Help an innocent man start over after 32 years

My name is Paige and I'm one of the lawyers who helped exonerate Joaquin Ciria. Joaquin was a young father raising his infant son when he was wrongfully arrested for the murder of his friend - a murder he had nothing to do with.

 

Joaquin turned himself in, confident the truth would set him free. And it did... only 32 years later.

 

Now we need your help getting him back on his feet - he will walk out of jail this week with nothing but the hand me down clothes they give him and he'll need to buy all the stuff we've all spent the last 32 years collecting. Whether you can give something big or small, I promise he will appreciate it immensely - because that's who Joaquin is.

 

When he was first sent to prison, he told himself he would not let his heart grow cold or overly angry and miraculously, he kept that promise to himself. He focused on staying a good and happy person, being a great father, and fighting to prove his innocence. And he's accomplished all three.

 

Joaquin had to raise his son from behind bars, through phone calls and letters and weekend visits, be he did it and did it well.

 

     Joaquin and his son circa 1997

  

Now, as he waits for the prison paperwork so he can finally go free, the thing he's most excited about is just being with his son. "I want to take a walk with my son and just walk and talk," he said. "We've never been able to do that."

It took over three decades during which Joaquin never gave up, a team of lawyers and law students, the star witness from trial admitting he had lied, an eyewitness identifying the actual shooter, an Innocencr Commission chaired by Lara Bazelon and the state agreeing Joaquin is innocent, and far too long, but, at long last, on April 18, 2022, Joaquin was finally exonerated.

 

    SCU law students outside the courtroom

Despite being wrongfully incarcerated for more than half of his life, and despite the state keeping him from his son's first birthday, second, third, fourth, fifth... tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-second birthdays, Joaquin is still somehow full of smiles and joy - let's give him the homecoming he deserves!

Me being happy after Joaquin's exoneration, Joaquin waving at the law students who worked on his case, and my co-counsel Ellen Eggers, the driving force behind everything!