Speaker 1: Hi, It's Connor Hall, the senior producer for Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: with another update and more behind the scenes insights. And
Speaker 1: this one is another that we've been involved with for
Speaker 1: far too long with not enough movement. Pierre Rushing. The
Speaker 1: first time I'd even heard about him was December twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and by the time I was approved to speak with
Speaker 1: him on the phone, COVID was in full swing and
Speaker 1: we were rapidly trying to figure out how to keep
Speaker 1: the podcast going. But it turned out that remote recording
Speaker 1: made it way easier to cover more stories and we
Speaker 1: ended up like nearly doubling our annual output. But I
Speaker 1: digress Pierre, And I mean we were talking on the
Speaker 1: phone so much that my wife would just like come
Speaker 1: into the room and see me on the phone and
Speaker 1: you'd be like, who are you talking to? Pierre uh Man?
Speaker 1: You know, And we still talk less. Oh, but you know,
Speaker 1: every few months or so, he'll give me a ring
Speaker 1: and I'll see that California prison number that I have
Speaker 1: saved as him in my phone, and every time there's
Speaker 1: like a mix of hope and despair, and you know,
Speaker 1: is he finally calling with that good news? Anyway? I
Speaker 1: pick up and just in the sound of his voice,
Speaker 1: I can tell that it's just another Tuesday. So we
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, what new information he's found out
Speaker 1: or new strategies that, you know, we could try. For
Speaker 1: a while, I was trolling everything. The Almada County DA's
Speaker 1: social media account was posting with hashtag free Pierre Rushing
Speaker 1: and like when are you gonna do something now? Obviously
Speaker 1: that wasn't very effective, but you know, there were rallies
Speaker 1: and protests and Jason went on the Breakfast Club Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: Whoever would lend their ear and their platform. There's even
Speaker 1: a movie Undefeated the wrongful conviction of Pierre Rushing. In
Speaker 1: this case, it's you know, an Oakland drug dealer named
Speaker 1: c who killed one of his customers, want Taylor Dwan
Speaker 1: had allegedly pocketed an iPod from Sea's apartment during a
Speaker 1: drug deal. So once he figured that out, he went
Speaker 1: with three others in a car to chase down Dewan
Speaker 1: and shot him. One of the three in the car,
Speaker 1: a guy named Robert Green, eventually told the police, who
Speaker 1: knows why, I mean, maybe he was picked up for
Speaker 1: something else, but he named the two others in the
Speaker 1: car while not naming C, and then gave varying descriptions
Speaker 1: of C over time, like wildly different right. And then
Speaker 1: two weeks after the murder, Robert Green comes forward again
Speaker 1: and says, oh, I saw Sea at a BART station
Speaker 1: wearing a red hat. And around that same time, Pierre
Speaker 1: Rushing was stopped at a bart station. He tells you
Speaker 1: about it in the episode, and he was wearing a
Speaker 1: red hat. And despite not matching any of Robert Green's
Speaker 1: varying descriptions, Green picked Pierre out of a photo lineup
Speaker 1: as C. Now, at the time of our initial coverage,
Speaker 1: the other two named accomplices had already sworn in affidavits
Speaker 1: that Pierre was not C, and another witness went as
Speaker 1: far as to name C. Then, by the time of
Speaker 1: our twenty twenty three coverage, the star witness, Robert Green,
Speaker 1: had recanted his testimony clearing Pierre's name, so they had
Speaker 1: nothing left in this case. We thought the Almeda County DA,
Speaker 1: Pamela Price, might do the right thing, but at that
Speaker 1: time she was another alleged progressive DA who had become
Speaker 1: the target of a so called tough on crime recall campaign,
Speaker 1: so she chose to not rock the vote with an exoneration,
Speaker 1: but she still got voted out in a twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four special election. Now since that time, Pierre's team has
Speaker 1: uncovered even more. They finally were allowed to test crime
Speaker 1: scene biological evidence, namely the car seat where C sat,
Speaker 1: as well as cigarette butts said to have belonged to him,
Speaker 1: all of which cleared Pierre. And I'm gonna guess it
Speaker 1: would match C if they just knew who he was.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, it turns out that Pierre's team discovered that
Speaker 1: a whit and This had named C for investigators before
Speaker 1: Pierre went to trial, the same name that Pier's team
Speaker 1: had during our initial coverage. But that report of an
Speaker 1: alternate suspect that appears to be quite consequential, that was
Speaker 1: hidden from the defense at trial. You gotta wonder why
Speaker 1: they'd hide that information. This guy was known to operate
Speaker 1: out of the building from which this whole saga began.
Speaker 1: Maybe they were just so far out over their skis
Speaker 1: and this investigation and prosecution that they just buried it
Speaker 1: and plodded ahead. Maybe it was tunnel vision. Maybe they
Speaker 1: actually believed, well, this is inconsequential, Or maybe C was
Speaker 1: more useful to police on the outside will never know.
Speaker 1: I understand he went away for something else not too
Speaker 1: long after, while Pierre is still serving a sentence that
Speaker 1: most likely belongs to him. And I just want you
Speaker 1: to keep that in mind, that he's still in there
Speaker 1: serving someone else's time while you listen to this coverage,
Speaker 1: some of which is from twenty twenty and then the
Speaker 1: final segment most of it it's from twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: There's even you know, the call to action is outdated
Speaker 1: because Bamela Price isn't in an office anymore. But I'd
Speaker 1: like you to renew the effort to reach out to
Speaker 1: the new DA. We're going to have contact information listed
Speaker 1: in the episode description, So please keep making noise because
Speaker 1: here it is twenty twenty six. He's still in there,
Speaker 1: and I mean, wouldn't it be even more tragic if
Speaker 1: I was back here again in three more years.
Speaker 2: In the early morning of April fifteenth, twenty eleven, Dwan
Speaker 2: Taylor stole an iPod for an Oakland drug dealer named c.
Speaker 2: Two of his other customers, Patrick Smith and Robert Green,
Speaker 2: gave Ce a ride in search of the iPod thief
Speaker 2: they spotted. Mister Taylor pulled up next to him, and
Speaker 2: See proceeded to shoot and kill him over this trivial slight.
Speaker 2: Nearly a week we'ld go by before Robert Green would
Speaker 2: offer cops information and an uncertain description of the shooter.
Speaker 2: A few weeks and several descriptions later, Green would claim
Speaker 2: to have seen c wearing a red hat. A few
Speaker 2: days after that, police would approach Pierre Rushing, a man
Speaker 2: who had never been known as Sea, but wearing a
Speaker 2: red hat. They'd bring Pierre's juvie photo and his name
Speaker 2: to Robert Green, who went on to identify him as
Speaker 2: the shooter, despite a solid alibi, no physical evidence whatsoever
Speaker 2: or anything to corroborate Robert Green's highly questionable identification. Pierre
Speaker 2: Rushing's burgeoning rap career and promising future were stolen by
Speaker 2: Green and the criminal legal system. He's currently serving fifty
Speaker 2: to life for a frivolous and tragic crime committed by
Speaker 2: a drug dealer named C. Patrick Smith has since signed
Speaker 2: affidavits and testified to Pierre's innocence, and another of C's
Speaker 2: customers that night has bravely set a legal name to
Speaker 2: the culprit, and even though mister Rushing did not name Se,
Speaker 2: we have censored his name from this episode for mister
Speaker 2: Rushing's safety. Meanwhile, the state of California and used to
Speaker 2: ignore evidence of Pierre's actual innocence and to fight his
Speaker 2: honest attempts to regain his freedom. This is Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 2: with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 2: That's me and today we're going to tell you about
Speaker 2: the case of Pierre Rushing. We'll speak with one of
Speaker 2: his post conviction attorneys, Marvin Lou as well as taking
Speaker 2: a call from Kern Valley Correction in California to hear
Speaker 2: from Pierre himself.
Speaker 3: This is Global tail Lenge.
Speaker 1: You have a free post call from you.
Speaker 2: This call ANGELA telephone number will be monitored and recorded.
Speaker 4: To accept this call, say or.
Speaker 3: Dial five now. Thank you for using Global tail Link.
Speaker 2: Hello, good morning, good morning. I'm glad you're here. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but I'm definitely
Speaker 2: glad you're here. And I know we have limited time,
Speaker 2: so let's get right into it. Today's episode, we're going
Speaker 2: to tell the story of the man we have on
Speaker 2: the phone now, Pierre Rushing, who's serving fifty years. The
Speaker 2: nightmare starts on April fifteen, twenty eleven, at three forty
Speaker 2: five am, when there's a murder. But let's go back
Speaker 2: to your childhood, because you had a difficult upbringing and
Speaker 2: you were coming out of that and building a career
Speaker 2: in music when it all went haywire.
Speaker 3: So I grew up in Oakland, California. My father was
Speaker 3: a passentee and then out of prison smug with a
Speaker 3: dig crack cocaine. So I don't want to say like
Speaker 3: any other Oakland kid, but I mean a lot lot
Speaker 3: of kids in the in the that grew up in
Speaker 3: the nineties were just products of our environment. We grew
Speaker 3: up looking at things that we believed to be right,
Speaker 3: so we as we mature, we get to see that
Speaker 3: they were really wrong.
Speaker 2: And how did you get into music?
Speaker 3: My auntie used to work for Keith Switt her name
Speaker 3: with Tracy Rush. She since passed in twenty thirteen. But
Speaker 3: just being around her, she took me in her wing,
Speaker 3: just taking me to the studio whor her as I
Speaker 3: became a big contribute.
Speaker 2: Is it fair to say by twenty eleven, things were
Speaker 2: starting to look up for you in terms of possibly
Speaker 2: building a career, and yeah.
Speaker 3: When I was arrested for this case, actually friends of
Speaker 3: mine has said that the police were looking for me
Speaker 3: for this time, and we all laughed about it because
Speaker 3: everybody knew that I couldn't have done. And I had
Speaker 3: been wrapping and going to the studio state assistant shooting videos.
Speaker 3: And actually when I was arrested, I was open enough
Speaker 3: for Bay Area Leegen by the name of Saint Quinn,
Speaker 3: and we had a big black tour van with my
Speaker 3: pictures on and promoting my music and everything. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was coming up for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you were exactly You're on your way up. And
Speaker 2: then everything went completely haywire. Now let's turn the conversation
Speaker 2: to Marvin Lou. Marvin is a criminal defense attorney of
Speaker 2: some repute and he has been representing Pierre for some time. Now,
Speaker 2: let's just paint a picture of what happened.
Speaker 5: The date was April fifteenth, twenty eleven, and what happened
Speaker 5: was two individuals by the name of Patrick Smith and
Speaker 5: Robert Green. We're doing crack cocaine for the day and
Speaker 5: a half leading up to this young man's killing. And
Speaker 5: Patrick Smith and Robert Green went to an apartment in
Speaker 5: Oakland to purchase more crack cocaine. Patrick Smith was driving.
Speaker 5: Robert Green stayed in the car while Patrick Smith went
Speaker 5: up to the apartment to purchase more drugs. So Patrick
Speaker 5: Smith meets up with his drug dealer. Patrick Smith knows
Speaker 5: him as see the letter C who is the actual
Speaker 5: person responsible for the murder of Dewane Taylor. While Patrick
Speaker 5: Smith was in the apartment, there were several other people
Speaker 5: present and mister Taylor left the apartment. Shortly after mister
Speaker 5: Taylor left, then sees iPod turned up missing and someone
Speaker 5: in the apartment said that mister Taylor had taken sees iPod.
Speaker 5: What happened next was Patrick Smith, the shooter, SE and
Speaker 5: another individual who was also charged as a co defendant
Speaker 5: named Andre Morris. They all left the apartment and went
Speaker 5: and got in Patrick Smith's car to go find mister Taylor,
Speaker 5: who had allegedly taken SE's iPod. Robert Green was waiting
Speaker 5: in the car sitting in the front passenger seat, so
Speaker 5: pat Smith drives around the corner. They see mister Taylor
Speaker 5: walking down the street and see or Andre Morris. Pat
Speaker 5: Smith wasn't sure which told him to stop the car.
Speaker 5: She and Andre Morris got out of the car, confronted
Speaker 5: mister Taylor, and s shot and killed mister Taylor on
Speaker 5: the sidewalk in front of a fast food restaurant. They
Speaker 5: then got back into the car. Pat Smith drove a
Speaker 5: short distance. Both See and mister Morris got out of
Speaker 5: the car and ran away. So that's the factual backdrop
Speaker 5: for this thing.
Speaker 2: Follow along here because Pierre, who were on the phone
Speaker 2: with now had no connection to viction, no knowledge of
Speaker 2: the actual perpetrator, and he was at his grandmother's at
Speaker 2: the time with a young lady named Lauren Richardson on
Speaker 2: the time and date of the murder. Have you ever
Speaker 2: had a nickname of ce before it?
Speaker 3: Never? Never, I've always went by the name of Stink
Speaker 3: or people from my neighborhoods to call me peace, thank beer.
Speaker 3: For my first name is Pierre. I have never ever
Speaker 3: went by the namacy.
Speaker 2: So what happened? How did you end up getting wrongfully
Speaker 2: convicted here?
Speaker 3: Well, one of the pastors, Robert Greed, he goes to
Speaker 3: the police n five days after he allegedly seated this time,
Speaker 3: and he tells them that he's seen as murdered. A
Speaker 3: guy named Seca missed this murder. He gives the police
Speaker 3: multiple different descriptions. I believe his first description is five eight,
Speaker 3: light skinned, one hundred and twenty pounds. I haven't been
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty pounds since I was eighteen years old,
Speaker 3: let alone at nineteen years old. I'm not light skinned.
Speaker 3: The second time I believe sees the police, he switches
Speaker 3: it up again. So allegedly he says he sees se
Speaker 3: on April thirty, which would have been fifteen days after
Speaker 3: the crime, and he went back to the police and said,
Speaker 3: you know what, I lied again. I believe he was
Speaker 3: six foot two, brown skin, and they had on red
Speaker 3: shirt and a red hat. I'm not sure what kind
Speaker 3: of lineup they were showing it, but he still couldn't
Speaker 3: identify who they believed to be seen. The police seen
Speaker 3: in an area that he said that he had seen seeing.
Speaker 3: I believe it was May third, wearing a red hat.
Speaker 3: And they stopped me. And when they stopped me and
Speaker 3: they said, what is your name? I don't lie to
Speaker 3: the police. Here, Russian is my man. I say, hey,
Speaker 3: we're looking for a guy that beat the guy up.
Speaker 3: I haven't beaten the guy up. And then they leave.
Speaker 3: When they take that name back to I believe Robert Green,
Speaker 3: who was at the police station, and they show him
Speaker 3: a picture four days after he's seen a guy with
Speaker 3: a red hat. He said, you know what, Yeah, that's me.
Speaker 3: I'm past see. And that's how the whole way of
Speaker 3: respond would have red had four days after the Barbara
Speaker 3: grid Fife seen this guy.
Speaker 2: And a month after the crime. When they first questioned you,
Speaker 2: they wanted to know what you were doing on the
Speaker 2: day of the crime. But when they were asking you
Speaker 2: this question, it was already five weeks later, right, And
Speaker 2: this is a trick that they use. Sometimes you're like,
Speaker 2: you're supposed to remember exactly. Like I'll ask anybody in
Speaker 2: the audience right now, what were you doing. Let's go
Speaker 2: back thirty five days from whatever day you're listening to this.
Speaker 2: Tell me right now what you were doing at a
Speaker 2: particular time on that day, and I'll give you a dollar.
Speaker 2: Because that's impossible, but it is very effective because then
Speaker 2: they can say you lied, because there's no way anyone
Speaker 2: could possibly remember that unless it was their birthday or
Speaker 2: some other like really important day.
Speaker 3: Right April fifteenth, you would have it is my father's birthday.
Speaker 3: So without me even thinking you say April fifteen, Hey,
Speaker 3: there's nothing I was with my dad? I say, my
Speaker 3: dad on his birthday? Not one time at any trial transcript,
Speaker 3: Police ADVA Torti's theermory. Do they ever say where were
Speaker 3: you three forty five a m. So if they said no,
Speaker 3: you weren't with your dad. I also remember that I
Speaker 3: had a traffic stop that day and they went chick
Speaker 3: and it showed that I was untruth for they say no,
Speaker 3: not at that time. It took me, I believe my attorney,
Speaker 3: for about a week of jog in my memory to
Speaker 3: figure out where did I sleep at three forty five
Speaker 3: a m. That morning? And I remembered it was my grandma.
Speaker 3: So was because my mom came to me that morning
Speaker 3: and said, where are you going to get your dad
Speaker 3: for his birthday? That's how I was. They able to
Speaker 3: put the pieces of a puzzle together, but by that
Speaker 3: time it was trial, so they looked at it as if, oh,
Speaker 3: this is a third alibi. Well, no, I've given you
Speaker 3: everywhere I went from April fifteenth, and so that's how
Speaker 3: they played it, which is very nefarious because they see
Speaker 3: that I was trying to tell them.
Speaker 2: Everything at the time that This crime was committed at
Speaker 2: three forty five in the morning. Now we know what
Speaker 2: you were doing when you were supposedly out shooting somebody
Speaker 2: who you never knew and don't know and still don't
Speaker 2: know and never will know.
Speaker 3: Well, height belfourteenth shooting a video. Thank you go on
Speaker 3: YouTube right now. The song is called young Stink Take
Speaker 3: a Trip. Lauren Richerson was associate of the camera man
Speaker 3: helped shoot the video. She was also my girlfriend April fourteenth,
Speaker 3: going in table fifteen. She came to my grandma talk
Speaker 3: roughly about nine forty five round timmy clock, and we
Speaker 3: spent the night. We enjoy each other's company. We deal
Speaker 3: with any other boy for their girlfriend.
Speaker 6: Hello. My name is Lauren Richardson. I am an Oakland
Speaker 6: resident and current legal apprentice. I entered the field with
Speaker 6: a lot of motivation from the tragic situation that happened
Speaker 6: with Pierre Rushing. I originally was into video. On April fourteenth,
Speaker 6: Pierre went to shoot a video. It's called take a Trip.
Speaker 6: We were super excited because he had so much support
Speaker 6: from our neighborhood. Everybody knew he was a great rapper.
Speaker 6: When he finally shot the video, we were super excited.
Speaker 6: We went back to his grandmother's house afterwards, just to
Speaker 6: kind of recap, and we stayed up all night watching movies, laughing,
Speaker 6: making plans for the future. We you know, did what
Speaker 6: couples do late night, and I left early in the
Speaker 6: morning because I had to take my son to school.
Speaker 6: And it was some weeks after that he kind of disappeared,
Speaker 6: you know, when somebody else found me and was like,
Speaker 6: you know, he's in jail. I'm like, what, because I
Speaker 6: was kind of mad, you know I was. I thought
Speaker 6: he ghosted me, to be honest, so it was no
Speaker 6: way that he could have committed the crime. I have
Speaker 6: never felt as powerless as I felt in this situation
Speaker 6: to express reality and be believed, and you know, this
Speaker 6: huge power structure for them to be able to create
Speaker 6: a false reality, like even with the witness, the witness
Speaker 6: is not a credible witness, nowhere near as credible as
Speaker 6: I am. Because I'm not going to go perjure myself.
Speaker 6: I'm not going to risk my life to keep a
Speaker 6: killer out of jail. So for me to go up
Speaker 6: there in front of all of these people and for
Speaker 6: them to not take my word for it when they
Speaker 6: had no other evidence. It bothers me to this day.
Speaker 6: It's a big part of the motivation for me to
Speaker 6: go into this apprenticeship program because I want to learn
Speaker 6: how to speak up for other people who can't speak
Speaker 6: up for themselves, because this has to stop. They ruined
Speaker 6: an entire family.
Speaker 2: The idea that we in this country can sent in
Speaker 2: somebody like you, a promising young man with his life
Speaker 2: ahead of him, to fifty years based on the testimony
Speaker 2: of an admitted crackhead. It was up for two days
Speaker 2: or changed the story four times really should make everybody
Speaker 2: a little scared. Yeah, can you tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about the trial itself?
Speaker 3: And killing it on camera. When I heard they had
Speaker 3: it on camera, I started to kick my feet up
Speaker 3: and just wait for the trold days because I'm like,
Speaker 3: if it's on camera, I'm going home. I never in
Speaker 3: a million years imagined that the camera would be low
Speaker 3: quality or you really can't see anything on the camera.
Speaker 3: You see a vehicle pull up and it's just draining,
Speaker 3: so you can't really see anything. And I remember my
Speaker 3: heart just dropping because I knew that that was what
Speaker 3: was supposed to exonerate music. They had no evidence, no
Speaker 3: corrupt no, no physicals. They have the murder vehicle with
Speaker 3: twelve fingerprints inside the car, and say I got in
Speaker 3: and out of that car a four time. None of
Speaker 3: the fingerprints Mats Mott. One of the prosecution's witness was
Speaker 3: a lady by the name of the Carls Smith or so.
Speaker 3: She witnessed the crime her and pass s meth for
Speaker 3: best friends. She had been in that car a week
Speaker 3: before when the police forensic pathologists became the call on
Speaker 3: every twenty second they found to call this fingerprints in
Speaker 3: that car. Therefore, when she testified she hadn't been in
Speaker 3: the car seven days prior to the killing, that means
Speaker 3: that the car couldn't have actually been wiped down. And
Speaker 3: if the car wasn't wiped down, and you count twelve
Speaker 3: to fourteenth fingerprints in that car, per Robert Greene's testimony,
Speaker 3: I got in and out of that car four times,
Speaker 3: and I killed this guy with no glove. Why don't
Speaker 3: wear my fingerprints on the car? Second, if Robert greens
Speaker 3: took the leave, why would you ever call me five
Speaker 3: day light skinning one hundred and twenty pounds? Why would
Speaker 3: you ever change it to five ten one hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty pounds? In that preliminary hearing, when the judge allowed
Speaker 3: me to leave the court room, they brought Robert Green in.
Speaker 3: They said, could compleatly describe to kill it. This guy
Speaker 3: switched it up to six to two hundred and twenty pounds.
Speaker 3: This guy's not to be believed. It was addicted to cracking.
Speaker 3: Aroon said he had been up for two days off cracking. Aroon,
Speaker 3: I hadn't been initially seven times failing. Third, you have
Speaker 3: to call the smith another prosecutions with us. I didn't
Speaker 3: see him. I don't know who that is.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean our standard in this country is
Speaker 2: supposed to be reasonable doubt, and this goes way beyond
Speaker 2: that standard.
Speaker 3: I had hoped that, you know, I would I would
Speaker 3: be exacted.
Speaker 2: And did you have proper representation?
Speaker 3: Now I went to a trial with a posite defender
Speaker 3: and I went speedy trial. I was arrested in May,
Speaker 3: I was convicted and all of this. And the reason
Speaker 3: I went Steed Troup because I feel like I had
Speaker 3: nothing to add I didn't do it. So why would
Speaker 3: I wait? Where I see in my counting people wait
Speaker 3: four or five years to fight the case because they're
Speaker 3: trying to wait for the better deal. The first day
Speaker 3: of trial, I remember the judge saying something like, hey,
Speaker 3: I know the DA is going to give you a deal.
Speaker 3: She looked to your left, get a deal because I
Speaker 3: know that he's going to give you one. And I
Speaker 3: just remember shaking my head. No, no, no, because why
Speaker 3: would I take time for something if I didn't do it.
Speaker 3: They know I'm not Sea, so they want to know
Speaker 3: if what we call in the urban community, I'm going
Speaker 3: the stench. I know a lot of seas. That's that's
Speaker 3: the one for two. It's not my job to do.
Speaker 3: The police are job for them, you know. So if
Speaker 3: I wasn't there, what if you expect me to do?
Speaker 3: Or maybe it could have been this guy, Maybe he
Speaker 3: could be this guy. If I do that, I'm worse
Speaker 3: than Robert Green because you were not there and they
Speaker 3: know that. The feet off that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, jail house nitches has just sort of become like
Speaker 2: standard operating procedure.
Speaker 3: Correct. It's a nightmare, a living nightmare. But that that
Speaker 3: was the summ of the trial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a nightmare scenario. So the jury goes out.
Speaker 2: When they came back in, what was that moment like
Speaker 2: when they actually found guilty of a crime you didn't commit.
Speaker 3: When they came back with it, it was It was
Speaker 3: weird because the whole trial, I had twenty to thirty
Speaker 3: people every single day of my trial, friends from the neighborhood, family, girlfriend, associates.
Speaker 3: But on that day, nobody was in the cooorroom, not
Speaker 3: even the victim's family, nobody from my faund That was
Speaker 3: just like a sense of loneliness, a sense of like
Speaker 3: me against the world, because you're sitting here convicting me
Speaker 3: for a crime that I didn't commit. And I know
Speaker 3: that you know I didn't commit this crime. And I
Speaker 3: couldn't even look back to look in the eyes of
Speaker 3: my mother, my father, and my grandmother, and I felt
Speaker 3: like that was already saving. I'm like, why was even
Speaker 3: the Baker family? Like? Where was a feeling that I
Speaker 3: never want to feel again.
Speaker 2: Marvin, take it back to how you first met Pierre
Speaker 2: or how you first became aware of his case, and
Speaker 2: why you chose to get involved in this case. You
Speaker 2: must get hit with cases all the time.
Speaker 5: I actually came to represent Pierre after a different attorney,
Speaker 5: Stephen Frederick, who was handling his direct appeal in state court,
Speaker 5: also filed the habeas corpus petition in the California State
Speaker 5: Court of Appeal.
Speaker 2: What is the literal interpretation of habeas corpus.
Speaker 5: Habeas corpus means to produce the body in Latin, and
Speaker 5: what that means is that it's an allegation by us
Speaker 5: that Pierre is being unlawfully incarcerated. And once I dug
Speaker 5: into the case and reviewed the evidence in Pierre's case
Speaker 5: and did some investigation on my own, that very much
Speaker 5: turned out to be true.
Speaker 2: What went wrong here?
Speaker 5: I think a number of things went wrong, but most critically,
Speaker 5: there was evidence which could have exonerated Pierre which was
Speaker 5: not introduced. The only witness in the case, Robert Green,
Speaker 5: testified that Pierre was supposedly the person who committed this crime.
Speaker 5: That is the only evidence in the case and in
Speaker 5: the trial against Pierre, that witness testified that the person
Speaker 5: who committed this crime was talking on his cell phone
Speaker 5: a mere minute before shooting the victim. In this case,
Speaker 5: Pierre's phone records were available and that was part of
Speaker 5: the habeas petition and got him a hearing subsequently, and
Speaker 5: those phone records established conclusively that Pierre was not talking
Speaker 5: on his cell phone at the time when the perpetrator was,
Speaker 5: and if those records were introduced, I think that it
Speaker 5: would be a pretty compelling piece of evidence to establish that,
Speaker 5: in fact, Pierre is not the pers responsible for this murder.
Speaker 2: But they weren't introduced.
Speaker 7: The jury never heard of them.
Speaker 2: What about the fingerprint stuff? How did they manage to
Speaker 2: get around that? That seems like that could have been
Speaker 2: enough on its own. How did he not leave his fingerprints?
Speaker 2: Is he a ghost?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 5: The fingerprint evidence was introduced by way of a stipulation
Speaker 5: or the evidence technician who actually gathered the latent fingerprints
Speaker 5: from the car that was used in the homicide. That
Speaker 5: witness did not testify. Rather, Pierre's trial attorney chose to
Speaker 5: have that evidence admitted by way of an agreement with
Speaker 5: the prosecutor, simply the conclusion that Pierre's fingerprints were not
Speaker 5: in fact recovered from that car, and had that witness
Speaker 5: been called, it would have led to another important piece
Speaker 5: which was not introduced and not known to the jury.
Speaker 5: That evidence technician also collected DNA from that car, swabbed
Speaker 5: all of the areas of that car where the killer
Speaker 5: fat just before the murder occurred. In addition, there was
Speaker 5: a cigarette but that was recovered from the floorboard of
Speaker 5: that car, which was also swabbed for DNA. That DNA
Speaker 5: evidence was not tested in time for Pierre's trial, and
Speaker 5: that was also the subject of his subsequent avias petition.
Speaker 5: So what happened was after we obtained an evidentiary hearing
Speaker 5: in state court to attempt to prove Pierre's innocence, As
Speaker 5: I started reviewing the case materials, I realized that this
Speaker 5: DNA evidence existed which would completely exonerate him, and no
Speaker 5: one had tested it. So there's a procedure under California
Speaker 5: law that allows the convicted individual to ask the court
Speaker 5: to now have that evidence tested because it would prove
Speaker 5: that he's innocent. The government opposed our efforts to have
Speaker 5: that evidence tested, and ultimately the judge in this case
Speaker 5: refused to allow it to test that evidence. I then
Speaker 5: appealed that refusal, and the Court of Appeal refused to
Speaker 5: allow us to test that evidence. Why is it that
Speaker 5: they wouldn't want to have the DNA evidence in the
Speaker 5: case tested if they're so confident that, in fact, he's
Speaker 5: the perpetrator.
Speaker 2: I never can understand in any case, especially in a
Speaker 2: case as serious as this one. A murder case. Why
Speaker 2: they wouldn't want to have every stone turned over and
Speaker 2: have every piece of evidence tested so that they can
Speaker 2: find out not only that in this case, Pierre didn't
Speaker 2: do it, but they could find out who actually did. Marvin,
Speaker 2: Yolanda Washington, and Patrick Smith are pivotal players in this
Speaker 2: whole wrongful conviction. Can you explain their role in what
Speaker 2: went wrong here?
Speaker 7: Sure?
Speaker 5: Of course Pat Smith was a charged co defendant in
Speaker 5: the case at the time of Pierre's trial, so he
Speaker 5: did not testify at the trial. He had his fifth
Speaker 5: Amendment right. But after Pierre's trial was long over and
Speaker 5: after Patrick Smith was his part of the case for
Speaker 5: accessory after the fact, he then signed an affidavid which
Speaker 5: helped Pierre get an evidentiary hearing. He indicated both in
Speaker 5: his affidavit as well as in his testimony at the
Speaker 5: evidentiary hearing that his drug dealer is a man who
Speaker 5: goes by the name of f and that individual was
Speaker 5: not Pierre Rushing. Pat Smith at the hearing refused to
Speaker 5: name that individual because he was afraid for his life.
Speaker 5: But one of the people who was in that apartment
Speaker 5: was a woman by the name of Yolanda Washington, and
Speaker 5: she also did not testify a trial, But after Pierre
Speaker 5: was convicted, she signed an affidavid under penalty of perjury,
Speaker 5: indicating that she, of course, having been in that apartment,
Speaker 5: knew who she was. She obviously knew who Andre Morris was.
Speaker 5: And what she said in her affidavit was that Pierre
Speaker 5: Rushing is not the drug dealer who shot and killed
Speaker 5: mister Taylor.
Speaker 7: Rushing is not C.
Speaker 5: But that's not all. Indeed, Yolanda Washington went so far
Speaker 5: as to identify who that person was. Now, before we
Speaker 5: get into this, let me make one thing clear, which
Speaker 5: is that Pierre does not know the identity of the
Speaker 5: perpetrator of this homicide. Yolanda Washington, in her affidavid did
Speaker 5: name that individual who goes by the nickname C. In fact,
Speaker 5: his first name is his name is And of course
Speaker 5: it would make perfect sense that he would go by
Speaker 5: the nickname C because his name is Pierre Rushing does
Speaker 5: not have a cea in his name, and she has
Speaker 5: never been Pierre's nickname. Because Pierre is not the person
Speaker 5: responsible for this killing. That affidavit was part of what
Speaker 5: enabled Pierre to get a hearing in superior court. Unfortunately,
Speaker 5: Miss Washington was a homeless individual at that time, and
Speaker 5: my investigator was essentially unable to locate her to get
Speaker 5: her to testify in court. So I filed emotion essentially
Speaker 5: asking that her affidavit be considered because she was unavailable,
Speaker 5: and that request was denied.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's pretty courageous, even after the fact that these
Speaker 2: two people both were willing to put their own lives
Speaker 2: at risk to identify someone who they know is a killer,
Speaker 2: and I think that speaks volumes to the veracity of
Speaker 2: their statements.
Speaker 3: You have any doubt in my innagmence? How would I
Speaker 3: use this thing on the points? What person would for
Speaker 3: DNA testing of the materials that were sought out the
Speaker 3: vehicle if I wasn't innocent, What yilty man would place
Speaker 3: for the enhancement of the video if I wasn't innocent,
Speaker 3: A man going to push for the phone records? Amnis,
Speaker 3: I think you meant this crime. I have nothing to
Speaker 3: do with this.
Speaker 2: Crime, Pierre. Last time we spoke Dwan Taylor's actual murderer,
Speaker 2: the guy known as C now his co conspirator Andre Marris,
Speaker 2: as well as an accessory after the fact, Patrick Smith,
Speaker 2: they had both come forward to definitively state that you
Speaker 2: had absolutely nothing to do with the ones murder and
Speaker 2: are not, in fact C.
Speaker 1: That's not you.
Speaker 2: You and C are different people, but for their own safety,
Speaker 2: understandably they would not name C. However, a woman named
Speaker 2: Yolanda Washington, who was prepared to do just that, she
Speaker 2: couldn't be located for your ebidentiary here and then Smith
Speaker 2: and Morris were just explained away. And additionally, your request
Speaker 2: for DNA testing against items from the car was denied.
Speaker 2: And you're right, why would a guilty person, what guilty
Speaker 2: person would be seeking DNA testing on items that might
Speaker 2: contain their own DNA?
Speaker 3: What do you want to.
Speaker 2: Submit your own guilt if you were doing that, if
Speaker 2: you actually had a guilty conscience. Or why would they
Speaker 2: try to enhance crime scene video if they knew it
Speaker 2: was going to point to their guilt. All of this
Speaker 2: in addition to how flimsy the state's evidence was to
Speaker 2: begin with the sole witness I'm talking about Robert Green,
Speaker 2: of course, the whole witness who cooperated with police to
Speaker 2: avoid being charged as well, whose description of C changed
Speaker 2: three count them three times, and one of those times
Speaker 2: Green said that C had worn a red hat again.
Speaker 2: Robert green knew sy knew just how dangerous he really was,
Speaker 2: yet he felt quite comfortable identifying you, Pierre, after you
Speaker 2: were picked up while wearing a red hat.
Speaker 4: They stopped me two days after that description was given,
Speaker 4: So I guess this quote unquote killer was supposed to
Speaker 4: have been wearing the same clothes and hat for two
Speaker 4: days straight. I mean, like it was bananas from the beginning.
Speaker 4: I've never fit a description of being five to eight
Speaker 4: light skin, I've never rocked the ball, and haven't been
Speaker 4: one hundred and twenty pounds since I was ten years old.
Speaker 4: I mean, it just has been bananas from the game.
Speaker 4: Nobody can convince me that he thought I was ever
Speaker 4: the guy in the car with.
Speaker 2: Him, because you weren't. What you were was you were
Speaker 2: with Lauren that night at your grandmother's house, and her
Speaker 2: testimony was corroborated by the absence of your fingerprints in
Speaker 2: the vehicle. Since your episode aired in twenty twenty, your
Speaker 2: case was picked up from Marvin leu pro bono, by
Speaker 2: the way, by one of the biggest and baddest law
Speaker 2: firms in the country, Greenberg Trauig and one of their
Speaker 2: star attorneys, Jordan Gratzinger has been hard at work. I
Speaker 2: mean that's an understatement.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he's a beast.
Speaker 4: We have a great investigator by the name of Grant
Speaker 4: Fine overturning all the stones in the case, getting half
Speaker 4: a Davis that wouldn't have gotten before, talking to witnesses
Speaker 4: that hadn't spoken before, and tracked Robert Green down. I
Speaker 4: was sitting here on my bunk and Jordan grass Singer
Speaker 4: he sent me a message and he just was saying
Speaker 4: Robert Green every candidate and I had to look at
Speaker 4: the message twice take it.
Speaker 7: All in, and I was like, damn.
Speaker 4: I thought it was like some kind of like April
Speaker 4: Fool's joke or something, and I just immediately dropped his tears.
Speaker 4: So from what I've been told, it was just like,
Speaker 4: you know, weighing on his soul. He finally did the
Speaker 4: right thing. We'll just tell the truth. I mean, I've
Speaker 4: gotten with anybody in my position of fighting wrong for
Speaker 4: comvision as asked for. The one and only witness has
Speaker 4: fully recanted.
Speaker 2: So I'm both well, very happy for you, but also
Speaker 2: i gotta admit I'm confused. Why am I? Why are
Speaker 2: we talking to you over a prison phone? It seems
Speaker 2: like that should have been, it should have resolved the case.
Speaker 2: You should have walked out the door. And now there's
Speaker 2: actually literally zero evidence against you. So where does that
Speaker 2: leave your case.
Speaker 4: We're in court and we're trying to get this case dismissed.
Speaker 4: Speaking with a progressive da by the name of Pamela Price,
Speaker 4: and she has eyes on it.
Speaker 7: I don't have the declaration in front of me, but
Speaker 7: Robert Green.
Speaker 4: Says he knew the whole time that it wasn't me,
Speaker 4: and it just gave validation and what I've been saying
Speaker 4: the whole time that I didn't commit this crime and
Speaker 4: there was no way that I would have or could
Speaker 4: have committed this crime. As well as one of the
Speaker 4: guys that were actually convicted after me, Andre Morris, he
Speaker 4: did a written declaration and said that he was a
Speaker 4: participant in the killing and that I wasn't with him.
Speaker 3: That was that.
Speaker 7: So we're just waiting and praying for good news very soon.
Speaker 2: Well, let's hope the Pamela Price doesn't just put on
Speaker 2: the progressive sort of bona FIDE's at election time, right,
Speaker 2: but that she takes this case as what it is,
Speaker 2: which is an example of why we need prospersuters with
Speaker 2: the brains and the heart that we know she possesses.
Speaker 2: And by the way, it shouldn't take a reform minded
Speaker 2: prosecutor when we're dealing with actual innocence. Every prosecutor should
Speaker 2: want to get the innocent guy out and go after
Speaker 2: the person that actually did it. And this is a
Speaker 2: guy whose name we know and we know they know,
Speaker 2: So what is the hold up?
Speaker 7: I believe Pamela Price is under a lot of scrutiny.
Speaker 4: She's cleaning up Alameda County, and she's being took to town
Speaker 4: by some as being too soft on crime. And really
Speaker 4: there's all type of guys walking around here in three
Speaker 4: strikes and weed and all type of just craziness. She's
Speaker 4: by the book, and by her being by the book,
Speaker 4: it's making her seem as if she's soft on crime
Speaker 4: if you don't have enough evidence to convict beyond a
Speaker 4: reasonable doubt. She's not taking it into some that that
Speaker 4: seems if she's soft on krime in my instance, as
Speaker 4: far as my habeas petition, I haven't heard from Pamela Price,
Speaker 4: and Jordan hasn't either. She's aware of the situation, she's
Speaker 4: aware of the Joe Rogan podcast, She's aware of the
Speaker 4: Wrongful Provision podcast, She's aware of the Breakfast Club interview,
Speaker 4: and she still hasn't responded to Jordan Grassinger, and she's
Speaker 4: supposed to file some kind of rebuttal to my release.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure where we're at. We're close to justice,
Speaker 4: but I still feel like they're trying to hold on
Speaker 4: to something that they know is wrong, because why are
Speaker 4: they not talking to us?
Speaker 7: Why are they following the rebuddle? What are you rebudding?
Speaker 4: You have every single person that was in the vehicle
Speaker 4: except to kill her yourself, that has done sworn declarations
Speaker 4: and given testimony that I did not comment the crime.
Speaker 4: Everybody has said, wrong guy. There is no physical or
Speaker 4: tangible or corroborating evidence that goes with this case.
Speaker 7: What are you rebudding?
Speaker 2: I don't get it either. I mean, are they going
Speaker 2: to say we don't find Robert Green's recantation credible? And
Speaker 2: if so, was he then credible before when he was
Speaker 2: facing accessory after the fact doing all kinds of drugs.
Speaker 2: And don't forget he changed the description of c three times,
Speaker 2: a guy who he knew to be capable of murder,
Speaker 2: yet he was brave enough to identify you a man
Speaker 2: who did not fit any one of his multiple descriptions.
Speaker 2: You know, it's hard not to think that maybe he
Speaker 2: thought that you were the type of guy who wouldn't
Speaker 2: come after him, which leads us to believe that you
Speaker 2: were not a dangerous guy in the first place, never were,
Speaker 2: and never will be. I mean, this conviction happened well
Speaker 2: over a decade before Pam Price was elected. She could
Speaker 2: fix this. It wouldn't reflect badly on her or her office,
Speaker 2: because after all, it was one of her predecessors that
Speaker 2: made these mistakes.
Speaker 4: It was a lady but the name of Nancy O'Malley.
Speaker 4: So I understand she has a lot to go on.
Speaker 4: But it's like Jordan says, there is no case in
Speaker 4: Alamina County that is as compelling in an innocence claim
Speaker 4: as mine.
Speaker 2: So is there anything our audience can do to help?
Speaker 2: Is there a petition to sign? At a very minimum, I.
Speaker 4: Think we're past signing a petition. I believe that we
Speaker 4: have to do a CEP Newton shiit. We have to agitate,
Speaker 4: we have to call, we have to email, we have
Speaker 4: to show up unannounced to the d DA's office. Some
Speaker 4: might say that that's hurtful. Sitting in jail for twelve
Speaker 4: years with a fifty to life sentence is hurtful. Duwan
Speaker 4: Taylor's family deserves justice like this is not justice. So
Speaker 4: I would ask that a call Family Prices office and
Speaker 4: ask for justice for Perre Russian.
Speaker 2: All right, this is all hands on deck, people, We
Speaker 2: can we can do this. We put out the original
Speaker 2: coverage three and a half bucking years ago. All right,
Speaker 2: so we're gonna post her office's number, her email, her
Speaker 2: snail mail address, all of it in the bio. And remember,
Speaker 2: be respectful when you call. It doesn't help anyone in order.
Speaker 2: Does she deserve Everyone deserves to be treated ris respect
Speaker 2: in that office whoever answers the phone, So please keep
Speaker 2: that in mind, but do call, write, email, whatever. And
Speaker 2: with that we're going to move on to closing arguments,
Speaker 2: where I thank you Pierre for calling in once again again.
Speaker 2: You know you're in our thoughts here at Rafel Conviction
Speaker 2: more often than you know. And now I'm just going
Speaker 2: to sit back and listen to anything else you want
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 7: I would just like to speak directly to her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 4: Pamela Price, Robert Green get his declaration in February when
Speaker 4: he lied on me. They instantly put a word out
Speaker 4: the same day. That's tooking longer to exonerate me than
Speaker 4: it took to convict me.
Speaker 7: There's no evidence in this case.
Speaker 4: Rely on your common sense, Rely on your expertise and
Speaker 4: the Civil Rights Arena. Rely on your intelligence. I didn't
Speaker 4: commit this crime. You know I didn't commit this crime.
Speaker 4: Every mind of second that passes by is an injustice.
Speaker 7: I could be your son. I could be your little brother.
Speaker 7: I could be your nephew.
Speaker 4: I do not deserve to continue to sit here while
Speaker 4: you and your office place politics. I have a family
Speaker 4: to get to. My little sister was murdered in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: My niece has no mother, she has no father.
Speaker 7: She needs me.
Speaker 4: My family needs me. My mother needs me, my father
Speaker 4: needs me. The community needs me. I have a story.
Speaker 4: I can stop a lot with my story. I'm asking
Speaker 4: you to please step up and do the right thing.
Speaker 4: Give Jordan Grassen your a call, and please do the
Speaker 4: right thing.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 2: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
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Speaker 2: production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 2: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Warnis, and Jeff Cleiber.
Speaker 2: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 2: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
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Speaker 2: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 2: at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is the production of
Speaker 2: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: We've worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in
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