Speaker 1: On the night of July two thousand seven, Jamal Truelove
Speaker 1: was hanging out in a common area of San Francisco's
Speaker 1: Sunnydale Projects with his younger brother, Joshua. Jamal's friend, Sell Kuca,
Speaker 1: drove up intoxicated, ripping off the side view mirror from
Speaker 1: Joshua's car. Jamal got between Cell and his brother. Then
Speaker 1: gunfire in the air would send Cell into an alcohol
Speaker 1: fueled rage. In search of a gun himself, Jamal tried
Speaker 1: to come Sell again, who pushed him away and punched
Speaker 1: another man. Frustrated and fed up, Jamal left the scene,
Speaker 1: only to turn in time to witness his friends Cell
Speaker 1: being gunned down in the street. Now, since snitching is
Speaker 1: a sure fire away to be sent to the same fate,
Speaker 1: Jamal kept his mouth shut. Cell's cousin, Priscilla Luallamaga, would
Speaker 1: go downtown to identify the shooters she claimed to see
Speaker 1: from her second story window, only to pass over Jamal's
Speaker 1: mug shot that was in plain sight. Police pressured her
Speaker 1: to name Jamal so they could coerce the identity of
Speaker 1: the shooter. Either he would name the killer or he'd
Speaker 1: go down for the murder himself. Jamal would receive fifty
Speaker 1: years to life. The prosecutor's closing argument would point to
Speaker 1: Lalamaga's bravery in light of the supposed threat of jamal
Speaker 1: true love. This comment, unsupported by evidence and unobjected to
Speaker 1: by counsel, would ultimately lead to a new trial in
Speaker 1: which Jamal's new lawyers would be able to successfully argue
Speaker 1: that ballistic evidence at the autopsy report proved that the
Speaker 1: shooter was out of Lollamaga's second story view. Jamal was
Speaker 1: finally set free in two thousand and fifteen. This is
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: with Jason Flam. That's me. I'm your host, and today
Speaker 1: I'm very excited because this is a story I've wanted
Speaker 1: to tell from quite some time, and that's primarily because
Speaker 1: of the person who survived this an incredible ordeal, Jamal Truelove.
Speaker 1: He has the best name on top of everything else.
Speaker 1: So Jamal, welcome, Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: Like I always say, I'm sorry you have to be here,
Speaker 1: but I'm really happy that you are here. So Jamal,
Speaker 1: this story touches me on a personal level because you
Speaker 1: were in the entertainment business before this horrible misidentification and
Speaker 1: all the other things that went wrong happened to you.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that because you
Speaker 1: grew up in San Francisco, right, Yes, I grew up
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, Sunnydale projects. Always wanted to get into
Speaker 1: entertainment within you know, music and acting, and the ball
Speaker 1: was starting to bounce your way, so to speak. Right
Speaker 1: because at the time of this incident, you had been
Speaker 1: recently featured on the reality TV show Popped, the show
Speaker 1: called I Love New York Too. Right, you were just
Speaker 1: a kid from the Project X with no connections, but
Speaker 1: you were making it happen anyway. How did you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: initially I was recording music my friend out a studio
Speaker 1: which he would let me some time to get into
Speaker 1: actually record, And then I had an opportunity to audition
Speaker 1: for this character for this show called I Love New
Speaker 1: York Too. So I figured if I could get on
Speaker 1: the show and put a name to a face, then
Speaker 1: I will get the exposure that I need to shine
Speaker 1: onto my music and to ultimately get into film. And
Speaker 1: sure enough you had now gone and shot this show.
Speaker 1: Which did you shoot in l A or yeah, it
Speaker 1: was based in l A and so this was like
Speaker 1: an exciting time for you. How old were you at
Speaker 1: the time, tomorrow, Well, I started recording music when I
Speaker 1: was sixteen years old. When I ended up landing on
Speaker 1: the show, I was freshly twenty one, so a kid
Speaker 1: with big dreams and aspirations and you know, the ability
Speaker 1: to really manifest those things. And I think people that
Speaker 1: meets you now still see that same spark. It makes
Speaker 1: in a certain way, it makes this wrongful conviction more tragic. So, Jamal,
Speaker 1: your life took a terrible turn because of events that
Speaker 1: occurred around eleven pm on July twenty, two, thousand seven.
Speaker 1: And of course you know what I'm referring to, but
Speaker 1: it was that night that twenty eight year old Cell Kuca,
Speaker 1: was a resident in your housing project, was shot nine times.
Speaker 1: How did this happen? How did you find out about it?
Speaker 1: And how did you get misidentified as a shooter. We
Speaker 1: were all kicking it in the projects in the area
Speaker 1: that were typically chill at and the incident had happened
Speaker 1: between Sale Kuca and my little brother Joshua. Sale was
Speaker 1: intoxicated driving up the street where he came real close
Speaker 1: to my brother's car that ripped off his side mirror,
Speaker 1: and you know, I've seen it, but I didn't think
Speaker 1: too much of it. And then somebody yelled down to
Speaker 1: me like there was some type of altercation between him
Speaker 1: and my brother. So I come through to diffuse the situation.
Speaker 1: I've seen how my brother was contorted his face. Uh, Sales,
Speaker 1: one of my good friends. He's got some liquor in them,
Speaker 1: so you know, he's ramped up. He's not trying to
Speaker 1: take no blame, and they're getting closer to each other
Speaker 1: where it's gonna end up, you know, turning into the fight.
Speaker 1: So I intervened, you know, I told both of them
Speaker 1: and chill relaxed. Sale was hyped up to start being
Speaker 1: kind of a crowd people looking on and next to
Speaker 1: you know, we're here some gunshots going off kind of
Speaker 1: like I guess in the air, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: that field Sale that much more to feel some type
Speaker 1: of way, and he started heading down saying that he
Speaker 1: was gonna go get a gun. So me, I've remember
Speaker 1: some of my other friends used to you know, kind
Speaker 1: of contain his anger when he's in this type of state.
Speaker 1: So me trying to prevent anything from escalating. I kind
Speaker 1: of followed them, and he was asking somebody, one of
Speaker 1: our other friends to give him a gun, and I'm
Speaker 1: telling them, no, like, bro, there ain't no reason for
Speaker 1: all of that. But he like, you know, ms out
Speaker 1: here shooting, and I'm like that ain't got nothing to
Speaker 1: do with us on this situation. And so I got
Speaker 1: like close up on him. I like held him like,
Speaker 1: you know, in a kind of bear hug, and he's
Speaker 1: like way bigger than me. I'm probably like a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty pounds soaking wet at that point, and he's
Speaker 1: like to twenty two thirty at least, and he's listening,
Speaker 1: but you could definitely tell that he's kind of trunk.
Speaker 1: And then he kind of bust out of my my
Speaker 1: bear hug and angry type of way, and at that
Speaker 1: point it felt like, you know, he wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: hear me are calm the altercation. So I ended up
Speaker 1: leaving across the street, which I had my car inside
Speaker 1: the parking lot. I had a female friend inside the car.
Speaker 1: I bent down to let her know that we're about
Speaker 1: to get up out of here, and by time I
Speaker 1: stood up from the side of the car, I've seen
Speaker 1: sale skipping around the building right there from off of
Speaker 1: the street, and I've seen the perpetrator already holding the
Speaker 1: gun and the shooting position. Before I could say stop,
Speaker 1: gun shots had already rained off. So I just got
Speaker 1: down until all the gun shots was overwood. And typically
Speaker 1: in situations like this in the project, regardless if you
Speaker 1: did something or if you didn't do it, you just
Speaker 1: htel up out of there. So that's what I ended
Speaker 1: up doing. So I'm gonna ask you point blank, did
Speaker 1: you know at the time who who the actually shooter was. Yes,
Speaker 1: I did, And there were a lot of witnesses. Thirty
Speaker 1: or more witnesses were there because as you described, it
Speaker 1: was a street team, a lot of people hanging out.
Speaker 1: Of course, in a seemed like this, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are gonna be scared to come forward. Nobody wants
Speaker 1: to be labeled to snitch because I know what that
Speaker 1: actually means. Something happened to me my family. But one
Speaker 1: woman did come forward and she became a key part
Speaker 1: of this whole awful scenario, right. And this woman's name
Speaker 1: was Priscilla Lulla Maga, and she claimed to have seen
Speaker 1: the whole thing from her second story window already at
Speaker 1: my spidy sense and start tingling because it's eleven o'clock
Speaker 1: at night, it's dark. It sounds like a pretty diocese
Speaker 1: scenario to think that she's going to identify somebody. But okay,
Speaker 1: so she told police that her distant relative, it was
Speaker 1: just the deceased sell Kuca, was chasing another man around
Speaker 1: a car who she identified as your brother, Joshua. And
Speaker 1: then she further claimed that while chasing Joshua, Kuka bumped
Speaker 1: into a knockdown another man who got up, chased him
Speaker 1: down the street and sloping downhill and open fire close range.
Speaker 1: So this is important. She gets taken the police station
Speaker 1: and showing thirty four mug shots that were set up
Speaker 1: on a bulletin board, and she recognized many of the
Speaker 1: mug shots that spaces from her neighborhood understandably. But then
Speaker 1: in the two hours she was in that room with
Speaker 1: the bulletin board of mug shots, she didn't recognize your face,
Speaker 1: which was immediately above Joshua Bradley's monk shots. So that's
Speaker 1: even weirder, right, it was right there in front of
Speaker 1: her face, and she still didn't recognize it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: two days later the cops come to her workplace and
Speaker 1: take us from there. Two days later the police came
Speaker 1: to her workplace, but the day before that is really
Speaker 1: interesting that they actually came to her house showing her
Speaker 1: a mug shot picture which we believe to have been me,
Speaker 1: and they denying that it was me. That it runs
Speaker 1: side by side to what you know ultimately end up
Speaker 1: coming out when it comes down to the lineup and
Speaker 1: the mug shots. So they told her that if we
Speaker 1: were to bring a photo lineup with the person who
Speaker 1: did it inside the line up, would you be able
Speaker 1: to identify? So the next day they went to our job.
Speaker 1: They brought her a six pack line up with really
Speaker 1: me wearing an orange jumpsuit and everybody else and playing clothes.
Speaker 1: But she had already identified the other people, you know,
Speaker 1: not being the person and people that she already knows.
Speaker 1: It's even worse than that, right, because of the fact
Speaker 1: that she said that you quote unquote looks like the
Speaker 1: guy who could have shot Kuka, right, So that's pretty
Speaker 1: damn weak. The six pack lineup and had to standout things.
Speaker 1: It had me inside of an orange jumpsuit, and then
Speaker 1: it also had the dates that came off of the
Speaker 1: system when they brought up the mug shots where mind
Speaker 1: date was dated different than the other dates that came
Speaker 1: off of the system because they had me down as
Speaker 1: the shooter on day one, Why do you think the
Speaker 1: detectives had it out for you or they just like, whoever,
Speaker 1: we just got to close the case. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I wasn't somebody that was out there. I was always
Speaker 1: trying to do something positive. I was doing music, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll hang around of course, but with my name coming
Speaker 1: up on the day that it actually happened, whether they
Speaker 1: wanted questions from me or them saying oh it was
Speaker 1: the guy that Jamal was with, they was like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is how we're gonna get him. We're gonna pressure
Speaker 1: said either town on the person who did it, or
Speaker 1: we're gonna make sure that he goes down for this.
Speaker 1: And then no weapon was recovered, but hl casings were
Speaker 1: found downhill from the body, in the trail leading up
Speaker 1: to the body, which means that what she said was
Speaker 1: false because she said the shooter was chasing Kuka downhill.
Speaker 1: So now we know and they should have known that
Speaker 1: she didn't know what the funk she was talking about,
Speaker 1: so to be honest, right, her representation of what actually happened.
Speaker 1: If anything, she could have only seen what was on
Speaker 1: the side of that building. She didn't see when the
Speaker 1: person was actually shooting. She told police to sell. Kuka
Speaker 1: was chasing another man around the car, and then Kuka
Speaker 1: bumped into a knockdown another man who got up, chased
Speaker 1: him down the street and sloping down on the hill
Speaker 1: and open fire close range. It wasn't me who Sale
Speaker 1: had knocked down? What was her agenda here? Do you know?
Speaker 1: Her whole thing? And the family which I was deeply
Speaker 1: connected to, felt like they weren't scared of me, they
Speaker 1: were scared of the person who actually did it, right,
Speaker 1: So by way of throwing me in there, they felt
Speaker 1: that I was gonna tell on the person who actually
Speaker 1: did it. So that's the big boom right there. And
Speaker 1: then things take another crazy turn, right because the TV
Speaker 1: show airs the show that you were in, which should
Speaker 1: have been a cause for celebration. She happens to see
Speaker 1: the TV show, right, and then she comes back and says, oh,
Speaker 1: now I know it's definitely him. Yeah, So they were
Speaker 1: getting her closer and closer to that it was me
Speaker 1: one And then on top of her saying that she
Speaker 1: talked to her cousin and then on top of the
Speaker 1: detectives really trying to get somebody to go to jail
Speaker 1: for this. You know, that's what brewed up to what
Speaker 1: that ultimately ended up being. But even still that didn't
Speaker 1: work well ultimately end up happening was I said. About
Speaker 1: fourteen months later, the police had did a traffic stop
Speaker 1: with this other woman named Letitia, who had a gun
Speaker 1: in her lap, had crack cocaine on her baby in
Speaker 1: the back, had her boyfriend who was on parole, and
Speaker 1: the passenger seat pulled over. She's going to jail, and
Speaker 1: she goes down and they basically say, well, if you
Speaker 1: could tell us X, Y, and Z about this case,
Speaker 1: everybody basically goes free. She initially tells them that it
Speaker 1: was daylight and this altercation happened, and then she says
Speaker 1: she looked through the window and looked all the way
Speaker 1: down the block and seeing that this happened, and just
Speaker 1: threw my name in there. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of things is wrong with that, right as if First,
Speaker 1: she says that she's seen it for fifty yards away
Speaker 1: on a slant hill in the daylight when it didn't
Speaker 1: happen in the daytime. It happened at night. But what
Speaker 1: got the arrest warrant was the right up that detectives
Speaker 1: had wrote up. They were guiding her the whole way,
Speaker 1: making everything like it was a clear record, and then
Speaker 1: wrote at the bottom extremely credible. So now when they
Speaker 1: take that to the d A, now they feel they
Speaker 1: have two witnesses saying the same exact thing. So this
Speaker 1: is a crazy timeline too, because the crime we know
Speaker 1: happens in two thousand seven, you don't get brought in
Speaker 1: and arrested until two thousand and eight, over a year later,
Speaker 1: and then the trial doesn't happen until two correct. So
Speaker 1: during that time were you in jail, did you bail out?
Speaker 1: How did how did that unfold? After you arrested? Well,
Speaker 1: after I was arrested, they wanted to question me. Obviously
Speaker 1: there's two things you can do. You can give up information,
Speaker 1: but never mind that because in that situation, which you're
Speaker 1: taught in the streets, is you know it's not to stitch,
Speaker 1: not to give up information. Something happened to me my family,
Speaker 1: you know, So I balanced that we also knowing that
Speaker 1: it's not my duty to put somebody else into jail.
Speaker 1: That's for them to actually get it right. And that
Speaker 1: was my way of going at it. So it actually
Speaker 1: took me about a year and a half to go
Speaker 1: to trial. It was hard trying to get the thirty
Speaker 1: people that I was out there to actually come in,
Speaker 1: you know, not say who did it, you know, but
Speaker 1: to say I didn't do it. I wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: put nobody in a situation where I was trying to
Speaker 1: have somebody else tell on the sail it because I
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna do anything like that. Then I have to
Speaker 1: go what hide for the rest of my life for
Speaker 1: something that's just not my job. That's up to the
Speaker 1: system to do so. And nobody would want to be
Speaker 1: in that situation. But you were in it, and you're
Speaker 1: still just a young guy without you know, reach or citizen,
Speaker 1: so you you roll with it and you go to trial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we thought the case, that's an identity case. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't testify, We didn't call nobody to testify or whatever.
Speaker 1: So it took three days and then it took five
Speaker 1: days of deliberation. Ultimately they came back with a murder
Speaker 1: one conviction. It was it was definitely tough. I stayed
Speaker 1: optimistic because I know I didn't do it at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. And that's what ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: kept the wills turning in my mind, or how do
Speaker 1: I figure this out? And you were convicted, of course,
Speaker 1: and you were sentenced to fifty years in prison. So
Speaker 1: I want you to understand this. Right before I get
Speaker 1: sentence the fifty the life I'm inside of my cell,
Speaker 1: I become we're doing a retrial motion right to ask
Speaker 1: for a retrial before sentencing. I'm coming back from church.
Speaker 1: Com inside. It's a twelve man like tank in this
Speaker 1: kid by the name of Oliver barr sin Is comes
Speaker 1: up to me. Now I don't know who this kid is.
Speaker 1: He comes up too, man. He asked me, like, you
Speaker 1: know it's your last name, true Love, And I say yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: He said, did you go to jail like in oh seven?
Speaker 1: I'm like no, but that's where my case happened. He
Speaker 1: said yes. I remember being in a police station at
Speaker 1: the time where some like some moree girl and some
Speaker 1: detectives came in and she was crying and they were
Speaker 1: pointing out a picture saying are you sure it ain't
Speaker 1: something something? True Love and I'm like, whoa, you know,
Speaker 1: and it blows my mind that it just so happens
Speaker 1: that I run into this guy and he had just
Speaker 1: been transported from Saying Bruno Jail to San Francisco County
Speaker 1: on his way to prison. And he's seen in the
Speaker 1: newspaper when he was in Saying Bruno about my case,
Speaker 1: and he remembered the last name that was the first spark.
Speaker 1: And then when he ended up in a sail with me,
Speaker 1: her at the name again, that's where he actually approached
Speaker 1: me and told me these things. So I called my
Speaker 1: attorney immediately and tell my attorney about him, and my
Speaker 1: attorney came up and, you know, talk to him, got
Speaker 1: his statement, and come to find out, he was at
Speaker 1: the police station at the exact same time that little
Speaker 1: Lamana had came into the police station. He was a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old kid come to the bench watching all
Speaker 1: of this unfold. So what he ended up saying was
Speaker 1: big in my case because remind you that that photo,
Speaker 1: that photo and the six pack lineup that had the
Speaker 1: date that was different from everybody else's which we called
Speaker 1: in the question, made that much more sense because they
Speaker 1: had me down as the shooter on day one, And
Speaker 1: what made more sense from his testimony is why she
Speaker 1: never pointed at my picture on the wall, Because on
Speaker 1: day one she was saying it wasn't me. Even on
Speaker 1: day two she was saying it wasn't me. Now, this
Speaker 1: is newly found evidence. There was no way that we
Speaker 1: could have knew that this kid was inside the police station.
Speaker 1: So there's no way we could have called him. Now,
Speaker 1: just in the heap of that time, what was going
Speaker 1: on in San Francisco. You got, you know, Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: who's going to try to be Attorney General. You have
Speaker 1: another case which got overturned, and then you have a
Speaker 1: big drug scandal that's happening in San Francisco also at
Speaker 1: the exact same time. So in the retrial motion hearing
Speaker 1: when we put him on the stand to testify, Linda Allen,
Speaker 1: the city's attorney, attacked Oh that he was a gang
Speaker 1: member and he's trying to do this for a favor
Speaker 1: for the blacks, like some prison politics type stuff. And
Speaker 1: neither one of us have ever been to president and
Speaker 1: we just don't know each other at oh. So in
Speaker 1: this moment though that this is new discovered evidence, I
Speaker 1: feel like I was politicked out because if they were
Speaker 1: to grant me a retrial, that would have been to
Speaker 1: murder cases with convictions granted retrial before conviction. And plus
Speaker 1: the drug scandal that was national attention. So ultimately, even
Speaker 1: with Oliver Barson is they still denied my retrial motion.
Speaker 1: That's when I got sentenced to fifty the life in prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's important to look at the role that
Speaker 1: politics played at this because there was a lot going
Speaker 1: on and and now things are really looking a lot
Speaker 1: better in San Francisco with the new da chas of Boudin,
Speaker 1: who is doing incredible, incredible things. Probably the most impactful
Speaker 1: six months of any new prosecutor in the history of
Speaker 1: this country, I would say, in terms of what he's
Speaker 1: been able to accomplish. But that's a separate issue. Ms.
Speaker 1: Harris at the time does not come out. I mean,
Speaker 1: we can't sugarcoat it. I mean, she was one of
Speaker 1: the villains in this story and your story, and in
Speaker 1: too many other stories that took place around this time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing about Kamala Harris as a senator, she talks
Speaker 1: a lot of things that employs towards the African American community,
Speaker 1: and you know, it is good like if I didn't
Speaker 1: go through the experience that I went through, then I
Speaker 1: would probably be on the side of what Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: actually talks about. And that's if you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: find out about me. But when we talk about being
Speaker 1: a progressive prosecutor, I think of chase A Boudin Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris at the time she had opportunity to alleviate this
Speaker 1: case and dive into it, especially a murder charge. Any
Speaker 1: head d A is overlooking any murder charge that's happened
Speaker 1: inside of their city. But also just knowing politics at
Speaker 1: that time. I know four people who went to jail
Speaker 1: innocently from murders in every single asked, one of them
Speaker 1: got convicted. They call it a street sweep. Once elections
Speaker 1: come up, they come through and they sweep any case
Speaker 1: that they had. They say, arrest them, arrest them, arrest them.
Speaker 1: They look. I went to jail right before elections and
Speaker 1: one of the detectives my dad had ran into before
Speaker 1: I went to trial, Kevin Noble, had told my dad.
Speaker 1: My dad was like, Yo, why are you got my son?
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, you know how it is. And
Speaker 1: during election time, you know d a's they just come
Speaker 1: and sweep you know, everybody up, any case that they
Speaker 1: got and see if they could pressure people into taking deals.
Speaker 1: Because they offered me a deal, you know, before I
Speaker 1: went to try my first time, I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: you complete out and take voluntary man, So I didn't
Speaker 1: take thirteen years under her watch. So my feeling up
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris been in that position, being African American coming
Speaker 1: from the Bay Area and being hard on crime the
Speaker 1: way that she was, and how many people that was
Speaker 1: going to jail for marijuana charges at one of the
Speaker 1: highest rates in the country, you know, played a big
Speaker 1: part of mass incarceration and also to gentrification in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: So I cannot unfeel that r c that are when
Speaker 1: I'm getting sentenced, you know, are my conviction. She's in
Speaker 1: there and smiling and you know, proud of what this is,
Speaker 1: what this conviction is, and what it means to her career.
Speaker 1: And then right after I lose my case, she wins
Speaker 1: you know, Attorney General. So that all tells a story,
Speaker 1: you know, just within itself. Yeah, And what a sick
Speaker 1: thing to say to your father. I mean it's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's as cold as it gets, Like it's your father,
Speaker 1: for fox sakes, So Kevin Noble. Before I went to
Speaker 1: trial and this was not turned over to us, Kevin
Speaker 1: Noble actually came in with a confidential formant saying that
Speaker 1: somebody else did it. So he was out there investigating
Speaker 1: and he found somebody saying that this person did it,
Speaker 1: and they took it and they tucked it under the rug.
Speaker 1: You know, they felt like they had their god that
Speaker 1: they was actually sold on on doing it. Joan, if
Speaker 1: you could talk about for a minute, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: get to the to the retrial, of course your ex
Speaker 1: generation because you were fully exonerated. That being said, can
Speaker 1: you tell us when you were in prison, was there
Speaker 1: a best moment when I was waiting for the courts
Speaker 1: to give their opinion on if I was gonna get
Speaker 1: a retrial or not. And they initially I came back
Speaker 1: and I'm on the phone at the same time with
Speaker 1: my appellate attorney, Mark Zilbersmith, and they did not well,
Speaker 1: they didn't deny. They changed the conviction from first degree
Speaker 1: murder to second degree murder, which I would have had
Speaker 1: from fifty years. I would have went down the forty
Speaker 1: years to life. And I'm like, WHOA, Like, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, And my sailly at the time was
Speaker 1: like that's good. I mean, they're really looking at it now.
Speaker 1: Mind you, I'm in prison for three years before I
Speaker 1: even get this opinion from the appellate courts. But I
Speaker 1: knew that until I get another descension, as you, I
Speaker 1: will be in prison for at least another two to
Speaker 1: three years because that's the time that it typically takes.
Speaker 1: So then my attorney put in a motion to review.
Speaker 1: So with this strategy at the same time, I ended
Speaker 1: up getting two witnesses to sign FFI David's testifying to
Speaker 1: what happened that day without saying the person who did it,
Speaker 1: and we filed the Haby's corpus through the Pellet court
Speaker 1: so it could go across Judge climb them table at
Speaker 1: the exact same time as our review was and to
Speaker 1: say that there's two more witnesses saying that he didn't
Speaker 1: do it. So ninety days later we got the opinion
Speaker 1: back that the judges said, you know what, you're right,
Speaker 1: and they granted a new retrial. It was a crying moment,
Speaker 1: you know, I cried like a baby, you know inside
Speaker 1: that self. Yeah, and I don't think anyone who's ever
Speaker 1: not been through that could possibly even imagine such a
Speaker 1: transformative I mean, you get your life back. Well. The well,
Speaker 1: the crazy part about it is like in that moment,
Speaker 1: you feel excited, right, but come to find out once
Speaker 1: you get back to County Jim, you just know that
Speaker 1: you don't have the life sentence no more, but you
Speaker 1: still have a whole another fight, and that's a potentially
Speaker 1: going to trial or them coming to you and offering
Speaker 1: you a deal where you're almost close to want to
Speaker 1: take that deal just so you don't have to go
Speaker 1: to trial and lose again, because at that point, you
Speaker 1: know you don't I don't believe in the system. You know,
Speaker 1: I just got convictive problem. I didn't do like you
Speaker 1: ask anybody who has a life sentence right now innocent?
Speaker 1: Are not innocent? If they had a deal on the
Speaker 1: table right now to take it and they get to
Speaker 1: come home in two years, they're taking it. So let's
Speaker 1: get to the good stuff, because we don't have a
Speaker 1: ton of time left. But I do want to, of course,
Speaker 1: talk about how you manage to finally get some measure
Speaker 1: of justice, and by that I mean, of course the
Speaker 1: retrial and your egeneration. When I got back to county,
Speaker 1: it took me a year to go back to trial.
Speaker 1: I had two extraordinary lawyers, Kate chat Field and Alex Richman.
Speaker 1: The way that we fought the case, we asked for
Speaker 1: the original homicide file and the judge granted it to us.
Speaker 1: What helped us was that they were tampering with the evidence.
Speaker 1: So when we slipped at the original homicide file, we
Speaker 1: seen that the detectives was writing in pen pencil in marker,
Speaker 1: so the ballistics of the trajectory of the bullets, it
Speaker 1: didn't fit Lula La Manga's testimony of the bullets going
Speaker 1: from the left to the right. The trajectory of the
Speaker 1: bullets went from the right to the left, and that
Speaker 1: made more sense if the shooter was coming up from
Speaker 1: the bottom into the top of the hill. So what
Speaker 1: they did was erased because they wrote in pencil. They
Speaker 1: erased everything that the autopsy lady has said about the
Speaker 1: trajectory of the bullet wounds, so they knew that that
Speaker 1: was an issue. Also, a gun shoots off the shawcases
Speaker 1: from the right, it'so in the rear percent of the time.
Speaker 1: So if she saying that this murder happened coming from
Speaker 1: this way, then the showcases will be in the street
Speaker 1: and not in a straight line in the grass from
Speaker 1: where the showcases landed, And it made more sense that
Speaker 1: the shooter was coming from the bottom into the top.
Speaker 1: So it did not match well what Lulu la Manga
Speaker 1: had actually said. So you were able to undermine the
Speaker 1: police's theory of the crime because the autopsy and ballistics
Speaker 1: findings pointed to the gunman approaching Cell Kuka from downhill,
Speaker 1: which was out of Lualamana's view. Now, what about the deliberation.
Speaker 1: Every day, within deliberation, you get to choose if you
Speaker 1: you want to stay downstairs inside the holding take, or
Speaker 1: you can stay upstairs until they come back with a verdict.
Speaker 1: I chose to stay downstairs because the deliberation rum was
Speaker 1: right next to the holding take and I'm I'm in
Speaker 1: there panic and I'm stressing, I'm pacing, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about what I'm gonna do if I win. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about what I'm gonna do if I lose. So
Speaker 1: five days later, they finally end up coming back what
Speaker 1: with a verdict? So I come downstairs. I didn't have
Speaker 1: no opportunity to call my family. Uh. They were living
Speaker 1: in the East Bay. Uh. So when I come downstairs
Speaker 1: for the verdict, the only people that are sitting on
Speaker 1: my side is my attorney's loved ones. And it's also
Speaker 1: Chase A Boudin. Chase A Boudin. I don't know who
Speaker 1: Chase Budin is at that point, right, But on the
Speaker 1: other side the whole d a's office, So Gascon was
Speaker 1: the d A at that point, right. So they're all
Speaker 1: in there waiting for the verdict, and the clerk reads
Speaker 1: off in the case of Jamal true Love on first
Speaker 1: degree murder, not guilty, and I break out in tears
Speaker 1: of crying. I hugging my attorney and I'm just crying
Speaker 1: my eyes out. I can't believe I'm really breaking down.
Speaker 1: And then my attorney says, hold on, wait, you gotta
Speaker 1: listen for second degree murder. I said what, I don't know,
Speaker 1: because I thought I wanted at that point, so oh man,
Speaker 1: it was I felt the sweat just coming down my face.
Speaker 1: And then they said, in the case of Jamal true
Speaker 1: Love on second degree murder, we find the defendant not guilty,
Speaker 1: and and I'm I'm literally feeling that right now. I'm
Speaker 1: trying not to get emotional, but when I looked over
Speaker 1: to the jury, that was the first time that they
Speaker 1: could actually show an expression on their faces. And you
Speaker 1: see them over there crying. They're giving me prayer heads,
Speaker 1: they're sending the kisses at me, you know, and all
Speaker 1: of these things, and I'm, you know, and I'm just
Speaker 1: crying my eyes out. You know. I looked back. You
Speaker 1: see all the district attorneys just leaving, you know, upset,
Speaker 1: and I'm just crying out. I'm just crying my eyes out.
Speaker 1: And even going back up to the sixth for where
Speaker 1: I was being held and telling everybody on the line,
Speaker 1: which everybody knew I was innocent, and I told her everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, I got found not guilty. The whole floor
Speaker 1: of the whole jail erupts, even some of the deputies
Speaker 1: that were you know, cool, and even the ones that
Speaker 1: was foul as funk because this hell of foul ship
Speaker 1: was trying to you know, clap their hands and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So it was a good feeling. And I
Speaker 1: went home that day. I was able to surprise my
Speaker 1: mother and you know, my family, which they didn't know
Speaker 1: if I want or not, but I popped up on
Speaker 1: them and they you know, they see me. They couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. It was more tears ship and it was
Speaker 1: the most accilating feeling to know that, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: free again today. Um, you've been out for how long?
Speaker 1: I've been out? Five years? And I've seen you around
Speaker 1: and you know, I know you're making the most of
Speaker 1: every minute of it. Um, do you want to tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about what you're working on now?
Speaker 1: And then we're gonna get to the closing of the show.
Speaker 1: I ended up suing, you know, the police. They try
Speaker 1: to offer me, you know, some money to shut up. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I held them accountable and I won my civil case.
Speaker 1: I was awarded two million dollars that ended up rounding
Speaker 1: out to be thirteen point one million, which obviously stut
Speaker 1: to get all the money. But from there on whatether
Speaker 1: So what's ironic is before I won my civil case,
Speaker 1: three days before that, I landed a role in this
Speaker 1: movie called The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which
Speaker 1: I got the opportunity by volunteering at a nonprofit called
Speaker 1: United Players. Rudy Corpetz that's my mentor, and you know
Speaker 1: the mantras, it takes the hood to save the Hood.
Speaker 1: So they were coming there to get some kids for
Speaker 1: the rock throwing scene. Here comes that opportunity. I say, look,
Speaker 1: I know how to act. I'm acting all my life,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to fit in the city where I
Speaker 1: stand out in And I think that was the line
Speaker 1: that got me the opportunity to read. Joe Talbot Jimmy
Speaker 1: Fails called me back two times after I got it.
Speaker 1: Three days later, I went my civil case and from
Speaker 1: there on I took on what I believe my life
Speaker 1: was meant to be. And before all of that, I
Speaker 1: went to school for Psychology Africana Studies at State and
Speaker 1: after one semester identified that much more of what my
Speaker 1: life was supposed to be. So when you were saying manifestation,
Speaker 1: you know, I run my life on you know, manifesto desto.
Speaker 1: If you can manifest it and you can see the
Speaker 1: steps that you gotta take to actually get there, then
Speaker 1: you take what's it a tangible right in front of you,
Speaker 1: and you make sense of it on how you ultimately
Speaker 1: get to that next plat for him. I also landed
Speaker 1: the role on this upcoming animation film called Pierre the Pigeonhawk,
Speaker 1: which has whoop and go Word, Keenan Thompson, how He Mandel,
Speaker 1: and of course myself and a slew of other names.
Speaker 1: I'm producing this film called Black and White, it's about
Speaker 1: the USC seventy two football team, and working on other projects.
Speaker 1: I launched my production company with one of my good
Speaker 1: friends and business partners, said Twili Holger called True Narrative.
Speaker 1: Also launching a record label at my son and a
Speaker 1: few other artists that's coming up that I plan on
Speaker 1: putting out there with their music. And I do a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, activism. I used my platform to
Speaker 1: to speak on you know, social issues and to bring
Speaker 1: the enlightenment to my community about you know, what we
Speaker 1: need to be doing with the voting and letting our
Speaker 1: voices be heard behind you know, specific racism behind all
Speaker 1: these police involved shootings. Know, I can't paign for Chase
Speaker 1: A Bouded now. Before I would have never in my
Speaker 1: life be a campaigning for a d A because the
Speaker 1: DA has looked at as basically the police. But once
Speaker 1: I got the understanding that there's gonna be a d
Speaker 1: A regardless, and don't you want it to be the
Speaker 1: right one. So that's what I start pressing onto my
Speaker 1: people to understand that there's gonna be a d A regardless,
Speaker 1: and we have to say so and who the d
Speaker 1: A actually is, So get out and vote. So that's
Speaker 1: everything in a nutshell. That's a pretty damn good nutshell.
Speaker 1: And you know, I gotta say I was a big
Speaker 1: supporter of Chase A. Boudin's campaign as well, and I'm
Speaker 1: super proud of everything he's been doing. You know, the
Speaker 1: truth is, we need to clone that guy and put
Speaker 1: the clones of him in d A offices all over
Speaker 1: the country. And while we're on the subject of dismantling
Speaker 1: systemic racism and all the other things that we've managed
Speaker 1: to talk about in this brief time we've had together,
Speaker 1: we can't leave out the young man who testified for
Speaker 1: you about what he's in the police station, right, And
Speaker 1: that was the guy who talked about the police coercing
Speaker 1: Lou Alamaga. His name, of course, was Oliver bar Senez
Speaker 1: and he was actually shot in the back by the police, right,
Speaker 1: Oliver Barsene is the story is really that much like
Speaker 1: we we will have to have two hours because the
Speaker 1: police shot him after he testified against me the first time,
Speaker 1: San Francisco Police Department, right when he went to prison,
Speaker 1: came home within sixty days. They shot him in the
Speaker 1: back while he was running. He had a gun on him.
Speaker 1: Right he goes to jail, he does three years, come
Speaker 1: home around the same time I come home. And then
Speaker 1: he stays home three years, get all probation, We go
Speaker 1: to trial. We actually use him to testify in my
Speaker 1: civil case. He testifies in my civil case, and within
Speaker 1: two months again SFPD again shoots him in the back
Speaker 1: while he's running. It tries to literally kill him, which
Speaker 1: he doesn't die. They had it on camera, and he
Speaker 1: actually just two weeks ago settled for less than five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars in a civil suit. And the media
Speaker 1: has not connected these at all, both cases. But what
Speaker 1: I when I know what they ended up doing. Because
Speaker 1: we know this ship is crooked, they gave a belief
Speaker 1: like a dolphine or somebody. It's called a chipped gun,
Speaker 1: so a drop a drop gun to make sure that
Speaker 1: this guns gets in this person's hands so they could
Speaker 1: go ahead and trail them ultimately to go to take
Speaker 1: them down. And when they're going to take them down,
Speaker 1: there's only two things they could do. So if they
Speaker 1: run and they got the gun on them. Then all
Speaker 1: they gotta do is kill them, and then they're gonna say, oh,
Speaker 1: well he had a gun on him. I seen the
Speaker 1: gun and bla blas the thing with Oliver, he didn't
Speaker 1: die both times. Okay, wait, wait what a chipped gun
Speaker 1: like with GPS or something. Yes, exactly what they do, right.
Speaker 1: So you know how when they do like set up cars,
Speaker 1: they'll put a car right there with the keys in
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, kind of like lure you. But
Speaker 1: they already got it all set up. Same thing with
Speaker 1: a gun, and they was doing this in the nineties, right,
Speaker 1: That's how I know about. It's called a drop gun.
Speaker 1: So they'll chip the gun, right, and they'll get this
Speaker 1: dolfine or something like that that I'll go up to
Speaker 1: a specific person or if not a person, a crowd
Speaker 1: and be like, we're gonna give you this. Go sell
Speaker 1: this gun for a hundred dollars. If you go to
Speaker 1: any projects in any hood with a dolfine with a
Speaker 1: gun saying that he's selling it for a hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: somebody's gonna buy it. And Oliver case, that's what I
Speaker 1: believe they did because the same scenario happened twice in
Speaker 1: the second time. It just so happened that they have
Speaker 1: footage on the day the Warriors won the championship. They
Speaker 1: first championship, they pull out on a group of five
Speaker 1: Latinos with one can of beer talking about, oh, what
Speaker 1: do you guys doing here? And they're like, Warriors, just
Speaker 1: one We're just chilling. It's like, oh, well, you gotta
Speaker 1: open canna beer. And as like now, at that moment,
Speaker 1: you see Oliver kind of like testy a little bit,
Speaker 1: and then actually no, he takes off running. As soon
Speaker 1: as he takes off running, the officer already pulled out
Speaker 1: his gun and start running with the gun. Before the
Speaker 1: officer could see even if he had a gun on
Speaker 1: him or not, the officer already starts shooting blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, drops him with three of them, and then
Speaker 1: shoot an extra three of them while he on the floor,
Speaker 1: saying get down, get down, and he still lives. This
Speaker 1: is the thing, though, right that same officer killed the
Speaker 1: fourteen year old boy in South San Francisco just three
Speaker 1: years prior. Wow, you're right, and we would need at
Speaker 1: least a few more hours and I'm leaving sure that'd
Speaker 1: be enough to cover all of this stuff that's coming
Speaker 1: out now. But you know, at this point, let's go
Speaker 1: to our closing argument. This is the part of the
Speaker 1: show where uh, everyone think. I think that's a part
Speaker 1: of the show everybody looks forward to. Um, I know,
Speaker 1: I do. We call it closing arguments. This is where
Speaker 1: I get to, first of all, thank you for for
Speaker 1: being here sharing your incredible story, um and uh and
Speaker 1: doing it so beautifully, and and then I get to
Speaker 1: turn my microphone off and just kick back in my chair,
Speaker 1: leave my headphones on and listen to you for any
Speaker 1: closing thoughts that you have about anything you want to
Speaker 1: talk about. My philosophy that I've got out of all
Speaker 1: of this that I that I've been through is that
Speaker 1: I don't stand for nothing because I find understanding and
Speaker 1: everything and what that is it just find a mediation.
Speaker 1: You can have an opinion, You can have an opinion
Speaker 1: on how you look at things, but also knowing that
Speaker 1: there's somebody else's opinion and you have to look at
Speaker 1: it from their lenses and identify why they're looking at
Speaker 1: it like that causing mediation. Mediation is peaceful. So if
Speaker 1: people can always look at what they're going through or
Speaker 1: their ideology of how they see things and compare it
Speaker 1: to somebody else's and find understanding in that within if
Speaker 1: it's a negative or a positive, then you'll be able
Speaker 1: to come to a common ground to understand why you're
Speaker 1: going through what you're going through and why the opposite
Speaker 1: person looks at something the way that they look at it.
Speaker 1: And that leads me to knowing that there will not
Speaker 1: be a positive for you are in this life without
Speaker 1: a negative. You have to accept every negative. Then you'll
Speaker 1: understand that me being in this positive situation right now,
Speaker 1: there's no way I get here. I could predict that
Speaker 1: I get anywhere else in life without going through the
Speaker 1: most horrific thing that somebody can actually go through, and
Speaker 1: that's being put in jail and given a death sentence
Speaker 1: that you have to live the rest of your life
Speaker 1: until you actually die on. And that leads me to
Speaker 1: the end, and that's knowing your past could better predict
Speaker 1: your future than plan it for If you know the
Speaker 1: decisions that you've made that led to a positive and
Speaker 1: the ones that led to a negative, then you will
Speaker 1: better identify where your future is actually going towards. Knowing
Speaker 1: that we all have to plan for sure, but not
Speaker 1: putting a plan so far ahead are so heavy onto
Speaker 1: your shoulders, so when you fail, you don't find understanding
Speaker 1: of why you fail, but then you'll understand it that
Speaker 1: much more by knowing why you failed before. Don't forget
Speaker 1: to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
Speaker 1: supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
Speaker 1: wrong for convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to
Speaker 1: learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The
Speaker 1: music on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Bronful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one