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#041 Jason Flom with Jeffrey Deskovic · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
0:07
Speaker 2: I was naive enough to believe that I would be
0:10
Speaker 2: able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence,
0:13
Speaker 2: that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't
0:15
Speaker 2: be going to prison because I was a good person.
0:17
Speaker 2: I hadn't done anything wrong.
0:19
Speaker 1: In the back of your mind, you say, well, when
0:21
Speaker 1: we go to a hearing or we go to court,
0:23
Speaker 1: the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one
0:26
Speaker 1: knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected
0:30
Speaker 1: from the lower courts all the way up to the
0:33
Speaker 1: United States Supreme Court.
0:36
Speaker 3: You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really,
0:41
Speaker 3: in that moment, unchecked authority.
0:44
Speaker 2: Don't presume that people are guilty when you see them
0:47
Speaker 2: on TV, because it may just be a dirty da
0:50
Speaker 2: that is trying to rise upward.
0:57
Speaker 4: This is wrongful conviction.
1:11
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flomm. Today's guest
1:14
Speaker 3: as someone fans of the show will recognize, jeff Dskovic.
1:18
Speaker 5: Jeffrey Deskovich spent more than a decade in prison for
1:21
Speaker 5: the rape and murder of a classmate. It was a
1:24
Speaker 5: crime he did not commit.
1:25
Speaker 6: A sixteen year old is arrested for rape and murder.
1:28
Speaker 6: He's grown by police and given a lie detector test,
1:31
Speaker 6: and eventually the police talk him into a false confession.
1:34
Speaker 6: Even though DNA did not link him to the crime.
1:36
Speaker 6: He served sixteen years in prison before new testing shows
1:39
Speaker 6: another man committed that crime.
1:41
Speaker 5: In January two thousand and six, the Innocence Project convinced
1:44
Speaker 5: prosecutors to take another look at DNA evidence. New testing
1:48
Speaker 5: technology cleared Dskovic of the nineteen eighty nine crime, identifying
1:52
Speaker 5: the real killer and releasing Dskovic into a world he
1:56
Speaker 5: no longer knew. Today, Deskovic is a free man.
2:00
Speaker 4: Jeff, welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
2:03
Speaker 7: Thanks for having me, Jason. It's always a pleasure.
2:05
Speaker 3: And Jeff was here before with Amanda Knox and jareded
2:08
Speaker 3: Adams when we did a very special Wrongful Christmas where
2:12
Speaker 3: he spoke so eloquently about what it was like being
2:15
Speaker 3: locked up in a maximum security prison on the holidays
2:18
Speaker 3: when everyone else is out celebrating in the world's going
2:21
Speaker 3: on without you. But this time I'm really glad to
2:25
Speaker 3: have you here, Jeff, because your story is so important
2:29
Speaker 3: and so I want to get right back into that
2:32
Speaker 3: you grew up in White Plains.
2:34
Speaker 7: No, I grew up in Peakskill in west Chester County.
2:36
Speaker 7: My case happened in White Plains. That's the county court.
2:40
Speaker 3: People are going to scratch their heads or shake their
2:42
Speaker 3: heads when I say this. Right, in your case, DNA
2:46
Speaker 3: evidence was presented at the trial that proved scientifically, with
2:51
Speaker 3: no doubt that you could not have been the perpetrator
2:55
Speaker 3: of the beating, rape and murder of the fifteen year
2:58
Speaker 3: old victim, Angela Correa. There is no way on God's
3:03
Speaker 3: green earth that you could have been the perpetrator, and
3:05
Speaker 3: yet you were convicted anyway. And that's what makes it
3:09
Speaker 3: just I want to shake up the whole justice system
3:11
Speaker 3: and go, wait, that's not possible. It can't happen. And
3:14
Speaker 3: you were basically a child when this happened.
3:17
Speaker 7: I was. I was sixteen years old when I was arrested,
3:20
Speaker 7: and by the time the trial happened and I was
3:21
Speaker 7: wrongfully convicted, I was seventeen. So yes, I was a child,
3:25
Speaker 7: and I had very small awareness of what was going on,
3:29
Speaker 7: totally dependent on the lawyer, who was inept. In a
3:33
Speaker 7: lot of ways, It's fair to say that I was
3:35
Speaker 7: particularly vulnerable it's.
3:37
Speaker 3: Such a tragic thing that happened to start with. And
3:40
Speaker 3: this was a young girl who was in your school.
3:42
Speaker 3: Were you in tenth grade at the time. I was,
3:44
Speaker 3: so you were in tenth grade. She was in tenth grade.
3:46
Speaker 4: Yeah.
3:47
Speaker 7: She was in two of my classes as a freshman
3:50
Speaker 7: and one as a sophomore. She was an immigrant from Columbia.
3:54
Speaker 7: She'd been in the country for about a year and
3:56
Speaker 7: a half. She lived a very very sheltered life, as
3:59
Speaker 7: I understand, in which she never went outside unless she
4:02
Speaker 7: was with her older sister or with her parents. And
4:05
Speaker 7: this one particular day, she received a assignment in her
4:10
Speaker 7: photography class to take some pictures of some foliage. The
4:14
Speaker 7: teacher assigned male students with the female students. You're like
4:18
Speaker 7: a buddy system for you know, safety, And this male
4:22
Speaker 7: student who was assigned to her played hooky on the assignment.
4:26
Speaker 7: And so when Angela went to her house with her sister,
4:29
Speaker 7: her sister went to the restroom, and when she came
4:33
Speaker 7: back out, Angela decided to venture out on her own
4:37
Speaker 7: that one day to take the pictures, and unfortunately, that
4:41
Speaker 7: proved to be her last day.
4:44
Speaker 4: It's unbelievable.
4:45
Speaker 3: I mean, it's really an incredible story, right, the one
4:47
Speaker 3: day this poor little girl decides to you know, be brave,
4:51
Speaker 3: right right, So she ends up brutally beaten, raped and strangled, right, yes,
4:59
Speaker 3: And this must have caused pandemonium in the community.
5:03
Speaker 7: It absolutely did. There hadn't been a murder and big
5:06
Speaker 7: skill for about twenty years, and the whole city virtually
5:12
Speaker 7: shut down. I mean parents were coming right to the
5:15
Speaker 7: high school dropping their kids off and picking them up.
5:18
Speaker 7: There was repeated town hall meetings, a mayor and police
5:22
Speaker 7: were attending and giving safety tips, and people were vocalizing concerns.
5:27
Speaker 3: And well, yeah, there was a monster on the loose
5:30
Speaker 3: exactly right, a real monster there was. And so yeah,
5:33
Speaker 3: as a parent, I would certainly be doing the same thing.
5:36
Speaker 3: I wouldn't let my kid out of my sight until
5:38
Speaker 3: this thing was resolved. So this creates, as we know,
5:41
Speaker 3: a lot of pressure right on law enforcement. They got
5:44
Speaker 3: to get this thing off their desks. Who knows what
5:46
Speaker 3: could happen, right, There's going to be articles written, there's
5:49
Speaker 3: going to be TV, there's going to be all that stuff.
5:51
Speaker 3: Right when you have a high profile case, especially involving
5:53
Speaker 3: a child in a community where murder hasn't happened in
5:56
Speaker 3: twenty years. It's a pressure cooker, So how the hell
6:00
Speaker 3: did they end up picking on you. I didn't know
6:03
Speaker 3: you when you were sixteen, but I can imagine that
6:06
Speaker 3: you would be an extremely unlikely candidate for a brutal
6:12
Speaker 3: crime like this one.
6:13
Speaker 7: Yeah, I would agree with that so well. When I
6:16
Speaker 7: was sixteen, I kind of lived a double life in
6:19
Speaker 7: a sense, in the sense that in school I was quiet,
6:23
Speaker 7: I was to myself. I was a little bit withdrawn
6:25
Speaker 7: because I wasn't really familiar with those kids and I
6:29
Speaker 7: didn't quite fit in with them. But after school, in
6:33
Speaker 7: the apartment building where I lived at, which coincidentally was
6:36
Speaker 7: right across the street from the high school, I was
6:39
Speaker 7: kind of like the life of the party. So myself
6:41
Speaker 7: and one other boy that lived there, I mean, there
6:44
Speaker 7: was a big group of kids that lived near complex
6:46
Speaker 7: and in the areas around it, and pretty much whatever
6:50
Speaker 7: I would suggest would mostly be what we would do.
6:52
Speaker 7: I mean, we would swim, we would play basketball, ride bikes,
6:56
Speaker 7: play Monopoly, video games, movies. We made up some games.
7:00
Speaker 7: We made up a game that was like baseball, except
7:03
Speaker 7: it was played with a tennis racket and a tennis ball,
7:06
Speaker 7: and the ball had to be thrown a certain way,
7:08
Speaker 7: and I was a different person there. So the police
7:13
Speaker 7: story is that in the course of interviewing students from
7:18
Speaker 7: the high school, some of them told the police, Hey,
7:21
Speaker 7: you might want to talk to Jeff because he's quiet
7:24
Speaker 7: and to himself. So originally the police looked at the
7:28
Speaker 7: victim's stepdad, who was married to the victim's mother, but
7:33
Speaker 7: at some point he realized that he was a suspect,
7:36
Speaker 7: and he hired a retired New York City detective to
7:40
Speaker 7: investigate the crime, and so that persuaded them to move
7:43
Speaker 7: off of him. Then they looked at another youth in
7:47
Speaker 7: the high school and they started using interrogative tactics, which
7:51
Speaker 7: they would use on me later on. But the difference
7:55
Speaker 7: is that he had a stepfather in the home, and
7:57
Speaker 7: so the stepfather went down to the police station and
8:01
Speaker 7: broke up the interrogation, and they initially wouldn't let him
8:04
Speaker 7: in the room, but he broke up the interrogation and
8:06
Speaker 7: he got his steps on an attorney, and so that
8:09
Speaker 7: was the end of that. I, on the other hand,
8:11
Speaker 7: didn't have a step father in the home, so there
8:15
Speaker 7: wasn't anybody to intervene for me.
8:17
Speaker 4: It was just you and your mother at the.
8:18
Speaker 7: Time, myself, my mother, and I lived with my grandmother
8:22
Speaker 7: and then I had a younger brother. So the police
8:25
Speaker 7: story is that some of the kids in the school
8:28
Speaker 7: told them that they might want to talk to me,
8:30
Speaker 7: and their other theory as to why they focused it
8:32
Speaker 7: on me, they said that my emotional reaction to the
8:37
Speaker 7: victim having been murdered was disproportionate to what my actual
8:41
Speaker 7: relationship with there was, which was to say there was
8:43
Speaker 7: no relationship. I mean, I knew her name, she knew mine.
8:47
Speaker 7: We weren't even on a high by basis. So her
8:51
Speaker 7: being murdered it kind of struck me because that was
8:53
Speaker 7: really my first encounter with death. I thought that was
8:55
Speaker 7: something that happens to people at the end of life.
8:58
Speaker 7: I had a chance to briefly get to know the family.
9:02
Speaker 7: I went to the wick and people were invited back
9:04
Speaker 7: to their house, to the Korea household, to have coffee
9:08
Speaker 7: and talk to the family, and there was cookies and stuff,
9:10
Speaker 7: and so I guess you could say, you might say
9:12
Speaker 7: I was kind of a sensitive, sentimental type of person,
9:16
Speaker 7: and so it kind of touched me.
9:17
Speaker 3: A little by the way you might say you were
9:19
Speaker 3: a normal type of person, right, And it always boggles
9:22
Speaker 3: my mind how these authority figures suddenly become expert psychiatrists
9:28
Speaker 3: or psychologists, and we see it over and over again.
9:30
Speaker 3: He acted too sad, he didn't act sad enough, he
9:33
Speaker 3: was too upset, not upset enough. He ran into the fire,
9:36
Speaker 3: he didn't. You know, there's all these cases where that
9:39
Speaker 3: becomes a factor. When it is it's ridiculous. Nobody knows
9:43
Speaker 3: how anyone is going to react in times of trauma.
9:45
Speaker 3: And I would say, like I said that, your reaction
9:47
Speaker 3: sounds to me like a sensitive person who is just
9:51
Speaker 3: experiencing something in their own community with somebody that's an
9:56
Speaker 3: innocent young girl.
9:57
Speaker 4: Of course you're upset.
9:59
Speaker 7: Yeah, I agree with you completely, you know, And I
10:01
Speaker 7: want to add that this really shook up the whole
10:04
Speaker 7: city to the point that free mental health counseling was
10:07
Speaker 7: offered to anybody in the city who wanted it. So
10:11
Speaker 7: this affected many people emotionally.
10:14
Speaker 3: Had you ever been in trouble before, No, never been
10:16
Speaker 3: in trouble. So the cops at some point they come
10:19
Speaker 3: and pick you up. But your interrogation is really at
10:23
Speaker 3: the root of the entire problem, and it is it
10:26
Speaker 3: is a perfect example of everything that's wrong with interrogation
10:33
Speaker 3: techniques in this country even today.
10:36
Speaker 7: It is. There was a six week run up to
10:39
Speaker 7: that day, so I had an interaction with the police
10:42
Speaker 7: from the time they initially intercepted me on my way
10:45
Speaker 7: to the high school up until the day of the
10:47
Speaker 7: Cours false confession, which half the time they would talk
10:50
Speaker 7: to me as if I was a suspect, and then
10:53
Speaker 7: half the time they would talk to me pretending like
10:56
Speaker 7: they needed my help to solve the crime. They would
10:59
Speaker 7: say things like, the kids won't talk freely around us,
11:03
Speaker 7: but they will around you. Let us know if you
11:05
Speaker 7: hear any rumors. They made me the center of attention.
11:08
Speaker 7: They would ask me opinion questions and then it's exciting, right, yeah,
11:12
Speaker 7: congrat It was congratulate made my opinions being correct. My
11:16
Speaker 7: fantasy childhood career was actually to be a cop. So
11:19
Speaker 7: this unexpected early opportunity to do this quasi police work,
11:23
Speaker 7: you know, was part of how they pulled the wool
11:25
Speaker 7: over my eyes, along with my age, so that was sixteen.
11:28
Speaker 7: They used to buy pizza and listen, I grew up
11:32
Speaker 7: in a single parent household as well, as we mentioned,
11:34
Speaker 7: and that directly intersected with a good cop, bad cop routine,
11:38
Speaker 7: and then I started looking up to the cop who
11:41
Speaker 7: was pretending to.
11:42
Speaker 4: Be my friend as a father figure.
11:45
Speaker 7: As a father figure, yeah exactly.
11:47
Speaker 3: I mean again, you were sixteen, so okay, so they're
11:50
Speaker 3: sort of sort of spinning this web and seducing you
11:53
Speaker 3: and trying to get you to say something that would
11:55
Speaker 3: be incriminating. Now we know that's what they were doing, right.
11:57
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly. And so finally at the end, they told
12:00
Speaker 7: me that they received some new tip that was in
12:03
Speaker 7: the police file and they wanted to share that with me,
12:05
Speaker 7: but to do that I would first have to take
12:08
Speaker 7: and pass a polygraph. So help us, to help you,
12:12
Speaker 7: to help us type of logic was employed. So instead
12:16
Speaker 7: of going to the school the next day, I instead
12:20
Speaker 7: went to the police station where I thought the polygraph
12:23
Speaker 7: was gonna happen, because through the rumor mill of the
12:27
Speaker 7: city I had heard that other people had been polygraphed
12:31
Speaker 7: at the police station. But actually they drove me from Peakskill,
12:36
Speaker 7: which was in Westchester County. They drove me forty minutes
12:39
Speaker 7: away out of county to the town of Brewster, which
12:43
Speaker 7: is in Putnam County. So they drove me to Brewster
12:46
Speaker 7: to this polygraph as former Putnam County Sheriff's investigator Daniel Stevens,
12:51
Speaker 7: and he was an officer, but he was dressed as
12:54
Speaker 7: a civilian, and he never identified himself as a cop,
12:58
Speaker 7: and he never read me my Miranda warning, so I
13:00
Speaker 7: thought that he was a civilian. So he gave me
13:05
Speaker 7: this manual to look at about how the polygraph works,
13:08
Speaker 7: and it had a lot of really big words in
13:11
Speaker 7: it that were beyond my comprehension, but I didn't care
13:14
Speaker 7: because I was there to help the police, so who
13:17
Speaker 7: cares what the thing says, or so I thought. They
13:21
Speaker 7: put me into a small room and the polygraph is.
13:25
Speaker 7: Stevens became like a virtual coffee dispenser. I mean, I
13:28
Speaker 7: must have drank six or seven cups, and no sooner
13:30
Speaker 7: would I put the cup down than the cup would
13:32
Speaker 7: be halfway filled up. And you know, he's giving me
13:35
Speaker 7: another one. And it seems pretty clear in hindsight that
13:38
Speaker 7: the purpose of that was to get your nervous, make
13:41
Speaker 7: me nerve right, exactly right. So once he finished the
13:45
Speaker 7: coffee routine, then he straps me into the polygraph machine,
13:49
Speaker 7: which was fairly heavy, so you know, now I'm kind
13:52
Speaker 7: of immobilized. It's a very small room, and that's when
13:56
Speaker 7: he launches into his third degree tactics. So he invaded
14:00
Speaker 7: my personal space. He raised his voice at me. He
14:04
Speaker 7: kept asking me the same questions over and over again.
14:07
Speaker 7: And keep in mind that I'm not used to interacting
14:11
Speaker 7: with adult males and the way he's conducting himself, and
14:14
Speaker 7: he's kind of a mountain of a man, and I'm sixteen,
14:16
Speaker 7: like maybe one hundred and forty pounds, so can wet,
14:19
Speaker 7: you know. So it's really frightening. So each hour that
14:22
Speaker 7: goes by, my fear is increasing in proportion to the time.
14:27
Speaker 7: So Stevens kept that up for about six or seven hours.
14:31
Speaker 7: Towards the end of the interrogation, that's when he said
14:35
Speaker 7: to me, I guess by then he was just frustrated
14:38
Speaker 7: by not having been able to get me to confess
14:41
Speaker 7: to that point, he said, what do you mean you
14:45
Speaker 7: didn't do it? You just told me through the polygraph
14:48
Speaker 7: test results that you did. We just want you to
14:51
Speaker 7: verbally confirm it. So when he said that to me,
14:55
Speaker 7: that really shot my fear through the roof. And at
14:58
Speaker 7: that moment, the officer who was I've been pretending to
15:00
Speaker 7: be my friend. He came in the room and told
15:03
Speaker 7: me that the other officers were going to harm me,
15:05
Speaker 7: that he was holding them off, but he couldn't do
15:08
Speaker 7: so any longer, that I had to help myself. And
15:11
Speaker 7: then he added that if I did as he as
15:14
Speaker 7: they wanted, that not only would they stop what they
15:17
Speaker 7: were doing, but that I could go home afterwards, that
15:20
Speaker 7: I was not going to be arrested. Being young, naive,
15:24
Speaker 7: frightened sixteen years old in fear of my life because
15:29
Speaker 7: the fact that I didn't know where I was, and
15:31
Speaker 7: that I knew that nobody else did either, that loomed
15:34
Speaker 7: very large in my mind.
15:35
Speaker 4: It's incredible.
15:36
Speaker 3: I mean, it's total disorientation, right, I mean, yes, I mean,
15:39
Speaker 3: and it's you.
15:40
Speaker 4: Know, it's diabolical.
15:42
Speaker 3: But if what you want is a false confession, this
15:44
Speaker 3: would be the way to do it.
15:46
Speaker 7: Textbook, this is the way to do it. Yeah. And
15:47
Speaker 7: then I was emotionally overwhelmed also, and then there's the
15:51
Speaker 7: push pull dynamic, you know, there's the possibility of harm.
15:55
Speaker 7: But then he's thrown me this false life preserver and
15:59
Speaker 7: I took out which he offered. I made up a
16:02
Speaker 7: story based on information which they had given me that
16:05
Speaker 7: day and in the six weeks run up to that day,
16:08
Speaker 7: and by the time it was all said and done,
16:11
Speaker 7: I had collapsed on the floor, curled up into a
16:14
Speaker 7: fetal position, crying uncontrollably. Obviously I was arrested.
16:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the whole thing was a lie. It's
16:23
Speaker 3: like a fucking charade, right, And it was easy for them.
16:27
Speaker 3: I mean, the miracle is that you didn't confess sooner. Actually,
16:30
Speaker 3: And you know, it's interesting, Jeff, We know that false
16:32
Speaker 3: confessions happened typically much later like yours, and you were
16:36
Speaker 3: among the most vulnerable people that's ever been put into
16:38
Speaker 3: this position, being that you were alone, you had no
16:41
Speaker 3: way out, you had no way to get home. You
16:43
Speaker 3: were in tenth grade, I mean tenth grade. You don't
16:46
Speaker 3: know what the fuck you're doing. When you're in tenth grade.
16:48
Speaker 3: You're just a child, and you had a very real
16:53
Speaker 3: concern that you were going to be beaten up or worse.
16:57
Speaker 4: Right, you know, the fact that you were able to.
16:59
Speaker 3: Hang on for you know, almost nine hours in this
17:02
Speaker 3: situation is a testament to your strength, even in this
17:05
Speaker 3: most terrifying situation that you found yourself in. So now
17:11
Speaker 3: you're expecting to go home because that's what they told you. Yes,
17:14
Speaker 3: but they lied again. Yes, and so you signed this
17:17
Speaker 3: piece of paper.
17:18
Speaker 7: No. Let mean there was no sign confession. I never
17:21
Speaker 7: signed a confession, and there was no audio or video tap.
17:25
Speaker 7: It was just the cops word as to what happened.
17:27
Speaker 7: And as a result of that, when we got to court,
17:29
Speaker 7: they conveniently left out the threat and the false promise.
17:33
Speaker 4: Wow.
17:34
Speaker 3: I mean, it's actually strange, Jef, that they wouldn't have
17:36
Speaker 3: just put a piece of paper in front of you,
17:37
Speaker 3: because at this point you would have signed anything.
17:39
Speaker 4: You would have said that you stole the mona.
17:40
Speaker 7: Lisa, Right, Yeah, sure, yeah, of course, I mean whatever
17:45
Speaker 7: opinion for a pound. Look, man, I ready decide. I
17:47
Speaker 7: wanted to get the hell out of here. Tell you
17:49
Speaker 7: what you want to say. Yeah, this is the next
17:51
Speaker 7: thing you want me to say. Come on, get me
17:53
Speaker 7: out of you make good on your end? Yeah you
17:54
Speaker 7: want this extra thing? Come on, you got it? Can
17:56
Speaker 7: you honor your word? Down?
17:58
Speaker 3: So now you're arrested and the nightmare really begins, right,
18:02
Speaker 3: because you're as unprepared for this situation as someone can be. Right,
18:07
Speaker 3: you have no experience with criminal justice. You're not a
18:10
Speaker 3: big guy. You're not a tough guy. You're not emotionally
18:13
Speaker 3: developed to a point that you could be in any way,
18:17
Speaker 3: you know, steal yourself for what's going on. You're not
18:20
Speaker 3: educated enough to understand the proceedings. You don't have a
18:24
Speaker 3: family that's able to hire, for lack of a better word,
18:27
Speaker 3: a dream team to help you, and so arrested in
18:31
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety and now you're held in jail.
18:34
Speaker 4: I am a waiting trial.
18:35
Speaker 7: I was in jail for like thirty five days, and
18:38
Speaker 7: then I got bailed out. I got bailed out. At
18:41
Speaker 7: the time, my mother was dating a business person, Jack Ecashan,
18:45
Speaker 7: who had a carpet store, Acusian Carpets, and he was
18:49
Speaker 7: willing to bail me out, which he was hammered in
18:54
Speaker 7: the newspaper for just the fact of bailing me out,
18:58
Speaker 7: and he lost quite a bit of customer as a
19:00
Speaker 7: result of doing that.
19:01
Speaker 4: Well, that's innocent until proven guilty, right.
19:06
Speaker 7: So they say not so much.
19:07
Speaker 3: So much so even he's tard by this, yes, reputation
19:11
Speaker 3: that you have. And now you go home. You're not
19:12
Speaker 3: in school anymore, right, You've been kicked out of schools.
19:15
Speaker 7: So yeah, they would not allow me to go back
19:17
Speaker 7: to school until the case was resolved. And you know,
19:20
Speaker 7: I naively thought, you know, when I got bailed at,
19:22
Speaker 7: I was going to go back to my life. But
19:25
Speaker 7: there was no going back to it ever.
19:28
Speaker 4: So what did you do? Just stay in the house.
19:30
Speaker 7: I stayed in the house. Yeah, I mean I was
19:32
Speaker 7: afraid to go out, to be frank with you, that
19:35
Speaker 7: was a pariah. And the parents of my former friends
19:38
Speaker 7: would not allow them to play with me, of course,
19:40
Speaker 7: and even if they had, I doubt very many of
19:43
Speaker 7: them would have wanted to anyway, because they thought I
19:45
Speaker 7: was guilty, because that's what the headlines and everything else
19:48
Speaker 7: was saying. And I couldn't go to school, I couldn't
19:51
Speaker 7: do anything. So yeah, I just I stayed in my house.
19:55
Speaker 7: But that was only for a few weeks. Though I
19:58
Speaker 7: tried to kill myself. I felt my life was over.
20:01
Speaker 7: And I took an entire bottle of extra strength Title
20:04
Speaker 7: and all that had not been used, and I took
20:07
Speaker 7: every last pill and I went to sleep, and I
20:09
Speaker 7: intended to never wake up again.
20:11
Speaker 4: Wow, take them inte to think about that. I didn't
20:14
Speaker 4: know that part of your story.
20:17
Speaker 3: And Jeff and I've spent a lot of time together
20:19
Speaker 3: but they've never shared those details with me.
20:21
Speaker 4: It's really hard, hard to deal with.
20:26
Speaker 7: My point of mentioning that though, is that that resulted
20:29
Speaker 7: in my being involuntarily committed into a mental hospital for
20:33
Speaker 7: six months.
20:36
Speaker 3: So now the worst is still to come. But you've
20:39
Speaker 3: now gone through this crazy rapid decline from a happy,
20:44
Speaker 3: go lucky, goofy kid, not a care in the world
20:47
Speaker 3: except for maybe a test coming up right, right, or
20:50
Speaker 3: maybe you have a date or maybe you don't or whatever.
20:53
Speaker 3: You know, all the things you go through in adolescents,
20:56
Speaker 3: to being locked in a terrible jail basically being under
21:00
Speaker 3: house arrest, being ostracized by your friends and the whole community,
21:06
Speaker 3: being pilloried in the newspapers and the media, and now
21:11
Speaker 3: you're in a mental institution, and then the trial comes, and.
21:14
Speaker 7: Then the trial comes in just before the trial, the
21:17
Speaker 7: results of the DNA test comes back from the FBI laboratory,
21:22
Speaker 7: which shows that the seamen found in the victim didn't
21:26
Speaker 7: match me.
21:27
Speaker 4: Right, because remember she was raped, because.
21:28
Speaker 7: She was raped. Yes, And by the way, the lieutenant
21:31
Speaker 7: who oversaw everything in the letter that he penned to
21:35
Speaker 7: the FBI asking them to expedite the testing, he wrote
21:39
Speaker 7: in the letter that the DNA testing would either show
21:42
Speaker 7: my guilt or it would exonerate me. But when it
21:46
Speaker 7: came back and it didn't match me, my lawyer did
21:50
Speaker 7: try to get the indictment dismissed against me based on that,
21:54
Speaker 7: but the judge denied that motion.
21:56
Speaker 3: That alone seems so just incomprehensible to me. I mean,
22:02
Speaker 3: that just doesn't make sense. The judge is impartial, right,
22:05
Speaker 3: we know the prosecutor has an agenda, but the judge
22:08
Speaker 3: is impartial.
22:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, I don't understand.
22:10
Speaker 3: I mean, I know that back then DNA wasn't it
22:13
Speaker 3: wasn't as it wasn't.
22:15
Speaker 7: As well known. But to be clear, I mean, DNA
22:18
Speaker 7: started being used in the court system as early as
22:20
Speaker 7: nineteen eighty seven, and this we're on trial now in
22:23
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety, so it's been around for three years. So
22:27
Speaker 7: while not in currency like now, it is not exactly
22:30
Speaker 7: totally unknown.
22:32
Speaker 4: Right, and it's perfect I mean.
22:34
Speaker 7: Right, it's the gold standard.
22:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, so your DNA doesn't match. This is an inconvenient
22:40
Speaker 3: truth for the authorities, and the judge allows this, this
22:45
Speaker 3: circus to go on. So you go to trial, yes,
22:48
Speaker 3: and at the trial was the DNA allowed to be introduced, Yes,
22:51
Speaker 3: it was.
22:52
Speaker 4: So again, how does it end up that you get
22:55
Speaker 4: convicted under these circumstances?
22:57
Speaker 7: Sure? So, firstly, as I mentioned, the the cops left
23:01
Speaker 7: the threatned false promise out of the story, So I
23:05
Speaker 7: mean the story is still there's a lot enough red
23:08
Speaker 7: flags pertaining to circumstances around the confession that called into
23:11
Speaker 7: a question, but the threatned false promise weren't there. So
23:15
Speaker 7: that's one factor. Another factor is there was prosecutorial misconduct
23:21
Speaker 7: and fraud by the medical examiner. So in order to
23:24
Speaker 7: answer the DNA evidence, the prosecutor got the medical examiner
23:29
Speaker 7: to commit fraud. So when an autopsy's done, there's written
23:32
Speaker 7: in audio notes which are taken contemporaneously as the findings
23:36
Speaker 7: are made. So it was only six months after doing
23:40
Speaker 7: that initial autopsy, and only after the DNA result didn't
23:45
Speaker 7: match me, that this medical examiner for the first time
23:49
Speaker 7: suddenly claimed he suddenly remembers right. Six months later and
23:54
Speaker 7: hundreds of autopsies later, he suddenly remembers that he found
23:58
Speaker 7: medical evidence to show that the victim had been sexually active,
24:03
Speaker 7: which is what opened the door for the prosecutor to
24:06
Speaker 7: argue that it didn't matter that the seamen didn't come
24:10
Speaker 7: from me. That that didn't mean I was innocent. That
24:13
Speaker 7: just meant that she could have had consensual sex close
24:17
Speaker 7: enough to the murder and rape so as to explain
24:19
Speaker 7: away the DNA.
24:21
Speaker 3: But that still wouldn't explain it away. It would just
24:23
Speaker 3: explain that there would be a mixture, right, exactly right,
24:26
Speaker 3: So that doesn't make any sense. And also, let's just
24:28
Speaker 3: reflect for a moment on the other victim in this case,
24:31
Speaker 3: and there are more right, Yes, it's not just you
24:33
Speaker 3: and Angela, it is not. Let's just reflect for a
24:36
Speaker 3: minute that the authorities were willing to go so low.
24:41
Speaker 3: They had to know that you were innocent. Yeah, they
24:43
Speaker 3: were so determined to convict an innocent boy because you
24:46
Speaker 3: were a boy, yes, that they were willing to drag
24:50
Speaker 3: the reputation of a fifteen year old girl, yes, through
24:55
Speaker 3: the mud, right, and put her family through that whenever
25:00
Speaker 3: indication that she was a girl who was like as
25:02
Speaker 3: goody two shoes as you could be. You couldn't even
25:04
Speaker 3: leave the house by yourself until that one faithful day.
25:07
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so disgusting, right, this girl who deserves
25:11
Speaker 3: at least to have her reputation protected is dragged.
25:16
Speaker 4: Through the mud. It's just disgusting.
25:28
Speaker 7: Jeff.
25:29
Speaker 3: Let me ask you this, because you've become an expert
25:31
Speaker 3: in criminal justice. You've accomplished so much since you've been home,
25:35
Speaker 3: in terms of your education, in terms of investigative skills,
25:38
Speaker 3: in terms of your advocacy. You are one of the
25:41
Speaker 3: top people in the state or dry state, or maybe
25:43
Speaker 3: even the country now in terms of your breadth of
25:46
Speaker 3: knowledge of how these things work. To your great credit,
25:52
Speaker 3: And there was no physical evidence connecting you to this crime, right, correct?
25:57
Speaker 3: Is it possible for someone to beat, rape, and strangle
26:03
Speaker 3: someone and not leave any physical evidence at the crime scene.
26:06
Speaker 4: No, it's impossible.
26:08
Speaker 7: It's very very close to impossible. And just to delve
26:11
Speaker 7: into this a little bit more, one of my statements,
26:13
Speaker 7: I said that I hit the victim over the head
26:17
Speaker 7: with a gatorade bottle, because gatorade was made in glass bottles.
26:21
Speaker 7: But if you look at the types of injuries that
26:24
Speaker 7: the victim had on her head, a bottle would not
26:27
Speaker 7: be capable of making that type of injury. And on
26:31
Speaker 7: top of that, there was no broken glass at the
26:34
Speaker 7: crime scene. There was no shards of glass in the body.
26:37
Speaker 7: There's no relationship to the physical evidence and the statements
26:40
Speaker 7: in the confession at all.
26:43
Speaker 3: Right, so there was no physical evidence. No, your confession stunk, yes,
26:48
Speaker 3: because you didn't know, right, and there was DNA to
26:51
Speaker 3: prove that you didn't do it. Now they conspire somehow
26:54
Speaker 3: to drag this girl's reputation into the mud, and in
26:58
Speaker 3: order to protect this false narrative that they've created.
27:03
Speaker 7: Right, But there's three other things that they did fighting
27:06
Speaker 7: the DNA. So taking his law a step further, the
27:09
Speaker 7: prosecutor then named another youth by name that he claimed
27:15
Speaker 7: probably had had sex with the victim, but he never
27:18
Speaker 7: had a DNA test to prove that, and he didn't
27:21
Speaker 7: even call him as a witness. He just made the
27:24
Speaker 7: unsupported argument to the jury. And then another thing was
27:29
Speaker 7: that I later learned through civil litigation that when the
27:32
Speaker 7: DNA didn't match me, the police went back out into
27:35
Speaker 7: the field and they interviewed seventeen witnesses who knew the
27:38
Speaker 7: victim in one capacity or another, and all of them
27:42
Speaker 7: told the police that there was no boyfriend, there was
27:45
Speaker 7: no consensual sex. But the cops never documented any of
27:50
Speaker 7: those interviews so that they didn't have to turn those
27:53
Speaker 7: over to my lawyer. And the third thing was that
27:57
Speaker 7: the police fabricated and attributed to me. They claimed that
28:02
Speaker 7: I said to them speaking in the third person. They
28:06
Speaker 7: claimed that I said, well, I don't know if the
28:08
Speaker 7: perpetrator ejaculated or not, so that word was not in
28:12
Speaker 7: my vocabulary as a sixteen year old, And we proved
28:16
Speaker 7: that in the police reports, where they referenced that they
28:20
Speaker 7: only came up with that after the DNA didn't match me.
28:24
Speaker 7: That was never in their early written reports of the interrogation.
28:28
Speaker 7: So they fabricated that to help the prosecutor against the DNA.
28:32
Speaker 3: You know what's bothering me greatly Aside from all of
28:35
Speaker 3: this right now, Jeff, is the idea that there must
28:38
Speaker 3: have been meetings right where they were like, uh oh,
28:41
Speaker 3: like at various different stages. Oh, the DNA doesn't match. Oh,
28:45
Speaker 3: the witnesses are not connecting any boyfriend.
28:48
Speaker 4: Oh.
28:48
Speaker 3: Everything that they had said was turning out to be
28:51
Speaker 3: not true.
28:52
Speaker 4: Right.
28:53
Speaker 3: All their theories were going up in smoke, and there
28:56
Speaker 3: must have been at some point sit downs where they
28:58
Speaker 3: got with the medical EGA.
29:00
Speaker 4: I don't know this, I can't prove it, but I'm guessing.
29:03
Speaker 7: Examiner testified at that position in the lawsuit. He said
29:07
Speaker 7: that the day after the DNA didn't match me, he
29:09
Speaker 7: got a phone call from one of three people, and
29:13
Speaker 7: he said that they told him that the DNA didn't
29:15
Speaker 7: match me, and he had to come up with some
29:17
Speaker 7: kind of a theory by which the case against me
29:20
Speaker 7: could continue and a conviction could result.
29:23
Speaker 3: Unbelievable, I mean, it's unbelievable. I mean, I can't I
29:29
Speaker 3: can't fathom it.
29:31
Speaker 4: So there you are a trial.
29:33
Speaker 7: So that's on the prosecution end, But I want to
29:35
Speaker 7: the other part of how I got convicted was the
29:38
Speaker 7: public defender, who supposedly was the best lawyer in Legal
29:43
Speaker 7: Aid of Westchester. He was terrible. He very rarely met
29:47
Speaker 7: with me. Whenever I would try to explain to him
29:50
Speaker 7: that I was innocent and what happened in the interrogation room,
29:52
Speaker 7: he was always shutting me up. One time he told
29:55
Speaker 7: me he didn't care if I was guilty or innocent.
29:58
Speaker 7: He never explained to the jury the significance of the
30:02
Speaker 7: DNA not matching me. He never used the DNA to
30:05
Speaker 7: argue that this so called confession was coerced and false.
30:09
Speaker 7: When we hadn't decided if we were going to go
30:12
Speaker 7: with a bench trial or a jury trial. He came
30:16
Speaker 7: to me one day and told me that the trial
30:19
Speaker 7: judge came to him off the record and told him
30:22
Speaker 7: to pick a jury because he didn't want to be
30:24
Speaker 7: responsible for acquitting me. So my lawyer was supposed to
30:28
Speaker 7: put that on the record and asked the judge to
30:30
Speaker 7: accuse himself, because that's a prejudicial type of statement. It
30:34
Speaker 7: also suggests that the judge is feeling public pressure, because again,
30:39
Speaker 7: virtually all of the coverage is guilt presumptive oriented. So additionally,
30:45
Speaker 7: my lawyer was not supposed to represent me because of
30:48
Speaker 7: a conflict of interest in that this other youth that
30:51
Speaker 7: the prosecution was falsely claiming had had sex with the
30:55
Speaker 7: victim was represented by another lawyer in legal eight, which
31:00
Speaker 7: meant that the defense couldn't ask him to give a
31:04
Speaker 7: DNA sample, The defense couldn't subpoena him in order to
31:07
Speaker 7: explode the consensual sex theory. Because right and then, the
31:12
Speaker 7: best thing or worst thing of all, was when it
31:16
Speaker 7: was time to cross examine the medical examiner whose fraud
31:20
Speaker 7: was so large in this case, he never even bothered
31:24
Speaker 7: to cross examine him. He stood up in open court
31:27
Speaker 7: and with a big smile on his face, as if
31:30
Speaker 7: him and the medical examiner were great friends from back
31:33
Speaker 7: in the day. He said to him, you're going to
31:36
Speaker 7: be pleased to know that I don't have a single
31:39
Speaker 7: question for you.
31:41
Speaker 4: Wow.
31:42
Speaker 7: He never interviewed nor presented as a witness my alibi.
31:46
Speaker 7: I was actually playing wiffle ball when the crime happened,
31:51
Speaker 7: and he wouldn't allow me to testify at the pre
31:54
Speaker 7: trial hearing to put the threatned false promise on the record,
31:59
Speaker 7: And when it was time for the defense to try
32:01
Speaker 7: to put a case on he said to me that
32:04
Speaker 7: it wasn't his job to prove that I was innocent.
32:06
Speaker 7: It's up to the prosecution to prove that I was guilty,
32:09
Speaker 7: and he didn't think that that had happened, so added
32:12
Speaker 7: all up, I was wrongfully convicted of a murder and rape.
32:18
Speaker 3: It's unreal. I mean, this stuff goes on in America.
32:21
Speaker 3: It's just it's just insane. So you end up getting
32:26
Speaker 3: convicted and sentenced.
32:28
Speaker 7: To fifteen to life. At the sentencing hearing, I begged
32:31
Speaker 7: the judge to overturn the verdict because I was innocent,
32:34
Speaker 7: and I referenced the DNA to support my contention, and
32:38
Speaker 7: he actually told me on the record, maybe you are innocent,
32:42
Speaker 7: conceding that there is a doubt, but the DNA doesn't
32:45
Speaker 7: match me. How could there not be a doubt? But
32:47
Speaker 7: you might think that he would step up for justice
32:50
Speaker 7: and overturn the conviction by reversing any number of rulings
32:54
Speaker 7: that he made against me in the course of the trial.
32:57
Speaker 7: But he didn't do that. He took the easy and
32:59
Speaker 7: politically expedient way out, which was to sentence me to
33:03
Speaker 7: a term of imprisonment of fifteen to life.
33:06
Speaker 3: Fifteen years to life. Now you're only seventeen at this time,
33:10
Speaker 3: so this is basically that's an incomprehensible thing to face
33:14
Speaker 3: for anybody, but at least of all for a child.
33:17
Speaker 3: And then you end up in some of the worst
33:19
Speaker 3: prisons in America, and you go into these places unprepared
33:24
Speaker 3: in every imaginable way, and you go in under the
33:28
Speaker 3: worst possible circumstance, which is it's someone who's been convicted
33:31
Speaker 3: of raping and murdering a child.
33:33
Speaker 7: Exactly, how the fuck.
33:35
Speaker 4: Did you survive in there? Jeff? How did you keep
33:41
Speaker 4: hope alive?
33:41
Speaker 7: All right? So, in terms of how how I kept
33:43
Speaker 7: hope alive, definitely belief in God was one thing. Another
33:47
Speaker 7: thing was I didn't look at it like I was
33:49
Speaker 7: doing fifteen to life. I thought I was just doing
33:52
Speaker 7: a year or two until the next appeal would be decided,
33:55
Speaker 7: which I was sure I was going to win, because
33:56
Speaker 7: I knew I was innocent, and I still naively believed
33:59
Speaker 7: in this. I found different things to throw myself into mentally.
34:04
Speaker 7: I used to go to the law library and learn
34:06
Speaker 7: about the laws so I could feel a little bit empowered.
34:09
Speaker 7: I used to read nonfiction books. I would cut pictures
34:13
Speaker 7: of nature scenes out so I could look at them
34:16
Speaker 7: and travel there mentally. But I would play sports like
34:20
Speaker 7: ping pong or basketball or chess. I engaged in this
34:24
Speaker 7: elaborate delusion, like if I was a professional player and
34:26
Speaker 7: so was the other person, and the people on the
34:29
Speaker 7: sidelines were the fans. But it was not like kids
34:33
Speaker 7: like fantasizing about being a professional athlete. This was more
34:37
Speaker 7: like my mind couldn't deal with being there anymore, and
34:39
Speaker 7: I had to get out of the prison mentally for
34:42
Speaker 7: a couple of hours. By this elaborate delusion. Sometimes I'd
34:47
Speaker 7: listen to sports radio, but it wasn't listening to sports radio.
34:50
Speaker 7: It was a connection to the outside, and I'm not
34:54
Speaker 7: going to the prison assignment in the morning. I'm going
34:57
Speaker 7: to work or I'm going to school. It's not the warden,
35:01
Speaker 7: it's the superintendent. And you try to it's normal that
35:04
Speaker 7: if you're going to make a phone call, it's got
35:07
Speaker 7: to be collect or a strip search as the price
35:10
Speaker 7: for a visit, and you tried to normalize the madness
35:14
Speaker 7: in your own mind. I had to fight off feelings
35:18
Speaker 7: of hopelessness, helplessness, thoughts of giving up, suicidal ideations, thoughts
35:23
Speaker 7: of suicide came into my mind at times, and so
35:26
Speaker 7: this was as much a psychological thing as it was physical.
35:31
Speaker 7: I mean, I didn't have the luxury of loosing my
35:34
Speaker 7: mind because I knew that, especially when my peals were
35:37
Speaker 7: over and exhausted. After I was in for eleven years,
35:41
Speaker 7: and they no longer give you a lawyer, and the
35:44
Speaker 7: only way back into court is if you can find
35:46
Speaker 7: something new that wasn't known previously. So I started writing
35:52
Speaker 7: a countless number of letters trying to find a lawyer
35:56
Speaker 7: and to investigator to take my case for free, because
35:58
Speaker 7: I didn't have any money to hige right.
36:00
Speaker 3: And I want to point out a cruel irony here, Jeff,
36:03
Speaker 3: which is that for many of the clients of the
36:06
Speaker 3: innocence projects or other innocence organizations, the DNA is a
36:11
Speaker 3: silver bullet, right, And ultimately, when the DNA gets discovered,
36:15
Speaker 3: they get a new trial because it's new evidence. But
36:17
Speaker 3: you would already presented the DNA. You would actually shot
36:20
Speaker 3: that arrow already, right, And so you're actually fucked because
36:24
Speaker 3: of the fact that your timing of it.
36:26
Speaker 4: It's so strange, you know that fact.
36:28
Speaker 7: See. I used to collect articles on exonerations and that
36:32
Speaker 7: used to grate on me though, like all these people
36:34
Speaker 7: were going home because of the DNA, and I'm like, well,
36:37
Speaker 7: why do I have to be an exception? The DNA
36:40
Speaker 7: doesn't match me either. What does it matter when the
36:44
Speaker 7: result was actually obtained? I mean, it means the same thing.
36:48
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, let's spend a moment talking about.
36:52
Speaker 4: The actual perpetrator.
36:53
Speaker 3: Yes, because every time and I sound like a broken
36:57
Speaker 3: record when I say this, but every time that somebody
37:00
Speaker 3: like you gets convicted wrongfully, the actual perpetrator, they stopped
37:05
Speaker 3: looking for him.
37:06
Speaker 4: Right.
37:06
Speaker 3: The case is closed, And in this case, the consequences
37:09
Speaker 3: were very real, as they are in most cases when
37:13
Speaker 3: these things happen. Right, and I think that the people
37:17
Speaker 3: that are responsible for your wrongful conviction, there's an argument
37:21
Speaker 3: to say that they are responsible for another tragedy that happen.
37:26
Speaker 4: Can you talk about that.
37:27
Speaker 7: I can. Yeah, school teacher Patricia Morrison who also had
37:31
Speaker 7: a couple of kids. She was from Peak Skill and
37:34
Speaker 7: she was killed by the stayed perpetrator, Stephen Cunningham. She
37:38
Speaker 7: was killed three and a half years later as a
37:41
Speaker 7: result of Cunningham being left free on the street while
37:44
Speaker 7: I was doing time for his crime.
37:46
Speaker 4: Now you say the real perpetrator, how do we know that?
37:49
Speaker 7: Well, here, great, that's a great question. I'm so glad
37:52
Speaker 7: you asked. Because the DNA matched him because he got
37:57
Speaker 7: caught for the second murder, which resulted in his being
38:01
Speaker 7: incarcerated and having to give up a DNA sample which
38:04
Speaker 7: was put into the data bank. And so when I
38:07
Speaker 7: eventually got the further testing with the Innocence Projects help,
38:12
Speaker 7: it matched him. Then he subsequently confessed not just to
38:17
Speaker 7: the authorities, but also to a reporter on video camera
38:21
Speaker 7: in the prison visiting room. That video is available on
38:25
Speaker 7: the internet. So, just to be clear, there's no coerced
38:28
Speaker 7: false confession there an he played guilty in court.
38:31
Speaker 4: When did this happen?
38:33
Speaker 7: That happened that him being caught for the original crime
38:37
Speaker 7: that happened twelve and a half years after he killed
38:40
Speaker 7: a second victim, So there was a point in time
38:43
Speaker 7: we were both concurrently in the same prison system, although
38:47
Speaker 7: not in the same prison.
38:49
Speaker 4: Wow.
38:49
Speaker 3: So Patricia Morrison, yes today, would be probably lost sitting
38:55
Speaker 3: around with her grandchildren, you know, probably be a retired
38:58
Speaker 3: school teacher by now having a nice life. Her children
39:00
Speaker 3: would have grown up as they deserve too, as everyone
39:03
Speaker 3: deserves to with their mother. The rest of her family
39:07
Speaker 3: wouldn't have gone through this horrendous loss.
39:10
Speaker 4: And none of it had to happen, you.
39:12
Speaker 3: Know, except for the fact that they went on this
39:15
Speaker 3: crazy witch hunt to convict you, Jeffrey Deskovic, of a.
39:19
Speaker 4: Crime that they knew you didn't commit.
39:21
Speaker 3: It's a tragic, tragic byproduct of this horrible malfeasance coordinated
39:29
Speaker 3: in this case that resulted in you enduring the nightmare
39:33
Speaker 3: that none of us who haven't been through it could
39:34
Speaker 3: ever imagine. You, somehow or other, managed to find this
39:54
Speaker 3: extra layer of strength and courage to persevere, to not
40:01
Speaker 3: give up, and to ultimately win right to be and
40:05
Speaker 3: to be vindicated. Correct, We've talked about some of the
40:08
Speaker 3: darkest moments that anyone could imagine.
40:11
Speaker 4: Is there a flip side to it? Was there a.
40:13
Speaker 3: Moment of joy ecstasy when you were finally vindicated and freed?
40:19
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it was. It was a surreal moment.
40:21
Speaker 7: I have to say. The luncheon afterwards was surreal. And
40:26
Speaker 7: after that is where reality, you know, the reality hit
40:30
Speaker 7: the road, the retires hit the road. How do you
40:31
Speaker 7: want to phrase it. It'd be great to say there
40:33
Speaker 7: was this great party, this raucous party that lasted to
40:37
Speaker 7: the crack of dawn, But in reality, who was there
40:40
Speaker 7: to socialize or party with? I mean, I had long
40:43
Speaker 7: since lost track with my connection with my old friends
40:47
Speaker 7: and my extended family, and everybody was virtual stranger, even
40:51
Speaker 7: my immediate family very very limited visiting, so I couldn't
40:54
Speaker 7: relate to the people there. I felt out of place
40:57
Speaker 7: and I couldn't really communicate with them, and that's when
41:00
Speaker 7: a lot of my difficulties post exoneration started happening.
41:05
Speaker 3: You talked very beautifully about your mindset of being able
41:10
Speaker 3: to escape the walls by having these almost out of
41:15
Speaker 3: body experiences, these mental exercises that you put yourself through
41:18
Speaker 3: to transport yourself to a happier place. Were there any
41:22
Speaker 3: friendships that you developed in prison?
41:24
Speaker 7: Yeah, I would like to remember Exgonnery, Frank Sterling, Mike Roberts,
41:31
Speaker 7: and Sammy Swift. So those are the three people that
41:35
Speaker 7: I want to give a shout out.
41:37
Speaker 3: So, yeah, you came out into a world that had
41:40
Speaker 3: changed a lot. You literally had spent half of your
41:43
Speaker 3: life in prison. You were arrested when you were sixteen
41:46
Speaker 3: and you were exonerated when you were thirty three. So
41:49
Speaker 3: all those years when everybody else was developing their career,
41:52
Speaker 3: getting their education, developing their social networks, their relationships, or
41:57
Speaker 3: even starting families, you were stuck in hell.
42:01
Speaker 7: Actually right, Yeah fair to say, yeah, exactly right, as
42:04
Speaker 7: well as everybody was, you know, incrementally adjusting as technology
42:08
Speaker 7: would come out. When I came out, I never saw
42:10
Speaker 7: a cell phone, GPS, the Internet hadn't been invented, all
42:14
Speaker 7: these different ways of banking, culture had changed. I was
42:17
Speaker 7: totally a fish out of water. I didn't fit or
42:20
Speaker 7: belong anymore.
42:22
Speaker 3: You talked about the things that you did to survive
42:25
Speaker 3: in prison and the friendships that you developed, the people
42:28
Speaker 3: who were able to be a support system for you
42:32
Speaker 3: and you for them. Is it as bad as everybody
42:36
Speaker 3: thinks it is. I want to give people an idea
42:38
Speaker 3: of what this experience is really like, because we don't
42:41
Speaker 3: do prison in America like they do in the rest
42:43
Speaker 3: of the Western world. We focus so much on punishment
42:46
Speaker 3: and basically in a lot of ways, torture, where in
42:49
Speaker 3: other Western countries they focus on rehabilitation.
42:53
Speaker 7: Yeah, so I think that the image that a lot
42:54
Speaker 7: of people have in their mind, I think they overdramatized
42:58
Speaker 7: the gang thing, and they think that that everyone just
43:01
Speaker 7: is raping each other all day, every day. And I
43:05
Speaker 7: think that some of it is it's not as bad
43:07
Speaker 7: as they make it seem. But then in other ways
43:10
Speaker 7: it's much worse than what people imagine. I mean, there
43:14
Speaker 7: was three or four stabbings or cuttings every every day
43:17
Speaker 7: in Helmira where I was, and there was plenty of
43:19
Speaker 7: gang activity and lots of violence that didn't involve weapons.
43:24
Speaker 7: The guards were very disrespectful, and most of them, not
43:28
Speaker 7: not all of them, they were very disrespectful and just
43:30
Speaker 7: you know, the medical care was terrible. The food was
43:33
Speaker 7: terrible as well. So I would describe it as a
43:37
Speaker 7: NonStop obstacle course, featuring the guards, civilians and inmates. All
43:42
Speaker 7: is obstacles to the main objective, which was to try
43:45
Speaker 7: to prove your innocence and regain your freedom. It was
43:48
Speaker 7: every day a living hell without a doubt, and to
43:51
Speaker 7: stay alive, to stay alive. Yeah, every time I left
43:54
Speaker 7: my cell, I never knew if I was gonna make
43:56
Speaker 7: it back. When I arrived in Elmira, the guards asked me,
44:00
Speaker 7: you want to go into protective custody because of you
44:03
Speaker 7: know your charges and how young you are, and this
44:05
Speaker 7: increases the likely of you being a victim. And I
44:08
Speaker 7: asked them, well, well what's that and they explained to me, well,
44:10
Speaker 7: you know you would be in your cell like twenty
44:12
Speaker 7: three hours a day, and you know you wouldn't go
44:15
Speaker 7: to programs, but then again, nobody would be able to
44:17
Speaker 7: harm you. And I quickly, on the spot, I made
44:20
Speaker 7: the decision. Imagine making this decision, going down this line
44:23
Speaker 7: of reasoning, right at seventeen years old. I just thought
44:26
Speaker 7: to myself, you know what, I'm already here. I'm not
44:30
Speaker 7: going to agree to make my time even worse. So
44:33
Speaker 7: I'm not taking this protective custody. I'm going to go
44:36
Speaker 7: to general population. I'm going to take my chances, and
44:39
Speaker 7: you know what if somebody kills me, well, I guess
44:41
Speaker 7: I don't have to worry about doing this life sentence
44:44
Speaker 7: that I've been given for a crime I didn't commit.
44:47
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it's unbelievable. So you come out, Jeff,
44:51
Speaker 3: finally exonerated. You've proven what you've known all along. But
44:57
Speaker 3: now you face a whole other.
44:58
Speaker 4: Set of obstacles.
45:00
Speaker 3: How did you transform yourself because at one point you
45:04
Speaker 3: were almost homeless?
45:05
Speaker 7: Correct, yes, exactly. I almost went to a homeless shelter.
45:09
Speaker 2: You know.
45:09
Speaker 7: I lost the temporary apartment that this religious community was
45:12
Speaker 7: putting me up in. Nobody would take me in. Thank
45:15
Speaker 7: god for Mercy College, which had given me a scholarship
45:18
Speaker 7: to finish the bachelor's degree because I was thirty credits
45:22
Speaker 7: short of that at the time that former governor of
45:25
Speaker 7: Attack he had cut the funding for that. So that
45:28
Speaker 7: made its way into the newspaper, and so Mercy College
45:31
Speaker 7: gave me the scholarship and the meal plan. And when
45:33
Speaker 7: I lost the housing, they allowed me to stay in
45:36
Speaker 7: the dorms. You know, I was never able to obtain
45:39
Speaker 7: gainful employment because I didn't understand the technology. All the
45:42
Speaker 7: potential employers wanted somebody who could hit the ground running
45:46
Speaker 7: rather than some little bit of patience on the job training.
45:49
Speaker 7: I did get a job as a weekly columnist, but
45:53
Speaker 7: the problem was that it was a weekly newspaper, and
45:55
Speaker 7: so they only wanted one article a week. You know.
45:58
Speaker 7: I was making like two and fifty as an article,
46:00
Speaker 7: which is really good, but that was the only income
46:03
Speaker 7: I could count on per month while I started doing
46:05
Speaker 7: speaking engagements, but that's almost like being an actor or
46:09
Speaker 7: you only get paid if you get booked, and that
46:11
Speaker 7: wasn't consistent, so, you know, it was very tight financially,
46:15
Speaker 7: and then I had to deal with all these the
46:17
Speaker 7: psychological after effects of my experience and then the technology,
46:21
Speaker 7: and then just being just straight up lonely and depressed
46:25
Speaker 7: because there was no social circle that I had and
46:28
Speaker 7: I wasn't able to make another one.
46:31
Speaker 3: You really were alone in the world in a lot
46:34
Speaker 3: of ways. But somehow or other, you have transformed yourself
46:39
Speaker 3: literally figuratively, physically, mentally, spiritually, and I think everybody can
46:46
Speaker 3: learn from that.
46:47
Speaker 6: I have.
46:48
Speaker 3: I mean, I've learned a lot from hanging out with you,
46:50
Speaker 3: and we've had a lot of laughs over the last
46:52
Speaker 3: several years. But you're doing so much good stuff now
46:55
Speaker 3: and you're taking your experience and applying it in the
46:58
Speaker 3: real world in a way that's already having a very
47:00
Speaker 3: positive impact.
47:01
Speaker 4: And talk a little.
47:02
Speaker 3: Bit, Jeff about your education and your goals and what
47:05
Speaker 3: you're doing now with your foundation. You've been able to
47:07
Speaker 3: help exonerate other people. How incredible is that. I mean,
47:10
Speaker 3: that's got to be a it is.
47:12
Speaker 7: A story book. It is. It's beside myself about that.
47:15
Speaker 7: It's incredible.
47:17
Speaker 6: Now.
47:17
Speaker 3: I can see how you're lighting up right now, talk
47:19
Speaker 3: about it. I've seen you around those guys, and it
47:21
Speaker 3: is the best feeling. It's why all of us in
47:23
Speaker 3: this movement through what we do, because it's an unbelievably
47:26
Speaker 3: great feeling to be able to see somebody like you,
47:30
Speaker 3: thanks to the help of the Innis Project and other
47:32
Speaker 3: great organizations, be able to come out and get your
47:36
Speaker 3: life back on track.
47:38
Speaker 7: Sure. So from finishing the bachelor's at Mercy College, I
47:42
Speaker 7: then graduated with John Jay College of Criminal Justice, got
47:45
Speaker 7: the master's degree with my master's thesis on raful Conviction
47:48
Speaker 7: Courses and other Reforms, and I'm in my second year
47:52
Speaker 7: now at the Elizabeth Hopp School of Law at Pace University.
47:56
Speaker 7: So in terms of my foundation, after being home for
48:00
Speaker 7: five years, very difficult five years, as we've went over,
48:03
Speaker 7: I was able to receive some financial compensation and I
48:07
Speaker 7: decided I wanted to go from being an individual advocate.
48:11
Speaker 7: I mean do I used to. I was doing presentations
48:13
Speaker 7: and doing media interviews and lobbying elected officials and going
48:18
Speaker 7: to legislative hearings. And it was part of the effort
48:21
Speaker 7: where we fought off capital punishment reinstatement efforts in two
48:25
Speaker 7: thousand and seven in collaboration with New Yorkers against the
48:28
Speaker 7: death penalty, and I was involved in the successful campaign
48:32
Speaker 7: repealing the death penalty in Connecticut. So doing all of
48:35
Speaker 7: that as an individual advocate and it wasn't enough. I
48:40
Speaker 7: wanted to get into the exoneration game. You know. I
48:43
Speaker 7: was tired of helping out on cases on the peripheral
48:45
Speaker 7: and I wanted to be more directly involved. So when
48:48
Speaker 7: I received some compensation, I decided to take things to
48:53
Speaker 7: the next level open a nonprofit. So I committed a
48:55
Speaker 7: million and a half dollars of that compensation and we
48:58
Speaker 7: opened a Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, and our goal
49:02
Speaker 7: is to exonerate innocent people both in DNA and non
49:05
Speaker 7: DNA cases with the policy change component to it. Our
49:11
Speaker 7: first ex honery was William Lopez, so we helped exonerate
49:14
Speaker 7: collaboratively along with his pre existing attorneys, Richard Levitt and
49:18
Speaker 7: Yvon Shefvers. We did the investigative work. It's kind of
49:21
Speaker 7: like a building is built and it's missing a section
49:23
Speaker 7: and we helped put the section in. So Bill was
49:26
Speaker 7: in for twenty three and a half years in a
49:28
Speaker 7: wrongful conviction case in Brooklyn, and so that was our
49:32
Speaker 7: first success. A second exoneration was William Hahey. That was
49:36
Speaker 7: totally in house, traveling, collaborative. So William Hawhey did eight
49:40
Speaker 7: years and four months on an arson case in Putnam County.
49:44
Speaker 7: So the place that they brought me to for the polygraph,
49:46
Speaker 7: I was able to reach back there. It exonerates somebody there.
49:49
Speaker 7: It's a little irony, little extra satisfaction, full circle. Yeah.
49:54
Speaker 7: So he was in for eight years. In four months,
49:56
Speaker 7: we were able to get four other innocent people out
49:59
Speaker 7: through other means, which turned out to be less than
50:01
Speaker 7: an exoneration. So Lorenzo Johnson, that was a collaborative effort.
50:05
Speaker 7: We did some investigative work. We were able to convince
50:08
Speaker 7: the parole board in three other cases that our clients
50:11
Speaker 7: were innocent. So that's six people, and you know, we're
50:14
Speaker 7: part of the effort that we got the laws changed
50:18
Speaker 7: in New York on interrogation and on d reform, although
50:21
Speaker 7: they watered that down a bit. And we've been very
50:23
Speaker 7: close the last three years working collaboration with the group
50:26
Speaker 7: It Can Happen to You, which is a coalition group
50:28
Speaker 7: which I'm an advisory board member of trying to pass
50:31
Speaker 7: a bill that would create a Commission on Prosecutor Conducts
50:34
Speaker 7: to an oversight board for prosecutors.
50:37
Speaker 3: So this is all amazing, amazing stuff. It is full
50:41
Speaker 3: circle in so many ways. Like most of the other
50:44
Speaker 3: exigneries I talked to, you have committed yourself selplessly and
50:49
Speaker 3: tirelessly to helping other people avoid the same faith that
50:53
Speaker 3: you went through when you could just as easily be
50:55
Speaker 3: off doing whatever you want and no one would blame you, right,
50:59
Speaker 3: you could be off avctioning, right, But instead you're channeling
51:03
Speaker 3: all your energy and your money, your personal money, into
51:05
Speaker 3: helping others. And that's that's just a beautiful, amazing thing,
51:09
Speaker 3: and it's one of the reasons why I love being
51:10
Speaker 3: around you because you're just like a such a great
51:13
Speaker 3: positive influence on everybody that you touch. So, Jeff, we
51:17
Speaker 3: have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction, which is that
51:20
Speaker 3: at the end of the episode, I like to turn
51:22
Speaker 3: the mic over to you for closing thoughts, anything you
51:26
Speaker 3: want to share.
51:28
Speaker 7: I have a dream. Imagine if there were twenty five
51:32
Speaker 7: thousand people in the world who could afford three dollars
51:35
Speaker 7: a month on a recurring basis, who felt that it
51:38
Speaker 7: would be worth it to sacrifice the three dollars in
51:42
Speaker 7: order to play their part in helping to free wrongfully
51:45
Speaker 7: convicted people. That's a budget of close to a million dollars.
51:49
Speaker 7: If a person goes to Google and types in Deskovic Foundation,
51:54
Speaker 7: then Patreon, pht R, e O N A link will
51:57
Speaker 7: come up. If they click to that, everything is laid
52:00
Speaker 7: out there exactly how the money would go for lawyers, investigators, paralegals,
52:06
Speaker 7: other essential personnel to really having a robust entity. If
52:11
Speaker 7: we could have these type of results on basically a
52:15
Speaker 7: shoe string budget, imagine if we really were armed for bear.
52:20
Speaker 7: I need people, obviously who will be willing to part
52:24
Speaker 7: with the three dollars, but we also need people to
52:28
Speaker 7: help make the campaign go viral. If we could somehow
52:31
Speaker 7: do we need volunteers to help do that. If we
52:34
Speaker 7: could somehow do that, I mean we could make a
52:37
Speaker 7: really big dent. I made the big contribution to the
52:41
Speaker 7: organization to give us a running start. We had paid
52:44
Speaker 7: staff and we got some good results. Fundraising didn't go
52:48
Speaker 7: that well and I had to convert things to where
52:50
Speaker 7: we're volunteer entity. Now we have maybe fourteen volunteers, which
52:54
Speaker 7: is great, but you need people to go full time
52:58
Speaker 7: as opposed to people who are fitting it in in
53:00
Speaker 7: between their paid work, you know, their their personal life.
53:04
Speaker 7: You know, it's great to bring lawyers into cases and
53:08
Speaker 7: connect people with that like we did with Andy Kreevac,
53:11
Speaker 7: and bring lawyers into do pro bono work after we've
53:14
Speaker 7: screened the case, and yeah, that's nice. But in a
53:17
Speaker 7: lot of cases, work that could really be done in
53:20
Speaker 7: the course of six months is being done in two
53:23
Speaker 7: years because it's being done on the side as paid
53:27
Speaker 7: cases are done. So I really would love to be
53:30
Speaker 7: able to have a full time paid staff again. You know,
53:34
Speaker 7: my mission in life is to fight wrongful convictions, and
53:37
Speaker 7: that's that's how it makes sense out of what happened
53:41
Speaker 7: to me. And with that, you know, I want to
53:44
Speaker 7: thank you for having me here. And you know, I
53:46
Speaker 7: think this podcast is an awesome idea and we need
53:50
Speaker 7: to continue to raise awareness and this is certainly one
53:54
Speaker 7: of the methods of doing that. So kudos Case and.
53:58
Speaker 3: Flown right back at you once again. I want to
54:01
Speaker 3: give the website. It's a Deskavic dot org.
54:04
Speaker 4: That's d e.
54:04
Speaker 3: Skovic dot org and go to the website, learn about
54:10
Speaker 3: the mission, get involved. You can help. Everybody can make
54:14
Speaker 3: a difference. It starts right here. So this has been
54:18
Speaker 3: an extraordinary experience for me, and I want to thank
54:22
Speaker 3: our amazing guest, Jeff Deskovic, for sharing his experience, strength
54:27
Speaker 3: and wisdom. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review
54:34
Speaker 3: wherever you get your podcasts.
54:36
Speaker 4: It really helps.
54:37
Speaker 3: And I'm a proud donor to the Ennosis Project and
54:40
Speaker 3: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
54:43
Speaker 3: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
54:47
Speaker 3: to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
54:50
Speaker 3: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
54:53
Speaker 3: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
54:56
Speaker 3: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
54:59
Speaker 7: Be sure to.
54:59
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55:02
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55:07
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55:10
Speaker 3: with Signal Company Number one