Speaker 1: America has two point two million people in prison. If
Speaker 1: just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two thousand people.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people's lives destroyed.
Speaker 2: If the system want to take you out of society,
Speaker 2: they will do it no matter what laws they have
Speaker 2: to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, but
Speaker 2: they are breaking the lord.
Speaker 1: Having to hear those people say that I was guilty
Speaker 1: of a crime that I did not commit, and then
Speaker 1: hear my family break down behind me and not be
Speaker 1: able to do anything about it. I can't describe the
Speaker 1: crushing weight that was.
Speaker 3: I'm not anti police, I'm just anti corruption.
Speaker 2: A lot of times we look and we see something
Speaker 2: happen to somebody and that's the first thing we said,
Speaker 2: that could never happen to me, But.
Speaker 3: They can.
Speaker 4: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 4: Jason Flamm. Today, I am actually in the presence of
Speaker 4: someone who I am. I can only say I'm in
Speaker 4: awe of this guy. John Huffington is here. John was
Speaker 4: in prison for thirty two years, ten of them on
Speaker 4: death row for a double murder that he didn't commit.
Speaker 4: And the things that he's doing today would embarrass the
Speaker 4: biggest do gooder among us. So, John, welcome to wrongful conviction.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 4: So John, let's go back to the beginning, before this
Speaker 4: insane saga began, because this happened when you were eighteen.
Speaker 4: But before that, how was your life? What was it like?
Speaker 4: Where'd you grow up? So?
Speaker 3: I grew up in a small town called Churchvills. It's
Speaker 3: in Harford County, in between two bigger towns that folk
Speaker 3: would know, bela Air and Aberdeen and Maryland in Maryland, Yes, Maryland.
Speaker 3: So I grew up probably will be considered middle class,
Speaker 3: upper class kind of a situation. Nice neighborhood, good schools.
Speaker 3: I had everything that you know you would want in
Speaker 3: that sense of support, a strong family. My parents ended
Speaker 3: up being married over fifty six years. I think it was,
Speaker 3: you know, at the end, siblings were doing well. So,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like anything else young age, you know,
Speaker 3: we make our choices. We get exposed to different things.
Speaker 3: And I made a few the wrong choices and took
Speaker 3: quicker routes to negativity is what it turned out to be,
Speaker 3: and exposed myself to lifestyles that were not healthy. My
Speaker 3: choices took me out of an arena where you know,
Speaker 3: I should have had the white picket fence and half
Speaker 3: kids or whatever and you.
Speaker 4: Know and adult. Were you doing anything violent at the time.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, I mean when I say bad choices,
Speaker 3: it was into getting into drugs and that's what I
Speaker 3: was doing. I was, I was dealing drugs and I
Speaker 3: was living that lifestyle.
Speaker 4: As you were between tenth grade and I guess twelfth
Speaker 4: grade when this happened, right, Did you ever have any
Speaker 4: interaction with law enforcement based on the fact that you
Speaker 4: were involved with drugs? No.
Speaker 3: I never had any regular charge placed on me in
Speaker 3: that regard. I was a wild child and my parents
Speaker 3: were trying to bring me more under control. So there
Speaker 3: was that I was exposed to the juvenile criminal system
Speaker 3: justice system at that time with what they call sin
Speaker 3: charle child and need a supervision because my parents were
Speaker 3: kind of wits end what to do. So I got
Speaker 3: juvenile probation and had to do like family counseling and
Speaker 3: that kind of thing to work through that. But again
Speaker 3: it was me being rebellious against you know, my parents were.
Speaker 3: There was a serious generation gap. My parents were born
Speaker 3: in the twenties and they were in their forties before
Speaker 3: the kids came along. So as I was pushing the
Speaker 3: boundaries of curfews and just lifestyle choices, it was very
Speaker 3: hard to sort of transgress into that through the family unit.
Speaker 3: And you know, having your younger brother and sister, my
Speaker 3: parents didn't want that to be a bad influence on
Speaker 3: them as well, so you know they were right to
Speaker 3: try and bring me and bring me in tighter.
Speaker 4: So none of the stuff that you're describing would prepare
Speaker 4: you or anyone for death row or any of the
Speaker 4: stuff that was to befall you. And it all leads
Speaker 4: to that faithful day of May twenty fifth, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 4: when there was a double murder and you were implicated
Speaker 4: ultimately by the guy who actually committed the crimes. So
Speaker 4: how did how did they come to decide to come
Speaker 4: get you in the first place.
Speaker 3: So the night of or prior in that evening, I
Speaker 3: was with what turned out to be my co defendant
Speaker 3: and we were at a club and they were closing
Speaker 3: that club early. It was a Sunday night, and the
Speaker 3: owner was like, well, we're all going to go over here,
Speaker 3: why don't we go? And so we ended up over
Speaker 3: at the club where one of the victims worked as
Speaker 3: a DJ and the guy had worked for me in
Speaker 3: the past. Like when I say worked for me, he
Speaker 3: had purchased quantities of cocaine, you know, and sold for me.
Speaker 3: So we had various conversations and my co defendant was
Speaker 3: actually looking to make a purchase that night. I was
Speaker 3: waiting for supply to come in anyway. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of the realm of why we were all in that,
Speaker 3: you know, gathering, so to speak. So we left there
Speaker 3: after having some conversation. At the end of the night
Speaker 3: at two in the morning whatever we had gone back
Speaker 3: to he lived in a trailer home. We had gone
Speaker 3: back and had further conversation. My co defend actually purchased
Speaker 3: like an eighth of an hour ocid, coke or whatever
Speaker 3: from him, and we left it at that and we left.
Speaker 3: So when the murders were discovered the next day and
Speaker 3: the police investigation led them to my co defendant because
Speaker 3: his name had been said while they were in the car,
Speaker 3: because I guess we were following them and somebody's like,
Speaker 3: who's the car following us, and it was said, you know,
Speaker 3: that's Dino. So they they tracked him down and he
Speaker 3: reached out to me asking for an alibi. And again,
Speaker 3: look at that age, I was eighteen, I'm I'm a
Speaker 3: drug dealer, I'm anti police, I'm like all about the
Speaker 3: loyalty factor and you know, never snitching and all those
Speaker 3: kind of things, just being young and stupid. So it
Speaker 3: wasn't a big thing to me. It was like, whatever,
Speaker 3: no problem. This is The following night, I guess, I
Speaker 3: got a call from his cousin that said the police
Speaker 3: had reached out to him looking for me because apparently
Speaker 3: they didn't know my last name. They just wanted to
Speaker 3: talk to me. So I was like, fine, let's go.
Speaker 3: Let's go see him. So literally, we went to the
Speaker 3: police station and I walked in, I knocked on the
Speaker 3: door and I said, you know, I'm John Huffington. I
Speaker 3: understanding you're looking for me, and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we are, so.
Speaker 4: But you didn't know at that time what they were
Speaker 4: looking for you for.
Speaker 3: No, I honestly, I didn't know the extent of what happened.
Speaker 3: I just knew something had happened.
Speaker 4: Well because your friend at the time, cod defended it
Speaker 4: turned out to be Dino Canaris. He hadn't told you
Speaker 4: about what he had done. He just told you that
Speaker 4: he wanted an all.
Speaker 3: We need to we need to have been here all
Speaker 3: night because we had gone to a convention music convention
Speaker 3: that they have as a bluegrass convention the next day,
Speaker 3: and it was like, we need to fill the gap
Speaker 3: from the night before. You know, I'm not stupid, but
Speaker 3: I don't. I just didn't know the extent of it.
Speaker 4: I mean, who would ever expect that he had committed
Speaker 4: a double murder? I mean, did you know this guy
Speaker 4: to be a violent guy.
Speaker 3: No, But as the case developed, a quick sidebar on
Speaker 3: that there was a witness that came forward who I
Speaker 3: didn't even know. You know, I'd met once in my life.
Speaker 3: But this guy said that he was with Dino like
Speaker 3: two weeks prior to this, and they were at the location,
Speaker 3: the campground, and the Dino pulled out a gun and
Speaker 3: a knife and wanted to go kill and rob these people. Again,
Speaker 3: I don't find this out till years later in his trial.
Speaker 3: Like that witness never testified at one of my trials. Ever,
Speaker 3: it wasn't my witness, stayed witness.
Speaker 4: And again, you had never personally known him to be
Speaker 4: prone to this type of talking about violence and extreme violence.
Speaker 3: Extreme yeah, no, I hadn't. I mean I always looked
Speaker 3: at him. Quite honestly, he wasn't a friend of mine.
Speaker 3: His other cousins were friends of mine. Like I didn't
Speaker 3: like Dino. He was addicted to the cocaine. This is
Speaker 3: a guy that chased it.
Speaker 4: So you covered for him because you just were more
Speaker 4: I mean, even though he wasn't really a friend, you
Speaker 4: were more anti authority at the time, and you were
Speaker 4: just kind of being questionable too.
Speaker 3: Like the Greek.
Speaker 4: He was much older than you, right, Yeah, he was in.
Speaker 3: Mid twenties something, I think twenty seven. I was eighteen.
Speaker 3: The Greeks have their thing, and like I said, I
Speaker 3: was friends with their cousin. I'm thinking, I'm rolling with
Speaker 3: the gangsters, and this is what we all do, and
Speaker 3: it's that kind of a lifestyle. But again, it's something
Speaker 3: I still ascribe to today, Like I don't, you know,
Speaker 3: have my code of what we could call honor ethics
Speaker 3: were I don't snitch, you know, so when I get
Speaker 3: in there and you know, they're confronting me with this,
Speaker 3: I don't have a way out. Now. It's different to
Speaker 3: think abstractly like Okay, something happened, even a crime of violence,
Speaker 3: something happened. You know, it's abstract, but when you you know,
Speaker 3: started hearing the elements of it, it was very I'm eighteen,
Speaker 3: it was a little overwhelming. I didn't even know how
Speaker 3: to process it. So my reaction to them was, look,
Speaker 3: I'm not involved in this. You can come search my
Speaker 3: apartment right now. I'll take a lot of tective tests.
Speaker 3: I'll do whatever I can to extricate myself the only
Speaker 3: way I know how. So they were like, we'll do
Speaker 3: all that. So literally left the police station now is
Speaker 3: probably midnight on Sunday, and they drove me back to
Speaker 3: my apartment and I turned in like all my paraphernalia
Speaker 3: right then and there, because I told them, I said,
Speaker 3: if you search my apartment, there might be some things
Speaker 3: that you're going to find. And they're like like what,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, you know, I have scales, I have
Speaker 3: drug parafhinney, that kind of thing, and they're like, are
Speaker 3: you willing to turn it in? I'm like absolutely, I
Speaker 3: just retired as of today, as of this moment, I'm retired.
Speaker 3: I'm not a drug dealer anymore. Like I knew my
Speaker 3: life had just completely changed right then and there. So
Speaker 3: we went back to the apartment, and I turned in
Speaker 3: all this material and I volunteered to take the LT
Speaker 3: of detector tests. So the only thing I had said
Speaker 3: is I just wanted a lawyer there, and I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't have a lawyer, I don't know a lawyer.
Speaker 3: So the next morning, I literally went to the Yellow Pages,
Speaker 3: and back in those days, they had Yellow Pages, and
Speaker 3: there was a guy in my class at school who
Speaker 3: I knew his father was an attorney. So I looked
Speaker 3: for that last name, called that law firm, and it
Speaker 3: turns out as father does civil but his uncle does
Speaker 3: criminal law. So I set up an appointment and went
Speaker 3: in there the very next morning at like nine o'clock
Speaker 3: and met with the attorney and you know, they're like, well,
Speaker 3: what is it you want us to do. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I want to take the LOT of detector test. I
Speaker 3: want this to be you know, I don't want them
Speaker 3: looking at me like I'm in I want to do this,
Speaker 3: and they're like, okay, we'll set it up.
Speaker 4: So I was.
Speaker 3: Leaving the police station, went to get in our cars
Speaker 3: with my future brother in law. He was my sister's
Speaker 3: boyfriend at the time, and Dino's father was standing outside
Speaker 3: because the restaurant's right there. So I said good morning
Speaker 3: to him and continued on to get in the car. Well,
Speaker 3: unbeknownst to me that night, Dino had gone to his
Speaker 3: father and gave his whatever you want to call his confession.
Speaker 3: But obviously it was all putting the weight on me,
Speaker 3: saying that I held him hostage while all this stuff happened.
Speaker 3: So all that had transpired unbeknownst to me during the evening,
Speaker 3: So when his father saw me, his father ran into
Speaker 3: the police station and said, you know, John Hoffingon is
Speaker 3: out in the parking lot. So we're starting to pull
Speaker 3: out of our parking spot. I look up, I see
Speaker 3: the back of the police station door just burst open.
Speaker 3: A dozen officers are fanning out into the parking lot.
Speaker 3: We're the only vehicle moving, so we're immediately surrounded. Guns
Speaker 3: drown So I told him, my brother in law, I
Speaker 3: just just stopped, just pull over, and we get out
Speaker 3: of the car, and it's like.
Speaker 4: That was it.
Speaker 3: That was the last time that right there, that moment
Speaker 3: was the last time my feet hit the ground until
Speaker 3: thirty two years later.
Speaker 4: Thirty two years.
Speaker 3: Later, and I never did get that light detective.
Speaker 4: Test, never got the light detective test. It sounds like
Speaker 4: some other people should have been given light detectors, and.
Speaker 3: They were, and they were and he failed to our
Speaker 3: knowledge and what my law firm was able to ascertain,
Speaker 3: were aware that he took two and he failed both
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 4: You're talking about Diinoo. So now you know you're in
Speaker 4: real trouble. You've got this lawyer. Now did he end
Speaker 4: up representing you? And how and how did things go
Speaker 4: from there? How long were you held in jail? I'm
Speaker 4: assuming you were held without bail because this was a
Speaker 4: I mean you're talking about Joe Hudson was shot and
Speaker 4: killed outside of farm on his way to a turn
Speaker 4: out to be a fabricated drug deal. Right. He was
Speaker 4: the boyfriend of Diana Becker, who was beaten and stabbed.
Speaker 4: She had been sleeping her trailer her son found her.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's the whole thing's horrible in every way,
Speaker 4: and then it gets worse when an innocent man ends
Speaker 4: up serving all this time in prison when they actually
Speaker 4: had the real perpetrator. But he had every reason to
Speaker 4: implicate you. I mean, he didn't care about you at all,
Speaker 4: and he was making a deal for himself, probably to
Speaker 4: spare his own life because of course Maryland had the
Speaker 4: death penalty still.
Speaker 3: Does, I think, right, No, they've abolised it.
Speaker 4: So Marylnd's a bossed death en. But they had the
Speaker 4: death back then. So yeah, he had the strongest possible
Speaker 4: incentive to implicate somebody. And you were the logical guy
Speaker 4: because you were the guy who had been around that night, right,
Speaker 4: So it's like he didn't need to be a brain
Speaker 4: surgeon to figure that out. But then it's interesting too
Speaker 4: because he came up with this story which every time
Speaker 4: I think we've ever heard of it, it's been false, right,
Speaker 4: which is that you held him hostage.
Speaker 3: And it changes, you know, his story changes every time
Speaker 3: he testifies grand jury. I've had two trials. Will Mitt
Speaker 3: is his gun. There's really no ducking that because when
Speaker 3: he was with these undercover cops, there was a point
Speaker 3: in time where they were driving somewhere and he was
Speaker 3: in the car with the officer and he said, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, let me go get my gun. I don't
Speaker 3: ever go anywhere without my gun. So he went back
Speaker 3: to his car. He came back with the gun. Now
Speaker 3: the officer obviously is not pleased with this. Nervously he's
Speaker 3: carrying a gun, so asked to see it, like, let
Speaker 3: me what do you carry? Let me see it. Apparently
Speaker 3: it's a it was a unique kind of a thirty
Speaker 3: eight something. There was an animal in the handle or something.
Speaker 3: The officer noted that. So just he can't duck the
Speaker 3: fact that this officer is testifying it's an undercover state
Speaker 3: police officer. The canarious carries a gun. So he tells
Speaker 3: different versions of he supposedly sells me this gun, like
Speaker 3: either two weeks before or a month before. You know,
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff changes every time he opens his mouth.
Speaker 4: And of course you didn't have the gun. I don't
Speaker 4: have a gun, And they knew you didn't have gun
Speaker 4: because they'd search your apartment. They searched everything. There was
Speaker 4: no physical evidence connecting you to the crime.
Speaker 3: The only thing that they as far as physical evidence goes,
Speaker 3: is there's a vodka bottle that apparently was used as
Speaker 3: a weapon to to bludge in Diana, and my fingerprint,
Speaker 3: they've claimed, is on the neck of this bottle. Now,
Speaker 3: this is back in the eighties where everybody, myself included,
Speaker 3: we always had these big bottles in your apartment or whatever,
Speaker 3: and where you throw your coins and usually you had
Speaker 3: these big feathers sticking out of it. I did on mine,
Speaker 3: and that's what this bottle was in the trailer. Apparently
Speaker 3: it was full of coins and such. So, you know,
Speaker 3: they asked me, well, how could your fingerprint get on there?
Speaker 3: My answers, I don't know. Like I was in the trailer.
Speaker 3: Did I touch it at one point? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to sit here and tell you lie
Speaker 3: and say very specifically that night I moved the bottle.
Speaker 3: So therefore my fingerprints on there, I don't know. If
Speaker 3: you say my fingerprints on there. There was also, I
Speaker 3: don't know, it was over twenty other fingerprints and handprints
Speaker 3: on this bottle that still to this day remained unidentified.
Speaker 3: But that was the other piece of evidence that they've
Speaker 3: used to put me at the scene. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't have an answer for that. I'm not going to
Speaker 3: sit here and make up an answer. I've been in
Speaker 3: the trailer, I was there that night. Did I touch it?
Speaker 3: If if my fingerprints on there, obviously I did it
Speaker 3: some point point. Did I swing it as a weapon. No,
Speaker 3: that's just not the facts.
Speaker 4: So so you go to trial, did you still have
Speaker 4: the same lawyer.
Speaker 3: No, I you know at this point, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm eighteen, and it wasn't that that could have a
Speaker 3: drug dealer. I couldn't afford lawyers, so it became a
Speaker 3: public defender. By the time I made it to trial,
Speaker 3: I was represented by a public defender who, you actually
Speaker 3: did a fairly good job. I mean he I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, he did a great job, and apparently the
Speaker 3: jury didn't.
Speaker 4: Your parents didn't want to pay for a lawyer.
Speaker 3: No, you know, I was living on my own. I
Speaker 3: didn't really talk to them about that. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was kind of understood, like, you know, I'm grown, I'm
Speaker 3: an adult, and you know, this is my journey, and
Speaker 3: you know, I wasn't going to pull the family down
Speaker 3: into it. My mom especially was very supportive, sat there
Speaker 3: every day of trial and stuff. But no, my entire incarceration,
Speaker 3: I never financially pulled anybody into it.
Speaker 4: That's the way you are in any case. So you
Speaker 4: had this public defender who did as good of a
Speaker 4: job as you could have done under the circumstances, which
Speaker 4: kudos to him. But at what point did you realize
Speaker 4: that you were doomed.
Speaker 3: Here's a funny story.
Speaker 4: So the funny story there ain't nothing funny about that.
Speaker 4: There's not.
Speaker 3: But this is this is when I knew I was
Speaker 3: in serious, serious trouble. So it's a change of venue
Speaker 3: because it's death penalty case, it's automatic change of venue.
Speaker 3: So I'm not in Harford County where the crime occurred,
Speaker 3: which is you know, rural but metropolitan. I'm in Caroline County,
Speaker 3: which is extremely rural. So in the middle of the trial,
Speaker 3: the jury's been sworn, this older woman approached the jury
Speaker 3: box and passed a note to this elderly gentleman that
Speaker 3: was on the jury, And of course everybody's watching it,
Speaker 3: like what the heck, what the hell's going on? You
Speaker 3: don't do this? And the judge stopped everything. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't remember the names, but he's like, Myrtle,
Speaker 3: come up here for a minute. And she comes up there,
Speaker 3: and it's like what are you doing? What did you
Speaker 3: just pass the bill? Everybody knows everybody in this county,
Speaker 3: you know, Like she's like, oh, and he had the note,
Speaker 3: he had the Bailif grab the note, it had one
Speaker 3: word on it, soybeans. So it's like, what is this
Speaker 3: all about. She's like, well, the seas just came in
Speaker 3: and I need Bill at home to plant the crop.
Speaker 3: Now I knew I'm in trouble because here I am.
Speaker 3: This is a very cosmopolitan case, and you know, you know,
Speaker 3: it's drugs and it's the city and this kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And I'm in a courtroom where they're talking about soybeans.
Speaker 3: That's their priority, and they're not going to get any
Speaker 3: of this information whatsoever. It just was one of those
Speaker 3: you know, I'm in Mayberry and I'm in trouble. They're
Speaker 3: going to listen to anything officials tell them, be it
Speaker 3: state's attorneys, FBI agents on the stand. This is the
Speaker 3: kind of folk that are just going to believe in
Speaker 3: authority without questioning it or challenging it.
Speaker 4: So and they got to get home to deal with seib.
Speaker 3: So they got to get home. So they're going to
Speaker 3: rush out of here as quickly as they can. And
Speaker 3: it was Friday the thirteenth that the verdict came in,
Speaker 3: So of course that was an interesting day. But it
Speaker 3: was just interesting. You asked when I knew it was like,
Speaker 3: quite honestly, there was a lot of naiveness on my part, thinking,
Speaker 3: you know, I had never really been exposed to this
Speaker 3: system and I'm like, truth, this is what this is about.
Speaker 3: It's going to come out. They're going to figure this out.
Speaker 3: And it just didn't come like that. It's just I
Speaker 3: had FBI agent after FBI agent come in there and
Speaker 3: their suits and ties and we're with the FBI lab
Speaker 3: me and they're saying what they're saying. Well, all three
Speaker 3: of those FBI agents have now been discounted, like their testimony,
Speaker 3: their their tests have been thrown out. But at the time,
Speaker 3: that's an impressive thing to may bury er anywhere else.
Speaker 3: And you know, I was just up against it. And
Speaker 3: the more you sit there day after day listening to
Speaker 3: the testimony, the more worried you get. This is not
Speaker 3: going to go.
Speaker 4: Well, no, you were. You were doing this backwoods place
Speaker 4: and people that are that are heredy get home and
Speaker 4: it's a perfect storm. You're done. And we know now,
Speaker 4: and the FBI has acknowledged this right because the four
Speaker 4: year study was conducted by the Innocis Project and the FBI,
Speaker 4: and the results showed that in a study I think
Speaker 4: it was two hundred and sixty eight cases, they found
Speaker 4: that I think in two hundred and fifty seven of them.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to remember these numbers out of my head.
Speaker 4: I think that's right. FBI agents had either lied or
Speaker 4: been mistaken, and these were all cases involving hair analysis
Speaker 4: like yours. In fact, yours was one of them. And
Speaker 4: the fact is that when I say they either lied
Speaker 4: or were mistaken, what I want people to understand is
Speaker 4: that in every one of those cases in which they
Speaker 4: were mistaken, they were mistaken in favor of the prosecution.
Speaker 4: So it's hard to take a view and say, well,
Speaker 4: these were honest mistakes because none of them came down
Speaker 4: in the other direction. And of the twenty eight FBI
Speaker 4: agents involved, twenty six of them were complicit in this.
Speaker 4: So you were a victim like so many other people,
Speaker 4: based on this hair analysis in which they either lied
Speaker 4: or exaggerated or or misstated the likelihood that the hairs
Speaker 4: could have come from somebody else. And we know that
Speaker 4: they were just making these fingers up out of thin
Speaker 4: air and saying things with certainty that were in some
Speaker 4: cases even money or even less right, that the odds
Speaker 4: could it could have come from almost anyone. And of
Speaker 4: course it's extremely powerful, as you said, when an FBI
Speaker 4: agent gets up there, I mean, who's gonna Who's gonna
Speaker 4: think twice. Maybe people who listen to the show will
Speaker 4: think twice. I hope. So so the day comes Friday
Speaker 4: the thirteenth, you've got very little hope in hell at
Speaker 4: this point. What were you expecting when the jury went out?
Speaker 4: How long did they deliberate?
Speaker 3: Day and a half.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's actually longer than I would have thought. And
Speaker 4: then they come back in did they look at you?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: They always have heard that adage before, like if they're
Speaker 3: not looking at you, you're in trouble. So they didn't,
Speaker 3: And so I knew, you know, you just get that,
Speaker 3: you know, like, I don't know that's true, but I've
Speaker 3: been to somebody told me that prior. So I was
Speaker 3: looking to see if they were going to look me
Speaker 3: in the eye. And they didn't. So you stand for
Speaker 3: the verdict. The first count. It was the strangest thing.
Speaker 3: I still don't understand how they did it. But the
Speaker 3: first count was first degree premeditated moles forethought murder, you know,
Speaker 3: murdered the first degree. And they said not guilty.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: So I was like, like, okay, and you thought you
Speaker 3: were going home. I thought that's okay, this is good.
Speaker 3: You know, we made it. We proved our point. Then
Speaker 3: they said, okay, as to the first count, still the
Speaker 3: same first count, indictment to felony murder. How do you
Speaker 3: find And that's when they say guilty And I'm like, wait,
Speaker 3: I just got it. Guilty and not guilty on the
Speaker 3: same count, just two different degrees of murder. It always
Speaker 3: bothered me, and I've actually challenged that over and over
Speaker 3: again as a double jeopardy violation, but it never it
Speaker 3: just never caught wind. You know, we just couldn't prevail
Speaker 3: on that. But that's my feelings. As I was standing there,
Speaker 3: is like wow. You know, you go from all the
Speaker 3: way to the top of the roller coaster all the
Speaker 3: way at the bottom that quickly, and from that you
Speaker 3: don't really hear anything more Like I didn't. I was
Speaker 3: just in a daze, like what just happened here? And
Speaker 3: you're trying to process it, and I'm like, I'm eighteen
Speaker 3: years old, Like as smart as I might have thought
Speaker 3: I was at that age. You know, now I have
Speaker 3: thirty some years of hindsight to look back on that
Speaker 3: eighteen year old kid that was standing there, and I'm
Speaker 3: not smart and I didn't know how to process it.
Speaker 3: It was way above my capacity to really understand and
Speaker 3: fathom what had happened and what was about to happen,
Speaker 3: the whole nine I mean, looking back, it's like, I
Speaker 3: don't even know how I was able to stand there
Speaker 3: and just absorb it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's samerically you were able to stay
Speaker 4: on your feet.
Speaker 3: Actually I was rocking. There wasn't any breeze in that courtroom,
Speaker 3: but I certainly started, you know, like just rocking on
Speaker 3: my heels a little bit. Like I was taken.
Speaker 4: Aback and your mom was there? Do you remember who
Speaker 4: else was there?
Speaker 3: You know? I remember, Yeah, my parents were there. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm under custody, so I can't even go over and
Speaker 3: get my mother. Oh, I can't be reassuring. I can't
Speaker 3: do anything because I don't even know, don't I don't
Speaker 3: know what's about to befall me. I don't know what
Speaker 3: death row is going to be like in the penitentiary
Speaker 3: because it's a buyerfurcated process. So the conviction has happened,
Speaker 3: but now I've got to come back in about a
Speaker 3: month and be sentenced. There's a whole other process about
Speaker 3: to occur as well. And again I had not been
Speaker 3: exposed to this. This is long before forensic files and
Speaker 3: CSI and all these kinds of shows, Like I don't know,
Speaker 3: I just didn't know, and I don't think I ever
Speaker 3: processed it. I think I just absorbed it and just
Speaker 3: like treading water, just kept my head above water and
Speaker 3: just kept coming.
Speaker 4: You know, so so amazing that you said what you
Speaker 4: just said, and you were so young, and then your
Speaker 4: situation couldn't have been more diary. You were about to
Speaker 4: be sent to death, and yet your thought was trying
Speaker 4: to comfort your mom, not the other way around. It's
Speaker 4: amazing to me like that. You know, what that says
Speaker 4: about your character is pretty profound, and I just want
Speaker 4: to take a moment to recognize that. So now the
Speaker 4: worst possible thing that could happen has happened. Off you
Speaker 4: go to prison. Can you take us through that? I
Speaker 4: mean death row? I think it's everybody's most primal fear.
Speaker 3: Well, interesting enough, in Maryland the time that I went
Speaker 3: on death row, it was not segregated, and we were
Speaker 3: in population when I first went in there. What they
Speaker 3: would do is they put you on ad and in SAG.
Speaker 3: In other words, they lock you on a cell for
Speaker 3: a month just to see if you're your head's right,
Speaker 3: I guess, and then they let you out into regular pop.
Speaker 3: You know you're in gen pop. There's nothing to distinguish
Speaker 3: you as being death row. They had a board somewhere
Speaker 3: where they had kept our pictures on it and like,
Speaker 3: these are the guys on death row. But we lived
Speaker 3: anywhere we wanted inside the prison. We could live in
Speaker 3: any housing block we wanted. We weren't all in the
Speaker 3: same tier or whatever at the beginning, the years into it,
Speaker 3: I don't know, four or five years in, they decided
Speaker 3: to put us all in the same tiers, so like
Speaker 3: we were sell one through twelve on the second tier
Speaker 3: street side of a block. So we were housed to
Speaker 3: go at a later point, but in the beginning we weren't.
Speaker 3: The thing about prison is like everybody knows everything. The
Speaker 3: grapevine is extremely good, so people know you're on death
Speaker 3: road whatever, but it doesn't carry any cachet value when
Speaker 3: the guy next to you is serving five life sentences,
Speaker 3: so he doesn't give a shit that you got two
Speaker 3: death ponies. You know, it doesn't matter, doesn't give you
Speaker 3: any credentials whatsoever. It really comes down to who you are.
Speaker 4: Did you say two death penalties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my original sentence was death plus death plus fifteen
Speaker 3: plus five plus three the first total two death ponies
Speaker 3: in like twenty one years, all consecutive by the way, right,
Speaker 3: I don't know how you do that time.
Speaker 4: But well so if they execute you when you come
Speaker 4: back to life, they can execute you again.
Speaker 3: And then hold my body for twenty one years, I guess.
Speaker 4: Or if you come back to life a second time, right,
Speaker 4: then they get to hold you in prison for another
Speaker 4: twenty one years.
Speaker 3: It's really just sho, just stepid.
Speaker 4: The concept is, yeah, double the double death sentences, Like
Speaker 4: what the fuck? Anyway? I can't I can't even process
Speaker 4: this as far as death row is concerned. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's no good news whatsoever.
Speaker 3: There's nothing. There is absolutely zero for that. And you
Speaker 3: learn the minute you step onto the tier, like nobody
Speaker 3: gives a shit if you're innocent, you're not, so like
Speaker 3: there's no point in going in there saying, you know,
Speaker 3: but wait, I'm innocent. I'm innocent, so I guess I
Speaker 3: can like it. It's like if you stepped out on
Speaker 3: a pond, a frozen pond, and you suddenly the ice
Speaker 3: cracked and you fell through and you drift, so you're
Speaker 3: not under that air hole anymore. But you can see
Speaker 3: through the ice and you know, it's twelve inches of
Speaker 3: ice there. You see the people, and you could scream
Speaker 3: all you want, it's just air bubbles, you know, like
Speaker 3: you just can't be heard. You're trapped. And that's just
Speaker 3: how it felt. It's a self imposed cage that I
Speaker 3: put myself on because you want to scream through the
Speaker 3: world like I'm innocent, I don't belong here. But then
Speaker 3: you you know, everybody doesn't belong in prison, and everybody's innocent.
Speaker 3: You fall into that, so I don't know. I just
Speaker 3: you bite your tongue. You learn to adjust to the
Speaker 3: city situation the best you can. And I just hit
Speaker 3: the law library, you know. I spent the first year
Speaker 3: just reading everything i'd get my hands on and studying law,
Speaker 3: and I was writing my emotions and driving my lawyers crazy,
Speaker 3: you know. But I was fighting for my life, and
Speaker 3: that's the only way I knew how to do it.
Speaker 3: So I tried to be a little bit more proactive
Speaker 3: or constructive in that way instead of just sitting back
Speaker 3: with a woe is me attitude. And obviously I couldn't
Speaker 3: count anybody else to save my life. I have to
Speaker 3: fight for my life, and that's what I did.
Speaker 4: You brought up an interesting point, which is that as
Speaker 4: a death row inmate, you are entitled to a post
Speaker 4: conviction council, right, an apella council. So that's about the
Speaker 4: only positive thing I guess about being sentenced to death,
Speaker 4: Whereas if you were a normal inmate or sense to life,
Speaker 4: you would not be entitled to that and you'd be
Speaker 4: totally on your own. So there you were in the
Speaker 4: law library. Was what was the day to day experience,
Speaker 4: the physical experience, but also what was the mental and
Speaker 4: spiritual thing that led you to be able to not
Speaker 4: only maintain your physical health, so I mean as best
Speaker 4: you could, but also eventually find a way to get
Speaker 4: out and be sitting right here right now. I mean,
Speaker 4: what can you tell us?
Speaker 3: Well, soon the beginning guy was just angry. You know,
Speaker 3: I was young and still not that I figured myself
Speaker 3: out by any means. But I hadn't like really took
Speaker 3: that time in the introspection and try to figure out
Speaker 3: who I thought I was. So maybe the first I
Speaker 3: want to say, these six or seven years, I probably
Speaker 3: was close to becoming everything they wanted me to be,
Speaker 3: which is the convict. I was getting in trouble inside.
Speaker 3: I had my share of fights. I had a violation
Speaker 3: of the prison rules for whatever things I was doing.
Speaker 3: I had an attempt to escape, you know, I just
Speaker 3: I was not conformed, wasn't going to conform. I had
Speaker 3: a real problem with authority, with the officers. I literally
Speaker 3: got an assault charge against one officer one time, who
Speaker 3: said I saw to them. But I was defending myself against
Speaker 3: five officers, and you know, I'm the one against the
Speaker 3: assault charge, which was dropped later. But so that's where
Speaker 3: I was becoming. And then I guess I had a
Speaker 3: little epithemy. You know, I woke up and there was
Speaker 3: a guy I was working with. I was in the
Speaker 3: property room, you know, I went did my job every
Speaker 3: day and I worked in the package room and where
Speaker 3: the property was packed up. And this guy was always
Speaker 3: involved in activities like he was a member j c's
Speaker 3: was you had a chapter inside this is the Junior
Speaker 3: Chamber of Commerce, And he was always doing paperwork and
Speaker 3: doing stuff. And I was like, what are you doing
Speaker 3: And he's like, you need to come join, you need
Speaker 3: to be a part of this. So I ended up
Speaker 3: joining the j CS, and the minute I joined, they
Speaker 3: asked me to be on their board as Ways and
Speaker 3: Means director, their fundraiser, and then two years later, one
Speaker 3: year later, I was the president. And you know, now
Speaker 3: the jc's are is a leadership training through community service.
Speaker 3: They were doing a lot of good things, and I
Speaker 3: felt a responsibility that I got one hundred and twenty guys.
Speaker 3: Maybe not all of them voted for me, but they
Speaker 3: elected me, and so I'm there to lead them. And then,
Speaker 3: you know, I started looking around and it's like, here
Speaker 3: are these you know, their kids. Some of them were
Speaker 3: sixteen seventeen younger than me. They had come into the
Speaker 3: system and they're the throwaway class, and nobody cared. Nobody
Speaker 3: was working with them. The warden had two rules, don't
Speaker 3: jump on my wall and don't jump on my officers.
Speaker 3: Other than that, anything went. I mean, guy gets killed,
Speaker 3: like stabbed to death on the yard. Literally two hours later,
Speaker 3: they threw sand over the blood and we're back to normal,
Speaker 3: like nothing ever happened. That's that was the penitentiaries back then.
Speaker 3: So I felt a calling to do something different, and
Speaker 3: so through jc's, you know, we were able to start
Speaker 3: doing some things that brought a certain degree of i
Speaker 3: don't know, self respect and measurability to not just the inmates,
Speaker 3: but to the population inside as well as out. So
Speaker 3: we did a lot of projects out on the street,
Speaker 3: and we had a local chapter, the NAACP that was
Speaker 3: in there as well. And this is like when school
Speaker 3: uniforms were first coming back as a topic. There was
Speaker 3: a young girl that got murdered straight bullet hit her
Speaker 3: and she was like eight years old, attended Utah Marshburne
Speaker 3: Elementary School and they were having trouble raising the money
Speaker 3: for their school uniforms. So we did it inside of prison.
Speaker 3: We raised that money for the school uniforms, the NAP
Speaker 3: and the JCS. And then it was you know, I
Speaker 3: saw a little article in the It was the open
Speaker 3: form section of the Aegis. It was a letter that
Speaker 3: a woman had written about her grandchild needed a bone
Speaker 3: marrow transplant, shorans won't go pay for it. She was
Speaker 3: asking for help. So I reached out and contacted her
Speaker 3: and said, look, you know, we don't have a lot
Speaker 3: of money, but we have a silk screen shop, so
Speaker 3: you know, we can design some T shirts and I'll
Speaker 3: give them to you. You can sell them at your fundraisers,
Speaker 3: you know. So we ended up giving her like five
Speaker 3: hundred T shirts and like a thousand of these little buttons,
Speaker 3: and they were using those to raise money and the
Speaker 3: girl got her surgery. It was successful, and you know,
Speaker 3: every Christmas, the grandmother would send me pictures and a card,
Speaker 3: you know, tell them to give me an update as
Speaker 3: she you know, went through life and graduated high school
Speaker 3: and stuff. So there was a lot of good And
Speaker 3: I don't say that because it was me. I'll saying
Speaker 3: it because it was one hundred and twenty guys following
Speaker 3: what we were doing that were doing good things and
Speaker 3: giving back to the community outside as well as inside.
Speaker 3: And that's where I found, I guess my calling in
Speaker 3: a sense where rewoken my own social conscience and my
Speaker 3: passion to do something right and do it well, you know.
Speaker 3: To be honest, it was just be An Onnery, like
Speaker 3: I'm still fighting my case, and my thought process was
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be carried kicking and screaming into
Speaker 3: a gas chamber and I'm not going to walk in
Speaker 3: their head bowed. If that's the ultimate thing's going to
Speaker 3: happen when I walk in there, they're gonna still question
Speaker 3: for decades later what they did and why they did
Speaker 3: it and if they got the right guy, because I'm
Speaker 3: not going to fit the stereotype of what they think.
Speaker 3: So it's just important. And at the end, it really
Speaker 3: is you know, they talk about the dash. It really
Speaker 3: comes down to the dash. This man was born, this
Speaker 3: man dies. It's about what happens in between the dash
Speaker 3: that's in between those two dates. And if you don't
Speaker 3: make it count for something, then why were you here?
Speaker 3: So I figured, if I'm in there, that's where my
Speaker 3: dash is gonna be, then it's still gonna count. And
Speaker 3: so it was really really important to me to make
Speaker 3: my life mean something, regardless of where I was. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I was doing the JCS. We brought Alternative
Speaker 3: to Violence Project from New York down to Baltimore. You know,
Speaker 3: this was starting green Haven State Prison up here by
Speaker 3: the Quakers. It's now an international organization conflict mediation. We
Speaker 3: started that in Maryland and I got my college degree
Speaker 3: while I was inside. I was in the last graduating classes.
Speaker 3: Congress took away our access to the Pelgram. They literally
Speaker 3: took away my senior year. I graduated as a junior
Speaker 3: I just was lucky. I was going for a dual
Speaker 3: degree and I had enough credits to go on out.
Speaker 3: But I lost my senior year over that poor decision.
Speaker 3: But so I chose to make the time work for me,
Speaker 3: not saying it was easy time. I did my time
Speaker 3: and all the hardest prisons in Maryland. You know, I
Speaker 3: was in the penitentiary for my first sixteen I was
Speaker 3: in Cumberland, I was in the cut, I was in supermacs.
Speaker 3: I didn't get any easy ride. There was no country
Speaker 3: club prison for me at any point in time. But
Speaker 3: we were able to make a difference and change not
Speaker 3: just our mentalities, but I think somehow society looked at us,
Speaker 3: and hopefully those seas that we planted back then grow
Speaker 3: trees now because more people are looking at re entry
Speaker 3: and trying to get reciptism down and understanding the need
Speaker 3: to launch programs in the system and work with folk,
Speaker 3: not to warehouse people, but to actually say, regardless of
Speaker 3: why you're there, human beings are redeemable and the human
Speaker 3: spirit is going to thrive in spite of So why
Speaker 3: don't we encourage that? Why don't we order that with
Speaker 3: positivity rather than encourage the negativity. Because you encourage the negativity,
Speaker 3: you just create an unsafe environment for your own guard force.
Speaker 3: And seventy five percent of these people are coming home
Speaker 3: breeding repeat.
Speaker 4: So well yeah, I mean nationally, ninety five percent of
Speaker 4: everyone that's in prison is going to be released at
Speaker 4: some point. So, just purely on a societal level, it
Speaker 4: behooves all of us to want to have those people
Speaker 4: have a shot when they get out at getting on
Speaker 4: the right track. So you survived this death row ordeal.
Speaker 4: All the odds were stacked against you. Finally, decades into
Speaker 4: this nightmare of yours, you discover that the evidence exists
Speaker 4: that can actually free you. Right, and the response of
Speaker 4: the authorities is actually fucking mind blowing.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Talk about the hair and when that emerged and how
Speaker 4: it emerged and what the response of the people in
Speaker 4: power was.
Speaker 3: I'll try to do this really quickly because it goes
Speaker 3: all the way back to the Oklahoma City bombing case.
Speaker 3: So after the Oklahoma City bombing case, there was a
Speaker 3: whistleblower that came out of the FBI lab, doctor Frederick Whitehurst,
Speaker 3: and he brought forth several allegations about the pressure to
Speaker 3: falsify it evidence and the very fact that the lab
Speaker 3: was not equipped to deliver a good report. It was dirty,
Speaker 3: the best practices weren't being utilized. He laid it out
Speaker 3: and what ended up happening. It launched I think about
Speaker 3: a year long investigation from the Spector General's Office at
Speaker 3: which time, at the conclusion of that, they issued this
Speaker 3: massive report, three hundred page report, and they found that
Speaker 3: what doctor Whitehurst had alleged was true in a lot
Speaker 3: of cases, so in particular it affects me. They named
Speaker 3: the FBI agent that it testified in my case, agent
Speaker 3: Michael Malone, and their commentary about him was that he
Speaker 3: consistently testified outside of his area of expertise and misrepresented evidence.
Speaker 3: Now I'm just a layman. It sounds like you just
Speaker 3: called the man a liar with very fancy words, but
Speaker 3: they didn't go quite that far to call him that.
Speaker 3: So here's this report and I'm thinking, great, we can
Speaker 3: do something. Well we can't. I'm on collateral attack at
Speaker 3: this time, meaning post conviction, and apparently that report doesn't
Speaker 3: mean anything. So I was never able to persevere or
Speaker 3: follow any kind of motions based on that. So now
Speaker 3: well let me jump to the next part. So in
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, I get introduced to the Innostance Project.
Speaker 3: A friend of mine was working through the Innocence Project
Speaker 3: in Nina Nina. Morrison was handling his case and he
Speaker 3: had a hair evidence in this case and a DNA
Speaker 3: tested it came back it wasn't his. He was about
Speaker 3: to go home and he was like, you need to
Speaker 3: contact these people because he knew my case and he
Speaker 3: knew me. He'd been around me for decades. You know,
Speaker 3: we know trust me. This fellow convicts. We know who
Speaker 3: did a crime and who didn't, and he knew that
Speaker 3: I didn't do it. So with his encouragement, I'd reached
Speaker 3: out and got the Innocence Project involved in my law firm,
Speaker 3: and we had filed to do DNA testing on the hair.
Speaker 3: This is two thousand and three. Well, the very first
Speaker 3: thing the state did in writing was filed in motion
Speaker 3: asking the court's permission to destroy the evidence. Now we
Speaker 3: didn't know why is an odd thing to right? You know,
Speaker 3: like we want to just know you've held it for whatever,
Speaker 3: twenty six twenty seven years at that time, and now
Speaker 3: you want to destroy it when we're about to send
Speaker 3: it to a lab that we mutually agree you know,
Speaker 3: is the top it's might have typing lab in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: doctor Terry Melton, who's the foremost DNA scientists in the country.
Speaker 3: And we all agree this is going to be a fair review,
Speaker 3: and you're saying you want to destroy the evidence. So
Speaker 3: the judge ruled against that, and after an eight hour
Speaker 3: long court in battle, we've got to approveal to send
Speaker 3: the hair to the lab.
Speaker 4: Well at least time for a second here, right, So
Speaker 4: I'm just picturing the judge. The judge sitting there and
Speaker 4: the prosecutors are arguing, saying, you know what, before we
Speaker 4: discover the truth, we just like to take the preliminary
Speaker 4: step of destroying any chance of discovering the truth by
Speaker 4: eliminating the one thing that can actually tell us what happened.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't make this stuff up. It's public
Speaker 3: record is you couldn't write a script like this. It's
Speaker 3: mind boggling. It becomes more mind boggling when fourteen years
Speaker 3: later we understand why that. So what happens is we
Speaker 3: send these slides to the lab, we get a call
Speaker 3: from the lab that basically says, what do you want
Speaker 3: us to do with this? And we're like, test the
Speaker 3: two hairs. And again, I have to pay for this.
Speaker 3: I've been incarcerated twenty eive years at this point. Coming
Speaker 3: up with fifteen thousand dollars is not an easy task,
Speaker 3: and I'm still it wasn't clear on how I was
Speaker 3: going to do that, but we were moving forward. So
Speaker 3: doctor Melton hits my lawyers and says, you know, what
Speaker 3: do you want me to do? And it's like test
Speaker 3: the hairs. Well, the problem was there was about ten
Speaker 3: microscopic slides. Each slide had five to eight hairs on them.
Speaker 3: They were preserved in some kind of chemical mounting. They
Speaker 3: were not identified. They were not even laid out like
Speaker 3: one strand pulled tight like they were on top of
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 4: So you had to test all of them.
Speaker 3: Well, to test all of them, it would have cost
Speaker 3: probably I think it was eighty five thousand, and at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, like, what does that tell me? Like,
Speaker 3: I've had two trials, where do these hairs even come from?
Speaker 3: All along, you've always said we have two hairs, like
Speaker 3: they were the only two hairs in this entire trailer,
Speaker 3: and they belonged to Huffington And literally one of the
Speaker 3: hairs was found on the body and so you put
Speaker 3: you right at the scene. So I didn't even know
Speaker 3: there were that many hairs. We never knew that. So
Speaker 3: we went back with the help of the Instance Project,
Speaker 3: and we had an agent look at the file to
Speaker 3: see if there was any notes in there that might
Speaker 3: help us. We filed a Freedom Information Act to get
Speaker 3: the file, which took another year, and at the end
Speaker 3: of that the FBI told us, well, whoever does their
Speaker 3: Freedom Information Act? Told us, well, your file exists. Here's
Speaker 3: the number, here's the town, here's the building, here's the file.
Speaker 3: Cabinet is supposed to be in but it's not there.
Speaker 3: So your request is denied. You can appeal this if
Speaker 3: you want. Just like that, My file wasn't around, so like,
Speaker 3: oh okay, So there wasn't anything more we could do.
Speaker 3: We sent the stuff back to the state. We withdrew
Speaker 3: the motion from the court, and actually my lawyers withdrew
Speaker 3: from the case because we were done. There was nothing
Speaker 3: more that we could do. That was like the last
Speaker 3: basically a hail Mary that we were trying to prove
Speaker 3: the point. So years go by, this is two thousand
Speaker 3: and three, four in that range. In two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: Governor Maalley puts a new law on the book called
Speaker 3: a rid of actual innocence, and that's based on pre
Speaker 3: ponderance of evidence or the totality of the evidence. Meaning
Speaker 3: before you would only look at this cup of water
Speaker 3: by itself. But if you look at this cup of
Speaker 3: water with that picture of Warder sitting on this table
Speaker 3: with two of us talking, now there's a story if
Speaker 3: we put it in this proper perspective. So here's this
Speaker 3: chance to really go back in and say, let's look
Speaker 3: at all these little pieces together. They tell a story.
Speaker 3: So my lawyer spent, oh my god, probably a year
Speaker 3: preparing that motion. They looked at every state that had
Speaker 3: similar laws and really studied it. We filed a seventy
Speaker 3: five page motion, and we had a hearing. At the
Speaker 3: hearing again the provider of this state's attorney. The first
Speaker 3: thing he tells the judge is where your honor mister
Speaker 3: Havin had a chance to test the hairs. He didn't
Speaker 3: even test them, So why are we still here today?
Speaker 3: So the judge, who doesn't know why we didn't test them,
Speaker 3: now turns and says, well, why didn't you tell them?
Speaker 3: So my lawyers explained to him what happened, and he
Speaker 3: turned to the State. He said, well, why does mister
Speaker 3: Huffing didn't have to test them anyway? You test them,
Speaker 3: which the losses I have to. But he told the State,
Speaker 3: you go test them. I'm going to hold this hearing.
Speaker 3: You go test them. So we left that hearing. The
Speaker 3: State went to the State Police and asked them to
Speaker 3: test the hairs, and state Police said, no, we don't
Speaker 3: test other labs work and we don't have a budget
Speaker 3: for that, so we're not touching it. So all summer long,
Speaker 3: the judge thinks that we're testing hairs. What the State
Speaker 3: was doing is they went back and they tested my boots,
Speaker 3: and they tested my pants, and they tested the jacket.
Speaker 3: They tested everything they could possibly test, and then September comes,
Speaker 3: they're done. They haven't tried to do the hairs with
Speaker 3: the FBI. So they tell my lawyers, we're done, let's
Speaker 3: go back into court. We don't have anything more to test.
Speaker 3: But they're telling the judge with regular updates like we're
Speaker 3: working on, we're working on.
Speaker 4: And they tested all your stuff just to see if
Speaker 4: there was any evidence of the victim on your clothes.
Speaker 3: Whatever they could figure out. You know, Yeah, they were
Speaker 3: trying to tie me to the scene through Now, DNA
Speaker 3: didn't exist back then, so they were trying to pull
Speaker 3: me in with forensic evidence and none of that worked.
Speaker 3: So right after they made that announcement, out of the blue,
Speaker 3: my lawyers got a phone call from a reporter at
Speaker 3: the Washington Post Spencer's shoe. He's working on this big
Speaker 3: expose of the FBI Lab and their hair nowsis section.
Speaker 3: So he wanted to talk to us because I was
Speaker 3: the Maryland case that Michael Malone was involved in. So
Speaker 3: my lawyers are like, well, you know, we're in court,
Speaker 3: we can't talk about the case. And so the conversation continued,
Speaker 3: and long story short on that he had my file,
Speaker 3: the file that we couldn't get. He had it. He
Speaker 3: got it through Freedom Information Act again years later, but
Speaker 3: he has it. So there's two things in that file
Speaker 3: that we never knew about. The first is after the
Speaker 3: Inspector General's report was done on the FBI Lab, the
Speaker 3: FBI Lab, that was a public report. What nobody knew
Speaker 3: is the FBI Lab conducted their own internal investigation. After that,
Speaker 3: they went out and hired forensic scientists to come in
Speaker 3: and review their own agent's work, including agent Malone my case.
Speaker 3: So there's a report in my file from this outside expert.
Speaker 3: His report basically just says no way, there's no way
Speaker 3: that Malone could have testified the way he did in
Speaker 3: my trial. And he even raised the doubt that Malone
Speaker 3: actually even did the test himself. So there's this report,
Speaker 3: and then the other document that's in there is a
Speaker 3: letter again from nineteen ninety nine from the FBI to
Speaker 3: the state's attorney saying, there's a problem in the Huffington
Speaker 3: case with the hair. You might want to notify either
Speaker 3: mister Huffington or his attorneys. Nineteen ninety nine. Now, remember
Speaker 3: what happens in two thousand and three when I go
Speaker 3: to test the hair. What's the first thing the state does?
Speaker 4: Try to destroy it. Now that makes sense because they knew,
Speaker 4: they knew four years earlier, and that here we are.
Speaker 3: Fourteen years later just finding this out.
Speaker 4: So the FBI went to the.
Speaker 3: State, They sent the letter to the state. Now the
Speaker 3: state and that's an open court, an open court, and
Speaker 3: this I'll never forget or forget. He sat in open
Speaker 3: court and try to tell the judge that he had
Speaker 3: notified me. Now do you think not to take me
Speaker 3: out of the equation. You think anybody in prison would
Speaker 3: have sat there for another fifteen years of that information
Speaker 3: and not used it. Like where's the logic of this?
Speaker 3: Like he claims, he claims he sent it to the
Speaker 3: Public Defender's office. I've been represented by Roopes and Gray
Speaker 3: for twenty five years. He knows that. He claims he
Speaker 3: sent it to the Innocence Project. We talked to them.
Speaker 3: They'd never heard of him. So where did you send it?
Speaker 3: How is it You can go in there and literally
Speaker 3: is an officer to the court. And I'll say it now,
Speaker 3: you lied. You know to the court. You're an officer
Speaker 3: of the court. You lied. It's not the first time
Speaker 3: you've lied. You lied, and that cover up cost me
Speaker 3: an extra fourteen years of my life. And when people
Speaker 3: ask why I'm not bitter, I will tell you that
Speaker 3: part right there. I'm bitter about because I lost my
Speaker 3: mom like five years before I came home. We talked
Speaker 3: about this earlier today, Like don't run from the truth.
Speaker 3: Let the truth just be itself, Like you have an obligation,
Speaker 3: you're elected official, you have an oath that you're sworn to.
Speaker 3: Just let the truth come out, Let your ego get
Speaker 3: on the side. Stop with the win loss record and
Speaker 3: all that. Just let the truth come out. We the
Speaker 3: DNA tested that back then if it came back, it's mine.
Speaker 3: You win your case, it's over with. But either way,
Speaker 3: the truth comes out, and that I can't get that
Speaker 3: time back with my mother. I can't recover what I
Speaker 3: lost with the extra fourteen years that that cover up
Speaker 3: cost me. And to sit there and blatantly tell the
Speaker 3: judge like, oh, I did all my due diligence, that's bullshit.
Speaker 3: You didn't, your liar, and your name's Joe Castley and
Speaker 3: your liar, And that's how it is. I can say
Speaker 3: that now because I'm free and clear of that system.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's impossible to understand what motivates people to bathe
Speaker 4: in that way. I'll hear another one hundred or two
Speaker 4: hundred of these stories and I still won't understand it.
Speaker 4: I don't think any of us ever can. But it happens,
Speaker 4: and it happens not infrequently, and people need to know that.
Speaker 3: Just don't stand in the way of an opportunity for
Speaker 3: truth to come out. Look, we get too caught up
Speaker 3: in our own personalities and egos and it should be
Speaker 3: a system of laws rather than a man. And that
Speaker 3: comes out of the JC cree that's one of the
Speaker 3: stands of the government should be, you know, laws rather
Speaker 3: than a men. When we put our own personalities and
Speaker 3: egos into that, that's where the system gets derailed. Like
Speaker 3: I said, we had a chance to fix this in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine. We should have fixed it, shouldn't. It
Speaker 3: took till twenty thirteen, actually till twenty eighteen to fix it,
Speaker 3: because I mean, at the end of the day, I
Speaker 3: still had to fight even with this coming out. And
Speaker 3: so what ends up happening is they scramble and instead
Speaker 3: of letting it go to my lab, the FBI themselves
Speaker 3: decided to test it. They tell us ahead of time
Speaker 3: it's going to totally consume the sample. So of course
Speaker 3: my conspiracy theories. I'm like, they're just going to say
Speaker 3: it's mine. I'm not even gonna be able to send
Speaker 3: it to our lab they can confirm or.
Speaker 4: Deny because the hair is fragile, it's old, it's gone,
Speaker 4: it's a piece of hair. And that's something that's been
Speaker 4: as you've been talking, I've been sitting here thinking with
Speaker 4: that like, what an amazing phenomenon that your life is
Speaker 4: hanging in the balance of two hairs, and those hairs
Speaker 4: have to be brought from one place to another. If
Speaker 4: there's a car accident, if somebody loses it, if somebody
Speaker 4: goes off the I mean a lot of things can
Speaker 4: go wrong when that thing's being transported, Your life's being
Speaker 4: transported with it. And they're fucking hairs. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: you're being told that it's going to degrade them to
Speaker 4: the point that they're useless when we tested, So this
Speaker 4: really you talked about Hail Mary, this is it, but
Speaker 4: it ain't a football game.
Speaker 3: No, you know. Luckily, they did it as a peer review,
Speaker 3: so it's like a surgeon operating with other surgeons watching
Speaker 3: because this is Michael Malone and it's so scandalous. This
Speaker 3: guy's this guy's infamous for just screwing people's lives. It's
Speaker 3: just terrible what he's gotten away with. But in this case,
Speaker 3: they tested it and it wasn't my DNA, So you
Speaker 3: would think, slam dunk, we're done, we're out of here. Nope.
Speaker 3: I had to go back and then prove that that
Speaker 3: would have made a difference. They fought us on that.
Speaker 3: Luckily the judge, I was fortunate that he didn't have
Speaker 3: an ego and he looked at it for what it was.
Speaker 3: So I want to rid of actual innocence, which meant
Speaker 3: that they took away my victions and my sentence, But
Speaker 3: it also meant that he's set it for new trial.
Speaker 3: Now here's the same prosecutor's been in office for forty years.
Speaker 3: His career started around the same time as my case.
Speaker 3: He's kind of his parallel course throughout the whole time.
Speaker 3: Who won't let go?
Speaker 4: So right? Your case probably helped propel him to a
Speaker 4: long career that he enjoyed.
Speaker 3: I you know, yeah, I mean, you know, I think
Speaker 3: that he has a history of abusing his power and
Speaker 3: the system. And so I ended up that they set
Speaker 3: a bail and it's half a million dollars cash bails. Again,
Speaker 3: here I am sitting there after thirty two years. How's
Speaker 3: that going to work? But it worked the help of
Speaker 3: a couple of friends, I was able to post that
Speaker 3: bail and I came home and the whole time I've
Speaker 3: been home for four years, just as of December seventh
Speaker 3: is over. You know, as of January the first, I'm
Speaker 3: not on any kind of pro probation supervision. But for
Speaker 3: the four years that I've been home, I've had one
Speaker 3: foot on a banana. So you know, I've been really
Speaker 3: blessed in the fact that, you know, I've been able
Speaker 3: to launch a career and find some success in some
Speaker 3: degree of a voice out here. All the while with
Speaker 3: that's still hanging over my head, I've got an active
Speaker 3: prosecution or persecution going on trying to put me back
Speaker 3: in prison for the rest of my life.
Speaker 4: So and this prosecutor so driven he actually delayed his
Speaker 4: own retirement just to get a chance to prosecute you again.
Speaker 3: Well, he'd offered me a deal right before that plead
Speaker 3: guilty and it would all go away time served, and
Speaker 3: he announced his retirement and then I can't say that
Speaker 3: it's definitely coincidental, but I will say this, when I
Speaker 3: said no to the deal, within two days he took
Speaker 3: his retirement back.
Speaker 4: So let's talk a little bit about what's been happening
Speaker 4: since you got out, because these four years, I mean,
Speaker 4: do you sleep, because I mean you're on so many
Speaker 4: boards and different organizations. You know what, that got it
Speaker 4: right in front of me and read it. So John's
Speaker 4: a Committee member, the Greater Baltimore Committee's Coalition for a
Speaker 4: Second Chance. He's also on the board of the Mayor's
Speaker 4: Green Network Leadership Team, the Governor's Office of Crime Control
Speaker 4: and Prevention, Collateral Consequences Work Group, Baltimore City Police Department,
Speaker 4: Community Collaborative Division, re Entry Advisory Committee, the DHCDS Keep
Speaker 4: Maryland Beautiful Steering Committee, and Pivot A Pathway for Women
Speaker 4: from Prison to Purpose. I mean, I'm tired from reading that. Okay,
Speaker 4: what in the hell is going on? What are he's
Speaker 4: trying to improve?
Speaker 3: Well, once again, it's about to dash. I mean, so
Speaker 3: when I came home, obviously I'm on bail and I
Speaker 3: don't know what the future holds. I'm very cynical a
Speaker 3: bat the criminal justice system. I don't trust it, and
Speaker 3: I fully expect they're going to come and hit me
Speaker 3: with the butterfly net and snatch me back like oops,
Speaker 3: we made a mistake or something, you know. So it
Speaker 3: was very surreal getting out here, and then I got
Speaker 3: very I keep saying lucky. Lucky, he's not the right word.
Speaker 3: I was blessed, and I made a few good steps
Speaker 3: and involved myself with some good people, and I have
Speaker 3: to say, I got lucky because I came through the
Speaker 3: very program that I now administer, which is Project Server,
Speaker 3: our rapid attachment to work model. It's a re entry component.
Speaker 3: But I was only there for like three months because,
Speaker 3: like you say, I present myself a little different and
Speaker 3: people tend to look at me and think, oh, he's okay,
Speaker 3: and not think, well, you know, he's been gone for
Speaker 3: thirty two years, he might need some service himself. So
Speaker 3: I came into Living Classrooms Foundations the organization, and they
Speaker 3: gave me business cards in a title, and I was
Speaker 3: a client advocate event coordinator, and so I didn't do
Speaker 3: our normal go out in the alleys and clean and
Speaker 3: do the normal Project Serve work. I literally was working
Speaker 3: with the members that were in Project Serve and creating
Speaker 3: their calend of activities and things like that. But there
Speaker 3: wasn't a funning stream for its, so I needed to
Speaker 3: move on. So after three months, I interviewed for another nonprofit,
Speaker 3: Second Chance in ball or More, and went to work
Speaker 3: for them. And when I left them, you know, I
Speaker 3: was a salaried employee and doing well and they were
Speaker 3: a great organization, were very supportive. But Living Classrooms has
Speaker 3: sort of called me back. The director of Workforce Development
Speaker 3: position was open. Honestly didn't think that it was, you know,
Speaker 3: something I could apply for because you know, I was
Speaker 3: a man with no future. You know, I don't bring
Speaker 3: that future to the table. I'm literally still under trial
Speaker 3: and or indictment and on bail. And they know that,
Speaker 3: and they looked past that and felt that I was
Speaker 3: suited for the job and the right one for the job,
Speaker 3: and gave me that opportunity, knowing full well that my
Speaker 3: world could have ended at any time. You know, I
Speaker 3: could have been sent back to prison, and they entrusted
Speaker 3: a department millions of dollars of budget and staff and
Speaker 3: everything else. So it became even more important to me
Speaker 3: to honor that, you know, to show that their faith
Speaker 3: in me was was correct and that you know, I
Speaker 3: was going to redeem that and make a difference in
Speaker 3: that role. So I don't know, it just comes down
Speaker 3: to the dash, you know, it really does, like how
Speaker 3: much time you have, and the Lord knows any of
Speaker 3: us could walk out of here and get hit by
Speaker 3: a bus. But it's about trying to make a difference.
Speaker 3: And that's just the path that I've always been on.
Speaker 3: Like it's important to me, you know, especially to redeem
Speaker 3: Like I had a law firm Ropes and Gray, I
Speaker 3: should mention this who believed in me and gave me
Speaker 3: twenty five years of pro bono legal services. Now think
Speaker 3: about the cost value of that. And they did it
Speaker 3: because they believed in me and they believed in my case.
Speaker 3: So now how do I repay that? They're not sitting
Speaker 3: there waiting to garnish my check. You know, they're telling
Speaker 3: me go live my life and be successful. So again,
Speaker 3: the only way to repay that debt is to be
Speaker 3: successful and to redeem their faith in me and why
Speaker 3: they did what they did. And then I guess the
Speaker 3: mantle becomes even more big because the more I go
Speaker 3: out there and become involved in these various committees or
Speaker 3: have an opportunity to speak, then you become representative of
Speaker 3: what re entry can look like. So now I can't
Speaker 3: mess up. Like you know, I'm visible, I'm publicly visible
Speaker 3: as others are. I'm not the poster child here, but
Speaker 3: I think that brings more responsibility that if I were
Speaker 3: to mess up, then that gives all the naysayers even
Speaker 3: more ammunitions. This is why we don't do this. This
Speaker 3: is why we don't give jobs or work with re entry.
Speaker 3: So you keep moving it forward. You have no choice
Speaker 3: but to the more, the more you add, the more
Speaker 3: it becomes important that you utilize your voice everywhere you
Speaker 3: can to make a difference. I go back into prisons
Speaker 3: now to introduce the guys inside with here's an opportunity
Speaker 3: when you come home, you can come get trained in
Speaker 3: solar installations and we have jobs for you. Just being
Speaker 3: able to sort of coalesce those folks and to get
Speaker 3: that moving in the right direction and to start, you know,
Speaker 3: having more in depth conversation about why and how we
Speaker 3: can make a difference with the whole re entry models important.
Speaker 4: To me now, and it's great you're here because it's
Speaker 4: so important for people to hear that message and to
Speaker 4: take a different view of people like yourselves, innocent or
Speaker 4: otherwise who were formally incarcerated, and to reach out and
Speaker 4: give them a chance. I mean, I think that my
Speaker 4: experience is that that community of formally incarcerated people will
Speaker 4: work their ass off because they value every day and
Speaker 4: every minute. They take nothing for granted. Before we close,
Speaker 4: if you could just talk for a second about the
Speaker 4: organization you're working with, it you're trying to raise money for,
Speaker 4: and how incredible their success rate is at keeping people
Speaker 4: from recidivating.
Speaker 3: Living Classrooms amazing, amazing organizations that I work for right now.
Speaker 3: It's a nonprofit in Baltimore. We work primarily in East
Speaker 3: Baltimore through our Target Investment Zone, where we've taken a
Speaker 3: two and a half mile square area of East Baltimore
Speaker 3: and we are transforming, trying to disrupt the cycle poverty
Speaker 3: and UPLI multi generational approach to health and wellness, education
Speaker 3: and workforce development. I can't express enough gratitude. You know,
Speaker 3: these folks gave me an opportunity and a chance and
Speaker 3: supported me throughout this entire journey.
Speaker 4: For people who want to help, they can give money
Speaker 4: to Living Classrooms absolutely. You know that Living Classrooms dot org.
Speaker 3: Is Living Classroesfoundation dot org. You know we're nonprofit. You
Speaker 3: know we do a lot of work. It's not just
Speaker 3: re entry. We do you know, after school programming, we
Speaker 3: do early childhood development. Look at our website and it will
Speaker 3: show you how you can make a donation. We appreciate
Speaker 3: that support.
Speaker 4: So once again is www dot Living Classrooms Foundation dot org.
Speaker 4: I'm going to give money. I hope you'll join me
Speaker 4: and do so too. And now is time for always
Speaker 4: the highlights of the of the show, which is where
Speaker 4: I stopped talking, and just turn it over to you
Speaker 4: for any closing thoughts that you want to share.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I want to thank you for
Speaker 3: having me and inviting me to come out here and
Speaker 3: be a part of the show. I use my time
Speaker 3: just to say kudos to YouTube. Jason. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think this is so crucial, so key and important what
Speaker 3: you're doing and bringing the attention that you bring not
Speaker 3: just the exign reads, but to the whole criminal justice system,
Speaker 3: the families against mandatory minimums that I know you're a
Speaker 3: big proponent of. So if I can just flip the
Speaker 3: script and just say to everybody listening, like this guy,
Speaker 3: like he introduced me as doing all this, trust me,
Speaker 3: I'm not even in his league for what he does.
Speaker 3: I don't know when he can possibly sleep. So Jason's
Speaker 3: going to expose you through this podcast and everything that
Speaker 3: he's doing. It's just follow him on Instagram. That's what
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you right now. Follow him and
Speaker 3: see the different things he's doing and understand that you
Speaker 3: two can have an impact you know, this is one guy,
Speaker 3: regardless of him being a record mogul or whatever title
Speaker 3: we want to give him, it's one guy making a difference.
Speaker 3: And honestly, we all can make a difference. It takes
Speaker 3: a lot of one guys and one woman out there
Speaker 3: to make these things happen. And I think the lesson
Speaker 3: that we can all take away from this is that
Speaker 3: we're all empowered to do that. We just got to
Speaker 3: take action.
Speaker 4: Well, John, all I can say is thank you for that.
Speaker 4: I'm humbled and honored that you're here, and thank you
Speaker 4: again for coming in and sharing your experience, strength and
Speaker 4: hope with our audience. You've been listening to a very
Speaker 4: moving episode for me personally of wrongful conviction.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, and thanks to the Innocence
Speaker 3: Project as well. Couldn't a been to do this with Adams,
Speaker 3: so thank you.
Speaker 4: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 4: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 4: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 4: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 4: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 4: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 4: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 4: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 4: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 4: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 4: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 4: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one