On July 18, 2009, four men robbed a diner in St. Bernard Parish. Before the robbery, a Hispanic man with long hair and a camouflage baseball cap ordered coffee and a pastry. DNA testing would later identify that man as Selvin Rodriguez, who asked the owner’s daughter if the diner cashed checks. She confirmed that they did and Rodriguez spoke to someone on the phone, in Spanish, for a few minutes. Three Hispanic men then entered the diner, all wearing baseball caps. They joined Rodriguez. When the owner got to the front counter, two of the four men produced guns and announced, in English, that they were robbing the diner. They bound the daughter’s hands with zip ties. The owner was forced to unlock the diner’s safe. Money was placed in a plastic bag from the owner’s desk. A group of customers interrupted the robbery. One of them was bound with a plastic tie, but was able to alert the other customers. Surveillance video depicted all four robbers wearing their caps as they exited the diner. A customer followed two of them and took down the license plate number of the vehicle they got into. Two baseball caps were recovered from near the rear exit of the diner, as was the plastic bag filled with money from near the office door.
Six weeks later, Darvin Castro Santos was a passenger in a vehicle that was pulled over in Natalia, Texas. The car he was in was linked to the robbery and he was arrested. A month later, one of the victims made a cross-racial identification of Mr. Castro Santos from a photographic array. Two other victims would identify him in court, when he was the only Hispanic man in the room, though they’d failed to do so during the investigation. The man who was arrested with Mr. Castro Santos confessed on the stand, but swore that Mr. Castro Santos was innocent. He even identified the actual perpetrators. Still, after a trial tainted by racism and xenophobia, Mr. Casto Santos was convicted by a non-unanimous jury of two counts of armed robbery in January 2012. He was sentenced to 50 years.
Innocence & Justice Louisiana’s investigation led to DNA testing of evidence, including of the money bag and zip ties handled by the lead robber, that excluded Mr. Castro Santos. New evidence also included work records that confirmed that he was working in Houston on the day that the robbers were traveling to Louisiana to commit the crime. Cell phone records established where and when the men were traveling. Trial counsel confirmed that there was no investigation of witnesses in Houston. DNA testing and the alibi records were presented at trial, though some of this information and the physical evidence were available to counsel. Finally, Innocence & Justice Louisiana gathered evidence confirming the identity of the actual perpetrator that Mr. Castro Santos was mistaken for. After an evidentiary hearing, the St. Bernard Parish District Attorney’s Office agreed that Mr. Castro Santos should be exonerated. He was released in August 2021, almost 12 years after the crime.
