Speaker 1: I've never been in trouble in my life.
Speaker 2: I didn't even have a parking ticket, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
Speaker 2: do know that everything was stacked against me.
Speaker 3: Everything like everything.
Speaker 2: This isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I
Speaker 2: know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with this.
Speaker 1: How is this possible?
Speaker 3: I grew up trusting the systems. I've grew up believing
Speaker 3: that every human being should do the right thing. And
Speaker 3: that's why, even though I knew I was dealing with
Speaker 3: corerough people, I wasn't going to break anyone to get
Speaker 3: me out of prison because I wouldn't live with the
Speaker 3: fact that I break my way out of my wife's death.
Speaker 3: I'm not innocent, too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I
Speaker 3: prove my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me.
Speaker 2: Our system.
Speaker 1: Since I've been out ten years, it's come a little ways,
Speaker 1: but it's still broken.
Speaker 3: I totally little trust in humanity after what's happened to me.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today,
Speaker 1: I have a very special show planned for you. One
Speaker 1: of the people I admire most in the innocence movement,
Speaker 1: Lara Baslon, is here. Lara, first of all, before I
Speaker 1: introduce you and read off your accomplishments, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me so.
Speaker 1: Lara is a writer and associate professor at the University
Speaker 1: of San Francisco Law School, and she's the director of
Speaker 1: the Criminal, Juvenile Justice, and Racial Justice clinics. And her
Speaker 1: resume is much much longer than that, having spent a
Speaker 1: long time as a public defender doing fantastic writing on
Speaker 1: all different aspects of wrongful conviction and places like Slate
Speaker 1: and New York Times and so many others. So it's
Speaker 1: really awesome that you're here. We have a lot to
Speaker 1: talk about, absolutely, And our other guest is someone who
Speaker 1: listeners will be familiar with, and it's going to be
Speaker 1: amazing to catch up with him. Tony Wright is here.
Speaker 1: And Tony, of course, served twenty five years in prison
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania for a crime it was so obvious that
Speaker 1: he didn't commit that when the jury finally exonerated him
Speaker 1: declared him not guilty, it took them all of five
Speaker 1: minutes to figure it out. And that's right. They deliberated
Speaker 1: it for five minutes before declaring him totally innocent. So Tony,
Speaker 1: welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, My.
Speaker 2: Man, pleasure always mind. Man, it's been a long time.
Speaker 2: I bet it's been overdue. Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1: Tony, right back, live and in person on wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: And this time you brought a couple of very special
Speaker 1: guests with you. Do you want to go ahead and
Speaker 1: introduce them or you want me to do it. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it, Okay. So you brought two very special
Speaker 1: guess Shannon Coleman, who is a shining example of everything
Speaker 1: that restorative justice can and should and will be, and
Speaker 1: her wonderful daughter Lauren, who actually really started this ball
Speaker 1: rolling 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.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having us come in tell
Speaker 5: our story.
Speaker 1: So Lara, let's turn to you first. What got you
Speaker 1: into this work?
Speaker 4: So part of what I used to do was direct
Speaker 4: an innocence project a small one at Loyola Law School
Speaker 4: in LA and I litigated a case in twenty twelve
Speaker 4: and twenty thirteen. Our client's name, believe it or not,
Speaker 4: was Cash Register and he had been wrongfully convicted in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy nine of a murder that he didn't commit.
Speaker 4: So thirty four years later we were trying to get
Speaker 4: him out, were successful in exonerating him. And then after
Speaker 4: that that experience led me to think, well, what happens
Speaker 4: to people in the aftermath. So there's so many victims.
Speaker 4: There's cash there's his mother who waited in their tiny
Speaker 4: apartment for him to come home. He'd been snatched there
Speaker 4: by the police and basically kidnapped by the prison industrial
Speaker 4: complex for thirty four years. There was the fact that
Speaker 4: they had lost his brother, that his father died soon after.
Speaker 4: And then there was the victims and the original crime
Speaker 4: victims and the man's family who died, and what they
Speaker 4: had to go through realizing that the truth that they'd
Speaker 4: always been told was not the truth at all.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the truth at all, as is the case.
Speaker 1: And you know every one of these wrongful convict cases,
Speaker 1: but some are worse than others. Right, I mean, there
Speaker 1: are somewhere 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 above of 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 the
Speaker 1: fact is with him. It's so dramatic to me because
Speaker 1: he was in prison for almost twice as long as
Speaker 1: he had been alive outside of prison.
Speaker 4: That's right, And just one edition about the name. His
Speaker 4: name is cash Register with a K. Interestingly, the other
Speaker 4: brother was named Norman. So the family naming system was
Speaker 4: just kind of the whole spectrum.
Speaker 1: Somebody had a sense of humor. I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: really interesting. I mean, I don't know what I would name.
Speaker 1: My last name was Register. I'm trying to think what
Speaker 1: I would name my kids. But there's a funny mind
Speaker 1: in there somewhere. I'll come up with it later. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So you got cash out there, cash out there goes
Speaker 1: another fun But anyway, and we know I know obviously
Speaker 1: firsthand how incredible that feels. It's addictive, isn't it.
Speaker 6: Yes, it is.
Speaker 4: It's like a drug. There's no feeling in the world
Speaker 4: like having a judge find your client innocent and having
Speaker 4: them walk out of prison after having been there for decades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's remarkable. I mean it's interesting because people who
Speaker 1: know me and know I have this sort of string
Speaker 1: double life as a record executive and criminal justice reformer.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll ask me, you know, what is it
Speaker 1: about this? Why am I so devoted spending so much time?
Speaker 1: And the answer is very simple. Years from now or
Speaker 1: even now, no one will care who signed Katy Perry, Like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. No one remembers who signed the Beatles,
Speaker 1: for fuck's sakes, right, So but after I'm gone, you
Speaker 1: know the you know, the lasting impact of the people,
Speaker 1: or after we're going, I should say, of the people
Speaker 1: whose lives we've been able to positively affect, who were
Speaker 1: stuck in the ultimate nightmare really 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 good
Speaker 1: to be in this and it's good to be in
Speaker 1: it with you. And meanwhile, very exciting is a new
Speaker 1: development in your life, which is a book. You've got
Speaker 1: a book, a real hardcover book. I'm holding it in
Speaker 1: my hands, it feels good, it looks great. It's from
Speaker 1: Beacon Pressed. It's called Rectify the Power of Restorative Justice
Speaker 1: after Wrongful Conviction And I'm reading it now and I'm hooked.
Speaker 1: So tell me the inspiration behind this book.
Speaker 4: How did you come to So the inspiration really did
Speaker 4: grow out of Cash's case, because, as you say, it's
Speaker 4: so important to be able to really help save someone's life,
Speaker 4: and then afterwards, what you really want for them is
Speaker 4: for them to have a good life. And what does
Speaker 4: that mean? Because, as you know, when people have been
Speaker 4: sent away and locked away for so long under unbelievably
Speaker 4: inhumane conditions, they have psychological trauma, sometimes they have physical trauma,
Speaker 4: and they have to kind of make sense of the
Speaker 4: senseless and the monstrous. And what's really interesting is that
Speaker 4: there's this movement now to help people who've been exonerated.
Speaker 4: But then also the original crime victims move through the
Speaker 4: earthquake of exoneration together if they're open to it, by
Speaker 4: connecting with each other. And it's fascinating because when you
Speaker 4: think about it, the exonery comes out starting as a
Speaker 4: perpetrator and then being revealed as a victim. For the
Speaker 4: crime victims, especially the victims who testified believing that they
Speaker 4: had gotten the right person, but it was a case
Speaker 4: of mistaken identity or even just fervently believing that they
Speaker 4: were guilty and wanting them to get the death penalty.
Speaker 4: They feel culpable, they feel complicit, they feel like perpetrators,
Speaker 4: and so the whole system has been flipped around and
Speaker 4: they've each seen each other's perspective.
Speaker 1: It is a remarkable thing. I was this phenomenon of
Speaker 1: that connection, and that the power that's generated from those
Speaker 1: two sort of opposite forces coming together is unlike anything
Speaker 1: else I can think of. One of the most important
Speaker 1: and incredible examples, of course, is Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed them on the show. Some of the people listening
Speaker 1: now may have heard that episode. I hope you have.
Speaker 1: If not, you should go back and check it out.
Speaker 1: But talk about that case, because I know you've had
Speaker 1: a lot of dealings in interaction with them, and I'm
Speaker 1: assuming I'm going to get to them in your book.
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten to that chatter yet.
Speaker 4: You're absolutely going to read a lot about them. And
Speaker 4: Jennifer Thompson was a large part of the inspiration because
Speaker 4: she's really at the forefront of this movement to apply
Speaker 4: restorative justice practices in wrongful conviction cases. Because, as she says,
Speaker 4: she and Ronald Cotton were doing restorative justice without even
Speaker 4: realizing that that's what they were doing. And then when
Speaker 4: she saw after their book came out and became a
Speaker 4: best seller, how many people were in their situation, she
Speaker 4: realized how many people could also benefit from doing what
Speaker 4: they had done, which is reconnect with each other. So
Speaker 4: the backstory is that she was brutally raped at knife point,
Speaker 4: woken up in the middle of the night by a stranger.
Speaker 4: She followed the identification procedures that were in place in
Speaker 4: time at that time in North Carolina. She picked the
Speaker 4: person who she believed was her attacker. She went to court,
Speaker 4: she testified, and that person was Ronald Cotton. And then,
Speaker 4: as it turned out, thirteen years later, DNA revealed that
Speaker 4: in fact, her attacker was a man named Bobby Poole.
Speaker 4: And when that news was revealed to her, she was
Speaker 4: completely devastated by it and overcome with shame and guilt
Speaker 4: and remorse, and she and Ronald Cotton had this very
Speaker 4: emotional reunion at a church where she just wept and
Speaker 4: asked him to forgive her, and he said, I forgave
Speaker 4: you a long time ago. And then they formed this bond.
Speaker 4: And what's so remarkable about it is not only that
Speaker 4: it really is truly a love relationship, but also that
Speaker 4: their social justice advocates together, and it's really their effort
Speaker 4: that led to North Carolina revising its eyewitness identification laws
Speaker 4: and now they use best practices, so what happened is
Speaker 4: unlikely to happen again.
Speaker 1: So your book again is called Rectify, and this story
Speaker 1: it plays an important part in the book because it's
Speaker 1: sort of spearheaded this movement, and they now run an
Speaker 1: organization that is devoted to putting these pieces back together,
Speaker 1: putting these broken lives together to create something beautiful and
Speaker 1: even magic. And in their case, I think what's so
Speaker 1: fascinating and so important to highlight about that particular case
Speaker 1: is that she was called the perfect witness. She was sober,
Speaker 1: she was a college student, she was hyper focused on
Speaker 1: identifying him. And so she talks about how she spent
Speaker 1: every second of this horrible ordeal trying to memorize any
Speaker 1: detail that could help, because, as she says, if I lived,
Speaker 1: I'm quoting her paraphrasing, but if I lived, I was
Speaker 1: going to make sure that he went to prison for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. And of course one of
Speaker 1: the things that motivated her was that she wanted to
Speaker 1: prevent this from happening to any other women, and so
Speaker 1: she identified him in a mugshot, in a lineup in
Speaker 1: court with absolute certainty, and of course she was dead wrong.
Speaker 1: And then she has to live with.
Speaker 2: Just the.
Speaker 1: Awful feeling of knowing that he went out and rap
Speaker 1: dozens of other women because he got away with it,
Speaker 1: you know. So, and that's one of the tragic things
Speaker 1: about wrongful conviction, of course, is that when the wrong
Speaker 1: person like Ronald Cotton is convicted, the right person is
Speaker 1: left free to go out and perpetrate other horrible crimes
Speaker 1: against innocent victims. So let's talk about the book. Rectify
Speaker 1: Again is the new book, the new release from Lara Baslon,
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: phenomenon of restorative justice. What's the first other case that
Speaker 1: comes to your mind? There's so many of them.
Speaker 4: Well, we have Tony here, and he can speak more
Speaker 4: poignantly than I can. But his story is also a
Speaker 4: story of restorative justice in that, as you described, he
Speaker 4: spent twenty five years in prison for a crime he
Speaker 4: did not commit. And in this case there was just
Speaker 4: truly egregious police misconduct. And one thing about the case
Speaker 4: that was so interesting is that the victims elderly woman
Speaker 4: Louise Tally. She was part of a law enforcement family,
Speaker 4: and so her great niece, Shannon Coleman, was the daughter
Speaker 4: of one of Philadelphia's first African American police officers. And
Speaker 4: it was Shannon's mother who told her what had happened
Speaker 4: to her great aunt, and the family was very involved
Speaker 4: in law enforcement. The mom was a cop. They followed
Speaker 4: the case really closely. Tony was arrested the next day.
Speaker 4: Shannon truly believed he was guilty and took some satisfaction
Speaker 4: from the fact that he was given life without the
Speaker 4: possibility of pearl. And then Rolling Stone published this expose
Speaker 4: of just how corrupt and just how unsound this conviction was.
Speaker 4: She read it, she was beset by doubt, and she
Speaker 4: was forced to re examine not only her feelings about him,
Speaker 4: but her feelings about law enforcement and what it meant
Speaker 4: to be an honorable police officer, and all of the
Speaker 4: beliefs she had had about the Philadelphia Police Department, all
Speaker 4: of a sudden were just kind of blown up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's you two spent more than two decades, really,
Speaker 1: I mean as opposite forces, right. I mean, Shanney, you've
Speaker 1: talked about how you really hated this man for what
Speaker 1: you thought that he had done to your great aunt.
Speaker 5: Correct. I went by what we were told by the police,
Speaker 5: and I believed that he was a bad guy and
Speaker 5: that he had done harmed, had killed my own And.
Speaker 1: You are not somebody who's unfamiliar with the criminal justice
Speaker 1: system because you come from a law enforcement family.
Speaker 5: Yes, my mother was a policewoman for twenty twenty five years.
Speaker 5: So again, because of that, probably led me to believe
Speaker 5: more in what we were being told that he was guilty.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, that would, if anything, that would deepen
Speaker 1: your belief in this, you know, being exactly as it
Speaker 1: was presented to you. And obviously, then Harden, You're resolved
Speaker 1: to see this man spend the rest of his life
Speaker 1: in prison because had he done what he had done.
Speaker 1: I mean, no one could blame you for feeling that way.
Speaker 1: Everybody feels the way they feel. But the crime was
Speaker 1: a gruesome crime, rape and stabbing, horrible murder of an
Speaker 1: elderly woman who you know. I mean, it's just it's unimaginable.
Speaker 1: So now let's turn to you, though, Lauren, because how
Speaker 1: did you find out about this case and what made
Speaker 1: you You must have had a strange moment You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can bring this to my mom, right,
Speaker 1: you know how that must have been difficult.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I grew up hearing about it. I guess I
Speaker 6: would always ask her questions about it. And I think
Speaker 6: I saw it first in a tweet and I recognized
Speaker 6: her name. So I went to my mom and I
Speaker 6: said like, Hey, isn't this your grand aunt that you
Speaker 6: told me about? And she read it and immediately was alarmed,
Speaker 6: Like she said, she had no idea, and she just
Speaker 6: flew into defense mode.
Speaker 1: How old were you at the time.
Speaker 6: I want to say I was sixteen maybe, So.
Speaker 1: You're sixteen, you're starting to really, you know, come into
Speaker 1: you know, real consciousness of turning from a girl into
Speaker 1: a woman and becoming you know, more aware of everything
Speaker 1: in the world. And what a way to be awoken, right,
Speaker 1: and so you saw a tweet about the Rolling Stone article, right,
Speaker 1: and what an article that was. I mean, I didn't
Speaker 1: have any connection to the case. Obviously, I've been involved
Speaker 1: in this work for twenty five years. But when I
Speaker 1: read that case, I said, I mean, when I read
Speaker 1: that article, I said, oh, man, I didn't. I mean
Speaker 1: I wanted to run through the streets screaming and waving
Speaker 1: signs and breaking stuff because I was like, this can't
Speaker 1: be happening. And again, it's Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: So if it can happen there, it could really happen anywhere.
Speaker 1: And so Tony, like for you, you were on the
Speaker 1: opposite side of this, right, you were the I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of victims in this case. I mean
Speaker 1: all of you were victims in a certain way, right,
Speaker 1: in different ways. How did you come to be aware
Speaker 1: that Shannon had turned this corner and was now becoming
Speaker 1: a powerful advocate for you, not just forgiving, but actually
Speaker 1: getting out there and like knocking on people's doors, knocking
Speaker 1: down doors.
Speaker 2: Right, it was insane. I thought my family, I thought
Speaker 2: my family was trying to pump me or something. I
Speaker 2: got a visitor, Well, I called home and somebody gave
Speaker 2: me an indirect message and they said, somebody come up
Speaker 2: there to tell you something. And I'm sitting there waiting,
Speaker 2: and my cousin visited me one evening and he told
Speaker 2: me about Shannon and the petition and all that, and
Speaker 2: I fell on the floor in the visiting room. I
Speaker 2: couldn't believe it. I mean, I couldn't believe it. You know,
Speaker 2: just was a moment. We was waiting for it for
Speaker 2: a long time, just to connect with somebody from that family,
Speaker 2: because before that we had several appears and everybody from
Speaker 2: my side was there, but nobody ever showed up from
Speaker 2: uh miss Talley's side, and you know, we couldn't figure
Speaker 2: out what was going on, did she have any relative left?
Speaker 2: And when Shannon appeared, man, it was it was such
Speaker 2: a fresh up breath there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what a moment to and what a
Speaker 1: moment to be here with the two of you now.
Speaker 1: And of course we're here tonight to celebrate the release
Speaker 1: of Rectify by Lara Basilon, which is a book that
Speaker 1: really highlights your case and your and your amazing bond
Speaker 1: that you formed and this beautiful friendship that's blossomed from
Speaker 1: this most dark, dark, most unimaginably dark place. And so
Speaker 1: I mean, was it hard for you Tony to forgiven?
Speaker 2: No? No, absolutely not. You can't blame Shannon or anybody
Speaker 2: from that side of family feeling waity for I go.
Speaker 2: For say, maybe some of my family even thought I
Speaker 2: mighta been the perpetrator of the scribe until the facts
Speaker 2: came out. Uh, you know, my family is my family.
Speaker 2: They supported me. Nobody reached for me. If I call,
Speaker 2: everybody ans uh answered the call if I needed anything. Uh,
Speaker 2: they made sure I had what I needed. I mean,
Speaker 2: so you can't blame her. Uh, you can't even imagine this.
Speaker 2: This this is some fairy tough stuff going on between us.
Speaker 2: I love her to death. She one of my closest friends.
Speaker 2: Her daughter's my niece, her son is my nephew. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, uh, Laura here uh on fall
Speaker 2: or break and and assume she arrived. She let me
Speaker 2: know she's here. I mean, when she's here, I like
Speaker 2: to get them together and you know, my little group
Speaker 2: and we go have dinner and sit down and chat
Speaker 2: and all that. Man. I I love her to death.
Speaker 2: Man A family right there to me and Laura.
Speaker 1: What kind of impact has it's had on you, Like,
Speaker 1: what the how old are you now? And what are
Speaker 1: you doing with your life?
Speaker 6: I'm planning on going to law school.
Speaker 1: Oh, I was gonna get that so you look like
Speaker 1: a lawyer.
Speaker 6: Yes, So it definitely had an impact on that, and
Speaker 6: it made me realize the importance of the work that
Speaker 6: I wanted to get into criminal defense. It was just
Speaker 6: a shiny example of how to you know that the
Speaker 6: need to be a good lawyer so things like this
Speaker 6: 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 percent,
Speaker 1: but it's a part of the reason why Tony's sitting
Speaker 1: here right now. So what a thing for a teenager.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's good stuff, you know, and I know
Speaker 1: that's something you'll carry with you for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. And it's incredible. And Shannon, what is what
Speaker 1: what's now for you what's going on? I mean, how
Speaker 1: does how has this transformed you? And what does it
Speaker 1: mean for you? And and how's you know, what's what's next?
Speaker 5: Well, I'm a big advocate now for the Innocence Project
Speaker 5: and for you know, I read all the stories that
Speaker 5: I can find online and see the other examples of
Speaker 5: situations like Tony's. I'm a big advocate for my daughter because,
Speaker 5: you know, helping her with this kind of information because
Speaker 5: I know down the line it's going to help her
Speaker 5: in her career.
Speaker 6: It's just like.
Speaker 5: I guess it's like my hobby now. I mean, I
Speaker 5: would like I went to Harrisburn to help with some
Speaker 5: legislation for reimbursing wrongfully convicted people. And I would love
Speaker 5: to do more to help because I just I mean,
Speaker 5: it's like a passion that I have now.
Speaker 1: It is it's it's the most but it's the best
Speaker 1: addiction that you can have. I mean, helping other people
Speaker 1: who need the help as much as anybody could ever
Speaker 1: need help. And and it means so much. And you
Speaker 1: are really a great advocate and at a beautiful spirit
Speaker 1: for doing what you do. So Tony, what what else
Speaker 1: can you share with us? I mean how's you were
Speaker 1: on the show. I mean that must have been about
Speaker 1: a year ago, I guess, and you would give such
Speaker 1: a powerful presentation talking about all There's certain things I'll
Speaker 1: never forget. I mean, we're like seventy episodes into the
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction now and so many stories, but I'll never
Speaker 1: forget certain things that you said during that amazing episode
Speaker 1: that we tape together. What's what I mean, that's kind
Speaker 1: of a big development in your life now too, right.
Speaker 2: Just just my whole transition. I mean, you know, people
Speaker 2: seem a maze of everything I got going on in
Speaker 2: how I'm manure. I mean, you've got a million people
Speaker 2: hold in my hands like a baby every step I take. Man,
Speaker 2: I never do nothing along so much help. I mean,
Speaker 2: and and and you know I want I wanna heart
Speaker 2: back on you know one thing, uh uh. You know,
Speaker 2: I think this whole situation really changed sharing in life.
Speaker 2: You gave her a different perspective on you know, just
Speaker 2: a judicial system as a whole. And and and I
Speaker 2: witnessed the passion she has for other men, and and
Speaker 2: and and that may be in the situation, and and
Speaker 2: and learn you know, the apple don't fall far from
Speaker 2: the tree. You know what I mean. You know she's
Speaker 2: her mother's daughter one hundred percent. I guarantee you that
Speaker 2: so smart, so brilliant. Man, I mean, I love him
Speaker 2: the death.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: It's my family right there.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 2: I can never yeah, I mean, I uh, that's an understatement.
Speaker 2: I mean I can never overstate that.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 2: I want the world and note you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like this is some fairy tale stuff going on here,
Speaker 2: and it's another member of this family and that's her son,
Speaker 2: Devin Coleman. So I want to mention him. Devin a
Speaker 2: shout out to me. I love you, Shan and Lauren.
Speaker 5: To me, it was so important to do the right
Speaker 5: thing because I have a son, Blackmail and two nephews
Speaker 5: that I raised, and I could only think every time
Speaker 5: I thought about what Tony went through and was going through,
Speaker 5: was that could have been one of them? And just
Speaker 5: I just never forget that no matter, you know, if
Speaker 5: I'm trying to help somebody or when I'm reading the
Speaker 5: other stories, I always place them, my kids in that spot.
Speaker 6: And that's not good point.
Speaker 2: Brian. Two things for me. The first was I wanted
Speaker 2: Miss Tyley's family to know that Anthony Wright absolutely had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with the crime that was perpetrated against
Speaker 2: they loved one, my family. I could have died after that.
Speaker 2: I didn't even care. I just wanted to clear my
Speaker 2: name and I wanted to clear those people conscious that
Speaker 2: I wasn't a person that committed this crime because they
Speaker 2: loved one except for me. I was good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's really amazing read I read about
Speaker 1: this exact situation in your book, and she describes very
Speaker 1: eloquently and poigtantly the gamut of emotions that ran through
Speaker 1: her as this horrible realization took hold. And I can't
Speaker 1: even begin to imagine what that must be like. But
Speaker 1: the fact is that she she made not only made
Speaker 1: peace with it and and turned her whole perspective around
Speaker 1: and became a powerful advocate for Tony. Like I mean,
Speaker 1: she went to great lengths to try to get Tony
Speaker 1: out after spending almost a quarter of a century hating him,
Speaker 1: wishing terrible things upon him. And again I'm not judging
Speaker 1: her for that. And then she, upon being presented with evidence,
Speaker 1: she didn't like shut it down or try to ignore it.
Speaker 1: She just went in the complete opposite direction and tried
Speaker 1: to fix it. And now, of course she's come full
Speaker 1: circle to the point that she is now a wonderful
Speaker 1: spokesperson for this restorative justice movement and and her you know,
Speaker 1: her story, as I said, is captured in your book Rectify,
Speaker 1: which 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 what are having to
Speaker 1: describe that ordeal that she went through.
Speaker 4: She's an amazing woman because, as you say, she did
Speaker 4: everything she could. She went to her church, she started
Speaker 4: writing her city council person, she asked friends she knew
Speaker 4: who had some kind of influence, and then she went
Speaker 4: directly to the DA's office repeatedly, and she had a
Speaker 4: meeting with the head of the homicide unit, and she said,
Speaker 4: this is an abomination. You can't retry him. Because, of course,
Speaker 4: the other part of Anthony Write's story is that once
Speaker 4: the DNA evidence came back and pointed to the real perpetrator,
Speaker 4: the DA decided that they were going to retry Tony
Speaker 4: under a different theory of the case. And that was
Speaker 4: what Shannon was trying to do everything she could to
Speaker 4: get stopped. When she met with this head of the
Speaker 4: homicide unit. She begged this woman to drop the prosecution.
Speaker 4: And there's this email that Shannon writes afterwards where she says,
Speaker 4: you told me that you have doubt and that this
Speaker 4: is for the jury to sort out. But that's not
Speaker 4: your ethical obligation. Your obligation it's to see that justice
Speaker 4: is done and this is a travesty. And then she
Speaker 4: started a change dot org petition. She attended as much
Speaker 4: of the trial as she could, and she said that
Speaker 4: when Tony's lawyer texted to say that, as you say,
Speaker 4: he's been acquitted in five minutes, she literally screamed with relief,
Speaker 4: and then immediately started a new change dot org petition
Speaker 4: to get him money to help out after he was
Speaker 4: let go.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's a different you know, I think when
Speaker 1: some people think of restorative justice, 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 Incence Project
Speaker 1: and the work that you do and they do, and
Speaker 1: so many other good people are involved in. I would
Speaker 1: say the most common thing that comes up is for
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: you know there's any consequence of the prosecutor's conduct. That's
Speaker 1: the second most asked question. But the first one is
Speaker 1: people want to know that these men and women who've
Speaker 1: been through this Kafka esque ordeal get compensated. And I
Speaker 1: think most people think, yeah, you walk out, you get
Speaker 1: a check. But that's not the way it is.
Speaker 4: No, it's not. I think people would be disappointed to
Speaker 4: both answers to those questions. Police and prosecutors are hardly
Speaker 4: ever called to account, and even when they are, what
Speaker 4: happens to them is fairly minor compared to the damage
Speaker 4: that they've inflicted on other people, including the original crime
Speaker 4: victims and the exoneries. So with respect to consequence, there
Speaker 4: isn't often a consequence. And then compensation is all over
Speaker 4: the place. It depends on your state. So for example,
Speaker 4: in Pennsylvania, where Tony was wrongfully convicted, you don't get
Speaker 4: a dime. There is no statute to compensate you. If
Speaker 4: you want to be compensated, you have to sue the state,
Speaker 4: and you have to sue alleging violations of your federal
Speaker 4: civil rights and hope that your case is powerful enough
Speaker 4: that you can prevail. So eventually that is how Tony
Speaker 4: ended up getting a settlement. But it's very hard to do,
Speaker 4: it's arduous. And then in other states the compensation is capped,
Speaker 4: so you'll do twenty years and they'll give you twenty
Speaker 4: thousand dollars. Now, there's no amount of money that can
Speaker 4: make up for twenty years, but twenty thousand dollars does
Speaker 4: not even come close. And I think this all points
Speaker 4: to this other idea that we have, which is we
Speaker 4: see these stories of exoneration, and we see the exonery
Speaker 4: in the news with his lawyer, with his mother thanking God,
Speaker 4: giving thanks, and we think it's going to be a
Speaker 4: happily ever after story. They're going to get compensated, he'll
Speaker 4: get millions of dollars, and the police officers they'll be
Speaker 4: put in prison. And so often what wrongful conviction stories
Speaker 4: really are. They're not happy endings to fairy tales. They're
Speaker 4: more like earthquakes. And you were talking before about putting
Speaker 4: the pieces back together, and that's really what rectifies about.
Speaker 4: It's about who's left in the rubble and how they
Speaker 4: sort through it and find a way collaboratively to make
Speaker 4: their own justice, a kind of justice that was denied
Speaker 4: to them by the system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, 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 punishments because there's so many problems
Speaker 1: and challenges that these these innocent men and women face
Speaker 1: when they get out, right, which are again not of
Speaker 1: their doing, but they did. The problems go to employment.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard when your resume has a twenty
Speaker 1: something year hole in it, right, And even though as
Speaker 1: Doug Delosa, who's you know, a friend and a hero
Speaker 1: of mine, and Zanneri from New Orleans who's in Angola
Speaker 1: for fourteen years, he says, you know, they go to
Speaker 1: job interviews and they'd say, I understand, but they don't understand,
Speaker 1: and they'd prefer to have somebody in generally speaking, who
Speaker 1: you know, who wasn't incarse, right, even though you have
Speaker 1: the newspaper article it says you're innocent or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. And of course the challenges with family, the
Speaker 1: challenges with you know, yesterday I had dinner with Valentino Dixon,
Speaker 1: who just got out after twenty seven years I was
Speaker 1: teaching him how to do Instagram right. But it's a process.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot not that Instagram is the
Speaker 1: most important thing, but I'm just saying, well, kind of
Speaker 1: it is anyway. But I'm just saying, like, it's you know,
Speaker 1: these are people who have never held the cell phone.
Speaker 1: They don't have access in many cases to their identification.
Speaker 1: And the you know, the most to me obvious and
Speaker 1: probably disturbing aspect of the second punishment is exactly what
Speaker 1: you talked about. New Hampshire's the state where you can
Speaker 1: only get twenty thousand. Wisconsin you can only get twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand. There are some states where you can't get anything.
Speaker 1: There's still nineteen states with no compensation statutes, and there's
Speaker 1: some that have compensation statutes. I think it's Montana, but
Speaker 1: 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: seems counterintuitive because California. We like to think of California
Speaker 1: as like you know, a you know, an oasis of
Speaker 1: sanity in a country of insanity. But they're the you know,
Speaker 1: the hoops you have to jump through to get any
Speaker 1: sort of compensation. You basically have to reprove your inn
Speaker 1: in spite of the fact that a court has already
Speaker 1: ruled you innocent. It's like, it's not.
Speaker 4: That's absolutely right. I just spent some time with Bill Richards,
Speaker 4: who is wrongfully convicted in California and spent I think
Speaker 4: twenty six years in prison, and even though he has
Speaker 4: a finding of innocence, it's not good enough and he
Speaker 4: has to go through, as you say, this arduous process
Speaker 4: in front of a compensation board that is staffed by prosecutors,
Speaker 4: and they have to approve him for compensation. And if
Speaker 4: that doesn't work, he then has to appeal. And that
Speaker 4: happens to so many exoneries in California. It's just incredibly
Speaker 4: difficult for them under the statute the way it's written
Speaker 4: and enforced, to get any money.
Speaker 1: Right, So they have to jump through these hoops. They
Speaker 1: need help, They need legal help if they're lucky enough
Speaker 1: to find lawyers who want to spend our hundreds of
Speaker 1: hours or more working towards this elusive goal of getting compensation,
Speaker 1: which 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. It's really busy, are but it's you know, look,
Speaker 1: it's one of the many, many things I'm working on
Speaker 1: that particular situation in California. I think we are going
Speaker 1: to be able to make some progress. Hopefully Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: will be the next governor. If he is, you know,
Speaker 1: he's very forward thinking and very passionate about criminal justice reform,
Speaker 1: so I believe that he will take that up. I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope he's listening. And if you could, I mean,
Speaker 1: after having spent your entire adult life in the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system in some of the grungiest places, in some
Speaker 1: of the you know, in some of the most hopeless situations,
Speaker 1: and with some amazing victories to your name, and having
Speaker 1: raised incredible amounts of awareness through your advocacy and your journalism,
Speaker 1: if you could make, if you could wave a magic
Speaker 1: wand and make let's just call it three changes, what
Speaker 1: would they be?
Speaker 4: One change I would make is I would mandate compensation
Speaker 4: for every exonery in every state in this country, so
Speaker 4: that it's not an accident of geography, whether or not
Speaker 4: you get a million dollars or zero cents. So that
Speaker 4: would certainly be one reform, because we have a responsibility
Speaker 4: as citizens of this country to make these injustices right
Speaker 4: and to make people as whole as we can. Another
Speaker 4: reform that I would make is that I would encourage,
Speaker 4: and maybe encourage as too delicate a word, I would
Speaker 4: strongly enforce state bar rules because one way to stop,
Speaker 4: for example, prosecutoroll misconduct and also bad defense luring, which
Speaker 4: is another cause of wrongful convictions from happening, is for
Speaker 4: there to be consequences. And you and I talked about
Speaker 4: the fact that there rarely are, and that is because
Speaker 4: most state bars don't pursue these cases. Even when there
Speaker 4: are published opinions showing that there was misconduct, showing there
Speaker 4: was an effective assistance of counsel, there aren't any consequences.
Speaker 4: And I think it is so important for that to happen,
Speaker 4: and it's so important to bring a tension to the
Speaker 4: fact that the prosecutor's job isn't to just tack as
Speaker 4: many skins up against the wall as possible. It's to
Speaker 4: do justice, and sometimes that means admitting a mistake and
Speaker 4: stepping back and conceding error and dropping a case. We
Speaker 4: have this mindset in this country that we need to
Speaker 4: be tough on crime, and that to win elections as
Speaker 4: prosecutors you have to talk about your conviction rate. I
Speaker 4: think that's starting to change, and we've had this small
Speaker 4: wave of progressive reformers. But to really hammer that message home,
Speaker 4: you not only need to elect reformers, you need to
Speaker 4: expose people who are not following the rules, who are cheating,
Speaker 4: and who are stealing people's lives. So that's certainly another
Speaker 4: reform that I think we very badly need. And finally,
Speaker 4: what I would say is that I think that as
Speaker 4: citizens again and these states, we are responsible to for
Speaker 4: caring for the victims of wrongful conviction. And one of
Speaker 4: the things about the book that was so powerful for me, because,
Speaker 4: as you say, my role in the system was really
Speaker 4: to advocate for defendants, for people who were accused, and
Speaker 4: I never spent a lot of time thinking about the victims.
Speaker 4: I really couldn't afford to it. It was distracting and
Speaker 4: sort of painful to live in their anguish, and what
Speaker 4: happens to them after this is exposed is really that
Speaker 4: they're shunted aside we owe them more than that. We
Speaker 4: owe them services, We owe them therapy, we owe them outreach,
Speaker 4: we owe them recognition, and so often what they feel
Speaker 4: is shunted, aside 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, et cetera, can you think of the best
Speaker 1: and the worst moments that you've had, the best one
Speaker 1: and the worst one.
Speaker 4: I'll go with the worst first, because I want to
Speaker 4: end on a positive note. The worst moment of my
Speaker 4: career was when I had a client sentenced to life,
Speaker 4: and court life means life because there is no parole.
Speaker 4: They abolished it, and we had tried the case once
Speaker 4: and the jury had hung, and then we tried the
Speaker 4: case a second time and the jury convicted, and then
Speaker 4: we had a third trial actually about the punishment, because
Speaker 4: there was a very complicated question of statutory interpretation involved
Speaker 4: in that. And I broke down and sobbed because my
Speaker 4: client was in his early forties, and even given the
Speaker 4: conviction and his record, it just seemed colossally unfair that
Speaker 4: we were going to put him in a cage for
Speaker 4: the rest of his life. And I felt that I
Speaker 4: had been part of that process. Even though I had
Speaker 4: tried as hard as I could to stop that from happening,
Speaker 4: I had not been able to stop that from happening,
Speaker 4: and the train had come and run him down. That
Speaker 4: was the worst moment of my legal career, and I
Speaker 4: revisit it. The best moment was when Catherine made her
Speaker 4: the superior court judge in Cash's case made the decision
Speaker 4: finding him innocent. And I turned around and Cash's mom
Speaker 4: was just she had this expression on her face of
Speaker 4: just absolute amazement, and she said, thank you Jesus, and
Speaker 4: she wept, and I just felt this overwhelming sense of
Speaker 4: relief because I had been a part of giving her
Speaker 4: her son back, and it was just the most amazing
Speaker 4: feeling in the world to realize that she had lived
Speaker 4: for thirty four years without him. She was seventy six
Speaker 4: years old, and she was alive to see him come home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the good stuff, and it is. It is good.
Speaker 1: It's as good as it gets. What's the plan? So
Speaker 1: Rectify is out now. People can get it on Amazon, Barnesandoble,
Speaker 1: dot com, anywhere books are sold. What's next for you?
Speaker 4: So I'm going to do a lot of traveling and
Speaker 4: speaking related to the book, which I'm very excited about.
Speaker 4: And part of what's so awesome is that I get
Speaker 4: to go and be with some of the people who
Speaker 4: are in the book, some friends of yours. I get
Speaker 4: to go to New Orleans and spend time with Jerro
Speaker 4: Morgan and Orion's and I get to go to various
Speaker 4: other places Virginia and see Thomas Hainsworth and Janet Burke.
Speaker 4: So for me, just being able to travel around the
Speaker 4: country and reconnect with the people that I form these
Speaker 4: relationships with and talk about the book with them present
Speaker 4: is incredibly powerful and rewarding. So that's what the next
Speaker 4: couple of months, I think, and maybe longer will look like.
Speaker 4: My hope is that it will build a following and
Speaker 4: that people will connect with the message, and that the
Speaker 4: message of restorative justice will catch hold and not be
Speaker 4: such an alien concept. I mean, some people listening to
Speaker 4: your show, they might not even know what restorative justice is.
Speaker 4: They might be thinking, what are the two of them
Speaker 4: talking about, And so my hope is that it becomes
Speaker 4: as common a ward in our lexicon as criminal justice.
Speaker 1: Right, it's actually a sort of a I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a religious person, but it's sort of a
Speaker 1: Christian concept, right, It's a whole like forgiving, and in
Speaker 1: this case, you're forgiving for something that never happened in
Speaker 1: the first place. But it's yeah, it's it's got layers
Speaker 1: to it, you know, it does.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting. It has roots in the Native American community.
Speaker 4: It's also practiced in South Africa, most famously with the
Speaker 4: Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of apartheid. But
Speaker 4: the concept is essentially, we don't believe in banishing offenders
Speaker 4: from our community. We believe in renitting our community and
Speaker 4: bringing them back. So we the criminal justice system in
Speaker 4: the United States, we ask what crime was committed, who
Speaker 4: committed it, and what punishment is deserved. Restorative justice takes
Speaker 4: those questions and it radically reframes them to ask who
Speaker 4: is harmed, what are their needs, and who is best
Speaker 4: situated to meet those needs. And when you put that
Speaker 4: in the concept of an exoneration, you see all this
Speaker 4: need from the original crime victims, from the exoneries, from
Speaker 4: their respective families, even from the jurors. There are jurors
Speaker 4: who suffer your trauma when they realized they voted to
Speaker 4: convict based on evidence that turned out to be false,
Speaker 4: based on lies that they were told by witnesses or
Speaker 4: other state actors. And so there's so much harm and
Speaker 4: there's so much repairing to be done that were stored
Speaker 4: of justice. Bringing all these harmed actors together to work
Speaker 4: through a mutual trauma has turned out to be a
Speaker 4: way for people to kind of make sense of something
Speaker 4: very senseless and soul destroying.
Speaker 1: And let's talk about jurors because one of the things
Speaker 1: I harp on on the show is the critical importance
Speaker 1: of people showing up for jury duty. Good people, the
Speaker 1: type of people that listen to this show, inform people,
Speaker 1: people who are awoke. It's an imposition. We all know that,
Speaker 1: But in your view, how important is it for people
Speaker 1: to show up for jury duty and what should they
Speaker 1: be looking out for? Because the people's faces, the people
Speaker 1: that go to jury duty, by and large, they don't
Speaker 1: have experience in the criminal justice system. They don't really know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think most people default, as I did
Speaker 1: growing up, that law enforcement is on our side. There
Speaker 1: are friends, they're not you know, they're they're there to
Speaker 1: protect us. And it says right on the side of
Speaker 1: the car, protect and serve. So what should they be
Speaker 1: looking out for.
Speaker 4: Well, the first thing I would say is absolutely to
Speaker 4: echo your message. Jury service is crucial. And the second
Speaker 4: thing they should be looking out for is their own autonomy.
Speaker 4: What happens so often in these situations is you get
Speaker 4: in a room and in Cash's case, you have a
Speaker 4: couple of people who have doubt. In his case, there
Speaker 4: was no weapon, there was no wallet found, there was
Speaker 4: no evidence other than these two eyewitnesses. And the juror
Speaker 4: who contacted me after Cash's exoneration, who suffered so much anguish,
Speaker 4: was telling me that he was the youngest person on
Speaker 4: the jury. He was eighteen. It was the first time
Speaker 4: he'd served on a jury, and he had these doubts
Speaker 4: and he expressed them, but basically he felt that because
Speaker 4: other people on the jury were older and had more
Speaker 4: powerful personalities, are more and more experienced, he should sort
Speaker 4: of defer to them. And then the pressure to convict mounted,
Speaker 4: and the pressure to get out of the room mounted,
Speaker 4: and he gave it. And so often you hear about
Speaker 4: that that jurors have these lingering doubts in these cases
Speaker 4: because they do smell a rat and they don't act
Speaker 4: on it. So I would just impress upon people not
Speaker 4: only go to jury service, but in the jury room,
Speaker 4: stick to your convictions. If you don't think it's right
Speaker 4: to convict, it's not. Don't let people push you around,
Speaker 4: don't let people bully you. Don't convict so you can
Speaker 4: go home to your family on a Friday night.
Speaker 1: Right, That's the whole reasonable doubt thing, I mean, And
Speaker 1: I think that's forgotten and ignored in too many cases.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean, that's a powerful picture that you're painting.
Speaker 1: And I have heard of so many, too many cases
Speaker 1: in which there's been jurors who've been bamboozled or bullied
Speaker 1: even in the jury room. And you know, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: now about the Randall Paget case, right, which Richard Jaffey
Speaker 1: wrote so eloquently about in his book Quest for Justice
Speaker 1: Defending the Damned. And in his case, the jury was
Speaker 1: ten to two in favor of originally a favor of
Speaker 1: guilt of conviction. And it was so clear, I mean,
Speaker 1: when you read the story, it's unbelievably obvious when you're
Speaker 1: presented now with the facts. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: that jury was looking at a guy who had already
Speaker 1: been convicted and sentenced to death right, so they knew
Speaker 1: that they knew that this was a brutal murder, stabbing
Speaker 1: and a rape, and so they were preconceived to think, well,
Speaker 1: he's there, it must be. Then there's research that shows
Speaker 1: my friend Josh Dubin did the research that shows that
Speaker 1: people have a preconceived notion of someone's in that box,
Speaker 1: they probably are guilty. But in this case, there was
Speaker 1: one juror, a woman who came up and spoke to
Speaker 1: Richard after the verdict, which was innocent. They found him
Speaker 1: innocent and freedom, and she came up to him on
Speaker 1: the courthouse steps and told him that she had gotten
Speaker 1: up because the victim was found in a very strange position.
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 imagine an Alabama woman doing that in the
Speaker 1: jury room, and said, look, you can't rape a woman
Speaker 1: this way, right, And she showed the other jurors that
Speaker 1: this was not possible, and sure enough she won the
Speaker 1: day and he was freed, and he turned out to
Speaker 1: be absolutely factually innocent. So she saved the man's life.
Speaker 1: And when you're in a jury, I'm not suggesting that
Speaker 1: that's an extreme that you need to go to, but
Speaker 1: you know, we should remember her and and you know,
Speaker 1: and honor.
Speaker 4: Her absolutely, and what she did was incredibly brave and
Speaker 4: creative and creative.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean that was such a bizarre case too,
Speaker 1: because I won't get into all the details. You have
Speaker 1: to read the book, but it's an amazing, amazing case.
Speaker 1: And he is such a hero for having, you know,
Speaker 1: won that case in Alabama, you know, I mean, tough,
Speaker 1: tough down there.
Speaker 4: One final point about jury's and this is to watch
Speaker 4: out for your unconscious bias because so for example, going
Speaker 4: back to Cash's jury in nineteen seventy nine, this was
Speaker 4: a black teenager accused of killing an elderly white man.
Speaker 4: The jury was all white, twelve people, all white people,
Speaker 4: and it's hard for me to believe, based on the
Speaker 4: scanty evidence that they had, that they would have convicted
Speaker 4: a white person. And I think, whether it was conscious
Speaker 4: or unconscious, they valued Cash's life less because he was black.
Speaker 4: And I think that's another thing that jurors really really
Speaker 4: have to think about, which is you have to value
Speaker 4: everyone's life equally, And as you say, you have to
Speaker 4: drill down on the presumption of innocence, because you're absolutely right, Jason,
Speaker 4: that people look at the person sitting at the defendant's
Speaker 4: table and they don't think, Gosh, what's that wrongly accused
Speaker 4: innocent person doing there? They think, I wonder what he did?
Speaker 4: And that's an unconstitutional thought. You actually shouldn't be thinking
Speaker 4: that you should be presuming innocence. So I think both
Speaker 4: of those are also very very important for juries to remember.
Speaker 1: And while we're on that subject, we know that the
Speaker 1: justice system is biased throughout right in terms of the
Speaker 1: number of people arrested, prosecuted, and convicted. The percentages are
Speaker 1: off the charts if you're a person of color. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, we also know that people of
Speaker 1: color don't commit crimes at any higher rate than white
Speaker 1: people do. So isn't it odd that we demonize and
Speaker 1: persecute people who are not only the least able to
Speaker 1: defend themselves because of socioeconomic reasons, but also people who
Speaker 1: are by and large less culpable and less likely to
Speaker 1: commit terrible crimes on a large scale.
Speaker 4: And it's also really interesting how those crimes get classified. So,
Speaker 4: for example, in the eighties and the nineties, we had
Speaker 4: what we called, or our presidents called a crack epidemic,
Speaker 4: and of course, predominantly the people who are being arrested
Speaker 4: and prosecuted and sent away for long periods of time.
Speaker 4: We're African American. Now we're going going through a huge
Speaker 4: problem in this country with opioids. But we're not calling
Speaker 4: it a criminal epidemic. We're not talking about super predators
Speaker 4: roaming the streets with crack cocaine because many of the
Speaker 4: people who are impacted are white. So we're calling it
Speaker 4: a health crisis. We're calling it a national emergency, and
Speaker 4: we're talking about treatment. We're talking about options other than
Speaker 4: incarceration in a lot of these cases. And yet they're
Speaker 4: both these massive problems with drug addiction, but we classify
Speaker 4: it differently depending on who that drug or which community
Speaker 4: 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, the people being arrested for
Speaker 1: marijuana in this country and locked up. 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: And a true conservative can't look at it any other
Speaker 1: way than to say, this is big government at its worst,
Speaker 1: and we need to deincarce rate, and we need to
Speaker 1: stop this mass spending on warehousing of people. And I
Speaker 1: don't think you know, the numbers are so insane in
Speaker 1: terms of the money that it costs us as taxpayers,
Speaker 1: but even those numbers don't take into account the loss
Speaker 1: of tax revenue from the people that are locked up,
Speaker 1: that aren't out there working jobs and supporting their families.
Speaker 1: And it just goes on and on and on. It's
Speaker 1: so horrible, Lara, we have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: which is it's a great tradition because it's my favorite
Speaker 1: part of the show, and my favorite part of the
Speaker 1: show is the end. And the reason it's my favorite
Speaker 1: part is because it's the part where I get to
Speaker 1: say thank you for being here and for all you're
Speaker 1: doing and for you know, inspiring me and countless others
Speaker 1: to keep doing everything we can to to rectify a situation.
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 tune
Speaker 1: out and listen to your thoughts.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I want to start by saying
Speaker 4: thank you for having me, and thank you for all
Speaker 4: of the work that you do. I think it's rare
Speaker 4: to find someone who has such diverse interests and who
Speaker 4: supports artists and art and makes art and then also
Speaker 4: looks around and sees that the world is broken in
Speaker 4: this entirely different place and does everything they can to
Speaker 4: make it right. And so I want to thank you
Speaker 4: for the work that you do and for inviting me
Speaker 4: onto your show. Parting thoughts, I think we should all
Speaker 4: think hard about how we can all be practitioners of
Speaker 4: restorative justice in our own way, in our own lives
Speaker 4: and our own relationships. When I first found out about it,
Speaker 4: my thought was, why isn't everyone doing this? And I
Speaker 4: looked at the kind of healing that can happen when
Speaker 4: people face each other who've faced each other down across
Speaker 4: opposite side of the courtroom and felt nothing but hatred
Speaker 4: for each other and wishing each other the worst, and
Speaker 4: they're able to come together and share these experiences that
Speaker 4: are so profound in circumstances where they might just want
Speaker 4: to run from each other and run from the pain
Speaker 4: and run from the trauma, and instead they're joining hands
Speaker 4: and they're walking through it together, and then they're coming
Speaker 4: out the other side. And I think for people who
Speaker 4: listen to your show, who think, well, I'm not wrongfully
Speaker 4: convicted myself, and I don't know anyone, and this is
Speaker 4: sort of outside of any experience that I might have,
Speaker 4: I think what they can ask themselves is, how can
Speaker 4: I apply this to my own life and what harms
Speaker 4: have I inflicted? Who's harmed me? And how can I
Speaker 4: use this to make my own life better and make
Speaker 4: someone else's life better. And I've definitely gone through that
Speaker 4: process myself, and I've really thought I've been somewhat of
Speaker 4: a vengeful and unforgiving person in a way that hasn't
Speaker 4: benefited anyone, certainly not me. Or the people that I've
Speaker 4: directed that energy toward, And it just makes so much
Speaker 4: more sense, I think, to completely revisualize the situation and
Speaker 4: realize every time you tell yourself you're a victim, quite
Speaker 4: often you have a piece of culpability and what's happened,
Speaker 4: and you have some responsibility and some accountability of your
Speaker 4: own to do. And I think the more people can
Speaker 4: see that and reconnect and mend broken relationships, the better
Speaker 4: off all of us will be.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's that's pretty much it. I mean, I couldn't
Speaker 1: have said it any better, and I'm glad I got
Speaker 1: to hear you say it. So why don't we go
Speaker 1: start with the youngest and just share anything that you
Speaker 1: want to share with the audience about your experience.
Speaker 6: It was a great experience. It's an experience I don't
Speaker 6: wish anyone would have to go through. But I appreciate
Speaker 6: him so much and it's been an honor knowing him,
Speaker 6: getting to know him, and I will forever cherish this bond.
Speaker 5: I think the most important thing for me right now
Speaker 5: is that perhaps what I did, what I believe the
Speaker 5: risk I took, that somebody else, some other victim's family
Speaker 5: will follow suit and try to help somebody else down
Speaker 5: the route. So I want to be an example for
Speaker 5: other people to forgive.
Speaker 2: Again, you can't imagine this. I mean it's insane. I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't even with somebody else's brain. You can't think
Speaker 2: of this. I mean, this sort of thing doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, not just with Shannon and her family, but
Speaker 2: the jurors, the men and women that read that not
Speaker 2: guilty verdict. I'm close with everybody.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Right after the verd they didn't want to leave the courtroom.
Speaker 2: They wanted to just stay there and see me come
Speaker 2: out of that. Man like, you can't. You can't. I
Speaker 2: can't put this in words. You can't imagine this.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, you know, I'm just so grateful, and it's
Speaker 2: such a shame that you have to go through such
Speaker 2: a tragic situation to be breeding some goodness in life.
Speaker 2: I've been home over two years, just a little over
Speaker 2: two years. That past twenty five years don't consume my life,
Speaker 2: not for one second of any day. I'm happy to
Speaker 2: be alive. I'm happy to have Shannon and Lauren and
Speaker 2: Devin and that family in my life. I'm happy to
Speaker 2: have my whole family. I try to find a good
Speaker 2: in everything. No matter what situation. You and somebody in
Speaker 2: the worst situation just keep on fighting, Just keep on fighting.
Speaker 2: Tough times on last, tough people do. I'm built for this, man.
Speaker 1: I'm really almost never at a loss for words, but
Speaker 1: in the presence of you, I'm really I'm just very
Speaker 1: very moved and grateful when you're here and sharing your
Speaker 1: thoughts and your spirit. Once again, You've been listening to
Speaker 1: a very special episode for me and I hope for you,
Speaker 1: with Lara Basilon, Shannon Coleman and her wonderful daughter Lauren,
Speaker 1: and the one and only Tony Wright.
Speaker 2: Having play Always Mind Man.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 1: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: in Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production
Speaker 1: of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company
Speaker 1: Number one