3 Decades Later, a Juror's Second Thoughts Set Him Free

Stories of prisoners being set free years after a wrongful conviction are not highly unusual. But a story by Michael Hall at Texas Monthly has an incredible twist: It wasn't newly revealed DNA evidence that got Carlos Jaile out of prison after nearly three decades, it was a juror who never felt quite right about voting "guilty." In 1990, Jaile was sent to prison for life in El Paso, Texas, after being convicted of raping an 8-year-old girl. No physical evidence tied him to the crime, and he had three solid alibi witnesses. However, the victim picked him out of a police lineup, and that was good enough. Estella Ybarra was on the jury, and she recounts how two "loud and pushy" white men pressured her—the last holdout among other Mexican-American women on the jury—to vote guilty. She did just that.

However, Ybarra says she never stopped thinking about Jaile, and when she came across her old jury certificate in 2017, she ended up calling the local DA's office to express her doubts. That call set the ball rolling to Jaile's release in 2019. As it turns out, prosecutors and Jaile's own attorney had been presented with DNA tests (then new) establishing his innocence. For reasons nobody can quite recall, this evidence was not brought up at trial. Jaile should have been "the first Texan to be cleared by DNA," writes Hall, but instead he went to prison. The story culminates with Hall reuniting the pair—Ybarra hadn't even been informed Jaile had been released. "I feel bad because I didn't do it sooner," says Ybarra, but Jaile responds, "If you didn't do it, I would still be there." Read the full story, which notes that Jaile's quest for state compensation is a "long shot." (Or check out other longforms.)