Vicente Benavides, Sentenced to Death by False Forensics, to Be Freed After 26 Years on Death Row

Mexican nation­al Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pic­tured), wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Kern County, California for sup­pos­ed­ly rap­ing, sodom­iz­ing, and mur­der­ing his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daugh­ter, will soon be freed after near­ly 26 years on death row. He will be the 162^nd per­son and fifth for­eign nation­al exon­er­at­ed from a U.S. death row since 1973. 

In a media advi­so­ry on April 17, 2018, Kern District Attorney Lisa Green announced on April 17, 2018 that her office would be drop­ping all charges against Benavides, one month after the California Supreme Court vacat­ed the for­mer farmworker’s con­vic­tions for sex­u­al­ly assault­ing and mur­der­ing Consuelo Verdugo, which the court called a prod­uct of ​“exten­sive,” ​“per­va­sive,” ​“impact­ful,” and ​“false” foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. The girl, 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 Consuelo had died from ​“blunt force pen­e­trat­ing injury of the anus” and claimed that many of her inter­nal injuries were the result of rape. He fur­ther tes­ti­fied that arm injuries, oth­er inter­nal trau­ma, dilat­ed pupils, and com­pres­sion rib frac­tures she 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.” On appeal, 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. 

Even after agree­ing on April 17, 2018 to drop all charges, District Attorney Green refused to con­cede that Benavides was inno­cent of mur­der. “[I]t doesn’t mean he’s inno­cent of the phys­i­cal child abuse,” she said. ​“My deci­sion not to retry the case is not the same as a find­ing of fac­tu­al inno­cence[.] I’m not stat­ing in any way that he’s fac­tu­al­ly inno­cent of the death of the child.” 

At least ten men and women have been exon­er­at­ed from death rows across the United States after hav­ing been wrong­ly con­vict­ed for killing a child. In the cas­es of Rodricus Crawford and Sabrina Butler, the med­ical evi­dence also showed that no crime had occurred, but the defen­dants were con­vict­ed based on false foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. Benavides is the fourth per­son exon­er­at­ed from California’s death row since 1980. 

A California prison spokesper­son said he is expect­ed the be freed ​“with­in a few days,” as soon as the Kern County court orders his release. [UPDATE: The court for­mal­ly dis­missed all charges against Mr. Benavides and he was released on April 19, 2018.]