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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Long Shot, a production of McClatchy Studios

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Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio. I'm executive producer Davin Coburn. This

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Speaker 1: is a bonus feature for a return man, taking you

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Speaker 1: behind the scenes of a reporting process that lasted more

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Speaker 1: than three years. Having listened to the show, audiences will

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Speaker 1: know that we have far more context now for the

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Speaker 1: events of October two. It involves rates the mental state

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Speaker 1: of the person and a town that was scared to

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Speaker 1: death to say anything, but it's not clear we have

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Speaker 1: actual answers yet about what happened in the Lancaster police station.

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Speaker 1: They say he committed suicia, but basically as you heard

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Speaker 1: in Part eight, Paula Johnson and her team at Syracuse

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Speaker 1: University's Cold Case Justice Initiative could soon work to change that,

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Speaker 1: bringing legal expertise to the case. Brett McCormick and our

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Speaker 1: production team investigated as reporters. Sometimes our training may lead

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Speaker 1: us to find that something raises an issue for us

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Speaker 1: that journalists may not pick up on. At the time

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Speaker 1: of Jim Duncan's death, no outside organizations investigated the shooting,

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Speaker 1: and we initially reached out to Johnson to see if

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Speaker 1: her team at C c J I might have done

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Speaker 1: so more recently, Johnson told us they hadn't and we

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Speaker 1: did not collaborate with her team on this project. But

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Speaker 1: after reading the few publicly available stories about Duncan's death,

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Speaker 1: Johnson told us she too had many questions and that

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Speaker 1: her team might now begin looking into it. I had

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Speaker 1: the chance to speak with Johnson at length about how

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Speaker 1: her team of student volunteers approaches these investigations, what could

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Speaker 1: come next in Duncan's case, and that elusive concept of closure.

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Speaker 1: This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. My

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Speaker 1: name is Policy Johnson. I am Professor of Law at

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Speaker 1: Syracuse University College of Law. I am also the director

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Speaker 1: of the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Sarcus University College

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Speaker 1: of Law. Our work is to assist families and speaking

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Speaker 1: information and justice and accountability for racially motivated killings of

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Speaker 1: their loved ones that have not been solved and no

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Speaker 1: one has been held to answer for those crimes. When

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Speaker 1: Jim Duncan died, there were a few stories written in

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Speaker 1: national publications like Jet Magazine in the New York Times,

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Speaker 1: but that was about it. What was your reaction to

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Speaker 1: reading some of those stories? It clearly seems like they

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Speaker 1: raised some questions for you the way they did for us. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I mean I having read the Jet magazine piece, having

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Speaker 1: looked at the New York Times piece, you know, and

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Speaker 1: just having a sense of, um, the kinds of suspensions

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Speaker 1: that are raised by this pace. You know, there are

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Speaker 1: more areas that we would want to look into, you know,

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Speaker 1: what his experiences were, what his demeanor was, at least

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Speaker 1: relevant times. It was very interesting to see the different

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Speaker 1: accounts about what was going on, you know, for Mr

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Speaker 1: Duncan with respect to drugs, and that needn't be you know,

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Speaker 1: really here or there as opposed to the most pivotal

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Speaker 1: part of this, and that is when he goes into

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Speaker 1: the police station. I mean, he's really curious to me,

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Speaker 1: for instance, that he walked in there and didn't say

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Speaker 1: anything to anyone. It just doesn't quite made sense to me. Now,

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Speaker 1: I've got the impression from what I've read that you know,

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Speaker 1: there were some real issues, racial issues in terms of

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Speaker 1: the police department and the rest of the community, and

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Speaker 1: so whatever has been documented, or even those things that

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Speaker 1: have not been documented but that people would be willing

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Speaker 1: to discuss. I think those things are really critical with

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Speaker 1: respect to the black community and would appear to be

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Speaker 1: a pretty all white or largely white police force in

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Speaker 1: that community. I mean, I could go on and on

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Speaker 1: about the kinds of things we want to know, but

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Speaker 1: that's the sort of thing that we want to be

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Speaker 1: able to learn more about. At times in the past,

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Speaker 1: C c J I has collaborated with reporters. How do

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Speaker 1: you think journalists and lawyers approach these sorts of investigations differently. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: One of the things that you know, we would do

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Speaker 1: as an initial matter is to read everything that we

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Speaker 1: can get our hands on that's available in the public sphere.

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Speaker 1: That includes any reportage that has taken place, you know, print, broadcast,

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Speaker 1: you name it, and we would begin to identify a

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Speaker 1: list of people that may have some knowledge or may

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Speaker 1: have some impressions. We'd want to talk to those people.

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Speaker 1: But beyond that, we would um look into any kind

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Speaker 1: of documents that may be part of the legal investigation

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Speaker 1: aspect of this, and that sometimes we will require um

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Speaker 1: certainly fo your request. And you know that's something that

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Speaker 1: we would do. Now, you know, we ourselves are not prosecutors,

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Speaker 1: and so what we try to do is put that

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Speaker 1: information in some kind of report, and if it looks

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Speaker 1: as though there was something, you know, criminal involved, then

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Speaker 1: we present that to the relevant authorities. They may be

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Speaker 1: local prosecutors, they may be federal or state prosecutors, you know,

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Speaker 1: but as attorneys we kind of speak that language and

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Speaker 1: understand what kinds of things would be important for them

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Speaker 1: to take that and say maybe we'll convene a grand

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Speaker 1: jury or take this at that point. But it's all

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Speaker 1: about really the comprehensiveness and the thoroughness of following every lead,

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Speaker 1: and you know, and it's stuffing that I tell the

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Speaker 1: students all the time, and that is, don't draw conclusions

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Speaker 1: on things before we get as much information as we can,

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Speaker 1: because something may seem to be insignificant, but we can't

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Speaker 1: player that it's insignificance unless we have followed it, and

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Speaker 1: only then are we able to dismiss it as something

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Speaker 1: that really may have no bearing on the situation. So,

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Speaker 1: as lawyers, then your team would take on a family member,

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Speaker 1: in this case, a family member of Jim Duncan's as

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Speaker 1: a client. Is that right? Yeah? Generally speaking, very often

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Speaker 1: what happens is that a family member will contact us

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Speaker 1: or a community member will say it's been However, many

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Speaker 1: decades and law enforcement has said one thing, we've never

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Speaker 1: quite believed that or we think that there is more

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Speaker 1: to be discovered about this. Can you help us? And

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Speaker 1: so we yes, we take on you know, that matter,

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Speaker 1: and we are doing that on behalf of the families,

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Speaker 1: you know, to try to help a mass as much

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Speaker 1: information and create some sort of case, you know, profile

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Speaker 1: as to what we think has happened. And by definition,

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Speaker 1: your team is looking into cases that are decades old.

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Speaker 1: That means paperwork and other evidence could have been destroyed,

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Speaker 1: things simply get lost over time. How do you handle that?

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Speaker 1: How does your team make a case out of evidence

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Speaker 1: that may no longer exist. Well, I mean that's the

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Speaker 1: most difficult thing with cases that are defined as old cases.

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Speaker 1: When you're talking about something that's forty or more years old,

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Speaker 1: people have passed away, documents have been you know, lost

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Speaker 1: just in the process of moving. And so sometimes we

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Speaker 1: really are looking for a needle in a haystack. So

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Speaker 1: that becomes a very difficult task. It's very meticulous to

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Speaker 1: have to go through it. And again, as I say,

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Speaker 1: for our students, sometimes you don't even know what you're

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Speaker 1: looking for, right, you simply know that you're looking for

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Speaker 1: something that suggests that it is connected to the main inquiry,

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Speaker 1: and so that process can be quite difficult. And even

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Speaker 1: if there might not be a satisfying lead resolution to

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Speaker 1: one of your cases, is it fair to say that

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Speaker 1: family and friends just getting more clarity on what actually

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Speaker 1: happened begins to provide a little bit more closure. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The word closure in these contexts I find to be

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Speaker 1: a very loaded term because in a number of instances,

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Speaker 1: people will ask us, why are you continuing to look

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Speaker 1: into these cases that are decades old? Right? Why don't you?

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Speaker 1: And by you, what is really mental is why don't

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Speaker 1: these families just move on? Right? It's been fifty years,

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Speaker 1: don't stay stuck in the past. And our response to

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Speaker 1: that is, to the extent that the families do not

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Speaker 1: have as much information as is possible to obtain about

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Speaker 1: what happened to their loved one, there is no moving

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Speaker 1: on right. There is is no closure because it remains

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Speaker 1: an open wool. Certainly, people go on with their lives,

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Speaker 1: but it does mean that there is something that has

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Speaker 1: not been determined and they want for there to be

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Speaker 1: something final about it, and that finality is a sense

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Speaker 1: of justice. If someone is responsible for taking someone else's

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Speaker 1: life or for propagating a story that is not accurate,

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Speaker 1: you know, if they are shielding other people who participated

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Speaker 1: and so are responsible. The families deserve to know that.

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Speaker 1: Whole communities deserve to know that. You know, those things

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Speaker 1: were done as messages to entire black community, and so

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Speaker 1: the closure, so to speak, goes beyond any particular family member,

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Speaker 1: any particular community. This is a demand for justice for

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Speaker 1: the entire American society. We'll be right back after the break.

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Speaker 1: When you take on a case, how long do these

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Speaker 1: investigations take? How much time are you and your students

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Speaker 1: going to be investing in it? Well, you know, the

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Speaker 1: time frames always differ with respect to the cases, and

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Speaker 1: we've been working with some for upwards of but you know,

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Speaker 1: a decade ourselves. I really should put it this way.

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Speaker 1: The information is there because there are people who are knowledgeable,

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Speaker 1: right and so if the people who are knowledgeable would

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Speaker 1: come forward, that would make our work exceedingly less difficult.

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Speaker 1: But to the extent that that is not availing, we

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Speaker 1: have to try to find it, you know, when we

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Speaker 1: have the wherewithal the means, the time. So much of

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Speaker 1: this really requires footwork. Just do it sitting at a

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Speaker 1: desk and getting to know people bry, developing a rapport

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Speaker 1: so that they will be willing to speak with you.

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Speaker 1: You know, you don't you simply don't just go to

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Speaker 1: folks and and really, you know, trying to ask them

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Speaker 1: about one of, if not the most harrowing experiences that

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Speaker 1: they have had in their own lives. I have to

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Speaker 1: spend time with people before they have a reason to

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Speaker 1: trust you. And that's simply the human dimension of it.

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Speaker 1: There has to be empathy and compassion even as you

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Speaker 1: are trying to gather information. So it's a constant process

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Speaker 1: of visiting and revisiting and going back over territory that

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Speaker 1: you may have covered before to see if it leads

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Speaker 1: you to something else, and when it does, to follow

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Speaker 1: those paths as well. C c j I has a

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Speaker 1: very specific commission, what was the genesis of this program

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Speaker 1: and why did you feel like these particular kinds of

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Speaker 1: cases were important to be focusing on. In the first

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Speaker 1: Emmett Till Act was passed in two thousand and seven,

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Speaker 1: really signed into law in two thousand eight. We began

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Speaker 1: to look into this and my co director Janice McDonald,

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Speaker 1: who was now an America professor at the College of Law,

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Speaker 1: was in Faraday, Louisiana, and she and a journalist, Stanley Nelson,

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Speaker 1: had struck up a conversation and he was looking into

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Speaker 1: the death of a man named Frank Morris. Mr Morris

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Speaker 1: had been killed in December of nineteen sixty four when

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Speaker 1: three white men had come to his shop instead of

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Speaker 1: a flame, and its believed that the people who set

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Speaker 1: his shoe shop of flame were members of the local

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Speaker 1: law enforcement and possibly planned members as well. So, as

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Speaker 1: you know, Professor McDonald and Stanley Morris were discussing this,

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Speaker 1: he mentioned that the family was really interested in getting

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Speaker 1: more information that he, as a journalist, didn't feel that

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Speaker 1: he might be able to provide for them, and would

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Speaker 1: we be willing to, you know, talk to the family

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Speaker 1: and see what we as lawyers might be able to do.

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Speaker 1: And from there we began to notice that there were

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Speaker 1: other cases that hadn't been solved. And as we began

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Speaker 1: to travel, people began to become aware of the work

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Speaker 1: we were doing. And whenever we would make these trips,

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Speaker 1: you know, invariably people would come to us and say,

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Speaker 1: you know, something suspicious happened about our family members death.

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Speaker 1: We never accepted what was told to us, you know,

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Speaker 1: the official story. Would you be able to help our

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Speaker 1: family as well? And so that is how it just grew.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it just grew. There just so many of

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Speaker 1: the instances and from there we actually, you know, we

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Speaker 1: created a course look at racial history legal analysis, you know,

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Speaker 1: around the work that we were doing, and so the

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Speaker 1: project itself blossomed from that. We'll be back after the break.

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Speaker 1: I've seen it in the past few years, you've taken

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Speaker 1: students to the King Center in Atlanta and other historic

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Speaker 1: locations in the civil rights movement. For your students today,

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Speaker 1: what's their understanding of events that happened fifty or sixty

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Speaker 1: years ago, Yes, we did. Part of the work with

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Speaker 1: the students is that the civil rights era, you know,

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Speaker 1: as we understand that from the say, you know, mid

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Speaker 1: to late nineties fifties to the mid seventies, with a

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Speaker 1: concentration in the nineteen sixties, is something that this younger

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Speaker 1: generation of students don't know as as a first hand

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Speaker 1: matter and have not generally been taught about it in

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Speaker 1: their secondary or even undergraduate educations. So so much of

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Speaker 1: what we have done in the course of working on

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Speaker 1: the cases has been also educating our students about this

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Speaker 1: era in American history. I mean, they certainly knew that

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Speaker 1: there's racial discrimination in the United States, but they didn't

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Speaker 1: have the kind of in depth awareness that this was

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Speaker 1: so endemic in American society and what that meant. Some

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Speaker 1: of you may be familiar with the Emmett Till case interview,

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Speaker 1: familiar with at least the name Emmett Till in Mississippi

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Speaker 1: in nine fourteen year old youth, young person who was

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Speaker 1: As they were reading through the accounts, sometimes the students

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Speaker 1: would come back to us and say they sometimes couldn't

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Speaker 1: tell whether they were reading something from the present or

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Speaker 1: something back in the nineties sixties, because the stories and

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Speaker 1: the accounts sounded so familiar to something that they heard

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Speaker 1: on the news just days before. It has always been

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Speaker 1: the families who have insisted that the world, that government officials,

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Speaker 1: that the entities, and the apparatus of society and law

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Speaker 1: enforcement take notice of these events, that the lives of

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Speaker 1: their loved ones, of their children matter, and that they

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Speaker 1: matter in the places where other people's lives matter. And so,

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Speaker 1: you know, this was part of the education for them

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Speaker 1: to understand that to some degree, there was an unbroken

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Speaker 1: chain in these racially motivated killings. So we took the

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Speaker 1: students to ad and we've taken them to Mississippi so

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Speaker 1: that they would get a first hand understanding of what

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Speaker 1: had happened in US history. Now. I think the Atlanta

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Speaker 1: trip that you're also referred to was one in which

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Speaker 1: c c j I and Syracuse University sponsored a retreat

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Speaker 1: or the family members of victims of racially motivated crime seats.

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Speaker 1: What you will hear this evening are from several family

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Speaker 1: members who will speak with you briefly about the experiences

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Speaker 1: that they've had in their families. And we had a

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Speaker 1: public forum at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and as you know,

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Speaker 1: that was Dr King's church. So there was a public

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Speaker 1: forum where we talked about the work. We talked about

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Speaker 1: the emotional and you know, psychological aspects of racial trauma.

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Speaker 1: We know that this isn't all about law. We know

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Speaker 1: that the family's needs go beyond simply making sure that

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Speaker 1: there is say a conviction, or there is even a

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Speaker 1: civil matter that happens in the legal system. We want

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Speaker 1: to recognize that before those needs are met, we can't

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Speaker 1: consider this work to be finished either. But then there

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Speaker 1: was a closed aspect of this that was just for

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Speaker 1: the families to meet and interact with each other. It

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Speaker 1: was emotional for all of us. I will never forget that.

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Speaker 1: As the family members went around and they kind of

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Speaker 1: talked about, you know, why they were there, what happened

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Speaker 1: in their own family, you know what they knew about it,

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Speaker 1: and all the questions that remained in the cases. One

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Speaker 1: man stood up and he said, I have always thought

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Speaker 1: that what our family experienced was one of the worst

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Speaker 1: things I had ever heard about, ever known about. And

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Speaker 1: then he said, until right until I heard from this

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Speaker 1: other family right because in a since they had all

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Speaker 1: been doing this in isolation, but now they were able

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Speaker 1: to connect with each other about something that no one

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Speaker 1: else could really understand, and it was just an incredibly powerful,

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Speaker 1: powerful moment. That retreat was something that really epitomized the

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Speaker 1: enormity of what has taken place in this society and

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Speaker 1: how much the families have had to hold throughout the

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Speaker 1: years of longing for justice for their family members. I'm

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Speaker 1: Davin Cober return Man is a production of The Herald

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Speaker 1: McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio. Brett McCormick is the

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Speaker 1: lead reporter and the show is produced by Matt Walsh,

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Speaker 1: Karat Tabor Cotta Stevens, and Rachel Wise. I'm the executive

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Speaker 1: producer from McLatchy Studios. The executive producer for I Heart

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Speaker 1: Radio is Sean t Toone. For lots more on this story,

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Speaker 1: go to Harold online dot com Slash return Man. If

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Speaker 1: you have any additional information about Jim Duncan's life or death,

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Speaker 1: email us at return Man at Harold online dot com.

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