Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #526 Ben Bowlin with Sonny Bharadia

Transcript

#526 Ben Bowlin with Sonny Bharadia · Wrongful Conviction

0:00
Speaker 1: This episode of Wrongful Conviction includes discussion of sexual assault
0:03
Speaker 1: and suicide. Please listen with caution and care. On November eighteenth,
0:12
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, a Georgia woman found a burglar
0:14
Speaker 1: in her home who blindfolded and tied her down. He
0:19
Speaker 1: bizarrely claimed to be an Islamic militant before completing the
0:23
Speaker 1: burglary and a sexual assault. The victim described her attacker
0:28
Speaker 1: as black, and she eventually chose a man named Sterling
0:31
Speaker 1: Flint from a photo lineup. Separately, a man named Sonny
0:36
Speaker 1: Baradia reported Sterling Flint for stealing a Chevy Tahoe and
0:40
Speaker 1: a motorcycle, and while investigating that, the police found the
0:44
Speaker 1: sexual assault victim's property in Sterling's house. But Sterling's girlfriend
0:49
Speaker 1: was a former sheriff's deputy and they both said that
0:52
Speaker 1: Sonny Baradia had asked him to hold the stolen items.
0:57
Speaker 1: Even though Sonny wasn't black, the police chose to believe
1:01
Speaker 1: that he was an Islamic militant. This is wrongful conviction.
1:12
Speaker 1: You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
1:15
Speaker 1: and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early
1:17
Speaker 1: and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus
1:21
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction this story today.
1:34
Speaker 1: First of all, it's going to make you want to
1:35
Speaker 1: jump through your headset whatever you're listening to this on,
1:39
Speaker 1: and strangle somebody, because well, I've been wanting to do
1:43
Speaker 1: something like that ever since I first heard about it
1:45
Speaker 1: years ago, and I'm so glad that Suddy Barati is
1:48
Speaker 1: here with us today to tell it. But before I
1:50
Speaker 1: introduced Studdy, I want to introduce my co host, Ben Bolan.
1:54
Speaker 1: Many of you will know, he's one of my favorite
1:56
Speaker 1: podcasters and probably one of yours as well, and we're
1:59
Speaker 1: so thrilled to have him on this season of Rawful Conviction.
2:03
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
2:03
Speaker 3: This is and anger that we all share, like you
2:06
Speaker 3: were saying, wanting to jump through the headset. We're going
2:09
Speaker 3: to talk about some gross miscarriages of justice, but I
2:13
Speaker 3: don't know, Jason, what better way to begin than to
2:16
Speaker 3: speak with the man.
2:17
Speaker 2: Himself, Sonny, Thanks so much for being here, Thank you.
2:20
Speaker 1: And to help tell this story. We're also joined by
2:22
Speaker 1: Sonny's pro bono attorney, Olivia Vigiletti.
2:25
Speaker 3: Welcome, Thank you so much, and this story begins in
2:28
Speaker 3: the metro Atlanta area.
2:30
Speaker 4: Yes, suburbs. I grow up of Stone Mountain. I mean
2:32
Speaker 4: growing up out a pretty good childhood. I mean I
2:34
Speaker 4: had parents now're married, you know, red with things like holidays,
2:37
Speaker 4: go camping, Daisy World, did all that growing up. I mean,
2:39
Speaker 4: play sports, eleague, baseball, stuff like that, hanging out my
2:42
Speaker 4: friends and stuff.
2:43
Speaker 2: I mean that was it.
2:44
Speaker 1: And by the time this happened in September two thousand
2:47
Speaker 1: and one, Sonny was in his mid twenties.
2:49
Speaker 4: The fall this happened, I was working. I was going
2:51
Speaker 4: to school and go to gym Rediley. I was doing
2:54
Speaker 4: that sheet metal work. I mean does a good job
2:56
Speaker 4: because like at that time probably like seventy five dollars
2:59
Speaker 4: now doing it. And he gave me opportunities to move
3:01
Speaker 4: up in a job. And so for me at the
3:03
Speaker 4: time that was good and was something stable.
3:05
Speaker 1: Yeahs an hour, it was good money. Yes, this is
3:07
Speaker 1: how you were able to afford a tahoe and some
3:09
Speaker 1: other nice things. Right, So you're doing all right.
3:12
Speaker 3: And you also had a side interest.
3:14
Speaker 2: In cars vehicles.
3:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yes, my little side thing was I like
3:19
Speaker 4: to buy cars and fix the myself.
3:20
Speaker 1: And Sunny was very generous with his talents, especially with
3:23
Speaker 1: his close friends Ray Sewan and Keisha Pitts. While it
3:27
Speaker 1: seems some acquaintances took advantage of Sonny's generosity, one of
3:31
Speaker 1: them was a guy named Sterling Flint. But before Sterling
3:36
Speaker 1: enters the story, a different friend who stayed in Beuford,
3:39
Speaker 1: South Carolina, had asked to borrow Sonny's shabby tahoe.
3:43
Speaker 4: I let a friend of mine use my car because
3:45
Speaker 4: his car was in the shop. I'm like sure, just
3:47
Speaker 4: like two three days a camp, and it ended up
3:49
Speaker 4: being a breach of trust. Like when Friday came, it's
3:51
Speaker 4: like a cell phone was cut off so he won't respond.
3:54
Speaker 4: And I knew it was his mother's house in South Carolina,
3:57
Speaker 4: so I got all his ex wife, got his mother's address,
4:00
Speaker 4: and I called to Cab County Police explain what happened
4:03
Speaker 4: to my vehicle. And I remember clearly being a Saturday,
4:06
Speaker 4: November seventeenth, two thousand and one, I met a friend
4:09
Speaker 4: of mine named Rayshawn's house exactly from Brooklyn, and so
4:12
Speaker 4: I just to go check on his wife when he's
4:14
Speaker 4: out of town in New York working and take his
4:16
Speaker 4: wife's kids.
4:17
Speaker 3: Out that night Sunny, his girlfriend Alitia Colbert and Rayshawn's wife, Kesha.
4:22
Speaker 3: They all went out together with their kids for the
4:25
Speaker 3: opening weekend of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which
4:29
Speaker 3: they watched to drive it now. They got home very
4:32
Speaker 3: late around midnight.
4:33
Speaker 4: So the next day being Sunday, which was a day
4:37
Speaker 4: a crime. November eighteenth, two thousand and one. I'm at
4:39
Speaker 4: my girlfriend's house. About ten o'clock, my cell phone rings
4:43
Speaker 4: and it's a detective from Beauford County, South Carolina, and
4:46
Speaker 4: he told me he has my vehicle in his impound
4:49
Speaker 4: and I can pick it up Monday through Friday. So
4:51
Speaker 4: that day I dropped my girlfriend's daughter to Mova's house.
4:54
Speaker 4: I took my girlfriend, took her to Wendy's. I went
4:57
Speaker 4: through the drive through day on cameras. I got her
4:59
Speaker 4: something to and I dropped across street to a job
5:02
Speaker 4: and then a comma from ray Sean, and I asked
5:04
Speaker 4: him I'll pick up a socket set from his house
5:06
Speaker 4: because I was working on his car out bought from
5:08
Speaker 4: auction a while back. So I get the soaka set
5:10
Speaker 4: a little left, like twelve o'clock and I go to
5:12
Speaker 4: a friend of mine's house. I had a car park
5:14
Speaker 4: there which I was working on and around four thirty
5:17
Speaker 4: five o'clock I stopped by Ray Shawn's dropped a soakka
5:19
Speaker 4: set off.
5:20
Speaker 1: So Sonny's whereabouts were accounted for in the Metro Atlanta area,
5:23
Speaker 1: over two hundred and fifty miles away from the scene
5:26
Speaker 1: of the crime, which was in a Savannah suburb called Thunderbolt, Georgia. Now,
5:30
Speaker 1: remember this happened not even ten weeks after nine to eleven,
5:34
Speaker 1: when average Americans were just learning the names of militant
5:37
Speaker 1: groups like Al Qaeda, and this fear of terrorist cells
5:42
Speaker 1: operating in the US was at a fever pitch. So
5:45
Speaker 1: with that backdrop, it's believed that an acquaintance of Sonny's
5:48
Speaker 1: named Sterling Flint, committed a burglary in the early afternoon
5:51
Speaker 1: of November eighteenth, two thousand and one.
5:54
Speaker 5: Basically, this was a daytime burglary gone wrong. Sterling Flint
5:58
Speaker 5: breaks into the house and he's stealing electronics and the
6:01
Speaker 5: victim comes home, so he very quickly blindfolds her and
6:04
Speaker 5: he tells her this very scary story about how he's
6:07
Speaker 5: part of al Qaeda and he was sent here for her,
6:10
Speaker 5: and she says in her original police statement that he
6:13
Speaker 5: was pretending to be on the phone with someone else
6:15
Speaker 5: who's maybe like instructing him what to do next, but
6:18
Speaker 5: she knew that there was no one actually on the phone.
6:19
Speaker 5: She could hear the dial tone, and he tells her
6:22
Speaker 5: he needs to commit what he calls a fake rape
6:25
Speaker 5: to make this other person happy, so that she's scared quiet,
6:29
Speaker 5: and he's holding her at knife point and does some
6:31
Speaker 5: assault of things to her.
6:33
Speaker 2: Be aware.
6:34
Speaker 3: The following language is graphic and maybe disturbing. This is
6:38
Speaker 3: from the victim's statement. The victim says, this man tied
6:42
Speaker 3: her up to the bed, performed oral sex on her, masturbated, ejaculated,
6:47
Speaker 3: cleaned up after himself had then left with a number
6:50
Speaker 3: of electronic items and a suitcase. When the victim freed
6:54
Speaker 3: herself and removed the blindfold, she noticed it was two forty.
6:58
Speaker 5: Pm, fortunately for some Before she gets blindfolded, she sees
7:02
Speaker 5: he's wearing blue and white bat and gloves, and she
7:03
Speaker 5: tells the police that but the GBI the Georgia labs
7:07
Speaker 5: at the time were only testing fluids. The labs weren't
7:11
Speaker 5: doing touch DNA testing, so they scan all the evidence
7:14
Speaker 5: that they have. They don't find any fluids. They say
7:16
Speaker 5: there's nothing to test, and that's really important.
7:18
Speaker 1: We're going to hold onto that detail for later, But
7:20
Speaker 1: at that time all they had to go on was
7:23
Speaker 1: her description. Now, remember the attacker was partially masked, she
7:26
Speaker 1: had only seen his eyes shortly before she was blindfolded,
7:30
Speaker 1: and the victim was white, which made this a cross
7:33
Speaker 1: racial identification situation, whether with the actual attacker as described
7:38
Speaker 1: by the victim or with Sonny.
7:40
Speaker 4: The victim's description of the guy was a black mail
7:43
Speaker 4: bushy bras bushy musta's darskin ruskin face five six, one fifty.
7:47
Speaker 4: I was like one eighty five. I just go to
7:48
Speaker 4: gym like four days a week at a time. So
7:50
Speaker 4: you're not saying one hundred fifty pounds. You're not said
7:52
Speaker 4: I was a black mail.
7:53
Speaker 3: After all, Sonny's ethnicity is Indian, which I guess if
7:58
Speaker 3: you're a racist and you're all suit not good at
8:01
Speaker 3: being racist, then that makes Sunny a member of al
8:05
Speaker 3: Qaeda somehow. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. At this point,
8:09
Speaker 3: they had made a composite sketch of a black man. Meanwhile,
8:13
Speaker 3: Sunny was headed just a short distance north of Savannah, Georgia,
8:17
Speaker 3: to Beauford County, South Carolina to get his car back. However,
8:20
Speaker 3: the only friend he could scramble to come with him
8:23
Speaker 3: to drive one of the vehicles back home she had
8:25
Speaker 3: a problem with her license.
8:27
Speaker 4: We finally get a Buford like five pm on November nineteenth,
8:30
Speaker 4: and I picked my vehicle up and just randomly startling.
8:33
Speaker 4: Flint called me at that time, and I've only seen
8:35
Speaker 4: this coup once or twice. So he's like, where am
8:37
Speaker 4: I at? I said him in Bufford and he's like,
8:38
Speaker 4: were you like thirty minutes from me. It's like light
8:41
Speaker 4: bulb goes off in a head. I was like, hey, man,
8:43
Speaker 4: is any way you go on Atlanta soon? Because I
8:45
Speaker 4: got a scirrel me took me to get my car,
8:48
Speaker 4: but she has some type of issue of license.
8:49
Speaker 2: I think she had a DUI or something.
8:51
Speaker 4: So I didn't want to getting pulled over going back
8:53
Speaker 4: to Atlanta driving behind me, you know, So I asked
8:55
Speaker 4: me to drive my vehicle back and he's like sure.
8:57
Speaker 4: So we met him and his girlfriend at a restaurant.
9:00
Speaker 4: We ate dinner, and he left on his motorcycle and
9:03
Speaker 4: I follow his girlfriend to his house. So when we
9:04
Speaker 4: get to his house, she introduced me her roommate with
9:07
Speaker 4: he was a Chatham County share steputy, and she tells
9:09
Speaker 4: me she used to be a Chatham County shaf's deputy.
9:12
Speaker 1: Now it appears that Sterling's girlfriend, Ashley Dold's affiliation to
9:15
Speaker 1: law enforcement may have played a role in this case.
9:18
Speaker 1: But at this point in the story, Sterling Flint parked
9:20
Speaker 1: his motorcycle at home. He got into Chabby Tahoe and
9:23
Speaker 1: was supposed to follow Sonny back to his friend's house
9:26
Speaker 1: at Atlanta.
9:27
Speaker 4: When we entered one of the interstates in Atlanta, my
9:29
Speaker 4: vehicle disappeared. I don't see him on the highway no more.
9:32
Speaker 4: But finally when I get to my friend's house, I'll
9:34
Speaker 4: keep calling. His phone is not answering. Probably about three
9:36
Speaker 4: o'clock in the morning, he calls. He says that he
9:38
Speaker 4: stopped for gas and he ran into a friend of
9:41
Speaker 4: his aid and seen in some yours and he'll beat in.
9:43
Speaker 2: A few So she left the doornlock.
9:45
Speaker 4: So I don't wake up, probably about seven o'clock, and
9:47
Speaker 4: it's like, you know, you have that feeling like you
9:48
Speaker 4: just know something's not right.
9:50
Speaker 2: And so by eleven o'clock in the morning, he calls.
9:52
Speaker 4: He says he stopped at his mom's house and he'll
9:55
Speaker 4: beat in a few and I clearly looked at a.
9:57
Speaker 2: Phone number on the call ide I wrote the number down. Well,
10:00
Speaker 2: well I'm waiting. I'm waiting. He never comes.
10:02
Speaker 4: So going into the next morning, I caught his mother's
10:05
Speaker 4: house and I'm like asking if he's there, and she's
10:07
Speaker 4: like no, and I said, my name's Sonny. I said,
10:09
Speaker 4: your son has my vehicle. Can you ask him bring
10:11
Speaker 4: it back by twelve o'clock noon. If he doesn't, I'm
10:13
Speaker 4: report of stolen. So right before noon, I hear my
10:16
Speaker 4: friend on the phone arguing with somebody and yelling and stuff.
10:18
Speaker 4: So I asked what's going on. She's like, that's Sterling
10:21
Speaker 4: and she's saying his threatening to kill her. So I
10:23
Speaker 4: grabbed the phone. He said, it's going to kill my
10:24
Speaker 4: family because he's got my home address, because I've got
10:27
Speaker 4: mail in my car and is in kill mcgarthin and
10:29
Speaker 4: kill me.
10:30
Speaker 2: So I called a police.
10:31
Speaker 3: Suddy made a police report that Sterling Flint had stolen
10:35
Speaker 3: his Chevy Tahoe and made terroristic threats. Now, at some point,
10:40
Speaker 3: the burglary and sexual assault victim viewed a photo lineup
10:44
Speaker 3: and identified Sterling Flint as her attacker. So now Sterling
10:48
Speaker 3: is wanted by Thunderbolt PD in Chatham County for terroristic
10:52
Speaker 3: threats into Cab County, as well as in Clayton County
10:56
Speaker 3: where he first made off with the Chevy Tahoe.
10:59
Speaker 4: So this whole time, I'm calling Sterring. Finally answers, he says,
11:02
Speaker 4: gonna run my truck off a cliff, gonna kill my family.
11:05
Speaker 4: And I said, man, I work for everything I have,
11:08
Speaker 4: and you got a motorcycle, it's like if that bike
11:10
Speaker 4: is hot, and you mentioned the stolen And a couple
11:13
Speaker 4: of days later there was a messed with my parents'
11:15
Speaker 4: voicemail for me to call this Detective Underwood in Cobb
11:18
Speaker 4: County and he asked for Sterling Flint and I'm like, yes,
11:22
Speaker 4: that's the guy still my vehicles. And he's like, the
11:24
Speaker 4: reason I came looking for your vehicles involved in a
11:26
Speaker 4: burger in Cobb County and the residents came home, Sterling
11:29
Speaker 4: Flint was in the house. He assaulted the guy fled
11:32
Speaker 4: in a tahoe, which was my vehicle, so to report
11:34
Speaker 4: the tag number. When he ran the tag, it showed
11:36
Speaker 4: up in my name, but it also showed up it
11:37
Speaker 4: was stolen. A week prior and goes, well, your vehicle
11:39
Speaker 4: was in a high speed chase with Atlanta Pede last night.
11:42
Speaker 4: Black Mail jumped out of the vehicle, fled on foot,
11:44
Speaker 4: and my vehicle went down a hill hit the telephone pole.
11:47
Speaker 4: He's like, they're looking for him now, so he asked
11:49
Speaker 4: me to get in touch with him, and I'm like, well,
11:51
Speaker 4: is this girlfriend's phone number if that'll help.
11:53
Speaker 1: So Detective Underwood called Chatham County shared Ashley Dole's phone number,
11:57
Speaker 1: but they already knew her and they went looking for
12:00
Speaker 1: the stolen motorcycle.
12:01
Speaker 5: When the police show up to Sterling Flint's house, the
12:04
Speaker 5: victims stolen items are inside of his house and we
12:07
Speaker 5: know that they're her items because he stole some luggage
12:09
Speaker 5: and I had her name on it, so we know
12:11
Speaker 5: they're her items. And the batting gloves she describes to
12:14
Speaker 5: the police are with the stolen items.
12:16
Speaker 4: When he found his stuff at her house, she called
12:19
Speaker 4: him on the phone and he tells her say, I
12:22
Speaker 4: brought the stuff there.
12:23
Speaker 5: Sterling Flint says, I am holding these items for Sonny Bradia.
12:27
Speaker 4: I'merstaying his girlfriend was ex Chaman County. Shaf Stepani roommates
12:30
Speaker 4: a Chatham County. Shaf Steppye telling a Thunderbolt police officer,
12:33
Speaker 4: which is a Chatham County that I brought this stuff there.
12:36
Speaker 4: Now the whole storyline changed from a blackmail to.
12:38
Speaker 5: Me, it's kind of brilliant, right because he's like, Hey,
12:41
Speaker 5: let me get out of this crap that I did,
12:43
Speaker 5: and let me implicate this guy that's giving me trouble
12:45
Speaker 5: for stealing his car. The police should have said, well,
12:48
Speaker 5: that's absurd. That doesn't make sense. Sonny is the one
12:50
Speaker 5: who sent us over here. Why would Sonny tell the police, hey,
12:53
Speaker 5: go check out this guy when he's holding stolen items
12:56
Speaker 5: for Sunny. It doesn't make any sense.
12:58
Speaker 3: Lost.
12:59
Speaker 1: The victim had already identified sterling Flint from a photo array,
13:03
Speaker 1: so this case literally came with instructions.
13:06
Speaker 5: But when we're thinking about how to secure a conviction,
13:09
Speaker 5: they only had the victims who was blindfolded for most
13:12
Speaker 5: of it. They only had her identification. Well, if Sterling
13:15
Speaker 5: Flint is willing to testify against Sonny, then now they
13:18
Speaker 5: have two witnesses that would speak against Sonny, where there's
13:20
Speaker 5: only maybe one witness that would speak against Sterling Flint.
13:23
Speaker 3: But then the lead detective on the burglary and sexual
13:26
Speaker 3: assault and thunderbolt. Detective Henry Trey Connors brought the victim
13:30
Speaker 3: in to view a second photo lineup. This time Sterling
13:34
Speaker 3: Flint wasn't even in it.
13:36
Speaker 4: Every photo on a lineup was blurred and they will blackmails.
13:40
Speaker 4: One guy had one eye and I was the only
13:42
Speaker 4: clear photo on a lineup. She has circled photo number four,
13:45
Speaker 4: which was me. Another lineup she circled Sterling Flint and
13:48
Speaker 4: somebody else and so she identified three different people, but
13:51
Speaker 4: one person did crime.
13:52
Speaker 5: Which is a traumatized person who didn't get a good
13:54
Speaker 5: look at the perpetrator. We're talking about crossracial identification. There's
13:58
Speaker 5: a lot of research that showed is that all humans
14:01
Speaker 5: of all races are worse at identifying strangers of other
14:06
Speaker 5: races than they are strangers of their own race.
14:09
Speaker 1: I think it one step further, Olivia, which is that
14:11
Speaker 1: multiple studies have shown that, particularly in instances where someone
14:15
Speaker 1: has either been a victim or a witness to a
14:17
Speaker 1: violent crime, cross racial identification has been proven to be
14:21
Speaker 1: less accurate than guessing, which means, as crazy as it sounds,
14:25
Speaker 1: a person who wasn't even there, just by virtue of guessing,
14:28
Speaker 1: would have a better chance of identifying the actual perpetrator
14:32
Speaker 1: than somebody who was.
14:33
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's understandable that she made that mistake, it's not
14:36
Speaker 5: understandable that the police rolled with it.
14:38
Speaker 4: So the next day, which was Friday, November thirty, if
14:41
Speaker 4: I got arrest in this served me a warrant from bravery,
14:44
Speaker 4: sexual assault actively to sodom and kidnapping. I'm laughing, thinking
14:48
Speaker 4: as candid camera, like this some kind of sordid joke,
14:50
Speaker 4: you know, But when they pulled the guns out on
14:53
Speaker 4: knew this was serious and sex goes, you know why
14:57
Speaker 4: I arrested you, and I'm like why he goes Ashley.
15:00
Speaker 2: Which is Sterling Flint's girlfriend.
15:01
Speaker 4: Next chers deputy, I arrest you because of what she said,
15:05
Speaker 4: not because of what the victim said. I didn't know
15:07
Speaker 4: what to think. They placed me under the wrist. He
15:23
Speaker 4: said a crime happened in Thunderbolt. I've never heard this
15:25
Speaker 4: time in my life. Had these boots on one and
15:29
Speaker 4: as like it's going to be a long time.
15:31
Speaker 2: Before season boots agin. I never forget that.
15:36
Speaker 3: Sunny couldn't bond out and spent about a year and
15:39
Speaker 3: a half in pre trialed attention while Sterling Flint, the
15:43
Speaker 3: man whose whereabouts were unknown during the crime, The man
15:47
Speaker 3: who was fending off several other burglary charges as well
15:50
Speaker 3: as a charge for Sonny stolen vehicle and a motorcycle.
15:54
Speaker 3: The guy who was originally identified by the victim and
15:58
Speaker 3: had her belongings. He was able to shift the blame
16:02
Speaker 3: onto Sonny, and he appeared to have everyone's help in
16:05
Speaker 3: doing so.
16:07
Speaker 5: Sterling Flint took a plea to receiving stolen property right
16:12
Speaker 5: because that's his story that he received these things from Sonny.
16:15
Speaker 5: As far as I know, that's the deal he got
16:17
Speaker 5: to testify against Sonny. Of course, there's these other separate
16:20
Speaker 5: crimes in a separate county, and so he was working
16:23
Speaker 5: on that. He is, actually, if you can believe it,
16:26
Speaker 5: a jailhouse informant in another Georgia Innocence Project case where
16:30
Speaker 5: he cut a deal to completely fabricate a story against
16:32
Speaker 5: another man.
16:34
Speaker 1: And that man's name is Eric Hurd. Now, over twenty
16:37
Speaker 1: percent of the first two hundred and fifty DNA exonerations
16:39
Speaker 1: in history involved the use of jail house informants, which
16:43
Speaker 1: isn't hard to believe considering how much these jailhouse snitches
16:47
Speaker 1: or informants have to gain from there, and said device testimony.
16:51
Speaker 1: But it appears that the lead detective had a motivation
16:55
Speaker 1: to ignore this more compelling suspect, instead choosing to pursue
16:59
Speaker 1: what was an impossible narrative.
17:02
Speaker 4: We go to my plumbing hearing and the detectives. His
17:05
Speaker 4: old events were when I came to Savannah to pick
17:07
Speaker 4: my vehicle up from the impound. He said, I did
17:09
Speaker 4: all that Sunday record, show all my vehicles an impound Sunday.
17:12
Speaker 2: I didn't even have my vehicle that Sunday. I came
17:14
Speaker 2: to Savannah that.
17:15
Speaker 4: Monday, and then we did a video audio statement in
17:18
Speaker 4: front of an attorney and he's saying my account for
17:21
Speaker 4: that day, and I'm like, look, these are my witnesses.
17:24
Speaker 4: I said, I went through Wedndays that morning to have cameras.
17:26
Speaker 4: I went through this quick trip gas station to have cameras.
17:29
Speaker 4: It's gonna be substantiate. These are my witnesses. He didn't
17:31
Speaker 4: care about none of that. In his mind. I'm a Muslim,
17:34
Speaker 4: I come did this and he goes that. He called
17:36
Speaker 4: home ob security said this guy's terrorists. You need to
17:38
Speaker 4: check on him. This is literally what the guy said.
17:40
Speaker 3: So it seems that this detective, Henry Trey Carter's, well,
17:44
Speaker 3: he thought that Sonny's complexion made him a better fit
17:48
Speaker 3: for Al Qaeda than Sterling and Flint. This still wouldn't
17:52
Speaker 3: have been acceptable if Sunny was Muslim or Arab, But
17:56
Speaker 3: to make matters even more absurd, Sunny is an Indian
18:00
Speaker 3: American Evangelical Christian, not a black man, as the victim
18:05
Speaker 3: had described to this detective.
18:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, the lead detective got arrest before my trial on
18:09
Speaker 4: something else he had going on. The original police statement disappeared,
18:13
Speaker 4: which before my name was put into it, the victim
18:15
Speaker 4: description of the guy was a blackmail The photo lineups disappeared.
18:19
Speaker 5: Trial council's whole strategy was to show the two photo
18:24
Speaker 5: arrays where the victim identifies Sterling, Flint and one other
18:27
Speaker 5: black man. She does a second photo array where Sterling
18:30
Speaker 5: Flint is not a part of it, and she identifies Sonny.
18:32
Speaker 5: He's going to show how ridiculously dissimilar these people look
18:36
Speaker 5: and that she identified everyone, and it destroys the case.
18:39
Speaker 5: And that's his whole plan. Well, he doesn't get the
18:41
Speaker 5: photo arrays before trial. He expects the prosecution to show
18:44
Speaker 5: up with the photo arrays at trial and they don't.
18:47
Speaker 4: He's seen them, but DA doesn't have a copy of
18:49
Speaker 4: When I was testifying the trial attorney, he stated, like
18:53
Speaker 4: on his little ad lib starts on out of lineups,
18:55
Speaker 4: how I was only clear a photo, that every photo
18:58
Speaker 4: on a lineup was blurred, and they will blackmails.
19:01
Speaker 2: He said.
19:02
Speaker 4: He talked to the chief police at that time and
19:03
Speaker 4: he goes chief police said that he laughed about it.
19:06
Speaker 4: He's like, this case is nonsensical. Just the things didn't
19:09
Speaker 4: add up.
19:10
Speaker 5: Trial Council's whole strategy is gone. So he, with no preparation,
19:15
Speaker 5: calls alibi witnesses to the stand, who were just thinking
19:18
Speaker 5: they're going to court to sit in the gallery and
19:21
Speaker 5: support Sonny. So he's calling Sonny's girlfriend, Sonny's friend to
19:25
Speaker 5: the stand, and they're trying to remember dates and things
19:27
Speaker 5: off the top of their heads. They're not prepared.
19:29
Speaker 3: If you remember, Sonny and his alibi witnesses had seen
19:33
Speaker 3: Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone on November seventeenth, the
19:37
Speaker 3: second day of its release in the US.
19:39
Speaker 5: They get the date wrong of when they go to
19:41
Speaker 5: the movies, Sunny's girlfriend says, we took the kids to
19:44
Speaker 5: see the Harry Potter movie on this date. It wasn't
19:46
Speaker 5: this other date. Well, the movie wasn't even out yet.
19:49
Speaker 1: Misremembering this event as from a prior weekend appears to
19:52
Speaker 1: have damaged the rest of Sonny's alibi as far as
19:55
Speaker 1: when he picked up and dropped off the socket wrenches
19:58
Speaker 1: with Keisha Pitts, so we know.
20:00
Speaker 5: Oh, it's just a mix up. A's because as they
20:01
Speaker 5: weren't prepared, because he wasn't prepared, and I think that
20:04
Speaker 5: this case is so ridiculous. He kind of thought it
20:06
Speaker 5: would resolve itself, but that's not an attorney strategy. You
20:09
Speaker 5: have to be over prepared. He didn't investigate the alibi
20:12
Speaker 5: any more than the police did.
20:14
Speaker 3: Sunny's cell phone records would have placed him in Atlanta.
20:18
Speaker 3: The Wendy's security cam at eleven am would have left
20:21
Speaker 3: Sonny with insufficient time to make the four hour one
20:25
Speaker 3: way trip to Thunderbolt in order to commit the crime
20:28
Speaker 3: before two forty pm. And it would have been helpful
20:32
Speaker 3: if the batting gloves had been tested for touch DNA,
20:35
Speaker 3: but at that time testing of this nature wasn't even
20:38
Speaker 3: being done by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And then
20:42
Speaker 3: Sterling Flint took the stand.
20:44
Speaker 5: So Sterling Flint at this time had been convicted of
20:47
Speaker 5: committing two other burglaries in Sunny's Tahoe, daytime burglaries, very
20:52
Speaker 5: similar crimes. He does not come prepared with the police reports,
20:56
Speaker 5: and he thinks at the time that their open charges
20:59
Speaker 5: against Sterling Flint. He doesn't realize he took a pleat
21:01
Speaker 5: he's already been convicted of those. So he asked sterling
21:04
Speaker 5: Flint on the stand, well, isn't it true that you
21:06
Speaker 5: have these pending charges of burglaries? And sterling Flint says, no,
21:10
Speaker 5: that's not true. They've been disposed of. Well, that's a
21:13
Speaker 5: tricky way to say it, but yeah, he is right.
21:15
Speaker 5: It's not true that he had pending charges. He had
21:17
Speaker 5: convictions for similar crimes, and the attorney didn't come in
21:20
Speaker 5: prepared to say, look, this guy was stealing things out
21:23
Speaker 5: of people's homes in Sonny's.
21:25
Speaker 1: Tahoe, and without all of this crucial preparation, Sonny didn't
21:29
Speaker 1: have a chance in hell. When the victim took the stand.
21:32
Speaker 4: When she got an oath, she goes a friend emailer
21:35
Speaker 4: article by the crime, Yeah, color photo me in the paper.
21:37
Speaker 4: She satisfied, and she's been looking at that photo every day.
21:40
Speaker 4: She goes those were the eyes. I got brown eyes.
21:42
Speaker 4: He has brown eyes. I just couldn't believe it, Like
21:44
Speaker 4: my heart dropped because I was adamant, like she's going
21:47
Speaker 4: to see me say hey to Saint the guy.
21:48
Speaker 3: Add the district attorney leaned into the racism of the
21:52
Speaker 3: time to further seal Sonny's fate.
21:55
Speaker 4: I remember clearly being a trial to DH she goes,
21:58
Speaker 4: am I a Muslim? And I said no, I said,
22:01
Speaker 4: I just go to this church here. If you choose
22:03
Speaker 4: be a Muslim, that's fine. I respect that by faith.
22:05
Speaker 2: I'm Christian. It's like, no, you're a Muslim. And I'm like,
22:08
Speaker 2: I'm not a Muslim. And it's on my child transcript.
22:11
Speaker 2: She's telling me I'm a Muslim.
22:13
Speaker 4: And you know how the jury looked at the post
22:15
Speaker 4: ninet eleven, I get convicted and the judge said life
22:18
Speaker 4: file parole.
22:19
Speaker 2: That's the first of my life. My knees ever shook.
22:33
Speaker 4: It's like you're trying to process this like this is
22:37
Speaker 4: a nightmare that just want to stop here. I'm in
22:39
Speaker 4: prison for something I did not do and they want
22:42
Speaker 4: me to die. How are you supposed to process that.
22:46
Speaker 4: You know, prison is a violence. I mean it's like
22:49
Speaker 4: a fight of flight mode in a jungle when you
22:51
Speaker 4: have to survive and you as like you have shape
22:53
Speaker 4: you put in a jungle full alliance, I mean, what
22:55
Speaker 4: are you supposed to do? I was a hate state prism,
22:59
Speaker 4: Like two thousand five through fourteen. The captain of the
23:03
Speaker 4: prison was putting hits on inmateson officers, so you understand,
23:07
Speaker 4: like this is general. Not everybody knew this. Like he'd
23:10
Speaker 4: bring like the contraband in give it to this gang.
23:13
Speaker 4: This gang would take him off. He'd goes have this
23:15
Speaker 4: officerc confiscated to give to another gang. And like it
23:18
Speaker 4: was so wild. And my officer was saying they were
23:21
Speaker 4: scared to come into dormitories because the inmates rano prison.
23:24
Speaker 4: They would literally they might kidnap somebody from one building,
23:28
Speaker 4: have them in another building, calling their family, threaten to
23:30
Speaker 4: kill them if they don't send him money. So this
23:33
Speaker 4: is the environment you're in and you gotta survive. It's
23:36
Speaker 4: not only inmates. You have to look officers too. And
23:39
Speaker 4: like twenty eighteen, I went in a dormitory also open
23:42
Speaker 4: the doors. Two officers right there and a guy comes
23:45
Speaker 4: to me on a knife about a foot long. The
23:46
Speaker 4: oss is looking at and they got tastes on them.
23:48
Speaker 4: They're just looking like with a mousa jar. I'm like
23:51
Speaker 4: forty something years old. This guy's like half my age.
23:53
Speaker 4: I can't run and so I'm trying to fight this guy,
23:56
Speaker 4: and finally, by fluke, I pushed him and he fell
23:58
Speaker 4: and I got on top of him. The office came,
24:00
Speaker 4: throw me against the wall, handcuffed me, and that's when
24:02
Speaker 4: I saw a blood all of me.
24:04
Speaker 2: I got stabbed twelve times.
24:05
Speaker 4: Jesus, I didn't even know i'd got stab but this
24:08
Speaker 4: is Georgia prisons, like a life is not valued, and
24:11
Speaker 4: I just I'm okay. I made it through that. It
24:13
Speaker 4: was a nightmare through it all. I lost my father,
24:15
Speaker 4: I lost people deed to me, and you see yours,
24:18
Speaker 4: your life go by, You see your youth go by,
24:19
Speaker 4: to prim you life go by.
24:21
Speaker 1: Winning his freedom was an urgent matter that took just
24:25
Speaker 1: short of twenty three long years.
24:28
Speaker 5: In Georgia. The first step after your conviction is called
24:31
Speaker 5: a motion for a new trial, and so it's basically
24:34
Speaker 5: an appeal that goes back to that same court, that
24:36
Speaker 5: same judge. So that was filed right after Sunny's conviction,
24:39
Speaker 5: and it was amended by Sonny's appellata attorney to add
24:44
Speaker 5: just a mountain of claims for him, and.
24:46
Speaker 3: Many of these claims stem from the ineffectiveness of his
24:50
Speaker 3: trial counsel. This is when the batting gloves come into play.
24:53
Speaker 3: Let's remember Georgia Bureau of Investigation only DNA tested biological fluids.
25:00
Speaker 3: These gloves needed touch DNA testing, meaning they needed to
25:03
Speaker 3: lift skin cells from inside the gloves, and Sonny's appelleat
25:08
Speaker 3: attorney got this testing approved.
25:09
Speaker 2: In two thousand and four.
25:11
Speaker 4: My attorney goes, hey, are you sure you want to
25:13
Speaker 4: get DNA tested in these gloves because if he comes
25:15
Speaker 4: back showing a shoot, that's a found nail in the coffin.
25:17
Speaker 4: And I wrote him a letter in big words, I
25:19
Speaker 4: am innocent, and I'm mailed it to him.
25:21
Speaker 5: And so when Sonny's a Pellet attorney gets this super
25:24
Speaker 5: cutting edge test and he has to send it to
25:26
Speaker 5: a lab in California because he can't find anyone locally
25:28
Speaker 5: that's doing it, Sonny's a Pellet attorney believes in him
25:31
Speaker 5: so wholeheartedly he offers to forego his own pay in
25:35
Speaker 5: the case to pay for the DNA testing, and the
25:37
Speaker 5: court takes him up on it. He gets the DNA results.
25:40
Speaker 5: They exclude sonny.
25:41
Speaker 4: But also on the outside of gloves because the victim goes,
25:43
Speaker 4: I covered the mouthfoot of gloves. He said, there's a
25:46
Speaker 4: female DNA and outside of gloves. They got a coke
25:49
Speaker 4: can from the victim's house. He tested in the same
25:52
Speaker 4: female denis and coke can is on the outside of gloves.
25:55
Speaker 4: So he recommends that for a profile the victims DNA
25:58
Speaker 4: get taken as well as sterling flints.
26:00
Speaker 2: The State of checks to it.
26:01
Speaker 1: So he moves forward with the only new evidence that
26:03
Speaker 1: he's got.
26:04
Speaker 5: However, the way he raised the new evidence was that
26:09
Speaker 5: the trial attorney should have gotten this test done. Well,
26:11
Speaker 5: that's not really true. The trial attorney can't be expected
26:14
Speaker 5: to get a test done that the Georgia lab won't
26:16
Speaker 5: even do. He does at the end throw in like
26:19
Speaker 5: or maybe this is new evidence. But when you raise
26:21
Speaker 5: a new evidence claim, you have to make a really
26:22
Speaker 5: specific showing. And he doesn't make that showing. And he
26:25
Speaker 5: gets a hearing on this motion for a new trial,
26:27
Speaker 5: so he gets to put some evidence on the record.
26:28
Speaker 5: And so even though this evidence that Sonny was not
26:31
Speaker 5: part of this crime. This DNA evidence has existed since
26:34
Speaker 5: like two thousand and three. The way that it was
26:36
Speaker 5: raised procedurally posed a problem. It's not the right claim
26:40
Speaker 5: because he actually went so far above and beyond what
26:42
Speaker 5: an attorney can be expected to do to get this
26:44
Speaker 5: test done. So we can't say the trial council was
26:47
Speaker 5: deficient for not doing the same thing.
26:49
Speaker 3: The courts concluded that the attorney was not at fault,
26:52
Speaker 3: so even though the new evidence proved Sonny's innocence, this
26:57
Speaker 3: claim failed.
26:58
Speaker 5: The next thing that what happens is the Appella attorney
27:02
Speaker 5: starts partnering with the Georgia Innosonce Project around twenty eleven
27:05
Speaker 5: to file what in Georgia is called an extraordinary motion
27:09
Speaker 5: for new trial the post conviction litigation avenue in the
27:12
Speaker 5: state of Georgia, where you have new evidence that was
27:16
Speaker 5: not available to you before. And one of the bases
27:19
Speaker 5: for this new evidence is that in twenty twelve they
27:22
Speaker 5: were able to get a codis hit for sterling flint
27:25
Speaker 5: on the gloves. But Matt goes up to the Supreme
27:27
Speaker 5: Court of Georgia and they say trial council should have
27:29
Speaker 5: gotten this test done. If you got it done a
27:31
Speaker 5: year later, trial council should have done it without really
27:34
Speaker 5: appreciating what he went through to get the test done.
27:36
Speaker 4: So you hold to be accountable in two thousand and
27:38
Speaker 4: three for a test that the crime lab didn't even
27:40
Speaker 4: use twenty eleven.
27:42
Speaker 1: It also kind of sounds like the reverse course on
27:44
Speaker 1: the earlier ruling that trial council was not ineffective. Now
27:49
Speaker 1: they're saying that trial council could have done this, but
27:52
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter since it's procedurally barred. So after this defeat,
27:56
Speaker 1: Sunny's attorneys needed to regroup. In the interim, at Old
28:00
Speaker 1: did an interview.
28:01
Speaker 4: She did an interview called Shadow of Doubt we Living
28:03
Speaker 4: the Life on YouTube and originally the Stolen Goods. She
28:06
Speaker 4: goes that when my boyfriend picked up from work, he
28:09
Speaker 4: had a UHUL trailer and he had a burgeran Cobb
28:11
Speaker 4: County involvement, an U haul trailer, and they parked the
28:13
Speaker 4: U all trailer at her sister's house and her sister
28:16
Speaker 4: stay a stone's throw from a victim's house. Recalls a
28:19
Speaker 4: couple days later, says, hey, can you go to your
28:21
Speaker 4: sister's house, go get the stuff out of you haul
28:23
Speaker 4: and put it your house, and that's the victim stolen goods.
28:26
Speaker 2: She covered up for a boyfriend.
28:28
Speaker 4: And she went on TV years ago said when it
28:30
Speaker 4: found the stuff, he told Race I brought stuff there.
28:33
Speaker 4: So she believing what he said, told a police that.
28:35
Speaker 4: Then the whole storyline changes. So does one police officer
28:38
Speaker 4: telling another police officer, Hey, who's wordy?
28:40
Speaker 3: Gonna take just one officer to another. And she said
28:44
Speaker 3: the stolen goods came from Sonny. And then the victim
28:47
Speaker 3: viewed another photo lineup. This one did not contain Sterling
28:51
Speaker 3: Flint and only had one clear photo Sonnings. But it
28:55
Speaker 3: doesn't even have to be that devious for cross racial
28:59
Speaker 3: misidentification to occur. Consider the case of Ronald Cotton and
29:03
Speaker 3: Jennifer Thompson.
29:04
Speaker 4: I came across a book in twenty sixteen picking Cotton,
29:07
Speaker 4: and it was about a guy named Ronald Cotton. Said
29:09
Speaker 4: he was convicted of crime, he was innocent of the victim.
29:12
Speaker 4: Jennifer Thompson said she was sure that it was him
29:15
Speaker 4: the eyes and this, and that I could empatize with
29:17
Speaker 4: that because of my case.
29:18
Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened.
29:19
Speaker 1: Recovered the case on the podcast and Jennifer Thompson was
29:23
Speaker 1: called the perfect witness. She was sober, she was awake,
29:27
Speaker 1: a black man broke into her home and brutally assaulted
29:30
Speaker 1: her for twenty five minutes, and her whole being was
29:34
Speaker 1: wrapped up. As she describes it, in studying every feature because,
29:38
Speaker 1: as she says, I get the chills thinking about it.
29:40
Speaker 1: If I survived, I was going to make sure that
29:43
Speaker 1: I could identify this man so no one would ever
29:46
Speaker 1: have to suffer the way I was. And sure enough,
29:49
Speaker 1: they picked up mister Cotton not too long after this
29:52
Speaker 1: horrible crime occurred, and she identified him with absolute certainty.
29:57
Speaker 1: Of course, he was convicted, and eleven years later there
30:00
Speaker 1: was another guy in the prison that people were talking about.
30:03
Speaker 1: He's the one who actually committed the crime. It turned
30:04
Speaker 1: out he looked very much like mister Cotton, and DNA
30:08
Speaker 1: ultimately proved that he in fact was the perpetrator, and
30:11
Speaker 1: he had gone on to commit many other horrible crimes
30:14
Speaker 1: by the time he was arrested, and.
30:16
Speaker 5: Just a small plug to defense attorneys and prosecutors. She
30:21
Speaker 5: founded an organization called Healing Justice. And if you're in
30:24
Speaker 5: a situation like this where you need to approach a
30:28
Speaker 5: victim and you're trying not to do more harm, You're
30:31
Speaker 5: trying not to impose more trauma. Her organization will help
30:35
Speaker 5: you figure out how to do that the best way.
30:36
Speaker 5: So I've used that many times, and it's so important
30:39
Speaker 5: because this problem is not an individual's problem. It's a
30:42
Speaker 5: systemic problem.
30:43
Speaker 1: It's a great organization. And I'm a proud donor. And
30:45
Speaker 1: Jennifer as one of my heroes, as is Ronald Cotton.
30:48
Speaker 1: And important to note they became very close friends. As
30:51
Speaker 1: they wrote picking Cotton, which is such an incredible name.
30:54
Speaker 1: They've done sixty minutes together, They've been on wrongful conviction together.
30:57
Speaker 1: They've toured the country giving presentations to lost students and
31:01
Speaker 1: prosecutors and anyone that will listen to them about the
31:05
Speaker 1: unreliability of eyewitness identification. And Sonny, if memory serves me,
31:10
Speaker 1: she brought your case to my attention.
31:12
Speaker 4: And yes, So I got in touch with her on
31:15
Speaker 4: Facebook and she's like, I'm on team Sonny.
31:18
Speaker 2: So she was my life readily for me. She's one
31:21
Speaker 2: of my mentors. She really is. I try to hang
31:23
Speaker 2: myself years ago. I did, I actually did.
31:24
Speaker 4: I didn't succeed, just went through some things, but It's
31:27
Speaker 4: like Jennifer was like one of people i'd always go
31:29
Speaker 4: to kind of give me reality check. She was always
31:31
Speaker 4: blunt with me and honest with me. She's like, I'm
31:32
Speaker 4: gonna beat it the gates when you get out, and
31:34
Speaker 4: it's like these things manifested, they really did.
31:37
Speaker 2: She kept a word.
31:38
Speaker 1: She's kind of like an angel. She has a very
31:39
Speaker 1: angelus quality.
31:41
Speaker 2: Jennifer.
31:41
Speaker 1: If you're listening and you're blushing, you should be because
31:44
Speaker 1: we have so much respect for you here. So okay,
31:47
Speaker 1: So then along comes through other angel, Olivia.
31:50
Speaker 4: Right.
31:51
Speaker 5: I was working for the Georgia Innocence Project. Sonny was
31:54
Speaker 5: my first client. So even after I left the Georgia
31:56
Speaker 5: Ennosonce project. It's always hard to leave a job, leave
31:59
Speaker 5: your case, but I couldn't leave Sonny. So I have
32:01
Speaker 5: stayed with him as pro bono council for the past
32:04
Speaker 5: three years. And so when we filed an amended habeas
32:07
Speaker 5: petition in twenty twenty two, all of our claims they
32:10
Speaker 5: were all based on ineffective assistance of appellate Council for
32:13
Speaker 5: the way he raised the claims. And I want to
32:16
Speaker 5: just be really clear, ineffective assistance of council doesn't mean
32:20
Speaker 5: bad attorney. This appellate Council did an amazing job getting
32:24
Speaker 5: the DNA, very vigorous advocate, and still it was constitutionally defective.
32:29
Speaker 5: So we were granted an evidentiary hearing in the middle
32:32
Speaker 5: of twenty twenty three where we put all this evidence
32:35
Speaker 5: on the record that finally clarified what these procedural mistakes were.
32:39
Speaker 5: And Sunny's appellat attorney was very helpful at the hearing.
32:42
Speaker 5: He explained that he just made a lot of mistakes.
32:45
Speaker 1: In addition, many witnesses testified in support of Sonny's innocence claim,
32:49
Speaker 1: including Ashley Dold.
32:51
Speaker 2: She testified that I wasn't there.
32:54
Speaker 4: My ex girlfriend test fied the one who got confused
32:56
Speaker 4: at trial, and one of my witnesses died over the.
32:58
Speaker 3: Years, that was Kisha Pitts. But her husband Ray Shawan
33:02
Speaker 3: took the stand in hestead.
33:04
Speaker 4: He said he remembers I called him that morning asked
33:06
Speaker 4: I pick of soakkasent from his house, and Kesha called
33:09
Speaker 4: him and he's like, Sonny came picked it up, and
33:11
Speaker 4: then when I came back that evening she called to
33:13
Speaker 4: Sonny dropped the stuff off.
33:14
Speaker 1: And this established a timeframe which made it impossible for
33:17
Speaker 1: an eight hour round trip to Thunderbolt, Georgia, a timeframe
33:21
Speaker 1: that your trial counsel didn't prepare enough to even do
33:24
Speaker 1: a rudimentary job of laying it out.
33:27
Speaker 5: And I will say that trial attorney did testify and
33:30
Speaker 5: he wept on the stand. He told us he thinks
33:33
Speaker 5: about Sonny all the time. This case keeps him up
33:35
Speaker 5: at night. He always believed in Sonny. He just was
33:38
Speaker 5: so overconfident because the case was so ridiculous and had
33:43
Speaker 5: a lot of regret. But of course we can't not
33:45
Speaker 5: prepare just because the case is ridiculous. And in twenty
33:49
Speaker 5: twenty four, Judge Tate out of Gwinnett County granted Sonny's
33:53
Speaker 5: habeas petition, which was not appealed by the Attorney General,
33:56
Speaker 5: so that overturned his conviction.
33:58
Speaker 3: Sonny was transferred to jail prior to his release, but
34:02
Speaker 3: the date of his actual release still remained unclear.
34:06
Speaker 5: That morning, I was like, look, the paperwork's not done.
34:09
Speaker 5: I don't know when you're getting out. We didn't think
34:11
Speaker 5: he was getting out.
34:11
Speaker 2: That day I was in a county jail.
34:13
Speaker 4: But remember I go up to intake and she told
34:16
Speaker 4: officer like gave my property and stuff. So I had
34:19
Speaker 4: certain books like Long Walked, Freedom of my Bible, some
34:22
Speaker 4: letters I kept over the years, and these things meant
34:25
Speaker 4: something to me. So they're like in a little clear
34:26
Speaker 4: trash bag. So she tells us to dress me out.
34:30
Speaker 4: So I'm still like the reality is not sitting in,
34:32
Speaker 4: like something's gonna happen, Like they're gonna say, hey, we're
34:34
Speaker 4: making a mistake of something. She told me like, hey,
34:36
Speaker 4: you got to go out this door. So when I
34:38
Speaker 4: pressed the button, the door open, it's a parking lot.
34:40
Speaker 4: So it's me, this trash bag of books and a
34:43
Speaker 4: parking lot.
34:44
Speaker 2: So I run.
34:45
Speaker 4: I forrest gumped at that guy was running out the
34:48
Speaker 4: drunning down his driveway. That's how I was running. I
34:51
Speaker 4: didn't know where I was going. I was just running.
34:53
Speaker 4: I said, I got to get on the phone, somebody
34:55
Speaker 4: to call Olivia. So I ran one way and it's
34:58
Speaker 4: like a concrete plant. I'm like, what this is the
35:00
Speaker 4: wrong way. Then I'm running along a tree line, so
35:02
Speaker 4: I'm like looking back, saying, hey, they might realize we
35:05
Speaker 4: made a mistake.
35:06
Speaker 2: Lay this guy out. So I keep looking back every second. Paranol.
35:09
Speaker 4: My bag of books is like coming apart, like holes
35:12
Speaker 4: in it, and I'm trying to hold these books together.
35:14
Speaker 4: And finally I get to this little place and I'm
35:17
Speaker 4: like yelling, cause somebody help me. And a guy's like,
35:18
Speaker 4: how can I help you. I said, Hey, my name
35:20
Speaker 4: is Sonny Barata. You can google me.
35:22
Speaker 2: They just let me out of jail. I was innocent.
35:23
Speaker 4: I've been in prison twenty something years. I just need
35:26
Speaker 4: to call him, my attorney, so to come get me in.
35:29
Speaker 4: He's like, what's the phone number? Sort of laughing, he cold.
35:31
Speaker 5: And then I get this random number call and I
35:33
Speaker 5: know it's Sonny, and I pick up the phone and
35:35
Speaker 5: he said, they let me out. They let me out,
35:37
Speaker 5: They let me out. I don't know where I am.
35:39
Speaker 5: And then a man gets on the phone, gives me
35:42
Speaker 5: the address and hangs up on me. And that's it.
35:44
Speaker 5: That's all the information I get. I passed the information
35:46
Speaker 5: along to someone closer and she said, why is he
35:49
Speaker 5: at this address? And I was like, I don't know.
35:51
Speaker 4: And by the time I got home, Oliviy was at
35:53
Speaker 4: my mother's house. Came from Detroit, and Jennifer Thompson came
35:56
Speaker 4: from Chapel Hill. She was at my mom's house. Amazing
35:59
Speaker 4: so I was like, it's such a highlight, just like
36:00
Speaker 4: a mount top experience. The last couple of months, I mean,
36:03
Speaker 4: just trying to find my place right now, it's still
36:06
Speaker 4: hard to process at all. I don't understand a purpose
36:08
Speaker 4: why I went through it, but it's like at the
36:10
Speaker 4: same time, I like to help people. Me and Jennifer
36:12
Speaker 4: Thompson talked about it, and she was like, maybe I
36:14
Speaker 4: could start some time Healing Justice thing in Georgia. So
36:17
Speaker 4: that's maybe one thing I'm looking at. But I had
36:19
Speaker 4: not imporous of having a voice because so many years
36:22
Speaker 4: I didn't have a voice, and I have a voice now,
36:24
Speaker 4: so I want to use my voice to help people
36:26
Speaker 4: that don't have a voice.
36:27
Speaker 1: If anyone would like to talk to Sunny about public speaking,
36:30
Speaker 1: and I really hope you will, then we're going to
36:32
Speaker 1: link his instagram in the episode description so you can
36:35
Speaker 1: reach out. And Sunday's Instagram is at sun B nineteen
36:39
Speaker 1: forty four. I'm gonna spell it out. That's so and
36:42
Speaker 1: letter B like Sunny Varietia So son B nineteen forty four.
36:47
Speaker 1: We're also going to link to Healing Justice and the
36:49
Speaker 1: episode that Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton did together.
36:52
Speaker 3: And since the recording of this interview, on May sixteenth,
36:57
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, Sunny's charges were officially dismissed.
37:02
Speaker 4: The feeling itself was exhilarating. I mean, I've never had
37:05
Speaker 4: a feeling like that. It's like, I'll wait off you
37:09
Speaker 4: and Jennifer Thompson of Healing Justice was there, my attorney
37:14
Speaker 4: Olivia Vigiletti, Christina Cribs, Noah Pines, and the George Andoson's project,
37:19
Speaker 4: and my mom and it was just amazing because I
37:22
Speaker 4: couldn't have made it in this journey about these people.
37:25
Speaker 4: After my dismissal, they had like a little pot luck
37:28
Speaker 4: type party and my Girlfriendjoe down to Florida, so I've
37:31
Speaker 4: been at Panama City Beach since Sunday and needed this
37:34
Speaker 4: much needed.
37:36
Speaker 3: We were all so happy for you, while of course
37:38
Speaker 3: wishing that this never happened in the first place.
37:42
Speaker 1: And with that, we're going to go to closing arguments
37:44
Speaker 1: where first I think we thank both of you for
37:48
Speaker 1: joining us, and then I'm just gonna turn my microphone
37:53
Speaker 1: off with my headphones on and just kicked back in
37:56
Speaker 1: my chair and listen for you to share anything you
37:58
Speaker 1: feel is left to be said, We're going to start
38:01
Speaker 1: with Olivia and then Sonny, you take us off into
38:04
Speaker 1: the sunset.
38:06
Speaker 5: Wow, that is fun, and I feel very put on
38:09
Speaker 5: the spot. I would like to tell a story of Sonny,
38:12
Speaker 5: because it's of course never a requirement that your client
38:15
Speaker 5: be exceptional and incredible. But Sonny has been lead counsel
38:20
Speaker 5: on this case his entire life, and the whole time
38:23
Speaker 5: he's been fighting this and has taught me a lot
38:26
Speaker 5: of things at every turn. And we were talking one time,
38:29
Speaker 5: kind of dreaming about the day Sonny might get out
38:31
Speaker 5: of prison, and I asked him how he was preparing
38:35
Speaker 5: to transition back into the world, and he told me
38:38
Speaker 5: something that I thought was really random at first, but
38:41
Speaker 5: connected it back. He said, do you remember in the
38:43
Speaker 5: nineties when they would always show the oil spills on
38:45
Speaker 5: TV and you'd always see like oil covered pictures of
38:48
Speaker 5: ducks and stuff. But then they show that like you
38:50
Speaker 5: just wipe them down with some dawn and then they're
38:52
Speaker 5: okay after you clean them up. But if the oil
38:54
Speaker 5: gets into the animal's body, things get really bad and
38:57
Speaker 5: you die instantly. And he was like, that's been my
39:00
Speaker 5: task here in prison the entire time. I am in
39:02
Speaker 5: this environment, but it is not inside of me. And
39:05
Speaker 5: so from here until I'm out, I just have to
39:08
Speaker 5: keep myself fortified and know that although it is all
39:11
Speaker 5: around me, I can clean this off and it's gonna
39:14
Speaker 5: be okay. It's not inside of me, so I'm not
39:16
Speaker 5: gonna die.
39:17
Speaker 4: All I can say is that I'm grateful and humbled
39:19
Speaker 4: because when you're in prison, lifeile, parole, and it's like
39:22
Speaker 4: you're fighting with hope and it's hard, and you see
39:25
Speaker 4: people with serious crimes that are guilty, that don't have
39:28
Speaker 4: no remorse getting out doing less time than.
39:31
Speaker 2: You and have a sentence to dine in prison.
39:33
Speaker 4: And I just didn't think the day would come. I
39:36
Speaker 4: lost my twenties, my thirties, my forties, I'm fifty years old.
39:38
Speaker 4: But I have great people in my life and the
39:41
Speaker 4: last six months and like being like a roller coaster
39:43
Speaker 4: to me. And I was speaking to one of my
39:46
Speaker 4: old attorneys, the one that got the DNA test, Mapple attorneys, like, Sonny,
39:49
Speaker 4: you know what what kept you going all these years
39:52
Speaker 4: in prison? Because it's two thousand and three years, like
39:54
Speaker 4: my attorney, it's like, hope, Sonny, I used to talk
39:57
Speaker 4: to you all the time, hope kept you and I said,
39:59
Speaker 4: you know what, right, And so no matter how dark
40:01
Speaker 4: things get in life, you gotta have hope. And that's
40:05
Speaker 4: what pulled me through. Those are tools I'm using in
40:07
Speaker 4: my life that are helping me and propelling me to
40:09
Speaker 4: my future.
40:09
Speaker 2: And that's what I'm gonna do. And I'm just content
40:11
Speaker 2: and I'm.
40:12
Speaker 4: Just thankful and grateful that chapter my life is over with.
40:15
Speaker 4: And next chapter, next half the story book of my life,
40:19
Speaker 4: it's a different story. I can rewrite the ending and
40:21
Speaker 4: that's what I'm doing now.
40:27
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
40:30
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
40:32
Speaker 1: week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
40:35
Speaker 1: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
40:38
Speaker 1: production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
40:41
Speaker 1: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliber.
40:45
Speaker 1: The music in this production was supplied by three time
40:47
Speaker 1: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
40:51
Speaker 1: across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
40:54
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
40:57
Speaker 1: at it's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production Lava
41:00
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
41:03
Speaker 2: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
41:06
Speaker 2: in this show are accurate.
41:07
Speaker 4: The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in
41:10
Speaker 4: this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect
41:13
Speaker 4: those of Lava for Good