LOS ANGELES, CA – Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman announced Friday that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jacke II has found Humberto “Beto” Duran factually innocent of a 1993 East Los Angeles gang-related murder, for which he spent 30 years in prison.
The DA Office statement noted that, during the 1994 case, a jury had convicted the defendant of one count of first-degree murder and one count of attempted premeditated murder in the killing of Albert Gonzalez, who was shot in the driveway of his home in 1993.
Thirty years later, in January 2024, Duran’s lawyers at California Innocence Advocates had filed a petition asking a judge to overturn the conviction, having reinvestigated the case for the previous seven years, reported the LA Times, and in October 2024, Duran filed a motion for a finding of factual innocence.
“The trauma that Mr. Duran suffered for three decades is unfathomable. We are deeply grateful to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, specifically Deputy District Attorney Bazan and District Attorney Hochman, and to the Court for seeing the truth, applying the correct legal standard, and ensuring that Mr. Duran is finally vindicated,” said Megan Baca, Director of California Innocence Advocates.
In 2018, the lone eyewitness who had testified to the crime admitted to Duran’s attorney that she had lied on the stand about seeing Duran shoot the victim.
She admitted there were two shooters and that the second wasn’t Duran but rather a dangerous gang member she could have identified if deputies hadn’t “insisted” she name Duran, reported the Times.
In their defense, Duran’s attorneys also claimed there was no other evidence implicating Duran and defended his alibi, which was that he had been with his girlfriend and her mother, wrote the Times.
The lawyers insisted Duran had been “framed” by deputies on the case, including one who had been described as Duran’s cousin, read the Times.
The DA’s Office stated, “After a careful review of the facts and analysis of the law, the People determined that Mr. Duran met his legal burden to establish habeas relief on the ground of cumulative error, based on specific instances of ineffective assistance of trial counsel in combination with new evidence of Mr. Duran’s actual innocence, including the recantation by the sole witness and evidence that Mr. Duran was not a member or associate of the gang responsible for the murder.”
Both the DA’s office and the court have agreed Duran can now seek monetary recompense for his time behind bars through the Victim Compensation Board, wrote the Times.
