Speaker 1: On January twelfth, two thousand and two, sixteen year old
Speaker 1: Steve Thomas went to a crowded hip hop club in
Speaker 1: Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, where a successful artist named Corey Miller
Speaker 1: was slated to introduce a new hip hop group. But
Speaker 1: before they even took the stage, a fight broke out
Speaker 1: and Steve Thomas was fatally shot. When the police arrived,
Speaker 1: it was allegedly rumored that Corey was involved, but when
Speaker 1: specifically asked about Corey, none of the witnesses substantiated that
Speaker 1: rumor until a week later, leading to his arrest, two trials,
Speaker 1: and ultimately a non unanimous jury verdict, all of which
Speaker 1: may well have been prejudiced by Corey's stage name C Murder.
Speaker 1: This is Wrongful Conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You
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Speaker 1: Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Romful Conviction, where we've got a case out of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: involving a once celebrated hip hop artist, Corey Miller, also
Speaker 1: known as C murderer. Now he and his brother's master
Speaker 1: p and Silk the Shaker had a number of hits
Speaker 1: collaborated with Snoop until his situation drastically changed. And here
Speaker 1: we are twenty three years later, where he's grateful to
Speaker 1: have the support of one of his fiercest advocates, Kim Kardashian. Kim,
Speaker 1: welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me back on.
Speaker 1: Were you a fan of Corey's music before you knew
Speaker 1: about his case?
Speaker 3: I definitely was.
Speaker 2: I definitely knew about The No Limit Soldiers and I
Speaker 2: love New Orleans. But years later, the singer Monica called
Speaker 2: me and was like, you have to help me with
Speaker 2: A dear friend of mine told me all about the case.
Speaker 2: And there's like a network of us, right so it's
Speaker 2: like you and Scott Budnick and Jessica Jackson and Aaron Haney, and.
Speaker 3: We've been working on it for a while.
Speaker 2: So I'm glad that we can be here to talk
Speaker 2: about Corey's case today.
Speaker 1: And calling in from a Louisiana penitentiary, the man himself,
Speaker 1: Corey Miller, thank Jo Jeff and to help tell his story.
Speaker 1: Corey's appellat attorney.
Speaker 3: Jane Hogan, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Now, this is a Louisiana story where we've seen so
Speaker 1: many many wrongful convictions marked by non unanimous jury verdicts,
Speaker 1: which was a legal practice as late as twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: when they could convict you with as few as ten
Speaker 1: out of twelve jurors voting guilty. This was a practice
Speaker 1: that had its roots in the aftermath of the Civil War,
Speaker 1: where the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery unless duly convicted of
Speaker 1: a felony. It also allowed black people to serve on
Speaker 1: jury's and in Louisiana, even if the defense managed to
Speaker 1: keep two black people on the jury, well, their votes
Speaker 1: could be ignored and the person could effectively be re enslaved.
Speaker 3: We've never learned how to have an economy that doesn't
Speaker 3: rely on forced labor. There's so many prisons here and
Speaker 3: that is the economy. Like you go in the middle
Speaker 3: of Louisiana, they have nothing except like three private prisons.
Speaker 3: It's the local employer. If you want to stop mass
Speaker 3: incarceration in Louisiana, if you were to pay people at
Speaker 3: least minimum wage for the labor that they perform while incarcerated,
Speaker 3: I think that there would be a real push to
Speaker 3: do sentencing reform immediately because it's such a business.
Speaker 1: There was a twenty twenty two ballot initiative in Louisiana
Speaker 1: which would have ended the slavery loophole of the thirteenth Amendment,
Speaker 1: but it was voted down. Yeah, but certainly before that
Speaker 1: as well as this incident, and even before Corey's music career,
Speaker 1: he was just another kid growing up in the New
Speaker 1: Orleans Calio projects.
Speaker 4: I was raised my grandmother, my grandfather, and Big Bomb
Speaker 4: and Big Daddy. My mother and father gave here for
Speaker 4: addashing to her when I was just a baby and
Speaker 4: lived in a county of price Action. When I came
Speaker 4: up as and we didn't have Big Bomb and she
Speaker 4: kept me out of trouble. She instilled didn't be that
Speaker 4: drugs fad. That school was important. So throughout my whole
Speaker 4: school I was on a student because I just had
Speaker 4: to please Big bomba.
Speaker 1: And while school was important, Corey and his brothers Percy
Speaker 1: and vy Sean also grew up loving hip hop during
Speaker 1: its early years.
Speaker 4: We became integrated in rap long time ago, listened to
Speaker 4: Right DMC and people like that. So Daddy takes that
Speaker 4: were in the room and we were playing the instrumental shape.
Speaker 4: Then we would play another teap record and we have
Speaker 4: a recording take and we played it too, and write raps.
Speaker 1: Messing around with tape recorders soon turned into renting studio time,
Speaker 1: and eventually Percy Miller, better known as Master P, started
Speaker 1: his label No Limit Records in nineteen ninety one with
Speaker 1: the founding group tru which featured himself Corey as c
Speaker 1: Murder his stage name, and by Sean as Silk the Shaker,
Speaker 1: and they began to see big success in the mid
Speaker 1: nineties and early two thousands.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a good feeling. They had that much
Speaker 4: momentum without music. It was a wonderful charity and it
Speaker 4: was only the beginning, and Dallas star rose it in.
Speaker 4: I'm basically this steel in the walls and I just
Speaker 4: moved my family to bed Rouge and the Gaving community,
Speaker 4: the country club.
Speaker 1: Corey has three kids who at the time lived in
Speaker 1: Baton Rouge while he worked out of New Orleans, which
Speaker 1: is just across the Mississippi River from where this crime
Speaker 1: took place, in a more conservative, white flight type of
Speaker 1: area called Jefferson Parish.
Speaker 4: You gotta realize jeff Paris went to try to hit
Speaker 4: There was some black people that trying to cross the
Speaker 4: bridge to get some food, water and something like that.
Speaker 4: It was a breakdan lady, couple of women, couple of
Speaker 4: guys and trying to cross the bridge, and the police
Speaker 4: was predicting the bridge any Katrina finish cross and the
Speaker 4: actually shut these sheets and the whole as a story,
Speaker 4: but distant lady that I got.
Speaker 1: Called up and I hope that story might shed some
Speaker 1: light on why their police department might have hired the
Speaker 1: lead detective in this case, Detective Cloger, after well they
Speaker 1: had found he wasn't a good fit for even Orleans Parish.
Speaker 3: We got Cloger's personnel record and Cloger was working in
Speaker 3: Orleans Parish. Then he went to Jefferson Parish. The superintendent
Speaker 3: of the New Orleans Police Department wrote this very scathing
Speaker 3: letter that's in his personnel file that said he has
Speaker 3: been messing up homicide investigations in Orleans Parish. So if
Speaker 3: you do hire him, he is more studed to be
Speaker 3: a guard at a correctional institution than on the streets
Speaker 3: trying to solve murders.
Speaker 1: It appears Jefferson Parish heard this message as more of
Speaker 1: a horseman than a condemnation. And that brings us to
Speaker 1: January twelfth, two thousand and two, when a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old kid named Steve Thomas was killed at the Jefferson
Speaker 1: Parish music venue called the Pyramid Club.
Speaker 4: That night of the instandent a couple of guys out
Speaker 4: they were they were going to perform at that club.
Speaker 4: So by being in a savage audis and they know,
Speaker 4: all we try to represent a kill of love, the
Speaker 4: X me to get loose deal.
Speaker 3: So he goes over to the Platinum Club in Harvey, Louisiana,
Speaker 3: January twelve, two thousand and two, and there were by
Speaker 3: different accounts, three hundred and five hundred people in a
Speaker 3: club like way over fire Marshall capacity.
Speaker 4: It's really a bowler there lived the bottom and then
Speaker 4: a club of time to follow, one way up, one
Speaker 4: way out to take the thing. And there's four hundred
Speaker 4: people and call everybody that walks in getting tagged down.
Speaker 4: And so I was saying I was padded down.
Speaker 1: And that security guard later testified that Corey was not armed,
Speaker 1: but somehow a gun got in obviously, and as well
Speaker 1: as sixteen year old Steve Thomas, who you know. He
Speaker 1: probably they must have used a fake ID to get
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 4: And they say that the guy was a tran of mind.
Speaker 4: They even created a moten saying that I had a
Speaker 4: rep the guy that was killed. I guess they had
Speaker 4: got somebody to stay something like that, I have a
Speaker 4: bad repide of my life from the South, and then
Speaker 4: talk he's going the East Coast as yo. Especially back then,
Speaker 4: we didn't know what bad a rep it was. That
Speaker 4: whole night, I never messed the guy that was doing
Speaker 4: that was Folk, never had one word with him.
Speaker 1: After all, Corey was not in this thick crowd, but
Speaker 1: rather as you might have expected, he was in the
Speaker 1: VIP area.
Speaker 4: I was just in there drinking, wait for them to
Speaker 4: tell me go up the stage introduced, then I could leave,
Speaker 4: right so, I remember talking to a shoot girl. I
Speaker 4: never had a chance to even introduce my crew.
Speaker 3: Then at some point during the night, a fight breaks
Speaker 3: out near the dance floor, directly across from the DJ booth.
Speaker 3: Everybody describes just kind of this group of men surrounding
Speaker 3: and beating and kicking Steve as he's curled up on
Speaker 3: the ground, and then at some point a gunshot goes off.
Speaker 4: I'm just as surprised that everybody else, but and so
Speaker 4: unnatural reactions is the goal.
Speaker 3: A bunch of people flee, including Corey and his friends.
Speaker 3: It goes from five hundred people to about one hundred.
Speaker 3: And after this shot goes off, there was a really
Speaker 3: drunk woman who was in the bathroom at the time
Speaker 3: of the shooting, so she didn't see anything, but she
Speaker 3: was intoxicated, and she starts hollering out, see mardyed this, y'all,
Speaker 3: see murdered this, And I think that probably is what
Speaker 3: began sort of the rumors. And pretty quickly the Jefferson
Speaker 3: pair of Sheriff's office gets there.
Speaker 1: They discovered Steve Thomas lying on his back, having been
Speaker 1: shot in the chest and there was a chain near
Speaker 1: his body.
Speaker 3: The police seal up the doors basically with one hundred
Speaker 3: people left inside. You know, they learned that Corey was there,
Speaker 3: and they start interviewing people and they were asking specifically,
Speaker 3: did you see c murder do this? And nobody said yes,
Speaker 3: none of them.
Speaker 4: Some of the witnesses called on that one one he'd
Speaker 4: see the show those games like guard I'm six five
Speaker 4: big steaks n skin.
Speaker 1: Not only was it unlikely that a successful musician would
Speaker 1: put his career and his family at risk. But then
Speaker 1: the description wasn't even close, and not one eyewitness named him,
Speaker 1: and that included the security guard, the guy who had
Speaker 1: called nine one one, a man named Darnelle Jordan.
Speaker 3: The security guard spoke to the police that night and
Speaker 3: said that he hadn't seen anything, and then a couple
Speaker 3: of days later he gives an inculpatory statement against Corey,
Speaker 3: and so based really on that statement alone, they locate
Speaker 3: Corey at the House of Blues four days later. He's
Speaker 3: not run, he's in New Orleans, and then he gets arrested.
Speaker 1: Now, according to Darnell Jordan's twenty eighteen recantation, when asked
Speaker 1: by the police, if Corey Miller had been the shooter,
Speaker 1: he said, if that was the case, he would have
Speaker 1: said so on the nine to one one call. But
Speaker 1: then he went on to say, quote, they got me
Speaker 1: the id C murder's picture and sign it. They tricked me.
Speaker 1: I wasn't signing the picture to id the shooter. I
Speaker 1: signed it because they told me to. I knew they
Speaker 1: wanted me to say Corey Miller did it because he's famous.
Speaker 1: End quote. Nevertheless, this interaction helped them get an arrest
Speaker 1: warrant for Corey Miller.
Speaker 4: I actually had some kind of shape in eliteal system
Speaker 4: at that time. I was like, oh, well, they're going
Speaker 4: to live in rest and talked to Wicks and then
Speaker 4: they gonna a panory. So there was my whole straight
Speaker 4: up while I let it go.
Speaker 1: At this point, they continued to interview clubgoers. Meanwhile, they'd
Speaker 1: found two DNA profiles on the chain from the crime scene,
Speaker 1: and one was the victim, so they got a warrant
Speaker 1: for Corey's DNA and Kim. I mean, it seems reasonable,
Speaker 1: maybe not this positive, but very reasonable that whoever's DNA
Speaker 1: was identified could well have been the shooter.
Speaker 2: Knowing that the necklace that was allegedly taken from the
Speaker 2: person that committed the crime, and obviously if it was
Speaker 2: worn around someone's neck and pulled off of someone's neck,
Speaker 2: there would be DNA evidence on it. And then when
Speaker 2: it finally was DNA tested, it was not Corey's.
Speaker 1: DNA, And then suddenly the chain became unimportant.
Speaker 2: I never understood why someone wouldn't want to find the
Speaker 2: real killer. How our state can just be okay with
Speaker 2: convicting someone not caring if that someone is actually the
Speaker 2: right person. If God forbid, a family member of mine
Speaker 2: or someone was harmed in a horrible crime, I would
Speaker 2: not be satisfied with just anyone being convicted. I would
Speaker 2: have to know without a reasonable doubt that this person
Speaker 2: was the person that committed that crime. And since I
Speaker 2: started to get involved in this work, I was really
Speaker 2: hopeful at the beginning, and I still am and I
Speaker 2: always will be. But like as you dig deeper and
Speaker 2: as you work on more cases and you figure out more,
Speaker 2: it just doesn't it become overwhelming to understand, like how
Speaker 2: messed up our system is.
Speaker 1: Case in point, despite the fact that every club Gore
Speaker 1: initially denied Corey's involvement, Detective Cloger revisited them and out
Speaker 1: of the hundreds, Cloger found four who were some degree
Speaker 1: of willing to implicate Corey. Those four were keishaan Jones,
Speaker 1: Ayisha Washington, Tanika Rankins, and Elouise Matthews. And his trial
Speaker 1: approached in September two thousand and three. Darnell Jordan had
Speaker 1: to be arrested on a material witness warrant, so he
Speaker 1: was locked up in a hotel where Kloger visited him
Speaker 1: with his alleged statement, which put the following words in
Speaker 1: his mouth.
Speaker 3: As the fight was happening, Darnell saw fifteen or twenty
Speaker 3: men beating Steve, and that Steve was lying on the
Speaker 3: ground in a defensive position, and that Corey wasn't participating
Speaker 3: in the fight, was standing back. And then eventually, at
Speaker 3: some point he reaches his arm underneath the pile of bodies.
Speaker 3: Darnell doesn't see a gun, but he hears a pop,
Speaker 3: saw flash and sparks from underneath the pile of people,
Speaker 3: which came from the direction of Corey's hand.
Speaker 1: And for this alleged account to have been an accurate
Speaker 1: description of the murder, there would have had to have
Speaker 1: been stippling on the body. Those are the burns associated
Speaker 1: with close range gunshots, but there were none, and according
Speaker 1: to Darnell's twenty eighteen recantation, despite Cloger's insistence, he told
Speaker 1: him quote that's not what I said, end quote, Darnell
Speaker 1: claimed that since he had signed that picture, he was
Speaker 1: afraid of the police and went along with the narrative
Speaker 1: a trial along with three others, whose testimonies, by the way,
Speaker 1: varied wildly, starting with Tanika Rankins and Eloise Matthews.
Speaker 3: What Tanika testified to at the first trial is that
Speaker 3: she was at the Platinum Club with Elouise Matthews. She
Speaker 3: saw Corey verbally confront Steve. Then the fight broke out.
Speaker 3: Corey went underneath his shirt raised his arm in Steve's direction.
Speaker 3: She never said that she saw Corey with a gun,
Speaker 3: but the shot was fired and Steve fell to the floor.
Speaker 3: And then what Eloise testified too was that she had
Speaker 3: gone to the club with Tanika Rankins and when the
Speaker 3: fight started, they both climbed up on a chair. That
Speaker 3: she saw four or five people stomping and punching Steve,
Speaker 3: who was lying on the floor on his back. And
Speaker 3: then after about thirty seconds, she fell off the chair
Speaker 3: and then she heard a gun shot, but she didn't
Speaker 3: see a gun. She didn't see who shot Steve. She
Speaker 3: also testified that Tanika had not seen the shooting.
Speaker 1: To recap Elouise said both she and Tanika didn't see
Speaker 1: the shooting. Tanika said she saw Corey shoot from a
Speaker 1: standing position, while Darnell said that Corey reached under the
Speaker 1: pile of bodies before hearing a pop and seeing sparks.
Speaker 4: All of the witnesses. Statements by these people are blatantly lying.
Speaker 4: My lawyers closely examined it them.
Speaker 1: The state's next witness, Keishawn Jones, wouldn't even look up
Speaker 1: when she testified that she saw Corey pull something from
Speaker 1: his waist and heard a gunshot.
Speaker 3: The second she gets off the stand, she runs up
Speaker 3: to the defense investigator in the courthouse, recamps her entire statement, said,
Speaker 3: I'm only saying this because I am pressured into it
Speaker 3: by the Sheriff's office, and there's a recess. She goes
Speaker 3: and she recamps to the judge.
Speaker 1: On the record, she said she didn't directly see what
Speaker 1: happened and had even told police that night that Corey
Speaker 1: was not involved, but in the year following, Detector Cloger
Speaker 1: threatened her with unrelated charges.
Speaker 4: She told him that everything they have provided the age
Speaker 4: forced a delight and she was crying. She was in
Speaker 4: distressing to law.
Speaker 3: That story of pressure from law enforcement to implicate Corey.
Speaker 3: It's a similar story told by multiple different people that
Speaker 3: aren't connected. So Another woman named Aisha Washington said that
Speaker 3: people were popping up at her mom's house following her
Speaker 3: she was taking her children to school, trying to pressure
Speaker 3: her into making a statement against Corey.
Speaker 1: Aisha Washington was also being detained on the material witness
Speaker 1: warrant for trial, but after Kishawn Jones recanted, Aisha wasn't
Speaker 1: called to the stand.
Speaker 3: And then also Corey had four witnesses testify for the
Speaker 3: defense that they were there, that they know who Corey is,
Speaker 3: that whenever the fight broke out, they saw Corey somewhere else,
Speaker 3: that he was not engaged in the fight.
Speaker 1: But somehow the jury chose to believe the three wildly
Speaker 1: inconsistent stories over the defenses United Front, which was supported
Speaker 1: by Keishawn Jones's recantation.
Speaker 4: Being at Jeffson pay would not be placed with somebody
Speaker 4: like you to go to trial because I was basically
Speaker 4: guilty and the eyes already you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: you know, the old white men and old white women's
Speaker 4: like discuss the with being bashing him, just siding the
Speaker 4: way that I looked up like gold tee from my
Speaker 4: name you from the tragic the NAC burden. I mean,
Speaker 4: it wasn't a matter of I innocent. It was basically
Speaker 4: like look who you are, Look how you look guilty.
Speaker 3: And the jury returned a unanimous verdict at the first
Speaker 3: trial of guilty, and then that began the most extensive
Speaker 3: postrial litigation of any case I've ever seen. Seven months,
Speaker 3: thirteen different hearings. Corey's trial lawyer really did a phenomenal job.
Speaker 3: A lot of the allegations were that there was withholding
Speaker 3: of exculpatory impeachment information, and that Cloger was helping these witnesses,
Speaker 3: that he was making convictions quickly get expunged. During the
Speaker 3: post trial hearing they recalled Eloise and Tanika. It comes
Speaker 3: out that Tanique actually had felony theft convictions outstanding warrants
Speaker 3: which the Sheriff's office had arranged to have recalled. They
Speaker 3: basically set aside her felony convictions quickly and expunge them.
Speaker 1: Which gave the appearance that she had nothing to exchange
Speaker 1: for her testimony, and Eloise Matthew's was no different.
Speaker 3: Eloise testified that she had met with Cloger multiple times
Speaker 3: he had said he'd do anything to help her in
Speaker 3: Tanika that she had told Cloger that Corey didn't shoot Steve,
Speaker 3: but Cloger wasn't interested and accused her of lying. There
Speaker 3: was also impeachment evidence that wasn't turned over about her.
Speaker 3: She had arrests for forgery. She was recommended for a diversion,
Speaker 3: but she had failed out of diversion, but they hadn't
Speaker 3: given notice of that.
Speaker 1: Then Ayisha Washington and Keishaw and Jones testified about there experiences,
Speaker 1: how they'd both been harassed, and Keishawn had actually been
Speaker 1: detained three times and threatened with unrelated charges to ensure
Speaker 1: her testimony. So Judge Martha Sasson simply couldn't ignore their claims.
Speaker 3: The judge tells Kloger, like, I want you to bring
Speaker 3: your file up here and show me what you've got.
Speaker 3: He said, no, I destroy my file, like the night
Speaker 3: after the conviction. I just went and shredded everything. And
Speaker 3: the judge is like, why would you do that. Then
Speaker 3: it turns out later on into seven months of Postpol proceedings,
Speaker 3: that he hadn't shredded his file and so he brought
Speaker 3: it up there and within his file. Not only is
Speaker 3: there the impeachment evidence against the three witnesses, but there's
Speaker 3: also statements from a guy named Roger Lewis and Angela
Speaker 3: Casten who were there at the club, who had said
Speaker 3: they saw the fight. They knew that Corey wasn't involved
Speaker 3: in it, so the judge granted Corey a new trial.
Speaker 1: That was in April two thousand and four, when Judge
Speaker 1: Sasson was up for reelection that November.
Speaker 3: I think that she was sort of painted as the
Speaker 3: judge who's trying to let see murder out of prison,
Speaker 3: and then she lost her bid for reelection.
Speaker 4: It's still some parage. These people still sticked together. They
Speaker 4: kicked the jail. So then I'm at the Furst year
Speaker 4: of these different people now.
Speaker 3: And then the intermediate Appellate Court in Louisiana reversed a
Speaker 3: new trial, and then the Louisiana Supreme Court actually in
Speaker 3: March tenth of two thousand and six, said no, like
Speaker 3: she conducted a painstaking review of all of this and
Speaker 3: she concluded that there were constitutional violations that mandated a
Speaker 3: new trial.
Speaker 1: So after two years of appeals, Corey was released on
Speaker 1: house arrest awaiting his new trial in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: giving him three years with his children.
Speaker 4: That was amazing good they didn't have to go there week.
Speaker 4: And so I definitely hold on to Chared going home,
Speaker 4: and those three years after brought us closer. You know,
Speaker 4: when I heard that arrested. I just thought that they
Speaker 4: were so fraged and so young and small. I couldn't
Speaker 4: even chall that that I was in jail. There was
Speaker 4: a wing on the business and on two I kept
Speaker 4: thinking I was going to go to ChIL I was
Speaker 4: gonna get release. So when the years says enough the action,
Speaker 4: when you come back, oh good, I didn't want to
Speaker 4: think that I worked. So I had to break it
Speaker 4: down him again. Started they don't come to business. Even
Speaker 4: though I love seeing U, they didn't broke malid. Every
Speaker 4: time I said, oh, come with us, meaning with us
Speaker 4: to break it.
Speaker 1: I gotta process that myself for a minute. So during
Speaker 1: those three years, the state went back to the list
Speaker 1: of clubgoers, one of whom was Keishawn Jones's half brother
Speaker 1: Kenneth Jordan, whose newborn died in January two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: at which time it's believed that the child's mother bore responsibility,
Speaker 1: but they were both under investigation.
Speaker 3: So whenever they're questioning him about the death of his child,
Speaker 3: they realized that he's on the list of people that
Speaker 3: was at the Platinum Club that night, so they start
Speaker 3: talking to him about the case.
Speaker 1: According to Kenneth's twenty eighteenantation. He initially told them that
Speaker 1: the shooter was a dark skinned man in a hoodie
Speaker 1: and was definitely not Corey Miller, but quote, the officers
Speaker 1: pressured me to lie and say it was Corey Miller,
Speaker 1: all the while holding criminal charges over my head end quote.
Speaker 1: So he gave a statement naming Corey and his charges. Yep,
Speaker 1: you guess did. They went away while the child's mother
Speaker 1: got thirty five years. But Kenneth was never called at
Speaker 1: the two thousand and three trial. So fast forward after
Speaker 1: Corey was granted a new trial and the false statement resurfaced.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and five, Kenneth Jordan gets arrested for
Speaker 3: a possession of crack cocaine. He gets placed on probation,
Speaker 3: he absconds, and then in two thousand and seven he
Speaker 3: is in prison facing revocation of his probation, and that's
Speaker 3: when the prosecutor comes and says, I will extend your
Speaker 3: probation in lieu of revocation. And then he signed a
Speaker 3: written agreement at that point that he would testify against
Speaker 3: Corey in exchange to get his probation extended.
Speaker 1: So now the state moved forward to trial in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine with two reluctant witnesses, and even in
Speaker 1: pre trial, the deck looked stacked, starting with the new judge,
Speaker 1: a guy named Hans J. Lilgeberg.
Speaker 4: During Waldberg the first day he fell being his coach.
Speaker 4: So you should be all bye, you should be arrested.
Speaker 4: You a herd choice. I want to get you convicted,
Speaker 4: and I want to put this case on a show.
Speaker 4: We kind of s that is the riforbody and then
Speaker 4: anything that we try to file, whatever the DA's wanted,
Speaker 4: ain't that whatever will be asked for us an emotion.
Speaker 1: Of fiul for that, including a critical request from his
Speaker 1: hired attorney, who hadn't been paid in years.
Speaker 3: At this point, Corey had been in prison since two
Speaker 3: thousand and two hadn't been able to earn an income.
Speaker 3: In April of two thousand and nine, his trial lawyer
Speaker 3: tries to withdraw from his case and says, I've not
Speaker 3: been paid in three years. I cannot do a second
Speaker 3: trial for Corey. And rather than permitting trial council to withdraw,
Speaker 3: the judge which like kind of heckles Corey and was
Speaker 3: like I'd feel a whole heck of a lot better
Speaker 3: if my lawyer was paid, Corey, you know I'm not
Speaker 3: going to let you withdraw. We've got a trial date
Speaker 3: in four months.
Speaker 1: So without being paid the defense attorney. Instead of physically
Speaker 1: calling Corey's alibi witnesses, he was allowed to just replay
Speaker 1: the recording of their testimonies from the first trial, which
Speaker 1: is not what the state did with Darnell and Kenneth.
Speaker 1: Jordan no relation, by the way those two guys, except
Speaker 1: perhaps for family histories that may have been intertwined with
Speaker 1: one of the prosecutors, Roger Jordan, a powerful Louisiana white
Speaker 1: man who also happens to share the same last name,
Speaker 1: and it appears that their relationship was not so different
Speaker 1: from their ancestors.
Speaker 3: Prior to the second trial, Darnell and Kenneth do not
Speaker 3: want to come and testify. They are arrested on material
Speaker 3: witness warrants. They're held in communicado leading up to the trial,
Speaker 3: and then they're brought to court in chains to testify
Speaker 3: against Corey and Kenneth. His statement is different than even
Speaker 3: Darnell's right, so he says that he sees the fight
Speaker 3: and that after the fight is over and everybody walks away,
Speaker 3: he sees Corey walk up, stand over Steven shoot him.
Speaker 1: So was he standing over the body or was he
Speaker 1: reaching underneath the pylon? It can't be both. It appears
Speaker 1: that these inconsistencies gave at least three of the jurors
Speaker 1: some really serious reservations.
Speaker 3: This is the poster child for non unanimous verdicts because
Speaker 3: it wasn't even ten to two, it was nine to three.
Speaker 3: There were three African Americans on the jury, the rest
Speaker 3: were white people, and there was one young black woman
Speaker 3: on the jury who was getting attacked by the white
Speaker 3: members of the jury. They were saying very horrible things
Speaker 3: to her, like your mother should have aborted you. You're
Speaker 3: just as dumb as he is. You're not doing your job.
Speaker 3: They kept on reporting to the judge that like the
Speaker 3: jurors were losing it. The young woman was so stressed
Speaker 3: out she was throwing up.
Speaker 4: The jurors came as they can't help up with her
Speaker 4: dirty wild up with helgoing out.
Speaker 3: So the judge is like, I'm going to sequester you
Speaker 3: guys in a hotel overnight, So he does that. They
Speaker 3: come back the next day. The abuse continues.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, because they clearly must have been unsure of the outcome.
Speaker 1: The attorneys were discussing the offered that they'd made to
Speaker 1: Corey before trial twenty years. At this point he almost
Speaker 1: served half but still Corey maintains his innocence. And then
Speaker 1: the jury came back with their first ten to two
Speaker 1: vote for guilty.
Speaker 3: They pull the jurors and two African Americans say not guilty.
Speaker 3: One woman, a white lady, writes guilty under duress, and
Speaker 3: they're like, oh no, this won't do. So then they
Speaker 3: send everybody back and then she comes back and she's
Speaker 3: changed her vote at this point from guilty under duress
Speaker 3: to just guilty and that's enough.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Then the next day she gives an interview to The
Speaker 3: Times picky you and and she describes the scene in
Speaker 3: deliberations and she just says, I didn't vote guilty because
Speaker 3: I thought the state proved its case. I voted guilty
Speaker 3: to end deliberations because the Mama bear instinct in me
Speaker 3: came out and I was afraid for the sanity of
Speaker 3: this young girl.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I just see I just thought she was dried,
Speaker 4: kids on the eyes and stuff like that. So I
Speaker 4: know something was going on in effect, I just didn't
Speaker 4: find out until later, she described a total lens going
Speaker 4: off back. It was unsel how to go through that,
Speaker 4: and it was unself to me. They had to be
Speaker 4: found guilty by Dervis said basically put out out in
Speaker 4: the room there. It's just hard recapping all of those
Speaker 4: times and it just takes you back to that place.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't wish this all my words enemy, I lost
Speaker 4: twenty two years of my life so far of being
Speaker 4: able to raise my kids. Tryping me because I was
Speaker 4: not raised by my father my mother. I was giving
Speaker 4: my grand pans and I always vowed to break that cycle.
Speaker 4: The most important thing in the world of people was
Speaker 4: to be a father and be up in the thout
Speaker 4: these lives. My youngest daughter was two years old. Now
Speaker 4: she's graduated and let you so I wasn't there for
Speaker 4: them because of the hearts of men, political figures and discontinas,
Speaker 4: checkers and posy.
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, all the easy
Speaker 3: on you and been trying.
Speaker 4: To upgrade in their standards, and they just somebody like
Speaker 4: me come along and they're just like that, We're gonna
Speaker 4: go all out. This don't help us, It don't feel
Speaker 4: us in our platfall. But I allowed. I did it
Speaker 4: to change me and make my heart. I still believe
Speaker 4: that if I staked go ahead a wait, and I
Speaker 4: bet if my kids all of it was going real well,
Speaker 4: going to college, when college being successful, I was, it
Speaker 4: could have turned out much worse for them. And so
Speaker 4: I hold on today. I could see the pain and
Speaker 4: I can hear the pain what we shouldpeak, and I
Speaker 4: know they been under the pain. It could be given
Speaker 4: back to him, and the best thing that I could
Speaker 4: do for him is give my freedom.
Speaker 3: He had his direct appeal and then he filed for
Speaker 3: his initial state habeas or state post conviction, and it
Speaker 3: was timely, and that was denied without a hearing. That's
Speaker 3: a shame because what the law says is if there's
Speaker 3: any contested factual issue, you cannot just resolve that on
Speaker 3: inspection of the pleadings. You have to have a hearing.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of contested factual issues in this case.
Speaker 3: So there was never a hearing on his initial timely
Speaker 3: post conviction application.
Speaker 1: Eighteen.
Speaker 5: Both the state's witnesses recanted. In twenty eighteen, both men
Speaker 5: independently fully recanted their trial testimony. Both of them said,
Speaker 5: I didn't see Corey Kenneth actually said that he saw
Speaker 5: a shorter, darker skinned person, and they both described similar
Speaker 5: coercion by the Sheriff's office. They both said what I
Speaker 5: said at trial was not true, so the evidence against
Speaker 5: Corey is gone.
Speaker 1: In addition, Jane hired a crime scene reconstruction expert.
Speaker 3: We had a crime scene reconstruction expert, and basically the
Speaker 3: trajectory of the bullet, because it's got a slightly upward angle,
Speaker 3: they were either on the same plane or the shooter
Speaker 3: was standing up, Steve was laying down, and the shooter
Speaker 3: had an unobstructive path from at least three feet away
Speaker 3: because there was no stippling, so we know that it
Speaker 3: came from at least three feet away. So the idea
Speaker 3: that the shooter sticks his hand in a pile of
Speaker 3: people fighting and shoots that clearly didn't happen, and that.
Speaker 1: Was alleged by the only person who appear in both trials,
Speaker 1: Darnell Jordan. At least Kenneth Jordan's version of events was
Speaker 1: physically possible. Yet the post conviction filing was denied, ruling
Speaker 1: that the recantations were suspect and not reliable. Even though
Speaker 1: these recantations were in part supported by the crime scene
Speaker 1: reconstruction and in total by Detective Cloger's pattern of coercion.
Speaker 3: There's corroboration that this is kind of the pattern in
Speaker 3: practice of what the Sheriff's office was doing in this case.
Speaker 3: And then subsequently, in the most recent filing that we did,
Speaker 3: we got Cloger's personnel record and within it there was
Speaker 3: this letter from the superintendent of the New Orleans Police
Speaker 3: Department that said, this guy has been messing up homicide
Speaker 3: investigations in Orleans Parish. So if you do hire mb
Speaker 3: is more stuited to be a guard at a correctional institution.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, the motion was denied without a hearing, so.
Speaker 3: He's never had a hearing. They've never let him come
Speaker 3: back to court for anything, even the new evidence.
Speaker 1: Now, around this time, there was a ballot initiative in
Speaker 1: Louisiana and the practice of non unanimous jew verdicts. We
Speaker 1: even did an episode about it in October twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: It's linked in the episode description. In fact, that was
Speaker 1: only about a month after Kim's first appearance on this show. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: that November, Louisiana finally did the right thing, at least
Speaker 1: for cases going forward.
Speaker 2: But everyone that had been convicted on that system, they
Speaker 2: didn't retroactively let them out. Not changing laws retroactively is
Speaker 2: something that really bothers me. I can't understand how that
Speaker 2: makes sense to lawmakers and how people are comfortable with that.
Speaker 1: You know the reason, Kim that's cited by the powers
Speaker 1: that be in Louisiana that they aren't changing this law
Speaker 1: because it would clog up the court system with all
Speaker 1: these people who would need to come home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, isn't that the most ridiculous thing ever?
Speaker 2: I really can't wrap my head around it.
Speaker 1: We certainly can't either. So even though people like Corey
Speaker 1: didn't benefit from that new law, since then, Louisiana has
Speaker 1: passed other promising legislation.
Speaker 3: Louisiana enacted a provision of law that is meant to
Speaker 3: provide people like Corey Miller with a pathway to prove
Speaker 3: their innocence and what would otherwise be considered untimely filing
Speaker 3: that says they can file a factual innocence petition before
Speaker 3: December thirty first of twenty twenty two. So that's what
Speaker 3: we did, alleging everything, showing everything, and we didn't get
Speaker 3: a hearing on it. What they did was the trial
Speaker 3: judge relied on previous decisions. So he said, like, because
Speaker 3: I made the call in twenty eighteen that Darnell and
Speaker 3: Kennet's recantations are suspicious, I don't think that this qualifies
Speaker 3: as evidence to support a factual innocence filing. But in
Speaker 3: every case dealing with recantations, there's a hearing to determine
Speaker 3: the veracity of the recantation. Darnell and Kenneth have never
Speaker 3: been called to court to testify under oaths, like the
Speaker 3: veracity of the evidence has never been tested. And we
Speaker 3: took it to the Supreme Court and the two of
Speaker 3: the justices voted in our favor, but we needed four
Speaker 3: and so that avenue is closed.
Speaker 1: His federal habeas was also But considering that there's literally
Speaker 1: no evidence left that implicates Corey Miller, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to understand how he hasn't seen relief after all these
Speaker 1: long years.
Speaker 4: So it's said all around the forward there was a
Speaker 4: victim involved, and it's more than one victim. And because
Speaker 4: I've been playing at my innocence to the day one
Speaker 4: and I know they're just pa and I know that's
Speaker 4: the state that I'm innocent, and I know that when
Speaker 4: Dane went and visited the day knows that I'm in.
Speaker 4: They just don't know what to do with me.
Speaker 3: I have spoken several times to the District Attorney's office
Speaker 3: and said, you know, Corey, he's not interested in spending
Speaker 3: the rest of his life in prison trying to get exonerated.
Speaker 3: We all offered him twenty years and he's.
Speaker 4: Served that it's right all the judges of Street and
Speaker 4: grant here my vote, and the das of Trade to
Speaker 4: lean up my cage and give me in my freedom,
Speaker 4: because they said I retroduced doing the right date would
Speaker 4: be the wrong moved for anybody to China further than career.
Speaker 1: Doing the right thing would be the wrong move for
Speaker 1: anybody trying to further their career. I think that's the
Speaker 1: best and maybe the only explanation for where Corey finds
Speaker 1: himself today.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's just had every roadblock that you could
Speaker 2: possibly imagine, and everyone screw him over every which way,
Speaker 2: and it's just I definitely won't stop fighting for him.
Speaker 2: That's why I want to be loud about him and
Speaker 2: keep his case alive. Unfortunately, nothing has happened. He keeps
Speaker 2: getting blocked at every motion, every step.
Speaker 1: Of the way. Corey needs all the help he can get,
Speaker 1: and I'm asking each and every one of you to
Speaker 1: not only share his story, but also to please sign
Speaker 1: the petition to free Corey Miller based on his actual innocence,
Speaker 1: and beyond that, we all need to sign a petition
Speaker 1: to apply the unanimous verdict standard retroactively in Louisiana. Both
Speaker 1: will be linked in the episode description. Plus new evidence
Speaker 1: is another way Corey could get back into court and
Speaker 1: write this wrong.
Speaker 3: If you have any information about Corey's case, please contact me.
Speaker 3: My email address is Jane ja and E at Hoganattorneys dot.
Speaker 1: Com and we'll have Jane's contact info as well as
Speaker 1: other action steps linked in the episode description. And with that,
Speaker 1: we're going to go to closing arguments, starting with Kim,
Speaker 1: then Jane, and then Corey will take us off into
Speaker 1: the sunset.
Speaker 2: If you really think about it, that your family member,
Speaker 2: or your loved one, or your friends or someone close
Speaker 2: to you could be in the same exact situations as
Speaker 2: so many of these people that are locked up for life,
Speaker 2: it really opens up my heart to just want to
Speaker 2: help people and do whatever we can so specifically with
Speaker 2: Corey Miller, someone who has no evidence that he was
Speaker 2: involved in this crime. His DNA was not on the evidence,
Speaker 2: and I don't know why our system cannot take accountability
Speaker 2: of the wrongs and let people out that have been
Speaker 2: proven innocent. I believe in Corey Miller one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: I really want him to come home. I think he
Speaker 2: would be such an asset to our society, and I
Speaker 2: really hope that Louisiana strongly considers changing the law retroactively
Speaker 2: and letting those people out, because it would change so
Speaker 2: many people's lives and families.
Speaker 3: I would just like to thank you for your interest
Speaker 3: in it. I would also, of course like to thank
Speaker 3: Kim and her team for their interest in it and
Speaker 3: for using her platform to shed some light on this case.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is not a verdict which should inspire
Speaker 3: confidence in the system. If you look at it, it
Speaker 3: was a house of cards to begin with. It collapsed,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately there as a human being who is still
Speaker 3: sitting in prison for something that he didn't do and
Speaker 3: that there is no evidence that he did, and he
Speaker 3: is now lost over two decades of his life to this,
Speaker 3: and so that is an injustice it's also an injustice
Speaker 3: of course that Steve Thomas was shot and killed. So
Speaker 3: there's a lot of injustice here. But the one injustice
Speaker 3: that can be remedied is record to get some relief somewhere,
Speaker 3: and I believe that one day that will happen, and
Speaker 3: I will continue to work on this case until hopefully
Speaker 3: one day he can come home.
Speaker 4: I did what everybody to get the full shore. Because
Speaker 4: everybody is aware of everything that went on in my case,
Speaker 4: it'd be easiest for the proper officious to make the
Speaker 4: right decision. And I feel like he's going to be
Speaker 4: retrocuted and carry for making the right decision and relieve,
Speaker 4: so I'd want everybody get the story. Help. We tried
Speaker 4: everything else that work. No matter how great find appeal
Speaker 4: and all and how great word and in people is
Speaker 4: ever gonna matter. I will actually die after what I've done,
Speaker 4: but only because of jam and love me, behold and
Speaker 4: law and release you. That's political sabotage for them, and
Speaker 4: so I gotta keep doing what we're going right down.
Speaker 4: That's why it's important to bring awayness to my situation
Speaker 4: and my summer.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 4: I have had it, man, because I haven't had me
Speaker 4: in twenty three years.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Rawful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
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Speaker 1: production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 1: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wadis, and Jeff Cliber.
Speaker 1: Music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
Speaker 1: It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 1: in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
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Speaker 1: and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good