Salomon Zavala
BAKERSFIELD — A California farmworker who spent nearly a quarter-century on death row for a conviction the state Supreme Court concluded was based on false evidence will receive a $13.5 million settlement to resolve his federal civil rights lawsuit against Kern County.
Vincente Benavides Figueroa, now 77, settled his wrongful-conviction case this month after the parties agreed to dismiss it on Oct. 12 in the Eastern District of California. One of his attorneys, Salomon Zavala of the Zavala Law Group P.C., said the case was shocking due to the severity of the sentence handed down in 1993, the lack of procedural safeguards and the lack of due diligence by detectives and medical experts.
“The lack of constitutional safeguards is really jarring,” Zavala told the Southern California Record. “... We need to do a better job in ensuring that when there's a wrongful conviction, there is a more speedy way to determine one's innocence.”
According to the law firm, Benavides was a lawful permanent resident who lived in Delano in November 1991.
“While he was babysitting his girlfriend's 21-month-old daughter, the child was badly hurt, and she died days later,” the law firm reported in a news release. “Kern County prosecutors charged him with her rape and murder. A jury convicted him in 1993, and he was sentenced to death.”
The New York-based Innocence Project reported in 2018 that a pathologist and other medical professionals testified at Benavides’ trial that the little girl, Consuelo Verdugo, died as a result of injuries sustained in a sexual assault. But years later, nearly all of those doctors recanted their testimony after reviewing the girl’s full medical records.
“No amount of money could replace the years that he lost,” Zavala said of his client. Benavides’ incarceration – a time characterized by being alone in a cell for most of every day he was imprisoned – took an emotional toll, his attorney said, adding that both his parents died during the time he spent in jail.
His legal team hired experts in forensic pathology who concluded Consuelo’s injuries were more consistent with a collision with an automobile.
Once the state Supreme Court vacated the conviction and death sentence in March of 2018, Kern County prosecutors declined to retry Benavides, who had no previous criminal record and who later filed a wrongful-conviction lawsuit that continued seven years. The county never issued an apology or admission of wrongdoing for how the trial played out, Zavala said.
“This was preventable – it should have never happened,” he said, adding that there is no sense of urgency in the justice system to resolve such wrongful convictions. “Society should not be comfortable with this.”
In a prepared statement, Benavides said he was grateful the case was finally over.
“No amount of money can give me back those years or the time I lost with my family,” he said. “But I am thankful that I can finally close this chapter of my life, look toward the future, and enjoy the freedom I fought so long to regain.”
During the trial, Benavides wasn’t given “competent interpretation” and never knew he had been sentenced to capital punishment until he was sent to San Quentin, Zavala said.
His law practice, which has offices in both Los Angeles and New York City, specializes in civil rights cases and institutional accountability issues.
