Speaker 1: Welcome back to our mini series Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: Flam In the time of COVID, you know, social distancing
Speaker 1: orders were put in place well over a month ago,
Speaker 1: and on top of the tragic loss of life, we're
Speaker 1: starting to see the effects of isolation and restricted movement
Speaker 1: as they make their impact. For many, there's the specter
Speaker 1: of going without basic necessities when their businesses can't bear
Speaker 1: the idle time, or when stimulus money runs dry when
Speaker 1: they can't get unemployment. But for those incarcerated, a potential
Speaker 1: death sentence looms as a very real possibility as they
Speaker 1: have no way of social distancing in our overcrowded prisons.
Speaker 1: And yet some people on the outside are ignoring the
Speaker 1: necessary precautions and even going so far as to demand
Speaker 1: an ill advised and straight crazy returned to business as usual. Clearly,
Speaker 1: the advice of our expert it's from the rothly convicted community,
Speaker 1: is now more necessary, even essential than ever previously. We
Speaker 1: spoke to Damian Echols and Amanda Knox about the importance
Speaker 1: of structuring your time, keeping an exercise regimen, cleanliness, focusing
Speaker 1: the mind inward, and they gave us tips on combating
Speaker 1: the absence of physical touch and and this is really
Speaker 1: important holding on to our senses of humor. This week
Speaker 1: we will talk to a man who was not only
Speaker 1: sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit, but
Speaker 1: who also unintentionally You're not going to leave this escape
Speaker 1: from death Row only to return to some new, fresh
Speaker 1: version of hell. Now. He tells us about how the
Speaker 1: current state of affairs reminds him of his experiences on
Speaker 1: death Row, how he overcame his anger, escaped into literature,
Speaker 1: and about the detrimental role that the ego plays on
Speaker 1: our respective abilities to deal with being in our own
Speaker 1: versions of Lockdown. You can hear his entire story of
Speaker 1: triumph over tragedy in an episode so insane that we
Speaker 1: had to break it into two parts for episode five
Speaker 1: of season nine. He's the author of Monsters and Madmen,
Speaker 1: the star of the documentary film The Fear of Thirteen.
Speaker 1: But mostly he's our friend, Nicky Harris on Coping in
Speaker 1: the time of COVID. Nick Yarris is here. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me back on. It's a real honor to
Speaker 1: do this at a time that we're all struggling to
Speaker 1: handle Lockdown Europe in Oregon, Right, Yeah, I'm I'm in
Speaker 1: a small town on the coast of Oregon, just above California,
Speaker 1: and we're blessed by having only six thousand people in
Speaker 1: the population. Well, Nick, you survived um death row in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania at a time when it was so brutal. So
Speaker 1: you've been to hell and back and now here you
Speaker 1: are in the free world and experiencing a much milder,
Speaker 1: shall we say, sort of lockdown. But is it triggering
Speaker 1: for you to have to be sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: stationary and not have the freedom of movement that you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed now for so many years. It's actually um reinvigorating
Speaker 1: all of my lessons learned from it. I had to
Speaker 1: replace the structure in my life when my my life
Speaker 1: hit a brick wall. When I was getting no new
Speaker 1: sensory input in my daily life to have memories of
Speaker 1: interactions with others, it was killing me. Initially I had
Speaker 1: no structure, and I realized that that learning process of
Speaker 1: giving myself structure every day while being locked in a
Speaker 1: six by nine cell has come back and rebounded again
Speaker 1: now to point towards Oh, okay, I'm okay with this.
Speaker 1: So I used it to set up the structure. For
Speaker 1: the children in the house to have their school. We
Speaker 1: built them a little classroom. We're trying to have everything
Speaker 1: regimented because structure keeps the mind healthy. And how are
Speaker 1: you doing now? Right now? The worst thing that I'm facing,
Speaker 1: I guess is the same thing we're all facing. We
Speaker 1: have worry in our hearts, our loved ones. We can
Speaker 1: set it aside for ourselves, but we struggle with worry.
Speaker 1: Meant for everyone from a farm. My dad is eighty
Speaker 1: five years old. He goes over and he picks up
Speaker 1: the newspaper every day, and he refuses to stop living
Speaker 1: his life, and he won't put on a mask. He said,
Speaker 1: I've lived through war and terrorism. I lived through all
Speaker 1: the worst things in life. If God wanted me, he
Speaker 1: would have gotten me sooner. I'm not going to stop
Speaker 1: living my life. But I'm not going to be a fool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are experiencing right now.
Speaker 1: You know, we're all having a tough time with the isolation,
Speaker 1: but some of the people in our lives are not
Speaker 1: taking all of the precautions. For some, the issue is
Speaker 1: economic desperation, but for others, they feel like their rights
Speaker 1: are being infringed, rather than that this is temporary and
Speaker 1: for the common good. And I mean you actually had
Speaker 1: your freedom stolen without cause, So how did you persevere?
Speaker 1: What was the key for you that allowed you to,
Speaker 1: you know, transcend it's probably the right word. This unbelievably
Speaker 1: terrible environment. And how can those lessons be applied for
Speaker 1: people who now are at home, frustrated, no work, no
Speaker 1: recreation activities, stuck in the walls, closing in um, money tight,
Speaker 1: all the other pressures that people are experiencing. How can
Speaker 1: your experience help them? In real tongue, I'm I'm doing
Speaker 1: it with everyone in that same feeling that I had
Speaker 1: on death row, like and it goes back to a
Speaker 1: very terrible night in November when Huntington's prison was set
Speaker 1: on fire during a riot and I was locked up
Speaker 1: in the death row housing unit two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five of us all went quiet as we watched the
Speaker 1: prisoners across the court or burned the block across from us,
Speaker 1: knowing that the building structure was connected and it was
Speaker 1: going to set us on fire, and the guards had
Speaker 1: already left us. So you sit there in those moments
Speaker 1: with this fear in your chest, like Is this real?
Speaker 1: Is this how it ends? And my next what will happen?
Speaker 1: How can I have control over these feelings? And right
Speaker 1: now our whole world is feeling this way. We didn't
Speaker 1: do anything to be put in lockdown. Why are we
Speaker 1: here enduring these fears when this has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with us. We didn't cause this mayhem around us, but
Speaker 1: we're suffering through it. How do we deal with it?
Speaker 1: And the one thing that kept me going through it
Speaker 1: all was I refused to give up my humanity. My
Speaker 1: kindness was so important to me that I refused to
Speaker 1: feed the negative cycle, just like feeding into the negative
Speaker 1: news cycles now in today's social media. I refused to
Speaker 1: feed into the negative, believing that good was the only
Speaker 1: way going forward. And if I believed in that, then
Speaker 1: I could wait this out, see how it plays out,
Speaker 1: and remember that it's a humbling for me. And I
Speaker 1: swear to God that death row experience is playing out
Speaker 1: right now in my life with me. There must have
Speaker 1: been times thick, I mean, you were free, aimed for
Speaker 1: a crime that they knew you didn't commit. Your life
Speaker 1: is in danger every day, not just from being executed,
Speaker 1: but from being beaten to death by guards other inmates,
Speaker 1: all the other deprivations there, there must have been moments
Speaker 1: when you felt bitter. No oh, yeah, oh, Jason, I
Speaker 1: don't want to misplace this truth. But in my early
Speaker 1: days I was so bitter about having nothing that I
Speaker 1: would beat my head on the wall so hard by
Speaker 1: slamming it backwards into the wall. It was the only
Speaker 1: way I felt like I could keep going if I
Speaker 1: stayed angry. In first, I was consumed by the insult
Speaker 1: done to me and my family to be sentenced to
Speaker 1: death for a crime, for a murder of a woman
Speaker 1: I never met in my life. To have my parents
Speaker 1: cry and humiliation in the courtroom while the people taunted
Speaker 1: them and laughed in their face. I was so angry
Speaker 1: that I thought the only way I'm gonna get through
Speaker 1: this is if I stay angry. And it consumed me,
Speaker 1: and I was so ashamed of that that it was
Speaker 1: only because of a miracle chance encounter. A man hung
Speaker 1: himself on my prison block. His cell was empty. The
Speaker 1: guards took me out of my cell to take me
Speaker 1: to the nurses stage and to patch my head up again.
Speaker 1: I'm walking back and the guard says to me, go
Speaker 1: in that cell and get them books he said, they'll
Speaker 1: keep you from being angry. From somehow that moment and
Speaker 1: that chance encounter, I decided to try to stop being angry.
Speaker 1: And it was really hard to stop being angry. How
Speaker 1: embarrassing that I was so consumed by anger that I
Speaker 1: couldn't read more than a few pages. I started to
Speaker 1: pray for were a way to figure out how to
Speaker 1: become strong enough to handle this without anger and bitterness.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't articulate much. I didn't have the fluidity
Speaker 1: of a beautiful vernacular that would come later. So I
Speaker 1: stripped all the photographs off the wall, and I put
Speaker 1: a photograph of myself up and I began to politely
Speaker 1: speak to the image before me of myself, hoping to
Speaker 1: give myself enough respect, love and encouragement, because that was
Speaker 1: the person that had to get me through this life.
Speaker 1: And in this transition, I found this wonderful sense that
Speaker 1: maybe if I stopped and looked at who I was
Speaker 1: for one minute, maybe I could possibly just hopefully love myself.
Speaker 1: So I was looking for and it worked. I mean,
Speaker 1: had you not had that epiphany, there's no way you
Speaker 1: would be here today. You would have almost certainly died
Speaker 1: in prison, like I said, either at the hands of
Speaker 1: the state or at the hands of one of the
Speaker 1: many people who were trying to kill you. Um, and
Speaker 1: I know those stories. Well. The thing I found out, Jason,
Speaker 1: that really is true. I watched I don't know four
Speaker 1: guys entered the prison system on death row, particularly on
Speaker 1: death row from a member of the du Pont family.
Speaker 1: On down. You know, people will high ilk suffer the
Speaker 1: worst when they go into lockdown. So the analogy is,
Speaker 1: the bigger the ego, the harder it is to be
Speaker 1: in lockdown. How much of an affront is all of
Speaker 1: this to you is a measure of your ego, and
Speaker 1: it will attack your health. It will cause you to
Speaker 1: undo every good bond in your life. Some people can't
Speaker 1: really handle this because they're fucking egos so out of
Speaker 1: control that they really are affronted by this. How dare I,
Speaker 1: as an American have to sit in my house for
Speaker 1: four weeks because some Chinese person ate of back like
Speaker 1: this is real? People are walking around in this country
Speaker 1: with the notion that this isn't affront to them in
Speaker 1: their lives, when in fact they're being taught how to
Speaker 1: be more polite, how to be less German spreading hell
Speaker 1: in the future to be more consistently conscientious of your
Speaker 1: own public health. And yet it's such an angry moment
Speaker 1: for so many people. You mentioned Neck about serving time
Speaker 1: with one of the tupont hairs. Can you talk about
Speaker 1: how did he adapt to them? Was he able to
Speaker 1: somehow or other turn a corner like you did. It's
Speaker 1: amazing how it has to have the humbling first. A
Speaker 1: lot of people who do well in society, when they
Speaker 1: hit prison, they just break down. And it happened with
Speaker 1: John DuPont, it happened with others who were very well
Speaker 1: to do in society because their ego is inflated in
Speaker 1: life to the stature of how they live. Imagine one
Speaker 1: of these super wealthy people going from a yacht to
Speaker 1: the prison house. Man. It is such a demoralizing downfall
Speaker 1: that they can't handle that. Jason. The one answer to
Speaker 1: the trouble people have when they acknowledge their ego, if
Speaker 1: they can acknowledge their ego, is what is your outlet.
Speaker 1: You can't mindlessly look at screens, you can't endlessly go
Speaker 1: on social media. That's gonna burn you out really quick.
Speaker 1: This is why I'm so grateful I can go back
Speaker 1: to my first love of reading. I love books for
Speaker 1: one thing. Each one taught me a different aspect of myself.
Speaker 1: And if I go back and read one now, I
Speaker 1: realized the changes of who I was at the time
Speaker 1: that I read it the first time. Two now, is
Speaker 1: there a particular book or was there a particular book
Speaker 1: that meant the most to you that others may be
Speaker 1: able to benefit from? Great question, because one of the
Speaker 1: things that I recently did was I picked up The
Speaker 1: Prophet by Khalil Gribraun, and this is my touchstone book.
Speaker 1: This book was my present at Christmas. I rewarded myself
Speaker 1: by re reading this one work because I felt so
Speaker 1: akin to its main character, al Mustafa, the Chosen who
Speaker 1: spent twelve years within a waltz, and on the day
Speaker 1: of his leaving, he was asked by everyone to give
Speaker 1: them parting wisdom knowledge of what he experienced. And the
Speaker 1: reason I did this is because I was so angry.
Speaker 1: At first. I thought it was flimsy, flimsy, fluozy bullshit,
Speaker 1: and I didn't like it, and I threw it against
Speaker 1: the wall. My mind was so scrambled. I thought this
Speaker 1: was crazy. Why would I bother reading this? Crap. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until about two years later when I had the
Speaker 1: fluid it in my mind to really absorb that. I
Speaker 1: found Gabron's work so uplifting. So I sat down and
Speaker 1: I opened up the book, and I was so rewarded
Speaker 1: with this beauty of this writing. You see, Gabron suffered
Speaker 1: through the tragedy of losing all of his family members
Speaker 1: to another plague. It was called tuberculosis, and his family
Speaker 1: moved to the Boston area from lebon On, and he
Speaker 1: was enraptured with trying to hold down the family farm
Speaker 1: in Lebanon while migrating back and forth to Boston on
Speaker 1: these ships, and his whole family perished during a three
Speaker 1: year period of his life while he wrote The Prophet.
Speaker 1: That's why I loved him. He took the worst tragedies
Speaker 1: of his life and turned it into the most beautiful
Speaker 1: book he could think of and gave that to the world.
Speaker 1: That is what I make the analogy today of today's c. O. V. D.
Speaker 1: Hero was my personal hero. Khalil Gubron. Picking up that
Speaker 1: book the other day meant so much to me because
Speaker 1: it reinvigorated that touch, that field, that smell of art.
Speaker 1: There's nothing like it. Man. The other thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to touch on about reading is this, right now, studies
Speaker 1: have shown that we read on average about two hundred
Speaker 1: books a year in social media messaging. Of reading other
Speaker 1: people's words, we read them in snippets and you know,
Speaker 1: five and ten minutes bounds. But we're not really reading
Speaker 1: the books that we should be reading. And this is
Speaker 1: where a lot of times we have to recognize we
Speaker 1: have to implement actual time away from a screen and
Speaker 1: into enjoying art and literature the way it's meant to be.
Speaker 1: We're doing it anyway, and it's a loss to us
Speaker 1: because we would rather sit there and watch the left
Speaker 1: and right argue about what's right or people's opinions, than
Speaker 1: to absorb some really cool literature and feel good about yourself.
Speaker 1: Like I couldn't imagine sitting there day after day on
Speaker 1: a a retort to someone else's reply to someone else's words,
Speaker 1: an argument about a conspiracy, in all this crap, when
Speaker 1: I could be enjoying something truly invigorating from my brain.
Speaker 1: That's how we do this. My prison guards would walk
Speaker 1: past me and I would be so happy, so uplifted,
Speaker 1: so alive. They thought I was mentally off. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just that I read and therefore I was absorbing things
Speaker 1: I left prison behind. M hm. So I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about another innocent man that you met
Speaker 1: on death row in Pennsylvania way back in and of
Speaker 1: course you know I'm referring to Walter oh Grid. Just
Speaker 1: before this lockdown started, you were on your way to
Speaker 1: Philadelphia to fight for him, right. I started out trying
Speaker 1: to drive across this country in a pickup truck to
Speaker 1: go get my friend Walter o Brod out of death
Speaker 1: row after twenty eight years of being on death row, wrongly,
Speaker 1: having the mother of the victim begging for his release
Speaker 1: in all this, only to be stopped cold by the judge.
Speaker 1: And I would have been still in Philadelphia begging for
Speaker 1: his release had I not listened to wisdom better than
Speaker 1: my own. Honestly, lately, I'm just I keep thinking about
Speaker 1: my friend Gregory Ogrod, Walter's brother. Now that Anne Marie Fayhey,
Speaker 1: the mother of the victim, the little girl who my
Speaker 1: friend Walter Ogrod was falsely convicted of murdering, is begging
Speaker 1: for Walter's release, he kept saying, Man, she's such a
Speaker 1: huge Bruce Springsteen fan. Can I do anything to try
Speaker 1: and get her as signed c D from Bruce? That's
Speaker 1: all he wants to do. This is a man who
Speaker 1: suffers from his brother being on death row right now
Speaker 1: for a crime that he didn't commit for the last
Speaker 1: twenty eight years, and his main concern is trying to
Speaker 1: show grace to the mother of the victim for her
Speaker 1: efforts to show grace to his brother. That's how I
Speaker 1: keep thinking about Jason. Isn't it wonderful that in the
Speaker 1: height of this horrible thing that we're going through, so
Speaker 1: many good things are shining. Like Greg gives me so
Speaker 1: much hope because he's not allowing all of this negativity
Speaker 1: of his brother being cheated from being released to affect
Speaker 1: him from finding a way to go forward with good
Speaker 1: for his brother. And you know, I'm so inspired by you.
Speaker 1: And it's another thing I have to tell you, this man,
Speaker 1: I struggled before I met you. No one with your
Speaker 1: stature has given me any respect. I've done podcast around
Speaker 1: the world, but that's a a moment for that person. Sir.
Speaker 1: You're the only sincere friend that has stayed true throughout
Speaker 1: this process, and it's because of you I'm going to
Speaker 1: keep standing up strong and making these efforts for people
Speaker 1: to see. This is the message right here, Jason, you
Speaker 1: and me man showing people that you might be in
Speaker 1: New York and I might be an organ but I
Speaker 1: love you, man, and I love the effort you make
Speaker 1: for other people. And good is gonna win, and you
Speaker 1: believe it and I believe it, and that's why we're
Speaker 1: here today. So that all of us right now, if
Speaker 1: you hear my voice and you're struggling to handle this,
Speaker 1: we we get it, man, and we love you for it.
Speaker 1: And reach out to someone. Do the nice thing, man,
Speaker 1: don't reach out and tell your woes. Reach out and
Speaker 1: be someone else's answered prayer. Be the uplifting moment they need,
Speaker 1: and you'll feel so it's better for yourself. And Nick, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm really touched. And Um, you know you're someone who
Speaker 1: I look up to and I draw a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of inspiration from. So I love YouTube brother, and we
Speaker 1: will continue to fight this fight together. We will bring
Speaker 1: Walter home and we're gonna go get Bruce Springsteen's autographed
Speaker 1: for that wonderful woman who has been through such hardship
Speaker 1: and tragedy and is now showing such grace as you said.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and I like the one thing that you
Speaker 1: continue to do on the social media. You continue to
Speaker 1: share positive messaging that uplifts people who relieves them of
Speaker 1: the stress with good neuralplasicity post. I love it that
Speaker 1: you always started the same way. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: much I needed to see a giraffe hug a donkey,
Speaker 1: but there it is, you know what I mean, and
Speaker 1: that really matters to someone. Jason. You're doing your part
Speaker 1: and that's what people need to hear. Those little things
Speaker 1: means something to someone somewhere, even if you didn't notice it,
Speaker 1: and that's what we got to keep alive. Yeah, hey man, brother,
Speaker 1: So again, Nick, thank you for sharing your thoughts. You
Speaker 1: never ceased to amaze me, and I appreciate our friendship
Speaker 1: more than words can say. You know, I feel like
Speaker 1: you've already shared your words of wisdom with us. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say, stay safe and I'll be looking
Speaker 1: forward to seeing and working with you as soon as
Speaker 1: we're allowed to travel again. Thank you for having me
Speaker 1: on and I'm really grateful to you. It never fails
Speaker 1: whenever I speak to Nick. I learned so much and
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting things I just learned. I mean,
Speaker 1: we all know the importance of literature, but we tend
Speaker 1: to you know, neglect it or take it for granted sometimes.
Speaker 1: But from Nick, I learned that we read equivalent of
Speaker 1: two hundred books a year in terms of the total
Speaker 1: number of words that we consume, but we consume them
Speaker 1: in such sort of trite ways right on social media
Speaker 1: and little bites. But reading real art, reading some of
Speaker 1: the classics is something that so many people who were
Speaker 1: wrongly convicted, so many of our Exonorey community, have told
Speaker 1: me that's one of the things that got them through
Speaker 1: as Nick did, that that lifted their spirits, even turned
Speaker 1: their their whole you know, mojo around was reading Victor
Speaker 1: francole Man Search for Meaning or or some of the
Speaker 1: other classics the Prophet. Do you hear these things come
Speaker 1: up over and over again. You know, if I learned
Speaker 1: anything talking to Nick, it's stay positive and always be kind.
Speaker 1: Nick practices radical kindness, and I think we can all
Speaker 1: take something from that. I mean, right now more than ever,
Speaker 1: I think it's the time when we can help each other.
Speaker 1: You could be someone else's you know, lifeline for we
Speaker 1: go any further, I want to thank all our our heroes.
Speaker 1: Um they've always been heroes, but now they're finally being
Speaker 1: recognized as such. And by that I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: our healthcare providers, all the essential workers, the grocery store people,
Speaker 1: the delivery people, everybody who is, you know, helping us
Speaker 1: to keep going, risking their own safety to keep society
Speaker 1: from coming apart. So in the meantime, I hope you've
Speaker 1: been listening and hearing Laura and I Writer and Steve
Speaker 1: Drizzen as they shed light on why someone would ever
Speaker 1: admit to a crime they didn't commit in Rawful Conviction,
Speaker 1: False Confessions. I'll be returning with the new season of
Speaker 1: Rawful Conviction with Jason Flaman May and next week we're
Speaker 1: going to have a very special guest. I'm gonna leave
Speaker 1: it a mystery, but you're gonna want to hear this one.
Speaker 1: So come back next week for more alternative perspective on
Speaker 1: life and living in the time of COVID. Don't forget
Speaker 1: to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll join me in
Speaker 1: supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
Speaker 1: how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
Speaker 1: our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music
Speaker 1: in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Speaker 1: Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one