Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #052 Jason Flom with John Huffington

Transcript

#052 Jason Flom with John Huffington · Wrongful Conviction

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: America has two point two million people in prison. If
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two thousand people.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of people's lives destroyed.
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  Speaker 2: If the system want to take you out of society,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: they will do it no matter what laws they have
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, but
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: they are breaking the lord.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Having to hear those people say that I was guilty
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  Speaker 1: of a crime that I did not commit, and then
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: hear my family break down behind me and not be
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: able to do anything about it. I can't describe the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: crushing weight that was.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: I'm not anti police, I'm just anti corruption.
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  Speaker 2: A lot of times we look and we see something
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  Speaker 2: happen to somebody and that's the first thing we said,
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  Speaker 2: that could never happen to me, But.
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  Speaker 3: They can.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: Jason Flamm. Today, I am actually in the presence of
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: someone who I am. I can only say I'm in
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: awe of this guy. John Huffington is here. John was
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  Speaker 4: in prison for thirty two years, ten of them on
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  Speaker 4: death row for a double murder that he didn't commit.
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  Speaker 4: And the things that he's doing today would embarrass the
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  Speaker 4: biggest do gooder among us. So, John, welcome to wrongful conviction.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Thank you. I appreciate that.
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: So John, let's go back to the beginning, before this
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: insane saga began, because this happened when you were eighteen.
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: But before that, how was your life? What was it like?
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: Where'd you grow up? So?
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  Speaker 3: I grew up in a small town called Churchvills. It's
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  Speaker 3: in Harford County, in between two bigger towns that folk
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: would know, bela Air and Aberdeen and Maryland in Maryland, Yes, Maryland.
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  Speaker 3: So I grew up probably will be considered middle class,
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  Speaker 3: upper class kind of a situation. Nice neighborhood, good schools.
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  Speaker 3: I had everything that you know you would want in
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  Speaker 3: that sense of support, a strong family. My parents ended
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: up being married over fifty six years. I think it was,
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: you know, at the end, siblings were doing well. So,
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: you know, it's like anything else young age, you know,
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  Speaker 3: we make our choices. We get exposed to different things.
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  Speaker 3: And I made a few the wrong choices and took
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  Speaker 3: quicker routes to negativity is what it turned out to be,
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  Speaker 3: and exposed myself to lifestyles that were not healthy. My
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: choices took me out of an arena where you know,
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  Speaker 3: I should have had the white picket fence and half
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  Speaker 3: kids or whatever and you.
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  Speaker 4: Know and adult. Were you doing anything violent at the time.
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  Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, I mean when I say bad choices,
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  Speaker 3: it was into getting into drugs and that's what I
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  Speaker 3: was doing. I was, I was dealing drugs and I
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  Speaker 3: was living that lifestyle.
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  Speaker 4: As you were between tenth grade and I guess twelfth
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  Speaker 4: grade when this happened, right, Did you ever have any
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: interaction with law enforcement based on the fact that you
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: were involved with drugs? No.
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  Speaker 3: I never had any regular charge placed on me in
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  Speaker 3: that regard. I was a wild child and my parents
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: were trying to bring me more under control. So there
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: was that I was exposed to the juvenile criminal system
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: justice system at that time with what they call sin
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  Speaker 3: charle child and need a supervision because my parents were
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  Speaker 3: kind of wits end what to do. So I got
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: juvenile probation and had to do like family counseling and
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: that kind of thing to work through that. But again
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  Speaker 3: it was me being rebellious against you know, my parents were.
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  Speaker 3: There was a serious generation gap. My parents were born
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  Speaker 3: in the twenties and they were in their forties before
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  Speaker 3: the kids came along. So as I was pushing the
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  Speaker 3: boundaries of curfews and just lifestyle choices, it was very
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  Speaker 3: hard to sort of transgress into that through the family unit.
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  Speaker 3: And you know, having your younger brother and sister, my
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  Speaker 3: parents didn't want that to be a bad influence on
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  Speaker 3: them as well, so you know they were right to
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  Speaker 3: try and bring me and bring me in tighter.
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  Speaker 4: So none of the stuff that you're describing would prepare
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  Speaker 4: you or anyone for death row or any of the
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  Speaker 4: stuff that was to befall you. And it all leads
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  Speaker 4: to that faithful day of May twenty fifth, nineteen eighty one,
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  Speaker 4: when there was a double murder and you were implicated
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  Speaker 4: ultimately by the guy who actually committed the crimes. So
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  Speaker 4: how did how did they come to decide to come
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  Speaker 4: get you in the first place.
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  Speaker 3: So the night of or prior in that evening, I
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: was with what turned out to be my co defendant
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  Speaker 3: and we were at a club and they were closing
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  Speaker 3: that club early. It was a Sunday night, and the
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  Speaker 3: owner was like, well, we're all going to go over here,
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  Speaker 3: why don't we go? And so we ended up over
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  Speaker 3: at the club where one of the victims worked as
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  Speaker 3: a DJ and the guy had worked for me in
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  Speaker 3: the past. Like when I say worked for me, he
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  Speaker 3: had purchased quantities of cocaine, you know, and sold for me.
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  Speaker 3: So we had various conversations and my co defendant was
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: actually looking to make a purchase that night. I was
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  Speaker 3: waiting for supply to come in anyway. So that's kind
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  Speaker 3: of the realm of why we were all in that,
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  Speaker 3: you know, gathering, so to speak. So we left there
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: after having some conversation. At the end of the night
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  Speaker 3: at two in the morning whatever we had gone back
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  Speaker 3: to he lived in a trailer home. We had gone
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  Speaker 3: back and had further conversation. My co defend actually purchased
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: like an eighth of an hour ocid, coke or whatever
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  Speaker 3: from him, and we left it at that and we left.
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  Speaker 3: So when the murders were discovered the next day and
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: the police investigation led them to my co defendant because
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  Speaker 3: his name had been said while they were in the car,
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  Speaker 3: because I guess we were following them and somebody's like,
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  Speaker 3: who's the car following us, and it was said, you know,
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  Speaker 3: that's Dino. So they they tracked him down and he
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: reached out to me asking for an alibi. And again,
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  Speaker 3: look at that age, I was eighteen, I'm I'm a
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  Speaker 3: drug dealer, I'm anti police, I'm like all about the
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  Speaker 3: loyalty factor and you know, never snitching and all those
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: kind of things, just being young and stupid. So it
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: wasn't a big thing to me. It was like, whatever,
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  Speaker 3: no problem. This is The following night, I guess, I
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: got a call from his cousin that said the police
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  Speaker 3: had reached out to him looking for me because apparently
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  Speaker 3: they didn't know my last name. They just wanted to
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  Speaker 3: talk to me. So I was like, fine, let's go.
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  Speaker 3: Let's go see him. So literally, we went to the
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  Speaker 3: police station and I walked in, I knocked on the
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: door and I said, you know, I'm John Huffington. I
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  Speaker 3: understanding you're looking for me, and they were like, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: we are, so.
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  Speaker 4: But you didn't know at that time what they were
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  Speaker 4: looking for you for.
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  Speaker 3: No, I honestly, I didn't know the extent of what happened.
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  Speaker 3: I just knew something had happened.
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  Speaker 4: Well because your friend at the time, cod defended it
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  Speaker 4: turned out to be Dino Canaris. He hadn't told you
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  Speaker 4: about what he had done. He just told you that
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  Speaker 4: he wanted an all.
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  Speaker 3: We need to we need to have been here all
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  Speaker 3: night because we had gone to a convention music convention
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  Speaker 3: that they have as a bluegrass convention the next day,
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  Speaker 3: and it was like, we need to fill the gap
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  Speaker 3: from the night before. You know, I'm not stupid, but
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  Speaker 3: I don't. I just didn't know the extent of it.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, who would ever expect that he had committed
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: a double murder? I mean, did you know this guy
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  Speaker 4: to be a violent guy.
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  Speaker 3: No, But as the case developed, a quick sidebar on
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: that there was a witness that came forward who I
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: didn't even know. You know, I'd met once in my life.
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  Speaker 3: But this guy said that he was with Dino like
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: two weeks prior to this, and they were at the location,
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: the campground, and the Dino pulled out a gun and
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: a knife and wanted to go kill and rob these people. Again,
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  Speaker 3: I don't find this out till years later in his trial.
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  Speaker 3: Like that witness never testified at one of my trials. Ever,
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  Speaker 3: it wasn't my witness, stayed witness.
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  Speaker 4: And again, you had never personally known him to be
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  Speaker 4: prone to this type of talking about violence and extreme violence.
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  Speaker 3: Extreme yeah, no, I hadn't. I mean I always looked
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  Speaker 3: at him. Quite honestly, he wasn't a friend of mine.
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  Speaker 3: His other cousins were friends of mine. Like I didn't
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  Speaker 3: like Dino. He was addicted to the cocaine. This is
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  Speaker 3: a guy that chased it.
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  Speaker 4: So you covered for him because you just were more
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  Speaker 4: I mean, even though he wasn't really a friend, you
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  Speaker 4: were more anti authority at the time, and you were
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  Speaker 4: just kind of being questionable too.
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  Speaker 3: Like the Greek.
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  Speaker 4: He was much older than you, right, Yeah, he was in.
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  Speaker 3: Mid twenties something, I think twenty seven. I was eighteen.
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  Speaker 3: The Greeks have their thing, and like I said, I
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  Speaker 3: was friends with their cousin. I'm thinking, I'm rolling with
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  Speaker 3: the gangsters, and this is what we all do, and
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: it's that kind of a lifestyle. But again, it's something
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  Speaker 3: I still ascribe to today, Like I don't, you know,
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  Speaker 3: have my code of what we could call honor ethics
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  Speaker 3: were I don't snitch, you know, so when I get
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  Speaker 3: in there and you know, they're confronting me with this,
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  Speaker 3: I don't have a way out. Now. It's different to
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  Speaker 3: think abstractly like Okay, something happened, even a crime of violence,
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  Speaker 3: something happened. You know, it's abstract, but when you you know,
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: started hearing the elements of it, it was very I'm eighteen,
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  Speaker 3: it was a little overwhelming. I didn't even know how
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  Speaker 3: to process it. So my reaction to them was, look,
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  Speaker 3: I'm not involved in this. You can come search my
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  Speaker 3: apartment right now. I'll take a lot of tective tests.
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  Speaker 3: I'll do whatever I can to extricate myself the only
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  Speaker 3: way I know how. So they were like, we'll do
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  Speaker 3: all that. So literally left the police station now is
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  Speaker 3: probably midnight on Sunday, and they drove me back to
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  Speaker 3: my apartment and I turned in like all my paraphernalia
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  Speaker 3: right then and there, because I told them, I said,
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  Speaker 3: if you search my apartment, there might be some things
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  Speaker 3: that you're going to find. And they're like like what,
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  Speaker 3: And I'm like, you know, I have scales, I have
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  Speaker 3: drug parafhinney, that kind of thing, and they're like, are
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  Speaker 3: you willing to turn it in? I'm like absolutely, I
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  Speaker 3: just retired as of today, as of this moment, I'm retired.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not a drug dealer anymore. Like I knew my
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: life had just completely changed right then and there. So
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: we went back to the apartment, and I turned in
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  Speaker 3: all this material and I volunteered to take the LT
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  Speaker 3: of detector tests. So the only thing I had said
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: is I just wanted a lawyer there, and I don't.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: I don't have a lawyer, I don't know a lawyer.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: So the next morning, I literally went to the Yellow Pages,
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: and back in those days, they had Yellow Pages, and
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: there was a guy in my class at school who
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: I knew his father was an attorney. So I looked
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: for that last name, called that law firm, and it
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: turns out as father does civil but his uncle does
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: criminal law. So I set up an appointment and went
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: in there the very next morning at like nine o'clock
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  Speaker 3: and met with the attorney and you know, they're like, well,
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  Speaker 3: what is it you want us to do. I'm like,
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  Speaker 3: I want to take the LOT of detector test. I
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: want this to be you know, I don't want them
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  Speaker 3: looking at me like I'm in I want to do this,
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: and they're like, okay, we'll set it up.
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  Speaker 4: So I was.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: Leaving the police station, went to get in our cars
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: with my future brother in law. He was my sister's
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: boyfriend at the time, and Dino's father was standing outside
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: because the restaurant's right there. So I said good morning
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  Speaker 3: to him and continued on to get in the car. Well,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: unbeknownst to me that night, Dino had gone to his
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: father and gave his whatever you want to call his confession.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: But obviously it was all putting the weight on me,
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: saying that I held him hostage while all this stuff happened.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: So all that had transpired unbeknownst to me during the evening,
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: So when his father saw me, his father ran into
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: the police station and said, you know, John Hoffingon is
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: out in the parking lot. So we're starting to pull
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: out of our parking spot. I look up, I see
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: the back of the police station door just burst open.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: A dozen officers are fanning out into the parking lot.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: We're the only vehicle moving, so we're immediately surrounded. Guns
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: drown So I told him, my brother in law, I
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: just just stopped, just pull over, and we get out
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  Speaker 3: of the car, and it's like.
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: That was it.
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  Speaker 3: That was the last time that right there, that moment
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  Speaker 3: was the last time my feet hit the ground until
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: thirty two years later.
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  Speaker 4: Thirty two years.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Later, and I never did get that light detective.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: Test, never got the light detective test. It sounds like
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: some other people should have been given light detectors, and.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: They were, and they were and he failed to our
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: knowledge and what my law firm was able to ascertain,
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: were aware that he took two and he failed both
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: of them.
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: You're talking about Diinoo. So now you know you're in
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: real trouble. You've got this lawyer. Now did he end
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: up representing you? And how and how did things go
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: from there? How long were you held in jail? I'm
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: assuming you were held without bail because this was a
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: I mean you're talking about Joe Hudson was shot and
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: killed outside of farm on his way to a turn
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: out to be a fabricated drug deal. Right. He was
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: the boyfriend of Diana Becker, who was beaten and stabbed.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: She had been sleeping her trailer her son found her.
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's the whole thing's horrible in every way,
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: and then it gets worse when an innocent man ends
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: up serving all this time in prison when they actually
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: had the real perpetrator. But he had every reason to
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: implicate you. I mean, he didn't care about you at all,
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: and he was making a deal for himself, probably to
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: spare his own life because of course Maryland had the
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: death penalty still.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: Does, I think, right, No, they've abolised it.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: So Marylnd's a bossed death en. But they had the
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: death back then. So yeah, he had the strongest possible
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: incentive to implicate somebody. And you were the logical guy
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: because you were the guy who had been around that night, right,
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: So it's like he didn't need to be a brain
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: surgeon to figure that out. But then it's interesting too
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: because he came up with this story which every time
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: I think we've ever heard of it, it's been false, right,
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: which is that you held him hostage.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: And it changes, you know, his story changes every time
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: he testifies grand jury. I've had two trials. Will Mitt
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: is his gun. There's really no ducking that because when
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: he was with these undercover cops, there was a point
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: in time where they were driving somewhere and he was
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: in the car with the officer and he said, wait
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: a minute, let me go get my gun. I don't
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: ever go anywhere without my gun. So he went back
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: to his car. He came back with the gun. Now
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: the officer obviously is not pleased with this. Nervously he's
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: carrying a gun, so asked to see it, like, let
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: me what do you carry? Let me see it. Apparently
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: it's a it was a unique kind of a thirty
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: eight something. There was an animal in the handle or something.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: The officer noted that. So just he can't duck the
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: fact that this officer is testifying it's an undercover state
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: police officer. The canarious carries a gun. So he tells
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: different versions of he supposedly sells me this gun, like
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: either two weeks before or a month before. You know,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: that kind of stuff changes every time he opens his mouth.
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: And of course you didn't have the gun. I don't
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: have a gun, And they knew you didn't have gun
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: because they'd search your apartment. They searched everything. There was
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: no physical evidence connecting you to the crime.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: The only thing that they as far as physical evidence goes,
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: is there's a vodka bottle that apparently was used as
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: a weapon to to bludge in Diana, and my fingerprint,
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: they've claimed, is on the neck of this bottle. Now,
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: this is back in the eighties where everybody, myself included,
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: we always had these big bottles in your apartment or whatever,
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: and where you throw your coins and usually you had
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: these big feathers sticking out of it. I did on mine,
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: and that's what this bottle was in the trailer. Apparently
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: it was full of coins and such. So, you know,
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: they asked me, well, how could your fingerprint get on there?
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: My answers, I don't know. Like I was in the trailer.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: Did I touch it at one point? I don't know.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to sit here and tell you lie
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: and say very specifically that night I moved the bottle.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: So therefore my fingerprints on there, I don't know. If
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: you say my fingerprints on there. There was also, I
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: don't know, it was over twenty other fingerprints and handprints
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: on this bottle that still to this day remained unidentified.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: But that was the other piece of evidence that they've
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: used to put me at the scene. You know, I
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: don't have an answer for that. I'm not going to
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: sit here and make up an answer. I've been in
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: the trailer, I was there that night. Did I touch it?
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: If if my fingerprints on there, obviously I did it
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: some point point. Did I swing it as a weapon. No,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: that's just not the facts.
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: So so you go to trial, did you still have
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: the same lawyer.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: No, I you know at this point, I mean, you know,
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: I'm eighteen, and it wasn't that that could have a
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: drug dealer. I couldn't afford lawyers, so it became a
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: public defender. By the time I made it to trial,
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: I was represented by a public defender who, you actually
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: did a fairly good job. I mean he I thought,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: you know, he did a great job, and apparently the
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: jury didn't.
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: Your parents didn't want to pay for a lawyer.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: No, you know, I was living on my own. I
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: didn't really talk to them about that. I mean, it
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: was kind of understood, like, you know, I'm grown, I'm
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: an adult, and you know, this is my journey, and
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: you know, I wasn't going to pull the family down
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: into it. My mom especially was very supportive, sat there
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: every day of trial and stuff. But no, my entire incarceration,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: I never financially pulled anybody into it.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: That's the way you are in any case. So you
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: had this public defender who did as good of a
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: job as you could have done under the circumstances, which
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: kudos to him. But at what point did you realize
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: that you were doomed.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Here's a funny story.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: So the funny story there ain't nothing funny about that.
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: There's not.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: But this is this is when I knew I was
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: in serious, serious trouble. So it's a change of venue
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: because it's death penalty case, it's automatic change of venue.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: So I'm not in Harford County where the crime occurred,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: which is you know, rural but metropolitan. I'm in Caroline County,
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: which is extremely rural. So in the middle of the trial,
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: the jury's been sworn, this older woman approached the jury
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: box and passed a note to this elderly gentleman that
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: was on the jury, And of course everybody's watching it,
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: like what the heck, what the hell's going on? You
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: don't do this? And the judge stopped everything. It's like,
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't remember the names, but he's like, Myrtle,
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: come up here for a minute. And she comes up there,
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: and it's like what are you doing? What did you
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: just pass the bill? Everybody knows everybody in this county,
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: you know, Like she's like, oh, and he had the note,
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: he had the Bailif grab the note, it had one
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: word on it, soybeans. So it's like, what is this
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: all about. She's like, well, the seas just came in
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: and I need Bill at home to plant the crop.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: Now I knew I'm in trouble because here I am.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: This is a very cosmopolitan case, and you know, you know,
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: it's drugs and it's the city and this kind of thing.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: And I'm in a courtroom where they're talking about soybeans.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: That's their priority, and they're not going to get any
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: of this information whatsoever. It just was one of those
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm in Mayberry and I'm in trouble. They're
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: going to listen to anything officials tell them, be it
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: state's attorneys, FBI agents on the stand. This is the
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: kind of folk that are just going to believe in
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: authority without questioning it or challenging it.
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: So and they got to get home to deal with seib.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: So they got to get home. So they're going to
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: rush out of here as quickly as they can. And
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: it was Friday the thirteenth that the verdict came in,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: So of course that was an interesting day. But it
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: was just interesting. You asked when I knew it was like,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: quite honestly, there was a lot of naiveness on my part, thinking,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: you know, I had never really been exposed to this
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: system and I'm like, truth, this is what this is about.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: It's going to come out. They're going to figure this out.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: And it just didn't come like that. It's just I
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: had FBI agent after FBI agent come in there and
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: their suits and ties and we're with the FBI lab
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: me and they're saying what they're saying. Well, all three
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: of those FBI agents have now been discounted, like their testimony,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: their their tests have been thrown out. But at the time,
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: that's an impressive thing to may bury er anywhere else.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: And you know, I was just up against it. And
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: the more you sit there day after day listening to
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: the testimony, the more worried you get. This is not
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: going to go.
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: Well, no, you were. You were doing this backwoods place
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: and people that are that are heredy get home and
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: it's a perfect storm. You're done. And we know now,
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: and the FBI has acknowledged this right because the four
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: year study was conducted by the Innocis Project and the FBI,
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: and the results showed that in a study I think
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: it was two hundred and sixty eight cases, they found
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: that I think in two hundred and fifty seven of them.
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to remember these numbers out of my head.
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: I think that's right. FBI agents had either lied or
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: been mistaken, and these were all cases involving hair analysis
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: like yours. In fact, yours was one of them. And
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: the fact is that when I say they either lied
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: or were mistaken, what I want people to understand is
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: that in every one of those cases in which they
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: were mistaken, they were mistaken in favor of the prosecution.
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: So it's hard to take a view and say, well,
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: these were honest mistakes because none of them came down
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: in the other direction. And of the twenty eight FBI
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: agents involved, twenty six of them were complicit in this.
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: So you were a victim like so many other people,
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: based on this hair analysis in which they either lied
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: or exaggerated or or misstated the likelihood that the hairs
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: could have come from somebody else. And we know that
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: they were just making these fingers up out of thin
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: air and saying things with certainty that were in some
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: cases even money or even less right, that the odds
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: could it could have come from almost anyone. And of
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: course it's extremely powerful, as you said, when an FBI
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: agent gets up there, I mean, who's gonna Who's gonna
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: think twice. Maybe people who listen to the show will
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: think twice. I hope. So so the day comes Friday
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: the thirteenth, you've got very little hope in hell at
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: this point. What were you expecting when the jury went out?
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: How long did they deliberate?
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Day and a half.
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: Wow, that's actually longer than I would have thought. And
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: then they come back in did they look at you?
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: No?
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: They always have heard that adage before, like if they're
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: not looking at you, you're in trouble. So they didn't,
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: And so I knew, you know, you just get that,
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: you know, like, I don't know that's true, but I've
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: been to somebody told me that prior. So I was
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: looking to see if they were going to look me
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: in the eye. And they didn't. So you stand for
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: the verdict. The first count. It was the strangest thing.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: I still don't understand how they did it. But the
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: first count was first degree premeditated moles forethought murder, you know,
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: murdered the first degree. And they said not guilty.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: So I was like, like, okay, and you thought you
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: were going home. I thought that's okay, this is good.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: You know, we made it. We proved our point. Then
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: they said, okay, as to the first count, still the
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: same first count, indictment to felony murder. How do you
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: find And that's when they say guilty And I'm like, wait,
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: I just got it. Guilty and not guilty on the
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: same count, just two different degrees of murder. It always
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: bothered me, and I've actually challenged that over and over
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: again as a double jeopardy violation, but it never it
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: just never caught wind. You know, we just couldn't prevail
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: on that. But that's my feelings. As I was standing there,
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: is like wow. You know, you go from all the
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: way to the top of the roller coaster all the
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: way at the bottom that quickly, and from that you
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: don't really hear anything more Like I didn't. I was
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: just in a daze, like what just happened here? And
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: you're trying to process it, and I'm like, I'm eighteen
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: years old, Like as smart as I might have thought
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: I was at that age. You know, now I have
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: thirty some years of hindsight to look back on that
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: eighteen year old kid that was standing there, and I'm
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: not smart and I didn't know how to process it.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: It was way above my capacity to really understand and
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: fathom what had happened and what was about to happen,
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: the whole nine I mean, looking back, it's like, I
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: don't even know how I was able to stand there
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: and just absorb it.
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's samerically you were able to stay
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: on your feet.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: Actually I was rocking. There wasn't any breeze in that courtroom,
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: but I certainly started, you know, like just rocking on
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: my heels a little bit. Like I was taken.
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: Aback and your mom was there? Do you remember who
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: else was there?
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: You know? I remember, Yeah, my parents were there. You know,
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: I'm under custody, so I can't even go over and
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: get my mother. Oh, I can't be reassuring. I can't
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: do anything because I don't even know, don't I don't
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: know what's about to befall me. I don't know what
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: death row is going to be like in the penitentiary
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: because it's a buyerfurcated process. So the conviction has happened,
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: but now I've got to come back in about a
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: month and be sentenced. There's a whole other process about
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: to occur as well. And again I had not been
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: exposed to this. This is long before forensic files and
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: CSI and all these kinds of shows, Like I don't know,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: I just didn't know, and I don't think I ever
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: processed it. I think I just absorbed it and just
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: like treading water, just kept my head above water and
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: just kept coming.
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: You know, so so amazing that you said what you
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: just said, and you were so young, and then your
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: situation couldn't have been more diary. You were about to
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: be sent to death, and yet your thought was trying
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: to comfort your mom, not the other way around. It's
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: amazing to me like that. You know, what that says
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: about your character is pretty profound, and I just want
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: to take a moment to recognize that. So now the
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: worst possible thing that could happen has happened. Off you
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: go to prison. Can you take us through that? I
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: mean death row? I think it's everybody's most primal fear.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Well, interesting enough, in Maryland the time that I went
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: on death row, it was not segregated, and we were
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: in population when I first went in there. What they
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: would do is they put you on ad and in SAG.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: In other words, they lock you on a cell for
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: a month just to see if you're your head's right,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: I guess, and then they let you out into regular pop.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: You know you're in gen pop. There's nothing to distinguish
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: you as being death row. They had a board somewhere
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: where they had kept our pictures on it and like,
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: these are the guys on death row. But we lived
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: anywhere we wanted inside the prison. We could live in
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: any housing block we wanted. We weren't all in the
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: same tier or whatever at the beginning, the years into it,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: I don't know, four or five years in, they decided
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: to put us all in the same tiers, so like
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: we were sell one through twelve on the second tier
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: street side of a block. So we were housed to
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: go at a later point, but in the beginning we weren't.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: The thing about prison is like everybody knows everything. The
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: grapevine is extremely good, so people know you're on death
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: road whatever, but it doesn't carry any cachet value when
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: the guy next to you is serving five life sentences,
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: so he doesn't give a shit that you got two
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: death ponies. You know, it doesn't matter, doesn't give you
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: any credentials whatsoever. It really comes down to who you are.
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: Did you say two death penalties.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, my original sentence was death plus death plus fifteen
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: plus five plus three the first total two death ponies
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: in like twenty one years, all consecutive by the way, right,
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: I don't know how you do that time.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: But well so if they execute you when you come
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: back to life, they can execute you again.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: And then hold my body for twenty one years, I guess.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: Or if you come back to life a second time, right,
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: then they get to hold you in prison for another
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: twenty one years.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: It's really just sho, just stepid.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: The concept is, yeah, double the double death sentences, Like
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: what the fuck? Anyway? I can't I can't even process
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: this as far as death row is concerned. I mean,
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: there's no good news whatsoever.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: There's nothing. There is absolutely zero for that. And you
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: learn the minute you step onto the tier, like nobody
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: gives a shit if you're innocent, you're not, so like
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: there's no point in going in there saying, you know,
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: but wait, I'm innocent. I'm innocent, so I guess I
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: can like it. It's like if you stepped out on
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: a pond, a frozen pond, and you suddenly the ice
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: cracked and you fell through and you drift, so you're
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: not under that air hole anymore. But you can see
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: through the ice and you know, it's twelve inches of
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: ice there. You see the people, and you could scream
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: all you want, it's just air bubbles, you know, like
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: you just can't be heard. You're trapped. And that's just
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: how it felt. It's a self imposed cage that I
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: put myself on because you want to scream through the
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: world like I'm innocent, I don't belong here. But then
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: you you know, everybody doesn't belong in prison, and everybody's innocent.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: You fall into that, so I don't know. I just
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: you bite your tongue. You learn to adjust to the
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: city situation the best you can. And I just hit
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: the law library, you know. I spent the first year
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: just reading everything i'd get my hands on and studying law,
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: and I was writing my emotions and driving my lawyers crazy,
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: you know. But I was fighting for my life, and
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: that's the only way I knew how to do it.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: So I tried to be a little bit more proactive
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: or constructive in that way instead of just sitting back
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: with a woe is me attitude. And obviously I couldn't
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: count anybody else to save my life. I have to
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: fight for my life, and that's what I did.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: You brought up an interesting point, which is that as
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: a death row inmate, you are entitled to a post
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: conviction council, right, an apella council. So that's about the
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: only positive thing I guess about being sentenced to death,
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: Whereas if you were a normal inmate or sense to life,
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: you would not be entitled to that and you'd be
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: totally on your own. So there you were in the
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: law library. Was what was the day to day experience,
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: the physical experience, but also what was the mental and
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: spiritual thing that led you to be able to not
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: only maintain your physical health, so I mean as best
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: you could, but also eventually find a way to get
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: out and be sitting right here right now. I mean,
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: what can you tell us?
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: Well, soon the beginning guy was just angry. You know,
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: I was young and still not that I figured myself
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: out by any means. But I hadn't like really took
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: that time in the introspection and try to figure out
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: who I thought I was. So maybe the first I
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: want to say, these six or seven years, I probably
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: was close to becoming everything they wanted me to be,
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: which is the convict. I was getting in trouble inside.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: I had my share of fights. I had a violation
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: of the prison rules for whatever things I was doing.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: I had an attempt to escape, you know, I just
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: I was not conformed, wasn't going to conform. I had
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: a real problem with authority, with the officers. I literally
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: got an assault charge against one officer one time, who
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: said I saw to them. But I was defending myself against
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: five officers, and you know, I'm the one against the
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: assault charge, which was dropped later. But so that's where
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: I was becoming. And then I guess I had a
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: little epithemy. You know, I woke up and there was
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: a guy I was working with. I was in the
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: property room, you know, I went did my job every
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: day and I worked in the package room and where
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: the property was packed up. And this guy was always
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: involved in activities like he was a member j c's
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: was you had a chapter inside this is the Junior
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Chamber of Commerce, And he was always doing paperwork and
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: doing stuff. And I was like, what are you doing
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: And he's like, you need to come join, you need
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: to be a part of this. So I ended up
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: joining the j CS, and the minute I joined, they
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: asked me to be on their board as Ways and
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: Means director, their fundraiser, and then two years later, one
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: year later, I was the president. And you know, now
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: the jc's are is a leadership training through community service.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: They were doing a lot of good things, and I
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: felt a responsibility that I got one hundred and twenty guys.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: Maybe not all of them voted for me, but they
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: elected me, and so I'm there to lead them. And then,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: you know, I started looking around and it's like, here
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: are these you know, their kids. Some of them were
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: sixteen seventeen younger than me. They had come into the
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: system and they're the throwaway class, and nobody cared. Nobody
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: was working with them. The warden had two rules, don't
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: jump on my wall and don't jump on my officers.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Other than that, anything went. I mean, guy gets killed,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: like stabbed to death on the yard. Literally two hours later,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: they threw sand over the blood and we're back to normal,
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: like nothing ever happened. That's that was the penitentiaries back then.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: So I felt a calling to do something different, and
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: so through jc's, you know, we were able to start
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: doing some things that brought a certain degree of i
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: don't know, self respect and measurability to not just the inmates,
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: but to the population inside as well as out. So
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: we did a lot of projects out on the street,
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: and we had a local chapter, the NAACP that was
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: in there as well. And this is like when school
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: uniforms were first coming back as a topic. There was
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: a young girl that got murdered straight bullet hit her
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: and she was like eight years old, attended Utah Marshburne
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: Elementary School and they were having trouble raising the money
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: for their school uniforms. So we did it inside of prison.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: We raised that money for the school uniforms, the NAP
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: and the JCS. And then it was you know, I
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: saw a little article in the It was the open
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: form section of the Aegis. It was a letter that
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: a woman had written about her grandchild needed a bone
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: marrow transplant, shorans won't go pay for it. She was
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: asking for help. So I reached out and contacted her
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: and said, look, you know, we don't have a lot
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: of money, but we have a silk screen shop, so
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: you know, we can design some T shirts and I'll
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: give them to you. You can sell them at your fundraisers,
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: you know. So we ended up giving her like five
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: hundred T shirts and like a thousand of these little buttons,
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: and they were using those to raise money and the
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: girl got her surgery. It was successful, and you know,
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: every Christmas, the grandmother would send me pictures and a card,
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: you know, tell them to give me an update as
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: she you know, went through life and graduated high school
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: and stuff. So there was a lot of good And
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: I don't say that because it was me. I'll saying
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: it because it was one hundred and twenty guys following
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: what we were doing that were doing good things and
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: giving back to the community outside as well as inside.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: And that's where I found, I guess my calling in
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: a sense where rewoken my own social conscience and my
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: passion to do something right and do it well, you know.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: To be honest, it was just be An Onnery, like
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: I'm still fighting my case, and my thought process was
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to be carried kicking and screaming into
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: a gas chamber and I'm not going to walk in
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: their head bowed. If that's the ultimate thing's going to
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: happen when I walk in there, they're gonna still question
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: for decades later what they did and why they did
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: it and if they got the right guy, because I'm
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: not going to fit the stereotype of what they think.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: So it's just important. And at the end, it really
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: is you know, they talk about the dash. It really
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: comes down to the dash. This man was born, this
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: man dies. It's about what happens in between the dash
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: that's in between those two dates. And if you don't
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: make it count for something, then why were you here?
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: So I figured, if I'm in there, that's where my
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: dash is gonna be, then it's still gonna count. And
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: so it was really really important to me to make
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: my life mean something, regardless of where I was. So,
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: you know, I was doing the JCS. We brought Alternative
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: to Violence Project from New York down to Baltimore. You know,
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: this was starting green Haven State Prison up here by
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: the Quakers. It's now an international organization conflict mediation. We
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: started that in Maryland and I got my college degree
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: while I was inside. I was in the last graduating classes.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Congress took away our access to the Pelgram. They literally
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: took away my senior year. I graduated as a junior
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: I just was lucky. I was going for a dual
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: degree and I had enough credits to go on out.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: But I lost my senior year over that poor decision.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: But so I chose to make the time work for me,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: not saying it was easy time. I did my time
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: and all the hardest prisons in Maryland. You know, I
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: was in the penitentiary for my first sixteen I was
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: in Cumberland, I was in the cut, I was in supermacs.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: I didn't get any easy ride. There was no country
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: club prison for me at any point in time. But
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: we were able to make a difference and change not
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: just our mentalities, but I think somehow society looked at us,
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: and hopefully those seas that we planted back then grow
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: trees now because more people are looking at re entry
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: and trying to get reciptism down and understanding the need
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: to launch programs in the system and work with folk,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: not to warehouse people, but to actually say, regardless of
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: why you're there, human beings are redeemable and the human
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: spirit is going to thrive in spite of So why
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: don't we encourage that? Why don't we order that with
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: positivity rather than encourage the negativity. Because you encourage the negativity,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: you just create an unsafe environment for your own guard force.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: And seventy five percent of these people are coming home
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: breeding repeat.
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: So well yeah, I mean nationally, ninety five percent of
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: everyone that's in prison is going to be released at
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: some point. So, just purely on a societal level, it
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: behooves all of us to want to have those people
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: have a shot when they get out at getting on
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: the right track. So you survived this death row ordeal.
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: All the odds were stacked against you. Finally, decades into
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: this nightmare of yours, you discover that the evidence exists
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: that can actually free you. Right, and the response of
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: the authorities is actually fucking mind blowing.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: Talk about the hair and when that emerged and how
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: it emerged and what the response of the people in
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: power was.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: I'll try to do this really quickly because it goes
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: all the way back to the Oklahoma City bombing case.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: So after the Oklahoma City bombing case, there was a
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: whistleblower that came out of the FBI lab, doctor Frederick Whitehurst,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: and he brought forth several allegations about the pressure to
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: falsify it evidence and the very fact that the lab
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: was not equipped to deliver a good report. It was dirty,
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: the best practices weren't being utilized. He laid it out
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: and what ended up happening. It launched I think about
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: a year long investigation from the Spector General's Office at
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: which time, at the conclusion of that, they issued this
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: massive report, three hundred page report, and they found that
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: what doctor Whitehurst had alleged was true in a lot
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: of cases, so in particular it affects me. They named
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: the FBI agent that it testified in my case, agent
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: Michael Malone, and their commentary about him was that he
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: consistently testified outside of his area of expertise and misrepresented evidence.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: Now I'm just a layman. It sounds like you just
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: called the man a liar with very fancy words, but
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: they didn't go quite that far to call him that.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: So here's this report and I'm thinking, great, we can
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: do something. Well we can't. I'm on collateral attack at
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: this time, meaning post conviction, and apparently that report doesn't
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: mean anything. So I was never able to persevere or
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: follow any kind of motions based on that. So now
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: well let me jump to the next part. So in
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: two thousand and three, I get introduced to the Innostance Project.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: A friend of mine was working through the Innocence Project
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: in Nina Nina. Morrison was handling his case and he
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: had a hair evidence in this case and a DNA
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: tested it came back it wasn't his. He was about
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: to go home and he was like, you need to
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: contact these people because he knew my case and he
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: knew me. He'd been around me for decades. You know,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: we know trust me. This fellow convicts. We know who
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: did a crime and who didn't, and he knew that
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: I didn't do it. So with his encouragement, I'd reached
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: out and got the Innocence Project involved in my law firm,
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: and we had filed to do DNA testing on the hair.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: This is two thousand and three. Well, the very first
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: thing the state did in writing was filed in motion
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: asking the court's permission to destroy the evidence. Now we
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: didn't know why is an odd thing to right? You know,
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: like we want to just know you've held it for whatever,
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: twenty six twenty seven years at that time, and now
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: you want to destroy it when we're about to send
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: it to a lab that we mutually agree you know,
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: is the top it's might have typing lab in Pennsylvania,
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: doctor Terry Melton, who's the foremost DNA scientists in the country.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: And we all agree this is going to be a fair review,
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: and you're saying you want to destroy the evidence. So
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: the judge ruled against that, and after an eight hour
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: long court in battle, we've got to approveal to send
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: the hair to the lab.
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: Well at least time for a second here, right, So
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: I'm just picturing the judge. The judge sitting there and
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: the prosecutors are arguing, saying, you know what, before we
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: discover the truth, we just like to take the preliminary
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: step of destroying any chance of discovering the truth by
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: eliminating the one thing that can actually tell us what happened.
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: You know, you can't make this stuff up. It's public
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: record is you couldn't write a script like this. It's
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: mind boggling. It becomes more mind boggling when fourteen years
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: later we understand why that. So what happens is we
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: send these slides to the lab, we get a call
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: from the lab that basically says, what do you want
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: us to do with this? And we're like, test the
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: two hairs. And again, I have to pay for this.
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: I've been incarcerated twenty eive years at this point. Coming
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: up with fifteen thousand dollars is not an easy task,
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: and I'm still it wasn't clear on how I was
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: going to do that, but we were moving forward. So
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: doctor Melton hits my lawyers and says, you know, what
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: do you want me to do? And it's like test
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: the hairs. Well, the problem was there was about ten
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: microscopic slides. Each slide had five to eight hairs on them.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: They were preserved in some kind of chemical mounting. They
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: were not identified. They were not even laid out like
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: one strand pulled tight like they were on top of
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: each other.
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: So you had to test all of them.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: Well, to test all of them, it would have cost
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: probably I think it was eighty five thousand, and at
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: the end of the day, like, what does that tell me? Like,
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: I've had two trials, where do these hairs even come from?
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: All along, you've always said we have two hairs, like
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: they were the only two hairs in this entire trailer,
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: and they belonged to Huffington And literally one of the
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: hairs was found on the body and so you put
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: you right at the scene. So I didn't even know
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: there were that many hairs. We never knew that. So
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: we went back with the help of the Instance Project,
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: and we had an agent look at the file to
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: see if there was any notes in there that might
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: help us. We filed a Freedom Information Act to get
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: the file, which took another year, and at the end
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: of that the FBI told us, well, whoever does their
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Freedom Information Act? Told us, well, your file exists. Here's
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: the number, here's the town, here's the building, here's the file.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: Cabinet is supposed to be in but it's not there.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: So your request is denied. You can appeal this if
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: you want. Just like that, My file wasn't around, so like,
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: oh okay, So there wasn't anything more we could do.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: We sent the stuff back to the state. We withdrew
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: the motion from the court, and actually my lawyers withdrew
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: from the case because we were done. There was nothing
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: more that we could do. That was like the last
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: basically a hail Mary that we were trying to prove
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: the point. So years go by, this is two thousand
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: and three, four in that range. In two thousand and nine,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Governor Maalley puts a new law on the book called
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: a rid of actual innocence, and that's based on pre
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: ponderance of evidence or the totality of the evidence. Meaning
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: before you would only look at this cup of water
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: by itself. But if you look at this cup of
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: water with that picture of Warder sitting on this table
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: with two of us talking, now there's a story if
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: we put it in this proper perspective. So here's this
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: chance to really go back in and say, let's look
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: at all these little pieces together. They tell a story.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: So my lawyer spent, oh my god, probably a year
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: preparing that motion. They looked at every state that had
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: similar laws and really studied it. We filed a seventy
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: five page motion, and we had a hearing. At the
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: hearing again the provider of this state's attorney. The first
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: thing he tells the judge is where your honor mister
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: Havin had a chance to test the hairs. He didn't
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: even test them, So why are we still here today?
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: So the judge, who doesn't know why we didn't test them,
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: now turns and says, well, why didn't you tell them?
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: So my lawyers explained to him what happened, and he
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: turned to the State. He said, well, why does mister
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Huffing didn't have to test them anyway? You test them,
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: which the losses I have to. But he told the State,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: you go test them. I'm going to hold this hearing.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: You go test them. So we left that hearing. The
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: State went to the State Police and asked them to
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: test the hairs, and state Police said, no, we don't
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: test other labs work and we don't have a budget
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: for that, so we're not touching it. So all summer long,
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: the judge thinks that we're testing hairs. What the State
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: was doing is they went back and they tested my boots,
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: and they tested my pants, and they tested the jacket.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: They tested everything they could possibly test, and then September comes,
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: they're done. They haven't tried to do the hairs with
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: the FBI. So they tell my lawyers, we're done, let's
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: go back into court. We don't have anything more to test.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: But they're telling the judge with regular updates like we're
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: working on, we're working on.
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: And they tested all your stuff just to see if
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: there was any evidence of the victim on your clothes.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: Whatever they could figure out. You know, Yeah, they were
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: trying to tie me to the scene through Now, DNA
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: didn't exist back then, so they were trying to pull
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: me in with forensic evidence and none of that worked.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: So right after they made that announcement, out of the blue,
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: my lawyers got a phone call from a reporter at
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: the Washington Post Spencer's shoe. He's working on this big
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: expose of the FBI Lab and their hair nowsis section.
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: So he wanted to talk to us because I was
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: the Maryland case that Michael Malone was involved in. So
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: my lawyers are like, well, you know, we're in court,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: we can't talk about the case. And so the conversation continued,
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: and long story short on that he had my file,
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: the file that we couldn't get. He had it. He
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: got it through Freedom Information Act again years later, but
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: he has it. So there's two things in that file
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: that we never knew about. The first is after the
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Inspector General's report was done on the FBI Lab, the
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: FBI Lab, that was a public report. What nobody knew
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: is the FBI Lab conducted their own internal investigation. After that,
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: they went out and hired forensic scientists to come in
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: and review their own agent's work, including agent Malone my case.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: So there's a report in my file from this outside expert.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: His report basically just says no way, there's no way
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: that Malone could have testified the way he did in
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: my trial. And he even raised the doubt that Malone
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: actually even did the test himself. So there's this report,
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: and then the other document that's in there is a
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: letter again from nineteen ninety nine from the FBI to
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: the state's attorney saying, there's a problem in the Huffington
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: case with the hair. You might want to notify either
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: mister Huffington or his attorneys. Nineteen ninety nine. Now, remember
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: what happens in two thousand and three when I go
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: to test the hair. What's the first thing the state does?
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: Try to destroy it. Now that makes sense because they knew,
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: they knew four years earlier, and that here we are.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: Fourteen years later just finding this out.
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: So the FBI went to the.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: State, They sent the letter to the state. Now the
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: state and that's an open court, an open court, and
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: this I'll never forget or forget. He sat in open
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: court and try to tell the judge that he had
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: notified me. Now do you think not to take me
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: out of the equation. You think anybody in prison would
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: have sat there for another fifteen years of that information
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: and not used it. Like where's the logic of this?
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: Like he claims, he claims he sent it to the
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: Public Defender's office. I've been represented by Roopes and Gray
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: for twenty five years. He knows that. He claims he
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: sent it to the Innocence Project. We talked to them.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: They'd never heard of him. So where did you send it?
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: How is it You can go in there and literally
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: is an officer to the court. And I'll say it now,
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: you lied. You know to the court. You're an officer
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: of the court. You lied. It's not the first time
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: you've lied. You lied, and that cover up cost me
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: an extra fourteen years of my life. And when people
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: ask why I'm not bitter, I will tell you that
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: part right there. I'm bitter about because I lost my
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: mom like five years before I came home. We talked
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: about this earlier today, Like don't run from the truth.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: Let the truth just be itself, Like you have an obligation,
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: you're elected official, you have an oath that you're sworn to.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: Just let the truth come out, Let your ego get
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: on the side. Stop with the win loss record and
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: all that. Just let the truth come out. We the
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: DNA tested that back then if it came back, it's mine.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: You win your case, it's over with. But either way,
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: the truth comes out, and that I can't get that
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: time back with my mother. I can't recover what I
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: lost with the extra fourteen years that that cover up
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: cost me. And to sit there and blatantly tell the
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: judge like, oh, I did all my due diligence, that's bullshit.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: You didn't, your liar, and your name's Joe Castley and
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: your liar, And that's how it is. I can say
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: that now because I'm free and clear of that system.
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's impossible to understand what motivates people to bathe
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: in that way. I'll hear another one hundred or two
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: hundred of these stories and I still won't understand it.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: I don't think any of us ever can. But it happens,
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: and it happens not infrequently, and people need to know that.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: Just don't stand in the way of an opportunity for
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: truth to come out. Look, we get too caught up
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: in our own personalities and egos and it should be
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: a system of laws rather than a man. And that
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: comes out of the JC cree that's one of the
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: stands of the government should be, you know, laws rather
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: than a men. When we put our own personalities and
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: egos into that, that's where the system gets derailed. Like
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: I said, we had a chance to fix this in
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine. We should have fixed it, shouldn't. It
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: took till twenty thirteen, actually till twenty eighteen to fix it,
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: because I mean, at the end of the day, I
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: still had to fight even with this coming out. And
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: so what ends up happening is they scramble and instead
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: of letting it go to my lab, the FBI themselves
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: decided to test it. They tell us ahead of time
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: it's going to totally consume the sample. So of course
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: my conspiracy theories. I'm like, they're just going to say
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: it's mine. I'm not even gonna be able to send
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: it to our lab they can confirm or.
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: Deny because the hair is fragile, it's old, it's gone,
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: it's a piece of hair. And that's something that's been
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: as you've been talking, I've been sitting here thinking with
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: that like, what an amazing phenomenon that your life is
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: hanging in the balance of two hairs, and those hairs
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: have to be brought from one place to another. If
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: there's a car accident, if somebody loses it, if somebody
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: goes off the I mean a lot of things can
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: go wrong when that thing's being transported, Your life's being
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: transported with it. And they're fucking hairs. I mean, you know,
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: you're being told that it's going to degrade them to
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: the point that they're useless when we tested, So this
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: really you talked about Hail Mary, this is it, but
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: it ain't a football game.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: No, you know. Luckily, they did it as a peer review,
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: so it's like a surgeon operating with other surgeons watching
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: because this is Michael Malone and it's so scandalous. This
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: guy's this guy's infamous for just screwing people's lives. It's
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: just terrible what he's gotten away with. But in this case,
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: they tested it and it wasn't my DNA, So you
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: would think, slam dunk, we're done, we're out of here. Nope.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: I had to go back and then prove that that
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: would have made a difference. They fought us on that.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Luckily the judge, I was fortunate that he didn't have
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: an ego and he looked at it for what it was.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: So I want to rid of actual innocence, which meant
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: that they took away my victions and my sentence, But
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: it also meant that he's set it for new trial.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: Now here's the same prosecutor's been in office for forty years.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: His career started around the same time as my case.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: He's kind of his parallel course throughout the whole time.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: Who won't let go?
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: So right? Your case probably helped propel him to a
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: long career that he enjoyed.
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: I you know, yeah, I mean, you know, I think
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: that he has a history of abusing his power and
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: the system. And so I ended up that they set
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: a bail and it's half a million dollars cash bails. Again,
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: here I am sitting there after thirty two years. How's
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: that going to work? But it worked the help of
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: a couple of friends, I was able to post that
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: bail and I came home and the whole time I've
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: been home for four years, just as of December seventh
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: is over. You know, as of January the first, I'm
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: not on any kind of pro probation supervision. But for
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: the four years that I've been home, I've had one
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: foot on a banana. So you know, I've been really
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: blessed in the fact that, you know, I've been able
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: to launch a career and find some success in some
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: degree of a voice out here. All the while with
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: that's still hanging over my head, I've got an active
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: prosecution or persecution going on trying to put me back
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: in prison for the rest of my life.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: So and this prosecutor so driven he actually delayed his
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: own retirement just to get a chance to prosecute you again.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: Well, he'd offered me a deal right before that plead
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: guilty and it would all go away time served, and
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: he announced his retirement and then I can't say that
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: it's definitely coincidental, but I will say this, when I
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: said no to the deal, within two days he took
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: his retirement back.
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: So let's talk a little bit about what's been happening
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: since you got out, because these four years, I mean,
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: do you sleep, because I mean you're on so many
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: boards and different organizations. You know what, that got it
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: right in front of me and read it. So John's
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: a Committee member, the Greater Baltimore Committee's Coalition for a
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: Second Chance. He's also on the board of the Mayor's
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: Green Network Leadership Team, the Governor's Office of Crime Control
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: and Prevention, Collateral Consequences Work Group, Baltimore City Police Department,
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: Community Collaborative Division, re Entry Advisory Committee, the DHCDS Keep
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: Maryland Beautiful Steering Committee, and Pivot A Pathway for Women
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: from Prison to Purpose. I mean, I'm tired from reading that. Okay,
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: what in the hell is going on? What are he's
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: trying to improve?
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: Well, once again, it's about to dash. I mean, so
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: when I came home, obviously I'm on bail and I
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: don't know what the future holds. I'm very cynical a
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: bat the criminal justice system. I don't trust it, and
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: I fully expect they're going to come and hit me
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: with the butterfly net and snatch me back like oops,
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: we made a mistake or something, you know. So it
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: was very surreal getting out here, and then I got
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: very I keep saying lucky. Lucky, he's not the right word.
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: I was blessed, and I made a few good steps
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: and involved myself with some good people, and I have
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: to say, I got lucky because I came through the
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: very program that I now administer, which is Project Server,
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: our rapid attachment to work model. It's a re entry component.
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: But I was only there for like three months because,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: like you say, I present myself a little different and
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: people tend to look at me and think, oh, he's okay,
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: and not think, well, you know, he's been gone for
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: thirty two years, he might need some service himself. So
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: I came into Living Classrooms Foundations the organization, and they
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: gave me business cards in a title, and I was
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: a client advocate event coordinator, and so I didn't do
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: our normal go out in the alleys and clean and
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: do the normal Project Serve work. I literally was working
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: with the members that were in Project Serve and creating
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: their calend of activities and things like that. But there
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: wasn't a funning stream for its, so I needed to
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: move on. So after three months, I interviewed for another nonprofit,
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: Second Chance in ball or More, and went to work
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: for them. And when I left them, you know, I
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: was a salaried employee and doing well and they were
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: a great organization, were very supportive. But Living Classrooms has
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: sort of called me back. The director of Workforce Development
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: position was open. Honestly didn't think that it was, you know,
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: something I could apply for because you know, I was
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: a man with no future. You know, I don't bring
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: that future to the table. I'm literally still under trial
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: and or indictment and on bail. And they know that,
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: and they looked past that and felt that I was
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: suited for the job and the right one for the job,
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: and gave me that opportunity, knowing full well that my
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: world could have ended at any time. You know, I
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: could have been sent back to prison, and they entrusted
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: a department millions of dollars of budget and staff and
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: everything else. So it became even more important to me
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: to honor that, you know, to show that their faith
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: in me was was correct and that you know, I
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: was going to redeem that and make a difference in
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: that role. So I don't know, it just comes down
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: to the dash, you know, it really does, like how
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: much time you have, and the Lord knows any of
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: us could walk out of here and get hit by
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: a bus. But it's about trying to make a difference.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: And that's just the path that I've always been on.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: Like it's important to me, you know, especially to redeem
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: Like I had a law firm Ropes and Gray, I
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: should mention this who believed in me and gave me
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: twenty five years of pro bono legal services. Now think
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: about the cost value of that. And they did it
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: because they believed in me and they believed in my case.
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: So now how do I repay that? They're not sitting
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: there waiting to garnish my check. You know, they're telling
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: me go live my life and be successful. So again,
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: the only way to repay that debt is to be
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: successful and to redeem their faith in me and why
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: they did what they did. And then I guess the
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: mantle becomes even more big because the more I go
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: out there and become involved in these various committees or
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: have an opportunity to speak, then you become representative of
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: what re entry can look like. So now I can't
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: mess up. Like you know, I'm visible, I'm publicly visible
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: as others are. I'm not the poster child here, but
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: I think that brings more responsibility that if I were
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: to mess up, then that gives all the naysayers even
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: more ammunitions. This is why we don't do this. This
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: is why we don't give jobs or work with re entry.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: So you keep moving it forward. You have no choice
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: but to the more, the more you add, the more
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: it becomes important that you utilize your voice everywhere you
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: can to make a difference. I go back into prisons
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: now to introduce the guys inside with here's an opportunity
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: when you come home, you can come get trained in
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: solar installations and we have jobs for you. Just being
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: able to sort of coalesce those folks and to get
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: that moving in the right direction and to start, you know,
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: having more in depth conversation about why and how we
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: can make a difference with the whole re entry models important.
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: To me now, and it's great you're here because it's
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: so important for people to hear that message and to
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: take a different view of people like yourselves, innocent or
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: otherwise who were formally incarcerated, and to reach out and
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: give them a chance. I mean, I think that my
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: experience is that that community of formally incarcerated people will
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: work their ass off because they value every day and
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: every minute. They take nothing for granted. Before we close,
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: if you could just talk for a second about the
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: organization you're working with, it you're trying to raise money for,
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: and how incredible their success rate is at keeping people
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: from recidivating.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: Living Classrooms amazing, amazing organizations that I work for right now.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: It's a nonprofit in Baltimore. We work primarily in East
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: Baltimore through our Target Investment Zone, where we've taken a
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: two and a half mile square area of East Baltimore
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: and we are transforming, trying to disrupt the cycle poverty
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: and UPLI multi generational approach to health and wellness, education
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: and workforce development. I can't express enough gratitude. You know,
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: these folks gave me an opportunity and a chance and
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: supported me throughout this entire journey.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: For people who want to help, they can give money
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: to Living Classrooms absolutely. You know that Living Classrooms dot org.
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: Is Living Classroesfoundation dot org. You know we're nonprofit. You
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: know we do a lot of work. It's not just
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: re entry. We do you know, after school programming, we
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: do early childhood development. Look at our website and it will
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: show you how you can make a donation. We appreciate
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: that support.
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: So once again is www dot Living Classrooms Foundation dot org.
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: I'm going to give money. I hope you'll join me
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: and do so too. And now is time for always
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: the highlights of the of the show, which is where
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: I stopped talking, and just turn it over to you
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: for any closing thoughts that you want to share.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I want to thank you for
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: having me and inviting me to come out here and
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: be a part of the show. I use my time
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: just to say kudos to YouTube. Jason. I mean, I
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: think this is so crucial, so key and important what
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: you're doing and bringing the attention that you bring not
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: just the exign reads, but to the whole criminal justice system,
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: the families against mandatory minimums that I know you're a
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: big proponent of. So if I can just flip the
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: script and just say to everybody listening, like this guy,
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: like he introduced me as doing all this, trust me,
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: I'm not even in his league for what he does.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: I don't know when he can possibly sleep. So Jason's
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: going to expose you through this podcast and everything that
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: he's doing. It's just follow him on Instagram. That's what
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you right now. Follow him and
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: see the different things he's doing and understand that you
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: two can have an impact you know, this is one guy,
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: regardless of him being a record mogul or whatever title
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: we want to give him, it's one guy making a difference.
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: And honestly, we all can make a difference. It takes
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: a lot of one guys and one woman out there
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: to make these things happen. And I think the lesson
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: that we can all take away from this is that
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: we're all empowered to do that. We just got to
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: take action.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: Well, John, all I can say is thank you for that.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: I'm humbled and honored that you're here, and thank you
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: again for coming in and sharing your experience, strength and
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: hope with our audience. You've been listening to a very
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: moving episode for me personally of wrongful conviction.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, and thanks to the Innocence
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: Project as well. Couldn't a been to do this with Adams,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: so thank you.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one