Baldwin Park will pay $19.1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a man wrongfully imprisoned for 33 years after a police detective allegedly “coerced” witnesses and “fabricated” evidence to justify the arrest.
Daniel Saldana was wrongfully arrested in 1990 and charged with attempted murder for a drive-by shooting in which a gang member fired at a car full of high school students and injured two. Saldana, 22 at the time, was convicted and sentenced, along with two of the true perpetrators, that same year, though no physical evidence tied him to the attack.
The only evidence against Saldana during the trial came from a compromised investigation, according to Saldana’s attorneys. They allege former Baldwin Park Police Detective Michael Donovan steered witnesses, who either didn’t see or barely saw the shooter, toward identifying Saldana and coerced one of Saldana’s eventual co-defendants into naming him as a participant in the crime while threatening to take away her child.
“Mr. Saldaña’s wrongful conviction resulted from the egregious misconduct of a Baldwin Park detective who systematically fabricated evidence and pressured witnesses throughout a fundamentally flawed investigation,” said Amelia Green, an attorney with Neufeld Sheck Brustin Hoffmann and Freudenberger LLP. “While no amount of money can restore the years Mr. Saldaña lost to wrongful imprisonment, we hope the settlement with the City of Baldwin Park sends a clear message: law enforcement will be held accountable for such serious abuses of power.”
Saldana filed a federal lawsuit against Baldwin Park, Los Angeles County and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2024. The litigation names Donovan, Detective Leonard Maughan, Deputy District Attorney Steven Sowders and Board of Parole Hearing Commissioners Brian Roberts and Keith Stanton, for their purported roles in Saldana’s conviction and prolonged incarceration.
In a statement, Baldwin Park stressed that “no current employees or agents of the city were involved.” The city will pay $16.1 million within 60 days and then another $3 million in annual installments over the next three years. Roughly half of the settlement — about $9.75 million — will be covered by insurance, while the rest will be paid from the city’s reserves.
No other settlements have been reached in the case so far.
The winding web that ensnared Saldana began at 10:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 27, 1989. Then, East Side Bolen gang members Raul Vidal, April Gallegos and a second man, only identified decades later, pulled up to a Chevrolet Monte Carlo carrying six teenagers heading home from a football game, according to the lawsuit.
Vidal stepped out of Gallegos’ Datsun B210 and demanded to know where the teenagers were from. He then told the other man, still in the vehicle, to “pull out the cuete,” prompting the driver of the Monte Carlo to speed away. Vidal and the second shooter allegedly fired multiple shots at the car, striking the driver in the shoulder and another teen in the thigh and causing the car to crash into a tree.
The two shooters fled on foot and Gallegos drove off in the Datsun. Police spotted Gallegos and her car in a nearby alley and arrested her, but then had to release her the next morning. Her alibi fell apart under investigation and police confirmed with witnesses that her car was involved. After receiving information that her boyfriend, Vidal, may have been involved, police arranged a parole search of his home and found Gallegos inside.
The lawsuit alleges Donovan and Maughan pulled her aside and “yelled and swore at her, threatening that she would never see her three-year-old son again if she did not give them the information they wanted.” They brought her to the station and left Vidal behind.
During the interrogation, the detectives “showed Gallegos folders of loose photos they had gathered of local gang members, including the East Side Bolen gang, and demanded, through threats and coercion, that Gallegos identify two of them as the people responsible for the shooting incident,” according to the lawsuit.
Saldana’s attorneys allege that after “telling Gallegos what to say, who to point out and who to blame for the shooting, Donovan videotaped the manufactured and coerced statements of Gallegos, which were later played during a pre-trial hearing.”
Gallegos identified Saldana, who went by “Angel,” and another man with the moniker of “Goofy.”
“In addition to falsely implicating these innocent men — instead of her boyfriend Vidal and her friend — Gallegos also falsely minimized her own role in the shooting,” the lawsuit states. “Gallegos claimed she had merely been giving “Angel” and “Goofy” a ride home the night of the shooting and otherwise had no connection to it.”
Donovan later “used improper suggestion — including directly pointing out his suspects in the photos — to get the teens to identify these suspects,” according to Saldana’s attorneys.
“Donovan then falsely claimed in his written reports and to the prosecutor that any identifications were made spontaneously, positively, and without any suggestion,” the lawsuit states.
No additional evidence was ever found tying Saldana to the case. In court, one of the two teens who identified Saldana instead testified that he did not see the second person who got out of the car, while the second stated that he had only seen the person for two seconds, with the nearest street light at least 25 feet away.
He couldn’t say how tall the second shooter was, whether the gunman had facial hair, or describe what the man was wearing. He testified that he was “pretty shaky” and wasn’t sure if the pictures of Saldana shown to him matched his memory.
Vidal and Gallegos were both positively identified by the victims during the trial. No one else identified Saldana.
Saldana was sentenced in August 1990 to 45 years to life with the possibility of parole.
It took 27 years before Vidal, during his own parole hearing, admitted that Saldana was innocent and named the other shooter. But neither the board nor the deputy district attorney present notified Saldana or his counsel of the admission.
Sowders, the deputy district attorney, and Commissioners Roberts and Stanton discussed how the testimony exonerated Saldana, but then failed to take action or to properly document the new information, according the lawsuit.
Roberts asked Vidal if he’d be willing to testify in court about Saldana’s innocence and Vidal responded that he would.
“We’ll be doing something with that, I guarantee you,” Stanton said at the time.
The board voted in 2017 to release Vidal on parole. It took six more years for Saldana.
Saldana, still maintaining his innocence, had been denied his own parole just two months before Vidal’s hearing and was given a five-year denial “in part due to his claims of innocence” that commissioners believed meant he “was not yet suitably rehabilitated,” according to his lawsuit.
Saldana, unaware of Vidal’s testimony, was once again denied parole in 2022.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office opened a new investigation after learning of the exculpatory evidence in February 2023. Saldana was released four months later.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation blamed the deputy district attorney present at Vidal’s 2017 hearing for the inaction, according to a statement to CNN.
“Daniel Saldana’s claims of innocence by his co-defendant were made in a setting with the deputy district attorney present — making their office aware of these claims in 2017,” the statement read. “If the claims of innocence had been made in a setting without the deputy district attorney present, the Board would have been responsible to refer the matter to the prosecuting agency.”
Saldana was 55 years old when he left prison. During a press conference announcing his release in May 2023, he said he never lost hope that he would be freed.
“It’s a struggle, every day waking up knowing you’re innocent and here I am locked up in a cell, crying for help and not knowing the legal system or having the help,” said Saldana, now 55. “I’m just so happy this day came. I’m just grateful to be alive every day and healthy and just living life.”
The California Victim Compensation Board agreed to pay Saldana $1.7 million in August 2023. The payment amounts to $140 per day for each of the 12,181 days he was wrongfully imprisoned.
Saldana continues to live in Southern California, where he “spends time with his family and friends and enjoys immersing himself in nature, particularly through horseback riding,” according to his attorneys.