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The short version is after many years of regret, she made several phone calls and was surprisingly taken seriously when she was persistent. > She knew how hard
by jbm 3y ago
The short version is after many years of regret, she made several phone calls and was surprisingly taken seriously when she was persistent.
> She knew how hard it was to take a stand. She knew how hard it was to do the right thing. And now she was going to do it.
> She called the El Paso Police Department and told the woman on the line that she had been a juror on a 1990 case, and that even after all these years she didn’t think the guy was guilty. The woman told her it was too late to do anything and hung up.
> Estella called back and talked to someone else. She explained everything again, recalling details from the trial. This time the person told her to dial the office of Jaime Esparza, the district attorney. Estella called and explained again what was on her mind. She was transferred to Tom Darnold, the head of the appellate division.
> DA’s offices get unusual calls all the time, including from jurors having doubts about cases, but usually these come immediately after a trial. Estella was calling about a case from when Bill Clements was governor. She told Darnold what she’d told the others: she didn’t feel right about the verdict. Something she said convinced Darnold to take her seriously, and he promised her he’d look into it. He read the appellate opinion and didn’t see any obvious red flags. He told his boss Esparza about the unusual call from the juror and about his research, and Esparza told him to keep digging. Darnold read the trial transcripts and saw that the case wasn’t the strongest the office had ever prosecuted. He noted the discrepancies with the car and clothes, and also that Carlos had a strong alibi. He went back to Esparza, who decided it was time to take the whole thing to the next level. “We decided,” said Darnold, “just to be on the safe side: let’s look further.”
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago> The woman told her it was too late to do anything and hung up. Yeesh. Talk about a real role model.
- justinclift 3y ago> The short version is after many years of regret ... Thanks. These articles where the author is clearly paid by the word, so do their utmost to include everything they can think of, are ridiculous. :)
- attentionspan 3y agoWhat's actually ridiculous is the short attention span of kids these days who can't keep it together for longer than a tiktok clip. That writer didn't just sit in a room dream this all up. Unbelievably many hours went into the making of this piece, including flying back and forth across the country to dig up information, speak to people, connect the dots, finding all the background information, staying persistent. That's hard work. You may not like the style, but it's quite offensive to just brush it off as "nah, paid by the word, ridiculous"
- justinclift 3y agoNah. They could have taken the time to condense it down to something useful, but nope... they decided to pad it out as far as they could. Pretty sure text generators / AI will be used for this sort of thing by some authors too, though I have no idea if it's the case in this instance.
- attentionspan 3y agoTbh. I also skipped over parts of the article. But I'm not blaming the author for that.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoThis is like saying a movie can be condensed into a several-sentence summary of its plot. The author of the article was deliberate with their words. A lot of what you might see as "useless filler" served to humanize all the characters, and give us much greater insight than we would get from a summary. I teared up when I read about Jaile's situation: how his wife left him during his proceedings, and then died of cancer before his name was cleared. And I was inspired by his optimistic attitude in the face of so much injustice. If you want a summary, you're free to copy-paste and ask ChatGPT for one. ChatGPT can't expand a summary into a moving work of investigative journalism while maintaining authenticity.
- true_religion 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tommiegannert 3y agoThe article made it sound like she didn't have many years of regret. She cleaned a drawer and was filled with guilt and regret by what she found. Then she does what she needs to do to get rid of the feeling.