Gerardo Cabanillas, at the time of his freedom.
The Innocence Center is an independent non-profit law firm dedicated to freeing the innocent from prison, educating the public on the causes of wrongful conviction, and assisting freed clients as they reenter society.
The Innocence Center launched in 2023. The Board and Staff have decades of innocence work under their belt, all having worked at the California Innocence Project as a staff or faculty member. Collectively, the group has freed more than 40 people who have served 560+ years in prison for crimes they did not commit.
The team has been responsible for getting a dozen laws changed to prevent future injustices and make it easier to free the innocent. The Innocence Center is a provisional member of the Innocence Network.
The story of Gerardo Cabanillas illustrates the fruits of his work.
(Story taken from The Innocence Center site)
On January 16, 1995, two armed men robbed Raul F. and Maria A., stole Raul’s car, kidnapped his girlfriend, Maria A., and sexually assaulted her in an abandoned house. Two days later, on January 18, 1995, an armed man robbed Ricardo S. and Maria L. and unsuccessfully attempted to steal Ricardo’s car.
A few days later, police arrested eighteen-year-old Gerardo Cabanillas because he generally matched the description of the perpetrator and was wearing red pants, a detail witnesses provided to police. A seasoned detective known for eliciting false confessions placed Gerardo Cabanillas in an interrogation room. The detective accused Cabanillas of robbery, kidnap, and rape but promised Cabanillas he would get only probation and could go home if he confessed. After many denials, Cabanillas finally confessed, but he did not go home as promised. Instead, the prosecution charged him with fourteen felony counts including robbery, kidnapping, carjacking, rape, and sodomy.
The prosecution’s case consisted of Cabanillas’s confession and problematic eyewitness identifications of the four victims. Police failed to find any physical evidence tying Gerardo Cabanillas to the crime. Maria A. and Raul F. had serious doubts about their identifications of Cabanillas’s photo from a six-pack lineup. They only committed to their identifications after the detective told them Cabanillas had confessed. Maria L. said she would not be able to make an identification of the person because she had not gotten a good look at him.
It would take two jury trials before the prosecution secured a conviction on almost all the counts. All the while, Cabanillas proclaimed his innocence and testified on his own behalf in both trials, denouncing the veracity of his confession and presenting alibi evidence that he was at home with his family at the time of the crimes. At both trials, Maria A. failed to identify Cabanillas. Raul wavered on his identification but commented, “I have seen cases like this that sometimes they are not correct.” Unfortunately for Gerardo Cabanillas, Raul was right.
It would be over two decades before DNA evidence would definitively prove Gerardo Cabanillas did not commit these crimes. Specifically, Maria A. testified her two attackers ejaculated in her. Post-conviction DNA testing on the sexual assault examination kit has revealed two contributors of sperm found on her, neither of which are Cabanillas. In addition, an expert on false confessions has determined Cabanillas’s confession has a “high probability” of being false. It was inconsistent with the facts & was primarily the product of police feeding him information and Cabanillas merely confirming it.
Gerardo Cabanillas was exonerated on September 26, 2023.
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