Wrongful Conviction Podcasts
Wrongful Conviction Podcasts share the stories of men and women who have spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit. Some of them had even been sentenced to death. These are stories about tragedy, triumph, unequal justice and actual innocence.
It was Thanksgiving Eve when Maureen Fernandez went to a few of her usual bars with an unknown man in a black Monte Carlo. The next morning, her body was discovered in an empty lot, where the night watchman had seen a white car leaving in the early hours. Detectives and their star witness got really creative when the case went cold.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, the Sepulveda’s Red Top crew ran the crack game in the South Bronx. When the Yellow Top crew tried to open up shop in an alleyway on Beekman Avenue, Nelson Sepulveda and 3 enforcers sprayed the alleyway with bullets on December 16th, 1991, killing 4 and wounding 1. Danny Rincon, who was with the Orange Top crew, had his whereabouts accounted for, but that didn’t seem to matter to Detective Mark Tebbens.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.exonerationinitiative.org/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.
On September 7th, 1988, Marty Tankleff awoke for his 1st day of his senior year of high school only to find his mother had been killed, while his father held on by a thread. Curiously, he became the target of the investigation, despite some glaringly suspicious characters.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.makinganexoneree.com/
https://metcalflawnyc.com/attorneys/martin-tankleff/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.
At sunrise on December 4th, 2000, sheriff’s deputies rolled up on Rob Will and Michael Allen Rosario as they stripped hubcaps in North Houston. One of them thought escaping responsibility for this petty crime was more important than Deputy Barrett Hill’s life.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.change.org/p/free-rob-will-an-innocent-man-on-texas-death-row
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.
No body, no bones, no motive. Just a decades long nightmare that has not ended.
For the final episode of Season 2 Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us back to Ada, Oklahoma, for the second half of the story of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot. When we left off last week, Tommy and Karl were sitting on death row, after police turned Tommy’s bad dream into a murder confession. This week, we hear about some serious twists in the case, from the discovery of the victim’s body to the revelation of hidden evidence that turned this case upside down.
Laura and Steve update us on everything that’s happened since the 2018 Netflix series, The Innocent Man, told Tommy and Karl’s story. There’s been some very good news for one of them….and a breaking story that brings some hope for the other.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tommy Ward Announcement
In the spring of 2019, Zephi was a high school sophomore troubled by a bad break up, when an older guy, Philip Baldenegro, swooped in through social media and began grooming her for the sex trade. One exchange between Baldenegro and a john turned deadly, and now, Dallas County is trying to send Zephi to prison for her trafficker’s crimes. Join us in speaking up for Zephi before the unthinkable happens.
https://directlyto.org/projects/zephaniah-trevinos-defense-fund/
https://www.change.org/p/henry-wade-juvenile-justice-facility-justice-for-zephaniah-trevino
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/release-zephaniah-trevino
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/freezephi/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.
He thought the police would recognize this was just a dream, not reality.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us a story from Ada, Oklahoma where a young woman went missing. A few months after her disappearance, a man named Tommy Ward told police that he’d had a bad dream about her murder. Incredibly, the police took that dream and turned it into a false confession... and into a prison sentence that continues to this day, 35 years later.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
These police were willing to sacrifice one of their own just to close a case.
Laura and Steve tell us the story of a Michigan murder case with an unusual suspect: a small-town police officer named Ray McCann. After Ray helped investigate the disappearance of a little girl, he was wrongfully accused of her murder. In pursuit of their only suspect, police turned Ray’s whole life into an interrogation room.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
Michael was serving a life sentence until one person came to his rescue: his mom.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us to Culpeper County, Virginia, to tell the story of teenage buddies Eric Weakley and Michael Hash. Local police solved a murder case by coercing Eric into falsely confessing and into falsely implicating his friend Michael as an accomplice. For years, lawyers couldn’t get justice for either of them -- until Michael’s mom found evidence that blew this case wide open.
If you want to support Eric Weakley’s pardon petition, you can write to the governor of Virginia.
Governor Ralph E. Northam
Use the email form at: https://www.governor.virginia.gov/constituent-services/communicating-with-the-governors-office/
Write a letter to:
Governor Ralph E. Northam
P.O. Box 1475
Richmond, VA 23218
Call:
804-786-2211
Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Thomasson
Email to: pardons@governor.virginia.gov
Write a letter to:
Secretary of the Commonwealth
Kelly Thomasson
P.O. Bo 2454
Richmond, Virginia 23218
Call:
804-692-2542
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
One woman was forced to talk, the other was not allowed. Both were powerless.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell you about a California man named Ricky Davis. In 1985, Ricky and his girlfriend, Connie, found their roommate brutally stabbed to death. Without any leads, the case went cold for 14 years until detectives convinced Connie that she had repressed memories of Ricky committing the crime.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
In the final episode of the season, Josh Dubin explores Shaken Baby Syndrome with Kate Judson, Executive Director for the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences.
Shaken Baby Syndrome isn’t a fool proof diagnosis. There are in fact many other causes for the symptoms of Shaken Baby Syndrome that do not arise from intentionally shaking a baby at all.
Learn more and get involved.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/junk-science
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
To win exoneration, it wasn’t enough for the DA to declare innocence. The judge had to agree, or Walter wasn’t going anywhere.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us to Philadelphia for the story of Walter Ogrod. Walter was sent to death row by an old-school Philly justice system that was better known for injustice. He spent decades in prison for a murder he didn't commit -- until a new wave of reform-minded prosecutors found the truth behind Walter's false confession.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
Josh Dubin discusses Eyewitness Testimony with renowned psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, a professor at the University of California, Irvine. She studies human memory, specifically the malleability of memory, a huge factor in cases where eyewitness testimony is used as evidence.
It turns out that memories, just like other forms of evidence, can be manipulated, contaminated, and planted.
Learn more and get involved.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/junk-science
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Sometimes when detectives can't get a confession they'll settle for a something else
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin explore the story of Emerson Stevens, a fisherman from Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. When a young mother was found murdered, it seemed all the evidence pointed to Emerson, until the case fell apart. Emerson survived 31 years in prison with the help of an ally from across the bay.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
To support Emerson Stevens’ request for an Absolute Pardon contact the Governor of Virginia's office and the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office. The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office investigates the requests while the Governor grants or denies the requests.
Governor Ralph E. Northam
Use the email form at: https://www.governor.virginia.gov/constituent-services/communicating-with-the-governors-office/
Write a letter to:
Governor Ralph E. Northam
P.O. Box 1475
Richmond, VA 23218
Call:
804-786-2211
Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Thomasson
Email to: pardons@governor.virginia.gov
Write a letter to:
Secretary of the Commonwealth
Kelly Thomasson
P.O. Bo 2454
Richmond, Virginia 23218
Call:
804-692-2542
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Josh Dubin was called to Kansas to represent an innocent man named Albert Wilson, and we are pulling for a successful resolution to this case. Josh will return next week with a brand new episode of Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/junk-science
The thing about torture is that it works, at least if your only goal is to find a scapegoat.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us to Birmingham, England. In 1972, two pubs were bombed, and six innocent Irish men were tortured into giving false confessions. The Birmingham Six were freed in 1991, but the crime’s never been solved. To this day, the public demands to know who really planted those bombs.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
Josh Dubin examines Roadside Drug Testing with Greg Glod, Criminal Justice Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.
Faulty tests, which cost police departments $2 a piece or less, are widely used across the United States, causing countless people to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit, despite scientific evidence that proves just how ineffective they really are.
Learn more and get involved.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/junk-science
https://www.propublica.org/article/common-roadside-drug-test-routinely-produces-false-positives
https://www.propublica.org/article/unreliable-and-unchallenged
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
In Chicago, old habits die hard.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us inside one of the worst police abuse scandals in U.S. history. For decades on the southside of Chicago, a group of white cops turned the interrogation room into a torture chamber for Black men. Those cops called themselves the Midnight Crew.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
Josh Dubin does a deep dive into the psychology behind Coerced Confession Evidence with David Rudolf, criminal defense and civil rights attorney, and co-host of the podcast Abuse of Power.
It turns out tactics used to extract Coerced Confessions are also rooted in Junk Science. Just like Bite Mark Evidence, Bloodstain Pattern Analysis, and so many others covered in this show, Coerced, or False Confessions are another link in the chain of the Junk Science epidemic.
Learn more and get involved.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/junk-science
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
The prisons are filled with people convicted of murder who never killed anyone.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us to Dayton, Ohio where a young woman’s false confession to robbery gets turned into a false conviction for murder. There are two profound lies at work in the legal system here.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
Josh Dubin talks about Tool Mark Analysis with Tim Requarth, a freelance journalist who often writes about the intersection between science and criminal justice and a lecturer in science and writing at New York University.
The notion that tools leave a unique mark on a surface is commonly presented to unsuspecting juries. But, it turns out that it's not necessarily the case at all.
Learn more and get involved.
“Forensic Science Put Jimmy Genrich in Prison for 24 Years. What if It Wasn’t Science” By Meehan Crist and Tim Requarth https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-crisis-of-american-forensics/
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us inside a decades-long fight for the truth. The story of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown is living proof that false confessions can send innocent people to death row.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
This episode includes audio from “Brothers Return Home to Freedom” from The News & Observer. © 2014 McClatchy. All rights reserved. Used under license.
Josh Dubin explores Gunshot Residue Evidence with Joanna Sanchez from the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Office of the Ohio Public Defender.
Of all the many faulty forensic sciences, Gunshot Residue certainly has some truly startling and scary issues that began almost a century ago.
Learn more and get involved.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Norfolk 4
Four honorable men volunteered to fight for their country, but ended up fighting for their own freedom.
Hosts Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin, co-directors at Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions and central figures in the smash hit Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer, tell us about not one, but four U.S. Navy sailors who falsely confessed to murdering another sailor’s wife.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This episode includes audio from “Brothers Return Home to Freedom” from The News & Observer. © 2014 McClatchy. All rights reserved. Used under license.
S11E20: Keyontay Ricks
After being wrongfully convicted for the first time as a child and paroled from juvie, Keyontay Ricks got involved with mentoring at risk kids, including a 14 year old weed dealer named Kurtel Walker. Kurtel and one of his customers conjured up a plot to settle a drug debt through the customer’s workplace, and their combined behavior got pinned on Keyontay when a racist cop decided to abuse his power.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Imagine the nightmare of being interrogated until you admit guilt for a crime you didn’t commit. In its long-awaited second season, Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions examines this true crime phenomenon through the eyes of two of the globe’s leading experts on interrogations: Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin, renowned attorneys, co-directors of Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, and recognized figures from the smash hit Netflix docu-series Making a Murderer. Using their unparalleled, first hand experience, actual interrogation audio, and interviews with leading lawyers, experts, and formerly incarcerated people to tell twelve true stories of false confessions, Laura and Steve invite us onto the front lines along with them to learn not only why people confess to crimes they never committed, but also how the criminal justice system failed to prevent those injustices from turning into years of wrongful imprisonment.
Season 2 begins on Monday, October 5, 2020.
Learn more and get involved:
S11E19: Sabrina Butler
Approaching midnight on April 11th, 1989, 18 year old single mother Sabrina Butler found her 9 month old, Walter, not breathing. A genetic kidney disorder sent a series of events in motion that took Walter’s life and nearly his mother’s along with it.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.witnesstoinnocence.org/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E18: Kevin Dykes
Plagued by guilt over the accidental death of a friend, Kevin Dykes turned to drugs and the street after a stint in juvie. After witnessing his drug overlords visit violence upon his friends and neighbors, Kevin decided to go to the police, but snitching came with even more hazards than expected.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Josh Dubin discusses Fingerprint Evidence with Mary Moriarty, Chief Public Defender of Hennepin County in Minnesota
Contrary to what pop culture has ingrained in the American conscience, matching known fingerprints of a suspect to prints left at the scene of a crime is not an exact science. It’s entirely subjective.
So how did fingerprints become so widely accepted and thought of as the gold standard, as fool proof evidence?
Learn more and get involved.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E16: Marilyn Mulero
On May 2nd, 1992, Marilyn Mulero was out with a friend and someone whom they had just met, Jackie Montanez, mourning the death of another friend at the hands of the Latin Kings, when they happened to meet 2 members of that very same gang. Montanez’s murderous gang life ambitions put her friends’ lives and freedom in jeopardy when they all collided with 2 of Chicago’s most corrupt detectives.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://californiainnocenceproject.org/
https://www.uis.edu/illinoisinnocenceproject/
https://www.exonerationproject.org/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Josh Dubin speaks with Bill Osinski, journalist and author of “Guilty By Popular Demand.”
Even when done correctly, impression analysis of evidence, like shoe prints and tire tracks, is purely subjective. Many experts recognize its limitations. But one so-called “expert” in particular pushed the limits of this forensic discipline to produce horrific outcomes.
Learn more and get involved.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E16: Willie “Pete” Williams
In the spring of 1985, a rapist with a very specific M.O. was on the loose along a stretch of Roswell Road between the city of Atlanta and Fulton County. Somehow it did not matter to the less than scrupulous district attorney when the attacks continued after a composite sketch nabbed the wrong man.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.georgiainnocenceproject.org/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Josh Dubin speaks with Vanessa Antoun, Senior Resource Counsel at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) to learn about Hair Microscopy Evidence.
Even when examined under a microscope, the similarities that can be observed between two hairs are open to wide interpretation, there are no definitive traits that can prove with any scientific certainty that a suspect’s hair matches a hair found at a crime scene. Yet hair comparison analysis was still being used to falsely identify and convict innocent people up until the year 2000 and people are still incarcerated who were convicted based on this false evidence.
So how did this evidence get admitted into courts in the first place?
Learn more and get involved.
innocenceproject.org/exoneree-fund-2020
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E15: Kristine Bunch
In the early morning hours of June 30th, 1995, 21 year old mother Kristine Bunch awoke in a carbon monoxide haze to the decimation of her entire world - only for junk science and the false testimony of an actual scientist to make matters worse.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.justis4justus.org/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E14: Randal Padgett
At the tail end of the 1980’s, Randal Padgett was living an idyllic rural life of farm and family, when admittedly he made his biggest mistake that began with a skinny dipping joke.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.questforjusticethebook.com/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Josh Dubin sits down with Barry Scheck, Co-Founder of the Innocence Project to discuss Arson Evidence.
Built on a foundation of conjecture and best guesses that were never adequately tested and confirmed according to any valid scientific principles, what Arson Evidence experts and prosecutors have been telling juries for decades, that one can definitively determine that a fire was intentionally set, is completely wrong.
But why, after generations of experts have all been proven wrong, is there still an unwillingness to change?
Learn more and get involved.
2009 Article in The New Yorker by David Grann
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E13: James Davis
On January 24th, 2004, a party at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple devolved into violence, resulting in one man’s death. Before the violence erupted, an overserved young man left the party into the care of his new girlfriend - only to become the murder suspect on the word of his jilted ex.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.change.org/p/brooklyn-district-attorney-eric-gonzalez-free-james-davis?redirect=false
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Josh Dubin, civil rights and criminal defense attorney, and Innocence Ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York explores bloodstain pattern evidence with Pamela Colloff, senior reporter at ProPublica and staff writer at The New York Times Magazine.
Bloodstain pattern experts falsely claim that they can identify the culprit of violent crimes. But, bloodstain pattern evidence has no grounding in any verifiable science. So how did this kind of junk science become admissible?
Learn more and get involved.
Pamela Coloff’s two part story on the Joe Bryan case Blood Will Tell - ProPublica
Part 1 https://features.propublica.org/blood-spatter/mickey-bryan-murder-blood-spatter-forensic-evidence/
Part 2 https://features.propublica.org/blood-spatter/joe-bryan-conviction-blood-spatter-forensic-evidence/
National Academy of Sciences: Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E12: Jamal Trulove
In the summer of 2007, Jamal Trulove was an aspiring rapper from San Francisco’s Sunnydale projects. He had hoped that scoring himself a role on a reality television show would help his music career. Instead, his appearance on television would help police pin a July 27 murder on him. Over 30 witnesses, including Jamal himself, would not snitch, but someone had to go down for it. His most momentous mention on television yet would occur during the 2020 Democratic Primary debate.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Introducing Josh Dubin, civil rights and criminal defense attorney, and Innocence Ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. On the debut episode of Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science, Josh explores bite mark evidence.
Like other forms of junk science used in criminal trials, bite mark evidence does not benefit crime victims or their loved ones. So why is it treated like credible science?
It turns out that the charade of bite mark evidence is actually older than the United States.
Learn more and get involved.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
True scientific expertise, built through rigorous study and review, is absolutely vital in a court of law. But what happens when one claims to be an expert - in a discipline that isn’t based in science at all?
Meet renowned attorney and Innocence Project Ambassador Josh Dubin. He is the host of the brand new series from Lava For Good Podcast, Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science. Josh explores junk sciences, such as bite mark analysis, arson science, and many others, along with the curious origin stories that led to their viral spread via legal precedent. He is joined by the journalists and lawyers who chronicle, combat, and defend against the harrowing impact of these junk sciences.
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science launching August 3rd, 2020.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E11: Ronnie Long
On the night of April 25th, 1976, a wealthy, 54 year old widow was burglarized and raped in Concord, North Carolina. What happened next paints a stark picture of American policing and race relations that arguably remains unchanged to this day.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.change.org/p/demand-nc-governor-to-commute-ronnie-long-s-sentence-immediately
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E10: Terrance Lewis
In 1996, Hulon Howard was allowing competing crack dealers to operate out of the front porch and basement of his home in West Philadelphia. He and his girlfriend, Lena Laws, enjoyed the fringe benefits until the usual trappings of the drug trade claimed Mr Howard’s life along with the freedom of a man with an unfortunate nickname.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E9: James Dailey
On May 5th, 1985, a group of friends were bar hopping around Clearwater, Florida, when they ran into their drug dealer’s 14 year old daughter, Shelly Boggio. She tagged along for a night of fun that tragically ended in her death and an innocent man spending over 3 decades on Florida’s death row.
We are joined by James Dailey’s attorney, Josh Dubin, who has had a hand in freeing many of our previous guests, including Barry Gibbs (S1E2); Robert Jones (S3E6); Jeffrey Deskovic (S4E8); Clemente Aguirre (S9E6); John Restivo (S9E10); Herman Atkins (S9E11); and Huwe Burton (S10E10), among so many others. He speaks with Jason, as he persists in one of his most exhaustive quests for justice yet.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/james-m-dailey-is-innocent-stop-the-execution
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E8: Pierre Rushing
On April 15th, 2011, an Oakland, CA drug dealer lost his iPod, and an addict lost his life. 5 weeks later, the questionable word of another addict derailed the promising musical career of a young man whom he had never met.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E7: Meek Mill - UPDATED
Since his release in April 2018 and the ultimate end to his legal troubles in August 2019, Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill is using his voice to fight on behalf of those entangled in the many trappings of the criminal legal system. He is joined by his friend, e-commerce billionaire, and co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, Michael Rubin, to discuss their shared hopes for reform.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E6: Terrel Barros
Terrel Barros, Stephen Bodden, and their friends thought they were just going out clubbing until a tragic encounter changed all that. Then, authorities compounded that tragedy by sending an innocent man to prison and setting the confessed killer free.
Learn more and get involved at:
http://www.change.org/freeterrelbarros
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LQPNFwumJQ
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E5: Tim Howard
Tim Howard and Brian Day were best friends with drug habits to match. Brian did some deals to support his habit, ending up in debt to some nasty characters. When Brian and Shannon Day are murdered, and their 7 month old boy, Trevor, is left for dead in a duffel bag, authorities get a case of tunnel vision for the Day’s only black friend.
Learn more and get involved at:
http://www.proclaimjustice.org
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11Bonus: Power to the People
On Thursday June 11, 2020, justice advocate and philanthropist Jason Flom moderated a forum on Facebook Live with four extraordinary leaders in civil rights, justice, and advocacy: Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors; prison industry expert Bianca Tylek; Drug Policy Alliance executive director Kassandra Frederique; and civil rights lawyer and author Alec Karakatsanis. The goal of this event was to empower people to take action, find resources, and learn how to use their unique talents/resources to move us forward in the urgent fight for racial justice.
This is a list of the many organizations mentioned during this discussion. Learn more and get involved at:
8 to Abolition https://www.8toabolition.com/
Black Lives Matter https://blacklivesmatter.com/
Blackout Collective https://blackoutcollective.org/
Black Youth Project 100 https://www.byp100.org/
Civil Rights Core https://www.civilrightscorps.org/
Dignity and Power Now http://dignityandpowernow.org/
Drug Policy Alliance https://www.drugpolicy.org/
Innocence Project http://www.innocenceproject.org
Movement for Black Lives https://m4bl.org/
People's Budget LA http://www.peoplesbudgetLA.com
Real Justice PAC https://realjusticepac.org/
Vocal New York http://www.vocal-ny.org/
Worth Rises https://worthrises.org/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E4: Stephen Carrington
After a short stint in prison, Stephen Carrington was a newlywed father, training to be an EMT and getting his life back on track. However, his past would pique interest when the police came looking for his brother at the same address, and a detective would flippantly interchange the fates of two young black men.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E3: Lamonte McIntyre
This is an updated episode from season 4.
On April 15th, 1994, a double homicide drug hit would begin a chain of events in which a sex extortionist police detective would exact his revenge by laying one woman’s son at the mercy of the American criminal legal system.
Jason speaks with Attorney Cheryl Pilate and FBI Special Agent Al Jennerich about the underbelly of law enforcement that caused the wrongful conviction of our guest Lamonte McIntyre, who we spoke to while he was still behind bars.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E2: Damon Thibodeaux
In July of 1996, Damon Thibodeaux was visiting family, when his 14 year-old step cousin, Crystal, walked to the grocery store and never came back. When Crystal’s mother Dawn began to worry, Damon went looking for her daughter. Soon, neighbors and emergency workers would join the search that ended under the Huey P Long Bridge with a partially nude Crystal strangled to death.
However, even before the body was found, the police already had their sights on Damon for what they thought was a rape and murder. Returning guest Innocence Project Senior Staff attorney Vanessa Potkin and death row exoneree Damon Thibodeaux tell Jason this unbelievable tale of triumph over tragedy.
Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S11E1: Julius Jones
In the fall of 1998, Julius Jones had the whole world ahead of him. He was a freshman who planned to study engineering and was attending the University of Oklahoma on an academic scholarship. The following summer, just three days after his 19th birthday, Julius was awakened and dragged out of bed, barefoot and shirtless, and taken into police custody as a murder suspect. In 2002, he was convicted of killing a prominent local businessman – this after eyewitness testimony that should have excluded the young man as a suspect, as well as overt racial bias both in the news media and in the jury box.
Julius Jones is facing execution as early as the fall of 2020.
Special guests Kim Kardashian West along with Julius’ current attorney, Dale Baich and his mother and sister, Madeline and Antoinette Jones, join Jason Flom to discuss Julius’ case and the race for the State of Oklahoma to grant him clemency before it’s too late.
Learn more and get involved at: https://www.justiceforjuliusjones.com/
https://www.change.org/p/julius-jones-is-innocent-don-t-let-him-be-executed-by-the-state-of-oklahoma
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S10E13: Peter Reilly
Why do we tell these stories?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us the last story of season one. It’s about Peter Reilly, one of the first modern-day false confessors.
In 1973, police continued to interrogate 18-year-old Peter until he started to believe he was actually guilty of murdering his own mother. But Peter’s friends and neighbors believed in his innocence. Their small-town campaign for Peter’s freedom was eventually joined by a host of big name celebrities.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin end Season 1 with Peter’s story because it helped launch the movement against wrongful convictions and false confessions. It inspires the work that Steve and Laura do to this day.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10E12: David McCallum
Am I telling the story the way the story needs to be told?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us the story of David McCallum, one of two New York teens wrongfully convicted of murder in 1986. Luckily for David, he had incredible allies in his corner - the famous boxer, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, and a district attorney, Ken Thompson, who was dedicated to real justice. Here comes the story of the DA and the Hurricane, and one of the men they saved.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10Bonus4 - Dr Yusef Salaam in the Time of COVID
Conflicting survival instincts and an internet full of misinformation has left many of us in disagreement over what is the best path forward. Once again, Jason Flom taps the wisdom of our wrongfully convicted community, while so many struggle.
In the 4th and final interview of our mini series from Wrongful Conviction Podcasts, one of the Central Park. 5, now the Exonerated 5, Dr Yusef Salaam, pulls from a deep reservoir of philosophical and spiritual learning to guide us all in making lemonade out of the lemons that we find ourselves with today. You can hear his story in both his own interview, season 6 episode 8, through the voice of his co-defendant Raymond Santana in our podcast’s premiere episode, or in the Netflix mini series “When They See Us.”
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of LAVA For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co Co1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com.
S10E11: Chris Tapp
How could a layperson see all the problems with this interrogation when the police couldn’t?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us about Chris Tapp, just 20 when he endured a mind-bending, 25-hour interrogation that transformed him from an innocent man into a confessed murderer. Fortunately for Chris, he found an indomitable champion... in the victim’s mother, Carol Dodge. Carol convinced police to use a revolutionary new method of DNA identification to exonerate Chris and find her own daughter’s killer.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10Bonus3 - Nick Yarris in the Time of COVID
Social distancing orders have had us on lockdown for well over a month, leaving many of us struggling with not only isolation and restricted movement, but also the looming economic implications. Jason Flom has been reaching out to our wrongfully convicted community for the kind of advice that only they can give.
In the third interview of our mini series from Wrongful Conviction Podcasts, Nick Yarris draws upon his harrowing experiences on death row to show us how to leave the existential threat behind and practice radical kindness. His story is unmatched, and you can hear it in full on our double episode 5 of season 9.
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of LAVA For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co Co1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com.
S10E10: Huwe Burton
What could make someone confess to the murder of their own mother?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us to The Bronx in 1989. Huwe Burton was sixteen years old and charged with the murder of his own mother. Even as Huwe was bulldozed into a false confession, the real killer was living in the apartment just one floor below.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10Bonus2 - Amanda Knox in the Time of COVID
As we move into our 2nd month since COVID 19 was declared a global pandemic, many of us have been isolating for just as long, if not longer. Jason Flom has been reaching out to some experts - our wrongfully convicted community - for advice on how to cope with the dark side of isolation.
In the second interview of a new mini series from Wrongful Conviction Podcasts, Jason Flom speaks with Amanda Knox, a woman who was sentenced to 26 years in an Italian prison for a crime she did not commit. Her full story can be heard in the premier episode of our 2nd season.
Now, Amanda tells us about her concerns for all those isolating alone, including the currently incarcerated, and what she did to make the best use of her time, as well as to combat the absence of physical touch while in prison.
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of LAVA For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co Co1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com.
S10E9: Billy Wayne Cope
Could I have somehow done this and not remembered it?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us the story of Billy Wayne Cope- a father and husband, a man of faith, and one of many railroaded into a false confession. The interrogation techniques were so potent that Billy even started questioning his own memory. Though DNA evidence pointed to the real killer, prosecutors refused to acknowledge Billy's innocence. This case will stay with you. It certainly left a mark on Steve.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10Bonus1 - Damien Echols in the Time of COVID
COVID 19 has derailed our normal lives into that of isolation, restricted movement, anxiety, despair, and even the threat of death. Jason Flom knows a lot of people that have an intimate knowledge of all of these things and how to cope with them.
In the first interview of a new mini series from Wrongful Conviction Podcasts Jason Flom speaks with Damien Echols, a man who spent 18 years on death row for a crime he did not commit.
Damien tells us how he used exercise, art, structure, mental focus, and free will to not allow isolation and fear to break him plus, an epiphany that came from one man’s deadly encounter with a can of corn that continues to guide him even through our current shared reality in this time of COVID.
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of LAVA For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co Co1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10E8: Hamid Hayat
How could anyone believe a confession about 1,000 pole-vaulting terrorists all dressed like Ninja Turtles?
This week, Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us a story with some of the most outlandish false confessions ever heard. And yet, California native, Hamid Hayat, was wrongfully convicted of terrorism in the years following the horrific 9/11 attacks. Investigators thought Hamid was part of a terrorist sleeper cell, though eventually they learned no such terrorist cell ever existed.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10E7.1: Bonus Episode Interview with Daniel Villegas
Laura Nirider talks with Daniel Villegas about what it was like waiting for the jury to announce its verdict, how he prepared his children for the possibility he might not be coming home, and how it feels to finally focus on the future.
If you haven't heard his full story, it's right here in the podcast Feed. Just under this bonus episode. And if you've yet to watch Daniel's exoneration video, check it out on Instagram @wrongfulconviction. It's an incredible opportunity for all of us to bear witness to freedom
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10E7: Daniel Villegas
How can one man save the life of a perfect stranger?
The case of Daniel Villegas shows how ordinary people can make an extraordinary difference in the fight against wrongful convictions. Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell the story of an unexpected hero who fought for years to turn tragedy into triumph, ending in one of the most dramatic courtroom exonerations ever seen.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to https://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10E6: Teina Pora
Have you heard about New Zealand's Brendan Dassey?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us across the globe to New Zealand with a story that hits way too close to home: a sixteen-year-old boy confessed to a rape and murder he didn’t commit. His wrongful conviction allowed the real offender, a serial rapist, to assault dozens of other women -- while Teina Pora languished behind bars for 20 years.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10E5: Matt Livers
What do police do when a confession starts falling apart? Double down...or fix it up?
Sometimes farm life isn’t as tranquil as it seems... Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us to small-town Nebraska where two murders shattered a peaceful Easter Sunday. The story of Matt Livers is a major plot-twister: a coerced confession, dirty cops, planted evidence, and a mysterious clue that led police to a pair of natural born killers.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to https://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S10E4: Thomas Cogdell
While eating a hamburger, this kid spontaneously confesses to killing his sister?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us to Camden, Arkansas, where a twelve-year-old boy is left to fend for himself against police officers who suspect him of murder. The interrogation tape is bad enough – but the worst parts happened off camera. This is the story of Thomas Cogdell.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to https://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/
S10E3: Dixmoor 5
So their theory is that a wandering necrophiliac comes across the body and defiles it?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell the story of how five Chicago teens were wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of their classmate - and how prosecutors tried to explain away the DNA that proved them innocent. This case happened during the early 1990s, when the media was saturated with misleading stories about youth of color committing violent crimes in groups. This "superpredator" narrative drove the wrongful prosecution of the so-called Central Park Five “wolfpack” -- but it didn’t stop there.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to https://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
This episode includes story line about and clips from Retro Report, The Superpredator Scare.
S10E2: Robert Davis
What can I say I did to get me out of this?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin use real interrogation audio to tell the shocking story of Robert Davis, a Virginia teenager who in 2003 falsely confessed to a double murder after enduring an interrogation complete with death threats, lies about the evidence, and fact-feeding, only to tell investigators, "I’m lying to you, full front to your face."
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which has exonerated more than forty innocent people.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to https://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for
Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
This episode includes story line about and clips from Dateline NBC: In the Shadow of Justice
S10E1: Origin Story
Why would anyone confess to a crime they didn’t commit?
Hosts Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin, co-directors at Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions and central figures in the smash hit Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer, introduce themselves, their work, their passion, and the origin story behind their tireless efforts to free the wrongfully convicted.
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
S9E12: The Insult and Injury of Julie Rea
On October 13th, 1997, Julie Rea’s nightmare would begin, when an intruder broke into her home, killed her son Joel, and the authorities would begin a bumbling, tunnel vision investigation to pin the murder on her. With their blinders on, the incompetent investigators would inadvertently destroy or fail to capture vital evidence of the intruder’s presence at the crime scene. They would ignore developing leads that implicated the 3rd party to this horrific crime of which Julie still cannot speak. The prosecution’s blood spatter “expert” who played an integral role in Julie’s conviction at her first trial would become, according to jurors, “a powerful witness for the defense” under more competent cross examination at her retrial.
The state would later willfully ignore the intruder’s confession and crassly attempt to conceal the new evidence from the retrial jury. Their gross misconduct only added insult to this grave injury. Julie was acquitted in 2006 and formally exonerated in 2010 with the help of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law under the leadership of Karen Daniel to whom this episode is dedicated. Karen’s colleague and one of Julie’s attorneys, Ron Safer, joins Julie and Jason to both pay tribute to Karen and tell Julie’s terrifying story.
You can read more about the life and career of Karen Daniel here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-karen-daniel-obit-20191227-h3jbt3ch3ff7naqdin6kletytu-story.html
You can read the NY Times article mentioned in this episode here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/she-was-exonerated-of-the-murder-of-her-son-her-life-is-still-shattered.html
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E11: Herman Atkins: Father and Child Reunion
Herman Atkins was a disciplined student athlete who enjoyed refurbishing old cars, growing up in the rigid household of a California highway patrolman. On January 25th, 1986, Herman Atkins was paying an auto mechanic for an engine rebuild when an armed robber stepped to the 2 men, grabbed the cash, and fled on foot. Herman grabbed the mechanic’s gun and chased the robber, firing warning shots into the air. The robber turned a corner, and Herman heard more gunshots. When he got to the corner, there were cop cars, and several people had been wounded by gunshots, including 2 police officers. Herman ditched the gun and retreated.
On April 8th, 1986, Herman Atkins is in Texas for the birth of one of his children, when an armed man entered a strip mall shoe store in Lake Elsinore, CA, forced the 23 year old female clerk to perform oral sex on him, ejaculated, leaving semen on her sweater, and stole $130 in cash and the clerk’s jewelry. When authorities caught up with Herman in November of that year while he was visiting family in Phoenix, AZ, Herman was finally made aware that he was wanted for both the January 25th incident and the Lake Elsinore kidnapping, robbery, and rape.
After multiple cross racial eyewitness misidentifications, a jailhouse snitch seeking leniency, and both police and prosecutorial misconduct, Herman was wrongfully convicted, sentenced to 47 years and 8 month in prison, and shunned by his father. After hitting the law books in prison and gaining the support of the Innocence Project, the semen stained sweater was tested for DNA, excluding and exonerating Herman. Despite this and his civil litigation victories, Herman was not truly whole again until mending the rift caused by what he describes as his father’s treason against the father-son relationship.
You can delve deeper into Herman’s story through the documentary “After Innocence” or in his book “Wrongfully Convicted, Rightfully Committed: The Reincarnation of Herman Atkins After 12 Years in Prison,” available soon wherever books are sold. He is also available for speaking engagements on the topics of judicial reform, the aftermath of exoneration, as well as his own story.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E10: 3 For the Crime of One: The Wrongful Convictions of John Kogut, Dennis Halstead, and John Restivo
On December 5th, 1984, the naked body of Theresa Fusco was pulled out of a wooded area in Lynbrook, NY - the 3rd in a string of recent disappearances, putting pressure on police to find the monster among them. The medical examiner determined that the presence of semen implied that a rape had occurred and the cause of death was ligature strangulation. Dennis Halstead had been linked to one of the victims, and in a police interview about Halstead, John Restivo inadvertently mentioned an occasional employee John Kogut. When police interrogated Kogut for 12 hours, during which interrogators lied to him about his failing a polygraph, Kogut signed a confession that was hand-written by one of the detectives and contained all of the information authorities knew at the time, looping in the 3 men as the perpetrators.
With the false confession, a coerced and flipped alibi witness, evidence tampering, and the victim’s hair said to have been found in Restivo’s van, the trio were convicted and sentenced to 33 and a half years in prison. Despite years of obstruction, DNA testing would later exclude all three men and repeatedly implicate a still unknown assailant. John Restivo and Innocence Project Senior Staff Attorney Nina Morrison joined Jason at the Atlanta Innocence Network Conference to tell this amazing and terrifying tale.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Trailer
Launching February 19th, 2020, Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a powerful 13-episode podcast that tells the story of twelve real false confessions, using actual audiotapes from inside the interrogation room and diving deep into the disturbing psychological techniques used to extract confessions from innocent suspects.
Hosted by Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin, famed attorneys, co-directors at Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, and central figures in the smash global hit Netflix docuseries "Making a Murderer," the Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions podcast asks – and answers – the question: why would an innocent person confess to a crime he didn’t commit?
From overnight interrogations to blatant lies, false promises of freedom, and death threats, Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions tells stories of ordinary people who found themselves in a criminal justice nightmare – trapped inside the interrogation room with no choice but to admit to crimes that they never committed.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E9: Stefon Morant and The Kingpin’s Payroll
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Stefon Morant and Scott Lewis were selling drugs for organized crime figure Frank Parise. When Frank was set to go away on a weapon’s charge, he asked Scott to take over the drug dealing arm of his criminal enterprise, but Scott wasn’t trying to go deeper into illegal activity. When he refused, Frank tapped a detective he had on the payroll, Vincent Raucci.
On October 11th, 1990, former New Haven, CT alderman Ricardo Turner and his lover Lamont Fields were shot dead in their bed, and Raucci knew just who to pin it on. How would he make it stick? By extracting a false confession from Scott’s good friend Stefon - one he would never sign. His refusal to participate in Scott’s railroading sealed him to the same fate. Stefon was in the Carolinas at the time of the murders, but that didn’t matter. Raucci put the screws to another character in the New Haven drug game, Ovil Ruiz, who would name Scott and Stefon in his false confession in exchange for leniency in his own legal troubles.
With the help of Raucci’s direct supervisor, Detective Sweeney, an FBI investigation, and the tireless aid of some Ivy League law school students under the tutelage of professor Brett Dignam, Scott Lewis would eventually be fully exonerated. However, the District Attorney would only allow Stefon to cop a plea, rather than be declared innocent as well. The man that was targeted for wrongful conviction simply for knowing Scott Lewis is still fighting for exoneration from the outside for the same crimes that Scott was exonerated for in 2016.
The trailer for the documentary “120 Years” about Scoot and Stefon’s case can be found here: https://www.120yearsfilm.com/
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E8: The Persistence of Patrick Pursley
On April 2nd, 1993, 22 year old Andrew Ascher and Becky George sat in his parked car by her brother’s apartment building on Silent Road in Rockford, IL, when a black man in a blue ski mask approached the vehicle, announcing a stick up. While Becky frantically fished in her purse for some money, the armed robber shot Andrew twice. Both of the bullets and their casings were retrieved from the crime scene and during the autopsy. Meanwhile, across town, Patrick Pursley celebrated his son’s birthday in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend Samantha Crabtree. Over 2 months later, as the police came up empty on Andrew’s murder, an acquaintance of Patrick and Samantha’s, Marvin Windham, traded false information with the police through Crime Stoppers that implicated Patrick in exchange for leniency in his own legal matters, as well as a $2,650 reward. It was also revealed at trial that Windham had a long time crush on Samantha. Police obtained a search warrant, retrieved a Taurus 9mm from their apartment, and interrogated Samantha, threatening to take away her children if they didn’t get the story they wanted in the form of a confession and an immediate grand jury testimony - a testimony she would later recant at trial. But, with her coerced confession on the record, Windham’s “hot tip”, and conflicting expert ballistics testimony about the murder weapon and the Taurus 9mm found at the apartment, Patrick Pursley was convicted of 1st degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.
In this episode, recorded in front of a live audience at ComplexCon Chicago 2019, Patrick tells Jason of his wrongful conviction and subsequent fight for freedom, including how he changed a law from inside prison in order to obtain the ballistic testing necessary to set himself free.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E7: Perry Lott: Another Innocent Man in Ada, Oklahoma
At 1:15 AM on November 2nd, 1987, an Ada, Oklahoma woman felt a gun at the back of her head as she unlocked her door. She was robbed, burglarized, and raped by an otherwise nondescript black assailant who had a gold tooth. While filming a Crime Stoppers video about the incident, Detective Jeff Crosby approached bystander Perry Lott. Noticing his gold tooth, Perry was brought in for questioning and a line up despite his alibi. With all the other men in the line up wearing foil to simulate a gold tooth, Perry was identified as the attacker. In absence of any other evidence beyond the eyewitness identification, Mr Lott was convicted and sentenced to 300 years in prison. After 25 years of appeals and parole hearings, the Innocence Project was able to test the 1987 rape kit for Perry’s DNA, ultimately excluding him as the perpetrator.
This interview was recorded at an art gallery opening for Rob Will, another innocent man currently on death row in Texas and features Perry Lott and Eric Cullen, the private investigator who conducted the interview with the victim alongside Detective Jeff Crosby where she recanted her eyewitness identification. After 30 years in prison, Perry Lott agreed to a sentence modification in the form of time served rather than risking his fate on the Oklahoman authorities’ willingness to accept the facts in this case. He is currently on lifetime probation and fighting to clear his good name.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E6: Clemente Aguirre - Deadly Options
Coming of age in Honduras, Clemente “Shorty” Aguirre was faced with a choice: join MS13 or die. He moved to Nicaragua with his grandmother instead, but with no economic prospects, he chose to come to the United States as an undocumented immigrant. Life was calm for a while, as he worked as a cook and lived in a trailer park, where he had found a place in a nice community of friends. Then, on June 17th, 2004, after a long night out, Shorty dropped by a neighboring trailer shared by his friends Cheryl Williams, part-time by her daughter Samantha, and her mother Carol Bareis. They were known for always having a stockpile of beer, and Shorty was going to ask them for an early morning nightcap, when he discovered Cheryl and Carol had been stabbed and were lying in pools of their own blood. Not thinking clearly in that dramatic moment, he inserted himself into the crime scene, while he checked their bodies for signs of life. Realizing that they were gone and that making a call to the police would certainly get him deported to a country where MS13 awaited his return, he went to his own trailer to lay low. Later that day, he came forward to investigators with his discovery and became the prime suspect. With the combination of an ineffective public defender, the prosecution’s tunnel vision, and plenty of circumstantial evidence, Clemente would be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Later, Shorty was able to get the attention of the Innocence Project who tested the 197 pieces of crime scene evidence for DNA, excluding Clemente and pointing to Cheryl’s own daughter, Samantha, as the true perpetrator - a finding corroborated by her multiple confessions to friends and neighbors.
If you feel compelled to support Clemente, please go to: https://www.mightycause.com/story/Clementeaguirree2019
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E5: Nick Yarris: Waylaid by a Lie - Part 1
On December 16th, 1981, Linda Mae Craig was found beaten, raped, and stabbed to death in a church parking lot about a mile and a half away from where her car was discovered. A few days later, Nick Yarris, a troubled young man linked with petty crimes and substance abuse, was pulled over for a traffic violation in a stolen car and got into an altercation with the arresting officer that included an accidental discharge of the officer’s service pistol. This incident spiraled into a laundry list of charges. Yarris had seen the news about Linda Mae Craig, and in a desperate attempt to save himself, he tried to trade false information about her attacker to garner leniency. When authorities got wind of his trickery, they turned the charges on Nick. The prosecution manipulated several eyewitness testimonies, hid or destroyed the case history, and employed misleading serology in order to obtain his wrongful conviction. However, between his first day in prison to exoneration by the biological evidence that put him there, Nick Yarris lived (and continues to live) out one of the greatest and most unbelievable stories ever told. In part 1 of Nick Yarris’ story, he tells us about surviving sexual assault, repeated run-ins with the law, getting waylaid by his own lie, his trial and conviction, “Gladiator Sundays,” and accidentally (yet successfully) escaping from death row, only to turn himself in when he reached Florida - a state where he is still not welcome as a free man. Comparing Nick Yarris’ story to a rollercoaster ride would only serve as a compliment to roller coasters. For example, in 2008, Nick Yarris sued Delaware County and won $4 million. Then, it was stolen from him, and we didn’t even cover that in this episode.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E5: Nick Yarris: Waylaid by a Lie - Part 2
In part 2 of the Nick Yarris story, we pick up where we left off with Nick turning himself in after his unintentional escape from death row. It’s about 3 years and 2 months after Linda Mae Craig was found beaten, raped, and stabbed to death in a church parking lot in Chichester, PA. As you’ve already heard Nick recount, he had an altercation with a police officer during a traffic stop that led to an accidental discharge of the officer’s gun, followed by a laundry list of trumped up charges. In a turn of events that he would come to sincerely regret, Nick tried to exchange false information about Linda Mae Craig’s attacker for his own freedom. When caught in his lie, the state fixed a case against him that would lead to an almost 22 year stint on death row. Eventually, the same biological evidence that was used to convict him became the evidence that would set him free and win him $4 million in his civil suit against Delaware County, Pennsylvania. In the 2nd half of this interview, Nick Yarris tells us about his encounters with other innocent men and serial killers alike, being the 1st to request post conviction DNA testing from death row, his education, exoneration, botched release, and his life, post exoneration. His incredible story has served to inform a truly unique, yet relatable, perspective. Nick Yarris is currently available for speaking engagements and can be reached on social media or through his website: http://www.nickyarris.org.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E4: UPDATED + ADDITIONAL CONTENT: Jens Soering: Fatal Attraction to Free Man
This is an updated episode from season 8 with 22 minutes of new content.
In 1985, Derek and Nancy Haysom were found brutally stabbed to death in their Bedford County, VA home - both nearly decapitated. When their daughter Elizabeth Haysom became a prime suspect, she and her boyfriend, Jens Soering, the son of a German diplomat, fled the country. The authorities finally caught up with them in London, and if extradited and found guilty, Elizabeth would face the electric chair. Under the illusion that his father’s diplomatic status would protect him from facing the death penalty in Virginia, Jens sacrificed himself for Elizabeth and gave a false confession that was riddled with inconsistencies. Upon learning of his misunderstanding and before being extradited to the US for trial, Jens fought and won a landmark judgment (Soering v UK) in the European Court of Human Rights, protecting himself from facing the death penalty upon his deliverance to Virginia. At Jens’ trial, prosecutor Jim Updike told the jury that Soering's confession was corroborated by several drops of type O blood at the crime scene - Jens’ blood type. None of the Haysoms had type O, so the blood had to be his. Updike repeated this claim 26 times. Jens was sentenced to 2 consecutive life terms. Elizabeth was convicted as an accessory. After almost 30 years in prison, DNA testing eliminated Jens Soering as a possible source of the type O blood at the scene. In 2017, two independent DNA scientists confirmed these findings, and they also found DNA evidence showing the presence of a second unknown man with type AB blood. The crime remains unsolved; however, Jens Soering’s wrongful conviction remains on his record. After over 33 years in prison, he was paroled on November 25th, 2019, along with Elizabeth Haysom, and is finally back in his home country of Germany.
In this episode, you will hear excerpts of the original interview with Jens Soering, novelist John Grisham, and Sheriff J.E. "Chip” Harding of Albemarle County, VA. Then, Jens and Jason go over parole board strategy with Dr Phil, and finally, we hear reactions from Amanda Knox and Sheriff Harding - both of whom worked so hard on Jens’ behalf.
Thanks to the amazing Small Town Big Crime podcast for providing additional audio.
Thanks to the very generous Freedom Wynn for additional engineering.
http://wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S9E3: Daniel Holtzclaw and the Court of Public Opinion
At 2 AM, on June 18th, 2014, Daniel Holtzclaw finished up his shift as an Oklahoma City police officer and made his way home in his all black cruiser. He saw a car swerving and pulled over 57-year-old daycare provider Jannie Ligons. About 3 hours later, Ms Ligons would claim that Officer Holtzclaw forced her to perform oral sodomy through the fly of his uniform pants from the back seat of his squad car. Her mouth swab would come up empty for Daniel’s DNA, as would a search of his uniform for hers, but nonetheless, an investigation would be launched into Daniel Holtzclaw’s field contacts with at risk African American women, soliciting stories of sexual impropriety. 21 accusers made allegations, and a media circus ensued, bolstering a grim and growing narrative of law enforcement officers abusing their authority. 8 of those 21 claims were immediately dismissed by investigators, and they still moved forward with the 13 other questionable or otherwise ill-fitting claims. Through the misconstruing of DNA evidence, 8 of the remaining 13 allegations resulted in 18 convictions. Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw is currently serving a 263 year sentence in an undisclosed correctional facility under an assumed name for crimes he did not commit.
Please listen to our coverage and find out more at: http://www.freedanielholtzclaw.com.
Sign the petition in support of Daniel’s freedom at: https://www.change.org/p/free-daniel-holtzclaw-an-innocent-man-wrongfully-convicted
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts, in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E2: The Vulnerable and Tragic Life of Bobbie Jean Johnson
Bobbie Jean Johnson was given up for adoption at birth, survived abuse in foster care, and ran away into the sex trade of New Orleans as a teenager. In 1977, a New Orleans antiquities dealer, Arthur Samson, was shot in the stomach and stabbed approximately 100 times inside his shop at 1130 St Charles Ave. His store was ransacked, and the safe was missing about $2,000. A month later police stopped 2 men and Bobbie Jean Johnson for a traffic violation in a stolen car. At the time Johnson was not a suspect, but police were on the lookout for a .32 caliber revolver. They found one in Bobbie Jean’s purse. She endured a violent interrogation that resulted in a tape recorded false confession, riddled with inconsistencies. One of the men that had been in the car with Johnson told police that he had slipped the gun into her purse while they were being pulled over, but his statement was both ignored by the prosecution and hidden from the defense. To make matters worse, her trial lawyer, Thomas Baumler, had been described as a “warm body”. In 1978, Bobbie Jean Johnson was convicted of 1st degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. After serving 41 years behind bars, Bobbie Jean continued to maintain her innocence; however, she was forced to plead guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery in order to obtain her freedom in February of 2018. To make this story even more tragic, Bobbie Jean spent less than 18 months as a free woman before passing away.
Donations made to IPNO with the note “Bobbie Jean Johnson” will be matched dollar for dollar! https://ip-no.org/support/donate/ or can be mailed to P.O. Box 792808, New Orleans, LA 70179.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E1: Rodney Reed: An Innocent Man on Death Row **BREAKING NEWS + ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY FROM DR PHIL**
Stacey Stites and Police Officer Jimmy Fennell were engaged, but Stacey was having an affair with Rodney Reed. On April 23rd, 1996, Stacey’s lifeless body was discovered, lying face up next to a dirt road near Bastrop, TX. Jimmy Fennell was a prime suspect until 3 spermatozoa found in Stacey’s body were matched to Rodney Reed. The state alleged that Rodney did not know Ms. Stites, intercepted her on her 3AM drive to work, raped and strangled her, and left her on the side of that dirt road, while abandoning the truck in a high school parking lot. With no other evidence of Rodney found in the truck, on the body, or at the scene; the state’s forensic experts incorrectly asserting that intact spermatozoa could not survive passed 24 hours; and Stacey’s whereabouts being known for the 24 hours prior to 3AM; Rodney Reed was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1998. The state’s forensic experts have since disavowed their testimony, and Rodney Reed continues to maintain that the presence of his semen was a result of consensual intercourse from late in the night of the 21st (early morning, 22nd). In this premiere episode of the 9th season of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom, we go to death row to speak with Rodney Reed. His attorney Bryce Benjet talks to us about the case. His brother Rodrick Reed tells us about his advocacy for his brother and the Reed Justice Initiative. And, forensic pathology legend Dr. Michael Baden retells his sworn testimony given at a hearing for a new trial in October 2017, disputing the time of death. The corrected time of death places Ms Stites in her apartment with Fennell when she died, according to his testimony at trial. When asked about this discrepancy, Mr. Fennell invoked his 5th amendment rights.
Rodney Reed was granted an indefinite stay of execution from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, saving him from his November 20th, 2019 execution date, but his future is still in danger. He still needs our help.
This Episode of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom was produced in partnership with NowThis. https://nowthisnews.com/
Additional engineering for Dr Phil and Jason Flom’s interview by Freedom Wynn.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1 and PRX.
S9E0: SPECIAL EDITION: Un-Making a Murderer, Exclusive Interview with Brendan Dassey and Laura Nirider
This special edition of Wrongful Conviction features Jason Flom’s exclusive interview with Brendan Dassey from behind bars—the only interview ever conducted with Brendan. The case against Brendan, and his uncle Steven Avery, is the subject of Netflix’s hit series Making a Murderer. In 2006, 16 year old Wisconsin special education student Brendan Dassey gave a videotaped confession to the murder and sexual assault of a young woman named Teresa Halbach. That confession – extracted from Brendan after four interrogations over a 48 hour period – has been widely recognized as false and coerced due to Brendan’s inability to describe the crime accurately without being told the "right" answers by his interrogators. In fact, Brendan recanted his confession immediately, and no evidence connects him to Halbach’s disappearance. Nonetheless, he was convicted based on that confession and sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole before 2048. In 2016, two courts threw out Brendan's confession and overturned his conviction – and Brendan came within twelve hours of release – before a federal appeals court reversed course on legal grounds. After visiting Brendan in prison, Jason Flom and Brendan’s attorney, Laura Nirider of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, unravel the case as Brendan joins them by phone from behind bars. Their conversation touches on hope, resilience, and the fact that Brendan – who will turn 30 on October 19, 2019 – has already lost fourteen of his life to wrongful imprisonment.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E9: UPDATED EPISODE: Philadelphia Freedom: The Jimmy Dennis Story
On October 22, 1991, when 17-year-old Chedell Williams and a friend went to Fern Rock subway station in North Philadelphia, two men approached them and demanded Chedell’s earrings. She refused and ran, and one of the men chased her to nearby 10th Street and Nedro Avenue, where he snatched the earrings, and shot her in the throat. Her friend was left unharmed. The two men were joined by a third man who was waiting in a 1978 Chevy Malibu. Chedell died at a hospital less than an hour later. The pressure was on the police and prosecutors to solve the crime, when some local “stick-up boys” named 21-year-old, burgeoning R&B vocalist Jimmy Dennis as a potential culprit. Hearing of this, Jimmy went to the police to confront the rumors, maintaining that he was on a bus miles away at the time of the murder with eyewitnesses to corroborate his claim. No forensic evidence tying Jimmy to the crime was ever developed, and evidence and eyewitness accounts that proved his innocence were suppressed. In this emotional interview, we hear the story of a promising musical career curtailed and a 25-year-long battle with a wrongful conviction from death row.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E12: The Devil Made Them Do It: Joe Berlinger’s Quest for Justice
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, the US found itself wrapped up in the “Satanic Panic” - a general state of fear revolving around Satanism and satanic ritual, real or imagined. On May 5th, 1993, three 8-year-old boys—Steven Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers—were reported missing. Their lifeless bodies were found the following day in a Robin Hood Hills creek, naked and hogtied. Christopher Byers had suffered lacerations, and his genitals had been mutilated. Details of the bizarre and brutal scene in Robin Hood Hills brought Satanic Panic to a fever pitch in the largely conservative Christian city of West Memphis, AK. Coming off their first film success with Brother’s Keeper, documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were tapped by HBO documentaries to head down to get the story. Joe Berlinger sits with Jason Flom and recalls his experience of the case, the moments that inspired his fight for criminal justice reform, and the films and events that have helped shape public opinion of wrongful convictions.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E11: “132 Years? You Can’t Even Live That Long”: Messiah Johnson’s Fight for His Life
On December 5th, 1997, two armed and disguised men robbed a beauty salon and its patrons in Norfolk, VA. On December 19th, Messiah Johnson was misidentified as the culprit and arrested. In the absence of any physical evidence and in spite of his corroborated alibi, Messiah Johnson was convicted on 26 counts of armed robbery, abduction, and related gun charges, and he was sentenced to 132 years in prison. He was pardoned by Governor Terry McAuliffe in 2018. Messiah is a graphic designer and still lives in Virginia, as he continues to fight to clear his name. You can find him on Instagram @messiahaladar johnson. If you’d like to show him support, please visit: https://www.gofundme.com/rc8d4-welcome-home-messiah-johnson
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S9E10: “I Lied My Ass off For You People”: The Incentivized Testimony that Started Gloria Killian’s Law Practice Behind Bars
On December 9th, 1981, Stephen DeSantis and Gary Masse, disguised as telephone repair men, gained entry to the suburban home of Sacramento coin collector Ed Davies. They hogtied Ed and his wife Grace, ransacked the house, and came up with 6 suitcases full of silver before murdering the older couple. There had been a string of robberies connected to area coin shops, and Ed Davies was a customer at the coin store where law student Gloria Killian had worked. When an anonymous tip sent police in search of DeSantis and Masse, Joanne Masse named Gloria as the mastermind to her husband’s crimes, an assertion that was repeated through the anonymous tip line. However, without sufficient evidence the charges against Gloria were dropped. Upon being convicted, Gary Masse offered his testimony, naming Gloria as the mastermind of his criminal enterprise, in exchange for sentencing leniency and other perks. This deal was concealed from the defense and the jury. In absence of corroborating evidence, Gloria Killian was sentenced to 32 years to life solely upon Masse’s incentivized testimony. She spent 17 years in prison until evidence surfaced, exposing the prosecution’s machinations and Masse’s false testimony. Gloria Killian was released in August of 2002 and currently advocates for women in prison. You can support Gloria Killian’s efforts by visiting the Action Committee for Women in Prison at acwip.net. In this episode, Gloria tells her story alongside Innocence Project Senior Staff Attorney Nina Morrison.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E8: A Tale of Two Systems: The Story of Kenzi Snider
On March 18, 2001, Jamie Penich—an American exchange student in South Korea—was brutally murdered in her motel room after a night of partying with friends from the program. Kenzi Snider, a 19-year-old student from Marshall University in West Virginia, was one of the friends Penich was with. One year later, in February 2002, FBI agents contacted Kenzi out of the blue. She was back in school in West Virginia. She met with three agents on three consecutive days for several hours, and the sessions were grueling. When it was done, she had confessed. She murdered her friend, she said, in the context of a drunken sexual encounter, but later said she had been coerced into making the confession and accused investigators of framing her to protect two American soldiers who she claimed killed Penich. Kenzi was promptly arrested, incarcerated in a local jail for ten months, and extradited to Korea to stand trial. There, she then spent another six months in jail. Then a panel of judges found her not guilty. The prosecutor appealed the verdict but months later an appeals court confirmed: not guilty. In 2006, five years after the crime, in response to yet another appeal, the Supreme Court of Korea once again affirmed: NOT GUILTY. Kenzi Snider has been fully acquitted in court. Yet her confession haunts her—and leads some people still to question her actual innocence. In this episode, Jason Flom is joined by Kenzi Snider and renowned psychologist Saul Kassin best known for his groundbreaking work on false confessions.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E7: Never Broken: Harold “House” Moore Is Finally Ready for the Most Important Role of His Life
Harold “House” Moore was on top the world–he was one of the stars on the Fox award-winning series *Atlanta *and had just played Dr. Dre in the 2Pac biopic All Eyez on Me. Harold’s career was blossoming, but all of that changed when he was railroaded, maliciously and falsely accused, and convicted of child molestation. He was sentenced to 6 to 12 years but was released after 2 years and granted a motion for a new trial, after a failed judicial process and intentionally suppressed evidence that would have proven his innocence threatened to surface. He is paving his way now as a fighter for judicial equality and criminal justice reform. In his first interview since his release, Harold is sharing his story with the hope that his journey will help inspire others to fight on behalf of the wrongfully convicted.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E6: Forced to Return to Prison After Serving 21 Years: The Story of Matthew Charles
At age 30, Matthew was arrested for selling 216 grams of crack cocaine to an informant and illegally possessing a firearm. He was given a 35-year sentence. In prison, Matthew could easily have crawled deeper into his shell of anger, but he didn’t. His prison life was directed at exemplary rehabilitation. He took college courses and became a law clerk. And most importantly, Matthew became “genuinely repentant of his life before encountering the Grace of Christ, not offering empty excuses about his past, but taking ownership,” as a pastor would later describe him. In 2013, Matthew applied for a sentence modification because the Sentencing Commission had lowered guideline ranges for drug offenses. At his re-sentencing hearing, Judge Kevin Sharp commended his rehabilitation and reduced Matthew’s sentence. After spending 21 years in prison on a 35-year sentence, Matthew Charles was released in 2016. However, after a year and half of freedom, the court reversed the reduction in sentence, citing an error in his release. Remarkably, Matthew was sent back to prison in May of 2018 to serve out the rest of his sentence with more than a decade left to go. Then, the First Step Act, signed into law by President Trump on December 21, 2018, included a provision to apply the Fair Sentencing Act retroactively, which the government agreed would allow for Matthew’s immediate release. On January 3, 2019, Matthew Charles finally left prison for good.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E5: A Child Discarded: The Wrongful Conviction of Darnell Phillips
Darnell Phillips served 28 years for a crime he did not commit. He was sentenced to 100 years in prison for the 1990 rape of a child in Virginia Beach. In 2015, the Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Virginia found physical evidence, and in 2017, DNA testing proved that Darnell was not at the scene of the crime. In this compelling interview, Darnell shares the devastating story of his conviction and his hopes for his future as a free man. He is also joined by Lisa Spees, Director of Virginians for Judicial Reform.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E4: Disentangling Mental Health and Criminal Justice
In this compelling interview, Vincent Atchity and Kelly Grimes join Jason Flom for a candid discussion about the criminal justice system and how it fails to support Americans with mental health challenges. Vincent Atchity has served as Executive Director of The Equitas Project since 2015. Vincent is an advocate for public health and health equity, a population health management strategist, and a builder of communications bridges connecting communities and community partners with better health outcomes and more efficiently managed costs. Kelly Grimes is a graduate of the Manhattan Mental Health Court, where CASES provides case management services, including treatment, planning and reporting on clients’ progress to the court. Kelly is now a certified peer specialist with CASES, as the peer specialist for the Manhattan Mental Health Court team. She has moved from being a client of the court to serving clients of the court. The Equitas Project, an initiative of the David and Laura Merage Foundation, envisions an America rededicated to liberty and justice for all, where there is a commonly held expectation that jails and prisons should not continue to serve as the nation’s warehouses for people with unmet mental health needs. Equitas is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which promotes mental health awareness, and champions laws, policies, and practices that prioritize improved population health outcomes, sensible use of resources, and the decriminalization of mental illness.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E3: Freed After 38 Years, Fred Clay Is Ready for His Life to Begin
In 1981, at only 16-years-old, Frederick Clay was arrested, charged as an adult and convicted of first-degree murder. In August 2017, a Suffolk Superior Court judge exonerated Clay based on new evidence that revealed he had been misidentified. Fred Clay spent 38 years in a Massachusetts prison for a crime he did not commit.
wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E2: John Grisham & Jason Flom Join Forces to Advocate for Criminal Justice Reform
In this special edition of Wrongful Conviction, Jason Flom is joined by author John Grisham to discuss his work with the Innocence Project, his commitment to criminal justice reform, and his Netflix series, The Innocent Man, the documentary adaptation of his only nonfiction book about two murders in Ada, OK. For ten years, John Grisham practiced law in a small town in Mississippi. He also served two terms in the State House of Representatives. In 1990, he gave up both the law and politics to write full-time, and since then has published at least one book a year. He has written one collection of short stories, one work of nonfiction, three books about sports, one comic novel, seven editions of his Theodore Boone series for children, a childhood memoir, and, at last count, more than twenty legal thrillers. Nine of his books have been adapted to film. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Innocence Project in New York, and the Focused Ultrasound Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia.
wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E1: Did a Fatal Attraction Lead to a Wrongful Conviction? The Story of Jens Soering
Jens Soering is serving two consecutive life terms for a case of double homicide, the murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom in 1985–a crime he did not commit. On June 8, 1986, Jens Soering, the son of a former German diplomat, falsely confessed to killing the Haysoms. Jens "took the rap" for his girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, to save her from the death penalty for killing her parents. At Jens’ trial, prosecutor Jim Updike told the jury that Soering's confession was corroborated by several drops of type O blood at the crime scene. Jens had type O, none of the other people involved in the crime did, so the blood had to be his. Updike repeated this claim 26 times. A comparison of lab reports showed that in fact DNA tests had eliminated Jens Soering as a possible source of the type O blood at the scene. The same blood that in 1990 suggested his guilt now proved his innocence. In 2017 two independent DNA scientists confirmed these findings, and they also found DNA evidence showing the presence of a second unknown man with type AB blood. The crime remains unsolved and Jens Soering has remained behind bars for over 32 years. In this gripping interview with Jens Soering, Jason Flom is joined by novelist John Grisham and Sheriff J.E. "Chip” Harding of Albemarle County, VA, both of whom have advocated on Soering’s behalf.
wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S8E1: Trailer: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom - Season 8
Season 8 Premieres, Monday. Feb. 4 2019. Tune in for an interview with Jens Soering. Soering was only 18 years old when he went to prison for murder. He is still behind bars–32 years later–for a crime he says he didn’t commit.
S7E10: UPDATED EPISODE: 27 Years in and 29 Days out, the Struggle and Triumph of Valentino Dixon
Although Valentino Dixon has never played golf, he wouldn’t have survived 27 years in prison–for a crime he did not commit–without it. A few years into his sentence of 39 years to life, Valentino returned to his childhood passion of art to help him cope. He began sketching landscapes of golf courses with color pencils. His breathtakingly detailed sketches led to a profile in *Golf Digest *magazine. That article in Golf Digest, helped bring other media attention to Valentino’s case and prompted students at Georgetown to help appeal his sentence. On September 19, 2018, Valentino Dixon was released after the court determined that he, in fact, was not responsible for the murder of 17-year-old Torriano Jackson on a Buffalo street corner in 1991. In this compelling interview, Valentino shares how his art served as a shield in prison, protecting his mind and comforting his soul.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E17: The Wrongful Conviction of Marty Tankleff
Marty Tankleff had just turned 17 when he was arrested for murdering his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff in September 1988. Based on an unsigned “confession" extracted from him following many long hours of interrogation by notorious Suffolk County detective K. James McCready, Marty was convicted and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. After serving 17 years, Marty's conviction was vacated by the New York State Appellate Division, Second Department, in December of 2007. On July 22, 2008, a judge signed off on a motion by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to dismiss all charges against Marty. Marty recently passed the bar exam and is pursuing a career as an attorney, advocating criminal justice reform and wrongful convictions.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E16: Jeffrey Deskovic: A 10th Grade Student Forced by Detectives to Make a False Confession and Freed by DNA Evidence 16 Years Later
In 1990, Jeffrey Deskovic was wrongfully convicted of the brutal rape and murder of his 15-year-old classmate, Angela Correa. Jeff was only 16 at the time of the crime with no prior record. Police claimed that Jeff was overly upset at the victim’s funeral and were certain they had their man. They interrogated him for over seven and a half hours, without his mother or legal counsel present. After browbeating and intimidating him, they ultimately extracted a false confession after promising that he could go home after he confessed. He had also been told that if his DNA did not match the semen in the rape kit, he would be cleared as a suspect. In January 1991, Jeffrey Deskovic was convicted of 1st degree rape and 2nd degree murder, despite DNA results showing that he was not the source of semen in the victim’s rape kit, and he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. In 2006, post-conviction DNA testing done by the Innocence Project both proved Jeff’s innocence and identified the real perpetrator, convicted murderer Steven Cunningham, who subsequently confessed to the crime. On November 2nd, 2006, Jeffrey Deskovic’s indictment was dismissed on grounds of actual innocence and he was released after serving 16 years in prison. Since his release, he has started The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which investigates wrongful conviction cases and provides support for exonerees once they are released.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E15: Dusty Turner: A Navy Seal Behind Bars for 22 Years for a Murder Even Though the Actual Killer Confessed
Dusty Turner was a 20-year-old Navy SEAL trainee when he was arrested for the murder and abduction of Jennifer Evans. On June 19th, 1995, Dusty Turner was out at a bar with some friends in Virginia Beach, VA, including his roommate and training partner, Billy Brown. Dusty Turner and Jennifer Evans were sitting in his car waiting for Evans’s friends to join them when an extremely intoxicated Billy Brown forced his way into the back seat and began insulting Evans and pulling her hair. When she tried to defend herself, Brown suddenly attacked her, wrapped his arms around her neck in a forceful choke hold, and killed her instantly. All the while Dusty Turner had been prying and clawing Brown’s hand off of Evans, pleading with him to stop. Finally realizing that she was dead, Dusty panicked and reacted to his intensive SEAL training that demanded “always protect your swim buddy” regardless of the cost. Dusty’s instinct for survival and misplaced loyalty to Brown took over as he drove out of the parking lot and helped Brown hide the victim’s body in a nearby wooded area. Eight days later, Dusty confessed the entire story to his commanding officer and agreed to take the police to the body after being assured that he would only be used as a witness during the trial. During Billy Brown’s trial in 1996, Brown testified against Dusty to receive a lesser sentence of 72 years in prison. Three months later, with an outraged community and media frenzy surrounding the case, Dusty Turner was convicted of first-degree murder and abduction, and sentenced to 82 years in prison. In 2002, Billy Brown confessed to Jennifer Evans’ murder and said that Dusty Turner played no part in it. Dusty Turner petitioned for a “writ of actual innocence” and his conviction was overturned by a three-judge panel of the Virginia State Court of Appeals. However, the State Attorney General’s Office quickly appealed this decision and the original Court of Appeals ruling was overturned. To date, Dusty Turner has served nearly 22 years in prison, over half of his life.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E14: Love Is Better than Revenge: The Wrongful Conviction of Sunny Jacobs
In 1976, Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs was sentenced to death for the murders of Florida Highway Patrol officer Phillip Black and Donald Irwin, a visiting Canadian constable. The officers were killed during a traffic stop where Sunny was traveling with her boyfriend, Jesse Tafero, and her two children, Eric, nine, and Christina, 10 months, in a car driven by Walter Rhodes. After officers approached the vehicle, Rhodes fired shots at them, a gun battle ensued, and chaos erupted. Sunny and Jesse were arrested, and both of their children were taken away by the state. Rhodes negotiated a plea bargain with the state, claiming Jesse and Sunny had pulled the triggers, in exchange for a life sentence. In 1990, Jesse was executed by the state of Florida in horrific circumstances. Sunny spent five years in isolation on Florida’s death row and a total of 17 years in a maximum-security prison before her conviction was overturned. Sunny was freed in 1992 when she was 45 years old. In this episode, Jason talks with Sunny, her current husband, exoneree Peter Pringle, and her daughter Christina, who as a child was also a victim of this tragic injustice.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E13: How Crystal Weimer Won an 11 Year Fight for Freedom
Curtis Haith was beaten to death and shot outside of his home in western Pennsylvania. Police determined that the evening before Haith had attended a party in Uniontown, PA. Crystal Weimer, whose sisters hosted the party, and her cousin had driven Haith home and returned directly to the party. Crystal became the focus of the investigation after an ex-boyfriend told authorities she confessed. The charges were dropped when he recanted, but police re-filed the charges in 2004 with the use of statements given by Joseph Stenger, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy of homicide of Haith while he was serving time for unrelated robbery charges. Stenger testified that Crystal had an earlier physical altercation with Haith, and she enlisted Stenger and two unidentified black men to return to Haith’s house after where she lured him outside, and they beat him to death and shot him in the face. At her trial in 2006, the only physical evidence that directly tied Crystal to the crime scene was an alleged bite mark on the victim’s arm. Expert odontologist Dr. Constantine Karazulas told the jury that a mark on the victim’s hand was a bite mark made minutes before he died, and that Crystal is the one who bit him. During closing argument, the prosecution told the jury that the jailhouse informants who testified against her at the trial had not asked for any leniency on their own cases in return for their testimony. Crystal Weimer was convicted of third-degree murder and conspiracy to commit homicide and sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison. She continued to fight for her innocence, acting as her own lawyer and filing motions for post-conviction relief, but all were denied until a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus was filed on her behalf. In December 2014, Joseph Stenger ultimately recanted all of his statements and admitted that prosecutors dropped more serious charges against him in exchange for his testimony against Crystal. In early 2015, Dr. Constantine Karazulas, that same expert declared his own trial testimony "junk science" and "invalid." In February 2015, Crystal, represented pro bono by the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and the firm of Jones Day, filed a motion for a new trial based on the discredited bite mark evidence and the recantations of key witnesses. Her lawyers had also discovered that the prosecution had failed to disclose to Crystal’s trial counsel that the jailhouse informants had written letters to the prosecution requesting favorable treatment, which showed that the informants had testified falsely at trial when they denied they sought deals for their testimony. A new trial was ordered on October 1st, 2015, and Crystal Weimer was released the same day on bond after serving 11 years in prison. She was forced to wear an electronic ankle bracelet for another nine months until the judge dismissed the charges with prejudice, and she was finally exonerated in June 2016. Crystal is joined by one of her attorneys from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, Nilaam Sanghvi, in this episode.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E12: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Granted Clemency After 22 Years in Prison for a Non-Violent Crime
Tim Tyler was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence in federal prison for selling LSD while traveling around the country following the Grateful Dead. He was 25 years old when he was sentenced and spent nearly half of his life behind bars. In 1991, Tim was arrested twice for selling LSD and received probation both times. Then, in May 1992, Tim sold marijuana and LSD to a confidential informant. He was arrested in August and charged along with three codefendants, including his father. Tim pled guilty to possession with intent to deliver LSD and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute LSD. In March 1994, Tim was sentenced to mandatory life without parole in federal prison. Tim’s codefendants received five- and 10-year sentences. Timothy’s father died in prison while serving his 10-year prison term. Tim’s life sentence was determined by two factors: his two prior drug offenses and the amount of LSD he was convicted of selling, which included the “carrier” weight of the paper the LSD was placed on. Ten grams or more of LSD (including the weight of the carrier) on a third offense triggers a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison. Without the mandatory minimum, Timothy would have received a sentence of 262-327 months under the federal sentencing guidelines.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E11: Ndaba Mandela: Carrying the Torch of Social Justice Inherited from His Grandfather, Nelson Mandela
Following in the footsteps of his beloved and iconic grandfather, Ndaba Mandela has taken the torch of social justice and run with it. Today, Nelson Mandela’s legacy continues as Ndaba keeps its beacon of hope bright, fueling his message that one person can make a difference. In this candid interview, Ndaba discusses his passion for criminal justice reform and his commitment to a new generation of young Africans that he hopes will be at the forefront of Africa’s development.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E9: Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction
In her new book Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction, Lara Bazelon makes a powerful argument for adopting a model of restorative justice as part of the innocence movement so exonerees, crime victims, and their communities can come together to heal. Tony Wright is one of those exonerees. Tony endured two trials and 25 years in prison before a jury found him not guilty for the rape, sodomy, and murder of Louise Talley, a 77-year-old woman in Philadelphia. He was only 20 years old when he was arrested in 1993, signed a confession after being beaten and threatened by the interrogating detectives, and was sentenced to life in prison—he narrowly escaped the death penalty after the jury voted against it 7 to 5. Later DNA testing of the rape kit not only excluded Tony as a suspect, but also identified Ronnie Byrd as the real assailant. On August 23, 2016, Tony Wright was exonerated, and he became the 344th DNA exoneree in the nation.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E8: Vote YES on Amendment 2: Louisiana Faces Vote to Restore Fairness with Unanimous Juries
In forty-eight other states and in federal courts across the country, a conviction requires a unanimous vote – all jurors must agree on whether a prosecutor has met the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Louisiana is the only state where someone can be sentenced to life without parole without a unanimous decision of a jury. Non-unanimous juries allow conviction even where two citizens have reasonable doubts about the evidence. They are, as a result, unreliable. More than forty percent of all those who have been recently exonerated were (mistakenly) found guilty by non-unanimous juries. On November 6th, 2018, Louisiana voters will have a chance to change that. Amendment 2, a ballot initiative, would require unanimous agreement by jurors for all felony trials. Jason Flom is joined by Doug DiLosa of Rising Foundation and Chris Pourciau the Deputy Director of the Unanimous Jury Coalition, through the Promise of Justice Initiative. Doug DiLosa is himself a victim of non-unanimous jury. He was wrongfully convicted of second-degree murder in 1987 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole with less than a unanimous consensus of his guilt. Based on the information and evidence Doug was able to gather on his case, in 2000 the Federal Court reversed his conviction and he was released from prison in January of 2001. For more information about his case please listen to Doug DiLosa’s first interview on Wrongful Conviction in Season 1.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E7: Inner Freedom for the Imprisoned: A Conversation with Sadhguru-Yogi, Mystic and Visionary-About His Revolutionary Work in Prisons from India to Kentucky
In this special edition of Wrongful Conviction, Jason Flom is joined by Sadhguru to discuss his revolutionary work that has helped reform prisons throughout India. Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author who ranked amongst the 50 most influential people in India by India Today. He has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest civilian award of the year, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service. Three decades ago, Sadhguru founded the Isha Foundation, a non-profit organization with human well-being at its core commitment, supported by over seven million volunteers in over 250 centers worldwide.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E7: Rafael Madrigal: Convicted of Attempted Murder After a Drive-By Shooting Despite an Airtight Alibi
Rafael Madrigal and co-defendant Francisco Olivares were charged with committing a drive-by shooting in East Los Angeles on behalf of the Ford Maravilla gang and convicted in January of 2002. Rafael contended his innocence from the beginning; at the time of the shooting he was at work at Proactive Packaging & Display in Rancho Cucamonga, approximately 35 miles away. The petition submitted on Madrigal’s behalf established his alibi and argued that his trial counsel was ineffective in his representation, failing to call an alibi witness or properly investigate the case. During an evidentiary hearing on November 3, 2008, alibi witness Robert Howards, Rafael’s direct supervisor at Proactive, testified that the production line would have shut down had Rafael not been at work. Rafael was the only employee trained to operate the laminating machine and his failure to operate that piece of machinery would have impacted production. Howards was never called as a witness, despite his submission of a notarized alibi statement in Rafael’s defense. An audio tape was also produced during the evidentiary hearing. On the tape was a telephone conversation between Olivares and his girlfriend. In the conversation, Olivares admits that Rafael was not involved in the shooting, nor did he know any details of the crime. The audio tape was never entered as evidence. The alibi witness and audio tape prove Rafael Madrigal’s innocence, and together, both pieces of evidence were crucial in the reversal his conviction.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E5: Damien Echols Survived Death Row and Now He Is Sharing the Spiritual Practices that Saved His Life with the World
As a teenager, Damien Echols along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley—known as the West Memphis Three—was convicted in 1994 of killing three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, AK. There was no DNA linking the WM3 to the crime, and some of the DNA found at the crime scene even seemed to implicate the stepfather of one of the victims. The case gained national attention soon after the teenagers’ arrests when word was leaked that the murders were committed as part of a satanic ritual. A key prosecution witness in the second trial was a self-proclaimed cult expert who stated that the murders bore “trappings” of the occult. This testimony, combined with testimony about books Damien Echols read and some of his writings, plus evidence that he and Jason Baldwin liked heavy-metal music and several black t-shirts were found in Jason Baldwin’s closet, helped to convict the two teenagers. Damien Echols was sentenced to death; Jason Baldwin was sentenced to life without parole, and Misskelley was sentenced to 40 years. Following a 2010 decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court regarding newly produced DNA evidence and potential juror misconduct, the West Memphis Three negotiated a plea bargain with prosecutors. After serving more than 18 years in prison, all three of the WM3 took the Alford Plea, which meant that the state of Arkansas admitted no wrongdoing. While in prison, Damien was ordained into the Rinzai Zen Buddhist tradition. Today he teaches classes on Magick around the country and works as a visual artist. He and wife Lorri live in New York City with their three cats. He is the author of High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Rowand the *New York Times *bestseller Life After Death and Yours For Eternity(with his wife Lorri Davis). This episode was recorded live in front of a studio audience at the opening of The Church of Rock & Roll.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E4: Noura Jackson: Wrongfully Convicted of Murdering Her Mother After Prosecutors Withheld Evidence of Her Innocence
Noura Jackson was egregiously framed and wrongfully convicted of murdering her mother, Jennifer Jackson, in Memphis, TN in 2005. Amazingly, she spent over three years in jail awaiting trial before being sentenced to 20 years and nine months in prison. No physical evidence linked Noura to the murder, and DNA testing not only excluded her as a suspect, but it also suggested that two or three different people were present at the crime scene. The Supreme Court of Tennessee overturned her conviction unanimously in 2014, and in their 5-0 decision, they made strong statements about the misconduct that took place during her trial. The prosecutors threatened to retry Noura, and she was faced with little choice but to accept an Alford Plea in 2015. Noura Jackson was then sent back to prison for 15 months before she was finally released in 2016, after serving 11 years in prison. She is joined by one of her lawyers, Bryce Benjet, Senior Staff Attorney at the Innocence Project, in this episode.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E3: A Decade Later: The Wrongful Conviction of Amanda Knox
It’s been over 10 years since the murder of Meredith Kercher, British exchange student killed while studying abroad in Italy. That crime sent an innocent American student named Amanda Knox to prison for four years. At just 20 years old Amanda Knox became embroiled in an international scandal that captivated the world. The guilty verdict at Amanda’s initial trial and her 26-year sentence caused international controversy, as U.S. forensic experts thought evidence at the crime scene didn’t make sense. After her eventual release, Amanda returned to the United States to rebuild her life. Amanda was the first guest on Season 2 of Wrongful Conviction as we begin this, our seventh season, we are looking back. Amanda Knox is currently a New York Timesbest-selling author, the host of The Scarlet Letter Reports on Broadly/Vice, and the host of The Truth About True Crime, a Sundance AMC podcast series.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E2: Falsely Accused: The Devastating Story of Susan King’s Wrongful Conviction and the Detective Who Lied to Make It Happen
Susan King served nearly seven years behind bars for a crime she didn’t commit. In November 1998, a fisherman found the body of 40-year-old Kyle Breeden in the Kentucky River. He had been shot in the head twice with .22 caliber magnum bullets and his legs were bound with guitar amplifier cord. The crime went unsolved for eight years until May 2006, when Kentucky State Police began re-investigating. In April 2007, based on an investigation by state police officer Todd Harwood, Breeden’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, Susan King, was charged with murder and tampering with a crime scene. Harwood concluded that Susan shot Breeden twice in the head in the kitchen of her home following a quarrel. Susan, who had one leg and weighed 97 pounds, was accused of transporting the body to the river where she physically lifted Breeden’s 180-pound body over the railing of a Kentucky River bridge. She was also charged with trying to clean up the crime scene to hide evidence of the murder. In September 2008, Susan King entered an Alford plea to second-degree manslaughter in which she did not admit guilt, and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She served more than six years in prison before she was released on parole in November 2012.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E1: Kim Kardashian West & Jason Flom Join Forces to Advocate for Criminal Justice Reform and Clemency
Kim Kardashian West first heard about Alice Marie Johnson through a short video about Johnson’s life behind bars on Twitter. Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old-great-grandmother, was given a life sentence for a first time-nonviolent-drug-related crime and was not eligible for parole. At the time, Johnson had already been in prison for 21 years. Kardashian West retweeted that video from Mic.com saying “This is so unfair” on October 25, 2017. That single tweet and Johnson’s story moved Kardashian West and ignited a passion in her for criminal justice reform. It became her mission to help free Johnson and reunite her with the family she missed so much. Kardashian West’s journey took her to the White House where she personally petitioned for a pardon of Johnson’s criminal offenses and on June 6, 2018, President Donald Trump granted clemency to Alice Marie Johnson. In this special edition of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom, Kim Kardashian West discusses her commitment to criminal justice reform and how she plans to continue using her voice to advocate on behalf of those behind bars.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S7E1: Preview of Kim Kardashian West on Wrongful Conviction
Listen to a special preview of Jason Flom’s interview of Kim Kardashian West as she discusses her involvement in Alice Johnson’s release and her advocacy for criminal justice reform and clemency. The full episode will be available Wednesday, September 5th.
S6E8: UPDATED EPISODE: Words of a Man: Dr. Yusef Salaam’s Wrongful Conviction for One of NYC’s Most Heinous Crimes
On the night of April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old female jogger was brutally attacked and raped in New York’s Central Park. She was found unconscious with her skull fractured, and 75 percent of her blood drained from her body. Five teens from Harlem—all between the ages of 14 and 16-years-old—were tried and convicted of the crime in one of the most frenzied cases in the city’s history. The woman was dubbed the “Central Park jogger” and the accused teens became known collectively as the “Central Park Five.” One of those boys, Dr. Yusef Salaam, was just 15 years old when he was tried as a juvenile and convicted of rape and assault. He was sentenced to five to ten years in prison. In early 2002, Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and rapist, admitted that he alone was responsible for the attack on the Central Park jogger. Reyes had already committed another rape near Central Park days earlier in 1989, using the same modus operandi. Although the police had Reyes’s name on file, they failed to connect Reyes to the rape and assault of the Central Park jogger. Eventually, the evidence from the crime was subjected to DNA testing and matched the profile of Reyes, who is currently serving a life sentence. On December 19, 2002, on the recommendation of the Manhattan District Attorney, the convictions of the five men were overturned. Dr. Yusef Salaam had served nearly seven years for a crime he did not commit. Since his release, he has become a family man, father, poet, activist, and inspirational speaker. He has committed himself to advocating for and educating people on the issues of mass incarceration, police brutality and misconduct, false confessions, press ethics and bias, race and law, and the disparities in America’s criminal justice system, especially for young men of color. He is featured in the 2019 hit Netflix series When They See Us.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E13: Three Decades Later: Raymond Santana and the Central Park Jogger Case
It’s been almost 30 years since the brutal rape and beating of the Central Park Jogger that sent five innocent men to prison—they were known as the Central Park Five. This case and their stories captivated New Yorkers. This season we heard from one of the five: the incredible Yusef Salaam. But the first guest on Wrongful Conviction was Raymond Santana, and as the sixth season of Wrongful Conviction comes to an end, we are looking back. Raymond was only 14 years old when he was wrongfully convicted of the rape and assault of the Central Park jogger in 1990. He was finally exonerated in 2002 when serial rapist and murderer Matias Reyes confessed from prison that he committed the crime.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E12: The Notorious Teardrop Rapist and Luis Vargas’ Fight to Prove His Innocence and Survive in Prison
In 1999, Luis Vargas was convicted and sentenced to fifty-five years to life in prison for three sexual assaults. He was accused of being the notorious “teardrop rapist,” a methodical serial rapist that terrorized women in Los Angeles. The real “teardrop rapist” would attack over 30 victims. Luis Vargas is joined by his lawyer, Justin Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E11: Meek Mill's 12 Year Journey from Wrongful Conviction to Righteous Activism
Since his release in April 2018, Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill is using his voice and freedom to fight on behalf of those still behind bars. In this special interview, Meek Mill is joined by his friend and ally Michael Rubin, e-commerce billionaire and co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, to discuss their hopes for criminal justice reform.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E10: Unwavering Faith: The Story of Kerry Porter
On December 27, 1996, 35-year-old Tyrone Camp was fatally shot in the head and back as he was warming up his truck at Active Transportation Co. in Louisville, KY. The murder was witnessed by Kenneth Brown, who told police he had seen the assailant running away, but that he could not identify him. The focus shifted to Kerry Porter, who had also once been married to Camp’s wife, after the victim’s brother showed the witness a picture of Kerry. Brown identified Kerry as the assailant on two separate occasions. Kerry Porter was eventually convicted of the murder of Tyrone Camp and sentenced to 60 years in prison. His devastating conviction was built on mistaken witness identification, perjury, and a false accusation. He was exonerated in 2011 thanks in part to the Innocence Project and–in a strange turn– the television show Bay Watch.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E9: Exit to Freedom: The Story of Calvin Johnson
Calvin Johnson was 25 years old when he was wrongfully convicted for the rape of a woman in 1983, and he served 16 years for that crime. In 1999, a judge ordered a new trial for Calvin and DNA tests were done on samples collected from the rape kit. The DNA testing concluded that Calvin was not the perpetrator, and the District Attorney decided to drop the charges against him. Calvin Johnson was the first man exonerated in part to DNA evidence in the state of Georgia. He is now on the inaugural board of directors for the Innocence Project. In September 2003, his book *Exit To Freedom *was published by the University of Georgia Press. Co-authored by Dr. Greg Hampikian, the book chronicles Calvin’s wrongful arrest, conviction, imprisonment, and the events that led to his exoneration.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E7: Wrong Man: The Story of Shabaka Shakur and the Fabricated Confession that Sent Him to Prison for 27 Years
On January 11, 1988, Fitzgerald Clarke and Steven Hewitt were fatally shot in Brooklyn, NY outside of a building where they sold drugs. Shabaka Shakur, a friend of both victims, was brought in for questioning after a witness told officers that Shabaka harbored a dispute over money he owned Hewitt. Another witness told police that Shabaka admitted to committing the crime before he was arrested, but this witness never testified and recanted in 2014. In Detective Phillip Mahony’s initial interview with Shabaka, he denied any involvement in the crime. But after Mahony, Shabaka was interviewed by the now disgraced Detective Louis Scarcella, who claimed that he confessed to shooting the victims. Shabaka Shakur was convicted on two counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life. After 27 years–and in large part to his determination–Shabaka Shakur was exonerated. He is joined by his defense attorney, Ron Kuby, in this episode. Ron Kuby is the star of a new series *Wrong Man *on STARZ. The series follows a team of esteemed experts as they re-investigate the cases of three inmates who have been locked up for decades and claim they're innocent.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E6: Misidentified: The Story of Guy Miles’ Fight to Prove His Innocence
On June 29, 1998, three men committed an armed robbery at a Fidelity Financial institution in Fullerton, CA. Two bank employees chose Guy Miles from faulty photo arrays and later testified that he was one of the robbers in court. Guy had six alibi witnesses at trial who all testified that he was in Las Vegas–an almost four-hour drive away–when the robbery occurred. He was convicted of robbery and sentenced to 75 years to life. With the help of the California Innocence Project, Guy Miles was freed after 18 years in prison. Their investigation found the three men responsible for committing that crime: Jason Stewart, Harold Bailey and Bernard Teamer. In this episode, Guy is joined by his lawyer, Justin Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E5: Conviction: Murder, Shooting with the Intent to Kill, Use of a Vehicle to Facilitate the Discharge of a Weapon
De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott were 17 years old when Tulsa police arrested them in connection to a gang-related shooting that killed 19-year-old Karen Summers, the mother of a 4-month-old baby, outside a house party in 1994. Neither teen was found with the murder weapon or the getaway car and no DNA linked either of them to the crime scene. Days after the murder occurred, a Tulsa homicide supervisor visited Michael Lee Wilson, a known member of the Bloods, who had the murder weapon, the car, and the motive. Prosecutors offered Wilson a plea deal in exchange for testifying against De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott, and Wilson was released on $5,000 bond. While he was free, he brutally butchered Richard Yost, a night clerk at a Tulsa convenience store in February 1995—that crime was so heinous that Wilson and his co-defendant Billy Alverson both received the death penalty. Two eyewitnesses who placed De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott at the scene, and who provided inconsistent statements to investigators, later recanted and claimed detectives had coerced their testimony by threatening them with charges. After their three-day trial, De’Marchoe and Malcolm were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison on the murder conviction, plus 170 years for two counts of shooting with intent to kill, and one count of using a vehicle to facilitate the discharge of a weapon. Days before Wilson was set to die by lethal injection in 2011, he provided a videotaped confession to the Oklahoma Innocence Project. In the footage, he claimed that he was the one who killed Summers, and that he’d allowed cops to suspect De’Marchoe and Malcolm. Almost 22 years later, on May 9, 2016, a judge finally vacated their convictions and declared them factually innocent.
wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E4: Sentenced to Death in Africa and Locked in a 7 x 9 Cell with 13 Other Inmates: How Pete Ouko Found His Purpose
In 1998, Peter Ouko was taken to Kamiti Maximum Prison in Kenya and was sentenced to death in 2001. His sentence would later be commuted to life imprisonment by Kenya’s former President Mwai Kibaki in 2009. Instead of bitterness, Mr. Ouko decided to forgive his tormentors and make the best of his time in prison, becoming the first inmate to graduate with a University of London Diploma in Law while behind bars. He is currently in his final year as an LLB student in the same University. Peter later won his freedom in October 2016 and continues to support and advocate for those individuals who remain on remand. In his dual role as an Ambassador of the African Prisons Project and Founder of the Youth Safety Awareness Initiative, Pete Ouko today champions access to justice for inmates and the indolent in society while using social enterprise to advocate for a crime free world.
wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E3: A Crime Against Humanity, an Epic Struggle for Survival, & Two Decades of Devastating Loneliness: The Unimaginable Story of Steven Barnes
In March 1988, Steven Barnes was arrested and charged with the rape, sodomy, and murder of 16-year-old Kimberly Simon in upstate New York. He was tried by a jury in Utica beginning on May 15, 1989. Questionable eyewitness identifications and three forms of unvalidated forensic science were used against Steven at trial, and he was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Nearly two decades later, on November 25, 2008, DNA testing obtained by the Innocence Project proved his innocence and Steven Barnes walked out of the Utica courthouse a free man.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E2: The Story Behind Empire on Blood: Calvin Buari’s Trial by Ambush and Two Decades in Hell
Calvin Buari served 22 years for a double murder in the Bronx, even though someone else confessed to the crime. In the early 1990s, Calvin Buari was a well-known crack cocaine distributor in the Bronx, and authorities blamed him for a spasm of bloodshed there; the press reported that he practiced "black magic" and was a murderous thug. In 1992, a disgruntled drug associate who had recently shot Calvin implicated him in the murder of Elijah and Salhaddin Harris, who were parked when a gunman walked up and fired about a dozen rounds into their car. Calvin was charged with the double murder and six rival drug dealers testified against him at his 1995 murder trial. No physical evidence connected him to the crime. A jury took only two hours to convict Calvin of murder, and he was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. He never stopped fighting for his freedom, and the case took a turn with a 2003 affidavit from the key witness against him, Dwight Robinson, who confessed to the crime, stating that he “pinned this double murder on Calvin Buari because of a dispute between Calvin and me, and because I wanted complete control of my drug spot.” Journalist Steve Fishman followed Calvin’s story for seven years and eyewitnesses, first interviewed by Fishman, testified in court in 2015 that Calvin was not the murderer. By May 2017, a judge overturned the conviction and ordered 46-year-old Calvin Buari freed. In this episode, Calvin is joined by Steve Fishman, who chronicles his journey for justice in the hit podcast Empire on Blood.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S6E1: Trailer: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom Season 6
Premieres Monday June 11, 2018
S5E11: A Gruesome Murder, an Impossible Scenario, and a Sloppy, but Ultimately Successful Frame Up: The Terrible Saga of Andre Hatchett’s 25 Years Behind Bars for a Crime He Didn’t Commit
Andre Hatchett spent half of his life in prison for a murder he did not commit largely due to inadequate defense, a single unreliable witness, and exculpatory evidence that was not disclosed to the defense. He was the 19th person to be exonerated under Brooklyn D.A. Ken Thompson's Conviction Integrity Unit. Andre Hatchett is joined by Senior Staff Attorney at the Innocence Project Seema Saifee and his brother Jerry Hatchett in this episode.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S5E10: Tortured by Police, Failed by the Justice System, & Locked up in Hell on a Putrid Prison Ship: Angel Cordero’s Fight for Freedom
Angel Cordero was convicted in 1999 of attempted murder and robbery of then-Boston University freshman Jason Mercado, who was attacked and stabbed by strangers while walking in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. Four plainclothes Bronx Gang Unit cops driving by the scene observed the tail end of the assault and quickly arrested five men out of the crowd, including Angel Cordero, who at age 26 had no prior criminal record, and his brother, Ramon Rivas. Three of the five young men pleaded guilty in exchange for lesser sentences, but Angel Cordero and Ramon Rivas refused to plead guilty and went to trial. At trial, multiple people testified that a man named Dario Rodriguez had committed the stabbing. In addition, the three confessed assailants also told police that Angel and his brother were not involved. Both brothers were found guilty of second-degree attempted murder, robbery in the first degree, and assault in the first degree, and they were both sentenced to 15 years in prison. Ramon Rivas won his appeal due to judicially inappropriate actions made by the court and was released 6 years into his sentence. Angel Cordero served 13 years in prison despite numerous statements from witnesses that he was not involved, as well as the 2007 confession of longtime drug dealer Dario Rodriguez, who admitted he actually committed the crime. Angel Cordero was released on parole in 2012, and he is still fighting for exoneration with his attorneys at the Innocence Project. In this episode, he is joined by his biggest supporter, his wife Michelle Cordero, who married him while he was still in prison.
wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S5E9: After 38 Years Still Behind Bars for a Triple Murder that the Real Killer Confessed to on the Day of the Crime: The Unreal Saga of John Moss
In December 1979, a triple murder shook the small town of St. Albans, WV. John Moss III was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison, and he has since served 38 years for this crime that he did not commit. Jason Flom teams up with Georgetown University Professor of Government and Law, Marc Howard, and his student, Jessica Scoratow, to interview John Moss from behind bars in West Virginia and unravel the saga behind this tragic miscarriage of justice. On December 13th, 1979, in St. Albans, WV, twenty-six-year-old Vanessa Reggettz and her two young children, Paul Eric and Bernadette, were strangled to death by electrical cords. The murders were gruesome–Vanessa was brutally beaten and stabbed with scissors, Paul Eric was left in a bathtub, and Bernadette was hung from a door. Paul Reggettz, the husband of Vanessa and the father of Bernadette and Paul Eric, was immediately taken into custody and after being interrogated for hours, he confessed in graphic detail and reenacted the crime for investigators. Reggettz was indicted on three counts of first-degree murder and held in pre-trial detention for eleven months. Charges were dropped, however, when John Moss, a 17-year-old former neighbor, was arrested for the murders instead. In October 1980, West Virginia State Police investigators traveled to interview John Moss in Ohio, where he was being held in juvenile detention for an unrelated crime. John denied any involvement in the murders, and the troopers took a blood sample from him without his parents’ consent or a court order. They returned to pick him up five months later to take him into custody. The policemen in the car claimed that John confessed to the murders. He then gave a tape-recorded confession. The police stated that John confessed again a third time, but there is no recording or written record of the confession. John maintains that he was coerced, beaten, and threatened during interrogations. Armed with these confessions, however, Kanawha County, West Virginia authorities charged John Moss with three counts of first-degree murder and brought him to Charleston to stand trial for the Reggettz slayings in 1985. Importantly, there was blood at the scene of the crime that did not match any of the family members, and the blood was found to match Moss’s blood type. The blood sample was tested by Fred Zain, the infamous lab technician later convicted of falsifying blood evidence in over 134 cases spanning decades, and later destroyed after the conviction. On April 30, 1983, John Moss was convicted of the murders after fourteen hours of jury deliberation and sentenced to three life sentences without the possibility of parole in 1985. He was convicted again in 1990 after his first trial was thrown out for judicial errors in jury polling and prosecutorial misconduct. John Moss has been incarcerated in West Virginia for 38 years, filing numerous appeals alleging ineffective assistance of counsel and challenging Fred Zain's testimony, the validity of his confessions, and arguments about the purportedly stolen items. His appeals have thus far been unsuccessful, and without new evidence, his options for further appeals are limited. For more information visit https://www.justiceforjohnmoss.com
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S5E8: How 3 Seconds Changed Rodney Robert’s Wrongful Incarceration and Why He Pleaded Guilty to a Crime He Didn’t Commit Twice
Rodney Roberts was arrested in 1996 in Newark, NJ, after an altercation with a friend. After several days in custody, he found himself charged with the kidnapping and rape of a 17-year-old girl. His court appointed attorney advised him to plead guilty or spend the rest of his life in prison. Rodney had a good job and had recently moved with his young son into a new apartment. Hoping to get back to his son as soon as possible, Rodney pleaded guilty to the crime in exchange for a seven-year sentence. He would end up spending 18 years in custody before DNA evidence excluded him as a perpetrator and he was exonerated and released in 2014.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S5E7: Convicted of a Grisly Murder & Mutilation, Even Though She Was 200 Miles away with an Airtight Alibi: The Insane Saga of Blaise Lobato
Blaise Lobato was twice convicted of the gruesome murder of a 44-year-old homeless man named Duran Bailey, whose body was found behind a dumpster off the Las Vegas Strip just after 10 p.m. on July 8, 2001, covered in a thin layer of trash. Bailey’s teeth had been knocked out and his eyes were bloodied and swollen shut; his carotid artery had been slashed, his rectum stabbed, and his penis amputated. Despite a crime scene rich with potential evidence, Las Vegas detectives Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle ignored obvious leads and instead focused their investigation on 18-year-old Blaise Lobato, based solely on a third-hand rumor. Blaise became a suspect because of an attack she fended off in Las Vegas in May 2001. A man attempted to rape her, and she fought him off with a knife, slashing him in the groin area before escaping in her car. In July, police drove up to the small town of Panaca to interview Blaise about the incident. On the day of the crime, she was at home with her parents in Panaca, which was nearly three hours northeast of Las Vegas near the Utah state line. She was forthcoming with police and described an incident entirely different from Bailey’s murder. When the police told her that the man had died, she mistakenly believed it was the same man that had attacked her, and she expressed remorse, which the police took to be a confession. Even though there was not a shred of physical evidence linking Blaise Lobato to the crime scene, on May 18, 2002, she was convicted of first-degree murder and sexual penetration of a dead body and sentenced to 40 to 100 years. The state’s theory of the crime fell apart in October 2017, when Vanessa Potkin, Director of Post-Conviction Litigation at the Innocence Project, and a team of attorneys presented nearly a week’s worth of testimony from several renowned entomologists and a medical examiner, each of whom demonstrated why the state’s narrative never made any scientific sense. On December 19, 2017, the judge vacated Blaise’s conviction and ordered a new trial. Ten days later, the prosecution dropped all charges, and Blaise Lobato was freed after serving almost 16 years in prison. In this episode she is joined by two of her Innocence Project attorneys, Jane Putcher & Adnan Salter.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S5E6: John Huffington: Drug Deals, a Double Death Sentence, & over 3 Decades in Prison
John Huffington spent 32 years in the Maryland Prison System—10 of which were on death row—after being wrongfully convicted of a 1981 double murder. Previously, juries twice convicted John of first-degree murder in the deaths of Diane Becker and Joseph Hudson. The first trial, in 1981, occurred in Caroline County and John was later granted a new trial due to evidence improperly introduced by the State. The second trial took place in Frederick County in 1983. He faced the death penalty after both convictions, but his sentence was later commuted to two life terms in prison. Since his first trial, John had filed multiple appeals at the state and federal levels, challenging the state’s case against him. In 2013, as the result of newly discovered DNA evidence that demonstrated that hairs discovered at the crime scene were not John’s, the Circuit Court for Frederick County, MD, granted him a Writ of Actual Innocence and vacated his murder convictions, and John Huffington was released from prison on bond. The faulty evidence came from an FBI lab that has been forced to acknowledge widespread mismanagement and false testimony. Flawed forensic testimony was given in 257 of the 268 trials in which hair evidence was used, and John Huffington’s trial was one of them. Since his release from prison, John Huffington has been a tireless advocate for the re-entry community, and his work has been recognized by Baltimore City leaders, including State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. He is now serving as the Director of Workforce Development for Living Classrooms Foundation, where he manages the workforce development department and its programming with 18 staff members and a $2 million budget. As part of his role, he manages Project SERVE, the same job-training program in which he enrolled upon being released from incarceration.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S5E5: Malcolm Alexander: An Innocent Man, a One Day Trial and 38 Years in Prison—A Tragic Miscarriage of Justice
Malcolm Alexander was wrongfully convicted for a 1979 rape in Gretna, LA and spent nearly four decades incarcerated before DNA evidence proved his innocence. In February 1980, police arrested 20-year-old Malcolm Alexander after a white woman accused him of sexually assaulting her. Malcolm, who is black, told police that the sex occurred after he gave the woman money and that it was consensual. This encounter, which was uncorroborated and later dropped, prompted police to place Malcolm’s photo in an array that was shown to the 1979 rape victim over four months after she was attacked at gunpoint by a complete stranger. The assailant was behind the victim for the entirety of the crime, and her opportunity to view him was extremely limited. According to police reports, the victim “tentatively” selected Malcolm Alexander’s photo. Yet, police conducted a physical line-up three days later that included Malcolm, who was the only person from the photo array who was shown again to the victim in the physical line-up. Again, the victim made a “possible” identification and the word “tentative” was written next to Malcolm’s line-up number. However, when the original detective returned later that day to record a statement from the victim, the victim’s confidence was recorded as 98% sure that Malcolm Alexander was the assailant. He was arrested and charged with aggravated rape and he went to trial on November 5, 1980. The entire trial—from selection of the jury until the jury’s guilty verdict—lasted one day, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Malcolm’s paid attorney, who was subsequently disbarred, failed to make court appearances and to file important pleadings, including a motion challenging the identification. The Innocence Project first took up Malcolm Alexander’s case in 1996 but quickly learned that the rape kit and a semen-stained towel had been destroyed only four years after his conviction. In 2013, new hair evidence recovered from the crime scene was found at the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Crime Lab. The tests showed that all three hairs came from the same person, and Malcolm Alexander was excluded as the source of the hairs. On January 30, 2018, absolved of the crime thanks to DNA evidence, Malcolm Alexander walked free from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola after serving 38 years. He is joined by his son Malcolm Jr. and Innocence Project's Director of Post-Conviction Litigation, Vanessa Potkin, in this episode.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX
S5E4: An Unforgettable Story of Mistaken Identity, Grave Injustice, Forgiveness, & Grace
In July 1984, an assailant broke into Jennifer Thompson-Cannino’s apartment and sexually assaulted her; later that night, the assailant broke into another apartment and sexually assaulted a second woman. Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, then a 22-year-old college student, made every effort to study the perpetrator’s face while he was assaulting her. Ms. Thompson-Cannino first chose Ronald Cotton as her attacker in a photo lineup. Soon after, she chose him again in a live lineup – she was 100% sure she had the right man. In January 1985, Ronald Cotton was convicted by a jury of one count of rape and one count of burglary. In a second trial, in November 1987, Ronald was convicted of both rapes and two counts of burglary. He was sentenced to life in prison plus fifty-four years. Ronald was unsuccessful overturning his conviction in several appeals, but in the spring of 1995, his case was given a major break: the Burlington Police Department turned over all evidence, which included the assailant’s semen for DNA testing, to the defense. When the DNA test results were reported in May 1995, the district attorney and the defense motioned to dismiss all charges. On June 30, 1995, Ronald Cotton was officially cleared of all charges and released from prison after serving over 10 years. In July 1995, the governor of North Carolina officially pardoned him. Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton met for the first time after his exoneration and immediately became good friends. They appear together on *Wrongful Conviction *and travel around the country working to spread the word about wrongful convictions and reforms – especially for eyewitness identification procedures – that can prevent future injustice.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S5E3: The Wrongful Convictions and Multiple Escapes of Leroy Harris: 30 Years in Prison and a Story You Have to Hear to Believe
From the moment he was charged with rape and robbery in 1989, Leroy Harris has insisted on his innocence. In May 1983, a New Haven, CT nightclub owner was robbed at gunpoint by three young men late one night. The men stole his car, and later that evening robbed and sexually assaulted two women. Leroy became one of the numerous suspects because he was misidentified. He was tried in April 1989, six years after the crimes were committed. Despite the fact that not a single eyewitness identified Leroy as being involved in the crimes prior to the trial, all four witnesses—the two assault victims, nightclub owner, and nightclub owner’s girlfriend—positively identified Leroy for the first time in court. He was convicted of three counts of robbery and one count of sexual assault in the first degree and sentenced to 80 years in prison. Even after his conviction, he fought the verdict through five appeals. Leroy finally got the Innocence Project of New York working on his case in 2012. The Innocence Project had the Connecticut forensic lab test new DNA evidence which excluded Leroy from the male DNA on the inside of one victim’s blouse. The sexual assault charge against Leroy was dismissed, but in order to be released, Leroy Harris agreed to enter “Alford” pleas to the remaining charges in exchange for his freedom. He spent almost 30 years in prison in Connecticut.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S5E2: The Path from Star Chicago Cubs Pitching Prospect to Prisoner: Jimmie Gardner’s Triumphant Story of Perseverance Under the Worst Prison Conditions Imaginable
Jimmie C. Gardner was a Charleston minor league baseball player when he was accused of sexual assault in 1987. He grew up in Tampa, FL and was drafted by the Chicago Cubs just after high school graduation, playing with them in the minor leagues for four seasons. In 1990, while working towards his business degree, Jimmie Gardner was arrested and charged with robbing and raping a woman and physically assaulting her and her mother at a home in Kanawha City. Despite always maintaining his innocence, Jimmie was put on trial and prosecutors used West Virginia State Trooper and Chief Serologist Fred Zain as the expert witness. Zain knowingly presented false testimony which resulted in Jimmie’s guilty verdict, and he was convicted of two separate counts of robbery and sexual assault as well as burglary and assault-during-the-commission-of-a-felony and sentenced to 110 years in prison. Jimmie Gardner's case is one of over 140 cases from the late 1970’s through the 1980’s in which the state of West Virginia relied on falsified forensic evidence testimony by Chief Serologist Fred Zain in order to convict. It was not until April 1st, 2016, nearly 3 decades after the Chief Serologist was exposed—when Jimmie C. Gardner’s case was overturned, and he was finally released after serving 26 years in prison. Since his release, Jimmie has become an active motivational speaker and is in the process of establishing the Gardner House, a 48-bed facility dedicated to providing shelter, food and opportunities to people recently released from prison. For more information on how to book Mr. Gardner, visit www.jcgardnerspeaks.com. In this episode, he is joined by his attorney A. Scott Bolden, Managing Partner of Reed Smith, Washington, DC and the Honorable Leslie J. Abrams, United States District Court Judge for the Middle District of Georgia.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S5E1: A Cold Case, a False Confession, & the Diabolical Truth: Jason Strong’s Vindication After 15 Years Locked up in Hell
In December 1999, the body of an unidentified young woman was found beaten to death in a forest preserve near North Chicago in Lake County, IL. Ten days after the body was discovered, Jeremy Tweedy, Jason Johnson and Jason Strong were brought in for questioning after Tweedy mentioned the woman's death to an undercover police officer posing as a prostitute. Police charged 24-year-old Jason Strong with first-degree murder and concealing a homicide and charged Tweedy and Johnson with concealing a homicide. Officers furnished a narrative about the circumstances of the victim's death to the two purported "witnesses," Tweedy and Johnson, both of whom agreed to testify against Jason Strong in exchange for lesser prison sentences. Eventually all three men falsely confessed to beating the victim using information provided by the police, and all three later recanted their confessions. In July 2000, Tweedy pled guilty to obstruction of justice and was sentenced to two years in prison, and in September, Johnson pled guilty to concealing a homicide and was sentenced to three years in prison. On October 18, 2000, Jason Strong was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 46 years in prison. In 2006, seven years after Jason’s incarceration, the victim was finally identified as Mary Kate Sunderlin, a developmentally disabled woman who lived in Kane County, IL. Around the time of her disappearance, it was known that Sunderlin had come under the influence of two women-a mother and daughter who had a record of preying on the disabled and the elderly-who befriended the victim in the spring of 1999 and forbade her from contacting her family, had used Sunderlin's bank card to withdraw large amounts of cash from her account, and had tried to get a new bank card in her name a year after her death. They had also arranged for Sunderlin's secret marriage to Gonzalo Chamizo, who was mentally ill with a history of violence, three weeks prior to her death. In 2002, Chamizo had been committed to a psychiatric hospital in Florida and during an interview with police investigating Sunderlin's disappearance had said he killed her and buried her in his backyard. In 2007, Thomas Geraghty, an attorney at Northwestern University's Bluhm Legal Clinic, joined Jason’s legal team and filed a motion for a new trial in 2010, citing new evidence regarding the identity of the victim and a recantation given by Tweedy. In 2013, the Illinois Attorney General and the Lake County State's Attorney agreed to re-investigate the case, leading to depositions of key state's witnesses and the discovery of previously unexamined medical evidence. In 2014, three medical experts independently reviewed the autopsy reports and photographs, and all concluded that the victim had died days before the discovery of her body and that many of her injuries were weeks or months old and consistent with chronic abuse-which meant that the confessions by Jason Strong and other two co-defendants were demonstrably false. On May 28th, 2015, Jason Strong's conviction was vacated, and he was released from Menard Correctional Center after serving 15 years in prison. In April 2016, Jason was granted a certificate of innocence from Lake County court. He is an aspiring filmmaker and currently working on a documentary about wrongful convictions.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E13: David McCallum with the Men Who Helped Free Him After 29 Years in Prison for a Crime He Didn’t Commit: Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez and Oscar Michelen
David McCallum and Willie Stuckey were both 16 when they were convicted of forcing a 20-year-old man into his Buick Regal at gunpoint in Queens, killing him with a single gunshot to the head, then leaving his body in Bushwick, Brooklyn. After being beaten by police and coerced into confessing, David McCallum and Willie Stuckey gave brief and contradictory confessions, each pinning the homicide on the other. They both recanted the confessions almost immediately and rejected offers to plead guilty in return for prison sentences of 15 years to life. On October 27th, 1986, a jury convicted them both of second-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree robbery and criminal use of a weapon, and they were each sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Stuckey died of a heart attack behind bars 16 years into his sentence in 2001, but David McCallum persevered in trying to clear his name. After exhausting all of his appeals, David’s attorney, Oscar Michelen approached Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit, and in 2014 District Attorney Ken Thompson's office and the Conviction Review Unit completed their reviews of David’s case, finding that there was no DNA evidence, physical evidence or credible testimony to link David or Stuckey to the abduction or killing of the victim. On October 15, 2014, David McCallum and the late Willie Stuckey’s convictions were thrown out at DA Thompson’s request, and David was freed after serving nearly 30 years behind bars. In this special episode of Wrongful Conviction, David McCallum is joined by Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez as well as attorney Oscar Michelen. Promoted by the late District Attorney Ken Thompson in 2014, Eric Gonzalez successfully guided the launch of several of the late DA Ken Thompson’s key initiatives, including the creation of the Conviction Review Unit, which has vacated over 20 unjust convictions to date and has been held up as a national model for other prosecutors’ offices. DA Gonzalez was sworn in as Acting District Attorney in October of 2016 after the passing of DA Thompson.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E12: “Don’t Let the Negativity Rule You”: Vanessa Gathers, Framed by New York’s Notorious, Disgraced Detective Louis Scarcella
In 1998, Vanessa Gathers was wrongfully convicted of robbing and beating 71-year-old Michael Shaw to death. There was no physical evidence linking Vanessa to the crime, and her conviction was based on a false confession extracted from her by notorious New York police detective Louis Scarcella, whose tactics led to the wrongful convictions of more than a dozen people. In 2016, Vanessa Gathers became the first woman to have been exonerated by Ken Thompson's Conviction Review Unit and the tenth person convicted by Scarcella to be exonerated. She is joined by her attorney Lisa Cahill in this episode.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E11: From Wrongful Conviction to Righteous Justice: From Rage to Grace
Ronald Simpson-Bey was a jailhouse lawyer who got his conviction reversed for prosecutorial misconduct and subsequently won his freedom after serving 27 years in Michigan prison. In 1986, Ronald was convicted of assault with intent to murder and possession of a firearm and sentenced to 50 years in prison. While in prison he became familiar with the legal system and began assisting other inmates with their appeals as a jailhouse lawyer. Eventually, his work led to his own release twenty-seven years later. Since being freed, Ronald Simpson-Bey has worked tirelessly to advance prison reform efforts, most recently through JustLeadershipUSA, an organization with the ambitious goal to halve the nation’s correctional population by 2030. In this episode, he is joined by Glenn Martin, former President and Founder of JustLeadershipUSA.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E10: Michelle Murphy: A Teenage Mother Wrongfully Convicted and Sentenced to Life for the Murder of Her Baby
On September 12th, 1994, 17-year-old Michelle Murphy found her 15-week-old son stabbed to death in her kitchen. After being questioned without a parent or guardian present, which was prohibited under Oklahoma law, Michelle falsely confessed to the crime. Her 14-year-old neighbor William Lee testified during the preliminary hearing that he had walked around her house that evening and reportedly saw Michelle with the dead infant but did not report it to the police. Testing of blood at the scene of the crime excluded Michelle Murphy as a suspect, but at trial prosecution falsely implied that it matched Michelle’s blood type. In 1995, she was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. She was forced to give her only living child up for adoption, daughter Michelle. In 2014, the Innocence Project joined Michelle’s defense team and conducted more DNA testing, yielding results that the bloodstains at the crime scene revealed that there was an unidentified male present that night. On September 12th, 2014, Michelle Murphy was declared innocent, after having spent 20 years behind bars.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E9: Noura Jackson: Wrongfully Convicted of Murdering Her Mother After Prosecutors Withheld Evidence of Her Innocence
Noura Jackson was egregiously framed and wrongfully convicted of murdering her mother, Jennifer Jackson, in Memphis, TN in 2005. Amazingly she spent over three years in jail awaiting trial before being sentenced to 20 years and nine months in prison. No physical evidence linked Noura to the murder, and DNA testing not only excluded her as a suspect, but it also suggested that two or three different people were present at the crime scene. The Supreme Court of Tennessee overturned her conviction, unanimously in 2014, and in their 5-0 decision they made strong statements about the misconduct that took place during her trial. The prosecutors threatened to retry Noura, and she was faced with little choice but to accept an Alford Plea in 2015. Noura Jackson was then sent back to prison for 15 months before she was finally released in 2016, after serving 11 years in prison. She is joined by one of her lawyers, Bryce Benjet, Senior Staff Attorney at the Innocence Project, in this episode.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E8: Jeffrey Deskovic: A 10thGrade Student Forced by Detectives to Make a False Confession and Freed by DNA Evidence 16 Years Later
In 1990, Jeffrey Deskovic was wrongfully convicted of the brutal rape and murder of his 15-year-old classmate, Angela Correa. Jeff was only 16 at the time of the crime with no prior record. Police claimed that Jeff was overly upset at the victim’s funeral and were certain they had their man. They interrogated him for over seven and a half hours, without his mother or legal counsel present. After browbeating and intimidating him, they ultimately extracted a false confession after promising that he could go home after he confessed. He had also been told that if his DNA did not match the semen in the rape kit, he would be cleared as a suspect. In January 1991, Jeffrey Deskovic was convicted of 1st degree rape and 2nd degree murder, despite DNA results showing that he was not the source of semen in the victim’s rape kit, and he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. In 2006, post-conviction DNA testing done by the Innocence Project both proved Jeff’s innocence and identified the real perpetrator, convicted murderer Steven Cunningham, who subsequently confessed to the crime. On November 2nd, 2006, Jeffrey Deskovic’s indictment was dismissed on grounds of actual innocence and he was released after serving 16 years in prison. Since his release, he has started The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which investigates wrongful conviction cases and provides support for exonerees once they are released.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E7: Dusty Turner: A Navy Seal Behind Bars for 22 Years for a Murder Even Though the Actual Killer Confessed
Dusty Turner was a 20-year-old Navy SEAL trainee when he was arrested for the murder and abduction of Jennifer Evans. On June 19th, 1995, Dusty Turner was out at a bar with some friends in Virginia Beach, VA, including his roommate and training partner, Billy Brown. Dusty Turner and Jennifer Evans were sitting in his car waiting for Evans’s friends to join them when an extremely intoxicated Billy Brown forced his way into the back seat and began insulting Evans and pulling her hair. When she tried to defend herself, Brown suddenly attacked her, wrapped his arms around her neck in a forceful choke hold, and killed her instantly. All the while Dusty Turner had been prying and clawing Brown’s hand off of Evans, pleading with him to stop. Finally realizing that she was dead, Dusty panicked and reacted to his intensive SEAL training that demanded “always protect your swim buddy” regardless of the cost. Dusty’s instinct for survival and misplaced loyalty to Brown took over as he drove out of the parking lot and helped Brown hide the victim’s body in a nearby wooded area. Eight days later, Dusty confessed the entire story to his commanding officer and agreed to take the police to the body after being assured that he would only be used as a witness during the trial. During Billy Brown’s trial in 1996, Brown testified against Dusty to receive a lesser sentence of 72 years in prison. Three months later, with an outraged community and media frenzy surrounding the case, Dusty Turner was convicted of first-degree murder and abduction, and sentenced to 82 years in prison. In 2002, Billy Brown confessed to Jennifer Evans’ murder and said that Dusty Turner played no part in it. Dusty Turner petitioned for a “writ of actual innocence” and his conviction was overturned by a three-judge panel of the Virginia State Court of Appeals. However, the State Attorney General’s Office quickly appealed this decision and the original Court of Appeals ruling was overturned. To date, Dusty Turner has served nearly 22 years in prison, over half of his life.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E6: After 10 Long Years Behind Bars for His Brother’s Crime, Kian Khatibi Is Now a Full Time Lawyer Who Represents Innocent People
In 1998, Kian Khatibi was 22 years old and living in Westchester County, NY when he was wrongfully convicted of stabbing two men during a bar fight and sentenced to 7 to 14 years in prison. After eventually discovering that his brother had committed the crime, Kian successfully fought for his release from prison in 2008 and was finally exonerated in 2012. Kian Khatibi graduated with honors from New York University in 2011 and passed the bar exam in New York after graduating from Cardozo School of Law in 2014. He established a law practice in New York City and is currently working to free other wrongfully convicted individuals.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E5: Updates from Behind Bars: Lamonte McIntyre & Jon-Adrian Velazquez
This special edition of Wrongful Conviction highlights the updates from two episodes recorded from Behind Bars. Since airing the Season 4 premiere about Lamonte McIntyre’s case, which was recorded while Lamonte was awaiting a new trial, he was finally freed on Friday, October 13th, 2017 after serving more than two decades behind bars in a Kansas correctional facility for a double murder. Season 2, Episode 5 featured a behind bars interview with Jon-Adrian Velazquez. “J.J.” was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life for the 1998 shooting death of Albert Ward, a retired police officer who owned and operated an illegal gambling spot in Harlem. Ward was shot and killed in the course of a robbery. Following the robbery, witnesses provided a description of the gunman as “a light-skinned black male with dreadlocks,” which prompted the search for “Mustafa,” a known drug dealer who fit the description. After learning that he was being sought by the police, J.J. attempted to vindicate himself of the allegations by voluntarily subjecting himself to a lineup. Out of nine eyewitnesses present at the scene of the crime, three identified him at the lineup. Despite being a light-skinned Latino who had never had dreadlocks and despite providing phone records which corroborated his alibi and showed that he was talking to his mother during the time of the crime, J.J. Velazquez was sentenced to 25 years to life even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. Since then, two of the witnesses have recanted, and the other eyewitness has expressed serious doubts. J.J. and his alibi witness have both taken lie detector tests and have passed them. He is currently in his 21st year at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E4: A Cold Case, a Dream, and a Tragic Miscarriage of Justice: The Wrongful Conviction of College Student Ryan Ferguson
Ryan Ferguson was a 17-year-old high school student when Kent Heitholt, a sportswriter for the Columbia Daily Tribune, was found beaten and strangled in Missouri. Heitholt's murder went unsolved for two years until police received a tip that a man named Charles Erickson could not remember the evening of the murder and had told a friend that he thought he may have been involved. Erickson, who had spent that fateful evening partying with Ryan Ferguson, was interrogated by police and despite initially seeming to have no memory of the night of the murder, eventually confessed and implicated Ryan as well. Police offered Erickson a plea deal in exchange for testimony against Ryan at his trial in 2005. Despite the lack of any physical evidence tying Ryan Ferguson to the crime, he was convicted of second-degree murder and robbery and sentenced to 40 years in prison. In 2009, Kathleen Zellner took over Ryan’s case on a pro bono basis, and in 2013 his conviction was vacated. Since his release, Ryan Ferguson has become a published author of the book Stronger, Faster, Smarter: A Guide to Your Most Powerful Body, hosted a television series on MTV Unlocking the Truth, and an advocate for other wrongfully convicted individuals.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E3: Lorenzo Johnson: Fighting Injustice All the Way up to the Supreme Court After He Was Wrongfully Convicted…Twice
Lorenzo Johnson served 22 years of a life sentence after he was framed twice for a murder that happened in Pennsylvania while he was in New York. On December 15th, 1995, Tarajay Williams was murdered outside of a bar in Harrisburg, PA. For several months after the murder, police detectives threatened Lorenzo with a murder charge unless he falsely accused a friend of committing the murder and dealing drugs. When he refused, Lorenzo and his co-defendant Corey Walker were convicted of first-degree murder and criminal conspiracy to commit murder and were sentenced to mandatory life in prison on the murder conviction, and concurrent five to ten years on conspiracy conviction. Lorenzo won his freedom in an October 2011 federal court of appeals decision stating that his conviction was based on insufficient evidence and he was released on bond in 2012. However just four months later, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and reinstated his murder conviction and Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily surrendered himself and was re-incarcerated. After Lorenzo’s re-incarceration, he and his legal team began investigating the police and prosecutorial misconduct that led to his wrongful conviction, and on July 11th, 2017, Lorenzo finally won his freedom. He has since been advocating for other wrongfully convicted prisoners.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E2: Lucinda Hites-Clabaugh: A Schoolteacher Convicted of Sexual Assault that Never Happened
Lucinda Hites-Clabaugh was 53 years old when she was wrongfully convicted of first-degree sexual abuse of a third grader in 2009. She was convicted despite no physical evidence, no witnesses, and a police officer’s admitted failures to follow investigative protocols. Lucinda spent over two years in prison until her conviction was overturned on July 18, 2012.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S4E1: Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars: Lamonte McIntyre Tells His Terrifying Story of Being Forced by a Dirty Cop & Crushed by a Corrupt System as He Awaits a Hearing from Inside Lansing Correctional Facility
For this special edition of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars, Jason Flom shines a light on the case of Lamonte McIntyre, who at the time was currently serving two life sentences at Lansing Correctional Facility, in advance of his upcoming court date on October 12th, 2017. On the afternoon of April 15th, 1994, two men were sitting in a powder-blue Cadillac in the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, KS. A man dressed in black ran up to the passenger side, raised a shotgun and fired four rounds in what looked like a drug-related hit, killing the two passengers Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing. Within six hours of the shooting, police detective Roger Golubski had begun the process of framing Lamonte McIntyre. Lamonte, who was 17 at the time, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, he was found guilty by a jury after a trial that lasted only three days and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. At trial, the prosecutor did not establish a motive and relied on the testimonies of two eyewitnesses who identified Lamonte as the shooter. Ruby Mitchell claimed in an initial interview with police that she recognized the attacker and that his name was “Lamonte something” and had previously dated her niece. She stated after the trial that Lamonte McIntyre was not the man she was referring to and in a 2011 affidavit, Ruby Mitchell claimed that Golubski had made sexual advances towards her on the day of the crime, causing her to fear he was going to arrest her for solicitation. The other eyewitness who testified for the prosecution, Niko Quinn has since recanted, attesting that she realized that she misidentified Lamonte as soon as she saw him in the courtroom, but that when she told this to the prosecutor, Terra Morehead, Morehead threatened to take away custody of her children. Additional procedural misconduct during Lamonte’s trial includes an undisclosed sexual relationship between the judge and the prosecutor, Terra Morehead, and the failure to disclose to the defense that there were two witnesses who believed that Lamonte was not the shooter. Lamonte’s court-appointed attorney, Gary Long, was on supervised probation at the time of the trial for failing to diligently handle three prior cases. In 1997, he was suspended from legal practice for failure to adequately handle a separate criminal case, and he was disbarred in 1998. Several months after the trial, a juror contacted the prosecutor and stated his misgivings about the verdict. The family of the victims have steadfastly proclaimed their belief in Lamonte’s innocence. In June 2016, Cheryl Pilate, a Kansas City attorney working with the Centurion Project filed a motion for exoneration after seven years of gathering evidence. Listen to Jason Flom’s explosive interviews with Lamonte McIntyre, his attorney Cheryl Pilate and former FBI agent Al Jennerich as they unravel the case and expose the systematic flaws that led to this miscarriage of justice.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E11: Still Fighting for Justice from Behind the Walls of a Maximum Security Prison Since 1995: The Continuing Saga of Andrew Krivak
This special edition of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars was recorded inside of Wende Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Buffalo, NY with Anthony DiPippo’s co-defendant, Andrew Krivak, and his attorney Professor Adele Bernhard. On November 22nd, 1995, a hunter found the remains of 12-year-old Josette Wright in a wooded area of Putnam County, NY with her hands and feet hog-tied behind her back and her underwear shoved down her throat. Detectives investigating the murder arrested 16-year-old Dominic Neglia on unrelated drug charges. During questioning, detectives claimed that Neglia said 18-year-old Anthony DiPippo, his girlfriend at the time Denise Rose, Andrew Krivak, Adam Wilson, Bill McGregor were involved in the rape and murder of Wright. Although co-defendants, they were convicted in separate trials in Putnam County Supreme Court in 1997, based largely on the testimony of Wilson, McGregor and Rose, and sentenced each to 25 years to life in prison. While Anthony DiPippo denied any involvement in the crime and testified in his trial, Andrew Krivak signed a false confession in which he admitted to raping Josette Wright but not killing her and implicating Anthony DiPippo in the murder. In 2016, Andrew Krivak’s legal team sought to introduce newly discovered evidence that points to Howard Gombert, who is serving time in Connecticut for sexual assault, as the killer, which ultimately led to the acquittal and release of his co-defendant, Anthony DiPippo. The motion seeking a new trial was denied, largely due to his false confession. However, in 2019 a judge threw out his conviction and granted him a new trial. He is still in prison awaiting his new trial.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E10: How Crystal Weimer Won an 11 Year Fight for Freedom
Curtis Haith was beaten to death and shot outside of his home in western Pennsylvania. Police determined that the evening before Haith had attended a party in Uniontown, PA. Crystal Weimer, whose sisters hosted the party, and her cousin had driven Haith home and returned directly to the party. Crystal became the focus of the investigation after an ex-boyfriend told authorities she confessed. The charges were dropped when he recanted, but police re-filed the charges in 2004 with the use of statements given by Joseph Stenger, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy of homicide of Haith while he was serving time for unrelated robbery charges. Stenger testified that Crystal had an earlier physical altercation with Haith, and she enlisted Stenger and two unidentified black men to return to Haith’s house after where she lured him outside, and they beat him to death and shot him in the face. At her trial in 2006, the only physical evidence that directly tied Crystal to the crime scene was an alleged bite mark on the victim’s arm. Expert odontologist Dr. Constantine Karazulas told the jury that a mark on the victim’s hand was a bite mark made minutes before he died, and that Crystal is the one who bit him. During closing argument, the prosecution told the jury that the jailhouse informants who testified against her at the trial had not asked for any leniency on their own cases in return for their testimony. Crystal Weimer was convicted of third-degree murder and conspiracy to commit homicide and sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison. She continued to fight for her innocence, acting as her own lawyer and filing motions for post-conviction relief, but all were denied until a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus was filed on her behalf. In December 2014, Joseph Stenger ultimately recanted all of his statements and admitted that prosecutors dropped more serious charges against him in exchange for his testimony against Crystal. In early 2015, Dr. Constantine Karazulas, that same expert declared his own trial testimony "junk science" and "invalid." In February 2015, Crystal, represented pro bono by the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and the firm of Jones Day, filed a motion for a new trial based on the discredited bite mark evidence and the recantations of key witnesses. Her lawyers had also discovered that the prosecution had failed to disclose to Crystal’s trial counsel that the jailhouse informants had written letters to the prosecution requesting favorable treatment, which showed that the informants had testified falsely at trial when they denied they sought deals for their testimony. A new trial was ordered on October 1st, 2015, and Crystal Weimer was released the same day on bond after serving 11 years in prison. She was forced to wear an electronic ankle bracelet for another nine months until the judge dismissed the charges with prejudice, and she was finally exonerated in June 2016. Crystal is joined by one of her attorneys from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, Nilaam Sanghvi, in this episode.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E9: Unusually Cruel: The Wrongful Conviction of Brian Ferguson and His Fight to Make a Difference
Brian Ferguson was a 20-year-old college student in West Virginia when he was accused in 2002 of fatally shooting a fellow classmate. Brian was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole, and he remained in prison until a committed team of pro bono lawyers won his release and exoneration for the crime in 2013. After his release, Brian returned to Washington, D.C. and soon discovered a gap in services for people reentering society after incarceration. In response to these challenges, he developed Start Line, which he describes as a kind of Yelp for returning citizens. Brian Ferguson enrolled at Georgetown University after meeting government professor Marc Howard, who launched the university’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, which addresses pressing policy and moral issues surrounding prison reform and mass incarceration through programs and events. Professor Howard joins Brian in this episode.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E8: Angel Gonzalez: Tricked by Police into Signing a False Confession in a Language He Didn’t Understand, but Freed by DNA After Serving 21 Years in Prison
In 1994, Angel Gonzalez was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison for the rape and kidnapping of a woman in Waukegan, IL. On the night of the crime, Angel had been visiting his fiancé’s sister, who lived in the same apartment building as the victim. The victim’s boyfriend saw Angel leaving the parking lot that night, and she misidentified his car as the car that the assailants had been driving earlier in the evening. The police pulled Angel over and brought him in handcuffs to the victim, who was in the backseat of the squad car. From still inside the dark car, the victim identified Angel as one of her attackers, even though he didn’t match her original description of either perpetrator. Angel Gonzalez is Mexican and had only been in the United States for a little more than a year at the time, and he spoke very limited English. During the interrogation process, he wrote a statement in Spanish, which was then translated and read in English by Detective Lou Marquez. These two statements were later revealed to be completely different. Angel signed a statement prepared in English by Detective Marquez, which, combined with the victim’s misidentification, was enough to sentence him to 40 years in jail, despite his having four alibi witnesses testify in his defense. The Innocence Project conducted DNA testing in 2001 that identified one male DNA profile that didn’t match Angel. In 2012, the Innocence Project again conducted DNA testing, this time yielding two distinct male profiles that both excluded Angel as an assailant. On March 10th, 2015, Angel Gonzalez was finally exonerated after serving 20 years in prison. In this episode, he is joined by Vanessa Potkin, Director of Post-Conviction Litigation at the Innocence Project.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E7: Honorably Discharged Wrongfully Convicted: Jerry Miller’s 26 Year Journey Through Hell
In 1981, a woman was brutally beaten, raped, robbed, and forced into the trunk of her car on the roof of a parking garage in Chicago. Two employees recognized her car as it was leaving the garage and attempted to stop the assailant from driving away, but the perpetrator escaped on foot, leaving the victim locked in the trunk. Based only on a composite drawing and description of the assailant, both of which were created based on the memory of the parking garage employees, a Chicago Police Department officer accused Jerry Miller of the crime, claiming that he had seen Jerry looking in a parked car’s window some days prior. The two garage employees both identified Jerry in a lineup, but the victim said that she couldn’t positively identify her assailant because he had threatened to kill her if she didn’t keep her eyes closed. Jerry and his father both testified that they were watching a pay-per-view boxing match at the time of the crime, but despite his alibi and the total lack of physical evidence connecting him to the crime, in 1982 Jerry Miller was convicted of rape, kidnapping, and robbery. It wasn’t until 2005, when the Innocence Project took on Jerry’s case, that the victim’s clothes were subjected to DNA testing, yielding a profile that excluded him. In 2007, Jerry Miller was exonerated, having spent 25 years in prison for a rape that he didn’t commit. He is joined by Maurice Possley, Senior Researcher at the National Registry of Exonerations and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and *New York Times *bestselling author who has written about, investigated and consulted on issues involving criminal justice for more than 30 years.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E6: 10 Separate Charges and 23 Years Later: The Egregious Framing of Robert Jones
In the spring of 1992, Robert Jones was arrested for a series of attacks that occurred in the French Quarter of New Orleans, which included the murder of a British tourist, the kidnapping and rape of a woman, and the robbery of her fiancé and friend. He was arrested because the rape victim identified his photo, and she and her fiancé identified him in a lineup. Robert had been attending his son’s birthday party at the time of the rape, and the other victims of the crime spree had declined to identify him as their assailant, but despite his alibi and the lack of evidence linking him to any of the other crimes, he was charged with the rape and a role in the murder. Lester Jones (no relation) was later arrested and charged for the crime spree after police found him in possession of the gun used in the murder, stolen property from the other crimes, and the car used in all of the crimes. Robert, however, remained in jail after Lester’s arrest. At trial, the prosecutor argued that Robert and Lester were friends, without any evidence to connect them. Robert was sentenced to life in prison. He requested DNA testing for his case, but all of the evidence was either lost or destroyed. In 2015, after 23 years behind bars the Innocence Project New Orleans was able to get Robert released from Louisiana’s State Penitentiary, Angola on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct and missing evidence, and he was completely exonerated on January 26th, 2017, his 44th birthday. In this episode, Robert is joined by the Director of IPNO, Emily Maw.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E5: An Innocent Teenager Sentenced to Life in a Living Hell: The Incredible True Story of Jerome Morgan
In 1993, Jerome Morgan was only 17 when he was wrongfully convicted for the murder of Clarence Landry III, who had been shot to death at a sweet 16 party at the Howard Johnson Hotel in New Orleans. Jerome was in the ballroom when the police arrived. Despite clear evidence that he could not have been the gunman, he was prosecuted based upon the coerced testimony of two teenage witnesses, one of whom had previously told the police it was definitely not Jerome Morgan. Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) investigated Jerome’s case for years, uncovering clear evidence in the police files that it was impossible for Jerome to have been the perpetrator. IPNO presented this evidence in court over a period of several years and got Jerome Morgan’s conviction thrown out because, as every judge agreed, the State should have turned over the exculpatory evidence to Jerome’s trial lawyer. Jerome Morgan was released from prison in 2014 and exonerated on May 27th, 2016. In this episode, he is joined by one of his attorneys at IPNO, Kristin Wenstrom.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E4: I’d Rather Have Had the Death Penalty: The Hellish Saga of a Prisoner Abandoned to Floodwaters During Hurricane Katrina
Daniel Tapia was arrested on April 12th, 2003 for second-degree murder in the Calliope housing projects in New Orleans where he lived. He was accused of being the getaway driver and master mind in this murder. The only witness was a police officer who made conflicting statements and even was recorded stating that he was in pursuit of three black males who committed this crime. Despite being Caucasian, Daniel was arrested less than 10 minutes after the shooting occurred, along with three black males. He was wrongfully convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 2005. Prior to his transfer to a state correctional facility, he barely survived Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding while he was locked up in Orleans Parish Prison. His conviction was overturned by a judge, reinstated by the higher court, and eventually overturned for good. Daniel Tapia was released in 2017 after serving 12 years and is now the Lead Mentor at Rising Foundation—an organization which provides pathways to self-sufficiency for formerly incarcerated people with an aim to stop the cycle of incarceration in low income communities in Louisiana—where he is able to pursue his passion of guiding other men and women in changing themselves, their communities, and the circumstances around them.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E3: Three Trials and Twenty Years Later: Anthony DiPippo Finally Cleared of a Monster’s Crime
In November 1995, a hunter found the remains of 12-year-old Josette Wright in a wooded area of Putnam County, NY. She was reported to have been hog-tied with her hands and feet tied together behind her back, and her underwear had been shoved down her throat. Dominic Neglia, who was being investigated for drug charges, claimed that 18-year-old Anthony DiPippo and his friends were responsible for the rape and murder of Wright. Three of the accused teenagers testified against Anthony and Andrew Krivak, claiming that they were in Anthony’s van when he and Krivak raped and strangled the victim. Anthony denied his involvement with the crime, but in 1997 he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. In 2011, Anthony was ordered a new trial after it was discovered that his lawyer had also previously represented Howard Gombert, who a witness had reported seeing the victim get into a car driven by Gombert on the day she was last seen. Several other women came forward saying that they had also been sexually molested by Gombert in a similar fashion, with their limbs bound and with clothing stuffed in their mouths. These women were not allowed to testify in Anthony’s new trial, nor was Joseph Santoro, who was incarcerated with Gombert and had heard him talk about raping Wright, along with another young girl. Anthony DiPippo was again convicted in 2012, even though two of the three teenagers who had testified against him had recanted their testimonies, claiming that detectives had threated to charge them with the murder if they didn’t implicate Anthony DiPippo and Andrew Krivak. In 2016, Anthony was again ordered a new trial, and this time the testimonies of Santoro and the other women who had been assaulted by Gombert were admitted. Additionally, Dominic Neglia recanted his initial accusation against him. On October 11th, 2016, Anthony DiPippo was acquitted and released after serving 19 years in prison.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E2: Antoine Day: A Musician Framed for Murder
Antione Day was starting his career as a musician when he was convicted of first-degree murder in 1992 and sentenced to 60 years. After serving a decade in prison, Antione’s conviction was overturned with the help of his attorney, Howard Joseph. Today, Antione is the Outreach Coordinator of Prison Reentry at the Howard Area Employment Resource Center. In this position, Antione mentors at-risk teens and parolees, implements job training and placement programs and runs neighborhood stabilization and anti-violence programs. He co-founded the Life After Justice organization with Jarrett Adams, another exoneree, to help provide new exonerees with a place to live and a variety of services to help them successfully re-enter society, such as job training, computer skills, finance classes, mentoring, and more. In this episode, Antione Day is joined by Laura Caldwell, a former civil trial attorney who is now the director of Life After Innocence as well as a published author of 14 novels and one nonfiction book, Anatomy of Innocence.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S3E1: Confess or Die: Beating a False Confession into Johnny Hincapie for the Murder of a Hero
Johnny Hincapie was convicted as part of a gang that murdered 22-year-old tourist Brian Watkins, even though he himself was not charged with the act and neither the victim’s family nor the other attackers identified him as a perpetrator. In 1990, Brian Watkins and his family were attacked on a New York City subway platform by a group of 6 to 8 teenagers when they were in town for the U.S. Open, resulting in the death of Watkins as he tried to defend his parents. Johnny was only 18 years old at the time, and he did not have a lawyer present during his interrogation. He falsely confessed to the crime, after being tortured by police who threatened to kill him. After spending 25 years in prison, Johnny’s conviction was overturned based on the statements of several witnesses who testified that he was in fact not a part of the group of attackers. He was formally exonerated in January 2017.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E1: UPDATED EPISODE: The Wrongful Conviction of Amanda Knox
Amanda Knox was convicted of the murder of a 21-year-old British exchange student, Meredith Kercher, who died from knife wounds in the apartment she shared with Amanda in Perugia, Italy in 2007. Amanda and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were both found guilty of killing Kercher, receiving 26- and 25-year prison sentences, respectively. Their convictions were subsequently overturned in 2011, and she was released from prison after serving four years. In early 2014, the Italian Supreme Court ruled that they should both stand trial again, and she and Sollecito were re-convicted. Finally, in March 2015, the Italian Supreme Court overturned both murder convictions, ending their eight-year ordeal. Amanda Knox is currently a *New York Times *bestselling author, the host of the Scarlet Letter Reports on Broadly/Vice, and the host of The Truth About True Crime, a Sundance AMC podcast series.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E13: Justice Had Just Begun: Stories From The 2017 Innocence Network Conference, Part Two
This special edition of Wrongful Conviction was recorded at the 2017 Innocence Network Conference in San Diego, CA, where 170 exonerees and 750 members of the innocence movement gathered to honor newly freed people and learn about the latest developments in freeing the wrongfully convicted. Part Two features interviews with Kristine Bunch and Obie Anthony. Kristine Bunch was 22 years old and pregnant when she was charged with setting a fire that claimed the life of her three-year-old son, Anthony, on June 30, 1995, in a trailer home they shared in Decatur County, IN. She was sentenced to concurrent prison terms of 60 years for murder and 50 years for arson and languished behind bars for more than 17 years until her exoneration in 2012. Obie Anthony was 19 years old when he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1995. There was no physical evidence connecting him to the murder, and prosecutors relied on the testimony of John Jones, a convicted killer and pimp who ran a house of prostitution near the scene of the crime. He was exonerated in 2011 after serving 17 years in prison. Obie Anthony is the founder and president of Exonerated Nation, a non-profit organization that offers exonerees a variety of support services so that they may successfully transition to life outside of prison and reintegrate back into society. His activism was instrumental in the passage of California AB 672 in October 2015, now known as Obie’s Law, which requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the DMV to provide up to one year of transitional services including job training, housing assistance, and mental health services to all eligible exonerees released from state prison.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E12: We Are a Family: Stories from the 2017 Innocence Network Conference, Park One
This special edition of Wrongful Conviction was recorded at the 2017 Innocence Network Conference in San Diego, CA, where 170 exonerees and 750 members of the innocence movement gathered to honor newly freed people and learn about the latest developments in freeing the wrongfully convicted. Part One features interviews with Innocence Project Executive Director Maddy DeLone and exonerees Floyd Bledsoe and Cornelius Dupree. Floyd Bledsoe was exonerated in 2015 after 15 years in prison for a murder his brother committed. Since his release, Floyd has been a fierce advocate for mandatory recording of interrogations among other reforms in Kansas. Cornelius Dupree was exonerated in 2011, after spending more than 30 years in prison for a rape and robbery he didn’t commit. Cornelius serves as the ambassador to all of the new exonerees at the Innocence Network Conferences.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E11: Live at SXSW with the San Antonio Four
In 1995, 20-year-old Elizabeth Ramirez and three of her friends —Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Anna Vasquez — were indicted on charges of sexually molesting Ms. Ramirez’s 7-year-old and 9-year-old nieces in San Antonio, TX. Before charges were filed, police learned that all four women were gay and had recently come out to their families. The allegations came in the wake of more than a decade of national hysteria over claims of satanic ritual abuse of children. All four women cooperated with authorities but vehemently denied they molested the girls. In both trials, prosecutors won convictions by discounting the many inconsistencies in the little girls’ testimonies and argued that the inconsistencies were outweighed by the testimony of a pediatrician. Prosecutors portrayed Elizabeth Ramirez as the ringleader and tried her first. She was convicted in 1997 of aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child and sentenced to 37½ years in prison. The remaining women were tried together in 1998 and were each convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child. All three were sentenced to 15 years in prison on the aggravated sexual assault charges and 10 years for the indecency charges. The convictions began to unravel many years later when one of Elizabeth’s two nieces, now in her twenties, stepped forward to say she had lied. Members of her family coached her, she told authorities, to make up a story because of their anger about Elizabeth's sexuality. Soon after, the pediatrician used by the prosecution recanted her testimony based on new scientific evidence that showed her original findings regarding the girls' injuries were medically inaccurate. With the new evidence, the Innocence Project of Texas filed for post-conviction relief to have the verdicts overturned. A Bexar County District Court allowed Kristie Mayhugh, Cassandra Rivera, and Elizabeth Ramirez to be released from prison in 2013 while the court considered their request to have their verdicts overturned. Anna Vasquez had just been released on parole. They were finally exonerated in 2016 after serving a combined total of 62 years in prison.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E10: Mistaken Identity: The Wrongful Murder Conviction of Franky Carrillo
Francisco Carrillo Jr. was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1992 in the fatal drive-by shooting of Donald Sarpy in Lynwood. Franky, who was 16 at the time of the 1991 shooting, maintained his innocence through two trials and in prison. His conviction relied on eyewitness testimony from six people. Franky said that a gang of corrupt and racist Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies—known as the "Lynwood Vikings"—coerced and threatened key witnesses into identifying him in a photo lineup. In 2011, a judge overturned his conviction after witnesses later admitted they did not have a view of the shooter, and instead had been influenced by police officers, and each other, to identify Franky. Two men since confessed to the crime, and stated Franky was not involved. Since his release, Franky Carrillo has gotten married, started a family and obtained a bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E9: Guilty Until Proven Innocent: The Wrongful Conviction of Tony Wright
Tony Wright endured two trials and 25 years in prison before a jury found him not guilty for the rape, sodomy and murder of Louise Talley, a 77-year-old woman in Philadelphia. Tony, who was only 20 years old when he was arrested in 1993, signed a confession after being beaten and threatened by the interrogating detectives. He was sentenced to life in prison—he narrowly escaped the death penalty after the jury voted against it 7 to 5. Later DNA testing of the rape kit not only excluded Tony as a suspect, but also identified Ronnie Byrd as the real assailant. On August 23, 2016, Tony Wright was exonerated, and he became the 344th DNA exoneree in the nation. He is joined by co-founder of the Innocence Project, Peter Neufeld.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E8: From Prison to Proclaiming Justice: The Wrongful Conviction of Jason Baldwin
At 16 years old, Jason Baldwin along with Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley – known as the West Memphis Three – was convicted in 1994 of killing three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, AK. There was no DNA linking the WM3 to the crime, and some of the DNA found at the crime scene even seemed to implicate the stepfather of one of the victims. The case gained national attention soon after the teenagers' arrests when word was leaked that the murders were committed as part of a satanic ritual. A key prosecution witness in the second trial was a self-proclaimed cult expert who stated that the murders bore "trappings" of the occult. This testimony, combined with testimony about books Damien Echols read and some of his writings, plus evidence that he and Jason Baldwin liked heavy-metal music and several black t-shirts were found in Jason’s closet, helped to convict the two teenagers. Jason received life without parole; Echols was sentenced to death, and Misskelley was sentenced to 40 years. After serving more than 17 years in prison, all three of the WM3 took the Alford Plea, which meant that the state of Arkansas admitted no wrongdoing. After being released, Jason Baldwin executive produced the 2014 film about his tragic saga, Devil’s Knot. He is joined by the co-founder of the Innocence Project, Barry Scheck.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E7: Sentenced to Death, Exonerated by DNA: The Wrongful Conviction of Kirk Bloodsworth
Kirk Bloodsworth, an honorably discharged former Marine, was the first person sentenced to death and subsequently exonerated by DNA testing. He was 22 years old in 1984 when he was arrested for the rape and murder of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton and sentenced to death in Baltimore County, MD. Kirk was arrested based on an anonymous call telling police that he was seen with the victim that day and an identification made by a witness from a police sketch shown on television. The description of the perpetrator was a 6 ft, 5 in tall white man with curly blond hair, a bushy mustache, skinny, and tan. Kirk was 6 ft, had red hair, and was well over 200 pounds. Though there was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted based on the testimony of five witnesses who placed him either with the victim or near the scene of the crime. The Maryland Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in 1986, finding that the prosecution had illegally withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense, and he was then retried, convicted again, and sentenced to two life terms. In the early 1990s, Kirk learned about DNA testing and the opportunities it could provide to prove his innocence. The prosecution finally agreed to DNA testing for Kirk’s case in 1992. The victim’s shorts and underwear, a stick found at the scene, and an autopsy slide were compared against DNA from the victim and Kirk. The DNA lab determined that testing on the panties excluded Kirk, and he was released from prison in June 1993 and pardoned in December 1993. Kirk Bloodsworth had spent almost nine years in prison, two of those years facing execution. He is now a published author and was instrumental in Maryland’s abolishment of the death penalty. The introduction of the Innocence Protection Act of 2003 established the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program, a program that helps states defray the costs of post-conviction DNA testing.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E6: Circumstantial Evidence: U.S. Army Sergeant Wrongfully Convicted of 3 Rapes
On November 16, 1983, a 28-year-old woman was attacked and sexually assaulted by an unknown male as she was walking home from work in Lowell, MA. The following evening, a 23-year-old woman was attacked less than one hundred yards away from the site of the first assault. Even though no biological evidence could link him to any of the crimes, Dennis Maher, who was a sergeant in the United States Army at the time, was arrested and charged with both attacks, in addition to an unsolved rape from the previous summer. He was convicted based on eyewitness misidentifications made by the victims, all of whom identified him in photographic lineups. In 2001, evidence from the assaults was recovered and subjected to DNA testing, yielding a genetic profile that excluded Dennis as a suspect. In 2003, results from DNA testing of evidence from the rape victim also excluded Dennis as a suspect, and he was exonerated after spending 19 years fighting to prove his innocence from behind bars. Dennis Maher is joined by attorney Alex Spiro and New England Innocence Project Director of Communications Hannah Riley.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E5: Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars: Jon-Adrian Velazquez Speaks Out From Inside Sing Sing
Jon-Adrian “J.J.” Velazquez was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life for the 1998 shooting death of Albert Ward, a retired police officer who owned and operated an illegal gambling spot in Harlem. Ward was shot and killed in the course of a robbery. Following the robbery, witnesses provided a description of the gunman as “a light-skinned black male with dreadlocks,” which prompted the search for “Mustafa,” a known drug dealer who fit the description. After learning that he was being sought by the police, J.J. attempted to vindicate himself of the allegations by voluntarily subjecting himself to a lineup. Out of nine eyewitnesses present at the scene of the crime, three identified him at the lineup. Despite being a light-skinned Latino who had never had dreadlocks and despite providing phone records which corroborated his alibi and showed that he was talking to his mother during the time of the crime, J.J. Velazquez was sentenced to 25 years to life even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. Since then, two of the witnesses have recanted, and the other eyewitness has expressed serious doubts. J.J. and his alibi witness have both taken lie detector tests and have passed them. He is currently in his 21st year, and Jason Flom interviews him from inside the walls of Sing Sing Correctional Facility for this special edition of Wrongful Conviction.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E4: Make a Difference & Live: The Wrongful Conviction of Everton Wagstaffe
Everton Wagstaffe was wrongfully convicted of the rape, kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Jennifer Negron in 1993. Everton’s conviction was based primarily on the testimony of Brunilda Capella, a 25-year-old, drug-addicted sex worker who claimed that she had seen Everton pull the victim into a Buick Skylark driven by Reginald Connor. It was later revealed, however, that the car had been parked at a church during the time that Capella claimed she had witnessed the kidnapping. The owner of the car testified that she had told the police this fact prior to Everton’s conviction, but the police didn’t write any reports of the interview. It was also revealed that Capella had been regularly providing information to the police at that time—remarkably, she testified for the prosecution in 20 cases. The Innocence Project consulted on the case and aided in testing foreign hairs found on the victim’s body for DNA, which revealed that the hairs had not come from Everton or Reginald Connor. The ruling to dismiss their charges, however, was primarily based on a revelation that prosecutors had buried evidence that Everton himself uncovered that police had targeted him before even speaking with the informant who provided critical testimony against the two men. In 2014, his conviction was ultimately vacated after serving 23 years in prison.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E3: 10 Days From Execution: The Wrongful Conviction of Peter Pringle
Peter Pringle was wrongfully convicted of an armed robbery and the murder of two police officers during a bank raid in Ireland in 1980. He was the last person sentenced to death in Ireland, and just days before a noose was to be tied around his neck, Peter learned that Ireland’s president had commuted his sentence to 40 years without parole. Peter then immersed himself in legal texts and effectively became a jailhouse lawyer. He discovered that the confession used by the prosecution was written down in a police officer’s notebook prior to his interrogation about the killings. Serving as his own counsel, he eventually convinced the Court of Criminal Appeal to quash his conviction in 1995. Today, Peter is a human rights and anti-death penalty activist and together he and his wife, Sunny Jacobs, also a death row exoneree, run the Sunny Center in Ireland where they provide counseling to other exonerees.
wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S2E2: Valentine’s Day Special Edition: The Wrongful Conviction of Sedrick Courtney
Sedrick Courtney was wrongfully convicted of robbery with a firearm and first-degree burglary in Tulsa, OK. On April 6, 1995, two armed men wearing ski masks broke into an apartment in Sedrick’s building complex and brutally beat a female victim, blindfolded her, and forced her to lie on the floor as they ransacked her home. The victim suffered traumatic brain injury because of the attack, but she positively identified Sedrick Courtney as one of the assailants, claiming she recognized his voice. The second assailant was never identified. Even though his sister and cousins corroborated his alibi, Sedrick was sentenced to 30 years and served 15 years before the Innocence Project was able to conduct DNA testing on hairs from the crime scene, proving that none of the hairs from the ski masks matched him. He was exonerated on July 19, 2012. In this episode, Sedrick Courtney appears with his wife, Tina, whom he met in prison when she was working as one of the guards.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E1: UPDATED EPISODE: Raymond Santana: The Central Park Jogger Case
Raymond Santana served 7 years in prison after being falsely accused of the rape and brutal beating of the Central Park Jogger in 1989. Raymond was just 14 years old when he was arrested for the attack on Trisha Meili in New York City’s Central Park. Despite a lack of evidence, the prosecution pursued his conviction of rape and assault. He was finally exonerated in 2002 when serial rapist and murderer Matias Reyes confessed from prison that he was the one who attacked Meili. Raymond is now an activist, clothing designer, and public speaker, and is featured in the hit Netflix series When They See Us.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E11: Christmas Behind Bars: A Special Episode with Amanda Knox, Jarrett Adams, & Jeffrey Deskovic
In this special episode, Jason Flom talks to Amanda Knox, Jarrett Adams and Jeff Deskovic about what it's like for an innocent person who is forced to spend the holidays in prison. Amanda Knox was convicted of the murder of a 21-year-old British exchange student, Meredith Kercher, who died from knife wounds in the apartment she shared with Amanda in Perugia, Italy in 2007. Amanda and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were both found guilty of killing Kercher, receiving 26- and 25-year prison sentences, respectively. Their convictions were subsequently overturned in 2011 and Amanda was released from prison after serving four years. In early 2014, the Italian Supreme Court ruled that they should both stand trial again and she and Sollecito were re-convicted. Finally, in March 2015, the Italian Supreme Court overturned both murder convictions, ending their eight-year ordeal. Jarrett Adams was 17 years old when he was wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting a young woman at UW-Whitewater in 1998. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison and spent close to a decade incarcerated before his conviction was reversed with the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project on the basis that trial counsel had been ineffective for failing to present the testimony of a critical witness. Jarrett graduated from Loyola Law School in May 2015 and is currently practicing law in New York and advocating for criminal justice reform. Jeffrey Deskovic was a 16-year-old high school sophomore when he was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a high school classmate in 1991. Although hair and semen samples taken from the scene did not match Jeff’s DNA, he aroused the suspicion of detectives by weeping openly at the victim’s funeral. After six hours of intense interrogation, Jeff confessed to the crime, though he later contended in a lawsuit that police investigators had fed him the details of the killing and promised him that if he admitted guilt, he would not go to prison but would instead get psychiatric treatment. With the help of The Innocence Project, Jeff Deskovic was exonerated and released in 2006 after DNA analysis linked convict Stephen Cunningham to the crime and Cunningham confessed.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E10: The Wrongful Conviction of Michael Morton
Michael Morton's nightmare began in 1986, when his wife Christine was bludgeoned to death in their bed in Austin, TX. Despite any evidence pointing to his guilt and tremendous evidence showing his innocence, he quickly became the prime suspect. At his trial, Williamson County District attorney Ken Anderson painted a picture of him as a violent, sexually depraved murderer who showed no remorse for his crime and he was sentenced to life in prison. Evidence was withheld that may have cleared him, including statements from his child. Finally, after 25 years, a blue bandana found at the scene was tested for DNA evidence. The test not only proved the innocence of Michael Morton, it yielded a hit on a known felon who has since been charged with the murder of Christine Morton, along with the murder of another young woman two years later. After spending nearly 25 years in prison for the murder of his wife, Michael was released on October 4, 2011, and officially exonerated in December 2011.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E9: The Wrongful Conviction of Douglas DiLosa
Douglas DiLosa was wrongfully convicted in 1987 of his wife's murder in Jefferson Parish, LA and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The State's case against him consisted entirely of circumstantial evidence. As if making a jigsaw puzzle or a mosaic, prosecutors had to make the picture whole—there were contradictions and inconsistencies between Doug’s version of events, the physical evidence presented by the State, and witnesses' hearsay statements. While incarcerated at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, Doug worked as an inmate legal counsel assisting fellow prisoners with their legal cases while also working on appeals to fight his own case. He filed a public records request with the prosecutor's office for the records in his case and received a 150-page police report that hadn't been disclosed to his trial lawyers. Based on the information and evidence Doug was able to gather on his case, in 2000 the Federal Court reversed his conviction and he was released from prison in January of 2001 after serving 16 years. He was exonerated in 2003 due to DA and police misconduct. Doug now works with the Rising Foundation helping other formerly incarcerated people rebuild their lives.
wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E8: The Wrongful Conviction of Richard Rosario
Richard Rosario was convicted of a murder that took place in the Bronx on June 19, 1996, based on the testimony of two witnesses who had picked his picture out of a book of police photos. There was no other evidence linking him to the crime, and Richard did not know the victim or the witnesses. On June 30, 1996, after he heard that the authorities were looking for him, he got on a Greyhound bus in Florida, arrived in New York the next day, and voluntarily contacted the police. He named more than a dozen people in Florida who he said would vouch for him including a pastor and a sheriff’s deputy. But the police did not follow up, and prosecutors charged him with murder based on the statements of the two eyewitnesses. Richard was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life. When Richard challenged his conviction in state court in 2004, seven more witnesses appeared to say he had been in Florida around the time of the murder. He was released in 2016 after serving 20 years when the Bronx District Attorney’s office concluded that Richard did not receive a fair trial.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E7: The Wrongful Conviction of Keith Allen Harward
Keith Allen Harward, a Navy veteran, was wrongfully convicted of a 1982 rape and murder in Newport News, VA and served 33 years in prison. The assailant had broken into a home, killed a man and brutally raped his wife. Keith was convicted primarily on the testimony of two forensic dentists who said that his teeth matched marks on the victim's body, and he was convicted of capital murder. The Innocence Project performed DNA testing on the rape kit and numerous other pieces of crime scene evidence, and the testing excluded Keith and identified Jerry Crotty as the perpetrator. After the Virginia Supreme Court granted a writ of actual innocence, Keith Allen Harward walked out of prison on April 8, 2016 after wrongly serving more than 33 years of a life sentence.
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Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E6: The Wrongful Conviction of Marty Tankleff
Marty Tankleff had just turned 17 when he was arrested for murdering his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff in September 1988. Based on an unsigned “confession" extracted from him following many long hours of interrogation by notorious Suffolk County detective K. James McCready, Marty was convicted and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. After serving 17 years, Marty's conviction was vacated by the New York State Appellate Division, Second Department, in December of 2007. On July 22, 2008, a judge signed off on a motion by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to dismiss all charges against Marty. Marty recently passed the bar exam and is pursuing a career as an attorney, advocating criminal justice reform and wrongful convictions.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E5: The Wrongful Conviction of Derrick Hamilton
Derrick Hamilton was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1991 and served over two decades in prison after he was framed by the disgraced Detective Louis Scarcella. During an initial stint in prison in his teens for a separate wrongful conviction, Derrick began studying in the prison’s law library, eventually earning a reputation as one of the most highly skilled jailhouse lawyers in the country. When he wasn’t fighting to prove his own innocence, Derrick worked pro bono on the cases of his fellow inmates, and he formed the Actual Innocence Team with other jailhouse lawyers serving time. He was released on parole in 2011 and finally cleared his name in 2014. Today, he continues to work as a paralegal on wrongful conviction cases.
wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E4: Love Is Better Than Revenge: The Wrongful Conviction of Sunny Jacobs
In 1976, Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs was sentenced to death for the murders of Florida Highway Patrol officer Phillip Black and Donald Irwin, a visiting Canadian constable. The officers were killed during a traffic stop where Sunny was traveling with her boyfriend, Jesse Tafero, and her two children, Eric, nine, and Christina, 10 months, in a car driven by Walter Rhodes. After officers approached the vehicle, Rhodes fired shots at them, a gun battle ensued, and chaos erupted. Sunny and Jesse were arrested, and both of their children were taken away by the state. Rhodes negotiated a plea bargain with the state, claiming Jesse and Sunny had pulled the triggers, in exchange for a life sentence. In 1990, Jesse was executed by the state of Florida in horrific circumstances. Sunny spent five years in isolation on Florida’s death row and a total of 17 years in a maximum-security prison before her conviction was overturned. Sunny was freed in 1992 when she was 45 years old. In this episode, Jason talks with Sunny, her current husband, exoneree Peter Pringle, and her daughter Christina, who as a child was also a victim of this tragic injustice.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E3: The Actual Innocence of Fernando Bermudez
Fernando Bermudez served over 18 years in New York State maximum security prisons after he was wrongfully convicted of murder in the shooting death of Raymond Blount in 1991. Fernando was proven innocent in late 2009 with help from a team of pro bono attorneys. Fernando was the first Latin-American male in New York state history to be exonerated on “actual innocence” grounds in a non-DNA case.
www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
S1E2: Barry Gibbs: The Mafia Cops Case
Guests Barry Scheck (Co-Founder of The Innocence Project), exoneree Barry Gibbs and Vanessa Potkin (Director of Post-Conviction Litigation for The Innocence Project) detail the unfathomable odyssey of Barry Gibbs in the bizarre case of The Mafia Cops. Barry was wrongfully convicted of a 1986 second-degree murder in NYC. His conviction was based on misconduct by a NYPD detective, who was later convicted of arranging and committing several murders and cover-ups on behalf of an organized crime family. Barry was incarcerated for 19 years before new evidence led to his release and subsequent exoneration in 2005.
http://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1 and PRX.
Audio Trailer #2 for Season 1 of Wrongful Conviction. www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com www.revolverpodcasts.com
