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| Manuel Velez |
Innocent man cleared of 2005 murder of one-year-old after review of evidence determines he could not have killed child
A building worker from Texas, who was sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, was released on Wednesday after spending nine years in prison, four of them on death row.
Manuel Velez, 49, emerged from Huntsville prison a free man at 11.32 pm CT. He was arrested in 2005, and sentenced to death three years later, for killing a one-year-old who was partially in his care.
But over the years the conviction unraveled. Tests on the victim’s brain showed that Velez could not have caused the child’s head injuries. Further evidence revealed that the defendant, who is intellectually disabled, had suffered from woeful legal representation at trial, and that the prosecutor had acted improperly to sway the jury against him.
Brian Stull, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented Velez since 2009, said that “an innocent man went to death row because the entire system failed him. The defense counsel who are meant to defend him let him down, the prosecutor who is meant to secure justice committed misconduct, and even the judge made errors that were recognized on appeal.”
Velez leaves prison with a criminal record. Despite the conclusive evidence that he was not in Brownsville at the time Angel received his head injuries, and despite the fact that the state of Texas has not disputed any of the facts in his appeal, the state continued to demand a retrial.
The ACLU advised him that he could not be guaranteed an acquittal, and that a further injustice was always possible. So Velez agreed to plead guilty to reckless injury to a child, leading to his release on time served.
“He wanted to fight for his innocence. But even more he wanted to see his children who are almost grown up, and his parents who are getting old,” Stull said.
Velez will travel on Wednesday more than 400 miles from Huntsville back to Brownsville, where he will be reunited with his two sons, Jose Manuel, now 15, and Ismael, 11.
Source: The Guardian, October 8, 2014
