An El Paso man who says police coerced a false murder confession from him when he was 16 years old, leading to 20 years in prison, has presented enough evidence to warrant a trial for his lawsuit against the city of El Paso and several police officers, a federal judge ruled.
Daniel Villegas, now 48, was convicted of capital murder in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison for the 1993 drive-by shooting deaths of Armando Lazo and Robert England. The conviction was overturned in 2013 and Villegas was acquitted in 2018.
During his interrogation, Villegas alleges, Detective Alfonso Marquez hit him, threatened him with other beatings, and said he would put him in an adult jail where he would be raped if he didn’t cooperate. Villegas confessed during an interrogation but later recanted, and he has maintained his innocence.
Villegas filed a federal lawsuit in 2015 against the city and several officers, and U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama ruled Friday that Villegas could go to trial on allegations that police leadership demonstrated to homicide detectives that “it would tolerate deliberate dishonesty and constitutional violations so long as officers were able to make arrests for crimes.”
Guaderrama also dismissed two claims in Villegas’ lawsuit against the city: that El Paso police didn’t properly train its officers and detectives, and that department leadership failed to investigate and discipline officers accused of wrongdoing. The judge ruled that the plaintiff hadn’t provided enough evidence to meet the high standards courts have established for suing governments.
Attorneys for Villegas and the city didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday from El Paso Matters.
In a separate ruling, Guaderrama ruled that Villegas was entitled to a trial on claims made against current or former El Paso police officers Ray Sanchez, Scott Graves and Carlos Ortega, as well as the estate of Marquez, who died in 2023.
Current or former police officers Hector Loya and Earl Arbogast were dismissed from the lawsuit in Guaderrama’s ruling.
Guaderrama said he would issue a separate ruling “directing the remaining parties to submit their availability for trial.”
The post After 20 years in prison, Daniel Villegas wins chance to put El Paso police on trial for coerced confession appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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