Ramirez and Sifuentes Still Wait
By: Lauren Murphy
Updated: April 23, 2008
Three months after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated their conviction, two men are still waiting behind bars.
"You're never afraid of the cases where your client is guilty. You're scared of the cases where he's not guilty," said Jack Stoffregen, the public defender who originally represented Alberto Sifuentes.
He says he believes with all his heart that Sifuentes and Jesus Ramirez had nothing to do with the 1996 murder of Evangelina Cruz.
"There were some real problems with the evidence in this case," said Stoffregen.
Stoffregen blames faulty eyewitness testimony and unreliable witnesses.
He says prosecutors "guilted" the jury into convicting the two men.
"They were convenient. They were hispanic. They weren't able to communicate very well. The state latched onto a witness that was led into a misidentification."
Stoffregen says now, nearly 12 years later, the evidence is clear, and its time to set two innocent men free.
"They're moving slow. Can you imagine what it would be like to be in there even one day? Then eleven years and you weren't guilty of an offense?"
