Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #178 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tommy Ward Pt. 2

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#178 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tommy Ward Pt. 2 · Wrongful Conviction

0:00
Speaker 1: To our listeners. This episode is part two of the
0:03
Speaker 1: story of Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau. Two days before
0:07
Speaker 1: we were scheduled to release this episode, Steve and I
0:10
Speaker 1: learned about breaking news in Tommy's case, and it's the
0:13
Speaker 1: kind of news that reminds us why we do this work.
0:16
Speaker 1: So we'll hear this episode as we originally recorded it,
0:20
Speaker 1: but with a special update at the end. No spoilers,
0:23
Speaker 1: but for Tommy and Carl, it's starting to look like
0:26
Speaker 1: justice might not be just a dream after all. Welcome
0:35
Speaker 1: to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.
0:37
Speaker 2: I'm Laura and I writer and I'm Steve Drisen.
0:40
Speaker 1: Today we bring you back to Ada, Oklahoma for the
0:43
Speaker 1: second half of our story about Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau.
0:46
Speaker 1: When we left off last week, Tommy and Carl were
0:49
Speaker 1: sitting on death row after police turned Tommy's bad dream
0:53
Speaker 1: into a murder confession. This week, we'll tell you about
0:56
Speaker 1: some serious twists in the case, from the discovery of
0:59
Speaker 1: the victims to the revelation of hidden evidence that turned
1:03
Speaker 1: this case upside down. We'll update you on everything that's
1:06
Speaker 1: happened since the twenty eighteen Netflix series The Innocent Man
1:10
Speaker 1: told Tommy and Carl's story. There's been some very good
1:13
Speaker 1: news for one of them and a lot of hope
1:15
Speaker 1: for the other.
1:29
Speaker 3: Steve.
1:29
Speaker 1: For those listeners who missed last week's episode, let's tell
1:32
Speaker 1: them what happened.
1:33
Speaker 2: In Ada, Oklahoma. Denise Haroway, a twenty four year old woman,
1:37
Speaker 2: goes missing. She vanishes the please bring Tommy Ward in
1:42
Speaker 2: for questioning, and.
1:43
Speaker 1: It got ugly fast. Tommy told the police about this
1:46
Speaker 1: nightmare he'd had about Denise's disappearance, and over a nine
1:50
Speaker 1: hour interrogation, police turned that dream into a confession. They
1:55
Speaker 1: even hauled in Tommy's friend, Carl Fontano and got him
1:58
Speaker 1: to confess too. But here's the thing. These confessions were
2:01
Speaker 1: riddled with errors. They named a third perpetrator who had
2:04
Speaker 1: a rock solid alibi. They repeated the stories that police
2:08
Speaker 1: fed to Tommy and Carl without adding anything new. These
2:11
Speaker 1: confessions were obviously obviously false.
2:14
Speaker 2: Now going into trial, the prosecutors have two confessions that
2:19
Speaker 2: are at odds with the objectively noble facts of the crime.
2:23
Speaker 1: But they thought they had an ace in the hole, and.
2:25
Speaker 2: That ace in the hole was a single fact that
2:29
Speaker 2: both Tommy and Carl had told to police. Officers a
2:34
Speaker 2: description of a blouse that Denise Harrowy was wearing at
2:39
Speaker 2: the time that she was abducted. A blouse that it
2:43
Speaker 2: turned out was missing from Denise's wardrobe, A blouse which
2:49
Speaker 2: even the police did not know about at the time
2:52
Speaker 2: they interviewed Tommy and Carl.
2:55
Speaker 1: But based on this one detail in their confessions, Tommy
2:57
Speaker 1: and Carl were convicted of murder. And remember her bodies
3:01
Speaker 1: still hadn't been found when they were convicted.
3:03
Speaker 2: No body, no bones, no motive, nothing but a description
3:09
Speaker 2: of Denise Harroway's blouse, and they are on death row
3:13
Speaker 2: because of that. That's where we pick up the story.
3:20
Speaker 1: Three months after Tommy and Carl were convicted, a wake
3:23
Speaker 1: up call arrived in the case that was built on
3:25
Speaker 1: a dream. On January twenty first, nineteen eighty six, a
3:29
Speaker 1: man was walking through a field in Gurdy, Oklahoma, when
3:33
Speaker 1: he found a skull under some brush. Police found more
3:36
Speaker 1: human remains spread across the field, and dental records confirmed
3:40
Speaker 1: a match. Finally, they'd found Denise Harroway. This discovery produced
3:46
Speaker 1: a new round of problems with Tommy and Carl's confessions.
3:50
Speaker 1: Denise had been found unclothed, twenty miles away from where
3:53
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl had said they'd left her. Her body
3:56
Speaker 1: hadn't been burned at all, despite the fact that Carl
3:59
Speaker 1: had said they'd set her on fire, and the medical
4:02
Speaker 1: examiner confirmed even though Tommy and Carl had said Denise
4:06
Speaker 1: had been stabbed that never happened. She had actually been
4:09
Speaker 1: shot in the head.
4:11
Speaker 2: It's like they're describing completely different crimes from what happened
4:16
Speaker 2: to Denise Harroway.
4:18
Speaker 1: Both Tommy and Carl's convictions were reversed on appeal, but
4:22
Speaker 1: not because Denise's body had been found. It was because
4:25
Speaker 1: the judge ruled they shouldn't have been tried together. Prosecutors
4:29
Speaker 1: went ahead and tried both Tommy and Carl again, this
4:32
Speaker 1: time separately but using the same evidence as before.
4:36
Speaker 3: When the second trial come up before they had found
4:38
Speaker 3: her remains and everything they found that crime scene had
4:42
Speaker 3: proved Tommy's confession wrong.
4:45
Speaker 4: Nothing was right about it.
4:46
Speaker 1: That's Tommy Ward's brother, Melvin. He's been advocating for Tommy's
4:50
Speaker 1: innocence for over thirty years.
4:52
Speaker 3: Our hearts was a high I mean, how can you
4:54
Speaker 3: ignore you know that she was shot back of the head,
4:57
Speaker 3: and here you got two boys saying it was she was.
5:00
Speaker 3: She was never sad, even in corners before stites at But.
5:05
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, the second trials were deja vu
5:07
Speaker 1: all over again, Just like before. The prosecutors relied on
5:11
Speaker 1: the fact that Tommy and Carl had both said Denise
5:14
Speaker 1: was wearing a blue flowered, ruffled blouse. The police hadn't
5:18
Speaker 1: known anything about the blouse before the interrogation. The prosecutors
5:22
Speaker 1: insisted that fact couldn't have been fed.
5:24
Speaker 2: Imagine you're a prosecutor and you have to stand up
5:28
Speaker 2: in front of a jury and present them with a confession.
5:31
Speaker 2: They can't tell you what happened to Denise, who did it,
5:36
Speaker 2: or even where the crime occurred. That's what these prosecutors
5:41
Speaker 2: had to do. But they did it well enough, well
5:44
Speaker 2: enough to convict both Tommy and Carl a second time.
5:49
Speaker 1: When Tommy heard the verdict, he began to sob uncontrollably.
5:53
Speaker 1: You're all liars, he shouted at the prosecutors. I'm being
5:57
Speaker 1: punished for something I didn't do.
5:59
Speaker 4: I don't know.
6:00
Speaker 3: I still have a hard time. I actually thought it
6:03
Speaker 3: would be a hung jury the second one. Confessions are
6:07
Speaker 3: hard to get by. You know, people still believe that,
6:10
Speaker 3: you know, why did you confess if you didn't do it?
6:12
Speaker 3: So their confessions were similar, but they also was off.
6:17
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not a lawyer by any means, but
6:22
Speaker 3: I could not see how twelve adult jurors could just
6:26
Speaker 3: ignore all the other evidence. And that's what they did.
6:30
Speaker 4: Had to have.
6:31
Speaker 3: Tommy was totally convicted on this confession. Them confessions sunk
6:35
Speaker 3: them this time around.
6:37
Speaker 1: Tommy Ward and Carl Fontano were ultimately sentenced to life
6:40
Speaker 1: in prison.
6:41
Speaker 3: That's been thirty five years ago plus thirty five years later.
6:46
Speaker 3: I'm just still waiting to get out.
6:48
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl went off to prison to serve their
6:50
Speaker 1: life sentences years past, and their appeals were denied one
6:55
Speaker 1: after another.
6:56
Speaker 3: Tommy was a kid that he'd take it straight, for instance,
7:01
Speaker 3: and uh, well I made by astrays. I don't meet
7:03
Speaker 3: just stray dogs. Like one time he found a hawk
7:06
Speaker 3: that had a broken wing. He took that hawk and
7:09
Speaker 3: nursed it back to help and let it go.
7:13
Speaker 5: H Man.
7:16
Speaker 3: A wife would would for years went and saw him.
7:19
Speaker 3: You know, every two three weeks, Mama religiously go see him.
7:23
Speaker 3: Even today he calls me every week. Almost in prison,
7:28
Speaker 3: he got into the cabintry and the way I understand it,
7:30
Speaker 3: he's very good at it. He built a prefab homes
7:34
Speaker 3: there and everybody that knows Tommy, everywhere he's at, even
7:38
Speaker 3: in prison, everybody likes him. You know, he's a good
7:41
Speaker 3: Christian man. He's honest, and you know he just just
7:47
Speaker 3: not in him to do what they claimed he did.
7:50
Speaker 1: Tommy had befriended Carl Fontanea when Carl had no family
7:53
Speaker 1: or home. He wasn't much different from those other strays
7:56
Speaker 1: Tommy took in in prison. While Tommy worked carbon jobs,
8:00
Speaker 1: Carl pursued a different kind of woodworking. He taught himself
8:04
Speaker 1: the lonely skill of building picture frames out of toothpicks
8:08
Speaker 1: and glue, even though he didn't have any photos of
8:10
Speaker 1: loved ones to go in them. While Tommy and Carl
8:24
Speaker 1: sat in an Oklahoma prison, words started spreading about this
8:27
Speaker 1: mysterious case that was built on a dream. Two books
8:31
Speaker 1: were written about it, one in nineteen eighty seven and
8:34
Speaker 1: a second in two thousand and six.
8:37
Speaker 2: This was a case that captured the imagination of an
8:39
Speaker 2: investigative reporter named Robert Mayer, who wrote a classic wrongful
8:44
Speaker 2: conviction book entitled Dreams of Ada, and then none other
8:48
Speaker 2: than John Grisham wrote a book about this case.
8:51
Speaker 1: This is the only nonfiction book Grisham ever wrote, and
8:53
Speaker 1: like he told us in the last episode, even he
8:56
Speaker 1: couldn't make up a story like this.
8:58
Speaker 2: Eventually, Grisham's book The innes Man would be turned into
9:01
Speaker 2: a Netflix series, which was released in twenty and eighteen.
9:06
Speaker 3: Finally, somebody was taking notice, is starting to believe in
9:09
Speaker 3: Tommy's story. I mean, it's even gone so far where
9:13
Speaker 3: I get on vicebook, people on the other side the world,
9:16
Speaker 3: I mean Ukrainian and in Price's Italy, you know, wishing
9:21
Speaker 3: Tommy well and believing in his innocent It's just pretty amazing.
9:26
Speaker 1: While journalists were telling Tommy and Carl's stories, the two
9:29
Speaker 1: men sat behind bars for decades. Both still insisted on
9:34
Speaker 1: their innocence. They needed post conviction lawyers to take their case,
9:38
Speaker 1: but any new legal team would face a problem. No
9:41
Speaker 1: DNA evidence existed that could prove Tommy and Carl's innocence.
9:46
Speaker 1: How on earth would any lawyers go about exonerating them.
9:49
Speaker 1: It was a case, turns out that was made for
9:51
Speaker 1: the organization that Steve and I are lucky enough to
9:54
Speaker 1: co direct the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University
9:58
Speaker 1: Pritzker School of Law.
10:00
Speaker 4: The purpose of the Center on Wrongical Convictions is to
10:02
Speaker 4: identify and rectify wrongful convictions and other serious miscarriages of justice.
10:09
Speaker 1: Here's the co founder of our center, renowned journalist Rob Warden.
10:13
Speaker 4: We thought that it was important to have an organization
10:16
Speaker 4: that would investigate cases in which there was no DNA
10:21
Speaker 4: but there was other persuasive evidence of actual innocence. Now,
10:25
Speaker 4: these cases are much harder to prove than DNA, but
10:28
Speaker 4: they are no less compelling. The Center on Wrongful Convictions
10:33
Speaker 4: was a first innocence project in the country that was
10:37
Speaker 4: taking non DNA cases as well as DNA cases.
10:41
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, when the Center had been
10:43
Speaker 1: around for about seven years, Rob heard about Tommy Ward's
10:46
Speaker 1: case and he couldn't forget what he learned.
10:49
Speaker 4: We wouldn't even have had a wrongful conviction movement were
10:52
Speaker 4: it not initially for vibrant investigative reporting. John Grisham and
10:59
Speaker 4: I had a conversation about the Tommy Ward case when
11:02
Speaker 4: he was in Chicago. The thing that was so striking
11:05
Speaker 4: about the Ward Fontina case was that the dreams conflicted
11:11
Speaker 4: with known physical facts of the crime. So we have
11:16
Speaker 4: this evidence that the dream confessions are false and that
11:21
Speaker 4: quite clearly the ideas here were implanted in the minds
11:26
Speaker 4: of both Tommy and Carl by the police. The case
11:30
Speaker 4: probably never should have been brought. It still has immensely
11:34
Speaker 4: powerful evidence of actual innocence, and that's why the Center
11:38
Speaker 4: on Ronical Convictions got involved, and we've been involved in
11:41
Speaker 4: it for the ensuing a dozen or thirteen years. Still fighting.
11:46
Speaker 1: Now here's one thing that fascinated Rob about the case
11:49
Speaker 1: and about Ada, Oklahoma. Turns out Tommy Ward wasn't the
11:53
Speaker 1: only innocent man from Ada who was convicted of murder
11:56
Speaker 1: based on a dream confession.
11:58
Speaker 4: Ron Williamson was minor league baseball player who had been
12:03
Speaker 4: sentenced to death based on a dream that he described
12:08
Speaker 4: to police about the crime. He was exonerated by DNA.
12:13
Speaker 4: So this was an intriguing situation for me.
12:16
Speaker 2: Of the twelve known dream confessions in the history of
12:20
Speaker 2: false confessions, we have two of them coming from Ada, Oklahoma,
12:25
Speaker 2: This small, seventeen thousand person town. What are the chances
12:30
Speaker 2: of that it's like a cancer cluster. What's going on
12:34
Speaker 2: here is that these interrogators were hell bent on solving
12:39
Speaker 2: high profile murders, and they were converting dreams into confessions.
12:45
Speaker 2: This was part and parcel of their arsenal of tactics
12:50
Speaker 2: to break suspects down and get them to confess, and
12:55
Speaker 2: they were getting false confessions.
13:00
Speaker 1: If that other dream confession was false, if ron Williamson
13:04
Speaker 1: had been exonerated, maybe Tommy and Carl could be exonerated too.
13:09
Speaker 1: Our colleagues at the Center on Wrongful Convictions partnered with
13:12
Speaker 1: Oklahoma attorney Mark Barrett to represent Tommy Ward. Carl Fontaneau
13:17
Speaker 1: also got new representation. Together, both legal teams dug into
13:21
Speaker 1: the case of Denise Harroway's disappearance. And what did they find.
13:26
Speaker 1: Not DNA, but they did find evidence of innocence that
13:30
Speaker 1: was equally compelling. A whole box of investigative reports that
13:35
Speaker 1: had not been disclosed to Tommy or Carl's defense, eight
13:39
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty pages of secret evidence, and the contents
13:43
Speaker 1: of those reports talk about a dream come true.
13:46
Speaker 2: The discovery of this box is a development that occurred
13:50
Speaker 2: after all the books, after the Netflix series, and it's
13:54
Speaker 2: a development that blows this case wide open.
13:57
Speaker 4: The prosecution. That turns out, we now have learned had
14:02
Speaker 4: concealed a huge body of exculpatory evidence, including evidence corroborating
14:08
Speaker 4: Tommy Ward's alibi that he had been at a party
14:13
Speaker 4: with a bunch of people at the exact time of
14:15
Speaker 4: the abduction and couldn't have been involved.
14:18
Speaker 1: In that box. There was also a full recantation from
14:21
Speaker 1: Carl Fontana, which he wrote just days after he confessed.
14:25
Speaker 1: There were police reports showing that the only witness who
14:28
Speaker 1: put Tommy Ward at mcinally's that night, James Moyer, had
14:32
Speaker 1: completely changed his descriptions several times of whoever it was
14:36
Speaker 1: he saw. But what about that blouse with the blue
14:39
Speaker 1: flowers and lazy collar? That magical proof that Tommy and
14:43
Speaker 1: Carl must be guilty because their interrogators didn't know what
14:46
Speaker 1: Denise was wearing.
14:47
Speaker 2: In that box. The lawyers found a draft missing person's
14:51
Speaker 2: report written by the police but never actually circulated to
14:55
Speaker 2: either the public or to defense counsel in this case.
14:59
Speaker 2: That report to described the blouse that Denise was wearing
15:02
Speaker 2: on the day she was abducted. It said that Denise
15:05
Speaker 2: Harvey was wearing a blouse with blue flowers and lace
15:09
Speaker 2: around the neckline, and that report was dated one day
15:13
Speaker 2: after Denise's disappearance. That's months before the interrogations, so the
15:18
Speaker 2: police knew what Denise was wearing before they interrogated both
15:25
Speaker 2: Tommy and Carl.
15:27
Speaker 1: And there was more in the box. Lawyers also found
15:30
Speaker 1: an undated report of an interview with Denise's sister, which
15:34
Speaker 1: is probably where police got the information for the missing
15:37
Speaker 1: person's bulletin. In it, she described Denise as wearing a
15:40
Speaker 1: button down blouse with small blue flowers that had lace
15:44
Speaker 1: around the collar and elastic on the sleeves. These are
15:48
Speaker 1: the same details, the same words that ended up in
15:51
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl's confessions. Not to play on stereotypes, but
15:54
Speaker 1: what are the odds that these two rough and tumbled
15:57
Speaker 1: dudes from rural Oklahoma would have described a woman Lacey
16:00
Speaker 1: Blause using exactly the same words as Denise's sister.
16:04
Speaker 2: This eviscerates the state's case. The one fact, the blouse fact,
16:09
Speaker 2: that put these men on death row. We now know
16:12
Speaker 2: that the police knew about it before they interrogated Tommy
16:16
Speaker 2: and Carl. We now know that Denise's sister told them
16:20
Speaker 2: about it shortly after she disappeared. Now we know it
16:25
Speaker 2: must have been fed to them by the same police
16:28
Speaker 2: officers who fed so many other facts to them. The
16:32
Speaker 2: anchor that police claimed was the basis of conviction in
16:36
Speaker 2: both Trial I and Trial two. You gotta pull that
16:40
Speaker 2: anchor up, because remember, there's nothing else in this case,
16:44
Speaker 2: there's no other evidence.
16:45
Speaker 1: It was the one unanswerable fact, and.
16:48
Speaker 2: Now it's answerable. The confessions no longer convict Tommy and Carl.
16:55
Speaker 3: The detective said they didn't know the description of their
16:57
Speaker 3: shirt until after Tommy's in Carl's confession, Well, we kind
17:03
Speaker 3: of have proof now that that's not true. These detectives
17:06
Speaker 3: got both of them to mention Odell Tipsworth's name in there.
17:09
Speaker 3: They added the description of the shirt in there. It
17:12
Speaker 3: was just as much these detectives confession as it was
17:15
Speaker 3: Tommy and Carl's. I guess that's the best way of
17:18
Speaker 3: saying that.
17:19
Speaker 1: So much for the prosecution's ace in the hole. Police
17:22
Speaker 1: had known all along what Denise was wearing when she disappeared.
17:25
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl were innocent.
17:28
Speaker 3: I know, I don't understand law or anything, but here
17:31
Speaker 3: you have a blatant miscarriage of justice because it's their
17:36
Speaker 3: job to hand over all the evidence to the defense,
17:40
Speaker 3: but the prosecuting attorney did not do that. That's a
17:43
Speaker 3: violation of their rights.
17:45
Speaker 4: When you put this all together, there is just no
17:47
Speaker 4: question that Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau are absolutely innocent
17:53
Speaker 4: of this crime and have been the victims of one
17:55
Speaker 4: of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in the history
17:59
Speaker 4: of the United States.
18:00
Speaker 2: The confessions of Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau are worthless.
18:07
Speaker 2: There is nothing holding this case together at all.
18:11
Speaker 1: Based on these new discoveries, both Tommy and Carl filed
18:14
Speaker 1: petitions for relief, Tommy in state court and Carl in
18:18
Speaker 1: federal court. Carl's judge was the first to act. In
18:22
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, he threw out Carl Fontineau's conviction. After thirty
18:27
Speaker 1: four years behind bars, Carl was released on bond. He's
18:31
Speaker 1: finally free.
18:33
Speaker 4: I'm absolutely delighted that Carl Fontneau has been released. Of course,
18:38
Speaker 4: the damage that's been done to him can never be undone.
18:41
Speaker 4: Nobody can ever make this right for Carl, But at
18:44
Speaker 4: least he is no longer in prison.
18:47
Speaker 2: And when he was released, he was welcomed with open
18:50
Speaker 2: arms by a new community, a new family, the community
18:55
Speaker 2: of exoneries from the state of Oklahoma. But justice in
19:01
Speaker 2: this case won't be complete until Tommy Ward is free.
19:05
Speaker 3: We're very happy for Carl, and Tommy's very happy for Carl.
19:09
Speaker 3: Of course, it shows hope for Tommy because a lot
19:12
Speaker 3: of the things that the federal judge had come out
19:15
Speaker 3: with it also falls under Tommy's case.
19:18
Speaker 1: As of this recording, Tommy's still waiting behind bars for
19:22
Speaker 1: his judge to decide whether he can walk free too.
19:25
Speaker 1: Tommy's been waiting for that decision for thirty five years,
19:29
Speaker 1: and God, we hope it's the right one.
19:44
Speaker 3: I would guess Tommy would be dreaming about freedom.
19:46
Speaker 1: Now in this case that started with a nightmare. There
19:50
Speaker 1: are new things to hope for now, doors opening, chains
19:54
Speaker 1: being removed, family embracing you and taking you home. These
20:00
Speaker 1: are the things that all wrongfully convicted people hope for
20:03
Speaker 1: until finally, one day those dreams come true.
20:08
Speaker 3: I have more hope for Tommy now than I've had
20:10
Speaker 3: in a long time. After thirty five years of knowing
20:13
Speaker 3: that your little brothers in prison for something he didn't do.
20:16
Speaker 2: You want him out.
20:17
Speaker 3: We want him out bad, and he deserves to be out.
20:20
Speaker 3: If there's any justice in this world, he'll be out
20:23
Speaker 3: one of these days.
20:26
Speaker 1: Fifteen years after author John Grisham started researching this case.
20:30
Speaker 1: He still speaks with Tommy Ward all the time and
20:34
Speaker 1: remains a strong advocate for Tommy's freedom.
20:36
Speaker 6: Tommy prays for me, will not pray for him. I
20:39
Speaker 6: will say, Tommy, relax, I'm okay. Worry about you. Sim
20:42
Speaker 6: That's not the kind of guy is. He has a
20:44
Speaker 6: long prayer list and he keeps a lot of people
20:46
Speaker 6: on that list. And Tommy would probably go to work
20:49
Speaker 6: helping people when he got out. When he gets out,
20:53
Speaker 6: this is an innocent man. Get him out of prison.
20:55
Speaker 6: That's what should happen.
21:00
Speaker 3: Hello, this is a collect call from Tommy's war an
21:03
Speaker 3: inmate at Connor Correctional Center.
21:06
Speaker 1: You may start the conversation now. Hello, Hey Tommy, this
21:10
Speaker 1: is Laura.
21:11
Speaker 2: And this is Steve Tommy.
21:13
Speaker 1: Hi Tommy, how are you doing?
21:17
Speaker 5: Okay, it's the same my prayers that it's not Marv
21:21
Speaker 5: be coming to an ends.
21:23
Speaker 2: We sure hope.
21:24
Speaker 1: So can you tell us how you pass your time
21:27
Speaker 1: these days?
21:28
Speaker 5: Well, I'm been trying to keep busy. You know, there's
21:31
Speaker 5: a lot of bit of hobby crams for you know,
21:34
Speaker 5: like Christmas presence or birthday presence and kind of case.
21:38
Speaker 5: They're busy doing that.
21:40
Speaker 2: You've had so many ups and downs over the past
21:43
Speaker 2: decades that you've been locked up. Do you allow yourself
21:47
Speaker 2: to think about what you're going to want to do
21:51
Speaker 2: when you get out.
21:52
Speaker 5: Yeah. I like woodwork, and I'd like to open up
21:57
Speaker 5: my own wood shop. And I always thought of, you
21:59
Speaker 5: know a lot of elderly people where I could go
22:02
Speaker 5: in and maybe lower their cabinage for them and the answers.
22:05
Speaker 5: It's like that, you know, make it like wheelchair accessible
22:09
Speaker 5: where they can say at home longer instead of happening
22:12
Speaker 5: to go to a nursing home.
22:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be pretty meaningful work to do. Do
22:18
Speaker 1: you get letters from people who have watched your story
22:21
Speaker 1: on TV or who read the books?
22:23
Speaker 5: Oh? Yeah, it's a blessing to hear from everybody that
22:25
Speaker 5: has written Tommy. No one is to peck them after
22:29
Speaker 5: they do care. So let's get pig more.
22:32
Speaker 1: A lot of people care, Tommy, and just from talking
22:36
Speaker 1: to you now, I can see that you deserve every
22:38
Speaker 1: one of those blessings and a whole lot more. Hi listeners.
22:49
Speaker 1: So here's your update on that breaking news we learned
22:51
Speaker 1: just a few days ago. On December eighteenth, twenty twenty
22:55
Speaker 1: there was a ruling in Tommy's case, and it's what
22:58
Speaker 1: we've all been waiting for. The judge threw out Tommy's conviction.
23:02
Speaker 1: Not only that, the judge dismissed the charges against Tommy
23:06
Speaker 1: and ordered him to be released from prison. This is
23:09
Speaker 1: a moment for celebration and joy. But believe it or not,
23:13
Speaker 1: Tommy's case still isn't settled. Prosecutors have obtained a temporary
23:17
Speaker 1: stay of Tommy's release while they prepare to appeal. So
23:21
Speaker 1: for now, Tommy Ward is still behind bars. Steve and
23:25
Speaker 1: I and the Center on Wrongful Convictions will be posting
23:28
Speaker 1: updates on Twitter, so follow us for the latest. Tommy
23:38
Speaker 1: Ward is now sixty years old. Will he finally be
23:41
Speaker 1: able to reclaim what's left of his life as an
23:44
Speaker 1: exonerated man? We hope. So, Tommy, we support you all
23:49
Speaker 1: the way. Your dream of freedom is our dream too.
23:56
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Law for
24:00
Speaker 1: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one Special
24:05
Speaker 1: thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis.
24:09
Speaker 1: Our production team is headed by senior producer and Pope,
24:12
Speaker 1: along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show
24:15
Speaker 1: is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern.
24:20
Speaker 1: Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
24:23
Speaker 1: me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and I Wrider,
24:26
Speaker 1: and you.
24:27
Speaker 2: Can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen.
24:30
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast
24:33
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram
24:37
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
24:42
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction