Wrong Man

Her testimony and the fact that

"it was him that pulled the trigger"...

It was literally an execution,

and, uh, that's why it was a good verdict.

How are half of the witnesses saying it's a juvenile,

and the other half are saying it's an adult?

And I pushed him hard.

And he started beating on the desk, saying,

"Look, I did not kill Jose."

We believe that they caught the right guy,

and now he's playing mister victim?

Does this reconstruction show

that he was the one that pulled the trigger?

No!

This is telling us how, not who.

Detective Rivard knew Evaristo,

had had a series of bad encounters with him.

Evaristo was, um, a troubled kid.

Do you have any idea why this confidential informant

would say you were the one who did it?

So I think we have one goal now --

Find the informant.

Nice-looking mountains.

Yeah, we're in -- I guess we're in the lower valley of Yakima,

pretty nice little area though over here.

Yeah.

Farm country.

We're on our way to see Jim Rivard,

the detective in this case.

Can't wait to talk to him.

It'll be interesting what he saw and heard

the days after this thing, you know?

Yeah. Hopefully he'll talk to us.

We need a break.

Yeah, we do.

If this is like the regular news,

I'll probably talk for 15 minutes,

and there'll be, like, 30 seconds on the show.

Right. Just be yourself like you were out in the --

-Oh, yeah, oh, that's -- -I mean, you know, hey,

you're speaking to us from the heart, man.

Yeah.

So, Jim, how did you get this case?

Um, at the time, I was a detective

for the police department,

and it was assigned to me

'cause I was the detective sergeant.

And how long had you been a detective?

Uh...

Did this case take place in '96?

'95. November 14, 1995.

In '95, okay, November of '95, well,

I went into detectives about, I think, July of that year.

-July of that year. -Yes.

And how many homicides had you worked prior to this homicide?

-My first one. -That was your first one?

-Wow. -Yep.

I spent an extensive amount of time

with the victim's girlfriend,

and over the entire course of the case,

I had showed her 11 or 12 different photo lineups,

and nothing came home -- nothing.

As time went on, you know,

we would get different stories from people, rumors.

You know, we had leads that would come in,

and they would just go dead.

I also had an informant that I worked with extensively

in Sunnyside on drug cases.

He kind of knew what was going on in that town,

and he would go to a place, and he would see the drugs,

and then he would come and tell me and say,

"Hey, Jim, there's 1/2 pound of marijuana

at 301 Riverview Lane,

and it's in the closet."

One afternoon, he was with me, and I had asked him

if he had heard anything about this shooting,

and the informant goes, "What are you talking about?

I already told you who shot him."

He says, "Don't you remember?

I told you that I actually smoked

with the guy that told me

that he wouldn't have wanted to be the one

that cleaned up the mess inside that pickup.

I don't know his name."

And I says, "Well, can you get it?"

And he goes, "Yeah, I-I-I can probably get it."

A couple weeks goes by, and he cannot locate this person,

so I says, "Well, we're gonna have to figure out

another way to find him, I guess."

In this case, it's genuinely bizarre.

They had absolutely no reason to think Evaristo was involved

until an alleged coincidental meeting.

My informant comes into the office one afternoon,

and he says, "Jim, I got three places

where I know there's drugs."

And I said, "Okay. Well, let's do the search warrant."

So I start typing up the search warrants,

and a deputy from the sheriff's office comes to me,

and he says, "I got this fellow

over in one of the interview offices.

I just got done interviewing him," and he says,

"You got anything you want to talk to him about?"

I looked at him and said, "Yeah, I'll take a minute

to go talk to him," and I grab my Polaroid camera off my desk,

and the young man's name was "Junior" Salas.

And I said, "Well, you know, Junior,

I was gonna talk to you,

but I really don't have anything to talk to you about,

but I am gonna take your picture."

So, why'd you take his picture?

To this day, I couldn't tell you why.

And I walked back to my office,

and I had the picture in my hand.

It kind of slid across my desk a couple inches,

and my informant looked at me, and he says,

"Hey, what do you need me for?"

He says, "That's the guy right there that told me

he shot him in the head."

And the picture that I put on my desk,

I put that in a photo lineup,

and I showed it to the victim/wife,

and I still get goose bumps to this day.

When she pointed to that picture, she said, "That's him."

Sergeant Rivard had the victim's wife

come in to look at a photo montage,

and I remember she let out a scream,

and when I turned around, she was crying,

and she's saying, "That's the guy that did it."

And do you know who the guy was that she was identifying?

Well, obviously, the one that was convicted.

-And who was that? -I don't remember his name.

You don't remember his name? -No.

You don't even remember his name? No.

I remember the tears.

I remember she was crying.

She was -- You could see the fear in her face.

That's how law enforcement

first got to Evaristo in the first place.

He was not a suspect before.

Nobody identified him fleeing or coming or going.

That was it --

this snitch who coincidentally just happened

to see the photos that Rivard coincidentally just happened

to have taken of the guy

who just happened to be in the police station being questioned

on something totally different,

and Ofelia confirms it, and that's the --

that's the -- the end of the case,

really, as far as the cops were concerned.

That's, like, an amazing coincidence.

Coincidence. What's going on with Rivard?

Why does he even have Evaristo's pictures out on his desk?

Even the way the pictures are taken are almost incriminating.

-They're mug shots. -Yeah, yeah.

They got him to the side and to the front.

Right.You know, it's very convenient, the informant.

You know, what takes him so long to bring it forward?

-Right. -You know, we know informants.

A lot of them want to collect money.

You know that, Ira. It's what they're a snitch for.

This could have been a payment for him.

Right, this is a murderer,

not just a little crappy little drug case.

-This is a great big murder. -Yeah.

You'd think he'd go running over to Rivard.

Do you remember the informant that the prosecution called?

Do you remember him saying he couldn't remember things?

Oh, yeah.

The prosecution had asked him some questions.

Okay.

Then the defense attorney says, "Okay."

He says, "I asked you a question,

and you gave a different answer.

Can you explain that?"

And he says, "Oh, yes." He says, "I can explain that."

He says, "I have been doctor-diagnosed

with CRS Disease."

And what was CRS? Did he tell you what that was?

-Yeah, well, they asked him. -Okay.

It was Can't Remember Shit.

Everybody is just looking at the prosecution at that time

because their jaws just dropped,

you know, that they put this guy on the stand.

That right there kind of blew him out

-as far as I was concerned. -Uh-huh.

I don't know of anybody in the courtroom

that wasn't surprised.

Do you believe he's guilty?

I believe,

when that woman reacted that way,

there's no doubt.