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Santiago Ventura Morales was convicted of murdering Ramiro Lopez Fidel, a fellow farm worker.  Fidel had been stabbed twice in the chest and left to die in a strawberry field near Sandy.  The conviction was due to the prosecution's use of fabricated evidence, including the use of a fake murder weapon.  Only one witness, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, testified that Morales was the killer. The witness, Epifanio Bautista Lopez, initially testified that he saw nothing, but changed his testimony after he was taken into the district attorney's office during a recess.  Under cross-examination, Lopez said that he was afraid of what might happen to him if he did not testify the way the prosecutor wanted him to testify.

Several days after the trial, four jurors, Patricia Lee, Glorya Oppitz, David Ralls, and Sherien Jaeger, told the defense co-counsel, Lane Borg, that they had changed their minds about their jury votes and asked if they could do anything about it.  They were told that a verdict cannot be thrown out simply because jurors change their minds.  Three of these jurors formed a support group for Morales.  They visited him in jail, sent him money, and wrote letters to the parole board asking for his release.

Morales's defense was hampered because Morales, a Mexican immigrant, did not speak English or Spanish, but spoke Mixtec, an indigenous language.  The judge assigned him a Spanish interpreter.  The interpreter tried to tell the judge that he could not communicate with Morales, but the judge refused to accept the idea that a Mexican defendant could not speak Spanish.  Portland Oregonian newspaper columnist Phil Stanford wrote many columns outlining Morales's innocence.  The Oregon Attorney General opposed Morales's petition for relief on the grounds that his innocence was not a legal basis to overturn his conviction and release him.  Four years after Morales's conviction, his lawyer established that another farm worker, Herminio Luna Hernandez, was the actual killer and Morales was released.  (NY Times)  [5/08]

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