All Ruben Piñuelas ’21 wanted at 鶹Ӱ was a level playing field.
After being incarcerated for nearly 15 years—six of those wrongfully so—Piñuelas knew changing the trajectory of his life in his 40s would require overcoming biases society can put on people with such baggage.
“Pomona believed in me on day one,” he says, “and ushered me into this world of higher education.”
After fighting, running from and resisting the law as a young adult, Piñuelas is a second-year law student at the University of Michigan and a coveted orator who recently returned to Claremont to speak at the .
“At one time society threw me away,” he says. “They told me I’ll never be good enough to be a scholar. What I came back from, I’ve accomplished the impossible.”
Years of incarceration
Piñuelas started running with a gang in El Centro, California, in high school.
In 1999, around his 20th birthday, he was sentenced to two years in prison for possession of marijuana and erroneously placed in a building with inmates serving life terms. Piñuelas was later charged in connection with a prison riot there, and while he says he was only defending himself in the fracas, he asserts he was tricked into taking a deal to add seven years to his term.
In 2008, Piñuelas raised enough money to make bail on new conspiracy charges he was facing. While on parole, he says he helped local groups build houses and enrolled in night community college classes at Pierce College in Los Angeles.
Piñuelas was taken back into custody in 2010 for alleged parole violations and his alleged involvement in a 2007 incident at a prison in Corcoran, California, involving people he says he had never met.
In 2011, Piñuelas was convicted of conspiracy to murder, attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon on an inmate. He was given 60 years to life and sent to solitary confinement in Pelican Bay State Prison.
Sixty (years) to life, 12 years in solitary, no one comes back from that.
— Ruben Piñuelas '21
While in solitary, Piñuelas began studying law, and he advocated for his innocence. In December 2013, a panel of California appellate justices overturned his conviction based on insufficient evidence.
After his release in 2014, Piñuelas worked construction jobs before returning to Pierce College. He earned two associate degrees from Pierce and qualified for the financial assistance he needed to continue his undergraduate studies at 鶹Ӱ.
“Sixty (years) to life, 12 years in solitary, no one comes back from that,” Piñuelas says. “I’d gotten myself out and didn’t have any organization to usher me back to society. I had to figure that out on my own. The prison system kicked me out with no resources, no counseling. They wiped their hands of me and kicked me to the curb.”
“I was in a dark place,” he adds, “but I learned it’s not what’s been done to you, but what you do with it.”
A fresh start
Piñuelas’ path to Pomona demonstrates the College’s commitment to recruiting diverse transfer students from community colleges in California and myriad other states.
Community college students comprise about 65% of Pomona’s yearly transfer cohort, says Adam Sapp, assistant vice president of admissions, and while most of that group comes from California, the Office of Admissions has bolstered outreach efforts nationwide. Admissions officers attend off-campus events, host open house programs on campus, and connect with local community colleges for special campus tours and financial aid workshops, Sapp says.
When deciding where to continue their studies, transfer students find especially appealing the resources open to them through the , Piñuelas being one example of a new student taking advantage of the CDO's professional school advising, career networking events, alumni panels and workshops.
“The CDO is a huge draw for our transfer students,” Sapp says.
While Piñuelas had his choice of universities to attend, Pomona offered him the community he yearned for after years in an isolation cell. As an exoneree, “being at Pomona was very humanizing, empowering,” he says.
“It made me feel alive again.”
Susanne Mahoney Filback, associate director of preprofessional programs and prelaw advisor at the CDO, recalls Piñuelas emailing her the summer before his first semester at Pomona and conveying his plan to pursue a career in law.
The two met regularly to get Piñuelas accustomed to Pomona, and Piñuelas was a regular at CDO law events.
“He knew he wanted to make a difference and that was directly related to what he went through,” Filback says. “He had a thoughtful understanding of why he was here and how he was going to take advantage of Pomona’s resources.”
As someone who felt life would always be an uphill battle, Piñuelas says he was blown away by how reassuring his professors were when he questioned whether he belonged at Pomona. “They always believed in me,” he says. “They gave me everything I needed to thrive, perform and be the student I needed to be.”
As a psychological science major, Piñuelas especially admired Eric Hurley, professor of psychological science and Africana studies—the first Black psychology professor he’d ever seen. “It was refreshing to hear from someone I could identify with as a student of color,” he says. Piñuelas took Hurley’s Psychology of the Black Experience course his first semester at Pomona and later became a course mentor in Hurley’s Intro to Psychology class.
While at Pomona, Piñuelas says Hurley, Emerita Professor of Psychological Science Patricia Smiley and Professor of Psychological Science Adam Pearson all encouraged him to test his limits as a student.
“Pomona knows how to push you, but also how to let you grow at your own pace,” he says.
After graduating in 2021, Piñuelas continued his studies at the University of Michigan, an institution he finds as academically rigorous and nurturing as Pomona.
In addition to being a busy law student, Piñuelas is an advocate for criminal justice reform with aspirations of becoming a trial attorney, a civil rights lawyer and California Supreme Court justice.
“I’m trying to maximize the time I have left,” he says. “A lot of time was stolen from me, but I don’t want to mope. I want to use it as a blessing, an opportunity for others to learn about what I’ve been able to gain from my experience, and to use it to better the world.”