Man Convicted after DA Struggles to Make DNA Evidence Fit
James Ochoa was convicted of carjacking in December 2005 and spent 16 months in Centinela State Prison in Imperial County, California. Not only was he wrongfully convicted, a veteran forensic specialist alleges that prosecutors in the case asked the Orange County Sheriff's Department crime lab to alter vital evidence.
Danielle G. Wieland recently made the allegation during a civil deposition related to Ochoa's wrongful conviction. Weiland testified that Ochoa was not wrongfully convicted by accident, or simply because the Orange County district attorney's office repeatedly ignored exculpatory facts. The forensic specialist says that criminal prosecution was pushed forward by the district attorney's office, despite a wealth of evidence indicating his innocence.
After the carjacking that Ochoa was accused of committing, investigators found a black baseball cap, a gray plaid long-sleeve shirt and a BB gun that the real carjacker had left behind. DNA evidence was also found in the car. As the DNA did not match either of the victims in the case, it was thought to have been left by the perpetrator. This DNA evidence was checked against Ochoa's DNA and he was excluded. The DNA of the real carjacker did not match Ochoa's DNA in initial tests, nor in two other independent tests, yet prosecutors seemed determined to pin the crime on Ochoa anyway.
Ochoa's case caught the attention of criminal defense lawyer Scott Borthwick. Borthwick took the case pro-bono because he felt that Ochoa was getting a raw deal. Prosecutors in the case asked to meet with Wieland to discuss her findings on the crime scene evidence before she met with Borthwick. Prosecutors conducted one phone meeting and two face-to-face meetings with Wieland and asked her to lie to Borthwork. Wieland says she was directly asked to tell Ochoa' criminal defense lawyer that the DNA found on the shirt at the crime scene was matched to Ochoa.
In a civil deposition taken for the civil wrongful prosecution lawsuit that Ochoa has filed, Wieland testified that Camille Hill from the district attorney's office called her and directly asked her to change her scientific findings in the case. Hill allegedly told Wieland that she did not care about the conclusions from the crime lab, and that she wanted Ochoa's DNA not to be excluded in the findings. Later, during an in-person meeting, Hill, Deputy District Attorney Christian Kim and three other staff members from the DA's office argued with Wieland that because of the testimony of witnesses and the fact that police dogs had identified Ochoa as the carjacker, his DNA should not be excluded.
The request, especially coming from Hill, was somewhat shocking. Hill is not only a veteran prosecutor, but also a DNA expert who once worked as a forensic specialist for the Houston Police Department. However, despite her professional background, Hill still defends the request she made of Wieland. According to Hill, about once a week the DA's office asks scientists to reconsider their findings. Shockingly enough, she says in some cases the scientists return different findings after her requests.
According to Wieland, the DA's office put pressure on the crime-lab to alter the findings of the DNA evidence. However, the scientists stood by their findings and refused to change results based on solid science in order to appease prosecutors. Eventually Hill accepted the DNA findings, but still the DA's office moved forward to prosecute Ochoa anyway.
Although the DNA evidence excluded Ochoa, the jury never got to hear at his trial about it or weigh his guilt or innocence in the case. Scott Moxley of The Orange County Weekly has done extensive coverage on this case and reported that three days into Ochoa's criminal trial, Superior Court Judge Robert Fitzgerald spoke directly to Ochoa outside the presence of the jury. He gave Ochoa an ultimatum to either plead guilty and be sentenced to two years in prison, or go forward with the trial and be sentenced to life in prison if the jury returns a guilty verdict.
It seemed to be too much of a gamble for Ochoa. Although his criminal defense lawyer advised him not to plead guilty, Ochoa felt that regardless of the evidence, prosecutors were hell-bent on putting him in jail. After being dragged out of his home by police, arrested for a crime he didn't commit and seeing how determined the DA's office was to have him convicted, Ochoa didn't feel as though he had a choice in the matter and he took the deal and went to prison. At that point, a new nightmare began. As an innocent man, Ochoa suffered in prison and was even stabbed by another inmate while he was in the facility among the almost 5,000 other inmates who have been convicted of felonies.
Ten months after Ochoa was thrown in prison, the DNA in his case was matched to the DNA of Jaymes Thomas McCollum who was already in police custody at the Los Angeles County Jail on auto-theft charges. Crime-lab scientists with the California Department of Justice made the DNA match, which prompted the DA to file the paperwork to have Ochoa released from prison.
In California, the state penal code authorizes a $100-a-day reimbursement to wrongly convicted inmates. However, state hearing officer Kevin Kwong of the California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board in Sacramento denied Ochoa's request for compensation. As a result, Ochoa has filed a civil lawsuit in an attempt to collect the compensation that he is owed.