What is Judge Conroy and Boudin’s Innocence Commission Hiding?

Was a convicted killer exonerated based on a known perjurer’s evolving memory?

This article started out as documentation of three San Francisco city departments that are withholding pertinent public information.  On this story, it seemed suspicious that court transcripts were not being released on a controversial exoneration hearing that was rendered in Judge Brendan Conroy’s court—that was the only issue. 

What I discovered in my research, which lengthened this into a single-subject article, was that Boudin’s Innocence Commission’s star witness—a convicted murderer himself, effectively revealed to the commission’s investigators that he lied (perjured himself) in his own court testimony and intentionally misidentified a potential murder suspect.  The commission ignored this new perjury admission and still leveraged this inherently unreliable person’s account.  It appears Judge Conroy accepted the perjurer’s testimony over three independent witnesses’ testimonies to exonerate a convicted murderer- we don’t know though, because Judge Conroy’s court is not releasing the  transcripts.

The two stories on the other City departments will follow this week.

Anatomy of a nonviolent resolution to a narcotics disagreement

In the early 1980’s, Socorro, Alfonso, Ciria, and Bastarrica entered the United States from Cuba in the great Mariel boatlift.  The four ended up in San Francisco, became friends, and entered the narcotics distribution trade.  In late 1989, the four friends partitioned into two hostile groups, with Ciria and Alfonso partnering on one side and Socorro and Bastarrica running an opposing rival enterprise.  

On consecutive days in March 1990:

·      Socorro killed Alfonso

·      Ciria killed Bastarrica in an apparent retaliation.

In Scorro’s 1991 homicide trial:

·      He testified under oath that his conveniently, now-deceased partner, Bastarrica, was the real killer of Alfonso.

In Socorro’s 2021/2022 interview with the Boudin’s Innocence Commission:

·      He admitted to previously lying (perjuring) under oath that Bastarrica had killed Alfonso and confessed to the investigator that he was the real murderer.

·      That a mysterious other person killed Bastarrica-not Ciria.

·      The Innocence Commission presented to Judge Conroy the perjuring/murderer Socorro’s account as a substitute for three independent witnesses’ corroborating testimony that Ciria was the murderer.

·      Conroy exonerated Ciria.

The murder case against Ciria

On March 25, 1990, the first evening of spring, Joaquin Ciria was picked up in a 1974 white Chevy Monte Carlo, which had noticeable frontend damage.  On Clara Street, a few blocks from the Hall of Justice, two independent witnesses identified Ciria exiting the distinguishable car and shooting Bastarrica twice, before delivering a coup de grace to his head.  One of the identifying witnesses also claimed Ciria first pointed his gun at him before fleeing in the banged-up Monte Carlo.  That witness testified under oath that he was “absolutely sure” Ciria was the murderer. The driver of the Monte Carlo became SFPD’s third corroborating eyewitness to Ciria’s shooting of Bastarrica.

Ciria was arrested and upon the advice of his attorney did not take a polygraph test.  Nor did he testify at his own trial.  On April 25, 1991, Ciria was convicted of murder.

The Innocence Commission

On September 17, 2020, District Attorney Chesa Boudin formed the Innocence Commission to review wrongful convictions.

Photo by Christine Delianne. published in September 16, 2022 Mission Local Innocence Commission with Jacque Wilson (left) of Lara Bazelon at podium.

Heading the commission was Lara Bazelon who served as a spokesperson for Boudin’s 2019 election, his surrogate debater during the recall election, and she recently cited a study that found a preposterous abundance of preadolescent children getting arrested for driving vehicles as her authority to accuse SFPD of making traffic stops by race--despite the fact California laws specifically do not allow police to arrest preadolescents.[1]

Also, on the commission, was public defender Jacque Wilson.  In 2020, Boudin and Wilson ranted on Twitter how Wilson’s brother, Neto, was still in an Arizona prison “for a 17-year-old marijuana case.”  As I detailed in my July 2020 article, Neko was actually arrested in Arizona for “transporting” a large amount of marijuana, then released on probation.  While on probation, Neko served as a getaway driver in a Fresno marijuana robbery and double homicide, via slashing a couple’s throats.  When California decriminalized Neko’s conspiracy-to-homicide conviction to just a robbery and then released him, Arizona courts embarrassed by their contribution to the Fresno double homicide, called Neko back to complete his probation in custody.

The point being that Bazelon, Wilson, and Boudin have long track records of not letting facts get in the way of their spinning that violent criminals are really innocent victims.

The Innocence Commission’s investigation of the Ciria murder

The Innocence Commission rested much of their research on the work of California public defender Ellen Eggers, who believed Ciria was innocent.  As part of Egger’s investigation, she tracked down[2] and interviewed Roberto Socorro.  There is a difference in the reliability of a witness who comes forward to clear his conscious after 30+ years, versus one that had to be “tracked down.”[3]

In 1991, Socorro was convicted for the second-degree murder of Alfonso, Ciria’s partner, which coincidently occurred only 24 hours before Ciria’s killed Socorro’s partner, Bastarrica.  At his trial and under oath, Socorro testified that he didn’t kill Alfonso, but it was Bastarrica, his conveniently dead partner, who had committed the murder.

More than thirty years passed from the trial, when Socorro was tracked down by Eggers and he confided to her.  Eggers documented: “Socorro said he was in room 7 of the Bay Bridge Motel because Socorro was hiding out after shooting Alfonso.  Socorro said Bastarrica was bringing clothing to him at the hotel when Candito Diaz shot him.”  In Eggers’ mind, the introduction of the mythical Diaz absolved Ciria of murder.

But wait! Wait!  In 1991, Socorro testified under oath that his partner, Bastarrica, killed Alfonso. But now thirty-years later he admitted to Eggers that he was the murderer of Alfonso?  Did Eggers not recognize Socorro’s fresh admission to her meant he either perjured himself in his 1991 trial, or he was lying to her now?  Logically, not only does one of Socorro’s two versions have to be a lie, but it also establishes he has a history of misidentifying killers.  But Eggers blindly accepted Socorro’s identification of a new killer. 

Shouldn’t Eggers, Boudin, and the Innocent Commission have immediately assessed that Socorro was not a credible person?  Nope, Socorro as an inherently unreliable witness would serve as the basis of Egger’s, Boudin’s, and the Innocence Commission’s claim to the overly receptive Judge Conroy that Ciria has been innocent.

Another gigantic issue Eggers breezed over was: What was the vantage point and proximity from Socorro’s hotel room #7, to the Clara Street murder crime scene evidence secured by SFPD inspectors?[4]  There are two issues with Socorro’s account that Egger’s does not address: First, because of the slim width of the hotel’s parking lot, it created an extremely narrow-angled view of Clara Street. 

This is the view of Clara Street from the middle of the Bay Bridge Hotel (now an “Inn”) parking lot. Socorro claimed he was in a middle room, which would have only afforded him a much smaller, peripheral view.

For Socorro to have witnessed the homicide from his room, it had to have occurred in the hotel’s immediate Clara Street driveway- unlikely- since Bastarrica was “trying to run away” after he was struck by the first bullet.   Second, one of the witnesses told SFPD inspectors that Ciria and Bastarrica were seen “arguing under a streetlight.”  While obviously streetlights may have been moved over the past 32 years, there are currently no Clara Street streetlights that are in the viewing range from rooms of this hotel. (Also see photo above.)  But I am sure Eggers obtained a 1990 Department of Public Works’ street map to authenticate Socorro’s story.

Per the National Registry of Exonerations, “Ultimately, Eggers concluded Diaz was the real gunman” and killer of Bastarrica.  Unlike Boudin’s and the Innocence Commission’s lip service to “the real perpetrators of crime avoid consequences for their actions and victims are denied justice,” neither Eggers nor the Commission made any attempt to prevent Diaz from avoiding consequences.  Per my sources, neither Eggers, the commission, nor Boudin provided a probable cause statement to the SFPD Homicide Bureau that Diaz was the murderer. (Perhaps he was also the killer of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman.)

Judge Conroy’s Court

Not raising any of the above issues, on June 9, 2021, Boudin signed off on his Innocence Commission’s findings and asked the courts to overturn Ciria’s conviction.  Judge Loretta Giorgi had immediate reservations that Boudin, without providing a single objection, had blanketly conceded to the commission’s findings.  Giorgi eventually stated “the reliability of the People’s (Boudin’s) investigation through the Innocence Commission simply did not do enough,” and she asked for an evidentiary hearing.

The Innocence Commission presented their evidentiary case to Judge Conroy.  Per Politico, “Conroy seemed to have few of Giorgi’s reservations about the commission’s investigation,” and he emailed, “The record as to the alibi witnesses, Socorro, and the identification issues appear to be fully developed and will be considered.”  Thus, Conroy accepted the perjurer/murder/misidentifying Socorro’s story and overturned the conviction of Ciria.  

Boudin immediately issued a press release claiming:

·      That Ciria was freed based on the “false testimony of another man. The newly discovered evidence of Roberto Socorro before Commission members.”  Wait, Boudin and Judge Conroy trusted Socorro—the proven liar—over three witnesses that had not been proven to be dishonest?

·      The Innocence Commission and Boudin objected to witness testimony based on “cross-racial identifications by strangers.”  That literally means Boudin prioritizes perjuring convicted murders’ accounts over two of the independent witnesses’ testimonies because those witnesses did not match the race of the accused.  (Per Boudin’s theory, Sirhan Sirhan is innocent of killing Senator Robert Kennedy because there were no matching Palestinian witnesses at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968.)

·      Boudin neither opposed the motion to exonerate Ciria, nor called in the other “cross-race” witnesses to refute Socorro’s 30+ year recollections.  Was Boudin’s lack of due diligence just attributable to making Bazelon look good and awarding validity to his own Innocence Commission?

·      Judge Conroy allowed live hearsay from two people that thought Valera as lying.

This stands as the only presentation by Boudin’s Innocence Commission.  As shady as the investigation was, we can only speculate on what happened in Judge Conroy’s court because the transcripts of Ciria’s evidentiary hearing are not being released.

Where are the transcripts?

On April 28th, May 3rd, May 27th, July 15th, August 9th September 12th, and October 9th , I requested transcripts for the Ciria evidentiary hearing.   After six months, they still have not been made available.  I was informed that there are many orders for this transcript and there are “time-sensitive” requests in front of my request.  I am not blaming the court reporter.  Per numerous attorneys, Judge Conroy ultimately controls if he doesn’t want a transcript released.  And, as a public defender alumnus, Judge Conroy has demonstrated extreme alignment to the public defender syndicate, and by extension, the public defender-controlled Innocence Commission.

But consider how the withholding of the Ciria transcripts poorly reflects on both the integrity of Judge Conroy and our court system.  First, the public defender-centric investigation into Ciria’s murder of Bastarrica was extremely subjective, and amateurish.  Without clarity, it allows the Bazelon’s and Boudin’s to both perpetuate and inflate the fictionalized number of wrongly incarcerated people.  Second, without transparency, it increases the suspicion that Conroy is hiding the trail that he set a guilty man free.

Judge Conroy should release the transcripts in the Ciria hearing immediately.

My previous stories on the Gotham by the Bay website.

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[1] The only exceptions to not arresting preadolescence children is for murder or sexual assaults

[2] The National Registry of Exonerations’ own words

[3] Ibid

[4] The “Bay Bridge Inn” no longer has a “Room 7.”   Rooms are labeled #107 and #207.