The Guy Miles Story: How Flawed Eyewitness Identification Led to 18 Years in Prison

Episode Notes

Transcript

Michael Semanchik:

Guy Miles was falsely identified for a 1998 armed robbery in Fullerton, California. Despite shaky IDs and uncertain witnesses, the prosecution was able to convict and he spent 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. According to the Innocence Project, eyewitness misidentification is one of the leading causes of wrongful conviction. Guy’s story is one of great perseverance and spirit. Through the many ups and crushing downs, he continued to fight so that one day he would be reunited with his family and loved ones. With the deck stacked against him, running out of hope and questionable odds for success. Guy was offered a plea deal. Taking it would set him free, but he would have to admit he was guilty. After decades of maintaining innocence and fighting for your freedom, what would you do? What you’re about to hear is told firsthand by the man who lived through it. My name is Michael Semanchik and this is the Guy Miles’ story.

Musician & Exoneree William Michael Dillon:

♪ Spent most of my life in prison chasing our dream, call justice, chasing our dream, chasing a dream. Won’t somebody, please hear my peace. Want somebody, please set me free. ♪

Guy Miles:

My name is Guy Miles. I’m 56 years old, was incarcerated at 32. I’m from Carson, California. Love sports, basketball, football, don’t really have too much of a hobby, just like to get into business and really get my feet in the door of that. 1998 I was living in Las Vegas. Me and my girlfriend, Tarnisa Hughes at the time had my son Deandre. I decided to move to Las Vegas away from Los Angeles just to get away from all the chaos that was going on.

Michael Semanchik:

What sort of chaos was going on in LA?

Guy Miles:

I was raised up in a neighborhood where it was gang bang, was like a everyday chewer out there, so to speak. I grew up in that environment. I also became a product of my environment. I started the gang bang scene, getting in trouble as I got older, kind of calmed down and decided to kind of straighten my life out a little.

Michael Semanchik:

So Vegas is sort of the escape to get out of that lifestyle.

Guy Miles:

Right.

Michael Semanchik:

You moved to Vegas and then all of a sudden you get contacted about something that went down in Orange County. Talk to us about that.

Guy Miles:

Yeah, it was kind of crazy. Me and Tarnisa, we come down to see my mom every so often. On this particular time, my son was coming to stay with me for a while, so we had went down to my mom’s house to get my son. I ended up getting arrested for a crime, a robbery in Orange County in a town that I had never been in other than probably 20, 30 years prior to.

Michael Semanchik:

Did you know anything about the robbery or when it happened?

Guy Miles:

I knew nothing about the robbery. I was living in Las Vegas at the time. The robbery even took place. Had it not been for me picking up my son, I wouldn’t have even been in California. But I’m glad I was because I was able to recount the events of what happened that day.

Michael Semanchik:

Take us through it. How do you know what you were doing and who else knew where you were and what you were doing?

Guy Miles:

So on the 29th of June, 1998, my son wanted me to pick him up from my mom’s house so he can come stay out in Las Vegas with me. So me and Ty took off to come down to Los Angeles to pick him up from my mother and take him back. We did that, went back to Las Vegas, and on the 5th of July I was arrested in California.

Michael Semanchik:

When did you learn what the crime was and what it entailed?

Guy Miles:

They arrested me and told me I was being held for a robbery in Orange County and I was like, well that can’t be because I’ve never been to Orange County, so well, not at that time. I had maybe it was 20, 30 years prior to that I had been to Orange County, but that particular day I hadn’t been to Orange County.

Michael Semanchik:

So what happened with this robbery? What were the details of it, if you know?

Guy Miles:

Well, the detective was telling me three guys had went into some kind of check cash in place, robbed it. I got away with checks and money and one of the people identified me in a six pack lineup.

Michael Semanchik:

How did you feel when you were told that an eyewitness had picked you out?

Guy Miles:

It was crazy. I just kept telling him, there’s no way. No, I don’t know what you guys did. What kind of picture you showed him? I was just in disbelief. I couldn’t believe this was happening right now. They were telling me that I was being held for robbery in the county I hadn’t been in.

Michael Semanchik:

When you get into trouble with the law, the police keep pictures of you. This is especially true when gang activity is involved. Law enforcement will later use those photos in their lineups to evaluate how certain a victim or witness is about who committed a crime. They do that by presenting multiple photos of people for comparison. The theory behind this is that if a given victim or witness can pick a suspect out of a group, their identification must be accurate. Some people in these photos might look like each other while others will not. Some might share a group affiliation like a gang. Occasionally the police will toss in photos of coworkers for an extra level of certainty. The only problem with this is that it opens the door for misidentifications and when we stop to think about it, that makes sense. After all, if you do this enough times, eventually the wrong person is going to be accused. And as we will hear, that’s exactly what happened to Guy Miles.

Guy Miles:

Again, prior to me moving to Vegas, I was a mixed up in gangs and neighborhood things. So what they do is people who’s been in trouble before they store your pictures in the police station. So one of the guys I guess who did the robbery had some kind of connection to the place that got robbed and they figured since he was from the area I lived in, that they would go get pictures from everybody from that neighborhood. And that’s how my picture end up in the fold.

Michael Semanchik:

So just having basically your name and face in the system leads you to getting placed back into the system.

Guy Miles:

Correct.

Michael Semanchik:

Believe it or not, witnesses can become more certain, however, certainty does not mean accuracy. For example, a bystander might start off as 70% certain and over time, especially after talking with police, they suddenly become 95% sure, but as it turns out, they got it 100% wrong. This happens frequently as humans, our memory can play tricks on us, especially when we witness events under a great deal of stress. As a practical matter, it can be very difficult to overcome this once it happens. That’s why it’s very important for investigators to record identification procedures. So ultimately they bound you over. You go to trial and what happens there?

Guy Miles:

I go to trial. It is kind of funny because while I was in trial, the main victim who was supposedly had these strong identifications, got on the witness stand, looked at me. I asked if she can come down and take a better look at me. She got off the stand, came down. This was all outside the presence of the jury because they were on break. She came down, took a look at me, said This is not the guy, and the DA rushed her outside, talked to her, brought her back in, then brought the jury in and she pointed me out saying that I was the person that robbed her

Michael Semanchik:

In the middle of the trial. She’s weary of whether or not you’re the person and then all of a sudden has a conversation with the DA and changes her mind. And now she’s sure

Guy Miles:

That’s right. I mean all alone they’ve been saying how strong this witness identification was. No doubt, a hundred percent. And I just kept telling them, it’s no way. No way. She picked me out because I know I hadn’t been to Orange County. So that’s why I was confident in standing up and asking her to come forward and come look at me from various angles. And she did that and just like I knew it, she said, this is not the guy.

Michael Semanchik:

Did the jury ever hear that part?

Guy Miles:

Well, the jury heard the cross-examination, but never heard it live when it happened.

Michael Semanchik:

Then what happens? The jury, eventually they go and deliberate and then what happens?

Guy Miles:

They go into deliberation, come back on the hung jury, the judge sends them back in, they come back with a verdict and I was sentenced to 75 years to life.

Michael Semanchik:

So at that point, you’re sentenced. What are you thinking? What’s going through your mind?

Guy Miles:

I just still couldn’t believe it. The whole thing was just like a blur. It was like it can’t be over. I’m just waiting on somebody to come say, this is all a joke. April Fool’s only thing. We were in September at that time. So I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but it was disappointing. It was disappointing. I lost all faith in the system at that point.

Musician & Exoneree William Michael Dillon:

♪ Try as you might. ♪

Guy Miles:

When I first went to prison, I was upset. I was mad staying to myself, just trying to figure this whole thing out. What am I going to do? What’s happening? I was dealing with my mom. She was going through the, she was going through the whole her trying to deal with it. I was just trying to deal with her, just trying to keep her straight, trying to keep her just healthy. At that moment, I just kept praying, kept praying.

Michael Semanchik:

Did she think that you had done it?

Guy Miles:

No. She knew I didn’t do it. Everybody knew I didn’t do it. Everybody that was around me knew I didn’t do it. It was like, nah, we already know he didn’t do that because he not even on that no more. He’s not even on no kind of stuff like that. So my mom, my dad, Tarnisa definitely knew I didn’t do it. I was with her at the time. It was was a battle. It was a fight.

Michael Semanchik:

It is incredibly frustrating when the court does not believe you, you know, didn’t do it. But how do you convince a jury or your family? Fortunately guy had people who believed him, but not every exoneree has that benefit of the doubt. Having people in your corner is extremely important, especially when everything looks really bad. Guy was in for a long fight and he had a lot of strikes against him. Like most exonerees, he did not know the legal system and he was extremely short on resources.

Guy Miles:

Well, I was uneducated. I mean a lot of things I didn’t know how to do. So I started going back to school, got my GED, started going to the law library, looking up various cases, just trying to figure out the legal system, trying to figure out how I can get back in some kind of way or figure this thing out. And at that time when I first went in the California Innocence Project was kind of new, so the word hadn’t got out like that yet. I wrote Barry Shack, his innocent project, and he wrote me back and told me it was out of his jurisdiction and stuff like that. Then I ended up writing some new organization they had back in New York and they also told me that it was out of their jurisdiction. So I ended up writing Northern Innocence Project and they referred me to you guys and that’s when I wrote you guys and you guys told me that no promises or nothing like that, but we’ll look into your case.

Michael Semanchik:

Luck is a central theme in innocence cases. The contrast between being lucky and unlucky can mean decades or life behind bars and our line of work twists of happenstance are often the turning point leading to freedom as unlucky as Guy was to be convicted for something he didn’t do. His fortune was about to change and as we will soon hear, he happened to meet the actual people who committed the crime while he was in prison and even more lucky, they were willing to share key details and those key details would eventually be critical to guys fight for freedom.

Guy Miles:

It’s a wild story. I ended up being in jail with one of the guys who committed the crime. He informed me of the individuals that were involved. I then talked to Alyssa about it, who was my attorney at the time. Then more investigations started to happen. I guess they started going up talking to the people that were involved and affidavits was wrote and here I am.

Michael Semanchik:

So we ended up getting declarations from I think two of the three true perpetrators. We also did some investigating into your alibi, the fact that you were in Vegas. So take us through who all we were able to uncover in Vegas.

Guy Miles:

Well, we actually had 16 alibi witnesses, but only I believe six of them were able to testify because the judge ruled that it was all the same testimony being repeated. So he didn’t allow everybody to testify. But in Vegas we had eight witnesses in Vegas who puts me in Vegas at the time.

Michael Semanchik:

What guy is talking about is called cumulative evidence. All courts follow evidence rules. Those rules set limitations on the types of evidence that are allowed in the court places restrictions on evidence to keep proceedings as fair to defendants as reasonably possible. Evidence can be kept out if it is not relevant and it can also be kept out if it would be unfairly prejudicial to the defendant. But evidence can also be kept out when it becomes too repetitive and that is called cumulative. But as we will soon hear, there were other crucial pieces of evidence that would make a huge impact and for some reason, despite the overwhelming evidence piling up for innocence, the court was still not seeing it our way. All we could do was keep fighting inch by inch, but eventually something would have to give. And remember what I said about those lucky happenstance moments. One piece of evidence in particular would make a huge difference and that was a speeding ticket. It would indisputably show that guy was away from Orange County at the time in question and for some reason there was no record of it without guy telling me about it. I’m not sure we would’ve been able to piece it all together. His case for innocence was getting a lot stronger

Guy Miles:

Going back to Vegas, I had a speeding ticket showing that I was headed that way at least to Vegas. It was me, my son, Gary and Tarsa. They pulled me over, but it was never recorded for some reason. I’m not sure what happened, but I got a speeding ticket on the freeway headed back to Vegas.

Michael Semanchik:

So we also do some DNA testing on a glove that’s found at the scene. And that doesn’t have your DNA in it. It does have potentially one of the three perpetrators, right?

Guy Miles:

Correct. I even volunteered to take the DNA when they were talking about DNA. I volunteered and told ’em I would get my DNA volunteer for anything that would help me or help them show that I wasn’t the person I cooperated with ’em 100%.

Michael Semanchik:

So despite all of this stuff, we get back into court, file a habeas petition, get back into court, and what happens.

Guy Miles:

We were denied the first time we went back on a habeas. It was the same trial judge. He actually had retired and came back just to hear this case

Michael Semanchik:

And decides that no, what you’re presenting isn’t compelling. I still think that guy Miles is guilty.

Guy Miles:

Correct.

Michael Semanchik:

How did you feel at the end of that?

Guy Miles:

It was like a disappointment all over again. Here it is. I’m at a point where, hey, I’m back. I’m showing you that I’m not the person. Here’s all this evidence. I told you from the beginning, it wasn’t me

Michael Semanchik:

Guy’s case like many others had. Its share of setbacks, whether it’s a habeas petition, an appeal or clemency. Exonerees often face disappointing denials in their fight for freedom. It can be really discouraging, some lose hope, and we were not taking any chances. We decided to add guy to our California 12 in 2013. We identified 12 cases that stood out. All the cases had overwhelming evidence of innocence, but procedurally they had hit walls. And so what we decided to do was walk over 700 miles from San Diego to Sacramento to hand deliver clemency petitions to then Governor Jerry Brown. We brought guy’s petition with us. We needed every break we could get our long journey on foot, brought the news coverage we needed. Awareness was going to help us shed light on our client’s cases.

Guy Miles:

I think at this time, that’s when my hope started building. When I became one of the California twelves, it was like, okay, people believe me, people are fighting for me. And it was just a good feeling all the way around. I had hope at that point. I had hope.

Michael Semanchik:

So then we go through another hearing. We present more evidence ultimately what happens in the court of appeal.

Guy Miles:

So we get a new judge, we come back down for the second evidentiary hearing, we get a new judge. This judge we had high hopes for because we heard he was a fair judge. So we present all the evidence. I testify. We really believed that the judge was listening and he believed the story. Just looking at his demeanor. I know he was judging my demeanor, but looking at his demeanor, you can see that he really believed that, hey, maybe this guy didn’t do it. And also even talking to the detective Montgomery, who at the time is the one that arrested me, he also changed his tomb. He was like, I just hope you get out of here now things are changing. The detective is looking at me different. The judge is talking to me differently, and I just felt a different presence sitting in there. I was hopeful I was going home.

Michael Semanchik:

I know the detective at one point came over to us in court. I don’t know if you were there, and he apologized because he at that point, like you said, kind of turned a corner and had felt like he had got the wrong guy and apologized for the way he put together the photo lineups and done everything he did. But nonetheless, you still weren’t out.

Guy Miles:

Got denied again, got denied. And at that point all hope was crushed. It was crushed. It was getting ready for another fight. I already knew it was going to be a while before I went home.

Michael Semanchik:

Eventually the legal tide began to ebb our way. The Court of appeal ordered guy’s conviction reversed. Normally that would be great news, but as you will hear, the prosecution was not yet willing to give up and unfortunately that would press an innocent man into making a really difficult decision.

Guy Miles:

I was scared to get my hope alive again. I was scared to just say, Hey, it’s over. I’m going home. I’m going home. I’ve done that twice already. When the court of appeals reversed my case and said, Hey, you got 90 days to retry him or let him go, I was like, okay, maybe. But I was scared. I was scared to hope. Again. I was scared to believe that this time things were going to be different again. We was basically denied. We were basically denied.

Michael Semanchik:

So the Orange County District Attorney decides they’re going to re prosecute you. We’ve got 16 people that put you in Vegas at the time. We’ve got the three true perpetrators who have all written declarations and come in and given testimony in front of the court. We’ve got the eyewitness IDs that have been impeached and severely diminished, and we know everything we know about eyewitness identifications that they’re so bad that they’re one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. So we’ve got all this great stuff, but yet the prosecution is proceeding. And when you learn that the prosecution, they want to retry you, take us through what you’re thinking, weighing all of this evidence of innocence we have versus going back to trial.

Guy Miles:

At that point I knew they just didn’t care. They just didn’t care. And it goes all the way back to when I was arrested and had a meeting with the district attorney, Karen woke and she told me to my face, I don’t believe you did this, but you’re good for it. The pieces to the puzzle don’t fit, but you’re good for it. And when she told me that, that’s when I knew I was in Orange County. It was a predominantly white town. I was a black guy and things just wasn’t going to go fairly. That’s what I was thinking at the time, going back down for the third time and the prosecutor said, Hey, after being armed with all this evidence, we had even the officer, the detective, even changing his mind at that point, they just didn’t care. It wasn’t no longer about justice, it was about winning. And that’s how I felt.

Michael Semanchik:

Courts are very reluctant to overturn convictions even when evidence starts falling apart. Jury decisions are given great deference and it is impossible to know what weight the jurors put on one piece of evidence versus another. You can never be sure what a jury was thinking or what ultimately caused them to find a defendant guilty. That’s especially true when a conviction is an old one. Regardless, it’s really frustrating when you know someone is innocent. Proof of that is shown and the court will still not budge. And that puts our clients in a desperate situation and it’s that feeling of hopelessness that is often used against the innocent. Just when things seem the darkest, when our clients have wrongfully suffered and are running out of hope, the obstacles and costs seem insurmountable. That’s when an offer is made a dark plea for freedom, but there’s always a catch.

Guy Miles:

They gave me a bail. I think it was a million dollar bail. Everything was just the judge just, I mean, she just dogged me in that hearing. I went back to my cell. It was Alyssa and Justin who came up to see me. This happened on a Friday. I think they came that Friday night and they said they had a meeting with the DA and they’re willing to offer you a deal. We don’t want you to take the deal unless you want to take the deal. And at that point, I just got tired of fighting. I was tired of fighting. Here’s an opportunity for me to go home, be with my family. I didn’t care if nobody thought I was guilty or innocent at that point. I just wanted to go home and be with my family and be able to fight at a later day because I wasn’t going to let that go. I can remember justice saying, don’t take the deal just to please us, because I kept telling him, you guys fought so hard and I don’t want to shame you guys. It was just all kind of mixed feelings, mixed emotions. There was a whole lot of things going on in my head at the time. I didn’t want to let them down and I didn’t want to stay in prison. So it was a battle.

Michael Semanchik:

A lot of innocent people who take guilty pleas feel this way. Some worry about letting their lawyers or innocence organization down. Others worry about what their family and friends will think. After all of the years of maintaining innocence, what does taking a guilty plea mean? How will they be judged? Add to that, the consequences of taking a guilty plea in exchange for freedom. The big pro is that you were free from prison. The downside is that the law views you as guilty. It will probably make future employment very difficult and you won’t be able to collect compensation for all the years spent behind bars. It’s an extremely difficult decision to make, and the state is very good at offering this option when the innocent are feeling their most desperate. But I’d like to say this to any innocent person out there fighting for their freedom, you don’t have to worry about being judged. Your lawyers and innocence organization understand the importance of that decision and will support you either way. They believe you. They know you fought bravely for your freedom. They know you suffered. They are here to help and will walk you through the options. The most important thing you can do is make the best decision for yourself.

Ultimately, guy Miles decided it was in his best interest to plead guilty, get out of prison and move on with his life. Sure, he had mixed feelings about it, but when he considered the aggressive prosecution staggering bail, and 18 years he had been behind bars, he decided that he had had enough. From our perspective too, this decision seemed like the right one. The system had let him down so many times there were no guarantees of success, and there was a realistic chance that he would have been reconvicted and now serving a life sentence. But Guy was determined to make it out. He wanted to be reunited with family. And no matter how difficult the journey going home is the end goal, the raw sudden euphoria of freedom following decades of agony can be painful. In its contrast, a strange partnership of both extreme happiness and hurt is an experience known only to those who have suffered greatly. Those first moments of freedom are something innocent people never forget.

Guy Miles:

I can remember that day, like it was yesterday, sitting in my cell waiting on them to call me to be released. We had already did all the paperwork. I was already signed the deal, all that stuff. And I can remember sitting there just waiting on them to call my name. It’s like five o’clock and all the releases leave at five 30. They end up calling me and telling me they were going to let me out first because there was so much media out there and they just wanted to clear everything out. So I go get my clothes walking through this long hallway and I’m just waiting for any moment somebody to jump out and say, Hey, you got to go back, or it was crazy. It’s like, no, I don’t believe this is happening right now. Something’s going to happen, something’s going to stop this. And I was already seeing Justin at the end of the tunnel, but in my mind, I’m still thinking it is like the matrix. Somebody’s just going to to jump out and everything’s just going to go in three deep. I’m back in my cell again. But that didn’t happen. I met Justin, he walked me out. Everybody was out waiting on me. It was hugs, it was just a lot of laughing, joking, smiling, and it just felt good.

Michael Semanchik:

What was the first thing you did when you walked out?

Guy Miles:

I called my daughter, told her, I told my daughter I was on my way home and they called my father, told him I was coming home, that I wanted to surprise my mom and to kind of prep her. I didn’t want her to have a heart attack, see and become home. So everybody was just there, just waiting, just waiting. So thought I was over this part. I guess you never get over this, but it was a good day. Coming home was just beautiful. It was beautiful.

Musician & Exoneree William Michael Dillon:

I know sometimes it seems like there’s everywhere you turn, there’s a shadow, don’t you. Don’t you cry. Don’t die.

Michael Semanchik:

Upon release from prison, guy Miles began rebuilding his life. He relocated to Texas for a fresh start and started working for the railroad. He also rekindled relationships with his family and friends. He loves his children, his new home, and looks forward to the simple joys of living. He’s a man who certainly deserves to have his name cleared, but for now, a happy ending through New Beginnings will have to do. Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Brought to you by the generous support of Clio, the legal operating system for client-centered law firms. Produced and written by Laurence Colletti Audio Engineering by Adam Lockwood. Special contribution of music and sound elements by real life exoneree, William Michael Dillon. You can find his catalog of work at frameddillon.com. That’s frameddillon.com. Until next time, I’m your host, Michael Semanchik, and you’ve been listening to For The Innocent here on Legal Talk Network.

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