California Supreme Court Grants New Trial to Man Sent to Death Row 25 Years Ago by False Forensic Evidence

The California Supreme Court has vacat­ed the con­vic­tion of Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pic­tured), say­ing that the foren­sic evi­dence that sent the for­mer Mexican farm­work­er to death row 25 years ago was ​“exten­sive,” ​“per­va­sive,” ​“impact­ful,” and ​“false.”

Benavides, now 68, was sen­tenced to death in 1993 after being found guilty of bru­tal­ly mur­der­ing Consuelo Verdugo, his girlfriend’s 21-month-old tod­dler, by rap­ing and anal­ly sodom­iz­ing her. However, the court said, med­ical evi­dence showed that the girl was nev­er raped or sodom­ized and may not have been mur­dered at all. Instead, she may have died from com­pli­ca­tions from hav­ing been struck by a car. 

Benavides — whose lawyers have argued is devel­op­men­tal­ly dis­abled and pos­sess­es the men­tal abil­i­ty of a 7‑year-old — told the police and jury dur­ing the tri­al that he lost track of the tod­dler while he was prepar­ing din­ner on November 17, 1991 and he found her out­doors, vom­it­ing. Consuelo’s moth­er took her to a local med­ical cen­ter that evening, where her con­di­tion wors­ened. After surgery and two hos­pi­tal trans­fers, the child died a week later. 

At tri­al, foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr. James Diblin tes­ti­fied that the tod­dler had died from ​“blunt force pen­e­trat­ing injury of the anus” and claimed that the major inter­nal injuries she suf­fered were the result of rape. He fur­ther tes­ti­fied that arm injuries, inter­nal trau­ma, dilat­ed pupils, and com­pres­sion rib frac­tures that Consuelo sus­tained had been ​“caused by tight squeez­ing dur­ing a sex­u­al assault.” Dr. Jess Diamond, who eval­u­at­ed the tod­dler at Kern Medical Center, also ini­tial­ly tes­ti­fied that the baby had been raped. 

However, med­ical records obtained by Benavides’s post-con­vic­tion lawyers showed that the exam­in­ing physi­cians had not seen any signs of bleed­ing when Consuelo was brought to the hos­pi­tal, and a nurse who helped treat the tod­dler said that nei­ther she nor any of her col­leagues saw evi­dence of anal or vagi­nal trau­ma when the child arrived. Instead, the court said, the injuries to Consuelo’s gen­i­talia and anus were ​“attribut[able] to med­ical inter­ven­tion,” includ­ing repeat­ed failed efforts to insert a catheter and the improp­er use of an adult-sized catheter on the small child. 

“After review­ing the med­ical records and pho­tographs that I should have been pro­vid­ed in 1993,” Dr. Diamond with­drew his assess­ment that Consuelo had been raped. ​“I am con­vinced that this case presents a tremen­dous fail­ing of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” he said. 

The defense also pre­sent­ed evi­dence from Dr. Astrid Heger, one of the country’s lead­ing experts on child abuse, who described Dr. Didbin’s asser­tion that Consuelo’s injuries had been the prod­uct of sex­u­al assault as ​“so unlike­ly to the point of being absurd. … No such mech­a­nism of injury has ever been report­ed in any lit­er­a­ture of child abuse or child assault.” She said the inter­nal injuries the child sus­tained were com­mon­ly seen in vic­tims of automobile accidents. 

During oral argu­ment, Associate Justice Carol Corrigan, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor, described Dibdin’s tes­ti­mo­ny as being ​“among the most hair-rais­ing false evi­dence that I’ve encoun­tered in all the time that I’ve been look­ing at crim­i­nal cas­es.” Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye com­pared the sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tions to ​“a bomb dropped on the jury” that pre­vent­ed the jurors from con­sid­er­ing the evi­dence that the tod­dler may have been hit by a car. 

Prosecutors admit­ted that the foren­sic evi­dence they used to con­vict Benavides was false, but asked the state court to sus­tain a con­vic­tion for sec­ond-degree mur­der. With its key evi­dence dis­cred­it­ed, Kern County District Attorney Lisa Green said it was improb­a­ble that pros­e­cu­tors would attempt to retry Benavides. If the charges are dis­missed, Benavides would be the fourth California death-row pris­on­er to be exon­er­at­ed since the state brought back the death penal­ty in 1974.