Latinx Heritage Month ended this week, but that doesn’t mean we should stop talking about the unique challenges that people in the Latinx community face when it comes to wrongful convictions.
“I do believe that if I was white and if I was not an immigrant, I would already be home a long time ago,” Innocence Project client Rosa Jimenez says. Both language barriers and racism were factors in her case.
By the time of her trial in 2005, Rosa understood some English, but still not enough to comprehend the racist comments made by the assistant district attorney at her trial, as the prosecutor asked an officer on the stand, “Despite being from Mexico, she’s very intelligent, wouldn’t you agree?”
Rosa had no criminal record or history of abuse, but was charged and convicted of murder. She was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Since then, pediatric airway experts from the top children’s hospitals in the US have all concluded that the child’s choking was a tragic accident and found no evidence his death was anything other than an accident. Rosa has now served nearly 18 years in prison for a crime that never happened. Experts also concluded that it would have been “nearly impossible” for a single person to have forced a child to ingest paper towels like this.
Four Texas judges have agreed that Rosa is likely innocent. Last year, a federal court ordered that she be released or given a new trial, but Attorney General Ken Paxton is appealing the ruling. Rosa is stuck in limbo, fighting for her freedom and against Stage 4 kidney disease behind bars.
Despite all of that, Rosa is still hopeful her day will come. She is now fluent in English and working on learning a third language: braille.
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
