Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #590 Jason Flom with Jens Soering

Transcript

#590 Jason Flom with Jens Soering · Wrongful Conviction

0:04
Speaker 1: This is Jason Flom with an update on Jens Ziering's case.
0:09
Speaker 1: In 1990, Jens and his then-girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, were convicted
0:12
Speaker 1: of murdering her parents in their Bedford County, Virginia home.
0:16
Speaker 1: After 33 years, four months, and seven days in prison,
0:21
Speaker 1: Jens was finally paroled and deported back to Germany in 2019.
0:24
Speaker 1: On February 17th of this year, Jens' legal team filed
0:30
Speaker 1: a new actual innocence petition citing DNA analysis that they
0:35
Speaker 1: say excludes him and identifies two unknown male profiles.
0:41
Speaker 2: The petition also.
0:42
Speaker 1: Includes information from the victim's granddaughter, Sheena Hasem, and has
0:47
Speaker 1: raised questions about other family members and inconsistencies in the case.
0:53
Speaker 3: The DNA tests are reliable. It's not Jens Ziering. It
0:58
Speaker 3: is most likely two other people, one with blood group O,
1:02
Speaker 3: one with blood group AB. And now comes Sheena Hasen
1:05
Speaker 3: and does the familial DNA. And that shows that her
1:11
Speaker 3: male relatives cannot be excluded. So the jury hears Yen
1:17
Speaker 3: Tsering is excluded, but Sheena's male relatives cannot be excluded.
1:25
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean they did it. The question is only,
1:29
Speaker 3: the legal question is, if a jury were to hear
1:32
Speaker 3: all of this, would that not lead to a reasonable doubt?
1:37
Speaker 1: On August 6th, the court ordered the Attorney General to respond.
1:41
Speaker 1: What that response could mean for Jens' four-decade-long fight to
1:45
Speaker 1: clear his name?
1:46
Speaker 2: Well, that remains to be seen, but we remain hopeful.
1:52
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to the process as it unfolds in
1:56
Speaker 3: the coming months. And I'm hopeful that my case get
2:00
Speaker 3: the consideration it deserves after actually now 40 years since
2:06
Speaker 3: my arrest and 41 years since the crime. I think
2:10
Speaker 3: this is now actually my best chance yet of getting justice.
2:15
Speaker 3: And I'm really excited about that. And I'm thankful to
2:18
Speaker 3: Sheena Hasem, who's had a lot of courage to go
2:20
Speaker 3: public with this. And I'm thankful to Elliot Harding, my
2:24
Speaker 3: new attorney, and all the other people who've supported me
2:27
Speaker 3: For ages. I'm grateful to all of these people for
2:30
Speaker 3: helping me.
2:31
Speaker 4: Hello.
2:42
Speaker 5: This is a prepaid debit call from... Yes, Zerling.
2:47
Speaker 6: An inmate at Virginia Department of Corrections, Buckingham Correctional.
2:52
Speaker 5: To accept this call, press zero. To refuse this call...
2:57
Speaker 5: This call is from.
2:58
Speaker 7: A correction facility and is subject to monitoring and recording.
3:02
Speaker 7: Thank you for using GTL.
3:05
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom.
3:08
Speaker 2: That's me. I'm your host.
3:09
Speaker 1: And today we have an episode that is going to
3:13
Speaker 1: rock your world. We have three guests today. I'm going
3:18
Speaker 1: to save the best for last. But we have John
3:21
Speaker 1: Grisham in the studio with us. John, welcome.
3:23
Speaker 8: Delighted to be here.
3:24
Speaker 1: And Sheriff Chip Harding of Albemarle County.
3:27
Speaker 9: Yes, sir.
3:27
Speaker 2: Good to be here. Virginia.
3:29
Speaker 1: And on the phone is Jens Soering, one of the
3:32
Speaker 1: most remarkable people I know, and one of the most
3:36
Speaker 1: extraordinary cases of injustice that we've ever covered on this show.
3:41
Speaker 1: So Jens, as I always say, I'm happy you're here,
3:44
Speaker 1: but I'm sorry you're here.
3:45
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate this, Jason.
3:49
Speaker 5: And thanks to Chip and John as well.
3:52
Speaker 1: So this is a A case that takes us back
3:55
Speaker 1: to the 80s, believe it or not. A case that
3:59
Speaker 1: has all the makings of a John Grisham novel, actually.
4:04
Speaker 1: Because this goes back to Jens, when you were first
4:09
Speaker 1: an exchange student from Germany, a brilliant young scholar from
4:12
Speaker 1: everything I'm told. This is a Jefferson scholar, a freshman
4:15
Speaker 1: at the University of Virginia. Jens, do you want to
4:18
Speaker 1: take us back there and tell us how this started?
4:25
Speaker 5: Sure. This was in 1984, in the fall. I arrived
4:30
Speaker 5: at the University of Virginia as a freshman. They called
4:34
Speaker 5: first-year students there. And I met a young woman there
4:39
Speaker 5: who was two and a half years older than I was,
4:41
Speaker 5: Elizabeth Hayson. And we were both in the same dormitory.
4:47
Speaker 5: She had entered the university late because she had had
4:50
Speaker 5: an adventurous... youth. She had gone to an English boarding
4:56
Speaker 5: school and run away with her girlfriend to Europe, things
4:59
Speaker 5: like that. And so she came to UVA quite a
5:03
Speaker 5: bit older than the rest of us in that dormitory.
5:06
Speaker 6: And I was.
5:09
Speaker 5: Not an American citizen. My father was a German diplomat.
5:13
Speaker 5: That's why I was living in the United States. And
5:16
Speaker 5: her family came from South Africa and from Canada. So
5:21
Speaker 5: we were drawn to each other as being foreigners, you know,
5:28
Speaker 5: not Americans. And in the course of that fall semester
5:32
Speaker 5: in 1984, we fell in love. And, you know, it
5:39
Speaker 5: was quite a surprise to everybody else in the dormitory
5:41
Speaker 5: because she was very experienced and very mature. And I was,
5:47
Speaker 5: I guess, a nerd, an uber-nerd.
5:51
Speaker 10: And virgin to boot.
5:52
Speaker 5: So she was my very first girlfriend.
5:55
Speaker 1: You're a German Uber version nerd. It's quite a combination, Jens.
5:58
Speaker 1: And she was a beautiful young woman, a striking woman,
6:02
Speaker 1: who anyone in your situation would have probably fallen head
6:05
Speaker 1: over heels for, considering the circumstances. But it was, of course,
6:09
Speaker 1: a fateful, star-crossed love affair.
6:12
Speaker 5: Yes, and it was a very short-lived love affair as well.
6:16
Speaker 5: Three months after we started dating, or maybe four months,
6:20
Speaker 5: We went to Washington, D.C. to spend a weekend together,
6:23
Speaker 5: and in the course of that weekend, she told me
6:27
Speaker 5: that she was still using drugs, which she had previously
6:32
Speaker 5: told me she had stopped doing, and that she needed
6:35
Speaker 5: to use our rental car to run some drugs from Washington, D.C.
6:40
Speaker 5: to her dealer, who was also a university student back
6:44
Speaker 5: in Charlottesville. And I wanted to come along, But she
6:50
Speaker 5: wouldn't let me because she said that I was such
6:52
Speaker 5: a nerd. No drug dealer would want to do business
6:55
Speaker 5: around me. So she drove off in the car by
6:58
Speaker 5: herself and came back eight hours later and told me
7:03
Speaker 5: she had killed her parents. And she said that the
7:07
Speaker 5: drugs had made her do it and they had deserved
7:10
Speaker 5: it anyway. And if I didn't help her, she would
7:16
Speaker 5: be executed. She would be back then they used a
7:19
Speaker 5: lecture chair. She said that they would fry her. And
7:22
Speaker 5: she said that I should be her alibi and tell
7:25
Speaker 5: the police that she was with me in Washington. And
7:28
Speaker 5: I told her that that would never, ever work because
7:30
Speaker 5: the police never believed boyfriends or husbands or wives, people
7:34
Speaker 5: like that. So I came up with this brilliant idea, um,
7:42
Speaker 5: based on Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, of
7:46
Speaker 5: all things, um, I would take the blame for her.
7:49
Speaker 5: I would take the rap for her and save her life.
7:55
Speaker 5: That was based on a character in the Charles Dickens novel.
7:59
Speaker 5: Sidney Carton did that in this novel. The difference was
8:04
Speaker 5: that in the novel, that particular character actually did get executed,
8:08
Speaker 5: whereas my father was a German diplomat. I thought I
8:14
Speaker 5: had diplomatic immunity. I thought that I could take the
8:19
Speaker 5: blame for her crime, and all that would happen with
8:23
Speaker 5: me was that I would be sent back to Germany
8:26
Speaker 5: and put in prison there, in a juvenile prison, for
8:32
Speaker 5: about 10 years. And I thought that giving 10 years
8:35
Speaker 5: of my life was worth saving her life from the electric, too.
8:41
Speaker 2: Yeah.
8:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.
8:45
Speaker 1: It's sort of a twisted nobility. People do crazy things
8:49
Speaker 1: for love all the time. And we were talking about
8:52
Speaker 1: this earlier, Jens, and I said that it's such a
8:53
Speaker 1: strange fate that you happen to have only been with
8:56
Speaker 1: one woman and she turned out to be the devil.
8:59
Speaker 5: You know, calling her the devil is a little oversimplified.
9:04
Speaker 5: She was later diagnosed with a very severe personality disorder.
9:10
Speaker 5: So she actually had serious mental health issues. And, of course,
9:15
Speaker 5: she claimed that her mother had sexually abused her with
9:19
Speaker 5: the knowledge and cooperation of her father. And, you know,
9:24
Speaker 5: there's some indications that may have actually been true. Of course,
9:29
Speaker 5: we'll never know for sure now. But she was a
9:31
Speaker 5: troubled young woman.
9:33
Speaker 1: As things developed, you initially were not suspects, but then
9:37
Speaker 1: at some point you decided to make a getaway. And
9:41
Speaker 1: this is back in the days when For people who
9:44
Speaker 1: don't remember, in the 80s, you could sort of travel
9:46
Speaker 1: the world under a different name, and it wasn't so
9:48
Speaker 1: tightly monitored or regulated. And so you guys went around
9:52
Speaker 1: the world and ultimately ended up in England. And that's
9:54
Speaker 1: when things began to go wrong, right, because you were
9:57
Speaker 1: ultimately arrested for passing bad checks. and then we get
10:00
Speaker 1: to the point where the false confessions come in, or
10:04
Speaker 1: your false confessions.
10:05
Speaker 5: So the police took both Elizabeth and me back from
10:10
Speaker 5: the jail to the police station, and they actually wrote
10:15
Speaker 5: into the police station logbook that I was to be
10:18
Speaker 5: held incommunicado. In other words, I was to be isolated
10:21
Speaker 5: from the outside world and not given access to my lawyer.
10:25
Speaker 5: And that's exactly what they did. For four days, they
10:30
Speaker 5: interrogated me. Four days. Many, many hours. Dozens and dozens
10:35
Speaker 5: and dozens of hours. And then finally, on the fourth day,
10:38
Speaker 5: I decided to keep my promise to Elizabeth that I
10:43
Speaker 5: had made 15 months earlier, and I decided to take
10:47
Speaker 5: the blame for what she did. And that's what I did.
10:52
Speaker 5: I told them the story that she and I had
10:54
Speaker 5: cooked up. And, of course, that false confession contained many
11:00
Speaker 5: mistakes that the real killer would not have made. I
11:05
Speaker 5: described the clothing of one victim incorrectly. And I placed
11:11
Speaker 5: the other victim in the wrong room. And there were
11:14
Speaker 5: numerous mistakes like that, which... I should have alerted the
11:19
Speaker 5: police to the fact that I might not be telling
11:22
Speaker 5: the truth. In addition to that, of course, at that time,
11:27
Speaker 5: the police who were interrogating me were in possession of
11:32
Speaker 5: an FBI crime scene profile by one of the people
11:36
Speaker 5: who invented crime scene profiling, one of the leading special agents.
11:42
Speaker 5: And that profile said that the crime.
11:45
Speaker 10: Had been committed.
11:47
Speaker 5: by a woman in a close relationship to the victims.
11:51
Speaker 5: And of course, I was a man, and I didn't
11:53
Speaker 5: know the victims at the one time for 20 minutes.
11:57
Speaker 5: So they should have known that the story I was
12:00
Speaker 5: telling them was not true. And then, of course, the
12:03
Speaker 5: other thing that happened is that just a couple of
12:06
Speaker 5: hours after I told the police that I did it,
12:10
Speaker 5: Elizabeth told the police that she did it. She said,
12:14
Speaker 5: I did it myself. I got off on it. And
12:17
Speaker 5: I did it myself. I got off on it. I
12:21
Speaker 5: did it myself. I got off on it. But by
12:24
Speaker 5: that stage, the police had decided that I was the
12:27
Speaker 5: guilty one. So they actually let her withdraw that confession,
12:31
Speaker 5: which is hilarious in a way, because they found her
12:36
Speaker 5: fingerprints at the crime scene and not mine. And, you know,
12:42
Speaker 5: it's quite incredible.
12:45
Speaker 10: That they let her withdraw that confession.
12:47
Speaker 5: But they did. And so they ended up charging me
12:51
Speaker 5: with being the killer, and they charged her with being
12:55
Speaker 5: the accomplice. And in 1990, they put me on trial
13:00
Speaker 5: and convicted me of something that I did not do.
13:03
Speaker 1: And I do want to bring John and Chip into
13:06
Speaker 1: the conversation now, too, just to talk about this scenario
13:10
Speaker 1: that took place in England and the immediate aftermath of it. John,
13:14
Speaker 1: You were a criminal defense lawyer in your younger years.
13:18
Speaker 8: Yeah, it goes back to a confession, false confession. There's
13:22
Speaker 8: no other proof to convict Jens of the murder. So
13:26
Speaker 8: all they have is a false confession. And with any
13:29
Speaker 8: false confession case, what you would hope that the authorities
13:33
Speaker 8: do is once they manage to extract the confession, whatever
13:39
Speaker 8: tactics they use to do that, is that they will
13:41
Speaker 8: match it up to the physical evidence. to see if
13:44
Speaker 8: it in fact matches. And false confessions virtually never match
13:49
Speaker 8: up because there are too many details or specifics in
13:51
Speaker 8: the murder, the method of murder, the place, the blood,
13:55
Speaker 8: the blood splatter, the clothing, the room, whatever. There's a
13:58
Speaker 8: whole fingerprints, footprints. There's a long list of items that,
14:02
Speaker 8: you know, police go through in any investigation. And with
14:07
Speaker 8: a false confession, it's usually fairly simple to realize once
14:11
Speaker 8: you start matching the confession, given by somebody who wasn't there,
14:16
Speaker 8: it's impossible for them to remember all the details that
14:18
Speaker 8: the real killer would actually know. Where he left the bodies,
14:21
Speaker 8: how he killed them, who did what, what was on
14:25
Speaker 8: the kitchen table, what was knocked over, what was spilled.
14:27
Speaker 8: These are all fairly common sense. In Yen's case, there
14:32
Speaker 8: were so many discrepancies between his confession and the actual
14:37
Speaker 8: physical crime scene, you just want to scream and say,
14:41
Speaker 8: why didn't somebody put these together, match them up. And
14:46
Speaker 8: what frustrates me is when you get to trial and
14:48
Speaker 8: you have what you think should be a competent defense
14:51
Speaker 8: lawyer who cannot walk through the confession step by step
14:56
Speaker 8: by step and show the discrepancies between the confession and
14:59
Speaker 8: the actual crime scene. I'm not sure if this was
15:02
Speaker 8: done or attempted in Yen's case, but it certainly was
15:05
Speaker 8: not effective. And so that's That's where we always start
15:09
Speaker 8: in a false confession case is let's match it up
15:12
Speaker 8: with the proof, and it never matches up.
15:15
Speaker 1: It never does, and this was a crazy case because
15:17
Speaker 1: on top of all the other factors that led to
15:19
Speaker 1: his wrongful conviction, I think there was an inherent bias.
15:23
Speaker 1: I can't prove this because of the fact that it
15:25
Speaker 1: was Bedford County, which ironically is the county that lost
15:28
Speaker 1: more soldiers in World War II to the Germans per
15:31
Speaker 1: capita than anywhere else in the United States. It's why
15:33
Speaker 1: the World War II memorial is there. And so I
15:35
Speaker 1: think that there's at least an argument that the odds
15:38
Speaker 1: were stacked against Jens from the beginning. I want to
15:40
Speaker 1: bring Sheriff Harding into the conversation. Sheriff Harding, you've been
15:45
Speaker 1: in law enforcement for several decades, four decades, right? I mean,
15:48
Speaker 1: his resume is nuts when you look at the number
15:51
Speaker 1: of accreditations he has and the number of awards he's won.
15:54
Speaker 1: And he's one of the most accomplished people in law
15:58
Speaker 1: enforcement in the United States. And you've dived into this
16:01
Speaker 1: case with all guns blazing, so to speak, and You've
16:04
Speaker 1: examined this evidence 18 ways till Sunday. Is it theoretically
16:08
Speaker 1: possible that Jens committed this crime? Is it possible?
16:11
Speaker 9: I mean, he could have been dropped down from a
16:13
Speaker 9: spaceship and done it. But is it logical he was
16:17
Speaker 9: there when these murders occurred? Extremely unlikely he was there.
16:20
Speaker 9: There's nothing that puts him there other than this false confession.
16:24
Speaker 9: And as John was saying earlier, the confession didn't match
16:28
Speaker 9: the crime scene when you look at it. I mean,
16:29
Speaker 9: there was some huge discrepancies that weren't followed up. You
16:33
Speaker 9: had a young investigator, his first homicide case he'd ever investigated.
16:38
Speaker 9: And I'm reading a transcript going, you've got to be
16:40
Speaker 9: kidding me. You didn't do any follow-up. Plus, they didn't
16:43
Speaker 9: tape the confession. So when he gets to court, very skillfully,
16:47
Speaker 9: the prosecutor only asked questions that were consistent with the
16:52
Speaker 9: crime scene and the event and omitted the inconsistencies. And
16:57
Speaker 9: as John was pointing out, he had a very, very
16:59
Speaker 9: ineffective defense attorney that didn't bring that to the attention
17:02
Speaker 9: of the jury.
17:03
Speaker 5: As far as details that corroborate the confession, at the
17:09
Speaker 5: time of the trial, the prosecutor pointed out to the
17:14
Speaker 5: jury 26 times that the police found.
17:19
Speaker 10: Some O-type blood at the crime scene, and that I
17:24
Speaker 10: was the only person involved in the case who had
17:28
Speaker 10: type O blood. The victims did not have typo blood,
17:32
Speaker 10: and my girlfriend did not have typo blood.
17:34
Speaker 5: The only person involved in the case with typo blood
17:38
Speaker 5: was me, is what the prosecutor told the jury 26 times.
17:42
Speaker 5: And it would take another two and a half decades
17:47
Speaker 5: to find out, through DNA testing, that indeed that was
17:51
Speaker 5: typo blood that was left by somebody else. So the
17:56
Speaker 5: fact that seemed to corroborate the confessions at the time
17:59
Speaker 5: of the trial, is now shown to actually disprove the confession.
18:05
Speaker 5: Skip can talk more about that.
18:07
Speaker 1: Sheriff Harding, what percentage of the population has this type
18:10
Speaker 1: of blood? I think it's about 45%, isn't it? Yeah,
18:12
Speaker 1: it's pretty high.
18:13
Speaker 5: Right.
18:13
Speaker 1: So, I mean, that really is, I mean, it's a
18:15
Speaker 1: ridiculous thing to try to pin anything on, but yet
18:17
Speaker 1: the prosecutor mentioned it 26 times. It's also worth mentioning
18:21
Speaker 1: that Jens' lead trial lawyer was disbarred a few years
18:25
Speaker 1: after your wrongful conviction. And he was disbarred because of
18:28
Speaker 1: mental illness. Drugs were a factor in all of this.
18:31
Speaker 1: And it was shown that he was suffering from this
18:34
Speaker 1: during the time of your trial. So that's just another
18:38
Speaker 1: important thing to recognize. This is a nightmare that no
18:42
Speaker 1: one can imagine living through. You had been in jail
18:45
Speaker 1: in England for quite some time before you even came
18:47
Speaker 1: to trial. You had nothing in your life experience that
18:50
Speaker 1: would prepare you for any of this.
18:52
Speaker 4: And.
18:53
Speaker 1: Now here you are in the grip of the justice
18:56
Speaker 1: system in Virginia. It's sort of an arch-villain, right? And
19:02
Speaker 1: what was this like for you to go through this?
19:05
Speaker 5: At that stage in 1990, I had already been in
19:08
Speaker 5: prison for four years, fighting extradition from England to the
19:13
Speaker 5: United States. For most of those four years, I was convinced,
19:18
Speaker 5: and all my lawyers were convinced, and everybody thought that
19:22
Speaker 5: I would definitely be sentenced to death. So I spent
19:26
Speaker 5: four years in prison, in effect, psychologically, on death row. Everybody,
19:31
Speaker 5: including my own team, told me that I had no
19:35
Speaker 5: chance of avoiding the electric, too. And then at the
19:39
Speaker 5: last minute, that was avoided. We won an appeal at
19:42
Speaker 5: the European Court of Human Rights, and I was brought
19:44
Speaker 5: back to America.
19:46
Speaker 4: And.
19:47
Speaker 5: That sort of thing has an effect on you psychologically.
19:51
Speaker 5: living in prison for four years believing that you're going
19:55
Speaker 5: to die pretty gruesomely in the electric tube then I
19:59
Speaker 5: got brought back to Virginia everybody hated me everybody was
20:05
Speaker 5: convinced I was guilty and it was really it was
20:08
Speaker 5: scary And I did not handle it well. I did
20:11
Speaker 5: not handle it well. But, again, you have to look
20:15
Speaker 5: at this against the background of my having just spent
20:17
Speaker 5: three years under imminent threat of death, then coming into
20:21
Speaker 5: this new atmosphere, and having to see Elizabeth Hasen, the
20:26
Speaker 5: woman that I had sacrificed myself for, get up on
20:30
Speaker 5: the stand and torture herself and tell all these lies
20:34
Speaker 5: to put me away in prison. And when I say
20:37
Speaker 5: that she perjured herself, that's not just a claim I make.
20:40
Speaker 5: 26 years later, she actually admitted that in a newspaper interview.
20:47
Speaker 5: She admitted that she perjured herself at that trial. But
20:51
Speaker 5: at that time, nobody knew that, and nobody cared. They
20:55
Speaker 5: just wanted a witness to point the finger at me,
20:58
Speaker 5: and she did that job. She pointed the finger at me,
21:01
Speaker 5: and that, and my own false confession... And the type
21:07
Speaker 5: of blood, that's what did me in.
21:10
Speaker 1: And the sock print, of course, was a ridiculous piece
21:12
Speaker 1: of evidence that no serious person should have ever even,
21:16
Speaker 1: it shouldn't have been allowed in court, and it shouldn't
21:17
Speaker 1: have been, and the way that it was done was
21:18
Speaker 1: very devious. And Sheriff Harding, I want to talk to
21:21
Speaker 1: you because it's interesting to me that, you know, Jens
21:24
Speaker 1: has assembled this remarkable team, and it's a great credit
21:27
Speaker 1: to him. And you're an interesting character in this because
21:30
Speaker 1: you're a conservative guy, a guy who's obviously a law
21:33
Speaker 1: and order guy. And yet you have devoted yourself selflessly
21:37
Speaker 1: and spent time that you could have been doing anything
21:39
Speaker 1: else to hundreds of hours to this case. So can
21:44
Speaker 1: you talk about that? And then can you talk about
21:46
Speaker 1: the actual forensic evidence?
21:49
Speaker 11: Right.
21:49
Speaker 9: Well, his attorney, Stephen Rosenfield, asked me to take a
21:51
Speaker 9: look at part of the pardon petition to see if
21:53
Speaker 9: I could find a way to strengthen it or to
21:55
Speaker 9: see if he's missed something in it. And I told
21:58
Speaker 9: Steve at the beginning, I felt like Yens was guilty
22:00
Speaker 9: based on everything I'd seen. I know Governor Kaine had
22:03
Speaker 9: tried to send him back to Germany. I was opposed
22:05
Speaker 9: to that because I felt like he was guilty. He
22:08
Speaker 9: shouldn't have been given any special consideration just because he
22:12
Speaker 9: was a German. So Steve gave me the case. He
22:14
Speaker 9: said it won't take but a couple hours. Well, I
22:16
Speaker 9: ended up taking a bunch of stuff home at night.
22:18
Speaker 9: My wife thought I lost my mind because I spent
22:20
Speaker 9: basically the whole weekend at the dining room table covered
22:23
Speaker 9: with material that Steve gave me. And I said, oh,
22:25
Speaker 9: my God, this is nothing like what was representative. In conclusion,
22:30
Speaker 9: I ended up writing a 19-page letter to the governor
22:33
Speaker 9: breaking down the closing arguments of the case. That's the
22:35
Speaker 9: strength of the government's case, last bite.
22:38
Speaker 2: At the apple.
22:40
Speaker 9: I broke that down, and then after that was published,
22:42
Speaker 9: I had another investigator work with me for 25 years, said,
22:46
Speaker 9: let me help a former FBI agent that I know
22:48
Speaker 9: that I worked another case with, jumped in. One of
22:52
Speaker 9: the original Bedford investigators said he felt like Jens had
22:56
Speaker 9: been railroaded, and was innocent also. So the four of
22:58
Speaker 9: us have been working it collectively. We've given a couple
23:00
Speaker 9: thousand hours. And you want to talk briefly about the forensics.
23:05
Speaker 9: The old blood was very powerful, as was mentioned. And
23:09
Speaker 9: I will say, if I was on that jury, I
23:11
Speaker 9: would have convicted him based on the way the evidence
23:14
Speaker 9: was represented so skillfully by the prosecutor.
23:17
Speaker 1: The old blood now we know absolutely.
23:19
Speaker 9: No one can test the fact that it's not Yinser
23:21
Speaker 9: and he's not been detected in the crime scene but
23:24
Speaker 9: two other males. One with AB blood and one with
23:27
Speaker 9: O blood had been detected in the crime scene, and
23:29
Speaker 9: we have not identified those people. In my opinion, Bedford
23:32
Speaker 9: County should consider having an open homicide investigation. Then you
23:36
Speaker 9: look at the next piece of evidence that was pretty powerful.
23:40
Speaker 9: The Commonwealth originally got a certificate of analysis from the
23:45
Speaker 9: State Bureau of Forensics saying that the shoe and sock
23:48
Speaker 9: size was consistent with a 6 1⁄2 to 7 1⁄2
23:49
Speaker 9: woman's shoe or a man's 5 or 6 shoe. Well,
23:54
Speaker 9: they originally had, and this just blew my mind, they
23:56
Speaker 9: originally had a small female as a prime suspect in
24:00
Speaker 9: this thing. And the prosecutor wrote a letter, we got
24:03
Speaker 9: a copy of it, attached with a draft affidavit saying
24:06
Speaker 9: that he wanted this woman's blood, fingerprints, and shoe impressions
24:09
Speaker 9: because her shoe was consistent with what was in the
24:12
Speaker 9: crime scene. Now, you turn around and go to trial,
24:15
Speaker 9: you don't hear anything. The defense attorney brings nothing up.
24:18
Speaker 1: They bring in.
24:19
Speaker 9: A non-qualified individual to testify. He did what we like
24:24
Speaker 9: to refer to as a magic trick, created an overlay
24:27
Speaker 9: of an impression of Yen's foot and said it basically
24:31
Speaker 9: fits like a glove. Reminds you of OJ. And he
24:34
Speaker 9: was even instructed he could not testify as an expert.
24:36
Speaker 9: But when you look at the closing arguments of the prosecutor,
24:39
Speaker 9: he says it can only fit one man. One man
24:42
Speaker 9: in the world could this fit. And he points at
24:44
Speaker 9: Yen Tsering. And we know that's hoopla. That's junk evidence.
24:47
Speaker 9: And the same man that put this on in front
24:50
Speaker 9: of the jury, Robert Halett, did the same thing in
24:53
Speaker 9: another case where a man was given the death penalty.
24:57
Speaker 9: And thank God it took a few years. He did
24:59
Speaker 9: not get executed. DNA proved he absolutely didn't do it.
25:02
Speaker 9: So here you have the same junk science being used again.
25:06
Speaker 9: There was a juror that gave an affidavit to the
25:09
Speaker 9: attorneys that said it was tied 6-6 in the jury room.
25:12
Speaker 9: They wanted to take a look at the sock and
25:14
Speaker 9: shoe evidence again. And he said, that's what turned the tide.
25:17
Speaker 9: And we know now that's ludicrous. They're really two parts.
25:20
Speaker 9: You've got a false confession and you also have a
25:22
Speaker 9: false alibi. You've got Elizabeth who claims she stayed at
25:27
Speaker 9: the hotel room. And when Jens came back, she said
25:30
Speaker 9: Jens comes back that night after midnight in a sheet
25:34
Speaker 9: covered in blood from head to toe in the rental vehicle.
25:37
Speaker 9: And Jens asked her to clean it up with Coca-Cola. Yet,
25:41
Speaker 9: That vehicle was tested with luminol, and I've never had
25:44
Speaker 9: a case where blood had been present, even bleach had
25:46
Speaker 9: gotten it all out. No indication of any blood at all,
25:49
Speaker 9: and it was testimony from the folks at the rental
25:51
Speaker 9: agency that the car was in immaculate condition, no signs
25:54
Speaker 9: of any Coca-Cola. We have since learned, and digging in
25:58
Speaker 9: the little limited information we can see, that there was
26:02
Speaker 9: actually blood found in the trap of the shower of
26:05
Speaker 9: the master bedroom in And that shower wall illuminated like
26:08
Speaker 9: 4th of July. So it gives us the impression as investigators,
26:12
Speaker 9: at least one of the participants in this homicide took
26:14
Speaker 9: a shower. So why would he be covered in blood
26:16
Speaker 9: from head to toe?
26:17
Speaker 2: It's impossible.
26:18
Speaker 1: Sheriff Harding, on top of all the other evidence and
26:21
Speaker 1: FBI agents like Ed Salzbach who came forward and others
26:24
Speaker 1: to say that there had been evidence that had been
26:26
Speaker 1: hidden or not turned over, not disclosed in the way
26:30
Speaker 1: that the law mandates that it must be, there's also
26:33
Speaker 1: the In chapter 18 of the book, A Far, Far
26:37
Speaker 1: Better Thing, there's the story of the car in the woods, right?
26:41
Speaker 1: Which would, again, you would think that this alone would
26:44
Speaker 1: be enough to send Jens home. And I'm going to
26:48
Speaker 1: quote from the book again. In 2011, Tony Buchanan, the
26:53
Speaker 1: retired owner of a Lynchburg area auto transmission shop, said
26:55
Speaker 1: that three to five months after the murders in 1985,
26:58
Speaker 1: a car was towed into his shop for repairs. Its
27:01
Speaker 1: undercarriage matted with grass and mud as if it had
27:03
Speaker 1: been sitting in the woods for a while. The tow
27:05
Speaker 1: truck driver told Buchanan the two-door Chevrolet belonged to, quote,
27:09
Speaker 1: some college kids. And here's the important part. He said
27:11
Speaker 1: in a sworn statement that when he looked inside, he
27:13
Speaker 1: saw that the floorboard on the driver's side was, quote,
27:15
Speaker 1: full of dried blood. Beside the console between the front seats,
27:19
Speaker 1: also covered in dried blood, was a single-edged hunting-type knife,
27:23
Speaker 1: the same type that was used to kill the Hasems. Now,
27:26
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here. I've got chills just reading that. And,
27:29
Speaker 1: you know, he this same guy testified or swore and
27:33
Speaker 1: affidavit that Jens was not one of the people that
27:35
Speaker 1: returned the car. Elizabeth was one and somebody else was
27:38
Speaker 1: the other. But yet here we go again.
27:40
Speaker 9: Yeah, he claims just a shame so much time has passed.
27:42
Speaker 9: He claimed that he called and spoke to Ricky Gardner,
27:45
Speaker 9: who was the lead investigator, now chief deputy in Bedford,
27:48
Speaker 9: and told him about this. Gardner denies that, says it
27:51
Speaker 9: didn't happen. So, so much time has passed.
27:54
Speaker 12: Some of the.
27:55
Speaker 9: Investigators did work that lead, and we kind of ran
27:57
Speaker 9: it out because time was not on our side. We
28:00
Speaker 9: tried to find any documentation, real material, checks, and all
28:04
Speaker 9: that kind of stuff. The banks just don't have it
28:06
Speaker 9: from back in 1985. But if they'd been followed up
28:09
Speaker 9: on properly at the time, same way if they had
28:12
Speaker 9: sent investigators to the hotel they'd stayed at, it had
28:15
Speaker 9: cleared it up right away that Jens was there.
28:17
Speaker 1: She wasn't.
28:18
Speaker 9: His story of what he purchased was consistent with the
28:21
Speaker 9: hotel bill. But she said she purchased when she stayed there.
28:24
Speaker 9: It was very inconsistent, way over what the bill showed
28:28
Speaker 9: in it. And there were three or four more things
28:30
Speaker 9: that Elizabeth says that occurred we can disprove with her alibi. But,
28:35
Speaker 9: you know, the bottom line that's most frustrating for me
28:39
Speaker 9: is everything that has come out of that woman's mouth
28:42
Speaker 9: is provable that she's lying or it's highly suspect she's lying.
28:45
Speaker 9: We've looked very hard at everything that Jens has said,
28:49
Speaker 9: and we have not caught him in a lie.
29:04
Speaker 1: We're talking about a case in which a couple was
29:07
Speaker 1: brutally murdered, stabbed multiple times, each of them very bloody
29:12
Speaker 1: crime scene, rich with biological evidence from the actual killers.
29:17
Speaker 1: In theory, you also had a logical explanation for this
29:21
Speaker 1: in that Elizabeth had said multiple times that she had
29:24
Speaker 1: been sexually abused by her mother, that her father may
29:27
Speaker 1: have been involved in this in some way. There was
29:30
Speaker 1: a clear motive in that sense. You had drugs, which
29:33
Speaker 1: no one ever claimed that you were on drugs, but
29:35
Speaker 1: we know that she was doing hard drugs and that
29:38
Speaker 1: she was running with a very nefarious. crew back then
29:41
Speaker 1: and would have had access to the type of people
29:43
Speaker 1: who might commit a murder like this. People who knew
29:45
Speaker 1: you back then, including some people from law enforcement, said
29:47
Speaker 1: that it was, even Elizabeth said it was ludicrous to
29:50
Speaker 1: think that you could have committed a brutal crime like
29:53
Speaker 1: this because you're not a physically imposing guy. You would
29:56
Speaker 1: have had to overpower two adults. None of it ever
29:59
Speaker 1: made any sense, and it should have been relatively simple.
30:03
Speaker 1: And now, of course, so many people have weighed in
30:05
Speaker 1: on this, including Chuck Reed, one of the original investigators
30:08
Speaker 1: in the case, who has said in emphatic terms that
30:12
Speaker 1: it could not have been you, that he doesn't believe
30:13
Speaker 1: it was you, and yet we still find ourselves in
30:17
Speaker 1: this situation where we're still all trying to get you out.
30:21
Speaker 5: Well, it's been very, very difficult for me, especially over
30:27
Speaker 5: the last two and a half years, since the pardon
30:30
Speaker 5: petition was submitted based on the DNA evidence. It's been
30:34
Speaker 5: really difficult for me because for 30 years, we thought
30:38
Speaker 5: there was no DNA evidence in this case that could
30:42
Speaker 5: prove my innocence. And then after 30 years in prison,
30:45
Speaker 5: it was actually I, on the phone, with my lawyer,
30:50
Speaker 5: Steve Rosenfield, flipping through some old forensic reports. I found
30:56
Speaker 5: the DNA evidence. And You know, that's what the pardon
31:00
Speaker 5: petition is based on, but two and a half years later,
31:03
Speaker 5: we cannot get anybody to act on it. And that's,
31:07
Speaker 5: you know, for 30 years, I was wishing for DNA,
31:12
Speaker 5: and then I finally get the DNA evidence, and then
31:16
Speaker 5: nobody's willing to listen or accept it or do anything
31:19
Speaker 5: about it.
31:21
Speaker 1: Maybe you guys can try to give me some insight
31:25
Speaker 1: as to why this case is such a difficult one
31:29
Speaker 1: to resolve in the face of such overwhelming evidence of innocence.
31:36
Speaker 1: How do you explain this?
31:36
Speaker 8: I'll touch on it. I can't explain it. And I
31:38
Speaker 8: think you know, Jason, from your work in the innocence world,
31:43
Speaker 8: as frustrating as this is, it's not unusual. We've had
31:49
Speaker 8: cases before where we have to fight tooth and nail
31:53
Speaker 8: to obtain DNA testing for one of our clients. And
31:57
Speaker 8: we get the DNA testing, all the objections of the
32:00
Speaker 8: local prosecutors and local law enforcement. We get the DNA testing.
32:05
Speaker 8: It clears our client slash inmate, whatever. And so he's cleared.
32:11
Speaker 12: Okay.
32:12
Speaker 8: Then it takes a year procedurally to get him out.
32:16
Speaker 8: Oftentimes the prosecutor will say, well, I don't really believe
32:20
Speaker 8: the DNA results. We're going to try you again. And
32:23
Speaker 8: so they bring him back to the local jail where
32:26
Speaker 8: they can keep him forever. Again, as frustrating as it is,
32:30
Speaker 8: I'm ashamed to say it's not that unusual.
32:33
Speaker 9: Most frustrating for me is that law enforcement, I'm in
32:36
Speaker 9: law enforcement, and I hope I'm respected in law enforcement.
32:39
Speaker 9: I'm a sitting sheriff, and yet the sitting sheriff in
32:41
Speaker 9: Bedford County refuses to meet with me and even discuss
32:44
Speaker 9: the case. The lead investigator won't meet with the four
32:47
Speaker 9: of us who've given thousands of hours pro bono. We
32:49
Speaker 9: don't have anything in it. We're just looking for justice.
32:52
Speaker 9: We ask for one hour, and he says he doesn't
32:53
Speaker 9: have time. However, we do have him caught on videotape
32:56
Speaker 9: saying a few years ago, this happened 30 years ago.
32:59
Speaker 9: He was convicted in court. Why do we need to
33:02
Speaker 9: go any further then? And I think that's the attitude,
33:06
Speaker 9: which is it's really shut down from an investigative standpoint.
33:09
Speaker 9: We've not had access to the investigative files or any
33:12
Speaker 9: further testing because I'm out of my jurisdiction and getting
33:16
Speaker 9: absolutely no cooperation from Bedford.
33:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, they won't even allow you to test the DNA
33:20
Speaker 1: of two guys that we know are in for committing
33:22
Speaker 1: similar crimes in another county in Virginia. We have no
33:26
Speaker 1: idea whether they committed this crime or not, but there's
33:29
Speaker 1: some reason to believe that they would.
33:31
Speaker 9: These two guys knifed a man multiple times to death within.
33:35
Speaker 12: A few days.
33:35
Speaker 9: And that far from the Hasem residence where those victims
33:40
Speaker 9: were located. And these two folks, one of them at least,
33:44
Speaker 9: was killed. according to his background that we've read, was
33:47
Speaker 9: involved in heavy drugs in the Lynchburg area, as we
33:50
Speaker 9: believe Elizabeth was. She was an admitted heroin user. And
33:54
Speaker 9: DNA should be in the data bank. They're both doing
33:56
Speaker 9: life for that murder. And we simply ask, would you
33:59
Speaker 9: take those profiles, compare them to the crime scene, and
34:02
Speaker 9: the state says you can't do it, the jurisdiction where
34:04
Speaker 9: the offense occurred, they have to request it.
34:07
Speaker 1: And to our knowledge, they're not doing anything. Which is
34:09
Speaker 1: just remarkable, right? When you think about the idea that
34:12
Speaker 1: they just refused to test something that can only prove
34:15
Speaker 1: like one way or another, either these guys did it
34:17
Speaker 1: or they didn't. Why wouldn't we want to know?
34:18
Speaker 9: We want to know from an investigative standpoint, do we
34:20
Speaker 9: want to keep following those two guys as a lead
34:23
Speaker 9: or can they be excluded based on the DNA? Very simply,
34:27
Speaker 9: it would take about three or four minutes to compare
34:29
Speaker 9: those barcodes. It's so frustrating. I'm used to working in
34:33
Speaker 9: my own jurisdiction. If I want something tested, I ask
34:36
Speaker 9: a lab to do it. They do it. If I
34:37
Speaker 9: want to search one, I get it. If I have witnesses,
34:39
Speaker 9: and we have two or three people that need to
34:41
Speaker 9: be interviewed in this case who refuse to cooperate whatsoever,
34:44
Speaker 9: I don't have any grand jury authority to serve a
34:47
Speaker 9: subpoena on them. So I really feel for the Innocence Project.
34:51
Speaker 9: I see what they go through now. Now that I'm
34:52
Speaker 9: on the other side of the fence, I feel like
34:54
Speaker 9: you're operating with both hands tied behind your back. Everything's
34:57
Speaker 9: working against you. So you've got to put a lot
34:59
Speaker 9: more work and effort into it than you really should
35:02
Speaker 9: and try to get to the truth, which we all
35:04
Speaker 9: should want. But apparently, we don't all always want the
35:07
Speaker 9: truth and justice.
35:09
Speaker 1: Something I want to touch on before I turn over
35:11
Speaker 1: to John for a second, which is that back in
35:14
Speaker 1: 2008 or 9, with the support of Bishop Sullivan and
35:18
Speaker 1: other luminaries, both religious and political figures, Governor Kaine granted
35:23
Speaker 1: a conditional pardon, I guess you would say, that would
35:25
Speaker 1: have allowed you to go back to Germany. And then
35:28
Speaker 1: as literally as you were packing your bags, the new
35:31
Speaker 1: governor came in. Governor McDonnell, and he revoked, for the
35:36
Speaker 1: first time in the then 234-year history of Virginia, he
35:40
Speaker 1: revoked the previous governor's order and decided that you would
35:43
Speaker 1: be kept in prison.
35:45
Speaker 8: I think in Yin's case, though, we are pressing ahead,
35:49
Speaker 8: cautiously optimistic that the right people are listening to us.
35:55
Speaker 8: We are almost sanctimonious in our belief that we are right,
35:59
Speaker 8: and we're not going to stop, slow down, or be quiet. And,
36:03
Speaker 8: you know, we have several avenues left. It's not hopeless
36:06
Speaker 8: by any means. We don't view it as hopeless. We
36:10
Speaker 8: think we can smell victory.
36:12
Speaker 5: John was just speaking about the multiple avenues available. Most
36:18
Speaker 5: innocence cases have only one real option, and that's a pardon.
36:23
Speaker 5: And that's usually a full pardon. And that makes it
36:26
Speaker 5: very difficult because somebody has to admit that they made
36:29
Speaker 5: a terrible mistake. My case is a little bit unusual
36:32
Speaker 5: in that the state actually has three options. They have
36:36
Speaker 5: the option of an absolute pardon, which would be to
36:39
Speaker 5: declare my innocence and actually admit what really happened, which
36:43
Speaker 5: was that this is a wrongful conviction. But they have
36:45
Speaker 5: two other options. They have a conditional pardon, which would
36:50
Speaker 5: be not to say I'm actually innocent, just to say
36:52
Speaker 5: there's a lot of questions and a lot of doubts.
36:54
Speaker 5: You can't be sure. And then there's a third option,
36:59
Speaker 5: and that would be parole. So one of the mystifying
37:02
Speaker 5: things about my case in comparison to other cases is
37:06
Speaker 5: that they have a whole smorgasbord of options to choose from.
37:11
Speaker 5: Full pardon or absolute pardon, conditional pardon, and then parole.
37:16
Speaker 5: And they're choosing not to exercise any of these options.
37:19
Speaker 5: And I find that troubling.
37:24
Speaker 1: I recently met Dr. Phil, who, before he became the
37:27
Speaker 1: TV star that's known and loved by millions, had been
37:30
Speaker 1: putting his various degrees in psychology and medicine to good
37:33
Speaker 1: use in.
37:33
Speaker 2: His jury consultancy business, Courtroom Sciences.
37:37
Speaker 6: Dr.
37:37
Speaker 1: Phil, as you know, advocates for the wrongfully convicted. He's
37:41
Speaker 1: been doing it for a long time. So, as you
37:44
Speaker 1: can imagine, we hit it off and decided to sit
37:47
Speaker 1: down for an interview. The crazy thing was, during that interview,
37:50
Speaker 1: Jens happened to call me, as he did over the
37:52
Speaker 1: last several years, not infrequently.
37:54
Speaker 2: When he called, it turned.
37:56
Speaker 1: Out to be a really powerful meeting of the minds,
38:00
Speaker 1: and we sensed immediately that Dr. Phil might be able
38:03
Speaker 1: to help him and us work through this parole board
38:07
Speaker 1: stalemate that we've been stuck in for such an interminably
38:10
Speaker 1: long time.
38:13
Speaker 12: Jens, you've been in how long now?
38:16
Speaker 6: 33 years, 6 months, and 13 days.
38:21
Speaker 12: Good Lord. What's the stumbling block with the appellate courts,
38:26
Speaker 12: with the people that have the ability to grant clemency?
38:30
Speaker 12: What do they tell you is the reason you're still
38:32
Speaker 12: in jail?
38:34
Speaker 6: That's one of the problems. We're not getting any communication.
38:39
Speaker 6: The problem is that from the very beginning, from the 1980s,
38:44
Speaker 6: this was a very high-profile crime. So a lot of
38:47
Speaker 6: politicians used it in political campaigns to get themselves elected
38:53
Speaker 6: and reelected, basically by beating up on me. The last
38:58
Speaker 6: instance of that was in late 2015. So that lasted
39:04
Speaker 6: for 29 years. One politician after another tried to curry
39:10
Speaker 6: the voters' favor by saying that Jens Turing is a monster.
39:16
Speaker 6: And then after 30 years the DNA comes out and
39:20
Speaker 6: the DNA shows that the very same blood samples that
39:25
Speaker 6: they used to convict me with at my trial in
39:28
Speaker 6: 1990 once they'd been DNA tested, turned out to be
39:32
Speaker 6: somebody else's blood, not mine. And everybody in Virginia who's
39:38
Speaker 6: been beating up on me, all the politicians who've been
39:40
Speaker 6: beating up on me for all these decades, now look stupid.
39:44
Speaker 6: And it's very, very difficult to admit you've made a mistake.
39:49
Speaker 6: And that appears to be the problem in Virginia. If
39:54
Speaker 6: they admit that I'm innocent, then they're basically admitting that
39:59
Speaker 6: a long line of politicians going back to the 1980s
40:02
Speaker 6: were just dead wrong.
40:04
Speaker 1: That being said, Jens, I don't want to leave this out.
40:06
Speaker 1: We feel like there's light at the very near end
40:09
Speaker 1: of the tunnel, potentially. We won't believe it till we
40:11
Speaker 1: see it. But, you know, John Grisham has made this
40:14
Speaker 1: a very personal cause, arguably the most prominent Virginian of
40:18
Speaker 1: these times. And so have so many others. And the
40:23
Speaker 1: parole board is actually run by Adrienne Bennett, who is a,
40:26
Speaker 1: you know, by I think by anybody's definition, she's a
40:28
Speaker 1: person who believes in fairness. And now the whole state
40:33
Speaker 1: has gone blue. So we're post-election and we're all hoping
40:39
Speaker 1: that Governor Northam is going to do the right thing
40:42
Speaker 1: and that either the parole board will see clear to
40:45
Speaker 1: send Jens back to Germany to live out his days
40:49
Speaker 1: making speeches, writing books as he does, contributing to society.
40:54
Speaker 1: I've made the point again and again that in these
40:56
Speaker 1: 33 plus years in prison, Jens, how many infractions have
40:59
Speaker 1: you had?
41:03
Speaker 5: Not one.
41:03
Speaker 6: Not a single infraction in 33 and a half years.
41:06
Speaker 1: Can you imagine?
41:07
Speaker 12: That's virtually impossible. You must not go to the TV
41:10
Speaker 12: room at night.
41:10
Speaker 6: I work out a lot. I've been told it's either
41:19
Speaker 6: unique or nearly unique by prison staff members. But, of course,
41:26
Speaker 6: that's all well and good. Ultimately, what really matters, though, is,
41:30
Speaker 6: you know, I didn't do this. I did not kill
41:33
Speaker 6: Derek and Nancy Hazen. I didn't find out about it
41:36
Speaker 6: until afterwards. You know, my only role in this was
41:40
Speaker 6: this terrible mistake of trying to save Elizabeth's life from
41:45
Speaker 6: execution back then in the electric chair. The key reason
41:49
Speaker 6: to let me go is not because I didn't break
41:52
Speaker 6: any prison rules. The key reason to let me go
41:54
Speaker 6: is because I did not do this. And it's not
41:57
Speaker 6: just me saying it. It's the DNA saying it. We
42:01
Speaker 6: have two national experts and a bunch of law enforcement
42:04
Speaker 6: officers who've looked at the DNA and the evidence in
42:07
Speaker 6: this case, and they've all come to the same conclusion.
42:10
Speaker 6: It wasn't me. The evidence points at two other men
42:13
Speaker 6: who have not been identified. There's blood and DNA from
42:18
Speaker 6: two other men at that crime scene, as well as
42:21
Speaker 6: Elizabeth's fingerprints and her side print of hers. And of course,
42:26
Speaker 6: she said she did it.
42:28
Speaker 12: That's obviously not been enough. What do you think's missing?
42:32
Speaker 6: No, I mean, I think in any other state that
42:35
Speaker 6: would have been enough.
42:36
Speaker 12: But you're not in any other state. You're in this state.
42:39
Speaker 12: What do you think's missing?
42:42
Speaker 6: Political courage and... I think now after the election on
42:47
Speaker 6: November 5th, when the Democrats took over the General Assembly
42:51
Speaker 6: here in Virginia, there's no longer any reason for the
42:56
Speaker 6: Democratic governor and the Democratic parole board to fear releasing me.
43:01
Speaker 6: And I hope that'll happen soon. It's been a long time.
43:05
Speaker 6: My petition has been pending for more than three years.
43:12
Speaker 6: So it's time to make a decision.
43:15
Speaker 12: Well, it's way past time to make a decision, but
43:18
Speaker 12: can I give you a couple of thoughts about this?
43:20
Speaker 4: Uh-huh.
43:22
Speaker 12: I just say this from having been in the system
43:24
Speaker 12: for a long, long time. What has to happen is
43:27
Speaker 12: we've got to find a way to give them a
43:30
Speaker 12: face-saving way out of this, a face-saving way to say
43:36
Speaker 12: yes instead of no. Now you're before the Pardon and
43:41
Speaker 12: Parole Board, right? What is the narrative to them? where
43:46
Speaker 12: their currency is met in saying, okay, enough's enough, too
43:51
Speaker 12: much is too much, this is too much, we need
43:53
Speaker 12: to turn this man loose. What is the narrative that
43:57
Speaker 12: they've not heard before? Because you've got to give these
44:00
Speaker 12: people something to hang their hat on so they can
44:03
Speaker 12: defend it when they're asked questions about it, so there
44:06
Speaker 12: is a public position they can take that's face-saving. This
44:10
Speaker 12: is a high-profile case, which is sweet poison. It's high
44:14
Speaker 12: profile and everybody knows about it. That's the good news.
44:16
Speaker 12: Everybody knows about it. That's the bad news.
44:18
Speaker 1: We've gotten to a place now, I believe, where Republican
44:22
Speaker 1: governors have granted dozens or even hundreds of clemencies and pardons.
44:26
Speaker 1: President Obama in his last flourish there granted 1,700. And
44:31
Speaker 1: there's not a peep from any side. There's nobody going, oh,
44:34
Speaker 1: these crazy people are letting all these people. Nobody, it's
44:36
Speaker 1: not a thing anymore. I don't think it even makes the,
44:39
Speaker 1: you know, in Yen's case, because it was a high
44:41
Speaker 1: profile case, Maybe it makes the news for a day
44:43
Speaker 1: or two.
44:44
Speaker 6: Let me just interrupt you briefly and say that they're
44:46
Speaker 6: locking us up for count. While they're doing that, I
44:49
Speaker 6: want to address briefly Dr. Phil's question about a narrative
44:52
Speaker 6: that could be used to change people's minds. None of
44:55
Speaker 6: the people who are making the decision today are in
44:58
Speaker 6: any way responsible for the mistakes that were originally made
45:03
Speaker 6: 33 years ago. They're fixing the problem. And the United
45:10
Speaker 6: States has... advanced in those 33 years, and the issue
45:14
Speaker 6: of wrongful convictions is now much more widely understood. Back then,
45:19
Speaker 6: the idea that somebody innocent might get convicted would seem far-fetched.
45:23
Speaker 6: I think nowadays it's much more widely accepted. The other
45:27
Speaker 6: thing is that there have been some high-profile wrongful convictions
45:30
Speaker 6: here in Virginia prior to mine. Most recently, the Norfolk
45:33
Speaker 6: Four case, which received national attention, which also involved false
45:38
Speaker 6: confessions and DNA. And I think that's the narrative that
45:43
Speaker 6: I think they can hang their hat on in this
45:45
Speaker 6: particular case. In this case, all they really had was
45:49
Speaker 6: my false confession and the type O blood at the
45:52
Speaker 6: crime scene. And the prosecutor told the jury 26 times
45:58
Speaker 6: that the only person who could have left that type
46:00
Speaker 6: O blood was Jens Soering. And he made a mistake
46:05
Speaker 6: because they simply didn't have DNA back then. 30 years later,
46:10
Speaker 6: they DNA test that typo blood, and it turns out
46:13
Speaker 6: it's somebody else's. It was not possible to know this
46:19
Speaker 6: back then. They did the best they could back in
46:23
Speaker 6: the 1980s and 1990s. They did the best they could
46:26
Speaker 6: with the technology they had. All they had was blood typing.
46:30
Speaker 6: But now they have new technology, DNA, and it turns
46:36
Speaker 6: out that, yes, that was typo blood at the crime scene,
46:39
Speaker 6: But it was not my type O blood. 43% of
46:43
Speaker 6: the population have type O blood. But the DNA is different.
46:48
Speaker 6: It's somebody else's blood. So that's the narrative that I
46:53
Speaker 6: would say can swing this.
46:55
Speaker 12: That's pretty damn compelling.
46:57
Speaker 6: Ultimately, every wrongful conviction is about admitting that somebody screwed
47:01
Speaker 6: up big time. And, you know, there's only so far
47:05
Speaker 6: you can help them with that. They're going to have
47:07
Speaker 6: to man up and admit that. But the people who
47:14
Speaker 6: are being asked to fix the problem now were not
47:18
Speaker 6: the people who made the mistake back then. This is
47:20
Speaker 6: a governor who was in college when I was in college.
47:24
Speaker 6: He was a few years ahead of me, but he's
47:26
Speaker 6: not responsible for what happened back then. He was going
47:28
Speaker 6: to med school when my life was exploding. Thank you
47:33
Speaker 6: for using GTL.
47:41
Speaker 1: And now I can share with you some really, really
47:46
Speaker 1: incredible news. Jens Ziering has finally been granted parole. I
47:52
Speaker 1: heard this news. I was on a train to Delaware
47:55
Speaker 1: to give a talk about criminal justice reform. And I
47:57
Speaker 1: got a call about five o'clock in the afternoon. Now,
48:01
Speaker 1: I had recently done an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
48:04
Speaker 1: And at the very end of the interview, the reporter.
48:07
Speaker 2: Asked me, do you ever cry? And I said, truthfully, no,
48:12
Speaker 2: only at the movies.
48:13
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not ashamed to tell you now that I
48:16
Speaker 1: didn't make it through that phone call without breaking down.
48:19
Speaker 1: And it's funny because I called the sheriff not too long.
48:23
Speaker 1: At first, I called Amanda Knox. Amanda, of course, has
48:27
Speaker 1: done work on behalf of Jens for quite a while
48:30
Speaker 1: now and did a whole season of her podcast, The
48:34
Speaker 1: Truth About True Crime. on the Yen Zuren case. And
48:38
Speaker 1: I called Amanda, and we cried together. Oh, Yen.
48:43
Speaker 7: I mean, Yen's just such a special person.
48:46
Speaker 11: And, I mean, everyone who's innocent deserves to get out
48:50
Speaker 11: as soon as possible. I mean, I've just been on
48:53
Speaker 11: the other end of the line with Yen talking about
48:57
Speaker 11: the day that he gets out, and, like, knowing that, like,
49:00
Speaker 11: I know what it feels like to, like, fantasize about
49:02
Speaker 11: that day and not knowing if.
49:04
Speaker 7: It's going to happen, and I didn't know if it
49:06
Speaker 7: was going to happen for him. Wow. And now, you know,
49:16
Speaker 7: he has asked me to, you know, be his big sister,
49:19
Speaker 7: which doesn't because I'm way younger than him.
49:22
Speaker 11: But, like, he said, like, I'm going to need you
49:24
Speaker 11: to be my big sister and help walk.
49:26
Speaker 7: Me through this, like, process of being a free person.
49:29
Speaker 7: And I was like, dude, I'm there. And now I
49:31
Speaker 7: get to be him. So it's really exciting. I think
49:37
Speaker 7: that he may end up getting... you know, pardon, um,
49:41
Speaker 7: you know, but it's better to get pardoned from the
49:45
Speaker 7: outside than the inside.
49:47
Speaker 5: Yes.
49:47
Speaker 11: 100%.
49:47
Speaker 7: He has so much more life that he can live.
49:50
Speaker 7: He can fight the fight from out here now and
49:53
Speaker 7: he can do it with help and he can not
49:55
Speaker 7: be alone. It's, it's a big difference. So, yeah, I'm
50:00
Speaker 7: just so excited for him. Um, getting him out is
50:04
Speaker 7: what needed to happen. I can't remember the last time
50:06
Speaker 7: I cried.
50:08
Speaker 5: Oh, that's, Yeah, so it's good to have you here.
50:12
Speaker 7: Hey, Amanda, where are you right now? I'm actually standing
50:16
Speaker 7: outside of the athletic club. I was about to go
50:18
Speaker 7: jog on the elliptical. Like, now I don't even know
50:21
Speaker 7: what to fucking do with myself. Okay, well, if you
50:26
Speaker 7: get any news, let me know.
50:29
Speaker 1: Amanda, as soon as he calls me, I'll come to
50:32
Speaker 1: you and invite you. Okay.
50:35
Speaker 7: Because I'm so, so happy for him, and I just
50:38
Speaker 7: hope that he's okay right now and that he's not
50:42
Speaker 7: alone right now.
51:02
Speaker 1: You know, Rachel Ryan is one of the hosts of
51:04
Speaker 1: Small Town Big Crime, a deep dive serial podcast about
51:08
Speaker 1: Yen Zuring and the haste of murders, including an investigation
51:11
Speaker 1: into the two unknown sources of DNA at the crime scene.
51:14
Speaker 1: You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, but
51:17
Speaker 1: don't wait.
51:17
Speaker 2: Subscribe now.
51:18
Speaker 1: She was just about to interview Chip Harding when the
51:21
Speaker 1: news had started trickling into us and the details were
51:23
Speaker 1: still a little unclear. The sound was rolling on Chip
51:27
Speaker 1: as he took my call.
51:29
Speaker 5: Testing.
51:33
Speaker 9: I'm going to put my phone over here.
51:38
Speaker 6: Hey, Jason.
51:42
Speaker 9: You know, it's kind of breaking right now.
51:44
Speaker 7: I called Rosenfield.
51:45
Speaker 5: He hadn't heard.
51:46
Speaker 2: Bernadette just sent a thing out.
51:50
Speaker 4: You got that.
51:52
Speaker 7: Oh, okay.
51:55
Speaker 5: Oh, we know.
51:55
Speaker 9: They'd both be turned over to ICE and be deported.
51:59
Speaker 9: I guess she's going back to Canada, I guess, and
52:01
Speaker 9: he'll be going back to Germany.
52:03
Speaker 12: And Steve Rosenfield hadn't been notified.
52:05
Speaker 6: We assume Jens knows.
52:07
Speaker 9: I mean, because she sent a thank you from Jens,
52:10
Speaker 9: so I guess he's been told.
52:11
Speaker 1: Kind of an odd way to handle something like this.
52:14
Speaker 2: So there's no keeping it as a secret right now?
52:16
Speaker 5: No, no.
52:17
Speaker 1: The Associated Press has it now. And it's confirmed.
52:21
Speaker 12: Holy shit.
52:23
Speaker 5: Yes.
52:23
Speaker 4: Horrible.
52:27
Speaker 5: Oh, my God, this is incredible. Well, Chip, I'm glad.
52:32
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you second, because I just spoke to Amanda,
52:34
Speaker 1: and I was literally crying like a baby.
52:37
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, you going to get me?
52:38
Speaker 7: They're getting ready to interview me on camera, so let
52:40
Speaker 7: me talk to you.
52:47
Speaker 1: A little while.
52:47
Speaker 2: All right, bye-bye. How are you feeling?
52:51
Speaker 7: Great.
52:55
Speaker 3: I'm ecstatic.
52:56
Speaker 9: I mean, what a great thing.
52:58
Speaker 12: To have him.
52:59
Speaker 2: He's been locked up for 33 years.
53:02
Speaker 9: He's missed his 20s, his 30s, and his 40s, so
53:04
Speaker 9: it's time.
53:05
Speaker 2: It's time to let him go.
53:07
Speaker 5: Now, she's also been granted parole, we understand.
53:09
Speaker 9: I understand she has been granted parole, and as a
53:13
Speaker 9: law enforcement officer, I don't have any objection to that either.
53:17
Speaker 9: If she was, in fact, sexually abused by her mom,
53:22
Speaker 9: if that was the case, I think if it had
53:23
Speaker 9: gone that route back when she originally went to trial,
53:26
Speaker 9: this whole thing would have turned out differently.
53:29
Speaker 1: I mean, this came out in sort of a strange,
53:31
Speaker 1: I mean, this was reported by the media before you
53:33
Speaker 1: were notified.
53:33
Speaker 12: It was.
53:34
Speaker 9: Yeah, I immediately, I got a call from someone in
53:37
Speaker 9: the media asking my reaction, and I didn't know to what.
53:41
Speaker 9: And he told me, and I immediately called his primary attorney,
53:45
Speaker 9: Stephen Rosenfield, who's given probably 4,000 hours on his case,
53:49
Speaker 9: and he had not heard. So we were quite shocked
53:52
Speaker 9: that it came out through the media first. But we're
53:55
Speaker 9: not complaining because it appears he's going home.
53:59
Speaker 5: And that is, I mean, you've put years and hours,
54:02
Speaker 5: how long?
54:03
Speaker 9: Yeah, I probably put, let me, a thousand hours in
54:05
Speaker 9: on it now. I'm not looking for any credit. There's
54:08
Speaker 9: tons of people who have given this young man hundreds
54:11
Speaker 9: and hundreds and hundreds of hours because they believe in
54:14
Speaker 9: his innocence.
54:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's an emotional thing.
54:19
Speaker 7: Thank you so much.
54:21
Speaker 1: I am beyond happy to announce that Jens is officially
54:25
Speaker 1: out of ICE custody and out of custody period, and
54:28
Speaker 1: he's finally back home in his home country of Germany,
54:30
Speaker 1: which he hasn't seen, or, you know, come to think
54:33
Speaker 1: of it, he hasn't even seen a tree, ponder that
54:36
Speaker 1: for a second, of any kind since 1986. And just
54:40
Speaker 1: to put some context behind that, the fucking Berlin Wall
54:43
Speaker 1: was up the last time he was there, and we
54:44
Speaker 1: were all smack dab in the middle of the threat
54:46
Speaker 1: of full-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia.
54:50
Speaker 2: But anyway.
54:51
Speaker 1: Jens is finally able to make the most of his life,
54:54
Speaker 1: and I know that all of us that have played
54:55
Speaker 1: roles large and small in his newfound freedom can't wait
54:58
Speaker 1: to celebrate with him.
55:00
Speaker 2: I'll leave you with the.
55:01
Speaker 1: Remainder of our original interview, and of course the closing arguments,
55:04
Speaker 1: which I must say, sounds a hell of a lot
55:07
Speaker 1: better coming from what we now know is a free
55:09
Speaker 1: man's mouth.
55:11
Speaker 5: I had a really, really bad trial lawyer who was
55:14
Speaker 5: essentially disbarred, like you mentioned. But I've also had really,
55:18
Speaker 5: really fantastic lawyers fighting for me, including former Deputy Attorney
55:25
Speaker 5: General Dale Starling Marshall, also Dale Powell, and who's in
55:32
Speaker 5: the movie, and, of course, Steve Rosenfield, who has suffered
55:36
Speaker 5: with me for, I don't know, so many years, and
55:39
Speaker 5: Steve Northup. You know, they're just, you know, lawyers get
55:42
Speaker 5: a lot of blame, but there are some really, really
55:46
Speaker 5: fantastic human beings working as lawyers. And then, you know,
55:50
Speaker 5: these last few years, I've had wonderful people like you
55:54
Speaker 5: and John Gresham and Mike Sheen, you know, people who
55:59
Speaker 5: really have no important and better things to do with
56:02
Speaker 5: their life than to worry about me, you know, stepping
56:05
Speaker 5: into my life and trying to help me. That's been really,
56:09
Speaker 5: really encouraging. It's given me hope. And it gives me
56:12
Speaker 5: hope to, you know, try to hold on a little
56:16
Speaker 5: while longer, you know, to see whether this can be
56:19
Speaker 5: resolved in some way, shape, or form before I die
56:22
Speaker 5: of old age. Because I've been in here for.
56:26
Speaker 10: I can tell you exactly, 11,945 days.
56:28
Speaker 11: Okay?
56:28
Speaker 5: 11,945 days I've been in here. 32 years, 8 months,
56:30
Speaker 5: and 11 days. And it hasn't been easy, but that's
56:33
Speaker 5: what's carried me.
56:51
Speaker 1: You do have an extraordinary team, including the leaders of Germany,
56:55
Speaker 1: past and present. I want to tell the audience there's
57:00
Speaker 1: the movie Killing for Love, and the book is A Far,
57:03
Speaker 1: Far Better Thing by Jens Zürich and Bill Sizemore, A Far,
57:07
Speaker 1: Far Better Thing. And then this is part of the
57:11
Speaker 1: show that we've become known for. It's, I think, everyone's
57:15
Speaker 1: favorite part of the show. It's mine. And this is
57:17
Speaker 1: a part of the show where I get to thank
57:21
Speaker 1: our guests. In this case, of course, John Grisham. John,
57:26
Speaker 1: thanks for being here. And Sheriff Harding, Sheriff Chip Harving
57:30
Speaker 1: of Albemarle County. Of course, you, Jens, thanks for participating
57:33
Speaker 1: in this and sharing your thoughts and experience and educating
57:37
Speaker 1: our audience. I want to turn it over to each
57:39
Speaker 1: of you just for brief closing thoughts. And of course,
57:42
Speaker 1: we'll end with you, Jens. Anyway, John, final thoughts.
57:46
Speaker 8: As far as... Yeah, I've said it before. These wrongful
57:51
Speaker 8: conviction stories are always compelling and tempting from my point
57:55
Speaker 8: of view to write about them, to tell the fantastic stories,
58:00
Speaker 8: as sad as they are, but to also hopefully raise awareness.
58:06
Speaker 8: I hope there's a happy ending. We believe there's going
58:09
Speaker 8: to be a happy ending because we're all working hard
58:12
Speaker 8: with a game plan to get Jens out and get
58:15
Speaker 8: him back to Germany. And Jens and I have this...
58:19
Speaker 8: kind of a running gag that one day soon we're
58:21
Speaker 8: going to be drinking a beer together in Munich at Oktoberfest.
58:25
Speaker 1: I'm coming too. And by the way, he and I
58:27
Speaker 1: have the same deal. So, you know, I don't want
58:29
Speaker 1: to make you not feel special, but we've got the
58:31
Speaker 1: same arrangement.
58:31
Speaker 2: Me too, and he's got you.
58:32
Speaker 9: Paying for it, John.
58:33
Speaker 8: We're all invited. We're all invited to Oktoberfest.
58:35
Speaker 2: That's right.
58:36
Speaker 1: Sheriff Harding, final thoughts.
58:39
Speaker 9: Until I got involved in this kind of work, I
58:41
Speaker 9: always thought that you were found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
58:45
Speaker 9: But it looks like in America, once you're found guilty...
58:49
Speaker 9: To be found innocent or pardoned, it almost has to
58:51
Speaker 9: be you're innocent beyond a shadow of a doubt. The
58:55
Speaker 9: standard is way too high. It's shameful for me to
58:59
Speaker 9: have 50 years in the justice system and to see
59:02
Speaker 9: the pushback, not just in this case, but I've read
59:05
Speaker 9: 300 or 400 cases from prosecutors and law enforcement that don't...
59:10
Speaker 9: man up and step up and admit they make mistakes
59:15
Speaker 9: and seek the truth. And no one is ever held accountable.
59:19
Speaker 9: In the first 250 cases that Brandon Garrett examined, in
59:23
Speaker 9: many cases prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence and so did law enforcement.
59:27
Speaker 9: In that one single case, did one officer ever go
59:30
Speaker 9: to trial or spend one day in jail? So if
59:32
Speaker 9: we can't police ourselves, how do we anticipate the public's
59:36
Speaker 9: going to have the confidence in us to police them?
59:39
Speaker 1: And now, saving the best for last, Jens, your final thoughts.
59:45
Speaker 5: Thank you. I think it's important for your audience to
59:51
Speaker 5: realize that there are an estimated 100,000 wrongfully convicted prisoners
59:59
Speaker 5: in the United States. That's a small city, and I'm
1:00:06
Speaker 5: far from the only one. I'm really, really so grateful
1:00:11
Speaker 5: to the three of you, John Grisham, Chip Harding, and
1:00:13
Speaker 5: Jason Flom, for drawing attention to my case. But let's
1:00:18
Speaker 5: not forget the other 99,999 victims of miscarriages of justice
1:00:27
Speaker 5: One of the things that I really would hope for
1:00:30
Speaker 5: is that if I'm ever released, I can maybe help
1:00:38
Speaker 5: draw attention to all those other people and work towards
1:00:42
Speaker 5: systemic changes so that things like this don't happen to
1:00:48
Speaker 5: other people in the future. This is something to think about.
1:00:53
Speaker 5: There's 100,000 innocent people in prison in the United States.
1:00:58
Speaker 5: somebody should be really bothered by that. And I hope
1:01:02
Speaker 5: your audience thinks about them as well. And I want
1:01:05
Speaker 5: to thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak
1:01:07
Speaker 5: today and talk about my case. Thank you.
1:01:12
Speaker 1: Jens, you have all my respect. I look forward to
1:01:16
Speaker 1: working with you. And I'll see you for Oktoberfest. Don't
1:01:27
Speaker 1: forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get
1:01:30
Speaker 1: your podcasts.
1:01:31
Speaker 2: It really helps.
1:01:32
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and
1:01:35
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
1:01:38
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
1:01:42
Speaker 1: to innocenceproject.org to learn how to donate and get involved.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
1:01:49
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardus. The music in the show is by three-time
1:01:52
Speaker 1: Oscar-nominated composer, Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
1:01:55
Speaker 1: Instagram at wrongfulconviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
1:02:00
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava
1:02:03
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.