At about 6 p.m. on June 29, 1998, three men got out of a car parked in front of Fidelity Financial Services, a loan office in a strip mall in Fullerton, California. Two of them knocked on the door of Fidelity, which was locked. The third man went into Trio Auto Parts, which was located next door.
One of the Fidelity employees, A.P., unlocked the door and then went back behind the counter. One of the men said he wanted to make a car payment for his brother. The other man asked to use the bathroom. As he passed by the desk of another employee, A.G., the man in a suit struck A.P. in the back of the head with the butt of a pistol. He ordered A.P. to the ground and demanded money.
The man who went to the bathroom then returned and went behind the counter. He opened a drawer and then a filing cabinet, grabbing several envelopes. He then ordered A.P. and A.G. to a back room where he told them to remain for 15 minutes. The two men then left the office.
Meanwhile, in the auto parts store, a clerk, A.H., was talking with the third man who was asking about a 454 cubic-inch engine for a Chevrolet Caprice, a rare engine. Soon, he heard the sound of a horn honking. He saw the two men who had left Fidelity next to a car in the lot. A.H. told the man he had been talking with that his friends wanted him to hurry up. The man then left the store and joined the two men. They got into the car and drove off.
The police were summoned. The employees said that the robbers had taken about $1,400 in cash and another $4,000 in checks.
Before he was taken to the hospital for treatment of his injuries to his mouth and ear, A.P. told the police that the man with the handgun was Black, in his 20s, about 6 feet 2 inches tall, 150 pounds, clean shaven, and had a dark complexion. He said the man was wearing a green suit. He said the man who asked to use the bathroom was Black, in his 20’s, stocky, about 5 feet 9 inches tall, 200 pounds, no tattoos, possibly a goatee, and had skin folds on the back of his neck. The second man was wearing a white polo shirt and jeans, A.P. said. A.G.’s description was similar, although years later she would say both men were about the same height.
The police dusted the loan office for fingerprints, but no usable fingerprints were discovered.
The next day, the police interviewed A.H. at the Fidelity office. As A.H. told the police what happened at the auto parts store during the robbery, a Fidelity employee overheard the conversation. The employee retrieved a customer’s records and said, “Is this the person that you saw in your store?” When she showed A.H. a copy of a driver’s license, he said, “That was the person.”
The photograph was of 26-year-old Bernard Teamer. The police took Teamer's financial records, which listed his assets, including a 1975 Chevrolet Caprice.
A Fullerton police detective began running background checks on Teamer and determined that Teamer was affiliated with the 190 Street Crip gang out of Carson, California. The detective contacted a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department gang enforcement officer, who helped obtain photographs of 190 Street gang members. Meanwhile, the Fullerton detective conducted surveillance on Teamer, whom he saw with 20-year-old Harold Bailey.
The detective assembled several photographic lineups, each containing six photographs. The detective tried to include photographs of potential suspects along with fillers who had a similar appearance to the suspects. In some lineups, the detective included photographs of more than one suspect.
One of the lineups contained a photograph of Bailey, who A.G. said looked similar to the man in the green suit. Another lineup contained a photograph of 32-year-old Guy Miles, who was associated with the 190 Street gang. A.G. identified Miles as the man who asked to use the bathroom. Within a few days, Teamer was arrested in Los Angeles.
On August 5, 1998, Miles was arrested in Las Vegas, where he was living. During an interview, Miles denied involvement in the robbery, although he said he knew Teamer. At the time of his arrest, Miles was on parole after serving a prison term for robbery, assault, and firing a gun into a car. Living in Las Vegas was a parole violation.
The detective notified A.P. by phone that he had arrested two of the robbers. The detective later met with A.P. who identified Miles in a photographic lineup as the man who asked to use the bathroom.
On March 12, 1999, the Orange County District Attorney filed a first amended information charging Miles and Teamer with two counts of robbery and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon. The information further alleged that Miles personally inflicted great bodily injury. The information alleged that the crime was committed for gang purposes.
On February 23, 1999, more than two months before trial, Miles wrote a letter to the presiding judge maintaining his innocence and offering to undergo any available test to prove his innocence.
In May 1999, Miles and Teamer went to trial in Orange County Superior Court. A.P., A.H., and A.G. testified for the prosecution.
A.P. identified Miles as the man who asked to use the bathroom. The defense noted that Miles had a visible scar and an indentation on his head from a gunshot wound years earlier, but neither A.P. nor A.G. had mentioned that. A.P. agreed that Miles had a scar and indentation on his head, but said they would not have been visible if Miles had a full head of hair.
A.H was not asked to identify Miles in court. He identified Teamer as the man who came in asking about the engine for a Chevrolet Caprice.
During a break, when the judge and the jury were not present, A.G. told the prosecutor she could not identify Miles as the man who went to the bathroom. A.G. repeatedly told the prosecutor that she was unable to do so, even after she stood close to Miles at the defense table.
Just prior to her testimony, the prosecutor took A.G. into the hallway where he showed A.G. a color copy of Miles’s booking photo that contained his booking number and arrest date. After looking at the booking photo, A.G. went back into court, took the witness stand and identified Miles.
The prosecution’s gang expert explained criminal street gang culture, slang terms, and behavior. He found significant the presence of multiple tattoos on Teamer and Miles. Ultimately, the expert declared that Teamer and Miles committed the Fidelity robbery to benefit their gang. He noted that Miles had been arrested in Las Vegas driving another gang member’s car.
Miles’s father, Charles Miles, testified for the defense that at the time of the robbery Miles had been living in Las Vegas for about a year. He said that his grandson, Guy Miles’s 12-year-old son De Andre, who lived with his mother in Sacramento, would spend the summers at his grandparents’ home in Carson. Charles testified that he had purchased a roundtrip plane ticket for De Andre to come in the summer of 1998.
Charles said that he and his wife, Mabel, picked up De Andre at Los Angeles International Airport at 8 p.m. on June 27—two days before the Fidelity robbery. In Carson, De Andre called Miles in Las Vegas. Charles said, “[W]e thought he was going to spend the summer with us, and the moment he got there, he wanted to call his father and go spend the summer with his father.”
On Sunday, June 28, Charles, Mabel, and De Andre went to church where Charles was a pastor. “Afterwards, we came home…[and] the rest of the family came over to greet him in Carson—to greet him home. He comes home for the summer, so the whole family was over and, of course, we had dinner and just enjoyed one another and enjoyed him, too.”
On Monday, June 29—the morning of the robbery—Miles picked up De Andre at about 3:00 a.m., Charles said. He said Miles was only there for 10 minutes, and then he and De Andre left because Miles wanted to get back to Las Vegas before it got too hot.
Mabel testified consistently with Charles’s account. Mabel also testified that Miles had been shot years earlier and, as a result, he had a noticeable scar from his hairline to his ear and an indenture in his head.
De Andre testified that after flying from Sacramento to Los Angeles, he telephoned his father, who was in Las Vegas, when he arrived at his grandparents’ home. He confirmed that the next day, he went to church with his grandparents and attended a family dinner at their home. He said his father picked him up at 3:00 a.m. On the drive to Las Vegas, they stopped at a 7-Eleven convenience store, a gas station, and a McDonald’s. De Andre said they arrived in Las Vegas between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. After his father slept for about 90 minutes, they drove to meet two of Miles’s friends. De Andre said he spent the entire day and night with his father at his home in Las Vegas.
On the following morning, June 30, 1998, De Andre saw that his father’s car had been broken into the prior night and the steering column had been damaged. He said he saw the car being towed and that the tow truck driver gave his father a receipt.
Gloria Perry testified that Miles had been living in Las Vegas since sometime in 1997. She said she saw Miles at his home on Sunday, June 28, 1998, while she was having her hair braided. She said that she saw Miles on the freeway driving towards Los Angeles with his girlfriend sometime between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. She next spoke to Miles by telephone on Monday, June 29, 1998—the day of the robbery—sometime between 4:45 and 5:00 p.m.
The resident manager of Miles’s Las Vegas apartment complex testified that she spoke to Miles on Monday, June 29, 1998, at around 9:00 a.m., by telephone, and noticed that his car was parked in its normal parking space later in the afternoon. She testified that she also saw Miles and his son the following day between 12:00 noon and 2:00 p.m., and that Miles’s car had been towed.
Patricia Joseph testified that she was Miles’s upstairs neighbor at the Las Vegas apartment for five to six months. She testified that late in the evening on June 28, she saw Miles and his girlfriend drive away from the apartment complex. She next saw Miles between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. the next morning—the morning of the robbery—with his son. Joseph said she saw Miles again in his apartment between 4:00 and 7:00 p.m. on the same day.
The defense called Dr. Scott Fraser, a psychologist, researcher, and professor who testified as an expert in eyewitness memory. Fraser noted that A.P. was white, A.G. was Hispanic, and that race and other factors can affect the accuracy of eyewitness memory. Fraser said that people “are just less accurate in terms of identifying members of a different race.” Fraser also described “photo bias” as another factor that can affect the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. He said the term referred to the showing of multiple photographic lineups to the same witnesses. He said that a person’s memory becomes more vivid because of repeated exposure to photographs. “They can now recall more details of the person, but it is the product of the recognition test. It is not [the product of] the original observation,” Fraser said.
In rebuttal, the prosecution summoned Dr. Ebbe Ebbsen, a psychology professor whose emphasis was in methodology. Ebbsen said he was a colleague of Fraser and was familiar with his viewpoints in the area of eyewitness identification. Ebbsen was highly critical of the methodology of Fraser’s research. Ebbsen said that the research in the area of eyewitness identification could not be generalized. He said there were a large number of theories about memory that were available, but they were in competition. “So the point is at this point in time, we don’t have what people think of as scientific understanding of human memory,” Ebbsen said. He added that he believed that experts in the field of eyewitness identification should not be rendering opinions in court.
On June 10, 1999, after two days of deliberation, the jury asked for clarification as to when a jury was a “hung jury.” The jury continued to deliberate, and five days later, on June 15, 1999, the jury convicted Teamer and Miles and found the gang enhancement to be true. Teamer was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Miles was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison.
In 2003, the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, reversed the street gang enhancements for lack of sufficient evidence and affirmed the convictions. Miles’s sentence remained at 75 years to life.
In 2010, assisted by the California Innocence Project (later renamed The Innocence Center), Miles filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus. The petition included declarations from Teamer, Bailey, and Jason Steward, stating that they had committed the robbery and Miles was not involved. In 2011, prior to a hearing, the court was informed that Bailey was refusing to testify.
The court heard from five witnesses including Teamer, Steward, and Miles. The trial court denied the writ of habeas corpus, finding that the evidence did not undermine the entire prosecution case and did not point “unerringly” to innocence as the law then required. The court did not find Teamer, Steward, and Miles to be credible witnesses, based in part on their criminal histories.
In 2012, Miles filed another state habeas petition in the California Court of Appeal, asserting the same claims. In 2016, a referee was appointed to conduct a hearing and make a recommendation. Several alibi witnesses testified. Teamer, Steward, and Miles each testified again. Bailey again refused to testify. The referee found that Miles did not meet the habeas corpus standard for a new evidence claim. The referee noted that the case was the type of case which “dramatically tests the credibility of California’s criminal justice system.”
Teamer testified that he robbed Fidelity with Steward and Bailey. Teamer grew up across the street from Bailey, who was known as “Baby K.O.,” meaning that he was Teamer’s “little homie” and that he followed after Teamer, who was known as “Little K.O.” Bailey listened to and trusted Teamer. Teamer knew Steward through Bailey and knew him as “Tiny Wimp.”
Teamer said he paid his bills at Fidelity and decided to rob it because “I was just trying to get some money.” Teamer said he planned the robbery. Steward and Bailey were to go into the Fidelity office, and Teamer was to wait in the car.
At the time of the robbery, Bailey was about six feet tall, stocky, and had rolls in the back of his neck. Steward was also about six feet tall and slim.
Steward testified that he grew up in Compton and was involved with the Farm Dog Compton Crips. He said that June 29, 1998—the day of the robbery—was his 19th birthday. Steward said the plan was for Teamer to stay in the car. Bailey and Steward were to go inside, get the money, and then “come back out and get in the car and bone out.” Steward said he wore a suit because it helped him get access.
Steward said he hid a shotgun in the sleeve of his suit and persuaded A.P. to open the door by telling him that he had to make a payment. Steward said that when he and Bailey returned to the car, the car doors were locked, and Teamer wasn’t there. Steward said they saw Teamer in the auto parts store, so they waved and motioned for him to come out. Steward said he was 100 percent sure that the car doors were locked.
Steward said that in 2007, he met Miles in prison for the first time after getting a message that Miles wanted to talk to him. Steward said Miles showed him a document with the date of the robbery on it. Steward recognized the date because it was his birthday. He said he couldn’t believe that Miles had been convicted of the Fullerton robbery.
Steward said that in 2008, the California Innocence Project contacted him. He gave a declaration saying Miles was not involved and drew a diagram of Fidelity showing where they parked, the location of the auto parts store, and the interior of the office indicating the location of the witnesses.
Miles’s defense team presented a declaration signed by Bailey on February 5, 2010, that largely corroborated the testimony of Teamer and Steward. In addition, the defense presented evidence that during an interview in a Texas prison on June 20, 2013, Bailey told a Fullerton police detective that Miles was innocent.
Bailey did not remember many of the details of the robbery, but he did remember demanding money. Bailey said that he always had a “meaty neck.” Bailey recalled that he was angry when they got to the car after the robbery because Teamer wasn’t there.
Miles testified and denied committing the crime. He recounted how he had picked up his son in Carson and drove to Las Vegas, where he was at the time of the crime.
The defense presented phone records, a receipt for De Andre’s plane trip, and the receipt Miles got when his car was towed. Those records had not been presented at Miles’s trial and buttressed the testimony about Miles’s presence in Las Vegas at the time of the crime.
On January 18, 2017, the California Court of Appeal granted the writ and vacated Miles’s convictions.
The Court of Appeal noted when Miles first filed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, “there was no codified standard of proof for habeas corpus relief based on a claim of new evidence.” The Court of Appeal noted that a petitioner needed to present evidence that pointed “unerringly” to innocence and “completely undermines the entire structure of the case presented by the prosecution at the time of the conviction.”
Effective January 1, 2017, the burden of proof in a new evidence habeas claim was significantly lowered. The definition of “new evidence” under the newly enacted habeas statute was “evidence that has been discovered after trial, that could not have been discovered prior to trial by the exercise of due diligence, and is admissible and not merely cumulative, corroborative, collateral, or impeaching.”
The court said that under the new statute, in order to grant relief, it had to find that the confessions were “credible, material, presented without substantial delay, and of such decisive force and value that it would have more likely than not changed the outcome at trial.”
“We find that the confessions meet the necessary grounds for relief,” the Court declared.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Eileen Moore cited concerns about the identification process in the case. Justice Moore described how A.G. had been unable to identify Miles until the prosecutor showed her Miles’s booking photo during a hallway break in the trial.
Justice Moore said that “what the prosecutor did in this case was troubling, to say the least…There are many troubling aspects to this ad hoc photo identification procedure. In the first place, it had none of the reliability protections that come with a properly executed sixpack photograph lineup utilizing one suspect and five fillers...”
The Court said that the prosecutor “essentially conducted a photographic lineup with only one photograph…Further, the prosecutor’s showing of the booking photo to [A.G.] during the period of uncertainty gave [A.G.] precisely the type of positive feedback that experts in the field feel should be avoided.”
“Moreover, the entire episode appears to have reduced or eliminated any doubt that she may have had,” the Court said. “This undoubtedly engendered a false sense of confidence, and [A.G.’s] confidence in her identification was undoubtedly communicated to the jury.”
Six months later, on June 20, 2017, Miles entered a no-contest plea to two counts of robbery and one count of possessing a firearm. He maintained his innocence while acknowledging that the prosecution had evidence that could result in a conviction. He was resentenced to 18 years in prison and released that day.
On June 20, 2019, Miles filed a claim for compensation with the California Victim Compensation Board. On September 30, 2021, the Board granted the claim after an investigation of the case by the California Attorney General’s Office concluded that he had proven his innocence by a preponderance of the evidence. Miles was awarded $965,300.
In 2025, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity (CIU) informed Miles’s defense team that it was reviewing his case.
On August 17, 2026, the CIU along with Miles’s attorneys at The Innocence Center, Michael Semanchik, Raquel Barilla, Claudia Salinas, and Audrey McGinn filed a joint motion to vacate Miles’s convictions.
“Miles spent more than eighteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit,” the motion said. “Three other men have admitted their guilt, and no physical evidence ever tied Miles to the offense. Significantly, the People agree. After an independent investigation, the CIU concluded there is a loss of confidence in Miles’s conviction and expressly sought to take immediate steps to exonerate him.”
On August 21, 2026, the motion was granted. Miles’s convictions were vacated, and the charges were dismissed.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-28-2026
