California Man Exonerated After Serving 33 Years in Prison
Exonerating evidence in 2017 was not shared with defense attorney
Daniel Saldana was released from prison after serving 33 years for a crime Los Angeles prosecutors now say he didn’t commit, after reviewing exonerating evidence revealed by another prisoner six years ago, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced yesterday.
Saldana was sentenced to 45 years in prison after he and two others were convicted of attempted murder in a 1989 incident in which a group of six high school students was fired upon while driving, apparently mistaken for gang members. Two of the students were injured during the shooting.
The exonerating evidence was disclosed during a 2017 parole hearing for one of Saldana’s co-defendants, Raul Vidal, who told the parole board not only did Saldana not participate in the shooting, but he was not present at the time, Gascón said.
This information had not been shared with Saldana or his attorney, and it wasn’t until February of this year that the statement from the parole hearing was presented to Gascón’s office by California’s Board of Parole Hearings, which since 2017 has had new members. “This information was clearly exonerating information, which the DA’s office was required to turn over to Mr. Saldana or his attorney, but it was not turned over. This failure to investigate this matter in 2017 cost Mr. Saldana an additional six years in prison,” Gascón said.
According to California law, Saldana is entitled to compensation for being wrongfully convicted. “It is to be determined exactly how much, but not an insignificant amount of money,” Saldana's attorney Mike Romano, director of Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project, stated during the news confernce.
“I never lost hope,” Saldana said at the news conference. “I’m innocent – 100 percent – I’ve been saying that from Day One. This is overwhelming. I just knew that one day this was going to come. I’m just so grateful and I just thank God, Jesus.”
Read the
full statement from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office regarding Daniel Saldana's exoneration.
