The East La man whose lawyers said he was framed for the murder was found to be virtually innocent.
Humbel Duran took the courtroom in downtown Los Angeles on Friday morning and nervously changed his weight. However, as Judge H. Clay Jacquet spoke, Duran began to smile slowly, soaking in the words he had been waiting for for a long time to hear.
“The facts support the inevitable conclusion that Duran did not kill Albert Gonzalez or did not kill Rivera Ortiz.
Confronting Duran, he added: “You are practically innocent.”
Duran returned to hug his family. And I began to cry.
The now 51-year-old was sentenced to life in prison for the 1993 gang murder in East Los Angeles. Twenty-four years later, the case began to collapse when Monica Rivera, the sole witness of the crime, cut down her story and told Duran’s lawyer that she lied to the stands when she saw her filming 17-year-old Gonzalez.
The lawyers for Duran, a California Innocence supporter, have reviewed the case for seven years. Then, in early 2024, they filed a petition to ask the judge to overturn the conviction.
In a 147-page submission, lawyers Megan Baka and Ariana Price said one of the people they called Rivera’s cousins ”framed” Duran, who was targeted to indict him. They said there was no other evidence to suggest Duran, and he had an alibi. He was with his girlfriend and her mother.
In October, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office admitted in a 10-page letter that there was evidence of “actual innocence.” A day later, Yac reversed Duran’s beliefs.
But before Duran agrees to the defense team’s demands to formally declare his innocence — a discovery that clarifies the state’s compensation path for the year he was mistakenly imprisoned — the prosecutor wanted to investigate further. Earlier this month, the DA’s office submitted a letter agreeing to BACA’s request.
“Justice often arrives at arrests, convictions, and sentences, but justice may have to put aside beliefs,” Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman spoke to the court on Friday to thank his prosecutors and Duran’s defense team for their hard work.
“It’s a joy to be here,” he said. “There’s not much on days like this.”
Duran is a third party found in a virtually innocent murder since Hochman took office last year.
A week before Christmas in 1993, Duran (after 19) went to his girlfriend’s house on Fraser Avenue in East Los Angeles on his account, and they watched TV together at home and made a quick trip to Taco Bell. At about 1:30am, Duran said an older friend from the neighborhood walked him home.
When Duran returned to his parents’ house, his sister opened the door and told him the news: a child who knew he was growing up – Gonzalez – was shot.
After East LA lawmakers arrive at the crime scene, Rivera tells them that she and Gonzalez were in the back room of his family’s house when they hear someone screaming for his brother Vidal. The teens headed out into the driveway and saw a young man in a dark hoodie. He is said to have told Gonzalez that someone named “Beto” didn’t like him.
The young man then pulled out a gun and fatally shot Gonzalez. Rivera then spoke to the deputy, and the shooter climbed up to the passenger side of the Cadillac waiting in a nearby alley and left.
At first, Rivera told deputies that he didn’t know the names of the shooters or drivers, but he knew they were members of the Rascal’s Street gang.
When the detective officially interviewed her three days later, she still mentioned only one shooter. The detective pulls out a photo of Duran that he brought to the interview, but Rivera said he was not a murderer as he hadn’t seen him that night.
Later that day, one of the detectives – Sgt. Robert Perry – Duran said he may have been a suspect despite Rivera excluding him a few hours ago.
Batanero then visited Rivera at his family home. The two already knew each other, and Rivera later said in a statement sworn that they were cousins.
During the visit, Batanero did not record the conversation, but later Rivera wrote in the report that she had two shooters, the second one “sayed someone I personally knew as ‘beto’. ”
Near midnight he returned Rivera to the sheriff’s station for another interview. This time, the teenager said that after the first man shot Gonzalez, Duran jumped out from behind the Cadillac, shot Gonzalez with his foot and pointed his gun at Rivera. When it didn’t go out, he threatened her and ran away, she told the detective.
Deputies arrested Duran the day after Christmas. Others brought hints when his arrest words came around. Peter “Rocky” Peace told investigators that a fellow Rascal’s gang member who went to Spooky’s side confessed to the murder when he showed up at a bloody party a few hours later.
When the case went to trial, Duran’s lawyers – state lawmakers in California Records later rejected an unrelated “moral offence” pose as what BACA described as a “severely ineffective” defense. He did not offer evidence to back up Duran’s alibi, Baka wrote, and during the trial he appeared so many times that the judges lightly empty him, according to court minutes and payment receipts.
When contacted in comments last year, former lawyer Donald Ainsley said “some of the allegations” against him were “absolutely forgery.”
After a week of trial, Duran was found guilty. The judge gave him two life sentences.
More than 20 years later, the incident landed on BACA’s desk. She sent Rivera a Facebook message, and repeated witnesses of the former star.
“I know Beto is innocent,” she wrote in her 2021 Oath declaration.
She also vowed that there were two shooters, the second one not Duran and that she was a dangerous gang member who could have identified if she hadn’t “asserted” to name Duran.
Last year, Batanero told The Times that she felt Rivera’s story was reliable at the time, telling him that the allegations of misconduct against him were “a malicious attempt to trust me, and the fact that Monica identified and involved the petitioner in this gang-related murder.”
The two detectives involved in the case either did not respond or were unable to contact us for comment.
When Duran went on parole in the summer of 2022, BACA compiled a parole packet containing Rivera’s ticks. A few months later, he left the free man from prison.
However, the idiot still pushed her efforts to prove his innocence. And now, with both the DA’s office and the court agreeing, Duran can ask for money for his time behind the bar.
“I’m happy that this is finally over,” Baka said after the court. “This means that Duran can seek compensation from the Daily Victim Compensation Committee, where he was accidentally imprisoned. But more importantly, his name has been cleared and the truth is here.”
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