Northwestern Law Bluhm Legal Clinic
Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth
Search
Northwestern
Search Help Northwestern Law

Our thoughts on
oversentencing youth

Link to Video CWCY video trailer
See why this issue demands attention!

Facebook Visit us on Facebook

Twitter Visit us on Twitter

Facebook Cases We're Following

Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth Logo
Return to Cases List

Daniel Villegas

State: Texas
Background
For the last 17 years, Daniel Villegas has been fighting to prove his innocence. His conviction stems from a confession he gave to police at the age of 16. This confession, he maintains is inconsistent with other witness accounts of the shooting. Villegas has asked the court to give him an evidentiary hearing to allow him to prove he is an innocent man locked up and at least deserves a new trial.

Chris Ochoa has become Villegas' advocate. Ochoa himself falsely confessed to a crime years ago at the age of 21 during a police interrogation. In the article below -- "Exonerated man from El Paso tries to help clear convicted killer Daniel Villegas" -- Ochoa beautifully explains how aggressive police interrogation tactics can get you to confess to a brutal crime you did not commit.

Says Ochoa:
"They were leading me, asking me leading questions. They were asking me if I remember this, if I remember that. If I didn't know the answer, we would play the guessing game. Or they would say 'When you walked into a place, what color was this?' I would say something. The cop would come back and say, 'It had to be like this.' That pressure after so many hours -- you just don't know which way is up and which way is down."

Did the same thing happen to Daniel Villegas?

Update: November 19, 2010
Did Daniel Villegas falsely confess to a murder 17 years ago when he was just 16 years of age?. A local businessman, John Mimbela thinks so. Over the past two years, Mimbela has invested $80,000 of his own money to try to prove that Villegas is innocent. After reviewing some of the records in this case, juvenile false confession expert Steve Drizin has serious doubts about the boys' guilt. In his confession, Villegas supposedly named the driver of the car in the drive=by. But that young man couldn't have been there -- he was in jail. The so-called passenger also had an alibi. See new article below for more information.

Update: January 15, 2010
Daniel Villegas has been given an evidentiary hearing on his state writ that claims his innocence. The CWCY has reviewed the confession in this case and is watching it closely.

Update: April 27, 2011
Daniel Villegas' hearing on his claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and actual innocence have been postponed until June. The hearing was scheduled to begin this week. A large coalition of supporters -- including an eyewitness to the killing (who was also targeted) as well as several exonerees -- have come out in support of Daniel. The CWCY has reviewed the case against Daniel in detail and supports his motion for a new trial.

News

Supporters of Convicted Felon Rally Outside Courthouse, Say He's Innocent
NBC - April 25, 2011
The latest on the Daniel Villegas case. The CWCY has studied this case closely and believe that his confession is entirely unreliable. He was just 16 when he confessed, and he has spent more than 18 years in prison.

Hearing postponed for Daniel Villegas
El Paso Times - April 23, 2011
This article notes that Daniel Villegas recently passed a lie detector test "with flying colors." While those results may not be admissible at a trial, they could be admissible at the hearing.