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#196 Jason Flom with Gary Drinkard · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: Dalton Pace was a large man who ran a junkyard
0:05
Speaker 1: out of his home into Cater, Alabama. He was known
0:08
Speaker 1: to carry large amounts of cash. On August nineteenth, nineteen
0:12
Speaker 1: ninety three, after a brutal fight, someone shot Dalton Pace
0:16
Speaker 1: and stole that cash. Meanwhile, thirty five miles away, Gary
0:22
Speaker 1: Drinkerd's daughter and neighbors were delivering a litter of puppies
0:26
Speaker 1: while Gary was there laid up on the couch with
0:28
Speaker 1: a back injury on heavy pain meds, definitely in no
0:32
Speaker 1: shape to fight anyone, let alone a man the size
0:35
Speaker 1: of Dalton Pace. When Gary's half sister, Beverly Robinson and
0:40
Speaker 1: her boyfriend Rex Segar were dealing with their own significant
0:44
Speaker 1: legal troubles, they tried to trade a lleged information about
0:48
Speaker 1: Dalton Pace's murder for leniency, claiming that Gary was the killer.
0:53
Speaker 1: To corroborate those false claims, Beverly wore a wire between
0:57
Speaker 1: her legs while trying to coax them words out of Gary,
1:01
Speaker 1: But whenever Gary denied involvement, Beverly would rub her thighs together,
1:06
Speaker 1: making his denials inaudible. Then the lead detective took it
1:12
Speaker 1: upon himself to testify a trial about Gary's alleged taped confession.
1:17
Speaker 1: It took a literal dream team of lawyers to undo
1:21
Speaker 1: those lies, including the great Brian Stevenson and our returning guest,
1:25
Speaker 1: the eminent attorney Richard Jeffy. However, nothing will ever make
1:30
Speaker 1: up for all that lost time Gary spent on death row.
1:36
Speaker 1: This this Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flopp. Welcome back to
1:54
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason flamm That's me. I'm your host,
1:57
Speaker 1: and today I'm actually almost a little nervous because I've
2:02
Speaker 1: not one, but two people who I just look up
2:05
Speaker 1: to so much. One you'll recognize, Richard Jaffey, is one
2:08
Speaker 1: of the most prolific and successful death penalty lawyers in
2:12
Speaker 1: the country. Richard, Welcome back to Ronful Conviction.
2:16
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
2:17
Speaker 3: Jaison.
2:17
Speaker 1: Great to be here, and with him is someone who
2:20
Speaker 1: he speaks of in the Reverend tones, and he's not
2:24
Speaker 1: the only one. His story will anger you, but his
2:27
Speaker 1: spirit will inspire you. Gary Drinkard, Welcome to Wronful Conviction.
2:31
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.
2:34
Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning. First of all, Gary, did
2:37
Speaker 1: you grow up in Alabama?
2:39
Speaker 4: I did I've been all up in the north and
2:42
Speaker 4: out west and everything. I always came back to Alabama.
2:45
Speaker 1: For the most part. You know, until this insane fate
2:49
Speaker 1: befel you, things were pretty good. Is that fair to say? Oh?
2:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything was going great.
2:54
Speaker 4: I had just followed fourteen acres of land and enrolled
2:58
Speaker 4: into college. We were fixing to build a dream home.
3:01
Speaker 4: And then bam, everything goes crazy.
3:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, and everything really did go crazy. And just to
3:08
Speaker 1: set the stage, we're talking about the afternoon of August nineteenth,
3:13
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, when the body of Dalton Pace was
3:18
Speaker 1: found in his Decatur, Alabama home. He had been shot
3:22
Speaker 1: twice in the back and once in the head. Now,
3:25
Speaker 1: mister Pace ran a junk yard out of his home
3:27
Speaker 1: and was known for carrying large rolls of cash. He
3:29
Speaker 1: was a guy who didn't trust banks, so he was
3:31
Speaker 1: a logical target for somebody, and all of the cash,
3:35
Speaker 1: except for the contents of his wallet, had been stolen. So, Richard,
3:39
Speaker 1: take us back to this crime, because what's going to
3:41
Speaker 1: become clear as we go along is that it was
3:43
Speaker 1: actually totally impossible for Gary to have committed this crime.
3:48
Speaker 1: But somehow or other, long before you even heard about
3:50
Speaker 1: the case. He was convicted anyway and sentenced to death.
3:53
Speaker 2: This is really an extraordinary case because Gary was thirty
3:58
Speaker 2: five miles away and when the authorities got there they
4:04
Speaker 2: found a bottle of whiskey in a glass and they
4:08
Speaker 2: didn't even fingerprint these two items. After a couple of weeks,
4:14
Speaker 2: the investigation went nowhere, and suddenly Beverly Robinson, who happened
4:19
Speaker 2: to be Gary's half sister, went to the police and
4:23
Speaker 2: she said, I can help you find who killed Dalton Pace.
4:28
Speaker 2: She said it's my half brother, Gary Drinkard and they said, well,
4:32
Speaker 2: you got any corroboration to that? They said, yeah, I'm
4:36
Speaker 2: my boyfriend Rex Seegers, who I live with, and that's it.
4:41
Speaker 2: At which point they said you're going to have to
4:43
Speaker 2: give us more than that. So they wired her up,
4:47
Speaker 2: sent her over to Gary's home around six thirty or
4:51
Speaker 2: so in the morning, sat there drinking coffee with Gary,
4:55
Speaker 2: wired up with Detective Gary Walker in a van, and
5:00
Speaker 2: like you see on TV, down the street listening in
5:02
Speaker 2: real time, Beverly Robinson had brought a newspaper of the
5:07
Speaker 2: account and then started reading from the newspaper and asking
5:12
Speaker 2: Gary questions about the crime, as if Gary might have
5:16
Speaker 2: known something, and every time Gary answered the question, the
5:20
Speaker 2: tap was not legible because, and we found this out later,
5:26
Speaker 2: Beverly's wire was between her legs and she would rub
5:29
Speaker 2: her legs together every time. She would try to get
5:32
Speaker 2: Gary to incriminate himself, and he never did.
5:35
Speaker 1: She was almost sort of editing the tape for the cops. Gary,
5:39
Speaker 1: when did you first find out that you were considered
5:42
Speaker 1: a suspect?
5:44
Speaker 3: Oh?
5:44
Speaker 4: I had no clue until the police came one morning
5:48
Speaker 4: and busted my door open. They had a search more
5:51
Speaker 4: for marijuana. It was a quarter ounce, and they were
5:54
Speaker 4: looking for everything except marijuana. They threw my wife and
5:59
Speaker 4: myself on the ground, handcuffed us. They drug my kids
6:03
Speaker 4: out of the bedrooms. One of them stuck a gun
6:06
Speaker 4: to my son's face, leaving the bruise. They made my
6:10
Speaker 4: sixteen year old daughter and her friend come out of
6:12
Speaker 4: the back bedroom, wouldn't let them get a dressed. They
6:14
Speaker 4: run their bra and panties in front of all those police,
6:18
Speaker 4: and I was just outraged. I didn't find out until
6:21
Speaker 4: two weeks after I had been arrested for the marijuana
6:25
Speaker 4: that I was implicated in a murder.
6:27
Speaker 1: The idea that they were willing to bust up your
6:29
Speaker 1: house and manhandle your family in a way that they
6:32
Speaker 1: did for a quarter ound supot. Of course, we know
6:35
Speaker 1: that that wasn't really what they were after, but that's
6:37
Speaker 1: the idea that it could be used as a pretext
6:40
Speaker 1: to go in and bust up a house and a
6:42
Speaker 1: family like that. That can't go on anymore.
6:45
Speaker 4: Amazingly enough, it was dry in that area of marijuana
6:50
Speaker 4: at the time.
6:51
Speaker 3: Beverly's the one that sold it to me.
6:53
Speaker 4: They knew exactly where to go find it, and I'm
6:58
Speaker 4: really believing that they gave to her to sell to me.
7:02
Speaker 1: Wow.
7:03
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's important to realize that Beverly and
7:06
Speaker 2: Rex had also been busted and both of them were
7:10
Speaker 2: facing serious criminal charges. And Rex was on parole from Oklahoma,
7:16
Speaker 2: and he was facing forty years if he screwed up
7:19
Speaker 2: his parole, but as a career criminal, he was looking
7:22
Speaker 2: at a LFE sentence in Alabama. So both of them
7:25
Speaker 2: were hugely motivated to try to give them Gary a
7:30
Speaker 2: likely suspect in their mind, if they could get Geary
7:33
Speaker 2: to confess to something he wouldn't confess to and didn't do.
7:37
Speaker 1: Now, Dalton Pace was not a small guy. Right, this
7:41
Speaker 1: is a big, strong man who put up a tremendous struggle,
7:45
Speaker 1: and that plays into the story as well. Gary, forget
7:48
Speaker 1: the fact that you had an airtight alibi because you
7:50
Speaker 1: were thirty five miles away and there was a particular
7:52
Speaker 1: reason why your alibi was so tight. Just explain to
7:56
Speaker 1: the audience what was going on that very day when
7:59
Speaker 1: mister was murdered.
8:01
Speaker 4: I had bought fourteen acres of land, and the neighbor
8:05
Speaker 4: had gave my daughter a Pickanese dog that was pregnant.
8:08
Speaker 4: She wanted to pick of the litter of the puppies,
8:11
Speaker 4: and she told us when she started having the puppies
8:14
Speaker 4: to call her and she would come out there and
8:17
Speaker 4: help us birth them. So the night of the murder,
8:20
Speaker 4: which I knew nothing about, we called the lady and
8:24
Speaker 4: she came over to the house with her boyfriend and
8:27
Speaker 4: she was back with my daughter helping her birth the
8:30
Speaker 4: puppies as her boyfriend and I were sitting in the
8:32
Speaker 4: living room watching the news.
8:34
Speaker 1: And you were also in no physical shape to murder
8:37
Speaker 1: anybody at the time, right.
8:39
Speaker 4: No, I was on strong muscle lectures and I was
8:42
Speaker 4: laid up on the couch and from a back injury.
8:44
Speaker 1: Is it fair to say that you couldn't have even
8:46
Speaker 1: driven to thirty five miles, much less got out of
8:48
Speaker 1: the car and gone it. Struggled with a big, strong man.
8:51
Speaker 4: I could have actually driven there, but I couldn't have
8:54
Speaker 4: struggled with him and overcame anything.
8:56
Speaker 1: So, Richard, how the hell did they build a care
9:00
Speaker 1: with no evidence? And how were they able to convince
9:03
Speaker 1: a jury that he did it when it should have
9:05
Speaker 1: been obvious to anyone that these snitches were incentivized and
9:12
Speaker 1: in all likelihood were the actual perpetrators.
9:14
Speaker 2: Well, it's a great question because Geary was appointed for
9:18
Speaker 2: that first trial three local lawyers, but none of them
9:23
Speaker 2: were experienced criminal lawyers, and especially not in the death
9:27
Speaker 2: penalty arena. They didn't call the doctor that treated Geary
9:32
Speaker 2: that would have explained the extent of his condition. The
9:36
Speaker 2: fingernail scrapings that were on the deceased Dalton pace. They
9:42
Speaker 2: didn't even challenge that they weren't tested, nor that fingerprints
9:46
Speaker 2: that were taken from the whiskey wasn't compared to Rex
9:50
Speaker 2: or to Beverly. They didn't do any of that. What
9:53
Speaker 2: they did was they called Beverly as the chief witness
9:57
Speaker 2: and they called the detective that had engineered the wired
10:01
Speaker 2: conversation with Gary and Beverly. And here's the kicker. That
10:06
Speaker 2: particular detective told the jury that while he couldn't hear
10:12
Speaker 2: all of what was on the tape, he was able
10:15
Speaker 2: to hear that Geary said to Beverly, the old man
10:20
Speaker 2: grabbed me, and you know, I had no choice but
10:22
Speaker 2: to shoot him, which was never on there. But the
10:27
Speaker 2: lawyers unfortunately let that slide, and the jury believed the
10:31
Speaker 2: detective that Geary had confessed when he didn't.
10:35
Speaker 1: You no, jury's can be misled fairly easily when people
10:39
Speaker 1: in positions of power view that power. And that's exactly
10:42
Speaker 1: what happened here. Now, the jury didn't deliberate very long.
10:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, approximately an hour.
10:48
Speaker 4: The judge had told one of his secretaries, and it
10:52
Speaker 4: got back to my mother that if I put on
10:54
Speaker 4: some type of mitigating evidence that he would give me
10:58
Speaker 4: a life without problem. Well, I wasn't about to get
11:02
Speaker 4: my mother up there begging and crying for my life
11:04
Speaker 4: when I hadn't done anything, and I didn't put on
11:07
Speaker 4: any mitigating evidence, and I was found guilty and sentenced
11:10
Speaker 4: to death. And that was devastating because I figured, well,
11:15
Speaker 4: I'm going down there with the worst of the worst.
11:16
Speaker 4: I've got to be watching my back all the time.
11:20
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot of people's worst nightmare and
11:22
Speaker 1: you were living it. Can you just give us a
11:25
Speaker 1: sense of death row in Alabama? You know, take us
11:29
Speaker 1: inside that cell if you can't.
11:31
Speaker 4: Well, it was a little five by eight concrete cell.
11:36
Speaker 4: I mean most people's bathrooms are larger than that.
11:40
Speaker 3: It was nasty.
11:41
Speaker 4: They would give you clean and supplies, but you couldn't
11:44
Speaker 4: keep it clean. There was cockroaches three inches long, rats
11:49
Speaker 4: running around, insane people hollering. We had a man I
11:54
Speaker 4: was on the second tier. There was a man on
11:57
Speaker 4: the first tier. He would holler twenty four hours a
11:59
Speaker 4: day day. There were people committing suicide trying to beat
12:04
Speaker 4: the executioner. There were people committing suicide because they were
12:09
Speaker 4: in so much pain and the doctors wouldn't help them.
12:12
Speaker 4: Your friends get sent to be executed. If the wind's
12:15
Speaker 4: blown right, you can smell burning flash. It was unreal.
12:31
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by the AIG pro Bono Program.
12:35
Speaker 1: AIG is a leading global insurance company, and for over
12:39
Speaker 1: a decade, the AIG pro Bono program has provided thousands
12:43
Speaker 1: of hours of free legal services and other support to
12:46
Speaker 1: nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need. More recently, the
12:50
Speaker 1: program added criminal and social justice reform as a key
12:54
Speaker 1: pillar of its mission. The Pacers Foundation is a proud
12:59
Speaker 1: supporter of this episod of Wraful Convision with Jason Flam
13:02
Speaker 1: and of the Last Mile Organization, which provides business and
13:05
Speaker 1: tech training to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re
13:10
Speaker 1: enter the workforce. The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving
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Speaker 1: the lives of Hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations that are
13:17
Speaker 1: dedicated primarily to helping young people and students. For more
13:21
Speaker 1: information on the work of the Pacers Foundation or the
13:25
Speaker 1: Last Mile Program, please visit Pacersfoundation dot org or the
13:29
Speaker 1: Lastmile dot org. I was rereading your chapter in Richard's
13:42
Speaker 1: wonderful book Quest for Justice Defending the Damned. It's the
13:46
Speaker 1: second edition. The stories are really brilliantly told. You really
13:50
Speaker 1: get a chance to be inside the mind of one
13:52
Speaker 1: of the great courtroom lawyers of our time in life
13:56
Speaker 1: or death situations. So I think you'll enjoy reading it.
13:59
Speaker 1: But as I was rereading that chapter today, I was
14:03
Speaker 1: thinking about you. Somehow or other went from I don't
14:06
Speaker 1: know what you want to call it the outhouse of
14:08
Speaker 1: the penthouse in terms of your legal representation, because you
14:11
Speaker 1: ended up having the great Brian Stevenson get you a retrial.
14:16
Speaker 4: The first attorneys at the trial didn't do a good job,
14:19
Speaker 4: and I was fearful that the appeals attorney wouldn't do
14:21
Speaker 4: a good job. So I wrote mister Stevenson begging for
14:25
Speaker 4: an attorney to handle my appeals. When I did hear
14:28
Speaker 4: back from him, he appointed mister Randy Suskin to handle
14:32
Speaker 4: my appeals.
14:33
Speaker 3: I was thrilled Gary got.
14:35
Speaker 2: A new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct improper evidence offered
14:40
Speaker 2: against him in his first trial.
14:42
Speaker 1: And now that Brian Stevenson and Randy Suskin have done
14:45
Speaker 1: their part.
14:46
Speaker 3: You got involved.
14:47
Speaker 1: You weren't even really a decated lawyer, so you had
14:49
Speaker 1: to basically pull some strings and maneuver yourself into this case.
14:53
Speaker 2: If I was going to get on, I knew that
14:56
Speaker 2: I would have to get appointed. The problem with getting
14:59
Speaker 2: appointed was that the judge doesn't know me. I've not
15:02
Speaker 2: practiced there, but John Mays, my good friend, did and
15:06
Speaker 2: does practice there. So John was ultimately able to talk
15:09
Speaker 2: to Judge into appointing us both with some conditions, and
15:13
Speaker 2: then Steve Wright from the Southern Cider from Human Rights
15:17
Speaker 2: called me at home and he offered the services of
15:19
Speaker 2: Chris Adams and the mitigation team of Southern Center. It
15:23
Speaker 2: was a deal I would never refused, and boom, we
15:25
Speaker 2: had our team in place.
15:27
Speaker 1: I think for many people listening, they're probably going, well, Okay,
15:29
Speaker 1: now you got this dream team. You have all this evidence.
15:32
Speaker 1: The state has no evidence. This should have been a
15:34
Speaker 1: slam dunk.
15:35
Speaker 2: The first thing that happened in this case right before
15:40
Speaker 2: trial that basically just blew our world was this We
15:44
Speaker 2: were counting on the perfect alibi that Geary had, which
15:49
Speaker 2: was multiple people besides of course the doctor in his back.
15:52
Speaker 2: And one of those alibi witnesses testified in the first trial,
15:57
Speaker 2: and her name was Kelly Hargrove. That was Gary's stepdaughter. Well,
16:02
Speaker 2: Kelly was going to be one of three or four
16:05
Speaker 2: alibi witnesses we were going to call, and right before
16:08
Speaker 2: trial we couldn't reach her, and she had moved to
16:11
Speaker 2: Panama City and she would not respond to ours, couldn't
16:15
Speaker 2: even subpoena her. And we figured out what happened they
16:18
Speaker 2: had cut a deal with her, meaning that she had
16:21
Speaker 2: got in trouble in Panama City. She was facing some
16:25
Speaker 2: potential theft charges, and she cut a deal, even though
16:29
Speaker 2: the state never admitted it, and suddenly she became the
16:32
Speaker 2: chief witness for the state. She basically said, I perjured
16:38
Speaker 2: myself in the first trial, and Gary confessed to me,
16:43
Speaker 2: and that was her testimony in the second trial.
16:46
Speaker 1: So they were far from done with their dirty tricks.
16:49
Speaker 1: And in fact, they really pulled the rug out from
16:51
Speaker 1: under you in a pretty serious way here. So you
16:53
Speaker 1: had to pivot. But that wasn't the only card you
16:56
Speaker 1: had to play.
16:57
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no. So where I candidly made a
17:03
Speaker 2: tremendous tactical mistake, and I write about it in the
17:06
Speaker 2: book with clarity and candor, because lawyers need to be
17:11
Speaker 2: conscious of every word they speak. And I ask a
17:14
Speaker 2: question that I never should have asked, and it was
17:18
Speaker 2: what were the scratches that she claimed that she sold
17:22
Speaker 2: twelve days later when she said Gary confessed, where were
17:26
Speaker 2: they on Geary? And it was a huge mistake because
17:31
Speaker 2: I didn't take into consideration the obvious is that they
17:34
Speaker 2: would have prepped her and showed her the pictures of
17:37
Speaker 2: the scratches that Geary had that he received when he
17:41
Speaker 2: was arrested and basically jerked onto the concrete from his automobile.
17:46
Speaker 2: They jerked him out about it causing scratches, and she
17:50
Speaker 2: described those scratches as being very red and very fresh
17:54
Speaker 2: and long scratches, and it was what the picture showed,
17:58
Speaker 2: and it was an awful moment for me. Fortunately, we
18:02
Speaker 2: got a lunch break and everybody else was eating lunch.
18:06
Speaker 2: I was like underwater, and then I figured it out,
18:10
Speaker 2: like a bell went on right before we went back.
18:13
Speaker 2: Is that there's no way that those were the scratches
18:17
Speaker 2: that she saw, because if she'd seen those scratches twelve
18:22
Speaker 2: days later when she said Gary confessed, they wouldn't have
18:25
Speaker 2: been fresh, they would have been scabbed, and they would
18:28
Speaker 2: have been in the healing process. There's no way that
18:31
Speaker 2: those scratches would have occurred at the crime scene from
18:34
Speaker 2: Dalton Pace.
18:35
Speaker 3: There's no way.
18:37
Speaker 2: And once I overcame that hurdle, then showing that she
18:41
Speaker 2: was beyond belief was very easy to do, especially since
18:45
Speaker 2: we had Affi Davids from all the people she stole
18:49
Speaker 2: from in Panama City that she denied.
18:52
Speaker 1: So the step daughter's claims about an alleged compession were
18:54
Speaker 1: proven to be totally incredible. That lie brought to you,
18:58
Speaker 1: of course by prosecutor conduct. But this wasn't the only
19:03
Speaker 1: person that they'd courced.
19:04
Speaker 2: An alibi witness that was a friend of Gary's daughter.
19:09
Speaker 2: We flew her up from Oregon on our own dime,
19:12
Speaker 2: and when the investigators and the prosecution found out, they
19:16
Speaker 2: intimidated her at the motel where she was staying and
19:20
Speaker 2: basically spooked her, and she refused to testify. They threatened
19:24
Speaker 2: her with perjury, and that would have been a nice
19:26
Speaker 2: thing to have her because she was another strong alibi
19:29
Speaker 2: witness that they used their power to keep her from testifying.
19:35
Speaker 1: Now comes another state's witness. Beverly gets back on the
19:38
Speaker 1: stand to repeat the lies she told in the first trial,
19:41
Speaker 1: and really the lies that started the whole thing. And
19:44
Speaker 1: of course she denied having an incentive to lie, and
19:48
Speaker 1: Richard proved that her denials were lies, destroying her credibility.
19:53
Speaker 1: So now Beverly, who bears a great deal of responsibility
19:56
Speaker 1: for Gary's wrongful conviction, was all deflated. And when she
19:59
Speaker 1: got off the stand, she does something absolutely nuts. Gary,
20:06
Speaker 1: go ahead, do you speak to that.
20:08
Speaker 4: Right as she was getting off the stand, she looks
20:10
Speaker 4: over at me and says, Carrie, I've always loved you.
20:15
Speaker 4: And the judge said, get her out of here, get
20:16
Speaker 4: her out of here. I mean, everybody in there could
20:19
Speaker 4: tell she was lying. Everybody could tell she was hot,
20:23
Speaker 4: she was hopped up.
20:25
Speaker 1: That's like, it's like a movie. It's like it's like
20:28
Speaker 1: some of my cousin VINNI shit or something. It's crazy. Really,
20:42
Speaker 1: what were the other key things that you think really
20:45
Speaker 1: turned the jury around.
20:47
Speaker 2: Well, let me start by saying this that in the
20:50
Speaker 2: first trial, the detective detective Gary Walker had said that
20:56
Speaker 2: while listening to the tape recorded conversation between and Beverly,
21:02
Speaker 2: his half sister, that Gary confessed. And I already mentioned that,
21:06
Speaker 2: but the tape got enhanced because we insisted the FBI
21:10
Speaker 2: and Anstein. They brought the agent to testify in the
21:15
Speaker 2: state court, and the FBI agent had to be honest.
21:19
Speaker 2: And as many times as we played the enhanced tape,
21:24
Speaker 2: he never heard Gary confess because it wasn't on there.
21:29
Speaker 2: And then Detective Walker testified in spite of it not
21:35
Speaker 2: being on there. He insisted even on my cross with him,
21:39
Speaker 2: he insisted that Gary basically confessed, and we played that
21:45
Speaker 2: tape at least a half a dozen times, and it
21:48
Speaker 2: was very clear that Gary never confessed. It was never
21:53
Speaker 2: on the tape, and he could not have heard what
21:56
Speaker 2: he told the jury in the first trial. On the
21:58
Speaker 2: second trial that he heard. And when that occurred, I
22:03
Speaker 2: think the trial was pretty much over in our favor.
22:06
Speaker 4: I knew we'd put on a good case, and I
22:09
Speaker 4: knew I had a good chance of being found not guilty.
22:12
Speaker 4: But you'll never never allow your hopes to get up,
22:16
Speaker 4: or you'll get crushed and it'll devastate you all over again.
22:21
Speaker 4: But when they sent the jury out to deliberate, Richard
22:25
Speaker 4: and the other attorneys went after some coffee. Well, the
22:29
Speaker 4: laps in the courthouse went out. Somebody outside had hit
22:33
Speaker 4: a telephone pole, and a police officer that was sitting
22:36
Speaker 4: with me put a gun in my back, and I'm thinking,
22:39
Speaker 4: oh Lord, this Sidi's going to shoot me before I
22:41
Speaker 4: even get a chance to hear the juror.
22:45
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ again, if you put that in a movie,
22:48
Speaker 1: somebody would go, now, I be gonna believe that. Sorry,
22:49
Speaker 1: I gotta take that out.
22:51
Speaker 3: Gary.
22:51
Speaker 1: We talked about the worst moment of your life when
22:55
Speaker 1: you were found guilty. So this is the opposite. Paint
22:58
Speaker 1: the picture for us as best you can. You take
23:01
Speaker 1: us inside that moment in the courtroom.
23:03
Speaker 4: Well, when they told me to stand up and they
23:05
Speaker 4: pronounced a not guilty verdict, everybody in the courtroom, I
23:10
Speaker 4: believe had tears. I think the old judge even she
23:12
Speaker 4: had a couple of tears. That was probably the happiest
23:16
Speaker 4: moment of my life.
23:18
Speaker 2: We interviewed the drawers afterwards and they all said, basically, look,
23:23
Speaker 2: we know he never could have done it, he never
23:25
Speaker 2: should have been charged, and we reached our verdict in
23:29
Speaker 2: less than five minutes. There's no way to quantify the
23:33
Speaker 2: depth of your feelings when someone is basically snatched away
23:38
Speaker 2: from the grips of death.
23:41
Speaker 4: Well, I'm walking out the courthouse and my mother's there,
23:44
Speaker 4: my ex wife's there with my children, are good friends there.
23:49
Speaker 4: My kids are just thrilled to death, and they asked
23:54
Speaker 4: me what's the first thing I want to do. I said,
23:58
Speaker 4: get some barbecue right away.
24:01
Speaker 1: So, Gary, since getting out, you've been doing some great
24:04
Speaker 1: work with Witnessed Innocence, Kirk Bludsworth and the whole crew,
24:09
Speaker 1: raising awareness you're literally on a mission to abolish the
24:13
Speaker 1: death penalty. I would love to hear more about.
24:16
Speaker 4: That, Okay, be glad to Witness to Innocence is an
24:21
Speaker 4: anti death penalty organization which came to me approximately five
24:25
Speaker 4: years after I was out. The group consists of people
24:30
Speaker 4: that have been exonerated from death row and their family
24:33
Speaker 4: members and support members. We go around the country speaking
24:37
Speaker 4: to anyone that listened to us. We've got this penalty
24:41
Speaker 4: called accuracy and justice. We speak to prosecutors, we speak
24:46
Speaker 4: to judges, and we change a lot of minds. I mean,
24:50
Speaker 4: we've helped abolish we haven't done it ourselves, but we've
24:53
Speaker 4: helped abolish the death penalty in about four states.
24:57
Speaker 1: How can people get involved?
25:00
Speaker 3: A website Witness Innocence dot org.
25:03
Speaker 1: That's Witness to Innocence dot org. A great organization. By
25:07
Speaker 1: the way, we have the link in the bio along
25:09
Speaker 1: with links to the groups that help free Gary. Of course,
25:13
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Equal Justice Initiative and the Southern
25:16
Speaker 1: Center for Human Rights. So just scroll down and get involved.
25:21
Speaker 1: And now we come to the part of our show
25:24
Speaker 1: called closing Arguments, where I thank you both for sharing
25:27
Speaker 1: this remarkable story and I'm just going to turn my
25:30
Speaker 1: mic off, kick back, close my eyes, and listen to
25:33
Speaker 1: anything you have left to say, anything on your mind
25:37
Speaker 1: at all.
25:38
Speaker 3: Anything we left out.
25:39
Speaker 1: So we're going to save the best for Lass, of course,
25:42
Speaker 1: and no offense to the great Richard Jaffy. But that
25:45
Speaker 1: means you, Gary, you're bat and clean up here, so
25:47
Speaker 1: to speak. So Richard, the mic is yours.
25:51
Speaker 2: This case is the perfect example of every reason why
25:57
Speaker 2: the death penalty should be abolished, because everything that's wrong
26:02
Speaker 2: with it is present in this case. One, it was
26:05
Speaker 2: a lottery that Geary ended up with the legal team
26:09
Speaker 2: he ended up with for the second trial, in particular
26:13
Speaker 2: the Southern Center for Human Rights John Mays, Chris Adams.
26:17
Speaker 2: And secondly, Geary got a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct,
26:24
Speaker 2: and then when his second trial begins, there was more
26:27
Speaker 2: prosecutorial misconduct. The case involved an investigation that was taking
26:33
Speaker 2: snitch's words for things without corroborating it and verifying it.
26:38
Speaker 2: It was truly a travesty that Geary was ever charged
26:42
Speaker 2: in the first place. So when you look at the
26:45
Speaker 2: death penalty and analyze it, this is the perfect example
26:51
Speaker 2: of why it simply doesn't work. It's arbitrary, and it's capricious,
26:58
Speaker 2: and it is snatching people that are good people out
27:02
Speaker 2: of society and wrongfully convicting them and subjecting them to
27:07
Speaker 2: losing their lives.
27:09
Speaker 1: Kary over to you.
27:11
Speaker 4: When I got off out of prison, I knew I
27:16
Speaker 4: had to get a different vocation other than construction because
27:19
Speaker 4: it still had a hurt back.
27:20
Speaker 3: And I went to college.
27:23
Speaker 4: I told the teachers what had happened, asked them, could
27:26
Speaker 4: I get a job?
27:26
Speaker 3: They said yes.
27:28
Speaker 4: I signed up for respiratory therapy. I was doing good
27:31
Speaker 4: in class, I was doing great in clinicals six months
27:36
Speaker 4: before graduation. The hospital will hire you if you're doing good,
27:42
Speaker 4: nurses warned me, because I could feel the patient's pain
27:47
Speaker 4: and they.
27:48
Speaker 3: Wouldn't hire me.
27:49
Speaker 4: They laughed when they seen that I'd been convicted of
27:53
Speaker 4: capital murder. They laughed, said, no hospital in the country
27:56
Speaker 4: will hire you. That's still on my record, witness to innocence.
28:02
Speaker 4: I saw what they were doing. I saw the potential
28:05
Speaker 4: in the organization, and I said, definitely, I would love
28:09
Speaker 4: to be a member.
28:10
Speaker 3: And to me, this is one of.
28:12
Speaker 4: The best, most powerful anti death penalty organizations around. Before
28:18
Speaker 4: this COVID thing, I was traveling probably once a month
28:22
Speaker 4: without just speaking engagements. But now since this COVID thing's
28:27
Speaker 4: going on, I sit at home and hope somebody will call.
28:37
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason flamm.
28:40
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence projects and go to the
28:43
Speaker 1: link in our bio to see how you can help.
28:46
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff
28:49
Speaker 1: Clyburn and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show as always,
28:53
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
28:56
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29:00
Speaker 1: Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm
29:04
Speaker 1: is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association
29:07
Speaker 1: with Signal Company Number one