Cousins who were longest-serving wrongfully convicted people in Illinois get innocence certificates

James Soto and his cousin, David Ayala, stood outside the doors of a Cook County courtroom Wednesday at the end of a more than four-decade entanglement with the criminal court and prison system, nervously riding out a final 20-minute delay in their hearing to receive an official declaration of innocence.

“It doesn’t happen until it happens. I waited so long,” Soto said, listening for a call back into the room. 

Family and supporters audibly exhaled when the decision came several minutes later: a certificate of innocence was granted for the two men, the longest-serving wrongfully convicted people in Illinois. 

Ayala and Soto were released from prison more than a year and a half ago after a judge exonerated them. But the certificate of innocence means even the arrest records from the case will be erased. Soto said having the certificate will allow him to travel without restrictions, and both men said it would help them to move on with their lives. 

Soto, whose post-release journey the Tribune chronicled earlier this year, and Ayala were wrongfully convicted of murder in 1982 and served 42 years before their release from prison in December 2023. 

“Our vindication is not based on some sort of technicality,” Ayala said after the ruling. “This is clear proof of evidence, what we’ve been saying for over 42 years.” 

Cook County prosecutors previously dropped all charges in the case. But Soto, Ayala and their family and supporters all said they still felt on edge in court before the certificates were issued.

“It feels like I’m in a dream,” Rose Ayala-Olson, David’s sister, said in the lobby of the Leighton Criminal Court Building. “He’s innocent. He always has been.” 

Soto earned a college degree in prison and learned how to write court petitions for himself and others who were in prison. He had a reputation inside prison walls for using his self-taught knowledge to help others who were incarcerated with their legal issues, sometimes writing the first petition that would eventually win freedom or a sentence reduction. A professor once called him “one of the most successful non-licensed litigators inside of Stateville.”

Next month, he’s planning to take the LSAT, his attorney Lauren Myerscough-Mueller said.

Now in their 60s, Soto and Ayala were 20 and 18 when they were arrested following the shooting deaths of 16-year-old Julie Limas and Hector Valeriano, 18, a U.S. Marine on leave, on Aug. 16, 1981. They were sentenced to natural life in prison.

The case largely turned on a single witness who, in exchange for a deal, told a jury Soto carried out a shooting with him and a third person under orders from Ayala. That witness was later key to both men’s exoneration, when an Illinois appeals court found that other witnesses contradicted his “highly-incentivized” account.

Ayala served 15 years in the supermax facility at the now-shuttered Tamms Correctional Center, which was known for brutal conditions and was the prison where the state housed people on death row before the death penalty was abolished in Illinois.

Both men have been making up for lost time since their release, getting out in nature and volunteering, Myerscough-Mueller said. 

Soto last year filed a lawsuit against defendants including the city of Chicago and Cook County accusing police and prosecutors of using abusive tactics to get witnesses to tell a certain story, including threatening them with the death penalty and depriving them of sleep and food. He said he expects that process will continue for another four or five years. Ayala has filed a similar lawsuit seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction. 

“This is something that I’ve been waiting for a long time, and to finally hear those words — I mean, it’s like a whole weight lifted off me,” Soto said of receiving the certificate.