The teenager collapsed on a chair, crying, in the interrogation room of the Los Angeles Police Department.
“I’m not there,” he said, repeatedly, according to a video of the interrogation seen by The Times. “Please.”
“You were there,” the homicide detective replied, a point the detective would make. “Let’s get through it now.”
The teenager continued to cry and told the detectives: This is wrong. He is not innocent. Hours earlier, before dawn, he had been awakened by a phalanx of officers who had stormed into the small Hollywood apartment he shared with his mother and sister. They dragged him out of bed, brought him here and told him he had been identified as the shooter in the gang-related murder that had happened on Sunset Boulevard a few months earlier. All that was left was to tell the police what they had done.
At one point, the officers left the room, and the young man asked God to let him know: He didn’t kill anyone. But the officers refused to accept it. They insisted that the only way forward for him was to stop protesting his innocence and tell them how he had been involved.
“How old are you?” the detective asked.
“Fifteen,” he said through tears.
“You are a young man with a future,” said the detective.
But he didn’t. Not after what happened in the interrogation room on May 30, 2007.
After hours of questioning, Lombardo Palacios, a refugee from Guatemala who has a passion for art and is fiercely protective of his sister, finally told the officer what he was asking for – sex. He said that he had been there, perhaps in the morning, or perhaps when “it was late.” Maybe he had shot a revolver in the air, he said. Maybe he had pulled the trigger twice. Maybe the victim was walking in the parking lot when he was shot.
The details did not match the crime, according to a description of the incident included in the court filing. After the officers left the room, Palacios repeated: “I didn’t do anything.”
But after the confession, Palacios’ fate seemed set.
The police will build a case against him and an unknown young woman, Charlotte Pleytez, then 20 and pregnant, with the murder of Hector Flores, a former member of a rival gang. In 2009, they were convicted in LA County Superior Court, and each was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. (Flores’ fiancee, sitting in the passenger seat, was shot and wounded in the same attack and survived.)
However, according to new findings from the LA County district attorney, neither Palacios nor Pleytez had any involvement in the crime. Palacios claims, said Dist. Atty. George Gascón, fake.
Gascón told The Times this week that he is “sure that not only is he innocent, but we are sure that we know who committed the murder.”
The district attorney’s office, in a motion filed together with the lawyers for Palacios and Pleytez, has asked the judge to declare the two factually innocent. A new suspect has been identified, according to the court motion.
A Superior Court judge will review the petition Tuesday, and Gascón said he is confident Palacios and Pleytez will be freed.
The LAPD did not comment on the case by deadline.
Though Palacios’ statement was ultimately not used in court, the conviction can be traced, in part, back to a breakdown in the interrogation room, attorneys said. In California and around the country, many detectives have been taught not to answer when they believe they have the right suspect. The detective is trained to form a theory about what happened to the crime based on the facts available, then repeatedly question the suspect – even falsely claiming to have eyewitness accounts, forensic evidence and other evidence of guilt – until he confesses.
Along with the preferred method of interviewing American detectives, this approach has become an icon in popular culture, the image of a hard-nosed detective who refuses to back down, ultimately destroying a lying and guilty suspect through sheer force. However, more recent research into interrogation methods and human psychology has shown this tactic can prove flawed, especially when used on young or vulnerable people, and lead to false confessions.
A California law that took effect in January now prohibits police from using this method on minors, prohibiting law enforcement “to use threats, physical harm, deception, or psychologically manipulative interrogation tactics,” on subjects 17 or younger. The screening method is still used for adults, which upsets some people who consider the method to be outdated.
It’s a “truly deceptive and dangerous way to get justice,” said El Dorado County Dist. Atty. Vern Pierson, who is advocating a new law banning the technique in the interrogation of teenagers.
“There are better, more effective and ethical ways for law enforcement to conduct interviews,” Pierson said.
Palacios and Pleytez arrived on the police radar shortly after Flores was killed, as detectives heard the news that the killers were believed to belong to the White Fence gang, according to the habeas petition. Police found three people who said they witnessed the shooting, according to the petition: Flores’ fiancé, along with two girls who had been in the parking lot getting ready to go to a nearby nightclub.
The police showed the woman a book full of photos of Pagar Putih gang members. Flores’ girlfriend, who wears glasses with trifocal lenses, chose Palacios. Two other women also voted for Palacios, though they later testified in court that they weren’t sure. One woman said: “The skin tone looks out and the nose,” according to the petition.
Witnesses also identified Pleytez from a gang book. She is one of two women included, according to the petition.
No physical evidence was introduced in court linking either of them to the shooting, according to prosecutors. He was convicted based on eyewitness testimony, and imprisoned in 2009.
For many years, the request was not there. Then, in 2021, a law student at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles heard about the case from a friend who knew Pleytez. The student, Nicolas Tomas, read a letter Palacios sent to the Innocence Project, asking for help.
“I am an innocent man,” Palacios wrote. “I’m young and don’t know how to legally defend myself.”
Tomas begins to investigate and becomes convinced that the couple has been wrongly accused. Although he is still in law school, he is determined to do something.
At first, the Palacios family was skeptical. He had gotten hope before, only to lose it. But in the end, said Palacios’ sister, Sigry Ortiz, Tomas prevailed.
“He never gave up on my brother or Charlotte, you know, just like he never backed down and never gave up on my brother’s case.”
He also used some creative tactics to get the authorities’ attention, including driving to San Diego to crash a gala dinner full of lawyers working on innocent cases. He invited Ortiz, who is now 26 years old and in medical school.
Once there, he was able to find the woman who later became the head of the Conviction Integrity Unit in the LA County district attorney’s office. He approaches her as she tries to drink a glass of wine, and manages to win an appointment to make the case.
Tomas also worked to free Pleytez. But he also had help from other avenues.
Like the Palacios family, the Pleytez family were immigrants. She came from El Salvador, and Pleytez’s mother, Carla Campos, worked as a cleaning lady. Pleytez, the fifth of seven children, often helped him.
Pleytez was two months pregnant when she was arrested. She gave birth imprisoned, handcuffed to a gurney. The baby girl was taken from her after a day, and Campos raised her.
However, unlike Palacios, Pleytez never confessed, maintaining his innocence throughout the interrogation, trial and imprisonment. Pleytez is trying to make the best of the situation at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. He learned sign language and participated in a program that taught him to train service dogs for the blind. If released, he hopes to find work with animals.
Outside, his family is looking for a way to prove his innocence.
“I never stop fighting, I never give up,” Campos said. “I will tell the story to those who will listen to me.”
Finally, Campos found a private investigator, John Brown, who started his career helping farm workers in the Central Valley in the fight to unionize and now specializes in investigations for people accused of crimes.
“John was an angel placed in our path,” Campos said.
Brown works to re-investigate the original crime. He said he was not authorized to speak about the findings. But the petition filed with the court, although heavily redacted, makes it clear that Gascón and the defense attorney have identified another suspect as the perpetrator. Pleytez may have met one of them during his time behind bars.
Brown said he has no doubt Pleytez and Palacios are innocent, but what’s most striking about the case is the “class disparity.” If Playtez and Palacios had not been poor immigrants, “this would not have continued,” he said.
“The absolute power of the defendants and their families created a perfect storm where there were no fences,” he said. “No one heard it. No one listens.”
