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DNA testing clears man of sex crimes after serving 16 years in prison

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NBC LA

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A judge on Monday overturned the conviction of a man who spent 16 years in prison for sexual assaults that DNA evidence later proved he didn't commit.

Luis Vargas began crying when the judge said that the evidence "completely and unerringly" points to his innocence.

Vargas, 46, is not a free man yet because of his immigration status. He's going into federal custody until his green card can be restored.


But his daughter and her 7-year-old child are looking forward to getting him back.
"Growing up I would cry myself to sleep, my father meant the world to me," Crystal Nunez-Vargas said. "I made poor decisions because I didn't have a father to guide me."

It was DNA tests that proved Vargas was innocent based on technology that wasn't around when Vargas he was sentenced in 1999 for three sexual assaults.
"This was a shaky eyewitness identification case," said attorney Alex Simpson of the California Innocence Project.
"This happens all the time. The No. 1 factor in wrongful convictions across the country is mistaken eyewitness identification."

Both defense lawyers and authorities say DNA evidence now points to the so-called Teardrop Rapist, who police believe is responsible for at least 35 attacks on women — the last one in 2012. His nickname is based on a tattoo of one or two teardrops below one eye.

"The DNA evidence links the Teardrop Rapist to these three crimes," Simpson said.
At his trial, three victims identified Vargas, who had previously served time for forcibly raping a girlfriend, as the man who attacked them.

Vargas was sentenced to 55 years to life in prison for a rape and two attempted rapes. In the 16 years that he served, he got to see his granddaughter just once at a community college graduation ceremony held inside prison.
His daughter says she's held off her wedding ceremony until her father can walk her down the aisle.

"Everybody needs a father figure, unfortunately I didn't have one because he wasn't able," Nunez-Vargas said. "They didn't give him the opportunity to be there for me and now I want him to be there for me."

Lawyers for the Innocence Project credit the district attorney's office for standing with them in court Monday to say the conviction was a mistake and that Vargas was indeed innocent.

Vargas has been sending books to his granddaughter in anticipation that he'll finally be able to read them to her.

From another article

When he was convicted, Vargas pleaded with the court: "I'm concerned (the) individual (who) really did these crimes might really be raping someone out there, might really be killing someone out there".
 

Linkyn

Member
Good for him, but what a shitty situation, overall. Shame on the people who sent him away without conclusive evidence.
 

OEM

Member
Man thats so sad. How do government compensate in these type of situation. Sorry we fucked up, is that all? Or he can sue and get money.
 

kewlmyc

Member
Hahaha, video game joke!


I feel really bad for the guy. Hope he can recover once he gets his green card, though that's 16 years of wrongful imprisonment, so I'm not sure he can. Hopefully he gets some sort of compensation for this.
 

KyleCross

Member
Man thats so sad. How do government compensate in these type of situation. Sorry we fucked up, is that all? Or he can sue and get money.

I know jack-all about the law, but that's what I always thought it was. "Sorry for fucking your life, our bad. Enjoy the rest of it!"

Also, if I'm reading this right, the guy is actually a rapist but just didn't commit the rapes he was convicted of? Says he raped his girlfriend. In which case yeah, sucks to go down for crimes you didn't commit, but I certainly have no compassion for him if that bit of info is true.
 

weekev

Banned
Then he comes out of prison and tracks down those responsible and it turns out it was him all along but hes actually a split personality who has been overpowered by his evil self and was never in jail, and now he faces a moral quandry to hand himself in or continue on with his life.

Its a great PNC with a fantastic plot, metacritic 81 I reckon.
 

Hoje0308

Banned
Finally got around to levelling up that persuasion skill.

Good for him, but what a shitty situation, overall. Shame on the people who sent him away without conclusive evidence.

The thing is, eyewitnesses count as evidence, unreliable though they are.
 

HardRojo

Member
At least he can be a grandfather now. This is fucked up :/ No amount of anything will bring back those years.
Edit: Oh wait, he was actually a rapist, but the crimes he was convicted of weren't actually his doing. Man this story is full of twists.
 
I know jack-all about the law, but that's what I always thought it was. "Sorry for fucking your life, our bad. Enjoy the rest of it!"

Also, if I'm reading this right, the guy is actually a rapist but just didn't commit the rapes he was convicted of? Says he raped his girlfriend. In which case yeah, sucks to go down for crimes you didn't commit, but I certainly have no compassion for him if that bit of info is true.

Yep, read that too. No sympathy.
 

Bronetta

Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
I have to do an assignment on Wrongful Convictions due tonight.

I'll use this thanks OP good timing.
 
Come on guys, this is no joking matter. The guy got his life robbed from him. All that time with his family that he'll never get back. Put yourselves in his shoes.

Edit: wait, he has a history of raping? Well, it's still a terrible mistake of course but I'm not going to feel sympathy for him.
 

Hoje0308

Banned
Wrong section, haha, very funny...

...But 16 years? I'm like 87% sure they had DNA testing in 1999. Why did it take them this long to get around to it? Shouldn't that have been like the #1 priority for his trial?

It may have been prohibitively expensive, especially in a case with eye witnesses pointing the finger at a man that had already raped at least one woman.
 

Mondrian

Member
He will get a decent amount of money from the government. I'm not sure how he will be able to adapt though, the jump from PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 4 will be too much to handle.
 

V_Arnold

Member
Its almost as if Gaming-GAF is not quite ready for news stories like this. Almost.

Horrible stuff, and he is not not alone with his case.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I am pretty sure he will get a few million dollars. Isn't it always like this ?

I've heard of a guy getting nothing but a $20 gift card for this sort of thing.
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Also, if I'm reading this right, the guy is actually a rapist but just didn't commit the rapes he was convicted of? Says he raped his girlfriend. In which case yeah, sucks to go down for crimes you didn't commit, but I certainly have no compassion for him if that bit of info is true.

He raped his girlfriend, seemingly got convicted for that (rightfully I guess? His girlfriend will have been able to identify him properly), so what is the reason to not feel compassion for him when he gets convicted for something he did not do? For all we know he saw his wrong doings and decided to live a better life, be more responsible from there on, just to be convicted out of prejudice (he was a rapist once, he sure has raped again) and seemingly lies (the victims are said to have identified him...)
 

Linkyn

Member
The thing is, eyewitnesses count as evidence, unreliable though they are.

I just feel like there are enough cases of faulty eyewitness accounts that maybe, their overall validity could be called into question. Doesn't something like this help build a legal precedent that can be used to toss out eyewitness testimony? I mean, many times, you're looking at bad memory at best, or possibly even coercion by authorities.
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
And that makes it okay for him being a prior rapist? C'mon man. there's a time and place for contrarianism, but this isn't the right hill to die on.
Of course it doesn't make it ok, but since they claim he was a rapist before, it is safe to assume he was convicted for that, too. But it is not fair to convict him for something he did not do.
 

Hoje0308

Banned
And that makes it okay for him being a prior rapist? C'mon man. there's a time and place for contrarianism, but this isn't the right hill to die on.

Where did I say anything like that?
It means that either you believe in justice for all, or you don't believe in justice. The guy is a rapist that was punished accordingly. That doesn't put him on the chopping block for a wrongful conviction.
 

hesido

Member
Problem with this verdict was, like the convicted said, that the real guilty person was roaming free. He did serve for his own crime in a sense.
 

KevinCow

Banned
And that makes it okay for him being a prior rapist? C'mon man. there's a time and place for contrarianism, but this isn't the right hill to die on.

He did something horrible, okay, sure. That doesn't make it okay to punish him for doing horrible things that he didn't do.
 

kewlmyc

Member
And that makes it okay for him being a prior rapist? C'mon man. there's a time and place for contrarianism, but this isn't the right hill to die on.

No one's saying it's okay. If I'm reading this correctly, he already served his time for that, then afterward he was wrongly convicted of raping 3 more girls (which he didn't do) so he got 16 years of prison for a crime he didn't do. I'm not going to act as if getting wrongly convicted is okay just because they guy did a heinous crime that he already served his time for 2 decades or so ago.
 

Jaeger

Member
We couldn't put that one woman who killed her baby and partied it up the whole week on camera afterwards complete with chloroform searches on her PC but shaky testimony of "it might be him..." is all we need to put him in jail for life?
 

Hesh

Member
Of course it doesn't make it ok, but since they claim he was a rapist before, it is safe to assume he was convicted for that, too. But it is not fair to convict him for something he did not do.

Wasn't my point. He was responding to someone that quoted another person about showing him sympathy, implying that he was wrong to point out that he was already a convicted rapist. As I said in my original post above, wrongful convictions suck, but the dude was a rapist, he already had a lot of problems that he's caused for himself and others before being wrongfully convicted of more rape. Times like these you should save the outrage and crocodile tears for some wrongfully convicted individuals that didn't rape anyone prior.

Where did I say anything like that?
It means that either you believe in justice for all, or you don't believe in justice. The guy is a rapist that was punished accordingly. That doesn't put him on the chopping block for a wrongful conviction.

I wasn't implying this was "justice", I was saying the man doesn't deserve sympathy for his plight because he's a convicted rapist because you responded to someone pointing out he was a rapist in response to someone asking for us to show him sympathy. He served his time (and then some, from the wrongful conviction), but he's still a rapist.That doesn't excuse what he did prior.
 

BokehKing

Banned
Well I know my post got deleted because it originally contained a gaming joke

But like I said

I know money doesn't buy happiness but the government needs to give this guy a couple million dollars, not just for compensation but the psychologist and therapist bills he is going to have to pay for when trying to readjust back into society


Edit: wait he is still a rapist? Chop his dick off
 

JeffZero

Purple Drazi
All stupid gaming jokes do is make more work for us as we delete posts. Stahp.

Sorry. My post wasn't actually intended to go down that route, but I'm tired and made the silly-bad decision to join in once I realized I'd used the word "level."

Truly though, what the man's daughter said really resonates with me. Everything she said. I empathize with her. Full stop, damn, I wish I had a dad.

That's probably peanuts next to the father's suffering, of course. I can't even imagine. Seeing as he was a rapist beforehand I can't bring myself to feel total empathy here, but still.
 

Hoje0308

Banned
Wasn't my point. He was responding to someone that quoted another person about showing him sympathy, implying that he was wrong to point out that he was already a convicted rapist. As I said in my original post above, wrongful convictions suck, but the dude was a rapist, he already had a lot of problems that he's caused for himself and others before being wrongfully convicted of more rape. Times like these you should save the outrage and crocodile tears for some wrongfully convicted individuals that didn't rape anyone prior.



I wasn't implying this was "justice", I was saying the man doesn't deserve sympathy for his plight because he's a convicted rapist because you responded to someone pointing out he was a rapist in response to someone asking for us to show him sympathy. He served his time (and then some, from the wrongful conviction), but he's still a rapist.That doesn't excuse what he did prior.

No one is excusing his prior actions. You're inventing issues that don't exist in this thread, so stop. He was convicted of crimes he didn't commit and deserves to be free, end of.
 
No one's saying it's okay. If I'm reading this correctly, he already served his time for that, then afterward he was wrongly convicted of raping 3 more girls (which he didn't do) so he got 16 years of prison for a crime he didn't do. I'm not going to act as if getting wrongly convicted is okay just because they guy did a heinous crime that he already served his time for 2 decades or so ago.

It's late and I'm half asleep so my comprehension might be low but where in those two articles does it mention he was previously incarcerated for a prior rape charge?

Found it on another article.


Vargas — who previously served time for forcibly raping a girlfriend, according to the Times — later wrote to members of the Innocence Project about his case. He said the “Teardrop Rapist” and he had a similar tattoo and description — a middle aged Hispanic man with a small build.
 

Hesh

Member
No one is excusing his prior actions. You're inventing issues that don't exist in this thread, so stop. He was convicted of crimes he didn't commit and deserves to be free, end of.

What was the reasoning behind your reply to Langdon Alger then?
 
Am I reading correctly that he was imprisoned for 16 years and has a 7 year old daughter?

Edit: No I am not. Read "his daughter and 7 year old child," not "his daughter and her 7 year old child."
 

Hoje0308

Banned
It's late and I'm half asleep so my comprehension might be low but where in those two articles does it mention he was previously incarcerated for a prior rape charge?


Seventh paragraph in the OP.

What was the reasoning behind your reply to Langdon Alger then?

You really can't piece that together? The hand waving, as if this is somehow less frightening because the guy did something awful previously was, in my opinion, ridiculous. You don't have to feel for the guy to see his case as an injustice.
 

g11

Member
I have to laugh at all the "Yeah but he was totally a rapist before" comments. What a completely draconian thought to let occupy your mind...
 

KevinCow

Banned
It's late and I'm half asleep so my comprehension might be low but where in those two articles does it mention he was previously incarcerated for a prior rape charge?

Here: "At his trial, three victims identified Vargas, who had previously served time for forcibly raping a girlfriend, as the man who attacked them."
 
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