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#276 Jason Flom with Charles McCrory · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, Charles and Julie McCrory were having
0:05
Speaker 1: marital trouble and seeing a counselor while amicably sharing both
0:08
Speaker 1: the care of their three year old boy, Chad, and
0:10
Speaker 1: occasionally the same bed. On May thirtieth, nineteen eighty five,
0:14
Speaker 1: Charles left Julie's house around ten to fifteen pm and
0:17
Speaker 1: made a phone call in the pre cell phone era.
0:20
Speaker 1: This corroborated that he had arrived at his apartment the
0:24
Speaker 1: following morning. Charles's parents were expecting Julie to drop off
0:27
Speaker 1: Chad and began to worry when she did not show.
0:30
Speaker 1: After several unanswered calls from Charles and his parents, Charles's
0:34
Speaker 1: father was the first to discover Julie's body just inside
0:37
Speaker 1: her front door. It was determined that she had died
0:40
Speaker 1: of blunt force head trauma sometime in the early hours
0:43
Speaker 1: of the morning. A red bandana was found near the body,
0:46
Speaker 1: and a clump of hairs were found in her hand
0:47
Speaker 1: that did not belong to her or Charles. Besides conflicting
0:51
Speaker 1: and dubious reports of a car that looked like Charles's
0:54
Speaker 1: at Julie's house that morning, no evidence connected him to
0:57
Speaker 1: the crime. Despite a similar incident within a month committed
1:01
Speaker 1: by a man known to wear red bandanas, the police
1:04
Speaker 1: maintained their focus on Charles. Since the district attorney was
1:07
Speaker 1: reluctant to charge Charles, Julie's family hired a private prosecutor
1:12
Speaker 1: team who sought the help of notorious junk science dentist
1:16
Speaker 1: Dick Suveran. Suveran testified that some of Julie's wounds were
1:19
Speaker 1: not only bitemarks, but that they were made by Charles
1:22
Speaker 1: at the time of death, effectively sealing his fate. Suveran
1:26
Speaker 1: has since recanted that testimony, including the assertion that the
1:30
Speaker 1: wounds were even bite marks at all. Yet, somehow Charles
1:34
Speaker 1: is still serving a life sentence in an Alabama prison.
1:37
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. You know,
1:53
Speaker 1: when listeners of our show asked me, what are some
1:56
Speaker 1: of the most disturbing cases I've ever heard of? I
2:00
Speaker 1: will list off Vincent Simmons, Richard Glossip, Pedro Renoso. I mean,
2:04
Speaker 1: there's so many others I could mention, But before we
2:07
Speaker 1: even start today, I think Charles McCrory has to be
2:11
Speaker 1: added to that horrifying list. Joining us Besides the man himself.
2:17
Speaker 1: We have his attorneys first from the Southern Center for
2:20
Speaker 1: Human Rights, Mark Louden Brown, Mark, welcome to Wronful Conviction.
2:24
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me and a voice
2:26
Speaker 1: you'll all recognize, I'm sure, Chris Fabricant. Chris is the
2:31
Speaker 1: strategic Litigation director at the Innocence Project, the author of
2:35
Speaker 1: the fantastic book You've heard me talk about it before,
2:37
Speaker 1: Junk Science and the American criminal justice system. And he's
2:41
Speaker 1: also a frequent guest on the show and was featured
2:44
Speaker 1: on our Junk Science podcast hosted by Josh Dubin where
2:48
Speaker 1: he talked about bite mark analysis, which was the pivotal
2:52
Speaker 1: thing in this case. And so Chris, welcome back to
2:54
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction.
2:55
Speaker 2: It's great to be back.
2:56
Speaker 3: Jason, thanks for having us.
2:57
Speaker 1: And now calling in from an Alabama prison where he's
3:00
Speaker 1: been locked up for I hate I even have to
3:04
Speaker 1: say this for over thirty seven years. Charles McCrory, thank
3:08
Speaker 1: you for joining us.
3:09
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, I appreciate you having me.
3:12
Speaker 1: Well, we're happy to have you here despite the reason
3:15
Speaker 1: why you're here, or more to the point where you
3:17
Speaker 1: are as you call us today, and that reason is
3:21
Speaker 1: bitemark analysis. Which is a proven junk science. It fails
3:26
Speaker 1: that not only reliably concluding who made a bite mark,
3:29
Speaker 1: but also at reliably identifying wounds as bite marks at all,
3:32
Speaker 1: especially because these wounds are found on skin and the
3:36
Speaker 1: medium itself is elastic and usually changing over time as
3:40
Speaker 1: it heals or decomposes or grows. And then some Charlottan
3:46
Speaker 1: comes into court claiming that they can match a suspects
3:50
Speaker 1: teeth to usually a photograph of an injury, and they
3:54
Speaker 1: say they can do this to the exclusion of every
3:56
Speaker 1: other set of teeth on the planet. It's just fuck
4:00
Speaker 1: and bananas. But it's only recently that lawyers like Chris
4:03
Speaker 1: and Mark have been battling these junk science experts in
4:06
Speaker 1: post conviction, because at the time of conviction, everybody bought
4:10
Speaker 1: into these lies. And Chris, I've been quoting your book
4:15
Speaker 1: left and right, And of course the book I'm talking
4:17
Speaker 1: about is junk science and the American criminal justice system.
4:21
Speaker 1: But what are some of the other common threads between
4:23
Speaker 1: these wrongful convictions that are based on junk science and
4:26
Speaker 1: bite mark analysis?
4:27
Speaker 3: In particular, what I've seen in all of these cases.
4:30
Speaker 3: I feel like I've been involved in all the bite
4:32
Speaker 3: mark cases over the last ten years, is that I
4:35
Speaker 3: have never seen an effective cross examination of a bitemark
4:40
Speaker 3: expert a trial, and all the transcripts that I've read,
4:42
Speaker 3: I've never even seen the question, you know, even the
4:45
Speaker 3: most basic one. You know, you think about when an
4:47
Speaker 3: injury is inflicted, usually during the crime itself, nobody was there.
4:52
Speaker 3: Nobody knows the position that the perpetrator or the victim
4:55
Speaker 3: was in at that time. But we know one thing
4:58
Speaker 3: is that it's not not on a mortuary slab where
5:02
Speaker 3: the photographs were taken of this injury. And we know
5:05
Speaker 3: that the injury has changed, often quite dramatically as a
5:08
Speaker 3: result of decomposition of the body, and they continued decomposition,
5:13
Speaker 3: So you may match quote unquote a bitemark quote unquote
5:17
Speaker 3: one day and not the next. It might be one
5:20
Speaker 3: hour and not the next hour, right, because skin is
5:23
Speaker 3: changing all the time, particularly with the deceased victim. So
5:26
Speaker 3: you never see that type of cross examination and you
5:28
Speaker 3: never see like, how is it that you know that
5:30
Speaker 3: this is a bitemark? What is it about being a
5:32
Speaker 3: dentist that makes you an expert in diagnosing an injury
5:35
Speaker 3: as a bite mark?
5:36
Speaker 4: Right?
5:36
Speaker 3: What the proximity to teeth nonsense, right, So you never
5:41
Speaker 3: see those. And I think that just as a general
5:42
Speaker 3: matter on junk science convictions broadly speaking, is that it's
5:46
Speaker 3: almost impossible to cross examine your way out of a
5:49
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction with junk science. Once the judge lets it in,
5:52
Speaker 3: you got two strikes against you anyway, you know, And
5:55
Speaker 3: I'm not sure Johnny cochrane could have saved Charles McCrory
5:59
Speaker 3: once Dick subern gets on the stand and you know,
6:02
Speaker 3: spouts these invented credentials, right the American Board of Friends
6:05
Speaker 3: of go Toontology. That's what I wrote about this in
6:07
Speaker 3: the book. It's just an invented organization. Never tested any
6:10
Speaker 3: of their members on their abilities to actually match bike
6:13
Speaker 3: marks or even diagnose them. They just gave each other
6:16
Speaker 3: board certifications to bring into court and Wougers and places
6:20
Speaker 3: like andlus Alabama, and they led to a lot of
6:24
Speaker 3: wrongful convictions, including at least three others by Dick Suberan.
6:28
Speaker 1: And we'll go further into how this junk science applies
6:31
Speaker 1: to Charles's case in just a bit, but first I'd
6:33
Speaker 1: like to go back before all of this happened. Tell
6:36
Speaker 1: us Charles about your life growing up. Were you born
6:40
Speaker 1: in Alabama?
6:41
Speaker 4: I was born actually in the Panhandle of Florida, and
6:45
Speaker 4: lived in Mobile a couple of years when I was
6:46
Speaker 4: in like first to second grade, But anyway, we moved
6:48
Speaker 4: and Bluja at the beginning of my third grade year
6:51
Speaker 4: and grew up there and graduated and Lujah High School.
6:54
Speaker 4: Went to junior college there at Lurley Wallace for a
6:58
Speaker 4: year or so, and then I transferred to MacArthur Tech
7:02
Speaker 4: College and Op which is just fifteen miles or so away,
7:05
Speaker 4: and I finished a associate degree in computer science. A
7:09
Speaker 4: few months later. They started working for the junior college
7:12
Speaker 4: that I had been a student and that previously, and
7:14
Speaker 4: set up and then later ran the computer center there.
7:16
Speaker 4: They didn't really have one when I started there. You know,
7:19
Speaker 4: this is back in seventy nine, so we're in a
7:22
Speaker 4: very early period as far as computers were concerned. And
7:24
Speaker 4: worked there for five years, and then had gone over
7:28
Speaker 4: to the Power Company album an Electric co op it
7:30
Speaker 4: was called in it's now Power South. So pretty much
7:34
Speaker 4: far a living, That's all I'd really ever done full
7:36
Speaker 4: of time was computer work.
7:38
Speaker 1: So okay, you were working in the field that has
7:40
Speaker 1: become central to all that we do, so plenty of
7:43
Speaker 1: potential in your life. And I understand you were also
7:46
Speaker 1: a volunteer EMT the Rescue Squad as it was called
7:50
Speaker 1: in Andalusia, Alabama.
7:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Rescue Squad was an all volunteer organizations about
7:55
Speaker 4: thirty men that provided damas and rescue for that area.
7:59
Speaker 4: You know, we wore work, to.
8:00
Speaker 1: Say the least, Yes, saving Lise kind of the freaking
8:04
Speaker 1: opposite of being a murderer, right.
8:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
8:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. And of course during this rise in your career,
8:11
Speaker 1: both professional and in the volunteer space, you had married
8:14
Speaker 1: your high school sweetheart Julie Bonds in nineteen eighty had
8:17
Speaker 1: a great job fulfilling community service, and had your son,
8:22
Speaker 1: Chad in nineteen eighty two, through which you and Julie
8:25
Speaker 1: shared a bond that could not be broken even if
8:28
Speaker 1: your marriage was going through a rough patch.
8:30
Speaker 4: Right, and it was, you know, the look back, it
8:34
Speaker 4: was just a lot of poor decisions on probably both
8:36
Speaker 4: of our part, but certainly on mind and we kind
8:40
Speaker 4: of grew apart, I guess, you know. I say we
8:42
Speaker 4: had we had a good relationship, very very amicable to
8:45
Speaker 4: say the least. We were together pretty much every day
8:48
Speaker 4: even during the time that we later separated and I
8:50
Speaker 4: had an apartment across town, we were still very involved
8:54
Speaker 4: with course with our son as well as you know,
8:56
Speaker 4: mutual friends and things like that, and we were together
8:58
Speaker 4: constantly even though we were we were separated and trying
9:01
Speaker 4: to work out marritder issues and so forth.
9:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems that things may have worked out
9:07
Speaker 1: in your marriage had all of this tragic series of
9:10
Speaker 1: events not come to pass. The night before Julie died,
9:12
Speaker 1: you two had actually spent the evening together correct.
9:15
Speaker 4: That night, I'd been over there. We had actually been
9:18
Speaker 4: to see a marriage counselor, had had an affair before
9:22
Speaker 4: that for several months prior to that, and it had
9:25
Speaker 4: ended it although I was still talking to the lady
9:28
Speaker 4: for a while there, and anyway, Julie and I were
9:31
Speaker 4: trying to work through those things, and so we had
9:33
Speaker 4: actually had an interview with it marriage counselor that night,
9:36
Speaker 4: if and then we had actually met back over at
9:38
Speaker 4: the house later and stayed at the house for I
9:40
Speaker 4: guess a couple of hours or so, and left around
9:43
Speaker 4: ten fifteen, ten thirty, somewhere in that range.
9:46
Speaker 1: And this affair that you mentioned, the woman you're referring
9:49
Speaker 1: to is Gloria Wiggins. So at least from trial testimony
9:52
Speaker 1: said that you had called her on the phone from
9:54
Speaker 1: your apartment. I remember this is the era before cell phone,
9:58
Speaker 1: so this is corroborative evidence that you were actually at
10:02
Speaker 1: the apartment.
10:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, at that phone call. I'm at the apartment when
10:05
Speaker 4: I made the call. And then, you know, I just
10:07
Speaker 4: go to sleep, and the next morning I get up
10:09
Speaker 4: at whatever time, six thirty six forty five, had to
10:12
Speaker 4: be at work at seven thirty.
10:14
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is the morning of May thirty first,
10:17
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, and you were having what you thought
10:19
Speaker 1: was going to be a normal day, and as per usual,
10:22
Speaker 1: your parents were waiting for Julie to drop off Chad
10:25
Speaker 1: at their house on her way to.
10:26
Speaker 4: Work right usually around eighties, and so there was times
10:31
Speaker 4: when she'd bring me breakfast her, you know, or whatever.
10:34
Speaker 4: And so that morning I had called her about that
10:36
Speaker 4: and picking up something on her way and didn't get
10:39
Speaker 4: an answer, and turn around call right back. I figured
10:40
Speaker 4: I'd just dial the wrong number or something. Still didn't
10:43
Speaker 4: get answer, and even then it didn't particularly alarm it.
10:46
Speaker 4: You know, you just think, okay, she left for work,
10:49
Speaker 4: a little earlier something I really thought a little of it,
10:51
Speaker 4: and then later on it was I believe after eight
10:55
Speaker 4: I called my mom's house and she hadn't got there yet.
10:57
Speaker 4: And my mom, of course, if once something like that
10:59
Speaker 4: had she just starts worrying. So, you know, I called
11:02
Speaker 4: the house a couple more times and get no answer,
11:05
Speaker 4: and so eventually I called her workplace. They had not
11:07
Speaker 4: seen her either, and about that time, you know, my
11:10
Speaker 4: mom was like, so he Dad's going to check on.
11:12
Speaker 4: I said, okay, okay, I'll go there and just you know,
11:14
Speaker 4: kind of like we're leaving, you know, fears, so to speak.
11:16
Speaker 4: And so I leave work, go toward the house, and
11:20
Speaker 4: many of the rescue squad members we had two way
11:23
Speaker 4: radios in our personal vehicles, and so as I'm going
11:26
Speaker 4: to the house, I hear them on the radio call
11:28
Speaker 4: about a namas going to beside Charles McCrory's house or
11:33
Speaker 4: near Charles mccrary's house. And even then, you know, my
11:36
Speaker 4: thought was maybe a neighbor in trouble or somebody outside,
11:39
Speaker 4: or I call and tell him, you know, I look,
11:40
Speaker 4: I'm on my way over there anyway, And when I
11:43
Speaker 4: get there, my dad's outside and he's just you know,
11:46
Speaker 4: he's upset, and said, something's wrong with Julie. You know,
11:50
Speaker 4: where is she? And he just kind of like falling
11:52
Speaker 4: towards the house. I said, where's Chad, and he said,
11:55
Speaker 4: I've already got Chad. He's at the neighbors. He had
11:57
Speaker 4: he had already been in the house and founder the
12:00
Speaker 4: front door was a jar when he got there.
12:03
Speaker 1: So your father was the first to see this horrible
12:06
Speaker 1: crime scene before whisking away your three year old boy,
12:08
Speaker 1: who was thankfully unharmed. It's the only silver lining in
12:12
Speaker 1: this whole thing. And as you mentioned, he had taken
12:14
Speaker 1: him to the neighbors. Julie, on the other hand, was
12:17
Speaker 1: not so fortunate. She had been beaten to death. Rigormortis
12:23
Speaker 1: typically sets in about three to six hours after death,
12:25
Speaker 1: and by the time investigators arrived on scene around nine am,
12:28
Speaker 1: rigor mortis had not yet set in, so the murder
12:31
Speaker 1: must have occurred sometime between three and six am. Well,
12:35
Speaker 1: you hadn't seen her since about ten to fifteen pm,
12:38
Speaker 1: despite conflicting and dubious reports of a car that looked
12:42
Speaker 1: like yours having been allegedly seen at the house during
12:47
Speaker 1: those hours. And we're going to get to that in
12:50
Speaker 1: a bit, but first I want to talk about the
12:52
Speaker 1: crime scene itself. Now, this was a terribly violent struggle.
12:56
Speaker 1: A stocking had been tied to her right wrist. Hair
12:59
Speaker 1: was found at her left hand, hair that must have
13:01
Speaker 1: logically belonged to the person but to whom she was
13:04
Speaker 1: fighting for her very life. There was also a red
13:07
Speaker 1: bandana found near the body. Now, the fire poker from
13:10
Speaker 1: the fireplace appeared to be missing and was never found again.
13:14
Speaker 1: From the autopsy, it appears that she was struck four
13:17
Speaker 1: times in the back of the head, with one wound
13:20
Speaker 1: to the side of the head blunt trauma's the left
13:22
Speaker 1: part of her skull, eleven puncture wounds to the left breast,
13:25
Speaker 1: fractures on both mandibles, bruises on her face and ribs,
13:29
Speaker 1: and two bruises that may or may not have been
13:30
Speaker 1: bite marks on her right shoulder. So this is your wife,
13:34
Speaker 1: the mother of your son, and now you've come upon
13:38
Speaker 1: this unbelievably bloody and brutal crime scene.
13:42
Speaker 4: When you walk in and see that, you just mean,
13:44
Speaker 4: you don't know, you just don't know what sits to do.
13:48
Speaker 4: I mean, you don't know what to think. It's so
13:50
Speaker 4: shocking that there's really no standard response for it. You know,
13:54
Speaker 4: after I had saying that Julie was dead, and then
13:57
Speaker 4: the risky score got there right after that. And of course,
14:01
Speaker 4: you know, I knew all the guys on the squad,
14:03
Speaker 4: they were all friends of mine, and they were you know,
14:06
Speaker 4: wanting to see At that point, the police had not
14:08
Speaker 4: arrived or anything. And so as we do that, I
14:12
Speaker 4: come out and I go across the street to Chad
14:14
Speaker 4: and I remember I remember holding him and just I mean, really,
14:20
Speaker 4: the thought that come to mine is, my god, what
14:22
Speaker 4: is happening. I remember him kind of pushing back a
14:24
Speaker 4: little bit. I guess I was squeezing him too tight
14:27
Speaker 4: or something. But and then in the coming days, you know,
14:29
Speaker 4: he would ask for and we'd try to answer him
14:32
Speaker 4: as best you can.
14:49
Speaker 3: This is an incredibly brutal crime and the perpetrator undoubtedly
14:54
Speaker 3: would have been very bloody. And there was only lads
14:57
Speaker 3: to a been about four hours passed between the last
15:00
Speaker 3: time that mister McCrory he saw the victim in this case,
15:03
Speaker 3: and when he was first questioned by police at that time,
15:07
Speaker 3: they turned over all of his clothes, they searched the
15:10
Speaker 3: intertor's car, they searched his house, They found no trace
15:13
Speaker 3: of blood on anything. Then they examined the hares that
15:18
Speaker 3: were clutched in the victim's hand. Those hairs were not
15:24
Speaker 3: from the victim, and they were not from Charles McCrory.
15:27
Speaker 3: In other words, they were from a third person. We
15:30
Speaker 3: still don't know whose hairs those were. There was also
15:33
Speaker 3: a red bandana found near the victim's body. There was
15:37
Speaker 3: a construction worker that worked next door to the victim's
15:42
Speaker 3: house was known to wear a red bandana. There was
15:45
Speaker 3: an open window on that side of the house, the
15:47
Speaker 3: same side as the construction site, that had a fresh
15:50
Speaker 3: bootprint outside that window. The police took an impression of
15:55
Speaker 3: that bootprint, but then never compared it to anything or anybody,
15:58
Speaker 3: and never dusted the the window sill that was open
16:02
Speaker 3: for fingerprints. But we know that a man who worked
16:04
Speaker 3: at that construction site named Ainsworth was known to wear
16:08
Speaker 3: a red bandana. And we know that a few weeks
16:11
Speaker 3: after this murder, he committed a home invasion rape and
16:14
Speaker 3: served twenty years in prison for that crime. Was never
16:17
Speaker 3: investigated as a suspect in this case. Then we also
16:20
Speaker 3: know that mister McCrory had been entirely cooperative with the
16:26
Speaker 3: prosecution from beginning to end, had voluntarily supplied samples of
16:32
Speaker 3: his hair, his DNA, his body, all of which was exculpatory,
16:37
Speaker 3: nothing to point to mister McCrory's guilt. The only physical
16:42
Speaker 3: evidence was concocted, and we'll talk about the bite marks
16:46
Speaker 3: in a second. The only other evidence was that neighbor
16:50
Speaker 3: across the street who claimed that around four o'clock in
16:54
Speaker 3: the morning, his nineteen year old kid decides to get
16:56
Speaker 3: up and check on the garden, but he wasn't sure
16:59
Speaker 3: of the date, was sure of the truck, but he's
17:02
Speaker 3: thought that on the date in question that he had
17:06
Speaker 3: seen a truck similar to mister McCrory's.
17:10
Speaker 1: And despite this extremely dubious teenage middle of the night
17:15
Speaker 1: gardening scenario, we also found out later that he and
17:18
Speaker 1: later his grandfather not only exaggerated their vantage point, but
17:22
Speaker 1: also several other neighbors with much more credible recollections reported
17:25
Speaker 1: only Julie's car in the driveway on the date and
17:28
Speaker 1: time in question.
17:29
Speaker 3: That's the only evidence that they had apart from this
17:32
Speaker 3: bite mark.
17:33
Speaker 1: And the bite mark. Even their trial expert Dick Suveran,
17:36
Speaker 1: years later admitted that he wasn't even sure if it
17:41
Speaker 1: even was a bitemark at all. But even back in
17:45
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, other than the refuted recollection of this
17:48
Speaker 1: teenage middle of the night gardener and his grandfather, all
17:52
Speaker 1: other evidence pointed away from Charles. But tunnel Vision had
17:55
Speaker 1: already said in and some say that it came back
17:57
Speaker 1: to something Charles had said at the crime scene and
18:00
Speaker 1: what later the prosecutor tried to use against him a trial.
18:03
Speaker 1: It was when at the scene, looking at the body
18:07
Speaker 1: with the other rescue squad guys on police and seeing
18:11
Speaker 1: the gash on the back of her head, Charles said
18:13
Speaker 1: something to the effect of do you think it was
18:15
Speaker 1: the licks to her head? Is that what killed her?
18:19
Speaker 1: So they just totally ignored the clump of hair in
18:22
Speaker 1: her hand, the red bandana, any alternative suspects, the lack
18:26
Speaker 1: of blood on anything that Charles owned, and started turning
18:30
Speaker 1: their focus on him anyway, on Charles, do you remember
18:34
Speaker 1: when that happened?
18:36
Speaker 4: I do know there was a time when the fielding
18:38
Speaker 4: is almost like the atmosphere changed. You could just feel
18:40
Speaker 4: it in the air, And in fact, I believe later Saturday,
18:44
Speaker 4: I told my mom that looked you know, they're turning
18:46
Speaker 4: this on me. They're looking at me. And then it
18:49
Speaker 4: was on Saturday night. The mayor of Andalusia was a
18:52
Speaker 4: man named Chalwmers, Brian. He was a longtime family friend
18:55
Speaker 4: of ours. He was a deacon in our church and
18:57
Speaker 4: I had known Chalmers a long time. He was also
18:59
Speaker 4: one of the charge members of the resk You squad,
19:01
Speaker 4: so I knew him through that. And he called me
19:03
Speaker 4: and said, look, I want to talk to you. So
19:04
Speaker 4: we talked on Saturday night for a good while and
19:08
Speaker 4: Chalmers told me then he said, you know they think
19:10
Speaker 4: you did this. He told me, say, I don't believe that,
19:12
Speaker 4: he said, But I'm the mayor. I can't get involved
19:15
Speaker 4: in this, you know, I've got to let the police
19:18
Speaker 4: do their work.
19:19
Speaker 1: Wow. So, okay, if you're at home listening to this
19:23
Speaker 1: insane story right now and thinking, well, okay, but you're
19:27
Speaker 1: somehow safe, You're somehow insulated from the possibility of being
19:33
Speaker 1: the victim of a wrongful conviction. Are you friends with
19:37
Speaker 1: the mayor? Because even a friendship like that couldn't save Charles,
19:42
Speaker 1: which shows us, in very stark terms that none of
19:46
Speaker 1: us are safe. So just after Julie's funeral. On that Monday,
19:50
Speaker 1: they brought you in for a more accusatory interview that
19:54
Speaker 1: ended up in your arrest. Did they try to extract
19:57
Speaker 1: a confession, as we so often see.
19:59
Speaker 4: Oh yes, as we were walking over to the county
20:01
Speaker 4: jails when one of them said, you know we can
20:04
Speaker 4: help you on this. And you got a long record
20:06
Speaker 4: of community service, you come from a good family. You know,
20:09
Speaker 4: all these kinds of positive things about my life that
20:12
Speaker 4: they seem to soon forget. But they say, you know,
20:14
Speaker 4: we can do a deal here where you know, we'll
20:16
Speaker 4: talk to the DA and see if we can't. You know,
20:18
Speaker 4: I think we can do ten years at that time
20:20
Speaker 4: manslaughter without a weapon. I believe it was called for
20:22
Speaker 4: like ten years is the max. And said, you know
20:24
Speaker 4: you'd be home in two or three years for Chad
20:27
Speaker 4: even gets in school. Good. You know you'd already be home.
20:30
Speaker 4: So I'm not pleading guilty to something I didn't do.
20:32
Speaker 4: And that kind of ended that discussion.
20:35
Speaker 1: And oddly enough, the Covenant County DA Grady Lanier, had
20:38
Speaker 1: no plans on indicting you none. The case against you
20:41
Speaker 1: was just too weak. A false confession would have definitely
20:45
Speaker 1: changed his tune. But you didn't crumble. This is why
20:48
Speaker 1: Julie's family, on this bizarre Alabama law, was able to
20:53
Speaker 1: bring in private prosecutors to do with Grady Laneer rightfully
20:58
Speaker 1: did not want to do He declined to do it. Mark,
21:02
Speaker 1: do I have that right?
21:03
Speaker 2: That's right from talking to folks in the community that
21:06
Speaker 2: he was at best lukewarm about the prospect of indicting
21:11
Speaker 2: mister McCrory and trying the case, as you would think
21:13
Speaker 2: he would be, because, as you pointed out, there was
21:15
Speaker 2: no evidence against mister McCrory, and the evidence that there
21:19
Speaker 2: was was exculpatory, right, And so I believe it was
21:24
Speaker 2: Julie's uncle approached this father son duo of Frank and
21:28
Speaker 2: Harvey Tippler, who were very well known trial attorneys, and
21:32
Speaker 2: so he went out and paid them to prosecute the case.
21:36
Speaker 2: And I think that's the point at which this alleged
21:41
Speaker 2: bite mark, sort of as Chris said, gets concocted.
21:44
Speaker 3: There were a number of puncture wounds on the victim's body.
21:49
Speaker 3: It was the tiplars who took this injury and decided
21:55
Speaker 3: that these were potentially teeth marks and took this evidence
22:00
Speaker 3: to doctor Dick Suveran who rose to fame as one
22:04
Speaker 3: of the forensic odentologists. Is they like to call themselves
22:08
Speaker 3: when they're in court. It's just a fancy way of
22:10
Speaker 3: saying forensic dentist. And Suvron decides that these R and
22:13
Speaker 3: D teeth marks, but he's very noncommittal about associating these
22:18
Speaker 3: teeth marks with mister McCrory. Then the case gets closer
22:24
Speaker 3: and closer to trial. And you see this in wrongful
22:26
Speaker 3: conviction after wrongful conviction, particularly as it relates to junk science.
22:29
Speaker 3: And this is why junk science is so convenient, because
22:32
Speaker 3: it really can say whatever you needed to say. And
22:34
Speaker 3: it wasn't saying enough before trial. But by the time
22:37
Speaker 3: it got to trial, Dick Suban was saying that it
22:39
Speaker 3: was mister McCrory's tea, to exclusion of everybody else on
22:42
Speaker 3: the planet's teeth that made this particular bitemark.
22:46
Speaker 1: So, according to this letter from Souveran to the Tiplers
22:49
Speaker 1: that was hidden from the defensive trial, Souvan shared his
22:52
Speaker 1: own doubts about making that match in court, but then
22:55
Speaker 1: he later did it anyway a trial. Now how he
22:58
Speaker 1: squared that circle for himself know, But the Tiplers now
23:01
Speaker 1: had their you know, the piece of evidence that they
23:04
Speaker 1: needed to win, not to get justice, but to win
23:07
Speaker 1: for trial. And this is just five months later in
23:10
Speaker 1: October nineteen eighty five. And remember Charles was doing well
23:13
Speaker 1: in life, so he was able to hire a real
23:16
Speaker 1: solid team Bubba, Marcel and Larrigus said, who were experienced
23:19
Speaker 1: defense layers. They just couldn't overcome what was eventually the
23:23
Speaker 1: recanted false testimony of Dick Suveran.
23:26
Speaker 2: So it's a short trial, a couple of days. What
23:29
Speaker 2: is frustrating is that the opening and closing statements are
23:32
Speaker 2: not transcribed, so we only have the testimony of the witnesses.
23:38
Speaker 2: And like you mentioned, it really comes down to the
23:40
Speaker 2: bitemark by doctor Souverron.
23:42
Speaker 1: But in addition to that, the Tiplers presented the marriage
23:44
Speaker 1: counselor as well as the woman with whom Charles had
23:47
Speaker 1: had an affair, Gloria Wiggins, to solidify their narrative that
23:50
Speaker 1: marital trouble was a potential catalyst or motive. But oddly enough,
23:55
Speaker 1: this woman, Gloria Wiggins, actually corroborated that Charles was back
23:59
Speaker 1: in his apartment around ten thirty pm, not at Julie's.
24:03
Speaker 1: They also brought up this comment from Charles at the
24:05
Speaker 1: crime scene about the quote licks to the back of
24:08
Speaker 1: her head. Now again, he was making an observation and
24:12
Speaker 1: she had a massive gash to the back of her head.
24:16
Speaker 1: So far, this is not a compelling case at all.
24:20
Speaker 1: Then they brought out the nineteen year old with the
24:23
Speaker 1: crazy midnight gardening story, Willie Meeks, who had been staying
24:26
Speaker 1: with his grandfather, Hubert Walker, Julie's neighbor, who also testified.
24:32
Speaker 2: There's this teenager kitty corner from Julie's home who claims
24:37
Speaker 2: that he was out at four point thirty at five
24:40
Speaker 2: o'clock in the morning checking on his grandfather's garden. It
24:43
Speaker 2: may have been the morning of May thirty. First, he's
24:45
Speaker 2: not really sure, and he sees this car that looks
24:49
Speaker 2: similar to the one that mister McCrory drives parked at
24:53
Speaker 2: Julie's house, right, so whatever that is worth. Interestingly, his
24:59
Speaker 2: grandfather there, who lives in that home, also testifies and
25:04
Speaker 2: claims that he is also up in the morning and
25:08
Speaker 2: also says that he sees a similar car, but he
25:11
Speaker 2: says that the car is parked somewhere else in a
25:13
Speaker 2: different location. So like you have these two stories that
25:16
Speaker 2: I think the prosecution probably hoped would corroborate each other,
25:19
Speaker 2: which actually didn't corroborate each other, probably because they were inaccurate.
25:23
Speaker 4: You know, Mick said that he saw the truck there,
25:26
Speaker 4: and my attorney had him draw a sketch, and that's
25:30
Speaker 4: part of the trial records. There's actually a hand drawn
25:32
Speaker 4: sketch of where the truck was parked. And I think
25:35
Speaker 4: it's the point a lot of people just didn't catch
25:37
Speaker 4: in the jury at the time. The house has a
25:39
Speaker 4: double driveway in it, and Julie's car would always parked it,
25:43
Speaker 4: you know, closer to the front door, and my Bronco
25:45
Speaker 4: was sit beside it, but there was plenty of room
25:47
Speaker 4: in the driveway for both vehicles. So when I got there,
25:51
Speaker 4: my dad's car was already there, parked beside Julie's car
25:54
Speaker 4: in the drive so I just pull up behind him
25:56
Speaker 4: over on the grass to the left side of the driveway.
25:59
Speaker 4: So then Danny leaves to go tell mother what had happened,
26:03
Speaker 4: and so when he leaves, that leaves an opening in
26:07
Speaker 4: the driveway. And so that's exactly how Meeks drew it
26:11
Speaker 4: on his diagram, and to me, it's obviously what Meeks
26:15
Speaker 4: saying is what he'd remembers seeing that morning after the
26:18
Speaker 4: police got there and after all this had happened, And
26:20
Speaker 4: there's an aerial photo of the scene taken by the
26:23
Speaker 4: police that shows that.
26:25
Speaker 1: So it seems like maybe this kid was interviewed in
26:27
Speaker 1: the aftermath about seeing Charles's car a few days after
26:30
Speaker 1: the fact, and his recollection was a bit fuzzy. Perhaps
26:33
Speaker 1: his memory was enhanced by that aerial photo. We'll never know. Perhaps,
26:40
Speaker 1: as we've seen in other cases, you just had a
26:42
Speaker 1: kid who, for whatever reason, wanted to insert himself into
26:46
Speaker 1: an investigation to help the police. However, what we found
26:50
Speaker 1: out just before the evidence you hearing that Chris and
26:52
Speaker 1: Mark recently tagged him, was that an investigator working for
26:56
Speaker 1: Chris checked out the properties and get this, the vantage
27:00
Speaker 1: point that Willie Meeks and his grandfather had. They checked
27:03
Speaker 1: it out, and what they found is that that vantage
27:07
Speaker 1: point was totally misrepresented to the jury. The jury had
27:11
Speaker 1: been told that they were right across the street, but
27:14
Speaker 1: if you were standing where they said they were standing
27:17
Speaker 1: and looking at Julie's house, you would not have been
27:20
Speaker 1: able to see the driveway in the way that they claimed.
27:24
Speaker 3: This kid who testified they was checking the garden as
27:27
Speaker 3: the father of a teenager. It struck me when I
27:30
Speaker 3: read the transcript, it was like who does that? Who
27:33
Speaker 3: gets up? But like, you know, I think that you know,
27:35
Speaker 3: normally when you would have a testimony like that at
27:38
Speaker 3: a trial, that you would have some sort of explanation. Yeah,
27:41
Speaker 3: it was part of my job, like to go out
27:43
Speaker 3: and you know, make sure that the garden was still
27:45
Speaker 3: there at four thirty in the morning, when it's still
27:47
Speaker 3: basically dark out.
27:48
Speaker 2: The defense called two other neighbors, one of whom had
27:51
Speaker 2: an actual explanation that was credible for why they were
27:55
Speaker 2: out on the morning of May thirty. First, that is,
27:58
Speaker 2: they were getting in their car to go to work.
27:59
Speaker 2: These were you know, and it was an adult who
28:01
Speaker 2: had a job. These two witnesses said there was no
28:05
Speaker 2: car there, meeting that description.
28:07
Speaker 1: So this midnight, pre dawned gardening teenager and his grandfather,
28:11
Speaker 1: who remember, whose accounts did not corroborate each other, were
28:14
Speaker 1: refuted by two other neighbors with credible recollections of that
28:18
Speaker 1: morning who said that both said that Charles's car was
28:21
Speaker 1: not there. And in addition to this weak evidence, the
28:24
Speaker 1: Tiplers presented no confessions, eyewitnesses, forensic evidence because there wasn't any.
28:29
Speaker 1: The hares found in Julie's hand were not a match
28:32
Speaker 1: for Julie or Charles. Charles's clothes, his car, fingernails, his apartment.
28:38
Speaker 1: No blood evidence at all was found. In fact, get
28:40
Speaker 1: this prior to trial. At one point they even claimed
28:43
Speaker 1: that they had found blood on his tennis shoes, but
28:44
Speaker 1: when it came back for the lab it turned out
28:47
Speaker 1: to be Coca cola. Now, the defense presented Charles, who,
28:52
Speaker 1: of course reiterated the same statement that he had been
28:54
Speaker 1: making since day one, recounting his every step and maintaining
28:57
Speaker 1: his innocence. The defense tried to up to the evidence
29:00
Speaker 1: of an intruder coming through the open rear window, the bootprint,
29:03
Speaker 1: and the red bandana, as well as the construction worker
29:06
Speaker 1: Ainsworth who worked behind Julie's house and committed a rape
29:10
Speaker 1: and home invasion just a month after Julie's murder, but
29:14
Speaker 1: none of it gained enough traction to overcome the testimony
29:17
Speaker 1: of Dick Suveran.
29:18
Speaker 2: Doctor Richard Suveran, fresh off his testimony convicting Ted Bundy.
29:23
Speaker 2: Doctor Suveran is a charismatic guy, one of the sort
29:26
Speaker 2: of godfathers of forensic odonology. Right, he's got resume full
29:31
Speaker 2: of credentials, at least he did in nineteen eighty five.
29:33
Speaker 2: At the time of this trial. Fancy doctor flies up
29:37
Speaker 2: to ende Lujahl Obama from Miami and wow's the jury
29:42
Speaker 2: with this quote unquote science. And you know, I think
29:45
Speaker 2: the private prosecutors, the Tipplers, knew how important he was
29:49
Speaker 2: because they saved him to the end of their case
29:52
Speaker 2: against mister McCrory. And right at the end of his testimony,
29:55
Speaker 2: they do this series of questions, is this a bitemark?
29:58
Speaker 1: Yes?
29:58
Speaker 2: Did mister McCrory make this by mark?
30:00
Speaker 1: Yes?
30:00
Speaker 2: Did he do it during the murder? Essentially? Yes? And
30:04
Speaker 2: if you're a juror, that's hard to overcome. You know. Yeah,
30:09
Speaker 2: there's tons of all their expalatory information out there, obviously,
30:12
Speaker 2: but you just had this fancy doctor who flew up
30:15
Speaker 2: from Miami saying this guy bit her while.
30:17
Speaker 1: He was killing her.
30:18
Speaker 4: You know.
30:19
Speaker 1: It's usually at this point that I ask if you
30:21
Speaker 1: were still holding out hope that the jury got it right,
30:24
Speaker 1: but it doesn't sound like anyone did. Can you take
30:27
Speaker 1: us back to that moment, that awful moment when the
30:30
Speaker 1: jury came back in.
30:32
Speaker 4: Well, when when they walked in, I mean, I could
30:35
Speaker 4: have told you the verdict before they're in, just jurors
30:39
Speaker 4: that were smiling and looking at us and so forth.
30:42
Speaker 4: But when they came back in that they were not
30:44
Speaker 4: looking at our way, and I knew then, you know
30:46
Speaker 4: that it was over. When jeordge Balwin, you know, fantastic
30:50
Speaker 4: guilt to I told him then that I didn't kill her.
30:54
Speaker 4: I knew it wasn't gonna make any real difference, but
30:57
Speaker 4: there's something I felt I had to say. I had
30:58
Speaker 4: to tell him personally, well, you know, I wanted to
31:01
Speaker 4: stay in front of everybody. I need not do this.
31:03
Speaker 4: And we were surprised that the judge allowed me to
31:06
Speaker 4: remain out on bond until sentence, and that was just
31:08
Speaker 4: unheard of. And I've often thought that maybe that was
31:11
Speaker 4: a little bit of how he felt about the case,
31:14
Speaker 4: because you just don't get convicted the murder and stay
31:16
Speaker 4: out on bonding. And I went out for ten more days.
31:30
Speaker 4: Prison is a horrible place. You don't want to be there,
31:34
Speaker 4: and you don't want your family there, to say the least.
31:37
Speaker 4: There's a real adjustment. That's not the word for it.
31:39
Speaker 4: It's culture shock. I mean, it's just not something I
31:42
Speaker 4: ever dreamed in the worst nightmare, what ever happened. And
31:48
Speaker 4: so to get sentenced to a life sentences, you know,
31:52
Speaker 4: it takes a while to adjust to that.
31:54
Speaker 1: There's no way I'd ever want to even imagine. Must
31:58
Speaker 1: us live through it? I mean, seeing what Dick Suvron did,
32:02
Speaker 1: did you have any hope that this could ever be undone?
32:06
Speaker 4: Uh? Well, we of course did a direct appeal to
32:10
Speaker 4: criminal court appeals like you normally would, and that was
32:13
Speaker 4: shot down, although there were some comments in their opinion
32:16
Speaker 4: that you know, they agreed that Subarun's testimony had substantially
32:20
Speaker 4: changed from the time he wrote the letter until he
32:23
Speaker 4: actually came in the courtroom and that should have been
32:26
Speaker 4: revealed to us under discovery laws. But the judge said
32:30
Speaker 4: that Marcel, my attorney, did not object at the proper
32:33
Speaker 4: time to preserve it for appellate review. And it's like
32:36
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe that, I mean, your attorney doesn't object
32:39
Speaker 4: even though they think there's an issue here. And then,
32:42
Speaker 4: of course we didn't know until after I was at
32:45
Speaker 4: Kilby for a while at a hearing on a motion
32:48
Speaker 4: for a new trial. The DA greatly near at the
32:50
Speaker 4: time Grady made the comment about Harvey went down there
32:54
Speaker 4: one day, and that's when we first learned that Harvey Tippler,
32:56
Speaker 4: the young the son of the Tipplers, had act going
33:00
Speaker 4: down to Carl Gables, Florida and met with Suverron from
33:03
Speaker 4: the time of the letter until the time of the trial.
33:05
Speaker 4: So now it's like, Okay, now we're seeing some understanding.
33:08
Speaker 4: Why did this testimony change like it did?
33:11
Speaker 1: Wow, So now things begin to appear a bit clearer.
33:15
Speaker 3: You know, another thing happened after this case. The Tipplers,
33:19
Speaker 3: younger member of their duo went to federal prison serving
33:23
Speaker 3: life sentence for solicitation and murder as an aside, right,
33:28
Speaker 3: So these are the guys that prosecuted an innocent man.
33:31
Speaker 1: So it appears Harvey Tippler may have been willing to
33:35
Speaker 1: fudge evidence to ruin an innocent man's life, which makes
33:39
Speaker 1: his solicitation of murder conviction not that surprising, let's face it.
33:43
Speaker 1: So what did the Alabama Supreme Court do with this
33:46
Speaker 1: information album?
33:47
Speaker 4: The Supreme Court, they really just didn't do anything with it,
33:51
Speaker 4: and then it just sat for a while. And I'm
33:54
Speaker 4: not sure the date here in the early two thousands
33:56
Speaker 4: or someone of the two thousands that the cases involved
33:59
Speaker 4: in Michael Way and the dental mess over there in
34:02
Speaker 4: Mississippi where two different men were sentenced to death row.
34:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, Lavon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer. That was like two
34:09
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, two thousand and eight. Michael West was
34:12
Speaker 1: basically exposed as being a fixer for hire. If you
34:16
Speaker 1: didn't have the evidence you needed to con back, he'd
34:19
Speaker 1: basically just show up and match any teeth to almost
34:23
Speaker 1: any injury.
34:24
Speaker 4: Right exactly. That case became public and we got wind
34:28
Speaker 4: of it and Newsweek magazine I believe it was, and
34:31
Speaker 4: so after that we file Rule thirty two trying to
34:35
Speaker 4: attack the dental evidence, but at that point we didn't
34:38
Speaker 4: have near the resources. Any serious ammunition didn't come up
34:41
Speaker 4: until I got a letter from Mark earlier the Innocence
34:44
Speaker 4: Project of New York could ask if we would be
34:46
Speaker 4: willing to provide records. They were doing, I think a
34:48
Speaker 4: task force or study in dental cases around the country.
34:51
Speaker 4: So we provided all the records.
34:52
Speaker 3: You know, when we in strategical litigation at the Innocence
34:55
Speaker 3: Project decided to focus on bank Mark comparison at evidence
35:00
Speaker 3: we identified as well as we possibly could every bite
35:04
Speaker 3: Mark conviction in the history of time, and we focused
35:08
Speaker 3: on death penalty cases initially, and then we started, you know,
35:12
Speaker 3: litigating all of these cases because we know that any
35:15
Speaker 3: conviction that rests on junk science is inherently unreliable. And
35:19
Speaker 3: because Mark and I have litigated many post conviction cases previously,
35:24
Speaker 3: including another wrongful conviction of Shila Denton in Georgia that
35:28
Speaker 3: was also a bite Mark case. We reached out to Mark,
35:30
Speaker 3: you know, because Mark and the Southern Center for Human
35:33
Speaker 3: Rights litigates and Georgia and in Alabama and referred mister
35:37
Speaker 3: McCrory's case to him.
35:38
Speaker 2: I read the transcript and I thought, yep, we're going
35:41
Speaker 2: to take this. You know, mister McCrory's lead trial council's
35:44
Speaker 2: deceased now, but the junior trial attorney at the time
35:48
Speaker 2: is not. And you know, he was practicing in nineteen
35:50
Speaker 2: eighty five. He's still practicing, So that's a career of
35:52
Speaker 2: something like thirty seven thirty nine, forty years. When I
35:55
Speaker 2: walked into his office after I learned of this case
35:58
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, he had mister McCrory's file
36:02
Speaker 2: sitting behind his desk, and he said, that's where I
36:05
Speaker 2: keep my file because this is that case, this is
36:07
Speaker 2: the case that haunts me. One of the first things
36:10
Speaker 2: we did was we've talked with Chris and we said, well,
36:12
Speaker 2: let's just see if doctor Suvron what he thinks today,
36:16
Speaker 2: and so we asked him.
36:17
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not very popular with the dentists, as
36:20
Speaker 3: you can imagine, particularly after publishing my book, but I
36:24
Speaker 3: do have respect for forensic analysts of any discipline that
36:29
Speaker 3: are willing to review their prior case work and to
36:33
Speaker 3: recant when they know they've been wrong, when they know
36:36
Speaker 3: that their opinion may have led to the conviction of
36:39
Speaker 3: an innocent person. And I think that with notable exceptions
36:43
Speaker 3: that we've talked about on your show before, Jason, but
36:47
Speaker 3: most forensic analysts are trying to do the right thing.
36:50
Speaker 3: They're not trying to frame innocent people for crimes that
36:53
Speaker 3: they didn't commit. And you know, when you have the
36:57
Speaker 3: influence of you know, prosecutors saying that that you know,
37:00
Speaker 3: this guy is a guilty murderer and we need your
37:02
Speaker 3: opinion to help put him away, you know, many friends
37:05
Speaker 3: analysts believe that they're doing the right thing by giving
37:07
Speaker 3: the opinion to the prosecution that.
37:09
Speaker 2: They want dix.
37:09
Speaker 3: Zuban went back, he reviewed his testimony, he reviewed the
37:14
Speaker 3: evidence at issue, and he entirely recanted his opinion. Once
37:18
Speaker 3: that happened, Mark and I decided to co counsel this
37:21
Speaker 3: case together and we filed a petition for a new
37:24
Speaker 3: trial untainted by false, misleading. Evidence that was presented, nonetheless
37:30
Speaker 3: is so called scientific evidence to mister McCrory's jury, So.
37:33
Speaker 2: That's what we want.
37:34
Speaker 3: We filed this motion for a new trial in the case,
37:38
Speaker 3: and we were granted an evidentiary hearing, and in the
37:41
Speaker 3: lead up to this evidentiary hearing, the day before, we
37:44
Speaker 3: got an offer from the prosecution for time served, which
37:50
Speaker 3: means that all mister McCrory has to do is accept
37:54
Speaker 3: responsibility for this murder, and he goes home that day
37:58
Speaker 3: day that day, goes back to his son, to his sisters,
38:01
Speaker 3: to his life after thirty seven years in prison. He
38:06
Speaker 3: did not hesitate for one second in rejecting it. I
38:10
Speaker 3: think I'd plead guilty almost anything to get out of
38:12
Speaker 3: prison after being in for that long, And to me,
38:15
Speaker 3: that was as much evidence as anything else that mister
38:18
Speaker 3: McCrory is an instant.
38:19
Speaker 1: Man, and the fact that it was offered in the
38:20
Speaker 1: first place, and the fact that they let him go
38:23
Speaker 1: home after he was sentenced, but before he went to prison.
38:27
Speaker 1: All of it adds up to an even more searing
38:30
Speaker 1: indictment of the whole system.
38:31
Speaker 4: Someone asked me recently, did you entertain it? And I
38:34
Speaker 4: know I didn't entertain it. I'm not about to plead
38:36
Speaker 4: guilty to a murder that I did not do for
38:39
Speaker 4: many reasons. I mean, obviously I want to get out
38:42
Speaker 4: of prison, but we want to know what happened and
38:45
Speaker 4: who did it and so forth, And it seems to
38:48
Speaker 4: be that we're the only ones chasing those answers. The
38:50
Speaker 4: police have long since given up on trying to help that.
38:53
Speaker 4: It seemed like in many ways they've tried to cover
38:55
Speaker 4: their tracks on their inepness. Back when all this occurred,
38:58
Speaker 4: I mean, investigator blay geartt destroys and burns several things
39:04
Speaker 4: that could have been used for DNAs. That's when DNA
39:07
Speaker 4: was just becoming known and just becoming popular, and yeah,
39:10
Speaker 4: he burns these things.
39:12
Speaker 2: Now, we would love to do DNA testing of the
39:15
Speaker 2: fingernail scrapings that were taken from Julie right, despite no
39:20
Speaker 2: scratches on mister McCrory, the hair that was found clutched
39:23
Speaker 2: in her head, the red bandana like the one that
39:26
Speaker 2: Ainsworth wore. We'd love to test all of that for DNA,
39:30
Speaker 2: but one of the police officers burnt it all and
39:33
Speaker 2: so it's unavailable for testing.
39:35
Speaker 1: Who burns evidence? This is insane, like at least lie
39:39
Speaker 1: to us, right it was, tell us that you lost it,
39:41
Speaker 1: but you burned it. It just speaks to the fact
39:43
Speaker 1: that all the people in positions of power really must
39:47
Speaker 1: know that he's innocent.
39:48
Speaker 3: Is just astonishing. So we proceed to the hearing, and
39:53
Speaker 3: in addition to the recantation that was done in an
39:58
Speaker 3: Affidavid and you know, notably, the prosecution did not call
40:02
Speaker 3: pigsu Verron to try to rehabilitate him or to try
40:06
Speaker 3: to salvage his commcsion. Instead, we put on the evidence,
40:09
Speaker 3: and we put on two forensic dentists, Adam Freeman and
40:13
Speaker 3: Cynthia Berezowski, both of whom are to extent that anybody
40:16
Speaker 3: can be well qualified in this field. They're both very
40:19
Speaker 3: well qualified and studied it, and they both opined that
40:22
Speaker 3: this was not a bite mark. They looked at the
40:24
Speaker 3: other injuries that had not been called teeth marks and
40:27
Speaker 3: pointed out that these things that were called teeth marks
40:30
Speaker 3: and these other things that weren't appeared to be the
40:32
Speaker 3: same instrument that created all these injuries which were not
40:35
Speaker 3: teeth right. And then additionally and importantly, we had an
40:40
Speaker 3: investigator go out to the scene a couple of days
40:43
Speaker 3: before the hearing and take a look at the vantage
40:46
Speaker 3: point that the kid across the street and his grandfather
40:50
Speaker 3: claimed to have seen mister McCrory's truck or something that
40:55
Speaker 3: looked like his truck, maybe on the.
40:57
Speaker 2: Day of the murder, maybe not.
40:59
Speaker 3: And the description of the vantage point that they gave
41:04
Speaker 3: to mister McCory's jury, it was described as being directly
41:08
Speaker 3: across the street. But if you were standing where they
41:12
Speaker 3: said they were standing, and you were looking toward the
41:15
Speaker 3: victim's house, you would not have been able to see
41:17
Speaker 3: the driveway in the way that they claimed. And when
41:21
Speaker 3: we put our investigator on the stand, we showed evidence
41:25
Speaker 3: from the nineteen eighties that showed that the houses were
41:28
Speaker 3: in the same position, that there were no new structures,
41:32
Speaker 3: and that they were the same when we did the
41:34
Speaker 3: hearing last year. So even this one shred of weak
41:38
Speaker 3: evidence was further undermined at this hearing.
41:42
Speaker 2: To sort of close out the rest of the hearing.
41:44
Speaker 2: You know, we felt like we did it. That's the
41:46
Speaker 2: only evidence. It's not there anymore. Right, And so what
41:48
Speaker 2: does the prosecution do. A prosecution has an investigator from
41:53
Speaker 2: their office read the direct testimony of some of the
41:58
Speaker 2: witnesses who testify in nineteen eighty five. So this guy's
42:02
Speaker 2: just literally reading the transcript. He's not reading the cross examinations,
42:06
Speaker 2: he's not reading any of the defense witnesses.
42:08
Speaker 1: He's just reading.
42:09
Speaker 2: Certain prosecutor and witnesses from nineteen eighty five, which seems
42:13
Speaker 2: to me a concession that they have no response to
42:16
Speaker 2: anything that we've said. And then in closing argument, get
42:20
Speaker 2: up and create an entirely new theory of guilt.
42:24
Speaker 1: Right.
42:24
Speaker 2: Liliana Sigoura and Jordan Smith did an article for The
42:27
Speaker 2: Intercept on this case, and they called the closing argument
42:30
Speaker 2: a fever dream. It was just this story that the
42:33
Speaker 2: new prosecutor made up, completely inconsistent with the theory that
42:38
Speaker 2: the prosecution had at the time. And so we're sitting
42:42
Speaker 2: there like, what is going on? What is this? This
42:45
Speaker 2: makes no sense this is a totally new theory. And
42:47
Speaker 2: so a few days after the hearing, in Investergeiter and
42:50
Speaker 2: I went down to the prison where Harvey Tipler was
42:54
Speaker 2: serving his prison. Since he was agreeable he knew the
42:57
Speaker 2: case well. He has since passed away. He spoke with
43:00
Speaker 2: us for quite a while about his memory of the
43:02
Speaker 2: case because I mentioned at the outset, we didn't have
43:05
Speaker 2: the opening statement or the closing argument, and so we
43:08
Speaker 2: didn't know what the prosecution argut in closing. So we
43:11
Speaker 2: went to the source and we said, mister Tipler, what
43:14
Speaker 2: did you say in closing? And he said, oh, it
43:15
Speaker 2: is the bitemark. That was all we had, you know.
43:18
Speaker 2: And so we submitted a notice to the court saying
43:22
Speaker 2: we would like to let the court know that mister Tipler,
43:25
Speaker 2: the lawyer who tried the case, disagrees with the new tact,
43:28
Speaker 2: essentially that the prosecution has taken and the court didn't
43:32
Speaker 2: allow us to add that to the record, so they
43:35
Speaker 2: had no response to the new evidence and instead made
43:39
Speaker 2: up this story. And the real kicker was when they
43:43
Speaker 2: said that the jury was free to decide for itself
43:51
Speaker 2: that it was mister McCrory's bitemark. So notwithstanding three dentists
43:56
Speaker 2: who said it's not a bitemark let alone. Mister McCrory's
44:00
Speaker 2: execution said, well, but the jury could have decided that
44:02
Speaker 2: it was, and therefore his convictions should stand.
44:05
Speaker 3: So to put it differently, lagers are more capable of
44:09
Speaker 3: engaging in junk science than the junk scientists themselves, right,
44:14
Speaker 3: So that the idea is is that you don't even
44:18
Speaker 3: need an expert witness. We can just put this junk
44:21
Speaker 3: science in front of the jury and that would be
44:23
Speaker 3: good enough for government work.
44:24
Speaker 4: You know what, do you bring in somebody LASU or
44:27
Speaker 4: all these big fancy pictures and all that, and they're
44:29
Speaker 4: gonna believe what he says. And the idea that somehow
44:32
Speaker 4: they can take that out and the jury would have
44:33
Speaker 4: reached the same verdict is ridiculous.
44:36
Speaker 1: It's unfucking real. And then on the first of March
44:39
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, you guys filed the motion to reconsider
44:43
Speaker 1: the order. In it, you've described all of the other
44:46
Speaker 1: bitemark cases that resulted in overturned convictions, and this emotion began.
44:51
Speaker 1: I think this is so powerful, just with the names
44:54
Speaker 1: of thirty five people who combined probably served over a
44:58
Speaker 1: thousand years in prison. If I to guess, and we
45:01
Speaker 1: know some of these names because they've been on the show,
45:04
Speaker 1: and I mean we can read them one at a time,
45:06
Speaker 1: I feel like we should go in each take turns
45:09
Speaker 1: reading the names.
45:10
Speaker 2: Keith Harward, Robert Stinson, Gerard Richardson, Willie Jackson, Roy Brown,
45:16
Speaker 2: Ray Cron, Calvin Washington, Joe Williams, James O'Donnell, Levon Brooks,
45:22
Speaker 2: Kennedy Brewer, Benny.
45:23
Speaker 1: Starks, Michael Christine.
45:25
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Muldowan, Anthony Keko, Harold Hill, Dan Young Junior, Greg Wilhoyt,
45:31
Speaker 3: Crystal Weimer, Stephen Cheney, William.
45:34
Speaker 1: Richards, Alfred Swinton.
45:36
Speaker 2: Sherwood Brown, John Kunzo, Garry Sifazzari, Sheila Denton, Robert de Boys,
45:41
Speaker 2: Eddie Lee, Howard, Gilbert Pool, and of.
45:44
Speaker 1: Course the man we're talking about today, Charles McCrory. And
45:47
Speaker 1: each of these people was wrongfully convicted due to bite
45:50
Speaker 1: mark evidence. And there are countless other names that could
45:53
Speaker 1: be added to this list that we haven't been able
45:55
Speaker 1: to help yet. So with that, Charles is in your
45:59
Speaker 1: thirty of this slow moving train wreck, you know, I
46:04
Speaker 1: want to find out from you guys, is there any
46:06
Speaker 1: steps that people can take as their petition. Is there someone?
46:10
Speaker 1: What can people do?
46:11
Speaker 2: We are appealing the case. We've partnered with some Alabama
46:15
Speaker 2: lawyers who are helping us do the best we can
46:18
Speaker 2: to try to convince the appellate court that the trial
46:21
Speaker 2: court will get it wrong. And so that's the next step.
46:23
Speaker 2: And I think just the more people who know about
46:25
Speaker 2: the case, the better.
46:26
Speaker 3: Reshare the podcast the articles to those listeners in Alabama
46:31
Speaker 3: to write into your lawmakers and question, you know why
46:37
Speaker 3: Charles McCrory, an instant man, is still in prison and
46:39
Speaker 3: this is correctable. Charles McCrory can still live the rest
46:43
Speaker 3: of his life and be reunited with his family. So
46:45
Speaker 3: I hope that listeners will help spread the word, help
46:50
Speaker 3: put pressure on the decision makers to do the right thing.
46:53
Speaker 2: We really want people in Alabama to know that this
46:56
Speaker 2: is happening in their backyard.
46:58
Speaker 3: And this is not a right or a less issue.
47:01
Speaker 3: This is a human rights issue. There should be no
47:03
Speaker 3: politics in freeing the innocent.
47:06
Speaker 1: So please do get involved. We'll put links in the
47:09
Speaker 1: bio to action steps you can take. Again. Chris Fabricant,
47:12
Speaker 1: go get the book Junk Science. Some of these stories
47:15
Speaker 1: are just too crazy to be believed. But you'll understand
47:19
Speaker 1: the issue so much better. And it's a great read
47:21
Speaker 1: to read like a novel. And now we turn to
47:24
Speaker 1: the part of our show that I know everyone looks
47:27
Speaker 1: forward to like I do, which is called closing arguments.
47:30
Speaker 1: And Chris, you know how it works. Charles was going
47:34
Speaker 1: to tell you how it works right now, and Mark,
47:37
Speaker 1: So basically I thank you closing arguments. I'm going to
47:41
Speaker 1: turn my microphone off and leave it on for each
47:44
Speaker 1: of you guys to share any thoughts that you have,
47:47
Speaker 1: anything we may have left out, or anything else you
47:49
Speaker 1: want to say. So we'll go Chris, then over to
47:53
Speaker 1: you Mark, and then of course mister McCrory, Charles, please
47:57
Speaker 1: close it out.
47:58
Speaker 3: I'd like people to retain their skepticism and that it's
48:03
Speaker 3: really important that we all serve on juries, that we
48:05
Speaker 3: have skeptical jurors and that don't believe anything that somebody
48:09
Speaker 3: tells you just because they're board certified or they're wearing
48:13
Speaker 3: a white lab coat.
48:15
Speaker 2: I want to just read a quote that I think
48:17
Speaker 2: is important for people to keep in mind. You know,
48:21
Speaker 2: Chris and I have mentioned a few times that we
48:24
Speaker 2: represented a woman by the name of Shila Denton in
48:27
Speaker 2: Georgia who was a bitemark case and in twenty twenty
48:30
Speaker 2: Miss Denton was granted a new trial. This is died
48:33
Speaker 2: in Waycross, Georgia, conservative part of Georgia, and the judge
48:37
Speaker 2: chief judge wrote, quote proven unreliable scientific evidence should never
48:43
Speaker 2: serve as the basis of a conviction and should be
48:46
Speaker 2: dealt with by the courts if and when it is found.
48:50
Speaker 2: And like doctor Suveran, who we applaud for admitting his mistake,
48:55
Speaker 2: like this judge who wrote this, who applaud for being
48:58
Speaker 2: courageous enough to overturn a murder conviction because it was
49:05
Speaker 2: based on proving unreliable scientific evidence. I just hope that
49:09
Speaker 2: there are more judges and prosecutors out there who have
49:12
Speaker 2: the courage that this judge did to see that and.
49:14
Speaker 1: To enforce that.
49:16
Speaker 4: Well. Again, I appreciate your interest in the case, and
49:19
Speaker 4: I just say that I think I wrote this recent
49:22
Speaker 4: but there should not be a finality in a case
49:24
Speaker 4: where an innocent person is in prison. And I think
49:27
Speaker 4: what some courts want to do is close the door.
49:30
Speaker 4: This is not the only case we know of thirty
49:32
Speaker 4: something exoneries just from dental evidence alone, and how many
49:36
Speaker 4: others are out there so juries. While they try to
49:39
Speaker 4: make I think good decisions, they do not make perfect
49:42
Speaker 4: decisions and there should be a real process for people.
49:45
Speaker 4: Seriously look at this when people claim innocence, and I
49:49
Speaker 4: appreciate groups like yourself and others that are working on that.
49:58
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to raw Conviction. I'd like to
50:01
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis,
50:05
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
50:08
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
50:12
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