Speaker 1: At ten pm on a snowy April second, nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: twenty two year old Andrew Asher and Becky George sat
Speaker 1: in a parked car in front of her brother's apartment
Speaker 1: on Silent Road in Rockford, Illinois.
Speaker 2: A black man.
Speaker 1: Approached the car and a blue ski mask and a hoodie,
Speaker 1: and he opened the driver's side door, announcing a stick up.
Speaker 1: While Becky fished around in her purse and tried to
Speaker 1: offer the gunman the sixty dollars she had, he shot
Speaker 1: Andrew Asher twice. Becky ran to her brother's apartment to
Speaker 1: call the police, and the two bullets and their casings
Speaker 1: were retrieved from the crime scene and during the autopsy.
Speaker 1: Through the use of incentivized eyewitness testimony, the coercion of
Speaker 1: a false confession, and grand jury testimony from Patrick Persley's girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Samantha Crabtree, testimony she later recanted a trial, and conflicting
Speaker 1: and misleading ballistics expert testimony. Patrick was convicted of first
Speaker 1: degree murder and sentenced to life without parole, with an
Speaker 1: epic appeals process that included Patrick getting a law change
Speaker 1: from prison in order to get new BAE listics testing
Speaker 1: done that would ultimately set him free. Patrick Parsley suffered
Speaker 1: for over twenty five years for a crime he simply
Speaker 1: didn't commit. In March twenty seventeen, Patrick's conviction was finally.
Speaker 2: Vacated and he was released on bond.
Speaker 1: He was formally acquitted at his retrial on January sixteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: This episode was recorded at Complex Con Chicago twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: a culture, fashion, art and music hybrid event described as
Speaker 1: a streetwear fans kind of world's fair featuring limited edition
Speaker 1: brand collaborations, performances, and even the occasional live podcast recording
Speaker 1: like this one. We only had thirty minutes though, to
Speaker 1: tell Patrick's story, so I'll be fleshing out some of
Speaker 1: the details along the way. Patrick Persley, this is going
Speaker 1: to be extraordinary, because Franklin, doesn't you, Because Pat is
Speaker 1: my new friend. I've just gotten to know him, his
Speaker 1: unbelievable spirit and intellect. But Patrick, I want to say
Speaker 1: that I'm happy you're here. I'm sorry you're here because
Speaker 1: you should never even have to be having this conversation.
Speaker 1: But I'm happier here, and your case has so many
Speaker 1: of the hallmarks, so many of the common factors that
Speaker 1: we see in rawful convictions over and over again. You
Speaker 1: had incentivized lying witnesses, yes, coerced threatened witnesses. You had
Speaker 1: bad ballistics, terrible ballistics.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You had people in positions of authority who broke rules,
Speaker 1: broke laws in order to railroad you. Tunnel vision is
Speaker 1: another factor, right, And by tunnel vision, what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is once a suspect is identified. In many cases,
Speaker 1: we see that the police and prosecutors start to build
Speaker 1: a narrative, either consciously or subconsciously, and they managed to
Speaker 1: ignore or they subconsciously ignore evidence that points.
Speaker 2: Away as they sated.
Speaker 3: In your case, Yes, I'll term to suspects crime scene evidence, clothing, everything,
Speaker 3: everything was contradicted.
Speaker 1: Patrick Pursley was ronflely convicted of a brutal crime, a
Speaker 1: robbery of two people in a car where the robber
Speaker 1: shot the guy sitting in the car twice and ran
Speaker 1: and then things went downhill from.
Speaker 2: There very quickly.
Speaker 1: And Patrick, this was Rockford, Illinois. But you didn't know
Speaker 1: the people, You didn't know anything about the.
Speaker 3: Crime, didn't even know it happened.
Speaker 2: You were home with your girlfriend when this happened.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was doing a lated birthday party from my
Speaker 3: son and he came from Wisconsin. His birthday was on
Speaker 3: the twenty ninth, and we were celebrating on the night
Speaker 3: of the crime, which was four to ninety three, and
Speaker 3: had a chemistry set for him and we were just
Speaker 3: tinkering around and have no idea of these events happening
Speaker 3: just a few miles away now.
Speaker 1: I Meanwhile, there's another aspect of this that's important to recognize,
Speaker 1: which is crime stoppers, right, and theory crime stoppers great thing. Right,
Speaker 1: people call up, they talk about a crime, they can
Speaker 1: make us all safer. They get a reward. But in
Speaker 1: your case, except except when they do it like When's
Speaker 1: case where someone called up and knew nothing about the
Speaker 1: crime and just gave up his name in order to
Speaker 1: get two thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars the Price
Speaker 1: of life, right, about one hundred dollars a year for
Speaker 1: the time you were in the Price of Life. So
Speaker 1: all of this must have come as a tremendous shock
Speaker 1: to you when it happened in stages right when you
Speaker 1: first first you became aware that you were a suspect.
Speaker 2: Can you get into that aspect of this whole thing.
Speaker 3: I was taking my daughter and my son to a
Speaker 3: birthday party and the police tried to for hid me,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately I was ghettle bred, so I fled and
Speaker 3: that's how it started.
Speaker 1: That was June tenth, nineteen ninety three, about ten weeks
Speaker 1: after the crime. Two days earlier, on June eighth, Marvin Windham,
Speaker 1: a man Patrick knew from a few small time weed
Speaker 1: deals around Rockford, was the first one to point the
Speaker 1: finger at him in a call he made to crime stoppers.
Speaker 1: It was later revealed a trial that not only did
Speaker 1: Marvin have ey for Samantha Crabtree, Patrick's girlfriend, but he
Speaker 1: also received leniency on a number of charges that he
Speaker 1: faced in exchange for his testimony not to mention the
Speaker 1: two six hundred and fifty dollars reward. With Wyndham's hot tip,
Speaker 1: the police now we're able to get a search warrant
Speaker 1: for Patrick and Samantha's apartment, where they recovered a Taurus
Speaker 1: nine millimeter that Samantha kept for protection. Notably, she always
Speaker 1: stored it out of reach of her small children. While
Speaker 1: Patrick fled on foot and the cops rated the apartment,
Speaker 1: they brought Samantha in for some aggressive interrogation, and I'm
Speaker 1: putting that mile.
Speaker 3: The intergregated my girlfriend for like twelve hours. She was pregnant,
Speaker 3: you know, just basically force fed a narrative to her
Speaker 3: while disregarding glaring contradictions.
Speaker 2: And so your girlfriend was the pregnant mother of two
Speaker 2: or three.
Speaker 3: Never been in trouble, three kids, three.
Speaker 2: Kids, pregnant mother.
Speaker 1: So she's a target for twelve hours, and the police
Speaker 1: tells her that if she doesn't tell them exactly what
Speaker 1: they want to hear, she.
Speaker 3: Won't see her children till she's forty.
Speaker 2: So here's how this unraveled.
Speaker 1: So they take her from directly from the interrogation room
Speaker 1: to a grand jury where they make her repeat the
Speaker 1: story right now.
Speaker 2: She's under oath, right.
Speaker 3: Get her own record, get her under you know, a
Speaker 3: substantiate of evidence come in later.
Speaker 1: So she tells them what they want to hear, and
Speaker 1: a girlfriend, to her everlasting.
Speaker 2: Credit, stood strong to get back. Can you talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, as soon as she was out of custody,
Speaker 3: she filed an affidavit with my attorneys and said she
Speaker 3: was courced basically took back her statement. Whether Ellanoi idea
Speaker 3: is no takebacks right now. It's called perjury. It's called perjury.
Speaker 3: It's called come in that trial substantial evidence. Then you
Speaker 3: say this under oath and comes in as evidence of guilt.
Speaker 2: Your girlfriend ended up spending two years in prison because.
Speaker 3: She didn't go along with the narrative and took it back.
Speaker 1: The narrative of her terror rized, spoon fed and patently
Speaker 1: false confession and her grand jury testimony was that she
Speaker 1: and Patrick were having financial trouble and on the night
Speaker 1: of the murder, they were driving around in search of
Speaker 1: a house to rob when Patrick told her to stop
Speaker 1: on silent road, hopped out of the car, put on
Speaker 1: a blue ski mask, told her to keep the engine running,
Speaker 1: and ran off toward the apartment buildings. Then a few
Speaker 1: minutes later, she heard two gun shots and Patrick returned
Speaker 1: to the car carrying a Taurus nine millimeter. Hours before
Speaker 1: being threatened with a life separated from her children and
Speaker 1: regurgitating this narrative for her false confession, Samantha's apartment was
Speaker 1: being searched by the police where photos were actually staged.
Speaker 2: There were staged.
Speaker 1: Photos of her tourist nine millimeters being stored in plain
Speaker 1: sight for ease of use.
Speaker 3: The whole gun situation as far as like pictures where
Speaker 3: the gun was. It's like I had children in my house.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to have a gun in plain view
Speaker 3: where a ten year old could get it. It just wasn't.
Speaker 3: The whole narrative of how it was put together was
Speaker 3: so far suppose it's just crazy.
Speaker 2: But early on you you had a lawyer who actually
Speaker 2: made one move.
Speaker 3: One move ch course, save your life. Yeah, So every defendant,
Speaker 3: I think, in the course of America says I didn't
Speaker 3: do it. I had a young lawyer who was beginning
Speaker 3: his career and I was his first depth penalty case.
Speaker 3: And then I had the older lawyer who kind of
Speaker 3: just like, I'm out of here. So the young lawyer
Speaker 3: and his pushback, right, you know you didn't do it. Well,
Speaker 3: we'll test the gun. Really, you can do that. Yes,
Speaker 3: please test the gun. Test gun. That's how it all started,
Speaker 3: That's what got me here.
Speaker 1: Ballistic testing is very important to this story. Ballistics is
Speaker 1: the study of the dynamics of projectiles or of the
Speaker 1: internal action of firearms. It can tell us what type
Speaker 1: of firearm was used, where it was fired, from, how
Speaker 1: many shots were fired, and most importantly for this case,
Speaker 1: it can be used to identify a firearm by the
Speaker 1: markings left on bullets and bullet casings after firing. So,
Speaker 1: after both the state's crime lab and the defense's independent
Speaker 1: lab test fire Crabtrees nine milimeter and compare the bullets
Speaker 1: and casings from both the test firing and the murder,
Speaker 1: the prosecution's expert testified that the gun used in the
Speaker 1: murder was Crabtrees Tourist nine millimeter and this is a
Speaker 1: direct quote to the exclusion of all others. Powerful testimony,
Speaker 1: false but powerful. While the defense's expert testified that the
Speaker 1: murder weapon was likely a Tourist nine millimere but not
Speaker 1: crab Trees. However, the expert hired by the defense could
Speaker 1: not conclusively exclude the gun.
Speaker 2: So think about this.
Speaker 1: You now have the state testifying with absolute certainty and
Speaker 1: the defense inconclusive in their exclusion of Patrick. This, along
Speaker 1: with Marvin Wyndham's incentivized testimony and Samantha Crabtree's initial false confession,
Speaker 1: brings us to where we know this part of the
Speaker 1: story tragically, when, however, the ballistics testing becomes crucial again
Speaker 1: many years down the road, when the jury went out,
Speaker 1: You've now seen a bunch of dirty tricks. You've been
Speaker 1: around the system. You grew up, as you said, in
Speaker 1: the streets, so you know what can happen. You're a
Speaker 1: young black man at this point in the clutches of
Speaker 1: a system that is designed to chew you up and
Speaker 1: spit you out.
Speaker 3: I think Lupe called it planned convalescence. I think called
Speaker 3: it that.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: That being said, when the jury went out, did.
Speaker 2: You have hope?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I knew I didn't do it. I know
Speaker 3: it was going home. And so when they returned a
Speaker 3: guilty verdict, I just I really don't even remember how
Speaker 3: I got back to my cell because I guess the
Speaker 3: blood drained off my body or something. I just went
Speaker 3: body numb, and uh, you know, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3: I just I couldn't believe it. It floored me.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody here can possibly begin to understand
Speaker 1: unless someone else here has been through what you've been through.
Speaker 1: And now you're facing the death penalty. Yes, come back
Speaker 1: for sentencing, and the judge.
Speaker 3: Says, because of the inconsistencies of the evidence, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to give you the death penalty. However, I will
Speaker 3: give you natural life, I'll find you'll be a minister society.
Speaker 3: And this is at a time where people were actually
Speaker 3: picketing for me to get a new trial. It was
Speaker 3: very strange and very strange correlation what was going on.
Speaker 1: And that's just fasake. We're not going to kill you quickly,
Speaker 1: but we are going to kill you slowly.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm having mercy on you because I see the
Speaker 3: bs and evidence. But you're still going, buddy.
Speaker 2: You're gone.
Speaker 3: There was a cry in the courtroom when he announced
Speaker 3: that my daughters were there. It was something else.
Speaker 2: You were said to some of the worst, well one
Speaker 2: of the worst prisons.
Speaker 3: Yes, stay built, and I'm one job in the law library.
Speaker 3: I tried to play past the game banging and the
Speaker 3: dice games and try to educate myself. I got a
Speaker 3: grant to correspondence classes in law.
Speaker 2: Is it as bad as everyone thinks it is?
Speaker 3: I'm a natural life survivor right so, right now in
Speaker 3: the wintertime, although locks are cut off the windows so
Speaker 3: the natives don't make knives, However, what that does allows
Speaker 3: your cell to have enough ice on you can make
Speaker 3: a snow cone right off the bars. And freezing temperatures mice, roaches,
Speaker 3: so many roaches. You put a potato chip back in
Speaker 3: the corner of your segregation cell and the roaches going
Speaker 3: there and they can't get out, and so you hear
Speaker 3: kind of like the scraping. And that was the roach
Speaker 3: motel in f House Panoptacon. They actually, uh, it's a landmark.
Speaker 3: It's a landmark.
Speaker 1: And of the two point two million people in prison,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of them who don't have air conditioning.
Speaker 2: And I don't know.
Speaker 1: A guy who died recently in Texas prison, he told
Speaker 1: his brother that his brother said, why don't you have
Speaker 1: any sodas? You love soda, but you can't keep sodas
Speaker 1: in your cell. You said, I can't because they explode
Speaker 1: because it's too hot. Like what the fuck even is that?
Speaker 3: Well, ice is the commodity. They might get one cup
Speaker 3: of ice in the morning, one cup of ice at night.
Speaker 3: Ice is a commodity. So you will deal with the elements.
Speaker 3: And right around April fifteenth they will turn off the
Speaker 3: heat every year like clockwork, despite the elements.
Speaker 2: Right in Chicago, you got some elements here, God knows it.
Speaker 1: So And I'm always fascinated and amazed by people like yourself,
Speaker 1: who managed to, you know, go through this ordeal as
Speaker 1: an innocent person, and the extra psychological damage that that
Speaker 1: must do to a person who's undergoing the extreme physical
Speaker 1: hardships and the loneliness and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: The violence in the prison, we talked about it, the
Speaker 1: terrible food, et cetera. Set the cold, the heat, and
Speaker 1: then you are there, you know, innocent forever, innocent. Right.
Speaker 3: I was done, all my appeals were done. I was
Speaker 3: done in court. It was over.
Speaker 1: With that being said, you found this something, this inner strength, perseverance,
Speaker 1: whatever you have, you describe it. And you not only
Speaker 1: didn't you give up, but you had, first of all,
Speaker 1: you had every reason to give up. Motion after motion
Speaker 1: after motion, denied, denied, denied.
Speaker 3: All I needed was one yes. I needed once one yes.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: And how you got to that is a really incredible
Speaker 1: part of the story. So you deny, denied. Now, as
Speaker 1: I understand that the law in Illinois at the time
Speaker 1: allowed for post conviction testing of fingerprints in DNA, but
Speaker 1: not ballistics.
Speaker 3: Exactly, So in two thousand and I asked for the testing.
Speaker 3: I've seen an article and a tribune about Illinois State Police.
Speaker 3: Now starts using the IBIS system Integated Ballistic Identification System,
Speaker 3: which uses algorithms to connect ballistics to crime scenes. So
Speaker 3: I was like, that can free me. I knew it
Speaker 3: could free me. It was just that simple. And unfortunately,
Speaker 3: because the law didn't allow for it in two thousand
Speaker 3: and two thousand and one, wis for it. The courts
Speaker 3: was like, no, the law would have to be amended.
Speaker 3: The law would have to be a change in order
Speaker 3: to grant me the gun testing, which would potentially designer Rabian.
Speaker 3: That was two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Right, So you were stuff on a technicality, right because
Speaker 1: you knew that you had this evidence because your lawyer
Speaker 1: had tested.
Speaker 2: We go back to that, right. Your lawyer had had
Speaker 2: the sense to go and get.
Speaker 3: The testing independent lab. Independent lab. This lab had only
Speaker 3: testified for defendants four times.
Speaker 1: So now a lot of people would say, Okay, here
Speaker 1: you are in the segregation unit of one of the
Speaker 1: worst prisons in America. Not a great education. You'd have
Speaker 1: a law degree, you didn't have a science degree. It
Speaker 1: would seem to be hopeless. But somehow or other, you
Speaker 1: managed to actually get the law changed from inside yourself.
Speaker 3: So so long, long story short, it's two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: I'm in chowhall. There's an a warden, I would say,
Speaker 3: a southern gentleman. Maybe in past life he had slave ships.
Speaker 3: He sees my prayer beads and he says, are you
Speaker 3: allowed to have them?
Speaker 2: Sir?
Speaker 3: And me, being the sarcastic bastard I am, I buck
Speaker 3: up and say yes, sir. So he looks at me
Speaker 3: and says, are you sure you're allowed to have him?
Speaker 3: I don't like your attitude. He sees the energy coming
Speaker 3: off me. I say, sir, yes, sir, And so he
Speaker 3: gets a little closer in my personal space than the
Speaker 3: tar man's out with the gun. It's about two hundred inmates,
Speaker 3: and he says, I don't like your attitude. I said,
Speaker 3: we don't like your attitude either, sir. You brought much
Speaker 3: misery and suffering to the land. As a result, I
Speaker 3: went straight to segregation six months in some of the
Speaker 3: worst conditions in the United States. But while there I
Speaker 3: had epiphany and I wrote an article that became a
Speaker 3: state law.
Speaker 2: And what is that law? Yeah, exactly, here we go.
Speaker 3: So the law is seven to twenty five. I'll see
Speaker 3: as five hue sixteen dash three as a minute October
Speaker 3: twenty seven, two thousand and seven, signed by Governor Blagoyevitch.
Speaker 3: I should probably send him some money for commissary because
Speaker 3: he actually he helped me. No, really, he helped me. I
Speaker 3: just it slips my mind sometimes, but he helped me.
Speaker 3: He really did. He signed my idea to law.
Speaker 1: If you remember, back in two thousand and nine, Illinois
Speaker 1: Governor Rod Blokoyevitch was indicted on corruption charges that included
Speaker 1: the alleged solicitation of personal benefit in exchange for Barack
Speaker 1: Obama's recently vacated US Senate seat. As I remember that well,
Speaker 1: it was a bizarre episode anyway. He was later found
Speaker 1: guilty of seventeen different charges, including wire fraud, attempted extortion,
Speaker 1: and conspiracy to solicit bribes, and sentenced to fourteen years
Speaker 1: behind bars. But before he left office, he did sign
Speaker 1: Patrick's amendment into law. Now back to the law. Bill
Speaker 1: Ryan worked for the Department of Children and Family Services
Speaker 1: as an advocate for long term offenders.
Speaker 2: He had a.
Speaker 1: Newsletter that was circulated throughout prisons as well as the
Speaker 1: families of inmates, to law professors and colleges, and even
Speaker 1: legislators and politicians. Mister Ryan published the article that Patrick
Speaker 1: wrote about amending the law to include post conviction ballistics
Speaker 1: testing through the Integrated Ballistics Identification System also known as IBIS.
Speaker 1: In turn, Illinois State Representative Arthur Turner Senior sponsored the legislation.
Speaker 3: You can imagine the letters that come from prison, and
Speaker 3: so Bill Ryan are a long term advocate, explained to me,
Speaker 3: and Michelle says Patrick, you just don't get it. I
Speaker 3: had a table full of letters. I reached down to
Speaker 3: grab one letter, open it up. You asked me to
Speaker 3: give it to the senators, and I did so. It's
Speaker 3: completely by the grace of the creator, completely fortuitous, anomalist,
Speaker 3: whatever you think.
Speaker 2: It was all just luck, right, No, I mean.
Speaker 3: The stars lined upwards, genetics as a comminator, it's all
Speaker 3: the above.
Speaker 1: It's a combination of everything. And so ultimately the log
Speaker 1: it's changed. They opened the jail doors, they let you
Speaker 1: out right. No, it's never not exactly. So the log
Speaker 1: has changed. Illinois.
Speaker 3: It comes to first state in the country to have
Speaker 3: this law in order to grant me the gun testing.
Speaker 3: So the log has changed. In general, Block which were
Speaker 3: in the shadow of my attorneys over there on Clark Street,
Speaker 3: who spent like four point five million dollars over ten
Speaker 3: years to get me exonerated.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, let's not leave out there are
Speaker 1: a lot of heroes in your story right northwest, none
Speaker 1: bigger than you, by the way, And two of them
Speaker 1: are in the room, And I want to recognize Steve
Speaker 1: Drizzen and Laura and I Ryder from the Northwestern Center
Speaker 1: on Ronfel convictions, who have been steadfast support as they
Speaker 1: still are. They your biggest fans of me. To be
Speaker 1: embarrassed if you heard something things they said. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so Rockford fought every step of the way. There was
Speaker 1: no welcoming Reese for the conquering hero.
Speaker 3: It was none of that. It was more like my
Speaker 3: cousin Vinnie, we don't take too can of your kind
Speaker 3: around here. So it was a long fight. It was
Speaker 3: a very long fight. About five rounds of gun testing
Speaker 3: showed the gun didn't match. And of course no one
Speaker 3: and knits mistakes in this world. So we had to
Speaker 3: fight new trial, new trial.
Speaker 2: But meanwhile, now you're hitting your.
Speaker 3: Stride, I'm hitting my stride. We were winning motion after motion.
Speaker 3: It was just amazing. It was a momentum. If you
Speaker 3: can imagine ten fifteen years of representing myself, or you know,
Speaker 3: just trying to navigate the system.
Speaker 2: And you're just starting to look like a lawyer.
Speaker 3: Did everybody tell you that I do hear that I
Speaker 3: take my cues from Steve Drizzen, I confessed.
Speaker 1: So, as you know, the wheels of justice turned painfully slowly.
Speaker 1: Even after getting the law changed in order to request
Speaker 1: new ballistics testing through the IBIS system in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, it took a tremendous amount of fighting in
Speaker 1: order for Patrick's lawyers to finally be able to present
Speaker 1: the new evidence from two different ballistics experts, excluding as
Speaker 1: the murder weapon the tourist nine millimeter, that same tourist
Speaker 1: nine millimeter that was seized at Patrick's apartment. This all
Speaker 1: happened finally in December of twenty sixteen, and then at last,
Speaker 1: his conviction was vacated and a new trial was granted
Speaker 1: March of twenty seventeen, and Patrick Percy was released on
Speaker 1: bond that very April, and there he began to fight
Speaker 1: the new trial from the outside. In November twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: Patrick's lawyers filed a motion for dismissal in light of
Speaker 1: a new bit of information that was not disclosed by
Speaker 1: the prosecution after eighteen months. A story from Lois Asher,
Speaker 1: the victim's mother, that alluded to conscious wrongdoing by police
Speaker 1: in regards to the gun, even though at a December
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen hearing she admitted that the story came to
Speaker 1: her second hand through her now deceased husband. It's still
Speaker 1: worth hearing, but did not result in a dismissal. There's
Speaker 1: another aspect of this case that needs to be mentioned,
Speaker 1: which is the story of the gun.
Speaker 3: So basically the state's attorney's once it came to realize
Speaker 3: that the gun didn't match, even the mother of the
Speaker 3: victim right had came forward and it was like, look,
Speaker 3: the detectives told me and my husband back in two thousand,
Speaker 3: that back in nineteen ninety four that they couldn't find
Speaker 3: a gun that killed their sons. So they just put
Speaker 3: Patrick's gun into evidence. And when she asked, her and
Speaker 3: her husband asked, are you sure you have the right person?
Speaker 3: And they responded, well, we got one anyway. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of victims in this case.
Speaker 1: The parents of the victim right, your girlfriend ended up
Speaker 1: spending two years in prison.
Speaker 3: My children, I can't explained watching what they went through,
Speaker 3: you know, all through my children, you know, because every
Speaker 3: step of the way they were my guiding light. They
Speaker 3: were my guiding light.
Speaker 1: So finally the retrial is on. In January twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: despite the evidence pointing to the contrary, the state's ballistics
Speaker 1: expert continued to connect the Taurus nine milimeters seize the
Speaker 1: Patrick's apartment with the murder weapon. Meanwhile, the defense hired
Speaker 1: two of the leading forensic firearm and tool mark experts
Speaker 1: in the country, Chris Coleman and John Murdoch, who worked
Speaker 1: independently of one another. That's important and arrived at the
Speaker 1: same conclusion. The markings made on test bullets in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three and twenty eleven by the tourist nine millimeters
Speaker 1: seized from Patrick's apartment all matched and showed distinct similarities.
Speaker 2: However, the test.
Speaker 1: Bullets did not match the bullets and casings recovered from
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety three crime scene. Therefore, the inescapable and
Speaker 1: for the authorities in this case, the inconvenient truth was
Speaker 1: that the Taurus nine millimeter did not could not have
Speaker 1: fired the bullets that killed Andrew Ashmer. Finally, your day comes,
Speaker 1: your day in court. Right, how good was that day
Speaker 1: of vindication?
Speaker 2: Did you float out of the courtroom like.
Speaker 3: Well, It's really strange because as I'm caught up in
Speaker 3: these events, I realized all that this is bigger than myself.
Speaker 3: But I had to sit for a second trial, and
Speaker 3: even though I knew I knew I was gonna be
Speaker 3: found innocent, I really believed it that everything came out
Speaker 3: the judge. It was very meticulous. He was very fair, right,
Speaker 3: but it was still very much like dangling your feet
Speaker 3: over hell fire because he could say guilty and you
Speaker 3: go back. So that's in the back of my head.
Speaker 3: So when I'm actually exonerated, when I leave the courtroom,
Speaker 3: I still have that goofy look on my face, like right,
Speaker 3: So I still was numb. You know, it's like end
Speaker 3: to end because you really can't believe the gravity of
Speaker 3: the circumstances that you're caught up in.
Speaker 1: In the twenty five years, I've been working on these
Speaker 1: cases and on this cause, criminal justice reform as a
Speaker 1: whole deincarceration, mandatory sense, synologic decriminalization of drugs. You know,
Speaker 1: my heart has been with the innocence movement for all
Speaker 1: those years. So I'm always proselytizing the questions I get
Speaker 1: asked most frequently by civilians who don't realize until we
Speaker 1: talk about it that these wrongful convictions happen at the
Speaker 1: rate that they do. As I didn't realize until I
Speaker 1: found out, what happens to the people that did this
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 2: And we know you? Answer to that is nothing almost
Speaker 2: always karma.
Speaker 3: Karma's always there.
Speaker 1: Karma is the thing. And two, do you get compensation?
Speaker 1: That question gets asked by everybody, and people just assume.
Speaker 1: So when he walks out, tell me he got paid, right,
Speaker 1: the state makes it up to him.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I mean, Illinois has the statute. But
Speaker 3: you have to basically go through another fight called a
Speaker 3: certificate of innocence, and then after that is another fight
Speaker 3: for the federal level for federal civil rights violations, which
Speaker 3: would be a wrongful conviction suit. So it's a process
Speaker 3: no one you know. Like I said, there's no reas
Speaker 3: for the conquering hero. It doesn't work like that. They
Speaker 3: fight fight, fight, fight, fight, because you're messing with people's careers.
Speaker 3: It doesn't happen like that.
Speaker 1: But it's so crazy because it's a tax payer money.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're paying it themselves. In Illinois, there's
Speaker 1: a cap on how much you can get as well,
Speaker 1: unless you can prove a civil rights violation, right right.
Speaker 3: But all those things are beyond they're beyond the kiln.
Speaker 3: That's all down the line. I have to fight a
Speaker 3: whole nother fight called certificate of innocence, just like the
Speaker 3: post conviction petitions. So it's a fight after fight.
Speaker 1: But even then, the cap is I think going to
Speaker 1: surprise a lot of people how low it is. And
Speaker 1: Illinois is not the worst state by far right, but
Speaker 1: the cap here is what it's under.
Speaker 3: Two hundred I know it's about one twenty something like.
Speaker 2: That, under two hundred thousand dollars for twenty five years and.
Speaker 1: Seven in present right, And that's after you fight, fight, fight,
Speaker 1: fight fight.
Speaker 2: The good news is we're moving.
Speaker 1: The project has been really moving the needle on getting
Speaker 1: laws passed state after state compensation laws. We're now up
Speaker 1: to thirty five states that have in their fifteen states
Speaker 1: that have no laws whatsoever. In some states that have
Speaker 1: a match, I think Misconsot right next door has a
Speaker 1: cap of twenty five thousand dollars. So now you're out
Speaker 1: right making speeches and anyone who has heard Patrick's story today,
Speaker 1: If you know another organization, corporate, or otherwise that's interested
Speaker 1: in having him come and speak, that's how you're supporting yourself.
Speaker 3: I'll run my mouth for a living. That's what I do.
Speaker 3: You run your mouth for I can't do much else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you could do that. So that's number one.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing is, you know, we're just
Speaker 1: out here trying to educate everyone. I mean, I'll ask
Speaker 1: everybody that's here to ask everyone you know to serve
Speaker 1: on a jury. Remember the things that you're hearing now
Speaker 1: when you're in that jury box. You know, the research
Speaker 1: is now showing the jurors are predisposed to think that
Speaker 1: a person in defend this box is guilty just because
Speaker 1: they're there eighty percent to twenty percent. So remember Patrick,
Speaker 1: Remember what happened to him, And how what you're watching
Speaker 1: unfold in front of you as you're holding somebody's life
Speaker 1: in your hands, may not be what you're being told
Speaker 1: that it is. So they're supposed to be a reasonable doubt,
Speaker 1: reason of doubt, right, and they're supposed to be a
Speaker 1: presumption of innocence.
Speaker 2: None of that work.
Speaker 3: No, it's a credibility deficit. There's a credibility deficit for
Speaker 3: a defendant walking the door, period. And if you're poor,
Speaker 3: there's a credibility deficit. And if you're behind bars and
Speaker 3: you're fighting the case, you're not going nowhere unless you
Speaker 3: have an attorney. So pro say gets no play.
Speaker 2: Pro sake, get's no play.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you this question as we wind down,
Speaker 1: and I have one more question after this.
Speaker 2: Are you bitter?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No, that's I thought that was a good question.
Speaker 3: No, it's no. I'm hurt. I'm very hurt. You know,
Speaker 3: I have reservoirs of hurt. So seeing what this has
Speaker 3: done to my children, you know, it's like stepping outside
Speaker 3: of a time machine and not really connecting with nothing
Speaker 3: out here because I'm the analog man from nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 3: you know. So it's really a very strange, you know,
Speaker 3: just surreal existence. But we make the best of it.
Speaker 3: We make the best of it. You know. I amkculture
Speaker 3: dot org. So I reduced gun and gag violence promote
Speaker 3: higher education on the organization I found it while.
Speaker 1: That I am kidculture dot org. And of course you're
Speaker 1: on You're on all social media now too. You hit
Speaker 1: the ground running. I mean, you only been el since
Speaker 1: January you got I.
Speaker 3: Was on social media before I got out that that
Speaker 3: was that was my thing. I was a writer and
Speaker 3: Michelle helped propagate the stories. And we had professors coming
Speaker 3: in and out Stateville for years who was taking our
Speaker 3: material They were you know, volunteers, and they were taking
Speaker 3: our materials to gang peace circles, high schools, colleges. Kit
Speaker 3: Culture actually was born in Stateville, where I had a
Speaker 3: natural life sentence. Also, I have a book on Amazon, also,
Speaker 3: the Adventures of Kid Culture in the World Explorers. We
Speaker 3: got t shirts on I amkidculture dot org. Please support, support,
Speaker 3: support because we are trying to connect to stop the
Speaker 3: violence movement across the country. Show culture to culture.
Speaker 1: And one more thing, I got to ask this more
Speaker 1: question before I get to the last part. So you
Speaker 1: did talk very beautifully earlier about the programs that you
Speaker 1: sponsored in prison and about the importance of education.
Speaker 3: Yes, so basically everyone knows how the grants got took
Speaker 3: in our prisons. Well, we led a fight to reverse that.
Speaker 3: We had did charities in prison. Police left. We said
Speaker 3: we're going to do hats for the homeless. So every
Speaker 3: time we tried to do something positive. People kind of
Speaker 3: like aah, right, well we still did it. So there
Speaker 3: was very much that persistence. And also try to reach
Speaker 3: out to the community at large to show, you know,
Speaker 3: not just to stare the kids away from crime and
Speaker 3: educate college kids that were volunteering to come into state
Speaker 3: Bill also kind of educate the public at large. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of mismanagement and gross waste of money in
Speaker 3: the prison system.
Speaker 2: Well said again.
Speaker 1: And I now come to my favorite part of the show,
Speaker 1: which is when I get to thank you Patrick Pursley
Speaker 1: for coming and sharing your story, and you know, just
Speaker 1: for being here and being such a great example for
Speaker 1: everybody of the power of the human spirit. And thank
Speaker 1: the audience here for being here and listening of course
Speaker 1: Laura and Steve again for everything you're doing, and all
Speaker 1: the great activists in the room. And this part of
Speaker 1: the show I call it closing argument. This is where
Speaker 1: I actually get to turn my mic off. Thank you
Speaker 1: once again. Thank to everybody at home or on your
Speaker 1: device wherever you're listening to Wrongful.
Speaker 2: Conviction, Please check out the other episodes.
Speaker 1: One story is crazier than the other and you can
Speaker 1: learn something from each one of them. So now I'm
Speaker 1: signing off and leaving your microphone on and I'm just
Speaker 1: going to kick back and listen right.
Speaker 3: Those and arguments. Remember, people, everything isn't always is seems.
Speaker 3: Everyone has intrinsic value. Every one of us has value.
Speaker 3: That has to be our mission to be able to
Speaker 3: teach compassionate love. Right, So, facing the worst possible conditions,
Speaker 3: you can still move mountains and that is very much
Speaker 3: a testament to the spirit. And I have to thank Northwestern,
Speaker 3: I have to thank you. I have to thank General Block, Prison,
Speaker 3: Neighborhood Arts Project, Michelle, everyone that's been there every step
Speaker 3: of the way. Because I'm a mess. I will tell
Speaker 3: you I'm a mess. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise
Speaker 3: that doing hard time and inhumane conditions, that would be
Speaker 3: against the law for you to leave your dog in
Speaker 3: So you think like that, So I always keep a
Speaker 3: part of me in the cellhouse. Right. So right now,
Speaker 3: let's see they're back from child. You know that you
Speaker 3: have birds flying over their heads, you have spiders, you
Speaker 3: have mice, You have people who are loved, you know,
Speaker 3: loved ones and prisoners who are basically kind of get
Speaker 3: the scarlet letter for loving a prisoner. You see what
Speaker 3: I'm saying. So basically, if you have loved ones behind bars,
Speaker 3: write iler it at wrongful conviction. Consultants were trying to
Speaker 3: do something. We got allowed prisoners talk to us ellas
Speaker 3: I amkidculture dot org. It's a five o' one c
Speaker 3: three reducing gun and game violence. We did a mixtape.
Speaker 3: Imagine that fifty three year old man come out prison,
Speaker 3: do a mixtape and no, I'm not rapping. It just
Speaker 3: tells the story of the wrongful conviction as well as
Speaker 3: the violence and Rockford, but also the hope and always
Speaker 3: work for love, Always work for love. It is the
Speaker 3: highest vibration of human spirit. And that's my closing arguments.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: It really helps.
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Annescence Project, and
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 1: to Innocence Project dot org learn how to donate and
Speaker 1: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 1: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
Speaker 1: by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralft. Be sure
Speaker 1: to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook.
Speaker 2: At Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one