Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #027 Jason Flom with Jerome Morgan

Transcript

#027 Jason Flom with Jerome Morgan · Wrongful Conviction

0:04
Speaker 1: I think we have the best legal system.
0:05
Speaker 2: It's just the people that implement they get lost along
0:09
Speaker 2: the way and forget what their job really is.
0:13
Speaker 3: He just kept on trying to remind me that who
0:15
Speaker 3: was in authority, who was in control, and how easy
0:19
Speaker 3: it was for my body to be found in any
0:23
Speaker 3: alley of New York City.
0:25
Speaker 4: It's a tough prison when you have the guards going
0:28
Speaker 4: against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
0:33
Speaker 1: They do that.
0:33
Speaker 3: They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home
0:36
Speaker 3: in eat spaghetti like it was nothing. And anybody that said, well,
0:40
Speaker 3: why would you confess to something that you didn't do?
0:42
Speaker 3: My question to them will be why wouldn't you confess
0:45
Speaker 3: when somebody's threatening to kill your life? The judge, he said,
0:50
Speaker 3: how you feel?
0:50
Speaker 1: I said, I'm okay.
0:51
Speaker 3: He said, well, the days you're lucky day you're going home.
0:56
Speaker 4: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
1:14
Speaker 4: Jason Flamm. Today we have two very special guests. Jerome Morgan,
1:19
Speaker 4: who was exonerated after serving twenty years in prison in
1:22
Speaker 4: Louisiana in the worst possible conditions.
1:26
Speaker 5: Morgan was seventeen when he was convicted of the murder
1:29
Speaker 5: of a sixteen year old at a party and was
1:32
Speaker 5: sent away to Angola for life. He proclaimed his innocence,
1:35
Speaker 5: but it wasn't until new evidence was discovered in prosecutors'
1:39
Speaker 5: files that Morgan's conviction was overturned, helped by two eyewitnesses
1:44
Speaker 5: who recanted, saying their statements more than twenty years earlier
1:47
Speaker 5: had been coerced by police.
1:49
Speaker 6: Kevin Johnson and Hakeem Shabaz were teenagers when they said
1:53
Speaker 6: they were coerced into naving Jerome Morgan as a shooter
1:57
Speaker 6: in the murder murder of the sweet sixteen party back
2:00
Speaker 6: in nineteen ninety three.
2:01
Speaker 5: The DA's office finally dropped the charge last May. It
2:05
Speaker 5: was a triumphant moment for Morgan and his attorneys at
2:09
Speaker 5: Innocence Project New Orleans. A teenager who went to prison
2:13
Speaker 5: walked out as a thirty seven year old man.
2:16
Speaker 4: And one of his attorneys is here as well. From
2:19
Speaker 4: the Innocence Project of New Orleans also known as IPNO.
2:22
Speaker 4: Kristin Winstrom is here. Jerome and Kristin, welcome to ronful conviction.
2:27
Speaker 7: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
2:28
Speaker 4: Let's go back to May twenty second, nineteen ninety three
2:33
Speaker 4: and even a little further back than that.
2:34
Speaker 2: You grew up in New Orleans, Yes, sir, Yes, I
2:37
Speaker 2: grew up in the neighborhood called Putch Train Park here
2:40
Speaker 2: in New Orleans. It was a neighborhood that was built
2:43
Speaker 2: for and by Black's in nineteen fifty five, right after
2:46
Speaker 2: Brown versus Board of Educations with the Separate but Equal
2:50
Speaker 2: law that was written into the constitution, and so they
2:54
Speaker 2: had lent the history of ownership.
2:56
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I grew up in a culture
2:58
Speaker 1: of being.
2:59
Speaker 2: Able to teach it yourself and being able to take
3:02
Speaker 2: care of people, you know that needs your help in
3:04
Speaker 2: the community.
3:05
Speaker 4: And did they have a big family.
3:07
Speaker 1: No.
3:07
Speaker 2: I grew up in foster care from the age of
3:10
Speaker 2: three until my own full arrest. My mom she didn't
3:13
Speaker 2: receive a former education, so her reasons were because she
3:18
Speaker 2: wanted us to have an education, she placed us in
3:21
Speaker 2: falster care. And that's how I end up in the
3:23
Speaker 2: punch Trained Park neighborhood with a foster family by the
3:27
Speaker 2: name of the Johnson's.
3:28
Speaker 4: And on May twenty second, nineteen ninety three, you were
3:32
Speaker 4: barely seventeen years old. It just turned seventeen, Yes, sir,
3:35
Speaker 4: so are you're still a child.
3:36
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, as a young young male and you know,
3:40
Speaker 2: going through the phases of puberty. Of course, naturally, you know,
3:44
Speaker 2: as a young person you struggle with your identity, you know,
3:48
Speaker 2: this this stage of puberty and just trying to find
3:51
Speaker 2: your identity.
3:52
Speaker 4: You ended up going to a party in a hotel ballroom.
3:56
Speaker 4: It was a sweet sixteen party, yes, sir, and so
3:58
Speaker 4: it sounds like, you know, recipe for a good night
4:01
Speaker 4: and then things went crazy.
4:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, well this the backup a little bit.
4:06
Speaker 2: I was put out from the foster home in Punchry
4:09
Speaker 2: Train Park a day after my sixteenth birthday for being
4:12
Speaker 2: suspected of selling drugs in the neighborhood.
4:15
Speaker 1: In nineteen nine three.
4:16
Speaker 2: My best friend was murdered, but before then, his mom
4:19
Speaker 2: called him in nineteen ninety two with some crack rock
4:22
Speaker 2: in his room, and so she called all of our parents,
4:26
Speaker 2: you know, his friends, because you know, it was a
4:28
Speaker 2: group of us.
4:29
Speaker 1: It was friends that hang out every day.
4:31
Speaker 2: And so she called my foster parents and then in
4:35
Speaker 2: turn put me out, and so I didn't see my
4:38
Speaker 2: friends because I went to stay in another area in
4:41
Speaker 2: New Orleans in the eight war with my aunt who
4:44
Speaker 2: had a one bedroom apartment on Franklin Avenue and she
4:47
Speaker 2: stayed there with her daughter, who was a year younger
4:50
Speaker 2: than me. And so my friend Romeo Johnson asked me
4:54
Speaker 2: to come to the party because we hadn't been hanging
4:57
Speaker 2: out and they wanted to, you know, spend some time,
5:00
Speaker 2: and so I agreed. We met up at another friend's
5:03
Speaker 2: house and walked to the party, and so we got there.
5:07
Speaker 2: I was very familiar with a lot of people there
5:09
Speaker 2: because my freshman year was spent at McDonald thirty five
5:14
Speaker 2: and that's where the young lady whose birthday was.
5:17
Speaker 1: That's where she attended.
5:19
Speaker 2: And by this time all it was, all of us
5:21
Speaker 2: was juniors at the time, are just finishing our junior
5:23
Speaker 2: year in school, and so all I needed was to
5:26
Speaker 2: and I have credits to graduate, so you know, it
5:29
Speaker 2: was pretty much a friendly party until two group of
5:33
Speaker 2: guys started to you know, push and shove each other
5:37
Speaker 2: while dancing on the dance floor, and so that escalated.
5:40
Speaker 2: But one group of guys left out to I guess,
5:43
Speaker 2: avoid anything that may transpire from that pushing and shoving,
5:48
Speaker 2: but then decided to come back in. And the moment
5:51
Speaker 2: they decided to come back in, the other group of
5:53
Speaker 2: guys that they was, you know, getting into the skirmish
5:56
Speaker 2: with you know, approached them and then they started to fight.
5:58
Speaker 2: And once the fight started, it was like a bro
6:01
Speaker 2: many people fighting and then shots he erupted. And once
6:04
Speaker 2: shots he erupted it. I was standing there next to
6:07
Speaker 2: the speakers by the DJ table because I enjoy music.
6:11
Speaker 1: But once I heard the shots, my immediate reaction was.
6:14
Speaker 2: To jump behind the DJ table and hide under the
6:17
Speaker 2: DJ table so that I won't get shot. A few
6:20
Speaker 2: of my friends in my peripheral I could see them
6:22
Speaker 2: running in some of the same directions and then running
6:25
Speaker 2: into another room.
6:26
Speaker 4: How many people were at the party.
6:27
Speaker 2: Well, by record, over eighty because everybody had to enlist
6:32
Speaker 2: their names before leaving. But that don't account for the
6:35
Speaker 2: people that may have left as they were running from
6:37
Speaker 2: the gun shots.
6:38
Speaker 4: But at least eighty people, it was a pretty big party. Yes, yes, yeah,
6:42
Speaker 4: it sounds like a recipe for disaster. I mean, gunshots
6:44
Speaker 4: in a crowded place like that, anything could happen. You
6:47
Speaker 4: could have been shot, so you're hiding under the table.
6:50
Speaker 2: Right and the shots ceased. You hear a lot of screaming, yelling.
6:56
Speaker 2: I heard, in particular, somebody shot in the area where
7:00
Speaker 2: I thought i'd see my friend run too, So immediately
7:03
Speaker 2: my attention went to there. I left it, went and
7:06
Speaker 2: went into that room and found a person that we
7:09
Speaker 2: was acquainted with was shot in the leg and my
7:12
Speaker 2: friends were trying to help him. So immediately took off
7:15
Speaker 2: my shirt because I see two wounds, entry wound and
7:19
Speaker 2: exit wound. I don't know where I learned it from,
7:21
Speaker 2: but I took off my shirt to tie around his
7:24
Speaker 2: leg under the wound to stop the bleeding. But my
7:27
Speaker 2: shirt didn't fit because he was a kind of bulky guy.
7:29
Speaker 2: So my friend Romel Johnson snatched the table caught off
7:34
Speaker 2: of the refreshment table to tie around his leg, and
7:38
Speaker 2: so once we tied that around his leg, we sat
7:41
Speaker 2: there and to the ambulams came.
7:43
Speaker 4: And then the police were called quickly. Yes, yes, I'm
7:48
Speaker 4: sure probably a lot of different people, probably called nine
7:50
Speaker 4: one one, and they showed up within minutes, right.
7:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, but at the time I had no knowledge
7:57
Speaker 2: of it. Like I said, I was in this adjacent
7:58
Speaker 2: room waiting with this victim.
8:00
Speaker 1: Into the ambulance came.
8:01
Speaker 2: So my personal knowledge of the police being there came
8:05
Speaker 2: about when we came out of the room with this
8:08
Speaker 2: victim and just that'll go with the paramedics so they
8:11
Speaker 2: can get him to the hospital.
8:13
Speaker 1: But once I came out of there, it was like
8:16
Speaker 1: table set up.
8:17
Speaker 2: It was ununiformed police there and uniform police there.
8:20
Speaker 4: So I'm sure everybody listening is going, okay, well, so
8:24
Speaker 4: what's the story here? I mean, why would anybody possibly
8:28
Speaker 4: there's over eighty people, because, like you said, not including
8:31
Speaker 4: the people who left, they counted eighty people there, and
8:33
Speaker 4: obviously a lot of people probably ran right out the door.
8:35
Speaker 4: The people who are closest to the door, it's a
8:37
Speaker 4: safe bet they went to the street and got the
8:40
Speaker 4: hell out of there. I want to ask Christen this too,
8:43
Speaker 4: Like again, it sounds like you're going home and it's
8:47
Speaker 4: a very unfortunate incident. You actually acted in a very
8:50
Speaker 4: kind of heroic way for somebody who's not trained as
8:53
Speaker 4: a doctor or anything else. Maybe you saw it on
8:55
Speaker 4: TV or whatever, but you did what a concerned and
8:59
Speaker 4: honorable citizen would do, which has come to the aid
9:01
Speaker 4: of somebody who's been shot and bleeding, and you did
9:05
Speaker 4: what you could do in the circumstance, and then stayed
9:07
Speaker 4: there till the ambulance came. That's more than ninety percent
9:10
Speaker 4: of people would have done or did do right. So
9:13
Speaker 4: it sounds like that's where this story ends, but it's
9:17
Speaker 4: not so. Kristin, What can you tell us, like, how
9:20
Speaker 4: did he possibly become a suspect under this scenario? I mean,
9:25
Speaker 4: I know it's Louisiana, and I know it's New Orleans
9:27
Speaker 4: and crazy shit happens here every day all day and
9:30
Speaker 4: twice on Sunday.
9:31
Speaker 1: But tell us what happened?
9:33
Speaker 7: Well, to clarify a little bit. Once the shots are fired,
9:37
Speaker 7: not only was Jerome's friend shot in the leg, but
9:40
Speaker 7: there was another individual who shot in the abdomen. He
9:42
Speaker 7: ultimately survived that shooting. And one boy, Clarence Landry, was
9:46
Speaker 7: shot and killed and he died there on the scene.
9:49
Speaker 7: And so that's how this became murder charge. But the
9:52
Speaker 7: reason that when our office looked at Jerome's case and
9:55
Speaker 7: we were committed to representing him, even though we didn't
9:58
Speaker 7: initially know how we're going to do it, is because,
10:01
Speaker 7: by everyone's account, the gunman shot those bullets and then
10:06
Speaker 7: ran out of the room.
10:07
Speaker 4: It was a single gunman, yes, single gunman, a lot
10:09
Speaker 4: of shots though.
10:11
Speaker 7: Let me think I believe there were eight shots. Seven
10:14
Speaker 7: or eight shots.
10:14
Speaker 4: That's a lot in a crowded room.
10:16
Speaker 7: But yeah, and so by all accounts, that gunman ran
10:19
Speaker 7: out of the room, as you would expect somebody who
10:22
Speaker 7: shoots a gun into a crowd, But he left the building.
10:24
Speaker 7: He left the building. And when the detectives arrived a
10:27
Speaker 7: bit later after the initial police arrived, and they took
10:31
Speaker 7: down the names, phone numbers, addresses, school social security numbers
10:35
Speaker 7: of every kid who was still in the room and
10:37
Speaker 7: kind of had them line up and asked them their information.
10:40
Speaker 7: I think basically was asked him, do you know anything?
10:42
Speaker 7: Everyone in the room gave them their basic information and
10:45
Speaker 7: said I don't know who it was. I couldn't see it.
10:47
Speaker 7: They were then free to leave. And so there was
10:49
Speaker 7: in the police report a list of I believe eighty
10:52
Speaker 7: four names and Jerome's name, date of birth, address, social
10:56
Speaker 7: security number is listed there By all accounts he was
10:59
Speaker 7: in the room after the shooting. So the gunman fled,
11:01
Speaker 7: Jerome Morgan is still in the room, and somehow he
11:03
Speaker 7: gets convicted of this murder. So that's why we are
11:07
Speaker 7: always confident in his innocence. But I can tell you
11:10
Speaker 7: why he was.
11:11
Speaker 4: Convicted let's talk about that, because it is an insane
11:15
Speaker 4: story of incompetence, malfeasance, misconduct, carelessness, and just sort of
11:24
Speaker 4: a don't give a fuck about the truth type of attitude.
11:28
Speaker 4: They were fishing in the wrong pond, right, They knew
11:30
Speaker 4: that the actual perpetrator left, So what did they do.
11:34
Speaker 4: They decided to pick somebody from a group of people
11:37
Speaker 4: who should have automatically been excluded, right, And they lied
11:41
Speaker 4: in order to accomplish that goal. I mean, and they
11:43
Speaker 4: didn't lie a little, they lied a lot, right, Which
11:46
Speaker 4: is one of the things that makes this case an
11:48
Speaker 4: important case for people to know about because it wasn't
11:51
Speaker 4: a small lie. It was a big lie, and it
11:54
Speaker 4: was a series of them that led to Jerome almost
11:57
Speaker 4: having his entire life taken away from him, but certainly
12:00
Speaker 4: his more than half of his life was taken from him.
12:03
Speaker 4: And had you guys not gotten involved, he would have
12:05
Speaker 4: died in prison.
12:06
Speaker 7: Yes, he had a sentence of life without parole. So
12:09
Speaker 7: that was a sentence in Louisiana. That's a sentence to
12:12
Speaker 7: die in prison.
12:13
Speaker 4: So, Jerome, you were a boy, not a man. All
12:16
Speaker 4: of a sudden, you're a boy in a very grown
12:19
Speaker 4: up situation. So what happened and then what went through
12:23
Speaker 4: your mind?
12:24
Speaker 1: Well, but you know I was there. You know, I
12:27
Speaker 1: was a witness.
12:28
Speaker 2: I seen the fire from the gun, and I seen
12:32
Speaker 2: the guy and dead and you know other guy shot. Now,
12:36
Speaker 2: the guy that was breaking up the fight, I didn't
12:39
Speaker 2: see him because from the record, he ran out into
12:43
Speaker 2: the lobby. And that's how they initiated the call to
12:46
Speaker 2: the police, because as soon as he ran out, he
12:48
Speaker 2: ran into a lobby and a person in there saw
12:51
Speaker 2: that he was injured and bleeding and called the police.
12:54
Speaker 2: You know, just that experience. But being in New Orleans
12:57
Speaker 2: is like it's no surprise at that time. You know,
13:00
Speaker 2: New Orleans had a heavy culture and kind of rowdy music,
13:04
Speaker 2: bonce music, hype music, and that's what started the humbug
13:08
Speaker 2: between the.
13:09
Speaker 1: Two group of guys.
13:10
Speaker 2: You know, Like I said, I was put out from
13:12
Speaker 2: the Foster Home, so I was staying with my aunt,
13:15
Speaker 2: and you know, we were poor. Usually when I was
13:18
Speaker 2: staying with in the Foster Home, you know, I was
13:21
Speaker 2: more well off because I had more community, more neighbor support.
13:26
Speaker 2: But I'm saying that because at this particular time, I
13:28
Speaker 2: had to go find some cheap clues to wear to
13:30
Speaker 2: the party something new, and at the time the trend
13:34
Speaker 2: was Warner brother T shirts, you know, Jean Sharks and
13:38
Speaker 2: tennis shoes, maybe some socks or something. But I say
13:42
Speaker 2: that to say, this is what I bought all Knall
13:44
Speaker 2: Street that ned it went to the party, and this
13:46
Speaker 2: is what the group of guys that got into with
13:48
Speaker 2: the guy who would feelings shot and his friends wore
13:52
Speaker 2: that night, Warner brother T shirts and Jean Sharks tennis shoes.
13:56
Speaker 2: So my thing is by a lot of people being
14:01
Speaker 2: aware of who I was and my friends because we'd
14:04
Speaker 2: be at a lot of teenage events, you know, school dances, parties,
14:09
Speaker 2: we used to go to skate country a lot, so
14:11
Speaker 2: a lot of people are familiar with our face and
14:13
Speaker 2: so they probably misassociated me with this other group, and
14:17
Speaker 2: the other guy that actually did it probably resemble me
14:21
Speaker 2: in their perspective. So that's how I was associated with
14:25
Speaker 2: that group, by you know, these teenage rumors. But at
14:28
Speaker 2: the time, like I said, I needed to and I
14:31
Speaker 2: have credits to graduate high school, so I was trying
14:34
Speaker 2: to focus on that, especially since my mom initially put
14:37
Speaker 2: me in foster care to get an education, and so
14:40
Speaker 2: I was also working at when Dixie at a grocery store.
14:45
Speaker 1: So I was trying to figure out my life.
14:48
Speaker 2: As it would end as a teenager and as I
14:50
Speaker 2: would approaching being an adult.
14:52
Speaker 1: But you know, I had a lot to figure out.
14:54
Speaker 4: I was reading about your case in the National Registry
14:58
Speaker 4: of Exonerations. And here's where it gets really weird. Right,
15:01
Speaker 4: and I'm just going to read this right the way
15:03
Speaker 4: they wrote it. It says that in June nineteen ninety three,
15:06
Speaker 4: so this is the next month, shortly after the Clime
15:09
Speaker 4: police received a crime Stoppers tip that the gunman may
15:12
Speaker 4: have been you, Jerome Morgan. The detective assemble the photographic
15:16
Speaker 4: lineup that included the photograph of you, a seventeen year old,
15:20
Speaker 4: and other people who had been at the party. This
15:22
Speaker 4: is where it gets weird. Two witnesses are shooting were
15:24
Speaker 4: shown the photo lineup containing your photo. One witness did
15:28
Speaker 4: not identify anyone in the lineup as the gunman, and
15:32
Speaker 4: the other, Kevin Johnson put it says, put Morgan's photo asides,
15:36
Speaker 4: I'm going to call you by your last name here
15:38
Speaker 4: and said quote he knew that guy from grade school
15:41
Speaker 4: and he was not the shooter. Now I'm getting the
15:44
Speaker 4: chills like I do on this show, and I'm going, Okay,
15:46
Speaker 4: wait a minute, we're done. Let's keep looking, because now
15:50
Speaker 4: we know this guy's not the guy. Yeah, so that
15:52
Speaker 4: should have excluded you right off the bat. Now, there's
15:54
Speaker 4: another part of this that's extremely disturbing, which is the
15:57
Speaker 4: same kid, Kevin Johnson told police that he chased the gunman,
16:01
Speaker 4: which is a crazy thing to do in the first place.
16:03
Speaker 1: He chased the.
16:04
Speaker 4: Gunman outside the building and followed him until he leaped
16:06
Speaker 4: over a fence and escaped. Right, so the police knew
16:11
Speaker 4: that the gunman ran, jumped over a fence, and escaped,
16:16
Speaker 4: and later on they managed to sort of twist this
16:21
Speaker 4: into a whole different narrative where they said that actually
16:25
Speaker 4: they didn't show up till half an hour after the
16:28
Speaker 4: shooting happened, which we know was not true at all,
16:31
Speaker 4: and that therefore you must have been the guy who
16:35
Speaker 4: ran away, jumped over the fence, and then came back
16:38
Speaker 4: to blend in with the crowd, because that would be
16:41
Speaker 4: just the dumbest fucking thing anybody could possibly imagine to do.
16:45
Speaker 4: Knowing that the police must be on their way, you're
16:49
Speaker 4: going to go back and sort of as they would say,
16:53
Speaker 4: blend In, that's a little bit of a stretch, right,
16:56
Speaker 4: So Kristin, how did they get how did they get
16:59
Speaker 4: a con? I mean you would think that there's just
17:03
Speaker 4: not a reasonable person that would believe this story.
17:07
Speaker 7: Yes, there was a gunman who ran out of the
17:09
Speaker 7: room and Jerome was undeniably in the room after the
17:12
Speaker 7: police arrived, and the best witness to who that gunman
17:16
Speaker 7: was explicitly excluded Jerome from the lineup, So it seems
17:20
Speaker 7: pretty clear that Jerome was not the person who did it.
17:23
Speaker 7: After Kevin Johnson excluded Jerome from the photo array, the
17:26
Speaker 7: police had no other leads. I don't know that they
17:28
Speaker 7: were doing much work. They relied at that point on
17:31
Speaker 7: rumors from high school kids. That's what the crime stoppers
17:34
Speaker 7: tip was based on. These are all just high school
17:35
Speaker 7: kids spreading rumors. And there were rumors that they're of
17:38
Speaker 7: other people besides Jerome as well. But the rumor that
17:41
Speaker 7: got to the police was Jerome Morgan, and so they
17:43
Speaker 7: put that photo line up together, he was excluded, and
17:46
Speaker 7: then they had no more leads. And so then that
17:48
Speaker 7: was June second, when that photo array was shown, and
17:52
Speaker 7: nothing happened in the investigation. I mean, you can look
17:54
Speaker 7: at the police reports and there's really nothing in the
17:56
Speaker 7: police reports between June second until August twenty second, three
18:00
Speaker 7: months after the crime. And based on the police reports
18:03
Speaker 7: and what the jury heard, supposedly spontaneously, the police just
18:08
Speaker 7: called Hakeem Shabaz, who was one of the kids who
18:11
Speaker 7: was shot that night. He was shot in the abdomen
18:14
Speaker 7: and survived. He was not involved in the fight, but
18:16
Speaker 7: he was trying to break up the fight, and supposedly
18:19
Speaker 7: the police called him three months after the crime. This
18:22
Speaker 7: is the first time speaking with him, and he just said,
18:24
Speaker 7: Jerome Morgan shot me, and he came in and made
18:26
Speaker 7: a photo identification. So that's the account that the police had.
18:30
Speaker 7: That's what the jury heard.
18:31
Speaker 4: Right now. What's troubling me a little bit about this
18:36
Speaker 4: is if you were the guy who got shot and
18:41
Speaker 4: you knew who did it, what the fuck would take
18:45
Speaker 4: you so long to come forward with that information. Did
18:48
Speaker 4: you know Shabaz?
18:50
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, he was a familiar face because we attended
18:52
Speaker 2: McDonald thirty five as Freshmans together.
18:55
Speaker 4: Right. What happened there, Kristen, the true.
18:58
Speaker 7: Story of how Hakim came to name Jerome Morgan. So
19:02
Speaker 7: the truth is is that Hikim had no idea who
19:05
Speaker 7: shot him. He like everyone else in that room. It
19:07
Speaker 7: was a dimly lit ballroom, and when the shots are fired,
19:11
Speaker 7: there was a bright light that came from the gun.
19:13
Speaker 7: No one could see the face of the gunman. Hakim
19:15
Speaker 7: was in the middle of breaking up a fight. He
19:17
Speaker 7: was in no better position to identify the gunman than
19:20
Speaker 7: other people who were shown photo rays and couldn't make
19:22
Speaker 7: an identification. So the truth is he didn't know. But
19:25
Speaker 7: in that three months he heard rumors about Jerome as well.
19:30
Speaker 7: He heard that name being thrown around. And what actually
19:33
Speaker 7: happened was the police called him and got him on
19:36
Speaker 7: the phone and they said, Hikim, do you know who
19:40
Speaker 7: shot you? And he said no, and they said Jerome
19:43
Speaker 7: shot you. So the detective is telling him Jerome shot him,
19:46
Speaker 7: and Haikim, hearing the same name that he's heard in rumors, thinks, okay,
19:53
Speaker 7: I'll believe that. He agrees, okay, and he goes down
19:56
Speaker 7: to the police station and makes an identification and makes
19:59
Speaker 7: a form statement. So now we have one witness who
20:03
Speaker 7: explicitly says that Jerome Morgan was the gunman.
20:06
Speaker 4: But that's not all.
20:08
Speaker 7: No, So now at that point, the police arrest Jerome.
20:12
Speaker 2: Adventures arrested me on my mom's birthday that year, nineteen
20:16
Speaker 2: ninety three, October seventh. I mean, I was arrested, but
20:19
Speaker 2: they didn't get any indictment because it was just one eyewitness.
20:23
Speaker 2: And remember Kevin Johnson that gave a negative photo idea
20:27
Speaker 2: of me, and so I sat seventy two a's in
20:32
Speaker 2: Orleans Parish prison.
20:33
Speaker 1: I had to be released after.
20:35
Speaker 2: That time because they didn't get an indictment, and so
20:37
Speaker 2: they all crossed it and I was released on December sixteenth,
20:41
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three.
20:43
Speaker 4: Okay, so now you're out right. So this has a
20:46
Speaker 4: lot of twists and turns, but they weren't done. They
20:49
Speaker 4: were going to stick. As we see sometimes and myopic
20:53
Speaker 4: would be a nice way to put it right. We
20:55
Speaker 4: see this that once once a lie gets started or
21:00
Speaker 4: a witch hunt or whatever you want to call it,
21:03
Speaker 4: they don't give up easy, and they don't like to
21:06
Speaker 4: be proven wrong. And they needed somebody right, they needed
21:09
Speaker 4: to solve this crime.
21:10
Speaker 1: Well, at the time when I was released, I don't
21:12
Speaker 1: think they care that normal happens.
21:14
Speaker 2: It was a black guy, young black guy that was killed,
21:17
Speaker 2: so nobody in the DA's office really cares about that
21:21
Speaker 2: sort of thing. It wasn't until the fatal victim's mom
21:25
Speaker 2: got into the newspaper and got into the news and
21:28
Speaker 2: made attention that nothing is getting done behind my son's murder,
21:33
Speaker 2: and so that would cause them to, I guess, try
21:37
Speaker 2: to make like they were doing something to appease this
21:40
Speaker 2: parent who was making them look bad in the media
21:42
Speaker 2: about this crime taking place and no one being held accountable.
21:47
Speaker 4: So then it comes back around and you're eventually rearrested, yes,
21:52
Speaker 4: and brought in for trial, and I assume you were
21:56
Speaker 4: represented by a public defender.
21:58
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, contract butblic of defender. But out that the
22:03
Speaker 2: current occurrence happened. The fatal victim's mom went to Kevin Johnson,
22:09
Speaker 2: and I guess picked him up and told him that
22:12
Speaker 2: you need to talk to the DA and somebody because
22:15
Speaker 2: the person that is being rumored to have killed my
22:19
Speaker 2: son has been released and we have to do something
22:22
Speaker 2: about it.
22:23
Speaker 4: And Kevin Johnson, just to refresh everybody's memory, was the
22:26
Speaker 4: guy who originally had said that you weren't the guy
22:30
Speaker 4: he knew you from grade school, You were not the shooter.
22:33
Speaker 4: But now all of a sudden his memory is different.
22:37
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean he's feeling pressure from you know,
22:40
Speaker 2: his best friend, one of his best friend's parents and
22:42
Speaker 2: their family. You know they have he had eleven other siblings.
22:47
Speaker 2: Clarence Landry did Lass Landry was the kid who was killed. Yes, yes,
22:52
Speaker 2: and so and the other two friends antonio' bradley and
22:55
Speaker 2: Harrison Hogan.
22:56
Speaker 1: They weren't able to make identifications.
22:58
Speaker 2: But you know, it's a out of pressure on Kevin
23:01
Speaker 2: because and then he buried the guilt of going back
23:04
Speaker 2: into the ballroom after the initial skirmish and they left.
23:10
Speaker 2: They were supposed to returning to get a cousin of
23:13
Speaker 2: his from inside the party, but once they went back
23:17
Speaker 2: inside the party, that's when the fight happened and his
23:19
Speaker 2: best friend was murdered. So Ms Landry picked up Kevin
23:23
Speaker 2: Johnson from his job. They went to i think first
23:26
Speaker 2: the homicide detective office. The homicide detective pointed him to
23:30
Speaker 2: the d's office so that he could make a statement.
23:34
Speaker 2: And so they say that he altered statement in a
23:38
Speaker 2: way because he's saying a homicide detective misunderstood what he
23:41
Speaker 2: was saying, that he was in shock when he seen
23:44
Speaker 2: a picture and he said oh, he can't be, like,
23:47
Speaker 2: you know.
23:47
Speaker 4: Just right right, So he went from it can't be
23:50
Speaker 4: to oh, it can't be. At the trial, there were
24:05
Speaker 4: a number of people who testified on your behalf and
24:08
Speaker 4: said that you never left the room, but we know
24:10
Speaker 4: that the shooter did, so that would be pretty strong testimony.
24:16
Speaker 4: You testified as well, and yet you were convicted in
24:20
Speaker 4: a trial that lasted one day. There has to be
24:25
Speaker 4: and this is something that is and should be troubling
24:28
Speaker 4: to every person, every American, the idea that a trial
24:34
Speaker 4: or the consequences are so profound. Literally it's a death sentence.
24:40
Speaker 4: I've spoken to some ex houneries who will say that
24:43
Speaker 4: they would have preferred to be sentenced to death than
24:45
Speaker 4: life without parole. Yes, because it's death either way.
24:49
Speaker 1: It just takes longer.
24:50
Speaker 4: You get to spend the rest of your life in
24:52
Speaker 4: hell and then die and.
24:55
Speaker 1: Then over at a younger age and maybe a other people.
25:01
Speaker 4: It's pretty shocking that the justice system could take such
25:05
Speaker 4: a casual approach to somebody's life, but that's what they do,
25:10
Speaker 4: and down here in Louisiana they do it all the time. Yes,
25:13
Speaker 4: So it's almost like a factory process. It's a machine
25:17
Speaker 4: that grinds up the people it's supposed to serve. It
25:21
Speaker 4: leaves the public in a situation of which the actual
25:24
Speaker 4: killer is out there a roam in the streets, dangerous
25:27
Speaker 4: as ever. And also when you think about locking up
25:32
Speaker 4: a seventeen year old person, we're going to spend millions
25:35
Speaker 4: of dollars over the years. Now, it's good for business.
25:38
Speaker 4: We know that there's people making money on it, but
25:40
Speaker 4: the public is paying for it, yes, through the tax
25:43
Speaker 4: dollars and everything else. So the only people making money
25:46
Speaker 4: are the people who provide services for the prison, right
25:49
Speaker 4: the industries that are associated with the prison. In some cases,
25:52
Speaker 4: the sheriffs themselves. And we have a particularly strange situation
25:55
Speaker 4: in this country in some states where sheriffs actually own jails.
25:58
Speaker 7: You just talk about making money off of incarcerating people.
26:02
Speaker 7: Obviously there's all the services, but there's the make money
26:04
Speaker 7: off of that system. But there's also the individual men
26:07
Speaker 7: who are at Angola, which is a former slave plantation
26:11
Speaker 7: or a combination of multiple slave plantations, where you've got
26:14
Speaker 7: men working in fields and to be for money to
26:17
Speaker 7: make off of them. And we had at some point
26:21
Speaker 7: requested Jerome's disciplinary record at the prison. This was in
26:25
Speaker 7: the nineties. He was disciplined for not picking cotton fast enough.
26:30
Speaker 4: Okay, let's just reflect on that for a second. What
26:35
Speaker 4: century is this exactly? He was disciplined for not picking
26:42
Speaker 4: cotton fast enough. I mean the images that that conjures
26:45
Speaker 4: up of the worst, you know, the most shameful periods
26:49
Speaker 4: in American history are very real. I mean, it's it's
26:53
Speaker 4: and this is this is in the nineteen ninety yea today, Yeah.
26:57
Speaker 1: I think it was ninety six ninety seven that occurred.
27:01
Speaker 2: In the proper word, they say it was not enough
27:03
Speaker 2: speed and efficiency, and the infraction was a worker fans
27:07
Speaker 2: aggravated worker fings.
27:10
Speaker 4: Why do I feel like Abe blink and is spinning
27:12
Speaker 4: in his grave right now? Okay, so that was your
27:15
Speaker 4: infraction among yes, yes, so Angola to paint a picture.
27:23
Speaker 4: It's still a slave plantation, right. It's named Angola because
27:26
Speaker 4: of the fact that it was a slave plantation and
27:29
Speaker 4: the slaves were brought from Angola, so they named it Angola.
27:34
Speaker 4: Didn't take a lot of imagination, and it is really
27:38
Speaker 4: a place that's removed from society and is basically free
27:42
Speaker 4: from any sort of oversight as far as I can tell.
27:45
Speaker 4: And what goes on in Angola, stays in Angola. Right,
27:49
Speaker 4: I call it the silence scene of truth, the silencing
27:52
Speaker 4: of truth. What do they pay the the inmates at Angola.
27:55
Speaker 1: For a sense, but you only get two cents?
27:57
Speaker 2: Two centses automatically put into some savings for you to
28:02
Speaker 2: afford court documents or supposed to be educational things.
28:06
Speaker 1: But usually what they do is save the two cents.
28:08
Speaker 2: So when you get in debt for restitution or any
28:11
Speaker 2: other rule in fraction they write you up on they
28:14
Speaker 2: can take that money that you pay as a fine
28:17
Speaker 2: or debt to whatever in fraction they root you up on.
28:20
Speaker 4: Two cents an hour. Yes, wow, I thought you know.
28:26
Speaker 4: I thought I knew that, but I just didn't want
28:28
Speaker 4: to say it because it sounds too crazy. And I
28:31
Speaker 4: didn't want to say something that was completely crazy because
28:33
Speaker 4: it sounds so crazy that it's crazy. But it's crazy,
28:36
Speaker 4: so okay. And we know that in Louisiana, for second
28:40
Speaker 4: degree murder, there's only one sentence, which is life without parole. Lwop.
28:45
Speaker 1: Yep.
28:46
Speaker 4: There you were, all of a sudden serving life in
28:49
Speaker 4: prison without par in what I think many people would
28:54
Speaker 4: say is the worst prison in America. One of the
28:56
Speaker 4: worst in the world. How did you find the fortitude
29:01
Speaker 4: to inner strength, whatever it is, to be able to
29:05
Speaker 4: get through this and to ultimately contact the Innocence Project
29:10
Speaker 4: of New Orleans and continue to fight for your freedom.
29:12
Speaker 4: I mean, I think almost anybody else would have just
29:15
Speaker 4: given up and given in. That's not what happened. I mean,
29:17
Speaker 4: here you are. Somehow or other, you managed to persevere
29:21
Speaker 4: and triumph.
29:23
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's just that one thing I can
29:25
Speaker 2: always remember that I never thought of myself as just
29:29
Speaker 2: a prison you know, of any kind. I was thankful
29:33
Speaker 2: in the sense that I had been exposed to people
29:36
Speaker 2: who believed in freedom. Like I said, the neighborhood I
29:39
Speaker 2: grew up in had a history that I wasn't aware
29:41
Speaker 2: of at the time. But the culture and climate of
29:47
Speaker 2: everyday life then was of just you know, being self supportive,
29:52
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying, to supporting yourself in a sense,
29:55
Speaker 2: always thinking positive, always knowing that you have enough capability
30:00
Speaker 2: pass it as anybody else, to do what you need
30:02
Speaker 2: to do to make your life a successful one. And
30:06
Speaker 2: so it didn't always seem that easy. But when I
30:10
Speaker 2: was able to kind of like get over myself pity
30:13
Speaker 2: or whatever. I always revert back to that that you know,
30:16
Speaker 2: I am a person. I'm blessed to be able to
30:19
Speaker 2: see here, smell, have all my lambs. You know, my
30:22
Speaker 2: heart is beating fine, and so at least I can
30:25
Speaker 2: have an encouraged word for somebody else and in turn
30:28
Speaker 2: that would encourage me, because that's that's all I wanted
30:32
Speaker 2: for my life to be, as you know, a difference
30:34
Speaker 2: maker to somebody else.
30:36
Speaker 1: Wow.
30:36
Speaker 4: Well, let me ask you this too. Was there a
30:38
Speaker 4: person or people inside Angola who inspired you to stay strong?
30:44
Speaker 2: And it was a lot of people, And then outside Angola,
30:47
Speaker 2: I didn't know anybody there. I was one of the youngest,
30:51
Speaker 2: probably one of the smallest at the time, and so
30:54
Speaker 2: you know, there was many people like I would get
30:57
Speaker 2: written up and go to extending lock Down. That's where
31:01
Speaker 2: I met, I guess, my most influential friends, because you know,
31:05
Speaker 2: when you in solitary confinment on lockdown, you stand and
31:08
Speaker 2: sell one man's sell for twenty three hours a day
31:12
Speaker 2: and let you outside of that six x nine sell
31:15
Speaker 2: into another caged area for an hour to take a
31:19
Speaker 2: shower and do exercise and or socialize with other guys
31:23
Speaker 2: on a tier with you, and so, like you said earlier,
31:27
Speaker 2: I've always been like a mild mannered person, reserved, you know,
31:31
Speaker 2: in a great sense, and so I was then, but
31:36
Speaker 2: you couldn't be at that time because you dry yourself
31:39
Speaker 2: insane just holding all that stuff in. One guy, in particular,
31:43
Speaker 2: when I had my first experience on lockdown, that was
31:46
Speaker 2: able to you know, converse with you know, bounce our
31:50
Speaker 2: frustrations off each other and also encourage each other to
31:54
Speaker 2: think positively about what we can do.
31:56
Speaker 1: Which guy is that? Noel Brooks? Noel Brooks who's Angola.
32:01
Speaker 2: You know, he helped me out a lot, and we
32:02
Speaker 2: helped each other out and thinking about ways that we
32:05
Speaker 2: could help ourselves and help out this.
32:07
Speaker 1: So that just one, but you know there was many.
32:09
Speaker 4: So Kristin, how did this impossible situation eventually get Rizaud?
32:16
Speaker 4: How is he sitting here in front of us now?
32:18
Speaker 7: Well, there are three pieces of new information that we
32:21
Speaker 7: learned that really just completely undermined the case against Jerome
32:25
Speaker 7: and proved his innocence. One is that there was a
32:29
Speaker 7: nine to one to one complaint history, which is a
32:32
Speaker 7: document that shows when a nine to one one call
32:34
Speaker 7: comes in, and some of the initial information that comes
32:37
Speaker 7: in from that caller and it's blocked off by minutes
32:41
Speaker 7: of time, and the nine one one complaint history here
32:43
Speaker 7: shows that the call came in from the Howard Johnson's lobby.
32:48
Speaker 7: This is where the sweet sixteen party was, at a
32:50
Speaker 7: hotel lobby. It was clearly in response to seeing Hikeim
32:53
Speaker 7: Shabaz arrive in the lobby shot, and that call came
32:57
Speaker 7: in at eleven thirty and the complaint history showed that
33:00
Speaker 7: the police arrived at eleven thirty six, so six minutes later.
33:03
Speaker 7: But the state's theory at trial was that somehow Jerome
33:08
Speaker 7: shot everybody, ran out of the room, jumped over a fence,
33:12
Speaker 7: hit a gun, and then returned to the room full
33:15
Speaker 7: of eighty some odd witnesses and waited for the police
33:17
Speaker 7: to arrive. And the only information that the jury heard
33:21
Speaker 7: about the timing of the arrival of the police and
33:23
Speaker 7: how possible that would be the window of time where
33:28
Speaker 7: the gunman theoretically could have returned to this room, as
33:32
Speaker 7: unbelievable as it sounds, was actually from Jerome himself. He
33:36
Speaker 7: testified he was asked how long it took for the
33:39
Speaker 7: police to arrive, and he said thirty to forty five minutes,
33:42
Speaker 7: and probably the reason for that is that that's how
33:45
Speaker 7: long it took for the detectives to arrive. Not the
33:48
Speaker 7: uniformed officers that came in and sealed the room and
33:50
Speaker 7: made sure no one left or returned, but the detectives
33:53
Speaker 7: that actually interacted with the kids arrived thirty five minutes
33:56
Speaker 7: after at twelve o five am, And so those are
33:59
Speaker 7: people he interacted with. That's probably what he was recalling
34:02
Speaker 7: when he testified to that. And there had been some
34:05
Speaker 7: prior testimony earlier on in the trial that suggested that
34:08
Speaker 7: there was an unusually long gap between the nine to
34:11
Speaker 7: one to one caller between the shooting and the police arriving,
34:14
Speaker 7: and so the jury heard the sort of thinking there
34:16
Speaker 7: might have been an unusual circumstance where a crime scene
34:19
Speaker 7: just sat unattended for a long period of time. And
34:21
Speaker 7: theoretically it's so absurd to say, but the gunman may
34:25
Speaker 7: have returned to the room, so that made it physically
34:28
Speaker 7: possible for him to have potentially have come back. But
34:31
Speaker 7: once we knew that the police had arrived six minutes later,
34:34
Speaker 7: and they all testified that they arrived and they sealed
34:36
Speaker 7: the room and no one left after that and no
34:38
Speaker 7: one returned after that. That really changed the state's theory.
34:42
Speaker 7: It undermined the state's theory. The other two pieces of
34:44
Speaker 7: information relate to the witnesses, So the only evidence against
34:48
Speaker 7: Jerome at trial were these two teenage witnesses who testified
34:52
Speaker 7: that they saw him as the gunman. But what we
34:55
Speaker 7: learned was that Hakim Shabaz first told the police that
34:59
Speaker 7: he did not know who the gunman was, and that
35:02
Speaker 7: the police said, Jerome shot you, and then he just
35:05
Speaker 7: agreed only because it was consistent with rumors he had heard,
35:08
Speaker 7: not from what he actually saw that night, but he
35:10
Speaker 7: had just heard some rumors and the police were repeating
35:12
Speaker 7: those rumors back to him, and he's a teenager, and
35:15
Speaker 7: he went along with it, thinking he was doing the
35:17
Speaker 7: right thing. Kevin Johnson, we know, initially saw the photo,
35:21
Speaker 7: array saw Jerome's familiar face, didn't know Jerome's name, but
35:24
Speaker 7: saw a familiar face and had seen the gunman and
35:26
Speaker 7: excluded him. And the jury did hear that. The jury
35:28
Speaker 7: did hear that. But the jury also heard this explanation
35:31
Speaker 7: that when he said, oh, it can't be him, what
35:34
Speaker 7: he meant was like, oh, I can't believe it was him.
35:36
Speaker 7: That's what the jury heard, and that he made a
35:38
Speaker 7: subsequent identification. But what we learned from talking to Kevin
35:42
Speaker 7: was that he was brought back to the police station
35:45
Speaker 7: with missus Landry, with his best friend's mother, the mother
35:48
Speaker 7: of the boy who was killed, and she was upset
35:51
Speaker 7: because she thought that the person who had shot her
35:53
Speaker 7: son had been released from prison. As Jerome mentioned earlier,
35:57
Speaker 7: he's under a lot of pressure. He blames some himself
36:00
Speaker 7: for the death of Clarence, and so he just goes
36:03
Speaker 7: along with what the police say. The police tell him
36:07
Speaker 7: that he's shown another photo array, a different photo array
36:09
Speaker 7: this time. So the first one was just a set
36:11
Speaker 7: of your book photos because the police didn't have a
36:13
Speaker 7: photo of Jerome. Second time around, Jerome had been arrested,
36:16
Speaker 7: so they made another second photo array of mugshots, and
36:19
Speaker 7: again he's shown it. He does the same thing, puts
36:21
Speaker 7: Drome's photo aside, and they say, who did you say
36:25
Speaker 7: was the gunman? And at that point, Kevin had heard
36:28
Speaker 7: rumors he had heard the name Jerome Morgan, so he
36:30
Speaker 7: repeats the rumor. He says Jerome Morgan, But he doesn't
36:33
Speaker 7: realize that the photo that he's putting aside and eliminating
36:37
Speaker 7: is Jerome. So he has a name, but it's separate
36:39
Speaker 7: from the face, and the police say, sure, it's not
36:41
Speaker 7: this guy, pointing to Jerome's photo. That's Jerome Morgan. And
36:45
Speaker 7: for him, well, he hurt again. It's just like Hachem.
36:47
Speaker 7: He'd heard these rumors and now the police are reinforcing
36:50
Speaker 7: these rumors, and so he agrees. And so both of
36:53
Speaker 7: them went and testified at trial believing that they were
36:57
Speaker 7: identifying the right person and not knowing that the police
37:00
Speaker 7: were working off of the same rumors that they were
37:02
Speaker 7: hearing and there was no other evidence behind that at all.
37:05
Speaker 7: So when they testified, it was probably pretty convincing. I
37:08
Speaker 7: wasn't there because they thought that they were doing the
37:11
Speaker 7: right thing and that they were identifying the gunmen, when
37:14
Speaker 7: in fact it was all the police telling them.
37:16
Speaker 4: But then fast forward twenty years, yes, and they came clean.
37:20
Speaker 7: Yes, so they didn't know. So again Jerome gets convicted.
37:25
Speaker 7: They are not aware that there is no other evidence.
37:28
Speaker 7: So they go along with their lives and then an
37:30
Speaker 7: investigator from our office talks to each of them separately
37:34
Speaker 7: and he points out to them, did you know that
37:37
Speaker 7: Jerome was in the room after the shooting, and neither
37:40
Speaker 7: of them knew that, and so once there was a stain,
37:44
Speaker 7: I don't know if that's the right word, but something
37:47
Speaker 7: that kind of undermined their confidence that they had quote
37:51
Speaker 7: unquote identified the right person. Then they started telling the
37:56
Speaker 7: investigator about how those identifications came to happen that really
38:00
Speaker 7: undermine their confidence in what they had done. They may
38:03
Speaker 7: have known that they didn't really have a reason behind
38:05
Speaker 7: identifying Jerome, or they may have known even that it
38:07
Speaker 7: really wasn't the right person, but they thought they were
38:09
Speaker 7: doing the right thing. And it wasn't until they learned
38:12
Speaker 7: that the person they identified as the fleeing gunman was
38:14
Speaker 7: in the room after the police arrived that really changed
38:17
Speaker 7: their perspective, and so they came clean. They told this
38:20
Speaker 7: true story of how they came to make the identifications.
38:23
Speaker 7: It's not just a recantation, it's really an explanation of
38:26
Speaker 7: how those identifications happened and what the police did to
38:30
Speaker 7: make those false identifications happen.
38:32
Speaker 4: At some point, the police went to these two witnesses
38:35
Speaker 4: who now are whether it's their conscience or whether it's
38:38
Speaker 4: this new information that's being provided to them, that they
38:41
Speaker 4: are now being made aware that they were fed lies
38:44
Speaker 4: by the police twenty years earlier, and that they played
38:47
Speaker 4: a major role in locking Jeroam up for the rest
38:51
Speaker 4: of his life. Based on being misled is a nice
38:54
Speaker 4: way of putting it. Now, the authorities are really scrambling
38:59
Speaker 4: to pack this conviction right, and what did they do
39:02
Speaker 4: to these two guys? What did they threaten them with
39:05
Speaker 4: in order to try to coerce them into not telling
39:09
Speaker 4: the truth?
39:10
Speaker 7: Well, both of them. Both of these witnesses consulted with
39:13
Speaker 7: attorneys before they signed Affidavid's and before they provided testimony
39:18
Speaker 7: in our post conviction hearing, so they knew that there
39:20
Speaker 7: was a possibility of a charge when they chose to
39:24
Speaker 7: get up on the stand and testify.
39:25
Speaker 1: A perjury charge.
39:26
Speaker 7: Yes, perjury charge, But they did, and they withstood direct
39:30
Speaker 7: and cross examination back and forth. Their stories remained consistent
39:35
Speaker 7: and based on that, plus the nine to one complaint
39:38
Speaker 7: history that shows that Timeline Jerome's conviction was overturned and
39:42
Speaker 7: so nothing happened to them initially, this state chose to
39:45
Speaker 7: appeal that decision to an intermediate appellate court, and the
39:49
Speaker 7: appellate court upheld the trial court's decision in a very lengthily,
39:53
Speaker 7: clearly well thought out ruling. And after that ruling came down,
39:57
Speaker 7: when it appeared, oh no, this granting of post conviction
40:01
Speaker 7: relief is going to be upheld, the state then chose
40:05
Speaker 7: to charge these two witnesses with perjury. I just think
40:07
Speaker 7: the timing of it is interesting. It wasn't immediate. If
40:11
Speaker 7: they really cared about protecting people against society against inconsistent statements,
40:17
Speaker 7: they could have charged them with perjury back when they
40:20
Speaker 7: signed these affidavits. But they did it after there was
40:24
Speaker 7: a good signal that the decision to overturn Jerome's conviction
40:28
Speaker 7: was going to be upheld and that there would be
40:29
Speaker 7: a new trial.
40:30
Speaker 4: And we know that there were two lawyers who represented
40:34
Speaker 4: those two guys pro bono right yes, and spent years
40:37
Speaker 4: actually defending them against this evil machine of New Orleans
40:45
Speaker 4: justice or injustice, and ultimately they prevailed.
40:49
Speaker 2: Another interesting fact that may not be too noticeable, but
40:54
Speaker 2: at the same time, I don't know you know how
40:57
Speaker 2: it happened in for his order, but it did also
41:01
Speaker 2: filed to have the judge recused and forced him to
41:04
Speaker 2: recuse himself. And so I end up in another section
41:08
Speaker 2: of court with a judge that was pretty you know,
41:11
Speaker 2: cool with the DA Yeah, Judge Franz Zibleich.
41:14
Speaker 4: So they wanted to make sure they got a judge
41:16
Speaker 4: who was going to give them the best chance of
41:18
Speaker 4: winning and keeping you in prison. But none of that
41:22
Speaker 4: stuff worked because ultimately you won. What are the names
41:25
Speaker 4: of those two lawyers, by the way, because I want
41:26
Speaker 4: to give them a shout out for having spent all that.
41:28
Speaker 1: Time, Jason Williams and BOBBYA.
41:31
Speaker 4: Sportsburgh, So Jerome. When you finally prevailed, what was that like?
41:49
Speaker 4: Because we talked about the misery and the heartbreak of
41:52
Speaker 4: the whole thing. What was it like the moment when
41:54
Speaker 4: you actually did you even believe it was happening?
41:58
Speaker 6: Uh?
41:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it was happening, But I often describe
42:02
Speaker 2: it as just being overwhelmingly excited.
42:05
Speaker 1: I mean, you envision these.
42:07
Speaker 2: Things, you know, all those years, and that's what holds
42:09
Speaker 2: you up when you feeling like you can't make it
42:11
Speaker 2: no more.
42:12
Speaker 4: Give us a picture of the courtroom that day. What
42:15
Speaker 4: were you wearing, what did it, what time of day
42:18
Speaker 4: was it, Who was in the courtroom with you?
42:20
Speaker 1: How did you react from the moment that I was
42:24
Speaker 1: released from prison or jail.
42:27
Speaker 2: I also had an ankle brason on too, so I
42:30
Speaker 2: still felt incarcerated. But even in that moment, just being outside,
42:35
Speaker 2: smelling the air of society, and you know, seeing my
42:40
Speaker 2: friends who was there from it since day one, being
42:43
Speaker 2: able to see them and hug them, and being able
42:45
Speaker 2: to just change into some regular clues right there in
42:48
Speaker 2: the street. It just was overwhelmingly exciting. When I exited prison,
42:55
Speaker 2: they didn't have any.
42:56
Speaker 1: Clues for me.
42:57
Speaker 2: Of course they didn't keep my clue for twenty years,
43:00
Speaker 2: but they're supposed to have your clothes that you went
43:02
Speaker 2: into prison with waiting on you when you get out.
43:05
Speaker 1: So I didn't have any clues.
43:06
Speaker 2: There, but you were never supposed to get out right,
43:08
Speaker 2: and so they gave me an oversized undershirt and some
43:12
Speaker 2: oversized shots that looked like pants, just to be released with.
43:16
Speaker 2: And so you know, my family and friends had few
43:19
Speaker 2: articles clothing for me a change into. Once I got out,
43:23
Speaker 2: Christian met me that evening. It was like six o'clock
43:27
Speaker 2: on the fourth of February twenty fourteen, and so we
43:31
Speaker 2: stayed there on on Dupre Street, just celebrating, just smiling
43:36
Speaker 2: and hugging and you know, just taking in the new
43:40
Speaker 2: era because there had been a long time coming.
43:41
Speaker 1: For all of us. What do you eat? I wanted Popeyes,
43:45
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, New Orleans fried chicken, you know, and
43:48
Speaker 1: I ain't going to you don't get.
43:50
Speaker 4: Any of that, right, I mean, after twenty years of slop? Right,
43:54
Speaker 4: how good does food taste?
43:56
Speaker 1: Oh? It tastes wonderful.
43:57
Speaker 4: You know.
43:58
Speaker 1: It's I'm very you know, particular about what I eat.
44:02
Speaker 2: So it makes me feel good that I have options, Yeah,
44:07
Speaker 2: I because sometimes, you know, you have to go to
44:09
Speaker 2: sleep Hongry. You know a lot of guys return home
44:12
Speaker 2: and have cancer, and that's because of the slop that
44:14
Speaker 2: they eat for so long, and so you know, you
44:17
Speaker 2: have to kind of monitor that, you know, when you're
44:20
Speaker 2: in prison, and it gets tough because you know, everybody
44:25
Speaker 2: family is not well off enough to provide them with
44:27
Speaker 2: money to spend to buy food from, you know, the
44:31
Speaker 2: prison canteen or whatever.
44:33
Speaker 4: And I'm glad you brought that up because there are
44:36
Speaker 4: a number of cases here in Louisiana people who were
44:39
Speaker 4: exonerated after decades in prison just came out and died
44:41
Speaker 4: of cancer shortly after they got out. And I think
44:44
Speaker 4: that that has to be a contributing factor. And it's
44:47
Speaker 4: also important to highlight and people are going to listen
44:49
Speaker 4: and say, no, that's not true, because when I read this,
44:51
Speaker 4: I was like, no, that can't be true. But it
44:52
Speaker 4: is true that in Alabama they have a program where
44:56
Speaker 4: the sheriffs who own the jails of an an annual
45:00
Speaker 4: budget for food and whatever's left over they get to keep,
45:05
Speaker 4: not the sheriff's department, the sheriff themselves. So they've been
45:08
Speaker 4: feeding the inmates there corn dogs all day, every day
45:12
Speaker 4: because it's the cheapest thing you can get. And there's
45:14
Speaker 4: a lawsuit taking place right now. You can't even make
45:17
Speaker 4: this stuff up, and it's just it's sort of under
45:20
Speaker 4: the radar. And of course with the current administration that
45:22
Speaker 4: we have, they turn a blind eye to it or
45:24
Speaker 4: they just endorse it. But on a state level, there
45:27
Speaker 4: are a lot of changes being made now. Jerome, I
45:30
Speaker 4: know you've been very outspoken in a very thoughtful way
45:35
Speaker 4: about the issues of socialization and compensation. As far as
45:40
Speaker 4: compensation goes, there's a crazy range of options different depending
45:46
Speaker 4: on what state your wrongful conviction took place. In Louisiana,
45:50
Speaker 4: we know has the worst criminal justice system in the
45:53
Speaker 4: entire country, And as far as that goes as far
45:56
Speaker 4: as far as socialization and compensation are concerned. What does
46:00
Speaker 4: that look like for somebody like you who had their
46:02
Speaker 4: entire well twenty years of their life taken away.
46:05
Speaker 2: Well, I mean in reality, if I use myself as
46:08
Speaker 2: an example, I wouldn't be surprised. I'd be in jail tomorrow,
46:13
Speaker 2: you know, behind unpaid bills. I haven't received anything, if anything,
46:18
Speaker 2: I've paid towards the same system. I pay taxes, you know,
46:22
Speaker 2: because I work for wages that you know, I'm not
46:27
Speaker 2: even able to afford all of the basic necessities that
46:30
Speaker 2: I would need. I've paid for drug testing, I paid bond.
46:34
Speaker 2: I had to pay twelve percent of twenty five thousand
46:37
Speaker 2: dollars bond and just just continue or expenses that has
46:42
Speaker 2: resulted from my situation. But it doesn't look good, and
46:46
Speaker 2: that's why guys don't make it. Some guys result to
46:49
Speaker 2: drug use, alcohol, They have to result the crime sometime
46:54
Speaker 2: to take care of themselves. And so we are still
46:58
Speaker 2: in the fight of and conversation for myself and also
47:03
Speaker 2: civil action against prosecutor. Socialization is a struggle because that's
47:10
Speaker 2: one of the silent killers. Social deprivation of guys in
47:15
Speaker 2: prison I mean meaning that they don't know how to
47:18
Speaker 2: communicate themselves to others that's not in prison with them
47:22
Speaker 2: because they have been doing that for so long, basically
47:26
Speaker 2: right amongst a fabric that excludes, you know, females, and
47:31
Speaker 2: you know, with all the other challenges, that's probably the
47:34
Speaker 2: heaviest challenge because you know, guys are excited now because
47:38
Speaker 2: now they can socialize with females once they get out,
47:41
Speaker 2: but there's no way to transition these guys into doing
47:45
Speaker 2: that in a healthy way. And also people that don't
47:49
Speaker 2: recognize as Silent Killer kind of misjudge or misunderstand or
47:54
Speaker 2: forming incarcerated person's communication towards them, and so it just
47:59
Speaker 2: create a whole bunch of confusion. A lot of guys
48:01
Speaker 2: get mixed off of relationships and have to end up
48:03
Speaker 2: going back to jail for domestic reasons, retaliatory reasons of
48:09
Speaker 2: the person that they got into these intimate situations with,
48:12
Speaker 2: and it causes a big problem. I just try to
48:15
Speaker 2: be reminded of that every day. But being in prison
48:18
Speaker 2: and being able to visit with people that's interning with
48:22
Speaker 2: the Innocence Project and working alone with the Innocence Project
48:25
Speaker 2: gave me the opportunity to exercise some social skills that
48:28
Speaker 2: I would need, you know, once I was released.
48:31
Speaker 4: So it's actually almost like some crazy through the looking
48:35
Speaker 4: glass insanity that not only haven't you been compensated, but
48:39
Speaker 4: you're paying the state for the privilege of having been
48:43
Speaker 4: locked up for twenty years in Angola because I didn't
48:46
Speaker 4: even realize you're paying for drug testing and the bond.
48:50
Speaker 4: I mean that, don't get me started on that. That's
48:51
Speaker 4: a whole other show. That's madness. And what we should
48:56
Speaker 4: be doing as a society is providing counselor psychologists or
49:01
Speaker 4: whatever appropriate form of treatment. You know, we know a
49:04
Speaker 4: lot of guys that come out have severe mental issues,
49:08
Speaker 4: but we don't. We don't do any of that. You
49:10
Speaker 4: have to sue to get your money, and we know
49:13
Speaker 4: that in Louisiana there's a cap right.
49:15
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean that conversation here is a whole
49:19
Speaker 2: another injustice Kristin.
49:20
Speaker 4: What is the compensation statute in Louisiana? I mean, I
49:24
Speaker 4: know it again, but I don't even like to say
49:26
Speaker 4: it because I hear myself say and I don't even
49:28
Speaker 4: believe myself saying it.
49:30
Speaker 7: The Louisiana compensation Statute provides for twenty five thousand dollars
49:35
Speaker 7: per year of wrongful incarceration, but it's capped at two
49:39
Speaker 7: hundred and fifty thousand, so it's essentially capped at ten years.
49:43
Speaker 7: I think we have one, maybe two clients who served
49:46
Speaker 7: less than ten years. Everybody served more than ten years,
49:49
Speaker 7: Drome served twice that, some have served three times that.
49:53
Speaker 7: So you get compensated for just ten years, and it's
49:55
Speaker 7: only at twenty five thousand dollars. That's paid out in
49:58
Speaker 7: twenty five thousand dollars increment. And this is all after
50:01
Speaker 7: you get a judgment, which can take years. And then
50:04
Speaker 7: there is something called compensation for loss of life opportunities,
50:09
Speaker 7: and the idea there is to provide some money for education,
50:13
Speaker 7: job skills training, and medical expenses. But that's set up
50:17
Speaker 7: in such a way there's a theoretical eighty thousand dollars
50:21
Speaker 7: pot for that. There's a time limit on using that money,
50:24
Speaker 7: and the way it's set up is that you have
50:26
Speaker 7: to spend the money before you get the money, and
50:28
Speaker 7: so you walk out of prison with nothing, then you
50:31
Speaker 7: wait years to receive that first twenty five thousand dollars check,
50:35
Speaker 7: and then if you have medical expenses, You're expected to
50:38
Speaker 7: front them before you get reimbursed, and that can take
50:41
Speaker 7: just the reimbursement can take over a year. It's an
50:45
Speaker 7: unfair system. It's fair to say.
50:49
Speaker 4: It's cool, I mean, and it's important for people to
50:53
Speaker 4: hear about it, especially from somebody like you, your own,
50:57
Speaker 4: who's been through it and it's still going through it.
51:00
Speaker 4: It seems like it never stops, by the way, I
51:02
Speaker 4: want to say, in the innocence community, which is it
51:06
Speaker 4: really is a community, right. There's innocence projects all over
51:08
Speaker 4: the country and all over the world, but in that community,
51:12
Speaker 4: the Innocence Project of New Orleans is considered one of
51:14
Speaker 4: the gold standards of innocence work. So you were very fortunate,
51:20
Speaker 4: much more fortunate than probably dozens of guys that you
51:23
Speaker 4: know that are in Gola who deserve a need a break.
51:26
Speaker 4: But yet you get out and you're still facing this
51:30
Speaker 4: incredible mountain to climb. There needs to be a whole
51:35
Speaker 4: paradigm shift, the idea that people like yourselves who have
51:38
Speaker 4: been through no fault of their own, ground up by
51:43
Speaker 4: the system and then come out and it's like, you know,
51:46
Speaker 4: you deserve a big fucking hug from society and like
51:49
Speaker 4: a program. You know, no one's saying you should get
51:52
Speaker 4: like the minute you walk out, you should get a
51:53
Speaker 4: mansion and a thing and whatever. Right, but a fair shake,
51:57
Speaker 4: I think is what most of the guys would want.
52:00
Speaker 1: I would suggest me and.
52:04
Speaker 2: You know, in the spirit of justice, that we find
52:06
Speaker 2: ways to put them in position to use that experience positively,
52:12
Speaker 2: use those sufferings or whatever they've been through to help
52:15
Speaker 2: somebody else cope through it and not have to fall
52:18
Speaker 2: victim to it. And if we can understand as a society,
52:23
Speaker 2: then you know, the money that we worried about far
52:26
Speaker 2: as you know, this person getting to match in a
52:29
Speaker 2: expensive car, what would be a concern, because these people
52:32
Speaker 2: will be able to afford those things for themselves as
52:36
Speaker 2: they seem to need them, you know, because you put
52:39
Speaker 2: them in a position where they can make it earn
52:41
Speaker 2: honest living, doing something that could turn whatever they have
52:45
Speaker 2: to heal from and relating it to somebody else and
52:49
Speaker 2: helping them go through it.
52:50
Speaker 1: And not end up being a victim of it.
52:53
Speaker 4: That's very well said, and I think those words are
52:56
Speaker 4: really important. Before we wrap up, is there any last
53:01
Speaker 4: thoughts that you am about anything that you want to
53:03
Speaker 4: share with the audience.
53:05
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts,
53:08
Speaker 2: but I mean, but to be shot, the one thing
53:11
Speaker 2: that I will say, kind of like a capital I
53:14
Speaker 2: just mentioned about us thinking of justice in that way,
53:17
Speaker 2: is that, you know, the just shall live by faith.
53:20
Speaker 2: The just shall live by faith. And I'm speaking of
53:23
Speaker 2: all of us. The people that I know that interested
53:27
Speaker 2: and invested in justice live by faith in the sense
53:30
Speaker 2: that they feel they have the faith that my good
53:35
Speaker 2: could harm the wrong in the world. And so we
53:39
Speaker 2: have to believe that good will harm the wrong in
53:42
Speaker 2: the world. And so we have to approach everything with
53:45
Speaker 2: good nature or good spirit, not the manipulative or conniving
53:50
Speaker 2: or deceitful, you know, or selfish. That we have to
53:54
Speaker 2: come to the table of life with the faith and
53:56
Speaker 2: goodness of faith, and positivity faith and groot of faith,
54:01
Speaker 2: in togetherness, of faith, in equality, and that's the only
54:05
Speaker 2: way that we're gonna live in a peaceful world. Then
54:09
Speaker 2: you will see that there has no room for selfishness
54:12
Speaker 2: or any inequality or disparities amongst humanity.
54:17
Speaker 4: Wow, I don't even know what to say, and people
54:23
Speaker 4: who listen know I'm rarely at a loss for words.
54:26
Speaker 4: But all I can say after that is to thank
54:30
Speaker 4: both of you for being here. You've been listening to
54:33
Speaker 4: a special New Orleans edition of Wrong for Conviction. You
54:37
Speaker 4: heard me and our guests today are Jerome Morgan and
54:41
Speaker 4: Kristin Winstrom, and thank you both for being here and
54:44
Speaker 4: sharing your story.
54:45
Speaker 1: Thank you Jason. Thank you appreciate this opportunity.
54:48
Speaker 4: Thank you, Jason, don't forget to give us a fantastic
54:55
Speaker 4: review wherever you get your podcasts.
54:57
Speaker 1: It really helps.
54:58
Speaker 4: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
55:01
Speaker 4: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
55:04
Speaker 4: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
55:08
Speaker 4: to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate
55:11
Speaker 4: and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
55:14
Speaker 4: Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show
55:17
Speaker 4: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
55:20
Speaker 4: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
55:23
Speaker 4: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
55:27
Speaker 4: Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
55:30
Speaker 4: association with Signal Company Number one