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Season 1_ Sidebar 11(M4A_128K) · NO FILTER

0:10
Speaker 1: There was no episode of Proof this week we were
0:12
Speaker 1: off for the holiday, but be sure to tune in
0:14
Speaker 1: on Monday for episode thirteen and find out what Charlie
0:17
Speaker 1: Childer saw on the night that Brian Bowling was shot.
0:20
Speaker 1: We do have a special episode of Proof Sidebar for you, though.
0:23
Speaker 1: Jacinda and I spoke to doctor Amy Banks, a psychiatrist,
0:26
Speaker 1: trauma specialist, speaker, writer and educator, and we're very happy
0:30
Speaker 1: she's joining us for this episode of Sidebar to discuss
0:32
Speaker 1: the case that greatly impacted her life. On the evening
0:45
Speaker 1: of April twelfth, nineteen seventy nine, doctors Ronald Banks and
0:48
Speaker 1: his colleague John Hackela were attending a conference in New Orleans.
0:52
Speaker 1: Just feet from the entrance to their hotel, they were
0:54
Speaker 1: held up by two young men. A shot was fired
0:57
Speaker 1: and doctor Ronald Banks was killed. Isaac Napper, a sixteen
1:01
Speaker 1: year old boy from a nearby housing project, was wrongfully
1:03
Speaker 1: convicted of the murder. He was sentenced to life in
1:06
Speaker 1: prison without parole to be served the notorious and goal
1:08
Speaker 1: of prison, but eventually he was able to overturn his
1:12
Speaker 1: conviction and win his freedom. Years later, doctor Banks's daughter, Amy,
1:16
Speaker 1: decided to look into what exactly had happened to her father.
1:20
Speaker 1: She was surprised to learn that the person she'd always
1:22
Speaker 1: believed responsible for his death was innocent. She reached out
1:25
Speaker 1: to Isaac and he agreed to meet her. They formed
1:27
Speaker 1: a friendship, and Amy found herself writing a book with
1:30
Speaker 1: the man who was convicted of murdering her father. Their book,
1:33
Speaker 1: Fighting Time, is the story of two families whose lives
1:37
Speaker 1: were forever changed by the murder of doctor Banks, and
1:39
Speaker 1: their journey to find justice, forgiveness, and friendship.
1:42
Speaker 2: Welcome to sidebar Amy. She preferred that I'd call you
1:45
Speaker 2: doctor Banks.
1:47
Speaker 3: No, you can call me Amy. That's good, okay.
1:50
Speaker 2: So if you would tell us a little bit about
1:53
Speaker 2: your story, if you could summarize it for us.
1:57
Speaker 3: Sure. So my stream when I was nineteen seventy nine,
2:01
Speaker 3: my father was a professor at the University made Orno.
2:04
Speaker 3: He traveled to New Orleans to go to a history
2:07
Speaker 3: conference and while he was there, he was held up
2:10
Speaker 3: right outside of the Higher Regency and you know, just
2:14
Speaker 3: a robbery, held up by allegedly two black men and
2:19
Speaker 3: shot and killed on the spot. So that's the murder
2:25
Speaker 3: aspect of it. About three weeks later, they picked up
2:29
Speaker 3: two young men, Isaac Napper and Leroy Williams. And from
2:34
Speaker 3: my understanding, it is clear to me that they weren't
2:37
Speaker 3: there and that they didn't do it. But what also
2:39
Speaker 3: wasn't clear is, you know, why they were going in
2:42
Speaker 3: this direction in the first place, because they had evidence.
2:47
Speaker 3: Somebody had sent them information that there was a similar
2:50
Speaker 3: hold up with the gun that killed my father with
2:53
Speaker 3: two young black men that fit the description, and that
2:57
Speaker 3: information was sent very specifically to our detective John Dillman
3:02
Speaker 3: to say, hey, you better look into this. They didn't,
3:06
Speaker 3: in fact, and chose to go this route and take
3:10
Speaker 3: in these two young again also young black men, sixteen
3:14
Speaker 3: and seventeen. They then fed us lots of information about
3:20
Speaker 3: how sure they were that these were the guys and
3:22
Speaker 3: bad kids, and they had been trying to get them
3:25
Speaker 3: for a very long time. You know, they really kind
3:27
Speaker 3: of built it up, and you know, we had no
3:29
Speaker 3: reason to dealt them, and so we didn't. And in
3:32
Speaker 3: October of that same year, eventually the detective's prosecution went
3:38
Speaker 3: to both of these young men and gave them both
3:40
Speaker 3: the same deal, essentially saying to both of them, we
3:44
Speaker 3: know the other guy did it, and if you tell
3:46
Speaker 3: on him, then your sentence will be reduced, you know.
3:50
Speaker 3: And when that offer was given to both Isaac and Leroy,
3:56
Speaker 3: Leroy took it, Isaac didn't. That resulted in Isaac being
4:00
Speaker 3: convicted in a one day trial a first degree murder
4:03
Speaker 3: and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
4:06
Speaker 1: How did Isaac and Leroy first come to their attention?
4:10
Speaker 3: There was a guy, allegedly there was a guy by
4:12
Speaker 3: the name of Tony Williams who was, as Isaac who's
4:17
Speaker 3: now a friend of mine describes it, he was, you know,
4:20
Speaker 3: maybe he was developmentally delayed or something, but it was
4:23
Speaker 3: clear that he was not quite right. But he knew Isaac.
4:26
Speaker 3: He also knew Leroy. And apparently what he did is
4:31
Speaker 3: he was in the vicinity at the time of the murder,
4:34
Speaker 3: and when the police went to him, I don't think
4:38
Speaker 3: it wasn't right at the time, but either a week
4:40
Speaker 3: or so later and began showing pictures of people, he
4:46
Speaker 3: picked him out of the lineup because he recognized him,
4:49
Speaker 3: recognized Isaac and Leroy and said these were the guys
4:52
Speaker 3: that did it. That was the only mention. There was
4:55
Speaker 3: a security guard at the time of the murderer who
4:58
Speaker 3: was literally coming down this years right by the opening
5:01
Speaker 3: where my father was who got to look at the
5:04
Speaker 3: guys that were running away and said, no, it was
5:07
Speaker 3: not Isaac Knapper. You know, there were a number of
5:09
Speaker 3: people and his family that said no, he was home
5:12
Speaker 3: that night. So there were other people that kind of
5:14
Speaker 3: provided an alibi, if you will, or a witness that
5:17
Speaker 3: said no, it wasn't him. But it's clear in retrospect
5:21
Speaker 3: that the prosecution, the detectives wanted to get this off
5:24
Speaker 3: the books. At the time, the High Regency was only
5:27
Speaker 3: three years old. They were really trying to get people
5:29
Speaker 3: to come there. The Superdome was built, and you know,
5:32
Speaker 3: it was a big tourist thing, and my dad was
5:35
Speaker 3: a white guy at a conference. They wanted somebody and
5:38
Speaker 3: that's you know, I have no idea to this day
5:42
Speaker 3: why they, you know, ignored this other evidence doesn't make any.
5:46
Speaker 2: Sense to me. And the timing is, had they already
5:50
Speaker 2: picked up Isaac and Leroy when before this other incident happened,
5:56
Speaker 2: or no they him they hadn't had even though they
6:01
Speaker 2: had this other information, they still went after Wow, yeah.
6:06
Speaker 3: I don't get that. I don't know. I mean, there
6:08
Speaker 3: was literally another detective who wrote in the police report
6:13
Speaker 3: that of course the police report that wasn't turned over
6:16
Speaker 3: to the defense, right, this was the Brady material that
6:19
Speaker 3: the defense didn't get. But in that I mean this
6:22
Speaker 3: Sergeant Italiano had literally said, I am sending you this
6:27
Speaker 3: information because it reminds me of the description of the
6:30
Speaker 3: guys that you're investigating. I mean he literally lays it
6:34
Speaker 3: out there and then goes right through it, including that
6:37
Speaker 3: they had the gun and the ballistic test match. The
6:40
Speaker 3: gun had five bullets in it. The one bullet that
6:43
Speaker 3: was missing was the bullet that killed my father, and
6:46
Speaker 3: they just chose to overlook it.
6:48
Speaker 1: Yep.
6:49
Speaker 2: Wow, it's incredible, it is.
6:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I.
6:53
Speaker 2: Know it's really hard because what you know now, right,
6:57
Speaker 2: but you understand that I was very, very different from
6:59
Speaker 2: what you knew and understood to be the truth. Then.
7:02
Speaker 2: I think I remember reading that the first time you
7:05
Speaker 2: ever saw a picture of Isaac was in the newspaper
7:08
Speaker 2: in Maine.
7:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
7:10
Speaker 2: Literally, Yes, Do you like seeing the person who you
7:14
Speaker 2: think killed your father and what that was like for you? Yeah?
7:19
Speaker 3: Because I wasn't prepared for it, and it was in
7:21
Speaker 3: the bangor Daily News. Nobody had told us yet that
7:24
Speaker 3: somebody had been arrested, right, And so there it was
7:27
Speaker 3: in our local newspaper, right, which is in Bangor, Maine,
7:30
Speaker 3: and on the front page, you know, this picture of
7:32
Speaker 3: Isaac with this detective Dilman, and that this arrest had
7:36
Speaker 3: been made. And you know, it's interesting. I often think
7:40
Speaker 3: about that. I mean, it was shocking to see him.
7:42
Speaker 3: It was shocking to see Okay, this alleged. You know,
7:46
Speaker 3: I didn't I didn't question it. You know, I figured
7:48
Speaker 3: if they've picked up somebody, of course they picked up
7:51
Speaker 3: the right guy. It never occurred to me or our
7:55
Speaker 3: family that there would be anything untoward going on at all. Right,
8:00
Speaker 3: So I'm looking at in my mind one of the
8:03
Speaker 3: two guys, and a few days later was the you know,
8:06
Speaker 3: also the picture of Lee Roy Williams being arrested as well.
8:10
Speaker 3: And so they had picked these guys up. And what's interesting,
8:12
Speaker 3: And this is just I think a quirk of mine.
8:15
Speaker 3: I remember just staring at it. It almost didn't compute.
8:20
Speaker 3: I want to say, you know, there was some short
8:22
Speaker 3: circuiting that was going on, because it wasn't like I
8:25
Speaker 3: looked in was like angry or I mean, it was
8:28
Speaker 3: more curious, like what in the world would cause that
8:32
Speaker 3: man to shoot my father, you know it. It was
8:35
Speaker 3: this weird kind of thing.
8:37
Speaker 2: But at the time, there was, like you said, there's
8:39
Speaker 2: no doubts in your mind that it was the wrong
8:43
Speaker 2: person or they had made a mistake.
8:44
Speaker 3: Or no, it never occurred to us. And it wasn't
8:50
Speaker 3: that it was neutral, you know. That wasn't they were saying,
8:53
Speaker 3: we think we have a suspect. It was we got
8:56
Speaker 3: the guy. He's been in trouble, you know, all along,
9:01
Speaker 3: and here he is. I mean, we were just fed
9:04
Speaker 3: lots of information. You know, it was just piled on.
9:08
Speaker 2: Right, So everything you're being told kind of supports this
9:10
Speaker 2: image of someone capable of committing murder of someone.
9:15
Speaker 3: Right, exactly exactly, And of course it fit all of
9:19
Speaker 3: the stereotypes of young black men, right, I mean, you know,
9:22
Speaker 3: and we're up there, isolated, and you know, yeah, we
9:26
Speaker 3: completely believed it.
9:28
Speaker 1: Yeah.
9:29
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting because you talk about this picture
9:31
Speaker 2: in the case we're covering. There's a color photo that
9:35
Speaker 2: runs in the local newspaper down in Rome, and the
9:38
Speaker 2: two boys are in their orange jump suits with handcuffs
9:42
Speaker 2: and they're looking at the camera and one of them,
9:44
Speaker 2: Lee Clark, I don't know Susan, if you know which
9:46
Speaker 2: picture I'm talking about, he looks so angry, he looks angry,
9:50
Speaker 2: and people interpret it as if I was being accused
9:53
Speaker 2: of something I wasn't guilty of, I wouldn't look like that,
9:56
Speaker 2: you know, Like there's people read into how you're supposed
9:59
Speaker 2: to look, or how you're supposed to act, or how
10:01
Speaker 2: you're supposed to you know, behave in court, and I
10:06
Speaker 2: don't think there is any universal.
10:08
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And of course, if you're being wrongly arrested for something,
10:13
Speaker 3: why wouldn't you look angry or scared or whatever? I mean?
10:18
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, no, it yeah, yeah, yeah to me, both
10:23
Speaker 1: the boys look terrified in that photo, not angry. But
10:25
Speaker 1: you can read so much into it more than those
10:28
Speaker 1: kind of images.
10:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a cross section in time of a mess
10:31
Speaker 3: of a situation, right, yeah. Yeah.
10:35
Speaker 2: The other thing about your story that caught my attention
10:37
Speaker 2: when I first read your book, Fighting Time is the
10:41
Speaker 2: parallels between you and Isaac. Or maybe they're not actually parallels,
10:45
Speaker 2: because it's very different worlds, but you're you're the same
10:48
Speaker 2: age essentially when Isaac is picked up and when your
10:53
Speaker 2: father dies, and your lives take very different Yeah, ads,
10:58
Speaker 2: I don't know if you could speak to that for
11:00
Speaker 2: a minute, maybe sure.
11:01
Speaker 3: You know, as Isaac and I have been, you know,
11:03
Speaker 3: going around and talking about it, this is one of
11:06
Speaker 3: the things that I feel like, you know, I want
11:09
Speaker 3: people to understand, right, Like we do these talks. I
11:11
Speaker 3: have a PowerPoint and I talk about there's this image
11:14
Speaker 3: that I show of Isaac actually in boxing gloves in Angola.
11:18
Speaker 3: Right at the same age, I am with my basketball
11:22
Speaker 3: team and I'm holding up a basketball because I've just
11:24
Speaker 3: scored my whatever thousands point or something. And the point
11:28
Speaker 3: I always make is neither one of us was guilty
11:30
Speaker 3: of anything. Right then He's an Angola. And so his
11:36
Speaker 3: next twelve thirteen years of life was Angola, fighting for
11:40
Speaker 3: his life every single day, you know, thinking he's going
11:43
Speaker 3: to die there, having no hope whatsoever. And I got
11:47
Speaker 3: to again, not having done anything. I got to go
11:50
Speaker 3: to college and play basketball in college, and go to
11:53
Speaker 3: medical school and go to do a residency and come
11:56
Speaker 3: out and learn and do trauma work. And so it's like, yeah,
12:01
Speaker 3: we just went in the opposite direction. And I think
12:04
Speaker 3: you're right. I mean, one thing that's interesting and as
12:07
Speaker 3: I've gotten to know Isaac even more and we've spent
12:09
Speaker 3: more and more and more time together. Is actually how
12:12
Speaker 3: similar we are, right, I mean it's cool. I feel
12:16
Speaker 3: like he's a bit of my soulmate. Actually, you know,
12:18
Speaker 3: we're very similar in how we think about the world,
12:22
Speaker 3: how we think about people. He's got a huge heart,
12:25
Speaker 3: you know, he's always trying to help. So it like
12:28
Speaker 3: the weirdest thing is how light we are, you know.
12:31
Speaker 3: So I don't think that's you know, I think that's
12:33
Speaker 3: put on at all. And the parallels are really striking.
12:37
Speaker 1: Actually, you know, how long and all did Isaac spend incarcerated.
12:42
Speaker 3: He was thirteen years in Angola, and then part of
12:45
Speaker 3: the story, Susan is that he had come out. He
12:48
Speaker 3: was actually an amateur boxer for a couple of years
12:52
Speaker 3: and then he was a professional boxer, ended up breaking
12:55
Speaker 3: his hand, you know, didn't get any money for his
12:58
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction. Of course, had no education because he you know,
13:02
Speaker 3: I mean, these are all the lists of what he
13:04
Speaker 3: would say or excuses for a very bad decision, which
13:07
Speaker 3: is eventually ended up selling drugs to try to support
13:11
Speaker 3: his family on a very large scale and ended up
13:14
Speaker 3: going back to prison for another seventeen years. He was
13:18
Speaker 3: twenty years. So he's been in prison a total of
13:21
Speaker 3: thirty years, but for the wrongful conviction. He was in
13:24
Speaker 3: for about thirteen.
13:26
Speaker 2: I remember Isaac's mom. Wasn't there a story and we
13:29
Speaker 2: could ask Isaac this himself, but where his mom had
13:35
Speaker 2: asked him to just take the deal because they had
13:37
Speaker 2: threatened to kill him and they had beat him up
13:39
Speaker 2: and they had yep, and he did not. He said,
13:45
Speaker 2: I'm not going to admit to something I didn't do.
13:47
Speaker 3: Right, Right, that's exactly right. Is literally what you know
13:51
Speaker 3: when it was coming right down to the wire and
13:53
Speaker 3: you know, for our side, right this deal of like
13:57
Speaker 3: right up until I would say a few weeks before,
14:00
Speaker 3: we were then being told that even though they had
14:03
Speaker 3: the right guy, they might not be able to get
14:05
Speaker 3: a conviction because the one witness I think it was
14:08
Speaker 3: this Tony Williams, was missing and he wasn't missing. They
14:12
Speaker 3: didn't want to call him, right, he was right in
14:14
Speaker 3: the neighborhood. They didn't call him because it wasn't going
14:16
Speaker 3: to be a good witness, right, And so they were
14:18
Speaker 3: preparing my family that these two might go free. And
14:22
Speaker 3: then literally, like we as I said, week or two,
14:25
Speaker 3: the prosecution start offered this deal to both of them,
14:29
Speaker 3: and Isaac didn't take it, and Leroy Williams did And
14:32
Speaker 3: then we got a call saying, hey, great news. One
14:36
Speaker 3: of the two that were rested turned stays evidence on
14:39
Speaker 3: the other guy, and we're sure we'll get a conviction.
14:42
Speaker 3: And that was like about a week before the trial.
14:44
Speaker 3: It was all, you know, everything was all different all
14:46
Speaker 3: of a sudden. So and you said it was a.
14:48
Speaker 2: One day trial. Did Leroy testify at he did?
14:52
Speaker 1: He did?
14:53
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, and just you know fed them the line. Yep.
14:56
Speaker 3: We were at the Superdome and it's crazy. I mean,
14:59
Speaker 3: we had, you know, finally, once I met Isaac, we
15:03
Speaker 3: got a chance to look at the trial transcript and
15:05
Speaker 3: it's just horrifying. I mean it's horrifying to hear the
15:08
Speaker 3: way they questioned Isaac, you know, the condescension, the way
15:11
Speaker 3: they were, you know, how they dealt with his family.
15:14
Speaker 3: I mean, it was it's just it's really sickening, quite frankly.
15:18
Speaker 2: And just to remind people, both Isaac and Leroy were
15:21
Speaker 2: sixteen seventeen.
15:23
Speaker 3: I think Leroy was seventeen, Isaac was sixteen, and when
15:26
Speaker 3: the trial happened, Isaac had just turned seventeen. He had
15:29
Speaker 3: his seventeenth birthday like a month earlier.
15:32
Speaker 2: I mean they're young kids. They're teenagers who are young
15:36
Speaker 2: met it with the situation and have no idea how.
15:39
Speaker 3: To no idea, right. And Leroy William's mother also said,
15:45
Speaker 3: you've got to take this deal because they're going to
15:46
Speaker 3: kill you, right, I mean they will. They are asking
15:49
Speaker 3: for the death penalty, right. And Isaac's mom did that.
15:53
Speaker 3: I just got a chance to talk with her about
15:55
Speaker 3: it actually the last time. I was in New Orleans
15:56
Speaker 3: a few weeks ago, and just crushing, right, this woman,
16:00
Speaker 3: you know, who's now in her nineties, who you know,
16:03
Speaker 3: has raised these ten kids and under just unfathomable conditions,
16:09
Speaker 3: trying to get him out of prison and having to
16:11
Speaker 3: actually say that to your son, like whe right to
16:17
Speaker 3: save your life, you know, and Isaac just was like, yeah,
16:20
Speaker 3: I can't do that.
16:21
Speaker 2: At what point do you find out that Isaac has
16:27
Speaker 2: been exonerated.
16:28
Speaker 3: So Isaac was exonerated in nineteen ninety two, and my
16:32
Speaker 3: family nobody told us that this had happened, right, So
16:35
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two he's free. We still think he's in prison,
16:40
Speaker 3: and we didn't find out until about two thousand and four,
16:44
Speaker 3: And you know, we never would have found out had
16:46
Speaker 3: not my brother in law googled Isaac Knapper's name and
16:51
Speaker 3: found all of this information. I mean, he just did
16:54
Speaker 3: it on a whim and out of the blue and
16:55
Speaker 3: found all of this information about his exoneration and what
16:59
Speaker 3: happened in the brat of material at all of that.
17:01
Speaker 3: So we didn't have any idea until then, till two
17:04
Speaker 3: thousand and four.
17:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, how when you learn about his exoneration, are you
17:10
Speaker 2: do you remember that moment? Did it? Could you believe it?
17:16
Speaker 3: No? No, no, no, I mean it's so far beyond comprehendible, right,
17:25
Speaker 3: I mean, and it was layered, It was layered. Part
17:28
Speaker 3: of it was you didn't tell us, right like I mean,
17:33
Speaker 3: so the first pass was I have to say. And
17:35
Speaker 3: I feel a little ashamed of this at this point
17:37
Speaker 3: because of course I know and love Isaac at this
17:39
Speaker 3: point so much like I wasn't thinking, I'm like, God,
17:42
Speaker 3: this poor guy has been wrongly convicted. That that grew
17:47
Speaker 3: over time. You know, we were like, this is an
17:52
Speaker 3: open murder case. You know, we still have a murdered father,
17:56
Speaker 3: and now we don't have any other clues, and so
17:59
Speaker 3: the race at That's where my anger has come from
18:03
Speaker 3: and continues to be, which is the rage at a
18:05
Speaker 3: system that can set up young people but also doesn't
18:09
Speaker 3: really give a shit about me and my family either, right,
18:13
Speaker 3: I mean, like, did they just think we would never
18:18
Speaker 3: find out? I mean, I guess and at the time,
18:21
Speaker 3: you know, my sister Nancy particularly really pounded the pavement
18:25
Speaker 3: to try to get people interested and try to find
18:27
Speaker 3: out what the heck had happened, and you know, and
18:30
Speaker 3: what we were hearing is unfortunately, this is not uncommon
18:35
Speaker 3: in New Orleans particularly. I mean, you know, I've since
18:38
Speaker 3: learned that this is an uncommon period, but that particularly
18:41
Speaker 3: in New Orleans and particularly in Harry Conic Senior's DA's office,
18:46
Speaker 3: this was part of the course at that time. But
18:49
Speaker 3: I have to say, I mean, for me, what it
18:51
Speaker 3: did is, you know, whatever, you never put a murder
18:55
Speaker 3: behind you. I don't think. I just think that's impossible.
18:58
Speaker 3: But you'll learned to live with it. You learned or
19:01
Speaker 3: you learned to keep going. And you know, Okay, there's
19:05
Speaker 3: every April when the anniversary comes, it's just hell. And
19:09
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, there's always the pain of it,
19:11
Speaker 3: but you kind of get to some equilibrium right where Okay,
19:16
Speaker 3: this is horrible it happened. But then to have the
19:19
Speaker 3: whole thing opened back up, I mean, that was the
19:21
Speaker 3: thing that was just it was just gut wrenching.
19:24
Speaker 1: It was horrible. After Isaac's honeration, was there any effort
19:27
Speaker 1: to reinvestigate the case.
19:29
Speaker 3: None, Nope, none at all.
19:34
Speaker 1: They ever explained why that is, or have you ever
19:36
Speaker 1: had a conversation with them about whether they intend to
19:39
Speaker 1: ever look into the case again.
19:40
Speaker 3: Yep, nobody's intending to look in at any case. Yeah,
19:43
Speaker 3: I mean, those were the questions that Nancy, my sister,
19:45
Speaker 3: was asking the DA's office. She went to the police department,
19:49
Speaker 3: who said, no, it would be the prosecution, the prosecutions,
19:52
Speaker 3: you know, they punted it. We went to victims advocates,
19:55
Speaker 3: we went to Boo. It was they had put in
19:58
Speaker 3: I don't know what the term is, no la, no
20:00
Speaker 3: lo something I don't know, like, we're not going to
20:02
Speaker 3: prosecute basically, so they made a unilateral decision to not
20:07
Speaker 3: try to investigate it. It's I mean, it's interesting. I
20:13
Speaker 3: at this point, it's been forty three years since my
20:17
Speaker 3: father has been murdered, right, I'm pretty sure through conversations
20:22
Speaker 3: with Isaac and his friends and whatever. I'm pretty sure
20:25
Speaker 3: that three players who were arrested a week later, particularly
20:29
Speaker 3: this guy Derek Robertson, who was a friend of Isaac's,
20:32
Speaker 3: are all dead. So in my mind, it's sort of
20:35
Speaker 3: like wasted money, wasted time. They can use it on
20:38
Speaker 3: something else. It is not going to change my life
20:42
Speaker 3: to know very specifically at this point who killed my father,
20:46
Speaker 3: particularly if the three people that are probably most suspect
20:50
Speaker 3: or all dead. I don't have a burning desire to
20:53
Speaker 3: have to know that.
20:55
Speaker 1: You know.
20:55
Speaker 3: And in some ways that's probably you know, forgive me,
20:58
Speaker 3: I'm a psychiatrist, and ways that's probably a defense mechanism
21:03
Speaker 3: to say, you know, I just don't. I don't want
21:05
Speaker 3: to open it up. I don't, you know. I've transitioned
21:09
Speaker 3: the story into, you know, it's kind of making lemonade
21:12
Speaker 3: out of lemons, right, I've transitioned into writing a book
21:15
Speaker 3: with Isaac and really trying to talk with people about
21:19
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction and how horrible it is and you know,
21:22
Speaker 3: why it happens, and justice reform and reconciliation and a
21:25
Speaker 3: whole bunch of other stuff. So would of a curious
21:28
Speaker 3: or I'd be curious, but it's not going to make
21:30
Speaker 3: or break my life at this point, and it doesn't
21:33
Speaker 3: offer me any healing.
21:35
Speaker 1: Back when Isaac was convicted, did you feel a sense
21:37
Speaker 1: of closure from that?
21:38
Speaker 3: I can't. I can't say that I felt closure. Part
21:43
Speaker 3: of it is I was young, right, I was seventeen.
21:46
Speaker 3: My family was just just blown apart by this, you know,
21:52
Speaker 3: and we're still we're still fairly blown apart by this.
21:55
Speaker 3: So so there wasn't there was it's an idea of closure.
22:01
Speaker 3: I don't. There's never been closure, you know. You know,
22:05
Speaker 3: I think a lot at this point about justice and
22:07
Speaker 3: what is justice and the justice system, you know, and
22:10
Speaker 3: how unjust it is, and I it just, you know,
22:13
Speaker 3: it just feels like the whole system is so screwed
22:17
Speaker 3: up at this point. I just I don't. I don't
22:19
Speaker 3: have any faith in it now. And at the time,
22:22
Speaker 3: I think there was a little bit like, Okay, this happened,
22:24
Speaker 3: and of course somebody gets convicted, so that happens. But
22:27
Speaker 3: I don't know that there was anything called closure.
22:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Susan and I look into cases that are
22:35
Speaker 2: possible wrongful convictions, so they haven't there hasn't been a decision.
22:39
Speaker 2: We're reinvestigating cases, which is very different from you who
22:44
Speaker 2: finds out after the fact, even when presented evidence. It's
22:47
Speaker 2: very very hard for family members, you know. Often it's like,
22:51
Speaker 2: we know it's the right guy, and we don't want
22:53
Speaker 2: to talk to you about it. What is that phenomenon, Like,
22:55
Speaker 2: it's so hard to think that maybe the wrong person
22:58
Speaker 2: is convicted. Right.
22:59
Speaker 3: Right, by the time I found out and my family
23:03
Speaker 3: found out, I was already pretty deep and steeped into it.
23:10
Speaker 3: It was a shock that it happened. It wasn't a
23:13
Speaker 3: shock that things like this happened in the world, And
23:16
Speaker 3: so for me, I didn't at all have a what
23:21
Speaker 3: that can't be right? I had a oh Jesus, really,
23:26
Speaker 3: you know kind of thing like here we go again,
23:29
Speaker 3: you know, because by that time I really was aware
23:32
Speaker 3: of not the way that I am now, but certainly
23:35
Speaker 3: aware of what happened happens.
23:37
Speaker 2: In the justice system.
23:38
Speaker 3: Right, So I wasn't surprised. I do think Isaac, you know,
23:42
Speaker 3: the way that I describe it is, Isaac has been
23:45
Speaker 3: literally coded in my brain as the murderer, murderer of
23:49
Speaker 3: my father. Right. Whatever the valance on that was, obviously
23:52
Speaker 3: it was horrible, but he was the murder of my father. Right,
23:55
Speaker 3: He's in jail for the murder. And I came home
23:59
Speaker 3: from that weekend with Isaac Napper's phone number, contact information
24:04
Speaker 3: on my cell phone and I kept looking at it
24:07
Speaker 3: and it was this weird, like, this is Isaac Napper, right,
24:12
Speaker 3: thirty six years later he has lived for all this
24:14
Speaker 3: time as the murder of my father. Now I've just
24:17
Speaker 3: met him and he certainly developed the beginnings of a
24:21
Speaker 3: friendship there. And so it you know, to imagine that
24:29
Speaker 3: you have a neural network that has been devoted to
24:32
Speaker 3: the murder of your father. It doesn't change that easily, right,
24:38
Speaker 3: And I can imagine that that is what a lot
24:40
Speaker 3: of people go through. Right If you don't, I mean,
24:44
Speaker 3: you've really lived with this right as a fact, not
24:49
Speaker 3: an opinion or not a maybe this guy killed my
24:53
Speaker 3: father whatever, it was a fact. And I can imagine
24:57
Speaker 3: people shutting down, putting it a wait in a box,
25:02
Speaker 3: locked in, and that what you're asking them to do
25:06
Speaker 3: is unlock all of that pain, right and to begin
25:10
Speaker 3: to revisit that. And I just think that is a
25:13
Speaker 3: tall order for anyone.
25:15
Speaker 2: Well, what's next for you? And Isaac? What do you
25:18
Speaker 2: see in your future. You have this book everybody should
25:21
Speaker 2: go out and buy called Fight.
25:23
Speaker 3: He's called Fighting Time. So I'm in the process of
25:26
Speaker 3: going through I've been wanting to make a curriculum to
25:29
Speaker 3: really use to kind of use the book in a
25:32
Speaker 3: talk that Isaac and I do, And we've been going
25:34
Speaker 3: all over the place actually giving lectures and teaching and
25:38
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. But to be able to really
25:40
Speaker 3: have something very specific curriculum for like high school and
25:43
Speaker 3: college students to engage in the story and really, you know,
25:48
Speaker 3: kind of put themselves in this place, what would you do?
25:50
Speaker 2: And the case we're working on, one of the boys,
25:53
Speaker 2: Cane story, is interrogated two days after the shooting, and
25:57
Speaker 2: it's not a long interrogation, but over and over they say,
26:01
Speaker 2: tell us the truth. Kane tell us the tru truth,
26:04
Speaker 2: and he keeps saying I didn't do it. I didn't
26:06
Speaker 2: do it. And then they say everyone wants to just
26:10
Speaker 2: everyone just wants to get this done. We all want
26:13
Speaker 2: to go home. The family's grieving. We promised, we promised,
26:16
Speaker 2: we won't charge you with murder. Just tell us you
26:19
Speaker 2: did it. Just tell us she did it. And finally
26:21
Speaker 2: at the end he says, yeah, I was holding the
26:24
Speaker 2: gun and it went off, And it's just it's a
26:28
Speaker 2: little glimpse of what happens inside of interrogation rooms with
26:33
Speaker 2: He does not have a lawyer with him, he does
26:35
Speaker 2: not have a parent with him. He's seventeen years old.
26:39
Speaker 2: He thinks he knows everything. He scared out his mind.
26:43
Speaker 2: His best friend is dead. You know, it's all these things, right, Tom,
26:47
Speaker 2: which again, you know, going back to Isaac, it's kind
26:49
Speaker 2: of amazing to me that Isaac didn't break, He didn't
26:55
Speaker 2: do what they wanted him to do. That that's actually,
26:59
Speaker 2: I think.
27:00
Speaker 3: Very rare, I think absolutely, I mean, and it's so
27:05
Speaker 3: consistent with who he is as a person. You mean,
27:09
Speaker 3: I mean. And that's the thing that that part of
27:11
Speaker 3: the part of the story that I actually love, right,
27:14
Speaker 3: is that you know, he wasn't broken, and he wasn't broken,
27:18
Speaker 3: and he stept the way. Was he traumatized, absolutely? Was
27:21
Speaker 3: he beaten? Absolutely? Was he did he do things that
27:24
Speaker 3: he regrets to stay alive in prison. Absolutely, But he
27:28
Speaker 3: didn't he didn't do that thing. He didn't lie. And
27:32
Speaker 3: he would say, actually to this day, he'd say, I
27:35
Speaker 3: really thought that I'd go to trial and they wouldn't
27:40
Speaker 3: have anything on me because they didn't do it right.
27:43
Speaker 3: He really thought, he actually thought that, you know, and
27:46
Speaker 3: then he sees what plays out and he goes to
27:49
Speaker 3: prison and he's meeting hundreds of guys that this has
27:51
Speaker 3: happened to thousands of guys as has happened to, right,
27:53
Speaker 3: I mean, ugh, so sick.
27:57
Speaker 1: I just can't imagine how difficult it is for families
28:00
Speaker 1: to have two losses in effect, first the loss of
28:04
Speaker 1: loved one and then to go through this whole process
28:06
Speaker 1: again and knowing someone else's life has been ruined as well.
28:09
Speaker 2: Well, that's it.
28:10
Speaker 3: That's my other like kind of line that I always say.
28:13
Speaker 3: The only thing worse and having apparent murdered is then
28:16
Speaker 3: finding out that a seventeen year old boy has been
28:20
Speaker 3: wrongfully convicted for it, right, I mean, that's the only
28:24
Speaker 3: way you could make the story worse. And it did
28:26
Speaker 3: make it worse, a hell of a lot worse, right
28:29
Speaker 3: for everybody? And ugh, just yeah, just sick.
28:34
Speaker 2: Well, the fact that you and Isaac are now friends
28:36
Speaker 2: and co authors of this amazing book and are sharing
28:39
Speaker 2: your story across the country and worldwide, that that's amazing.
28:43
Speaker 2: The fact that you've been able to come together and
28:46
Speaker 2: the forgiveness and acceptance, and that's also a unique part
28:49
Speaker 2: of these kinds of stories.
28:52
Speaker 3: Absolutely right and trying to help other people get there right,
28:56
Speaker 3: I mean, get to that place where you can kind
28:58
Speaker 3: of make peace with whatever the screwy systems have done
29:02
Speaker 3: and actually working on reconciliation. Not an easy process at all.
29:07
Speaker 3: It isn't, but it's better than the alternative, I have
29:10
Speaker 3: to say, you know, which is to just be angry, bitter, confused,
29:16
Speaker 3: you know, helpless and feel like you can't turn to
29:20
Speaker 3: the justice system er anywhere right really to make things right.
29:24
Speaker 3: You're just kind of stuck in a pilot dog crap,
29:28
Speaker 3: you know.
29:30
Speaker 1: Check your local bookstore to purchase a copy of Fighting Time.
29:33
Speaker 1: The book is also available for purchase from any of
29:36
Speaker 1: your favorite online retailers. Thanks for listening to Proof Sidebar.
29:44
Speaker 1: Proof is back on Monday with episode thirteen, so tune
29:47
Speaker 1: in to find out what Charlie Childers really saw on
29:49
Speaker 1: the night that Brian Bowling was shot. If you have
29:52
Speaker 1: any questions for future cyber episodes, don't forget to send
29:54
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30:00
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