Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #117 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Dixmoor 5

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#117 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Dixmoor 5 · Wrongful Conviction

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
0:05
Speaker 2: And I'm Steve Drusen.
0:07
Speaker 1: Last week, we told you the story of Robert Davis,
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Speaker 1: a false confession case that happened in Virginia. Today, we're
0:13
Speaker 1: going to tell you about a case out of Chicago,
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Speaker 1: the story of a violent and tragic crime that took
0:18
Speaker 1: the life of a young girl. But there's a larger
0:21
Speaker 1: reason why we want to talk about this case because
0:23
Speaker 1: of what it also took from not one, but five
0:27
Speaker 1: innocent teenage boys and from their families and communities. This
0:31
Speaker 1: case happened during what we now call the super Predator era,
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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. The news media was
0:38
Speaker 1: saturated with stories of urban crime, drugs and gangs, and
0:42
Speaker 1: in particular, sensationalized stories about black and brown youth committing
0:48
Speaker 1: violent crimes in groups. This narrative is often associated with
0:52
Speaker 1: New York City. It drove the wrongful prosecution of the
0:55
Speaker 1: so called Central Park five wolf Pack, but it didn't
0:58
Speaker 1: stop there. Today we're going to tell you about a
1:01
Speaker 1: group of teenage boys whose false confessions transformed them into
1:05
Speaker 1: Chicago's own wolf pack. They're known as the Dixmore five.
1:19
Speaker 2: You know, Chicago may be called the second City, but
1:21
Speaker 2: in when it comes to false confessions, we don't take
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Speaker 2: a back seat to anybody, not New York or any
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Speaker 2: other jurisdiction for that matter. We're home to more false
1:31
Speaker 2: confessions than any other city in the United States. We're
1:34
Speaker 2: home to more juvenile false confessions, and we're also the
1:37
Speaker 2: home of more cases in which there are multiple false confessions.
1:42
Speaker 2: And over the years, the Center on Wrongful Convictions has
1:45
Speaker 2: obtained exonerations in many of these cases, all of which
1:50
Speaker 2: were from African American teenagers in the Chicago area.
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Speaker 1: Marquette Park four, Uptown seven, Englewood four, Dix Moore five.
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Speaker 1: These numbers start to add up, and the thing is
2:01
Speaker 1: each one of these cases involves innocent African American teenagers
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Speaker 1: in groups confessing to crimes they didn't commit.
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Speaker 2: Of course, the most famous case like this was New
2:11
Speaker 2: York's Central Park five case. In April of nineteen eighty nine,
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Speaker 2: five teenage boys were charged with the sexual assault and
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Speaker 2: the attempted murder of a female jogger in New York's
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Speaker 2: Central Park. The boys falsely confessed to beating this woman
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Speaker 2: within an inch of her life and leaving her in
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Speaker 2: the woods to die. The Central Park five confessions were
2:38
Speaker 2: driven by race wolfpacks. Wilding was a whole new language
2:45
Speaker 2: to describe groups of African American and Latino teenagers, and
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Speaker 2: it created a level of fear in New York City
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Speaker 2: and around the country that I had never seen before.
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Speaker 2: So when we began to look at the Dixmore case,
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Speaker 2: the case of the Central Part five was ringing in
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Speaker 2: my years.
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Speaker 1: It was November of nineteen ninety one and fourteen year
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Speaker 1: old Kateresa Matthews was in the eighth grade. She lived
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Speaker 1: with her mom in Dixmore, a suburb on the south
3:14
Speaker 1: side of Chicago, surrounded by a tight knit extended family
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Speaker 1: and community. Every day, after school, Kateresa followed the same routine.
3:23
Speaker 1: She'd walk to her great grandmother's house, where she'd do
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Speaker 1: her homework, talk on the phone, and do whatever fourteen
3:28
Speaker 1: year old girls do after school, she was waiting until
3:31
Speaker 1: her mom came home from work to go back to
3:33
Speaker 1: her own house. Kateresa followed this routine religiously until November nineteenth,
3:39
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one. When she doesn't show up at her
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Speaker 1: great grandmother's house after school, her family panics, They call
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Speaker 1: the police and a search begins, but for three weeks
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Speaker 1: there's no sign of Kateresa until December eighth, nineteen ninety one.
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Speaker 1: That's when Kateresa's body is found lying in a wooded
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Speaker 1: field next to the Inner Highway that runs through Dixmore.
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Speaker 1: She's on her back, partially undressed, with her pants draped
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Speaker 1: across her lower body. On her chest is a spent
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Speaker 1: casing from a twenty five caliber bullet. She's been shot
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Speaker 1: once in the mouth. Even though Katse had been missing
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Speaker 1: for three weeks, the medical examiner concludes that she's been
4:20
Speaker 1: killed recently, right around the time her body's found. There
4:23
Speaker 1: are several reasons for this. For one thing, rigor mortis
4:27
Speaker 1: is present when she's found. That usually disappears about twenty
4:30
Speaker 1: four to forty eight hours after death. Her body is
4:34
Speaker 1: also still bleeding when she's discovered, which she wouldn't expect
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Speaker 1: if she'd been killed much earlier. And also, when a
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Speaker 1: body's been lying outside for a long time, there are
4:43
Speaker 1: usually signs like animal or insect bites. There's nothing like
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Speaker 1: that here, and the medical examiner finds something else too,
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Speaker 1: seamen on Katse's body. She's been raped.
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Speaker 2: This was an awful crime. It's the worst.
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Speaker 1: I mean, it's every parent's nightmare to have this happen
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Speaker 1: to their child.
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Speaker 2: You know, when you think of a crime like this,
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Speaker 2: you don't think of it as something the teenagers would do. Typically,
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Speaker 2: teenage crimes are impulsive crimes. There's not a lot of
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Speaker 2: planning or premeditation. They happen in the spur of the moment.
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Speaker 2: But this crime clearly required some forethought.
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Speaker 1: For eleven long months, the investigation into Kateresa's death goes
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Speaker 1: nowhere until fall nineteen ninety two, when a teenage boy
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Speaker 1: tells police that he saw Kateresa getting into a car
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Speaker 1: with some friends around the time of her disappearance. Police
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Speaker 1: decide to question those friends, starting with Robert Veil on
5:36
Speaker 1: October twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two. Now, Robert's fourteen years old,
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Speaker 1: but he has pretty severe intellectual limitations that make him
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Speaker 1: think more like a five year old. He's questioned for
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Speaker 1: hours without a parent or a lawyer present, off camera,
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Speaker 1: and in the end he signs a confession prepared by
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Speaker 1: his interrogator, and the story in this confession is brutal.
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Speaker 1: Robert says he and four other African American teenage boys
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Speaker 1: kidnapped a girl they knew from school. They gang raped
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Speaker 1: her as she pleaded with them to stop, and then
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Speaker 1: they shot her once in the mouth. It was a
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Speaker 1: story of an animalistic group of black teenagers attacking their
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Speaker 1: classmate for sport.
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Speaker 2: The level of depravity in this story was so out
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Speaker 2: of bounds that it made me question whether it was true.
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Speaker 2: But it also had an eerily familiar ring to it,
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Speaker 2: and for me, the significance was as I was seeing
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Speaker 2: the same explanations in different cases, which made me begin
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Speaker 2: to feel it like maybe there was a script that
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Speaker 2: was getting passed around among Chicago police officers.
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Speaker 1: Only hours after Robert Veale confesses, police bring in one
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Speaker 1: of his supposed co perpetrators, fifteen year old Robert Taylor.
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Speaker 1: He's a kid from a loving and protective family, but
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Speaker 1: his parents didn't know he was at the police station
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Speaker 1: being interrogated. Hours later, his signature appears on a confession too,
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Speaker 1: and that confession tells a similarly vicious story. The same
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Speaker 1: five African American teenagers lured Katsa into a car, then
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Speaker 1: raped her and shot her in a field.
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Speaker 3: The super Predator era was a period of pronounced moral
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Speaker 3: panic in the United States that focused on young people,
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Speaker 3: race and crime.
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Speaker 1: That's our colleague and friend, Perry Moriarty. She's a professor
7:34
Speaker 1: of law at the University of Minnesota and an expert
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Speaker 1: on juvenile justice and the era of the super predator.
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Speaker 3: The front end marker is more than likely the Central
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Speaker 3: Park five case that was April of nineteen eighty nine,
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Speaker 3: and that began an era when, in the name of
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Speaker 3: public safety, in the name of being tough on crime,
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Speaker 3: law enforcement authorities dropped any pretense of treating children as
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Speaker 3: children and prosecuted them as adults. If they were black
8:04
Speaker 3: and brown children, they were adultified, either by law or
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Speaker 3: by connotation, and certainly by the media. A jogger murdered
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Speaker 3: in New York Central Park. A little girl gunned down
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Speaker 3: in her family's car.
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Speaker 2: In Los Angeles.
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Speaker 1: A judge has sentenced two boys for killing another child
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Speaker 1: who refused to steal candy for them. There's a tidal
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Speaker 1: wave of juvenile violent crime right over the horizon, and
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Speaker 1: some who study it say the worst is.
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Speaker 2: Yet to come.
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Speaker 3: Terms like wilding, beast chill, predatory. In New York City
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Speaker 3: newspapers alone, the term wilding appeared one hundred and fifty
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Speaker 3: six times in articles over the eight years following the
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Speaker 3: Central Park five arrests. To put it in perspective, just
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Speaker 3: a few months after the Central Park five case, a
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Speaker 3: large group of Italian and Irish, predominantly teenagers in benson Hurst, Brooklyn,
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Speaker 3: chased down and killed a young black teenager named you
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Speaker 3: Seph Hawkins. And the headlines did not say wilding. They
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Speaker 3: did not say beastschill. They did not even say gang.
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Speaker 3: They said a group of white teenagers.
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Speaker 1: Now the police have two confessions that implicate the same
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Speaker 1: five teenagers, but they're not done yet. Next up is
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Speaker 1: Cheyenne Sharp, seventeen years old, the third supposed co perpetrator.
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Speaker 1: He's questioned for nearly twenty four hours before he also
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Speaker 1: confesses and implicates the other four. And it's the same
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Speaker 1: brutal story, a group of African American teenage boys terrorizing
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Speaker 1: their classmate for fun.
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Speaker 2: Now you have to understand how these confessions are taken.
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Speaker 2: These confessions are scripted, usually by a prosecutor from the
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Speaker 2: State Attorney's office. Sometimes they're written by police, and these
10:01
Speaker 2: scripts contain a narrative, including character development. Kids are described
10:07
Speaker 2: as thugs. There's usually references to gang membership. Women are
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Speaker 2: called bitches and hoes. The scriptwriter in these cases is
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Speaker 2: doing two things. He's painting the suspects in a way
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Speaker 2: that nobody can ever think of them as teenagers. And
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Speaker 2: he's also painting them in a way that nobody and
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Speaker 2: that means nobody in the public and nobody on the
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Speaker 2: jury can have an ounce of sympathy for them. And
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Speaker 2: in doing so, he's making a script that is about
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Speaker 2: as rock solid as a roote to conviction as one
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Speaker 2: can imagine.
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Speaker 1: So far, the police have confessions from three of the
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Speaker 1: Dixmore five, and within days they bring in the two
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Speaker 1: remaining teenagers for questioning two brothers, seventeen year old James
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Speaker 1: Harden and fifteen year old Jonathan Barr. The boys are
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Speaker 1: interrogated for hours, but their father had always told them
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Speaker 1: never sign anything prepared by the police. Somehow a miracle
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Speaker 1: they remember these words and they don't confess, but they're
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Speaker 1: still named in the other three teenagers' statements. So all
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Speaker 1: five are on the.
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Speaker 3: Hook, in part because they were arresting and prosecuting kids
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Speaker 3: in mass in groups. Law enforcement became very adept in
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Speaker 3: that period at pitting kids against each other. During the
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Speaker 3: interrogation process and using kids against each other to extract
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Speaker 3: false confessions.
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Speaker 2: When you look at these cases of multiple false confessions,
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Speaker 2: you see a similar pattern. First of all, the police
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Speaker 2: usually start with the most vulnerable, most naive, most gullible
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Speaker 2: of the suspects, and they focused in this case on
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Speaker 2: Robert Field. He was the weak link. Then they get
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Speaker 2: a confession from Robert Veel and what do they do
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Speaker 2: with that confession They use it as a battering ram
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Speaker 2: to plow over all of the other defendants. This is
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Speaker 2: how it works. The first suspect comes in and the
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Speaker 2: police officers tell them that they know that he was
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Speaker 2: involved in this crime and nothing that suspect can say
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Speaker 2: is going to change their mind. But they don't think
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Speaker 2: he was the one who actually raped anybody or killed anybody.
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Speaker 2: He was just a follower. The suspect is pressured into
12:29
Speaker 2: adopting a story in which he is a passive participant
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Speaker 2: to the crime and which he fingers his co defendants
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Speaker 2: as the more active participants. Then, once that suspect confesses,
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Speaker 2: they bring that confession to the next in line and
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Speaker 2: they go over the same thing again. We don't think
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Speaker 2: you committed the crime. He's telling us that you committed
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Speaker 2: the crime. We know you were there, but maybe you
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Speaker 2: just held down her arm while they were raping and
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Speaker 2: killing her. Each suspect is vying for the least culpable role,
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Speaker 2: and at the end of the day, this is a
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Speaker 2: very effective way to get confessions from multiple suspects.
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Speaker 1: In this case, the dominoes are falling and each one
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Speaker 1: of them eventually agrees to a story in which James
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Speaker 1: Harden is the one who actually places the gun inside
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Speaker 1: Kateresa's mouth and pulls the trigger. It's no coincidence that
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Speaker 1: James is one of the last ones questioned.
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Speaker 2: Here, That's right. And at the end of the day,
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Speaker 2: police got confessions from Robert Field, Robert Taylor, and Cheyenne's Sharp,
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Speaker 2: but they couldn't get James Harden and Jonathan Barr to confess.
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Speaker 1: Based on the confessions, all five teenagers are charged with
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Speaker 1: the assault and murder of Katsa Matthews and That Dixmore
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Speaker 1: five are transformed into Chicago's own Wolfback. Pretty soon, though,
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Speaker 1: it becomes apparent that this case has major problems for starters.
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Speaker 1: The teenager's versions of what happened are wildly inconsistent. They
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Speaker 1: can't agree on how they met up with Katrisa, what
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Speaker 1: the group did before they ended up in that field,
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Speaker 1: by the interstate, or who assaulted Katsa, and in what order.
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Speaker 1: In fact, one of the only things they do agree
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Speaker 1: on was that Katsa had been murdered the day she
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Speaker 1: disappeared November nineteenth. But remember this was contradicted by the
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Speaker 1: medical examiner, who determined that she'd been killed three weeks later,
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Speaker 1: around the time her body was found. And then here
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Speaker 1: comes the biggest problem. After all five teenagers were charged
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Speaker 1: but before trial, DNA testing from the seaman left on
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Speaker 1: Kateresa's body excludes all five suspects. Instead, this DNA belongs
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Speaker 1: to a single, unidentified male.
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Speaker 2: This is might drop evidence, the kind of evidence that
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Speaker 2: should have resulted in these cases being dismissed before trial.
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Speaker 1: Exactly these confessions had been proven false. But instead of
15:00
Speaker 1: dropping its case, the state offers deals to two members
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Speaker 1: of the Dixmore Five, Cheyenne Sharp and Robert Viel. If
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Speaker 1: the boys agree to testify against their co defendants, they'll
15:11
Speaker 1: receive much shorter sentences. Yanna and Robert decide to take
15:15
Speaker 1: the deal, while the state moves forward with trials for
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Speaker 1: the other three, and those trials, of course, are based
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Speaker 1: on the stories told in the confessions despite the DNA.
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Speaker 2: You talk here about tunnel vision. This is what happens.
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Speaker 2: The police officers lock into a story. They become invested
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Speaker 2: in this notion of a gang rape, and they can't
15:36
Speaker 2: get out of that box exactly.
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Speaker 1: And you see this when they have to deal with
15:40
Speaker 1: the DNA and the prosecutor addresses it during closing arguments.
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Speaker 2: And what does the prosecutor say. He explains the presence
15:47
Speaker 2: of DNA as the work of a necrophiliac.
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Speaker 1: Now see if this isn't exactly a household term. What
15:53
Speaker 1: is a necrophiliac?
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Speaker 2: It's someone who has sex with dead bodies.
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Speaker 1: I knew you know that. This is officially the most
16:00
Speaker 1: batchet theory I think I've ever heard, By the way.
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Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more So, let's get this straight.
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Speaker 1: The theory here at the Dixmore five trial was that
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Speaker 1: five teenage boys sexually assault this victim. They don't leave
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Speaker 1: a trace of themselves behind. Then here comes this wandering
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Speaker 1: necrophiliac who comes across the body and decides to defile it.
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Speaker 1: I mean, we've heard a lot of excuses for DNA
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Speaker 1: in our time, but this one may take the prize.
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Speaker 2: It's unbelievable that they would even present this to a jury.
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Speaker 2: It's that insane. But you have to understand in the
16:32
Speaker 2: context of a climate of fear, the irrational becomes rational. Now,
16:39
Speaker 2: in the opening statement in this case, the prosecutor said
16:43
Speaker 2: that these men, pointing at the five teenagers, these men
16:48
Speaker 2: came from a world where so called friends were turned
16:51
Speaker 2: into a pack of jackals hunting down their prey, and
16:55
Speaker 2: then they were done with it, killing it for sport jackals.
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Speaker 1: Can you believe that this really is Chicago's own wolf pack?
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Speaker 3: Again, it's a lot easier to fathom locking up a young, beastial,
17:10
Speaker 3: feral thing than it is a child, which is in
17:14
Speaker 3: fact what we were doing.
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Speaker 2: And when you talk about children as if they were animals,
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Speaker 2: it becomes so much easier to throw away their lives.
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Speaker 1: To just not worry about doing that last bit of
17:26
Speaker 1: DNA testing figure out whose DNA it was actually left
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Speaker 1: on Katriza Matthew's body.
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Speaker 2: It becomes easier to try them as adults. It becomes
17:33
Speaker 2: easier to sentence them to life sentences or even the
17:37
Speaker 2: death penalty. It becomes easier to just lock them up
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Speaker 2: and throw away the key.
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Speaker 1: The dehumanizing story embedded in these boys confessions. While it works,
17:59
Speaker 1: each that dix Moore five is convicted and the three
18:02
Speaker 1: who don't cut deals, Robert Taylor, Jonathan Barr, and James
18:05
Speaker 1: Harden are sentenced to life in prison. Cheyenne Sharp and
18:09
Speaker 1: Robert Veale serve their time and are eventually released with
18:13
Speaker 1: murder convictions on the records, But the other three languish
18:16
Speaker 1: behind bars forgotten people.
18:21
Speaker 2: But they were not forgotten by their parents or their
18:24
Speaker 2: loved ones. You know, I'll never forget learning that Jonathan
18:28
Speaker 2: Barr and James Hardin's dad would literally drive around with
18:32
Speaker 2: boxes full of files regarding their cases in his trunk,
18:37
Speaker 2: trying to get lawyers interested in taking his son's cases.
18:42
Speaker 2: And Robert Taylor's family did similar things. They would write
18:45
Speaker 2: letters and letters and letters to lawyers begging them for help. Finally,
18:51
Speaker 2: in twenty ten, we learned about the case of the
18:54
Speaker 2: Dixmore five. Our colleague Josh tepfer knew a public defender
18:59
Speaker 2: name named Jennifer Blagg who had represented Robert Taylor on appeal.
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Speaker 2: She referred the case to Josh and we agreed to
19:07
Speaker 2: take Robert's case.
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Speaker 1: By this time, Robert was in his early thirties.
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Speaker 2: That's right, he had served over fifteen years of his sentence.
19:16
Speaker 1: Robert Taylor grew up with his parents, sister, and brother
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Speaker 1: in Harvey, Illinois, right next to Dixmore. From day one,
19:22
Speaker 1: Robert's dad, a Navy vet, was his strongest defender. Robert
19:27
Speaker 1: Senior refused to be broken by the fact that his
19:29
Speaker 1: son had gone to prison because of the words he'd
19:31
Speaker 1: signed his name to. When the Center on Wrongful Convictions
19:35
Speaker 1: agreed to take Robert's case, his dad became a major
19:37
Speaker 1: presence in our lives. I can still remember the smell
19:40
Speaker 1: of his leather jacket when he hugged us and welcomed
19:43
Speaker 1: us to his family's struggle. Around the same time, organizations
19:47
Speaker 1: like the Innocence Project and Exoneration Project got involved in
19:50
Speaker 1: representing other members of the Dixmore five. Our collective first
19:54
Speaker 1: priority was identifying whose DNA had been left at the
19:58
Speaker 1: crime scene.
19:59
Speaker 2: We had a new tool called CODIS, the Combined DNA
20:02
Speaker 2: Index System, and over the timeframe since the advent of
20:06
Speaker 2: DNA testing in the late nineteen eighties, that database had grown,
20:11
Speaker 2: and so the chances of finding the identity of the
20:15
Speaker 2: person who raped and killed Kateresa.
20:17
Speaker 1: Matthews had grown exactly. I mean, let's remember for a
20:20
Speaker 1: moment that we're talking here about DNA that was taken
20:23
Speaker 1: from the semen left on a rape victim. You cannot
20:25
Speaker 1: ask for better evidence than that, and it's just sitting
20:28
Speaker 1: there forgotten. How can you not want to know whose
20:31
Speaker 1: DNA that was? Isn't that the most important question in
20:34
Speaker 1: this case had been sitting there unanswered for fifteen years?
20:40
Speaker 2: But where was it sitting? That was their first challenge.
20:42
Speaker 2: And after a year of searching, we found the DNA
20:47
Speaker 2: in some warehouse or in some trailer, and we then
20:51
Speaker 2: had to get permission from the court to test the DNA.
20:55
Speaker 2: We then sent the DNA off for testing to a lab,
20:58
Speaker 2: and we waited and the lab extracted a profile, and
21:02
Speaker 2: when that profile was extracted, it was run through the
21:05
Speaker 2: CODA database. A miracle of miracles. In March of twenty eleven,
21:11
Speaker 2: we got a hit and the hit was to a man,
21:16
Speaker 2: not a boy, a man named Willie Randolph.
21:21
Speaker 1: Now Willie Randolph was a troubled guy. He was much
21:24
Speaker 1: older than Kateresa or the dixmore five. When Kateresa disappeared.
21:28
Speaker 1: He was thirty three years old, more than twice her age.
21:32
Speaker 1: Willy had been in and out of prison his entire
21:34
Speaker 1: adult life for all sorts of different offenses. In fact,
21:37
Speaker 1: he'd been paroled only a few months before Kateresa was
21:41
Speaker 1: killed to a house within a mile of where she lived,
21:44
Speaker 1: and Willie Randolph had previously been accused of rape in
21:48
Speaker 1: that very same field by the interstate where Kateresa's body
21:51
Speaker 1: was found. This is a person with a history of
21:55
Speaker 1: these kinds of attacks, and his DNA and no one
21:58
Speaker 1: else's was present at the crime scene. Finally, it all
22:02
Speaker 1: made sense.
22:04
Speaker 2: When we learned the identity of Willy Randolph, when we
22:07
Speaker 2: investigated his background, when we learned the history of abusing
22:12
Speaker 2: and sexually assaulting women, including young women teenagers, we thought
22:17
Speaker 2: this case was over. We thought we are going to
22:20
Speaker 2: get these boys out tomorrow.
22:23
Speaker 1: Exactly, there's no relationship at all between Willy Randolph and
22:26
Speaker 1: any of the Dixmore five. He's not mentioned in any
22:29
Speaker 1: of their confessions.
22:30
Speaker 2: And why would there be a relationship. This is a
22:33
Speaker 2: man with a long history of violence in his record,
22:36
Speaker 2: and none of these boys had a history of violence.
22:39
Speaker 1: Right, He's twice their age when they were growing up
22:42
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. He was in prison.
22:43
Speaker 2: Willie Randolph is the guy who did this to Katrisa Matthews.
22:47
Speaker 2: The DNA proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
22:50
Speaker 2: Now we had to convince the prosecutors to do the
22:53
Speaker 2: right thing.
22:54
Speaker 1: But as incredible as it sounds, the state wouldn't let
22:57
Speaker 1: go of their necrophilia theory, and the case dragged on
23:01
Speaker 1: for months.
23:02
Speaker 2: You know, old habits die hard. The state actually suggested
23:06
Speaker 2: again and maybe Willie Randolph was their mystery necrophiliac.
23:12
Speaker 1: This is an unbelievable thing. Still, they're clinging to this
23:14
Speaker 1: theory that five teenage boys assaulted Kateresa Matthews, left no
23:18
Speaker 1: trace of their DNA behind, and here comes Willy Randolph,
23:21
Speaker 1: the older man, the man of the history of assaults
23:24
Speaker 1: and violent crime and rape in that very field, and
23:27
Speaker 1: just happens to defile her body. It beggars belief.
23:30
Speaker 2: It still took six to seven months to investigate whether
23:35
Speaker 2: there was any link between Willie Randolph and any of
23:38
Speaker 2: the Dix More five, there wasn't one.
23:41
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, we were coming back to court every few weeks
23:44
Speaker 1: to get an update on the state's investigation and to
23:47
Speaker 1: ask the judge is today the day of exoneration? And
23:51
Speaker 1: for six long months we were disappointed. I remember coming
23:55
Speaker 1: home after those court dates and crying with frustration that
23:58
Speaker 1: I was able to go home. Robert Taylor, our clients
24:01
Speaker 1: had to go back to a prison cell.
24:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember pulling out my hair and I had
24:06
Speaker 2: hair back there.
24:07
Speaker 1: That's where it all went.
24:08
Speaker 2: That's where it all went because we had the best
24:11
Speaker 2: possible evidence of their innocence. And not only were they
24:17
Speaker 2: refusing to clear our clients, Willie Randolph was on the street.
24:22
Speaker 2: He was out of prison on parole, and he could
24:25
Speaker 2: be doing this to somebody else. It was driving me crazy.
24:29
Speaker 1: Every time before we walked into that courtroom, I remember
24:33
Speaker 1: watching Robert hold his whole body just taught. His muscles
24:37
Speaker 1: would be tense, and you could see those twenty years
24:40
Speaker 1: of trauma that he had endured and the toll it
24:43
Speaker 1: had taken on him. He couldn't relax into the possibility
24:47
Speaker 1: that it was going to be his day that day,
24:49
Speaker 1: and it wasn't his day.
24:50
Speaker 2: For months until it finally was.
24:56
Speaker 1: On November third, twenty eleven. Robert Ville, Cheyenne Sharp, James Harden,
25:00
Speaker 1: Jonathan Barr and Robert Taylor were exonerated. Their convictions were
25:05
Speaker 1: thrown out. Nearly twenty years to the day after Kateresa
25:08
Speaker 1: matthews disappearance, The Dix Moore five had wrongly served a
25:12
Speaker 1: total of more than fifty years in prison. Eventually, Willie
25:17
Speaker 1: Randolph was charged with the attack on Kateresa Matthews based
25:20
Speaker 1: on DNA evidence. He's still awaiting trial today. We're proud
25:25
Speaker 1: to have helped free the Dix Moore five, but as
25:27
Speaker 1: our colleague Josh Tepfer put it, this is not justice.
25:31
Speaker 1: Justice would have happened a long time ago.
25:36
Speaker 2: Hello, Hey, Robert, Stephen Waura A long time. I'll see
25:41
Speaker 2: too long, too long. Good to hear your voice.
25:43
Speaker 1: What's going on with you these days, Robert? I'm hanging
25:46
Speaker 1: in now. How's your son doing?
25:49
Speaker 2: I got picked boys. You got to pick him up
25:52
Speaker 2: the school. Yeah, I'll picking him up every day.
25:55
Speaker 3: Held your point, haven't going away?
25:58
Speaker 1: What's your favorite thing to do with your son, Robert?
26:01
Speaker 2: I'd like Sam Smatters.
26:03
Speaker 1: So you can't give those twenty years back to Robert,
26:08
Speaker 1: or to any of the Dixmore five, or any of
26:09
Speaker 1: the guys we're going to talk about on this podcast.
26:11
Speaker 1: You can't give that time back, but what you can
26:14
Speaker 1: do is make the years decades that they lost mean something.
26:19
Speaker 3: One of the greatest tragedies in my opinion, and I've
26:22
Speaker 3: been teaching about the Central Park five case for years
26:26
Speaker 3: and to this day. When I introduced the case in
26:28
Speaker 3: my criminal law classes, the one thing that people don't
26:32
Speaker 3: know about the case is that the kids were innocent.
26:35
Speaker 3: So few people knew that even after Matthias Rayes confessed,
26:40
Speaker 3: even after these kids were let out of prison, even
26:43
Speaker 3: after they were compensated. It is the footnote in this
26:47
Speaker 3: story that gets lost in our collective consciousness, maybe not anymore. Finally,
26:52
Speaker 3: there is attention being brought to who they actually were
26:55
Speaker 3: and what they suffered, and.
26:56
Speaker 1: That's a big part of how Steve and I approach
26:58
Speaker 1: these cases.
26:59
Speaker 2: Right.
26:59
Speaker 1: It's about, of course getting them out of prison, fighting
27:02
Speaker 1: for them, opening up those doors, but it's also about
27:05
Speaker 1: telling the stories. It's about making it meaningful. It's about
27:08
Speaker 1: saying their name. It's about not forgetting what happened to
27:10
Speaker 1: them and changing it so it doesn't happen again. Like
27:17
Speaker 1: the Central Park five, the story of the Dixmore five
27:20
Speaker 1: is about convictions that were driven by prejudice rather than proof.
27:24
Speaker 1: But the injustices of the super Predator era were not
27:27
Speaker 1: just a New York City thing or a Chicago thing,
27:30
Speaker 1: And although we may want to think so, they're not
27:32
Speaker 1: even really a nineteen nineties thing. In times of great
27:35
Speaker 1: fear or moral panic, prejudices can distort the search for
27:39
Speaker 1: the truth. Mistaken assumptions, faulty investigations, and flawed evidence are
27:45
Speaker 1: all still real, and they still cause wrongful convictions across
27:48
Speaker 1: the country. Every day. We tell these stories so that
27:52
Speaker 1: we can learn from them, so that one day there
27:55
Speaker 1: won't be any more. Dix Moore fives to all the dicksive,
28:00
Speaker 1: but especially to our client and friend, Robert Taylor. You've
28:04
Speaker 1: endured years of injustice while remaining a pillar of strength
28:08
Speaker 1: and resilience. To you and your families, we wish you
28:11
Speaker 1: all the best. Thanks for letting us tell your story.
28:17
Speaker 1: Next week, we'll tell you the story of a false
28:19
Speaker 1: confession out of Arkansas, where a twelve year old boy
28:22
Speaker 1: maintains his innocence in a murder case until police turn
28:26
Speaker 1: off the cameras. Wrongful conviction. False Confessions is a production
28:36
Speaker 1: of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
28:40
Speaker 1: number one Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm
28:44
Speaker 1: and the team at Signal Company Number one. Executive producer
28:48
Speaker 1: Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope, and additional production and
28:52
Speaker 1: editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
28:56
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura.
28:59
Speaker 2: Nyrol and you can follow me on Twitter at Sdrizzen.
29:04
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
29:08
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
29:11
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
29:15
Speaker 1: Twitter at wrong Conviction