Speaker 1: I think we have the best legal system. It's just
Speaker 1: the people that implement they get lost along the way
Speaker 1: and forget what their job really is.
Speaker 2: He just kept on trying to remind me that who
Speaker 2: was in authority, who was in control, and how easy
Speaker 2: it was for my body to be found in any
Speaker 2: alley of New York City.
Speaker 3: It's a tough prison when you have the guards going
Speaker 3: against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
Speaker 1: They do that. They'll give a guy a life sentence
Speaker 1: and go home in eat spaghetti like it was nothing.
Speaker 2: And anybody that said, well, why would you confess to
Speaker 2: something that you didn't do? My question to them will
Speaker 2: be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to kill
Speaker 2: your life?
Speaker 1: The judge, he said, how you feel?
Speaker 2: I said, I'm okay. He said, well, the days you're
Speaker 2: lucky day you're going home.
Speaker 3: This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 3: Jason Flamm. Today we are recording from New Orleans with
Speaker 3: a very special individual. My friend Daniel Tapia is here today. Daniel,
Speaker 3: welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Well let's start with this. We're in New Orleans, which
Speaker 3: is the epicenter of the problem with the criminal justice
Speaker 3: system or the world. Actually, America locks up more people
Speaker 3: per capita than any place in the world, five times
Speaker 3: as many people per capita as the rest of the
Speaker 3: Western world, fourteen times as many as Japan, which is insane.
Speaker 3: Louisiana locks up twice as many people per capita as
Speaker 3: the rest of the United States, and New Orleans locks
Speaker 3: up more people than any other county or city in Louisiana, sir.
Speaker 3: So overall, it's really not that shocking that somebody like
Speaker 3: you could be wrongfully convicted in a place like this.
Speaker 1: That happens way too often.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, it's really troubling. Daniel was forced to take a
Speaker 3: plea even though he's innocent, because had he not done that,
Speaker 3: he'd probably be in prison for the rest of his life.
Speaker 3: Is that fair, Yes, sir, because the way things roll
Speaker 3: down here, and to be fair, in most of the
Speaker 3: rest of the country, a huge number of people are
Speaker 3: faced with the same sort of Sophie's choice that you had,
Speaker 3: which is either plead guilty and sort of have that
Speaker 3: scarlet letter, or try to fight for your innocence and
Speaker 3: run the risk of the very likely scenario that you're
Speaker 3: going to spend the rest of your life in prison.
Speaker 3: So let's go back to your case, because it's like
Speaker 3: something out of a movie.
Speaker 1: It absolutely is. That's the only way I know how
Speaker 1: to go a bad movie.
Speaker 3: So walk us through that. What happened? Where were you?
Speaker 3: How did you get caught up in this?
Speaker 1: Okay? I used to live in the Calio Projects in
Speaker 1: New Waters, That's where this incident occurred. That so on
Speaker 1: the day that it occurred, I was with a friend
Speaker 1: of mine. Let me say this. I had just bought
Speaker 1: my first call. I was a teenager. I was eighteen
Speaker 1: years old, just bought my first call, and basically all
Speaker 1: I was doing was everybody I knew, all my friends, anybody, Hey,
Speaker 1: you need to ride, Let's go this place, Let's go
Speaker 1: to that place.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: We just were riding around everywhere, typical of most teenagers
Speaker 1: when they buy their first vehicle, especially when you're the
Speaker 1: only one out of your friends who has one at
Speaker 1: the time. You know, the data incident happened. I was
Speaker 1: outside talking to another friend of mine. Me and one
Speaker 1: of my friends were getting ready to leave, and he
Speaker 1: was like, where y'all about to go? I said, we
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go pass by my girlfriend and then we
Speaker 1: probably gonna go downtown, which was you know, I lived uptown.
Speaker 1: So he said, all right, well just drop me off
Speaker 1: on your way over there. So I said, all right.
Speaker 1: So I dropped him off, and a friend of mine
Speaker 1: had recently been another guy that I knew. He had
Speaker 1: recently been shot by another individual, and you know, he
Speaker 1: was my friend who I was dropping off. Was going
Speaker 1: to check on him because he lived upstairs where I
Speaker 1: was dropping him off, fat in the projects on the
Speaker 1: other side. So as I dropped him off, he gets out,
Speaker 1: he goes in there. I pulled off. I pull up
Speaker 1: way I was going to. My girlfriend was probably approximately
Speaker 1: maybe two to three blocks away. She lived in another driveway.
Speaker 1: And if I'm going that way, I started hearing gunshots.
Speaker 1: And when I started hearing gunshots, my friend who was
Speaker 1: in the vehicle with me, he's like, man, you know
Speaker 1: that's coming from where we just dropped off with my
Speaker 1: other two friends. So I look back. I can't see
Speaker 1: anything because the way the buildings are you can't see
Speaker 1: over to what's going on. All I hear is gunshots.
Speaker 1: And then I start hearing gunshots getting rapid succession like
Speaker 1: a semi automatic, you know, like assault rifle. You can
Speaker 1: you know the difference between a sault rifle and a
Speaker 1: pistol going off? I mean, it's shot after shot, it's
Speaker 1: just relentless shot after shot. At that time, probably less
Speaker 1: than a minute later, my friend and his friend come running,
Speaker 1: and as they're running, somebody's behind them shooting at them
Speaker 1: with the assault rifle.
Speaker 4: Over whatever.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a video game, yes, sir, but it
Speaker 3: was crazy.
Speaker 1: No, it's real life. It's split second. You gotta make
Speaker 1: a decision. What are you gonna do? So, as he's running,
Speaker 1: he's running towards me, and I see him, so I
Speaker 1: you know, I'm looking. I get back in my car
Speaker 1: and he comes running towards my car. Pull up, he
Speaker 1: jumps in my car. I take off. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: what happened? He's like, man, just go, just go, just go. So,
Speaker 1: I know somebody's shooting at him. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what went on, but I see someone shooting
Speaker 1: at him.
Speaker 3: Well, someone shoot at him. They' shooting at ut exactly now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's no time to sit around and think
Speaker 1: about what happened or what might have happened. What's the
Speaker 1: right decision? Was not the right decision. So I pull
Speaker 1: off and I pull out of the driveway, and I
Speaker 1: mean less than maybe two blocks. There's cops coming from everywhere.
Speaker 1: So I stopped. I didn't do anything, you know, I stopped.
Speaker 1: I pull over to the side of the road. And
Speaker 1: as I pull over to the side of the road,
Speaker 1: they come pulling up on us. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: put my hands up, get out the car. Whatever. I
Speaker 1: know something happened, but I don't know what happened. I know,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a shooting going on. I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened, though, So we get out. They pull
Speaker 1: us all out, They separate all of us, put us
Speaker 1: in different places. Four of you, four of us, Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: it was four of us. And this is where the
Speaker 1: story gets crazy. This is where it starts not making
Speaker 1: sense at all.
Speaker 3: Pretty crazy so far.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just say, you know, this is when the corruption starts.
Speaker 1: Let me put it like that. So as we get stopped,
Speaker 1: we get pulled out. So I don't know what the
Speaker 1: cops are telling the other guy. But there's a black
Speaker 1: car that pulls is a black Cadillac with tinted windows
Speaker 1: and rims in it. And a guy pulls in front
Speaker 1: and gets out, and he comes straight to where I'm
Speaker 1: at and he comes back there and he opens the
Speaker 1: door and he tells me he's a police officer. He
Speaker 1: just saw everything that happened, and he knows I didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with it, but he needs to
Speaker 1: know what's going on because it's the second murder in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood within that week. That was someone who was
Speaker 1: killed maybe a block away from where this incident happened,
Speaker 1: about five days before that, the Calio Projects in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of murders, a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: going on. It's a really bad neighborhood to grow up
Speaker 1: in and living. And so I told him, I said, look,
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened. I don't know anything about
Speaker 1: the shooting. I said, man, I was just over here
Speaker 1: and I heard some shots. So he punched me. He
Speaker 1: hit me. He said, you're trying to take up for him.
Speaker 1: I said, look, well, look I want to talk to
Speaker 1: a lawyer.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: You know, I ain't got nothing else to say to y'all.
Speaker 1: Y'all sitting here punching on me saying I'm lying. I
Speaker 1: ain't got nothing to say, so then he slams the door.
Speaker 1: So then one after one, cops start coming up to
Speaker 1: the car and they open the back door, and they
Speaker 1: keep asking me what my race is. I'm like, what
Speaker 1: my race is? What the what does that have to
Speaker 1: do with anything? Why y'all keep why? Why are these
Speaker 1: cops so interesting if I'm black or white? And so
Speaker 1: I don't think anything of it. I'm just, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: the stupid cops. You know, I'm not thinking anything. Well,
Speaker 1: the captain of the sixth District comes and he tells me,
Speaker 1: because I want to take up for them, he's gonna
Speaker 1: make sure I get the death penalty win him after,
Speaker 1: you know alone whatever. We've been sitting out there, maybe
Speaker 1: two three hours now.
Speaker 3: Right, The problem being that you don't actually know.
Speaker 1: What I don't know what happened.
Speaker 3: So even if you wanted to tell him that, you
Speaker 3: certainly would not if you couldn't live in that neighborhood
Speaker 3: on exactly, but there was no snitching, you would have
Speaker 3: to just make up a story out of thin air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really legitimately don't know what happened for real,
Speaker 1: because I couldn't see over it that I couldn't see
Speaker 1: what was going on. But I know in my heart,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I didn't I didn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with this. So I'm not even worrying about if I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go to jail or if you know, because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything. I stopped, y'all, I stopped, I
Speaker 1: got out. I don't know, y'all. Tell y'all are telling
Speaker 1: me what happened. I don't know what happened. Y'all are
Speaker 1: telling me that somebody got shot and all this type
Speaker 1: of stuff. So I go to jail and they let
Speaker 1: the guy who was with me, my friend who was
Speaker 1: with me, they let him go that same night, and
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of my head like this, this is crazy, you.
Speaker 3: Know, like what this is the guy who came running
Speaker 3: into the car.
Speaker 1: No, this was another guy, the guy who was with
Speaker 1: me at the time when the other guys came running
Speaker 1: to the car. There was two guys who ran to
Speaker 1: the car, and it was me and another friend of
Speaker 1: mine who were in the car at the time already.
Speaker 1: And they let him go, but they didn't let me go.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, man, you know why they taking me
Speaker 1: and and let him go. It's like, you know, but
Speaker 1: I still don't know what's going on. I didn't actually
Speaker 1: find out what was going when it actually happened until
Speaker 1: when I was in jail, had been processed about three
Speaker 1: days later, because I didn't even see myself on a
Speaker 1: news I got a newspaper article from somebody. They let
Speaker 1: me see the newspaper when I got up on the
Speaker 1: til I was going on, and I read what happened,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what, holy shit. And then I
Speaker 1: start reading how they trying to involve me in and
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, that's not even what happened. But I mean,
Speaker 1: what can I say? What can I do about it?
Speaker 1: I'm in jail now, So the first thing I'm thinking is,
Speaker 1: all right, this is gonna get played out in court.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll go to court. It'll be over. You know,
Speaker 1: they'll see Because the cops telling me he saw everything
Speaker 1: that happened and he knows I didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with it, and he told me because he thinks
Speaker 1: I'm trying to take up for them, that he's gonna
Speaker 1: mess over me. But I'm like, this guy is't really
Speaker 1: gonna go through this and really come in here and
Speaker 1: lie in court and say, you know that I had
Speaker 1: something to do with something I didn't, but he did.
Speaker 1: And what's crazy is that even as they played the
Speaker 1: dispatch tape of him calling in the shooting that he
Speaker 1: allegedly witnessed, it doesn't even line up with what he
Speaker 1: testified to in court, Like it doesn't even make.
Speaker 3: Sense because he called in and said it was three
Speaker 3: black men.
Speaker 1: He called in and said it was three black males,
Speaker 1: which obviously I have no melody. I don't have a
Speaker 1: drop of it in my skin. That's all I can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it, you know, especially in that neighborhood. I'm one
Speaker 1: of the only white people in that neighborhood period.
Speaker 3: Actually, if he did witness the shooting, it would have
Speaker 3: been really easy for him to identify it.
Speaker 1: Just spotted me a mile away.
Speaker 3: If I had something, it would have been, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: the white guy from the name right exactly.
Speaker 1: And you said it was three black males. But when
Speaker 1: you stopped us, you stopped three black males and meet
Speaker 1: and you let one of them go, which he didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with it either. But it's just
Speaker 1: a thought like where is all this going? Like how
Speaker 1: does this even make sense to y'all to actually prosecute this.
Speaker 1: It took over two years and I was eventually convicted
Speaker 1: the second agree murder.
Speaker 3: It took two years for the trial to resolve. So
Speaker 3: you were in jail for two years waiting.
Speaker 1: To go to trial, yes, sir, thinking I was going
Speaker 1: to go home, and I didn't. They convicted me, and
Speaker 1: it was it was the most surreal feeling I ever
Speaker 1: felt in my life.
Speaker 3: And the crime happened in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, April eleven, two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: And Hurricane Katrina has a role in this whole crazy
Speaker 3: saga of your life as well. Definitely, So let's talk
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 1: So in August two thousand and five, Hurricane Katrina comes true.
Speaker 1: So in the day leading up to Katrina, they basically
Speaker 1: just it was like nothing was gonna happen, no big deal.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this giant storm coming our way, but
Speaker 1: there's no preparations being made. They're not moving us out
Speaker 1: of the line of fire. They're not taking us to
Speaker 1: another prison up north or something where we're out of
Speaker 1: the way of the storm and out of horms way.
Speaker 1: They just left us there. Friday, Hurricane Katrina hitting Sunday
Speaker 1: that Friday. They turned the phones off inside the jail,
Speaker 1: so nobody can make a phone call outside to talk
Speaker 1: to their family, anything like that, or let them know
Speaker 1: that we were still in there.
Speaker 3: Which jail was it again?
Speaker 1: Orleans Paris Prison?
Speaker 3: And what does that look like? Is it a tall building?
Speaker 3: Is it a flat?
Speaker 1: It's four stories tall.
Speaker 3: So it's not tall at all. Not when you have Hurricane.
Speaker 1: Katrina coming, not at all, Not at all.
Speaker 3: And if you're on the first the second floor, if.
Speaker 1: You're on the first floor, you'd have been dead because
Speaker 1: I was on the second floor and we were standing
Speaker 1: in water.
Speaker 3: So let me just get this straight. Hurricane Katrina's coming
Speaker 3: one of the biggest storms in the history of this country. Yes, sir,
Speaker 3: didn't take anybody by surprise. No, everybody saw that thing.
Speaker 3: He's coming a mile away, days away. There's one time
Speaker 3: the weather men actually.
Speaker 4: Got it right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they couldn't mess that one up.
Speaker 3: So they decided that the appropriate response would be to
Speaker 3: abandon you there because they want to go protect their
Speaker 3: own asses. Yes, and turn off the phones.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly what they did.
Speaker 3: So the storm comes, you were on the second.
Speaker 1: Floor, I was on the second floor.
Speaker 3: What was the vibe? What was everybody saying and doing?
Speaker 3: I mean, like it just just when you think things
Speaker 3: can't get worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what happened was we were all on a
Speaker 1: tib and of course, you know the power went out.
Speaker 1: When the power goes out before the deputies basically locked
Speaker 1: us in there. Left We can see out the window
Speaker 1: onto the fourth floor, which is the highest level inside
Speaker 1: of the building. Up there, that's where the deputies have
Speaker 1: stationed themselves at. They removed the inmates who were up
Speaker 1: there on the fourth floor and put them at lower floors.
Speaker 1: And they were up there and they had like some
Speaker 1: of their family members and stuff in there up on
Speaker 1: the fourth floor, and they were up there cooking, and
Speaker 1: you know, you could see they had like a barbecue
Speaker 1: and they had all the food that was left. They
Speaker 1: took it up there with them. So they locked us
Speaker 1: inside of our tears, which is your cell blocks of
Speaker 1: your domes, and we had no food. Once the storm
Speaker 1: comes to you, we have no running water, we have no
Speaker 1: clean water, we have nothing. We can barely even breathe
Speaker 1: in there because it's stifling from the lack of air
Speaker 1: and circulation going on inside there, and you've got on
Speaker 1: a particular tier I was on. There's enough beds for
Speaker 1: forty two people. We had about sixty four at the
Speaker 1: time up there, and like I said, with nothing else,
Speaker 1: not even enough beds for everybody to be in. Obviously,
Speaker 1: being in prison, you around other people who are maybe
Speaker 1: not so nice individuals and who have different beefs and
Speaker 1: stuff from the street, and so when the lights go out,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to be that guy, because I mean you
Speaker 1: literally couldn't see your hand in front of your face
Speaker 1: when the power was out in there. So you had
Speaker 1: guys that started lighting fires inside of there and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and there's no air, there's no circulation, there's
Speaker 1: no windows, there's no anyway for this smoke to get out.
Speaker 1: So you got these idiots who started a fire on
Speaker 1: the other side, and there's smoke going all through the
Speaker 1: inside of the dome where we at. So we had
Speaker 1: to break windows in order for the smoke to get out,
Speaker 1: just so we could breathe and everybody didn't suffocate up there.
Speaker 3: How did you break a window?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, they have bars around them and it's
Speaker 1: reinforced glass. But we had like a big iron metal
Speaker 1: bar that goes across the shower, and we ended up
Speaker 1: breaking that down out of the wall and use that
Speaker 1: along with a broom and a mopstick that was up
Speaker 1: there to just beat on a glass until it put
Speaker 1: a hole in it. And once it put a hole
Speaker 1: in it, we just chipped the way at it and
Speaker 1: broke it out. So the bars were still intact, like
Speaker 1: we couldn't get out of the window, but the glass
Speaker 1: itself was broken where we could. Air was able to
Speaker 1: come in and go out.
Speaker 3: So that saved everybody's life right there. Literally, you're painting
Speaker 3: a picture of literally the worst imaginable scenario that anybody
Speaker 3: could be in. It's dark, it's stifling heat, there's no air.
Speaker 1: No food, no food, no water over all of.
Speaker 3: Them, and a storm coming in that just might kill
Speaker 3: you all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, by this time the storm had passed when
Speaker 1: the part of the lights and everything went off, the
Speaker 1: storm had passed. Now, with Hurricane Katrina, it wasn't the
Speaker 1: storm itself that caused the flooded. That's why we were
Speaker 1: so lost. Because the storm came, the wind came through,
Speaker 1: the rain came through, the power went out, and then
Speaker 1: it passed and the sun was shining outside. Well, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, now we're seeing water just coming up
Speaker 1: and up and up and up and up and up,
Speaker 1: and we're looking out the wind and we're like, man,
Speaker 1: where's all this fucking water coming from? You know, it
Speaker 1: just keeps pouring, raising up and up closer to where
Speaker 1: we are, until eventually it's to the second floor where
Speaker 1: we're at. Well, at the time, the building where I
Speaker 1: was at, we were right next to the coroner's office.
Speaker 1: We didn't process this at the time because you know,
Speaker 1: you're just not thinking about what it could potentially be.
Speaker 1: We look outside the winter and it's dead bodies floating
Speaker 1: right right around the window right where we are, right
Speaker 1: next to us. There was at least seven dead bodies
Speaker 1: that were floating around out there. So we're like, man,
Speaker 1: this fucking water's coming up. There's no guards, no help,
Speaker 1: no food, no water, and we got dead blodies floating
Speaker 1: around in the window next to us. But there came
Speaker 1: from the corner's office. Because the corner's office, which was
Speaker 1: on the first floor, was completely submerged in water and
Speaker 1: floated up. We didn't realize that until after everything was over.
Speaker 1: We just in panicked. Now everybody's panicking there's fucking water's
Speaker 1: coming up, there's nobody here with us. We're locked inside
Speaker 1: of here, literally can't get out. There's dead bodies floating
Speaker 1: around the fucking window next to us, and we don't
Speaker 1: even know if anybody even knows we're here more or
Speaker 1: les's gonna come rescue us and get us out of here.
Speaker 3: What happened to the people on the first floor?
Speaker 1: They had got moved. Oh, that was the one thing
Speaker 1: I give them credit that they were smart enough to do,
Speaker 1: is they moved the people off of the first floor.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of rumors about some people were left
Speaker 1: down there and stuff like that. I'll never know the
Speaker 1: truth on that, because some of the guys who were
Speaker 1: on the first floor edded up on the second floor
Speaker 1: with me where I was at, and they just moved
Speaker 1: them and kind of separated them on different tears. Like
Speaker 1: I said, they to the guys who were off the
Speaker 1: fourth floor and put them down lower so that they
Speaker 1: can go station themselves on the fourth floor and be
Speaker 1: at the highest point.
Speaker 3: So there were actually cards there with there, they just
Speaker 3: weren't coming us. Because so if I'm I'm going to
Speaker 3: just make an assumption that they probably lived in houses
Speaker 3: that they couldn't stay in because you can't. New Orleans
Speaker 3: is under sea level and we all know, we've all
Speaker 3: seen the pictures of what happened. So had they stayed home.
Speaker 1: They probably would have been flooded out.
Speaker 3: They were using this as a shelter, exactly the building.
Speaker 3: I'm sure the building is built pretty well.
Speaker 1: That building is not going and it.
Speaker 3: Was no matter what storm comes.
Speaker 1: So they had their family members of You could see
Speaker 1: their family members were up there with them, like you
Speaker 1: saw kids. You saw women who weren't offices and stuff
Speaker 1: like that were all staying up there on the force.
Speaker 3: An emergency shelters. So how long were you stuck in
Speaker 3: this situation? On Friday is when everybody left.
Speaker 1: Sunday they left the Sunday left us down on Sunday.
Speaker 1: Wednesday evening is when we finally were taken out of there.
Speaker 3: And so what did you drink?
Speaker 1: You didn't drink anything. You didn't have anything to drink.
Speaker 3: You certainly couldn't drink the water you had the sewage
Speaker 3: in it, right, you had dead bodies floating around.
Speaker 1: So we were all severely dehydrated.
Speaker 3: I mean, and water was up to what was it
Speaker 3: up to your ankles.
Speaker 1: It was about it our ankles. It was about it
Speaker 1: our ankles on the second floor. When it finally stopped,
Speaker 1: it was almost a sigh of relief because we didn't
Speaker 1: know if it was just gonna keep coming up, would
Speaker 1: just drowned. Yeah, because we couldn't go anywhere, and we tried.
Speaker 1: I mean, we ripped down the air conditioning ventilation, there
Speaker 1: were bars in the wall, we ripped the toilets out
Speaker 1: of the ground, there were bars in the floor. We
Speaker 1: tried to chip through the shop. I mean, that place
Speaker 1: is a real fortress. Like you're not getting out of
Speaker 1: there unless you're going through the guards with keys.
Speaker 3: So seventy two hours of sheer, terror, uncertainty, hunger, thirst.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. You had guys started fighting. They had two guys
Speaker 1: had a knife fight, just because everybody was so stressed
Speaker 1: out and so on high red alert. Every little thing
Speaker 1: was taking them off. I actually had taken a sheet
Speaker 1: and rolled on it with a ma because we can
Speaker 1: hear the helicopters flying around and see the helicopters flying
Speaker 1: around outside, and like I said, we didn't even know
Speaker 1: if anybody knew we were in there. So I had
Speaker 1: taken a sheet and rolle on that you know, people
Speaker 1: in here need help, and tried to hang it outside
Speaker 1: the balls because you know, we had broken the glass
Speaker 1: and tried to hang it out there, and the officers
Speaker 1: started shooting at us because we were sticking our hands
Speaker 1: out the balls trying to put a flag out there.
Speaker 1: They started taking potshots.
Speaker 3: At Okay, so there's another thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that that was the end of us trying
Speaker 1: to send a flag. So now the idea is start
Speaker 1: another fire, because now we got the winners over. So
Speaker 1: now you've got guys who are gonna lit another fire
Speaker 1: and throwing flames like lit a mattress on fire and
Speaker 1: sticking it, hanging it out the balls to try and
Speaker 1: get the attention of the helicopters going around trying to
Speaker 1: just get anybody to come help us.
Speaker 3: It's taking me a minute to price says this. Okay,
Speaker 3: So now I'm sure everybody else that's listening and scratching
Speaker 3: their head like I am and going what Yeah, So
Speaker 3: you didn't drown? No, thank that it was a miracle
Speaker 3: and you you survived this ordeal and ultimately you end
Speaker 3: up getting convicted of second degree murder, yes, sir, and
Speaker 3: sense to life in prison. And you were twenty years
Speaker 3: old at the time.
Speaker 1: I was twenty when I was convicted. I was eighteen
Speaker 1: when I was arrested.
Speaker 3: Right, and you get sent to Angola, Yes, I mean
Speaker 3: it's hard to say what the worst prison is in America,
Speaker 3: but I think a lot of people who are knowledgeable
Speaker 3: in this field would say that's that strong consideration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's won't be.
Speaker 3: Angola is a plantation in the middle of nowhere in
Speaker 3: Louisiana which is named Angola because it originally was a
Speaker 3: slave plantation and the slaves that worked the fields there
Speaker 3: were from Angola, And so it certainly at the time
Speaker 3: you were there, and I would say probably true to
Speaker 3: this day. It still operates basically like a slave plantation.
Speaker 1: Exactly like a slave plantation.
Speaker 3: You know, it's so far removed from sight, and people
Speaker 3: go there to die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's its own world.
Speaker 3: Most of the people, I think I read some of
Speaker 3: the eighty five percent of people that go there die there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I mean you got all kinds of people we
Speaker 3: were talking about before. They've been there. Since the seventies eighties.
Speaker 1: You have about three average, two and a half to
Speaker 1: three people a month die.
Speaker 3: It ain't golden, right, and I was told that during
Speaker 3: one particular flood, the Army Corps of Engineers came down
Speaker 3: there and wanted to build some dams or whatever, do
Speaker 3: some dig up some stuff, and they wouldn't let them
Speaker 3: in because they had to move some of the bodies
Speaker 3: that they had buried first, because they didn't want to,
Speaker 3: you know, because those people didn't necessarily die of natural causes.
Speaker 3: So here you are, in one of the worst places
Speaker 3: on earth, and with basically no hope of ever going home.
Speaker 1: One thing I can say, though, is that's one thing
Speaker 1: I can't say. I never gave up my hope. I
Speaker 1: never gave up my hope. I think when I was
Speaker 1: convicted and the jury walked past me. When I was convicted, literally,
Speaker 1: and this is in my minutes, this is in my transcripts.
Speaker 1: I told my judge, Judge Camille Burris, I told her
Speaker 1: I'd rather have a death penalty then spend the rest
Speaker 1: of my life it ain't golden. And I even made
Speaker 1: a statement, I said, Yana, all due respect, that was
Speaker 1: exactly what I told her. I'd rather had a death penndy,
Speaker 1: I said, I'd rather y'all kill me. They sent me
Speaker 1: up there to wait another fifty sixty years to die.
Speaker 1: She just put her head down and kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: motion to the bailiff to get me out of the
Speaker 1: court room. And they took me out of that because
Speaker 1: I was just like, man, there's no way. And after that,
Speaker 1: probably that first night, I was down on myself, and
Speaker 1: then after that I was like, man, I gotta get
Speaker 1: out of here. This is crazy, this isn't fair, but
Speaker 1: this is my life, and I got to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to get out of here.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting you sit there and you say, well,
Speaker 3: I had hope, but I'm getting the chill was thinking
Speaker 3: about it. But I think most people would lose hope absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's nobody's vouching for you at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're on your own.
Speaker 1: I'm on my own, man. It's it's total mental gymnastics,
Speaker 1: because you want to have hope and you want to
Speaker 1: believe that the right thing is going to happen and
Speaker 1: that these people are going to realize that they made
Speaker 1: a mistake and they're gonna realize that you're innocent. But
Speaker 1: every day you're waking up next to guys who've been
Speaker 1: in prison since before my mother was born, before your
Speaker 1: mother was before my mother was born. You know, you
Speaker 1: got guys that's been up there forty to fifty sumi years.
Speaker 3: Right, and some of them not guilty in the first place,
Speaker 3: and some of them, like you said, for minor crimes.
Speaker 3: I mean in Louisiana. Some of the things, some of
Speaker 3: the stories that you hear really just twist your mind around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the justice system here is just I don't even
Speaker 1: know how to describe it. It's it's very inhuman. It's
Speaker 1: it's all about winning and locking people up. It's not
Speaker 1: about actual justice. It's not about finding out the truth.
Speaker 1: There's more of a pursuit of so that people can say, look,
Speaker 1: I punished this guy. I punished this guy. You know,
Speaker 1: we found it, we solved it, and there's no in
Speaker 1: my opinion, real thought to you know, it's like they
Speaker 1: do that. They'll give a guy a life sentence and
Speaker 1: go home in eat spaghetti like it was nothing, you know,
Speaker 1: and not think about it. Man, maybe I really sent
Speaker 1: the wrong person to prison for the rest of their life.
Speaker 3: But then this is another very interesting thing about your case,
Speaker 3: cause you ended up in a scenario where you found
Speaker 3: a way, you found a crack, right, and talk about
Speaker 3: that and how you ended up being here. You're sentenced
Speaker 3: to life in prison. You're not supposed to be here
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, I'm not. After I was convicted, I think
Speaker 1: i've really I filed my attorney who I had. I
Speaker 1: had another attorney who was working on my appeal. The
Speaker 1: first thing that her and I spoke about, I told her,
Speaker 1: I said, listen, I know you probably don't believe I'm innocent.
Speaker 1: I don't think my last lawyer believed I was innocent.
Speaker 1: I said, but if you listen to what I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you, and you help me investigate this like
Speaker 1: it should have been investigated, I'll prove to you that
Speaker 1: I am. And so she said, listen, it's not my
Speaker 1: job to figure out if you're innocent or not. It's
Speaker 1: my job to get you out. I said, all right,
Speaker 1: that might not be your job, but it's important to
Speaker 1: me that you know that I am. So I started
Speaker 1: talking to people and doing my own kind of investigating
Speaker 1: and being I guess you could call my own kind
Speaker 1: of jailhouse lawyer and investigator, just finding out everything I
Speaker 1: could find out about it, because there were just certain
Speaker 1: things that didn't make sense about what the police officer said,
Speaker 1: with my case. For one, he said that he was
Speaker 1: there to meet up with a confidential informant. My first
Speaker 1: thought is, why would you go there to meet up
Speaker 1: with a confidential informant Because everything that you know about
Speaker 1: me with a confidential informant is that you want to
Speaker 1: keep it confidential. You don't want people around to know.
Speaker 1: So if you're meeting with a confidential informant in an
Speaker 1: area where there's big time heroin being sealed and there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of people outside, if you're a copy and
Speaker 1: gonna pull up and pick this guy up and go
Speaker 1: sit down and have a talk, why would you go there.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you meet him anywhere else in the city
Speaker 1: that you could meet him at. Why would you go
Speaker 1: right to the dope set and meet up with an
Speaker 1: informant and sit down and talk. That just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: So then I told my turn, I said, we need
Speaker 1: to find out who that informant was, because that's a
Speaker 1: potential witness. So we filed it was called the subpoena
Speaker 1: induceers tech them get the police officer's confidence and informancist.
Speaker 1: As soon as we filed that, they went crazy. They
Speaker 1: did not want to turn that over. They did not
Speaker 1: want to hand it over. I said, listen, I don't
Speaker 1: even need to see it. I don't want to see
Speaker 1: it for any reason. Just show it to my lawyer.
Speaker 1: Because this is a potential witness. This is someone who
Speaker 1: they must have been out there. Why aren't they named
Speaker 1: in this as a witness. If this cop was sitting
Speaker 1: out here and say he saw all so all this
Speaker 1: stuff go on, why isn't the informant who he was
Speaker 1: sitting out there with a witness. Also, if this cop,
Speaker 1: we've poked holes in his story so many times, and
Speaker 1: it's so many things about his story, it don't make sense.
Speaker 1: He described me as a black male. The way they
Speaker 1: made the scene was I was there when the murder happened,
Speaker 1: almost like I sent the guys to do it. I
Speaker 1: was out there to make sure it went right and
Speaker 1: all this type of stuff. Because the guy was shot
Speaker 1: with two different guns. I didn't have any gunpowder of
Speaker 1: residues on me. There was only two guns that were found,
Speaker 1: because that's, you know, all it was. But then there
Speaker 1: was another thing that came up that I saw in
Speaker 1: my police report. Because this was a shootout, I didn't
Speaker 1: see it with my own two eyes. But from what
Speaker 1: I've been told by my code defendant from other guys,
Speaker 1: it was a shootout. You heard it, Yeah, you could
Speaker 1: hear all the shots going on this guy had. He
Speaker 1: was shot with a forty five caliber gun and a
Speaker 1: thirty eight. All around his body exactly where he's laying,
Speaker 1: there are nine millimeter casings all around his body. He
Speaker 1: wasn't shot with a nine milimeter. He had a nine
Speaker 1: milimeter that he was shooting at my codefendants with and
Speaker 1: they were shooting at each other, and then someone else
Speaker 1: came and was shooting at them with the assault rifle
Speaker 1: who was one of his friends. This cop claims that
Speaker 1: this guy never had a gun. It wasn't a shootout,
Speaker 1: it was a hit. It was an execution, a broad
Speaker 1: day murder, all this type of stuff that they try
Speaker 1: and make, you know, try to tie it in the beat.
Speaker 1: But where did these shellcasings come from? Literally, if I'm
Speaker 1: standing here shooting the shellcass, that's where they fall around
Speaker 1: where I'm shooting from. There's shellcass all around where he's at,
Speaker 1: But it's not from a gun that he was shot with.
Speaker 1: It just didn't make sense. So now we started investigating
Speaker 1: the where the gun could have possibly been. But this
Speaker 1: happened in the middle of the projects where there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of people outside, and so of course nobody wants
Speaker 1: to come to court and be the witness. But if
Speaker 1: there's a gun laying on the ground, somebody's gonna pick
Speaker 1: it up. I'm not just gonna leave it out there.
Speaker 1: So this is just some of the things that didn't
Speaker 1: make sense about my case that I think when the
Speaker 1: attorney that high started looking into it, she started saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something here, maybe this guy really is innocent.
Speaker 1: Then he comes to my co defendant. He and I
Speaker 1: had the severance, which means we got separate trials. He
Speaker 1: went to trial, he was convicted. I went to trial.
Speaker 1: I was convicted, but it was a separate times. When
Speaker 1: he found out I had been convicted, he sent a
Speaker 1: letter to my mother, who turned it over to my
Speaker 1: attorney and told her that, you know, listen, I just
Speaker 1: don't feel right with this. Dang. He didn't have anything
Speaker 1: to do with this. He wasn't even there when it happened.
Speaker 1: He didn't even know me and this guy with beef,
Speaker 1: and he had no idea any of this could have
Speaker 1: went on. He's literally just was in the wrong place
Speaker 1: at the wrong time. I can't live with imagining him
Speaker 1: doing the rest of his life in prison and knowing
Speaker 1: that he didn't even have anything to do with this.
Speaker 1: So my attorney presents it to the judge they called
Speaker 1: my co defendant, and he gets on the stand, testifies,
Speaker 1: tells him exactly what I just said, that I didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with it. It was him and
Speaker 1: the other guy that got into a shootout with the guy.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that they were even beefing with this
Speaker 1: guy more or less because I had just literally I
Speaker 1: was with another friend and he walked up to me
Speaker 1: and then just like, oh, you're going that way, let
Speaker 1: me get a ride. I'm not thinking anything of it.
Speaker 1: I always you know, I've been giving everybody a ride.
Speaker 1: You know. I just bought my first call. So he
Speaker 1: testifies to that judge orders me a new trial. She
Speaker 1: vacates my conviction, orders me a new trial because she
Speaker 1: presided over my case. You know, And this is a judge,
Speaker 1: and Camille burrys, you can do the research. She doesn't
Speaker 1: overturn convictions. If a jerry finds you guilty, you got
Speaker 1: to take that up with the appellate court. She is
Speaker 1: not big on granted post conviction relief. She's very conservative.
Speaker 1: I have nothing negative to say about her, but she's
Speaker 1: a very conservative judge, and she takes jury convictions very seriously.
Speaker 1: She vacates my com the district attorney at the time
Speaker 1: appeals it to the appellate court. The appellate court overturns
Speaker 1: her and reinstates my conviction. So now I went from
Speaker 1: life sentence, no life sentence, life sentence again. So you
Speaker 1: want to talk about mental gymnastics and trying to keep
Speaker 1: your mind right, you know, trying to stay focused. I'm
Speaker 1: literally being twisted and pulled upside down. I got my
Speaker 1: hopes up. Now my conviction's been overturned. It looks like
Speaker 1: I'm going home. He came in there and told him
Speaker 1: it was him. It wasn't me. I got to be
Speaker 1: about to go home now, right, Yeah. No, No, they
Speaker 1: overturned it. They say I should have got him to
Speaker 1: testify before I went to trial or at my trial.
Speaker 1: I didn't practice due diligence, so therefore it doesn't count.
Speaker 3: Right. That's sort of like how there used to be
Speaker 3: these laws. Like in Virginia, there was a twenty one
Speaker 3: day rule, you know by that, whichpecially meant that after
Speaker 3: twenty two days, if the dead guy walked in the
Speaker 3: courtroom and was like, hey, wait a minute, you guys
Speaker 3: made a mistake. I'm still alive, didn't matter because you're
Speaker 3: too late. So that's basically what they were saying. They
Speaker 3: wanted you to be basically Clarence Darrow, you know, and
Speaker 3: Colombo mixed up in one and produce a witness before
Speaker 3: the trial when he was still hoping that he was
Speaker 3: going to exact it.
Speaker 1: I mean, who can he's hoping that he's going to
Speaker 1: get out too. How How am I going to know
Speaker 1: that he's going to testify and get up there and
Speaker 1: tell them I didn't have anything to do with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, what what what co defendant? That doesn't happen
Speaker 1: very often. It was me, it wasn't him. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: when it's the rest of his life in prison exact
Speaker 1: that he's facing for saying that exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean, friends are friends. But that's that's a little much, right,
Speaker 3: So on a technicality, they said to you, we don't
Speaker 3: really give a fuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go spend the rest of your life in prison anyway.
Speaker 3: And next time this happens to you, make sure you
Speaker 3: get to us a little bit earlier. Yeah, basically, right,
Speaker 3: So now you got that, So then what happens so
Speaker 3: because you're here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I appealed it to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court deniy me, so my conviction is reinstated.
Speaker 1: So this is the craziest story I'm about to tell you, Jason.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you're a spiritual person. I
Speaker 1: don't know if anybody listening is spiritual person. But this is,
Speaker 1: honest to God, exactly what happened. And the tattoo on
Speaker 1: my right arm right here that you're looking at Code
Speaker 1: of Criminal Procedure Article eight fifty one point five with
Speaker 1: the angel wings, that's my angel. That was my sent
Speaker 1: from God right there. I'm in prison. I'm in the
Speaker 1: whole for a knife fight. I had a fight with
Speaker 1: a guy. He pulled a knife out on man stab me.
Speaker 1: So I'm in the hole in a cell by myself.
Speaker 1: Get the letter from the Supreme Court saying that basically
Speaker 1: you're fucked. We've reviewed it. We felt that the appellate
Speaker 1: Court made the right decision. You didn't practice due diligence.
Speaker 1: Your convictions reinstated. You got to go spend the rest
Speaker 1: of your life in prison. That's basically what they told
Speaker 1: me upon getting that letter. I'm in the whole. I
Speaker 1: have nothing. I have no books, i have no none
Speaker 1: of my legal work with me. I'm just in there,
Speaker 1: basically with myself and in a cell. And I got
Speaker 1: down on my knees and I started praying, and I said, God,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're trying to get out of me.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're real, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're listening to me. I don't know anything. All I
Speaker 1: know is I don't know how much longer I can
Speaker 1: make it like this because I did everything I could do.
Speaker 1: You know, my heart, you know I didn't do this.
Speaker 1: You knew I didn't have anything to do with this.
Speaker 1: I need some help, please. As I'm on my knees
Speaker 1: praying that I had read this auto called the law before.
Speaker 1: Just you know, when you're in jail, that's one of
Speaker 1: the things you do, especially when you're trying to work
Speaker 1: on your case. You read all kinds of stuff in
Speaker 1: the law and stuff like that. But I didn't have
Speaker 1: a law book in front of me. But for some reason,
Speaker 1: this just just kept replaying in my mind over and
Speaker 1: over again. And I'm not trying to sound like because
Speaker 1: I'm not some super holy religious person anything like that.
Speaker 1: I believe in God. I believe in spiritual life and stuff,
Speaker 1: but man, I'm, you know, far from a preacher anything
Speaker 1: like that. But I'm telling you, I believe in my
Speaker 1: whole heart that was God speaking to me in my
Speaker 1: head about this allticulored law right here. So I go
Speaker 1: to court for my hearing to put everything on the
Speaker 1: record to state, you know, basically on the record with
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court had said, and they're ruling and they're
Speaker 1: going to reinstate my conviction and send me back to
Speaker 1: Angola for the rest of my life. As I go
Speaker 1: in there, my attorney I bring it up to her.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, are you familiar with Cote of
Speaker 1: Criminal Procedure Article eight fifty one five And she's like, no,
Speaker 1: not really. And this is a woman who's been an
Speaker 1: attorney for over twenty five years. At the time, she
Speaker 1: was not only an assistant district attorney who prosecuted people.
Speaker 1: Then she went and she was an attorney, a defense attorney,
Speaker 1: worked all kind of federal cases. Lourd White's she's now
Speaker 1: chief judge of criminal court. She knows as shit. She
Speaker 1: knows the law right, She wasn't familiar with it. She said,
Speaker 1: tell me what it says.
Speaker 3: And your education at this point was what eighth grade.
Speaker 3: I had a ged okay, okay, bring it to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I bring it to her, and she's like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean all she could do is say, I mean what,
Speaker 1: they're going to give your life anyway, there's nothing else
Speaker 1: they can do. We might as well try it. So
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, just go up to her and talk
Speaker 1: to her and see what she'll do. So she has
Speaker 1: to tell the assistant district attorney that she's going to
Speaker 1: go to the judge and ask for continuing so that
Speaker 1: she can file a formal motion based upon this order
Speaker 1: called the law. The prosecutor at the turns and looks
Speaker 1: at me when she says it. She turned it and looked
Speaker 1: at me in my face and started laughing in my face,
Speaker 1: basically trying to make me feel like, you idiot, What
Speaker 1: do you know about the law? You know, because I
Speaker 1: guess she had told you, my client wants me to
Speaker 1: raise this issue. What whatever. She goes up there, talks
Speaker 1: to the judge to judge says, you know what, I
Speaker 1: want to hear more about that that sounds intriguing. Grants
Speaker 1: me a continuance. We filed emotion. The state opposers at YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: We go back, we rule, she grants me another neutrial.
Speaker 1: A judge who I can't name, one other person she's
Speaker 1: granted a new trial for grants me a second neutrial,
Speaker 1: this time based upon this order called a law right here.
Speaker 1: So now, as bad as I want to get my
Speaker 1: hopes up, like okay, this might really be it, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know what, I went through this before and the
Speaker 1: appellate court shot me down and they reinstated it. Let
Speaker 1: me see how this is going to play out. Goes
Speaker 1: back in front the same Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Speaker 1: What happens. They uphold it, They say, yes, you have
Speaker 1: to give them a new trial. They appeal it to
Speaker 1: the same Supreme Court that upheld it before and that
Speaker 1: I had to go do life. The Supreme Court comes
Speaker 1: back and says, we uphold it, you have to grant
Speaker 1: them a new trial. So they finally grant me a
Speaker 1: new trial. So I get a new trial, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, this is it. You know, I got a
Speaker 1: new trial. My co defendant confessed, said I didn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with it. They gotta be about to
Speaker 1: let me go home now, right. This is two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight.
Speaker 3: By the way, people that listened to the show, No,
Speaker 3: I've never he this quiet for this long. But I'm
Speaker 3: just sitting here like my eyes blazed over, like the
Speaker 3: yeah story is this?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah, so and you can read about this.
Speaker 1: This is fact. This is on my docketmaster. You can
Speaker 1: read about this. So they changed the prosecutors on my
Speaker 1: case because that's what they do every so often. So
Speaker 1: I get two new prosecutors on my case, one of
Speaker 1: whom as I'm in one of my hearings, because they
Speaker 1: saying they're gonna take me to trial again. This is
Speaker 1: after my appeal has been granted. I get a new trial.
Speaker 1: They still won't just drop it. They saying they have
Speaker 1: you know, they might bring me to trial. They deciding
Speaker 1: what they're going to do. So I'm sitting in prison
Speaker 1: all this time waiting. She goes to my mother and
Speaker 1: tells my mother, ma'am, I know you've been through a
Speaker 1: lot with this. We're gonna drop it. The worst thing
Speaker 1: might happen is we're gonna give him credit for time
Speaker 1: serve and he plead to all lesser charge and will
Speaker 1: let him out. Tells that to my mother, the district attorney,
Speaker 1: not my lawyer or not someone who works for the state.
Speaker 1: The lady who's prosecuting me, goes and tells that to
Speaker 1: my mother. This is in September two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: when I'm about to go to court. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is it. You know, I'm gone. I'm about to
Speaker 1: get out the day before I'm about to go to
Speaker 1: court for that. I'm on my tier in my cell
Speaker 1: right at the time, I was called a tear rep
Speaker 1: in a prison, which is basically I'm in charge of,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff on a tier, making sure everything goes right.
Speaker 1: They had two officers that came down there. They had
Speaker 1: a guy that yelled something out the gate. And I
Speaker 1: had been talking to one of the officers because he
Speaker 1: used to work in my court section, and He's asking
Speaker 1: me what's going on my case, and so I'm telling
Speaker 1: him like, yeah, man, I'm about to get out. I
Speaker 1: go to court tomorrow. They saying they're gonna drop and
Speaker 1: give me credit for time serve. I'm about to go home. Well,
Speaker 1: the other officer hears him saying that. He comes over
Speaker 1: there and calls me to come back there. Ask me
Speaker 1: who was the guy who just yells I, man, I
Speaker 1: don't know. You know, you don't tell on people. You know,
Speaker 1: that's that's just a rule. It's just you know, you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to tell on another man. So he takes
Speaker 1: me out. They bring me in a closet and lock
Speaker 1: me in there, beat the dog shit out of me.
Speaker 1: Says I know you're supposed to go home tomorrow. I
Speaker 1: want you to hit me back so I can rebook you.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make sure you're never go home. In my mind,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling like this is my test. I'm like, you
Speaker 1: know what I said, I don't even want to hit
Speaker 1: you. You're not even worth it. I said, you don't even
Speaker 1: hit hard enough to make me hit you. All I
Speaker 1: want is my freedom. I don't care what you do
Speaker 1: to me. I'm going home tomorrow. Beat the dog shit
Speaker 1: out of me. It's in my medical you know, they
Speaker 1: send me to medical or whatever. I didn't have any
Speaker 1: right up. I didn't even do anything wrong. They just
Speaker 1: did it because they thought I was about to get out,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to get me to get another charge.
Speaker 1: I go to court the next day. They changed prosecutors again,
Speaker 1: and this time the one that comes on my case says,
Speaker 1: no deals, We're taking them to trial again. So now
Speaker 1: I got my hopes up again. This is September two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and now I'm just like but I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can't give up because I feel like, I know
Speaker 1: this conviction didn't get overturned for nothing. So in my mind,
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, well we're gonna go to trialing
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna call my code defendant and understand this
Speaker 1: time he's gonna come testifying front the jury. And they
Speaker 1: got this same police officer who's saying he's gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: he's gonna testify and say what he saw. So I'm
Speaker 1: getting ready preparations to go to trial again. I was
Speaker 1: supposed to go to trial November of two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Two days before I'm supposed to go to trial, I
Speaker 1: have a meet with my attorney. She's literally in tears
Speaker 1: begging me to take a plea Barkin, and I'm telling him,
Speaker 1: you know, man, I just I just I don't want
Speaker 1: to give up. You know, I feel like we fought
Speaker 1: all this, you know, we got it going. I'm innocent.
Speaker 1: She's like, I know you're an innocent thing. She's like,
Speaker 1: but I'm telling you right now it's your word and
Speaker 1: your friend's word against a cop, and I don't believe
Speaker 1: that they're gonna believe y'all. She's like, listen, I've been
Speaker 1: doing this a long time. She's like, I'm just telling you.
Speaker 1: It's a gut instinct. I have them. She's like, if
Speaker 1: you go to trial again, I think you're gonna get
Speaker 1: convicted again. She's like, you need to take this plea.
Speaker 1: Please take this plea. So I thought about it. I
Speaker 1: thought he about it. I fought with it. I said,
Speaker 1: all right, I take the plea. The plea bargain they
Speaker 1: offered me was I plead guilty to manslaughter. Right. They
Speaker 1: put a cap on it at fifteen years, and leave
Speaker 1: it up to my judge to sentence me to say,
Speaker 1: you know what she's gonna sentence me to. They're gonna
Speaker 1: do a pre sentenced investigation, you know, look into my background,
Speaker 1: looking to my housing, you know, talk to me. The
Speaker 1: probation people, come talk to me all this and leave
Speaker 1: it up to the judge who's giving me two new
Speaker 1: trials on what she's gonna give me. So I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: you know I should be all right, I should at
Speaker 1: least get out on this right go to court. When
Speaker 1: I go to court from my sentence and they have
Speaker 1: a man in there who they're saying, is that the
Speaker 1: guy who was killed? They're saying it was his father.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you about this. This is crazy. I
Speaker 1: still to this day don't believe this was this guy's dad.
Speaker 3: Actor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't have the same name. I don't even
Speaker 1: believe he could tell you what the guy looks like.
Speaker 1: They put him on the stand. He gets up there
Speaker 1: and says, I've had two heart attacks and a stroke
Speaker 1: since my un died. The family can't get over it.
Speaker 1: We're so hurt, heartbroken. He needs to be in prison
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. Why are y'all considering
Speaker 1: letting him out?
Speaker 3: He didn't say, we really miss a convicted murdering major
Speaker 3: heroin dealing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so check this out.
Speaker 3: He say that he made it sound like it was
Speaker 3: a choir boy exactly.
Speaker 1: So my attorney says, well, sir, all due respect to
Speaker 1: you and your family. All due respect to what y'all lost.
Speaker 1: Your son was convicted of manslaughter. Also, he served six years.
Speaker 1: You felt like that was an adequate sentence for him.
Speaker 1: Why are you so opposed to this man getting the
Speaker 1: same amount of time for the time that your son
Speaker 1: did for the same crime. My son's never been in
Speaker 1: jail before in his life. Everybody looks, even the DA
Speaker 1: looks like they're like, oh shit, we're busted. My son's
Speaker 1: never been in jail before. I don't know what y'all
Speaker 1: talking about. You don't know your son was in prison
Speaker 1: for six years. You don't know your son was arrested
Speaker 1: for murder. Do you know who they even talking about
Speaker 1: right now? Who the fuck are you, dude? What are
Speaker 1: you even doing here? So the judge gets mad, She says,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're not going to go through this
Speaker 1: line of question. You're badgering this witness. They stayed objects
Speaker 1: to it. They say, you don't have to answer that, sir,
Speaker 1: and he's adamant. My son was never in jail. My
Speaker 1: son was never in jail. It was some crackhead looking
Speaker 1: dude off the street. I don't know if they told
Speaker 1: him that I killed his son and it was somebody else.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was just an actor. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the story was, but this didn't make
Speaker 1: any fucking sense. Wow, he gets off the stand. The
Speaker 1: judge's mad. She gives me fifteen years. So now, even
Speaker 1: the parole officer who came and talked to me, who
Speaker 1: did the pre sense investigation, told me his recommendation was
Speaker 1: no more than ten years, but he didn't feel like
Speaker 1: it was necessary to keep me in any longer. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a problem with me getting credit for Tom
Speaker 1: sertin getting out. Not only did she disregard that, Now
Speaker 1: I gotta go through another seven years in prison before
Speaker 1: I can get.
Speaker 3: Out this story, ladies and gentlemen, his I don't even
Speaker 3: know what to say.
Speaker 4: I don't have the right words. You know.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons that I really wanted to have
Speaker 3: you on the show is that we are in the
Speaker 3: midst of a lot of different crises in the criminal
Speaker 3: justice system in America right now, but one of them
Speaker 3: is something called the guilty plea problem. And people don't
Speaker 3: realize that ninety five percent of the felony convictions in
Speaker 3: the United States are obtained through guilty. Police on a
Speaker 3: much more mundane level on much lesser crimes than dealing
Speaker 3: with lesser sentences. Every day, all day in all these
Speaker 3: courts in the country, tens of thousands of people every
Speaker 3: day are faced with the same problem that you had,
Speaker 3: which is their attorney. And here in New Orleans we
Speaker 3: know that last year there were fifty two public defenders
Speaker 3: who dealt with twenty thousand cases. Do the math. So
Speaker 3: a lot of those public defenders who are underpaid, overworked,
Speaker 3: that's madness, that's anarchy. So these people who are doing
Speaker 3: something that I could only say is noble, are out
Speaker 3: there every day, happened to meet with their clients, sometimes
Speaker 3: for the first time on the day of their trial
Speaker 3: and say to them, to the next Daniel, listen, the
Speaker 3: best thing for you to do is plea guilty. And
Speaker 3: that person, that kid is going but them innocent. They're going,
Speaker 3: I know, but they're going to throw the book at you.
Speaker 3: And so we are filling the prisons in jails with
Speaker 3: people who are innocent. Because of the fact that our
Speaker 3: public defender system is broken, as well as the rest
Speaker 3: of the system, the scales of justice are so tilted
Speaker 3: in the favor of the prosecution. You were playing. Actually
Speaker 3: the highest stakes game of poker than anybody ever played,
Speaker 3: other than the death sentence, because you had to either
Speaker 3: put all your cars on the table and literally bet
Speaker 3: your life, literally bet your life, and you would be
Speaker 3: betting against a dealer that you know cheats.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know they're hiding cards and there's nothing I
Speaker 1: can do about them cheating.
Speaker 3: And this was your last year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what the attorneys tell you. They told
Speaker 1: it to me, and I've heard I hear them say
Speaker 1: it all the time because I work at criminal court.
Speaker 1: Now it's like, do you want to take a chance
Speaker 1: with the rest of your life? Yeah, you may be innocent,
Speaker 1: you might not have done this crime, but look at
Speaker 1: what you're facing. If this jury doesn't happen to believe you,
Speaker 1: if they win, this is what you're gonna have. So
Speaker 1: do you want to take that chance and think you're
Speaker 1: gonna win? Or do you want to take this lesser
Speaker 1: of two evils and at least know that you're getting
Speaker 1: out one day or know what your fate.
Speaker 3: Is gonna be because the work you're doing now it's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, it's kind of twofold. I work for
Speaker 1: a criminal court now actually ironically the same criminal court
Speaker 1: where I was convicted of second agree murder, which in
Speaker 1: Louisiana is a mandatory life sentence, mandatory life, mandatory life.
Speaker 3: And that's my first degree murder.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, sir, that's second degree, second degree. I am
Speaker 1: now the one of the cases managers for a re
Speaker 1: entry program, which is a program that was instituted by
Speaker 1: Judge Lurid White. It's an alternative to long term incarceration
Speaker 1: for drug offenders and people who you know, have been
Speaker 1: convicted maybe a few times for selling drugs, burglary, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. As of now, the program has no quote
Speaker 1: unquote violent offenders in it. These guys in Louisiana. There
Speaker 1: are men right now in Louisiana State Penitentiary who've been
Speaker 1: there since the seventies and the eighties.
Speaker 3: For heroin drugs, just drugs, no violence.
Speaker 1: No violence, none whatsoever. And most of them is very
Speaker 1: small amounts of drugs, less than a gram, less than
Speaker 1: an ounce.
Speaker 3: I really admire the work that you're doing, thank you.
Speaker 3: And it's really typical of the exenrees that have been
Speaker 3: on the show and the group of exguneries' ex Hoonnery
Speaker 3: Nation at large that you are devoting yourself to helping
Speaker 3: other people. Yes, sir, it's so interesting that the group
Speaker 3: of people that you could say are the most wronged
Speaker 3: by society of anyone are the ones who are contributing
Speaker 3: almost more to society as a group than any other group.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: And now you have to wear that scarlet letter. You're
Speaker 3: not technically an exonery even though you're innocent. And in
Speaker 3: eighty four percent of the DNA exoneration plea cases, the
Speaker 3: alternate perpetrator was identified. So you had somebody who pleaded
Speaker 3: guilty and was proven innocent, and the altual perpetrator was
Speaker 3: later identified. So there's in case there was ever any
Speaker 3: doubt about the depth of the problem, the series is
Speaker 3: the problem, and about the fact that it happens. There
Speaker 3: you go and in your case, it's actually that's sort
Speaker 3: of a similar case too, even though it's not a
Speaker 3: DNA case. But the actual perpetrator was right there going, hey,
Speaker 3: look at me, I'm the guy. I mean, that would
Speaker 3: seem to be pretty strong evidence for any court to
Speaker 3: look at. But you know, look, the fact is you're here,
Speaker 3: You somehow or other survived. Let's just let's just look
Speaker 3: back at this for a second. Of what we've discussed
Speaker 3: over the last hour. You survived a shootout, a corrupt
Speaker 3: system that wanted to put you away for the rest
Speaker 3: of your life for something that they knew they you
Speaker 3: didn't do, a hurricane, a flood, almost being roasted to death,
Speaker 3: almost dying of smoke inhalation, being shot at, being stabbed,
Speaker 3: being beaten. Did we mention almost dying of thirst? I
Speaker 3: think we left that one out. Then you survived the
Speaker 3: worst prison in the worst criminal justice system in the
Speaker 3: western world, and another series of trials that were rigged
Speaker 3: against you with an eighth grade education, just to sum
Speaker 3: up one more time, and then from somewhere in the
Speaker 3: depths of your consciousness or subconscious you pulled an obscure
Speaker 3: legal doctrine right statute that I've never heard of that
Speaker 3: I would bet if we went to Stanford Law School
Speaker 3: right now and whipped that out, they'd be like, everybody
Speaker 3: be scrambling for their textbooks, Like, what the that you
Speaker 3: managed to get yourself free? What the hell can I say?
Speaker 3: You have all my respect, and I think it's incredible
Speaker 3: that you're here sharing the story, and I think there's
Speaker 3: a lot more that we have to do together. Because
Speaker 3: there's a lot of messages here. It's gonna take me
Speaker 3: a while to process this. All I can do now
Speaker 3: is ask you, is there any final thought that you
Speaker 3: would like to share with the audience before we sign on?
Speaker 1: I guess you know. My biggest thing that I tell
Speaker 1: people ever did is you never know what you can
Speaker 1: deal with until you don't have a choice, no matter
Speaker 1: what's going on in your life. You know, whether you're
Speaker 1: listening to this and you're dealing with cancer, you're dealing
Speaker 1: with incarceration, are you dealing with the loss of someone
Speaker 1: that you're dealing with, you know, a loss of a job,
Speaker 1: or there just anything in your life. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's insurmountable. If you still have breath in your body,
Speaker 1: you can still fighting and you can still win. Don't
Speaker 1: give up on.
Speaker 3: Yourself, don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever
Speaker 3: you get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a
Speaker 3: proud donor to the Innocis and I really hope you'll
Speaker 3: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 3: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocentsproject dot org
Speaker 3: to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like
Speaker 3: to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 3: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 3: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 3: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 3: for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one