This case marks the first exoneration prompted by Chesa Boudin's Innocence Commission, which was established by the DA in 2020 to review potential wrongful conviction cases.
San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin addressed a crowd of nearly 200 as his recall election is now less than three months away.
Ciria was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for the shooting death of Felix Bastarrica, who was shot in the head after an argument in a San Francisco alley. An 18-month investigation by the commission located new witnesses and evidence and found"a cascade of errors" in how the case was handled, including police coercion of the key witness, who was a teenager at the time, said Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law.
"There was no DNA, no fingerprints, no murder weapon was ever recovered," she said, adding that Ciria had always maintained his innocence and had two alibi witnesses who said he was home at the time of the murder but were never called by the defense, possibly because they only spoke Spanish."Had a jury heard this case today there would not have been a conviction.""Mr. Ciria has been in prison for more than 30 years for a crime he did not commit," Boudin said.
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