A record 151 men and women were exon­er­at­ed across the United States in 2018, accord­ing to the National Registry of Exonerations’ 2018 annu­al report on wrong­ful con­vic­tions. The report, Exonerations in 2018, includ­ed 68 exon­er­a­tions result­ing from wrong­ful homi­cide con­vic­tions. A DPIC analy­sis of data accom­pa­ny­ing the report shows that at least five peo­ple were exon­er­at­ed in 2018 after hav­ing been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in cas­es that involved the mis­use or threat­ened use of the death penal­ty, includ­ing 2018 death-row exonerees Vicente Benavides and Clemente Aguirre.

A record num­ber of the exon­er­a­tions in 2018 were the prod­uct of wrong­ful con­vic­tions obtained by police and/​or pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct (107) or perjury/​false accu­sa­tion (111), with both often occur­ring in com­bi­na­tion. The two also were the lead­ing fac­tors con­tribut­ing to wrong­ful homi­cide con­vic­tions, 79.4% of which involved police and/​or pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct (54 cas­es) and 76.5% of which involved perjury/​false accu­sa­tion (52 cas­es). Historically, those two fac­tors are the lead­ing caus­es of wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions. Both were present in more than two-thirds of the homi­cide exon­er­a­tions (47 cas­es, 69.1%) in 2018, includ­ing the wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions of Benavides and Aquirre.

DNA evi­dence helped to exon­er­ate 14 of those wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of homi­cide in 2018, account­ing for only 20.1% of homi­cide exon­er­a­tions. The pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed per­jured tes­ti­mo­ny or false wit­ness accu­sa­tions in all of the mur­der cas­es involv­ing DNA, and police and/​or pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct was also present in more than 60% of those cas­es. DNA helped to rebut false or mis­lead­ing foren­sic evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the pros­e­cu­tion in five of the homicide exonerations.

With new­ly dis­cov­ered con­fes­sions and DNA evi­dence point­ing to the prosecution’s chief wit­ness as the actu­al killer, pros­e­cu­tors dropped all charges against Clemente Javier Aguirre (pic­tured, cen­ter, at his exon­er­a­tion) in a Seminole County, Florida court­room on November 5, 2018. The dis­missal of the charges made Aguirre the 164^th wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed death-row pris­on­er to be exon­er­at­ed in the United States since 1973 and the 28^th in Florida.

Aguirre was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2006 for the mur­der of two neigh­bors: an elder­ly woman and her adult daugh­ter. He stead­fast­ly main­tained his inno­cence, say­ing he had dis­cov­ered the women only after they had been killed. He did not report the mur­ders to author­i­ties, he said, because he was an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant and feared deportation.

Evidence has increas­ing­ly point­ed to the vic­tims’ daugh­ter and grand­daugh­ter, Samantha Williams, as the like­ly per­pe­tra­tor, and an affi­davit filed the week before Aguirre’s sched­uled retri­al under­mined Williams’s ali­bi. DNA test­ing had revealed Williams’s blood in sev­er­al loca­tions at the crime scene but had found none of Aguirre’s blood. Williams also has report­ed­ly con­fessed to the crime on at least five occa­sions. A sworn affi­davit from the wife of Mark Van Sandt, Williams’s boyfriend at the time of the crime and her key ali­bi wit­ness, says that Van Sandt told his wife he saw Williams crawl­ing out of his bed­room win­dow on the night of the murders.

Prosecutors said that they dropped charges ​“based upon new evi­dence that mate­ri­al­ly affects the cred­i­bil­i­ty of a crit­i­cal State witness.”

Aguirre was sen­tenced to death by the tri­al judge despite non-unan­i­mous 7 – 5 and 9 – 3 jury votes for death in the two mur­ders. 20 of the 22 Florida exon­er­a­tions for which researchers have been able to deter­mine the jury vote have been cas­es in which judges imposed the death penal­ty despite non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death or over­rode jury rec­om­men­da­tions for life.

Mexican nation­al Vicente Benavides Figueroa (pic­tured) was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Kern County, California for sup­pos­ed­ly rap­ing, sodom­iz­ing, and mur­der­ing his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daugh­ter. He was freed in April 2018 after near­ly 26 years on death row.

In a media advi­so­ry on April 17, 2018, Kern District Attorney Lisa Green announced that her office would be drop­ping all charges against Benavides, one month after the California Supreme Court vacat­ed the for­mer farmworker’s con­vic­tions for alleged­ly sex­u­al­ly assault­ing and mur­der­ing Consuelo Verdugo. The court called the con­vic­tion a prod­uct of ​“exten­sive,” ​“per­va­sive,” ​“impact­ful,” and ​“false” foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. Consuelo, the court said, had nev­er been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed and may actu­al­ly have died from being hit by a car.

At tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr. James Diblin, who told the jury that the tod­dler had died from ​“blunt force pen­e­trat­ing injury of the anus” and claimed that many of her inter­nal injuries had been the result of a rape. Diblin fur­ther tes­ti­fied that arm injuries, oth­er inter­nal trau­ma, dilat­ed pupils, and com­pres­sion rib frac­tures Consuelo had sus­tained had been ​“caused by tight squeez­ing dur­ing a sexual assault.”

During post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings, Benavides’s lawyers pre­sent­ed evi­dence from Dr. Astrid Heger, one of the country’s lead­ing experts on child abuse, debunk­ing Diblin’s false tes­ti­mo­ny. Dr. Heger described Diblin’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.” Rather, she said, the inter­nal injuries Consuelo sus­tained were com­mon­ly seen in vic­tims of automobile accidents.

Hospital records and wit­ness state­ments obtained by Benavides’s appeal lawyers also under­mined Diblin’s false tes­ti­mo­ny. Records showed that the exam­in­ing physi­cians from Consuelo’s ini­tial hos­pi­tal­iza­tion had not seen any signs of bleed­ing when she was brought to the emer­gency room, and a nurse who helped treat Consuelo report­ed that nei­ther she nor any of her col­leagues had seen evi­dence of anal or vagi­nal trau­ma when the child arrived. Indeed, the court said, the med­ical records showed that the injuries to Consuelo’s gen­i­talia and anus that Diblin had claimed were evi­dence of sex­u­al assault were actu­al­ly ​“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.

Associate Justice Carol Corrigan — a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor — described the foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny that Benavides had bru­tal­ly raped and anal­ly sodom­ized Consuelo as ​“among the most hair-rais­ing false evi­dence that I’ve encoun­tered in all the time that I’ve been look­ing at criminal cases.”

Bobby Joe Maxwell

Bobby Joe Maxwell was cap­i­tal­ly pros­e­cut­ed in Los Angeles, California for a series of ten mur­ders and five rob­beries attrib­uted to the ​“Skid Row Stabber” in 1978 and 1979. No phys­i­cal evi­dence direct­ly linked Maxwell to the mur­ders and wit­ness­es failed to iden­ti­fy him or his voice in police line­ups. Tried in 1984, the jury con­vict­ed Maxwell of two of the mur­ders based on ques­tion­able foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny and the tes­ti­mo­ny of prison infor­mant Sidney Storch, who claimed Maxwell had con­fessed to him and told the jury this was the first time he had ever tes­ti­fied or coop­er­at­ed as a pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness. The jury acquit­ted Maxwell of three oth­er mur­ders and the jury hung on the remain­ing five mur­der counts. A scan­dal in the late 1980s over the sys­temic mis­use of jail­house snitch­es in Los Angeles County mur­der cas­es exposed Storch as a ​“ser­i­al liar” and one of the most pro­lif­ic false infor­mants. In 2010 a fed­er­al appeals court grant­ed Maxwell a new tri­al in 2010 and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2012. Maxwell remained in cus­tody fac­ing retri­al until December 2017, when he suf­fered a heart attack that left him comatose. Prosecutors dropped the charges against him in 2018.

Matthew Sopron

Matthew Sopron was con­vict­ed of a dou­ble mur­der and sen­tenced to life with­out parole in 1998 in Chicago, Illinois after an 18-year-old pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness false­ly tes­ti­fied that he had ordered the killing. William Bigeck, who tes­ti­fied at tri­al that he had not ini­tial­ly impli­cat­ed Sopron because Sopron was a gang leader who could kill him, lat­er admit­ted to Sopron’s lawyers that Sopron ​“had absolute­ly noth­ing to do with the mur­ders.” Bigeck tes­ti­fied in post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings in 2018 that police inter­view­ers were angry with him after he ini­tial­ly refused to impli­cate Sopron, that he would have done any­thing to avoid the death penal­ty, and that he had changed his ini­tial state­ment to obtain a plea deal that took the death penal­ty off the table. Two oth­er pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es lat­er admit­ted that they also had impli­cat­ed Sopron only after police or pros­e­cu­tors had threat­ened to pros­e­cute them for the murders.

Daniel Villegas

Daniel Villegas was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der and sen­tenced to life in El Paso, Texas in August 1995 for a dri­ve-by dou­ble mur­der. The 16-year-old false­ly con­fessed after being hand­cuffed to a chair by a detec­tive who threat­ened to take him to the desert and ​“beat his ass,” slapped him, and said he would die in the elec­tric chair if he didn’t con­fess. “[T]errified out of his mind,” Villegas con­fessed. The same detec­tive coerced a false con­fes­sion out of 15-year-old Michael Johnston, hand­cuff­ing him to a chair and inter­ro­gat­ing him for eight hours, threat­en­ing him with the death penal­ty, lying to him that his friends had already impli­cat­ed him in the shoot­ing, and telling him he would be raped in jail if he did not con­fess. Villegas recant­ed his con­fes­sion a few hours after sign­ing his state­ment. His first tri­al result­ed in a mis­tri­al, but he was con­vict­ed on retri­al. As evi­dence point­ing to oth­er sus­pects was unearthed, the Texas state courts over­turned the con­vic­tion in 2012, cit­ing inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel. Presenting evi­dence of inno­cence at his third tri­al, Villegas was acquit­ted in October 2018.

• Annual Report, Exonerations in 2018, National Registry of Exonerations, April 9 2019.
• Innocent Man Who Spent Over a Decade on Florida’s Death Row is Exonerated, Innocence Project, November 5, 2018; Michael Williams, Prosecutors drop case against exon­er­at­ed death-row inmate Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin, Orlando Sentinel, November 5, 2018.
• Jason Kotowski, Delano man whose mur­der con­vic­tion in death of 21-month-old girl was over­turned last month will not be retried, April 17, 2018; Bakersfield Now Staff, Kern DA won’t retry over­turned mur­der case, KMPH Fox 26, April 17, 2018; California death row inmate to be freed; no retri­al planned, Associated Press, April 17, 2018; Death row inmate Vicente Benavides released from cus­tody Thursday after charges dis­missed, The Bakersfield Californian, April 19, 2018.
• Maurice Possley, Bobby Joe Maxwell, National Registry of Exonerations, January 15, 2019.
• Maurice Possley, Matthew Sopron, National Registry of Exonerations, December 31, 2018.
• Ken Otterbourg, Daniel Villegas, National Registry of Exonerations, October 15, 2018.

DPIC analy­sis by Robert Dunham.

Photo of Clemente Aguirre cour­tesy of the Innocence Project.