Angel Echavarría celebrates freedom, builds a new life
Arrested in 1994 for a murder he always maintained he didn’t commit, convicted and imprisoned for 21 years before being exonerated, Angel Echavarría celebrates his one-year anniversary of freedom and embraces life with a new marriage and renewed relationships with his five children.
How does a man who was exonerated after serving 21 years of a life sentence celebrate his first year of freedom? In Angel Echavarría’s case, by getting married.
Just a week before the first anniversary of his exoneration, Echavarría, 49, wed his former girlfriend, Lilliana Comery. The two had dated as teenagers but lost touch decades ago, before Echavarría was imprisoned. They reconnected last year after his release.
They didn’t have much money to spend on a big celebration and wanted to keep it simple. One of her friends hosted the reception at her home, complete with a three-layer cake and gifts.
When they got back together last year, said Lilliana, they picked up right where they left off. “Everything came back to life again,” she said. They were both ready to settle down, so “we decided we were going to be together for the rest of our lives.”
The wedding was the cherry on top of a year of joy, anxiety, change, public appearances and many dental appointments for Echavarría.
Last spring, following two days of a hearing on Echavarría’s motion for a new trial, Superior Court Judge David A. Lowy overturned Echavarría’s conviction for a 1994 murder in Lynn based on ineffective assistance of counsel and also expressed his “deep personal concerns” about the conviction. On June 15, 2015, Essex County prosecutors announced they would not appeal Lowy’s decision or retry Echavarría.
The original trial in 1996 had been marred by an inept defense attorney and unreliable eyewitnesses. No physical evidence connected Echavarría to the crime. But even though the trial judge immediately threw out the jury’s “guilty” verdict for his co-defendant, Echavarría’s conviction stood for 21 years.
It was in 2005 after several failed appeals and requests for help to various nonprofits working on wrongful convictions that Echavarría connected with the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University and its director, investigative journalist Florence Graves.
Echavarria’s case became the first for the Institute’s Justice Brandeis Law Project, which had just opened its doors in 2004. A weekly ritual of Sunday evening phone calls from Echavarría to Graves began, and continues to this day.
Convinced of Echavarría’s likely innocence by the Justice Brandeis Law Project’s meticulous investigation, the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) appointed attorney Leslie O’Brien to the case in 2008. In 2010, O’Brien filed a motion for a new trial, citing, among other points, evidence uncovered by the Justice Brandeis Law Project.
Echavarría has always insisted on his innocence, and for that reason, he says, he refused to even consider a plea deal prosecutors originally offered him that would have allowed him to be paroled more than a decade ago. But, Echavarría says, he simply couldn’t lie and admit he murdered someone.
While serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, he didn’t lose hope that he would someday regain his freedom. He was so confident that he would be released, he brought all his legal papers and his prized, well-worn Bible with him to the bail hearing — packed and ready to go.
“Because I am innocent, I knew it would come,” he told reporters and supporters gathered outside Essex County Superior Court in Salem after his release that day. “I never gave up…. When you’re innocent, you keep your hope.”
“Since gaining his hard-fought freedom, Echavarría has risen to the challenges now facing him with the same quiet dignity and determination he demonstrated while unjustly imprisoned,” Graves said. “His family has rallied around him from day one, and now he is finally able to be physically present and play an active role in his children’s lives. We couldn’t be happier for him and Liliana as they start their life together.”
After his conviction was vacated, Echavarría filed a lawsuit against the state seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction and on June 15, the one-year anniversary of his exoneration, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Lynn, Massachusetts, as well as city police and Massachusetts State Police officers, accusing them of manipulating evidence to frame him. “The evidence used to convict Angel Echavarría was invented out of whole cloth,” attorney Steven Art told the Associated Press. (See “Angel Echavarría files lawsuit in federal court”)
Family first
While it has not been without challenges, life after exoneration has been “wonderful” overall, Echavarría says. Adjusting has been a slow process, but he enjoys his newfound independence.
“It’s been exciting,” he said. “It’s a different world out here.”
The biggest personal change, he says, has been the opportunity to spend more time with his family and adult children. His two sons and three daughters were all under the age of 6 when Echavarría went to prison. “All my children were very small — 2, 3 years old, 1 year old. Very little,” he said. “That’s heartbreaking.”
But he’s there for the big moments now. In April, he cheered from the crowd as his youngest, Ishannis, 23, received her bachelor’s degree from Berkeley College in New York. Echavarría says he always had faith that he would be there that day.
Ishannis had wanted her father to come to her high school graduation several years before, Echavarría recounted. “I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to be there for the big one, when you graduate college.’ And look at that…exactly how I told her!”
“That was big,” he said. “I was very proud. I think every parent is going to feel that way, very proud, when their kid’s graduating.”
And in the coming year, Echavarría will become a grandfather twice over. His son Eliot and his daughter Katherine are both expecting. Is Echavarría ready to be a grandfather? “Yes!” he said. “I love kids.”
While most of Echavarría’s children live in the New York City area, where they were born and raised, they keep in touch by phone and email.
One of his daughters, Ianellis, 26, is still “very shy,” said Echavarría. A shy man himself, he understands why they don’t talk as much. “I don’t blame her,” he said. “I respect that.”
Between celebrations and reunions, Echavarría busily furnished himself with the basics of life as a free man. With help, he was quickly set up with an ID, a bank account, clothing — and of course, an iPhone.
When he was first released, still on a GPS monitoring bracelet and awaiting the prosecutors’ decision, he began living in court-sanctioned housing in a group home in Lynn. There, he was able to lean on nearby friends, volunteers, social workers and members of his new congregation at a nearby church.
Then Lilliana came back into his life. The two had dated as teenagers in New York, and their families had been close, even introducing the pair in the 1980s. In 2015, when Echavarría was released, she heard the news from relatives and began asking about him. Echavarría first called her just a week after his release. A few months later – the day after Christmas – he was on the road to visit her.
Overcoming years of dental neglect
After two decades of limited prison dental care, Echavarría emerged with gum disease and missing teeth. The pain was so intense at one point, he said, that he couldn’t even brush his teeth. He said that the doctors in prison gave him antibiotics for his gum infection, but for the most part, treatment consisted of pulling his teeth.
Fortunately for him, Mary Winston McCarriston, a friend of Anne Driscoll, a Schuster Institute senior contributing reporter who worked over the course of 10 years investigating Echavarria’s case, stepped in after his release and found local dentists who donated extensive dental work to Echavarría. Dr. Fern Selesnick of Marblehead Dental and Drs. Simon Bernstein and Jeff Li of Perico in Swampscott coordinated to provide Echavarría dental implants.
In fact, they went “above and beyond,” Selesnick said. She added that the dental implant company Straumann and Precision Craft Dental Laboratory in Rhode Island also donated their services to help replace Echavarría’s teeth.
Echavarría has had almost a dozen appointments since last August, with a few more to come. But he is now pain-free, he says.
Inspiring others
Although a reserved man by nature, Echavarría recognizes the importance of sharing his story to educate the public about deficiencies in the criminal justice system that can lead to wrongful convictions.
In October, Echavarría and Graves discussed these systemic issues and Echavarría’s personal experiences as the culminating event of a local high school’s summer education program. Students at Waltham High School listened to the first season of the podcast “Serial” and returned to school in the fall, ready to discuss and write about it. At the event in October, they lined up to get Echavarría’s autograph and have their pictures taken with him.
In April, he got more standing ovations in San Antonio, where he was honored at the annual Innocence Network conference, along with more than 100 other exonerees. (The Innocence Network is a group of nonprofit organizations dedicated to freeing the wrongfully convicted.) The exonerees became a meaningful support group, as Echavarría learned from his peers successful ways to cope with the trauma of incarceration. He plans to attend next year’s conference in San Diego, another opportunity to reconnect with this newfound community.
Echavarría has also inspired more than one person to study the law.
“Over the years, he was my inspiration to go to law school,” said Comery. She has completed her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, and still hopes to complete a law degree. “I used to say that when I became an attorney I was going to get him out...I always knew he was innocent. I knew the type of person that he was.”
Lindsay Markel, a former assistant director at the Schuster Institute, also cites her work on Echavarría’s case as the inspiration for her to become a lawyer. Last spring, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and now works as a public defender in New Orleans.
Echavarría still keeps in touch with her, and even spent Christmas with her family, he said.
Embracing the future
So what’s next for Angel Echavarría, exoneree, husband, father and soon-to-be grandfather? He says he’s thinking of going back to school. In prison, Echavarría mastered English, earned his GED and took computer courses. However, prison officials limited his opportunities to take more classes. Because he had been sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, opportunities to take classes were given to prisoners with shorter sentences, he said. He’s still interested in computers, and says he could see himself fixing them for a living.
Echavarría still thinks about what happened to him, and the time he spent in prison. He remembers when he heard that the Schuster Institute took on his case. That’s when he knew he was going to get out, he says. “That was big, you know. When someone believes in you, you have to appreciate that.”
Now, he’s just happy to be free.
“I’m glad I’m not there anymore. Thank God.”