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#232 Jason Flom with Dennis and Lee Horton · Wrongful Conviction

0:03
Speaker 1: On May thirty first, nineteen ninety three, Dennis Horton went
0:06
Speaker 1: to his brother Lee's home for a Memorial Day weekend cookout.
0:10
Speaker 1: Later in the day, they visited their father in North Philadelphia,
0:13
Speaker 1: as well as their childhood friend Robert Leif. Unbeknownst to
0:17
Speaker 1: the Hortons, Robert Leaf had committed an armed robbery earlier
0:20
Speaker 1: that day in which two women were injured and one
0:23
Speaker 1: man was fatally shot. The Hortons pulled up to their
0:27
Speaker 1: friend Robert Leaf on the street and made plans to
0:29
Speaker 1: watch a basketball game back at Lee's. Robert asked the
0:33
Speaker 1: brothers to meet him one block up, where he got
0:35
Speaker 1: into their car with a gun. Police had been following
0:39
Speaker 1: Robert and immediately pulled them over, where all three men
0:42
Speaker 1: were arrested. The two injured women, who initially had said
0:46
Speaker 1: that there were only two arm robbers, gave a shaky
0:49
Speaker 1: idea of all three men, sending them to trial together.
0:52
Speaker 1: Robert Leif's attorney used confusion amongst the witnesses over the
0:56
Speaker 1: identities of the three men to change the narrative from
0:59
Speaker 1: Robert Leaf as the shooter to Dennis delivering a lighter
1:02
Speaker 1: sentence to the actual culprit while the Hortons were sentenced
1:06
Speaker 1: to life without parole. Years later, a statement by Robert
1:10
Speaker 1: Leaf admitting his role and excluding the Horton brothers was unearthed,
1:14
Speaker 1: along with the fact that police had identified Robert Leaf
1:17
Speaker 1: as the shooter from the very start. However, with this
1:21
Speaker 1: new evidence being ruled inadmissible on purely procedural grounds, it
1:25
Speaker 1: took the tireless advocacy of Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman
1:29
Speaker 1: to win a commutation and release for the brothers after
1:33
Speaker 1: nearly three long decades in prison. This is wrongful conviction.
1:53
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful conviction. My best advice to you
1:56
Speaker 1: right now is fasten your seatbelt because this is going
2:00
Speaker 1: to be a crazy ride that you're about to go on.
2:03
Speaker 1: But before I introduced the two brothers who were wrongfully
2:07
Speaker 1: convicted of the same crime together and ended up serving
2:09
Speaker 1: almost twenty seven years together in the same cell for
2:13
Speaker 1: the crime that didn't commit, I just want to say
2:15
Speaker 1: that this is Philadelphia in the nineties. You've heard stories
2:20
Speaker 1: on here before about Philadelphia in the nineties, and it
2:23
Speaker 1: was the time and place where a black man had
2:27
Speaker 1: a better chance of getting justice in Philadelphia, Mississippi than
2:30
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and this is another example of that.
2:34
Speaker 1: So without further ado, let me introduce to you. I'm
2:38
Speaker 1: so excited to have these guys on the show today
2:40
Speaker 1: because there's such inspiring people. Lee and Dennis Horton, the
2:44
Speaker 1: brothers Horton. Welcome to Ronful Conviction.
2:47
Speaker 2: All right, good afternoon. How's everybody doing out there. I'm
2:50
Speaker 2: glad to be here. Thank you for inviting us on.
2:53
Speaker 1: So let's get right into it. First of all, I
2:55
Speaker 1: want to say to both of you guys that while
2:58
Speaker 1: I am obviously delighted to have you on the show,
3:00
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that you're here because of what you had
3:02
Speaker 1: to go through and it should have never happened. So
3:05
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. I'm talking about how
3:09
Speaker 1: was childhood for you guys growing up together while you
3:13
Speaker 1: moved to Philly in seventy seven, right, but give us
3:15
Speaker 1: a quick look at what your childhood was like.
3:18
Speaker 3: So when we was young, growing up, we lived uneventful
3:21
Speaker 3: but a wonderful life. You know, my mom and my
3:24
Speaker 3: father was married in the early sixties.
3:27
Speaker 2: It four of us, four kids. We grew up in
3:29
Speaker 2: some of the roughest places in the city, but our family.
3:33
Speaker 2: My mom, my grandmother, my father always instilled in us
3:37
Speaker 2: that you had to work for what you wanted their life,
3:39
Speaker 2: and so we started working at an early age my
3:42
Speaker 2: mom and father.
3:43
Speaker 3: Unfortunately they split up in nineteen seventy two. My mom,
3:46
Speaker 3: she was trying to take care of four kids on
3:48
Speaker 3: our own. We wind up moving to the Projects, which
3:51
Speaker 3: was at the time East Falls Projects. I was around
3:53
Speaker 3: twelve years old, my brother was seven at the time.
3:57
Speaker 3: So the projects was a rough project.
4:00
Speaker 2: You know, you had to prove the people up there
4:01
Speaker 2: that you was willing to fight in order for you
4:03
Speaker 2: to be able to stay, or they chased you out
4:05
Speaker 2: the projects. That's how it was.
4:07
Speaker 3: And so I had got into a fight with an
4:09
Speaker 3: individual and I wanted to fight.
4:12
Speaker 2: That was a blessing to some degree, but it was
4:14
Speaker 2: also a curse because now I was at ies with
4:17
Speaker 2: a lot of guys my age twelve or thirteen year
4:20
Speaker 2: olds in the projects, and one day I wound up
4:23
Speaker 2: on the wrong side of the projects when we was
4:26
Speaker 2: approached by a group of individuals and it was maybe
4:29
Speaker 2: about twenty something thirty guys, and they approached us and
4:33
Speaker 2: they wanted me to fight a guy. And you know,
4:36
Speaker 2: there was a bunch of guys that was about to
4:37
Speaker 2: jump us.
4:38
Speaker 3: And then these other guys came out of nowhere and
4:42
Speaker 3: came to our rescue. And it was only a few
4:44
Speaker 3: of them, but they were like the neighborhood tough guys
4:46
Speaker 3: to some degree. One of these guys who would become
4:49
Speaker 3: a really good friend of mine was an individual named
4:51
Speaker 3: Rob Relief. And so I fell in with these guys
4:54
Speaker 3: and we became really good friends. He came to my house,
4:58
Speaker 3: stayed at my house, slept in my house, ate at
5:00
Speaker 3: my house. My mom to somebody, we became his mom.
5:03
Speaker 3: And then in nineteen eight three, we moved out of
5:06
Speaker 3: the projects.
5:08
Speaker 2: By that time we kind of veered off a little bit,
5:10
Speaker 2: although I would go see my friends who were still
5:13
Speaker 2: living in the projects and some living in North Philadelphia
5:16
Speaker 2: from town to town.
5:18
Speaker 1: And so now we move up towards the time of
5:22
Speaker 1: the actual crime, and I'm talking about Memorial Day weekend,
5:25
Speaker 1: May thirty first, nineteen ninety three. So there was an
5:29
Speaker 1: arm robbery at Toledo's Bar. Now, initial descriptions say it
5:32
Speaker 1: was two men, but later it was changed to three,
5:36
Speaker 1: one man with a twenty two caliber semi automatic rifle
5:39
Speaker 1: and another with a black pistol robbed the bar and
5:42
Speaker 1: its patrons. Samuel Alimo, six foot three and over two
5:47
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, wrestled with the gunman for the gun, but
5:51
Speaker 1: was overpowered and was shot and killed. Lous Archella and
5:57
Speaker 1: Louis Martinez were injured, but both were covered, and a
6:01
Speaker 1: witness described chasing after the fleeing assailants who saw them
6:04
Speaker 1: in a small blue car and supplied police with a
6:07
Speaker 1: partial license plate number. And again, remember this is Philadelphia
6:10
Speaker 1: in the nineties. So we'll get to the myriad problems
6:14
Speaker 1: with the state story, but first let's hear your story.
6:17
Speaker 1: So it's Memorial Day, weekend, May thirty first, nineteen ninety three. Lee,
6:22
Speaker 1: you had four kids, right, including a two week old baby,
6:25
Speaker 1: and at the time, Dennis, you were just recently engaged
6:28
Speaker 1: to be married, and had also recently been badly injured
6:32
Speaker 1: at work and we're recovering, right, So you were in
6:35
Speaker 1: absolutely no condition to be engaging in hand to hand combat,
6:40
Speaker 1: wrestling right with a very large man, right strong man.
6:44
Speaker 1: So can you take us through that day, the day
6:48
Speaker 1: that this armed robbery and murder, this whole tragedy happened.
6:51
Speaker 2: So Lee and his wife invited me and my fiancee
6:55
Speaker 2: at the time over to his house. So of course
6:58
Speaker 2: I went to Lee's house, had a cookout out with
7:00
Speaker 2: him and his wife and his kids, and later on
7:03
Speaker 2: that evening, we decided we was going to take a ride.
7:06
Speaker 2: You know, we've been in the house all day. Stopped
7:08
Speaker 2: by my father's house see him, and then Lee was
7:10
Speaker 2: going to stop by just see a few guys that
7:13
Speaker 2: he knew, and we headed for North Philadelphia, where my
7:16
Speaker 2: father lived at the time, and we swung by his house,
7:19
Speaker 2: but his light was out so he was sleep So
7:21
Speaker 2: Lee said, okay, let's stop around Leaf's house. So, you know,
7:24
Speaker 2: we drove around Leaf's house. He was standing out on
7:27
Speaker 2: the corner with some other guys and Lee beat the
7:30
Speaker 2: horn and Leif came over to the car, letting him
7:32
Speaker 2: and Lee talk for a little bit. So rober Leif
7:34
Speaker 2: was supposed to come back to Lee's house. We was
7:36
Speaker 2: going to watch the basketball game. So Leif said, pull
7:39
Speaker 2: up a block and I'll be there. And I got
7:41
Speaker 2: to just take care of something real quick, and we
7:44
Speaker 2: pulled up to the block and Leif came maybe about
7:47
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen minutes later, got in the car and
7:50
Speaker 2: then we pulled off, and about a couple of blocks later,
7:54
Speaker 2: we saw sirens and we pulled over and the police
7:57
Speaker 2: jumped out of their vans and cars were gunn drawn
8:00
Speaker 2: and told us to get out of the car. And
8:02
Speaker 2: we got out of the car and they handcuffed us
8:04
Speaker 2: and they put us into the paddy wagon and they
8:06
Speaker 2: took us to the hospital when identification take place, and
8:11
Speaker 2: all I remember is that the van doors opened up,
8:13
Speaker 2: and next thing you know, I've seen it. I think
8:15
Speaker 2: two ladies point to rob Belief and say, yeah, that's
8:18
Speaker 2: the guy right there. And then they said, well, what
8:20
Speaker 2: about these other guys and they said, yeah, them too.
8:22
Speaker 2: They were with them too, And then they shut the
8:24
Speaker 2: doors back and then that was it. And next thing
8:27
Speaker 2: you know, we were down the roundhouse where they charge
8:31
Speaker 2: you for a homicide.
8:33
Speaker 1: So, okay, right away we see problems emerge with what
8:36
Speaker 1: the witnesses are describing. Right the alleged number of individuals
8:40
Speaker 1: involved in the robbery went from went up fifty percent,
8:43
Speaker 1: right from two to three. And when you're there at
8:46
Speaker 1: the hospital in the police paddy wagon right outside the
8:50
Speaker 1: hospital with the witnesses saying yeah them too. Also one
8:54
Speaker 1: of the witnesses described a blue car and gave a
8:56
Speaker 1: partial plate number. So did that match your own vehicles?
9:00
Speaker 2: The only witness who claimed to see the car said
9:03
Speaker 2: it was a blue small car. It was as supposed
9:05
Speaker 2: to been a Chevy Chavette. He said the name of
9:07
Speaker 2: the car in his statement. Now Lee's car is a
9:11
Speaker 2: Priest Classic, a four door large car, two tones, two
9:15
Speaker 2: different colors.
9:16
Speaker 3: But this witness, for some reason, we could never find
9:19
Speaker 3: him and never bring him the trial. The person the
9:21
Speaker 3: police put down giving out this partial plate number. When
9:24
Speaker 3: we got the witness on the stand, she said, right
9:27
Speaker 3: then there, I.
9:28
Speaker 2: Never gave a police anything.
9:29
Speaker 3: I never saw a car, so how could I have
9:31
Speaker 3: ever given him the name is on this paper. Though
9:33
Speaker 3: they said you gave it to him, She said, it's impossible.
9:36
Speaker 3: I didn't see a car. I didn't give him anything.
9:39
Speaker 3: And the thing about the officers who did this first thing,
9:41
Speaker 3: you got to give you a context to.
9:42
Speaker 2: Who these officers are. The first officer was somebody who
9:45
Speaker 2: had strangled a guy to the early on, and then later,
9:48
Speaker 2: right after we was arrested, he shot a guy unarmed
9:51
Speaker 2: in a car. The second officer, she was involved in
9:53
Speaker 2: internal fears of investigation about a large quantity of drugs
9:56
Speaker 2: being found in the police station and them suspecting it
9:59
Speaker 2: or connect it to her. As you start appeeling the
10:02
Speaker 2: layers away, you start seeing that it's more to this
10:05
Speaker 2: than just the police picking up some guys and they
10:08
Speaker 2: were involved.
10:09
Speaker 1: So I have to ask, do you think that they
10:11
Speaker 1: knew from the beginning that you guys had nothing to
10:13
Speaker 1: do with this.
10:14
Speaker 2: That's a really good question, and our heart of hearts,
10:17
Speaker 2: we believe in the beginning maybe they wasn't sure, but
10:21
Speaker 2: as things begin to unfold, they had to be clear
10:23
Speaker 2: that we wasn't involved, just didn't care. And the reason
10:26
Speaker 2: why we know is because the prosecuted came to us
10:29
Speaker 2: with the deal. It was like five to ten years,
10:32
Speaker 2: and we were like, we're innocent, We're not taking any deal.
10:36
Speaker 2: Why should we take any deal to go to jail
10:38
Speaker 2: when we didn't do anything? And now it was sort
10:40
Speaker 2: of like, okay, you won't take the deal, all right, Well,
10:42
Speaker 2: the chip's gonna forward.
10:43
Speaker 1: They made, right, And it's very uncommon that in the
10:47
Speaker 1: crime as serious as this one armed robbery where someone
10:50
Speaker 1: was killed, right, that they're going to offer someone two
10:55
Speaker 1: guys in this case five years, right, you know, you
10:58
Speaker 1: don't have to be a legal scholar to figure this
11:00
Speaker 1: one out. So now we get to the trial and
11:03
Speaker 1: all three of you, Lee, Dennis, and Robert Leaf are
11:06
Speaker 1: tried together, and they have three witnesses. Now I'm going
11:09
Speaker 1: to put witnesses in quotation marks here. Three of them
11:12
Speaker 1: came to trial, and they eventually identified Dennis as the shooter.
11:15
Speaker 1: But did they have any physical evidence at all, any fingerprints,
11:21
Speaker 1: any security footage.
11:23
Speaker 2: There were no security footage.
11:25
Speaker 3: What they had was they actually had the gun they
11:28
Speaker 3: said with the murdered weapon. They never actually could trace
11:31
Speaker 3: it to any of the bullets they got out of
11:32
Speaker 3: the body.
11:33
Speaker 2: They didn't match. But this is the gun that Leif
11:35
Speaker 2: had on him. He left the gun in the car.
11:38
Speaker 2: The cops retrieved it and when they checked it, it had fingerprints.
11:41
Speaker 2: But we've been always trying to get these fingerprints checked
11:43
Speaker 2: because they could never trace them to any of us.
11:45
Speaker 2: If they took all of our fingerprints, they didn't fit
11:47
Speaker 2: any of us.
11:48
Speaker 3: Now, the way that my brother got to become the
11:51
Speaker 3: shooter is a clear case of mistaken identification. Initially in
11:57
Speaker 3: the case, they all identified Robert Leaf at the shooter,
12:00
Speaker 3: and this where the whole case turns. If this don't
12:03
Speaker 3: ever happen, we probably would have walked. The one witness
12:06
Speaker 3: would identify different person every hearing. When she identified Robert Leave,
12:11
Speaker 3: Robert Leaf's attorney, he would read the know some testimony
12:13
Speaker 3: of her identifying my brother, until it got to the
12:16
Speaker 3: point where when the judge asked her, well, who are
12:19
Speaker 3: you saying did this? She said, I'm going to say
12:22
Speaker 3: it's the one right there, and she was identifying me,
12:24
Speaker 3: and we had already told the court that they was
12:27
Speaker 3: identified as base where we were sitting at, so we
12:29
Speaker 3: switched seats. So when we switched seats, she was identified
12:33
Speaker 3: based on who the witness before her told her to identify,
12:36
Speaker 3: and then she thought that the person was sitting in
12:38
Speaker 3: that seat, but it wound up being me Lee Horton.
12:41
Speaker 3: When she heard my name, she said, hold it, what's
12:44
Speaker 3: the name? And they JEG said why do you.
12:46
Speaker 2: Want to know the name? Because, uh, Dennis did it.
12:49
Speaker 2: It's Dennis. He said Dennis, and then she said, yeah,
12:53
Speaker 2: I heard him. They was calling Dennis. And then after
12:56
Speaker 2: that we were in the case and they knew that
12:59
Speaker 2: this woman just had made this up out of the sky,
13:01
Speaker 2: just right then and there, everybody refused to pull back,
13:04
Speaker 2: and they could have corrected that right there, and they
13:06
Speaker 2: had said, well, hold up, Yonner, she's wrong. Mister Leaf
13:10
Speaker 2: was wearing a red jacket. We know that for sure.
13:12
Speaker 2: That's a fact. They identified him as a shooter. That's
13:15
Speaker 2: a fact. They didn't say any of that.
13:17
Speaker 3: They just let the witnesses go on and on and
13:19
Speaker 3: on with these wrong identifications. And this woman had identified
13:23
Speaker 3: every last one of us as a shooter at one
13:25
Speaker 3: given time.
13:36
Speaker 4: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
13:41
Speaker 4: and by Accenture, a global professional services company with leading
13:45
Speaker 4: capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the
13:49
Speaker 4: criminal justice system is a key pillar of the AIG
13:51
Speaker 4: pro Bono Program, which provides free legal services and other
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Speaker 4: support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need
13:59
Speaker 4: as part of censures commitment to racial and civil justice.
14:03
Speaker 4: Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in
14:07
Speaker 4: partnership with more than forty organizations bringing meaningful change to
14:11
Speaker 4: people and communities worldwide.
14:21
Speaker 2: Three weeks prior to our arrest, I had injured my
14:24
Speaker 2: leg on my job in such a fashion that I
14:27
Speaker 2: needed to acl repair. The holiday was on a Monday,
14:31
Speaker 2: I was supposed to go talk about the day that
14:32
Speaker 2: week I was going to have the surgery done. I
14:35
Speaker 2: just came off the crutches, so when we were arrested,
14:38
Speaker 2: it was impossible for me to be able to wrestle
14:41
Speaker 2: with this guy. I think they said he was like
14:43
Speaker 2: sixty four sixty three something like that. I was supposed
14:45
Speaker 2: to have overpowered him, wrestled all the way to the
14:47
Speaker 2: ground with this guy, overpowered the gun out of his hand,
14:50
Speaker 2: and then after I was supposed to have shot him,
14:53
Speaker 2: I was supposed to have ran away as fast as
14:56
Speaker 2: I could. There was no way I could run on
14:58
Speaker 2: that leg at all. And my medical records and all
15:02
Speaker 2: that would have shown that would have proved that, and
15:04
Speaker 2: this would have disqualified me from even remotely possibly being
15:08
Speaker 2: the shooter. And the thing is they knew this, but
15:11
Speaker 2: nobody cared.
15:13
Speaker 1: So you both had different lawyers, So two people who
15:17
Speaker 1: were supposed to be working on your behalf, what were
15:21
Speaker 1: they doing with all of this information?
15:24
Speaker 3: At trial, we made the mistake of a friend of
15:26
Speaker 3: my mom's told her that their son could be a
15:31
Speaker 3: good lawyer for us, and we accepted that, but he
15:34
Speaker 3: wasn't a criminal defense attorney. He had not tried one
15:36
Speaker 3: criminal case, and he wound up being a person putting
15:40
Speaker 3: our defense together. My lawyer had been retired and he
15:44
Speaker 3: was kind of older and he was a little out
15:46
Speaker 3: of step. Were just not prepared for a capital case. Now,
15:49
Speaker 3: the difference is Robert Leef was prepared. He knew the
15:52
Speaker 3: system and he knew how to work the system. We
15:54
Speaker 3: were naive.
15:55
Speaker 2: We thought that we were innocent and it was going
15:57
Speaker 2: to be shown and it never was.
16:00
Speaker 1: Literally, if you put this in the movie, you say, well,
16:02
Speaker 1: one guy's represented by a friend of a friend who
16:05
Speaker 1: never tried a criminal case before this capital murder we're
16:08
Speaker 1: talking about, and the other guys tried by a guy
16:10
Speaker 1: that they literally pulled out a retirement and wheeled him
16:13
Speaker 1: into the courtroom. You guys didn't even know that you're doomed.
16:16
Speaker 1: You're thinking, hey, we go in tell the truth. You
16:19
Speaker 1: were the only guys in the courtroom telling the truth.
16:21
Speaker 1: That's the only problem, right, and that doesn't work.
16:23
Speaker 2: And that's the thing that you know, even now gets
16:26
Speaker 2: to me a little bit because I spent twenty seven
16:29
Speaker 2: years in prison when this be nipping of it early on,
16:32
Speaker 2: and I didn't have to never go to prison after
16:34
Speaker 2: twenty seven years. You know, sometimes in your mind you think, well,
16:37
Speaker 2: you should have took there, But what would we have said.
16:41
Speaker 2: We didn't commit the crime, We didn't know anything about It.
16:43
Speaker 2: Took us twenty eight years to learn enough about this
16:46
Speaker 2: case to be able to talk about it. Where though
16:48
Speaker 2: we knew some of the facts that happened, we had
16:51
Speaker 2: to find in the police file. They went to court
16:54
Speaker 2: knowing that these witnesses was identifying my brother, but they
16:58
Speaker 2: had determined that was the shooter. The prosecutors knew this,
17:03
Speaker 2: the detectives knew this. But this is the problem with
17:06
Speaker 2: the system. Nobody cared about the truth. It was about
17:08
Speaker 2: let's get the conviction at all costs.
17:11
Speaker 1: Okay, So they knew you weren't involved from the jump,
17:14
Speaker 1: But since you wouldn't plead to lesser charges that you
17:19
Speaker 1: knew and I think they knew were false, they threw
17:22
Speaker 1: you into this kangaroo court situation tied to Robert Leaf,
17:26
Speaker 1: who was the actual culprit here, and to let the
17:29
Speaker 1: chips fall where they may, that's how they put it.
17:31
Speaker 2: Right.
17:32
Speaker 1: So then you were represented by people who had no
17:37
Speaker 1: business whatsoever really even being in this courtroom, right, I
17:41
Speaker 1: mean definitely not as lawyers in a capital murder case
17:45
Speaker 1: and you're literally on trial for your lives. So what
17:49
Speaker 1: was that like.
17:50
Speaker 2: I can tell you what it was like. Robert Leif's
17:52
Speaker 2: attorney communicated with our attorneys and they spolly had a
17:56
Speaker 2: joint defense, and right towards the time the jury was
18:00
Speaker 2: going out the deliberation, I remember my attorney looking back
18:03
Speaker 2: and saying, I don't think that his attorney was with us,
18:06
Speaker 2: And I said, you think like he was doing everything
18:09
Speaker 2: in his power to get his client the best possible
18:14
Speaker 2: verdict he could get. He used the defense to paint
18:19
Speaker 2: a picture so that we would wind up with the
18:21
Speaker 2: most out of this and his client would, if not
18:23
Speaker 2: walk free, get the least.
18:26
Speaker 1: So the jury goes out, they come back in four
18:28
Speaker 1: or five hours later. Did you guys have hope that
18:32
Speaker 1: they were going to actually see the light and that
18:34
Speaker 1: you were going to be vindicated.
18:36
Speaker 2: I mean it was just a blur of a moment.
18:38
Speaker 2: Of course, you hold out hope that the system is
18:41
Speaker 2: going to do the right thing. I mean we were
18:43
Speaker 2: raised like everybody else, watching police shows and court shows,
18:48
Speaker 2: and from what they show on TV, it always seemed
18:50
Speaker 2: like the system does the right thing, everything would turn
18:52
Speaker 2: out right, even though everything was looking wrong.
18:56
Speaker 3: We believed in the system to the point where I
18:58
Speaker 3: had put an application to the police force to being arrested.
19:01
Speaker 3: Like around the time when I got convicted, my wife
19:04
Speaker 3: received the letter saying that I was accepted to go
19:07
Speaker 3: to the next phase.
19:09
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. I mean, it's like you had. This was
19:12
Speaker 1: like an alternate reality, the life that should have been right.
19:17
Speaker 1: But okay, so the jury comes back in and the
19:22
Speaker 1: verdict is guilty. I mean, can you tell us about
19:27
Speaker 1: that moment. It's I mean, it's obviously horrible for anyone
19:32
Speaker 1: who experiences it, but here it's worse because one brother
19:38
Speaker 1: had to hear the other brother being declared guilty, followed
19:42
Speaker 1: by being declared guilty himself.
19:45
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you, being oldest, I probably was the weakest.
19:49
Speaker 2: When I heard the verdict.
19:50
Speaker 3: It was like I was in a state of shock,
19:52
Speaker 3: and my legs buckled, and I remember I felt like
19:55
Speaker 3: I was going down to the floor, and I remember
19:57
Speaker 3: hearing my grandmom's voice in the back.
20:00
Speaker 2: Saying, stand up real loud, don't you fall on that ground.
20:04
Speaker 2: Stand up that part. I ain't never gonna forget when
20:09
Speaker 2: they've been to divertict. I felt like I was in
20:11
Speaker 2: the twilight zone, like this wasn't happening, Like somebody's going
20:15
Speaker 2: to come in and say, we're just kidding. This is
20:18
Speaker 2: not how it's supposed to end for us. I mean,
20:22
Speaker 2: we played by the rules. You know, we were taught
20:24
Speaker 2: to work hard for whatever we get in life, and
20:26
Speaker 2: that's what we did. We were taught to mind the
20:28
Speaker 2: people in the neighborhood, the elders, to respect people. You
20:31
Speaker 2: know that this don't happen to decent people.
20:34
Speaker 3: And it was crazy because he immediately SAIDs us to
20:38
Speaker 3: life without the possibility for rule immediately. And you know,
20:42
Speaker 3: when our family got a chance to speak on our behalf,
20:45
Speaker 3: each one of our family members got up there. They
20:48
Speaker 3: said that we didn't commit the crime, and the judge
20:50
Speaker 3: got bad at some point. I think he told my
20:53
Speaker 3: sister that if you're going to say that they didn't
20:54
Speaker 3: commit this crime, then don't need to get up y.
20:57
Speaker 2: I haven't hurt enough of that. So, I mean, we
20:59
Speaker 2: were to distraught beyond words can describe it. I became angry,
21:04
Speaker 2: angry at the system, angry at myself for allowing myself
21:09
Speaker 2: to even be in that situation. Around a guy like this.
21:12
Speaker 2: And as time went on, my grandmother came to see
21:15
Speaker 2: as my grandmother and my mother and we would just
21:17
Speaker 2: complain and complain about everything that was going on. We
21:20
Speaker 2: was talking about how dark prison was, you know, how
21:23
Speaker 2: cold it always seems to be in there. You know
21:25
Speaker 2: how these folks around here they don't care about anything.
21:29
Speaker 2: And I remember my grandmother said, you know, if it's cold,
21:33
Speaker 2: then heated up with love, and if it's dark, then
21:35
Speaker 2: lighted up with hope. And my brother and I we
21:37
Speaker 2: looked at each other and said, Grandma, how much I
21:40
Speaker 2: have lost her mind? He was looking at each other
21:42
Speaker 2: like this lady for real? Like did she realize that
21:45
Speaker 2: were in the prison for a crime we didn't commit.
21:47
Speaker 2: She's telling us to do what? So the thing is
21:49
Speaker 2: didn't make sense to us at that time. But as
21:52
Speaker 2: the years would go by and we would begin the
21:55
Speaker 2: process like reading you know, self help books, history books,
21:59
Speaker 2: psychology books, and we were beginning taking the various programs
22:03
Speaker 2: that was available towards to educate ourselves. And we would
22:06
Speaker 2: go to the law library at least five days a
22:08
Speaker 2: week and we were just being there for hours reading
22:11
Speaker 2: this law, trying to decipher this law these cases and
22:14
Speaker 2: figure out ways how to argue and plead, because at
22:17
Speaker 2: some point we had to take over our own representation
22:19
Speaker 2: because the lawyers they were signing us was to up
22:22
Speaker 2: to park. And through that process more we became educated.
22:26
Speaker 2: The anger got directed in a different direction, and that
22:29
Speaker 2: anger all of a sudden started becoming more about helping
22:33
Speaker 2: men in prison that was wrongfully convicted as well, men
22:37
Speaker 2: that got more time than they should have.
22:40
Speaker 3: The revenge was going to be to try to send
22:42
Speaker 3: as many guys home as we could that would not
22:45
Speaker 3: come back to prison.
22:46
Speaker 2: And he talks about the law library, and that law library,
22:50
Speaker 2: we had a couple of tables of men who are
22:53
Speaker 2: all home now, who've all been exonerated. All of us
22:56
Speaker 2: was at those tables in nineteen ninety five, we all
22:59
Speaker 2: sitting around a table. And as the years were about,
23:01
Speaker 2: more and more men came into the institution and they
23:04
Speaker 2: would sit at those tables, and at the end of
23:06
Speaker 2: the day it was two of us as left. At
23:08
Speaker 2: the time, nobody was going home. Years later, everybody started
23:11
Speaker 2: trickling out, so eventually we would get transferred to another prison,
23:16
Speaker 2: which was a treatment facility more so geared towards programming
23:19
Speaker 2: and things like that. And so this prison, which was
23:22
Speaker 2: at Cichester, was kind of telling maybe for men like
23:24
Speaker 2: Le and I. And one of the first things that
23:28
Speaker 2: we do is become a certified pair Support Specialists. That
23:32
Speaker 2: means we work with people who struggle with mental health issues,
23:35
Speaker 2: struggle with all kinds of issues, addiction, struggle with anger issues,
23:39
Speaker 2: people who just having a hard time adjusting the prison life.
23:42
Speaker 2: And we went to work and they started seeing how
23:47
Speaker 2: the assault on officers, rate on staff started to drop,
23:51
Speaker 2: They started seeing the rate on prison on prisoner assaults drop,
23:56
Speaker 2: write ups started to drop. Everything in the prison started
23:59
Speaker 2: getting better as result of a certified pay support Specialist program.
24:03
Speaker 2: And from there we began to branch out into other areas.
24:08
Speaker 2: The ward, the superintendent, and the deputy superintendent allowed Lee
24:12
Speaker 2: and I to be able to facilitate many a programs.
24:16
Speaker 2: You know. We facilitated programs like Thresholds, which was a
24:20
Speaker 2: six step decisional making program. We taught men how to
24:22
Speaker 2: make better decisions in their lives so that they can
24:25
Speaker 2: also get through prison much better, but not only get
24:27
Speaker 2: through prison, but go home to their families and do
24:30
Speaker 2: better in society. We facilitated a health and Wellness program,
24:34
Speaker 2: and through this program we founded the day Responsibility in
24:38
Speaker 2: that particular institution. What we did was we created a
24:42
Speaker 2: play and the play would have areas in it would
24:46
Speaker 2: talk about recidivism, the impact of crime, dysfunction, trauma. I
24:52
Speaker 2: think it took us like fifty five fifty seven people
24:55
Speaker 2: to put this play on, and it was like a
24:58
Speaker 2: food production. We put the roles out for men to
25:00
Speaker 2: sign up and they had to try out for the parts.
25:03
Speaker 2: It was so widely successful that the administration said, well, hey, listen,
25:08
Speaker 2: why you guys didn't do this bigger. So we went
25:11
Speaker 2: on to do another three more plays within that institution,
25:14
Speaker 2: and we went from fifty seven people being involved in
25:19
Speaker 2: the year after that, one hundred and something people was involved.
25:21
Speaker 2: The following year. We put workshops on right after the play,
25:25
Speaker 2: so not only did we do the play, but we
25:27
Speaker 2: also put together twenty to thirty workshops where we would
25:31
Speaker 2: talk about these various things that were plaguing our community.
25:35
Speaker 2: And then those workshops, we would invite people from the community, organizations,
25:40
Speaker 2: from the community that was involved in stopping violence, like ceasefire,
25:44
Speaker 2: and universities to come in students and professors. We would
25:48
Speaker 2: invite politicians to come in.
25:51
Speaker 1: So while you're doing this amazing work, you're also, of course,
25:55
Speaker 1: you know, simultaneously fighting to overturn your own wrongful conviction.
26:00
Speaker 1: But so much of the information that you were discovering,
26:03
Speaker 1: exculpatory evidence, right tons of it was time barred, which
26:08
Speaker 1: means it was held back, you barred from being introduced
26:12
Speaker 1: because of procedural bullshit.
26:15
Speaker 3: I mean, it was a lot of things that came, like,
26:17
Speaker 3: you know, the police officer when we found out about
26:19
Speaker 3: the internal fair investigation, they said that was public.
26:22
Speaker 2: Information that we should have known about it, even though
26:25
Speaker 2: we had no idea that she was going through this,
26:27
Speaker 2: so how would we even know to look for it,
26:29
Speaker 2: So that was time barred. We had a witness individual
26:33
Speaker 2: we ran across who Robert Leif had confessed to because
26:36
Speaker 2: he was also incarcerated.
26:37
Speaker 3: When we met him, they said that wasn't usable because
26:41
Speaker 3: he's a prisoner, so of course he would help you.
26:44
Speaker 2: They use confessions against you, but you can't use one
26:47
Speaker 2: from somebody to get out of prison. But he said
26:50
Speaker 2: clearly what happened. Robert Leaf made a statement, and in
26:53
Speaker 2: his statement he identified the person he was with as
26:56
Speaker 2: somebody named Eddie and in the state he said, clearly
27:01
Speaker 2: when they said that this man died, and they believed
27:03
Speaker 2: he did it at the time because they took his
27:05
Speaker 2: jacket and they did paraffine tests on it, they did
27:08
Speaker 2: nitrate tests on his hands and all this kind of
27:10
Speaker 2: stuff like this.
27:11
Speaker 3: And he said, if the man died, it was his
27:14
Speaker 3: time to die, then if I got to do the
27:16
Speaker 3: time for it, then I'll do the time for it.
27:18
Speaker 2: That's what he said in his statement. And he said
27:21
Speaker 2: something in the.
27:21
Speaker 3: Statement referring to us that put us not even with him,
27:25
Speaker 3: so everything that we would get would be time barne.
27:28
Speaker 3: So we spent twenty years pretty much fighting to overcome
27:33
Speaker 3: procedural hurdles. When we was transferred to ci Chester, a
28:01
Speaker 3: staff member who was watching us at the time, he
28:04
Speaker 3: was a counselor, and he started talking to us in
28:06
Speaker 3: general conversation and then one day he called us in
28:09
Speaker 3: they and he asked what was we doing to get
28:10
Speaker 3: out of prison, And we told him about our fight
28:12
Speaker 3: in the courts and about our.
28:14
Speaker 2: Innocence and everything like this, and he said, you know.
28:16
Speaker 3: I believe y'all, I really believe everything you've been telling me.
28:20
Speaker 3: And he is the one that suggested to us that
28:22
Speaker 3: we filed for commutation, and at the time we told
28:26
Speaker 3: him that we were actually innocent and that wasn't the
28:29
Speaker 3: venue for commutation.
28:30
Speaker 2: And he spent months trying to convince us to file
28:32
Speaker 2: for commutation and just to give in, just to agree
28:35
Speaker 2: with him. We said okay, and he introduced us to
28:38
Speaker 2: a professor whose name is Kathleen Brown, who helped a
28:42
Speaker 2: lot of other guys with commutation applications. And she came
28:46
Speaker 2: to see us and we told her our story and
28:48
Speaker 2: she said, well, won't you follow actual innocence application. She
28:51
Speaker 2: said it would be the first one, but just write
28:54
Speaker 2: and just tell him what you told me. And that's
28:57
Speaker 2: what we did.
28:58
Speaker 3: And the first time we went before the board far
29:00
Speaker 3: as we was denied and we were distraught. And around
29:03
Speaker 3: that time my mom was sick and she passed away
29:06
Speaker 3: not too long after that, and she was so supportive.
29:08
Speaker 3: We didn't talk a lot about her, but she was
29:10
Speaker 3: the person that was fueling our fight for all those years.
29:14
Speaker 2: You know, my grandma's word just kept bringing in our
29:17
Speaker 2: ears that keep fighting. And we had developed the philosophy
29:20
Speaker 2: of freemen have freed themselves. So we went back to
29:24
Speaker 2: the courts, and then we filed for reconsideration and that
29:27
Speaker 2: was denied. And then we came back and filed for
29:29
Speaker 2: reconsideration again and they granted the reconsideration based on some
29:34
Speaker 2: other stuff. But right before that, the Lieutenant Governor John
29:37
Speaker 2: Fetterman started taking up our calls. He looked at our application,
29:40
Speaker 2: he'd seen everything in it, and he just started doing
29:43
Speaker 2: what it was the right thing to do. He started
29:45
Speaker 2: fighting for us, and the rest is history.
29:49
Speaker 5: I am a Lieutenant Governor, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and
29:52
Speaker 5: I also chair of the Board of Partons and Commutations
29:56
Speaker 5: here and I became acquainted with Dennis and Lee's case
29:58
Speaker 5: during one of their reapplicat for commutation, and when I
30:03
Speaker 5: read through it, I was blown away that these men
30:06
Speaker 5: were ever in prison, let alone struggling to be sent home.
30:12
Speaker 5: It's their background is astonishing. In Pennsylvania, the Board of
30:16
Speaker 5: Pardons requires a unanimous vote of five members. It has
30:20
Speaker 5: to be unanimous. If you don't get that threshold, that
30:24
Speaker 5: person is going to die in prison. And that, to
30:28
Speaker 5: me triggered a campaign to make sure that Lee and
30:32
Speaker 5: Dennis would be able to return to their families because
30:36
Speaker 5: this is a gross miscarriage of justice. Not only are
30:40
Speaker 5: they profoundly deserving that they have always maintained their innocence.
30:45
Speaker 5: Everyone believes that these men, including the warden and the
30:49
Speaker 5: Department of Corrections, that they have no business being in prison,
30:53
Speaker 5: and I'm so grateful that they're out on so many levels.
30:56
Speaker 5: In fact, I actually hired them to work on our campaign.
31:00
Speaker 5: They are far better a person and stronger a person
31:02
Speaker 5: than I could ever be. For what they went through
31:05
Speaker 5: to have emerged with the kind of humanity that they
31:08
Speaker 5: just radiate is nothing short of remarkable.
31:14
Speaker 1: So paint a picture for me. It's February twelfth, twenty
31:19
Speaker 1: twenty one, just two days before Valentine's Day. Governor Wolfe
31:23
Speaker 1: signs the papers, and you're about to see your wife again.
31:28
Speaker 3: I would tell you honestly, it was extremely amazing and
31:31
Speaker 3: difficult at the same time.
31:33
Speaker 2: It was like a miracle. It brought a sense of anxiety,
31:37
Speaker 2: but also it was a great feeling of hope. Prison
31:41
Speaker 2: For me it was a darkness I was in, and
31:44
Speaker 2: when I walked out it seemed like everything was bright,
31:46
Speaker 2: everything was beautiful. I could see everything.
31:49
Speaker 1: Dennis, how about for you and for me?
31:52
Speaker 2: It was bitter sweet at the same time because my
31:56
Speaker 2: mother was no longer there. She never gave up with
31:58
Speaker 2: fighting with us and to come home, and for her
32:02
Speaker 2: not to be here, I mean, it was just so painful,
32:05
Speaker 2: but it felt good to be free. It was just unbelievable.
32:09
Speaker 2: I felt like I can breathe again. But at the
32:12
Speaker 2: same time, I'm still like bewildered because some may not
32:17
Speaker 2: even get this chance, and I want to see others
32:19
Speaker 2: that are deserving of the same opportunity to get it.
32:22
Speaker 2: We found our sense of purpose while we were in prison,
32:25
Speaker 2: and that purpose was helping others, helping others to know
32:29
Speaker 2: that prison, you may be here, but this is not
32:32
Speaker 2: who you are, and this is not who you have
32:34
Speaker 2: to be. And we did that by leading, by showing
32:38
Speaker 2: people we cared about them, and through that care and
32:40
Speaker 2: through that love, we begin to inspire men to be
32:43
Speaker 2: more hopeful about and more optimistic about their future.
32:47
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really just an amazing, amazing story perseverance
32:52
Speaker 1: and triumph over struggling tragedy. And you know the fact
32:55
Speaker 1: that you guys, with the inspiration and the support of
32:59
Speaker 1: your families and other people, we're able to take this
33:03
Speaker 1: unimaginable burden and rise above it and turn it into
33:07
Speaker 1: something that enabled you to transform the lives of so
33:10
Speaker 1: many other people, and that you're still doing it today.
33:14
Speaker 1: It's nothing short. It's magical. Really, it's incredible. And for
33:20
Speaker 1: the people who are listening right now, who are inspired
33:23
Speaker 1: and who are going to want to take action and
33:26
Speaker 1: make a difference because of what you guys have been
33:28
Speaker 1: able to accomplish. Is there anything you guys want to suggest?
33:32
Speaker 3: What I just would say my call action would be
33:34
Speaker 3: to pay attention to what's going on out here in
33:37
Speaker 3: society and to support criminal justice reform. Every innocent man
33:41
Speaker 3: is not going to make it out of prison, and
33:42
Speaker 3: it's a lot left behind, so we need some sort
33:45
Speaker 3: of criminal justice before and to make a way for
33:48
Speaker 3: others to be able to come out.
33:49
Speaker 1: Now we've come to the part of the show that's well,
33:53
Speaker 1: it's the closing of the show, but it's become my
33:54
Speaker 1: favorite part of the show. And of course it's called
33:57
Speaker 1: closing arguments, And I want to say, first of all,
34:00
Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys tremendously just for being here and
34:04
Speaker 1: sharing your story. You know, you guys are heroes to
34:07
Speaker 1: me and so many other people, and I'm excited to
34:11
Speaker 1: get this out there, and get this story out in
34:13
Speaker 1: a way in the way that it should have been
34:17
Speaker 1: told from the very beginning, and so closing arguments. What
34:22
Speaker 1: we do here, how this works is I'm just going
34:23
Speaker 1: to turn my microphone off and leave both of yours on,
34:26
Speaker 1: and I'm going to just sit back in my chair
34:29
Speaker 1: and listen to anything that you feel has been left unsaid.
34:34
Speaker 1: So Dennis, how about you go first, and then Lee
34:38
Speaker 1: you'll be bad and clean up.
34:40
Speaker 2: So, folks, first of all, thank you for tuning in.
34:44
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to my brother and I recount
34:47
Speaker 2: our story. The thing is this, at the end of
34:50
Speaker 2: the day, the people control the system. The system don't
34:53
Speaker 2: control you, but we've gotten to a place where we
34:56
Speaker 2: allow the system to control us. This is supposed to
34:59
Speaker 2: be our system, and we're supposed to hold people accountable
35:03
Speaker 2: for the decisions they make on our behalf. So the
35:06
Speaker 2: only thing I would say is please get involved and
35:10
Speaker 2: know with the prosecutors, Know with the district attorney, know
35:15
Speaker 2: what the police are doing on your down because we
35:19
Speaker 2: pay the taxes that pay their salaries, and if this
35:23
Speaker 2: is how they're doing business, then we need to make
35:25
Speaker 2: sure we hold them accountable. My brother not with free,
35:28
Speaker 2: but there are countless others that are not free. My
35:32
Speaker 2: grandma once told us that life gives you what life
35:34
Speaker 2: gives you, and it's up to you to make something
35:37
Speaker 2: out of it. So when we went to prison, that
35:40
Speaker 2: wasn't the end of our story.
35:42
Speaker 3: That was just another leg in our journey. The next
35:44
Speaker 3: part of our journey, we hope is spectacular. We want
35:48
Speaker 3: to do a lot of things out here in society.
35:50
Speaker 3: We did a lot of positive working inside and we'll
35:51
Speaker 3: do a lot of positive work out here.
35:53
Speaker 2: And so what I would say is make sure you
35:57
Speaker 2: pay attention to what's going on. When somebody say they've
36:01
Speaker 2: been wrongfully convicted, try to give them the benefit of
36:04
Speaker 2: the doubt because they could be just like us, two
36:06
Speaker 2: individuals who just took a ride and wind up being
36:10
Speaker 2: arrested and sent away and spend twenty eight years trying
36:13
Speaker 2: to come back home.
36:20
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
36:23
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn,
36:27
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music
36:31
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
36:33
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph be sure to follow us on Instagram
36:37
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
36:41
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
36:45
Speaker 1: for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
36:48
Speaker 1: me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flopp.
36:52
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcasts
36:55
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one