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575: #575 Jason Flom with Larry DeLisle · Wrongful Conviction Podcasts

• 00:00:05 Speaker 1: Hello once again. This is Connor Hall, senior producer for Rafel Conviction, where I'll be offering case updates, behind the scenes info and insights from cases we've covered over the years, and one case that comes to mind is Larry Delisle. I've gotten a lot of emails from folks on the inside, but Larry is probably the most prolific for two reasons. He usually writes to me during holidays or major life events, which gives him plenty of reasons to write. And two, it's just been so many years since we started writing each other. I mean, my son was just a few months old when we met, and he's going on seven now, and that's not too far off from Larry's oldest. Back in nineteen eighty nine when all this happened, he and his wife Sue lost all four of their children one tragic summer evening when it appears that the accelerator and their station wagon jammed and they sailed into the Detroit River and only Larry and Sue survived. Larry was not only accused of the murder of all four of his children, but Sue's attempted murder as well, but she stuck by him. I mean there's video of this conviction where I mean she falls apart. You can see it on the confession tapes on Netflix. And beyond that, even after she moved on to start a new life and got married, I mean, she remained committed to his innocence, which makes what happened at his parole hearing in twenty twenty three so strange. See, after the release of our initial coverage in twenty twenty one, Jason advocated to whomever would listen, and the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic picked up Larry's case prepared for his parole hearing, And I remember talking to Jason right after the hearing, and apparently it had been going really well. I mean, they exposed the false confession, the evidence of the car's accelerator issues that was presented, as well as how the state's expert had corroborated that those issues existed in his initial report, only to then contradict it on the stand. But then, for some reason, after thirty four years of knowing that this was all just a tragic accident, a lawyer read a prepared statement allegedly from Sue, which reversed over three decades of support for Larry's innocence. From what I understand, her husband with no knowledge beyond what was in the media at the time, which was nothing short of an orgy of projection and violence, voyeurism with a head full of that her new husband has believed in Larry's guilt for all of these years, and who knows may have been in her ear about it, or may have been the catalyst for this alleged statement that Sue didn't even bother to show up in person to deliver. Either way, the accelerator issues in the station wagon corroborate what Larry has been saying all along. In addition, since this parole hearing, it has come to like that at the time all Ford vehicles, not just the pickup trucks, but the station wagons as well, which Larry had. All Ford vehicles with this engine were subject to a recall. But unfortunately, her statement was weighed more heavily over the course of a year and a half after this twenty twenty three parole hearing, when finally Larry's parole was denied. So maybe when you're listening to his story, think about whether the physical evidence should be believed over a change of heart and mind coming three decades after the fact. 00:04:07 Speaker 2: On August third, nineteen eighty nine, after a long, hot summer day, Lariot Sue Delisle took their four children out for ice cream and to watch the boats pass by on the Detroit River. When Larry pulled out on the street that dead ended at the river, the mechanical defect in their station wagon caused the accelerator to stick. The car sped off uncontrollably, and larryer Sue's panicked efforts could not save them from launching into the Detroit River. Larry and Sue narrowly survived, but their children Brian, Melissa, Kate, and Emily tragically did not. When the water log wreck was pulled from the river, the accelerator stuck again during testing, an issue raised by hundreds of others about that very make and model station wagon. It was a tragic accident, but that wasn't good enough for the police, the media, or the people of Downriver, Michigan. Eighteen hours of interrogation and the usual tricks, Larry tacitly agreed to hypotheticals posed by the interrogator. This couldn't pass muster as a confession for a court of law. But it was quickly submitted to the court of public opinion when the police chief went on TV and said that Larry Delile had confessed, effectively poisoning the entire jury pool. Larry was convicted of four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, despite Sue Delile's unwavering account of his actual innocence. This tragic accident stole their four children, and the state compounded that loss by stealing what has become over three long decades of Larry's life. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flomm. Welcome back to wrong Conviction with Jason Flomm. That's me, of course, I'm your host, and today my heart is heavy because of the story you're about to hear and the man you're about to meet. I'm proud to call him a friend, and I'm proud to be part of the team that's helping to try to bring justice long delayed to this awful case. So, without further ado, Larry Delisle, Welcome to ronfl Conviction. I'm sorry you have to. 00:06:28 Speaker 3: Be here, but I'm glad you're here, humble and honored to be here with you today. 00:06:33 Speaker 2: And Larry is calling us from prison in Michigan. Where exactly are you, Larry? 00:06:41 Speaker 3: I'm in Coldwater, Michigan, which is a Lakeland correctional facility. 00:06:46 Speaker 2: And what you've gone through is surely unimaginable to almost anyone. You know, the multiple tragic aspects of this case include obviously the loss of your family, but also the persecution that was wrongfully inflicted upon you by people that really should have known better. And of course your wrongful incarceration now for over three decades is another thing that nobody could even begin to imagine. But I want to go back to the beginning. Did you grow up in Michigan? 00:07:22 Speaker 3: Yes, my grandparents raised me from age throughout two years old. 00:07:27 Speaker 2: I mean, your childhood was haunted by a tragedy, A separate tragedy, right, I mean, I don't know how much one person is supposed to take in their life, and I don't even know if you want to talk about that, but it does come into focus with this case. As this goes on. 00:07:40 Speaker 3: You're talking about my father committing suicide. 00:07:43 Speaker 2: Yes, of course, I got a. 00:07:45 Speaker 3: Call in the middle of the night early eighty eight that my father had committed suicide. He drove down somewhere by the river and put a gun to his head. 00:07:55 Speaker 2: Ironically, in the same vehicle that ended up being the central figure in this awful tragedy that befell your family. 00:08:05 Speaker 3: Most people would not have wanted to drive the vehicle. I didn't want to drive the vehicle. But my father's wife, she wanted to give us something because my sister and I find away our rights to his house, because we didn't want her to have to remortgage or have to move, So she gave me the car the option of keeping it or selling it. At the time, we had a brand new nineteen eighty seven Ford Aerostart we had just bought to go to Disneyland November of eighty seven, when my father had committed suicide. We were talking about getting rid of the Aerostar, getting a cheaper vehicle so we can knock our bills down to a point where we can afford to buy a house. Well, when my father committed suicide, the place that I worked for tiremen, God bless them, they had taken the vehicle. They had it completely cleaned on the inside. Now, when I went there that night drive the vehicle, I had mixed emotions. When I got in, I started crying right away, But after a few minutes, I felt calm because my father had taken me everywhere with him when I was younger and older in the station wagon. He loved station wagon. I think that was his second or third one. So when I drove the vehicle, I felt at peace. Now it was up to my wife. She drove it. She loved it because it had a lot of power. It just happened to have an intrinsic value as far as helping us to achieve our goals, which would have been to get a house for our children, to get a house for us. 00:09:40 Speaker 2: Right well, with four kids, you have obviously in your a mechanic, and Larry is known in the prison as someone who can fix basically anything. But even still raising four kids on that salary, it hn't be an easy task. And this case was featured in the Netflix documentary series of Confession Tapes by the wonderful well Kelly Laudenberg, and I encourage everyone to watch that episode. But let's go back to the night of this awful accident, and we're talking about the evening of August third, nineteen eighty nine, a ninety degree hot summer day and the hottest part of the summer. 00:10:16 Speaker 3: This was a very, very hot day, and it was a very busy day. I worked close to ten hours that day, running around on my feet. I got out of there as quickly as I could, got the kids in the car, and away we went. 00:10:29 Speaker 2: Larry and his wife and the children, Brian, Melissa, Katie and Emily had gone for ice cream, and we're watching the boats along the Detroit River, which I know the kids enjoyed doing that. You had issues with your legs. 00:10:42 Speaker 3: I was just not properly hydrated, and it caused my muscles to cramp up at different points. I've had problems most of my youth with cramping in my legs. 00:10:52 Speaker 2: It actually happened to me in the gym this morning when I was stretching. So it's not an uncommon thing, especially when you're dehydrated on a hot summer day, which was what the situation was with you. But there are a number of things that played into this unspeakable disaster. And what really happened was as you were leaving to go home, you were on Eureka Road, which dead ends at the river. You stepped on the gas, your leg cramped right up. The car shot off in pain. You reached down to pull your foot off the gas, but the car continued to accelerate. Now you didn't know it at the time, but there was a deep beact that caused your accelerated jam, propelling the car with the six of you inside, terrified and screaming through the barricade at the end of Eureka Road, right into the Detroit River. I mean, you must have relived it thousands of times in your head. 00:11:47 Speaker 3: Now I try that too. It's still painful today. When the accelerator stuck, it threw me off. I didn't know what was stuck. I got my foot off the gas. My foot was off. My wife even testified my foot was off. She saw that my foot was off, but the car did not slow down. Before I could even do anything further, she reached over in an attempt to help me. It was an inadvertent act, but it startled me for a second and I froze, and before I could decide what I was going to do, we ran out of street. The whole thing took seven to ten seconds, according to officials, seven to ten seconds. 00:12:35 Speaker 2: We're talking about a section of the street that was three hundred and ninety six feet long. We've already talked about the fact that the car had a powerful engine and it wouldn't take any car very long to cover its basically just a little bit further than a football field. So add to I mean, all the other elements of pure panic and terror, the fact that the kids are in the car. I'm sure they're screaming, wife's grabbing the wheel, eta, et cetera. You're staring at the water, and on top of that, you didn't know how to swim right, No, I cannot. 00:13:04 Speaker 3: I can tread water thanks to my high school coach. But that's about it. But in the impact itself, I was thrown forward, top of my head, hit around the Wesor area. There was a bright light, a shot of pain from my neck all the way down my spine. So I was disoriented. Once I was in the water. I don't even know how I got out of the car. 00:13:29 Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, it's impossible to probably imagine. And the fact is that this particular vehicle had known issues. There were over one hundred people who had reported the accelerator jamming on this exact make and model station Wagon. 00:13:50 Speaker 3: It was a seventy seven Ford Ltd. Station Wagon four sixty QB against four barrel carburetor. 00:13:57 Speaker 2: There was a mechanic who examined the car, Jim Colquell, and he had identified three separate defects, any one of which could have caused us uncontrolled acceleration. One was a kink and the accelerated cable that caused the cable to stick. Secondly, the throttle plates could be heard scraping inside the carburetor. And thirdly, the engine mount was broken in this vehicle which caused the tilt of the engine, and the tilting pulled at the accelerator cable. So the combination of these factors turned deadly. And as it turns out, they chose to ignore their own test because when they tested the vehicle after it was pulled out of the river, in one of the times when they test drove it, the accelerator did in fact jam. 00:14:43 Speaker 3: Yes, when they were testing the vehicle and the accelerator had stuck. You had two mechanics there, one for the state who actually was just a bus mechanic who couldn't even start the vehicle for testing. We had an ASE certified master mechanic for us, who is the one who I owned all the problems with the vehicle had to start it for them before they could even test it in an engineer. They were all there today. That test happened when the accelerator stuck. He was sitting next to the State trooper sergeant during their tests, and they're testing it with his foot on the accelerator, testing the brakes to see how long it would take to stop the vehicle. And I imagine it would be quite a long ways with only manual brakes work. And you don't have the power assist because when you're accelerating, you don't have power assist. Your power brakes don't work. You have to stand on them to get it to stop. And the State trooper sergeant and he had to do that so hard they broke the seat. Any case, to the arresting officer, he's taking notes. He wrote across the top of his notepad in bold letters, accelerator sticking, then swore under oath when he was up on the witness stand. He had no idea why. He wrote that there was nothing wrong with the car. When the accelerators stuck. The bust mechanic, the master mechanic, and an engineer they came running over to the vehicle. According to my lawyer and the state trooper waved them away. He said, no, no, the problems inside the car. You have engineers and mechanics there to confind it. Get out of the car. Let him find out what's sticking right now. And he refused to do it because the arresting officer probably didn't want them to find it, because if they found a problem, it would approve what I've been saying from the very beginning and what my wife had been saying from the very beginning. The accelerator stuck, because it did for you. He shut it off. He testified that he shut it off because it startled him. He's six four to three hundred pounds and it startled him. 00:16:42 Speaker 2: Do you expect it to remain. 00:16:43 Speaker 3: Come, yes, I'm expected to remain calm. He said. He was going to start the vehicle back up and put it in gear and see how fast it would go. At that point, all you had to do was put it in gear. When he shut it off, avoided the test, and they never got a chance to test it again because by the time they gave it over to the sense the engine had been sold roughly treated during their acceleration tests that the engine blew up end of testing, end of proving the unreasonable doubt that there was a problem with the station Lagon. 00:17:28 Speaker 2: In a tragedy like this, community members have a very difficult time reconciling the fact that these type of tragic accidents happen. When a child is lost, it's easier psychologically for people to assign blame to someone because the randomness of it is too terrifying, especially for people with children to imagine. And in this case, I think that, as well as other sort of confirmation biases took hold, were targeted by the media. They hounded you and basically set up camp outside the house of the grieving parents until you agreed to give an interview, and then it becomes and we've seen this in so many cases, whether it's Amanda Knox or so many others, where the media or the authorities feel you're either too sad or not sad enough, or too hysterical or too calm. 00:18:22 Speaker 3: I don't think that people are aware of the fact that that first interview I did in the backyard, that I had had a couple of valumes given to me by a family member, and I don't even remember the interview. All I remember was an airplane going over the top. So if I didn't show emotion for people, it just makes me angry that they're going to point to the fact that I'm not classical as far as how I was supposed to react to losing my children being hounded by the press. I'm sorry, it's just dirty upsetting. 00:19:01 Speaker 2: Well, let's move on from there. This is a false confession case that has all of the hallmarks that we see again and again, just to paint a picture for everyone. A week after this unimaginable loss, the police picked you and Sue your wife up at seven am and interrogated you till one in the morning. So that's eighteen hours. And we know that when this process goes on interminably, eventually everybody has a breaking point. And even though you told him again and again I didn't do this, et cetera, et cetera, they just wouldn't listen. 00:19:41 Speaker 3: Is that right to continue to tell me that I wasn't telling him everything he wanted to hear, and I didn't understand what he meant at that point because I was answering all of his questions. 00:19:53 Speaker 2: I can't leave alone the idea that they were expecting you to recite over and over again, exactly what happened when you didn't actually know what happened. In fact, you could not have known that this car was defective, or you wouldn't have been driving the damn thing. 00:20:07 Speaker 3: He was asking what could have happened? Why the accelerator had stuck? And I didn't know. I had my shoes off, but the shoe gets stuck in there was the accelerator sticking. Why wasn't it slowing down? Would you take your foot off the guests it's supposed to slow down. Period. 00:20:24 Speaker 2: Let's face it, there was no explanation that you could have provided that would have satisfied them. Because this is a very high profile case. The media is all over it, and everyone had already come to their own conclusions that you must have done this. So then it gets to the point where they give you a polygraph, And polygraphs are wildly inaccurate anyway, but they're effective in terms of getting people to falsely confess. 00:20:49 Speaker 4: I'm doctor Michael Lobravski. I am a clinical and forensic psychologist. At the time of the wildcase, I was studying false confessions and I was retained by the court to examine the confession. So I was provided with the videotape of the entire interrogation, the first half an hour to forty five minutes. The police officer, Palmitteer, built himself up as an expert and infallible, and he also did the same thing with a polygraph. He said the polygraph could read minds, it was infallible, it's never wrong. It gives Delial the tests, which only consists of a few questions, and he leaves the room and he comes back with his head shaking and says to Delile you know you fail the polygraph. You're lying. The technique is to make the defendant feel that their situation is totally helpless. So basically, you set up a dilemma. Since the polygraph is infallible, you think you're telling the truth. It puts you into a state of cognitive dissonance. You have to find an explanation that entails both of those things. So Palmiteer spends hours pump him, and largely it's not asking questions, it's telling him scenarios, telling him why he did this, that oh, you're tired and families are burden and I know how hard your life is. So he is empathic with him, tells me he understands implies that you know you're not a bad person for this. Lots of people are under stress, they do something rash, and the people will be understanding. Basically, what he's trying to do is get Larry to make incriminating statements, and the implication is always that you know you're not going to suffer a bad punishment for this. 00:22:39 Speaker 3: Some of the things that this man was saying we're actually disturbing to hear. He would try to convince me that he liked to scare his wife. He said he'd drive up really fast behind parked cars and slam on the bridge just to scare her. And he asked me if I ever wanted to do that. He even talked about he gets so mad at his kids, I want to stick them in a garbage bag and throw him in a cloud. That said, you ever want to do that? And I got angry at him for even suggesting something that heinous to be done to any child. I never said I wanted to do that. But then later on in his interrogation, somehow he had me parroting him. But they were not confessions. They were brought about by this man instilling guilt in me, making me feel that I was responsible percent above and beyond the mechanical problems on there. 00:23:32 Speaker 4: Palmeteer keeps on trying scenarios where Larry will implicate himself and he doesn't, and finally he tries out a scenario that makes Larry bite. He basically says to Larry, do you know about the unconscious? And Larry does not. He tells him that unconscious means that we do certain things that we don't really know that we've done them. You know, even though you did it, you're not really responsible because you're unconscious that did it, and that starts giving Larry an explanation, and so at some point he makes an equivocal statement such as you think that could have happened, or he starts questioning Palmitteer, and he never says that he did it, but he starts questioning and implying that maybe that did happen, And then the interrogation is over because what he's done is accepted. Palmitteer's theory that he did drive the car into the river and that he did want hurt someone, he just didn't know it at the time. But you know, under the law, that doesn't make any difference. 00:24:33 Speaker 2: The police chief himself went on the news and proclaimed that Larry Delal has confessed. At that point they needed trial. To his credit, the judge did actually suppress the confession and people are probably hearing that saying, oh good. But the fact is it didn't matter at that point because they refuse to change venue. 00:24:52 Speaker 4: So it's very important to understand the psychological atmosphere was occurring. First, the news stations had a stock shot of the car being lifted out of the river by a crane, and everybody knew there were four dead children in there, and night after night that was playing. People then started gathering down by the river demanding justice for these four kids. And then after he was questioned, they announced that he had confessed to the crime, which of course he had not. But you put that in the crowd's mind, it's almost impossible to reverse. The next thing that happened was, of course, of suppression hearing, and that's where I testified that the confession was involuntary. I described the techniques that were used and why what he said was not voluntary. Judge Colombo ruled in Delile's favor and he threw out the confession, except the problem was that it had already been in the newspaper, and the retractions from the newspaper said things like Lawrence Delile's statements that he intentionally killed his family cannot be used in court against And when you try to tell people that it's invalid, they believe, oh, no, the guy just just realized that he got himself into trouble. He's just denying it now. So they never believe the confession is false. They believe the denial of the confession is false. 00:26:16 Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if they have caves in wyan Dot that you could have found someone who didn't on the TV or read the newspaper. But short of that, you're looking at yours or unaware of the tactics that were used to elicit that confession, and who can't reconcile the idea that anyone would confessed to crime they didn't commit. But it happens all the damn time. And they charged you with four counts of murder. One kind of attempted murder. Prosecutor was a guy named Kevin Simowski. He painted you as a guy who was overwhelmed by debt. 00:26:43 Speaker 3: The fact of the matter is I was not overwhelmed with debt. I owned less than thirteen to five and made over thirty thousand dollars a year. I just got a house so they didn't have to make any payments on for an entire year. And I take great offense every time they keep trying to bring up, oh, wait, he was deeply in debt. As a matter of fact, the headlines wanted to point out, oh, he was trying to get rid of his burdens. Well, the police were trying to say, my debt was my burdens, but the people looked at it as my children were my burdens. That's how they were trying to convict me. 00:27:15 Speaker 2: And here's a very very important thing to me. Your wife, Sue. Now she's gone through the same horrendous boss that you have, and I think it's fair to say that maybe went in her position. If they had even a sneaking suspicion that you might have done it on purpose, she would have been the number one witness for the prosecution. She in fact, was the only witness to the crime except for some woman that was out in her balcony on the eleventh floor across the street. Let's not even go there. But she didn't turn on you. 00:27:49 Speaker 3: She was there, She knows exactly what happened. She saw my foot off there. She tried to help. She was actually demonized by the public for you years. She had to move away from down River because they were harassing her. Somebody tried to break into the house. Somebody would call on the phone leaving threatening messages. She couldn't get a job anywhere because of her last. 00:28:14 Speaker 2: Name, well because she wouldn't turn on you, even though she was doing the right thing. So the jury deliberated for nine hours over two days. 00:28:23 Speaker 3: They came back originally ten to two. The judge sent them back. They came back the next day eleven to one. He threatened to keep them through the weekend if they didn't come back with a decision. 00:28:36 Speaker 2: We know that in those jury rooms extreme pressure is exerted by people who want to go home. But you can send a note to the judge. You're allowed to do that and just say your honor, I'm not budging. I'm done here. I'd say ninety nine percent of people serve on juries don't even know you can do that. You just send a note to the judge and say I'm done. I'm not voted to convict, and then the judge has the decision to make the idea that so many people like you, Larry, are spending the rest of their lives in prison because somebody needed to get home back to their job. This is not a unique thing, and it's something that needs to be addressed. When they filed back in, what were your thoughts? 00:29:14 Speaker 3: I could tell when they came in. Some of them were smiling, but some of them had their arms crossed, and I stood up, and when they said guilty, I couldn't stand anymore. I had to sit down or I would just pass out. I was so much shock. If this were a boxing match, we won every single day. To prosecutor helped prove our case, even when the accelerator stuck and the police officers waved the mechanics away, saying, oh no, the problems in the car, Yeah, the problem was sitting next to you taking notes. He wrote specifically across the top of his notepad, accelerators sticking, then swore under oath, I have no idea why I wrote that there was nothing wrong with the car. Bullshit. You knew that mechanics, an engineer that was there would have found the problem. It would have proved that I was innocent. 00:30:08 Speaker 2: The big mistake to me that among all the other mistakes, was the judge not allowing a change of venue, because you know, maybe you could have gotten a fair trial. 00:30:15 Speaker 3: What was disheartening, too, is that there was a problem with that vehicle. That Ford did recall that engine, but only on the pickup trucks, not on our station wagon for that year. My lawyer tried to enter it into trial at the time, and the judge said that because it was not the pickup truck recalled, he wouldn't allow him to enter in evidence until the trial was over with, so the jury never got to hear it. 00:30:51 Speaker 2: So you've been in prison of for thirty years. I know you recently survived COVID on top of everything else, But can you explain that the the prison experience. 00:31:02 Speaker 3: OW, I wasn't there for my wife at the funeral for our children. My grandparents who raised me passed away while I was in here. These are just the emotional ones there. This has nothing to do with the pain that I went through dealing with all these people. In the beginning. I could tell you that the first ten years were horrible. Matter of fact, the first five I've had more death threats, evil stares, things thrown at me every day, NonStop for five years. I'm surprised I even survived it. And then the next five years, instead of being daily, it would be once or twice a week, and then eventually once or twice a month, and then finally down to once or twice a year. Now I can go several years before I hear a discouraging words from somebody. But I have over the last two decades made a lot of good friends in here. You are the company you keep, so I try to keep company with people I would have as my friends and neighbors out in the world. 00:32:09 Speaker 2: Can you describe a ray of light that you can identify. 00:32:13 Speaker 3: The best thing that's ever happened to me was getting on maintenance twenty two years ago. I've had the opportunity to learn so much about things that I never knew before, so much about repairing buildings, clients, repair heating, air conditioning, electrical I spent hundreds of dollars on books and thousands of hours studying to get as good as I am now. I'm very good at what I do today. 00:32:37 Speaker 2: You've had appeals over the years, but it hasn't resulted in any relief. Can you explain why that process is dragged on for so long. 00:32:48 Speaker 3: Well, my lawyer, Frank Eman, did an excellent job throughout the entire process. I owe him everything. The system itself is very slow. The courts don't care if you're innocent or not. They just care did to get a fair trial? I didn't get a fair trial, and I went through the federal courts where they split politically eight to seven. I don't remember if it was Democrats Republicans, Republicans Democrats. You're supposed to be impartial. You're supposed to vote your conscious what you see. You're like a referee in a football game. You're supposed to judge everything by what you have before you. Every one of the judges said that they are disappointed in the state of Michigan for allowing suppressed evidence to be released to the media before trial. You would think that would get you to the United States Supreme Court, but it didn't. I guess some clerk putting in there in my case doesn't warrant you going before the highest court in the land. My life, my constitutional rights violated, and that doesn't go before the highest court in the land. 00:33:52 Speaker 2: There's still one remedy left for clemency from Governor Whitmer. You've recently submitted your clemency petition. You know, clemency is to me something that I've been telling anyone who would listen, including people in power, that this is an underused power that is given very deliberately to governors and presidents because they are meant to serve as the last sort of stop gap to prevent injustices from being allowed to stand. And your case cries out for it, as I think anyone who's just listened to this podcast agrees. So is there anything people can do to help generate momentum for your clemency petition? 00:34:38 Speaker 3: You could write the pro board, try to contact the governor. I've got thousands of signatures on this petition begging her to hear my case to show clemency. Visit the petition website sign a petition that she can hear that people are concerned she may do something. 00:34:57 Speaker 2: We're going to put a link to the in the show notes. Please use your voice. Let's help bring Larry home together. This nightmare has gone on for far too long. Larry. We have a section of the show that is my favorite part. Each episode. First of all, I thank you for being here and for your courage and for sharing your story. So thank you, Larry Delile. You know our thoughts are with you, and we're going to build momentum for you with this podcast. This actually the show is called Closing Arguments, and this is where I turn my microphone off. I'm going to kick back, close my eyes and just listen to your words. 00:35:37 Speaker 3: First off, I would like to say that I am so proud of so many activists out there who are protesting both social and racial injustice, the protesting against wrongful convictions. You have to salute our heroes on the front line in healthcare who are taking everyone who has COVID nineteen, all these tragic deaths that are happening in everyone's family. My heart goes out to you. I would like to thank Ashley Ross, I think Tyler Beck for everything they've done to get to this point. They have been very staunch supporters. They started the petition, They've supported a petition, and I love them to death. There are so many people that have written me since the Netflix documentary came out. Bless you all. Thank you very much. Please please stay safe out there. 00:36:40 Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Ronful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ed free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kenpler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliber. The music in this production was applied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One. 00:37:16 Speaker 1: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good