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.