Speaker 1: In the early morning hours of August eighth, nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: shots rang out in downtown Indianapolis. Casey Shane, a young
Speaker 1: man who had been known to frequent a gay bar
Speaker 1: in the area, was found dead in the driver's seat
Speaker 1: of his truck. A young woman who was delivering newspapers
Speaker 1: in the area witnessed the shooting. She described the gunman
Speaker 1: to police as a dark skinned black man wearing a
Speaker 1: black shirt and jogging pants with three white stripes down
Speaker 1: the sides. Later, in a photo array and a live lineup,
Speaker 1: she picked out Leon Benson. Leon lived a few blocks
Speaker 1: from the shooting and was known to police as a
Speaker 1: drug dealer. When Leon was arrested a week later, he
Speaker 1: insisted he had nothing to do with the shooting. He'd
Speaker 1: been in a building across the street that night and
Speaker 1: dozens of people had seen him there. But at trial,
Speaker 1: the young woman who had identified Leon from the lineup
Speaker 1: did so again in front of a jury with convincing certainty.
Speaker 1: She had seen the shooter with her own eyes, she
Speaker 1: told the court, and she pointed at Leon Benson. But
Speaker 1: this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I'm
Speaker 1: kimbas Smith. Criminal justice advocate, formerly incarcerated individual, presidential clemency recipient,
Speaker 1: and author and executive producer. And I'm sitting in today
Speaker 1: for Jason Flahm, who is a good friend, longtime supporter,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited today to be here with Leon Benson. Hi. Leon,
Speaker 1: thanks for being on Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: And we also have us Laura Basilon from the University
Speaker 1: of San Francis Go School of Law, where she is
Speaker 1: the director of the Criminal, Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice
Speaker 1: Clinic Programs.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Laura.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for your passion and the
Speaker 1: work that you do. Leon. So what was most interesting
Speaker 1: to me about your case was that during that particular
Speaker 1: time when you are arrested in nineteen ninety eight, there
Speaker 1: was this big, you know thing already with the war
Speaker 1: on drugs, but there was an influx now black and
Speaker 1: brown people going into the system. And so my case
Speaker 1: was a drug case, a crack case. And so I
Speaker 1: know with my case, the prosecution withheld discovery information and
Speaker 1: just to read all the many errors that transpired with
Speaker 1: your trial, it just really struck a chur with me,
Speaker 1: and not to mention. I used to live in Indianapolis
Speaker 1: as well, so I'm really excited to just dive in.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about your life before all of
Speaker 1: this happened. You know, where you're from, where you grew up,
Speaker 1: anything about your family life.
Speaker 3: You know, first and foremost, I'm from Flint, Michigan, and
Speaker 3: I'm proud to say that. You know, Flint is a
Speaker 3: blue collar community, you know, the underdog. You know, we
Speaker 3: got that fighting spirit. I think I had a great childhood.
Speaker 3: I mean I didn't know I was poor anything like that.
Speaker 3: I was very creative growing up. I was able to
Speaker 3: see a diverse crowd of people and culture at a
Speaker 3: young age. And you know, I participated in sports, played basketball,
Speaker 3: you know, things like that, you know, typical things of
Speaker 3: a kid. So I did have an affinity for hip hop,
Speaker 3: but I also started to have an affinity for you know,
Speaker 3: the fast life, fast money, things like that. You know,
Speaker 3: growing up, I was a typical kid who experienced gang violence,
Speaker 3: experience street violence, things like that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I eventually moved to Detroit when I was seventeen and
Speaker 3: and love Detroit. You know, I made my bones in
Speaker 3: Detroit very early. You know, fair feeling Puritan. You know,
Speaker 3: at this point, it seems like a very typical urban background.
Speaker 3: As I reflect back on my life, I see a
Speaker 3: lot of things that could have been a lot better,
Speaker 3: but they could have been a lot worse too, you know.
Speaker 1: And at the time that this incident happened, what was
Speaker 1: going on in your life?
Speaker 3: In August eighth, for nineteen ninety eight, I was twenty
Speaker 3: two years old, and at the time, what was happening
Speaker 3: for me in my life? It was like, you know,
Speaker 3: the the hip hop stuff that was going on with Tupac,
Speaker 3: you know, in Bigie master P.
Speaker 2: You know, this was the backdrop.
Speaker 3: You know. I was in Indianapolis, Indiana. I had come
Speaker 3: down there, not to sell drugs or anything like that.
Speaker 3: I came down there as a professional painter, home renovator.
Speaker 3: I was able to renovate like eighty homes before I
Speaker 3: was laid off, and you know, unfortunately, you know, I
Speaker 3: got back into the street life. So the area I
Speaker 3: was in, it was a transit area in the near
Speaker 3: downtown area Indianapolis. It was a lot going on. It
Speaker 3: was very transit, very moving, and this was one of
Speaker 3: the reasons that attracted me to this particular part of
Speaker 3: the city of Indianapolis because it reminded me of Detroit and.
Speaker 1: Flynt And this was also the neighborhood where the crime
Speaker 1: took place. Laura, can you tell us something about the
Speaker 1: area kind of set the stage for what happened that night?
Speaker 4: Indianapolis, the downtown part of it where this crime took place,
Speaker 4: was fairly violent. It was known for a place where
Speaker 4: you could buy and sell drugs, and as Leon also indicated,
Speaker 4: was this interesting mix where this is the late nineties,
Speaker 4: there was a lot of homophobia, and it was also
Speaker 4: a place where people who were gay could go to bars,
Speaker 4: including the Varsity Lounge and meet other people who were gay.
Speaker 1: The victim in the case was twenty five year old
Speaker 1: Casey Shane. He was from Plainville, which was middle class
Speaker 1: subourbon community about twenty miles outside of Indianapolis. What was
Speaker 1: he doing downtown that night?
Speaker 4: Our operating theory has always been that Casey Shane was
Speaker 4: there that night in that particular part of Indianapolis because
Speaker 4: he had visited the Varsity Lounge, and we know he
Speaker 4: had visited that bar in the past because witnesses had
Speaker 4: identified him as being there, and there's fairly strong evidence
Speaker 4: at this point to suggest that he was gay, but
Speaker 4: also closeted for the reasons that you might expect, which
Speaker 4: is that very very few people, even in extremely liberal places,
Speaker 4: which Indianapolis was not, were out of the closet at
Speaker 4: that point in time. And so our theory is that
Speaker 4: he went out that night and went to the Varsity
Speaker 4: and had a few drinks and maybe had an interaction
Speaker 4: with someone there and then maybe arranged to meet them
Speaker 4: a couple of blocks away, which is where the actual
Speaker 4: crime itself occurred.
Speaker 1: With all of that, can you run downologically the night
Speaker 1: of August eighth, nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it was a fairly ordinary night in that
Speaker 4: Leon was hanging out at a place called the Priscilla Apartments,
Speaker 4: which was also known as Little Vietnam.
Speaker 3: It was a building that I sow drugs out of,
Speaker 3: and at this particular point of the night, I'd been
Speaker 3: out there all day. So I came back to my
Speaker 3: headquarters was this building, and I was in the back
Speaker 3: of the buildings and by the steps, and I was
Speaker 3: there with Timothy Gaither with a whole bunch of other people,
Speaker 3: and you know, it was beer drinking, we smoking, and.
Speaker 4: Then around a little after three o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 4: there was this sound of gunfire.
Speaker 3: And we heard shots like by pa and it was
Speaker 3: like they were so close.
Speaker 4: And one of Leon's friends, Miss Shirley, who had just
Speaker 4: gone outside, saw what they believed to be this black
Speaker 4: pickup truck parked kind of idling outside across the street,
Speaker 4: and there was a man in the truck in the
Speaker 4: front seat who wasn't moving, and there was a man
Speaker 4: on the sidewalk who had fired multiple times into the vehicle,
Speaker 4: then walked away, walked back and fired again. And this
Speaker 4: was just a completely shocking, seemingly out of nowhere shooting,
Speaker 4: and from Leon's perspective, all he heard were the shots.
Speaker 2: You know, I stay in the back of the building
Speaker 2: for maybe twenty.
Speaker 3: Thirty minutes, so I left out that back part of
Speaker 3: the door and went to my apartment that was also
Speaker 3: in that direction, going like several blocks away, and he kind.
Speaker 4: Of went about his evening and then only later realized
Speaker 4: that it was this young white man who was in
Speaker 4: the neighborhood and this was a really big deal that
Speaker 4: he had essentially been executed in his car, and the
Speaker 4: police just came in kind of swarmed into the neighborhood
Speaker 4: and essentially shut down business as usual there for a
Speaker 4: while because they were extremely intent on finding someone to arrest.
Speaker 2: That went on about my business and it was a
Speaker 2: parade of police, you know, later on that day, and
Speaker 2: I didn't come back to the area for several days.
Speaker 4: I think there was a lot of pressure in this
Speaker 4: case because the suspect who had been seen by witnesses
Speaker 4: was black, the victim was white. I think that cross
Speaker 4: racial nature put extra pressure on the police, and there
Speaker 4: was just a lot of heat in the neighborhood in
Speaker 4: the next couple of weeks, and a lot of, as
Speaker 4: I said, pressure on the police to solve this crime
Speaker 4: and really get someone in custody and charge them.
Speaker 1: So Leon was nowhere around he heard the shot. What
Speaker 1: led to this investigation? How did they even connect Leon
Speaker 1: to the case?
Speaker 4: Initially, the police were given leads that the person who
Speaker 4: committed the shooting was a man named Joseph Webster, and
Speaker 4: they had that information because there was talk in the
Speaker 4: streets that it was Joseph Webster, and there was other information,
Speaker 4: including from a man named Dakaria Fulton who had actually
Speaker 4: witnessed the shooting, that Joseph Webster had committed that crime,
Speaker 4: but it so happened that a young woman named Christy
Speaker 4: Schmidt was there at the scene. She was a white woman.
Speaker 4: Her reason for being in the neighborhood was that she
Speaker 4: was delivering newspapers. So for your younger listeners back in
Speaker 4: the day, you would put a quarter in a box,
Speaker 4: you'd open the box and you would pull out a newspaper,
Speaker 4: and Christy was the person who would stack those newspapers,
Speaker 4: and that's what she was doing. She was in the
Speaker 4: middle of doing that when she heard the shots and
Speaker 4: she looked up and saw the shooter. And her initial
Speaker 4: description she said, he never got into the light, and
Speaker 4: recall it's very dark at three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 4: She was one hundred and fifty feet away, a full
Speaker 4: block away, and according to the lead detective, a man
Speaker 4: named Alan Jones, when she was given different mugshots to
Speaker 4: look at, she was given Joseph Webster's mugshot, and she
Speaker 4: said that it was not Joseph Webster, and then detective
Speaker 4: Jones showed her a picture of Leon and Christy Schmidt
Speaker 4: said that his face leapt off the page and that
Speaker 4: she was certain that this was the person. That this
Speaker 4: was the shooter, and when that happened, the entire trajectory
Speaker 4: of the case changed.
Speaker 1: So you're saying this key witness pointed out Leon on
Speaker 1: a lineup, despite having only seen the shooter in the
Speaker 1: dark of night for a few seconds and from one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet away.
Speaker 4: And she said, initially to the detective on the scene,
Speaker 4: Detective Leslie van Buskirk, he had a dark complexion. And
Speaker 4: of course, as you can see all too clearly because
Speaker 4: we're all looking at each other and these little zoom pictures,
Speaker 4: Leon is very light complexed. There were a lot of
Speaker 4: things that didn't make any sense about her description, which
Speaker 4: also evolved and became increasingly specific and dramatic over time.
Speaker 1: And I want to point out too that study after
Speaker 1: study has shown the unreliability of cross racial identification. They've
Speaker 1: been found to be less accurate than just taking a
Speaker 1: wild guess. So, Laura, was there anything else about the
Speaker 1: photo identification or the lineup that seems sketchy.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's a lot of opaqueness around that. They never
Speaker 4: recorded that interview. We have no idea what detective Jones
Speaker 4: said to her. We don't know if suggestive language was used.
Speaker 4: We don't know how many pictures she actually looked at.
Speaker 4: She does not have a clear memory of that at
Speaker 4: the time. And so once they had this woman as
Speaker 4: their witness, they built the entire case around that, which
Speaker 4: meant essentially that they developed tunnel vision, and it really
Speaker 4: became about propping up her account and making everything revolve
Speaker 4: around and reinforce what she was saying. And every time
Speaker 4: they received a piece of information that pointed away from
Speaker 4: Leon and toward Joseph Webster, they would bury it in
Speaker 4: the file and not turn it over.
Speaker 1: And another thing, there was another witness who came forward
Speaker 1: as well, a neighborhood guy named Donald Brooks who had
Speaker 1: previously gotten into a beef with Leon, I think over
Speaker 1: a drug deal gone sour. He told detective Jones that
Speaker 1: the shooter was a guy named Detroit, which was Leon's nickname.
Speaker 1: Donald Brooks later went back on a statement, but we'll
Speaker 1: hear more about that later. Leon. All of this came
Speaker 1: as a surprise to you because you were arrested on
Speaker 1: the fourteenth of August, about a week after the shooting happened.
Speaker 1: But originally you thought they were picking you up for
Speaker 1: something else.
Speaker 3: Right that day, I was still in my drug business
Speaker 3: at the time. You know, my run in with authorities
Speaker 3: was I got caught with possession of cocaine and so
Speaker 3: I was on a misdemeanor probation charge. So when the
Speaker 3: police rolled up on me and Shirley now sitting on
Speaker 3: the stool, they said I had a warrant for possession
Speaker 3: of cocaine and probation violation, and you know, I was
Speaker 3: arrested for that. We went to the police station and
Speaker 3: they tain me to the wall in the room.
Speaker 2: And I just fell asleep. I fell out.
Speaker 3: And then I was awakened. I don't know for how long.
Speaker 3: It was cold as hell in there. And they came,
Speaker 3: you know, Detective Jones and Van Buskirk, and it was
Speaker 3: interrogate me.
Speaker 2: They told me like, hey, what do you know.
Speaker 3: About this murder? And instantly for me, I felt like
Speaker 3: this is a game. I was nowhere around, no murder scene.
Speaker 3: I got nothing to do with this stuff. I just
Speaker 3: held my own But I thought it was a joke
Speaker 3: that they had come to me about a murder, and
Speaker 3: even saying that somebody'd seen me do it. It was laughable.
Speaker 3: It was laughable. My biggest mistake was not asking for
Speaker 3: a lawyer. You know, twenty twenty, hindsight is always there.
Speaker 3: But you know, when I start to understand the law,
Speaker 3: I realized that most people like me at the time,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty two year old, uneducated. Of course, you know,
Speaker 3: you had this notion that if you say, get a lawyer,
Speaker 3: as if it's saying you guilty, you know, the system
Speaker 3: say you're innocent, to proven guilty.
Speaker 2: But it was quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 3: It was guilty and to proven innocent. So I didn't
Speaker 3: know this at the time. So I'm volunteering my location
Speaker 3: where I was at, and I find out later that
Speaker 3: you know, the detective, you know, manipulated you know, this information.
Speaker 2: You know, he omitted.
Speaker 3: Out of forty people in the building, you only can
Speaker 3: find two people who said they didn't see me.
Speaker 2: And I gave you at least ten twelve apartment numbers.
Speaker 3: Of people that see me right right, and even worse,
Speaker 3: even worse because I gave up that information. You know,
Speaker 3: I wasn't thinking that people even in the building that
Speaker 3: they had seen me that day would probably be like,
Speaker 3: I don't want to get involved. I'm no, but I
Speaker 3: didn't see nothing what you're talking about. And they was
Speaker 3: right to feel like that you know at the time.
Speaker 3: You know, so as bad as it sounds, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of us play this game with the system.
Speaker 3: And I'm talking to my people that's out there, you know,
Speaker 3: in the street life or whatnot. You know, on one hand,
Speaker 3: we want to, you know, be out there doing our
Speaker 3: thing in the dark, selling drugs, you know, moving the
Speaker 3: things that we do. But then on the other hand,
Speaker 3: we wanted to we still want to trust it. We
Speaker 3: don't trust the police, but we want to trust the
Speaker 3: police at the.
Speaker 2: Same time, you know, come save me right, you know.
Speaker 3: And I was in that type of frame of mind
Speaker 3: at that time, and honestly, as a citizen, whether whether
Speaker 3: I was an accused drug dealer, accused murderer, accused robber,
Speaker 3: or whatnot, the law in the system suposed to be impartial.
Speaker 2: And I was feeling like that, but that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: But you did eventually hire a lawyer to represent you,
Speaker 1: a man named Timothy Miller. How did he feel about
Speaker 1: your chances?
Speaker 3: So he came to me and I gave him a
Speaker 3: little run down. He's like, yeah, yeah, man, I already
Speaker 3: know that. Man, we're going to get this case dismissed.
Speaker 2: You know, I just want twenty thousand.
Speaker 3: You might not have to pay the whole thing because
Speaker 3: we'd get this dismissed. Just give me a five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars retainer and you know we would go from there. Man, hey,
Speaker 3: I absolutely believe you right.
Speaker 1: And then your trial was set for May of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine in Marion County Superior Court. So, Leon, what
Speaker 1: were you actually feeling as the trial date was approaching?
Speaker 3: You know, I had a lot of different emotions. You know,
Speaker 3: I was very nervous. I had never been to trial before,
Speaker 3: so at this point, me feeling like it was laughable
Speaker 3: was over with. I'm going to trial. I'm like, oh, man, oh,
Speaker 3: they for real?
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So the state had a couple of our witness says
Speaker 1: Christy Smidt, who pitched you out of the lineup as
Speaker 1: the shooter, and Donald Brooks, who had given your name
Speaker 1: to the police. But at trial, Donald try to recant
Speaker 1: a statement saying he didn't remember what he'd said to
Speaker 1: the detective Jones, and he didn't remember seeing you near
Speaker 1: the truck. And not only that, you knew that your
Speaker 1: defense attorney had an acepisleeve, a man named Dakaria Fulton,
Speaker 1: Laura can you tell us about Dakaria and why he
Speaker 1: was so crucial to the defense.
Speaker 4: Basically, Leon, Joseph Webster, and Dakaria were all drug dealers
Speaker 4: in this area. They didn't work together, but they also
Speaker 4: weren't enemies. He didn't really have anything against anybody. He
Speaker 4: just told Detective Jones exactly.
Speaker 1: What he saw.
Speaker 4: What had happened was, he was in his apartment a
Speaker 4: couple of blocks away. He decided he wanted to go
Speaker 4: smoke a blunt. He needed some rolling papers. He starts
Speaker 4: walking towards the seven eleven and just by happenstance, he's
Speaker 4: literally across the street and he looks and he sees
Speaker 4: Casey Shane's park car, and he sees this man standing
Speaker 4: by the car, and he watches this interaction go down,
Speaker 4: and he's pretty close. He's much much closer than Christy
Speaker 4: Schmidt ever was. And he recognizes the guy as Joseph
Speaker 4: Webster because he's wearing these very distinct Adidas jogging pants
Speaker 4: block with three white stripes down the side, but also
Speaker 4: because he and Joseph Webster had run into each other
Speaker 4: earlier that day, and Joseph Webster had been carrying a
Speaker 4: gun and showed it to Takaria, who told Webster, you're
Speaker 4: a fool. You need to put that gun away. And
Speaker 4: so it was this very clear, strong identification from someone
Speaker 4: who knew everyone new Leon, knew Joseph Webster and really
Speaker 4: didn't have any skin in the game. And that statement
Speaker 4: did get turned over to Timothy Miller.
Speaker 3: Like a week before the first trial. You know, Timothy
Speaker 3: Miller had finally given me the January nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 3: discovery supplement, and in this it had Dakaria Fulton's statement,
Speaker 3: and I looked, I'm like, oh, man, this guy's saying
Speaker 3: he's seen it right.
Speaker 2: I'm like, man, look, hey, I'm not Finn go home, right.
Speaker 3: So I go back to the sale block and I'm
Speaker 3: showing them. I'm like, look, man, I told ju man,
Speaker 3: look they got the witness right there, like we giving
Speaker 3: each other hog find Like, bro, man, you going home.
Speaker 3: So I go to the first trial that Karl wasn't there.
Speaker 3: Just the mere mention of him is what got a
Speaker 3: hung jury. In my opinion, I was able to listen
Speaker 3: from the hold and sell to the jury pool coming
Speaker 3: out and them saying, you know, where's that other guy on?
Speaker 2: They mentioned him? But where is he at.
Speaker 4: In the first trial, the jury hung sex to sex,
Speaker 4: so it was a split vert. There were six people
Speaker 4: who did not think there was enough evidence to convict.
Speaker 3: I say this all the time that my trial wasn't
Speaker 3: a trial really of Leon Benson, but it was a
Speaker 3: trial of urban America against America, because everybody in my
Speaker 3: trial was people who were from the streets, people of color,
Speaker 3: and our challenge was these people in us.
Speaker 2: That's how I felt.
Speaker 3: It was a clear line drawn, and I got the
Speaker 3: raff of a lie that energy.
Speaker 2: I felt some nasty energy in there. It was nasty.
Speaker 3: But when they came back and said a mistrial, I
Speaker 3: wasn't necessarily relieved. I was glad not to hear a
Speaker 3: guilty verdict, but I was figuring, like, oh, once we
Speaker 3: get to Cary Fault, I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: So then there was a second trial about six weeks later,
Speaker 1: in July of nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 4: There were some major differences though, between the first and
Speaker 4: the second trial, and I think maybe the biggest one
Speaker 4: was that in the first trial, Timothy Miller called a
Speaker 4: guy named Tim Gaither who alibied Leon because he had
Speaker 4: been sitting next to him inside the building when the
Speaker 4: shots were fired, and so that really did establish an alibi,
Speaker 4: and it's consistent with what Leon had always said. And
Speaker 4: in the second trial, and we don't know why he
Speaker 4: didn't call him. I think one of the things that
Speaker 4: is completely frustrating and not explicable is that he never
Speaker 4: called Fulton, not in the first trial and not in
Speaker 4: the second trial. In the second trial, he also didn't
Speaker 4: call Timothy Gaither and so Leon didn't have an alibi,
Speaker 4: and once again he failed to meaningfully challenge Christy Schmid's identification,
Speaker 4: and this time the jury came back with a guilty verdict.
Speaker 4: It was chaos in the courtroom. Leon was crying out
Speaker 4: for God to help him. His family was crying. The
Speaker 4: judge had to admonish them. The other side of the
Speaker 4: courtroom was cheering.
Speaker 3: You know, the Leon Benson was murdered in that courtroom
Speaker 3: that day. That's what you witness. You witness a murder,
Speaker 3: a legal linchen And I understand the victim's family, they
Speaker 3: lost a loved one. He can never be returned. But
Speaker 3: I was I was deeply hurt by the tears. Guilty
Speaker 3: in a tear, you know, I started to feel and
Speaker 3: empathize with a deep level of what slavery months looked like,
Speaker 3: you know, back in the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I say it.
Speaker 2: It was burnt. It was kind of burnt me. You know.
Speaker 2: I went back to the hole and sell you know,
Speaker 2: you know, I cried.
Speaker 3: I was like, damn, like this is real, Like I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna see my kids.
Speaker 2: I was outcast, I was killed, and I.
Speaker 3: Was buried with sixty one years of dirt to lie
Speaker 3: in the tomb called prison.
Speaker 2: And I was shattered, you know, so much.
Speaker 3: So when I went to prison, I had what you
Speaker 3: call delusions.
Speaker 2: Of reprieve.
Speaker 3: Something good's gonna happen. God is gonna open up the
Speaker 3: door and for me. You know, while I was sitting
Speaker 3: in prison, I wore my coat and my boots in
Speaker 3: my bunk.
Speaker 2: They say, man, why are you doing that? Because they
Speaker 2: gonna come get me man and tripping. I was broken, right,
Speaker 2: So that's the gist of it.
Speaker 1: But I see it also as just not losing hope,
Speaker 1: Like you had to believe that you weren't going to
Speaker 1: spend sixty some years in prison. So I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in hearing because I did six and a half years,
Speaker 1: and it breaks my heart to know that you spent
Speaker 1: twenty five years in prison, and so I just want
Speaker 1: to hear about your strength and how you spent your
Speaker 1: time in prison, especially too of ten years. At that time,
Speaker 1: I believe I read you were in solitary confinement. So
Speaker 1: how did you keep yourself strong?
Speaker 3: So, you know, in order to see somebody at their
Speaker 3: highest heights, you must know where they being that they
Speaker 3: low was lows. When I explained to you why I
Speaker 3: was that I was shattered. I could have gave up,
Speaker 3: but you can never give up on yourself. And you
Speaker 3: know when I came in, you know, I fought from
Speaker 3: day one. I hit the law library. I learned how
Speaker 3: to really read a case law and understand it. And
Speaker 3: you know, I was eventually, you know, put on solitary
Speaker 3: for participating in the prison riot that I didn't even
Speaker 3: participate in. So I was left with the question why me?
Speaker 3: And that question was answered, why not me? Why not me?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: So I had to get myself together.
Speaker 3: I had to eat, eat some spirit full, you know,
Speaker 3: eat some knowledge ful you know, every day. And one
Speaker 3: of the things that I learned when I was in
Speaker 3: solitary was acceptance, right acceptance. I had to accept that
Speaker 3: I was in that moment. Those circumstances, not the stance,
Speaker 3: the situation, but the things that are circumscribed around it.
Speaker 3: And once I started to accept that I got to
Speaker 3: go through this process, I became more creative with the
Speaker 3: tools around me. So my jail cell wasn't no longer
Speaker 3: a jail cell. It wasn't solitary no more. It became solitude.
Speaker 3: It became a university, It became a healing center for me.
Speaker 3: It became, you know, a public speaking stage, you know,
Speaker 3: to the other solitary prisoners, the other eleven. So I
Speaker 3: did the best that I can do in there, and
Speaker 3: I impacted guys. My best moments in there was when
Speaker 3: I showed guys who were illiterate how to read, how
Speaker 3: to write, right, when I gave somebody that was broken, man,
Speaker 3: I put them back together and gave them real confidence
Speaker 3: and healing. See, they didn't see that when we was
Speaker 3: on the inside. When I had the mic, it don't matter.
Speaker 3: I'm the coldest ever, and I said it on record
Speaker 3: because I made them guys in their hope. That feel good,
Speaker 3: That feel good. That's what I do it for it
Speaker 3: right now?
Speaker 1: Right well, Leon, congratulations on your self growth while and
Speaker 1: the shoe in solitary and then also your motivation for
Speaker 1: you know, when you were in general population to try
Speaker 1: to help lift other young brothers that were in the
Speaker 1: system as well, and I'm sure you'll continue to do
Speaker 1: so while you're home. Laura, I want to circle back
Speaker 1: to you a little bit and talk about some things
Speaker 1: that went wrong in Leon's trials, both of them. When
Speaker 1: you reviewed this case, did you see any evidence of
Speaker 1: ineffective counsel or prosecutor or misconduct, you know that kind
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 4: There was. There was a misconduct by the prosecutor, not
Speaker 4: just by the police, and it was egregious in the
Speaker 4: second trial. And that is also consistent with my experience,
Speaker 4: which is that prosecutors tend to cross ethical and legal
Speaker 4: lines when the case is very close and they're worried
Speaker 4: that they're going to lose. And I think that's what
Speaker 4: was going on with this prosecutor, whose name is Randall Head,
Speaker 4: who later became a state legislator and is now prosecuting
Speaker 4: people once again. But I think because the first trial
Speaker 4: was so close and he almost lost, he was absolutely
Speaker 4: determined that he was going to nail Leon this time,
Speaker 4: and so he did this absolutely unlawful thing, which is
Speaker 4: that when Donald Brooks, the second eyewitness, didn't say what
Speaker 4: he wanted him to say, which is that he saw
Speaker 4: LeAnn by the truck, and instead Donald Brooks started going
Speaker 4: backwards and being contradictory to his initial statement to Detective Jones.
Speaker 4: Rather than impeach him with the statement properly, he got
Speaker 4: frustrated and he said, I want to read his entire
Speaker 4: statement to Detective Jones into the record, all of it,
Speaker 4: and this is a very long statement. It covered the
Speaker 4: beef between Leon and Donald Brooks. It covered all kinds
Speaker 4: of things that made Leon seem like a really bad
Speaker 4: guy and were completely irrelevant. And then to compound what
Speaker 4: he was doing, he said in closing argument that Donald
Speaker 4: Brooks had gone sideways and backtracked because quote, snitches get stitches,
Speaker 4: and that when Donald Brooks was in jail, he was
Speaker 4: afraid for his life. He was afraid he was going
Speaker 4: to be killed, and he implied not just that, but
Speaker 4: that Leon or his family was going to kill him,
Speaker 4: none of which was actually true. And what that's called
Speaker 4: is basically evidence outside of the record, except it's not evidence.
Speaker 4: It's a totally made up story. And he just injected
Speaker 4: that into his closing argument. He made up a bunch
Speaker 4: of facts once again to make Leon look like a terrible,
Speaker 4: violent person, and Timothy Miller didn't object to any of
Speaker 4: that either.
Speaker 1: And Laura, when you heard about Leon's case, what stood
Speaker 1: out to you?
Speaker 4: There are really two reasons why my students and my
Speaker 4: staff attorney and I took this case. And the first
Speaker 4: one was that Leon has a very powerful advocate named
Speaker 4: Shannon Coleman, who's a woman in Philadelphia who's really made
Speaker 4: it her life's work to try to get people out
Speaker 4: of prison who've been wrongfully convicted, and she reached out
Speaker 4: and asked me to take the case. But the second
Speaker 4: reason was that once I met Leon, it was just
Speaker 4: so clear to me not only that he was innocent,
Speaker 4: but just what a complete waste this was, because he's
Speaker 4: such an amazing human being and has so much to
Speaker 4: offer the world as an artist, as a thinker, as
Speaker 4: a brother, as a partner, as a father, as a
Speaker 4: member of the community. And the idea that Leon was
Speaker 4: just going to be rotting in there was so horrifying
Speaker 4: to me. It just I couldn't live with that, And
Speaker 4: so I thought, you know what, this is a long shot,
Speaker 4: but we're going to dig deep, We're going to do
Speaker 4: everything we possibly can. And I felt like at the
Speaker 4: end of the day, if after a few years and
Speaker 4: we did everything we possibly could, I could live with that.
Speaker 4: But what I couldn't live with was listening to Shannon
Speaker 4: and meeting Leon and walking away.
Speaker 1: Laura, you are a real one, and I'm sure Leon
Speaker 1: and I can both say that we're grateful for a
Speaker 1: tourneys like you that'll take the long shots. Now we
Speaker 1: have to get to the events that led to Leon's
Speaker 1: conviction being vacated. Can you tell us about that process.
Speaker 4: Leon's case was accepted for review by the Conviction Integrity
Speaker 4: Unit of the Marion County Prosecutor's Office, which was a
Speaker 4: new unit at the time, and I think maybe his
Speaker 4: case was the first that was accepted and the co director,
Speaker 4: Kelly Potter, was assigned to it. So we were really
Speaker 4: lucky that we had a true partner in the prosecution,
Speaker 4: the District Attorney Ryan Meers. He was very focused on
Speaker 4: making sure not that the numbers were really high in
Speaker 4: terms of convictions, but that the right people were being
Speaker 4: convicted and that innocent people were not being convicted. And
Speaker 4: so Ryan Mehers had assigned Kelly and her counterpart to
Speaker 4: look back at cases where it seemed like maybe there
Speaker 4: had been a mistake or multiple mistakes that were made.
Speaker 4: And what was really tricky about Leon's case is that
Speaker 4: many of the issues that we had been talking about
Speaker 4: were what we call in the legal world litigated and lost,
Speaker 4: meaning that they had been raised at other times after
Speaker 4: Land was convicted and rejected. And that included the misconduct
Speaker 4: that I described by the prosecutor. It included the failure
Speaker 4: to call Dakaria Fulton, It included the failure to introduce
Speaker 4: testimony about the perils of crossracial identification. All of those
Speaker 4: issues had been raised and lost, and so we had
Speaker 4: to find something new, and that was going to be
Speaker 4: very very hard because almost a quarter of a century
Speaker 4: had gone by, and it occurred to us ultimately that
Speaker 4: maybe there was evidence that was provided by the original
Speaker 4: people involved in the case as witnesses that had never
Speaker 4: been turned over to Leon and his attorney, and so
Speaker 4: that ended up being the key that really unlocked the
Speaker 4: prison door, so to speak. In other words, we were
Speaker 4: all in agreement that once this buried evidence surfaced, it
Speaker 4: was really clear that the trial had been unfair and
Speaker 4: unconstitutional because there's a rule, the Brady rule, that says
Speaker 4: you have to turn that evidence over and had been violated.
Speaker 4: And in addition to it being violated, it was very
Speaker 4: clear that had it been followed, the jury would have
Speaker 4: reached a different verdict.
Speaker 1: You mentioned evidence that was buried, What exactly was that
Speaker 1: buried evidence and how did you dig it up?
Speaker 4: So what we did was Kelly, our partner on the
Speaker 4: other side and the conviction Review Unit, she provided the
Speaker 4: actual police file, which no one in the history of
Speaker 4: the litigation had ever seen, including Leon, and so we
Speaker 4: went through everything in that file, and then we compared
Speaker 4: it to the documents that have been turned over to
Speaker 4: Leon and Lo and behold pretty much every time Joseph
Speaker 4: Webster came up as a suspect, whether it was through
Speaker 4: multiple detailed crime stopper tips, or most crucially, a note
Speaker 4: to Detective Jones from another detective citing three different people
Speaker 4: who had either witnessed the murder or who he had
Speaker 4: told he did. It was buried and Leon had never
Speaker 4: gotten those things. So we went to see Detective Jones.
Speaker 4: He had retired under difficult circumstances. He was older, ailing
Speaker 4: and over a series of hours. Really towards the end
Speaker 4: of this interview, he admitted that he had not turned
Speaker 4: these documents over and that basically every time he wrote
Speaker 4: something down or received something that was handwritten, including this
Speaker 4: note saying my confidential informant saw Joseph Webster shoot the
Speaker 4: white boy and the head, that note too, had not
Speaker 4: been turned over. And so when we asked Detective Jones why,
Speaker 4: he said, well, that was my work product. There is
Speaker 4: really no such thing as police work product. They have
Speaker 4: to turn over everything in their file to the district attorney.
Speaker 4: And so once he said that, I remember, I just
Speaker 4: had a physical sensation in my body, like I just
Speaker 4: couldn't believe that he was saying what he was saying.
Speaker 4: That's when I realized that in that moment, the case
Speaker 4: was probably over. And then we came back and visited
Speaker 4: him a few months later and he signed a declaration
Speaker 4: basically saying what he had said to us initially, and
Speaker 4: that was, in the end, the most powerful piece of
Speaker 4: evidence that really broke the case completely apart. And that
Speaker 4: was when I understood that that Leon was going to
Speaker 4: be going home.
Speaker 1: And then on March eighth, twenty twenty three, Leon's conviction
Speaker 1: was vacated by Judge Shatries Flowers.
Speaker 3: But I didn't know until March knife about eleven in
Speaker 3: this and I was reading Jay Prince The Art of Respect.
Speaker 2: I was reading that and they called my name, and.
Speaker 3: You know, I left out and went there, and the
Speaker 3: council was like, hey, you got immediate release, you know,
Speaker 3: woo woo. So I did have a David Shappel moment, right,
Speaker 3: I did kind of feel like man, woo tang, you know,
Speaker 3: just slipping over my desk's right. So I just pumped
Speaker 3: my fists and I went and got my property together
Speaker 3: and everything, and I was on my.
Speaker 2: Way down the walk like an hour later, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean.
Speaker 3: So I threw on my all white, you know, I
Speaker 3: threw my pair, my prayer shaw on. I get there
Speaker 3: to the gate, and uh, you know, the first thing
Speaker 3: when I opened up the door, it's like I was
Speaker 3: blinded by the light, you know, I was being rebirthed.
Speaker 3: And the first thing I did, you know, I iron
Speaker 3: at the most High in which I called the most
Speaker 3: High Yahweh. I said, Halleluyah barukata Yahuah, which means blessed
Speaker 3: be the name Yahweh. That's what I did when I
Speaker 3: got out. I see my sister Valerie, and I heard
Speaker 3: my brother's voice, and I see my daughters, and I
Speaker 3: seen all my people who looked at like angels to
Speaker 3: me when they sat right there and they was looking
Speaker 3: and I could hear the chant truth never dies, Truth
Speaker 3: never dies. And what you would see if you ever
Speaker 3: look at that footage, it's so authentic because I just
Speaker 3: was in a moment. That's what you're seeing. That's the
Speaker 3: core of me getting out of there. I laugh at
Speaker 3: it when I see it too. It bring me joy.
Speaker 2: That's how joyful I was, you know, with that to
Speaker 2: embrace the people who put in the.
Speaker 3: Time to believe me. You believe me, so now you
Speaker 3: know I'm like a spiritual Muhammad Ali. I got the people,
Speaker 3: ain't on telling them what I can do with the
Speaker 3: people you believe.
Speaker 1: Me, Leon, All of that is just phenomenal and definitely
Speaker 1: resonates within me. And I just think with your release
Speaker 1: and what you're doing now, I'm wondering how many of
Speaker 1: the boxes that you checked off with your goals of
Speaker 1: once you come out, because it seems like in five months,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've checked off plenty. But tell us you know,
Speaker 1: what are you doing with your time nowadays? At you're home?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm living here in Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 3: I've been doing a lot of things because I was
Speaker 3: practicing them, you know, on the inside. I was mentoring.
Speaker 3: On the inside, I was teaching, creating programs, performing organizing events,
Speaker 3: you know, things like that. One of my biggest highlights is,
Speaker 3: you know, I dropped the album Innocent Born Guilty. I
Speaker 3: recorded it on the inside. I don't want to tell
Speaker 3: you how when where you know, yeah, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't want to do that, but it was recorded inside.
Speaker 3: It's a soundtrack of what I was feeling in different
Speaker 3: times and whatnot. Beyond that, you know, I'm still active
Speaker 3: in community involvement awareness. You know, every chance I get
Speaker 3: you or I put a word in for at risk youth.
Speaker 3: I connect with other organizations like organization Exigner Reads here
Speaker 3: in Detroit. They definitely been huge with helping me re
Speaker 3: enter the back in society. I've been you know, working
Speaker 3: with the Streets Don't Love You Back, you know, these
Speaker 3: other nonprofits.
Speaker 2: Anything that I can do to.
Speaker 3: Bring awareness, you know, to Room for and conservations, to
Speaker 3: any type of you know, discriminations or injustices in the world.
Speaker 1: Well, Leon, those are really wonderful organizations that are doing
Speaker 1: great work. We'll put links to them in our bio
Speaker 1: page so our listeners can show their support and also
Speaker 1: let them know where they can check out your album,
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty dope by the way. So
Speaker 1: again I feel so humbled and grateful to be able
Speaker 1: to have this opportunity to be a guest host to
Speaker 1: interview you both with wrong For convention podcasts, we always
Speaker 1: close with closing arguments and so just really wanted to
Speaker 1: know what the both of you all have to close with.
Speaker 4: I guess I have two kind of calls to action.
Speaker 4: The first one is in in the time that it
Speaker 4: took between our filing the petition for Lean to be
Speaker 4: released in Leon's actual release, we did get increasingly uncertain
Speaker 4: about whether this was actually going to work and whether
Speaker 4: he was ever going to get out. And the truth
Speaker 4: of the matter is it's a major decision by a
Speaker 4: judge to overturn a conviction. We needed to respect that process.
Speaker 4: I think Leon understood that better than we did. So
Speaker 4: one thing I will say to lawyers out there is
Speaker 4: listen to your clients. Sometimes oftentimes they know best And
Speaker 4: the second thing I'll say is to the audience, because
Speaker 4: any one of you could be selected to serve on
Speaker 4: a jury, and it's maybe the most important thing that
Speaker 4: you'll ever do, even though you don't realize it. What
Speaker 4: I would ask that you do when you're on that
Speaker 4: jury is really, really take your obligation seriously, whether it
Speaker 4: is presuming somebody innocent, or holding the prosecution to their burden,
Speaker 4: or understanding that your doubts are real. I think so often.
Speaker 4: There was a juror on Leon's case who did have
Speaker 4: a lot of doubts in the second trial, and she
Speaker 4: felt sort of bullied and exhausted, and she got herself excused,
Speaker 4: she left the jury, and then they convicted shortly after
Speaker 4: with a replacement. And if she had just been able
Speaker 4: to hang on a little longer, maybe the result would
Speaker 4: have been different. She could have hung the jury again.
Speaker 4: So I urge people, when you're in the minority and
Speaker 4: you're battling against the majority. Maybe it's even eleven people
Speaker 4: telling you you're wrong and you're crazy, and it's Friday
Speaker 4: afternoon and they want to go home, Hang on, hang
Speaker 4: on to your conviction, because you are the person standing
Speaker 4: between this wrongfully accused person and a terrible injustice. And
Speaker 4: so I would ask people when you're being selected for
Speaker 4: a jury to be considerate, to be observant, and to
Speaker 4: be strong.
Speaker 3: Well, I got two thoughts. I got one ounce of previncing.
Speaker 3: This better than a town they cure. You know, do
Speaker 3: the things I mean, as individuals as well as you
Speaker 3: know public servants do to things in the now that
Speaker 3: you can do to prevent having to go back right
Speaker 3: with a ton of cure. So if you just come
Speaker 3: with an ounce of prevention, let's just have harm reduction,
Speaker 3: you know, in our lives as well as in our
Speaker 3: public spaces. And the next thing is, you know, be
Speaker 3: a part of the solution, not the problem. Don't let
Speaker 3: your silence be the action that you know perpetuates injustice
Speaker 3: in any form, let alone wrong for incarceration. It's so
Speaker 3: many things that we can do as a society, as
Speaker 3: individuals that can get the world out. Okay, maybe you didn't.
Speaker 3: You don't want to get behind an innocence case. It
Speaker 3: might take too long for you. Maybe you don't want
Speaker 3: to get behind a particular movement. But what you can
Speaker 3: do is small things. Sign a petition, leave a comment
Speaker 3: of encouragement to somebody you know, sometimes show up at
Speaker 3: a rally that's trying to you know, get humanity across
Speaker 3: whereas being blocked. And one thing I wanted to say too,
Speaker 3: this ain't my story.
Speaker 2: This Casey Shane's story.
Speaker 3: He was killed because he was closeted, and now because
Speaker 3: he's dead, he don't have no voice.
Speaker 2: And you know.
Speaker 3: His story should get out because the biggest injustice now
Speaker 3: is not me in prison anymore or the time that
Speaker 3: I'm lost, but as an individual, you know, who was
Speaker 3: a family member to others, was killed maybe for a
Speaker 3: sexual preference. And you know, even though you know I'm
Speaker 3: a head of sexual guy, I say I'm an ally
Speaker 3: to the LGBTQ community because I'm being so considerate of
Speaker 3: what they go through and some of those experiences I
Speaker 3: don't fully understand. But one thing I do understand is
Speaker 3: that we are all human. We perfectly imperfect. You know,
Speaker 3: ay Elohim said we was perfect. We were made in
Speaker 3: their image. You know that's something that to even look at,
Speaker 3: you know, and taur Ross, so everything that's here is
Speaker 3: supposed to be, you know, because it wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all Lava for Good podcasts one week
Speaker 1: early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank executive producers Jason Blam, Jeff Kempler,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Bortis for inviting me to sit in today,
Speaker 1: and thanks to our production team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea,
Speaker 1: Lyla Robinson and Kathleen Fink. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction, and you
Speaker 1: can also follow me at Kenpasmith on Instagram or go
Speaker 1: to my website Keimbosmith dot com and purchase my book
Speaker 1: Post a Child, The Kembusmith Story. Wrongful Conviction is a
Speaker 1: production of Loving for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number one