Speaker 1: On December fifth, four, the naked body of a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old girl was found in a wooded area of
Speaker 1: lynn Brook, Long Island. The victim had been last seen
Speaker 1: leaving her job at a local roller rink about a
Speaker 1: month earlier. The medical examiner determined that the cause of
Speaker 1: death was ligature strangulation and seamen found on her Baginal
Speaker 1: swabs suggested that she had been raped. By March nine five,
Speaker 1: authorities believed that this rape and murder were connected to
Speaker 1: similar disappearances, and investigators started focusing on Dennis Halsted, who
Speaker 1: was believed to have been associated with another young woman
Speaker 1: who had disappeared. John Restivo had been interviewed as part
Speaker 1: of this investigation and mentioned that he was acquainted with
Speaker 1: John Cooked, an occasional employee of his and his brother's
Speaker 1: moving business. After COVID was given three polygraphs, police asserted
Speaker 1: that he lied when denying involvement with the disappearance of
Speaker 1: the sixteen year old victim. He endured twelve hours of
Speaker 1: aggressive interrogation and eventually he cracked and signed a confession
Speaker 1: that was handwritten by one of the detectives. The sixth
Speaker 1: version of events given by COVID, containing information all of
Speaker 1: which was previously known to investigators. According to COVID's false confession,
Speaker 1: the victim voluntarily got into Restivo's van, where Covid and
Speaker 1: Halsted stripped her and Halsted raped her. Further into this
Speaker 1: coerced statement, he said that when they arrived at a cemetery,
Speaker 1: Restivo also raped her and Covid strangled her. When she
Speaker 1: regained consciousness and became frantic. With the false confession, that
Speaker 1: a number of hairs found in Restivo's band said to
Speaker 1: have matched the victims, the three men were tried over
Speaker 1: the course of nine six John Covid was tried separately
Speaker 1: and convicted of rape and murder in March, Thenis Halsted
Speaker 1: and John Restivo in November. Through the concerted efforts of
Speaker 1: Centurion Ministries, Paced Law School's Post Conviction Clinic, Private Council,
Speaker 1: and the Innocence Project, that defense used police department property
Speaker 1: records to finally locate and test intact vaginal swaps for
Speaker 1: DNA in two thousand and three, ultimately excluding the three
Speaker 1: men as the perpetrators. John Restivo spoke with US at
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Innocence Network conference to tell their horrifying story. Together,
Speaker 1: they spent over half a century in prison for a
Speaker 1: crime they did not commit. This is rawful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason plom Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm especially excited
Speaker 1: today because I've got a guest who I've wanted to
Speaker 1: have on my podcast from long before I even had
Speaker 1: a podcast. So um, ever since I read your story
Speaker 1: in The New Yorker, John Restivo, I've been sort of
Speaker 1: in awe of your your story, your your case, your everything.
Speaker 1: So I'm really I'm really happy you're here. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: a long, strange trip has been. Yeah, how about it?
Speaker 1: And like I always say, I'm sorry you're here, but
Speaker 1: I'm happy you're here. So um and with you. Nina
Speaker 1: Morrison is a return guest on this Year Is Today.
Speaker 1: Nina is the senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project
Speaker 1: in New York. Um, welcome back, Thank you, Jason. It's
Speaker 1: always so nice to be here, and this is gonna
Speaker 1: be an amazing experience for me, I think for everyone
Speaker 1: who's listening as well, mainly because of you, John. So
Speaker 1: let's get right into it. So and yours is a
Speaker 1: New York case, right, which is which makes it personal
Speaker 1: to me as a New Yorker. A lifelong New Yorker,
Speaker 1: and just by way of background, John was convicted of
Speaker 1: a rape murder along with two other innocent men and
Speaker 1: sentenced to thirty three and a half years of life.
Speaker 1: Could well have been executed if not for Governor Mario
Speaker 1: Cuomo blocking repeatedly the death penalty in New York State.
Speaker 1: I think that's an important thing to touch on. But
Speaker 1: let's go back to it. All these crimes we talked
Speaker 1: about are horrible. This one is particularly terrible, right. This
Speaker 1: is the rape and murder of a young girl, sixteen
Speaker 1: year old girl. And obviously everybody wants to see those
Speaker 1: crimes solved, but they don't want to see it solved
Speaker 1: this way. I mean, when we get the wrong people
Speaker 1: locked up. Whoever it is that did this was free
Speaker 1: to commit other heinous crimes. But take us back to
Speaker 1: the crime itself. And how did you first hear about it?
Speaker 1: I mean, you were at the time, you were in
Speaker 1: the moving business. What were you doing? Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: inna moving business with my brother, right, And when young
Speaker 1: lady disappeared, we had seen articles in newspaper there was
Speaker 1: missing persons flyes on different store windows or telephone poles.
Speaker 1: So people in the community knew that the young lady
Speaker 1: who was a mission which town was this just was
Speaker 1: in Linbrook, New York, in Nashville County, all Ang Island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there was a couple of articles in the newspaper.
Speaker 1: So approximately three weeks later, a body is found and
Speaker 1: it's identified as being her body, and now instead of
Speaker 1: being a missing person's case, it's a homicide. And this case,
Speaker 1: it's got so many layers because you have three guys
Speaker 1: with makes it really especially tragic because the other two
Speaker 1: guys that were convicted of the same time that you
Speaker 1: were convicted of were just as innocent as you were.
Speaker 1: But one of them confessed, and we know how that
Speaker 1: goes as well. But every one of those even inside
Speaker 1: of that false confession, there's a lot of nuance to
Speaker 1: those situations. Do you want to talk about that? Because
Speaker 1: I was a guy named Kogut right, Well, part of
Speaker 1: the problem with the introgation process that he was put
Speaker 1: through is that the police lied to him. And I understand, okay,
Speaker 1: the police are allowed to lie to you, but he
Speaker 1: took a lie detective test and the police told him
Speaker 1: he failed the lie detective tests. And we had experts
Speaker 1: that actually viewed the you know, the Polly charge, and
Speaker 1: our experts said that you know, he didn't lie, right,
Speaker 1: that he was telling the truth, but the detectives used
Speaker 1: that as a tool against him. You know, while this
Speaker 1: guy is being you know, he's in a small room
Speaker 1: with a couple of these let's call him thugs because
Speaker 1: that's what they are. Don't get me wrong. I'm not
Speaker 1: calling all police thugs. We need the police, and I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that and and that's yeah, so I'm not
Speaker 1: a calling roll police bad. But so they held that
Speaker 1: over his head, saying that, okay, you lied during the
Speaker 1: polygraph test, which was an actual lie. I mean, they
Speaker 1: will lie into him, right, and they're polygraph expert said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't really go by the charts. I go by
Speaker 1: the person's demeanor while i'm giving them, while I'm giving
Speaker 1: them the test. It's just it's just a tool they're
Speaker 1: using to interrogate someone. It's not and polygraphs are not
Speaker 1: you know, people can debate whether they have any utility
Speaker 1: for determining if someone is or is not telling the truth,
Speaker 1: but police have used them for decades as part of
Speaker 1: what they the experts now call it guilt presumptive interrogation
Speaker 1: where they bring somebody in they've already decided based on
Speaker 1: these subjective factors, like I get a feeling he's not
Speaker 1: telling me the truth, or they think they have other
Speaker 1: evidence the person did it, And once they decide that
Speaker 1: the person is guilty, the interrogation is not a search
Speaker 1: for the truth, it's a search for a confession. In
Speaker 1: the false confession, right, everything that the police had known, right,
Speaker 1: every fact that they knew, right, was incorporated into this confession. Right,
Speaker 1: the young lady disappears in early November. They're interrogating COVID
Speaker 1: in early March of night five, And according to the police,
Speaker 1: in this false confession, this facts coming out of color
Speaker 1: of pocket book, color of sneakers. I mean things that
Speaker 1: no normal person could ever remember. You know, last week,
Speaker 1: what did you have for breakfast last Monday? I mean,
Speaker 1: like every fact was known, even like the piece of
Speaker 1: jewelry that they recovered that she had been wearing. Right,
Speaker 1: he supposedly remembers the type of jewelry. And since it
Speaker 1: was all fictitious to begin with, right, every fact that
Speaker 1: they knew was incorporated into the false confession except one thing.
Speaker 1: The police didn't know. The color blouse or shirt that
Speaker 1: she was wearing on the night she disappeared, and that's
Speaker 1: the only thing that wasn't incorporated into this false confession. So,
Speaker 1: according to all of the experts, they considered as a
Speaker 1: classic false confession because no normal person would be able
Speaker 1: to actually remember all of these facts. There was just
Speaker 1: too many facts incorporated into this confession for it to
Speaker 1: be reliable. Okay, now we know that COVID confessed, but
Speaker 1: how did that lead to your case being brought to
Speaker 1: where it went and ultimately to you being that it
Speaker 1: almost executed the police? They incorporate my name and Dennis's
Speaker 1: name into the false confession because in a way, the
Speaker 1: police had us labeled as suspects. I don't believe that
Speaker 1: we were labeled as targets. I personally believe that they
Speaker 1: were going to frame us one way to other. Right
Speaker 1: when Dennis I wouldn't have a clue. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: a clue after COVID confessed falsely confessed. Now my family
Speaker 1: retained a private investigator. We're trying to figure out where
Speaker 1: I was on a night this younger lady disappeared. We
Speaker 1: figured out where I was through receipts because I had
Speaker 1: just purchased the house, and that weekend I was standing
Speaker 1: in the floors. I was an house all night, died evening.
Speaker 1: I was on the phone with my girlfriend, who was pregnant.
Speaker 1: We were putting Polly, you're thing on the floor, so
Speaker 1: she was pregnant. She putn't be an house. She was
Speaker 1: out of mother. So we had phone records, we had receipts,
Speaker 1: so we knew exactly where we were where I was right,
Speaker 1: and Dennis was with his kids and another town, and
Speaker 1: Kobe was at a birthday party in another town. We
Speaker 1: didn't even lay eyes on each other that whole weekend.
Speaker 1: And beyond that, the three of us were never together
Speaker 1: in that van as a threesome ever, And we all
Speaker 1: had independent alibis. And by the time we got the trial,
Speaker 1: they took my independent alibi witness because the guy who
Speaker 1: was helping me, he was a friend at the time.
Speaker 1: He was helping me sand the floors, right, He was
Speaker 1: at the house all night. The cops picked him up
Speaker 1: up the street. They bring him in for ten or
Speaker 1: twelve hours, and they tell him that, well, if you
Speaker 1: don't tell us what we want to hear, right, you're
Speaker 1: gonna end up in jail with them, So they've actually
Speaker 1: flipped my independent alibi witness from my witness today witness,
Speaker 1: and he actually gave damage and testimony against me at
Speaker 1: trial and at the civil trial, during his testimony, the
Speaker 1: judge actually stopped the proceedings, had the jury removed and
Speaker 1: told him that you're on the borderline of being charged
Speaker 1: with perjury here because he had changed his testimony so
Speaker 1: many times, right, And when he testified at the criminal trial,
Speaker 1: he lied, right, but they wouldn't give us his original
Speaker 1: grand jury testimony. So it was always my opinion that
Speaker 1: his testimony was different from what he testified at the
Speaker 1: grand jury to what he testified two years later at
Speaker 1: the criminal trial, because during that time span, the cops
Speaker 1: put so much pressure on his dude and flipped them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, he was in an impossible situation. It doesn't
Speaker 1: excuse what he did, No, you're right in the way,
Speaker 1: I felt bad for him because he was stuck in
Speaker 1: the middle of this, right, and he's under this tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of pressure by the police, and he's being told, well,
Speaker 1: if you don't tell us what we want to hear,
Speaker 1: you're gonna end up in jail with him, and he
Speaker 1: sees innocent people in jail, right, and he sees how
Speaker 1: easy was but the police to do that. Exactly. He
Speaker 1: knows what they're capable of because he already knows you're
Speaker 1: innocent and he knows what they're doing to you. So
Speaker 1: there's no reason to not believe that they would do
Speaker 1: the same thing, right. And then we had the other
Speaker 1: problem with the police planting evidence in the van, and
Speaker 1: the judge was that it was a bench trial, so
Speaker 1: the judge concluded that the hedge that they intimated that
Speaker 1: were found in my van would never in the van, right.
Speaker 1: And you know, let's talk about that because that is
Speaker 1: even by the standards of some of the crazy ship
Speaker 1: that we see in this line of work. That's going
Speaker 1: even beyond some of the misconduct, you know, this is
Speaker 1: so far. They were literally pulling hairs from the corpse
Speaker 1: and then taking those hairs and putting them in the van.
Speaker 1: Like who does a thing like that? Well, who does it?
Speaker 1: Are police who are desperate to solve a crime that
Speaker 1: has the community absolutely terrified and up in arms. So
Speaker 1: what John talked about earlier about the flyers around town,
Speaker 1: I mean this was the mid eighties, you know, bedroom
Speaker 1: community suburban Long Island. The young woman who was killed
Speaker 1: in the case that John was falsely convicted in her
Speaker 1: name is Teresa Fusco. Was actually one of three young
Speaker 1: women that went missing around that time, and the other
Speaker 1: two to this day, those crimes have never been solved,
Speaker 1: and for all we know, it may have been the
Speaker 1: same killer or killers in those cases. But by the
Speaker 1: time Teresa disappeared, she was missing for what was it,
Speaker 1: John three weeks every week, about three weeks before her
Speaker 1: body was found. So the terror and the paranoia that
Speaker 1: they're feeling in this town is only heightening. And the
Speaker 1: parents that elected officials, the teachers are saying, solve this crime,
Speaker 1: solve this crime. And after she was found naked, brutalized
Speaker 1: in the woods, just a horrible way to go. You know.
Speaker 1: The police spent months basically bringing in every working class
Speaker 1: guy between the ages of eighteen and twenty nine in
Speaker 1: town in and working them over, trying to see if
Speaker 1: they could find a weak spot until they get poor
Speaker 1: John Kovid, who had had a really rough life grown
Speaker 1: up in foster care. Nobody to fight for him, and
Speaker 1: even he held out for hours and hours till he
Speaker 1: finally confessed. You know, and gave a false confession that,
Speaker 1: as John said, was a classic false confession and that
Speaker 1: it had no information that the police didn't already know,
Speaker 1: so he couldn't point them to clothing or jewelry or
Speaker 1: fruits to the crime, or anything about her that wasn't
Speaker 1: part of the police's knowledge. But everything they did know
Speaker 1: almost two perfectly. But when it came to the hair.
Speaker 1: As part of what was wrong with this case when
Speaker 1: they decided they were going to pin it on John
Speaker 1: and his two friends, is that they had no physical evidence.
Speaker 1: There was no evidence against them, no DNA, no blood typing,
Speaker 1: nothing of hers that was ever found with them, no
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses as far as anybody knew at the time, who
Speaker 1: had seen one vehicle she'd gotten into, and she was
Speaker 1: leaving her job at a roller skating rink. And you know,
Speaker 1: we don't say lightly that police framed people. I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of times police will make bad mistakes, they
Speaker 1: will cut corners, they will interview witnesses in a way
Speaker 1: that's not ethical or permissible. But in this case, there
Speaker 1: is actual scientific evidence that John and his co defendants
Speaker 1: got framed, namely Detective Vulpie to lead homicide detective claimed
Speaker 1: that he found several hairs when he finally got a
Speaker 1: search warrant for John's van when he used for his
Speaker 1: moving jobs, he claimed that he found several hairs that
Speaker 1: were long hairs, looked just like Teresa's and microscopically appeared
Speaker 1: to be the same as Teresa's hairs. I mean, later
Speaker 1: tod DNA and confirmed that they were in factor hairs.
Speaker 1: So that would be pretty bad evidence, and normally you'd think, well,
Speaker 1: that makes John guilty. The problem was those hairs would
Speaker 1: have had to be deposited in the van during this
Speaker 1: period when John and his friends were alleged to have
Speaker 1: abducted her for just a few minutes. According to the confession,
Speaker 1: they had given her a ride and then raped her,
Speaker 1: and she was in the van for not longer, certainly
Speaker 1: no more than an hour, and then she was missing
Speaker 1: for several weeks. But the hairs came from a corpse.
Speaker 1: They had this decomposition at the roots of the hairs
Speaker 1: called post mortem root banding, which basically happens when hairs
Speaker 1: are attached to a corpse that's decomposing, and so detective
Speaker 1: all he takes these hairs and whether he planted them
Speaker 1: in the van or just put him in an envelope
Speaker 1: marked hairs from van that was back at the lab.
Speaker 1: We don't know, it doesn't really matter, but he lied
Speaker 1: under oath and said that these hairs came from the van,
Speaker 1: and it's physically impossible because she had been decomposing for
Speaker 1: several weeks when these when these hairs were collective, they
Speaker 1: were from her autopsy, not from the van. I do
Speaker 1: believe that most people that are doing those jobs are
Speaker 1: doing the best they can, and we need police to
Speaker 1: keep us safe. But when you get somebody like this
Speaker 1: vulpy character who does the type of damage that he did,
Speaker 1: they have to be held to account. I mean, these
Speaker 1: detectives actually created a fictitious scenario after they actually botched
Speaker 1: what we think was the actual crime scene. And unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to us, the night she disappeared, a car within approximately
Speaker 1: a mile of where she was last seen was stolen,
Speaker 1: and when this car was recovered approximately a week later,
Speaker 1: they found a pair of blue striped jeans with one
Speaker 1: of the legs inside out in the back, but the
Speaker 1: stuffed underneath the sea and on the missing persons report
Speaker 1: when she was last seen, that's what she was wearing.
Speaker 1: Blue stripe jeans. So the homicide cops grabbed his car, right,
Speaker 1: which was already cleaned by the owner, and the blue
Speaker 1: stripe jeans were thrown out by the Limber police department.
Speaker 1: So there was police reports regarding the stolen car and
Speaker 1: the blue striped jeans, right, And then there was a
Speaker 1: piece of rope missing from the car. And according to
Speaker 1: the m E. Right, there was a piece of rope
Speaker 1: similar used as what would you say, the murder weapon, right,
Speaker 1: and this was missing from the car. When they brought
Speaker 1: the owner back to the area we had the car
Speaker 1: were recovered, they found the piece of rope, but they
Speaker 1: took a picture of the piece of rope. And one
Speaker 1: would think that given the significance of that this piece
Speaker 1: of rope would be taken into evidence and vouching, and
Speaker 1: the police say it never was. So this is information
Speaker 1: that should have been turned over to the defense, and
Speaker 1: the never was. And we never found out about this
Speaker 1: information until we were in the civil litigation stage twenty
Speaker 1: something years later. Correct, I was John's Innocence project lawyer.
Speaker 1: We didn't know about this information. You know. A lot
Speaker 1: of times as you know, and a lot of your
Speaker 1: guests have talked about there's evidence pointing to someone's innocence,
Speaker 1: and you know, certainly in this case, this is evidence
Speaker 1: about where the crime occurred and what type of vehicle
Speaker 1: was used, which is a huge objective lead. That's different
Speaker 1: than the entire case that was against John and his
Speaker 1: co defendants, but that is evidence. Often we learned about
Speaker 1: that when we're in post conviction, meaning the person has
Speaker 1: been convicted and we're litigating their appeals and we're trying
Speaker 1: to exonerate them. In John's cases, I'll tell you we
Speaker 1: cleared him with DNA and other evidence that we gathered
Speaker 1: as part of the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministry's investigation
Speaker 1: of the case, But we didn't even know about this
Speaker 1: other evidence the police had of his innocence until after
Speaker 1: he was exonerated. It only came out when he had
Speaker 1: lawyers representing him in his lawsuit against the police department
Speaker 1: in the county that this all came to light. So
Speaker 1: it's a really stunning fact that you can have evidence
Speaker 1: of innocence that's hidden, possibly even from the d a's
Speaker 1: because it was in the police file and only come
Speaker 1: out after someone's exonerated. And so his case is a
Speaker 1: DNA exoneration case, but as with so many, there's other
Speaker 1: evidence that could have cleared him even before he went
Speaker 1: to trial. As the son of a police officer, this
Speaker 1: must have been totally surreal to you because as much
Speaker 1: as we all grew up and when I was a son,
Speaker 1: I had, you know, ideas that I would become a policeman, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we all look up to firemen
Speaker 1: and cops. I think most boys do, especially growing up right, um,
Speaker 1: in the year that we grew up in. But for you,
Speaker 1: it was a very personal thing, right. You must have
Speaker 1: been very proud to have a dad it was a cop,
Speaker 1: I would think, right, I mean I would be. But
Speaker 1: then at the same time I would expect that you
Speaker 1: must have thought that, because of the fact that your
Speaker 1: dad was in blue, that this wouldn't happen to you, right,
Speaker 1: And was your dad around? Was he alive at this time?
Speaker 1: My father passed away in January four so he wasn't around.
Speaker 1: But my father said something to me at one time
Speaker 1: while he was on the job, and he told me,
Speaker 1: if you ever have a problem with the top coal oil.
Speaker 1: And when the police brought me in and interrogated me
Speaker 1: for twenty plus hours, Once I was released, I immediately
Speaker 1: why don't you call her? At first, they wouldn't let
Speaker 1: me leave, they took my cockeys. I mean, they would
Speaker 1: let me call the layer. You know I was there.
Speaker 1: I mean, they weren't letting me go anywhere. And finally
Speaker 1: they let me go, and after twenty hours I was
Speaker 1: so out of it. They wouldn't even let me drive home.
Speaker 1: They drove me home and drove my call. There's so
Speaker 1: many things wrong with this that I'm just like, no,
Speaker 1: this is a complicated case. There's no doubt about it,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm just glad it's over it. But what
Speaker 1: the cops did to me, right, it's unfortunate that they
Speaker 1: can do to whoever they please. I mean, they could.
Speaker 1: They could pick somebody out of a group, right and
Speaker 1: make them a target, and then they fabricated case around them,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what they did to us. But but
Speaker 1: from day one, I requested DNA testing, and back in
Speaker 1: the eighties mid eighties, there was no DNA testing, and
Speaker 1: back in we had three different d N eight has done.
Speaker 1: One was inclusive, the two other ones excluded us. And
Speaker 1: back in I thought we were going to get loose.
Speaker 1: I thought that was going to be the end of
Speaker 1: the gospel. That wasn't the case. The judges should have
Speaker 1: been one of the first DNA gulantarmies in the country
Speaker 1: because he was going in pro sae and he had
Speaker 1: a lawyer who was helping him out for some of
Speaker 1: that time, you know, early on, and he's incredibly smart,
Speaker 1: and he was researching and filing his own emotions. He
Speaker 1: had a DNA test from sperm from a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old girl who was a virgin that didn't come back
Speaker 1: to him or Dennis or John Cookeett, and the d
Speaker 1: A said, it doesn't matter. It could have been a
Speaker 1: fourth guy, right, fourth guy, there's a third guy. There's
Speaker 1: no second guy. There was one guy. It was his
Speaker 1: sperm and it wasn't any of these guys. And he
Speaker 1: goes to court and the judges back then weren't as
Speaker 1: educated as they are now about DNA and what it shows,
Speaker 1: and you know, he had different lawyers and they said, sorry,
Speaker 1: not giving you a new trial. And so there he was,
Speaker 1: you know, the mid nineties, starting at square one again.
Speaker 1: Let's just reflect on that for a second too. So
Speaker 1: you prove with DNA that you were innocent and They're like,
Speaker 1: that's right, doesn't matter. I think probably everyone at home
Speaker 1: is experiencing the same or in your car orerever you're
Speaker 1: listening the same thing that I'm experiencing, which is that
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that sounds like a misprint or a
Speaker 1: misstatement that can't really be true. The prosecute is actually lied.
Speaker 1: In their papers about the reliability of tests. They insinuated
Speaker 1: that the test results were not reliable, which is ludicrous
Speaker 1: because there's two independent tests done by two independent labs,
Speaker 1: and they identify the same exact DNA profile. So if
Speaker 1: one layer made a mistake, how could the other lab,
Speaker 1: independent lab make the same mistake and identify the exact
Speaker 1: same DNA profile. So when they argued in their papers
Speaker 1: that the tests weren't reliable, I mean, that was totally ludicrous,
Speaker 1: and the judge adopted older is insanity. And then and then,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, after they realized they weren't getting
Speaker 1: anywhere for a while, the judge was getting skeptical of
Speaker 1: the reliability argument. Then they said, well, the only thing
Speaker 1: that was tested for this last round was off of
Speaker 1: a vaginal slide, which is a glass slide that the
Speaker 1: medical examiner autopsy makes from the cotton swab that was
Speaker 1: actually had most of the sperm and the semen on it,
Speaker 1: and it was just the one part of the slide.
Speaker 1: So maybe these three guys who we convicted, maybe their
Speaker 1: DNA was on the rest of the slide or on
Speaker 1: the swabs, and we just don't have enough material. So
Speaker 1: you had to believe two things. One that the test
Speaker 1: was missing all of their DNA, but also that they
Speaker 1: had some crime partner. This mystery John Doe, who was
Speaker 1: the fourth guy whose name didn't come up in the confession,
Speaker 1: didn't come up from any of the informants, didn't come
Speaker 1: up from any of the witnesses, you know, who everybody
Speaker 1: had been covering up for this last ten years, which
Speaker 1: was absurd um, but the courts bought it. And so
Speaker 1: then they basically gave John a challenge which was proved
Speaker 1: us wrong, proved to us that your DNA is not
Speaker 1: really there, And then we did that right in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, there was a small portion of sample
Speaker 1: left and they retested it using new methodology where they
Speaker 1: would be able to run that result through the federal
Speaker 1: and state databases, you know, through quotas, right, and again
Speaker 1: when they tested that it comes back matching the same
Speaker 1: DNA profile that came back in the nineties. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they ran it through code is hoping that they would
Speaker 1: get a hit, right, And since they didn't get a hit,
Speaker 1: they're still maintaining that it's not reliable. Then in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, I met Nina Marson, and I p
Speaker 1: took on more involvement in the case right and got
Speaker 1: us old in pendant lawyer's right. They got lay's for Dennis,
Speaker 1: they got lawyer's for John. And in early two thousands
Speaker 1: and three and Nina and a couple of the lawyers
Speaker 1: went to inventory evidence that the police had and lo
Speaker 1: and behold for photos and maps. We were looking for
Speaker 1: some old photos related to another part of our investigation,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't just send us the photos, so we said,
Speaker 1: find can we come look through the boxes? So we're
Speaker 1: out there with an assistant to a who was near
Speaker 1: to the office, relatively new and she said, YEA, let's
Speaker 1: just go look through the boxes. It's go ahead time.
Speaker 1: So Nina or Neil Deloise they opened up the boxes
Speaker 1: and they're going through the boxes and will behold, they
Speaker 1: found a plastic envelope with a glass tube in it
Speaker 1: and a swab in it, and it has the case
Speaker 1: number and Teresa fust goes name on it, and it's
Speaker 1: vouched by Volpi and after day insinuated all of them
Speaker 1: is that there's no samples left to be tested. It
Speaker 1: was right there in the box, you know, in the
Speaker 1: d a's officer and a police headquarters wherever they were,
Speaker 1: and Nina scene is and the acene is and and
Speaker 1: now they had to collaborate. Okay, now where are we
Speaker 1: going to send this to have it tested? And they
Speaker 1: sent it out to have it tested. And this is
Speaker 1: a sample that was never touched, so it's in pristine condition.
Speaker 1: And if anybody had raped her that that DNA is
Speaker 1: going to be on there. So they they had said
Speaker 1: for years, well the other guys, you know, John and
Speaker 1: his co defendants, their DNA was there. We just burned
Speaker 1: all the samples, so we can't protest it now. And
Speaker 1: then suddenly we had this big intact swab that everybody
Speaker 1: said was gone for fifteen years. It was finally available,
Speaker 1: and not surprising to any of us, we tested it
Speaker 1: and guess what, it's the same guy whose profile has
Speaker 1: been coming up again and again, but this time because
Speaker 1: it was such an example the D's office. Finally, you
Speaker 1: know that, plus a whole lot of other evidence we gathered. Um,
Speaker 1: we went out and made a presentation to them, a
Speaker 1: whole coalition of people that really did take a village.
Speaker 1: It was my very first Innocence Project case. I was
Speaker 1: a young lawyer, very motivated, shall we say, and I
Speaker 1: still am, but you know I was. I was very
Speaker 1: invested in this one, and a whole bunch of US
Speaker 1: Centurion ministries even since project to del Bernard and then
Speaker 1: my old law school classmate Terry Moroney, who was a
Speaker 1: lawyer at a big firm. We all we all did
Speaker 1: this big presentation with Barry check together and got them
Speaker 1: to finally agree. They actually caved in and agreed we
Speaker 1: didn't have to go to court. They agreed to throw
Speaker 1: out their convictions. You had a kind of a bright
Speaker 1: future at the time, right, you had a pregnant girlfriend. Right,
Speaker 1: you had a good job. Right, Um, you had a
Speaker 1: career that was growing, and all of a sudden you're
Speaker 1: accused and ultimately convicted of the worst crime that anyone
Speaker 1: could be convicted up right, I think, which is the
Speaker 1: rape and murder of an underage person child at a
Speaker 1: teenager or whatever. How did you deal with this? And
Speaker 1: then you had to go through this eighteen years in
Speaker 1: the maximum security is I mean, can you chick us
Speaker 1: through that in the beginning? And turned my life upside down.
Speaker 1: I turned my family's life upside down. But that being said,
Speaker 1: my family always supported me. Right, my original trial lawyer
Speaker 1: always supported me, and everybody always believed in my innocence.
Speaker 1: And I had the one thing going for me that
Speaker 1: I knew that not only was I innocent, that I
Speaker 1: was framed because I watched the evidence come out during
Speaker 1: the course of the trial. Right, so I knew that
Speaker 1: I was framed. Now it was up to me to
Speaker 1: prove all it is. So I end up in a penitentiary,
Speaker 1: and I started going to the law library and I
Speaker 1: started teaching myself how to use the books. I taught
Speaker 1: myself how to become a legal writer. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say a legal scholar, but I became a legal writer.
Speaker 1: And I started writing and writing, and I started writing
Speaker 1: lettuce to all kinds of organizations or individuals seeking help.
Speaker 1: And I wrote since showing ministries in seven and started
Speaker 1: corresponding with them. And then I started corresponding with the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project, and you know, there was a lot of setbacks,
Speaker 1: you know, like because originally, when we expect the DNA
Speaker 1: testing that this returns office refused to do it. This
Speaker 1: is no way we're not going to do that. And
Speaker 1: this was in the late eighties because DNA was first
Speaker 1: used in a criminal case. I think it was or
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, something like that, and I think it
Speaker 1: was an old Encounty case. And so I wrote my lawyer,
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're gonna use this to convict somebody,
Speaker 1: why can't we use this to exonerate us? Right? And
Speaker 1: I got letters signed by John by Dennis agreeing to
Speaker 1: have this DNA test done in my lawyer correct, right,
Speaker 1: because I'm not doing this just for me. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a frame job, it's not like so we
Speaker 1: all agree, and my lawyer filed emotion. The judge denied it,
Speaker 1: and then my lawyer went on his own writing campaign
Speaker 1: to the d A and finally, on the eve of
Speaker 1: when New York State Legislature was getting ready to sign
Speaker 1: the post conviction Statute for forty to allow DNA testing,
Speaker 1: the prosecutors or the d A S office finally agreed
Speaker 1: to do the DNA testing, and that's why the DNA
Speaker 1: testing occurred in Otherwise, if that legislation wasn't gonna be
Speaker 1: on the books, that would probably continue to refuse it,
Speaker 1: even though you know, people at that point were being
Speaker 1: exonerated because of the results of DNA tests. These people
Speaker 1: fought tooth and nail against this DNA tests, and then
Speaker 1: we finally got the DNA test of going that justud
Speaker 1: finds it unreliable, like we've mentioned before. But you know,
Speaker 1: I always had this hope, right and then you know,
Speaker 1: things started full and together with more people who getting involved,
Speaker 1: and the more people that I got involved were more confident.
Speaker 1: I felt that I was gonna one day be vindicated.
Speaker 1: But let me ask it. I mean, I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out is it seems like it
Speaker 1: would have been really easy for you to either give
Speaker 1: up or get consumed by anger, because this was not
Speaker 1: a situation where it was a mistake. This was a
Speaker 1: situation where you were deliberately prosecuted and persecuted by people
Speaker 1: who did you incredible harm and also denied justice to
Speaker 1: the family who must have been fucking devastated. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: as a father, can't imagine you know what they went through,
Speaker 1: and then there's no justice for them either. So is
Speaker 1: there a secret that you could share that allowed you
Speaker 1: to sort of find this extra gear and instead of
Speaker 1: banging your head against the wall or doing whatever you
Speaker 1: you channeled. This seems like this is gonna this is
Speaker 1: gonna sound strange, but I still use this line today.
Speaker 1: It could be worse. Right, and I was facing a
Speaker 1: level of adversity that the average person could never understand. Well,
Speaker 1: I was inside. I read a lot, but I didn't
Speaker 1: read you know, novels. I read a lot of nonfiction.
Speaker 1: I read a lot about World War Two. I read
Speaker 1: a lot about POWs. So I'm putting in my brain like, okay,
Speaker 1: me doing his life sentence to somebody didn't do, how
Speaker 1: does that compare to an eighteen year old kid that
Speaker 1: is pushed onto the beach Normandy and you know, lives
Speaker 1: for five minutes and he's gone, right, or a pow
Speaker 1: in the Philippines that is being tortured every day. So
Speaker 1: I'm putting my adversity and kind of in kind of
Speaker 1: perspective of, you know, adversity that other people in worse
Speaker 1: situations that I was in. Right at least I was getting,
Speaker 1: you know, three meals a day. I wasn't being physically taught.
Speaker 1: You nobody was pulling my fingernails out. I put it
Speaker 1: all on perspective of you know, appere W and the
Speaker 1: Philippines or appeal W and Vietnam and and I got
Speaker 1: it in my brain. Well, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I don't belong here, but it could be worse. John's
Speaker 1: too modest to talk about this, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: say he also spent a lot of time when he
Speaker 1: was in prison trying to make it a less horrible
Speaker 1: place for other people, and also helping people on the outside.
Speaker 1: So among the many things he did, like when I
Speaker 1: first talked his prison counselor, she would just blew up
Speaker 1: my phone with oh my god, John, He's just incredible.
Speaker 1: I want him to go home, but what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do without him? He was a HIV AIDS counselor
Speaker 1: for other inmates, either on how to avoid contracting the
Speaker 1: disease or helping him deal with their diagnoses, even though
Speaker 1: he was a straight band who was HIV negative. At
Speaker 1: a time in the eighties and nineties when people were
Speaker 1: scared to talk about AIDS, much less work directly with
Speaker 1: people who were affected. He worked with mentally ill and
Speaker 1: made the guys that everybody thought was crazy and we're
Speaker 1: prized at the prison, and he was just trying to
Speaker 1: help them get the medication they needed and the support
Speaker 1: they needed. And then people on the outside, I know
Speaker 1: people who John was like their phone buddy, you know,
Speaker 1: family friends and young nieces and nephews who he would
Speaker 1: just call once a week and like talk them through
Speaker 1: their problems in school and their issues with their families.
Speaker 1: You know, all the while he's facing the most unimaginable
Speaker 1: thing any of us I think we could go through
Speaker 1: um and that's just a testament to who he is
Speaker 1: and how strong he is. I'm glad you said that,
Speaker 1: because that is an awesome thing to hear from me.
Speaker 1: I'm sure many other people who are gone through whatever
Speaker 1: they're going through to hear your perspective on that. And
Speaker 1: here then Nina, you know, adding in what you were
Speaker 1: too modest or humble to talk about. It's incredible. And
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, John, you know it's true too
Speaker 1: that I think I can speak for Nina and almost
Speaker 1: any of the other six hundred of us who are
Speaker 1: here at the Innocence Network conference. Who are part of
Speaker 1: the the network, right, the activist lawyers, the social workers,
Speaker 1: the people who are just obsessed with this stuff like me.
Speaker 1: And the simple reason why is because of people like you,
Speaker 1: and someone's made aware of the quality of person that
Speaker 1: you are, and that I would say the overwhelming majority
Speaker 1: of the people, the men and women who have been exonerated,
Speaker 1: what they're made out of. It's like it only inspires
Speaker 1: us to want to do more. And and and that's why
Speaker 1: for anyone who's ever asked me, you know why you
Speaker 1: keep doing this, it's because of people like you. So
Speaker 1: you know, Um, what can I say? You have all
Speaker 1: my respect? Well, I look at it from the other
Speaker 1: perspective because and I appreciate where you're coming from. But
Speaker 1: to me, people who need issues, they're my hero. People
Speaker 1: in your shoes where you do for the movement, you're
Speaker 1: my hero. And everybody who supports this movement, Da're my hero.
Speaker 1: Right because if it wasn't for people like Nina and
Speaker 1: people like you, write, I probably still being at six
Speaker 1: eight John. I just want to ask you one more
Speaker 1: question though, and then I am going to get to
Speaker 1: the closing. So Um interviewed Gloria Kelly on on the
Speaker 1: podcast and she said, um, she's an amazing, amazing woman,
Speaker 1: very powerful presence and wrongly convicted seventeen and a half years.
Speaker 1: I encourage people to listen to her episode of the podcast.
Speaker 1: But she said something that, UM, I think is important
Speaker 1: to hear and I want to get your perspective on that.
Speaker 1: She said to anyone listening, if you don't think this
Speaker 1: can happen to you, it can happen to you. Would
Speaker 1: you agree with that most definitely? And you could be
Speaker 1: walking down the street one day, just minding your business
Speaker 1: and get surrounded by cops and before you know it,
Speaker 1: you're thrown into the system and you don't have a
Speaker 1: clue as to what's going on until all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're brought in front of a judge and you're
Speaker 1: being charged with whatever, and you're totally clueless as to
Speaker 1: what happened. And and a lot of these wrongful conviction cases,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what occurred. I mean, because if so many
Speaker 1: things that this can't happen to them, that's totally wrong.
Speaker 1: Because being woefully convicted can happen to anybody, anybody, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't have anything to do with raise gender anything.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy to
Speaker 1: have to go through something like this, because no matter
Speaker 1: what you do, after you're exonerated, you carry it for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. I mean, it doesn't go away.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, you can't get back those years and all
Speaker 1: the things that you missed, the birthdays, the family stuff,
Speaker 1: just everything. I mean, nobody can give you those back.
Speaker 1: If we could, we would. But that being said, um,
Speaker 1: it's amazing to see you making the most out of
Speaker 1: it and you're in Florida. You're enjoying some sun and
Speaker 1: some palm trees or whatever it is down there, and
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that things are going your way. And
Speaker 1: now comes my favorite part of the show, which is
Speaker 1: that part of the show where I first of all,
Speaker 1: thank both of you, Nina Morrison and John Restivo for
Speaker 1: joining me sharing your thoughts on Rawful Conviction. So thank
Speaker 1: you both for being here. And now I get to
Speaker 1: sit back and listen and just leave the microphones on
Speaker 1: for final thoughts. And I'm gonna let Nina go first
Speaker 1: because it would be appropriate for you to close the
Speaker 1: the show, so you're bat and clean up, so to speak.
Speaker 1: So anyway, So Nina, Well I want to say, is
Speaker 1: you know your listeners have gotten a flavor for who
Speaker 1: John is and what he's gone through. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that's really special about John is what he's
Speaker 1: done after he's been out um and how much he's done.
Speaker 1: He's done a lot to help get people registered to
Speaker 1: vote in Florida, to feed the homeless, to make his
Speaker 1: community better. And his personal journey is told in this beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful feature story in the New Yorker magazine by a
Speaker 1: writer named Ariel Levy. And if people google John's name
Speaker 1: and the title, I think is the Price of a Life.
Speaker 1: And it's all about the deep pain and suffering that
Speaker 1: he went through. If if your listeners are interested in
Speaker 1: the human toll that wrongful convictions take. Ariel told his
Speaker 1: story in a in a very revealing, an intimate way,
Speaker 1: and I hope folks will check it out. John. I
Speaker 1: just take you one day at the time I wake
Speaker 1: up in the morning, and I just say to myself,
Speaker 1: no day in paradise. I'm just glad to be free.
Speaker 1: And if I can do something to help my community,
Speaker 1: or if I feel or if I see something that
Speaker 1: needs to be done, I tried to help, and I
Speaker 1: was involved in two thousand and eight in this huge
Speaker 1: voter registration the thing that we had going in Florida,
Speaker 1: and we just got passed. We got an amendment past
Speaker 1: where felons are going to be allowed to vote. So
Speaker 1: now we're gonna have to start getting felons registered to
Speaker 1: vote for our upcoming election. And when I'm asked, I
Speaker 1: have a group of friends, and when I'm asked to help,
Speaker 1: I'm more than happy to help. And I want to
Speaker 1: thank you for having us. Yet all I can say
Speaker 1: is thank you both again, and thank you all for listening,
Speaker 1: and I'll see you next week on Wrangful Conviction. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud donor
Speaker 1: to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join
Speaker 1: me in supporting this very important cause and helping to
Speaker 1: prevent future wrong of 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 Wardis.
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time 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 Flam is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one