Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #123 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Hamid Hayat

Transcript

#123 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Hamid Hayat · Wrongful Conviction

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
0:04
Speaker 1: writer and.
0:05
Speaker 2: I'm Steve Drissin.
0:07
Speaker 1: In the wake of nine to eleven, keeping America safe
0:09
Speaker 1: was everyone's priority. But what happens when an innocent man
0:13
Speaker 1: gets accused of terrorism based on a false confession. Today's
0:18
Speaker 1: case includes one of the most outlandish confessions I've ever heard,
0:22
Speaker 1: a thousand pole vaulting terrorists, all dressed up like ninja turtles.
0:28
Speaker 1: It's a story that sounds like the punchline of a
0:30
Speaker 1: joke instead of the path to a conviction. But for
0:33
Speaker 1: US citizen Hamid Hyatt, the verdict was no joke at all.
0:47
Speaker 1: Usually we start each episode by telling you about a crime,
0:50
Speaker 1: but in today's story, there was both a crime on
0:53
Speaker 1: a scale we've never seen before and no crime at all.
0:57
Speaker 1: You see, this case took place right after the horrific
1:00
Speaker 1: nine to eleven attacks. Thousands of Americans had died, and
1:04
Speaker 1: pressure was building on our government to prevent more attacks.
1:08
Speaker 1: Make no mistake, there was a lot of good police
1:11
Speaker 1: work done to keep us all safe, but sometimes fear
1:15
Speaker 1: started to override good decision making. Some law enforcement efforts
1:19
Speaker 1: became driven by panic, and even prejudice, not proof. This
1:25
Speaker 1: story is one of the times we got it wrong.
1:28
Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, California native and US citizen
1:32
Speaker 1: Hamid Hyatt was accused of being part of a homegrown
1:36
Speaker 1: terrorist sleeper cell. Years later, the government admitted that no
1:40
Speaker 1: such sleeper cell ever existed, but Hamid had falsely confessed.
1:46
Speaker 1: He spent more than a decade in prison before being cleared.
1:50
Speaker 2: As prosecutors prepare for trial, they review the evidence that
1:54
Speaker 2: the FBI agents obtained in the case, and they look
1:58
Speaker 2: at the interrogation and tapes, and you have to wonder
2:03
Speaker 2: what the prosecutors in this case were thinking when they
2:06
Speaker 2: saw these tapes. What were they thinking when the corroboration
2:11
Speaker 2: of this case was so thin.
2:13
Speaker 1: Hamed is one of the first post nine to eleven
2:16
Speaker 1: terrorism defendants to be exonerated, and he probably won't be
2:19
Speaker 1: the last. His story is a caution to us all
2:24
Speaker 1: when we're talking about our national security, there's nothing more
2:27
Speaker 1: important than getting it right. Hamid's story takes place in Lodi, California,
2:36
Speaker 1: a medium sized town halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento.
2:41
Speaker 1: Lodi's downtown looks like the set of an old western,
2:44
Speaker 1: complete with a train depot from gold Rush days. But
2:47
Speaker 1: if you go south a mile, you'll find a large
2:50
Speaker 1: Pakistani American community where families wear traditional clothing and center
2:55
Speaker 1: their lives around the local mosque. We'll get to Lodi
2:59
Speaker 1: in a minute, but our story starts in Oregon. That's
3:03
Speaker 1: where FBI agents traveled in October two thousand and one
3:07
Speaker 1: looking for a suspected terrorist named Nasim Khan. The Nasm
3:12
Speaker 1: Khan they've found was a twenty eight year old convenience
3:16
Speaker 1: store employee. The FBI quickly realized this guy had nothing
3:20
Speaker 1: to do with terrorism. He simply had the same name
3:23
Speaker 1: as their suspect. But with the FBI at his door,
3:26
Speaker 1: Nasim smelled an opportunity. He gave the agents the biggest
3:31
Speaker 1: tip he could conjure up. He claimed to have seen
3:34
Speaker 1: i'm in al Zawahiri, one of the most wanted terrorists
3:38
Speaker 1: in the world, at a mosque in Lodi, California.
3:41
Speaker 2: It's ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous that Osama bin Lan's number two
3:46
Speaker 2: person would make it into the United States without detection,
3:50
Speaker 2: and of all places, settle in Lode Eye, California.
3:54
Speaker 1: The FBI, to its credit, didn't believe Nassem. They figured
3:58
Speaker 1: out soon enough that he had a reputation for lying.
4:01
Speaker 1: Even his own mother later called Nassim a bag full
4:05
Speaker 1: of lies, air and deceit. But this was a month
4:09
Speaker 1: after nine to eleven, and the government was desperate to
4:12
Speaker 1: recruit informants who could infiltrate Muslim American communities and expose
4:16
Speaker 1: any sleeper cells. Somehow, they decided Nasim was their guy.
4:22
Speaker 1: Being hired as an informant was a pretty big deal
4:25
Speaker 1: for Nassim. He went from working in a convenience store
4:29
Speaker 1: to getting a cool FBI nickname Wildcat. He earned hundreds
4:33
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars on the US government payroll. The
4:37
Speaker 1: FEDS even paid for his car washes. In exchange, they
4:41
Speaker 1: asked him to target the Lodi, California community. By early
4:45
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, Nasim wormed his way into Lowdei's
4:48
Speaker 1: Pakistani neighborhoods. He started befriending people looking for any information
4:53
Speaker 1: the FBI might consider useful, and pretty soon Nasine began
4:57
Speaker 1: focusing on the Hyatt family, especially nineteen year old Hamid. Now,
5:03
Speaker 1: the Hyatt family was well known in Lodi. They had
5:06
Speaker 1: no history of political involvement or extremism whatsoever. Hahmed's dad, Umer,
5:12
Speaker 1: was the local ice cream truck driver.
5:15
Speaker 2: The pairing of Nassim and Hahmed was a strange pairing
5:18
Speaker 2: from the get go. Nassim was ten years older than
5:22
Speaker 2: Hamid and Hamid nineteen or so at the time, acted
5:27
Speaker 2: much more immaturely than his age. He had suffered a
5:31
Speaker 2: terrible batt of meningitis years earlier, which left him cognitively
5:36
Speaker 2: and physically slower.
5:38
Speaker 1: As a child, Hamad had split his time between his
5:40
Speaker 1: home in the US and his relative's home in Pakistan.
5:44
Speaker 1: Because of all the travel, he'd only finished elementary school,
5:47
Speaker 1: and he didn't have many friends in the States. So
5:50
Speaker 1: when Nassim, the informant, befriended him, Hamed couldn't believe his luck.
5:55
Speaker 2: Nassim was paying attention to Hamid, and very few people
6:00
Speaker 2: in the community in lord I paid much attention to Hamid.
6:04
Speaker 1: Nassim was older, he had a fancy car, and apparently
6:07
Speaker 1: endless money. This is the guy who wanted to chat
6:10
Speaker 1: up Hamed. Hamed was in Nasim Andhmaed became friends, or
6:15
Speaker 1: at least so Hamid thought. Over the next year or two,
6:19
Speaker 1: Nasim and Hahmed started having hours of phone conversations that
6:23
Speaker 1: Nassim was secretly recording. On those calls, Nassim portrayed himself
6:28
Speaker 1: as an extremist and told Hamed he'd been involved in
6:31
Speaker 1: jihadi activities for years. Pretty Soon, hapless Hamed started trying
6:36
Speaker 1: to impress Nasim by making up fake stories about his
6:40
Speaker 1: own exploits. Once Hamed said he participated in a Taliban attack,
6:45
Speaker 1: another time he claimed he'd been held in a Pakistani jail.
6:49
Speaker 1: And when Nasim said that he wanted to go to
6:51
Speaker 1: a terrorist training camp, Hamed said that sounded cool. Fast
6:56
Speaker 1: forward a year to two thousand and three, twenty one,
7:01
Speaker 1: and his parents take him to Pakistan to find a
7:03
Speaker 1: bride for Nasim. This trip was a chance to up
7:07
Speaker 1: the ante to bully Hamid into actually going to a
7:11
Speaker 1: terrorist training camp. He starts telling Hamed that he's going
7:14
Speaker 1: to come to Pakistan himself and force Hamed into jihadi training,
7:19
Speaker 1: but Hamid refuses. He fends Nasim off with one excuse
7:24
Speaker 1: after another. It's too hot to go to a training camp,
7:27
Speaker 1: it's too difficult, I need to stay with my sick mother.
7:31
Speaker 1: It's pretty obvious Hamed has zero interest in becoming a terrorist. Finally,
7:36
Speaker 1: he straight out tells Nasim he's never going to a camp.
7:40
Speaker 1: It was their last phone call. Hamed gets married in
7:43
Speaker 1: Pakistan and ends up staying there for two years until
7:46
Speaker 1: June two thousand and five, when he decides to go
7:49
Speaker 1: back to the United States. He boards a plane in Pakistan.
7:52
Speaker 2: With his whole family, but the plane gets.
7:54
Speaker 1: Diverted to Tokyo because it turns out Hamed is on
7:57
Speaker 1: the no fly list. The whole Hyatt family is ushered
8:01
Speaker 1: off the plane and the FBI questions them about why
8:04
Speaker 1: they were overseas and who they were with. They even
8:07
Speaker 1: ask if the men Hamad was hanging out with had
8:10
Speaker 1: facial hair. Eventually, the family is allowed to get back
8:13
Speaker 1: on the plane and fly to California, but a day
8:17
Speaker 1: or two later, the FBI shows up again at the
8:19
Speaker 1: Hyatt family home and brings Hamad in to the Sacramento
8:23
Speaker 1: office for more questioning. Now, let's step back for a minute.
8:29
Speaker 1: By June two thousand and five, there'd been a three
8:31
Speaker 1: year multi agency Federal Terrorism Task Force investigation that revolved
8:37
Speaker 1: around Nasim Khan and his stories. None of Nassm's claims
8:42
Speaker 1: yielded any real information about terrorism. Despite all the money
8:45
Speaker 1: he'd been paid, so by mid two thousand and five,
8:49
Speaker 1: the FBI was feeling pressure to show results in the
8:52
Speaker 1: worst way, and they got results from the Hyatt family
8:56
Speaker 1: in the worst way.
9:07
Speaker 2: Ahmad's interrogation begins on June third, two thousand and five,
9:12
Speaker 2: at about eleven thirty in the morning, and it would
9:15
Speaker 2: go on for hours and hours before the agents turned
9:19
Speaker 2: on the video cameras.
9:21
Speaker 1: They start taping at five o'clock in the afternoon. You
9:25
Speaker 1: can see skinny little Hamed, very nervous, sitting in a
9:29
Speaker 1: chair that's pushed against the wall of a small windowless room.
9:34
Speaker 1: He's facing two FBI agents who are staring him down.
9:37
Speaker 2: The policy of the FBI at this time was that
9:41
Speaker 2: the decision to record interrogations was left in the discretion
9:45
Speaker 2: of agents, so it was unusual that they would record
9:50
Speaker 2: these interrogations. But thank god they did, because otherwise we
9:55
Speaker 2: wouldn't have the record that we do have about how
9:59
Speaker 2: at least some of Hamid's interrogation went down.
10:03
Speaker 1: As soon as the tape's rolling. The agents accuse Hamid
10:06
Speaker 1: of spending between three and six months at a terrorist
10:10
Speaker 1: training camp in Pakistan, and then come to lies. First,
10:16
Speaker 1: they say he failed a polygraph that he apparently took
10:18
Speaker 1: earlier that day. Second, they claim to have satellite photographs
10:23
Speaker 1: of a camp, implying Hamid's in those photos. Neither was true,
10:29
Speaker 1: and then the agents offer him help. As long as
10:32
Speaker 1: he talks over and over and over, they promise that
10:37
Speaker 1: they're there to help him. Hamid looks desperate to please
10:40
Speaker 1: these guys. He says, he wants to cooperate for my country.
10:45
Speaker 3: From our country are doing anything, you know, because you
10:47
Speaker 3: know these guys are.
10:48
Speaker 1: Hunting our country about well, I appreciate that.
10:51
Speaker 2: I mean it's important because you.
10:53
Speaker 4: Know every day in the movie sees her. You know,
10:55
Speaker 4: our troops Erooklyn.
10:56
Speaker 3: They're very hard for you know, making peace in the
10:58
Speaker 3: whole world in front.
11:00
Speaker 2: While they're making peace, they're making peace for us so
11:02
Speaker 2: we can live together, all of us. Yeah, And what
11:04
Speaker 2: do they do with these camps.
11:06
Speaker 1: What they're doing is to teaching people out to how
11:07
Speaker 1: to kill American of course, right, that's what.
11:09
Speaker 2: The camps are all about.
11:11
Speaker 1: The interrogation goes on for hours into the night, until
11:14
Speaker 1: Hamid starts breaking. He tells the agents he did go
11:18
Speaker 1: to a camp in Pakistan for several months, but his
11:22
Speaker 1: story makes no sense.
11:23
Speaker 2: It's laughable.
11:24
Speaker 1: They ask him when he'd gone to the camp. At
11:27
Speaker 1: first Hamad said it was during the hot season, but
11:30
Speaker 1: then he says it was during the cold season. When
11:32
Speaker 1: they ask him to describe the camp, Hammad's answer is
11:35
Speaker 1: just pathetic. He says the whole place had only four
11:39
Speaker 1: weapons in it, a shotgun, two pistols, and a machine gun.
11:43
Speaker 2: He said the only weapon that he had handled was
11:45
Speaker 2: actually a pistol, and he'd only shot it three or
11:48
Speaker 2: four times. What kind of training is that?
11:51
Speaker 1: The agents ask comed where the camp was, and he
11:54
Speaker 1: keeps switching his story there too. First it was in
11:57
Speaker 1: rural Afghanistan, then it was in rural path Pakistan.
12:00
Speaker 3: You're all over the map here, and you're not helping
12:03
Speaker 3: yourself out it by doing that, you know, Okay, when
12:05
Speaker 3: one minute you're saying Northwest Frontier, next minute you're saying cash,
12:09
Speaker 3: you're saying where this building was? Which city was it?
12:11
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I'll say about a court.
12:14
Speaker 3: It's not that you will say you know where it is,
12:17
Speaker 3: you know where the building is, Tell me where was it?
12:20
Speaker 3: About a gourd and the BFP in NWFP.
12:22
Speaker 1: And calling Coort and of course remember Hammad had said
12:26
Speaker 1: none of this to Nassin Khan, despite years of recorded
12:30
Speaker 1: phone calls. Instead, he told Nasim he'd never go to
12:34
Speaker 1: a training camp. It's only after this interrogation that Hamad
12:38
Speaker 1: starts saying whatever he thinks the agents want to hear,
12:42
Speaker 1: and piece by piece, the agents feed him nearly all
12:45
Speaker 1: the information in his confession, down to the types of
12:48
Speaker 1: buildings he was supposedly going to attack in the United States.
12:52
Speaker 3: There are certain kinds of targets that you know, are
12:54
Speaker 3: are good targets.
12:55
Speaker 5: You know, if you're going.
12:56
Speaker 4: To be worth your salt as a gati.
12:58
Speaker 5: You know about his targets.
13:00
Speaker 3: Buildings and I'll say buildings. What kind of doings you
13:05
Speaker 3: take your babys you know, okay, financial buildings are private buildings,
13:10
Speaker 3: commercial buildings, think.
13:12
Speaker 2: Of the United's commercial artics and those kind of buildings.
13:15
Speaker 3: I see, all right, you're not yeah, but I'm not
13:20
Speaker 3: sure about the buildings you guys are talking about the
13:22
Speaker 3: big one that will say yeah, finance, I'll take What else?
13:27
Speaker 2: What else did they tell you about Hoskins was.
13:29
Speaker 1: Maybe Hammed's confession is not very believable, so the FBI
13:33
Speaker 1: needs corroboration. While those agents are questioning Hamid, other agents
13:38
Speaker 1: bring in his dad, Umer, the ice cream truck driver,
13:42
Speaker 1: and start questioning him too. They tell Umer that Hamed
13:46
Speaker 1: admitted going to a training camp in Pakistan, and they
13:49
Speaker 1: start pressuring Umer to say he also went to visit Hamed,
13:53
Speaker 1: just like a parent would check out his kids college. Eventually,
13:57
Speaker 1: Umer agrees that he had gone to visit Homed, but
14:00
Speaker 1: his story is totally wild. Hamid had described a rural
14:05
Speaker 1: camp in a forested area, but Umer says the camp's
14:08
Speaker 1: in rawal Pindi, a two million persons city. And Umer's
14:12
Speaker 1: description well, he says he saw one thousand fighters at
14:16
Speaker 1: this camp and they're all in a huge underground basement
14:19
Speaker 1: practicing pole vaulting.
14:21
Speaker 2: Do you know how high a ceiling has to be
14:23
Speaker 2: in order.
14:24
Speaker 6: To pull vault?
14:25
Speaker 1: I'll take shit you don't do in a basement for
14:27
Speaker 1: five hundred alex. And it gets even crazier because, according
14:30
Speaker 1: to Umer, those pole vaulters are dressed up like Ninja turtles.
14:35
Speaker 1: Umer later explained that he lifted this story from the
14:38
Speaker 1: movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles he'd recently seen it on TV.
14:46
Speaker 1: All this goes on and on. Both men keep spinning
14:49
Speaker 1: stories and the agents aren't really getting anywhere. At three am,
14:54
Speaker 1: Hamid starts complaining that his head hurts. He asks to
14:57
Speaker 1: go home and gets in sleep.
14:59
Speaker 3: You tell me Kashmir, You telling me Afghanistan, Northwest.
15:03
Speaker 1: Blame it on whatever you want to blame it on.
15:05
Speaker 2: But what's going up happening tonight? He ran up the
15:07
Speaker 2: rest of you.
15:08
Speaker 3: Okay, so I'm here tour over.
15:11
Speaker 2: No, No, you're not leaving here tonight now.
15:13
Speaker 3: No, I mean tom, I'm going to be here tonight,
15:15
Speaker 3: staying here in that everything you're going, you're a jail
15:18
Speaker 3: and to Jeda. So I'm going to get place to
15:20
Speaker 3: sweep forward there like that.
15:22
Speaker 1: Instead, the agents arrest him and charge him with lending
15:25
Speaker 1: material support to terrorism. Suddenly, he's facing up to thirty
15:30
Speaker 1: years in prison for his part. Umer's also arrested based
15:35
Speaker 1: on the crazy ninja turtle statement. He's charged with two
15:39
Speaker 1: counts of lying to federal agents. The Hyatt's arrest was
15:45
Speaker 1: a huge news story. Now, some media outlets were skeptical.
15:49
Speaker 1: They ran stories highlighting the pole vaulting and the ninja
15:52
Speaker 1: turtles and the crazy mismatch between what Hammad and his
15:56
Speaker 1: dad had said, but other media bought it all hook
15:59
Speaker 1: line and sinker. They covered the story as proof that
16:03
Speaker 1: domestic sleeper cells existed.
16:05
Speaker 2: You throw a word out there, you throw the word terror,
16:08
Speaker 2: you throw the word martyr, you throw the word gihad
16:11
Speaker 2: out into public space, and people will believe almost anything
16:16
Speaker 2: because the fear is so great.
16:19
Speaker 1: There's a federal trial to get ready for, and the
16:21
Speaker 1: Hyatt family hires lawyers. But while the lawyer that Umer
16:25
Speaker 1: hires is very experienced, Hamed gets a novice. She'd never
16:30
Speaker 1: gone before a jury before. The plan was for her
16:33
Speaker 1: to imitate whatever Umer's lawyer did, but that was no
16:36
Speaker 1: plan at all. The cases were totally different, very different charges,
16:41
Speaker 1: very different confessions. Hamid needed his own defense, but he
16:45
Speaker 1: didn't get one, or at least not a very good one.
16:48
Speaker 2: I mean, I've had some trial experience in my career.
16:51
Speaker 2: I know my way around a criminal courtroom. We've had
16:55
Speaker 2: contested hearings in our own post conviction cases, and I
16:59
Speaker 2: know more more about false confessions than a lot of
17:02
Speaker 2: other attorneys who practice in this area. But there is
17:06
Speaker 2: no way that I would ever take a case like this.
17:10
Speaker 2: This case required a trial lawyer, and one who had
17:14
Speaker 2: worked with a security clearance and had done cases in
17:19
Speaker 2: federal court against the FBI.
17:21
Speaker 1: Hammid's lawyer had some of the best false confession experts
17:24
Speaker 1: in her backyard, including doctor Richard Leo at the University
17:29
Speaker 1: of San Francisco, but when Hahmed's trial rolled around in
17:32
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, his lawyer didn't call doctor Leo
17:35
Speaker 1: to testify. Hamed's lawyer also didn't adequately challenge the government's
17:40
Speaker 1: claim that he carried a jihadi prayer in his wallet.
17:45
Speaker 1: Hamed did carry a note a tauiz, a standard Pakistani
17:49
Speaker 1: Muslim prayer for good health and protection. It was a
17:52
Speaker 1: gift from Hammed's uncle after the meningitis, but Hamid's lawyer
17:57
Speaker 1: didn't clearly explain that the note had nothing to do
18:00
Speaker 1: with terrorism, and the jury was left to think the worst.
18:03
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a travel prayer. You know, Jews travel
18:07
Speaker 2: with eighteen cents in their front pocket when they go
18:09
Speaker 2: on an airplane.
18:10
Speaker 1: All right, well, I feel comfortable traveling with you, Steve.
18:12
Speaker 1: You're gott me covered spiritually.
18:13
Speaker 2: No, I kind of elapsed jewe okay, But people have
18:18
Speaker 2: these prayers with regard to travel, and that's what my
18:21
Speaker 2: understanding of this tawiz was. Yeah, I mean the language
18:24
Speaker 2: that that expert use makes it sound very ominous, but
18:28
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that was the right translation.
18:31
Speaker 1: Despite a pretty weak defense, Hamid's conviction was far from guaranteed.
18:36
Speaker 1: Even after hearing his confession, The jury still took nine
18:39
Speaker 1: days to reach a decision, but in the end they're
18:42
Speaker 1: verdict guilty. Later it came out that there had been
18:46
Speaker 1: instances of jury misconduct during deliberations. The jury foreman himself
18:51
Speaker 1: had said that if you put all Muslims in the
18:53
Speaker 1: same costume, they all look alike. Umer Hyatt's trial, on
18:58
Speaker 1: the other hand, ended in a mistrial, no verdict at all.
19:02
Speaker 1: He ended up pleading guilty to some minor customs violations
19:05
Speaker 1: and was released but Hamid. On September tenth, two thousand
19:09
Speaker 1: and seven, Hamed Hyatt was sentenced to twenty four years
19:13
Speaker 1: in prison. It was one day before the sixth anniversary
19:18
Speaker 1: of the nine to eleven attacks. Federal prison is no
19:24
Speaker 1: picnic for anyone, especially not a young muslinman who's been
19:28
Speaker 1: convicted of terrorism. Most inmates are allowed only a limited
19:31
Speaker 1: number of visits, something like once a week. Hamed was
19:35
Speaker 1: allowed only one visit per year from his family members.
19:39
Speaker 1: His dad, Umer didn't get permission to see him for
19:41
Speaker 1: more than eight years. But even while Hamat endured prison,
19:46
Speaker 1: he grew up for the first time. He was meeting
19:49
Speaker 1: people of different faiths and backgrounds, albeit behind bars, and
19:53
Speaker 1: he began to realize that those things he'd said to
19:56
Speaker 1: impress Naseem about terrorism being cool or toxic. When a
20:02
Speaker 1: reporter interviewed him in twenty sixteen, Hamad retracted everything. He
20:07
Speaker 1: told the reporter. It was wrong what I said. I
20:10
Speaker 1: totally disagree with myself. I didn't know much then. I
20:14
Speaker 1: wasn't open minded about a lot of stuff.
20:27
Speaker 2: So Hamid is in prison and he's doing his time,
20:30
Speaker 2: and his case is winding its way through the system.
20:33
Speaker 2: He's losing at every stage. And then Hamid gets a new.
20:37
Speaker 1: Lawyer, a great lawyer by the name of Dennis Riardon.
20:41
Speaker 1: For those of you who are real true crime junkies,
20:43
Speaker 1: you might remember Dennis Riardon as one of the leading
20:46
Speaker 1: lawyers on the team that freed the West Memphis three.
20:50
Speaker 6: For us, of course, the important thing about the case
20:52
Speaker 6: is that this was not about just a bad trial.
20:56
Speaker 6: You can have cases like that where someone's rights are violated.
21:00
Speaker 6: We passionately believed and knew, we knew it was an
21:03
Speaker 6: actual innocence case.
21:05
Speaker 1: So Dennis starts investigating the time that Hamid spent in
21:08
Speaker 1: Pakistan between two thousand and three and two thousand and five. Remember,
21:13
Speaker 1: the government said that during those two years, Hamad went
21:17
Speaker 1: off for three months to a training camp. And what
21:20
Speaker 1: does Dennis discover alibi witnesses, eighteen of them.
21:24
Speaker 6: They described in great detail his daily routine. He was
21:28
Speaker 6: generally almost every day in the native village, except for
21:32
Speaker 6: the time when he took two trips to ral Pindi
21:35
Speaker 6: with his mother. So there were witnesses from raal Pindi,
21:39
Speaker 6: there were witnesses from the village of Babudi. He had
21:43
Speaker 6: never been out of their site for more than at
21:46
Speaker 6: most a couple of days, and had never attended at
21:49
Speaker 6: camp as the government alleged, for three to six months.
21:53
Speaker 1: Person after person comes forward to say that when Hahmad
21:56
Speaker 1: was in Pakistan, he was living with family and friends
21:59
Speaker 1: the whole time. There were no three month unexplained absences.
22:03
Speaker 1: He spent his days playing soccer, not training for jihad.
22:07
Speaker 2: Haman was no terrorist, He was totally innocent.
22:10
Speaker 1: Dennis prepares an appeal based on these alibis. He's granted
22:13
Speaker 1: a hearing, a chance to make the case for Hamad's innocence.
22:17
Speaker 1: The alibi witnesses testify at the hearing over a live
22:21
Speaker 1: video feed from Pakistan. Dennis also calls that false confession
22:25
Speaker 1: expert to the stand doctor Richard Leo.
22:28
Speaker 2: And doctor Leo testified that this confession was useless. It
22:32
Speaker 2: wasn't worth the tape that it was recorded on.
22:35
Speaker 6: And of course, if you look at the interrogation itself,
22:39
Speaker 6: one of the almost humorous aspects of it was that
22:42
Speaker 6: he was painfully thin and hardly looked like someone who
22:47
Speaker 6: had trained for terrorist activities, and in fact gave this
22:51
Speaker 6: description during this marathon interrogation where he's trying very hard
22:56
Speaker 6: to please them and give them answers. Well, I was
22:58
Speaker 6: in the camp. Did you ever do arms trading? Well,
23:02
Speaker 6: they gave me a rifle once, but it was too
23:04
Speaker 6: heavy for me, so they never gave it to me again,
23:07
Speaker 6: and so what they had me do was peel vegetables
23:09
Speaker 6: in the kitchen.
23:10
Speaker 1: The media is following all of this. A PBS Frontline
23:14
Speaker 1: episode had been made questioning Hamid's conviction. A written piece
23:18
Speaker 1: in the intercept did the same thing, and while the
23:21
Speaker 1: hearing was going on, an episode of the Netflix series
23:24
Speaker 1: The confession tapes also pointed to Hammid's innocence. His case
23:29
Speaker 1: was attracting supporters, momentum was building fast. So what does
23:34
Speaker 1: the government do. They offer Hamid his freedom, but he's
23:38
Speaker 1: got to plead guilty.
23:39
Speaker 6: As a lawyer, you're obligated to go to client and
23:41
Speaker 6: say the government is still talking about potentially helping you
23:44
Speaker 6: out if you provide them with information about Pakistan. And
23:48
Speaker 6: he said, I have nothing to provide them with.
23:50
Speaker 1: Now we've heard the story way too often. As soon
23:52
Speaker 1: as a case starts falling apart, the government offers a deal.
23:56
Speaker 1: It lets prosecutors save face, and it's pretty hard for
23:59
Speaker 1: any defendant to turn down.
24:01
Speaker 6: But Hamat, he said, I've gone through all of that
24:03
Speaker 6: and I am not going to stand up and say
24:07
Speaker 6: that I did something I didn't do. And we said,
24:10
Speaker 6: you know, we have a very strong case, but there's
24:13
Speaker 6: no way we can guarantee you that it will succeed.
24:17
Speaker 6: And he said, I'm prepared to see this through.
24:20
Speaker 1: Years ago, he refused to go to a camp when
24:23
Speaker 1: a scene pressured him. Now he refuses to say he
24:27
Speaker 1: went to a camp. He turns down the deal. Instead,
24:31
Speaker 1: he bets that the truth will set him free.
24:34
Speaker 2: Turns out he was right to take that bet.
24:36
Speaker 6: You just see before you click on it, there's an
24:39
Speaker 6: order of the District Court, and you know you're talking
24:43
Speaker 6: about ten seconds of absolute terror. And then I clicked
24:48
Speaker 6: on it and the conviction is overturned. I'll admit it.
24:52
Speaker 2: I wept.
24:53
Speaker 6: I really did.
24:55
Speaker 1: On July thirtieth, twenty nineteen, after fourteen years behind bars,
25:00
Speaker 1: hamit Hyatt's conviction was thrown out based on his trial
25:03
Speaker 1: attorney's ineffectiveness. If Hamid's lawyer had called those alibi witnesses,
25:09
Speaker 1: the court found, he would have been acquitted.
25:13
Speaker 2: So where's Hamid today?
25:14
Speaker 1: Laura Hamid was freed on August ninth, twenty nineteen, and
25:19
Speaker 1: formally exonerated just a few months ago. On Valentine's Day
25:22
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, the government dismissed all charges against him. He's
25:27
Speaker 1: the first post nine to eleven international terrorism defendant to
25:31
Speaker 1: be officially cleared of any.
25:33
Speaker 6: Wrongdoing, and his family knew that he had been freed,
25:37
Speaker 6: but they didn't know what was the next step. Family
25:40
Speaker 6: was brought to the Council on American Islamic Relations, not
25:45
Speaker 6: knowing that he would be there, and the video of
25:51
Speaker 6: his mother seeing him for the first time in fourteen
25:55
Speaker 6: years because she was never able to visit him, and
25:58
Speaker 6: then the same with his father, Jeremah Jeremah. It was extraordinary.
26:09
Speaker 6: Everyone wept just watching it.
26:18
Speaker 1: Since his exoneration, Hamid's been taking life one day at
26:20
Speaker 1: a time. He's living in California, although not in Lodi,
26:25
Speaker 1: and he's reconnecting with his family, including nieces and nephews
26:28
Speaker 1: who were born while he was locked up. But like
26:31
Speaker 1: all exoneries, he's struggling to navigate a world that's really
26:35
Speaker 1: different than the one he was taken from in two
26:37
Speaker 1: thousand and five. When I saw him a few months ago,
26:41
Speaker 1: I asked him if he was okay. He looked at
26:44
Speaker 1: me for a long time and simply said, no, I'm not.
26:50
Speaker 1: Hamed's got a lot of healing to do. But the
26:52
Speaker 1: good news he's got an enormous number of supporters who
26:56
Speaker 1: believe in him, and Hamid, we're here to say for
27:00
Speaker 1: you too, Hey, Hamed?
27:03
Speaker 5: Is that you?
27:04
Speaker 6: Hey?
27:04
Speaker 4: Laura? Are you doing good?
27:06
Speaker 5: Good?
27:06
Speaker 2: What are you up to today?
27:07
Speaker 4: Not much? Where do you stand these days?
27:09
Speaker 5: You sand with your family?
27:11
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm with my family.
27:12
Speaker 2: Yes.
27:13
Speaker 5: What's it like to be back with your family after
27:15
Speaker 5: so many years away.
27:16
Speaker 4: Truly a blessing.
27:17
Speaker 5: They always believed in you.
27:19
Speaker 4: My family was there, my legal team was there, almost supported.
27:22
Speaker 4: That was my hope, my star.
27:25
Speaker 1: Where do you see yourself five years from now?
27:27
Speaker 4: I just want to go back to school and get
27:29
Speaker 4: my school the Phoneline didn't go to college after that.
27:32
Speaker 4: I hope you'll find a good job.
27:34
Speaker 1: I see you on social media posting pictures of you
27:36
Speaker 1: with your nieces and nephews.
27:38
Speaker 5: It's amazing. You've been out what since August, and you're
27:41
Speaker 5: already way better than me at Instagram. So the checks.
27:53
Speaker 2: And balances in our criminal justice system failed miserably in
27:57
Speaker 2: this case. And I think it's not because these are
28:00
Speaker 2: bad people or they were trying to frame Hamid Hyad
28:04
Speaker 2: and his father. I think it's because they were operating
28:08
Speaker 2: in the panic and fear that everybody in this country
28:14
Speaker 2: was living under in the wake of nine to eleven,
28:18
Speaker 2: And in that context, I think standards for what a
28:21
Speaker 2: good case is sometimes get.
28:24
Speaker 1: Ignored, Standards start being cut short, and the results is
28:30
Speaker 1: the taking of more innocent life. Right in this case,
28:33
Speaker 1: fourteen years from the life of Hammed Hyad. When Hamad
28:39
Speaker 1: was released, he said I still think this is a dream.
28:43
Speaker 1: I wake up and I still think I'm in prison.
28:47
Speaker 1: I'll never be able to pay back my sisters and brothers,
28:49
Speaker 1: none of my supporters. I'm your servant until the day
28:53
Speaker 1: of judgment. That's the story of Hamed Hyatt. Next week,
29:02
Speaker 1: join us as we go to South Carolina. We'll take
29:05
Speaker 1: you to a fight for justice that's stuck with Steve
29:08
Speaker 1: his entire career till then. Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction,
29:13
Speaker 1: False Confessions. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
29:20
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
29:25
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the
29:28
Speaker 1: team at Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis
29:32
Speaker 1: Senior producer and Pope, and additional production and editing by
29:36
Speaker 1: Connor Hall. Special thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script
29:40
Speaker 1: editing and for wrangling and writing like a mad woman.
29:43
Speaker 1: Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
29:47
Speaker 1: me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nywriter.
29:50
Speaker 2: And you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
29:53
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongfulconviction podcast dot
29:57
Speaker 1: com and be sure to follow the show on Instagram
30:00
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
30:04
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction