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#387 Jason Flom with Eduardo Dumbrique and John Klene · Wrongful Conviction

0:00
Speaker 1: We first told you the story of ed Eduardo Dembrique
0:03
Speaker 1: and John Clenny in July twenty twenty two, and I
0:06
Speaker 1: was so excited to run into them both again at
0:08
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty three INNOCENTCE Network Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
0:12
Speaker 1: That's an annual opportunity to gather with others in the
0:15
Speaker 1: innocence community axuneries, attorneys, advocate, social workers, and even a
0:20
Speaker 1: few fellow podcasters like me running around sticking mics in
0:23
Speaker 1: people's faces and jokes aside. I look forward to reuniting
0:27
Speaker 1: with everybody every year.
0:29
Speaker 2: We're going to hear.
0:30
Speaker 3: John and a.
0:30
Speaker 1: Dwardo's story again in a minute, but first, here's a
0:33
Speaker 1: bit of the conversation we had when we met up
0:36
Speaker 1: at this year's conference. I started off by asking John
0:38
Speaker 1: how life's been treating him in the free world.
0:42
Speaker 4: Life's been great, been living life, working, traveling, you know,
0:46
Speaker 4: eating good, spending time with my family, my friends, making
0:50
Speaker 4: up for miss time.
0:52
Speaker 3: For sure, it's been amazing.
0:54
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And what about you at Duardo, What's what's life
0:57
Speaker 1: been like for you on the outside? And I mean,
0:59
Speaker 1: obviously you're doing good. You're here, you're representing people Gravitate
1:03
Speaker 1: towards you.
1:04
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I feel great, man, I feel so great.
1:07
Speaker 3: I feel grateful to be here, to be amongst all
1:09
Speaker 3: these brothers that have been through what we've been through,
1:12
Speaker 3: and they understand they're all at different stages of you know,
1:16
Speaker 3: their transition and reconnecting with their families, reconnecting with their lives.
1:20
Speaker 3: I'm grateful and really appreciative of the Peace and Justice
1:24
Speaker 3: Law Center, Fullerton, California, but taking me on as a
1:27
Speaker 3: legal apprentice. It's a four year program administered by the
1:30
Speaker 3: California Bar I'm on my way to become attorney. I'm
1:33
Speaker 3: so strong and passionate for juvenile rights. I'm really really
1:37
Speaker 3: excited and encouraged by the opportunities that I have in
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Speaker 3: front of me and to speak my experience, to speak
1:43
Speaker 3: my truth, to speak my understanding of what I believe
1:46
Speaker 3: justice is for juveniles and their parents.
1:49
Speaker 1: Oh No, it's incredible though, because you went in at
1:51
Speaker 1: fifteen years old. Right at fifteen, you're just fairly a teenager.
1:56
Speaker 1: You're not a man, you're a child. And then to
1:59
Speaker 1: be put into that environment at that age, and now
2:02
Speaker 1: to come out on the other side and transform that
2:05
Speaker 1: pain into healing for other people who are strangers to you. Right.
2:10
Speaker 1: What an amazing full circle story that is.
2:14
Speaker 3: You know, it's the children and their families, and this
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Speaker 3: is happening all across America. You got fourteen, fifteen, sixty
2:19
Speaker 3: to seventeen year old treated differently. Some are giving life
2:22
Speaker 3: said and some are put with the adults, you know,
2:24
Speaker 3: forced to fend for themselves. Their families are at home worried.
2:28
Speaker 3: You know, that family unit is destroyed by that child
2:31
Speaker 3: going into an adult prison. I mean, on all ends
2:34
Speaker 3: of the spectrum, it's not going to end well. And
2:37
Speaker 3: so I am passionate about fighting for these people. They
2:42
Speaker 3: have a right to be treated equally and fairly and educated.
2:48
Speaker 3: And now I'm in a position that I can do
2:49
Speaker 3: something about it, and I feel deep responsibility. You know,
2:52
Speaker 3: it's not the easiest thing, but I'm really excited about
2:56
Speaker 3: this next chapter. I really am.
3:06
Speaker 1: In the eighties and nineties, Los Angeles gang culture was
3:08
Speaker 1: much more nuanced than anyone outside of it bothered to know.
3:12
Speaker 1: For some, gangs meant socializing, while the criminal activity of
3:15
Speaker 1: others colored all affiliated with the same broad brush. Gangs
3:19
Speaker 1: were viewed as a problem that needed a swift and
3:22
Speaker 1: harsh solution, and it seems that simply connecting it defended
3:25
Speaker 1: to a gang was enough to get a conviction. While
3:28
Speaker 1: fifteen year old de Duardo Dombrica and eighteen year old
3:31
Speaker 1: John Clennie were affiliated with LAWNDEL thirteen for the girls,
3:34
Speaker 1: parties and camaraderie, three older LAWNDEL thirteen members, Santo Alvarez,
3:39
Speaker 1: Lester Momlor, and Chad Landrum were in IT for the
3:42
Speaker 1: drugs and violence. On June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven,
3:47
Speaker 1: Antonio Alarcan, a rival gang member, was killed in a
3:50
Speaker 1: drive by shooting. A few days later, to escape unrelated charges,
3:55
Speaker 1: Santo Alvarez used his knowledge of that drive by to
3:58
Speaker 1: blame Duardo and John. A few weeks later, Alvarez, Monmore,
4:03
Speaker 1: and Landrum committed another murder, and the police were happy
4:06
Speaker 1: to pin Alvarez's role on a woman who knew the
4:08
Speaker 1: deceased rather than their star witness against Eduardo and John.
4:13
Speaker 1: With Alvarez's statement and a corrupt identification process that was
4:16
Speaker 1: immediately recanted and protested by the witness, the two boys
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Speaker 1: were taken to trial. Chad Landrum was willing to confess
4:23
Speaker 1: to the drive bite, but his continued violence behind bars
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Speaker 1: kept him unavailable. Despite both Alvarez and the witness's less
4:31
Speaker 1: than willing participation to trial, the prosecutor and the detectives
4:35
Speaker 1: were able to harp on at Duardo and John's gang
4:37
Speaker 1: affiliation in order to send them away for life without parole.
4:42
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction today.
4:56
Speaker 1: We're covering a case. It gives us a peek into
4:59
Speaker 1: the gang world of Los Angeles in the nineteen nineties
5:02
Speaker 1: and the way in which the LAPD and the Prosecutor's
5:04
Speaker 1: office dealt with that issue. We have two men that
5:07
Speaker 1: were affected by those policies when they were just boys.
5:12
Speaker 1: There's a third wrongfully convicted person, Susan Mellen, from a
5:14
Speaker 1: related crime. She's not recording with us today, but their
5:18
Speaker 1: amazing lawyer is one of the founders of Innocence Matters.
5:22
Speaker 1: Deirdre O'Connor, Welcome to Wrongful Conviction. Thank you for having
5:26
Speaker 1: me and now our guests of honor, the two men themselves.
5:31
Speaker 1: You know I always say this, but it's true. I'm
5:34
Speaker 1: sorry that you guys are here because of why you're here,
5:37
Speaker 1: but I'm really happy to have you on Wrongful Conviction today.
5:40
Speaker 1: So I'm going to introduce John Clenny. First, John, thank
5:44
Speaker 1: you for being here with us today on Wrongful Conviction.
5:47
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
5:49
Speaker 1: And of course Ed Dombrique, thank you for joining.
5:52
Speaker 3: Us, Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
5:55
Speaker 1: So you two guys grew up together. Can you give
5:58
Speaker 1: us a little background there.
6:00
Speaker 4: I've known Ed since I was about maybe fifteen. We
6:03
Speaker 4: both grew up in Londale, California. Londeal's kind of typical
6:10
Speaker 4: middle class city in the South Bay. You know, it
6:14
Speaker 4: has its little areas that aren't so great, and it's
6:17
Speaker 4: some areas are decent.
6:19
Speaker 3: So it's about ten minutes fifteen minutes from the beach.
6:23
Speaker 2: I think it's a nice city. It's got a good
6:25
Speaker 2: high school.
6:27
Speaker 1: So growing up in Lawndale, there was a gang in
6:28
Speaker 1: your neighborhood called the Londale thirteen.
6:31
Speaker 3: Well, we grew up there and we were part of that.
6:34
Speaker 1: So you too grew up in the gang culture of
6:36
Speaker 1: Los Angeles in the eighties and nineties and really came
6:38
Speaker 1: of age in the nineties. And I think it's news
6:40
Speaker 1: to some people that the word gang and gang culture
6:42
Speaker 1: in general is a bit more nuanced than most of
6:45
Speaker 1: the country realized back then. You know, many of our
6:47
Speaker 1: listeners are old enough to remember seeing news reports of
6:50
Speaker 1: the violence associated with gangs, and that's pretty much all
6:53
Speaker 1: anyone outside of that culture knew about it at the time.
6:56
Speaker 1: Only negative connotations, of course, So society reacted to that
7:00
Speaker 1: by electing quote unquote tough on crime politicians who implemented
7:05
Speaker 1: these kinds of ham fisted policing tactics, which of course
7:09
Speaker 1: had very real effects, as you can both attest to
7:13
Speaker 1: locking people up for the sake of doing it, but
7:15
Speaker 1: not the right people, and in too many cases it's
7:17
Speaker 1: the wrong people, like in yours. But gang culture was
7:19
Speaker 1: not just criminality and violence, right, It was much much
7:22
Speaker 1: more nuanced than that. Would you say that's an accurate depiction.
7:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. Even in a single gang, it may
7:28
Speaker 4: be like, you know, some people are just families, some
7:31
Speaker 4: people are just friends. Of course you have a criminal
7:34
Speaker 4: element to it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone
7:37
Speaker 4: is involved in crime. The term gang is not a
7:40
Speaker 4: good one, but it's like when you're young and growing
7:43
Speaker 4: up and you experienced the friendship and the camaraderie, and
7:47
Speaker 4: I mean that's kind of where you end up at,
7:50
Speaker 4: especially if you're growing up like in a neighborhood, you
7:52
Speaker 4: know where gangs are there.
7:53
Speaker 3: You know, not everybody is on the same page. Not
7:56
Speaker 3: everybody gets along. We were having fun, you know, whether
7:59
Speaker 3: we're trying to get girls, trying to have a good time,
8:02
Speaker 3: that's what it was. But you definitely had other guys
8:05
Speaker 3: that their version of fun or you know, what they
8:08
Speaker 3: would do is drugs and violence.
8:12
Speaker 5: What I think is true for all gangs, right is
8:14
Speaker 5: that there are little subsets inside the gangs where people
8:17
Speaker 5: gravitate towards certain activities, you know, chasing girls, maybe scoring
8:22
Speaker 5: some weed, that kind of thing. And there was that
8:25
Speaker 5: kind of group, and then there were the people like Payaso,
8:28
Speaker 5: which is Santo Alvarez, or Ghost Chad Landrum or Wicked
8:33
Speaker 5: Lester Monlore that were really wanting to make a name
8:37
Speaker 5: for themselves. They were getting high all the time and
8:41
Speaker 5: doing some real vicious stuff. And they were the ones
8:44
Speaker 5: out there doing the drive bys and the kind of
8:48
Speaker 5: gratuitous violence that everybody associates gangs with.
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Speaker 1: Did you get along with these guys?
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Speaker 4: We know them. They're all significantly older than us. I
8:58
Speaker 4: knew Lester when I was growing up a little bit,
9:01
Speaker 4: like just as a as a younger kid, but he
9:04
Speaker 4: kind of went the druggy kind of violent route, and
9:07
Speaker 4: I just was there for kind of like the camaraderie
9:10
Speaker 4: and the friendships and the fun I saw Santos on
9:14
Speaker 4: my block a lot here and there, and my neighbor
9:17
Speaker 4: that lived in the backhouse. I guess he got his
9:20
Speaker 4: radio stolen, you know, out of his car in my driveway,
9:24
Speaker 4: you know, And I always pretty much suspected Santos as
9:28
Speaker 4: being the one that stole it.
9:31
Speaker 2: You know.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so so much for camaraderie. So this kind of
9:35
Speaker 1: accurately paints a picture of the divide that's at the
9:37
Speaker 1: crux of this story. And I mean by that the
9:40
Speaker 1: larger perception of gangs in the nineties, and then how
9:43
Speaker 1: the issue was dealt with, like I said, in a
9:46
Speaker 1: ham fisted kind of way, by detectives like the ones
9:49
Speaker 1: in this case. There was Sergeant Riggs, but also Marcella
9:53
Speaker 1: Win in a related case Deirdre. Have either of them
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Speaker 1: had any other wrongful convictions that they've been tied to.
10:00
Speaker 5: Win certainly does. She's a serial offender. There's at least
10:05
Speaker 5: five known people ob Anthony and Reggie Cole case. They
10:10
Speaker 5: were code defendants. It was Wynn's first murder case at
10:13
Speaker 5: South Bay Homicide.
10:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, we covered that case here on Raefel Conviction and
10:17
Speaker 1: we'll have it linked in the bio.
10:19
Speaker 5: Then she had these two guys, Ed and John. Now
10:23
Speaker 5: she had a tangential role in that, but had she
10:26
Speaker 5: done the right thing, these guys would not have been
10:29
Speaker 5: in custody. She also had the Susan Mellon case where
10:32
Speaker 5: she relied on a non reliable person, but obviously unreliable,
10:36
Speaker 5: there was no question about it. And then she had
10:39
Speaker 5: another case, the Michelle Pulo's case, she relied on the
10:43
Speaker 5: same unreliable witness that she used against Susan Mellon.
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Speaker 1: That is really disgusting tactic that we see over and
10:49
Speaker 1: over again revisiting and reusing the same useful liars, like
10:54
Speaker 1: Mark Tavins did in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. And
10:57
Speaker 1: this kid Joey Morales who was a witness in six
11:00
Speaker 1: different murders and each time he was out getting milk
11:04
Speaker 1: for his mom, and Danny Rincon who we interviewed on
11:08
Speaker 1: this podcast, which is still in prison three decades later
11:11
Speaker 1: because of this fake witness, and of course Mark Tevans,
11:16
Speaker 1: it looks like win was cut from the same cloth.
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Speaker 5: She was a terrible detective and didn't follow the rules
11:22
Speaker 5: at all.
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Speaker 1: Now, as far as Sergeant Riggs is concerned, you're going
11:25
Speaker 1: to see what he does in this case in terms
11:27
Speaker 1: of the identification process, and one can only surmise that
11:32
Speaker 1: if he was so comfortable running rough shot over a
11:34
Speaker 1: witness who was protesting at the identification in the courtroom
11:38
Speaker 1: and in post conviction, yeah, while at the identification, he's
11:41
Speaker 1: literally going, I can't see that, bar I can't do
11:45
Speaker 1: this identification for you because I can't see. So this
11:48
Speaker 1: guy tried to stand up and do the right thing
11:51
Speaker 1: and was overruled and overridden and bullied.
11:54
Speaker 2: By these cops.
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Speaker 1: So it's fair to say that this is something that
11:57
Speaker 1: this particular officer had done before.
12:00
Speaker 5: The one thing I would say, Jason, in these gang cases,
12:04
Speaker 5: you know, all bets are off with these detectives. They
12:06
Speaker 5: can do whatever they want because they know that nobody
12:09
Speaker 5: has any sympathy. All they have to do is say
12:11
Speaker 5: the word gang member, and the prosecutors, the jurors, judges,
12:15
Speaker 5: everybody rallies around a conviction. So the rules are completely
12:19
Speaker 5: different in a gang case, and that's why you see
12:23
Speaker 5: detectives violate the rules as much as they do because
12:27
Speaker 5: they can.
12:27
Speaker 1: Get away with it, right, They violate the rules while
12:30
Speaker 1: lumping every gang member in under the umbrella of quote
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Speaker 1: violent gang member, regardless of what subset of the gang
12:37
Speaker 1: that individual identified with. And what happened in this case,
12:41
Speaker 1: as happens unfortunately all over the country tragically, is that
12:45
Speaker 1: you have a violent character like Santo Alvarez who conveniently
12:49
Speaker 1: trades false information for his own freedom, and then he
12:53
Speaker 1: and they remain free, I mean, other people like him
12:57
Speaker 1: to commit more acts of violence while getting innocent folks
13:01
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted, and according to the false information that Alvarez
13:04
Speaker 1: eventually gave the police. This story began to unfold on
13:07
Speaker 1: the day before the incident in question, June twenty seventh,
13:10
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, when a few kids from around the
13:13
Speaker 1: Lowndeal thirteen neighborhood who were not in any way affiliated,
13:16
Speaker 1: were the victims of a drive by. This was allegedly
13:19
Speaker 1: perpetrated by members of the Lil Watts game. Now, none
13:22
Speaker 1: of this was ever investigated or substantiated, but this story
13:25
Speaker 1: from Santo Alvarez was used as the alleged motive for
13:27
Speaker 1: a retaliatory drive by the following night. But did either
13:32
Speaker 1: of you guys even know the kids who were shot
13:35
Speaker 1: or shot at the night before, and particularly did you
13:37
Speaker 1: know nineteen year old Luis Madrano.
13:40
Speaker 4: I didn't know the guy. Those guys were not associates
13:43
Speaker 4: of Londo. They were not friends of Londo that I
13:45
Speaker 4: know of. But somehow I guess to maybe create a
13:48
Speaker 4: motive for our case, they got brought into that as
13:53
Speaker 4: being a good way to say, oh, yeah, these guys
13:55
Speaker 4: are retaliating for this.
13:57
Speaker 1: And what happened the following night, June twenty thirty ninety
13:59
Speaker 1: seen was that a member of the Little Watts Gang,
14:02
Speaker 1: twenty five year old Antonio Alercon, was at an autobody
14:05
Speaker 1: shop and while outside using the payphone next door, out
14:09
Speaker 1: of sight of those in the autobody shop, he was
14:11
Speaker 1: killed by a drive by shooter. Dieu, what else can
14:14
Speaker 1: you tell us?
14:15
Speaker 5: Allar Khan had a truck that was being worked on
14:18
Speaker 5: over a period of time at the shop, and the
14:21
Speaker 5: shop owner, Daniel Curio, was at the shop that night
14:25
Speaker 5: with a couple of other people in the shop and
14:28
Speaker 5: Aller Khan happened to stop by and while he was there,
14:31
Speaker 5: I think he got a page and he wanted to
14:33
Speaker 5: use the phone to call this woman who turned out
14:37
Speaker 5: to be his mistress. So he was offered to use
14:40
Speaker 5: the inside phone, but he declined and decided to go
14:44
Speaker 5: outside because he wanted privacy. So he went out of
14:48
Speaker 5: the shop. There's an adjacent building and there's a payphone
14:51
Speaker 5: outside of that, and he went to the payphone to
14:54
Speaker 5: speak with his mistress, and then suddenly a car pulled up.
14:58
Speaker 5: Somebody got out of the car and just unloaded multiple shots,
15:03
Speaker 5: and he was killed, really, probably before he had any
15:06
Speaker 5: chance to react in any way. And then the shooter
15:09
Speaker 5: got back in the car and the car drove off,
15:12
Speaker 5: and as it drove off, it passed the opening of
15:16
Speaker 5: the body shop garage door. So basically there's the storefront
15:21
Speaker 5: on the corner. Adjacent to it is the body shop,
15:23
Speaker 5: but the body shop sits in from the sidewalk so
15:27
Speaker 5: that there's parking in front of it. So when you're
15:30
Speaker 5: inside the body shop with the door open and looking out,
15:33
Speaker 5: you would not have a direct line to the phone
15:36
Speaker 5: booth because the wall of the building would be blocking it.
15:40
Speaker 5: But once the car moved forward, they would be able
15:44
Speaker 5: to see the car.
15:45
Speaker 1: Pass by right, so no one actually got a good
15:48
Speaker 1: look at the shooter, including the shop owner who told
15:50
Speaker 1: detectives that, but detectives cajoled him anyway into making an
15:54
Speaker 1: id that he has never supported. Curiel even demonstrated later
15:59
Speaker 1: at trial that he can't reliably see twenty feet in
16:03
Speaker 1: front of him. Can you talk a bit about his
16:06
Speaker 1: vantage point.
16:07
Speaker 5: Curio's working on a car with his back to the street.
16:10
Speaker 5: He hears the sound of the gunshots going off, but
16:14
Speaker 5: he thought it was fireworks, and because of the echoing effect,
16:18
Speaker 5: he thought it was coming from the back. So he
16:21
Speaker 5: goes to the back and he looks out to see
16:23
Speaker 5: what's going on back there, and that's when he realizes
16:27
Speaker 5: it's coming from the front. And by then the car
16:29
Speaker 5: is moving past the shop, so he would have been
16:34
Speaker 5: I think more than twenty feet away from the car
16:37
Speaker 5: at the time that he first observed it.
16:39
Speaker 1: So what he and others did see was that this
16:42
Speaker 1: was a black or dark green colored sedan and that
16:45
Speaker 1: the front passenger had yelled some kind of gang epithet
16:48
Speaker 1: at Alarkhan as they drove off. So this shooting happened
16:50
Speaker 1: around eleven pm on June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven,
16:53
Speaker 1: and from looking into this case, I realized that this
16:56
Speaker 1: state has some other significance and the audience will remember
17:01
Speaker 1: this like I do. Because earlier that same night, Mike
17:04
Speaker 1: Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear off during a heavyweight championship fight.
17:10
Speaker 1: So people remember that night very, very clearly. In fact,
17:16
Speaker 1: you guys were friends. Ed was fifteen, John was eighteen,
17:18
Speaker 1: and you were hanging out to watch the fight together.
17:21
Speaker 3: Is that right, Yes, sir. Yeah, on the day of
17:24
Speaker 3: he had you know, barbecue, invited me.
17:26
Speaker 4: It was actually a great night. You know, we'd never
17:29
Speaker 4: seen something like that before, right, It was pretty memorable.
17:33
Speaker 4: There was multiple people there, you know, cooking, eating, drinking it.
17:38
Speaker 4: It was a good night.
17:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was insane. I remember calling my friends and
17:42
Speaker 1: family just to check if they had seen it.
17:45
Speaker 3: Yeah.
17:45
Speaker 4: People called the house, a few people and they're like,
17:48
Speaker 4: what the hell happened? Seeing it on the news, and
17:51
Speaker 4: you know, if they didn't watch the fight, you know.
17:54
Speaker 1: Right, they knew you were watching and called to ask
17:57
Speaker 1: about it. You were seen on the front lawn talking
18:00
Speaker 1: on your cordless phone by a neighbor as well, who
18:02
Speaker 1: got home around eleven. So not only do people at
18:04
Speaker 1: the party, but also those that called you and your neighbor.
18:08
Speaker 1: They all placed you at home at the time of
18:10
Speaker 1: the shooting, which was about an eight to twelve minute
18:13
Speaker 1: drive away from your home. And this shooting was alleged
18:15
Speaker 1: to be in retaliation for the shooting of some kid
18:17
Speaker 1: you didn't even know. Now, this case was being investigated
18:20
Speaker 1: by Sergeant DORYL.
18:21
Speaker 3: Riggs.
18:22
Speaker 1: Several days go by, and on July first, Santo Alvarez
18:26
Speaker 1: Akapayaso got picked up for possession of a weapon and
18:28
Speaker 1: a hypodermic needle by Torrence PD. And this is when
18:32
Speaker 1: the story start.
18:33
Speaker 4: So basically, Santos Alvarez is in jail trying to find
18:37
Speaker 4: his way out of jail, starts telling the I believe
18:40
Speaker 4: it was a Torrance Police department where he was at.
18:43
Speaker 4: You know, hey, I know something about a murder that happened,
18:47
Speaker 4: and they called the Sheriff's Homicide.
18:51
Speaker 1: Right, So Torrance PD called over to La County Sheriff's
18:53
Speaker 1: Homicide Department and Sergeant Riggs came to interview Santo Alvarez
18:57
Speaker 1: and they started asking about this dark colored car, maybe
19:00
Speaker 1: perhaps green, and while distancing himself from Londeale gang activity,
19:04
Speaker 1: he said that the only person he can think of
19:06
Speaker 1: from Londale with a car like that was a guy
19:08
Speaker 1: named Robert Caputo, and he said that he saw the
19:11
Speaker 1: two of you in Kaputo's car on the day of
19:13
Speaker 1: the murder, among other things.
19:16
Speaker 4: But also Santo Alvarez creates this story that he saw
19:22
Speaker 4: me the day of the murder and I was upset
19:26
Speaker 4: about that shooting from the prior day of Luis Madrano,
19:31
Speaker 4: and that I wanted to retaliate. And then he said
19:34
Speaker 4: that he saw me like you know, a few days
19:37
Speaker 4: later or whatever, and says that he overhears me talking
19:41
Speaker 4: to someone else saying that I shot someone or blasted
19:44
Speaker 4: that for or something like along those lines is what
19:47
Speaker 4: he used. So with that, from my understanding, they let
19:51
Speaker 4: him out. Then they go back to the witnesses. I
19:55
Speaker 4: feel they put pressure the most on probably Daniel Curriel
19:57
Speaker 4: since he was a shop owner and showed him six
20:00
Speaker 4: packs and coerced him into identifying us because of what
20:05
Speaker 4: Santos said.
20:07
Speaker 3: So you mentioned that Alva said that we were in
20:09
Speaker 3: Carpule's car, right, but computer had turned that car in
20:13
Speaker 3: or sold it. They could tell there that he was
20:16
Speaker 3: lying about that, and that's a significant thing to lie
20:19
Speaker 3: about it.
20:19
Speaker 2: You said, they were in a car that the guy
20:21
Speaker 2: doesn't have exactly.
20:23
Speaker 1: Capudle had sold it in February nineteen ninety seven, about
20:26
Speaker 1: five or six months before the shooting. Yet Riggs and
20:29
Speaker 1: his partner Garcia brought a six pack photo array over
20:33
Speaker 1: to Curiel with the purpose of getting him to id
20:36
Speaker 1: YouTube as if they couldn't spot that lie about Capudo's
20:40
Speaker 1: car right off the bat. This bogus photo lineup happened
20:44
Speaker 1: on July tenth, I believe, before Ed's arrest, and Curiel
20:48
Speaker 1: has always disputed this, but Riggs says that he identified
20:51
Speaker 1: Ed as the shooter and John is the front passenger.
20:53
Speaker 1: He held a gang epithet, So what really happened here?
20:57
Speaker 4: Well, Riggs convinces him basically, look, you're never going to
21:01
Speaker 4: have to go to court. We don't even need you.
21:04
Speaker 4: This is just to help our case a little bit.
21:06
Speaker 4: We already got these guys, but in reality he was
21:10
Speaker 4: their entire case. So he convinces Curiel to say, all right,
21:15
Speaker 4: I'll sign for you today.
21:17
Speaker 3: My arrest July tenth, nineteen ninety seven, on my way
21:22
Speaker 3: to the gym with a friend, and he noticed that
21:25
Speaker 3: there was cow cars behind us, and there was three
21:28
Speaker 3: of them, and then there was three coming in front
21:32
Speaker 3: of us. It had a bad feeling, like this is
21:36
Speaker 3: not a traffic ticket. They pulled us over, pulled the
21:39
Speaker 3: guns out, drive us off the car, and one of
21:43
Speaker 3: my mom's friends happened to be driving by, and so
21:45
Speaker 3: she was across.
21:47
Speaker 2: The street just observing.
21:49
Speaker 3: But I was trying to communicate with her to call
21:52
Speaker 3: my mom. Dude, I didn't want my mom not to
21:54
Speaker 3: know what happened to me either, you know. So I
21:56
Speaker 3: was fifteen. They tried me as an adult and they
21:58
Speaker 3: sent me to the county jail, and I found myself
22:01
Speaker 3: in a very binding section of the Alkan and that
22:07
Speaker 3: was my kind of introduction to the system.
22:26
Speaker 5: Three weeks after the Alerkhan shooting, Santo Alvarez, Lester Moanler,
22:32
Speaker 5: and Chad Landrum were hanging out in this house that
22:36
Speaker 5: had been vacated that was referred to as the Melon
22:39
Speaker 5: Patch because the family that owned it their last name
22:43
Speaker 5: was Melon. So they break in the back. They're getting high.
22:46
Speaker 5: A homeless guy, Richard Daly, who had prior connection with
22:50
Speaker 5: the woman who used to live there, Susan Mellon, stops by.
22:54
Speaker 5: They're originally partying with him, and then all of a sudden,
22:58
Speaker 5: Chad Landrum viciously attacks Daily Max's head multiple times with
23:04
Speaker 5: a hammer and kills him. And then with the help
23:07
Speaker 5: of Santo and Lester, they wrap up the body and
23:13
Speaker 5: bring it to an alley in sam Pedro, where they
23:16
Speaker 5: set it on fire in hopes of destroying any evidence. Said, well,
23:20
Speaker 5: enable the police to connect them.
23:22
Speaker 1: Right, And you all didn't find out about this until
23:25
Speaker 1: post conviction, even though the person who prosecuted both Ed
23:28
Speaker 1: and John prosecuted this case as well, and we talked
23:31
Speaker 1: a bit about her before. But the Daily murder fell
23:35
Speaker 1: on Marcella Win's desk, right, All of these informants came
23:38
Speaker 1: to her saying it was Piasso ghost and wicked with
23:41
Speaker 1: the hammer right in the melon patch, open and shut, right,
23:45
Speaker 1: But that's not what happened. This person, Susan Mellon, ended
23:48
Speaker 1: up getting dragged into it in Piaso's stead right instead
23:51
Speaker 1: of him. How did that happen?
23:53
Speaker 5: Well, I think initially when you know, she takes the
23:56
Speaker 5: path of least resistance in all of her investigations, so
23:59
Speaker 5: when people were handing up the three gang members, she
24:03
Speaker 5: was going to pursue that and go after them. She
24:05
Speaker 5: even submitted a Maffi David for arrest warrants for all
24:08
Speaker 5: three of them. However, she doesn't want to do any
24:10
Speaker 5: heavy lifting, so there wasn't enough evidence for the DA
24:15
Speaker 5: to pursue Piasso, and Wynn didn't do the investigations she
24:21
Speaker 5: needed to build a case against them. So at the
24:23
Speaker 5: same time that it was becoming clear that she'd have
24:26
Speaker 5: to work to get Piasso further implicated in it, this
24:31
Speaker 5: other tweaker, June Patty, came along and said, Hey, I
24:35
Speaker 5: got some information on Melon. You can pursue her. And
24:37
Speaker 5: so Wind shifted gears and went after Melon. And while
24:41
Speaker 5: she was doing this, she was in communication with Riggs
24:45
Speaker 5: about Piasso's role as a witness as their star witness
24:49
Speaker 5: in that case. So in those conversations that were never documented,
24:53
Speaker 5: the substance of that was never documented. Clearly, these detectives
24:56
Speaker 5: made decisions that benefited both of them. So Riggs was
25:00
Speaker 5: allowed to use Payasso in the Aller Khan shooting, and
25:04
Speaker 5: Win was free to pursue Melon, another innocent person, for
25:08
Speaker 5: the Daily murder.
25:09
Speaker 1: So ultimately Chad Landrum and Lester Monlaur were rightfully pursued,
25:13
Speaker 1: along with Susan Mellon, who was wrongfully pursued. They were
25:17
Speaker 1: all tried separately, and Landrum and Mellon were both convicted.
25:20
Speaker 1: Monlare was acquitted, So both monlaur and Alvarez got off
25:24
Speaker 1: scott free, ready willing and able to commit even more crimes.
25:29
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, Jesus Chris. So now August fourteenth rolls around,
25:33
Speaker 1: and John, you were arrested for the alar Khan drive
25:36
Speaker 1: by as the front seat passenger.
25:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was the shocker, obviously, but for the first
25:43
Speaker 4: you know, six months of going to jail. When I
25:46
Speaker 4: got arrested, I thought the next court date they would realize, hey,
25:50
Speaker 4: this guy's not supposed to be here, We're going to
25:52
Speaker 4: go ahead and release them. And you know, every court
25:55
Speaker 4: date turned into a next court date till I finally realized, like,
25:59
Speaker 4: these guys are so they really, you know, they're really
26:01
Speaker 4: trying to charge me with this.
26:03
Speaker 1: So now October thirtieth, nineteen ninety seven, curial was brought
26:07
Speaker 1: into view a live lineup, and on the advice of
26:09
Speaker 1: your lawyer, John, you tried to change your appearance. So
26:12
Speaker 1: even though you were innocent of this crime, this move
26:15
Speaker 1: made you look not so great.
26:17
Speaker 4: My lawyer, Frank ta Jacomo. He tells me, you know, hey,
26:20
Speaker 4: this guy, he's already seen pictures of you. They've shown
26:23
Speaker 4: him your six pack or whatever. Let's kind of make
26:26
Speaker 4: it a little more difficult for him to pick you out. So,
26:30
Speaker 4: you know, grow your hair out, shave your mustache. And
26:33
Speaker 4: I'm listening to the advice of my attorney. So I say,
26:36
Speaker 4: all right, you know, I grow my hair out, shave
26:39
Speaker 4: my mustache. I go to my lineup and then I'm waiting.
26:42
Speaker 4: They bring me off the stage from the lineup, and
26:45
Speaker 4: the deputy is like, who are you? And I'm like,
26:47
Speaker 4: what do you mean You're not John Plenty? Who are you?
26:50
Speaker 4: And I'm like, yes, I am. And he's like, no
26:53
Speaker 4: one recognizes you out there. Your lawyer doesn't recognize you.
26:56
Speaker 4: The detective doesn't recognize you. You did you switch wristbands?
27:00
Speaker 4: And I'm like, no, I didn't switch ristbands. Like it's me,
27:04
Speaker 4: you know, And I said, how does my lawyer not
27:06
Speaker 4: recognize me? He just saw me two weeks ago. He's
27:08
Speaker 4: the one that told me to change my appearance. Little
27:11
Speaker 4: did I know that was going to be used against me.
27:15
Speaker 4: They used that as a sign of a consciousness of guilt.
27:18
Speaker 1: So later on Curio and identifying you in the live lineup.
27:21
Speaker 1: He went on to testify that he had just recognized
27:24
Speaker 1: John from the photo race and in referring to Riggs, quote,
27:28
Speaker 1: I already knew who he was looking for. End quote.
27:31
Speaker 1: Now you two are on your way to be tried together,
27:35
Speaker 1: and Chad Landrum has already been convicted and sentenced to
27:37
Speaker 1: life without the possibility of parole. Amazingly, Landrum reached out
27:41
Speaker 1: to Ed's family because he wanted to come clean about
27:44
Speaker 1: the Alarchan drive by.
27:46
Speaker 2: He wanted to testify in the case, and my Lord
27:48
Speaker 2: did bring him down to our.
27:49
Speaker 3: Trial or it was maybe a pre trial pulls or something,
27:53
Speaker 3: and they never got his statement. It didn't give him
27:56
Speaker 3: much chance to testify or confess.
27:59
Speaker 1: From what I've read, there's a reason why he didn't
28:01
Speaker 1: get that chance. Right, he was actually brought down to
28:05
Speaker 1: the courthouse.
28:05
Speaker 4: What happened, Yeah, I guess he got into it or
28:08
Speaker 4: something with someone. I think it was on the bus
28:12
Speaker 4: or not too sure, but he ended up stabbing him
28:15
Speaker 4: in the courthouse tank and that was the end of that.
28:19
Speaker 1: So you're one shot at getting around the false testimony
28:22
Speaker 1: of Alvarez and this protested identification just got dragged away
28:27
Speaker 1: for acting out violently again stabbing another guy. And then
28:32
Speaker 1: you go to trial in La County Superior Court and
28:34
Speaker 1: no one brought up Landrum's involvement or went again an
28:36
Speaker 1: affi David nothing. So Ed was represented by Walter Urbin
28:40
Speaker 1: and John by Frank Dajacomo. The prosecutor was Valerie Cole,
28:44
Speaker 1: and so the prosecution's theory was that Ed, John and
28:47
Speaker 1: a third Londale thirteen gang member were in the dark
28:49
Speaker 1: green car. John was in the front passenger seat, Ed
28:52
Speaker 1: was in the back seat, and Ed was the shooter.
28:55
Speaker 1: So they never caught up with this alleged driver. Right,
28:58
Speaker 1: John allegedly shouted an epithet about the Little Watch gang.
29:02
Speaker 1: This was allegedly a retaliation for this other shooting. But
29:05
Speaker 1: of course this entire theory came from Santo Alvarez, who
29:08
Speaker 1: was deflecting the blame from his own crew. What was
29:12
Speaker 1: presented by the prosecution to support this wacky ass theory.
29:17
Speaker 5: The prosecution was entirely dependent on pre trial statements of
29:21
Speaker 5: Santo Alvarez and the pre trial identification of Curio. At
29:27
Speaker 5: the actual trial, Curio did not identify either Ed or John.
29:32
Speaker 5: He specifically testified that the only reason he made the
29:36
Speaker 5: pre trial identification was because he was, you know, kind
29:39
Speaker 5: of pressure to and he gave the whole story about
29:42
Speaker 5: how the police pointed out the pictures and said, hey,
29:45
Speaker 5: this guy's ragging about it, this guy was in the
29:48
Speaker 5: front seat, this guy's a shooter, or all that. So
29:51
Speaker 5: the jurors weren't basing their verdict on what the testimony
29:55
Speaker 5: in front of them. They were basing their verdict on
29:57
Speaker 5: the statements made outside of their presence. Same thing Paiaso
30:00
Speaker 5: when he gets into trial, he's like, I don't know,
30:03
Speaker 5: I don't know, I don't know what I said, might
30:05
Speaker 5: have said whatever. So they use the tape recording of
30:09
Speaker 5: the statement that Paiasso made to Rigs. And by the way,
30:13
Speaker 5: they rehearsed it before they did the official tape, right,
30:16
Speaker 5: they talked to him off record, and then they put
30:19
Speaker 5: the tape on and they talked to them. And so
30:22
Speaker 5: the jurors were told, hey, look it, this is a
30:25
Speaker 5: gang case. Piasso doesn't want to come in here and
30:28
Speaker 5: rat out his homies, so you can believe what he
30:30
Speaker 5: said to Riggs when he's trying to get out of custody.
30:33
Speaker 5: And Curio, poor Curial. He's being intimidated and threatened by
30:38
Speaker 5: all these gang members. So that's why he's not going
30:40
Speaker 5: to say it in front of you all. But he
30:42
Speaker 5: looked what he said to the cops. You know, he
30:45
Speaker 5: made this idea, and that was the entirety of the
30:48
Speaker 5: prosecutor's case. And the other thing she did, without any
30:52
Speaker 5: legitimate basis for doing so, is she made every single
30:56
Speaker 5: one of the alibi witnesses look like liars and made
30:59
Speaker 5: it sound like the alibi was this last minute defense
31:03
Speaker 5: that defense lawyers put together at the very end, when
31:08
Speaker 5: John's mother had presented the lawyers with line by line,
31:13
Speaker 5: minute by minute timeline of where everybody was, who showed up, when,
31:17
Speaker 5: who left when, the names, the phone numbers and all
31:20
Speaker 5: of that the day she hired John's lawyer. So the
31:24
Speaker 5: alibi was known right from the get go, but the
31:26
Speaker 5: jurors were misled into believing it was all some fabrication
31:30
Speaker 5: by the tricky defense lawyers.
31:32
Speaker 1: I mean, I can see how you could impeach alibi
31:34
Speaker 1: witnesses as friends and loved ones, or as they did
31:37
Speaker 1: in this case, fellow gang members and friends of long
31:40
Speaker 1: till thirteen. So the message is that everyone is gang
31:43
Speaker 1: related and therefore lying. But your lawyer could have backed
31:46
Speaker 1: up the alibi with phone records. It's not that complicated
31:49
Speaker 1: it but even without that support though, from what I understand,
31:52
Speaker 1: the one witness that was used in this corrupt identification process, Curiol,
31:56
Speaker 1: was adamant that he did not stand by this identification.
32:00
Speaker 1: Really take off his glasses to demonstrate how bad his
32:02
Speaker 1: vision was, because that would have been pretty powerful. Does
32:06
Speaker 1: anyone remember that?
32:08
Speaker 2: Yeah?
32:08
Speaker 4: I remember that he took off his glasses in court
32:12
Speaker 4: and couldn't see anything. I mean, you could tell he
32:15
Speaker 4: couldn't see anything. You know when when someone I can
32:18
Speaker 4: take off my glasses and you can tell I need
32:20
Speaker 4: them just by looking at me. So, I mean, it
32:23
Speaker 4: was amazing, man, it was.
32:25
Speaker 2: It was crazy.
32:27
Speaker 3: Another thing that I remember happening was the district attorney
32:29
Speaker 3: she said that I gave him my thumbs up. Yeah.
32:32
Speaker 1: I read about that to Curio, like as if he
32:35
Speaker 1: was helping you out.
32:36
Speaker 3: And I'm curious, now she's ever used that tactic against
32:39
Speaker 3: other defendants.
32:41
Speaker 2: Because the whole courtroom focused.
32:43
Speaker 3: On me, And this is did you just give the
32:45
Speaker 3: guy a thumbs up and open courte room?
32:47
Speaker 2: Now mine?
32:48
Speaker 3: He wasn't doing me any favors. There was no reason,
32:50
Speaker 3: and I did not give him my thumbs up. I'm
32:52
Speaker 3: looking at the jury like I did not. But it
32:57
Speaker 3: was effective. Yeah, those dirty.
33:00
Speaker 1: It sounds like they were just running the disgraceful playbook.
33:03
Speaker 1: I mean, part of Curro's testimony was that the cops
33:05
Speaker 1: just convinced him that they had the right guys, and
33:08
Speaker 1: at that time, everyone believed the police right. And then
33:11
Speaker 1: all they had to do was say gang and gang
33:13
Speaker 1: member enough times and it's almost like Pavlov's Dog. It
33:16
Speaker 1: just almost a knee jerk reaction from the jury to say, okay, great,
33:19
Speaker 1: when do I get to vote guilty. The alibis and
33:22
Speaker 1: the witness protesting the identification just didn't seem to matter
33:25
Speaker 1: at all.
33:26
Speaker 4: You got it one hundred percent.
33:27
Speaker 2: And then so that thumbs.
33:29
Speaker 5: Up in there, if I could jump in on that point.
33:31
Speaker 5: And in LA they created this hardcore gang unit in
33:35
Speaker 5: the late eighties, I believe it was eighty eight or
33:38
Speaker 5: eighty nine, and the whole purpose of that hardcore gang
33:42
Speaker 5: unit was like, damn, it's hard to prove these cases
33:45
Speaker 5: because everybody's a liar and everybody has baggage, and we
33:49
Speaker 5: don't have good witnesses. We got to figure out a way.
33:52
Speaker 5: And basically what they did was they created this unit
33:54
Speaker 5: where they recruited all these overzealous prosecutors and say, hey,
33:59
Speaker 5: you get to be the shine star here and you
34:00
Speaker 5: can make these cases that nobody else can make. And
34:03
Speaker 5: then they gave them strategies for how to do that.
34:06
Speaker 5: How do what's the work around when you really can't
34:08
Speaker 5: prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt, Just say gang gang, gang, gang, gang,
34:12
Speaker 5: as many times as you can make everything be about
34:16
Speaker 5: scaring the hell out of the jurors and making them
34:19
Speaker 5: think that whoever sitting in the defendanc seat is the
34:22
Speaker 5: worst person in the world, just because they happened to
34:25
Speaker 5: have affiliated with a gang for whatever reason, and regardless
34:29
Speaker 5: of their level of involvement, let's get them off the street.
34:32
Speaker 5: Evidence be damned.
34:33
Speaker 1: Even their use of the word homies, I mean, that's
34:36
Speaker 1: a racist dog whistle.
34:37
Speaker 4: If I ever heard what I saw, the gang gang
34:40
Speaker 4: gang push by the prosecutor, by the you know, by
34:43
Speaker 4: the detectives. You know, I saw my lawyer not do
34:48
Speaker 4: a good job at all. The combination of all those things,
34:52
Speaker 4: I felt my life slipping away from me.
34:54
Speaker 3: When they read the verdict. I remember they hear you know,
34:58
Speaker 3: my family, my mom or. I remember looking up at
35:02
Speaker 3: the lights in the courtroom trying to not you know,
35:04
Speaker 3: let no tears come out.
35:06
Speaker 4: Man, I think I probably did shed a couple tears.
35:10
Speaker 4: You know, people talk about the worst moment in their life.
35:13
Speaker 4: That was for sure the worst moment right there.
35:30
Speaker 3: You know, I get to prison on brand new. I
35:33
Speaker 3: don't know what to expect. I know that I'm surrounded
35:36
Speaker 3: by a bunch of guys that are violent, angry, confrontational,
35:44
Speaker 3: and so I'm navigating through that. You got to walk
35:48
Speaker 3: on eggshells to be sure. And I used to work
35:50
Speaker 3: out a lot because if I did end up having
35:52
Speaker 3: to get into a confrontation, I wanted to be able
35:54
Speaker 3: to defend myself, and so I used to work out
35:57
Speaker 3: for three hours a day in the beginning.
35:59
Speaker 4: I I tell people this story all the time, like
36:03
Speaker 4: my kind of welcome to prison moment. I'm scared, but
36:06
Speaker 4: I'm also trying not to show fear. You know, that's
36:09
Speaker 4: not a good idea in prison. I'm walking on the yard,
36:15
Speaker 4: some guys sitting down on a curb, and as I'm walking,
36:18
Speaker 4: I'm you know, probably a foot or two away from him,
36:22
Speaker 4: and a guy comes up behind him and just slices
36:26
Speaker 4: his whole face open, from like his lip to his ear.
36:31
Speaker 4: And just seeing that happen, like, you know, a foot
36:34
Speaker 4: away from me, it was like, where the fuck am I? So,
36:39
Speaker 4: like Ed said, it's just survival mode.
36:42
Speaker 1: That's it.
36:43
Speaker 3: As soon as I could, I started to read books,
36:46
Speaker 3: and then I learned that, you know, the way that
36:49
Speaker 3: the criminal appeal process works is your lawyer's gonna dump
36:53
Speaker 3: the case on you, and then it's gonna be on
36:55
Speaker 3: you to represent yourself. And that's when I started to
36:58
Speaker 3: go into the library. I would go to the yard.
37:00
Speaker 3: I would go to the library instead because you only
37:03
Speaker 3: choose one or the other. And started to learn the law.
37:08
Speaker 3: And then I found myself in solitary and I had
37:12
Speaker 3: to try to figure out way how am I going
37:14
Speaker 3: to get out of solitary was? I started to study
37:18
Speaker 3: solitary confinement cases and I put together a memorandum of
37:22
Speaker 3: law on why lawyers should come to California and challenge
37:26
Speaker 3: long term solitary confinement. And in those efforts I managed
37:31
Speaker 3: to meet Professor Jose Lobel from the University of Pittsburgh.
37:36
Speaker 3: It was through his student Brett Grot, who's now the
37:39
Speaker 3: director of the Abolitionist Law Center. They read my memorandum,
37:42
Speaker 3: they researched it, and they decided to come to California
37:46
Speaker 3: follow class action, and that case settled in twenty fifteen,
37:52
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. And you know, I was partly responsible for
37:56
Speaker 3: getting guys that had been in there for thirty five years,
38:00
Speaker 3: eight years, twenty seven years. Me myself, I was there
38:04
Speaker 3: for thirteen years. It is one of the things that
38:07
Speaker 3: I've done in my life that I still feel the
38:10
Speaker 3: rewards of because today there's people that are outside and
38:14
Speaker 3: seeing the sky, seeing their family, and that is due
38:19
Speaker 3: to the work that I did. Obviously, I wasn't acted alone.
38:22
Speaker 3: I had there was a team of lawyers. But I
38:25
Speaker 3: put in the work and it paid off.
38:28
Speaker 4: Well.
38:29
Speaker 1: You should be very proud of that. And as part
38:31
Speaker 1: of that settlement, California can no longer put a prisoner
38:34
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement for indeterminate periods. In Ed's case, it
38:37
Speaker 1: was thirteen years with no end in sight, simply based
38:41
Speaker 1: upon alleged gang membership. So now that you fought your
38:45
Speaker 1: way out of the prison. Within the prison, let's get
38:47
Speaker 1: to how you guys are here speaking with us today.
38:50
Speaker 1: So your initial appeals were denied. As far as I
38:54
Speaker 1: could see here, there's no real movement on this until
38:56
Speaker 1: Landrum once again reached out to Ed's family saying that
38:59
Speaker 1: he wanted to confess to murdering alercon Right. We knew
39:03
Speaker 1: this already, but I guess he hadn't ever gone on
39:05
Speaker 1: the record about it and wasn't exactly easily reachable. He
39:10
Speaker 1: was also by this time in solitary doing life without parole.
39:13
Speaker 1: So John, take us through this.
39:15
Speaker 4: My friend told me when I got convicted, like, I'm
39:18
Speaker 4: going to get you a lawyer. I don't care how
39:19
Speaker 4: long it takes. You know, once I can afford one,
39:23
Speaker 4: I'm going to get you one. So when this stuff
39:25
Speaker 4: came up with Landrum, that's when I talked to my
39:29
Speaker 4: best friend and I told him, you know, now's the time.
39:31
Speaker 4: You know, this guy's coming forward and confessing, Like, we
39:34
Speaker 4: need to get a lawyer, and thank god we got
39:37
Speaker 4: Deir Dr.
39:38
Speaker 5: John's friend reached out to me in May of twenty twelve,
39:42
Speaker 5: and what had happened prior to that was Chad Landrum
39:47
Speaker 5: had written out a confession and provided it to Ed's
39:51
Speaker 5: family and then Ed used it to file his own
39:54
Speaker 5: habeas petition, but he didn't have any resources or a
39:59
Speaker 5: lawyer to help him, so it was just the paper
40:01
Speaker 5: that went in and the judge just dismissed it without
40:05
Speaker 5: any thoughtful analysis at all. So when John's friend reached
40:09
Speaker 5: out to me, the first thing we did is we
40:11
Speaker 5: scheduled a trip to Pelican Bay to meet with Chad
40:14
Speaker 5: Landrum and Ed Dunbriky. Both of them were in the
40:17
Speaker 5: shoe unit and they had no ability to communicate with
40:21
Speaker 5: one another. My sense of it was if there was
40:23
Speaker 5: merit to Chad Landram's confession, we needed to do a
40:27
Speaker 5: lot more work to build it up, and so we
40:30
Speaker 5: asked all kinds of details, including who else would have
40:33
Speaker 5: known back in the day about Chad's role in this
40:37
Speaker 5: killing and the details. He had not a single note
40:42
Speaker 5: in front of him reminding him about any of the
40:44
Speaker 5: details of the case, and he could give me specific
40:48
Speaker 5: information consistent with the police report, including the fact that
40:53
Speaker 5: he got out of the car and shot alar Khan.
40:56
Speaker 5: There were only two witnesses that saw that they were
40:59
Speaker 5: women across the street, and they were never used in
41:02
Speaker 5: the trial, so none of that was in the trial record,
41:05
Speaker 5: all of the people from the auto body shop never
41:07
Speaker 5: saw anybody out of the car because the car doesn't
41:09
Speaker 5: come into their line of sight until after the shooting
41:12
Speaker 5: is done. He also knew that Alercan was shot with
41:15
Speaker 5: different types of bullets. That was a fact that, although
41:19
Speaker 5: it was contained in the records, would not be something
41:21
Speaker 5: that some random person would have known about. So there
41:25
Speaker 5: was a lot of key points in Chad Landrum's statements
41:28
Speaker 5: to me that made me think that he probably was
41:32
Speaker 5: telling the truth. And so I asked him to tell
41:34
Speaker 5: me confirmation as to who else knew back then, and
41:37
Speaker 5: he told me his brother knew, and we followed up
41:39
Speaker 5: and talked to the brother, and the brother gave us
41:41
Speaker 5: all kinds of information. And I also asked Chad if
41:44
Speaker 5: he would take a polygraph, and he immediately agreed to,
41:47
Speaker 5: but the prison wouldn't allow us to go up there.
41:50
Speaker 5: And so then you know all of the places you
41:52
Speaker 5: would go logically in an investigation like this, including contacting
41:57
Speaker 5: Curiel stop by his work out of the Blue. Reaes
42:00
Speaker 5: to talk to us at an Eyehap as soon as
42:02
Speaker 5: he gets off of work, and he lays it all out.
42:04
Speaker 5: He tells us consistent with his recantation everything, and it's
42:08
Speaker 5: all on tape, so nobody can say we put words
42:11
Speaker 5: in his mouth or anything. And then we did the
42:13
Speaker 5: same thing with all the alibi witnesses to find out,
42:16
Speaker 5: you know, was there more that could have been done
42:19
Speaker 5: to show that they were telling the truth, including the
42:22
Speaker 5: logical things like phone records and other people who could
42:26
Speaker 5: corroborate what they said. And it all fell into place,
42:28
Speaker 5: and it was like I remember talking to John. You know,
42:31
Speaker 5: we filed our brief in three months after investigation, and
42:35
Speaker 5: we felt like, this is a no brainer. He should
42:38
Speaker 5: be out that year.
42:39
Speaker 1: I think that's how we all hope our system works,
42:41
Speaker 1: but unfortunately that's not how it usually goes, and this
42:45
Speaker 1: was no exception. So John Savias was filed in October
42:49
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. He presented all this material, and like you said,
42:54
Speaker 1: it was a no brainer. In twenty thirteen, Landram made
42:57
Speaker 1: a formal confession on the record, then ed joined the
43:00
Speaker 1: habeas as well. So it seems like there's a lot
43:03
Speaker 1: of momentum. And in an effort to further support Landrum's confession,
43:08
Speaker 1: you reached out to his co defendant on the Richard
43:10
Speaker 1: Daily murder another wrongfully convicted person, Susan Mallon.
43:14
Speaker 5: Right, So we went and visited her. There were some
43:17
Speaker 5: delays along the way because she was being represented by
43:20
Speaker 5: someone else, but a year later I ended up representing her,
43:24
Speaker 5: and in a lot of what I needed to prove
43:28
Speaker 5: her innocence overlapped with what I needed to prove for
43:31
Speaker 5: John and ultimately Ed, because there were so many witnesses
43:34
Speaker 5: in common, and representing Susan gave me access to witnesses
43:38
Speaker 5: that I didn't have before that.
43:40
Speaker 1: So this is twenty fourteen, Landram and even Alvarez one
43:43
Speaker 1: on the record confessing to their roles in the daily
43:46
Speaker 1: murder and clearing Susan of any responsibility. And after seventeen
43:49
Speaker 1: years in prison, seventeen long years, Susan's conviction was vacated,
43:55
Speaker 1: charges were dismissed and she went on to sue Marcello
43:58
Speaker 1: win and won twelve million, and good for her. So
44:01
Speaker 1: we're obviously very happy for Susan. That seemed to be
44:04
Speaker 1: our system operating at the speed that it should, I mean,
44:10
Speaker 1: notwithstanding the seventeen long years wrongfully incarcerated. But for John
44:14
Speaker 1: and Ed. There was a court order in November of
44:17
Speaker 1: twenty twelve for the DA to respond to this habeas petition.
44:21
Speaker 1: What happened, Deirdre?
44:22
Speaker 5: There was one delay after another. There was transfers of
44:26
Speaker 5: district attorneys and all kinds of stuff that just a
44:29
Speaker 5: month turned into six month, turned into a year, turned
44:32
Speaker 5: into five years. And it's hard. I can't even imagine,
44:38
Speaker 5: excuse me, what it's like for these guys to have
44:45
Speaker 5: to count on a lawyer on the outside saying, don't worry,
44:48
Speaker 5: I got you back. I'm I'm going to do this.
44:49
Speaker 5: You know, I'm going to get it taken care of,
44:51
Speaker 5: when they have been disappointed every step of the way.
44:55
Speaker 5: And I, you know, my experience of it is like,
44:58
Speaker 5: you know, the frustration I feel on my end can't
45:01
Speaker 5: even begin to compere to what these guys are going through.
45:05
Speaker 3: Right.
45:05
Speaker 1: Imagine having the keys to the prison gate staring you
45:08
Speaker 1: in the face for eight years before the district attorney
45:11
Speaker 1: or the courts even pretend to not ignore them. It
45:14
Speaker 1: wasn't until twenty twenty that a judge finally made a
45:16
Speaker 1: ruling that amounts to basically a brain fart of a
45:18
Speaker 1: man in cognitive decline. So tell us about this, judge,
45:22
Speaker 1: Edmund Clark Junior and how this thing finally turned around.
45:26
Speaker 5: So it was clear we weren't going to be able
45:28
Speaker 5: to force anybody's hand until we filed this supplemental brief.
45:33
Speaker 5: And I mean, this is this brief because of all
45:35
Speaker 5: of the evidence that was developed during Susan Mellon's case
45:38
Speaker 5: was even stronger than what we had, and we had
45:42
Speaker 5: a clear winner from the beginning. But it lands in
45:45
Speaker 5: the hands of a judge who couldn't care less and
45:49
Speaker 5: in a heartbeat, without any hearing or anything, he denies it.
45:53
Speaker 5: He characterizes it as a pro say proper petition. When
45:58
Speaker 5: I have my name all over it, I'm representing him,
46:01
Speaker 5: and I had already been on the record, and he
46:04
Speaker 5: completely distorted the history of it and made it sound
46:07
Speaker 5: like it was a brand new petition that was relitigating
46:11
Speaker 5: issues that had already been decided against John. So he
46:16
Speaker 5: dismissed it, and then he retired soon after that. So
46:19
Speaker 5: I file two motions, one for reconsideration and one for
46:24
Speaker 5: a ruling on the original petition. And either way we
46:27
Speaker 5: were prepared to go to the Court of Appeal, that's
46:28
Speaker 5: where we thought we were going to end up. But
46:30
Speaker 5: fortunately the judge who took the other judge's place really
46:34
Speaker 5: was concerned that this might be a case involving innocent people,
46:38
Speaker 5: and she told the DA you're going to need to
46:41
Speaker 5: commit get yourself on paper, tell me what your position
46:44
Speaker 5: is on this case, because if these are innocent people,
46:46
Speaker 5: we have to deal with it. And once they were
46:49
Speaker 5: forced to deal with it, then they submitted. Then they
46:53
Speaker 5: just read the document and answered the document. Back in
46:56
Speaker 5: twenty twelve, it would have been the same answer they submitted.
47:00
Speaker 5: They said that based on the cumulative error in the case,
47:03
Speaker 5: that the conviction should be vacated and they were not
47:06
Speaker 5: going to pursue the charges. They were going to recommend
47:09
Speaker 5: that it'd be dismissed. They could have done that back
47:11
Speaker 5: in twenty thirteen.
47:14
Speaker 1: I'm rarely at a loss for words, but this just
47:19
Speaker 1: really makes my stomach turn. I mean, it's just so
47:26
Speaker 1: it makes me so angry, frustrated, and just I feel
47:32
Speaker 1: a sense of deep sadness. And this didn't even happen
47:34
Speaker 1: to me, but I just hate injustice and this is
47:40
Speaker 1: such a grotesque example of the system at its worst.
47:44
Speaker 1: We see it a lot on the show, but this one,
47:47
Speaker 1: this one's really leaving a bitter taste. But the silver lining,
47:50
Speaker 1: of course, is that you're out, even if it took
47:53
Speaker 1: so much longer that it should have, and never mind
47:56
Speaker 1: that it should have never even happened in the first place.
47:58
Speaker 1: And John, I understand despite it all, you have somehow
48:02
Speaker 1: managed to maintain a positive outlook.
48:04
Speaker 4: Every day is a blessing for sure, you know. And
48:08
Speaker 4: as each day goes by, it seems so much farther
48:11
Speaker 4: away from everything that happened. But it just feels great
48:15
Speaker 4: to be out and great to be free, and words
48:19
Speaker 4: can't express it or describe it. Really.
48:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I getting arrested at fifteen and sent
48:27
Speaker 3: off to prison. There's a lot of things in normal
48:31
Speaker 3: society that I've never experienced, you know. Just this last
48:35
Speaker 3: year was the first time I took a plane ride,
48:37
Speaker 3: first time I've been to a lake, to a river.
48:40
Speaker 3: But also like the first time I had to pay bills,
48:42
Speaker 3: the first time I had to keep up with appointments, responsibilities,
48:46
Speaker 3: balancing school and work. What I'm finding is that it
48:49
Speaker 3: doesn't just fall into place. It doesn't, and I'm working
48:53
Speaker 3: through that. But there are times when I feel a
48:56
Speaker 3: little bit lost out here. I really do, I really do.
49:00
Speaker 3: But I'm confident and optimistic that it's going to come together.
49:05
Speaker 1: And Ed, I understand that you'd like to start a nonprofit.
49:08
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about what you're
49:10
Speaker 1: doing now.
49:11
Speaker 3: I applied for a job in Pittsburgh at a nonprofit
49:14
Speaker 3: to Abolitionist Law Center. I'm hopeful that I get the job.
49:17
Speaker 3: If I do, I'm headed out that way in order
49:20
Speaker 3: for me to work there, but also to learn about
49:24
Speaker 3: nonprofits and how it runs, and with the goal of
49:28
Speaker 3: creating my own. I want to call it Juvenile Justice
49:30
Speaker 3: for All, and the goal would be to have children
49:33
Speaker 3: treated equally and fairly, to have their parents rights respected.
49:38
Speaker 3: A lot of times they just adopt adult laws. The
49:41
Speaker 3: adult prison system doesn't help children at all. I look
49:45
Speaker 3: to filing cases in court, but also working on policy changes,
49:50
Speaker 3: speaking to other nonprofits and getting them to support some
49:54
Speaker 3: of these ideas. My goal is to have a uniform
49:57
Speaker 3: system in America treating children equally and fairly across the board.
50:02
Speaker 1: Well, Ed, you've already been able to accomplish so much
50:05
Speaker 1: from behind bars. So we're going to be on the
50:07
Speaker 1: lookout for juvenile Justice for All. And we'll also link
50:09
Speaker 1: to Innocence Matters, the organization that Deirdre co founded, so
50:13
Speaker 1: please show them your support and John's Instagram as well,
50:16
Speaker 1: where he'll keep you up to date on the continued
50:18
Speaker 1: fight for justice. In this case. The courts are still
50:20
Speaker 1: trying to deny the factual innocence claim here, but after
50:23
Speaker 1: what we've heard here today, I can't see any reason
50:27
Speaker 1: for it. And with that, we're going to go to
50:30
Speaker 1: closing arguments, where first of all, I thank each of
50:33
Speaker 1: you from the bottom of my heart for joining us here,
50:36
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna kick back in my chair, shut
50:40
Speaker 1: my microphone off, and leave my headphones on and just
50:44
Speaker 1: listen to anything else you feel is left to be said. Deirdre,
50:49
Speaker 1: please start us off, and then we'll leave it to
50:50
Speaker 1: the guys to take us off into the sunset.
50:54
Speaker 5: I think that it's essential for these stories to be told,
50:57
Speaker 5: and I'm so grateful that you guys give people like
51:00
Speaker 5: John and Ed the opportunity to tell the stories that
51:03
Speaker 5: they live through. I think it's important for the public
51:05
Speaker 5: to understand how fallible the system is, and I wish
51:10
Speaker 5: it was limited to the nineties, but I represent people
51:14
Speaker 5: who are charged today. It's the same fight, the same struggle,
51:18
Speaker 5: and we've got to get it right. The first time.
51:20
Speaker 5: We have to want to get it right the first time,
51:23
Speaker 5: because it doesn't serve anybody, even if all we care
51:26
Speaker 5: about collectively as a society is the money aspect of this.
51:30
Speaker 5: We're throwing money away. We're paying for people to be
51:33
Speaker 5: housed in prisons for crimes they didn't commit, and the
51:37
Speaker 5: real criminals are out there committing other crimes. So we
51:40
Speaker 5: need to get it right. We need to want to
51:42
Speaker 5: get it right, and we need to applaud people like
51:45
Speaker 5: John and Ed who have gone through hell and back
51:50
Speaker 5: and we need to make their lives easier once they
51:53
Speaker 5: get out. We need to help them in whatever way
51:56
Speaker 5: we can.
51:57
Speaker 3: Well, I do appreciate this opportunity to speak about our
52:01
Speaker 3: case and what we went through. I know that there's
52:04
Speaker 3: a lot of other people out there that are in
52:06
Speaker 3: the same circumstances and they're in the same struggle. So
52:09
Speaker 3: I do appreciate the work that you're doing, and I
52:13
Speaker 3: just I'm happy to be free, you know. I'm happy
52:15
Speaker 3: to be free. I'm looking forward to making a difference
52:17
Speaker 3: out here. I think it kind of for me would
52:20
Speaker 3: give my life meaning when I feel like I've lost
52:23
Speaker 3: so much of it already. I'm hopeful that what's left
52:27
Speaker 3: of it. I can actually make a difference, and my
52:31
Speaker 3: experience will help other people.
52:34
Speaker 4: A couple of things. I'd just like to thank you
52:36
Speaker 4: Jason for what you do and Wrongful Conviction Podcast Lava
52:41
Speaker 4: for Good. I follow all that stuff very closely, keep
52:45
Speaker 4: it up because it's needed. I think it helps a lot,
52:47
Speaker 4: and even if it helps a little, a little is
52:50
Speaker 4: more than nothing. So for me, the one thing I
52:53
Speaker 4: would tell people is never to lose hope, never to
52:57
Speaker 4: give up. That's the key to everything, because I know
53:02
Speaker 4: in my case, I never gave up hope. I kept
53:06
Speaker 4: the fight, never got away from that. If you're innocent,
53:09
Speaker 4: you better fight until you can't fight anymore. Hope is
53:13
Speaker 4: all you got, That's all that's going to keep you going.
53:16
Speaker 4: Don't lose it.
53:23
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
53:26
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Kleibern, and Kevin Wartis.
53:30
Speaker 1: With research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
53:33
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
53:37
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
53:41
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
53:44
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction as well as at Lava for Good on
53:48
Speaker 1: all three platforms. You can also follow me on both
53:51
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is
53:55
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with
53:58
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one.
54:00
Speaker 4: The Woman burned the land in the Dream