Speaker 1: John Jerome White received compensation for his wrongful conviction in
Speaker 1: the state of Georgia, but only after having to convince
Speaker 1: a majority of the state legislature that he deserved that compensation.
Speaker 1: At the twenty twenty three Innocance Network Conference, we spoke
Speaker 1: with John and other Georgia ex honoreies like Clarence Harrison,
Speaker 1: who also had to go through the same arduous process,
Speaker 1: and they're all in the fight to bring about change
Speaker 1: in their home state. John White, man with a common
Speaker 1: name and a very uncommon story, and we're excited to
Speaker 1: hear what you're up to now. I know you're doing
Speaker 1: some very very positive work.
Speaker 2: We've got toil states in the United States that don't
Speaker 2: have a compensation law. In Georgia one of them, Man,
Speaker 2: I've been strong with advocate they get some type of
Speaker 2: compensation law in play. That way, if I'm the guy
Speaker 2: that's coming out, it seems like she would be common
Speaker 2: knowledge that you know they did it wrong. They should
Speaker 2: rectify it.
Speaker 1: I mean, they can never rectify it because they can't
Speaker 1: give you your years of your life back. But how
Speaker 1: can you say to some buddy, oops, we locked you
Speaker 1: up for half of your life, three quarters of your life,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, but we got nothing for you when
Speaker 1: you come home.
Speaker 2: It's amazing how simpleathety they are. It's really amazing, you know.
Speaker 2: They they seem to be fighting tooths in nails to
Speaker 2: not let this happen.
Speaker 1: Let's not forget that guys like yourself spend it all
Speaker 1: that time in prison. You don't get socials. You don't
Speaker 1: qualify for any of the benefits that anybody else does
Speaker 1: just from being free.
Speaker 2: We don't got no Social Security benefit if we weren't
Speaker 2: given the opportunity to build oodle benefits. So and when
Speaker 2: we apply for them, they tell us you don't have
Speaker 2: nothing built up to receive these farms, you know. But
Speaker 2: they seem to want to keep their eye closed to
Speaker 2: the fact that, you know, their wrongs created a problem
Speaker 2: for the guy that coming out. We have plans, that's
Speaker 2: the reasons getting together and going to these capitals in
Speaker 2: these states that don't have these conversation all and lobby
Speaker 2: them for ourself and inform these people that is their
Speaker 2: responsibility to address these issues. And you know, yup in
Speaker 2: their process of uscain in a meaningful lifestyle back in society.
Speaker 1: When it comes to trying to make some kind of
Speaker 1: amends for these horrendous injustices. I'm just not sure how
Speaker 1: anyone could be against it. So when this legislation comes
Speaker 1: up for a vote, maybe keeping John's story fresh in
Speaker 1: their minds and all of our minds will help. Here's
Speaker 1: our original coverage right now. In the early morning hours
Speaker 1: of August eleventh, nineteen seventy nine, a seventy four year
Speaker 1: old woman was asleep in her den when she awoke
Speaker 1: to find a black man had broken in through the
Speaker 1: window by the light of her television. He brutalized and
Speaker 1: raped her for over an hour. After stealing seventy dollars,
Speaker 1: The assailant pulled the telephone court out of the wall
Speaker 1: and fled through the back door. When the victim finally
Speaker 1: was able to contact the police, she was taken to
Speaker 1: the hospital, but in her bloodied state, they decided against
Speaker 1: performing a rape kit. However, other biological evidence was collected
Speaker 1: from the scene. The victim helped that Georgia Bureau of
Speaker 1: Investigation develop a composite sketchet immediately. One of the investigators
Speaker 1: said that it looked like a young man named John
Speaker 1: Jerome White, who was a person of interest in a
Speaker 1: string of burglaries. They arrested John and collected physical samples
Speaker 1: from him as well as his driver's license. Even though
Speaker 1: none of the physical evidence was a match for John,
Speaker 1: the victim identified him at first in a photo array
Speaker 1: and then again at a live lineup. And after all that,
Speaker 1: how could anyone deny her gut wrench in courtroom identification?
Speaker 1: So they didn't. This is rawful conviction. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction today. We have a unique story, but not rare,
Speaker 1: and it's just as tragic every time something like this happen.
Speaker 1: Happens when a black man is misidentified by a white victim.
Speaker 1: So there's this double victimization that happens. And it was
Speaker 1: much easier for these things to happen before the dawn
Speaker 1: of DNA testing. Not that they don't still happen to it,
Speaker 1: because they do. But here to discuss the matter. As
Speaker 1: the former executive director of the Georgia Andasis Project, she's
Speaker 1: now with the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit. So, Amy Maxwell,
Speaker 1: without further ado, thank you for joining us here again
Speaker 1: on wrongful conviction. Thank you for having me and now
Speaker 1: the man she represented, mister John Jerome White. You know
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for the reason why you're here joining us today,
Speaker 1: but we are really honored to have you.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: You're very welcome. So, John, as we like to do here,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of almost a tradition. Now, we'd
Speaker 1: like to spend some time getting to know you a bit.
Speaker 1: I think our audience get to know you a bit.
Speaker 1: So can you tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: your life was like prior to all this insanity? Uh?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm from the Smile what we'd like to call
Speaker 2: it the railroad town, Uh, in Manchester, Georgia. Uh, that's
Speaker 2: in South Georgia. I'm the only boy's six girls. I
Speaker 2: was raised by my grandmother. I'd love to do things
Speaker 2: for my grandmother, you know, cut wood and working in
Speaker 2: gardens and things of that nature. You know, growed up
Speaker 2: and got a chance to experience you know, what we
Speaker 2: like to call what cross town. That's you know, the
Speaker 2: city of Manchester, you know, and I kind of got
Speaker 2: away from my grandmama, you know, hold on me and
Speaker 2: you know, making sure I was doing the right thing
Speaker 2: and thing. And during the time all this occurred, you know,
Speaker 2: I had started to do little miner burgers and things
Speaker 2: of that nature. Here around Manchester convenience stores and merchant
Speaker 2: stores like that. I was going in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2: It was going totally against the way I was brought up,
Speaker 2: you know, how it all happened to me, you know,
Speaker 2: and the way things happened. I felt like it regards
Speaker 2: way of putting that putting that roadblock in my path.
Speaker 1: Well, that sounds like one way of taking response ability
Speaker 1: for the actual wrong that you've admitted to doing in
Speaker 1: the past. And I suppose thinking of your wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: like that is a way to make peace with it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, sometimes on this show we speak with
Speaker 1: folks that are pulled completely out of obscurity to be
Speaker 1: tried for a crime that had absolutely nothing to do
Speaker 1: with But in your case, and this doesn't make it
Speaker 1: right by any means, but you were known entity the
Speaker 1: police because of those burglaries down in Manchester. But the
Speaker 1: crime in question wasn't burglary. It was rape. And you
Speaker 1: had never exhibited any sort of violence and certainly no
Speaker 1: sexual violence before. So it's really a hell of a
Speaker 1: label to get saddled with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't believe it. You know, I always been
Speaker 2: the type that you know, I respect the women you know,
Speaker 2: I was raised by my grandmother, you know, all alive
Speaker 2: that you know, that's all I've been around, you know, women,
Speaker 2: And it was kind of hard to believe that, you know,
Speaker 2: I would be in charge with, you know, the whole
Speaker 2: type of crime.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, the burglaries had you on the radar of the
Speaker 1: local police when this terrible crime occurred. And it was
Speaker 1: in the early morning hours of August eleventh, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: when a man broke into the Manchester, Georgia home of
Speaker 1: a seventy four year old woman.
Speaker 3: Well, what we know is that she was in the din.
Speaker 3: She was asleep on her couch, and she had her
Speaker 3: sheets on the couch, and she did have the light
Speaker 3: on in the kitchen, and she had her television on,
Speaker 3: so that was the only line available to her. She
Speaker 3: also wore prescription glasses and she didn't have her glasses
Speaker 3: on and someone broke in through a window in the din.
Speaker 3: He attacked her, He raped her, He brutalized her for
Speaker 3: over an hour. Then he ripped out the telephone cords
Speaker 3: out of the wall and went out the back door.
Speaker 1: He also stole seventy dollars in cash from her purse.
Speaker 1: Now she eventually called the cops and was taken to
Speaker 1: the hospital. But do I have this right that no
Speaker 1: rape kit was collected.
Speaker 3: No rape kit was collected. They said because she was
Speaker 3: so damaged during the rape, The rape was so brutal,
Speaker 3: and there was just so much blood, they made a
Speaker 3: determination that they couldn't get any viable evidence. And you know,
Speaker 3: you've got to remember back then, they were only able
Speaker 3: to do blood typing. So I think that their thought
Speaker 3: process may have been, there's so much of her blood,
Speaker 3: you know, his blood type is going to just get
Speaker 3: all mixed up in there. They may also have not
Speaker 3: wanted to got to remember, this is a small town,
Speaker 3: right They might have been concerned that she was already
Speaker 3: so traumatized that they didn't want to do any more
Speaker 3: of an examination. You know, she was seventy four years old,
Speaker 3: and I can't even imagine how she was presenting to
Speaker 3: the doctors. Obviously they should have done a sexual assault kit,
Speaker 3: they certainly would today, but they did not.
Speaker 1: And since there was no rape kit, there's no seminal evidence.
Speaker 1: But there was other blood and biological evidence at the scene,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into in a bit. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, as Amy mentioned, all we had was soerrology,
Speaker 1: which had its own limitations. DNA testing, of course, was
Speaker 1: not available yet, and I can't imagine collecting a rape
Speaker 1: kit would have been an easy thing to do with
Speaker 1: this poor seventy four year old woman in the state
Speaker 1: that she was in. But the fact that she did
Speaker 1: somehow survive, she must have been some tough lady. So
Speaker 1: what happened next in this investigation.
Speaker 3: Well, I should point out that this is such a
Speaker 3: small town that their local police didn't do the investigation.
Speaker 3: They brought in the state police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 3: And when they were collecting evidence, they collected the bed
Speaker 3: sheet that was on the couch, and the bed sheet
Speaker 3: had hairs. Now, I will say that at trial they
Speaker 3: only thought there was one hair. It turned out there
Speaker 3: were several hairs on that bed sheet, and they preserved that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I will say that at trial the hairs were discussed,
Speaker 3: to use the parlance at the time, they were negroid hairs,
Speaker 3: and that's pretty much all they could say about them.
Speaker 3: They did a microscopic examination of them and they said
Speaker 3: that they looked almost exactly alike, that they were almost
Speaker 3: positive that they were from the same person. Of course,
Speaker 3: what that is is a human eye is looking at
Speaker 3: two hairs and their pubic hair, so they're very small hairs, right,
Speaker 3: and saying, oh, yeah, they look alike, you know. And
Speaker 3: back then that was good evidence, right, Not so much.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, definitely not. We did a whole episode, by
Speaker 1: the way of Wrongful Conviction Junk Science that Josh Duben
Speaker 1: hosted about hair microscopy, and we're going to link to
Speaker 1: it in the episode bio. But to think that someone
Speaker 1: could compare hairs from a suspect and a crime scene
Speaker 1: just by looking and match them to the exclusion by
Speaker 1: the way of all other potential suspects, every anybody else,
Speaker 1: all other people on the whole planet, is absolutely bonkers. Now,
Speaker 1: remember they used to do that all the damn time. Now,
Speaker 1: they mentioned that these hairs were from a black man,
Speaker 1: as the victim had already told them, But what about
Speaker 1: this piece of skin that I read about?
Speaker 3: Yes, so apparently when the man came in through the window,
Speaker 3: he cut himself on his hand and there was literally
Speaker 3: like a triangular piece of his palm that was also
Speaker 3: recovered from the scene.
Speaker 1: And it's unclear whether or not they did seriological testing
Speaker 1: on that either. But we're going to come back to
Speaker 1: the piece of skin in a bit. But at this
Speaker 1: point they moved on to relying on cross racial identification. Now,
Speaker 1: study after study has shown, these are studies of which
Speaker 1: they used a control group that has not seen the crime,
Speaker 1: that that control group tends to be more accurate than
Speaker 1: victims or witnesses. So get this. Cross racial identification has
Speaker 1: been proven to be less accurate than guessing. So if
Speaker 1: you actually didn't even witness the crime and were shown
Speaker 1: a lineup, you'd have a better chance of picking the
Speaker 1: person just by guessing than someone who did witness the crime.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing thing, but it's true. Look it up.
Speaker 1: I encourage you.
Speaker 3: So they do a composite sketch of her attacker that
Speaker 3: she saw in the dark, the only light from the
Speaker 3: kitchen and the television while she's being traumatized. Right, So
Speaker 3: she does do a composite sketch, and there is a
Speaker 3: GBI agent who is part of the investigation. He says, hey,
Speaker 3: that looks a lot like John White. And then everything,
Speaker 3: of course, is often running at that point.
Speaker 1: So John, this wasn't a big town, so I'm sure
Speaker 1: word traveled fast at that point, had you heard about
Speaker 1: what had happened?
Speaker 2: We heard, you know, this particular lady had got raped.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't think much of it. I really didn't,
Speaker 2: you know. And when all this occurred, they was suspect
Speaker 2: me for doing those mint of burgers around town, and
Speaker 2: come to find out that they were looking for me.
Speaker 2: So I decided to just up and leave Manchester. You know,
Speaker 2: I was at the age of nineteen then, and I
Speaker 2: went to a little small town and the Corps Georgia,
Speaker 2: where I had some people, you know, some cousins staying.
Speaker 1: So this crime happened on August eleventh, and they finally
Speaker 1: caught up with you into Court, Georgia and drove you
Speaker 1: back to Meriweather County around September twenty first.
Speaker 2: On the ride back, they kept on asking me questions
Speaker 2: about this here particular crime involved in the seventy something
Speaker 2: year old lady and I had a venera disease they
Speaker 2: called goungria, And you know, being a little small addict
Speaker 2: like I was, you know, I didn't answer the question directly.
Speaker 2: You know. When they kept on asking me, I said, well,
Speaker 2: if I did it, she got goungria. They took that
Speaker 2: and I like to say they ran with it. When
Speaker 2: they got me back to the county jail. They took
Speaker 2: a house and apples ping of Prince a love s
Speaker 2: an apple blood from me, and they took my driving
Speaker 2: license and I'm a Social Security car and everything, and
Speaker 2: you know, they locked me up.
Speaker 1: So they took those samples in order to run tests
Speaker 1: on all the physical evidence that they had tried to
Speaker 1: match the hair. Like we already mentioned, they probably did
Speaker 1: some seriological testing with the patcherskin in your blood. We
Speaker 1: don't know that for sure, but that would seem like
Speaker 1: it would have been the least thing they could have done.
Speaker 1: And had any of it matched you, they would have
Speaker 1: been shouting it from the rooftops. Now they already had
Speaker 1: this composite sketch that they thought looked like you. They
Speaker 1: had to catch up with you a few towns away,
Speaker 1: and you were being held for the burglaries.
Speaker 2: My grandma came to get me out the next day. Apple,
Speaker 2: you know, had brought me back to Milweather County. That's
Speaker 2: when she was on that I would be in charge with,
Speaker 2: you know, Ray Rob reggravated so and murgery.
Speaker 1: Curiously, she got that news before they had even taken
Speaker 1: your driver's license to be viewed by the victim in
Speaker 1: an alleged photo array.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they took my driving license or
Speaker 2: they took many pictures. They say they took a photo
Speaker 2: array to her apartment, but I'm assuming they took my
Speaker 2: driver license.
Speaker 3: We don't know much about it because, of course, you know,
Speaker 3: they didn't record a lot of information. They certainly didn't
Speaker 3: record the photo array, and I don't believe we ever
Speaker 3: found that photo array did with John. I don't think
Speaker 3: we've ever seen those photos, so we don't know who
Speaker 3: else was in the photo and how well they matched,
Speaker 3: either the composite or John.
Speaker 1: Now, maybe this composite sketch looked enough like you that
Speaker 1: your likeness was already imprinted in her mind, So photo
Speaker 1: array or not, she had been primed to pick you
Speaker 1: with that come positive in mind. And it's also possible
Speaker 1: that they only brought along your driver's license rather than
Speaker 1: a number of other photos that favored your features. We
Speaker 1: don't know, but now you had been chosen from this
Speaker 1: alleged photo array, and things started going down how fast?
Speaker 2: A few you know, weeks after they did all this
Speaker 2: here they performed the line up it was just us
Speaker 2: on the room and me standing about ten feet from her,
Speaker 2: along with a few other guys. And I couldn't believe,
Speaker 2: you know, it would tick with because they brought another
Speaker 2: person up there of a place I had robbed, and
Speaker 2: she didn't pick me out, but they brained it old
Speaker 2: Lady nine, and she picked me out. Like I said,
Speaker 2: I'm quite sure that any take now one of the
Speaker 2: other guy pictures that was in that line up to her,
Speaker 2: and I'm the only somebody she had seen recently on
Speaker 2: a photo.
Speaker 1: Again, we're not sure what happened at that alleged photo lineup,
Speaker 1: as no documentation has ever been found, But I want
Speaker 1: our audience to note that I witnessed misidentification is a
Speaker 1: contributing factor in sixty nine percent of all known convictions,
Speaker 1: and in this case, we have a cross racial mis identification. So,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, in study after study, cross racial
Speaker 1: identifications are actually less accurate than guessing. But what about
Speaker 1: the robbery victim also white and that would have been
Speaker 1: the correct identification. It's crazy, but okay, so cross racial
Speaker 1: or not, she had already been primed to pick you
Speaker 1: out of the lineup by seeing your driver's license, in
Speaker 1: addition potentially to a composite sketch that may have favored
Speaker 1: you or you know, pointed towards you. I mean, nineteen seventies, Georgia.
Speaker 1: You were already known to police, and then an old
Speaker 1: white lady who had been brutally attacked identified you. I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, but I think your fate was
Speaker 1: pretty much sealed. Did you have a court appointed or
Speaker 1: a paid attorney?
Speaker 2: They gave me a quarter pointed attorney. But my mom
Speaker 2: and them, you know, they raised the money and they
Speaker 2: had you know, Sampa Bishop.
Speaker 1: And he's now a US representative, right.
Speaker 2: He was a part of the legislature back you know,
Speaker 2: when I was going to trial, they took me to trial.
Speaker 2: You know, they picked a jeer which was mainly all white.
Speaker 2: They presented the evidence. The finger pressed they said they
Speaker 2: collected at the scene of the crime. They said all
Speaker 2: of them were sponge, to the point that they couldn't
Speaker 2: get no kind of identification off of them. They say
Speaker 2: the blood test came back negative. I don't know what
Speaker 2: they had tested. I don't know they tested the skin.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it was. But the crime left
Speaker 2: in buscating said the houseyble could be mine. I know
Speaker 2: they brought up the pigmentation of a black person's hair
Speaker 2: and they said it was all of it was.
Speaker 1: Some which really this technician was testifying that the hair
Speaker 1: was a black person's and you were also black, which
Speaker 1: is just not that probative. And what was it that
Speaker 1: they tested your blood against.
Speaker 3: I don't really remember what it was they tested with
Speaker 3: the blood, I have to be honest with you. But also,
Speaker 3: you know we talked about the piece of skin, right
Speaker 3: that there was the cut, and when they picked John
Speaker 3: up five weeks later, he had a cut on his palm,
Speaker 3: and so that was another.
Speaker 1: Piece, right. But the item that they tested for blood,
Speaker 1: which the skin, was more than likely the item it
Speaker 1: excluded him. But I suppose none of this matters when
Speaker 1: you have the word of a seventy year old white
Speaker 1: lady who was a victim of a brutal assault.
Speaker 2: They actually to peak me out in court why she
Speaker 2: was on a fan.
Speaker 3: The problem with eyewitness identification is it's unreliable, but it's
Speaker 3: incredibly powerful in court. You have a now seventy five
Speaker 3: year old woman who is so traumatized the er didn't
Speaker 3: even want to do an examination of her. Get on
Speaker 3: the stand and say that's the man that did that
Speaker 3: to me. You know, the jury at that point is
Speaker 3: done right if there's a few little things that they
Speaker 3: can put together, like oh, that hair might be the same,
Speaker 3: or oh when he had a cut too, that was enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you combat that? Even pointing out
Speaker 1: that she wore glasses, that it was dark in there.
Speaker 1: It's debatable whether that helps or hurts your client. When
Speaker 1: you have an emotionally charged moment like that, how are
Speaker 1: you going to try to contradict her the victim? Right? John?
Speaker 1: At that point, did you have any hope that the
Speaker 1: jury might actually still get this right?
Speaker 2: You know, me knowing that I didn't do it, I
Speaker 2: didn't have no doubt in my mind that I was
Speaker 2: going on. I was that young, and I was so
Speaker 2: inexperienced that I thought I was going home.
Speaker 1: Can you take us back to that awful moment when
Speaker 1: they read the verdict.
Speaker 2: That it broke down and started crying. You know, I
Speaker 2: will convicted the rape, robbery, aggravated, the salt and two
Speaker 2: council burgeries. And they asked me did I have anything
Speaker 2: to say? I just said I didn't do it. When
Speaker 2: they took me back to the hole and say, well,
Speaker 2: I know, I broke down and started crying. I was
Speaker 2: corresponding with a cousin of mind. You know. He told me,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, God got his reasons for everything,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. And he said it was
Speaker 2: a reason behind it, you know for me, you know,
Speaker 2: it was a reason behind and I thought, I just
Speaker 2: thought that reason behind it, you know, I just accepted
Speaker 2: it at God will, and I moved forward. I couldn't
Speaker 2: go through that their time, all that time that they
Speaker 2: gave me feeling some type of way, and I just
Speaker 2: had to learn how to how to survive inside the contention.
Speaker 2: I found what they call it jail house attorney, and
Speaker 2: we tried, you know, by fuing ahabor Corpus against my
Speaker 2: lawyer that he didn't represent me right. We had requested,
Speaker 2: you know, from a transcript and all that everything that
Speaker 2: pertained into my trial. But they, you know, the time
Speaker 2: of mayor, wealla didn't send me anything but a transfer.
Speaker 2: They said they didn't have nothing else to send me.
Speaker 2: And we buy ourselves an assistant accounseling and they denied that.
Speaker 2: So I pretty much lay down on it from that
Speaker 2: point on.
Speaker 1: So at that time, it was much easier to be
Speaker 1: granted parole even with a sentence like yours, which was
Speaker 1: life plus sixty years. And usually, let's face it, they're
Speaker 1: not going to grant you parole without an admission of
Speaker 1: guilt and a show of remorse, even if you didn't
Speaker 1: commit the crime. That that's that's a detail gets washed away.
Speaker 1: But it appears that they may have actually believed in
Speaker 1: your innocence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after I want to say, eleven years, I came
Speaker 2: up a parole. They told me, in order to make
Speaker 2: parole that I would have to do some type of
Speaker 2: sex offlinal program. And I told the lady that, you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't do it, mister White. Unless you'd get in
Speaker 2: some sex offlinal program, you ain't gonna get out of jail.
Speaker 2: So they sent me to Metro up here in Atlanta, George,
Speaker 2: where they had the programs there. And my mamma came
Speaker 2: up and she says, go on, get in this program
Speaker 2: if it gonna help you get out, even you had
Speaker 2: to tell a lie. And they told me to cry
Speaker 2: till you for getting in the safe Defending program, which
Speaker 2: you had to describe what to play during the crime.
Speaker 2: And so I told him, man you know, I can't
Speaker 2: do that. I say, I can't imagine what took play
Speaker 2: doing this stair crime. You know, I couldn't make that
Speaker 2: lie up. So I basically had just just gave it
Speaker 2: up again, you know. And uh So one day I
Speaker 2: came in from work and the warden called me to
Speaker 2: his office at me, he aad me why I was
Speaker 2: at his institution, and I told him that they had
Speaker 2: something he there participate in the safe shphical program and
Speaker 2: that I couldn't you know, participate in because I couldn't
Speaker 2: describe the crime. So he's something on back to the
Speaker 2: dormator and some strange things occurred there. Told me to
Speaker 2: pack my stuff up, that I was going to Hospital
Speaker 2: lie and Augusta, Georgia for a year proud I had
Speaker 2: opposcopic survey then on my knee. So one of the
Speaker 2: inmates that was coming in from work helping to notice
Speaker 2: a piece of paper that had all the transfers on
Speaker 2: and everything, and he told me that said, John, you
Speaker 2: weren't going to Augusta Medical Hospital. Say you going to
Speaker 2: constantly on Haldway House. And it totally shocked me that
Speaker 2: they're all finna get out of prison.
Speaker 1: That the par board cut you a brake or was
Speaker 1: it the warden points of strings? I don't know, And
Speaker 1: no one told you.
Speaker 2: Nobody told them.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's weird. So you got paroled, I guess. And
Speaker 1: now you were starting out on a tough road to
Speaker 1: reacclimate into society. There are a lot of obstacles to
Speaker 1: employment and getting IDs and things like that, and those
Speaker 1: are some of the many reasons why recidivism rates can
Speaker 1: be as high as they are in some places. Not
Speaker 1: to mention that you turned to burglary in the past,
Speaker 1: and so where and how did you start that journey?
Speaker 2: When I first got out, I was up in Atlanta
Speaker 2: in the halfway house. I parode out of there to
Speaker 2: room and house. I got tired of the room and house,
Speaker 2: and I moved to moved to manchouse.
Speaker 1: Did you move back in with your mom? Your grandma?
Speaker 2: My mom? My grandma had passed while I was incarcerated.
Speaker 1: Sorry to hear that, But luckily you still had some family,
Speaker 1: right Were your sisters around now?
Speaker 2: Most of them had, they had married, they moved on.
Speaker 2: It was most of just me and my mom and
Speaker 2: my dad was still living at the time, and my niece, you.
Speaker 3: Know, John got the opportunity to come out on parole,
Speaker 3: but he came out as a sex offender, right, who
Speaker 3: hires a sex offender? You know, it was a struggle
Speaker 3: when he was out on parole.
Speaker 1: So what did you do for work? And I understand
Speaker 1: you eventually went back to prison.
Speaker 2: When I was dying back down here, I was doing
Speaker 2: odds and then work. And one day I was at
Speaker 2: McDonald's and seeing this guy and he pulled his wallet
Speaker 2: out and he had a lot of money in it,
Speaker 2: and me and another guy follow him, and Robin, the
Speaker 2: other guy got caught up some kind of way, and
Speaker 2: he told you know what that appened, And I turned
Speaker 2: myself in again and I revoked my parole and saw
Speaker 2: me back. I talked with the DA. He gave me
Speaker 2: ten years ran into what I already had, and that
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have no kind of negative recommendation towards if
Speaker 2: I was to come up with parole again.
Speaker 1: Well, I can't say a lot of people are going
Speaker 1: to have a ton of sympathy for you on that situation.
Speaker 1: But it's like you said earlier about how you made
Speaker 1: peace with your wrongful conviction. You kind of felt deserving
Speaker 1: of it because of the wrong that you had done.
Speaker 1: And I want to point out that in nabbing the
Speaker 1: wrong guy for that ultra violent rape and robber all
Speaker 1: those years ago, this did a really terrible disservice the
Speaker 1: entire community, not least of which to the victim, because
Speaker 1: the real perpetrator was still free. So now it's nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven year back to serve out this new sentence
Speaker 1: and your old one. And it's not until about four
Speaker 1: years later when the amazing Amy Maxwell became the founding
Speaker 1: executive director of the Georgia Innisces Project. Can you run
Speaker 1: through how you all came upon John's case?
Speaker 3: The Georgia nisis Project started in two thousand one. Obviously
Speaker 3: we got cases coming to us fairly quickly. But as
Speaker 3: we were working on the cases, I started thinking, well,
Speaker 3: what about all those people who don't know that we
Speaker 3: could look at the cases. What about those people who've
Speaker 3: not heard that we exist? So in two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: first of all, we tried to go through the prison
Speaker 3: hierarchy and try to get notices posted in prison, and
Speaker 3: they wouldn't do that. So what we did is we
Speaker 3: went through the Department of Corrections website and found everybody
Speaker 3: who was in prison for rape and sent them a letter.
Speaker 3: We sent about twelve hundred letters and we got about
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty, so we got about ten percent
Speaker 3: return on our letter. And John was actually one of them.
Speaker 2: I didn't I really didn't even know what to write,
Speaker 2: but I wrote it won a week or so late today, Aim,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna responding.
Speaker 3: We looked at his evidence and the hair evidence. They
Speaker 3: only really talked about one hair that they compared, and
Speaker 3: so we were under the impression from the crime lab
Speaker 3: report and from the testimony that there was only the
Speaker 3: one hair. But most importantly, we were trying to find
Speaker 3: that piece of flesh. In fact, we called it the
Speaker 3: piece of flesh case, right, because it was such an
Speaker 3: unusual piece of evidence. You know, this was a straight
Speaker 3: up If we could find this evidence, we would know
Speaker 3: who the perpetrator was. So I had an intern that
Speaker 3: went down to Meriwether County looking for that piece of flesh.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We just could not find it. We couldn't find it
Speaker 3: at the GBI, we couldn't find it anywhere, and so
Speaker 3: we just just kept on. It's hard people tell you
Speaker 3: that the evidence doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Or they just haven't looked at all because either they
Speaker 1: didn't care or they were instructed to ignore such requestions.
Speaker 3: Well, there might be that. So finally we went in
Speaker 3: person to the clerk's office and what they ended up
Speaker 3: finding was not the piece of flesh, but there were
Speaker 3: several of their hairs from the crime scene. Now, let
Speaker 3: me just say that hair are they're good evidence.
Speaker 1: If they're good evidence, right, if the hairs are pulled
Speaker 1: out from the root, then a DNA profile can be developed, right,
Speaker 1: if they.
Speaker 3: Can give us information. But there's also I mean, there
Speaker 3: could be other reasons hairs were there. There was another
Speaker 3: Georgia case that involved hairs, and the theory was that
Speaker 3: she did her wash at the laundromat and she might
Speaker 3: have picked up some random hairs there, which, of course,
Speaker 3: these are pubic hairs, right, Why are you picking up
Speaker 3: pubic hairs at the laundry. So anyway, but we were
Speaker 3: we were concerned. You know, if these hairs didn't match John,
Speaker 3: that helped us, but it might not walk him out
Speaker 3: of prison. So we you know, had to tell John,
Speaker 3: we've got these hairs we're going to test on. But
Speaker 3: so we sent those hairs for DNA testing and we
Speaker 3: find out that the hairs don't match John, and we
Speaker 3: all pile in the car to staff members and our intern,
Speaker 3: Cliff Williams. Cliff had been working on the case almost
Speaker 3: from the beginning. I can't where were you, John, I
Speaker 3: can't even remember where you were.
Speaker 2: Macon State Prison.
Speaker 3: So it's like two hours away. We get there and
Speaker 3: we're getting all we're putting all of our stuff in
Speaker 3: the trunk because you know, you can't take anything into
Speaker 3: the prison with you, and I get a call from
Speaker 3: the GBI and they tell me that there's been a
Speaker 3: CODIS match. And I'm standing in the parking lot going,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh. We were just going down to tell
Speaker 3: him we got the DNA but to hold on. And
Speaker 3: I thought, oh my god, we're going to get to
Speaker 3: go in and tell him he's coming home. And I said,
Speaker 3: who didn't match? He goes, oh, it matched a man
Speaker 3: named James Parum. And at that point my intern goes,
Speaker 3: James Parham, I think he was a suspect in this case.
Speaker 3: So he pulls out the box, you know, because we
Speaker 3: of course carry John's White's box all the way to
Speaker 3: the prison with us, you know, his file, and he's
Speaker 3: going through the file and he pulls out the photo
Speaker 3: of the live lineup, turns it over and James Parum
Speaker 3: is actually in the lineup where she picks John White
Speaker 3: instead of James Parum. So we don't even know what
Speaker 3: to do with all this, right, So we get to
Speaker 3: go in and tell John all of this information, and
Speaker 3: I'm like John, and don't know how quickly you're coming home,
Speaker 3: but you're coming home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at the photo right now and we're
Speaker 1: gonna link to it from the bio. I mean, oh
Speaker 1: my god, Like John is in the number three spot
Speaker 1: of course because he was the target. And James Parham
Speaker 1: sure enough, is right there in number five right.
Speaker 2: Oh, actually you know Edie institution now was there? Me
Speaker 2: and it were roommates that I am.
Speaker 1: A a one what Yeah, Oh my god, I'm rarely
Speaker 1: at a loss for words, but that's insane.
Speaker 2: It was a scrangy thing. He helped throughout at my
Speaker 2: whole a journey because he was in the same room
Speaker 2: up with me, and I ended up with his Bible
Speaker 2: when I got out, it had the name on it.
Speaker 2: I gave it back to it sister to get him.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Amy came down and told me about I
Speaker 2: was getting out. And when they did come to get
Speaker 2: me out, they came back. They rushed back there because
Speaker 2: they didn't want no media down at the institution. They
Speaker 2: rushed me in, wanted to know it was anybody come
Speaker 2: get me. And they went downtown and bought me some
Speaker 2: clothes and made sure I was dressed. And when my
Speaker 2: mom and them came to get me, and they they
Speaker 2: shook me on the way as quick as they can
Speaker 2: get me away from there.
Speaker 1: So, Amy, what were the machinations that you had to
Speaker 1: go through to finish the job and get him home?
Speaker 3: Well, it was so quick. So you know, we get
Speaker 3: all the information, but so does the district attorney. And
Speaker 3: so of course when the district's attorney, and at that
Speaker 3: time it was Pete Scandalacus, who is now the head
Speaker 3: of the Prosecuting Attorney's Council here in Georgia, and he
Speaker 3: saw what we saw. And of course I'm on the
Speaker 3: phone with him on the way back from the and
Speaker 3: I'm like, Pete, they got a codus match, what are
Speaker 3: you gonna do? And he contacted the prison and honestly,
Speaker 3: John John's family got the notice to come pick him up.
Speaker 3: But literally four days later his folks are on the
Speaker 3: way down to Oglethorpe, Georgia to pick him up.
Speaker 1: So John was hum So John, what was your first meal?
Speaker 1: Where did you go? What did you what did you do?
Speaker 2: It was like a blur. It was like a blur.
Speaker 2: I can't remember too much of the only thing I
Speaker 2: can remember looking back, when we passed the prills and
Speaker 2: going out, I think I went to sleep. I think
Speaker 2: I went to sleep because somebody were happening. We went
Speaker 2: by some my sister house and then we went straight
Speaker 2: to Atlanta. But press conferences and sayings of that nature.
Speaker 2: And I had me some fride grade tomatoes, had some
Speaker 2: some ochre. I've had been warnings. And I remember that
Speaker 2: night that I got up and I walked. I walked
Speaker 2: up to a restaurant and this guy a chance just
Speaker 2: look up at the sky, you know, and look at
Speaker 2: the stalls and things, and just it's well, I could
Speaker 2: just see beyond that, you know, I could get a
Speaker 2: chance to see the sky, you know, in the stall
Speaker 2: and in the moon. Some of you didn't very often.
Speaker 2: You didn't get to see too much of why you
Speaker 2: was any pen attention.
Speaker 1: So James Parham played guilty who since to twenty years
Speaker 1: in prison on this rape. Right, and then in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, the Georgia legislature authorized the payment of
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand dollars in compensation to Hugh. Now, no
Speaker 1: amount of money would ever be enough, and that's not
Speaker 1: even I mean, that's that number is tiny compared to
Speaker 1: what it should be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, Georgia don't have a compensation law.
Speaker 2: And I got five hundred thousand dollars a conversation with
Speaker 2: prescriptions that I gotta maintain some type of employment. I
Speaker 2: got submit to drug tests and every so often I
Speaker 2: can't catch another fella there though, I'll lose my conversation.
Speaker 2: I believe they put those stipulations in it because they
Speaker 2: don't want to get it, They don't want to give
Speaker 2: me any money, and that it was done for me
Speaker 2: to fail. You know, we asked for a million and something,
Speaker 2: they got it down to seven and fifty thousand. It
Speaker 2: passed one body of our legislature, then it went to
Speaker 2: the other body of our legislation and they rejected it.
Speaker 2: They revised it, and they agreed to all these stipulations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's just crazy to me that anybody
Speaker 1: could look at someone in your shoes and not have
Speaker 1: an instinct to immediately want to help, but rather their
Speaker 1: first instinct is I'm gonna fight this. I'm gonna fight
Speaker 1: to not write this wrong, to keep this wrong as
Speaker 1: wrong as it could be. Is there anything our audience
Speaker 1: can do for you, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right now? Give them this opportunity to say what
Speaker 2: I'm about to say, I never you know, go vote.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Get these unsimpensated people that
Speaker 2: that's a part of our legislators wave up there so
Speaker 2: we can't get some of the bill path that would
Speaker 2: that a and us getting you know, the support we
Speaker 2: need not only me, but other people that's in then
Speaker 2: you know, the similar situations yea, you know, I you know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna look out for me, but that's what we need.
Speaker 2: We need voters, We need those people that's in office
Speaker 2: that that's that's voting against this. It change to be removed.
Speaker 1: I hope our audience really takes those words to heart.
Speaker 1: And what about you, Amy, any call to action for
Speaker 1: our audience, Well.
Speaker 3: I think folks can obviously follow the Georgia Innocence Project,
Speaker 3: particularly about the legislation, but there is also an ex
Speaker 3: Hognery fund, so if folks wanted to donate to the
Speaker 3: Georgia Edocence Project, they could donate and specify that it's
Speaker 3: for the Exignery Fund. That would be great.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we'll have those action steps linked in the bio,
Speaker 1: which brings us to my favorite part of the show.
Speaker 1: It's called, of course, closing arguments, and this is the
Speaker 1: part of the show where I thank you both for
Speaker 1: being here and just sharing this unbelievable, horrible story. And
Speaker 1: with that, I'm going to kick back in my chair,
Speaker 1: turn my microphone off, leave my headphones on, and close
Speaker 1: my eyes and just listen for anything else you want
Speaker 1: to share with me and our amazing audience.
Speaker 3: I would highly recommend people google the live lineup photo
Speaker 3: in John's case. When you get a chance to look
Speaker 3: at the live lineup, you're going to see how different
Speaker 3: James Parham looked from everybody else in that lineup. And
Speaker 3: it just goes to show how incredibly difficult it is
Speaker 3: to deal with eyewitness identification. I mean, the actual perpetrator
Speaker 3: was there live in front of her, and she still
Speaker 3: picked the wrong man. So I think that we all
Speaker 3: need to be very cautious because, as we said earlier,
Speaker 3: when the eyewindness takes the standard trial and says that's
Speaker 3: the person. It is incredibly powerful, but we need to
Speaker 3: be very careful. The other thing is how really hard
Speaker 3: it is to come out of prison. You know, even
Speaker 3: though he comes out of prison an innocent man, prison
Speaker 3: does a number on you. Prison physically changes you, you
Speaker 3: and mentally for sure changes you. And there's really no
Speaker 3: support other than the people who rally around him. So,
Speaker 3: you know, we've got to got to do better because
Speaker 3: people are going to come out of prison and we
Speaker 3: want them to be able to succeed or they're going
Speaker 3: to What's going to happen is their struggle and they
Speaker 3: end up committing a crime because they're struggling.
Speaker 2: I'm there, I'm thankful. I'm thank buy, you know. I
Speaker 2: love and her determination to start to answer the project.
Speaker 2: My experience being incost rated, it's like PGSD soldiers. I
Speaker 2: don't have too much trust for nobody. I'm pretty much
Speaker 2: a loner. I don't you know. I don't deal with
Speaker 2: a whole lot of people. It's hard. It's hard, and
Speaker 2: I just want the government to step up to the
Speaker 2: plate and establish our social security benefits, our medical benefits
Speaker 2: and make these things are possible, so we can you know,
Speaker 2: at least live, you know, when we do get sick
Speaker 2: or something like that, that we can go see a doctor.
Speaker 2: We constantly being denied either easier benefit because we were
Speaker 2: wrongly convicted. We weren't given an opportunity to build up
Speaker 2: to you know, to have no kind of social security
Speaker 2: in our benefits built up, it would take them from us,
Speaker 2: so it still be given back to us. That's what
Speaker 2: I want.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Kleibern, and Kevin Wardis,
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
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Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is
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