Speaker 1: Nora Jackson is an extraordinary person who has been through
Speaker 1: an ordeal that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy,
Speaker 1: as you know for listening to her episode that originally
Speaker 1: aired in November of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Nora was wrongfully convicted of the murder of her mother.
Speaker 2: Both of her parents were murdered, and she was left
Speaker 2: an orphan with no brothers and sisters when she was
Speaker 2: wrongfully convicted and ended up serving eleven years in prison.
Speaker 2: Of course, the Tennessee Supreme Court unanimously overturned her conviction
Speaker 2: and set in there ruling that the prosecutors had lied
Speaker 2: and cheated and broken so many rules. There were too
Speaker 2: many to count, too many examples of prosecutorial misconduct, too
Speaker 2: good into in one recording. Nora, The good news is
Speaker 2: since the episode aired, she's moved from Tennessee to New York.
Speaker 1: She now lives in Brooklyn, and she is a sophomore
Speaker 1: in college to thirty two. Her freshman year, she achieved
Speaker 1: a three point sixty seven GPA. I know she's going
Speaker 1: to improve on it this year. She started in an
Speaker 1: organization called Meet Your Mentor, and she is working with
Speaker 1: some other incredible, dynamic women Sarah Rappold, Stacy Ryan, and others,
Speaker 1: and Meet Your Mentor is an organization that is dedicated
Speaker 1: to helping exoneries formerly incarcerated people get back on their
Speaker 1: feet and get a fresh start. Nora is a hero
Speaker 1: of mine, and I'm super proud of everything she's doing.
Speaker 3: I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
Speaker 4: I was naive enough to believe that I would be
Speaker 4: able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence,
Speaker 4: that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't
Speaker 4: be going to prison because I was a good person.
Speaker 4: I hadn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 3: In the back of your mind, you say, well, when
Speaker 3: we go to a hearing, we go to court, the
Speaker 3: truth will come out. The prosecution from day one knew
Speaker 3: I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected from
Speaker 3: the lower courts all the way up to the United
Speaker 3: States Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really,
Speaker 5: in that moment unchecked authority.
Speaker 4: Don't presume that people are guilty when you see him
Speaker 4: on TV, because it may just be a dirty da
Speaker 4: that is trying to rise upward.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I am particularly honored actually
Speaker 1: today to have in the studio Norara Jackson.
Speaker 6: Nor Jackson was convicted in two thousand and nine of
Speaker 6: killing her mother.
Speaker 5: Jackson was eighteen when her mother, Jennifer Jackson, was found
Speaker 5: murdered stabbed at least fifty times in the bedroom of
Speaker 5: her East Memphis home. In two thousand and nine, a
Speaker 5: jury convicted Jackson of second degree murder.
Speaker 6: Nora Jackson has maintained her innocence. In twenty fourteen, the
Speaker 6: Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the conviction because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Speaker 5: And ordered a new trial, claiming the lead prosecutor, now
Speaker 5: District Attorney Amy Wyrick, withheld a witness statement from the defense.
Speaker 6: Stephen Jones, is facing misconduct charges for not turning over
Speaker 6: a key witness statement. District Attorney Amy Wyrick also is
Speaker 6: facing misconduct charges connected to the case.
Speaker 5: In May twenty fifteen, Jackson's attorneys accepted a plea deal
Speaker 5: of voluntary manslaughter from prosecutors, avoiding a potentially lengthy new trial.
Speaker 5: She could have fought for another ten years on principle,
Speaker 5: I don't know anybody who would give up their thirties
Speaker 5: for principal.
Speaker 1: Nora Jackson is officially a free woman today. Nora, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Thank you, and we have with you
Speaker 1: Bryce Benjett. You're lawyer from the ennisonce Project, and Bryce,
Speaker 1: welcome to you too. Glad to be here. This story
Speaker 1: just really shocked my conscience and you.
Speaker 7: Lived through it unfortunately.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there were times when I didn't know if I
Speaker 8: would make it to the other side.
Speaker 7: But here I am.
Speaker 1: Nor Let's go back to it was really not that
Speaker 1: long ago. I mean two thousand and five. You were
Speaker 1: still a teenager.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I turned eighteen in March of two thousand and five,
Speaker 8: so I was just at the age where, you know,
Speaker 8: there was no issue with them charging me as an adult.
Speaker 1: Right, Just another terrible circumstance of your case, And it
Speaker 1: started with one of the worst things that anyone can experience,
Speaker 1: which is the murder of your mother. And you had
Speaker 1: already been through so much because your father was murdered
Speaker 1: sixteen months earlier.
Speaker 7: Correct in January of two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: But they weren't together, No, no, no.
Speaker 7: No, they weren't. They weren't together.
Speaker 8: My parents had split up when I was like eighteen
Speaker 8: months old, and they shared custody for about eight years,
Speaker 8: and then there was an eight year period where I
Speaker 8: didn't see my father, and that's another interesting story. I
Speaker 8: actually walked into a convenience store about a year before
Speaker 8: he was killed and found him.
Speaker 7: So I lived with my mom my entire life.
Speaker 8: So the death of my father, it did really rock me,
Speaker 8: especially since there was like that newfound relationship there with him.
Speaker 7: But my mom was my rock.
Speaker 8: The death of my mother's mother, my grandmother, was the
Speaker 8: first one that happened in the summer of two thousand
Speaker 8: and three. Then the death of my father in two
Speaker 8: thousand and four, and then my best friend was actually
Speaker 8: killed in a car wreck on the way to my
Speaker 8: house in January of.
Speaker 7: Two thousand and five.
Speaker 8: So that was a really really rough year for me,
Speaker 8: a really rough time, and my mom was the one
Speaker 8: that was actually able to get me through all of that.
Speaker 7: I had pulled back from a lot of my friends.
Speaker 8: Anybody that has a single parent will know that that
Speaker 8: relationship is kind of sacred. It's totally different than if
Speaker 8: you're raised in a two parent household and.
Speaker 1: You were an only child as well. Yes, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I can imagine that would create even a stronger bond
Speaker 1: because there's no one else. It's no buffer, right, it's
Speaker 1: just you and your mom and your mom Jennifer Jackson
Speaker 1: was a successful banker as well, right investment bank.
Speaker 8: But yeah, she was actually a broker. She worked in
Speaker 8: the stock market. She was a bondsman, and she was
Speaker 8: very successful. And she'd actually just wanted a word about
Speaker 8: three months before she was killed, and it was a
Speaker 8: really big deal. They gave her like a gold bat
Speaker 8: for like a heavy hitter because of all the money
Speaker 8: that she had brought in, and I was her date
Speaker 8: for that.
Speaker 7: Actually.
Speaker 8: So you have all of these successful bondsman's there with
Speaker 8: their trophy wives and or their girlfriends, and you know,
Speaker 8: my mom is like kind of like the star of
Speaker 8: the evening and here she comes with her eighteen year
Speaker 8: old daughter.
Speaker 7: So it was really really fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like an awesome event, and she sounds
Speaker 1: like an awesome woman. It's worth noting that the murder
Speaker 1: of your father went unsolved and still unsolved. Correct, It's
Speaker 1: only worth noting as it relates to this particular case
Speaker 1: about your mom because of the fact that there could
Speaker 1: be some correlation. But let's go back to the terrible
Speaker 1: night when this happened.
Speaker 8: So at that time I came home, and retrospectively, I
Speaker 8: can look back and see that there were signs that
Speaker 8: something bad had gone on in my house that night.
Speaker 8: I walked into the kitchen and I saw and broken
Speaker 8: glass on the floor, so I looked up at the window.
Speaker 8: My mom had actually broken into that same door once
Speaker 8: before when she had lost her keys. There's a way
Speaker 8: to enter into our garage from the backyard. We had
Speaker 8: a gate that went into our backyard. Then you could
Speaker 8: go down a hallway which led to our garage, and
Speaker 8: you could enter into the kitchen through a side door
Speaker 8: in the garage. There was no key to that door
Speaker 8: because there was a latch actually in the middle pane.
Speaker 8: It would slide up and slide over, and that's how
Speaker 8: you would enter into the house was through that latch.
Speaker 8: I remember having friends over like all the time, and
Speaker 8: they kept like trying to open the door because we
Speaker 8: had a fridge outside, and like everybody was like, what
Speaker 8: is going on with this door? And there's this like
Speaker 8: tiny little piece of metal that would hinder you from
Speaker 8: going outside.
Speaker 7: So that's what.
Speaker 8: Makes me feel like anybody that was involved in anything
Speaker 8: that took place that night and killing my mom, they
Speaker 8: had intimate knowledge of our house, but at the time,
Speaker 8: it still didn't alarm me. What alarmed me was when
Speaker 8: I got ready to go to my room, which was
Speaker 8: across from my mom's room, and the light was on
Speaker 8: in the bedroom. The door was halfway open, so that's
Speaker 8: what caused me to go into the bedroom and.
Speaker 7: I saw my mom and.
Speaker 9: I'm sorry, take your time, And you know, I'm not
Speaker 9: really even sure of what I remember versus what I've
Speaker 9: heard along the way, especially like from trial and transcripts
Speaker 9: and things like that, but i do remember walking in
Speaker 9: and seeing her naked body on the floor and my
Speaker 9: first reaction was to just pick her up, and she
Speaker 9: was so heavy, and.
Speaker 8: I'm looking and I don't even know if I registered
Speaker 8: at the time.
Speaker 7: I must have.
Speaker 8: I mean, somebody gets shot, you know, there's like a
Speaker 8: pool of blood. I don't even remember there being a
Speaker 8: pool of blood. I remember they're being blood everywhere, like
Speaker 8: on the sheets and even on the walls, and I'm
Speaker 8: just like screaming, and then I know I wanted help,
Speaker 8: so I run across the street and I go get
Speaker 8: a neighbor. And at that point, I'm thinking about the
Speaker 8: broken glass, and I'm like, somebody broke into my house
Speaker 8: and so he comes with me, and I guess I
Speaker 8: run in the house in front of him. That's what
Speaker 8: he said at trial, which they inadvertently made a huge
Speaker 8: deal about. I didn't give a fuck who was in there.
Speaker 8: I knew a man was behind me with a gun,
Speaker 8: and I knew my mom was in there on the floor.
Speaker 7: That was like my life.
Speaker 8: That was my cheerleader, that was my coach, and I
Speaker 8: needed to get to her. And so I went back
Speaker 8: in there, and the neighbor across the street, I think
Speaker 8: his girlfriend actually pulled me away from her and told
Speaker 8: me to call nine wood would So I called nine
Speaker 8: one one and I'm just I'm screaming. And at one
Speaker 8: point they asked me if she had been shot, and
Speaker 8: I said no, But I just remember sitting out on
Speaker 8: that curb.
Speaker 7: You know, I watched plenty of TV and I know that.
Speaker 7: You know, the.
Speaker 8: EMT goes inside and they bring the body out on
Speaker 8: the gurney if it's going to go to the hospital.
Speaker 7: And the gurney came out and nobody was on it,
Speaker 7: and that's just went I lost it. They actually put me.
Speaker 8: It's so ironic because it was like foreshadowing what was
Speaker 8: going to happen. I was so uncontrollable trying to run
Speaker 8: in the house. They put me in the back of
Speaker 8: a cock car.
Speaker 7: At one point.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 10: It's one thing that I see. I represent a number
Speaker 10: of people who have been convicted of a murder of
Speaker 10: a family member, and just to have that trauma of
Speaker 10: what you're talking about, and then to be sort of
Speaker 10: re traumatized by being convicted for it is just unimaginable.
Speaker 10: And I think that police, when they're faced with a
Speaker 10: situation where they don't know who did it, rather than
Speaker 10: looking at the evidence, they start looking at suspects, and
Speaker 10: they do these suspect driven investigations where they look at
Speaker 10: the person and try to make a case against the person,
Speaker 10: rather than looking at the evidence and trying to follow
Speaker 10: where the evidence leads.
Speaker 8: And the interesting and disgusting thing is that the day
Speaker 8: of my mom's funeral, they had two detectives waiting on me.
Speaker 8: My mom was killed on June fifth. June sixth, I
Speaker 8: stayed with a family friend. June seventh, my aunts came
Speaker 8: into town and they tried to take me. I wouldn't
Speaker 8: go with them, so June eighth. They came and got
Speaker 8: me and they were like, you're coming with us. We
Speaker 8: stayed downtown in a hotel room and they left me there.
Speaker 8: They went somewhere and they left me there, and so
Speaker 8: one of the people that attended our church came to
Speaker 8: pick me up and she was like, why are you
Speaker 8: by yourself? I was sitting on the curb. She was like,
Speaker 8: you need help, Like, I'm going to take you to
Speaker 8: see somebody.
Speaker 7: So she takes me.
Speaker 8: To a child psychologist and he's talking to me and
Speaker 8: he was like.
Speaker 7: This girl is in shock.
Speaker 8: She needs to be surrounded by people that can pay
Speaker 8: attention to her and give her what she needs and love,
Speaker 8: and they need to give her some type of security.
Speaker 8: So my aunt's solution to that was to take me
Speaker 8: to Lakeside, which is a behavioral health center. So we
Speaker 8: go to Lakeside. I don't think at the time, I
Speaker 8: was really aware of the fact that I was eighteen,
Speaker 8: so they couldn't put me in there. So what they
Speaker 8: did was they told me, we will involuntarily commit you
Speaker 8: and it'll be a seventy two hour mandatory minimum and
Speaker 8: you will miss your mom's funeral. So they knew that
Speaker 8: I signed whatever they put in front of me to
Speaker 8: go inside. So when I went inside, I was there
Speaker 8: for two days, and then they were supposed to pick
Speaker 8: me up for my mom's funeral. My best friend that
Speaker 8: was killed. Her mom actually came up there and brought
Speaker 8: me clothes the night before. So I just remember, like
Speaker 8: I'm sitting up there waiting on my aunts to pick
Speaker 8: me up to what I know is my mom's funeral.
Speaker 8: It's kind of morbid, like in my dead best friend's clothes,
Speaker 8: and they're not there. So at this point, I begin
Speaker 8: to like shred a whole box of Kleenex, and then
Speaker 8: I begin to freak out. We didn't have access to phones,
Speaker 8: so my nurse starts to call them. Nobody's answering, so
Speaker 8: then I really start to freak out. So they give
Speaker 8: me a sedative, and when my aunts get there, they're like,
Speaker 8: get in the car. You know, it's not a big deal.
Speaker 8: You're not going to miss it. The show's not going
Speaker 8: to start without us, like they referred to it as
Speaker 8: a show, and I do remember that. And so we're
Speaker 8: sitting at the funeral and we leave. I don't even
Speaker 8: go to anything that they have after the funeral. I'm
Speaker 8: pretty sure. I heard that they had a reception.
Speaker 7: I didn't go.
Speaker 8: They took me straight back to Lakeside. I walk into
Speaker 8: the doors of Lakeside and I'll never forget. My nurse's
Speaker 8: name was Chris, and I just really, really really was
Speaker 8: clinging to her at that time because she reminded me
Speaker 8: of my grandma, and she was like, baby, She was like,
Speaker 8: I have to take you into the office.
Speaker 7: You have some people here that want to talk to you.
Speaker 8: I don't even know what I'm thinking, Like maybe it's
Speaker 8: like old friends, maybe it's a visit, maybe somebody's here
Speaker 8: to see me. And I walk in and it's two
Speaker 8: detectives with a camera and they hand over a piece
Speaker 8: of paper and so at this point Lakeside has become
Speaker 8: very overprotective of me. They're reading the paper and they
Speaker 8: were like, are you kidding me? Like you picked this
Speaker 8: day of all days, and it's the Affidavid with the warrant.
Speaker 8: It was very apparent that the attack or the killer
Speaker 8: was injured at the scene of the crime, so they
Speaker 8: needed to photograph my body in its entirety and get
Speaker 8: some DNA, which I had already provided the first day,
Speaker 8: and so they took my clothes off, and I mean,
Speaker 8: if you look at these pictures, you can tell whatever
Speaker 8: since that I had left at that time left me.
Speaker 7: I just it was like out of body. I couldn't.
Speaker 8: I could not cope with reality at that point, and
Speaker 8: I had no choice but to go with it because
Speaker 8: at this point i had nobody left. So I'm taking
Speaker 8: off my clothes and they're photographing me, and I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 8: I just wanted to lay down and die. At that point,
Speaker 8: I just I didn't. I did not have the wherewithal
Speaker 8: to continue.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to process, Well, you just told me
Speaker 1: you were, still, as you said, a child. I mean,
Speaker 1: the idea that they would strip you at that point,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not even stripped of everything except your dignity,
Speaker 1: and then they took that away too. How how that's
Speaker 1: even possible is hard for me to process. You've I've
Speaker 1: been through everything that a human being can possibly adore.
Speaker 1: You're not even twenty years old yet, right, You're all
Speaker 1: alone in the world, and how the fuck did you
Speaker 1: find the strength to persevere?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 8: Well, my mom told me when my best friend and
Speaker 8: and id that grief is like Sarah. You know, that's
Speaker 8: the name that she wanted to name me, and she
Speaker 8: was like, you go through sadness and then you go
Speaker 8: through anger, and then you go through resentment, and then
Speaker 8: you go through acceptance, and then you go through healing.
Speaker 8: And I wanted to go through those things. So the
Speaker 8: anger is what drove me. When I was first arrested,
Speaker 8: I remember being in the jail, sitting on my bunk
Speaker 8: and watching, like everybody else in the pod of the jail,
Speaker 8: watch the television where they were talking about eighteen year
Speaker 8: old girl arrested for killing her mother who was stabbed
Speaker 8: over fifty seven times.
Speaker 7: Prosecutors have not announced if they will be seeking the
Speaker 7: death penalty.
Speaker 8: She's been charged with first degree murder, which carries us
Speaker 8: in life without parole, life with pearl, and even the
Speaker 8: death pen you know. And it just was like going
Speaker 8: on and on, and I remember sitting there thinking like,
Speaker 8: I wonder if they will try to give me the
Speaker 8: death penalty. The Constitution, they guarantee the right to a
Speaker 8: speedy and fair trial.
Speaker 7: That's what it says in black and white.
Speaker 8: But the reality of the situation is you will sit
Speaker 8: there for as long as they deem necessary.
Speaker 7: Amy Wyrick was determined to be my prosecutor. She was
Speaker 7: a death penalty lawyer, and she was on what they
Speaker 7: used to refer to as the death squad, which meant
Speaker 7: that she was qualified to try death penalty cases.
Speaker 8: Amy went out on maternity leave. Do you think that
Speaker 8: she handed the case over to somebody else.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 8: I sat there and waited for her to go on
Speaker 8: maternity leave, to have her child and come back. Amy
Speaker 8: was determined to try that case.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there, but it's pretty clear that she saw
Speaker 1: you as a real stopping stone to where she wanted
Speaker 1: to get to in her career.
Speaker 7: Correct.
Speaker 8: This was the biggest and longest running case with the
Speaker 8: most evidence in the most exhibits and Shelby County history
Speaker 8: at the time, it was very clear to her that
Speaker 8: this could be like a career making case, especially if
Speaker 8: she got a conviction. Yeah, so she played like a
Speaker 8: win at all costs game. And you know one of
Speaker 8: the things that Amy Wyrick likes to hold on to
Speaker 8: and like she steadfast on, is that we had forty witnesses. Okay,
Speaker 8: you did, but let's look at what those forty witnesses presented.
Speaker 8: You had TBI, the Tennessee Bear of Investigation that testifies
Speaker 8: that the DNA that they analyzed belonged to somebody else.
Speaker 8: You have Kirby McDonald, Sophie Cooley, Perry Brassfield, Andrew Hammock,
Speaker 8: Joey McGoff. You have all of these children, because they're
Speaker 8: still children at the time, testifying that I smoked pot
Speaker 8: and that I drank at a party. But they were
Speaker 8: doing the same thing, and they're not on trial for
Speaker 8: killing anybody.
Speaker 7: That does not make you a murderer.
Speaker 1: They made a big deal out of the idea that
Speaker 1: you were this craze druggie, right when in fact you
Speaker 1: were a typical eighteen year old. You're having, you know,
Speaker 1: some beers, you're smoking some p That's what eighteen year
Speaker 1: olds do. You were no drug addict.
Speaker 8: I'm a diabolical killer, and then I'm a pothead. I'm
Speaker 8: someone that can totally get rid of any trace evidence
Speaker 8: that made blood disappear off of clothes that they pulled
Speaker 8: out the back of my car, Clothes that they had
Speaker 8: that I had on that night, that was able to
Speaker 8: overtake a woman that was five to eleven. I don't know,
Speaker 8: like without she was on I'm five to three. She
Speaker 8: was an avid runner, she worked out at the time,
Speaker 8: I was a chubby, little pothead, Like, there's no way
Speaker 8: my mom would have kicked my ass any day of
Speaker 8: the week, you know, And they said this, I mean,
Speaker 8: she fought for her life. I mean, if you look
Speaker 8: at the pictures, like she she went down swinging, there's
Speaker 8: no way that anybody walked away from there unscathed. And
Speaker 8: you know what's crazy is that, I know I remember
Speaker 8: like in situations where like I was in danger and
Speaker 8: I know my mom. There's no way my mom left
Speaker 8: this world willingly. You know, she she took something from
Speaker 8: those people, whoever it was. So that is what they
Speaker 8: use for the warrant for my body. You know, there
Speaker 8: would have been evidence of some type of attack.
Speaker 1: Some type of fight, of course that would have been
Speaker 1: and we know that your nails were perfectly manicured, and
Speaker 1: there's just no way. And we know this from dreams
Speaker 1: of evidence of cases throughout the years that when somebody
Speaker 1: stabs somebody else numerous times, you always leave blood because
Speaker 1: the thing gets slippery and you get you know, and
Speaker 1: you cut yourself. So, Nora, there's a very unique aspect
Speaker 1: to your prosecution, persecution, et cetera, which I've never heard before,
Speaker 1: which is the fact that the prosecution made a big
Speaker 1: deal out of the fact that you were wearing long sleeves.
Speaker 1: What difference did it make that you were wearing or
Speaker 1: not wearing long.
Speaker 8: Sleeves, right, So I think the theory that they adopted
Speaker 8: was that I had on long sleeves because they said
Speaker 8: I was trying to hide the cut on my hand.
Speaker 8: I kind of touched on the fact that I was
Speaker 8: a little bit different with this single mother. But I
Speaker 8: was also different because my father was Lebanese.
Speaker 7: So that was a really difficult.
Speaker 8: Thing for me, and it was made even more difficult
Speaker 8: at a young age by my mom's sisters because they
Speaker 8: constantly pointed it out. Growing up, I always wanted to
Speaker 8: look like my mom because she was like, she was
Speaker 8: so beautiful, and I just like idolized her. I could
Speaker 8: never do that figure wise, like I said, you know,
Speaker 8: she was tall and very fit, and I was short
Speaker 8: and I was always kind of chubby. But I would
Speaker 8: dye my hair like if you look back at the
Speaker 8: pictures all throughout my high school and junior high I
Speaker 8: died my hair blonde because I felt like if I
Speaker 8: died my hair blonde, I.
Speaker 7: Would look like more like my mom, I.
Speaker 8: Have really, really, really hairy arms, and that is my heritage,
Speaker 8: that is from being Lebanese. So at that point in
Speaker 8: my life, I thought different was bad, so I didn't
Speaker 8: want to be different, so I tried to hide those differences,
Speaker 8: and it became just kind of a thing. I mean,
Speaker 8: I was called natured, but I think subconsciously it started
Speaker 8: off as being more of like trying to mask the
Speaker 8: difference in me versus other people.
Speaker 1: But let's also just examine the fact of how ridiculous
Speaker 1: it is that you were wearing long sleeves to hide
Speaker 1: the cuts on your hands. You would have need admittence, right,
Speaker 1: That's what you needed, admits or something, right.
Speaker 10: And so all of this comes down to seeing every
Speaker 10: fact through the prism of Nora's guilt. And once these
Speaker 10: investigators decide who they think did it, they make everything
Speaker 10: fall in line. And when they do that, they miss
Speaker 10: the obvious evidence that show said that there was somebody
Speaker 10: else there, there's somebody else's blood on the bed. Instead
Speaker 10: they're looking at shirt sleeves and.
Speaker 1: That person is still free. All of this goes back
Speaker 1: to the idea that they had no evidence against you.
Speaker 1: There never was any evidence against you and the exculpatory evidence.
Speaker 1: I want to touch on that for a second too.
Speaker 1: Stephen Jones, the assistant prosecutor on the case, This motherfucker
Speaker 1: took evidence that he clearly knew would have blown the
Speaker 1: case against you, right, which means in English that he
Speaker 1: knew you were in it. But this was an inconvenient truth.
Speaker 1: He somehow or other managed to forget that there was
Speaker 1: a note which would have totally blown to think the smitherings,
Speaker 1: and then magically, five days after the trial he remembers it,
Speaker 1: which leads me to think that he started thinking after
Speaker 1: the trial was over, well, I probably did something really
Speaker 1: wrong here.
Speaker 8: If my attorney, Valery Quarter is nothing else, she is very,
Speaker 8: very thorough. They knew that it would be found because
Speaker 8: she was thorough. Valerie, she knew head on going into
Speaker 8: this that these people were unethical.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor, Amy Wyrick, had been censured numerous times for
Speaker 1: behavior not dissimilar to what she did to you. She
Speaker 1: was promoted after the trial, right, She's moved.
Speaker 8: Up in the world and brought some of the detectives
Speaker 8: that were on the case up with her. This woman
Speaker 8: sat there and said that DNA analysis was not important
Speaker 8: it is important in some cases, she said, but it
Speaker 8: wasn't important in mine. But if you go back to
Speaker 8: the very beginning, they used DNA as a way to
Speaker 8: gain access to my body. They used all of this
Speaker 8: stuff to get what they wanted, and when the results
Speaker 8: came back then it wasn't relevant anymore.
Speaker 7: That never really made sense to me.
Speaker 8: You have a warrant that was issued in two thousand
Speaker 8: and five for a person's body because you say an
Speaker 8: arrest cannot be made in a case that's in June
Speaker 8: of two thousand and five. An arrest cannot be made
Speaker 8: in this case without some type of DNA or physical evidence.
Speaker 8: September twenty ninth, two thousand and five, you arrest me.
Speaker 8: December of two thousand and five, the Tennessee Bear of
Speaker 8: Investigations releases their findings with the DNA analysis and it
Speaker 8: comes back as a profile that it excludes me and
Speaker 8: excludes my mother. Do you think that at any point
Speaker 8: they revisited the case, they revisited the theory, They said,
Speaker 8: maybe we got this wrong.
Speaker 7: We should let her go. Let's go back to the
Speaker 7: drawing board, let's start over.
Speaker 1: No, it's I can't, I mean, and I'm trying to.
Speaker 1: I can't obviously put myself in your shoes. Nobody can.
Speaker 1: But the nightmare it's total. I mean, the people who
Speaker 1: are supposed to be protecting you and are supposed to be,
Speaker 1: you know, protecting society are going so rogue.
Speaker 8: I really really have to point this out. You have
Speaker 8: to have motive, means an opportunity. That's the three requirements
Speaker 8: when you're trying somebody for a case. So their motive
Speaker 8: became money. There was no money. My father ran a
Speaker 8: business that relied on cash, and some will say that he.
Speaker 7: Ran an escort service.
Speaker 8: If anybody knows anything about when you're doing I legal activity,
Speaker 8: you don't put that money in a bank account.
Speaker 7: It's not ran on books. It's ran off books. Whatever
Speaker 7: was there.
Speaker 8: We saw a person on video lifting cash out of
Speaker 8: a floor safe that I didn't even know existed. By
Speaker 8: the time the cops had released the keys to his house,
Speaker 8: it had been ransacked. My father had ten thousand dollars
Speaker 8: in a bank account, and my mom allowed me to
Speaker 8: make the choice of what to do with that, and
Speaker 8: we used that money and she ended up having to
Speaker 8: put like another thousand dollars with it to send his
Speaker 8: body back to Beirut so he could be buried with
Speaker 8: my grandparents.
Speaker 7: So there was no money.
Speaker 8: There was this big idea that there was a fight
Speaker 8: over control of an estate that did not exist, the
Speaker 8: idea that he had an estate or he didn't even
Speaker 8: have a will, I mean, there was there was nothing.
Speaker 8: So the whole theory of the case was built around
Speaker 8: there was money that my mom had that I could
Speaker 8: not have.
Speaker 7: Well, okay, let's look at that too.
Speaker 8: I'm eighteen, so anything that existed that she had by
Speaker 8: right would have gone to me. Then they said that
Speaker 8: she wanted to send me away. I'm eighteen. She can't
Speaker 8: send me away unless I choose to go. She could
Speaker 8: kick me out, but she can't send me away. So
Speaker 8: this whole theory that I was an out of control
Speaker 8: teenager that wanted some money that didn't I mean, it
Speaker 8: was like and what was so frustrating to me and
Speaker 8: I didn't know the time, is that all of this
Speaker 8: could have been easily disproven, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: You didn't testify in your own case, and this became
Speaker 1: a very important factor. Your attorney was concerned that in
Speaker 1: your fragile state, which by the way, you are now
Speaker 1: an orphan you've been in jail for three and a
Speaker 1: half years. Your attorney made what could be deemed a
Speaker 1: rational decision to not have you testify because on cross
Speaker 1: examination you could have broken down or who knows. I mean,
Speaker 1: it turned out to be the wrong decision, but you
Speaker 1: could sort of see where that came from, right Bright.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's always a tough call because you have this
Speaker 10: dynamic where the state has all the power. They are
Speaker 10: the ones who create this narrative, and they've got you
Speaker 10: on the stand. The judge is going to let them
Speaker 10: ask all kinds of horrible questions, and there is always
Speaker 10: a very delicate question about whether your client's going to testify.
Speaker 10: And certainly nobody should ever think about somebody not testifying,
Speaker 10: and that's an admission of guilt. Juries are instructed about it.
Speaker 10: And in this case, the state took that right that
Speaker 10: Nora has and reasonable decision. Every single person has the
Speaker 10: right to say to the state, I didn't do this crime,
Speaker 10: and there's no proof that I did this crime, and
Speaker 10: I don't have to subject myself to being attacked because
Speaker 10: of it. I mean, think Nora is there sitting accused
Speaker 10: of the murder of her own mother, traumatized for a
Speaker 10: second time, And is it a reasonable decision to not
Speaker 10: allow yourself to be traumatized for a third time where
Speaker 10: you're being accused of that murder on the stand. That's
Speaker 10: a reasonable decision under the circumstances.
Speaker 1: So you have these rights.
Speaker 10: But here in the closing argument, the prosecutor takes that
Speaker 10: and really comments on that and invites the jury to
Speaker 10: in for guilt in ways that is unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, the prosecutor this hyric chose to basically excoriate
Speaker 1: and more or less scream at you, demanding that you
Speaker 1: tell her what had happened, which is not only wildly inappropriate,
Speaker 1: but also patently illegal. Right, that's illegal behavior. You can't
Speaker 1: do it. But she did it anyway. She had this goal, right,
Speaker 1: she was gonna make it to where she had to
Speaker 1: go by stepping on your neck. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: she did. And she was willing to not only bend
Speaker 1: the rules, but break the rules and break the law.
Speaker 1: And it's actually mind blowing in your case.
Speaker 8: I mean, before she was able to finish a valerie quarter,
Speaker 8: my first attorney, she jumped up and you know, at
Speaker 8: this point, I'm I'm still like I just turned twenty one,
Speaker 8: and I really didn't know a whole lot, but I
Speaker 8: knew what she did right then and there, Like I
Speaker 8: was about to jump out my seat and I was
Speaker 8: about to say but you know, and my lawyer like
Speaker 8: put my hand like this, and she jumped up and
Speaker 8: she was like, you're on, Like you know, I object
Speaker 8: and all of that.
Speaker 7: The thing is is that her intention was met.
Speaker 8: It was very, very very calculating what she did. Jurors
Speaker 8: are your everyday people. The human condition is to be curious.
Speaker 8: These people walked out of the jury box with the
Speaker 8: last thing in their mind being just tell us where
Speaker 8: you were, Nora. That's all we're asking. She simplified it
Speaker 8: in a way like if you would have just told
Speaker 8: us where you were, none of this would be happening.
Speaker 8: So that's the last thing that these twelve people heard
Speaker 8: when they walked.
Speaker 7: Out of that box.
Speaker 10: And I'll tell you, as a lawyer, you know that
Speaker 10: you're not allowed to do that. You are not allowed
Speaker 10: to comment on a person testifying or not testifying in
Speaker 10: that manner. And if a defense lawyer had done that,
Speaker 10: they'd be in jail.
Speaker 7: It's their world. You're in it, and they make the rules.
Speaker 1: And they move the lines when they want to.
Speaker 2: They do.
Speaker 8: And if you're a defense attorney and you do something wrong,
Speaker 8: they'll have no fury. If you're a prosecutor and you
Speaker 8: do something wrong, it was a mistake, it was an
Speaker 8: invertent mistake.
Speaker 7: They didn't mean to. They're sorry. It won't happen.
Speaker 1: And Norah, let me point out that the Fair Punishment
Speaker 1: Project at Harvard, which is as blue chip of a
Speaker 1: panel as you can have, there are literally legal luminaries
Speaker 1: on that panel, and they just this year singled out
Speaker 1: Amy Wyrick, prosecutor in your case, for numerous allegations of
Speaker 1: misconduct over the last several years. And yet there she
Speaker 1: is serving an eight year term victimizing other people the
Speaker 1: same way she did to you, and getting away with it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's crazy. And she actually gave a statement when
Speaker 8: that came out. She gave a statement, and she dismissed
Speaker 8: that as easily as she dismissed the dNaM My case.
Speaker 1: Norah, when you were at trial, obviously you knew you
Speaker 1: were innocent, but now you'd been incarcerated in a horrendous
Speaker 1: jail situation for three and a half years, which let's
Speaker 1: not forget at that point that's a big percentage of
Speaker 1: your life. Was there a point during the trial at
Speaker 1: which you said, WHOA, they may actually convict me, Like,
Speaker 1: did you just expect that finally justice would be done
Speaker 1: and the jury would rule in your favor.
Speaker 7: Going into trial.
Speaker 8: I looked forward to it and I was looking for
Speaker 8: my day in court, and I thought that justice system
Speaker 8: would prevail, and I believed all that during trial. It
Speaker 8: was like, so when my mom was killed, it was
Speaker 8: a shock, it was a trauma, but it's like it
Speaker 8: had the advantage of like I didn't see it coming
Speaker 8: and I was totally blindsided. Going to trial, I was
Speaker 8: reliving all of that. I knew how horrible it was.
Speaker 8: I knew how horrendous it was. I knew what it
Speaker 8: looked like, I knew what she looked like, and I
Speaker 8: was faced with all that again. So I think, like
Speaker 8: there were points during the trial where I would literally
Speaker 8: like bite the inside of my cheek. At one point
Speaker 8: it bled, just because there were so many times I
Speaker 8: wanted to open up my mouth and say something, whether
Speaker 8: it was during testimony or at one point I wanted
Speaker 8: them to just take the fucking pictures down, Like I
Speaker 8: didn't want to see that there my mom is neked
Speaker 8: and she has been murdered, and it's just like there's
Speaker 8: a thousand people in the courtroom, and I just I
Speaker 8: didn't want to see it, and I didn't want anyone
Speaker 8: else to see it. So I think subconsciously the first week,
Speaker 8: I just was so focused on like trying to get
Speaker 8: up and like make it through the next day. I'll
Speaker 8: never forget this Saturday, because we went to trial on
Speaker 8: a Saturday. It lasted like fourteen days, and that Saturday
Speaker 8: it was Valentine's Day.
Speaker 7: And the only way I knew.
Speaker 8: That is because when they took me to the holding cell,
Speaker 8: no one else was obviously going to court. It was Saturday,
Speaker 8: so I was in the whole jail by myself, and
Speaker 8: so they kept me in this little tiny holding cell
Speaker 8: that normally they would have the men in during the week,
Speaker 8: and one of the jailers had put a heart shaped
Speaker 8: butterfinger in there for me to like acknowledge that it
Speaker 8: was Valentine's Day. And I remember like getting that piece
Speaker 8: of candy and realizing that it was Valentine's Day and
Speaker 8: that that was a day that people recognized, and like
Speaker 8: that I wasn't even aware of what was going on,
Speaker 8: you know, and that the only thing that I could
Speaker 8: figure out was that today might be the day that
Speaker 8: I found out what was going to happen with the
Speaker 8: rest of my life.
Speaker 7: I think that not knowing was the worst.
Speaker 1: And then we get to the point where the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: why Rick, violates your constitutional rights flagrantly by totally disregarding
Speaker 1: her responsibility to not highlight or make an issue out
Speaker 1: of the fact that you chose or your lawyer actually
Speaker 1: advised you, and you chose not to testify your own defense.
Speaker 1: And the jury goes out, and then they come back in,
Speaker 1: and that moment you knew when they came back in, I.
Speaker 7: Knew, you know.
Speaker 8: I almost feel like I knew when Amy did that
Speaker 8: as they walk back in. There was periods throughout that trial.
Speaker 8: It was like a fourteen day trial where when things
Speaker 8: are being discussed and things were being said, the jury
Speaker 8: would look at me. I mean, who wouldn't you know
Speaker 8: you're talking about this person like they're not in the room,
Speaker 8: but the person is in the room and they're just
Speaker 8: sitting there. So periodically I would look, even though my
Speaker 8: journeys kept telling me not too, I would look at
Speaker 8: the jury and there was this one guy with like
Speaker 8: reddish hair, and he constantly, along with a woman next
Speaker 8: to him, made eye contact with me throughout the trial.
Speaker 8: And when they walked in his nose because he had
Speaker 8: red hair and he was paler, I could tell that
Speaker 8: either he was angry or he had been crying. And
Speaker 8: I looked at him and he looked down. He wouldn't
Speaker 8: look at me. Well, boy, and I knew right then.
Speaker 1: So you're convicted and sentenced to twenty years and nine
Speaker 1: months in prison. You've already been now in jail for
Speaker 1: three and a half years. You go to prison, How
Speaker 1: did you deal with that?
Speaker 7: You know? Prison?
Speaker 8: I talked about Sarah with you, and prison was where
Speaker 8: I did like my anger, and then I did my
Speaker 8: resentment and then my acceptance, and it kind of armored
Speaker 8: me to go back out and FIGHTE again. I was
Speaker 8: really broken when I got to prison. I had totally
Speaker 8: lost faith in the justice system. That's when I really
Speaker 8: realized that the world was not fair, that my mother's
Speaker 8: killer was walking around free, and that people that said
Speaker 8: that they loved her didn't care because to love my
Speaker 8: mother was to love me because I was my mother,
Speaker 8: Like we were a package deal. And so I just
Speaker 8: I really couldn't believe when it happened, Like I was
Speaker 8: really in a daze. So I go to prison and
Speaker 8: I'm very very very much to myself and I get
Speaker 8: involved in a lot.
Speaker 7: Of different activities.
Speaker 8: So I go to this one seminar in the prison
Speaker 8: and they had assigned you to tables by stickers. Well,
Speaker 8: I decided I didn't like the sticker that I had,
Speaker 8: and I didn't like the table I had, and I
Speaker 8: wanted to sit at a different table. So I took
Speaker 8: it upon myself to switch my sticker with somebody else
Speaker 8: and move myself. I'm not thinking anybody's paying attention. There's
Speaker 8: like one hundred inmates in there. So the lady that's
Speaker 8: the director of this program, she just keeps picking at me,
Speaker 8: like the whole time that I'm in there, saying something
Speaker 8: to me about changing my sticker, putting me by at
Speaker 8: my table, and there was like another thing that she
Speaker 8: did to me. So at the end of the seminar,
Speaker 8: she's asking questions to give away prizes, and she has
Speaker 8: something that was relevant to what one of the speakers said,
Speaker 8: and she called on me. I guess she thought I
Speaker 8: didn't know the answer, and I stood up and I
Speaker 8: give her the answer, probably in like the nicest, nastiest
Speaker 8: way that you could. And at the end of the seminar,
Speaker 8: she was like, I'm going to be her on Wednesday
Speaker 8: to talk to you, and I was just looking at
Speaker 8: her like and I'm not going to talk to you.
Speaker 7: Like I've had so many people. I just at that
Speaker 7: point I didn't want to talk to anyone.
Speaker 8: And her name was pat Colp and she is the
Speaker 8: reason that I still have my sanity. She runs an
Speaker 8: organization called Women Empowered to Become Self Sufficient shortened its webs,
Speaker 8: and what she does is she comes into the prison
Speaker 8: and she nurtures the people that have longer sentences. So
Speaker 8: many of the programs inside the prison are geared towards
Speaker 8: people that are fast tracked for release. You know, they
Speaker 8: want to reduce the rate of recidivism theoretically, and they
Speaker 8: want to provide entry for people that are closer to
Speaker 8: getting out. So then you have someone like me with
Speaker 8: almost a twenty one year sentence and I'm just at
Speaker 8: the back of the bus because they're not worried about
Speaker 8: people like us or my friends that have life, because
Speaker 8: they'll get to us when they get to us.
Speaker 7: We're gonna be there a while.
Speaker 8: But then you have an amazing situation like mine happened,
Speaker 8: where the Supreme Court overturns all my stuff and I
Speaker 8: have the possibility of being thrown back out into society.
Speaker 8: But I have no tools and no help because I've
Speaker 8: been put at the back of the bus because of
Speaker 8: my sentence. So ms pat comes in, and she's so
Speaker 8: important because she offers computer classes, how to write a resume,
Speaker 8: thinking for a change, like things that people like me need,
Speaker 8: but the prison doesn't like they don't have anything for that.
Speaker 8: She also does something called Winter Wonderland, where it's like
Speaker 8: for a whole week, I felt like I wasn't in prison.
Speaker 8: I don't have any children. But what they do is
Speaker 8: they turn the whole gym into the prison. They allow
Speaker 8: people to go down there. If you don't have any children,
Speaker 8: you get thirty fake dollars. You're able to go down there.
Speaker 8: And it's just something about being able to get like
Speaker 8: something from the free world, a nice, real gift to
Speaker 8: send to people that are on the outside, that are
Speaker 8: taking care of you, that are coming to see you,
Speaker 8: that are accepting your phone calls, that are sending you
Speaker 8: pictures to be able to be in prison and to
Speaker 8: give something to somebody else, you know, when you're so
Speaker 8: locked away from the world, is the most amazing thing.
Speaker 8: And then if you do have children, on Saturday, your
Speaker 8: children come in and you give your children Christmas. So
Speaker 8: it's not in a visitation setting. It's not where you
Speaker 8: can't hold your child, you can't feed your child, you
Speaker 8: can't do any of that.
Speaker 7: These mothers get to have.
Speaker 8: Their children from eight to three, open gifts with them,
Speaker 8: do arts and crafts with them, hold them, if they
Speaker 8: need to change their diaper, they can. You know, all
Speaker 8: of the things that mothers want and need to do
Speaker 8: for their children, and she enables that opportunity.
Speaker 7: So to be a part.
Speaker 8: Of that was like the most amazing experience ever. There
Speaker 8: was so much joy and at the same time, like
Speaker 8: you open up the day and it's the most beautiful
Speaker 8: thing you've ever seen for these women in prison to
Speaker 8: be able to hold and have Christmas with their children.
Speaker 8: And then it's the most heart wrenching thing you've seen
Speaker 8: when these children have to walk out of the prison
Speaker 8: away from their mothers.
Speaker 7: It will destroy your soul.
Speaker 1: Norah. Then a miracle happens, literally a miracle right, I mean,
Speaker 1: because we know how rare it is for wrongful convictions
Speaker 1: to be overturned, very rare in Tennessee. For the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court of Tennessee to overturn a wrongful conviction, it's a miracle.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: What was that day?
Speaker 8: Like it was I'm actually on the toilet, going to
Speaker 8: the bathroom watching TV and it just like so happens
Speaker 8: that my roommate's TV is on the lower stand and
Speaker 8: she had it on mute. I think it was something
Speaker 8: good to eat for dinner that night, So everybody else
Speaker 8: has gone to the chowha, and I I see what
Speaker 8: I think is my name flashed across the bottom of
Speaker 8: the screen. Like you know how they have like the
Speaker 8: little title at the bottom of whatever the news story
Speaker 8: is about. Well, you get in trouble if you listen
Speaker 8: to your TV without headphones in it. So we always
Speaker 8: have the closed caption on, so even if the mute
Speaker 8: is on, the close caption is running, so the close
Speaker 8: caption is always a little.
Speaker 7: Bit behind that. So I'm like, did I just see
Speaker 7: my name?
Speaker 8: So I'm waiting for the closed caption to come on,
Speaker 8: and all I see is Nora Jackson, and I don't
Speaker 8: know if I saw reverse or Supreme Court.
Speaker 7: So I was like, holy shit.
Speaker 8: So I jump up and I changed the channel because
Speaker 8: we have something called three dash two, which is like
Speaker 8: it just runs the news over and over and over again.
Speaker 8: So I'm sitting there and I'm like, you know what,
Speaker 8: Like I get impatient. I'm like, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 8: a news channel five. I go to news channel five.
Speaker 8: I wait about two or three minutes it's on there.
Speaker 8: So I'm screaming out. At the time, I lived around
Speaker 8: the corner on the upper level of D South, which
Speaker 8: is like it's a pod that's away from the rest
Speaker 8: of the prison because they have a dog program there.
Speaker 8: So I think the officer was outside with the dog
Speaker 8: program and I'm like screaming.
Speaker 7: I'm like, somebody let me out of here.
Speaker 8: And I'm just so excited and i want to tell
Speaker 8: my friends and they're gone to eat, so I'm like
Speaker 8: waiting for them on the breezeway. I'm like guess what,
Speaker 8: and they're like what. I'm like, what would be like
Speaker 8: the best thing that could ever happen to me? And
Speaker 8: they were like, you know, you walk away and you
Speaker 8: do this and you do that, And I was like
Speaker 8: the Supreme Court just overturned my stuff, and we all
Speaker 8: just started crying because a victory for me was a
Speaker 8: victory for them, because it's hope. We hadn't seen that
Speaker 8: done before.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say that I don't remember ever
Speaker 1: having a visual quite like you sitting on the toilet,
Speaker 1: watching your own name scroll across the screen and then
Speaker 1: jumping around. I mean, you no, I know, It's like I.
Speaker 8: Almost wanted to change the narrative just because I'm like,
Speaker 8: I'm sitting on the toilet, but I mean, that's what happens.
Speaker 7: There's something symbolic about that, right, it really really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, the toilet is perfect analogy for this a
Speaker 1: lot of what's gone on here so far. Something else
Speaker 1: is really dramatic about you having to wait to be
Speaker 1: able to tell your friends. So the Tennessee Supreme Court
Speaker 1: in a unanimous decision. I want to emphasize that the
Speaker 1: unanimous decision reverses your conviction and in the strongest terms,
Speaker 1: condemns the conduct of the prosecutors. And anybody listening is
Speaker 1: probably going, Okay, well, that's that's a wrap, right, case closed,
Speaker 1: nor is out. But that's not the end of the story,
Speaker 1: and what we learn in these cases is that having
Speaker 1: your conviction overturn doesn't mean that your indictment. You know,
Speaker 1: your indictment still stands right, and the prosecutor still has
Speaker 1: power to inflict harm on the person that's in the crosshairs. Here.
Speaker 1: In many cases they'll drop the charges at that point
Speaker 1: because the conviction has been overturned, and in this case
Speaker 1: by the Supreme Court, I mean, like the highest court
Speaker 1: in Tennessee five zero five zero, right. Incredible. When you
Speaker 1: got that news, did you think you were going home
Speaker 1: that day?
Speaker 8: You know, if I was anyone else, I probably would
Speaker 8: have thought that that meant that I was going to
Speaker 8: be free. A lot of people, you know, that were
Speaker 8: not really really totally aware of the workings of the
Speaker 8: just system were like waiting for me to pack myself
Speaker 8: that night. But the way my life in my world works,
Speaker 8: I knew that there was still.
Speaker 7: An uphill battle.
Speaker 1: For there to be no real consequence of that is insane.
Speaker 10: It is It's nuts that this can go on, That
Speaker 10: a court can identify, yes, a flagrant violation of her
Speaker 10: rights and that ultimately is a condemnation of this conviction.
Speaker 10: It's as close as can be to a finding by
Speaker 10: this court that she really didn't do it, and for
Speaker 10: that then to go back to the county and for
Speaker 10: them to just go right back to work on the
Speaker 10: same railroad that they were doing before is unimaginable from
Speaker 10: this perspective, but unfortunately pretty routine. So in a claim
Speaker 10: like a Brady claim, you cannot say no more. All
Speaker 10: they can do is put you back in the same
Speaker 10: position that you were before where the government cheated, which
Speaker 10: is one of the real problems with these britty claims,
Speaker 10: because the government can cheat and cheat and cheat, and
Speaker 10: the worst possible consequence for them is that they just
Speaker 10: get to do it over as if they weren't caught cheating.
Speaker 1: So the Supreme Court or returns your conviction and then
Speaker 1: you end up back in court because they can put
Speaker 1: you back in court, and that's another outrageous thing about
Speaker 1: all of this. But nonetheless they put you back in court,
Speaker 1: and now you are faced with a momentous decision, which
Speaker 1: is that the government gives you the option to go
Speaker 1: back to trial or to take what's called an Alfred play.
Speaker 1: And I know that had to be really the hardest
Speaker 1: decision of your life.
Speaker 8: It was okay, the Supreme Court overturned my conviction and
Speaker 8: in August of twenty fourteen, and I didn't even go
Speaker 8: back to the county jail. I had my first hearing
Speaker 8: in February of twenty fifteen, so there was like a
Speaker 8: long waiting period in between there. My first court appearance
Speaker 8: in February of twenty fifteen was for a bond hearing.
Speaker 8: And the mentality of people that are incarcerated in anybody
Speaker 8: that knows, is it's easier to fight your case from
Speaker 8: the street. If you're out there and you're in the
Speaker 8: free world and you're doing good things can and also
Speaker 8: just mentally you're more prepared and you're not all broken down.
Speaker 1: You can meet with your lawyers as many.
Speaker 7: Times as you There's a big advantage to that. So
Speaker 7: our thoughts were I would have.
Speaker 8: A bond hearing and we would work really hard on
Speaker 8: getting me out and that way, because this case theoretically
Speaker 8: could drag on for a really long time. In a
Speaker 8: very calculating move, the Shelby County District Attorney's office recused
Speaker 8: themselves the day of my bond hearing, which therefore forfeited
Speaker 8: me the opportunity to have a bond.
Speaker 7: And Jason, that's like really important.
Speaker 8: Because if that just goes to show that they they
Speaker 8: were so underhanded and all of the stuff that they
Speaker 8: did to me.
Speaker 7: I mean a bond hearing. People have bond hearings every day.
Speaker 8: People get bond set before they ever have a court appearance.
Speaker 8: A special prosecutor does not need to be familiar with
Speaker 8: the facts of the case in order for a defendant
Speaker 8: to have a bond. But this is the judge saying
Speaker 8: that it was all just a ployee because the ultimate
Speaker 8: goal for them was for me to take a plea.
Speaker 7: Of course, they had no case. There was so much
Speaker 7: public scrutiny.
Speaker 8: The Supreme Court had slapped them down very very heavily
Speaker 8: in that opinion, and they had lost all their witnesses.
Speaker 8: A lot of them didn't want to testify, and a
Speaker 8: lot of them were now in material. So they just
Speaker 8: kept pressuring, putting off, pressuring and putting off. And the
Speaker 8: day before I took my plea, we had actually subpoened
Speaker 8: thirty assistant district attorneys and they had filed injunctions to
Speaker 8: block him, and then they were getting ready to go through.
Speaker 7: Their ultimate goal was to keep Amy Wyrick off the stand.
Speaker 8: She had already been in the stand earlier in that
Speaker 8: year about hiding evidence in a totally different case, and
Speaker 8: if you put Amy on that stand, she was going
Speaker 8: to have to be held accountable. And I guess the
Speaker 8: solution to all that was to get me off their
Speaker 8: case and just to dispose of all of this was
Speaker 8: a plea. So my lawyers came to me the night
Speaker 8: before I took the plea with the offer. There was
Speaker 8: a lot of confusion. I kept asking, like, you know,
Speaker 8: how much is it?
Speaker 7: What is it?
Speaker 8: And they just kept reiterating, you will walk out of
Speaker 8: here tomorrow, you can go home, you can be free.
Speaker 8: And my lawyer the first thing I asked them, I
Speaker 8: started crying and I was like, do you know what
Speaker 8: this means?
Speaker 7: And she was like, what I said.
Speaker 8: For them to offer me this plea, I said, this
Speaker 8: means that they know I didn't do it. They went
Speaker 8: to my mom's two sisters that were against me, and
Speaker 8: they agreed to this plea. If they really thought that
Speaker 8: I killed their sister, do you think that they would
Speaker 8: be willing to offer me freedom? I said, I don't
Speaker 8: know what's more awful the fact that I've been here,
Speaker 8: of the fact that these people know or have a
Speaker 8: doubt in their mind and still went through with all
Speaker 8: of this that I could be free. Like I was crying,
Speaker 8: and she was like, Nora, listen, you want five things.
Speaker 8: You want your mom back, It's not going to happen.
Speaker 8: You want your ants to acknowledge the fact that you
Speaker 8: didn't do this, and you want them to love you.
Speaker 8: That's not going to happen. You want people to think
Speaker 8: you didn't do it. The people that believe you and
Speaker 8: that they know you, they're going to be behind you.
Speaker 8: They've always been behind you. The people that have made
Speaker 8: up their mind that you did do this and that
Speaker 8: are opinionated nothing a trial, an overturnal like your conviction
Speaker 8: being overturned, an acquittal, that's not going to change their mind.
Speaker 7: She said, you want to get out and help people.
Speaker 7: You can do that. You want to get out and
Speaker 7: have a baby. You will be young enough to do
Speaker 7: that now, she said, hold on to the things that
Speaker 7: you can do and let go of the things that
Speaker 7: you can't and sign the paper.
Speaker 1: And you did. I think any reasonable person in your
Speaker 1: situation would have signed that paper because you had seen
Speaker 1: the worst of what American justice system can dish out.
Speaker 1: At that point, you knew that they were going to
Speaker 1: go to any lanes they had to to reconvict you
Speaker 1: and send you back to hell, basically for as long
Speaker 1: as they could.
Speaker 8: Right, I'm not in prison anymore, So I'm back logged
Speaker 8: down with a totally group of people.
Speaker 7: I'm restricted from all of my friends. You make friends
Speaker 7: in prison.
Speaker 8: We have Joehaus lawyers in prison called law clerks, so
Speaker 8: all of the people that can understand and empathize and
Speaker 8: actually talk about what the court proceedings and what's going
Speaker 8: on and fully understand them and give me advice. I'm
Speaker 8: not even allowed to communicate with these people. We're not
Speaker 8: allowed to write, we're not allowed to talk, We're not
Speaker 8: allowed to do anything. So I once again was back
Speaker 8: at square one, and I was all alone, and I
Speaker 8: was tired, and I was going to court, and I
Speaker 8: was just sitting there and watching them do the same
Speaker 8: thing to me that they had done all over again,
Speaker 8: and acting like the Supreme Court decision had never happened.
Speaker 8: And so when they offered me a piece of paper
Speaker 8: to sign, it was unreal.
Speaker 7: They told me I would walk out that day.
Speaker 1: You're sort of signing your life away, right, because once
Speaker 1: you signed that Alfred plea. You're not able to sue.
Speaker 7: Them, they're not liable for anything.
Speaker 1: On top of that, you're living as a convicted felon,
Speaker 1: even though the Tennessee Supreme Court has said five to
Speaker 1: nothing that basically that's not true. So it's really a
Speaker 1: Sophie's choice kind of situation, right, and you took the
Speaker 1: logical choice, but you took it under false pretenses, thinking
Speaker 1: that you were going to be freed that day, and
Speaker 1: instead you're sent back to prison for fifteen months, which
Speaker 1: is I don't know, it's really just it's just hard,
Speaker 1: like it's hard for me to just wrap my head around.
Speaker 7: That was my lowest point.
Speaker 8: So when I get there, TDC is like, we did
Speaker 8: not tell your lawyers that you will go home. We
Speaker 8: told your lawyers that you would be eligible for a parole.
Speaker 8: And when I was sitting there taking the plea that day,
Speaker 8: that's what Chris Kraft that George was saying, you'll go
Speaker 8: back and you'll be eligible for parole. But one of
Speaker 8: the things that my attorney's told me before I took
Speaker 8: the stand was, look, don't listen to anything he says. Okay,
Speaker 8: he doesn't know you're getting out we've arranged this with TDOC.
Speaker 8: They just know you're taking the plea. They don't understand
Speaker 8: how much good time you have. So if he says
Speaker 8: something that makes you, like, you know, uncomfortable, ignore it.
Speaker 8: Don't listen to anything he's saying. So I get on
Speaker 8: the stand and he's saying that I'm going to go
Speaker 8: back to prison. At this point, like I'm not even
Speaker 8: acknowledging my lawyers in the courtroom, I'm looking at miss
Speaker 8: pat and she is willing me like a mother because
Speaker 8: I feel like she became my adoptive mother. I'm looking
Speaker 8: at her and my ex boyfriend's mother, Ansley, and these
Speaker 8: two women are a force of nature, like their eye contact.
Speaker 7: Is trying to pull me off the stand.
Speaker 8: They are looking like, oh shit, like something has gone
Speaker 8: terrible wrong. They just knew, you know, because they weren't
Speaker 8: back there when my lawyers were telling me all this,
Speaker 8: and they're thinking that I'm signing this plea and I'm
Speaker 8: getting out that day.
Speaker 7: They've gone out and they've bought me root beer.
Speaker 8: They've bought me clothes, they bought me a toothbrush, and
Speaker 8: they're gonna be waiting on me when I get out
Speaker 8: and they're sitting there listening to the judge saying I'm
Speaker 8: gonna go up for parole, and.
Speaker 7: Everybody we're all really confused.
Speaker 8: So I get off the stand and I go back
Speaker 8: to the back room with my attorneys, and they're like,
Speaker 8: but you're not even smiling, like this is so exciting,
Speaker 8: you're about to walk out of here, and I said,
Speaker 8: I don't. I don't think I'm gonna believe it until
Speaker 8: it actually happens. So I go back to the jail,
Speaker 8: I give away all my stuff. I check the computer.
Speaker 8: It says disposed, So then it's real to me. I'm
Speaker 8: getting out of here. My case is disposed of. So
Speaker 8: they say, nor you have a visit. I go up
Speaker 8: to the top of the steps. It's one of my friends, Jennifer,
Speaker 8: my mom's name, that was actually formally incarcerated with me,
Speaker 8: her and her girlfriend, and they're like, Nora, we asked
Speaker 8: them what time you were getting out, because we were
Speaker 8: just going to wait on you and surprise you, and
Speaker 8: they said, you have a fifteen year old for the
Speaker 8: penitentiary in the computer. And I just left my visit
Speaker 8: and I walked downstairs to the officer and I was like,
Speaker 8: I want you to check that computer again.
Speaker 7: She was like, Nora, we already checked it. And I said, no,
Speaker 7: I want you to check it again.
Speaker 8: And she did it and it said fifteen years because that's
Speaker 8: what I had signed for, so it said fifteen years
Speaker 8: hold TDOC, which is Department of Corrections. So that meant
Speaker 8: that I had to go back to TDOC and they
Speaker 8: needed to calculate my time.
Speaker 7: I went back to.
Speaker 8: TEDC and that was in May of twenty fifteen. When
Speaker 8: I got there, my expiration date, which is the day
Speaker 8: that I would get out, was sitting in July of
Speaker 8: twenty seventeen. I was past my parole eligibility date. So
Speaker 8: I get there and they're like, Nora, you're on the
Speaker 8: parole docket. And I just looked at the counselor and
Speaker 8: I don't think anyone has ever said this before. And
Speaker 8: I looked at her and I said, fuck parol. And
Speaker 8: she was like what. And I was like, I don't
Speaker 8: trust you. I don't trust TDOC, and I don't trust
Speaker 8: the State of Tennessee. And I'm refusing to go up
Speaker 8: for a parole. And she was like, Nord, you cannot
Speaker 8: refuse to go out for a parole. I said, I
Speaker 8: am not going to go up and say I'm sorry
Speaker 8: for a crime I didn't commit. Please let me out,
Speaker 8: and then I'm under state supervision for two years.
Speaker 7: I said.
Speaker 8: I don't have anybody waiting on me out there, I said,
Speaker 8: and I don't trust anybody out there, and I'm going
Speaker 8: to flatten my sentence.
Speaker 7: So let me explain.
Speaker 8: Flatten means that I would sit there and earn my
Speaker 8: good time and meet my date. So I could have
Speaker 8: gone up for parole. I might have gotten it, I
Speaker 8: might not have. But if I would have gone out
Speaker 8: on parole, then that means I would have been under
Speaker 8: the Tennessee State supervision for two more years, which means
Speaker 8: Amy Wyrick would have been.
Speaker 7: Like over me for two more years.
Speaker 8: Isn't about to release what little control I had back
Speaker 8: to them at this point, to be quite honest, nothing personal.
Speaker 8: I didn't trust my lawyers, I didn't trust TDC, I
Speaker 8: didn't trust anyone.
Speaker 7: So I had to trust myself.
Speaker 8: So I sat there for fifteen more months so I
Speaker 8: could walk out of there and never look back.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and think about this. She gets a decision from
Speaker 10: the Tennessee Supreme Court unanimous that puts her in the
Speaker 10: position of she's innocent, no more guilty than you or
Speaker 10: me of this crime, and she waits months and months
Speaker 10: and months to even get a hearing about whether she
Speaker 10: can get bond. There is no daylight but this one
Speaker 10: option that is put in front of her, and then
Speaker 10: the rug is pulled right underneath her. And it's just
Speaker 10: all of this to prevent her from just bringing the
Speaker 10: light of the day to what happened.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 10: We see this over and over again, where you've got
Speaker 10: innocent people who are stuck behind bars with no legal justification,
Speaker 10: and they're given this forced choice because the government holds
Speaker 10: all the cards.
Speaker 1: Norah, Then, what was it like for you the day
Speaker 1: you got out, you finally got out, how'd you feel?
Speaker 7: It was unreal?
Speaker 8: Up until the moment that I walked out this sally
Speaker 8: port the gates, I didn't think I would really get out.
Speaker 8: They had played with They would release me at twelve
Speaker 8: o'clock midnight, then they would release me at four o'clock
Speaker 8: the next day, and then I ended up leaving at
Speaker 8: eight thirty and the warden actually came and told me
Speaker 8: if I told anyone when I was leaving, they wouldn't
Speaker 8: release me at all. But I knew I was expiating,
Speaker 8: and I knew I would get out, and I signed
Speaker 8: the piece of paper, but I didn't believe it, just
Speaker 8: because of everything that had happened on my journey, that
Speaker 8: it would really really happen.
Speaker 7: And I got out and Ansley was there.
Speaker 8: I was so lucky and so happy to have her.
Speaker 8: But I honestly think being out, I knew that my
Speaker 8: mom was gone, and I knew.
Speaker 7: That someone had killed her.
Speaker 8: People talk all the time in prison about going home
Speaker 8: because they have this idea of home, and I don't
Speaker 8: really know what a home is for me right now,
Speaker 8: and so I think getting out has been such a
Speaker 8: blessing and I'm so grateful. And I used to always
Speaker 8: think that getting out was the hard part, getting released,
Speaker 8: getting free, but life after something like this is the
Speaker 8: hard part. I took that plea because I thought I
Speaker 8: would get out that day and that didn't happen. And
Speaker 8: so there are times that I think I wonder that
Speaker 8: if I made a really big mistake, because being a
Speaker 8: fella in today's world is really hard. A lot of
Speaker 8: people aren't like you. They don't understand that the justice
Speaker 8: system is flawed and unfair. Getting a job is hard,
Speaker 8: finding a place to live as hard, but I'm still lucky.
Speaker 7: I find myself.
Speaker 8: When I talk to my friends in prison, it's like
Speaker 8: I don't even want to tell them these things, because
Speaker 8: who am I to complain when they're still sitting in there?
Speaker 7: You know, but these are the things they don't tell
Speaker 7: you when you're in there.
Speaker 1: I think. I guess I'm just going to say, everyone
Speaker 1: who's listening out there, get involved. Donate to your local
Speaker 1: innocence project, go online, read about these issues, write to
Speaker 1: someone in prison. Support organizations like Women Empowered to Become
Speaker 1: Self Sufficient that meant so much to Nora when she
Speaker 1: was in Check them out and vote. Nora can't, but
Speaker 1: you can, and so get out there and make a difference,
Speaker 1: because you know it's time. It's time for us to
Speaker 1: turn this whole tide around. We have a tradition here
Speaker 1: Nora at Wrongful Conviction, which is that to close the show,
Speaker 1: I like to just turn the microphone over to you
Speaker 1: for any closing thoughts that you want to share.
Speaker 8: I don't know, I just I'm just one.
Speaker 7: I'm one of many.
Speaker 8: There are Michelle's and Shane's, and Joscelyn's and Octavia's and
Speaker 8: so many people like me that are sitting inside that
Speaker 8: haven't gotten the opportunity or the chances that I've gotten,
Speaker 8: that are just waiting on someone like the Innocence Project
Speaker 8: to accept their case. So I guess what I would
Speaker 8: say is I just hope that the people are listening.
Speaker 7: R is that like any little bit counts, And I just.
Speaker 8: Hope that people are able to look at this with
Speaker 8: an objectivity that maybe they didn't have.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you both for being on the show,
Speaker 1: Bryce for sharing your wisdom of all these years, and Nora,
Speaker 1: of course you. I can't even know put into words
Speaker 1: how much it means to have you here, and I
Speaker 1: know the best is yet to come for you. We're
Speaker 1: all on your side, and we're fucking pissed too, Sonna.
Speaker 1: We're all gonna have to practice Sarah together. And I
Speaker 1: also want to give special thanks to Emily Basilon, who
Speaker 1: first brought so much attention to your case. Extraordinary writer
Speaker 1: for The New York Times, a scholar at Yale Law School.
Speaker 1: She doesn't fuck around, and another badass, another badass. A
Speaker 1: lot of badass women on your side now, which is great.
Speaker 1: So this has been a very special episode of Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Thanks to you, Nora, and what else can I say?
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, thank you for having me, Thanks
Speaker 1: don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 1: donor into the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 1: orgorg to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time Oscar
Speaker 1: nominade composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one