After 24 years, day of vindication
Four San Antonio women falsely accused of assault have criminal records expunged
It was a very long time coming, but the San Antonio Four no longer have a criminal history.
State District Judge Catherine Torres-Stahl handed out orders Monday expunging the records of Elizabeth Ramirez, 44, Cassandra Rivera, 43, Kristie Mayhugh, 45, and Anna Vasquez, 43.
With the order, all government agencies that house information on criminal charges, indictments, arrests or convictions related to the cases in which the women were found innocent must seal or destroy the records.
The women consistently maintained their innocence from the day 24 years ago when Ramirez’s nieces, then ages 7 and 9, accused the women of brutalizing them while on a weekend visit with their aunt.
Ramirez was convicted in 1997 and the other three in 1998 of aggravated sexual assault of a child.
The case was the subject of a documentary film that opened in San Antonio in September, “Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four.”
After the women served nearly 15 years in prison, one of the nieces publicly recanted. She said family members upset that her aunt had come out as a lesbi-
an told her to lie. So did her father, who she said was upset that Ramirez had spurned his advances.
“Whatever it takes to get them out, I’m going to do,” Stephanie Limon Martinez told the ExpressNews in 2012. “I can’t live my life knowing that four women are sleeping in a cage because of me.”
Her older sister has maintained the assaults occurred but said she wouldn’t testify again.
‘Very important step’
During court testimony in the aftermath of the recanting, it was also shown that faulty science helped support the charge of rape.
The four women were exonerated by the state’s highest criminal court in 2016.
“If that (exoneration) was a successful surgery, even successful surgeries leave scars: Criminal records. Indictments. Falsely convicted. Wrongly convicted,” said Mike Ware, executive director of the Innocence Project of Texas, which fought for the women’s freedom for years. “Judge TorresStahl has signed orders erasing those final scars, such that they no longer will have their criminal histories. It’s a very important step.”
Experts at the time called the exoneration “rare” and “momentous,” and came years after lower courts and prosecutors acknowledged serious doubts about the convictions, and allowed the women to be released pending further legal action.
Seven of nine judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals heard the case. All agreed the women should have a new trial, and five said outright that the women were innocent, which paved the way for each of them to later receive state compensation of about $80,000 for each year they were imprisoned — a little more than $1 million apiece.
In the opinion written by Justice David Newell, the four had “won the right to proclaim to the citizens of Texas that they did not commit a crime. That they are innocent. That they deserve to be exonerated.”
“These women have carried that burden. They are innocent. And they are exonerated,” Newell wrote.
‘To see a wrong made right’
Despite the exoneration, official records still showed the women’s arrests and that they at one time had a felony conviction. Having a felony conviction can make it difficult to get employment, rent a place to live or even travel abroad.
With the expunction signed by Torres-Stahl, the women’s convictions are gone.
“I wanted to thank the court for making time and signing the order of exoneration,” Ware said Monday. “I think that a little over 20 years ago the criminal justice system made a horrible mistake and convicted four innocent women.
“It’s tragic. But what we can be proud of is that it does provide a process to correct mistakes it made, and it has done what the system provides.”
At a proceeding in her courtroom Monday, Torres-Stahl called the women up to the bench, one by one, to hand them the expunction documents.
As each took the papers and read them, they cried, as did relatives who sat in the gallery of the 175th state District Court.
“It is my honor and privilege,” Torres-Stahl said. “It’s not often we have the ability to do that, to see a wrong made right.”
Expunging records can cost $150,000 and more for just one person, but all costs for all four of the women were covered by the Innocence Project of Texas, said Vasquez, who now works for the advocacy organization as its outreach and education director.
“Twenty-four years fighting for a crime that never occurred,” said Vasquez, who was 19 years old when she was accused. “This right here is huge.”
Vasquez said it wasn’t easy walking into the courthouse, and into the courtroom where everything happened.
“There’s a lot of memories,” she said. “It was difficult.”
Rivera now works for San Antonio attorney Rosie Gonzalez, who will be sworn in at the first of the year as judge of County Court-atLaw No. 13. Rivera noted their families endured a lot during the ordeal.
“Even though we were convicted, they suffered as much as we did,” said Rivera. “It’s a good feeling to know that it’s finally completely over.”
Looking to the future
Ramirez, who is taking some time off from working, cried as she clutched the arm of her mother after receiving Torres-Stahl’s expunction order.
“For years she prayed for this to happen,” Ramirez said.
Mayhugh, who used to work for Toyota, has moved to Houston to be with her mother. She said she was lucky Toyota hired her after her release from prison. She studied to become a veterinary technician and, now that she has no felony conviction on her record, she looks forward to being able to get a job in that field.
“Now that my record is clean, I won’t have any problems,” Mayhugh said.