Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / Wrongfully Convicted at 17 to Innocence Pardon: Dieter Tejada’s Comeback | Nightmare Success In and Out

Transcript

Wrongfully Convicted at 17 to Innocence Pardon: Dieter Tejada’s Comeback | Nightmare Success In and Out · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:00
  That feeling that I knew that I would how I would feel when I
• 0:03
  win, when I get there, when I get exonerated, when I get into
• 0:07
  law school, when I do the thing that people told me I can't do,
• 0:09
  that supposed to be impossible, how I will feel is what has
• 0:14
  dragged me through to these hardest accompaniments for me.
• 0:19
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:22
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy. Welcome to the Nightmare Success
• 0:25
  In and Out podcast. We explore how to overcome your
• 0:28
  fears and nightmares to set yourself free.
• 0:31
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:33
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:38
  These stories can be inspiring sometimes sad, there's some
• 0:42
  humor, but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of
• 0:45
  something that'll help you knock down some of the prisons you
• 0:47
  built up in your own mind. All right, welcome back
• 0:53
  nightmare success in that listers.
• 0:54
  This is where you come from. What happens when your worst
• 0:56
  fear becomes your reality. How do you adapt, survive,
• 0:58
  overcome, set yourself free, folks.
• 1:01
  Don't forget to follow, subscribe, share this thing out
• 1:04
  like it up. It really helps the show and I
• 1:06
  appreciate it. So who are we talking to you
• 1:09
  today on Nightmare success? Well, I've got to tell you, I'm
• 1:12
  talking to Dieter Tejada and I, I knew of him because we're part
• 1:19
  of the white collar support group.
• 1:20
  But he had posted it was either on Facebook or LinkedIn.
• 1:25
  And it was a story that had written, been written Yukon
• 1:29
  magazine, which he went to Yukon as a student.
• 1:33
  And I started reading. I thought, Oh my God, I got to
• 1:35
  get a hold of him. This is this is a great story
• 1:38
  and it's 1 and I was just telling him before we got on.
• 1:41
  It's one of those stories where, and I'll just jump into a little
• 1:45
  bit about what his story's about.
• 1:47
  He was at a party 17 years old, gets into a fight defending
• 1:51
  himself and he gets charges against him even though it was
• 1:56
  pretty clear that it was self-defense and they wanted to
• 1:59
  fight it. But as a lot of these cases come
• 2:03
  down to things he was looking at if you went to trial a maximum
• 2:08
  of 10 years. And that seemed like an awful
• 2:10
  lot to a 17 year old kid that had a, an acceptance to Yukon
• 2:13
  that he was hoping to, to continue to keep that acceptance
• 2:17
  letter. And he, he went ahead and pled
• 2:23
  and he served his time and he went to, he went to UConn did
• 2:27
  accept him. He then went to Vanderbilt Law
• 2:30
  School. He passed the bar.
• 2:33
  And as in a lot of cases, I've had a lot of different attorneys
• 2:37
  on here that have had to go through the scrutiny of Tara
• 2:40
  Simmons and Casey early and all these different ones.
• 2:44
  You can pass the bar, but that doesn't mean they're going to
• 2:46
  license you because of a conviction.
• 2:50
  One of the things that the bar had asked for is a copy of the
• 2:54
  police report. And I was just talking to Dieter
• 2:58
  about this. I don't know that he would have
• 2:59
  gone back, you know, 10 years plus to look at that police
• 3:03
  report, but he had to go get it because of what he was going
• 3:05
  through being examined. And he discovered something that
• 3:10
  there was 20 extra pages of exculpatory evidence that was
• 3:15
  being hidden from him in the first go around.
• 3:19
  So this up and up a whole thing. And, you know, in the end, we're
• 3:24
  I'm going to shortcut it here because I want to jump into this
• 3:26
  story and let Dieter talk about it.
• 3:29
  But in September 2023, Dieter was given a full, complete
• 3:32
  absolution, absolute unconditional pardon.
• 3:36
  And I just love the story because he did.
• 3:40
  He could have just stayed low, curled up in a fetal position
• 3:44
  and never have been to where he is today.
• 3:47
  So I can't wait to jump into all this.
• 3:48
  Before we do, I want to recognize our show sponsor, Auto
• 3:51
  Plaza Direct. You know who likes spending a
• 3:53
  couple of weekends walking car lots looking for a car?
• 3:56
  And he spent four or five hours of the dealership to buy a car.
• 3:59
  It's kind of like a root canal appointment.
• 4:00
  Well, there's a better way to take away all that pain and
• 4:02
  hassle getting a car. It's called Auto Plaza Direct.
• 4:05
  They your personal car concierge.
• 4:07
  Just tell them the car you want, what you can pay and they'll go
• 4:10
  find that car for you. They'll negotiate your best
• 4:12
  price. They also offer warranties and
• 4:14
  financing. It's awful service.
• 4:16
  Go to autoplazdirect.com to get started with your personal car
• 4:18
  concierge. The new hassle freeway the car
• 4:21
  buying experience you deserve. Auto Plazdirect telling Brent
• 4:23
  from Nightmare Success sent you folks.
• 4:25
  I want to share with you a powerful and moving new book you
• 4:28
  won't want to miss. My name is Saffron Voices
• 4:31
  silence stifled and taken away by author Saffron Gustafson.
• 4:35
  This isn't just a story. It's a journey through
• 4:37
  resilience, survival, and reclaiming your voice after
• 4:40
  being silenced for far too long. Saffron's story takes you
• 4:43
  inside. The hidden struggles, the pain
• 4:44
  and ultimately the triumph are refusing to be defined by
• 4:46
  circumstances. As Saffron was putting the
• 4:49
  finishing touches on her book, The Prison, she had just been
• 4:52
  released from Federal Dublin. FCI was permanently closed
• 4:55
  because of sexual abuse of the women prisoners.
• 4:58
  If you've ever wondered what it takes to rise from the darkness
• 5:01
  of places, to find your truth and to speak it boldly, this
• 5:04
  book will inspire you. Pick up your copy of My Name is
• 5:08
  Saffron today, available now on Amazon or wherever books are
• 5:12
  sold. Trust me, you'll be moved,
• 5:14
  challenged and changed by her story.
• 5:17
  Dieter. How you doing my man?
• 5:19
  Good, good. How are you?
• 5:21
  Good. Glad we were able to connect.
• 5:23
  This is so. And we just found out because I
• 5:26
  always tell people before we get started, there's a few buttons I
• 5:30
  have to push to get this thing all rolling.
• 5:32
  And I, I told Dieter, I said, you know, I'm left-handed so
• 5:35
  anything can happen. And he said yeah, I'm
• 5:37
  left-handed too. I said, but I've got a
• 5:39
  left-handed wife so we're both left-handed.
• 5:42
  And Dieter said yeah, me too. And I said I'm not even sure if
• 5:44
  you're supposed to do that. I'm not sure 2 left-handed
• 5:46
  people are supposed to marry, but I guess Julie and I have
• 5:51
  been 35 years now, so maybe it is OK to marry after 35 years.
• 5:57
  Stay within. Your side.
• 5:58
  Stay within your side. It works really well, though,
• 6:01
  when you're at a in a booth, you know, at a baseball game or a
• 6:06
  sporting event because you don't knock into the other person's
• 6:09
  elbow. So that kind of thing works out
• 6:11
  pretty well. All right, Dieter, let's talk
• 6:14
  about this. What I didn't talk Take us back
• 6:19
  before the 17 year old. What was life like for Dieter
• 6:22
  growing up? Where did you grow up?
• 6:24
  And before that night happened, what all was going on in your
• 6:28
  life? So I, I grew up in Norwalk, CT
• 6:33
  and for those that aren't familiar, it's in Fairfield
• 6:37
  County, somewhat of like a, a commuter town.
• 6:42
  Some people work in New York, some don't.
• 6:44
  School I went to was 33% Spanish, 33% black, 33% white,
• 6:52
  middle class mainly. And my parents were both
• 6:56
  teachers. My dad's Dominican immigrant and
• 7:03
  mom's white. That's why you get deeted hot.
• 7:05
  But it was, you know, pretty pretty standard.
• 7:09
  Was it a pretty good student, much better test taker than
• 7:13
  student for most of the time. But I was like class clown, a
• 7:18
  dorky little kid. I had friends, very average
• 7:23
  middle class existence until yeah, have a team.
• 7:28
  Siblings. Did you have siblings?
• 7:30
  I'm one younger brother. OK.
• 7:32
  So you got so there was two brothers in this whole scenario
• 7:35
  of the family. OK, so I, I've had some people
• 7:43
  on where things have happened as a teenager.
• 7:45
  And I, I always think it's fascinating how, you know, you
• 7:51
  can have laws where people can't, you know, they can't vote
• 7:57
  or they can't drink or they can't do this, can't drive.
• 8:00
  But in a lot of different cases, especially in state cases, they
• 8:06
  will immediately turn somebody into an adult to go through an
• 8:09
  adult world and put people in adult prisons.
• 8:13
  But when you were before this night happened, it would have
• 8:19
  been your senior year. Is that, is that right?
• 8:23
  Yeah, a senior. Year.
• 8:26
  So for you, everything's kind of going along as it should.
• 8:29
  You got your acceptance letter, you kind of know where you're
• 8:31
  going to college. You've, you know, seen your
• 8:34
  years, what it is, and you're at this party.
• 8:40
  So did did anything seem like anything was going to happen
• 8:44
  that night? No, no, no, it didn't.
• 8:48
  It was seemed like a, a, you know, regular high school
• 8:53
  weekend night. You know, we're hanging out
• 8:56
  drinking at a friend's house and I get a call on my phone.
• 9:05
  I knew something was up right away because it was a call from
• 9:08
  this girl. We had gotten into an argument
• 9:09
  the night before and it wasn't, it didn't end well.
• 9:14
  I had driven her to a party. I didn't drive her home.
• 9:16
  And I knew that like we probably weren't going to.
• 9:20
  Talk. Was this just a Dieter move?
• 9:23
  No, no, I was shocked. I was shocked that like that
• 9:27
  thing, I, I, I wanted things to go well, but I, I get this call
• 9:33
  and this kid starts, you know, immediately this guy, he is like
• 9:38
  a, he had like a New York accent, which I thought was
• 9:41
  strange because I knew he wasn't from New York and it was like it
• 9:44
  wasn't. And you didn't know him?
• 9:45
  No, I didn't know. I didn't know who he was at all.
• 9:48
  OK, got it. But he starts threatening me
• 9:50
  immediately and I just, I'll be honest, I just didn't, I was, I
• 10:00
  didn't, I didn't believe him. I didn't believe him at all.
• 10:02
  So I put him on speakerphone and I just started like laughing at
• 10:05
  him. And so many, many people heard
• 10:07
  this, which is like, funny too, because once the case happens,
• 10:10
  you know, it's like everyone, there were so many witnesses.
• 10:14
  Yeah. So many people that heard it, I
• 10:16
  mean, and now a lot of those witnesses, I, you know, I have
• 10:18
  statements they remember and threaten and then, you know, but
• 10:24
  other people can attest to this, that like, yeah, there's a your
• 10:28
  kid from why are you talking like a, like a, like a, a
• 10:30
  gangster from New York? Like it's not.
• 10:33
  So I didn't think, I didn't really think anything was going
• 10:35
  to happen that night. But he was serious.
• 10:37
  He was really serious. He ended up attacking me a
• 10:42
  little later on with a bat. OK, So what?
• 10:47
  Wait, so this was this at the party or were?
• 10:50
  No, so he how did. How did how did he get?
• 10:53
  How did he find you? So he didn't, he didn't find me.
• 10:56
  He he said at one point, you know, this is like, this is a
• 11:00
  conversation. It's like he's like, where are
• 11:02
  you? And I?
• 11:04
  I like an idiot. I immediately go, oh, I'm here.
• 11:07
  And then I'm like, shit, like my, you know, but I don't want
• 11:15
  my friend. My friend probably doesn't want
• 11:16
  him coming here. Right, right.
• 11:20
  Because I was interested in in in meeting him mainly just to
• 11:23
  like tell him to to mock it. You know, I was I was not a
• 11:28
  fighter, but I was somebody who was like this is guy deserves
• 11:31
  this is happening like Joe and I thought it'd be funny.
• 11:36
  And so, well, after telling him where I was, then, you know, I'm
• 11:40
  realizing I don't want you can't come.
• 11:42
  I asked him where he was and then he said he was at that
• 11:44
  girl's place. And so then I was like, oh,
• 11:47
  gosh, now I got to go over there because I know like, why?
• 11:49
  First of all, why is he calling me from her phone?
• 11:51
  Like I wanted to make fun of her, him in front of her.
• 11:54
  I like my intentions were not good.
• 11:56
  They were not great. I was going to make fun of this
• 11:58
  guy. Yeah, you're a teenager.
• 12:01
  Yeah, yeah. And he's threatening me.
• 12:03
  And it was like stupid and whatever, I, you know, I wasn't
• 12:07
  a perfect kid. I wasn't like, right?
• 12:08
  Your manhood. Is on the line.
• 12:10
  Everybody heard it right. I got it.
• 12:12
  I would suggest to anybody like I know like what that you want
• 12:15
  lesson on this. Don't do what I did.
• 12:17
  Kids don't go. It could be bad.
• 12:21
  It could, it could turn into bad things, Right?
• 12:23
  Yeah. Things can go really sideways
• 12:26
  and the outcome too won't necessarily know the full
• 12:30
  outcome until sometimes days years later.
• 12:35
  So I I ended up going over there.
• 12:37
  At first I was going to go over by myself, but he had threatened
• 12:40
  me so much because my friend was like, Nah, come on, I was there.
• 12:43
  All right, Maybe, you know, they'll come along.
• 12:45
  And so I had three girls, three guys accompany me in a car over
• 12:49
  there. We get over there, I get out of
• 12:51
  the car alone and four kids come out with bats and I'm start.
• 12:58
  I started getting worried. Yeah, I'm unarmed and I'm not a
• 13:03
  big guy. At that time I was like 58I grew
• 13:07
  a lot enough in college and like 120 lbs Max and this guy was a
• 13:13
  pretty big guy and. And you've never seen him before
• 13:18
  the until tonight. This guy was not somebody in
• 13:21
  Dieter's world. You've.
• 13:22
  No, I had no idea. No idea.
• 13:25
  These guys walk out with four bats.
• 13:27
  Yeah, yeah. That would be a bad thing.
• 13:31
  Yeah, it was, it was. I was I was pretty worried
• 13:35
  walking me to my friends, you know, by the car and join me out
• 13:43
  there. He puts the bat up against my
• 13:45
  head immediately. And so basically I'm at the
• 13:47
  bottom of a hill in the at the in the driveway.
• 13:52
  He comes down with the other guys and then he just starts
• 13:57
  saying which one used to hata. My other friends are both we're
• 14:02
  all Spanish, but they're more Spanish looking than I am.
• 14:05
  So he's like thinking it's one of them.
• 14:07
  I'm like, it's me. And then he's like puts the bat
• 14:10
  up against my head. And then I, I started getting
• 14:13
  really worried. I pushed the bat down.
• 14:16
  I say, can we talk? This was not going to my plan at
• 14:19
  all, right? And he wasn't interested in
• 14:23
  talking. So he just hit me in, in the
• 14:25
  stomach. And my Long story short, after
• 14:29
  he hits me, I'll get the air knocked out of me.
• 14:33
  He turns around to, you know, start laughing to one of his
• 14:37
  friends. One of my buddies runs over and
• 14:39
  hits him. We say Pandemonium's about to
• 14:43
  break out. You know, we're all there.
• 14:46
  He's, you know, we're outnumbered, out armed and, you
• 14:51
  know, clearly guy's willing to be violent.
• 14:54
  But luckily my, my, my friend stepped in.
• 14:56
  If he hadn't done that, I, I don't know what happened to me
• 14:59
  because he was about, he was going to turn back around.
• 15:01
  Sorry. And I know this because he did
• 15:04
  hit me more because I, you know, I, I remember it was, I
• 15:09
  remember. So it's crazy.
• 15:12
  Some of these things like they stick in your head.
• 15:14
  Like I can call. I don't even have to close my
• 15:18
  eyes. I'm back there.
• 15:19
  I'm sure some things are vivid and some things are a blur.
• 15:22
  Some things are because of the adrenaline rush.
• 15:25
  Yeah, exactly. And I had never been in a fight,
• 15:28
  so I was just like, oh, I just remember because it felt like I
• 15:31
  had a moment to like, think of like, oh, what do I do?
• 15:35
  Yeah, I I got to do something. Well, you don't usually practice
• 15:40
  for fights with bats and that kind of.
• 15:45
  He's getting back up, I see him getting back up and he's like
• 15:50
  leaning on the bat. I run over and I hit him, punch
• 15:53
  him and he falls back down. Luckily, what I didn't realize
• 15:58
  is that I wasn't as disadvantaged as I thought.
• 16:01
  He was bigger than me. He was way more violent than me,
• 16:05
  but he was also way more intoxicated than I found out
• 16:09
  later on, a lot many years later on that he had a cocktail of
• 16:14
  drugs in his system that not only incapacitated him to some
• 16:20
  extent, but probably definitely helped cause him to be more
• 16:24
  violent. He's somebody who has like a, a
• 16:27
  conduct disorder essentially. He was a psychopath, but they
• 16:30
  didn't like, they don't like to diagnose.
• 16:34
  They don't like to call kids psychopaths, but he was that.
• 16:39
  And so those drugs, though, essentially made it.
• 16:43
  That's probably why my punch. My punch shouldn't have knocked
• 16:45
  him down. It did, right?
• 16:48
  But yeah, after that, you know, he swings a bat at me, hits me
• 16:52
  in the legs. I get tired of that.
• 16:59
  I reached down, wrestled with him for the bat, pull it away.
• 17:03
  I hit him in the legs. Get man, walk away, throw the
• 17:09
  bat on the ground. He pops up immediately picks the
• 17:12
  bat back up. He starts saying, hey, yeah, you
• 17:15
  wanna fight? I might not.
• 17:16
  No, no, It's you lost. It's over forever.
• 17:20
  And that was that was the end of my thing.
• 17:22
  I ended up going straighten. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:25
  And I I'd like to me, that's pretty clear cut self-defense.
• 17:31
  Yeah. I'm threatened with deadly
• 17:33
  force. I respond.
• 17:37
  And you walk away. Yeah, and I walk away.
• 17:39
  He continues. To wanna engage with me.
• 17:42
  I refuse to do so. And Dieter, I know you said
• 17:46
  this, but so there's, there's six people that you were with,
• 17:51
  three girls and three boys, right?
• 17:54
  And then on his side with the bat people, there were four
• 17:57
  people that had. Bats.
• 18:00
  Yeah, there were the four, including himself.
• 18:02
  One of them. One of them was like a younger
• 18:03
  kid. I just.
• 18:04
  I was just trying to get a feel for how many witnesses were at
• 18:08
  that moment when all that happened, OK.
• 18:10
  Yeah. And then there was more like, so
• 18:13
  another car comes after that. After that another car comes.
• 18:17
  They had been at the party I I was at.
• 18:20
  I didn't, I hadn't. They were.
• 18:21
  Interested to see what was going on.
• 18:23
  Yeah, one of they had called like they talked to like one of
• 18:26
  the guys that had come over with me and they they came over to
• 18:30
  the house afterwards, OK, but they weren't, they had witnessed
• 18:34
  the beginning of. That OK, so that all happens.
• 18:38
  What's what else? What happens after this?
• 18:42
  So, you know, after this, we go home, we think it's, we're like,
• 18:48
  yeah, hey, that was great. It's over.
• 18:50
  Like we got, you know, guy, guy calls, threatens friends, he's
• 18:56
  attacks then, right. In a situation where we probably
• 18:59
  shouldn't have been OK, we're OK.
• 19:01
  Yeah, you guys were lucky. Yeah, He went back inside.
• 19:04
  Everything was, We thought everything was fine.
• 19:07
  We thought everything was good. We were like, yeah, like,
• 19:11
  probably deserved, probably shouldn't threaten people and
• 19:14
  attack them and thought nothing else of it.
• 19:19
  And then, you know, get a call a couple days later from the girl
• 19:29
  that has sort of been at the center of it initially.
• 19:34
  And she's like that Christ, like, I don't know what to do.
• 19:39
  Like the he, he went to the hospital and the police or or
• 19:46
  whatever now like to be frank with you, him going to hospital,
• 19:50
  it's a little bit unclear to me exactly what, what, why he went
• 19:58
  to the hospital. Yeah, 'cause you all were there
• 20:00
  he was. Overdose saying it seems like he
• 20:03
  had to be given antipsychotics when he got to the hospital,
• 20:09
  right. And as far as I understand from
• 20:12
  talking to medical, when people in medical profession, the only
• 20:15
  reason you would give somebody antipsychotics is if they are
• 20:21
  acting out of control aggressively, which does sound
• 20:32
  like the guy that I met. But yeah, I guess.
• 20:38
  So what did you say to the girl who was saying I?
• 20:40
  Was like, oh, right. Like she's like, what do I tell
• 20:43
  them? I was like, I, I don't like what
• 20:45
  do you mean? Like I don't.
• 20:47
  So I, they want me to, they want, they need somebody to, to
• 20:49
  blame. They need somebody to go down
• 20:52
  for this or whatever. I'm like, I like, what do you
• 20:55
  mean? Like, and she's like who likes,
• 21:00
  like telling me to like say like I like, she's like, I got to
• 21:03
  give him a name. Who should I say?
• 21:04
  I'm like nobody. What do you mean and I just said
• 21:12
  whatever you tell, just tell him the truth and she didn't do
• 21:15
  that. So eventually I go into the
• 21:20
  police, get a call from detective secretary walks where
• 21:25
  you come in my. Parents, did that surprise you,
• 21:28
  Dieter, that you got a call from the police from this event, Yes.
• 21:32
  Or did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:37
  But you, I guess you kind of had a little bit of a foreshadowing
• 21:40
  from her call. Well, from her call at that
• 21:43
  point, yeah. Something, something could
• 21:44
  happen, and then a couple of days later you get a call from a
• 21:47
  detective. Yeah, I wasn't as surprised
• 21:50
  after that, but I was surprised based on like that night.
• 21:54
  Exactly. But yeah.
• 21:58
  Please. So, so when you went down to see
• 22:00
  the detective, because there's I, I, you know, this goes into
• 22:06
  1100 prisons and there's a lot of people that listen to this
• 22:09
  about when you deal with police and detectives.
• 22:14
  Did you have representation when you went down there?
• 22:17
  Not at the beginning of the interview, midway through I did,
• 22:23
  but she and the I know this because the cop came in and told
• 22:28
  the detective his lawyer's on the phone.
• 22:31
  OK. And she didn't.
• 22:33
  She was like, OK. Waved him off.
• 22:37
  Yeah, Yeah. So we did.
• 22:38
  We just kept on talking. I didn't.
• 22:40
  I found out that I had a lawyer for sure afterwards when my
• 22:43
  parents said they had talked to the lawyer.
• 22:45
  So yeah, I mean, one of the lessons is I, I should not have
• 22:48
  gone in right and talked to them and the lawyer should have
• 22:54
  talked to a lawyer first for sure.
• 22:56
  Yeah. And.
• 23:01
  Which is great advice. We were, we were ignorant.
• 23:03
  We were ignorant. We thought like go and tell the
• 23:05
  truth. You know, I told my parents what
• 23:06
  happened at that point and you know, it's pretty clear cut
• 23:10
  itself. Well, here, here's what I think
• 23:13
  happens Dieter, is that so many people are not in ever in that
• 23:19
  situation. So they just feel like, well, if
• 23:22
  I can just talk to him about it, tell him what happened, then I
• 23:25
  can work all this out. It really doesn't work like that
• 23:28
  mostly ever because you have no idea what their angle is.
• 23:33
  The detective is a professional and you're not.
• 23:36
  And you have to have somebody that's also a professional that
• 23:40
  can handle whatever's going on because you have no idea what
• 23:43
  their angle is and you don't want to make any assumptions.
• 23:46
  But so many people just think, well, I'll just talk.
• 23:49
  All I got to do is talk to them. I didn't do anything.
• 23:52
  And if you if you've been tagged, they're taking every
• 23:55
  single word that you're saying and molding it into what they
• 23:59
  want it to be. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:01
  And they they certainly tried that with me.
• 24:05
  I mean, so I shouldn't have gone.
• 24:06
  And now granted, me going in didn't actually hurt me because
• 24:11
  the the detective wasn't she did a couple things.
• 24:19
  That one, I I know, I know that didn't hurt me because they lost
• 24:23
  my interview, they lost my recording.
• 24:25
  They lost everything about it. Why?
• 24:28
  Well, they lost a lot. They lost a lot of different
• 24:30
  witnesses in accordance. And the one thing in common that
• 24:34
  that seems, that would seem kind of common between the recordings
• 24:37
  that were retained and the ones that weren't is that, yeah, the
• 24:42
  if it was really bad for their case, they lost it.
• 24:47
  And yeah, I remember, I remember some of the questions the
• 24:50
  detective asked, like she said at one point she was like, well,
• 24:53
  what if we, what if I told you there was a video Now, Because
• 24:58
  at this point, I do believe that at one point early on in the
• 25:01
  case, the detectives were coming at it from a more honest angle
• 25:06
  where they really did think maybe I was at fault or
• 25:09
  something. So she said, what if there's a
• 25:12
  video, like a recording that would happen at the, the on the
• 25:18
  House? And I was like, believed her
• 25:21
  like, oh, great, that would be great.
• 25:23
  I'll just show you what I'm telling you.
• 25:26
  Awesome. And she, she, I remember, she
• 25:28
  was not, she was not happy with. That no, she didn't want that
• 25:31
  answer. No, no, no, that wasn't a good,
• 25:33
  that wasn't a good answer. But you know, she got they got
• 25:37
  more aggressive later on as the truth came out, they got more
• 25:40
  aggressive. You know, I, I have like I was
• 25:44
  actually looking over they have to, I'm still dealing with stuff
• 25:48
  for my case, but I was looking over the one of the to check one
• 25:52
  of the statements of one of the witnesses earlier.
• 25:57
  And this is so we were almost all minors, everybody that they
• 26:03
  questioned. And one of the witnesses, the,
• 26:07
  she was a 16 year old girl at the time and she went in and she
• 26:10
  told the truth. She said, you know, she said
• 26:13
  that I was attacked. She had seen the whole thing and
• 26:18
  they did not like her statement. Not one bit.
• 26:23
  Could I? Could I do you mind if I read
• 26:25
  you a part of of what she drives?
• 26:27
  Sure. OK.
• 26:29
  So she says. During my interview, I told the
• 26:35
  truth. Nick Schwartz started the fight
• 26:37
  by attacking Deeda Tata with a baseball bat and Deeda acting in
• 26:40
  self-defense. The interview was held in the
• 26:42
  detective's office. Two officers were involved.
• 26:45
  The female off detective and male officer who came in toward.
• 26:48
  Yeah, from the start, the detective was pressuring me to
• 26:51
  change my story. She kept saying things like so
• 26:55
  in other words, dear wanted to go to this house to fight.
• 26:58
  I answered no, that's not what I said.
• 27:01
  I even told her directly. You keep trying to get me to
• 27:02
  lie. I'm not going to lie.
• 27:04
  I told you this five times already.
• 27:06
  When the male officer entered, he joined in threatening me.
• 27:10
  They were extremely rude. I'm professional for a young
• 27:12
  teenage girl, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, so they went on to the The
• 27:18
  male officer told me, you're going to go down for this.
• 27:22
  You're going to get in so much trouble.
• 27:23
  All these people that are you're with are bad people.
• 27:26
  You're never going to amount to anything.
• 27:28
  Might as well kiss your future goodbye.
• 27:30
  And then they end up writing up a statement for her.
• 27:33
  Detective did this for everyone. She did it for me too.
• 27:35
  And I remember I reading over her statement.
• 27:37
  At that point, I was I was a dumb kid, but I wasn't that
• 27:39
  dumb. I was like reading.
• 27:40
  I was like, that's not even what I said.
• 27:42
  I'm not signing this. But in in the in this girl's
• 27:46
  case, her statement was more or less I guess what she did end up
• 27:53
  signing it. They end up it's one of the many
• 27:56
  pieces of evidence that was never turned over.
• 27:59
  I found out only a little while ago that the statement existed,
• 28:05
  but they wanted, they threatened to put her in jail if she signed
• 28:08
  it unless she changed it. And then they ended up calling
• 28:14
  her. So about a year later, this
• 28:15
  isn't again from her, her statement now, it's about a year
• 28:18
  later, Detective Ruggerio called me directly.
• 28:22
  She began in a fake cheerful tone.
• 28:23
  She said, hi, how are you? When I asked who it was, she
• 28:29
  said, oh, this is Detective Ruggerio.
• 28:32
  Do you Remember Me? Then the same insincere St.
• 28:35
  St. Mayer, She told me, I'm just
• 28:37
  calling to let you know you need to come into the PD so that we
• 28:40
  can arrest you. So they ended up arresting and
• 28:42
  falsely charging her 2. For what?
• 28:46
  A false witness statement or. Yeah, for like tampering or
• 28:49
  something. Wow.
• 28:51
  Yeah, it was a complete nonsense.
• 28:53
  Luckily she didn't. She didn't have to go to jail or
• 28:58
  anything, but it was, it was crazy.
• 29:01
  That's eye opening though. I mean, that's, that's some
• 29:03
  heavy stuff. When people at that age, you
• 29:06
  know, a teenager is being threatened, you're going to go
• 29:08
  down, they're going to get in trouble, you're going to get
• 29:10
  arrested. Dieter, what was the next thing
• 29:14
  that happened with this? You went in and you talked to
• 29:17
  they've they've interviewed witnesses.
• 29:18
  How long? How long did this whole process
• 29:21
  last for you? About a year and a half.
• 29:24
  A year and a half, yeah. And right afterwards, we went in
• 29:28
  and met with my lawyer and he said this is the truest thing
• 29:32
  that he said. I went in, I was like going to
• 29:37
  explain to him what happened and all that stuff.
• 29:40
  And he said he told my parents he was like, who do you know?
• 29:45
  Who do you know? Because that's how this guy
• 29:48
  operates. Who's talking about the
• 29:50
  prosecutor Now, that prosecutor is not unique.
• 29:53
  That is exactly how that prosecutor operated and how the
• 29:58
  police operated in this case. And unfortunately, we did not
• 30:03
  know the right people. We did not know, you know, it's
• 30:07
  like I've done a lot of one of the things I'm, I'd say for to
• 30:11
  do, I've done some stuff about like, you know, justice reform
• 30:15
  and also things on like lawful conviction, you know, out of,
• 30:19
  with kids. I've worked with a lot of
• 30:20
  different college students stuff over the years.
• 30:23
  And one thing I, I think I need to put together is like a, a
• 30:30
  flow chart of like, are you safe?
• 30:32
  Are you safe? Will you be lawfully convicted?
• 30:35
  And at the beginning too, it's like, OK, who do you know?
• 30:39
  Who do you know? Do you know anyone important?
• 30:41
  Are your parents lawyers? This kid and the kid who
• 30:45
  attacked me, his parents were lawyers, so it didn't matter
• 30:47
  that he was a psychopath who attacked me unprompted with a
• 30:51
  weapon that was irrelevant. That was fun.
• 30:54
  Relevant was that his parents were both lawyers and that they
• 30:58
  had connections and they could potentially help these people
• 31:01
  advance in their careers. Right?
• 31:04
  You are not you like if you think and if you think that like
• 31:08
  just because you're acting within the law that you're safe.
• 31:11
  Absolutely not Absolutely right. Very naive.
• 31:16
  So your your attorney says who do you know?
• 31:19
  You guys don't know anybody. What other advice did he have?
• 31:22
  Because I'm assuming at this time you and your parents are
• 31:27
  thinking we're going to go to trial because the kids innocent.
• 31:32
  I'm innocent. What was your thought?
• 31:33
  We. No, no, no.
• 31:34
  We still thought for a while that they was going to, you
• 31:37
  know, they might come no more more evidence was coming out and
• 31:42
  it kept on getting worse for the for the state's case.
• 31:46
  So we were thinking maybe they're going to like.
• 31:48
  Realize the charges. We're still so naive that we
• 31:51
  think like, maybe they're just, you know, it's a
• 31:53
  misunderstanding. And then, you know, more
• 31:54
  witnesses are coming forward. And it's like they're realizing
• 31:56
  that this isn't because at first they're thinking that like, I'm
• 31:59
  attack. I attacked this kid.
• 32:00
  I'm prompted and I beat him with a bat and all this other stuff.
• 32:04
  And, you know, eventually that's very clear.
• 32:07
  That's not what happened. But they didn't care.
• 32:12
  They changed the theory again and again.
• 32:13
  Eventually it became, well, if you hadn't gone there, none of
• 32:17
  this would happen. It's like that's not a charge.
• 32:21
  Like if I hadn't you can't. It has that extenuation.
• 32:25
  It it's not it's not close enough.
• 32:27
  It's not causation there. Yeah.
• 32:28
  If if I hadn't gone there and been attacked, sure.
• 32:33
  Yeah. Like it's just not how this
• 32:35
  works. But we thought that there was.
• 32:38
  You know, if you bring enough truth out that then you know,
• 32:41
  eventually they'll, you know. Drop the charges.
• 32:43
  Drop the charges. Yeah, that didn't happen.
• 32:46
  I know charges didn't. We all did.
• 32:50
  And it actually shortly after I got out of prison, they changed
• 32:54
  that law. It was, it was essentially a law
• 32:56
  that allowed the prosecutor to have the discretion to charge a
• 33:02
  minor as an adult in the case of a assault like this, which was a
• 33:07
  charge against me. And they they, they got they it
• 33:12
  couldn't happen. It was it was, it was funny.
• 33:13
  A lot of things like that happened in my life where it's
• 33:15
  like, really right after I get out, that can't happen anymore.
• 33:18
  OK. I just miss the ball, right?
• 33:21
  Just by a little bit. Yeah, but.
• 33:23
  Yeah, there's a law that was in California.
• 33:25
  I had a Jason Holland on the show and and there were four
• 33:30
  kids involved in this fight, high school kids.
• 33:34
  They charged all of those kids for the same.
• 33:38
  The kid was stabbed with a Swiss Army knife and it just happened
• 33:42
  to hit him at the right spot and he bled out.
• 33:45
  And they charged them all with murder.
• 33:47
  Murder. Now they that law has also
• 33:50
  changed, but all those four kids went to prison for murder, even
• 33:55
  though there was one person that did it.
• 33:57
  But anyway that that's that's another show.
• 34:00
  But so Dieter, at what point? Because, you know, going through
• 34:07
  all this is stressful. Going through all this at your
• 34:10
  age, being 17, senior in high school, wondering about the
• 34:15
  next, you know, roadshow of your life.
• 34:19
  What? What are you thinking?
• 34:21
  I thought my life was over at first.
• 34:24
  I thought my life was over. I mean, literally also, like, I
• 34:27
  wasn't sure I was gonna survive prison.
• 34:29
  Yeah. You know, I'm.
• 34:30
  I'm. I wasn't my.
• 34:33
  The culture. I was raped like nobody I knew
• 34:35
  had been to prison. Yeah, at that time.
• 34:38
  And it was. Yeah.
• 34:42
  It was supposed to be a very scary place.
• 34:46
  And yeah, I saw my life was over.
• 34:50
  Or eventually the writing on the wall became clear that they
• 34:53
  were. The prosecutor was going to make
• 34:55
  sure that this, you know, we had to, he had to do what?
• 35:00
  We had to make the, the the the other party happy.
• 35:05
  His parents. And so, yeah, eventually also,
• 35:13
  you know, the lawyers that were representing me were not
• 35:16
  interested in, probably they weren't really interested in the
• 35:19
  case I. Didn't really want to do a lot
• 35:21
  of work with I was, I was curious, how did they break it
• 35:25
  down for you Dieter on. I mean, did they break it down
• 35:30
  for you? Here's here's the here's your
• 35:33
  options. If we go this way, there's a
• 35:35
  good chance that we could do this because we got this, this
• 35:38
  and this or but you could get a maximum of 10 years.
• 35:42
  You know, if you decide to plead out, then this, this and this,
• 35:48
  and you can serve as much as a year and you know, you're going
• 35:52
  to have this on your record for the rest of your life.
• 35:54
  I mean, was, was, was there a talk like that that happened for
• 35:58
  you and your family or? Where were you with your there
• 36:01
  was it wasn't as and I'm going to law school now.
• 36:06
  So right. Pretty well.
• 36:08
  You're an attorney? So and I also been through this
• 36:11
  experience now and I would say that the talk that happened, it
• 36:15
  was very leading also like it was very clear.
• 36:21
  You knew which way he he wanted you to.
• 36:23
  Go. There was only one right answer.
• 36:25
  Yeah. And you know, Despite that,
• 36:30
  Despite that, still really wanting to go to trial because,
• 36:32
  you know, it's hard to get an an innocent person to plead guilty.
• 36:37
  It's really hard. Yeah.
• 36:38
  You know, some people, like, I think the majority of Americans
• 36:41
  can't fathom that that that would ever happen.
• 36:45
  Most people will say that. Wait, I would never.
• 36:47
  I would never. Why do I would?
• 36:48
  Why would I ever? Why would I ever plead guilty to
• 36:51
  something that I didn't do? Yeah, like maybe you don't.
• 36:55
  That's somebody that has never been.
• 36:57
  What I always say to people that say that is, is that's fine to
• 37:01
  say that that just means that you've never been in that
• 37:03
  situation and you don't know what you're going to do.
• 37:07
  Yeah, no. And I and I and I do know what
• 37:09
  they would do. You would plead, you wouldn't
• 37:12
  plead the first trial. But yeah, I was almost stupid
• 37:20
  enough to not plead even with a lawyer that didn't want to do
• 37:23
  it, didn't want to do the case. Yeah, I didn't want to put in
• 37:26
  the time he'd already been paid. And the thing was too is I was
• 37:30
  going off. I still they had to do so.
• 37:33
  You know, eventually I discover all this evidence that was
• 37:35
  hidden and I will tell you this, that evidence was hidden.
• 37:41
  They were right to hide it. Absolutely right to hide it.
• 37:45
  One you they did not want to go to trial.
• 37:48
  The state, of course they didn't.
• 37:50
  Why would you when you know that the guy's innocent, when you
• 37:52
  know they they knew too much about the case.
• 37:57
  They knew that he was a psychopath.
• 37:58
  They had that they didn't they they had the diagnosis.
• 38:01
  We didn't have it. They knew not to give that to
• 38:04
  us. Why would we?
• 38:06
  Because that's pretty good evidence that maybe the
• 38:08
  psychopath started it. There's a good, good chance that
• 38:12
  the. Chance at the night, who has a
• 38:14
  history of violence is the one who is literally like a a 1% of
• 38:18
  people, like scary person is the one who started it.
• 38:22
  Yeah, you probably don't want to have that evidence turned over.
• 38:25
  So even without that evidence though, I was still wanting to
• 38:28
  go to trial. Yeah, without those extra 20
• 38:30
  pages. And it but eventually they wear
• 38:33
  you down. They wore you down and then you
• 38:35
  feel like, you know, it's like when you're getting, you know,
• 38:38
  you see it in the movies, you're being, you see the person being
• 38:40
  questioned for like 20 hours, You know, if you'll just say
• 38:43
  this and we'll let you go home. It's almost like that with with,
• 38:47
  you know, they beat you down over a course of a year and a
• 38:49
  half and you just want it over. But the one thing that you don't
• 38:53
  know at that time until you have to live the rest of your life is
• 38:59
  that you're going to walk around with the scarlet letter that
• 39:01
  you're a convicted felon. And that's the part that you you
• 39:05
  think the the worst part is going to prison because I can't
• 39:09
  imagine the unknown world of having to live through that.
• 39:12
  I hope I can make it. You never even consider, Oh my
• 39:15
  gosh, I'm going to live the rest of my life as a as a convicted
• 39:19
  felon. What is that going to be like?
• 39:21
  So Dieter, you, you go ahead and you do the plea.
• 39:27
  I believe that you get a year. Was it a year?
• 39:31
  This is a state case. So you did a year something and,
• 39:35
  and tell me what your thoughts were as a young kid walking into
• 39:40
  that. Well, no, let's don't do that.
• 39:42
  Let, let's take a break 'cause I, I want to go into all that.
• 39:45
  Let's take a break here and, and we'll read a couple of our, our
• 39:49
  sponsors. A lot of people don't like how
• 39:52
  they show up online. Many individuals think there's
• 39:54
  no hope when it comes to managing your reputation.
• 39:57
  On Google, there is hope. It's called the Discoverability
• 39:59
  Company, and they can help you whether you're building a
• 40:02
  reputation from scratch or repairing your search results
• 40:05
  from a negative news story. Discoverability can also help
• 40:08
  you how you're portrayed on popular AI services like
• 40:11
  ChatGPT. To learn more, visit
• 40:14
  discoverability.co. Itsnot.com.co.
• 40:18
  Listeners of Nightmare Success can take $100 off with coupon
• 40:21
  code and Nightmare Success. Check this out.
• 40:23
  Drew Chapin knows what he's doing with all this stuff when
• 40:27
  it comes to managing your reputation.
• 40:29
  The Nightmare Success Podcast is sponsored by the White Collar
• 40:32
  Support Group, the world's first support group devoted to people
• 40:35
  navigating the white collar criminal justice system.
• 40:38
  I'm a member of the White Collar Support Group group, and I can
• 40:40
  tell you this is a bunch of people who can help each other
• 40:43
  through the criminal justice journey for free.
• 40:45
  Whether you're just starting your journey or you've made it
• 40:48
  through to the other side, this is great space for you.
• 40:50
  You can join us on Zoom Monday, 7:00 PM Eastern Time.
• 40:54
  For more information, go to prisonness.org.
• 40:57
  That's prisonness.org. OK, Dieter.
• 40:59
  So at this time, you're probably 18 years old.
• 41:04
  You're, you are, I guess, voluntarily surrendering to
• 41:11
  wherever you went. What?
• 41:12
  What's going through your mind? I remember, I remember it was,
• 41:19
  it was an emotional thing decision.
• 41:24
  It was like a date. It was one of many court dates,
• 41:26
  right? So you every court date for a
• 41:28
  long time after the initial court date was just a
• 41:31
  continuation. So this one was planned to be
• 41:33
  another one of these continuations, wait for an offer
• 41:36
  from the prosecutor. But instead I got to take it or
• 41:39
  leave a deal. It was like a couple days after
• 41:42
  my birthday and I looked at the deal and I was like, well, if I
• 41:50
  get early release, I finally was I finally kayed.
• 41:54
  I was like, fine, let's do it. He's like, you can do it now,
• 41:57
  You can take an hour or you could take it in a month or
• 41:59
  whatever. But I was like, well, maybe I'll
• 42:01
  get out in time to go back to school or something, and I just
• 42:06
  didn't, you know, I didn't know put.
• 42:07
  Your life back and you had the opportunity because UConn had
• 42:10
  not pulled the offer. No, they had it.
• 42:15
  So I took the deal and you know, they, you, they bring brought me
• 42:18
  into the court. And essentially it was, you
• 42:20
  know, when you, when you accept a deal like that, you know, I
• 42:23
  wasn't sentenced at the time, but they raised bond for me.
• 42:28
  So I get pulled out of court. You know, it's traumatic
• 42:32
  experience. Mom's crying.
• 42:33
  You know, you never forget images like that.
• 42:38
  And I remember it did not start well because I get pulled into
• 42:44
  the, into the, the, I guess the holding cells back there.
• 42:51
  And I, I, I remember it's like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm like in my
• 42:55
  street clothes still, but I got a little cuffs on and whatever.
• 42:58
  And this the, the, the, the, the, you know, bailiff forever
• 43:02
  is bringing me to for. And I hear this guy like, yo,
• 43:05
  don't put him in here. Don't put him in here.
• 43:09
  Put that little white boy in here.
• 43:10
  I'm gonna F them all. I'm like, oh man, really.
• 43:15
  Not even a day. Not even a day.
• 43:17
  Oh man. And so and the the bailiff did
• 43:21
  not care. She didn't care.
• 43:22
  Which was not making me feel better.
• 43:24
  It was making me confused. I was like, why is she not?
• 43:27
  Saying there's no one paying attention to.
• 43:28
  This clearly he's saying he's going to like kill me or
• 43:31
  something if I get put in there and she just like she mentally
• 43:34
  tell them shut up, move away from the door and I get pull put
• 43:38
  in there. I remember I'm like this and I
• 43:40
  see the guy. I'm like, holy, he's huge.
• 43:43
  I'm like, this is not going to go well, but I'm going to, you
• 43:45
  know, I'm going to try and I'm not going to die without
• 43:46
  something. And then he just starts
• 43:48
  laughing. And he ended up becoming a a,
• 43:50
  you know, good friend of mine for a lot of my stay inside.
• 43:54
  Ended up working out with him a lot forever.
• 43:58
  And so, you know, prison was a very, it's a very bad place.
• 44:05
  It's worse than most, at least the the state, you know, I was
• 44:10
  in a state in, in, in state prisons and it was not, they
• 44:14
  were not clean. They were not clean at all.
• 44:17
  They were not, not, not very humane.
• 44:20
  Of course there were people, you know, prisoners, some of them,
• 44:24
  you know, you have issues and things.
• 44:26
  But and to be honest with you though, the more stuff with some
• 44:30
  of the guards, some of the guards were fine, absolutely
• 44:33
  fine, all the people. Yeah, that's what I always say,
• 44:36
  Dieter, is that that there was some really bad CE OS at
• 44:40
  Leavenworth, but then there were, you know, some that
• 44:44
  weren't. You know, we had a, you know, a
• 44:47
  good counselor and a bad counselor.
• 44:49
  You know, there was Goodwin and Swanson and Swanson was the
• 44:51
  devil and Goodwin was good. And you know, it's really
• 44:55
  strange. Like, I had like, a visiting cop
• 44:58
  with my family come visit and we had this one guy, Hudson, that
• 45:01
  made my family so comfortable and made them feel not so
• 45:05
  nervous and was so nice. And we had this other one that
• 45:08
  turned them away three times after driving there for 4 1/2
• 45:11
  hours. That's the, I mean, polar
• 45:15
  opposites that you live with in prison is, yeah, they're not all
• 45:20
  bad. That's the ones that are bad.
• 45:23
  It really feels bad. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:27
  So I I know what one of the things that was in the article
• 45:30
  that caught my attention was the first time you brought it up to
• 45:34
  somebody that you wanted to be an attorney was to somebody that
• 45:38
  worked in prison, that I think it was a prison counselor.
• 45:41
  And he laughed at you. Yeah.
• 45:42
  Yeah, I remember he laughed at me.
• 45:45
  He laughed at me a couple of times.
• 45:47
  He laughed also because I was like, I was like, I want to
• 45:49
  apply for early release. He laughed and he said part of
• 45:54
  me is why he laughed. He was right to laugh on that
• 45:55
  one. Maybe because like my charge was
• 45:57
  actually in the system wrong. I was.
• 45:59
  It was showing that I was convicted of assault on an
• 46:01
  elderly and I wasn't. That was a whole another thing
• 46:05
  my parents. That didn't happen, right?
• 46:07
  Yeah, but he laughed at me over the the the lawyer thing.
• 46:12
  And I would say it hurt, but it I was already at a point where I
• 46:18
  decided that like, I'm not going to let the world defined me.
• 46:26
  I mean, if, if we're getting into like, what, what did I
• 46:28
  learn from this? Like what was the good that came
• 46:30
  out of this experience was that I was a kid when I went in.
• 46:33
  I was a kid who was very didn't have the best self esteem.
• 46:38
  I was very concerned with what others thought about me.
• 46:43
  And the freeing part of this was that I'm on the inside now.
• 46:46
  And after, especially after sentencing, it's like, why would
• 46:52
  I care what people think about me?
• 46:53
  They literally, I'm being, I'm being, I'm being persecuted.
• 46:57
  I mean, I'm being, I'm being thrown away over something that
• 47:01
  like, I know, you know, because you don't know, sometimes like,
• 47:04
  well, maybe people have a reason not to like me or whatever.
• 47:06
  But in this case it's like, I know you're wrong.
• 47:09
  I didn't even do this thing right.
• 47:12
  And and so, you know, the freeing thing was like, well,
• 47:15
  you know, and I, and it was like, I don't know, will I ever
• 47:17
  win the back over? I was like, I don't care.
• 47:21
  I don't care. I can't care about that.
• 47:23
  I'd like who, who. Like what I found that I cared
• 47:26
  about was what I need to care about is who do I respect
• 47:30
  myself? And I decided that I wanted to
• 47:33
  do certain things in my life and that I wouldn't respect myself
• 47:36
  unless I try. I love that so and and you know,
• 47:41
  that's the whole thing. Is that action step of trying.
• 47:45
  Yeah, I, I, you know, the thing Dieter too, is that a lot of
• 47:48
  people when they're released from prison, they're released
• 47:51
  back into the community. Re entry is tough and and and
• 47:54
  being around people. You got released and you went to
• 47:58
  college and. Ankle bracelet at first.
• 48:01
  That's what I was going to say. You went to college with an
• 48:03
  ankle bracelet on, not caring what people think.
• 48:08
  Did that continue on? Well, to the warning center.
• 48:13
  Now I've realized you got to care a little bit what people
• 48:16
  think, or you should. I care what I care what people
• 48:19
  think only in so much as like, what will they allow me to do?
• 48:22
  If you're not going to let me do something 'cause you think I'm a
• 48:24
  bad person, then I'd rather try and make you think I'm not.
• 48:28
  Right, right, I got it. Yeah, but so, yeah, you know.
• 48:31
  What was that? I guess what I my the better
• 48:34
  question, Dieter, what was it like getting back into a college
• 48:39
  environment? All of a sudden things this is a
• 48:41
  community of of people that are a certain age doing certain
• 48:46
  things and you just got released from prison.
• 48:51
  Do people know about it? Do do you talk about it?
• 48:54
  Does it? How does this hang in your life?
• 48:58
  So originally I go back to new con stores and I wanted my life
• 49:03
  just to go right back to how it was.
• 49:05
  And that lasted about a week and a half because I was on parole
• 49:10
  at 1st. And then actually by the time I
• 49:12
  went back to school, I take a semester off because I didn't
• 49:14
  get out in time to go back to school.
• 49:16
  And then, but when I'm back now I have a probation officer and
• 49:20
  the Parisian officer up there, she had, I had my ankle bracelet
• 49:24
  on and 16 months out electronic monitoring after, after my
• 49:28
  sentence. And the way it was going to work
• 49:31
  was I was going to have to go to class.
• 49:33
  I could go to class, but then I had to be leave the house
• 49:37
  tomorrow to class. Then I had to be back within
• 49:40
  like 15 minutes. And I lived like 14 minutes from
• 49:44
  campus. Oh God.
• 49:45
  And I was, and it was just, it was very apparent that this was
• 49:49
  not going to work out. This lady would I was going to
• 49:51
  go back to jail because she was going to violate me.
• 49:53
  You know if you get any they can when you're all probation.
• 49:57
  You're looking for if you got. If you got a probation offer
• 49:59
  just looking for a reason. Any reason works.
• 50:01
  Yeah, and so I ended up transferring to a Yukon
• 50:06
  Stanford, which is a commuter smaller like a a branch of of
• 50:11
  the main campus. And I didn't tell people about I
• 50:18
  had more pants so they couldn't see my ankle bracelet.
• 50:21
  Yeah. And I didn't tell people for a
• 50:22
  while. I remember I finally one day I,
• 50:26
  I told I'd have to get close to somebody before I told them.
• 50:30
  And then one day I was in AI had an art class.
• 50:32
  It was like a art, I don't know, like art history or something.
• 50:35
  For whatever reason, there was like a final project that was
• 50:38
  tell us something about your life.
• 50:40
  And I don't know. I remember if I had to go
• 50:42
  PowerPoint presentation or something.
• 50:43
  But all I remember is I went in and I was like, I'm just going
• 50:47
  to tell him about what happened with me.
• 50:51
  I told him about it. I told him like what I wanted,
• 50:54
  wanted to do afterwards and I just told them about the whole
• 50:56
  experience and it was, it was a very freeing, it was a good
• 51:01
  experience. It was really, it was good to do
• 51:04
  that. I felt a lot better.
• 51:06
  Isn't that interesting, Dieter how that works 'cause it to me.
• 51:12
  I know I wrote a book and that was cathartic, but it's it does
• 51:19
  take a lot of weight off of you of of the pressure of do they
• 51:22
  know? Do they not know?
• 51:23
  Do they know? You know, it's that if you if
• 51:26
  you lead with it and you know, I had this happen to me and I want
• 51:30
  to go into law and This is why I want to do it.
• 51:33
  It it kind of gives a whole nother new reason and passion
• 51:37
  for your life that people can cheer for and maybe understand
• 51:41
  more than than finding out about it and somebody gossiping or
• 51:45
  something. You know, it's, it's, it's, it
• 51:46
  feels different. Yeah, It's a shame because in
• 51:50
  law school, this was an undergrad.
• 51:52
  When I went to law school, I ended up not doing that.
• 51:54
  I ended up going back to not telling anybody about it because
• 51:58
  different. Schools This was Vanderbilt.
• 52:00
  Yeah, at Vanderbilt they it was a couple days after I get there.
• 52:05
  So I've been I had to did. You have any problem getting
• 52:08
  into law school because of your record?
• 52:11
  Yes, yes. So I, I, like, I, I figured out
• 52:15
  what I need to do to go to law school.
• 52:16
  And essentially it's the same thing now.
• 52:18
  You need to do well in school. Well, to go to a good law
• 52:22
  school, you need to do well in school, get good grades and you
• 52:26
  need to take the LSAT and do well on the LSAT law school
• 52:30
  admissions test. And so I did that.
• 52:35
  I did well in school. I was interned and stuff and I
• 52:38
  worked all through college and I took the LSAT and I took it
• 52:44
  twice. First time I got 162.
• 52:47
  It's a pretty good score. I was like, let me try it one
• 52:50
  more time and I did it and I got a 175, which is a very good
• 52:54
  score. It's 99.5 percentile.
• 52:57
  And if you have that score, you. I thought I was like, I'm going
• 53:01
  anywhere. I want anywhere.
• 53:03
  And I would have, but not really because I have that conviction.
• 53:09
  But I did get into Vanderbilt. Excellent school.
• 53:13
  Yeah, they gave me a scholarship.
• 53:15
  I was very happy about it. But then I I was on probation
• 53:19
  still and I. Did they bring up your
• 53:23
  conviction, Vanderbilt at all? Did they know?
• 53:26
  Yeah. So I wrote about it in my.
• 53:28
  OK. So you actually LED with it
• 53:30
  there? Yeah, yeah.
• 53:32
  I didn't say I was wrongfully convicted at that time because I
• 53:35
  wasn't, you know, you. Weren't there yet.
• 53:38
  Yeah, and I, but I, I remember I, I was on probation and I, I
• 53:48
  would have, I looked like I wasn't gonna be able to go.
• 53:50
  I need to get my, something happened with probation where
• 53:53
  they didn't do a transfer of paperwork so that I could be
• 53:57
  transferred down to Tennessee. So essentially I had only one
• 54:00
  option. I had to try and get off
• 54:01
  probation early. Now, I'd already done all my,
• 54:03
  you know, they had given me like 200 hours community service.
• 54:06
  I had done like 500 hours within the first year and I had done
• 54:11
  all my conditions. I was off the bracelet or
• 54:13
  wherever, but I still needed to apply to get off early because I
• 54:16
  had about like another six months.
• 54:19
  By the time school would have started, I would have had
• 54:21
  another six months of probation. And so I went back and I filed a
• 54:27
  motion to get off probation. And on my court date, I go in
• 54:34
  and they tell me that the prosecutor wants to see you in
• 54:37
  his office before. And so I go up there and I
• 54:47
  remember he didn't look up from the desk.
• 54:49
  It's like, Tata, Tata, it's like, I'm going to have to argue
• 54:54
  against your motion. And I was like, OK, why?
• 55:02
  And he snapped. He snapped.
• 55:04
  He was like, because we had a deal, we made a deal.
• 55:10
  I was like, no, we didn't make a deal.
• 55:14
  I was 17 year old kids here, like I didn't know the deal made
• 55:17
  in bad faith. And he said, well, what about
• 55:21
  that? Here's the here's the deal.
• 55:23
  Why? Or I send you back to prison.
• 55:27
  And I, you know, I knew I would have known logically that you
• 55:33
  can't send somebody back to prison for that.
• 55:36
  What is that? Nothing.
• 55:37
  Nothing. I hadn't done anything.
• 55:38
  All I've done is filed a motion. Yeah, like the girl that they,
• 55:43
  it's like the girl that was the witness that they've hassled
• 55:47
  because she was just being a witness.
• 55:48
  Yeah, yeah. I was scared though, so I would
• 55:51
  threw my hands up. I was like, what do you want
• 55:53
  you? Get you have PTSD over Dieter,
• 55:54
  that's one of the things they that really happens.
• 55:58
  I mean, it's a really bad thing to go through and you don't want
• 56:00
  to be threatened with something else.
• 56:02
  Yeah. And he, he was powerful.
• 56:05
  He had proven that he had. He had done what he had done in
• 56:07
  prison. Time with him, yeah.
• 56:09
  Yeah, So I was scared. He let me do my he said he, he
• 56:13
  he was like, I'll let you do your little argument.
• 56:18
  He we came to that after he he calmed down.
• 56:21
  I guess the problem was, is this right?
• 56:26
  So I knew from the beginning when I went to a law school and
• 56:29
  all the other stuff, I also wanted to get exonerated always.
• 56:33
  But I knew I was going to have to play a little bit of a game.
• 56:35
  I was going to have to not talk about it all that much until I
• 56:40
  get it done. And I was going to have to when
• 56:43
  I went in there. You know, I know I'm wrongfully,
• 56:45
  I know that he knows what he did, but I can't.
• 56:49
  I'm going to pretend that like I'm just here for whatever the
• 56:52
  problem was. He could see it in my eyes.
• 56:54
  He knew that I was going to law school.
• 56:55
  He didn't like that. He was smart.
• 56:57
  He knew that. Like, that's not necessarily a
• 56:59
  good thing that this guy goes to law school.
• 57:01
  He's going to get. He's going to know more and more
• 57:03
  and more. We'll try and fight the case
• 57:04
  some way. Who knows?
• 57:06
  I think I, I'll give, I'll grant him that, that he might have
• 57:08
  been willing, he might have been able to see that because he did
• 57:10
  try his best to stop. The judge ultimately sided with
• 57:15
  me in my little argument and I was able to go to law school.
• 57:21
  But he did do one other thing. So I get a letter to the law
• 57:26
  school three days late, three days into the classes.
• 57:30
  I I get pulled. I get called to the Dean's
• 57:32
  office. Dean pulls out this letter.
• 57:34
  He's like, you got this letter. It's anonymous.
• 57:39
  And it was a letter just tearing me down.
• 57:41
  It was just saying, you know, I can't believe it was just like
• 57:44
  telling Vanderbilt, I can't believe you let this kid in
• 57:47
  here. You know, he's gonna, he's
• 57:48
  gonna. He's.
• 57:50
  Oh, this is an anonymous letter, though nobody signed it.
• 57:52
  Yeah, nobody. OK, There's only a couple people
• 57:55
  that could. OK.
• 57:58
  And it was interesting timing because it was shortly after
• 58:01
  that case, like, yeah. Anyways, that letter the the
• 58:07
  Dean, to his credit was just saying, listen, I'm just letting
• 58:09
  you know that this happened. We're not going to do anything
• 58:13
  about it. We just want to let you know.
• 58:15
  And just in case they like, you know, something escalates, like,
• 58:18
  I don't know, somebody writes an article or something, but it,
• 58:23
  it, it, it shook me. It rocked me, that letter, it
• 58:27
  really messed me up. So, you know, kudos to whoever
• 58:30
  made that letter. They got what they wanted and it
• 58:33
  shot me up. So I stopped tell I didn't tell
• 58:36
  anybody about what happened. Of course people found out, but
• 58:40
  I didn't tell anybody about my story, which was not good for
• 58:44
  me. And it probably think it's
• 58:47
  something, you know, in the years since I've shared my story
• 58:51
  a lot with lost, not not many podcasts, but but with like law
• 58:57
  schools and got a lot of work with law schools, law students
• 59:00
  and stuff. And, you know, I feel like they
• 59:02
  get a lot out of it, but I didn't share it while I was in
• 59:06
  school. So you get out of law school and
• 59:13
  like every good law school student does is they study for
• 59:17
  the bar exam. They take the bar just as you
• 59:21
  did. And but you know that by doing
• 59:25
  this, you've just put yourself in a spin cycle with the bar
• 59:32
  because you passed the bar, but that didn't mean that they were
• 59:35
  going to license you as an attorney.
• 59:37
  So what happened? Yeah.
• 59:39
  So the whole whole trip, I didn't know in advance, like
• 59:44
  when I was applying law school, I didn't know about the
• 59:47
  licensing process afterwards really.
• 59:52
  But yeah, essentially I went go to take the bar.
• 59:55
  So at first I was going to I had a job down in Florida and I find
• 59:59
  out what I'm applying when I'm about to apply the Florida bar
• 1:00:03
  that because of my conviction, I'm probably they're not going
• 1:00:06
  to my case isn't even going to come before them for like a year
• 1:00:09
  and a half. And it's not likely that I'll be
• 1:00:11
  licensed. And so I essentially had to, you
• 1:00:16
  know, now I don't have a job going to re rethink about what
• 1:00:19
  I'm going to do. And so I take I end up taking
• 1:00:23
  the bar, I end up taking it in in Connecticut and it's a
• 1:00:30
  uniform bar. So it like applies everywhere
• 1:00:33
  and I end up passing 98 something percentile and it
• 1:00:38
  means I can technically 40 something states are on the Ubi
• 1:00:43
  would be able to practice everywhere based on my score.
• 1:00:49
  But I had applied to New York and Connecticut at the same
• 1:00:54
  time, Connecticut first. So I had had to hire, I hired an
• 1:00:59
  attorney to help represent me. And so I they were like go
• 1:01:03
  forward with Connecticut first. My shortly after passing, I get
• 1:01:09
  a letter from them saying like, we're going to have to have a
• 1:01:11
  hearing. We're not letting you through.
• 1:01:12
  We have to have a hearing or we have to like we need more
• 1:01:14
  information. And so this starts this like
• 1:01:17
  long process of them asking me for all types of things my bar.
• 1:01:23
  You and I talked a little bit about this, Dieter, before we
• 1:01:25
  ever hit the record button. Going back into that stuff is
• 1:01:29
  not really easy to do. You know, you kind of put that
• 1:01:32
  stuff away, you move forward, you try to create yourself a new
• 1:01:37
  life and all that. But when somebody tells you,
• 1:01:38
  hey, you got to go back, open up that closet, get back into that
• 1:01:41
  box and you got to pull a ball back out, it's kind of like
• 1:01:44
  reliving it all. But you did it, which I'm really
• 1:01:47
  proud of you for that because a lot of people would just say
• 1:01:50
  it's just too much. I just, I don't know what I was
• 1:01:52
  thinking going down this path. I'll just have to figure
• 1:01:54
  something else out. But you didn't do that and you
• 1:01:58
  didn't do that. And by the hassle that they made
• 1:02:01
  you do by looking for the stuff that they asked for, it actually
• 1:02:06
  opened up another opportunity for you.
• 1:02:09
  Yeah, yeah. So they, they asked for one of
• 1:02:11
  the things they they wanted was for my conviction and I had told
• 1:02:15
  them about it. They wanted a police report, but
• 1:02:23
  they need to be certified like new.
• 1:02:26
  I could I have, I had like a, oh, I had the police report that
• 1:02:29
  we had had back when copy that my lawyer had given me, but that
• 1:02:35
  wouldn't cut it. I needed one from the Police
• 1:02:37
  Department directly. And so I was pretty happy when
• 1:02:44
  they said that I needed that because I knew I was like, well,
• 1:02:49
  I can go, this might be good for me.
• 1:02:52
  That I'd always been trying to like work on my case a little
• 1:02:55
  bit or trying to figure out a way to get exonerated.
• 1:02:58
  And I, you know, I suspected, I knew that some stuff had been
• 1:03:03
  done wrong in my case. I, I knew that they knew that I
• 1:03:08
  was innocent. And I knew that there was some
• 1:03:10
  evidence where it's like where, where this doesn't exist.
• 1:03:15
  Why wait, wait, wait, wait. Are we missing anything?
• 1:03:19
  And so I knew going back to the police, I was like, well, you
• 1:03:22
  know, they would never have given me if I started snooping
• 1:03:24
  around over there on my own, they would not give me it.
• 1:03:28
  I, I suspect it. And I'm pretty sure my
• 1:03:30
  suspicions were like, well, I know because I tried.
• 1:03:33
  I asked them and they were like, no, we can't.
• 1:03:36
  And then I was like, well, it's not for me.
• 1:03:38
  It's for the unfortunately, the Connecticut bar really needs
• 1:03:42
  this information and yeah, they need it.
• 1:03:45
  Sorry. And so I after a while, they,
• 1:03:52
  you know that first they tell me that we don't, we don't, we
• 1:03:55
  can't find anything. We can't find you in our system.
• 1:03:57
  I was like, what? The felony charge?
• 1:04:00
  Westport, CT. Not even that many.
• 1:04:04
  You guys don't have pops up everywhere else you found?
• 1:04:06
  Out like, why would it not be in your system?
• 1:04:08
  And I and, and so another, there's another, it's not in
• 1:04:12
  their sit. They can't find it.
• 1:04:15
  Oh, now I'm really feeling like this might be good what I get.
• 1:04:18
  And by good, I mean like it. You'll see.
• 1:04:23
  So I, I, I go eventually they find they, they, they, they a
• 1:04:28
  couple weeks later called me back.
• 1:04:30
  I kept on bothering them. And she's like, OK, we found, I
• 1:04:33
  found it, found it somehow. And we have to redact some
• 1:04:41
  names, some minors in the case, but I go to but you can come
• 1:04:46
  into the station and get it. So I go over there and I know
• 1:04:49
  like I have a feeling that something that I'm going to get
• 1:04:54
  like I might discover something big.
• 1:04:56
  So I start recording to just my my right before I go in describe
• 1:05:03
  what's happening and after I come out.
• 1:05:06
  So I when I go in and get the thing, it's I feel immediately,
• 1:05:11
  I feel the weight of it. I'm like, this is heavy.
• 1:05:15
  This is a lot heavier than the report that I have report I had
• 1:05:19
  had been around 20 pages. Get back to the car, open this,
• 1:05:23
  open the envelope up and it's 40 something pages.
• 1:05:28
  Like what is this? And it's not like the words are
• 1:05:31
  much bigger. And I start reading and I start
• 1:05:36
  reading past the part that's where my report had ended.
• 1:05:40
  And I start finding some things that are very interesting that I
• 1:05:43
  didn't know that, that or that maybe I suspected, but I didn't
• 1:05:47
  know. And they had, they had always
• 1:05:49
  had this. This had existed.
• 1:05:51
  This report was written, was finished in May of 2008.
• 1:05:56
  Never turned over to us. I wasn't, I wasn't sentenced
• 1:05:59
  until 2009, late 2009. They had it.
• 1:06:03
  They never turned it over and for good reason.
• 1:06:07
  For good reason. There was stuff in there that
• 1:06:10
  they did not. If they're they're the the
• 1:06:13
  easiest way to get a wrongful conviction.
• 1:06:15
  This is one of the sad things too.
• 1:06:16
  We have there's so many wrongful convicts.
• 1:06:19
  More of the people, more than even the even the highest
• 1:06:22
  estimates are missing a big piece of it because they don't
• 1:06:26
  count plea deals. They don't they don't consider
• 1:06:29
  how many more are pleased, right?
• 1:06:32
  It's way more, way more plea deals, probably because those
• 1:06:36
  are also the hardest ones to overturn.
• 1:06:38
  And there it's an easiest way to get somebody convicted.
• 1:06:41
  If you have a bad case, if you have somebody who's innocent,
• 1:06:45
  you don't want to go to trial, you probably don't have a great
• 1:06:47
  case. If if, if they're.
• 1:06:48
  Yeah. Offer them a plea deal.
• 1:06:49
  Yeah, get them, get them to plea, get them to play and yeah,
• 1:06:52
  offer them a plea deal and then make sure that if there's
• 1:06:54
  evidence in there that won't that they're right.
• 1:06:56
  If I would have seen any of that evidence, if I and I showed it
• 1:06:59
  to my my Co defendant, none of us would have taken a deal.
• 1:07:01
  No deal, absolutely no deal. If one of these pages was was
• 1:07:05
  shown to us before. So they made the right decision
• 1:07:07
  to hide that stuff. And I know that they know that
• 1:07:10
  because I actually had to go back one more time to get it
• 1:07:15
  another copy of the police because I turned it into the bar
• 1:07:19
  and it was missing a page. The bar is like, we need that
• 1:07:22
  page. I'm like, OK, I'll go back.
• 1:07:25
  I go back and I asked for another copy.
• 1:07:28
  Now the second copy that I get, it's redacted again.
• 1:07:33
  The redactions are very different this time.
• 1:07:36
  So in the first copy that I got, this was in 2019 of this new of
• 1:07:41
  the new report, first copy, all the redactions.
• 1:07:45
  Sure enough, she said we got to redact the names of all the
• 1:07:47
  minors. Now she doesn't know anything
• 1:07:49
  about whoever redacted. I know knows nothing about the
• 1:07:52
  case because they redacted every now and that's all they redacted
• 1:08:00
  was names a second copy. This time the names of of are
• 1:08:07
  that are redacted are specific. So it's only the names of the
• 1:08:11
  defendants. I mean of the like not the
• 1:08:14
  defendants of non defendants, the witnesses that that are
• 1:08:18
  minors. But more importantly, it's not
• 1:08:20
  just names. They go back and they redact the
• 1:08:26
  the redactions are on the new pages.
• 1:08:28
  It's specific, substantive evidence that is now redacted.
• 1:08:32
  That you already know and have seen.
• 1:08:34
  Oh yeah, I already know. But I think the person who did
• 1:08:36
  that did not know that I already knew and had seen.
• 1:08:40
  I think they thought that this person 100% knew about the case
• 1:08:45
  and 100% understood that that evidence cannot see the light.
• 1:08:50
  Cannot be seen. So at that point I already
• 1:08:56
  started doing a lot more investigating on the case and my
• 1:08:59
  bar thing, it goes on hold. I'm like, you know what, I can't
• 1:09:03
  move forward with this. I can't move forward with
• 1:09:05
  getting license until I get exonerated because, you know,
• 1:09:11
  candidness is a big part, part of this.
• 1:09:14
  And I can't go before them for a hearing until I can say that I
• 1:09:18
  was awfully convicted. I was innocent and and.
• 1:09:24
  Being candid too is you can't show remorse about something
• 1:09:27
  that you were wrongly convicted. For no, you can't.
• 1:09:30
  That's not candid, that's a lie. And so I, you know, start
• 1:09:37
  interviewing witnesses on my own and they, you know, get like 8-9
• 1:09:44
  witnesses and, you know, get rid a witness who recanted.
• 1:09:51
  One of the things is like one of the lessons in my life is that
• 1:09:54
  like, you got to do what you, what you, if you really want to
• 1:09:59
  do something, you got to just do it.
• 1:10:01
  And, and you can't. And, and when an opportunity
• 1:10:04
  hops up, even if it, if it's scary, you got to do it.
• 1:10:08
  And if it's a chance, you got to take it.
• 1:10:10
  So, you know, going forward with getting that police report was
• 1:10:13
  scary or ever I had to do it. There was a point where one of I
• 1:10:18
  found out a witness, one of my friends was going to visit
• 1:10:21
  somebody in, in Florida. He happened to be a witness in
• 1:10:24
  the case. I was like, let me, I was like,
• 1:10:25
  can I come? And then I just talked to the
• 1:10:27
  guy when I got down there and I, before I even say anything, I
• 1:10:30
  was going to ask him, would you mind talk?
• 1:10:33
  He, he like offers, he offers to talk to me.
• 1:10:36
  And so then I talked to him and he had a recantation and all
• 1:10:38
  that stuff because he, you know, multiple, the only evidence that
• 1:10:43
  they had was some people who now, and I don't blame people
• 1:10:48
  for lying because I was shocked. They were.
• 1:10:50
  Probably scared, for instance, that girl.
• 1:10:52
  Yeah, that's crazy that you didn't.
• 1:10:55
  You were 6 year old giant like big man threatening you.
• 1:10:59
  You're not. You didn't.
• 1:11:00
  You didn't. Crap, you didn't.
• 1:11:01
  You didn't just tell them what they wanted to hear.
• 1:11:03
  Yeah, but, you know, so they did that to every witness.
• 1:11:07
  And yeah, some of them did. So Jeffrey Deskovic was a guest
• 1:11:12
  on this show a couple of times because he was with gosh, I'm
• 1:11:19
  trying to think what the name of the movie was Dieter that that
• 1:11:22
  was up for an Oscar with the actor.
• 1:11:27
  Anyway, he's been on a couple times, but he, he, he, he was
• 1:11:30
  wrongly convicted. He's got the Deskovic foundation
• 1:11:33
  that that goes and and helps uncover wrong, wrongly convicted
• 1:11:38
  cases. And you connected with Jeffrey
• 1:11:43
  and he started helping you, actually.
• 1:11:45
  How did you connect with Jeffrey?
• 1:11:47
  How did you know about Jeffrey? You said you met him in law
• 1:11:49
  school, I think. Yeah, I met him.
• 1:11:51
  I was in law school and I was doing a project for an as a
• 1:11:57
  class called Actual Innocence and I did a project there and I
• 1:12:02
  was like, I want to do, I work on his case.
• 1:12:05
  So I, I connected with him, I interviewed him at that time,
• 1:12:08
  OK, Then reconnected with him afterwards.
• 1:12:11
  And you know, I went to the ended up going, you know, I got,
• 1:12:14
  ended up getting involved in the like, the whole, you know, his
• 1:12:17
  honoree world. It is a world.
• 1:12:19
  It's like work. It's not like, you know, there's
• 1:12:22
  not that many of us. And there's like the Innocence
• 1:12:25
  Project gala and stuff. When you go there, you start
• 1:12:28
  meeting people and you know there's.
• 1:12:30
  A lot of people that I've interviewed, well, two or three
• 1:12:33
  guys that I've interviewed from Michigan, because Michigan's got
• 1:12:36
  an actual actually division that works on wrongly convicted
• 1:12:40
  cases. And I think they've, the last
• 1:12:43
  I've heard they, they had overturned 38 wrongly convicted
• 1:12:48
  people and some of them had served as much as 35 years.
• 1:12:52
  So when you said there's a lot of people that are wrongly
• 1:12:56
  convicted, that's just Michigan anyway.
• 1:13:01
  So, so Deskovic and you team up and you start working the facts
• 1:13:10
  of this case. And and we have a strategy too.
• 1:13:14
  So, you know, a lot of the things that I've gotten to like
• 1:13:18
  another lesson like that, you know, you send some people in
• 1:13:20
  jail. Listen, you know, sometimes the
• 1:13:23
  things that a lot of stuff I've got in my life is like through
• 1:13:25
  the networks of of the people that, you know, share the same
• 1:13:28
  experience. So I found out from about
• 1:13:31
  exoneree who had got exonerated in a, in a specific way, you
• 1:13:39
  know, through the pardons process in Connecticut.
• 1:13:43
  Essentially it was a, a different type of pardon.
• 1:13:46
  So I'd been offered pardons many time over the years, turned it
• 1:13:49
  down every time. They're like, you're a perfect
• 1:13:52
  candidate because you have such a great like, you know, turn
• 1:13:54
  around story and all this stuff and all that.
• 1:13:56
  I yeah, the problem is I, I'm not, I'm not interested.
• 1:13:59
  I'm pardoned for what I didn't do any.
• 1:14:01
  I'm not I'm not going to show remorse.
• 1:14:03
  I'm not going to lie. I'm not going, I'm not doing
• 1:14:05
  that. But this was a pardon on
• 1:14:07
  innocence grounds would essentially it's you don't.
• 1:14:13
  The main difference is you don't show remorse.
• 1:14:15
  You don't, you don't do that. You explained how you were
• 1:14:18
  wrongfully convicted, showed the evidence or whatever.
• 1:14:21
  And you know, if you know you can get exonerated that way,
• 1:14:24
  it's a different path. It's very important because
• 1:14:27
  especially for cases like mine, there's no way back into court
• 1:14:31
  for a case like mine. Traditionally, that was the the
• 1:14:36
  thing that we kept on running into with different lawyers
• 1:14:38
  because you in order to get into court to appeal your case, you
• 1:14:42
  have to still be whenever you hear about most exonerations,
• 1:14:46
  it's like, OK, guys in jail, well, you have a something, you
• 1:14:51
  know, an injury that the court will, you have a reason to have
• 1:14:55
  to go into court because you have that injury.
• 1:14:57
  You're still in, you're still in jail.
• 1:14:58
  I wasn't in jail. I was out.
• 1:15:01
  For a while, you know, I've gone to law school and yeah.
• 1:15:04
  It's highly it it was that was the issue that we kept on
• 1:15:07
  running into is how do I get into court to like appeal the
• 1:15:10
  case. So luckily we go through this
• 1:15:13
  process and you know, Jeff, that's his foundation at first
• 1:15:17
  on its own. And then, then I connect with
• 1:15:19
  Alexander Chavez, the attorney in, in, in Connecticut.
• 1:15:23
  There's not that many attorneys that do this work.
• 1:15:25
  Alex had done this and helped a lot of people, you know,
• 1:15:27
  hundreds of years exonerated and we end up winning my
• 1:15:35
  exoneration. It was a little bit dramatic,
• 1:15:38
  the process. Prosecutor's office tried to do
• 1:15:41
  something near the end, but luckily and work.
• 1:15:47
  Did anybody well and this happened in 2023 and you got a
• 1:15:53
  full absolute exoneration and I what did that feel like it?
• 1:16:02
  Felt really good. Oh, really good.
• 1:16:05
  After all those years. Yeah, you know, so like for
• 1:16:10
  inspiration or whatever, right. So when I was inside, there were
• 1:16:15
  a couple of things I wanted to do.
• 1:16:16
  That was one of them. And the way that I use that,
• 1:16:18
  it's like the carrot to get me to the place.
• 1:16:19
  I also wanted to go to law school and the carrot was and
• 1:16:23
  this is the carrot. This is the reality of my
• 1:16:25
  carrots. Now is to, I understand, like
• 1:16:27
  anything, it's not like you know, it's not like a long
• 1:16:30
  lasting feeling that you have forever, but that feeling that I
• 1:16:33
  knew that I would how I would feel when I win, when I get
• 1:16:38
  there, when I get exotic, when I get into law school, when I do
• 1:16:40
  the thing that people told me I can't do, that supposed to be
• 1:16:42
  impossible, how I will feel is what has dragged me through to
• 1:16:48
  these hardest comments. For me, and that's a really good
• 1:16:52
  thing to do, that's a good, that's a good movie to play.
• 1:16:54
  A lot of people, especially if they get into prison, they play
• 1:16:57
  the bad movie and the bad movie continues to play and they
• 1:17:00
  don't, they don't play the good movie.
• 1:17:01
  In their mind. In prison, you have to play the
• 1:17:03
  good movie because you can get into a hell of a negative slump
• 1:17:10
  because of where you are. You have to play the good movie.
• 1:17:12
  You have to keep putting things out in front of you.
• 1:17:14
  Like you said, Dieter, this does go into 1100 prisons on the
• 1:17:17
  adobo platform and there's a lot of people.
• 1:17:20
  You have to make a decision and it's binary.
• 1:17:25
  Either I'm going to get busy living or get busy dying.
• 1:17:27
  And that's in a movie. Shawshank is one of my biggest
• 1:17:30
  favorite movies, but it's so true because if you you, you
• 1:17:35
  don't really have an in between and divine G on Sing Sing is the
• 1:17:39
  is the name of the movie Sing Sing.
• 1:17:42
  And he he actually was able to go to the Oscars because the
• 1:17:47
  person who played him in the movie was up for best actor.
• 1:17:52
  Old, old mine here, 58 years old.
• 1:17:54
  But it did come back to me. Dieter.
• 1:17:55
  So OK, so you get this incredible thing that happens
• 1:18:03
  and you didn't give up on it, which I think is is the the best
• 1:18:07
  when you do something that's so tough and so ugly to swim
• 1:18:11
  through and you get it. I know that you are Co director,
• 1:18:19
  Co founder of the National Justice Impact Bar Association
• 1:18:22
  and the Justice Impact Alliance. It helps people through and
• 1:18:27
  assisting people impacted by the criminal justice system.
• 1:18:31
  Is that something that you're still doing, Dieter?
• 1:18:34
  Is that something you're still part?
• 1:18:35
  Of So, yeah, the bar sure, certainly recently had some, you
• 1:18:43
  know, pretty good success with the working with the ABA.
• 1:18:47
  We passed this resolution that will make it easier for others,
• 1:18:53
  not just wrongfully convicted. Essentially what it is, is that
• 1:18:57
  every bar has its own question or set of questions concerning
• 1:19:03
  someone's criminal justice history.
• 1:19:06
  And the contention that the basis of the resolution is that
• 1:19:11
  not everything is relevant to someone's character and fitness.
• 1:19:14
  Not everything. We need to narrowly tailor this
• 1:19:20
  right? So there's a difference between
• 1:19:23
  somebody who jaywalked and was arrested or whatever when they
• 1:19:28
  were. Not everybody should go in the
• 1:19:30
  same bucket exactly. In 32 years later, they're going
• 1:19:33
  to law school. And so we're saying it basically
• 1:19:38
  what it would do is it makes it so that it has to be narrowly
• 1:19:40
  tailored to only those to only ask about those things that are
• 1:19:45
  are relevant to 1's character fitness, ability to practice
• 1:19:47
  law, including, for instance, somebody being wrongfully
• 1:19:50
  convicted. Not, I don't know, I don't see
• 1:19:53
  how how that is relevant to their character.
• 1:19:58
  I mean, it's relevant, I would say arguably probably means that
• 1:20:01
  they should be a bonus. It should be a good thing I
• 1:20:04
  would think. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:20:05
  Somebody been through something that they know the other side of
• 1:20:08
  the system. I, I'm curious, Dieter, you
• 1:20:14
  know, this couple of years ago, the 23 and we talked about this,
• 1:20:19
  you know, you, this is something that happened to you, but it
• 1:20:23
  doesn't define you. You feel different now that
• 1:20:27
  you've gotten this proclamation that you know, I'm, I was
• 1:20:32
  innocent and, and now they've, they've recognized it and I'm,
• 1:20:37
  do you feel somewhat different or is it just something that
• 1:20:41
  you, you had the win and you move forward and that was part
• 1:20:44
  of your experience that you've gone through with this?
• 1:20:47
  I feel different. It's different.
• 1:20:50
  I could talk about it more. Yeah, I could talk about it a
• 1:20:53
  lot more. I still can't talk about as much
• 1:20:56
  like, so I have. I have pending cases right now.
• 1:20:58
  I have a pending claim in Connecticut, a state claim based
• 1:21:02
  on a law to get compensation right roughly convicted.
• 1:21:06
  Right, I was. I had that question down.
• 1:21:08
  You just answered it. But I don't.
• 1:21:12
  But I'm much more free to speak now freely about the fact that I
• 1:21:15
  was wrongfully convicted. Yeah.
• 1:21:17
  And I could talk about the case. And it's.
• 1:21:19
  So it's a really, it is a good feeling.
• 1:21:21
  It's something. And it realistically, The thing
• 1:21:24
  is this that like, you know, I, I made this part of part of my,
• 1:21:29
  my story too, is just making a decision about like, what am I
• 1:21:32
  willing to live with? OK.
• 1:21:34
  So when I, when I got convicted, I remember the day that I, I
• 1:21:38
  mean, the day that I got sentenced, it was bad, Dave, you
• 1:21:40
  know, very sad, Dave. You know, I went in, I had
• 1:21:43
  originally written something up. I was going to like, it was just
• 1:21:46
  going to be like a truth bomb. I would be like, yeah, and you
• 1:21:48
  did this and all that was going to like call out the prosecutor,
• 1:21:51
  police and all that stuff for like the forest of the thing.
• 1:21:54
  And instead I apologize, 'cause my lawyer told me, I apologize.
• 1:21:58
  It was very cheap. You won't get as much time.
• 1:22:00
  Yeah, and then, you know, then they sentence judge sentences
• 1:22:04
  me, says you threw your life away, blah, blah blah.
• 1:22:07
  My mom bawling. It's I'm very sad.
• 1:22:11
  I go into the cell, I start crying.
• 1:22:13
  I'm on my own. I didn't cry.
• 1:22:15
  I mentioned side 'cause I just felt like I needed not to.
• 1:22:18
  I cry and I realize I'm a man. I start crying and then I'm
• 1:22:21
  like, and then I just have this thought.
• 1:22:23
  I'm like, OK, so like you lost, man, you lost.
• 1:22:26
  Like you, you lost bad. They got you fully crushed.
• 1:22:31
  You crushed you. And now here's the thing, you
• 1:22:35
  guys, you have to make a decision.
• 1:22:36
  You got to either accept it, accept it, and then you.
• 1:22:41
  But you, I really just think you like you got to figure out how
• 1:22:43
  to live with it and accept it or like, what are you going to do
• 1:22:46
  about it? You can do something about it.
• 1:22:48
  You can do something about it's going to be hard as it's going
• 1:22:51
  to be hard as hell. You're going to have to do.
• 1:22:53
  You're going to have to go through what are you willing to
• 1:22:56
  do to do something about it, to get exonerated, to do it.
• 1:23:00
  And I was like, anything. Are you willing to give any?
• 1:23:04
  Like, I was literally like willing to give my life.
• 1:23:07
  And I had to make that decision. I was, you know, as a young kid,
• 1:23:10
  I was like, and I remember it was a very big moment for me.
• 1:23:12
  Like it's literally this talk in my head.
• 1:23:14
  And I was just like, yeah, I'm going to do this.
• 1:23:17
  And I've realized now that that's that's the type of person
• 1:23:19
  I am. Is that once I've met like you,
• 1:23:21
  we all know what we really want. Like I remember at one point I
• 1:23:24
  was like, I do well, I was like, oh, curious, should I, I was
• 1:23:29
  interested in modeling a little bit.
• 1:23:30
  I was like, I don't know, I feel like I could do it like one of
• 1:23:32
  those stupid thoughts. And then I was like, finally I
• 1:23:34
  was like, my last year of law school was like, I did try and
• 1:23:37
  do it and I didn't do it and it was fine.
• 1:23:38
  It was good. And I'm happy I did it because
• 1:23:40
  then I don't have to worry about it the rest of my life.
• 1:23:41
  Be like, well, but I have done it.
• 1:23:43
  Like but so you know this is this is what?
• 1:23:48
  Do you think that helped? Do you think that all helped,
• 1:23:52
  going through this whole nightmare?
• 1:23:54
  Yeah, that process of your thinking processing of taking
• 1:24:02
  action and. Yeah, I knew I couldn't live a
• 1:24:04
  lie and the lie was that I was, it doesn't like, I don't think
• 1:24:09
  even if I had done the thing like so I don't judge somebody
• 1:24:11
  for like doing. Yeah.
• 1:24:13
  Because I, I've worked with mostly it's like formerly
• 1:24:16
  incarcerated people trying to get them to I don't care what
• 1:24:18
  you, I care who you are now. I care what you're doing now.
• 1:24:21
  But for me, what bothered me is that like, but my story is my
• 1:24:25
  story. My truth is my truth.
• 1:24:27
  And until I pay that freely, like, I'm not OK.
• 1:24:30
  Like I'm not OK. I'm not OK.
• 1:24:32
  I'm not going to be like, yeah, well.
• 1:24:35
  I. Get it, I get it.
• 1:24:36
  And, and I, I think that's why I, I, I, I really loved your
• 1:24:40
  story. It you could have just given it
• 1:24:44
  the loss. You could have just walked away
• 1:24:47
  and, you know, you kind of accepted you and you just went
• 1:24:51
  off and did whatever that was for your life.
• 1:24:54
  But you didn't, you stuck with something that mattered to you.
• 1:24:58
  And it wasn't easy to get to what that win was.
• 1:25:02
  And I think that's what I like so much about your story.
• 1:25:06
  There was nothing easy about getting that win.
• 1:25:09
  They, they made you work for it and you found some people that
• 1:25:12
  believed in you and you found some good people that believed
• 1:25:15
  in you and you went and got the win.
• 1:25:18
  But there's nothing easy about getting the win.
• 1:25:20
  And I think, you know, going and talking to students and things
• 1:25:24
  that you do, that's so important for them to know.
• 1:25:28
  There's no shortcuts to get in the win.
• 1:25:30
  A lot of times the wind's the most painful part of it and you
• 1:25:34
  still have to just walk it, walk it.
• 1:25:38
  Yeah, you got to have. Got to have a little bit of
• 1:25:42
  grit, but you learned the the other thing, I think, Dieter,
• 1:25:46
  that it's so weird. Here's two guys talking about
• 1:25:48
  going to prison, but you find out in this unknown world that
• 1:25:54
  you've never been in, never planned on going to that you can
• 1:25:57
  adapt to it and it didn't. It doesn't break you.
• 1:26:01
  And so you walk out of that and it's kind of, you don't really
• 1:26:06
  talk about it a lot, but you know, in the back of your mind,
• 1:26:09
  I can do that, I can do that. So if I can do that, I might be
• 1:26:14
  able to do some of these other things that sound like really
• 1:26:17
  hard things, barriers, because I can do that.
• 1:26:21
  I didn't think I could do that. That scared the shit out of me
• 1:26:24
  and now I did that. So I think that is something
• 1:26:26
  that comes out of prison. But I always ask people on the
• 1:26:29
  show, Dieter, what do you think's your biggest take away
• 1:26:35
  going through all this? Yeah, I guess.
• 1:26:41
  I guess the main thing to me is, you know, you got to find out
• 1:26:51
  what what you want in life and what you don't, what you're not
• 1:26:55
  OK with living with, right. That's a big part of my story.
• 1:26:58
  I wasn't OK with living with being lawfully convicted of my
• 1:27:01
  whole life and not exonerated. And I knew that.
• 1:27:06
  So then what does that mean? Then you have to do something.
• 1:27:09
  And so then once you know what you want to do is just be brave,
• 1:27:14
  be brave and be honest with yourself.
• 1:27:17
  Be honest. And I know that I am the type of
• 1:27:23
  person figure out who you are and figure out well, I'm the
• 1:27:26
  type of person that I'm, I'm relentless when I, when I want
• 1:27:29
  something. I'm not the strongest guy, not
• 1:27:31
  whatever, but I will hold on until I, I will die before I
• 1:27:37
  give up on the thing that I really.
• 1:27:40
  And it's something that, you know, has served me well in
• 1:27:45
  getting the things that I really want, some of the things that
• 1:27:46
  don't quite as much. But, you know, the big, big
• 1:27:51
  things. It's like, you know, and you
• 1:27:53
  will win eventually if you keep trying.
• 1:27:55
  Yeah, one way or another, you will.
• 1:27:57
  Yeah. And at least you'll like respect
• 1:28:01
  yourself, you know? That's a great take away.
• 1:28:05
  It's a great take away and and I kind of thought you'd have a
• 1:28:09
  good take away there after all this for everybody.
• 1:28:17
  I want to give a shout out to Homestead Financial Home
• 1:28:19
  Mortgage. Let me use this podcast room,
• 1:28:22
  all the fancy stuff. If anybody's got home mortgage
• 1:28:24
  needs out there, get a hold of Greg.
• 1:28:26
  FDIV is the guy that knows everything about that.
• 1:28:30
  If you're looking for a book out there, I've got one.
• 1:28:32
  It's a nightmare success, loyal to betrayal, life behind bars,
• 1:28:35
  adapting, and finally breaking free.
• 1:28:37
  Let me review on Apple. Those are great.
• 1:28:39
  They really help and I love it when I get to read those from
• 1:28:42
  the listeners. If you want to want to know what
• 1:28:44
  I'm doing, go to brentcassidy.com.
• 1:28:48
  I spell it wrong. I spell it with a Ty, not a DY
• 1:28:52
  as they used to say to my people when I was writing my emails
• 1:28:54
  back and forth from Leavenworth. Stay strong.
• 1:28:57
  I'll do the same. Dieter man, what a story.
• 1:29:00
  I'm proud of you. I've I really think what you did
• 1:29:05
  and what you're doing now it's it's I think you're just going
• 1:29:07
  to continue to make a big impact.
• 1:29:08
  So thanks for being here today and sharing your story.
• 1:29:12
  Nice pleasure. I'm your success in and out.