Thursday, November 24, 2016

Texas women exonerated after nearly 15 years in prison for sexual assault


Texas’ highest criminal court on Wednesday exonerated four San Antonio women who spent almost 15 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting two girls, opening the door for the women to seek potentially millions of dollars in state compensation.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the so-called “San Antonio 4” -- Elizabeth Ramirez, Kristie Mayhugh, Cassandra Rivera and Anna Vasquez -- were innocent. The decision will allow the criminal records of all four women to be expunged.

The women were convicted in 1998, after two of Ramirez’s nieces, ages 7 and 9, accused them of holding them by the wrists and ankles, sexually assaulting and threatening to kill them in 1994. One of the nieces later recanted, saying another family member threatened her into making the statements.

“Those defendants have won the right to proclaim to the citizens of Texas that they did not commit a crime. That they are innocent. That they deserve to be exonerated,” Judge David Newell wrote in the majority opinion. “These women have carried that burden. They are innocent. And they are exonerated.”

CBS affiliate KENS reports that Ramirez was babysitting her two nieces, who were 7 and 9 years old at the time, while the other three women were visiting at her apartment.

About four months after that night, in November 1994, the 20-year-old and pregnant Ramirez remembers a knock at her door.

“I was at home in my apartment, and a detective came knocking at the door and asked to speak to me,” Ramirez previously told KENS. “He asked if I knew Javier, Stephanie and Vanessa, and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s my brother-in-law and my nieces.’ And he said, ‘Do you know they accused you of sexually assaulting them?’ And I was like, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘Do you know why they would do that?’ And I said, ‘No, I have no idea because it never happened.’”[...]

But the court’s opinion on Wednesday relied heavily on the niece who recanted her testimony. The opinion said the two girls’ testimony was so intertwined that a jury could not rely on one without the other. The court also said the “newly available evidence of innocence undermines the legally sufficient, but hard-to-believe versions of events that led to the convictions of these four women.”

A concurring opinion by two other Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judges would also grant exoneration based on the challenges to the expert testimony and recantation. The opinion said “no reasonable juror would have convicted them” considering those factors and other “weak and contradictory” testimony presented at their trials.

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