Speaker 1: I came from a beautiful neighborhood. I had a beautiful life.
Speaker 1: I went to sleep because September seventh 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 2: Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
Speaker 2: freedom ever since after that.
Speaker 1: It's like roach Moe Town. Once you get in, you
Speaker 1: and I can't now.
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction. With Jason Flommer today we have
Speaker 3: a very special guest, Sunny Jacob's one of my favorite
Speaker 3: people in the world. Sunny Jacob's story is as crazy
Speaker 3: as it can get. Is that fair to say, Sonny?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: It's pretty crazy. So Sonny was wrongfully convicted in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy six. I'm particularly thrilled today because joining Sonny in
Speaker 3: the studio with me is her Well. I could call
Speaker 3: you a new husband, Peter Fringle. It's a few years now,
Speaker 3: but he's still a new husband. And Sonny's daughter, Christina Tafarah,
Speaker 3: is going to speak today publicly for the first time ever.
Speaker 3: So Sonny, Peter, Christina, welcome to Ronful conviction very much,
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jase. So, Sonny, let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 3: You were living where at the time that this all
Speaker 3: went down.
Speaker 2: At the time that this happened, we had been living
Speaker 2: in North Carolina, but Jesse had gone down to Florida
Speaker 2: with the promise of some work and we ended up
Speaker 2: joining him down there.
Speaker 3: So he went down there originally to do some work
Speaker 3: in Florida. But you went down with the two kids
Speaker 3: afterwards to meet him. Yes, right, And then when you
Speaker 3: went down there, your car broke down. Is that what
Speaker 3: happens how this all started?
Speaker 2: Pretty much, that's how it all started, right.
Speaker 3: So your car broke down. Now you're stranded in Florida.
Speaker 3: You got to get back home, right, right, So take
Speaker 3: us through it. What happens next? You were offered a ride,
Speaker 3: which was turned out to be a you know, the
Speaker 3: beginning of the beginning of the terrible Saga of Sonny Jacobs,
Speaker 3: which so fill us in filling the audience.
Speaker 2: Well, the card broken down, and Jesse asked a friend
Speaker 2: of his to give us a lift, and we were
Speaker 2: going to go someplace where he knew someone where we
Speaker 2: could stay and wait for my parents to send some money.
Speaker 2: So we could get back home to North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Right, but then you end up you end up actually
Speaker 3: taking a rest in the car when this.
Speaker 2: Happened, right, yeah, we pulled into a rest area off the.
Speaker 3: Highway in Florida.
Speaker 2: Yep, in Florida. This was and I was in the
Speaker 2: back with the two children. Now, my son at the
Speaker 2: time was nine years old. My daughter was only ten
Speaker 2: months old. She was still nursing, right, yeah, she was
Speaker 2: a baby. And so Jess was in the passenger seat
Speaker 2: and his friend who's driving, And then so we were
Speaker 2: sleeping in the car in the rest area. Nothing was
Speaker 2: going on, there was no crime being committed, there was
Speaker 2: no reason for anybody to.
Speaker 3: It seems like an unlikely place for everything to.
Speaker 2: Go wrong completely, I mean in your sleep.
Speaker 3: Now, just to give you a visual. By the way,
Speaker 3: if you would meet Sonny, you would see that she
Speaker 3: looks like the least likely person who have ever served
Speaker 3: time in anything other than you know, it looks like
Speaker 3: some of you would meet in a coffee shop or
Speaker 3: a in a theater or something. I mean, she's the
Speaker 3: least likely person to have ever served time on death road.
Speaker 2: At the time, I was, besides being a young wife
Speaker 2: and mother. I was also a hippie, you know, like.
Speaker 3: Still a hippie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cool. It was a hippie and a vegetarian. So
Speaker 2: I mean, I was totally the least likely person to
Speaker 2: be in any way involved in a scene where somebody
Speaker 2: would get killed.
Speaker 3: So you're in the car, you're sleeping, and there's a
Speaker 3: knock knock on the window, right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we were sleeping in the car. And then
Speaker 2: the police apparently came to do a routine check of
Speaker 2: the rest area, and it was in the police notes
Speaker 2: that they said that when they looked in the driver's window,
Speaker 2: they saw a handgun between the driver's feet, and that's
Speaker 2: what started the whole thing. They pulled open the door,
Speaker 2: they took the gun, they or pulled him out of
Speaker 2: the car. Then they ordered Jesse out of the car.
Speaker 2: They took everyone's ID.
Speaker 3: You were still in the back seat with the kids.
Speaker 2: I was still in the back seat with the kids.
Speaker 2: I never left the back seat, and they called in
Speaker 2: the driver's identification. Then they wanted Jesse's idea and he
Speaker 2: was reluctant to give it, and then they asked me
Speaker 2: from my ID. And then the word came back on
Speaker 2: the police radio that the driver from whom they had
Speaker 2: taken the handgun was on parole, and as I say, so.
Speaker 3: He was subject to arrest.
Speaker 2: Well, as I say, off of.
Speaker 3: Your gun and being on parole.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, even in America, you're not allowed to have
Speaker 2: a gun if you're on parole. So that changed everything.
Speaker 2: The policeman then drew his gun and he said something
Speaker 2: like if nobody moved, the next one to move is dead.
Speaker 2: And then there's a gunfire. And so I just covered
Speaker 2: the children.
Speaker 3: So you're like literally laying on top of the children
Speaker 3: as a mother would. Yes, I mean to protect them,
Speaker 3: and then there's guns and you don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2: At this point seven thirty in the morning, it was foggy,
Speaker 2: it was a bit cool still in the morning, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, this insane thing is going on.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know how many bullets were fired,
Speaker 2: but it was like, all of a sudden, we were
Speaker 2: in a war. And I was over the children until
Speaker 2: it got quiet, and I actually wasn't sure if we
Speaker 2: were still alive because it was so quiet, and then
Speaker 2: I determined that I was breathing. We were all, I
Speaker 2: guess shocked by what was happening. And then I looked
Speaker 2: up to see if Jesse was okay, and I saw
Speaker 2: him just standing there, frozen in between the two cars,
Speaker 2: looking as shocked basically as I felt. And the other
Speaker 2: guy was running around the car with a gun in
Speaker 2: his hand, ordering Jesse to put us into the police car.
Speaker 2: At that point we became hostages of the man who
Speaker 2: had just shot the two policemen.
Speaker 3: Right now, it's more surreal. Right now, you're being ordered
Speaker 3: to get into a police car by a guy who
Speaker 3: just killed two policemen who you thought was your friend,
Speaker 3: who was doing your favor giving you a ride. So
Speaker 3: it doesn't get much weirder than that. And now you've
Speaker 3: got to take the kids at gunpoint and put him
Speaker 3: in a police car, that's right.
Speaker 2: And as he helped me out of the car with
Speaker 2: the baby and with my son Eric, Eric slipped and
Speaker 2: fell into a pool of blood. Well, and that's when
Speaker 2: I saw the two policemen on the ground. So helped
Speaker 2: Eric up and we got We were put into the
Speaker 2: back of the police car, Jesse again in the passenger side,
Speaker 2: and the guy drove us away.
Speaker 3: You know, if this was in a movie, nobody would
Speaker 3: believe it, right so now you're in the police car.
Speaker 3: What happens next?
Speaker 2: I was thinking in my mind, okay, like, how do
Speaker 2: we get away from the sky. He was racing down
Speaker 2: the highway, and because it was on the interstate, then
Speaker 2: he pulls off. He was looking for to change cars.
Speaker 2: I guess he realized that the police car was a
Speaker 2: little too conspicuous. So there was a man, an old fellow,
Speaker 2: going out to get his mail, and the driver walked
Speaker 2: up to him, and Jesse followed him. And I was
Speaker 2: still in the back of the car with the kids,
Speaker 2: and I thought, ah, now now I can get get
Speaker 2: away from here, you know. So I tried to open
Speaker 2: the doors, but you can't open the back of a
Speaker 2: police car. Yeah, so we're stuck. Anyway, Jesse came back
Speaker 2: and said, listen, he says, we have to go with
Speaker 2: him in this man's car. So it takes us in
Speaker 2: the transfers into what is now slightly less conspicuous in
Speaker 2: a police car, a orange Cadillac.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great. This guy's this guy's got a flair
Speaker 3: for the dramatic.
Speaker 2: So now this other poor man is also hostage. They
Speaker 2: put me and the children in the front seat. Jesse
Speaker 2: and the older man are in the back seat. He's
Speaker 2: driving along and there's very heavy traffic by now.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a rush hour.
Speaker 2: It's rush hour, and I could hear helicopters above, and
Speaker 2: I thought, oh my god, maybe the traffic is so
Speaker 2: bad because maybe there's a roadblock or something, and maybe
Speaker 2: that's a helicopter. And we're gonna be saved, right, You're
Speaker 2: gonna be saved.
Speaker 3: Right, the cops are gonna come get you. Great nightmare.
Speaker 2: And what we didn't know at the time was that
Speaker 2: when the man went out to get his mail, his
Speaker 2: wife was watching out the window. Something shouldn't happen to
Speaker 2: him from the building to the post box and back,
Speaker 2: you know, and she saw whole thing, and she called
Speaker 2: the police. So the police. So this means two things. One,
Speaker 2: the police knew that this man had been kidnapped by
Speaker 2: this other guy who had with the police car and
Speaker 2: US number. Two, they knew that there was a woman,
Speaker 2: two children, and a man hostage in that car.
Speaker 3: In the orange Cadillac.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're driving along in the orange Cadilloc. I'm now
Speaker 2: in the front with the two children. Jesse's in the
Speaker 2: back with the old man, and we come upon the roadblock.
Speaker 2: You can see it. There's a roadblock. Thank god, I'm
Speaker 2: thinking he makes this insane decision to try to avoid
Speaker 2: the roadblock, at which point he makes a sharp left
Speaker 2: and all the police lined up at the roadblock with
Speaker 2: their rifles open fire on the car. Holy shit, again,
Speaker 2: we are being bomb guarded by bullets. I covered the
Speaker 2: children again, and the car was bouncing with the bullets,
Speaker 2: just like you know in the movie about Bonnie and Clyde,
Speaker 2: where the car is actually bouncing with bullets. That's how
Speaker 2: it was. And then we crashed. We crashed into a
Speaker 2: semi that was parked as part of the roadblock. The
Speaker 2: police surround the car. The only one who's actually injured
Speaker 2: was the driver. He was shot in the leg.
Speaker 3: That's a miracle, yes, yes, it's.
Speaker 2: A miracle that we were all alive. So they took
Speaker 2: him and put him in an ambulance. They took Jesse
Speaker 2: out of the car. They handcuffed him. They took the
Speaker 2: man out of the car, They took him away somewhere,
Speaker 2: and Jesse's standing there, handcuffed and a cop comes from
Speaker 2: the crowd with his gun turned around with the button
Speaker 2: forward and ran over and smashed Jesse in the head
Speaker 2: and knocked them to the ground, and he said, you
Speaker 2: better get away from me because they're gonna kill me.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you're holding his hand, you're holding the baby, Christina,
Speaker 3: who's here. Now we can call you a miracle baby.
Speaker 3: Now since you survived before you were a year old,
Speaker 3: you survived two gun fights. I mean, it's quite extraordinary,
Speaker 3: you know, very lucky. And she's a lovely, lovely young
Speaker 3: woman if you'd meet her now, So go ahead. So
Speaker 3: now what I mean even still, what are you thinking? Now?
Speaker 3: Are you thinking because you your saviors are here the cops.
Speaker 2: No, they're not saviors anymore, because they're pointing guns at me.
Speaker 3: A minute ago they were, yeah.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, the whole thing turned,
Speaker 2: and now they're pointing guns at me.
Speaker 3: And I.
Speaker 2: Tried to explain that we didn't know. I didn't know,
Speaker 2: like really what was going on, But they didn't. They
Speaker 2: weren't listening because they were there. They had just had
Speaker 2: two of their comrades at the time. I didn't know,
Speaker 2: but they were killed. They were dead. We or one
Speaker 2: of us or all of us, we respond and it
Speaker 2: wasn't up to them to figure it out. It was
Speaker 2: up to them to apprehend us, and so they take
Speaker 2: us to an unused portion of the railroad track where
Speaker 2: the police get out of their cars and start arguing
Speaker 2: among themselves whether or not to take us in or
Speaker 2: to simply kill us right there and say we tried
Speaker 2: to escape. Wow, I couldn't tell you how many there were,
Speaker 2: but there was a group of them, and I remember
Speaker 2: there were three of them standing right by the car
Speaker 2: where I was, and they were so vehement about it.
Speaker 2: They were like, you know, like when you people are swaying,
Speaker 2: they start spitting, you know, like I could see the
Speaker 2: spit coming out in their molines when they were talking,
Speaker 2: you know, And it was it was one of the
Speaker 2: most frightening moments. And like I'm sitting there praying, like
Speaker 2: I hope the one I call in my head the
Speaker 2: voice of reason should prevail, which thing God Eventually he did,
Speaker 2: because otherwise they were nobody would have known. So he
Speaker 2: did prevail. They decided they would take us in. Two
Speaker 2: detectives came in and they started trying to question me,
Speaker 2: and they record. In those days, they had the you know,
Speaker 2: the tape recorders with real tape, right, you know, and
Speaker 2: so they kept trying to ask me what was what happened,
Speaker 2: and I kept telling them.
Speaker 4: I'm really I really don't know.
Speaker 2: I really don't know exactly what happened, because just like
Speaker 2: I told you, they were taking our id and asking
Speaker 2: us questions and then they were shooting, and I honestly
Speaker 2: didn't see who were shooting. So they didn't believe me
Speaker 2: because they figure, if you're there, you know what happened.
Speaker 2: So they every time I'd say, you know, you're trying
Speaker 2: to get me to say something that's not true, they'd
Speaker 2: stopped the recording and start a new recording. While we
Speaker 2: were being interrogated, the guy, the driver, the guy who
Speaker 2: actually did the killing, from his hospital bed, asked to
Speaker 2: speak to the prosecutor. Now I was this is how
Speaker 2: later I found this out. I didn't know. We didn't
Speaker 2: know at the time, but you see, he knew he
Speaker 2: was facing the electric chair, so he wanted to make
Speaker 2: a deal, so he requested to speak to the prosecutor.
Speaker 2: And the prosecutor at the time was apparently had ambitions
Speaker 2: to run for district attorney, so rather than get one conviction,
Speaker 2: he was going to get three convictions, and after our trials,
Speaker 2: he did, in fact resign as prosecutor and run for
Speaker 2: district attorney on the basis of his strong stance against crime.
Speaker 2: So what happened was that the killer was offered a
Speaker 2: plea bargain for three life sentences in exchange for his
Speaker 2: testimony against Jesse and me. These plea bargains should not
Speaker 2: be allowed in capital cases because it's always going to
Speaker 2: be the most guilty party that takes the plea bargain
Speaker 2: because they're the one who has the most to lose.
Speaker 3: Well, they have everything to lose their life.
Speaker 2: Well, I thought, yes, exactly, So I thought, well, when
Speaker 2: I found out about it, I thought, well, this is
Speaker 2: a no brainer. No innocent person would accept three life sentences.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's not a bargain, you know, not to
Speaker 2: an innocent person. So I figured the jury will who this,
Speaker 2: they'll know and we'll go home.
Speaker 3: By the way, I never just did the concept of
Speaker 3: three life senses. Does anyone have three lives? I don't
Speaker 3: know why in this country. It's very odd, right, I'm
Speaker 3: never like, I mean, anyway, it's very very odd. And
Speaker 3: he eventually got out. But that's another story. So it's
Speaker 3: even weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another story. But he's also back in so
Speaker 2: just so people shouldn't how do you.
Speaker 3: Have three lifess why didn't you give the guy one
Speaker 3: life sentence and keep them in instead of three life senses?
Speaker 3: I don't know whatever. That's just another aspect of the case.
Speaker 3: That's that's very strange and the system is very strange.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so go ahead.
Speaker 2: So this plea arrangement was made unbeknownst to us. And
Speaker 2: also in order to justify giving the plea bargain, they
Speaker 2: have to give the person a polygraph test to prove
Speaker 2: that they're not making the deal with the real killer. Okay,
Speaker 2: so apparently he was given a polygraph test and they
Speaker 2: submitted a report that he passed a polygraph test. Therefore
Speaker 2: they were justified in making the plea bargain. Jesse's trial
Speaker 2: went first. He has tried, convicted, and sentenced to death
Speaker 2: in four days. My trial lasts two weeks. We all
Speaker 2: were appointed the public defender. But because now one was
Speaker 2: going to testify against the others, they had to give
Speaker 2: us special public defenders, which is regular lawyers who act
Speaker 2: as who represent you as if they were the public defender,
Speaker 2: and they don't get paid a lot, so they don't
Speaker 2: always do a lot because they have other clients, they
Speaker 2: have to make a living. So and my parents were asked, actually,
Speaker 2: do you want to maybe get a hire a lawyer.
Speaker 2: But we thought, why should they have to mortgage their
Speaker 2: home to try to get me a lawyer, because we
Speaker 2: were told even in those days, it'd be one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars or more. In those days, I was a
Speaker 2: total fortune. So I said, there's no need to do that.
Speaker 2: I'm completely innocent. I mean, it's not like there was
Speaker 2: even a fingerprint, there's nothing. It was absolutely nothing against me.
Speaker 2: So we didn't have the dream team and we didn't
Speaker 2: have the expert witnesses or whatever. And my lawyer at
Speaker 2: the time, the appointed lawyer, said, we're not going to
Speaker 2: put up a defense because there's absolutely no nothing against you.
Speaker 2: There's no evidence against you, and it gives me a
Speaker 2: better position in the closing arguments. So I go, fine,
Speaker 2: you know whatever you say, you're my lawyer. I'm not scared.
Speaker 2: I didn't do anything. I still believed in truth, justice
Speaker 2: in the American way, and Superman and all those things.
Speaker 2: So in the second week of the trial, the jury
Speaker 2: started asking questions. They weren't convinced by the killer, so
Speaker 2: It turns out that the prosecutor or his team, whoever
Speaker 2: it was, went and located a girl in the jail
Speaker 2: who had been arrested for a minor drugs charge, and
Speaker 2: she and her boyfriend were arrested, and they told her
Speaker 2: that if she could help them to convict me, she
Speaker 2: and her boyfriend would released the next day. If they couldn't,
Speaker 2: then she would go to prison for a long time,
Speaker 2: her life would be ruined, and she'd never get back
Speaker 2: to university.
Speaker 3: Jail House snitches are actually, you know. In the most
Speaker 3: recent report from the Center for Ronful Convictions, it was
Speaker 3: shown that in almost forty six percent of the capital
Speaker 3: cases that have been overturned, forty five point nine percent,
Speaker 3: a jail house snitch was the sort of deciding factor, right, so, well, she.
Speaker 2: Said that I spoke to her in the one night
Speaker 2: that they put her in the bit cell block where
Speaker 2: I was, and I never spoke to her that. She
Speaker 2: said that I told her that I did it, I
Speaker 2: enjoyed it, and I'd do it again. Like, all right,
Speaker 2: somebody would really say that to a strange person, you know,
Speaker 2: I thought, now they're really going to know that this
Speaker 2: is ridiculous. And the jury wasn't convinced, and in fact,
Speaker 2: they asked more questions, and they were starting to ask
Speaker 2: questions about like maybe could they at least consider accomplice
Speaker 2: or something like that. And it was as a result
Speaker 2: of the judge's instructions to the jury at that point
Speaker 2: that they felt that they had no choice to convict,
Speaker 2: but to convict because we didn't put up a defense.
Speaker 2: And I should say that the judge had been a
Speaker 2: former highway patrolman and we had asked him to recuse
Speaker 2: himself from the cases because you couldn't possibly be non
Speaker 2: biased in a case that involved the killing a policeman
Speaker 2: if you had been part of that brotherhood yourself. But
Speaker 2: he refused to step down from the cases.
Speaker 3: So it was worth noting that the judge judge had
Speaker 3: a nickname which was Maximum Dan.
Speaker 2: Yes, and he kept a little miniature electric chair on
Speaker 2: his desk that he used to do ZIZI.
Speaker 3: You know, let's just reflect on that for a moment.
Speaker 3: So you have a judge, this is America. You have
Speaker 3: a judge who's a former state trooper presiding over a
Speaker 3: trial in which a state trooper was he a state
Speaker 3: trooper was killed. There's no reason to think that he
Speaker 3: wouldn't be totally objective under those circumstances. And he's got
Speaker 3: an electric chair on his desk going zoop zoop zoop,
Speaker 3: right touching it and like almost like taunting you, right,
Speaker 3: And he's and his name was Maximum Dan.
Speaker 2: So it was as a result though, of his explanation
Speaker 2: of the law to the jurors that they felt they
Speaker 2: had no choice but to convict. Then comes the sentencing,
Speaker 2: and in the sentencing phase they have to be unanimous
Speaker 2: in order to give a death sentence. Okay, And there
Speaker 2: was one juror, and this is really important for people
Speaker 2: to know because people think, oh, you know, one person
Speaker 2: doesn't make a difference. One person does make a difference
Speaker 2: because this juror wasn't convinced. He wasn't really convinced that
Speaker 2: they should have convicted me, but he surely wasn't going
Speaker 2: to sentence me to death. And so he stood up
Speaker 2: for what he believed in the face of all the
Speaker 2: pressure from the other jurors to agree with them, and
Speaker 2: as a result of his integrity that my jury wasn't
Speaker 2: able to be unanimous and I was sentenced to life.
Speaker 3: That's where the judge gets involved, right, And This principle
Speaker 3: of judicial override is something I want to talk about
Speaker 3: because this judge then overrode the jury right and he
Speaker 3: decided that you should be sentenced to death right. And
Speaker 3: that's an interesting thing to talk about because there were
Speaker 3: only three states in which this principle of judicial override
Speaker 3: was constitution was considered constitutional. Now there's only one, and
Speaker 3: it won't shock you to know that it's Alabama. Even
Speaker 3: Florida has had it overturned, as has Delaware, which was
Speaker 3: the other holdout. So now only an Alabama can that happen, right,
Speaker 3: and judicial override has It's been an issue in about
Speaker 3: a quarter of the death penalty cases since the death
Speaker 3: penalty was re enacted in the seventies, and yet it's
Speaker 3: been a factor in fifty percent of the death sentences
Speaker 3: that have been overturned. So what that tells you is
Speaker 3: that the jury is very focused on, or at least
Speaker 3: interested in the idea that they may be convicting, but
Speaker 3: they may have enough of a shred of a doubt
Speaker 3: that they don't want to sentence you the death and
Speaker 3: that finality. But the judge, for whatever reason, doesn't feel
Speaker 3: the same compunction. And in your case, it's obvious why
Speaker 3: he was a former state trooper and he was a
Speaker 3: who was a you know, a very he was maximum
Speaker 3: dan right, he was going to throw the death penalty
Speaker 3: if he was going to throw it out of vegetarian
Speaker 3: hippie like you. So anyway, so you're sentenced to death,
Speaker 3: you end up on At this point, there is no
Speaker 3: death row for women in Florida.
Speaker 2: Right, No, no, because in nineteen seventy six there had
Speaker 2: been a three year moratorium just prior to our cases,
Speaker 2: and they had changed all the death sentences to life.
Speaker 2: So there were very few men on death row and
Speaker 2: there were no women. So I became the only woman
Speaker 2: in the United States with a sentence of death at
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it is a sort of a distinction, I suppose.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so they didn't actually know what they were going
Speaker 2: to do with me, so everybody was kind of speculating
Speaker 2: in the jail what they would do with me. And
Speaker 2: what they did is they cleared out a building that
Speaker 2: had been used for disciplinary purposes, like if there had
Speaker 2: been a riot in the prisoner or whatever, and they
Speaker 2: had to lock up a lot of people. That was
Speaker 2: what that building had been used for. So there were
Speaker 2: a number of cells on each side. It was like
Speaker 2: a dungeon there, Like I'll just say six, I'm not
Speaker 2: really sure anymore. How there were six cells on each side,
Speaker 2: and in the front there was an office where the
Speaker 2: guards would stay, and the whole building was surrounded by
Speaker 2: its own barbed wire fence. Within the barbed wire of
Speaker 2: the prison itself. No other prisoners were allowed in proximity
Speaker 2: of that building.
Speaker 3: So there you are all alone, right, There's nobody else
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 2: I was the only person in that building.
Speaker 3: How insane is that?
Speaker 2: When I was there, I was locked up twenty.
Speaker 3: Four hours a day, twenty four hours a day in
Speaker 3: a tiny cell, that's right.
Speaker 2: It was six steps from the door to the toilet,
Speaker 2: and I could reach out both my arms and touch
Speaker 2: the side walls. There was a metal shelf with a
Speaker 2: thin mattress that was my bed, and then there was
Speaker 2: a toilet and sink combination. That was all that was
Speaker 2: in the cell. I spent the first five years of
Speaker 2: the seventeen years that it took to resolve this in
Speaker 2: solitary confinement, sence to death. After five years in solitary confinement,
Speaker 2: finally my first appeal came up. It took that long
Speaker 2: in those days, and as a result of the judge
Speaker 2: overruling the jury without giving a proper written reason for
Speaker 2: having done so, they had to change my sentence from
Speaker 2: death to life. So then they put me in the
Speaker 2: prison population, which was another strange circumstance to try to
Speaker 2: deal with after having been first a free person and
Speaker 2: then isolated for five years and then be put into
Speaker 2: the prison population. So that was another thing. But then
Speaker 2: after a year after my sentence was changed from death
Speaker 2: to life, that's when my parents were killed at or
Speaker 2: plane crash. The worst part was that my children then
Speaker 2: became orphans again, and by then my daughter was about seven.
Speaker 1: Six years old.
Speaker 5: And you remember it, I do remember it very clearly.
Speaker 3: I'm in awe of your mother. Do you watch that?
Speaker 3: You do you listen to her and just say, I mean,
Speaker 3: who is she's like? Does she have a cake that
Speaker 3: she wears around at night?
Speaker 2: That's you have to ask to kill everyone.
Speaker 5: My mom is the most amazing person you'll ever meet.
Speaker 3: She's my favorite. I mean, and then uh, and Peter,
Speaker 3: we haven't even gotten to you yet.
Speaker 1: She's also the funniest woman in the world.
Speaker 3: And so sunny. So then yes, a number.
Speaker 2: Of things happened in the interim. At one point, the
Speaker 2: guy who actually did the killing was bragging in prison
Speaker 2: about how he had killed the two officers, and you know,
Speaker 2: he had these other two people and death throw for
Speaker 2: what he'd done. He confessed a number of times, and
Speaker 2: on one occasion some other prisoners came forward and actually,
Speaker 2: we're willing to go to court and testify, but the
Speaker 2: judge ruled that it was prisoner's word wasn't believable. So
Speaker 2: how come it's believable if they testify against you, but
Speaker 2: it's not believable if they testify for you, because it's
Speaker 2: incons why, you know. So we didn't prevail. And when
Speaker 2: that happened, Jesse was like, this is it, babe, We're
Speaker 2: going home. You know I told you keep your spirits up.
Speaker 2: He was always trying to.
Speaker 3: Keep my spirits up to letters. Yes, so you knew
Speaker 3: that the real killer had been bragging and it essentially confessed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so you're like, now we're going home. I mean obviously right.
Speaker 2: But we didn't go home.
Speaker 3: They didn't go home. In fact, quite the opposite, and.
Speaker 2: It was at that hearing that they brought us both
Speaker 2: to court. That's the last time I ever saw Jesse
Speaker 2: actually in person. I always advise people, if you're going
Speaker 2: to have to go into the appeals process, to get
Speaker 2: a very young lawyer, because my original appeals lawyer died
Speaker 2: of a heart attack before the appeals process could be completed,
Speaker 2: because it takes so many years. As you know, people
Speaker 2: spent twenty thirty years on death row before they're exonerated.
Speaker 3: A young lawyer who would think of that except for
Speaker 3: you anyway.
Speaker 2: So anyway, these were two young lawyers who were mentoring
Speaker 2: under him, and they both decided they would continue to
Speaker 2: fight for my case because they believed in my innocence.
Speaker 2: Thank god. In the eleventh year, these two young lawyers
Speaker 2: who paired up and then eventually married, give me the
Speaker 2: use of a private investigator from some other CALLI in
Speaker 2: who it paid for it for one day, and I
Speaker 2: want to find the woman, the young woman who testified
Speaker 2: against me in the trial, right, the one that we
Speaker 2: called the jail house snitch. So they said, forget about it.
Speaker 2: She's a drug addict. She's probably dead, but she wasn't
Speaker 2: because after this happened, she cleaned up her life and
Speaker 2: she never looked back, and she moved to Wyoming somewhere,
Speaker 2: and she was taking care of her sick father, and
Speaker 2: she had a little family of her own, and she
Speaker 2: had no idea what happened to me. She didn't even know.
Speaker 2: So the lawyer, the investigative founder, the lawyer's going they
Speaker 2: see her, and she cried and she apologized. She was
Speaker 2: devastated to find out that what at least partly as
Speaker 2: a result of what she had done, had happened to me.
Speaker 2: But she would do anything except come back to Florida.
Speaker 3: And there's a reason why she wanted to come back to.
Speaker 2: Her Yeah, because she was scared to death because the
Speaker 2: prosecutor was now a district attorney, even more powerful, and
Speaker 2: she was afraid that he would find a way to
Speaker 2: put her in prison too, maybe for perjury that he
Speaker 2: helped her do. So she was terrified. And unless she
Speaker 2: was willing to come back to testify and be cross examined,
Speaker 2: we couldn't use her testimony, right, So the prosecutor sent
Speaker 2: a couple of his guys out to Wyoming to talk
Speaker 2: to her father, to have him convince his daughter that
Speaker 2: she shouldn't come back and.
Speaker 3: Get involved her sick father.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's what made her come back. She got
Speaker 2: so mad that they would dare to disturb her sick
Speaker 2: father that she came back, and she is a hero.
Speaker 2: She's heroic. We had a federal hearing. She testified, She
Speaker 2: took the stand, she told everything that happened. She sat
Speaker 2: there and apologized to me. She cried. Then it was
Speaker 2: the prosecutor's turn to cross examined. As he approached the
Speaker 2: bench where she said, she grabbed her chest, she started
Speaker 2: a hyperale and she had a heart attack. And honestly,
Speaker 2: all I can think of at that moment was please God,
Speaker 2: don't let her die before a cross examination. Please, because
Speaker 2: unless we could cross examine, you can't use her testimony.
Speaker 2: Everything she said would have been for nothing. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So anyway, the medical person came in, they brought the paramedics.
Speaker 2: They took her away in an ambulance, and we didn't
Speaker 2: know what was going to happen. Finally she recovered. She
Speaker 2: went back to Wyoming, and the judge said that we
Speaker 2: could videotape her testimony from Wyoming. So they all went
Speaker 2: out there and they did the cross examination whatever, and
Speaker 2: in the end, the judge ruled that it was her
Speaker 2: word former drug addict against the word of the upstanding citizen,
Speaker 2: the prosecutor, and we didn't prevail again.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, was this before or after Jesse was executed?
Speaker 2: That was in the eleventh year.
Speaker 3: Right, so he was still alive.
Speaker 2: Yes, In the fifteenth year incarceration, Jesse received his third
Speaker 2: death warrant, which is normally fatal, and in his case
Speaker 2: it was as well, and he was taken to the
Speaker 2: electric chair, right.
Speaker 3: And then it gets worse because in Jesse's case, and
Speaker 3: people may remember this because it's a very well documented
Speaker 3: and famous tragic situation. So in Jesse's case, he went
Speaker 3: to the electric chair, but the electric chair malfunctioned. It
Speaker 3: was known as old sparky, right, so it wasn't exactly
Speaker 3: a modern piece of equipment by prisoners by prisoners, and
Speaker 3: there's at least a theory going around that they may
Speaker 3: have deliberately tampered with it in order to make his
Speaker 3: execution more they were like a torture, yes, because he
Speaker 3: had of course been convicted of killing two police officers.
Speaker 3: So in his case, the electric air malfunctioned, it took
Speaker 3: over ten minutes for him to die.
Speaker 2: It took thirteen and a half minutes for Jesse to
Speaker 2: Pharaoh to die, and the word was in the prison
Speaker 2: that they had substituted the natural sea sponge in the
Speaker 2: helmet with an artificial one so that when they pulled
Speaker 2: the switch, instead of dying, instead of conducting the current properly.
Speaker 3: He caught fire. Fire.
Speaker 2: The witnesses on behalf of the media said that the
Speaker 2: flame shot two feet in the air out of his head,
Speaker 2: and that smoke came out of his ears, and then
Speaker 2: it took thirteen and a half minutes for Jesse to
Speaker 2: Farah to die.
Speaker 3: And we shouldn't have a death penalty in this country
Speaker 3: in my opinion at all. I don't think the death
Speaker 3: penalty should exist in any country because if you believe
Speaker 3: in the death penalty, you have to be willing to
Speaker 3: accept the idea that people like Jesse to Fara are
Speaker 3: going to be executed. There is no perfect system, there
Speaker 3: is no way to make sure you've got it right.
Speaker 3: There's always going to be human error. You can't get
Speaker 3: that back. So Jesse's actually.
Speaker 2: Can't give him back to his children either.
Speaker 3: No, you can't give him back to his children. I mean,
Speaker 3: and Christina, I mean, I can't even It's hard for
Speaker 3: me to even bring myself to ask you what you
Speaker 3: experienced during this period of time. I mean, were you
Speaker 3: aware that your parents were innocent?
Speaker 5: How No, I wasn't aware they were innocent, but I
Speaker 5: mean I didn't. I didn't believe it either. Now I've
Speaker 5: blacked out a lot from it, just as a coping
Speaker 5: mechanism for myself. Not blacked out. I remember a lot
Speaker 5: of things. I don't really honestly remember what I thought.
Speaker 5: I just knew that they were gone, and you know,
Speaker 5: my mom was always telling me, you know, I'm coming
Speaker 5: home home, you know, coming home soon. You know, I
Speaker 5: just wanted them back. I don't think I cared. I
Speaker 5: don't think I cared. I just wanted my parents back.
Speaker 5: It's funny because the day they killed my father, I
Speaker 5: had two friends with me and I saw them both
Speaker 5: yesterday after like twenty years. Both of them we were children,
Speaker 5: and I'll never forget that morning because I wanted to
Speaker 5: go to school. I didn't want to be home sinking
Speaker 5: in the news and my parents are watching it. It's on.
Speaker 5: I'm fifteen now, and my two friends, Sarah and Marvin
Speaker 5: were on my bus with me, but I was the
Speaker 5: first one on the bus, and when I got on
Speaker 5: the bus. The bus driver was actually listening to it
Speaker 5: on the radio and I could hear it as she
Speaker 5: didn't know. And the next stop.
Speaker 3: The bus driver didn't know.
Speaker 5: The bus driver didn't know that was my father, right,
Speaker 5: So the next stop was my friend Sarah, and I'm
Speaker 5: just sitting stoic on the bus. I probably was crying.
Speaker 3: Sarah knew.
Speaker 5: Sarah knew what was happening, and she came and she
Speaker 5: just got on the bus and sat on one side
Speaker 5: of me and put her arm around me. We didn't
Speaker 5: say a word. Then my friend Marvin, who's an NYPD
Speaker 5: officer here by the way, but he was now but
Speaker 5: we were kids, then got on the bus and he
Speaker 5: sat on my other side and just put his arm
Speaker 5: around me, and they held me in love the entire
Speaker 5: way to school, and they knew what was happening. And
Speaker 5: I didn't end up staying in school because I had
Speaker 5: an issue while I was at school and I got
Speaker 5: sent home, which I should have been home anyway, but.
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 5: I didn't know about the malfunction of the chair, and
Speaker 5: I act he found out walking through the mall. I
Speaker 5: think it was the next day through a friend of
Speaker 5: mine who was like, you know, I'm really sorry about
Speaker 5: your dad, and I'm like thanks, you know. He's like,
Speaker 5: it's terrible what happened, and I'm like it is and
Speaker 5: he goes, no, but how his head caught fire? And
Speaker 5: I had I didn't know. Nobody told me and I
Speaker 5: wasn't watching TV. I wasn't I was trying not to
Speaker 5: pay attention to it, to tell you the truth, And
Speaker 5: that's how I found out. And I was angry, to
Speaker 5: say the least, that nobody told me. And I'm hearing
Speaker 5: it from not a stranger, but not somebody I should
Speaker 5: be hearing that from either. And it was really hard.
Speaker 5: I had seen my dad was it just a few
Speaker 5: days before, right, And it was a really hard visit,
Speaker 5: knowing what was going to happen to him, really emotional
Speaker 5: visiting my grandmother, my grandma Kay, his mother. Somehow fenagled
Speaker 5: me to get an actual contact visit because it was
Speaker 5: my only visit with my father behind glass and it
Speaker 5: was always contact visits, So knowing it's the last time
Speaker 5: I'm going to see him, I really wanted to sit
Speaker 5: on his lap. I wanted to give him a hug.
Speaker 5: I wanted to kiss his face, you know, and somehow
Speaker 5: she finagled it. But they did have to strip search me,
Speaker 5: which was weird because I'm a kid, but I didn't care.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to be with my dad.
Speaker 3: So but.
Speaker 5: I will never forget that day. Yeah, insane, and I
Speaker 5: you know, I don't know what to say about it,
Speaker 5: but it was very, very, very hard because I'm connected
Speaker 5: with my father, I'm connected with my mother on a
Speaker 5: different level. I can feel them, I can, you know.
Speaker 5: So I knew he was gone his you know, and
Speaker 5: then knowing what happened to him made it even harder.
Speaker 5: And not being told immediately too, It's like wow. And
Speaker 5: then you have everyone you know feeling sad for you
Speaker 5: and makes it worse, you know. And then I got
Speaker 5: sent away to school. I got sent away to boarding school,
Speaker 5: like about six months later, eight months later.
Speaker 2: See, there's no help for the families of people who
Speaker 2: are on death row. There's no help at all.
Speaker 3: I can't even talk.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll help you out here, you know, it was
Speaker 2: it's no one knows what to do. There's there's actually
Speaker 2: no help for the families. I mean, when at very
Speaker 2: least when somebody's being executed, there should be somebody for
Speaker 2: their family, and there isn't. So at first I was
Speaker 2: very upset and angry at the foster parents who are
Speaker 2: taking care of Tina, to know that instead of keeping
Speaker 2: her there and loving her and giving her that family
Speaker 2: support and letting her be perhaps with me and Grandma Kay,
Speaker 2: you know, so we could grieve together, she was sent away.
Speaker 2: But to be fair, I understand now they didn't know
Speaker 2: what the heck to do. What do you do with
Speaker 2: this child? How do you deal with this? And it's shame,
Speaker 2: the shame of it. So they sent her away to
Speaker 2: a school for children with emotional behavioral problems and she
Speaker 2: was locked up until she was eighteen years old. So
Speaker 2: now she's locked up too. And yeah, and in a
Speaker 2: strange way, it gave us a commonality, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I understand what it's like to be locked up, ma,
Speaker 2: because I was locked up too. So the suffering of
Speaker 2: these wrongful convictions isn't confined to the one person. It's
Speaker 2: their whole family that suffers. And the people whose children
Speaker 2: have family to go to that you know, they can
Speaker 2: stay with you much better than the people whose children
Speaker 2: don't have family to stay with and end up in
Speaker 2: foster care because they just they just don't have a chance.
Speaker 3: The stigma on top of everything else, because for a
Speaker 3: little Christina, you know, to be getting that sympathy is
Speaker 3: sort of nice. But even that's got to be complicated
Speaker 3: because your friends didn't know if your father was a
Speaker 3: cop killer or not. Right, you didn't even know, right.
Speaker 5: And could you grew up in a neighborhood like it was,
Speaker 5: upper middle class neighborhoods, So there's a lot of maybe
Speaker 5: keeping up with the Joneses, if I can say that.
Speaker 5: And you know, the people I was with, you know,
Speaker 5: they don't want everybody to know my story because again,
Speaker 5: you know, people are going to judge. You know, oh
Speaker 5: my gosh, you have this child in your house, you know,
Speaker 5: so you know, and I just showed up out of
Speaker 5: nowhere and all of a sudden, you know, I'm part
Speaker 5: of their family and I have brother, and so it's
Speaker 5: like it's complicated. It's really really complicated. And yes, I would.
Speaker 5: I would go to visit my parents, and I would
Speaker 5: I would come back to school, and obviously I would
Speaker 5: have not mental issues, but I would have emotional issues
Speaker 5: going on. I'm just you know, I go, I take
Speaker 5: you know, a week out of school and I'm going
Speaker 5: from prison to prison, and I'm getting sick. I have
Speaker 5: double ear infections. You know, I'm on a boss to
Speaker 5: Dad's was what like seven hours up to Dad's prison.
Speaker 5: You know, I would fly by myself, and it was
Speaker 5: very hard as a as a child. And again I
Speaker 5: don't remember a lot of it, but I do remember
Speaker 5: having a little trouble in school when i'd come back
Speaker 5: and there was an adjustment again. And you know, I
Speaker 5: just visited both my parents in prison and like that
Speaker 5: to the.
Speaker 2: Point where apparently it felt it was just too disruptive
Speaker 2: to their lives to keep bringing her, and they stopped.
Speaker 2: So then finally, just after Jesse's execution, a friend of mine,
Speaker 2: a childhood friend, her name is Mickey Diakov. She came
Speaker 2: to visit me because she wanted to console me over
Speaker 2: what had happened. I mean, the whole country, the whole
Speaker 2: world heard what happened to Jesse. In fact, they stopped
Speaker 2: using the electric chair in Florida as a result of
Speaker 2: Jesse's execution.
Speaker 3: For us. Yeah, I was fifteen and living in New
Speaker 3: York and I heard about it, so, you know, two
Speaker 3: thousand miles away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, people over the world heard about it, and
Speaker 2: Jesse said, they will remember my name. That was one
Speaker 2: of the last things he said. We had a ten
Speaker 2: minute phone call just before he was executed, just maybe
Speaker 2: a few hours before.
Speaker 3: Do you remember the last thing he said to you?
Speaker 5: He said, to be brave? Yeah, and you are and
Speaker 5: I am.
Speaker 3: I think if he could see you now, he would
Speaker 3: be extremely proud.
Speaker 5: He can see me now.
Speaker 3: Good answer.
Speaker 2: So Mickey came to visit me, and she said, what
Speaker 2: can I do to help you? Because we were kids
Speaker 2: growing up on Long Island together, and I was like
Speaker 2: the most least likely person in the whole world to
Speaker 2: ever be in any way involved in something like this,
Speaker 2: and everybody that knew we knew that. So she said,
Speaker 2: what can I do? And can I talk to a lawyer?
Speaker 2: Because she's a documentary filmmaker and she has research skills,
Speaker 2: and her partner is a civil lawyer, but still a
Speaker 2: lawyer that knows about how the law works, and they
Speaker 2: wanted to help me. So I said, sure, go talk
Speaker 2: to my lawyer. Fine, you know. So they did, and
Speaker 2: as a result of that, about two and a half
Speaker 2: years after Jesse was executed, they were able to put
Speaker 2: together my Habeas Corpus in a way with diagrams, which
Speaker 2: they had to get special permissions, first time they ever
Speaker 2: used diagrams and a habeas corpus, and they were able
Speaker 2: to clearly show what we had been trying to show
Speaker 2: for years is that I couldn't and Jesse couldn't possibly
Speaker 2: have committed this crime, and my sentence and conviction were
Speaker 2: overturned and I should have been free. But as you know,
Speaker 2: they don't like to admit they're wrong exactly, so they
Speaker 2: threatened to take me to a new trial. And in
Speaker 2: those days it was just just I think I was
Speaker 2: the second person after Alfred that they did this. The
Speaker 2: Alford is a thing where they say, if you let
Speaker 2: us convict you of a lesser to charge, you don't
Speaker 2: have to plead guilty. You can maintain your innocence and
Speaker 2: then you can leave. You can be free. But if not,
Speaker 2: we're going to take you back to a new trial.
Speaker 2: It could take years, we might sentence you to death again.
Speaker 2: And now they're more desperate than before because now it's
Speaker 2: going to show all the illegal things that they did,
Speaker 2: so they're really going to be desperate. We already knew
Speaker 2: that they had another false witness already lined up to
Speaker 2: come to the new trial. I even heard that she
Speaker 2: was promised a white couch for her living room in
Speaker 2: exchange for her testimony. A white couch.
Speaker 6: This is nice.
Speaker 3: You've got orange cadillacs and white couches. I mean, this
Speaker 3: story is yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, Nicky and Christy, my friends who
Speaker 2: were helping me at the time, to help without helping
Speaker 2: working with my lawyers, they were warned that it was
Speaker 2: dangerous to even try to help, and that they were
Speaker 2: being followed and that their phones were being tapped. Everyone
Speaker 2: was so afraid because of the power. You know, a
Speaker 2: person in that position has a lot of power.
Speaker 3: And they have almost all the power.
Speaker 2: Actually, yes, it's you know, it's interesting how it works
Speaker 2: because when someone is accused of crime, the police gathered
Speaker 2: all the evidence, they give it over to the prosecutor.
Speaker 2: The prosecutor then decides which parts he's going to give
Speaker 2: to the defense and which parts he doesn't have to
Speaker 2: buy law gift to the defense to the defense, and
Speaker 2: then they have the trials. So it's like we have
Speaker 2: a deck of cards, fifty two cards. I have all
Speaker 2: the cards. I'm gonna look at them. I'm gonna decide
Speaker 2: which one is I'm gonna give you and now we're
Speaker 2: gonna play. You're gonna play with me? Of course not,
Speaker 2: because the deck is totally stacked. I decide which cards
Speaker 2: you can have. I'm not giving you all the aces
Speaker 2: I can tell you. So that's how that's how it works.
Speaker 2: It's it's really not fair to put another human being
Speaker 2: in that position, because look, we're all subject to human nature. Okay,
Speaker 2: everybody wants to win, everybody wants to be the best.
Speaker 2: And if there's nobody ever gonna know, come on, you know,
Speaker 2: nobody's ever gonna know that you hid that one card.
Speaker 2: We have a situation where there's these hearings going on.
Speaker 2: I am now offered a deal they offered to me.
Speaker 2: This is before the offer please thing comes up. They
Speaker 2: offered to me. They say, okay, we're having these hearings.
Speaker 2: So exactly this is interesting what happened to hearings. First
Speaker 2: of all, in the hearings, we find out about the
Speaker 2: fact that, uh, there was a polygraph test. Now, Micky says,
Speaker 2: why should we believe them they lied about so much.
Speaker 2: We want to see this polygraph test, the actual graph
Speaker 2: that came off the machine. Right, So they get a
Speaker 2: hold of the poly test, and they hire a guy
Speaker 2: who is a former policeman who's now a polygraph expert,
Speaker 2: and he takes a look at it and he says
Speaker 2: he didn't pass the polygraph test. He failed a polygraph
Speaker 2: test where it said he passed, he actually failed. So
Speaker 2: the report that they entered saying he passed a polygraph
Speaker 2: test was a lie. They entered a false report, and
Speaker 2: that was the basis of their arrangement with him in
Speaker 2: the first place. That day, they come to me and
Speaker 2: they say, okay, we're going to offer you a deal.
Speaker 2: If you'll say that the guy they made the deal
Speaker 2: with didn't do it, I didn't do it, we'll let
Speaker 2: you go free today. You can have a steak dinner today.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, I'm a vegetarian. What were they trying to say?
Speaker 2: If I didn't do it and the other guy didn't
Speaker 2: do it, then who did it?
Speaker 3: Your husband?
Speaker 2: They figure will blame Jesse. He's dead anyway, right and we.
Speaker 3: All go out and everybody's fine.
Speaker 2: But I'm not doing that. Okay. First of all, he
Speaker 2: still has children and a mother. Second of all, they
Speaker 2: took everything from me. They took my whole life from me.
Speaker 2: They took everything from but my integrity, and it was
Speaker 2: like I felt like I was. It was like dealing
Speaker 2: with the devil. Now they wanted that last thing. They
Speaker 2: wanted my very soul, and I wasn't gonna do it
Speaker 2: because I had made a life for myself in prison.
Speaker 2: We started a little community group to try to make
Speaker 2: life better for the life. First, I was teaching math
Speaker 2: and English in the school. I was teaching yoga because
Speaker 2: yoga and meditation and prayer was what saved me while
Speaker 2: I was on death row. There was not enough time
Speaker 2: to tell everything, but it was my practice of yoga
Speaker 2: that helped me with the physical effects of all the emotions,
Speaker 2: and meditation that helped me to clear myself spiritually, and
Speaker 2: prayer which gave me the hope that there was something
Speaker 2: out there stronger than them that could see me through.
Speaker 2: And so I had made a life for myself in there.
Speaker 2: I could hold my head up and say, you know what,
Speaker 2: at least I have integrity, Whereas if I were to
Speaker 2: do that, no matter where you are, you have to
Speaker 2: live with yourself. So I said, I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 2: need steak, Thank you very much. Take me back to prison.
Speaker 3: They were dealing with so I.
Speaker 2: Said, take me back, and they did. They took me back.
Speaker 2: Things went on usual. I went back to my job
Speaker 2: in the prison whatever. And then uh, a week or
Speaker 2: so later, I got called back on a Friday. Now
Speaker 2: you get called back to court on a Friday. They
Speaker 2: know that everybody's sure you're going home because they don't
Speaker 2: want to keep you in the county over the weekend.
Speaker 2: So everybody lined, they lined the walkways. They were like,
Speaker 2: you're going home. You're going home. Oh, They're all pat
Speaker 2: me on the back, sailor to your children. You know,
Speaker 2: you're going home. They took me back to court and
Speaker 2: I was like praying, and I was like I could
Speaker 2: almost feel my parents and Jessie around me, you know,
Speaker 2: in the van because you're you know, you've got your
Speaker 2: hands handcuffed with the box, you know, so you can't
Speaker 2: and your feet handcuffed and everything fit, feet coughed. I
Speaker 2: guess you'd call it. And they took me back to
Speaker 2: court and my lawyers say to me, Okay, they're offering
Speaker 2: you this deal. Another deal. Yeah, this time they say
Speaker 2: that if you'll just allow them to read into the record,
Speaker 2: you know, a conviction of a lested degree. You don't
Speaker 2: have to plead guilty, and you can go home.
Speaker 3: You don't have to implicate Jesse.
Speaker 2: No, and you can go home, and you have ten minutes.
Speaker 2: And I sat there and I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 2: when I went into prison when this happened, I was
Speaker 2: twenty seven years old. By the time I was sitting
Speaker 2: there trying to make this decision, I was forty five
Speaker 2: years old. When I went in. I was a young
Speaker 2: mother and a wife and a daughter. And at that
Speaker 2: point in my life when I had to make this decision,
Speaker 2: I was a widow and an orphan and a grandmother
Speaker 2: because my son Eric by then had a three and
Speaker 2: a half year old daughter of his own. And I thought,
Speaker 2: you know, you never know what will happen in the
Speaker 2: next few years, if they're going to take me to
Speaker 2: a trial again, and how long that's going to take,
Speaker 2: and whatever the outcome would be, what.
Speaker 3: They were capable of by this point, I mean, you
Speaker 3: made the right decision.
Speaker 2: And so I told them that I would accept on
Speaker 2: the condition that I was not going to plead guilty
Speaker 2: to anything, that I would maintain my innocence, and they
Speaker 2: said that was okay, but that during the hearing I
Speaker 2: had to keep absolutely silent. I was not allowed to
Speaker 2: say anything. That was the deal. I was not allowed
Speaker 2: to say anything during this next hearing. So okay, thiss
Speaker 2: hilarious by the way, she knows so because I can't
Speaker 2: keep my mouth if she can't. And the judges, uh.
Speaker 2: You see what happens at one of these alpha and
Speaker 2: hearing things is that the prosecutor is allowed to read
Speaker 2: into the record everything he would have said against you
Speaker 2: had there been a new trial, and you're not allowed
Speaker 2: to say anything too refute what do you say? Which
Speaker 2: is a bunch of crap.
Speaker 4: So I'm sitting there listening to this litany just ridiculous stuff,
Speaker 4: in my opinion, and I'm trying to think what can
Speaker 4: I say.
Speaker 2: There's gotta be something I can get away with saying. Here,
Speaker 2: So I go, you run her, and my lawyer pinches me.
Speaker 2: She's pinching me, and he goes, yes, I said I'd
Speaker 2: like a drink of water. I have a bad taste
Speaker 2: in my mouth. Wow, Bailiff, get a drink of water.
Speaker 2: I get my water. And holl is dying. So at
Speaker 2: least I said something to say something, to say something.
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure there was anything that could make me
Speaker 3: love you more than I already do. That's it. That's
Speaker 3: one of the that's one of the best one liners
Speaker 3: in the history of the world. So congratulations on that
Speaker 3: you got the last word at court right, so to speak,
Speaker 3: because you managed to give them a very sunnyish sort
Speaker 3: of middle finger to the entire system, and you were freed.
Speaker 3: And now I want to talk about your life now
Speaker 3: because it's extraordinary. Everything about you is extraordinary, But the
Speaker 3: crazy twist that life took several years ago is really
Speaker 3: the subject that I want to turn to now.
Speaker 2: It's my favorite part.
Speaker 3: So it's one of my favorite parts too.
Speaker 2: So so what happened is I took time off to
Speaker 2: get a life for myself and to get a persona
Speaker 2: other than the victim of injustice, and I became Sonny
Speaker 2: the yoga teacher, the happy pink dot floatner. I used
Speaker 2: to wear pink all the time because in prison you
Speaker 2: couldn't wear nice color. So I had this pink sweatpants
Speaker 2: and pink sweatshirt and I used to run around being
Speaker 2: the yoga teacher all over Los Angeles until finally I
Speaker 2: went back into the death penalty movement again and I
Speaker 2: met some representatives of Mnescy International from Ireland, and they
Speaker 2: heard me talk and invited me to Ireland to speak.
Speaker 3: And this is where the story gets good ending, Yes,
Speaker 3: the happy ending.
Speaker 1: She I got this phone call one day and.
Speaker 6: American woman who said her name was Sunny Jacobs and
Speaker 6: whom I'd never heard of, and said she was going
Speaker 6: to be given a talk three days later where I
Speaker 6: was in the town I was in, and invited.
Speaker 1: Me to come along.
Speaker 6: I said, what are you going to talk about? She
Speaker 6: said that dead penalty. I said, yes, I'm interested in that.
Speaker 6: I'll come along, and I brought two friends and so
Speaker 6: I went along and the door opened across the room
Speaker 6: and this little lady walked in and I walked over.
Speaker 1: To her and I said, you must be Sonny Jacobs
Speaker 1: and she said.
Speaker 2: To me, well, you must be Peter Bringle, and.
Speaker 6: She gave me this big smile which she has. So
Speaker 6: she went to share her story and I listened, and
Speaker 6: I was devastated by.
Speaker 3: What I heard.
Speaker 1: I was hugely emotionally.
Speaker 6: Upset by the tragedy of what had happened to her.
Speaker 6: And I knew that I had to talk to her.
Speaker 6: I just knew I had to speak with her. This
Speaker 6: was somebody who would understand my situation just as I
Speaker 6: understood hers. And so afterwards I said, I'd like to
Speaker 6: talk with you and she said, yes, so Di, she said,
Speaker 6: but I'm leaving in an hour.
Speaker 1: I said, where are you going? She said, we have
Speaker 1: to go to Cork.
Speaker 6: She was traveling around the country with the Secretary of
Speaker 6: Amnesty Ireland, Mary Lawler, and she had to be in
Speaker 6: Cork the following evening for the agm of Amnesty. That's
Speaker 6: about five hours away from where we were. So I
Speaker 6: said to her, well, if you stay over and I
Speaker 6: here Galway, I guarantee I'll get you there in time
Speaker 6: for your meeting. And so we did, and I took
Speaker 6: her down to the countryside. She showed her all the sights,
Speaker 6: and we got the Cork and she did her talk.
Speaker 6: When we were crossing the river, Shannon and the car
Speaker 6: ferry and Chris, our friend, had given us a.
Speaker 1: Pack lunch and he was a vegetarian, of.
Speaker 6: Both vegetarians at the time, and so we had his
Speaker 6: pack lunch and Sonny turned to me and she said,
Speaker 6: what's your interest in all of this? I said to well, well,
Speaker 6: I was wrongly convicted and sentenced that too. I spent
Speaker 6: almost fifteen years in prison.
Speaker 3: Did you believe him?
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she said, oh, she said, we just seem to
Speaker 1: have come out of it. Okay.
Speaker 6: She said, how did you get through? And I said, well,
Speaker 6: yoga and meditation Jesus, and that's what she had used
Speaker 6: as well. And I said that to her. She just
Speaker 6: lit up and she said, oh my god, the yoga meditation.
Speaker 6: So then when we were driving down after that from
Speaker 6: the car ferry down to the Cork, we were sharing
Speaker 6: our story with each other.
Speaker 1: It was the most.
Speaker 6: Amazing journey I've ever had in my life because we
Speaker 6: were at various stages. We were laughing our heads off,
Speaker 6: we were crying our eyes out. It was a hugely
Speaker 6: emotional trift the hallway down the road as we shared
Speaker 6: things with each other and we see each other goodbye,
Speaker 6: we said we keep in touch, and we did, and
Speaker 6: so our relationship.
Speaker 3: Developed and now, truly what is can only be considered
Speaker 3: a full circle a current. Sonny and Peter now run
Speaker 3: a thing called the Sunny Sanctuary, and the Sunny Sanctuary
Speaker 3: is a truly a sunny sanctuary, although it's not that
Speaker 3: much sun in Ireland, but it's a Sanctuary, share of it,
Speaker 3: you get our share. Yeah, it's everyone thinks it rains
Speaker 3: all the time, but it doesn't. It doesn't. So and
Speaker 3: you have a lot of nice golf courses over there.
Speaker 3: So Sunny and Peter run the Sunny Sanctuary where they
Speaker 3: have found an extraordinary way of sharing their experience and
Speaker 3: creating a positive outcome from all this negative which is
Speaker 3: a weak word to use for what's gone on in
Speaker 3: your lives. And now they now bring newly exonerated people
Speaker 3: over to stay with them, and they're able to share
Speaker 3: their experiences and learn anything from yoga to farming to
Speaker 3: just being How do people they want to give to
Speaker 3: the Sunny Sanctuary? How do people? Is there? What's the website?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a website. It's called the Sunny Center, the
Speaker 2: Sunny Center.
Speaker 3: That's s U n n Y the Sunny Center, and
Speaker 3: there's sunny is it Sunnycenter dot com.
Speaker 5: Dot com And in the website that it describes how
Speaker 5: you can donate, you can and so so different ways.
Speaker 3: And you're just doing such incredible work.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's what we do, and that's what we love doing.
Speaker 6: And it's not just healing for the exonerties, for it's
Speaker 6: healing for us too.
Speaker 3: Don't forget to give us a fit tast stick review
Speaker 3: wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm
Speaker 3: a proud donor to the Ennisnce Project, and I really
Speaker 3: hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause
Speaker 3: and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject
Speaker 3: dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
Speaker 3: I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Speaker 3: Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three
Speaker 3: time OSCAR nominatede composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
Speaker 3: us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a
Speaker 3: production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal
Speaker 3: Company Number one