Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #556 Jason Flom with Franky Carrillo

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#556 Jason Flom with Franky Carrillo · Wrongful Conviction

0:05
Speaker 1: With the police banging on the door open up.
0:10
Speaker 2: The choice to be in that lineup was the last
0:12
Speaker 2: choice I made as a free man.
0:14
Speaker 3: A year later, I ended up writing the system.
0:18
Speaker 4: I'm going to be one of those people who everyone
0:20
Speaker 4: in the world is going to think as a monster
0:21
Speaker 4: or suspect as a monster for the rest of my life,
0:24
Speaker 4: and I'm just going to have to come to peace
0:25
Speaker 4: with that.
0:27
Speaker 3: Somebody was able to look at my picture in the
0:29
Speaker 3: database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't.
0:34
Speaker 3: I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they
0:37
Speaker 3: might have to play in my hanging. They had been
0:39
Speaker 3: told that two prison officers would have to participate in
0:42
Speaker 3: my execution. Now I walked back inside that prison for
0:47
Speaker 3: the last time. Man, all help broke loose.
0:49
Speaker 2: But welcome to another episode of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
1:06
Speaker 2: Today we have a very incredible person as our guest.
1:10
Speaker 2: Our featured exonnery today is Frankie Correo.
1:13
Speaker 4: Korea was sixteen. In nineteen ninety one, fifteen sheriff's deputies
1:17
Speaker 4: with guns drawn storm through the front door. Korea was
1:20
Speaker 4: convicted of murder and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
1:23
Speaker 3: Frankie was released.
1:24
Speaker 4: From jail in downtown LA this afternoon after spending twenty
1:27
Speaker 4: years in prison. Rio was released after the court found
1:30
Speaker 4: evidence that Koreo was framed through coerced testimony for a
1:34
Speaker 4: fatal drive by shooting. The gang of corrupt LA Sheriff's
1:37
Speaker 4: deputies known as the Linwood Vikings co wer six witnesses
1:40
Speaker 4: into identifying him in a photo lineup.
1:44
Speaker 3: Frankie, welcome, Jason's good to be here.
1:47
Speaker 2: So, Frankie, your story begins when you were really just
1:51
Speaker 2: a child and the baby man. Let's go back to
1:54
Speaker 2: the beginning. You grew up in La, right, that's correct,
1:58
Speaker 2: Southern California, and you had a pretty happy upbringing, right, Yeah,
2:02
Speaker 2: I would say that.
2:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything was going along more or less.
2:05
Speaker 2: Okay, nothing's easy about being a sixteen year old boy,
2:08
Speaker 2: that's right.
2:09
Speaker 3: Then one day it all was turned upside down. That
2:12
Speaker 3: day was January twenty fourth, nineteen ninety one. I was
2:16
Speaker 3: just a little color there. I was a high school student.
2:18
Speaker 3: I was a child of a divorce family, four siblings.
2:21
Speaker 3: My father had raised us in stage of nine, so
2:23
Speaker 3: it's a very male dominated household. Dad and two boys.
2:27
Speaker 3: It was what I'd known for the past seven years.
2:29
Speaker 2: And you had a sort of a unique situation too it,
2:31
Speaker 2: which is that your mom had did one day just
2:32
Speaker 2: decided to check out.
2:33
Speaker 3: That's it.
2:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't like it got separated and you spent
2:37
Speaker 2: half the time with her or she just left.
2:39
Speaker 3: That was it. Yeah, I mean, it's an unfortunate story,
2:41
Speaker 3: but that's what happened.
2:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you had been abandoned in a very real
2:45
Speaker 2: way and experienced something that's obviously going to affect any
2:51
Speaker 2: young man for the rest of his life. But that
2:54
Speaker 2: wasn't the worst of what was to come by far.
2:57
Speaker 2: And again, sixteen is really not a child, but you're
3:00
Speaker 2: closer to a child.
3:01
Speaker 1: Than an adult.
3:02
Speaker 3: Right even though it was my age, I was sixteen,
3:04
Speaker 3: Psychologically you're you're still a kid, you know, maybe operating
3:07
Speaker 3: at thirteen fourteen level, not to you know, minimize it,
3:10
Speaker 3: but I'm a boy, I'm a kid.
3:11
Speaker 2: We were in tenth grade, tenth grader, tenth grade, exactly
3:14
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. Tenth grade, you're you know, yeah, you're
3:17
Speaker 2: closer to middle school than you are to college.
3:19
Speaker 3: And they hadn't been shaved. So it's like a good,
3:21
Speaker 3: good reference is that you're at the point where like
3:23
Speaker 3: facial hair is sort of developing, but you're not there yet, Frankie, like,
3:26
Speaker 3: hold off right.
3:27
Speaker 2: And then one night, fifteen cops bust in your house.
3:30
Speaker 2: What a surreal situation. You were asleep.
3:33
Speaker 1: I was asleep, just a normal night.
3:35
Speaker 3: Actually it was early morning, so it was dark, but
3:37
Speaker 3: it was it was six in the morning when this happened.
3:40
Speaker 3: And my father and I went home and they couldn't
3:42
Speaker 3: get in. They were pounding away, and ultimately I opened
3:45
Speaker 3: the door, looked out the window and new was them.
3:47
Speaker 3: They were screaming who they were, and they stormed in,
3:50
Speaker 3: stormed in, ordered my father and I to the floor.
3:52
Speaker 3: And that's the beginning of the nightmare.
3:54
Speaker 2: Really, so they already had to the floor. Did they
3:57
Speaker 2: tell you what was going on?
3:59
Speaker 3: I wish it did?
4:00
Speaker 4: You know?
4:00
Speaker 3: It was pretty strategic in all business, so they want to,
4:03
Speaker 3: like ram Seck, the home was their main objective, and
4:06
Speaker 3: you know, my father and I. My dad was trying
4:08
Speaker 3: to exert his position, this is my home, what are
4:11
Speaker 3: you doing here? And he was being ignored. So he's
4:14
Speaker 3: telling me, like, what's happening. I'm like I don't know,
4:16
Speaker 3: Like I have no idea why they're here. Soon after,
4:18
Speaker 3: on the ride to the sheriff station is when I
4:21
Speaker 3: learned that I had been accused and ultimately now being
4:23
Speaker 3: arrested for a murderer I hadn't committed.
4:25
Speaker 2: So you get to the sheriff's station and what happens next.
4:29
Speaker 3: Really, I was expecting my father to show up, but
4:32
Speaker 3: what happened was I was placed into an interrogation room.
4:35
Speaker 3: The people who showed up instead were these two sort
4:37
Speaker 3: of cowboy detectives ready to play the good call bad
4:40
Speaker 3: cop on me, and I played along. You know. They
4:42
Speaker 3: said what they were arrested me for, and if I
4:45
Speaker 3: would willing to talk, and I said, sure, I'll talk
4:47
Speaker 3: like I have nothing to hide.
4:49
Speaker 1: Right, And so you waved your marana, right I did.
4:52
Speaker 2: And that's such a crazy thing, Frankie, because I think
4:54
Speaker 2: it's hard for most people to understand why someone would
4:59
Speaker 2: wave their miranda when you.
5:00
Speaker 1: Have the right to a lawyer who would going to
5:03
Speaker 1: give that up?
5:04
Speaker 2: But the fact is, in your case, I think it's
5:06
Speaker 2: fairly typical, which is that if you're innocent, and this
5:08
Speaker 2: is an ironic thing, right, if you're innocent, a lot
5:11
Speaker 2: of people go in they think, well, why do I
5:13
Speaker 2: need a lawyer. I'm just going to answer some questions,
5:16
Speaker 2: and the justice system is going to work because I'm
5:18
Speaker 2: an innocent person who abides by the law, and then
5:21
Speaker 2: they'll see that they made a mistake and then they'll
5:23
Speaker 2: go catch the real guy.
5:24
Speaker 1: Exactly right.
5:25
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, it's going to take stories like yours to help
5:29
Speaker 2: educate people so that they don't do that. You do
5:33
Speaker 2: not give up any information without getting a lawyer.
5:36
Speaker 3: But I will adjason that when you're in that code
5:38
Speaker 3: room and the power imbalance is obvious, you are in
5:43
Speaker 3: a detention facility. Basically, you're in the stronghold, you're in
5:46
Speaker 3: the sheriff's departments space, and you're there as a visitor.
5:50
Speaker 3: You're there obviously being charged with this crime, in my case,
5:52
Speaker 3: being wrongfully charged. And so to some degree, as a
5:55
Speaker 3: young boy, you want these are adults. Some look at
5:57
Speaker 3: these men and you want to cooperate. You want it
5:59
Speaker 3: like I'll talk to you. I have nothing to hide.
6:01
Speaker 3: It is sort of my position looking back now. Obviously
6:05
Speaker 3: I wish I wish there was a Civics class that
6:07
Speaker 3: would have said, you know what, no matter what, innocent, guilty, whatever,
6:10
Speaker 3: the situation is just wait for your parents or wait
6:13
Speaker 3: for a lawyer.
6:14
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a tragic twist or irony that when you're
6:17
Speaker 2: innocent and you go into the situation, you're more likely
6:20
Speaker 2: to waive your Miranda rights and if you're guilty. Exactly
6:23
Speaker 2: in that interrogation room, how long were you interrogated for?
6:25
Speaker 1: Do you even know?
6:26
Speaker 3: You know? Surprisingly, I think back of that fived him
6:28
Speaker 3: minute interrogation and I sort of left that room thinking,
6:31
Speaker 3: you know, where was the lamp? You know, where were
6:33
Speaker 3: these guys punching on me? Like, you know, you watch
6:35
Speaker 3: enough TV to understand that this is supposed to unfold
6:39
Speaker 3: a little bit differently than it did in my case.
6:40
Speaker 3: At least, they were very quick to just say, there's
6:43
Speaker 3: a young boy who witnessed the crime, who was adamant
6:45
Speaker 3: that you were the guy who did it. So we
6:47
Speaker 3: got you. Let's talk about you just confessing to it.
6:50
Speaker 3: So it was really very brief, very precise on their end,
6:54
Speaker 3: and I think I'm go on have chuckle not to
6:55
Speaker 3: be silly here, but it was just like so unreal,
6:58
Speaker 3: like one, you're are you sure you're talking to me?
7:01
Speaker 3: I'm adamant that it wasn't me obviously, and their position
7:05
Speaker 3: was like, we're beyond if you did it or not.
7:07
Speaker 3: We just want you to just come clean, just confess
7:10
Speaker 3: that you did it. And I was like, I can't
7:13
Speaker 3: do that.
7:14
Speaker 1: It ended after ten minutes.
7:15
Speaker 3: That's it. Like they weren't trying to press me and
7:18
Speaker 3: starve me out anything. They were just like, okay, well
7:21
Speaker 3: we'll see you in court, like we're going to jail now,
7:24
Speaker 3: Like that was it.
7:24
Speaker 2: Hearing that and that's an unusual interrogation, and that it
7:28
Speaker 2: went on for such a short period of time, it
7:30
Speaker 2: sounds to me like at that point they actually did
7:32
Speaker 2: think they had the right guy, because they were like, Okay,
7:34
Speaker 2: well this guy's not gonna give it up, but we
7:35
Speaker 2: got the right guy, so it's okay, We're gon We're
7:36
Speaker 2: gonna get him no matter what. But as things unraveled,
7:40
Speaker 2: they took steps that were corrupt and illegal. How did
7:45
Speaker 2: they end up managing to convict you when you were
7:48
Speaker 2: so obviously not the guy?
7:49
Speaker 3: So you know, in Los Angeles at least, there's a
7:52
Speaker 3: very familiar story about misconduct with the LAPD SO Rampart
7:56
Speaker 3: Division scandal. It's more readily available knowledge. But my case
8:00
Speaker 3: didn't involve LAPED involved the LA's Sheriff's department, and there's
8:04
Speaker 3: a well known at least locally of the Linwood Vikings.
8:08
Speaker 3: So Lindwood is where this crime happened and where my
8:11
Speaker 3: arrest was ultimately investigated. And the Linwood Vikings had become
8:15
Speaker 3: a rogue police gang. So what I thought is a
8:18
Speaker 3: naive boy, that I was dealing with law enforcement who
8:21
Speaker 3: were abided by the constitution and their policies in the department.
8:25
Speaker 3: Some of the people on this investigation team were these
8:27
Speaker 3: bad cops sort of fast forward in here of information
8:30
Speaker 3: I knew, not at the time, but as the case developed.
8:33
Speaker 3: And so when this young boy who was used to
8:36
Speaker 3: identify me, who was shown a photo line of a
8:39
Speaker 3: photo six pack to ultimately say this is the guy
8:41
Speaker 3: who committed the crime, the case sounded pretty pretty cut
8:45
Speaker 3: and dry. There's a witness, there's a he show was
8:47
Speaker 3: showing a photographic lineup. He quickly identified the shooter. We
8:51
Speaker 3: got in the rest Slamm Dunk. And so there was
8:55
Speaker 3: a trial when I was tried as an adult and
8:56
Speaker 3: moved forward to a conviction. But at some point it
8:59
Speaker 3: was discovered that this young boy wasn't as innocent as
9:03
Speaker 3: you know. He was more than just a witness. It
9:05
Speaker 3: was revealed that he was an informant for one specific
9:08
Speaker 3: law enforcement officer, Deputy Ditch. And so Deputy Ditch, Ditch,
9:12
Speaker 3: Deputy of all.
9:13
Speaker 1: Things, Deputy Ditch.
9:14
Speaker 3: Right, I mean what a name, right, Craig Ditch is
9:16
Speaker 3: the guy's name. He's now retired. The guy had this
9:18
Speaker 3: boy under his wing as an informant, and he happened
9:22
Speaker 3: to be at this crime scene, and so it was
9:24
Speaker 3: very very easy to say, I'm your go to guy here.
9:27
Speaker 3: So the story later was discovered that this young boy
9:30
Speaker 3: was showing photographs after he'd been interviewed five times by
9:34
Speaker 3: other investigators with no results. They realized Ditch had a
9:38
Speaker 3: relationship with this boy. Ditch shows up cases over. The
9:41
Speaker 3: case was solved once Stitch arrived in less than eight hours,
9:44
Speaker 3: and the story that was revealed that the young boy
9:47
Speaker 3: was showing the photographs as what was in the report,
9:50
Speaker 3: and so he picks a random picture just to play along,
9:53
Speaker 3: and Ditch says, that's the wrong guy. He's in jail
9:56
Speaker 3: right now, try again. You know, I'm sure he's feeling
9:59
Speaker 3: like an idiot. Point. You know, you're trying to help,
10:01
Speaker 3: You're young, you're scared, so he picks another photograph, and
10:04
Speaker 3: the deputy says, this guy's dead. What about this guy here?
10:07
Speaker 3: We think he's trying to come up in the rankings
10:09
Speaker 3: or whatever, And so the boy just says, yeah, I
10:11
Speaker 3: guess that makes sense. I guess I guess that's the guy.
10:14
Speaker 3: And this is there.
10:15
Speaker 1: He was looking at six photographs. Yep, he was over
10:17
Speaker 1: too exactly. He picked. He picked very badly. He picked
10:21
Speaker 1: a guy who was in jail and a guy who
10:23
Speaker 1: was dead. Right. That's yeah, really hard to make a
10:25
Speaker 1: case against those guys. Right.
10:26
Speaker 2: And by the way, it's sort of odd that there
10:28
Speaker 2: was a guy in the six pack who was dead.
10:30
Speaker 2: Give me a break, I mean, you would think they
10:32
Speaker 2: would take that guy out just I mean to let
10:34
Speaker 2: me jump in here and say, well, you know, Frankie,
10:35
Speaker 2: what's up. You're coming off as this high school student,
10:38
Speaker 2: nice guy. What's your photograph doing in the sheriff's apartment? Like,
10:41
Speaker 2: tell us about that. I'm sure that was your next question, right,
10:44
Speaker 2: I'm getting to that what happened.
10:45
Speaker 3: In this environment is so nineteen ninety nineteen ninety one
10:48
Speaker 3: is what we're referencing here. That specific sheriff's department's policy
10:52
Speaker 3: was that if there was any anyone that you thought
10:53
Speaker 3: was a potential bad kid or bad guy or bad anything,
10:57
Speaker 3: let's do some racial profiling at this point, right, gather intel.
11:01
Speaker 3: And so the photograph was obtained in the summer between
11:04
Speaker 3: my sixth grade and seventh grade vacation block. There, me
11:08
Speaker 3: and some of my buddies just riding our BMX spikes
11:10
Speaker 3: through a local park, no big deal, summertime, and this deputy,
11:13
Speaker 3: Deputy Luna, I remember the guy's name, sort of just
11:16
Speaker 3: rolls up next to us. He's done of the official
11:18
Speaker 3: lights on pull over. He stops, We stopped, start talking
11:21
Speaker 3: about who has a girlfriend, and where do you live?
11:23
Speaker 3: And what's up with you? Whatever? Right, just pretty cool
11:26
Speaker 3: talking to a cop, No big deal. Then the guy says,
11:29
Speaker 3: do you mind if I take your photograph to the group?
11:31
Speaker 3: I don't remember us looking around saying what do you think? Guys?
11:35
Speaker 3: We just like, I guess like you're a cop, right,
11:37
Speaker 3: Like what do we say?
11:38
Speaker 4: No?
11:39
Speaker 3: And so this is the time when you had polaroad camera.
11:41
Speaker 3: So the guy got out of his car, went into
11:43
Speaker 3: the trunk and pulled out the little manual polaroid camera,
11:46
Speaker 3: and one by one he just came to write where
11:48
Speaker 3: we were on our bike standing and just snapped the photograph.
11:52
Speaker 3: And so that photograph that was taken in a park
11:55
Speaker 3: with trees in the background and whatever else was in
11:58
Speaker 3: the background, I was smiling them picture. That photograph ended
12:02
Speaker 3: up in the sixth pack. So talk about like a
12:04
Speaker 3: chain of events here that fucks your life up, right,
12:07
Speaker 3: Oh my.
12:07
Speaker 2: God, I mean, that's really the most I've heard all
12:10
Speaker 2: types of different stories, and you're right, that is a
12:12
Speaker 2: question that people often ask, why was this picture?
12:14
Speaker 1: Now?
12:14
Speaker 2: What we know is that if you live in a
12:17
Speaker 2: poor neighborhood spetiicularly a poor minority neighborhood, the cops do
12:21
Speaker 2: sweeps and they'll pick up everybody, right, And so your
12:24
Speaker 2: picture could be in there because you had a joint,
12:26
Speaker 2: or any other thing could be in there because you
12:28
Speaker 2: were trespassing, right, I have air quotes under that one
12:31
Speaker 2: or whatever. And so it's really true that a lot
12:35
Speaker 2: of people have records for the most minor misdemeanors. In
12:38
Speaker 2: your case, you had no record whatsoever. Actually, it was
12:42
Speaker 2: probably I mean, thinking back to when I was in
12:44
Speaker 2: sixth or seventh grade, if a cop would have asked
12:46
Speaker 2: to take my picture, I would have felt good, right,
12:48
Speaker 2: but like, wow, this guy.
12:49
Speaker 1: Wants to take my picture. I'm pretty cool kid.
13:03
Speaker 2: So your picture was in the lineup because this cop had,
13:06
Speaker 2: in a sneaky way, racially profiled you as a thirteen
13:10
Speaker 2: year old boy riding his bike in the park, which
13:13
Speaker 2: is exactly as far as I can tell, what thirteen
13:15
Speaker 2: year old boys are supposed to be doing. You were
13:17
Speaker 2: identified in this insane process, right, which is literally like
13:21
Speaker 2: it would be funny.
13:22
Speaker 1: Except the results are so tragic.
13:24
Speaker 2: So he eventually managed to come up with the answer
13:27
Speaker 2: that the cop wanted, which he could have saved himself
13:29
Speaker 2: the trouble by just saying initially to the kid, hey,
13:31
Speaker 2: this is the guy we want identify him. That would
13:33
Speaker 2: have been simple, exactly. I would have saved five minutes.
13:35
Speaker 2: So you're identified, you go to trial.
13:37
Speaker 3: Well, I try as an adult. I'm going to keep
13:39
Speaker 3: parking this spit.
13:39
Speaker 1: I'm a kid.
13:40
Speaker 3: So there's a process here in California that determines if
13:43
Speaker 3: you're worthy of juvenile court or you have to go
13:45
Speaker 3: with the big boys. Right, And so this was a
13:47
Speaker 3: murderer and they felt that it deserved it a higher punishment,
13:50
Speaker 3: and so ultimately went to trial, had an assigned attorney
13:54
Speaker 3: that the county. It wasn't a public defenders like a
13:57
Speaker 3: panel attorney. I have to say this part here. And
13:59
Speaker 3: when I walked into the court and I was chained
14:01
Speaker 3: to you know, the chain gang there, everyone's there being arraigned,
14:04
Speaker 3: all adults and then was looking like what did you do,
14:06
Speaker 3: like steal some candy and blah blah blah, and you know,
14:08
Speaker 3: they're just ragging on me, these adults who had obviously
14:11
Speaker 3: been there before. And so I'm the last guy to
14:14
Speaker 3: be arraigned, and so everyone's freaking out like, oh shit,
14:17
Speaker 3: we weren't expecting that charge for this kid, right And
14:20
Speaker 3: prior to that, I will say that, and it's and
14:22
Speaker 3: it kind of goes to just me being so naive
14:25
Speaker 3: here is that I heard someone call my name and
14:29
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm so little. I'm like raising my hand
14:31
Speaker 3: like I'm over here. And I looked over and I
14:33
Speaker 3: saw this good looking white man with this amazing suit on,
14:37
Speaker 3: just like canned suit, walking towards me with the file
14:41
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh my god, David, you have
14:42
Speaker 3: signed me the best fucker in the room, man, Like
14:45
Speaker 3: this is all going to be worked out, Like this
14:47
Speaker 3: is it? I got the very sheck of the world. Sadly,
14:50
Speaker 3: it's just an example of like where my mentality was,
14:52
Speaker 3: even my perception of this new world. This courtroom was
14:56
Speaker 3: like sadly, like the white guy come into your rescue
14:59
Speaker 3: had like such an impact from living in a society
15:01
Speaker 3: where the majority of people around you are people who
15:04
Speaker 3: look like you and who you know than the teacher
15:07
Speaker 3: or whatever, and so I thought it was a sort
15:09
Speaker 3: of funny and looking back at that moment, getting me
15:11
Speaker 3: so excited about everything's gonna be okay now right obviously.
15:15
Speaker 2: Not obviously not. I mean the odds, the odds were
15:17
Speaker 2: stacked against you. The government was willing to lie to
15:21
Speaker 2: get the conviction. They were willing to use an incentivized witness,
15:25
Speaker 2: and they convicted you, they did, and now you get
15:28
Speaker 2: sent to maximum security prison.
15:30
Speaker 3: At the time, they had a juvenile facility, so it
15:32
Speaker 3: was like the Youth Authority for young adults. So I
15:34
Speaker 3: went there and the sentence was thirty years to life,
15:38
Speaker 3: with an additional six life sentences attached to that. So
15:42
Speaker 3: I'll say that when I heard those words coming to
15:43
Speaker 3: the judge's mouth, I couldn't imagine or perceived like a
15:47
Speaker 3: week or a few months in my life to now
15:50
Speaker 3: to imagine thirty years to life plus life, I couldn't
15:54
Speaker 3: even comprehend that. For someone wants to be sort of
15:56
Speaker 3: funny and sort of mess with me, it meant like,
15:59
Speaker 3: do thirty years to life die and then you're back
16:02
Speaker 3: in prison, like even if you ever come back, right,
16:04
Speaker 3: And it was.
16:05
Speaker 1: Like, you mean, like if you get reincarnated.
16:06
Speaker 3: I suppose, right, like you're you're seting you up for
16:10
Speaker 3: your next life.
16:10
Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense, right, and none of this
16:13
Speaker 2: makes any sense, But that in particular doesn't make any
16:15
Speaker 2: sense just in terms of the semantics of it. It's
16:17
Speaker 2: interesting too write because there was a witness who actually
16:20
Speaker 2: wanted to come forward and who had information that could
16:24
Speaker 2: have prevented you from being convicted in the first place.
16:26
Speaker 3: Is there was, so he wasn't just a witness. This
16:28
Speaker 3: guy that you're referring to was the actual killer. So
16:31
Speaker 3: as a bizarre twist in this case, the investigator had
16:35
Speaker 3: discovered who the murderer was, and your investigator there and
16:39
Speaker 3: this is it's a bizarre twist all this. And it's
16:41
Speaker 3: not to minimize the bad police work here, but now
16:44
Speaker 3: it's also bad defense work here. My defense attorney had
16:47
Speaker 3: an investigator who had went out and become the world's
16:51
Speaker 3: best investigator by tracking down who excumented the crime. Turns
16:54
Speaker 3: out he knew the murderer, and so there was just
16:57
Speaker 3: this conflict of interest of either get off the case
17:01
Speaker 3: or reveal that this is the guy who did it.
17:03
Speaker 3: He had this young man, the actual murderer, confessed to
17:07
Speaker 3: the crime. There's a six page confession that he took
17:09
Speaker 3: from this man, and what he tried to do. To
17:12
Speaker 3: his credit, he tried to convince this guy to come
17:14
Speaker 3: to the court and just say, look, Frankie didn't do it,
17:17
Speaker 3: it was me. And he arrived with an attorney. You
17:20
Speaker 3: would assume that the judge would say, well, wait a
17:22
Speaker 3: minute here, before Frankie goes down and he's sentenced, let's
17:25
Speaker 3: hear about this guy in the hallway. And lo and behold,
17:28
Speaker 3: the judge says, you're too late. You've been convicted by
17:31
Speaker 3: a jury. All this sort of like last information that's
17:34
Speaker 3: apparently in the hallway. Just deal with it in your appeal.
17:37
Speaker 2: So after the jury renders you guilty, and the guy
17:40
Speaker 2: standing outside the doors of the courtroom exactly who's actually
17:44
Speaker 2: holding the cards to your freedom?
17:46
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it would have shed light if someone
17:48
Speaker 3: cared about truth, right, it would have been like, well,
17:50
Speaker 3: let's bring this guy in. And so it failed me
17:52
Speaker 3: even again at that point, that's such a crazy it's
17:55
Speaker 3: a bizarre man. You were like thirty feet from freedom
17:59
Speaker 3: sort of right, the doors would have opened and this
18:01
Speaker 3: guy would have been allowed to walk in and provided
18:03
Speaker 3: he actually came clean, true, because he might have changed
18:05
Speaker 3: his mind.
18:06
Speaker 1: People do that.
18:06
Speaker 2: But you had a real opportunity to avoid this most
18:11
Speaker 2: nightmarish fate that anybody can possibly imagine. But that's not
18:15
Speaker 2: what happened. And ultimately there were six witnesses who testified
18:18
Speaker 2: against you, and the crazy thing is they all recanted, right,
18:22
Speaker 2: eventually they all recanted.
18:23
Speaker 3: They initially use this one boy, the swift year old boy,
18:26
Speaker 3: to arrest me based on this photographic lineup, and so
18:28
Speaker 3: six months which is bizarre. Here everyone was under eighteen,
18:31
Speaker 3: so that everyone was very young. Six months maybe even
18:34
Speaker 3: seven months after the crime had occurred. For the first time,
18:37
Speaker 3: the other five boys had been shown the photographic lineup.
18:40
Speaker 3: And we all know about memory, and there's been studies
18:43
Speaker 3: and it's been proven that this is not a recording.
18:45
Speaker 1: Dick.
18:45
Speaker 3: You have on your phone. In your mind, memories record
18:47
Speaker 3: a little bit differently. It's like little snapshots, and as
18:49
Speaker 3: time goes on they fade and other information filters in
18:53
Speaker 3: and it gets very tainted. So it's hard to really recall,
18:56
Speaker 3: especially a dry by shooting the middle of the night.
19:00
Speaker 3: You hear gunfire, you're ducking, you're running, So to really
19:02
Speaker 3: capture that, it's like an immediate on the scene interview
19:05
Speaker 3: is like the best one. So we're talking about seven
19:08
Speaker 3: months later now where these boys are showing photographs for
19:11
Speaker 3: the first time ever. Wow, And sure enough, sure enough,
19:15
Speaker 3: one by one they say, yep, that's the guy. It's
19:17
Speaker 3: photograph number one. And it was obviously later determined that's
19:20
Speaker 3: this young boy. The fifteen year old boy. Made it
19:22
Speaker 3: a point to tell everyone else if they ever show
19:24
Speaker 3: you photographs, believe me, I know who did it. It
19:27
Speaker 3: was photograph number one. And so now we got six people.
19:31
Speaker 2: Right, And it's so absurd to think that seven months later,
19:35
Speaker 2: as you said, in the middle of the night, in
19:37
Speaker 2: the dark and a drive by shooting, all the factors
19:39
Speaker 2: are there for almost a guarantee of wrongful identification, a
19:43
Speaker 2: mess identification, and that's exactly what happened. So you spent
19:46
Speaker 2: much more than half your life behind bars. You're only
19:50
Speaker 2: really a cognizant human, right maybe for ten years to
19:54
Speaker 2: a round number, so more than twice that amount of time.
19:56
Speaker 2: You're now in a cage in a violent, scary, hostile environment.
20:03
Speaker 2: How did you manage to make it through that?
20:05
Speaker 3: You know? Well, you know, when I think back about
20:13
Speaker 3: how I survived twenty years incarceration, what I remembered most
20:17
Speaker 3: about something my dad said sort of in passing or
20:20
Speaker 3: just try to give me some advice up to dinner table,
20:22
Speaker 3: which was if there's adults around, go to them. He's
20:25
Speaker 3: sort of instilling these things about just society, they'll help you.
20:28
Speaker 3: And so I think, here I am in a room
20:30
Speaker 3: full of adults. I'm in an adult court, and I'm
20:33
Speaker 3: expecting everyone to do the right thing just because you're
20:35
Speaker 3: an adult. I'm a kid. You're supposed to be watching
20:37
Speaker 3: out for the system and yourself and everyone in the room.
20:41
Speaker 3: And so that went haywire. That that failed me. But
20:46
Speaker 3: I think that this very fuzzy idea of humanity was
20:51
Speaker 3: being born, and so I arrived in the place that
20:54
Speaker 3: was very sad. I mean, it's dangerous when you hear
20:56
Speaker 3: about it from the outside, but from the inside it's
20:58
Speaker 3: a very somber and just a sad place where people
21:03
Speaker 3: are being confined. And so I'm talking to you from
21:05
Speaker 3: the ground level here other people who don't want to
21:08
Speaker 3: be there, and they're also suffering on whatever level, and
21:11
Speaker 3: you join in on this pity party about life, you know.
21:13
Speaker 3: And so first couple of years of that, you know,
21:16
Speaker 3: you're trying to sort of find your place. It's a
21:18
Speaker 3: social dynamic there, and so you're moving in groups of
21:21
Speaker 3: your kind, and you know, you get a job and
21:23
Speaker 3: you kind of get active in what's happening there. But
21:26
Speaker 3: luckily for me, and I really thank my dad for
21:28
Speaker 3: saying that, it's instilling in this idea that whoever they are,
21:32
Speaker 3: but people are good people. And in my case, I
21:35
Speaker 3: had to be careful with who I told that I
21:37
Speaker 3: was innocent, because you know, that's back to the sort
21:39
Speaker 3: of ranking about like you're a murderer in prison has
21:43
Speaker 3: more status than if you're there for child molestation. And
21:45
Speaker 3: so even in my environment, I think innocent is probably
21:48
Speaker 3: below child molester. You don't belong here, like what the
21:52
Speaker 3: fuck man like you're you know, I mean a criminal
21:54
Speaker 3: like we're all you know, we're all tough here. So
21:57
Speaker 3: I learned that I made a mistake and told the
21:59
Speaker 3: wrong guy that I was innocent, and the look he
22:01
Speaker 3: gave me was like, oh shit, maybe I shouldn't be
22:03
Speaker 3: telling people that I'm not like you, right Obviously, like
22:06
Speaker 3: everyone else I read and I and I feel like
22:09
Speaker 3: I'm on a sound like a natural chameleon. So I
22:11
Speaker 3: just adapted to my environment. I've been always been very diplomatic,
22:14
Speaker 3: so I was always trying to be the peacekeeper, and
22:17
Speaker 3: so that helped the pain. And also, like the hope
22:19
Speaker 3: was that like somewhere, somehow someone was going to realize
22:24
Speaker 3: that this was a huge mistake. And so the system
22:26
Speaker 3: that failed me, the criminal justice system that failed me,
22:30
Speaker 3: and everyone who makes that sort of turn, you know,
22:32
Speaker 3: happen and work though it's it's supposed to work. I
22:35
Speaker 3: suppose I was expecting them to figure it out and
22:39
Speaker 3: help me. It's sort of like suspending reality and thinking,
22:42
Speaker 3: forget what just happened to you where you've been wrongly convicted,
22:45
Speaker 3: and try to hold onto the one piece that these
22:49
Speaker 3: people can do the right thing, and some expecting people
22:51
Speaker 3: to do the right thing.
22:52
Speaker 2: It's incredible that you would be expecting people to do
22:56
Speaker 2: the right thing when, with the exception of your father,
23:00
Speaker 2: everybody who was supposed to have protected you either abandoned
23:03
Speaker 2: you or turned on you in the most vicious way,
23:06
Speaker 2: and yet you maintained this outlook like, if I just
23:09
Speaker 2: be me and be honest and be optimistic, then eventually
23:14
Speaker 2: people are going to accept me for who I am,
23:15
Speaker 2: which is an innocent guide trapped in a sentence that
23:18
Speaker 2: doesn't belong to me. That's really there's a lot to
23:21
Speaker 2: be learned from that, right, because all of us go
23:23
Speaker 2: through little disappointments on a daily basements, right, or a
23:26
Speaker 2: weekly basis or whatever, and so many people react to those,
23:30
Speaker 2: and certainly being around you and the other exgneries, I
23:33
Speaker 2: always say, it puts gratitude in my attitude, you know,
23:35
Speaker 2: and I learned to be I think much more understanding
23:39
Speaker 2: of life's little twists and turns, because they all seem
23:42
Speaker 2: so trivial. When you deal with someone who's been through
23:46
Speaker 2: hell right and managed to maintain not just sanity, but
23:49
Speaker 2: a sense of grace and kindness and optimism, it's remarkable,
23:53
Speaker 2: you know.
23:53
Speaker 3: I'm going to add to also, Jason, that there was
23:55
Speaker 3: something happening that I didn't realize this until many years later.
23:58
Speaker 3: But we're all conditioned in the way, and specifically, when
24:01
Speaker 3: we think of prison, we think of the ugliest human
24:04
Speaker 3: from his behavior, what he did, or the way he
24:06
Speaker 3: looks and the tattoos and ponytail. Whatever we have in
24:11
Speaker 3: our minds etched out as like what a prison who
24:13
Speaker 3: looks like. And so imagine a guy who's great looking
24:17
Speaker 3: as I am in a prison. You might think, oh, man,
24:19
Speaker 3: this guy's vulnerable to like sexual assaults, right, But the
24:22
Speaker 3: reality is that pull perversion out of it. You're in
24:25
Speaker 3: a place where you're almost like a porcelain figurine in
24:29
Speaker 3: a bar, and it's almost like people want to protect you,
24:32
Speaker 3: and they're curious about, like, what's this guy with no
24:33
Speaker 3: tattoos doing amongst us? Why is he so nice? Like,
24:37
Speaker 3: you know, we're all mean and talking shit to each other,
24:39
Speaker 3: and this guy's like talking about good morning and whatever. Right,
24:42
Speaker 3: And so I learned that my humanity hadn't been detached
24:46
Speaker 3: from me. There was no guilt that made me feel
24:48
Speaker 3: like I couldn't be human. So I was just who
24:50
Speaker 3: I thought I had to be, And as time went on,
24:52
Speaker 3: I'd use it as a shield because I knew that
24:54
Speaker 3: that was happening, that there was like these social conditioning
24:57
Speaker 3: that was working in my favor, even just a survival part,
25:00
Speaker 3: let alone the criminal justice be trying to get out.
25:14
Speaker 2: Now that you've been out for six years, and hearing
25:18
Speaker 2: you talk about it, you're very calm, and you paint
25:22
Speaker 2: a picture that is I think either you're in a
25:26
Speaker 2: little bit of denial, you know, like they say, denial
25:28
Speaker 2: is not.
25:28
Speaker 1: A river in Egypt.
25:29
Speaker 2: About how terrifying and how I know it was a
25:33
Speaker 2: brutal experience, no matter all the things you're saying, notwithstanding,
25:37
Speaker 2: but I do want to turn to the happy part
25:40
Speaker 2: of the story, right your exoneration and then what happened
25:44
Speaker 2: after you got out, because America loves to come back. Yeah, man,
25:48
Speaker 2: and your story is very uplifting. I mean, just the
25:50
Speaker 2: fact that you're here now has got to be inspiring
25:53
Speaker 2: to so many people. So how did you Was it
25:55
Speaker 2: the Northern California Innocent's Project that took your case?
25:57
Speaker 3: I think my exoneration is sort of twofold here, But
26:00
Speaker 3: when it came to the legal components to it, I
26:02
Speaker 3: did what many other people do. They write letters and
26:04
Speaker 3: they bother their families and that they have a friend
26:07
Speaker 3: who they can nag about it. They do that like
26:09
Speaker 3: it's a constant scratching away at this right. And so
26:12
Speaker 3: for me, it was a fifteen year letter writing campaign
26:15
Speaker 3: that went nowhere. I mean it was Oprah and twenty
26:18
Speaker 3: twenty and forty eight hours and some roll back, you know,
26:21
Speaker 3: along with Barry shk who wasn't interested in at the
26:23
Speaker 3: time with a case who wasn't involved in DNA, which
26:26
Speaker 3: I understood. But as bizarre as it was, I was.
26:28
Speaker 3: I was a folesome prisoner working as a teacher's aid.
26:32
Speaker 3: So I was, you know, helping the teacher correct papers
26:34
Speaker 3: and do some algebra on the board, whatever, just pretty
26:36
Speaker 3: basic stuff, right. And Tony Carter, who was a teacher,
26:40
Speaker 3: she is about to retire, and there was like this
26:43
Speaker 3: internal policy where you can't get too close to the
26:45
Speaker 3: prisoners because they'll fire you and so on. And so
26:47
Speaker 3: I knew that, and now I want to get her
26:48
Speaker 3: in trouble. So she knew my plight, but I never
26:51
Speaker 3: never went as far as to say, hey, Tony, would
26:52
Speaker 3: he help? But now I figure she's done, you know,
26:54
Speaker 3: she's about to retire. Now is the time, right, So
26:57
Speaker 3: on the last moments she's walking away on that Friday,
27:01
Speaker 3: I say, Tony, Tony, and she looks back and she says, yeah,
27:04
Speaker 3: what's up. Did you forget to say something? And sure
27:06
Speaker 3: enough I did, right? I said, would you help me?
27:09
Speaker 3: She's like sure, Like, what can I do for you? Right?
27:11
Speaker 3: You know my story, if Nelicher retired, if you're in
27:14
Speaker 3: your travels in the world, if you come across a lawyer,
27:17
Speaker 3: a reporter, anyone you think might be interested in my story,
27:20
Speaker 3: would you just mind just sharing that with them? And
27:23
Speaker 3: I think anyone would have said yes, it's pretty simple. Right,
27:25
Speaker 3: you're about to leave, and so she she says, sure,
27:28
Speaker 3: I can do that, and I was. I was really
27:30
Speaker 3: relieved because a letter I can do that all day long,
27:33
Speaker 3: but face to face it's a different dynamic there. But
27:36
Speaker 3: I felt really happy that I was able to muster
27:38
Speaker 3: the guts to do that. And so turns out that
27:40
Speaker 3: six months after that conversation, she was invited to a
27:43
Speaker 3: book club in Sacramento. This guy named Bo Mosof who's
27:46
Speaker 3: now has passed, who was going to do some book
27:48
Speaker 3: signing and she had seen him before, and so she
27:50
Speaker 3: shows up and lo and behold, there's an attorney in
27:53
Speaker 3: the room, and luckily for me, she mentioned that she
27:56
Speaker 3: was a lawyer because I guess who was listening Tony,
28:00
Speaker 3: who says, oh shit, I guess this is I guess
28:02
Speaker 3: this is a calling, right, So she goes over and says,
28:04
Speaker 3: I heard you're a lawyer, and you know have this guy.
28:07
Speaker 3: You know, I used to be a former teacher in prison,
28:09
Speaker 3: and there's a story I want to share with you.
28:11
Speaker 3: And literally that's what's triggered it. This woman was Ellen Naggers,
28:14
Speaker 3: was a public defender working on death penalty cases in California,
28:18
Speaker 3: who then got in touch with Northern California Innocence Project
28:22
Speaker 3: Morrison Forrester, and this dream came together. It took them
28:26
Speaker 3: five years, and they could have taken them ten years.
28:27
Speaker 3: I didn't care. But finally someone was going beyond the
28:31
Speaker 3: record and saying, let's listen to this guy has to say.
28:34
Speaker 3: So they turned stones over that had been ignored. They
28:38
Speaker 3: tracked down these six boys, these now men, you know,
28:40
Speaker 3: they weren't kids anymore, and one by one it was
28:44
Speaker 3: almost like if they were being freed from their own miseries.
28:48
Speaker 3: They all, from what I hear, they were all so
28:50
Speaker 3: gracious to say like, you know what, thank you for
28:51
Speaker 3: finding me. I need to tell you the truth as
28:54
Speaker 3: if they were living with this pain as well. There
28:56
Speaker 3: was witnesses that were brought in to clarify the Paul.
28:58
Speaker 3: Things were described that happened couldn't have happened. And so
29:01
Speaker 3: the evidence that was used against me had gone away
29:03
Speaker 3: and there was a final hearing. Luckily for me, the
29:06
Speaker 3: Los Angeles disc Attorney's office conceded the case, so there
29:10
Speaker 3: was ultimately no fight. They agreed that this had gone
29:13
Speaker 3: wrong and I was free to go. And so the
29:16
Speaker 3: words I've been yearning to hear all my life, well
29:19
Speaker 3: it seemed to be my entire life, the judge said them,
29:22
Speaker 3: which is basically, get out of here.
29:24
Speaker 1: You apologize.
29:25
Speaker 3: The DA's apologized in the room, which felt really good.
29:27
Speaker 3: They came over and shook my hand. I think the
29:29
Speaker 3: judge he gave more of like a philosophical response to that,
29:32
Speaker 3: but it was less about him. It was more about
29:34
Speaker 3: the DA's office. And it turned out that the corporate
29:36
Speaker 3: the bad players here were just as bad cop. I'm
29:39
Speaker 3: a big fan of law enforcement, but in this situation,
29:41
Speaker 3: it was a bad cop who was tied up with
29:43
Speaker 3: this internal gang situation and shit went bad and I
29:47
Speaker 3: had to suffer.
29:48
Speaker 2: Yes, you certainly did. So you walked out of the courthouse.
29:52
Speaker 2: You walked in, Well, you were arrested and you can
29:54
Speaker 2: walk in. You were taken in as a sixteen year
29:57
Speaker 2: old boy. You walk out as a thirty seven year
30:00
Speaker 2: old man.
30:01
Speaker 1: What's that like? You walk out?
30:03
Speaker 2: I mean, what is freedom taste? And your dad had
30:06
Speaker 2: died in the drum, right, so now you're an orphan yep,
30:09
Speaker 2: and you walk out into what would you do?
30:12
Speaker 1: Did you go get something to eat?
30:14
Speaker 4: Like?
30:14
Speaker 1: What'd you DoD? I mean?
30:18
Speaker 3: I wish I would have been released from the court room.
30:19
Speaker 3: I was released from the Sheriff's Department's jail there the
30:21
Speaker 3: county jail, I La County jail. And it was about
30:24
Speaker 3: it was mid midweek. It was about maybe two in
30:27
Speaker 3: the afternoon, and they called me out of my cell
30:29
Speaker 3: and took me down to the street level when doors open,
30:32
Speaker 3: and there was like a TMZ moment, really, all these
30:35
Speaker 3: cameras bouncing on their shoulders trying to interview me, right,
30:38
Speaker 3: and all the mics come out before my family and
30:40
Speaker 3: lawyers could get to me. And how does it feel
30:42
Speaker 3: to be free? How does it feel to be free, right,
30:44
Speaker 3: and the big question, And I think I ignored that one
30:47
Speaker 3: because I sort of thought about that for a very
30:49
Speaker 3: long time when I was in prison. What's they going
30:51
Speaker 3: to feel like? And it sort of felt stupid, as safe,
30:54
Speaker 3: it felt as great or whatever. So but I remember
30:57
Speaker 3: thinking that it was such a bright day, the colors
30:59
Speaker 3: that just at my disposal now it seemed to be
31:02
Speaker 3: like a century overload, which is my immediate reaction was
31:05
Speaker 3: whoa the wind, the colors, the people, the attention, because
31:09
Speaker 3: you know, Jason, the reality was that at a very
31:12
Speaker 3: young age I had become like the man in the
31:14
Speaker 3: iron mask, where my voice was taken away. My existence
31:19
Speaker 3: before I had a chance to even blossom, was extinguished.
31:23
Speaker 3: There was no chance for this young life to become anything,
31:28
Speaker 3: and so I had to live with that. I lived
31:29
Speaker 3: with the fact that when I did try to make
31:31
Speaker 3: an attempt to speak up for myself, I was ignored
31:34
Speaker 3: and that was minimized. So that was a personal struggle
31:37
Speaker 3: that all kind of came together the day I was out,
31:39
Speaker 3: So from no attention to like, hey, we're all here
31:42
Speaker 3: for you, right, which was great. My attorneys were there,
31:45
Speaker 3: my family was there. Somehow I hadn't seen them very
31:47
Speaker 3: long time, and.
31:48
Speaker 1: So what happened? So then you're out? Yeah, where'd you go?
31:51
Speaker 3: And I was ushered into a car pretty quickly, and
31:53
Speaker 3: we went to Echo Park to a friend's home who
31:56
Speaker 3: they had a good whole food sort of spread awaiting
31:58
Speaker 3: for me. Right, So I went for a cafeteria food
32:01
Speaker 3: for twenty years or prison food, which is even worse,
32:04
Speaker 3: to this long table of organic almonds and dried apricots.
32:09
Speaker 4: You know.
32:09
Speaker 3: So that was pretty cool.
32:10
Speaker 2: Almonds and apricots a whole ya, man, sounds a little biblical,
32:14
Speaker 2: you know, It's kind of funny, that's right.
32:15
Speaker 1: I was thinking of you.
32:16
Speaker 2: I was thinking, you're gonna say you got like a sandwiches,
32:19
Speaker 2: and you know, I was picturing more of a you know.
32:23
Speaker 2: I mean, if they had almonds and eight apricots, I
32:25
Speaker 2: would have actually been pissed out of it, like come on, really,
32:27
Speaker 2: like can I get a slice?
32:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, pizza? Something? I mean, come on, man.
32:32
Speaker 2: So then you went home, and then you know, now
32:34
Speaker 2: here it is. You rebuilt your life. You successfully filed
32:39
Speaker 2: a lawsuit, well, you had two lawsuits, right, and one
32:43
Speaker 2: was settled. The other one you won, right, so you're
32:47
Speaker 2: now unlike many of our x houneries. There's a bright
32:51
Speaker 2: spot there because you know I talk about often. But
32:53
Speaker 2: the fact is, you know, so many ex houneries and
32:56
Speaker 2: something we're working to fix, do not receive compensation. You
32:59
Speaker 2: were able to prove violations of your civil rights and
33:02
Speaker 2: other things that led to you being compensated in a
33:05
Speaker 2: meaningful way. That's going to now allow you to help
33:08
Speaker 2: fix the system. That that would be a great full circle,
33:11
Speaker 2: wouldn't it.
33:11
Speaker 3: You know, I can't wait, and I'm not minimizing the
33:13
Speaker 3: money here because it makes my life very enjoyable. I
33:16
Speaker 3: think the true joyous moments for me since I've been
33:18
Speaker 3: home is that before I even got out, And this
33:21
Speaker 3: is this is I hope it can be sort of
33:22
Speaker 3: passed along to those who are who were imprisoned rightly
33:26
Speaker 3: or wrongly. But this idea that you have to before
33:29
Speaker 3: you even get out. You can't sort of prepare yourself
33:32
Speaker 3: the week to date, that the week to the night before,
33:34
Speaker 3: like okay, tomorrow is my big release date. Let me
33:37
Speaker 3: kind of get my thoughts together. This has to happen
33:39
Speaker 3: long before the door opens. And so I feel that
33:41
Speaker 3: in sort of credit to myself and those who were
33:43
Speaker 3: around me that my transition phase happened long before the
33:47
Speaker 3: door opened, and so when the door opened, I felt
33:50
Speaker 3: very prepared to just attempt to just now really be free.
33:53
Speaker 3: Because a common theme was when you got there, some
33:56
Speaker 3: older guy kind of gave you some like advice. As
33:58
Speaker 3: an example, you have five years years to do, and
34:01
Speaker 3: the advice was, for the first four years, just kind
34:03
Speaker 3: of hang out, man, you know you're in prison, Just relax,
34:06
Speaker 3: just play some cards and shit, and if you know
34:08
Speaker 3: you want to play dominoes, go work out, right. But
34:11
Speaker 3: the last year, man, like the last year, like, you know,
34:12
Speaker 3: go to church, or if you're smoking, stop smoking, get
34:15
Speaker 3: it together, right, And I thought that was pretty good advice. Shit,
34:18
Speaker 3: why not, man? What else you got to lose? Right?
34:20
Speaker 3: And at some point I realized that that even though
34:23
Speaker 3: it was a lifer, that advice applied to me, and
34:26
Speaker 3: it was against suspending complete reality here, but it was like,
34:29
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm making all these efforts to try
34:31
Speaker 3: to get my case hurt and try to get some
34:33
Speaker 3: attention here. Let me work on me too, Let me
34:36
Speaker 3: work on this idea that I need to prepare myself.
34:37
Speaker 3: And so fast forward, I went a month after I
34:41
Speaker 3: got out with some good friends Scott Wooden and who
34:44
Speaker 3: ended up living with in Mannon Beach and his wife
34:46
Speaker 3: Jeanie would. I enrolled at a great university in Los Angeles,
34:50
Speaker 3: Loyola Marymount University. So I went from and I'm sort
34:53
Speaker 3: of funny here, but I went from one prison to
34:55
Speaker 3: another because it had all the elements that I needed.
34:58
Speaker 3: And it felt like for a guy like me, I
35:01
Speaker 3: needed the structure that I had been accustomed to. And
35:03
Speaker 3: it's not the put down, but it was the university
35:06
Speaker 3: gave me the camaraderie, the friendship. There was no Bob Wire,
35:09
Speaker 3: but shit, I had deadlines, man. I had to show up,
35:12
Speaker 3: you know. And so it went from a very negative
35:14
Speaker 3: environment that I was into a very very loving and
35:17
Speaker 3: encouraging space, which was the school right along with just
35:20
Speaker 3: sort of being active and being activism. How could I
35:23
Speaker 3: not support the Innocence Project and ways the end of
35:25
Speaker 3: death penalty in California and other social issues around the state.
35:30
Speaker 2: And that's just gotten a whole lot worse with the
35:32
Speaker 2: speed up to death penalty referendum that passed in California,
35:34
Speaker 2: which is absolutely unimaginable and unconscionable that people would have
35:39
Speaker 2: been terrible because well, essentially they voted for guaranteeing that
35:44
Speaker 2: we're going to execute a lot of innocent people because
35:47
Speaker 2: the changes to the law are devastating to people who
35:51
Speaker 2: have claims of innocence. It's exactly what it sounds like.
35:53
Speaker 2: It's to speed up to death penalty. Yep, none of
35:55
Speaker 2: it makes any sense. But voices like yours and all
35:59
Speaker 2: the cure that is the media is really driving interest
36:04
Speaker 2: in this issue, this issue of innocence, this issue of
36:07
Speaker 2: mass incarceration and other related criminal justice problems that are
36:12
Speaker 2: sadly uniquely American problems because other countries are so much
36:17
Speaker 2: more evolved than we are. You know, it's incredible, Frankie.
36:20
Speaker 2: We have five percent of the world's population at twenty
36:23
Speaker 2: five percent of the world's prison population. The point I'm
36:25
Speaker 2: making is that when we process people at this rate,
36:29
Speaker 2: where we just keep feeding this prison industrial complex, they're
36:32
Speaker 2: going to be mistakes, They're going to be more Frankie Correos,
36:35
Speaker 2: we have to reverse the entire way of thinking that
36:39
Speaker 2: we have and start to become a more progressive society
36:43
Speaker 2: in terms of the way we treat the people who
36:44
Speaker 2: are really the least among us, people who find themselves
36:46
Speaker 2: in the situation that you are in, not a wealthy
36:49
Speaker 2: person by any means, and then just being ground.
36:51
Speaker 1: Up by the system.
36:52
Speaker 2: I want to get to last words because I always
36:55
Speaker 2: like to give our guests the opportunity to air anything
36:58
Speaker 2: that you can think of that you want to share
37:00
Speaker 2: with our audience. You've been through so much, You've come
37:03
Speaker 2: through sounding, looking, feeling, acting like a person who knows stuff.
37:09
Speaker 2: You have such a calm demeanor and such a positive outlook.
37:13
Speaker 2: It's almost unnerving to be honest with you, you know.
37:16
Speaker 2: I mean for a minute there you were making prison
37:18
Speaker 2: sound like it was like, yeah, you know whatever this
37:21
Speaker 2: many years that man, I'm like, it's just.
37:24
Speaker 3: You know, thank you Jason for these final words here
37:26
Speaker 3: that I think that for many people listening, and people
37:29
Speaker 3: even in my life now think, you know, like this dude,
37:32
Speaker 3: you know this optimism stuff is he's taken to a
37:34
Speaker 3: different level here, right. And you know, I wish that
37:37
Speaker 3: I can sort of either write a book or explain
37:39
Speaker 3: how I made it through and how these things weren't
37:41
Speaker 3: able to penetrate my armor here. But I suffer I
37:44
Speaker 3: can't minimize that there are things and moments where I
37:47
Speaker 3: might hear a song that might trigger true sadness about
37:50
Speaker 3: what I'd experienced as a whole, about the things that
37:52
Speaker 3: were lost, about you know, all the what ifs. Right
37:55
Speaker 3: and very quickly I made it a point to remember
37:59
Speaker 3: what anger and what revenge and what hatred does to someone.
38:04
Speaker 3: Tell you even deeper here that when I was in prison,
38:07
Speaker 3: I think about those who had owned that, who had
38:09
Speaker 3: owned the anger and the revenge and the hatred, and
38:13
Speaker 3: I saw these men that were being blinded by it,
38:16
Speaker 3: and I don't want to be that. And here we
38:18
Speaker 3: are in a room full of statues, this beautiful art
38:21
Speaker 3: that predates all of us here, and I think about
38:24
Speaker 3: if that was who I'd become in prison, I would
38:26
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be here one and two. If I had
38:29
Speaker 3: traces of that and I was out on some level,
38:32
Speaker 3: I would still be on the inside. I would be
38:34
Speaker 3: physically free, but the rage that would be living within
38:37
Speaker 3: me would be like a prison all to itself. And
38:40
Speaker 3: so I mean, I'm happy that I can make those
38:42
Speaker 3: connections of my own existence for my own personal healing
38:45
Speaker 3: and as a move forward to my life. And speaking
38:48
Speaker 3: of that life, I'm happily married, I have three amazing children,
38:51
Speaker 3: I have theo Akiva and Frieda, my wife, FT is
38:54
Speaker 3: amazing and life is great. And I think it's a
38:57
Speaker 3: responsibility for not only myself my family to take on
39:00
Speaker 3: this responsibility of giving people the pleasure of experiencing the
39:04
Speaker 3: cognitive dissonance, which is you are around or you hear
39:10
Speaker 3: and you experience something. It suspends you from and it
39:13
Speaker 3: shocks you into like this is not what I expected
39:16
Speaker 3: from a guy who had been in prison for all
39:17
Speaker 3: these years. And it challenges you your own beliefs, your
39:20
Speaker 3: own things you've been carrying with you. This psychological moment
39:24
Speaker 3: says wow, like I need to change what I used
39:26
Speaker 3: to think about those who were on the inside. And
39:28
Speaker 3: so it's a responsibility for me and other exenreies, I
39:31
Speaker 3: feel that to awaken that side of all of us
39:33
Speaker 3: to say, let's not do that, Let's not do that
39:35
Speaker 3: to each other. And when someone says, and it's not
39:38
Speaker 3: a joke anymore that they are innocent, let's listen because
39:42
Speaker 3: we know many experiences and many stories that are tragic
39:45
Speaker 3: that we've been listening to this whole weekend of If
39:47
Speaker 3: only someone really listened and cared.
39:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, and everybody out there has the power to make
39:52
Speaker 2: a difference. I always encourage our audience to get involved,
39:56
Speaker 2: and it's great to see that many of them are,
39:59
Speaker 2: I know, and hearing story. For me again, it puts
40:03
Speaker 2: gratitude in my attitude. It makes all those little wham
40:06
Speaker 2: wains that we all have in life just seem so
40:09
Speaker 2: much easier to deal with and so much to surface
40:13
Speaker 2: noise right when somebody like you can come and have
40:16
Speaker 2: this sort of aura. And it's amazing, Frankie. You know,
40:18
Speaker 2: the fact is, to any of us in the movement
40:22
Speaker 2: and to other people on the outside, it's a source
40:24
Speaker 2: of never ending wonder and awe that every single Xonery
40:30
Speaker 2: I've ever met has some version of that type of
40:35
Speaker 2: higher consciousness that you've managed to achieve. They have this
40:39
Speaker 2: state of almost like a state of grace that is
40:42
Speaker 2: it's just inspiring, that's all it is. And so I
40:45
Speaker 2: appreciate you taking the time to share your experience, strength
40:49
Speaker 2: and hope with us. And again, I'm just going to
40:52
Speaker 2: have to take a moment to process this, and then
40:56
Speaker 2: I'm going to go and get busy and get back
40:58
Speaker 2: to work on helping others.
41:00
Speaker 3: That's right.
41:01
Speaker 1: We've had a very.
41:01
Speaker 2: Unique experience because we've been recording the podcast in an
41:05
Speaker 2: idyllic environment. We're actually in a room and a home
41:08
Speaker 2: overlooking the Pacific Ocean on a cliff, surrounded by the
41:12
Speaker 2: most incredible African art. So I want to thank our hosts,
41:16
Speaker 2: Bill LaRock and Michelle Chicarelli The Rock for having us
41:20
Speaker 2: here and allowing us to record in their beautiful home.
41:29
Speaker 2: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
41:31
Speaker 2: get your podcasts.
41:33
Speaker 1: It really helps.
41:34
Speaker 2: And I'm a proud donor to the Ennosis Project, and
41:37
Speaker 2: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
41:40
Speaker 2: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
41:44
Speaker 2: to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
41:47
Speaker 2: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
41:50
Speaker 2: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
41:53
Speaker 2: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
41:56
Speaker 2: to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
41:59
Speaker 2: faceboo book at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
42:03
Speaker 2: Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
42:06
Speaker 2: association with Signal Company Number one