Ruben Martinez was released from prison on Tuesday after 12 years. Now he and his wife can finally start their life together

'I stand for the truth': the man sentenced to 47 years for crimes he didn't commit

'I stand for the truth': the man sentenced to 47 years for crimes he didn't commit

Ruben and Maria Martinez are having a honeymoon this week – 12 years after their wedding day.

Ruben was arrested in 2007, just five months after they tied the knot, accused of a string of armed robberies in Los Angeles he did not commit. He was sentenced to 47 years in prison in 2008, and for more than a decade Ruben and his wife fought to prove his innocence, with appeals that repeatedly failed.

On Tuesday, however, the couple’s prayers were answered. The LA district attorney’s office agreed that Ruben was wrongfully convicted, a judge formally deemed him innocent, and for the first time in more than 4,500 days, Ruben walked free.

“This is a divine miracle,” Ruben, now 49, told the Guardian on Thursday, as he sat inside the food pantry in El Monte, just outside of LA, where Maria works. “All of this time crying in my cell, it’s like I was in a dark tunnel … and finally God has brought the light to the darkness.”

Ruben and Maria, 59, were giggly and joyful as they discussed his freedom, saying they felt like newlyweds spending their first week together. While exonerations are exceptionally rare, the couple said they never wavered in their belief that this day would come.

They had faith to keep them hopeful – as well as a binder of evidence.

A marriage shattered by arrest: ‘They just stereotyped him’

The two grew up in LA county and met in 2003 at the Victory Outreach church in East LA. They were friends for years and got married on 9 December 2006; Maria carries around a framed photo of them lighting a candle on their wedding day.

At the time, Ruben was making ends meet as a day laborer, and on the morning of 1 June 2007, he woke up at 4.30am looking for a gig, leaving the house with only $5 in his wallet. He completed a job moving some furniture and was walking down the street to a liquor store near his home in Boyle Heights when Los Angeles police department officers approached – and arrested him.

“I thought something bad had happened to my family,” he said. “I sat in the back of that cop car thinking, what could it be?”

The officers took him to a station for questioning, and a detective asked him if he knew why he was arrested. When he said no, the detective asked him to try on a painter’s mask, which Ruben refused to do. Police then asked him if he had tattoos, and when he said he did not, they made him take his shirt off to prove it, he said.

“‘Who do you hang around with?’” police continued, according to Ruben. He said it became clear that officers were trying to establish some sort of gang affiliation based on his neighborhood.

“They just stereotyped him as a Boyle Heights, East LA Mexican gangbanger,” said Maria.

Eventually police told him he was being charged with “second-degree robbery while personally armed with a firearm”.

He told the officers he knew nothing about any robberies, and the questioning quickly ended.

Maria came home to find police had put up yellow tape and turned her home into a crime scene, executing a search warrant for robbery.

“The house was in shambles,” she said.

Ruben, who was jailed while awaiting trial, later learned he was being charged with nine felony counts stemming from five robberies between December 2005 and May 2007 at the same Boyle Heights auto body shop – a business he had never patronized. He matched some parts of the victim’s description of the suspect, though the suspect was a bit taller and had been wearing a mask for most of the robberies.

The simplest way forward for Ruben was to plead guilty. Prosecutors offered him a plea deal that would give him a two-year sentence, and his lawyer urged him to sign.

Ruben never even considered it: “Everybody was telling me to take it … but it wouldn’t be right on my behalf, saying I was a thief. That would be a lie. I don’t believe in lying. If a man’s going to stand, let him stand for the truth.”

Maria knew the risks of rejected a deal, but said she always supported her husband’s decision: “He didn’t do it.”

Prosecution with ‘no evidence’

After learning the specific robbery dates in court, Maria went through all of Ruben’s pay stubs and found paperwork showing he was working during two of the alleged incidents – on a job at CBS Studios and another at a metal processing facility. The temporary agencies that employed Ruben gave Maria time sheets and a list of people he carpooled with on those days. She gave those to his lawyer, but the attorney did not use the documents during the trial and did not call his alibis from the carpool as witnesses.

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Ruben’s supervisors did testify on his behalf, but prosecutors attacked their credibility, alleging that one was biased and another had made a typo on one time sheet.

The only physical evidence from the five crime scenes was a single palm print. It did not match Ruben’s. Police knew one suspect had committed all the crimes and had no evidence from Ruben’s home to connect him to any of the offenses.

A first trial in November 2007 ended in a mistrial with a deadlocked jury. Prosecutors moved forward with a second trial, which ended in guilty verdicts on all counts. On 20 May 2008, Ruben was sentenced to 47 years and eight months in state prison.

Ruben’s incarceration devastated his whole family.

Maria broke down as she recounted the milestones missed: “I got robbed of a lot of stuff. Sharing our first anniversary behind bars, it was so sad.”

When Ruben’s nephew was killed the day of his conviction, Maria hid the news, worried he wouldn’t be able to cope. When Ruben’s mother passed away in July 2010, he wasn’t able to go to the funeral. During the holidays each year, his family would honor him by passing around a hat and collecting donations that could go to his prison care packages.

After Ruben ended up in a state prison 200 miles away from LA, most of his family couldn’t afford to visit any more.

Ruben said the hardest part was the physical separation from Maria: “We lost our time alone, that intimacy where she’s looking into my eyes. We couldn’t share our pain over the phone.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘There’s two people in the room – me and Jesus. And both of us know I didn’t do it.’ Photograph: Dan Tuffs/The Guardian

He survived by praying in his cell, he said: “‘Jesus, you know I didn’t do this.’ There’s two people in the room – me and Jesus. And both of us know I didn’t do it.”

Maria refused to give up on the case. A former secretary for the sheriff’s department, she kept detailed records of all his files proving his alibis. One of Ruben’s sisters took an early withdrawal from her retirement to pay for an attorney, and his family filed petitions and appeals. The courts denied each one.

In 2015, Maria learned she had one final option. The district attorney (DA), Jackie Lacey, had established a new conviction review unit. Without the help of an attorney, Maria put together a claim for Lacey’s office. Maria also had the support of a close friend and retired homicide detective, Catherine Wills, who had become a mother figure to her and twice directly appealed to the prosecutor.

And for the first time in a decade, the system took Maria’s binder of evidence seriously. DA investigators interviewed witnesses and alibis and concluded it was not possible that Ruben committed any of the robberies.

‘They never gave up hope’

Ruben’s exoneration is an anomaly in LA county. Since the creation of Lacey’s review unit, he is only the third person to have a conviction reversed – and the first to successfully bring a claim without an attorney. The unit has received more than 1,900 claims during that time.

“A lot of people come up to me and say there’s somebody in prison who’s innocent,” Lacey told the Guardian this week. “The moral of the story is you’ve got to listen … Ruben is an inspirational figure, larger than life, no bitterness … They never gave up hope.”

Lacey said her office would use Ruben’s case in trainings, adding: “There are mixed emotions when you see a mistake in the system, because you have so much faith in the system.”

Ruben will be entitled to $140 for every day of his incarceration, which could amount to more than $600,000. But Lacey acknowledged that could never make up for the suffering of his family: “I can’t even imagine, 11 years … It’s hard to even explain it or think about it.”

Maria said she did not have animosity towards the DA’s office: “They’re human, and it’s not their fault. It was just the system.”

Ruben immediately celebrated his freedom with a double cheeseburger, fries and a strawberry shake. The next morning, his first day on the outside, he decided to volunteer at the food bank where his wife works. He thought it would be a good way to show his gratitude.