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#012 Jason Flom with Peter Pringle · Wrongful Conviction

0:05
Speaker 1: With the police banging on the door open up. The
0:10
Speaker 1: choice to be in that lineup was the last choice
0:12
Speaker 1: I made as a free man.
0:14
Speaker 2: A year later, I ended up writing the system.
0:18
Speaker 1: I'm going to be one of those people who everyone
0:20
Speaker 1: in the world is going to think as a.
0:21
Speaker 3: Monster or suspect as a monster for the rest of
0:23
Speaker 3: my life, and I'm just going to have to come
0:24
Speaker 3: to peace with that.
0:27
Speaker 2: Somebody was able to look at my picture in the
0:29
Speaker 2: database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't.
0:34
Speaker 2: I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they
0:37
Speaker 2: might have to play in my hanging. They had been
0:39
Speaker 2: told that two prison officers would have to participate in
0:42
Speaker 2: my execution.
0:45
Speaker 1: Now I walked back inside that prison for the last time. Man,
0:48
Speaker 1: all health broke news. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome
1:12
Speaker 1: back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today's guest is
1:16
Speaker 1: a dear friend of mine and an extraordinary person, Peter Pringle.
1:20
Speaker 3: Pringle was accused of participating in a murder of two
1:23
Speaker 3: police officers following a bank robbery in Ireland. After his conviction,
1:27
Speaker 3: he was sentenced to.
1:28
Speaker 2: Death by hanging and the police officer who had lied
1:32
Speaker 2: to get me convicted, was now a retired detective superintendent.
1:36
Speaker 2: He had been promoted up to the top.
1:38
Speaker 3: Just days before a noose was to be tied around
1:40
Speaker 3: his neck. Peter learned that Ireland's president had commuted his
1:44
Speaker 3: sends to forty years without parole.
1:46
Speaker 2: It faced the forty years, which wasn't the possibility for
1:49
Speaker 2: me at the time. I could kill myself, which at
1:52
Speaker 2: the time was a reasonable house.
1:55
Speaker 1: Peter, what an extraordinary story. So happy to have you here.
1:58
Speaker 1: You're also the first guest on Wrongful who's not born
2:01
Speaker 1: in America.
2:01
Speaker 2: Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Thank you
2:03
Speaker 2: very much.
2:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just saying, it's exciting that you're here because,
2:08
Speaker 1: as I said, we're taking it international now, right. You're
2:11
Speaker 1: as Irish as Irish can be. So Peter, let's go
2:14
Speaker 1: back to the we're talking. This is a very interesting
2:17
Speaker 1: time right when things were going sort of crazy in
2:21
Speaker 1: your home country, right, So bring us back to what
2:24
Speaker 1: was give us the climate in there.
2:26
Speaker 2: What happened was in nineteen eighty there was a bank
2:29
Speaker 2: robbery in Ireland which the police serf was carried out
2:32
Speaker 2: by two three men rather and the getaway car traveling
2:36
Speaker 2: across country, small country roads, collided with a police car
2:39
Speaker 2: at a small crossroads.
2:41
Speaker 1: It sounds like a movie.
2:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, well this is now the police version of events
2:45
Speaker 2: because it goes I wasn't there, so I really can't
2:47
Speaker 2: give you the I can give you what I think
2:49
Speaker 2: is the accurate event of what happened because of my
2:52
Speaker 2: later investigations. But there was the two cars collided, there
2:56
Speaker 2: was an exchange of going far and two police officers
2:59
Speaker 2: were killed, and the three raiders escaped across country, the
3:03
Speaker 2: three bank crappers.
3:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, and where did this happen?
3:07
Speaker 2: In a town called Balhadrin and County ross Common in Ireland.
3:11
Speaker 1: But at the time you were far away.
3:12
Speaker 2: I was in a different region, different county altogether. That's it.
3:18
Speaker 1: That's an important detail.
3:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that evening one man was arrested not too
3:23
Speaker 2: far away and he had a bullet wound in his chest.
3:26
Speaker 2: And the following morning a second man was arrested and
3:29
Speaker 2: the third man escaped across country. And two days after
3:33
Speaker 2: the crime, a police officer managed to catch the man
3:38
Speaker 2: that were chasing, actually caught hold of him and was
3:42
Speaker 2: the only police officer to see the man with When
3:44
Speaker 2: the man wasn't wearing a mask, but the man struggled
3:47
Speaker 2: and got away from the police officer, ran away across
3:49
Speaker 2: the fields, stole a car and escaped again, and apparently
3:55
Speaker 2: he passed through the town where I was and got
3:57
Speaker 2: away again from the police. And twelve days after the crime,
4:00
Speaker 2: they arrested me and brought me in and framed me
4:03
Speaker 2: up for the crime I hadn't committed.
4:05
Speaker 1: Now, there was there's a backstory there too, right, there
4:07
Speaker 1: was a reason they wanted you. Right, you were known
4:12
Speaker 1: to the cops and you were a person that they
4:15
Speaker 1: would have liked to pin something on, and this was
4:17
Speaker 1: sort of a cond Yeah.
4:18
Speaker 2: Well, I was known in the context that I was
4:20
Speaker 2: a political activist. I'd been a political activist from the
4:23
Speaker 2: time I was sixteen years of age, and I'd been
4:26
Speaker 2: involved with the IRA, and I had been interned when
4:29
Speaker 2: I was eighteen years of age. From nineteen fifty seven
4:31
Speaker 2: to fifty nine, I was imprisoned in a prison camp
4:35
Speaker 2: on the Coral in Ireland without interment. It means that
4:38
Speaker 2: you're imprisoned without any charge or trial on suspicion. So
4:41
Speaker 2: they had this background. They classified me as a subversive
4:45
Speaker 2: so it was handy for them to get me off
4:46
Speaker 2: the streets. That's the way they saw it. But at
4:48
Speaker 2: the time at the crime happened, I had a very
4:52
Speaker 2: serious alcohol problem and I was on a binge. I
4:55
Speaker 2: was drinking. I had been drinking buddies for days and
4:58
Speaker 2: days and days. And then they told me that they
5:00
Speaker 2: thought the police might be looking for me. I said,
5:03
Speaker 2: what for what? So I decided, well, you know, I'd
5:07
Speaker 2: have to come off the drink and go and go
5:10
Speaker 2: to the police and find out what this is all about.
5:13
Speaker 2: But before that happened, I had come off to drink.
5:16
Speaker 2: But before I could go to them, they found me
5:19
Speaker 2: in the house of a friend and arrested me and
5:21
Speaker 2: took me in.
5:22
Speaker 1: They found you in the house of friends. So you
5:23
Speaker 1: were on this this binge. Yeah, knowing you you're you're
5:26
Speaker 1: someone who's prone to extremes.
5:29
Speaker 2: Right, some days I've been drinking.
5:30
Speaker 1: Twelve days of drinking. That's a lot of drinking. Yeah,
5:35
Speaker 1: And I imagine this is this is not casual drinking,
5:38
Speaker 1: This is.
5:38
Speaker 2: No this is this was serious alcoholic drinking. Yes. And
5:42
Speaker 2: I've been a fisherman you see at sea, which probably
5:46
Speaker 2: saved me because when you go to see in a
5:49
Speaker 2: trawler you don't drink. There's not drinking a boat, and
5:52
Speaker 2: so I only drank when when I got ashore, which
5:54
Speaker 2: was a different story. And at the time of my arrest,
5:57
Speaker 2: I was a skipper of a boat carrying cargo out
6:00
Speaker 2: of the Arden Islands, which are three islands off the
6:03
Speaker 2: west coast of Ireland as Away off Galway Bay and
6:07
Speaker 2: habited islands. So my job was to carry different cargoes
6:11
Speaker 2: on the ship boat out of the islands of landed
6:14
Speaker 2: safety and bring the boat back safely. That was my
6:16
Speaker 2: job at the time.
6:17
Speaker 1: Now, just to give some context, Peter looks like the
6:19
Speaker 1: skipper of a boat. He's very tall and strong and
6:23
Speaker 1: very well built. I mean, he's got long flowing hair.
6:26
Speaker 1: You know, for someone like me who grew up in Manhattan,
6:28
Speaker 1: what would I know about skippers of boats? Right, we
6:30
Speaker 1: have rowboats in Central Park here. That's about it. But
6:32
Speaker 1: in any case, yes, he very much looks the part.
6:36
Speaker 1: So you were so this was your job at the time.
6:38
Speaker 2: That was my job, and as luck would have it,
6:41
Speaker 2: I took the day off work the day that the
6:45
Speaker 2: robbery happened and went on a binge and they used
6:49
Speaker 2: that against me as I had taken the day off
6:51
Speaker 2: work to go and commit the robbery hadn't happened. But anyway,
6:56
Speaker 2: when I was arrested and I was taken to the
6:58
Speaker 2: police station, there's a funny thing about that too, because
7:01
Speaker 2: after twelve days on drinking, you know, I was entering
7:05
Speaker 2: into detox because this was the first day I hadn't drank.
7:09
Speaker 2: And when they arrested me and took me into the
7:11
Speaker 2: police card, two detectives each side of me, I had
7:14
Speaker 2: to shiver it and they said I was shivering because
7:16
Speaker 2: of fear, because of killed skilled. I was shivering because
7:21
Speaker 2: I was after binge. But when they got me into
7:24
Speaker 2: the police station, they first thing they did was strip
7:26
Speaker 2: me naked and a team of detectives walked around and
7:29
Speaker 2: inspected my body, which I found to be very weird,
7:33
Speaker 2: and they all looked very disappointed, and I didn't know why.
7:35
Speaker 2: I later discovered they were disappointed because I didn't have
7:37
Speaker 2: a bullet wound. Because I remember the guy that they
7:40
Speaker 2: arrested had been shot told him that his friend had
7:42
Speaker 2: also been shot, so they were looking to see had
7:45
Speaker 2: I a bullet wound, And when I didn't have a
7:47
Speaker 2: bullet wound, that looked very disappointed. But that didn't stop
7:49
Speaker 2: them framing me up. So I was arrested at three
7:53
Speaker 2: o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, and at four o'clock they
7:56
Speaker 2: commenced interrogations and I was interrogated from four pm Saturday
8:00
Speaker 2: afternoon until four thirty am on Sunday morning.
8:04
Speaker 1: Twelve and a half hours.
8:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a break when I had a visit,
8:07
Speaker 2: two breaks when I had two short visits with my
8:09
Speaker 2: lawyers in the middle, but that was twelve hours.
8:11
Speaker 1: Basically, you and two detectors in the room had that may.
8:15
Speaker 2: And the team of detectives they were coming in relays
8:17
Speaker 2: of towo's and trees and interrogating and you know, with
8:22
Speaker 2: the occasional beating in the thrown in for good measure
8:25
Speaker 2: because two colleagues had been killed and they were very,
8:29
Speaker 2: very angry. And so then at four am in the morning,
8:32
Speaker 2: I was brought down into a dirty cell and put
8:34
Speaker 2: into a dirty cell, and a police officer was outside
8:37
Speaker 2: with a baton, and it's a solid door, and they
8:40
Speaker 2: closed the door and then he was outside banging on
8:42
Speaker 2: the metal door with his baton so that I couldn't
8:45
Speaker 2: fall asleep. And then at eight am they took me
8:48
Speaker 2: out of the cell and at eight thirty re commenced
8:51
Speaker 2: interrogations and I was interrogated from eight thirty am on
8:54
Speaker 2: Sunday morning right through until four thirty am on Monday morning.
8:59
Speaker 1: Wow, that's an twenty hours yeah.
9:02
Speaker 2: And during that day it's very interesting actually in the
9:05
Speaker 2: afternoon that was on the Sunday what we're known in
9:11
Speaker 2: Ireland as the Heavy Gang. These were the Serious Crime
9:14
Speaker 2: Squad who had a terrible reputation. They took over the
9:18
Speaker 2: police station and they allowed they let all the local
9:21
Speaker 2: police go off to a football match or something, and
9:25
Speaker 2: so the only people in the police station with me
9:28
Speaker 2: on Sunday afternoon were the Serious Crime Squad and Special Branch.
9:33
Speaker 2: And at one point in the afternoon I was being
9:36
Speaker 2: interrogated and they when they beat you, they make sure
9:41
Speaker 2: you have to leave mark so you get kidney punches.
9:44
Speaker 2: I'd be standing while they be questioning me, and one
9:48
Speaker 2: would come behind me with his pistol and you know,
9:51
Speaker 2: whack you in the kidneys, which is very very painful.
9:54
Speaker 2: And are they take their boots and rask them down
9:58
Speaker 2: along my shins, you know, along the shin bone, along
10:01
Speaker 2: the skin to tear the skin. Stuff like that. You
10:04
Speaker 2: wouldn't think about a stamp on your toes. These are big,
10:09
Speaker 2: heavy men, you know, and you're wearing a pair of
10:11
Speaker 2: canvas shoes that they've given me. And at one point
10:16
Speaker 2: that I knew I needed to break this was, you know,
10:20
Speaker 2: I knew I was. I was getting very tired of this.
10:23
Speaker 2: So I said I wanted to use the toilet, and
10:26
Speaker 2: they said you're not going to use the toilet. You're
10:27
Speaker 2: not going to use the toilet, you know, because they
10:29
Speaker 2: used fierce language, you know. And I waited a little
10:33
Speaker 2: while and then I said to the inspector who was
10:36
Speaker 2: conducting matters, I said, it's like this now, I said,
10:39
Speaker 2: if you don't have to use the toilet, I said,
10:40
Speaker 2: I'm going to pissl the floor here in this office.
10:44
Speaker 2: They went there and he said, well he would too,
10:47
Speaker 2: he would too to be you know. So with that
10:50
Speaker 2: they left the room and they called in two other
10:53
Speaker 2: detectives and they left the room, and after about ten minutes,
10:59
Speaker 2: they were told to take me out of the toilet.
11:01
Speaker 2: So the two detectors took me out. I was in front,
11:03
Speaker 2: walked out the door, down the corridor and turned right
11:06
Speaker 2: along a long corridor and about halfway down this corridor,
11:10
Speaker 2: there's an alcove to a staircase going stairs, waves going.
11:13
Speaker 1: Up, and the.
11:16
Speaker 2: Men's room was on the left, near the opposite that
11:20
Speaker 2: that's alcove. And at the end of the corridor, the
11:23
Speaker 2: door was open out onto the car park and the street.
11:29
Speaker 2: And I'm walking now, but you know, you can imagine
11:31
Speaker 2: I'm sort of hypertense because of all that's happening, and
11:37
Speaker 2: I'm walking down along the corridor, and I had the
11:42
Speaker 2: door open because they wanted me to make a run
11:44
Speaker 2: for it.
11:44
Speaker 1: So they could see you.
11:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when I got just at this alcohol, a
11:49
Speaker 2: detective standing in the alcohol that I couldn't see, put
11:51
Speaker 2: his foot out to trip me. But I was so
11:54
Speaker 2: hypertense I saw it and I lift him. I stepped
11:56
Speaker 2: over his foot, and the detective behind me says, ah,
12:00
Speaker 2: you won't catch Peter like that. And with that, the
12:03
Speaker 2: guy that had tried to trip me says, I'll fucking
12:05
Speaker 2: catch him, he says, and he cocked a noosy submachine gun.
12:09
Speaker 2: He said, I'll kill the bastard. And I got on
12:12
Speaker 2: a merciful push in my back and I was propelled
12:15
Speaker 2: through the door of the men's room and up against
12:19
Speaker 2: the wall to the side, and the detective behind me,
12:22
Speaker 2: who was a Special Branch detective, shielded my body, put
12:26
Speaker 2: his hands up like that. She eded my body and
12:28
Speaker 2: said into my ears, say nothing, say nothing, Say nothing,
12:31
Speaker 2: and he said to his call he shut the door,
12:33
Speaker 2: and they shut the door, and there was a big
12:36
Speaker 2: for already going on out in the hallway. The guy
12:38
Speaker 2: with a gun was wanting to get at me. And
12:40
Speaker 2: the next thing we heard a torretive voice saying, what's
12:44
Speaker 2: going on here? And then hand me that weapon and
12:49
Speaker 2: then to somebody has take care of that weapon, and
12:52
Speaker 2: he says, you to my office. And I gather what
12:55
Speaker 2: happened to was as superintendent came in and saw what
12:58
Speaker 2: was going on, stopped it. But in the toilet, the
13:03
Speaker 2: detective that was protecting me still covered my back, covered
13:06
Speaker 2: me with his body, which is a very brave thing
13:08
Speaker 2: to do, because I thought the lunatic was going to
13:10
Speaker 2: shoot me. And then when everything had quite and down,
13:14
Speaker 2: he says to me, I need to have a pin
13:16
Speaker 2: out too, he says, after all that, and so that
13:19
Speaker 2: was it, and that was brought back and the interrogations continued.
13:23
Speaker 1: I mean, we've heard these stories from people who were
13:26
Speaker 1: wrongfully arrested and subjected to awful interrogations in America. And
13:33
Speaker 1: we don't really know much about the audience here because
13:36
Speaker 1: we haven't covered it in any detail what goes on overseas,
13:39
Speaker 1: but it sounds every bit as bad as anything that
13:42
Speaker 1: goes on in America. And of course we do know that,
13:45
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, when police officers are killed, they
13:49
Speaker 1: get crazy, they get into an irrational state, and they
13:54
Speaker 1: probably do things that they wouldn't normally.
13:57
Speaker 2: Do normally do that's correct.
13:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you you were subject to I mean from
14:02
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to do the math, like almost forty
14:05
Speaker 1: hours of interrogation. That's far, and I'm guessing that there
14:08
Speaker 1: was well we know that you didn't get any sleep.
14:10
Speaker 1: I'm sure you weren't giving anything to eat.
14:12
Speaker 2: Well, no, they would bring along a cup of tea
14:15
Speaker 2: or something like that, you know, maybe a sandwich, you know.
14:18
Speaker 1: Right, so they okay, so at least you had that
14:20
Speaker 1: going for yourself. But that which is better than you
14:22
Speaker 1: would have thought based on the way they're treating you. Right,
14:24
Speaker 1: But then again, they like to do that, right, They
14:26
Speaker 1: like to pull you in a little bit and then
14:27
Speaker 1: put you back out and do that whole like psychological
14:30
Speaker 1: torture thing as well.
14:30
Speaker 2: Then when I was put into the cell down on
14:33
Speaker 2: Monday morning at four am on Monday morning, I was
14:36
Speaker 2: taken out again at eight o'clock and I was interrogated
14:40
Speaker 2: then til noon on Monday, and then I was taken
14:42
Speaker 2: on an armed desk card of police to Dublin and
14:46
Speaker 2: brought before the Special Criminal Court where I was charged
14:48
Speaker 2: with capital model and robbery.
14:51
Speaker 1: But you never confessed, absolutely not.
14:55
Speaker 2: I should tell you this one. My father was a policeman.
14:58
Speaker 2: My father had been a police officer.
15:00
Speaker 1: I don't know that.
15:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, And at the time when I was a young man,
15:04
Speaker 2: and he knew of my involvement with the Republican movement,
15:09
Speaker 2: and he tried to talk me out of it, of course,
15:12
Speaker 2: and he said to me at one stage he said
15:15
Speaker 2: to me, if you're going to stay with these people
15:17
Speaker 2: that you're involved in now, he said, I want to
15:20
Speaker 2: tell you to give you some advice. He says, if
15:21
Speaker 2: you're ever arrested by that crowd. And I said, what crowd?
15:26
Speaker 2: He said, that crowd in the castle. Dublin Castle was
15:28
Speaker 2: the center for the Special Branch. And he was referring
15:31
Speaker 2: to a special branch. He said, if they deal with
15:33
Speaker 2: political matters. He says, if you're arrested, don't answer any questions.
15:37
Speaker 2: He said, give them me your name, address, and date
15:40
Speaker 2: of bert and say nothing else. And I said, why that,
15:43
Speaker 2: He says, because no matter what you say, they'll twist
15:45
Speaker 2: it and use it against you. So when I was arrested,
15:49
Speaker 2: and that was my policy when I had been arrested
15:53
Speaker 2: many times before, because if anything happened in the area
15:57
Speaker 2: that I was in, they would do a sort of
15:59
Speaker 2: round up the usual specs. Anything political happened, I didn't mean,
16:03
Speaker 2: and they'd pulled me in and they questioned me, and
16:06
Speaker 2: I'd say nothing, and they'd released me and that was
16:07
Speaker 2: the end of it. So I knew about the procedures
16:12
Speaker 2: when I was arrested. But they brought me before the
16:15
Speaker 2: Special Criminal Court which was established for the trial of
16:18
Speaker 2: political offenses, which is a tribunal of three judges, no jury,
16:24
Speaker 2: and there I was charged and remanded in custody to
16:26
Speaker 2: the maximum security prison where was put And in truth,
16:30
Speaker 2: when I got to the maximum security prison that evening
16:33
Speaker 2: on the Monday evening, and that was kind of interesting too,
16:37
Speaker 2: because when I was brought into what they call reception
16:39
Speaker 2: in the prison. I was stripped. Of course, they stripped
16:41
Speaker 2: her to you're going into the prison. And there was
16:43
Speaker 2: a senior chief officer what they call a chief officer there, Jaylor,
16:48
Speaker 2: and they handed me prison claus. I said them, They said,
16:52
Speaker 2: you have to put them on. You have to wear
16:54
Speaker 2: prison clothes. I said, no, I'm a political prisoner. I
16:56
Speaker 2: don't wear prison clothes. And they said, but after that's it. No,
17:01
Speaker 2: I said, I'm not wearing I want my own clothes back.
17:04
Speaker 2: And I said, if you don't give me my own clothes,
17:05
Speaker 2: I'll go naked. I did the respond to that, and
17:07
Speaker 2: I said, what well, some of them wanted to beat
17:10
Speaker 2: me up again, you see. I wanted to beat me up.
17:12
Speaker 2: And the chief said no, no, no, he said, are
17:15
Speaker 2: you serious. I said, of course, I'm serious. I said,
17:17
Speaker 2: I'm a political prisoner. I'm not wearing prison clothes. And
17:20
Speaker 2: he said, give me his fucking clothes. So I got
17:23
Speaker 2: my clothes and I was brought into the prison wing
17:26
Speaker 2: where I was where everybody else was not wearing their
17:29
Speaker 2: own clothes too, because it was a politic good wing,
17:31
Speaker 2: you see. And I was put into a cell. And
17:35
Speaker 2: I can tell you this much. I to get into
17:37
Speaker 2: that prison cell with a clean bed, even though it's
17:41
Speaker 2: a narrow, army type of bed. Take off my clothes
17:44
Speaker 2: and get into the bed and sleep. It was such
17:46
Speaker 2: a relief after forty eight harrowing hours and me I
17:52
Speaker 2: was detoxing during all this time that I was in
17:54
Speaker 2: the police station, and there I was. And then three
17:56
Speaker 2: months later I was given a copy of the Book
17:58
Speaker 2: of Evidence, and I saw in the book of evidence
18:02
Speaker 2: where one detective sergeant was claiming that on the Monday
18:05
Speaker 2: morning that would have been after thirty four hours of interrogation,
18:09
Speaker 2: I had supposedly suddenly blurted out these words. I know
18:13
Speaker 2: that you know I was involved, but on the advice
18:15
Speaker 2: of my solicitor, I'm saying nothing, and you'll have to
18:18
Speaker 2: and you'll have to prove it all the way. I'd
18:21
Speaker 2: never spoken those words, because, as I said, all I
18:23
Speaker 2: gave was my name addressed data bart and if I
18:25
Speaker 2: wanted to use the toilet, I said, I wanted to
18:27
Speaker 2: use the toilet.
18:27
Speaker 1: So for thirty four hours of them interrogating you and
18:30
Speaker 1: alternately beating you and switching people and going in and
18:34
Speaker 1: out and depriving you of sleep and everything else, all
18:37
Speaker 1: you gave them was your name.
18:39
Speaker 2: Address, and birth data bart and to say to them,
18:43
Speaker 2: I am innocent of what you're accusing me of.
18:45
Speaker 1: So your dad's advice really stuck with.
18:48
Speaker 2: You absolutely because he knew I mean, he was a
18:50
Speaker 2: police officer.
18:51
Speaker 1: Right, which is an iron ironic twist. It is a thing, right,
18:53
Speaker 1: the fact that your dad was a police officer and
18:55
Speaker 1: you end up being accused of killing two police officers
18:58
Speaker 1: and then tortured by police office. Yeah, it's very strange.
19:01
Speaker 1: Life is very strange, and your story is particularly insane.
19:06
Speaker 1: So and what an odd thing to just reflect for
19:08
Speaker 1: a second on the fact that you were just expressing
19:12
Speaker 1: how you felt the sense of relief and you almost
19:14
Speaker 1: sounded joyful at the idea that you were being put
19:17
Speaker 1: into a cell in a maximum security prison just because
19:20
Speaker 1: you had just been through this unbelievable ordeal.
19:23
Speaker 2: Because I was away from the RDEL, you see, right,
19:25
Speaker 2: I was safe from it. That's why I could relax.
19:27
Speaker 1: I know. But you got to understand, like for anyone
19:29
Speaker 1: else you know who's in society to hear that or
19:32
Speaker 1: me right now, to go to think of how that
19:36
Speaker 1: could be that you could actually feel happy about being
19:40
Speaker 1: an innocent person put into a tiny cell with a
19:44
Speaker 1: hard cut. But then again it was the best thing
19:47
Speaker 1: you had seen in at least forty eight hours. Yes, right,
19:50
Speaker 1: I could get some.
19:51
Speaker 2: Sleeps, so my mind didn't go to that fact that
19:53
Speaker 2: I was in the maximum security prisoner, that I was
19:55
Speaker 2: accused wrongly. That stage my exhaustion, all I wanted was rest.
20:00
Speaker 2: And then a funny thing happened the following morning. I
20:02
Speaker 2: woke up at seven o'clock in the following morning. The
20:04
Speaker 2: cell I was in was on the ground floor, and
20:06
Speaker 2: I woke up the following morning at seven o'clock to
20:08
Speaker 2: hear a voice outside the cell in the prison yard,
20:12
Speaker 2: outside the cell, screaming, Jesus help me, help me, help me. Oh,
20:17
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ helped me. Like I heard a scream, and
20:20
Speaker 2: I thought, oh my god, what's going on here? Because
20:21
Speaker 2: I didn't know. I thought maybe some prisoner was being
20:24
Speaker 2: battered or something. And then I heard other voice saying,
20:26
Speaker 2: come on, come on, come on here, the cut that down,
20:28
Speaker 2: come on, And there was a whole commercial going on
20:30
Speaker 2: outside in the prison yard, and I didn't know what
20:33
Speaker 2: it was. And I thought, really, I'm in a right
20:36
Speaker 2: hell hole here. This is a prisoner being battered.
20:39
Speaker 1: You know.
20:40
Speaker 2: It was only afterwards when the cell door opened I
20:42
Speaker 2: heard that actually it was a prison officer had had
20:45
Speaker 2: a nervous breakdown in the yard and they were trying
20:49
Speaker 2: to take him away.
20:51
Speaker 1: That was your first morning.
20:52
Speaker 2: That was my first morning experience in the maximum security prison.
20:56
Speaker 2: What was the name of the prison, Port Leasha prison?
20:58
Speaker 1: It was in the Midlands for at least so, yeah, well,
21:01
Speaker 1: welcome to Port Lisia.
21:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, which it was. It's known colloquially as the Bark
21:05
Speaker 2: the Bark. Yeah.
21:15
Speaker 1: So at this point, had you already been sentenced?
21:19
Speaker 2: No, no, just accused.
21:21
Speaker 1: They've thrown you into this prison while you await your trial.
21:24
Speaker 2: That's right. And I was swing. There was no such
21:26
Speaker 2: thing as putting me in with other people and romand
21:28
Speaker 2: I was put in with people that had already been convicted.
21:30
Speaker 2: It was a politic good wing. So the way it
21:32
Speaker 2: worked there, in one way, it was a tough place
21:36
Speaker 2: to be.
21:37
Speaker 1: So let's go forward to the trial and the conviction,
21:40
Speaker 1: because there's so much more to your story. So the
21:43
Speaker 1: trial takes, how long does it take to get to
21:44
Speaker 1: the trial?
21:45
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, three months after I was arrested, I got
21:47
Speaker 2: a copy of the Book of Evidence and when I
21:49
Speaker 2: read the book of evidence, I saw where the detective
21:51
Speaker 2: sergeant was claiming that after thirty four hours of interrogation,
21:55
Speaker 2: I had suddenly blurted out these words that did I
21:57
Speaker 2: said to them already I know you know, yeah, which
21:59
Speaker 2: I never said. And the first time I came across
22:01
Speaker 2: these words was when I read the book of evidence,
22:03
Speaker 2: and that was the principal evidence against me.
22:06
Speaker 1: You're so called confession, my so called oral confession.
22:11
Speaker 2: So when we went to try, now the two other
22:13
Speaker 2: people had been arrested, the three of us were tried together, right,
22:16
Speaker 2: So the trial took twenty three court days over six weeks,
22:21
Speaker 2: and for the first twelve days of the trial, my
22:23
Speaker 2: name wasn't even mentioned, apart from the fact they charges
22:27
Speaker 2: were read out to me. After that, my name wasn't
22:29
Speaker 2: mentioned for twelve days. So I'm sitting in the dock.
22:31
Speaker 2: It's surreal as if I'm one of the audience, because
22:35
Speaker 2: they're talking about stuff about these other guys and nothing
22:38
Speaker 2: about me. And then after twelve days they went to
22:40
Speaker 2: my case, and when my case was then opened, they
22:43
Speaker 2: opened the case against me. The police officer who had
22:47
Speaker 2: captured the guy they were chasing, whom they claimed was me.
22:51
Speaker 2: Went in the witness box and he was asked to
22:53
Speaker 2: see the man again and he said, yes, he's in
22:54
Speaker 2: the court and can you point him out? And he said, yes,
22:57
Speaker 2: I'm sitting in the dock. So he pointed to a
22:59
Speaker 2: man in the public gallery, standing in the public gallery
23:01
Speaker 2: and he says, that's him standing up there. And it
23:05
Speaker 2: was really bizarre because all the public gallery in the
23:09
Speaker 2: court was packed, but all the people standing beside this
23:12
Speaker 2: man moved away from him and somehow found space, and
23:15
Speaker 2: he was left standing like this on his own, like
23:17
Speaker 2: something you can see in the movies, you know, And
23:19
Speaker 2: the whole courtroom started laughing. It seems so funny. But
23:24
Speaker 2: I was convicted. They never stopped that man, they never
23:26
Speaker 2: arrested him, they allowed him leave the court.
23:28
Speaker 1: Is it your belief that that was actually the guy?
23:30
Speaker 2: Oh well, the police officer who had caught him and
23:32
Speaker 2: spoke to him said that was actually the guy, and
23:35
Speaker 2: he had the and he knew I was in the dock.
23:37
Speaker 2: He knew I was the accused.
23:39
Speaker 1: And it's interesting and bizarre though we've seen this before,
23:43
Speaker 1: that the actual killer would come to the courtroom to
23:45
Speaker 1: watch the proceedings, right.
23:46
Speaker 2: Apparently he did.
23:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a phenomenon that happened. It's so weird.
23:50
Speaker 2: And so he was allowed to leave the court. And
23:52
Speaker 2: I was convicted on the evidence of the detective sergeant
23:55
Speaker 2: that I had spoken those words I told you about
23:57
Speaker 2: that I never said, right, and that was the evidence
23:59
Speaker 2: of him which I was convicted.
24:00
Speaker 1: And sense death, did your attorney bring up the fact
24:03
Speaker 1: that the other defendant had said that you had?
24:06
Speaker 2: But he said to me afterwards that evening, he said
24:10
Speaker 2: to me, now I should explain the situation in the
24:12
Speaker 2: Special Priminent court. Not like in America, I the accused
24:17
Speaker 2: of not allowed to sit beside these lawyers. Okay, So
24:21
Speaker 2: you have the tribunal, the registrar, the solicitors, the barristers,
24:29
Speaker 2: the journalists, and then behind and are raised slightly elevated
24:34
Speaker 2: the dock. I'm sitting in the dock, So I am
24:38
Speaker 2: about I suppose I am about the equivalent of about
24:40
Speaker 2: six rows of seats behind my lawyers. And they're facing
24:45
Speaker 2: the opposite direction from me. They're facing the court as
24:48
Speaker 2: I am, so I can only see their backs, and
24:51
Speaker 2: I can't consult with them. And the only time I
24:54
Speaker 2: can consult with them is when the try that day
24:56
Speaker 2: is over. So when I raised the matter with my
25:00
Speaker 2: lwyers at the time, they told me, oh, well, you
25:02
Speaker 2: can't be convicted now, as the detective has said, the
25:04
Speaker 2: police officer has made that identification. There's no way you
25:06
Speaker 2: can be convicted. And I thought, okay, I knew nothing
25:09
Speaker 2: about the law at the time.
25:10
Speaker 1: Well it seems logical though, understand it says, yeah, the
25:14
Speaker 1: guy's here, there, he is, he is, and you're going okay, yeah, good.
25:17
Speaker 2: But the thing about it is, if that had happened
25:20
Speaker 2: in the North of Ireland, if my lawyers had been
25:22
Speaker 2: any good, they would have asked for a mistrial straight away.
25:26
Speaker 2: They would ask for dismissal straight away. But they didn't.
25:31
Speaker 2: And actually, my senior counsel, who didn't even turn around
25:35
Speaker 2: to look at this man, and didn't even turn around
25:37
Speaker 2: to look where the police officer pointed to, he said
25:40
Speaker 2: to the police officer, so you've identified the defendant as
25:43
Speaker 2: the man, and the police officer said yes. And then
25:48
Speaker 2: the prosecution council stood up and he said, in fairness
25:52
Speaker 2: to the accused, my lords, he said, I have to
25:53
Speaker 2: point out he said that this witness was shown a
25:56
Speaker 2: photograph of the accused before the trial and they're not
26:00
Speaker 2: allowed to do that, you see. So then that meant
26:05
Speaker 2: that his evidence was just allowed.
26:08
Speaker 1: Oh so his evidence of having pointed out the actual killer,
26:11
Speaker 1: who we believe is the actual killer, was disallowed because
26:13
Speaker 1: of that, but not your false confession. Were you able
26:16
Speaker 1: to testify in your defense?
26:18
Speaker 2: No, my lawyers said that no evidence against me, and
26:20
Speaker 2: that if I went into the witness box it would
26:23
Speaker 2: mitigate against me and that the state would put me apart.
26:27
Speaker 2: And I wasn't afraid to go into the witness box.
26:28
Speaker 2: In fact, I wanted to go into the witness box,
26:30
Speaker 2: but my lawyers misdirected me and said, no, there's no
26:34
Speaker 2: evidence against you, so there's no need for you to
26:35
Speaker 2: go into the witness box.
26:37
Speaker 1: So again another common factor that we see, well, a
26:41
Speaker 1: couple of common factors that we see in these wrongful convictions.
26:45
Speaker 1: You're a victim of police misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, and incompetent
26:51
Speaker 1: defense attorneys, and ultimately you're convicted and sentenced to death.
26:57
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that moment, and then let's move forward
27:00
Speaker 1: to the craziness that happened on the eve of your execution.
27:03
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Well, when the case was over, when the
27:06
Speaker 2: prosecution case in the defense case was finished. The court
27:09
Speaker 2: reserved judgment to the following day, and we were brought
27:13
Speaker 2: back to the prison and to be brought up the
27:15
Speaker 2: following day to hear their judgment. When we were convicted
27:19
Speaker 2: and so.
27:20
Speaker 1: So you had been convicted in that sentence.
27:22
Speaker 2: No, I hadn't been convicted.
27:23
Speaker 1: Oh, so you had to go You had to go
27:24
Speaker 1: back to the prison and wait there, wonder.
27:27
Speaker 2: Off the court as to whether they were going to
27:29
Speaker 2: convict or not.
27:30
Speaker 1: That's a long night.
27:31
Speaker 2: And it was. It was pretty clear that they were
27:34
Speaker 2: going to convict the other two guys because there was
27:36
Speaker 2: evidence against them, but there was no The only evidence
27:39
Speaker 2: against me was this the word of this police officer,
27:41
Speaker 2: which I had disputed, and plus the fact that the
27:45
Speaker 2: other police officer had identified the actual culprit who was
27:49
Speaker 2: not me. So when we went up the following day, anyway,
27:52
Speaker 2: they convicted me and they sentenced me to death, and
27:57
Speaker 2: the sentence went like this. To preside member of the
28:01
Speaker 2: court said you should be taken from this court to
28:03
Speaker 2: the place in which you were last held. And this
28:07
Speaker 2: was now on the twenty seventh of November nineteen eighty
28:09
Speaker 2: and on the nineteen day of November and nine and
28:12
Speaker 2: the year of our Lord nineteen eighty you should be
28:14
Speaker 2: made to suffer debt by execution in the manner prescribed
28:17
Speaker 2: by law. And then and you're also sentenced to fifteen
28:21
Speaker 2: years imprisonment for the robbery. My inner response at the
28:24
Speaker 2: time was, this is crazy. If I'm going to be
28:28
Speaker 2: executed in three weeks time, I can't serve the fifteen years.
28:33
Speaker 2: And if I'm going to serve the fifteen years, I
28:34
Speaker 2: can't be executed three weeks time. That was the way
28:37
Speaker 2: my head was around the whole time. And then I
28:40
Speaker 2: was taken down underneath the courtroom to the cells. I
28:44
Speaker 2: was putting the cell, and then my lawyers come down
28:46
Speaker 2: to see me in this alcove that was there, and
28:48
Speaker 2: I was brought out to the alcohol to meet with
28:50
Speaker 2: my lawyers. But the senior lawyer hadn't yet come. And
28:55
Speaker 2: when he came in a few moments later and he
28:57
Speaker 2: came up to me, he was weeping. He was crying,
29:00
Speaker 2: he was in tears. And I found myself in this
29:04
Speaker 2: bizarre situation that I was standing up with my arm
29:07
Speaker 2: around his name is Sheamus Egan, the lawyer. My arm
29:11
Speaker 2: was around him, and I was saying it's okay, it's okay,
29:13
Speaker 2: don't worry, which we haven't appealed, don't worry. And he's
29:16
Speaker 2: crying his eyes out, and I think there was a
29:19
Speaker 2: this is weird good backwards, this is this is about face. Yeah,
29:23
Speaker 2: he should be consoling me and I, you know, whereas
29:25
Speaker 2: I'm consolting him. And so I was brought back to
29:29
Speaker 2: the prison. Now, when I was brought back to the prison,
29:32
Speaker 2: now I'm a sentence I condemned prisoner, right, so I'm
29:35
Speaker 2: put in a death cell. And at first actually didn't
29:38
Speaker 2: put me in a death cell. They put me in
29:40
Speaker 2: an isolation area. And they put me in an ordinary
29:42
Speaker 2: cell in an isolation area with two jailers in this
29:45
Speaker 2: stale saddle with me. And that night there was no
29:48
Speaker 2: sleep because these guys were sitting reading papers, rustling, talking,
29:52
Speaker 2: you know, and I couldn't get to sleep until eventually
29:55
Speaker 2: during the night I sat up and I said to him,
29:56
Speaker 2: and I said, now listen here to me, you guys,
30:00
Speaker 2: the chief has told me that in this situation that
30:03
Speaker 2: I'm in, I can have whatever jailer's I want with me.
30:07
Speaker 2: And unless you pair be totally quiet, I'm going to
30:11
Speaker 2: ask for you every night, and they went, oh jeez,
30:14
Speaker 2: don't do that, and they were as quite as lambs,
30:17
Speaker 2: and I got through the night.
30:18
Speaker 1: But then the follow that was a very good reverse
30:20
Speaker 1: psychology there. Yeah. Yeah, well it's almost it's sort of
30:23
Speaker 1: like an active rebellion, I guess in a certain way,
30:25
Speaker 1: and also and an element of controlling your own situation
30:29
Speaker 1: which is completely out of your control.
30:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then I protested the following day and they
30:35
Speaker 2: put us into a they created what they called the
30:38
Speaker 2: death cell, which was a larger cell, and the three
30:42
Speaker 2: condemned prisoners were put in there. And I hadn't bed
30:44
Speaker 2: down again in the wall.
30:46
Speaker 1: You and the other two the actual bankroppers, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
30:49
Speaker 1: you didn't know until that point, right.
30:51
Speaker 2: No, well I knew one of them previously because I
30:54
Speaker 2: knew him from drinking, okay, but otherwise I didn't know them.
30:58
Speaker 2: And of course it's often asked to me, why didn't
31:00
Speaker 2: they say you weren't with them? And the fact of
31:03
Speaker 2: the matter is each of them were conducting a defense
31:06
Speaker 2: of not guilty. They were pleading not guilty, and if
31:10
Speaker 2: they had said that I wasn't with them, that would
31:12
Speaker 2: prove that they were guilty. And the charge carried a
31:15
Speaker 2: mandatory death sentence.
31:17
Speaker 1: So they had nothing to lose.
31:19
Speaker 2: They weren't going They were just trying to save their
31:21
Speaker 2: own next and I understood that. But anyway, in that
31:25
Speaker 2: condemned self that I was in there on the twenty
31:28
Speaker 2: seventh of November and about a week before Christmas of
31:32
Speaker 2: that year in nineteen eighty, the way the rule was,
31:36
Speaker 2: the condemned prisoner wasn't allowed to speak to any of
31:38
Speaker 2: the prisoners, and the jailers were told not to speak
31:41
Speaker 2: the condemned prisoner for their own protection, because if a jailer,
31:47
Speaker 2: like a prison guard, gets to like a condemned prisoner,
31:49
Speaker 2: or have respect for a condemned prisoner, it would be
31:51
Speaker 2: very difficult for them to participate in cold bloodedly taking
31:54
Speaker 2: that person's life, which is logically true. But on this
31:59
Speaker 2: particular case, about a week before Christmas, I overheard three
32:02
Speaker 2: of the jailers discussing what part they might have to
32:04
Speaker 2: play in my hanging.
32:06
Speaker 1: Now.
32:06
Speaker 2: They were sitting as cross as I am to you, Jason,
32:08
Speaker 2: and they were discussing, this is if I wasn't there,
32:11
Speaker 2: as if I wasn't a human being. They had been
32:14
Speaker 2: told that two prison officers would have to participate in
32:17
Speaker 2: my execution, and they were very concerned to know what
32:20
Speaker 2: bonus they would receive for doing this job, because of
32:23
Speaker 2: course it was outside of their normal work, and what
32:26
Speaker 2: role they would have to play. And the role they
32:28
Speaker 2: would have to play, they said, was that when my
32:31
Speaker 2: body would go down to the trap door of the gallows,
32:33
Speaker 2: there would be two prison officers underneath, and each one
32:37
Speaker 2: would have to pull on one of my legs to
32:39
Speaker 2: make sure my neck was broken.
32:42
Speaker 1: You know, I'm almost never at a loss for words,
32:44
Speaker 1: but I don't even know what to say about that.
32:47
Speaker 1: That's a whole note.
32:48
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't know what to say about it either,
32:50
Speaker 2: but I was already angry over what they had done
32:53
Speaker 2: to me. But this made me enraged, but in a
32:56
Speaker 2: funny kind of way, and if it's our kind of way,
33:00
Speaker 2: helped me because it forced me to face the reality
33:05
Speaker 2: straight in front of me. So I was likely to
33:08
Speaker 2: be hanged. How old were you at the time, forty one?
33:11
Speaker 2: And facing that reality, to my surprise, I discovered that
33:16
Speaker 2: I wasn't afraid to die, But what I was afraid
33:20
Speaker 2: of was that I might not be able to die
33:22
Speaker 2: with dignity. I was terribly afraid that they might succeed
33:27
Speaker 2: in taking away my human dignity, and I determined I
33:31
Speaker 2: wouldn't have let them do that. Now they had imprisoned
33:34
Speaker 2: me physically, but they couldn't imprison my mind, or my
33:37
Speaker 2: heart or my spirit. And so I determined that it
33:40
Speaker 2: was in those relements on myself I would exist while
33:43
Speaker 2: I was in that situation. And that's what I did.
33:45
Speaker 1: And the mind, the heart, and the spirit. Yeah, and
33:48
Speaker 1: so you came within eleven days of being executed.
33:53
Speaker 2: That's correct. Well before that, my lawyer has made an
33:55
Speaker 2: application for leave to appeal, which put a stay on
33:57
Speaker 2: the execution. But then the appeal court refuse my application
34:01
Speaker 2: for leave to appeal, so I got no appeal, and
34:04
Speaker 2: they said a new day for my execution, which was
34:06
Speaker 2: the eighth of June nineteen eighty one. And about two
34:11
Speaker 2: weeks after the new date was set, my lawyer's going
34:14
Speaker 2: on to visit me in the prison and they wanted
34:17
Speaker 2: me to allow them to put in a plea for
34:20
Speaker 2: clemency on my behalf, and I refused. I said no way.
34:25
Speaker 2: And the senior counsel, the guy who had been crying
34:27
Speaker 2: after the trial, he was in tears again, you know,
34:30
Speaker 2: very emotional man, and he said, but they might hang you,
34:33
Speaker 2: Peter Well, I said, if they do, it wouldn't be
34:36
Speaker 2: the first innocent person they've hanged. But I will not
34:39
Speaker 2: plea for clemency for something I didn't do. And I
34:43
Speaker 2: actually asked for a piece of paper and I wrote,
34:45
Speaker 2: gave them written instructions to that effect, because I was
34:47
Speaker 2: afraid they would actually go and do it anyway. Oh.
34:50
Speaker 1: Yes.
34:50
Speaker 2: The reason they said this was that government cabinet had
34:53
Speaker 2: met and discussed whether I would be executed or not
34:58
Speaker 2: and couldn't come to an agreement about it. And they
35:00
Speaker 2: were concerned that the following week the cabinet was going
35:03
Speaker 2: to meet again and the cabinet might decide to execute me.
35:07
Speaker 2: So they went away very upset and I went back
35:09
Speaker 2: to my cell and the following week when the cabinet met,
35:13
Speaker 2: I later learned that the Prime ministers before any discussion
35:16
Speaker 2: would happen and said, we're not executing Pringle. It would
35:19
Speaker 2: be political suicide. And then they instructed the President to
35:24
Speaker 2: commute the sentence. And the President commuted sentence from debt
35:28
Speaker 2: to forty years penal servitude without any possibility of parole
35:32
Speaker 2: or omission. And I was put out into the general
35:35
Speaker 2: prison population where I could talk to people and I
35:38
Speaker 2: could exercise the yard.
35:40
Speaker 1: So it's almost like a I mean, better than being executed,
35:46
Speaker 1: I guess, but not by a whole lot, because essentially
35:48
Speaker 1: it's a death sentence. You're forty one years old, You've
35:50
Speaker 1: got forty years in prison. You're going to die in prison, right,
35:52
Speaker 1: that's right.
35:53
Speaker 2: But that's not what happened, no, because at the time
35:56
Speaker 2: I knew I had three options. You know, I could
35:58
Speaker 2: face the forty years, which wasn't the possibility for me
36:01
Speaker 2: at the time. I could kill myself, which at the
36:04
Speaker 2: time was a reasonable proposition, not let them refuse, to
36:08
Speaker 2: allow them to keep me for forty years. But then
36:11
Speaker 2: I realized if I did that, they'd say I had
36:14
Speaker 2: done it out of given a remorse. So I couldn't
36:16
Speaker 2: allow that. So I determined I was going to try
36:18
Speaker 2: and prove my innocence.
36:19
Speaker 1: And ultimately you did, yeah, fifteen years later. So let's
36:23
Speaker 1: walk through that because I want to get to the
36:25
Speaker 1: next phase of your life, which is so extraordinary.
36:28
Speaker 2: Well, I should also tell you that there was no
36:30
Speaker 2: law library in the prison.
36:31
Speaker 1: So how did you go about proving your innocence?
36:33
Speaker 2: I had a friend who worked in the university outside
36:36
Speaker 2: and she had access to the law library in the university,
36:39
Speaker 2: and I arranged with her to photocopy sections of law
36:41
Speaker 2: books and find out which were the best criminal law
36:44
Speaker 2: books and constitutional law books and photocopy sections of them.
36:48
Speaker 1: You had plenty of time to study.
36:49
Speaker 2: Well, then I couldn't study. You see, I left school
36:52
Speaker 2: when I was thirteen years of age, and I'd worked
36:54
Speaker 2: all my life, and I had no formal education, and
36:57
Speaker 2: my anger was such that I just.
36:59
Speaker 1: Couldn't the documents understandable.
37:02
Speaker 2: So I determined I had to try and learn how
37:04
Speaker 2: to relax. So I got a friend to leave me
37:06
Speaker 2: in a little book on yoga with illustrations of the postures,
37:09
Speaker 2: and I began to teach myself yoga in the cell
37:11
Speaker 2: on my own, and teach myself meditation. And as I
37:15
Speaker 2: mastered does two disciplines, my anger got less than I
37:19
Speaker 2: was able to study. And I spent my time studying.
37:21
Speaker 2: And then what happened was other guys in the prison
37:23
Speaker 2: would come to me with their documents, with their cases
37:25
Speaker 2: and asked me would I look at their cases? And
37:29
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, sure, and I would because it was
37:30
Speaker 2: helping them. Was also helping me, and so that's what
37:34
Speaker 2: I did most of my time in the jail. In
37:36
Speaker 2: the prison, I studied law as best I could, and eventually,
37:41
Speaker 2: in January of nineteen ninety two, I opened my own
37:43
Speaker 2: case on my own behalf in the High Court in
37:45
Speaker 2: Dublin under the Irish Constitution. Now I had no money,
37:47
Speaker 2: i'd know lawyers, so I had to prepare the case myself,
37:50
Speaker 2: file at myself and conduct the case myself, so which
37:55
Speaker 2: meant that they had to take me under armed escort
37:57
Speaker 2: of military and police up to the court where I
38:01
Speaker 2: represented myself against the top lawyers of the state. And
38:05
Speaker 2: the case ran from January nineteen ninety two until May
38:09
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety five, when my conviction was overturned. But
38:14
Speaker 2: in July of nineteen ninety two I won an order
38:16
Speaker 2: for discovery in the High Court. And that's another I'll
38:20
Speaker 2: tell you. There's reams to this story that it's kind
38:23
Speaker 2: of important to say this one to you.
38:26
Speaker 1: One of the.
38:27
Speaker 2: Cars used in the crime had been stolen in Galway
38:31
Speaker 2: on the second of July. The crime happened the seventh.
38:34
Speaker 2: It was stolen on the second of July between eleven
38:38
Speaker 2: PM and eleven forty five pm from the car park
38:42
Speaker 2: of a hotel. Right, and the evidence of the stealing
38:46
Speaker 2: of that car was allowed into the trial because at
38:48
Speaker 2: court ruled that the stealing of the car formed part
38:52
Speaker 2: of the rest yestay of the offense, which meant that
38:55
Speaker 2: the person who stole the car had done the killing. Right. Okay,
39:00
Speaker 2: But on the date of the car of stolen. At
39:03
Speaker 2: the time the car of stolen, I was delivering four
39:05
Speaker 2: thousand concrete blocks on the Arden Islands with fifty more
39:09
Speaker 2: or more witnesses there. Now, I delivered the concrete blocker.
39:14
Speaker 2: But five years after I had been I was imprisoned.
39:18
Speaker 2: I got a letter from my former boss, the guy
39:20
Speaker 2: who owned a little company that owned the boat that
39:22
Speaker 2: I was skippering, asking me if i'd been paid for
39:26
Speaker 2: the delivery and for the blocks to the value of
39:29
Speaker 2: six hundred pounds, which I didn't know about because that
39:31
Speaker 2: wasn't my role. My role was simply to be the
39:33
Speaker 2: skipper to take the cargo out, and I didn't even
39:35
Speaker 2: know what a cost. I wrote back and told him that,
39:38
Speaker 2: and he said, no, we believe you, We understand that.
39:41
Speaker 2: But he said, the man that you delivered to has
39:44
Speaker 2: refused to pay his bill, and five years later, when
39:47
Speaker 2: they threatened court action to get the money, he told
39:49
Speaker 2: them that he had paid me the money because I'm imprisoned.
39:52
Speaker 2: You see, I'm in prison doing forty years for murderer
39:57
Speaker 2: catherin wor Than now robbery. So he was going to
39:58
Speaker 2: blame me. So I wrote him out of a letter
40:01
Speaker 2: saying that of course I'd never done it. And when
40:03
Speaker 2: the case came for court, the man never appeared in court,
40:06
Speaker 2: and the court ruled against him and accepted my account,
40:10
Speaker 2: and the matter was finished. But I went into the
40:12
Speaker 2: book of evidence, and I saw that my boss supposedly
40:15
Speaker 2: had made a statement in the book of evidence saying
40:17
Speaker 2: I sailed at eleven o'clock in the morning and come
40:19
Speaker 2: back at eleven o'clock that night, which would have meant
40:22
Speaker 2: I had the possibility of steed in the car okay,
40:26
Speaker 2: whereas I sailed at four o'clock in the afternoon and
40:28
Speaker 2: didn't get back to go with it till two am
40:30
Speaker 2: the following morning. Now I knew he had a computer,
40:33
Speaker 2: and I knew as a charge of the acountant he
40:35
Speaker 2: kept all records. So I wrote to him and said,
40:36
Speaker 2: if you a record of the sailing on that day,
40:39
Speaker 2: and he said he had you sailed at four o'clock
40:41
Speaker 2: in the afternoon and you got back at two am
40:43
Speaker 2: in the morning. So I wrote to him again, I said, well,
40:45
Speaker 2: then tell me this, Why did you make this statement,
40:48
Speaker 2: this false statement?
40:49
Speaker 1: What do you say?
40:50
Speaker 2: I never made a statement.
40:52
Speaker 1: Oh, they made it up.
40:53
Speaker 2: They made it up.
40:54
Speaker 1: He never made a stake your conviction.
40:56
Speaker 2: To try and keet me convicted. He never made a
40:58
Speaker 2: statement and he was never even asked to make a statement.
41:01
Speaker 1: Wow.
41:02
Speaker 2: And so later, when I got a lot more discovery,
41:05
Speaker 2: I discovered there were actually twenty three prosecution witnesses in
41:09
Speaker 2: the case had never made any statements, although there were
41:11
Speaker 2: statements in the book of evidence attributed to them, and
41:15
Speaker 2: had he He told me that if he had been
41:17
Speaker 2: asked to make a statement, he would have told the truth.
41:19
Speaker 2: And had he been asked to make a statement and
41:21
Speaker 2: told the truth, I couldn't have been convicted. So I
41:24
Speaker 2: asked him, wuld he make an affidavit? Would he swear
41:26
Speaker 2: an Affidavid? At that and I drafted this and AFFI
41:28
Speaker 2: David sent it out to him. He got it notorized
41:30
Speaker 2: and swore and sent it back in to me. So
41:32
Speaker 2: when I appeared in the court and the High Court
41:34
Speaker 2: and looked for an order for discovery, and the lawyers
41:36
Speaker 2: for the state were saying, ah, he's only fishing. He
41:38
Speaker 2: hasn't got anything. I said, yes, I have, and I
41:40
Speaker 2: produced two copies of this affidavi and I said, I
41:44
Speaker 2: have here the sworn affidavit of a prosecution witness stating
41:47
Speaker 2: clearly that he not only did he not make a
41:49
Speaker 2: statement attributed to him, but he was never even asked
41:51
Speaker 2: to make a statement. And I offered it to the
41:53
Speaker 2: court and the judge wuldn't accept And I offered it
41:56
Speaker 2: the state lawyers and they wouldn't accept it, because of
41:59
Speaker 2: course they'd accepted it, they would have had to deal
42:01
Speaker 2: with it.
42:02
Speaker 1: But wouldn't the judge want to deal with it?
42:04
Speaker 2: You would think, no, no, no, I don't forget. He
42:06
Speaker 2: wasn't being I mean, he was looking at me as
42:08
Speaker 2: if I was a piece of dirt.
42:20
Speaker 1: So what happened there?
42:22
Speaker 2: So I won my order for discovery? And then when
42:24
Speaker 2: I got my order for discovery, didn't I get a
42:27
Speaker 2: photocopy of the notebook off the detective who had claimed
42:30
Speaker 2: I had spoken those words in a particular period of interrogation,
42:34
Speaker 2: and he has warned us on notes and that he
42:35
Speaker 2: had recorded the interrogation and recorded these words. And when
42:39
Speaker 2: I got his notebook, I saw in the notebook it's
42:40
Speaker 2: very clear he wrote the words in before the period
42:44
Speaker 2: of interrogation in which he claimed.
42:46
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, that's tricky.
42:50
Speaker 2: Well there's nothing against me, and they decided this was
42:53
Speaker 2: what they're going to do.
42:54
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very organized, it's very insidious, absolute,
42:58
Speaker 1: very coordinated. I mean, the lengths that they went to
43:02
Speaker 1: to get the conviction, to protect the conviction, to basically
43:06
Speaker 1: run rough shot over the truth are extraordinary to still
43:10
Speaker 1: at it.
43:10
Speaker 2: By the way, which I'll tell you about as we
43:12
Speaker 2: get on through this. But in January of nineteen ninety four,
43:17
Speaker 2: a human rights lawyer offered me his help. When I
43:19
Speaker 2: took it, we got a legal team, we went to
43:21
Speaker 2: the Court of Criminal Appeal on the new legislation, and
43:23
Speaker 2: the case ran from nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety five.
43:27
Speaker 2: And the police officer who had lied to get me
43:30
Speaker 2: convicted was now a retired detective superintendent. He had been
43:34
Speaker 2: promoted up to the top. By the way, the cops
43:37
Speaker 2: who lied in the trial were all promoted, and the
43:40
Speaker 2: cop who saved my life and who refused to lie
43:43
Speaker 2: in the trial, was never promoted.
43:46
Speaker 1: Well, I am I not surprised. I mean, this is
43:48
Speaker 1: such a web of deceased absolutely lies and bad actors
43:52
Speaker 1: and everything else. So your convictions thrown out, your freed right,
43:57
Speaker 1: And then you told me a great story about your
43:59
Speaker 1: first stay on the outside, or your first was the
44:03
Speaker 1: first thing you did when you got out.
44:07
Speaker 2: Well, when I was released out of the special Court,
44:10
Speaker 2: out on the street, I was met with a plethora
44:14
Speaker 2: of media people with microphones and cameras and alls took
44:18
Speaker 2: my face, strong questions at me, and I didn't have
44:22
Speaker 2: time to sort of realize that I was free, if
44:26
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. I didn't have time to
44:28
Speaker 2: let it sink in. And then I was taken by
44:31
Speaker 2: my lawyer to the TV station, the national TV station
44:34
Speaker 2: where I was. We were interviewed for the news that evening,
44:37
Speaker 2: and then my friends organized a party. A bunch of
44:41
Speaker 2: people had set up a defense committee for me outside
44:43
Speaker 2: and they took a floor of a pub and organized
44:45
Speaker 2: a big party. And there was a huge, big party
44:47
Speaker 2: going on, and we went to that and that went
44:50
Speaker 2: on all that evening, and everybody got drunk except me.
44:54
Speaker 2: I wasn't drinking, and I stayed with two friends that
44:58
Speaker 2: night in their house, and the following morning, when I
45:01
Speaker 2: got up, I was the first one up. I went
45:04
Speaker 2: down to the kitchen and I went out to the
45:07
Speaker 2: back garden, which was a lovely long back garden, and
45:12
Speaker 2: the sunshine was a beautiful day. There were no big
45:15
Speaker 2: walls around me. There was flowers and trees and bushes.
45:18
Speaker 2: And I walked down the garden and at the bottom
45:21
Speaker 2: of the garden there was a big old apple tree,
45:24
Speaker 2: really big old narl. The other way they'd become gnarled
45:27
Speaker 2: apple tree. And I could hear in the distance the sound,
45:31
Speaker 2: the background noises of the city. But I went to
45:34
Speaker 2: this tree, and I stood with the tree, and I
45:37
Speaker 2: realized that and all the time I had been in jail,
45:39
Speaker 2: and all the time the trouble I had gone through,
45:41
Speaker 2: this tree was growing in this garden on its own,
45:46
Speaker 2: with nature, producing its fruit and shedding its leaves every year,
45:49
Speaker 2: year and year out, doing its own thing, and immune
45:54
Speaker 2: from the corruption, the greed, the rat race, the injustice,
46:00
Speaker 2: and everything else. And I put my arms around the
46:04
Speaker 2: trunk of the tree, and I wept, and I released
46:10
Speaker 2: And that's when I knew for certain I was free.
46:14
Speaker 2: That was in May nineteen ninety five.
46:16
Speaker 1: So that's twenty one years ago. And then another extraordinary
46:20
Speaker 1: thing happened in your life, right, which is something I'm
46:22
Speaker 1: very well aware of. Well, something or someone I should say, right.
46:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, three years after I got out. And it
46:29
Speaker 2: was difficult times for a while after I got out,
46:32
Speaker 2: because it's very difficult to fit into society again when
46:35
Speaker 2: you're locked up. But I had yoga meditation and I
46:38
Speaker 2: used that and a little bit of prayer. And three
46:40
Speaker 2: years after, one day I got a phone call from
46:43
Speaker 2: an American lady who told me her name was Sunny
46:46
Speaker 2: Jacob's and she told me she was speaking at a
46:49
Speaker 2: meeting three days later where I was, and invited me
46:52
Speaker 2: to come and hear talk. And I said, what are
46:54
Speaker 2: you going to talk about? And she said the death
46:55
Speaker 2: penalty and I said, yes, I'm interested in that. I'll
46:57
Speaker 2: come along. And I brought two friends and I went
47:00
Speaker 2: long and it was a room above a public course.
47:03
Speaker 2: At one o'clock on a Friday, I went up to
47:05
Speaker 2: the room. There was nobody there, and after a few
47:08
Speaker 2: minutes the door opened to the fire side of the room,
47:10
Speaker 2: and this little woman walked in and I walked over
47:13
Speaker 2: to her and I said, you must be Sonny Jacobs,
47:17
Speaker 2: and she looked up at me with a big smile,
47:20
Speaker 2: and that's how we met. And I listened to her
47:23
Speaker 2: story and I was hugely emotionally upset by listening to it,
47:28
Speaker 2: and I knew I had to talk with her. And
47:30
Speaker 2: I said to her, I need to talk with you,
47:32
Speaker 2: and she said, got to be good. I need to
47:33
Speaker 2: talk with you too. But she said, I'm leaving in
47:36
Speaker 2: an hour. This was on a Friday, So where are
47:40
Speaker 2: you going? She says, I have to go to Cork
47:43
Speaker 2: for the annual General Meeting of Amnesty into an Irish
47:45
Speaker 2: section of Amnist International. I should be there at eight
47:47
Speaker 2: o'clock tomorrow evening. I said, stay over with me, I said,
47:50
Speaker 2: and I guarantee I'll get you down there.
47:53
Speaker 1: And so she went how far away was Cork?
47:56
Speaker 2: Four hours strive And she went to Mary Lawler, who
48:01
Speaker 2: was the General Secretary of Amnesty at the time, and
48:04
Speaker 2: asked Mary, because of course she was unsure about whether
48:06
Speaker 2: she should go with a stranger in the strange country.
48:10
Speaker 2: And Mary knew me and knew my story, and she said, oh,
48:13
Speaker 2: that's wonderful. Thank you, Peter. Yeah, yeah, great. So we
48:15
Speaker 2: transferred Sunday's case from her car into my audio loppy
48:19
Speaker 2: and she stayed in my house that night. In the
48:21
Speaker 2: following morning, we went to my friend on the Cafe
48:23
Speaker 2: and go away. We went to his place for breakfast.
48:25
Speaker 2: He asked us to come for breakfast and he said
48:28
Speaker 2: to me, are you driving her down the Cork? And
48:31
Speaker 2: I said yeah. He said, you can't go drive somebody
48:33
Speaker 2: to Cork and dot your lopy. He said here, and
48:34
Speaker 2: he reached his hand in his pocket and he gave
48:35
Speaker 2: me the keys of his Mercedes. He said, just get
48:38
Speaker 2: it back to me tomorrow morning. So I drove Sunny
48:42
Speaker 2: down the Cork in the Mercedes. We traveled in style.
48:45
Speaker 2: And as we were on the car fairly crossing the river,
48:48
Speaker 2: Shannon eating a pack lunch which he'd made up for us,
48:52
Speaker 2: she said to me, what's your interest in all of this?
48:55
Speaker 2: And I told her that I too had been wrongly
48:57
Speaker 2: convicted and sentenced to death. And she said, you got
49:00
Speaker 2: through very well. She said, how did you get through
49:03
Speaker 2: so easy so well? And I said, yoga and meditation.
49:07
Speaker 1: First of all. By the way, this is a hell
49:08
Speaker 1: of a first date, I got to give it up
49:09
Speaker 1: to you for a guy who had been in prison
49:11
Speaker 1: for fifteen years, you got game, okay, And so so
49:14
Speaker 1: that yeah, it's extraordinary, as I keep using that word
49:17
Speaker 1: because I don't know what else other words to use, the
49:19
Speaker 1: fact that Sonny, of course, had also been sentenced to
49:22
Speaker 1: that for a similar crime that happened a continent away,
49:27
Speaker 1: five six thousand miles from where you were charged and convicted.
49:31
Speaker 1: She was charged and convicted. Both of you were actually
49:34
Speaker 1: and absolutely innocent, and you served similar amounts of time
49:38
Speaker 1: in prison. She actually a little bit longer than you,
49:41
Speaker 1: and both of you had more in common than that, right,
49:45
Speaker 1: Both were were committed to a lifestyle of meditation and yoga.
49:48
Speaker 1: You're vegetarians, right. So it's sort of the universe organizing
49:52
Speaker 1: itself in a way that is.
49:54
Speaker 2: It was inevitable that we should come together.
49:56
Speaker 1: I think about serendipity as synchronisy what everyone calls metaphysics.
50:00
Speaker 1: And you drive her there, We drive her there, and.
50:04
Speaker 2: Now Amnesty had got us two rooms in a hotel
50:07
Speaker 2: across from the hotel where the convention was, and each
50:09
Speaker 2: of us lay on a bed separately, and for three
50:13
Speaker 2: and a half hours we discussed forgiveness. Well, that was
50:17
Speaker 2: the key forgiveness. And then I brought her back to
50:21
Speaker 2: her room and she said to me, would I call
50:24
Speaker 2: her when as I leave at six in the morning,
50:25
Speaker 2: Would I call her in the morning. I said yes,
50:27
Speaker 2: So on the morning, I knocked her door and she
50:29
Speaker 2: got up and we said goodbye to each other and
50:31
Speaker 2: we'd keep in touch. And I had got my friend's
50:34
Speaker 2: car and dropped back to go away.
50:37
Speaker 1: Did you guys kiss? Was there any physical interaction? Hold hands? Exactly?
50:42
Speaker 4: What happened was.
50:43
Speaker 1: A perfect gentleman.
50:46
Speaker 4: He said to me, I don't want you to think
50:49
Speaker 4: I'm not attracted to you, but I'm in a kind
50:52
Speaker 4: of a relationship, and I like to try to leave
50:56
Speaker 4: an honorable life. And that's what clicked in my mind,
51:01
Speaker 4: because at that point in my life I had no
51:03
Speaker 4: time for bs, you know, and so that impressed me.
51:09
Speaker 1: How long have you been out of prison? By this time,
51:11
Speaker 1: I was out three years? It's almost yeah, three years
51:15
Speaker 1: you were out.
51:16
Speaker 2: Oh he was out eight.
51:17
Speaker 1: Right, so you've been out sex and you've been three Okay, fine,
51:20
Speaker 1: that's nothing.
51:20
Speaker 2: But we joke and say, you see that she's five
51:22
Speaker 2: years older than me. Right, I got it five years
51:25
Speaker 2: out before.
51:25
Speaker 1: Me and anyway, okay, so then it was what happened.
51:28
Speaker 4: And then we hadn't made any arrangement, but when he
51:31
Speaker 4: got home he called me and that's when I knew
51:33
Speaker 4: that it had clicked for him too.
51:36
Speaker 1: So then you ultimately were married, which is my favorite
51:41
Speaker 1: part of the story actually.
51:43
Speaker 2: But what we'd actually did was about ten years ago.
51:47
Speaker 2: We decided that we were going to exchange vows for
51:50
Speaker 2: each other, and we bought two clatter rings and on
51:54
Speaker 2: the winter, so it's the shortest day of the year,
51:56
Speaker 2: because then he said we should do it on the
51:57
Speaker 2: shortest stay of the year because we don't want to
51:59
Speaker 2: have a long and ag we gave rings to each
52:02
Speaker 2: other in the morning, and we were engaged in the evening,
52:04
Speaker 2: and we went down to the seashore with our dogs
52:08
Speaker 2: and we exchanged vows on the seashore in the evening time,
52:11
Speaker 2: and the sun and the moon were both in the
52:13
Speaker 2: sky at the same time, which we thought was very auspicious.
52:16
Speaker 2: And then what happened. We were having some difficulty when
52:19
Speaker 2: we'd leave the country coming back because we're given to
52:22
Speaker 2: Sonny Hassel about whether she could come back into the
52:24
Speaker 2: country or not. And this was because she was with me,
52:27
Speaker 2: you see. So we decided we were going to get married.
52:30
Speaker 2: But getting married in Ireland is much more bureaucratically difficult
52:34
Speaker 2: than it is in America. And we found out that
52:37
Speaker 2: you could apply in New York and get a license
52:39
Speaker 2: and get married the next day. But we had no
52:43
Speaker 2: money to come to New York. So now at that stage,
52:47
Speaker 2: by the way, we were existing on my state pension,
52:51
Speaker 2: which is like very small. So the theater that had
52:55
Speaker 2: put on The Exonerated the film called contacted us. They
52:59
Speaker 2: were doing producers weekend and they wanted us to come
53:02
Speaker 2: and speak at two dinners that were hosting, and Sonny says, oh,
53:06
Speaker 2: we wanted to go to New York to get married,
53:08
Speaker 2: and they said, you're going to get married in New York,
53:09
Speaker 2: we'll host the wedding. So they hosted the wedding. They
53:12
Speaker 2: brought us to New York and they pull us open
53:14
Speaker 2: a hotel and they hosted the wedding. So there were
53:17
Speaker 2: about one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty people
53:19
Speaker 2: at the wedding. We only knew six or seven of them,
53:22
Speaker 2: and none of our family were there. It was so funny,
53:25
Speaker 2: was hilarious. Brookshields, Amy Irving, Marlo Thomas, and Stockard Channing
53:30
Speaker 2: were at the wedding. They were four people actresses who
53:33
Speaker 2: had played Sonny.
53:34
Speaker 1: In the play The Extraordinary Play. Yeah, and Sunny's story
53:39
Speaker 1: is one of six that are profiled in this remarkable
53:42
Speaker 1: play in which so many incredible actresses have portrayed you.
53:46
Speaker 1: That's right, And so they showed up at the wedding.
53:48
Speaker 1: So you have this sort of celebrity wedding which adds
53:51
Speaker 1: a certain element of strangeness to the whole thing.
53:53
Speaker 2: And the best part of it was that when Sonny
53:55
Speaker 2: was asked do you take this man to be your
53:58
Speaker 2: awfully weathered husband, the four actresses step forward and said,
54:03
Speaker 2: with Sonny.
54:04
Speaker 1: We do hilarious, that's amazing, Oh my god, funny. So
54:09
Speaker 1: you may actually be married to five women at this point.
54:12
Speaker 1: Hard to say, and I'm not judging you. I'm just saying,
54:15
Speaker 1: so you might want to have somebody look into it.
54:18
Speaker 1: So there's a wonderful announcement if you google Peter Pringle
54:23
Speaker 1: and Sonny Jacob's wedding. My belief I can't prove this
54:26
Speaker 1: is that you're the only two Death Row exgneries who
54:29
Speaker 1: have ever been married after exonerations, because there are very
54:33
Speaker 1: few women who've been sentenced to death and even many
54:37
Speaker 1: fewer who have been exonerated, So you really hit the jackpot.
54:42
Speaker 1: And so I do want to put in a plug
54:45
Speaker 1: because now Sonny and Peter operate a phenomenal organization called
54:51
Speaker 1: the Sunny Sanctuary and it is sort of a haven
54:56
Speaker 1: or whatever you want to call it where they bring
54:59
Speaker 1: a new league exoner rated people over to the coast
55:03
Speaker 1: of Ireland and help them reintegrate, right this is probably
55:07
Speaker 1: the best word, and get their get their lives back,
55:09
Speaker 1: and get their their spirits back, so to speak.
55:12
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's kind of healing from the inside out.
55:15
Speaker 2: We helped them to release the anger and busness that
55:18
Speaker 2: they carry over what was done to them.
55:21
Speaker 1: And paint the picture of the Sunny Sanctuary for people
55:23
Speaker 1: out there who can't really visualize.
55:26
Speaker 2: Okay, well we managed. We managed to rent a three
55:31
Speaker 2: bedroom house on fourteen acres on the side of a
55:35
Speaker 2: hill overlooking a lake and there's there's hazel woods down
55:38
Speaker 2: to the lake and each bedroom is on sweet so
55:42
Speaker 2: there's every person that comes has their own bathroom and toilet.
55:45
Speaker 1: And it's on the coast.
55:47
Speaker 2: It's four miles from the sea, but it's it's only
55:50
Speaker 2: just above the lake, and it's in a very it's
55:53
Speaker 2: at the end of the road. The nearest store is
55:55
Speaker 2: six miles away.
55:57
Speaker 1: There's more than a few animals there right, Oh.
55:59
Speaker 2: Yes, we have. Let us see now we have three
56:01
Speaker 2: cats and four dogs, four hens, and five goats and
56:08
Speaker 2: tree something like that. I jokingly call it the menagerie.
56:11
Speaker 2: Sometimes we milk the goats and Sunny processes the milk,
56:14
Speaker 2: and Sonny makes wonderful goat cheese, three different types of
56:18
Speaker 2: goat cheese. So we also have what they call a polytunnel,
56:21
Speaker 2: which is the equivalent of a greenhouse, where we grow
56:24
Speaker 2: around vegetables. So when people come to us, we feed
56:28
Speaker 2: them on an organic food and organic free range of eggs,
56:32
Speaker 2: and they have milk and cheese, homemade goat cheese, organic
56:36
Speaker 2: goat cheese.
56:37
Speaker 1: And do you teach them meditation yoga?
56:40
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, we share with them. We don't conduct therapies
56:43
Speaker 2: as such. But what happens is that when they come
56:47
Speaker 2: at first, they will tell us what has happened to them,
56:51
Speaker 2: They release the things they need to release, and then
56:54
Speaker 2: we can share with them how we dealt with the
56:56
Speaker 2: issues that are causing them problems and opened the way
57:00
Speaker 2: for them to the realization that actually they're more than
57:04
Speaker 2: just an ex hoonay. They're not just a person who's
57:08
Speaker 2: been in prison. They're more than that. The fact that
57:10
Speaker 2: they were wrongfully in prison is just an episode in
57:12
Speaker 2: their life, and it's an episode they can put behind
57:16
Speaker 2: them now. It always travels with them, but they don't
57:18
Speaker 2: have to live in the past, and they have an
57:20
Speaker 2: opportunity of realizing themselves as full human beings. And we
57:24
Speaker 2: bring them out and socialize with our friends, and we
57:26
Speaker 2: go to events and to the theater, and so they
57:31
Speaker 2: get a chance to mingle with people as ordinary people.
57:34
Speaker 1: It's so inspiring to me and to many of us
57:38
Speaker 1: who work in the Innocence movement that a very large
57:42
Speaker 1: percentage of x honarees are driven to help others who
57:47
Speaker 1: have gone through a similar ordeal. And so it's I
57:52
Speaker 1: think the most powerful thing I've witnessed, and I always
57:56
Speaker 1: asked this question yesterday, is the coming together of gunaries
58:00
Speaker 1: and the sharing of the experiences and the healing that
58:05
Speaker 1: comes from that and from being with others who are
58:10
Speaker 1: the only people alive who can possibly begin to understand
58:14
Speaker 1: what you've been through even though every situation is unique
58:16
Speaker 1: and every story is unique, but still the experience is
58:20
Speaker 1: more similar than not. And it's so wonderfully inspiring to
58:26
Speaker 1: hear the stories, both of your stories and the fact
58:29
Speaker 1: that they're now one, and what you've done and how
58:34
Speaker 1: you've turned this unimaginable set of circumstances into such a
58:39
Speaker 1: force for positivity and change and good is something that
58:43
Speaker 1: I think everyone who's listening and so many others are
58:47
Speaker 1: going to be affected by, and it's inspiring me and
58:51
Speaker 1: so many others to want to do more and help more,
58:55
Speaker 1: or as many as we possibly can. I should say
58:57
Speaker 1: before we have to wrap this up, if any of
58:59
Speaker 1: you are listening now and haven't heard the Sunny Jacob's episode,
59:03
Speaker 1: I strongly encourage everyone to check out the Sunny Jacob's episode.
59:07
Speaker 1: But before we sign off, Peter, are there any last
59:10
Speaker 1: words that you'd like to share with the audience.
59:13
Speaker 2: Learn not to carry anger. Anger is a natural phenomenon.
59:18
Speaker 2: We get angry, I get angry, everybody gets angry, but
59:20
Speaker 2: don't hold it. Don't hold it, don't hate because hate
59:25
Speaker 2: consumes the hater, and anger consumes the angry person. That
59:30
Speaker 2: doesn't consume the person you're angry against and it damaged
59:34
Speaker 2: your health, let it go and try and be in
59:37
Speaker 2: the spirit of forgiveness, because that's where your real strength is.
59:42
Speaker 2: Our real strength is in the fact that we decided
59:44
Speaker 2: we would move towards healing and forgiveness and let go
59:48
Speaker 2: of all those negative emotions. And I wish everyone the best.
1:00:00
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
1:00:03
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
1:00:06
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
1:00:09
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
1:00:13
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
1:00:16
Speaker 1: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
1:00:19
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
1:00:25
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
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Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
1:00:33
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
1:00:36
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company. Number one