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526: #526 Ben Bowlin with Sonny Bharadia · Wrongful Conviction Podcasts

• 00:00:00 Speaker 1: This episode of Wrongful Conviction includes discussion of sexual assault and suicide. Please listen with caution and care. On November eighteenth, two thousand and one, a Georgia woman found a burglar in her home who blindfolded and tied her down. He bizarrely claimed to be an Islamic militant before completing the burglary and a sexual assault. The victim described her attacker as black, and she eventually chose a man named Sterling Flint from a photo lineup. Separately, a man named Sonny Baradia reported Sterling Flint for stealing a Chevy Tahoe and a motorcycle, and while investigating that, the police found the sexual assault victim's property in Sterling's house. But Sterling's girlfriend was a former sheriff's deputy and they both said that Sonny Baradia had asked him to hold the stolen items. Even though Sonny wasn't black, the police chose to believe that he was an Islamic militant. This is wrongful conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction this story today. First of all, it's going to make you want to jump through your headset whatever you're listening to this on, and strangle somebody, because well, I've been wanting to do something like that ever since I first heard about it years ago, and I'm so glad that Suddy Barati is here with us today to tell it. But before I introduced Studdy, I want to introduce my co host, Ben Bolan. Many of you will know, he's one of my favorite podcasters and probably one of yours as well, and we're so thrilled to have him on this season of Rawful Conviction. 00:02:03 Speaker 2: Thank you so much. This is and anger that we all share, like you were saying, wanting to jump through the headset. We're going to talk about some gross miscarriages of justice, but I don't know, Jason, what better way to begin than to speak with the man. 00:02:17 Speaker 1: Himself, Sonny, Thanks so much for being here, Thank you and to help tell this story. We're also joined by Sonny's pro bono attorney, Olivia Vigiletti. 00:02:25 Speaker 2: Welcome, Thank you so much, and this story begins in the metro Atlanta area. 00:02:30 Speaker 3: Yes, suburbs, I group of Stone Mountain. I mean growing up out a pretty good childhood. I mean I had parents now're married, you know, read with things like holidays, go camping, Daisy World, did all that growing up. I mean, play sports, elague, baseball, stuff like that, hanging out my friends and stuff. 00:02:43 Speaker 4: I mean that was it. 00:02:44 Speaker 1: And by the time this happened in September two thousand and one, Sonny was in his mid twenties. 00:02:49 Speaker 3: The fall this happen, I was working. I was going to school and go to gym readily. I was doing that sheet metal work. I mean does a good job because like at that time probably like seventy five dollars now doing it. And he gave me opportunities to move up in a job. And so for me at the time that was good and was something stable. 00:03:05 Speaker 1: Yeahs an hour, it was good money. Yes, this is how you were able to afford a tahoe and some other nice things. Right, So you're doing all right. 00:03:12 Speaker 2: And you also had a side interest in cars vehicles. 00:03:16 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yes, my little side thing was I like to buy cars and fix them myself. 00:03:20 Speaker 1: And Sunny was very generous with his talents, especially with his close friends Ray Sewan and Keisha Pitts. While it seems some acquaintances took advantage of Sonny's generosity, one of them was a guy named Sterling Flint. But before Sterling enters the story, a different friend who stayed in Beuford, South Carolina, had asked to borrow Sonny's shabby tahoe. 00:03:43 Speaker 3: I let a friend of mine use my car because his car was in the shop. I'm like sure, just like two three days a cam and it ended up being a breach of trust, like when Friday came. It's like a cell phone was cut off so he won't respond. And I knew it was his mother's house in South Carolina, so I got all his ex wife, got his mother's address, and I called the Cab County Police explain what happened to my vehicle? And I remember clearly being a Saturday, November seventeenth, two thousand and one, I met a friend of mine named Rayshawn's house exactly from Brooklyn, and so I u to go check on his wife when he's out of town in New York working and take his wife's kids. 00:04:17 Speaker 2: Out that night Sunny, his girlfriend Alitia Colbert and Rayshawn's wife, Kesha. They all went out together with their kids for the opening weekend of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which they watched to drive it now. They got home very late around midnight. 00:04:33 Speaker 3: So the next day being Sunday, which was a day a crime. November eighteenth, two thousand and one. I'm at my girlfriend's house. About ten o'clock, my cell phone rings and it's a detective from Beauford County, South Carolina, and he told me he has my vehicle in his impound and I can pick it up Monday through Friday. So that day I dropped my girlfriend's daughter to Mova's house. I took my girlfriend, took her to Wendy's. I went through the drive through day on cameras. I got her something to and I dropped across street to a job and then a coma from ray Sean, and I asked him I'll pick up a socket set from his house because I was working on his car. 00:05:07 Speaker 4: Out bought from auction a while back. 00:05:09 Speaker 3: So I get the soaka set a little left, like twelve o'clock and I go to a friend of mine's house. I had a car park there which I was working on and around four thirty five o'clock I stopped by Ray Shawn's dropped a soakka set off. 00:05:20 Speaker 1: So Sonny's whereabouts were accounted for in the Metro Atlanta area, over two hundred and fifty miles away from the scene of the crime, which was in a Savannah suburb called Thunderbolt, Georgia. Now, remember this happened not even ten weeks after nine to eleven, when average Americans were just learning the names of militant groups like Al Qaeda, and this fear of terrorist cells operating in the US was at a fever pitch. So with that backdrop, it's believed that an acquaintance of Sonny's named Sterling Flint, committed a burglary in the early afternoon of November eighteenth, two thousand and one. 00:05:54 Speaker 5: Basically, this was a daytime burglary gone wrong. Sterling Flint breaks into the house and he's stealing electronics and the victim comes home, so he very quickly blindfolds her and he tells her this very scary story about how he's part of al Qaeda and he was sent here for her, and she says in her original police statement that he was pretending to be on the phone with someone else who's maybe like instructing him what to do next, but she knew that there was no one actually on the phone. She could hear the dial tone, and he tells her he needs to commit what he calls a fake rape to make this other person happy, so that she's scared quiet, and he's holding her at knife point and does some assault of things to her. 00:06:33 Speaker 4: Be aware. 00:06:34 Speaker 2: The following language is graphic and maybe disturbing. This is from the victim's statement. The victim says, this man tied her up to the bed, performed oral sex on her, masturbated, ejaculated, cleaned up after himself had then left with a number of electronic items and a suitcase. When the victim freed herself and removed the blindfold, she noticed it was two forty. 00:06:58 Speaker 5: Pm, fortunately for some Before she gets blindfolded, she sees he's wearing blue and white bat and gloves, and she tells the police that but the GBI the Georgia labs at the time were only testing fluids. The labs weren't doing touch DNA testing, so they scan all the evidence that they have. They don't find any fluids. They say there's nothing to test, and that's really important. 00:07:18 Speaker 1: We're going to hold onto that detail for later. But at that time all they had to go on was her description. Now, remember the attacker was partially masked, she had only seen his eyes shortly before she was blindfolded, and the victim was white, which made this a cross racial identification situation, whether with the actual attacker as described by the victim or with Sonny. 00:07:40 Speaker 3: The victim of description of the guy was a black mail bushy bras bushy Musta's darskin ruskin face five six, one fifty. I was like one eighty five. I just go to gym like four days a week at a time. So you're not saying one hundred fifty pounds. You're not said I was a black mail. 00:07:54 Speaker 2: After all, Sonny's ethnicity is Indian, which I guess if you were racist, and you're also not good at being racist, then that makes Sunny a member of al Qaeda somehow. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. At this point, they had made a composite sketch of a black man. Meanwhile, Sunny was headed just a short distance north of Savannah, Georgia, to Beauford County, south Carolina to get his car back. However, the only friend he could scramble to come with him to drive one of the vehicles back home she had a problem with their license. 00:08:27 Speaker 3: We finally get a Buford like five pm on November nineteenth, and I picked my vehicle up and just randomly startling. Flint called me at that time, and I've only seen this coup once or twice. So he's like, where am I at? I said him in Buford and he's like, were you like thirty minutes from me. It's like light bulb goes off in a head and I was like, hey, man, is any way you go on Atlanta soon? Because I got to Scirrel me took me to get my car. But she has some type of issue of license. I think she had a DUI or something. So I didn't want to getting pulled over going back to Atlanta driving behind me, you know, So I asked me to drive my vehicle back and he's like sure. So we end up Pensylvania and we met him and his girlfriend at a restaurant. We ate dinner, and he left on his motorcycle and I follow his girlfriend to his house. So when we get to his house, she introduced met her roommate with he was a Chatham County share'steputy, and she tells me she used to be a Chatham County SHARE's deputy. 00:09:15 Speaker 1: Now it appears that Sterling's girlfriend, Ashley Dold's affiliation to law enforcement may have played a role in this case. But at this point in the story, Sterling Flint parked his motorcycle at home. He got into Chabby Tahoe and was supposed to follow Sonny back to his friend's house in Atlanta. 00:09:30 Speaker 3: When we entered one of the interstates in Atlanta, my vehicle disappeared. I don't see him on the highway no more. But finally when I get to my friend's house, I'll keep calling. His phone is not answering. Probably about three o'clock in the morning, he calls and he says that he stopped for gas and he ran into a friend of his ane and seen some yours and he'll be it in a few So she left the doornwock. So I'll wake up probably about seven o'clock, and it's like, you know, you have that feeling, like your whole stomach is churning, like you just know something's not right, and So about eleven o'clock in the morning, he calls and he says he stopped at his mom and I'm about clearly looked at a phone number on the call ide I wrote the number down and he'll beat in a few Well, I'm waiting, I'm waiting. 00:10:07 Speaker 4: He never comes. 00:10:08 Speaker 3: So going into the next morning, I caught his mother's house and I'm like asking if it's there, and she's like no, And I said, well, my name's Sonny. I said, your son has my vehicle. Can you ask him bring it back by twelve o'clock noon. If he doesn't, I'm report of stolen. So right before noon, I hear my friend on the phone arguing with somebody and yelling and stuff. So I asked what's going on. She's like, that's Sterling and she's saying his threatening to kill her. So I grabbed the phone. He said, it's going to kill my family because he's got my home address, because I've got mail in my car and is in kill mcgarfriend and kill me. 00:10:36 Speaker 4: So I called a police. 00:10:38 Speaker 2: Suddy made a police report that Sterling Flint had stolen his Chevy Tahoe and made terroristic threats. Now, at some point the burglary and sexual assault victim viewed a photo lineup and identified Sterling Flint as her attacker. So now Sterling is wanted by a Thunderbolt PD in Chatham County for terroristic threats in Cab County as well as in Clayton County where he first made off with the Chevy Tahoe. 00:11:06 Speaker 3: So this whole time, I'm calling Sterring. Finally answers, he says, gonna run my truck off a cliff, gonna kill my family. And I said, man, I work for everything I have and you got a motorcycle, was like, if that bike is hot, and you mentioned the stolen and a couple of days later, November twenty seven, twenty there was a mess with my parents' voicemail for me to call this Detective Underwood in Cobb County and he asked for Sterling Flint and I'm like, yes, that's the guy still my vehicle, and he's like, the reason I came looking for your vehicle's involved in Burger and Cobb County. And the residents came home and Sterling Flint was in the house and he assaulted the guy fled in a tahoe which was my vehicle, so to report the tag number. When he ran the tag, it showed up in my name, but it also showed up it was stolen a week prior, and goes, well, your vehicle was in a high speed chase with Atlanta PD last night and Blackmail jumped out of vehicle, fled on foot, and my vehicle went down a hill hit the telephone pole. So he's like, they're looking for him now, So he asked for touch with him, and I'm like, what is this girlfriend's phone number? 00:12:02 Speaker 1: If that'll help, So Detective Underwood called Chatham County shared Ashley Dole's phone number, but they already knew her, and they went looking for the stolen motorcycle. 00:12:11 Speaker 5: When the police show up to Sterling Flint's house, the victims stolen items are inside of his house, and we know that they're her items because he stole some luggage and I had her name on it, so we know they're her items. And the batting gloves she describes to the police are with the stolen items. 00:12:27 Speaker 3: When they found his stuff at her house, she called him on the phone. I guess, not knowing stuff is stolen, and he tells her say, I brought to stuff there. 00:12:36 Speaker 5: Sterling Flint says, I am holding these items for Sunny Bradia. 00:12:40 Speaker 3: I understand his girlfriend was ex Chatham County share Stepanie roommates a Chaththam County shaf steppee, telling a Thunderbolt police officer, which is a Chatham County that I brought this stuff there. Now the whole storyline changed from a blackmail to me. 00:12:52 Speaker 5: It's kind of brilliant, right because he's like, hey, let me get out of this crap that I did, and let me implicate this guy that's giving me trouble for stealing his car. Police should have said, well, that's absurd. That doesn't make sense. Sonny is the one who sent us over here. Why would Sonny tell the police, hey, go check out this guy when he's holding stolen items for Sonny. It doesn't make any sense. 00:13:11 Speaker 2: Lost. 00:13:12 Speaker 1: The victim had already identified sterling Flint from a photo array, so this case literally came with instructions. 00:13:19 Speaker 5: But when we're thinking about how to secure a conviction, they only had the victims who was blindfolded for most of it. They only had her identification. Well, if sterling Flint is willing to testify against Sonny, then now they have two witnesses that would speak against Sonny, where there's only maybe one witness that would speak against Sterling Flint. 00:13:36 Speaker 2: But then the lead detective on the burglary and sexual assault and thunderbolt, detective Henry Trey Connors, brought the victim in to view a second photo lineup. This time Sterling Flint wasn't even in it. 00:13:49 Speaker 3: Every photo on a lineup was blurred and they will blackmails. One guy had one eye and I was the only clear photo on a lineup. She has circled photo number four, which was my photo, sick somebody else, and another line of she circled to Sterling Flint. So she identified three different people, but one person did the crime, which. 00:14:06 Speaker 5: Is a traumatized person who didn't get a good look at the perpetrator. We're talking about cross racial identification. There's a lot of research that shows that all humans of all races are worse at identifying strangers of other races than they are strangers of their own race. 00:14:22 Speaker 1: I think it one step further, Olivia, which is that multiple studies have shown that, particularly in instances where someone has either been a victim or a witness to a violent crime, cross racial identification has been proven to be less accurate than guessing, which means, as crazy as it sounds, a person who wasn't even there, just by virtue of guessing, would have a better chance of identifying the actual perpetrator than somebody who was. 00:14:47 Speaker 5: Yeah, it's understandable that she made that mistake. It's not understandable that the police rolled with it. 00:14:52 Speaker 3: So the next day, which was Friday, No thirty, if I got arrest in this served me a warrant from Burvery sexual assault actively to sodom in kidnap. I'm laughing, thinking it's candid camera like this some kind of sort of joke, you know. But when they pulled the guns out, I. 00:15:06 Speaker 4: Knew this was serious. 00:15:08 Speaker 3: And the text goes, you know why I arrested you? 00:15:11 Speaker 4: And I'm like why. He goes Ashley Dull, which is Sterling Flint's girlfriend. 00:15:15 Speaker 3: Next shechrys deputy, I arrest you because of what she said, not because of what the victim said. I didn't know what to think. They placed me under the wrist and said a crime happened in Thunderbolt. I've never heard this time in my life. I can never forget this. Had these boots on the one and auss like it's going to be a long time before he season boots. 00:15:46 Speaker 4: Akin, I never forget that. 00:15:50 Speaker 2: Study couldn't bond out and spent about a year and a half in pre trial detention. While Sterling Flint, the man whose whereabouts were unknown during the crime, the man who was fending off several other burglary charges as well as a charge for Sonny stolen vehicle and a motorcycle, the guy who was originally identified by the victim and had her belongings. He was able to shift the blame onto Sonny, and he appeared to have everyone's help in doing so. 00:16:21 Speaker 5: Sterling Flint took a plea to receiving stolen property right because that's his story that he received these things from Sunny. As far as I know, that's the deal he got to testify against Sonny. Of course, there's these other separate crimes in a separate county. 00:16:35 Speaker 6: And so he was working on that. 00:16:37 Speaker 5: He is, actually, if you can believe it, a jail house informant in another Georgia Innocence Project case where he cut a deal to completely fabricate a story against another man. And so this is kind of hism o. It's what will you give me and I'll say whatever. 00:16:51 Speaker 1: And that man's name is Eric Hurd. Now, over twenty percent of the first two hundred and fifty DNA exonerations in history involved the use of jail house and pformance, which isn't hard to believe considering how much these jailhouse snitches or informants have to gain from there and said device testimony. But it appears that the lead detective had a motivation to ignore this more compelling suspect, instead choosing to pursue what was an impossible narrative. 00:17:20 Speaker 3: We go to my plumbent hearing and the detectors his old events were when I came to Savannah and picked my vehicle up from the impound. He said, I did all that Sunday record show my vehicles an impound Sunday. I didn't even have my vehicle that Sunday. I came to Savannah that Monday, and then we did a video audio statement in front of an attorney and he's saying my account for that day, and I'm like, look, these are my witnesses. 00:17:42 Speaker 4: I said. 00:17:43 Speaker 3: I went through Wendys that morning to have cameras. I went through this quick trip gas station to have cameras. This can all be substantiate. These are my witnesses. He didn't care about. 00:17:50 Speaker 4: None of that. In his mind. 00:17:51 Speaker 3: I'm a Muslim, I come did this, and he goes that. He called home ob Security said, this guy's terrorists. You need to check on him. This is literally what the guy said. 00:17:59 Speaker 2: So it seems to this detective Henry Trey Conners, well, he thought that Sonny's complexion made him a better fit for al Qaeda than Sterling Flint. This still wouldn't have been acceptable if Sonny was Muslim or Arab. But to make matters even more absurd, Sunny is an Indian American Evangelical Christian, not a black man, as the victim had described to this detective. 00:18:25 Speaker 3: Yeah, the lead detective got risk before my trial on something else he had going on. The photo lineups disappeared. The original police statement disappeared, which is before my name was put into it. The victim of description of the guy was a blackmail bushy bras bushy Musta's darskin ruskin face five six point fifty. 00:18:42 Speaker 1: So Sunny's trial attorney believed that he'd be able to use that evidence at trial. In June two thousand and three, since, after all, this was an accurate description of Sterling Flint. 00:18:51 Speaker 3: Yes, s Sam is this description to the sea and she has certainly him I won a photo trial. 00:18:55 Speaker 5: Council's whole strategy was to show the two photo arrays where the victim identifies Sterling Flint and she does a second photo array where Sterling Flint is not a part of it, and she identifies one other black man and Sonny. That's his whole strategy. He's going to show how ridiculously dissimilar these people look and that she identified everyone, and it destroys the case. And that's his whole plan. Well, he doesn't get the photo arrays before trial. He expects the prosecution to show up with the photo arrays at trial and they don't. 00:19:24 Speaker 3: He's seen them, but DA doesn't have a copy of When I was testifying the trial attorney, he stated, like on his little ad lib starts on out of lineups, how I was only clear photo that every photo on a lineup was blurred, and they will blackmails. And he said he talked to the chief police at that time and he goes chief police said that he laughed about it. He's like, this case is done. Sense school just the things didn't add up. 00:19:47 Speaker 5: Trial Council's whole strategy is gone. So he, with no preparation, calls alibi witnesses to the stand, who were just thinking they're going to court to sit in the gallery and support Sonny. Calling Sonny's girlfriend, Sonny's friend to the stand, and they're trying to remember dates and things off the top of their heads. 00:20:05 Speaker 6: They're not prepared. 00:20:06 Speaker 2: If you remember, Sonny and his alibi witnesses had seen Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on November seventeenth, the second day of its release in the US. 00:20:17 Speaker 5: They get the date wrong of when they go to the movies. Sunny's girlfriend says, we took the kids to see the Harry Potter movie on this date. It wasn't this other date. Well, the movie wasn't even out yet. 00:20:27 Speaker 1: Misremembering this event as from a prior weekend appears to have damaged the rest of Sonny's alibi as far as when he picked up and dropped off the socket wrenches with Keisha Pitts. 00:20:37 Speaker 6: So we know it's just a mix up. 00:20:38 Speaker 5: A's because as they weren't prepared, because he wasn't prepared, and I think that this case is so ridiculous. He kind of thought it would resolve itself. But that's not an attorney strategy. 00:20:47 Speaker 6: You have to be over prepared. 00:20:48 Speaker 5: He didn't investigate the alibi any more than the police did. 00:20:52 Speaker 2: Sonny's cell phone records would have placed him in Atlanta. The Wendy's security cam at eleven am would have left Sonny with insufficient time to make the four hour one way trip to Thunderbolt in order to commit the crime before two forty pm. And it would have been helpful if the batting gloves had been tested for touch DNA, but at that time testing of this nature wasn't even being done by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And then Sterling Flint took the stand. 00:21:21 Speaker 5: So Sterling Flint at this time had been convicted of committing two other burglaries in Sunny's Tahoe daytime burglaries, very similar crimes. He does not come prepared with the police reports, and he thinks at the time that they're open charges against Sterling Flint. He doesn't realize he took a pleat he's already been convicted of those. So he asked Sterling Flint on the stand, well isn't it true that you have these pending charges of burglaries and sterling. Flint says, no, that's not true. They've been disposed of. Well that's a tricky way to say it, but yeah, he is right. It's not true that he had pending charges. He had convictions for similar crimes. And the attorney didn't come in prepared to say, look, this guy with stealing things out of people's homes in Sunny's. 00:22:02 Speaker 1: Top hole and without all of this crucial preparation, Sonny didn't have a chance in hell. When the victim took the. 00:22:09 Speaker 3: Stand, I was sure this girl would see me say I'm not the guy, because I didn't see it till I went to court. And when she got out, O she goes, her friend emailed her article by the crime. When I got arrested, Yeah, color photo me in the paper. She satisfied that she's been looking at that photo every day. She goes, those were the eyes. I got brown eyes. He has brown eyes. I just couldn't believe it, Like my heart dropped because I was adamant, like she's going to see me say hey, this saint the guy. 00:22:31 Speaker 2: Add The district attorney leaned into the racism of the time to further seal Sonny's fate. 00:22:37 Speaker 3: I remember clearly being a trial the dh she goes, am I a Muslim, and I said no, I said, I just go to this church here. If you choose be a Muslim, that's fine. I respect that by faith from Christian It's like, no, you're a Muslim. 00:22:50 Speaker 4: And I'm like, I'm not a Muslim. And it's on my trial transcript. She's telling me I'm a Muslim. 00:22:55 Speaker 3: And you know how a jury looked at the post ninet eleven, I get convicted and the judge said life file parole. That's the first in my life. My knees ever shook. It's like you're trying to process this, like this is a nightmare that just want to stop here. I'm in prison for something I did not do and they want me to die. 00:23:26 Speaker 4: How are you supposed to process that? You know, prison is a violet. 00:23:31 Speaker 3: I mean it's like a fighter flight mode in a jungle and you have to survive. And he was like, you have shape you put in a jungle full alliance. 00:23:37 Speaker 4: I mean, what are you supposed to do? 00:23:40 Speaker 3: I was a Hayes State prison like two thousand and five through fourteen, the captain of the prison was putting hits on in Mason officers. So you understand this is general. No everybody knew this. Like he'd bring like the contraband in, give it to this gang. This gang would take him off. He'd go have this offsco confiscated, give to another gang. And like it was so wild. And my officer was saying they were scared to come into dormitories because the inmates ran to prison. They would literally they might kidnap somebody from one building, have them in another building, calling their family, threatened to kill them if they don't send him money. So this is the environment you're in and you gotta survive. It's not only inmates, you have to look officers too. And like twenty eighteen, I went in a dormitory. I also opened the doors. Two officers right there, and a guy comes to me on a knife about a foot long. Now Ostas is looking at and they got tastes on them. They're just looking like with a mouse a jar. I'm like forty something years old, this guy's like half my age. I can't run and so I'm trying to fight this guy. And finally, by fluke, I pushed him and he fell and I got on top of him, and the officers came, threw me against the wall, handcuffed me, and that's when I saw a blood all of me. I got stabbed twelve times, Jesus, I didn't even know I'd got stabbed. But this is Georgia prisons, like a life is not valued. And I just I'm okay. I made it through that. It was a nightmare through it all. I lost my father, I lost people did to me. And you see years your life go by, you see your youth go by, to promiu life go by. 00:25:04 Speaker 1: Women his freedom was an urgent matter that took just short of twenty three long years. 00:25:10 Speaker 5: In Georgia, the first step after your conviction is called a motion for a new trial, and so it's basically an appeal that goes back to that same court, that same judge. So that was filed right after Sonny's conviction, and it was amended by Sonny's a pellat attorney to add just a mountain of claims. I mean, Sonny's a pellat attorney always believed in his innocence, and he raised buckets of claims for him. 00:25:33 Speaker 2: And many of these claims stem from the ineffectiveness of his trial counsel. This is when the batting gloves come into play. Let's remember Georgia Bureau of Investigation only DNA tested biological fluids. These gloves needed touch DNA testing, meaning they needed to lift skin cells from inside the gloves, and Sonny's appellat attorney got this testing approved. 00:25:56 Speaker 4: In two thousand and four. 00:25:58 Speaker 3: My attorney wrote me a letter and he goes, hey, are you sure you want to get DNA tested in these gloves because if he comes back showing a shoot that's found on the coffin. And I wrote him a letter in big words, I am innocent, and I'm mailed it to him. 00:26:09 Speaker 5: And so when Sonny's a Pellet attorney gets this super cutting edge test one, he has to send it to a lab in California because he can't find anyone locally that's doing it. Sonny's a Pellet attorney believes in him so wholeheartedly. He offers to forego his own pay in the case to pay for the DNA testing, and the court takes him up on it. He gets the DNA results, they exclude Sonny. 00:26:29 Speaker 3: But also on the outside of gloves because the victim goes, I covered the mouthfut of gloves. He said, there's a female dnaal outside of the gloves. They got a coke can from the victim's house. He tested in the same female denis and coke can is on the outside of gloves. 00:26:43 Speaker 4: That's the victim pretty much. 00:26:44 Speaker 3: So he recommends that for a profile that the victim's DNA get taken as well as sterling flints. 00:26:49 Speaker 4: The state objects to it. 00:26:50 Speaker 1: So he moves forward with the only new evidence that he's got. 00:26:53 Speaker 5: However, the way he raised the new evidence was that the trial attorney should have gotten this test. 00:27:00 Speaker 6: Well, that's not really true. 00:27:01 Speaker 5: The trial attorney can't be expected to get a test done that the Georgia Lab won't even do. He does at the end throw in like or maybe this is new evidence. But when you raise a new evidence claim, you have to make a really specific showing. And he doesn't make that showing. And he gets a hearing on this motion for a new trial, so he gets to put some evidence on the record. And so even though this evidence that Sonny was not part of this crime, this DNA evidence has existed since like two thousand and three, the way that it was raised procedurally posed a problem. It's not the right claim because he actually went so far above and beyond what an attorney can be expected to do to get this test done. So we can't say the trial council was deficient for not doing the same thing. 00:27:38 Speaker 2: The courts concluded that the attorney was not at fault, so even though the new evidence proved Sonny's innocence, this claim failed. 00:27:47 Speaker 5: The next thing that happens is the Appella attorney starts partnering with the Georgia Innocence Project around twenty eleven to file what in Georgia is called an extraordinary motion for new trial the post conviction and litigation avenue in the state of Georgia, where you have new evidence that was not available to you before. And one of the bases for this new evidence is that in twenty twelve they were able to get a codis hit for sterling flint on the gloves, and so that gets litigated all the way up Sonny's appellad attorney and GP working together. But because there had already been this incorrect belief out in the world of this case, it had been talked about in brief and opinions that maybe trial Council should have done this, and then there wasn't really ever clarification of no, actually, trial council couldn't have reasonably done this. 00:28:37 Speaker 6: He loses all the way up and. 00:28:39 Speaker 5: That goes up to the Supreme Court of Georgia and they say Trial council should have gotten this test done. If you got it done a year later, trial council should have done it, without really appreciating what he went through to get the test done. 00:28:49 Speaker 3: The crazy thing is the GBI test fied that they didn't start that test of twenty eleven and you had to go to all kinds of red tape to get that test done. Was the twenty fifteen that you could really act do that test in Georgia. So you hold to me accountable in two thousand and three for a test that the crime lab didn't even use twenty eleven. 00:29:07 Speaker 1: It also kind of sounds like the reverse course on the earlier ruling that Trial council was not ineffective. Now they're saying that Trial council could have done this, but it doesn't matter since it's procedurally barred. So after this defeat, Sunny's attorneys needed to regroup in the interim Ashley Dold did an interview. 00:29:27 Speaker 3: She did an interview called Shadow of Doubt we Living in Lifes on YouTube and originally the Stolen Goods. She goes that when my boyfriend picked up from work, he had a UHUL trailer and he had a bergeran Cobb County Involvement U haul trailer, and they parked the U all trailer at her sister's house, and her sister stay the stone's throw from a victim's house, recalls a couple of days later, says, Hey, can you go to your sister's house, go get the stuff out of you haul and put it your house. 00:29:50 Speaker 4: And that's the victim stolen goods. 00:29:52 Speaker 3: She covered up for a boyfriend, and she went on TV years ago said when it found the stuff, he told race, I brought stuff there. So she believing what he said, said told a police that. And the whole storyline chain is said, is one police officer telling another police. I'll say, who's word? 00:30:05 Speaker 2: Are gonna take just one officer to another? And she said the stolen goods came from Sonny. And then the victim viewed another photo lineup. This one did not contain Sterling Flint and only had one clear photo Sonnings. But it doesn't even have to be that devious for cross racial misidentification to occur. Consider the case of Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson. 00:30:30 Speaker 3: I came across a book years ago, picking Cotton twenty sixteen, and it was about a guy named Ronald Cotton said he was convicted of crime he was innocent of. So it touched me because victim, Jennifer Thompson said this was the guy. 00:30:42 Speaker 4: She was sure that it was him the. 00:30:44 Speaker 3: Eyes and this, and that I can empathize with that because of my case. 00:30:46 Speaker 4: That's exactly what happened. 00:30:48 Speaker 1: Recovered the case on the podcast, and Jennifer Thompson was called the perfect witness. She was home, she was sober, she was awake, and a black man broke into her home and tied her up and brutally assaulted her for twenty five minutes, and her whole being was wrapped up. As she describes it, in studying every feature because, as she says, I get the chills thinking about it. If I survived, I was going to make sure that I could identify this man so no one would ever have to suffer the way I was, and I would be able to put him away, and sure enough, they picked up somebody not too long after this horrible crime occurred, and she identified him in a photo array, in a lineup, and a trial with absolute certainty, and of course he was convicted and sentenced to I don't remember his life, but a long time in prison. And eleven years later, there was another guy in the prison that people were talking about. He's the one who actually committed the crime. It turned out he looked very much like mister Cotton, and DNA ultimately proved that he, in fact was the perpetrator, and he had gone on to commit many other horrible crimes by the time he was arrested. 00:31:57 Speaker 5: And just a small plug to defense attorneys and prosecutors. She founded an organization called Healing Justice. And if you're in a situation like this where you need to approach a victim and you're trying not to do more harm, you're trying not to impose more trauma, her organization will help you figure out how to do that the best way. So I've used that many times, and it's so important because this problem is not an individual's problem, it's a systemic problem. 00:32:24 Speaker 1: It's a great organization, and I'm a proud donor and Jennifer as one of my heroes, as is Ronald Cotton. And important to note they became very close friends. As they wrote picking Cotton, which is such an incredible name. They've done sixty Minutes together, They've been on wrongfulk theyvectioned together. They've toured the country giving presentations to loss students and prosecutors and anyone that will listen to them about the unreliability of eyewitness identification. And Sonny, if memory serves me, she brought your case to my. 00:32:52 Speaker 4: Attention and arsession. 00:32:54 Speaker 3: Yes, So I got in touch with her on Facebook and she's like, I'm on team Sonny. So she was in my life readily for me. She's one of my mentors. 00:33:02 Speaker 4: She really is. I try to hang myself years ago. I did. I actually did. I didn't succeed. 00:33:06 Speaker 3: I got stabbed like twelve times, just went through some things. But it's like Jennifer was like one of people I'd always go to kind of give me reality check. She was always blunt, boom me and honest with me. She's like, I'm gonna beat it the gates when you get out, and it's like these things manifested, they really did, and she kept a word. 00:33:20 Speaker 1: She's kind of like an angel. She has a very angelious quality about Jennifer. If you're listening and you're blushing, you should be because we have so much respect for you here. So okay, So then along comes through other angel, Olivia right. 00:33:33 Speaker 5: I was working for the Georgia Innocence Project. Sonny was my first client. So even after I left the Georgia Ennosonce Project. It's always hard to leave a job, leave your cases, but I couldn't leave Sonny. So I have stayed with him as pro bono council for the past three years. And so when we filed an amended habeas petition in twenty twenty two, all of our claims they were all based on ineffective assistance of appellate council for the way he raised the claims. And I want to just be really clear, ineffective assistance of counsel doesn't mean bad attorney. This appellate counsel did an amazing job getting the DNA, very vigorous advocate, and still it was constitutionally defective. So we were granted an evidentiary hearing in the middle of twenty twenty three where we put all this evidence on the record that finally clarified what these procedural mistakes were, and Sunny's appellat attorney was very helpful at the hearing. 00:34:24 Speaker 6: He explained that he just made a lot of mistakes. 00:34:27 Speaker 1: In addition, many witnesses testified in support of Sonny's innocence claim, including Ashley Dold. 00:34:34 Speaker 4: She testified that I wasn't there. 00:34:36 Speaker 3: They wasn't asked uff by Stirling Flint, but she pretty much testified that she wasn't there. And my ex girlfriend testified the one who got confused at trial. And one of my witnesses died over the years. 00:34:45 Speaker 2: And that was Keisha Pitts, but her husband, Ray Shawan took the stand in herstead. 00:34:50 Speaker 3: He said he remembers I called him that morning and asked I pick of soaker sent from his house, and Keisha called him and is like, Sonny came picked it up, and then when I came back that evening around five o'clock, he said that she called to Sonny dropped the stuff off. 00:35:03 Speaker 1: And this established a timeframe which made it impossible for an eight hour round trip to Thunderbolt, Georgia, a timeframe that your trial counsel didn't prepare enough to even do a rudimentary job of laying it out. 00:35:16 Speaker 5: And I will say that trial attorney did testify and he wept on the stand. He told us he thinks about Sonny all the time. This case keeps him up at night. He always believed in Sonny. He just was so overconfident because the case was so ridiculous and had a lot of regret. But of course we can't not prepare just because the case is ridiculous. And in twenty twenty four, Judge Tate out of Gwinnett County granted Sonny's habeas petition, which was not appealed by the Attorney General, so that overturned his conviction. 00:35:47 Speaker 2: Sonny was transferred to a jail prior to his release, but the date of his actual release still remained unclear. 00:35:55 Speaker 5: Sonny and I that morning had such an emo conversation because there was like some work stuff, and I was. 00:36:00 Speaker 6: Like, look, the paperwork's not done. I don't know when you're getting out. You're not going to be getting out. We were both like, oh sad. We didn't think he was getting out that day. 00:36:07 Speaker 4: I was in a county jail. 00:36:08 Speaker 3: But remember I go up to intake and she told officer like, gave my property and stuff. So I had certain books like Long Walked, Freedom of my Bible, some letters I kept over the years, and these things meant something to me. So they're like in a little clear trash bag. So she tells us to dress me out. So I'm still like the reality is not sitting in, like something's gonna happen, Like they're gonna say, hey, were making a mistake of something. So finally I said, hey, can I put my shoes on? And when she said yeah, and I'm like, hey about let me out? 00:36:36 Speaker 4: And then she. 00:36:37 Speaker 3: Told me like, hey, you got to go out this door. So when I go out the doors, officer in the sally port some inmates escorting him in the vehicle. He's like, unless you going, let's press that button. When I pressed the button, the door opens. It is a parking lot. So it's me, this trash bag of books and a parking lot. This is day eight, three hundred ninety three for me, you know, So I run. I forrest gumped out that guys Comps was running out the drunning down his driveway. That's how I was running. I didn't know where I was going. I was just running. I said, I gotta get on the phone, somebody to call Olivia. I don't know how I'm gonna what I'm gonna do, but I gotta get on the phone. 00:37:09 Speaker 4: Call Olivia. So I ran one way and it's like a concrete plant. So I'm like, well, this is the wrong way. 00:37:15 Speaker 3: So then I'm running along a tree line because I'm like looking back, saying, hey, they might realize we made a mistake. Let this guy out. So I keep looking back every second, paranoid. My bag of books is like coming apart, like holes in it, and I'm trying to hold these books together. So I'm thinking, hey, I might just hide these in a ditch or something grained dish like, come back later. 00:37:32 Speaker 4: Get him. I just got to get to a phone. 00:37:34 Speaker 3: And finally I get to this little place and I'm like the only can somebody help me? Can somebody help me? And the guy's like, how can I help you? I said, Hey, my name is Sonny Barati. You can google me. They just let me out of jail. I was innocent. I've been in prison twenty something years. I just need to call him my attorney, so come get me in. I remember he called He's like, what's the phone number? Sort of laughing, he called it was Livia. 00:37:54 Speaker 5: And then I get this random number call and I know it's Sonny, and I pick up the. 00:37:58 Speaker 6: Phone and he said, they let me out, They let me out, they let me out. I don't know where I am. 00:38:02 Speaker 5: And then a man who I guess owned this shop, gets on the phone, gives me the address and hangs up on me. 00:38:09 Speaker 6: And that's it. That's all the information I get. 00:38:11 Speaker 5: And so I passed the information along to someone closer and she said, why is he at this address? 00:38:15 Speaker 6: And I was like, I don't know. I literally had a ten second conversation about it. 00:38:19 Speaker 3: And by the time I got home, Olivy was at my mother's house. Came from Detroit, and Jennifer Thompson came from Chapel Hill. She was at a mom's house. 00:38:27 Speaker 2: Amazing. 00:38:28 Speaker 3: So it was like such a highlight, was like a mountain. It was like a mountaintop experience. The last couple of months, I mean, just trying to find my place right now. I have PTSD, That's something true I do, but you know, I'm getting helped for it and I'm working on it. I try to keep routine, go to jim By four or five days a week, I have been writing a book and it's still hard to process it all to this day. I'm just like, I just really don't even try to think on it. I don't understand a purpose why I went through it, but it's like, at the same time, I like to help people. Me and Jennifer Thompson talked about it and she was like, maybe I could start some time Healing Justice thing in Georgia, So that's maybe one thing I'm looking at. But I had not importance of not having a voice because so many years I didn't have a voice, and I have a voice now, so I want to use my voice to help people that don't have a voice, and I feel somewhere along the way I'm be able to do that. 00:39:10 Speaker 1: If anyone would like to talk to Sonny about public speaking, and I really hope you will, then we're going to link his Instagram in the episode description so you can reach out on DM. We're also going to link to Healing Justice and the episode that Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton did together. 00:39:25 Speaker 2: And since the recording of this interview on May sixteenth, twenty twenty five, Sonny's charges were officially dismissed. 00:39:34 Speaker 3: The feeling itself was exhilarating. I mean, I've never had a feeling like that. It's like, I'll wait off you. And Jennifer Thompson of Healing Justice was there, my attorney Olivi Vigiletti, Christina Cribs, Noah Pines, and George Andoson's project and my mom and it was just amazing because I couldn't made it in this journey about these people. After my dismissal, they held like a little pot luck type party and we want to downtown Atlantisk the rooftop board and then Saturday me Jennifer O Livy went hiking, and then Sunday the Innocence Project had a picnic and then my Girlfriendjoe down to Florida. So I've been at Panama City Beach since Sunday. That state here for a week and needed this much needed We. 00:40:20 Speaker 2: Were all so happy for you, will of course wishing that this never happened in the first place. 00:40:27 Speaker 1: And with that, we're going to go to closing arguments where first I think we think both of you for joining us, and then I'm just gonna turn my microphone off with my headphones on and just kick back in my chair and listen for you to share anything you feel is left to be said. We're gonna start with Olivia and then Sonny, you take us off into the sunset. 00:40:50 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:40:51 Speaker 5: That is fun, and I feel very put on the spot. I would like to tell a story of Sunny, because it's of course never a requirement that you're client be exceptional and incredible. But Sonny has been lead counsel on this case his entire life, and the whole time he's been fighting this and has taught me a lot of things at every turn. And we were talking one time, kind of dreaming about the day Sonny might get out of prison, and I asked him how he was preparing to transition back into the world, and he told me something that I thought was really random at first, but connected it back. He said, do you remember in the nineties when they would always show the oil spills on TV and you'd always see like oil covered pictures of ducks and stuff. But then they show that like you just wipe them down with some dawn and then they're okay after you clean them up. But if the oil gets into the animal's body, things get really bad. And you die instantly. And he was like, that's been my task here in prison the entire time. I'm in this environment, but it is not inside of me, and so from here until I'm out, I just have to keep myself fortified and know that although it is all around me, I can clean this off and it's going to be okay. It's not inside of me, so I'm not gonna die. 00:42:02 Speaker 3: All I can say is that I'm grateful and humbled because you in prison, life out parole, and it's like you're fighting with hope and it's hard, and you see people with serious crimes that are guilty, that don't have no remorse getting out doing less time than you, and have a sentence to die in prison, and I just didn't think the day would come. I lost my twenties, my thirties, my forties, I'm fifty years old. But I have great people in my life and the last six months of like being like a roller coaster to me. And I was speaking to one of my old attorneys, the one that got the DNA test, Bapple Attorneys, like, Sonny, you know what what kept you going all these years in prison? Because it's two thousand and three years like my attorney. It's like Hope, Sonny. I used to talk to you all the time. Hope kept you and I said, you know what, You're right, And so no matter how dark things get in life, you gotta have hope. 00:42:49 Speaker 4: And that's what pulled me through. 00:42:50 Speaker 3: Those are the tools I'm using in my life that are helping me and propelling me to my future. 00:42:54 Speaker 4: And that's what I'm gonna do. 00:42:55 Speaker 3: And I'm just content and I'm just thankful and grateful that chapter of my life is over. With mixed chap to mix half a story book about life, it's a different story. 00:43:04 Speaker 4: I can rewrite the ending. That's what I'm doing now. 00:43:12 Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at it's Jason plom Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One. We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. 00:43:52 Speaker 4: The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.