15 minute read
FEATURE
New evidence reverses 2010 attempted murder conviction
by Kimberly Rivers
kimberly@vcreporter.com
On April 12, 2021, a hearing will take place in Ventura County Superior Court at which the Ventura County District Attorney will support Ignacio Ixta Junior’s request that the court throw out the guilty verdict against him as a result of exculpatory evidence.
Ixta had just turned 21 in 2010 when he was found guilty of attempted murder by a jury in Ventura County Superior Court. He was sentenced to 35 years for the Dec. 3, 2009 shooting of Miguel Cortez in Oxnard. Cortez survived and fully recovered from the shooting.
Ixta has served 10 years at the maximum security Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California. A pro bono legal defense team, however, has uncovered new evidence implicating the prosecution in a Brady Violation for withholding evidence from the defense, and persevering through denials of appeals and writs of habeas corpus.
The April 12 hearing is the result of an intrepid and dedicated father who never faltered in seeking the truth of his son’s innocence.
Ignacio Ixta Junior (center) with parents Alma and Ignacio Senior at Pelican Bay State Prison. Photo courtesy of the Ixta family
Mario’s Story
The formation of Ixta’s pro bono team came about, initially, through the viewing of a film.
Ignacio Ixta Senior and his wife, Alma Ixta, knew their son was innocent. But they did not know where to turn. They left their home in Arizona and moved to Fillmore to be able to visit their son and work for his exoneration. After the couple spent their retirement savings on attorneys they say didn’t help much, a family member told Ixta Senior to watch Mario’s Story, a 2007 documentary by Jeff Werner about Mario Rocha, who was wrongfully convicted of murder in Los Angeles County and ultimately exonerated after a nun investigated his case and uncovered new evidence.
After watching the film, Ixta Senior said that, “The same thing happened to Junior. I told my wife you need to watch this.” She reluctantly watched the film and said she cried the entire time, knowing her son was experiencing the same things: Rocha was convicted even though he didn’t fit the description given by eyewitnesses of the shooter.
The film inspired Ixta Senior and gave him a pathway forward. “I decided I’m going to find every single person that helped this guy get out of prison and you know what? After a few months I found every single one of them.” After becoming connected to people in the Los Angeles area, “ everything started...I learned what to do and how to do it.”
A vital connection
Ixta Senior also began his own investigation, eventually making contact with Natalie Cherot, a resident of Ventura and longtime investigative reporter.
In September 2015, Cherot skeptically agreed to meet the Ixtas for coffee at Starbucks. She said they seemed like really nice people, and they clearly loved their son, but that didn’t mean he was innocent. Ixta Senior convinced Cherot to take the case file home to read, although she made no promises.
In the file, Cherot zeroed in on the eyewitnesses to the shooting, all of whom gave the same descriptions. There were three men. One, the shooter, was slender, short and dark with a thin face. The second man was very tall and very overweight. None of the eyewitnesses got a good look at the third man, but all said he had light hair and was short.
Cherot asked for photographs of Ixta from different time periods. She wanted to see if he could possibly have matched the description of the shooter. She considered whether narcotics were involved (they often alter someone’s appearance), even though Ixta Junior had no history of drug use. But in viewing the various photos, Cherot said that Ixta Junior “never got tan, he was pale, or he was sunburned.” He was tall but not over 6 feet, and he was not thin; strong looking but “not chubby.”
“This is really weird. But I don’t know what I’m going to do about this,” Cherot recalled thinking. “Finally the deacon said ‘Come with me to the house, talk to people there where the shooting occured.’” (Cherot calls Ixta Senior “deacon,” in reference to his being an ordained deacon in the Catholic Church.)
Only one of three witnesses asked to testify
In July 2016, she went with Ixta Senior to the site of the shooting and they spoke to an eyewitness, who was also the victim’s brother-in-law. “I showed him a photo of [Junior], ‘Did this guy do it? Is he the shooter?’ ‘No,’ he said. He said the guy who ‘came in and shot my brother-in-law was short, had a thin face and was dark.’”
Ixta is 5’ 11” and weighs about 180 pounds. Cherot described him as having “high cheekbones, a roundish face, is not overweight and is not dark...he’s pale.”
And here was a family member of the victim, one of the eyewitnesses, adamant that the shooter could not be Ixta Junior.
In addition, the brother-in-law told Cherot that he told the police, after looking at a pack of photos, “The shooter was not in the headshots. He told the police that. ‘Your guy didn’t do it.’ It was a major red flag that something wrong was going on.”
Something else bothered Cherot: Only the brother-in-law testified at the trial. (He claimed that he told the jury the same thing — that Ixta Junior could not have been the shooter.) As for the other witnesses, “they disappeared,” or the prosecution didn’t call them at trial.
As Cherot dug into the case records, she read that the second eyewitness “supposedly moved to Mexico. But he was living three blocks away. Seriously, two minutes away. He told me that he never even knew anyone was looking for him. The defense attorney didn’t try to find him. The DA didn’t try to find him.”
The third witness was a neighbor who lived 300 yards away from the site of the shooting. “Everybody interviewed her that night,” Cherot said. “I interviewed her three times. She never moved from that house. She never made it to trial, either. She had a very vivid description of what the people looked like. She remembered everything.”
Cherot did talk with Cortez, who now lives out of state. He said they convicted the right person. But on the night he was shot, he told police he didn’t know who shot him, and a few days later, when shown photographs of Ixta Junior, he said, “I think so,” when asked if he was the shooter.
“It took me a while to believe that Ignacio was innocent, to really believe it,” the seasoned reporter admitted. “But when I heard from the first witness and he said this guy did not do the shooting,” and took everything else she had learned into consideration, she became convinced that the wrong man had been convicted.
Blind justice?
On the night of Dec. 3, 2009, Cortez was shot in the front yard of his residence in the Lemonwood neighborhood in Oxnard. Three eyewitnesses described three men to police that night. None of the eyewitness descriptions matched Ignacio Ixta Junior.
Cortez told police that night he didn’t know who shot him and that it was too dark to see. A few days later he identified Ixta Junior from a “six pack” of photographs provided by police investigators.
Ixta Junior turned himself in to police on Dec. 22, 2009. He pleaded innocent at trial and has maintained his innocence. At trial, Oxnard Police Department Detective Alex Arnett (now a commander) stated that he included Ixta Junior’s photo in the packet shown to Cortez because he “conducted a background check on Erik Ixta,” who lived across the street from where Cortez was shot, and who was believed to have ties to local gangs, “and found some individuals that he associated with. One of them was — and I don’t know how they’re related, whether they’re brothers or cousins — but I found Ignacio Ixta, as well as the other individuals, that I ultimately included in photo lineups...that’s how I ended up putting the defendant in the photo lineup.” (1)
On Dec. 15, Detective Edward Baldwin interviewed Cortez
for a second time. According to an official transcript of the interview, Baldwin indicated that Cortez’s large hospital bills could be reduced through a Victim Restitution Fund, but only if the state felt he was “cooperating” with the investigation. Initially, Cortez told detectives he “couldn’t be sure” Ixta Junior was the shooter. But after Baldwin mentioned the restitution fund, and that the prosecution could explain away Cortez’s initial inability to name the shooter (by saying he was afraid of retaliation to his girlfriend and family), Cortez then provided what the detectives called a “positive ID” of Ixta Junior.
Ultimately, Ignacio Ixta Junior ended up in the photo lineup shown to Cortez not because any eyewitness, physical evidence or known motive connected him to the shooting, but because he was associated with or related to a man, Erik Ixta, who had ties to a gang and lived across the street from where the shooting took place...and because a detective chose to include that photo in the packet.
Exculpatory evidence
information to our attention,” and goes on to say the evidence Ixta brought forward from “unrelated investigations...could have been used to impeach the credibility of the prosecution’s key witness.”
Retrial or dismissal
Waters confirmed that the “key witness” is “the named victim” in the matter: Miguel Cortez. Dunn points out the prosecution’s case against Ixta Junior relied on testimony from Cortez, in which he said he was not an active gang member and had never been majorly involved in violent gang activities, but that he had been a “tagger” five years before. Waters said the VCDA is “agreeing” with the conviction reversal “based on the existence of potentially exculpatory evidence” that results in Ixta being “entitled legally to a new trial,” and he further clarified that “functionally our agreement has the same consequence” as if the evidence showed someone else committed the crime. Ignacio Ixta Junior with son Andrew. Photo courtesy of the Ixta family In a March 24, 2021 letter to the VCDA, Dunn on
Cherot and Ixta Senior moved ahead, conducting more behalf of Ixta Junior states that not only should the 2009 interviews, including some with former gang members conducted in the interest of justice. conviction be tossed out, but that the new evidence active at the time of the shooting. None knew who Junior was, By not sharing information regarding Cortez’s gang affiliations “should compel the dismissal of the case” altogether and the but most knew Cortez. to Ixta Junior’s legal team — evidence that could have helped Ixta VCDA should reach “the conclusion that Ixta Junior is factually
Cherot realized that during the trial the prosecution had been Junior’s case — the prosecution committed a Brady Violation. innocent.” (1) trying to tout Cortez “as this innocent former tagger.” Cherot’s Waters emphasized that the VCDA has not yet decided whethinterviews of former gang members confirmed that Cortez was Finding counsel er or not there will be a retrial with the new evidence. considered “hard” and an active gang member at that time, but When Cherot decided to devote herself to Junior’s case, “we The case can take one of two paths on April 12. If the VCDA they still didn’t have firm evidence. didn’t have a lawyer. Now we have all these interviews...What seeks a retrial, then the case will be reset for a jury trial with a
“After that point I made this case my life. I would get to the am I supposed to do about it?” She had tape recorded evidence, statutory requirement of 60 days from the date of reversal. “If bottom of this. By October [2016] I had interviewed all the wit- she had the search warrants — now what? the case is processed in that fashion,” on April 12, Waters said nesses. Each time I felt, this is not good.” Cherot reached out to a former public defender who reminded the court would “address the issue of bail at that time.” But if the
Then the Ixtas and Cherot uncovered something new and her of a conviction that had been overturned in Santa Barbara. case is not going to be retried, “whenever a case is dismissed the unexpected. The man wrongfully convicted in that case was also accused of defendant is discharged” from custody.
Ixta Senior told the Ventura County Reporter that one of the being in a gang called Colonia Chiques, similar to Ixta Junior’s They can “retry him, or...dismiss the action entirely...They people they spoke with asked if he was have to decide whether or not based aware of the evidence that implicates Cortez, the victim, in some other shoot- “This is another case in which law enforcement decided on the new evidence and exculpatory evidence that was withheld do they still ings. They hadn’t heard that before. “That was the eye opener,” he said. that any old kid from the hood would do.” have a case,” said Dunn. Waters was unable to comment spe“This is it.” - Philip R. Dunn, attorney. cifically on the case and possibility of a
He and Cherot pursued that informa- retrial because it is now again an active tion, and uncovered new evidence — investigation, but he said “our office including three search warrants signed off by the VCDA. One of case. The attorney on the Santa Barbara case, Philip R. Dunn, takes these claims very seriously,” and the case files, police the warrants related to a Jan. 9, 2008 “Guava Street Shooting,” had written a book about the case titled When Darkness Reigns. reports and all aspects of the case are reviewed with “a clean and names a white Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck owned and “I could not put it down, I read it in a day. I didn’t sleep,” set of eyes.” driven by Cortez as the vehicle used in the shooting. The warrant remembers Cherot. “When I finished I called the deacon, ‘these Once the CIU determined a conviction reversal was approprinames Cortez and calls out his gang affiliation. The truck was guys are still around, they are now in their 60s and still practic- ate, they worked with Dunn to expedite the hearing to occur as impounded. ing. We need these guys.’” soon as possible.
This evidence contradicted the prosecution’s assertions in Ixta Ixta Senior contacted Dunn, who agreed to have his investigator, Dunn said if the case is not dismissed it will be set for trial Junior’s case that Cortez was not an active gang member, and it Len Newcomb, meet with them and talk to one of the witnesses. and a pretrial hearing could be set. “If they don’t dismiss it on provided evidence that he was likely to be a target of retaliation On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2017, Newcomb and Cherot April 12 my position is that they own it, in other words they are from rival gangs. It also showed that the prosecution was aware went to Lemonwood. “When we met [the witness], and the keeping an innocent man in custody...they have all this evidence of this evidence, because it was in their possession. None of that minute we walked out [Newcomb] says, ‘Junior didn’t do this.’ that he’s innocent.” information was ever shared with Ixta Junior’s original defense He got his friends Andrew Wolf and Phil [Dunn]” to work on “We can’t be completely happy because we don’t know exactteam, ultimately violating the Brady Rule. the case pro bono. ly what is going to happen,” said Alma Ixta on April 1. “We are
A 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland, found Wolf, a longtime criminal appeals attorney, now retired, pre- hoping [the court will] dismiss everything and realize that they that the prosecution is bound by law to disclose any and all pared the paperwork, appeals, writs of habeas corpus and final have the wrong person.” evidence, even if it would undermine its case. A failure to do so packet submitted to the VCDA Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) As of April 1, it “remains to be seen what they’re going to violates the guarantee of due process in the U.S. Constitution. in March 2020. do,” said Dunn. “In the highly competitive world of the crimiThe point of the Brady Rule is to ensure that trials are fair and “This is another case in which law enforcement decided that any nal justice system and jury trials and trying to clear cases with old kid from the hood would do. We’ll get this one today and we’ll convictions — especially with what was going on in Oxnard at get the other guy next month,” said Dunn, talking to the Ventura the time, there were so many shootings — it often gets forgotten County Reporter on April 1. “That is what really happened here.” that the first consideration of the district attorney’s office, and in “Mr. Ixta brought forth the claim” seeking a conviction rever- the system in general, is to do justice and protect the innocent.” sal,” said Taylor Waters, Senior Deputy District Attorney, talking Ixta Junior was transported to Ventura County Jail on Tueswith the VCReporter on April 2. “Our office has agreed he is legal- day, March 30, so that he can appear in person at his hearing ly entitled to the reversal of conviction.” on April 12 in Ventura County Superior Court. On April 2, the VCDA released a written statement confirming that the office agrees that the reversal of Ixta’s conviction is the 1. The March 24, 2021 letter to Ventura County District Attorney Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, CA. Google appropriate relief in light of the new evidence. According to the statement, the CIU conducted a “comprefrom Philip R. Dunn on behalf of Ignacio Ixta Junior is online at vcreporter.com/2021/04/reversal-of-conviction-new-evidenceImage capture hensive investigation” when “Ixta brought this newly discovered reverses-2010-attempted-murder-conviction/.
