by Jaime Lopez
Hello, my name is Jamie Jezzuel Lopez. I was born in Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico. I immigrated to the United States in 1999 when I was seventeen years old. I left my mother, older sister and younger brother looking for a better future. My single mother worked everyday, but the money she earned was not enough. We were poor.
My first job in the United States was gardening in an apartment complex. I later worked in maintenance. The satisfaction of being able to help my family was great. However, my education and school was always on my mind. I did not speak English, so I enrolled for an ESL night class in Santa Ana, CA. On the first day of class our teacher asked every student why we wanted to learn English.
My answer was, “Porque quiero ir a la Universidad y terminar una carrera.” (“Because I want to go the university and graduate in my career.”)
With a smile on his face the teacher asked me, “Do you know how much it costs to go to college?”
In the fall of 2000 I began my first semester in Santiago, Canyon College in Orange, CA. Four years later, with the help of the Adult education Program inside campus, I earned my highschool diploma. In the spring of 2006 I graduated from college with an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts.
Six years in college while working full time in a restaurant was not easy. My family was proud. I was proud and happy. Still, my dream was to become a journalist, a reporter for Univision News in Spanish. I applied to several Universities. I got accepted into Cal State Long Beach, to which I enrolled with a major in broadcast journalism.
Sponsors helped me pay for my first two classes, books, and parking permit. By then, my younger brother had come to the U.S. from Mexico also. He started working hard and going to school. He soon graduated from El Modena High School and enrolled in Santiago Canyon College. My mother was no longer in det. Her and my sister were granted tourist visas and came to visit. My dreams were becoming a reality. Those were my happiest days.
Driving without a license was always a fear. On August twenty-eighth, 2006 I was ordered to pull over. Instead, I panicked, sped up and ended up going the wrong direction. My car was taken, and I was arrested for reckless driving and driving without a Driver’s License. My brother bailed me out. The weight on my shoulders started to feel heavy. Heavier it got when the secrets of my life were revealed to my family, that I am gay and that I was molested when I was eleven years old.
My family was heart-broken. This truth was not easy to understand or accept. I went from feeling like a role model to feeling like a disgrace. I felt ashamed. I did not deal with rejection the right way. I stopped contact with my family and closest friends. I met a guy in a club who offered me a place to stay and I moved in with him. I started smoking methamphetamine with him and I became an addict.
My life changed drastically. I dropped out of school, quit my job, and my new circle of friends were all drug users. I started looking for love in all the wrong places: bookstores, clubs, parks. I met Trang P online and started a relationship with him. He was smart and an expert on computers. He taught me how to do credit card fraud.
Trang and I stole mail from mailboxes and gym bags with wallets, cell phones and car keys from twenty-four hour fitness clubs. I became a thief. Trang became like a boss who would get violent when things did not go his way. I was lost and alone. I was a failure. Getting high was the only thing that would numb the emptiness I felt.
I used to go to a park in Santa Ana to buy crystal meth. There I met Ivan A. He was a dealer and I became a regular customer. Ivan and I started hanging out. We went out to clubs, to eat, to the movies and we became friends. We had a lot in common: both gay, addicts, and in abusive relationships.
On June fourth, 2007, Ivan showed up in the garage/studio where Trang and I lived in Garden Grove. Ivan woke me up to tell me he got into a fight with his boyfriend that morning and he needed to get out of his place before his boyfriend came back from work. He asked me if he could borrow my Jeep because his car, a two-door white Mustang, was too small. But my jeep was in the shop getting the transmission rebuilt.
Ivan asked me to go with him. He was high and anxious. Even though I had not met Ivan’s boyfriend, I got to see bruises and cuts Ivan claimed were from his boyfriend. I did not want to go. Ivan insisted and promised to pay me back for a computer and a printer I pawned to lend him money months before. I then agreed to go.
Ivan drove to the apartment. When we arrived, Ivan opened the door and I followed him inside. Ivan told me to stay in the living room. I sat down on the couch while he went somewhere inside. The place was dark. Drawers were open and stuff was on the floor. I called Ivan and asked him what was all the mess. Ivan did not answer.
I could hear him moving around, talking to himself, sometimes cursing. I asked him where the bathroom was. Ivan came out carrying two pieces of luggage and left them in the living room. Ivan showed me the bathroom. I took a piss and then went back to the living room.
I started freaking out about the place being a mess. I asked Ivan what time his boyfriend was coming back from work and he yelled, “Do not worry about it!” I went to the kitchen, got a glass and some water from the sink, drank water and put the glass on the kitchen counter. Ivan came out with another piece of luggage. I told Ivan let’s go. Ivan said he was staying and told me to take the luggage away in his car. I asked for the money he owed me and told him I was not coming back for him.
Ivan assured me he was going to pay me and gave me his car keys. Later that evening, Ivan returned and gave me two plastic grocery bags containing about twelve pieces of jewelry. I was expecting cash. Ivan told me the jewelry was worth more than the thousand dollars he owed me. Ivan left and did not see him again. The next day Trang and I went to a Vietnamese mall in Westminster and sold some of the jewelry for cash.
On July sixteenth, 2007 Trang and I got into an argument. The homeowner heard the altercation and told us he was calling the cops. Trang and I had laptops, memory cards, mail we had stolen, jewelry and watches we kept from the gym bags we stole and the jewelry we had left from what Ivan paid me with. We put everything inside our backpacks because we did not want the police to find it.
I hid the two backpacks behind a storage shed in the backyard. The police arrived. We explained it was just a breakup fight. When the police checked the information, it showed an arrest warrant for my not showing up to court the time I got arrested with no driver’s license. I got arrested, did time, and got deported to Mexico.
I stayed in Mexico for a while and then came illegally to the United States. Trang’s family opened their house for me to live there in Westminster. Trang had previously tried to recover our backpacks, but the homeowner told him he gave the backpacks to the police the day after I got arrested.
Trang and I went to the Garden Grove Police Department. Trang did the talking and asked about the backpacks. The officer explained that unclaimed property is sent to an auction company or given to charity. Trang and I continued with our criminal lifestyle: getting high, stealing, and doing fraud.
On March fourteenth, 2008 we both were arrested and sentenced to three hundred and sixty-five days in county jail for several counts of burglary, grand theft, and fraudulent charges. A month before our release date we were called for an interview. Investigators showed me pictures of an apartment and told me they had witnesses that saw me taking stuff out of there. I told the investigators about Ivan.
I repeated three times, step by step, every move: what I did, heard, and touched. I told them what I saw Ivan doing and what he touched. Investigators brought three pages of several mug shots and I recognized Ivan in one of them. Then they showed me a picture of a guy.
I remember having seen that picture in a flier posted in a bookstore in Garden Grove. Then they showed me pictures of a crime scene with lots of blood, the kind of pictures you see on TV Shows. The interview turned into repeating accusations that I killed the owner of the apartment. I told the investigators I had never owned a gun before.
They told me the name of the guy I killed was Mr. Harry, that I beat him to death and that I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison. Trang and I served one year in county jail. Trang went home and I was booked for a murder case with the death penalty. My first public defender visited me once to tell me the death penalty had been dropped. Mr. Weinberg was the third public defender assigned to my case. He visited me often and I had the opportunity to tell him what happened the day I went to that apartment.
I could not tell Mr. Weinberg that Ivan killed anybody because I did not see him do it. But there is no doubt in my heart that Ivan killed Mr. Harry. I told that to Mr. Weinberg and asked him to help me. Mr. Weinberg worked on my case for more than two years. He found out that Ivan got deported to Mexico. He had been interviewed about the case. Ivan denied we were in the apartment that day. Mr. Weinberg worked with an investigator that found out Ivan‘s white mustang had been registered in the city of Fullerton for years and that Ivan’s address was in the same city about a mile away from Mr. Harry’s apartment.
I spent five years in county jail before I went to trial. I dressed up in a suit for my first day of trial. Jury selection. That day Mr. Weinberg abandoned me. He told me he was not going to be able to represent me due to a conflict of interest. A few months after I was called for my first day of trial. That day I met Mr. Jensen, my new attorney.
The jury was selected, and I went back for trial the following four days. My new attorney told me he was following up on what he discussed with my previous attorney. It did not take me long to realize my attorney was not interested in talking to me. The DA was well prepared for trial. Next to him sat the investigator that interviewed me years before. Witness after witness took the stand. I would sometimes ask my attorney to question a witness to clarify something. My attorney would pick up his cell phone and text during the trial.
A day before my last day of trial my attorney asked me if I wanted to take the stand, assuring me I did not have to. I told him I would take the stand. Until that day Ivan had not been mentioned in the trial at all. I had to tell the story of what happened. I asked Mr. Jensen for a translator. My level of nervousness would be lesser speaking in my native language.
Mr. Jensen said I should have requested a translator before the trial started. I asked Mr. Jensen if he could visit me that day so I could talk to him and tell him what happened the day I went to the apartment with Ivan. He said he would do so, but he did not show up.
The next day I went to court and Mr. Jensen apologized for not being able to visit me. He then asked me “What questions do you want me to ask you?” Before I was about to take the stand, I raised my hand and asked to talk to the judge. The judge asked the jury to leave the courtroom for a moment. I explained to the judge my situation:
My previous attorney, Mr. Weinberg, had been working on my case for years. He knew every little detail of my case. He was going to defend me. Mr. Jensen became my conflict attorney a couple of months ago and without having visited me once he is about to question me on the stand.
I told the judge I felt Mr. Jensen was not prepared and asked him for somebody else to represent me. My petition was denied. I took the stand. In my desperation to explain everything I was stopped by the judge several times telling me I needed to answer either “yes,” or “no,” only. I was unable to explain in full what happened. I was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
I have been in prison for twelve years. I have not lost hope that the truth will come to light. I know in front of me I have a powerful monster that does not see me, hear me, nor is interested in me. I have been serving my time with the most integrity possible, free of drugs and violence. I stay productive working, writing, reading, exercising and drawing. My faith in God, the love and support of my family and friends and my innocence have kept me strong to survive this place. I have experienced difficult, embarrassing and dangerous situations. I have grown and matured.
I understand now that my life changed dramatically when I started doing drugs and my criminal lifestyle led me to this situation where I am implicated in this crime. I have spent the years remembering how I used to steal from people, acknowledging the pain I caused on those I stole from has helped me bear my pain.
I kept on telling myself that I deserved to be here and that worked for years. I started watching a show on ABC called, “For life.” During that time, I watched the movies “Brian Banks,” and “Just Mercy.”
Those stories awoke something inside of me, the hope that somebody might care enough to look into my case and help me fight for justice. Justice for Mr. Harry’s family and for me.