The Emotional Story of Clemente Aguirre Jarquin Being Freed From Death Row

And what blows my mind is that science is the truth to me. Good science, DNA is the truth. So here we had a case, and this was one where I said, well, I want to be convinced that he's innocent. So it's the case of this guy named Clemente Aguirre. And if I tell you this story, you'll say, you got to be making this shit up. It can't be true. Because the story from start to finish is just mind bending. He's a Honduran immigrant. He is escaping MS-13 in Honduras. And he wins like what? It was like the Honduran version of The Voice, right? American Idol. American Idol. Honduran Idol, yeah. Right, Honduran Idol when he's young, when he's in grade school. So the gang leaves him alone because he's kind of a novelty. And he's nicknamed Shorty because he's only four foot 11 as a grown person. He's in his early 20s. And the violence is getting so bad. I got to get the fuck out of here. They kill his best friend and dump him in the street in front of him. So he flees to America. And he does the whole circuitous route through Mexico, or he tries to get a Mexican accent. He finds a coyote, and he swims across the Rio Grande, almost drowns. And then he's taken... I mean, that whole story I could spend a half hour on. He's put in an escape hatch of a car and driven around the country till he finally lands in Sanford, Florida. And Sanford, Florida is where the Trayvon Martin trial happened. And I end up in front of the same judge that presided originally over the Trayvon Martin trial. So Clemente is accused. He gets to Sanford, Florida on a Saturday. He begins working at a golf course on a Monday, climbing trees and cutting down branches. One of the golf members says, I like this kid's work ethic. You want to come work at my restaurant? He goes and begins working at the restaurant. He lives in a trailer, in the back of a trailer, no shit, on Vagabond Way. And he's got neighbors who are three generations of poor white trash. It's a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter. And he's like a novelty. They call him Little Mexico. He's not even from Mexico. He can't speak English. And he used to go and do coke with the daughter, smoke weed, drink. And it was like an outdoor dorm. They would go to his trailer. He would go to hers. It was like their doors were always unlocked. He's out one day partying with his friends. He does coke. He comes home and it's like five in the morning. And he wants a beer because he wants to try to come down. So he waits till the sun comes up. And he goes to knock on their door. And he sees a bloody shoulder blocking the door. And he goes to push it open. And the mother has stabbed 129 times. And he bends down. He was no stranger to seeing violence. He bends down to check her. And the dog starts barking. He hears noise. And he picks up. He sees a butcher knife, bloody butcher knife, sitting on a box. And he picks it up. He screams in Spanish, is anyone here? He then walks into the other room. And he sees the grandmother slumped over in her wheelchair. And he freaks out. He goes, he's about to call the police. And he says, wait a second. I'm illegal. They'll never believe me. And can you imagine this shit on a cocaine bender? So he leaves the trailer. He runs back to his, throws the knife in the grass, takes his bloody clothes off. His clothes are bloody because he picked up the mother and to check her pulse, takes off his clothes, throws them in a garbage bag, puts them on top of his trailer. The boyfriend and the daughter slept out that night. All right. So the mother and the grandmother are dead. The daughter slept out that night. And bear with me because this is like worth waiting for. The police show up a couple of hours later because the boyfriend is sent by the daughter. The daughter says, I have a weird feeling about my mother and grandmother. Can you go check on them and get my work clothes? Because she worked at Subway, the sandwich shop. So the boyfriend of the daughter discovers the dead bodies, calls 911. The police come. They come next door to Clementi's trailer and say, did you hear anything last night? You know anything about this? He says, no. He's freaked out. He then goes to a friend's house and tells his friend what happened. He said, I'm just going to go back and tell the cops what happened. This is America, right? And the friend says, you don't know America. You need to get the fuck out of town. He says, no, I'm going back. I'm going to tell them. He goes back, walks over there and says, tells them exactly what happened. They put them in handcuffs and they sit them down and they say, listen, we know how you Latin guys are. You wanted sex from them, right? He says, are you out of your fucking mind? No, I had nothing to do with this. PS, long story short, he gets tried, convicted and put on death row in Florida. The crime scene analysts sat on their hands and knees for days in the stinking Florida heat and scraping blood swabs in the trailer. Okay. 151 blood swabs and what they're swabbing for is not the victim's blood. They know it's the victim's blood. This woman has been butchered 129 times. The crime scene analysts in his case testified that we were swabbing for evidence of who the perpetrator was because in a knife fight, the perpetrator often gets nicked and cut, especially when you're stabbing someone that many times. So when the Innocence Project got the case, they said, well, what were the results of that blood test? You know how many drops of blood they tested? Not a single drop of blood. They never tested a single drop of blood because they thought that he was guilty. We had the blood tested and right in the, within inches of the mother's body and in a bathroom where the state argued the killer cleaned up is the daughter's blood, a trail of the daughter's blood going to the bathroom. And then the mother's blood on the outside of the daughter's window. We did just a minimal investigation into the daughter and it turns out that she had a history of crazy violence. She had a condition called intermittent explosive disorder where you would snap and just go off the rails. That's a condition? It's a condition, a psychiatric condition. You look at her medical file, when she's diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder, they put her in four points restraints, that's your arms and legs, and there's in the doctor's notes a few years before this happened where she says to her mother, I'm going to fucking kill you. If I ever get out of here, I'll fucking kill all of you. Then we find out that she has confessed all over town. We had people coming in all over the place testifying. Affidavits that she said, I killed my fucking mother and my grandmother, I'll do it to you. And I got her on the witness. So watch this. The state still retries him. His conviction gets overturned. The Florida Supreme Court throws it out, says that he is obviously, there's obviously a real problem here. And the state, instead of saying, you know what, we screwed up here, they doubled down. And it happens in all of our cases, very rare, not all of them, most of them, where the state comes up with a new theory. They said, well, that must have been old blood from her cutting herself. And they had no explanation for why her mother's blood is mixed with her blood in her bedroom, why her mother's blood is outside of her window. I demanded proof there, and there was incontrovertible proof. So watch what happens. There's a blood swipe on her mother's ass. Her mother is struggling to get out of the house. And the killer grabbed at her and pulled her pants down. And there's a four-fingered blood swipe. And I always thought it was weird, or three-fingered blood swipe, excuse me. And I always thought it was weird that there was only three fingers in blood at someone trying to grab at her. So when I had her on the stand, I said, I got a court order to take pictures of her hands because I wanted to see if there were scars on her hand. And she lifts up her hand, and her pinky is bent down like this. And I said, what happened to your pinky? She said, I cut my finger off when I was 14 because I'm a cutter, and I severed my tendon. That's exactly right. I said, was your hand like that on the night that your mother and grandmother were killed? She said, yes. And I looked at the prosecutor, and I said, have you seen enough? They don't quit. I had... They just want to win. They just want to win. They just want to win. And he... I'm happy to report that after her examination, and then an amazing examination by my co-counsel, Mari Palmer, which explodes a bunch of other lies, the ex-boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend's current wife came in and testified that he told her that the daughter killed her, and that she snuck out of her house that night, his house that night, climbed out of the window, and then returned later in the night. They dropped the charges in the middle of his retrial, and I got to walk him out off of death row. And in Trump's America, they would not... They put an immigration hold on him. And it was like out of a movie. He walked out of the prison to immigration, and there's a mounting crowd outside of immigration. We still don't know how it happened. I got him an immigration bond and walked him out of the immigration center that night. And to Jason's point, other than the birth of my kids, marrying my wife, hitting a home run in Little League, I've never had... I've never floated like that. There's winning world titles that you... No better feeling than to restore someone's life. You hit a home run in Little League? One. Way to go. That should be great. So, it's so hard to hear these stories, man, because you just imagine yourself... Did I get to you on that? Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. He's a beautiful guy too, Joe. I mean, shorty... Imagine meeting some guy who comes to America, you know? And you get me going. You meet this guy, and... Here's the crazy part. I was called... Oh, he got me. It's fucking crazy, man. How about... Joe, I'll tell you what I had to go through to get it. I'm not patting myself on the back. Watch this. I've skipped one retrial. The first retrial, I was in front of a judge. The same judge that denied him post-conviction relief said, I don't care that the daughter's blood is there, that she confessed, I don't care. Watch this. She denied him post-conviction relief, and he then gets his case overturned in the Supreme Court. Her credentials to serve as a judge in a death penalty case had lapsed. After his case gets reversed, she files for special dispensation to become a death penalty judge and says, even though I don't still have my credentials, I want to be the judge on his case, seeks out his case, they're seeking the death penalty, and she denied him the constitutional protections that the US Constitution said that when you death qualify a jury, if you violate these rules, the case is going back on appeal. I would say to her, your honor, you don't understand. We're going to be back here again. You can't not tell the jury, don't research the case in the hallway. They're going to research the case in the hallway. She wanted to kill him. At one point, I stood up and I said, I'll tell you something. I had to go at her so hard, I find out that she was the judge in the Trayvon Martin case, whose husband represented George Zimmerman and wouldn't recuse herself. All of a sudden, the papers start picking up that I'm clashing with her in court. One point had such a run-in with her that I sat down and Clemente was crying. I said, I'm sorry. I thought he was going to fire me because I went at it with her so hard. I said, I understand. He put his arm on me and he said, she's going to kill me. He said, please keep doing it. I just kept going at her. She finally had to declare a mistrial because a juror came in and said that they were all researching the case in the hallway. They thought that he was listening to music because he was listening to the translation on the headphones. To get these exonerations, it is such a grueling fight. If you meet Clemente, he is the most gentle, kind human being and is still an immigration limbo. To tell you what a great man this guy is, I'm in there in Florida fighting. There's no fucking way I'm going to get him off. He's calling me going, listen, when we get him out, we'll get him up in an apartment and we'll pay for this and pay for that. I thought he was crazy. I said, this guy has no fucking clue what I'm up against. In his debt, and I'm so in awe of him, even though he's my friend, that to this day, he and I have jointly supported Clemente financially, but he pays for his room and board and to be able to be in a position to help these guys and just help them start a life again. This guy still believes in America. After all that's happened to him, he still believes it's the best place to be. What happens to a judge like that? How does a judge not go to jail? How does someone get away with that? She's violating the law and clearly he's innocent, right? She's trying to kill a man who's innocent. The judge that took over the case, she had to recuse herself in a fit of embarrassment. The judge that took over the case was such a beautiful guy. His name is Judge Galuzzo. All he did was uphold the law. The prosecutors would come in and try to get rid of jurors that said, I believe that I'll listen to the facts and I will only get rid of, I will consider life instead of death. And he was just so, and they have immunity is the short answer. These judges and prosecutors, one of the many flaws of our system, right Jason, is that they all have immunity. So what about these cops? We were talking about the cop beat the guy in the confession. How does a cop like that not go to jail? How does, if you know that, where is that cop now? One of them got promoted. One of them got promoted. One of them got- Does the cop know that the kid was innocent and that they did this? Many times they do, Joe. And you know, we can't say make a blanket statement that they all do. And none of us believe that all of them are bad. But there are a lot of really bad actors throughout the system and they don't face repercussions. And as a result of that, and it's so important for people to know this. I talk about it on my podcast all the time and Clemente's episode is so wonderful because in that episode you really feel his humanity. He still has a great sense of humor. He still has a joy of life. And all the exonerees I find have this sort of incredible, I can only describe it as grace, right, after literally being to hell. Like death row on Florida, it doesn't get closer to hell than that, right? And he was there for 14 years. And he talks about on the podcast- Clemente was on death row for 14 years? Yeah. Listen, there's a lot worse than that too. Don't get me started on Anthony Panovich, which is a current case in Ohio. Your fucking head will explode. Oh yeah, I got him off after. He was actually 10 of the 14 years he was on Florida's death row. The other four years were in jails, not to be technical, but yeah, he was on death row. But he's funny, Joe, because we had to inject a little humor into this, right? So on the podcast, On R awful Conviction, he talks about how when he went to prison, he didn't speak English and he figured he needed- remember this, Josh? And he said, I needed to learn how to speak English. I figured I'm never going to get out of here if I can't help in my own defense. So he asked the guard for a Bible. And the guard said, there's no Bible. He goes, this is hell. There's no Bibles here. So he gave him instead a book of penthouse letters, like porn. He gave him porn. And so Clemente says he read this thing 17 times. And he says the 17th time he finally got a hard on. He says, but not because of the porn, because I realized I could speak English, right? And you hear him say this and you just, you want to hug the motherfucker. He's such a good and decent guy and he just loves life and he appreciates everything. But imagine that it took Josh Dubin, right? One of the great lawyers in our country. Right him right there. Yeah, that was right after I, that was, that's me on the right. That was right. That was the moment that he got exonerated. Wow. My co-counsel, Lindsay Boney and Dylan Black. Southern gentlemen. Who this case changed their lives. And that's Mari Palmer, who I mentioned before. And when. And so where is he now? He's so listen to this. How about this? He would go into court when he was that guy in the white and he would throw a fit. I'm fucking innocent. Who the fuck are you to do this to me? Early in his court appearances, when I knew him, he was very docile. So he acted exactly how I would expect someone to act. So watch this. Three days after he gets out, I always told him, I'm going to get you out of here in jail, I would say, and I'm going to take you to the beach and we're going to have a beer. And I would say to Jason, I'm, I'm starting to think that I'm not, you know, going to be able to live up to it. And I get a call like two days after he's out, we're in a hotel. And I said, you know, he got located at this place called the sunny center in Tampa. It's this property where they have like efficiency apartments for death rogues honorees. And Jason goes to me, that's my place. I bought the property. I didn't even know it. I mean, he's like, this guy's like fucking Robin Hood. There's a killing on the beach in Miami, me and Shorty. Is that hilarious? Like literally from death row to the front row, right? It's incredible. Wow. And I actually, it's funny, Joe, because you mentioned the music business before. I actually had that experience about a year ago. This is off topic, but I can't help saying this and this is on my mind. About a year ago, I was visiting an innocent guy. Well, no, a year and a half ago now, because it was early late January. I was visiting an innocent guy in death row in Texas named Rob Will. And I left there and flew to LA. That was on a Monday. I was down there and then flew to LA and ended up going to the Grammys on Sunday and ended up, you know, moving around some seats, whatever, sitting in the front row. And I had that feeling. I was like, holy shit, what a week. I literally went from death row to the front row. It's a strange life, I believe. It's a double life. But it really is, it gives a lot of meaning to our days.