Speaker 1: On October first, nineteen eighty four, a forty nine year
Speaker 1: old mother named Catherine Fuller took a shortcut through an
Speaker 1: alleyway in a busy area of Washington, d C. Known
Speaker 1: as eighth and h. She was beaten and violated in
Speaker 1: a particularly brutal fashion, and she succumbed to her injuries.
Speaker 1: Even though only two men were seen fleeing when police arrived,
Speaker 1: it was believed that there just had to be more
Speaker 1: assailants involved. An alleged anonymous tip confirmed that fear and
Speaker 1: led to seventeen arrests and eight convictions, none of whom
Speaker 1: were the two who had fled the scene. This is
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction. Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent
Speaker 1: people in prison, and now we're expanding that voice to you.
Speaker 1: Call us at eight three three two seven four six
Speaker 1: sixty six and tell us how these stories make you
Speaker 1: feel and what you've done to help the cause, even
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Speaker 1: in a future episode. Call us A three three two
Speaker 1: oh seven four six sixty six. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: where we've got a historical case from a historical place Washington, DC, where,
Speaker 1: even though two assailants were witnessed fleeing the scene of
Speaker 1: a sexually violent robbery and murder, somehow a narrative about
Speaker 1: a frenzied gang assault took hold and our guest, Chris Turner,
Speaker 1: was roped into this precursor to the Central Park five,
Speaker 1: now known as the Exonerated five. Only in this case,
Speaker 1: it wasn't five.
Speaker 2: There was seventeen people.
Speaker 3: The first time ever in the history of America that
Speaker 3: many people were charge for the murder one person without
Speaker 3: it being a conspiracy or anything.
Speaker 1: So seventeen were charged an eight conviction stuck. And we're
Speaker 1: just super relieved and glad that you survived and are
Speaker 1: here joining us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're very welcome and returning to the show from
Speaker 1: the mid Atlantic Innocence Project is one of my personal heroes.
Speaker 1: Sean Armbrus, John, welcome back.
Speaker 4: Any chance to talk about this case, I am happy
Speaker 4: to take.
Speaker 1: So this story when it happened was huge news. The
Speaker 1: graphic gang assault narrative stuck in people's minds, and the
Speaker 1: setting Chris's hometown also has the distinction of being the
Speaker 1: nation's Capital.
Speaker 3: I literally grew up on Capitol hill Man when Union Station,
Speaker 3: all those fountains that you see down Pennsylvania Avenue, Constitution Avenue,
Speaker 3: I swim in all in my I played hide and
Speaker 3: go see in the bushes at the Supreme Court. We
Speaker 3: used to ride our bikes and around the Capitol, around
Speaker 3: the stairs, and I was your average.
Speaker 2: Kid growing up.
Speaker 3: The neighborhood was like any average middle class neighborhood. The
Speaker 3: community supported each other. My grandmother was one of the
Speaker 3: highest ranking members in Peace Corps. She used to take
Speaker 3: us all over the place my siblings. I had two
Speaker 3: brothers and a sister, and my parents were separated, but
Speaker 3: my grandmother was the foundation in the family.
Speaker 2: She took us everywhere.
Speaker 3: So we would hang out at the Pentagon. From being
Speaker 3: around that atmosphere, my dream was to go in the
Speaker 3: Air Force. I graduated when I was seventeen years old.
Speaker 3: Never been arrested. Used to hang out with a bunch
Speaker 3: of guys and we'd go to the go gos. We
Speaker 3: go to different shows, we go to club.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We were trying to get a band, started a go
Speaker 3: go band.
Speaker 1: Go go music for those who don't remember, it was
Speaker 1: a subgenre of funk born out of the DC area,
Speaker 1: And I'm just going to do you a favor and
Speaker 1: link one of the originating groups in the episode description
Speaker 1: to give you a feel a flavor for the soundtrack
Speaker 1: for this group of friends, among whom were the children
Speaker 1: of the victim in this case, Catherine Fuller.
Speaker 3: Yes absolutely new Well neewer son David her Son. Willim
Speaker 3: was younger than us, but they both looked up to
Speaker 3: me as a big brother. So we had some instruments
Speaker 3: and then we thought we could make some go go music.
Speaker 3: I used to be the so called manager of the
Speaker 3: band because I was the one who was putting it together,
Speaker 3: the drama, the guitars, the keyboards. But we only had
Speaker 3: really two guys in the band that was any good,
Speaker 3: and that was James Gomellia and Gregory Williams, who would
Speaker 3: end up charged with the case.
Speaker 1: And we're going to get to the laundry list of
Speaker 1: people from the neighborhood who were dragged into this, including
Speaker 1: Chris and his alibi witness, Calvin Smith. But first let's
Speaker 1: go to the afternoon of October first, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 4: October first, eighteen four, kind of a drizzly day in DC.
Speaker 4: But it's a busy day at eighth and H Streets Northeast.
Speaker 4: That area is a very populated section of the city.
Speaker 4: A whole bunch of bus lines come together. It's check day,
Speaker 4: so you have people out shopping, doing whatever. And I
Speaker 4: actually like to tell the story the way it actually happened,
Speaker 4: as opposed to the way the government has it happened.
Speaker 4: So on that day, there was a street vendor who
Speaker 4: was at the corner of eighth and H Streets and
Speaker 4: his job was kind of watching the area, making sure
Speaker 4: nobody touched the merchandise, looking for customers. So he's watching
Speaker 4: the corner, he's watching the alley, and he sees two
Speaker 4: guys kind of walking up and down H Street Northeast
Speaker 4: looking like their case in the joint. But that's about it.
Speaker 4: At around six or six thirty, he goes into the
Speaker 4: alley to take a leak, and he goes kind of
Speaker 4: over to where this garage is at the t point
Speaker 4: of the alley, and he sees blood and he finds
Speaker 4: the body of Catherine Fuller, who is a very tiny
Speaker 4: I think like four foot nine ninety eight pounds mother
Speaker 4: in the neighborhood, and she's been badly beaten. She's clearly dead.
Speaker 4: He calls the police. Him and a couple of his
Speaker 4: friends are kind of like monitoring the alley waiting for
Speaker 4: the police. As the police show up, the two guys
Speaker 4: who had been kind of walking up and down each
Speaker 4: street the street vender sees them agin as police were arriving,
Speaker 4: those two guys bolt. One of them has something puffy
Speaker 4: in his jacket.
Speaker 3: They're literally at the garage what a victim is, and
Speaker 3: they're tucking someone in the jacket and I think the
Speaker 3: police here. The guys say don't run, and then both
Speaker 3: of them take off running, So.
Speaker 4: The police start processing the scene. Missus Fuller's body is
Speaker 4: in a very small, cluttered garage. She's been badly beaten
Speaker 4: anally sodomized, so she's got pretty significant brutal injuries. And
Speaker 4: if you look at the crime scene, evidence looks like
Speaker 4: it's happened in this garage. There are a group of
Speaker 4: witnesses who come forward who say they'd been walking through
Speaker 4: the alley at around five thirty that evening and the
Speaker 4: garage doors were closed and they heard some low like
Speaker 4: moans or groans coming through the garage. If you look
Speaker 4: in that garage, there's all sorts of stuff all over
Speaker 4: the place, and you don't see that stuff as disturbed
Speaker 4: that there was room for ten, fifteen, twenty people to
Speaker 4: be committing this crime. So, if you are someone who's
Speaker 4: looking at this case like first blush, what you probably
Speaker 4: think is those two guys who were walking up and down,
Speaker 4: who were running from the garage, seem important, and this
Speaker 4: might have been happening at around and so you might ask,
Speaker 4: how do you go from that to a mob of
Speaker 4: crazed young people beating Missus Fuller to death in an
Speaker 4: alley in a total frenzy and sodomizing her with an object, right,
Speaker 4: Because that's not what that crime looks like.
Speaker 1: Well, as we mentioned, many of the kids who eventually
Speaker 1: were convicted were friends with Missus Fuller's sons, never been
Speaker 1: in trouble, and would not likely be motivated to do
Speaker 1: something like this for any reason at all, let alone
Speaker 1: the jewelry and fifty dollars that were stolen. But according
Speaker 1: to the investigators McGuinness and Sanchez Torano, they received an
Speaker 1: anonymous tip and I'm not buying it. It's like a
Speaker 1: go to fallback, you know, something about that sounds fishy to.
Speaker 3: Me, I'm glad you say that because I'd never brought
Speaker 3: the theory of anonymous call, because they just created a
Speaker 3: theory and say, way, it was an anonymous tip that
Speaker 3: it was these even age guys talking about snatches on
Speaker 3: one in alley.
Speaker 4: They don't tend to be huge organized gangs in DC
Speaker 4: the way there are in like Chicago ORLA. DC has cruise.
Speaker 4: There was not an eighth and H Crew, though another
Speaker 4: DC thing is go go clubs, go go's like the
Speaker 4: DC homegrown music, and the eighth and H Crew was
Speaker 4: kind of like a go go thing. Someone would say,
Speaker 4: is the eighth and H Crew in the house, and
Speaker 4: people from eighth and H would cheer. So there's not
Speaker 4: really an eighth and H Crew. But in nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: four you're kind of at the early talk about wilding
Speaker 4: and youths and.
Speaker 1: Gangs, and this alleged tip led them to a guy
Speaker 1: named Clifton Yardborough as well as his brother Ernie, and
Speaker 1: to their alleged involvement in this fabricated gang.
Speaker 4: Cliff Yardborough is sixteen at the time, super talented basketball
Speaker 4: player but very low IQ. So they pick up Cliff,
Speaker 4: separate him from his older brother and tell Cliff that
Speaker 4: they know he was at this scene, that if he
Speaker 4: denies it, he's lying, and if he keeps denying it,
Speaker 4: he's going to end up getting charged with it.
Speaker 3: That right there should tell everyone the story that you
Speaker 3: pick this guy, the youngest, weakest guy who didn't have
Speaker 3: the mental capacity, and that's where you win at you
Speaker 3: just drill them for nineteen hours, the problem of food,
Speaker 3: water anything.
Speaker 4: Cliff gives police a statement telling them that a guy
Speaker 4: named Alfonso Harris, his nickname was Monk, a guy named
Speaker 4: Levi Rouse, Roland Franklin, and a couple of other guys
Speaker 4: robbed Missus Fuller, and on that basis they arrest Monk Harris.
Speaker 4: At that point though, all they have is cliff statement,
Speaker 4: and so they keep investigating. Their next big break, to
Speaker 4: the extent that we can call it, that comes from
Speaker 4: a young woman who is sixteen, a heavy PCP user,
Speaker 4: also has an IQ of sixty three, someone who by
Speaker 4: the time of trial has changed the specifics of her
Speaker 4: story so many times that it's hard to keep track.
Speaker 1: And that was Carrie Ellerby, whose initial statement was made
Speaker 1: while she was high on PCP. And for those of
Speaker 1: you who don't know PCP is a powerful drug, and
Speaker 1: she identified a guy named Calvin Austin.
Speaker 4: The police are talking to her about some kind of
Speaker 4: unrelated fight at one of the go go clubs, and
Speaker 4: she kind of spontaneously tells them that she knows who
Speaker 4: killed Missus Fuller.
Speaker 3: First, she says she was riding in a car coming
Speaker 3: from a go go somewhere in southeast and she over
Speaker 3: heard a Calvin Austin tell them mal killed the woman
Speaker 3: in an alley.
Speaker 4: So police bring in Calvin Alston, very low IQ teenager
Speaker 4: interrogated by the same police. Officers who interrogated Cliff tell
Speaker 4: him that they know he was there. He's denying it.
Speaker 4: They tell him he faces life in prison if he
Speaker 4: doesn't talk to them. He can either have a piece
Speaker 4: of the pie or they can have the whole thing.
Speaker 4: And Austin eventually says he witnessed.
Speaker 3: A group assault thirteen other people. Yeah, when you're hearing
Speaker 3: the three, you like y'all got this room, man, people
Speaker 3: would have random Missus Fuller's defense on a street.
Speaker 2: This wouldn't have happened that way.
Speaker 4: He says, it's on video, and he thought he was
Speaker 4: going to give the statement and go home.
Speaker 1: Calvin Austin immediately recanted it, but it was too late.
Speaker 1: His statement named thirteen other people, including Chris Turner, his
Speaker 1: younger brother Charles, and a friend named Timothy Catlett.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me and Katnet went to a late night movie
Speaker 3: and watched Beverly Hills Cop and came home and the
Speaker 3: next morning they kicking out doors. And the crazy thing
Speaker 3: about it is is someone that you know that you
Speaker 3: had to grieve about, You had to greeve what a
Speaker 3: friend about. That's the difference in the Central Park case,
Speaker 3: in the Norfolk case, and this is somebody that you
Speaker 3: actually know.
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Speaker 3: The people that were charged on the case have never
Speaker 3: been together. No one has ever heard of an aph
Speaker 3: and H gang like. I know all the people that
Speaker 3: were charged, but some of the people on the case
Speaker 3: don't know each other. The only person I did not
Speaker 3: know in the case was Lisa Ruffin. Some of the
Speaker 3: guys are.
Speaker 2: Meeting each other.
Speaker 3: They like, Chrissy, who is this? I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 3: such and such. That's Bobo or man?
Speaker 2: Who is this?
Speaker 3: I ain't never seen this dude for in our neighborhood
Speaker 3: and I'm like, no, he live in the neighborhood, just.
Speaker 2: Live up top.
Speaker 3: And there was a total of seventeen people charged with
Speaker 3: the case, so naturally people saw on TV that they
Speaker 3: are arresting people and they are up to seventeen. So
Speaker 3: you better come up and tell them something when they
Speaker 3: come knocking on your door or you will be number eighteen, nineteen,
Speaker 3: and twenty.
Speaker 4: The other witnesses were mostly teenagers who the police interviewed
Speaker 4: multiple times, and they just keep bringing people in until
Speaker 4: they finally broke. There was one witness, Linda Jacobs, who
Speaker 4: was friend of Carrie Ellerby's.
Speaker 1: Linda Jacobs gave a statement making her and Carrie ellerbe
Speaker 1: witnesses instead of just eavesdroppers to Calvin Austin's confession, and
Speaker 1: the police went back to Carrie ellerb.
Speaker 3: Now the story changes and now she's a witness tutor
Speaker 3: murder at the scene in the alley, her and her
Speaker 3: best friend. Now, if you dare Calvin Austen, don't have
Speaker 3: to tell you about it. But that was her initial
Speaker 3: statement they used her against Calvin Austen and then got
Speaker 3: her to change all her whole testimony around to Kelvin Smith.
Speaker 3: Curry Elab was supposed to have had a baby by
Speaker 3: Kelvin Smith, which was ludicrous because Kelvin Smith he didn't
Speaker 3: need meet Curry Llerb till after missus Fuller's death.
Speaker 1: Now, if you recall, Kelvin Smith was Chris's alibi witness.
Speaker 1: They were at Kelvin's during the crime. So this new
Speaker 1: statement from Ellerb somehow gave Llerb credibility making a statement
Speaker 1: that incriminated her alleged baby's father and discredited Chriss alibi,
Speaker 1: even though it was all a total departure from the
Speaker 1: statement Llerb had made about Calvin Austen. But nevertheless, seventeen
Speaker 1: people from the eighth and H area were now in
Speaker 1: jail awaiting trial.
Speaker 3: Many of the defendants would blame in each other because
Speaker 3: they didn't know each other. Like, man, whatever y'all guys
Speaker 3: got me into, y'all need to get me the f
Speaker 3: off for this case. Man, y'all need to take your
Speaker 3: fucking weight if you did this. And everybody's agging back
Speaker 3: and forth, and so we got argaments and fight among
Speaker 3: ourselves about man. What you know about this man? You
Speaker 3: better tell the people whatever you know and get me
Speaker 3: off of this case. And everybody on the case is
Speaker 3: just lost and dumbfounded, except for Harry Bennett. Harry Bennett
Speaker 3: is not from that neighborhood. He put itself on the
Speaker 3: case to take away a drug charge that he had,
Speaker 3: but he's not from that neighborhood. He's never mentioned in
Speaker 3: any of the.
Speaker 1: False confessions, and he's referred to Calvin Austin's statement and
Speaker 1: a striking inconsistency.
Speaker 3: Calvin Austin and Bennett said the similar story, but they
Speaker 3: switched up different people doing different things, and they don't
Speaker 3: implicate each other. Why because Harry Bennett don't know Calvin
Speaker 3: alst Kavin don't know Harry Bennett, so they never implicate
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 1: Which sounds like a blazing red flag.
Speaker 4: What the government says is essentially, well, these inconsistencies don't
Speaker 4: matter because they all basically say the same thing, so
Speaker 4: that there was a large grip that attacked Missus Fuller.
Speaker 4: And first of all, as details do matter when you're
Speaker 4: looking at those inconsistencies and trying to tell a story
Speaker 4: and figure out how the witnesses got.
Speaker 1: There, and not only are they inconsistent with the each other,
Speaker 1: but with the objective facts of the crime.
Speaker 4: When we asked a pathologist before the twenty twelve hearing
Speaker 4: to take a look at this and sort of see, like,
Speaker 4: are these injuries possible for one or two people to
Speaker 4: have inflicted? He said, yes, It's actually much more likely
Speaker 4: that this is one or two people than a large
Speaker 4: grip crime because of the way they're concentrated.
Speaker 3: But Calvin Alsen and Harry Bennett said that all these
Speaker 3: guys was dead. Oh yeah, Chrissy he hit her, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Charles he kicked her. Snot Rag he hit her. Stephen Webb,
Speaker 3: yeah he kicked her. It's like it was a similar line,
Speaker 3: like guys had taken torry, Okay, now you go kick
Speaker 3: And the autos report didn't support this.
Speaker 4: This pathologist looked at some of the witness statements and said,
Speaker 4: if this had happened the way this witness said, here
Speaker 4: are the injuries he would have expected. If it had
Speaker 4: happened the way this witness had said, here are the
Speaker 4: injuries he would have expected, and they're not there. The
Speaker 4: other piece of that is that the government has often
Speaker 4: said in this case that the injuries were so severe
Speaker 4: that they couldn't have been inflicted by one or two people.
Speaker 4: The pathologist said, that's absolutely not the case. If what
Speaker 4: the witnesses are saying is true, it would have actually
Speaker 4: been a more brutal crime.
Speaker 1: In addition, Calvin Austin fought to suppress his own false confession,
Speaker 1: a process he began upon leaving the interrogation room.
Speaker 4: He immediately retracts the confession and is writing everybody under
Speaker 4: the sun telling them he falsely confessed. Was planning to
Speaker 4: go to trial up until very late in the game.
Speaker 3: He was in the sale right next to me, across
Speaker 3: from Lamont Bobby, Calvin Smith, and Daryl Murchison. And once
Speaker 3: he lost that suppression motion for the video, they actually
Speaker 3: moved Calvin Alsten. We don't know why they move them.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say they moved him intentionally, but
Speaker 3: they put them with people who were sentenced already and
Speaker 3: he ended up right.
Speaker 4: He was sixteen, He got raped in the DC jail
Speaker 4: and at that point he said, like, I've got to
Speaker 4: get out here, and so he agreed to testify for
Speaker 4: the government Jesus.
Speaker 1: So they had Austin Bennett Yarborough, Ellerbye Jacobs, and a
Speaker 1: young man named Maurice Thomas, who claimed to be able
Speaker 1: to identify Chris Turner from a distance by the shape
Speaker 1: of his head. Yeah, and that is what passed Muster
Speaker 1: as the state's evidence that they planned to present at
Speaker 1: two separate trials, the first of which was for ten
Speaker 1: of the seventeen co defendants.
Speaker 3: They told the public that they were more and they
Speaker 3: were gonna get more. The other seven were supposed to
Speaker 3: be indicted on full of two but the one guy,
Speaker 3: Darryl Merchison, was not indicted because he had a time
Speaker 3: cause showing that he was at work at the time.
Speaker 3: Lamart Bobbitt, his girlfriend had a detailed journal hour on
Speaker 3: the hour and her and.
Speaker 2: Lamont was together.
Speaker 3: Another one of the guys, we were not in town
Speaker 3: or was locked up somewhere else at the time, maybe Rowland,
Speaker 3: Franklin or something. And so they don't want none of
Speaker 3: that stuff to come out.
Speaker 1: The alibi evidence would have impeached the credibility of all
Speaker 1: of the state's witnesses, so those whose alibis could be
Speaker 1: undermined went to trial, including Chris and Charles Turner, Kelvin Smith,
Speaker 1: Timothy Catlett, Levi Rouse, Stephen Webb, Russell Overton, Clifton, Yarborough,
Speaker 1: Alfonso Harris, and Lisa Ruffin.
Speaker 3: One person had public defendant Alfonso Harris, because he was
Speaker 3: the first person arrested, so the public Defender's office couldn't
Speaker 3: represent no one else on the case because of conflict
Speaker 3: they're interests. So we all received quarter pointed attorneys. They
Speaker 3: never did no investigation work, They never did any research.
Speaker 3: This would have been came out, but they thought that
Speaker 3: we all were gonna plead guilty. How could you not
Speaker 3: plead guilty to the worst case ever in the history
Speaker 3: of DC when they offer you plead deals to six years.
Speaker 3: They offered me a plea deal to two years at
Speaker 3: least a rough and one year, and offered everybody else
Speaker 3: a plead.
Speaker 2: Deal to six years.
Speaker 3: And I told him I'm not pleading juilty to somebody
Speaker 3: didn't do. And it should have woke the lawyers up
Speaker 3: if they were actually defense attorneys. Even when trial was
Speaker 3: going on, they offered us plead They kept on convincing
Speaker 3: us that we need to plead out to this and
Speaker 3: move on.
Speaker 1: But they refused, and the prosecutor, Jerry Goren, took them
Speaker 1: to trial in late nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 4: The evidence that it is presented at trial is the
Speaker 4: testimony of Calvin Austen and Harry Bennett that they, along
Speaker 4: with the defendants of some other individuals, were hanging out
Speaker 4: at a bus stop at the corner of eighth and
Speaker 4: H Streets when cliff Yarborough started singing a go go
Speaker 4: song about getting some money. That someone saw Missus Fuller
Speaker 4: from across the street and said let's go get her,
Speaker 4: and that they accosted her, drag her into the alley,
Speaker 4: rob her her, beat her in a wild frenzy, and
Speaker 4: somehow they all come to agree eventually that the person
Speaker 4: who committed the analsodomy with an object was Leevi Ross,
Speaker 4: and that they then left. That's the overarching narrative. Bennett
Speaker 4: and Alston put themselves in the crime. Carrie Ellebie and
Speaker 4: her friend Linda Jacobs. They tell very different stories about
Speaker 4: what they saw, but they put themselves there watching the crime.
Speaker 4: Another teenage witness, Maurice Thomas. Police were initially looking for
Speaker 4: a different Maurice who they heard knew something about the crime,
Speaker 4: but they found Maurice Thomas, and he ultimately told them
Speaker 4: that he had been walking by the alley, and he
Speaker 4: was able to sort of identify some of the people,
Speaker 4: including Chris Turner, by the shape of his head. The
Speaker 4: witnesses weren't great. They weren't super credible, so the jury.
Speaker 1: Must have picked up on some of the inconsistencies. But then,
Speaker 1: out of ten attorneys, only the public defender, Michelle Roberts
Speaker 1: raised the suspects who ran from the scene, and without
Speaker 1: Clifton Yarborough testifying to what had been coerced out of him,
Speaker 1: the case against her client, Alfonso Harris was basically non existent.
Speaker 3: Calvin Austen didn't know Afonso Hers, Harry Bennett didn't know
Speaker 3: Afonso Hers really, and then the girls lay what from
Speaker 3: the neighborhood and didn't know Afonso Hers.
Speaker 1: So Harris had a shot. Meanwhile, none of the attorneys
Speaker 1: even bothered questioning the state's theory of a group assault. Instead,
Speaker 1: there was a great deal of call it friendly fire.
Speaker 4: They were just all fighting with each other. So it
Speaker 4: was this defendant was there, but my client wasn't, and
Speaker 4: so they adopted the government's narrative and just quiverled with
Speaker 4: the specifics. And again the witnesses weren't super credible. But
Speaker 4: the crime was awful and there wasn't any sort of
Speaker 4: real competing theory presented.
Speaker 2: It was a mess.
Speaker 3: I mean, we had the worst attorneys that you could
Speaker 3: possibly have if anyone had just went to the crime scene.
Speaker 3: We kept begging for attorneys just go down there and
Speaker 3: just look. Just take pictures. You'll see. This not possible
Speaker 3: to happen like this. This can't occur the way they're
Speaker 3: saying it.
Speaker 1: So it appears that the only person who worked in
Speaker 1: the service of justice was the public defender. And meanwhile
Speaker 1: the jury was stuck with these inconsistent witnesses and a
Speaker 1: defense panel that resembled crabs in a barrel.
Speaker 4: The initial convictions took a really long time. I think
Speaker 4: the jury was out for about a week.
Speaker 3: One jury told me that they voted over seventy times
Speaker 3: before they reached the verdict. They found two not guilty
Speaker 3: right then and there, and then they convicted six.
Speaker 4: The two who are acquitted are Alfonso Harris and then
Speaker 4: Felicia Ruffin, frankly, because I think there's like nothing against her.
Speaker 4: It's unclear how she ended up there, which.
Speaker 1: Left two more for the jury, Russell Overton and Chris Turner.
Speaker 3: I was already grieving because they found my brother and
Speaker 3: other men guilty of a crime. I knew that they
Speaker 3: had not committed, so I was already grieving. But it
Speaker 3: was just like you had found me guilty already before.
Speaker 2: So over the course of.
Speaker 3: The next two days, the juriors kept telling the judge,
Speaker 3: we can't reach a verdict, that they wanted to go home.
Speaker 3: They've been sequestered in a hotel, they haven't seen their family,
Speaker 3: they hadn't been able to take care of their homes.
Speaker 3: This trial been going on for two months. This impossible
Speaker 3: for a verdict to be reached, and my attorney moved
Speaker 3: for a mistrial, and Russell over theon attorney didn't want
Speaker 3: a mistrial. The judge continued to send them back there
Speaker 3: to deliberate anyway, and basically told them what they know
Speaker 3: what their verdict should be. They had a duty to
Speaker 3: bring back a verdict and they found us guilty.
Speaker 4: So Chris ultimately was convicted of murdering Missus Fuller. He
Speaker 4: was sentenced to twenty six years to life in prison.
Speaker 4: He was nineteen at the time, and that was actually
Speaker 4: the latest sentence received by any of the eight men
Speaker 4: who were convicted.
Speaker 3: It was gut Rich, and it had broke my spirit
Speaker 3: because I thought that I let so many people down,
Speaker 3: and so.
Speaker 2: It was a tough time for me.
Speaker 3: I didn't want people who had invested so much in
Speaker 3: me to think that I threw that all the way
Speaker 3: and that I did the crime, and so it put
Speaker 3: me at the lowest point in my life.
Speaker 2: They gave most of the US federal destination.
Speaker 3: I was sent to Ashland, Kentucky, and so I would
Speaker 3: spend the next three years there. I angry, mad as
Speaker 3: hell solitary confinement most of the time. The gods hated me,
Speaker 3: the inmates hated me. They applied to kill me a
Speaker 3: couple of times. They told me that my life was
Speaker 3: in danger. I just didn't even care at that time.
Speaker 3: I'm like, you guys think you mad, you should imagine
Speaker 3: how mad I am.
Speaker 2: But I also made the transformation there.
Speaker 3: I was locked down twenty three hours a day by myself.
Speaker 3: So I began to read everything that I could get
Speaker 3: my own hands on. The more I read, the more
Speaker 3: I love reading. And so I read a book Call
Speaker 3: for a Boy, and it changed my life.
Speaker 2: I thought my.
Speaker 3: Situation was the worst situation in the world, and I
Speaker 3: thought no one could relate to it. When I read
Speaker 3: that book about the trocity in South Africa. As bad
Speaker 3: as I thought my situation was, it was not the
Speaker 3: worst situation in the world.
Speaker 2: That's when the transformation made place.
Speaker 3: That was when I made up in my mind that Chris,
Speaker 3: you get a chance to make this your monastery, or
Speaker 3: you get the chance to make this your place of
Speaker 3: how I learned in it. And so from that point on,
Speaker 3: I began to.
Speaker 2: Change my perception.
Speaker 3: I changed people's perception of how they was gonna perceive me.
Speaker 3: I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I stopped feeling bitter,
Speaker 3: I stopped being angry, and I said, I'm gonna do
Speaker 3: something about it. I began studying the law. I said,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm gonna get myself out of prison.
Speaker 1: And part of that journey was reaching out to a
Speaker 1: journalist named Patrice Gaines, who had covered the trial for
Speaker 1: the Washington Post.
Speaker 3: I was blaming Patrese in Washington Post and everyone for
Speaker 3: our conviction, because I told him that we were convicted
Speaker 3: in the newspaper long before we ever went to trial,
Speaker 3: and we were never given a fair trial. And I
Speaker 3: reminded her that I was still innocent, and she wrote
Speaker 3: me back and told me that the case didn't set
Speaker 3: well with her and she had a problem with it.
Speaker 3: Then then she was new to the Post and she
Speaker 3: didn't have no backing.
Speaker 4: Patrese was the lone black journey Us there who was
Speaker 4: covering the case. Even then, she had serious doubts about
Speaker 4: the case, but she was the only one at the
Speaker 4: Post who felt that way, And so when she heard
Speaker 4: from Chris again later, I think it really stirred something
Speaker 4: inside her. Patrese talks to Calvin Alston and Harry Bennett.
Speaker 4: I think Calvin Alston had been kind of recanting for
Speaker 4: a while at this point, and he recanted to her.
Speaker 4: Bennett recanted to her. In two thousand and one. She
Speaker 4: ultimately wrote a story for the Post, but this case,
Speaker 4: at least back then, still had a lot of power
Speaker 4: in DC and instead of a series like she was hoping,
Speaker 4: it became one article in the Style section. But it
Speaker 4: got the attention of the then newly formed mid Atlantic
Speaker 4: Innocence Project.
Speaker 1: And she had a literal bombshell to share. Patrese discovered
Speaker 1: that a woman named Amy Davis had told the police
Speaker 1: about her boyfriend James Blue just weeks after Catherine Fuller's awful.
Speaker 4: Murder, Amy Davis comes forward and says she witnessed her
Speaker 4: boyfriend James Blue commit the murder. Police follow up, they
Speaker 4: decide they don't think Ammy Davis is credible.
Speaker 3: They say they never believe their story. Her family vividly
Speaker 3: says they went to visit her and witness protection in
Speaker 3: Annapolis at a hotel that the government is known to
Speaker 3: have used for witness protection. The family wouldn't have had
Speaker 3: no reason to make this up. Amy Davis actually had
Speaker 3: Missus Fuller's wedding ring. They actually sold her ring to
Speaker 3: a group of people down on a street when they
Speaker 3: took it to the police office and say we got
Speaker 3: this ring. We think that might be described as the
Speaker 3: ring miss fullet. It was last scene when she left home.
Speaker 4: Ammy Davis statement just goes in a pile. It's never
Speaker 4: just close to the defense. Eventually, Amy Davis is actually
Speaker 4: murdered by.
Speaker 1: That boyfriend, a murder that happened the week before the
Speaker 1: Fuller trial. Now, James Blue died in prison in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, and it's possible that Amy Davis was lying
Speaker 1: to gain protection for herself from an abusive partner and
Speaker 1: the wedding ring was just a coincidence, but either way,
Speaker 1: it's Brady material.
Speaker 4: And so based on the initial recantations and the Amy
Speaker 4: Davis evidence, the initial lawyers filed a joint Innocence Protection
Speaker 4: Act petition and post conviction petition.
Speaker 1: And while this filing was processed, Chris had already done
Speaker 1: twenty six long, miserable years and was finally eligible for parole.
Speaker 3: We told him ahead of time that we were not
Speaker 3: beingmit and guilt, and we presented this Brady material to
Speaker 3: the parole boy and they had enough sense to believe
Speaker 3: in my innocence. I'm the first person to ever parole
Speaker 3: first time up without admitting guilt.
Speaker 1: By now, Sean and her team at the mid Atlanticainnis's
Speaker 1: project had officially taken over the.
Speaker 4: Case, so we sought formal discovery, and that's where we
Speaker 4: got information about all of the times the government interviewed
Speaker 4: its own witnesses, all of the times those stories were changed,
Speaker 4: about the people walking through the alley who saw the
Speaker 4: garage door closed and heard moans at five point thirty.
Speaker 4: That's where we got some of the most valuable information
Speaker 4: in the case, including information about James McMillan.
Speaker 1: If you recall the street vendor who discovered the body.
Speaker 1: He and his friend saw two men fleeing the scene.
Speaker 1: The police arrived, well, they had actually made an id
Speaker 1: back in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 4: One of the men, identified a guy named James McMillan,
Speaker 4: is known to police. He lives right on that alley
Speaker 4: with his aunt, and he's known to police because he's
Speaker 4: been robbing and beating women in alleys in that area,
Speaker 4: and the beatings are particularly brutal and nasty.
Speaker 1: But it appears that since this didn't fit the gang narrative,
Speaker 1: McMillan was merely prosecuted for his other violent robberies at
Speaker 1: that time.
Speaker 4: And just months after getting out of prison for those robberies,
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety two, James McMillan happened to murder and
Speaker 4: Analie Sodoma as another young woman in an alley a
Speaker 4: couple of blocks away. And when you look at the
Speaker 4: later crime, those injuries actually have a similar pattern and
Speaker 4: if anything, are even more severe, and we know that
Speaker 4: crime was only committed by one person.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, the nineteen ninety two murder doesn't qualify as Brady
Speaker 1: material since it didn't exist at trial. But the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four identification and McMillan's nineteen eighty four violent crimes
Speaker 1: absolutely did so. In twenty twelve, they filed a motion
Speaker 1: that contained the Brady material as well as some really
Speaker 1: helpful supporting evidence.
Speaker 4: So at the twenty twelve hearing, all of the recanters,
Speaker 4: a bunch of witnesses from the neighborhood testify, including two
Speaker 4: women with CIA level security clearances, who testify about the
Speaker 4: ways in which the police interrogated them in this case
Speaker 4: and were making accusations and just kind of assuming that
Speaker 4: every teenager in the neighborhood was potentially guilty. But at
Speaker 4: the end of the day it was all denied by
Speaker 4: the trial judge, who had been friends with the original
Speaker 4: trial judge on the case, so I think came in
Speaker 4: with some pretty strong preconceived notions and brought those to bear.
Speaker 1: It appears this judge felt similarly to the trial prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Jerry Goren, who also took the.
Speaker 4: Stand, specifically with the macmillan evidence. He said, it really
Speaker 4: would have only made a difference if this had been
Speaker 4: a one or two person crime, and of course, like
Speaker 4: that's the point, that's exactly the point.
Speaker 1: Both Goren and the judge had ignored the new evidence
Speaker 1: because it had flown in the face of the trial evidence,
Speaker 1: which was also shown to have been wholly unreliable.
Speaker 4: So we appeal that to the DC Court of Appeals.
Speaker 4: We also lost there, and then as kind of what
Speaker 4: we saw as hail Mary, we filed a petition for
Speaker 4: regisource errari with the US Supreme Court. And in the
Speaker 4: US Supreme Court, we couldn't bring forward the evidence of innocence,
Speaker 4: so we couldn't bring the recantations because that's only a
Speaker 4: claim under DC law, but we could raise the Brady issues.
Speaker 3: When they said the Supreme Court I accepted it, I
Speaker 3: thought it was a dune dee. I don't recall a
Speaker 3: Brady violation that they accepted that they did not overturn.
Speaker 2: We figured we.
Speaker 4: Had at least four votes, because that's what it takes
Speaker 4: to get cert in the US Supreme Court, and why
Speaker 4: would they bother granting cert if four people weren't fairly
Speaker 4: sure they wanted to reverse the lower court decision. So
Speaker 4: we had oral argument in the case, and it was
Speaker 4: pretty clear that we did not have justice sodomor, which
Speaker 4: was a bad sign, and we ultimately lost. We had
Speaker 4: given it our best shot. There was a lot of
Speaker 4: stuff that was withheld from the defendants at trial, But
Speaker 4: at the end of the day, the most powerful evidence
Speaker 4: we have is the similarity between the murder of Missus
Speaker 4: Fuller and the nineteen ninety two murder that James McMillan committed.
Speaker 4: But the Supreme Court can't consider that or chooses not
Speaker 4: to consider that, because it is about what the prosecutor
Speaker 4: knew at the time and what they should have turned
Speaker 4: over at the time, and what the trial would have
Speaker 4: been like at the time. So anything that happens after
Speaker 4: that isn't really relevant.
Speaker 1: Since this defeat in twenty seventeen, Chris has been focused
Speaker 1: on living even though his name still hasn't been fully cleared.
Speaker 3: The charge is still come up on the certain criterias.
Speaker 3: I try to apply for a job with Homeland Security TSA,
Speaker 3: the charge is still come up. This case is over
Speaker 3: forty years old and we still get back down on verse.
Speaker 4: People who are convicted in local DC courts can't go
Speaker 4: to the mayor. We don't have a governor because we're
Speaker 4: not a state. What we have is the president. The
Speaker 4: Central Park five now exonerated five just spoke at the
Speaker 4: Democratic National Convention. And if there's any case that this
Speaker 4: case reminds me of, it is the Central Park five
Speaker 4: case that kids were like having kind of a wild
Speaker 4: night in Central Park and ergo, they must have all
Speaker 4: just gang raped someone that if you browbeat teenagers for
Speaker 4: long enough, they'll either confess or give you the witness
Speaker 4: statements you want. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: this type of case is exactly what a pardon is for.
Speaker 4: Right a pardon is supposed to be a chance for
Speaker 4: you to bring evidence that you can't take to court.
Speaker 4: And so no one with any kind of unbiased view
Speaker 4: has ever looked at the facts of this case.
Speaker 3: Right now we have a pardon and in front of
Speaker 3: the president by we're confident that we have enough evidence
Speaker 3: to get him to do the right thing, and all
Speaker 3: the guys on the case, some of the families can
Speaker 3: finally get the relief that they deserve, including the fullest family.
Speaker 3: They hoping that we get the pardon and they can
Speaker 3: actually get the rest that they deserve and finally move
Speaker 3: past the case, because until justice is to serve, no
Speaker 3: one can actually move forward.
Speaker 1: Amen to that, and we're going to link some action
Speaker 1: steps in the episode description and with that, let's now
Speaker 1: go to closing arguments, my favorite part of the show,
Speaker 1: where once again I thank you Sean and Chris from
Speaker 1: the bottom of my heart. And it works like this. Sean,
Speaker 1: you know you've been here several times before. I'm going
Speaker 1: to turn my microphone off and leave my headphones on
Speaker 1: and just listen to anything else you want to share
Speaker 1: with me and our wonderful audience. Sean, you go first,
Speaker 1: and then just hand the mic off to Chris and
Speaker 1: he'll take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 4: Nobody wins when innocent people are convicted. Family of the
Speaker 4: person James McMillan murdered when he got out of prison
Speaker 4: like that never should have happened, and the guys who
Speaker 4: were convicted shouldn't have to live their lives with the
Speaker 4: stain of allegedly committing one of the most gruesome murders
Speaker 4: in DC history. Yes, they're out of prison, but I
Speaker 4: don't like being falsely accused of knowingly parking in someone
Speaker 4: else's parking space. Imagine that you are just known in
Speaker 4: DC and have been since you were a child, for
Speaker 4: committing a murder like that. Imagine being nineteen years old,
Speaker 4: being convicted of something you didn't do and going back
Speaker 4: to the DC jail and having the whole jail erupt
Speaker 4: in cheers because you were convicted. That's what happened to them.
Speaker 4: Imagine being target in prison because of the crime you're
Speaker 4: convicted of even though you didn't do it. Like that's
Speaker 4: what they've been living with for most of their adult
Speaker 4: lives and some of their non adult life. And the
Speaker 4: President has the power to undo that, and he should
Speaker 4: or she should.
Speaker 3: I extend my honest to you, Jason and the entire
Speaker 3: staff there and the work you're doing. Whether we get
Speaker 3: the partner or don't get the partner, we'll still be
Speaker 3: talking about it. My closing thoughts is just extend honors
Speaker 3: to the entire wrongful conviction community and the advocates and
Speaker 3: the tremendous work that's being done on so many fronts
Speaker 3: behind the scenes to bring.
Speaker 2: This to the forefront.
Speaker 3: We wish that the Justice Department get behind it, pull
Speaker 3: your head out of the sand, but I think they're
Speaker 3: afraid to get behind it.
Speaker 2: This is the one case that they.
Speaker 3: Don't allow any of their attorneys to have opinion about
Speaker 3: one way or another. Because you got to ask yourself
Speaker 3: if you did this in a case that everybody was watching,
Speaker 3: What the hell is going on? In cases where nobody
Speaker 3: is watching, and I think that's the thing that they're
Speaker 3: afraid of, that there'll be a windfall, you know, when
Speaker 3: you think about what's really going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
Speaker 1: week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
Speaker 1: production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 1: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn.
Speaker 1: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 1: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
Speaker 1: across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 1: at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number
Speaker 1: one