Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #316 Guest Host Laura Nirider with Vincent Ellerbe

Transcript

#316 Guest Host Laura Nirider with Vincent Ellerbe · Wrongful Conviction

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Speaker 1: I'm Jason Vlam, host of Roefel Conviction, but this week,
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Speaker 1: instead of hearing me, I've invited a legitimate genius from
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Speaker 1: the legal world to bring their knowledge and expertise to
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Speaker 1: the conversation as guest host here at Rofel Conviction, we
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Speaker 1: believe that sharing the stories of the incarcerated innocent can
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Speaker 1: create real change in the world, even beyond what these
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Speaker 1: real life legal superheroes do every day.
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Speaker 2: In the middle of one November night in nineteen ninety five,
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Speaker 2: there was an explosion in Brooklyn, New York. Nineteen different
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Speaker 2: people called nine to one one to report what they
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Speaker 2: heard and what they saw. They reported seeing two men
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Speaker 2: running up to a subway token booth on Kingston Avenue.
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Speaker 2: They poured gasoline into the coinslot and threatened the attendant
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Speaker 2: with a match. Almost immediately, the toll booth burst into flames.
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Speaker 2: The attendant was a man named Harry Kaufman, and as
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Speaker 2: the tollbooth caught on fire, he did too. Harry was
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Speaker 2: able to run up the street, where passers by helped
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Speaker 2: extinguish the flames on his body. More than eighty percent
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Speaker 2: of his body was badly burned. He died a few
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Speaker 2: weeks later, the crime made headlines in New York and
1:15
Speaker 2: around the country. Prominent politicians like Senator Bob Dole and
1:20
Speaker 2: Mayor Rudy Giuliani mentioned the case in their tough on
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Speaker 2: crime rhetoric. Pressure was mounting for the police to find
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Speaker 2: the attackers. With little physical evidence and no clear suspects,
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Speaker 2: Detective Lewis Scarcella turned to one of his favorite tactics,
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Speaker 2: coercing witnesses. One of the nine to one to one callers,
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Speaker 2: James Irons, was forced to give a false confession and
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Speaker 2: to name two more accomplices. Thomas Malik and Vincent Ellerby,
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Speaker 2: were both detained and interrogated, and both eventually gave false
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Speaker 2: confessions under pressure. After an investigation and a trial riddled
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Speaker 2: with lies and misconduct, Thomas Malie and Vincent Ellerbee were
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Speaker 2: convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to twenty five
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Speaker 2: years to life. This is Wrongful Conviction. Hi, everybody, it's
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Speaker 2: Laura and I writer. I am so glad to be
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Speaker 2: here guest hosting another episode of Wrongful Conviction. I'm the
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Speaker 2: co director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University,
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Speaker 2: and you might also recognize my voice from another series
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Speaker 2: I co hosted on this podcast feed False Confessions. Today,
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Speaker 2: I'm here with a real fighter, a real survivor of
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Speaker 2: false confessions, Vincent Ellerby Vince, you've endured more than any
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Speaker 2: human should be asked to endure. I am so honored
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Speaker 2: to get a chance to talk to you today. Do
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Speaker 2: you want to introduce yourself?
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Speaker 3: Hi, my name Vincent, I'll be I did twenty four years,
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Speaker 3: eleven months in twenty five days. I had nothing to
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Speaker 3: do it. I was forced to take the way for crime.
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Speaker 3: I had nothing to do it.
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Speaker 4: And I'm Ron Coopy. I was the lawyer for Vince's
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Speaker 4: co defendant way back in the nineties, and they were
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Speaker 4: tried together, although in front of separate juries.
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Speaker 2: Ron, We're so glad to have you here, and Vince,
3:20
Speaker 2: I am so glad you said every one of those days,
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Speaker 2: because every one of those days, hours and minutes counts.
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Speaker 2: But Ron, I'm going to start out by asking you
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Speaker 2: what was New York City like in the nineteen nineties
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Speaker 2: in terms of crime and how people were talking about
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Speaker 2: crime back then.
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Speaker 4: By nineteen ninety five, we were pretty much in our
3:41
Speaker 4: tenth year of the crack epidemic, which saw a dramatic
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Speaker 4: increase in crime and a wildly dramatic increase in punitive
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Speaker 4: law enforcement. It was a time in which the super
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Speaker 4: predator theory was gained and had gained tremendous currency in
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Speaker 4: legal circles and sociological circles. It was coined by a
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Speaker 4: sociologist who later attracted it, but the damage had been done.
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Speaker 4: The theory was there was a whole generation of black
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Speaker 4: youth growing off without fathers, living on the streets, who
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Speaker 4: were committing crimes. There was never any consequence to their crimes.
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Speaker 4: They would always get away with crime after crime after crime,
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Speaker 4: and as a result, they would become super predators. These
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Speaker 4: are people who were so feral and so consciousless they
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Speaker 4: would go out and do anything to anybody without any empathy, compassion,
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Speaker 4: or mercy. And we were in the process of creating
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Speaker 4: a whole generation of these people, and the only thing
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Speaker 4: that we could do about it as a society was
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Speaker 4: to incarcerate them forever.
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Speaker 2: It's one of the most toxic theories out there, right,
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Speaker 2: I mean, we know this is the theory that led
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Speaker 2: to the wrongful conviction of the Central Park five, for example,
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Speaker 2: now called the Exonerated five. Few years before this happened
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Speaker 2: to Vince. And there are so many other cases around
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Speaker 2: the country that were driven by the super predator myth.
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Speaker 2: Right here in Chicago, the Dixmore five, the Anglewood four,
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Speaker 2: the Marquette Park four, the Uptown seven. These numbers just
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Speaker 2: keep mounting and mounting and mounting. And Vince's case in
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Speaker 2: particular is a horrific example of these racist tropes being
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Speaker 2: used to incarcerate black kids, Black male children in particular.
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Speaker 2: So tell us how this toxic brew of racist myths
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Speaker 2: showed up in this case.
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Speaker 4: So on November twenty sixth, nineteen ninety five, outside of
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Speaker 4: a token booth in Brooklyn, two people two people, not three,
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Speaker 4: and this will become important later on in the story.
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Speaker 4: Two people went to that token booth. One of them
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Speaker 4: was armed with a thirty caliber carbine a rifle. The
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Speaker 4: other had a bottle with gasoline in it. They were
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Speaker 4: trying to rob the token boos. The token booth clerk,
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Speaker 4: Harry Kaufmann, refused to give up the money and he
6:04
Speaker 4: was behind bulletproof glass, and the perpetrators poured gasoline into
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Speaker 4: the slot. According to the prosecution, they then set it
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Speaker 4: on fire. The token booth exploded. It blew up the booth,
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Speaker 4: it blew up the money, and it burned up Harry Kaufman,
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Speaker 4: and he had third degree burns over most of his body.
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Speaker 4: And he lingered in the burn unit, agonizing day after
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Speaker 4: agonizing day until I think December tenth he died. It
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Speaker 4: was one of those horrific crimes that still made the
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Speaker 4: headlines in New York even though crime overall actually had
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Speaker 4: dropped as the crack epidemic wayne. But it was still
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Speaker 4: one of those incredibly high profile crimes that people used
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Speaker 4: to illustrate why you can no longer live in New
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Speaker 4: York City. Our mayor at the time, a guy better
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Speaker 4: known to this audience in his latter incarnation as a
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Speaker 4: Trump apologist. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for reasons still unclear, noted
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Speaker 4: that the movie Money Train had just come out, and
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Speaker 4: he claimed, utterly without evidence, that this particular robbery murder
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Speaker 4: had been inspired by the movie Money Train. So it
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Speaker 4: was a horrific crime, and everybody agreed it was a
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Speaker 4: horrific crime, of course, made more so by the fableism
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Speaker 4: of our mayor.
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Speaker 2: What evidence did investigators begin to look into? What leads
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Speaker 2: do they have to go on.
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Speaker 4: The problem was they had no suspects. There were no
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Speaker 4: fingerprints at the scene, the firearm couldn't be traced. This
7:54
Speaker 4: was before the days when there were cameras everywhere and
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Speaker 4: everybody had a cell phone. There were no cell phone towers.
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Speaker 4: There was absolutely no evidence that the cops had to
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Speaker 4: give them a lead to anybody. So when nobody's a suspect,
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Speaker 4: everybody becomes a suspect. Now that night, that night, nineteen
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Speaker 4: people called nine to one one to report an explosion
8:23
Speaker 4: in the subway station. One of those people was a
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Speaker 4: guy named James Irons, and he was in his mom's apartment.
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Speaker 4: He called up as well. Later his mom got on
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Speaker 4: the phone. And this is noteworthy because James Irons sounded
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Speaker 4: normal on the phone. That is, obviously he was paniced
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Speaker 4: something horrible. It just happened, but it just seemed like
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Speaker 4: another nine to one one caller.
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Speaker 2: So I want to take a minute and just ask
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Speaker 2: you to tell us a little bit about the cops
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Speaker 2: who ended up getting assigned to this investigation. They were
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Speaker 2: out of the seventy ninth Precinct.
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Speaker 4: Right.
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Speaker 2: Stephen Camille of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad was lead
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Speaker 2: on this case. And he was assisted by Lewis Scarcella,
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Speaker 2: which is a name that listeners of this podcast will remember.
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Speaker 2: Can you give us a little bit of background here.
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Speaker 4: Now, Disgrace. Detective Lewis Scarcella and his partner Stephen Camill
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Speaker 4: were known as Batman and Robin, and Scarcella was very
9:21
Speaker 4: much Batman. Whatever the lead was, whoever the lead detective
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Speaker 4: was named, whether it was Camille or Murphy or O'Reilly
9:30
Speaker 4: or Derita or O'Toole, it was Scarcella who was actually
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Speaker 4: in charge. He led a homicide task for us throughout
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Speaker 4: Brooklyn that had a roving commission to stick their nose
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Speaker 4: in any homicide they wished. And the amazing thing about
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Speaker 4: Detective Scarcella, and the reason he received such adulation within
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Speaker 4: the police department and the DA's office was he got
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Speaker 4: witnesses and he got confess sessions, even in cases where
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Speaker 4: there appeared to be no witnesses, and even in cases
10:05
Speaker 4: where there appeared to be no suspects. He was known
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Speaker 4: as the closer as well, because he will close this case.
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Speaker 4: At this point, there's close to I think two dozen
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Speaker 4: wrongful conviction cases attributed to Scarcella. I think at this
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Speaker 4: count eighteen have been exonerated. There are still some cases
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Speaker 4: in the pipeline that may or may not result in exonerations.
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Speaker 4: Out of ninety trials, ninety homicide trials that he.
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Speaker 2: Works, it's unbelievable. It sounds like he's been responsible for
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Speaker 2: so many lost centuries. It's mind blowing.
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Speaker 4: He's been responsible for lost millennia of black life. If
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Speaker 4: you add all those years together, it's not going to
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Speaker 4: be in the hundreds at this point, pretty sure it's
10:54
Speaker 4: going to be in the thousands. And he didn't have
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Speaker 4: any suspects either. So when you have case like this
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Speaker 4: with no suspects, kind of everybody's a suspect. So what
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Speaker 4: you do is you go out and you take every snitch,
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Speaker 4: every informant, every person on the street that you know of,
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Speaker 4: and you basically beat the crap out of them. So
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Speaker 4: they go back to the nine one one calls. I
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Speaker 4: don't know the television theory the criminal always returns to
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Speaker 4: the scene of the crime, and maybe one of the
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Speaker 4: nine to one one callers actually committed the crime, right,
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Speaker 4: So so footnote here. You know you're told if you
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Speaker 4: see something, say something. The lesson of this case, if
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Speaker 4: you see something and you say something, depending on who
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Speaker 4: you are, you may end up getting convicted for what
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Speaker 4: you saw and said.
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Speaker 2: Because one of those good Samaritans who called nine one one,
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Speaker 2: who tried to help out was this kid, eighteen year
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Speaker 2: old James Irons. But here's the thing, right, if he
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Speaker 2: did the crime and then called nine one one from
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Speaker 2: his home, he would have had to run really really
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Speaker 2: fast in order to get home and call nine to
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Speaker 2: one one when their call lugs say he did. He
12:05
Speaker 2: would have been out of breath on that nine one
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Speaker 2: one call, and he wasn't. That just doesn't make sense.
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Speaker 4: So right there, right there, if you were paying attention,
12:15
Speaker 4: which nobody was, you would have had your doubts. Anyway,
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Speaker 4: Scarcel and Camille bring him in and he gives a confession.
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Speaker 4: He gives a full confession. The confession itself is riddled
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Speaker 4: with things that are completely untrue, and he starts to
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Speaker 4: name people that he was with, he places himself as
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Speaker 4: the look at.
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Speaker 3: So the way this.
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Speaker 2: Works in interrogations, right, is that when you've got a
12:40
Speaker 2: group of people that you want to turn into suspects,
12:44
Speaker 2: you bring one of them in and you accuse that
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Speaker 2: person of being there, but you say, hey, I'm going
12:50
Speaker 2: to cut you a deal. You were probably the lookouts,
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Speaker 2: You probably weren't an active participant, and things will go
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Speaker 2: easier for you if you just tell us a story
12:58
Speaker 2: where you were the lookout and you say, some other
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Speaker 2: guys do it.
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Speaker 5: Right.
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Speaker 2: You see this over and over and over again in
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Speaker 2: all these cases around the country involving multiple defendants, all
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Speaker 2: of whom eventually falsely confessed to the same crime.
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Speaker 4: Right, and they get people to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 4: I knew there was going to be a robbery, but
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Speaker 4: I know nothing about a murder. And the guy thinks
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Speaker 4: he's getting Okay, I'll do time for the robbery. Lo
13:20
Speaker 4: and behold, he just confessed to fell any murder. Or yeah,
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Speaker 4: you were just a lookout. They just asked you to
13:25
Speaker 4: look out while they went in and did something. Yeah yeah,
13:27
Speaker 4: I was just like making sure nobody came down. I
13:29
Speaker 4: didn't have a weapon. Boom, You've just confessed again to
13:32
Speaker 4: acting in concert in a murder. Very very common, and
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Speaker 4: it's one of the flashing yellow lights when you see
13:39
Speaker 4: it today.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, it's a hallmark of a false confession. So here
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Speaker 2: you've got the idea that irons would just be a
13:48
Speaker 2: lookout the details of his story aren't matching up with
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Speaker 2: the facts right, the number of people, the guns, getting
13:54
Speaker 2: things wildly off. But he does put some names forward.
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Speaker 4: He does. He among other names he puts in are
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Speaker 4: Vincent Lerby and Thomas Mulwake.
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Speaker 2: So, Vince Ron and I just spoke at length about
14:22
Speaker 2: your hometown, Brooklyn, New York, and the horrible crime that
14:25
Speaker 2: happened there in November nineteen ninety five. Vince, I want
14:28
Speaker 2: to ask you, what was it like to realize all
14:31
Speaker 2: of a sudden that you were caught up in this
14:34
Speaker 2: case and you were facing these charges.
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Speaker 3: When I went to Rackens Island, and I didn't really
14:38
Speaker 3: have enough time to really sit back and dewelo on
14:41
Speaker 3: the case, because you know, you're walking into Rackings Island,
14:44
Speaker 3: you know, you got to worry about the phone, making
14:47
Speaker 3: sure that nobody's taking nothing from me. So in my mind,
14:51
Speaker 3: I just blanked it. I just blocked it all out.
14:54
Speaker 3: I just put all my faith for my lawyer, because
14:57
Speaker 3: I said to myself, it's no way possible that they're
15:00
Speaker 3: gonna find me guilty.
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Speaker 5: It's impossible. No matter what, it's impossible, no.
15:04
Speaker 3: Matter their confessions, They're gonna see everything it's a lie.
15:07
Speaker 3: It's mathematically impossible for you not to see it. A
15:11
Speaker 3: blind man can see it.
15:12
Speaker 2: You were in like short term survival mode, right, like
15:15
Speaker 2: this is gonna be over because they're gonna see I'm innocent.
15:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's just out here they say this is
15:23
Speaker 3: a normal environment, but when you get it locked up,
15:27
Speaker 3: that's an abnormal environment.
15:29
Speaker 5: So you got to adjust to that.
15:31
Speaker 3: I just put my faith for my lawyer, and I
15:35
Speaker 3: put my faith for my cole defending because he already
15:37
Speaker 3: knew the law.
15:38
Speaker 5: So for me, it was just I was just in
15:40
Speaker 5: survival mode.
15:42
Speaker 2: Survival mode in a Rikers in the nineties. It's no joke.
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Speaker 5: No, you gotta make adjustments real fast.
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Speaker 2: And there's somebody else in Rikers at the time, right,
15:52
Speaker 2: somebody who ended up giving police what he said was
15:56
Speaker 2: information about your case.
15:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, rakuon Shabazz, Yeah, they called him ice Pick Marlin.
16:06
Speaker 3: I met him, I knew him for all the three days,
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Speaker 3: and I'm not.
16:10
Speaker 5: Gonna live to me when we went to trial.
16:12
Speaker 3: We were sitting there and we're on trial, so I
16:15
Speaker 3: never knew him as Rayquoron Shabas. I only evenew him
16:17
Speaker 3: as Marlin show as we sitting there. When the DA,
16:22
Speaker 3: I mean, the DA calls.
16:24
Speaker 5: Their next witness.
16:25
Speaker 3: They say, Rake Won Shabazz and I took and looked
16:29
Speaker 3: at my coat offending, and he put his head down,
16:32
Speaker 3: so I tapped him.
16:32
Speaker 5: I'm like, what's up? And he shook his head like.
16:35
Speaker 3: So I'm saying to myself like, okay, who And the
16:40
Speaker 3: door opened up and he come out. He got this
16:44
Speaker 3: jean suit on, looking fly and in my mind I'm saying,
16:49
Speaker 3: what is he doing here? And he get on the
16:51
Speaker 3: stand and he get to proceed in telling him how
16:54
Speaker 3: time he choled him what we did, and how I
16:57
Speaker 3: chold him what we did, and that I was in
16:59
Speaker 3: one upper with him for like three months. And I'm
17:02
Speaker 3: saying to myself, like, they got records that will show
17:05
Speaker 3: you how long I was up there. So when the
17:10
Speaker 3: when when Ron and George's questioning the guy and you
17:14
Speaker 3: just you just you just see you see it.
17:17
Speaker 5: Then they brought up his past.
17:19
Speaker 3: That's when I found thought about we wasn't the first
17:22
Speaker 3: individuals he did this too.
17:24
Speaker 5: In my mind, I know I'm coming home now.
17:27
Speaker 2: So you're there, you're being tried with Tommy, right, you're
17:30
Speaker 2: being tried together separate juries but you're being tried together,
17:33
Speaker 2: and Shabaz comes up and says that you confessed again
17:36
Speaker 2: to him, and you must be sitting there going I'm
17:40
Speaker 2: going home because this guy's crazy.
17:42
Speaker 3: When you look at everything, from every witness that they
17:46
Speaker 3: had to, all the confessions to everything, if you just
17:51
Speaker 3: look at it, it's not a jury in the world.
17:54
Speaker 3: It's not a jury in the universe that's going to
17:57
Speaker 3: convict the money's crime.
17:59
Speaker 2: Ron, Can you give us a rundown of this trial?
18:01
Speaker 2: How was this case with all these holes, these confessions
18:05
Speaker 2: that are obviously wrong, How does it result in these convictions?
18:09
Speaker 4: This was really before the time there was much science
18:13
Speaker 4: available on the issue of false confessions. Some people had
18:17
Speaker 4: started work on it, Saul cass and I think had
18:19
Speaker 4: been doing it for a few years. But the idea
18:22
Speaker 4: of calling a false confession expert, that just was not
18:27
Speaker 4: an idea that existed in New York criminal trial practice
18:32
Speaker 4: at the time. And Ray Kwan Shabab's I actually did
18:38
Speaker 4: one of these sort of bush league lawyer things. I
18:42
Speaker 4: took his criminal record, which at that time was written
18:45
Speaker 4: on paper, and I taped all of the sheets together,
18:49
Speaker 4: and as I approached him, I let the sheets unspooled
18:54
Speaker 4: as they did, and I handed him the document, which
18:58
Speaker 4: at this point stretched all the way back to the
19:00
Speaker 4: defense table, and I asked him if he recognized it,
19:03
Speaker 4: and he said, yes, it's his criminal record. I knew
19:07
Speaker 4: that he had done this twice before, and I considered
19:10
Speaker 4: him to be a so called professional informant. He worked
19:14
Speaker 4: for the DA's office, not regularly, but whenever he needed to.
19:19
Speaker 4: Whenever he got in a jam, he would cook up
19:21
Speaker 4: some sort of plot, some confession, some conspiracy, and go
19:26
Speaker 4: to the DA's office and trade it for lighter treatment.
19:29
Speaker 4: The DA's office admitted that, yes, he had testified once
19:32
Speaker 4: in Brooklyn, and yes he had testified once in Queen's.
19:36
Speaker 4: Judge France's xavier A Gito, a name which should also
19:40
Speaker 4: be familiar to your listeners because he presided over many
19:44
Speaker 4: of these wrongful convictions, said two times isn't enough to
19:47
Speaker 4: make him a professional witness, and they let him testify.
19:51
Speaker 4: What we did not know, but the Brooklyn DA's office
19:55
Speaker 4: certainly knew, was that in the Brooklyn case which preced this,
20:01
Speaker 4: he had testified that he was a professional liar. He
20:07
Speaker 4: was asked, you lie for a living, don't you, mister Shabaz,
20:12
Speaker 4: and he said, yes, it's insane.
20:16
Speaker 2: I mean when you think about the way that this
20:17
Speaker 2: playing field was stacked, right, it stacked from the moment
20:21
Speaker 2: that a teenager walks into the interrogation room alone, without
20:24
Speaker 2: a parent, without a lawyer, without any clue about what's
20:27
Speaker 2: facing him, and a trial that all just continues with
20:31
Speaker 2: lies and concealments. Vince, I want to ask you if
20:36
Speaker 2: you'll take us back to that moment. I mean, this
20:38
Speaker 2: is when the wheels really come off. Right. You've been
20:41
Speaker 2: sitting at this trial. You've been telling yourself, I just
20:44
Speaker 2: have to make it to the acquittal. I just have
20:47
Speaker 2: to make it to the moment when the jury realizes
20:49
Speaker 2: that this entire situation is constructed bullshit.
20:54
Speaker 3: Well, when they at the crows and arguments, they came
20:57
Speaker 3: back with di verdict, little fat thing it was, and
21:01
Speaker 3: I don't think we probably wasn't even downstairs an hour
21:04
Speaker 3: something like that.
21:05
Speaker 5: They called us back upstairs.
21:06
Speaker 3: I remember sitting down and I'm saying to myself.
21:10
Speaker 5: All right, I'm about to slide up out of here.
21:12
Speaker 5: It's over.
21:13
Speaker 3: And they said, we find the defender's guilty on all chargers,
21:17
Speaker 3: so quick fast. I did a calculation in my head
21:20
Speaker 3: how old I be when I go to the board.
21:22
Speaker 3: I said I'd be forty two years old, said I'd
21:25
Speaker 3: be an old man. My daughter wasn't even born yet,
21:28
Speaker 3: her mother was six months pregnant. But it really didn't
21:31
Speaker 3: hit me until I went back to get sentenced, because
21:34
Speaker 3: even then I still thought they might have made a mistake,
21:38
Speaker 3: might be a chance. But I think the one good
21:41
Speaker 3: day about that sentence. That day I wore regular clothes, jeans,
21:47
Speaker 3: sweating sneakers, and my col defendant, that's the only thing
21:53
Speaker 3: that made me smile that day. He walked into the
21:55
Speaker 3: court room, and to this day, I don't know where
21:59
Speaker 3: he got it from, but he had on a lime
22:02
Speaker 3: green suit, a lime green suit, and I'm looking at
22:08
Speaker 3: him and I'm saying to myself, this guy can't be serious.
22:11
Speaker 3: They're about to give us twenty five years and you
22:14
Speaker 3: walk in here with a lime green SUITO. And I
22:19
Speaker 3: remember when I was taking me out the courtroom, I
22:21
Speaker 3: started singing Tupac, And somehow when I went to the board,
22:27
Speaker 3: somehow it changed for me singing Tupac to me cursing
22:30
Speaker 3: the judge out the parole board. When I went to
22:33
Speaker 3: the board, asked. They asked me, did I curse the
22:35
Speaker 3: judge out? I said, no, I didn't curse the judge. Job,
22:38
Speaker 3: I said, I read a statement that my mother wrote
22:40
Speaker 3: for me, I said, And when I walked out, I
22:42
Speaker 3: was singing Tupac. I said, I don't know how y'all
22:45
Speaker 3: got that, but it really didn't hit me til I
22:48
Speaker 3: got downstate that I wasn't going home for a long time.
22:53
Speaker 2: How did you survive all those years in prison?
22:55
Speaker 3: Fear y'all understand something.
23:00
Speaker 5: It is island.
23:00
Speaker 3: It's different from the penitentiary, and you hear all the
23:03
Speaker 3: Harvard stories about the penitentiary. When I get downstairs, the
23:07
Speaker 3: old timer that I ran into, he asked me, did
23:10
Speaker 3: I want to.
23:10
Speaker 5: Do a smooth bed? And I said yeah. He said, okay,
23:14
Speaker 5: this is what you do.
23:14
Speaker 3: He said, for the first five years in your bed,
23:17
Speaker 3: you put in major work. I don't care if somebody
23:21
Speaker 3: owe you a stamp, if they don't have your money,
23:23
Speaker 3: when they say they gonna have it, you give them
23:25
Speaker 3: the business.
23:27
Speaker 5: So what happens.
23:29
Speaker 3: What happened to me, and it still affects me to
23:32
Speaker 3: this day. My heart became real cold because that's what
23:37
Speaker 3: the penitentiary turned me. Into I drink now a lot,
23:42
Speaker 3: the shield all the pain go through every day. Nobody
23:46
Speaker 3: know what it's like when you go to prison for
23:49
Speaker 3: a crime you commit, and you wake up every morning
23:53
Speaker 3: and you go to brush your teeth, wash your face.
23:56
Speaker 3: You can't accept that.
23:58
Speaker 5: But when you're there, they the day after hour, year
24:02
Speaker 5: after year, for something you didn't do.
24:06
Speaker 3: A lot of hate, build up, a lot of thoughts
24:09
Speaker 3: about suicide setting. I couldn't put a rope around my neck,
24:15
Speaker 3: couldn't take a lot of pills. I couldn't do that,
24:20
Speaker 3: So I will cause a lot of problems hoping that
24:22
Speaker 3: the police would kill me because I became tired. Nobody
24:31
Speaker 3: know what it's like for me, even to this day,
24:36
Speaker 3: just to fight to get up. I gotta give myself
24:39
Speaker 3: a reason to keep getting up every day. Yeah, people
24:42
Speaker 3: see me. I still look young, still got my swag,
24:47
Speaker 3: but they don't know what it's like for me. I
24:50
Speaker 3: gave these people twenty plus years of my life for
24:53
Speaker 3: no reason, and.
24:55
Speaker 5: They start detective.
24:57
Speaker 3: He's living somewhere suburbs, somewhere, he get his pension.
25:01
Speaker 5: You all right? He all right?
25:05
Speaker 3: No matter how many times people do stories about that
25:08
Speaker 3: coward not feeling never habit too. But I thought they say, well,
25:13
Speaker 3: you committed crime, you go to jail for it. I
25:17
Speaker 3: ain't equit, make no crime. I went to jail. They
25:20
Speaker 3: exonerated us. So that means everything he did, he lied,
25:26
Speaker 3: he committed crimes. He forms to five evidence.
25:30
Speaker 5: They say it's a misdemeanor what he did. Okay, cool.
25:35
Speaker 3: I know a whole lot of people that got mister
25:37
Speaker 3: Meanings that went to jail. I would within a few
25:39
Speaker 3: of them, So I understand what y'all doing. I appreciate.
25:45
Speaker 3: Let me make this clear to y'all, and I'm just
25:47
Speaker 3: being honest. It's only one person that's gonna make him
25:51
Speaker 3: pay for what he did to all of us. Everyone
25:54
Speaker 3: that was not just me and my co defenished. We're
25:58
Speaker 3: the only ones that coward violates it. We ain't told
26:02
Speaker 3: he once, but the law gonna make him pay for it.
26:04
Speaker 3: Though he gonna be a rack. He gonna be a rack.
26:10
Speaker 3: They broke me a little bit, but I'm gonna keep fighting.
26:13
Speaker 3: That day, thought my cold defend.
26:16
Speaker 5: They need me to hold him down. Now it's my turn.
26:20
Speaker 5: He helped me, Damn.
26:22
Speaker 3: He helped me. Damn Well, I was in prison, ripping
26:26
Speaker 3: and running. He was in the little library fighting for
26:29
Speaker 3: both of us. These tears just say for me, he's
26:32
Speaker 3: tears for him too. My cold defriend it is hurt
26:37
Speaker 3: the same way they broke me. They broke my cold
26:39
Speaker 3: defend in too. But he kept fighting for us. That's
26:42
Speaker 3: why I'm sitting there. He got us to this point.
26:46
Speaker 3: No matter how many interviews I gotta do, I got us.
26:51
Speaker 3: I'm gonna let the people know about that coward. I
26:54
Speaker 3: got nephews that I ain't.
26:55
Speaker 5: Even grow up with my moms, my sister. What about
27:03
Speaker 5: their pain? What about them knowing that they huh like
27:07
Speaker 5: like no.
27:08
Speaker 3: I was inning, I got a door. We'll never have
27:13
Speaker 3: a relationship. But she can't never understand why her dad
27:17
Speaker 3: wasn't there. And I don't know how to fix that.
27:21
Speaker 3: That coward took that from me. That cowward took that
27:25
Speaker 3: from me. You know, yesterday I watched my daughter come
27:29
Speaker 3: out of the building from coming from my mom's house,
27:33
Speaker 3: and she was in the cabin. She just turned and
27:35
Speaker 3: looked at me, and we looked at each other like
27:39
Speaker 3: we were full blooded enemies. You know how that feel.
27:45
Speaker 3: Don't nobody know how that shit? But it's all right, though,
27:49
Speaker 3: It's all right it's part of life. That's the only
27:53
Speaker 3: way it could make sense for me. That's the only
27:55
Speaker 3: way I.
27:56
Speaker 5: Can survive is if I said it's all right.
27:59
Speaker 3: That's anyway. I ain't got no choice no more. Without that,
28:06
Speaker 3: my moms and my sister be burying me. That's how
28:10
Speaker 3: it makes sense something it's all right. That's how I
28:16
Speaker 3: keep going every day. It's all right when I wake
28:21
Speaker 3: up every day. It's all right for me. I'm real
28:27
Speaker 3: for it because at the moment I stopped saying that
28:30
Speaker 3: it's all right, it's the.
28:32
Speaker 5: Moment I don't want to be here no more. So
28:34
Speaker 5: it's all right. No woman is all right.
28:37
Speaker 6: You know what.
28:38
Speaker 2: Let's take a break. Okay, Let's just take a break
28:40
Speaker 2: for a second from having to talk about this for
28:43
Speaker 2: just a moment. Okay, So I think I.
28:45
Speaker 3: Just need a few minutes.
28:46
Speaker 6: I just need a few minutes.
29:16
Speaker 2: To our listeners. I just want to acknowledge that Vince
29:19
Speaker 2: is clearly in a lot of pain here. All of
29:22
Speaker 2: us who work on this podcast take the health and
29:24
Speaker 2: safety of our guests very seriously. Immediately after this interview,
29:29
Speaker 2: we connected Vince with a specialized trauma therapist and we
29:33
Speaker 2: talked to his family to make sure he was being
29:35
Speaker 2: taken care of and supported. In the days and weeks
29:40
Speaker 2: following this conversation, we also spend a lot of time
29:43
Speaker 2: talking and thinking about which parts of this interview to air,
29:47
Speaker 2: whether or not his pain was too raw, too fresh,
29:50
Speaker 2: whether or not Vince really wanted all of this out
29:52
Speaker 2: in the world, We asked him, and the answer is
29:56
Speaker 2: he does. He wants the world to know what happened
29:59
Speaker 2: to him, how it still affects him today. You know,
30:02
Speaker 2: wrongful conviction stories are often packaged as these stories of triumphs,
30:06
Speaker 2: but behind so many of them there's deep emotional suffering.
30:11
Speaker 2: So to Vince, I just want to say that I'm
30:13
Speaker 2: amazed and humbled by your bravery. You're sharing the truth
30:17
Speaker 2: of what happened to you, and our shared life work
30:21
Speaker 2: is to stop this from happening to anyone else ever again.
30:27
Speaker 2: So with that, let's get back to what happened next
30:29
Speaker 2: in Vincent's story. So, Ron, let's go back to you.
30:40
Speaker 2: You've been involved at the time of trial. Years pass
30:43
Speaker 2: and you do get back involved with this case. Can
30:47
Speaker 2: you tell us how you got involved again and how
30:48
Speaker 2: the case eventually started to turn its direction back towards justice.
30:53
Speaker 4: The turning point in the case came in early twenty
30:57
Speaker 4: thirteen when Tommy Malik, who never gave up, sent the
31:01
Speaker 4: most extraordinary document to me that I've ever seen. And
31:05
Speaker 4: what Tommy found was a ten page order from a
31:10
Speaker 4: state Supreme Court justice regarding Raekwan Schabaz and his most
31:16
Speaker 4: recent false testimony where he created a conspiracy to murder
31:23
Speaker 4: a sitting judge. The FBI got involved and they quickly
31:28
Speaker 4: realized what the DA's office could never face, which this
31:31
Speaker 4: is a hoax. This is something that Shabaz is doing
31:34
Speaker 4: simply to create a reason for him to be an informer,
31:39
Speaker 4: to get out of prison. And judge the judge issues
31:43
Speaker 4: a ten page injunction saying that Rakwan Schabaz aka Marlon
31:50
Speaker 4: Avilla is a clear and present danger to the administration
31:54
Speaker 4: of justice. He is permanently enjoined from ever intacting anyone
32:01
Speaker 4: in law enforcement. Again, if he feels the need to
32:06
Speaker 4: contact someone in law enforcement, he will contact a Special
32:10
Speaker 4: Master who I am appointing, And he is the only
32:14
Speaker 4: person that Shabbaz is ever to contact because his history
32:19
Speaker 4: and his habit of lying, creating cases, falsifying testimony, falsifying
32:26
Speaker 4: conspiracies is such that to let him talk to law
32:30
Speaker 4: enforcement is in fact, to disrupt the criminal justice system.
32:35
Speaker 4: I had never seen a document like this before. I
32:38
Speaker 4: have never seen a document like that since. And I
32:40
Speaker 4: called the head of the conviction Review Unit, who I
32:43
Speaker 4: had known from other cases, and he said, just wait
32:48
Speaker 4: a little bit. There's going to be things coming out
32:51
Speaker 4: about Detective Scarcella that you're going to want to know.
32:55
Speaker 4: Early on, they took this case. This case was handed
32:58
Speaker 4: to them in twenty thirteen, and by the time of
33:01
Speaker 4: this exoneration in twenty twenty two, it was the oldest case,
33:07
Speaker 4: the longest any case had lingered. But in the end
33:12
Speaker 4: they found everything they needed to convince everybody beyond any
33:18
Speaker 4: doubt whatsoever that all three of these young men, then
33:24
Speaker 4: young men, were wrongfully convicted. I started with Tommy, and
33:28
Speaker 4: then in twenty seventeen I realized that they were all
33:33
Speaker 4: going to stand or fall together just like they did
33:36
Speaker 4: at trial.
33:37
Speaker 2: And so you ended up representing Vince too in his
33:40
Speaker 2: effort to be exonerated. But at this point, Vince, you
33:44
Speaker 2: had already been paroled, right, you were parolled in twenty
33:46
Speaker 2: twenty How did you and Ron get in touch again?
33:49
Speaker 3: I got a letter from him, and he said he
33:52
Speaker 3: wanted to come see me. Right, I already knew who
33:56
Speaker 3: he was, so I really I you know, by this time,
34:01
Speaker 3: it's twenty seventeen. I got three years left before I
34:05
Speaker 3: go to the board. It's all right, I said, my
34:09
Speaker 3: cold infinity must have came up with something. He pulled
34:11
Speaker 3: the rabbit out of hot force or something. He ain't
34:14
Speaker 3: come up here, just just for no reason. And when
34:18
Speaker 3: he came to see me then he said, look, it's
34:22
Speaker 3: a seventy five percent chance we're gonna get it over Trump. Right,
34:28
Speaker 3: seventy five percent. I'm saying to myself, that's pretty hard.
34:31
Speaker 3: On a seventy five percent note. Normally a lawyer tell
34:35
Speaker 3: you at the most he might put it at. If
34:38
Speaker 3: he's trying to be a little cocky, he might put
34:40
Speaker 3: it at fifty. So right before I went to the board,
34:43
Speaker 3: I let him know I was going to the board,
34:44
Speaker 3: and I asked him to write me a letter. Now,
34:47
Speaker 3: normally when you go in front of the parole board,
34:49
Speaker 3: you know, after you say your name, they tell you
34:50
Speaker 3: who they are, they name and everything, and they asks
34:53
Speaker 3: you your name. They jumped right into the cakes and everything.
34:57
Speaker 3: But they didn't do that with me. First thing they
35:01
Speaker 3: asked me about was the letter from my lawyer, and
35:04
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, I guess after getting the letter from Ron,
35:08
Speaker 3: and Ron told him he let him know straight up
35:12
Speaker 3: and down. Y'all should do the right thing because this
35:15
Speaker 3: case gonna get over trunk. Y'all don't want to be
35:18
Speaker 3: the reason why he had to stay in prison any longer,
35:21
Speaker 3: so y'all should let him go.
35:24
Speaker 5: And he was right.
35:25
Speaker 3: I made my boy when I came home and then
35:28
Speaker 3: I was sleeping, called me early in the morning, and
35:33
Speaker 3: like he always do, when he called me his greeting,
35:35
Speaker 3: Hey Vince, I said, what's up, bro, How you doing?
35:39
Speaker 3: He said, I'm all right. He said, listen, you got
35:42
Speaker 3: to be at the court room on Friday. Cats your
35:45
Speaker 3: case getting over turned. I said yeah, he said yeah.
35:51
Speaker 3: I was tired. I was tired that morning. I was
35:53
Speaker 3: tired that morning. But after he told me that I
35:55
Speaker 3: couldn't go back to sleep, I started figuring, trying to
35:57
Speaker 3: put together what I'm away of the court, nice white
36:01
Speaker 3: white shorts, my fitted hat broke down to the side.
36:06
Speaker 5: I still got a little bit of swag.
36:07
Speaker 3: I told you that y'all came in there, you know,
36:11
Speaker 3: and I'm not gonna lie them. When I got there,
36:15
Speaker 3: were higher our other lawyer. She met me out in
36:18
Speaker 3: the hallway. She says, I was nervous, so I asked
36:21
Speaker 3: her where my co defending was at, So what tell
36:23
Speaker 3: me yet? She said they bringing them out, So I said,
36:26
Speaker 3: all right, And they brought them out in the handcuffs.
36:29
Speaker 3: That kind of that That that that pissed me off
36:33
Speaker 3: seeing him come out of handcuffs. When we walked out,
36:37
Speaker 3: we walked out together.
36:39
Speaker 5: At the end.
36:39
Speaker 3: They asked us what we're gonna do now, and I
36:42
Speaker 3: told him We're going to Disney World. So when this
36:44
Speaker 3: is all over with, when everything is all over with
36:48
Speaker 3: me and my boy going to Disney World. Depending on
36:51
Speaker 3: how this's turning out, depending on how after I see
36:53
Speaker 3: the last the.
36:57
Speaker 5: Ending cut, I might invite y'all. I don't know yet.
37:00
Speaker 2: And all I want to see is him and lime green,
37:02
Speaker 2: you and white at Disney World. That is how I
37:04
Speaker 2: want to see you.
37:05
Speaker 3: No he no, no, no, he can no. He can
37:08
Speaker 3: never put on lime green again. No, no, that is
37:13
Speaker 3: against the rules for him.
37:15
Speaker 2: Ron, we're getting to the end of a story. I
37:17
Speaker 2: just want to say, you've been working on this case
37:19
Speaker 2: for a long time. This has been a twenty seven
37:22
Speaker 2: year labor for you.
37:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, one of the advantages about living
37:29
Speaker 4: to be my age is that sometimes you do get
37:33
Speaker 4: to see stuff come around again. I'm happy that I'm
37:39
Speaker 4: old enough now that I am living to see some
37:41
Speaker 4: of these things happen. So I wouldn't call it a
37:45
Speaker 4: twenty seven year labor. I'd call it a twenty seven
37:50
Speaker 4: year look at watching what goes around finally finally does
37:55
Speaker 4: come around. And while I don't think the moral arc
37:59
Speaker 4: of the universe bends toward justice, in fact, I don't
38:02
Speaker 4: think the moral arc of the universe freaking exists. I
38:06
Speaker 4: do know that sometimes for some people there is a
38:10
Speaker 4: reckoning at least, and that's what's happened here, and.
38:13
Speaker 2: That reckoning, I think is going to come one day
38:15
Speaker 2: for the officers who did this. We all know that
38:18
Speaker 2: the law creates exceptions for police officers. We know that
38:21
Speaker 2: qualified immunity protects police officers even when they do things
38:25
Speaker 2: like this. But what I will say is that the
38:27
Speaker 2: world will know their names. They will know their names
38:31
Speaker 2: as bad police, and that's going to have to be
38:35
Speaker 2: where we leave this for now. At the end of
38:38
Speaker 2: every episode, of wrongful conviction. We do what we call
38:40
Speaker 2: closing arguments. This is where you get to close out
38:44
Speaker 2: the show. You can talk about anything you want to
38:46
Speaker 2: talk about. And before you do, I just want to
38:49
Speaker 2: say thank you to Ron and thank you to Vince
38:53
Speaker 2: for sharing your story with us today. It has been
38:56
Speaker 2: an honor. Vince.
38:58
Speaker 3: I'll give you the floor first and foremost, let me
39:01
Speaker 3: say thank you the wrong Thank you to my cold
39:04
Speaker 3: defriend of Thomas Malie, because without them, I wouldn't be
39:07
Speaker 3: sitting here right now now. Yeah, the penitentiary broken. I
39:11
Speaker 3: ain't afraid to say it. If you look deep enough
39:13
Speaker 3: in my eyes, you'll see it. But I'm just good
39:16
Speaker 3: at shilling it. That's what the penitentiary is designed to make.
39:19
Speaker 3: Break it break you down. But for me, like I said,
39:25
Speaker 3: I just keep telling myself it's gonna be all right.
39:30
Speaker 3: They said, Lord, don't place a burden on a person
39:32
Speaker 3: that they can't bear, And I guess it was designed
39:35
Speaker 3: for me to carry a heavy burden. Some days it's
39:40
Speaker 3: light like today, real heavy, and for the next couple
39:45
Speaker 3: of days it's won't be real heavy, and I may
39:48
Speaker 3: isolate myself, my girlfriend may not understand it, my moms
39:53
Speaker 3: may not understand it.
39:54
Speaker 5: My sister will.
39:55
Speaker 3: Lord, that's my baby girl, my sister's tears.
40:00
Speaker 5: As you see, Man, he's ain't a for us. All
40:04
Speaker 5: this is years hurting pain those that will see this.
40:11
Speaker 5: No one understands something. Man.
40:13
Speaker 3: Penitentiary ain't designed for nobody. Man, white, black, blue green,
40:21
Speaker 3: especially for those that didn't do it. If you did
40:23
Speaker 3: a crime, you know and understand what it is. I
40:26
Speaker 3: could have did a million years long for something I did.
40:32
Speaker 3: But it's all right, though, life goes on. Me and
40:36
Speaker 3: my colder friendly are gonna survive because the same thing
40:41
Speaker 3: I tell myself, he telling itself. Because that's all we got.
40:45
Speaker 3: Our family there, but that's all we got to tell ourselves.
40:49
Speaker 3: We all right, We're gonna make it. And I leave
40:53
Speaker 3: y'all with that.
40:54
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm
41:04
Speaker 2: your guest host, Laura and I writer. I'd like to
41:07
Speaker 2: thank our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Ortis. The
41:11
Speaker 2: Senior producer for this episode is Jackie Polly, and our
41:14
Speaker 2: producers are Lila Robinson and Jeff Cleiburn. Our editor is
41:19
Speaker 2: Lexandra Whedy. The music in this production is by Three
41:23
Speaker 2: Time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
41:28
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41:32
Speaker 2: Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well
41:37
Speaker 2: as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you
41:41
Speaker 2: can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Laura and
41:44
Speaker 2: I Writer. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for
41:48
Speaker 2: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one.
41:57
Speaker 1: Next week, on the guest hosted episodes of Wrongful Conviction
42:00
Speaker 1: and Lauren Bright Pacheco will sit down with Mark Shann,
42:02
Speaker 1: the victim of the Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department and their
42:06
Speaker 1: blatant disregard for the truth. Mark served nearly thirty years
42:10
Speaker 1: behind bars while his family and community fought for his freedom,
42:14
Speaker 1: surviving not only prison but also a dire medical emergency.
42:19
Speaker 1: Lauren Brye Pacheco is a brilliant investigator and she's no
42:23
Speaker 1: stranger to wrongful conviction cases. You may know her from
42:26
Speaker 1: her groundbreaking incredible podcasts Murder and Oregon and Murder in Illinois.
42:32
Speaker 1: Listen next Monday in the Wrongful Conviction podcast feed