 Edgar Barrientos-Quintana (Photo: Amy Anderson Photography)
At the time, Mickelson was attending the birthday party of his 13-year-old cousin, known in court records as J.G. It was 20 minutes after sunset, and J.G. and his friends were tossing a football at the top of the alley. Mickelson had left that group and was hanging out with some friends from high school further down the alley.
Witnesses told the police that a white Dodge Intrepid drove past J.G. and his young friends, then stopped where Mickelson stood. A passenger in the back seat of the Intrepid fired shots. Mickelson was pronounced dead at the scene. Another young man, 15-year-old Aron Bell-Bey was hit with a bullet fragment in the calf.
Sergeants Robert Dale and Christopher Gaiters arrived at about 8:50 p.m. They had joined the homicide unit of the Minneapolis Police Department less than a year earlier. This was their first murder investigation. They were joined by a film crew from the television program, The First 48. The show’s premise is that the success rate for solving a homicide plummets if an arrest isn’t made in the first 48 hours.
The police brought several of the witnesses in for questioning that night, and they described the shooter as a young Hispanic man with a shaved or bald head.
The police investigated the murder as a gang-related shooting. Mickelson did not have any gang affiliations, but several of the young men with him did. In particular, 16-year-old Jael Pliego-Espitia had recently formed a clique called South Side Raza within the larger Sureños 13 gang, a move that angered other gang members. Jael had recently been shot and his 13-year-old brother, Luis, had been beaten badly with a baseball bat. The brothers, who lived nearby, were outside with Mickelson, along with Bell-Bey and 16-year-old William Fajardo.
An early suspect was a Sureños 13 gang member named Arber Meko, who lived about a block from the shooting, not far from where officers thought the murder weapon—which was never found—had been tossed. Dale and Gaiters interviewed Meko, who fit the witness descriptions, but never brought any charges.
In addition, a resource officer at nearby Roosevelt High School had forwarded a tip to investigators that a girl at the school had picked out a student named Marcelo Hernandez as “possibly the shooter.” Hernandez’s street name was “Sharky,” but the girl said his nickname was either “Smokey or Sharky.”
In an interview that began on October 15 and continued into the morning of October 16, Luis Pliego-Espitia mentioned Sharky as a potential suspect. Bell-Bey told the police he doubted Sharky’s involvement, because Sharky was his friend. The police were interviewing Jael Pliego-Espitia during this period, and Jael mentioned several potential suspects, including 25-year-old Edgar Barrientos-Quintana, a former member of a rival gang. His nickname was “Smokey.”
On October 17, Luis gave police a new account of the shooting and said “Smokey” was the shooter. He viewed a six-pack array of suspects, and identified Barrientos-Quintana. The police did not record Luis viewing the array or the instructions they gave him. “This is Smokey,” he said later. “He’s the one who did it.” Luis said Smokey didn’t like his girlfriend hanging out with Jael and his crew and in the past had come through the alley looking for her.
Police also interviewed Fajardo on October 17. He viewed a photo array with the same photos as those shown to Luis, and said Barrientos-Quintana’s photo looked like the person who had punched him at a store a few weeks earlier. He said “Smokey” was that man, and later said he was a possible shooter, writing below the photo, “Kinda looks like the shooter.”
The arrays shown to Luis and Fajardo were non-blind, meaning the officer presenting the photos knew which person was the suspect.
The police arrested Barrientos-Quintana on October 22. He agreed to give a statement. He said he had heard rumors that he and Hernandez were involved in the shooting but denied any involvement. Barrientos-Quintana said he had spent the weekend in Maplewood, a suburb of St. Paul, at the house of his girlfriend, Itzel Chavarria-Cruz, who went to high school with Mickelson, Jael Pliego-Espitia and the other young men at the gathering. He had gone to a baptism party that evening.
It was a largely uneventful day, and Barrientos-Quintana stumbled over the details. He eventually told the officers to speak with Chavarria-Cruz’s mother, Marcia Cruz-Nolasco, who could confirm his alibi, which involved shopping for ingredients for dinner. One of the investigators told him, “It doesn’t matter.”
The police also interviewed Chavarria-Cruz, who said Barrientos-Quintana was with her until they went to the baptism party.
Dale accused her of covering for Barrientos-Quintana. He said: “If and when we find out that you had something to do with this, or you know who did and you are covering for that person, you could be possibly looking at jail time. Aiding an offender, that’s what it is. Do you understand that?”
Chavarria-Cruz then told Dale that she and Barrientos-Quintana had left the house to go to Cub Foods. Dale said this was a lie and that she was now changing her story. He implied that Barrientos-Quintana had confessed. “If he is saying that it was him, it’s a lie because he was at my house, so he has no reason to say it was him when it wasn’t him,” Chavarria-Cruz said.
Chavarria-Cruz told the police that she learned about Mickelson’s death from Jael Pliego-Espitia. Phone records would confirm that she and Jael talked several times around 9 p.m. on October 11.
As Chavarria-Cruz left the interview room, Gaiters told her that the information about the visit to Cub Foods was important, even if she thought it was insignificant.
Dale and Gaiters returned to Barrientos-Quintana. He again walked the police through his day. The officers told him that Chavarria-Cruz had told them everything. Barrientos-Quintana said that it was impossible for him to have killed Mickelson; he was with Itzel all day. Dale said, “Betrayal’s a bitch.”
In the days after the arrest, Cruz-Nolasco and her son would give additional statements to the police supporting Barrientos-Quintana’s alibi. This was partly because Cruz-Nolasco had mixed up her work schedule; she usually worked on Saturdays, but hadn’t on October 11.
On November 6, Dale and Gaiters showed up at Bell-Bey’s high school, pulled him from class, and interviewed him in the principal’s office without a parent present. They showed him a photo array. Bell-Bey said he remembered that the shooter looked “bald.” He looked at the six-pack array twice before saying he recognized Barrientos-Quintana’s older photo as the shooter.
On November 7, Dale interviewed Mickelson’s cousin, J.G. The boy looked at a photo array that included the old photo of Barrientos-Quintana. J.G. chose a filler, also with a shaved head, as the person who looked the most like the shooter.
Dale and Gaiters interviewed Hernandez on November 14, 2008, at a juvenile detention facility in southern Minnesota. Hernandez said a man known as “Slappy” was the driver and a man named “Manny” was the shooter. He denied knowing about Barrientos-Quintana’s involvement.
Dale and Gaiters interviewed Hernandez again on January 30, 2009. They floated the idea that Barrientos-Quintana shot at Pliego-Espitia and his crew because he was upset that Chavarria-Cruz was hanging out with them. In addition, they told Hernandez that there was a difference between being an active participant in the shooting and just being in the car when it happened. Hernandez eventually said he might have been in the car but could not remember because he was intoxicated.
The following month, Barrientos-Quintana’s attorney moved to suppress the witness identifications, asserting they were based on suggestive techniques or coercive tactics. The motion provided few specifics in support, and a judge rejected it, noting the defense’s lack of a memorandum or supporting affidavits.
Barrientos-Quintana had told the police he went to a liquor store on October 11, and prosecutors asked Dale and Gaiters to see if the visit was captured on store video. Their goal was to show that Barrientos-Quintana’s hair was much shorter than at the time of his arrest 11 days later.
The police could not obtain that video, but they did get a copy of the surveillance video from the Cub Foods store in east Saint Paul that Chavarria-Cruz had said she and Barrientos-Quintana visited on October 11. A time-stamped picture at the checkout line showed the two leaving the store just before 6:20 p.m., 33 minutes before a neighbor called 911 to report the Mickelson shooting. Equally problematic for the prosecution, Barrientos-Quintana had a full head of hair. It was short, but not shaved or bald. (Even after Barrientos-Quintana’s arrest, the police had continued to use his old photo.)
Dale and Gaiters made a third visit to Hernandez on March 3, 2009. In this interview, the officers read Hernandez his Miranda rights and warned him he could either be a witness or a defendant.
Hernandez said that a young man named Valentin Olivera was driving the Intrepid, which was owned by Ramiro Pineda, who was known as “Slappy” and was in the passenger seat. Hernandez said he and Barrientos-Quintana were in the back. Hernandez first said Barrientos-Quintana met up with them at around 4:30 at a park about two miles away from the shooting. The officers corrected him on the time, and Hernandez revised his account to say the meetup happened around dusk. He also said that Barrientos-Quintana called the group to get picked up (Barrientos-Quintana’s cellphone showed no calls between 4:37-8:12 p.m.) and that they drove around for a while before heading to the alley. Hernandez said Barrientos-Quintana wore suspenders or overalls, a white T-shirt, and a blue sweater.
The officers later conducted a driving test from the Cub Foods to the park and then to the alley. They drove the route twice, and each time said it took 28 minutes, creating a six-minute gap between the store video and the 911 call.
The First 48 episode ran in April 2009, a month before the trial, and presented a skewed version of the case. The investigation timeline had been altered. Dale and Gaiters had staged scenes, and Dale had given scripted answers on camera. (After prosecutors learned of the scripted answers, they decided not to have Dale testify at trial to avoid a potentially damaging cross-examination.)
In addition, the episode did not tell viewers that the consensus of the witnesses was that the shooter had a bald or shaved head.
The episode ended with the police telling Mickelson’s family that the case had been solved. That scene was filmed before the police reviewed the Cub Foods video. Bell-Bey would tell prosecutors that he saw the episode before testifying. Fajardo said he knew the program ran but did not watch it.
The trial in Hennepin County District Court began on May 15, 2009, with Judge Jeannice Reding presiding. The state was represented by Assistant County Attorneys Hilary Caligiuri and Susan Crumb. Barrientos-Quintana was represented by Benjamin Myers, Bridget Landry, and Geoffrey Colosi. His initial attorney had withdrawn weeks before the trial and was later convicted of theft by swindle. Myers had his license suspended in 2015, and Colosi was disbarred in 2021. Landry had passed the bar in April 2009.
The defense chose not to make its opening statement until the state had presented its evidence.
Luis Pliego-Espitia did not testify.
Fajardo did not make a courtroom identification. He testified that he only saw the shooter from the nose up, and it was only after comparing his memory to the photos that the police gave him was he able to identify Barrientos-Quintana. On cross-examination, Fajardo acknowledged that in his statements to police he had described the shooter as “bald.” He also said that he had initially told his friends that he believed the shooter was Hernandez. He later said it was the police who brought up the idea of Hernandez as a possible shooter.
Bell-Bey also did not make a courtroom identification, but he testified about his identification from the photo array. He confirmed that he had told the police the shooter had a “shiny, bald” head. He also said that he and the Pliego-Espitia brothers initially lied to the police about the shooting because they didn’t want to get involved.
J.G. testified that he saw three people, not four, in the car, and that he was 2 to 3 feet from the vehicle when it passed by. He testified that the person in the back was “Mexican,” did not have a lot of hair, and was wearing a gray sweatshirt. (Barrientos-Quintana was wearing a white T-shirt when he left Cub Foods.)
J.G. testified that he looked at the photo array and that the persons in the array generally looked like the shooter. J.G. was never asked either on direct or cross-examination about choosing a filler rather than Barrientos-Quintana in the photo array he viewed.
Hernandez testified that on the day of the shooting, he was with Pineda and Olivera, driving around in the Intrepid. He said Pineda received a phone call about Jael’s gathering. Pliego-Espitia had shot at Hernandez a week earlier, Hernandez testified.
Hernandez said they called Barrientos-Quintana to meet them at the park. Hernandez said Barrientos-Quintana was motivated to help out because Chavarria-Cruz was at the party. He said that the four men drove to the party, and that Barrientos-Quintana got out of the car and fired four or five times.
The police had investigated Olivera’s role in the shooting but accepted his alibi that he was at a family gathering. Hernandez was not cross-examined about this apparent contradiction.
Gaiters testified about the investigation, including the presentation of the photo arrays to the witnesses. He said that he gave the proper instructions and cautions to the witnesses, including Fajardo. Gaiters testified that Fajardo was the first person to identify the shooter and that no witnesses had ever said that Sharky was a potential suspect.
Gaiters also testified about the drive from the supermarket to the park and then to the alley. He said the trip, which began in the store’s parking lot, took 28 minutes.
During cross-examination, one of Barrientos-Quintana’s attorneys asked Gaiters about the witness descriptions regarding the shooter’s hair. Gaiters said the descriptions varied. “Some would [say] bald, some would say close-shaven, some would say a fade, which is kind of like fading from bald into hair.
“But pretty much the consistent theme from all these witnesses was that the shooter had very little to no hair; is that accurate?” asked the attorney.
Gaiters said, “Short.”
“I’m sorry,” said the attorney.
“Short hair,” said Gaiters.
Barrientos-Quintana did not testify. A defense investigator testified that he had done his own driving test, but had not documented the time through a video recording or other means. He said it was “approximately” 23 minutes from the store to the park and another 10 minutes to the alley. Like the police, he also started from the parking lot, not inside the store.
Chavarria-Cruz, her mother, and another family member testified about the events of October 11 and said that Barrientos-Quintana was with them during the critical periods of that day. Chavarria-Cruz described shopping for limes at the supermarket, which was captured on the video. Carlos Barrientos-Quintana testified that he had shown his brother a dog that day. During cross-examination, prosecutors pointed out the changes in the statements these defense witnesses made to the police as evidence of constructing an alibi as opposed to honest mistakes in remembering what happened on a typical Saturday.
On rebuttal, the state played part of a jail call between Barrientos-Quintana and Itzel. Barrientos-Quintana told Chavarria-Cruz they would get their “stories straight” if he got charged.
The state had obtained statements from two jailhouse informants, who each said Barrientos-Quintana had confessed his involvement in the shooting. Their accounts were riddled with inconsistencies. While each man received benefits from the state, neither testified, and their statements were not introduced.
Based on a motion by prosecutors, which the defense did not object to, Judge Reding did not give the jury cautionary instructions on accomplice testimony, which would have said that Hernandez’s testimony could not be relied on if it wasn’t corroborated.
In its closing argument, the state said investigators had corroborated Hernandez’s statements. A prosecutor had earlier established that Hernandez’s lack of sobriety “had some impact on his ability to remember details of the day.”
The prosecutor incorrectly said that it took Barrientos-Quintana only 20 minutes to get to the alley and also said the jail call indicated he was orchestrating his alibi from behind bars.
The prosecutor also said, “As the Judge has told you, the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. At this point, the defendant has lost that presumption of innocence because of the evidence received over the course of this trial.”
In addition, the prosecutor said that there was no inconsistency between Barrientos-Quintana’s appearance and the evidence presented at trial.
“You heard in the defense opening that in order to have committed this crime, Edgar Barrientos-Quintana would have had to have left Cub Foods, quickly shaved his head, and then gone to the scene of the crime to do the shooting,” the prosecutor said. “That’s not at all what the State is arguing. That’s clearly not what happened. Nobody suggests that, not Sharky, Marcelo Hernandez. Nobody suggests that. The defendant had short hair when he was at Cub Foods. He had short hair at the time of the shooting. He had short hair when he was again captured on video at 10:00 or 10:30 at night at the baptism party. Nobody is going out and cutting hair. He had short hair the whole time.”
During the third day of deliberations, on May 28, 2009, the jury said it was deadlocked, 9-3 in favor of conviction, and then twice asked the judge to read them a portion of Hernandez’s testimony. It then convicted Barrientos-Quintana of first-degree murder and attempted murder. He received a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Barrientos-Quintana appealed, arguing that Judge Reding erred in failing to give the jury the accomplice instructions. The state argued in its response that no instruction was needed, as Hernandez wasn’t an accomplice; he was just an intoxicated passenger along for the ride.
The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on September 9, 2010. The court said that Judge Reding should have given the instruction, as Hernandez was an accomplice; he had helped plan the shooting and only cooperated with police after investigators explained to him the difference between witnesses and suspects.
But the court said the error was harmless because there was sufficient corroborating evidence of Barrientos-Quintana’s guilt. Bell-Bey, it said, had “confidently selected” Barrientos-Quintana’s photo from an array. (Nothing in the trial transcript reflected that confidence.) The ruling called Barrientos-Quintana’s alibi “weak,” and also incorrectly said that “the record does not show whether the person J.G. chose from the lineup was Barrientos-Quintana or someone else.”
In a dissent, Justice Paul Anderson said the identifications by Fajardo and Bell-Bey were flawed, as they had viewed an old photo of Barrientos-Quintana that showed him with a hair style that was consistent with the witness descriptions but not with Barrientos-Quintana’s actual hair on the day of the murder.
In addition, the dissent said Hernandez had “inherent untrustworthiness as a witness” whose testimony did not hold up under scrutiny. Hernandez had testified that Olivera and Pineda had called Barrientos-Quintana that afternoon and told him that Chavarria-Cruz was at Jael’s house. But that couldn’t have been true; she was on the supermarket video with Barrientos-Quintana. “That statement about Barrientos-Quintana's purported motive for committing the shooting therefore lacks credibility,” the dissent said.
Barrientos-Quintana then moved for post-conviction relief, asserting that his trial attorneys had been ineffective for failing to object to Hernandez’s testimony and for not objecting to Judge Reding’s decision to give the jury a partial transcript of Hernandez’s testimony to review during deliberations. Judge Reding denied the motion, largely on procedural grounds, on January 8, 2013.
In 2016, Fajardo recanted his trial testimony to an attorney with the Innocence Project of Minnesota (which later became the Great North Innocence Project). Fajardo said that he did not believe Barrientos-Quintana was the shooter. He said that he wanted to say during the trial that Barrientos-Quintana was innocent but was afraid of what the police would do. Fajardo died in 2018.
In 2021, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison formed a Conviction Review Unit (CRU) to review cases with “plausible allegations of actual innocence or manifest injustice.” The Great North Innocence Project asked the CRU to re-investigate Barrientos-Quintana’s case.
Three years later, on July 29, 2024, the CRU issued a 181-page report that said its review of the evidence “convincingly establishes” Barrientos-Quintana’s innocence.
The report said the wrongful conviction was the result of a “confluence of errors” by police, prosecutors, and Barrientos-Quintana’s defense team.
The CRU said the police used coercive tactics on the witnesses, threatening the bystanders with charges. They fed Hernandez facts about the crime to shore up his story. In the early stages of the investigation, the police failed to follow department procedures on the use of photo arrays. They did not use double-blind administration. They did not record statements to reflect the certainty of witnesses, and they encouraged witnesses to view the arrays again, implying that the suspect was among the photos.
Dr. Nancy Steblay, an expert on witness identification who reviewed the police procedures for the CRU, wrote in a report, “A non-blind lineup administrator who encourages a second lap through the lineup after the witness does not make a selection during the first lap has egregiously influenced the witness.”
Steblay had worked with Caligiuri and then Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar to develop the best-practice protocols for photo lineups adopted in 2003 by the Minneapolis Police Department. (By the time of the trial, Klobuchar had been elected to the U.S. Senate.)
The report said the police investigation had been flawed in other ways, particularly with untangling the shifting stories of Barrientos-Quintana’s witnesses about the events of October 11. Gaiters and Dale viewed the shifts as evasive maneuvers. “If anything, Barrientos-Quintana’s alibi witnesses’ inability to perfectly align their memories and timelines shows that they are human,” the report said. “It does not support an inference that they conspired to construct an alibi that would favor Barrientos-Quintana.”
Gaiters appeared to have testified falsely on several occasions. First, he said that witnesses had described Barrientos-Quintana as having short hair. They hadn’t. “This testimony was inconsistent with the facts,” the CRU said. “None of the eyewitnesses described the shooter as having ‘short hair.’ The only mention of short hair in the entire record originates from either Dale and Gaiters or the prosecutors.” Gaiter also testified that none of the witnesses had ever named Hernandez as a possible shooter. This was also false. Hernandez was an early suspect, based on the statements from several witnesses, and the state had presented false testimony, the CRU said.
Gaiters also testified that he had given Fajardo the proper instructions. But records showed it was Dale who administered Fajardo’s photo array.
The CRU said the state also failed to turn over exculpatory evidence. Early in the investigation, Luis Pliego-Espitia had viewed an array that included a photo of Pineda. He made no identification. This would have undermined Hernandez’s testimony about who was with him at the time of the shooting.
The state also failed to create and then disclose statements from Gaiters and Dale regarding their involvement with the TV crew.
The police department’s work with the show infected the case in other ways and contributed to the wrongful conviction, the CRU said. Its crew reviewed and filmed video footage taken near the crime scene right after the shooting. On the show, the time stamps were blurred out, and the footage was later destroyed. Prosecutors would later write that this could create the impression that the state destroyed evidence.
The CRU also found problems with the procedures used by both the state and defense to time the trip from Cub Foods to the park and the alley.
Dale Burns, a retired Minneapolis police officer, conducted the CRU review of the timeline. While the first 911 call came in at 6:53, Burns said the shooting probably happened at least a minute earlier, because the woman who made the call said she first gathered all the children from outside and instructed them to go upstairs. Burns also said Gaiters and Dale had failed to account for several other factors. They started the drive from the parking lot, rather than inside the store. They also failed to establish where the meetup at the park took place. (Hernandez had testified that he and the others were cruising around, and Barrientos-Quintana did not use his cellphone during that period.) The officers didn’t account for the time that Hernandez said they waited prior to the shooting. In addition, their driving test never said what happened to Chavarria-Cruz, who was with Barrientos-Quintana. Either he drove her home, which was 5 minutes in the other direction, or she walked home, and nothing on the video suggested that Barrientos-Quintana was hurrying past her to get to south Minneapolis.
“Any of the additional single time elements eliminates Edgar as the shooter,” Burns wrote. “Taken in their totality, the added time puts Edgar way past the 33-34 minutes, which makes it impossible for him to arrive on time to be part of this murder.”
The CRU listened to the calls Barrientos-Quintana made from jail and found them exculpatory, detailing an effort to remember what happened on October 11 and figure out ways to corroborate that account. In one call, Barrientos-Quintana remembered being inside his girlfriend’s family’s apartment at about 7:20 p.m. when the telephone rang. It was Itzel’s brother. This conflicted with Hernandez’s testimony that Barrientos-Quintana spent at least an hour with him and the other young men after the shooting.
The CRU said that Barrientos-Quintana’s attorneys failed in numerous ways to provide effective representation. The CRU report included submissions from Barbara Bergman, a former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Jed Stone, an Illinois attorney and expert on ineffective assistance. Their findings said the trial attorneys failed to adequately cross-examine the witnesses on their shifting identifications, failed to cross-examine Gaiters on the discrepancies between his testimony and the witness statement, failed to highlight the inconsistencies and holes in Hernandez’s testimony, and failed to elicit testimony from J.G. that he had selected a filler—not Barrientos-Quintana—from the photo array he viewed.
Stone and Bergman said the defense’s decision to waive making an opening argument served no strategic purpose.
The CRU report said prosecutors acted properly in not using the jailhouse informants. “But the fact that they pursued these witnesses and rewarded them with sentencing deals and releases from custody demonstrates they felt their case was weak,” the report said.
On August 20, 2024, Barrientos-Quintana’s attorneys with the Great North Innocence Project moved for a new trial, based on ineffective assistance of counsel and official misconduct.
The motion, which used the CRU and the organization’s own investigation, said the trial attorneys failed to mount a more vigorous effort to suppress the witness identifications, challenge the state’s witnesses with their inconsistencies, and effectively present Barrientos-Quintana’s alibi. As with the CRU report, the motion said the state concealed exculpatory evidence, didn’t correct false testimony, and created a misleading impression that the witnesses had said the shooter had short hair.
“One might rightly ask, why did this happen to Mr. Barrientos-Quintana? How could the government pursue such a weak case against him once they had seen that he was not bald on the day of the shooting? How could the government pursue such a weak case against him once they had the phone records that proved he neither made nor received the phone calls Hernandez claims he did in order to meet at the park? How could the government pursue such a weak case against him once they had seen the Cub Foods video that proved Hernandez to be a complete liar? The CRU report might hold the answer to these questions. Once law enforcement ‘solved’ the case for The First 48 and were filmed sharing that news with Mr. Mickelson’s family, it would indeed be very hard for them to go back to the producers and the family and admit their mistake. Instead, they engaged in tunnel vision, only looking at evidence that they believed supported their theory—however weak and convoluted it was—and ignored powerful evidence of innocence.”
Because the CRU’s report was only a recommendation, the Hennepin County Attorney filed an official response to Barrientos-Quintana’s motion on September 23, 2024, agreeing that the state could no longer stand behind the conviction.
On November 6, 2024, Senior Judge John McBride of Hennepin County District Court vacated Barrientos-Quintana’s conviction. In his 103-page ruling, Judge McBride said that the trial attorneys had failed to effectively represent Barrientos-Quintana, and the state had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence and correct false testimony. He also said Dale and Gaiters had failed to follow the proper procedures for conducting photo arrays.
“The court simply cannot express any confidence that if Mr. Barrientos-Quintana had reasonable counsel, or if the prosecutors had complied with their duty to disclose, the jury would still have convicted him,” Judge McBride wrote.
The state dismissed the charges on November 6, 2024, and Barrientos-Quintana was released from prison that day.
In a statement provided to the Great North Innocence Project, Barrientos-Quintana’s family said: Edgar's journey has been one of resilience, strength, and unwavering faith. Despite the challenges and obstacles that he has faced, he has never lost hope. His spirit is an inspiration to us all, a testament to the power of perseverance and the human capacity for endurance.”
– Ken Otterbourg
|