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#440 Maggie Freleng with Cassandra Black Elk · Wrongful Conviction

0:05
Speaker 1: In February of twenty twenty two. Cassandra black Elk was
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Speaker 1: a young mother of three living in Bismarck, North Dakota.
0:13
Speaker 1: Her girls were her whole world. Six year old de
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Speaker 1: Laiza loved school and wanted to be a biologist. One
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Speaker 1: year old a Maria already had a strong personality. Cassie
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Speaker 1: called her their wild child, and Starlight was the baby,
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Speaker 1: just three weeks old. On the evening of February eighteenth,
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Speaker 1: Cassie was at home with the girls and Starlight's father, Seth.
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Speaker 2: Eagle, chilling, hanging out with my kids. We was watching
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Speaker 2: a movie. It was cooking supper.
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Speaker 1: Seth left around midnight to go hang out with friends.
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Speaker 1: Cassie fed Starlight and put the two oldest girls to bed,
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Speaker 1: Then she lay down with Starlight beside her and fell asleep.
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Speaker 1: She woke up around six in the morning to find
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Speaker 1: Starlight wasn't breathing. Daliza called nine one one, but it
1:04
Speaker 1: was already too late. Starlight was dead, and before she
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Speaker 1: could fully process what had happened, the police were telling
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Speaker 1: Cassie that she was under arrest for felony child neglect.
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Speaker 2: They were telling me, if somebody did something to Starlight,
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Speaker 2: somebody killed her.
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Speaker 1: Cassie knew that wasn't true, and she had one question
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Speaker 1: for her lawyer, what does the autopsy report say?
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Speaker 2: I kept said the same, Well, what if it came
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Speaker 2: back as I wasn't at fault. And then he was
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Speaker 2: like telling me we could deal with that later.
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Speaker 1: But by the time she got the answer, it was
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Speaker 1: too late. Cassie was already in prison.
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Speaker 2: I'm Cassie black Elk and I was wrongfully incarcerated for
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Speaker 2: eleven months.
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Speaker 1: From LoVa for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
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Speaker 1: Freeling today. Cassandra blackout O. Cassandra black Elk was born
2:17
Speaker 1: August fourth, nineteen ninety five in Bismarck, North Dakota. She's
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Speaker 1: a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe. Cassie grew
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Speaker 1: up in Rapid City, South Dakota, the middle child of nine.
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Speaker 3: It was.
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Speaker 2: Busy, chaotic, closest to my three little sisters. We'd always
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Speaker 2: play house school, went swimming at the Why all the time.
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Speaker 2: We just ran around the trailer park that we used
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Speaker 2: to live in and hung out with all our friends. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Cassie had her first daughter, Daliza at nineteen, with a
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Speaker 1: boyfriend from high school. At age twenty two, she decided
3:00
Speaker 1: to move back to Bismarck to go to school. She
3:03
Speaker 1: had plans to become a social worker. Cassie's second daughter,
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Speaker 1: Amara was born in twenty twenty and then Starlight. When
3:12
Speaker 1: was Starlight born?
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Speaker 2: January twenty fifth, twenty twenty two.
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Speaker 1: How did you meet Starlight's dad?
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Speaker 2: Up here hanging out with friends? Yeah? Meant the first
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Speaker 2: year I moved up here.
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Speaker 1: Cassie and Seth Eagle moved in together and at twenty
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Speaker 1: six years old, Cassie was happy to be a stay
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Speaker 1: at home mom. She loved hanging out with her girls.
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Speaker 1: Seth helped to support Starlight and Cassie's two older daughters
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Speaker 1: with oil royalties he received as a member of the
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Speaker 1: Mja tribe the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara nation. On the
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Speaker 1: evening of February eighteenth, twenty twenty two, Cassie, Seth, and
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Speaker 1: the girls were all at home together. So what do
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Speaker 1: you remember from that night?
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Speaker 4: Like?
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Speaker 1: How did the night start? Tell me? I guess from
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Speaker 1: the beginning.
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Speaker 2: I don't know. We were hanging out after my oldest
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Speaker 2: got back from school. We was watching a movie, we
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Speaker 2: was cooking supper barbecue chicken, steamed veggies, and mashed potatoes.
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Speaker 1: At what point you and Seth got in an argument?
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Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, well yeah, well we was kind of fighting
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Speaker 2: throughout that whole day. Really.
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Speaker 1: As the evening went on, Cassie and Seth began drinking,
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Speaker 1: and when their fight turned physical, Cassie ended up with
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Speaker 1: a bloodied ear. Finally, Seth stormed out to go see
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Speaker 1: some friends.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he was there all the way up until I
4:37
Speaker 2: don't know about midnight one.
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Speaker 1: Or some Yeah, and what'd you do when he left?
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Speaker 2: Fed my daughter and laid down with them.
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Speaker 1: So when you guys go to sleep, everything was normal.
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Speaker 2: I thought it was normal. I don't know. I just
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Speaker 2: I didn't think I was gonna wake up too. Everything gone.
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Speaker 2: What do you remember waking up?
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Speaker 5: It's okay, Cassie, my daughter gone, she was she was
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Speaker 5: stiff and cold.
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Speaker 2: I was freaking out. My oldest had to call nine
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Speaker 2: on one.
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Speaker 1: And then when the police got there, what happened.
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Speaker 2: Well, right away they were questioning me at my house.
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Speaker 2: I wasn't even with them in my house for a
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Speaker 2: full ten minutes. They wanted to know what happened here.
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Speaker 2: I was trying to get a hold of someone to
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Speaker 2: get a hold of set and they told me I
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Speaker 2: needed to get off my phone. They noticed I had
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Speaker 2: a bloody ear, and after that they told me to
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Speaker 2: go to the police station.
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Speaker 1: And then what happens at the police station.
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Speaker 2: They start questioning me.
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Speaker 1: Were they questioning or were they kind of telling you?
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Speaker 5: Oh?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they were telling me their story.
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Speaker 1: Which was what what was their story?
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Speaker 2: Somebody did something to starlight, somebody killed her.
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Speaker 4: So that first interrogation that she goes into is actually
6:43
Speaker 4: three hours long, and you can imagine the state that
6:46
Speaker 4: she was in given the timing of the interrogation. My
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Speaker 4: name is Jim Mayer and I'm a managing attorney with
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Speaker 4: the Great North Innocence Project. The officers doing the interrogation
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Speaker 4: are convinced and have jumped to the conclusion that Cassie
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Speaker 4: has done something to the baby. They begin their interrogation
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Speaker 4: by telling her that the child had bruising, that they
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Speaker 4: could tell the child had some injury. They start to
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Speaker 4: speculate that maybe there was some kind of abusive event,
7:18
Speaker 4: maybe there was shaking. They start describing the symptoms of
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Speaker 4: shaking baby syndrome to her and how that could have happened.
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Speaker 1: Remember this is just a few hours after Cassie had
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Speaker 1: found Starlight lifeless beside her. The officers telling her all
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Speaker 1: this were not trained medical professionals, and the body had
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Speaker 1: not even been examined yet.
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Speaker 4: It sounded to me like one of those officers had
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Speaker 4: recently been to a training and learned about shaken baby syndrome,
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Speaker 4: which of course is a highly controversial and dubious diagnosis,
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Speaker 4: as any of us who work in this industry know.
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Speaker 4: But he started explaining to Cassie in this interrogation room
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Speaker 4: what happens when you shake a baby and how you know.
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Speaker 4: That seemed to fit the situation that she was in.
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Speaker 4: Couldn't have been further from the truth, but he was
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Speaker 4: insisting that that was probably what had happened here and
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Speaker 4: trying to get her to confess to it. She continued
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Speaker 4: throughout this interrogation to insist that there were no injuries,
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Speaker 4: that the baby was fine when she had given her
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Speaker 4: a bottle and swaddled her and put her to bed
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Speaker 4: around one or two in the morning, and that there
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Speaker 4: was no injury.
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Speaker 1: So the officers ramped up their interrogation.
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Speaker 4: They would try all of these techniques, like telling her
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Speaker 4: you didn't mean to do it whatever you did was
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Speaker 4: an accident. You just lost control, that maybe the baby
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Speaker 4: was crying, maybe the baby couldn't sleep, maybe she got
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Speaker 4: frustrated and just lost control and shook the baby. Just
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Speaker 4: tell us that you're a person who needs help and
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Speaker 4: not an evil person, right, and that things will go
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Speaker 4: better for you, or they would tell her that, you know,
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Speaker 4: the autopsy is going to come back and it's going
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Speaker 4: to show there's trauma. You're much better off if you
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Speaker 4: just tell us now what you did, it's going to
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Speaker 4: go better for a jury. They even told her that
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Speaker 4: Child Protective Services had taken her other two children and
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Speaker 4: that she wouldn't get them back unless she was willing
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Speaker 4: to say what it was she did to this baby
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Speaker 4: to cause its death, which of course put her in
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Speaker 4: an impossible situation because she didn't do anything, and she
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Speaker 4: knew she didn't do anything, nor had her boyfriend, and
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Speaker 4: so she maintained her innocence throughout this interrogation despite the
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Speaker 4: pressure that they put on her.
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Speaker 1: Did you start questioning yourself at any point? Were you wondering, like,
9:33
Speaker 1: maybe maybe I did roll over on her because she
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Speaker 1: was in the bed with you, right?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? But no, no, because the way I had her sleeping.
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Speaker 2: She was out a slant away from me, and my
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Speaker 2: girls were on the other side, and I woke up
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Speaker 2: in the same spot, literally, like the same way when
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Speaker 2: I went to bed.
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Speaker 1: Three days later, on February twenty second, Cassie was trying
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Speaker 1: charged with felony child's neglect. That same day, state medical
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Speaker 1: examiner doctor Barry Miller performed an autopsy on Starlight. The
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Speaker 1: autopsy was attended by the state's attorney, Julie Lawyer, and
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Speaker 1: several officers from the Bismarck Police Department. While they were
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Speaker 1: still awaiting the autopsy results, Cassie's case was going forward.
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Speaker 1: She was assigned to public defender James Lores.
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Speaker 4: And the first thing that happens is they have a
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Speaker 4: bail hearing that the prosecution comes in. It says, look,
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Speaker 4: this is an infant death case. We need to set
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Speaker 4: bail at a high level. She couldn't meet it, so
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Speaker 4: she's stuck. She's behind bars, awaiting trial. She's got two
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Speaker 4: young children from whom she separated at this incredibly dramatic time,
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Speaker 4: So that's one layer of pressure that was added to her.
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Speaker 1: And I guess maybe I'm missing something, But how is
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Speaker 1: she able to be charged without even having a medical diagnosis.
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Speaker 1: Can they do that? I mean, I've never seen that.
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Speaker 4: The charging documents in her case, which came out on
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Speaker 4: February nineteenth, what they said was, we know that she
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Speaker 4: was responsible for the death, but we don't yet know
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Speaker 4: the mechanism of the death, pending the autopsy results. So
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Speaker 4: it was just the you know, a perfect example of
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Speaker 4: a rush to a conclusion with really no solid foundation
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Speaker 4: for it whatsoever, just assumptions that were made. Then, when
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Speaker 4: a plea deal is offered by the prosecution, her lawyer
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Speaker 4: urges her to take the deal.
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Speaker 2: Well, he said that they were considering of two years
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Speaker 2: and he was going to talk to them and see
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Speaker 2: if he get it out to eighteen months. And that's
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Speaker 2: when I went to eighteen months.
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Speaker 1: That following week, her attorney was trying to rush Cassie
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Speaker 1: into taking the plea because he knew that the prosecute
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Speaker 1: was leaving for private practice in a few weeks after that.
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Speaker 1: He said the deal might be off the table, and.
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Speaker 4: He says things like, you'll be out before you know it.
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Speaker 4: You're pleading guilty. You'll get a five year sentence, but
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Speaker 4: you'll only serve about eighteen months and you'll be out
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Speaker 4: before you know it. Cassie was resistant to that for
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Speaker 4: good reason. She kept saying, I know I didn't do
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Speaker 4: anything to my child. I'm innocent. When can we see
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Speaker 4: a copy of the autopsy report?
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Speaker 2: I kept asking him for the autopsy. I kept said
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Speaker 2: the same, Well, what if it came back as I
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Speaker 2: wasn't at fault.
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Speaker 4: Ultimately, what her lawyer says to her is, you're getting
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Speaker 4: ahead of yourself for now. Just plead guilty. If the
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Speaker 4: autopsy comes back favorable to you, we'll deal with that later.
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Speaker 1: How did that make you feel when he was like, no, no,
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Speaker 1: and just kind of brushed something so important aside.
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Speaker 2: Like it didn't matter. I don't think it mattered to anybody.
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Speaker 2: How Starlight passed away.
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Speaker 1: At her lawyer's urging, Cassie finally gave in and pled
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Speaker 1: guilty to the charge of felony child's neglect. The plea
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Speaker 1: deal did not mention Starlight's death. It simply said that
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Speaker 1: Cassie had willfully failed to provide proper parental care or
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Speaker 1: control necessary for the physical health of her baby. She
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Speaker 1: received a sentence of five years, with all but eighteen
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Speaker 1: months of it suspended because Seth was not the father
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Speaker 1: of the two older girls. They were placed in foster care.
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Speaker 1: Cassie was sent to the Dakota Women's Correctional Center in
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Speaker 1: New England, North Dakota.
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Speaker 2: What was prison like, Well, I don't recommend it to nobody.
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Speaker 2: Everybody says it's a cakewalk and what not, but it wasn't.
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Speaker 2: It's like how, It's just how.
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Speaker 1: When you first got in there, did you tell anybody
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Speaker 1: like I don't belong here. I didn't do.
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Speaker 2: This, yep. I told everyone that every day. A lot
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Speaker 2: of girls in there just content with that life.
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Speaker 5: Not me.
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Speaker 2: So that's not me, it's not my life. I couldn't
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Speaker 2: relate to half their stories. I just didn't know what
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Speaker 2: to say to half of them. I was always just
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Speaker 2: angry because I felt like I shouldn't have been in jail.
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Speaker 2: Everybody heard it from me. Oh no, I lost my daughter.
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Speaker 2: None of that made sense, none of it was okay.
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Speaker 2: So I was always mad.
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Speaker 4: So here she is, she's pled guilty, she's been sentenced,
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Speaker 4: she's in prison serving her sentence, and her lawyer had
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Speaker 4: essentially told her that he couldn't help her get the
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Speaker 4: autopsy report at that point, but she didn't give up.
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Speaker 4: She kept working on her own to get a copy
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Speaker 4: of it.
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Speaker 1: Cassie called the Medical Examiner's office in Bismarck over and
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Speaker 1: over from prison, asking for the report. Finally she was
14:56
Speaker 1: able to fill out an online form to have it
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Speaker 1: mailed to her, and then she waited and waited. Three
15:05
Speaker 1: months went by, and.
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Speaker 4: Then eventually she gets that copy, I think sometime in
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Speaker 4: July of twenty twenty two, where she gets to read,
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Speaker 4: you know, the story of what actually happened to her
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Speaker 4: baby for the first time.
15:33
Speaker 1: You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. You can
15:36
Speaker 1: listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
15:39
Speaker 1: one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava
15:42
Speaker 1: for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Doctor Miller's final autopsy
15:55
Speaker 1: report was dated May twenty seventh, twenty twenty two, two
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Speaker 1: weeks after cast entered her plea, and it confirmed what
16:02
Speaker 1: she had always known, which she had tried to tell
16:05
Speaker 1: everyone that she hadn't done anything to hurt her baby.
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Speaker 1: There was no evidence of neglect, trauma, or abuse. Three
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Speaker 1: week old Starlight had died of unexplained sudden infant death syndrome.
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Speaker 1: Do you remember that moment when you got it and
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Speaker 1: reading it.
16:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I felt a whole lot of relief, but didn't
16:34
Speaker 2: really do much. So I was just sat there crying
16:36
Speaker 2: because there was nothing I could do. I was already
16:40
Speaker 2: sent in prison.
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Speaker 6: My name's Adam Martin. I'm ten years sober, formally incarcerated,
16:47
Speaker 6: have multiple felonies on my background.
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Speaker 1: Adam is the founder and CEO of the F five Project,
16:53
Speaker 1: a nonprofit based in Fargo, North Dakota. It provides the
16:57
Speaker 1: formally incarcerated with support and re entry resources.
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Speaker 6: You know, all my friends were either dying or going
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Speaker 6: to prison, and so after the last friend had went
17:08
Speaker 6: to prison and then the couple had overdosed off fetanol
17:12
Speaker 6: or heroin or whatever, I just felt like I wanted
17:15
Speaker 6: to do something different than what was being done. There
17:19
Speaker 6: was no real plan to start it. I just started
17:22
Speaker 6: going into the jail and trying to help guys that
17:24
Speaker 6: were being released, really just through storytelling. I didn't have
17:27
Speaker 6: any services or resources or anything. And then what happened
17:31
Speaker 6: is is that the guys started calling me when they
17:33
Speaker 6: were getting out of prison or jail, and I didn't
17:35
Speaker 6: have anything, so I just let him sleep on my
17:38
Speaker 6: couch and then it turned into seven years later. We
17:42
Speaker 6: have over sixty employees in that we're in nine different
17:46
Speaker 6: cities and have three transitional houses or three cities that
17:49
Speaker 6: we have transitional houses in Okay.
17:52
Speaker 1: So what is far going North Dakota, Like, I mean,
17:54
Speaker 1: maybe tell me a little bit about the demographic. I mean,
17:57
Speaker 1: we know Cassie is indigenous, so tell me about it.
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Speaker 6: Yeah, So the landscape is, you know, obviously it's like
18:03
Speaker 6: eighty five percent white. We have there's not even a
18:07
Speaker 6: million people in North Dakota, Okay, So there's like seven
18:09
Speaker 6: hundred and seventy thousand of that seven seventy to about
18:14
Speaker 6: two hundred and forty thousand identifies having a criminal conviction.
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Speaker 6: And so we're about twenty eight percent of our general
18:22
Speaker 6: population identify as that, which is about three percent higher
18:25
Speaker 6: than the national average. Of that Native Americans or Indigenous
18:30
Speaker 6: people account for around five percent of the population, but
18:34
Speaker 6: they account for twenty five percent of the prison population.
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Speaker 6: And so a lot of the stuff that we see
18:40
Speaker 6: nationally trending is similar here, but just with different groups
18:43
Speaker 6: and then higher percentages.
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Speaker 1: Adam's work with F five led him to joining the
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Speaker 1: board of the Great North Innocence Project, where he met
18:52
Speaker 1: Jim in August of twenty twenty two. They went together
18:55
Speaker 1: to speak about their organizations at the New England Women's Prison.
19:00
Speaker 6: And so this young Native American woman came up to
19:03
Speaker 6: me and she was very timid, and she couldn't even
19:08
Speaker 6: look me in the eye. She was shaking, she was teary,
19:10
Speaker 6: teary eyed, and she just all she said to me
19:13
Speaker 6: was I don't belong here.
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Speaker 1: Cassie told Adam that she was in prison for killing
19:18
Speaker 1: her baby, but she was innocent. And then she told
19:21
Speaker 1: him about the autopsy report.
19:27
Speaker 6: And I've been in court enough to know that autopsy
19:31
Speaker 6: reports are a big deal, right, And the fact that
19:35
Speaker 6: it came out after she was convicted sent off a
19:38
Speaker 6: red flag. And I was like, okay, well what did
19:41
Speaker 6: it say? And she said that my baby died of SIDS.
19:44
Speaker 6: And so I introduced her right there to James. And
19:47
Speaker 6: when we left the prison, James came up to me
19:50
Speaker 6: and he was like, we have a case. She has
19:55
Speaker 6: a case, and we're going to get her released.
20:00
Speaker 4: In a way, her story was just so simple and straightforward.
20:03
Speaker 4: You know, you tell a lot of these stories and
20:05
Speaker 4: you see how convoluted they can be. Cassie's story is
20:09
Speaker 4: not convoluted at all. There was a tragic death of
20:13
Speaker 4: her baby that could not have been prevented by anyone.
20:31
Speaker 1: In December of twenty twenty two, Jim moved to vacate
20:34
Speaker 1: Cassie's conviction, citing the autopsy report as new evidence, and
20:38
Speaker 1: also that Cassie's attorney had provided ineffective representation by advising
20:43
Speaker 1: her to take the plea and evidentiary hearing was held
20:47
Speaker 1: on January nineteenth, twenty twenty three, before Judge Daniel Borgin.
20:53
Speaker 4: We presented the testimony from the medical examiner herself. She
20:56
Speaker 4: testified about the fact that there was no trauma in
20:59
Speaker 4: this case, that there was no evidence that the death
21:02
Speaker 4: resulted from something Cassie did or did not do.
21:05
Speaker 1: Doctor Miller told the court that she would have been
21:07
Speaker 1: willing to share her preliminary findings with the defense prior
21:11
Speaker 1: to the final report, but Cassie's defense attorney never asked
21:15
Speaker 1: for it. The prosecution, however, knew all along what it
21:19
Speaker 1: would say.
21:20
Speaker 4: One of the claims we made in our petition was
21:22
Speaker 4: that the state's attorney was present at the autopsy, so
21:26
Speaker 4: she knew that the autopsy was not showing any signs
21:29
Speaker 4: of trauma, and yet she managed to extract a guilty
21:34
Speaker 4: plea without disclosing what she knew.
21:36
Speaker 1: But in addition to the evidence they had, Jim knew
21:39
Speaker 1: that in order to present the most effective case, Cassie
21:42
Speaker 1: would have to testify.
21:44
Speaker 4: And I was a little nervous about telling her that
21:46
Speaker 4: because she was so quiet and soft spoken. I thought
21:48
Speaker 4: that would scare her. And she said something like, I'm ready,
21:52
Speaker 4: I can do that, and I just thought, Wow, She's
21:54
Speaker 4: come a long way in the few months that I've
21:56
Speaker 4: known her in terms of her confidence, and part of
21:59
Speaker 4: that was just that she was ready to tell her story.
22:02
Speaker 1: So Cassie took the stand and told Judge Borgan everything
22:05
Speaker 1: that had happened.
22:07
Speaker 4: The conversations with her defense lawyer, where she's professing her
22:10
Speaker 4: innocence and saying, I want the autopsy. I want the autopsy,
22:14
Speaker 4: and he's telling her, just take this plea. We'll deal
22:16
Speaker 4: with that later. She tells that entire story, and her
22:19
Speaker 4: testimony was very, very credible, which the judge found and
22:22
Speaker 4: that was a big reason why he granted relief.
22:28
Speaker 1: Cassie was released from prison the next day pending a
22:31
Speaker 1: new trial.
22:35
Speaker 4: And one of the North Dakota Supreme Court justices actually
22:38
Speaker 4: wrote separately to say that with the new evidence of
22:41
Speaker 4: the autopsy report, it's very likely that she would be
22:45
Speaker 4: acquitted at trial as a matter of law, because they
22:48
Speaker 4: just didn't have the evidence.
22:50
Speaker 1: At that point. Jim says, the state had a decision
22:52
Speaker 1: to make.
22:53
Speaker 4: Do they now let the case go or do they
22:56
Speaker 4: choose to recharge her. Again, very disappointed to learn from
22:59
Speaker 4: them that they and to continue to prosecute. So they
23:05
Speaker 4: shifted their theory to say that because Cassie had been
23:09
Speaker 4: drinking alcohol that night, regardless of whether that had anything
23:13
Speaker 4: to do with her baby's death, that in and of itself,
23:17
Speaker 4: drinking alcohol while you have children at home is felony
23:20
Speaker 4: child neglect, And so they pursued the case on that theory.
23:26
Speaker 1: Has that ever been a precedent that was set before
23:29
Speaker 1: drinking equals felony child neglect?
23:32
Speaker 4: I have not seen an example where that fact alone
23:37
Speaker 4: was constituting felony child neglect. That really makes you wonder
23:40
Speaker 4: in terms of a charging decision, whether a middle class
23:44
Speaker 4: white mother who'd had a few glasses of wine at
23:46
Speaker 4: the ballet and was still under the influence when she
23:49
Speaker 4: relieved the nanny would be charged I seriously doubt it.
23:54
Speaker 4: I spoke to a lot of other defense lawyers about this,
23:57
Speaker 4: you know, in other states around the country, and what
24:01
Speaker 4: I heard mostly was your client's not white, is she m?
24:06
Speaker 4: I said, no, she isn't. So I guess sometimes drinking
24:10
Speaker 4: while being non white and in charge of children could
24:12
Speaker 4: get in some more trouble than other folks would see.
24:23
Speaker 4: I think some assumptions were made based on who Cassie
24:26
Speaker 4: is and what she looks like, and what community she
24:29
Speaker 4: comes from. I also think that on all sides of
24:34
Speaker 4: the issue, people didn't think that it was such a
24:37
Speaker 4: big deal for Cassie to go to prison for eighteen months.
24:41
Speaker 4: I mean, even her own lawyer told her something to
24:43
Speaker 4: the effect of you'll be home before you know it.
24:46
Speaker 4: She'd never been in prison before. This was a totally
24:49
Speaker 4: new experience for her, so the idea that they wouldn't
24:52
Speaker 4: be such a big deal to go to prison for
24:54
Speaker 4: eighteen months is just shocking.
24:58
Speaker 1: After Judge Morgan's ruling, this date continued with its efforts
25:01
Speaker 1: to prosecute Cassie, but when the judge ordered them to
25:05
Speaker 1: identify specific conduct from Cassie that constituted felony child neglect,
25:09
Speaker 1: they were unable to do so because she wasn't guilty,
25:14
Speaker 1: So on October nineteenth, twenty twenty three, the state moved
25:17
Speaker 1: to dismiss the charges. Cassie was finally free. Adam remember
25:22
Speaker 1: seeing her united with her two daughters.
25:26
Speaker 6: I got a picture of when they were all hanging
25:28
Speaker 6: out and they were hugging her, and I just, I
25:31
Speaker 6: just I was emotional wreck. Just the moment of joy
25:36
Speaker 6: that that she's feeling at that moment. Enclosure was it was.
25:41
Speaker 6: It was inspiring for sure.
25:45
Speaker 1: Since then, Adam and f five have been helping Cassie
25:48
Speaker 1: to rebuild her life outside of prison.
25:51
Speaker 6: I've often played out the scenario like what person would
25:55
Speaker 6: it be the hardest for in re entry? And my
25:59
Speaker 6: opinion is, actually, here native American female that's being released
26:03
Speaker 6: from prison that has a bunch of felonies on her
26:07
Speaker 6: background is by far going to be the most stigmatized.
26:10
Speaker 4: You know, one of the worst things that happened to
26:13
Speaker 4: her was that when she was arrested, she was absolutely
26:17
Speaker 4: savaged in the Bismarck media. You know, her mugshot was
26:21
Speaker 4: plastered on the front pages of papers with a headline
26:25
Speaker 4: suggesting that she was a baby killer. Right that she'd
26:28
Speaker 4: been arrested for killing her own child, and that was
26:31
Speaker 4: so awful for her to see that and to have
26:34
Speaker 4: that be the story about her, to have her name
26:37
Speaker 4: associated with that, I think it started to feel empowering
26:40
Speaker 4: for her to take back her name and take back
26:43
Speaker 4: her own narrative.
26:44
Speaker 6: And so through all that stuff that she's been through,
26:47
Speaker 6: that negative mindset that exists is basically just one big
26:51
Speaker 6: ball of trauma. And so if your listeners are you know,
26:54
Speaker 6: praying people, or if they're you know, thoughtful people, just
26:58
Speaker 6: having her in your thoughts and just given sending her
27:01
Speaker 6: good vibes and good prayers is going to be. She's
27:04
Speaker 6: going to need it because she's got a long journey
27:05
Speaker 6: ahead of her.
27:11
Speaker 1: Eventually, Cassie hopes to return to Rapid City and to school.
27:15
Speaker 1: For now, she's just enjoying spending time with Dealeza and
27:19
Speaker 1: em Maria. She says that being separated for all those
27:22
Speaker 1: months took a toll on their relationship, and she's working
27:25
Speaker 1: to rebuild that bond, and Cassie says, all three of
27:29
Speaker 1: them mean time to heal from losing Starlight.
27:36
Speaker 2: I'm traumatized. It's traumatized and losing my baby, but I
27:43
Speaker 2: went through a lot more with it. Like even my babies,
27:48
Speaker 2: my three year old and my eight year old, are affected,
27:51
Speaker 2: not just me.
27:53
Speaker 1: How often do you think about her, Cassie every day?
28:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep.
28:03
Speaker 3: I see my two oldest and I always think of
28:05
Speaker 3: how would have been with all three. We all still
28:18
Speaker 3: talk about my daughter.
28:21
Speaker 2: My oldest always talks about because she remembers how she was.
28:25
Speaker 2: She was a calm little baby. My three year old
28:29
Speaker 2: she doesn't understand it. She kind of makes me laugh.
28:32
Speaker 2: She thinks she carries my starlight in her stomach. Whenever
28:37
Speaker 2: she gets really fool or she's done eating a snack,
28:41
Speaker 2: she'll say Starlight's making her stomach hurt because.
28:44
Speaker 1: It looks like she's pregnant.
28:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's really funny with all that. Or like three
28:59
Speaker 2: peas in a pod. Yeah, I always tease everybody and
29:04
Speaker 2: say we're cool out in public. We'll get along, all
29:07
Speaker 2: three of us, but we get back in our house,
29:10
Speaker 2: it's chaos disastery.
29:23
Speaker 1: If you'd like to help support Cassie and her daughters
29:26
Speaker 1: as they restart their life together, there's a GoFundMe for her.
29:29
Speaker 1: We'll have that link in the episode description. And if
29:32
Speaker 1: you'd like to know more about the Great North Innocence
29:34
Speaker 1: Project and the F five Project. Please check out their
29:37
Speaker 1: links on the page as well. Thank you for listening
29:54
Speaker 1: to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local
29:58
Speaker 1: innocence organizations and go to the in the episode description
30:01
Speaker 1: to see how you can help. I'd like to thank
30:03
Speaker 1: our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis,
30:07
Speaker 1: as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Kathleen Fink,
30:11
Speaker 1: story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels. Mixing and
30:16
Speaker 1: sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional production by
30:20
Speaker 1: Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music is by three
30:23
Speaker 1: time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
30:27
Speaker 1: us on all social media platforms at Lava for Good
30:31
Speaker 1: and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on
30:34
Speaker 1: all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling
30:38
Speaker 1: is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association
30:41
Speaker 1: with Signal Company Number one