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The Case of Clemente Aguirre
📻 Episode #524
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 May 08, 2025
About This Episode
Coming of age in Honduras, Clemente “Shorty” Aguirre was faced with a choice: join MS13 or die. He moved to Nicaragua with his grandmother instead, but with no economic prospects, he chose to come to the United States as an undocumented immigrant. Life was calm for a while, as he worked as a cook and…
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The Case
Coming of age in Honduras, Clemente “Shorty” Aguirre was faced with a choice: join MS13 or die. He moved to Nicaragua with his grandmother instead, but with no economic prospects, he chose to come to the United States as an undocumented immigrant. Life was calm for a while, as he worked as a cook and lived in a trailer park, where he had found a place in a nice community of friends. Then, on June 17th, 2004, after a long night out, Shorty dropped by a neighboring trailer shared by his friends Cheryl Williams, part-time by her daughter Samantha, and her mother Carol Bareis. They were known for always having a stockpile of beer, and Shorty was going to ask them for an early morning nightcap, when he discovered Cheryl and Carol had been stabbed and were lying in pools of their own blood. Realizing that they were gone and that making a call to the police would certainly get him deported to a country where MS13 awaited his return, he went to his own trailer to lay low. Later that day, he came forward to investigators with his discovery and became the prime suspect. With the combination of an ineffective public defender, the prosecution’s tunnel vision, and plenty of circumstantial evidence, Clemente would be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
If you feel compelled to support Clemente, please go to: https://www.mightycause.com/story/Clementeaguirree2019
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
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In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:07:29“Speaker 3: this raincoach, this long rail black coat and put an Speaker 3: a K forty seven and put it in my face. Speaker 3: The drivers step down and say, we ain't playing no more. TikTok, TikTok. Speaker 3: In that particular moment in time, my mom came out”
00:28:20“Speaker 3: we're going to be asking for the death penalty. As Speaker 3: the state asked for the dead penalty. Send you to Speaker 2: You've now been arrested you're locked up in the local jail. Speaker 3: I assume, yeah, Seminal County. Speaker 2: How long did it take from that point to go”
00:47:53“Speaker 5: trying him again. Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yeah, I mean this is seven justices in Speaker 2: the Deep South. Yeah, with a guy who doesn't have Speaker 2: the same skin color as they do. I mean they're Speaker 2: saying and in the strongest possible way, that this is”
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← #523 Lerico Kearney #525 Willie "Pete" Williams →
Also on the podcast: #108 Clemente Aguirre