Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #332 Jason Flom with Dean Gillispie

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#332 Jason Flom with Dean Gillispie · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: In August nineteen eighty eight, a serial rapist had already
0:05
Speaker 1: struck twice in Dayton, Ohio, claiming three victims. The victims
0:09
Speaker 1: descriptions of the assailant, as well as the event itself,
0:12
Speaker 1: were almost identical. The assailant pretended to be a security
0:16
Speaker 1: guardner's shopping center and accused the victims of shoplifting before
0:19
Speaker 1: using their cars to drive them off into the woods
0:22
Speaker 1: to be orally sodomized and assaulted. He called himself Roger.
0:27
Speaker 1: A composite sketch finally generated a long awaited lead. Roger
0:32
Speaker 1: Dean Gillespie was identified as a possible match by his
0:35
Speaker 1: direct supervisor at work, although he typically went by Dean.
0:39
Speaker 1: All three victims identified him out of a photo lineup,
0:42
Speaker 1: and again later at his trial, sending him away for
0:45
Speaker 1: up to fifty six years. So it seems like that's
0:50
Speaker 1: all there is to this story. But this is wrongful conviction.
1:08
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful conviction. If I sound a little
1:11
Speaker 1: more sprightly than usual, it's because of the guy I'm
1:14
Speaker 1: going to be interviewing, who's got this infectious energy and
1:17
Speaker 1: smile and has just transcended this insane ordeal that he
1:22
Speaker 1: went through so I am really excited today to have
1:26
Speaker 1: my friend Dean Gillespie on the show. Dean, Welcome to
1:31
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, Thank you, sir. And with Dean is the
1:35
Speaker 1: co founder of the Hioliness's Project. Dean's case was their
1:38
Speaker 1: very first once, so we're very happy and honored to
1:42
Speaker 1: have Mark Gotzi here with us.
1:43
Speaker 2: Thank you, happy to be here.
1:45
Speaker 1: And of course the other co founder was John Cranley,
1:48
Speaker 1: who went on to become the mayor of Cincinnati, but
1:49
Speaker 1: before all that, he worked to free innocent people like Dean.
1:53
Speaker 1: So let's go back in time with YouTube. Dean, your
1:56
Speaker 1: story is one that really needs to be told for
1:59
Speaker 1: so many reasons, from police misconduct, judicial misconduct, to what
2:03
Speaker 1: took place at your trial. We're more than half of
2:06
Speaker 1: the jury was ready to acquit before turning around and
2:10
Speaker 1: convicting you when they obviously had reasonable more than reasonable doubts,
2:14
Speaker 1: and then only for you and Mark to then turned
2:16
Speaker 1: this whole thing around to make history in Ohio. But
2:19
Speaker 1: before any of this happened, you had like a really
2:22
Speaker 1: good life.
2:23
Speaker 3: Well. I grew up in a middle class family. My
2:26
Speaker 3: dad worked at General Motors, my mother was a beautician,
2:29
Speaker 3: lived in a great neighborhood where the friends that were
2:33
Speaker 3: around me, you know, I knew my whole life. It's
2:36
Speaker 3: a beautiful place to grow up for me. I was
2:38
Speaker 3: like beaver Cleaver.
2:39
Speaker 1: What town was that in Fairborne, Ohio?
2:42
Speaker 3: Where the airplane was invented. I actually started working when
2:46
Speaker 3: I was fifteen with a friend of my dad's. He
2:48
Speaker 3: was a contractor. Then I graduated high school, my dad
2:51
Speaker 3: wanted me to go work at General Motors, which at
2:54
Speaker 3: that time was one of the best jobs in America.
2:56
Speaker 3: You know, you get a GM, you were set. You know,
2:59
Speaker 3: my dad in the union, so he knew the right
3:02
Speaker 3: union people to get me the job at the GM plant.
3:06
Speaker 3: I was going to the Community College for FI Science
3:09
Speaker 3: Technology to basically to get the job, which was a
3:13
Speaker 3: plant protection at Geral Motors. And you're basically a fireman,
3:16
Speaker 3: so put in the applications. You know, Bam, there I
3:20
Speaker 3: was with a cholb at Terrro Motors at eighteen.
3:24
Speaker 1: I mean that someone could get a job out of
3:26
Speaker 1: high school that would have them, you know, pretty much
3:29
Speaker 1: set up for life. Situations like that were dwindling a
3:32
Speaker 1: number even back then, so this was really a valuable
3:35
Speaker 1: position you had which sort of inadvertently made you a
3:38
Speaker 1: target for a particularly unscrupulous person.
3:40
Speaker 3: What we figured out during the course of this was
3:45
Speaker 3: the boss at GM, which is a management non union.
3:49
Speaker 3: This guy was the head of security the five different
3:52
Speaker 3: plants and GM and Dayton, and he had a friend
3:56
Speaker 3: who he wanted to get the job, so he don't
4:01
Speaker 3: like me now because I got the job. And this
4:04
Speaker 3: guy would just stirring up crap with me and harassing
4:08
Speaker 3: me and just you know, dalking down to me and everything.
4:11
Speaker 3: But you know, subsequently we come to find out that
4:14
Speaker 3: he was so mad about it. We've proven four times
4:17
Speaker 3: in federal court that he was taking my information from
4:20
Speaker 3: General Motors to the police department he used to work at,
4:23
Speaker 3: where his buddy was the head of the police department,
4:26
Speaker 3: trying to get me hooked up on something. Wow, because
4:29
Speaker 3: it's a union shop. You just can't fire somebody because
4:32
Speaker 3: you don't like him. You have to have, you know,
4:34
Speaker 3: some kind of reason. That reason would be me getting
4:37
Speaker 3: locked up and not showing up the work.
4:39
Speaker 1: And this sinister fock's name was Richard Wolfe, who then
4:43
Speaker 1: did what he had already done previously when he heard
4:48
Speaker 1: about the crimes were about to talk about it. Now
4:50
Speaker 1: this was August nineteen eighty eight. There were two gruesome
4:53
Speaker 1: sex crimes, one on August fifth, and then the second
4:56
Speaker 1: one involving two victims, was on August twentieth. The second
5:00
Speaker 1: one was reported first though. There were twenty two year
5:02
Speaker 1: old twin sisters. We're going to call them CW and BW.
5:05
Speaker 1: This is around seven pm as they were getting into
5:08
Speaker 1: their car outside of a Best Product store in Dayton, Ohio,
5:11
Speaker 1: and they were kidnapped by a loan gunman. He then
5:14
Speaker 1: said that he was a store security guard and his
5:16
Speaker 1: name was Roger.
5:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.
5:17
Speaker 2: So the perpetrator sort of accused them of shoplifting, had
5:21
Speaker 2: a gun, and said you got to come with me,
5:23
Speaker 2: pretending like you know, I'm going to take you around
5:25
Speaker 2: the little you know, mall cop police station we've got
5:28
Speaker 2: here or whatever. Instead, he takes them off into the woods.
5:31
Speaker 1: When they got there, he exposed himself fonald their breasts
5:34
Speaker 1: and forced them to perform oral sex on him. He
5:36
Speaker 1: then blindfolded both women and forced them to lie down
5:39
Speaker 1: in the backseat while he drove back to the Best
5:41
Speaker 1: Product store.
5:42
Speaker 2: So there were some distinctive things that the perpetrator said
5:45
Speaker 2: and did. Specifically, he would say things like, you know,
5:48
Speaker 2: I'm a contract killer for the CIA. I gain one
5:51
Speaker 2: thousand dollars per hit. He had cigarettes, you know, was smoking.
5:54
Speaker 2: He mentioned at one point how he does this to
5:56
Speaker 2: women because he was molested by his grandfather when he
5:59
Speaker 2: was twelve. He said he was from Corpus Christi, Texas.
6:01
Speaker 2: At one point he said he's from Columbus, Ohio.
6:03
Speaker 1: He then fled with money from their purses, as well
6:06
Speaker 1: as a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. Now here's
6:09
Speaker 1: the thing, Like these women reported this, this is all to
6:11
Speaker 1: the police. And around the same time, a twenty eight
6:13
Speaker 1: year old woman who were going to call SC totally
6:15
Speaker 1: separates that reported that a man wearing sunglasses and armed
6:18
Speaker 1: with a chrome handgun abducted her Samemo on August fifth.
6:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happened is SC read the newspaper report of
6:26
Speaker 2: what happened to the twins. You know, once she read
6:28
Speaker 2: the similarities, she decided she was going to come forward.
6:30
Speaker 1: This woman said the attacker got into her car when
6:33
Speaker 1: she came out of a store in a different shopping center.
6:35
Speaker 1: This guy identified himself, according to her, as a security
6:37
Speaker 1: guard and said his name was Roger. He ordered her
6:40
Speaker 1: to drive behind a vacant building where he finled her
6:42
Speaker 1: breast and force her to perform oral sex.
6:44
Speaker 2: So it was pretty clear to the police that the
6:46
Speaker 2: same guy was responsible for all three victims in both events.
6:50
Speaker 1: Were rape kits done? Was there any testing done on
6:53
Speaker 1: any of this type of you know, whether zerological or
6:56
Speaker 1: other biological evidence?
6:58
Speaker 3: The BWNC a case, there was rape gets done on,
7:02
Speaker 3: We know that for sure.
7:04
Speaker 2: You know, they collected semen on the sweater of one
7:07
Speaker 2: of the victims, and there were hairs that were collected,
7:10
Speaker 2: you know. Unfortunately, this was an eighty eight you know,
7:12
Speaker 2: before really DNA testing was known and widely used criminal investigations.
7:17
Speaker 2: So the items in question that the perpetrator touched or
7:20
Speaker 2: might have deposited biological material on were given back to
7:23
Speaker 2: the victims by the police. So any chance for DNA
7:26
Speaker 2: testing was sort of ruined.
7:28
Speaker 1: Right, But no one even knew that until much later
7:30
Speaker 1: when the Ohio Innos project kind of involved. But in
7:32
Speaker 1: the immediate aftermath, there were these hairs that they would
7:34
Speaker 1: eventually try to match with suspects by using hair microscopy,
7:38
Speaker 1: which is a well known junk science. But they've actually
7:40
Speaker 1: got to find the suspects first, So They relied on
7:44
Speaker 1: a composite sketch from the detailed descriptions that they had
7:47
Speaker 1: received from all three victims, and the descriptions were consistent.
7:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they were very consistent all three victims. So
7:53
Speaker 2: he had his shirt unbuttoned and you could see this
7:56
Speaker 2: big like rap medallion, very dark tan.
7:59
Speaker 3: This was August.
8:00
Speaker 2: Had acne along the jaw line, and he had very
8:03
Speaker 2: specific color of hairs, brown with a reddish tint. And
8:06
Speaker 2: they described him as tall and kind of a big guy,
8:10
Speaker 2: and something like between one eighty and two fifty. I
8:12
Speaker 2: think there was a pretty broad range. The pant size
8:14
Speaker 2: that they one of them provided was smaller would be
8:17
Speaker 2: a guy more like, you know, one hundred and eighty pounds,
8:19
Speaker 2: two hundred pounds something like that.
8:21
Speaker 1: So, Dean, did any of those very specific details match you.
8:25
Speaker 3: No, they said the guy who attacked him had a
8:28
Speaker 3: dark sun tan. I'm very irish. I burn and I
8:31
Speaker 3: go back to white. You know. The person who attacked
8:34
Speaker 3: him did not have a hairy chest because the medallion.
8:38
Speaker 3: I got a bear suit on. I'm covered in hair.
8:40
Speaker 3: The person who attacked him had severe acne scars on
8:43
Speaker 3: both sides of his jawline. I did not have any
8:46
Speaker 3: of that stuff. The person who attacked him did not
8:50
Speaker 3: have a cleft chin. I've got a cleft chin. I
8:53
Speaker 3: started having gray hair on my temples in the tenth grade.
8:57
Speaker 1: Which is a feature that the victims would have mentioned
8:59
Speaker 1: it been you. And also, I understand that you have
9:02
Speaker 1: always hated cigarettes.
9:04
Speaker 3: I absolutely hate cigarettes. My dad smoked most of my
9:07
Speaker 3: life and I could I can't stand smell them. So
9:10
Speaker 3: why am I even being looked at as a suspect?
9:13
Speaker 1: And you had no idea that your moss Richard Wolf
9:17
Speaker 1: had it out for you. This bad I mean, on
9:19
Speaker 1: its face, the only thing about this crime that has
9:22
Speaker 1: any connection to you was the name Roger. Now, your
9:25
Speaker 1: full name is Roger Dean Gillespie, but you've always gone
9:28
Speaker 1: by Dean. But by the time you had been considered
9:31
Speaker 1: for this crime, a lot of time had passed by,
9:34
Speaker 1: the case had gotten cold. So since it wasn't fresh
9:36
Speaker 1: in the headlines, do we know what prompted him to
9:38
Speaker 1: try to bring you in. No.
9:39
Speaker 3: He says that he's seen a newspaper article on a
9:42
Speaker 3: bulletin board in the plant, and he went down and said, hey,
9:46
Speaker 3: check this guy out. And the first time that he
9:49
Speaker 3: went down there. He was seeing the detectives who were
9:52
Speaker 3: in charge of that case when it very first started,
9:56
Speaker 3: so they knew the case inside and out. They looked
9:58
Speaker 3: at my DMV license and seeing that I didn't fit
10:02
Speaker 3: the description at all. They knew the pants size, and
10:06
Speaker 3: when they looked at the hide and weight on me,
10:08
Speaker 3: they knew I couldn't fit into pants, which I always
10:11
Speaker 3: say one time in my life being fat was good
10:14
Speaker 3: for me.
10:14
Speaker 1: Well yeah, right, you would think.
10:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, they've done a little right up
10:19
Speaker 3: on it and disregarded me as a suspect, and that
10:22
Speaker 3: was the end of it, you know with them.
10:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, Dean was eliminated as a suspect.
10:27
Speaker 2: Time went by. The detectives on the case who eliminated
10:31
Speaker 2: Dean retired and moved out of state.
10:32
Speaker 3: After they left. My boss his best friend who was
10:36
Speaker 3: the chief of police. The chief's son was a detective. Now,
10:40
Speaker 3: so my boss he went back with the same information
10:44
Speaker 3: and said, check this guy out. I think that when
10:47
Speaker 3: he was talking to this young new detective, with him
10:50
Speaker 3: being a ex police officer and understand how the system worked,
10:54
Speaker 3: he was able to convince him that he was working
10:57
Speaker 3: in the right track. And in the right guy.
10:59
Speaker 2: Detectives more twenty six years old, takes over the case
11:02
Speaker 2: and the filed eliminating Dean disappears and we don't know
11:05
Speaker 2: what happened to it. He just decides I'm going to
11:07
Speaker 2: go out and show the victims a photo spread with Dean.
11:09
Speaker 2: And you know, you look at the photo spread, it's
11:11
Speaker 2: clear that the other five came from the same source.
11:14
Speaker 2: Dean's was a glossy and the other ones were matts.
11:16
Speaker 2: He's got a different color background. The victims to described
11:19
Speaker 2: the perpetrators having a wide face, So the picture used
11:22
Speaker 2: of Dean is like his face is taking up the
11:24
Speaker 2: entire square, so it makes his head look really big
11:26
Speaker 2: and his face wide, whereas the other five are all
11:29
Speaker 2: like back more like torso shots. And so if you
11:31
Speaker 2: look at it, you go five of these are fillers,
11:34
Speaker 2: which one doesn't fit clearly it's this one.
11:37
Speaker 3: First off, I have no animosity toward the victims in
11:41
Speaker 3: this case because they were done wrong and they were
11:44
Speaker 3: lied to, just like I was. And you got to remember,
11:47
Speaker 3: this case is two and a half years old.
11:50
Speaker 2: And studies show that you know when it's a stranger rape,
11:52
Speaker 2: your ability to identify accurately decreases steadily from the time
11:56
Speaker 2: it happens, and it's essentially down to chance by eleven months.
11:59
Speaker 2: And so you're sticking a photo spread up in front
12:01
Speaker 2: of somebody two years after the fact with an extremely
12:05
Speaker 2: suggestive lineup. That's a very dangerous situation.
12:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, they were revictimized, right, but now with
12:12
Speaker 1: the victims identifying you, they had what they needed to
12:15
Speaker 1: get an arrest warrant, even though, as we've already mentioned,
12:18
Speaker 1: other than the name Roger, you and the assailant had
12:20
Speaker 1: very little in common. It's why the initial lead detectives
12:23
Speaker 1: eliminated you as a suspect. And there's more that they
12:26
Speaker 1: discovered that should have eliminated you again, but tunnel vision
12:31
Speaker 1: and you know, perhaps maybe the detective Scott More, feeling
12:34
Speaker 1: some kind of twisted obligation to his father's best friend,
12:37
Speaker 1: may have been why they continued their pursuit of you.
12:41
Speaker 3: Dean.
12:41
Speaker 1: I mean, when did you first find out that you
12:44
Speaker 1: were being targeted in this way?
12:46
Speaker 3: I got a letter called a demand letter to come
12:49
Speaker 3: into the police department, and because I'm a dumbass, I
12:54
Speaker 3: went in and he questioned me about these incidents. Where
12:59
Speaker 3: were you at on this day, which was two years before.
13:02
Speaker 3: Who knows where they were at two years ago, But
13:04
Speaker 3: because I didn't know, he felt like I wasn't answering
13:06
Speaker 3: his questions. So weeks later is when they came to
13:10
Speaker 3: the house. They tore my house apart. You know, there's
13:12
Speaker 3: supposed to be a gun involved and everything else. I
13:15
Speaker 3: didn't have guns. There was no clothing or anything that
13:18
Speaker 3: even came close to the type of attire this person
13:21
Speaker 3: was wearing.
13:22
Speaker 1: Okay, so that you're arrested and taking out in jail.
13:24
Speaker 3: We go through the arraiement and everything. They reduced the
13:27
Speaker 3: bond down enough for me to get out, and I
13:31
Speaker 3: am in a frantic mode to try to figure out
13:34
Speaker 3: where I was at during this time. And I was
13:37
Speaker 3: very lucky enough to have two friends who kept calendars
13:40
Speaker 3: of events. You know, I was in Morehead, Kentucky on
13:44
Speaker 3: one of the days of these crimes that took place
13:46
Speaker 3: with my friends. We were skinning and fishing and just
13:49
Speaker 3: having fun at the lake. And the other one we
13:53
Speaker 3: were with some friends who had came in from college
13:55
Speaker 3: and we were out with them.
13:57
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, alibi witnesses are often easily explained away by the prosecution.
14:01
Speaker 1: As people who are willing to lie for you, including
14:03
Speaker 1: about your ability to tan. They had photographic evidence of
14:07
Speaker 1: how it would have been impossible for you to tan,
14:09
Speaker 1: but it had no effect, nor did pointing out all
14:11
Speaker 1: the other discrepancies, amongst so many other tactics. During pre
14:15
Speaker 1: Charlie defense tried to suppress the identifications for the same
14:18
Speaker 1: reasons we had mentioned earlier, which is how outrageously suggested
14:22
Speaker 1: the lineups were.
14:23
Speaker 2: It's harder to get these things suppressed even when they're suggestive.
14:26
Speaker 3: We see this a lot.
14:27
Speaker 2: The current case law by the Supreme Court is completely
14:29
Speaker 2: out of date, doesn't reflect science, and that needs a
14:32
Speaker 2: change eventually. But yeah, they allowed it in and they
14:35
Speaker 2: allowed the identification.
14:36
Speaker 1: So I want our audience to take notice here these
14:38
Speaker 1: are the steps that our guests, usually incompetent attorneys, did
14:42
Speaker 1: not take. That you might be telling yourself that you'd
14:45
Speaker 1: make sure that you and your lawyer would take. But
14:49
Speaker 1: it still made no difference to judge allowed in the IDs,
14:52
Speaker 1: and the jury was not moved by the alby witnesses
14:55
Speaker 1: nor any of the discrepancies between Dean and the assailant,
14:58
Speaker 1: so he was found guilty. But the war sentencing a
15:01
Speaker 1: defense investigator learned that hairs recovered from the victims that
15:04
Speaker 1: were said to have been lost had not only not
15:06
Speaker 1: been lost, but the crime lab had actually tested them
15:09
Speaker 1: against Dean and excluded him.
15:12
Speaker 2: They found some hairs that had been on the victim's
15:14
Speaker 2: sweaters from the August twentieth event with the twins, and
15:17
Speaker 2: they did not belong to Dean Glyspie, and so he
15:20
Speaker 2: got a new trial where they could introduce that the
15:22
Speaker 2: hairs found on the victims did not belong to Dean Gilyspian.
15:24
Speaker 3: Right.
15:24
Speaker 1: This seemed compelling at the time, but har microscopy is
15:27
Speaker 1: shaky science. At best. You might be able to eliminate
15:30
Speaker 1: someone from inclusion, but making a match with any degree
15:34
Speaker 1: of certainty is total horseshit. It could be said that
15:37
Speaker 1: practitioners of this junk science might be willing to say anything,
15:40
Speaker 1: but this is the state's evidence, and given the opportunity,
15:43
Speaker 1: they still didn't try to budge the evidence and fix
15:45
Speaker 1: it on Dean. But the idea that he could simply
15:49
Speaker 1: not have physically been the man they were describing should
15:53
Speaker 1: have been enough on top of his alibi, for which
15:56
Speaker 1: there were over twenty witnesses. So Dean what do you
15:59
Speaker 1: remember about the second trial?
16:01
Speaker 3: Things got weird because one of my friends is a
16:05
Speaker 3: pretty proficient smart ass, and when the prosecutor asked him,
16:12
Speaker 3: do you know Roger Gillespie, he said, I sure do,
16:16
Speaker 3: and he said he's in the courtroom and he said
16:19
Speaker 3: he sure is, and he said, will you pointing him
16:22
Speaker 3: out to us, and he said, he's the guy in
16:24
Speaker 3: the back sitting with the gray haired lady, which was
16:28
Speaker 3: my mom and dad. Because my name is Roger Dean
16:31
Speaker 3: Gillespie my whole entire life. The only name I've ever
16:33
Speaker 3: used is Dean Gillespie. My dad is Roger. All my friends,
16:37
Speaker 3: some of them didn't even know that my first name
16:39
Speaker 3: was Roger. So when he got off the stand, the
16:42
Speaker 3: prosecutor went to a sidebar we had twenty two other
16:46
Speaker 3: people to testify for me, and complained that all these
16:49
Speaker 3: people grew up with me, they knew me my whole life,
16:52
Speaker 3: and they were going to life for me, and they
16:54
Speaker 3: cut all of the rest of the witnesses on my side.
16:57
Speaker 1: Wow, that's is that legal?
17:01
Speaker 3: It worked?
17:01
Speaker 1: Then there was more than just these witnesses that he
17:05
Speaker 1: had an extreme dislike for cigarettes.
17:07
Speaker 2: They had pictures of him before all this happened inside
17:10
Speaker 2: his truck on the dashboard. He had a thank you
17:12
Speaker 2: for not smoking plastic sticker, like a bumper sticker. He's
17:14
Speaker 2: stuck on his dashboard and he's like the most irish,
17:17
Speaker 2: whitest guy ever. I mean, you know, you have these
17:19
Speaker 2: pictures of him before all this happened, where he's out
17:22
Speaker 2: at lakes with all his friends and they're in boats
17:24
Speaker 2: and they're skiing, and then you know, they'd be in
17:26
Speaker 2: drinking beers that night and everybody's really tan, and he's
17:28
Speaker 2: like beat red, even though he had sunscreen on and
17:31
Speaker 2: a T shirt, so he literally cannot tan. On top
17:34
Speaker 2: of that, he's somebody. It's a family trait that had
17:36
Speaker 2: been going gray since ninth grade. In high school. They
17:39
Speaker 2: called him the silver Fox, and the victims were very
17:42
Speaker 2: specific that it was brown with a reddish tent. He
17:44
Speaker 2: didn't have a reddish tent. And they were asked on
17:46
Speaker 2: the stand did he have any gray, and they all
17:48
Speaker 2: said no.
17:49
Speaker 1: There was all this evidence, and sure enough it resonated
17:54
Speaker 1: with the jury.
17:55
Speaker 3: I think it was two days they deliberated, and they
17:59
Speaker 3: came out eight to four, eight for acquittal, four for conviction,
18:04
Speaker 3: and the judge told him to go to lunch and
18:08
Speaker 3: come back and study on it some more. They came
18:10
Speaker 3: back out again at eight to four.
18:14
Speaker 2: You know, it's actually kind of amazing that the jury
18:16
Speaker 2: was eight four for acquittal when you have three victims
18:18
Speaker 2: on the stand crying who were actually raped, and you
18:21
Speaker 2: have all that emotion and they're saying, I'm one hundred
18:23
Speaker 2: percent positive that's the guy. That guy's getting convicted, even
18:25
Speaker 2: if there's all these things that don't match. So you
18:28
Speaker 2: know the fact that they were eight to four to
18:29
Speaker 2: acquit at the beginning, it shows you how bad the
18:32
Speaker 2: case was against him. And then the judge gives them
18:35
Speaker 2: what's called a dynamite charger, an Allen charge, and sends
18:37
Speaker 2: him back.
18:38
Speaker 3: And this is what happened after that. He said, I
18:42
Speaker 3: have a fishing trip. I don't want to be here.
18:45
Speaker 3: If you don't reach a verdict, You're going to be
18:48
Speaker 3: sequestered until you do, which means you are going to
18:52
Speaker 3: leave here to a hotel, no contact, and we will
18:56
Speaker 3: come back in until you reach a verdict. Forty forty
19:01
Speaker 3: five minutes later, they just came back said all up,
19:03
Speaker 3: said Gilly, And like I say, I grew up in
19:22
Speaker 3: just a great, beautiful world, and I go into a
19:27
Speaker 3: close maximum security prison where seventy percent of these people
19:32
Speaker 3: are never getting out. Your life means nothing to them.
19:36
Speaker 3: The violence is overwhelming. You know, I've been in bar
19:40
Speaker 3: fights or whatever as a kid, but I've never seen
19:42
Speaker 3: anything like this. You know, when you're in prison and
19:46
Speaker 3: you get into a fight, you are fighting for your
19:49
Speaker 3: life every time they want to test you. Soon as
19:52
Speaker 3: you get in here, what are you gonna do? You know,
19:54
Speaker 3: you're gonna be a punk and give your stuff every
19:56
Speaker 3: commissary time, and everything you own is gonna be tooken
19:59
Speaker 3: by some where. You're going to fight. Luckily, you know,
20:02
Speaker 3: I was a big enough guy, and I was very
20:04
Speaker 3: very well first in fighting, and that helped me a
20:07
Speaker 3: little bit. But still get your ass beat. You know.
20:09
Speaker 3: I started reading a lot, and I started doing artwork
20:12
Speaker 3: and listen to a lot of music and try to
20:15
Speaker 3: stay out of the way the best I could.
20:18
Speaker 1: And somehow or other, you did, and you managed to
20:20
Speaker 1: figure out how to not only survive, but to fight,
20:23
Speaker 1: to continue to fight what was really not just an
20:26
Speaker 1: uphill battle, but a virtually hopeless battle. I mean, you'd
20:28
Speaker 1: seen the worst of what they could do to a
20:29
Speaker 1: person and yet you managed to continue to advocate for yourself.
20:36
Speaker 3: You know, my mom fought and fought and fought, and
20:39
Speaker 3: she was not giving up on nothing. So I never
20:43
Speaker 3: lost hope. I always knew that I was coming out
20:47
Speaker 3: there because I didn't do this. They would file a
20:50
Speaker 3: brief file emotion and then you know, you wait and
20:53
Speaker 3: you get all excited about it, and then you get
20:55
Speaker 3: denied and that crushes it. And you start talking to
20:58
Speaker 3: these lawyers and they start explaining to you, Oh, we're
21:01
Speaker 3: going to do this, and we're going to do this,
21:03
Speaker 3: so you get a little bit more hope, and it's like, well,
21:05
Speaker 3: how long is that going to take? Well, you know
21:07
Speaker 3: it's not gonna happen overnight, so you know, the years
21:11
Speaker 3: just start clicking off while you're filing these motions and
21:15
Speaker 3: they keep getting denied, to the point of I said,
21:18
Speaker 3: do not send me these motions no more. I don't
21:21
Speaker 3: want to read them. I don't want to see them
21:23
Speaker 3: because I get too hyped up. I just want to
21:25
Speaker 3: get my mind into a state where it's the same
21:27
Speaker 3: every day and not keep doing this up and down thing.
21:31
Speaker 3: I tried to clear my mind every day and then
21:34
Speaker 3: start the next day to be as positive and as
21:36
Speaker 3: happy as I could be every day just to try
21:39
Speaker 3: to keep my sanity.
21:40
Speaker 1: I tell you, one of the sator people, I know
21:42
Speaker 1: maybe I'm missing something. But and then in two thousand
21:45
Speaker 1: and three, you get a break when you'll highly missis
21:48
Speaker 1: project began representing you.
21:50
Speaker 3: Right.
21:50
Speaker 2: So in November of two thousand and two, I got
21:52
Speaker 2: hired as a law professor teach criminal law at the
21:55
Speaker 2: University of Cincinnati College of Law. But I wasn't going
21:57
Speaker 2: to start un till the following year when classes start
21:59
Speaker 2: August of two thousand and three. And John Cranley was
22:02
Speaker 2: a city councilman at that time in Cincinnati. He later
22:05
Speaker 2: became the mayor, and he wanted to do something positive
22:08
Speaker 2: with his law degree in addition to be a city
22:09
Speaker 2: council so he was trying to start an innocence project
22:12
Speaker 2: at u SEE Law School. Couldn't get the dean to bite,
22:14
Speaker 2: couldn't get any professors to bite. So I get hired,
22:17
Speaker 2: and I have been a prosecutor by this point in time.
22:19
Speaker 2: I was very bought into the idea that people are
22:21
Speaker 2: wrongfully convicted and we need to make some reforms in
22:23
Speaker 2: the system. So when he approaches me and says, I've
22:26
Speaker 2: been trying to get this school to start one will
22:27
Speaker 2: you help run it with me? And I'm like, yeah,
22:29
Speaker 2: let's do it. So we have our first fundraiser shortly
22:33
Speaker 2: after I was hired. It was November of two thousand
22:35
Speaker 2: and two, and there's some newspaper coverage of that fundraiser,
22:39
Speaker 2: and in January, Wana Gillispie, Dean's mom, before I even
22:43
Speaker 2: had started at u See Law, before we'd officially launched
22:45
Speaker 2: the Innocence Project, she tracks me down, comes to my
22:48
Speaker 2: office with a big box of files and says, you
22:50
Speaker 2: know you're going to take this case. It starts like
22:52
Speaker 2: pitching it to me. My son's Ennison. He didn't do this,
22:55
Speaker 2: so it was literally the first one we were looking into.
22:58
Speaker 2: Our first angle we started looking at the case in
23:00
Speaker 2: two thousand and three was to see if there was
23:02
Speaker 2: any DNA to test, and there were some hairs that
23:05
Speaker 2: were collected off of the victim's sweaters, but it turns
23:08
Speaker 2: out that most of them belonged to them. We did
23:10
Speaker 2: do DNA testing on those, but they were irrelevant. They
23:12
Speaker 2: didn't match Dean, they didn't match anybody. Most of them
23:14
Speaker 2: were the victim's own hairs. There was no semen that
23:17
Speaker 2: was actually preserved that we could test, even though there
23:20
Speaker 2: was some at the crime scene. We tried to see
23:22
Speaker 2: if there was anything. Again, our history tells us that
23:25
Speaker 2: they'll say things are destroyed, but when you really dig in,
23:28
Speaker 2: sometimes you'll find the semen even though they said they
23:30
Speaker 2: destroyed it. But in this case, it really was destroyed.
23:32
Speaker 2: There was nothing we could do other than the hairs,
23:34
Speaker 2: which turned out to be uneventful.
23:36
Speaker 1: So now without the easier of the irrefutable smoking gun
23:39
Speaker 1: evidence seminal DNA in a rape case, you had to
23:43
Speaker 1: buckle in and prove it with a more full investigation.
23:47
Speaker 1: And Dean's case, because it's just so monstrously egregious, there
23:51
Speaker 1: was plenty of it, including a more likely suspect during
23:55
Speaker 1: the initial investigation, which was a guy named Kevin Cobb.
23:59
Speaker 2: So at some point after Dean was convicted, a phone
24:03
Speaker 2: call had come in to I believe his attorney's office.
24:06
Speaker 2: Somebody had made an anonymous phone call saying the guy
24:08
Speaker 2: who committed these crimes, his name is Kevin Cobb. It
24:10
Speaker 2: was like a notation to that effect in the file.
24:13
Speaker 2: And this person wouldn't give their name. They said, you know,
24:16
Speaker 2: I worked with him at Correctional Institute. But he's the
24:19
Speaker 2: one who committed these crimes at Dean Gillispies And so
24:21
Speaker 2: we start investigating Kevin Cobb. First thing we do is
24:24
Speaker 2: get his rap sheet. He has a history of pretending
24:27
Speaker 2: to be a police officer, flashing a badge and committing crimes.
24:30
Speaker 2: And you start looking into those cases. You know he's
24:32
Speaker 2: arrested in this year of domestic violence. So we go
24:35
Speaker 2: pull that file and we can get the name of
24:37
Speaker 2: the female victim. So we start going and talking to
24:40
Speaker 2: some of these ex girlfriends and stuff, and what do
24:42
Speaker 2: we find out. He would get drunk and tell people
24:44
Speaker 2: he's a contract killer for the CIA, gets a thousand
24:47
Speaker 2: dollars per hit. He told one girlfriend I was molested
24:51
Speaker 2: by my grandfather when I was twelve. He tells people
24:53
Speaker 2: he's from Columbus, Ohio and Corpus Christi, Texas. In fact,
24:57
Speaker 2: he had been stationed in the Marines at Corpus Christy
24:59
Speaker 2: for a while. Exactly what the rapist said. We talked
25:02
Speaker 2: to people who knew him back at the same time
25:04
Speaker 2: of these crimes, to the point of going to his
25:06
Speaker 2: high school, getting his senior yearbook, tracking down people that
25:10
Speaker 2: had lived in that town and knew him around the
25:12
Speaker 2: same age. We found incidents of him wearing a medallion
25:15
Speaker 2: around the same year, flashing a badge, pretending to be
25:17
Speaker 2: a cop. We found incidents of him using the name
25:20
Speaker 2: of Roger. We heard the history of how he developed
25:22
Speaker 2: that fake name. There was a mentally challenged young man
25:26
Speaker 2: in their town named Roger who would walk around town
25:30
Speaker 2: and Kevin Cobb would make fun of him, would imitate
25:33
Speaker 2: him and say I'm Roger, you know, mimicking Roger's voice,
25:36
Speaker 2: And when he was acting crazy, he would take on
25:39
Speaker 2: this Roger persona. So we had incidents where he would
25:41
Speaker 2: commit crimes, flash of badge and use the name of Roger.
25:44
Speaker 2: And then we get a picture of him from nineteen
25:45
Speaker 2: eighty eight, and composite sketches are usually not very accurate,
25:49
Speaker 2: but it looks just like the composite sketch. We found
25:52
Speaker 2: out from the people who knew him that he got
25:54
Speaker 2: very tan in the summer, he was a smoker. Everything
25:57
Speaker 2: just matched up. It was uncanny.
26:00
Speaker 1: An Ohio Corrections Officer, Jesus Christ. I mean almost all
26:05
Speaker 1: of the villains in this story are part of the system.
26:08
Speaker 1: And I say almost because not only did the initial
26:11
Speaker 1: investigators Fritz and Bailey do the right thing. But now,
26:14
Speaker 1: in the lead up to filing the two thousand and
26:17
Speaker 1: seven post conviction filing, the former Ohio Attorney General Jim
26:21
Speaker 1: Pietrow actually joined Dean's legal team.
26:24
Speaker 2: The main allegations were the Kevin Cobb, but also the
26:27
Speaker 2: fact that the original investigation had eliminated Dean. We were
26:30
Speaker 2: able to talk to Fritz and Bailey, who told us
26:32
Speaker 2: all about the original investigation. They gave us affidavits that
26:34
Speaker 2: they had created reports eliminating Dean as a suspect. They
26:37
Speaker 2: talked about the pant size discrepancy, everything else, that those
26:39
Speaker 2: had disappeared and the jury had never heard about them.
26:42
Speaker 2: So there were multiple claims that we filed in two
26:44
Speaker 2: thousand and seven.
26:45
Speaker 1: So things now appear to be looking up. After all,
26:47
Speaker 1: you had the super compelling alternative suspect evidence about Kevin Cobb.
26:52
Speaker 1: In addition to Jim Petrow and your team, the original
26:55
Speaker 1: detective Fritz and Bailey were on board and supporting the
26:57
Speaker 1: Brady claim that all of their work from the initial
27:00
Speaker 1: investigation had been disappeared or gone missing and therefore was
27:03
Speaker 1: not shared with the defense. It seems like you finally
27:06
Speaker 1: really had momentum on your side.
27:08
Speaker 2: The judge that Dean had at that time who had
27:10
Speaker 2: taken over for the trial judge. His name was aj Wagner,
27:14
Speaker 2: and we could not have drawn a worse judge, extremely
27:16
Speaker 2: hostile to the idea that somebody could be wrongfully convicted
27:19
Speaker 2: that eyewitnessed it can be wrong, extremely hostile to basically us.
27:24
Speaker 2: And we presented the evidence and he denied it outright
27:28
Speaker 2: without a hearing, so we had to appeal. The appellate
27:31
Speaker 2: court denied us on the Brady claim, which is the
27:34
Speaker 2: missing file, but said that the judge should have had
27:36
Speaker 2: a hearing on Kevin Cobb. So at that point the
27:39
Speaker 2: case breaks in half. The Brady claim, since we lost
27:43
Speaker 2: in the Court of Appeals, continues up the appellate chain
27:45
Speaker 2: to the High Supreme Court, and the Kevin Cobb part
27:48
Speaker 2: of it is sent back down the lower step to
27:51
Speaker 2: the trial court for a hearing, which is like a trial.
27:53
Speaker 1: And we'll catch up with the Brady portion of the
27:55
Speaker 1: case in a bit, but first you've got to go
27:57
Speaker 1: back to the trial court with the Kevin Cobb issue
27:59
Speaker 1: in front of this super hostile judge.
28:01
Speaker 2: Again, just to show you what type of judge aj
28:04
Speaker 2: Wagner was there was a whole other part of the
28:07
Speaker 2: case where Dean on the August twentieth incident was actually
28:11
Speaker 2: camping in Kentucky with friends, and when his investigator had
28:15
Speaker 2: gone down to try to get the receipts to show
28:17
Speaker 2: he had been camping that weekend, they were missing. So
28:19
Speaker 2: of course they cross examined more on the stand during
28:21
Speaker 2: the trial and he's like, no, I never went down there.
28:23
Speaker 2: I never took those receipts. When it became public we
28:25
Speaker 2: were working on the case, a cop reached out to
28:27
Speaker 2: us who said, I actually know that he did go
28:30
Speaker 2: down there, because he admitted it to me, and we
28:31
Speaker 2: tried to get an affidavit from him, and the officer said,
28:34
Speaker 2: I can't cross the blue line like that. I just
28:36
Speaker 2: want you to know you're on the right track. And
28:38
Speaker 2: at that point I started secretly recording this officer. So
28:42
Speaker 2: when we go to file for Dean in two thousand
28:44
Speaker 2: and seven, we attach Affi Davids saying what this guy
28:47
Speaker 2: had said to us. They file a response and they
28:49
Speaker 2: get this cop to say, I never said that they're lying,
28:52
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah blah. On our reply brief. We
28:54
Speaker 2: go we got you on tape talking about it. So
28:56
Speaker 2: AJ Wagner denies us on that claim. Again, we don't
28:59
Speaker 2: have a hearing. And after it's over and the case
29:02
Speaker 2: goes to a Court of Appeals, I get a call
29:04
Speaker 2: saying AJ Wagner wants to have a status conference. I'm thinking,
29:07
Speaker 2: why does he want a status conference? The case is
29:09
Speaker 2: in the Court of Appeals. Now, this is like not
29:10
Speaker 2: even his jurisdiction. So we get on this teleconference on
29:13
Speaker 2: the phone. The Prosecutor's on the phone and Jim Petro's
29:15
Speaker 2: on the phone, and AJ Wagner goes, oh, thanks everybody
29:18
Speaker 2: for coming together. Yeah, I just wanted to get the
29:20
Speaker 2: parties together because Professor Godsee secretly recorded a police officer
29:25
Speaker 2: without his knowledge, which is a federal crime. And I'm
29:27
Speaker 2: letting everybody know that I'm turning the evidence over to
29:30
Speaker 2: federal prosecutors. And then there was this like awkward pause,
29:34
Speaker 2: and Jim Petrow goes, Judge, it's not a federal crime
29:38
Speaker 2: to secretly record a police officer. It's legal in Ohio.
29:41
Speaker 2: And then Judge Wagner goes, Dan, this is the name
29:43
Speaker 2: of the prosecutor.
29:44
Speaker 3: Is that your view? Yeah, Judge, I.
29:46
Speaker 2: Don't think it's illegal, and AJ Wagner goes, well, I'll
29:51
Speaker 2: look into it a little bit, Mark, and it just
29:53
Speaker 2: hangs up the phone and I never hear anything about
29:56
Speaker 2: it again. That shows you what kind of judges we
29:58
Speaker 2: sometimes deal with. An Aja Wagner's about as bad as
30:00
Speaker 2: a kids.
30:15
Speaker 1: So the Brady claim was still being litigated in the
30:18
Speaker 1: background as the Kevin Cobb issue was being sent back
30:21
Speaker 1: down to the trial court. And now AJ Wagner was
30:24
Speaker 1: expected to be impartial when he was being forced by
30:27
Speaker 1: the appellate court to hear all of the evidence that
30:29
Speaker 1: you had compiled on Kevin Cobb, especially after he had
30:32
Speaker 1: embarrassed himself in front of his colleagues and the veteran
30:35
Speaker 1: prosecutors he had spoken to about indicting Mark. Right, and
30:39
Speaker 1: this guy is your judge.
30:41
Speaker 2: So we had a hearing in front of AJ Wagner,
30:44
Speaker 2: which is like a trial. That's what we call witnesses.
30:47
Speaker 2: They come and testify about Kevin Cobb. You know, we
30:49
Speaker 2: call these ex girlfriends, these people that Kevin Cobb had
30:52
Speaker 2: committed crimes against, who talked about He used the name Roger.
30:55
Speaker 2: He flashed a badge. You know, he was very tan.
30:58
Speaker 2: He claimed to be a contract killer for the CEA,
31:00
Speaker 2: all those things I talked about that make an uncanny
31:03
Speaker 2: match from Kevin Cobb to this crime, and then Judge
31:06
Speaker 2: Wagner summarily dismissed it. So we then appealed that back
31:09
Speaker 2: up to the Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, the half that
31:12
Speaker 2: we lost on the Brady claim and the appellate court,
31:15
Speaker 2: we appealed to the highest Supreme Court, where we lost.
31:18
Speaker 2: At that point, since it was a constitutional claim Brady,
31:21
Speaker 2: that gave us jurisdiction to take the case into what's
31:23
Speaker 2: called federal habeas, So we filed a federal habeas petition.
31:26
Speaker 1: So this Brady issue that the initial detectives Fritz and
31:30
Speaker 1: Bailey had ruled Dean out as a suspect and the
31:32
Speaker 1: file was hidden from the defense. They received a hearing
31:35
Speaker 1: at federal court on this issue in front of Judge
31:37
Speaker 1: Michael Murrs. Fritz and Bailey testified again about all the
31:41
Speaker 1: physical discrepancies that they had written a report about, the hair,
31:44
Speaker 1: the skin, the cleft chin, the pants couldn't have fit,
31:48
Speaker 1: so you must have quit. In addition, they were suspicious
31:51
Speaker 1: of Wolfe's tip, calling it quote unquote particularly unreliable because
31:55
Speaker 1: the composite sketch had been posted at the GM plant
31:58
Speaker 1: since shortly after the assaults, but Wolfe only went to
32:01
Speaker 1: the police after a nasty fight resulting in Dean being fired.
32:04
Speaker 1: So they wrote this report about Dean not being a
32:07
Speaker 1: viable suspect and it was never seen by the defense,
32:10
Speaker 1: along with the campground receipts that the chief's son, Scott Moore,
32:14
Speaker 1: never turned over either. And the decision came down on
32:17
Speaker 1: December sixteenth, twenty eleven.
32:19
Speaker 2: You know, in this day and age, when they issued
32:21
Speaker 2: a decision, they email it. An email had come from
32:24
Speaker 2: the federal court, and I see that we won the case.
32:26
Speaker 2: He threw out Dean's conviction based on the Brady claim.
32:29
Speaker 2: So I immediately drive up to Dayton, which is only
32:32
Speaker 2: about forty five minutes from Cincinnati. I don't tell anybody,
32:35
Speaker 2: and I knock on the door of Dean's mom and dad,
32:38
Speaker 2: Wan and Roger Gillispie for twenty years.
32:41
Speaker 3: Well we won Dean's case. What judge murs throughout the.
32:45
Speaker 4: Counts kidd me, oh my god, come.
33:05
Speaker 3: In here to have a seat.
33:09
Speaker 1: This is the sound, the heart wrenching sound of a
33:13
Speaker 1: mother's grief. But it all means that her boy was
33:17
Speaker 1: finally coming home after so many years lost. And it
33:20
Speaker 1: took about a week for you to get out. You
33:23
Speaker 1: were released on bond with an ankle monitor, just in
33:25
Speaker 1: time for the holidays.
33:27
Speaker 3: A US Marshall came and got me. It was December
33:31
Speaker 3: twenty second, so everyone was basically shut down and closing
33:35
Speaker 3: up for the holidays. So she picks me up and
33:39
Speaker 3: I'm like, where's everybody at what's going on? She goes
33:42
Speaker 3: right down the road. So we drive down the road
33:44
Speaker 3: to a bowling alley right around the corner from the prison.
33:47
Speaker 3: You could actually see the place from the wreckyard on
33:50
Speaker 3: the back side of the prison when you're walking the track.
33:53
Speaker 3: And I go into this bowling alley. All my family's there,
33:57
Speaker 3: all my friends, the media was everywhere. One of them
34:01
Speaker 3: asked me, how does it feel to be free? And
34:03
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm looking around the room and I knew
34:07
Speaker 3: all these people that were bowling because they were guards
34:11
Speaker 3: from the prison. It was Garden League bowling night from
34:14
Speaker 3: the prison. And it's like, oh my god, man, am
34:18
Speaker 3: I free? Or am I a purgatory?
34:20
Speaker 1: It was very much of legal purgatory, because yeah, you
34:24
Speaker 1: were released, but you were wearing an ankle monitor and
34:26
Speaker 1: the case had not been officially dismissed. Meanwhile, the other issue,
34:30
Speaker 1: the alternative suspect Kevin Cobb, that was still being litigated.
34:34
Speaker 1: Now last we checked, AJ Wagner had just denied you
34:37
Speaker 1: on that issue, and your team appealed to the decision.
34:39
Speaker 2: Four months later, in April of twenty twelve, we went
34:42
Speaker 2: in the Court of Appeals on Kevin Cobb. So he's
34:45
Speaker 2: like double released. He's the only exonery I know of
34:47
Speaker 2: in the country that was exonerated twice on two totally
34:51
Speaker 2: independent grounds, Like if you take away the Brady, he
34:53
Speaker 2: still would have been exonerated on Kevin Cobb. If you
34:55
Speaker 2: take away Kevin Cobby, he still would have been exonerated
34:57
Speaker 2: on Brady. And they're totally independent of one another. So
35:00
Speaker 2: he was like double exoneration.
35:02
Speaker 1: So the state would have to fight this on two
35:04
Speaker 1: fronts in order to get you back in and considering
35:07
Speaker 1: the evidence in this, a normal person would just let
35:09
Speaker 1: this go right, So you guys filed to have the
35:11
Speaker 1: charges dismissed and that was dragged out until twenty fifteen
35:14
Speaker 1: when Montgomery Court of Common Please Judge Stephen Dankoff granted
35:18
Speaker 1: the motion to dismiss the indictment. The state appealed it
35:22
Speaker 1: dragged it out for another two years. Of July twenty six,
35:24
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, so almost six years later, the decision was
35:29
Speaker 1: finally upheld and the case was dismissed.
35:32
Speaker 3: That was the federal side, the Brady violation, that was
35:36
Speaker 3: in the federal court, and that's what got dismissed there,
35:40
Speaker 3: And then we had alternate suspect in the state court.
35:45
Speaker 3: I didn't get officially all the way done until December
35:49
Speaker 3: ninth of twenty twenty one.
35:52
Speaker 1: Ten years. I mean not only your time, but their time,
35:56
Speaker 1: which actually belongs to the taxpayers and the public. I mean,
36:00
Speaker 1: considering all the shit that we all now know about
36:04
Speaker 1: this case, like why continue this charade?
36:09
Speaker 3: And you gotta look at the money. You gotta look
36:11
Speaker 3: at the money that was wasted. It was just, you know,
36:13
Speaker 3: waste it on frivolous nothing. Just like what are you doing? Right?
36:18
Speaker 1: And think of all the better things they could have
36:20
Speaker 1: been doing with their time and our money. You know,
36:22
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that a single one of their constituents
36:25
Speaker 1: wants this done in their name. This was the alternative
36:30
Speaker 1: suspect part of the case. We're not positive that Kevin
36:33
Speaker 1: Cobb was the assailant, but the evidence certainly pointed in
36:36
Speaker 1: his direction. And in continuing to try to maintain Dean's conviction,
36:40
Speaker 1: they just doubled down on letting whoever the actual assailant was,
36:43
Speaker 1: go free and stay free. Another thing that I can
36:46
Speaker 1: bet that all of their constituents would be firmly opposed to.
36:50
Speaker 1: But now you've finally been fully exonerated, and there's a
36:54
Speaker 1: bittersweetness to this part of the story. You pursued Miami
36:58
Speaker 1: Township Police Department as well as the tech to Scott
37:00
Speaker 1: more Civilly Right.
37:02
Speaker 3: For the civil suit. In November of twenty two, we
37:06
Speaker 3: started a week of preparation for the federal civil suit.
37:10
Speaker 3: We went through a two week trial. The PTSD was
37:14
Speaker 3: off the charts for me. It was just unbelievable to
37:17
Speaker 3: sit through all that. But we get through it and
37:20
Speaker 3: the judge sent them back to deliberate, and they deliberated
37:24
Speaker 3: about three hours. They asked one question and that was
37:28
Speaker 3: do legal fees come out of damages? And then we knew, like,
37:34
Speaker 3: oh shit, they're on the right track. They went to
37:36
Speaker 3: lunch and then came back set us in the court
37:39
Speaker 3: and then they got to the money amount of damages
37:45
Speaker 3: and it was a shot around the world at forty
37:48
Speaker 3: five million dollars.
37:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, obviously no amount of money would ever
37:53
Speaker 1: give you that time back. But you know it is
37:55
Speaker 1: the largest verdict in Ohio state history. Correct.
37:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't do it again for a hundred million dollars.
38:02
Speaker 3: You couldn't say in nineteen ninety one, We're gonna send
38:04
Speaker 3: you to prison for twenty years for one hundred million dollars.
38:07
Speaker 3: I wouldn't do it. First. You got to survive the
38:09
Speaker 3: twenty years. You know, there is no way in the
38:12
Speaker 3: world any money, you know, send me back to twenty
38:15
Speaker 3: five years old. Do that. You know, keep your money
38:18
Speaker 3: and put me back in that era. But you know
38:20
Speaker 3: that you can't get it back. And that was one
38:22
Speaker 3: of my things with the PTSD in the court was
38:25
Speaker 3: when they talked about the amount of time and they
38:29
Speaker 3: would always say, you can never get that back. And
38:33
Speaker 3: while I'm sitting there, it is just like smacking me
38:36
Speaker 3: in the face, like my God, it's gone and it
38:39
Speaker 3: isn't coming back. This here is not going to make
38:42
Speaker 3: that come back. I mean, I've got a lot of
38:44
Speaker 3: things I want to do. Got car building on my mind.
38:47
Speaker 3: I'm doing one now, Just things like that. I'm setting
38:50
Speaker 3: up a trust for my great niece who's seven, you know,
38:53
Speaker 3: to hopefully, you know, make this money grow into something
38:56
Speaker 3: that would be a legacy. But definitely going to be
39:00
Speaker 3: supporting our Ohio project.
39:02
Speaker 1: I'd like to encourage our audience to support the Ohio
39:05
Speaker 1: Innocence Project. We're gonna have LinkedIn the bio because without them,
39:09
Speaker 1: Dean would not be out here with us along with
39:12
Speaker 1: so many others.
39:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I I was the first case the Ohio Instance
39:17
Speaker 3: Project took the fourteenth person we got out. Artist is
39:21
Speaker 3: our twenty year anniversary. We've got thirty nine people out.
39:24
Speaker 1: Well, Mark, you, Jennifer, the whole crew. You're all doing
39:29
Speaker 1: phenomenal work. And here's to the next thirty nine. And
39:33
Speaker 1: now we go to the closing of our show. So
39:36
Speaker 1: of course this is called closing arguments. I love this
39:42
Speaker 1: segment and I love it because it's a part where
39:45
Speaker 1: I get to, first of all, thank you two for
39:48
Speaker 1: being here and sharing this incredible, incredible story with me
39:51
Speaker 1: and our amazing audience. And so how this works is
39:54
Speaker 1: I'm gonna turn my microphone off, kick back in my
39:56
Speaker 1: chair with my headphones on, close my eyes, and just
39:59
Speaker 1: listen to any closing thoughts that you guys want to share. Mark,
40:03
Speaker 1: why don't you start and Dean, you take us off
40:06
Speaker 1: into the sunset.
40:08
Speaker 2: A grave injustice occurred against Dean. Grave injustices and unfairness
40:12
Speaker 2: occurred to people all the time. And you can say, well,
40:17
Speaker 2: you know, how can we take this and how can
40:19
Speaker 2: he get complete vindication? And you can dream of the
40:23
Speaker 2: steps that you would go through to win your case,
40:25
Speaker 2: to get free to then you know, win some huge
40:29
Speaker 2: settlement right in the face of the cop who did
40:31
Speaker 2: this to you. That's like the movie Shawshank Redemption, where
40:34
Speaker 2: he gets his revenge and everything turns out the way
40:37
Speaker 2: it should. In real life, that doesn't happen. It never
40:41
Speaker 2: happens the way it should. But in Dean's case it did.
40:44
Speaker 2: And you know, we sat in prison and talked about
40:46
Speaker 2: his wrongful conviction all the way back in two thousand
40:48
Speaker 2: and three and two thousand and four, and it looked
40:50
Speaker 2: like such a long shot to get this overturned, and
40:52
Speaker 2: everything that should have happened to vindicate him just happened
40:55
Speaker 2: like a Hollywood story. And I'm so happy for him.
40:59
Speaker 3: I wish this.
41:00
Speaker 2: I wish other people who've had these wrawful convictions happened
41:03
Speaker 2: to them could have the Hollywood story play out the
41:05
Speaker 2: way it has.
41:07
Speaker 3: People always ask what is the fix? What is the fix?
41:10
Speaker 3: I don't know that there's a fix. I feel like
41:14
Speaker 3: we need term limits on prosecutors. We need to figure
41:19
Speaker 3: out this system where the judge is put in place,
41:22
Speaker 3: like the federal system, because when you have a judge
41:26
Speaker 3: who's going to be on your television saying I'm going
41:28
Speaker 3: to be tough on crime, he's already formulated an opinion,
41:32
Speaker 3: so he's biased to start with. I think that's a
41:36
Speaker 3: start in this. But we got other issues with this problem,
41:40
Speaker 3: and that is the folks who are in states that
41:43
Speaker 3: don't get compensated. They also don't get credit for Social Security,
41:49
Speaker 3: and that is a huge issue for folks who are
41:51
Speaker 3: going to have to work the rest of their life.
41:53
Speaker 3: We need to try to figure out a fix for that.
41:55
Speaker 3: I know that's a huge undertaking and complicated thing, but
41:59
Speaker 3: we got to have compensation across America. Until then, we
42:02
Speaker 3: need to fix the social security so so folks can
42:05
Speaker 3: not have to work their whole life because they spent
42:08
Speaker 3: time in prison. And didn't pay in. And thank God
42:11
Speaker 3: for the Innocence Project, thank God for Barry and Peter,
42:14
Speaker 3: you know, the projects all across America. And you know,
42:17
Speaker 3: I can't never say enough about Mark Gazzi who saved
42:20
Speaker 3: my life, and the kids who work at our program
42:23
Speaker 3: with the University of Cincinnati Law School. Just you know,
42:26
Speaker 3: support these organizations because this is still going on. This
42:30
Speaker 3: is still happening. The man just got out of Arizona
42:33
Speaker 3: with fifty three years in so this can't keep going.
42:36
Speaker 3: It can't keep happening. We've got to fix this problem.
42:46
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Rafel Conviction. I'd like to
42:49
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis,
42:53
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
42:56
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
43:00
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
43:03
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
43:07
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
43:10
Speaker 1: all three platforms. You can also follow me on both
43:13
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is
43:17
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Speaker 1: signal Company Number one