LOS ANGELES \u2014 The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, approved a $3.7 million settlement for a man who spent 33 years in prison for a Baldwin Park shooting but was later exonerated.<\/p>\n
Daniel\u00a0Saldana\u00a0was convicted of attempted murder in 1990 for an Oct. 27, 1989, shooting that targeted six high school students who were driving after a football game. According to prosecutors, the suspects mistook the group for gang members and opened fire, injuring two of them.<\/p>\n
Saldana, who was 22 at the time, was charged along with two other people with six counts of attempted murder and one count of shooting at an occupied vehicle. He was convicted and sentenced to 45 years to life in prison.<\/p>\n
In 2023, however, then-District Attorney George Gasc\u00f3n announced that another defendant in the case disclosed during a 2017 parole hearing that\u00a0Saldana\u00a0was not involved in the shooting, and was not even present at the time. That information was finally relayed to the District Attorney\u2019s Office in February of 2023, prompting an investigation that ultimately determined\u00a0Saldana\u00a0to be innocent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just knew that one day this was going to come,\u201d\u00a0Saldana\u00a0said at a 2023 news conference with Gasc\u00f3n. \u201cI\u2019m so grateful. I just thank God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gasc\u00f3n said he lamented the delay in the parole board notifying prosecutors about the information disclosed in the 2017 parole hearing. But he stressed the importance of justice being served, even when delayed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs prosecutors, our duty is not simply to secure convictions but to seek justice,\u201d he said in a statement at the time. \u201cWhen someone is wrongfully convicted, it is a failure of our justice system and it is our responsibility to right that wrong. We owe it to the individual who was wrongfully convicted and to the public that justice is served.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only is it a tragedy to force people into prison for a crime they did not commit, every time an injustice of this magnitude takes place, the real people responsible are still out there to commit more crimes. Our job is to hold people accountable when they cause harm, but we also have to hold ourselves and the system accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, approved a $3.7 million settlement…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":776513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[174190,1582,276,2961,2650,224,6080,5337,50,10100,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-776512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-baldwin-park","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-local-government","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-county","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-san-gabriel-valley","18":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116525853869307272","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}