The Innocence Files (2020) s01e04 Episode Script

- [child's voice] Hello.
- [man] This doesn't work? Let me see.
Here we go. Okay.
[child gurgles]
Here. No, right here.
No. No, no, no, no.
[child chatters]
- Here's the book I like.
- [man] There's nothing here.
Oh, this is my favorite, Akiva.
[child giggles]
- [man] Look at this.
- That's my favorite book.
- You know why it's my favorite?
- Why?
'Cause these blank pages
allow you to tell your own story.
- Look at this.
- Yeah. A story about you.
Okay. "Once upon a time,
there was a little kid named Francisco.
He lived in a city
by the name of Lynwood.
And we were happy, and had a lot of toys,
and we had yummy food.
We had a lot of friends"
Are you even listening?
Get over here. I gotta turn the page.
[woman] I cannot imagine
how painful it must've been for him,
being 18 at the time,
facing two life terms in prison.
[man 2] Do you have any personal opinion
whether Mr. Carrillo is guilty
for the murder of Donald Sarpy
on January 18th, 1991?
[man 3] My personal feeling is he is, yes.
[man 4] Just after sunset, there were
a bunch of teenagers hanging out
on the sidewalk out in front of a house.
[woman] Somebody in the passenger seat
leaned out and fired two shots.
[gunshots]
[man 2] It was you who picked out
the photograph of Franky Carrillo
from the book of photographs
shown to you by Deputy Ditsch, wasn't it?
[man 5] I did pick Frank, yes.
[opening theme music playing]
[man 1]
I, as a young child, lived in a bubble.
My picture of Los Angeles
was like one ripple out of Lynwood.
Maybe the town over.
We didn't venture out too far from home.
But as you grow up, you learn that
you live in this beautiful, grand city
that you'd never had a chance
to even experience.
Growing up in Lynwood,
things were pretty rough.
This is early 1990s,
height of the crack epidemic.
[man 2]
You got anything to say for yourself?
Crip is a Crip, a Blood is a Blood.
[shouting]
[man 1] Gang violence.
[man 3] This one will bounce off bones
and rip your insides apart.
[man 1] Drive-by shootings became
a very popular thing.
People were being killed.
[rapid gunshots]
[reporter]
Gang-related violence is on the rise.
In 1990, nearly 700 people were killed
in Los Angeles County alone.
[rapid gunshots]
[man 1] The violence affected me directly.
I was jumped a few times.
I'd been stabbed a number of times,
hospitalized once,
um, directly because I was sort of,
like, in the wrong part of town.
[man 2] There was this Latino gang
in Lynwood called Young Crowd.
Franky Carrillo was living in Lynwood
at 16 years old
purportedly a member
of the Young Crowd gang.
[Franky Carrillo] By default, because you
live in the specific pocket of Lynwood,
the guys brought you in
as a friend initially,
and then, little by little,
you're hanging out with the guys
who were more hardened.
Becoming a member of a gang,
specifically Chicano gangs in Los Angeles,
there's, like, an initiation phase.
I didn't go through that.
My membership in the gang
was not something I signed up for.
It was something that I was born into.
My sisters had married into the gang.
So my sisters' husbands
were official gang members.
I was, like, the little brother-in-law.
That gave me some clout.
[man 3] Franky had the nickname
Little Spider because his brother-in-law,
Big Spider, was the, uh, leader,
if you will, of the Young Crowd.
[woman] There was a war going on between
the Lynwood Young Crowd Hispanic gang
and the gang called
the Neighborhood Crips.
African American gang
in that neighborhood.
They were fighting for territory,
and there had been shootouts
and drive-bys on each other.
Scotty Turner was associated
with the Neighborhood Crips.
[Scott Turner]
I was always aware there was a gang,
even when I was in elementary.
You know, you have family members
or cousins
or, you know, uncles or aunties
already in gangs, you know.
So that's a part of the culture.
It's a part of the lifestyle.
It's a part of everyday life.
It's where we live at.
So, you know, there's going to be gangs.
[man] Scotty, I don't know how we met.
It had to be something with rapping,
with music, because,
um, you know,
that was our whole relationship,
and his whole relationship
with the guys around my block.
The earliest memory I have of Lynwood
as a child
would be just the house
where we lived at.
It was just a warm, you know,
loving atmosphere.
We had a nice block with great neighbors,
you know.
It was just the surrounding areas
were pretty crazy.
I remember it was a normal day,
and then my life changes forever.
[indistinct chatter]
[Dameon Sarpy]
I had a few guys come to my house.
Scott,
Jeff,
James,
Montrai,
and Marcus.
We were kids, 15-year-olds hanging out.
[Scott] We were standing right by
the curve towards the front of his house
just talkin' about music, most likely,
or girls.
[Dameon] It was, like, 7:00 p.m.
Starting to get dark.
A car came by.
There was a few Hispanic cats in it.
[snaps] You know, okay. Take note of it.
Then my father came out like, "Hey!
What are you guys doing? Keep it down!"
That's when the car came back.
Once it got past us,
we kinda watched it up the block.
[indistinct shouting]
[gunshot]
[Scott] Shots rang out
and motherfuckers running
and, like, ducking and dipping.
I'm like, "Shit, am I shot? Am I okay?"
[Dameon] My dad wasn't super aware
of the magnitude of the gang problems.
[gunshot]
He was probably just caught off-guard.
- [sirens wail]
- [woman screaming]
[Scott] Next time I heard something,
it was Dameon's mom screaming.
I don't know if it was his mom,
but I heard screaming.
[Dameon] It was just chaotic.
He was hit on the side.
It was a small bullet,
so I thought that, you know,
"Oh, he'll be okay."
[siren wailing, horn honking]
[Dameon] I went to the hospital.
You know, the look on my mom's face,
you know, and the family's face, it was
When they told me, like,
"No, he didn't make it," you know.
It was just devastating.
The life was just taken out of me,
you know, once I
once they told me that he didn't make it.
You gotta get an envelope. Put that
in an envelope. Store it as evidence.
Take the ballistics off of that.
[man 3] The sheriff's department
believe that this was a Young Crowd
gang retaliation against, uh,
the black gang in the neighborhood,
which was N-Hood.
They were certain the killer
was with the Young Crowd gang.
[Franky]
I must have been in the fourth grade
when this picture was taken.
This is our only ever family portrait.
My parents had separated
by the time this picture was taken.
I have this vague memory of my dad crying,
or tearing up.
Maybe not flat-out crying,
but he was definitely tearing up
either before or after the picture.
This picture was supposed to be
that of a happy family,
a united family, but it wasn't.
Um
Memories of my mother as a young child
are unfortunately very limited.
At nine, she divorced my father
and left the four children with him,
and she just went off
and lived her life by herself.
We were living in a one-bedroom apartment
in Lynwood.
We had no phone.
We didn't have a car. We used the bus.
But my dad was a great father.
He was instilling lessons
to me and my siblings
that were grounded in respect
and just being a good person.
That makes me proud.
I thought it was a happy home.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Franky]
That morning, January 24th, 1991,
I was sleeping on the couch
and awakened by, like, this heavy,
heavy banging against the door.
I snapped out of it,
realized that they were saying,
"Sheriff's department. Let us in."
From my position on the couch,
I was just able to reach over
and just open the latch, and I did.
These men came in one after the other,
knocking each other down
to get into the house.
Just this wave of anger.
My dad, as they were coming in,
he was coming out of his bedroom.
The officers ordered
my father and I to the floor.
It just happened to be that we landed
about a foot away from each other's faces.
He's like, "What did you do?
What happened?"
And I'm like, "Nothing.
I am not the reason why they're here."
And, um, to my surprise,
they still handcuffed me.
And that was the last time
I saw my dad, um, at home.
[siren wailing]
[Franky] We got to the Lynwood station,
and I was taken into
their interrogation room
where two homicide detectives
were there waiting for me.
They charged me
with the murder of Donald Sarpy.
And I said, "It's not me.
You got the wrong kid."
And they're like, "It doesn't matter
if you cooperate or not.
We have a witness
that says that you did it.
We know it's you."
In the mind of a 16-year-old boy,
it was really no fear,
because I knew that,
although I was cuffed,
that I had done nothing wrong.
The day after I was arrested,
my father came to the juvenile hall
to visit me.
He was sort of my first person
I needed to convince
that they had the wrong person.
"Remember, Dad, we were at home.
You came home and we had dinner,
and we went to work the next day."
And my dad, without a doubt, like,
"Of course, I remember. We were together."
And so I felt that this would be resolved.
Whatever was going on,
I wanted to be back home.
Juvenile hall was
a very hostile environment.
I was attacked by a probation officer.
So one of the guards
who was there to protect me.
I think he was Donald Sarpy's friend.
And he came over, 250, 300 pounds,
and just put all his weight on me
and just tried to
He was choking me, trying to kill me.
Because I passed out,
he stopped choking me.
And luckily for me,
I woke up and I was alive.
It seemed like what's not supposed
to happen is happening again.
I'm in prison for something I didn't do.
And now the guard who's supposed to be
protecting me is trying to kill me.
Like, all these experiences
that are not supposed to be happening,
I just felt they were continuing
to just find me.
[Brentford Ferreira]
You have to understand, at any given time,
there were over 1,000 unsolved murders
in Los Angeles County,
mostly gang murders.
Over a thousand.
There was pressure to solve more murders.
So if somebody did come forward and say,
"It was so-and-so,
and I'm sure it was so-and-so,"
then the police want
to believe that person.
They want to clear that case.
They want closure
for that person's family.
[officer] Put your hands on your head.
Step to the wall.
Get down on your knees
when you get to the wall.
[Brentford] And frankly, at that time,
when the gangs were running rampant
and slaughtering lots of people,
there was a bit of an attitude
that if you can put a gang member
away for something, you did it.
You got 'em off the street.
Franky, of course, was in the Young Crowd.
And so Franky was of great interest
to the sheriff's department.
In some neighborhoods, the relationship
between cops and community
is mutually suspicious,
and violent, and hostile.
The latest flashpoint,
the LA County Sheriff's Department.
[woman] According to the newspaper,
about 30 Lynwood deputies
have been acting like the gang members
they're supposed to be fighting.
Those deputies call themselves Vikings.
[man] Get
Turn around! Put your hands up!
[Ron Kaye] There was the most oppressive
and criminal law enforcement gang
that I think we've ever known
in Los Angeles County,
called the Vikings.
[Brentford]
A federal judge in a published opinion
called the Vikings a gang
within the Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department.
A neo-Nazi gang, in his opinion.
[woman]
This map of Lynwood in the shape of Africa
was found hanging inside
the Lynwood sheriff station.
[Ron] They had their own gang signs
with their hands.
[man]
Flashing a sign? That's meaningless.
In fact, I'm sure the gang members
out there probably get a kick out of, uh,
deputies flashing a sign,
having their own gang.
[man 2] The Vikings had a tattoo
of a Viking on their ankle.
[distorted male voice]
There was unjustified beatings.
There was people that were taken to jail
that should never have gone to jail.
[Ron] They would engage in a level
of violence against young gang members
that was unprecedented.
Breaking people's eye orbits,
breaking their legs,
giving 'em a beating
and a little memory of what it's like
to engage in misconduct
in the Viking territory.
[man]
I want you to look at page marked 324.
There's a reference to a group
of Lynwood-area deputies
who were members of a neo-Nazi,
white supremacist gang, the Vikings,
which exists with the knowledge
of departmental policy makers.
I consider myself a Viking
because I trained at Lynwood station
and I worked Lynwood station.
This definition he places
on the "Vikings"?
The Vikings were nothing scandalous.
The Vikings were a group of hard-working,
proud deputies to work that area.
[Brentford] Craig Ditsch was
the gang detective at the time in Lynwood.
On the night of the murder,
he was called to the scene
because this was a gang shooting.
[Ellen Eggers]
The police interviewed these kids
that night at the police station.
One of the kids, Scotty Turner,
said that he could identify the shooter.
[Ron] Ditsch,
because he was a gang investigator,
gives Scott Turner
this Young Crowd gang book,
and he starts going through the pages.
After passing a hundred other pictures,
he picked out Francisco Carrillo
from the Young Crowd book.
He told me something to the fact that,
"This is the shooter.
He's the guy
that was in the right front seat.
They shot at us."
Or something to that effect.
A witness who just picked a guy
out of the gang book?
I don't put a lot of credence in that.
It's why we go to the six-pack
to put more credence
into their identification.
After Scott Turner had made the pick
in the gang book,
Lieutenant Ditsch assembled a six-pack,
which is a photographic lineup
of six photos.
Turner picked photo number one.
Photo number one was
Franky Carrillo's picture.
I was pretty certain
he picked the right guy.
[man] Why were you pretty certain?
Because I couldn't tell you
how few cases I have
where they go through the gang book
and pass a hundred pictures
and still pick a guy out,
and then knowing from contacts
or sightings around Lynwood High School,
and to know him from a fight,
and then to pick him out of a six-pack
of five other
similar-appearing individuals?
It doesn't happen.
[dramatic music]
[man] The witness to an offense
should be approached in a manner
which will encourage his cooperation.
Separated from the influence
of other people,
the witness may offer valuable assistance.
[Brentford] Generally speaking,
eyewitness testimony is how, in the past,
before fingerprints, before DNA
That's how you proved
somebody did something
if they weren't going to admit it.
Somebody had to see 'em do it.
Eyewitness testimony,
at some level, you know,
is really the oldest kind of evidence
that exists.
Even back with early humans,
the only way that you could solve
the question of,
"Who came into my cave
and stole the meat?"
is eyewitness testimony.
Someone says that it was
the guy in the cave over there.
For a long time,
it wasn't necessarily problematic.
Consider the small village where
someone engages in some kind of bad act.
[distant screaming]
And it's seen by someone else.
Everybody knows everyone,
and so it's like,
"Yeah, it was the butcher."
Or it was the stranger in town.
There's only one stranger
coming through the village.
But once you got into large populations
and big cities,
almost everyone you see is a stranger.
So then the issue of the reliability
of identifications
became much more significant.
Prior to the mid-1800s,
you would simply take a person,
do what today we would call a show up,
you'd take that person and say,
"Is this the person you saw?
Is this the person who robbed you?"
And you'd show them one person.
At some point, it became clear
that there's something
quite suggestive about that.
Then the idea became one of putting
together perhaps a group of people.
It's unclear
when the first lineup was done.
The general belief is that
it came out of English common law.
That would've been something
that would've been urged by a judge
at the time as a more fair procedure.
Today, we argue strongly against
any kind of system
that throws a lot of photos at witnesses
or makes them look at a lot of lineups.
It's like trawling, in a sense.
At some point
you're gonna come across someone
who's similar enough
that you're going to say yes
to that person.
[woman] At the time
I prosecuted Franky Carrillo,
after arraignment,
the trial could be months later.
We were inundated with murders,
and very few of our cases pled
because the offer is usually 25 to life,
plus the gun,
which is an additional amount of time.
So most all our cases went to trial,
and we were very busy.
[Franky] My preliminary hearing
was the moment that I was envisioning
where things would be worked out,
and they realize, "Okay,
this is not the guy we're looking for."
I remember Scott Turner being brought in.
This is the first time
I've ever seen him in my life.
To put his hand on the Bible
and he said he was gonna tell the truth.
[Mary Ann Escalante] Can you describe
the person that was in the passenger seat?
- [Scott] Yes.
- [Mary] And do you see that person
- in the courtroom today?
- [Scott] Yes.
[man] The witness identified Mr. Carrillo.
[Mary]
What did you see Defendant Carrillo do
as the car passed by?
[Scott] They got further down the street,
and he shot.
[Mary] In the prelim,
Scott Turner pointed out Franky Carrillo
as a suspect.
He also stated that he knew
who Franky was.
Not by name, but by face.
So when he sees a guy go by, in his mind,
click, "I know who that guy is."
So that was a very strong ID for me.
So he was, in my mind, my "star witness"
because he actually had seen him
over and over and over.
So, he was I believed that he knew
for sure who the shooter was.
give us a chance
to talk to him more thoroughly.
[Franky] We didn't have any money,
so we had a state-appointed attorney,
this guy named Robin Yanes.
I felt pretty confident this guy
was the one who was gonna help me.
Um sadly, I was mistaken.
For about a year-and-a-half,
almost two years that he was my attorney,
we might have only spoken three times.
And those conversations
were never about strategy,
they were never about,
"Franky, did you do it or did you not?"
It was more about, "Hey, how's it going?"
Um "Okay,
I'll see you next time in court."
There might have been
one, maybe, conversation
that lasted
more than two or three minutes,
um, but I couldn't even give the details
of what that was about.
I was under the impression
that the adults in the room,
from my lawyer, to the judge,
to the bailiff, to the DA
were out to seek justice,
and justice meant,
"Let's listen to what's going on
and kind of call it the way it is."
I felt invisible.
No one was acknowledging me.
No one was asking me specifically
what had happened or what was going on
or my condition of existence in all this.
It was more procedural.
At that point, I realized that this
is going to be harder than I expected.
[Brentford] In the Donald Sarpy case,
there was no physical evidence
from which you could build a case.
They never found the gun.
There was no fingerprint evidence,
no DNA. There's nothing.
[man] Now, maybe you can get evidence
from security video,
and cell phone evidence,
you can tell where people are.
But back in the early '90s,
you didn't have any of that.
It's just the word of who was in the car
where the gun was fired,
or who was outside of the car.
[Ron] When you don't have anything
but eyewitness identification,
meaning somebody being able to say,
"That was the guy
who committed the crime,"
then often there's no evidence at all.
And eyewitness testimony
is a piece of evidence.
[Mary] It was not unusual at all
to prosecute a murder
based on identification testimony alone.
But it's very helpful
to get corroboration.
The other witnesses, their statements were
a detailed description of the suspect,
but there was no ID from a photograph.
And I noticed that right off the bat.
So I called the detective,
and I said, "No, no,
that is not good enough for me,
and it won't be good enough for a jury.
You need to show everybody the six-pack."
[Ellen] Some of them said it's either one
or three, or it's either one or five,
but they all included number one.
And by the time he got to court,
all six of them were saying
that's the guy who did the shooting.
When I first got called, I was just,
"Wow, okay."
I felt really young and naive back then,
and I was like,
"I hope that, you know, what I'm doing
is what I'm supposed to be doing,
you know, helping the justice system."
I know that our legal system is flawed,
but I think its intentions are correct.
All you can do is try and arrive
at what you believe to be is the truth.
[Franky] A guy had a pair of state boots,
brown boots they assign you
when you get to prison.
And I saw them, I was like,
"Those are some cool boots.
Can I borrow them for trial?"
I just figured, like,
those are kind of like dress boots.
He's like, "Yeah, you can have 'em."
And I can remember some guy going
to court with me that day saying,
"Hey, you're going to trial, right?"
I'm like, "Yeah, trial begins today.
Today's my big first day."
And he said,
"Man, don't wear those boots.
It's a bad omen.
You're wearing prison-assigned boots
to a trial that's gonna
determine your life."
[gavel bangs repeatedly]
[man] The court will now come to order.
Ms. Escalante for the State of California.
[Mary] Any time somebody is
sworn under oath, they are a witness,
and give an oral statement and answers.
That's evidence for you to use.
And based on the evidence,
I am convinced you will come back
with the proper verdict
and find this defendant guilty
of one count of murder
and six counts of attempted murder.
[Ron] They told the story that
these callous, bloodthirsty
Young Crowd gangsters
were engaged in a street war
against the Neighborhood Crips gang,
drove by when the sun was down
on a residential street
where law-abiding,
good member of our society Donald Sarpy
was interacting with several kids,
and they just gunned him down
in cold blood.
[gunshot]
That's what they alleged Franky did.
[Mary] My duty to the victim
[voice breaks]
is to do the best job I can.
I get emotional because I picture them.
I picture all my victims.
It's sad. You know, you look at your case,
and it's all facts, facts, facts.
And then you go to court,
and you see it's real.
Like, this isn't just
a piece of paper with words.
It's people's lives.
And the bottom line is they all said,
"This guy shot and killed Donald Sarpy."
Call Montrai Mitchell to the stand.
Were you able to see a face?
[Montrai Mitchell]
I was able to see the face.
- [Mary] Then what happened?
- [Montrai] And then he yelled out,
"Fuck N-Hood,"
and proceeded with the shooting.
[Mary] Do you see that person in court?
[Montrai] Yes, ma'am.
[man]
Pointing to Mr. Carrillo, for the record.
[Gary L. Wells]
There's nothing that is much more powerful
than an eyewitness
who is highly confident on the stand
and points to the person
in the courtroom and says,
"That's the person
who I saw pull the trigger."
You put five of those together
and it's sort of like,
"Well, what other explanation is there
other than he's the gunman?"
[Mary] Calling Mr. Munnerlyn.
What did you see him do?
[Mr. Munnerlyn]
Point his hand out the window and start
Just start firing.
[Andrea Bunting] To me, they seemed like,
"That was the guy." They were 100%.
There was never any one of them
that led me to believe otherwise.
[Mary] Marcus Stewart to the stand.
[Marcus Stewart] He reached out,
out the car, and pulled the trigger.
[Corey Holst] Their testimony was,
"I was standing there.
I saw him do it. That's the guy."
If you believe
that person is telling you the truth
and speaking from the heart,
then it's convincing.
[Mary] Dameon Sarpy to the stand.
[Dameon] It's him right there.
It was the first time
I really got a good look at the dude
who was the killer of my father.
I just stared at him.
[Mary] Are you positive
that's the person who shot Mr. Sarpy?
[Dameon] Yes.
[Franky] I'd never been to a theater,
like a live performance, in my life.
I would lose track of the fact
that I was there as a defendant
thinking, like,
"Wow, this is like a show."
They would tell the story
of what they remembered,
and then the big moment was,
"And by the way,
that's the guy who did it right there."
[Mary] It was very powerful.
All the witnesses got on the stand
and pointed to Franky Carrillo.
Except for one witness.
[Franky]
I'm on the jail bus heading to court.
People are separating,
they're off the bus,
put into different holding tanks.
And, lo and behold,
there he is,
the star witness against me,
Scott Turner.
He was in the California Youth Authority.
He was brought down from that facility
to testify against me.
He is sitting by himself on a bench.
And without even thinking about it,
I just went and sat right next to him.
I said, "Hey, are you Scott Turner?"
He says, "Nah, man. I'm Leroy Jones, man."
Like, "Who are you?"
Like, really trying to scare me off.
And I just sat there super chill, man.
I didn't flinch. I was just, like
I reached down and whispered in his ear,
and I'm like, "You're Scott Turner."
And he's like, "Yeah, it's me, man, yeah."
[Scott] I seen that fool, I seen Frank,
and I was like, "Man,
I know you didn't do that shit, fool."
He was like, "Man, what?"
I'm like, "Yeah, I know you didn't do it.
Don't trip. I got it. I'm gonna fix it.
Don't worry about it, you know.
I'm on your side.
I know you didn't do it."
[Franky] Talk about, one,
shocked that I'm sitting next to the guy
in this holding tank,
and, two, what he's telling me.
That quickly, they called my name
or they called his name and we split up.
Scotty was somewhere else,
but I can hear his voice.
I can hear his voice and the DA's voice.
And I get myself down
on the floor of the tank.
[Mary]
Why are you changing your story now?
[Franky]
I can hear Mary Escalante telling Scotty,
"Please, Scott."
Like, "Please don't be afraid.
What is wrong?
Why are you now saying a different story?"
He was adamant.
He was like, "I'm done lying.
I didn't see anything. I am done."
This is, like, a total bombshell,
obviously, for me.
that this boy is now saying
that he's lying.
[woman] Please raise your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear
that the testimony you're about to give
will be the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth?
- Yes.
- [man] Please proceed.
[Robin Yanes] When the car first went by,
you saw Franky Carrillo in the car,
and you remembered his face, correct?
No.
[Robin] Did you recognize someone's face
when that car first went by?
No.
[Robin] At the preliminary hearing,
you testified that Franky Carrillo
was looking out the window
and, at you and the others,
and you actually pointed Mr. Carrillo out
in the courtroom
as the person
you were talking about, correct?
Yes, I did so incorrectly.
- [Robin] You did that under oath, correct?
- Yes.
[Robin] So you testified, again,
falsely under oath.
Is that your testimony?
Yes.
[Brentford]
Scott Turner recanted his testimony
from the preliminary hearing.
He not only recanted and said,
"I couldn't ID the person
and it wasn't Franky,"
but he said that Lieutenant Ditsch
had pointed to a picture of Frank
and said, "That's him."
[Robin] What did Deputy Ditsch do
in terms of identifying Franky Carrillo?
[Scott] When I was going through the book,
picking different pictures,
I picked one person, and he was like,
"No, it's not him. He's in jail."
I picked another picture,
he's like, "No, it couldn't be him."
When I came upon the picture of Frank,
who I did recognize from around Lynwood,
he was like, "Yeah, it could be him.
It could have been him
'cause he's trying to make his bones,
he's trying to get his stripes."
And that's how I came to that picture.
It wasn't like Ditsch had any confidence
that that was an accurate
eyewitness identification.
It was a random eyewitness identification
by Turner,
and Ditsch just ran with it.
He picked a picture
after looking at a hundred other guys,
and he told me that he recognized him
from contacts and sightings
in and around Lynwood High School.
He told me that
We've gone through this.
We've got through this a hundred times.
- [man 1] I'd like to take a short break.
- [man 2] Oh, sure.
[indistinct chatter]
[Brentford] Gang members
contradict themselves all the time.
They have very little respect
for the truth.
Whether Ditsch was being credible or not,
uh, I had my suspicions.
[Robin] Before this incident
on January 18th, 1991,
how long have you known Scott Turner?
To tell the truth, I don't know.
I'd guess maybe a year. I don't know.
[Robin] And you made some reference
that he was a good witness.
He was a good witness.
[Robin] And you look at your testimony.
"Question: How do you know Scott Turner?
Answer: From prior contacts
in other cases that I've had."
Do you know why
you didn't make any reference
that he was a cooperating witness
on another case?
I answered the question,
"By prior contacts in other cases."
What do you want?
[Robin] I want you to answer the question
of why you didn't put in the fact
that he worked with you
just several months earlier
on another case.
[man 1] Objection. Argumentative.
[Robin] Do you think it's important
information that you should've included?
- Maybe to you. It wasn't to me.
- [Robin] Okay.
Turner and Ditsch were familiar
with each other.
Ditsch testified he interacted
with Scotty Turner
20 times on the street.
Turner's 16 years old. He is Ditsch's guy.
Ditsch knows that he can manipulate him
and pressure Turner
to make an identification.
[man] At the preliminary hearing,
you did not testify
that Deputy Ditsch had suggested
that you pick out any photographs
from the photographic lineups, did you?
The reason why I didn't say anything
about those this incident,
for one, I was on the streets.
For two,
Ditsch and the rest of the sheriffs
had access to me at all times
if they wanted to.
Even though that I didn't want
to fully cooperate,
they could insist that I cooperate.
I felt trapped.
I didn't really say,
"Hey, that's the guy." I didn't
I just wanted to get up out of there.
And I'm, like, scared. Like, I don't know.
I don't know.
They said that's the person,
so I'm like, "All right, whatever.
Yeah, that's him. I don't care.
Can I go now?
Let me get the fuck up out of here."
'Cause I'm thinking,
"I ain't doing none of this shit.
Let me go the fuck up out of here
and I'm gone."
[Franky] Up to that point,
I just thought that these boys
are mistaking me with someone else.
Like, flat-out mistaken identity.
And so this was, like, a new idea that,
"Oh, man. There's somebody
behind the scenes making this happen."
I really could not understand
or even have the idea that
there was one or more sheriff deputies
behind the testimony
that was being used against me.
[Robin] Now, you discovered that
Scott Turner was recanting
his identification.
- Correct?
- Correct.
Were you angry?
[stammers]
I don't recall being angry.
I'm not sure what you mean.
I don't recall being angry.
[Robin] Well, you're
I'm just wondering
because here's a gang murder,
here's the lead witness,
and you're the person,
the law enforcement officer
who takes the identification evidence,
and now he's recanting.
Didn't that anger you, that he recanted?
It happens all the time. [chuckles]
Happens all the time.
How can you be angry about it?
It happens all the time.
- Guys get away with murder all the time.
- [man] You've answered the question.
- [Robin] "Guys get away with murder?"
- All the time.
How can I get angry about it?
I look at it as job security.
[Robin] And guys who don't do murders
get falsely imprisoned all the time.
- [man] Don't answer that question.
- Okay.
[Robin] All right.
- [man] Just answer the question asked.
- All right.
Ditsch was able to testify
as a "gang expert"
that Turner had been threatened in lockup,
and that's why he flipped.
I don't believe any of us
believed what he had just told us.
We talked about him being in custody now,
which changed the picture,
and that he was pointing out
a Southern California Hispanic gang member
who is controlled by the Mexican Mafia.
And if he goes to prison
with the Mexican Mafia "snitch jacket,"
they would kill him.
And we felt that that was his fear
and why he was recanting.
It was, "Who's telling the truth?"
And my witnesses were very, very credible.
They didn't have any reason to lie,
no motive to lie,
except when they're in custody,
and then they lie.
So I think that was a turning point.
[Andrea]
The prosecution was very convincing
about why Scotty Turner was no longer
pointing the finger at Franky.
He had changed his story.
What was your impression
of Robin Yanes, the defense attorney?
I don't really think he put
a very good defense up for him.
He wasn't very
Is it a he or a she? I'm sorry.
- [man] It's a he.
- It's a he.
[Franky] People who I thought
had the authority to do the right thing
either chose not to,
or just decided
this kid wasn't worth protecting.
I lost faith in the system,
and I just felt like
my testimony didn't matter.
It's unfortunate that I believe that,
but it was also because
of what was going on in the jail,
what was going on,
sort of the conditions of my existence.
By policy, once you're 18,
you've got to leave juvenile hall.
So on my birthday, I was transferred
from the juvenile hall that I was at
to the Los Angeles Men's Central Jail.
[woman] Lights on, fellas!
Don't forget gym
[Franky]
I lived in fear in the county jail.
The day I arrived, I heard
that anyone who was there in custody
being charged with a drive-by shooting,
they were to be assaulted.
Like, "Get them. Make sure you hurt them."
A big concern that I had.
[Mary] When I saw Franky
the first day of the trial,
I remember saying out loud,
"Wow, he got hardened."
He was really tough, really cold,
really stilted.
Mary Escalante definitely
worked that in her favor.
She, as an adult, saw that she can
push some buttons or say something
that would provoke me to say something
that didn't paint me in the best colors,
and I might have just fell right into it.
[Mary] Now, you say your younger brother
is still heavily into Young Crowd?
- [Franky] Yes.
- [Mary] That's his life, right?
[Franky] Well, he is young.
They were essentially trying to allege
that Franky was a major gangster.
[Mary] And you still
are a member of Young Crowd?
[Franky] You'll always be a member.
It's just different
if you're a gang banger or a gang member.
[Mary] What's the difference?
[Franky] Bangers are people that hang out
and do bad things, like shoot and stuff.
- [Mary] Kill people?
- [Franky] Yes.
Just so we're all on the same page,
Franky was interviewed and he admitted,
he was a self-admitted
Young Crowd gang member.
And here, it was a gang rivalry,
and that would explain
why they would shoot someone,
not even knowing them, just
You know, a lot of gangs,
when there is a rivalry
and they're out to put in work
for the hood,
if they can't find a gang member,
they'll shoot anyone.
The DA was harsh and looked at me,
you know, really mean.
Any chance she had an opportunity
to say something bad about me,
she would say it, you know.
I wish my attorney
had some of that fire in him as well.
Part of my testimony involved my alibi,
which was I got home, did some chores,
like I did on a regular basis.
Waited for my dad to get home.
We had dinner.
And I did some homework.
Like, a very bland alibi.
I said, "He wants you to believe
that on Friday night,
when he can't get a ride to a party
with his homeboys,
he went home and did his homework."
And I'm going, "How reasonable is that?
It is Friday night.
Okay. I was a good student.
I went to law school.
There is not a time in my life where
I did my homework on a Friday night.
So this guy wants you to believe that?
He is lying."
And then there's a jury instruction
that says
if you believe a witness lies
in one part of his testimony,
you can discredit everything he says.
So I said, "Therefore,
there's no evidence that he didn't do it,
and you should listen to these five
that saw him pull that trigger
and fire and kill Mr. Sarpy."
That's how I argued it.
She doesn't know my life.
She doesn't know, you know,
that my mother has been out of our lives
for the last seven, eight years,
and I had been raised mainly by my father,
and my little brother.
So the so-called gender roles
were something that I didn't
No one told me
that boys don't sweep and mop, you know?
And [sighs]
my dad was there in the
[voice breaks]in the courtroom.
[sighs]
He was listening to
this woman humiliate my family.
And
And my dad, you know,
he's listening to this.
[sniffs]
You know, all I was able to do was like,
"That's what happened."
Like, without getting into the divorce
and everything else,
like, that was my life.
And, um
[inhales]I just felt like
conditions of my existence
were used against me.
[Corey] I couldn't tell you right now
if we were there for three hours
or three days in the jury room.
I don't remember.
I do remember talking about it
and trying to give it the weight
of the serious matter that it was,
both from the loss of life
and from the potential
to take someone's life away.
[Andrea] One of the things
that really stuck in my mind,
they had recognized him,
they had seen him around town before,
so it wasn't like he was a new face.
They were very familiar with him.
[Franky] The fact that Scotty was now
changing his story,
I thought it was compelling.
[woman] We, the jury,
in the above entitled action,
find the defendant, Francisco Carrillo
guilty of the murder of Donald Sarpy.
[Franky]
I went into, like, this zombie state.
I was, like, sick,
but I couldn't even process the words.
The words were, like, hurting me,
like a weird pain I'd never had before.
Shutting down almost,
but, like, still you're awake.
And my attorney
I remember him rubbing my back,
like, "It's gonna be okay.
It's gonna be okay."
I don't know how I got from there
to the holding tank.
But my attorney came in
and had me sign some papers.
I only had one number that I'd memorized,
which was my mom's phone number.
There was a payphone,
so I called my mom.
She couldn't talk. She was
on her way out the door or something,
so I think all I was able to say, like,
"They found me guilty."
And then she was like,
"I'll talk to you later."
[stammers] It was pretty fucked up, man,
like, you know.
Looking for someone to console me,
maybe, you know, feel my pain, but
I was definitely alone.
[camera clicks]
[background chatter]
[gavel bangs]
[man] Now, we are here
for probation and sentencing.
Is there any legal cause
why we shouldn't proceed?
[Robin Yanes] Yes, Your Honor, there is.
When we came in this morning,
we were told
that there's a witness outside
which would relate
to newly-discovered evidence
in relation to Mr. Carrillo's
lack of involvement in this.
[Juan Mejia] There was an attorney
by the name of Ted Yamamoto,
and he comes into court
and, uh, tells the judge,
"I have this witness named Oscar Rodriguez
who was a member of Young Crowd,
was actually involved
or knew who was involved
in the actual drive-by shooting."
[Ted Yamamoto] One of the definite
observations that he made
was that the defendant,
Mr. Frank Carrillo,
was not present
at the scene of the incident.
Lynwood community was very,
very up in arms
that Franky was being prosecuted.
And I believe people in the community
spoke directly to Oscar,
urging Oscar to come forward
and help Franky Carrillo.
I was like, "What's gonna happen next?
I'm finally gonna get out.
The truth is finally gonna be heard."
[man] What were your impressions
of Oscar Rodriguez at the trial?
Murderous thug.
[heavy drum and bass music playing]