Latest / Wrongful Conviction Podcasts / 516: #516 Jason Flom and Kim Kardashian with Corey Miller
Transcript
- 00:00:02 Speaker 1: On January twelfth, two thousand and two, sixteen year old Steve Thomas went to a crowded hip hop club in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, where a successful artist named Corey Miller was slated to introduce a new hip hop group. But before they even took the stage, a fight broke out and Steve Thomas was fatally shot. When the police arrived, it was allegedly rumored that Corey was involved, but when specifically asked about Corey, none of the witnesses substantiated that rumor until a week later, leading to his arrest, two trials, and ultimately a non unanimous jury verdict, all of which may well have been prejudiced by Corey's stage name C Murder. This is Wrongful Conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the LoVa for Good podcasts one week early and ed free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Romful Conviction, where we've got a case out of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, involving a once celebrated hip hop artist, Corey Miller, also known as C murderer. Now he and his brother's master p and Silk the Shaker had a number of hits collaborated with Snoop until his situation drastically changed. And here we are twenty three years later, where he's grateful to have the support of one of his fiercest advocates, Kim Kardashian. Kim, welcome back to the show. 00:01:41 Speaker 2: Thank you for having me back on. 00:01:43 Speaker 1: Were you a fan of Corey's music before you knew about his case? 00:01:47 Speaker 3: I definitely was. 00:01:48 Speaker 2: I definitely knew about The No Limit Soldiers and I love New Orleans. But years later, the singer Monica called me and was like, you have to help me with A dear friend of mine told me all about the case. And there's like a network of us, right so it's like you and Scott Budnick and Jessica Jackson and Aaron Haney, and. 00:02:10 Speaker 3: We've been working on it for a while. 00:02:11 Speaker 2: So I'm glad that we can be here to talk about Corey's case today. 00:02:16 Speaker 1: And calling in from a Louisiana penitentiary, the man himself, Corey Miller, thank Jo Jeff and to help tell his story. Corey's appellat attorney. 00:02:26 Speaker 3: Jane Hogan, Thanks for having me. 00:02:28 Speaker 1: Now, this is a Louisiana story where we've seen so many many wrongful convictions marked by non unanimous jury verdicts, which was a legal practice as late as twenty eighteen, when they could convict you with as few as ten out of twelve jurors voting guilty. This was a practice that had its roots in the aftermath of the Civil War, where the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery unless duly convicted of a felony. It also allowed black people to serve on jury's and in Louisiana, even if the defense managed to keep two black people on the jury, well, their votes could be ignored and the person could effectively be re enslaved. 00:03:08 Speaker 3: We've never learned how to have an economy that doesn't rely on forced labor. There's so many prisons here and that is the economy. Like you go in the middle of Louisiana, they have nothing except like three private prisons. It's the local employer. If you want to stop mass incarceration in Louisiana, if you were to pay people at least minimum wage for the labor that they perform while incarcerated, I think that there would be a real push to do sentencing reform immediately because it's such a business. 00:03:39 Speaker 1: There was a twenty twenty two ballot initiative in Louisiana which would have ended the slavery loophole of the thirteenth Amendment, but it was voted down. Yeah, but certainly before that as well as this incident, and even before Corey's music career, he was just another kid growing up in the New Orleans Calio projects. 00:04:00 Speaker 4: I was raised my grandmother, my grandfather, and Big Bomb and Big Daddy. My mother and father gave here for addashing to her when I was just a baby and lived in a county of price Action. When I came up as and we didn't have Big Bomb and she kept me out of trouble. She instilled didn't be that drugs fad. That school was important. So throughout my whole school I was on a student because I just had to please Big bomba. 00:04:30 Speaker 1: And while school was important, Corey and his brothers Percy and vy Sean also grew up loving hip hop during its early years. 00:04:38 Speaker 4: We became integrated in rap long time ago, listened to Right DMC and people like that. So Daddy takes that were in the room and we were playing the instrumental shape. Then we would play another teap record and we have a recording take and we played it too, and write raps. 00:04:57 Speaker 1: Messing around with tape recorders soon turned into renting studio time, and eventually Percy Miller, better known as Master P, started his label No Limit Records in nineteen ninety one with the founding group tru which featured himself Corey as c Murder his stage name, and by Sean as Silk the Shaker, and they began to see big success in the mid nineties and early two thousands. 00:05:20 Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a good feeling. They had that much momentum without music. It was a wonderful charity and it was only the beginning, and Dallas star rose it in. I'm basically this steel in the walls and I just moved my family to bed Rouge and the Gaving community, the country club. 00:05:36 Speaker 1: Corey has three kids who at the time lived in Baton Rouge while he worked out of New Orleans, which is just across the Mississippi River from where this crime took place, in a more conservative, white flight type of area called Jefferson Parish. 00:05:50 Speaker 4: You gotta realize jeff Paris went to try to hit There was some black people that trying to cross the bridge to get some food, water and something like that. It was a breakdan lady, couple of women, couple of guys and trying to cross the bridge, and the police was predicting the bridge any Katrina finish cross and the actually shut these sheets and the whole as a story, but distant lady that I got. 00:06:18 Speaker 1: Called up and I hope that story might shed some light on why their police department might have hired the lead detective in this case, Detective Cloger, after well they had found he wasn't a good fit for even Orleans Parish. 00:06:32 Speaker 3: We got Cloger's personnel record and Cloger was working in Orleans Parish. Then he went to Jefferson Parish. The superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department wrote this very scathing letter that's in his personnel file that said he has been messing up homicide investigations in Orleans Parish. So if you do hire him, he is more studed to be a guard at a correctional institution than on the streets trying to solve murders. 00:06:56 Speaker 1: It appears Jefferson Parish heard this message as more of a horseman than a condemnation. And that brings us to January twelfth, two thousand and two, when a sixteen year old kid named Steve Thomas was killed at the Jefferson Parish music venue called the Pyramid Club. 00:07:12 Speaker 4: That night of the instandent a couple of guys out they were they were going to perform at that club. So by being in a savage audis and they know, all we try to represent a kill of love, the X me to get loose deal. 00:07:29 Speaker 3: So he goes over to the Platinum Club in Harvey, Louisiana, January twelve, two thousand and two, and there were by different accounts, three hundred and five hundred people in a club like way over fire Marshall capacity. 00:07:40 Speaker 4: It's really a bowler there lived the bottom and then a club of time to follow, one way up, one way out to take the thing. And there's four hundred people and call everybody that walks in getting tagged down. And so I was saying I was padded down. 00:07:55 Speaker 1: And that security guard later testified that Corey was not armed, but somehow a gun got in obviously, and as well as sixteen year old Steve Thomas, who you know. He probably they must have used a fake ID to get in there. 00:08:09 Speaker 4: And they say that the guy was a tran of mind. They even created a moten saying that I had a rep the guy that was killed. I guess they had got somebody to stay something like that, I have a bad repide of my life from the South, and then talk he's going the East Coast as yo. Especially back then, we didn't know what bad a rep it was. That whole night, I never messed the guy that was doing that was Folk, never had one word with him. 00:08:34 Speaker 1: After all, Corey was not in this thick crowd, but rather as you might have expected, he was in the VIP area. 00:08:41 Speaker 4: I was just in there drinking, wait for them to tell me go up the stage introduced, then I could leave, right so, I remember talking to a shoot girl. I never had a chance to even introduce my crew. 00:08:53 Speaker 3: Then at some point during the night, a fight breaks out near the dance floor, directly across from the DJ booth. Everybody describes just kind of this group of men surrounding and beating and kicking Steve as he's curled up on the ground, and then at some point a gunshot goes off. 00:09:10 Speaker 4: I'm just as surprised that everybody else, but and so unnatural reactions is the goal. 00:09:16 Speaker 3: A bunch of people flee, including Corey and his friends. It goes from five hundred people to about one hundred. And after this shot goes off, there was a really drunk woman who was in the bathroom at the time of the shooting, so she didn't see anything, but she was intoxicated, and she starts hollering out, see mardyed this, y'all, see murdered this, And I think that probably is what began sort of the rumors. And pretty quickly the Jefferson pair of Sheriff's office gets there. 00:09:49 Speaker 1: They discovered Steve Thomas lying on his back, having been shot in the chest and there was a chain near his body. 00:09:57 Speaker 3: The police seal up the doors basically with one hundred people left inside. You know, they learned that Corey was there, and they start interviewing people and they were asking specifically, did you see c murder do this? And nobody said yes, none of them. 00:10:13 Speaker 4: Some of the witnesses called on that one one he'd see the show those games like guard I'm six five big steaks n skin. 00:10:21 Speaker 1: Not only was it unlikely that a successful musician would put his career and his family at risk. But then the description wasn't even close, and not one eyewitness named him, and that included the security guard, the guy who had called nine one one, a man named Darnelle Jordan. 00:10:40 Speaker 3: The security guard spoke to the police that night and said that he hadn't seen anything, and then a couple of days later he gives an inculpatory statement against Corey, and so based really on that statement alone, they locate Corey at the House of Blues four days later. He's not run, he's in New Orleans, and then he gets arrested. 00:11:00 Speaker 1: Now, according to Darnell Jordan's twenty eighteen recantation, when asked by the police, if Corey Miller had been the shooter, he said, if that was the case, he would have said so on the nine to one one call. But then he went on to say, quote, they got me the id C murder's picture and sign it. They tricked me. I wasn't signing the picture to id the shooter. I signed it because they told me to. I knew they wanted me to say Corey Miller did it because he's famous. End quote. Nevertheless, this interaction helped them get an arrest warrant for Corey Miller. 00:11:37 Speaker 4: I actually had some kind of shape in eliteal system at that time. I was like, oh, well, they're going to live in rest and talked to Wicks and then they gonna a panory. So there was my whole straight up while I let it go. 00:11:52 Speaker 1: At this point, they continued to interview clubgoers. Meanwhile, they'd found two DNA profiles on the chain from the crime scene, and one was the victim, so they got a warrant for Corey's DNA and Kim. I mean, it seems reasonable, maybe not this positive, but very reasonable that whoever's DNA was identified could well have been the shooter. 00:12:15 Speaker 2: Knowing that the necklace that was allegedly taken from the person that committed the crime, and obviously if it was worn around someone's neck and pulled off of someone's neck, there would be DNA evidence on it. And then when it finally was DNA tested, it was not Corey's. 00:12:33 Speaker 1: DNA, And then suddenly the chain became unimportant. 00:12:55 Speaker 2: I never understood why someone wouldn't want to find the real killer. How our state can just be okay with convicting someone not caring if that someone is actually the right person. If God forbid, a family member of mine or someone was harmed in a horrible crime, I would not be satisfied with just anyone being convicted. I would have to know without a reasonable doubt that this person was the person that committed that crime. And since I started to get involved in this work, I was really hopeful at the beginning, and I still am and I always will be. But like as you dig deeper and as you work on more cases and you figure out more, it just doesn't it become overwhelming to understand, like how messed up our system is. 00:13:49 Speaker 1: Case in point, despite the fact that every club Gore initially denied Corey's involvement, Detective Cloger revisited them and out of the hundreds, Cloger found four who were some degree of willing to implicate Corey. Those four were keishaan Jones, Ayisha Washington, Tanika Rankins, and Elouise Matthews. And his trial approached in September two thousand and three. Darnell Jordan had to be arrested on a material witness warrant, so he was locked up in a hotel where Kloger visited him with his alleged statement, which put the following words in his mouth. 00:14:25 Speaker 3: As the fight was happening, Darnell saw fifteen or twenty men beating Steve, and that Steve was lying on the ground in a defensive position, and that Corey wasn't participating in the fight, was standing back. And then eventually, at some point he reaches his arm underneath the pile of bodies. Darnell doesn't see a gun, but he hears a pop, saw flash and sparks from underneath the pile of people, which came from the direction of Corey's hand. 00:14:49 Speaker 1: And for this alleged account to have been an accurate description of the murder, there would have had to have been stippling on the body. Those are the burns associated with close range gunshots, but there were none, and according to Darnell's twenty eighteen recantation, despite Cloger's insistence, he told him quote that's not what I said, end quote, Darnell claimed that since he had signed that picture, he was afraid of the police and went along with the narrative a trial along with three others, whose testimonies, by the way, varied wildly, starting with Tanika Rankins and Eloise Matthews. 00:15:23 Speaker 3: What Tanika testified to at the first trial is that she was at the Platinum Club with Elouise Matthews. She saw Corey verbally confront Steve. Then the fight broke out. Corey went underneath his shirt raised his arm in Steve's direction. She never said that she saw Corey with a gun, but the shot was fired and Steve fell to the floor. And then what Eloise testified too was that she had gone to the club with Tanika Rankins and when the fight started, they both climbed up on a chair. That she saw four or five people stomping and punching Steve, who was lying on the floor on his back. And then after about thirty seconds, she fell off the chair and then she heard a gun shot, but she didn't see a gun. She didn't see who shot Steve. She also testified that Tanika had not seen the shooting. 00:16:04 Speaker 1: To recap Elouise said both she and Tanika didn't see the shooting. Tanika said she saw Corey shoot from a standing position, while Darnell said that Corey reached under the pile of bodies before hearing a pop and seeing sparks. 00:16:18 Speaker 4: All of the witnesses. Statements by these people are blatantly lying. My lawyers closely examined it them. 00:16:26 Speaker 1: The state's next witness, Keishawn Jones, wouldn't even look up when she testified that she saw Corey pull something from his waist and heard a gunshot. 00:16:35 Speaker 3: The second she gets off the stand, she runs up to the defense investigator in the courthouse, recamps her entire statement, said, I'm only saying this because I am pressured into it by the Sheriff's office, and there's a recess. She goes and she recamps to the judge. 00:16:50 Speaker 1: On the record, she said she didn't directly see what happened and had even told police that night that Corey was not involved, but in the year following, Detector Cloger threatened her with unrelated charges. 00:17:01 Speaker 4: She told him that everything they have provided the age forced a delight and she was crying. She was in distressing to law. 00:17:13 Speaker 3: That story of pressure from law enforcement to implicate Corey. It's a similar story told by multiple different people that aren't connected. So Another woman named Aisha Washington said that people were popping up at her mom's house following her she was taking her children to school, trying to pressure her into making a statement against Corey. 00:17:33 Speaker 1: Aisha Washington was also being detained on the material witness warrant for trial, but after Kishawn Jones recanted, Aisha wasn't called to the stand. 00:17:41 Speaker 3: And then also Corey had four witnesses testify for the defense that they were there, that they know who Corey is, that whenever the fight broke out, they saw Corey somewhere else, that he was not engaged in the fight. 00:17:52 Speaker 1: But somehow the jury chose to believe the three wildly inconsistent stories over the defenses United Front, which was supported by Keishawn Jones's recantation. 00:18:06 Speaker 4: Being at Jeffson pay would not be placed with somebody like you to go to trial because I was basically guilty and the eyes already you know what I'm saying, you know, the old white men and old white women's like discuss the with being bashing him, just siding the way that I looked up like gold tee from my name you from the tragic the NAC burden. I mean, it wasn't a matter of I innocent. It was basically like look who you are, Look how you look guilty. 00:18:39 Speaker 3: And the jury returned a unanimous verdict at the first trial of guilty, and then that began the most extensive postrial litigation of any case I've ever seen. Seven months, thirteen different hearings. Corey's trial lawyer really did a phenomenal job. A lot of the allegations were that there was withholding of exculpatory impeachment information, and that Cloger was helping these witnesses, that he was making convictions quickly get expunged. During the post trial hearing they recalled Eloise and Tanika. It comes out that Tanique actually had felony theft convictions outstanding warrants which the Sheriff's office had arranged to have recalled. They basically set aside her felony convictions quickly and expunge them. 00:19:27 Speaker 1: Which gave the appearance that she had nothing to exchange for her testimony, and Eloise Matthew's was no different. 00:19:33 Speaker 3: Eloise testified that she had met with Cloger multiple times he had said he'd do anything to help her in Tanika that she had told Cloger that Corey didn't shoot Steve, but Cloger wasn't interested and accused her of lying. There was also impeachment evidence that wasn't turned over about her. She had arrests for forgery. She was recommended for a diversion, but she had failed out of diversion, but they hadn't given notice of that. 00:19:56 Speaker 1: Then Ayisha Washington and Keishaw and Jones testified about there experiences, how they'd both been harassed, and Keishawn had actually been detained three times and threatened with unrelated charges to ensure her testimony. So Judge Martha Sasson simply couldn't ignore their claims. 00:20:13 Speaker 3: The judge tells Kloger, like, I want you to bring your file up here and show me what you've got. He said, no, I destroy my file, like the night after the conviction. I just went and shredded everything. And the judge is like, why would you do that. Then it turns out later on into seven months of Postpol proceedings, that he hadn't shredded his file and so he brought it up there and within his file. Not only is there the impeachment evidence against the three witnesses, but there's also statements from a guy named Roger Lewis and Angela Casten who were there at the club, who had said they saw the fight. They knew that Corey wasn't involved in it, so the judge granted Corey a new trial. 00:20:50 Speaker 1: That was in April two thousand and four, when Judge Sasson was up for reelection that November. 00:20:55 Speaker 3: I think that she was sort of painted as the judge who's trying to let see murder out of prison, and then she lost her bid for reelection. 00:21:02 Speaker 4: It's still some parage. These people still sticked together. They kicked the jail. So then I'm at the Furst year of these different people now. 00:21:11 Speaker 3: And then the intermediate Appellate Court in Louisiana reversed a new trial, and then the Louisiana Supreme Court actually in March tenth of two thousand and six, said no, like she conducted a painstaking review of all of this and she concluded that there were constitutional violations that mandated a new trial. 00:21:29 Speaker 1: So after two years of appeals, Corey was released on house arrest awaiting his new trial in two thousand and nine, giving him three years with his children. 00:21:37 Speaker 4: That was amazing good they didn't have to go there week. And so I definitely hold on to Chared going home, and those three years after brought us closer. You know, when I heard that arrested. I just thought that they were so fraged and so young and small. I couldn't even chall that that I was in jail. There was a wing on the business and on two I kept thinking I was going to go to ChIL I was gonna get release. So when the years says enough the action, when you come back, oh good, I didn't want to think that I worked. So I had to break it down him again. Started they don't come to business. Even though I love seeing U, they didn't broke malid. Every time I said, oh, come with us, meaning with us to break it. 00:22:29 Speaker 1: I gotta process that myself for a minute. So during those three years, the state went back to the list of clubgoers, one of whom was Keishawn Jones's half brother Kenneth Jordan, whose newborn died in January two thousand and three, at which time it's believed that the child's mother bore responsibility, but they were both under investigation. 00:22:47 Speaker 3: So whenever they're questioning him about the death of his child, they realized that he's on the list of people that was at the Platinum Club that night, so they start talking to him about the case. 00:22:57 Speaker 1: According to Kenneth's twenty eighteenantation. He initially told them that the shooter was a dark skinned man in a hoodie and was definitely not Corey Miller, but quote, the officers pressured me to lie and say it was Corey Miller, all the while holding criminal charges over my head end quote. So he gave a statement naming Corey and his charges. Yep, you guess did. They went away while the child's mother got thirty five years. But Kenneth was never called at the two thousand and three trial. So fast forward after Corey was granted a new trial and the false statement resurfaced. 00:23:32 Speaker 3: In two thousand and five, Kenneth Jordan gets arrested for a possession of crack cocaine. He gets placed on probation, he absconds, and then in two thousand and seven he is in prison facing revocation of his probation, and that's when the prosecutor comes and says, I will extend your probation in lieu of revocation. And then he signed a written agreement at that point that he would testify against Corey in exchange to get his probation extended. 00:23:58 Speaker 1: So now the state moved forward to trial in two thousand and nine with two reluctant witnesses, and even in pre trial, the deck looked stacked, starting with the new judge, a guy named Hans J. Lilgeberg. 00:24:11 Speaker 4: During Waldberg the first day he fell being his coach. So you should be all bye, you should be arrested. You a herd choice. I want to get you convicted, and I want to put this case on a show. We kind of s that is the riforbody and then anything that we try to file, whatever the DA's wanted, ain't that whatever will be asked for us an emotion. 00:24:33 Speaker 1: Of fiul for that, including a critical request from his hired attorney, who hadn't been paid in years. 00:24:41 Speaker 3: At this point, Corey had been in prison since two thousand and two hadn't been able to earn an income. In April of two thousand and nine, his trial lawyer tries to withdraw from his case and says, I've not been paid in three years. I cannot do a second trial for Corey. And rather than permitting trial council to withdraw, the judge which like kind of heckles Corey and was like I'd feel a whole heck of a lot better if my lawyer was paid, Corey, you know I'm not going to let you withdraw. We've got a trial date in four months. 00:25:09 Speaker 1: So without being paid the defense attorney. Instead of physically calling Corey's alibi witnesses, he was allowed to just replay the recording of their testimonies from the first trial, which is not what the state did with Darnell and Kenneth. Jordan no relation, by the way those two guys, except perhaps for family histories that may have been intertwined with one of the prosecutors, Roger Jordan, a powerful Louisiana white man who also happens to share the same last name, and it appears that their relationship was not so different from their ancestors. 00:25:41 Speaker 3: Prior to the second trial, Darnell and Kenneth do not want to come and testify. They are arrested on material witness warrants. They're held in communicado leading up to the trial, and then they're brought to court in chains to testify against Corey and Kenneth. His statement is different than even Darnell's right, so he says that he sees the fight and that after the fight is over and everybody walks away, he sees Corey walk up, stand over Steven shoot him. 00:26:08 Speaker 1: So was he standing over the body or was he reaching underneath the pylon? It can't be both. It appears that these inconsistencies gave at least three of the jurors some really serious reservations. 00:26:22 Speaker 3: This is the poster child for non unanimous verdicts because it wasn't even ten to two, it was nine to three. There were three African Americans on the jury, the rest were white people, and there was one young black woman on the jury who was getting attacked by the white members of the jury. They were saying very horrible things to her, like your mother should have aborted you. You're just as dumb as he is. You're not doing your job. They kept on reporting to the judge that like the jurors were losing it. The young woman was so stressed out she was throwing up. 00:26:56 Speaker 4: The jurors came as they can't help up with her dirty wild up with helgoing out. 00:27:06 Speaker 3: So the judge is like, I'm going to sequester you guys in a hotel overnight, So he does that. They come back the next day. The abuse continues. 00:27:14 Speaker 1: Meanwhile, because they clearly must have been unsure of the outcome. The attorneys were discussing the offered that they'd made to Corey before trial twenty years. At this point he almost served half but still Corey maintains his innocence. And then the jury came back with their first ten to two vote for guilty. 00:27:33 Speaker 3: They pull the jurors and two African Americans say not guilty. One woman, a white lady, writes guilty under duress, and they're like, oh no, this won't do. So then they send everybody back and then she comes back and she's changed her vote at this point from guilty under duress to just guilty and that's enough. 00:27:53 Speaker 1: Right. 00:27:53 Speaker 3: Then the next day she gives an interview to The Times picky you and and she describes the scene in deliberations and she just says, I didn't vote guilty because I thought the state proved its case. I voted guilty to end deliberations because the Mama bear instinct in me came out and I was afraid for the sanity of this young girl. 00:28:11 Speaker 4: Yeah, and I just see I just thought she was dried, kids on the eyes and stuff like that. So I know something was going on in effect, I just didn't find out until later, she described a total lens going off back. It was unsel how to go through that, and it was unself to me. They had to be found guilty by Dervis said basically put out out in the room there. It's just hard recapping all of those times and it just takes you back to that place. I wouldn't wish this all my words enemy, I lost twenty two years of my life so far of being able to raise my kids. Tryping me because I was not raised by my father my mother. I was giving my grand pans and I always vowed to break that cycle. The most important thing in the world of people was to be a father and be up in the thout these lives. My youngest daughter was two years old. Now she's graduated and let you so I wasn't there for them because of the hearts of men, political figures and discontinas, checkers and posy. 00:29:39 Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, all the easy on you and been trying. 00:29:43 Speaker 4: To upgrade in their standards, and they just somebody like me come along and they're just like that, We're gonna go all out. This don't help us, It don't feel us in our platfall. But I allowed. I did it to change me and make my heart. I still believe that if I staked go ahead a wait, and I bet if my kids all of it was going real well, going to college, when college being successful, I was, it could have turned out much worse for them. And so I hold on today. I could see the pain and I can hear the pain what we shouldpeak, and I know they been under the pain. It could be given back to him, and the best thing that I could do for him is give my freedom. 00:30:32 Speaker 3: He had his direct appeal and then he filed for his initial state habeas or state post conviction, and it was timely, and that was denied without a hearing. That's a shame because what the law says is if there's any contested factual issue, you cannot just resolve that on inspection of the pleadings. You have to have a hearing. And there's a lot of contested factual issues in this case. So there was never a hearing on his initial timely post conviction application. 00:31:00 Speaker 1: Eighteen. 00:31:00 Speaker 5: Both the state's witnesses recanted. In twenty eighteen, both men independently fully recanted their trial testimony. Both of them said, I didn't see Corey Kenneth actually said that he saw a shorter, darker skinned person, and they both described similar coercion by the Sheriff's office. They both said what I said at trial was not true, so the evidence against Corey is gone. 00:31:28 Speaker 1: In addition, Jane hired a crime scene reconstruction expert. 00:31:31 Speaker 3: We had a crime scene reconstruction expert, and basically the trajectory of the bullet, because it's got a slightly upward angle, they were either on the same plane or the shooter was standing up, Steve was laying down, and the shooter had an unobstructive path from at least three feet away because there was no stippling, so we know that it came from at least three feet away. So the idea that the shooter sticks his hand in a pile of people fighting and shoots that clearly didn't happen, and that. 00:31:58 Speaker 1: Was alleged by the only person who appear in both trials, Darnell Jordan. At least Kenneth Jordan's version of events was physically possible. Yet the post conviction filing was denied, ruling that the recantations were suspect and not reliable. Even though these recantations were in part supported by the crime scene reconstruction and in total by Detective Cloger's pattern of coercion. 00:32:20 Speaker 3: There's corroboration that this is kind of the pattern in practice of what the Sheriff's office was doing in this case. And then subsequently, in the most recent filing that we did, we got Cloger's personnel record and within it there was this letter from the superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department that said, this guy has been messing up homicide investigations in Orleans Parish. So if you do hire mb is more stuited to be a guard at a correctional institution. 00:32:45 Speaker 1: Nevertheless, the motion was denied without a hearing, so. 00:32:49 Speaker 3: He's never had a hearing. They've never let him come back to court for anything, even the new evidence. 00:32:55 Speaker 1: Now, around this time, there was a ballot initiative in Louisiana and the practice of non unanimous jew verdicts. We even did an episode about it in October twenty eighteen. It's linked in the episode description. In fact, that was only about a month after Kim's first appearance on this show. Thankfully, that November, Louisiana finally did the right thing, at least for cases going forward. 00:33:16 Speaker 2: But everyone that had been convicted on that system, they didn't retroactively let them out. Not changing laws retroactively is something that really bothers me. I can't understand how that makes sense to lawmakers and how people are comfortable with that. 00:33:35 Speaker 1: You know the reason, Kim that's cited by the powers that be in Louisiana that they aren't changing this law because it would clog up the court system with all these people who would need to come home. 00:33:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, isn't that the most ridiculous thing ever? I really can't wrap my head around it. 00:33:51 Speaker 1: We certainly can't either. So even though people like Corey didn't benefit from that new law, since then, Louisiana has passed other promising legislation. 00:34:01 Speaker 3: Louisiana enacted a provision of law that is meant to provide people like Corey Miller with a pathway to prove their innocence and what would otherwise be considered untimely filing that says they can file a factual innocence petition before December thirty first of twenty twenty two. So that's what we did, alleging everything, showing everything, and we didn't get a hearing on it. What they did was the trial judge relied on previous decisions. So he said, like, because I made the call in twenty eighteen that Darnell and Kennet's recantations are suspicious, I don't think that this qualifies as evidence to support a factual innocence filing. But in every case dealing with recantations, there's a hearing to determine the veracity of the recantation. Darnell and Kenneth have never been called to court to testify under oaths, like the veracity of the evidence has never been tested. And we took it to the Supreme Court and the two of the justices voted in our favor, but we needed four and so that avenue is closed. 00:34:58 Speaker 1: His federal habeas was also But considering that there's literally no evidence left that implicates Corey Miller, it's really hard to understand how he hasn't seen relief after all these long years. 00:35:09 Speaker 4: So it's said all around the forward there was a victim involved, and it's more than one victim. And because I've been playing at my innocence to the day one and I know they're just pa and I know that's the state that I'm innocent, and I know that when Dane went and visited the day knows that I'm in. They just don't know what to do with me. 00:35:33 Speaker 3: I have spoken several times to the District Attorney's office and said, you know, Corey, he's not interested in spending the rest of his life in prison trying to get exonerated. We all offered him twenty years and he's. 00:35:47 Speaker 4: Served that it's right all the judges of Street and grant here my vote, and the das of Trade to lean up my cage and give me in my freedom, because they said I retroduced doing the right date would be the wrong moved for anybody to China further than career. 00:36:11 Speaker 1: Doing the right thing would be the wrong move for anybody trying to further their career. I think that's the best and maybe the only explanation for where Corey finds himself today. 00:36:21 Speaker 2: I mean, he's just had every roadblock that you could possibly imagine, and everyone screw him over every which way, and it's just I definitely won't stop fighting for him. That's why I want to be loud about him and keep his case alive. Unfortunately, nothing has happened. He keeps getting blocked at every motion, every step. 00:36:44 Speaker 1: Of the way. Corey needs all the help he can get, and I'm asking each and every one of you to not only share his story, but also to please sign the petition to free Corey Miller based on his actual innocence, and beyond that, we all need to sign a petition to apply the unanimous verdict standard retroactively in Louisiana. Both will be linked in the episode description. Plus new evidence is another way Corey could get back into court and write this wrong. 00:37:12 Speaker 3: If you have any information about Corey's case, please contact me. My email address is Jane ja and E at Hoganattorneys dot. 00:37:22 Speaker 1: Com and we'll have Jane's contact info as well as other action steps linked in the episode description. And with that, we're going to go to closing arguments, starting with Kim, then Jane, and then Corey will take us off into the sunset. 00:37:37 Speaker 2: If you really think about it, that your family member, or your loved one, or your friends or someone close to you could be in the same exact situations as so many of these people that are locked up for life, it really opens up my heart to just want to help people and do whatever we can so specifically with Corey Miller, someone who has no evidence that he was involved in this crime. His DNA was not on the evidence, and I don't know why our system cannot take accountability of the wrongs and let people out that have been proven innocent. I believe in Corey Miller one hundred percent. I really want him to come home. I think he would be such an asset to our society, and I really hope that Louisiana strongly considers changing the law retroactively and letting those people out, because it would change so many people's lives and families. 00:38:38 Speaker 3: I would just like to thank you for your interest in it. I would also, of course like to thank Kim and her team for their interest in it and for using her platform to shed some light on this case. I mean, this is not a verdict which should inspire confidence in the system. If you look at it, it was a house of cards to begin with. It collapsed, and unfortunately there as a human being who is still sitting in prison for something that he didn't do and that there is no evidence that he did, and he is now lost over two decades of his life to this, and so that is an injustice it's also an injustice of course that Steve Thomas was shot and killed. So there's a lot of injustice here. But the one injustice that can be remedied is record to get some relief somewhere, and I believe that one day that will happen, and I will continue to work on this case until hopefully one day he can come home. 00:39:30 Speaker 4: I did what everybody to get the full shore. Because everybody is aware of everything that went on in my case, it'd be easiest for the proper officious to make the right decision. And I feel like he's going to be retrocuted and carry for making the right decision and relieve, so I'd want everybody get the story. Help. We tried everything else that work. No matter how great find appeal and all and how great word and in people is ever gonna matter. I will actually die after what I've done, but only because of jam and love me, behold and law and release you. That's political sabotage for them, and so I gotta keep doing what we're going right down. That's why it's important to bring awayness to my situation and my summer. 00:40:31 Speaker 1: Man. 00:40:31 Speaker 4: I have had it, man, because I haven't had me in twenty three years. 00:40:41 Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Rawful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wadis, and Jeff Cliber. Music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One. We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good