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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcast.

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Speaker 1: And if you want to hear more than just this

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Speaker 1: highlight from the show, become a Coast Insider and you

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Speaker 1: can listen to this complete program plus recent episodes covering

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Speaker 1: amazing topics like the discovery of an ancient lost city

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Speaker 1: in Honduras, secret societies that may control the world, and

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Speaker 1: an update on the legendary star Child skull. Head on

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Speaker 1: over to Coast to Coast dam dot com and sign

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Speaker 1: up for Coast Insider to start listening. Now, here's a

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Speaker 1: highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeart Radio. We

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Speaker 1: have two guests for you for the next couple of hours.

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Speaker 1: First of all, let me introduce Less Clinger with you.

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Speaker 1: Less was with me about the year and a half ago.

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Speaker 1: He's considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities

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Speaker 1: on those twin icons of the Victorian era, Sherlock Holmes

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Speaker 1: and Dracula. Now, since the nineteen sixties, the study of

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Speaker 1: the rich, fantastic literature of the Victorian writers has been

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Speaker 1: Clingers consuming passion. Now. In addition, is a longtime supporter

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Speaker 1: of Loyota Universities in Chicago's Life after Innocence, and he

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Speaker 1: was thrilled by the guests that's going to join him,

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Speaker 1: Laura Coldwell, to co edit Anatomy of Innocence, to have

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Speaker 1: the opportunity to work with amazing people whose stories are

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Speaker 1: told in the book and the equally amazing writers who

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Speaker 1: tell them as Allso let me, first of all, welcome

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Speaker 1: back Less to the program. Less, good to have you.

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Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to this, and let's bring Laura in.

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Speaker 1: Laura Coldwell as a former civil trial attorney now a

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Speaker 1: law professor at Loyola University School of Law in Chicago.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, she founded Loyola's Life After Innocence,

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Speaker 1: which assists wrongfully convicted individuals and other innocent persons affected

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Speaker 1: by the criminal justice system in order to help them

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Speaker 1: re enter society reclaim their lives. Laura, you're doing great,

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Speaker 1: great work, and thank you for joining us. Thanks for

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Speaker 1: having us. Let's talk first of all about these convictions.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we have all known since the beginning of

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Speaker 1: time that some people are going to get wrongfully convicted,

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Speaker 1: some people are going to the death chamber wrongfully committed.

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Speaker 1: We have killed innocent people. How bad is it? Laura?

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Speaker 1: Right now? Well, it's you know, estimated that if you

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Speaker 1: think about it, how often does the criminal justice system

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Speaker 1: get it right. Let's say we get it right of

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Speaker 1: the time, which is the current sort of median estimate

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Speaker 1: based on various studies. So if we get it right

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Speaker 1: of the time, then five of the prison population, which

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Speaker 1: is um you know, two are innocent in jail. So

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Speaker 1: right now there's a recognized almost two thousand exonerations. But really,

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Speaker 1: even if our very human system is doing a really

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Speaker 1: good job in doing of the time it's right, there's

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Speaker 1: still it's a thousands of people innocent in jail. By

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Speaker 1: the way, just so you both know, we have a

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Speaker 1: huge listenership in the prisons across this country right now,

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Speaker 1: So they're listening to you, some of them probably cheering. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so if if a inmate he or she comes

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Speaker 1: up to you one day when you're visiting or whatever

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Speaker 1: and says I'm innocent, chances are five percent they're telling

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Speaker 1: the truth. That's right, That's exactly right. And there was

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Speaker 1: neat because of this book. The writers um have kind

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Speaker 1: of long recognized, I think that the criminal justice system

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Speaker 1: isn't perfect. If you look at sort of thriller writers

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Speaker 1: and some of these people. They're not saying anything's wrong

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Speaker 1: with cops and judges and whatever. They're just acknowledging that

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Speaker 1: it's human. And so pairing these kind of two worlds

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Speaker 1: was really interesting. And let's let's let's talk about you

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Speaker 1: and how did you get involved in this project, because

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Speaker 1: I know you as the Dracula guy, the Sherlock Holmes guy,

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Speaker 1: the Edgar Allan Poe guy. Well, of course, you know,

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Speaker 1: I've been involved in the mystery world for many years,

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Speaker 1: and I'm fascinated by the justice system and a concerned citizen.

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Speaker 1: Laura and I have been friends for more than ten years,

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Speaker 1: and I've tried to be very supportive of life fift

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Speaker 1: or Innocence. She had this brilliant idea for a book,

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Speaker 1: asked me if I had work on it with her,

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Speaker 1: and I was just thrilled to say yes, um, and

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Speaker 1: then we were able to bring a circle of friends

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Speaker 1: together to put the book in place, and here it is.

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Speaker 1: You said, It's so right, George. Up front, we're not

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Speaker 1: trying to indict the system. We're trying to make everybody

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Speaker 1: aware it's a human system. Stuff happens. And with that

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Speaker 1: stuff that happens, I mean can we, Laura, make it

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Speaker 1: any better? Oh? Absolutely, Um, we can. And I think

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Speaker 1: the great thing is now there's an innocence community that again,

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Speaker 1: as as les I said, this is not an indictment

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Speaker 1: of our overall system. It's it's a we just have

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Speaker 1: to acknowledge that. I mean, even a factory that made

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Speaker 1: these parts right at the time would get audited by

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Speaker 1: that's pretty good. So we just have to acknowledge all that.

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Speaker 1: That's a pretty large number of people who are innocent

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Speaker 1: in jail. And I think, I think we are starting

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Speaker 1: to come to a place where it's time to look

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Speaker 1: at what it feels like to be in the skin

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Speaker 1: and behind the eyes of someone who experiences that. And

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Speaker 1: so that's, you know, the direction we were going in

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Speaker 1: instead of reporting on this is a problem. This is

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Speaker 1: a problem. And so to your question, can this improve?

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Speaker 1: We know it can because we are now identifying the

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Speaker 1: top five or six causes of wrongful convictions. So we

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Speaker 1: know that UM bad expert testimony and bad science contributes.

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Speaker 1: We know that false confessions are a problem, a big problem.

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Speaker 1: We know that UM mistaken identification is humongous, it's very large.

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Speaker 1: It's a problem. You know, you google anything online and

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Speaker 1: take a witness test like they have. You look at

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Speaker 1: a crime that happens and then view a lineup. Chances

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Speaker 1: are you're not gonna get it right. There's a big problems.

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Speaker 1: So as we identify and the Innocence Network is doing

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Speaker 1: a lot of work on this to identify the causes,

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Speaker 1: then we can, um, you know, approach as we're doing

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Speaker 1: in Illinois. We're approaching. We're approaching the legislature and saying

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Speaker 1: let's change the rule about informants, informants paid informants. That's

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Speaker 1: a big issue as well. So I think it definitely

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Speaker 1: can get better because we're narrowing in on the causes.

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Speaker 1: Next hour, when we take phone calls, maybe we'll get

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Speaker 1: some calls from police officers. We have many who listen

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Speaker 1: to us, and maybe they can share some of the stories.

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Speaker 1: Go ahead, I'm just gonna say we're seeing some systemic changes.

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Speaker 1: We're seeing for example, really only in the last couple

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Speaker 1: of years, Um Prosecutorial Office is now creating correction I

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Speaker 1: mean conviction review units where they understand they may have

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Speaker 1: made mistakes. They're looking over their old convictions to see

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Speaker 1: if they're satisfied with the job they did. That's what

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Speaker 1: we're after is for everybody to say it's possible we

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Speaker 1: didn't get it right. Has technology made things better? One

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Speaker 1: one example, DNA is more prevalent than it was twenty

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Speaker 1: thirty years ago. Does that help well? Interestingly, only of

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Speaker 1: the exonerations in the last uh twenty five years have

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Speaker 1: been as a result of DNA. It's not the magic

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Speaker 1: bullet that TV likes you to think it is. It

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Speaker 1: certainly helps UM, and more knowledge about forensic science is helping,

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Speaker 1: but partly it's also disabusing juries, judges, prosecutors that science

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Speaker 1: is magic. It's not. And we have a terrible problem

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Speaker 1: in this country of a shortage of crime labs and

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Speaker 1: a shortage of qualified technicians and crime labs. So in

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Speaker 1: many cases the science is bad, it's not done properly,

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Speaker 1: or it's not done at all. So let's talk about

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Speaker 1: some of these convictions and some of the reasons, as

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Speaker 1: you've just pointed out, Laura, of why they happen. Can

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Speaker 1: you also add UM framed and it does happen. We

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Speaker 1: don't expect it a lot, but I would assume it

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Speaker 1: does happen. People are framed by the prosecution. Who knows

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Speaker 1: what right I think, let me jump in and say

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Speaker 1: that this is a problem. Michael Connolly in his in

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Speaker 1: his Wonderful novels about the police detective talks about tunnel vision,

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Speaker 1: so framed in a sense of not necessarily an evil

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Speaker 1: prosecutor or an evil police officer, but someone who has

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Speaker 1: decided that's the guilty person who were there, and so

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Speaker 1: they start ignoring subtly, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps they ignore the

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Speaker 1: evidence of the contrary, they don't seek it out, they

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Speaker 1: may even suppress it as sort of irrelevant. And so

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Speaker 1: in a sense, yes, there are friends with what's been

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Speaker 1: happening with let's say the O. J. Simpson trial. You know,

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Speaker 1: he was he was acquitted. A lot of people still

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Speaker 1: still think he was guilty, but you know, those problems

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Speaker 1: with the police and the gloves and stuff like that,

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Speaker 1: was was he wrongfully planted? I think that's a different

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Speaker 1: kind of case. I want to emphasize here that when

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Speaker 1: we're talking about Axana Reeves Um and all of the

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Speaker 1: stories in our book about the people that we worked

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Speaker 1: with here, these are people who didn't get off on

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Speaker 1: a technicality. It wasn't a matter that the prosecution failed

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Speaker 1: to prove they were guilty. It's a matter that they

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Speaker 1: were found to be we say, factually innocent. Somebody else

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Speaker 1: did it. In many of these cases they ultimately found

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Speaker 1: the real wrong tour, not all of them, but in some.

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Speaker 1: But the court has decided these people are truly innocent,

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Speaker 1: not just acquitted. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM

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Speaker 1: every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more