Speaker 1: It was late on the night of April eleventh, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, when a single teenage mother of two, Sabrina Butler,
Speaker 1: went for a job while her two young boys slept
Speaker 1: at home. When she returned and checked on her nine
Speaker 1: month old Walter, he wasn't breathing with no phone in
Speaker 1: a new apartment building, Sabrina picked him up and banged
Speaker 1: frantically on her neighbor's doors, begging for help. Finally, a
Speaker 1: woman let her in and showed Sabrina how to perform
Speaker 1: adult CPR on her infant son. At the hospital, they
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out what was wrong with Walter, and they
Speaker 1: blamed his internal injuries on child abuse. Sabrina was aggressively
Speaker 1: interrogated well into the morning hours, and a statement was
Speaker 1: drafted for her to sign, accounting for the damage to
Speaker 1: his internal organs, a common result of performing adult CPR
Speaker 1: on an infant. Tired alone and scared, Sabrina signed underneath
Speaker 1: the dotted line as an actor protest a parade of
Speaker 1: medical professionals, and her core statement made Sabrina's not guilty
Speaker 1: ply look like a callous lie, sending her to Mississippi's
Speaker 1: Death Row. Her novice trial lawyer contacted civil rights attorney
Speaker 1: and death penalty activist Clive Stafford Smith, whose investigation discovered
Speaker 1: and confirmed why Walter had stopped breathing in the first place.
Speaker 1: He suffered from chronic nephrotic syndrome brought on by polcistic
Speaker 1: kidney disease. Sabrina Butler is the first female death row
Speaker 1: xonnai in the United States. This is wrongful conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason Flomer, Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today we have
Speaker 1: Sabrina Butler Smith, who is the first woman ever to
Speaker 1: have been exonerated from death row in the United States.
Speaker 1: And the story is much deeper than that, but Sabrina welcome.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: And we have another Smith by Skype. We have a
Speaker 1: British attorney who specializes in civil rights cases as well
Speaker 1: as overturning death penalty cases in the US.
Speaker 2: Clive Smith, thanks for being here and joining us over
Speaker 2: the phone. My pleasure, Sabrino. Let's start with you.
Speaker 1: I want to go back in time to your life,
Speaker 1: you know, as a teenager, having a child, having a baby,
Speaker 1: single mom.
Speaker 2: Right back in Mississippi. Yes, Columbus Mississippi, right, correct? And
Speaker 2: what was that like? How'd you deal with it?
Speaker 1: That's a lot of responsibility for a young kid like
Speaker 1: yourself back then.
Speaker 3: Well, actually being that young, I was kind of me
Speaker 3: and my mom didn't have a really good relationship, and
Speaker 3: so I think that led me down the path that
Speaker 3: I traveled on. And actually my son that passed he
Speaker 3: was my second child. I actually had two at that
Speaker 3: time on my own since I was fourteen, So basically
Speaker 3: trying to figure.
Speaker 1: Out life from fourteen, you have to grow up fast, Yes,
Speaker 1: I did. Sabrina was convicted, wrongfully convicted, and sentenced to
Speaker 1: death for the murder which we know was not a
Speaker 1: murder at all of her baby boy, Walter Dean Butler.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to April eleventh, nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: You went out for a job, yes, and you returned
Speaker 1: to find a horrible situation.
Speaker 3: My son wasn't breathing, and I panicked, and I didn't
Speaker 3: know what to do because where I stayed at I'd
Speaker 3: only been over there a little while, didn't have a phone,
Speaker 3: I had just got the apartment through hood housing. I
Speaker 3: was a poor teenager that didn't have a job or money,
Speaker 3: and the people over there did not know me in
Speaker 3: that apartment complex, so it was kind of hard, and
Speaker 3: I didn't have a car or anything like that, and
Speaker 3: so I just grabbed him and started beating on doors
Speaker 3: trying to, you know, get someone to help me. And
Speaker 3: that was very difficult at that time of night because
Speaker 3: it was late.
Speaker 4: What time was it, almost twelve o'clock.
Speaker 3: So I did have a hard time trying to get help.
Speaker 3: The first lady that opened her door, she said that
Speaker 3: her kids were sick and she didn't have time to
Speaker 3: take me to the hospital. So that lady closed the
Speaker 3: door in my face, and when I ran downstairs, a
Speaker 3: lady from an inn apartment asked me what was wrong
Speaker 3: and grabbed my son and we took him in an apartment.
Speaker 3: She put him on the floor and started CPR. So
Speaker 3: I went next door to try to get someone else,
Speaker 3: and finally I got this couple that was willing to
Speaker 3: take me, and so when I went back in, she
Speaker 3: told me to hold his nose, blowing his mouth and
Speaker 3: pressing his stomach, but she didn't tell me the right way,
Speaker 3: so I applied adult CPR to my son all the
Speaker 3: way to the hospital, not knowing that whatever was wrong
Speaker 3: I probably was making it worse. I didn't know that though.
Speaker 3: I was just scared and I was trying to get
Speaker 3: him to breathe, but he he didn't.
Speaker 1: And we know that by the time you got to
Speaker 1: the hospital it was really too late. They attempted to
Speaker 1: resuscitate Walter at the hospital unsuccessfully, And then I have
Speaker 1: to say, there are, unfortunately, tragically a lot of cases
Speaker 1: like this where people, well meaning people like yourself, apply
Speaker 1: CPR that they've been taught to do, but they have
Speaker 1: never been taught the difference between doing it for a
Speaker 1: child or an adult. And we know that if you
Speaker 1: do it the normal CPR techniques to a child, it's
Speaker 1: virtually impossible to do that without breaking their ribs or
Speaker 1: causing some other kind of injuries.
Speaker 2: Because they're so little and so fragile.
Speaker 1: Clive, let's turn to you. How did this thing go
Speaker 1: so wrong so fast? And why was Sabrina convicted when
Speaker 1: all she was trying to do was help?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, there are several factors. I mean, one
Speaker 5: is Sabrainer, as she says, was eighteen and panic stricken.
Speaker 5: Another is that and this was something I didn't know
Speaker 5: until I got involved in Sabrina's case. Actually that in Mississippi,
Speaker 5: which is true of all fifty states. If you go
Speaker 5: to a hospital with a child who's been injured, if
Speaker 5: the doctors and medical staff report this as child abuse,
Speaker 5: then they're absolutely immune from being sued or being prosecuted
Speaker 5: for anything. If they don't report it as child abuse,
Speaker 5: then they can be held liable themselves. So what happens
Speaker 5: when a child is brought in by a terribly panic
Speaker 5: stricken mother like Sabrina, is there's this osmotic pressure that
Speaker 5: forces the hospital to look at this and start talking
Speaker 5: about it as child abuse from the very beginning, whether
Speaker 5: that's true or false, and their insurance policy makes them
Speaker 5: do that. And obviously what that does to an eighteen
Speaker 5: year old Sabrina is make a panic even more. And
Speaker 5: then you get this other utterly bizarre thing. I mean,
Speaker 5: I've done now a lot of shaken baby cases and
Speaker 5: batter child syndrome cases. There are only two medical diagnoses.
Speaker 5: They have nothing to do with helping the child to
Speaker 5: get cured, but everything to do with prosecuting the caregiver.
Speaker 5: And that's those two diagnoses. So if you think about it,
Speaker 5: the diagnosis of that a child syndrome is it looks
Speaker 5: like the child has been abused, and then there are
Speaker 5: other elements of this diagnosis that the caregiver changes her story.
Speaker 5: And this has got nothing to do with treating the
Speaker 5: child for whatever it is, a broken rib or whatever.
Speaker 5: It's all to do with prosecuting the parents. So when
Speaker 5: someone like Sabrina says, you know, I don't know what
Speaker 5: happened the child stop breathing. I think he's sick, and
Speaker 5: then the doctors say, well, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 5: I think this is abuse. Then someone like Sabrina inevitably
Speaker 5: starts panicking and saying, well, you know, yesterday he had
Speaker 5: a little fall, or the other day something else happened.
Speaker 5: That's then a diagnostic criterion for saying that she abused
Speaker 5: that child. And then of course the police come in
Speaker 5: and start getting heavy handed at a young girl la
Speaker 5: like Sagrina.
Speaker 3: When I took my son in, I was panic and
Speaker 3: I was scared, but I thought about, oh, you're in
Speaker 3: trouble because you left him at the house by itself.
Speaker 3: That was my thing. So people were asking me, you
Speaker 3: know why were there so many statements. Well, the statements
Speaker 3: was trying to cover up the fact that I had
Speaker 3: left my son alone for those ten minutes, and so
Speaker 3: I was trying to explain that away. I knew that
Speaker 3: I should not have left him at home by myself,
Speaker 3: but I didn't kill him. I just was trying to
Speaker 3: cover that up. And so when we got an interrogation,
Speaker 3: you know, they asked me a bunch of questions, and
Speaker 3: I could just remember trying to, you know, say something
Speaker 3: to that fact.
Speaker 1: Did you have a lawyer or anyone to help you
Speaker 1: as you were there in your most panic state that
Speaker 1: anyone could ever be in having just lost your child?
Speaker 3: The only thing I had With the two detectives that
Speaker 3: were in the room, and they were dead set on saying,
Speaker 3: you stump your baby, You beat them. That's what they
Speaker 3: kept saying.
Speaker 1: But how did they finally succeed in their quest to
Speaker 1: get you to say a bunch of things that not
Speaker 1: only weren't true, but that you knew weren't true, and
Speaker 1: that they probably knew weren't true.
Speaker 3: Well, the lead investigator kept screaming at me, and when
Speaker 3: I finally started telling him what exactly what happened, he
Speaker 3: bought up everything that I had to say, and he
Speaker 3: threw that in the trash. And after so many hours
Speaker 3: of him yelling and screaming and looking like he wanted
Speaker 3: to get up and jump on me, fight me, you know,
Speaker 3: I was scared. He actually wrote out the statement and
Speaker 3: he shoved it in my face. He wrote on the
Speaker 3: statement that I had punched my son, and I just
Speaker 3: agreed to everything that they said because I wanted it
Speaker 3: to end. He kept saying, you know, this is what
Speaker 3: you did, and we need you to write sign this.
Speaker 3: You know, they kept screaming at me, and that was
Speaker 3: like four hours of interrogation with him, and I was
Speaker 3: just I was tired. I just didn't know how. I
Speaker 3: just wanted it all to end. So I didn't sign
Speaker 3: where he told me to. I signed under the line,
Speaker 3: hoping that that was my way of saying, look, I
Speaker 3: didn't do this and that someone would see that.
Speaker 1: Well, and at this point, you had been up right,
Speaker 1: because this started at midnight. This ordeal started at midnight.
Speaker 1: So now we're talking about a teenage traumatized grieving mother
Speaker 1: who hasn't slept, who is literally fighting for your life
Speaker 1: at this point, who knows how you would react. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about false confessions. We of course have
Speaker 1: our whole new season of the show False Confessions, which
Speaker 1: is very purposefully highlighting the fact that these false confessions
Speaker 1: play a role in approximately twenty five percent of wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: In your case, the circumstances were even more grave because
Speaker 1: we know that ultimately you were sentenced to death. Yes, Clive,
Speaker 1: howe is it that they did such a ridiculously poor
Speaker 1: job investigating the medical side of this case, so much
Speaker 1: so that later on, when Sabrina was finally exonerated, that
Speaker 1: they basically acknowledge Oh, yeah, didn't really do any work
Speaker 1: on it. And the doctors were like, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: I was wrong about that. I think most people like
Speaker 1: to think that that couldn't happen in America.
Speaker 5: Well, I tell you, when you think about what the
Speaker 5: causes are of illnesses and injuries and children, we're still
Speaker 5: pretty medieval in that, and you know we're getting better.
Speaker 5: But the other factor is that you have a GP.
Speaker 5: I have great sympathy with GPS. I don't know how
Speaker 5: on earth how some GP who's meant to know everything
Speaker 5: about everything is possibly going to be able to figure
Speaker 5: out what it is that's afflicting the person. And so
Speaker 5: you have these folk who actually are just not experts,
Speaker 5: and they're called in and they're asked to say what
Speaker 5: happened to this child? And again, all of this had
Speaker 5: been set in motion by what happened in the hospital,
Speaker 5: where the doctors had this sort of pressure to say
Speaker 5: that it was child abuse. And once they say it's
Speaker 5: child abuse, people professionals don't like to admit they made mistakes,
Speaker 5: and they really really really don't like to admit they
Speaker 5: made mistakes in cases where they contribute to an eighteen
Speaker 5: year old young woman being sent to death for something
Speaker 5: she didn't do. So when a doctor takes a position
Speaker 5: that this looks like abuse, there's this sort of human
Speaker 5: pressure to stick with it and to then start justifying
Speaker 5: it using grand delinquent Latin terms that no one else understands.
Speaker 5: And you know, in that first trial, there was no challenge,
Speaker 5: no meaningful challenge to these doctors coming in saying this
Speaker 5: was abuse, and they stated it like it was, you know,
Speaker 5: on a tablet and Moses in Mount Sinai.
Speaker 1: In this trial, from what I've read and seen about it,
Speaker 1: it's basically a joke. Not a funny joke, but a joke.
Speaker 1: I mean, this trial, no witnesses were called in your.
Speaker 3: Defense, because the disc attorney subpoened every last one of them.
Speaker 3: And one of myeries was drunk during the whole trial.
Speaker 3: He was popping cany in his mouth and he kept
Speaker 3: telling me, you know, we got this thing nipped in
Speaker 3: the bud, don't you worry about it. And so that's
Speaker 3: the way it went through the whole trial. I was
Speaker 3: just told to look at the jury. That was it.
Speaker 5: If you're a corporate lawyer in New York and you're
Speaker 5: representing someone for money, you get one thousand dollars an hour,
Speaker 5: and yet in Mississippi, for representing someone for their life,
Speaker 5: you'd get one thousand dollars for the whole case, and
Speaker 5: you get what you paid for. And there were two
Speaker 5: lawyers in Sabrina's first case, and one, as she says,
Speaker 5: I'm afraid it is absolutely true that he was just
Speaker 5: a drunk, and the other was this young guy who
Speaker 5: I have great respect for. But he had no idea
Speaker 5: what he was doing. He tried, and you know the
Speaker 5: thing I'll give him most credit for was after they
Speaker 5: had failed, Sabrina, the first thing he did was give
Speaker 5: a call to my office to get some help on
Speaker 5: the appeal. But you kind of wish that that had
Speaker 5: happened before poorse Sabrina had got sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: The trial took how long it took a week? You
Speaker 1: had now been held in jail awaiting trial for how long?
Speaker 3: Did a little bit over year before I went to
Speaker 3: try on the first trial?
Speaker 1: So you'd been in jail for a year. Obviously, that's
Speaker 1: the traumatic experience piling on top of the other, you know,
Speaker 1: awful experiences that you've had already. You've got one drunk
Speaker 1: lawyer and one lawyer who doesn't really know his way
Speaker 1: around the courtroom. But you know, you didn't do it right.
Speaker 2: So when the jury went out, how long did they
Speaker 2: deliberate for?
Speaker 3: I think about an hour or two. I just knew
Speaker 3: that they were going to come back and say I
Speaker 3: was guilty because my attorneys they didn't really, you know,
Speaker 3: stand up and do anything in my behalf. And it
Speaker 3: was like everything was solely on the district attorney. The
Speaker 3: jury was not looking at my attorneys at all. They
Speaker 3: were looking on the floor, they were looking at the ceiling,
Speaker 3: they was looking everywhere else but when my attorney spoke.
Speaker 3: But when the district attorney spoke, they were on the
Speaker 3: edge of the seats and so me looking at it
Speaker 3: at that age, I said to myself, I'm done for
Speaker 3: I mean, I knew that I just had that filming.
Speaker 5: I asked you a question on that though, because you know,
Speaker 5: if it's my son Wilh and he's died through some
Speaker 5: tragedy and I'm incredibly broken hearted about it. To then
Speaker 5: have some prosecutors stand up there and say that I'm
Speaker 5: guilty of murdering my own child, and then going one
Speaker 5: step further and being all pious and saying I'm so
Speaker 5: subhuman that I deserve to die when you know that
Speaker 5: the worst you did was maybe give out for a
Speaker 5: jog when you shouldn't have.
Speaker 3: Glad. They hurt me with every fiber of my being
Speaker 3: because I kept asking my attorneys to let me take
Speaker 3: the stand of my own defense, and they wouldn't do it.
Speaker 3: They kept saying, we got this thing, we got it
Speaker 3: nipped in the bud, we don't need you to testify.
Speaker 3: I bade them through the whole thing, and they will
Speaker 3: not let me testify it.
Speaker 2: And I try, and then they impugned your right to.
Speaker 1: Not testify her for themendment right, and then the prosecutor
Speaker 1: got up in her face.
Speaker 3: And said it looked like a right. That's what he did.
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Speaker 3: When I walked into Mississippi's death throw, I was nineteen.
Speaker 3: I had to walk down this long haul and when
Speaker 3: I first got there, they put bugs, bread in your hair.
Speaker 3: They strip you of everything that you have. I sit
Speaker 3: in this glass tank for like two hours and I'm
Speaker 3: looking at all the people going around. And they came
Speaker 3: and a fingerprinted me and they just took all of
Speaker 3: what I thought was me away. They gave me this
Speaker 3: name tag. It had murderer on it, it had my
Speaker 3: MDOC number on it, and it had death. So I
Speaker 3: had to walk with my hands shackled around my waist
Speaker 3: and I had to walk with leg guards. And I
Speaker 3: had a security guard who's walking next to me, a
Speaker 3: correction officer, and he said, you see those inmates out
Speaker 3: there in that field, He said, we tell them when
Speaker 3: to get up, He said, we tell them when to
Speaker 3: go to sleep, We tell them what to eat. He said,
Speaker 3: what you'll die here. And by the time he said that,
Speaker 3: by the time I got to Maxic Security, because we
Speaker 3: had to walk, I was crying. I couldn't think. I
Speaker 3: was trying to figure out, you know, what was happening
Speaker 3: to me. So when I got there, they put me
Speaker 3: in a six by nine cell, no bigger than your bathroom,
Speaker 3: and shut the door and left. And during that time,
Speaker 3: that was one of the hardest things to ever have
Speaker 3: to deal with, knowing that I didn't kill my son,
Speaker 3: knowing that these people are saying we're going to kill you.
Speaker 3: I had a death date at the time, was July
Speaker 3: the second of nineteen ninety, and I didn't know that
Speaker 3: the state had to exhaust all state remedies before they
Speaker 3: could actually carry out his death sentence. So when that
Speaker 3: day came, that was one of the hardest days.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I paced the floor. I listened for every sound I
Speaker 3: listened to all the no was his keys make because
Speaker 3: I was thinking that they were coming to take me
Speaker 3: for my depth. So that is very it was very
Speaker 3: traumatic for me.
Speaker 2: That is completely insane.
Speaker 1: I mean, talk about psychological torture beside all the physical deprivation,
Speaker 1: and for you not to even know that you weren't
Speaker 1: going to be executed, no one bothered to tell you
Speaker 1: that you.
Speaker 2: Have I mean, that's nuts.
Speaker 1: I've never heard that before, and I've been doing this
Speaker 1: stuff for almost three decades.
Speaker 2: It's insane.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you're sitting here upright again and smiling.
Speaker 1: Is I you know, now I'm starting to understand why
Speaker 1: people say all the great things they say about you.
Speaker 1: So how did you find the strength to persevere? She
Speaker 1: was the only woman on death row in Mississippi at
Speaker 1: that time.
Speaker 3: No, I was not. It was another girl on death
Speaker 3: row named Susan Baffer who helped me a lot. But
Speaker 3: I say to anyone who asked that question, my most
Speaker 3: basic strength is Clyde. Because when Clyive, Clive was the
Speaker 3: only one who came to the prison. Clive brought me artwork.
Speaker 3: He kept talking to me. He kept saying, you know,
Speaker 3: give me a chance to look at this case. We're
Speaker 3: going to fix this. That's why I feel so close
Speaker 3: to him, because he saved my life. Without Clive or
Speaker 3: Rob McDuff.
Speaker 2: The other attorney, right, correct, I.
Speaker 3: Don't think I would be sitting here because I mean
Speaker 3: he was a godsend. Clyde was a godsend. And I
Speaker 3: thank him one hundredfold for bringing out the evidence in
Speaker 3: my case. I really do.
Speaker 1: And Clyve, so you got a letter one day in
Speaker 1: the mail from one of her trial attorneys.
Speaker 2: Is that how they started?
Speaker 5: I think he called me up actually, and I remember
Speaker 5: coming to see Sabrina, and you know, I was representing
Speaker 5: Susie Belfo at the time too, And it's sad to say,
Speaker 5: not the only time that I've heard of someone on
Speaker 5: the throw whether Lewis didn't even tell him that they
Speaker 5: weren't going to get executed. And you know, I remember
Speaker 5: meeting Sabrina for the first time, and you know, she's
Speaker 5: a kid, right, Sorry about that, Sabrina, that you were
Speaker 5: a kid, You're right, and you know she's stuck there
Speaker 5: all by herself. And you know, I looked at her
Speaker 5: case and I thought this is going to get reversed.
Speaker 5: I mean versus the comment on silence, but there's all
Speaker 5: sorts of other stuff that the Mississippi Supreme Court actually
Speaker 5: didn't even reach. So I was pretty confident we were
Speaker 5: going to get a new trial. But then you know,
Speaker 5: we were going to have to go back and start again.
Speaker 5: And you were convinced you were going to get executed.
Speaker 5: I was convinced you weren't, but there was still a
Speaker 5: long road ahead of us. Yeah, the case against it
Speaker 5: was such nonsense. But nevertheless, you know, once someone's been
Speaker 5: convicted and since to death, there is a huge presumption
Speaker 5: of guilt and it's going to be really hard to
Speaker 5: get them out from under it.
Speaker 1: Sabrina on death Rout in Mississippi. I know you talk
Speaker 1: about the one other person who was there with you, Susan.
Speaker 3: Yes, Susan baff Did she give.
Speaker 2: You hope to persevere?
Speaker 1: I mean you talked about Clive and the other attorney
Speaker 1: who came to your rescue, quite literally, like the Avengers
Speaker 1: writing it out of nowhere, I guess.
Speaker 2: But were there.
Speaker 5: Any God, I'd like to be an Avenger? I appreciate it,
Speaker 5: I got it.
Speaker 1: Well, so Brina and I are going to go to
Speaker 1: a costume store and get your cake when we're done here.
Speaker 2: So all right, Yeah, I don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, was there any Was there any particular moment
Speaker 1: that you think back on and you go, that was
Speaker 1: a moment when I found hope.
Speaker 3: Well, I can remember going through my deaf date. Before that.
Speaker 3: We used to get down on the floor and the
Speaker 3: toilets were connected between walls, and we would have that
Speaker 3: as our phone, and I started talking to her. She
Speaker 3: was older than me. I think Susan was like twenty
Speaker 3: five or twenty six when she got sentenced in the
Speaker 3: same county that I was from Columbus, Misissippi. Clyve worked
Speaker 3: on her case as well, and so we got to
Speaker 3: know each other like that, you know, And she started
Speaker 3: talking to me and was trying to explain to me
Speaker 3: about the death sentence and how it works and stuff
Speaker 3: like that after the fact. So that's how I had
Speaker 3: someone to talk to.
Speaker 2: So she communicated through the event or through.
Speaker 3: Through the vent, through the vent in the toilet. They
Speaker 3: kept us where we couldn't talk to anyone. They put
Speaker 3: us down this hall and they put a piece of
Speaker 3: tape on the floor because they didn't know where to
Speaker 3: put female death Row inmates. So we were just down
Speaker 3: a hall and I think it had no one beyond
Speaker 3: this point. And as far as me and Susan, we
Speaker 3: had to sign paper saying that we wouldn't kill each
Speaker 3: other before we could even go on yard all together.
Speaker 3: Everywhere we went we had to be shackled. We had
Speaker 3: no contact. No other inmates could come and touch us
Speaker 3: or say anything to us. We were locked down twenty
Speaker 3: three hours a day, and then when they did give
Speaker 3: us yard call, it was just stand in this bull
Speaker 3: pen like you do dogs, with no shade, no nothing.
Speaker 3: It's just standing out there that's the way they had us.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was crazy, but now we know you're here,
Speaker 1: and I want to highlight that the odds changed a
Speaker 1: lot in court with proper legal representation that everybody should have.
Speaker 2: And Clive, when.
Speaker 1: Did you that the tide really turned in the retrial.
Speaker 5: Well, you have to remember that actually no one ends
Speaker 5: up in prisoner on death row for something they didn't
Speaker 5: do without there being a semblance of evidence. First, there
Speaker 5: was the question of the injuries to little Walter. You
Speaker 5: had the injuries to his chest, which we could explain
Speaker 5: through CPR, and that also tied into the statement against Sabrina,
Speaker 5: because the police had co aster into saying she punched
Speaker 5: the child, which wasn't that far from the truth. The
Speaker 5: truth is she had done CPR to the child in
Speaker 5: a way that was almost the equivalent. But this was
Speaker 5: after the child was succumbing to other things, and so
Speaker 5: we were able to show to the jury the way
Speaker 5: that the police co asked. Most importantly I think was
Speaker 5: the medical evidence. I spent many many long hours in
Speaker 5: the medical library in you Orleans looking for what I
Speaker 5: thought the real explanation would be for what we saw
Speaker 5: in this child. And that was when I came across
Speaker 5: the chronic neuphrotic syndrome, the syndrome that Sabrina's daughter has too.
Speaker 5: You know, this seemed clearly to explain everything we were seeing,
Speaker 5: and that was one part of hope, because we were
Speaker 5: able to get our own medical examiner who could give
Speaker 5: an explanation for what really happened, but also get their
Speaker 5: medical examiner to admit what he didn't know, and their
Speaker 5: GP also to admit that they simply didn't know that
Speaker 5: there was this chronic nephrotic syndrome that could explain all
Speaker 5: of the things they saw, and they just didn't know
Speaker 5: about it because that was beyond their exploitise. And then,
Speaker 5: you know, I think the turning point in the trial
Speaker 5: was when we had their cup on the stand and
Speaker 5: I had this really ugly doll, and I wanted him
Speaker 5: to show the jury how he would do CPR on
Speaker 5: a little infant. And you know, it didn't really matter
Speaker 5: what he did because he was a police officer who
Speaker 5: was trained in CPR. So if he did it properly
Speaker 5: with two little fingers on the infant's chest, then that
Speaker 5: would demonstrate what no one else in the courtroom probably knew,
Speaker 5: which was how to do it properly. But if he
Speaker 5: got it wrong, then that was the end of that case.
Speaker 5: Because if the police officer trained like that would do
Speaker 5: CPR in the way that we said that Sabrina had
Speaker 5: done it, in a way that would crush the infant's ribs,
Speaker 5: then you know, that was an incredibly powerful argument for
Speaker 5: what had actually happened. And sure enough, he would have
Speaker 5: killed that little child the way he did CPR. He
Speaker 5: put his two hands on it, and he would have
Speaker 5: crushed the child. And then of course he went out
Speaker 5: in the hall, and I knew he was going to
Speaker 5: tell his body in the hall that we just got him.
Speaker 5: So I made an argument to the judge in front
Speaker 5: of the jury that I was afraid that he was
Speaker 5: going to tell the next police officer how to do
Speaker 5: it properly, And sure enough, that's what he did, And
Speaker 5: so we exposed that when the next guy came in,
Speaker 5: and that just showed that they were all getting together
Speaker 5: in the whole way and trying to concoct a case
Speaker 5: against Sabrina. So all of that went really well. But
Speaker 5: having said that, there were a couple of other things.
Speaker 5: Some of the other witnesses, the neighbors and so forth,
Speaker 5: who corroborated what Sabrina said, which was that she'd run
Speaker 5: around desperately trying to find people that take her to
Speaker 5: hospital and help her. You know, this just showed the
Speaker 5: truth that here was an eighteen year old who was
Speaker 5: in a massive panic, as opposed to what the prosecutor
Speaker 5: wanted to say that she was some sort of sociopath
Speaker 5: who had beaten up a little baby. Then you come
Speaker 5: to the verdict, and I've got to say, you know,
Speaker 5: capital trials, for me as a lawyer, are the greatest
Speaker 5: laxative known to humanity. If you're not nervous when you're
Speaker 5: doing those cases, then you just shouldn't be doing them.
Speaker 5: And I'm not going to admit to my knees knocking
Speaker 5: all the probably well, I was trying to hold Sabrina
Speaker 5: out there.
Speaker 3: Oh man, Clive now, I mean when we had to
Speaker 3: stand before the judge, my legs felt like spaghetti noodles
Speaker 3: and Clive now was holding me on either side. And
Speaker 3: I when the when the judge came back with that
Speaker 3: oh not guilty verdict, I just felt because I I
Speaker 3: was like, finally this is over, and I'm you know,
Speaker 3: thinking that it's you know, it's okay, I'm free, but
Speaker 3: you know that wasn't the whole thing. I wasn't. I'm
Speaker 3: still not free. I'm still working through that because after
Speaker 3: I got out and I got a chance to see
Speaker 3: my oldest son, I had to fight four more years
Speaker 3: to get him back. And then my daughter, who is
Speaker 3: seventeen years old, has the same exact disease my son
Speaker 3: died from so and it was polycistic kidney disease, and
Speaker 3: both of her kidney's are bad and they're saying that
Speaker 3: she will lose both and there's no cure. So it's
Speaker 3: the same thing. I'm fighting, the same, the same thing
Speaker 3: every day.
Speaker 6: It's hard because I've already lost one.
Speaker 5: The reason I consider my profession such a privilege is
Speaker 5: there is no greater privilege, I think, than being able
Speaker 5: to help just give someone like Sabrina her life back.
Speaker 5: It's a fantastic thing to be blessed and be able
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 1: It would be great if we didn't have to do
Speaker 1: these things, but those of us who work in this
Speaker 1: field movement, I couldn't have said it better myself. I mean,
Speaker 1: the happiest moments of my life putting my kids in
Speaker 1: a separate category because that is a separate category.
Speaker 5: Well, it's true, but let me say this, Well, I've
Speaker 5: got to you. I mean, I'm really grateful for you
Speaker 5: doing what you're doing. And let's just get a commitment
Speaker 5: on the air while we're here that you're going to
Speaker 5: carry on doing it for the next fifty years.
Speaker 2: What age?
Speaker 5: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you will, I will, I can't stop, won't stop,
Speaker 1: not gonna stop. And just getting to now all the
Speaker 1: amazing things that Sabrina is doing. Not to spoil the surprise,
Speaker 1: but Sabrina has been a tremendous advocate for change for
Speaker 1: almost a quarter century.
Speaker 3: Now, if you go to Witness to Innocence dot org,
Speaker 3: we are deathrow survivors. And if you go to that
Speaker 3: website then you can get me and several others any
Speaker 3: other speaker that you might like to come and speak
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's Witness to Innocence dot org. Witness to Innocence dot org,
Speaker 1: and you can find Sabrina there as well as so
Speaker 1: many other extraordinary people who I'm very fortunate to call
Speaker 1: my friends and who I'm proud to work together in
Speaker 1: this fight to abolish the death penalty. And before we
Speaker 1: get to closing arguments. One thing I did want to
Speaker 1: ask you, Clive, is I would like you to talk
Speaker 1: about what people should look for if they're on a jury,
Speaker 1: and how to make our listeners be the best jurors
Speaker 1: that they can be.
Speaker 5: There are several things you should bear in mind. The
Speaker 5: first is what does it really mean to be sure
Speaker 5: beyond a reasonable doubt? And I'm pretty horrified when I
Speaker 5: ask judges about that because when I've asked judges to
Speaker 5: put a number on it, the average judge, both in
Speaker 5: America and in Britain, and I've done this many times,
Speaker 5: that has averaged out at eighty three percent sure. That
Speaker 5: means they're aiming to be wrong one time in six
Speaker 5: and with six million Americans in the judicial system, the
Speaker 5: judges are aiming to put a million innocent people into
Speaker 5: prison when they take that as their standard. And as
Speaker 5: Robin Hurd will teach you, if you aim low, you miss.
Speaker 5: And the other thing to think about as a jura
Speaker 5: is there are twelve of you, but there's only one
Speaker 5: of you, and the one of you is the person
Speaker 5: who has responsibility for what you do. So very often
Speaker 5: there's this sort of herd mentality where everyone wants to agree,
Speaker 5: but you're not responsible for what those other people do,
Speaker 5: and as an individual juror, you have the right from
Speaker 5: beginning to end to say, respectfully, I just disagree. And
Speaker 5: one of the things we never tell jurors is how
Speaker 5: they can disagree, so they're never told that. At any moment,
Speaker 5: you as a juror, can send a note out to
Speaker 5: the judge saying, well, you know, don't really matter what
Speaker 5: these other e loving people are doing. I'm telling you
Speaker 5: we're not no agree because I think that this person
Speaker 5: is not guilty and you always have that right, and
Speaker 5: people try to bully you into not doing that.
Speaker 2: Well said, and I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: That's actually a new point I think for a lot
Speaker 1: of our listeners, and it's super important for everyone to know.
Speaker 2: That if you're on a jury, you have that right.
Speaker 1: You can just basically say, hey, this is going to
Speaker 1: end in a hung jury or an acquittal because I'm
Speaker 1: not voting guilty. And if that's how you feel, don't
Speaker 1: be bullied. I've heard too many stories, as you have,
Speaker 1: people who finally just got tired and they wanted to
Speaker 1: go home and they threw somebody life away literally because
Speaker 1: of pure pressure.
Speaker 5: And it's also because no one told them that is
Speaker 5: you're right. No one told them that you can say
Speaker 5: enough is enough now? And I think that's just very
Speaker 5: unfair on jurist that we don't say that.
Speaker 2: No. I think a lot of jurors also aren't told that.
Speaker 1: Actually therefore is the only one that really matters because
Speaker 1: we have to have unanimous jury verdicts in this country. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now comes the featured part of our show, where
Speaker 1: I thank both of you profusely for coming in and well,
Speaker 1: Sabrina for you sharing your story and your remarkable journey.
Speaker 1: And Clive, of course, thank you for calling in and
Speaker 1: for all the amazing work that you've been doing.
Speaker 2: And so now in.
Speaker 1: Order because we save the best for last, with all
Speaker 1: due respect to you, sir Clive, we're going to save
Speaker 1: Sabrina for last.
Speaker 5: All right, very good? I will. I've been doing death
Speaker 5: penalty work since I was about twenty, which is a
Speaker 5: long long time ago, and I do it because of
Speaker 5: what my mother said to me, which is, there's no
Speaker 5: point you having a law degree if you don't look
Speaker 5: at the people that we as a society most hate,
Speaker 5: and you get between them and the people doing the hating.
Speaker 5: And you know, when you think about the death penalty,
Speaker 5: it's extraordinary in theory, but in practice, when that jury
Speaker 5: and that judge came back to say to Sabrina, who
Speaker 5: I count as a dear friend and I count as
Speaker 5: a very valuable human being, when they came back and
Speaker 5: said to her that we are going to take your
Speaker 5: life away. We're going to sacrifice you on the altar
Speaker 5: to some mythological god of deterrence because we're going to
Speaker 5: do that to pretend that we're doing something meaningful about crime.
Speaker 5: That's just terrific to me. I've watched six of my
Speaker 5: clients die in the electric, the gas chamber, and the
Speaker 5: leafl injection gurny, and it's always in the middle of
Speaker 5: the night for whatever reason, and it's because I think
Speaker 5: we're deeply ashamed of what we're doing. And each time
Speaker 5: I have come out of the death chamber and I've
Speaker 5: looked up at the stars above and I've thought to myself,
Speaker 5: my God, did that really make the world a better place?
Speaker 5: And you know, the bottom line is it sure didn't.
Speaker 5: And I'm so glad that in Sabrina's case, not only
Speaker 5: did she not end up on the leafl injection gurney.
Speaker 5: But she ended up getting her life back and making
Speaker 5: so much of it, and that's just a wonderful, wonderful thing.
Speaker 2: Sabrina Well.
Speaker 3: I basically want to say that the journey was not easy.
Speaker 3: I had to do a lot of growing up going
Speaker 3: through this trial and tragedy of losing my son. Today
Speaker 3: I still fight the state of Mississippi where my son
Speaker 3: is buried. It took me two years to find him.
Speaker 3: When I did find him, he was buried on a
Speaker 3: dark gravel road in the woods, on a hill, under
Speaker 3: a tree, no marker except the little bitty marker that
Speaker 3: they have. I am trying to fight them because I
Speaker 3: found out that the death certificate still says today that
Speaker 3: he was murdered. Okay, So when I found that out,
Speaker 3: that was another blow to me as a person, because
Speaker 3: I'm trying to say, you still have this out here.
Speaker 3: I was found not guilty. The system of Mississippi paid
Speaker 3: me for wrongful conviction what they thought it was worth,
Speaker 3: but you still are convicting me in some sort of way.
Speaker 3: How could I ever be a nurse or doctor anything
Speaker 3: with death certificate that stated that. So the attorney is
Speaker 3: now working in the process of trying to get the
Speaker 3: State Examiner's office to change the death certificate in itself.
Speaker 3: They refused to do that, so now we have to
Speaker 3: go to That is another battle that I am currently
Speaker 3: in the process of trying to do. I said that
Speaker 3: in a sense to say that we are all human beings,
Speaker 3: we do not have the right as each individual to
Speaker 3: take a person's redemptive period. That's my belief. I feel
Speaker 3: that as long as God has me here, I am
Speaker 3: going to fight till I can't fight anymore, because that's
Speaker 3: what I'm here for. I feel like I can go
Speaker 3: all over the world and talk about this case until
Speaker 3: I'm blue in the face. If it changed one mind,
Speaker 3: one heart, then I feel like I'm doing my job.
Speaker 3: And I just thank God and for all the people
Speaker 3: that were involved in my case that he gave me
Speaker 3: a second chance to try to help someone else. And
Speaker 3: that's what I'm here for.
Speaker 4: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
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Speaker 2: It really helps.
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Nisis Project, and
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me and supporting this very
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future Wrongful Convictions. Go
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
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