‘I always knew the truth’: Man wrongly imprisoned for 18 years exonerated in O.C. robbery
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- Guy Miles spent 6,895 days — more than 18 years — behind bars for a 1998 Fullerton armed robbery he maintained he didn’t commit; now his conviction has been fully vacated.
- Miles’ wrongful conviction rested on flawed eyewitness identifications, despite multiple alibi witnesses and DNA that didn’t match; years later, the actual robbers confessed, bolstering his long fight for justice.
- Helped by the Innocence Center and the O.C. district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, Miles secured exoneration, financial compensation and long-delayed validation after losing crucial years with his family.
For 6,895 days, Guy Miles sat behind bars for a crime he says he didn’t commit.
He lost years of freedom, along with the opportunity to watch his son grow up.
For the record:
5:46 p.m. Aug. 24, 2026A previous version of this article said prosecutors had concluded Miles was innocent. They acknowledged he was wrongfully convicted of the crime.
But now, authorities officially have exonerated him — acknowledging he was wrongfully convicted in the 1998 Fullerton heist that robbed him of nearly two decades of his life.
“I always knew the truth,” Miles in a statement Friday. “I just needed the system to catch up to it.”
A California man who spent more than three decades behind bars for a murder he did not commit has been exonerated, clearing the way for his release.
Miles said he was grateful the truth mattered, even after all these years, and wishes more than anything his dad were alive to see his name cleared.
He had been convicted of two counts of armed robbery and a firearms charge in 1999 following the robbery of a Fidelity Financial Services office and given a “three strikes sentence” of 75 years to life.
His conviction was based in part on the false testimony of two eyewitnesses, despite the fact that five people testified Miles was in Las Vegas on the day of the crime, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.
He was separated from his young son and spent more than 18 years incarcerated, all while maintaining his innocence.
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In 2010, he filed a habeas petition to challenge his detention with assistance from the Innocence Center, a San Diego-based nonprofit law firm dedicated to freeing people who have been wrongly convicted.
According to the center, two men — later identified as Jason Steward and Harold Bailey — pulled firearms on two Fidelity employees and demanded money in June 1998. They made off with $1,410 in cash and $4,138 in personal checks in a getaway car driven by another man, Bernard Teamer.
Police initially struggled to identify suspects, as the descriptions given were generic and a detective compiled an error-ridden photo lineup, according to the center.
“One employee identified Guy Miles from the lineup, even though there were issues with the identification process,” the center said in a statement. “The other, influenced by the detective’s statement about an arrest, also identified Guy.”
Maurice Hastings, 70, who spent 38 years in prison before being found factually innocent, accepted a $25-million settlement from the city of Inglewood.
At trial, Miles presented an alibi defense that included testimony from his parents, 12-year-old son, a neighbor in Las Vegas and the manager of his Las Vegas apartment, according to the district attorney’s office. They all said Miles could not have been in Fullerton during the crime because he picked up his son from his parents’ Carson home the night before the robbery and traveled to Vegas the following morning.
Miles also presented scientific studies on the flaws of eyewitness identifications, and DNA evidence that had been collected didn’t match him, according to the Innocence Center. Nonetheless, a jury deliberated for five days and ultimately found Miles guilty.
Years later, after the statute of limitations expired, the actual robbers — Steward, Bailey and Teamer — all confessed, according to the center.
In 2017, a California Court of Appeal reversed Miles’ conviction, acknowledging that new, credible confessions would have changed the outcome of his trial. He faced the possibility of a retrial but instead opted to accept a plea deal that allowed him to be released based on time served.
Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors agreed to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit for $14 million Tuesday morning with 45-year-old Alexander Torres, who spent more than 20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
He later was awarded nearly $1 million from the Victim Compensation Board of California for his wrongful imprisonment. However, his conviction remained in place.
That was until Friday, when the O.C. district attorney’s office decided to set aside his guilty plea and vacate the conviction, following a review from its Conviction Integrity Unit. This unit was formed by Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer in 2019 to review claims of wrongful conviction.
“Justice exists only when the quest for truth never ends,” Spitzer said in a statement Friday. “While the conviction of Guy Miles did not occur on my watch, I am proud to say that the decision to move to have it dismissed did.”
Audrey McGinn, senior staff attorney of the Innocence Center, said she was thrilled the district attorney’s office decided to dig deeper into the case and do the right thing.
“Although Guy came home in 2018, he still lived under the shadow of this wrongful conviction,” she said in a statement. “All the while, the hallmark of this case stared back at us: a flawed eyewitness identification procedure that never should have led to a conviction.”
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