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How the Innocence Project Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff works dot com. This episode of Stuff
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Speaker 1: Visit Go to Meeting dot com slash stuff. That's Go
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Speaker 1: to meeting dot com slash stuff. Hey and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and our newest co star, Jerry Rowland. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Jerry's been getting people like her more than us now,
1:02
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, can we just say that? Yeah? Yeah, Guatemala
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Speaker 1: debut there like she's getting married proposals, um. She has
1:11
Speaker 1: been it's been suggested she should get her own Facebook
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Speaker 1: fan page, and she's taken to smacking me on the
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Speaker 1: bottom whenever I walk past her and she tells me
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Speaker 1: to go get her some coffee or something. Chief Yeah,
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Speaker 1: chief guy. Yeah, So it's weird. Jerry's kind of blown up. Yes,
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Speaker 1: it was hard to fit in this room with her
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Speaker 1: head in here. At the same time, I know it's
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Speaker 1: a little warm in here, isn't it. Yeah, it's hot,
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Speaker 1: So Chuck, Josh, Um, would you and I had a
1:42
Speaker 1: rare opportunity recently, a perk, I guess you could say,
1:45
Speaker 1: of working for Mother Discovery. Ure. Um, we spoke to
1:51
Speaker 1: Ms Paula is On. Yes, uh, legendary broadcaster, journalist, newswoman, newsperson. Yeah,
2:00
Speaker 1: and um. We were approached by our marketing people who said, hey,
2:06
Speaker 1: you guys want to talk to Paula is On And
2:08
Speaker 1: we said, of course, we want to talk to Paulazan.
2:10
Speaker 1: When do you want to talk to Paulson? They're like,
2:12
Speaker 1: you don't need to get all defensive and we're like, well,
2:14
Speaker 1: would you And it just kind of went on like
2:16
Speaker 1: that for a little while. Um, and then finally we
2:19
Speaker 1: ended up on the phone with Paula is on and
2:21
Speaker 1: just started talking to her. She's got a show on
2:23
Speaker 1: UM Investigation Discovery I D for those of us who
2:27
Speaker 1: work for Discovery, UM, and UH, it's called On the
2:31
Speaker 1: Case with paul is on. It's on every Sunday at
2:34
Speaker 1: ten pm. She'll she'll shill and UM. We we started
2:38
Speaker 1: talking to her about true crime. Right, Yeah, it's pretty cool.
2:42
Speaker 1: I mean we get interview UH setups like this. Sometimes
2:45
Speaker 1: we were kind of like, I don't know about that,
2:46
Speaker 1: but I'm way into courtroom drama and crime and really
2:51
Speaker 1: a good hour long show like that. So I was
2:53
Speaker 1: way way down with it, right and UM she started
2:56
Speaker 1: talking about like, if you've gotten the impression that we
2:59
Speaker 1: weren't really certain what we were going to do with
3:01
Speaker 1: the interview, you were right. Um. But she started talking about,
3:06
Speaker 1: UM this uh one case that she did an episode
3:10
Speaker 1: on UM that the Innocence Projects factored into, and that
3:14
Speaker 1: kind of rang a bell. But we started looking into it,
3:16
Speaker 1: and UM we remembered that last October there was a
3:21
Speaker 1: big kerfuffle about the Innocence Project UM out of Northwestern
3:26
Speaker 1: University's Medill Journalism School UM and the I think the
3:31
Speaker 1: Cook County UM chief prosecutor, maybe the state's attorney even stronger,
3:39
Speaker 1: more potent UM wanted to subpoena all of the notes
3:43
Speaker 1: and the grades of all the students on this case.
3:47
Speaker 1: And it was just a big stinky deal. Yeah, because
3:50
Speaker 1: the deal was as these were journalism students as opposed
3:53
Speaker 1: to law students, So there was it's a bit of
3:55
Speaker 1: a fine line there between. You know, journalists aren't supposed
3:59
Speaker 1: to go up their sources telling these journalists they have
4:01
Speaker 1: to student journalists they have to turn over all their information,
4:05
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of a big deal as to
4:08
Speaker 1: where the singing's upright, and uh, as far as I know,
4:11
Speaker 1: it's gone kind of cold, right, Yeah, I think so.
4:14
Speaker 1: But it was enough to spur our interest in UM
4:18
Speaker 1: looking up the Innocence Project a little more and we realized,
4:21
Speaker 1: ding ding ding, this is uh it, this is what
4:24
Speaker 1: we're going to do it on. Yeah, this is just
4:25
Speaker 1: a cool program. Yeah, I've heard of it before. Basically,
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Speaker 1: the Innocence Project, if you haven't heard of it is
4:31
Speaker 1: they are those when you hear about a a murder
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Speaker 1: case where someone's been in prison for twenty years for
4:36
Speaker 1: a murder care or rate case or doesn't really matter
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Speaker 1: what kind of case it is. As long as there
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Speaker 1: is DNA evidence that they can dig back up and
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Speaker 1: retest with modern methods, they can exonerate some uh you know,
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Speaker 1: an innocent person. Yeah, some mugs who have been in
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Speaker 1: jail for a long long time. And these are the
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Speaker 1: people that you see on the news that's like, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I was in jail for twenty eight years and now
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Speaker 1: I'm a freeman. And thanks to the Innocence Project right. Um.
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Speaker 1: The the group themselves, uh were It was founded by
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Speaker 1: a couple of guys named Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Newfield.
5:12
Speaker 1: He was on the o J team for a while.
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Speaker 1: Wud he Yeah, yeah, um, and uh they founded This
5:18
Speaker 1: project is part of the Benjamin Cardoza School of Law
5:22
Speaker 1: Yeshiva University. Right And basically what they do is poor people,
5:28
Speaker 1: and by poor I mean both senses of the word
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Speaker 1: literally and figuratively. UM who have been incarcerated wrongly get
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Speaker 1: really top notch quality UM legal aid for free UM
5:44
Speaker 1: from law students, mostly law students, but then in the
5:47
Speaker 1: case of Northwestern University, it can also be journalisms to
5:51
Speaker 1: UM who start pounding the pavement, interviewing old leads, coming
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Speaker 1: up with new ones trying to find the person who
5:59
Speaker 1: actually did the crime. Yeah, it's based in DNA evidence,
6:02
Speaker 1: but the students actually do a lot more investigating as
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Speaker 1: if it was just an open case. Yeah, and it's
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Speaker 1: not only DNA. It's pretty cool. Out of the d
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Speaker 1: n axoneration cases, there's been two hundred and fifty four
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Speaker 1: since the first one in But out of those two
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Speaker 1: fifty four, um in a hundred uh one hundred and
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Speaker 1: eleven of those cases, the actual perpetrator has been found
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Speaker 1: from the DNA investigation. Yeah, and that's something that Check
6:30
Speaker 1: likes to point out. Obviously he's hanging his hat on that, right.
6:33
Speaker 1: But the so you say, well, why do you need
6:35
Speaker 1: a group of do good or Scooby Doo law school
6:38
Speaker 1: kids to go do this? Uh? The reason why you
6:41
Speaker 1: have to do is because you virtually need a law
6:44
Speaker 1: degree or to be well on your way to earning
6:46
Speaker 1: a law degree, to navigate the kind of um legal
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Speaker 1: waters it takes to file an innocence appeal, uh, post
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Speaker 1: conviction appeal saying I'm actually innocent and I need you
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Speaker 1: to go conduct some DNA tests that weren't conducted before
7:03
Speaker 1: because my courter, pointed attorney was lazy, or because there
7:07
Speaker 1: wasn't DNA testing before, or because a lot of the
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Speaker 1: original evidence was destroyed, which we'll get to, which happens
7:14
Speaker 1: way more than I was comfortable with. Yeah. That I
7:18
Speaker 1: think is the key takeaway for me from researching the
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Speaker 1: Innocence Project is that our legal system is fundamentally flawed
7:29
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways as right. Yeah, in more
7:32
Speaker 1: than one way. You're absolutely right, as anybody who saw
7:35
Speaker 1: them Tom Selick movie An Innocent Man knows. Cops aren't
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Speaker 1: always on the up and up. Yeah, a lot of
7:42
Speaker 1: times you'll get it. I mean a lot of these
7:44
Speaker 1: cases that we reviewed, and we're not knocking cops, believe me,
7:48
Speaker 1: or detectives, but there's often a lot of pressure on
7:52
Speaker 1: these high profile cases to find somebody, and if there's
7:56
Speaker 1: some material evidence there or some eyewitnesses that may or
7:59
Speaker 1: not be too credible, sometimes there's a little coercion. Sometimes
8:03
Speaker 1: there's a snitch and all of a sudden you have
8:07
Speaker 1: somebody that's going to prison for something they didn't do. Right. Um,
8:10
Speaker 1: there was this a really big landmark deluge case um
8:16
Speaker 1: out of the l A. P D. I think in
8:19
Speaker 1: two thousand where one of the guys on this elite
8:24
Speaker 1: crash unit. UM was busted with six pounds of stolen
8:29
Speaker 1: cocaine that he was dealing. Yeah, and he started dropping
8:34
Speaker 1: bombshells like nobody's business. He and other people on the
8:38
Speaker 1: force UM have been shooting innocent people, in framing them
8:44
Speaker 1: with guns, stealing drugs, dealing drugs, stealing money, framing people,
8:49
Speaker 1: and as a result, between a hundred and a hundred
8:52
Speaker 1: and fifty convicted felons were released. They had their their
8:57
Speaker 1: convictions overturned because they've been framed. So it definitely happens.
9:02
Speaker 1: It's not just in Los Angeles and it's not just
9:04
Speaker 1: in Denzel Washington movies. Right, you kind of get the
9:07
Speaker 1: idea that there's a systemic, kind of informal procedure for
9:14
Speaker 1: railroading somebody that you are pretty sure it is guilty,
9:19
Speaker 1: but you don't really have a slam dunk case. So
9:22
Speaker 1: well that's the case, which we'll get to. Yeah. Remember
9:26
Speaker 1: how like they found out that several people had been
9:28
Speaker 1: convicted in the same manner after this guy, Yeah, which
9:31
Speaker 1: is kind of chilling, like because you're seeing how the
9:34
Speaker 1: investigators and the prosecutors down in Brevard County functioned in
9:39
Speaker 1: like the early eighties. You know. Um, so, Chuck, let's
9:42
Speaker 1: talk about how people um end up wrongfully convicted. Right, Yes,
9:48
Speaker 1: there are many ways that this can happen, but here
9:52
Speaker 1: are a few. Eye witnessed misidentification is a huge one. Um,
9:57
Speaker 1: it was a factor. They've got some stats here, which
9:59
Speaker 1: is awesome. It's uh, this kind of testimony has been
10:01
Speaker 1: a factor in seventy of post conviction DNA exoneration. So
10:07
Speaker 1: when they have let someone free with the Innocence Project
10:10
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe not with the Innocence Project, at
10:13
Speaker 1: a time, there has been misidentification. And one of the
10:16
Speaker 1: big problems is uh involving race cross cross Racial identification
10:23
Speaker 1: is usually the culprit, and they found in studies that
10:26
Speaker 1: people are less able to recognize faces of a different
10:28
Speaker 1: race than their own. Right. It's actually it's not Uh,
10:31
Speaker 1: it doesn't even have Other studies have shown that it's
10:35
Speaker 1: not linked to racial bias. It has nothing to do
10:38
Speaker 1: with racism. It's um, we are brains aren't wired to
10:43
Speaker 1: recognize people of other races easily. Um. So it's called
10:47
Speaker 1: the other race effect, and uh, it's it's uh, it is.
10:51
Speaker 1: It can be very problematic in UM court cases. So uh, yeah,
10:56
Speaker 1: I can. I can imagine that is what you said. Yeah,
11:00
Speaker 1: that's that's a lot. That makes it the number one
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Speaker 1: UM right for for wrongful convictions. Right. The second one, Josh,
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Speaker 1: is invalidated or improper forensic science, and that comes in
11:13
Speaker 1: second at it played a role in fifty of the cases,
11:17
Speaker 1: and that's basically sloppy work to a large degree. Well,
11:20
Speaker 1: not just that. I was surprised that most of the
11:23
Speaker 1: stuff you see on cs I hasn't been scientifically vetted
11:28
Speaker 1: fully according to the Innocence Project. Right. Um, you've got
11:33
Speaker 1: things like scerology, which is like blood typing or UM
11:37
Speaker 1: semen sampling, that kind of stuff, fluid, sticky, gross stuff, right, Um,
11:43
Speaker 1: that is vetted. That is hard science. But they're saying like, um,
11:48
Speaker 1: firearm tool marks, like shoeprint comparison. Uh what else, um,
11:58
Speaker 1: hair microscopy bite marks. Yeah, so all this stuff is
12:02
Speaker 1: basically based on good guesses rather than a hard science,
12:05
Speaker 1: which is one reason why the Innocence Project UM and
12:08
Speaker 1: others rely so heavily on d n A. It's it's
12:11
Speaker 1: cutting edges as it gets. It's the best we have
12:15
Speaker 1: right now, and it's gotten way way better since it
12:17
Speaker 1: even started. Uh, using DNA samples. So UM number three,
12:22
Speaker 1: buddy is false confessions and incriminating statements and about at
12:27
Speaker 1: a time that's been a factor. And in thirty five
12:31
Speaker 1: of the false confessions, the defendant was eighteen years or
12:35
Speaker 1: younger and or developmentally disabled. Yeah, there's a kind of
12:39
Speaker 1: a there's a famous case of UM. A woman named
12:43
Speaker 1: Victoria Banks who was in prisoned for two years in Alabama.
12:47
Speaker 1: She UM was a mentally handicapped woman who confessed to
12:52
Speaker 1: killing her newborn child. UM. The thing was, no one
12:55
Speaker 1: had ever seen this child or seen her pregnant, and
12:59
Speaker 1: she actually underwent a physical exam and they found that
13:03
Speaker 1: she had her tubes tied at the time that she
13:07
Speaker 1: supposedly was pregnant. She never had a kid, ergo, she
13:11
Speaker 1: never could have killed her kid, and yet she was
13:14
Speaker 1: still in prison for two years before she was exonerated
13:17
Speaker 1: and released. Two years is that's pretty good for you know,
13:21
Speaker 1: and you don't want to lose two years. But I
13:23
Speaker 1: think what was the average? Yeah, the average amount of
13:26
Speaker 1: time someone has been in prison and then released by
13:29
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project is thirteen years, right, And I was
13:31
Speaker 1: also that's something that I've always kind of wondered about,
13:35
Speaker 1: but never got around to looking into why somebody would
13:39
Speaker 1: make a false confession. I understand being mentally handicapped or
13:43
Speaker 1: being under aging, either being badgered or misled by over
13:47
Speaker 1: zealous cops forst basically like, look, just admit to it
13:51
Speaker 1: and things are gonna go a lot more easily for you,
13:54
Speaker 1: you know. But there's another factor that's involved. If you're
13:58
Speaker 1: an indigent or poor um defendant and you don't have
14:01
Speaker 1: money to make bail. When we did our bail podcast,
14:04
Speaker 1: right um, if you don't have money to make bail,
14:07
Speaker 1: you're sitting in jail until your court date. And if
14:10
Speaker 1: your court date is six months from now, right right? Uh?
14:14
Speaker 1: And they come to you with the plea deal and say, hey,
14:17
Speaker 1: we'll let you out in three months if you if
14:20
Speaker 1: you cop to doing this crime, which one are you
14:24
Speaker 1: gonna do? Or cop to a lesser crime? Maybe sure
14:27
Speaker 1: that you still didn't commit, right, So what are you
14:28
Speaker 1: gonna do? Sit in jail for three months or six months? Well,
14:32
Speaker 1: you're you're probably going to go for the three month things.
14:35
Speaker 1: So that's a wrongful conviction right there too, based on
14:38
Speaker 1: false testimony or false um confession. Well, and if you're
14:43
Speaker 1: pouring indigent. You might not know all of your options. Um,
14:46
Speaker 1: you might not be the most educated person in the world.
14:49
Speaker 1: And uh, you know you're between a rock and hard
14:52
Speaker 1: place many times. So number four Joshua snitches snitches snitches.
14:58
Speaker 1: Nine per scent of the cases involved dirty, rotten snitches.
15:04
Speaker 1: And I say that because most times are many times
15:08
Speaker 1: these snitches are flat out lying and they're trying to
15:11
Speaker 1: get themselves out of trouble in some way. Um, as
15:15
Speaker 1: was the case. And finally we've arrived in Brevard County, Chuck. Um. Yeah,
15:24
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Um William Dylan and he was
15:29
Speaker 1: I think like eighteen seventeen something like that. Um down
15:35
Speaker 1: in Brevard County, Florida, lived down there. He was a
15:37
Speaker 1: bit of a pothead. Uh, and he already had a
15:40
Speaker 1: drug beef against him. Um, but nothing heavier than that
15:44
Speaker 1: right now, I don't think so. Some guy named James
15:47
Speaker 1: Dvorak uh winds up debt. He's found beaten to death
15:51
Speaker 1: on the beach at Canova Beach, Florida, and um, the
15:57
Speaker 1: cops are trying to figure out who did it. Well,
16:00
Speaker 1: Bill Dylon happens to be sitting in his brother's car
16:04
Speaker 1: hanging out smoking a joint with his brother, Um when
16:07
Speaker 1: the cops come up and ask him what he's doing there, right,
16:11
Speaker 1: And then they get a little suspicious when he knows
16:14
Speaker 1: a little too much about this case, even though the
16:17
Speaker 1: case has been all over the news for five days.
16:19
Speaker 1: And for some reason, the the cops and the prosecutors
16:23
Speaker 1: liked William Dillon for this murder, so they started basically
16:28
Speaker 1: investigating him to make their case around his guilt. Yeah right, um.
16:34
Speaker 1: And one of the things that they used was a
16:37
Speaker 1: prison snitch, UM who said that on the night Dylan
16:41
Speaker 1: was booked for this murder, he was in the holding
16:44
Speaker 1: cell and Dylan said I totally did this and here's
16:48
Speaker 1: how he did it right, And no one else witnessed
16:50
Speaker 1: his confession. It was just that one guy and UM.
16:53
Speaker 1: Coincidentally or not. After this trial Dylan's trial, the rape
16:58
Speaker 1: charges against the SNI were dropped by prosecutors. Right twenty
17:03
Speaker 1: seven years later, I think the same snitch came into
17:06
Speaker 1: the courtroom for Dylan's exoneration trial or hearing and he said,
17:12
Speaker 1: I made this up. I didn't make it up. I
17:14
Speaker 1: was told to read this um by a cop, by
17:18
Speaker 1: an investigator who gave me the story and I went
17:21
Speaker 1: ahead and did it, and I'm very very sorry, right
17:24
Speaker 1: but chuck, Uh, well, here's Paulson talking about it. She
17:29
Speaker 1: covered the case there here she is. It gets it
17:32
Speaker 1: gets even um more outrageous than that because another woman
17:38
Speaker 1: who testified against Bill Dylan, who was his girlfriend, h
17:44
Speaker 1: ended up admitting that she had had an appropriate relationship
17:50
Speaker 1: with the lead investigator on the case and made it
17:53
Speaker 1: clear that she testified against Bill Dylan because she thought
17:57
Speaker 1: that a potential federal drug charge she was facing was
18:01
Speaker 1: gonna get dropped, so in exchange for having this relationship
18:04
Speaker 1: with the lead investigator, her charge would go away. And um,
18:09
Speaker 1: and then you know when a sum total of four
18:12
Speaker 1: or five witnesses testified and then recanted their testimony and
18:16
Speaker 1: number of times as this woman did. So, Um, here's
18:19
Speaker 1: this poor guy, you know, basically convicted on live lies. Indeed, Josh,
18:26
Speaker 1: and you want to hear some more. The night of
18:30
Speaker 1: the murder, Uh, there was a guy driving down the
18:33
Speaker 1: road in Brevet County, Revard County, and he told investigators
18:38
Speaker 1: that he picked up a hitchhiker and the hitchhiker was
18:42
Speaker 1: wearing a bloody yellow T shirt that had the words
18:44
Speaker 1: surfeit on it. He later told the investigators that the
18:48
Speaker 1: guy was sweaty and had blood on his shirt and
18:51
Speaker 1: blood smeared on his leg and shorts. He agreed anyway
18:55
Speaker 1: to drive the hitchhiker to a tavern a barged three
18:59
Speaker 1: miles away. And this is what's the most startling part
19:03
Speaker 1: to me, believe it or not, In that three mile
19:06
Speaker 1: journey the two men had, there was an oral sex
19:10
Speaker 1: act committed between the two of them, between the guy
19:13
Speaker 1: who just picked up the stranger and the stranger who
19:16
Speaker 1: was covered in sweat and blood. Yeah. What undermines only
19:20
Speaker 1: guy's credibility is the fact that he was blind in
19:22
Speaker 1: one eye. Um, And he still picked William Dillon out
19:28
Speaker 1: and said this is the guy, even though he described
19:30
Speaker 1: the guy at first as having a mustache and meaning
19:33
Speaker 1: six ft Bill Dillon didn't have a mustache and he
19:36
Speaker 1: was six ft four. Yeah. And in fact it said,
19:38
Speaker 1: which is I love this part too, It says he's
19:40
Speaker 1: physically unable to grow a mustache. Yeah, which he's pretty
19:43
Speaker 1: much just slammed dunk. As far as that I witnessed
19:46
Speaker 1: testimony goes, still, that guy coupled with the prison snitch,
19:50
Speaker 1: who really kind of shut the case. Um, and the
19:54
Speaker 1: girlfriend who slept with the lead investigator. Uh. There was
19:58
Speaker 1: one more big play year in this and he was
20:01
Speaker 1: a guy named John Preston and he was a scent
20:06
Speaker 1: dog handler and he and his dog har ass too. Yeah,
20:10
Speaker 1: who has nothing on her ass one? Um he they
20:13
Speaker 1: were on on um, they were on Bill Dylan like
20:16
Speaker 1: White on Rice. Yeah. I always pictured him when I
20:19
Speaker 1: was reading this as the dude from First Blood. Remember
20:23
Speaker 1: the old guy with the dogs, go get him, Brian dunnahy, no, no, no,
20:26
Speaker 1: the guy that brought the dogs, remember through the woods,
20:30
Speaker 1: and he brought the dogs to chase after Rambo the colonel.
20:33
Speaker 1: Huh No, he was a civilian. He's an old Cadra
20:35
Speaker 1: that had some bloodhounds. John Rambo. Anyway, that's who reminded
20:39
Speaker 1: me of. So he brings her ass too, and they
20:42
Speaker 1: conduct a couple of tests, one of which, well we
20:44
Speaker 1: should say real quick that while in the car after
20:47
Speaker 1: the sex act, the guy I guess took his shirt off,
20:51
Speaker 1: which oh yeah, you know, and uh leaves the shirt
20:54
Speaker 1: and the guy in the guy's car that picked him up,
20:56
Speaker 1: the guy realized that the shirts in there and just
20:58
Speaker 1: throws it in the trash police come the next day
21:01
Speaker 1: pick up the shirt from the trash. Right, which is
21:03
Speaker 1: pivotal because we should probably just cut to the chase here.
21:06
Speaker 1: Bill Dilon sentenced, He's convicted, sentenced to UM twenty six years,
21:12
Speaker 1: right or more? He served twenty six years UM and
21:19
Speaker 1: was he okay? So he serves twenty six years. In
21:22
Speaker 1: that time, the fingernails, scrapings, UM, other kind of biological
21:27
Speaker 1: samples are just completely destroyed, loss, thrown away. The only
21:32
Speaker 1: thing remaining from this case, which was in nineteen e one,
21:35
Speaker 1: long before any DNA testing was going on, UM, was
21:39
Speaker 1: that T shirt. Thank God for Bill Dylan. Bill Dilon
21:42
Speaker 1: starts representing himself per se UM and he's trying to
21:48
Speaker 1: navigate the seeds of UH post conviction appeal UM, and
21:54
Speaker 1: he keeps getting turned down because he's not following you know,
21:57
Speaker 1: legal formalities that kind of stuff. UM. Finally the Innocence
22:01
Speaker 1: Project heard about him because they had exonerated another guy
22:05
Speaker 1: who had been convicted based on a prison snitch, fake
22:10
Speaker 1: eyewitness testimony, and John Preston, the dog handler who turned
22:14
Speaker 1: out to be UM. As the Arizona Supreme State Supreme
22:17
Speaker 1: Court put it, a charlatan yeah. Well, can I say
22:20
Speaker 1: real quick what the test was that he did with
22:22
Speaker 1: the dog? Yeah? I can't believe they convicted a guy
22:24
Speaker 1: based on this. He got harassed too, and they made
22:28
Speaker 1: him sniff the T shirt and then they made him
22:30
Speaker 1: sniff some paper that Bill Dylan had held in his hand,
22:35
Speaker 1: and I guess harassed who reacted in such a way
22:38
Speaker 1: where John Preston said, that's your man. Harassed two smelled
22:42
Speaker 1: the two things and linked them. He was convicted on
22:45
Speaker 1: a dog's sniff, which, again we should say partially dog
22:50
Speaker 1: scent identification has never been proven, no and scientifically. And
22:55
Speaker 1: later on when the dude called him a charlatan, they
22:58
Speaker 1: did some testing and the dog failed. Her ass too,
23:03
Speaker 1: failed all these tests and test. Yeah, because you know
23:06
Speaker 1: he's got nothing against the guy, right and like I said,
23:08
Speaker 1: he has nothing on her ass one. So Bill Dylan
23:12
Speaker 1: sprung right, Um, because of the Innocence Project and because
23:16
Speaker 1: of the T shirt. I don't want to steal Polzans
23:18
Speaker 1: thunder Chuck, I assume you don't either, right. No, No,
23:21
Speaker 1: let's let her take us home. On Bill Dylan. The
23:23
Speaker 1: key piece of evidence that actually freed this man was
23:27
Speaker 1: DNA evidence and miraculously, a T shirt that had been
23:32
Speaker 1: worn the night of the murder by the alleged murderer.
23:38
Speaker 1: Um was kept in a courtroom by some court reporter. Um.
23:43
Speaker 1: This is long. You know, years ago they didn't do
23:46
Speaker 1: DNA testing and she just happened to keep this piece
23:48
Speaker 1: of evidence. Uh. William Dylan's attorneys were able to test
23:53
Speaker 1: it and guess what it wasn't his blood on the shirt. UM.
23:57
Speaker 1: So that that was the key part of overturning uh
24:00
Speaker 1: this this murder conviction. But you know, once again, he
24:04
Speaker 1: saw his countenance as he goes across the country telling
24:07
Speaker 1: people the legal system work. I'm a freeman today. Well,
24:10
Speaker 1: it worked been in his case, I would argue very
24:13
Speaker 1: slowly and cost him twenty five years of adult living
24:17
Speaker 1: that he could have enjoyed. That's unbelievable. I can't imagine
24:21
Speaker 1: anything like that. So Chuck, you like to think that, Okay,
24:26
Speaker 1: Bill Dylan, who by the way, um now gives lectures
24:30
Speaker 1: on how the legal system actually works, or else he
24:33
Speaker 1: wouldn't have ever been sprang. Yeah, that's hard to believe.
24:35
Speaker 1: He's not a better man, is on? Right? You? You
24:41
Speaker 1: would like to think that this guy is you know,
24:46
Speaker 1: a very he represents a very rare case. The evidence
24:50
Speaker 1: is that that's not true, that there's actually a lot
24:55
Speaker 1: of people in jail who are actually innocent. Right, Yeah,
25:00
Speaker 1: I've got a few stats just from what the Innocence
25:02
Speaker 1: Project has done thus far. Uh, there have been two
25:05
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty four you might have said this post
25:07
Speaker 1: conviction exonerations thanks to DNA in thirty four states. Um,
25:13
Speaker 1: Seventeen of those actually we're on death row or had
25:17
Speaker 1: served time on death row. Yeah. One guy came with
25:19
Speaker 1: him five days of being executed. Actually, that's crazy, could
25:23
Speaker 1: you imagine? No? No, Uh, two of the cases closed
25:29
Speaker 1: by the Innocence Project, we're closed because of lost or
25:32
Speaker 1: missing evidence. So these people might be innocent too, but
25:35
Speaker 1: there's nothing they can do about it because the evidence
25:38
Speaker 1: was destroyed. Um. The the Innocence Projects d DNA exonerations,
25:44
Speaker 1: it's not the only way you can be exonerated. No, right. Um.
25:48
Speaker 1: I read a study, uh that was written in two
25:51
Speaker 1: thousand four, and it was about exonerations from I think,
25:55
Speaker 1: uh to two thousand three. And Um. The author of
26:00
Speaker 1: his paper was saying that there that death row inmates
26:04
Speaker 1: in two thousand one hit a peak in the us
26:07
Speaker 1: representing one quarter of one percent of the entire prison population. Right,
26:12
Speaker 1: but death row inmates represented of the total exonerations for
26:17
Speaker 1: the fifteen years prior from four. Okay, So what this
26:23
Speaker 1: guy was saying was, Okay, there's two ways of looking
26:25
Speaker 1: at it. Number one, that death row inmates death row
26:28
Speaker 1: cases are actually more likely of being um wrongly imprisoned
26:33
Speaker 1: because of the pressure to catch somebody for a horrible
26:36
Speaker 1: crime and kind of thing. And he's saying that's probably
26:39
Speaker 1: correct to an extent. But he's saying the other hand,
26:42
Speaker 1: is probably correct as well, and that there aren't necessarily
26:47
Speaker 1: more death row inmates who are wrongfully imprisoned then in
26:54
Speaker 1: the general prison population. If that's true, right, that of
26:58
Speaker 1: the total population of exonerations that's true, then between Night
27:04
Speaker 1: nine in two thousand four, there should have been twenty
27:06
Speaker 1: eight thousand, five hundred non death row exonerations rather than
27:11
Speaker 1: two ye so potentially that many people are are rotting
27:16
Speaker 1: in prison right now, and thousands of people unbelievable. Another
27:21
Speaker 1: thing to dude is the Innocence Project is part of
27:23
Speaker 1: the larger innocence movement altogether, which is fifty nine affiliated
27:28
Speaker 1: law schools and programs that work with US and UH.
27:31
Speaker 1: A guy in Texas, David dow As a as a
27:33
Speaker 1: law professor at the University of Houston, and he's seen
27:37
Speaker 1: that in the last five years there, actually, he says,
27:40
Speaker 1: way fewer death cases and prosecutors are asking for death
27:44
Speaker 1: less and less because of the work of the Innocence
27:47
Speaker 1: Project and juries know about some of these exonerations. So
27:51
Speaker 1: he thinks beyond the exonerations that people are starting to
27:55
Speaker 1: become a little more careful and what they're trying to
27:57
Speaker 1: prosecute here, and well they should. I mean, we're talking
28:00
Speaker 1: about people's lives, you know, absolutely, let alone being incarcerated
28:05
Speaker 1: for a couple of decades. YEA. How they decide is
28:08
Speaker 1: they get thousands of letters from inmates that are sitting
28:11
Speaker 1: in prison that you know, say that they're innocent, and
28:13
Speaker 1: they say they range. The letters range from really formal
28:17
Speaker 1: and well written to one that came in in two
28:19
Speaker 1: thousand that said, simply, I am not the man who
28:23
Speaker 1: did this rape. All I want is to go home.
28:27
Speaker 1: He couldn't even like spell, and he did go home.
28:31
Speaker 1: His name was Ricky Johnson and a goal of prison
28:34
Speaker 1: in Louisiana, and he was freed thanks to the Innocence
28:37
Speaker 1: Project and DNA. So they have basically a bunch of volunteers, uh,
28:44
Speaker 1: including a high school teacher and a c l U veteran,
28:47
Speaker 1: former journalists and a poet who plow through these letters
28:51
Speaker 1: that they get and determined try and determine if they merit.
28:54
Speaker 1: And they don't do it on whether or not their
28:55
Speaker 1: heartstrings are pulled. They do it on whether or not
28:58
Speaker 1: there's actual DNA evidence still out there that they can
29:01
Speaker 1: work with, because if not, they're kind of, you know,
29:03
Speaker 1: fighting a larger battle. The problem is there's only UM
29:07
Speaker 1: only about half of all of the states have UM
29:11
Speaker 1: laws in place that that say you have to preserve
29:16
Speaker 1: evidence after a conviction. Right, in most cases, a conviction
29:22
Speaker 1: is made and it gets thrown the evidence gets thrown
29:24
Speaker 1: away or most of it does. Uh. And there's also
29:27
Speaker 1: even in states where you have to preserve evidence, either
29:32
Speaker 1: there's a statute of limitations where you're basically are just like, okay,
29:36
Speaker 1: it's been five years and the we we can throw
29:39
Speaker 1: it out and make room for more evidence, or there's
29:42
Speaker 1: no kind of penalty or UM I guess punishment for
29:48
Speaker 1: somebody who does throw away or destroy evidence from a case. Yeah,
29:52
Speaker 1: they passed. Didn't Congress pass something on that? Yeah, but
29:56
Speaker 1: it's called the uh the Justice for All Acts, the
29:59
Speaker 1: most metallica of all the acts. It was passing two
30:02
Speaker 1: thousand and four, and basically, UM it offers financial incentives
30:05
Speaker 1: to states that have programs where UM evidence is is maintained,
30:10
Speaker 1: and then they withhold money, uh from from states they
30:14
Speaker 1: don't have these programs. So it's a pretty flimsy carrot
30:17
Speaker 1: and stick when you're talking about something as important as
30:20
Speaker 1: wrongful incarceration. You know, I've always thought that the metallica thing.
30:24
Speaker 1: I always saw the Ride the Lightning Act was the
30:25
Speaker 1: most metallica. It's it's close. Yeah, so uh innocence projects
30:32
Speaker 1: huh Yeah, I think I had one more interesting note here.
30:36
Speaker 1: That's right, Uh, Barry Scheck, he is what he really
30:39
Speaker 1: wants the feather in his cap out of this. Eventually
30:42
Speaker 1: he wants to prove that a person has wrongly been
30:46
Speaker 1: put to death after the fact clearly. Oh, I'm sure
30:50
Speaker 1: he'll eventually be able to do that. And he's not
30:52
Speaker 1: done that yet. He came close a couple of times,
30:54
Speaker 1: but it has not yet happened. Yeah, and Chuck, look
30:57
Speaker 1: for a podcast from us on Capitol Hounishment sometime. We're
31:01
Speaker 1: gonna get into that. Yeah, man, So there's tons more
31:06
Speaker 1: on the Innocence Project, Like we're just this is just
31:09
Speaker 1: scratching the surface. They actually have a database of every
31:12
Speaker 1: single um DNA exoneration case person um. You can read
31:18
Speaker 1: about them, you can read about the work they're doing. Uh,
31:22
Speaker 1: it's just really interesting valuable stuff. Right. You can also
31:26
Speaker 1: watch the um Bill Dylan episode of On the Case
31:29
Speaker 1: with Paula is on on the Investigation Discovery website. Right one.
31:34
Speaker 1: I went and checked it out. It's from season two.
31:36
Speaker 1: It's called Killing and Canova Beach. Uh. If you go
31:39
Speaker 1: to uh investigation dot discovery dot com and search Canova
31:44
Speaker 1: Beach and in their handy search bar, it'll bring it
31:47
Speaker 1: up and you can watch it. And it's pretty cool. Yeah,
31:49
Speaker 1: and thanks to Paula's on for class in this turkey
31:52
Speaker 1: up a little bit. Seriously, this episode of stuff you
31:56
Speaker 1: should know. It's brought to you by go to Meeting
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Speaker 1: the Affordable way to meet with clients and colleagues for
32:02
Speaker 1: your free thirty day trial. Does it go to meeting
32:05
Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff. So chuck listener, Man, Josh, I'm
32:15
Speaker 1: gonna call this brightening days for our listeners and taking names.
32:20
Speaker 1: This comes to us from Becca, and Becca is a
32:22
Speaker 1: Facebook regular. She's cool, cool lady, h Hi, Josh and
32:26
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry. Of course, she says, you know those
32:29
Speaker 1: days when everything you touch think seges utterly and spectacularly wrong. Yes,
32:35
Speaker 1: that was my day to day. Here wass Becca's day.
32:37
Speaker 1: She gives a short version here the highlights. I woke
32:40
Speaker 1: up as awoken awakened at two am by the teenage
32:44
Speaker 1: son of the friends that I'm currently staying with to
32:46
Speaker 1: save on rent because I'm sleeping on a couch where
32:50
Speaker 1: his friends need to crash. I'm not sure I get that,
32:53
Speaker 1: but when is she's sleeping on a couch? Interesting? Since
32:56
Speaker 1: I had gone to bed in my own room, Apparently
32:58
Speaker 1: I started sleepwalking again because I woke up on the couch.
33:01
Speaker 1: Get yeah. I managed to make about four and seventy
33:04
Speaker 1: two stupid mistakes at work while also being slided, ignored,
33:07
Speaker 1: and or flat out insulted through email and Facebook throughout
33:11
Speaker 1: the day. Hopefully not no, no. Then I was off
33:15
Speaker 1: for my hour long drive to work to go to
33:17
Speaker 1: a nursing home until ten pm. She works at a
33:20
Speaker 1: nursing home, so she can get her nursing assistance license. Well.
33:23
Speaker 1: After five hours of being pooped on their figuratively and literally,
33:28
Speaker 1: I was finally the last student to finish my rounds
33:31
Speaker 1: as everyone had to wait for me. Was quick to
33:34
Speaker 1: point out that is having a bad day. Yeah, that's
33:36
Speaker 1: a day. At that point, I was totally wrecked. Didn't
33:39
Speaker 1: even make it out of the building before I burst
33:41
Speaker 1: into tears. Hour and a half drive ahead of me,
33:44
Speaker 1: I could barely see through the tears, and I was
33:46
Speaker 1: beating myself up for fear that I made a huge
33:48
Speaker 1: mistake by quitting my teaching job and changing careers. As
33:52
Speaker 1: I just happened to grab my iPod. You see where
33:55
Speaker 1: this is going. No, not if we made her feel
33:58
Speaker 1: worse than this is gonna be most pressing email lever.
34:01
Speaker 1: By the time I was finished with how midnight Regulations work,
34:04
Speaker 1: I was actually laughing at your discussion on the number
34:07
Speaker 1: of syllables in squirrel squirrel. Remember that one syllable squirrel squirrel.
34:12
Speaker 1: If you're from up North, it's squirrel, two syllables. Apparently,
34:16
Speaker 1: if you're Woody Allen, it's two syllable. Yeah he's from
34:19
Speaker 1: up North, New York. I can honestly say, I can't
34:22
Speaker 1: think of anything else that would have redeemed my otherwise
34:24
Speaker 1: crappy day. Thanks for making me laugh, guys for giving
34:27
Speaker 1: me something to do while I wait to put my
34:29
Speaker 1: scrubs in the dryer so I can do it all
34:31
Speaker 1: over again tomorrow from Rebecca. Thanks for writing in. Becca.
34:35
Speaker 1: At the very least, you're quite a go getter, so
34:38
Speaker 1: that's fantastic and we're glad we could turn that day around. Yeah,
34:41
Speaker 1: leaving her job as a teacher to work in a
34:43
Speaker 1: nursing home, so it's like she's covered either way on
34:47
Speaker 1: the good Samaritan front very much. So. If you have
34:50
Speaker 1: an email about a band day, chuck or a good day,
34:55
Speaker 1: well that's a good one too. If you have an
34:57
Speaker 1: email about the greatest day of your life, send it
35:01
Speaker 1: to us. We want to read it. Uh, you can
35:03
Speaker 1: wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
35:06
Speaker 1: it along on its way to stuff podcast at how
35:10
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
35:17
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35:20
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