Speaker 1: I think we have the best legal system.
Speaker 2: It's just the people that implement they get lost along
Speaker 2: the way and forget what their job really is.
Speaker 3: He just kept on trying to remind me that who
Speaker 3: was in authority, who was in control, and how easy
Speaker 3: it was for my body to be found in any
Speaker 3: alley of New York City.
Speaker 4: It's a tough prison when you have the guards going
Speaker 4: against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
Speaker 1: They do that.
Speaker 3: They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home
Speaker 3: in eat spaghetti like it was nothing. And anybody that said, well,
Speaker 3: why would you confess to something that you didn't do?
Speaker 3: My question to them will be why wouldn't you confess
Speaker 3: when somebody's threatening to kill your life? The judge, he said,
Speaker 3: how you feel?
Speaker 1: I said, I'm okay. He said, well, the days you're
Speaker 1: lucky day you're going home.
Speaker 5: This is wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 5: Jason Flamm. Today we have the New Orleans edition with
Speaker 5: two people who really exemplify and personify what's wrong and
Speaker 5: right about New Orleans criminal justice system. And the star
Speaker 5: of the show today is Robert Jones.
Speaker 6: In April nineteen ninety two, a series of violent crimes
Speaker 6: were committed in New Orleans. One of the crimes was
Speaker 6: the killing of the British tourist Julie Stott, after which
Speaker 6: police received a tip and arrested Robert Jones.
Speaker 1: All, a man who served twenty three years in prison
Speaker 1: for crimes he said he didn't commit.
Speaker 7: Is free tonight.
Speaker 8: The friends and family of Robert Jones broke the Core
Speaker 8: room silence with tears and applause as they judge granted
Speaker 8: the dismissal of rape and manslaughter chargers that had been
Speaker 8: thrown out, but then prosecutors vowed to reprosecute. Barry Scheck
Speaker 8: came down from New York to help Innocence Project attorneys
Speaker 8: fight the case, which was originally reversed in twenty fifteen
Speaker 8: when newly discovered evidence pointed to jones innocence.
Speaker 1: It's just extraordinary, you know.
Speaker 9: Sometimes they say it takes the village, it takes an
Speaker 9: army to free one man who's wrongly convicted.
Speaker 8: This exoneration was almost twenty five years in the making,
Speaker 8: and it came on Robert Jones' forty fourth birthday.
Speaker 5: Robert, welcome to the show. Thank you, and our other
Speaker 5: distinguished guest today is the fearless leader of IPNO, otherwise
Speaker 5: known as the Innocence Project of New Orleans. And her
Speaker 5: name is Emily Ma. And Emily is, as you will
Speaker 5: soon find out, a force of nature. So Emily, welcome
Speaker 5: to ronfolk.
Speaker 10: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: So, Robert, take us back to your childhood growing up
Speaker 5: in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: I was the elder of five other siblings my mother,
Speaker 2: my mother had six children. I mean, we grew up
Speaker 2: poor in the poor neighborhood. I lost my father when
Speaker 2: I was at the age of seven.
Speaker 1: He was killed.
Speaker 2: He was a professional boxer. We had it sort of hard.
Speaker 2: We had it.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was hard. It was like I said, we grew
Speaker 2: up poor. After our father was killed. It changed a
Speaker 2: lot of things for our family to domin. Next to
Speaker 2: our family, my mother she had to fortunately, she had
Speaker 2: to stop going to school, so she wasn't able to
Speaker 2: maintain a decent job to the extent to take care
Speaker 2: of all of us, right, so she had to take
Speaker 2: on our jobs. So it was it was rough, man,
Speaker 2: it was rough growing up. But she made it work.
Speaker 2: And one of the things is that I learned from
Speaker 2: my mother is that even though she took odd jobs
Speaker 2: or mothers used to they used to call her like
Speaker 2: the candle lady. You know what she used to do
Speaker 2: is she used to sell out our apartment in the
Speaker 2: housing projects. She used to sell like different candies, apples
Speaker 2: and different things that she made from scratch. And eventually
Speaker 2: that kind of like substituted, you know, her income in
Speaker 2: the sense of actually providing for us. You know, so
Speaker 2: my mother is the biggest you know, my biggest heroes
Speaker 2: because she made something out of nothing to take care
Speaker 2: of us. And you know, in the process of me
Speaker 2: growing up, you see a lot of things in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And eventually I dropped out of school in the eighth grade,
Speaker 2: and you know I did regular things, you know, hung out,
Speaker 2: hung out, even though I mean my mother in approve
Speaker 2: of it, but I guess not having that for the
Speaker 2: figure there, it's only so much that a woman can
Speaker 2: actually do to a young man growing up when she
Speaker 2: reached those particular stages that I had reached on that time,
Speaker 2: you know, I was in my maybe early teens.
Speaker 5: And so you grew up where we are right now
Speaker 5: in New Orleans and the aticenter of the criminal injustice system,
Speaker 5: right so you're going along making the best of the situation.
Speaker 5: How old were you when this crazy scenario happened that
Speaker 5: you didn't even know about, right and what was going
Speaker 5: on in your life at that point in time.
Speaker 2: Well, at that point, I just turned nineteen years old,
Speaker 2: already had two children, and I had big dreams and
Speaker 2: aspiration to one of you know, I was always fascinated
Speaker 2: about business. I kind of like went to on the
Speaker 2: mentorship with an older guy who I know you He
Speaker 2: was a form of drug dealer and I guess you
Speaker 2: were just classify as being retired. So he started dealing
Speaker 2: in real estate and I start, you know, from there,
Speaker 2: my focus kind of like went there. You know, I
Speaker 2: kind of like wanted to get back in school, but
Speaker 2: saw like was embarrassed because you know, the age difference
Speaker 2: was going back to school. So I started seeking out
Speaker 2: help in those particular areas to try to get in
Speaker 2: programmed so I can get back in school, so I
Speaker 2: can educate myself. Because I know, if I say, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, for me to learn or to understand and
Speaker 2: the business world understand real estate, I mean I have
Speaker 2: to get academically in client. So I know I had
Speaker 2: to go back to school. So that's what my mind said,
Speaker 2: because I wanted a better life for my children. I
Speaker 2: wanted to create a better world for my kids because
Speaker 2: I know how we grew up. Not new for them
Speaker 2: of my mother, but I knew that she struggled, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to change and break that particular cycle. So
Speaker 2: that's where my ambition was at. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you know, and at the age of nineteen, this happened.
Speaker 2: It is kind of like it really just strolled things
Speaker 2: totally off, I mean, really devastated my entire family.
Speaker 5: Emily, Let's let's talk about this because this is an
Speaker 5: interesting case because it's not just one case. Right. What
Speaker 5: happened was in nineteen ninety two, there was a series
Speaker 5: of attacks in and around the French Quarter that Robert
Speaker 5: ended up being implicated in and that we now know
Speaker 5: were committed by an individual who shares his last name
Speaker 5: but nothing else, no relation. This was a very violent
Speaker 5: time in a Maria and certainly in New Orleans. And
Speaker 5: this was a particularly violent series of crimes that happened
Speaker 5: in an area where the authorities don't like to have crime.
Speaker 5: Very bad for tourism when you have, you know, serious
Speaker 5: rapes and murders and things happening in the French Quarter.
Speaker 5: So can you take us back and explain what this
Speaker 5: crime spree was all about.
Speaker 10: Sure, there was a series of crimes that, at least
Speaker 10: as we know, began April the sixth of nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 10: A man was committing robberies in his car. He was armed.
Speaker 10: He would pull up, get out the car, rob people,
Speaker 10: and in some of the cases he did more than that,
Speaker 10: or tried to do more than that. In the first instance,
Speaker 10: he took one of the female victims and raped her.
Speaker 10: In the desire project, he asked his victims to lie
Speaker 10: on the ground. And a week later he robbed several
Speaker 10: more people in the French Quarter, right around the corner
Speaker 10: from where he had abducted the first party of people
Speaker 10: a week previous. And in the second night of his
Speaker 10: crime spree, he robbed two people. He walked around the
Speaker 10: corner or pulled around the corner of his car in
Speaker 10: the French Quarter, and he tried to rob a pair
Speaker 10: of English tourists who just arrived in town, and he
Speaker 10: shot the woman her name is Julie Stott, dead in
Speaker 10: that attempted armed robbery. A few hours later he used
Speaker 10: his car and went off in about a mile up
Speaker 10: the road, robbed some people who were coming out of
Speaker 10: a Poe Boy store close to the French Quarter. And
Speaker 10: the killing of the English tourist Judie Stott was a
Speaker 10: very big deal. It was a big deal here in
Speaker 10: the newspapers. It was a big deal at home in England.
Speaker 10: When I say at home, obviously I'm from England, because
Speaker 10: New Orleans relied so much on tourism. Because it is
Speaker 10: horrifying to think that you could be on vacation, just
Speaker 10: walking along the street and get shot dead by a
Speaker 10: man wielding a gun. Because frankly, she was a young, pretty,
Speaker 10: college educated white girl from England, the case got a
Speaker 10: lot of attention, and there was a big reward that
Speaker 10: was issued for anybody with information that would help to
Speaker 10: find the person who had killed her.
Speaker 5: Right, ten thousand dollars crime stoppers, right, And that's right.
Speaker 5: And let's not forget this is twenty five plus years ago,
Speaker 5: so ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 10: Was double that right now in today's money. And you know,
Speaker 10: is anybody, any police officer in this town anywhere, will
Speaker 10: tell you when there is reward money offered, you get
Speaker 10: a whole lot of crap called in, right, And what
Speaker 10: happened in this case was a tip got called in
Speaker 10: named Robert Jones and his friends as having been bragging
Speaker 10: about killing the lady in a bar or something like that,
Speaker 10: or talking about it in a bar, and the police,
Speaker 10: as they often do, started with that name, which is
Speaker 10: a method the police used. They will pull that name
Speaker 10: and see if there's anything to it. The police had
Speaker 10: realized that the same person had committed all these crimes
Speaker 10: because it was the same car that was used, and
Speaker 10: they were all done in the same area, the same
Speaker 10: mo victims had to lie on the ground. He asked
Speaker 10: for very specific things, a similar description of the perpetrator.
Speaker 10: And so when they get the name Robert Jones, he's
Speaker 10: a suspect in all the crimes, really, and they show
Speaker 10: his photo to the rape victim in the first crime
Speaker 10: and she picked him out.
Speaker 7: As a result, he was.
Speaker 10: Arrested for the murder, which was the big crime that
Speaker 10: was being investigated. It was the big, high profile.
Speaker 5: Crime because if he did want he did them all.
Speaker 10: That's right, the same person did all them. So Robert
Speaker 10: was booked with a series of crimes, including the murder, arrested,
Speaker 10: put in jail. His arrest was all over the newspapers.
Speaker 10: It was all over the British newspapers, It was all
Speaker 10: over the television. It was a big deal. They got
Speaker 10: the person who killed the English tourist and done the
Speaker 10: other crimes as well. The problem is that after he
Speaker 10: was arrested and put in jail, the crime spree in
Speaker 10: the car with his own gunman continued.
Speaker 5: And it was a distinctive car.
Speaker 10: It was very distinctive car. It's a big burgundy Oldsmobile
Speaker 10: I think, and it had like a landau roof right.
Speaker 7: And so when the police realized.
Speaker 10: That the crime spree had continued even though they'd arrested
Speaker 10: Robert Jones, that tipped them off that they might have
Speaker 10: not got the person responsible. And so the homicide and
Speaker 10: robbery detectives kept investigating the case. And what they found
Speaker 10: was the man who owned the car. They found the
Speaker 10: car in the Desire project, and he had jewelry or
Speaker 10: things taken from the victims in each one of the robberies,
Speaker 10: including the last one in the spree, and including the
Speaker 10: first one that ended in a rape.
Speaker 5: So this one came with instructions.
Speaker 10: He had the gun that was used to kill the
Speaker 10: English tourists. He had the bullets that matched the ones
Speaker 10: that were found in her head. He had the glasses
Speaker 10: in his car that the person had described the rapist wearing.
Speaker 10: He had jewelry or things taken from each of the victims.
Speaker 10: He lived less than a block from where the rape
Speaker 10: victim had been taken to be raped. In the case,
Speaker 10: he matched the description exactly of the perpetrator that each
Speaker 10: of the victims had given.
Speaker 5: And isn't it true that he had said to at
Speaker 5: least one of the victims that he was taking her
Speaker 5: to the neighborhood where he lived.
Speaker 10: Yeah, he told the rape victim, I going to take
Speaker 10: you to my neck of the woods, before parking his
Speaker 10: car next to his apartment, basically and taking her to
Speaker 10: an abandoned building in that building within the Desire Project.
Speaker 5: And Robert, you didn't live anywhere near there, no, right.
Speaker 5: So Robert also had a distinctive physical feature, which is
Speaker 5: gold teeth. Right, And none of the victims described somebody
Speaker 5: with gold teeth, which would be a harder thing than
Speaker 5: most to screw up.
Speaker 10: If it was Robert Jones, you would not miss it.
Speaker 10: Because Robert has he no longer has them. But Robert's teeth.
Speaker 10: They were completely gold at the front. He can't speak
Speaker 10: without exposing his teeth. Some people maybe can, I don't
Speaker 10: know Ventriloquist, but Robert cannot do that. And it is
Speaker 10: very very obvious if it is Robert Jones that the
Speaker 10: person has gold teeth. There is no way that he
Speaker 10: could have committed five crimes and said many things, including
Speaker 10: the woman who has taken off an aducted rape, who
Speaker 10: spent a while with her attacker. It would not be
Speaker 10: possible for him to have interacted with any of these people,
Speaker 10: and no one had noticed the gold teeth.
Speaker 5: So what we have now is a situation where somewhere
Speaker 5: inside police headquarters they're going, uh oh, I need Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 5: In this particular case, everything points in one direction away
Speaker 5: from the guy that they had arrested. But they had
Speaker 5: made a big deal out of this arrest and had
Speaker 5: gotten a lot of attention, accolades, media pats on the back.
Speaker 5: None of that sounds like something that they would want
Speaker 5: to have undone or exposed. They'll probably look a little silly.
Speaker 5: So they've got the real guy, but they still got
Speaker 5: the wrong guy.
Speaker 10: So I think what happens at that point right now
Speaker 10: is anyone's guest. But I think it's pretty clear what happened,
Speaker 10: and I think it's a perfectly normal human reaction, right,
Speaker 10: And I think we need to be very careful about
Speaker 10: what happened with the police when they found Lester Jones.
Speaker 10: The first reaction when you're a police officer detective and
Speaker 10: you've got your suspects, and you've booked your suspects and
Speaker 10: you've charged your suspect, all of us, all of us
Speaker 10: human beings, have brain means that exist to confirm our
Speaker 10: existing beliefs or suspicions. Right, So if you think you've
Speaker 10: got the person, and you find somebody who's got everything
Speaker 10: and the car, and it's clearly involved in this crime
Speaker 10: spree in some kind of way, your first reaction is,
Speaker 10: how are they connected? Right? They must be because obviously
Speaker 10: I've got my person. And so that was their reaction. Now,
Speaker 10: the police's first reaction is that they must be connected.
Speaker 10: They must be connected. They must be connected, because we've
Speaker 10: got our person. And so they interrogate Lester Jones for
Speaker 10: a very long time while in the process of executing
Speaker 10: search warrants on his department and his car. Are various
Speaker 10: places that could have property connected to the crime spree.
Speaker 5: Did you know Lester Jones? No, so you had no
Speaker 5: connection to him. What's happened right?
Speaker 10: Lester Jones says he first told police he didn't know
Speaker 10: Robert Jones. He was then in the custody of at
Speaker 10: least one officer who's pretty notorious for his interrogation tactics,
Speaker 10: and after many hours of interrogation questioning, Lester Jones says
Speaker 10: he does know. But Jones you can't name him, actually
Speaker 10: calls him something else and it says that he lent
Speaker 10: him his car in exchange for jewelry or something, and
Speaker 10: there was a gun in the car, and one day
Speaker 10: he lent it to Robert Jones, and then it came
Speaker 10: back and the gun.
Speaker 7: Was still in the dash, some very funny story.
Speaker 10: As this is going on, then they're getting more and
Speaker 10: more property from less Jones, and then they find the gun,
Speaker 10: and they find more stuff from the stalk holder side,
Speaker 10: and it comes pretty clear that Lester Jones is not
Speaker 10: just somebody who lent his car out for someone else
Speaker 10: to commit crimes in that he didn't keep anything from
Speaker 10: By the way, when they executed all the search warrants
Speaker 10: on Robert's house and places he used to visit, places
Speaker 10: you know, where people stayed, that he knew. They found
Speaker 10: absolutely nothing connecting him to any of these crimes, which.
Speaker 5: Would be a little bit of.
Speaker 10: A relp exactly exactly, and the police have said that,
Speaker 10: you know, they knew there may be something wrong when
Speaker 10: there was nothing connecting him. Usually if you've been on
Speaker 10: a robbery spree, you're going to find something connecting each
Speaker 10: of those crimes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my guess is that by the time they were
Speaker 5: finished interrogating Lester, Jones would have probably said that he
Speaker 5: knew Abraham Lincoln too.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think he probably would have done that, but
Speaker 10: he certainly knew Robert. And then ultimately he made some
Speaker 10: cockamami story about how they all did the murder together,
Speaker 10: Robert and his friends, because they'd also book Robert's friends
Speaker 10: in connection with this crime spree. And it's a totally
Speaker 10: preposterous statement. But what happens is there's some really good
Speaker 10: police work in this case. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 10: very often these cases involved very sloppy police work, and
Speaker 10: there were certainly some of that on one end, but
Speaker 10: there were some good detectives. And I think whether it
Speaker 10: should be a lot of credit given is a couple
Speaker 10: of the detectives, one homicide detective and one robbery detective
Speaker 10: who even though they had this confession from Ester Jones
Speaker 10: allegedly saying me and Robert did all this stuff together,
Speaker 10: and even though there was a couple of eyewitness ideas
Speaker 10: of Robert, they were and still are the kind of
Speaker 10: quality police that understand that that in itself is not
Speaker 10: damning right, that it can be, but it is not conclusive,
Speaker 10: and that that's the kind of evidence. It's very manipulable.
Speaker 10: And so they kept investigating, and they kept investigating, and
Speaker 10: they investigated whether these statements that he'd given in the
Speaker 10: custody of this officer who somewhat notorious, whether there was
Speaker 10: any truth to them. And they said, and they have
Speaker 10: now testified many times under oath, both of them sadly
Speaker 10: not at any of Robert's initial proceedings. But later on
Speaker 10: when they were called and asked these questions, they couldn't
Speaker 10: confirm any connection between Lester and Robert. There was no
Speaker 10: evidence connecting Lester Jones and Robert Jones. Lester Jones had
Speaker 10: been in prison and only got out eighteen months before
Speaker 10: this for an armed robbery that happened in the French
Speaker 10: Quadron in nineteen seventy nine, so maybe he got a
Speaker 10: little under two years previously. So there was a long
Speaker 10: period where they were together. They didn't live in the
Speaker 10: same neighborhood. There was just no connection between them. And
Speaker 10: so the.
Speaker 7: Police who had figured that out, they figured that, well,
Speaker 7: we've got.
Speaker 10: This statement, but it's kind of bs. We're going to
Speaker 10: keep investigating and see whether our initial suspect really was
Speaker 10: good for this. Have testified now under oath many times
Speaker 10: that they went to the prosecutors and they said, we've
Speaker 10: got nothing on Robert Jones. It was one person on
Speaker 10: that crime, and it was Lester James. It wasn't Robert,
Speaker 10: and there is no connection between these two, and.
Speaker 5: The victims knew it was one person.
Speaker 10: All with one exception, which I'll come to in a minute,
Speaker 10: all describe one person. And so what happens is you
Speaker 10: have the police saying Detective James Stewart, who again deserves
Speaker 10: a lot of credit here, went to the prosecutors and
Speaker 10: he has testified as the only time in his law
Speaker 10: enforcement career, his thirty year career in law enforcement, that
Speaker 10: he went to the prosecutors and said I arrested the
Speaker 10: wrong guy initially, and he will tell you it was
Speaker 10: a bit of a black eye, that it was a
Speaker 10: high profile case. We thought we had our guy and
Speaker 10: it turned out.
Speaker 7: It wasn't him that somehow got lost.
Speaker 10: Well, I mean, I say that very loosely. I think it.
Speaker 10: I think it was never never taken seriously or never
Speaker 10: turned over. And what happened is Robert remained charged on
Speaker 10: several of the crimes. Lester got charged with some of
Speaker 10: the crimes, and they tried to just kind of have
Speaker 10: it both ways, the prosecutors, this is not the police
Speaker 10: at this point.
Speaker 5: What's going on in your head and your you know,
Speaker 5: your psyche at this time, because you're locked up now
Speaker 5: right awaiting the outcome of this, I assume you couldn't
Speaker 5: post bail, right, No, how much did you know about
Speaker 5: what Emily's describing that was going on in the situation.
Speaker 5: It was all swirling around you. But I don't know
Speaker 5: what they were telling you, or what or what you
Speaker 5: thought your outlook was, or whether you thought you would
Speaker 5: be able to get justice.
Speaker 1: At first, I thought it was a print.
Speaker 2: Actually I really thought it was a print, because I mean,
Speaker 2: when you knew for a fact that you didn't do
Speaker 2: anything and somebody saying that you did it is like
Speaker 2: the officer.
Speaker 1: Has got to be some type of joke.
Speaker 2: And I know when we got to the station and
Speaker 2: they went the question is, I'm like telling you, now,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? I don't know nothing that
Speaker 2: you're talking about. You know, It's really it was crazy
Speaker 2: even at some point after I got charged. I mean,
Speaker 2: I didn't know nothing what was going on. Only thing
Speaker 2: that I was able to get information about the situation
Speaker 2: is from the news because it was on the news
Speaker 2: every day. Didn't at a certain pert that had became
Speaker 2: so frust grated just to watch it. So at one point,
Speaker 2: I mean I just didn't watch it, don't want to
Speaker 2: hear about.
Speaker 1: It or nothing.
Speaker 2: I mean I was just kind of like frus grated
Speaker 2: in the back of my mind. I just I realized,
Speaker 2: I say, okay, maybe they might drop the case.
Speaker 1: Oh. I just couldn't see myself getting found guilty.
Speaker 5: So you were in jail, right, and the TV would
Speaker 5: come on and you'd see yourself on the TV. Right,
Speaker 5: How strange is that?
Speaker 1: That was crazy?
Speaker 5: And then I imagine that doesn't engender anything other than
Speaker 5: hostility from the guards or other inmates, because you're now
Speaker 5: kind of a notorious guy, right right, and you're also
Speaker 5: like an infamous guy. But I mean, what a weird thing.
Speaker 5: Like here you are just a regular guy nineteen years old,
Speaker 5: a couple kids, trying to figure out your life, right,
Speaker 5: and the next thing you know, you're in prison or
Speaker 5: jail which could be worse in prison, right, and you're
Speaker 5: watching TV and there you are this like notorious, like
Speaker 5: multiple rapist, murderer, a guy like you're sitting there going
Speaker 5: wait a minute, you even having this strange nightmare.
Speaker 1: Or right right?
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's exactly what it was. As you say,
Speaker 2: you know, jail can be you know because during that
Speaker 2: particular time in the nineteen nineties, New Orleans Parish Old
Speaker 2: Paris jail, which most violent criminals is, really was tough.
Speaker 2: I mean I grew up in a tough naggs, so
Speaker 2: I know how to defend myself, and I had to
Speaker 2: defend myself a lot in the sense of, you know,
Speaker 2: you hear people talking, you know, like oh, yeah, they're
Speaker 2: gonna send him, They're gonna send him to the prison.
Speaker 2: He gonna never get out of person. You know, you
Speaker 2: can walk up on conversations like that. I'm like, it's like,
Speaker 2: you can't tell nobody that because poor people, especially young blacks,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like they must have did something, they're
Speaker 2: doing some type of crime. And it was just the
Speaker 2: image that's perpetuated about that. It's like, Okay, this nigga
Speaker 2: wrote and did all this, and I'm like, you can't
Speaker 2: even explain that to nobody, right, you know, all that
Speaker 2: very few people that me understand and even in the
Speaker 2: back of their mind like, okay them people ain't got
Speaker 2: them child with all that for nothing, you know, you
Speaker 2: can't even expend.
Speaker 1: So at that point, I mean, I really need to
Speaker 1: talk to him about it.
Speaker 2: I mean I just I kind of like stayed to myself,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people was fearful because I was
Speaker 2: kind of like a quiet person in the sense and
Speaker 2: they know I was a person that will defend myself.
Speaker 2: So when it is, you know, it's kind of like
Speaker 2: kept everything out of balanced. You know, it's like it
Speaker 2: was a crazy time. You know, you got, like I said,
Speaker 2: you walked up on a conversations that like, yeah, they
Speaker 2: gonna send this bigga such and such, They're gonna execute me,
Speaker 2: and all kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you don't even know nothing about me.
Speaker 5: So Emily, back to you. Finally comes to a trial.
Speaker 10: Four years after he was arrested.
Speaker 5: He was tried four years waiting.
Speaker 10: For He sat in jail for four years.
Speaker 5: Wow, let's just think about that for a second. Four
Speaker 5: years is just if we just think about anybody listening,
Speaker 5: think about what the last four years of your life
Speaker 5: looked like and all the things that you did, and
Speaker 5: you're just sitting there waiting try That's a crazy amount
Speaker 5: of time and it should be. It's totally unacceptable. Emily.
Speaker 5: What happened to the constitutional right to a speedy trial?
Speaker 5: Where does that fit into all of this? Isn't that
Speaker 5: one of the central tenets of the justice system in America.
Speaker 10: There are a couple of factors at work that meant
Speaker 10: Robert sat in jail for four years. One of them is, Honestly,
Speaker 10: I don't think anybody from the prosecutor's office wanted to
Speaker 10: try this case because it was clear that Lester Jones
Speaker 10: had done this crime spree to anybody looking at the file,
Speaker 10: and Lester Jones was before Robert's trial, was convicted of
Speaker 10: the stotthomicide. He was convicted of the robberies that happened
Speaker 10: right afterwards, so.
Speaker 5: He'd already been convicted of that.
Speaker 10: James was convicted of that and centers to life of
Speaker 10: that parole. And he was convicted of the robbery that
Speaker 10: happened a couple of hours later, and he was charged
Speaker 10: with the robbery that happened after Robert was in jail.
Speaker 10: And I think that any reasonable prosecutor looking at the
Speaker 10: case thought he's going to use that as his defense,
Speaker 10: except as a complicating factor, which is that they charged
Speaker 10: Robert with the murder as well, even though it was
Speaker 10: one person crime. They charged him with the murder by
Speaker 10: by presenting perjury to the grand jury information they knew
Speaker 10: to be false. It horrendous, horrendous behavior by a prosecutor
Speaker 10: in this case. So Roberts sort of hands were tied
Speaker 10: on his defense, or were because his defense lawyer was
Speaker 10: also asleep at the wheel. His defense lawyer rarely showed up.
Speaker 10: When he did, he did not do any investigation right away.
Speaker 10: Robert had an alibi. It was at his son's birthday
Speaker 10: party on the night this rape happened. Then he was
Speaker 10: charged with everybody there could have testified to that if
Speaker 10: the defense had spoken to them within two, three, four,
Speaker 10: five weeks, six weeks, two months, even six months, right,
Speaker 10: But he didn't. He rarely showed up to court. He
Speaker 10: didn't file any motions, any motions except a motion for
Speaker 10: speed trial after he'd been asking for delays for two years.
Speaker 10: It was Robert just is a very clear example of
Speaker 10: somebody who gets completely lost in the system. Nobody really
Speaker 10: wants to do anything about it. The judge isn't going
Speaker 10: to push it, the prosecutor is not going to push it.
Speaker 10: The defense is asleep at the wheel. Roberts defense overs
Speaker 10: was criminally negligent in this case.
Speaker 5: I'm getting the chills when I hear you say that
Speaker 5: he rarely showed up to court, Like that sounds impossible, right.
Speaker 10: No, it's not impossible at all. Robert gets brought in
Speaker 10: cross cubs. Defence is not there, he continued to next week.
Speaker 10: It's just for a status or something anyway, and so
Speaker 10: it just rolls along like that for years. There's a
Speaker 10: very basic motion in a criminal case called if there's
Speaker 10: an identification, and it's called emotion to suppress the identification,
Speaker 10: which would have been a very fruitful motion in this
Speaker 10: case because there are a lot of problems with the
Speaker 10: way the identification happened, and it was very clear by
Speaker 10: the way the victim's testimony changed from what she told
Speaker 10: police initially to match Robert Jones right by the time
Speaker 10: of the trial, she was just describing the person she
Speaker 10: saw in front of her. She wasn't describing the person
Speaker 10: she remembers from the night of the crime. And if
Speaker 10: you look at the police notes from the time, it's
Speaker 10: very very clear that she's describing an entirely different person
Speaker 10: by the time Robert James is on trial from the
Speaker 10: initial description. Emotion to suppress the identification is a basic
Speaker 10: Every single criminal defense lawyer with an identification case does
Speaker 10: it unless there is a airing reason not to. That
Speaker 10: would not be the case here. Robert initially was appointed
Speaker 10: to public defender. That's what happened. If you don't have
Speaker 10: a lawyer with you on the day that you go
Speaker 10: to be arranged, they'll they'll appoint the public defender and
Speaker 10: then Robert. Ultimately, Robert's family scraped together to hire probably
Speaker 10: the worst purchase they've ever made, hire a defense lawyer
Speaker 10: for him, because everybody knew the public defender was overworked,
Speaker 10: didn't necessarily have the resources to do what they needed
Speaker 10: to do, at least that's the reputation right in the
Speaker 10: nineties here, and rightly so they were. They didn't have
Speaker 10: any money and didn't have any resources, and so when
Speaker 10: the public defenders appointed, they file all these boiler plate motions,
Speaker 10: motion to suppress the identification, motion to suppress any evidence
Speaker 10: was seized, all the kinds of things the criminals defensor
Speaker 10: does for good reason. When the private lawyer comes in
Speaker 10: the case, he withdraws all those motions and doesn't file
Speaker 10: any of his own. So there was never any issue
Speaker 10: as to whether an identification of Robert, which was an
Speaker 10: incorrect identification it tends out, was coming in at trial.
Speaker 10: He withdrew the work that had already been done and
Speaker 10: did nothing else for four years. He didn't even go
Speaker 10: to the trial of Lester Jones for them murdered that
Speaker 10: his client was charged with, or read the transcript of
Speaker 10: that case to see what they were saying at Leicester
Speaker 10: Jones's trial about who did this crime. He then pled
Speaker 10: his client guilty to murder to manslaughter in the Stott
Speaker 10: homicide after he'd got him wrongly convicted at a trial
Speaker 10: of rape. He then recommended that Robert plead guilty to
Speaker 10: four separate charges, including including the homicide that Lester Jones
Speaker 10: had already been convicted of in a crime that everybody
Speaker 10: described as a one person crime, and a robbery that
Speaker 10: Robert didn't even know he was pleading guilty too. And
Speaker 10: I guarantee the defense lawyer didn't even know it was
Speaker 10: a different incident either. He didn't even know he pled
Speaker 10: guilty to that crime until twenty years later. We told
Speaker 10: him the paperwork that shows it was a completely separate incident,
Speaker 10: and they snuck it in there, and he told him
Speaker 10: to plead, and he didn't know he was pleading guilty
Speaker 10: to a separate robbery. This defense lawyer is now suspended,
Speaker 10: I think, from the practice of law, but he is
Speaker 10: not permanently disbarred, which is a crime in itself.
Speaker 5: That is a crime in itself, and of all the
Speaker 5: horrible twists and turns in this case. For some reason,
Speaker 5: it's really bugging me. I've just been imagining you showing
Speaker 5: up at court and looking to your right and to
Speaker 5: your left and not seeing your lawyer and going what's
Speaker 5: going on here? Like, what the fuck is going on here?
Speaker 2: Outside of family members in you know, friends, That was
Speaker 2: supporting It's like me against the entire system in the
Speaker 2: sense it's like I'm staying before a system and nobody
Speaker 2: has my interest. It's obviously I didn't do these crimes,
Speaker 2: but the idea of having no type of representation for
Speaker 2: my particular RSIs like it was crazy.
Speaker 5: So now you end up getting convicted sends to the
Speaker 5: most popular sentence in Louisiana, oh, the most common, most
Speaker 5: popular among law enforcement. I would say, life without parole, right,
Speaker 5: and you end up going to Angola. I mean, you're
Speaker 5: such a positive person. People just light up when they
Speaker 5: talk about you. And you know, we were talking last
Speaker 5: night about how it took twelve thousand hours of legal
Speaker 5: time of lawyers donating time to free you from this
Speaker 5: grip that the criminal justice system had on you. And
Speaker 5: from being in that room with a lot of people
Speaker 5: who did the work, I can say that if somebody
Speaker 5: would have said, well it would have taken one hundred
Speaker 5: and twenty thousand hours, people would have said, well, ill
Speaker 5: sign me up for that too. I mean, like everybody
Speaker 5: feels like this was the best time that they spent
Speaker 5: because of the way you are. But how how are
Speaker 5: you like that? How is that possible? When someone has
Speaker 5: been through this very profound experience of being abandoned even
Speaker 5: by the people that are being paid to protect you,
Speaker 5: not just the system, but also your own team, and
Speaker 5: then being thrust into this Angola plantation. They call it
Speaker 5: a jail, but it's a slave plantation. How'd you maintain
Speaker 5: this attitude?
Speaker 2: Well, we'll give me spriint is it used to bother
Speaker 2: me to talk about it, but I have to now
Speaker 2: because it's therapeutic. But nineteen ninety six I was found guilty.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, within that same year, I
Speaker 2: lost my brother. My brother was killed. And you know
Speaker 2: brother he was he was maybe a year, well two
Speaker 2: years younger than me, but we did everything together coming up.
Speaker 2: And he wasn't like only a brother, He was like
Speaker 2: a son of me, because like I said, I was
Speaker 2: born like a big brother, father figure. And you know,
Speaker 2: my brother he dropped out of school as well, and
Speaker 2: he sold drugs. You know, he kind of rose to
Speaker 2: the level of selling drugs. That kind of the thing
Speaker 2: was for guys in that particular thighborhood. And he was
Speaker 2: one of my my supporters in the sense of, you know,
Speaker 2: being able to help my mother out even though you know,
Speaker 2: She didn't condone it. She always disagreed with that type
Speaker 2: of action. But he helped out, and he helped me out.
Speaker 2: He was helping me out because he knew that I
Speaker 2: was innocent. In prison, I couldn't afford the attorney.
Speaker 1: So he sold drugs to.
Speaker 2: Raise money to try to get me a better attorney,
Speaker 2: and he lost his life because of that.
Speaker 1: He lost his life.
Speaker 2: So from that particular stage, from that part right there,
Speaker 2: I decided that I wanted to make a change. That
Speaker 2: was one of the most bivocult point in my life
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety six, and I decided that I'm gonna
Speaker 2: fight for justice. I'm gonna get out of prison and
Speaker 2: anyway I see and justice umber standing and fight because
Speaker 2: I feel like, you know, he the most currazy person
Speaker 2: in my eyesight because he gave it likee to try
Speaker 2: to save minds. So from that part, I re educated myself.
Speaker 2: And when he got my GED, I rose in school,
Speaker 2: got my GED and I sit and try to master
Speaker 2: every aspect of life I could, because I wanted.
Speaker 1: To be a beacon up hope to other people.
Speaker 2: So my method what I use is I kind of
Speaker 2: like detached myself from any type of cir circumstance in
Speaker 2: the sense of like being denied, like I always helped him.
Speaker 2: I used to get denied all the time. When I
Speaker 2: started doing my approceed litigation, you know, it was hurting
Speaker 2: at first, and then it started hurting them less so
Speaker 2: because I realized that they were all in denying the rich,
Speaker 2: that it wasn't denied me. I had to detach myself
Speaker 2: from it, and I realized that everything is take a process.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying I don't never get frustrated or
Speaker 2: get discouraged or hurt because I'm a human being. But
Speaker 2: I don't allow nothing just to devastate me like that
Speaker 2: no more, you know, and not just kind of keep
Speaker 2: on going no matter what it is. I just have
Speaker 2: to deal with it whatever face me. I don't care
Speaker 2: what it is. I want to face it. I'm not
Speaker 2: afraid of anything anything to anybody, any system.
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid of it. I'm just face me with it.
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid.
Speaker 5: I can see that, and it is and I know
Speaker 5: I'd heard that aspect of your story and it really
Speaker 5: knocked me out. I mean, the idea that in the
Speaker 5: process of the system trying to steal your life to
Speaker 5: actually stole your brother's life because in a very real way,
Speaker 5: he was in this case a sort of I mean,
Speaker 5: you can't really say it any other way. It was
Speaker 5: a heroic figure, and that he was out there doing
Speaker 5: what he was doing, not because he wanted fancy jewelry
Speaker 5: or whatever else, but so that he could pay for
Speaker 5: a lawyer, which you should have had in the first place. So, Emily,
Speaker 5: how did this seemingly impossible situation up against the odds
Speaker 5: as much as you could be How did you unravel this?
Speaker 10: We started looking at Robert's case in two thousand and
Speaker 10: four before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and we were
Speaker 10: looking because it was very clear to us that if
Speaker 10: we could find the rape kit from the rape we
Speaker 10: could probably exonerate him because it was pretty clear to
Speaker 10: us that he was innocent, And so we looked for
Speaker 10: it and it was lost. It had been thrown out
Speaker 10: or destroyed or just gone. All the biological evidence that
Speaker 10: could be tested had been thrown out before Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 10: And I say that because a lot of a lot
Speaker 10: of evidence got lost in Katrina. And so there's either
Speaker 10: are cases where you look now and if it was
Speaker 10: a pre Katrina case, the evidence is likely gone, but
Speaker 10: this was just the general negligence of New Orleans before
Speaker 10: Hurricane Katrina flooded the evidence facilities. So we looked at
Speaker 10: that and we wanted to help Robert. But then when
Speaker 10: the evidence was gone, we came back post Katrina. We
Speaker 10: also we talked to Lester Jones and he said, yeah,
Speaker 10: I don't know this guy, and they maybe say it,
Speaker 10: I owner who he is. When we were screening the
Speaker 10: case to see if it would be a good case
Speaker 10: to do DNA testing on, and when he said that
Speaker 10: to us, and we were just doing it for purposes
Speaker 10: of checking out whether we really thought Robert was innocent
Speaker 10: and DNA could help him, that made us really understand
Speaker 10: that Robert was completely innocent and they screwed this up royally,
Speaker 10: so we couldn't do it for DNA testing. And then
Speaker 10: when we came back after Katrina, we didn't really have
Speaker 10: the resources to do his case at that point because
Speaker 10: it was a big and very very complicated case. It
Speaker 10: was not just the rape case, but it's the homicide
Speaker 10: plea and the subsequent the subsequent cases, and though it
Speaker 10: was going to be a very complicated, long struggle, we
Speaker 10: kind of knew that, and we also thought Robert was
Speaker 10: a pretty good lawyer. He may't be able to do
Speaker 10: it himself. Frankly, we knew he had some good information,
Speaker 10: including the stuff from Lester Jones, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 10: we I mean, like a good judge could give him
Speaker 10: relief with what he has. And we knew he was litigating,
Speaker 10: so we stayed in touch with him, but we weren't
Speaker 10: working on his case at that point because of our
Speaker 10: resource issues. He got denied. You know, we're looking at
Speaker 10: a case with a guy that we're convinced is innocent.
Speaker 10: There's no physical evidence. They've lost the district attorneys far,
Speaker 10: which many times in these cases is the source of
Speaker 10: ex or information that can get a conviction thrown out
Speaker 10: if the person is innocent. So they didn't have the
Speaker 10: district's attorney's father'd lost the physical evidence. He'd exhausted his
Speaker 10: appeals he had. He was charged and convicted of ten
Speaker 10: separate charges from three different crimes, four of which he
Speaker 10: pled guilty to. He was sentenced to life with that barol.
Speaker 10: He had eight sentences of twenty five years on top
Speaker 10: of that, plus a twenty year sentence, and he'd had
Speaker 10: two place conviction applications which had been rejected now, which
Speaker 10: means he is procedurally barred and time barred.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 10: So all that, I have a really great colleague who
Speaker 10: was my coke haunts on this case for many years
Speaker 10: and who looked at it at that point and he's like,
Speaker 10: I think we can get this guy excelerated. And I
Speaker 10: thought he was joking, actually, but he explained that he
Speaker 10: thought we could get some more information and that where
Speaker 10: it would come from. And I said, well, let's do it.
Speaker 10: And that was in two thousand and nine, and we
Speaker 10: litigated for a long time. And you know, the default,
Speaker 10: the default, especially for someone who's tried to get themselves
Speaker 10: out of prison before, is deny, deny, deny, deny. Right,
Speaker 10: you're out of time two lately, fathers before it's the
Speaker 10: same information, it's not the same information. We found a
Speaker 10: whole lot more information in the police files than Robert
Speaker 10: had been able to get himself from prison, including the
Speaker 10: details of Lester Jones's crime spree which had never been
Speaker 10: turned over to Robert, including the initial descriptions of the
Speaker 10: rape victim in the case, which clearly matched Leester Jones
Speaker 10: not Robert Jones, in key ways in which they were
Speaker 10: different in the ways in which they were different. Her
Speaker 10: initial descriptions matched Lester Jones, not Robert Jones. We found
Speaker 10: information in the Leicester Jones files at the District Attorney's
Speaker 10: office showing that they had presented perjury basically to the
Speaker 10: grand jury in Roberts case to try to get an
Speaker 10: indictment in the Stot homicide. And then we talked to
Speaker 10: the police officers who said, oh no, we figured out
Speaker 10: that wasn't rober Jones. We told the prosecutors that, so
Speaker 10: you know, at that point we had a lot of
Speaker 10: information that most reasonable courts would look at and say,
Speaker 10: this man does not need to be convicted of this anymore.
Speaker 10: But it still took us seven years, and we filed
Speaker 10: in twenty ten, and we spent the first three and
Speaker 10: a half years arguing over whether he was too late
Speaker 10: to bring all this information to the courts which he
Speaker 10: couldn't have got previously been doing his best to get
Speaker 10: well every could from prison, and so we did that
Speaker 10: many times. In these cases, what you argue about for
Speaker 10: a long time is whether the person even has the
Speaker 10: right to be there in court presenting their new evidence.
Speaker 10: So we did that for three and a half years
Speaker 10: twenty ten to the middle of twenty thirteen, right and
Speaker 10: then after that we presented the evidence in a hearing
Speaker 10: late twenty thirteen in front of a judge here in
Speaker 10: New Orleans, and it included testimony from both the two
Speaker 10: main detectives who investigated the robbery spree and the homicide.
Speaker 10: We had all of the police documentation in the record,
Speaker 10: We had witnesses, We had a lot of people talking
Speaker 10: about the fact that there was no connection between Robert
Speaker 10: James and Lester Jones. We had expert witnesses and so on.
Speaker 10: And the judge, you know, she took a few months
Speaker 10: to deny Robert, say no and there's nothing new under
Speaker 10: the sun. And so then we took what's called a
Speaker 10: writ to the appellate court here and said, it is
Speaker 10: clear that all this information should have been heard by
Speaker 10: the jury that convicted Robert Jones, even shouldn't have even
Speaker 10: got as far as a trial when you've got all
Speaker 10: this information that it was clearly the wrong person, including
Speaker 10: the police telling you that you've got the wrong person.
Speaker 10: And so we took that appeal and the appellate court
Speaker 10: took it on and they threw out Robert's conviction in
Speaker 10: late twenty fourteen, October twenty fourteen.
Speaker 5: So October twenty fourteen, you're both in court.
Speaker 10: No no, So we argued it in September, which is
Speaker 10: the Court of Appeal. So Robert is not present for
Speaker 10: that because it's an appellate court, right, it's not the
Speaker 10: district court. If you're in prison, you get brought in
Speaker 10: for a something that involves taking evidence or testimony, so
Speaker 10: you get brought into the district court, which is like
Speaker 10: the trial level court. After that, Roberts family was there
Speaker 10: when we argued it in the Court of Appeal. Breathe
Speaker 10: was there, Kendra, I think came. But it's just lawyers
Speaker 10: in court arguing us. Now, there's no right to be
Speaker 10: present if you're locked up for something like that. So
Speaker 10: we did that and then they rendered a decision pretty
Speaker 10: soon after that, throwing out his conviction, which, of course
Speaker 10: the state then appealed to the Supreme Court. So then
Speaker 10: that was another seven months I think, pending in front
Speaker 10: of the Louisiana Supreme Court, which did not overturn the
Speaker 10: appellate court. Right, they declined to overturn the appellate court.
Speaker 10: So by June one, twenty fifteen, Roberts new trial was final.
Speaker 10: That meant he really was getting a new trial, so
Speaker 10: then he's pre trial again. In June of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 10: on the rape case, we approached the district attorneys. We said,
Speaker 10: this is a case you should absolutely dismiss. It's clear
Speaker 10: At wasn't him. The whole thing is a mess. You
Speaker 10: should absolutely dismiss it. And the district attorney's response to
Speaker 10: that was, he's welcome to take a play if he
Speaker 10: wants to do it, and he complete to anything, we
Speaker 10: don't really mind. They were fine with him being out
Speaker 10: of prison. They just had to have them convicted of
Speaker 10: something in their minds. So then we moved to get
Speaker 10: the judge to remove herself from the case, the judge
Speaker 10: who had denied him relief previously, because at that point
Speaker 10: they revealed a memo in their file they didn't even
Speaker 10: reveal to us while we were challenging Robert's conviction that
Speaker 10: proved exactly what Robert had been saying since two thousand
Speaker 10: and six, which is that Leicester Jones was asked to
Speaker 10: testify at Robert's trial by the prosecutor that he knew
Speaker 10: Robert Jones, and Leicester Jones said to the prosecutor, no,
Speaker 10: I'm not going to do it. I don't know him.
Speaker 10: Those statements that the police kicked out of me were
Speaker 10: not true. So the only connection they ever had between
Speaker 10: Lester and Robert with these statements by Lester Jones. Leicester
Speaker 10: told Robert, and Robert filed that stuff in court in
Speaker 10: two thousand and six, and you know in an affidavit
Speaker 10: and Lessons came and testified in in two six for
Speaker 10: Robert when he was basically a pro sa litigant. I
Speaker 10: didn't know Robert Jones. Police made me say I did.
Speaker 10: I didn't know him, and I told the prosecutor that
Speaker 10: before trial. At Robert's trial, at his rape trial, where
Speaker 10: the prosecutor spent the entire closing argument saying that they
Speaker 10: were friends, they know each other, Lester used to lend
Speaker 10: Robert his car. That was his closing argument, after the
Speaker 10: man had said I don't know Robert Jones, and there
Speaker 10: was no evidence entered at trial that they knew each other,
Speaker 10: and Robert had said that there's there's a Brady violation.
Speaker 10: Here is sculptory information that should have been turned over,
Speaker 10: which is that Leicester Jones told the prosecutors he didn't
Speaker 10: know me, and of course when he was pro say
Speaker 10: in two thousand and six and seven, had ignored it,
Speaker 10: and when we brought his case back to court, we
Speaker 10: had added that. We said, you know, in addition to
Speaker 10: all the other stuff we found, here's the evidence that
Speaker 10: Leicester Jones told the prosecutors. That's Brady. That is sculptory
Speaker 10: information for Robert favorable. The jury should have heard that
Speaker 10: Ester didn't know Robert, right, because the crimes all happened
Speaker 10: in Leicester's car and he's got all the jury that's
Speaker 10: an exculpatory fact. The prosecutor owed that to the defense,
Speaker 10: and when we were on the case all through the courts,
Speaker 10: the prosecutor's like, ah, this, you know, this, this sudden,
Speaker 10: made up thing that Lester Jones said about not knowing
Speaker 10: Robert is unbelievable. And the courts repeatedly rejected that part
Speaker 10: of Robert's challenge. And in the DA's files a memo
Speaker 10: confirming the conversation that Lester Jones had had with the
Speaker 10: prosecutor the day before Robert Jones's trial, telling the prosecutor
Speaker 10: he didn't know Robert Jones. And they turned that over
Speaker 10: to us after we'd managed to win Robert's case, and
Speaker 10: at that point we said, you cannot be trusted. This
Speaker 10: DA's office cannot be trusted. And the judge who had
Speaker 10: denied Robert relief was actually a DA for some of
Speaker 10: the part of the time that Robert's case was being
Speaker 10: litigated in two thousand and six and two thousand and seven,
Speaker 10: and we said at this point that memo was in
Speaker 10: one of her files, one of her ada's didn't turn
Speaker 10: that over while arguing that Lester Jones was lying that
Speaker 10: he didn't know Robert in post conviction like no one,
Speaker 10: no one can be trusted. We need a new judge. Ultimately,
Speaker 10: we didn't ask the das to recuse themselves yet, although
Speaker 10: we may have got there if they had continued what
Speaker 10: they were doing in the pre trial case. So that's
Speaker 10: when we got a new judge on the case who said, yes,
Speaker 10: first of all, I'm going to give this man bail
Speaker 10: because's pretty clear he's probably not going to get convicted again,
Speaker 10: and that's a factor that you consider. And I'm going
Speaker 10: to kick the old judge off the case because she
Speaker 10: could be a witness in why it took so long
Speaker 10: to disclose this memo, and so on and so forth right.
Speaker 10: That's also when we fought the motion to barn and
Speaker 10: reprosecuting him just because of the decades of misconduct at
Speaker 10: this point, and so because because of Judge let him
Speaker 10: out on bail, he didn't have to take a plead,
Speaker 10: which a lot of it is that people do to
Speaker 10: bring these wrongful conviction cases to an end just so
Speaker 10: they can come home, especially if they have kids. You know,
Speaker 10: we have had several clients you've done that. But because
Speaker 10: we've got already won on my a new trial, he
Speaker 10: was out on bail, so he was able to stare
Speaker 10: out of the DA and the dabling first, and he
Speaker 10: dropped all the charges in January of this year, on.
Speaker 11: His forty fourth birthday.
Speaker 5: So they dropped the charges on your birthday. You'd been
Speaker 5: out for how long at the time that the charges
Speaker 5: were dropped?
Speaker 1: A year over?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So what happened? Did Emily call you and say
Speaker 5: this is it?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 5: How did you find out?
Speaker 9: Remember that night?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: He did describe that moment, how it happened. Who broke
Speaker 5: the good news?
Speaker 11: Richard?
Speaker 10: Richard, let me have that privilege.
Speaker 1: Emily brought the good news. She she called me, what
Speaker 1: you say?
Speaker 2: She said that She told me how the process was
Speaker 2: going to go, and you know, everything that we had
Speaker 2: to go through the process, but they was going to
Speaker 2: drop the charge. They called her and I said, wow,
Speaker 2: this is crazy.
Speaker 10: To be clear, two days before they asked him if
Speaker 10: you wanted to play against.
Speaker 2: Right Actually yeah, they called she. I also received a
Speaker 2: call in regards to another plea. We discussed that that
Speaker 2: everything was off the tape. I'm gonna fight these people
Speaker 2: head nil too and everything with all the five.
Speaker 1: Of my spirit. I'm gonna fight them. I don't that
Speaker 1: you don't even talk to me about.
Speaker 5: How long was that phone call.
Speaker 10: We were in the middle of a multi day hearing
Speaker 10: at the time, but it wasn't just like, you know,
Speaker 10: all of a sudden out of the blue. So we
Speaker 10: were at the end of a long day in court,
Speaker 10: preparing for the next day in court. We were going
Speaker 10: to have some fun witnesses, both Richard and I are
Speaker 10: kind of looking forward to and they called that evening
Speaker 10: and you know, to be to be fair to the
Speaker 10: Assistant district's attorney, he is the one we had been
Speaker 10: talking to and he had recommended that resolution to his
Speaker 10: boss and I had ultimately got approval and he was
Speaker 10: very He's a professional guy. So he and I talked
Speaker 10: for a minute, and he guaranteed me that it was
Speaker 10: not something that was still up in the air. It
Speaker 10: had been done, and that they were calling him the
Speaker 10: victim to tell her that it would be happening, not
Speaker 10: to ask a permission for it to happen, and so
Speaker 10: we just knew that had to get done before before.
Speaker 10: So we had a day then of not being in court,
Speaker 10: and then we went back the next day.
Speaker 5: So, Emily, is there anything you'd rather do for a living?
Speaker 5: How how satisfying was that day? How much joy did
Speaker 5: you get from that?
Speaker 7: I mean, the Robert Jones day?
Speaker 5: Quite a lot.
Speaker 10: Now, My problem is I can't think of anything else
Speaker 10: I'd rather do for a living. And that's so, that
Speaker 10: is it's hard, but the anger, right, I am very,
Speaker 10: very angry about what happened to Robert. And I'm more
Speaker 10: angry than he is because I have not had to
Speaker 10: deal with my anger in a prison where it would
Speaker 10: only destroy me. So I still feel shame and horrified
Speaker 10: by what they did to him and what good people
Speaker 10: allowed to happen on their watch, too, And I think
Speaker 10: that that is it's very that is a very anger
Speaker 10: is and energy. Right, it's a very motivating force. But
Speaker 10: it's real, right, I feel when I see people who
Speaker 10: were involved, it's I can't be nice to them. I
Speaker 10: can't think you're okay because you let that happen.
Speaker 5: It's not okay. There's nothing okay about it. I don't
Speaker 5: know how people go so far wrong that they lose
Speaker 5: their humanity and they you know, even though in this
Speaker 5: line of work, you and I see it over and
Speaker 5: over again, but it's still just doesn't add up to me.
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't get it. I don't. I can't
Speaker 5: relate to it. I can't. I can't sugar color. And
Speaker 5: it's weird because the exgonneries are much better at it
Speaker 5: than we are.
Speaker 10: Great because we haven't had to deal with it.
Speaker 5: They right, they find this grace which is beautiful and inspiring.
Speaker 5: I guess you're right, though for us, I never thought
Speaker 5: of it that way. For us, this continual state of
Speaker 5: anger that we find ourselves in drives us forward, and
Speaker 5: so that works for us, and I guess that's just
Speaker 5: the way it is.
Speaker 10: I do want to say that the problem I think,
Speaker 10: and the thing that maybe makes me most angry about
Speaker 10: Robert's case is I do see exactly how all that happen,
Speaker 10: and I do see people that I know and people
Speaker 10: who have made other good decisions in their lives, and
Speaker 10: I think that the normality, in some ways, like the
Speaker 10: US abnormality, the extreme version of what happens to Robert
Speaker 10: is horrifying, But actually it's so bloody normal, like all
Speaker 10: of those people and those players, and that system works
Speaker 10: that every day. And I think maybe the reason I
Speaker 10: find his case most upsetting is I can see how
Speaker 10: each of those decisions were made, and how or not made,
Speaker 10: or how all of those things didn't get done that
Speaker 10: needed to be done, and how no one had time
Speaker 10: to pay attention, and how somebody assumed this, and somebody
Speaker 10: assumed that, and somebody thought they weren't really breaking the rules,
Speaker 10: with the exception of the one thing that I think
Speaker 10: screwed everything up, which was knowingly presenting a lie to
Speaker 10: the grand jury. Other than that, I see how that
Speaker 10: train went, and I think I see it a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I see it a lot too. I mean, this
Speaker 5: is a particularly crazy case and a particularly backwards and
Speaker 5: corrupt system in this state and city that we're in
Speaker 5: right now, New Orleans, Louisiana. But at the end of
Speaker 5: the day, Robert, you're here and that is ultimately the
Speaker 5: great part of this story. And you've now reconnected with
Speaker 5: your family. I know your beautiful daughter was out with
Speaker 5: us last night, and the evidence would show from having
Speaker 5: seen her last night that you did a pretty remarkable
Speaker 5: job of being a responsible even from being hundreds of
Speaker 5: miles away locked up, you never lost sight of those responsibilities,
Speaker 5: which is extremely admirable.
Speaker 10: Two those three of his kids as well, and two
Speaker 10: of them live further away. But he's been an amazing
Speaker 10: father to his children.
Speaker 5: How are the kids, all of them doing their kid
Speaker 5: that's a miracle too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, although all of them doing well.
Speaker 2: One of the main reasons, like I said, I just
Speaker 2: re educated myself and I started understanding the world that
Speaker 2: I lived in, in the world most people live in.
Speaker 2: Is that statistically wise, they say that you know, generally
Speaker 2: whit when your father, especially a young black father, when
Speaker 2: they go to prison, that generally their children follow yep.
Speaker 2: And me understanding that from being educated, I see that
Speaker 2: wasn't gonna happen to my kids. I wasn't gonna liow
Speaker 2: that happen to my kids. So you know that forced
Speaker 2: me or compelled me in the sense this guy like
Speaker 2: made sure they was on the straight path too. So
Speaker 2: that was one of the things outside of just having
Speaker 2: a responsibilities, having a love for your own children, but
Speaker 2: to make sure to make sure that these don't follow
Speaker 2: that those statistics. And my thing is, you know, and
Speaker 2: I tell people this all the time that and I
Speaker 2: know it's well yourself, you'll get frustrated about it, and
Speaker 2: y'all get angry, and you should be. And my angring
Speaker 2: in frustrations about the situation. I think, like you said,
Speaker 2: we kind of like look at it different. I don't
Speaker 2: feel like justice l being served until the system is
Speaker 2: fixed and to the point where you can't do it
Speaker 2: to nobody else, you know what I'm saying, Well, you
Speaker 2: can't really and I'm not saying that the system actually
Speaker 2: be perfect, but they got things here, especially here in
Speaker 2: New Orleans, that they got processes, you know that that
Speaker 2: can happen, that that system can actually be fixed because
Speaker 2: those decisions that they make and they're end up to
Speaker 2: a practice of law, this silliness or foodness or this
Speaker 2: no care for human life scisions that they make really
Speaker 2: affect people lives, you know, they think about all the
Speaker 2: years that hard knic and then you they have another administration,
Speaker 2: then you have canders. Ever, all these hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 2: of people that you set in the prison, innocent or not.
Speaker 2: But for the most part of those who are innocent,
Speaker 2: when you make decisions to do that, you're affecting their children, lives,
Speaker 2: their mother lives, their sisters, their brothers, their family, their friends.
Speaker 2: You change the dynamics of those people family, and you
Speaker 2: discard things. You know, you discard things when you take
Speaker 2: that man from out the household, that male figure from
Speaker 2: out the household that people have a lot of respect
Speaker 2: for and a lot of love. You have kids go
Speaker 2: off into different directions, the sisters, their brothers, their aunts.
Speaker 2: They changes things, you know, their mother, you know, And
Speaker 2: my mother's a strong woman. She has grown because she
Speaker 2: dealt with a lot, She lost a lot. She dealt
Speaker 2: with my father's dead, she deald with my brother dead,
Speaker 2: and she had to deal with the fact that I
Speaker 2: was gonna for a crime that she knew how to commit,
Speaker 2: and she had to deal with that that way that
Speaker 2: weighs heavily own her.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Those decisions affected a lot of that changed a lot
Speaker 2: of lives, and that's the thing, that's one of the
Speaker 2: key things, and that's what I that's why I fight,
Speaker 2: That's why I fight the way I fight. You lend
Speaker 2: the systems anything tools what's right, that's that's all, that's
Speaker 2: all I want, That's how I feel. That's how justice
Speaker 2: serves me in the sense of fixing that system so
Speaker 2: they wouldn't be able to do it to nobody else.
Speaker 5: I do want to have you talk a little bit
Speaker 5: about your art.
Speaker 2: Or one of the things I do with I pain
Speaker 2: issues in regards to like social justice issues.
Speaker 1: I pain issues that deal with that.
Speaker 2: Now I feel like, oh, it's another way, another area
Speaker 2: that I feel like it can be effective. When I
Speaker 2: do a piece of art, I'm all like, hopefully that
Speaker 2: you can look at that particular expression and over a
Speaker 2: period of time, or if you just look at it
Speaker 2: every day, whatever, that it actually can change your perception
Speaker 2: about this particular issue, that expression that I'm trying to
Speaker 2: conven to you. And if I know, if you can
Speaker 2: change the way you think about then ultimately continue the
Speaker 2: way you act about something.
Speaker 1: So that's what I kind of like do my art.
Speaker 5: I've seen it and it's beautiful. Every painting has an
Speaker 5: element of your philosophy right of social justice and of
Speaker 5: a strong viewpoint of right and wrong, and that it
Speaker 5: really hit me hard. I know you're doing five different
Speaker 5: things every day in terms of work and building your
Speaker 5: new life. But talk for a second, if you would,
Speaker 5: about the Freedom Foundation and what it is and how
Speaker 5: people can get involved.
Speaker 2: The Freedom Foundation is a nonprofit organization that I co
Speaker 2: founded with Daniel Rito and Jeron Morgan. Well, actually it's
Speaker 2: created to mentor the you and to give them directions
Speaker 2: so they wouldn't find themselves in the situation like we
Speaker 2: even though we didn't committ these particular crime, but we
Speaker 2: still became part of the massive incarceration problem that's happened
Speaker 2: in this country. So we kind of like mentor them
Speaker 2: by giving them our experiences and allowing them helping them
Speaker 2: acquire skill set, then it can prevent them from you know,
Speaker 2: going to commit crimes and hanging out with the wrong
Speaker 2: crew of people and falling victim to the system.
Speaker 5: You know, is there a Freedom Foundation website?
Speaker 1: Yeah, freedom Foundation dot org.
Speaker 5: Okay, so that's Freedom Foundation m Foundation dot org.
Speaker 1: And that's that's exactly what it means. It mean like free.
Speaker 5: Them, double meaning I like it so, Robert, we have
Speaker 5: a tradition here at Wrong for conviction, which is that
Speaker 5: we turn the mic over to you, the star of
Speaker 5: the show, the Axennery, for any closing thoughts that you
Speaker 5: want to share.
Speaker 2: The essence of this particular story, of my story, as
Speaker 2: I always tell a lot of people, is that you
Speaker 2: look at all of the obstacles or the odds that
Speaker 2: I had to overcome throughout my childhood through I mean,
Speaker 2: do now, and it should be able to inspire you
Speaker 2: to withstand and knowing that if you stand, I mean,
Speaker 2: if you can put whatever in your mind, you can
Speaker 2: stay determined and focus on whatever your aim is, whether
Speaker 2: whatever it is, no matter what you go through, whatever
Speaker 2: life throws at you, if you just keep on pushing forward,
Speaker 2: then I think that you can overcome anything. That's the
Speaker 2: essence of what I want people to get for my
Speaker 2: story out of you know, like I said, I know
Speaker 2: what happened to me is dramatic, and what happened to
Speaker 2: a lot of design the reasons so dramatic, and I
Speaker 2: mean can it touched people?
Speaker 1: I mean it hurt me.
Speaker 2: So I know hear a lot of people, but for
Speaker 2: the most part, I don't want people to feel sorry
Speaker 2: for me, you know, and I know they do either
Speaker 2: have empathy, but I don't want you to feel sorry
Speaker 2: for me. I want you to just use my story
Speaker 2: as an inspiration of you, whether.
Speaker 1: If you just just think about it.
Speaker 2: A lot of high school dropouts, you know, of a
Speaker 2: kid that thinking that he can't he can't overcome this,
Speaker 2: or I can't go to this particular profession because I
Speaker 2: didn't have an education.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know what it is, because I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't have an education, and I had a focus,
Speaker 2: and I was determined to get an education.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I had a focus and determined to get out of prison.
Speaker 2: And with the help of the instant projecting people with
Speaker 2: that particular hut yourself and other people that's on this
Speaker 2: particular route.
Speaker 1: I got out. I got out of prison. The eyes
Speaker 1: will stacked against me.
Speaker 2: So I just want people to use this particular story
Speaker 2: and let them know that anything they did facing in life,
Speaker 2: that you can do coming.
Speaker 1: But you gotta be you gotta be fearless in it.
Speaker 2: You know, just kind of face it, head up, don't
Speaker 2: dug it this uncle straight at it.
Speaker 5: And you not only got out of prison. But you
Speaker 5: did it on your terms, and it took an incredible
Speaker 5: amount of courage and perseverance. But you're here and I
Speaker 5: appreciate you you being here, and I want to thank
Speaker 5: both of my amazing guests today. Robert Jones twenty three
Speaker 5: and a half years in prison for criming and commit
Speaker 5: and coming out swinging strong and commit.
Speaker 1: It still swing.
Speaker 5: And the one and only for some nature, Emily Ma,
Speaker 5: the fearless leader of the Innocence Project New Orleans ipn O,
Speaker 5: and please support their work I do. What is the
Speaker 5: website for the Innocence Project New.
Speaker 10: Orleans www dot ip dashno dot org give.
Speaker 5: Till it hurts. Thanks you've been listening to a very
Speaker 5: special episode of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm from New Orleans.
Speaker 5: Once again, thank you to my guest Robert Jones and Lyma.
Speaker 9: Thank you Jason, don't forget to.
Speaker 4: Give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It really helps.
Speaker 4: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and
Speaker 4: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 4: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 4: to Innocence project dot org to learn how to donate
Speaker 4: and get in. I'd like to thank our production team,
Speaker 4: Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music in the show
Speaker 4: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 5: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 5: and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 5: Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 5: and association with Signal Company Number one