Bluhm Blog

Complete Vindication for False Confessor Jorge Hernandez

                                                                                      

This is not Jorge Hernandez.  It's Roberto Cruz Recendes, age 40, the man who actually raped and beat a 94 year old woman in Palo Alto, CA in 2002.  More than six years after wrongfully arresting and charging Hernandez, an 18 year old former soccer star at Gunn High School, Palo Alto detectives, working with the FBI finally tracked Recendes to a village in Mexico and succeeded in extraditing him back to the states to face trial.  DNA evidence proved to be both Hernandez's salvation and Recendes' doom.

Police arrested Hernandez with great fanfare after they obtained a "confession" from the young man during an interrogation, only part of which was videotaped.  The taped portion revealed that Hernandez was struggling to come up with details of the assault -- which supposedly occurred during a blackout while he was drunk -- but proved to be enough of a confession to get him arrested.  Three weeks after his "confession," DNA evidence proved he did not rape the victim who had only identified a single assailant.  Although charges against him were dropped, local authorities did not remove the cloud of suspicion from Hernandez, claiming that their investigation was still open and that he was still a suspect.

Recendes's downfall was that he was later arrested on charges of domestic violence and incarcerated in state prison.  He was paroled in 2006 and deported and required to give the state a sample of his DNA as a condition of his parole.  A few months after he left the country, the state Bureau of Forensic Services made the match to DNA left on a ring Recendes left at the crime scene.

The irony is that the ring is what led police to Hernandez in the first place.  The ring, which was engraved with the word "Edwin" and was decorated with a Quetzal, Guatemala's national bird, was reported as missing by Hernandez's brother Edwin who also drew police suspicion.   During Hernandez's interrogation, the police pitted one brother against the other and used Edwin to pressure Hernandez to confess to the crime. 

Tracking down Recendes was a major undertaking, requiring some heavy lifting by the FBI and then the cooperation of Mexican authorities who picked him up in December 2007.  Then the lengthy extradition process took its course, finally resulting in a decision by Mexican officials, after reviewing the evidence, to agree to his extradition.

All this was of course was news -- great news -- to Hernandez, now a 25 year old machinist living in Mountain  View California.  Quoted in the San Jose Mercury News, Hernandez was elated:

"Thank God they finally got the right person...I'm happy this is finally coming to an end. I'm finally able to get that nightmare off my back."

Hernandez's case was featured in a 2004 show on false confessions (which also featured yours truly) by 60 Minutes.  Hernandez sued authorities for his troubles, ultimately settling with them for $75,000.

DNA Review Clears Deceased Virginia Man Who Falsely Confessed to Brutal Murder and Rape

In Virginia, after Marvin Anderson   was exonerated in 2002 by DNA evidence in his case that was uncovered in the files of retired lab analyst Mary Jane Burton, who saved such evidence in all of her files, Gov. Mark Warner then ordered that 10% of her over 300 cases -- a random sample -- be tested for possible other wrongful convictions.  These tests exonerated two more men -- Phillip Leon Thurman and Willie Davidson. These shocking results -- a more than 6% error rate -- led Warner to order DNA testing of evidence found in all forensic case files that led to convictions from 1973 through 1988. 

It's taken quite a long time for testing to begin in these cases but results are starting to come in and the exonerations are likely to continue to mount.  Just this week test results appear to have cleared Curtis Jasper Moore of the murder and rape of an 88 year old Emporia woman named Eva King Jones.  Thomas Pope Jr. (pictured below) was charged with the murder and rape after DNA testing linked him to the crime.  Pope's profile was in a state database after he had been convicted of the abduction and rape of a 9 year old girl.

Thomas Pope Jr.

But what about Curtis Jaspar Moore?  Moore was arrested and convicted in the Virginia state courts based on a confession which two federal courts later tossed because it was the product of an unlawful arrest without probable cause and an un-Mirandized interrogation.   By reading the federal court opinions (both of which are published), Moore appears to have been the victim of a dragnet operation from desperate local police officers who hauled in dozens of local black men in the wake of the murder (the victim stayed alive long enough to tell police that her assailant was black).  Once at the police station, the severely mentally ill Moore, was grilled relentlessly by multiple detectives in an interrogation which was partially recorded on tape.  He repeatedly denied knowing anything about the crime but his denials were ignored.  The tapes of the interrogation are filled with highly coercive tactics, including repeated promises to Moore that he could go home once he confessed.  Detectives also suggested details of the crime to Moore and twice took him to the crime scene to help him "remember" these details.  Moore, who told the officers he had been released from a mental hospital, hummed and sang the theme song from the television show "Have gun will travel" throughout the interrogation. 

Tragically, Moore spent six years in a state mental hospital in the custody of the Department of Corrections before the federal courts tossed his conviction and prosecutors decided not to retry him.  Moore will never get to savor the taste of total vindication (which I hope will come shortly) -- he died four years ago.

For continuing updates about this story, check out articles by Frank Green in the Richmond Times Dispatch.