Speaker 1: Since the initial release of Patrick Pursley's story, he has
Speaker 1: been fighting for his certificate of actual innocence. Without it,
Speaker 1: he cannot file for state compensation or file a federal
Speaker 1: civil suit. After so much delay, the state has been dragged,
Speaker 1: kicking and screaming to a hearing for Patrick's certificate of
Speaker 1: actual innocence occurring August twenty seventh, twenty twenty one. The
Speaker 1: state has been desperately trying to throw Patrick's innocence into question,
Speaker 1: to no avail, and for no other reason than to
Speaker 1: not admit that they were wrong, and thereby gray and
Speaker 1: Patrick the right to pursue the compensation that he so
Speaker 1: rightly deserves. At ten pm on a snowy April second,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, twenty two year old Andrew Asher and
Speaker 1: Becky George sat in a parked car in front of
Speaker 1: her brother's apartment on Silent Road in Rockford, Illinois. A
Speaker 1: black man approached the car in a blue scheme mask
Speaker 1: in a hoodie, and he opened the driver's side door,
Speaker 1: announcing a stick up. While Becky fished around in her
Speaker 1: person tried to offer the gunman the sixty dollars she had,
Speaker 1: he shot Andrew Asher twice.
Speaker 2: Becky ran to her brother's apartment to.
Speaker 1: Call the police, and the two bullets and their casings
Speaker 1: were retrieved from the crime scene and during the autopsy.
Speaker 1: Through the use of incentivized eyewitness testimony, the coercion of
Speaker 1: a false confession, and grand jury testimony from Patrick Persley's girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Samantha Crabtree, testimony she later recanted a trial, and conflicting
Speaker 1: and misleading ballistics expert testimony. Patrick was convicted of first
Speaker 1: degree murder and sentenced to life without parole, with an
Speaker 1: epic appeals process that included Patrick getting a law change
Speaker 1: from prison in order to get new ballistics testing done
Speaker 1: that would ultimately set him free. Patrick Parsley suffered for
Speaker 1: over twenty five years for a crime he simply didn't commit.
Speaker 1: In March twenty seventeen, Patrick's conviction was finally.
Speaker 2: Vacated and he was released on bond.
Speaker 1: He was formally acquitted at his retrial on January sixteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. It's Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm Welcome Back
Speaker 1: to Wrongful Conviction. This episode was recorded at Complex Con
Speaker 1: Chicago twenty nineteen, a culture, fashion, art and music hybrid
Speaker 1: event described as a streetwear fans, kind of world's fair
Speaker 1: featuring limited edition brand collaborations, performances, and even the occasional
Speaker 1: live podcast recording like this one. We only had thirty
Speaker 1: minutes though, to tell Patrick's story, so I'll be fleshing
Speaker 1: out some of the details along the way. Patrick Persley,
Speaker 1: this is going to be extraordinary because, frankly because of you.
Speaker 2: Because Patrick is my new friend.
Speaker 1: I've just got to know him, his unbelievable spirit and intellect.
Speaker 1: But Patrick, I want to say that I'm happy you're here.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry you're.
Speaker 1: Here because you should never even have to be having
Speaker 1: this conversation.
Speaker 2: But I'm happier here.
Speaker 1: Case has so many of the hallmarks, so many of
Speaker 1: the common factors that we see.
Speaker 2: In wrongful convictions over and over again.
Speaker 1: You had incentivized lying witnesses, coerced threatened witnesses. You had
Speaker 1: bad ballistics, terrible ballistics, right. You had people in positions
Speaker 1: of authority who broke rules, broke laws in order to
Speaker 1: railroad you. Tunnel vision is another factor, right, And by
Speaker 1: tunnel vision, what I mean by that is once a
Speaker 1: suspect is identified. In many cases, we see that the
Speaker 1: police and prosecutors start to build a narrative, either consciously
Speaker 1: or subconsciously, and they managed to ignore or they subconsciously
Speaker 1: ignore evidence that points away, as it did in your case.
Speaker 3: Yes, i'll term to suspects, crime scene evidence, clothing, everything,
Speaker 3: Everything was contradicted.
Speaker 1: So Patrick Pursley was wrongfully convicted of a brutal crime,
Speaker 1: a robbery of two people in a car where the
Speaker 1: robber shot the guy sitting in the car twice and
Speaker 1: ran and then things went downhill from.
Speaker 2: There very quickly.
Speaker 1: And Patrick, this was Rockford, Illinois, Rockford. But you didn't
Speaker 1: know the people, You didn't know anything about the.
Speaker 4: Crime, didn't even know it happened.
Speaker 2: You were home with your girlfriend when this happened.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was doing a lated birthday party for my
Speaker 3: son and he came from Wisconsin. His birthday was on
Speaker 3: the twenty ninth, and we were celebrating on the night
Speaker 3: of the crime, which was four to ninety three, and
Speaker 3: had a chemistry set for him and we were just
Speaker 3: tinkering around and have no idea of these events happening
Speaker 3: just a few miles away.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: I Meanwhile, there's another aspect of this that's important to recognize,
Speaker 1: which is crime stoppers, right and theory. Crime stoppers great thing, right,
Speaker 1: people call up, they talk about a crime, They're gonna
Speaker 1: make us all safer to get a reward. But in
Speaker 1: your case, except when they do it like when Patrick's case,
Speaker 1: where someone called up and knew nothing about the crime
Speaker 1: and just gave up his name in order to get
Speaker 1: two thousand, six hundred.
Speaker 4: And fifty dollars the price of life.
Speaker 1: Right, about one hundred dollars a year for the time
Speaker 1: you were in the Price of life. So all of
Speaker 1: this must have come as a tremendous shock to you
Speaker 1: when it happened in stages right when you first first
Speaker 1: you became aware that you were a suspect.
Speaker 2: Can you get into that aspect of this whole thing.
Speaker 3: I was taking my daughter and my son to a
Speaker 3: birthday party and the police tried to for him me,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately I was ghettle bred, so I fled, And
Speaker 3: that's how it started.
Speaker 1: That was June tenth, nineteen ninety three, about ten weeks
Speaker 1: after the crime. Two days earlier, on June eighth, Marvin Wyndham,
Speaker 1: a man Patrick knew from a few small time weed
Speaker 1: deals around Rockford, was the first one to point the
Speaker 1: finger at him in a call he made to crime stoppers.
Speaker 1: It was later revealed a trial that not only did
Speaker 1: Marvin have eyes for Samantha Crabtree, Patrick's girlfriend, but he
Speaker 1: also received leniency on a number of charges that he
Speaker 1: faced in exchange for his testimony not to mention the
Speaker 1: two thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars reward. With Wyndham's
Speaker 1: hot tip, the police now we're able to get a
Speaker 1: search warrant for Patrick and Samantha's apartment, where they recovered
Speaker 1: a Taurus nine millimeter that Samantha kept for protection. Notably,
Speaker 1: she always stored it out of reach of her small children.
Speaker 1: While Patrick fled on foot and the cops rated the apartment,
Speaker 1: they brought Samantha in for some aggressive interrogation.
Speaker 2: And I'm putting that mildly.
Speaker 3: Dan Argergate and my girlfriend for like twelve hours she
Speaker 3: was pregnant, you know, just basically force fed a narrative
Speaker 3: to her while disregarding glaring contradictions.
Speaker 2: And so your girlfriend was the pregnant mother.
Speaker 4: Of two or three, never been in trouble, three kids.
Speaker 2: Three kids, pregnant mother.
Speaker 1: So she's a target for twelve hours and the police
Speaker 1: tell her that if she doesn't tell them exactly what
Speaker 1: they want to hear.
Speaker 4: She won't see her children till she's forty.
Speaker 2: So here's how this unraveled.
Speaker 1: So they take her from directly from the interrogation room
Speaker 1: to a grand jury where they make her repeat the
Speaker 1: story right now.
Speaker 3: She's under oath, right, get her own record, get it
Speaker 3: under you know, as substantiates evidence come in later.
Speaker 1: So she tells them what they want to hear, and
Speaker 1: a girlfriend, to her everlasting.
Speaker 4: Credit, stood strong, took it back.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, as soon as she was out of custody,
Speaker 3: she filed an affidavit with my attorneys and said she
Speaker 3: was coursed, basically took back her statement. When elnoi idea
Speaker 3: is no takebacks.
Speaker 2: Right now, It's called perjury.
Speaker 3: It's called perjury. It's called come in that trial substantial evidence.
Speaker 3: Didn you say this under oath and comes in as
Speaker 3: evidence of guilt.
Speaker 2: Your girlfriend ended up spending two years in prison.
Speaker 4: Because she didn't go along with the narrative and took
Speaker 4: it back.
Speaker 1: The narrative of her terror ride, spoon fed and patently
Speaker 1: false confession, and her grand jury testimony was that she
Speaker 1: and Patrick were having financial trouble and on the night
Speaker 1: of the murder, they were driving around in search of
Speaker 1: a house to rob when Patrick told her to stop
Speaker 1: on silent road, hopped out of the car, put on
Speaker 1: a blue ski mask, told her to keep the engine running,
Speaker 1: and ran off toward the apartment buildings. Then a few
Speaker 1: minutes later she heard two gun shots and Patrick returned
Speaker 1: to the car carrying a Taurus nine millimeter. Hours before
Speaker 1: being threatened with a life separated from her children and
Speaker 1: regurgitating this narrative for her false confession, Samantha's apartment was
Speaker 1: being searched by the police where photos were actually staged.
Speaker 2: There was stage.
Speaker 1: Photos of her tourist nine millimeters being stored in plain
Speaker 1: sight for ease of use.
Speaker 3: The whole gun situation as far as like pictures of
Speaker 3: where the gun was, It's like I had children in
Speaker 3: my house. I'm not going to have a gun in
Speaker 3: plain view where a ten year old could get it.
Speaker 4: It just wasn't.
Speaker 3: The whole narrative of how it was put together was
Speaker 3: so far socle it was. It's just crazy.
Speaker 1: But early on you it you had a lawyer who
Speaker 1: actually made one move.
Speaker 2: That one move saved your life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So every defendant, I think in the course of
Speaker 3: America says I didn't do it. I had a young
Speaker 3: lawyer who was beginning his career and I'm his first
Speaker 3: death penalty case. And then I had the older lawyer
Speaker 3: who kind of just like, I'm out of here. So
Speaker 3: the young lawyer and his pushback, right, you know you
Speaker 3: didn't do it. Well, we'll test a gun. Really, you
Speaker 3: can do that, Yes, please test the gun. Test a gun.
Speaker 3: That's how it all started, That's what got me here.
Speaker 1: Ballistic testing is very important to this story. Ballistics is
Speaker 1: the study of the dynamics of projectiles or of the
Speaker 1: internal action of firearms. It can tell us what type
Speaker 1: of firearm was used, where it was fired, from how
Speaker 1: many shots were fired, and most importantly for this case,
Speaker 1: it can be used to identify a firearm by the
Speaker 1: markings left on bullets and bullet casings after firing. So,
Speaker 1: after both the state's crime lab and the defense's independent
Speaker 1: lab test fire Crabtrees nine millimeters and compare the bullets
Speaker 1: and casings from both the test firing and the murder,
Speaker 1: the prosecutions expert testified that the gun used in the
Speaker 1: murder was Crabtrees Tourist nine millimeter and this is a
Speaker 1: direct quote to the exclusion of all others. Powerful testimony,
Speaker 1: false but powerful. While the defense's expert testified that the
Speaker 1: murder weapon was likely a tourist nine millimere, but not
Speaker 1: crab Trees, however, the expert hired by the defense could
Speaker 1: not conclusively exclude the gun.
Speaker 2: So think about this.
Speaker 1: You now have the state testifying with absolute certainty and
Speaker 1: the defense inconclusive in their exclusion of Patrick. This, along
Speaker 1: with Marvin Wyndham's incentivized testimony and Samantha Crabtree's initial false confession,
Speaker 1: brings us to where we know this part of the
Speaker 1: story tragically went. However, the ballistics testing becomes crucial again
Speaker 1: many years down the road. When the jury went out,
Speaker 1: You've now seen a bunch of dirty tricks. You've been
Speaker 1: around the system. You grew up, as you said, in
Speaker 1: the streets, so you know what can happen. You're a
Speaker 1: young black man at this point in the clutches of
Speaker 1: a system that is designed to chew you up and
Speaker 1: spit you out.
Speaker 3: I think Lupez called it planned convalescence. I think Lupeco
Speaker 3: called it that.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: That being said, when the jury went out, did you
Speaker 1: have hope.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I knew I didn't do it. I know
Speaker 4: it was going home.
Speaker 3: And so when they returned a guilty verdict, I just
Speaker 3: I really don't even remember how I got back to
Speaker 3: my cell because I guess the blood drained off my
Speaker 3: body or something. I just went body numb, and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, I couldn't believe it. I just I couldn't
Speaker 3: believe it. It floored me.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody here can possibly begin to understand
Speaker 1: nless someone else here has been through, and you've been through,
Speaker 1: and now you're facing the death penalty. Yes, so you
Speaker 1: come back for sentencing, and the judge says.
Speaker 3: Because of the inconsistencies of the evidence, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to give you the death penalty.
Speaker 4: However, I will give you natural life. I find you'll
Speaker 4: be a ministers.
Speaker 3: And this is at a time where people were actually
Speaker 3: picketing for me to get a new trial. It was
Speaker 3: very strange, a very strange correlation what was going on.
Speaker 2: And that's just facaic. We're not going to kill you quickly,
Speaker 2: but we are going to kill you slowly. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm having mercy on you because I see the
Speaker 3: bs and evidence, but you're still going buddy, you're gone.
Speaker 3: There was a cry in the courtroom when he announced
Speaker 3: that my daughters were there.
Speaker 4: It was something else.
Speaker 2: You were said to some of the worst, well one
Speaker 2: of the worst prisons.
Speaker 3: Yes, stay built, and uh, I'm one got job in
Speaker 3: the law library. I tried to play past the game
Speaker 3: banging and the dice games and try to educate myself.
Speaker 3: I got a grant to correspondence classes in law.
Speaker 2: Is it as bad as everyone thinks it is?
Speaker 3: I'm a natural life survivor right so, right now in
Speaker 3: the wintertime, although locks are cut off the windows, so
Speaker 3: the natives don't make knives.
Speaker 4: However, what that does that allows your cell to have
Speaker 4: enough ice on you can make a snow cone right
Speaker 4: off the bars and freezing temperatures, mice, roaches, so many roaches.
Speaker 3: You put a potato chip back in the corner of
Speaker 3: your segregation cell and the roaches going there and they
Speaker 3: can't get out, and so you hear kind of like
Speaker 3: the scraping, And that was the roach motel and f
Speaker 3: house Panoptacon.
Speaker 4: They actually it's a landmark. It's a landmark.
Speaker 1: And of the two point two million people in prison,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of them who don't have air conditioning,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. A guy who died recently in
Speaker 1: Texas prison, he told his brother that.
Speaker 2: His brother said, why don't you have any sodas?
Speaker 1: You love soda. You can't keep sodas in your cell?
Speaker 1: He said, I can't because they explode because it's too hot. Like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck even is that?
Speaker 4: Well, ice is the commodity.
Speaker 3: They might get one cup of ice in the morning,
Speaker 3: one cup of ice at night.
Speaker 4: Ice is a commodity.
Speaker 3: So you will deal with the elements, and right around
Speaker 3: April fifteenth they will turn off the heat every year
Speaker 3: like clockwork, despite the elements.
Speaker 1: Right in Chicago. You got some elements here, Yes, God
Speaker 1: knows so. And I'm always fascinated and amazed by people
Speaker 1: like yourself who managed to, you know, go through this
Speaker 1: ordeal as an innocent person, and the extra psychological damage
Speaker 1: that that must do to a person who's undergoing the
Speaker 1: extreme physical hardships, h and the loneliness and all the
Speaker 1: rest of it. The violence in the prison, we talked
Speaker 1: about it, the terrible food, et cetera. Set the cold
Speaker 1: to heat, and then you are there, you know, innocent, innocent.
Speaker 4: I was done, All my appeals were done.
Speaker 1: I was done in court, was over with that being said,
Speaker 1: you found this something, this inner strength, perseverance, whatever you
Speaker 1: however you describe it, and you not only didn't you
Speaker 1: give up, but you had and first of all, you
Speaker 1: had every reason to give up. Motion after motion after motion, denied, denied, denied.
Speaker 4: I needed was one yes, I needed one yes. That's it.
Speaker 1: And how you got to that is a really incredible
Speaker 1: part of the story.
Speaker 2: So deny denied.
Speaker 1: Now, as I understand that the law in Illinois at
Speaker 1: the time allowed for post conviction testing of fingerprints in DNA,
Speaker 1: but not ballistics exactly.
Speaker 3: So in two thousand and I asked for the testing.
Speaker 3: I've seen an article and a tribune about Illinois State
Speaker 3: Police now starts using the IBIS system Integated Ballistic Identification System,
Speaker 3: which uses algorithms to connect ballistics to crime scenes.
Speaker 4: So I was like, that can free me. I knew
Speaker 4: it could free me. It was just that simple.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately, because the law didn't allow for it in
Speaker 3: two thousand and two thousand and one, yis for it.
Speaker 3: The courts was like, no, the law would have to
Speaker 3: be amended, the law would have to be a change
Speaker 3: in order to grant me the gun testing, which would
Speaker 3: potentially desonerate me. And that was two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Right, So you were stuck on a technicality, right because
Speaker 1: you knew that you had this evidence because your lawyer
Speaker 1: had tested. We go back to that, right. Your lawyer
Speaker 1: had had the sense to go and get the testing dependent.
Speaker 3: Testing, independent lab, independent lab. This lab had only testified
Speaker 3: for defendants four times.
Speaker 1: So now a lot of people would say, Okay, here
Speaker 1: you are in the segregation unit of one of the
Speaker 1: worst prisons in America. Not a great education. You'd have
Speaker 1: a law degree, you don't have a science degree. It
Speaker 1: would seem to be hopeless. But somehow or other you
Speaker 1: managed to actually get the law changed from inside yourself.
Speaker 3: So so long, long story short, it's two thousand and six.
Speaker 4: I'm in chowhall.
Speaker 3: There's an a warden, I would say, a Southern gentleman,
Speaker 3: maybe in past life he had slave ships. He sees
Speaker 3: my prayer beads and he says, are you allowed to
Speaker 3: have him, sir, and me, being the sarcastic bastard, I am.
Speaker 3: I buck up and say yes sir. So he looks
Speaker 3: at me and he says, are you sure you're allowed
Speaker 3: to have him? I don't like your attitude. He sees
Speaker 3: the energy coming off me.
Speaker 4: I say so.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, And so he gets a little closer in
Speaker 3: my personal space than the tar man's out with the gun.
Speaker 3: It's about two hundred inmates, and he says, I don't
Speaker 3: like your attitude. I said, we don't like your attitude either, sir.
Speaker 3: You brought much misery and suffering to the land. As
Speaker 3: a result, I went straight to segregation six months in
Speaker 3: some of the worst conditions in the United States. But
Speaker 3: while there I had epiphany and I wrote an article
Speaker 3: that became a state law.
Speaker 2: And what is that law? Yeah, exactly, here we go.
Speaker 4: So the law is seven to twenty five.
Speaker 3: I'llc has five one, sixteen dash three as a minute
Speaker 3: October twenty seven, two thousand and seven, signed by Governor Blagoyevitch.
Speaker 3: I should probably send him some money for commissary because
Speaker 3: he actually he helped me.
Speaker 4: No, really, he helped me. I just it slips my
Speaker 4: mind sometimes, but he helped me.
Speaker 2: He really did.
Speaker 4: He signed my idea to law.
Speaker 1: If you remember, back in two thousand and nine, Illinois
Speaker 1: Governor Rod Blagoyevitch was indicted on corruption charges that included
Speaker 1: the alleged solicitation of personal benefit in exchange for Barack
Speaker 1: Obama's recently vacated US Senate seat. As I remember that well.
Speaker 1: It was a bizarre episode anyway. He was later found
Speaker 1: guilty of seventeen different charges, including wire fraud, attempted extortion,
Speaker 1: and conspiracy to solicit bribes, and sentenced to fourteen years
Speaker 1: behind bars. But before he left office, he did sign
Speaker 1: Patrick's amendment into law. Now back to the law. Bill
Speaker 1: Ryan worked for the Department of Children and Family Services
Speaker 1: as an advocate for long term offenders. He had a
Speaker 1: newsletter that was circulated throughout prisons as well as to
Speaker 1: families of inmates, to law professors and colleges, and even
Speaker 1: legislators and politicians. Mister Ryan published the article that Patrick
Speaker 1: wrote about amending the law to include post conviction ballistics
Speaker 1: testing through the Integrated Ballistics Identification System also known as IBIS.
Speaker 1: In turn, Illinois State Representative Arthur Turner Senior sponsored the legislator.
Speaker 3: You can imagine the letters that come from prison and
Speaker 3: so Bill Ryan are a long term advocate, explained to me,
Speaker 3: and Michelle says Patrick, you just.
Speaker 4: Don't get it.
Speaker 3: I had a table full of letters I reached down
Speaker 3: to grab one letter.
Speaker 4: Open it up. You asked me to give it to
Speaker 4: the senators, and I did so.
Speaker 3: It's completely by the grace of the creator, completely fortuitous, anomalist, whatever.
Speaker 2: You think, it was all just luck, right, No, I mean.
Speaker 5: The stars lined up, words, genetics, as a commader, it's
Speaker 5: all above. It's a combination of everything. And so ultimately
Speaker 5: the lag gets changed. They opened the jail doors, they
Speaker 5: let you out right.
Speaker 4: No, it's never not exactly. So the log has changed.
Speaker 3: Illinois becomes the first state in the country to have
Speaker 3: this law in order to grant me the gun testing.
Speaker 3: So the log has changed in general, block which we're
Speaker 3: in the shadow of my attorneys over there on Clark Street,
Speaker 3: who spent like four point five million dollars over ten
Speaker 3: years to get me a signerate.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, let's not leave out there are
Speaker 1: a lot of heroes in your story, right, a lot
Speaker 1: north none bigger than you, by the way, And two
Speaker 1: of them are in the room, and I want to
Speaker 1: recognize Steve Drizzen and Laura and I Ryder from the
Speaker 1: Northwestern Center on Ronfel Convictions, who have been steadfast support
Speaker 1: as they still are your biggest fans.
Speaker 2: I mean, you'd be embarrassed if you heard something things
Speaker 2: they say.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so Rockford fought every step of the way.
Speaker 3: There was no like welcoming Reese for the conquering hero.
Speaker 4: It was none of that.
Speaker 3: It was more like my cousin Vinnie, we don't take
Speaker 3: too kind of your kind around here. So it was
Speaker 3: a long fight. It was a very long fight. About
Speaker 3: five rounds of gun testing showed the gun didn't match,
Speaker 3: and of course no one knits mistakes in this world,
Speaker 3: so we had to fight new trial.
Speaker 2: New trial. But meanwhile, now you're hitting your stride.
Speaker 4: I'm hitting my stride. We were winning motion after motion.
Speaker 4: It was just amazing. It was a momentum. If you
Speaker 4: could imagine ten fifteen years of representing myself or you know,
Speaker 4: just trying to navigate the system, and.
Speaker 2: You're just starting to look like a lawyer. Did anybody
Speaker 2: tell you that.
Speaker 4: I do hear that I take my cues from Steve Drizzen.
Speaker 2: I confess.
Speaker 1: So, as you know, the wheels of justice turned painfully slowly.
Speaker 1: Even after getting the law changed in order to request
Speaker 1: new ballistics testing through the IBIS system in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, it took a tremendous amount of fighting in
Speaker 1: order for Patrick's lawyers to finally be able to present
Speaker 1: the new evidence from two different ballistics experts, excluding as
Speaker 1: the murder weapon the tourist nine millimeter, that same tourist
Speaker 1: nine millimeter that was seized at Patrick's apartment. This all
Speaker 1: happened finally in December of twenty sixteen, and then at
Speaker 1: last his conviction was vacated and a new trial was
Speaker 1: granted March of twenty seventeen, and Patrick Persley was released
Speaker 1: on bond that very April, and there he began to
Speaker 1: fight the new trial from the outside. In November twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: Patrick's lawyers filed a motion for dismissal in light of
Speaker 1: a new bit of information that was not disclosed by
Speaker 1: the prosecution after eighteen months, a story from Lois Asher,
Speaker 1: the victim's mother, that alluded to conscious wrongdoing by police
Speaker 1: in regards to the gun, even though at a December
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen hearing she admitted that the story came to
Speaker 1: her second hand through her now deceased husband. It's still
Speaker 1: worth hearing, but did not result in a dismissal. There's
Speaker 1: another aspect of this case that needs to be mentioned,
Speaker 1: which is the story of the gun.
Speaker 3: So basically, the state's attorneys once came to realize that
Speaker 3: the gun didn't match.
Speaker 4: Even the mother of the victim right had came forward
Speaker 4: and was like, look back in two thousand, the detectives
Speaker 4: told me and my husband that back in nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: four that they couldn't find a gun that killed their sons.
Speaker 4: So they just put Patrick's gun into evidence.
Speaker 3: And when she asked, her and her husband asked, are
Speaker 3: you sure you have the right person?
Speaker 4: And they responded, well, we got one anyway.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of victims in this case.
Speaker 1: The parents of the victim right, your girlfriend ended up
Speaker 1: spending two years in prison.
Speaker 4: My children.
Speaker 3: I can't explain watching what they went through, you know,
Speaker 3: all through my children, you know, because every step of
Speaker 3: the way, they were my guiding light.
Speaker 4: They were my guiding light.
Speaker 1: So finally the retrial is on. In January twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: despite the evidence pointing to the contrary, the state's ballistics
Speaker 1: expert continued to connect the Taurus nine millimeter seized that
Speaker 1: Patrick's apartment with the murder weapon. Meanwhile, the defense hired
Speaker 1: two of the leading forensic firearm and tul mark experts
Speaker 1: in the country, Chris Coleman and Johnadok, who worked independently
Speaker 1: of one another. That's important and arrived at the same conclusion.
Speaker 1: The markings made on test bullets in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: and twenty eleven by the tourist nine millimeters seized from
Speaker 1: Patrick's apartment all matched and showed distinct similarities.
Speaker 2: However, the test.
Speaker 1: Bullets did not match the bullets and casings recovered from
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety three crime scene. Therefore, the inescapable and
Speaker 1: for the authorities in this case, the inconvenient truth was
Speaker 1: that the tourist nine millimeter did not could not have
Speaker 1: fired the bullets that killed Andrew Asher. Finally, your day comes,
Speaker 1: your day in court, right, how good was that day
Speaker 1: of vindication? Did you float out of the courtroom like, well.
Speaker 4: It's really strange because.
Speaker 3: As I'm caught up in these events, I realized all
Speaker 3: that this is bigger than myself. But I had to
Speaker 3: sit for a second trial, and even though I knew
Speaker 3: I knew I was gonna be found innocent, I really
Speaker 3: believed it that everything came out the judge it was
Speaker 3: very meticulous, he was very fair, right, but it was
Speaker 3: still very much like dangling your feet over hell fire
Speaker 3: because he could say guilty and you go back. So
Speaker 3: that's in the back of my head. So when I'm
Speaker 3: actually exonerated, when I lead the courtroom, I still have
Speaker 3: that goofy look on my face, like.
Speaker 4: Right, So I still was numb.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like end to end because you really
Speaker 3: can't believe the gravity of the circumstances that you're.
Speaker 4: Caught up in.
Speaker 1: The questions I get asked most requently what happened to
Speaker 1: the people that did this to you? And we know
Speaker 1: your answer to that is nothing almost always karma. Karma's
Speaker 1: always there.
Speaker 2: Karma is the thing. And two do you get compensation?
Speaker 1: That question gets asked by everybody, and people just assume.
Speaker 1: So when he walks out, tell me he got paid, right,
Speaker 1: the state makes it up to him.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I mean, Illinois has the statue, But
Speaker 3: you have to basically go through another fight called a
Speaker 3: certificate of innocence, and then after that is another fight
Speaker 3: for the federal level for federal civil rights violations, which
Speaker 3: would be a wrongful conviction suit.
Speaker 4: So it's a process.
Speaker 3: No one you know, Like I said, there's no reas
Speaker 3: for the conquering hero. It doesn't work like that. They
Speaker 3: fight fight, fight, fight, fight, because you're messing with people's careers.
Speaker 4: It doesn't happen like that.
Speaker 1: But it's so crazy because it's a tax payer money.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're paying it themselves. In Illinois, there's
Speaker 1: a cap on how much you can get as well,
Speaker 1: unless you can prove a civil rights violation, right right,
Speaker 1: But even then, the cap is I think going to
Speaker 1: surprise a lot of people how low it is.
Speaker 2: And Illinois is not the worst state by far right,
Speaker 2: but the cap here is what.
Speaker 4: It's under two hundred.
Speaker 1: Under two hundred thousand dollars for twenty five years and
Speaker 1: seven files in prison, right, and that's after you fight, fight, fight,
Speaker 1: fight fight.
Speaker 2: The good news is we're moving.
Speaker 1: The Instant Project has been really moving in on getting
Speaker 1: laws passed state after state compensation laws. We're now up
Speaker 1: to thirty five states that have in their fifteen states
Speaker 1: that have no laws whatsoever.
Speaker 2: There's some states that have a match.
Speaker 1: I think Misconsol right next door has a cap of
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars. So now you're out right making
Speaker 1: speeches and anyone who has heard Patrick's story today, if
Speaker 1: you know, another organization, corporate or otherwise that's interested in
Speaker 1: having him come and speak. That's how you're supporting yourself.
Speaker 4: I'll run my mouth for a living. That's what I do.
Speaker 2: You run your mouth for them.
Speaker 4: I can't do much else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you could do that. So that's number one.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing is, you know, we're just
Speaker 1: out here trying to educate everyone. I mean, I'll ask
Speaker 1: everybody that's here to ask everyone you know to serve
Speaker 1: on a jury. Remember the things that you're hearing now
Speaker 1: when you're in that jury box. We know the research
Speaker 1: has now shown the jurors are predisposed to think that
Speaker 1: a person in defend this box is guilty just because
Speaker 1: they're there eighty percent to twenty percent. So remember Patrick,
Speaker 1: Remember what happened to him, and how what you're watching
Speaker 1: unfold in front of you as you're holding somebody's life
Speaker 1: in your hands may not be what you're being told
Speaker 1: that it is.
Speaker 2: So they're supposed to be a.
Speaker 1: Reasonable doubt, reasonable doubt right, and there's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a presumption of innocence.
Speaker 2: None of that worked.
Speaker 3: No, it's a credibility deficit. There's a credibility deficit for
Speaker 3: a defendant walking the door, period. And if you're poor,
Speaker 3: there's a credibility deficit. And if you're behind bars and
Speaker 3: you fighting the case, you're not going nowhere unless you
Speaker 3: have an attorney.
Speaker 4: So pro say gets no play.
Speaker 2: Pro say gets no play.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you this question as we wind down,
Speaker 1: and I have one more question after this.
Speaker 2: Are you bitter?
Speaker 4: No? No, I thought that was a good question. No,
Speaker 4: it's no.
Speaker 3: I'm hurt. I'm very hurt. You know, I have reservoirs
Speaker 3: of hurt. So seeing what this has done to my children,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like stepping outside of a time machine
Speaker 3: and not really connecting with nothing out here because I'm
Speaker 3: the analog man from nineteen ninety three, you know. So
Speaker 3: it's really a very strange, you know, just surreal existence.
Speaker 3: But we make the best of it. We make the
Speaker 3: best of it, you know. I amkidculture dot org. So
Speaker 3: I reduced gun and game violence promote higher education on
Speaker 3: the organization I found it while.
Speaker 1: That I amkidculture dot org. And of course you're on
Speaker 1: all social media now too. You hit the ground running.
Speaker 1: I mean you've only been el since January, you got.
Speaker 3: I was on social media before I got out that
Speaker 3: was that was my thing. I was a writer and
Speaker 3: Michelle helped propagate the stories. And we had professors coming
Speaker 3: in and out of Stateville for years who was taking
Speaker 3: our material They were you know, volunteers, and they were
Speaker 3: taking our materials to game peace circles, high schools, colleges.
Speaker 3: Kit Culture actually was born in Stateville, where I had
Speaker 3: a natural life sentence. Also, I have a book on Amazon, also,
Speaker 3: the Adventures of Kid Culture in the World Explorers. We
Speaker 3: got t shirts on I amkidculture dot org. Please support
Speaker 3: support support because we are trying to connect to stop
Speaker 3: the violence movement across the country, show culture to culture.
Speaker 1: And one more thing, I got to ask this more
Speaker 1: question before I get to the last part. So you
Speaker 1: did talk very beautifully earlier about the programs that you
Speaker 1: sponsored in prison and about the importance of education.
Speaker 3: Yes, so basically everyone knows how the grants got took
Speaker 3: in our prisons. Well, we led a fight to reverse that.
Speaker 3: We had did charities in prison.
Speaker 2: Police left.
Speaker 3: We said we're going to do hats for the homeless.
Speaker 3: So every time we tried to do something positive, people
Speaker 3: kind of like, ah, right, Well we still did it.
Speaker 3: So there was very much that persistence and also try
Speaker 3: to reach out to the community at large to show,
Speaker 3: you know, not just to stare the kids away from
Speaker 3: crime and educate college kids that were volunteering to come
Speaker 3: into state bill.
Speaker 4: Also educate the public at large.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of mismanagement and gross waste of money
Speaker 3: in the prison system.
Speaker 2: Well said again.
Speaker 1: And I now I'll come to my favorite part of
Speaker 1: the show, which is when I get to thank you
Speaker 1: Patrick Pursley for coming and sharing your story, and you know,
Speaker 1: just for being here and being such a great example
Speaker 1: for everybody of the power of the human spirit. And
Speaker 1: thank the audience here for being here and listening of
Speaker 1: course Laura and Steve again for everything you're doing, and
Speaker 1: all the great activists in the room. And this part
Speaker 1: of the show I call it closing argument. This is
Speaker 1: where I actually get to turn my mic off. Thank
Speaker 1: you once again. Thanks to everybody at home or on
Speaker 1: your device wherever you're listening to Wrongful.
Speaker 2: Conviction, please check out the other episodes.
Speaker 1: One story is crazier than the other and you can
Speaker 1: learn something from each one of them. So now I'm
Speaker 1: signing off and leaving your microphone on, and I'm just
Speaker 1: going to kick back and listen right.
Speaker 3: Close and arguments. Remember, people, everything isn't always is seems.
Speaker 3: Everyone has intrinsiing value. Every one of us has value.
Speaker 3: That has to be our mission to be able to
Speaker 3: teach compassion and love. Right, So, facing the worst possible conditions,
Speaker 3: you can still move mountains. And that is very much
Speaker 3: a testament to the spirit. And I have to thank Northwestern,
Speaker 3: I have to thank you. I have to thank General Block, Prison,
Speaker 3: Neighborhood Arts Project, Michelle, everyone that's been there every.
Speaker 4: Step of the way. Because I'm a mess. I will
Speaker 4: tell you I'm a mess.
Speaker 3: Don't let anyone tell you otherwise that doing hard time
Speaker 3: and inhuman conditions, that.
Speaker 4: Would be against the law for you to leave your
Speaker 4: dog in see think like that. So I always keep
Speaker 4: a part of me in the cellhouse.
Speaker 3: Right so right now, let's see they're back from child.
Speaker 3: You know that you have birds flying over their heads,
Speaker 3: you have spiders, you have mice, you have people who
Speaker 3: are loved, you know, loved ones and prisoners who are
Speaker 3: basically kind of get the scarlet letter for loving a prisoner,
Speaker 3: you see what I'm saying. So basically you have loved
Speaker 3: ones behind bars. Write them holered us at Wrongful Conviction Consultants.
Speaker 3: We trying to do something. We got a lot of
Speaker 3: prisoners talk to us, hollers. I amkidculture dot org five
Speaker 3: O one C three reducing gun and game violence.
Speaker 4: We did a mixtape.
Speaker 3: Imagine that fifty three year old man come out prison,
Speaker 3: do a mixtape and no, I'm not rapping. It just
Speaker 3: tells the story of the wrongful conviction as well as
Speaker 3: the violence in Rockford, but also the hope and always
Speaker 3: work for love, Always work for love. It is the
Speaker 3: highest vibration of human spirit. And that's my clothes and arguments.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence projects and go to the
Speaker 1: link in our bio to see how you can help.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff
Speaker 1: Cliburn and Kevin Warnis. The music on the show as
Speaker 1: always is by three ever time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 2: Be sure to.
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Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
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