LOS ANGELES — Two men who spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit have been acquitted and released, the Los Angeles County district attorney announced Wednesday.
The convictions of Giovanni Hernandez and Miguel Solorio were overturned earlier this year and on Wednesday a judge found them essentially innocent, the prosecutor's office said in an email.
At a press conference, prosecutor George Gascón apologized to both men.
“It is truly devastating when people are wrongly convicted, especially if they were so young at the time of their arrest. In Mr. Solorio's case, he was 19 years old. Mr. Hernandez was only 14 years old,” Gascón said.
After two trials, Hernandez was convicted in 2012 of killing 16-year-old Gary Ortiz in a 2006 drive-by shooting in Culver City. He was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. Hernandez said he was home with his family at the time of the shooting.
He was acquitted after his case was presented twice to the Public Prosecution Service's Conviction Integrity Unit.
Investigators interviewed witnesses who had not previously been contacted and analyzed Hernandez's cellphone records, which showed he was not near the shooting site, according to a statement from the district attorney's office.
Solorio spent 25 years in prison after his conviction for the 1998 shooting of an 81-year-old woman, Mary Bramlett, in an unincorporated county area near Whittier.
Authorities alleged that Solorio was driving a car carrying gang members who accidentally shot Bramlett while she was stopped at a red light. She was driving home with some friends after playing bridge at church.
Solorio, who said he spent the evening with his girlfriend, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
His attorney filed an innocence claim in 2021 with the Conviction Integrity Unit, which concluded based on new evidence that Solorio had been wrongly identified in a photo lineup, the prosecutor's office statement said.
Hernandez was represented by the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentencing Clinic at Loyola Law School and Solorio was represented by the Northern California Innocence Project.