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#412 Jason Flom with Douglas DiLosa · Wrongful Conviction

0:04
Speaker 1: We originally released our interview with Doug de Losan November
0:07
Speaker 1: twenty eight, twenty sixteen. It was our eighth episode that
0:10
Speaker 1: we ever recorded, and Doug and I go back even
0:13
Speaker 1: further than that. So running into him at the twenty
0:15
Speaker 1: twenty three Instance Network conference was like seeing an old friend.
0:19
Speaker 1: So we caught up on everything he's been up to
0:21
Speaker 1: his organization, the first seventy two plus, which aids people
0:25
Speaker 1: in re entry to society coming out of prison. We'll
0:28
Speaker 1: have that linked in the bio, but mostly we talked
0:30
Speaker 1: about the people who do the time with the wrongfully convicted,
0:34
Speaker 1: their loved ones. Doug, it's been a long time since
0:38
Speaker 1: you came home after fourteen years of a life sentence.
0:41
Speaker 2: What's going on now? Update everybody?
0:44
Speaker 3: Well, I'm now in my twenty third year of freedom
0:47
Speaker 3: and I'm happily married. I don't know if I was
0:50
Speaker 3: married when we did the other episode. My children are
0:55
Speaker 3: even older now. My daughter, who will be forty two.
0:59
Speaker 2: This h year.
1:00
Speaker 3: She managed to graduate from college with honors, has a
1:05
Speaker 3: degree in finance. She's been working as an accountant for
1:09
Speaker 3: the same company seventeen eighteen years.
1:12
Speaker 4: Now.
1:13
Speaker 3: She's a single mom. She has my grandson who's getting
1:17
Speaker 3: ready to turn seventeen and she owns her own home.
1:21
Speaker 3: My son has married, he is living in Sacramento, California,
1:26
Speaker 3: and he's expecting twins, which I couldn't be more delighted
1:30
Speaker 3: to become a grandfather again.
1:33
Speaker 1: That's great, and it's great to hear about the new
1:36
Speaker 1: family members coming your way. But I have to ask
1:38
Speaker 1: you this, Doug So, you talked about on the podcast
1:41
Speaker 1: when we recorded it back in I think it was
1:43
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, about how when you were almost at the
1:48
Speaker 1: fourteenth year of your life sentence without parole, you had
1:52
Speaker 1: felt like you had become such a burden to your
1:54
Speaker 1: kids coming to visit you week in and week out,
1:56
Speaker 1: instead of doing the things that you hoped that they
1:58
Speaker 1: would be doing and that kids wont to be doing.
2:00
Speaker 1: Let's face it, now, your kids enduring the loss of
2:03
Speaker 1: their mother who was murdered, the ronful imprisonment of their father,
2:06
Speaker 1: and yet it seems like they have led good lives
2:10
Speaker 1: and seem to be doing good things in the world.
2:14
Speaker 2: How do you explain the fact that those kids could
2:17
Speaker 2: go through this.
2:18
Speaker 1: Double trauma and still, you know, flourish in the world.
2:23
Speaker 3: Well, I think they deserve all the credit for where
2:27
Speaker 3: they are in life today. My daughter, I couldn't be
2:31
Speaker 3: more proud of her because she's overcome so many obstacles
2:35
Speaker 3: in her life. But she says all the time, biggest
2:39
Speaker 3: thing in her life is she wished she would have
2:40
Speaker 3: had a childhood. But she's doing fantastic today. She could
2:44
Speaker 3: be happier, but you know again, I think she's done
2:48
Speaker 3: a fantastic job of helping raise herself and reaching where
2:54
Speaker 3: she has in life. As far as my son, who
2:57
Speaker 3: will turn forty five this year, my son has experienced
3:04
Speaker 3: a number of problems. I hate to say it, but
3:07
Speaker 3: there's no sense in trying to hide it. He had
3:09
Speaker 3: a terrible problem with drugs and alcohol, and he had
3:13
Speaker 3: spiraled so far out of control in his late teens
3:17
Speaker 3: and early twenties that I didn't know if I'd get
3:22
Speaker 3: a phone call any given night given me bad news
3:25
Speaker 3: regarding him. But somehow, when he reached about thirty years old,
3:30
Speaker 3: he woke up, looked at himself in the mirror and said,
3:33
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do it anymore. And he still
3:37
Speaker 3: has an occasional drink. I don't think he has a
3:39
Speaker 3: drinking problem. He doesn't do drugs. He's happily married. His
3:44
Speaker 3: wife's a doctor, moved to California, and they have twins
3:48
Speaker 3: on the way. And I guess the biggest thing I
3:51
Speaker 3: wonder is given all the credit to my son and
3:55
Speaker 3: daughter for managing to succeed in life. Where would they
3:59
Speaker 3: be today if the police hadn't framed me, the DA
4:04
Speaker 3: hadn't framed me, and they had grown up with a
4:08
Speaker 3: loving father and had some direction in life. Because they
4:12
Speaker 3: had none, they did it all on their own.
4:16
Speaker 1: And now Doug's story our eighth episode ever and one
4:20
Speaker 1: of the most powerful ones I have to say I've
4:23
Speaker 1: ever heard here.
4:24
Speaker 2: It is as it originally aired.
4:27
Speaker 4: I came from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life.
4:33
Speaker 5: I went to sleep because September seventh was the first
4:35
Speaker 5: day of my high school year. I was going to
4:37
Speaker 5: be a senior at twenty two, I was set to
4:40
Speaker 5: start college. I woke up and my life was never
4:43
Speaker 5: the same again.
4:45
Speaker 3: Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
4:48
Speaker 3: freedom ever since after that.
4:50
Speaker 5: It's like groach mode ta once you get in and
4:53
Speaker 5: I can't now.
4:56
Speaker 2: This is wrong for conviction with Jason.
4:58
Speaker 1: Klom particularly thrilled today to have as our guest, my
5:23
Speaker 1: good friend Doug Delosa.
5:24
Speaker 2: Doug, welcome to the show.
5:26
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jason.
5:27
Speaker 1: Having worked with the Nisis Project now for twenty years
5:31
Speaker 1: in my role as a founding board member, I thought
5:33
Speaker 1: I had heard everything until I heard Doug's story. So
5:37
Speaker 1: you were living in Louisiana, right.
5:40
Speaker 3: I grew up there. I was born and raised in
5:43
Speaker 3: New Orleans, Louisiana. At the time, I wasn't living in
5:48
Speaker 3: New Orleans proper, but I was living just outside of
5:51
Speaker 3: New Orleans in the city of Cana. I was married.
5:55
Speaker 3: My wife and I had been together a little over
5:57
Speaker 3: ten years. We had two beautiful children and a son
6:01
Speaker 3: who was seven at the time and a daughter who
6:05
Speaker 3: was five.
6:06
Speaker 1: Right, So you had a little yard and basically some
6:09
Speaker 1: neighbors and sort of like they we think of in
6:11
Speaker 1: New York. We think everything's a culled the sack. Right,
6:13
Speaker 1: we have this strange region know America as a series
6:15
Speaker 1: of called the sack. But basically, am I painting the
6:19
Speaker 1: right picture?
6:19
Speaker 5: Yes?
6:20
Speaker 2: Until it all went wrong?
6:22
Speaker 3: Absolutely, until that American dream turned into the American nightmare?
6:26
Speaker 1: Right, And it's a nightmare of proportions that are impossible
6:29
Speaker 1: to overstate. You were at home with your wife and kids. Right,
6:36
Speaker 1: and tell us what happened.
6:37
Speaker 3: It was a typical Friday evening in our lives. Fast
6:42
Speaker 3: forward to about two thirty in the morning on Saturday morning,
6:49
Speaker 3: September twenty seventh, and I woke up, sat up in bed.
6:55
Speaker 3: I heard a noise. The noise that I was positive
6:59
Speaker 3: I heard was our pet parrot squawking and fluttering around
7:05
Speaker 3: in its cage. I get up from bed, Tell my wife,
7:10
Speaker 3: I'm going to check on Andy. That was the name
7:12
Speaker 3: of the bird.
7:12
Speaker 2: And what was your wife's name.
7:14
Speaker 3: My wife's name was Glinda. Right, I get up, I
7:18
Speaker 3: go downstairs. As soon as I got to the foot
7:21
Speaker 3: of the stairs, one person came from the side of
7:28
Speaker 3: me out of our bathroom area, and this person immediately
7:33
Speaker 3: struck me with an object that I think was a
7:36
Speaker 3: piece of mob pandle or a broomstick. Another person came
7:41
Speaker 3: from the kitchen area and immediately knocked me to the ground.
7:46
Speaker 3: And the two individuals, I don't know how long it lasted,
7:51
Speaker 3: probably less than thirty seconds, kicked me, beat me until
7:57
Speaker 3: I lost consciousness. Sometime later I was regaining consciousness. I'm
8:05
Speaker 3: not sure how long I laid on the floor. But
8:07
Speaker 3: I realized thing that sort of frightened me. At first,
8:11
Speaker 3: I couldn't move my fans and feet were tied behind
8:14
Speaker 3: my back. I was hog tied, and I was struggling
8:18
Speaker 3: to gain consciousness and put my thought process together to
8:22
Speaker 3: figure out what had happened. And after whether it was
8:27
Speaker 3: one minute or ten minutes, I started calling for my wife.
8:32
Speaker 3: Didn't get any response at all.
8:34
Speaker 2: So you're at the foot of the stairs, at the.
8:37
Speaker 3: Foot of the stairs, inside of what would have been
8:39
Speaker 3: our den.
8:40
Speaker 2: Right, and she's and she's upstairs. She's ups upstairs.
8:45
Speaker 3: In the bedroom. Getting no response at all from my wife.
8:50
Speaker 3: I called for my seven year old son, Dennis, and
8:55
Speaker 3: on the third of the fourth call from my son,
9:00
Speaker 3: I heard him stirring upstairs. He answered me. Initially, he
9:06
Speaker 3: went into the master bedroom and I could hear him say, Daddy,
9:12
Speaker 3: where are you? I see mommy, but she's sleeping, and
9:17
Speaker 3: I said, Daddy's downstairs, Please come downstairs. He came downstairs
9:24
Speaker 3: and I told him, Dennis, two bad men had broken
9:29
Speaker 3: in the house and they hurt Daddy. But I'm gonna
9:31
Speaker 3: be all right. I need you to untie my hands.
9:35
Speaker 3: He couldn't untie my hands. Because the rope was tied
9:38
Speaker 3: so tightly. Then I asked him to go in the kitchen,
9:42
Speaker 3: please get a knife and try to cut the rope.
9:46
Speaker 3: He came back with a knife, but he was panicking
9:49
Speaker 3: because he said, Daddy, I'm scared because I can see
9:53
Speaker 3: four legs under the blind or the curtain in the
10:00
Speaker 3: kitchen leading out to the patio. I can see people
10:03
Speaker 3: standing on the patio, and I'm afraid it's the bad
10:05
Speaker 3: men that hurt you. And I sort of panicked myself then,
10:10
Speaker 3: and I said, Dennis, pick up the phone. The phone
10:13
Speaker 3: was right there on the landing of the stairs. I said,
10:18
Speaker 3: dial nine one one, and he immediately picked up the phone,
10:23
Speaker 3: dial nine one one. He says, what do I say?
10:27
Speaker 3: And I said, just tell him you need help, that
10:31
Speaker 3: your daddy's hurt. And you had seen two men standing
10:37
Speaker 3: on the patio. I don't think he told them that
10:40
Speaker 3: exact anyway, he got their attention, and within minutes police
10:44
Speaker 3: arrived on the scene.
10:47
Speaker 1: And then the police arrive on the scene, and then
10:49
Speaker 1: this is where things start to really get crazy, right,
10:52
Speaker 1: because it seems like a pretty simple situation.
10:55
Speaker 2: You're hog tied, right.
10:56
Speaker 3: The police enter. The first thing, one of them does
10:59
Speaker 3: is kneel down next to me, ask me if I'm
11:03
Speaker 3: all right. I guess I basically tell him, yeah, I'm fine.
11:08
Speaker 3: He doesn't untime, he doesn't do anything, and I hear
11:13
Speaker 3: another officer goes upstairs, and at that point in time,
11:19
Speaker 3: the next thing I hear him is kicking the door
11:22
Speaker 3: off the hinges. And it turned out that after my
11:26
Speaker 3: son had gone in the bedroom when I called him
11:31
Speaker 3: and he found his mother what he described as being asleep,
11:35
Speaker 3: he must have pulled the door shut behind him and
11:38
Speaker 3: it just automatically locked.
11:42
Speaker 2: So he kicks in the door.
11:45
Speaker 3: He kicks in the door. When he kicks in the door,
11:48
Speaker 3: he really startles my daughter, who's in the bedroom next door,
11:52
Speaker 3: and she starts crying hysterically. And at that point then
11:56
Speaker 3: my son starts crying hysterically. And I'm getting pretty hysterical myself.
12:01
Speaker 3: Laying on the floor. I'm still hog tied, and I'm
12:04
Speaker 3: telling you what's going on, what's going on, And policemen
12:08
Speaker 3: is trying to restrain me and keep me on the ground.
12:12
Speaker 2: Which is not that hard.
12:13
Speaker 3: You're but go ahead, and I'm like, and he says,
12:16
Speaker 3: don't worry, Everything'll be fine, And I mean within moments,
12:22
Speaker 3: it seems like ambulance attendants arrived on the scene. I
12:27
Speaker 3: couldn't hear exactly what they were being told, but they
12:30
Speaker 3: were being told something about my wife was in the
12:33
Speaker 3: bedroom upstairs, and that somebody needed to get my daughter
12:37
Speaker 3: and bring a downstairs, which they did. And again I
12:41
Speaker 3: don't know how much time was elapsing, but at some
12:45
Speaker 3: point in time, more police officers arrived on the scene.
12:50
Speaker 3: Eventually someone cut me free. Moments after they cut me free,
12:59
Speaker 3: they told me that that I would have to be
13:03
Speaker 3: taken to the emergency room, and that the other paramedic
13:07
Speaker 3: team was working on my wife and I'd see her there.
13:12
Speaker 3: And also at some point in time they asked me
13:17
Speaker 3: if there was anybody that they could call to take
13:20
Speaker 3: care of my children. I'm being treated in the emergency room.
13:27
Speaker 3: I don't know how much later again, was it ten
13:31
Speaker 3: or fifteen minutes? Was it an hour later? My brother
13:35
Speaker 3: and a priest come into the emergency room, and they
13:39
Speaker 3: informed me that my wife had been killed.
13:43
Speaker 1: And at this point, you're I mean, you've just been
13:45
Speaker 1: through an impossibly traumatic experience and now you're getting hit
13:50
Speaker 1: with this news and the whole world must be collapsing
13:54
Speaker 1: around you.
13:54
Speaker 3: At this point in time, it was pretty hard to
13:58
Speaker 3: believe what I was being told. I think I almost
14:02
Speaker 3: went in the shock when they told me my wife
14:05
Speaker 3: had been killed, And I mean, I just can't process
14:09
Speaker 3: what I'm being told and come up with any logical
14:13
Speaker 3: reason why it had happened.
14:16
Speaker 1: And then you get back with your kids and try
14:22
Speaker 1: to piece things back together. You had given the police
14:25
Speaker 1: the information that they wanted right about it, basically the story.
14:28
Speaker 2: That you just told us.
14:29
Speaker 3: I had recalled everything I could remember to the police.
14:35
Speaker 1: Except for when you were unconscious, of course, which was
14:37
Speaker 1: that's the only missing part. And then they were having
14:41
Speaker 1: trouble solving the case.
14:43
Speaker 3: Right There had been considerable criticism of the police department
14:49
Speaker 3: for not solving having any viable leads in this case,
14:54
Speaker 3: demanding to know from the police chief what were they doing,
14:57
Speaker 3: how were they protecting the neighborhood. I had gotten a
15:01
Speaker 3: little bit vocal, and I probably said on more than
15:05
Speaker 3: one occasion, all of these stupid son of a bitches
15:08
Speaker 3: need to be fired because they don't appear to know
15:11
Speaker 3: what they're doing. Their actions were, in my mind, reminiscent
15:16
Speaker 3: of the old Keystone cops in slapstick comedies because they
15:22
Speaker 3: just didn't appear to be very.
15:23
Speaker 1: Bright, right, Okay, And so obviously the police, you know,
15:29
Speaker 1: they're feeling a lot of pressure and they're feeling a
15:32
Speaker 1: little they're getting their back up about this, right, right.
15:35
Speaker 1: So then comes the craziest part, in some ways the
15:39
Speaker 1: craziest part of the story, right, which is that now
15:41
Speaker 1: we're three months from the day to the crime basically.
15:44
Speaker 3: Right, we're now the morning of December twenty ninth.
15:49
Speaker 2: I was it's hot, it's hot in.
15:52
Speaker 3: It's very warm in Louisiana. I'm deciding I'm going to
15:56
Speaker 3: put out the Christmas tree. It's starting. It was a
15:59
Speaker 3: live tree. It's starting to drop needles all over. So
16:04
Speaker 3: I tell my children, I'll be right back. I'm just
16:06
Speaker 3: going to put the Christmas tree out for the trash.
16:09
Speaker 3: I've got a pair of cutoff jeans on, nothing else.
16:12
Speaker 3: And as I'm putting the tree in the back of
16:15
Speaker 3: my house by the curve for the trash, I hear
16:18
Speaker 3: Doug Delosa turn around, and I sort of turn around
16:23
Speaker 3: and I'm like almost in shock. I have no idea
16:29
Speaker 3: how many police officers are there, at minimum of six,
16:33
Speaker 3: maybe ten or more. I have many. No idea how
16:37
Speaker 3: many news cameras are there. Probably as many personnel were
16:42
Speaker 3: there as there were police officers pointing cameras at me,
16:47
Speaker 3: and the police pointing guns at me, and they say,
16:50
Speaker 3: you know why we're here. We're here to rest you
16:53
Speaker 3: for the murder or your wife. And I'm just like
16:56
Speaker 3: thinking to myself, this can't be true. This nightmare just
17:01
Speaker 3: keeps getting worse and worse. I knew that I had
17:05
Speaker 3: been labeled to suspect, but I never, in my wildest imagination,
17:11
Speaker 3: thought that it would evolve into an arrest. I'm not
17:15
Speaker 3: dressed except for with a pair of cutoffs on. My
17:17
Speaker 3: children are in their pajamas, and I asked the one detective,
17:22
Speaker 3: could I please go dress my children and call somebody
17:26
Speaker 3: to take them well. As I was changing their clothes,
17:31
Speaker 3: I turned to this man who couldn't have been more
17:34
Speaker 3: than two to three feet away from me, standing right
17:37
Speaker 3: in my face, and I asked him. I said, detective Dote,
17:41
Speaker 3: why are you doing this to me? Why are you
17:44
Speaker 3: doing this to my children? You know that I didn't
17:47
Speaker 3: kill my wife, and this police officer, when I asked
17:53
Speaker 3: him that question, he had the look of a wild
17:56
Speaker 3: man on his face, and he almost I don't know
17:59
Speaker 3: how to describe it. His voice was almost venomous, and
18:05
Speaker 3: he says, man, fuck you, fuck your children, and fuck
18:10
Speaker 3: that dead wife of yours. I didn't ask that stupid
18:13
Speaker 3: bitch to die in my city. And he goes on
18:17
Speaker 3: to say, he says, why should I give a fuck
18:20
Speaker 3: about you or your children? Do you care about me
18:22
Speaker 3: and my children? My job's on the line, and he said,
18:26
Speaker 3: you have asked that I be terminated in competence. Well,
18:32
Speaker 3: you know what, I don't know who did it. Maybe
18:35
Speaker 3: I know you didn't do it, but I can build
18:38
Speaker 3: the case against you. So you're it.
18:40
Speaker 1: So you're you know, you go to trial, and well
18:47
Speaker 1: they withheld several critical pieces of evidence from the defense,
18:51
Speaker 1: that which is called a Brady violation, which which would
18:53
Speaker 1: have excluded you and would have led to you being
18:57
Speaker 1: found innocent. Do you want to talk about the trial?
19:02
Speaker 3: From start to finish, nine days had passed, and from
19:07
Speaker 3: the very beginning, the two district attorneys prosecuting me told
19:12
Speaker 3: the jury that they were never going to hear any
19:15
Speaker 3: direct evidence that tied me to this crime. That basically
19:20
Speaker 3: what they were trying to convict me on was a
19:23
Speaker 3: theory of how I did it and why I did it,
19:28
Speaker 3: and what was going to be important to the jury
19:33
Speaker 3: to find me guilty was that I had no evidence
19:37
Speaker 3: to support my story that two black men broke into
19:42
Speaker 3: my house that night, beat me unconscious, hog tied me,
19:47
Speaker 3: and at some point in time killed my wife.
19:50
Speaker 1: Right now, But the reason we know that you couldn't
19:52
Speaker 1: provide any proof is because they were withholding the proof
19:55
Speaker 1: that they had. They had the investigators. You didn't have investigators.
19:57
Speaker 1: They had all the guys sweeping the and doing the
20:00
Speaker 1: whole thing exactly.
20:02
Speaker 3: There were fingerprints found in several places throughout the house
20:07
Speaker 3: that didn't belong to me, any of my family members,
20:11
Speaker 3: any of our friends, anyone any member of the investigative
20:16
Speaker 3: team that had all been ruled out, and these fingerprints
20:20
Speaker 3: found throughout the house belonged to someone. But we have
20:25
Speaker 3: no idea who they belonged to.
20:27
Speaker 2: But they didn't tell you that.
20:28
Speaker 3: No, their fingerprint expert committed perjury on the stand when
20:32
Speaker 3: he said absolutely no other fingerprints were found in the house.
20:38
Speaker 1: Can we talk about the cab driver for a second,
20:40
Speaker 1: because that's one to me, that's one that's always stuck
20:42
Speaker 1: in my mind.
20:43
Speaker 2: That's really you know.
20:44
Speaker 3: Sometime after I was arrested, well, actually, let's back up
20:50
Speaker 3: to right after my wife's funeral, three days after the murder,
20:56
Speaker 3: a taxi driver came forward to the can of Police
21:00
Speaker 3: department and he said, I think I may have some
21:05
Speaker 3: testimony that would help you catch the people who killed
21:08
Speaker 3: this lady, meaning my wife. And as the story goes
21:16
Speaker 3: in his written deposition to the police, he was dropping
21:20
Speaker 3: off affair in that neighborhood, which at that time was
21:24
Speaker 3: exclusively white. There would have been no reason whatsoever to
21:29
Speaker 3: have seen blacks in that particular neighborhood.
21:33
Speaker 2: At least aboot three in the morning.
21:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, least of all at three to four o'clock in
21:37
Speaker 3: the morning. And he goes on to give in his
21:40
Speaker 3: written deposition that as he was driving down this one street,
21:46
Speaker 3: he saw two black men leaving the vicinity of the
21:51
Speaker 3: front of my house carrying what would have fit the
21:55
Speaker 3: description of some of the items I told police were
21:58
Speaker 3: taken from my house. And he says that as his
22:02
Speaker 3: lights shone on the two men, it appeared that they panicked.
22:07
Speaker 3: They ran to a silver van that was waiting, and
22:11
Speaker 3: they sped off in a reckless manner and he found
22:15
Speaker 3: that very unusual and thought it was important to bring
22:17
Speaker 3: that testimony to the police, which he did.
22:21
Speaker 2: As it was, but they, of course withheld that from.
22:24
Speaker 3: The defense illegally. They withheld that and said that there
22:27
Speaker 3: was nobody had ever seen anything regarding any black men
22:34
Speaker 3: in that neighborhood, much less in the vicinity of my home.
22:38
Speaker 3: Now fast forward another six to seven months, I'm at
22:41
Speaker 3: trial this you know, good citizen is reading in the
22:47
Speaker 3: newspaper and hearing on the TV that I'm undergoing a
22:51
Speaker 3: trial for the murder of my wife. Well, he just
22:54
Speaker 3: doesn't understand, and at this point he doesn't trust the
22:56
Speaker 3: police because he's already gone to the police twice. So
23:00
Speaker 3: he shows up at the courthouse somehow manages to talk
23:03
Speaker 3: to one of the two or maybe perhaps both, of
23:06
Speaker 3: the district attorneys who were trying the case, and he
23:10
Speaker 3: tells his story to them, and they very nonchalantly brush
23:16
Speaker 3: him off and said, oh, don't worry. We presented your
23:21
Speaker 3: written statement to mister Dolosa's attorney. He reviewed it, but
23:26
Speaker 3: in light of the overwhelming evidence against him, he knows
23:31
Speaker 3: that your testimony wouldn't do any good, so he decided
23:35
Speaker 3: not to call you as a witness, which was a
23:37
Speaker 3: total lie. They hadn't given any of that information to
23:41
Speaker 3: my attorney. And one of the biggest parts of their
23:44
Speaker 3: case was over and over again they repeated to the jury,
23:49
Speaker 3: no one repeat, no one saw anything suspicious in that
23:54
Speaker 3: neighborhood that night, much less two black men. And that's
23:59
Speaker 3: why you must find mister Dolosa guilty because he was lying.
24:16
Speaker 1: The jury comes back, they find you guilty and sends
24:20
Speaker 1: you to life in prison. Now, the only thing that
24:22
Speaker 1: can make it worse is they're going to send you
24:24
Speaker 1: to what is arguably the worst prison in America, in Louisiana,
24:29
Speaker 1: which is the state which has the highest prison population
24:31
Speaker 1: by far. Louisiana does have three times higher rate of
24:35
Speaker 1: incarceration than the rest of the country per capita, and
24:38
Speaker 1: of course America has a five times higher rate than
24:40
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. So it's off the chain.
24:43
Speaker 1: But now you're being sent to Angola prison farm, and
24:48
Speaker 1: let's talk about that.
24:49
Speaker 3: Well. Arriving at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which they call Angola,
24:55
Speaker 3: it was beyond culture shock. I didn't know what to expect.
24:59
Speaker 3: I'd heard numerous rumors that scared the hell out of me.
25:05
Speaker 3: But I arrived at Angola and one of the first
25:09
Speaker 3: things that I guess was really strange was they put
25:14
Speaker 3: you in an initial classification to decide where you're going
25:17
Speaker 3: to be housed. And I'm going before these classification officers
25:23
Speaker 3: and they decide that they're going to put me in
25:25
Speaker 3: a working cell block for my protection rather than general population.
25:31
Speaker 3: And then they make a statement that's pretty odd. They
25:34
Speaker 3: said that they don't have a white cell available to
25:37
Speaker 3: put me in, so I'd have to be sent to
25:42
Speaker 3: a security cell while they prepare a white cell. And
25:47
Speaker 3: I'm like, what the hell is a white cell. At
25:50
Speaker 3: that time, they still believed in segregating the white and
25:54
Speaker 3: black prisoners at Angola. They didn't mix and blacks in
26:00
Speaker 3: the same cell. But my very first night in Angola,
26:08
Speaker 3: I'm in a disciplinary tier and I'm in a cell
26:12
Speaker 3: and there's someone down the tier in another cell acting up,
26:19
Speaker 3: and at some point in time he throws human waste
26:22
Speaker 3: on a security guard, and I'm just like, scared shitless.
26:26
Speaker 3: I don't know what's going on. Their guards would appear
26:31
Speaker 3: to be swat uniforms and riot shields and everything. Coming
26:36
Speaker 3: down the tier. They're dragging this person out by force.
26:41
Speaker 3: They're beating him, and I guess I'm curious. I'm sort
26:44
Speaker 3: of looking, you know. I guess maybe I should have
26:48
Speaker 3: known better than to try to look. When one of
26:51
Speaker 3: the gods saw me looking, he's like, what the fuck
26:55
Speaker 3: are you looking at? He turns around and sprayed me
26:58
Speaker 3: with a pepper spray of mace for about twenty thirty seconds.
27:03
Speaker 2: Wow.
27:03
Speaker 3: And the only thing I knew was my lungs were burning,
27:07
Speaker 3: my face was burning, and it was sort of like
27:09
Speaker 3: a welcomed angola. That was my first night in the penitentiary.
27:13
Speaker 1: So and then things get even crazier. So you end
27:17
Speaker 1: up working on a chain gang.
27:20
Speaker 2: Is that right?
27:21
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know that chain gang is a
27:24
Speaker 3: little bit misleading because we're not actually linked by chains.
27:28
Speaker 2: Right, But it's a term that applies.
27:30
Speaker 3: To It's a group of inmates working under the supervision
27:38
Speaker 3: of gun guards on horses in the swamps. It could
27:43
Speaker 3: be swamps, it could be anywhere on the farm.
27:47
Speaker 1: Here's a clip where Burl Caine, the warden, talks about
27:50
Speaker 1: the infamous history of Louisiana State Penitentiary.
27:53
Speaker 6: The work in the farm is critical angela. That's what
27:55
Speaker 6: it is. It's a plantation in prison. It was that
27:57
Speaker 6: way throughout its entire history important that we have agriculture
28:01
Speaker 6: here on the farm that provide work for the innate,
28:03
Speaker 6: which you know is good for them because they have
28:06
Speaker 6: something to do to use after energy and so forth.
28:09
Speaker 3: It turned out that I was working in what they
28:14
Speaker 3: called camp a Line twenty one under one of the
28:17
Speaker 3: most vicious inhuman farm bosses that Angola had at the time,
28:26
Speaker 3: and I found it difficult at my age and my
28:31
Speaker 3: physical condition to keep up with the average man who
28:34
Speaker 3: was only in their early twenties and I'm thirty seven
28:38
Speaker 3: thirty eight years old at this time in horrible shape.
28:42
Speaker 3: But one of the things that this particular field foreman
28:48
Speaker 3: used to enjoy doing to torment the people under his supervision.
28:54
Speaker 3: He would put us, say on the levee cutting high
28:58
Speaker 3: grass with what they called ditch bank blade, which is
29:01
Speaker 3: it's impossible to describe on air, but it's this huge,
29:05
Speaker 3: heavy cutting blade. And what he would do is they
29:10
Speaker 3: might have been close to one hundred men in the line.
29:14
Speaker 3: He would put us up on the levee and there
29:17
Speaker 3: would be two inmates with a water bucket, and he'd
29:21
Speaker 3: tell the people with the water bucket. I want y'all
29:24
Speaker 3: to move about a mile down the road with the
29:29
Speaker 3: gun guard supervising you, and he said, y'all keep moving
29:33
Speaker 3: that water bucket and don't let anybody have water, because
29:37
Speaker 3: it says until ten people pass out from the heat,
29:42
Speaker 3: I'm not letting anybody drink water. And that was a
29:46
Speaker 3: typical day working for this man mac Shaw, where he
29:49
Speaker 3: would see people pass out fall out, as we'd say,
29:54
Speaker 3: from heat stroke, heat exhaustion, from lack of water, and
29:59
Speaker 3: once a whatever number he arbitrarily determined he wanted to
30:03
Speaker 3: pass out and be carried off in the back of
30:05
Speaker 3: a truck for disciplinary purposes. Then he'd let everybody else
30:12
Speaker 3: have a drink of water.
30:14
Speaker 1: And then things got really crazy because at one point
30:18
Speaker 1: you were singled out.
30:20
Speaker 3: It was at more than one point, I mean, it
30:22
Speaker 3: seemed it was something that happened day after day, every
30:27
Speaker 3: time I'd go in the field. I never had the
30:32
Speaker 3: distinction of being one of the people. I guess I
30:34
Speaker 3: was fortunate enough that I could go without drinking water
30:38
Speaker 3: longer than other people that I might not be one
30:41
Speaker 3: of the first five to ten people to pass out
30:43
Speaker 3: from heatstroke and lack of water. But I certainly wasn't
30:49
Speaker 3: keeping up with the work quote according to this field form,
30:52
Speaker 3: and he would just almost every day that I went
30:56
Speaker 3: to work, he would write me up on a disciplinary report,
31:00
Speaker 3: lock me up in administrative segregation to be disciplined by
31:04
Speaker 3: the disciplinary court. They would hear my case and say
31:09
Speaker 3: it would say something like I flatly refused to work. Well,
31:12
Speaker 3: I never ever flatly refused to work. I simply worked
31:17
Speaker 3: until I couldn't work anymore, or I worked at the
31:20
Speaker 3: fastest pace I was capable of. But the field foreman
31:25
Speaker 3: never wrote the truth on a disciplinary report, and the
31:29
Speaker 3: disciplinary board that helped court, they didn't. They knew what
31:33
Speaker 3: the truth was, but they would just continue to stack
31:36
Speaker 3: punishment on you, and I'd be sent back out to work.
31:41
Speaker 1: It's it's just I don't I can't even I can't
31:46
Speaker 1: find any words. The good news is you're a smart guy.
31:49
Speaker 1: You're a guy of an educated guy, somebody who can
31:53
Speaker 1: can really think for himself.
31:55
Speaker 2: So you get to the point.
31:57
Speaker 1: Where you realize, if you're going to get out, you're
31:59
Speaker 1: going to have to be the one to do it.
32:00
Speaker 2: Is that a fair statement?
32:01
Speaker 3: That absolutely? And I would say that I worked as
32:05
Speaker 3: a clerk in an air conditioned office in the print
32:08
Speaker 3: shop silkscreen shop at Angola for a little bit over
32:12
Speaker 3: a year, but I knew I my ultimate goal was
32:16
Speaker 3: I want to get the hell out of prison. And
32:19
Speaker 3: everybody that I associated with said, you know, you'd probably
32:25
Speaker 3: be better off going to be what they call an
32:27
Speaker 3: inmate council substitute or prison lawyer working in the law library,
32:35
Speaker 3: and I finally decided I'd apply for that job. I
32:39
Speaker 3: did end up with a job over there, and over
32:42
Speaker 3: the next several years, I learned the law. I think
32:49
Speaker 3: I became pretty proficient with it. And after I had
32:53
Speaker 3: exhausted all of my appeals in state court, after I
32:57
Speaker 3: had gone through hundreds of thousands of dollars on about
33:01
Speaker 3: seven different lawyers who all promised to do something, but
33:05
Speaker 3: no one followed through and did what I hired him
33:09
Speaker 3: to do, I finally sat back, spent six months researching
33:15
Speaker 3: and another two to three months writing my own federal
33:18
Speaker 3: writ one hundred percent on my own or with having
33:22
Speaker 3: other inmate counsels review it give me their critique. I
33:29
Speaker 3: filed my rit a Habeas Corpus into the federal court
33:34
Speaker 3: system on my own. I didn't know what my chances
33:38
Speaker 3: were going to bed. I figured slim to none at best,
33:42
Speaker 3: but I felt like, at this point in time, if
33:47
Speaker 3: I'm denied, I'm going to be denied on my own terms,
33:50
Speaker 3: and I'll have given it my best shot. Finally, one
34:06
Speaker 3: day they call me for legal mail. So I get
34:12
Speaker 3: up at like five o'clock in the morning, go eat breakfast.
34:16
Speaker 3: I went to the window where they pass out the
34:20
Speaker 3: legal mail. They had me a little brown envelope and
34:23
Speaker 3: I was scared shitless to open it.
34:25
Speaker 1: I'm like, because if if it's if it's the wrong answer,
34:29
Speaker 1: you're done.
34:29
Speaker 2: This is your last appeal, right.
34:31
Speaker 3: It's the wrong answer. I had a plan to escape
34:33
Speaker 3: from Angola, and my escape from Mangola was I had
34:37
Speaker 3: enough drugs in my possession hidden that probably within twenty
34:43
Speaker 3: four hours, I was gonna od and that's how I
34:46
Speaker 3: was going to get out of prison. And that had
34:47
Speaker 3: been something I had planned for months, anticipating a negative
34:52
Speaker 3: response from the court.
34:53
Speaker 1: So I'm getting the chills right now. So you've got
34:55
Speaker 1: this envelope and it's gonna it's gonna basically tell you
34:59
Speaker 1: whether you're gonna will ever die. At this point, you've
35:01
Speaker 1: been in prison for fourteen years, fourteen years. It's been
35:04
Speaker 1: a long time, exactly. I'd put up with as much
35:08
Speaker 1: as I felt like I could live with. And I
35:11
Speaker 1: felt like my children were getting up in age, and
35:15
Speaker 1: as much as I love them, as much as I
35:17
Speaker 1: felt that they loved me, they continue to visit me
35:20
Speaker 1: almost every opportunity that they got. I felt I was
35:24
Speaker 1: doing them a disservice by having them come to visit
35:29
Speaker 1: me in prison, by having them try to explain to
35:33
Speaker 1: their friends in college, well, why can't you hang out
35:38
Speaker 1: with us this weekend? Oh, because I'm going to the
35:41
Speaker 1: penitentiary to see my dad. And I think I probably
35:47
Speaker 1: was looking at it the wrong way, and I know
35:50
Speaker 1: I would have heard them tremendously, but I felt like
35:53
Speaker 1: the best thing for myself and for my children in
35:56
Speaker 1: the long run.
35:57
Speaker 3: Was to take my life.
35:59
Speaker 2: Fortunately it to that.
36:00
Speaker 1: Because you're sitting here now, and so you've got this envelope,
36:04
Speaker 1: what do you do?
36:05
Speaker 2: Do you open it?
36:06
Speaker 3: I went to the law library where I worked, and
36:10
Speaker 3: I locked it in the bottom cabinet. I'm like, I'm
36:13
Speaker 3: the only person here this early in the morning. I
36:16
Speaker 3: just need somebody else around me. When I opened this up,
36:20
Speaker 3: So about half hour forty five minutes later, a couple
36:25
Speaker 3: of my close friends that work in the law library
36:28
Speaker 3: lived around me. They came in and I told my
36:33
Speaker 3: one friend, Mike Singletary, who was my closest friend in
36:37
Speaker 3: the law library at that time. I said, Mike, I
36:40
Speaker 3: got my decision from the federal court. And he says, well,
36:43
Speaker 3: what's it say? I said, I don't know, Mike, I
36:45
Speaker 3: don't have the nerve to open it. And he says,
36:48
Speaker 3: oh my god, he said, come on, give me that envelope.
36:51
Speaker 3: I'll open it for you. So I said, yeah, but
36:54
Speaker 3: I said he took it out of my hands. After
36:56
Speaker 3: I got it out the cabinet, he opened it. I said,
36:59
Speaker 3: now let me read that, Mike, don't so I took
37:02
Speaker 3: a couple of big, deep breaths uh. And I don't
37:06
Speaker 3: know how. My heart was probably beaten two hundred beats
37:08
Speaker 3: a minute, and I was shaking, and nine is right now,
37:12
Speaker 3: and I know the aser and I opened the UH
37:16
Speaker 3: writ to the last page, and all of a sudden,
37:20
Speaker 3: I just stopped shaking, and I guess sort of a
37:25
Speaker 3: smile came over my face, and for the first time
37:29
Speaker 3: since my wife's funeral, I cried. I started crying almost
37:34
Speaker 3: uncontrollably when I read that the magistrate judge recommended that
37:40
Speaker 3: my conviction be set aside and that I'll be you know, freed.
37:46
Speaker 3: I just, against all odds, I went up against the
37:50
Speaker 3: most conservative federal magistrate in the Eastern District for the
37:55
Speaker 3: State of Louisiana, who, according to what I had been told,
37:59
Speaker 3: had never before granted a writ filed by an inmate
38:04
Speaker 3: on their room. Behalf.
38:06
Speaker 1: That's a happy ending to an incredibly terrible saga. And
38:12
Speaker 1: you're back and I've gotten to know you well. Doug
38:16
Speaker 1: is now working closely with the Rising Foundation in New Orleans,
38:22
Speaker 1: helping other exoneries to rebuild their lives on the outside,
38:27
Speaker 1: using the skills that he has to help them with
38:30
Speaker 1: everything from you know, you name a job applications to
38:34
Speaker 1: tax problems to building their houses to you know, fixing things,
38:41
Speaker 1: getting employment. He's he's become a tremendous advocate for not
38:48
Speaker 1: only the Innocence Project and innocence projects, although in your
38:51
Speaker 1: case you represented yourself, but really somebody who has devoted
38:56
Speaker 1: himself to helping others, which is quite an extraordinary thing.
39:02
Speaker 1: It makes me really so proud to know you and
39:06
Speaker 1: to be a part of your life. It's important to
39:09
Speaker 1: note in all of this that the compensation that you
39:14
Speaker 1: were given ultimately by the state was paltry, to say
39:17
Speaker 1: the least, right because people ask me all the time, well,
39:19
Speaker 1: these guys must get they must get millions of dollars
39:21
Speaker 1: when they get out. I mean, after what you went
39:23
Speaker 1: through fourteen years in Angola prison and all the stuff,
39:27
Speaker 1: almost being beaten to death, all the other indignities that
39:30
Speaker 1: you suffered, and the fact that you were so egregiously framed.
39:34
Speaker 3: The compensation in the state of Louisiana allows for twenty
39:40
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars a year for a maximum of ten
39:43
Speaker 3: years of incarceration. It's doled out at twenty five thousand
39:49
Speaker 3: dollars a year over ten years, which gives a person
39:55
Speaker 3: barely enough to exist on if you have a very
39:58
Speaker 3: modest lifestyle for ten years. But the other thing, I mean,
40:04
Speaker 3: in my case, it fell short one hundred and thirty
40:11
Speaker 3: seven thousand dollars short of my actual expenses, so I
40:17
Speaker 3: didn't even recoup what I spent.
40:19
Speaker 2: Right, because you had actually spent the money on.
40:21
Speaker 3: Attorneys on my legal defense.
40:25
Speaker 1: You basically paid ten thousand dollars a year to be
40:28
Speaker 1: locked up for fourteen.
40:29
Speaker 2: Years is what it comes down to.
40:30
Speaker 3: That's about what it comes down to.
40:32
Speaker 1: It's important to note that there are twenty states that
40:34
Speaker 1: have no compensation statutes, and the ones that do have
40:36
Speaker 1: compensation statutes, some of them are even worse than Louisiana,
40:40
Speaker 1: like Wisconsin.
40:41
Speaker 3: You know, people think that, oh, you were proven that
40:44
Speaker 3: you were wrongfully convicted, you must have gotten millions. Well no,
40:49
Speaker 3: I'm still struggle to this day. I was never able
40:53
Speaker 3: to repay my children for selling their interest in their
40:58
Speaker 3: family homes so I could hire that lust attorney. And
41:02
Speaker 3: it's just not right, not just for me, but for
41:05
Speaker 3: all of the men in Louisiana and elsewhere too, and elsewhere.
41:10
Speaker 1: According to the National Registry of his Honerations, there have
41:12
Speaker 1: been forty six exonerations in Louisiana since nineteen eighty nine,
41:15
Speaker 1: and a quarter them occurred in Jefferson County, the same
41:18
Speaker 1: office that prosecuted you. The sad truth is that there's
41:22
Speaker 1: probably hundreds, if not thousands of other Doug deloss in
41:26
Speaker 1: Louisiana alone. It's certainly around the country, and I can
41:30
Speaker 1: tell you that we won't stop until we exonerate as
41:34
Speaker 1: many of them as we possibly can.
41:42
Speaker 2: People say to me, you know my work, I think
41:43
Speaker 2: it's inspired.
41:44
Speaker 1: They say, what that? But prosecutors they don't lie that.
41:46
Speaker 1: People don't understand like it's it's it's Unfortunately, it's common,
41:50
Speaker 1: which is why we asked Nina Morrison to join us
41:53
Speaker 1: in the studio today. Welcome to Ronful Conviction with Jason
41:56
Speaker 1: Flommer's good.
41:56
Speaker 2: To have you here. Thank you, good to be here.
41:59
Speaker 1: So Nina is the your staff attorney at the Innocence Project.
42:02
Speaker 1: She litigates claims for access to post conviction DNA evidence
42:06
Speaker 1: under both federal civil rights laws and state DNA testing statutes.
42:11
Speaker 1: To date, Ms Morrison has served as lead or co
42:14
Speaker 1: counsel for more than twenty innocent prisoners who were freed
42:17
Speaker 1: from prison or even death row based on DNA or
42:21
Speaker 1: other newly discovered evidence. So, can you explain to us
42:24
Speaker 1: what exactly is a Brady violation? We talk about it
42:27
Speaker 1: a lot.
42:27
Speaker 2: On the show.
42:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, a Brady violation is where a prosecutor doesn't
42:34
Speaker 4: give the defense evidence that either the prosecutor or the
42:38
Speaker 4: police or some other agent of the state like a
42:40
Speaker 4: crime lab has that is favorable to the defendant's case.
42:45
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's proof of their innocence. You know, another suspect
42:49
Speaker 4: who was seen in the area, somebody else who admitted
42:51
Speaker 4: to the crime. Sometimes it's evidence that shows that a witness,
42:56
Speaker 4: you know, who claimed to be an eyewitness, was you know,
42:59
Speaker 4: high out of their minds that night according to five
43:01
Speaker 4: other people, or couldn't have seen what they said they said.
43:04
Speaker 4: There's a whole array of stuff. It's basically anything that
43:06
Speaker 4: helps the defense. And it's a strange system when you
43:09
Speaker 4: think about it, because you know, prosecutors and defense layers
43:13
Speaker 4: go into court, they're fighting hard in these big murder
43:15
Speaker 4: cases or rape cases or other hard fought criminal trials,
43:19
Speaker 4: and the way the law is set up is the
43:21
Speaker 4: prosecutor has to give the other side something voluntarily that
43:25
Speaker 4: might make them lose, and we trust them in most
43:28
Speaker 4: places to turn it over, so they say, I'm fulfilling
43:31
Speaker 4: my Brady obligations, and there's no check on it until
43:34
Speaker 4: after the case is over, and sometimes not even then until.
43:37
Speaker 2: It's literally too late.
43:38
Speaker 1: And this leaves a very wide lane open for the
43:43
Speaker 1: bad actors in the system, the bad prosecutors to do
43:47
Speaker 1: what they feel like on a given day, and to
43:49
Speaker 1: really railroad people who are just regular people like you
43:54
Speaker 1: and I who get find themselves stuck in this nightmare.
43:57
Speaker 1: People like Doug Delosa.
43:58
Speaker 4: Yeah so, and they're even worse news in terms of
44:01
Speaker 4: how it gets dealt with after the trial. Because if
44:04
Speaker 4: you discover that a prosecutor in your case withheld Brady
44:07
Speaker 4: material something favorable to you, your conviction doesn't automatically get reversed.
44:12
Speaker 4: You then, according to US Supreme Court case law, have
44:16
Speaker 4: to show an appeals court that the violation is what
44:20
Speaker 4: the courts call material, which means it actually made a difference.
44:24
Speaker 4: So you basically have to come in after the fact
44:26
Speaker 4: when a jury never heard this information, a witness was
44:29
Speaker 4: never cross examined on it, and say, you know, Judge,
44:31
Speaker 4: if I'd had this, I would have argued this. I
44:34
Speaker 4: would have said that the jury wouldn't have believed this person.
44:37
Speaker 4: And here's why you have to kind of have a
44:40
Speaker 4: mental do over a hypothetical due over of the trial.
44:43
Speaker 4: And if they say, eh, you know, it made a difference, maybe,
44:46
Speaker 4: but we don't know, it might not necessarily have made
44:49
Speaker 4: a difference in the outcome. So it's what's called harmless error.
44:53
Speaker 1: So, Nina, I wanted to ask you how common are
44:55
Speaker 1: these Brady violations it you know, we.
44:57
Speaker 4: Don't know because by definition, men of them are hidden.
45:01
Speaker 4: We know that we have seen them in a very
45:03
Speaker 4: significant proportion of our cases. You know, there's at least
45:08
Speaker 4: fifteen featured cases on the Innocence Project website just from
45:10
Speaker 4: the last few years that involve serious Brady violations which
45:15
Speaker 4: we uncover in the course of investigating a client's other
45:18
Speaker 4: claim of innocence. And there is no scientific way to
45:22
Speaker 4: study them because by definition, there are things that haven't
45:24
Speaker 4: been turned over. It's sort of like everyone we find
45:27
Speaker 4: is in some ways by chance. You don't have a
45:30
Speaker 4: right to get a lot of files. After somebody has
45:32
Speaker 4: been convicted. Things get destroyed. I wake up at nights
45:34
Speaker 4: sometimes worrying about you know, these days, when almost everything
45:38
Speaker 4: is electronic, we don't have the piece of paper in
45:40
Speaker 4: the file anymore the way we used to in the
45:42
Speaker 4: cases from the eighties and early nineties. Now it's all
45:45
Speaker 4: in a memo on somebody's computer and they hit delete,
45:48
Speaker 4: or that person leave the office and it's gone. It's
45:51
Speaker 4: in an email, it's in a voicemail, it's in a
45:52
Speaker 4: text from a witness.
45:54
Speaker 1: It's you know, you know, it's really a level of
45:57
Speaker 1: evil that in this particular case, I don't know what
46:02
Speaker 1: else to call it.
46:03
Speaker 2: The prosecutor is.
46:06
Speaker 4: And you know, I know, Barry check in one of
46:08
Speaker 4: your other episodes when you had Barry Gibson was talking
46:11
Speaker 4: about this concept of noble cause corruption, which I think
46:14
Speaker 4: is a very real phenomenon. You know, I don't think
46:15
Speaker 4: even the prosecutors that we've caught red handed withholding evidence,
46:22
Speaker 4: I think most, if not all of them honestly believed
46:25
Speaker 4: that they were doing it for a higher purpose, which is,
46:28
Speaker 4: they had a killer sitting in the courtroom who was
46:30
Speaker 4: going to get away with murder if they didn't win
46:32
Speaker 4: their case, and so they convinced themselves that whatever they
46:36
Speaker 4: were holding back was not really proof of innocence. It
46:39
Speaker 4: was something the defense would use to create a smoke screen. Right.
46:44
Speaker 2: But the law's the law.
46:45
Speaker 4: You have a job as an officer of the court
46:48
Speaker 4: to follow the law and turn it over. And now
46:50
Speaker 4: we know that many of those people were actually innocent,
46:53
Speaker 4: So we see what the real harm is from that
46:57
Speaker 4: skirting the ethical line.
46:59
Speaker 1: So bring this to the sort of the practical question
47:05
Speaker 1: of what can be done.
47:07
Speaker 4: We at the Innocence Project are working on a couple
47:09
Speaker 4: of things to police things before trial happens. So one
47:13
Speaker 4: of the things we are trying to do is get
47:15
Speaker 4: judges to take a more active role in ensuring that
47:20
Speaker 4: Brady's guarantee is a real one by putting prosecutors on
47:25
Speaker 4: the record issuing court orders to say, I want you
47:29
Speaker 4: to check these five locations to see if there's anything
47:31
Speaker 4: favorable to the defense, and I'm going to have a
47:34
Speaker 4: conference a month before the trial to see how it's going.
47:38
Speaker 4: What have you turned over, what are you looking for?
47:39
Speaker 4: And at that point the defense lawyer will have an
47:42
Speaker 4: opportunity to speak up and say, I haven't gotten anything
47:45
Speaker 4: on the witness statements. I don't know who what these
47:47
Speaker 4: witness statements are. And our theory is, you know, for example,
47:50
Speaker 4: two black men came in and did this crime. Are
47:53
Speaker 4: there any reports of suspicious African Americans in the area,
47:57
Speaker 4: whether you think they did it or not? You know,
47:59
Speaker 4: is there anything we should invest to gate? And the
48:01
Speaker 4: reason why you want to have the judges be policing
48:04
Speaker 4: it is that if you lie to a judge, you
48:06
Speaker 4: can get charged with contemptive court and lose your law
48:09
Speaker 4: license and even go to jail. And on the back end,
48:12
Speaker 4: we need to take accountability seriously, you know, we need
48:16
Speaker 4: to make sure that the state bars have a culture
48:21
Speaker 4: where they can go after just as they would a
48:24
Speaker 4: lawyer who doesn't give a client all their money back
48:27
Speaker 4: or didn't do the job they were hired to do
48:30
Speaker 4: in a trust, some estates case or a civil case,
48:32
Speaker 4: that they will go after the prosecutors who break the law,
48:36
Speaker 4: even if it's not politically easy to do. And then lastly,
48:40
Speaker 4: you know, it is very hard, as you know, and
48:42
Speaker 4: you've talked about on your show, for prosecutors to ever
48:45
Speaker 4: be sued civilly and even for states or counties to
48:50
Speaker 4: be held liable for the misconduct of prosecutors. Prosecutors are
48:55
Speaker 4: what's called immune from suit in all but a few
48:58
Speaker 4: very rare cases. And so if a prosecutor knows of
49:03
Speaker 4: some favorable evidence and doesn't turn it over, the court
49:05
Speaker 4: Supreme Court has said, well, you can go after them
49:08
Speaker 4: on bar discipline, or you can maybe criminally prosecute them.
49:11
Speaker 4: Talk about Fox and Penhouse, right, but you can't see
49:16
Speaker 4: them unless there's a pattern and practice of violations, and
49:19
Speaker 4: those are very hard to prove, and.
49:20
Speaker 1: Criminal prosecutions of prosecutors are extremely difficult, not least it,
49:25
Speaker 1: which was because prosecutors generally don't like prosecuting prosecutors.
49:28
Speaker 4: Correct, and they will air I mean, you know, they
49:30
Speaker 4: will give every benefit of the doubt. Oh they missed it,
49:33
Speaker 4: they were busy, they thought they turned it over, they
49:35
Speaker 4: put it in the wrong notebook. You know, yes they did.
49:38
Speaker 4: The defense layer says they didn't have it, but we
49:40
Speaker 4: think they did. I mean, you know, and look, our
49:43
Speaker 4: clients should have been so lucky to get the benefit
49:45
Speaker 4: of every doubt when they were being accused of a crime.
49:47
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on Wrongful Conviction with
49:50
Speaker 1: Jason Flom And it was great.
49:53
Speaker 2: It's great to have you here.
49:54
Speaker 4: Thanks so much.
49:55
Speaker 2: It's great to be here.
50:01
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
50:04
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.
50:05
Speaker 2: It really helps.
50:06
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
50:09
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
50:12
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
50:16
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50:19
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50:22
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50:25
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50:29
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50:35
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