Speaker 1: On January twenty fourth, two thousand and four, James J.
Speaker 1: Davis went to a big party at the Brooklyn Masonic
Speaker 1: Temple to celebrate his little brother, Daniel's birthday. James's knight
Speaker 1: was cut short when he drank too much and vomited
Speaker 1: several times. Daniel put him in a cab to meet
Speaker 1: with his girlfriend, Caneen Johnson. Two hours later, a big
Speaker 1: fight broke out in the club, resulting in their friend
Speaker 1: Jamel Black, being stabbed and another man, Blake Harper, being
Speaker 1: shot and killed. Police would interview people at the scene
Speaker 1: to get a description of the shooter, a light skinned
Speaker 1: black man with braids, but James didn't have braids at
Speaker 1: the time. He had short hair with waves. Police then
Speaker 1: called stabbing victim Jammel Black's home and spoke to his sister,
Speaker 1: who happened to be James's spurned ex, Tina Black, who
Speaker 1: casually named James as the shooter, even though she had
Speaker 1: never even been at the party in the first place.
Speaker 1: Police found Jamel at the hospital, who told them the
Speaker 1: identity of the real shooter Tay Hall, So was it
Speaker 1: Tay or Ja. Two weeks later, Jose Machakote, who was
Speaker 1: at the club that night would enter the precinct and
Speaker 1: second tin of Black's identification. About six weeks after that,
Speaker 1: James found himself the target of an interrogation, a sham lineup,
Speaker 1: and a murder charge. Only after his case was picked
Speaker 1: up by the Legal Aid Society was it revealed that
Speaker 1: Jose Machakote was actually one of the most dangerous drug
Speaker 1: dealers in Brooklyn and the subject of a joint FBI
Speaker 1: NYPD investigation. Magic Kote was murdered five months after his
Speaker 1: false testimony that sent James to prison for the rest
Speaker 1: of his life. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. That's me.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, and today you're going to hear a
Speaker 1: story that when they write the History of Wrongful Convictions
Speaker 1: they could put this on the cover because this story
Speaker 1: is so outrageous that well, you're just going to have
Speaker 1: to hear it for yourself.
Speaker 2: Hello, this is a prepaid correct call from sure an
Speaker 2: inmate ed New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
Speaker 2: This called the subject of recording and monitoring.
Speaker 3: To accept charges, Press one to refuse charges, Press two
Speaker 3: if you would like thank you for using securists. You
Speaker 3: may start the conversation now.
Speaker 1: On the phone from prison where he's been for almost
Speaker 1: twenty years, we have James J. Davis. Hello, Jay, thanks
Speaker 1: for calling in and I hope that we'll be able
Speaker 1: to make a difference. And with us today we have
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Felber, who is the supervising attorney in the Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction Unit of the Legal Aid Society.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the beginning. James, you had a
Speaker 1: rough childhood growing up in Brownsville and Brooklyn, right, yeah, very.
Speaker 5: My movel and my favel. Really in my life it
Speaker 5: was more my grandmother. School was good up until maybe
Speaker 5: in fifth sixth grade, where where you start noticing that
Speaker 5: your close ain't the same as everybody else's and people
Speaker 5: pick on you and stuff like that. My father died
Speaker 5: when I was in fourth grade. Roughly two years later.
Speaker 5: My mother passed away. The year before that, my brother
Speaker 5: father passed away, so both of us had no parent
Speaker 5: by the time I reached sixth grade.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like a certain amount of responsibility, you know,
Speaker 1: as an older sibling at that point, I think.
Speaker 5: I had all of the responsibility I had to watch
Speaker 5: after my little brothers. I had to keep people from
Speaker 5: picking on him outside, as well as keep people from
Speaker 5: picking on me and bullying me. So that's when the
Speaker 5: fights started happening. I started getting into a lot of trouble. No,
Speaker 5: everybody has your mother joke.
Speaker 1: I've got to imagine that they stung you know a
Speaker 1: lot more with all you've been through already. So now
Speaker 1: you're staying at Grandma's looking out for your younger brother.
Speaker 1: But who's looking out for you?
Speaker 5: By the time I was fourteen, I was getting beat
Speaker 5: a lot. I had a cousin who was supposed to
Speaker 5: be disciplining me for getting in trouble in school and
Speaker 5: in the neighborhood, and it was kind of obsessive. So
Speaker 5: what ended up happening. I started running to the streets
Speaker 5: as much as I could, for as long as I could.
Speaker 5: I was doing a lot of stupid stuff. I was young,
Speaker 5: robbing people. I was selling weed or whatever the old,
Speaker 5: the older guys on the corner might be able to supply.
Speaker 1: And that's when you ended up in juvie.
Speaker 5: Yes, when I make it the juvie. I'm going to
Speaker 5: school and I met this teacher, a guy named mister Bliss,
Speaker 5: very very very smart guy, like he knew something about
Speaker 5: anything or whatever you wanted to act. I liked that
Speaker 5: he had that much knowledge, and I confided in him
Speaker 5: about schooling, and he convinced me to take my GB
Speaker 5: and I ended up passing. At that pass. He was like,
Speaker 5: you can go to community college and get going to
Speaker 5: high school now for re education. I was taking like
Speaker 5: biology and global history or economics classes and it was
Speaker 5: giving me credit for as somebody had come and check
Speaker 5: my work.
Speaker 1: So I understand you were accepted the CAPE for your
Speaker 1: community college in North Carolina, near where your aunt lived,
Speaker 1: no small feat considering your record, but your probation officer
Speaker 1: wouldn't transfer your supervision out of state, so you were
Speaker 1: trying to get yourself into some computer science classes locally.
Speaker 5: Around that time, I found out that my brother was
Speaker 5: into the streets, and that's pretty much where I got
Speaker 5: back involved in the streets, selling weed and being there
Speaker 5: for this case.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth, take us back to January twenty fourth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and four. What happened that faithful night?
Speaker 6: Okay, So January twenty fourth was his brother, Daniel's birthday,
Speaker 6: and Daniel wanted to go to a party that was
Speaker 6: being held at a Masonic temple lodge where they hosted events.
Speaker 6: It was a party for people with January birthdays.
Speaker 5: Well, my brother birthday was coming up. It was more
Speaker 5: whatever you want to do, I'm going to participate. Bo
Speaker 5: is an older guy from the neighborhood that he's like
Speaker 5: a well like guy. He does parties. He knew my
Speaker 5: brother as well. Two of them was promoting the party
Speaker 5: po and another guy, I don't know which one of
Speaker 5: them my brother. He been talking about his birthday for
Speaker 5: a long time, so they put him on a flyer.
Speaker 6: I guess Jay was not really a party goer. He
Speaker 6: was a quiet guy. I think he'd tell you himself
Speaker 6: he'd rather stay home with friends smoke weed. But he
Speaker 6: loved his brother. He was fiercely protective, so he decided
Speaker 6: to go with them as well.
Speaker 5: Well my brother birthday. My plan was the like, we
Speaker 5: just gonna chill, maybe call up some girls to come
Speaker 5: hang out at the projects with us, someone making drink
Speaker 5: for free, and hang out. He was been doing going
Speaker 5: to the party because his name was on a flyer.
Speaker 5: So it comes to be almost twelve o'clock and I
Speaker 5: wanted to surprise my brother. So I walked to the
Speaker 5: liquor store before it closed to get a bottle on
Speaker 5: the weet and a bottle of Hennessy. And when I
Speaker 5: got back, my brother was like, oh, I forgot the party.
Speaker 6: And Jay was not a big drinker, so by the
Speaker 6: time he got to the party, he had had a
Speaker 6: few already, and then he persuaded the bouncer to let
Speaker 6: him or one of the hosts who let him combine
Speaker 6: the two drinks he was drinking, which were hennessy and champagne,
Speaker 6: kind of a disgusting combination. He threw them to you know,
Speaker 6: we put them together. He went into the party, and
Speaker 6: he proceeded to have a few more drinks in the
Speaker 6: bathroom because they told him, okay, you can have your
Speaker 6: own drink, but you have to put some shade on it.
Speaker 5: Before you know it. I was trying to rush my
Speaker 5: drinks so that we can actually get out of the bathroom.
Speaker 5: I wanted to see what the party was really like.
Speaker 5: Plus my brother, you know, smoke, so he's out on
Speaker 5: the dance floor most of the time. Anyway, I'm like,
Speaker 5: I want to get out there and actually enjoy some
Speaker 5: of his birthday with him, and the mixture didn't agree
Speaker 5: with me. The hennessy and the moat turned my stomach over.
Speaker 5: That was the start of the end of the night.
Speaker 5: I threw up maybe once or twice in the bathroom,
Speaker 5: and before I know it, through the laughing, I hear
Speaker 5: my brother pretty much like, come on, man, now, I
Speaker 5: got to take you back home.
Speaker 4: We just got here.
Speaker 5: We ain't even fully been in the club long enough
Speaker 5: full negotiation. I just told him I just woke me outside,
Speaker 5: I catch a cab and I go to my girlfriend house.
Speaker 4: So they went outside.
Speaker 6: They got a cab and James called his girlfriend, Caneen Johnson,
Speaker 6: and took the cab to her place and she met
Speaker 6: him outside. Her mother didn't like James, so they would
Speaker 6: stay with her aunt.
Speaker 5: I got there at two forty five, maybe three. So
Speaker 5: when I got there, she's sitting on the steps already,
Speaker 5: I step out there cav th got threw up in
Speaker 5: between cars before I even touched this side. Well, she
Speaker 5: came running down the steps, rubbed my back, I think,
Speaker 5: and walked to our house, stop at the store and
Speaker 5: went into our house. And that was this. I think
Speaker 5: she even had a couple of jokes and I, hey, y'all,
Speaker 5: go again.
Speaker 6: So he was long gone Before anything happened. At the party,
Speaker 6: which was around four in the morning, a fight broke
Speaker 6: out and somebody was seriously stabbed. We now know that
Speaker 6: was Jamel Black, and Blake Harper was shot and killed.
Speaker 6: A couple other people were shot, but not seriously, but
Speaker 6: James had already left the party hours earlier.
Speaker 1: So you wake up the next morning at your girlfriend
Speaker 1: Kneen's her aunt's house, really, and one of the guys
Speaker 1: you were with, Jamel Black, had been stabbed the night before.
Speaker 1: How did you hear that news?
Speaker 5: Well, both of us up. The news is on. It's
Speaker 5: about the Masonic temple. Immediately I called my house on
Speaker 5: the landline, and first thing I asked, is my brother there.
Speaker 5: My grandmother like, yeah, he came in last night. He's
Speaker 5: in the room sleep. You know, they had a fight, right,
Speaker 5: And I asked for my aunt because my auntor probably
Speaker 5: no more than my grandmother would and my aunt is like, yeah,
Speaker 5: Jameel got stabbed and this guy got stabbed and somebody
Speaker 5: got killed. But nobody knew who the guy was that
Speaker 5: got killed. So I'm like, I'm coming over there.
Speaker 1: I got there.
Speaker 5: My brother pretty much told me I wasn't really involved
Speaker 5: in it, but it was crazy in it and a
Speaker 5: fight broke out, people shooting, girls screaming and everybody running.
Speaker 1: Police had responded to the scene and they interviewed a
Speaker 1: number of people at the club, and no one that
Speaker 1: they interviewed knew the identity of the shooter. But he
Speaker 1: was described as a young, light skinned blackmail with braids
Speaker 1: on the back of his head. Now, James, is that
Speaker 1: an accurate description of you at that time?
Speaker 5: No, I actually didn't have braids at the time. I
Speaker 5: had a low sea like waves.
Speaker 1: So police have already interviewed witnesses at the scene the
Speaker 1: night before. You're a friend who has stabbed Jamel Black.
Speaker 1: They call his house, but they get his sister on
Speaker 1: the phone in stat Now, James, you have a storied
Speaker 1: past with this young woman.
Speaker 5: Correct, seeing a black like the first girlfriend I ever had.
Speaker 5: We've never done anything together, but we've been like close
Speaker 5: friends ever since, being boyfriend and girlfriend at like eight
Speaker 5: or nine years old. And when I went to Juvie,
Speaker 5: me and her made contact again somehow, and we was
Speaker 5: talking about pretty much moving in with each other when
Speaker 5: I came home. But when I came home from Juvie.
Speaker 5: It was like, I don't know. She gave me like
Speaker 5: the code showed up. I did three and a half
Speaker 5: years almost, I'm coming home to a girlfriend thinking that
Speaker 5: you know, sex is like right there on the list
Speaker 5: one of the first things at the seeing each other's
Speaker 5: family and kicking it for a little bit, and herme
Speaker 5: on it was like, nah, I'm not trying to do that.
Speaker 5: So I was like, not really to be pressure in
Speaker 5: peer pressure in anything. But this is stuff that we've
Speaker 5: been speaking about for like over a year. Ready after
Speaker 5: that day, we never spoke as girlfriend and boyfriend again,
Speaker 5: but we see each ever in passing and we always
Speaker 5: remain called you, but we never spoke on a relationship
Speaker 5: or any of that stuff ever again.
Speaker 6: What we learned was that Tina Black still harbored a
Speaker 6: flame for him and was hugely jealous when she found
Speaker 6: out that he had a new girlfriend, and out of spite,
Speaker 6: she told the police that James did the shooting, even
Speaker 6: though you can tell by the only police record on
Speaker 6: her she wasn't at the party that night. She was
Speaker 6: very sick with juvenile diabetes, too sick to go to
Speaker 6: a party. The police should have known that she wasn't
Speaker 6: at the party, and yet they just focused on him.
Speaker 6: The second page of the detective notebook says Purp James
Speaker 6: Davis Jay, So it's just tunnel vision from then on out.
Speaker 1: Right, So people that were there couldn't identify the suspect.
Speaker 1: The woman who wasn't there does identify a suspect. And
Speaker 1: of course we know that Tina later on confessed to
Speaker 1: her mother and to others as she had lied to
Speaker 1: the police. It just seems like so many different things
Speaker 1: went wrong that didn't need to right, and this now
Speaker 1: we're up to the part with the detectives went to
Speaker 1: the hospital, right, and the interviewed Jammel Black. So can
Speaker 1: you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 6: So the detectives actually went to the hospital the day
Speaker 6: of the incident and they were told he was just
Speaker 6: coming out of surgery.
Speaker 4: He was too out of it.
Speaker 6: The doctors wouldn't let him interview. Jamel Jamelle testified out
Speaker 6: our hearing and he told the court that what happened
Speaker 6: was those detectives came back later and they wanted to
Speaker 6: know what happened, and at first he wasn't really engaging
Speaker 6: with them, but then they made it seem like they
Speaker 6: thought he was the shooter, which makes sense because if
Speaker 6: there's a brawl and one person gets shot and the
Speaker 6: other person get stabbed, you kind of think that they're
Speaker 6: they're somehow related.
Speaker 4: So because of that, Jammel told them what.
Speaker 6: Happened, which was he had been stabbed by the guy
Speaker 6: who was subsequently killed, and this guy named Tay Hall
Speaker 6: was helping him out of the party when he says,
Speaker 6: oh shit, pushes Jammel to the ground, and you hear
Speaker 6: shots fired. Jammel looks up and he sees Tay putting
Speaker 6: a gun back in his pocket and saying, I got
Speaker 6: to get out of here. The police are coming. But
Speaker 6: there was no written report about that conversation and it
Speaker 6: never came out. At the hearing, the judge said, Oh,
Speaker 6: it's just not credible that they wouldn't have a report
Speaker 6: about it. Well, it's also not credible that you wouldn't
Speaker 6: interview the person who was stabbed, because they would most
Speaker 6: likely have the most relevant information.
Speaker 1: So let's fast forward then to a couple of months
Speaker 1: after the shooting, right, and that's when the warrant squad came.
Speaker 1: They were actually looking for your younger brother. When they
Speaker 1: arrested you, and you weren't even aware that they were
Speaker 1: looking for you because you knew that you didn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with this and there was no reason
Speaker 1: to suspect you of anything other than being drunk and
Speaker 1: throwing up on the sidewalk. And they arrested you. It
Speaker 1: brought you to the precincts and interrogated you for hours
Speaker 1: and hours. Maybe they thought you were going to confess
Speaker 1: or something like, maybe even a false confession, but you
Speaker 1: never did. No.
Speaker 5: They took me from my house and under the guys
Speaker 5: that I had a warrant, which I did. I did
Speaker 5: have a warrant for disorderly conduct and do community service.
Speaker 5: But they never took me to the court building. They
Speaker 5: took me down to like homicide headquarters where I'm at
Speaker 5: Detective Hutchinson for the first time before they took me
Speaker 5: to the precinct. At the precinct, they pretty much was
Speaker 5: asking me, do I know Jamail Black? And do I
Speaker 5: know what happened to Jamail Black? So I explained to
Speaker 5: them the same thing that I just was telling you
Speaker 5: about getting drunk and leaving a party, and that seemed
Speaker 5: the right. They left. Then they came back and they
Speaker 5: were still asking me about the party and where I
Speaker 5: was at. So I gave him more detail of who
Speaker 5: I went with, who actually walked me to the door, whatever,
Speaker 5: where I went after I left the party, and they
Speaker 5: left again. But this time I'm feeling funny. I'm like,
Speaker 5: I ain't keep asking me where was I at the
Speaker 5: next time he came in, I think he started asking
Speaker 5: about the shooting. Do you know the guy that got killed?
Speaker 5: I'm like, I don't know the guy that got killed,
Speaker 5: but I know one of the guys that got shot
Speaker 5: because I went to school with him as well. But
Speaker 5: I don't know the guy that got killed. And from there,
Speaker 5: I don't remember exactly the rest of the questions, but
Speaker 5: it was pretty much all about the shooting there. So
Speaker 5: I'm like, when am I going to court? I'm supposed
Speaker 5: to be going to court. They're like, no, what we're
Speaker 5: going to do is we're gonna put you in the lineup.
Speaker 5: I'm like, a lineup. I need a lawyer. It's like,
Speaker 5: do you have a lawyer. I'm like, no, I don't
Speaker 5: have a lawyer, but I have a lawyer in my
Speaker 5: family who can come and represent me. And he asked
Speaker 5: me for his name and phone them I'm like, I
Speaker 5: don't have a phone number for him, but he should
Speaker 5: be listed. My uncle, Robert Davis, is a lawyer. I
Speaker 5: want somebody present. But he tells me if I don't
Speaker 5: have a number for him, then he can't call them.
Speaker 5: And they just took me back to the room and
Speaker 5: left me in the room. And from there it went
Speaker 5: to the lineup and it came back with four guys.
Speaker 5: Three of them is dark skinned, two of them have
Speaker 5: he set this can't be the people that they're going
Speaker 5: to put in the lineup with me. Nobody looks like me,
Speaker 5: nobody favors me in no way, shape or form. But
Speaker 5: I'm like, this can't be. And he bring two more
Speaker 5: guys in, like Indian looking guys. I'm like, nah, this
Speaker 5: is this is a fix.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about this lineup
Speaker 1: and how things went so wrong?
Speaker 6: As he says in his own statement, this is not
Speaker 6: a fair lineup. So the lineup in itself was already suggestive.
Speaker 6: But there were three people who viewed the lineup. One
Speaker 6: of them was Jose Macha Cody. He was the first
Speaker 6: witness that they brought into view a photo spread about
Speaker 6: six weeks earlier, and it was unclear why he was called.
Speaker 6: He was the brother in law of the man who died,
Speaker 6: but he was not one of the people that had
Speaker 6: been originally interviewed. It's pretty common knowledge that when you've
Speaker 6: picked someone out of a photograph, you pick them again
Speaker 6: in the lineup because you recognize them as the person.
Speaker 6: But the lineup happened six weeks later. At the lineup,
Speaker 6: the two other witnesses, Harold Poe and Sean Belton, they
Speaker 6: were brought there by the mother of the deceased, and
Speaker 6: according to their testimony, she called them and said, they
Speaker 6: have the guy they think who did it at the
Speaker 6: precinct and they want you to just come to see
Speaker 6: if you can identify him, or something to that effect.
Speaker 6: That's already contaminating the lineup because there's a pressure put
Speaker 6: on them that this is the person they have, the person,
Speaker 6: they feel compelled to sit pick one person, especially especially
Speaker 6: when the mother of the deceased has chauffeur driven you
Speaker 6: to the precincts. So they picked James, but one of
Speaker 6: them said, always from the beginning, we resembles him, except
Speaker 6: for the braids, because when James got arrested, his hair
Speaker 6: was short, and the other guy, Sean Belton. Now, originally
Speaker 6: he had said I didn't see anything when the police
Speaker 6: spoke to him. Now he said, oh, I just said
Speaker 6: that because I was afraid. But the description he gave
Speaker 6: before he viewed him was someone wearing a Scully cap
Speaker 6: and that's nowhere in any description. And also five ten
Speaker 6: and James was like five seven, so he didn't even
Speaker 6: describe someone that looked like James.
Speaker 4: So that's how they picked him.
Speaker 6: There was a fourth person at the lineup who did
Speaker 6: not testify at the trial or the hearings, and what
Speaker 6: Detective Hutchinson said about him wash we picked him out.
Speaker 6: He just wouldn't sign the sheets, saying he had again
Speaker 6: you know some things, just your alarm goes off. That
Speaker 6: smells fishy. So we caught up with him. He did
Speaker 6: not want to be involved. He made that one hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty percent clear. But what he told us was no,
Speaker 6: I never said that was the guy. That's why I
Speaker 6: wouldn't sign. And what I said to them was, if
Speaker 6: you say that's the guy, that's the guy. So to me,
Speaker 6: that says they were prompted to pick James, and I
Speaker 6: should just add that. Sean Belton at the second trial
Speaker 6: recanted again and said I just glanced at him. He
Speaker 6: gave four separate statements, so that was him, and the
Speaker 6: other guy always only said he resembled him. So essentially,
Speaker 6: it really came down to host him Macha Cody.
Speaker 5: When you think about the convenience of Tina Black Jr.
Speaker 5: Giving my name to the detective, and then a week later,
Speaker 5: Jose Machakodi, the drug building, violent robber who's a humble
Speaker 5: bobber now just happens to walk into the precint though
Speaker 5: he didn't stay at the crime scene when everything happened,
Speaker 5: he fled the crime scene. He walks into the precinct
Speaker 5: and he picks my picture. He's the only one that
Speaker 5: goes to the precinct and it just so happens that
Speaker 5: he's known in this neighborhood. To me, the whole case
Speaker 5: is weird from beginning to end. I think that this
Speaker 5: was a misunderstanding. Then maybe from speaking to Jamail Black
Speaker 5: and him telling them the story he told them about
Speaker 5: pay then them acts and his system about kay Is
Speaker 5: she telling them Jane and they just went from there
Speaker 5: with the easiest thing that they could do to close
Speaker 5: the case. And it just so happened to be that
Speaker 5: I was convenience for them.
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Speaker 5: After the lineup, they told me I was being charge
Speaker 5: with murder, and he offered me a deal pretty much detaching,
Speaker 5: Hunchinson asked me to tell him that I did it,
Speaker 5: because he already heard about the story of what happened.
Speaker 5: Somebody told him that two groups of guys was fighting
Speaker 5: and the guy in one of the groups had a knife,
Speaker 5: and the guy and the other group had a gun,
Speaker 5: and he shot the guy with the knife to defend himself. Like,
Speaker 5: if you tell me that, then I can help you.
Speaker 5: If I speak to the DA, I'm like, what the
Speaker 5: hell kind of shit is that? Why the fuck would
Speaker 5: I tell you I did something that I'm telling you
Speaker 5: I wasn't even aware of. I wasn't there for it.
Speaker 5: And he's like, you know, if I was you, I
Speaker 5: would have did the same thing. If it was me
Speaker 5: a guy comes at me with a knife and I
Speaker 5: got a gun, I would show you ain't doing that wrong.
Speaker 5: I was like, well, do you want me to admit
Speaker 5: this something I didn't do that's wrong right there? And
Speaker 5: told them if you would have told me that this
Speaker 5: was this was about from the beginning, I probably would
Speaker 5: have never spoke to you. I wouldn't have tried to
Speaker 5: help you.
Speaker 1: But here it is.
Speaker 5: I tried to help you, and I turned out to
Speaker 5: be the one going to jail.
Speaker 1: Pretty much.
Speaker 5: A fingerprinted me and put me in a holding cell
Speaker 5: for the rest of the night.
Speaker 1: So now things go from bad to worse right the trial.
Speaker 1: There's a number of problems at both trials, although the
Speaker 1: first trial amazingly ended up. And you know it hurts
Speaker 1: me to say this, and I know you must have
Speaker 1: had a lot of sleepless nights over this, James, but
Speaker 1: the first trial. In spite of the fact that you
Speaker 1: had substandard defense, you still ended up with an eleven
Speaker 1: to one hung jury in favor of a quittal. I
Speaker 1: rarely hear that, So talk about the trial from your perspective, James.
Speaker 5: So his trial is going on. I'm reading the paperwork
Speaker 5: that they gave me the day before my trial actually started.
Speaker 5: I'm still going through paperwork, and I'm noticing that, you know,
Speaker 5: they black out the name, so you don't know who's who.
Speaker 5: But I'm listening to the stories and now it's making
Speaker 5: sense with the DD fives from the police station, because
Speaker 5: now I'm seeing, Oh, this is the guy that said
Speaker 5: he never seen nothing at the crime scene. That changed
Speaker 5: his story the other two times to this story now,
Speaker 5: which happened to be Sean Belton. His first statement to
Speaker 5: the police at the crime scene was, I never seen
Speaker 5: what happened. I was talking to two girls and shots
Speaker 5: went off and I ducked for cover to protect myself.
Speaker 5: I never seen anything, havel poll throughout the whole thing,
Speaker 5: he never identified me from the precinct to trial. He
Speaker 5: only told the officers that it was two guys that
Speaker 5: looked like each other that had the fight in the
Speaker 5: shooting and everything, and he only referred to me as
Speaker 5: looking similar to one of the guys in that trial.
Speaker 5: He said, I resemble a guy that he's seen at
Speaker 5: the preaching. He never picked me out and said definitively
Speaker 5: that's him right there that I've seen doing the shooting.
Speaker 5: Like you have this one guy, Jose Machakodi, who's laming
Speaker 5: the cause of his murder on his brother in law. Well,
Speaker 5: the two prosecutors witnesses beside him are saying that he
Speaker 5: started the whole fight. You have a conflict between your
Speaker 5: own witnesses where they're pointing the finger at this guy
Speaker 5: saying that he did X, Y and Z that caused
Speaker 5: us to come over and be of assistance to him.
Speaker 5: But this is your main witness, Jose Machakodi, and he's
Speaker 5: saying that I had nothing to do with it. I'm
Speaker 5: a humble barber. I never committed a crime again after
Speaker 5: I was locked up all of those years ago.
Speaker 1: But here it is.
Speaker 5: You got two witnesses that you put in on a stand.
Speaker 5: You want us to believe that they identified me, but
Speaker 5: you don't want us to believe that they're seeing that
Speaker 5: this guy's lying and he started to fight that led
Speaker 5: to this shooting and stabbing.
Speaker 1: Did you think you were going to be exonerated as
Speaker 1: you should have been?
Speaker 5: I thought that I would be at the first trial
Speaker 5: because the jury that we had, they was asking questions
Speaker 5: that were relevant, that should have stood out to the
Speaker 5: police officers that did the investigation, to the DA's office
Speaker 5: that got their paperwork from the police officers, And though
Speaker 5: my lawyer didn't put on the best case, the jurors
Speaker 5: used their comments.
Speaker 6: Sense Kenein Johnson, his girlfriend did testify at the first trial.
Speaker 6: I think that in part was part of what led
Speaker 6: to the eleven to one Aquila that she was a
Speaker 6: very persuasive witness, because she was very persuasive at the
Speaker 6: hearing as well.
Speaker 5: She's explaining to them how I came to the house
Speaker 5: us staying over at her aunt's place. She explained pretty
Speaker 5: much why her mother didn't like me as much or
Speaker 5: why we didn't stay at her mother's house and some others.
Speaker 5: Was like a COO or x CEO at the time,
Speaker 5: so it was like kind of a conflict or interest.
Speaker 5: This guy that's selling weed and always smoking with no job.
Speaker 5: I guess she didn't think I was good enough for
Speaker 5: her daughter.
Speaker 1: The first trial ended up with an eleven to one
Speaker 1: hung fury in favor of a quittle.
Speaker 5: Even the judge said it something must be wrong if
Speaker 5: eleven of your PIDs the things one way and you
Speaker 5: go against that. But at the second trial, the DA
Speaker 5: is saying that I in one of the witnesses, Havel Poe,
Speaker 5: didn't really change his testimony. We had his testimony read
Speaker 5: into the record because throughout the whole thing he never
Speaker 5: identified me. He only referred to me as looking similar
Speaker 5: to one of the guys Sean Belton recants. But it's
Speaker 5: I can't really consider every canton because he went back
Speaker 5: to the initial statement that he never seen anything. The
Speaker 5: other person that they say picked me out of a
Speaker 5: photo overrate, he never signed on none of the pitches.
Speaker 5: But the detective is saying I made a monk next
Speaker 5: to the pitcher that he picked out because he wouldn't
Speaker 5: sign it. It's like that don't even make sense. The
Speaker 5: only only witness that they had was jose Manchakoti that
Speaker 5: actually positively picked me out of a lineup.
Speaker 1: And we find out later that the state's sole remaining witness,
Speaker 1: jose Machakot. The testimony on which the whole case rested,
Speaker 1: was not the humble barber that the state made him
Speaker 1: out to be, but actually a full time drug dealer,
Speaker 1: right prone to violence and under a joint investigation by
Speaker 1: the FBI and NYPD. And all you needed was your
Speaker 1: star witness Kenean Johnson to show up and counter Machakot,
Speaker 1: just like she did it the first trial.
Speaker 5: But at the second trial, I'm not with my girlfriend anymore,
Speaker 5: so our contact is kind of really touching goal where
Speaker 5: she knowed I'm only calling to notify her court dates
Speaker 5: and what's going on with my life, which she's trying
Speaker 5: to avoid. I guess I don't know. But in Keneine Johnson,
Speaker 5: the day before she was supposed to come in or
Speaker 5: two days before, we spoke, and then I didn't hear
Speaker 5: nothing from her. My lawyer said he spoke to her
Speaker 5: and she was supposed to be coming in, and then
Speaker 5: she didn't show up, but she was still being nice
Speaker 5: to him on the phone. He called her again and
Speaker 5: then she cursed him out. She told him that he
Speaker 5: sent police to her house that like one in the morning.
Speaker 5: But we learned that day in the courtroom that it
Speaker 5: wasn't actually my lawyer that sent the police, that it
Speaker 5: was the district attorney who subpoenaed her, even though in
Speaker 5: court she said, I never planned on calling this girl
Speaker 5: as a witness because I don't know what she's gonna say,
Speaker 5: even though she heard what my witness said at the
Speaker 5: first trial. It was well known at my case that
Speaker 5: her mother didn't like me. But they stills the peene
Speaker 5: at her and send police to her house at like
Speaker 5: one in the morning while her mother's house, which actually
Speaker 5: infuriated her mother and caused her mother to kick her out.
Speaker 5: That right there pretty much stilled the deal as far
Speaker 5: as her coming to court. And at that point I
Speaker 5: was asking, like, put me on the stand. If she's
Speaker 5: not going to come in, I'm the only thing we
Speaker 5: got left. You ain't do nothing else with nobody else,
Speaker 5: So put me understand like they're gonna eat you alive,
Speaker 5: which your prior history and stuff. They eat you alive,
Speaker 5: and the jury see that, and they're going to find
Speaker 5: you guilty. That's the last thing I wanted. So I'm
Speaker 5: no lawyer. Let him guide me and tell me guilty.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's listening is probably wondering right now, well, if
Speaker 1: I was representing him back then I would have checked
Speaker 1: to cell phone records, or I would have checked the
Speaker 1: cab records. You could have gotten a hold of the
Speaker 1: cab company and see if anybody because you took a
Speaker 1: cab right, and none of that stuff was done right.
Speaker 5: The weird thing is, out of all of the easy
Speaker 5: stuff that we think of that could have been done,
Speaker 5: my attorney at the time hired a chiropractor or child
Speaker 5: doctor to do medical examine or work. And I've never
Speaker 5: even seen the medical examine of work or any paperwork
Speaker 5: that he had done. But he didn't go and check
Speaker 5: a cab. He didn't go and speak to none of
Speaker 5: these witnesses that's in the DD files from the police reports.
Speaker 5: But you found adopted the player as a medical examiner
Speaker 5: from your office building. It's sad to say, but if
Speaker 5: you don't have money to actually pay for a lawyer,
Speaker 5: then the justice system doesn't really work for you. It's
Speaker 5: rare that it does. You really come across lawyers like
Speaker 5: Susan and Liz or people like you that actually go
Speaker 5: out of their way to help somebody out to show
Speaker 5: that they're innocent. And I appreciate every bit of it. Look,
Speaker 5: the officer is telling me that I have to get
Speaker 5: off the phone. He's pressing down because of the timeframe.
Speaker 5: I guess because we was really only supposed to get
Speaker 5: like that by our phone calls. No problem, it's gonna
Speaker 5: do it around a couple of guys that that are
Speaker 5: friendly here and know my situation that wanted to make
Speaker 5: sure that everything was all right. But we'll back either
Speaker 5: today or tomorrow or whenever.
Speaker 4: I can.
Speaker 5: Thank you again, Thank you again. I appreciate y'all, and
Speaker 5: I hope you will have a nice day. I will
Speaker 5: speak to you soon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be back in Tye for sure.
Speaker 4: All right, La hi Jay.
Speaker 1: What an unbelievably calm and gentle spirit he's got. It's here.
Speaker 1: He is in this chaotic situation in an actual security
Speaker 1: prison in the time of COVID, with people whose phone
Speaker 1: time he's sort of you know, borrowing or whatever, and
Speaker 1: guards who are going hey, you know, and yet he
Speaker 1: is so focused, which makes me even more sad thinking
Speaker 1: about the lost potential that that simple act of kindness
Speaker 1: from that parole officer twenty something years ago could have
Speaker 1: just avoided this whole thing. And God knows what he'd
Speaker 1: be doing with his life now. Contributing to society and
Speaker 1: probably building a family and everything else. So meanwhile the
Speaker 1: story goes on. Mister Machacote was murdered by a drug
Speaker 1: dealer five months after James's second trial, Yes, after he
Speaker 1: was trying to rob the drug dealer for the second
Speaker 1: time in a month. So yeah, he was tortured and killed.
Speaker 1: And I mean, this is some Quentin Tarantino stuff now,
Speaker 1: but this is the guy that the authorities were painting
Speaker 1: to be a wonderful citizen who was bravely coming forward
Speaker 1: and now he's a simple barber and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So that's all out the window. But there was also
Speaker 1: Brady violations in this case, right, so can you talk?
Speaker 1: Can you speak to that?
Speaker 6: So we learned this the hearing was going on, the
Speaker 6: actual innocence hearing that we litigated last summer and we're
Speaker 6: appealing now. It was actual innocence and ineffective assistance of counsel.
Speaker 6: That's when we finally got eight witnesses in to talk
Speaker 6: and support James's story of innocence. So during our hearing,
Speaker 6: I reached out to the assistant US attorney Because people
Speaker 6: were prosecuted federally for killing Machakodi and through it I
Speaker 6: met the FBI agent who told me that at the
Speaker 6: time of the trial, Jose Machakoti was under their investigation.
Speaker 6: It was a joint NYPD FBI investigation into drug dealing,
Speaker 6: major drug dealing in Brownsville and lo and Behold. In
Speaker 6: the spring, which was when the second trial was happening,
Speaker 6: a confidential informant was buying huge quantities of heroin and
Speaker 6: cocaine from Matchakodi. Now we don't know if the assistant
Speaker 6: district attorney knew that, but it's hard to believe that
Speaker 6: the detective who used to be a narcotics detective Brownsville
Speaker 6: did not know that this man was a one of
Speaker 6: the major most violent drug dealers in Brooklyn and be
Speaker 6: under you know, investigation by the FBI.
Speaker 4: So that was never disclosed.
Speaker 1: No, that would have been an inconvenient fact to bring
Speaker 1: up as they were trying to present him as the
Speaker 1: perfect witness.
Speaker 4: Right, So he was so brave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's the Brady violation because this wouldn't be
Speaker 1: complete without that, right, right.
Speaker 6: So they have an obligation to turn over this information
Speaker 6: that they knew about, and that's what we believe happened here,
Speaker 6: and yes, it does seem like that happens all the time.
Speaker 4: And what was in it for Matchic Cody.
Speaker 6: You know, I don't want to go down to deep
Speaker 6: a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, but he was on
Speaker 6: parole the night of this murder. He had violated parole
Speaker 6: by being out past his curfew. And the fight that
Speaker 6: Jay was referring to a lot of the police reports
Speaker 6: say a Spanish guy wearing a fur coat grabbed a
Speaker 6: bottle within a fight on the floor. That was Machic Cody,
Speaker 6: So that was also a violation of paroles. So I
Speaker 6: don't know whether they threatened him with having him locked up,
Speaker 6: whether there was something corrupt going on. You know, it
Speaker 6: was the seventy fifth Precinct, which is notorious. It has
Speaker 6: had some problems with corruption over the years. I don't
Speaker 6: know what happened, even the FBI agent, although he said,
Speaker 6: you know, he was on a bad guy list. That's
Speaker 6: how he referred to matcha coody, which is a computer
Speaker 6: database that you're supposed to check for any witness And
Speaker 6: in fact, the day they interviewed the witnesses at the club,
Speaker 6: they did HIDA checks on those witnesses, but there's no
Speaker 6: hi to check in the paperwork for MATCHA Cody. So
Speaker 6: there's just something fishy about Matchacode and why they're so
Speaker 6: protective of him. And all we do know is that
Speaker 6: when the prosecutor got up in summation and said, he's
Speaker 6: such a credible witness, and you know, he's credible because
Speaker 6: he was so honest about his past and now he's
Speaker 6: a barber. Well, he might have been honest about his past,
Speaker 6: but he wasn't really honest about his present. So you know,
Speaker 6: in addition to the problems with you know, ide evidence,
Speaker 6: in a situation like that, you also have this unsavory
Speaker 6: character pretending to be someone that he's not.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's exhausted. This one's actually.
Speaker 4: Tell me about it. I'm still writing the brief for the.
Speaker 1: Appeal, so none of that's disclosed to the defense of
Speaker 1: James's second trial, right, and we know about the whole
Speaker 1: Matchakuote thing. Of course, it's almost like an exclamation point
Speaker 1: on the whole thing that he ends up. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry the guy got murdered, but such a short
Speaker 1: time after this, as if to really just drive this home,
Speaker 1: you know, he ends up in like a scene from
Speaker 1: Reservoir Dogs being tortured to death by a guy who
Speaker 1: he was trying to rob for a second time, a
Speaker 1: drug dealer.
Speaker 6: I mean, nice witness, right, And the first time he
Speaker 6: entered at gunpoint and tied them up and robbed them.
Speaker 4: So it wasn't his first rodeo, no, And.
Speaker 1: It sounds like they turned the tables on him. And
Speaker 1: then he, yes, he met his demise and took this
Speaker 1: false testimony he presented to the grave with him.
Speaker 4: Yes, Now you know, we.
Speaker 1: Get to the post conviction investigation and of course you
Speaker 1: had a meeting with the conviction Review Unit in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: and this would seem to be one little ray of light.
Speaker 1: So where do we stand with that?
Speaker 6: So that was actually before I became involved in the case.
Speaker 6: Susan Epstein, who did the appeal and did a phenomenal investigation,
Speaker 6: brought the witnesses to the conviction review unit.
Speaker 4: They had the case incredibly for five years.
Speaker 6: It's not exactly clear what happened, but one refrain that
Speaker 6: is throughout the transcripts of those interviews is why didn't
Speaker 6: you come forward sooner? The assistant district attorney assigned to
Speaker 6: this case just seemed very suspicious from the beginning, and
Speaker 6: she gave some of them a really hard timing. But
Speaker 6: she got a lot of this information. I mean, she
Speaker 6: went to prisons and she spoke to Jamel Black, who's
Speaker 6: currently incarcerated, and he told her.
Speaker 4: That it was Tay who did the shooting.
Speaker 6: And she also fixated on some inconsistencies that I think
Speaker 6: are not material. The story that was told was coherent.
Speaker 6: Each witness corroborated one another. The vast majority of the
Speaker 6: witnesses told them that Jay's hair was short. He cut
Speaker 6: his hair because he had some kind of skin condition.
Speaker 6: So just like you'd remember a party because you were
Speaker 6: throwing up all night, you'd remember that someone had short
Speaker 6: hair because they thought.
Speaker 4: It was ringworm.
Speaker 6: It's not entirely clear that's what it was, but it
Speaker 6: was some skin condition that they remembered and his hair
Speaker 6: was short. But they handle this information and honestly, I
Speaker 6: don't know why they dragged their feet and they never
Speaker 6: came right out and said we don't believe you, we
Speaker 6: think s guilty. Even after we brought the motion and
Speaker 6: started the hearing, they said to the press, you know,
Speaker 6: we're still looking into it, or something to that effect.
Speaker 4: But for some reason, they just were unpersuaded.
Speaker 1: That's weird. I mean, look, there's even inside of a
Speaker 1: convictor of you unit like Brooklyn, where we'd like to
Speaker 1: think that everybody is on top of their game. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I can't really explain. You have these witnesses
Speaker 1: who are actually bravely coming forward now, right, and there's
Speaker 1: lots of them, right. It's not like this is one person.
Speaker 1: These are people who are, you know, members of the community,
Speaker 1: who are not kids anymore either. And I think it's
Speaker 1: also worthwhile to mention why James's brother Daniel and Tina
Speaker 1: Black were unavailable to testify. Tina, a young woman who
Speaker 1: named James in the first place, is sadly no longer
Speaker 1: with us. In twenty thirteen, she died of complications related
Speaker 1: to the very diabetes that had kept her from the
Speaker 1: party that faithful night all the way back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. And sadly, Daniel, James's younger brother, who
Speaker 1: put him in the cab that night, tragically was murdered
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve. So now the Brooklyn cru hasn't come
Speaker 1: to a decision, and they still could do something about
Speaker 1: it if they so choose, But you and Susan Epstein
Speaker 1: weren't going to wait around for that, and that brings
Speaker 1: us to the hearing we've been referring to this entire time.
Speaker 1: You and Susan filed a four to forty motion, which
Speaker 1: is New York legal leese, for a motion to set
Speaker 1: aside the judgment that was in September twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 1: you argued for James's actual innocence as well as ineffective
Speaker 1: assistant of counsel and newly discovered evidence at this hearing
Speaker 1: back in June of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 6: Yes, we were pretty optimistic going into it. So we
Speaker 6: had eight witnesses, including James. James went first, as you
Speaker 6: saw these very intelligent, humble, low keyed and I think
Speaker 6: he makes a good impression, and he went first. And
Speaker 6: also so they couldn't say, oh, of course he said this.
Speaker 6: He sat through the whole hearing and listened to what
Speaker 6: everyone else said. So he told the story that you
Speaker 6: heard about leaving because he was intoxicated. And then Jamel
Speaker 6: Black came in. And one thing about Jamel Black that
Speaker 6: was really, I think very persuasive. He had initially refused
Speaker 6: to cooperate and sent a letter to Susan saying he
Speaker 6: ruined my life because James had slept with his girlfriend
Speaker 6: when he was locked up at Riker's and he held
Speaker 6: a grudge and he even told me when we were
Speaker 6: preparing to testify, because he has a bad quality I have.
Speaker 6: I get it from my father. I can really hold
Speaker 6: a grudge. But he came in and he told the
Speaker 6: whole story. First of all, he helped walk James out
Speaker 6: to the car, but then they started to get into
Speaker 6: a fight about this girlfriend again and he went inside
Speaker 6: and he met up with Tay, the shooter. So he
Speaker 6: told the whole story about how he got stabbed because
Speaker 6: his younger brother was involved in the fight and he
Speaker 6: went over and he heard this guy say, you thought
Speaker 6: this was over. He turned around he was step. So
Speaker 6: he goes through the whole incident of how the stabbing happened,
Speaker 6: and how the shooting happened, and how it was Tay,
Speaker 6: and then how he told this to the police. We
Speaker 6: also had the woman who cut his hair, who although
Speaker 6: she didn't remember exactly when she cut it, she did
Speaker 6: remember that she told him it was breaking off and
Speaker 6: that he had to cut it, and that the last
Speaker 6: time she saw him his hair was short, and you
Speaker 6: had Corey Hines, who was at the party in the bathroom,
Speaker 6: laughing at him as he was throwing up. Sadly, his
Speaker 6: brother had signed an affid David saying I put him
Speaker 6: in a cab and send him to his girlfriend's house.
Speaker 6: He was murdered in twenty twelve, so we didn't have
Speaker 6: him as a witness. We had his affidavit and we
Speaker 6: believed the judge should have allowed that into evidence, and
Speaker 6: he didn't. And we had Caneine Johnson, the girlfriend who
Speaker 6: didn't show up at the second trial. We actually had
Speaker 6: to do what's called a material witness order to have
Speaker 6: her arrested to bring her in, which I really didn't
Speaker 6: want to do. But she came in, even though she
Speaker 6: was mad at me about that. She got on the stand.
Speaker 6: So when that happens, they assigned an attorney to you,
Speaker 6: and the attorney came in and said to the judge,
Speaker 6: she's willing to testify, but she's terrified of the family.
Speaker 6: And what came out on the witness stand is that
Speaker 6: after she testified at the first trial, friends and family
Speaker 6: of the deceased followed her not just out of the courtroom,
Speaker 6: but out of the courthouse, calling her names, threatening her
Speaker 6: if we're going to find out where.
Speaker 4: You live, if we see you on the street.
Speaker 6: And it was so bad that James's attorney put her
Speaker 6: in a cab because he was afraid of her having
Speaker 6: to take public transportation home.
Speaker 4: So here she is.
Speaker 6: She hasn't seen James since the first trial. And she
Speaker 6: gets on and she essentially says exactly what she testified
Speaker 6: to years before that she met him at her mother's house.
Speaker 6: He got out of the car. He was staggering, like
Speaker 6: stupid drunkuse kind of how she put it, and threw up,
Speaker 6: and she got him a ginger ale out of bodega
Speaker 6: and they walked to his hands. So she told that
Speaker 6: entire story. The two new witnesses that I found also
Speaker 6: particularly compelling. One was in the statement by James. He
Speaker 6: refers to Bo. His real name is Ernest. Ernest was
Speaker 6: one of the promoters, and we found him. He was
Speaker 6: willing to testify, and like a few days before he testified,
Speaker 6: we asked him, well, how is it that you remember
Speaker 6: that he was there? And he said, because we used
Speaker 6: to have a competition about who had the better waves
Speaker 6: in our hair. So I remember when he came in
Speaker 6: and I was joking about whose waves were better, So
Speaker 6: I'm prompted. He basically said he had short hair at
Speaker 6: the time, so he said that on the witness stand.
Speaker 6: And he also said somebody had thrown up by the bar,
Speaker 6: and he asked the bouncer what happened here and he said, oh,
Speaker 6: you know those two brothers. One of them was drunk
Speaker 6: and I told them they had to leave. So that
Speaker 6: was information we didn't even know about. And then lastly,
Speaker 6: and maybe the most emotionally compelling witness was Tina Black Senior,
Speaker 6: the mother. So she came in, you know, with the cane.
Speaker 6: She's like crippled by arthritis. She basically was racked with
Speaker 6: guilt that she knew her daughter. Her daughter eventually confessed
Speaker 6: to her, and she went through all this stuff about
Speaker 6: they got a call one day from Rikers and her
Speaker 6: kids were there and she said, who's that Riker's and
Speaker 6: they said James And she said, why is James at
Speaker 6: Riker's And one of the sons said, ash your dumbass daughter.
Speaker 6: So like she remembered little details like that, and then
Speaker 6: bit by bit, her daughter revealed to her that she
Speaker 6: had set James up and that he was never coming home,
Speaker 6: and that she was still in love with him. So
Speaker 6: that was extremely compelling testimony. So that was essentially our case.
Speaker 6: It was like so many people who you know, added
Speaker 6: little bits and pieces to the story and created this
Speaker 6: really cohesive story about what really happened there that nobody
Speaker 6: bothered to investigate.
Speaker 1: Then there's another sort of what could be seen as
Speaker 1: a devastating blow that took place on January twenty four,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty sixteen years to the day after Blake Harper
Speaker 1: was tragically murdered. The judge denied James Davis's wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: motion in its entirety. I remember reading that the first time.
Speaker 1: We were going, oh god.
Speaker 6: Right, we were stunned. So he yeah, he ruled against
Speaker 6: us on everything. By the end of the hearing, we
Speaker 6: had three points. One was that we had proved James
Speaker 6: was actually innocent by clearing convincing evidence. That's the standard.
Speaker 6: That his lawyer was ineffective by not doing a proper investigation.
Speaker 6: He didn't even hire an investigator. That's what James was
Speaker 6: referring to when he said he hired a doctor. He
Speaker 6: hired a doctor who appeared to have been his brother
Speaker 6: to review the medical records, so he knew what he
Speaker 6: had to do to get paid to hire someone. So
Speaker 6: we had an ineffective assistance of counsel point and then
Speaker 6: we asked the judge to reopen the hearings so that
Speaker 6: we could call this FBI agent, so that we could
Speaker 6: show that they would have known about this evidence that
Speaker 6: Matchic Cody was not just a humble barber, but he
Speaker 6: was a major drug dealer in Brooklyn. And the judge
Speaker 6: refused to reopen the hearing. Originally said alzheimus a poena
Speaker 6: for an FBI agent because you have to see poena them,
Speaker 6: then changed his mind on that, said you didn't prove it,
Speaker 6: but he didn't give us a chance to completely prove it,
Speaker 6: and so he denied every aspect of a hearing. And
Speaker 6: now there's really literally one stop left on this. You
Speaker 6: don't get to appeal these to call them for forty
Speaker 6: hearings in New York. You don't get to appeal a
Speaker 6: for forty as.
Speaker 4: A matter of right.
Speaker 6: You have to ask permission. He's called seeking leave to appeal,
Speaker 6: and we did get permission to appeal. So we are
Speaker 6: in the process of writing a brief and this is
Speaker 6: the last stop. We are going to the second apartment
Speaker 6: at Pellet Division and asking them first and foremost to
Speaker 6: find him innocent and dismiss these charges.
Speaker 1: Do you know when that hearing is going to be.
Speaker 6: We're shooting for September, hoping to get the brief filed
Speaker 6: in time for September. If it's not September, it will
Speaker 6: be October.
Speaker 1: There is a petition and we're going to link to
Speaker 1: it in the episode description. So for anyone who feels
Speaker 1: outraged as I do and wants to help James, go
Speaker 1: to our episode description and there'll be links to take
Speaker 1: you to action steps that you can take.
Speaker 4: Hello.
Speaker 3: This is a prepaid collects call from an inmate at
Speaker 3: New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. This
Speaker 3: call is subject to recording and monitoring. To accept charges,
Speaker 3: press one to refuse charges, press thank you for using securists.
Speaker 3: You may start the conversation now.
Speaker 1: Hello, Oh James, glad you're back. Elizabeth and I spoke
Speaker 1: a bit about your post conviction litigation and where you're
Speaker 1: at now legally speaking.
Speaker 5: I didn't know the justice system actually takes this long,
Speaker 5: but I thought, maybe you know, two years. I'll be
Speaker 5: back home, They'll fix this whole thing, and I'll be home.
Speaker 5: Two years turned into seventeen and I'm still fighting and
Speaker 5: trying to convince them that they actually locked up the
Speaker 5: wrong person.
Speaker 1: And then, to compound this tragedy again, the little brother
Speaker 1: that you felt so responsible for was murdered in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't possibly begin to imagine your pain,
Speaker 1: but your grandmother's still here.
Speaker 5: My brother and my grandmother is like my oldest friends
Speaker 5: in the world. My grandmother been there for as long
Speaker 5: as I knew. I know she know my pain because
Speaker 5: she lost some mother and she lost her daughter the
Speaker 5: same way I did. Well, not the daughter, but my
Speaker 5: mother the same way she lost some mother. And my
Speaker 5: brother was there with me through everything. So it was
Speaker 5: like I lost out on with little I was able
Speaker 5: to spend his life with him in seventeen years. In
Speaker 5: my grandmother's life, she just turned eighty June nineteenth, like
Speaker 5: she was sixty three. I dismissed all of these birthdays
Speaker 5: and times to spend with her where I would have
Speaker 5: been an adult, where I could actually because I just
Speaker 5: I think that was my first Christmas ever, actually really
Speaker 5: buying my grandmother my own gift, and she was so
Speaker 5: happy for that. Then here for every year, since it's
Speaker 5: something I didn't even do it, I prayed for her
Speaker 5: every night. He had to be strong for me. That's
Speaker 5: one of the reasons that I lived. For my grandmother,
Speaker 5: by the grace of God, she just turned eighties you
Speaker 5: on nineteen. My mother was murdered two weeks or yeah,
Speaker 5: a week and some change at the Mother's Day, which
Speaker 5: was hard for my grandmother, and then my brother on
Speaker 5: Father's Day right before her birthday. So it's like I've
Speaker 5: had a real, real rough journey. Her journey is just
Speaker 5: as rough. So this is why that's like my closest
Speaker 5: friend right there outside of my brother that passed away.
Speaker 5: The same beatings I got. He got the same little
Speaker 5: budget clothes or whatever you want to.
Speaker 1: Call him I got.
Speaker 5: He got. He's in in the neighborhood, in the house
Speaker 5: over not having our parents or my mother being the crackhead.
Speaker 5: He got the same thing. We endured everything together. So
Speaker 5: it was like, it's the only person that really really
Speaker 5: know my struggle. So to lose him wild hair right.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't imagine your story. Your life has exhausted,
Speaker 1: has taken so much out of me, and I've only
Speaker 1: listened to it. I can't imagine having lived it. We
Speaker 1: need to do everything we can to bring you home, James,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you. I mean, we have, as
Speaker 1: our regular listeners know, at the end of each episode,
Speaker 1: we have our featured segment, which I call closing Arguments,
Speaker 1: and this is where I first of all, thank you,
Speaker 1: and then I just kick back in my chair and
Speaker 1: turn my microphone off and leave my headphones on and
Speaker 1: turn it over to you for whatever else you think
Speaker 1: needs to be said. So now Liz, over to you
Speaker 1: for closing arguments.
Speaker 6: All right, Well, first of all, thank you so much
Speaker 6: for taking the time to listen and to speak to
Speaker 6: James and to get to know what a good person
Speaker 6: he is, what a smart, humble, kind person he is,
Speaker 6: and for giving us this chance to tell a story
Speaker 6: to as many people as possible. There was from the
Speaker 6: day he was arrested, I'm going to get emotional me
Speaker 6: clear and convincing evidence of his innocence. Not just clear
Speaker 6: and convincing, compelling evidence of his innocence, And he told
Speaker 6: everyone what they needed to do to learn that he
Speaker 6: was innocent. From the beginning, he told detective Hutchinson go
Speaker 6: speak to He listed about six names, and you know,
Speaker 6: from those six names there would have been twenty five
Speaker 6: thirty other people because this was a huge party and
Speaker 6: a lot of people knew him. But whether it was
Speaker 6: tunnel vision, a lack of respect or indifference, Detective Hutchinson
Speaker 6: did nothing to investigate. The prosecutor did nothing to investigate,
Speaker 6: and the person who, under the law, has the obligation
Speaker 6: to investigate, did not do so. He kept telling James, well,
Speaker 6: it's their burden, it's not our burden. But this is
Speaker 6: a twenty one year old facing murder charges, facing life
Speaker 6: in prison, which he's now serving a life in prison sentence.
Speaker 6: Seems to me, you have both a legal and a
Speaker 6: moral obligation to do everything you can to prove his innocence,
Speaker 6: to prove he's not guilty. That's the standard at a
Speaker 6: trial when you have so much evidence, it's almost obscene
Speaker 6: to turn your back to it. And yet that's what
Speaker 6: happened at this trial. And yet fifteen years afterward, these
Speaker 6: people came forward and you know, they may know each
Speaker 6: other from the community, but somewhere in their thirties, some
Speaker 6: were in their forties, some were in their fifties. They
Speaker 6: weren't all hanging out together conspiring to tell a story
Speaker 6: to help James. They told different pieces, and what they
Speaker 6: didn't remember they said they didn't remember, but each and
Speaker 6: every one of them painted a very vivid picture of
Speaker 6: a young man who loved his brother very much, who
Speaker 6: went to the party because he wanted to celebrate with
Speaker 6: his brother, who got stumbled down, throwing up, drunk, left
Speaker 6: the party kind of out of it, met his girlfriend,
Speaker 6: spent the night at her aunt's house, and wasn't even
Speaker 6: there when the shooting happened. And yet, incredibly, once again,
Speaker 6: the judge chose not to listen to James. In fact,
Speaker 6: in his decision he said, well, you can't listen to
Speaker 6: anything he said because he's the defendant here, he's convicted,
Speaker 6: and of course he has an overwhelming interest in the outcome,
Speaker 6: which is not the law. So he just disregarded everything
Speaker 6: James said, despite the fact that most of it was
Speaker 6: corroborated and substantiated by the other witnesses. He also said,
Speaker 6: you had to have direct evidence. There was no direct
Speaker 6: evidence that James went to his girlfriend's house that night. Well,
Speaker 6: there was a huge amount of circumstantial evidence. They walked
Speaker 6: him to the car, so they didn't see the cab leave.
Speaker 6: I mean, circumstantial evidence is extremely compelling and used all
Speaker 6: the time in court. So he discounted circumstantial evidence. And
Speaker 6: he also wouldn't let us bring in Daniel's AffA David,
Speaker 6: even though again this federal law says, when you're talking
Speaker 6: about actual innocence, you're allowed to bring in everything, even
Speaker 6: if it wouldn't come in ordinarily at a trial. So
Speaker 6: Daniel is dead, he was murdered, but we have his Affidavid.
Speaker 4: And guess what it says.
Speaker 6: I put him in a cab and it went to
Speaker 6: Caneen's house. So we did have that piece, but we
Speaker 6: weren't allowed to put it in. So once again justice
Speaker 6: was denied for James. And I think we've already been
Speaker 6: through just the shaky, questionable evidence that was the prosecution.
Speaker 6: This is the last chance. There's nothing after the second
Speaker 6: Department of Pellet Division. And I just hope people hear
Speaker 6: this and they're rightfully outraged and they demand justice for
Speaker 6: James because he really is innocent and he deserves to
Speaker 6: go home.
Speaker 1: That was well said, Thank you, that beautiful closing argument. Actually,
Speaker 1: and I've heard a lot of them, and now James,
Speaker 1: over to you for closing arguments. You are an incredible person.
Speaker 1: Your spirit comes through even over the phone, even in
Speaker 1: the most stressful situation. You are just an inspiring guy.
Speaker 1: What can I say? And so we're going to keep
Speaker 1: fighting for you out here, and I thank you for
Speaker 1: being on the show and shining a light on this
Speaker 1: awful injustice. And now it's turn it over to you
Speaker 1: for closing arguments.
Speaker 5: I want to say thank you to you again. Thank
Speaker 5: you to Elizabeth Felber, Susan Epstein, the whole Legal Aid Society,
Speaker 5: everybody's that's been helping me with my case. Without them,
Speaker 5: I probably would have gave up this fight. They kept
Speaker 5: me strong and kept me motivated. With all of the
Speaker 5: stuff that's going on in the world today, is so
Speaker 5: much on my mind. I think that our justice system
Speaker 5: really needs to be looked at on the outside and
Speaker 5: on the inside. The treatment is really really no different,
Speaker 5: and it's going all the way. Starts at law enforcement
Speaker 5: with the investigations and the things that they may do.
Speaker 5: If they make one bad mistake, it may change somebody's
Speaker 5: life forever. And they're human like everybody else. Everybody's entitled
Speaker 5: to make mistakes. But when you don't try to makes
Speaker 5: your mistakes, you just lie about them or cover them up,
Speaker 5: you only make things worse for people that should actually
Speaker 5: have a fair shot. You're stealing people lives away from people.
Speaker 5: People families actually still love them and care about them,
Speaker 5: and they're suffering. Just as much more effort should be
Speaker 5: done on getting things right, opposed to just worrying about
Speaker 5: convictions and putting people away. Sometimes, because in our hate
Speaker 5: we make poor judgment decisions, we send people away that
Speaker 5: shouldn't be locked up. People do deserve to have a
Speaker 5: fair shot. That whether it be trial, grand jury hearings,
Speaker 5: or even the benefit of the doubt when the officer
Speaker 5: comes and the rescue. It's no different on the inside.
Speaker 5: Not everybody in here deserves to be treated so harshly.
Speaker 5: When you're already sentenced for a crime, you've already been punished.
Speaker 5: You don't come to prison to be on the shmall
Speaker 5: or torture. You come to correct whatever bad behavior you
Speaker 5: was doing. You do your time that they gave you,
Speaker 5: because that's what they say, if you did the crime,
Speaker 5: through the time. But I'm not supposed to be tortured
Speaker 5: and abused what about the people that actually didn't do
Speaker 5: the crime. That's just like a casualty of war. Therefore,
Speaker 5: let him get tortured and beaten and everything too. It
Speaker 5: don't seem like fear and impart your trials are what
Speaker 5: actually takes place. They label you and then they send
Speaker 5: you away, and then they make it hard view to
Speaker 5: prove your innocence to get back out. Even when you
Speaker 5: do prove it, it's still hard for them to let
Speaker 5: you go. They're saying, well, it sounds like he's telling
Speaker 5: the truth, and it's the same thing. And we learned
Speaker 5: that these other guys were liars and all of these
Speaker 5: other things. But I don't know, maybe he's still guilty.
Speaker 5: Let's just keep him in there and double trouble, quadruple
Speaker 5: check and let him waste some more of his life away,
Speaker 5: even though he might be totally innocent, and it seems
Speaker 5: like he is from what we've been looking at, but
Speaker 5: not one hundred percent sure. He didn't prove it to
Speaker 5: me one hundred percent. Like that's that's crazy, that's insane,
Speaker 5: that what a human life is worth.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 1: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three times OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one