Latest / Wrongful Conviction Podcasts / 557: #557 Jason Flom with Dennis Maher

Transcript

557: #557 Jason Flom with Dennis Maher · Wrongful Conviction Podcasts

• 00:00:05 Speaker 1: With the police banging on the door open up. 00:00:10 Speaker 2: The choice to be in that lineup was the last choice I made as a free man. 00:00:14 Speaker 3: A year later, I ended up writing the system. 00:00:18 Speaker 4: I'm going to be one of those people who everyone in the world is going to think as a monster or suspect as a monster for the rest of my life, and I'm just going to have to come to peace with that. 00:00:27 Speaker 5: Somebody was able to look at my picture in the database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't. 00:00:34 Speaker 6: I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they might. 00:00:37 Speaker 1: Have to play in my hanging. 00:00:39 Speaker 6: They had been told that two prison officers would have to participate in my execution. Now I walked back inside that prison for the last time. Man, all help broke loose. 00:00:49 Speaker 7: But welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today we have a very special episode, not only because of our amazing guest, Dennis Mayer. First of all, Dennis, welcome to the show. 00:01:15 Speaker 6: Thank you for having me. 00:01:16 Speaker 7: Dennis will get into his story in a minute, but let's suffice it to say that he was a sergeant in the United States Army. When he was wrongfully convicted of three rapes and served almost twenty years in prison. I also want to introduce Hannah Riley, who's the director of communications for the New England Innocence Project, and she's the first time on the show, hopefully not the last. And then we have a very close friend of mine, Alex Spiro. 00:01:41 Speaker 1: He is a former criminal. 00:01:43 Speaker 7: Prosecutor in New York and currently a defense attorney. He's also a professor at Harvard Law School. Alex, it's great to have you on the show as well. 00:01:52 Speaker 2: Thanks. 00:01:53 Speaker 7: So Dennis, let's start with you. Your case is of great interest, I think, to anyone who's interested in this genre, because it touches on a number of really important and tragically common problems in the wrongful conviction world. The mistake and I winness identification is unique in your case because of the fact that there were three different women who identified you under dubious circumstances, but nonetheless that identified you. It touches on the storage of evidence because in your case the evidence had been supposedly lost but actually it wasn't. And that's something that is really disturbing to anyone who's interested in justice. It deals with incompetent defense counsel. And also it also has an element of willful wrongful prosecution. So you really hit the jackpot of causes of getting locked up for something you didn't do. So let's go back, and this is a while ago, right, we're talking nineteen eighty three when this all came down. 00:02:53 Speaker 6: That's when it started. 00:02:54 Speaker 7: Yeah, So nineteen eighty three, paint a picture for us. You were were you active to a you in the military at this time. 00:03:01 Speaker 6: Yes, I was stationed at Fort Devons. 00:03:03 Speaker 7: Right, and you had been in in the airborne Right. I was a paratrooper paraterooper station in Italy. 00:03:10 Speaker 6: Well, first I was at Fort Bragg, then I volunteered to serve overseas. Then I re enlisted to come home to Massachusetts, and then I got off a jump status to work in my field, which was a diesel mechanic. 00:03:23 Speaker 1: And that's another thing. 00:03:25 Speaker 7: It's it's really upsetting to me, as someone who loves his country and respects. 00:03:30 Speaker 1: The men and women of our military. Here you are. You're twenty three years old at the time. 00:03:34 Speaker 6: Yep. 00:03:35 Speaker 1: And what happened. Let's go back to that. 00:03:38 Speaker 6: Well, I graduated from high school in seventy eight and enlisted in the Army right out of high school. You know. I went through Basic training, Advanced Individual Training, Jump school, then went to Fort Bragg, then to Vicenza, Italy in the five or nine, and then to ten Special Forces up at Fort Devons. Then I got off of jump status to work as a diesel mechanic because what I worked on doesn't drop out of. And then from there I was living at home and Lowell with my parents. I was walking down Westword Street and I was stopped by the police. They asked me for identification, so I gave him my driver's license, which was outdated because when you're in the military you get a cod on the back of it that says your license never expires, and so well, I asked me for identification. They ran my name, which came back negative because I had never been in trouble. No speed and tickets, no nothing. He gave me back my ID and then he searched me and he arrested me for possession of marijuana. So they brought me to the police station and booked me and put me in a hold and sell. A couple of hours later, they came out and questioned me and they said, where were you on the night of November sixteenth, at five point thirty. Well, I said, I was in my CEO's office getting yelled at because we failed a nuclear biological chemical test. And I didn't leave the base till almost quarter past five, so I didn't get home till almost six o'clock. And then he put me back in the cell. And then the other cop come in a couple of hours later and asked me the same questions. I gave him the same answers. On a night of November seventeenth, I was I left the base early to get my car inspected, and I went home and took a nap, and then I went over to my friend's house to watch the Bruins game. And then they brought me into court the next day and arranged me for possession of marijuana. And then they did what's called an in court identification. They took me out of the box and sat me on the bench, and they brought one of the victims in and she identified someone else. 00:05:33 Speaker 7: Wait, did you even know what was going on at this point? I mean, you were being booked for possession of marijuana, but now they're bringing a victim. There's no victim of possession of marijuana. 00:05:41 Speaker 6: True. What I missed was the second time they started questioning me, I got mad, you know, why what are you questioning me about? And he said, well, we're questioning you about a rape that happened on November sixteenth, and then attempted rape that happened on November seventeenth. So I said, well, I guess I need a lawyer. And then next day in court they did an in court identification. Now I was never arraigned for the rapes or anything. They just did an in court identification and the victim I need someone else, and the judge said, you have no grounds to go forward. 00:06:12 Speaker 1: Seems like case closes right there, I mean. 00:06:15 Speaker 6: So they gave me six months probation and said I could leave now they had my boots. So I was in stocking feet and going to have to walk home and stalking feet. As I was leaving the courtroom, they arrested me and charged me with the rape and the attempted rape that the judge said there was no grounds to go forward on. 00:06:33 Speaker 7: Okay, Alex, do you want to jump in here because this whole story is pretty surreal. 00:06:36 Speaker 2: Right. 00:06:36 Speaker 7: First of all, the thing with the boots, we'll get back to that. Like why they're making you walk home and this is in Uh it's cold outside, It's it's November. It's November. Yeah, walking home? Okay, Well that's that's a little surreal. Then you've just spent the night in jail for the first time in your life, so I'm sure you're a little whacked out anyway at that point. What's going on here, Alex? Can you get into this? 00:06:57 Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, the use of that sort of identify procedure raises serious questions because just presenting him alone or him in that sort of a setting when he's already being accused of some other crime, is not the right way to conduct I think we know now identification procedures, but I guess what must have happened is twofold one. No doubt that the members of law enforcement were under pressure to make an arrest in this case, and secondarily during the time in which mister Mayor was incarcerated on the initial charge, I'm sure that they noticed things articles of clothing putting him near the scene, and other indisha that they believed to be corroboration. And so the lack of identification obviously did not set this record straight. 00:07:38 Speaker 7: Right and There's a very interesting point that you touch on there, which is that there was one of the victims, or I guess one of the victims, had said that the attacker had had a red hooded sweatshirt, right, and that became one of the only sort of circumstantial piece of evidence that was even something that they could put a hook on. 00:07:56 Speaker 1: Right. 00:07:57 Speaker 6: That's why I think they stopped me, because they saw was wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, you know, and they were two hundred feet away from me, and they said I fit the out of conception, but I believe it was just I had a red hooded sweatshirt on. 00:08:10 Speaker 1: Right. 00:08:10 Speaker 7: So seven o'clock at night, two hundred fet away, it's pretty hard to decide. I mean, you'd have to have sort of like really superhuman vision to be able to match a suspect at night, seven o'clock in November in Massachusetts. I'm not a meteorologist, but I'm guessing it was dark, and so it was dark, and you were two hundred feet away, and they managed to magically figure out that it was you. Now, this goes back to the thing I talk about often, which is that this is a small town. Right, you have a rapist out there who's just attacked two women, raped one of them, sexually assaulted and tempted to wape the other one. They got to find somebody there. You are walking around in a red hooded sweatshirt. It's like, oh, bingo, this is great. We can get this off our desks to an extent, right, And so Alex, go back to what you were saying before. 00:08:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't know sort of verbat him the back and forth. But no, that is not a sound identify procedure. I could say that quite assuredly. 00:09:02 Speaker 7: And what point did you you had requested a lawyer, At what point did you get assigned a lawyer. 00:09:07 Speaker 6: A lawyer approached my parents and asked if he could represent me. Now, this is the lawyer who ended up representing me at trial. He approached my parents the same day I had one to appoint it to me for possession. You know, I got six months probation. But then another lawyer approached my parents asking if he could represent me, and they said yes, yes, because they knew nothing about the law like me, you know, they'd never been in trouble or anything. And he said it'd represent me for five thousand dollars on a rape case. 00:09:37 Speaker 7: Now nineteen eighty three, five thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, right, I mean that's a lot of money back then, so you would hope that this guy would be a real star. But that's not the way it worked out at all, is it. Back to the scene, So now you're about to walk home in your socks stocking feet as New Englanders call it, and then you get pulled back in and you get charged with two counts. 00:10:02 Speaker 6: Of rape and an attempted rape. Right, Well, I didn't get charged then, they just arrested me, and then they took me back to the police station and kept me in the station over the weekend and brought me into Cambridge Court House and that's where they charged me with rape and put me on ten thousand dollars bail, which is one thousand dollars cash. So my parents bailed me out and then I went to the first lineup, which was me six police officers. They were all standing behind a railing. I was standing behind a chair and I was ided that was the first one. 00:10:34 Speaker 1: That kind of stuff always blows me away. Let's just reflect back on that. 00:10:38 Speaker 7: So they were standing behind a railing and you were standing behind a chair, so there was really no reason that anyone would think there'd be anything different about you, right, And there were six police officers in you okay? 00:10:47 Speaker 1: And then the victim, one of the victims, comes in. 00:10:50 Speaker 6: And identified me. You know, it was probably obvious to her, you know, I'm standing behind a chair. I really don't remember the second lineup, but I think when along the same lines, it was me, six police officers, my brother, and this time I wasn't standing behind a chair, and she id'd me, what. 00:11:08 Speaker 1: Does your brother have to do with it? 00:11:09 Speaker 6: Well, he was just in the line. He was there, and they just wanted to stick him in the lineup. 00:11:13 Speaker 1: That seems odd, doesn't it. 00:11:16 Speaker 2: I think that, you know, law enforcement would say that later they can assert that they did everything in their power to find people that look like him and who looks. 00:11:24 Speaker 3: More like a person than their own brother. 00:11:26 Speaker 7: And that's an interesting thing too, because I would this identification, as everyone who listens to the show knows, is the leading cause of wrongful conviction. And what we also know is that in cases where there's a weapon involved and someone is in close proximity and really fearing for their life, in a very real way, the instance of mistaken identification goes up. And that's logical, right as an amateur psychologist, if you're freaking out, literally like you're adrenaline is on, you know ten, you know your mind's not going to function in the way that it would if you were just calmly sitting here and just look at somebody. But when someone's got a knife to your throat and is either raping or attempting to rape you, your faculties are not going to be operating in a normal passion, to say the least. And so this case had that as well because the victims were in that exact situation. 00:12:22 Speaker 4: Have you seen the Gorilla basketball video? 00:12:25 Speaker 1: Yes, okay, have you guys seen that? 00:12:27 Speaker 4: The idea of being we just aren't able to focus really clearly on a lot of things at once. So if you haven't seen this, I'm completely going to ruin. 00:12:36 Speaker 1: It for you. But no, just watch it. Everyone should watch. 00:12:39 Speaker 4: It, right Google, It's on YouTube's a selective attention. 00:12:42 Speaker 7: Test, right, there's a selective attention test. It involves a basketball I strongly recommend that everybody listening to the show watched this because it'll give you an idea of just how easy it is for your mind to play tricks on you. So let's go back to the scene, right. So you end up now with this high priced, fancy lawyer, right, and you didn't get what you paid for. 00:13:02 Speaker 6: No, I didn't. He never visited where the crime happened. He never interrogated witnesses or talked to the witnesses or anything like that. We went to trial in March of two thousand and four. Well before that, January fifth, nineteen eighty four, the police came and arrested me again and brought me down to the police station. I said, well, what are you arresting me for? They wouldn't say anything, and they handed me over to the Air Police department. So they brought me back to Air and on the way, I asked the cop you know what am I under arrest for? She said, just shut up. So I asked her again and she said just shut up. I says, can you please tell me what I'm under arrest for? And she said, well, you're under arrest for a rape that happened at the Casa Mano Hotel. I said, where's the Casa Mana Hotel? Because I never knew where it was until two years ago when I went and spoke in air and she said, well, you committed a rape there. I said, no, I didn't. And then they brought me in the air and put my bail at fifty thousand dollars cash. So that was my last day of freedom, was January fifth, nineteen eighty four. And then we went through another lineup and I was idd again. And in March of nineteen eighty four we went to trial. 00:14:17 Speaker 1: Going back to your lawyer. 00:14:18 Speaker 7: So your lawyer didn't visit the crime scene, big red flag there. Yeah, didn't interview the witnesses. That seems even more insane. Okay, what else did he forget to do or neglect to do? 00:14:29 Speaker 6: I should say he didn't show up for some hearings at the trial. He presented most of the case for the prosecutor. You know, he's standing next to me. Are you sure this is the person? Are you sure? There's an point at me saying are you sure this is the person who raped you? And of course I got found guilty. 00:14:48 Speaker 1: I mean, anybody as well to say are you sure that this rapist is the one who raped you? 00:14:51 Speaker 7: Right? I mean it's like, I mean, it's crazy. So it's incomprehensible. I mean, Alex jump in here because I'm freaking out. 00:14:57 Speaker 3: Yeah, this is not does not sound like good LORI that. 00:15:00 Speaker 7: Now, let's talk about what good lawyering might have looked like, because this is an unusual situation we have here where we actually have somebody on the show who can give us that type of idea. 00:15:10 Speaker 2: I guess I'd break it down into two parts. In terms of the identification, I think you have to remember that, in terms of Lowell, the women were approached from behind. You already mentioned the distraction of a weapon, a high tense situation affecting the ability to accurately picture somebody and recall it. For one, she had already seen the individual that she would later pick out, because she had seen him in a courtroom setting on a bench, and so even if she just remembered that she would falsely identify him. It also wasn't a double blind procedure, meaning that the investigator ostensibly knew who she was trying to pick out, put him in a unique setting within the lineup and everything else. In addition, all of the witnesses were shown photographs in which they identified as I understand it, mister mayor before they viewed a live lineup, and so what often happens is that you end up picking out the person that you saw in the photo array, not necessarily the person who saw on the night in question. And sort of all of that, coupled with law enforcements, desire from perhaps a very good place of trying to solve this crime, can lead to a series of identification procedures not being pristine and not being correctly done, and the taint from one bleeds over into the next, because once he's identified in these initial cases, the air case becomes a foregone conclusion, and I think you have to attack that in all of those different ways. I also think they used corroborative evidence that is a bit of a red herring. They see him in the vicinity near the time of the initial rapes and Lowell, but the truth is he's from that area. It's not like finding somebody in some remote location or finding somebody far away from where they normally travel. They see a knife and a jacket in his car, but that's military issued, where that most of the men in his age demographic in a military town might very well have, and he might be wearing a red sweatshirt. But as US folks from Boston know, a lot of the sports teams there have red sweatshirt, and I don't think that is that unique of an item. And so there were all of those things that needed to be investigated. And on top of that, he had an alibi that wasn't properly vetted, that could have been properly vetted that would suggest he couldn't have been where they say that he was. And the crimes themselves, the air crime versus the lower crimes, don't have the same fact pattern and don't necessarily suggest that the same person perpetrated them. And that wasn't really tested or explored, and I think that could have been used effectively to suggest law enforcements, tunnel vision. 00:17:30 Speaker 7: Were any of these factors brought up by your attorney at trial. 00:17:34 Speaker 1: Or at any other time. 00:17:36 Speaker 6: Well, he brought up part of my alibi because where I was at the base for the November sixteenth crime, and they just dismissed it. They said, do you have that and write And even though I had NCOs the sergeants they are testifying on my behalf that they were with me. 00:17:50 Speaker 7: So the sergeants actually testified at trial and said that you were there. Yeah, those would seem to be relatively We're not talking about crackheads, right, We're talking about sergeants in the ends United States Army who are saying this guy was here. 00:18:04 Speaker 1: Again, I'm not. 00:18:05 Speaker 7: A professor of metaphysics, but you can't be in two places at one time. Everybody knows that. 00:18:10 Speaker 2: And the Starhouse had a reason to remember, right. The sergeants said that there had been a test failure and that it was an intense meeting, and so it wasn't a standard meeting. It was a meeting that they would have one would think remember, and they remembered him there. 00:18:22 Speaker 7: Yeah, that's an excellent point again that a good defense lawyer would have brought up. And this is very different than some of the cases we see where a guy's alibi or a woman's alibi is that they were home with their parents watching TV or with their wife or something. And then they say, wow, the lie for anybody would lie to protect their family. This is not family, right. These guys are not your uncles or brothers or anything else. I mean, these are guys you work with, and in fact, they were bitsed at you at this particular time. On top of that, So that's just that's just nuts. 00:18:51 Speaker 2: I think what the prosecutor may have countered is, even if they were to be believed, he still had enough time from five point fifteen to five thirty to make to the scene. 00:19:01 Speaker 3: But of course, if you did your job and you did an. 00:19:03 Speaker 2: Investigation, you would drive a car from one location to another, and you would show what the traffic patterns were at that time and show that it was feasibly impossible. And so there was a way to draw that out and tighten up that alibi that it does not appear what's done. 00:19:18 Speaker 7: Well, yeah, I mean, and we'd also don't know how long that meeting went on for. But how long would it have taken you Even if you had left immediately, you had had to walk to get to your car, you would have had to drive off the base. I imagine there's some you know, some elapsed time there. And then how long would it have taken you on a typical day to drive from there to where the rape occurred. 00:19:37 Speaker 6: Probably half hour to forty five minutes. 00:19:39 Speaker 7: Case closed, right, I mean, that just doesn't match your honor. He wasn't there because he was somewhere else. 00:19:58 Speaker 2: One of the things is you know, he was rested so close in time, it's much easier to figure out where you were since you were arrested within forty eight hours of when. 00:20:05 Speaker 3: The accusation was right. 00:20:07 Speaker 2: So the sergeant's memories would have also been sharp. If he was arrested two or three years later, one could say, you don't really remember where you were in the night of November fifteenth or sixteenth, But because it happened so close afterwards, he really did have an independent memory, and so did the other individuals that were interviewed. 00:20:22 Speaker 7: Alex brings up a very good point, which is that it's contemporaneous. It's like, right now, this is what happened, this is where you were. You should be out of there at that moment in time with any sort of competent defense. What about the prosecutor at that point, I mean, how does a prosecutor, having been a prosecutor, you obviously have insight that nobody else that's ever been on this show does. What is it that causes a prosecutor to continue to prosecute somebody and I ultimately lock them up or sends them to death when they have real hard evidence that it wasn't the guy. 00:20:56 Speaker 2: Well, the notion that they had hard evidence may be a bit of an over statement. I guess this is why you need to have a strong defense, because what the prosecutor's seeing is multiple identifications and seeing evidence that's corroberative put before him, right, and we went through the identification, and we went through the corroboration, and when you peel away at it, it doesn't seem as strong. 00:21:15 Speaker 3: Now, what did he make of the alibi witnesses. 00:21:18 Speaker 2: I have a feeling that he probably thought to himself, well, if he left it, if he knew he was going to be at that meeting, and he knew that the meeting was over at five ish, it gave him exactly the right amount of time, not just to little time, but exactly the right amount of time to both have a supposed alibi and to commit the crimes in question. And so he would take facts in the world that you might look through a different lens at, and he would look through them at a lens that he's guilty. I know that he's guilty, So what else proves that he's guilty? 00:21:45 Speaker 7: But in this case, as in many other rawful convictions, there was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime. 00:21:50 Speaker 2: But in the nineteen eighties, if you were to commit a crime in the woods, there usually wasn't forensic evidence. So the counter to that would be, you wouldn't expect to find forensic evidence outdoors, and you wouldn't expect to find videotape because it's not like New York in twenty seventeen, And you wouldn't expect to find DNA because it was prior to the modernization of DNA technology. And so what you have here is exactly what you'd expect to have. You have a woman who is a credible witness who swears under oath that he did it, and you have other factors such as the clothing, the time and place, and the repetition of the events, suggesting that he's a good. 00:22:26 Speaker 7: Suspect, circumstantial but nonetheless enough to be able in a prosecutor's mind to rationalize the continued prosecution or persecution in this case of somebody like you. So fast forward to the trial. We know that this attorney mounted a feeble would be a nice way of putting it. In competent would probably be a better description of the representation. Horrible and overpaid. Those are the ways I would describe the defense that you received in this case, which is again typical. The only thing that's not typical about is that most of the peopleople that are wrongfully convicted are represented by public defenders. In this case, you had to pay for the privilege of this guy acting like a prosecutor, which is beyond reprehensible. It's disgusting. Ultimately, the jury goes out, what were you feeling? I mean when they how long did they deliberate for? 00:23:16 Speaker 6: I think it was like two hours, an hour and a half something like that. They didn't they didn't deliberate a real long time. 00:23:21 Speaker 1: No, that's a very short time. 00:23:22 Speaker 7: So again, it's an unimaginable circumstance to anybody on the outside. What did you think when they came back in? Did you think you were going to be exonerate? You knew you were innocent. 00:23:36 Speaker 6: I thought I was going to be found guilty because of the way the lawyer represented me. Even though the court office was saying, you're going to get found guilty. I didn't feel that way because my lawyer was so horrible. You know, I had visions of going to prison, being stabbed, being raped, being beat up because it was a sex. 00:23:54 Speaker 7: Offense, and you knew that those you know, typically those will land you in real hot water once you get on the inside. Yeah, so they come back and sure enough they find you guilty. 00:24:06 Speaker 6: I was. I was pissed, you know, and I stood up in the courtroom. Well, after you get found guilty, they asked if you have anything to say. You know, I was a soldier, you know, I was a defender of my country, and they want to say that I did this. So I got up and after the judge asked if anything to say, of course I did. I said, your honor, if you call this justice, I think you when you hold judicial system or a crock of shit. And he doubled my sentence to twenty to thirty years. Wow, because the DA years later told me that he was going to give me a ten to fifteen. Then I said that, and he said to the clerk, did you sign that ye? And he goes no, he said double the sentence. 00:24:51 Speaker 1: In front of you. 00:24:52 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:24:53 Speaker 1: Oh shit. 00:24:54 Speaker 6: I didn't hear him say that, but the DA did, and he told me later on that he heard tell the clerk to double the sentence. 00:25:01 Speaker 7: And we know now that the DA had his own doubts about this right yes, and that I mean, I want to get into the prison experience. But your case is unusual for another reason, which is that you actually, ultimately twenty something years later, received an apology from the person who actually put you in there. It seems like this was a guy. And it's hard to say based on what we've just heard, but it seems like the guy who actually had a conscience, well, it is a guy. At least he has one now, right, because he tried to make amends to you, which is impossible to do, but he tried, right, And this was the first case that this guy had tried as a prosecutor, right. 00:25:37 Speaker 6: See. I believe it was his first case as a prosecutor. 00:25:40 Speaker 1: Right, which is another factor, right, Alex, I mean as the first case. 00:25:43 Speaker 3: Even in the criminal realm. 00:25:44 Speaker 2: I think for this to be your first case as a prosecutor is a tricky want. 00:25:49 Speaker 7: Now you get taken off to prison. Where were you in prison? The first off was an an mci walpole. It's called cate of Junction now, but it smacked some security and I went in there to be booked and. 00:26:00 Speaker 6: Then they transfer me from there to Conckered. That's where they decide where they're going to send you where I had a twenty to thirty, I would be behind the walls, because anything over eighteen years you've got to do time behind the walls. They call it behind the walls, being maximum security. Right. 00:26:16 Speaker 7: So on top of the fact that your sentence was doubled, and we know typically in a rape case, you know, fifteen years would be the general guideline that I've seen. But because you trying to stand up for yourself and say something, which after what you'd been through, I guess it's hard to follow you for wanting to actually speak your mind. So this had another negative consequence, not only doubling your sense, but putting you in a more dangerous and worse in every imaginable way facility than you would have been in otherwise. So you end up in Walpole. Walpole, What can you tell us about that? Because was it as bad as you expected it to be? 00:26:52 Speaker 6: Was it? Well? When you first walk into the prison, you get on a long hallway and you go through this big door and the door slams behind you, and you're in a it's probably twelve by twelve with a god up the top with a rifle in his hand, with a shotgun in his hand, until you go through the next which takes you through the wall and you get into the prison itself. And then as you go into the prison you could smell the fear in the building. Most prisons strive on fear, you know, fear that well, someone's going to raip me, someone's going to stab me, and that if I do it first, then no one's going to do it to me. And that's the way prison works, a lot of it, you know. And then I was going in there as a sex offender and I didn't know what was going to happen. I would go walk in the yard and see other people getting beat up that was sex offenders and stuff. And then I was only there a couple of days and then they took me to conquer it, which was less stressful than Wallpole. But then when I got my life sentence, I went back to Wallpole and was going to ended up doing almost a year there. Right before I got back there, there was a riot where they broke through one of the walls, and for orientation, you go in and it's gas. You could smell the gas still in the air from when they had gassed the inmates. And they put me on an essex Blocks, which was for people who were prone to violence. They broke it down into Essex, Bristol, and Suffolk, which was Essex would be for the ones who rarely acted up, Bristol would be for the lesser ones, and then Suffolk would be even for lesser than that. So while I was on Essex, I got cut. I got three stitches hare and fourteen stitches across the back of my neck because I was a sexophone. I did really nothing wrong, but that's the way it was. You know. The guy called me down. I was talking to him and he reached out and grabbed me. I had hair down to my shoulders and he grabbed me by my hair and pulled me up against the jail bars and with a razor blade he cut me hair. And then I ducked down to get out of the way, and he sliced me across the back of the neck. So I went back up into my cell and I pushed the skin back in and I reached behind my neck and my finger went inside, and I says, well, I got to go to the hospital. So I went downstairs and I said to the CEO. I says, yeah, I got to go down to the hospital. He goes why, I says, I caught myself shaven. He didn't know that I had to cut that was bleeding on the back of my neck. He just knew I had the one here. And so I went down there and they said what happened. I said, well, I caught myself shaven. He says, well, we're not going to do anything till you tell us what happened, you know, And I'm saying, you know, I got this huge cot on the back of my neck. So I told him. I says, yeah, the guy caught me. And then he stitched up my face with no no anesthesia or nothing, just I could feel the thread going through my skin and the needle going through my skin. He used anesthesia on the back because it was so long. I did another probably five months there, and there were fights all the time, people getting stabbed. Christmas Eve, there was a racial fight on the block between like ten people. Early in January there was Blacks and the Muslims. They hate each other in prison, and I walk into chow hall, they run around on the table stabbing each other. And so you just lean up against the wall and hold your steel tray in front of you so that you can't get stabbed the day shield. Yeah, so the day that I was supposed to leave there, there were shots fight in the od because there was going to be another race riot in the prison. And finally I went to Gardner, which they called skin a Mountain because all the sex offenders were there, and so there it was less stressful and I could do more things. I started lifting weights, and then while I was there there was almost another race riot between the blacks and the Porto rics. There was like one hundred and fifty Puerto Ricans on top of the hill and run the same amount of Blacks that were going to fight. They evacuated the prison. Nothing happened. But and then from there I went to the treatment center where I got one day to natural life civil commitment, which was just people supposedly in treatment. But while there they brought people from the prison system down and one of them, who was just about ready to get out, I mean he was going to get he was going to minimum, he would have been out within two months, he brutally raped a woman, and which was horrible, you know, because I worked in a staff kitchen, so I dealt with all the staff and she was a really nice person. 00:31:47 Speaker 1: Oh, he raped someone in the prison. 00:31:49 Speaker 6: He raped a staff member in the prison. 00:31:51 Speaker 4: Wow. 00:31:52 Speaker 6: You know, but in the prison people would get raped. Not all the time, but you know, at least once a twe a month someone would get raped by another guy. You know. I didn't because I lifted. By then, I was benching three point fifty and squatting five hundred pounds and nobody bothered me, you know. And I treated everyone good, you know, And I kept my job in the staff kitchen so I could eat good. And when I left the staff kitchen, they were disappointed because I was leaving, because who was going to cook for him? 00:32:28 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:32:28 Speaker 7: It takes a minute to process all that. Let's get to the good part of the story. Let's call it right where things start to turn around. 00:32:39 Speaker 6: Well, in nineteen ninety four, I left work and was heading back to the block and someone said, Dennis put on the Phil Donahue Show, and Barryshek was on there. He had like six or seven ex honorees at that time, it was either ninety three or ninety four, and he was talking about how he had used DNA to prove their innocence. And I knew the only way that I was going to be proven innocent was through the use of DNA. So my friend Bob Cameron, who has since died, helped me find the address to Yeshiva University in a Kadoza School of Law, and I wrote them a letter asking for help. And I got a twenty six page questionnaire back from them, and I filled all that out and sent it back and I got another questionairback the same thing. I guess they were going to compare it to see if they were both the same, if I was just making up stories. And then I got a letter back from them asking for all my transcripts. Now you got to imagine I hadn't had a lawyer since nineteen eighty five. 00:33:38 Speaker 1: Nine years earlier. 00:33:39 Speaker 6: Yeah, and I wanted to keep things going on in the court. Well, first, my lawyer got the spot when I was at Walpole, so I had to learn how to do a motion for appointment of counsel and motion for indigency and whatever else I had to do to get an appeals lawyer. So I got an appeals lawyer and he didn't represent me the way I wanted him to do. I wanted him to raise illegal search and seizure because they went and broke into my car and took evidence, but he wouldn't, so he just raised that the two cases shouldn't have been tried together, and a bunch of crap. And so I didn't have a lawyer after that, so I learned to file things on my own. I filed Rule thirties and whatever I could. I filed emotion for a paternity test, just to see if there was evidence that they could match against me. But everything I ever filed had to go in front of my sentence and judge, who didn't think kindly of me because I told him him and this whole judicial system were a crocod shit and he was a former marine. So I send all the stuff to the Innocence Project, which was probably twelve hundred pages of information between appeals and motions and stuff like that, and they started looking for evidence, and they called the police department, and they called the courthouse asking for evidence, and they're telling him the evidence is lost, the evidence is destroyed. And this goes on for like three years, because you know that the Innocence Project, the students come in and they work on the cases and they try and find the evidence. So in nineteen ninety seven, Barry had an attorney in Boston file emotion for DNA testing in front of my sentence and judge who denied it without a hearing, like had denied everything else without a hearing. So at that time I was hopeless. You know, I made peace with myself that I was going to die in prison as an innocent man. And then out of the blue, a reporter from the Boston Globe named John Elleman asked if he could come interview me, so just as a piece of hope. So I said, yeah, okay, you can interview me. And we started talking about it, and finally I said to him, I said, who's saying? He goes, oh, you know who sent me. I says, no, I don't, and he says, well, I was at Boston Superior Court and I saw J. W. Connie. Now this is the person who prosecuted me back in nineteen eighty four, and I said, Jay, you know, give me someone to do an article on He goes, Now, at this time, Jay was a private attorney, and he had represented the guy who shot up an abortion clinic in Boston and another guy who killed his wife. And he says, I'll tell you what if I believe this is right, and you do the article on this guy, you may get a Pulitzer prize out of it. So he sent him to interview me, and so we were talking and he says, here's a piece of news I'm going to give you. Your judge's retiring in six months. The day he retired, I called the New York Innocence Project and asked if they could help me again, and he said, I really shouldn't take this phone call, but I will. What you need to do is contact the New England Innosence Project at Testa, Herroitz and Tebow. So I did that, and I contacted Neepe and they sent me the twenty six page questionnaire, which I had to fill out again. And then they asked me for all my things I've ever filed, so I got to send them another twelve hundred pages of stuff. And then all of a sudden, the lawyer shows up and well, I heading back to the walk and the lawyer says, may her, you haven't an attorney visit He said, I haven't had an attorney in fifteen sixteen years. He says, well you do now. So I went up and I met with Elisa Kaplan and Karen Burns. As you can imagine. I was quite emotional because this is my hopes and dreams coming together. And so we start talking and introducing ourselves and then Eliza says to me, who's the copp the traps. I don't know why. She says, well, when we came in, he asked who we were. We told him Elisa Kaplan and Karen Burns. He goes, where are you from? And we said the New England Innocence Project and he goes, who are you here to see? And they said Dennis Mayor, And the god said it's about time. If anyone in here was innocent, it's Dennis. So that was her introduction to me. So they accepted the case and they start looking for evidance and Karen's calling the courthouse and she's calling the police station. They tell him that the evidence has been destroyed or lost. She says, well, do you have records of this being destroyed a lost? And they said no. So Karen got really frustrated at Cambridge Courthouse and she went knocking on doors asking for help, and she found a clerk to help her. Now, this clerk went down into the evidence room and found the evidence. And so Eliza calls me and says, we found the evidence. And she says, well, you're not too excited. I says, well, I've had so many downs that if something really good happens, then I'll get excited. But we're sending it to doctor Blake out in California, who's one of the foremost forensic scientists in the country, but he's not accepted by the government because he hates the government. And so they sent that to him. And then they came in to take my blood. So they bring me down to HSU and they start talking to me, and then in walks someone from the DA's office, someone from the AG's office, an attorney for me, Karen Burns, the superintendent of the prison, in a perimeterive security people in a phlebotomus. So they did the chain of evidence. They took my blood, took pictures of it, took a mouth swab, took pictures of that, handed the evidence to a state trooper who went back to the police lab, handed it to the chemist who got on a plane and hand delivered it to doctor Blake because she didn't want to do the testing because the evidence was so old and the Lowell cases and so now I have to wait so on Christmas Eve two thousand and two, Eliza said to call her. So I called her. Now she had moved from the New England Innocence Project to New York. I called her about twenty five times and there was no answer, and so I went outside to cool off, you know, because she told me to call her on Christmas Eve. And so I went back in and the block office says, may her call your attorney. I said, I've been calling her all day. So finally I call her and I get a hold of her and I said, where have you been. She says, oh, we were out celebrating. I said, why, She goes, we got two test results back today and the DNA's didn't match. But they had to talk to the victims because they had to find out if the victim had sex with their boyfriend or whatever the night before. So now Matha Cockley's got to go talk to the victim after nineteen years until her she may have sent an innocent man to prison. So they went and talked and she was freaked out, which I don't blame it. You know, nineteen years you on top of being raped, now you're being told you may have sent an innocent and to prison. That's got to be devastating. So they went and saw her a second tang and she was still freaked out, but she gave him permission to get the hospital wreckage, which can only be gotten through a court order or permission from the victim. So they gave her a permission and that ended up that she was a virgin when she was raped. So now I'm cleared of the Lowell cases. My twenty to thirtyer sentence is going to be gone, and I have the air case. So they start looking for the air evidence and they're getting the same run around. We don't know where the evidence is. The evidence has been destroyed, the evidence has been lost. So Matha Cokeley called Elizer and said, do you want to make a deal. We'll give them time served, and Eliza says no and had some choice words for Matha Cochley that we're going to prove he's innocent. And all of a sudden, a slide shows up on Matha Cochley's desk from the case that they've been looking for. So they sent the slide to Maryland to be tested. So I called Eliza on April Fool's Day and I says hi and she says, when do you want to go home? This is April Fool's Day. 00:42:35 Speaker 7: Yeah, the universe has a strange sense of humor, so go ahead. 00:42:39 Speaker 6: She says, no, when do you want to go home? The test came back and they were two different DNAs on it, and neither one of them was yours. I says, wow. I says, well, you better make it Thursday because it's going to take my parents at least a day to adjust. And so I called my parents and told them. My mother says, I'm not going to be in the car room. So I called back later on and she says, I might be in the court room. And then I called her the night before I was going to court and said, and she goes, I'll be there. So on April third, two thousand and three, I got my last strip search went to Cambridge Courthouse in Boston. Now this Zakembridge had just opened. Traffic was a nightmare because all the roads were dirt and everything else. We get to the courthouse. They put me in a two man cell and they had the tank on the right side, and there's a guy in there whining ned he's getting a three to five. So I told him, well, we just shut up. I'm going home after doing nineteen years and I'm proven innocent. I never heard another peep out of her. So I went up to the courtroom. Aliza reads her motion. I had told her, I said, you need to file a motion to get rid of the civil sentence. She says why, I said, just do it. So she files all the motions. Martha Cokeley says we're not going to oppose this, and Judge says, all I have to do is sign this and he can go home. And he said yeah. She says, well I'm signing he can leave. So I went back in. They took the ankle chains off, they took the waist chains off, and they let me go. I walked out the first door and met with my parents, went to the second door and met with my brothers and friends. Walked out the third door into five TV cameras, about fifteen microphones, and of course their first question was how do you feel? You want to say, how do you think I feel? And here comes a leizer and she says, well, there's going to be a press conference at Tester Hurwitz and Tbow at noontime and we'll see us all there. And then I as I was leaving the Senior Court office, comes over and says, JW. Connie would like to speak with you. 00:44:40 Speaker 1: That's the prosecutor. 00:44:41 Speaker 6: Yeah, the former prosecutor. And so we met in the hallway and he apologized and asked for forgiveness. So I forgave him, which had a huge effect on me because I'm not angry, you know, I'm not bitter. Afterwards, Jay told me that if I didn't forgive him, he might have stopped being a lawyer, and it still affects him to this day because he told me he was in his office one day and Barryshak called him and said, Dennis May has just been clad and lowell. He said, So I sat at my desk and cried, and he told me that he called him again and said, Dennis May has gone home Thursday. What I didn't know is that before I got there, he went and apologized to my parents and my brothers, which was my brother is still angry. And that's when I went home. 00:45:46 Speaker 7: Alex, it's hard to say anything after hearing that story, But since we have you here, you can't get a better spokesman for the cause than Dennis. For people listening, what kind of insight can you bring. 00:46:00 Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I'll start at the end, which is with the prosecutor. You know, I think this is a very good case example, because I think we've become too focused on the rogue actor, or focusing on that there are bad players in the system, because. 00:46:13 Speaker 3: Those variables affect all systems and all walks of life. 00:46:17 Speaker 2: The prosecutor in this case clearly did the honorable thing, and I think that prosecutors by and large are honorable and are trying to do the right thing. And if you start with that premise rather than the premise of this is good versus evil in one direction or another, you start to be able to unwind. Where are the implicit biases in the system, Where are the false positives? 00:46:38 Speaker 3: Where are the errors? 00:46:39 Speaker 2: And this is a good example of that because I don't think he, knowing what I know, did this on purpose. And if you can get past that, I think you can look at it with a deeper lens. My other reaction, initial reaction is this man is a hero, and that the work that the Innocence Project is remarkable not just for setting people free, but because it creates a system of t and balances and creates good law and creates people asking the hard questions. But then at the end of the day, I go back to being a trial lawyer, and I look at the facts of this case, and there's only DNA in so many cases, and only so many letters get read, and only so many people can get exonerated. If everybody in the first instance would fight smart and hard for everybody accused of crimes, I think that that would create the best checks in the system. 00:47:25 Speaker 3: And you know, hearing this case and. 00:47:27 Speaker 2: Going back, and I'll start with the man that mister Mayor is. You know, he's You can just tell that he's a good person by being around him. And he was a family man at the time, still living with his parents when most twenty year olds weren't. He was a soldier when most of us wouldn't be. He had never been in trouble before when many of us had been. And I don't know if the story of him as a person was told, because when you think about it, he makes an awfully unlikely suspect if you really get into his humanity, and to the lawyers defending people and advocating on the ground, you have to look at that alibi and not just throw it into a courtroom, but really firm it up, because that could have just like DNA can now essentially prove innocence because of the metaphysical comment you made earlier, and I. 00:48:10 Speaker 3: Would have called other soldiers. 00:48:12 Speaker 2: I would have impressed the fact that while Vlahm might have a meeting where he shows up around five, when military folks say that he didn't leave the base until seventeen twenty, that means five twenty, and it means precisely five to twenty. 00:48:24 Speaker 3: And there's probably a. 00:48:25 Speaker 2: Logbook that could have been used to show what time he actually physically checked out. And then the next thing you know, it's not all the resources and the tiers and the decades behind bars. 00:48:34 Speaker 3: It's an acquittal because he couldn't have done it. 00:48:37 Speaker 2: And so those are the things I focus on and that I come back to in the end. 00:48:41 Speaker 1: But what do we do? 00:48:42 Speaker 7: Because I've always said that I believe most cops are good cops, and most prosecutors are good prosecutors. But the ones that aren't they wreck a path of destruction that is wide and big and devastating to so many people. But there are a number of systemic problems, right, I mean, it's easy for us to sit here and say this is what should have been done, this is what could have been done. The system is stacked against Dennis, right, It was stacked against Dennis. It's stacked against guys like Dennis. Today. Somebody's being wrongfully convicted in America. Hopefully it's only one person, right. What can we do? What can people listening do to help prevent these things from happening, to prevent the next Dennis Mayor from ever having to go through this? 00:49:20 Speaker 3: To me, it all goes back to the role of the prosecutor. 00:49:23 Speaker 2: There are tens of thousands of NYPD officers. You're going to have good ones, you're going to have bad ones. But the office that oversees them, which is a politically accountable office, or the offices of the district attorney. And when I say politically accountable, I don't mean to suggest that any of them are doing anything wrong. It's just they are political positions, and the will of the public and what people think and concerns people have certainly do influence those offices. And those offices have to serve as checks and balances not only on the police department, but on themselves. And it's very easy to put a lot into a case. The adversary process is competitive. You do want to win, you do think you are on the right side of things, and so it's easy to get caught up on that and not pause and say, are we sure not pause, especially after a jury says he's guilty, to not go back and look at it, and it can create a wall, a wall between accountability and the prosecutors, in a wall in the person's own mind that doesn't allow them to sort of self assess and learn from these mistakes. 00:50:25 Speaker 7: But there's so much more awareness now. It's at a peak. Right now, we see the rise of conviction integrity units. We're starting to see some public activism in terms of throwing bad prosecutors out of office, right because ultimately you can vote, and I think that's one sort of activism that's very simple. That is before we sign off, And this is for you too, Hannah. You've spoken so eloquently and so powerfully about your experience, the tragedy, ultimately the triumph, the grace that you've shown is just sort of mind blowing to me and I'm sure to everyone who's listening. Is there anything else that either of you would like to share? 00:51:01 Speaker 1: With our audience. 00:51:03 Speaker 4: Sure, the vast majority of prosecutors and police are just human. You know, this is a human system. Like any other human system, there is going to be fault. And I find it really interesting that with other human run systems, Aviation and medicine are good examples, people expect mistakes to happen. So, you know, at a hospital, if a patient dies in somebody's care, they're going to have an M and M conference. They have all the people who worked on the case get together and they pinpoint where a mistake was made. It's not blaming, it's saying, you're a human, you did your best, something went wrong. We're going to use this as a learning moment. And because of these things, the aviation field the medical field have improved hugely. We don't really have something like that in the legal field right now. And Alex maybe you can attest to this, but that lawyers and especially people who are going to go into prosecution are told you're going to run fully convict someone. You know, they're expected somehow to not be human, to not make mistakes, and when they do make mistakes, they're often covered up. It's seen as shameful. The incentives justice is a moving target, and it's kind of an ethereal concept. Whereas a conviction is something that you can count, it actually takes a pretty rare case to have enough evidence to be really fool proof. You know, we forget that obviously it's innocent until proven guilty. A lot of people think that even if you get to the point of a trial, like they must have done something to get there. And I think the fact that most cases don't have DNA like we talked about, you know, the vast majority of wrongful convictions are probably people who are forced to take guilty please at a misdemeanor level. 00:52:45 Speaker 7: Right with Dennis, I don't know that there's really what could somebody add to what you've already said, but I want to turn it over to you to. 00:52:50 Speaker 1: Wrap up this episode of wrongful conviction. 00:52:53 Speaker 6: Well, for us, I want to say hi to my kids with my wife names Melissa, Joshua and Eliza. She's named after the women who got me out. 00:53:05 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:53:06 Speaker 6: What can people do to help? There are a lot of bills and there's different states that are trying to get passed. They can call the a politician, or they can go on the state house website and look up the bills and talk about that and tell them that they want to get behind it so that their senators or representatives would vote to make changes. You know, there's preserving evidence. We already changed witness identification in Massachusetts, which I was involved with, and things like that that can help. 00:53:34 Speaker 7: You know. 00:53:35 Speaker 6: I do a lot of public speaking. I speak at colleges. I'm going to go speak at a high school next week. 00:53:40 Speaker 7: How could people reach you if they want you to come and speak? Do you have a website? Do you have a contact that you want to share with the audience? 00:53:45 Speaker 4: Honestly, if you want to have dnnis come to anything, you can email me directly because I would love to make that happen. 00:53:51 Speaker 1: What's your email? 00:53:52 Speaker 4: Hiley at New England Innocence dot org. 00:53:56 Speaker 7: And that's ri I l e y okay, Dennis. Well, all I can say is I really appreciate you being here. Same for you Alex and Hannah. It's been an extraordinary experience being with you. All I can tell you is we'll never stop fighting. You give us just more and more inspiration from just being yourself, So keep being you. 00:54:23 Speaker 5: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts. 00:54:27 Speaker 6: It really helps. 00:54:28 Speaker 7: And I'm a proud donor to the Ennessis Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one