Speaker 1: Welcome back to our mini series Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1: In the time of COVID, you know, social distancing orders
Speaker 1: were put in place well over a month ago, and
Speaker 1: on top of the tragic loss of life, we're starting
Speaker 1: to see the effects of isolation and restricted movement as
Speaker 1: they make their impact. For many, there's the specter going
Speaker 1: without basic necessities when their businesses can't bear the idle time,
Speaker 1: or when stimulus money runs dry when they can't get unemployment.
Speaker 1: But for those incarcerated, a potential death sentence looms as
Speaker 1: a very real possibility as they have no way of
Speaker 1: social distancing in our overcrowded prisons. And yet some people
Speaker 1: on the outside are ignoring the necessary precautions and even
Speaker 1: going so far as to demand an ill advised and
Speaker 1: straight crazy returned to business as usual. Clearly the advice
Speaker 1: of our experts, it's from the wrongfully convicted community as
Speaker 1: now more necessary, even essential than ever previously. We spoke
Speaker 1: to Damien Echols and Amanda Knox about the importance of
Speaker 1: structuring your time, keeping an exercise regimen, cleanliness, focusing the
Speaker 1: mind inward, and they gave us tips on combating the
Speaker 1: absence of physical touch, and this is really important holding
Speaker 1: on to our senses of humor. This week we will
Speaker 1: talk to a man who was not only sentenced to
Speaker 1: death for a crime he didn't commit, but who also
Speaker 1: unintentionally do you not going to leave this escape from
Speaker 1: death Row only to return to some new, fresh version
Speaker 1: of hell now? He tells us about how the current
Speaker 1: state of affairs reminds him of his experiences on death Row,
Speaker 1: how he overcame his anger, escaped into literature, and about
Speaker 1: the detrimental role that the ego plays on our respective
Speaker 1: abilities to deal with being in our own versions of Lockdown.
Speaker 1: You can hear his entire story of triumph over tragedy
Speaker 1: in an episode so insane that we had to break
Speaker 1: it into two parts for episode five of season nine.
Speaker 1: He's the author of Monsters and Madmen, the star of
Speaker 1: the documentary film The Fear of Thirteen. But mostly he's
Speaker 1: our friend, nick Yarris on Coping in the time of COVID.
Speaker 1: Nick Yaris is here.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me back on. It's a real
Speaker 2: honor to do this at a time that we're all
Speaker 2: struggling to handle Lockdown.
Speaker 1: You're up in Oregon, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm in a small town on the coast of Oregon,
Speaker 2: just above California, and we're blessed by having only six
Speaker 2: thousand people in the population.
Speaker 1: Well, Nick, you survived death row in Pennsylvania at a
Speaker 1: time when it was so brutal. So you've been to
Speaker 1: hell and back and now here you are in the
Speaker 1: free world and experiencing a much milder, shall we say,
Speaker 1: sort of lockdown. But is it triggering for you to
Speaker 1: have to be sort of, you know, stationary and not
Speaker 1: have the freedom of movement that you've enjoyed now for
Speaker 1: so many years.
Speaker 2: It's actually reinvigorating all of my lessons learned from it.
Speaker 2: I had to replace the structure in my life when
Speaker 2: my life hit a brick wall. When I was getting
Speaker 2: no new sensory input in my daily life to have
Speaker 2: memories of interactions with others, it was killing me. Initially
Speaker 2: I had no structure, and I realized that that learning
Speaker 2: process of giving myself structure every day while being locked
Speaker 2: in a six x nine cell has come back and
Speaker 2: rebounded again now to point towards Oh, okay, I'm okay
Speaker 2: with this. So I used it to set up the
Speaker 2: structure for the children in the house to have their school.
Speaker 2: We built them a little classroom. We're trying to have
Speaker 2: everything regimented because structure keeps the mind healthy.
Speaker 1: And how are you doing now?
Speaker 2: Right now? The worst thing that I'm facing, I guess
Speaker 2: is the same thing we're all facing. We have worry
Speaker 2: in our heart, our loves ones. We consider it aside
Speaker 2: for ourselves, but we struggle with worryment for everyone. From
Speaker 2: a farm. My dad is eighty five years old. He
Speaker 2: goes over and he picks up the newspaper every day,
Speaker 2: and he refuses to stop living his life, and he
Speaker 2: won't put on a mask. He said, I've lived through
Speaker 2: war and terrorism. I lived through all the worst things
Speaker 2: in life. If God wanted me, he would have gotten
Speaker 2: me sooner. I'm not going to stop living my life.
Speaker 2: But I'm not going to be a fool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. 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, money tight
Speaker 1: all the other pressures that people are experiencing. How can
Speaker 1: your experience help them?
Speaker 2: In real time? I'm doing it with everyone in that
Speaker 2: same feeling that I had on death Row, And it
Speaker 2: goes back to a very terrible night in November of
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine when Huntington Prison was set on fire
Speaker 2: during a riot and I was locked up in the
Speaker 2: death row housing unit two hundred and twenty five of
Speaker 2: us all went quiet as we watched the prisoners across
Speaker 2: the courtyard burn the block across from us, knowing that
Speaker 2: the building structure was connected and it was going to
Speaker 2: set us on fire, and the guards had already left us.
Speaker 2: So you sit there in those moments with this fear
Speaker 2: in your chest, like is this real? Is this how
Speaker 2: it ends? And my next what will happen? How can
Speaker 2: I have control over these feelings? And right now our
Speaker 2: whole world is feeling this way. We didn't do anything
Speaker 2: to be put in lockdown. Why are we here enduring
Speaker 2: these fears when this had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2: We didn't cause this mayhem around us, but we're suffering
Speaker 2: through it? How do we deal with it? And the
Speaker 2: one thing that kept me going through it all was
Speaker 2: I refuse to give up my humanity. My kindness was
Speaker 2: so important to me that I refused to feed the
Speaker 2: negative cycle, just like feeding into the negative news cycles
Speaker 2: now in today's social media, I refuse to feed into
Speaker 2: the negative, believing that good was the only way going forward.
Speaker 2: And if I believed in that, then I could wake
Speaker 2: this out, see how it plays out, and remember that
Speaker 2: it's a humbling for me. And I swear to God
Speaker 2: that death row experience is playing out right now in
Speaker 2: my life with me.
Speaker 1: There must have been times, Dick, I mean, you were
Speaker 1: Franks for a crime that they knew you didn't commit.
Speaker 1: Your life is in danger every day, not just from
Speaker 1: being executed, but from being beaten to death by guards,
Speaker 1: other inmates, all the other deprivations. There must have been
Speaker 1: moments when you felt bitter.
Speaker 2: No oh yeah, oh, Jason, I don't want to misplace
Speaker 2: this truth. But in my early days I was so
Speaker 2: bitter about having nothing that I would beat my head
Speaker 2: on the wall so hard by slamming it backwards into
Speaker 2: the wall. It was the only way I felt like
Speaker 2: I could keep going if I stayed angry. In first,
Speaker 2: I was consumed by the insult done to me and
Speaker 2: my family to be sentenced to death for a crime,
Speaker 2: for a murder of a woman I never met in
Speaker 2: my life. To have my parents cry and humiliation in
Speaker 2: the courtroom while the people taunted them and laughed in
Speaker 2: their face. I was so angry that I thought the
Speaker 2: only way I'm gould get through this is if I
Speaker 2: stay angry. And it consumed me, and I was so
Speaker 2: ashamed of that that it was only because of a
Speaker 2: miracle chance encounter. A man hung himself on my prison block.
Speaker 2: His cell was empty. The guards took me out of
Speaker 2: my cell to take me to the nurses station to
Speaker 2: patch my head up again. I'm walking back and the
Speaker 2: guard says to me, go in that cell and get
Speaker 2: them books. He said, I'll keep you from being angry
Speaker 2: from somehow that moment, that chance encounter, I decided to
Speaker 2: try to stop being angry. And it was really hard
Speaker 2: to stop being angry. How embarrassing that I was so
Speaker 2: consumed by anger that I couldn't read more than a
Speaker 2: few pages. I started to pray for or a way
Speaker 2: to figure out how to become strong enough to handle
Speaker 2: this without anger and bitterness, and I couldn't articulate much.
Speaker 2: I didn't have the fluidity of a beautiful vernacular that
Speaker 2: would come later. So I stripped all the photographs off
Speaker 2: the wall, and I put a photograph of myself up,
Speaker 2: and I began to politely speak to the image before
Speaker 2: me of myself, hoping to give myself enough respect, love
Speaker 2: and encouragement, because that was the person that had to
Speaker 2: get me through this life. And in this transition, I
Speaker 2: found this wonderful sense that maybe if I stopped and
Speaker 2: looked at who I was for one minute, maybe I
Speaker 2: could possibly just hopefully love myself. That's all I was
Speaker 2: looking for.
Speaker 1: Had it worked, I mean, had you not had that epiphany,
Speaker 1: there's no way you would be here today. You would
Speaker 1: have almost certainly died in prison, Like I said, either
Speaker 1: at the hands of the state or at the hands
Speaker 1: of one of the many people who were trying to
Speaker 1: kill you, and I know those stories. Well.
Speaker 2: The thing I found out, Jason, that really is true.
Speaker 2: I watched I don't know four hundred guys entered the
Speaker 2: prison system on death row, particularly on death row from
Speaker 2: a member of the DuPont family. On down. You know,
Speaker 2: people of high ilk suffer the worse when they go
Speaker 2: into lockdown. So the analogy is, the bigger the ego,
Speaker 2: the harder it is to be in lockdown. How much
Speaker 2: of an affront is all of this to you? Is
Speaker 2: a measure of your ego, and it will attack your health.
Speaker 2: It will cause you to undo every good bond in
Speaker 2: your life. Some people can't really handle this because they're
Speaker 2: fucking egos so out of control that they really are
Speaker 2: affronted by this. How dare I, as an American have
Speaker 2: to sit in my house for four weeks because some
Speaker 2: Chinese person ate a bat like this is real? People
Speaker 2: are walking around in this country with the notion that
Speaker 2: this is an affront to them in their lives, when
Speaker 2: in fact they're being taught how to be more polite,
Speaker 2: how to be less germ spreading, how in the future
Speaker 2: to be more consistently conscientious of your own public health,
Speaker 2: and yet it's such an angry moment for so many people.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Nick about serving time with one of the
Speaker 1: DuPont heirs. Can you talk about how did he adapt it?
Speaker 1: Was he able to somehow or other turn a corner
Speaker 1: like you did.
Speaker 2: It's amazing how it has to have the humbling first.
Speaker 2: A lot of people who do well in society, when
Speaker 2: they hit prison, they just break down. And it happened
Speaker 2: with John DuPont, it happened with others who were very
Speaker 2: well to do in society because their ego is inflated
Speaker 2: in life to the stature of how they live. Imagine
Speaker 2: one of these super wealthy people going from a yacht
Speaker 2: to the prison house. Man. It is such a demoralizing
Speaker 2: downfall that they can't handle that. Jason. The one answer
Speaker 2: to the trouble people have when they acknowledge their ego,
Speaker 2: if they can acknowledge their ego, is what is your outlet.
Speaker 2: You can't mindlessly look at screens, you can't endlessly go
Speaker 2: on social media. That's going to burn you out really quick.
Speaker 2: This is why I'm so grateful I can go back
Speaker 2: to my first love of reading. I love books for
Speaker 2: one thing, each one taught me a different aspect of myself.
Speaker 2: And if I go back and read one now, I
Speaker 2: realized the changes of who I was at the time
Speaker 2: that I read it the first time to now.
Speaker 1: Is there a particular book or was there a particular
Speaker 1: book that meant the most to you that others may
Speaker 1: be able to benefit from?
Speaker 2: Great question, because one of the things that I recently
Speaker 2: did was I picked up The Prophet by Khalil Gebraun
Speaker 2: and this is my touchstone book. This book was my
Speaker 2: present at Christmas. I rewarded myself by rereading this one
Speaker 2: work because I felt so akin to its main character,
Speaker 2: al Mustafa, the Chosen who spent twelve years within a waltz,
Speaker 2: and on the day of his leaving, he was asked
Speaker 2: by everyone to give them parting wisdom knowledge of what
Speaker 2: he experienced. And the reason I did this is because
Speaker 2: I was so angry. At first. I thought it was flimsy, flamsley,
Speaker 2: flusy bullshit, and I didn't like it, and I threw
Speaker 2: it against the wall. My mind was so scrambled, I
Speaker 2: thought this was crazy. Why would I bother reading this crap.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until about two years later when I had
Speaker 2: the fluidity in my mind to really absorb that. I
Speaker 2: found Gabron's work so uplifting. So I sat down and
Speaker 2: I opened up the book, and I was so rewarded
Speaker 2: with this beauty of this writing. You see, Gabron suffered
Speaker 2: through the tragedy of losing all of his family members
Speaker 2: to another plague. It was called tuberculosis, and his family
Speaker 2: moved to the Boston area from leban On, and he
Speaker 2: was enraptured with trying to hold down the family farm
Speaker 2: in Lebanon while migrating back and forth to Boston on
Speaker 2: these ships, and his whole family perished during a three
Speaker 2: year period of his life while he wrote The Prophet.
Speaker 2: That's why I loved him. He took the worst tragedies
Speaker 2: of his life and turned it into the most beautiful
Speaker 2: book he could think of and gave that to the world.
Speaker 2: That is what I make the analogy today of today's
Speaker 2: COVD hero was my personal hero. Khalil Gebraun. Picking up
Speaker 2: that book the other day meant so much to me
Speaker 2: because it reinvigorated that touch, that field, that smell of art.
Speaker 2: There's nothing like it. Man. The other thing I wanted
Speaker 2: to touch on about reading is this right now, studies have
Speaker 2: shown that we read on average about two hundred books
Speaker 2: a year in social media messaging of reading other people's words,
Speaker 2: we read them in snippets and you know, five and
Speaker 2: ten minute bounds. But we're not really reading the books
Speaker 2: that we should be reading. And this is where a
Speaker 2: lot of times we have to recognize we have to
Speaker 2: implement actual time away from a screen and into enjoying
Speaker 2: art and literature the way it's meant to be. We're
Speaker 2: doing it anyway, and it's a loss to us because
Speaker 2: we would rather sit there and watch the left and
Speaker 2: right argue about what's right or people's opinions, than to
Speaker 2: absorb some really cool literature and feel good about yourself.
Speaker 2: Like I couldn't imagine sitting there day after day on
Speaker 2: a retort to someone else's reply to someone else's words
Speaker 2: and an argument about a conspiracy in all this crap,
Speaker 2: when I could be enjoying something truly invigorating from my brain.
Speaker 2: That's how we do this. My prison guards would walk
Speaker 2: past me and I would be so happy, so uplifted,
Speaker 2: so alive. They thought I was mentally off. It wasn't
Speaker 2: just that I read, and therefore I was absorbing things
Speaker 2: I left prison behind.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you about another innocent
Speaker 1: man that you met on death row in Pennsylvania way
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety nine. And of course you know
Speaker 1: I'm referring to Walter Ogrid. Just before this lockdown started,
Speaker 1: you were on your way to Philadelphia to fight for him, right.
Speaker 2: I started out trying to drive across this country in
Speaker 2: a pickup truck to go get my friend Walter Ogrod
Speaker 2: out of death row after twenty eight years of being
Speaker 2: on death row wrongly, having the mother of the victim
Speaker 2: begging for his release, and all this only to be
Speaker 2: stopped cold by the judge. And I would have been
Speaker 2: still in Philadelphia begging for his release had I not
Speaker 2: listened to wisdom better than my own. Honestly, lately, I'm
Speaker 2: just I keep thinking about my friend Gregory Ogrid, Walter's brother.
Speaker 2: Now that Anne Marie Fahey, the mother of the victim,
Speaker 2: the little girl who my friend Walter Ogrod was falsely
Speaker 2: convicted of murdering, is begging for Walter's release. He kept saying, Man,
Speaker 2: she's such a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. Can I do
Speaker 2: anything to try and get her? A signed CD from
Speaker 2: Bruce that's all he wants to do. This is a
Speaker 2: man who suffers from his brother being on death row
Speaker 2: right now for a crime that he didn't commit for
Speaker 2: the last twenty eight years, and his main concern is
Speaker 2: trying to show grace to the mother of the victim
Speaker 2: for her efforts to show grace to his brother. That's
Speaker 2: why I keep thinking about Jason. Isn't it wonderful that
Speaker 2: in the height of this horrible thing that we're going through,
Speaker 2: so many good things are shining. Like Greg gives me
Speaker 2: so much hope because he's not allowing all of this
Speaker 2: negativity of his brother being cheated from being released to
Speaker 2: affect him from finding a way to go forward with
Speaker 2: good for his brother. And you know, I'm so inspired
Speaker 2: by you. And it's another thing I have to tell
Speaker 2: you this man I struggled before I met you. No
Speaker 2: one with your stature has given me any respect. I've
Speaker 2: done podcast around the world, but that's a moment for
Speaker 2: that person. Sir. You're the only sincere friend that has
Speaker 2: stayed true throughout this process, and it's because of you
Speaker 2: I'm going to keep standing up strong and making these
Speaker 2: efforts for people to see. This is the message right
Speaker 2: here Jason, you and me man, showing people that you
Speaker 2: might be in New York and I might be in Oregon,
Speaker 2: but I fucking love you, man, and I love the
Speaker 2: effort you make for other people. And good is going
Speaker 2: to win, and you believe it and I believe it,
Speaker 2: and that's why we're here today, so that all of
Speaker 2: us right now, if you hear my voice and you're
Speaker 2: struggling to handle this, we get it, man, and we
Speaker 2: love you for it. And reach out to someone. Do
Speaker 2: the nice thing, man, don't reach out and tell your woes.
Speaker 2: Reach out and be someone else's answered prayer. Be the
Speaker 2: uplifting moment they need, and you'll feel so much much
Speaker 2: better for yourself.
Speaker 1: And Nick, I'm really touched. And you know you're someone
Speaker 1: who I look up to and I draw a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of inspiration from. So I love YouTube brother, and
Speaker 1: we will continue to fight this fight together. We will
Speaker 1: bring Walter home and we're going to go get Bruce
Speaker 1: Springsteen's autograph for that wonderful woman who has been through
Speaker 1: such hardship and tragedy and is now showing such grace.
Speaker 1: As you said, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I like the one thing that you continue
Speaker 2: to do on the social media, you continue to share
Speaker 2: positive messaging that uplifts people or relieves them of the
Speaker 2: stress with good neuroplasticity posts. I love it that you
Speaker 2: always started the same way. I didn't know how much
Speaker 2: I needed to see a giraffe hug a donky, but
Speaker 2: there it is, you know what I mean, and that
Speaker 2: really matters to someone. Jason. You're doing your part and
Speaker 2: that's what people need to hear. Those little things mean
Speaker 2: something to someone somewhere, even if you didn't notice it,
Speaker 2: and that's what we got to keep alive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Amen, brother. So again, Nick, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Speaker 1: You never cease to amaze me, and I appreciate our
Speaker 1: friendship more than words can say. You know, I feel
Speaker 1: like you've already shared your words of wisdom with us,
Speaker 1: So I'm just going to say stay safe and I'll
Speaker 1: be looking forward to seeing and working with you as
Speaker 1: soon as we're allowed to travel.
Speaker 2: Again. Thank you for having me on and I'm really
Speaker 2: grateful to you.
Speaker 1: It never fails whenever I speak to Nick. I learned
Speaker 1: so much and one of the most interesting things I
Speaker 1: just learned. I mean, we all know the importance of literature,
Speaker 1: but we tend to, you know, neglect it or take
Speaker 1: it for granted sometimes. But from Nick, I learned that
Speaker 1: we read the equivalent of two hundred books a year
Speaker 1: in terms of the total number of words that we consume,
Speaker 1: but we consume them in such sort of trite ways,
Speaker 1: right on social media and little bites. But reading real art,
Speaker 1: reading some of the classics is something that so many
Speaker 1: people who were wrongfully convicted, so many of our x
Speaker 1: hoonerary community have told me that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that got them through as Nick did, that lifted their spirits,
Speaker 1: even turned their whole you know, mojo around was reading
Speaker 1: Victor frankel Man Search for Meaning 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 practice is radical kindness, and I think we can
Speaker 1: all take something from that. I mean, right now, more
Speaker 1: than ever, I think it's a time when we can
Speaker 1: help each other. You could be someone else's you know, lifeline.
Speaker 1: Before we go any further, I want to thank all
Speaker 1: our heroes. They've always been heroes, but now they're finally
Speaker 1: being 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: that delivery people, everybody who is helping us to keep going,
Speaker 1: risking their own safety to keep society from coming apart.
Speaker 1: So in the meantime, I hope you've been listening and
Speaker 1: hearing Laura and I Writer and Steve Drissen as they
Speaker 1: shed light on why someone would ever admit to a
Speaker 1: crime they didn't commit in Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'll
Speaker 1: be returning with the new season of Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason Floman May and next week we're going to have
Speaker 1: a very special guest. I'm going to leave it a mystery,
Speaker 1: but you're going to want to hear this one. So
Speaker 1: come back next week from more alternative perspective on life
Speaker 1: and living in the time of COVID. Don't forget to
Speaker 1: 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 Innocenceproject dot org. To learn how
Speaker 1: to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our
Speaker 1: production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music in
Speaker 1: the show is by three time OSCAR nominatede composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 2: Be sure to.
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