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555: #555 Lauren Bright Pacheco with Frank Gable · Wrongful Conviction Podcasts

• 00:00:00 Speaker 1: This episode of wrongful Conviction contains discussion of suicidal ideation. 00:00:04 Speaker 2: Please listen with caution and care. At six forty five pm on January seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, the director of Oregon Corrections Michael Frankie, had left work ready to testify the following day before the state legislature about corruption within his department. But by seven to twenty pm, staffers notice that his car was still in his parking spot with the door ajar, but Frankie was nowhere in sight. Five hours later, his body was discovered outside the building's portico, fatally stabbed. Local authorities were quick to call it a car burglary gone wrong, even though Frankie's wallet, watch, and keys warrant missing. Then months later, an alleged tip led them to twenty nine year old Frank Gable, who maintained his innocence through a violent interrogation. So police found eight more people who were willing to cooperate as for the testimony Michael Frankie was scheduled to deliver that following day. That must have had nothing to do with it. This is wrongful conviction. The Fox Foundation is proud to support this episode of wrongful conviction and the work of After Innocence, a nonprofit that helps hundreds of people nationwide rebuild their lives after wrongful incarceration. Each year, innocent people are released after spending years behind bars for crimes they didn't commit. Nearly all of them leave prison with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, with no help or compensation from the state as they face the steep challenges of rebuilding their lives after wrongful imprisonment. After Innocence is changing that After Innocence helps exoneries get and make good use of essential services like health care, dental care, mental health support, legal aid, financial counseling, and more. Since twenty sixteen, they've brought that help to more than eight hundred exoneries across forty six states, working tirelessly to ensure that no one released after wrongful incarceration is left behind. Learn more at after Dashinnocence dot org and join After Innocence to support exoneries as they rebuild their lives. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. This is Lauren Bright Pacheco and I am joined now by Jason Flahm, and I have to tell you, Jason, this is such an incredible full circle moment for me because on this episode we're speaking with Frank Gable, who was wrongfully convicted and spent nearly thirty years for the murder of Michael Frankie, who was the then head of Oregon's Department of Corrections. But indirectly, it's really why you and I met In twenty eighteen, I had left television but took a freelance job as a producer just to meet you, because when I was researching Murder and Oregon, it was the first real wrongful conviction I had encountered from an investigative standpoint, and so to educate myself, I googled wrongful conviction and what pops up but your podcast, which is why I wanted to meet you. And I casually mentioned that I had a podcast too, and that's when we made the connection that you were actually listening to Murder and Oregon at the time. 00:03:47 Speaker 3: Well, I mean listening is not the right word. I had been obsessing about it. It's just got so many layers of insanity as it goes up levels into the even government, it's almost too much. 00:04:01 Speaker 2: It is a case of corruption that went high up the ranks. 00:04:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think the one hope that we have is that by shining a light and not letting this story die, that maybe eventually people in positions of power will feel the heat. 00:04:21 Speaker 2: All right, Well, with that, we will share the interview with Frank Gable, who, again I feel very connected to Frank, to you, to Michael Frankie's brothers, Pat and to Kevin, and to Phil Stamford. It's very much a full circle moment for me. And I don't know if justice will truly ever be served in this case. But if there was ever a case in which accountability is called for, it is the conviction of Frank Gable in the murder of Michael Frankie. 00:04:52 Speaker 1: It was so. 00:04:53 Speaker 3: Brutally murdered for no other reason than the fact that he was trying to do the right thing. 00:04:58 Speaker 2: He was trying to fix the system. 00:04:59 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was trying to fix it, and so the whole thing is exactly opposite of. 00:05:04 Speaker 4: What it's supposed to be. 00:05:07 Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty seven, Michael Frankie, a Navy veteran, former prosecutor and judge who went on to be the director of Corrections in New Mexico, was then hired to overhaul the Oregon Department of Corrections, which was headquartered at the Dome Building in Salem, Oregon. And in a town like this where the main employer is the prison, one can typically expect a sluggish economy with a thriving drug market, and it appears those two elements had intertwined in Salem. In fact, just a year earlier, an investigation into drugs smuggling at the prison led to the resignation of the prison superintendent as well as several guards losing their jobs. 00:05:49 Speaker 1: Like, I've seen a lot of just shady stuff there, you know, like use an inmate labor, to stealing equipment, to funneling drugs in and out, to all kind of just criminal behavior that they were doing. 00:06:04 Speaker 2: That is Frank different Cloud, known to the state as Frank Gable, talking about the corruption in Salem that even a state representative had described to me as similar to the mafia. 00:06:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, there's an all buddy system because it's the prisonal hire. Like your uncle and your grandpa, you know, his brother and then so if something happens, who they going to believe the three cousins that are making a story up on you and telling you, oh, yeah, he had these drugs or whatever. He had, and you know, and that's how they do it. 00:06:35 Speaker 2: So Michael Frankie was hired as the director of Corrections in Oregon, only to be murdered twenty months later. And Frank was framed for that murder. And I'd like to welcome him as well as his attorney, Rachel Brady. 00:06:49 Speaker 1: I think he's glad to do it. 00:06:52 Speaker 2: And so, Frank, you were a married man at this time. Tell us about your life in Salem. 00:06:58 Speaker 1: I don't know, like, you know, I'm just like to say, I'm an outdoors person. I like to fish in a hunt. But then you know, I got off track, you know, was drinking and using myth infetamine and you know it was just bad. You know, it's shit I'm not proud of. 00:07:13 Speaker 2: But you were surrounded by that in Salem at the time. 00:07:16 Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a lot of it around there, and you know, I wasn't just in it for a short time. But it didn't take but a short time to just destroy my life, you know, and might caused a lot to just have it. 00:07:27 Speaker 2: Frank's involvement in the drug scene made him familiar with the system, including a bunk exchange program which was born out of overcrowding, allowing inmates to cycle out for a week at a time to make room for others, which also allowed for the free flow of contraband, and one can imagine that this Golden Boy outsider, Michael Frankie, was not welcomed by the folks who were profiting from that free flow. In fact, Michael was set to testify in front of the State legislature on January eighteenth, nineteen eighty nine, about his findings, which brings us to the night before. Around six forty five pm, Michael Frankie left work at the Dome building and according to the Custodian, around seven pm he'd seen two men in the parking lot in some kind of altercation and one walked back to the building, while the other who fled was described as six foot short, dark hair, one hundred and seventy five pounds, twenty to forty years old, wearing a tanned trench coat. Now between seven o five and seven to twenty pm, several other staffers had seen Michael's car still in his parking space with the door ajar, but Michael was not discovered until twelve forty am, lying in a pool of blood at the Dome Building's north portico, stabbed in the torso, arm and heart. He also had some defensive wounds, and despite the almost six hour gap between an alleged altercation in the parking lot and the discovery of his body, the official theory became a car burglary gone wrong. 00:08:58 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole story of you know, their car burst. This foolish. I mean, like I've seen crime seen photos and stuff, and you could look in that car, like if you just looked in the window, there's nothing in there. Who's going to break into it? 00:09:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, parts in front of the head of the Department of Correction sign Frankie's found with his wallet, his watch, his car keys. Nothing was gone except they think the briefcase that would have had floppy discs and his computer, which would have been the meat of the investigation. 00:09:35 Speaker 1: They just jumped on something because I think Johnny Kraus put that in their head and they just went with that theory after that, I don't know. 00:09:43 Speaker 2: In February nineteen eighty nine, another local named Johnny Krause told his parole officer that he'd witness a group of men beating up one man by the Dome Building that night, which later became that he'd been offered three hundred thousand dollars to murder Michael Frankie. Then that April, Kraus confessed again to the carburglary theory, which sounds suspicious, but his confessions contained elements not shared with the public, like the location of the stab wounds, that he'd worn a tan jacket, and that Michael yelped when he was stabbed, which aligned with the custodian's account. He'd also repeated this confession to his brother, mother, and girlfriend in front of authorities, and soon we'll discuss why this lead was ignored in favor of Frank Gabel. 00:10:31 Speaker 1: Well, first, I got arrested in I think it was June in Salem for driving an unauthorized motor vehicle. They come in and wanted to talk to me then, and we're asking all people that are inmates where you were. And I told mom, I think I was home with my wife, you know, and I was it, and they asked times and he put the police report in there, and that's what it says. 00:10:54 Speaker 2: Mind you, this is four months later, so Frank wasn't sure, and he said, I think I was home with my wife. And as investigators continued to ignore Kraus's confession, they spoke with other potential suspects, like Michael Kieran's, who deflected blame from himself by claiming Frank Gable had confessed to him, at which point the police went to the local media to broadcast that Frank Gable, who they also alleged was a police informant, was now their main suspect. And so ten months in, they dragged Frank in again to ask his whereabouts, and again Frank wasn't sure, so he offered that perhaps he was with his friend Shelley Thomas. 00:11:35 Speaker 1: They was interrogating me, telling me, oh, well, where else could he have been? I said, well, if I wasn't there, I was at Shelley's. And then they'd go, oh, Shelley says, you wasn't there. Yeah. 00:11:43 Speaker 2: The crazy thing is I think it would be difficult for anybody to remember where they were. 00:11:49 Speaker 1: Not ten months later. I mean I didn't even remember telling like I read a bunch of police supports and then we talked a bunch and like, you're not going to know unless it was like somebody specific, like birthday or you were at work and you knew that, and that's what he said. When it was interiorgating, He's like, oh, well, you said you were here, and you said you were there, and I said no, you asked me where I possibly would and I'm trying to help you figure out where maybe I was. 00:12:15 Speaker 2: But it turned out that they knew where Frank was. On January seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, Frank and his wife Janine didn't have a quiet night at home. They hosted a pretty loud party, one that was so loud, in fact, that their landlord issued them an eviction notice the next day. 00:12:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, we had that eviction notice. And that kathing on that eviction notice is when the police asked me. He said, well, Frank, what did you get the eviction notice for? And I don't hesitate. I don't say, well, which one, because like we had multiple ones we had won, and that was that eviction notice. And they asked me that. I said, oh, blah blah blah, and they said, well, who was all there? I said all the neighbor kids through the play. These people were all here, and blah blah blah. Then immediately he realizes, I think that I know where I was on that night because the key here is he doesn't say that eviction notices for the night of the seventeenth, which is the night of the murder. He just says, what did you get the eviction notice for? And I started telling now all these people, there's nine people at this plate being thrown or mentioned this plate being thrown, or the landlady, or my ex wife, or the two neighbor kids, Lamontley, Robert Cornett, Kevin Walker were all there, everybody, and I'm listed it off. And then he goes off tape right there and says, oh, we're gonna go off tape, and then comes back on a completely different subject. So at that point he knew that I knew where I. 00:13:38 Speaker 2: Was, and perhaps this explains why they're alleged main suspect was let go once again. But then they picked up Jody Swearingen, a team runaway with a juvenile record who initially said she didn't know anything, but according to her later recantations, trial testimony, and sworn Affidavid's, she was interrogated twelve times, given twenty three polygraphs, after each one being told she was lying and that she was going to face criminal charges. So she told a story about how her boyfriend Kapi had picked her up at the Dome Building, which also housed the Oregon Psychiatric Hospital, and from his car they had witnessed Frank stab Michael. So they arrested Frank and tried to coerce a confession. 00:14:23 Speaker 1: Well, they wanted me to take a polygraph. I'm telling them I didn't do it. All these multiple detectives are just interrogating you and calling you murder and talking bad about your ex wife and your mom, telling you she's dying, telling me I'm going to get to death penalty, all kind of crap like that, trying to make me confess to something. It was crazy, like they had me crying, they break me down, and they got so mad because I keep repeating over and over I didn't do it. I don't know who did. I wasn't there. If you read the police reports, it just says that I don't know how many times I said that, And McCafferty got mad and that's why he choked me because I kept saying that and he goes, oh, you're going to cry or something, and I said, oh, you want me to cry like that. I was getting irritated with him, and he choked me out I woke up doing the dry tuning like this, and my shoulder was full of slobbery because that's how long I was blacked out because right here was all wet. And then Fred Akerman had said, oh, well they had and argument, but he never really choked him. He choked me on. I mean, if the guy didn't choke me now here, I am sixty six years old, why would I need to lie about the guy choking me. 00:15:47 Speaker 2: I just think back to how confused you must have been, knowing that you were innocent and not understanding why they were so aggressively trying to get you to confess. 00:16:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, because all they do is ask you questions to try to implicate you. Period. That's all they're doing. They're not trying to like, go, oh it is this guy innocent. They're just trying to implicate your ass. They don't care, they don't have to have no evidence, nothing, They will just come at you. 00:16:18 Speaker 2: I want to just point back to two things. One you mentioned the tape going off and the tape going back on, And that's really important because they basically use selective recordings to make it look like you were incriminating yourself. 00:16:32 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they would make statements then try to make it sound like I said something that I didn't like the God me statement. 00:16:39 Speaker 2: The God me statement Frank's talking about was a moment in this stop and Go recording in which Frank said there were quote only two people who know who killed Frankie, Frankie and God end quote and a detective pointed out that Frankie couldn't know because he was dead. 00:16:57 Speaker 1: And I said, well, I know this, I know and God know. And then he jumps on and says, oh, Fridian slip. And I said, well, what's that now. I'm just a young country kid. I didn't know what the hell Freudian slip man. And he's explaining the Freudian slip. It's like, well, your mouth says something before your mind catches it, and da da da, And so you just confess to the murder that you said only you and God know who did it. I said, no, I didn't say that. I said, you cut me off with the Friudian slip thing. 00:17:24 Speaker 2: But it appears that even they knew that didn't amount to a confession, since they dragged in a trove of people from the drug scene in Salem looking to gather statements and they use the same tactics that they used on Frank and Jodi Swarringen. 00:17:40 Speaker 4: So polygraphs are unreliable, they are not admissible in court, they are impossible to verify, and they are subject completely to the polygraph examiner's interpretation of the information that comes out at the charts. Polygraphs are also really scary, and they're intimidating, and for witnesses who have other crimes in their backgrounds, for witnesses who are vulnerable in any number of ways, witnesses who are being threatened with other crimes, this crime, witnesses who are being threatened to have their children taken away from them, any number of vulnerabilities can be exploited. 00:18:19 Speaker 1: Some of the stuff they did to some of these witness and like say Shelley Thomas go over there, threaten to arrest her take her child away if she didn't bring the right story. Or John and Kelly Bender, they got them turn on each other and make different stories. And then the stories that they were developing, I mean it was so like you can just see they weren't true. So then they'd take them and change that story, like take them out to the crime scene or give them a polygraph. 00:18:47 Speaker 4: So when you have a person who comes into a polygraph in a heightened emotional state with a lot on the line, can very easily figure out what answer they think they're supposed to be giving to any question on a polygraph. And none of these witnesses were polygraphed once. They were polygraphed repeatedly, multiple times over the same day, over in the middle of the night, over the course of months. These witnesses were given polygraphs, and each time they were told which questions they passed and which questions they failed. 00:19:16 Speaker 2: So they were using them as a training tool. 00:19:18 Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, And so if any person could figure out, oh, I failed this particular question on a polygraph, and my freedom is at stake, let me just give a different answer next time I'm asked a similar question. And you can see the progression every single witness. You can see the progression and the questions they're asked and how their answers change over time. 00:19:37 Speaker 2: Like what happened over Jody's swearing gens twenty three polygraphs. 00:19:41 Speaker 1: Jody said they took her to the crime scene like thirteen times, told her there were cigarette butts on the ground, what kind they were? Just so they could form a later story. Said, oh, well, there were some cigarette butts over here. Do you smoke camels? And she says yeah, Jody, she's a sixteen year old runaway and you're taking her out of Hillcrest giving her a nine hundred dollars in cash at sixteen seventeen years old. What do you think she's going to go do with it? She's gonna go buy myth and fetomine and hang out with the meth heads. 00:20:12 Speaker 2: Like her boyfriend Kathy Hardin, who came in and backed up her story that they had actually seen Frank Gable stab Michael Frankie in the parking lot. And investigators visited other vulnerable people from the Salem drug scene who knew Frank, like Earl Childers, who claimed to have seen Frank driving near the scene that night and that Frank later confessed to him while they were doing meth. Then there was Mark Gesner, who claimed that Frank had dropped by his house that night and asked him to get rid of a bag of clothes. And then Kevin Walker said that Frank had confessed to him the following day. 00:20:48 Speaker 1: Now, I've never ever had any real bones with Kevin Walker ever like I liked him, he liked me, I thought him or Mark Gist's dumb ass. And I didn't even meet Mark gust until then. First came to my house was that viction. Notice that's the first night. So how was I ever going to his house and bring him a damn bag of clothes or whatever he said and throwing it off a freaking bridge or a river. 00:21:11 Speaker 2: That's the crazy part about Kevin Walker and Mark Gesner. On the night of the murder. They were both at Frank's house party that got him evicted, So they should have been alibi witnesses. 00:21:22 Speaker 1: Like every one of them had some kind of crime against him, like charge like Guesner's federal charges and guns, drugs, and then like Earl Childers Jeanie, all of them. 00:21:33 Speaker 2: Frank's wife should have been an alibi witness too, But somewhere during this investigation, she and Frank had a huge falling out and she had lost custody of her daughter. So investigators promised to get her daughter back if she said there was no house party on January seventeenth, but rather that she was home with her daughter while Frank was out somewhere in the car in addition, there were Daniel Walsh and Linda Perkins who also claimed that Frank had made vague, incriminating statements. 00:22:02 Speaker 4: The thing that sets Frank's case apart from most of the other cases that I've worked on is just the sheer volume of the misconduct. There are some cases and small departments where one detective coerces one witness into providing a false identification and the whole investigation is wrapped up in twenty four hours. Frank was antagonized by law enforcement for months and months before he was ultimately charged, and law enforcement went to such astonishing lengths to tie up any possible loose end and really perfect the false narratives that they were putting forward. And they weren't just relying on one person to provide a false inculpatory statement. 00:22:45 Speaker 2: They'd amassed a web of at least nine liars, one of whom Michael Kieran's, who testified at the grand jury, recanted on the eve of trial in May nineteen ninety one. So the state moved ahead with what they thought were eight witnesses, most of whom had allegedly heard a confession or should have been alibi witnesses. But Capy Harten testified that he and Jody Swearingen had actually seen Frank stab Michael in the parking lot, and then Jody Swearingen took the stand. Yet she decided to recant, saying that neither she nor Cappy had seen anything, and they pulled out her grand jury testimony, but she insisted that she had been pressured to lie. 00:23:28 Speaker 1: So. 00:23:29 Speaker 2: In addition to the states now seven witnesses, some of the investigators testified about various things Frank said that were presented as incriminating, like the god me statement. 00:23:41 Speaker 1: The Freudian slip thing. That was a big thing in my trial because I said, well, I know this, I know and God know that. He jumps on and says, oh, Friudian slip, you just confess to the murder. I said, no, I didn't say that. I said you cut me off with the Freudian slip thing. But in trial they told the jury that I said, oh, only me and God know who did. 00:24:00 Speaker 2: They also presented Frank's confusion over his whereabouts as deceit. 00:24:05 Speaker 1: It made it sounds of the jury like, oh, well he said he was here, then he said he was there, And the whole time they had my alibi, and they hit it, and they literally just hit the freaking eviction. Notice, my attorney does nothing with it. 00:24:19 Speaker 2: And even though Frank's trial council called his landlord to testify about the party on January seventeenth that resulted in the eviction, the defense failed to use that information to impeach Kevin Walker, Mark Gesner, and Janine Gable, all of whom were at that party. The defense also tried to raise Johnny Krause's confession, but the state's evidence rules barred it from trial. So, with so many unimpeached witnesses incriminating Frank, the verdict came back guilty, and then the jury voted again on his sentence, life without the possibility of parole or death. 00:24:56 Speaker 1: I was two votes away from the death penalty. So that's like ten people thought I wasn't worthy to live and then they give you life without parol. I never thought I was going to get out. As I went through prison, I studied law myself. I did a lot of classes. You know, then once you read the stuff and you see what happened, oh the crap, and then you really understand what happened and things they were doing. 00:25:40 Speaker 2: What kept you going all those years against all odds. 00:25:45 Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if I was really like going. I just was like living, just trying to survive. I actually tried to commit suicide a couple of times, but I didn't have the courage. 00:26:01 Speaker 2: I'm so glad you didn't make that choice, because now you have a wonderff. 00:26:06 Speaker 1: Different for me. You know, I'm thankful I to do nothing stupid, I am too. 00:26:12 Speaker 2: You know what's crazy too about this is the amount of support that you did have, not just from Michael Frankie's brothers, Kevin and Pat, but also you had almost the who's who of journalists in Oregon constantly writing about your case. You would Phil Stamford from the Oregonian, You had Steve Jackson from the Statesman Journal, in addition to Nigel Jaquis from willam At Week, and then of course Jim Reddin from the Portland Tribune. Whereas so many of these wrongful convictions are waiting for the attention, your case had the attention and still because of as we've talked about, the forces above and beyond your control. 00:26:59 Speaker 1: Yeah, going to let it am. 00:27:02 Speaker 2: Not at state level anyway, unfortunately, frank State remedies were not exhausted until two thousand and seven, when he could move on to filing a federal habeas where proper attention might be paid not only to the confession of Johnny Krause, but also some recantations, starting with Kevin Walker in nineteen ninety three, who admitted that he had been at the Gables House party on January seventeenth, which also impeached Janine Gable and Mark Gesner. And then in two thousand and five, Kapy Hardin swore that after he was repeatedly questioned, polygraphed, threatened, and told that Frank had informed on him that he had decided to align with JODI's false statement. But Frank's federal proceedings didn't get traction until Frank's attorney, Nell Brown came on board in twenty fourteen. 00:27:51 Speaker 1: Before Nel Brown coming on, like, I had other attorneys and I had to get some of them fired disbarred because they were just selling out and not doing no job for me at all. I was tired of taking advantage of me. 00:28:05 Speaker 2: How did you get connected with now? 00:28:07 Speaker 1: Well, now just got a pointed through the federal defenders and we just kind of clicked right out of the gate, and then like she seen all the stuff, and then she believed in it and started really championing my case. You know, in between my wife and all the investigative stuff she did and research on legal stuff she did, we put together a case. 00:28:28 Speaker 2: The wife he just mentioned is Rainy, who he married while he was still inside. She was and is still his fiercest advocate. And so by twenty fourteen, there were four more recantations, Jody Swarringen, Janine Gable, Daniel Walch, and Michael Kieran's. In addition, Mark Gesner and Linda Perkins were impeached by the other recantations or witnesses to the circumstances of their statements, which just left Earle Childers who is now just not sure about what he said he saw or heard. And all of the witnesses described the same coercive tactics, for which the defense hired an expert to testify about how those tactics can lead to false statements. 00:29:11 Speaker 1: They knew, I was, there's no way you couldn't know. The eviction, noticed the phone records and all the stuff that don't match their bullshit stories. I Mean, there was just so many red flags along the. 00:29:25 Speaker 2: Way, including the biggest red flag, Johnny Krause. So after his credible April nineteen eighty nine confession, that June he gave more information involving a conspiracy among state officials who tried to hire him to kill Michael Frankie to keep him from exposing their prison drug operation, And in the following months other witnesses came forward identifying another man named Timothy Natividad as participating in the murder as well at the behest of the same cabal. But most telling was in November nineteen nine, Kraus was offered immunity from prosecution for making alleged fault statements to the police. So unless he went on records saying that his previous confessions involving the state officials was false, they were going to prosecute him for it. So he accepted immunity and went away quietly. So the court allowed all of this procedurally barred evidence to be heard based on Frank's actual innocence claim, and the ruling finally came down in twenty nineteen. 00:30:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like out on the yard and then I talked to my wife and I said, well, I'm going to go in. It was like I worked out in the yard, and so I go in and shower and hanging outside the tier because like a lot of the guards, you know, they liked me, said they let me run around a lot. So I thought, well, I'm gonna jump on the phone real quick and call my wife. So I went around the phone and she said, I'll be there Friday to get you. I said what she said. Yeah, Judge corst it is just with your favor. You're one hundred present exonerated. You just do nothing but cry. I mean, I just broke down. It was crazy hearing that. You know, you kind of believed it would come, but you just didn't never really want to hope that much where it would crush you, you know what I mean, you didn't want to hope that much. 00:31:27 Speaker 2: Judge Acosta's ruling rachel He didn't just overturn Frank's conviction. He called it constitutionally invalid, ordered the entire record expunged, and barred the state from ever trying him again. 00:31:41 Speaker 4: It is very difficult to get the kind of relief that was granted in this case. As a general matter, I mean, there are so many people who they never get out they never get the relief. So the fact that Judge Acosta acknowledged the misconduct, that he acknowledged this signal nificance of the evidence in the case is no small deal. 00:32:03 Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you know, the state is still challenging Frank's innocence despite multiple court siding with him. 00:32:14 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's an interesting posture that the certificate of innocence case is in because it shows the competing interests at play here. And so you have the State of Oregon, and you have the organ Attorney General and the governor, and then you have the individual defendants and the wrongful conviction case, and you have the Oregon State Police. And it shows that their competing interests here and that doing the right thing is not the only interest at stake. 00:32:43 Speaker 2: So even though their certificate of innocence is a separate suit from the civil matters, it might have an impact on the dynamic and their other proceedings. 00:32:51 Speaker 4: I'm sure communication is happening on the back end about how the wrongful conviction case would be impacted by a certificate of innocence. So we want everybody to do the right thing, but these cases have a lot of working parts and a lot of it is political and unfortunately, you can't force someone to do the right thing. 00:33:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, in an ideal world, people would acknowledge mistakes, take responsibility, make amends. That's what accountability really should look like. Frank, you and I have had conversations about accountability, and I know that. You know you've been compensated just to the exact amount that Oregon they thought they had to compensate you. But you filed a suit now against twenty four officers who helped build the case against you and fabricate evidence. Why is that accountability so important? 00:33:48 Speaker 1: They just shouldn't be allowed to do this to somebody. It's like, and it's not just me, there's many. It's like they just keep doing it and there's no accountability. They need to change the laws, like something like you can just take a person's life for thirty years. Make me basically live in hell, you know, watching people get murdered, stab shot, you know, riots every day, and then they think, oh, throw some money at them, and I don't make it better. I guess I got a little bit of money. I'm not much happier, you know. I still every day I'm in turmoil. Every day I have nightmares about prison violence and people getting stabbed and you know their throats cut or shot. 00:34:35 Speaker 2: Well, you told me something about the doorbell ringing. 00:34:39 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, any well, certain noises say like somebody drops a broom and it cracks on the floor. I mean I instantly like get in a chemical adrenaline thing in my throat and my mind, you know, goes right back to prison and you know, people getting shot. It just immediately reminds you of, you know, that freaking nightmare. 00:35:00 Speaker 2: In terms of preventing this nightmare from happening in the future, what do you think needs to be done in terms of the system. You and I talked about the fact that you need to go to school longer to be a barber. 00:35:16 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it takes longer to be a barber than go to be at the academy at the state police office. Ten weeks, you know, and then they're deciding your life where they lock you up, what their constitutional rights is. Come on, you can't tell me you know enough about the law and the constitution in ten weeks and look what happened. Just retrain them all, get rid of all the buddy buddy crap, you know, cousins and brothers in there to cover each other's back. 00:35:43 Speaker 2: What to you, Rachel, would accountability look like, not just in this case, but you know, perhaps in wrongful convictions in general. 00:35:55 Speaker 4: I think one of the things that I wish would happen in our cases generally is I wish somebody would admit what they did, and I wish that they would say, look, we got it wrong, and we're really sorry, and we're going to fix it, and we're not going to challenge your innocence petition, and we're not going to resist giving you relief and giving the accountability that you're seeking. It happens every so often, but I think that the impulse for law enforcement is to protect their convictions no matter what, even when they are so obviously false. And I think there's probably some level of you know, if we admit that we got it wrong, then what does that mean for the rest of our convictions, and what does that mean for our belief in the criminal legal system generally? And so you have to just dig in your heels and say we didn't get it wrong. And I wish that that didn't happen. I wish that folks were willing to really reflect on what they did and acknowledge when they did it wrong. 00:36:51 Speaker 2: That's wild because frank in a way, when this all went down, that's what you wanted. You wanted that acknowledgment, that apology. 00:37:01 Speaker 1: I think the apology means more to me than the money man. Look me in the face and apologize, you know, it's simple thing. There should be. What kind of character do you have? You know, if you can't look another man in a face and apologize when you did something wrong and admit it, you know, and it's like people don't care, you know. It's like they put you in prison and they throw you some money and say, oh, we're sorry, but that doesn't help. You know, my mom and dad died when I was in there. All my uncles passed away. Get out and a year later my brother dies. A year after that, my sister, you know, my two of my best friends die. Since I've bet out, it's like, you know why I even get out sometimes and so every day you wake up thinking, well, why did I have to suffer all this? And why did my family have to die? And why did all these other people have to go this? Like the Frankie family, they don't have justice yet, you know, And I'm out here and you know, we're pretty good friends, and so I'm trying to like not celebrate like I'm free and you know, I got a settlement while they're suffering. 00:38:16 Speaker 2: That's the bittersweet thing of this. You know, the Frankie brothers have championed you from the beginning. They knew that you didn't kill their brother. But you're right, they've had no justice. Yeah, it's still an unsolved murder, and unfortunately, it doesn't seem that there's a lot of interest in solving it, which is an injustice in and of itself. They should want to know who killed a high ranking public official. They should want to have the right person health account. 00:38:48 Speaker 1: Yeah, you would think I told them that in the interview. I said, look, there's a murder out there running around, and you're coming at me and my knowledgy list join a cross. Are he's still out there? Because I have no idea. 00:39:05 Speaker 2: I have some theories. We can talk about it. 00:39:07 Speaker 1: After Oh I have no idea. It's like, oh, grip all right. 00:39:12 Speaker 2: Last question for both of you, Rachel, what do you hope people take away from Frank's story. 00:39:17 Speaker 4: A lot of folks think, you know, this could happen to someone else, but it would never happen to me, but it can happen to anybody. And until police are held accountable for what they're doing, and until it is crystal clear that you cannot prosecute someone without probable cause and you can't make up evidence to support your theory, it has to work the other way around. You follow the evidence, not the person, that that this work will never stop and that they're innocent people in prison, and there needs to be a concerted effort to uncover all of the wrongful convictions and get folks out of prison who are innocent. It is such an injustice that this happens to even one person, and people need to understand in law enforcement needs to understand that this can't. 00:40:06 Speaker 2: Keep happening right beautifully put, Frank, do you want to add anything to that? No? 00:40:14 Speaker 1: Oh, gied. 00:40:17 Speaker 2: If you could sit down with anyone who doubted you, what would you want them to know and what would you want them to take away from your experience? 00:40:27 Speaker 1: I'd want to know that there's just because you've got a shitty live doesn't mean you don't have value, And don't send a person that you think don't have no value to present wrongfully convicted. 00:40:51 Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all LoVa for Good podcasts one week early and add free by subscribing to LoVa for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as executive producers Jason Vlahm, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at Lauren Bright Pacheco. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One. 00:41:29 Speaker 1: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. 00:41:33 Speaker 2: The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good