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#236 Jason Flom with Thomas Haynesworth · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: Beginning on January third, nineteen eighty four, and stretching over
0:05
Speaker 1: the next five weeks, five women were victims of some
0:08
Speaker 1: degree of sexual assault in East Richmond, Virginia. Due to
0:12
Speaker 1: the location, nature of the attacks and similar descriptions of
0:15
Speaker 1: the assailant, police believed that there was a single attacker.
0:19
Speaker 1: On February fifth, nineteen eighty four, eighteen year old Thomas
0:22
Speaker 1: Hainsworth was misidentified.
0:23
Speaker 2: By one of the victims and arrested.
0:25
Speaker 1: All five victims eventually echoed the misidentification. Two of the
0:30
Speaker 1: attacks included biological evidence, but in nineteen eighty four, with
0:34
Speaker 1: no DNA testing available, roology could only determine that Thomas's blood.
0:39
Speaker 2: Type matched that of the attacker.
0:41
Speaker 1: After one of the charges was dropped, he was tried
0:43
Speaker 1: four separate times, convicted in three cases, and sentenced to
0:48
Speaker 1: seventy four years. Although Thomas was in custody, the assaults
0:51
Speaker 1: continued through December of nineteen eighty four, concluding with the
0:55
Speaker 1: arrest of Leon Davis, a neighbor of Thomas's. According to
0:58
Speaker 1: both men, they wrongly resembled one another. Despite their similar
1:03
Speaker 1: appearances and the continued attacks. Authorities maintained that both men
1:07
Speaker 1: were guilty. Finally, in two thousand and five, DNA testing
1:10
Speaker 1: excluded Thomas from his only conviction in which there was
1:14
Speaker 1: biological evidence, simultaneously inculpating Leon Davis. After an investigation, the
1:20
Speaker 1: prosecutors joined Thomas and the mid Atlantic Inniscence Project, laying
1:24
Speaker 1: responsibility for all of the attacks on mister Davis. Yet,
1:28
Speaker 1: even without opposition, Thomas's case just barely succeeded in the
1:32
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals, but nevertheless he was finally exonerated after
1:37
Speaker 1: twenty seven years. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
1:56
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flaman. I want to
1:59
Speaker 1: start by say this episode demonstrates a classic example of
2:03
Speaker 1: why eyewitness identification is so terribly unreliable and why we
2:08
Speaker 1: must keep working to institute practices that safeguard us against
2:14
Speaker 1: the problems with cross racial misidentification as happened in this case,
2:20
Speaker 1: keeping an innocent man in prison for twenty seven years.
2:23
Speaker 1: And that man is our guest today, Thomas Hainsworth. Thomas,
2:28
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you here, even though I
2:31
Speaker 1: hate the reason why you're here, but thank you for taking.
2:34
Speaker 2: The time to be with us on the show today.
2:36
Speaker 1: You're wil And with Thomas as somebody who our avid
2:40
Speaker 1: listeners will recognize. Sean Arburst is the sort of the
2:45
Speaker 1: straw that stirs the drink at the mid Atlantic Innocence Project.
2:48
Speaker 1: She is an attorney, she's an advocate, she's a fighter,
2:52
Speaker 1: and she's my friend. And I'm super glad to have
2:55
Speaker 1: you here as well, Shawn, So welcome back to Rawful Conviction.
2:58
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jason. Great to be here, and it always
3:01
Speaker 3: grew to be with Thomas.
3:03
Speaker 1: So Thomas, take us back, if you would, what was
3:06
Speaker 1: your life like growing up?
3:08
Speaker 4: No, Michelle grew up with three sisters and a younger brother,
3:12
Speaker 4: you know, into sports, into music, Like I said, my
3:15
Speaker 4: child it was falling friend, you know.
3:17
Speaker 1: And you grew up in Richmond, Virginia.
3:19
Speaker 2: Is that right, right?
3:20
Speaker 5: Richmond, Virginia? Right?
3:22
Speaker 1: So it sounds about like what the childhood is more
3:25
Speaker 1: or less I want to say supposed to be like,
3:27
Speaker 1: but pretty much sports music. You know. I'm sure you
3:30
Speaker 1: had your ups and downs like any other teenager. But
3:32
Speaker 1: a series of terrible, terrible crimes sort of rock the
3:36
Speaker 1: city of Richmond at this time. And Sean, can you
3:40
Speaker 1: describe to us what happened?
3:42
Speaker 3: So the crimes Thomas initially got caught up in were
3:46
Speaker 3: a group of five crimes between January third and February
3:50
Speaker 3: first of nineteen eighty four, and they were all rapes
3:53
Speaker 3: or sexual assaults in the tiny corner of Richmond that's
3:57
Speaker 3: also right on the border of Henryko County. It was
4:00
Speaker 3: four crimes in Richmond, one in Henrico County. And these
4:04
Speaker 3: are eerily similar crimes. They happen at the same time
4:07
Speaker 3: of day, all white victims. They all describe I mean,
4:12
Speaker 3: it's a fairly generic description because it's white victims describing
4:15
Speaker 3: a black perpetrator. But they all describe someone who looks
4:19
Speaker 3: fairly similar, someone who typically approaches with a knife, who
4:26
Speaker 3: has a series of kind of odd behaviors, says a
4:28
Speaker 3: bunch of odd things. So the sort of prototypical one
4:32
Speaker 3: of these crimes was either early in the morning or
4:36
Speaker 3: right around dusk. Victim would be approached by a perpetrator
4:41
Speaker 3: outside on the street, and the perpetrator would take the
4:45
Speaker 3: victim to various locations and commit different types of sexual assault,
4:50
Speaker 3: so sometimes vaginal rape, sometimes oral sodomy, sometimes adle sodomy,
4:55
Speaker 3: and would make the victims kind of pretend to be
4:58
Speaker 3: his girlfriend as they were walking around. And when you're
5:02
Speaker 3: looking at a pattern like this, obviously not every crime
5:06
Speaker 3: fits precisely into the pattern. Some get interrupted. In this case,
5:11
Speaker 3: the attacker was pretty easily scared away. This is part
5:13
Speaker 3: of how he avoided being caught for so long. But
5:17
Speaker 3: it's that same basic arc and these are terrifying crimes.
5:23
Speaker 1: And the first case the one that said all of
5:25
Speaker 1: this in motion. I believe it was not only the
5:27
Speaker 1: crime itself that was so jarring, but also the location
5:32
Speaker 1: that had occurred in that threw the story to the forefront.
5:34
Speaker 1: So tell us what happened there.
5:36
Speaker 3: The first case took place on January third, and the
5:40
Speaker 3: victim in that case went to her work at a
5:43
Speaker 3: church preschool and she was waiting for students to come
5:47
Speaker 3: in for the day and was very quickly accosted by
5:51
Speaker 3: a rapist who held her at nice point, raped her,
5:55
Speaker 3: and ran away as the first parents started coming in
5:59
Speaker 3: for the day. And so, you know, if you can
6:01
Speaker 3: imagine it, a woman who she's in her late teen's
6:04
Speaker 3: early twenties, she is in a church, she is waiting
6:09
Speaker 3: for three year olds to come in and is dealing
6:12
Speaker 3: with the fact that she's just been raped. So right,
6:15
Speaker 3: off the bat, these crimes are really horrific and the
6:20
Speaker 3: kind of crime that make you think you're not safe anywhere, right,
6:23
Speaker 3: And I think it's that mentality that really started making
6:27
Speaker 3: these crimes particularly high profile in Richmond.
6:31
Speaker 1: And the second crime took place just a few weeks
6:34
Speaker 1: after the first, on January twenty first, and it took
6:36
Speaker 1: place in a grocery store. Again, I think it added
6:40
Speaker 1: to the horror that these assaults were happening in places
6:43
Speaker 1: that we normally think of as being safe spaces, right,
6:47
Speaker 1: A nursery school, a grocery store, And they continued on
6:51
Speaker 1: with alarming regularity, because then the time between the crimes
6:56
Speaker 1: started shrinking. So we're talking about on January twenty seven,
7:00
Speaker 1: and so now only six days after the second attack,
7:04
Speaker 1: a man with a knife approached a woman outside of
7:06
Speaker 1: her home and demanded money and sex. Sheilo luckily went
7:10
Speaker 1: inside and slammed the door shut and locked it and
7:12
Speaker 1: called the police, so she escaped. Then on January thirtieth,
7:16
Speaker 1: so just three days later, an eighteen year old woman
7:19
Speaker 1: was abducted, raped, and sodomized at gunpoint in Henrico County,
7:23
Speaker 1: just a few blocks from the other attacks. And then
7:25
Speaker 1: on February first, So again, the windows are just shrinking
7:29
Speaker 1: faster and faster. A nineteen year old woman was adducted
7:33
Speaker 1: at gunpoint outside her East Richmond home. The gunman forced
7:37
Speaker 1: her to go inside the house, but he fled when
7:39
Speaker 1: the family dog began barking at him. And wow, I mean,
7:43
Speaker 1: what a close call that was. So all of these
7:46
Speaker 1: incidents happened within a one mile radius. This guy was
7:50
Speaker 1: almost begging to be caught, but he continued getting away
7:53
Speaker 1: with it. Now, because of the locations of the attacks,
7:56
Speaker 1: a description of the attacker, and the nature of the assaults,
7:59
Speaker 1: everyone was pretty much on the same page that it
8:01
Speaker 1: was one person that was responsible, right, But what happens
8:04
Speaker 1: in these cases that we see again and again is
8:08
Speaker 1: that there was a misidentification which set this awful chain
8:12
Speaker 1: of events in motion. Take us through that, Sean, if
8:15
Speaker 1: you don't mind.
8:17
Speaker 3: Absolutely. So, Thomas was walking to the store to get
8:21
Speaker 3: sweet potatoes for his mom and one of the victims
8:25
Speaker 3: saw him and said, that's my rapist. She called police.
8:30
Speaker 3: Police came picked him up, arrested him, and then four
8:34
Speaker 3: more victims identified him as the perpetrator, and that was it.
8:38
Speaker 1: Now, these are all cross racial eye with its identifications,
8:41
Speaker 1: and that comes with its own problems already, and we
8:45
Speaker 1: find out later that the actual perpetrator did in fact
8:48
Speaker 1: resemble Thomas as well, just adding to the confusion and
8:51
Speaker 1: making it even harder for the victims to make the
8:54
Speaker 1: correct idea. But before we even get into that, Sean,
8:57
Speaker 1: can you tell us a bit about cross racial idea
9:00
Speaker 1: dentification in general.
9:01
Speaker 3: So what we know, and we know this based on
9:04
Speaker 3: now decades of social science research, is that people are
9:09
Speaker 3: not good at identifying people of different races. We also
9:13
Speaker 3: know that white people are particularly bad at identifying people
9:18
Speaker 3: of different races, particularly when those people are African American.
9:24
Speaker 3: So what we have seen over and over and over
9:27
Speaker 3: again is that the likelihood of an error by an
9:30
Speaker 3: eyewitness is just magnified when it is a cross racial identification,
9:36
Speaker 3: that is, a white person identifying a black person. If
9:39
Speaker 3: you look at the actual percentage of black on white
9:44
Speaker 3: rapes in the country, it is infinitesimally small. If you
9:49
Speaker 3: look at the percentage of DNA exonerations in rape cases
9:53
Speaker 3: that are black on white rape, it is extraordinarily large.
9:58
Speaker 3: And just those two numbers can tell you all you
10:01
Speaker 3: need to know about the enhanced risk of error when
10:05
Speaker 3: you have black and white idea.
10:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it fits into the stereotype, this sort of
10:11
Speaker 1: racist mythology that has been a part of unfortunately, our
10:15
Speaker 1: culture and our judicial system for as long as we've
10:19
Speaker 1: had one.
10:19
Speaker 3: And then you can't look at the cross racial nature
10:22
Speaker 3: of these crimes and not talk about where you are
10:26
Speaker 3: and when you're there. So you're in Richmond, which is
10:28
Speaker 3: the capital of the Confederacy, and it's nineteen eighty four,
10:32
Speaker 3: and you cannot divorce these cases from that time period
10:37
Speaker 3: and that place either.
10:39
Speaker 1: Now, Thomas, tell us what happened when they arrested you
10:43
Speaker 1: and what was going through your mind.
10:45
Speaker 4: These stopped me in the morning. They said, the lady
10:47
Speaker 4: she picked you out, and she can dentify you. And
10:50
Speaker 4: that's where I was going. I said, I'm going to
10:51
Speaker 4: the store. He said what he used to do. Right here,
10:54
Speaker 4: she could identify the person. I said, yeah, I ain't
10:56
Speaker 4: gonna have que I'm not gonna want So they want
10:59
Speaker 4: to get the female big and brought it back and
11:01
Speaker 4: she looked at me like she won too shore and
11:04
Speaker 4: then he sees some tour and she looked at me
11:06
Speaker 4: again like she won too. Shoe about the person, and
11:09
Speaker 4: then they did it for the third time. They talked
11:11
Speaker 4: to her in the third time and she just put
11:13
Speaker 4: her hands up, and then they came and said he
11:15
Speaker 4: was unarrest said, I'm the rest for what. They put
11:17
Speaker 4: her handcufs on me and they put me in back patrol
11:19
Speaker 4: car and he took me to the Richardson in jail and.
11:22
Speaker 5: They got dan Neil. Then when it came to reality,
11:25
Speaker 5: to me what was.
11:26
Speaker 4: Going on the child's will, rape, production and burking the innswer,
11:29
Speaker 4: I ain't know what to think, you know.
11:43
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
11:47
Speaker 1: and by Accenture, a global professional services company with leading
11:51
Speaker 1: capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the
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Speaker 1: criminal justice system is a key pillar of the AIG
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Speaker 1: to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need as
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Speaker 1: part of Excensure's commitment to racial and civil justice. Accenture's
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Speaker 1: Legal Access program provides pro bono legal services in partnership
12:14
Speaker 1: with more than forty organizations, bringing meaningful change to people
12:18
Speaker 1: and communities worldwide. Okay, so the initial identification at least from.
12:29
Speaker 2: Your perspective looked shaky right.
12:31
Speaker 1: The victim seemed to go back and forth a few
12:33
Speaker 1: times until throwing her hands up in the air. Then
12:36
Speaker 1: you're arrested, and eventually all five victims misidentified you as
12:42
Speaker 1: the attacker. All five dealing with the cross racial nature
12:46
Speaker 1: of this idea as well as the fact that you
12:49
Speaker 1: actually did resemble the attacker. So you're charged with rape,
12:52
Speaker 1: along with a slew of other charges that came with
12:55
Speaker 1: each incident. I'm talking about our abduction, breaking and entering, robbery,
13:00
Speaker 1: and then you go to trial.
13:01
Speaker 4: One of my lord they came with suggestion, you know
13:03
Speaker 4: you got these seed childs. I think it the best
13:05
Speaker 4: you will. Please get to, you know, get a life sentence,
13:07
Speaker 4: to get fishball role with Somewhere down the line you
13:10
Speaker 4: got aldy seated charge. You're going to get a license,
13:13
Speaker 4: And I said, now, I'm not gonna plead get into nothing.
13:15
Speaker 5: Ain't do.
13:15
Speaker 4: I said, I'd rather pull the try out and I
13:18
Speaker 4: could be found get to convict the license.
13:20
Speaker 5: I deal with it, but I'm never getting my right
13:22
Speaker 5: up to be innocent though.
13:23
Speaker 1: So you've got your own defense team trying to push
13:26
Speaker 1: you to admit guilt, which is not unfortuately exactly uncommon. Obviously,
13:31
Speaker 1: some people are actually guilty while others plead guilty just
13:35
Speaker 1: because it's a smarter decision to do so. I mean,
13:38
Speaker 1: fased with the choice of a lenient sentence or the
13:41
Speaker 1: unknown at trial, right, especially when life or even death
13:45
Speaker 1: sentences are you know, dangling over your head. I mean,
13:48
Speaker 1: with that at play. It's no wonder that convictions are
13:52
Speaker 1: obtained through guilty please, at a rate of close to
13:55
Speaker 1: ninety eight percent, right over ninety seven percent a melody.
14:00
Speaker 1: Convictions of the United States are a result of guilty.
14:02
Speaker 2: Please.
14:02
Speaker 1: It's a very understandable choice to make. But when given
14:07
Speaker 1: that choice, Thomas, you held firm in your innocence. I mean,
14:10
Speaker 1: that's a courageous and principled stand to take. Now, Okay,
14:14
Speaker 1: so we go to the trial, right, or should I
14:16
Speaker 1: say the trials, because there were four separate trials. The
14:20
Speaker 1: charges in the January twenty seventh incident where the attacker
14:22
Speaker 1: approached with a knife and the victim fled to her house,
14:25
Speaker 1: those charges were dropped. So for the four trials, though
14:28
Speaker 1: the prosecution relied on the victims misidentifications of Thomas. Now,
14:32
Speaker 1: in two of the four cases, there was some biological evidence,
14:36
Speaker 1: but in the early eighties there was no DNA testing,
14:39
Speaker 1: only sorology, right.
14:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, what you have in terms of physical evidence in
14:44
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties is you can test semen for blood type,
14:48
Speaker 3: and you also can test for something that's known as
14:50
Speaker 3: secretor status. If I am a secretor I'm somebody whose
14:54
Speaker 3: blood type shows up in my other bodily fluids. So
14:58
Speaker 3: like if I spit on a table, you can figure
15:00
Speaker 3: out my blood type from the spit. A non sec
15:03
Speaker 3: rereader is somebody whose blood type isn't in the spit,
15:06
Speaker 3: So they were in you know, at least a couple
15:08
Speaker 3: of Thomas's cases able to do that very limited amount
15:12
Speaker 3: of science, but that's science. It could give you percentages,
15:16
Speaker 3: but the percentages were pretty big, right, So think about
15:19
Speaker 3: all the people in the world who have type oh blood. Well,
15:21
Speaker 3: that's what you can really narrow down to. So you know,
15:25
Speaker 3: Thomas was in that case in the population of people
15:30
Speaker 3: who could have committed the crime. But that's a really
15:33
Speaker 3: big population of people.
15:35
Speaker 1: Right, So it really doesn't do a great job of
15:37
Speaker 1: proving anything at all. Zerology is actually really better at
15:41
Speaker 1: ruling a suspect out rather than in and There's also
15:45
Speaker 1: a moment in one of the trials where Thomas's height
15:49
Speaker 1: should have ruled him completely out.
15:52
Speaker 3: So in the case in Henrico County, the victim had
15:56
Speaker 3: sworn and believed correctly, it turns out that her rapist
16:01
Speaker 3: was taller than her. She described the rapist as being
16:04
Speaker 3: about five to ten Thomas's five six. So Thomas's lawyer
16:08
Speaker 3: actually had the two of them stand next to each
16:10
Speaker 3: other in that trial to demonstrate that Thomas was actually
16:14
Speaker 3: shorter than this victim. But this is part of why
16:17
Speaker 3: I witnessed testimony is so powerful. Right, This still didn't
16:20
Speaker 3: shake her confidence that Thomas was the perpetrator. She was
16:23
Speaker 3: still one hundred percent sure that Thomas did it. And
16:27
Speaker 3: so there's not much a defense lawyer could do in
16:30
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four in the face of that kind of testimony.
16:33
Speaker 1: So the charges had been dropped in the January twenty
16:36
Speaker 1: seventh incident, but you still had to sit through similar
16:39
Speaker 1: proceedings four times over, where the facts of four very real,
16:43
Speaker 1: unspeakably horrible assaults were presented, but along with no meaningful
16:48
Speaker 1: physical evidence to implicate you, even the fact that you
16:51
Speaker 1: didn't match the January thirtieth victims, description of the assailant's height.
16:56
Speaker 1: And now the jury goes out four times on you,
16:58
Speaker 1: and I've got to imagine that the first time was
17:01
Speaker 1: probably the hardest pill to swallow. Right the January third
17:04
Speaker 1: break in and rape at the nursery school. How long
17:08
Speaker 1: did that particular trial last?
17:10
Speaker 5: I reme in the first trial they last I think
17:12
Speaker 5: a day and a half.
17:13
Speaker 4: The Jid could not come to a verdict, and Jill
17:16
Speaker 4: Center back home overnight and told them to think about him,
17:19
Speaker 4: and they came back the next day, I think about
17:21
Speaker 4: three hours they deliberated, and then they came back for.
17:24
Speaker 5: The gilt, the virtue. And I was devastated.
17:27
Speaker 4: My family devastated because the three charges at the beginning
17:31
Speaker 4: with rape, breaking the interest, and Robert Lloyd got them
17:34
Speaker 4: to miss the robber child. So I left the jew
17:36
Speaker 4: only with two charges and rape and bringing the interest.
17:39
Speaker 4: They came back. Their family get to the rape, but
17:41
Speaker 4: their family not get to breaking into the entrant. The
17:44
Speaker 4: parpartrat had to break into the place and rate the person.
17:47
Speaker 4: So I would wonder how you could find me guilt
17:48
Speaker 4: to on one and not the other. And I noticed
17:51
Speaker 4: something about the jerid and all my trials, every time
17:54
Speaker 4: their family guilty, they give me the lowest sentence on
17:57
Speaker 4: each charges. If they cared fired in life, they get
18:00
Speaker 4: five year. If you get twenty to life, they give
18:02
Speaker 4: me twenty years. Because they had no sustained evidence that
18:06
Speaker 4: placed me at the cram scene.
18:07
Speaker 5: The only thing to hear is her words against my worry.
18:10
Speaker 1: So now you're since ten years, and I mean, this
18:13
Speaker 1: would seem to be the worst day in anybody's life,
18:15
Speaker 1: but you have to still stay on trial in these
18:17
Speaker 1: other cases. Then you got thirty six years for January thirtieth,
18:21
Speaker 1: Then you were acquitted for the January twenty first incident,
18:24
Speaker 1: and finally wrongfully convicted again for the February first incident
18:28
Speaker 1: and sentenced to another twenty eight years. I mean, it's
18:31
Speaker 1: hard to even read this stuff, and you lived it,
18:35
Speaker 1: and thus begins your saga of being a number instead
18:39
Speaker 1: of a name.
18:39
Speaker 4: When I got into the penitential, I think was that
18:42
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna see here lay there to take this.
18:45
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna sit here and to be a part
18:47
Speaker 4: of this corrupt system. I'm not gonna sit here that
18:49
Speaker 4: accept your selve it for my family and my life.
18:51
Speaker 4: You know, at the age of eighteen, I'm not gonna see,
18:53
Speaker 4: you know, waste all my life and penitendence. So I
18:55
Speaker 4: had to go there. I'm right to the end. I
18:57
Speaker 4: had things I know I had to do when I
18:59
Speaker 4: first added to the system. The third thing I asked
19:01
Speaker 4: with the old library was and I signed them for that.
19:04
Speaker 4: Then I signed up for the GED class and I
19:06
Speaker 4: signed them for college. So my thing was that, you know,
19:08
Speaker 4: I won't prove these people wrong. Now I'm in the
19:10
Speaker 4: place that I had to grew up overnight. I had
19:12
Speaker 4: become a man over night. It took me three years
19:16
Speaker 4: just to open up to people. I did nothing for
19:18
Speaker 4: three years this working went to school. I had to
19:21
Speaker 4: learn quick and be quick on my feet of thinking
19:23
Speaker 4: all the time. And you know, I had a couple
19:25
Speaker 4: older guys guide me, telling me the young blood sign
19:28
Speaker 4: up for school, take all the trades, and take a
19:31
Speaker 4: opportunity to and get some of the guys that stayed
19:33
Speaker 4: me in the right way. And they gave me good
19:35
Speaker 4: device and I took each to that.
19:36
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like there were some good people in
19:39
Speaker 1: there who were mentors to you. So I guess there
19:41
Speaker 1: was a little bit of light in this miserable dark tunnel.
19:45
Speaker 2: That you were in.
19:46
Speaker 1: And now we've got to turn our attention to a
19:49
Speaker 1: very important part of this terrible story, which is that
19:52
Speaker 1: while you were incarcerated, when the rapes should have stopped,
19:56
Speaker 1: they didn't stop at all. They actually increased. They continued
20:01
Speaker 1: throughout the East Richmond area, where another at least ten
20:05
Speaker 1: women reported being attacked by a young African American man
20:08
Speaker 1: who actually asked his victims to call the police and
20:11
Speaker 1: referred to him as the quote black ninja. Now, on
20:15
Speaker 1: December nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, two Richmond residents saw a
20:19
Speaker 1: man following a woman down the street. He was arrested.
20:22
Speaker 1: This was a guy named Leon Davis. Now this is crazy, right.
20:25
Speaker 1: So Leon was actually your neighbor, Thomas, and you saw
20:29
Speaker 1: him on January thirtieth, right after that incident. But it
20:33
Speaker 1: didn't click for you, right, The dots didn't connect until
20:37
Speaker 1: you were hearing the victim's story and the witnesses at
20:40
Speaker 1: your own preliminary hearing for that incident.
20:43
Speaker 5: Right, what was on January thirtieth?
20:46
Speaker 4: I was in my nixt birthday pond and I came
20:48
Speaker 4: outside of the front one of my friend they did
20:50
Speaker 4: who was on the front talking and Leon Davis came
20:53
Speaker 4: from the side of the house.
20:54
Speaker 5: He's a leopard, and I looked at him. I said, well,
20:56
Speaker 5: happ to you?
20:57
Speaker 4: And he said I would come down downtown mess with
20:59
Speaker 4: the white girls down there, and so they'll say, man,
21:02
Speaker 4: you don't you gonna put me down there?
21:03
Speaker 5: He said yeah, he said, it chased me and I failed.
21:06
Speaker 5: It hit my leg.
21:07
Speaker 4: At that time I had on one interacted with him.
21:11
Speaker 4: So then when my preminer here and when the victor
21:13
Speaker 4: seid what happened? How she told her friend and he
21:16
Speaker 4: chased them. I was saying to myself, Wow, there was
21:19
Speaker 4: to day on my niece birthday party. I was at
21:21
Speaker 4: home the day and I told my lawyer, I said,
21:23
Speaker 4: look at this guy named lil Lin in the street
21:25
Speaker 4: from me. I think he had something to do with it.
21:27
Speaker 4: And I told her to take the heart. Also, the
21:29
Speaker 4: leader taken on my case. But you know, my worry
21:31
Speaker 4: fell on death.
21:32
Speaker 5: Yeah. They ain't pay me, no man.
21:34
Speaker 1: And if only they would have, who knows how many
21:36
Speaker 1: of these other crimes could have been prevented. Sean tell
21:39
Speaker 1: us about this Leon Davis guy and how they managed
21:42
Speaker 1: to miss what should have been obvious signs.
21:46
Speaker 3: So in the opinion of the Richmond Police Department and
21:51
Speaker 3: the Hunreca Police Department. The crimes that Thomas was convicted of,
21:55
Speaker 3: those types of crimes stopped when Thomas was arrested, and
22:01
Speaker 3: there was a break in crimes like this until April,
22:05
Speaker 3: and that is when Leon Davis, according to the original
22:09
Speaker 3: government narrative, began his crime spree. I think what the
22:13
Speaker 3: police missed, of course, is that he just never stopped
22:16
Speaker 3: his crime spring, but he was committing crimes that looked
22:19
Speaker 3: an awful lot like, specifically like the last crime Thomas
22:23
Speaker 3: was convicted of, which is the one in Henriiko County
22:26
Speaker 3: where he made the woman walk around and pretend she
22:29
Speaker 3: was his girlfriend. And so he was able to keep
22:33
Speaker 3: committing these crimes in an incredibly brazen way until his
22:36
Speaker 3: arrest in December nineteen eighty four. One of the most
22:40
Speaker 3: interesting stories I think in this case is what I
22:43
Speaker 3: didn't believe when Thomas told me at first. He told
22:46
Speaker 3: me that when he and Leon were locked up together,
22:48
Speaker 3: Leon approached him in the Richmond City jail and said, hey,
22:52
Speaker 3: you know, we kind of look alike. I've got a
22:54
Speaker 3: hearing coming up in my case. Would you Thomas mind
22:58
Speaker 3: standing in for me Leon at defense table to see
23:02
Speaker 3: if we can confuse the victim, to see if the
23:04
Speaker 3: victim would identify you instead of me. Wow, And I
23:07
Speaker 3: thought Thomas had to be making that up because it's
23:09
Speaker 3: too crazy to be true. But I actually confirmed it.
23:14
Speaker 3: So this is something Leon new, it's something Thomas knew.
23:19
Speaker 3: And even though it didn't appear that the police were
23:23
Speaker 3: putting two and two together, there was one interrogation record
23:28
Speaker 3: of Leon Davis where he was asked if he knew Thomas.
23:31
Speaker 3: But I think for a lot of the police officers
23:34
Speaker 3: at the time, there's that ongoing stereotype about black men
23:38
Speaker 3: being sexual predators, and so I think it was probably
23:41
Speaker 3: quite conceivable to the police department at the time that
23:46
Speaker 3: there could just be two people who were black men
23:48
Speaker 3: going around and doing the same thing.
23:50
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a crazy coincidence. And you've mentioned earlier, Sean,
23:55
Speaker 1: about the fact that these crimes are exceedingly rare, in fact,
23:58
Speaker 1: that that stereotype based on nothing.
24:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the lone black speak up in Thomas's neighborhood.
24:05
Speaker 3: He apparently told detectives at the time, you got the
24:09
Speaker 3: wrong kid, like this just isn't him. But detectives didn't
24:12
Speaker 3: buy it. Even the juries struggled in this case. The
24:16
Speaker 3: January third rape that went to trial first was supposed
24:19
Speaker 3: to be the strongest case. But as you heard Thomas say,
24:23
Speaker 3: the jury really struggled to reach a verdict. And that
24:26
Speaker 3: first case sentenced Thomas to ten years, and that was
24:29
Speaker 3: supposed to be the strong case. So even at the time,
24:33
Speaker 3: there should have been warning signs that this wasn't right
24:36
Speaker 3: and someone should have put two and two together, but
24:39
Speaker 3: they didn't.
24:56
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's get to the good part. Because in
25:00
Speaker 1: Thomas's case, just as his trials were particularly screwy, the
25:04
Speaker 1: process of getting him out took some twists and turns
25:07
Speaker 1: that we don't often see.
25:08
Speaker 3: All Right, Thomas's case first came to our attention because
25:14
Speaker 3: he wrote to us, but the context in which he
25:16
Speaker 3: wrote to us was a little bit different. There had
25:19
Speaker 3: been several people at that point who had been exonerated
25:23
Speaker 3: based on DNA tests done on evidence like little tiny
25:28
Speaker 3: clippings of evidence, clippings of Q tips, clippings of underwear
25:33
Speaker 3: clothing that had been saved by a particular analyst at
25:38
Speaker 3: Virginia's Department of Forensic Science. After a few of those exonerations.
25:43
Speaker 3: Then Virginia Governor Mark Warner ordered the State Crime Lab
25:48
Speaker 3: to do DNA testing in every single case between nineteen
25:52
Speaker 3: seventy three and nineteen eighty nine where there was physical
25:55
Speaker 3: evidence saved in these files. The Lab sent out of
26:00
Speaker 3: letters to people who had been convicted and who now
26:03
Speaker 3: had DNA testing happening in their cases, and I was
26:06
Speaker 3: listed as the contact person in those letters. So he
26:09
Speaker 3: already wrote to me as a potential DNA case. But
26:14
Speaker 3: then I got a call from a Richmond Times Dispatch
26:17
Speaker 3: reporter named Frank Green who said, there's a case you
26:20
Speaker 3: got to jump on. It's this guy, Thomas Hainsworth. I
26:24
Speaker 3: covered his trial. I also covered the trial of the
26:26
Speaker 3: guy who did it. Frank had gotten hold of the
26:29
Speaker 3: DNA reports in the case, and it was one of
26:33
Speaker 3: the three cases where Thomas had been convicted. The DNA
26:36
Speaker 3: excluded Thomas as the perpetrator and linked to Leon Davis
26:40
Speaker 3: as the perpetrator, and this was great news for Thomas.
26:44
Speaker 3: But the problem was that we only had DNA in
26:47
Speaker 3: one of the three cases where Thomas was convicted. What
26:50
Speaker 3: we did have was potential DNA in the case where
26:55
Speaker 3: Thomas had been acquitted. So we worked with the Richmond
27:00
Speaker 3: Commonwealth's Attorney to get that evidence tested, and once again
27:05
Speaker 3: it cleared Thomas and linked to Leon Davis.
27:08
Speaker 1: Wow, and it would seem like this is where things
27:11
Speaker 1: should have just opened up for Thomas, that he should
27:14
Speaker 1: have been right on his way out of there, right,
27:16
Speaker 1: But unfortunately that's just not the way this played out.
27:20
Speaker 3: So at that point, what we had was five rapes
27:23
Speaker 3: and sexual assaults in a five week period that everyone
27:28
Speaker 3: thought were committed by the same person, and we know
27:30
Speaker 3: concretely that two were committed by Leon Das for most people, logically,
27:36
Speaker 3: that gets you to a place where you say, well,
27:38
Speaker 3: Leon Davis did the rest of these crimes, right, everyone
27:41
Speaker 3: thought they were the same person. But that kind of
27:43
Speaker 3: deduction is an evidence, right. So even though at that
27:47
Speaker 3: point the Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney thought Thomas was innocent, the
27:51
Speaker 3: Virginia Attorney General hen Kuchinelli, a very right wing conservative,
27:55
Speaker 3: was on the way to thinking Thomas was innocent. You
27:58
Speaker 3: can't prove anything in court that way. What you have
28:01
Speaker 3: to do is go to the Virginia Court of Appeals
28:05
Speaker 3: and file something very legal sounding called a writ of
28:09
Speaker 3: actual innocence, and you have to have proof, so we
28:14
Speaker 3: did a couple of different things to try to get
28:17
Speaker 3: us there. Thomas took polygraph tests, one for the Richmond
28:21
Speaker 3: crimes that he was convicted of and one for the
28:24
Speaker 3: Henriko County crime he was convicted of. Passed both with
28:28
Speaker 3: flying colors. Of course, we don't necessarily believe too much
28:32
Speaker 3: in the reliability of polygraph tests, but it was something
28:36
Speaker 3: that the prosecutors could use to sort of justify why
28:40
Speaker 3: they believed in Thomas's innocence. And then what we had
28:44
Speaker 3: was the similarities between the crimes. So we worked with
28:49
Speaker 3: the Attorney General's Office and the Commonwealth Attorney to meticulously
28:53
Speaker 3: document all of the similarities between the crimes that we
28:58
Speaker 3: knew Leon Davis had committed and the remaining convictions on
29:03
Speaker 3: Thomas's record, and using all of that, we filed a
29:07
Speaker 3: rid of actual innocence in the Court of Appeals and
29:12
Speaker 3: I think February of twenty eleven, so Thomas was still
29:18
Speaker 3: in prison, we were able to get him paroled and
29:22
Speaker 3: released unfortunately as a sex offender. While the case was pending.
29:27
Speaker 3: We had an oral argument in March of twenty eleven,
29:30
Speaker 3: and again there was no one opposing Thomas's exoneration except
29:34
Speaker 3: the court. That oral argument did not go well. It
29:38
Speaker 3: was pretty clear that the court just didn't believe we
29:41
Speaker 3: had met the burden we were supposed to meet in
29:43
Speaker 3: the case. In the summer of twenty eleven, the Court
29:48
Speaker 3: of Appeals came back to us and said, all of
29:50
Speaker 3: the judges on the court want to sit for another
29:53
Speaker 3: oral argument in this case. And at the time, in
29:57
Speaker 3: order to win a rid of actual innocence, you had
30:00
Speaker 3: to prove by clear and convincing evidence that no rational
30:06
Speaker 3: trier of fact could find proof of guilt beyond a
30:09
Speaker 3: reasonable doubt. And that is, to anyone normal out there,
30:13
Speaker 3: that just sounds like a bunch of like legal legal,
30:15
Speaker 3: legal boring. It's about as highest standard as you can have.
30:19
Speaker 3: So we did that oral argument. Thankfully, six of the
30:22
Speaker 3: ten judges ultimately agreed that Thomas deserved to have his
30:28
Speaker 3: convictions overturned and to be exonerated. So we won by
30:32
Speaker 3: six to four. But to put that in perspective, we
30:36
Speaker 3: only won by one vote in a case where the
30:40
Speaker 3: Attorney General's office agreed with us, which is pretty extraordinary.
30:46
Speaker 1: Pretty terrifying, actually, I mean it's absolutely terrifying. Yeah, I mean,
30:50
Speaker 1: you almost lost. In other words, with overwhelming evidence of innocence,
30:56
Speaker 1: the attorney General, prosecutors, everybody going, hey, guess what, this
31:01
Speaker 1: was a mistake. Here, a terrible mistake. This guy's innocent,
31:05
Speaker 1: and yet you won by one vote. I mean, this
31:08
Speaker 1: is well, this is.
31:11
Speaker 3: What happens when you have bad laws. So many exonerations
31:15
Speaker 3: depend on just having a decent person on the other
31:19
Speaker 3: side who's gonna wink and nod when the bad laws
31:22
Speaker 3: in front of them, And that's not what happens in Virginia.
31:25
Speaker 3: Winking and nodding doesn't work, so you're stuck with the
31:27
Speaker 3: bad law.
31:28
Speaker 1: So, Thomas, from your perspective, finally you've got a fantastic
31:34
Speaker 1: team and all the things are lining up. Everybody's starting
31:37
Speaker 1: to acknowledge what you've been saying all along, that you're innocent.
31:40
Speaker 1: But you're finally freed with all these conditions. You got
31:43
Speaker 1: to wear an ankle monitor, you're on the sex offender registry.
31:46
Speaker 1: What was it like to walk out into the light,
31:49
Speaker 1: even with all those sort of caveats and restrictions.
31:53
Speaker 5: It was frustrated. I mean I would have to.
31:55
Speaker 4: Be out, just come home, get on the bat. I
32:00
Speaker 4: wanted to this because I was paying attentional and you
32:02
Speaker 4: come home and be back with your family.
32:04
Speaker 5: When I first came home, I had to meet with
32:06
Speaker 5: one of my probation office. I think Sean was with me.
32:09
Speaker 4: I knew damn high condition because I was still, you know,
32:12
Speaker 4: a regular sex offender.
32:13
Speaker 5: I didn't have no problem with that.
32:14
Speaker 4: You know, I'm gonna apply to the law, and I'm
32:16
Speaker 4: gonna be obedient to the law what I got to
32:18
Speaker 4: do to maintain my freedom. But when she told me
32:21
Speaker 4: that if I choose to date somebody, I had to
32:23
Speaker 4: bring in person down before she could meet them and
32:26
Speaker 4: she could tell.
32:27
Speaker 5: Them what I'm locked up for.
32:28
Speaker 4: You know, while my cues are and I looked at Sean,
32:30
Speaker 4: and I told Sean I had more freedom in rites
32:33
Speaker 4: and prison I had on the street. It was a
32:36
Speaker 4: little bit hard getting adjusted to it, because really, you home,
32:39
Speaker 4: you got all the conditions, still leave as a sex
32:42
Speaker 4: offender and still convict the feather. You still ain't even
32:45
Speaker 4: really free. For me, I couldn't go nowhere. I had
32:47
Speaker 4: to be in the house by five o'clock. I couldn't
32:49
Speaker 4: go out the house after that. I couldn't leave one
32:51
Speaker 4: hundred feet from my house. I had this mom so
32:53
Speaker 4: I had the word round my leg and I had
32:55
Speaker 4: this big wad you had to put in my pocket contraction,
32:58
Speaker 4: and it was frustrated when I told Sean, look, we
33:00
Speaker 4: got to get this over. I'm tired of the rest
33:02
Speaker 4: of six offenom signed the feather, you know, I just
33:05
Speaker 4: want this over and done.
33:07
Speaker 1: Now we get to the best part, which is that
33:09
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, ten years ago, when you were freed
33:14
Speaker 1: and then finally you were exonerated, formally exonerated, cut that
33:19
Speaker 1: ankle bracelet off, and Governor Bob McDonald signed legislation which
33:25
Speaker 1: provided you with compensation as well, which is unfortunately most
33:29
Speaker 1: exogneries never get compensation. But I'm really glad that you did.
33:33
Speaker 1: It wasn't nearly enough, but at least it gave you
33:36
Speaker 1: a chance to get started, I would say, with a
33:39
Speaker 1: new life. So what was it like when you finally
33:43
Speaker 1: were vindicated.
33:44
Speaker 4: It's something that I've strived to do since day one,
33:47
Speaker 4: just to prove my innocative. I mean Sean and Kean Kuchen,
33:51
Speaker 4: you know, they did an outstand the child. I couldn't
33:53
Speaker 4: ask nothing out. I mean, just being literated, being back
33:57
Speaker 4: and getting clams off my back, getting my name stored
34:00
Speaker 4: that be the person that you know. You all not
34:02
Speaker 4: be who they want you to be, the bravest monster
34:04
Speaker 4: that me portrayed me to be.
34:06
Speaker 5: That's how I want, you know. Once I got my.
34:08
Speaker 4: Name clear, none have to matter. In a day, she
34:11
Speaker 4: called me and say you want sixty four. I didn't
34:13
Speaker 4: care like she said. We're one by one folk and
34:15
Speaker 4: I did a function one time and one of the
34:18
Speaker 4: judges who went against me, he got there, spoke and
34:21
Speaker 4: he got them.
34:21
Speaker 5: He looked at me, sir Thomas, I'm sorry, I got
34:23
Speaker 5: it wrong.
34:24
Speaker 4: I went against you. I told him, hey, I don't
34:26
Speaker 4: want no girls against you. What happened, happy, and I'm free.
34:29
Speaker 4: That's all that matters.
34:31
Speaker 3: That calls one of the best calls I've ever gotten
34:32
Speaker 3: to make.
34:34
Speaker 1: So now we turned to my favorite part of the show,
34:37
Speaker 1: which is called closing arguments. And closing Arguments is part
34:40
Speaker 1: of the show where I first of all, thank both
34:44
Speaker 1: of you again, Sean Armbers from the mid Atlantic Innocence
34:47
Speaker 1: Project and Thomas Haynesworth for sharing your incredible stories here
34:52
Speaker 1: today and just for being who you are in the world.
34:55
Speaker 1: Because I can't even describe how much respect I have
34:59
Speaker 1: for each of you for them reasons. And with that,
35:01
Speaker 1: here's how closing arguments works. I'm going to turn off
35:04
Speaker 1: my microphone, kick back in my chair and leave my
35:08
Speaker 1: headphones on, probably close my eyes, and just listen to
35:11
Speaker 1: whatever else you want to share with our audience. Let's
35:14
Speaker 1: start with you, Sean, and save the man Thomas Haynesworth
35:17
Speaker 1: for the final closing argument.
35:20
Speaker 3: So what I want to say is that sometimes people
35:23
Speaker 3: listen to these stories and hear them as proof that
35:27
Speaker 3: the system works. They hear them as proof that, well,
35:31
Speaker 3: we got it wrong, but eventually we did get it right.
35:34
Speaker 3: And in every single one of these cases that I
35:36
Speaker 3: have worked on, every exoneration I've seen has been an
35:40
Speaker 3: example of the system actually not working the way it
35:43
Speaker 3: was intended to work. Innocent people getting out is the
35:46
Speaker 3: opposite of what's supposed to happen. There's an extraordinary confluence
35:50
Speaker 3: of circumstances that has to happen to even put someone
35:54
Speaker 3: in a position to be exonerated. Mary Jane Burton, the
35:58
Speaker 3: lab technician of the Department of Front Sciences, had to
36:02
Speaker 3: decide that she was going to be the analyst who
36:05
Speaker 3: kept random clippings of stuff in her files. She had
36:09
Speaker 3: to be assigned to Thomas's case. Three other people had
36:12
Speaker 3: to be exonerated. The governor had to order testing in
36:15
Speaker 3: those cases, the lab had to agree to notify people,
36:19
Speaker 3: and that person had to be me, and Thomas had
36:22
Speaker 3: to be Thomas. All of those things had to happen
36:25
Speaker 3: just to put Thomas in a position to even prove
36:27
Speaker 3: his innocence, and then from there. The scariest thing to
36:31
Speaker 3: me about Thomas's case is that the standard to actually
36:35
Speaker 3: win was so high that the court wasn't necessarily wrong
36:39
Speaker 3: that we should lose. That's how high it was, even
36:43
Speaker 3: in a case where innocence is as obvious as Thomas's,
36:46
Speaker 3: and we won anyway. And so his freedom isn't the
36:50
Speaker 3: result of anything going the way it was supposed to.
36:53
Speaker 3: It was really the result of everything going the opposite
36:56
Speaker 3: of the way it's.
36:56
Speaker 5: Designed to work.
36:58
Speaker 3: So for all of you out here who are taking
37:01
Speaker 3: the time to learn about this issue, which is super
37:04
Speaker 3: important and one of the many reasons why I think
37:07
Speaker 3: Jason is a national treasure, try to remember that changing
37:12
Speaker 3: that system is absolutely crucial if we really are going
37:17
Speaker 3: to try to protect people who get convicted of things
37:20
Speaker 3: they didn't do.
37:21
Speaker 2: Thomas over to you, yeah.
37:24
Speaker 4: I just want to say to the any surpriject that
37:26
Speaker 4: Sean I should appreciate the hard way did y'all do?
37:29
Speaker 5: Fore the New feel and all them. I can't speak
37:31
Speaker 5: for having more about their surproject.
37:34
Speaker 4: I just want to say to people, whatever you're going through,
37:36
Speaker 4: you feel you've been wrong convicted wrong because don't give
37:39
Speaker 4: up stand on your brand. You know if you don't
37:41
Speaker 4: give up a BIS, you will overcome. If you know
37:44
Speaker 4: anybody who'll be wrong, speak up for them. I'm living
37:47
Speaker 4: the best life. Things ain't turning where I want them,
37:49
Speaker 4: but it ain't turn out batter for me, and I
37:51
Speaker 4: just want you to keep chinue to stride, don't give
37:54
Speaker 4: your claim but to be right standing, your innocent and
37:57
Speaker 4: they's stand up for yourself.
38:04
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
38:07
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn,
38:11
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wardis. With research by Lyla Robinson. The music
38:14
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
38:17
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
38:21
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
38:25
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction as well as at Lava
38:28
Speaker 1: for Good on all three platforms. You can also follow
38:31
Speaker 1: me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flam.
38:35
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast
38:38
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one