When Santiago Ventura Morales was released from an Oregon prison in 1991, it made national headlines.
Ventura was convicted five years earlier for murdering a fellow migrant farm worker in a case that began to unravel almost immediately after the verdict. Three jurors worried they made the wrong call and began working to free Ventura, whose cause gained attention as flaws in the case against him surfaced.
There were no traces of blood on the knife Ventura was accused of using in the murder. A key prosecution witness changed his testimony during the trial after speaking with a detective. Ventura was not given a translator for Mixtec, the Indigenous language he primarily spoke, and was not allowed to testify in his own defense.
Ventura was later interviewed from prison by Oprah Winfrey. By the time a judge overturned his conviction, then-Gov. Neil Goldschmidt offered him a conditional pardon to stave off an appeal that could send him back to court.
Despite Ventura’s release and seemingly clear-cut vindication, he’s preparing for another court date later this year related to his decades-old legal ordeal. The Oregon Department of Justice is challenging Ventura’s lawsuit seeking $310,000 for the time he spent in prison under a state law providing compensation to those wrongfully imprisoned.
He’s not alone. Of the 47 complaints for compensation made under the state law, just 12 have resulted in payouts totalling $7.25 million, according to figures from the Oregon DOJ.
Now, lawmakers and advocates are preparing to try again in the upcoming legislative session to remove legal roadblocks they say are keeping people like Ventura from compensation.
“The charges have been dismissed. They are living free in the world. They’re working. They’ve got families,” said Janis Puracal, executive director of the Forensic Justice Project. “The question is, are we going to compensate them for having been in prison when they shouldn’t have been?”
Forthcoming legislation slated for the upcoming short session starting Feb. 2 is a slimmer version of a more expansive bill lawmakers introduced last year intended to expedite wrongful imprisonment claims. That bill languished due to budgetary concerns, despite its broad support.
The new bill, Puracal said, would direct the DOJ not to oppose compensation claims from people pardoned by the governor on the basis of innocence, or if a court has found they likely didn’t commit the crime they were imprisoned for. Puracal said that means the new bill would apply to a “small proportion” of cases.
It also clarifies the department must consider evidence that a person is innocent and, if they are, not oppose their claims either.
The bill’s narrower focus is intended to ensure it doesn’t require lawmakers to request any additional funding during the upcoming five-week legislative session, when the state’s worsening financial situation is expected to be top of mind.
The bill also includes provisions that could provide relief to more wrongly imprisoned individuals by allowing them to challenge convictions based on discredited science.
Baffled by the state’s response
In 2022, Gov. Kate Brown signed the Oregon Justice for Exonerees Act, which provides people who were wrongfully imprisoned a path to clear their names outside of a lengthy civil lawsuit. It also offered $65,000 in restitution for each year someone was wrongfully imprisoned, on top of $25,000 for each year of post-prison supervision.
At the time, Oregon was among a handful of states that didn’t offer compensation for wrongful imprisonment. Over 40 Oregonians have been listed on the National Registry of Exonerations since 1989.
However, people seeking compensation under the new law have faced delays from the Oregon DOJ, which reviews their claims.
Puracal said the department broadly denied compensation claims, leading to what she called drawn-out and costly litigation for both sides. She said the department’s approach improved since Dan Rayfield became attorney general last year.
“At its core, this conversation is about making sure people who were wrongfully convicted can actually get the compensation they are owed — without unnecessary delay or red tape,” Jenny Hansson, spokesperson for Rayfield, said in an emailed statement.
Speaking during a legislative hearing in November, Leslie Wu, policy advisor for Rayfield, said the department has prioritized clearing the backlog of compensation claims and is working with Puracal on legislation reforming the process.
“Oregon law has not kept up with the science at all. We are far behind on actually addressing changes in science and how that affects criminal cases.”
Janis Puracal, executive director
of the Forensic Justice Project
The department has worked through about 75% of the total 82 claims for compensation, litigating 43 of those cases, she said. More than half of its active cases have been resolved, she said. But only in 12 cases has the state compensated exonerees.
Bryan Brock, executive director of the Oregon District Attorney’s Association, declined to comment on the forthcoming bill.
“But we want to make sure that we’re putting in place a law that works regardless of who’s sitting in that AG seat,” Puracal said. “We want to be protecting our exonerees under any circumstance.”
She said she is baffled by the state’s response to Ventura’s petition.
Highly unlikely
Ventura’s ordeal — publicized in court filings, press accounts and by his advocates — began on a summer night near a strawberry field outside of Sandy, Oregon, where he was living at the time.
Before his conviction, Ventura had worked on farms in Oregon and California since he was 14, sending money back home to his parents in Mexico.
In July 1986, he attended a party outside Sandy, Oregon. A brawl broke out. Two men left in a Monte Carlo and Ventura, along with other men, pursued them in a truck. They later found the car abandoned and vandalized, setting it on fire.
Ramiro Lopez Fidel, who was at the party, was found dead near the strawberry fields the next day. Police began making arrests and singled out Ventura, charging him with murder. Ventura, then 18, maintained his innocence and went to trial, which his 2023 petition for compensation states was marred by faulty evidence.
Witnesses stated during the appeal that police intimidated them into lying to incriminate Ventura, according to the petition. During the trial, a witness central to the prosecution’s case falsely testified that he saw Ventura stab Lopez. The witness later said in a sworn deposition that an officer had threatened him during a lunch recess to get him to lie in his testimony.
Juror Sherien Jaeger later said she was bothered by the witness’s “refreshed memory” and called the defense a “sandwich — two pieces of bread with nothing in the middle of it,” according to The Oregonian.
Another problem with the prosecution was the alleged murder weapon: a folding knife found on Ventura with the inscription “El Tigre.” State crime lab testing found no blood on the knife. Prosecutors alleged that the knife was wiped clean by fat tissue as Ventura pulled it from the victim’s body.
Oregon’s medical examiner later testified during post-conviction proceedings that “it would be unlikely that all traces of blood would be removed from the knife if it were the murder weapon in this case.”
Wrong, but somehow not false
The Oregon DOJ, however, is contesting Ventura’s claim for compensation. A state attorney admitted in a 2023 court filing that no blood was found on the knife, but denied that Ventura’s conviction was “false” or “that there was a lack of evidence connecting him to the murder.”
In the filing, the state disputed that Ventura spoke only Mixtec and denied that police intimidated witnesses. While some later gave conflicting accounts, the state’s filing denied that “those statements are competent or admissible evidence in this proceeding and, regardless, they speak for themselves.”
Ventura’s compensation claim is scheduled to go to trial in July. Puracal, who is representing Ventura, did not make him available for an interview but said he has “lived a very good life.”
After his release from prison, he completed a degree in social work on a full scholarship at the University of Portland and worked for nonprofit law firms helping farmworkers. Puracal said he has three kids in college and works for the state of California.
“All the charges are dismissed, and yet the state is still fighting it,” she said. “It’s one of those that just makes absolutely no sense to us.”
Hansson, the DOJ’s spokesperson, said in an email that the department “continues to consider all available options under the law” regarding Ventura’s case.
“Because the matter is still active, we’re limited in what we can say publicly, but our focus remains on following the process established by the legislature and treating every claim fairly and thoughtfully,” she said.
‘Erase an absurdity’
Philip Scott Cannon is another Oregonian still waiting for compensation for spending 11 years in prison after a false conviction in 1998 for shooting three people in a Salem mobile home.
A judge dismissed the case against Cannon in 2009. His attorney argued during the appeal that the prosecution relied on “comparative bullet lead analysis,” a debunked forensic science that prosecutors used to conclude that ammunition found in Cannon’s home was the same as bullets used to kill the victims.
The FBI announced in 2005 that it would stop using the analysis after scientists and manufacturers indicated the method couldn’t conclusively link two sets of bullets.
Puracal said the forthcoming bill will include provisions that allow people sent to prison using comparative bullet lead analysis to return to court to challenge their convictions.
The bill will also allow post-conviction challenges from people convicted with evidence based on microscopic hair comparisons and bite mark analysis, both of which have been found to lack scientific validity.
“Oregon law has not kept up with the science at all,” she said. “We are far behind on actually addressing changes in science and how that affects criminal cases.”
False or misleading forensics have contributed to more than 40% of wrongful convictions in Oregon, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Puracal said the bill is limited to those three widely discredited forensic sciences in order to minimize its fiscal impact. A 2023 bill that would have allowed broad challenges to convictions based on flawed forensic evidence died in the Legislature’s budget-writing committee.
Winne Ye, state policy advocate for the Innocence Project, said allowing post-conviction challenges for specific forensic methods is an uncommon approach. By comparison, seven states permit individuals to return to court if there is a change in scientific understanding relevant to their case. She said Oregon is strict about the circumstances under which post-conviction challenges are allowed. She called the bill a “first step.”
“Post-conviction mechanisms are so important,” she said. “That’s the only way people can return to court.”
Greg Hampikian, a forensic DNA expert and former director of the Idaho Innocence Project, said faulty forensic science remains standard in many states and legislation like Puracal’s seeks to “erase an absurdity.”
Hampikian said people should broadly be able to challenge their convictions that were later found to be based on faulty or “junk science.” He pointed to states like Texas and New York, which have commissions that review forensic science.
“We’re talking about a remedy for someone who has been wrongly convicted — that the facts of the case are different than what the jury heard,” he said. “And we now know that, because science has changed. It seems to be the most basic, simple question.”
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This article appears in January 14, 2026.