Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #185 Jason Flom with Pablo Fernandez

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#185 Jason Flom with Pablo Fernandez · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: In the early nineties, the crack epidemic was in full swing,
0:05
Speaker 1: and violence between rival gangs, the Red Top Crew and
0:08
Speaker 1: the Yellow Top Crew, among others, gripped Harlem and other
0:12
Speaker 1: parts of the city. On June tenth, nineteen ninety three,
0:15
Speaker 1: a slender, light skinned man in his forties with a
0:18
Speaker 1: gray ponytail rolled up to a building on West one
0:20
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty fifth Street and open fire, wounding fifteen
0:24
Speaker 1: year old Henry Gomez and killing eighteen year old Manny Kintero.
0:29
Speaker 1: The case went cold for two years. Then two members
0:33
Speaker 1: of Yellowtop joined forces with a corrupt detective and officer
0:36
Speaker 1: team to bring a close to this case in exchange
0:39
Speaker 1: for leniency in their own cases. Officer aj Molino had
0:43
Speaker 1: been involved in dealing at some point himself. The detective
0:47
Speaker 1: was Mark Tebbins, the same one responsible for Danny Ringcon's
0:51
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction in the bungling of another Red Top.
0:54
Speaker 2: Cruse shooting in the Bronx.
0:56
Speaker 1: These members of Yellowtop made up a story that Pablo
0:59
Speaker 1: fort and As had been hired by Redtop to carry
1:02
Speaker 1: out the June tenth shooting. Then Tevins and Malino used
1:05
Speaker 1: misleading identification tactics to trick or coerce several teenage eyewitnesses
1:10
Speaker 1: to build what they knew was a farcical case. The
1:14
Speaker 1: prosecution followed suit to turn Pablo, a stocky, darker skin
1:18
Speaker 1: twenty two year old with short black hair, into this slender,
1:22
Speaker 1: forty something light skin shooter with a gray ponytail. Pablo
1:27
Speaker 1: spent almost twenty five years behind bars, and it took
1:30
Speaker 1: nearly a decade and a half of pro bono work
1:32
Speaker 1: from legal giant Paul Weiss to win his freedom. This
1:38
Speaker 1: is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful
1:54
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flamm. That's me. I'm your host, and
1:57
Speaker 1: today I want to introduce first the tourney who spent
2:01
Speaker 1: thousands of hours pro bono on this case. So Dave Brown,
2:05
Speaker 1: thanks for being here on the show.
2:06
Speaker 3: Today, Thanks for having me Jason, and.
2:09
Speaker 1: With us, of course is the person who endured this
2:13
Speaker 1: night mare that you're about to hear about and live
2:15
Speaker 1: to tell the story. So now it's my great privilege
2:18
Speaker 1: to introduce you to Pablo Fernandez Babo. Thank you for
2:21
Speaker 1: being here with us today.
2:22
Speaker 4: Thank you.
2:23
Speaker 1: And this story goes back to the early nineties. Pablo,
2:26
Speaker 1: you came from the Dominican Republic, right, And you ended
2:30
Speaker 1: up as a teenager in Upper Manhattan at the height
2:34
Speaker 1: of the crack epidemic. What was it like growing up
2:36
Speaker 1: in that crazy time that we've heard so much about.
2:39
Speaker 4: It was way deeferent to day crying.
2:43
Speaker 5: Every day you walking in this three, you see the
2:46
Speaker 5: house in the botto of the crack the floor.
2:49
Speaker 4: You see a lot of cracking people walking in this
2:52
Speaker 4: three like a son.
2:53
Speaker 1: Be Gunshots could be heard regularly around the clock, not
2:56
Speaker 1: just at nighttime in those days. And you had a
2:59
Speaker 1: police force that out of control as well. And Dave
3:02
Speaker 1: take us back to the original crime and how this
3:05
Speaker 1: turned into this terribly flawed case and ultimately wonwful conviction.
3:10
Speaker 3: The crime in question took place on June tenth, nineteen
3:14
Speaker 3: ninety three.
3:15
Speaker 2: It was a.
3:16
Speaker 3: Drive by shooting where a car drives down one hundred
3:20
Speaker 3: and thirty fifth Street, stops. The gunman gets out for
3:24
Speaker 3: just a few seconds from the passenger side, fires several shots,
3:27
Speaker 3: kills Manny Kintaro, wounds Henry Gomez, jumps back in the car,
3:32
Speaker 3: and the car drives away. A number of eye witnesses
3:34
Speaker 3: saw that shooting. They called in to nine one one
3:37
Speaker 3: with descriptions. Some of them were interviewed by the police
3:40
Speaker 3: either that evening or in the days that followed, and
3:43
Speaker 3: they all described the shooter as having light skin, in
3:46
Speaker 3: his thirties or forties, tall, thin build, gray or salt
3:50
Speaker 3: and pepper hair pulled back in a pony tail. And
3:53
Speaker 3: Pablo looked nothing like that description. In nineteen ninety three,
3:56
Speaker 3: he was twenty years old, he had short, dark hair,
3:59
Speaker 3: stock built, he had never worn his hair long, much
4:02
Speaker 3: less in a ponytail. And the case went cold, we believed,
4:07
Speaker 3: because the police failed to follow up on leads. They
4:10
Speaker 3: sent officers who didn't speak Spanish to conduct interviews in
4:14
Speaker 3: the neighborhood around where the shooting took place, and they
4:17
Speaker 3: just came back and reported, well, we couldn't communicate with
4:19
Speaker 3: some of the witnesses because they spoke Spanish. Wow, and
4:23
Speaker 3: just we think there was no serious effort to really
4:25
Speaker 3: solve this clime.
4:26
Speaker 2: So the case goes cold.
4:28
Speaker 3: Approximately two years later, NYPD officers engaged in a really
4:34
Speaker 3: brazen and corrupt scheme to manufacture evidence against Pablo, faced
4:41
Speaker 3: with the facts that he bore no resemblance to the
4:44
Speaker 3: shooter and there was never any physical or forensics or
4:48
Speaker 3: ballistic evidence that connected him to the crime, and there
4:50
Speaker 3: was absolutely no motive for him to committed the crime.
4:53
Speaker 3: But let me start with the police officers who were
4:57
Speaker 3: the primary.
4:58
Speaker 2: Architects of this place to falsely.
5:01
Speaker 3: Incriminate Pablo, NYPD Officer Albert Molino. He went by aj
5:07
Speaker 3: who had ties to the drug trade himself from before
5:10
Speaker 3: he went to the police academy, and also Detective Mark Tevians.
5:14
Speaker 1: Our audience might remember Mark Tebans from another case that
5:17
Speaker 1: we covered recently, Danny Rincolone case, and of course all
5:22
Speaker 1: the corrupt tactics that he used to make that preposterous
5:26
Speaker 1: case stick as well.
5:27
Speaker 3: The corrupt and unconstitutional tactics that they used were not
5:32
Speaker 3: unique to them. I mean, these were commonplaces n MIPD,
5:35
Speaker 3: homicide and serious felony investigations during the early mid nineteen nineties,
5:41
Speaker 3: and the way they constructed this false case was based
5:46
Speaker 3: on Perger testimony.
5:48
Speaker 1: At the center of this corrupt investigation were two members
5:52
Speaker 1: of the Yellow Top Crew, who were rivals of the
5:54
Speaker 1: Red Top Crew. Now, in those days, of course, the
5:57
Speaker 1: crews were named after the colored caps of the crack
6:00
Speaker 1: files that they sold. Those Yellow Tops had two motives
6:04
Speaker 1: to give up seemingly useful but false information to the police.
6:08
Speaker 1: One was to help their own charges and the other
6:11
Speaker 1: was to try to inflict damage on their arrivals, the
6:15
Speaker 1: Red Top Crew, and these two individuals that worked with
6:19
Speaker 1: Melino and Tabins were Raymond Dilly Rivera and the leader
6:23
Speaker 1: of the Yellow Top Crew, whose name was Martin Chango Mehias.
6:29
Speaker 3: Now Mahias was known in the streets to be a crazy,
6:35
Speaker 3: violent drug dealer, and he was arrested in June of
6:38
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four charged with three counts of murder, one
6:41
Speaker 3: kind of attempted murder, and multiple drug conspiracy charges, and
6:44
Speaker 3: he was facing potential life in prison, so he decided
6:47
Speaker 3: that he would cooperate with the Manhattan Die's office and
6:51
Speaker 3: testify against other people to get a lighter sentence. He
6:55
Speaker 3: put away dozens of people who worked for him, and
6:58
Speaker 3: around that time Rivera, who was one of the chief
7:00
Speaker 3: lieutenants in the Yellow Top Crew, came into the Benhatan
7:04
Speaker 3: Die's office and he confessed that he had committed more
7:07
Speaker 3: than five hundred felonies, including assaults, robberies, and attempted murder.
7:11
Speaker 3: He was never charged for any of those crimes. So
7:14
Speaker 3: somehow Melino and Teppans urged these two cooperators, Mihias and Rivera,
7:21
Speaker 3: to say that they knew Pablo had been hired to
7:25
Speaker 3: do this shooting for the leader of the Red Top crew.
7:28
Speaker 3: They said that they saw Pablo being paid money to
7:31
Speaker 3: do the shooting, about twenty five hundred dollars, and one
7:33
Speaker 3: of them said that after the shooting he saw Pablo
7:36
Speaker 3: come back and meet with the person who had hired
7:39
Speaker 3: him to do the shooting and take out a shell
7:42
Speaker 3: casing and say this is the bullet that killed Kintaro.
7:44
Speaker 3: They said that they knew that Pablo wore disguise like
7:47
Speaker 3: a wig, or he painted his hair.
7:49
Speaker 1: And of course we would have also had to believe
7:50
Speaker 1: that he had a makeup artist on hand who could
7:52
Speaker 1: have changed his skin color. But you can't be stocky
7:56
Speaker 1: and pretend you're skinny. That doesn't work.
7:58
Speaker 2: None of this was true.
8:00
Speaker 3: And then early nineteen ninety five, detective Tevins and Officer
8:04
Speaker 3: Milino found two eyewitnesses who had seen the shooting. Now,
8:08
Speaker 3: when these kids saw the shooting, they were approximately thirteen
8:11
Speaker 3: years old, and both of them were cousins of Manniquintaro.
8:16
Speaker 3: One of them his name was Hiccliffe Rosario and the
8:19
Speaker 3: other's name was George Rosario, and both of them had
8:23
Speaker 3: reported seeing a light skinned shooter, you know, long gray hair,
8:27
Speaker 3: thirties or forties do the killing. But they were pressured
8:31
Speaker 3: by Melino and Tebbns to falsely identify Pablo as the shooter,
8:37
Speaker 3: in part because the police just kept pointing to pictures
8:41
Speaker 3: of Pablo over and over and over saying this is
8:43
Speaker 3: a shooter. The police officers lied to Hicckcliffe and George
8:46
Speaker 3: Rosario and said, you know, even though he may not
8:49
Speaker 3: have been the shooter, he had something to do with
8:51
Speaker 3: the crime, so.
8:52
Speaker 2: You should say that he did it.
8:54
Speaker 3: And if you look at the picture from Pablo's lineup,
8:56
Speaker 3: they're six men and five of them are where white
9:00
Speaker 3: T shirts. And Pablo was put in completely different clothes
9:03
Speaker 3: to make it easier for the witnesses to falsely incriminate him.
9:07
Speaker 3: I think this is something they had done many times before.
9:10
Speaker 3: You would think that it would be incredibly difficult to
9:13
Speaker 3: frame an innocent person for murder. It almost seemed effortless
9:18
Speaker 3: for these corrupt police officers.
9:20
Speaker 1: And Paba, what was it like going through this for you?
9:24
Speaker 1: Did you understand what was going on.
9:26
Speaker 4: And the beginning, though I thought I learned a little
9:29
Speaker 4: about little, it was real for me.
9:31
Speaker 5: I just have my song, my first baby, to change
9:35
Speaker 5: that life, that quiet like that that in one one second,
9:39
Speaker 5: it's real hard.
9:40
Speaker 4: They have me in the Rackets Island, you know by
9:43
Speaker 4: that dying Rackets Island was.
9:46
Speaker 5: The acquisition that I have something that I know that
9:49
Speaker 5: I'm not doing man my song.
9:54
Speaker 4: Every time I see my soul in the cool it
9:57
Speaker 4: was It's.
9:58
Speaker 1: It's impossible, I think for anyone who hasn't been through
10:01
Speaker 1: it to imagine what you went through. I mean, you're
10:05
Speaker 1: twenty years old, you're still a kid. Now you're thrust
10:08
Speaker 1: into a very adult situation that you didn't cause and
10:11
Speaker 1: you didn't create. And I want to just highlight one
10:14
Speaker 1: of the things on the Innesis project has led to charge,
10:16
Speaker 1: among other organizations, to make videotaping of interrogations mandatory, but
10:22
Speaker 1: also the photo arrays, lineup procedures, all of that, anything
10:27
Speaker 1: involving eye witnesses should also be videotaped. That's the only
10:31
Speaker 1: way we can clamp down on these type of practices.
10:34
Speaker 1: And they're not always as nefarious as this one was, right,
10:37
Speaker 1: but if they're influencing the witness in any way. The
10:40
Speaker 1: jury must know about that. And that brings us to
10:43
Speaker 1: the trial, which was January nineteen ninety six.
10:45
Speaker 3: And let me start just a few weeks before the
10:48
Speaker 3: trial begins. Actually, because it appears that Melino and Teppans
10:54
Speaker 3: they knew approaching the trial as was a weak case.
10:58
Speaker 3: They had two cooperators obviously had motives to lie and
11:02
Speaker 3: fabricate evidence, and then you had these two teenagers who
11:06
Speaker 3: have been pressured to lie, and so it looks like
11:08
Speaker 3: they went out to try to bolster this case. And
11:10
Speaker 3: they found two more eyewitnesses and one of them, his
11:14
Speaker 3: name was Hayes's Canela. Canela recants in the mid two thousands, actually.
11:19
Speaker 2: As do the Rosarios.
11:21
Speaker 3: But Canela, when he came forward, he said that he
11:24
Speaker 3: had been pressured by the police officers and they showed
11:27
Speaker 3: him a picture of Pablo, not even a photo array,
11:29
Speaker 3: just a single photographic Pablo, saying this is the person
11:32
Speaker 3: who did the crime. And then they told him you
11:35
Speaker 3: don't have to testify in court about the fact that
11:38
Speaker 3: you saw this photo. So this witness is found two
11:42
Speaker 3: weeks before the trial, right, it's now two and a
11:44
Speaker 3: half years since he saw the murder, and he testifies
11:47
Speaker 3: that he still recognizes Pablo, even though you know Pablo
11:51
Speaker 3: was supposedly wearing a disguise at the time, and he
11:54
Speaker 3: says he's never seen any pictures of Pablo up until then,
11:58
Speaker 3: although of course, just two weeks before trial started he
12:01
Speaker 3: indeed was some pictures of Pablo, but that's all covered up.
12:04
Speaker 5: It's so bad because you can do nothing. You can
12:06
Speaker 5: say nothing. It's like it's somebody punching you and you
12:10
Speaker 5: can do nothing. Everything was lying.
12:13
Speaker 1: So Pablo, when the jury came back, what was that
12:16
Speaker 1: moment like.
12:16
Speaker 4: When you told me that I'm guilty? Oh man, I
12:19
Speaker 4: thought I want to die.
12:21
Speaker 5: I feel my bie, like like I hold in one
12:23
Speaker 5: thousand pounds my back and look you back to see
12:26
Speaker 5: my family. All my family was crying. I was crying.
12:29
Speaker 5: I was crying. I can't hold it. When you know
12:33
Speaker 5: that you hemasy and they find you guilty or something
12:37
Speaker 5: that you want to confront twenty five years, it's crazy.
12:42
Speaker 5: I lost my family, love my song, I love everybody.
12:55
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by the AIG Pro Bono program.
12:59
Speaker 1: AIG is a leading global insurance company, and for over
13:03
Speaker 1: a decade, the AIG pro bono program has provided thousands
13:06
Speaker 1: of hours of free legal services and other support to
13:10
Speaker 1: nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need. More recently, the
13:14
Speaker 1: program added criminal and social justice reform as a key
13:18
Speaker 1: pillar of its mission.
13:25
Speaker 3: The case against Pablo really began to fall apart just
13:27
Speaker 3: a few days after the trial when the DA's office
13:31
Speaker 3: came to Pablo's trial council and said, we've had to
13:34
Speaker 3: arrest Officer aj Malino because we discovered that he was
13:38
Speaker 3: under investigation by the New York State Troopers for dealing
13:42
Speaker 3: large amounts of cocaine to.
13:44
Speaker 2: Undercover cops a few years prior, right.
13:47
Speaker 3: Before he went into the police academy, and for some
13:50
Speaker 3: reason that investigation stalled, but it was reopened during the trial.
13:55
Speaker 3: Alino is arrested right after the trial, but the DA's
13:59
Speaker 3: office never follows up to prosecute him, and after about
14:02
Speaker 3: five years the case is dismissed for failure to prosecute. Now,
14:07
Speaker 3: it's my theory that somebody who's dealing large amounts of
14:10
Speaker 3: drugs and it goes into the police academy does not
14:13
Speaker 3: stop after they've become a police officer, and we'll see
14:18
Speaker 3: what comes to bite in Pablo's civil case. But I
14:20
Speaker 3: think this was likely a corrupt officer through and through again.
14:24
Speaker 3: We know during this time there were other officers in
14:28
Speaker 3: UPTAH Manhattan who were dealing drugs themselves, providing protection to
14:31
Speaker 3: drug dealers, robbing drug dealers, and signed the drugs themselves.
14:35
Speaker 3: And you know, Melino certainly seems to fit that pattern.
14:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one would think that that would cause an
14:42
Speaker 1: immediate reopening of the case or retrial or something. But
14:45
Speaker 1: of course we know that it took the most twenty
14:47
Speaker 1: five years for this to be resolved, and thousands of
14:50
Speaker 1: hours of pro bono legal work from you and your
14:53
Speaker 1: team at Paul Weiss. You know, it's one of the
14:55
Speaker 1: things that gives me hope, just the fact that there
14:57
Speaker 1: are people like you and firms like Paul Weiss and
15:01
Speaker 1: so many others that provide almost limitless resources of human
15:06
Speaker 1: talent to help someone like Pablo get out of what
15:10
Speaker 1: is almost impossible.
15:11
Speaker 2: Morassed, Dave, you.
15:13
Speaker 1: Didn't get involved to two thousand and five, but talk
15:15
Speaker 1: to us about this crazy appellate process.
15:19
Speaker 3: The next major event occurs in two thousand and two.
15:22
Speaker 3: Hicclab and George Rosaria both recanted their trial testimony. And
15:26
Speaker 3: they met with a lawyer who was representing Pablo at
15:28
Speaker 3: the time, and they provided sworn testimony stating that Malino
15:32
Speaker 3: and others had pressured them to falsely identify Pablo as
15:35
Speaker 3: the shooter. That Hicclo stated that he was positive that
15:38
Speaker 3: Pablo had not shot Caintaro. George said that he never
15:43
Speaker 3: would have identified Pablo as the shooter if he had
15:45
Speaker 3: not been told by the police that Pablo was involved,
15:48
Speaker 3: and that he had been pressured to identify Pablo after
15:51
Speaker 3: being shown.
15:52
Speaker 4: Pablo's picture again.
15:53
Speaker 3: The appellate courts did not consider this evidence enough.
15:58
Speaker 2: To free Publo.
16:00
Speaker 3: The next year, in two thousand and three, Henry Gomez
16:03
Speaker 3: so the second victim of the shooting. He provided sworn
16:07
Speaker 3: testimony that Pablo was not the man who shot him
16:10
Speaker 3: and didn't look like the shooter. That is not enough either. Now,
16:15
Speaker 3: in two thousand and five, my law firm got involved.
16:18
Speaker 1: Paul Wise, what are the top law firms not in
16:21
Speaker 1: the city in the world, comes in, you know, to
16:24
Speaker 1: the rescue. How did his case land on your radar?
16:28
Speaker 3: Now we do a lot of pro bono work at
16:31
Speaker 3: Paul Weis, including criminal defense work, criminal justice reform work.
16:36
Speaker 3: But as your question indicated, you know why, of all
16:39
Speaker 3: of the thousands and thousands of criminal defendants in the
16:43
Speaker 3: New York State system, how do we get involved in
16:45
Speaker 3: Paplo's case.
16:46
Speaker 2: Well, there was a Yale.
16:47
Speaker 3: Law student named Andrew Goldstein who, because of a program
16:52
Speaker 3: at Yale Law School, became aware of this case. And
16:55
Speaker 3: then he came to Paul Weise for our summer associate program,
16:58
Speaker 3: which lasts about eight.
16:59
Speaker 2: To ten weeks.
17:00
Speaker 3: And when he came in, he said, can I get
17:02
Speaker 3: some support from Paul Whise to help me on Pablo's case?
17:06
Speaker 2: And we said sure.
17:07
Speaker 3: We thought this was going to be something that we
17:10
Speaker 3: helped Andrew Goldstein with for a summer. Well, that summer
17:15
Speaker 3: lasted fourteen years. Andrew ended up coming to the firm
17:20
Speaker 3: as an associate where he worked on the case, and
17:23
Speaker 3: then he left us after about four or five years,
17:25
Speaker 3: and he became a prosecutor in the US Attorney's Office
17:28
Speaker 3: in the Southern District, and he went on to work
17:31
Speaker 3: on Bob Moller's team a few years ago and is
17:34
Speaker 3: now back in private practice and just so overjoyed that
17:39
Speaker 3: the case that he brought in as a law student
17:41
Speaker 3: ended with such a great result, even though it took
17:44
Speaker 3: to such a long time for justice to be delivered.
17:48
Speaker 1: What did it mean to you when Dave and his
17:51
Speaker 1: team first got involved with your case and to have
17:55
Speaker 1: their support, And how did that feel?
17:58
Speaker 5: The lawyer that I have so d even the thing came,
18:02
Speaker 5: they told me, listen, you look, you got the best
18:04
Speaker 5: loyal United States and maybe in the war you got
18:08
Speaker 5: one of the best loyal And I was so happy,
18:11
Speaker 5: my family too, because you know, I woant to be
18:15
Speaker 5: in the best hang.
18:16
Speaker 4: That I can be. That's that's the only way I
18:19
Speaker 4: came home.
18:20
Speaker 1: And I want to get to that, you know, the
18:22
Speaker 1: good part, your freedom. So let's go right back to
18:25
Speaker 1: that post conviction history. In two thousand and five, Paul
18:29
Speaker 1: Weisse took the case, and then there was another recantation.
18:33
Speaker 3: In twenty ten, ten Haines's Canela recants, and again that
18:39
Speaker 3: motion is denied. One of the reasons that the New
18:43
Speaker 3: York State judge said that this witness was not to
18:47
Speaker 3: be believed is because he said, well, he was trying
18:50
Speaker 3: too hard to be convincing when he recanted, which is
18:54
Speaker 3: just such a ridiculous and bizarre thing to say. And
18:59
Speaker 3: with lost in all the state court appeals, in the
19:03
Speaker 3: Federal District Court, and now we're going up to the
19:05
Speaker 3: Federal Appeals Court, and we knew that if we lost,
19:07
Speaker 3: it was over. We would have only had the ability
19:12
Speaker 3: to appeal to the Supreme Court, and there was almost
19:15
Speaker 3: a zero chance that they would ever have taken this case.
19:18
Speaker 3: So this was really our last stop. And this is
19:23
Speaker 3: really a case that shows you the value of perseverance.
19:27
Speaker 1: Well, it certainly does, because in February of twenty nineteen,
19:31
Speaker 1: the US Court of Appeals for the Second District finally
19:34
Speaker 1: overturned the conviction, ruling that it was unconstitutional and citing
19:38
Speaker 1: the state court's denial as a quote unquote unreasonable determination
19:43
Speaker 1: on the grounds that Canela was and again I'm quoting here,
19:46
Speaker 1: trying too hard to be convincing end quote. So now
19:51
Speaker 1: the conviction is overturned, but the indictment still stands because
19:55
Speaker 1: there's no statute of limitations on murder, and the DA
19:59
Speaker 1: comes in you with the deal right to go free
20:02
Speaker 1: immediately if you plead guilty to manslaughter. But yet on
20:07
Speaker 1: the other hand, they could still retry you. You had
20:10
Speaker 1: twenty five to life, so parole was just around the corner.
20:13
Speaker 1: But there's no guarantee you there either, because who knows,
20:17
Speaker 1: Like if you wouldn't have admitted guilt, if you had
20:20
Speaker 1: refused the deal, you might still be sitting in prison today.
20:23
Speaker 5: I understand, but it's never passed from my mind to
20:26
Speaker 5: take any deal with him. From the beginning, I will
20:29
Speaker 5: fire for my freedom. So after all this, jed walking
20:33
Speaker 5: in MKA and try to be free to prove my
20:38
Speaker 5: ino say, I'm not going to take nothing for these
20:40
Speaker 5: people nothing.
20:54
Speaker 1: You know.
20:54
Speaker 3: At first, we have the defense team thought there's no
20:57
Speaker 3: way the DA's office is going to retry this case.
21:00
Speaker 3: The hicclerf Rosario has recanted, George Rosario has recanted, Jesu's
21:04
Speaker 3: Canella has recanted. We learned that Rivera was a quadriplegic
21:10
Speaker 3: and gravely ill, not even able to speak, and then
21:14
Speaker 3: Mihias was a drug dealer who had served a significant
21:17
Speaker 3: amount of time in prison. And there's absolutely no case left.
21:21
Speaker 3: And so during the spring of twenty nineteen, the DA's
21:26
Speaker 3: office was making one disclosure after another to us that
21:31
Speaker 3: showed that the case was even worse than we had known.
21:34
Speaker 3: But we contacted Martin Maheis and he made some incredible
21:40
Speaker 3: exclosures to us. He told our investigator, you know, when
21:43
Speaker 3: I was cooperating with the police, I was supposed to
21:46
Speaker 3: go back to the Rikers Island after I testified, or
21:49
Speaker 3: after I met.
21:50
Speaker 2: With the DIA's office.
21:52
Speaker 3: But Melino and Tevins would take me all around the city.
21:56
Speaker 3: We would go to Dallas barbecue, we would get drunk.
22:00
Speaker 3: They would take me to visit girlfriends, take me shopping.
22:05
Speaker 3: I was drinking a lot at the time. I was
22:08
Speaker 3: drunk when I testified. I viewed Tevins as a friend,
22:14
Speaker 3: basically indicating that he would have done anything to please
22:17
Speaker 3: the police. He also said the police had given him
22:20
Speaker 3: marijuana to sell in prison. I mean, this was just
22:24
Speaker 3: amazing to us. And we got similar disclosures from the
22:29
Speaker 3: Manhattan Die's office about Mihias in July of twenty nineteen.
22:35
Speaker 3: Information to show that Mihias said, I'm not going to
22:38
Speaker 3: testify for you again. The police told me to lie
22:42
Speaker 3: in the trial in nineteen ninety six. I'm not going
22:44
Speaker 3: to testify again. So then we learned just some shocking
22:48
Speaker 3: information about Raymond Rivera. Raymond Rivera said that he saw
22:54
Speaker 3: Pablo two days before the murder and that he witnessed
22:59
Speaker 3: Pop being hired to shoot Canterero. Now, at this time,
23:04
Speaker 3: according to what the DA's office disclosed to US, Rivera
23:07
Speaker 3: could not have been in Upper Manhattan witnessing Pablo or
23:11
Speaker 3: anybody else being paid to do this murder because during
23:14
Speaker 3: this time, Rivera was actually incarcerated in state prison more
23:20
Speaker 3: than three hundred miles away from New York City, and
23:24
Speaker 3: that meant that his testimony was just outright pergury. He
23:28
Speaker 3: could not have been in New York he could now
23:30
Speaker 3: have been in Manhattan. They were prison records, new York
23:33
Speaker 3: state records that showed that he was incarcerated at the time,
23:36
Speaker 3: And when these disclosures came out, the DA's office decided
23:42
Speaker 3: to stop fighting the case, and Pablo was first released
23:46
Speaker 3: on bail in August of twenty nineteen, and then in
23:51
Speaker 3: September of twenty nineteen, the DA's office asked the trial
23:55
Speaker 3: court to dismiss the case against Pablo. In September twenty nineteen,
24:01
Speaker 3: two days before his birthday, Pablo walked out of Manhattan
24:05
Speaker 3: Criminal Court. Finally a freeman.
24:08
Speaker 1: The day that you've been waiting for for twenty five
24:11
Speaker 1: years has finally come. You're innocent, Your lawyers know you're innocent.
24:15
Speaker 1: The whole time, your family, You're innocent the whole time.
24:18
Speaker 1: Now everyone knows, the court has said it. What was
24:21
Speaker 1: that moment like when you were finally declared actually innocent
24:25
Speaker 1: and set free?
24:27
Speaker 5: Wow, it was amazing day. It was It was my
24:31
Speaker 5: day every day. I was thinking in that day, and
24:35
Speaker 5: I know that one day going to come.
24:38
Speaker 4: That was the date.
24:39
Speaker 5: I was so happy that the through came out.
24:43
Speaker 4: And that I was rep free.
24:46
Speaker 5: But in the same way, I feel a little bad.
24:48
Speaker 5: My fatherly passed away when I was in jail twenty fourteen.
24:53
Speaker 5: And one other thing that I want to is to
24:58
Speaker 5: see my family or in my father, they see my freedom,
25:02
Speaker 5: they see me out or my father know how the
25:04
Speaker 5: opportunity to see me. He knows that I'm from the beginning,
25:08
Speaker 5: so I can show him, you know, my freedom. I
25:13
Speaker 5: feel happy that I'm free, pro in the same in
25:16
Speaker 5: the same time, I feel little.
25:20
Speaker 4: I don't know how to say, but I'm.
25:21
Speaker 5: Feeling my father in my in my hall, that I
25:24
Speaker 5: can see him, that I can hold him, you know,
25:26
Speaker 5: and show him I'm here with you again.
25:30
Speaker 1: The good news is your home now You're never going back.
25:35
Speaker 1: And Pablo, I have to ask how I mean people
25:39
Speaker 1: out here in the free world, trying to find love,
25:42
Speaker 1: going everywhere, looking online, on here, on there, going out,
25:47
Speaker 1: and you found love from behind the walls of prison.
25:50
Speaker 1: I mean, you're a charming guy. But still, that's amazing.
25:54
Speaker 5: Can you explain we know each other from outside before
25:58
Speaker 5: I get out that when I get told in jail
26:01
Speaker 5: a friend of mine, he was my wife Tania best friend. Broadly,
26:06
Speaker 5: we see that we from the same Abia, and we
26:10
Speaker 5: started talking about people. And when I'm mentioning Manitania, so
26:14
Speaker 5: he said, listen, my sister is Tanya's friend. So the
26:18
Speaker 5: same day he called so his sister that I was here,
26:22
Speaker 5: and next day I got a visit Fontania. Since the
26:26
Speaker 5: that day we're together. That happened two thousand and three. See,
26:30
Speaker 5: I missed one busy, she allways come to see me.
26:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you two got married. She I mean, it's amazing. Really,
26:38
Speaker 1: she's stuck by you the whole way. It's beautiful and
26:42
Speaker 1: it's just gotta feel amazing. And I know I speak
26:46
Speaker 1: for so many others, all of us here at Ronful
26:48
Speaker 1: Conviction and everyone in your in your very wide circle.
26:52
Speaker 1: Now when I say that we wish you to all
26:55
Speaker 1: the best, that life has to offer any other news.
27:00
Speaker 4: Now I got a new soul, now come out.
27:03
Speaker 1: Ah, great stuff. Congratulations to you both. So I mean,
27:08
Speaker 1: there's really nowhere left to go after that. So let's
27:11
Speaker 1: just end on a high note here and go straight
27:14
Speaker 1: to closing arguments, which is of course a segment on
27:17
Speaker 1: the show, my favorite segment when I thank both of you,
27:21
Speaker 1: each of you for being here, and then I shut
27:23
Speaker 1: my microphone off, just kick back and listen as I
27:27
Speaker 1: hear whatever you want to say, whatever you want to
27:30
Speaker 1: talk about it. Let's start with David first and leave
27:33
Speaker 1: you Pablo for last.
27:35
Speaker 3: Thanks Jason. I just want to say that it was
27:38
Speaker 3: such an honor and a privilege to represent Pablo, to
27:42
Speaker 3: fight for him to meet his family, his mother, his sisters,
27:48
Speaker 3: other members of his family, his wife Tanya, who is
27:52
Speaker 3: just such a lovely, impressive woman. I'm just so happy
27:57
Speaker 3: for Pablo and Tanya that even though Pop in twenty
28:00
Speaker 3: four years in prison and fourteen fifteen years of their marriage,
28:04
Speaker 3: Pablo was incarcerated, now that they get a chance to
28:08
Speaker 3: be together and to have a child together, and they
28:12
Speaker 3: have two other children and this will be a third,
28:15
Speaker 3: and this is just really wonderful as I said before,
28:18
Speaker 3: it's just so rewarding to.
28:20
Speaker 2: Do this type of work.
28:21
Speaker 3: I would urge every lawyer I know to try to
28:24
Speaker 3: get involved in.
28:25
Speaker 2: Criminal justice reform work.
28:27
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be an innocent case, but there's
28:30
Speaker 3: so much work that needs to be done around criminal
28:33
Speaker 3: justice reform, and especially if you are at a large
28:37
Speaker 3: firm like Ballwise, there's so many resources that you can
28:40
Speaker 3: bring to bear, and there's so many wrongs that need
28:43
Speaker 3: to be righted, especially in the New York.
28:46
Speaker 2: Criminal justice system.
28:48
Speaker 3: There have been a lot of cases that NYPD has
28:50
Speaker 3: been involved in. It had terrible, unjust tragic results, and
28:54
Speaker 3: these cases can also be a lot of fun. It
28:57
Speaker 3: is fun to be on the right side of his
29:00
Speaker 3: tree and on the right side of justice, and it's
29:03
Speaker 3: energizing in the morning to get up and know that
29:07
Speaker 3: you're fighting for an anescent person.
29:10
Speaker 4: I want to say thank you.
29:12
Speaker 5: I feel so grateful for Wise, everybody that's working in
29:17
Speaker 5: the case.
29:17
Speaker 4: That's the only reason they know I'm innocying. They do
29:21
Speaker 4: the best.
29:22
Speaker 5: Yes, they made my dream through, they made my freedom
29:26
Speaker 5: or my family happy. Now I enjoyed my song because
29:31
Speaker 5: then and everything, because you know, I feel so happy
29:35
Speaker 5: for them. And grateful my family too, like we can
29:39
Speaker 5: like family, My family feel like there is my family.
29:42
Speaker 4: I feel like they're my family.
29:44
Speaker 5: And thank you forming the program to make that through
29:48
Speaker 5: come out. You know, I know it's so many people
29:50
Speaker 5: like me, innocent people. They know how the opportunity that
29:55
Speaker 5: I have is Bray Mahat.
30:02
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
30:05
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
30:08
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
30:11
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
30:15
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
30:18
Speaker 1: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
30:21
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
30:25
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
30:27
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
30:30
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
30:35
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm is a production of Lava
30:38
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one