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564: #564 Maggie Freleng with Dr. Marvin Cotton Jr. · Wrongful Conviction Podcasts

• 00:00:05 Speaker 1: On the west side of Detroit. In the summer of twenty twenty, year old Marvin Cotton Junior sold a gun. He thought it belonged to his distant cousin, but that wasn't the case. 00:00:18 Speaker 2: I get a knock at the door and it's him and an older guy, and I knew immediately that it had something to do with this gun. So I opened the door and make it away from my house. So as I closed the door, I heard the older guy say he don't know who he's fm with. Next thing I know, two police cars pull up. They gear up and break in my house without a warn He kept saying that it was a department issue gun, but there wasn't a gun that a police offical carry was like a huge chrome automatic weapon. They really wanted it back. They ramsacked my house. They took money. Other guns that I had with the gun that they were looking for wasn't there. He said, I got a thousand dollars for this gun. We're gonna leave. Just go hide it somewhere, call me and tell me where you hit the gun at. 00:01:11 Speaker 1: But instead of playing along, Marvin filed a complaint, which led to an investigation and eventually consequences for these officers, as well as Marvin being routinely harassed by the police. Fast forward to January twenty fourth, two thousand and one, gunfire erupted on Marvin's friend Jamon McIntyre's porch. Jaman ran into the alley across the street, where he was fatally shot. When witnesses at the scene could not identify the shooters, the blame eventually found its way to Marvin and to others. 00:01:46 Speaker 2: When I was arrested, one of the detectives told the other detectives, you know, he really fed up some good officers' lives. My name is doctor Marvincott Junior, and I spent nighteteen seven months and twelve days of prison for a crime I didn't commit. 00:02:04 Speaker 1: From Lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today, Doctor Marvin Cotton Junior. Marvin Cotton Junior grew up in the nineteen eighties and nineties on the West side of Detroit. 00:02:25 Speaker 2: The neighborhood that I'm from, a street called Myers. Myers was the center of the universe for that area, or at least it was the center of my universe. We had restaurants on this block. We had elementary school on this block. It was like everything that you would need a community to be. It was all on this block, and it was a lot of families lived there. It was a lot of guys. We grew up together in my age group and those that were older. My co defendant in this case, Anthony Legion, who also did this show Brilliant paralegal here in Michigan, he grew up on Myers as well. He lived down the street from me, several years older. He gave my first haircut as a child. You know, I kind of grew up up under him and the older guys that was in the area. You know, Myers was really a close knit community. 00:03:20 Speaker 1: Marvin's co defendant, Anthony Legion, managed to stay largely uninvolved in the streets, while Marvin's situation was different. 00:03:29 Speaker 2: I'm the middle child of an older sister and a younger brother. We were raised primarily by my mother. My biological father struggled with drugs and alcohol for maybe thirty seven years of his life. Wow, he was very abusive in the household, and eventually she got away from that. Yeah. I grew up. I grew up very poor. I remember it creating the desire to want more, to want to have things, to not want to be singled out or bullied in school for not having things. You know, children could be very cruel. And my stepfather, the man who eventually married my mother, he helped raise myself and my brother and my sister from maybe about the age where I was twelve years old into the time that I was wrongfully convicted. He introduced me to the streets and I got involved with selling drugs and selling guns and just being involved in that whole life. 00:04:29 Speaker 1: And while hustling in the streets, Marvin was a senior in high school when he found out that he was going to be a dad when. 00:04:35 Speaker 2: I was seventeen years old, and I remember, like immediately when I found out, I just felt the pressure of being responsible for another human being that was coming. And you know, I went to every single doctor's appointment. I made sure that I fed her mother everything that I thought she should be eating. And I was very excited. But since I didn't have the two to organize my life the way that it should be, my plan was drop out of high school and then enroll in a GED course so that I can quickly get my GED and when I dropped myself from high school. I went to go and roll and they was like you a week late, Like you have to wait till next year to enroll in our ged program. So it was like I could have stayed in school, but I had a problem that no one knew about. I couldn't read and write. So I had made it all the way to this point in school without being able to read and write, because I just used my ability to communicate. I had a great memory, so if I heard something in class, I would answer all of the questions. I would never do anything on paper, and teachers automatically knew, like you're smart, you know everything, just do the work, so they would pass me because they thought I knew it. And the reason I couldn't read and write is because when I was a child and I was worried about my mother and whatever fight that just happened the night before, or what was going on in the home. 00:06:09 Speaker 1: So Marvin wasn't exactly set up for success, but he survived and cared for his daughter with the tools that he had, and that's how it went until the summer of two thousand, when his distant cousin brought him a gun to sell. 00:06:23 Speaker 2: One of my cousin's cousin. He knew that I indulged in that world. So I took the firearm. I gave him some money, and I went and I sold it. Several hours later, I get a knock at the door. It's him and an older guy, probably in his forties. I knew immediately it had something to do with the gun. So I opened the door, and you know, I told, you know, man, get away from my house. I didn't just get away from my house. So as I closed the door, I heard the older guy say he don't know who he's fing with. Next thing I know, two police cars pull up. They gear up and put their vests and everything on my front line. They break in my house without a warrant. They ramsacked the house. They took money, other guns that I had, but the gun that they were looking for wasn't there. So they handcuffed me, put me in the bathroom, and one of the guys come in and says, look, I got a thousand dollars. He said it on the bathroom sync He said, gonna let you out of these handcuffs. We're gonna leave. Here's my phone number. Just go hide it. Somewhere, call me and tell me where you hit the gun, and I owe you one. 00:07:39 Speaker 1: Do you think he lost his gun like he was in trouble maybe, like you know. 00:07:44 Speaker 2: He kept saying that it was a department issue gun. But I have seen department issue guns before, and it didn't have that extra serial number with DPD on it. And it wasn't a gun that a police officer will carry. It was like a huge chrome automatic web and it was no way that it was a department issue gun. But they really wanted it back. And the gun was not worth a thousand dollars, you know, it was brand new. It was probably a four hundred dollars gun. But they were willing to pay in pretty penny for this firearm back. And he said, go hide it somewhere and just tell me where it's at. So me being twenty years old at that time and my egos bruise, they essentially robbed me because they took things that I wasn't supposed to have, but they took them, and you know, they didn't charge me with it or anything. So one day I filed a complaint with internal Affairs and the person that was leading the raid was the head of narcotics, and they was like, why is a narcotic person trying to retrieve a gun that was never reported stolen? And it started a real big investigation. 00:08:49 Speaker 1: Do you think this kind of put you on their radar for when doomas? 00:08:53 Speaker 2: That absolutely did. They would just pick me up for no reason at all, Take me to jail, let me out sometimes, come get me the same day, take me back to jail, keep me in there for a couple of days, let me out. Every time they seen me, they was pulling me over. I got to the point to where I would just pull my car over, get out, and hit the alarm as I'm running, lock my doors as I'm running, just because I didn't feel like going to jail again for no reason, which led to me filing additional complaints. And eventually I filed a complaint and a police officer came to my house arresting me. The police PRECID is like five minutes away. They drove me around for like forty five minutes, you know, cussing and raving. The officer that was driving had his gun in his hand the whole time he was pulling up on people, pointing his gun at people. He actually shot somebody that night. Oh my gosh, after they took me to jail, he was just like unhinged. I thought they were gonna kill me that night. To be honest, I thought, you know, being a nobody black man from the streets of Detroit where you know, constitutional rights didn't exist at all back then, and you know, I just thought it was over. And then the pressure that they were placing on me at that time, I knew that something was coming. I just didn't know what it was. 00:10:10 Speaker 1: Which brings us to the victim in this case, Marvin's friend Jamon McIntyre, who lived at thirty nine to fifty one third Street in Detroit with a guy named Kenny Lockhart. But the house belonged to Jamon's powerful relatives. As we learned from Anthony Legion's attorney, Wolf Muller, I. 00:10:28 Speaker 3: Just know from all the police reports and what the police officers knew is this was a drug house maintained and kept by Jamon McIntyre, who was related either by blood or they call them plain nephews with the Johnson crime family that ran a lot of dope out of Detroit at that time in the early two thousands, late nineties. So this was a notorious drug house. In fact, one of the defendants in our lawsuit, Santonian Adams, was a nephew of the Johnsons, and he was a Detroit Police officer there at the time of the crime. He we found out later, was actually running security for the Johnson crime family as a Detroit Police officer. 00:11:15 Speaker 1: So shortly after midnight on January twenty fourth, two thousand and one, Santonian Adams was out in the driveway. Kenny Lockhart and his girlfriend Renee Tate were in an upstairs bedroom, and Jamon McIntyre was on the porch, allegedly with three other men. 00:11:31 Speaker 3: Three guys were hanging around on a porch, apparently a little bit after midnight, McIntyre's sister comes over and she's looking for some money. He gives her some money, she leaves. She doesn't recognize any of the three. Shortly after she leaves, Adams is in the driveway and all of a sudden, here shots being fired and McIntyre calls to him tone as he's running out of the house being chased by these guys, runs down an alley across the street and gets undown. Now at this time, Lockhart is in the bedroom with his girlfriend. He first told the officers he didn't see what happened. Here's the shooting, closes his door because he's trying to protect his girlfriend and waste till the shooting. 00:12:13 Speaker 1: Stops, as did his girlfriend, Renee Tate. Police collected about thirty shell casings, ten near the porch and another twenty in the alley. An officer Santonian Adams, not really explaining his presence there, said that he had gotten off a few shots as well. 00:12:30 Speaker 3: Santonian Adams claims that he couldn't find his official police gun in the van he was driving at the time. He says, I couldn't find my gun, but as I was ducking when I heard the shots, I saw a gun under the front passenger seat, so I grabbed that and I got off about four shots. Well, he never turned in his official law enforcement handgun to have it analyzed. When they did take a look at it, they found there were four bullets missing. His story never added up. Didn't pursue him. 00:13:01 Speaker 1: Instead, nearly a month later, they went back to Kenny Lockhart, who inexplicitly had a new story to tell involving three young men from the neighborhood. Marvin Cotton, Anthony Legion, and twenty nine year old Devonte Parks. 00:13:16 Speaker 3: Lockhart claims he hears the shooting, then he comes out says that the guys are in his house, and a guy he identifies as Cotton tells another guy shoot him, shoot Lockhart. Lockhart claims he finds a gun and takes a shot. Only the problem is there are no bullet holes in the house. 00:13:36 Speaker 1: And not only was this account contradicted by Renee Tate, but also of the three guns that the police found in the house, none of them could be linked to the shellcasings that were collected from the scene. 00:13:48 Speaker 3: Even one of the police officers who first interviewed Lockhart wrote in his notes, the guy is not telling the truth. I don't believe what word he says. And mind you, he first told the officers he didn't see what it has and second he knew Cotton, so if Cotton had been there, he would have identified Cotton. 00:14:07 Speaker 1: Nevertheless, all three young men were arrested separately, and with all the harassment that preceded this arrest, Marvin thought this was just more of the same. 00:14:17 Speaker 2: You know, I had got kind of used to it at this point. I did not know why they were picking me up and they took me downtown. They put me in a bathroom size interrogation room, you know, bright lights. They left me in there for about thirteen hours. No one came to check on me. Couldn't use the bathroom. About thirteen fourteen hours later and they took me into an office. There was three detectives in that office. One of the detectives told the other detectives, you know, he really fed up some good officers' lives. Here I go in this interrogation role, twenty one years old, not knowing why I'm down here. It was Sergeant Walter Bates, Sergeant Ernest Wilson, and Inspector Donald Hughes. It was a lot of threats saying they were going to do this and do that to me, some acts of violence. And I told them that I didn't have anything that I wanted to talk about. I told him a lawyer that shut it down. And just so you know, Walter Bates went to prison for Robin thirteen banks. Ernest Wilson high speed chased from a different police department, drunk for a second DUI and had an illegal gun on him. And then I have a recording of Donald Hughes talking about how they set me up. 00:15:52 Speaker 1: Before their misconduct was revealed, Marvin, Anthony and Davante had to find ways to impeach the identification that these menduced via Kenny Lockhart, while also trying to corroborate their alibis from pre trial detention. 00:16:07 Speaker 2: Like I said, I grew up not knowing how to read and write. And it's interesting because my wrongful conviction is the very thing that corrected that. I had a lot of motivation because when they gave me that big old stack of discovery papers, it was about forty five pages and I couldn't read it. 00:16:26 Speaker 3: Kenny Lockhart said that he was absolutely one hundred percent certain of the three guys who were charged, Legion, Cotton, and DeVante Parks on Parks had in airtight alibi. Well, then there goes Lockhart's whole identification. 00:16:40 Speaker 1: It appears the state had verified Parks's alibi, which directly undermined Lockhart's identification, but instead of dropping all charges, they found a jailhouse informant named Ellis Frasier to hold the case together. Meanwhile, Marvin had taught himself how to read and write, just in time to find out out how Detroit Police operates. 00:17:03 Speaker 2: Four days before Trout, my attorney came to visit me in the county jail and he slid a statement to me. So I'm looking over this statement and my blood pressure is just going through the roof as I'm trying to read it. And my attorney he says, listen, this guy is saying that you can confessed him, and I'm like, this didn't happen. 00:17:21 Speaker 3: It is the Detroit Police Department, and particularly the homicide section in the late nineteen eighties through the nineteen nineties and even into extending the early two thousands, if they had a weak case, they would recruit some snitch, typically from what would be the ninth floor jail, where you're only supposed to be held there for about forty eight hours before you get transferred to the county jail. But some of these guys on a ninth floor were in the ninth floor lockup for a year or more and they had sheets over their cells, they had VCRs, they had TVs, they had food, they had drink, they had everything because they were regular snitches for the DPD. And three of them have said under oath is, we would get discovery packages from the detectives told to memorize it. A handwritten statement from the homicide detective saying, how this guy confessed and all you had to do was sign it. 00:18:14 Speaker 2: I don't even consider Ellis Fraser or jail house informists a snitches, because a snitch tells something they know, But when detectives give you the information for you to testify to, that's just something completely different. 00:18:30 Speaker 1: But in the time before this informant system was exposed, it seems that the pattern weaved this case together as well. Ellis Fraser said that Marvin confessed to him an implicated legion and importantly not Parks. But there are some problems with this statement. 00:18:49 Speaker 2: He says this happened in the county jail, which has huge bullopeans. As you're going to court, they're putting people in different bullpens depending on what judge they're going to see. In his state, he said that Anthony Legion, myself, and my third cod defended were all on the docket to go see the trial judge. I went and see my probation judge on this day that this jail house informant says that I was in a different bullpen, So. 00:19:17 Speaker 1: Wrong, Judge He also said that Marvin had changed into street clothes, but that doesn't happen when seeing the probation judge. And then the statement placed them all in the trial judge bullpen together. 00:19:31 Speaker 2: Anthony never came down that day, even though on the computer it says that he had court that day, but we got documents showing that they never signed him to come down to court. My other co defendant had to go see a different judge in a completely different county, so he wasn't even in the bull pen. And then I went and seeing a different judge because I was seeing my probation judge. So none of us was in the bullpen with Ellis Fraser Junior. Although they thought that they had set it up like that, did. 00:20:00 Speaker 1: This get brought up at trial? Did your defense attorney bring this up? 00:20:04 Speaker 2: Well? When he went and showed the judge and the prosecutor they had a sidebar to then that's when they changed the story and Illustrazer was like, no, nobody was in the bullpayn with me. I talked to him through a wall and he told me his first and last name, victims first and last name, the street where this happened. Witnesses first and last name, all of these details that you can get out of policy ports and preliminary transcripts, and it was like literally a perfectly written statement that no one would ever say, and no one would ever share this information through a wall in a bullpen with forty to fifty people in his bullpen, forty to fifty people in my bullpen. People don't even use their real names in jail. 00:20:46 Speaker 1: Fraser also testified that he was receiving nothing in return for his testimony, even though he was released soon after. And the surprises didn't stop there. Without explanation, DeVante Parks was severed from Marvin and Anthony's trial all of a. 00:21:03 Speaker 3: Sudden, Parks severed from the case. Why it turns out, right before trial they verified Park had an airtight alibi, and so they dismissed charges against Parks, but only after the Cotton legion trial. 00:21:17 Speaker 1: Which gave the appearance that Parks was still being charged. While this information could not be used to impeach Lockhart, who had said that he was one hundred percent certain when he identified Parks, but at trial, Lockhart only had to identify the two defendants in front of him. 00:21:35 Speaker 3: The state's evidence simply came to Lockhart and being backed up by a snitch witness, which then would give credibility to Lockhart, right, because they're saying the same thing. And they never got to hear about the Duponte Parks misidentification. As much as the defense tried to punch holes in Lockhart, Lockhart could say, I knew Cotton, so I knew who it was. And then this other guy legion, I saw him too. 00:22:00 Speaker 2: We called two witnesses, a detective that Kenneth Lockhart had told several different variant stories too. And we called another witness that was the girlfriend of Lockhart, and she had told a story in her statement that conflicted with Lockhart. 00:22:20 Speaker 1: Right, because she was in the house with him, right, they allegedly had heard the gunshot. 00:22:24 Speaker 2: Yes, So we wanted to call her to show that this guy is lying, he's not telling the truth. But when she came in court, she was crying, shaking, She kept looking at Anthony and I and you know, we've never seen this woman before in our life. But the jury don't know why she's crying looking at us in this way. 00:22:44 Speaker 1: So without context or how Lockhart came to name these men, or how Parks's charges were just about to be dismissed, or how Frasier was definitely receiving a deal for testifying. On October nineteenth, two thousand and one, the jury Anthony and Marvin a first degree murder and illegal use of a firearm, sending them away for life without the possibility of parole, and in the process, another generation of the Cotton family was in jeopardy. 00:23:15 Speaker 2: Once I was wrongfully convicted. I knew that my daughter was in danger fathers in prison, a young black female in the city of Detroit. I did not want her to be a statistic so I knew that I needed to draw as many lines and connections and communication with her as possible. So even before she learned how to read, I was writing her letters. I wanted her to have a drawer full of letters that she can always see, and I would put lessons in it. I would talk to her about protecting her space and just communicating and being kind to people. I would just put lessons in every letter. I will send her cards, I will send her Teddy Bears money. I would call her all the time. So I just drew as many lines to build the relationship as possible. Because I knew that our relationship may give her a little bit of what she need not to fall and be a statistic in any way. 00:24:21 Speaker 1: You know, the relationship you had with your mother and your father and these different men in your life, did that affect or inform the way you parented with your daughter. 00:24:31 Speaker 2: Absolutely. I didn't have a perfect guide on what to be, but I knew what I did not want to be. You know, our biological father. You know, we've been building relationships since I've been out. I go see him a few times a year. But what I got from him that he wasn't trying to give me. But what I got from him is my discipline when it comes to alcohol and drugs because of what I witnessed and what I seen, and you know, all of the broken promises growing up, all of that stayed with me, and I'm able to practice opposite in a positive way. You know, he was never present, so I make sure that I'm very present. You know, drugs was his priority. And you know drug addicts are not interested in asking you how are you doing? They actually you know you have anything for me? Can I borrow some money? So his communication is not the best, So I make sure my communication with my daughter is solid. 00:25:26 Speaker 1: That it's not about needing or wanting. 00:25:28 Speaker 2: It's absolutely yeah, wow, it's all about me getting in their business. Like in prison, I understood that these detectives that was doing the wrong things. I recognized that they were smart because they were able to hide things from me in my face. So I knew that the battle was a mental battle. I have to become smarter because they're not planned. So my initial motivation was to turn myself into a weapon so that I could fight back against the system that had rolled over my life. I read a lot of books, I studied a lot. I did a lot of work on myself. So I turned my prison sale into a university. But when you can think in prison, everybody starts coming to you for askers. They want you to save them. So now I'm a mentor. Now I'm a leader, And then I started to feel a duty to help more than just myself. 00:26:30 Speaker 1: So Marvin went from a young father who couldn't read into a man who understands the law, parenting, and leadership as only doctor Marvin Cotton Junior can, all while fighting for his freedom, which began in the denial of his initial appeals and federal habeas So by twenty ten, Marvin needed to find new evidence. 00:26:54 Speaker 2: I hired a private investigator and he went and talked to Elis Fraser. Elis Fraser did not know who he was, who was working for, and he just revealed everything. 00:27:04 Speaker 1: Fraser said how he initially told Detective Hughes that he never saw anyone, but had overheard two men talking. One said I wasn't even there man. 00:27:14 Speaker 3: Elie Fraser says in an affidavit that the officer in charge, Hughes, walks him into court and has to explain to him who these guys are, so he makes sure that he picks them out and identifies cotton as cotton and doesn't confuse the guys. 00:27:32 Speaker 1: Fraser also claims that he was promised early release by both the detective and prosecutor and was reminded not to mention that deal at trial. Then the investigator visited Detective Hughes. 00:27:45 Speaker 3: Private investigator who used to be with the Detroit PD, makes a secret recording with Donald Hughes, the officer in charge, and Hughes tells him, Yeah, Lockart hadn't seen anything. This drug dealer told me, and then I told Lockhart. So Lockhart's story then lined up with whoever was the suspect that the drug dealer had identified, and that became Cotton and Legion and Parks. 00:28:09 Speaker 1: The investigator also visited Lockhart's girlfriend, Renee Tate, about why she backed up Lockhart's story at trial, and her answer might identify who this drug dealer was. 00:28:21 Speaker 2: She said she was receiving pressure from detectives as well as the victim family, one of which was the head of this criminal organization that was pressuring her to come in and say a particular thing. 00:28:33 Speaker 3: Lockhart's girlfriend said that Lockhart never saw anybody, because neither of them saw anybody. But she won't sign an affidavit and has basically said, if you subpoena me to testify, I'm just gonna lie and I say I never said that because she's terrified of the Johnson crime family. Word on the curb was that Johnson was the one orchestrating all of this. Johnson wanted McIntyre out of there. Santonian Adams, the Detroit please officer there at the time of the crime, who was a nephew of the Johnsons, set McIntyre up, and maybe Lockhart set McIntyre up too, because think about it, if he had been in the house, he'd have been killed. 00:29:12 Speaker 2: Two. 00:29:12 Speaker 3: If this was just a robbery for drugs, they would have killed everybody. And so because Cotton and McIntyre are buddies and doing stuff together, have the cops go get Cotton. 00:29:24 Speaker 1: And that word on the street was corroborated for the detectives in this case. Before trial, a. 00:29:29 Speaker 3: Guy named Kurt Nerd was living with Lockhart just a couple weeks later, and Lockhart told him Johnson offered him ten thousand dollars depended on Cotton and Legion, and so he ended up telling Kurt Neard, I never saw those guys, but ten thousand dollars a lot of money. Nard went to a Detroit Police homicide detective, Walter Bates, and told him exactly what happened. Even gave Bates the handwritten napkins that he took notes on after Lockhart told them this. Bates never turned that evidence over. 00:30:04 Speaker 1: Surprisingly, this Brady material and new evidence didn't make much difference on appeal. 00:30:10 Speaker 3: The court system is much more focused on procedure than whether you're innocent or what do you get screwed at trial? So they submitted their case to the Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit, and the CiU took a fresh look at the case, and then they were able to understand, especially with this tape that the PI had with Donald Hughes where Hughes admitted that Lockhart hadn't seen anything. Now you start getting into a whole lot of police misconduct and their right to affair trial. They were robbed a due process, and the CiU came to that conclusion that they couldn't say one hundred percent that these guys were. 00:30:48 Speaker 1: Innocent, couldn't or wouldn't. 00:30:51 Speaker 3: What they did was they said there was so much police misconduct they were entitled to a new trial. And then a Wayne County prosecutor's office realized the flaws with the case and dismissed the charges. But I think the new evidence that really rocked this case, other than what we've talked about, is that the prosecutor's office was very likely involved in this miscarriage of justice with not allowing Parks to take the stand because they didn't dismiss the charges until after this conviction. 00:31:20 Speaker 1: So that was October one, twenty twenty, when Marvin was finally able to be an even more present father. 00:31:27 Speaker 2: Now we talked all the time, We text all the time. My daughter is not a statistic She's twenty seven years old, she don't have any children. She's a business owner, she works, she's college educated, graduated college early. I got out the day before her surprise college graduation celebration. Wow, I was able to make that. 00:31:47 Speaker 1: And so you surprised her. 00:31:49 Speaker 2: Oh she came and picked me up from prison for mom. So she. 00:31:54 Speaker 1: Oh, I love that. When Marvin got out, he continued being the leader that he became inside. He and a few other men founded the Organization of Exouneries. 00:32:05 Speaker 2: The Organization of Exneries is a group of exouneries here in Michigan. You know, we started coming together as a support group. Valerie Noman, the director of the Conviction Integrity Unit, started bringing all the exuneries together. I think she really just wanted to just look in our eyes every month and make sure we was good, and to start opening up resources and finding out what we needed. And you know, just the way things landed. We got a great group of guys that can think and that was motivated and wanted to get involved in activism and advocacy, and we founded the Organization of Exouneries. Because there's so many gaps when it comes to someone being exonerated. You know, when people get out on parole, they do have some access to resources. But when you're exonerated, everybody washes their hands and like they go hire lawyers to fight you. But they're not concerned about your vitem documents. They're not concerned about your housing, they're not concerned about therapy, they're not concerned about any of these things. Yet we're suffering. We noticed that a lot of our guys were getting out and were struggling, taking us several months to get IDs. Couldn't even cash checks that people have for us because we couldn't set up a bank account without an ID. So we went to work creating those resources. So in our organization here in Michigan, when you get out, we have a straight line to almost everything you need. We're gonna put some money in your hands out of our Walking Free Fund. I'm usually want to take them shopping clothes and cosmetics. 00:33:39 Speaker 1: Where are you getting this money from? 00:33:41 Speaker 2: Well, we raise money. We are nonprofit with the five and one C three. We have gallas every year. I'll make sure you get to invite before October. We always do it in October. But we raised money We've made a lot of friends that really wants to see us successful. And we also apply for grants to make sure that we can so for our people to where we can do reparow services for exigneries here in Michigan. As you know, we travel around the country doing advocacy though it helps some people out in other states. 00:34:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys are really such an amazing support group. So you Ken Nixon, Eric Anderson really cultivated this amazing group of exguneries that you travel. I mean recently, a good friend of mine being from New York, Andre Brown, his conviction was vacated, but the prosecution was fighting that and trying to send him back to prison, and that looked like it was something that was going to happen after he had been out for a few years at this point with his family and his son, and you guys flew from Detroit to the Bronx to support Andre. You do things like that, and you know, coming up in Detroit, drell Ewing is having the same situation happened to him right now. Are you guys going to be there to support Durell? 00:34:54 Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, in Michigan, as you know, it's a lot more progressive here. We have a lot of allies that work within the criminal justice system as well as allies that's outside the criminal justice system. You know, there's more of a willingness than it is just to oppose. Do opposition happen? Absolutely, dreil Ewing very brilliant guy, growing into a great organizer as well, and he's organizing an event around his case. Definitely support Derail Union. 00:35:26 Speaker 1: We will link to info about Derell's mobilization event, his Instagram, and our coverage of his case in the episode description. Please scroll down and get involved. We cannot let this clearly innocent man be dragged back to prison for the sake of a finality and conviction. We so hope those in power are called to do the right thing. And we're also going to link to Marvin's books as well of some of his other work. 00:35:54 Speaker 2: The entire time that I was in prison, I was planning the day that I walked out of prison, even though it felt differently different than the way I plan but all of my structural plans with setting up my life, starting a business, being a motivational speaker, being an author of not one but two books, I knew everything that I would do and I knew how I. 00:36:15 Speaker 1: Would do it, Doctor Cotton, Where did the doctor come from? 00:36:19 Speaker 2: I have an honorary doctorate in humanities from a university that wastow to honor on me. Because of the work that I do and the people that I help, I'm considered to be an expert in humanitarian work. Some of the things we talked about today. I service not only people that were wrongfully convicted, but also people that were directly impacted by the criminal justice system and deserve a second chance. And I try to make sure that they second chance is something that society can benefit from. 00:36:48 Speaker 1: I have in my notes that you have helped get twenty nine people out of prison. Is that an accurate number? 00:36:56 Speaker 2: Yes, both both innocent and those that deserve a second I do commutation packages, parole packages. I walk them through the entire process. I have other experts that I partner with, but support letters, but resources. We outline what their life is going to look like if they have the privilege of being released early. Now, if somebody refuse to see that people are redeemable, that's more of a them issue and it has nothing to do with the person. I mean people all the time that refuse to forgive. Imagine me refusing to forgive my biological father. And there's people in my family that's upset that I deal with them that were directly impacted by him. But he's clean, he's off drugs, he doesn't drink, he goes to church, he goes to therapy for the first time in his life. He's good for him. Who am I to have a forever judgment when God is still working and bringing beautiful things out of his life. Now, I'm just not willing to put a period on someone before God put a period on them. 00:38:06 Speaker 1: Doctor Marvincotton Jr. Thank you so much for speaking with me and sharing your story. Is there anything else that we missed? You want to say to the listeners. 00:38:17 Speaker 2: If you have a loved one that you believe has been wrongfully convicted and you're really trying to help and serve them and you just don't know how. Now, I can't tell you what to do, and I'm not even giving you advice. I'm not a lawyer. Let me say that I'm not an attorney, but just know that there's things you can do that will help you in the battle with this beast number one. This is my personal policy. I like to refrain from attacks. So I know it feels good and it feels natural to attack the police officers, to attack the prosecutor, attack the judge. But just remember you dealing with human beings and nobody likes to be attacked. You can get more things out of a human being by treatment. With their respect doesn't mean you can't hold people accountable. We love our children, we hold them accountable. We don't abuse our children. But you can hold people accountable without being abusive. Build relationships. Go to coffee hours. Go see what politicians are talking about. Go see what the person is running for, prosecutors talking about. Go sit in an audience, stand up, ask questions, Ask them about wrongful convictions, Ask them about cases that they've worked on. That's number one. Number two, start from the beginning. Learn about freedom information acts requests. Send it to the prosecutor office so that you can get files. Because oftentimes we're wrongful convictions. You have information that's hitting in files that was never turned over. It can be a single sheet of paper that can lead to freeing your loved one from a wrongful conviction. So start from the beginning. Of course, it's always good to support financially if you can afford a private investigator, I would say a private investigator even over an attorney, especially if you're trying to get the wheels to start turning, look at private investigators that worked on innocent cases before. If you're trying to figure out what attorney to get, look at attorneys that work on innocent cases. It is a difference between a good attorney and an attorney that works on innocent cases. They come from a certain pedigree. They have the energy, they have the passion. They love to spend all this energy on a single case because that's what it's take in order to free somebody that's been wrongfully convicted. So if you really want to help your love one out, send them letters, be supportive. The institution needs to know that they have somebody that loved them. Send cards, send letters, send messages, let them call every now and then if you can afford it. But on the legal front, there's little things that you can do to be helpful and to just get that ball to roll. 00:40:58 Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Conviction with Maggie Freeling. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wortis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. 00:41:34 Speaker 3: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. 00:41:37 Speaker 2: 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