Latest / Wrongful Conviction Podcasts / 593: #593 Jason Flom with Jeffrey Deskovic

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593: #593 Jason Flom with Jeffrey Deskovic · Wrongful Conviction Podcasts

• 00:00:00 Speaker 1: I first covered Jeffrey Deskovic's story back in 2017, which was the first year of this podcast. Jeff's story is one that I've come back to over and over again over the years, not only because of the 16 years he spent in prison for a murder he had nothing to do with, I mean nothing at all, but also because of what he's chosen to do with his life after his exoneration. It's a hero's journey. And Jeff's story has... A powerful connection to the two cases that we recently revisited on this show. I'm talking about Andrew Krivak and Anthony DiPippo. Because the same freaking polygraph operator who helped extract the false confession from Jeff when he was just 16 years old was later involved in the interrogation that produced Andy Krivak's false confession. Yeah, these things, they happen again and again. The same people are usually behind them. Anyway, years later, Jeff and the Deskovic Foundation not only helped to free Andy, But Jeff even put up his own house as collateral for Andy's bail. Yeah, you heard that correctly. That's the type of guy he is. So recently I joined Jeffrey and filmmaker Gia Rizvi at the Sag Harbor Cinema for a special presentation followed by a talkback that we did together of 16 years. The 16 years is Gia's amazing documentary about Jeff's wrongful conviction, his exoneration, and all the work he's done since. I spoke there about Jeff's incredible journey from being a young teenage kid railroaded by the system to an attorney and advocate who fights for others day in and day out to make sure it doesn't happen to them. If you've been listening to Bone Valley, The Devil's Quarry, which I hope you have, and if you haven't, today's a good day to start. Jeff's story provides important context for the cases of Anthony DePippo and Andy Krivak. And moreover, for how these wrongful convictions happen in the first place. So now, check it out. Here's Jeffrey's story. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom. Today's guest is someone fans of the show will recognize, Jeff Deskovic. 00:02:11 Speaker 2: Jeffrey Deskovic spent more than a decade in prison for the rape and murder of a classmate. It was a crime he did not commit. 00:02:19 Speaker 3: A 16-year-old is arrested for rape and murder. He's grilled by police and given a lie detector test, and eventually the police talk him into a false confession, even though DNA did not link him to the crime. He served 16 years in prison before new testing shows another man committed that crime. 00:02:34 Speaker 2: In January 2006, the Innocence Project convinced prosecutors to take another look at DNA evidence. New testing technology cleared Deskovic of the 1989 crime, identifying the real killer and releasing Deskovic into a world he no longer knew. Today, Deskovic is a free man. 00:02:54 Speaker 1: Jeff, welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. 00:02:56 Speaker 4: Thanks for having me, Jason. It's always a pleasure. 00:02:58 Speaker 1: And Jeff was here before with Amanda Knox and Jared Adams when we did a very special Wrongful Christmas, where he spoke so eloquently about what it was like being locked up in a maximum security prison on the holidays when Everyone else is out celebrating and the world's going on without you. But this time, I'm really glad to have you here, Jeff, because your story is so important. And so I want to get right back into that. You grew up in White Plains? 00:03:27 Speaker 4: No, I grew up in Peekskill in Westchester County. My case happened in White Plains. That's the county court. 00:03:33 Speaker 1: People are going to scratch their heads or shake their heads when I say this, right? In your case... DNA evidence was presented at the trial that proved scientifically, with no doubt, that you could not have been the perpetrator of the beating, rape, and murder of the 15-year-old victim, Angela Correa. There is no way on God's green earth that you could have been the perpetrator, and yet you were convicted anyway. And that's what makes, it's just, I'm going to shake up the whole justice system and go, wait, that's not possible. It can't happen. And you were basically a child when this happened. 00:04:10 Speaker 4: I was. I was 16 years old when I was arrested. And by the time the trial happened and I was wrongfully convicted, I was 17. So, yes, I was a child. And I had very small awareness of what was going on, totally dependent on the lawyer who was inept in a lot of ways. It's fair to say that I was particularly vulnerable. 00:04:30 Speaker 1: It's such a tragic thing that happened to start with. And this was a young girl who was in your school. Were you in 10th grade at the time? 00:04:36 Speaker 4: I was. 00:04:37 Speaker 1: So you were in 10th grade. She was in 10th grade. Yeah. 00:04:40 Speaker 4: She was in two of my classes as a freshman and one as a sophomore. She was an immigrant from Colombia. She'd been in the country for about a year and a half. She lived a very, very sheltered life, as I understand it, in which she never went outside unless she was with her older sister or with her parents. And this one particular day, she received a assignment in her photography class to take some pictures of some foliage. The teacher assigned male students with the female students, like a buddy system for safety. And this male student who was assigned to her played hooky on the assignment. And so when Angela went to her house with her sister, her sister went to the restroom. And when she came back out, Angela decided to venture out on her own that one day to take the pictures. And unfortunately, that proved to be her last day. 00:05:37 Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. I mean, it's really an incredible story. The one day this poor little girl decides to, you know, be brave, right? 00:05:44 Speaker 2: Right. 00:05:45 Speaker 1: So she ends up brutally beaten, raped, and strangled, right? 00:05:51 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:05:52 Speaker 1: And this must have caused pandemonium in the community. 00:05:56 Speaker 4: It absolutely did. There hadn't been a murder in Peekskill for about 20 years. 00:06:01 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:06:02 Speaker 4: And the whole city virtually shut down. I mean, Parents were coming right to the high school, dropping their kids off and picking them up. There was repeated town hall meetings. The mayor and police were attending and giving safety tips, and people were vocalizing concerns. 00:06:21 Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there was a monster on the loose. 00:06:23 Speaker 4: Exactly right. 00:06:24 Speaker 1: A real monster. 00:06:25 Speaker 4: There was. 00:06:25 Speaker 1: And so, yeah, as a parent, I would certainly be doing the same thing. I wouldn't let my kid out of my sight until this thing was resolved. So this creates, as we know, a lot of pressure. right? On law enforcement. They got to get this thing off their desks. Who knows what could happen, right? There's going to be articles written. There's going to be TV. There's going to be all that stuff, right? When you have a high profile case, especially involving a child in a community where murder hasn't happened in 20 years, it's a pressure cooker. So how the hell did they end up picking on you? I didn't know you when you were 16, but I can imagine that you would be an extremely unlikely candidate for a brutal crime like this one. 00:07:06 Speaker 4: Yeah, I would agree with that. So, well, when I was 16, I kind of lived a double life in a sense, in the sense that in school, I was quiet. I was to myself. I was a little bit withdrawn because I wasn't really familiar with those kids, and I didn't quite fit in with them. But after school, in the apartment building where I lived at, which coincidentally was right across the street from the high school, I was kind of like the life of the party. So myself and one other boy that lived there. I mean, there was a big group of kids that lived in the complex and in the areas around it. And pretty much whatever I would suggest would mostly be what we would do. I mean, we would swim, we would play basketball, ride bikes, play Monopoly, video games, movies. We made up some games. We made up a game that was like baseball, except it was played with a tennis racket and a tennis ball and the ball had to be thrown a certain way. And I was a different person there. So the police story is that in the course of interviewing students from the high school, some of them told the police, hey, you might want to talk to Jeff because he's quiet and to himself. So originally, the police looked at the victim's stepdad, who was married to the victim's mother. But at some point, he realized that he was a suspect and he hired a retired New York City detective to investigate the crime. And so that persuaded them to move off of him. Then they looked at another youth in the high school and they started using interrogative tactics, which they would use on me later on. But the difference is that he had a stepfather in the home. And so the stepfather went down to the police station and broke up the interrogation. And they initially wouldn't let him in the room, but He broke up the interrogation and he got his stepson an attorney. And so that was the end of that. I, on the other hand, didn't have a stepfather in the home. So there wasn't anybody to intervene for me. 00:09:10 Speaker 1: It was just you and your mother at the time? 00:09:12 Speaker 4: Myself, my mother, and I lived with my grandmother. And then I had a younger brother. So the police story is that some of the kids in the school told them that they might want to talk to me. And their other theory as to why they focused in on me, they said that my emotional reaction to the victim having been murdered was disproportionate to what my actual relationship with her was, which was to say there was no relationship. I mean, I knew her name, she knew mine. We weren't even on a high buy basis. So her being murdered, it kind of struck me because that was really my first encounter with death. I thought that was something that happens to people at the end of life. I had a chance to briefly get to know the family. I went to the WIC and People were invited back to their house, to the Correa house. to have coffee and talk to the family. And there was cookies and stuff. And so I guess you could say, you might say I was kind of a sensitive, sentimental type of person. And so it kind of touched me. 00:10:11 Speaker 1: A little bit. By the way, you might say you were a normal type of person, right? And it always boggles my mind how these authority figures suddenly become expert psychiatrists or psychologists. And we see it over and over again. He acted too sad. He didn't act sad enough. He was too upset and not upset enough. He ran into the fire. There's all these cases where that becomes a factor when it's ridiculous. Nobody knows how anyone is going to react in times of trauma. And I would say, like I said, that your reaction sounds to me like a sensitive person who is just experiencing something in their own community with somebody that's an innocent young girl, of course you're upset. 00:10:52 Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree with you completely. And I want to add that this really shook up the whole city to the point that free mental health counseling was offered to anybody in the city who wanted it. So this affected many people emotionally. 00:11:07 Speaker 1: Had you ever been in trouble before? 00:11:08 Speaker 4: No. 00:11:09 Speaker 1: Never been in trouble. So the cops, at some point, they come and pick you up. But your interrogation is really at the root of the entire problem. And it is a perfect example of everything that's wrong with interrogation techniques in this country, even today. It is. 00:11:30 Speaker 4: There was a six-week run-up to that day. So I had interaction with the police from the time they initially intercepted me on my way to the high school. Up until the day of the course, false confession, in which half the time they would talk to me as if I was a suspect. And then half the time they would talk to me pretending like they needed my help to solve the crime. They would say things like, the kids won't talk freely around us, but they will around you. Let us know if you hear any rumors. They made me the center of attention. They would ask me opinion questions. It's exciting, right? 00:12:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. 00:12:06 Speaker 4: Congratulate me, my opinions being correct. My fantasy childhood career was actually to be a cop. So this unexpected early opportunity to do this quasi-police work was part of how they pulled the wool over my eyes, along with my age. I was 16 then. They used to buy pizza. And listen, I grew up in a single parent household, as we mentioned, and that directly intersected with the good cop, bad cop routine. And then I started looking up to the cop who was pretending to be my friend. 00:12:37 Speaker 1: But as a father figure. 00:12:38 Speaker 4: As a father figure. Yeah, exactly. 00:12:40 Speaker 1: I mean, again, you were 16. So, OK, so there's sort of. Sort of spinning this web and seducing you and trying to get you to say something that would be incriminating. Now we know that's what they were doing, right? Yeah, exactly. 00:12:51 Speaker 4: And so finally at the end, they told me that they received some new tip that was in the police file and they wanted to share that with me. But to do that, I would first have to take and pass a polygraph. So help us to help you to help us, typologic was employed. So instead of going to the school the next day, I instead went to the police station where I thought the polygraph was going to happen because through the rumor mill of the city, I had heard that other people had been polygraphed at the police station. But actually, they drove me from Peekskill, which was in Westchester County, they drove me 40 minutes away out of county to the town of Brewster, which is in Putnam County. So they drove me to Brewster to this polygraphist, former Putnam County Sheriff's investigator, Daniel Stevens. And he was an officer, but he was dressed as a civilian and he never identified himself as a cop. And he never read me my Miranda warning. So I thought that he was a civilian. So he gave me this manual to look at about how the polygraph works. And it had a lot of really big words in it that were beyond my comprehension, but it I didn't care because I was there to help the police. So who cares what the thing says? Or so I thought. They put me into a small room and the polygraphist, Stevens became like a virtual coffee dispenser. I mean, I must have drank six or seven cups and no sooner would I put the cup down than the cup would be halfway filled up. And, you know, he's giving me another one. And it seems pretty clear in hindsight that the purpose of that. 00:14:32 Speaker 1: Was to make me nervous. 00:14:35 Speaker 2: Right. 00:14:35 Speaker 4: Exactly right. So once he finished the coffee routine, then he straps me into the polygraph machine, which was fairly heavy, so now I'm kind of immobilized. It's a very small room, and that's when he launches into his third-degree tactics. So he invaded my personal space. He raised his voice at me. He kept asking me the same questions over and over again. And keep in mind that I'm not used to interacting with adult males and the way he's conducting himself. And he's kind of a mountain of a man. And I'm 16, like maybe 140 pounds soaking wet. You know, so it's really frightening. So each hour that goes by, my fear is increasing in proportion to the time. So Stevens kept that up for about six or seven hours. Towards the end of the interrogation, that's when he said to me, I guess by then he was just frustrated by not having been able to get me to confess to that point. He said, what do you mean you didn't do it? You just told me through the polygraph test results that you did. We just want you to verbally confirm it. So when he said that to me, that really shot my fear through the roof. And at that moment, the officer who had been pretending to be my friend, he came in the room and told me that the other officers were going to harm me, that he was holding them off, but he couldn't do so any longer, that I had to help myself. And then he added that if I did as they wanted, that not only would they stop what they were doing, but that I could go home afterwards, that I was not going to be arrested, being young, naive, frightened, 16 years old, In fear of my life, because the fact that I didn't know where I was and that I knew that nobody else did either, that loomed very large in my mind. 00:16:28 Speaker 1: It's incredible. I mean, it's total disorientation, right? 00:16:32 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:16:32 Speaker 1: I mean, and it's, you know, it's diabolical. But if what you want is a false confession, this would be the textbook. 00:16:39 Speaker 4: This is the way to do it. Yeah. And then I was emotionally overwhelmed also. And then there's the push-pull dynamic. You know, there's the... possibility of harm, but then he's thrown me this false life preserver and I took the out which he offered. I made up a story based on information which they had given me that day and in the six weeks run up to that day and by the time it was all said and done, I had collapsed on the floor, curled up into a fetal position, crying uncontrollably. Obviously I was arrested. 00:17:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the whole thing was a lie. It's like a fucking charade, right? And it was easy for them. I mean, the miracle is that you didn't confess sooner, actually. And you know, it's interesting, Jeff, we know that false confessions happen typically much later, like yours. And you were among the most vulnerable people that's ever been put into this position, being that you were alone, you had no way out, you had no way to get home. You were in 10th grade. I mean, 10th grade, you don't know what the fuck you're doing when you're in 10th grade. You're You had very real concern that you were going to be beaten up or worse. 00:17:50 Speaker 4: Right. 00:17:50 Speaker 1: You know, the fact that you were able to hang on for, you know, almost nine hours in this situation is a testament to your strength, even in this most terrifying situation that you found yourself in. So now you're expecting to go home because that's what they told you. 00:18:07 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:18:07 Speaker 1: But they lied again. 00:18:08 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:18:09 Speaker 1: And so you signed this piece of paper. 00:18:11 Speaker 4: No, let me. There was no signed confession. I never signed a confession. And there was no audio or video. It was just the cop's word as to what happened. And as a result of that, when we got to court, they conveniently left out the threat and the false promise. Wow. 00:18:27 Speaker 1: I mean, it's actually strange, Jeff, that they wouldn't have just put a piece of paper in front of you. Because at this point, you would have signed anything. You would have said that you stole the Mona Lisa, right? If they asked you to. 00:18:35 Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. Yeah, of course. 00:18:37 Speaker 1: I mean, whatever. 00:18:38 Speaker 4: For a penny and for a pound. Look, man, I already decided I wanted to get the hell out of here. Tell you what you want to say. Yeah, this is the next thing you want me to say? Come on. Get me out of here. Make good on your end. Yeah, you want this extra thing? Come on. You got it. Can you honor your word now? 00:18:51 Speaker 1: So now you're arrested, and now the nightmare really begins, right? Because you're as unprepared for this situation as someone can be, right? You have no experience with criminal justice. You're not a big guy. You're not a tough guy. You're not emotionally developed. to a point that you could be in any way, you know, steal yourself for what's going on. You're not educated enough to understand the proceedings. You don't have a family that's able to hire, for lack of a better word, a dream team to help you. And so arrested in 1990. And now you're held in jail. 00:19:27 Speaker 4: I am. 00:19:27 Speaker 1: Awaiting trial. 00:19:28 Speaker 4: I was in jail for like 35 days, and then I got bailed out. I got bailed out. At the time, my mother was dating a business person, Jack Ekesian, who had a carpet store, Ekesian Carpets, and he was willing to bail me out, which he was hammered in the newspaper for just the fact of. bailing me out. And he lost quite a bit of customers as a result of doing that. 00:19:54 Speaker 1: Wow. Innocent until proven guilty, right? 00:19:59 Speaker 4: So they say. 00:19:59 Speaker 1: Not so much. 00:20:00 Speaker 4: Not so much. 00:20:01 Speaker 1: So even he's tarred by this reputation that you have. And now you go home, you're not in school anymore. Right. You've been kicked out of school, I assume. 00:20:09 Speaker 4: Yeah, they would not allow me to go back to school until the case was resolved. And, you know, I naively thought, you know, when I got bailed out, I was going to go back to my life. But there was no going back to it ever. 00:20:21 Speaker 1: So what did you do? Just stay in the house? 00:20:23 Speaker 4: I stayed in the house. Yeah. I mean, I was afraid to go out, to be frank with you. That was a pariah. And the parents of my former friends would not allow them to play with me. 00:20:33 Speaker 1: Of course. 00:20:34 Speaker 4: And even if they had, I doubt very many of them would have wanted to anyway, because they thought I was guilty because that's what the headlines and everything else was saying. And I couldn't go to school. I couldn't do anything. So yeah, I just, I stayed in my house, but that was only for a few weeks though. I tried to kill myself. I felt my life was over and I took an entire bottle of extra strength Tylenol that had not been used. And I took every last pill, and I went to sleep, and I intended to never wake up again. 00:21:04 Speaker 1: Wow. I had to take a minute to think about that. I didn't know that part of your story. And Jeff and I have spent a lot of time together, but they've never shared those details with me. It's really hard to deal with. 00:21:19 Speaker 4: My point of mentioning that, though, is that that resulted in my being involuntarily committed into a mental hospital for six months. Wow. 00:21:29 Speaker 1: So now... The worst is still to come, but you've now gone through this crazy, rapid decline from a happy-go-lucky, goofy kid, not a care in the world, except for maybe a test coming up, right? 00:21:43 Speaker 4: Right. 00:21:43 Speaker 1: Or maybe you have a date or maybe you don't or whatever, you know, all the things you go through in adolescence, to being locked in a terrible jail, then basically being under house arrest, being ostracized by your friends and the whole community. being pilloried in the newspapers and the media, and now you're in a mental institution. And then the trial comes. 00:22:07 Speaker 4: And then the trial comes. And just before the trial, the results of the DNA test comes back from the FBI laboratory, which shows that the semen found in the victim didn't match me. 00:22:20 Speaker 1: Right, because remember, she was raped, right? 00:22:21 Speaker 4: She was raped, yes. And by the way, the lieutenant who oversaw everything In the letter that he penned to the FBI asking them to expedite the testing, he wrote in the letter that the DNA testing would either show my guilt or it would exonerate me. But when it came back and it didn't match me, my lawyer did try to get the indictment dismissed against me based on that, but the judge denied that motion. 00:22:49 Speaker 1: That alone seems so just incomprehensible to me. I mean... That just doesn't make sense. The judge is impartial, right? We know the prosecutor has an agenda, but the judge is impartial. Yeah, I don't know. I don't understand. I mean, I know that back then DNA wasn't, it wasn't as... It wasn't as well known. 00:23:09 Speaker 4: But to be clear, I mean, DNA started being used in the court system as early as 1987. And we're on trial now in 1990. So it's been around for three years. So while not in currency like now, it is not exactly totally unknown. 00:23:25 Speaker 1: Right. And it's perfect. 00:23:27 Speaker 4: Right. It's the gold standard. 00:23:28 Speaker 1: Yeah. So your DNA doesn't match. This is an inconvenient truth for the authorities. And the judge allows this circus to go on. So you go to trial. 00:23:41 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:23:42 Speaker 1: And at the trial, was the DNA allowed to be introduced? 00:23:44 Speaker 4: Yes, it was. 00:23:45 Speaker 1: So again, how does it end up that you get convicted under these circumstances? Sure. 00:23:50 Speaker 4: So firstly, as I mentioned, the cops left the threat and false promise out of the story. So, I mean, the story is still, there's enough red flags pertaining to circumstances around the confession to call it into question, but the threat and false promise weren't there. So that's one factor. Another factor is there was prosecutorial misconduct and fraud by the medical examiner. So in order to answer the DNA evidence, the prosecutor got the medical examiner to commit fraud. So when an autopsy is done, there's written and audio notes which are taken contemporaneously as the findings are made. So it was only six months after doing that initial autopsy, and only after the DNA result didn't match me, that this medical examiner for the first time suddenly claimed, he suddenly remembers, right, six months later in and hundreds of autopsies later, he suddenly remembers that he found medical evidence to show that the victim had been sexually active, which is what opened the door for the prosecutor to argue that it didn't matter that the semen didn't come from me, that that didn't mean I was innocent, that just meant that she could have had consensual sex close enough to the murder and rape so as to explain away the DNA. 00:25:14 Speaker 1: But that still wouldn't explain it away. It would just explain that there would be a mixture, right? 00:25:18 Speaker 4: Exactly right. 00:25:19 Speaker 1: So that doesn't make any sense. And also, let's just reflect for a moment on the other victim in this case. And there are more, right? 00:25:25 Speaker 4: Yes, there are. 00:25:26 Speaker 1: It's not just you and Angela. 00:25:27 Speaker 4: No, it is not. 00:25:28 Speaker 1: Let's just reflect for a minute that the authorities were willing to go so low. They had to know that you were innocent. 00:25:35 Speaker 2: Yes. 00:25:35 Speaker 1: But they were so determined to convict an innocent boy, because you're a boy. Yes. That they were willing... To drag the reputation of a 15-year-old girl through the mud, right, and put her family through that when every indication is she was a girl who was like as goody-two-shoes as you could be. 00:25:56 Speaker 2: Yes. 00:25:57 Speaker 1: Wouldn't even leave the house by herself until that one fateful day. I mean, it's so disgusting, right? This girl who deserves at least to have her reputation protected is dragged through the mud. It's just disgusting. Jeff, let me ask you this, because you've become an expert in criminal justice. You've accomplished so much since you've been home in terms of your education, in terms of your investigative skills, in terms of your advocacy. You are one of the top people in the state or tri-state or maybe even the country now in terms of your breadth of knowledge of how these things work, to your great credit. And there was no physical evidence connecting you to this crime. Is it possible for someone to beat, rape, and strangle someone and not leave any physical evidence at the crime scene? 00:27:01 Speaker 3: No. 00:27:02 Speaker 1: It's impossible? 00:27:03 Speaker 4: It's very, very close to impossible. And just to delve into this a little bit more, one of my statements, I said that I hit the victim over the head with a Gatorade bottle because Gatorade was made in glass bottles. But if you look at the types of injuries that the victim had on her head, a bottle would not be capable of making that type of injury. And on top of that, there was no broken glass at the crime scene. There was no shards of glass in the body. There's no relationship to the physical evidence and the statements in the confession at all. 00:27:37 Speaker 1: Right. So there was no physical evidence. No. Your confession stunk. 00:27:42 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:27:43 Speaker 1: Because you didn't know. Right. And there was DNA to prove that you didn't do it. Now they conspire somehow to drag this girl's reputation into the mud and in order to protect this false narrative that they've created. 00:27:57 Speaker 4: Right, but there's three other things that they did fighting the DNA. So taking his lie a step further, the prosecutor then named another youth by name that he claimed probably had had sex with the victim. But he never had a DNA test to prove that, and he didn't even call him as a witness. He just made the unsupported argument to the jury. And then another thing was that I later learned through civil litigation that when the DNA didn't match me, the police went back out into the field, and they interviewed 17 witnesses who knew the victim in one capacity or another. And all of them told the police that there was no boyfriend, there was no consensual sex. But the cops never documented any of those interviews so that they didn't have to turn those over to my lawyer. And the third thing was that the police fabricated a statement and attributed it to me. They claimed that I said to them, speaking in the third person, they claimed that I said, well, I don't know if the perpetrator ejaculated or not. So that word was not in my vocabulary as a 16-year-old. And we proved that in the police reports where they referenced that, they only came up with that after the DNA didn't match me. That was never in their early written reports of the interrogation. So they fabricated that to help the prosecutor against the DNA. 00:29:27 Speaker 1: You know what's bothering me greatly, aside from all of this right now, Jeff, is the idea that there must have been meetings, right, where they were like, uh-oh, like at various different stages, uh-oh, the DNA doesn't match, uh-oh, the witnesses are not connecting any boyfriend, uh-oh, everything that they had said was turning out to be not true, right? All their theories were going up in smoke, and there must have been at some point sit-downs where they got with the medical exam, I don't know this, I can't prove it, but I'm guessing... Well, a medical. 00:29:58 Speaker 4: Examiner testified at that position in the lawsuit. He said that the day after the DNA didn't match me, he got a phone call from one of three people, and he said that they told him that the DNA didn't match me, and he had to come up with some kind of a theory by which the case against me could continue and a conviction could result. 00:30:18 Speaker 1: Unbelievable. I mean, it's unbelievable. I mean, I can't fathom it. So there you are at trial. 00:30:28 Speaker 4: So that's on the prosecution end. But I want to, the other part of how I got convicted was the public defender who supposedly was the best lawyer in legal aid of Westchester. He was terrible. He very rarely met with me. Whenever I would try to explain to him that I was innocent and what happened in the interrogation room, he was always shutting me up. One time he told me he didn't care if I was guilty or innocent. He never explained to the jury the significance of the DNA not matching me. He never used the DNA to argue that this so-called confession was coerced and false. When we hadn't decided if we were going to go with a bench trial or a jury trial, he came to me one day and told me that the trial judge came to him off the record and told him to pick a jury because he didn't want to be responsible for acquitting me. So my lawyer was supposed to put that on the record and ask the judge to recuse himself because that's a prejudicial type of statement and also suggest that the judge is feeling public pressure because again, virtually all of the coverage is guilt presumptive oriented. So additionally, my lawyer was not supposed to represent me because of a conflict of interest in that this other youth that the prosecution was falsely claiming had had sex with the victim, was represented by another lawyer in legal aid, which meant that the defense couldn't ask him to give a DNA sample. The defense couldn't subpoena him in order to explode the consensual sex theory. 00:32:04 Speaker 1: Because it was their other client. 00:32:05 Speaker 4: Right. And then the best thing, or worst thing of all, was when it was time to cross-examine the medical examiner, whose fraud was so large in this case... He never even bothered to cross-examine him. He stood up in open court and with a big smile on his face, as if him and the medical examiner were great friends from back in the day, he said to him, you're going to be pleased to know that I don't have a single question for you. Wow. He never interviewed nor presented as a witness my alibi. I was actually playing wiffle ball when the crime happened. And... He wouldn't allow me to testify at the pretrial hearing to put the threat and false promise on the record. And when it was time for the defense to try to put a case on, he said to me that it wasn't his job to prove that I was innocent. It's up to the prosecution to prove that I was guilty. And he didn't think that that had happened. So add it all up. I was wrongfully convicted of murder and rape. 00:33:12 Speaker 1: It's unreal. I mean, this stuff goes on in America. It's just... it's just insane. So you end up getting convicted and sentenced to? 00:33:22 Speaker 4: 15 to life. At the sentencing hearing, I begged the judge to overturn the verdict because I was innocent, and I referenced the DNA to support my contention. And he actually told me on the record, maybe you are innocent, conceding that there is a doubt. But the DNA doesn't match me. How could there not be a doubt? But you might think that he would step up for justice and overturn the conviction by reversing any number of rulings that he made against me in the course of the trial. But he didn't do that. He took the easy and politically expedient way out, which was to sentence me to a term of imprisonment of 15 to life. 00:34:00 Speaker 1: 15 years to life. Now, you're only 17 at this time. 00:34:05 Speaker 4: Correct. 00:34:05 Speaker 1: So this is basically, it's an incomprehensible thing to face for anybody, but least of all for a child. And then you end up in some of the worst prisons in America. And you go into these places unprepared in every imaginable way. And you go in under the worst possible circumstance, which is it's someone who's been convicted of raping and murdering a child. 00:34:28 Speaker 4: Exactly. 00:34:29 Speaker 1: How the fuck did you survive in there, Jeff? How did you keep hope alive? 00:34:36 Speaker 4: All right. So in terms of how I kept hope alive, definitely belief in God was one thing. Another thing was I didn't look at it like I was doing 15 to Life. I thought I was just doing a year or two until the next appeal would be decided, which I was sure I was going to win because I knew I was innocent and I still naively believed in the system. I found different things to throw myself into mentally. I used to go to the law library and learn about the law so I could feel a little bit empowered. I used to read nonfiction books. I would cut pictures of nature scenes out so I could look at them and travel there. Mentally, when I would play sports like ping pong or basketball or chess, I engaged in this elaborate delusion like if I was a professional player and so was the other person and the people on the sidelines were the fans. But it was not like kids fantasizing about being a professional athlete. This was more like my mind couldn't deal with being there anymore and I had to get out of the prison mentally for a couple of hours by this elaborate delusion. sometimes I'd listen to sports radio, but it wasn't listening to sports radio. It was a connection to the outside. And I'm not going to the prison assignment in the morning. I'm going to work or I'm going to school. It's not the warden, it's the superintendent. And you try to, it's normal that if you're going to make a phone call, it's got to be collect or a strip search as the price for a visit. And you know, you try to normalize the madness in your own mind. I had to fight off feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, thoughts of giving up, suicidal ideation, thoughts of suicide came into my mind at times. And so this was as much a psychological thing as it was physical. I mean, I didn't have the luxury of losing my mind because I knew that especially when my appeals were over and exhausted after I was in for 11 years and they no longer give you a lawyer. And the only way back into court is if you can find something new that wasn't known previously. So I started writing a countless number of letters trying to find a lawyer and investigator to take my case for free because I didn't have any money to hire one. 00:36:55 Speaker 1: Right. And I want to point out a cruel irony here, Jeff, which is that for many of the clients of the Innocence Projects or other innocence organizations, the DNA is the silver bullet, right? And ultimately, when the DNA gets discovered, they get a new trial because it's new evidence. But you had already presented the DNA. You had actually shot that arrow already, right? And so you're actually fucked because of the fact that, you know. 00:37:19 Speaker 4: The timing of it. 00:37:21 Speaker 1: It's so strange. 00:37:22 Speaker 4: You know, that fact... See, I used to collect articles on exonerations and That used to grate on me, though. Like, all these people were going home because of the DNA. And I'm like, well, why do I have to be an exception? The DNA doesn't match me either. What does it matter when the result was actually obtained? I mean, it means the same thing. 00:37:43 Speaker 1: Meanwhile, let's spend a moment talking about the actual perpetrator. Yes. Because every time, and I sound like a broken record when I say this, But every time that somebody like you gets convicted wrongfully, the actual perpetrator, they stop looking for him, right? The case is closed. And in this case, the consequences were very real, as they are in most cases when these things happen, right? And I think that the people that are responsible for your wrongful conviction, there's an argument to say that they are responsible for another tragedy that happened. Can you talk about that? 00:38:21 Speaker 4: I can. Yes, schoolteacher Patricia Morrison, who also had a couple of kids. She was from Peekskill. And she was killed by the same perpetrator, Stephen Cunningham. She was killed three and a half years later as a result of Cunningham being left free on the street while I was doing time for his crime. 00:38:41 Speaker 1: Now, you say the real perpetrator. How do we know that? Well, here. 00:38:45 Speaker 4: Great. That's a great question. I'm so glad you asked because the DNA matched him. because he got caught for the second murder, which resulted in his being incarcerated and having to give up a DNA sample, which was put into the data bank. And so when I eventually got the further testing with the Innocence Project's help, it matched him. And then he subsequently confessed, not just to the authorities, but also to a reporter on video camera, In the prison visiting room, that video is available on the internet. So just to be clear, there's no coerced false confession there. And he pled guilty in court. 00:39:26 Speaker 1: When did this happen? 00:39:27 Speaker 4: That happened... him being caught for the original crime. That happened 12 and a half years after he killed a second victim. So there was a point in time we were both concurrently in the same prison system, although not in the same prison. 00:39:44 Speaker 3: Wow. 00:39:44 Speaker 1: So Patricia Morrison today would be probably a lot of sitting around with her grandchildren, you know, probably be a retired school teacher by now having a nice life. Her children would have grown up as they deserve to, as everyone deserves to with their mother. The rest of her family wouldn't have gone through this horrendous loss. None of it had to happen, you know, except for the fact that they went on this crazy witch hunt to convict you, Jeffrey Deskovic, of a crime that they knew you didn't commit. It's, um, It's a tragic, tragic byproduct of this horrible malfeasance, coordinated in this case, that resulted in you enduring a nightmare that none of us who haven't been through it could ever imagine. You somehow or other managed to find this extra moment layer of strength and courage to persevere, to not give up and to ultimately win, right? And to be vindicated. Correct. We've talked about some of the darkest moments that anyone could imagine. Is there a flip side to it? Was there a moment of joy, ecstasy when you were finally vindicated and freed? 00:41:10 Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, it was a surreal moment. I have to say the luncheon afterwards was surreal. And after that is where reality, you know, the reality hit the road, the tires hit the road, however you want to phrase it. It'd be great to say there was this great party, this raucous party that lasted to the crack of dawn. But in reality, who was there to socialize or party with? I mean, I'd long since lost track with my connection with my old friends and my extended family. And everybody was virtual strangers, even my immediate family, very, very limited visiting. So I couldn't relate to the people there, I felt out of place and I couldn't really communicate with them. And that's when a lot of my difficulties post-exoneration started happening. 00:41:57 Speaker 1: You talked very beautifully about your mindset of being able to escape the walls by having these almost out-of-body experiences, these mental exercises that you put yourself through to transport yourself to a happier place. Were there any friendships that you developed in prison? 00:42:16 Speaker 4: Yeah. I would like to remember exoneree Frank Sterling, Mike Roberts, and Sammy Swift. So those are the three people that I want to give a shout out to. 00:42:29 Speaker 1: So, yeah, you came out into a world that had changed a lot. You literally had spent half of your life in prison. You were arrested when you were 16 and you were exonerated when you were 33. So all those years when everybody else was developing their career, getting their education, developing their social networks, their relationships, or even starting families, you were stuck in hell, actually, right? 00:42:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, fair to say. Yeah, exactly right. As well as everybody was, you know, incrementally adjusting as technology would come out. When I came out, I never saw a cell phone, GPS, the internet hadn't been invented, all these different ways of bankings. Culture had changed. I was totally a fish out of water. I didn't fit or belong anymore. 00:43:13 Speaker 1: You talked about the things that you did to survive in prison and the friendships that you developed, the people who were able to be a support system for you and you for them. Is it as bad as everybody thinks it is? I want to give people an idea of what this experience is really like because we don't do prison in America like they do in the rest of the Western world. we focus so much on punishment and basically, in a lot of ways, torture, where in other Western countries, they focus on rehabilitation. 00:43:44 Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think that the image that a lot of people have in their mind, I think they over-dramatize the gang thing, and they think that everyone just is raping each other all day, every day, and I think that some of it is, it's not as bad as they make it seem, but then in other ways, it's much worse than what people imagine. I mean, There was three or four stabbings or cuttings every day in Elmira where I was, and there was plenty of gang activity and lots of violence that didn't involve weapons. The guards were very disrespectful, and most of them, not all of them, they were very disrespectful, and just, you know, the medical care was terrible. The food was terrible as well. So I would describe it as a nonstop obstacle course featuring the guards, civilians, and inmates all as obstacles to the main objective, which was to try to prove your innocence and regain your freedom. It was every day a living hell, without a doubt. 00:44:42 Speaker 1: And to stay alive. 00:44:44 Speaker 4: And to stay alive. Yeah, every time I left my cell, I never knew if I was going to make it back. When I arrived in Elmira, the guards asked me, you want to go into protective custody because of your charges and how young you are, and this increases the likelihood of you being a victim. And I asked them, well, what's that? And they explained to me, well, you know, you would be in your cell like 23 hours a day and you know, you wouldn't go to programs, but then again, nobody would be able to harm you. And I quickly on the spot, I made a decision. Imagine making this decision, going down this line of reasoning, right? At 17 years old. I just thought to myself, you know what? I'm already here. I'm not going to agree to make my time even worse. So I'm not taking this protective custody. I'm going to go to general population. I'm going to take my chances. And you know what? If somebody kills me, Well, I guess I don't have to worry about doing this life sentence that I've been given for a crime I didn't commit. 00:45:39 Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it's unbelievable. So you come out, Jeff, finally exonerated. You've proven what you've known all along. But now you face a whole other set of obstacles. How did you transform yourself? Because at one point you were almost homeless. 00:45:57 Speaker 4: Correct. Yes, exactly. I almost went to a homeless shelter. I lost a temporary apartment that this religious community was putting me up in. Nobody would take me in. Thank God for Mercy College, which had given me a scholarship to finish the bachelor's degree because I was 30 credits short of that at the time that former Governor Pataki had cut the funding for that. So that made its way into the newspaper. And so Mercy College gave me the scholarship and the meal plan. And when I lost the housing, they allowed me to stay in the dorms. I was never able to obtain gainful employment because I didn't understand the technology. All the potential employers wanted somebody who could hit the ground running rather than some little bit of patience on the job training. I did get a job as a weekly columnist, but the problem was that it was a weekly newspaper, and so they only wanted one article a week. I was making like $ 250 an article, which is really good, but that was the only income I could count on per month. I started doing speaking engagements, but that's almost like being an actor. You only get paid if you get booked, and that wasn't consistent. So it was very tight financially, and then I had to deal with all the psychological after effects of my experience, and then the technology, and then just being just straight up lonely and depressed because there was no social circle that I had, and I wasn't able to make another one. 00:47:23 Speaker 1: You really were alone in the world in a lot of ways. But somehow or other, you have transformed yourself literally, figuratively, physically, mentally, spiritually. And I think everybody can learn from that. I have. I mean, I've learned a lot from hanging out with you. And we've had a lot of laughs over the last several years. But you're doing so much good stuff now. And you're taking your experience and applying it. in the real world in a way that's already having a very positive impact. And talk a little bit, Jeff, about your education and your goals and what you're doing now with your foundation. You've been able to help exonerate other people. How incredible is that? I mean, that's got to be a. 00:48:03 Speaker 4: It is a storybook. 00:48:04 Speaker 1: It is. 00:48:05 Speaker 4: I'm beside myself about that. It's incredible. 00:48:08 Speaker 1: No, I can see how you're lighting up right now. Talk about it. I've seen you around those guys, and it is the best feeling. It's why all of us in this movement do what we do, because it's an unbelievably great feeling to be able to see somebody like you, thanks to the help of the Innocence Project and other great organizations, be able to come out and get your life back on track. 00:48:29 Speaker 4: Sure. So from finishing the bachelor's at Mercy College, I then graduated the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, got the master's degree with my master's thesis on wrongful conviction causes and other reforms. And I'm in my second year now at the Elizabeth Hobbs School of Law at Pace University. 00:48:47 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:48:48 Speaker 4: So in terms of my foundation, after being home for five years, very difficult five years as we've went over, I was able to receive some financial compensation and I decided I wanted to go from being an individual advocate. I mean, I used to, I was doing presentations and doing media interviews and lobbying elected officials and going to legislative hearings and It was part of the effort where we fought off capital punishment reinstatement efforts in 2007 in collaboration with New Yorkers Against the Dead. Penalty. And I was involved in the successful campaign repealing the death penalty in Connecticut. So doing all of that as an individual advocate, and it wasn't enough. I wanted to get into the exoneration game. You know, I was tired of helping out on cases on the peripheral, and I wanted to be more directly involved. So when I received some compensation, I decided to take things to the next level, open a non-profit. So I committed a million and a half dollars of that compensation, and we opened the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice. And our goal is to exonerate innocent people, both in DNA and non-DNA cases, with a policy change component to it. Our first exoneree was William Lopez, who we helped exonerate collaboratively along with his pre-existing attorneys, Richard Levitt and Yvonne Shivers. We did the investigative work. It's kind of like a building is built and it's missing a section, and we helped put the section in. So Bill was in for 23 and a half years in a wrongful conviction case in Brooklyn, and so that was our first success. A second exoneration was William Hawhey. That was totally in-house rather than collaborative. So William Hawhey did eight years and four months on an arson case in Putnam County. So that place that they brought me to for the polygraph, I was able to reach back there and exonerate somebody there. So a little irony, a little extra satisfaction. 00:50:43 Speaker 1: Full circle. 00:50:44 Speaker 4: Full circle. Yeah, so he was in for eight years and four months. We were able to get four other innocent people out through other means, which turned out to be less than exoneration. So Lorenzo Johnson, that was a collaborative effort. We did some investigative work. We were able to convince the parole board in three other cases that our clients were innocent. So that's six people, and we were part of the effort that we got the laws changed in New York on interrogation and ID reform, although they watered that down a bit. And we've been very close the last three years working in collaboration with the group It Can Happen to You, which is a coalition group, which I'm an advisory board member of, trying to pass a bill that would create a commission on prosecutor conduct to an oversight board for prosecutors. 00:51:29 Speaker 1: So this is all amazing, amazing stuff. It is full circle in so many ways. Like most of the other exonerees I talked to, you have committed yourself selflessly and tirelessly to helping other people avoid the same fate that you went through when you could just as easily be off doing whatever you want, and no one would blame you, right? You could be off vacationing, right? But instead, you're channeling all your energy and your money, your personal money into helping others. And that's just a beautiful, amazing thing. And it's one of the reasons why I love being around you, because you're just like a, such a great positive influence on everybody that you touch. So Jeff, we have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction, which is that at the end of the episode, I like to turn the mic over to you for closing thoughts, anything you want to share? 00:52:19 Speaker 4: I have a dream. Imagine if there were 25,000 people in the world who could afford $ 3 a month on a recurring basis, who felt that it would be worth it to sacrifice the $ 3 in order to play their part in helping to free wrongfully convicted people. That's a budget of close to a million dollars. If a person goes to Google and types in Duskovic Foundation then Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. A link will come up. If they click to that, everything is laid out there exactly how the money would go for lawyers, investigators, paralegals, other essential personnel to really having a robust entity. If we could have these type of results on basically a shoestring budget, imagine if we really were armed for bear. I need people obviously who will be willing to part with the $ 3, but we also need people to help make the campaign go viral. If we could somehow do, we need volunteers to help do that. If we could somehow do that, I mean, we could make a really big dent. I made the big contribution to the organization to give us our running start. We had paid staff and we got some good results. Fundraising didn't go that well. And I had to convert things to where we're a volunteer entity now. We have maybe 14 volunteers, which is great, but you need people to go full-time as opposed to people who are fitting it in, in between their paid work, their personal life. It's great to bring lawyers into cases and connect people with that, like we did with Andy Krivak, and bring lawyers in to do pro bono work after we've screened the case and Yeah, that's nice. But in a lot of the cases, work that could really be done in the course of six months is being done in two years because it's being done on the side as paid cases are done. So I really would love to be able to have a full-time paid staff again. You know, my mission in life is to fight wrongful convictions. And that's how I make sense out of what happened to me. And with that, you know, I want to... Thank you for having me here. And, you know, I think this podcast is an awesome idea. And we need to continue to raise awareness. And this is certainly one of the methods of doing that. So kudos, Jason Flom. 00:54:50 Speaker 1: Right back at you. Once again, I want to give the website. It's deskovic.org. That's D-E-S-K-O-V-I-C dot org. And go to the website. Learn about the mission. Get involved. You can help. Everybody can make a difference. It starts right here. So this has been an extraordinary experience for me. And I want to thank our amazing guest, Jeff Duskovic, for sharing his experience, strength, and wisdom. 00:55:23 Speaker 5: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. 00:55:27 Speaker 1: It really helps. 00:55:29 Speaker 5: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to innocenceproject.org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardus. The music in the show is by three-time Oscar-nominated composer, Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at wrongfulconviction and on Facebook at wrongfulconvictionpodcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company No. 1.