Speaker 1: I've never been a trouble in my life. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a parking ticket, and you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
Speaker 1: do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like everything,
Speaker 1: this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I
Speaker 1: know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this. How is this possible? I grew up trusting
Speaker 1: the systems. I grew up believing that every human thing
Speaker 1: should do the right thing. And that's why, even though
Speaker 1: I was dealing with corrupt people, I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: brave anyone to get me out of prison because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't live with the fact that I braved my way
Speaker 1: out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent to proven guilty.
Speaker 1: I'm guilty until I proved my innocence. And that's absolutely
Speaker 1: what happened to me. Our system. Since I've went out
Speaker 1: ten years, it's coming little ways, but it's still broke
Speaker 1: in a totally little trust in humanity after what happened
Speaker 1: to it. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today,
Speaker 1: I have a very special show planned for you. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the people I admire most in the innocence movement,
Speaker 1: Lara Basilon, is here. UM. Lara, first of all, before
Speaker 1: I introduce you and read off your accomplishments, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you for having me so. Lara is
Speaker 1: a writer and an associate professor at the University of
Speaker 1: San Francisco Law School, and she's the director of the Criminal,
Speaker 1: Juvenile Justice, and Racial Justice clinics. And her resume is
Speaker 1: much much longer than that, having spent a long time
Speaker 1: as a public defender, UH, doing fantastic writing on all
Speaker 1: different aspect so wrongful conviction in places like Slate and
Speaker 1: New York Times and so many others. So it's really
Speaker 1: awesome that you're here. We have a lot to talk about, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And our other guest is someone who listeners will be
Speaker 1: familiar with, UM, and it's gonna be amazing to catch
Speaker 1: up with him. Tony Wright is here. And Tony, of course,
Speaker 1: served twenty five years in prison in Pennsylvania for a
Speaker 1: crime it was so obvious that he didn't commit that
Speaker 1: when the jury finally exonerated him declared him not guilty,
Speaker 1: it took them all of five minutes to figure it out.
Speaker 1: And that's right. They deliberated for five minutes before declaring
Speaker 1: him totally innocent. So Tony, welcome back to wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: My man, pleasure always mine. Man, it's been a long time,
Speaker 1: I've man, it's been overd Thank for having me back, Tony,
Speaker 1: right back, live and in person on wrongful Conviction. And
Speaker 1: this time you brought a couple of very special guests
Speaker 1: with you. Do you want to go ahead and introduce
Speaker 1: them or you want me to do it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do it, Okay. So you brought two very special gues
Speaker 1: Shannon Coleman, who is a shining example of everything that
Speaker 1: restorative justice can and should and will be, and her
Speaker 1: wonderful daughter, Lauren, who actually really started this ball rolling,
Speaker 1: um when she read an article and brought it to
Speaker 1: your mom's attention. And that must have been an amazing
Speaker 1: moment and an amazing process. So I want to hear
Speaker 1: about that from both of your perspectives. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having us come and tell our story. So Lara,
Speaker 1: let's turn to you first. Um, what got you into
Speaker 1: this work? So part of what I used to do
Speaker 1: was direct an innocence project, a small one at Loyola
Speaker 1: Law School in l a and I litigated a case
Speaker 1: in our client's name, believe it or not, was Cash Register,
Speaker 1: and he had been wrongfully convicted in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: of a murder that he didn't commit. So thirty four
Speaker 1: years later we were trying to get him out. We
Speaker 1: were successful in exonerating him. And then after that that
Speaker 1: experience led me to think, well, what happens to people
Speaker 1: in the aftermath. So there's so many victims. There's Cash
Speaker 1: there's his mother who waited in their tiny apartment for
Speaker 1: him to come home. He'd been snatched there by the
Speaker 1: police and basically kidnapped by the prison industrial complex for
Speaker 1: thirty or four years. There was the fact that they
Speaker 1: had lost his brother, that his father died soon after.
Speaker 1: And then there was the victims and the original crime victims,
Speaker 1: and and and the man's family who died, and what
Speaker 1: they had to go through realizing that the truth that
Speaker 1: they'd always been told it was not the truth at all.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the truth at all, As is the case
Speaker 1: in you know, every one of these wrongful compigug cases,
Speaker 1: but some are worse than others, right. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are some where mistakes were made, but you could say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there was circumstantial evidence and it piled up,
Speaker 1: and you know, the a Bubba the cash Register wasn't
Speaker 1: one of those cases. And by the way, that is
Speaker 1: his real name. It's cash with a K. And and
Speaker 1: the fact is with him. It's so dramatic to me
Speaker 1: because he was in prison for almost twice as long
Speaker 1: as he had been alive outside of prison. That's right,
Speaker 1: And just one edition about the name. His name is
Speaker 1: cash Register with a K. Interestingly, the other brother was
Speaker 1: named Norman. So the family naming system was just kind
Speaker 1: of the whole spectrum. Somebody had a sense of humor.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's really interesting. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I would name. My last name was Register.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think what I would name my kids. Um,
Speaker 1: but there's a funny mind in there somewhere. I'll come
Speaker 1: up with it later. Anyway. So you got cash out,
Speaker 1: um there, cash out there goes another fun But anyway, um,
Speaker 1: and we know I know obviously firsthand how incredible that feels.
Speaker 1: It's addictive, isn't it. Yes, it is. It's like a drug.
Speaker 1: There's nothing no feeling in the world like having a
Speaker 1: judge find your client innocent and having them walk out
Speaker 1: of prison after having been there for decades. Yeah, it's remarkable.
Speaker 1: I mean it's interesting because people who know me and
Speaker 1: know I have this sort of string in double life
Speaker 1: as a record executive and criminal justice reformer. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: they'll ask me, you know, what is it about this?
Speaker 1: Why am I so devoted spending so much time? And
Speaker 1: the answer is very simple. Years from now or even now,
Speaker 1: no one will care who signed Katy Perry, Like, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. No one remembers who signed the Beatles
Speaker 1: for fox sakes, right, So but after I'm gone, you know,
Speaker 1: the you know, the lasting impact of the people, or
Speaker 1: after we're gonna should say, of the people whose lives
Speaker 1: we've been able to possibly affect, who were stuck in
Speaker 1: the ultimate nightmare. Um, really as as as hopeless as
Speaker 1: they could be. That's the good stuff, right, and that's
Speaker 1: the stuff that really means something. So anyway, it's it's
Speaker 1: good to be in this and it's good to be
Speaker 1: in it with you. And meanwhile, very exciting there's a
Speaker 1: new development in your life, which is a book you've
Speaker 1: got a book, a real hardcover book. I'm holding it
Speaker 1: in my hand. It feels good, it looks great. It's
Speaker 1: from Beacon Press. It's called Rectify the Power of Restorative
Speaker 1: Justice after Wrongful Conviction And um, I'm reading it now
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm hooked. So tell me the inspiration behind
Speaker 1: this book. How did you come to So the inspiration
Speaker 1: really did grow out of Cash's case, because, as you say,
Speaker 1: it's so important to be able to really help save
Speaker 1: someone's life, and then afterwards, what you really want for
Speaker 1: them is for them to have a good life. And
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Because, as you know, when people
Speaker 1: have been sent away and locked away for so long
Speaker 1: under unbelievably inhumane conditions, they have psychological trauma, sometimes they
Speaker 1: have physical trauma, and they have to kind of make
Speaker 1: sense of the senseless and the monstrous. And what's really
Speaker 1: interesting is that there's this movement now to help people
Speaker 1: who have been exonerated. But then also the original crime
Speaker 1: victims move through the earthquake of exoneration together if they're
Speaker 1: open to it, by connecting with each other. And it's
Speaker 1: fascinating because when you think about it, the exoner e
Speaker 1: comes out starting as a perpetrator and then being revealed
Speaker 1: as a victim for the crime victims, especially at the
Speaker 1: victims who testified believing that they had gotten the right person,
Speaker 1: but it was a case of mistaken identity or even
Speaker 1: just fervently believing that they were guilty and wanting them
Speaker 1: to get the death penalty. They feel culpable, they feel complicit,
Speaker 1: they feel like perpetrators, and so the whole system has
Speaker 1: been flipped around, and they've each seen each other's perspective.
Speaker 1: It is a remarkable, UM thing. I was this, this
Speaker 1: phenomenon of that connection, and that the power that's generated
Speaker 1: from those two sort of opposite forces UM coming together
Speaker 1: is unlike anything else I can think of. UM. One
Speaker 1: of the most important and UM, you know, incredible examples,
Speaker 1: of course, is Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton. UM. I've
Speaker 1: interviewed them on the show. Some of the people listening
Speaker 1: now we have heard that episode. I hope you have.
Speaker 1: If not, you should go back and and check it out.
Speaker 1: But talk about that case, because I know you've had
Speaker 1: a lot of dealings and interaction with them, and I'm
Speaker 1: assuming I'm going to get to them in your book.
Speaker 1: I've gotten to that chap for yet you're absolutely going
Speaker 1: to read a lot about them. And Jennifer Thompson was
Speaker 1: a large part of the inspiration because she's really at
Speaker 1: the forefront of this movement to apply restorative justice practices
Speaker 1: in wrongful conviction cases. Because, as she says, she and
Speaker 1: Ronald Cotton were doing restorative justice without even realizing that
Speaker 1: that's what they were doing. And then when she saw
Speaker 1: after their book came out and became a bestseller, how
Speaker 1: many people were in their situation, she realized how many
Speaker 1: people could also benefit from doing what they had done,
Speaker 1: which is reconnect with each other. So the backstory is
Speaker 1: that she was brutally raped at knife point, woken up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night by a stranger. She
Speaker 1: followed the identification procedures that were in place in time
Speaker 1: at that time in North Carolina. She picked the person
Speaker 1: who she believed was her attacker. She went to court,
Speaker 1: she testified, and that person was was Ronald Cotton. And then,
Speaker 1: as it turned out, thirteen years later, DNA revealed that
Speaker 1: in fact, her attacker was a man named Bobby Pool.
Speaker 1: And when that news was revealed to her, she was
Speaker 1: completely devastated by it and overcome with shame and guilt
Speaker 1: and remorse, and she and Ronald Cotton had this very
Speaker 1: emotional reunion at a church where she just wept and
Speaker 1: asked him to forgive her, and he said, I forgave
Speaker 1: you a long time ago. And then they formed this bond.
Speaker 1: And what's so remarkable about it is not only that
Speaker 1: it really is truly a love relationship, but also that
Speaker 1: their social justice advocates together, and it's really their effort
Speaker 1: that led to North Carolina revising its eyewitness identification laws
Speaker 1: and now they use best practices, so what happened is
Speaker 1: unlikely to happen again. So your book again is called Rectify,
Speaker 1: and this story it plays an important part in the
Speaker 1: book because it's sort of spearheaded this movement, and they
Speaker 1: were now run an organization that is devoted to putting
Speaker 1: these pieces back together, putting these broken lives together to
Speaker 1: create something beautiful and even magic call And in their case,
Speaker 1: I think what's so fascinating and so important to highlight
Speaker 1: about that particular case is that she was called the
Speaker 1: perfect witness. Um she was sober, she was a college student,
Speaker 1: she was hyper focused on identifying him, and so she
Speaker 1: talks about how she spent every second of this horrible ordeal,
Speaker 1: um trying to memorize any detail that could help, because,
Speaker 1: as she says, if I lived, I'm quoting her paraphrasing,
Speaker 1: but if I lived, I was going to make sure
Speaker 1: that he went to prison for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: And of course one of the things that motivated her
Speaker 1: was that she wanted to prevent this from happening to
Speaker 1: any other women, and so she identified him in a
Speaker 1: mug shot in a lineup on in court with absolute certainty,
Speaker 1: and of course she was dead wrong. And then she
Speaker 1: has to live with the just the the awful, awful
Speaker 1: feeling of knowing that he went out and ray dozens
Speaker 1: of other women because he got away with it, you know. So,
Speaker 1: and that's the one of the tragic things about wrongful conviction,
Speaker 1: of course, is that when the wrong person like Ronald
Speaker 1: Cotton is convicted, the right person is left free to
Speaker 1: go out and um perpetrate other horrible crimes against innocent victims.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the book Rectify Again. Is the
Speaker 1: is the new book, the new release from laur Basilon,
Speaker 1: And we're talking about cases that are highlighted in this
Speaker 1: book and how they have led to this really unlikely.
Speaker 1: Um phenomenon of restorative justice? Um, which which what's the
Speaker 1: first other case that comes to your mind? There's so
Speaker 1: many of them. Well, we have Tony here, and he
Speaker 1: can speak more poignantly than I can. But his story
Speaker 1: is also a story of restorative justice, and that, as
Speaker 1: you described, he spent um twenty five years in prison
Speaker 1: for a crime he did not commit. And in this
Speaker 1: case there was just truly egregious police misconduct. And one
Speaker 1: thing about the case that was interesting is that the
Speaker 1: victims elderly woman Louise Tally. She was part of a
Speaker 1: law enforcement family and so her great niece, Shannon Coleman,
Speaker 1: was the daughter of one of Philadelphia's first African American
Speaker 1: police officers. And it was Shannon's mother who told her
Speaker 1: what had happened to her great aunt. And the family
Speaker 1: was very involved in law enforcement. The mom was a cop.
Speaker 1: They followed the case really closely. Tony was arrested the
Speaker 1: next day. Shannon truly believed he was guilty and took
Speaker 1: some satisfaction from the fact that he was given life
Speaker 1: without the possibility of pearl. And then Rolling Stone published
Speaker 1: this expose of just how corrupt and just how unsound.
Speaker 1: This conviction was she read it, she was beset by doubt,
Speaker 1: and she was forced to re examine not only her
Speaker 1: feelings about him, but her feelings about law enforcement and
Speaker 1: what it meant to be an honorable police officer and
Speaker 1: all of the beliefs she had had about the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: Police Department. All of a sudden, we're just kind of
Speaker 1: blown up. Yeah, I mean, it's YouTube spin more than
Speaker 1: two decades. Really, I mean as opposite forces, right, I mean, Shannon,
Speaker 1: you've talked about how you really hated this man for
Speaker 1: what you thought that he had done to your great aunt. Correct. Um,
Speaker 1: I went by what we were told by the police,
Speaker 1: and I believe that he was a bad guy and
Speaker 1: that he had unharmed had killed myn And you are
Speaker 1: not somebody who's unfamiliar with the criminal justicism because you
Speaker 1: come from a law enforcement family. Yes, my mother was
Speaker 1: a policewoman for years. Um, So again because of that
Speaker 1: probably led me to believe more in what we were
Speaker 1: being told that he was guilty, right, I mean, that
Speaker 1: would have anything that would deepen your belief in this,
Speaker 1: you know, being exactly as it was presented to you.
Speaker 1: And obviously then Harden your resolved to see this man,
Speaker 1: uh spend the rest of his life in prison because
Speaker 1: had had he done what he had done. I mean,
Speaker 1: no one could blame you for feeling that way. Everybody
Speaker 1: feels the way they feel. But the crime was a
Speaker 1: was a gruesome crime of rape and stabbing. Ah, horrible
Speaker 1: murder of an elderly woman who you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it's unimaginable. So now let's turn to you, though, Lauren,
Speaker 1: because how did you find out about this case and
Speaker 1: what made you You must have had a strange moment
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I don't know if I can bring
Speaker 1: this to my mom, right, you know how it must
Speaker 1: have been difficult. Yeah, I grew up hearing about it.
Speaker 1: I guess I would always ask her questions about it.
Speaker 1: And I think I saw it first in a tweet
Speaker 1: and I recognized her name. So I went to my
Speaker 1: mom and I said like, Hey, isn't this your grant
Speaker 1: that you told me about? And she read it and
Speaker 1: immediately was alarmed, Like she said, she had no idea
Speaker 1: and she just flew into defense mode. How old were
Speaker 1: you at the time. I want to say I was
Speaker 1: sixteen maybe, so you're sixteen you're starting to really, you know,
Speaker 1: come into you know, real consciousness of turning from a
Speaker 1: girl into a woman and becoming you know, more aware
Speaker 1: of of everything in the world, and and what a
Speaker 1: way to to be awoken. Right, And so you saw
Speaker 1: a tweet about the Rolling Stone article, right, and what
Speaker 1: an article that was. I mean, I didn't have any
Speaker 1: connection to the case. Obviously, I've been involved in this
Speaker 1: work for twenty five years. But when I read that case,
Speaker 1: I said, I mean, when I read that article, I said, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean I wanted to run through the
Speaker 1: streets screaming and waving signs and breaking stuff because I
Speaker 1: was like, this, this can't be happening. And again, it's Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and not Philadelphia, Mississippi. So if it can happen there,
Speaker 1: it could really happen anywhere. And so Tony, like for you,
Speaker 1: you were on the opposite side of this, right, you
Speaker 1: were the I mean, there's a lot of victims in
Speaker 1: this case. I mean, all of you are victims in
Speaker 1: a certain way, right, in different ways. Um, how did
Speaker 1: you come to be aware that Shannon had turned this
Speaker 1: corner and was now becoming a powerful advocate for you?
Speaker 1: Not just forgiving, but actually getting out there and and
Speaker 1: like knocking on people's doors, knocking down doors. Right. It
Speaker 1: was insane. Uh, I thought my family. I thought my
Speaker 1: family was trying to pump me a something. I got
Speaker 1: a visitor. Well, I called home and somebody gave me
Speaker 1: an indirect message and he said, somebody come up there
Speaker 1: to tell you some And I'm sitting there waiting and
Speaker 1: my cousin visit me one evening and he told me
Speaker 1: about Shannon and the petition and all that, and I
Speaker 1: fell on the floor in the visiting room. I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. I mean, I couldn't believe it. You know,
Speaker 1: this was a moment were waiting for for a long time,
Speaker 1: just to connect with somebody from that family, because before
Speaker 1: that we had several ap parisons and everybody from my
Speaker 1: side was there, but nobody ever showed up from uh
Speaker 1: miss Tally side, and you know, we couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: what was going on, did she have any relative left?
Speaker 1: And when Shannon appeared, man, it was it was such
Speaker 1: a fresher breath here. Yeah, I mean, what a moment,
Speaker 1: and what a moment to be here with the two
Speaker 1: of you now. And of course We're here tonight to
Speaker 1: celebrate the release of Rectify by Lara Basilon, which is
Speaker 1: a book that really highlights your case and your UM
Speaker 1: and your amazing bond that you formed and this beautiful
Speaker 1: UM friendship that's blossom from this most dark dark, a
Speaker 1: most unimaginably dark place. And so, I mean, was it
Speaker 1: hard for you Tony to forgive um Shannon? No? Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Uh you can't blame Shannon or anybody from that side
Speaker 1: of family filling waity for I go for and say,
Speaker 1: maybe some of my family, even though I might have
Speaker 1: been a perpetrator of the scrub and to the facts
Speaker 1: came out. Uh, you know, my family as my family,
Speaker 1: they supported me. Nobody reached from me. If I called,
Speaker 1: everybody has answered the call. If I needed anything, they
Speaker 1: made sure I had what I needed. I mean, so
Speaker 1: you can't blame her. Uh, you can't even imagine this.
Speaker 1: This this is some fairytale stuff going on between us.
Speaker 1: I love her to death. She one of my closest friends.
Speaker 1: Her daughter is my niece, her son is my nephew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, uh, Lauren here on fall break
Speaker 1: and assume she arround she let me down. She's here
Speaker 1: I mean when she's here, I like to get them
Speaker 1: together and you know, my little group and we can
Speaker 1: have dinner and say down and chatting all that. Man,
Speaker 1: I love her, the death man and the family right there.
Speaker 1: I mean, and Laura, what kind of a pact has
Speaker 1: it's had on you? Like? What the how old are
Speaker 1: you know? And what are you doing? Um with your life?
Speaker 1: I'm planning on going to law school. Oh, I was
Speaker 1: going to get that you look like a lawyer. So
Speaker 1: it definitely had an impact on that, and it made
Speaker 1: me realize the importance of the work that I wanted
Speaker 1: to get into criminal defense. Um, it was just a
Speaker 1: shiny example of how to you know that the need
Speaker 1: to be a good lawyer so things like this don't happen.
Speaker 1: You do realize that had you not actually seen that
Speaker 1: particular tweet and then taken some action which you didn't
Speaker 1: have to, it would have been easier for you to
Speaker 1: just be you know, like, Okay, I better keep my
Speaker 1: mom out of this, you know, like and just but
Speaker 1: because you did that, I mean, that has something. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to know whether it's five percent or fifty,
Speaker 1: but it's a part of the reason why Tony sitting
Speaker 1: here right now. So what a thing for a teenager.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's that's that's good stuff, you know, and
Speaker 1: I know that's something you'll carry with you for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. UM. And it's incredible. And Shannon,
Speaker 1: what is what what's now for you? What's going on? UM?
Speaker 1: I mean how does how has this transformed you? And
Speaker 1: what does it mean for you? And and how's you know,
Speaker 1: what's what's next? Well, I'm a big advocate now, UM,
Speaker 1: for the Innocence Project and for you know, I read
Speaker 1: all the stories that I can find online and see
Speaker 1: the other examples of situations like Tony's. UM. I'm a
Speaker 1: big advocate for my daughter because, you know, helping her
Speaker 1: with this kind of information because I know down the
Speaker 1: line it's going to help her in her career. UM.
Speaker 1: It's just like, UM, I guess it's like my hobby now.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would like I went to Harris Burn
Speaker 1: UM to help with some legislation for reimbursing UM wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted people. And I would love to do more to
Speaker 1: help because I just I mean, it's like a passion
Speaker 1: that I have now. It is it's it's the most
Speaker 1: but it's the best addiction that you can have. I mean,
Speaker 1: helping other people who need to help as much as
Speaker 1: anybody could ever need help. And uh and it means
Speaker 1: so much. And you are really a great advocate and
Speaker 1: uh at a beautiful spirit for doing what you do.
Speaker 1: So tony, Um, what what else can you share with us?
Speaker 1: I mean how you were on the show? Oh, I
Speaker 1: mean that must have been about a year ago, I guess,
Speaker 1: and you would give such a powerful um um presentation,
Speaker 1: um talking about all there's certain things I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: We're we're like seventy episodes into the Wrongful Conviction now
Speaker 1: and so many stories, but I'll never forget certain things
Speaker 1: that you said during that amazing episode that we taped together. Um,
Speaker 1: what's what I mean? That's kind of a big development
Speaker 1: in your life now too, right, just just my whole transition.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, people seeing amaze of everything I
Speaker 1: got going on at high Manuver. I mean as as
Speaker 1: I've got a million people holding my hands like a
Speaker 1: baby every step I take, man do nothing wrong? So
Speaker 1: much help, I mean, and and you know I want
Speaker 1: I want a heart back on you know one thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think this whole situation really changed Shan
Speaker 1: in life, gave her a different perspective on you know,
Speaker 1: just adjical system as a whole. And and and I
Speaker 1: witnessed the passion she has for other men, and and
Speaker 1: and that may be in the situation and learn, you know,
Speaker 1: the apple don't fall far from the tree. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, she's her mother's daughter. One. I guarantee you
Speaker 1: that so smart, so brilliant. Man, Man, I love him.
Speaker 1: The deaf Man's my family right there. Man. I can
Speaker 1: never yeah, I mean that's an understatement. I mean I
Speaker 1: can never overstate that. Man. I want the world. And note,
Speaker 1: I mean like this is some fairy tale stuff going
Speaker 1: on here. And that's another member of this family us
Speaker 1: and and that's her son, Devin Coleman. So I want
Speaker 1: to mention him, Devin a shout out. Man, I love
Speaker 1: you Shannon and Lauren. Um. To me, it was so
Speaker 1: important to do the right thing because I have a son,
Speaker 1: black male, and two nephews that I raised, and I
Speaker 1: could only think every time I thought about what Tony
Speaker 1: went through and was going through, was that could have
Speaker 1: been one of them? And just I just never forget that,
Speaker 1: no matter, you know, if I'm trying to help somebody
Speaker 1: or when I'm reading the other stories, I always placed them,
Speaker 1: my my kids in that spot, and that's not good. Uh.
Speaker 1: Point Bryant, two things for me. The first was I
Speaker 1: wanted Ms. Tyley's family to know that Anthony Right absolutely
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the crime that was perpetrated
Speaker 1: against the loved one. Until my family, I could have
Speaker 1: died after that, I didn't even care. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to clear my name and I wanted to clear those
Speaker 1: people conscious that I wasn't a person that committed this crime.
Speaker 1: I can say loved one sent for me. I was good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really amazing. I read I read about
Speaker 1: this exact situation in your book, um, and she describes
Speaker 1: very eloquently and potantly the gamut of emotions that ran
Speaker 1: through her as this horrible realization took hold. And I
Speaker 1: can't even begin to imagine what that must be like. Um.
Speaker 1: But the fact is that she, uh um, she made
Speaker 1: not only made peace with it and and turned her
Speaker 1: whole perspective around and became a powerful advocate for Tony.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, she went to Great Lanes to try
Speaker 1: to get Tony out. After spending almost a quarter of
Speaker 1: a century hating him, wishing terrible things upon him. Um.
Speaker 1: And again I'm not judging her for that. Um. And
Speaker 1: then she upon being presented with evidence, she didn't like
Speaker 1: shut it down or try to ignore it. She just
Speaker 1: went in the complete opposite direction and tried to fix it.
Speaker 1: And now, of course she's come full circle to the
Speaker 1: point that she is now a wonderful spokesperson for this
Speaker 1: restorative justice movement. And UM, and her you know, her story,
Speaker 1: as I said, is captured in your book Rectify, which
Speaker 1: is so it's so, you know, just I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to read, but it's wonderful to read that.
Speaker 1: You know, that that thing that having you conscribed, that
Speaker 1: ordeal that she went through. It's she's an amazing woman because,
Speaker 1: as you say, she did everything she could. She went
Speaker 1: to her church, she started writing her city council person,
Speaker 1: she asked friends she knew who had some kind of influence,
Speaker 1: and then she went directly to the d a's office repeatedly,
Speaker 1: and she had a meeting with the head of the
Speaker 1: homicide unit and she said, this is an abomination. You
Speaker 1: can't retry him. Because of course, the other part of
Speaker 1: Anthony write story is that once the DNA evidence came
Speaker 1: back and pointed to the real perpetrator. The d A
Speaker 1: decided that they were going to retry Tony under a
Speaker 1: different theory of the case, and that was what Shannon
Speaker 1: was trying to do everything she could to get stopped.
Speaker 1: When she met with this head of the homicide unit,
Speaker 1: she begged this woman to drop the prosecution. And there's
Speaker 1: this email that Shannon writes afterwards where she says, you
Speaker 1: told me that you have doubt and that this is
Speaker 1: for the jury to sort out. But that's not your
Speaker 1: ethical obligation. Your obligation it's to see that justice is
Speaker 1: done and this is a travesty. And then she started
Speaker 1: a change dot org petition. She attended as much of
Speaker 1: the trial as she could, and she said that when
Speaker 1: Tony's lawyer texted to say that you say he's been
Speaker 1: acquitted in five minutes, she literally screamed with relief and
Speaker 1: then immediately started a new change dot org petition to
Speaker 1: get him money to help out after he was let go. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's a different you know, I think when some
Speaker 1: people think of restorative justice, um, you know, their mind
Speaker 1: will turn to the question that I get asked, probably
Speaker 1: more frequently than any other. As I'm out there proselytizing
Speaker 1: about these you know, innocence cases and the instance project
Speaker 1: in the work that that you do and they do
Speaker 1: and so many other good people are involved in. I
Speaker 1: would say the most common thing that comes up is
Speaker 1: for people they get all wide eyed and they go, well,
Speaker 1: they get paid when they get out, right, like tell
Speaker 1: me they you know? They also want to know whether, um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's any consequence of the prosecutor misconduct. That's
Speaker 1: the second most asked question. But the first one is
Speaker 1: people want to know that that these men and women
Speaker 1: who have been through this uh kafka asked ordeal get compensated.
Speaker 1: And I think most people think, yeah, you walk out,
Speaker 1: you get a check. But that's not the way it is. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. I think people would be disappointed to both
Speaker 1: answers to those questions. Police and prosecutors are hardly ever
Speaker 1: called to account, and even when they are, what happens
Speaker 1: to them is fairly minor compared to the damage that
Speaker 1: they've inflicted on other people, including the original crime victims
Speaker 1: and the exonres. So with respect to consequence, there isn't
Speaker 1: often a consequence, And then compensation is all over the place.
Speaker 1: It depends on your state. So for example, in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: where Tony was wrongfully convicted, you don't get a dime.
Speaker 1: There is no statute to compensate you. If you want
Speaker 1: to be compensated, you have to sue the state, and
Speaker 1: you have to sue alleging violations of your federal civil
Speaker 1: rights and hope that your case is powerful enough that
Speaker 1: you can prevail. So eventually, that is how Tony ended
Speaker 1: up getting a settlement. But it's very hard to do,
Speaker 1: it's arduous. And then in other states the compensation is capped.
Speaker 1: So you'll do twenty years and they'll give you twenty dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: there's no amount of money that can make up for
Speaker 1: twenty years, but does not even come close. And I
Speaker 1: think this all points to this other idea that we have,
Speaker 1: which is we see these stories of exoneration, and we
Speaker 1: see the exonree in the news with his lawyer, with
Speaker 1: his mother thanking God, giving thanks, and we think it's
Speaker 1: going to be a happily ever after story, that they're
Speaker 1: going to get compensated. He'll get millions of dollars, and
Speaker 1: the police officers they'll be put in prison. And so
Speaker 1: often what wrongful conviction stories really are. They're not happy
Speaker 1: endings to fairy tales. They're more like earthquakes. And you
Speaker 1: were talking before about putting the pieces back together, and
Speaker 1: that's really what rectifies about. It's about who's left in
Speaker 1: the rubble and how they sort through it and find
Speaker 1: a way collaboratively to make their own justice, a kind
Speaker 1: of justice that was denied to them by the system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really nuts. I mean, I call it the
Speaker 1: second punishment, and it really would be better to put
Speaker 1: it as the second punish Mints, because there's so many
Speaker 1: um problems and and challenges that that these uh, these
Speaker 1: these innocent and women face when they get out right,
Speaker 1: which are again not if they're doing but they the
Speaker 1: problems go to employment. Um, I mean, it's hard when
Speaker 1: your resume has a twenty something, your whole in it
Speaker 1: right And even though as as Doug Galosa, who's you know,
Speaker 1: a friend and a hero of mine, and Honerie from
Speaker 1: New Orleans who's an anglic for fourteen years, he says,
Speaker 1: you know, they go to job interviews and they'd say
Speaker 1: I understand, but they don't understand, and they'd prefer to
Speaker 1: have somebody in generally speaking, who you know who wasn't
Speaker 1: in cars right, even though you have the newspaper article
Speaker 1: that says you're innocent or whatever it might be. And
Speaker 1: of course the challenges with family, the challenges with you know,
Speaker 1: yesterday I had dinner with Valentino Dixon, who just got
Speaker 1: out after twenty seven years. I was teaching him how
Speaker 1: to do Instagram right. But it's a process. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot. Not the Instagram is the most important thing.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying, well, kind of it is anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying like it's you know, these are
Speaker 1: people who have never held a cell phone. Uh, they
Speaker 1: don't have access in many cases to their identification. And
Speaker 1: the you know, the most to me obvious and probably
Speaker 1: disturbing aspect of the second punishment is exactly what you
Speaker 1: talked about. New Hampshire is the state where you can
Speaker 1: only get twenty tho Wisconsin you can only get twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand. Um. There are some states where you can't
Speaker 1: get anything as it's still nineteen states with no compensation statutes,
Speaker 1: and there's some but have conversation statutes. I think it's Montana,
Speaker 1: but you can only get education credits and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You don't actually get any cash even in California, which
Speaker 1: is seems counterintuitive because California. We like to think of
Speaker 1: California as like, you know, a you know, an oasis
Speaker 1: of sanity in a country of insanity. But they're the
Speaker 1: you know, the um hoops you have to jump through
Speaker 1: to get any sort of compensation. You basically have to
Speaker 1: reprove your innes sense in spite of the fact that
Speaker 1: a court has already ruled you innocent. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: not that's absolutely right. I just spent some time with
Speaker 1: Bill Richards, who is wrongfully convicted in California and spent
Speaker 1: I think twenty six years in prison, and even though
Speaker 1: he has a finding of innocence, it's not good enough
Speaker 1: and he has to go through, as you say, this
Speaker 1: arduous process in front of a compensation board that is
Speaker 1: staffed by prosecutors, and they have to approve him for compensation,
Speaker 1: and if that doesn't work, he then has to appeal.
Speaker 1: And that happens to so many egoneries in California. It's
Speaker 1: just incredibly difficult for them under the statute the way
Speaker 1: it's written and enforced to get any money right, so
Speaker 1: they have to jump through these hoops. They need help,
Speaker 1: They need legal help if they're lucky enough to find
Speaker 1: lawyers who want to spend our hundreds of hours or more,
Speaker 1: um working towards this elusive goal of getting compensation, which
Speaker 1: may not even really be that much at the end.
Speaker 1: I mean it's and then they have to take time
Speaker 1: out of their lives as well to go basically retry
Speaker 1: a case that they would probably love to forget as
Speaker 1: best they could. Um. It's it's really busy, are but
Speaker 1: it's you know, look, it's one of the many, many
Speaker 1: things I'm working on that particular UM situation in California.
Speaker 1: I think we are going to be able to make
Speaker 1: some progress. Hopefully Gavin Newsom will be the next governor.
Speaker 1: If he is, you know, he's very forward thinking and
Speaker 1: very um passionate about criminal justice reform, so I believe
Speaker 1: that he will take that up. UM. I hope, I
Speaker 1: hope he's listening, and um, if you could. I mean,
Speaker 1: after having spent your entire adult life UM in the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system in some of the grungiest places and
Speaker 1: some of the you know, UM, in some of the
Speaker 1: most hopeless situations, and with some amazing victories to your
Speaker 1: name and having raised incredible amounts of awareness through your
Speaker 1: advocacy in your journalism. If you could make, if you
Speaker 1: could wave a magic wand and make, let's just call
Speaker 1: it three changes, what would they be. One change I
Speaker 1: would make is I would mandate compensation for every agony
Speaker 1: in every state in this country, so that it's not
Speaker 1: an accident of geography whether or not you get a
Speaker 1: million dollars or zero sense. So that would certainly be
Speaker 1: one reform, because we have a responsibility as citizens of
Speaker 1: this country to make these injustices right and to make
Speaker 1: people as whole as we can. Another reform that I
Speaker 1: would make is that I would encourage, and maybe encourages
Speaker 1: too delicate a word. I would strongly enforce state bar
Speaker 1: rules because one way to stop, for example, prosecutor a
Speaker 1: misconduct and also bad defense loring, which is another cause
Speaker 1: of wrongful convictions from happening, is for there to be consequences.
Speaker 1: And you and I talked about the fact that there
Speaker 1: really are, and that is because most state bars don't
Speaker 1: pursue these cases even when there are published opinions showing
Speaker 1: that there was misconduct, showing there was an effective assistance
Speaker 1: of counsel. There aren't any consequences, and I think it
Speaker 1: is so important for that to happen, and it's so
Speaker 1: important to bring a tension to the fact that the
Speaker 1: prosecutor's job isn't to just tack as many skins up
Speaker 1: against the wall it's possible. It's to do justice, and
Speaker 1: sometimes that means admitting a mistake and stepping back and
Speaker 1: conceding error and dropping a case. We have this mindset
Speaker 1: in this country that we need to be tough on crime,
Speaker 1: and that to win elections as prosecutors, you have to
Speaker 1: talk about your conviction rate. I think that's starting to change,
Speaker 1: and we've had this small wave of progressive reformers. But
Speaker 1: to really hammer that message home, you not only need
Speaker 1: to elect reformers, you need to expose people who are
Speaker 1: not following the rules, who are who are cheating, and
Speaker 1: who are stealing people's lives. So that's certainly another reform
Speaker 1: that I think we very badly need. And finally, what
Speaker 1: I would say is that I think that as citizens
Speaker 1: again and these states, we are responsible to for caring
Speaker 1: for the victims of wrongful conviction. And one of the
Speaker 1: things about the book that was so powerful for me because,
Speaker 1: as you say, my role in the system was really
Speaker 1: to advocate for for defendants, for people who were accused,
Speaker 1: and I never spent a lot of time thinking about
Speaker 1: the victims. I really couldn't afford to. It was it
Speaker 1: was it was distracting and sort of painful to live
Speaker 1: in their anguish. And what happens to them after this
Speaker 1: is exposed is really that they're shunted acide. We owe
Speaker 1: them more than that. We owe them services, we owe
Speaker 1: them therapy, we owe them outreach, we owe them recognition,
Speaker 1: and so often what they feel is shunted, decide, and ignored.
Speaker 1: Here's one for you, looking back over your career and
Speaker 1: your life. As I said in Criminal Justice, Advocacy, Reform,
Speaker 1: Legal Work, etcetera, can you think of the best and
Speaker 1: the worst moments that you've had, the best one and
Speaker 1: the worst one. I'll go with the worst first, because
Speaker 1: I want to end on a positive note. The worst
Speaker 1: moment of my career was when I had a client
Speaker 1: sentenced to life, and in fed real court, life means
Speaker 1: life because there is no parole. They abolished it and
Speaker 1: we had tried the case once and the jury had hung,
Speaker 1: and then we tried the case a second time, and
Speaker 1: the jury convicted, and then we had a third trial
Speaker 1: actually about the punishment, because there was a very complicated
Speaker 1: question of statutory interpretation involved in that. And I broke
Speaker 1: down and sobbed because my client was in his early forties,
Speaker 1: and even given the conviction and his record, it just
Speaker 1: seemed colossally unfair that we were going to put him
Speaker 1: in a cage for the rest of his life. And
Speaker 1: I felt that I had been part of that process.
Speaker 1: Even though I had tried as hard as I could
Speaker 1: to stop that from happening, I had not been able
Speaker 1: to stop that from happening, and the train had come
Speaker 1: and run him down. That was the worst moment of
Speaker 1: my legal career, and I revisited the best moment was
Speaker 1: when Catherine made her the superior court judge in Cash's case,
Speaker 1: made the decision finding him innocent, and I turned around
Speaker 1: and Cash his mom was just she had this expression
Speaker 1: on her face of just absolute amazement, and she said,
Speaker 1: thank you Jesus, and she wept, and I just felt
Speaker 1: this overwhelming sense of relief because I had been a
Speaker 1: part of giving her her son back, and it was
Speaker 1: just the most amazing feeling in the world to realize
Speaker 1: that she had lived for thirty or four years without him.
Speaker 1: She was seventy six years old and she was alive
Speaker 1: to see him come home. Yeah, that's the good stuff,
Speaker 1: and it is Uh, it is good. Um, it's as
Speaker 1: good as it gets. Um, what's the plan? So Rectify
Speaker 1: is out now. People can get it on Amazon, Barnes,
Speaker 1: and Noble dot com anywhere books are sold. Um, what's
Speaker 1: next for you? So I'm going to do a lot
Speaker 1: of traveling and speaking related to the book, which I'm
Speaker 1: very excited about. And part of what's so awesome is
Speaker 1: that I get to go and be with some of
Speaker 1: the people who are in the book, some friends of yours.
Speaker 1: I get to go to New Orleans and spend time
Speaker 1: with Joe Morgan and Kelly Ryan's and I get to
Speaker 1: go to various other places Virginia and see Thomas Haynesworth
Speaker 1: and Janet Burke. So for me, just being able to
Speaker 1: travel around the country and reconnect with the people that
Speaker 1: I form these relationships with and talk about the book
Speaker 1: with them present is incredibly powerful and rewarding. So that's
Speaker 1: what the next couple of months, I think, and maybe
Speaker 1: longer will look like. My hope is that it will
Speaker 1: build a following and that people will connect with the message,
Speaker 1: and that the message of restorative justice will catch hold
Speaker 1: and not be such an alien concept. I mean, some
Speaker 1: people listening to your show, they might not even know
Speaker 1: what restorative justice is. They might be thinking, what are
Speaker 1: what are the two of them talking about? And so
Speaker 1: my hope is that it becomes as common award in
Speaker 1: our lexicon as criminal justice. Right, it's actually sort of
Speaker 1: a I mean, you know, I'm not a religious person,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of a Christian concept, right. It's a
Speaker 1: whole like forgiving, um, and in this case, you're forgiving
Speaker 1: for something that never happened in the first place. But
Speaker 1: it's yet, it's it's got layers to it, you know,
Speaker 1: it does, and it's interesting. It has roots in the
Speaker 1: Native American community. It's also practiced in South Africa, most
Speaker 1: famously with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end
Speaker 1: of apartheid. But the concept is essentially, we don't believe
Speaker 1: in banishing offenders from our community. We believe in remitting
Speaker 1: our community and bringing them back. So we the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system in the United States, we ask what crime
Speaker 1: was committed, who committed it and what punishment is deserved.
Speaker 1: Restorative justice takes those questions and it radically reframes them
Speaker 1: to ask who is harmed, what are their needs, and
Speaker 1: who is best situated to meet those needs. And when
Speaker 1: you put that in the concept of an exoneration, you
Speaker 1: see all this need from the original crime victims, from
Speaker 1: the exonrees, from their respective families, even from the jurors.
Speaker 1: There are jurors who suffer sever year trauma when they
Speaker 1: realized they voted to convict based on evidence that turned
Speaker 1: out to be false, based on lies that they were
Speaker 1: told by witnesses or other state actors. And so there's
Speaker 1: so much harm and there's so much repairing to be
Speaker 1: done that restorative justice, bringing all these harmed actors together
Speaker 1: to work through a mutual trauma, has turned out to
Speaker 1: be a way for people to kind of make sense
Speaker 1: of something very senseless and soul destroying. And let's talk
Speaker 1: about yours because one of the things I harp on
Speaker 1: on the show is the critical importance of people showing
Speaker 1: up for Jerry duty. Good people, um, the type of
Speaker 1: people I listen to this show, um, informed people, people
Speaker 1: who awoke. It's an imposition we all know that, um,
Speaker 1: But in your view, how important is it for people
Speaker 1: to show up for jerry duty and what should they
Speaker 1: be looking out for? Because the people's faces of the
Speaker 1: people that go to jury duty, by and large, they
Speaker 1: don't have experience and in the criminal justice system, they
Speaker 1: don't really know. Oh, I mean, I think most people default,
Speaker 1: as I did growing up, that law enforcement is on
Speaker 1: our side. There are friends, they're not you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're there to protect us, and it says right on
Speaker 1: the side of the car, protect and serve. So what
Speaker 1: should they be looking out for? Well, the first thing
Speaker 1: I would say is absolutely to echo your message, jury
Speaker 1: service is crucial. And the second thing they should be
Speaker 1: looking out for is their own autonomy. What happened so
Speaker 1: often in these situations is you get in a room
Speaker 1: and in Cash's case, you have a couple of people
Speaker 1: who have doubt. In his case, there was no weapon,
Speaker 1: there was no wallet found, there was no evidence other
Speaker 1: than these two eye witnesses, and the juror who contacted
Speaker 1: me after Cash's exoneration, who suffered so much anguish, was
Speaker 1: telling me that he was the youngest person on the jury.
Speaker 1: He was eighteen. It was the first time he'd served
Speaker 1: on a jury and he had these doubts and he
Speaker 1: expressed them. But basically he felt that because other people
Speaker 1: in the jury were older and had more powerful personalities,
Speaker 1: are more and more experienced, he should sort of defer
Speaker 1: to them. And then the pressure to convict mounted, and
Speaker 1: the pressure to get out of the room mounted, and
Speaker 1: he gave it. And so often you hear about that
Speaker 1: that jurors have these lingering doubts in these cases because
Speaker 1: they do smell a rat and they don't act on it.
Speaker 1: So I would just impress upon people not only go
Speaker 1: to jury service, but in the jury room, stick to
Speaker 1: your convictions. If you don't think it's right to convict,
Speaker 1: it's not. Don't let people push you around, don't let
Speaker 1: people bully you. Don't convict that you can go home
Speaker 1: to your family on a Friday night. Right, That's the
Speaker 1: whole reasonable doubt thing, I mean. And I think that's
Speaker 1: forgotten and ignored in too many cases. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a powerful picture that you're painting. And I have
Speaker 1: heard of so many, too many cases in which, um,
Speaker 1: there's been jurors who have been you know, bambooz old
Speaker 1: or or or or bullied even in the jury room.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm thinking now about the Randall Paget case, right,
Speaker 1: which Richard Jaffey wrote so eloquently about in his book
Speaker 1: Quest for Justice Defending the Damned Um. And in his case,
Speaker 1: the jury was tend to two in favor of originally
Speaker 1: a favor of um guilt and um of conviction. And
Speaker 1: it was so clear. I mean it was when you
Speaker 1: read the story. It's unbelievably obvious when you're presented now
Speaker 1: with the facts. But on the other hand, that jury
Speaker 1: was looking at a guy who had already been convicted
Speaker 1: and sentenced to death, right, so they knew that they
Speaker 1: knew that this was a brutal murder, stabbing, and rape,
Speaker 1: and and so they were preconceived to think, well, he's there,
Speaker 1: it must be. Then there's research that showed my friend
Speaker 1: Josh Dubin did the research that shows that people have
Speaker 1: a preconceived notion that someone's in that box, they probably
Speaker 1: are guilty. But in this case, there was one juror,
Speaker 1: a woman who came up and spoke to Richard after
Speaker 1: the verdict, which was innocent. They found him innocent and
Speaker 1: freed him, and she came up to him on the
Speaker 1: courthouse steps and told him that she had gotten up
Speaker 1: because the victim was found in a very strange position. Um.
Speaker 1: One leg was up on a nightstand, the other leg
Speaker 1: was up on the bed. Her body was all askew,
Speaker 1: and she got up and put her legs up in
Speaker 1: that position. You imagine an Alabama woman doing that in
Speaker 1: the jury room and said, look, you can't rape a
Speaker 1: woman this way, right, And she showed the the other
Speaker 1: jurors that this was not possible. And sure enough, she
Speaker 1: won the day and he was freed, and he turned
Speaker 1: out to be absolutely factually innocent. So she saved the
Speaker 1: man's life. And and when you're in a jury, you're
Speaker 1: you I'm not suggesting that that's an extreme that you
Speaker 1: need to go to, but you know, we should remember
Speaker 1: her and uh and you know, and and honor her absolutely.
Speaker 1: And what she did was incredibly brave and creative and creative, yes, um,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that was such a bizarre case too,
Speaker 1: because UM, I won't get into all the details, you
Speaker 1: have to read the book, but it's it's an amazing,
Speaker 1: amazing case. Um. And he is such a hero for having, um,
Speaker 1: you know one that case in Alabama. You know, I mean, tough,
Speaker 1: tough down there. One final point about juries, and this
Speaker 1: is to watch out for your unconscious bias because so,
Speaker 1: for example, going back to Cash's jury in ninety nine,
Speaker 1: this was a black teenager accused of killing an elderly
Speaker 1: white man. The jury was all white, twelve people, all
Speaker 1: white people, and it's hard for me to believe, based
Speaker 1: on the scanty evidence that they had, that they would
Speaker 1: have convicted a white person. And I think whether it
Speaker 1: was conscious or unconscious, they valued Cash's life less because
Speaker 1: he was black. And I think that's another thing that
Speaker 1: jurors really really have to think about, which is you
Speaker 1: have to value everyone's life equally. And as you say,
Speaker 1: you have to drill down on the presumption of innocence,
Speaker 1: because you're absolutely right, Jason, that people look at the
Speaker 1: person sitting at the defendant's table and they don't think, Gosh,
Speaker 1: what's that wrongly accused innocent person doing there? They think,
Speaker 1: I wonder what he did? And that's an unconstitutional thought.
Speaker 1: You actually shouldn't be thinking that you should be presuming innocence.
Speaker 1: So I think both of those is are also very
Speaker 1: very important for juries to remember. And while we're on
Speaker 1: that subject, um we know that the just assistant is
Speaker 1: m biased throughout right in terms of the number of
Speaker 1: people arrested, prosecuted, and convicted. The percentages are off the
Speaker 1: charts if you're a person of color. Um. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, we also know that people of color
Speaker 1: don't commit crimes at any higher rate than white people do.
Speaker 1: So isn't it odd that we demonize and persecute people
Speaker 1: who are not only the least able to defend themselves
Speaker 1: because of socioeconomic reasons, but also people who are by
Speaker 1: and large less culpable and less likely to commit terrible crimes,
Speaker 1: you know, on a large scale. And it's also really
Speaker 1: interesting how those crimes get classified. So, for example, in
Speaker 1: the eighties and the nineties, we had what we called
Speaker 1: our presidents called a crack epidemic, and of course, predominantly
Speaker 1: the people who are being arrested and prosecuted and sent
Speaker 1: away for long periods of time. We're African American. Now
Speaker 1: we're going going through a huge problem in this country
Speaker 1: with opioids, but we're not calling it a criminal epidemic.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about super predators roaming the streets with
Speaker 1: crack cocaine. Because many of the people who are impacted
Speaker 1: are white. So we're calling it a health crisis, we're
Speaker 1: calling it a national emergency, and we're talking about treatment,
Speaker 1: we're talking about options other than incarceration in a lot
Speaker 1: of these cases. And yet they're both these massive problems
Speaker 1: with with drug addiction, but we classify it differently depending
Speaker 1: on who that drug or which community that drug is impacting.
Speaker 1: But yeah, drugs are a medical problem. They need to
Speaker 1: be treated as such. It is unconscionable that even as
Speaker 1: we're sitting here right now that people being arrested for
Speaker 1: marijuana in this country and locked up. Um. But it's happening,
Speaker 1: and it all needs to stop. But it's part of
Speaker 1: the same problem. And I think the pendulum is swinging.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that it's really the only even semi bipart
Speaker 1: is an issue that exists right now, right and it's
Speaker 1: not truly bipartisan, but at least there are points of agreement,
Speaker 1: um And and a true conserve to can't look at
Speaker 1: it any other way than to say, this is big
Speaker 1: government and its worst and we need to de incarce
Speaker 1: rate and we need to stop this mass spending on
Speaker 1: warehousing of people. And I don't think you know the
Speaker 1: numbers are so insane in terms of the money that
Speaker 1: it costs us as taxpayers. But even those numbers don't
Speaker 1: take into account the loss of tax revenue from the
Speaker 1: people that are locked up, that aren't out there working
Speaker 1: jobs and supporting their families. And it just goes on
Speaker 1: and on and on. It's so horrible. Um, Lara, we
Speaker 1: have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction, which is um
Speaker 1: it's a great tradition because it's my favorite part of
Speaker 1: the show, and my favorite part of the show is
Speaker 1: the end. And the reason it's my favorite part is
Speaker 1: because it's the part where I get to say thank
Speaker 1: you for being here and for all you're doing and
Speaker 1: for you know, inspiring me and countless others to keep
Speaker 1: doing everything we can to to rectify the situation. Um.
Speaker 1: And once again, your book is awesome. I recommend everybody
Speaker 1: read it. It's Rectify the Power of Restorative Justice After
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction by Lara Basilon. And so, Lara, thank you
Speaker 1: for being here. And I now get to turn the
Speaker 1: mic over to you and I get to just two
Speaker 1: out and listen to your thoughts. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I want to start by saying thank you for having
Speaker 1: me and thank you for all of the work that
Speaker 1: you do. I think it's rare to find someone who
Speaker 1: has such diverse interests and who supports artists and art
Speaker 1: and makes art and then also looks around and sees
Speaker 1: that the world is broken in this entirely different place
Speaker 1: and does everything they can to make it right. And
Speaker 1: so I want to thank you for the work that
Speaker 1: you do and for inviting me onto your show. Parting thoughts,
Speaker 1: I think we should all think hard about how we
Speaker 1: can all be practitioners of restorative justice in our own way,
Speaker 1: in our own lives and our own relationships. When I
Speaker 1: first found out about at, my thought was, why isn't
Speaker 1: everyone doing this? And I looked at the kind of
Speaker 1: healing that can happen when people face each other who
Speaker 1: have who have faced each other down across opposite side
Speaker 1: of the courtroom and felt nothing but hatred for each
Speaker 1: other and wishing each other the worst, and they're able
Speaker 1: to come together and share these experiences that are so
Speaker 1: profound in circumstances where they might just want to run
Speaker 1: from each other and run from the pain and run
Speaker 1: from the trauma, and instead they're joining hands and they're
Speaker 1: walking through it. Together and then they're coming out the
Speaker 1: other side. And I think for people who listen to
Speaker 1: your show, who think, well, I'm not wrongfully convicted myself
Speaker 1: and I don't know anyone, and this this is sort
Speaker 1: of outside of any experience that I might have, I
Speaker 1: think what they can ask themselves is how can I
Speaker 1: apply this to my own life? And what harms have
Speaker 1: I inflicted? Who's harmed me? And how can I use
Speaker 1: this to make my own life better and make someone
Speaker 1: else's life better. And I've definitely gone through that process myself,
Speaker 1: and I've really thought I've been somewhat a vengeful and
Speaker 1: unforgiving person in a way that hasn't benefited anyone, certainly
Speaker 1: not me or the people that I've directed that energy toward.
Speaker 1: And it just makes so much more sense, I think too.
Speaker 1: Completely revisualize the situation and realize every time you tell
Speaker 1: yourself you're a victim, quite often you have a piece
Speaker 1: of culpability and what's happened, and you have some responsibility
Speaker 1: and some accountability of your own to do. And I
Speaker 1: think the more people can see that and reconnect and
Speaker 1: mend broken relationships, the better off all of us will be. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty much it. I mean, I couldn't have
Speaker 1: said it any better, and I'm glad I got to
Speaker 1: hear you say. It's so, why don't we go start
Speaker 1: with the youngest and just share anything that you want
Speaker 1: to share with the audience about your experience. Um, it
Speaker 1: was a great experience. It's an experience I don't wish
Speaker 1: anyone would have to go through. But I appreciate him
Speaker 1: so much and it's been an honor knowing him, getting
Speaker 1: to know him, and I will forever cherish this bond.
Speaker 1: I think the most important thing for me right now
Speaker 1: is that perhaps what I did, what I believe the
Speaker 1: risk I took, that somebody else, some other victims family
Speaker 1: will follow suit and try to help somebody else, um
Speaker 1: down the route. So I want to be an example
Speaker 1: for other people to forgive. Again. You can't imagine this
Speaker 1: is I mean, it's insane. I couldn't. I couldn't even
Speaker 1: with somebody else's brain. You can't think of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this sort of thing doesn't happen. I mean,
Speaker 1: not just with with Shannon and her family, but the jurors,
Speaker 1: the men and women that uh read that not guilty verdict.
Speaker 1: I'm close with everybody. You know, right after the they
Speaker 1: didn't want to leave the courtroom. They wanted to state
Speaker 1: that and and see me come out of that. Man
Speaker 1: like you can't you can't, I can't put this in
Speaker 1: the words. You can't imagine this man, yea man, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just so grateful and it's such a shame that
Speaker 1: you have to go through such a tragic situation to
Speaker 1: be breeding some goodness in life. I've been home over
Speaker 1: two years, just a little over two years. That past
Speaker 1: twenty five years don't consume my life, not for one
Speaker 1: second of any day. I'm happy to be alive. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to have Shannon and Lauren and Devon in that
Speaker 1: family in my life. I'm happy to have my whole family.
Speaker 1: I try to find a good in everything, no matter
Speaker 1: what situation. You wouldn't somebody in the worst situation, just
Speaker 1: keep on fighting, Just keep on fighting. Tough times on
Speaker 1: the last tough people do. I'm built for this, man.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm really almost never at a loss for words,
Speaker 1: but in the presence of be I'm really I'm just
Speaker 1: very very moved and grateful. Then you're here and sharing
Speaker 1: your thoughts and your your spirit once again Um, you've
Speaker 1: been listening to a very special episode for me and
Speaker 1: I hope for you with Lara Basilon, Shannon Coleman and
Speaker 1: her wonderful daughter Lauren, and the one and only Tony Right.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having man pleasure always mine. Man, 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 wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org
Speaker 1: to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like
Speaker 1: to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis.
Speaker 1: The music on the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Stagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one