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#131 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - David McCallum · Wrongful Conviction

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Speaker 1: Hi, This is Laura and I writer. Because of COVID nineteen,
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Speaker 1: Steve and I recorded this episode from our homes, not
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Speaker 1: together in the studio. We might sound a little difference,
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Speaker 1: but I think the story we tell is as inspirational
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Speaker 1: as always be well and stay healthy. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction,
0:19
Speaker 1: False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
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Speaker 2: And I'm Steve Drissen.
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Speaker 1: Today we'll tell you the story of David McCallum, one
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Speaker 1: of two New York teens wrongfully convicted of murder in
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six. Luckily for David, he had incredible allies
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Speaker 1: in his corner, the famous boxer Reuben Hurricane Carter and
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Speaker 1: a district attorney, Ken Thompson, who was dedicated to real justice.
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Speaker 1: Here comes the story of the DA and the Hurricane
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Speaker 1: and one of the men they saved.
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Speaker 2: So it was two thousand and six and I had
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Speaker 2: just become the legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions,
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Speaker 2: and my colleague Rob Warden came into my office and
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Speaker 2: handed me a VHS tape. On the tape there were
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Speaker 2: confessions from David McCallum and Willie Stuckey. And Rob told me,
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Speaker 2: he said, Ruben Hurricane Carter would like you to look
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Speaker 2: at this. You know, when Rubin Hurricane Carter asked you
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Speaker 2: to do something, you do it.
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Speaker 1: At the time, Ruben Carter was the most famous person
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Speaker 1: who'd ever been wrongly convicted. In the nineteen sixties, he
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Speaker 1: was a prize winning professional boxer, nicknamed Hurricane for his
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Speaker 1: record of early round knockouts, but in nineteen sixty six
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Speaker 1: he was convicted of a triple murder he didn't commit.
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Speaker 1: After twenty years behind bars, Ruben was exonerated. He dedicated
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Speaker 1: the rest of his life to advocating for others he'd
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Speaker 1: been wrongly convicted too. In nineteen seventy six, Bob Dylan
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Speaker 1: wrote the song Hurricane as a tribute to Ruben Carter.
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Speaker 2: You know, I had met Rubin a couple years before
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Speaker 2: Rob handed me that tape. Ruben was at Northwestern he
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Speaker 2: was at a conference to honor dozens of people who
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Speaker 2: had been exonerated off of death row, and for me
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Speaker 2: it was now there was a little bit of hero
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Speaker 2: worship on my part. I was eager to meet him
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Speaker 2: because I was so impressed with the way he remade himself,
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Speaker 2: you know, from a brawler to a deep thinker.
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Speaker 1: To be honest. You need both of those skills to
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Speaker 1: work on cases of wrongful conviction, and you need plenty
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Speaker 1: of perseverance.
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Speaker 2: I got hooked on a ten year struggle to represent
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Speaker 2: David after watching that tape.
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Speaker 1: Today's story begins in Queens, New York, in South Ozone Park,
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Speaker 1: a working class neighborhood next to JFK Airport. It's phil
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Speaker 1: with single family homes, storefronts, and the sound of jetplanes
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Speaker 1: circling overhead. It's three point thirty on a Sunday afternoon,
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Speaker 1: October twentieth, nineteen eighty five. Twenty year old Nathan Blenner
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Speaker 1: is behind the wheel of his nineteen seventy nine black
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Speaker 1: Buick Regal. It's parked on a neighborhood street, and he's
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Speaker 1: trying to get the car to start. A couple kids
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Speaker 1: playing in a nearby yard were the only witnesses to
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Speaker 1: what happened next. According to the kids, Nathan is fiddling
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Speaker 1: with the ignition when two men approach him from behind.
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Speaker 1: They're about to pass the car when they turn around,
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Speaker 1: go to the driver's side and tell Nathan to move over.
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Speaker 1: The men push him into the backseat, get in manage
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Speaker 1: to start the car. And drive off. It's over in
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Speaker 1: the blink of an eye. A carjacking and a kidnapping.
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Speaker 1: Police from the local precinct and Queen's canvass the neighborhood
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Speaker 1: looking for leads. About a block away, they find a
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Speaker 1: woman who says she'd been outside washing Herbuick Regal a
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Speaker 1: red one when two men walked by, clearly checking out
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Speaker 1: her vehicle. One of them said nice car, She answered,
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Speaker 1: if it goes missing, I'll know where to look. The
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Speaker 1: two men didn't say anything else. Instead, they kept on
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Speaker 1: walking in the direction of Nathan Blenner. The woman gave
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Speaker 1: a description to the police. Both men were black and
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Speaker 1: in their twenties. They were also of noticeably different heights.
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Speaker 1: One was around five foot six and the taller guy
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Speaker 1: who had braided hair was five foot ten. But this
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Speaker 1: car theft and kidnapping soon got even more serious. The
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Speaker 1: next day, October twenty first, police in Brooklyn get a
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Speaker 1: phone call a doa dead on arrival in a wooded
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Speaker 1: area near a cemetery, Nathan Blenner's body had been found.
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Speaker 1: He was lying face down with a single gunshot wound
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Speaker 1: to the back of his head, and two days after
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Speaker 1: the carjacking, Brooklyn police were called to Fulton Street, about
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Speaker 1: a mile from where they discovered Nathan's body. A car
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Speaker 1: had been set on fire. It was Nathan's Buick Regal
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Speaker 1: Police douse the flames, search the car and find fingerprints,
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Speaker 1: along with some cigarette butts in the ashtray. Brooklyn cops
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Speaker 1: get in touch with NYPD Central Robbery. They learned there's
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Speaker 1: been a string of eight car thefts in Queen's over
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Speaker 1: the two days leading up to Nathan's kidnapping. In every case,
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Speaker 1: the offenders were described as two black men around age twenty,
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Speaker 1: one five foot six, the other five foot ten, and
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Speaker 1: armed with a gun. This was a two man car
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Speaker 1: theft crime spree that culminated in Nathan Blenner's murder, and
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Speaker 1: police were feeling intense pressure to stop it in its tracks.
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Speaker 1: A few days later, on October twenty fifth, two Brooklyn men,
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Speaker 1: Terence Hayward and Herman Mumford are arrested for snatching a
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Speaker 1: chain off a subway rider. One of these guys was
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Speaker 1: five foot six, the other one who had braided hair,
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Speaker 1: was five foot ten. Both were black. In other words,
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Speaker 1: they matched the car thief descriptions pretty well. Police question
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Speaker 1: Hayward and Mumford about the string of car thefts and
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Speaker 1: about Nathan's death. Now will never definitively know whether these
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Speaker 1: two were involved in anything. They didn't confess and police
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Speaker 1: stop investigating them pretty soon. That's because Hayward deflects attention
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Speaker 1: away by telling the cops he knows about a gun
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Speaker 1: that had been used in a murder. Now stick with
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Speaker 1: me here, because like a lot of police investigations, this
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Speaker 1: gets messy. Hayward told the police that his friend James
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Speaker 1: Johnson knew more about the gun. It turns out that
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Speaker 1: James was a suspect in a grocery store robbery in
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Speaker 1: which a gun had been used. When police interviewed James,
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Speaker 1: he said that he'd given the grocery store gun to
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Speaker 1: his aunt Lottie, who then gave the gun to a
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Speaker 1: man named Jamie, and then, shortly before Nathan's murder, Jamie
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Speaker 1: supposedly gave the gun to a sixteen year old Brooklyn
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Speaker 1: teenager named Willy Stucky.
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Speaker 2: What kind of story is that you got James's and
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Speaker 2: Jamie's and Lotties and who are all these people?
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Speaker 1: No kidding? This is a ridiculous story, And it's even
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Speaker 1: worse because it's coming from two guys who match the
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Speaker 1: descriptions of the carthieves. It's never clear whether this opposed
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Speaker 1: grocery store gun had anything to do with the car
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Speaker 1: thefts or Nathan Blenner, and there's no record of police
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Speaker 1: ever speaking to Aunt Lottie or Jamie. Instead, police goes
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Speaker 1: straight for Willy Stucky. For some reason, they jump to
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Speaker 1: the conclusion that Willy used that gun to kill Nathan.
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Speaker 1: At about seven pm on October twenty seventh, police pick
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Speaker 1: up sixteen year old Willy Stucky and bring him to
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Speaker 1: the eighty third Precinct in Brooklyn for questioning, and within
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Speaker 1: a few hours police also pick up Willy's sixteen year
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Speaker 1: old buddy, David McCallum and bring him in for questioningo.
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Speaker 1: Willy and David were longtime friends who played handball together
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Speaker 1: at a local park. Now, Willy had never been in
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Speaker 1: trouble with the law before, but for David it was
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Speaker 1: a different story. David's family had moved from South Carolina
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Speaker 1: to Brooklyn when he was just seven years old, and
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Speaker 1: the culture shock had been pretty severe.
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Speaker 2: You know, he went from a very rural environment where
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Speaker 2: he would play in the fields and go fishing and
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Speaker 2: not have that many worries in his life. But once
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Speaker 2: he hit the streets of Brooklyn, he took on this
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Speaker 2: sort of aura of a big tough guy because he
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Speaker 2: needed that to survive, and he began to act out
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Speaker 2: on the street in ways to fit his profile. But
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Speaker 2: it was really more bravado than anything else.
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Speaker 1: Police feel like they're hot on the trail and they
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Speaker 1: begin interrogating Willy and David separate rooms at the police station. Now,
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Speaker 1: neither one of their interrogations was recorded, so we'll never
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Speaker 1: have a perfect record of what happened inside the box,
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Speaker 1: but suffice to say that the detectives described the interrogations
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Speaker 1: very differently than Willi and David did. In court, the
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Speaker 1: lead detective testified that both Willia and David voluntarily confessed
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Speaker 1: to killing Nathan Blenner after just a few questions. But
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Speaker 1: Willie testified that police handcuffed him and then hit him
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Speaker 1: three or four times. David also testified that police hit
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Speaker 1: him in the mouth hard enough to drop blood and
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Speaker 1: they threatened to use a chair next time.
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Speaker 2: You know, the confession, when I first looked at it
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Speaker 2: had a very rehearsed quality to it. It was very short,
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Speaker 2: but There's one moment it gave me pause. It's when
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Speaker 2: David McCallum looks with a moment of sheer terror at
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Speaker 2: the police officer who's not on the screen but is
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Speaker 2: clearly sitting in the room. And it was a look like,
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Speaker 2: am I doing okay? Am I telling the story the
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Speaker 2: way the story needs to be told? And I remember
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Speaker 2: Freeze framing that one frame of terror, and that suggested
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Speaker 2: to me that what David was saying in terms of
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Speaker 2: getting hit was probably true.
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Speaker 1: Both David and Willie testified that after they agreed to confess,
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Speaker 1: the police rehearsed a story with them. Willy in particular,
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Speaker 1: testified that police fed him details about the perpetrator's conversation
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Speaker 1: with that woman washing her red Bwick Regal. But the
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Speaker 1: police claimed that all the information in Willy and David's
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Speaker 1: confessions came straight from them.
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Speaker 2: This is exactly why you need to record the entire
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Speaker 2: interrogation process. If you don't do that, it's the police
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Speaker 2: versus the suspects. The suspects are never going to be
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Speaker 2: found more credible by a judge or a jury. Police
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Speaker 2: officers are professional witnesses. They testify in court on a
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Speaker 2: regular basis, and Willy and David were just kids. They
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Speaker 2: never stood a chance on cross examination.
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Speaker 1: But David and Willy's confessions were both really problematic. The
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Speaker 1: stories they told didn't match the actual evidence. Willie said
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Speaker 1: Nathan had been shot three times, when in fact he'd
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Speaker 1: only been shot once. Both Willy and David said the
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Speaker 1: shooting happened at night, but the medical examiner said the
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Speaker 1: murder happen during the day, probably right after the carjacking.
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Speaker 1: Willie told the police that he'd hidden the gun under
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Speaker 1: his mattress, but when police went to Willy's home and looked,
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Speaker 1: they couldn't find any gun. There were other problems too,
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Speaker 1: Like a lot of New York City kids, David and
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Speaker 1: Willie didn't know how to drive, making them unlikely suspects
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Speaker 1: for a car theft ring, and most importantly, they didn't
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Speaker 1: match the descriptions of the car thieves. David and Willie
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Speaker 1: were sixteen years old, not twenty something, neither one of
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Speaker 1: them had braids, and both were short, nowhere near five
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Speaker 1: foot ten. But despite all this, Willy and David were
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Speaker 1: charged with the murder of Nathan Blenner based on their
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Speaker 1: confessions and nothing else. Both were convicted on October twenty seventh,
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six. Each was sentenced to twenty five years
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Speaker 1: to life. The story fast forwards now more than eighteen
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Speaker 1: years to two thousand and four. David McCallum was thirty
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Speaker 1: four years old. He'd transformed from an insecure teenager into
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Speaker 1: a man known by other prisoners for his unshakable integrity.
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Speaker 1: David had always maintained his innocence, but he'd lost all
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Speaker 1: his appeals and was running out of options. Tragically, Willie
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Speaker 1: Stuckey had died in two thousand and one at the
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Speaker 1: age of thirty one, from what the prison said was
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Speaker 1: a heart attack. So this was David's fight now, and
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Speaker 1: for too long he'd been fighting alone.
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Speaker 2: By two thousand and four, David had written over six
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Speaker 2: hundred letters. He wrote to lawyers, he wrote to TV stations,
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Speaker 2: radio stations, he wrote to anybody, and he always insisted
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Speaker 2: that he was innocent, But all he got back were
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Speaker 2: rejections until one of those letters made its way to
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Speaker 2: Ruben Hurricane Carter.
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Speaker 1: Remember Ruben Carter was the famous boxer who'd spent twenty
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Speaker 1: years in prison for a triple murder. He didn't commit.
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Speaker 1: Whose long fight to clear himself was immortalized by Bob
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Speaker 1: Dylan in the song Hurricane Now. Rubin wasn't exonerated until
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, the same year that David and Willie
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Speaker 1: went down for Nathan Blenner's murder. When he got out,
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Speaker 1: ruben was malnourished from decades of prison food, and he'd
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Speaker 1: lost sight in one eye from a botched prison surgery.
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Speaker 1: He couldn't fight for the middleweight crown any longer, so
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Speaker 1: instead he started fighting for the wrongfully convicted. After working
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Speaker 1: for one of North America's leading innocence organizations, Rubin founded
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Speaker 1: his own group, Innocence International.
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Speaker 2: Rubin recognized that he was probably the most well known
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Speaker 2: figure who had been wrongfully convicted, and that if he
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Speaker 2: didn't use his voice in some way to be a
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Speaker 2: champion for the wrongfully convicted, that it would be a
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Speaker 2: terrible waste.
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Speaker 3: For twenty years, I was incarcerated as a racist, triple murderer,
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Speaker 3: condemned by history, repudiated by the courts, and sentenced to
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Speaker 3: die amid the squalor and despair and of a maximum
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Speaker 3: security prison. And tonight I am standing here at the
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Speaker 3: United Nations making this address. Now, if that's not miraculous.
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Speaker 3: Then I don't know what it is.
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Speaker 2: I don't know what is. David was at his wits end.
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Speaker 2: His best friend had died, and every day was a
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Speaker 2: struggle for him because he didn't see a way out.
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Speaker 1: In February two thousand and four, David McCallum read a
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Speaker 1: magazine interview with Reuben Hurricane Carter, and he sent a
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Speaker 1: letter asking for help to the author, a man named
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Speaker 1: Ken Klonsky. Ruben and Ken had started working together on
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Speaker 1: wrongful conviction cases, and today Ken is the director of
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Speaker 1: Innocence International.
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Speaker 4: David sent me a letter and he explained his case
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Speaker 4: and the situation he was in. Now, I have no
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Speaker 4: legal background, and I had no background in wrongful convictions,
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Speaker 4: so I just thought, well, here's a person sounds honest,
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Speaker 4: and I'll just tell Ruben about him. And Ruben at
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Speaker 4: first he took it in and he said at some point, well,
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Speaker 4: let's go visit the brother and see what he's like.
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Speaker 1: Both Ken Klonsky and Ruben Carter read up on David's
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Speaker 1: case and came to visit him in prison.
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Speaker 4: This was a prison in New York called Eastern Correctional.
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Speaker 4: When we visited, first of all, I'd never been in
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Speaker 4: a prison in my life, and the place itself was enormous.
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Speaker 4: It looked like a medieval castle.
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Speaker 1: In a visiting room, Reuben and David sat on opposite
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Speaker 1: sides of the table, silently studying each other. Later David
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Speaker 1: would remember feeling like Ruben was reading him, and David
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Speaker 1: refused to break the silence.
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Speaker 4: The eye contact was like love at first sight. And
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Speaker 4: they had a conversation which David started going on about
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Speaker 4: it case, and Ruben interrupted and says, you know what,
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Speaker 4: I'm not interested right now in your case. I want
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Speaker 4: to know who you are.
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Speaker 2: Ruben was a tough interviewer. He grilled David about you know,
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Speaker 2: if I get involved in your case, I don't want
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Speaker 2: you to come out of prison and act like a
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Speaker 2: fool and I'm wasting my time. And he got from
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Speaker 2: David the sense that this was somebody who was going
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Speaker 2: to make him proud, and Rubin left that meeting knowing
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Speaker 2: that he was going to do everything in his power
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Speaker 2: to get David McCallum out of prison.
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Speaker 4: I think we were there about two hours, and I
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Speaker 4: remember us getting up and leaving and I look back
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Speaker 4: at that enormous prison and I said Rubin. Really, who's
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Speaker 4: going to get him out of there?
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Speaker 1: Rubin and Ken hired a defense lawyer, Oscar Michelin, and
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Speaker 1: in two thousand and six, the three of them sent
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Speaker 1: the confession tapes to the Center on Wrongful Convictions for
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Speaker 1: Steve to review. Now, David had read about your work, Steve,
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Speaker 1: and I'm going to out you here. He considers you
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Speaker 1: the Lebron James of false confessions.
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Speaker 2: Look, Laura, we're in Chicago, and out of respect for
18:17
Speaker 2: the greatest basketball player of all time, I think we
18:21
Speaker 2: should go with the Michael Jordan of false confessions.
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Speaker 1: Slow down, Steve. First of all, you're from Philly, that's right.
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Speaker 2: So actually, the more I think about it, I prefer
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Speaker 2: to be known as the Doctor j of false confessions,
18:34
Speaker 2: as in, the doctor is in the house. Oh see,
18:37
Speaker 2: the doctor makes house calls. The doctor is on the case.
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Speaker 1: Okay, Doctor j you analyze these confessions and you found
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Speaker 1: a pretty revealing error what we call a false fed fact.
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Speaker 5: I did.
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Speaker 2: A false fed fact is a fact that comports with
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Speaker 2: the police theory at the time of the interrogation, and
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Speaker 2: it's adopted by the suspect in his or her confession,
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Speaker 2: but the fact later turns out to be false, and
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Speaker 2: if it is in the suspects confession, then you know
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Speaker 2: that the police fed that fact to the suspects. And
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Speaker 2: that's exactly what happened here.
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Speaker 1: At the time of the interrogations, the police believed that
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Speaker 1: Willy and David were the ones who had talked to
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Speaker 1: that woman with the red Buick regal just before going
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Speaker 1: around the block and attacking Nathan Blenner. And sure enough,
19:28
Speaker 1: right there in Willie Stucky's confession is a story about
19:32
Speaker 1: talking to that woman and saying nice car.
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Speaker 2: But David and Willie didn't match their description. Remember, the
19:38
Speaker 2: woman had described two guys five feet six and five ten,
19:43
Speaker 2: one with braids. Now David and Willie were both five
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Speaker 2: six and neither of them had braids.
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Speaker 1: They couldn't have been the guys who talked to that woman.
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Speaker 1: And by the time of trial even the state agreed
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Speaker 1: that David and Willie were not the ones she'd seen.
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Speaker 2: So how did story get into Willie's confession? It must
20:03
Speaker 2: have been fed by the police.
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Speaker 1: That was enough to make Steve join the team right
20:08
Speaker 1: then and there, and.
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Speaker 2: I decided to recruit Laura Cohen, a law professor and
20:13
Speaker 2: an attorney at Rutgridge University to join our defense team.
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Speaker 1: Laura, Cohen and Steve approached the Brooklyn DA's office and
20:21
Speaker 1: got them to agree to do forensic testing on the
20:24
Speaker 1: cigarette butts and fingerprints found in Nathan Blenner's car, and
20:28
Speaker 1: the results the cigarette butts had DNA on them that
20:32
Speaker 1: excluded both David and Willie. Instead, the DNA matched a
20:36
Speaker 1: different Brooklyn teenager they had no connection to. The fingerprints
20:41
Speaker 1: also excluded David and Willie. They matched yet another Brooklyn
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Speaker 1: teenager who had been killed years before in an altercation
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Speaker 1: with the police.
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Speaker 2: This was more powerful evidence of both Willie and David's innocence,
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Speaker 2: and the whole team, including Rubin, was very excited.
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Speaker 1: But this evidence still wasn't enough to persuade the Brooklyn
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Speaker 1: DA to exonerate David, not yet. Then two big things happened. First,
21:11
Speaker 1: an election in twenty thirteen, a new Brooklyn DA was elected,
21:16
Speaker 1: a reformer named Ken Thompson who had campaigned on a
21:19
Speaker 1: platform of rooting out wrongful convictions. David's legal team immediately
21:24
Speaker 1: contacted Thompson and told him about the case.
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Speaker 2: We used every bit of our connections to try to
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Speaker 2: get David's case on Ken Thompson's radar screen, and it worked.
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Speaker 1: The second big thing that happened was a terrible blow
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Speaker 1: to the whole team. In twenty fourteen, Rubin announced that
21:46
Speaker 1: he had prostate cancer and it was spreading fast.
21:50
Speaker 5: You know.
21:51
Speaker 2: When Rubin announced that he had cancer, he and I
21:55
Speaker 2: were kind of at odds with one another. Rubin was
22:00
Speaker 2: upset with me because he thought that we coddled the
22:05
Speaker 2: DA instead of looking for an opportunity to land a
22:09
Speaker 2: knockout blow with new evidence. So Ruben's answer to us was,
22:15
Speaker 2: stop fiddling around with the DA's office, stop dealing with
22:20
Speaker 2: state court. You need to go to federal court in
22:23
Speaker 2: order to get David out of prison. And we told
22:27
Speaker 2: Ruben that's just not going to work. And it created
22:31
Speaker 2: a tension between Rubin and me at this point in time.
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Speaker 2: But the announcement that he had prostate cancer was devastating
22:40
Speaker 2: because even though we were at odds, I had tremendous
22:45
Speaker 2: respect for Ruben and I knew that his voice was
22:49
Speaker 2: going to be crucial if we were ever going to
22:52
Speaker 2: win this case.
22:53
Speaker 1: Ruben was very sick and quickly got much sicker, but
22:57
Speaker 1: he was still the ultimate fighter. On his deathbed, With
23:01
Speaker 1: ken Klonsky's help, Ruben wrote an op ed for the
23:04
Speaker 1: New York Post urging the New Brooklyn DA to exonerate
23:08
Speaker 1: David McCallum. It was one of the last things he
23:12
Speaker 1: did with his life. Here's some of what Reuben Hurricane
23:15
Speaker 1: Carter wrote.
23:17
Speaker 2: My single regret in life is that David McCallum is
23:20
Speaker 2: still in prison. My aim in helping this fine man
23:24
Speaker 2: is to pay it forward, to give the help that
23:27
Speaker 2: I received as a wrongfully convicted man to another who
23:31
Speaker 2: needs such help. Now now I'm looking death straight in
23:36
Speaker 2: the eye, Ruben wrote, He's got me on the ropes,
23:40
Speaker 2: but I won't back down. And then Ruben asked the
23:43
Speaker 2: New Brooklyn DA to look straight into the eye of truth,
23:48
Speaker 2: a tougher customer than death, and not to back down either.
23:52
Speaker 1: To this day, ken Klonsky remembers helping Ruben write that
23:56
Speaker 1: op ed.
23:59
Speaker 4: We wrote a look utter together and it didn't have
24:03
Speaker 4: a proper ending, And finally I hit on something. To
24:08
Speaker 4: live in a world where truth matters, and just as
24:11
Speaker 4: however late still happens, that world would be heaven enough
24:16
Speaker 4: for us.
24:17
Speaker 2: All.
24:18
Speaker 4: So it was out there that Ruben was dying and
24:23
Speaker 4: that Ruben had made a last wish.
24:27
Speaker 2: That op ed was the knockout blow that we were
24:31
Speaker 2: looking for.
24:42
Speaker 1: Ruben's dying plea, combined with the new DNA evidence, made
24:46
Speaker 1: the difference. A few months after Ruben passed away, the
24:50
Speaker 1: Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson announced that he was going to
24:55
Speaker 1: exonerate David McCallum and posthumously exonerate Willie Stuck too. And
25:01
Speaker 1: while this news was incredibly welcome, the way ken Thompson's
25:05
Speaker 1: office handled the exonerations was extraordinary.
25:09
Speaker 2: I had never seen so much grace in an exoneration.
25:12
Speaker 2: And let me explain what I mean by that. When
25:15
Speaker 2: we exonerate people, most of the time, it's after a
25:19
Speaker 2: hard fought legal battle that brings the state down to
25:23
Speaker 2: its knees, and the state reluctantly gives up, and on
25:29
Speaker 2: the day of exoneration it's oftentimes a kind of anticlimactic moment.
25:35
Speaker 2: But David's case was so different. When David was picked
25:39
Speaker 2: up by the detectives from prison, he was taken to
25:44
Speaker 2: the courthouse and then the DA's office brought him a
25:48
Speaker 2: lunch of barbecue chicken and whatever he wanted to drink,
25:53
Speaker 2: and one by one, members of the DA's conviction Review
25:59
Speaker 2: Unit congratulated David. David not only met Ken Thompson the DA,
26:05
Speaker 2: but he also met Ken Thompson's wife, and there was
26:10
Speaker 2: such a recognition of the humanity of David throughout this process.
26:16
Speaker 6: I'm Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, and I'm here today
26:20
Speaker 6: with some members of my conviction review team. And it
26:23
Speaker 6: continued because from day one I made a pledge to
26:27
Speaker 6: the people of Brooklyn, and my pledge was to put
26:30
Speaker 6: the guilty away, but also to make sure that our
26:34
Speaker 6: criminal justice system was based on fundamental fairness. That's what
26:39
Speaker 6: we're doing here today.
26:41
Speaker 2: Normally, when prisoners are brought into the court room, they
26:45
Speaker 2: had come in through the back door. They're handcuffed and
26:49
Speaker 2: they are shackled. When it came time for David's case
26:53
Speaker 2: to be called, he walked in through the front door
26:56
Speaker 2: with his head held high, knowing that he would soon
27:00
Speaker 2: be a free man.
27:02
Speaker 6: Mister McCallum asked me to look at his case. I
27:05
Speaker 6: agreed to do so because my duty is not just
27:07
Speaker 6: to convict, but to do justice. We have conducted a
27:12
Speaker 6: thorough and fair investigation of this matter, and as a
27:17
Speaker 6: result of that investigation, we've determined that there's not a
27:20
Speaker 6: single piece of evidence that linked David McCallum or William
27:25
Speaker 6: Stuckey to the abduction of Nathan Blenna.
27:29
Speaker 2: Unbeknownst to David, they had brought Willie Stucky's mother in
27:34
Speaker 2: for the exogeneration and it was a reunion that was
27:38
Speaker 2: just heartbreaking and incredibly tender. She was there also to
27:46
Speaker 2: feel that her son was being vindicated at the same time.
27:51
Speaker 6: And so today at two pm before Judge Demic in
27:56
Speaker 6: Brooklyn State Supreme I will move in the interest of
27:59
Speaker 6: justice to vacate the convictions of David McCallum and Willie Stuckey.
28:05
Speaker 2: This was not a reluctant exonerations, but a public reckoning,
28:10
Speaker 2: and that kind of exoneration really is such an important
28:15
Speaker 2: step in the healing process for people who get out
28:20
Speaker 2: of prison.
28:21
Speaker 6: David McCallum walked into prison as a boy. Today he
28:27
Speaker 6: will walk out of the courthouse as a man.
28:35
Speaker 4: The District Attorney had a press conference and in the
28:38
Speaker 4: press conference he said, I've inherited a legacy of disgrace
28:43
Speaker 4: with respect to wrongful convictions, and that moment you knew
28:49
Speaker 4: his intention to change things, to write everything was going
28:53
Speaker 4: to be realized. It was just a wonderful moment.
29:01
Speaker 5: You know.
29:01
Speaker 2: The only thing missed from David McCallum's exoneration was Rubin.
29:08
Speaker 2: Hurricane Carter and the state even found a way to
29:14
Speaker 2: bring Rubin into these proceedings. On the day of David's exoneration,
29:20
Speaker 2: the DA's office dispatched two detectives to take him from
29:24
Speaker 2: prison to court, and on the way back from prison,
29:30
Speaker 2: one of the detectives pulled out his iPhone and he
29:33
Speaker 2: pressed play, and of course it was the Story of
29:37
Speaker 2: the Hurricane by Bob Dylan. It comes the Story of
29:41
Speaker 2: the Hurricane, the man the authorities came to.
29:45
Speaker 1: Blame Ruben Carter wasn't the only hero of this story
29:49
Speaker 1: who passed away too soon. On October ninth, twenty sixteen,
29:54
Speaker 1: Ken Thompson, that reform minded Brooklyn DA who exonerated David
29:58
Speaker 1: McCallum and Will Stucky with such grace, also died of cancer.
30:03
Speaker 2: He'd exonerated by that point in time about thirteen or
30:06
Speaker 2: fourteen people, and so when he died it was a
30:11
Speaker 2: really terrible blow for justice. But one of the things
30:16
Speaker 2: that happened after Ken's death was his wife actually reached
30:20
Speaker 2: out to David McCallum and invited David to speak at
30:26
Speaker 2: the going home service for Ken Thompson.
30:30
Speaker 1: And so David McCallum stood up at the packed memorial
30:34
Speaker 1: service for the da who had agreed to free him
30:37
Speaker 1: and gave a powerful eulogy.
30:41
Speaker 7: He promised that he would investigate lawful convictions in a
30:44
Speaker 7: very fair way, and my legal team and I that's
30:49
Speaker 7: all we ever wanted.
30:50
Speaker 1: It was two years to the day after David had
30:54
Speaker 1: been exonerated.
30:55
Speaker 7: Mister Thompson touched me in a way that I don't
30:59
Speaker 7: think anybody ever would again, because mister Thompson didn't only
31:04
Speaker 7: give me my freedom. Mister Thompson, and this may sound
31:11
Speaker 7: point to some who don't believe in compassion, mister Thompson
31:15
Speaker 7: gave me my old daughter, Quinn. Because had he not
31:22
Speaker 7: did what he promised he would do, I'm not sure
31:27
Speaker 7: where I.
31:27
Speaker 2: Would be right now.
31:33
Speaker 5: David, Yes, you still see it's been a while, so
31:38
Speaker 5: you've been out now for five and a half years almost.
31:42
Speaker 5: You know, what are your hopes and dreams? And what
31:44
Speaker 5: are your hopes and dreams for Quinn?
31:46
Speaker 8: What about hopes and dreams is to become even the
31:50
Speaker 8: more effective then I think I'm pretty good at it now,
31:52
Speaker 8: but I just want to be really really good at
31:54
Speaker 8: it because I work very hard work, because it's all
31:58
Speaker 8: worth at the end of the day, and I am
32:00
Speaker 8: braced it.
32:00
Speaker 1: You know.
32:01
Speaker 8: I consider myself for hairs on Dad.
32:04
Speaker 5: She Daddy's little girl.
32:05
Speaker 8: Absolutely. I have to tell you how many times I've
32:11
Speaker 8: picked us at school that soon I come in the door.
32:13
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
32:14
Speaker 8: You know, she just runs from what else he's doing.
32:16
Speaker 8: And that's it's almost undesciable in some way when it's
32:20
Speaker 8: really really good failing up.
32:30
Speaker 1: And that's the story of David McCallum. Join us next
32:33
Speaker 1: week for the last episode in our first season, we'll
32:37
Speaker 1: tell you about one of the first modern day cases
32:39
Speaker 1: of false confession from nineteen seventy three. Peter Riley was
32:44
Speaker 1: just sixteen when he was wrongfully convicted of murdering his
32:47
Speaker 1: own mother. Peter's innocence was championed by everyone from neighborhood
32:51
Speaker 1: moms to New York celebrities. His people powered campaign for
32:55
Speaker 1: exoneration has been the inspiration for the work Steve and
32:59
Speaker 1: I do till then. Thanks for listening to wrongful conviction,
33:03
Speaker 1: false confessions, wrongful Conviction False Confessions is a production of
33:13
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
33:17
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the
33:21
Speaker 1: team at Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis
33:25
Speaker 1: Senior producer and Pope and additional production and editing by
33:28
Speaker 1: Connor Hall. Special thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script
33:32
Speaker 1: editing and for wrangling and writing like a mad woman.
33:36
Speaker 1: Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
33:39
Speaker 1: me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura.
33:41
Speaker 2: Nyriter and you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
33:46
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
33:50
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
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Speaker 1: Twitter at wrong Conviction