The U.S. Criminal Justice System Encourages Prosecutors To Be Corrupt

In 1995, John Adair and John Mix, a gay couple living in Riverside County, California, were murdered in their home. Both men were shot in the face. Mix died immediately, but Adair lived long enough to call 911 and respond, when the police asked him who the killer was, with something that sounded like baca. Johnny Steven Baca, the couple’s live-in housekeeper, was arrested and charged a few days later with first-degree murder. His trial took place in Riverside County Superior Court, in the city of Indio, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

The prosecution’s theory was that Baca killed Adair and Mix in a murder-for-hire plot masterminded by Adair’s adopted son Tom. But the evidence of a conspiracy was thin. Baca did not confess, and no forensic evidence linked him to the murder weapon, which had been recovered at the crime scene near Mix’s body. Tom Adair was never charged with the murders and did not testify against Baca. After John Adair’s death, Tom inherited nearly half a million dollars from his father’s estate, but there was no evidence that Baca knew about the inheritance or that he received any of Tom’s money.

Instead, the trial prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Paul Vinegrad, relied on the testimony of Daniel Melendez, a jailhouse informant who was facing his own murder charges for killing a man named Mario Gomez with the help of an accomplice. Melendez told the jury that Baca had confessed to killing Mix and Adair at Tom’s behest. Asked directly by defense counsel if he was receiving any favors from Vinegrad’s office in exchange for his testimony, Melendez said no.

Vinegrad then called his colleague, Deputy District Attorney Robert Spira, who was in charge of prosecuting Melendez. Under oath, Spira told the jury that Melendez had agreed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for Spira recommending a 14-year prison sentence. Spira was emphatic, however, that this deal was based solely on Melendez’s decision to inform on his co-defendant in the Gomez murder. Melendez’s testimony against Baca, Spira told the jury, had no bearing on the state’s leniency, which was substantial. Melendez’s initial murder charges carried the possibility of a life sentence.

Several months before Baca’s trial, Spira had made the same representation to Melendez’s sentencing judge, H. Dennis Myers. The judge was incredulous that Melendez would testify against Baca simply out of the goodness of his heart, thinking, in Myers’ words, “Well, heck, I will go up and testify in another murder case and just—I don’t expect anything from them.” Melendez’s attorney chimed in, telling Myers that his client had in fact been “led to believe there would be a reward at the end of the rainbow.”

Given Melendez’s cooperativeness in the Baca case, Myers said he was inclined to give him less than the 14-year sentence the state had already promised. Myers lacked the legal authority to do so, however, if the prosecution opposed him. He then asked Spira’s colleague, Kevin Ruddy, who was also present, “I’ll just cut to the quick. What is the people’s position if the court further went down from the 14? Further downward sentence?” Ruddy replied, “We would not appeal the court’s decision.” Melendez ultimately received a 10-year sentence for his cooperation in both cases.

Spira was in the courtroom representing the state of California when the court pronounced Melendez’s final sentence. Testifying at Baca’s trial, however, he concealed the fact that Judge Myers had explicitly taken Melendez’s testimony against Baca into account in his sentencing and at times affirmatively lied about it, insisting that the only reason Melendez got the extra sentence reduction was due to a change in the sentencing law that happened to benefit him. Baca was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to serve 70 years to life in prison.

After unearthing the transcript showing what actually transpired at Melendez’s sentencing hearing, Baca’s lawyers filed an appeal, demanding that his conviction be overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct and false testimony. The California Court of Appeal agreed that the state’s conduct was egregious. The justices characterized Spira’s testimony as “sheer fantasy” and took a dim view of the district attorney’s elaborate verbal tap dance to defend it by arguing that Melendez received no extra favors from the state in “exchange” for testifying against Baca because the windfall technically came from Judge Myers. “This kind of hypothetical parsing does not dispel the highly misleading nature of the testimony, which sent a single, unwavering, blatantly false message to the jury: that the informant sought nothing and got nothing for testifying against the defendant.”

And yet, the state appellate judges declined to reverse Baca’s conviction. Although Melendez and Spira had perjured themselves, the judges found that their false testimony did not prejudice the outcome of the trial. While the question was “close,” they concluded, “in the end, we do not see a probability of a different outcome.”

It is far from clear that Johnny Baca is actually innocent of the brutal double homicide that took the lives of Mix and Adair. Unlike defendants in recent years who have been exonerated by DNA evidence or new testimony, no information has surfaced to show that he did not commit the crime. And yet, his constitutional right to a fair trial was clearly violated. In theory, the Bill of Rights guarantees all defendants, even guilty ones, be protected from prosecutorial misconduct and false testimony. In practice, the structure of our criminal justice system gives prosecutors strong incentives to pursue convictions at all costs and to stand by ill-gotten verdicts. State appellate judges, who like prosecutors must stand for election, are often disinclined to overturn a trial court’s decision, even a compromised one.

Even the federal courts, which are free from the electoral pressures of the state system, have in recent years ignored the plights of defendants like Johnny Baca, their hands tied by legislation intended to keep federal judges from meddling in state affairs. Baca, however, enjoyed one bit of good fortune. In 2015, after more than a decade of filing and losing appeals, his case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit, one level below the Supreme Court, and home to a judge fighting a public war against prosecutorial misconduct.

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