Speaker 1: In December of four incidents in and outside of South London.
Speaker 1: Two car thefs and two home invasions left eight victims
Speaker 1: in their wake, one man severely injured, another brutally murdered,
Speaker 1: and a number of cars and other good stolen. The
Speaker 1: victims and witnesses all described three assailants, two white men
Speaker 1: and one black man. The brutality of the crimes garnered
Speaker 1: national attention, as well as mounting pressure to bring those
Speaker 1: responsible to justice. It is believed that the first car
Speaker 1: theF was traced to a hostel where eighteen year old
Speaker 1: Raphael Rowe lived with five other men. On December nineteen,
Speaker 1: he and his hostel mates, along with several others, were arrested.
Speaker 1: Despite the prior identification of the perpetrators as two white
Speaker 1: men and one black man and solid alibi witnesses, police
Speaker 1: focused their investigation on Raphael and two other black men,
Speaker 1: Michael Davis and Randolph Johnson. It became clear at trial
Speaker 1: that the prosecution was relying on information from an incentivized
Speaker 1: informant who was involved in the crimes. Discrepancies between the
Speaker 1: victims and witnesses initial reports and their testimonies. A trial
Speaker 1: race suspicion Despite all of that, plus Raphael and Michael's
Speaker 1: alibi witnesses and the description of two white and one
Speaker 1: black assailant, the jury convicted all three black men, and
Speaker 1: Rafael was sentenced to life plus fifty years. During his incarceration,
Speaker 1: Rathfael was able to develop evidence with the help of journalists,
Speaker 1: to shed light on the details of his wrongful conviction,
Speaker 1: including official misconduct and the fabrication of a false narrative.
Speaker 1: Rafael joins us today to share his harrowing story and
Speaker 1: his continued bite to clear his name. This is wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today, we're taking you overseas
Speaker 1: to Southeast England for a wrongful conviction case. That is,
Speaker 1: it's a powerful story, not least of which because the
Speaker 1: man who lived it has a way of telling it.
Speaker 1: That is, it rocks my world. So I think this
Speaker 1: is gonna be a wild episode and I'm really honored
Speaker 1: to have with us today the man himself, Rafael Row Rafael,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction. Thank you for inviting me on podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I've never had the privilege of interviewing a wrongfully convicted
Speaker 1: person who is themselves a podcaster journalists. But let's go
Speaker 1: back all the way to even before this happened, right,
Speaker 1: These are crimes that took place in December, a series
Speaker 1: of robberies, violent robberies in Southeast England. It's like something
Speaker 1: out of Clockwork, Orange or worse. And they're much more
Speaker 1: than robberies. It was a murderer. There were other types
Speaker 1: of home invasions and me, when I say robberies, it
Speaker 1: sounds too benign to describe what was really going on here.
Speaker 1: But what was your life like for all the sexacty happened? So?
Speaker 1: I grew up in Southeast London in a very deprived neighborhood.
Speaker 1: We had canceled houses, which are sort of social housing.
Speaker 1: I come from a mixed race background. My father came
Speaker 1: to the United Kingdom on the wind Rush as a
Speaker 1: Jamaica and my mother is a born and bred Londoner
Speaker 1: from West London. And when they got together they had
Speaker 1: my three sisters and then along came me and my
Speaker 1: dad was a laborer. My mom was a housewife bringing
Speaker 1: up four kids, and so financially we struggled as a
Speaker 1: young family, but we had quite a stable upbringing. Of course,
Speaker 1: there were problems in our household. You know, my dad
Speaker 1: liked to drink. My mom and dad would argue, but
Speaker 1: on the street everybody was struggling and trying to make ends. Me.
Speaker 1: Everybody came from a working class background and we all
Speaker 1: grew up in small flats, in blocks of flats. You know.
Speaker 1: I come from a neighborhood where riots had kicked off
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom because of the oppression of people
Speaker 1: like myself, in particular black people in and around London,
Speaker 1: especially migrants. To be honest, there was no one in
Speaker 1: my life in my early teens that inspired me to
Speaker 1: become anything. You know, everybody around me, we're just looking
Speaker 1: to earn money, and for me, as a young teenager,
Speaker 1: that was about being involved in petty crime. And so
Speaker 1: by the age of eighteen, I got in trouble with
Speaker 1: the law and I was put on what we call probation.
Speaker 1: And at that point I went to live in a
Speaker 1: hostel with one of my best friends. And in this
Speaker 1: hostel in southeast London, there were lots of other sort
Speaker 1: of wayward kids, if you like, people who have also
Speaker 1: been sent there by the authorities for getting in trouble
Speaker 1: with the law. And I was living with my best friend,
Speaker 1: Michael Party in doing the things that you do as
Speaker 1: a teenager without a care in the world. And so
Speaker 1: that brings us to this insane series of events. Four
Speaker 1: separate violent, hyper violent robberies that took place between December
Speaker 1: thirteenth and December sixteenth. The first crime took place in
Speaker 1: Sadly Here on December thirteenth, where two men stole a car,
Speaker 1: a Triumph spitfire in the middle of the night and
Speaker 1: took it back to Lori Park Road, which was the
Speaker 1: hostel that you were living in that you just described now.
Speaker 1: The next crime took place a few days later on
Speaker 1: December sixteenth and Fickleshaw, where three masked men interrupted Peter
Speaker 1: Herberg at a younger man named Alan Really as they
Speaker 1: were having sex at a car. The masked men had
Speaker 1: a knife and a gun. Really was pulled from the
Speaker 1: car and robbed of ten pounds, and it was clear
Speaker 1: that the three masked men intended to steal the car.
Speaker 1: When Herberg objected, he was attacked, Really passed out, and
Speaker 1: when he awoke he found that Herberg was dead after
Speaker 1: having been savagely beaten. He had fractured ribs of bruce
Speaker 1: heart and he had actually died from a heart attack,
Speaker 1: obviously as a result of the beating. This car, by
Speaker 1: the way, an Austin Princess was gone, but the stolen
Speaker 1: car from the thirteenth, the Triumph Spitfire, was discovered abandon
Speaker 1: close to the scene. The Austin Princess was then driven
Speaker 1: to Oxted, which is about ten miles away, where the
Speaker 1: three men invaded and robbed a home. There was a
Speaker 1: violent struggle and one of the homes occupants was cut
Speaker 1: badly with his artery severed. The house was ransacked and
Speaker 1: the robbers left with the man's Toyota now here too.
Speaker 1: The car from the previous robbery that night and Austin
Speaker 1: Princess was found abandoned near the home. And in the
Speaker 1: finalnce and an hour later, about twenty miles from Oxted,
Speaker 1: in a place called Fetch Them, a couple woke up
Speaker 1: in their bed to find three masked men in their room.
Speaker 1: The robbers asked them for money, jewelry and car keys,
Speaker 1: and the couple was tied and gagged while the robbers
Speaker 1: ransacked the house. The men eventually left, driving off in
Speaker 1: a Renault and a Vauxhall Cavalier. As before, the stolen
Speaker 1: Toyota from the previous robbery was found nearby, and the
Speaker 1: Renault and Voxhall were later found abandoned and burned out
Speaker 1: in the field. So this is four separate incidents in
Speaker 1: which eight people were robbed, one was severely injured, and
Speaker 1: another one killed in a truly gro tesque manner. These
Speaker 1: robberies hit the front pages of all the national news papers.
Speaker 1: The headlines were things like two white men, one black
Speaker 1: man commit horrors M twenty five gang, which is what
Speaker 1: these three men were dubbed. Catch these monsters, bring back
Speaker 1: hanging family. Wards for the arrest of these monsters, ETCETERA.
Speaker 1: Tho pounds back then was a huge amount of money,
Speaker 1: right we're talking about I don't know what that would
Speaker 1: be in current dollars are with the exchange rate, but
Speaker 1: I would say it's well over a hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in today's money. What I would say is that in
Speaker 1: case after case, we see that these type of rewards,
Speaker 1: which sound like a good idea on paper, lead to
Speaker 1: people who want the money saying things that they might
Speaker 1: otherwise know not to be true or guessing. So how
Speaker 1: did they come to target you and the others? Well,
Speaker 1: the facts don't materialize as to why we were initially
Speaker 1: targeted until many years after I'd spent time in prison.
Speaker 1: The reason the police targeted our address was because they
Speaker 1: were given a tip off. I believe that there was
Speaker 1: different evidence that led them to our address, i e.
Speaker 1: The cars that had been discovered from the final robbery
Speaker 1: that will burn out. Witnesses saw people standing over those
Speaker 1: cars at the time and described those individuals to the police,
Speaker 1: and I think the police then made some inroads on
Speaker 1: who those people were. Two of those people were living
Speaker 1: in the same address as me, two white guys. All
Speaker 1: of the victims described the perpetrators as two white men
Speaker 1: and one black man. One of the most significant factors
Speaker 1: in this case, all of the victims of these crimes,
Speaker 1: as terrified as they were, were able to give a
Speaker 1: consistent account of what the perpetrators looked like, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that these robbers were wearing balaklavas. And in case
Speaker 1: anyone our eardience is unfamiliar with the term balaklava, it's
Speaker 1: a scheme. Ask anyway, continue when the victims described the perpetrators,
Speaker 1: having described one of the white men with blue eyes
Speaker 1: and fair hair, another white man whose skin they saw
Speaker 1: through the eyehole and the mouth of one of the
Speaker 1: balaklavas was white and the black man, they said, had
Speaker 1: brown skin with quite a hubby face. So that was
Speaker 1: the level of detail. When I was arrested and my
Speaker 1: co defendants were arrested, the three men that ended up
Speaker 1: being charged were all black. I had dreadlocks at the time,
Speaker 1: my code defendant had dreadlocks at the time, and the
Speaker 1: other code defendant was of dark black African appearance. So
Speaker 1: all three black men who were eventually charged didn't fit
Speaker 1: the descriptions that were not only described by the victims,
Speaker 1: but it was also repeated in these headlines that the
Speaker 1: police were looking for two white men and one black man,
Speaker 1: and that two white men were seen burning the cars
Speaker 1: and etcetera, etcetera. The details were quite obvious. How could
Speaker 1: the police go on to charge three black men, right?
Speaker 1: These were no identifications that were given for a cross
Speaker 1: the street or down the road, where you might say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe they were mistaken about the race and it was
Speaker 1: dark the street. They didn't work something like that. No,
Speaker 1: these were up close and personal crimes, and there's no
Speaker 1: way that everybody got the race of the perpetrators wrong.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, Jason. These weren't fleeting glances across the
Speaker 1: road in the dead of night. There was a level
Speaker 1: of detail that you could not excuse. And this was
Speaker 1: certainly a case as well where you would hope that
Speaker 1: the authorities would be on their a game because everybody
Speaker 1: needed these guys off the streets. I mean, whoever did
Speaker 1: this are literally the people for whom prisons are built.
Speaker 1: I totally agree with you, Jason. I think the problem
Speaker 1: is is when the sensational headlines put politicians and lawmakers
Speaker 1: the police under the extreme pressure that they then start
Speaker 1: to target people that are innocent. They then home in
Speaker 1: on people who are the most vulnerable, i e. Those
Speaker 1: types of individuals like myself, who the public wouldn't care about.
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading
Speaker 1: global insurance company. A i G is committed to corporate
Speaker 1: social responsibility and is making a positive difference in the
Speaker 1: lives of its employees and in the communities where we
Speaker 1: work and live. In light of the compelling need for
Speaker 1: pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of A i
Speaker 1: g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the
Speaker 1: A i G Pro Bono Program provides free legal services
Speaker 1: and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Twelve people
Speaker 1: were arrested on the nineteenth of December under suspicion of
Speaker 1: being involved in these crimes. I was one of them,
Speaker 1: my co defendant Michael Davis, who was also my best
Speaker 1: friend and lived with me in the hostel, as was
Speaker 1: a number of other individuals who lived in at astle
Speaker 1: Free In particular, three young white guys were also arrested,
Speaker 1: as was a young Asian guy, but it was only me,
Speaker 1: my co defendant, and the three white guys who remained
Speaker 1: in the police station being interviewed and interrogated by the
Speaker 1: police between the nine December and the twenty second of December,
Speaker 1: when I was charged and then sent to a remand
Speaker 1: prison to await trial. My friend Michael was reminded in custody.
Speaker 1: The two white guys and the Asian guy were not
Speaker 1: charged with the murder and the series of robberies, and
Speaker 1: it was about three weeks later that Randolph Egbert Johnson,
Speaker 1: who was involved in a high speed car chase with
Speaker 1: the police, was arrested and he became the third suspect
Speaker 1: in the so called m case. Randolph I didn't know him.
Speaker 1: I had no association with him. I think i'd met
Speaker 1: him once before, but we had no connection at all.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the police interrogation. There were two
Speaker 1: particular police officers who were responsible for my arres and
Speaker 1: these two cops were typical of of your good cop,
Speaker 1: bad cop type guys. One of them hated me from
Speaker 1: the moment he set eyes on me. The other one
Speaker 1: was slightly more reserved, always thought for and reflective of
Speaker 1: my answers, and he always gave me some confidence that
Speaker 1: he was believing me because I was not one of
Speaker 1: those suspects who sat in the police cell saying no comment,
Speaker 1: no comment, No. I took every opportunity to tell them
Speaker 1: that I was not involved, that they were pointing the
Speaker 1: finger at the wrong guy. I was providing them with
Speaker 1: as much detail as I possibly could about where I was,
Speaker 1: who I was with, what I was doing, and it
Speaker 1: fell on deaf ears. And the reason for that is
Speaker 1: because the other suspects that the police were interrogating him,
Speaker 1: we're telling lies, were making stories up and I'd go
Speaker 1: as far as to say they were con buying with
Speaker 1: other police officers at the time to fabricate evidence that
Speaker 1: would then be used against me. You know, even the
Speaker 1: victims themselves, who I have all the sympathy for in
Speaker 1: the world as to what they experience, even they started
Speaker 1: to change their statements. So every time I told the
Speaker 1: police where I was and what I was doing and
Speaker 1: who I was with, they quickly got people to change
Speaker 1: their statements or their time so that it would undermine
Speaker 1: the evidence that proved unequivocally that I was innocent. And
Speaker 1: you know why that is, Jason. During the interrogation, the
Speaker 1: police have it in their head that they've got the
Speaker 1: right people, the evidence that's coming into the interview room,
Speaker 1: all these fabricated bits of evidence which were convincing the
Speaker 1: police that they were onto the right guys, regardless of
Speaker 1: the victims descriptions. The problem was is that by the
Speaker 1: time they were starting to discover the real evidence I,
Speaker 1: the evidence that proved I had an alibi, the evidence
Speaker 1: that proved I could not have been involved in these crimes,
Speaker 1: it was too late. So that's why they then went
Speaker 1: back to witnesses and victims and started to get them
Speaker 1: to change their statement. And that's easy for the police
Speaker 1: to do when you believe in the police, and these
Speaker 1: victims are law abiding citizens who lower by whatever the
Speaker 1: police tell them they need to go by. You know,
Speaker 1: I have to point out that in America, there's only
Speaker 1: one state, which is Minnesota, where they record I was interrogations,
Speaker 1: and I feel that's a reform that needs to be
Speaker 1: instituted nationwide and worldwide, because most people understand the reason
Speaker 1: why you need to record interrogations of suspects to make
Speaker 1: sure they're not being beaten, coerced, fed information, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But in some cases, including this one, that would have
Speaker 1: been extremely valuable to have access to the videotapes of
Speaker 1: these incredibly suggestive witness identificatory procedures. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: not even being suggested. They're being told you're wrong, don't
Speaker 1: believe your eyes, believe us. And I should say now,
Speaker 1: there was slutely no forensic evidence or any other kind
Speaker 1: of scientific evidence in this case that pointed to me
Speaker 1: or my code defendants. In fact, the opposite was true.
Speaker 1: There was some forensic evidence i e. Fingerprints found on
Speaker 1: the car at the scene of the murder that linked
Speaker 1: the case to a white guy with blue eyes and
Speaker 1: fair hair. I fitted the description as described by some
Speaker 1: of the victims, and when the police discovered that and
Speaker 1: I'm already locked up in prison charged with these crimes.
Speaker 1: They went to this witness and they got this witness
Speaker 1: to say that they stole the car that was used
Speaker 1: in the robbery for me and my code defendants rather
Speaker 1: than interrogate that individual about their involvement. It a tangled
Speaker 1: freaking webman. This is this is a lot, and Raphael,
Speaker 1: let's get to your alibi because you had multiple people
Speaker 1: testifying to where you were during the crimes, right, please
Speaker 1: take us through this. Initially, in the witness that survived statement,
Speaker 1: the murder was time to take in place at eleven
Speaker 1: thirty pm on the night of December. At that time,
Speaker 1: me and my code defendant were with four girls who
Speaker 1: we were knocking about with. I was sleeping with one
Speaker 1: of those girls. And about ten thirty on the night
Speaker 1: of the murder and these series of robberies, one of
Speaker 1: the girls invited me and my friend and her mates
Speaker 1: back to her parents house. So about ten thirty, the
Speaker 1: girls and my code defendant went back to this other
Speaker 1: girl's house. I met her mom for the first time,
Speaker 1: I met her sister, and I met her sister's boyfriend,
Speaker 1: who was a solicitor and we were there into about
Speaker 1: half past midnight. All these witnesses very fy this, so
Speaker 1: that's an hour after the murder had been committed, and
Speaker 1: about half past twelve, the solicitor wanted to get rid
Speaker 1: of this rowdy couple of guys who were smoking weed
Speaker 1: and bouncing around with their dreadlocks. The solicitor offered to
Speaker 1: give me and my friend a lift back to our flat,
Speaker 1: and we agreed, and the solicitor drove me, my cody
Speaker 1: friend and the girl I was sleeping with back to
Speaker 1: my flat and we arrived back at about just twenty
Speaker 1: two one in the morning. I went back to my
Speaker 1: room with this girl. We smoked a joint and then
Speaker 1: we made love. So I was in bed with her
Speaker 1: until about one thirty in the morning, So this is
Speaker 1: two hours after the murder had been committed. This was
Speaker 1: just as the second robbery was taken place, and I'm
Speaker 1: forty miles away from where these incidents were already taking place,
Speaker 1: and this was my alibi. And all of these witnesses
Speaker 1: I just mentioned came into the court at the time
Speaker 1: of my trial and told the jury that I was
Speaker 1: with them at this time, and this is why the
Speaker 1: police got that first victim to change their statement. They
Speaker 1: said that the crime didn't happen at eleven thirty, It
Speaker 1: happened at twelve thirty. But even then I still had
Speaker 1: an alibi that put me miles away from where this
Speaker 1: crime was committed. But crucially, the girlfriend that I was
Speaker 1: in bed with was then undermined by the police because
Speaker 1: she gave the police items of jury that had come
Speaker 1: from one of the robberies, saying that she got that
Speaker 1: jury from me. That was an outright lie. And I
Speaker 1: can tell you why. When I was in prison a
Speaker 1: few months later, this girl wrote me a letter, unbeknown
Speaker 1: that it would be crucial evidence, admitting that she'd lied
Speaker 1: and that she had been put up by the police
Speaker 1: to tell in the police that I had given her
Speaker 1: items a jury in order to save herself from being
Speaker 1: accused of perverting the course of justice or something like that.
Speaker 1: So a I had a cast iron alibi, be the
Speaker 1: police's attempt to undermine my alibi witnesses edibility by fabricating
Speaker 1: evidence which she admitted was untrue. That's what we were
Speaker 1: up against at the time of my trial. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: changing the times, they're changing the races of the perpetrators.
Speaker 1: They're coercing or well threatening eye witnesses and alibi witnesses.
Speaker 1: It's a whirlwind. So the trial itself, Raphael, it must
Speaker 1: have been a circus atmosphere. If I'm going to guess,
Speaker 1: please tell us about that experience. Here you are now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I'm going to say, one of
Speaker 1: the most hated men in the country, along with your
Speaker 1: Code offense. The court setting was that the Old Bailey,
Speaker 1: which is the number one call in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 1: And yes, it was a circus. Me and my two
Speaker 1: co defendants, all three of us stood in the dock
Speaker 1: accused of the murder and the three robberies and the
Speaker 1: attempted murder, and witness after witness, including the victims, who
Speaker 1: stood up in the dock and gave evidence against us.
Speaker 1: Some told the truth, many told lies. One of the
Speaker 1: most awkward moments Jason, in the trial was when the
Speaker 1: victims stood in the dock and they were asked to
Speaker 1: describe the perpetrators, and that's when the ms and are
Speaker 1: started to come in. You know. The victims were Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did say that it was white skinned, and yes
Speaker 1: I did say they had blue eyes, but maybe I
Speaker 1: was wrong. Why was you wrong? But the police seemed
Speaker 1: to believe that those men in the dock were guilty.
Speaker 1: That was one of the saddest things for me that
Speaker 1: the victims could look at the three guys that were
Speaker 1: in the dock, know that we didn't commit the crime
Speaker 1: and couldn't do anything about it, and yet somehow that
Speaker 1: jury they went out and they came back and they
Speaker 1: found us guilty. So yeah, in spite of the fact
Speaker 1: that the victims are acknowledging their own original identifications of
Speaker 1: these white, blonde, blue eyed individuals, and in spite of
Speaker 1: the fact of your many alibi witnesses, in spite of
Speaker 1: all of that, the jury goes out and finds you guilty.
Speaker 1: So can you take us back to that moment when
Speaker 1: the jury came in and they read the guilt t
Speaker 1: verdict against me for murder, for attempted murder, and for
Speaker 1: three serious robberies. The judge had no alternative but to
Speaker 1: send me to prison for the rest of my life
Speaker 1: plus fifty odd years, which is the accumulation of all
Speaker 1: the sentences added up for the robberies. It's really difficult
Speaker 1: to say at that point that I was crushed like
Speaker 1: a peanut under my foot because I had already been
Speaker 1: crushed when I was first charged with these offenses and
Speaker 1: condemned to prison. I was crushed, And it was during
Speaker 1: those eighteen months that I built a resilience within myself,
Speaker 1: a determination not to allow them to get away with
Speaker 1: what they were doing, not just to me and my family,
Speaker 1: but also the victims and anybody else that was being
Speaker 1: caught up wrongly. So by the time the jury came
Speaker 1: in and found me guilty, as crushing as that was,
Speaker 1: as desperate as I was a twenty one year old
Speaker 1: destined to spend the rest of my life in prison
Speaker 1: for a crime I didn't commit, I knew I was
Speaker 1: not going to give up. I knew that they got
Speaker 1: it wrong. They knew that they got it wrong, so
Speaker 1: I was never ever going to allow this to sit
Speaker 1: on that day forever. More. I think it was the
Speaker 1: fact that I became so militant as a young twenty
Speaker 1: one year old that I did everything I possibly could
Speaker 1: to keep my body as fit as I possibly could
Speaker 1: in order to withstand the four walls that I was
Speaker 1: being confined in. So rather than sit in that cell,
Speaker 1: I exercised in that cell, used it as my gym,
Speaker 1: used it as my office, used it as the space
Speaker 1: that I was gonna work my way out, whether that
Speaker 1: was psychologically or physically. So I was studying the law,
Speaker 1: teaching myself as much as I possibly could about the
Speaker 1: law in order to understand how and why what had
Speaker 1: happened to me happened to me. And I should stress
Speaker 1: that in those years I was so militant. I did
Speaker 1: not conform. I refused to work in prison every day.
Speaker 1: As a convicted person, you are expected to follow the
Speaker 1: regime of the maximum security prison. I you go to work,
Speaker 1: you do the things the authorities expect you to do
Speaker 1: as a guilty man. When I wasn't a guilty man,
Speaker 1: so I was going to do everything in the opposite.
Speaker 1: So when they opened my cell door and shouted my
Speaker 1: name to go to work, I refused to leave the cell.
Speaker 1: The consequence would mean that they would come into the
Speaker 1: cell and physically dragged me out of the cell, take
Speaker 1: me to the isolation block, where I would spend days
Speaker 1: or weeks or months being punished for not being prepared
Speaker 1: to put up with what guilty people had to endure.
Speaker 1: And that went on for years. It was me against
Speaker 1: the system, him as well as my wrongful conviction. And
Speaker 1: I mean I I was brutalized so badly by the
Speaker 1: authorities for not conforming. There were plenty of times where
Speaker 1: they physically beat me or locked me in isolation cells
Speaker 1: completely naked, for no other reason than they could. So Now,
Speaker 1: from inside the confines of these barbaric prisons that you
Speaker 1: were in, how did you manage to ultimately for yourself?
Speaker 1: One of the big turning points for me, Jason was
Speaker 1: the media, the publications of broadcast has paid a significant
Speaker 1: role in my wrongful conviction by calling me and monster,
Speaker 1: by asking for hanging to be brought back into the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom to kill people like me who were guilty
Speaker 1: of such horrible crimes. If the media could play such
Speaker 1: a powerful role in my wrongful conviction, maybe they could
Speaker 1: play a role in getting my conviction overturned. So I
Speaker 1: embarked on a journalism correspondence course whilst I was in prison,
Speaker 1: and that just meant paper push him in the same
Speaker 1: way that I read every document, every line, every sentence
Speaker 1: of every document that was involved in my case over
Speaker 1: and over again for years, and I'd become very tuned
Speaker 1: into how cases worked and didn't work. And I learned
Speaker 1: so much teaching myself how journalists work. Meant I could
Speaker 1: manipulate stories that I could send out there. So I'd
Speaker 1: write letters to some of our national newspapers, the Guardian
Speaker 1: and the Independent, son the Mirror, and they'd start slowly
Speaker 1: but surely publish my letters or published little things that
Speaker 1: I said. And then that triggered what happened next, which
Speaker 1: was simply that the media who called me a monster,
Speaker 1: where all of a sudden starting to question the safety
Speaker 1: of my conviction, and they were showing interest in coming
Speaker 1: to visit me. So I'd sit on a visiting table
Speaker 1: and talk to these journalists about why was innocent and
Speaker 1: asking them questions about what they remembered at the time,
Speaker 1: and that just led to a lot of publicity question
Speaker 1: in the safety of my conviction, and that rocked the
Speaker 1: British criminal justice syst into its core. They really started
Speaker 1: to wobble at the idea that they'd locked up three
Speaker 1: innocent black men. And once the media started questioning the
Speaker 1: safety of my conviction, once the media started to remind
Speaker 1: the new generation of children that free black men were
Speaker 1: imprisoned for crimes committed by two white men, we got
Speaker 1: neared a lot of support, and that made a big
Speaker 1: difference because it was then ten years into my wrongful
Speaker 1: life imprisonment that barristers and reputable lawyer started to take
Speaker 1: an interest when I wrote to them asking for their help,
Speaker 1: and so they did start to help. And then there
Speaker 1: was one moment where an eminent human rights lawyer discovered
Speaker 1: that the non disclosure of the reward money meant that
Speaker 1: I've been deprived the right of a fair trial, and
Speaker 1: that particular lawyer took my case to the European Court
Speaker 1: of Human Rights and it was an opportunity to set
Speaker 1: out the fact that free black member in prison for
Speaker 1: crimes committed by two white men one black man, I
Speaker 1: had a cast iron aller by witness had given fabricated evidence,
Speaker 1: reward money had been paid and it had not been disclosed.
Speaker 1: So all this was laid out in front of twenty
Speaker 1: nine judges at the European Court of Human Rights and
Speaker 1: they unanimously in ruled that I had been denied the
Speaker 1: right to a fair trial, and that that wrote the
Speaker 1: British government and in two thousand the government told the
Speaker 1: Court of Appeal they had to re hear my case
Speaker 1: and it was just a few months after that my
Speaker 1: convictions were overturned. You turned the train around on the tracks.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that you were able to do it from
Speaker 1: this dungeon that you were in, and even managed to
Speaker 1: keep your wits about you. Your codefendants did they benefit
Speaker 1: from your work as well? Were they reread when you were?
Speaker 1: They were? Yes, my co defendants convictions were also overturned
Speaker 1: at the Court of Appeal at the same time that
Speaker 1: my convictions were overturned. And that happened on the seventeenth
Speaker 1: of July two thousand and What was that moment like
Speaker 1: walking out from the age of twenty and to the
Speaker 1: age of thirty two. I was confined in a single
Speaker 1: cell by myself. I suffered in those twelve years. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until they quashed my convictions. I walked down
Speaker 1: the steps of the Court of Appeal. They opened up
Speaker 1: the door, the door that was going to set me free,
Speaker 1: that I for the first time cried. I fell into
Speaker 1: the arms of my sister, one of my three sisters,
Speaker 1: and it was the first time I cried in all
Speaker 1: the years that I was in prison, and it felt
Speaker 1: so good. And then I walked with my family to
Speaker 1: the front of the Court of Appeal and shouted my
Speaker 1: mouth off about how I'd lost so many years of
Speaker 1: my life in prison to the world's media. The judges
Speaker 1: cheekily and typically turned round and said, this is not
Speaker 1: a declaration of innocence. But they quashed my conviction as
Speaker 1: unsafe and they set me free. And that was the
Speaker 1: big turning point. That's where my life began. That wasn't
Speaker 1: the end of an ordeal. That was the beginning of
Speaker 1: my life. That's beautiful, and you're inviolude so many things now, Raphael,
Speaker 1: and it's it's awesome to see how you've taken the
Speaker 1: world by the polls since you came home. So please
Speaker 1: share with us what's your life like now. For me,
Speaker 1: it was one of those kind of classical right place,
Speaker 1: right time, right opportunity. From the age of twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty two, I studied the law. In prison, I studied journalism.
Speaker 1: So there was only two things I could do when
Speaker 1: I got out of prison, and that was go down
Speaker 1: that route of campaigning on behalf of other miscarriage of
Speaker 1: justice victims. But I just spent twelve years of my
Speaker 1: own fucking life fighting hard, and as much as I
Speaker 1: do that in my own way. Now, the other option
Speaker 1: was journalism, so that's what I did. I went. I
Speaker 1: met a man who at the time was a senior
Speaker 1: figure at the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation. He offered
Speaker 1: me an opportunity, and before I knew it, I was
Speaker 1: working on the most prestigious radio program here in the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom called the Radio for Today program, and I
Speaker 1: remember sitting at the desk as a sort of call
Speaker 1: center calling up politicians. Asked him to come on the program.
Speaker 1: And after two or three days, I went into the
Speaker 1: editor and I said, listen, you know what I've just
Speaker 1: spent twelve you sitting on a cell bed or a
Speaker 1: cell chair. I can't do this. This is not for me.
Speaker 1: I need to be free. And he offered me the
Speaker 1: opportunity to try my hand at being a reporter on
Speaker 1: this prestigious program, and I accepted and I didn't look back.
Speaker 1: I went on to become a reporter on this program. There.
Speaker 1: You've got to remember, Jason and your audience. When I
Speaker 1: came out of prison, I was handed a mobile home
Speaker 1: for the first time. The Internet didn't exist when I
Speaker 1: went to prison, so there were lots of technological developments.
Speaker 1: So I was learning things on the job at the BBC,
Speaker 1: and this was within twelve months of getting out, and
Speaker 1: I worked my way through the BBC, working for the
Speaker 1: Radio Pro then I worked for the prestigious BBC News program,
Speaker 1: and then I worked for the longest running current affairs
Speaker 1: investigative program Panorama as one of their correspondents. I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of my early career as a BBC journalist
Speaker 1: as an undercover operative because I knew how to duck
Speaker 1: and dive. Having survived in prison, I had a gift
Speaker 1: for the gap in that well. And so I spent
Speaker 1: the next sixteen years, having been released from prison, carving
Speaker 1: out this successful career as a BBC journalist as a
Speaker 1: public speaker, as somebody who inspired other people from backgrounds
Speaker 1: like mine, or bringing together people from my background and
Speaker 1: the academic or the affluent background to show that we
Speaker 1: could work together to bring about change in social justice.
Speaker 1: And I left the BBC after sixteen seventeen years and
Speaker 1: was given the opportunity by Netflix to do this series
Speaker 1: called Inside the World's Toughest Prisons. And I thought they
Speaker 1: were crazy to be asking me, having spent so long
Speaker 1: trying to get the funk out of prisons to go
Speaker 1: back in willingly. I thought long and hard and thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, I can change people's perceptions about the
Speaker 1: people that are in these places. I can change people's
Speaker 1: perceptions about what prison is really like. You know, Let's
Speaker 1: get rid of all this sensational violence stuff. Let's get
Speaker 1: rid of all this kind of stigma around who these
Speaker 1: individuals are, and let's try and understand more. And it's
Speaker 1: been a phenomenal success. I go in prisons all around
Speaker 1: the world, spent seven days with the prisoners to try
Speaker 1: and find the balance between rehabilitation and punishment. In addition
Speaker 1: to that, I have my own podcast, Second Chance. I
Speaker 1: talked to people about why they give people a second chance,
Speaker 1: what their second chances, what that means to people, not
Speaker 1: just people that have come out of prison and gone
Speaker 1: on to become entrepreneurs, or people that have been wrongly
Speaker 1: convicted who have gone on to lead successful careers like
Speaker 1: I have, but loads of different questions around what second
Speaker 1: chance actually means. During the lockdown first pandemic, I wrote
Speaker 1: my first book because so many people have asked me
Speaker 1: about my life story, and although in bits and pieces
Speaker 1: I've shared it, I've never put it all in one place.
Speaker 1: So I wrote my autobiography, Notorious, which was published at
Speaker 1: the end of last year. The most important thing for me,
Speaker 1: the legacy of everything, is the Raphael Row Foundation, and
Speaker 1: having experienced prisons around the globe, I realized so much
Speaker 1: needs to be done, not just for the prisoners, but
Speaker 1: the prisons to improve the humanity and the ability to
Speaker 1: rehabilitate or give people a second chance. And that's why
Speaker 1: I recently set up the Rafael Row Foundation in the
Speaker 1: hope that my legacy will be to guard near people
Speaker 1: change their perception about what prisons really are, what they mean,
Speaker 1: and how they can help people rather than destroy people
Speaker 1: or their families. It's great work and it uh it
Speaker 1: speaks volumes about your character that you're giving back in
Speaker 1: the ways that you best can, right. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have a natural gift for this stuff, and you found
Speaker 1: your I'm gonna call it your calling, and it's wonderful
Speaker 1: to see you sort of thriving and you know, succeeding
Speaker 1: I think, beyond any reasonable expectations that anybody could have
Speaker 1: had and just making a difference. You know, what can
Speaker 1: I say except you have all of my respect and
Speaker 1: I'm just glad that you're here today, and of course
Speaker 1: for anyone listening who wants to learn more about Rock
Speaker 1: Fail's journey and follow it as I do, and as
Speaker 1: I will his podcast, his book, The Rock Fail Row Foundation.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have links to all of them in our bio.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure people can follow you on Instagram, right
Speaker 1: and what about other social media? Yeah, I'm on Instagram,
Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter, I have a website. If you put
Speaker 1: my name Raphael Row R O W E or a
Speaker 1: reporter on Twitter or Instagram, you'll be able to find me.
Speaker 1: And now we come to the closing of our show.
Speaker 1: It's called closing arguments, and closing arguments works just like this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kick back in my chair, turn my microphone
Speaker 1: off and leave my headphones on, and of course leave
Speaker 1: your mic open for you to share any final thoughts
Speaker 1: you may have with our audience. I think for me,
Speaker 1: one of the most important things is who am I?
Speaker 1: Who am I? So I shared with you my upbringing,
Speaker 1: I shared with you my ordeal of being wrongly convicted
Speaker 1: and imprisoned. I've shared with you a bit about the
Speaker 1: work that I do now having got out of prison.
Speaker 1: You know when you think you hit the summit, you
Speaker 1: never quite hit the summit because there's always more to climb.
Speaker 1: And that's what I've done in my successful career as
Speaker 1: a journalist. But I'm constantly asking myself the question who
Speaker 1: am I? And that's what I want people to do,
Speaker 1: ask themselves, who are you? Who am I? Am I
Speaker 1: the person that wants to make lots of money? Am
Speaker 1: I the person who wants to care for my elderly parents?
Speaker 1: Am I the person who wants to become a high
Speaker 1: performance athlete? I always ask myself the question who am I?
Speaker 1: And I've reached what I think is a fair description
Speaker 1: of myself. I am who I've always been. I'm the
Speaker 1: same person that I was when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I'm the same person that I was when I was
Speaker 1: in prison, and I'm definitely the same person now that
Speaker 1: I'm free. And that person is an honest, direct with
Speaker 1: morals and values where I believe not just in myself,
Speaker 1: but in other people. And by other people, I mean
Speaker 1: the good, the bad, and the elderly. Why shouldn't I
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't you give up a few minutes of your
Speaker 1: time or your space to see the other side of
Speaker 1: of someone because I've shown over the years there are
Speaker 1: different in sides to everybody. The person I am today,
Speaker 1: as I say, is the same person I was when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, when I was innocent, when I
Speaker 1: just enjoyed the things that we all do before we're
Speaker 1: corrupted by the things that we witness and here as
Speaker 1: we get older, or our desires and our wants. So
Speaker 1: that's my final word. Ask yourself, who are you? Because
Speaker 1: I know who I am. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: Ronful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall,
Speaker 1: Justin Golden, Jeff Claver, and Kevin Wardis with research by
Speaker 1: Lada Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by
Speaker 1: three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to
Speaker 1: follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as
Speaker 1: well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms.
Speaker 1: You can also follow me on both talk and Instagram
Speaker 1: at its. Jason flam Raval Conviction is the production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number
Speaker 1: one h