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#437 Jason Flom with James Kluppleberg · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: On March twenty fourth, nineteen eighty four, five children and
0:05
Speaker 1: their mother, twenty eight year old Elva Lupercio, were killed
0:09
Speaker 1: in an apartment building fire. It was originally ruled accidental,
0:13
Speaker 1: but a fire captain who was unseen unofficially may have
0:17
Speaker 1: had some reservations about that finding. Then, in November nineteen
0:20
Speaker 1: eighty seven, a man named Dwayne Glasgow, who lived nearby
0:24
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty four fire, was arrested for burglary and
0:27
Speaker 1: offered some information that back in nineteen eighty four, looking
0:31
Speaker 1: out an attic window, he had seen his old roommate
0:34
Speaker 1: James Kluppelberg walking back and forth to the building before
0:37
Speaker 1: the fire and later admitting to setting it. And then,
0:40
Speaker 1: in December nineteen eighty seven, while coincidentally reporting an unrelated arson,
0:44
Speaker 1: James Kloppelberg was questioned about the nineteen eighty four fire
0:48
Speaker 1: and allegedly gave an oral confession in January nineteen eighty eight.
0:52
Speaker 1: Even though allegations of coercion shed doubt on the statement,
0:55
Speaker 1: testimony from Glasgow and the fire captain were enough to
0:58
Speaker 1: send James away for six natural life sentences plus fourteen years.
1:03
Speaker 1: But this is wrongful conviction Welcome back to wrongful Conviction.
1:17
Speaker 1: This is an arson case. I hate arson cases. I
1:21
Speaker 1: think it's one of the worst of all the junk sciences.
1:24
Speaker 1: It's also a torture case because the man we're going
1:27
Speaker 1: to be speaking to is just another victim of the
1:31
Speaker 1: torture crew in the Chicago PD under Lieutenant John Burge.
1:35
Speaker 1: And before I even introduce James Kloppelberg, I'm going to
1:40
Speaker 1: first reintroduce somebody who our listeners will probably recognize, Carl Leonard.
1:45
Speaker 1: Carl is an attorney at the Exoneration Project in Illinois.
1:49
Speaker 1: So Carl, welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
1:51
Speaker 2: Thank you. It's great to be here.
1:53
Speaker 1: So James, I'm sorry. I think, like the city of Chicago, Illinois,
1:58
Speaker 1: the country, everybody owes you in a post and more.
2:01
Speaker 1: But I'm so glad you're here and I appreciate you
2:03
Speaker 1: being here with us today.
2:04
Speaker 3: My pleasure and thank you for having me. It's a
2:06
Speaker 3: true honor, James.
2:07
Speaker 1: Before we get into the awful occurrence that happened in
2:12
Speaker 1: Chicago that led to the deaths for which you were
2:15
Speaker 1: years later wrongfully convicted, your life wasn't easy from the beginning.
2:18
Speaker 1: Is that fair to say?
2:20
Speaker 3: Yes, that would be a fair representation. I had a
2:23
Speaker 3: low income childhood, so to speak, with three sisters and
2:27
Speaker 3: a brother and my mother. We moved around a lot.
2:29
Speaker 3: I think at one point, probably about once a year
2:33
Speaker 3: for like a decade ish or so. Growing up. I
2:36
Speaker 3: remember going to a lot of different schools, almost a
2:38
Speaker 3: different one every year, and things were tough, you know,
2:40
Speaker 3: as far as finances and everything. But for the most part,
2:44
Speaker 3: my mother always made sure there was food on the
2:46
Speaker 3: table and we were loved and taken care of.
2:49
Speaker 1: By the time James was eighteen years old, he had
2:51
Speaker 1: been married, and during a rough patch, he was temporarily
2:54
Speaker 1: staying with his friends Don Graymont and Dwayne Glasgow, who
2:58
Speaker 1: lived about four doors down from where this far I occurred.
3:00
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, the couple had their own troubles,
3:03
Speaker 1: along with two kids and another one on the way.
3:05
Speaker 3: On February sixteenth of eighty four, she gave birth to
3:10
Speaker 3: her third child and Dwayne took her to the hospital
3:14
Speaker 3: and I was staying over so I watched the other
3:17
Speaker 3: two children. I got a phone call from her that evening.
3:20
Speaker 3: He had not returned yet, and she asked if I
3:23
Speaker 3: was still looking for a place to stay. I said yeah.
3:26
Speaker 3: She said, well you can move into the bedroom up
3:28
Speaker 3: in the attic. You want to help me out with
3:30
Speaker 3: the bills, fine, whatever. I said, Well, what's he going
3:33
Speaker 3: to say about this? She said, I don't care. That's
3:35
Speaker 3: the catch. I want you to pack his stuff. I
3:37
Speaker 3: want him out. Apparently, while she was giving birth to
3:40
Speaker 3: his third child, he was in the waiting room with
3:43
Speaker 3: his girlfriend and a gym bag with some beer, kicking back,
3:47
Speaker 3: having a good time. The nurses told her what was
3:50
Speaker 3: going on, obviously, and so when he came home that evening,
3:54
Speaker 3: his stuff was packed and I told him there's the door.
3:58
Speaker 3: She basically dumped Dwayne because of things that weren't working
4:03
Speaker 3: out between the two of them. Me and down ended
4:06
Speaker 3: up starting a relationship.
4:08
Speaker 1: Somehow, this didn't cramp your friendship or theirs?
4:12
Speaker 3: Right, Well, that was the thing. A couple days before
4:15
Speaker 3: the fire, he had came back, knocking at the door,
4:18
Speaker 3: asked to talk to her. She came into the kitchen.
4:21
Speaker 3: She's like, he's got nowhere to go. Can he stay upstairs?
4:24
Speaker 3: I'm like, this is your house because by that time,
4:26
Speaker 3: obviously I'd moved downstairs. I said, this is your house
4:29
Speaker 3: if that's what you want. Fine, and so he was
4:31
Speaker 3: actually staying there in the upstairs where I was originally staying,
4:36
Speaker 3: and I was gone all day that day the fire occurred.
4:39
Speaker 3: I was at my ex wife's house taking care of
4:42
Speaker 3: things over there. Came home that night. They were him,
4:45
Speaker 3: his girlfriend and Dawn. They were fairly intoxicated, and several
4:50
Speaker 3: hours into the night, you know, me and Don had
4:52
Speaker 3: had some arguments, and I entered and left a few
4:56
Speaker 3: times to cool off, and came back in and we
4:58
Speaker 3: were sitting around the kitchen table talking and next thing
5:01
Speaker 3: we know, we see this fire. We got the kids
5:04
Speaker 3: out of the house, put them in my car. The
5:07
Speaker 3: fire went on for several hours.
5:09
Speaker 1: Carl, if you could take us back and explain what
5:11
Speaker 1: happened on that awful, awful night. This was back in
5:15
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, March twenty fourth. I mean, whether whether
5:18
Speaker 1: it was arson or not, we know that James had
5:20
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. But this was a tragedy.
5:23
Speaker 2: It was a tragedy. It's an incredibly sad case. It
5:27
Speaker 2: happened early in the morning. There was an apartment building
5:30
Speaker 2: on the south side of Chicago. The first floor was vacant,
5:34
Speaker 2: and a fire started on that first floor and there
5:38
Speaker 2: was a family that lived upstairs. Seven people in the family,
5:43
Speaker 2: a husband and wife, five kids, and the fire unfortunately
5:47
Speaker 2: killed the mom and the children.
5:49
Speaker 1: Twenty eight year old Elva Lupercio and her five children Santos, Sonya, Cristo, Bell, Gadira,
5:56
Speaker 1: and Annabel, all of whom were living on the second floor,
5:59
Speaker 1: died and her husband managed to escape. His name was Santos,
6:03
Speaker 1: but he suffered a frash, furt skull, and severe burns.
6:06
Speaker 2: So just a terrible, terrible tragedy. At that time in Chicago,
6:11
Speaker 2: fires were investigated by the Chicago Police Department. It had
6:14
Speaker 2: a bomb and Arson unit which was in charge of
6:17
Speaker 2: investigating suspicious fires, and they did an investigation and concluded
6:23
Speaker 2: that the fire was most likely an accident.
6:26
Speaker 1: Testing for the presence of accelerants came up negative, closing
6:29
Speaker 1: the case as a tragic accident not a crime. Until
6:33
Speaker 1: November nineteen eighty seven when Dwayne Glasgow was arrested for burglary, theft,
6:37
Speaker 1: and violating probation, and he brought up the nineteen eighty
6:40
Speaker 1: four fire. According to Glasgow, he had watched through an
6:43
Speaker 1: attic window as James went back and forth to the
6:46
Speaker 1: building right before the fire, and that James later admitted
6:49
Speaker 1: to setting the blaze. Meanwhile, back in nineteen eighty seven,
6:53
Speaker 1: now twenty two years old, James was a plumber and
6:56
Speaker 1: electrician while moonlighting as a security guard. He and his
6:59
Speaker 1: girlfriend Bonnie had plans to get married when in December
7:02
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, coincidentally, a month after Glasgow's statement, James
7:07
Speaker 1: reported an actual arson. While working at his security job.
7:12
Speaker 3: One of the apartment complexes that I was assigned to,
7:15
Speaker 3: an automobile caught fire. I saw somebody running from the
7:18
Speaker 3: parking lot that night and a couple police detectives came
7:21
Speaker 3: to see me. I was at a job site and
7:24
Speaker 3: they said they needed me to look at mugshots. I said, sure,
7:27
Speaker 3: no problem, but it'll have to wait till I'm done.
7:29
Speaker 3: I'm in the middle of one of the worst winners
7:31
Speaker 3: Chicago had had and like forever, and I was thawing
7:33
Speaker 3: frozen pipes at this building. They informed me I was
7:36
Speaker 3: going with them one way or another. They took me
7:39
Speaker 3: to a leventh and State informed me that there was
7:42
Speaker 3: a witness that claims to have saw me start the
7:44
Speaker 3: automobile fires, but that he couldn't get down there for
7:47
Speaker 3: several hours because he was at work. If I wanted
7:51
Speaker 3: to go home, now, all I had to do was
7:53
Speaker 3: take a polygraph test proved that I didn't do it,
7:56
Speaker 3: and they'd let me go. I said, sure, no problem,
7:58
Speaker 3: let's go. They take me to another floor inside a
8:03
Speaker 3: dimly lit room. It soundproofed. A gentleman says he needs
8:07
Speaker 3: me to sign a waiver, and I was barely able
8:10
Speaker 3: to make out that it said that I was about
8:12
Speaker 3: to be questioned for a fire concerning six deaths in
8:16
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four. I told the examiner that this is
8:19
Speaker 3: the wrong form, that this is not what I was
8:21
Speaker 3: here for. I said, I'm not signing that, and he
8:25
Speaker 3: stepped out of the room. The detective that brought me
8:28
Speaker 3: down burst into the room, threw me up against the wall,
8:31
Speaker 3: put a pair of handcuffs on me, drug me upstairs,
8:34
Speaker 3: and him and his partner then proceeded to beat me
8:37
Speaker 3: for next several hours.
8:39
Speaker 1: So you were one of the countless victims suspects, as
8:43
Speaker 1: well as some witnesses who were brutally tortured inside these
8:47
Speaker 1: Chicago ped torture chambers disguised as interrogations.
8:53
Speaker 3: Yes, they laid me face down on the ground while
8:56
Speaker 3: one of them pulled my cuffs my arms towards my shoulders.
9:01
Speaker 3: The other one proceeded to kidney shot me or continued
9:05
Speaker 3: to beat me in my lower back area until I
9:07
Speaker 3: started hemorrhaging blood through my urin. I was a urinated myself.
9:12
Speaker 3: There was a lot of blood in the urine at
9:14
Speaker 3: the time, and I uttered the words I did it,
9:17
Speaker 3: and they stopped the beating.
9:18
Speaker 1: I mean, you probably would have confessed a Kennedy assassination, truthfully.
9:22
Speaker 3: Yes. At one point they wanted me to sign a
9:25
Speaker 3: confession and also removed his weapon from his holster and
9:29
Speaker 3: said I was going to sign it or else, And
9:31
Speaker 3: I said, at that point he might as well just
9:32
Speaker 3: go ahead and pull the trigger, because signing it would
9:35
Speaker 3: be the same thing.
9:51
Speaker 1: Wrongful. Conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison.
9:55
Speaker 1: Now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us at
9:58
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10:02
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10:05
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Speaker 1: for six six six.
10:24
Speaker 2: The way it works is after the police have gotten
10:27
Speaker 2: the soon to be defendant to the place where he
10:30
Speaker 2: or she is saying what they want them to say.
10:32
Speaker 2: They'll oftentimes rehearse it, and then they bring in the
10:36
Speaker 2: Felony Review States attorney who take a statement from them,
10:40
Speaker 2: and at the end they ask the person to sign,
10:43
Speaker 2: and then that's often the last time the soon to
10:47
Speaker 2: be defendant ever sees the outside of a jail cell.
10:49
Speaker 3: The state's attorney wanted to take my statement. I started
10:53
Speaker 3: to give him a statement basically saying I did it.
10:56
Speaker 3: I told him that I needed to talk to my
10:59
Speaker 3: then girlfriend. He allowed me to make a phone call
11:02
Speaker 3: to her. She made a three way phone call to
11:06
Speaker 3: my then attorney. I told him what was going on.
11:10
Speaker 3: He told me to put the state's attorney on the phone.
11:12
Speaker 3: They had a brief conversation. State's attorney slammed the phone down,
11:16
Speaker 3: went out to the hall, told the officers to process me,
11:20
Speaker 3: not to speak to me, not to touch me, and
11:22
Speaker 3: to get me out of there. A couple days after
11:25
Speaker 3: the beating on my intake, I was so badly beaten
11:28
Speaker 3: that the Cook County officers wouldn't turn a blind eye
11:31
Speaker 3: to it, and they actually documented all of my injuries.
11:35
Speaker 1: The state's attorney. I mean, he had to know that
11:37
Speaker 1: you had been tortured. There was no question, right, Carl,
11:40
Speaker 1: What do you think he was thinking at that point
11:43
Speaker 1: in time.
11:43
Speaker 2: I you know, I have no idea, but I think
11:45
Speaker 2: that the mechanism they use in Chicago in Cook County,
11:49
Speaker 2: I think is very unique, where we bring in an
11:52
Speaker 2: assistant state's attorney a prosecutor to take the actual statement,
11:57
Speaker 2: and I think the entire felony of view system is
12:01
Speaker 2: designed to sort of inoculate against allegations of torture and
12:05
Speaker 2: abuse by the time you get into court. Because there
12:07
Speaker 2: were so many people claiming a lot of them truthfully
12:11
Speaker 2: that their statement had been beaten out of them. You
12:14
Speaker 2: put a lawyer in the room who has a law
12:16
Speaker 2: license on the line, who can then come to court
12:18
Speaker 2: and say, look, I'm just a lawyer. I didn't see
12:21
Speaker 2: anything wrong, and I don't know what was going through
12:24
Speaker 2: this particular states attorney's mind, but it may have been
12:27
Speaker 2: there's no way I can go to court and say
12:29
Speaker 2: that nothing bad happened here, so I need to protect myself.
12:33
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, Cook County sought the indictment in January nineteen eighty eight.
12:38
Speaker 3: The officer that presented the case for the state at
12:41
Speaker 3: the grand jury outright committed perjury. One of the jurors
12:45
Speaker 3: had asked him why I had done this at the
12:48
Speaker 3: completion of the state's presentation, and he replied that it
12:51
Speaker 3: was my pattern that when I got mad at my girlfriend,
12:55
Speaker 3: I went out and set fires. Another juror then asked,
12:58
Speaker 3: so he had been caught for this before, and he
13:00
Speaker 3: replied yes. The only problem is I had never so
13:03
Speaker 3: much as been questioned for an Argiston fire in my
13:06
Speaker 3: entire life, let alone caught or convicted.
13:09
Speaker 1: So on January twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight, James, you
13:13
Speaker 1: had dieted on charges of arson and six counts of.
13:16
Speaker 3: Murder, actually eighteen counts of murder. Eighteen counts they charged
13:20
Speaker 3: me three times on each victim, along with seven counts
13:24
Speaker 3: of attempted murder. My entire indictment, I believe was around
13:27
Speaker 3: thirty one counts.
13:29
Speaker 1: But the well documented evidence of torture shed doubt on
13:32
Speaker 1: James's statement to officers and the state's attorney.
13:35
Speaker 3: When my lawyer put on a motion to suppress my
13:41
Speaker 3: statement due to the abuse, and the judge granted it
13:45
Speaker 3: because of the abuse was so blatant the state's attorney
13:49
Speaker 3: stood up and said, your honor, are you also suppressing
13:52
Speaker 3: what he told the state's attorney that night. The state's
13:56
Speaker 3: attorney didn't beat him, and I just sat there and
13:59
Speaker 3: I was just stunned into amazement that he swore up
14:03
Speaker 3: onside and down the other I wasn't beaten, And now
14:05
Speaker 3: he was basically conceding I was beaten, but that what
14:09
Speaker 3: I told the state's attorneys should be allowed in because
14:11
Speaker 3: he didn't beat me.
14:12
Speaker 1: Pretty freaking devious.
14:14
Speaker 3: Well, you have to keep in mind the judge that
14:16
Speaker 3: suppressed my confession got removed from my case after suppressing
14:20
Speaker 3: my confession because he went against the system.
14:23
Speaker 1: Wow.
14:23
Speaker 3: Within two weeks of that, Judge Loretta Hall Morgan was
14:26
Speaker 3: assigned my case. And it didn't register really at the time,
14:30
Speaker 3: but the judge who was going to be sitting at
14:33
Speaker 3: this bench trial already knew about my confession because it
14:36
Speaker 3: was part of the record that it was suppressed.
14:39
Speaker 1: And this doomed bench trial finally began in July nineteen
14:42
Speaker 1: eighty nine.
14:43
Speaker 3: The state put on six witnesses, two people that they
14:46
Speaker 3: call life or death witnesses that said that we survived
14:49
Speaker 3: the fire and the family was alive when we went
14:51
Speaker 3: to sleep woke up to smoking fire. They didn't implicate
14:55
Speaker 3: me at all. They put on a medical examiner who
14:58
Speaker 3: said that in his opinion, the cause of death was
15:01
Speaker 3: smoking fire carbon monoxide poisoning, and that the manner of
15:05
Speaker 3: debt was homicide. When asked why he originally said there
15:08
Speaker 3: were accidents, he said that's because that's what he was
15:11
Speaker 3: told by the police, and that four years later the
15:13
Speaker 3: police told him that they wanted to charge somebody and
15:16
Speaker 3: he had to change his death certificates to homicide. They
15:19
Speaker 3: then brought a gentleman in from the Chicago Fire Department
15:22
Speaker 3: who was there that night as an observer who was
15:25
Speaker 3: training a class for a future fire investigating team that
15:28
Speaker 3: was going to take over fire investigations in Chicago, called Ofi.
15:33
Speaker 3: He testified that due to burn patterns, he was positive
15:37
Speaker 3: that this was an arson fire, but yet he told
15:40
Speaker 3: nobody for four years, and the reason that the state
15:43
Speaker 3: used him as a witness, in my opinion, is because
15:45
Speaker 3: he filed no reports, so there was nothing to impeach
15:48
Speaker 3: him with. Whereas the original officers who investigated the fire
15:51
Speaker 3: that said it was an accident, they would have had
15:53
Speaker 3: to have went back on their original report, and then
15:55
Speaker 3: they put on don Graymont, who was my girlfriend at
15:57
Speaker 3: the time, who told the truth that I had nothing
16:00
Speaker 3: to do with it. They then proceeded to impeach her
16:03
Speaker 3: with a grand jury statement that she made that after
16:07
Speaker 3: making it, she went to the Office of Maternal Affairs
16:10
Speaker 3: and said I was just forced to commit perjury in
16:13
Speaker 3: front of the grand jury. And then they brought Dwayne
16:15
Speaker 3: glasgow in, who gave the testimony that he gave in
16:18
Speaker 3: exchange for going home. The next day, my attorney presented
16:22
Speaker 3: no defense whatsoever. At the end of the state's case,
16:25
Speaker 3: he stood up. He asked for a directed verdict of
16:27
Speaker 3: not guilty. The judge said motion denied. He said, oh, well,
16:31
Speaker 3: the defense rests, and he sat down, and the judge
16:34
Speaker 3: said she was going to take a ten minute break
16:36
Speaker 3: to have closing arguments. She took a ten minute break,
16:39
Speaker 3: came out and found me guilty. My lawyer just sat there.
16:41
Speaker 1: No closing arguments.
16:42
Speaker 3: There were no closing arguments.
16:44
Speaker 1: Carl, help is he talking about no closing argument?
16:48
Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense. So many things about James
16:51
Speaker 2: trial don't make any sense.
16:53
Speaker 3: Right. Well, what happened was, like I said, she took
16:55
Speaker 3: the break. We came back and I was expecting closing arguments,
16:59
Speaker 3: and she sat down and started reading her findings. And
17:04
Speaker 3: I'm looking at my attorney, like what's going on here?
17:06
Speaker 3: And he's like, don't worry about It'll be okay. And
17:08
Speaker 3: she said, as to counts like twenty five through thirty
17:12
Speaker 3: one or whatever it was, or twenty four through thirty one,
17:15
Speaker 3: those are the attempt counts, there's going to be a
17:17
Speaker 3: finding of not guilty because there's no evidence to indicate
17:21
Speaker 3: that the defendant intended to harm those individuals. As to
17:24
Speaker 3: the remainding counts in the indictment, there's a finding of guilty.
17:28
Speaker 3: I was, for want of a better word, I was
17:31
Speaker 3: just in shock. I mean, I couldn't believe that she
17:34
Speaker 3: had found me guilty. I was just dumbfounded at the
17:39
Speaker 3: fact that if a person was guilty of this crime,
17:42
Speaker 3: how could they have been not guilty of attempting to
17:46
Speaker 3: kill the people that jumped out the windows and lived,
17:49
Speaker 3: but guilty of killing the people that perished. It wasn't
17:52
Speaker 3: like this was a crime with a gun or a knife.
17:55
Speaker 3: Fire is indiscriminate. If I had set the fire, I
17:58
Speaker 3: would have intended harm on everybody. Apartment building, not just
18:02
Speaker 3: certain people. Her verdict held no sense to me whatsoever.
18:06
Speaker 3: And then she so nonchalantly after finding me guilty, she
18:11
Speaker 3: literally said the words, gentlemen, what's your pleasure? And it
18:14
Speaker 3: was at that point that the state's attorney stood up
18:16
Speaker 3: and said, your honor, at this time, we'll be asking
18:19
Speaker 3: for the death.
18:19
Speaker 1: Penalty, gentleman, what's your pleasure? That's what she said, what's
18:24
Speaker 1: your pleasure? As if this is some sort of sick game.
18:27
Speaker 1: I don't even have the right words for this. So
18:30
Speaker 1: they asked for the death penalty.
18:31
Speaker 3: The next step, you have to have a hearing. When
18:33
Speaker 3: it took me a couple of days to process what
18:35
Speaker 3: had happened, and somebody else who was incarcerated awaiting trial
18:40
Speaker 3: at the time, told me that I needed to get
18:42
Speaker 3: down to the jail's library, the law library, and speak
18:46
Speaker 3: to somebody down there because what was happening wasn't right.
18:49
Speaker 3: And that's when I found out a lot of things,
18:53
Speaker 3: you know. I found out that I was actually able
18:54
Speaker 3: to demand a jury for the death penalty phase because
18:57
Speaker 3: I didn't want her to make that decision.
19:00
Speaker 1: In case the story isn't crazy enough, there's a crazy
19:02
Speaker 1: footnote to this whole thing, which is that on October seventh,
19:07
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, while you were waiting sentencing, you had
19:11
Speaker 1: walked out of the Cook County jail after bond records
19:14
Speaker 1: were altered to lower your bond from no bond to
19:17
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars, and your mom posted twenty five
19:20
Speaker 1: hundred in cash, and then the jail officials discovered that
19:23
Speaker 1: a jail employee had been bribed with three thousand dollars
19:26
Speaker 1: to alter the record, and then you were arrested days
19:29
Speaker 1: later and brought back. What in the world again, I've
19:32
Speaker 1: never heard anything like this before.
19:34
Speaker 3: What you're speaking of hold some truth to it. I
19:37
Speaker 3: don't recall as to what my ex wife actually did
19:41
Speaker 3: for the jail official that altered the record, but nobody
19:45
Speaker 3: was listening to me. I was going to be put
19:47
Speaker 3: to death for something I did not do, and so yes,
19:51
Speaker 3: I bonded out. I was hoping that while out, I
19:56
Speaker 3: could probably get enough notoriety to the case to where
20:00
Speaker 3: people might look into it and see the errors that
20:02
Speaker 3: were committed. Technically, I was arrested, but I actually called
20:08
Speaker 3: them and told them where I was. They were making
20:11
Speaker 3: threats against my family that if I did not come back.
20:15
Speaker 3: They were going to take it out on them. So
20:19
Speaker 3: I called the state's attorney and told him where I was.
20:22
Speaker 3: It was not my proudest moment in all of this,
20:25
Speaker 3: but again, when somebody's talking about taking your life, and
20:29
Speaker 3: after what I had already been through with the beatings
20:32
Speaker 3: and everything and what I had seen happened to this point,
20:35
Speaker 3: I didn't know what else to do.
20:36
Speaker 1: James was back in Cook County Jail in November nineteen
20:39
Speaker 1: eighty nine, where he began all kinds of proceedings trying
20:42
Speaker 1: to save his own life, including demanding a new attorney
20:45
Speaker 1: and a new judge.
20:47
Speaker 3: When it came time for my sentencing, I had requested
20:50
Speaker 3: to remove my attorney because I did not feel that
20:53
Speaker 3: I was being represented in a manner to save my life.
20:56
Speaker 3: The judge denied the request, so I went to the
21:00
Speaker 3: Attorney Disciplinary Commission and said that I'd given my attorney
21:04
Speaker 3: a large amount of money to hire investigators and things
21:07
Speaker 3: like that, and he did nothing. He never came to
21:10
Speaker 3: see me, he never spoke to me, at which point
21:12
Speaker 3: my attorney notified the judge that he was under investigation
21:16
Speaker 3: by the commission and that she had to let him out.
21:18
Speaker 3: Of the case. She wasn't happy about it. At that point,
21:22
Speaker 3: I also moved to remove her as a judge because
21:25
Speaker 3: she was not giving me what I felt was a
21:28
Speaker 3: fair shake, so to speak. One of the things that
21:31
Speaker 3: I had alleged as to why my judge needed to
21:34
Speaker 3: be removed was because she had made a statement after
21:38
Speaker 3: the first day of trial. She had said something like,
21:41
Speaker 3: I start my vacation the day after tomorrow. This case
21:44
Speaker 3: is going to be done tomorrow regardless, or something like that.
21:47
Speaker 3: And I was just trying to build some type of
21:50
Speaker 3: a record for appeal of what was actually happening to me.
21:53
Speaker 3: And she finally, after that motion was denied, she finally
21:56
Speaker 3: appointed public defender. And that's when they found the evidence
22:01
Speaker 3: that Duayne committed perjury by saying he said he saw
22:05
Speaker 3: the back door of the building, that he saw me
22:07
Speaker 3: enter and leave the building. They obtained evidence that photographically
22:11
Speaker 3: shows it was impossible that he could not have seen
22:14
Speaker 3: the building. They tracked down people who used to live
22:16
Speaker 3: in the buildings from years ago that before that had said, now,
22:21
Speaker 3: there's no way you could see from point A to
22:23
Speaker 3: point B. And even faced with all of this, the
22:26
Speaker 3: judge refused to correct her mistake and emotion for a
22:29
Speaker 3: new trial.
22:30
Speaker 1: And here it was March twenty second, nineteen ninety when
22:33
Speaker 1: somehow James had escaped to death penalty.
22:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, the reason she rejected the whole premise of the
22:39
Speaker 3: death penalty was she wanted me out of her courtroom.
22:41
Speaker 3: Here we were almost eight months from my conviction and
22:44
Speaker 3: she still had been unable to sentence me because of
22:48
Speaker 3: court filings and things that I was trying to do
22:51
Speaker 3: to save my life. And she literally asked me what
22:54
Speaker 3: was it going to take to get me out of
22:55
Speaker 3: her courtroom? And I said I did not want to
22:58
Speaker 3: fight this from death row. She said, well, the only
23:01
Speaker 3: other sentence I can give you is natural life. The
23:04
Speaker 3: sad reality of it is, had I known then the
23:08
Speaker 3: things that I know now, I probably would have accepted
23:11
Speaker 3: the death penalty due to the fact that I think
23:14
Speaker 3: I would have been out sooner.
23:15
Speaker 1: Well, you would have been entitled to an attorney for
23:19
Speaker 1: post conviction, which you're only entitled too if you are
23:22
Speaker 1: sentenced to death. The judge rejected the death penals and
23:25
Speaker 1: sentence you to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
23:29
Speaker 3: Six natural life sentences and three fourteen year sentences. I
23:44
Speaker 3: went to Joliette. I was there maybe four weeks at most,
23:49
Speaker 3: and then I was sent to Minard, where I spent
23:51
Speaker 3: the next ten years of my life. They called it
23:54
Speaker 3: pit for a reason because it was literally built into
23:59
Speaker 3: the side of of what was an old rock quarry.
24:03
Speaker 3: Finally winning a transfer out of that hell hole, I
24:07
Speaker 3: then did another four years, almost in jollyev before they
24:12
Speaker 3: closed it down. I was then transferred to State Bill.
24:16
Speaker 3: I did almost ten years there and was transferred back
24:20
Speaker 3: to Minard for my last eleven months, where I met
24:22
Speaker 3: Carl for the first time.
24:24
Speaker 1: Over the course of two long decades, James's direct appeals
24:27
Speaker 1: and his first post conviction petition were denied, and then
24:31
Speaker 1: when he was about to file a federal habeas the
24:34
Speaker 1: Exoneration Project got involved, filing a second post conviction petition
24:37
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, including expert testimony from a
24:40
Speaker 1: doctor Ogel disputing the fire captain's trial testimony that was
24:44
Speaker 1: based on an ancient and now debunked Arson investigation method.
24:48
Speaker 1: For clarity, listen to our coverage of Arson investigation on
24:51
Speaker 1: wrongful Conviction junk Science. We're going to have it linked
24:55
Speaker 1: in the episode description. The Exoneration Project was also able
24:58
Speaker 1: to bolster their expert with previously hidden exculpatory evidence.
25:03
Speaker 2: We haven't talked about that there is an alternate suspect
25:06
Speaker 2: that there's somebody else who was setting fires in that
25:08
Speaker 2: neighborhood at that time. Doing some research into media coverage
25:13
Speaker 2: of fires in the neighborhood at the time, law students
25:15
Speaker 2: Ashley Schumacher and Cadence Mertz uncovered a small neighborhood newspaper
25:21
Speaker 2: that had run an article with the headline something like,
25:23
Speaker 2: Who's starting these fires?
25:24
Speaker 1: Are amazing?
25:25
Speaker 2: The night before, if I remember correctly, that the fire
25:28
Speaker 2: at issue here, there was another fire that had happened,
25:32
Speaker 2: which the police. The same police investigated and determined that
25:37
Speaker 2: the fire was set by a woman who lived in
25:40
Speaker 2: that building, Isabel Ramos, because she was mad at her
25:43
Speaker 2: landlord about something, so she decided to burn the place down.
25:47
Speaker 2: And in the course of questioning her about that fire,
25:51
Speaker 2: they said, hey, what about that fire down the street?
25:54
Speaker 2: Did you start that one? And she said something. I
25:56
Speaker 2: don't know what her exact words were, but basically, I
25:59
Speaker 2: was really I set a lot of fires? How can
26:02
Speaker 2: I remember?
26:03
Speaker 3: They pulled the court file and her original confession from
26:07
Speaker 3: her trial was still sitting there in the court.
26:10
Speaker 2: File and none of this is disclosed to the defense
26:13
Speaker 2: before James trial, and we filed this petition. There was
26:16
Speaker 2: also a habeas petition which was in front of Judge
26:18
Speaker 2: Saint Eve here in Chicago, and she was not able
26:23
Speaker 2: to advance it because we had the pending state court matter.
26:26
Speaker 2: But there was an opinion entered by her agreeing to
26:28
Speaker 2: stay the habeas petition because she felt that there was
26:31
Speaker 2: potential merit to it. So in the state court we
26:35
Speaker 2: proceeded towards an evidentiary hearing to present the new evidence.
26:40
Speaker 3: In one of the little side note. After my evidentiary
26:43
Speaker 3: hearing was granted on April fifteenth of twenty ten, the
26:50
Speaker 3: state said they needed time to obtain an expert of
26:54
Speaker 3: their own to review the fire science evidence that Carl
26:59
Speaker 3: and Gale and everybody had put together with doctor Ogle.
27:03
Speaker 3: It wasn't until a few years after I was released
27:07
Speaker 3: that a document accidentally got turned over to my legal
27:11
Speaker 3: team that said that the state's attorney had, for a
27:15
Speaker 3: full year in their possession a report that basically said
27:20
Speaker 3: what doctor Ogle had said in his report for me,
27:23
Speaker 3: and they were steadily going to court telling the judge
27:26
Speaker 3: they needed more time because they couldn't find an expert
27:28
Speaker 3: to look at the evidence. So for an entire year
27:32
Speaker 3: they held me knowing that what was said by doctor
27:36
Speaker 3: Ogle was true, that this wasn't an arson fire.
27:39
Speaker 2: And right before we were supposed to have this hearing,
27:42
Speaker 2: the state determined that they would no longer oppose postconviction relief.
27:47
Speaker 3: They chose to act two weeks after don Graymont died,
27:53
Speaker 3: she was in hospice. They went to her room. My
27:56
Speaker 3: ex wife was there that day that they showed up
27:59
Speaker 3: and tried to get her to give a deathbed statement
28:03
Speaker 3: that I was actually guilty of this. Within two weeks
28:06
Speaker 3: of her passing is when my court date was that.
28:10
Speaker 3: Carl and Tara went into court that day and the
28:12
Speaker 3: state just said, nah, you can let him go now.
28:15
Speaker 3: But that's how unwilling they are to admit when they
28:18
Speaker 3: make a mistake.
28:19
Speaker 1: They went to her in the hospice. Yes, I don't
28:25
Speaker 1: let to say anymore, but I do know that finally,
28:29
Speaker 1: Circuit Court Judge Ricky Jones vacated all your convictions and
28:33
Speaker 1: the charges were dismissed. And on May thirty first of
28:37
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, after a quarter century in prison, you left prison.
28:42
Speaker 3: I met Carl for the first time on the day
28:44
Speaker 3: he came to pick me up, and it was one
28:47
Speaker 3: of the most surreal parts of my entire life because
28:51
Speaker 3: we walked out and Carl had told me how it
28:54
Speaker 3: was raining the whole way down there, and we walked
28:56
Speaker 3: out of prison and it stopped. It was the weirdest thing.
29:00
Speaker 2: I will never forget that day. James was the first
29:02
Speaker 2: person I was with when he walked out of prison
29:04
Speaker 2: after being exonerated, and it was really exciting to be
29:08
Speaker 2: part of that with James.
29:09
Speaker 3: Because of him handsome, extremely dedicated people. I have a
29:14
Speaker 3: new lease on life.
29:15
Speaker 1: And as I understand it, not that this dampened your
29:19
Speaker 1: mood as the rain was lifting, but you walked out
29:23
Speaker 1: with fourteen dollars and seventeen cents right, Well, it's.
29:27
Speaker 3: All I had on my prison account at the time,
29:29
Speaker 3: and because I was no longer a convicted felon, I
29:32
Speaker 3: was not entitled to all the benefits that he convicted
29:36
Speaker 3: felon would be given upon their release. Had Carl not
29:40
Speaker 3: come pick me up, I had no way to get
29:43
Speaker 3: back to Chicago because I wasn't even going to be
29:45
Speaker 3: afforded in a bus ticket, the opportunity for housing assistance.
29:49
Speaker 3: I mean, it was the exoneration project that put me
29:52
Speaker 3: up in a hotel. All the things that he convicted
29:54
Speaker 3: felon receives. I was afforded none of it.
29:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, they literally kicked you out the door. But the
30:00
Speaker 1: good news is that in May twenty and thirteen you
30:03
Speaker 1: filed the federal wrongful conviction lawsuit against the City of
30:06
Speaker 1: Chicago and the Chicago PD, And even in the case
30:09
Speaker 1: as egregious as yours, it took what almost five years
30:13
Speaker 1: to get compensated, right, Yeah, it.
30:14
Speaker 3: Was almost six years. But what was filed first was
30:17
Speaker 3: a stifficate of innocence request, because in Illinois you have
30:20
Speaker 3: to have one of those before you can move forward
30:22
Speaker 3: really doing anything, which meant not only did I have
30:25
Speaker 3: to prove that I wasn't guilty, but Carl and his
30:29
Speaker 3: team had to prove that I was actually innocent. So
30:33
Speaker 3: they obtained that for me. On August fifth of twenty
30:37
Speaker 3: and thirteen.
30:38
Speaker 2: After I contested hearing, the very same state that agreed
30:42
Speaker 2: that James was innocent enough to come home fought us
30:45
Speaker 2: on the certificate of innocence.
30:47
Speaker 1: Finally, you know, some daylight in this now almost thirty
30:51
Speaker 1: years by the time you were compensated. This long, long,
30:53
Speaker 1: dark chapter. So that is a happy ending. How's your
30:58
Speaker 1: life now? Understand when you came home, you were living
31:01
Speaker 1: nearby your son and daughter in law.
31:03
Speaker 3: It took me almost a year to find my first job.
31:07
Speaker 3: One of the worst moments of employment seeking came the
31:11
Speaker 3: now defunct Kmart Corporation. They were going to hire me
31:15
Speaker 3: to do maintenance in one of their warehouses in Illinois.
31:17
Speaker 3: When I got in there to fill out my paperwork,
31:20
Speaker 3: in the middle of it, the human resources woman asked
31:22
Speaker 3: me what happened to all this gap in my work history?
31:25
Speaker 3: I said, did you read my resume? Because my resume
31:28
Speaker 3: stated from the onset after being wrongfully convicted for twenty
31:31
Speaker 3: five years, I'm now re entering the workforce. She started
31:35
Speaker 3: reading it. She made some gasps and some oh mis.
31:38
Speaker 3: She got up, she left. She came back and she said,
31:41
Speaker 3: I'm really sorry to have wasted your time, but we
31:44
Speaker 3: don't hire convicted murderers. I said, but I was exonerated.
31:49
Speaker 3: I'm innocent, Yeah, but you were convicted. I'm like, but
31:52
Speaker 3: I didn't do it. She's like, but you were still convicted,
31:54
Speaker 3: so we can't hire you, and I just I mean,
31:57
Speaker 3: I was just stunned at that point. I was like, well,
31:59
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't know if this was ever going
32:01
Speaker 3: to end. To this day, I have no Social Security
32:04
Speaker 3: because I will there's no way for me to be
32:06
Speaker 3: out long enough to work long enough because of my
32:10
Speaker 3: age to qualify for Social Security. So when I can
32:14
Speaker 3: no longer work, I'm pretty well screwed because even though
32:18
Speaker 3: I did receive compensation, the money that I did walk
32:22
Speaker 3: away with, which was about two million dollars at the
32:24
Speaker 3: end of it, you know, is long gone. I do
32:27
Speaker 3: have my house thankfully that that's paid for in my vehicles,
32:31
Speaker 3: but when I get too old to work, I'm really
32:33
Speaker 3: not sure what's going to happen. If I'm being totally honest,
32:36
Speaker 3: if somebody wants to hear me speak, somebody wants to
32:40
Speaker 3: hear about my story, I'll go wherever, whenever to try
32:43
Speaker 3: to enlighten people and open their eyes to what has
32:47
Speaker 3: happened in the system. I am part of the program
32:50
Speaker 3: for the Police Training Institute that has been initiated in Illinois,
32:54
Speaker 3: where there is now a mandatory four hour class in
32:59
Speaker 3: Illinois for every police Academy class that goes through where
33:04
Speaker 3: an attorney and a couple xeneries and the project director
33:10
Speaker 3: go to each class and spend about four hours with
33:12
Speaker 3: the cadets. The class is on wrongful conviction, avoidance and Awareness,
33:17
Speaker 3: where we get to speak to these future police officers
33:21
Speaker 3: and hopefully open their minds to what can go wrong.
33:26
Speaker 1: Well, we'll have some way to contact you linked in
33:28
Speaker 1: the episode description for speaking engagements. And additionally, maybe what
33:31
Speaker 1: you were talking about earlier should be the call to
33:33
Speaker 1: action this week. We need to be building ramps, not walls,
33:38
Speaker 1: for folks like James to re enter society. We need
33:41
Speaker 1: legislation to provide xouneries with the same things that are
33:44
Speaker 1: available to paroleees. I mean, it's a no brainer, and
33:48
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we're bringing awareness to that once again.
33:51
Speaker 1: And with that we're going to move on to closing arguments.
33:54
Speaker 1: First of all, I want to thank you both for
33:56
Speaker 1: being here today and sharing this insane story. And with that,
34:00
Speaker 1: I'm going to turn my microphone off, kick back in
34:02
Speaker 1: my chair, and leave your microphones on for anything else
34:06
Speaker 1: you guys want to say, Let's start with you, Carl,
34:08
Speaker 1: because we always save our honored guest for last. You're
34:11
Speaker 1: an honored guests, Well, don't get me wrong, but our
34:14
Speaker 1: featured guest of course is James. So Carl over to
34:18
Speaker 1: you and then just hand the mic off to James
34:19
Speaker 1: and he'll take us off into the sunset.
34:21
Speaker 2: Well, first, just thank you for this show and all
34:25
Speaker 2: the work that you do to give people like James
34:27
Speaker 2: a voice, a voice that was taken from them for
34:31
Speaker 2: a very long time, and I think it's important that
34:33
Speaker 2: we get to hear their voices now. I think James
34:37
Speaker 2: has obviously not had an easy life before or after
34:41
Speaker 2: getting out of prison, but he's done an amazing amount
34:45
Speaker 2: of work to help himself and help those around him.
34:48
Speaker 2: He's advocated on behalf of initiatives to change laws in
34:53
Speaker 2: Illinois to avoid wrongful convictions in the first place, and
34:56
Speaker 2: not just in Illinois, He's worked on this in many states.
35:00
Speaker 2: So I'm glad that this episode will air so people
35:03
Speaker 2: can hear about James' story and not just the part
35:07
Speaker 2: of the story that's tragic about the fire and what
35:10
Speaker 2: happened to that family and what happened to James, but
35:12
Speaker 2: about who he is now. So I'm honored to have
35:15
Speaker 2: gotten to work with James. I'm honored that he's still
35:18
Speaker 2: someone that is in my life, who I see from
35:22
Speaker 2: time to time, who I text. He's a great guy,
35:25
Speaker 2: and I'm just I'm glad that he has this opportunity
35:28
Speaker 2: to tell his story.
35:29
Speaker 3: Thank you, Carl for that. I mean, you constantly downplay
35:35
Speaker 3: how important you are and the things that you do.
35:38
Speaker 3: That's enough but true to begin with. And you know,
35:41
Speaker 3: a lot of people talk about good people in this world.
35:45
Speaker 3: And when you start thinking of people like Carl Leonard
35:49
Speaker 3: and Tara Thompson and Gail Horn and John Lovy, the
35:52
Speaker 3: reasons that they do what they do, I like to
35:55
Speaker 3: call the right reasons because they save people. They save
35:59
Speaker 3: people in ways that we as average citizens don't think of.
36:04
Speaker 3: When we think of people saving people, we think of
36:06
Speaker 3: firemen and police officers and things like that. And who
36:09
Speaker 3: step in in the instant. You do it for the
36:12
Speaker 3: right reasons, and you do it selflessly, I mean with
36:17
Speaker 3: your family and the sacrifices that they make, because at
36:20
Speaker 3: the time that you're not spending with them, they're just
36:23
Speaker 3: as important and just as special. I have no idea
36:27
Speaker 3: how many hours of his life he gave to give
36:29
Speaker 3: me my life back, but it's a debt that no
36:32
Speaker 3: matter how many times he tells me, I don't owe
36:34
Speaker 3: him anything. I'll never be able to repay because I
36:37
Speaker 3: wouldn't be here talking to you guys if it was
36:39
Speaker 3: not for people like him and Tara and Gail, and
36:43
Speaker 3: I don't think that anybody realizes just how special these
36:48
Speaker 3: people are.
36:55
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
36:58
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for podcast one week
37:01
Speaker 1: early by subscribing to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
37:05
Speaker 1: I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
37:07
Speaker 1: Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler,
37:11
Speaker 1: Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn. The music in this production
37:14
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
37:18
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
37:20
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
37:23
Speaker 1: also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful
37:27
Speaker 1: Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
37:30
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one