Free!
Free!

Saul Contreras

Another false confession in El Paso

Saul has spent almost 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, assuming there was a crime at all. The victim, Jazmine Contreras, was just 22 months old when she died on Thanksgiving weekend in 2003. That tragedy was compounded when police immediately developed a theory that Saul had inflicted injuries that caused her death and, through threats and other tactics, coerced a false confession from Saul.

Incarcerated For:
20 Years
4 Months
0 Days
Conviction: Murder
Sentence: 99 Years
Conviction Date: July 3, 2006
Exoneration Date: Remains incarcerated
State: Texas
Status: Incarcerated
Contributing Causes of Conviction: False confession, false medical testimony
Type of Crime: Internal injuries possibly related to physical abuse
01
Saul's Background

Saul was born in Juarez, Mexico on June 16th, 1973 and immigrated to the U.S. with his mother and younger brother when he was 4 years old. They settled in Los Angeles because his mother had family there, and Saul began school and quickly made friends with other kids in school and the neighborhood. However, he began to miss his father and older siblings, so he returned to Juarez when he was 8 years old. After spending two years there, he returned to Los Angeles.

The next few years of school were very happy for him. He had many close friends, close family, played football and soccer throughout high school, and excelled academically. He graduated in the top 5 percent of his class, and even graduated a semester early because he was ready to go to college. He began his studies at a college in California, but his brother Victor had moved to El Paso, so he transferred to the University of Texas at El Paso, where he studied engineering and psychology. Due to financial constraints, he left UTEP just short of his degree.

Saul worked at Walmart to fund his education and met his wife, Claudia, while working there. Claudia had young children and after they married, Saul raised the children and loved them as his own. By that time, Saul had completed his degree from the University of Phoenix and was a claims adjuster for Progressive insurance. That was his career when he was arrested.

Saul and Claudia welcomed her sister, Susana, along with her five children into their home to live with them. Saul’s brother, Victor, was in a relationship with Susana, and Jazmine was his daughter. All of the children were often left at home under his supervision when neither Claudia nor Susana were there. By all accounts, Saul is a caring, generous, and kind man who cherished family, so he did not hesitate to take on this added responsibility. That’s who he was and continues to be to this day, and that sense of familial responsibility eventually played a role in his false confession to the murder of his baby niece, Jazmine Contreras.

02
The Crime

On Friday, November 28, 2003, the day after Thanksgiving, 22-month-old Jazmine Contreras was found unresponsive in her bedroom by her mother, Susana. Earlier that evening, Susana, Saul’s wife Claudia, and the five other children in the home had gone out for pizza to celebrate a birthday. Jazmine had not been feeling well, so Saul remained home supervising her and her sister.

During the evening, while Saul was in his nearby bedroom watching a basketball game and doing laundry, Jazmine fell off the couch. Saul comforted her, changed her dirty diaper in which she had diarrhea, put her pajamas on and put her to bed after she had calmed down. Not long after, the rest of the family returned home.

After Susana found her unresponsive, they immediately called 911 and did their best to revive her. First responders were quickly on the scene, but were also unable to revive Jazmine. She was transported to the hospital and was pronounced dead that night.

03
The Investigation

On the night of Jazmine’s death, Saul willingly rode to the police station with Detective Jimmy Aguirre to give a statement. There was no reason to suspect he had done anything wrong, but on the ride Aguirre immediately began laying the foundation for what would become a false confession. He told Saul that his in-laws had lived with him and he could understand anyone snapping in a moment and becoming violent.

Saul gave a statement in the early morning hours giving the facts of what happened and in no way incriminating himself. He was released and, along with his family, began making the heartbreaking funeral arrangements for Jazmine. After the medical examiner, Dr. Juan Contin, concluded Jazmine had died from internal injuries caused by blunt force trauma to her abdomen, Aguirre and his partner, Detective Jose Ochoa, asked Saul to come back in for another statement, which he willingly did, even without an attorney. That was the beginning of the end for Saul.

Aguirre and Ochoa used tactics that were designed to get a confession out of Saul. They commiserated, assured him he could bond out that night, and threatened him in a number of ways. They threatened death, threatened to arrest his wife, and threatened to have his kids taken away from his entire family, among other things. After not sleeping for more than two days, Saul signed the statement. It was a textbook false confession that was not recorded, despite police having the capability to record.

Despite having no criminal history, much less a history of violence, that was all the state needed to charge Saul and take him to trial.

04
The Trial

Saul was represented by attorneys from the El Paso County Public Defenders Office. They brought in Dr. Richard Ofshe, one of the foremost experts in the psychological effects of police interrogations and how their tactics can lead to false confessions.

A key witness for the state was Dr. Contin, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Jazmine. He stated Jazmine could not have survived more than 15 minutes to an hour with the injuries she sustained, which, if correct, meant that Saul had to have inflicted the injuries since he was the only adult home with her during that time. However, his opinion is contradicted by pediatric forensic pathologists (which Contin was not), including Dr. Karen Griest. Dr. Griest and others contend that a child of Jazmine’s age and size could survive for days.

Witnesses testified that Jazmine had been acting very strangely and was in obvious discomfort at a family Thanksgiving gathering the day before, and that she had not felt well earlier in the day on the night she died.

Multiple witnesses testified that they had witnessed Jazmine and her siblings being physically abused by her mother, who had been investigated by CPS on other occasions before and after Jazmine’s death for different reasons. Unfortunately, these witnesses were not allowed to testify in front of the jury.

Taking Saul’s statement at face value, believing Dr. Contin’s incorrect analysis, and not hearing testimony about alleged prior abuse Jazmine and her siblings suffered, the jury convicted Saul and sentenced him to 99 years.

05
Current Status

Saul is currently incarcerated and is serving a life sentence in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. We are currently reinvestigating the case on the ground, working with notable false confession experts as well as a pediatric forensic pathologist who is reexamining the medical findings and testimony. Our hope and expectation is that Saul will be released in the near future.

06
How to Help

Saul would love to hear from you.

Even just a quick note of encouragement goes a long way in helping the wrongly convicted have hope. Saul is kind, curious, caring, and would be uplifted by your note. Write him here:

Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Saul Contreras #01381172
French M. Robertson unit
P.O. Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400