The Innocents (1964)
by Edward D. Radin

Excerpt from Chapter 7 on

Edward Avila

It was an extra mug shot that a detective happened to be carrying in his pocket that led to the wrong identification of Edward Avila. And it was hard work by the same detectives who had arrested him that won his release from prison.

A tall, lanky man held up Sam Bravero in his car lot in East Los Angeles and shot him during a brief struggle. The robbery had gone unnoticed, but two of Bravero's friends saw a stranger driving off in his car, suspected something was wrong, and gave chase. They forced the driver over to the curb, and when they demanded his identification, he produced a gun and sped away. Bravero was critically injured and could not be questioned, but the two witnesses furnished Detective Sergeants A. W. Bright and E. D. Villines of the Los Angeles sheriff's office with a detailed description.

The detectives went through the files and pulled out thirty mug shots of men with records answering the description. The two witnesses failed to recognize any of the men. Bright had a picture in his pocket in connection with another case, and since this man was tall and lanky, he showed it to them. They promptly identified Edward Avila, twenty-nine, as the man with the gun.

Los Angeles city police picked up Avila and turned him over to the sheriff's office. When the witnesses viewed Avila in a line-up, one witness still was certain, but the other was not sure. Avila surprised the detectives when they questioned him. Instead of a glib detailed story of his activities the day of the robbery, he simply said he had been home most of the afternoon, except for a brief visit to a large chain store to buy a pair of shoes. The very lack of an alibi convinced the detectives that he was telling the truth, but in view of the positive identification he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to San Quentin.

The detectives continued working on the case. Some two months later, while checking the records of recent arrests, the officers noticed that a man named Delbert Wilson had been arrested several days before Avila. Wilson answered the same general description. A partial single print had been found in Bravero's car, but since single prints are not classified, it had not been considered much of a clue. They put through a request to have Wilson's fingerprints checked against the single print; it was Wilson's thumbprint.

Wilson also had been sentenced to San Quentin, and the detectives flew to San Francisco to interview him. When he was shown the thumbprint taken from Bravero's car, Wilson admitted that he, and not Avila, was the bandit who had shot the car dealer. He also revealed a strange coincidence. When Avila was picked up by Los Angeles city police, he had been placed in the same cell with Wilson. He knew Avila was being accused of his crime, but he kept quiet. He told the detectives that he had felt he had enough of his own troubles without worrying about Avila's being convicted of a crime he did not commit. In September, 1957, Avila was granted an unconditional pardon.