Speaker 1: I came from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life.
Speaker 1: I went to sleep because September seven was the first
Speaker 1: day of my high school year. I was gonna be
Speaker 1: a senior at twenty two, I was set to start college.
Speaker 1: I woke up and my life was never the same again.
Speaker 1: Cops came out with guns drone, and I never saw
Speaker 1: freedom ever ever since after that. It's like roach Motown.
Speaker 1: Once you get in and I getting out. This is
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction with Jason Flower. Today we have a very
Speaker 1: special guest, Sunny Jacobs, one of my favorite people in
Speaker 1: the world. Sunny Jacob's story is as crazy as it
Speaker 1: can get. Is that fair today? Sunny? It's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: So Sonny was wrongfully convicted in n I'm particularly thrilled
Speaker 1: today because joining Sonny in the studio with me is her. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I could call you a new husband, Peter Frenkle. It's
Speaker 1: a few years now, but he's still a new husband.
Speaker 1: And Sonny's daughter, Christina to Pharaoh, is going to speak
Speaker 1: today publicly for the first time ever. So Sonny, Peter, Christina,
Speaker 1: welcome to ronval conviction very much. So, Sonny, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. Um, you were living where at
Speaker 1: the time that this all went down. At the time
Speaker 1: that this happened, Uh, we had been living in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: but Jesse had gone down to Florida with the promise
Speaker 1: of some work, and um we ended up joining him
Speaker 1: down there. So he went down there originally to do
Speaker 1: some work in Florida. But you went down with the
Speaker 1: two kids afterwards to meet him. Yes, right, and then
Speaker 1: when you went down there, your car broke down. Is
Speaker 1: that what happens? How this all started? Pretty much that's
Speaker 1: how it all started, right, So your car broke down.
Speaker 1: Now your stranded in Florida. You've gotta get back home,
Speaker 1: right right, So take us through it. What happens next?
Speaker 1: You were you were offered a ride, which was turned
Speaker 1: out to be a you know, the beginning the beginning
Speaker 1: of the terrible Sava of Sonny Jacobs, which uh so
Speaker 1: so phill us in filling the audience. Well, Um, the
Speaker 1: car broken down, and Jesse asked a friend of his
Speaker 1: to give us a lift, and uh, we were going
Speaker 1: to go to someplace where he knew someone where we
Speaker 1: could stay and wait for my parents to send some
Speaker 1: money so we could get back home to North Carolina. Right,
Speaker 1: but then you end up you end up at actually
Speaker 1: taking a rest in the car when this happened, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we pulled into a rest area off the highway in Florida. Yep,
Speaker 1: in Florida. This was and Um was in the back
Speaker 1: with the two children. Now, my son at the time
Speaker 1: was nine years old. My daughter was only ten months old.
Speaker 1: She was still nursing, right, yes, she was a and
Speaker 1: um So um Jesse was in the passenger seat and
Speaker 1: his friend who was driving, and then um So we
Speaker 1: were sleeping in the car in the rest area. Nothing
Speaker 1: was going on, There was no crime being committed. There
Speaker 1: was no reason for anybody too. It seems like an
Speaker 1: unlikely place for everything to go wrong completely, I mean
Speaker 1: in your sleep now. Just to give you a visual.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you would meet Sonny, you would
Speaker 1: see that she looks like the least likely person who
Speaker 1: have ever served time in anything other than uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like some of you would meet in a
Speaker 1: coffee shop or in a in a theater or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's uh, she's the least likely person who
Speaker 1: have ever served time on death. At the time, I
Speaker 1: was besides being a young wife and mother. I was
Speaker 1: also a hippie, you know, like hippy Yeah cool. I
Speaker 1: was a hippie and vegetarian. So I mean I was
Speaker 1: totally the least likely person to be in any way
Speaker 1: involved in in a scene where somebody would get killed.
Speaker 1: So you're in the car, you're sleeping, and there's a
Speaker 1: knock knock on the window, right, Well, yeah, we were
Speaker 1: sleeping in the car. And then the police apparently came
Speaker 1: to do a routine check of the rest area. And
Speaker 1: it was in the police notes that they said that
Speaker 1: when they looked in the driver's window, they saw a
Speaker 1: handgun between the driver's feet, and that's what started the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Um, the they pulled open the door, they
Speaker 1: took the gun, they or pulled him out of the car.
Speaker 1: Then they ordered Jesse out of the car. They took
Speaker 1: everyone's I D. You're still in the back seat with
Speaker 1: the kids. I was still in the back seat with
Speaker 1: the kids. I never left the back seat. And they
Speaker 1: called in the driver's identification. And then they wanted Jesse's idea,
Speaker 1: and he was reluctant to give it. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: they asked me my from my I D and um.
Speaker 1: Then the word came back on the police radio that
Speaker 1: the driver from whom they had taken the handgun was
Speaker 1: on parole and as I say, so he was subject
Speaker 1: to arrest. Well, as I say, often a gun and
Speaker 1: being on parole, right, yeah, even in America, you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to have a gun if you're on parole. So
Speaker 1: that changed everything. The policeman then drew his gun and
Speaker 1: he said something like if nobody moved, the next one
Speaker 1: to move is dead. And then there's a gunfire, and
Speaker 1: so I just covered the children. So you're like literally
Speaker 1: laying on top of the children as a mother would, Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean to protect them, and then there's guns and
Speaker 1: you don't know what's going on. At this point seven
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning, it was foggy, it was a
Speaker 1: bit cool still in the morning, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: this insane thing is going on. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: I don't know how any bullets were fired, but it
Speaker 1: was like, all of a sudden, we were in a war.
Speaker 1: And I was over the children until it got quiet,
Speaker 1: and I actually wasn't sure if we were still alive
Speaker 1: because it was so quiet, and then I determined that
Speaker 1: I was breathing. We were all I guess shocked by
Speaker 1: what was happening. And then I looked up to see
Speaker 1: if Jesse was okay, and I saw him just standing there,
Speaker 1: frozen in between the two cars, looking as shocked basically
Speaker 1: as I felt. And the other guy was running around
Speaker 1: the car with a gun in his hand, ordering Jesse
Speaker 1: to put us into the police car. And that point
Speaker 1: we became hostages of the man who had just shot
Speaker 1: the two policemen. Right now, jets more surreal. Right now,
Speaker 1: you're being ordered to get into a police car by
Speaker 1: a guy who just killed two policemen who you thought
Speaker 1: was your friend, who was doing your favorite giving you
Speaker 1: a ride. So it doesn't get much weirder than that.
Speaker 1: And now you've got to take the kids at gunpoint
Speaker 1: and put him in a police car. That's right. And
Speaker 1: as we he helped me out of the car with
Speaker 1: the baby and with my son Eric, Eric slipped and
Speaker 1: fell into a pool of blood, and that's when I
Speaker 1: saw the two policemen on the ground helped Eric up
Speaker 1: and we got We were put into the back of
Speaker 1: the police car Jesse and again in the passenger side,
Speaker 1: and the guy drove us away. You know, if this
Speaker 1: was in a movie, nobody would believe it right. So
Speaker 1: now you're in the police car. What happens next? I
Speaker 1: was thinking in my mind, okay, like, how do we
Speaker 1: get away from this guy? He was racing down the
Speaker 1: highway and because it was on the interstate, then he
Speaker 1: pulls off. He was looking for to change cars. I
Speaker 1: guess he realized that the police car was a little
Speaker 1: too conspicuous. So there was a man, uh an old
Speaker 1: fellow going out to get his his mail, and the
Speaker 1: driver walked up to him, and Jesse followed him. And
Speaker 1: I was still in the back of the car with
Speaker 1: the kids, and I thought, ah, now now I can
Speaker 1: get get get away from here, you know. So I
Speaker 1: tried to open the doors, but you can't open the
Speaker 1: back of a police car. Yeah, so we're stuck. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Jesse came back and said, listen, he says, we have
Speaker 1: to go with him in this man's car. So it
Speaker 1: takes us and they transfer us into what is now
Speaker 1: slightly less conspicuous in a police car and orange Cadillac.
Speaker 1: That's great, this guy's this guy's got a flair for
Speaker 1: the dramatic. So now this other poor man is also hostage.
Speaker 1: They put me and the children in the front seat.
Speaker 1: Jesse and the older man are in the back seat.
Speaker 1: He's driving along and there's very heavy traffic by now,
Speaker 1: right was it's rush hour. It's rush hour, and I
Speaker 1: could hear helicopters above, and I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: maybe the traffic is so bad because maybe there's a
Speaker 1: roadblock or something, and maybe that's a helicopter. And we're
Speaker 1: going to be saved. You're gonna be saved, right, the
Speaker 1: cops are going to come get you this nightmare. And
Speaker 1: what we didn't know at the time was that when
Speaker 1: the man went out to get his mail, his wife
Speaker 1: was watching out the window. Something shouldn't happen to him
Speaker 1: from the building to the post box and back now,
Speaker 1: and she saw the whole thing and she called the police.
Speaker 1: So the police. So this means two things. One, the
Speaker 1: police knew that this man had been kidnapped by this
Speaker 1: other guy who had with the police car and US number. Two,
Speaker 1: they knew that there was a woman, two children, and
Speaker 1: a man hostage in that car in the orange Cadillac
Speaker 1: driving along in the orange cadillock. Now in the front
Speaker 1: with the two children, Jesse's in the back with the
Speaker 1: old man, and we come upon the roadblock. You can
Speaker 1: see it. There's a roadblock. Thank god, I'm thinking he
Speaker 1: makes this insane decision to try to avoid the roadblock,
Speaker 1: at which point he makes a sharp left and all
Speaker 1: the police lined up at the roadblock with their rifles
Speaker 1: open fire on the gun car. Holy ship, again, we
Speaker 1: are being bomb arted by bullets. I covered the children again,
Speaker 1: and the car was bouncing with the bullets, just like
Speaker 1: you know in the movie about Bunny and Clyde, where
Speaker 1: the car is actually bouncing with bullets. That's how it was.
Speaker 1: And then we crashed. We crashed into a semi that
Speaker 1: was parked as part of the roadblock. The police surround
Speaker 1: the car. Um The only one who's actually injured was
Speaker 1: the driver. He was shot in the leg. That's a miracle, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's a miracle that we were all alive. So they
Speaker 1: took him and put him in an ambulance. They took
Speaker 1: Jesse out of the car. They handcuffed him. They took
Speaker 1: the man out of the car. They took him away somewhere,
Speaker 1: and Jesse standing there, handcuffed, and a cop comes from
Speaker 1: the crowd with his gun turned around with the button
Speaker 1: and forward and ran over and smashed Jesse in the
Speaker 1: head and knocked them to the ground, and he said,
Speaker 1: you better get away from me because they're going to
Speaker 1: kill me. Okay, so you're holding his hand, you're holding
Speaker 1: the baby Christina, who's here. Now we can call you
Speaker 1: a miracle baby. Now since you survived before you were
Speaker 1: a year old. You survived two gunfights. It's quite extraordinary,
Speaker 1: very lucky. And she's a lovely, lovely young woman. If
Speaker 1: you'd meet her now, I'm so go ahead. So now
Speaker 1: what I mean even still, what are you thinking? Now?
Speaker 1: Are you thinking because you your saviors are here the cops. No,
Speaker 1: they're not our saviors anymore. But they're pointing guns at me.
Speaker 1: A minute ago they were yeah, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the whole thing turned, and now they're pointing
Speaker 1: guns at me and I I tried to explain that
Speaker 1: we didn't know. I didn't know really what was going on,
Speaker 1: but they didn't. They weren't listening because they were there.
Speaker 1: They had just had two of their comrades at the time.
Speaker 1: I didn't know, but they were killed. They were dead.
Speaker 1: We or one of us are all of us with
Speaker 1: response bowl and it wasn't up to them to figure
Speaker 1: it out. It was up to them to apprehend us.
Speaker 1: And so they take us to an unused portion of
Speaker 1: the railroad track where the police get out of their
Speaker 1: cars and start arguing among themselves whether or not to
Speaker 1: take us in or to simply kill us right there
Speaker 1: and say we tried to escape. Wow, I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: you how many there were, but there was a group
Speaker 1: of them, and I remember there were three of them
Speaker 1: standing right by the car where I was, and they
Speaker 1: were they were so vehement about they were like, you know,
Speaker 1: like when your people are so angry, they start spitting,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I could see the spit coming out
Speaker 1: of the when they were talking, you know, and it
Speaker 1: was it was one of the most frightening moments. And
Speaker 1: like I'm sitting there praying, like I hope that would
Speaker 1: the one I call in my head the voice of
Speaker 1: reason should prevail, which think God. Eventually he did because
Speaker 1: otherwise they were nobody would have known. So um, he
Speaker 1: did prevail. They decided they would take us in. Two
Speaker 1: detectives came in and they started trying to question me,
Speaker 1: and they record. In those days, they had the you know,
Speaker 1: the tape recorders with real tape, you know, and uh
Speaker 1: so they kept trying to ask me what, what what happened,
Speaker 1: and and I kept telling them, I'm really I really
Speaker 1: don't know. I really don't know exactly what happened, because
Speaker 1: just like I told you, they were taking our idea
Speaker 1: and asking us questions, and then they were shooting, and
Speaker 1: I honestly didn't see who were shooting. So they didn't
Speaker 1: believe me because they figure, if you're there, you know
Speaker 1: what happened. So they every time I'd say, you know,
Speaker 1: you're trying to get me to say something that's not true,
Speaker 1: they stopped the recording and start a new recording. While
Speaker 1: we were being um interrogated, the guy, the driver of
Speaker 1: the guy who actually did the killing, from his hospital bed,
Speaker 1: asked to speak to the prosecutor. Now I was this
Speaker 1: is this is how later I found this out. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. We didn't know at the time. But you see,
Speaker 1: he knew he was facing the electric chair, so he
Speaker 1: wanted to make a deal, so he requested to speak
Speaker 1: to the prosecutor. And the prosecutor UH at the time
Speaker 1: was apparently had ambitions to run for district district attorney,
Speaker 1: so rather than get one conviction, he was going to
Speaker 1: get three convictions, and after our trials, he did in
Speaker 1: fact resign as prosecutor and run for attorney on the
Speaker 1: basis of his strong stance against crime. So what happened
Speaker 1: was that the the killer was offered a plea bargain
Speaker 1: for three life sentences in exchange for his testimony against
Speaker 1: Jesse and me. These plea bargains should not be allowed
Speaker 1: in capital cases because it's always going to be the
Speaker 1: most guilty party that takes the plea bargain because they're
Speaker 1: the one who has the most to lose. Well, they
Speaker 1: have everything to lose their life. Well, I thought, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: So I thought, well, when I found out about it,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, this is a no brainer. No innocent
Speaker 1: person would accept three life sentences. I mean, that's not
Speaker 1: a bargain, you know, not to an innocent person. So
Speaker 1: I figured the jury will do this, they'll know, and
Speaker 1: we'll go home. I never stood the concept of three
Speaker 1: life senses. Does anyone have three lives? I don't know why.
Speaker 1: In this country. Is very odd. I'm never like, I mean, anyway,
Speaker 1: it's very very odd. And he eventually got out. But
Speaker 1: that's another story, so it's even weird. It's another story.
Speaker 1: But but he's also back in. So it just so
Speaker 1: people shouldn't how do you have three life why don't
Speaker 1: you give the guy one life sense and keep him
Speaker 1: in instead of three life senses? I don't know whatever.
Speaker 1: That's just another aspect of the case that's that's very strange,
Speaker 1: and the system that's very strange. But anyway, so go ahead.
Speaker 1: So um, so this plea plea arrangement was made unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to us. And also in order to to justify giving
Speaker 1: the plea bargain, they have to give the person a
Speaker 1: polygraph test to prove that they're not making the deal
Speaker 1: with the real killer. Okay, so apparently he was given
Speaker 1: a polygraph test and they submitted a report that he
Speaker 1: passed a polygraph test. Therefore they were justified in making
Speaker 1: the plea bargain. Jesse's trial went first. He was tried, convicted,
Speaker 1: and sentenced to death in four days. My trial last
Speaker 1: two weeks. Um. We all were appointed the public defender.
Speaker 1: But because now one was going to testify against the others,
Speaker 1: they had to give us special public defenders, which is
Speaker 1: regular lawyers who act as who represent you as if
Speaker 1: they were the public defender. Um, And they don't get
Speaker 1: paid a lot, so they don't always do luck because
Speaker 1: they have other clients. They have to make a living.
Speaker 1: So Um and my parents were asked, actually, do you
Speaker 1: want to maybe get a higher a lawyer. But we thought,
Speaker 1: why should they have to mortgage their home to try
Speaker 1: to get me a lawyer, because we were told even
Speaker 1: in those days to be a hundred thousand dollars or more.
Speaker 1: In those days, that was a total fortune. So I said,
Speaker 1: I said, there's no need to do that. I'm completely innocent.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's not like there was even a fingerprint.
Speaker 1: There's nothing. I was absolutely nothing against me. So we
Speaker 1: didn't have the dream team and we didn't have the
Speaker 1: expert witnesses or whatever. And my lawyer at the time,
Speaker 1: the appointed lawyer, said, we're not going to put up
Speaker 1: a defense because there's absolutely no nothing against you. There's
Speaker 1: no evidence against you, and it gives me a better
Speaker 1: position in the closing arguments. You know, whatever, you say,
Speaker 1: you're my lawyer. I'm not scared. I didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: I still believed in truth, justice, in the American way,
Speaker 1: in Superman and all those things. So Um. In the
Speaker 1: second week of the trial, the jury started asking questions,
Speaker 1: they weren't convinced by the killer. So it turns out
Speaker 1: that the prosecutor or his team, whoever it was, went
Speaker 1: and located a girl in the jail who had been
Speaker 1: arrested for a minor drugs charge and UM, she and
Speaker 1: her boyfriend were arrested, and they told her that if
Speaker 1: she could help them to convict me, she and her
Speaker 1: boyfriend would release released the next day. If they couldn't,
Speaker 1: then she would go to prison for a long time
Speaker 1: in her life would be ruined, and she'd never get
Speaker 1: back to university. Jail House snitches are actually, uh, you know.
Speaker 1: In the most recent report from the Center for Wrongful
Speaker 1: Convictions UM, it was shown that in almost forty six
Speaker 1: percent of the capital cases that have been overturned, a
Speaker 1: jail house snitch was the sort of deciding factor. Right, so, well,
Speaker 1: she said that I spoke to her in the one
Speaker 1: night that they put her in the cell block where
Speaker 1: I was, and I never spoke to her that. She
Speaker 1: said that I told her that I did it, I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, and I'd do it again, Like all right,
Speaker 1: somebody would really say that to a strange parerson, you know,
Speaker 1: it's your I thought now they're really going to know
Speaker 1: that this is ridiculous. And the jury wasn't convinced, and
Speaker 1: in fact, they asked more questions, and they were starting
Speaker 1: to ask questions about like maybe could they at least
Speaker 1: consider accomplice or something like that. And it was as
Speaker 1: a result of the judge's instructions to the jury at
Speaker 1: that point that they felt that they had no choice
Speaker 1: to convict, but to convict because we didn't put up
Speaker 1: a defense. And I should say that the judge had
Speaker 1: been a former highway patrolman and we had asked him
Speaker 1: to recuse himself from the cases because you couldn't possibly
Speaker 1: be um non biased in the case that involved the
Speaker 1: killing a policeman if you had been part of that
Speaker 1: brotherhood yourself. But he refused to step down from the cases.
Speaker 1: So right was worth noting that the judge judge had
Speaker 1: a nickname which was Maximum Dan. Yes, and he kept
Speaker 1: a little miniature electric chair on his desk that he
Speaker 1: used to do zibibi. You know, let's just reflect on
Speaker 1: that for a moment. So you have a judge, this
Speaker 1: is America. You have a judge who's a former state
Speaker 1: trooper presiding over a trial in which a state trooper.
Speaker 1: Was he a state trooper was killed? There's no reason
Speaker 1: to think that he wouldn't be totally objective under those circumstances.
Speaker 1: And he's got an electric chair on his desk going
Speaker 1: zoo right, touching it and like almost like taunting you, right,
Speaker 1: And he and his name was Maximum Dan so um.
Speaker 1: It was as a result though, of his explanation of
Speaker 1: the law to the jurors that they felt they had
Speaker 1: no choice but to convict. Then comes the sentencing phase.
Speaker 1: And in the sentencing phase, they have to be unanimous
Speaker 1: in order to give a death sentence. Okay, And there
Speaker 1: was one juror, And this is really important for people
Speaker 1: to know because people think, you know, one person doesn't
Speaker 1: make a difference. One person does make a difference. Because
Speaker 1: this juror wasn't convinced. He wasn't really convinced that they
Speaker 1: should have convicted me, but he surely wasn't going to
Speaker 1: sentence me to death. And so he stood up for
Speaker 1: what he believed in the face of all the pressure
Speaker 1: from the other jurors to agree with them. And as
Speaker 1: it's as a result of his integrity that my jury
Speaker 1: wasn't able to be unanimous and I was sentenced to life.
Speaker 1: That's where the judge gets involved, right, And this principle
Speaker 1: of judicial override is something I want to talk about
Speaker 1: because this judge then overrode the jury, right, and he
Speaker 1: decided that you should be sentenced to death. Right. And
Speaker 1: that's an interesting thing to talk about because there were
Speaker 1: only three states in which this principle of judicial override
Speaker 1: was constitution was it was was considered constitutional. Now there's
Speaker 1: only one, and it won't shock you to know that
Speaker 1: it's Alabama. Even Florida has had it overturned, as has Delaware,
Speaker 1: which was the other holdout. So not now only an
Speaker 1: Alabama can it happened, And judicial override has uh. It's
Speaker 1: been an issue in about a quarter of the death
Speaker 1: penalty cases since the death penalty was re enacted in
Speaker 1: the seventies, and yet it's been a factor in fifty
Speaker 1: of the death sentences that have been overturned. So what
Speaker 1: that tells you is that the jury is very focused on,
Speaker 1: or or at least interested in the idea that they
Speaker 1: they may be convicting, but they may have enough of
Speaker 1: a shred of a doubt that they don't want to
Speaker 1: sentence you to death. And that finality, but the judge,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, doesn't feel the same compunction. And in
Speaker 1: your case, it's obvious why he was a former state
Speaker 1: trooper and he was a I who was a you know,
Speaker 1: a very Uh he was maximum dan right he was
Speaker 1: going to throw the death penalty if he was going
Speaker 1: to throw it out a vegetarian hippie, uh like you.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Um, so you're sentenced to death. Um, you
Speaker 1: end up on there is at this point, there is
Speaker 1: no death row for women in Florida. Right. Oh no,
Speaker 1: because in n there had been a three year moratorium
Speaker 1: just prior to to our cases and they had um
Speaker 1: changed all the death sentences to life, so there wasn't
Speaker 1: there were very few men on death row and there
Speaker 1: were no women. So I became the only woman in
Speaker 1: the United States with a sentence of death at that time. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a sort of a distinction, I suppose. And Um,
Speaker 1: so they didn't actually know what they were going to
Speaker 1: do with me, so everybody was kind of speculating in
Speaker 1: the jail what they would do with me, and um,
Speaker 1: what they did is they cleared out a building that
Speaker 1: had been used for disciplinary purposes, like if there had
Speaker 1: been a riot in the prisoner or whatever, and they
Speaker 1: had to lock up a lot of peak booll That
Speaker 1: was what that building had been used for. So there
Speaker 1: were a number of cells on each side. It was
Speaker 1: like a dungeon. Like I'll just say six, I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure anymore. How there were six cells on each
Speaker 1: side and in the in the front there was an
Speaker 1: office where the guard would stay, and the whole building
Speaker 1: was surrounded by its own barbed wire fence within the
Speaker 1: barbed wire of the prison itself. No other prisoners were
Speaker 1: allowed in proximity of that building. So there you are
Speaker 1: all alone, right, There's nobody else in there. I was
Speaker 1: the only person in that building. How insane is that?
Speaker 1: When I was there, I was locked up twenty four
Speaker 1: hours twenty four hours a day in a tiny cell.
Speaker 1: That's right. It was six steps from the door to
Speaker 1: the toilet, and I could reach out both my arms
Speaker 1: and touch the side walls. There was a metal shelf
Speaker 1: with a thin mattress that was my bed, and then
Speaker 1: there was a toilet and sync combination. That was all
Speaker 1: that was in the cell. I spent the first five
Speaker 1: years of the seventeen year is that it took to
Speaker 1: resolve this in solitary confinement sense to death. After five
Speaker 1: years in solitary confinement, finally my first appeal came up.
Speaker 1: It took that long in in those days, and as
Speaker 1: a result of the judge overruling the jury without giving
Speaker 1: a proper written reason for having done so, they had
Speaker 1: to change my sentence from death to life. So then
Speaker 1: they put me in the prison population, and which was
Speaker 1: another strange circumstance to try to deal with after having
Speaker 1: been first a free person and then isolated for five
Speaker 1: years and then be put into the prison population. So
Speaker 1: that was another thing. But then after year, after my
Speaker 1: sentence was changed from death to life, that's when my
Speaker 1: parents um were killed in a plane crash. The worst
Speaker 1: part was that my children then became orphans again. And
Speaker 1: by then my daughter was about seven six years old.
Speaker 1: And you remember it, I do remember it very clearly.
Speaker 1: Ask you, I'm in awe of your mother. Do you
Speaker 1: watch that? You do you listen to her and just say,
Speaker 1: I mean, who is she's like? Does she have a
Speaker 1: cake that she wears around at night? Like that? You
Speaker 1: have to tell everyone, my mom is the most amazing
Speaker 1: person you'll ever meet. She's my favorite. I mean and
Speaker 1: and then uh, and Peter, we haven't even gotten to
Speaker 1: you yet. Was also the funniest woman in the world
Speaker 1: and so sunny. So then, yes, a number of things
Speaker 1: happened in the interim um. At one point, the guy
Speaker 1: who actually did the killing was bragging in prison about
Speaker 1: how he had killed the two officers, and you know,
Speaker 1: he had these other two people on death row for
Speaker 1: what he'd done. He confessed a number of times, and
Speaker 1: on one occasion some other prisoners came forward and actually,
Speaker 1: we're willing to go to court and testify, but the
Speaker 1: judge ruled that it was prisoner's word wasn't believable. So
Speaker 1: how come it's believable if they testify against you, but
Speaker 1: it's not believable if they testify for you, because it's
Speaker 1: any convenient for them. That's why, you know. So we
Speaker 1: didn't prevail. And when that happened, Jesse was like, this
Speaker 1: is it. They were going home. You know, I told
Speaker 1: you keep your spirits up. He was always trying to
Speaker 1: keep my spirits up. He told you this by letters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you knew that the real killer had been bragging
Speaker 1: and had essentially confessed. So you're like, now we're going home.
Speaker 1: I mean obviously right. But we didn't go home. They
Speaker 1: didn't go home, In fact, quite the opposite. And it
Speaker 1: was that at that hearing that they bought brought us
Speaker 1: both to court. That's the last time I ever saw
Speaker 1: Jesse actually in person. I always advise people, if you're
Speaker 1: going to have to go into the appeals process, to
Speaker 1: get very young lawyer, because my original appeals lawyer died
Speaker 1: of art attack before the appeals process could be completed,
Speaker 1: because it takes so many years. As you know, people
Speaker 1: spent twenty thirty years on death row before they're exonerated.
Speaker 1: Lawyer who you anyway, So anyway, these were two young
Speaker 1: lawyers who were mentoring under him, and they both decided
Speaker 1: they would continue to fight for my case because they
Speaker 1: believed in my innocence. Thank god, in the eleventh year,
Speaker 1: these two young lawyers who paired up and then eventually married. Uh,
Speaker 1: give me the use of a private investigator from some
Speaker 1: other call into it. Paid for it for one day.
Speaker 1: And I want to find the woman, the young woman
Speaker 1: who testified against me in the trial, right, the one
Speaker 1: that we called the jailhouse snitch. So they said, forget
Speaker 1: about it. She's a drug addict, she's probably dead, but
Speaker 1: she wasn't because after this happened, she cleaned up her
Speaker 1: life and she never looked back. And she moved to
Speaker 1: Wyoming somewhere, and she was taking care of her sick father,
Speaker 1: and she had a little family of her own, and
Speaker 1: she had no idea what happened to me. She didn't
Speaker 1: even know. So the lawyer, the investigative founder, the lawyer's
Speaker 1: going they see her, and she cried and she apologized.
Speaker 1: She was devastated to find out that what at least
Speaker 1: partly as a result of what she had done, had
Speaker 1: happened to me. But they she was she would do
Speaker 1: anything except come back to Florida. And there's a reason
Speaker 1: why she want to come back to her Yeah, because
Speaker 1: she was scared to death because the prosecutor was now
Speaker 1: a district attorney, even more powerful, and she was afraid
Speaker 1: that he would find a way to put her in
Speaker 1: prison too, maybe for perjury that he helped her do.
Speaker 1: So she was terrified. And unless she was willing to
Speaker 1: come back to testify and be cross examined, we couldn't
Speaker 1: use her testimony. The prosecutor sent a couple of his
Speaker 1: guys out to Wyoming to talk to her. Father to
Speaker 1: have him convince his daughter that she shouldn't come back
Speaker 1: and get involved her. Yes, and that's what made her
Speaker 1: come back. She got so mad that they would dare
Speaker 1: to disturb her sick father, that she came back. And
Speaker 1: she is a hero. She's heroic. We had a federal hearing.
Speaker 1: She testified, She took the stand, She told everything that happened.
Speaker 1: She sat there and apologized to me. She cried. Then
Speaker 1: it was the prosecutors turned to cross examined. As he
Speaker 1: approached the bench where she said, she grabbed her chest.
Speaker 1: She started a hyper mentally and she had a heart attack.
Speaker 1: And honestly, all I could think of at that moment
Speaker 1: was please God, don't let her die before a cross examination. Please,
Speaker 1: because unless we could cross examined, you can't use your testimony.
Speaker 1: Everything she said would have been for nothing. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the medical person came in. Uh, they brought
Speaker 1: the paramedics. They took her away in an ambulance, and
Speaker 1: we didn't know what was going to happen. Uh. Finally, um,
Speaker 1: she recovered. She went back to Wyoming, and the judge
Speaker 1: said that we could videotape her testimony from Wyoming, so
Speaker 1: they all went out there and they did the cross
Speaker 1: examination whatever, and in the end the judge ruled that
Speaker 1: it was her word former drug addict, against the word
Speaker 1: of the upstanding citizen, the prosecutor, and we didn't prevail again.
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, was this before or after Jesse was executed?
Speaker 1: That was in the eleventh year, right, so he was
Speaker 1: still Yes, in the fifteenth year or incarceration, Jesse received
Speaker 1: his third death warrant, which is normally fatal, and in
Speaker 1: his case it was as well, and he was taken
Speaker 1: to the electric chair, right. And then it gets worse
Speaker 1: because in Jesse's case, and people may remember this because
Speaker 1: it's a very well documented and famous, uh, tragedy, tragic situation. Um.
Speaker 1: So in Jesse's case, uh, he went to the electric chair,
Speaker 1: but the electric chair malfunctioned. It was known as old sparky, right,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't exactly a modern piece of equipment by prisoners,
Speaker 1: built by prisoners, And there's at least the theory going
Speaker 1: around that they may have deliberately tampered with it in
Speaker 1: order to make his execution more like a torture. Yes,
Speaker 1: because he had of course been convicted of killing two
Speaker 1: police officers. So um So, in his case, the electric
Speaker 1: air amount functioned. It took over ten minutes for him
Speaker 1: to die. Took thirteen and a half minutes for Jesse
Speaker 1: to Pharaoh to die. And the word was in the
Speaker 1: prison that they had substituted the natural sea sponge in
Speaker 1: the helmet for with an artificial one, so that when
Speaker 1: they pulled the switch instead of dying, instead of conducting
Speaker 1: the current properly. Witnesses on behalf of the media said
Speaker 1: that the flame shot two ft in the air out
Speaker 1: of his head, and that smoke came out of his ears,
Speaker 1: and then it took thirteen and a half minutes for
Speaker 1: Jesse tafarair tone And um we shouldn't have a death
Speaker 1: penalty in this country in my opinion at all. I
Speaker 1: don't think the death penalty should exist in any country,
Speaker 1: because if you believe in the death penalty, you have
Speaker 1: to be willing to accept the idea that people like
Speaker 1: Jesse ta Fair are going to be executed. There is
Speaker 1: no perfect system, there is no way to make sure
Speaker 1: you've got it right. There's always going to be human error.
Speaker 1: You can't get that back, um so, so Jesse's actually
Speaker 1: can't give him back to his children either. No, you
Speaker 1: can't give him back to his children. UM. I mean
Speaker 1: and and Christina, I mean, I can't even it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to even bring myself to ask you, um,
Speaker 1: what you experienced during this period of time. I mean,
Speaker 1: were you aware that your parents were innocent? How No,
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware they were innocent, but I mean I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't believe it either. Now I've I've blacked out
Speaker 1: a lot from it, just as a coping mechanism for myself.
Speaker 1: Not blacked out. I remember a lot of things. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't really honestly remember what I thought. I just
Speaker 1: knew that they were gone. And you know, my mom
Speaker 1: was always telling me, you know, I'm coming home home,
Speaker 1: you know, coming home soon. You know, I just wanted
Speaker 1: them back. I don't think I care. I don't think
Speaker 1: I cared. I just wanted my parents back. Um. It's
Speaker 1: funny because the day might they killed my father. UM.
Speaker 1: I had two friends with me and I saw them
Speaker 1: both yesterday after like twenty years, both of them that
Speaker 1: the we were children. And I'll never forget that morning
Speaker 1: because I wanted to go to school. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be home sinking in the news and my parents
Speaker 1: are watching it. It's now and my two friends Sarah
Speaker 1: and Marvin were on my bus with me. But I
Speaker 1: was the first one on the bus. And when I
Speaker 1: got on the bus, the bus driver was actually listening
Speaker 1: to it on the radio and I could hear it,
Speaker 1: and she didn't know. And the next up the bus
Speaker 1: driver didn't know that my father right, So the next
Speaker 1: stop was my friend Sarah, and I'm just sitting stoic
Speaker 1: on the bus. I probably was crying. Sarah knew what
Speaker 1: was happening, and um, she came and she just got
Speaker 1: on the bus and sat on one side of me
Speaker 1: and put her arm around me. We didn't say a word.
Speaker 1: Then my friend Marvin, who's an NYPD officer here by
Speaker 1: the way, Um, but he was now but we were kids,
Speaker 1: then got on the bus and he sat on my
Speaker 1: other side and just put his arm around me. And
Speaker 1: they held me in love the entire way to school,
Speaker 1: and they knew what was happening. And um, I didn't
Speaker 1: end up staying in school because I had an issue
Speaker 1: while I was at school and I got sent home,
Speaker 1: which I should have been home anyway, But um, I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't know about the malfunction of the chair,
Speaker 1: and I actually found out walking through the mall. I
Speaker 1: think it was the next day through a friend of
Speaker 1: mine who was like, you know, I'm really sorry about
Speaker 1: your dad, and I'm like thanks, you know. He's like,
Speaker 1: it's terrible what happened, and I'm like it is and
Speaker 1: he goes, no, but how his head caught fire? And
Speaker 1: I had I didn't know. Nobody told me and I
Speaker 1: wasn't watching TV. I wasn't I was trying not to
Speaker 1: pay attention to it, to tell you the truth, And
Speaker 1: that's how I found out. And I was angry, to
Speaker 1: say the least, that nobody told me. And I'm hearing
Speaker 1: it from not a stranger, but not somebody I should
Speaker 1: be hearing that from either. And it was really hard.
Speaker 1: I had seen my dad, was it just a few
Speaker 1: days before, right, And and it was a really hard visit,
Speaker 1: knowing what was going to happen to him, really emotional
Speaker 1: visiting my grandmother, my grandma Ky. His mother somehow finagled
Speaker 1: me to get an actual contact visit because it was
Speaker 1: my only visit with my father behind glass and it
Speaker 1: was always contact visits, so knowing it's the last time
Speaker 1: I'm going to see him. I really wanted to sit
Speaker 1: on his lap. I wanted to give him a hug.
Speaker 1: I wanted to kiss his face, you know. And somehow
Speaker 1: Chief andagled it. But they did have to strip search me,
Speaker 1: which was weird because I'm a kid, but I didn't care.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be with my dad. So but
Speaker 1: I I'll never forget that day. Yeah, insane, and I
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what to say about it.
Speaker 1: But it was very, very, very hard because I'm connected
Speaker 1: with my father, I'm connected with my mother on a
Speaker 1: different level. I can feel them, I can, you know.
Speaker 1: So I knew he was gone is you know. And
Speaker 1: then knowing what happened to him made it even harder.
Speaker 1: And not being told immediately too, It's like wow. And
Speaker 1: then you have everyone you know feeling sad for you
Speaker 1: and makes it worse, you know. And then I got
Speaker 1: sent away to school. I got sent away to boarding school,
Speaker 1: like about six months later, eight months later. See, there's
Speaker 1: no help for the families of people who are in
Speaker 1: death row. There's no help at all. I can't even talk. Um, well,
Speaker 1: I'll help you out here. Um, you know, it was
Speaker 1: it's no one knows what to do there's there's actually
Speaker 1: no help for the families. I mean, when when's ats
Speaker 1: very least, when somebody's being executed, there should be somebody
Speaker 1: for their family, and there isn't. So at first I
Speaker 1: was very upset and angry at the foster parents who
Speaker 1: are taking care of Tina, to to know that instead
Speaker 1: of keeping her there and loving her and giving her
Speaker 1: that family support and letting her be perhaps with me
Speaker 1: and grand Mackay, you know, so we could grieve together,
Speaker 1: they she was sent away. But to be fair, I
Speaker 1: understand now they didn't know what the heck to do.
Speaker 1: What do you do with this child? How do you
Speaker 1: deal with this? And it's shame, the shame of it.
Speaker 1: So they sent her away to a school for children
Speaker 1: with emotional behavioral problems and she was locked up until
Speaker 1: she was eighteen years old. So now she's locked up too.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and in a strange way, it gave us
Speaker 1: a commonality, you know, like, yeah, I understand what it's
Speaker 1: like to be locked up, ma, because I was locked
Speaker 1: up too. So the suffering of these wrongful convictions isn't
Speaker 1: confined to the one person. It's their whole family that suffers.
Speaker 1: And some of the people whose children have family to
Speaker 1: go to that you know, they can stay with too,
Speaker 1: much better than the people whose children don't have family
Speaker 1: to stay with and end up in foster care because
Speaker 1: they just they just don't have a chance. The stigma
Speaker 1: um on top of everything else. Because for a little Christina,
Speaker 1: you know, to be getting that sympathy is sort of nice.
Speaker 1: But even that's got to be complicated because your friends
Speaker 1: didn't know if your father was a cop killer or not, right,
Speaker 1: you didn't even know. And I drew up in a
Speaker 1: neighborhood like it was upper middle class neighborhoods, So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of maybe keeping up with the Joneses, if
Speaker 1: I can say that. And you know, the people I
Speaker 1: was with, you know, they didn't want everybody to know
Speaker 1: my story because again, you know, people are gonna judge.
Speaker 1: You know, oh my gosh, you have this child in
Speaker 1: your house, you know, so you know, and I just
Speaker 1: showed up out of nowhere and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, part of their family, and I have brother,
Speaker 1: and so it's like it's complicated. It's really really complicated.
Speaker 1: And yes, I would, I would go to visit my
Speaker 1: parents and I would I would come back to school,
Speaker 1: and obviously I would have not mental issues, but I
Speaker 1: would have emotional issues going on. I'm just you know,
Speaker 1: I go, I take you know, a week out of school,
Speaker 1: and I'm going from prison to prison, and I'm getting sick.
Speaker 1: I have double ear infections. You know, I'm a boss
Speaker 1: to Dad's was what like seven hours up to Dad's prison.
Speaker 1: You know, I would fly by myself. It was very
Speaker 1: hard as a as a child. And again I don't
Speaker 1: remember a lot of it, but I do remember having
Speaker 1: a little trouble at school when I've come back and
Speaker 1: there was an adjustment again. And you know, I just
Speaker 1: visited both my parents in prison and from prison to
Speaker 1: prison until like that to the point where, um, apparently
Speaker 1: I felt it was just too disruptive to their lives
Speaker 1: to keep bringing her, and they stopped. So then finally, uh,
Speaker 1: just after Jesse's execution, Uh, a friend of mine, a
Speaker 1: childhood friend, her name is Mickey Diakov. She came to
Speaker 1: visit me because she wanted to console me over what
Speaker 1: had happened. I mean, the whole country, the whole world,
Speaker 1: who had heard what happened to Jesse. In fact, they
Speaker 1: stopped using the electric chair in Florida as a result
Speaker 1: of Jesse's execution fell. I was fifteen and living in
Speaker 1: New York and I heard about it, so thousand miles away. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: people over the world heard about it. And Jesse said,
Speaker 1: they will remember my name. That was one of the
Speaker 1: last things he said. We had a ten minute phone
Speaker 1: call just before he was execution, just maybe a few
Speaker 1: hours before. Chris, do you remember the last thing he
Speaker 1: said to you? He said, to be brave? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you are and I am. I think if he could
Speaker 1: see you now, he would be extremely proud. He can
Speaker 1: see so um. Mickey came to visit me, and she said,
Speaker 1: what can I do to help you? Because we were
Speaker 1: kids growing up on Long Island together, and I was
Speaker 1: like the most least likely person in the whole world
Speaker 1: to ever be in any way involved in something like this,
Speaker 1: and everybody that knew we knew that. So she said,
Speaker 1: what can I do? Can I talk to a lawyer,
Speaker 1: because she's a documentary filmmaker and she has research skills,
Speaker 1: and her partner is a civil lawyer, but still a
Speaker 1: lawyer that knows about how the law works, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to help me, So I said, sure, go talk
Speaker 1: to my lawyer, fine, you know, so they did. And
Speaker 1: as a result of that, about two and a half
Speaker 1: years after Jesse was executed, they were able to put
Speaker 1: together my habeas corpus in a way with diagrams, which
Speaker 1: they had to get special permissions, first time they ever
Speaker 1: used diagrams and a habeas corpus, and they were able
Speaker 1: to clearly show what we had been trying to show
Speaker 1: for years is that I couldn't and Jesse couldn't possibly
Speaker 1: have committed this crime, and my sentence and conviction were
Speaker 1: overturned and I should have been free. But as you know,
Speaker 1: they don't like to admit they're wrong exactly, so um
Speaker 1: they threatened to take me to a new trial. And
Speaker 1: in those days it was just just I think I
Speaker 1: was the second person after Alfred that they did this.
Speaker 1: The the Alfred lee is a thing where they say,
Speaker 1: if you let us convict you of a lesser charge,
Speaker 1: you don't have to plead guilty. You can maintain your
Speaker 1: innocence and then you can leave. You can be free.
Speaker 1: But if not, we're going to take you back to
Speaker 1: a new trial. It could take years, we might sentence
Speaker 1: you to death again. And now they're more desperate than before,
Speaker 1: because now it's going to show all the illegal things
Speaker 1: that they did, so they're really going to be desperate.
Speaker 1: We already knew that they had another false witness already
Speaker 1: lined up to come to the new trial. I even
Speaker 1: heard that she was promised a white couch for her
Speaker 1: living room in exchange for her testimony. White couch got
Speaker 1: orange cadillacs and white couches. I mean, this story is
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Nikki and Christie that my friends
Speaker 1: who are helping me at the time to help without
Speaker 1: helping working with my lawyers, they were warned that it
Speaker 1: was dangerous to even try to help, and that they
Speaker 1: were being followed and that their phones were being tapped.
Speaker 1: Everyone was so afraid because of the power. You know,
Speaker 1: a person in that position has a lot of power,
Speaker 1: and um, they almost all the power. Actually, yes, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting how it works because when someone
Speaker 1: is accused of crime, the police gathered through all the evidence,
Speaker 1: they give it over to the prosecutor. The prosecutor then
Speaker 1: decides which parts he is going to give to the
Speaker 1: defense and which parts he doesn't have to buy law
Speaker 1: gifted the offense to the defense, and then they have
Speaker 1: the trial so it's like we have a deck of cards,
Speaker 1: fifty two cards. I have all the cards. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look at them. I'm gonna decide which one is I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you, and now we're gonna play. You're
Speaker 1: gonna play with me, of course not because the deck
Speaker 1: is totally stacked. I decide which cards you can have.
Speaker 1: I'm not giving you all the aces I can tell you.
Speaker 1: So that's how that's how it works. It's it's really
Speaker 1: not fair to put another human being in that position,
Speaker 1: because look, we're all subject to human nature. Okay, everybody
Speaker 1: wants to win, everybody wants to be the best. And
Speaker 1: if there's nobody ever going to know, come on, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody's ever gonna know that you hid that one card.
Speaker 1: We have a situation where there's these hearings going on.
Speaker 1: I am now offered a deal. They offered to me.
Speaker 1: This is before the offer plea thing comes up. They
Speaker 1: offered to me. They say, Okay, we're having these hearings,
Speaker 1: so exactly this is it's interesting what happened hearings. First
Speaker 1: of all, in the hearings, we find out about the
Speaker 1: fact that, uh, there was a polygraph test. Now Mickey says,
Speaker 1: why should we believe them, they lied about so much.
Speaker 1: We want to see this polygraph test, the actual graph
Speaker 1: that came off the machine. Right, So they get ahold
Speaker 1: of the polygraph tests and they hire a guy who
Speaker 1: was a former policeman who is now a polygraph expert,
Speaker 1: and he takes a look at it and he says,
Speaker 1: he didn't pass the polygraph test. He failed the polygraph
Speaker 1: test where it said he passed, he actually failed. So
Speaker 1: the report that they entered saying he passed the polygraph
Speaker 1: test was a lie. They entered a false report, and
Speaker 1: that was the basis of their arrangement with him in
Speaker 1: the first place. That day they come to me and
Speaker 1: they say, okay, we're gonna offer you a deal. If
Speaker 1: you'll say that the guy they made the deal with
Speaker 1: didn't do it and I didn't do it, we'll let
Speaker 1: you go free today. You can have a steak dinner today.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, I'm a vegetarian. What were they trying to say?
Speaker 1: If I didn't do it and the other guy didn't
Speaker 1: do it, then who did it? The figure will blame Jesse.
Speaker 1: He's dead anyway, right, And we all go out and
Speaker 1: E's fine, but I'm not doing that. Okay. First of all,
Speaker 1: he still has children and a mother. Second of all,
Speaker 1: I they took everything from me. They took my whole
Speaker 1: life from me. They took everything from but my integrity.
Speaker 1: And it was like I felt like I was. It
Speaker 1: was like dealing with the devil. Now. They wanted that
Speaker 1: last thing. They wanted my very soul, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to do it because I had made a life
Speaker 1: for myself in prison. We started a little community group
Speaker 1: to try to make life better for the life. First
Speaker 1: we we um I was teaching math and and and
Speaker 1: English in the school. I was teaching yoga because yoga
Speaker 1: and meditation and prayer was what saved me while I
Speaker 1: was on death row. There was not enough time to
Speaker 1: tell everything, but it was my practice of yoga that
Speaker 1: helped me with the physical effects of all the emotions,
Speaker 1: and meditation that helped me to clear myself spiritually, and
Speaker 1: prayer which gave me the hope that there was something
Speaker 1: out there stronger than them that could see me through.
Speaker 1: And so I had made a life for myself in there.
Speaker 1: I could hold my head up and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: at least I have integrity, whereas if I were to
Speaker 1: do that. No matter where you are, you have to
Speaker 1: live with yourself. So I said, I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 1: need steak, Thank you very much. Take me back to prison.
Speaker 1: They didn't know they were dealing with so I said,
Speaker 1: take me back, and they did. They took me back.
Speaker 1: Things went on usually. I went back to my job
Speaker 1: in the prison whatever, and and then ah, a week
Speaker 1: or so later, I got called back on a Friday.
Speaker 1: Now you get called back to the court on a Friday.
Speaker 1: They know that. Everybody's sure you're going home because they
Speaker 1: don't want to keep you in the county over the weekend.
Speaker 1: So everybody lined, they lined the walkways. They were like,
Speaker 1: you're going home. You're going home. Oh, They're all pat
Speaker 1: me on the back, say a lot to your children.
Speaker 1: You know you're going home. Um. They took me back
Speaker 1: to court and I was like praying, and I was
Speaker 1: like I could almost feel my parents and Jesse around me,
Speaker 1: you know, in the van, because you're you know, you've
Speaker 1: got your hands handcuffed with the box, you know, so
Speaker 1: you can't and your feet handcuffed and everything feet coffed.
Speaker 1: I guess you're going And they took me back to
Speaker 1: court and my lawyers say to me, um, okay, they're
Speaker 1: offering you this deal, another deal this time. They say
Speaker 1: that if you'll just allow them to read into the record,
Speaker 1: you know, a conviction of a listed degree, you don't
Speaker 1: have to plead guilty, and you can go home. You
Speaker 1: don't have to implicate, and you can go home, and
Speaker 1: you have ten minutes. And I sat there and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know, when I went into prison when this happened,
Speaker 1: I was twenty seven years old. By the time I
Speaker 1: was sitting there trying to make this decision, I was
Speaker 1: forty five years old. When I went in. I was
Speaker 1: a young mother and a wife and a daughter. And
Speaker 1: at that point in my life when I had to
Speaker 1: make this decision, I was a widow and an orphan
Speaker 1: and a grandmother because my son Eric by then had
Speaker 1: a three and a half year old daughter of his own.
Speaker 1: And I thought, you know, you never know what will
Speaker 1: happen in the next few years, if they're going to
Speaker 1: take me to a trial again, and how long that's
Speaker 1: going to take, and whatever will come with me. You
Speaker 1: knew what they were capable of by this point, I mean,
Speaker 1: you made the right decision. And so I told them
Speaker 1: that I would accept on the condition that I was
Speaker 1: not going to plead guilty to anything, that I would
Speaker 1: maintain my innocence, And they said that was okay, but
Speaker 1: that during the hearing I had to keep absolutely silent.
Speaker 1: I was not allowed to say anything. That was the deal.
Speaker 1: I was not allowed to say anything during this next hearing.
Speaker 1: So okay, this hilarious, by the way, she knows. So
Speaker 1: she left. Christina's laugh because I can't keep my mouth
Speaker 1: if she can't. And the judges read. You see what
Speaker 1: happens at one of these alphred hearing things is that
Speaker 1: the prosecutor is allowed to read into the record everything
Speaker 1: he would have said against you had there been a
Speaker 1: new trial, and you're not allowed to say anything to
Speaker 1: refute what he's saying, which is a bunch of crap.
Speaker 1: So I say, I'm sitting there listening to this litany
Speaker 1: just ridiculous stuff in my opinion, and I'm trying to think,
Speaker 1: what can I say. There's got to be something I
Speaker 1: can get away with saying here, So I go, your honor,
Speaker 1: and my lawyer pinches me. She's chinching me, and he goes, yes,
Speaker 1: I said I'd like a drink of water. I have
Speaker 1: a bad taste in my mouth. Wow, And he goes
Speaker 1: bailiff has a drink of water. I get my water
Speaker 1: on holl he's dying. At least I said something, said
Speaker 1: favor something something. I wasn't sure there was anything that
Speaker 1: could make me love you more than I already do.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's one of the that's one of the
Speaker 1: best one liners in the history of the world. So
Speaker 1: congratulations on that. You got the last word a court right,
Speaker 1: so to speak, because you managed to give them a
Speaker 1: very sunny ish sort of middle finger to the entire system.
Speaker 1: And you were freed. And now I want to talk
Speaker 1: about your life now because it's extraordinary. Um. Everything about
Speaker 1: you is extraordinary. Um. But the crazy twist that life
Speaker 1: took several years ago, it's really the subject that I
Speaker 1: want to turn to now. It's my favorite part. So
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorite parts too. So, so what
Speaker 1: happened is I took time off to to get a
Speaker 1: life for myself and to get a persona other than
Speaker 1: the victim of injustice. And it became Sunny, the yoga teacher,
Speaker 1: the happy pink dot floatinger. I used to wear pink
Speaker 1: all the time because in prison, you couldn't wear nice colors,
Speaker 1: so you had this pink sweatpants and pink sweatshirt and
Speaker 1: used to run around being the yoga teacher all over
Speaker 1: Los Angeles until um, finally um. I went back into
Speaker 1: the death penalty movement again, and I met some representatives
Speaker 1: of Emnesty International from Ireland and they heard me talk
Speaker 1: and invited me to Ireland to speak. And this is
Speaker 1: where the story gets good. Yeah ending, the happy ending, Yes,
Speaker 1: the happy ending. She I got this phone call one
Speaker 1: day and American woman who said her name was Sunny
Speaker 1: Jacobs and whom I've never heard of, and says she
Speaker 1: was going to be given a talk three days later
Speaker 1: where I in the town I was in, inviting me
Speaker 1: to come along. I said, what are you going to
Speaker 1: talk about? She said that death penalty. I said, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in that. I'll come along, and I brought
Speaker 1: two friends and so I went along and the door
Speaker 1: opened across the room and this little lady walked in
Speaker 1: and I walked over to her and I said, you
Speaker 1: must be Sunny Jacobs and she said to me, you
Speaker 1: must be Peter Bringle, and she gave me this big
Speaker 1: smile which she has. So she went to share her story,
Speaker 1: and I listened, and I was devastated by all I heard.
Speaker 1: I was hugely emotionally upset by the tragedy of her
Speaker 1: what had happened to her, And I knew that I
Speaker 1: had to talk to her. I just knew I had
Speaker 1: to speak with her. This was somebody who would understand
Speaker 1: my situation just as I understood hers. And so afterwards
Speaker 1: I said, I'd like to talk with you, and she said, yes,
Speaker 1: so did I. She said, but I'm leaving in an hour.
Speaker 1: I said, where are you going? And she said, we
Speaker 1: have to go to Cork. She was traveling around the
Speaker 1: country with the second the Secretary of Amnesty Ireland, Mary Lawler,
Speaker 1: and she had to be in Cork the following evening
Speaker 1: for the a g M of Amnesty. That's about five
Speaker 1: hours away from where we were. So I said to her, well,
Speaker 1: if you stay over and I hear Galway, I guarantee
Speaker 1: I'll get you there in time for your meeting. And
Speaker 1: so we did, and I took her down to the countryside,
Speaker 1: showed that all the sights and we got the car
Speaker 1: and she did her talk when we were crossing the
Speaker 1: River Shannon on the car ferry and Chris, our friend
Speaker 1: had given us a pack lunch and he was a vegetarian,
Speaker 1: both vegetarians at the time, and so we had this
Speaker 1: pack lunch and Sunny turned to me and she said,
Speaker 1: what's your interest in all of this? I said to her, well,
Speaker 1: I was around a convicted and sentence to that too.
Speaker 1: I spent almost fifteen years in prison. Believe. I couldn't believe,
Speaker 1: Yea said, She said, we just seem to have come
Speaker 1: out of it. Okay. She said, how did you get through?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, yoga and meditation, Jesus, and that's
Speaker 1: what she had used as well. And I said that
Speaker 1: to her. She just lit up and said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: yoga and meditation. So then when we were driving down
Speaker 1: after that from the car ferry down the cark, we
Speaker 1: were sharing our story with each other. It was the
Speaker 1: most amazing journey I've ever had in my life because
Speaker 1: we were at various stages. We were laughing our heads off,
Speaker 1: we were crying our eyes out. It was a hugely
Speaker 1: emotional trip to all the way down the road as
Speaker 1: we shared things with each other, and we we teach
Speaker 1: other goodbye. We said we keep in touch, and we did,
Speaker 1: and so our relationship developed and now truly what is
Speaker 1: going only be considered a full circle occurrent. Sunny and
Speaker 1: Peter now run a thing called the Sunny Sanctuary, and
Speaker 1: the Sunny Sanctuary is a truly a sunny sanctuary, although
Speaker 1: it's not that much sun in Ireland, but it's a
Speaker 1: sanctuary if everyone thinks it rains all the time, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't know so um, and you have a lot
Speaker 1: of nice golf courses over there. So Sunny and Peter
Speaker 1: run the Sunny Sanctuary where they have found an extraordinary
Speaker 1: way of sharing their experience and creating a positive outcome
Speaker 1: from all this uh negative which is which is a
Speaker 1: weak word to use for what's gone on in your lives,
Speaker 1: and that they now bring newly exonerated people over to
Speaker 1: stay with them and they're able to share their experiences
Speaker 1: and learn anything from yoga to farming to just being.
Speaker 1: How do people they want to give to the Sunny Sanctuary?
Speaker 1: How do people? Is there? What's the website? Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a website. It's called the Sunny Center, the Sunny Center,
Speaker 1: and that's s U n n y um the Sunny
Speaker 1: Center and there's sunny is It's sunny Center dot com,
Speaker 1: dot com and and the website that it describes how
Speaker 1: you can donate, if you can rate and so, and
Speaker 1: you're just doing such incredible work. Yes, that's what we do,
Speaker 1: and that's what we love doing. And it's not just
Speaker 1: heating for the exonerities for it's heating for us too.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantas sick review wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a
Speaker 1: proud donor to the Innisis Project and I really hope
Speaker 1: you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and
Speaker 1: helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project
Speaker 1: dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardis. The music on the show is by three
Speaker 1: time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number one