Two decades later, murder conviction overturned

SALEM – After 21 years behind bars for a murder he says he did not commit, Angel Echavarria will stand before a Salem Superior Court judge to learn if he will be released on bail now his conviction has been overturned.”Mr. Echavarria may well have murdered Daniel Rodriguez or he may well be factually innocent,” Salem Superior Court Judge David Lowy wrote in an April 30 decision granting a defense motion for a new trial. “Either way, the court has scrutinized the record in this case and has been cautious to not let deep personal concerns regarding factual innocence color its determination that Echavarria received ineffective assistance of counsel. This court is left with uncertainty that the defendant’s guilt has been fairly adjudicated.”An Essex County jury convicted Echevarria in January 1996 for the shooting death of Rodriguez two years earlier. The Supreme Judicial Court upheld the conviction on Dec. 22, 1998.But Echavarria, 48, has always maintained his innocence, and he has motivated supporters.”I personally do not think he’s in any way guilty,” said Lindsay Markel, a former assistant director of the Schuster Center for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, which helped investigate the case. “But personal thoughts aside, he was absolutely railroaded; his lawyer was abysmal, and like no one really listened. I think there was an assumption of the type of person he was – doesn’t speak English, has darker colored skin, and an assumption that if he hadn’t done this, then he probably had done something similar.”According to trial testimony cited in Lowy’s decision, Isidoro Rodriguez said he and his brother Daniel Rodriguez returned to the former’s apartment and found two armed men – a taller and lighter-skinned man and a short and dark-skinned man. The men dragged the Rodriguez brothers into the apartment and they brought Isidoro Rodriguez into a bedroom where they tied him up, ordered him to the floor and threw a shirt over his face. When Isidoro Rodriguez untied himself, he found his brother Daniel had been bound hand and foot and shot twice in the head. The two armed men had fled.Isidoro described the lighter-skinned perpetrator as Hispanic, maybe Puerto Rican, with no facial hair and “stocky or chunky.”Isidoro identified two photos from photo arrays in subsequent days, both depicting a man named Mariano Bonafacio, whom Isidoro said “looked like” the perpetrator.Isidora a few days later saw Echavarria and a codefendant and told police they looked like the perpetrators. Echavarria and the codefendant were arrested.Yet, Echavarria was 5 feet 10 inches and 135 pounds and had a goatee when arrested. His attorney, Charles Robson, also never investigated Bonafacio – not learning that he had been identified as the suspect in a shooting two months earlier and a half mile away from the Rodriguez murder.Most notably, however, according to Lowy’s ruling, Robson told jurors in his opening statement that Echavarria would testify about having an alibi on the night of the murder. But Echavarria never took the stand, and Robson never said why. Meanwhile, Robson was paid only $2,500 to represent Echavarria and, during the time of the trial, stipulated disciplinary action from the Board of Bar Overseers that suspended his license to practice for three years. He then resigned, according to the Schuster Center.A number for Robson could not be located Friday. The bail hearing is scheduled for Monday afternoon in Salem Superior Court.