Speaker 1: It was the summer of nineteen ninety six in Upper Manhattan,
Speaker 1: while the violence of the crack epidemic continued to rage.
Speaker 1: On July fifteenth, a man survived a gunshot on one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty ninth Street. On August thirtieth, another man
Speaker 1: wasn't as lucky at a bus stop on one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty fifth On September twentieth, gunshots erupted on one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty eighth Street, and police chased down a
Speaker 1: white sedan that had sped away from the scene with
Speaker 1: two young men inside, Petro Guzman and Jerome Curry. Detectives
Speaker 1: told them that they'd found a gun in their wake,
Speaker 1: and eventually Guzman named Jerome and their friend Miguel Enriquez,
Speaker 1: saying that the gun was used in the August thirtieth
Speaker 1: murder as well. Over a day later, Jerome said the
Speaker 1: same thing, additionally admitting to the July fifteenth shooting. Either
Speaker 1: those detectives hit the jackpot, or this is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison,
Speaker 1: and now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us
Speaker 1: at eight three, three, two oh seven four six sixty six,
Speaker 1: and tell us how these stories make you feel and
Speaker 1: what you've done to help the cause, even if it's
Speaker 1: something as simple as telling a friend or sharing on
Speaker 1: social media. We've really appreciated hearing from our audience so
Speaker 1: much so that we've included one of the messages at
Speaker 1: the end of this episode. So stick around for that,
Speaker 1: and if you have something to say, we definitely want
Speaker 1: to hear it, and you might just hear yourself in
Speaker 1: a future episode. Call us A three three, two oh seven,
Speaker 1: four six sixty six. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction today's episod.
Speaker 1: So it's a case that you're not going to want
Speaker 1: to hear, but you need to hear the story of
Speaker 1: mister Jerome Curry. And Jerome is on the phone with
Speaker 1: us now. First of all, I'm sorry for everything even
Speaker 1: going through for Jesus almost three decades. Yes, but I'm
Speaker 1: very honored to have you here on the show.
Speaker 2: Well, I honor also to be on the show man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and joining us once again to help tell this story.
Speaker 1: My friend attorney Justin Bonas Justin, welcome.
Speaker 3: Back, thank you. It's great to be back on.
Speaker 1: So Jerome, take us back to before all of this
Speaker 1: horrible stuff happened.
Speaker 2: I was born into Dominican Republic. I spent some years
Speaker 2: out there. I grew up in between two different family structures.
Speaker 2: Social structures, like on my father's side, all of his
Speaker 2: children and everybody else in the family, they will all
Speaker 2: graduate from college and the university. They were professionals, so
Speaker 2: like a middle class sort of family. And on my
Speaker 2: mother's side, basically no one had graduated from college, but
Speaker 2: some people don't even read and write. It was a
Speaker 2: very poor family and a very rough neighborhood. I kind
Speaker 2: of grew up there more than with my father. I
Speaker 2: used to like it there more because I had cousins.
Speaker 2: And in the May seventies, my mother met an American doctor.
Speaker 2: They married and he brought over to the United States,
Speaker 2: and about a year later I came over to Trent
Speaker 2: in New Jersey. It was rough. I didn't know English,
Speaker 2: and I'm Baskin, so experienced bullying and abused by other kids.
Speaker 2: But I ended up getting a good education, graduating, and
Speaker 2: I moved over to New York Jerome.
Speaker 1: First moved to one hundred and fifty ninth Street in
Speaker 1: Washington Heights, an area that was deep in the throes
Speaker 1: of the crack epidemic. But then soon Jerome found a
Speaker 1: safer place in the Bronx, where he met his co defendants,
Speaker 1: Miguel Enriquez and unfortunately the guy who sold him down
Speaker 1: the river, Pedro Goosemann.
Speaker 2: I had just really met the guy around the time
Speaker 2: that we both got arrested, and Rieke Haz introduced me
Speaker 2: to him. You know, he worked for the superl the
Speaker 2: same build than where I lived, and he kind of
Speaker 2: gravitated towards me, so we started hanging out together. You know, Ice,
Speaker 2: it's like smoking weed. He smoked weedze. But I never
Speaker 2: really knew much about the guy. So, you know, we
Speaker 2: all had moved to the Bronx around that time because
Speaker 2: Washington Heights or the opposite west side of Manhattan was
Speaker 2: very very different. Man they was moving at a different speed.
Speaker 2: It was huge drug enterprise, so everybody and then the businesses,
Speaker 2: everybody was involved in something. Even the people that were
Speaker 2: not committing crimes were right there in the middle of everything.
Speaker 1: Crack epidemic era Upper Manhattan was rife with violence, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't excuse how our civil rights were regularly trampled
Speaker 1: to clear sometimes multiple open cases. If you recall what
Speaker 1: happened to Ralphie Martinez, which we're going to link that
Speaker 1: incredible story in the episode description. He became the scapegoat
Speaker 1: for drug trafficking on West one hundred and fifty seventh
Speaker 1: Street and three violent crimes. And this case bears some
Speaker 1: resemblance as the police were willing to once again use
Speaker 1: false statements to clear July fifteenth assault with a deadly weapon,
Speaker 1: an August thirtieth murder, and an attempted murder on September twentieth.
Speaker 1: And in this story, we have a known repeat offender
Speaker 1: with whom Justin has had some contact, Detective Ba de Leone.
Speaker 3: Lpedo, Ba de Leone. They cleared the books. That's what
Speaker 3: they did back then. I mean, Ba told me that
Speaker 3: about Raffi. That's what they did back then. I mean
Speaker 3: even now in modern times is when they think they
Speaker 3: can throw everything on a guy, that's what they're going
Speaker 3: to do. The funny thing is Baight, he's in the
Speaker 3: Jabbar Walker case. Jabar Walker was exonerated November twenty seventh,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three the Innocence Project. From everyone that I've
Speaker 3: spoken with have stated that the net case there was
Speaker 3: fabricating and manufacturing evidence from BA de Leone, and we
Speaker 3: also know about de Leone that he was found in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety to have used force against a witness in
Speaker 3: another case. In order to get statement, I could tell
Speaker 3: you that it almost never happens thirty years ago that
Speaker 3: the Civilian Complaint Review Board and the NYPD internally substantiated
Speaker 3: use of force allegation. And that's before we get the
Speaker 3: Jabbar Walker's case, which took place around the same time
Speaker 3: as Curry's. So it's kind of like a clear of
Speaker 3: the books type of situation. With the Jerome the July
Speaker 3: attempted murder and then the September twentieth attempted murder, we're
Speaker 3: both in the thirty third precinct, and then the murder
Speaker 3: of Reginald Myers is in the thirtieth precinct. So this
Speaker 3: is what brings de Leone in. So you get these
Speaker 3: statements that are obviously fabricated and manufactured, not only because
Speaker 3: they're identical, but also because they are demonstrably false. Okay,
Speaker 3: But the other detectives, he was the more senior detective,
Speaker 3: it appears, and he was the one that took the
Speaker 3: lead driving the investigation with regard to the other cases.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the assault of Reginald Fraser on
Speaker 1: July fifteenth of nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: According to him, it was late that night, around ten o'clock.
Speaker 2: He says that it was a male black eighteen to
Speaker 2: twenty years of age. They had an argument walking down
Speaker 2: the street from the middle of the block through the
Speaker 2: corner of one hundred and fifty ninth Street in Broadway,
Speaker 2: and that the argument got a little heated and the
Speaker 2: male black put out a gun on him and shot
Speaker 2: him on a box when he tried to flee away
Speaker 2: from Reginald Fraser. He's African American, so he would know
Speaker 2: for a fact whether he's talking to an African American
Speaker 2: or Latino. That was a dark skin, he definitely would
Speaker 2: have been able to distinguish that.
Speaker 1: Now, Jerome was five to seven with dark skin and
Speaker 1: a thick Dominican accent.
Speaker 2: In fact, my English back then, my accent was a
Speaker 2: little stronger. Now it has gotten better to education and
Speaker 2: studying and reading and you know, going through them off
Speaker 2: a pronunciation, but it was definitely a lot stronger back there,
Speaker 2: so he would have known that this distinction immediately.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, Reginald Fraser initially reported a young black Mail as
Speaker 1: his assailant, not an Hispanic Mail, but eventually Fraser identified
Speaker 1: Jerome and changed his story to say that an Hispanic
Speaker 1: Mail was his assailant. And we'll get into the suggestive
Speaker 1: nature of his idea as well as Fraser's particulate later on.
Speaker 1: But first back to July fifteenth, nineteen ninety six, detectives
Speaker 1: from the thirty third precinct had no leads, and then
Speaker 1: in the thirty th precinct on August thirtieth, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: there was a murder of Reginald Myers.
Speaker 3: Got two Reggies in this case, a Reggie Fraser and
Speaker 3: Reggie Myers. Myers is the deceased. Fraser is alive. My
Speaker 3: focus has been on the Myers case because you got
Speaker 3: to take one case at a time. If you don't,
Speaker 3: you're going to confuse a judge. I think you got
Speaker 3: to focus on Myers first, because there is a landslide
Speaker 3: worth of evidence, forensic, medical. One of the people that
Speaker 3: was in the car has come forward with an affidavit
Speaker 3: detailing who the killer was and that it wasn't Jerome
Speaker 3: and he wasn't there.
Speaker 2: During this time, I was visiting Trenton, New Jersey with
Speaker 2: my girlfriend visit in my mother's house. I was out
Speaker 2: there with friends and spending some time out there.
Speaker 1: Many years later, Jerome's co defend at Miguel Enriquez, made
Speaker 1: it clear that he committed this crime with Pedro Guzman
Speaker 1: and another man.
Speaker 2: Yes, he mentioned in Markles and then he nicknamed him
Speaker 2: boas this was the guy that was supposed to have
Speaker 2: fired the shot on the night of the murder.
Speaker 3: From my investigation, Henriquez, Guzman and a man named Mark
Speaker 3: or Loboa are looking for someone to rob. This is
Speaker 3: the west side of Harlem, and there was a lot
Speaker 3: of people running around with I guess a lot of
Speaker 3: weight in drugs, so you know, guys would drive around,
Speaker 3: you had stick up kids. And on one hundred and
Speaker 3: forty fifth Street Henriquez, Guzman on and Loboa. They see
Speaker 3: this man who happens to be Reginald Myers with a
Speaker 3: bag in his hand. They think that he has drugs
Speaker 3: in the bag. Turns out that he just got some
Speaker 3: like gatorade and like a snapple or something like that,
Speaker 3: and Henriquez gets out of the car grabs the bag.
Speaker 3: Myers chases Henriquez back to the car, and a gun
Speaker 3: shot goes over.
Speaker 1: Ems arrived around nine pm and Myers was pronounced dead
Speaker 1: at the hospital. Detective de Leon arrived around nine point
Speaker 1: fifteen pm, and, according to police reports that were not
Speaker 1: presented a trial, eyewitnesses said that a man around six
Speaker 1: feet tall grabbed the bag and returned to a dark
Speaker 1: gray sedan. As Myers reached for the guy who robbed him,
Speaker 1: the car pulled off toward Amsterdam Avenue and shots were fired.
Speaker 1: The following day, the autopsy revealed stippling, suggesting a close
Speaker 1: range shot with no impediments. It was determined that a
Speaker 1: nine millimeter bullet passed through the back of his upper
Speaker 1: right arm into the armpit, striking his lungs and heart.
Speaker 1: The witnesses and trajectory suggest that the victim reach for
Speaker 1: the sedan's passenger side and was shot as the sidhan
Speaker 1: pulled away. Yet the state's narrative had Meyers slapping the
Speaker 1: windshield of a stationary vehicle and was shot with a
Speaker 1: thirty eight caliber bullet through the windshield, which is simply
Speaker 1: not supported by the facts, But that narrative didn't emerge
Speaker 1: until September twentieth. Now, Jerome was back from New Jersey
Speaker 1: and was driving around Washington Heights near his old apartment
Speaker 1: with Pedro Guzman.
Speaker 2: No, this is what we did with party, smoke, marijuana, hangout,
Speaker 2: look for girls. So we ended up driving down the
Speaker 2: streets and we ended up coming into one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty eighth Street. While in the middle of the block,
Speaker 2: a shootout happens. For what I was told, it was
Speaker 2: over a drug spot that they had, a crack spot
Speaker 2: that they were fighting over. It was individuals fro Night
Speaker 2: blocked Reginald Fraser his friends.
Speaker 1: YEP, the same Reginald Fraser from the July fifteenth assault
Speaker 1: was involved in a shootout over a crack spot in
Speaker 1: which his friend Thomas Joe Long ran toward Amsterdam Avenue
Speaker 1: with the one way flow of traffic on his right
Speaker 1: and the buildings on his left.
Speaker 2: He shot on the left shoulder and the shots supposedly
Speaker 2: came from his right side of a car that was
Speaker 2: riding along the streets, but his left shoulder is facing
Speaker 2: the buildings as he's running towards Amsterdam.
Speaker 1: Even though the bullet entering and exiting through his upper
Speaker 1: left shoulder supported that the shooter was on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: The police radio reported that the shots came from a
Speaker 1: white Sedan. The making model varied, but this play suspicion
Speaker 1: on Jerome Curry and Petro Guzman, who were in a
Speaker 1: white Nissan Maxima.
Speaker 2: In the middle of this. We did what we thought
Speaker 2: was logical at that moment, and we also sped out
Speaker 2: of the block. The police are chasing us. You know,
Speaker 2: even though the victims identified multiple different cars, it just
Speaker 2: happened that our car was also white. Now, on that night,
Speaker 2: we had a substantial amount of marijuana, and then we
Speaker 2: ain't had no identification, no license, we didn't even have
Speaker 2: paperwork for the car, even that the car was legit.
Speaker 2: Guzman was driving. He panised him. He said, I'm not stopping.
Speaker 2: I'm not stopping. I'm going.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I didn't try to stop him. What I did was
Speaker 2: I tried to get rid of the marijuana we had
Speaker 2: in the and we just ran as much as we could.
Speaker 1: They sped toward the Macomb's Damn Bridge on their way
Speaker 1: back to the Bronx, but traffic from the Yankee Game
Speaker 1: was backed up and the police pulled up right next
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 3: Kurry gets arrested with Guzman on September twentieth.
Speaker 2: Somewhere in the area. The police found a gun. First,
Speaker 2: they claimed that it was a three fifty seven, so
Speaker 2: they put that on the reporter and said, well, we
Speaker 2: found a gun and this gun belongs to you. Guys.
Speaker 2: They never took any fingerprints off it, DNA anything, and
Speaker 2: they said, well, this is your gun, and we tell
Speaker 2: them this is not our gun from the beginning, this
Speaker 2: is not our gun. This is not our gun. And
Speaker 2: eventually Pedro Guzman started talking to the people. He said, well,
Speaker 2: that's my friend gun and I gotta talk to you.
Speaker 2: That's why he began to talk about the murder case.
Speaker 1: Well. Offending off suspicion in the attempted murder of Thomas Long,
Speaker 1: it appears that Guzman decided to try to save himself
Speaker 1: by cooperating, and at some point the three point fifty
Speaker 1: seven Magnum became a thirty eight special. I guess the
Speaker 1: police didn't know what kind of gun they allegedly found
Speaker 1: dumped from Guzman's car. Nevertheless, Guzman started to spill real
Speaker 1: information mixed in with the lies about the murder of
Speaker 1: Reginald Myers, which had occurred in the thirtieth precinct.
Speaker 2: They called in the thirtieth Precinct. This is when Detective
Speaker 2: de Lyon get involved. Pedro Guzman admitted that him and
Speaker 2: two of the individuals have been involved in that shooting
Speaker 2: of Reginald Myers. They never mentioned me. Somehow they pressured
Speaker 2: him and then he implicated me in the crime.
Speaker 3: They take a statement from Guzman, not knowing that you know,
Speaker 3: this guy now is trying to dig himself up out
Speaker 3: of a really, really nefarious scenario. Here. Guzman's I know
Speaker 3: about this other murder and Curry's involved with this murder, right,
Speaker 3: basically says to de Leon that this thirty eight killed Myers.
Speaker 3: Turns out that that thirty eight was not the murder
Speaker 3: weapon in Myers. There was a deformed nine millimeter bullet
Speaker 3: that was found in Meyer's body, and that bullet was
Speaker 3: compared to the gun that was recovered in connection with
Speaker 3: Curry's arrest on the night of September twentieth. The NYPD's
Speaker 3: own ballistic expert concluded that that nine minilimeter bullet could
Speaker 3: not have been fired from that thirty eight, that there
Speaker 3: was no connection between that gun and Myers at all.
Speaker 1: But de Leon didn't know this information when he was
Speaker 1: working on these statements, first with Guzman and then they
Speaker 1: picked up Miguel Enriquez and lastly.
Speaker 2: Jerome detected de Leon came in. This guy, him and
Speaker 2: another Guydny Detected Crimes. We were kept in a freeze
Speaker 2: and approximately forty eight hours, probably a little longer than that,
Speaker 2: things got really bad, but no continue to deny my
Speaker 2: involvement in it. The first thing they did was they
Speaker 2: brung in big colored pictures of a victim and they
Speaker 2: put them on the table. They were determined to get
Speaker 2: a confession. Who say, you're going to tell um just
Speaker 2: out of the story. You know, it got so bad
Speaker 2: to the point where this detective Elpedio de Leon became
Speaker 2: a bit physically, you know, I remember him getting off.
Speaker 2: He went into a rage, punching and slapping me and
Speaker 2: he said, we know you're not leaving here until you
Speaker 2: tell us what we want to hear. You know. During
Speaker 2: this process, they brought in a TV screen where the
Speaker 2: DVD was BCR player and they continuously played the confession
Speaker 2: that this guy Edro Guzman had already given them and
Speaker 2: gelhen Riquez that they implicated in this crime as well.
Speaker 3: Enriquez and Guzband both say that Enriquez jumps out of
Speaker 3: the car, takes the bag off of the victim, runs
Speaker 3: back to the eighty six accurate dark gray four door,
Speaker 3: and both of them say that the victim comes to
Speaker 3: the front windshield, slaps it, and Jerome shoots through the
Speaker 3: windshield and see that's the thing. The police could have
Speaker 3: easily gone to the autopsy to see that there was
Speaker 3: stippling on the body and automatically know that what Enriquez
Speaker 3: Guzmana saying is false.
Speaker 1: The windshield would have blocked any steppling at all from
Speaker 1: landing on Reginald Myers. And in addition, the nine milimeter bullet,
Speaker 1: not a three fifty seven or a thirty eight caliber,
Speaker 1: but a nine milimeter bullet entered through the back upper
Speaker 1: right arm and passed through the chest to the left.
Speaker 1: There was no upward trajectory that one might expect to
Speaker 1: have seen with a shot through the windshield. The shot,
Speaker 1: in fact entered the back upper right arm. This scenario
Speaker 1: in which Jerome is the shooter simply defies reality.
Speaker 2: And they can tell me just with people, they are saying,
Speaker 2: you gotta give us a story, you gotta pay some
Speaker 2: type of responsibility. And this went on for hours, like,
Speaker 2: I never knew how serious sleet the probation was, and
Speaker 2: not drinking water, not having access to fool for so
Speaker 2: long really meant into experience. Then they put me in
Speaker 2: a line up. I may have found out that the
Speaker 2: people that claimed that they see me at the crime
Speaker 2: scene had identify a guy that was six feet to
Speaker 2: six one. I'm only fist seven.
Speaker 1: How can a guy be identified as being six to
Speaker 1: one and be five to seven?
Speaker 2: Taking in consideration that I was sitting down when they
Speaker 2: made the identification with a bunch of other guys, so
Speaker 2: they didn't even see me standing up to compare me
Speaker 2: to the other individuals.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh wow, Okay, that's a whole there. I
Speaker 1: never heard of a lineup sitting down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on a bench, So that's how they made the identification.
Speaker 2: So they said, well, you know, we got you picked
Speaker 2: out of a line on there's people that seen you there,
Speaker 2: and it was all line and it got so bad
Speaker 2: that I just wanted to end it. I ended up
Speaker 2: incriminating myself in this crime even though I was innocent,
Speaker 2: which is something that I have regreaded all these years
Speaker 2: because I have to live with that. My family had
Speaker 2: to live with that you.
Speaker 1: Know listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
Speaker 1: and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early
Speaker 1: and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. As far as we can tell, the
Speaker 1: witnesses that viewed to sit down Lineup were never heard
Speaker 1: from again, but they served as an effective cudgel. They
Speaker 1: got Jerome to sign a confession making him the shooter
Speaker 1: for Reginald Fraser, Reginald Myers, and Thomas Long, but as
Speaker 1: we've already pointed out, the statements were not corroborated by reality.
Speaker 1: And then they brought in Reggie Fraser, who was both
Speaker 1: the victim from July fifteenth as well as the witness
Speaker 1: of the shooting in front of his crack spot, which
Speaker 1: one can surmise made him open for cooperation when he
Speaker 1: came in to view a lineup, especially when he's made
Speaker 1: to believe that the guy who shot his friend Thomas
Speaker 1: Long had been caught.
Speaker 2: He said, badd came in and he saw my picture
Speaker 2: on the detective's desk, and then he went into the
Speaker 2: lineup and identified me.
Speaker 1: There's also another version of events where someone else at
Speaker 1: the thirty third precinct, not Detective Primus who was conducting
Speaker 1: the lineup, but somebody else showed him Jerome's picture by mistake.
Speaker 1: Either way, Reggie Fraser made the id that was incentivised
Speaker 1: by not only a blind eye to his drug activity,
Speaker 1: but also just a few months before trial trigger warning,
Speaker 1: thirty eight year old Reggie Fraser had been charged with
Speaker 1: the rape of a thirteen year old child who became pregnant,
Speaker 1: receiving a sentence of only one and a half to
Speaker 1: three years. Meanwhile, Jerome had awaited his trials for about
Speaker 1: that same amount of time on Riker's Island. His first
Speaker 1: trial was for the July fifteenth assault of Fraser and
Speaker 1: the attempted murder of Fraser's buddy Thomas.
Speaker 2: Long Regulald Fraser. He testified that he seen a white car.
Speaker 2: Somebody pointed a girl out of the window of the
Speaker 2: car and started shooting at him or the group that
Speaker 2: he was in. Long testified also, but he really didn't
Speaker 2: provide much information. He just said that, you know, he's
Speaker 2: seen a white car. He couldn't identify the car. He
Speaker 2: don't even know where the shots came from. He just
Speaker 2: said he heard a shot and he started running and
Speaker 2: of course, a confession for me an incriminating confession.
Speaker 1: Now, as we've discussed, this alleged confession was about shooting
Speaker 1: Thomas Long from the car, even though the bullet path
Speaker 1: through Long's left shoulder placed the shooter on the sidewalk
Speaker 1: in front of or behind him, not in a car
Speaker 1: way off to his right, but none of this was
Speaker 1: ever explained to the jury. Then they moved on to
Speaker 1: the assault.
Speaker 2: On July fifteen, Fraser said that he had a confrontation
Speaker 2: with a guy on one hundred and fifty ninth Street
Speaker 2: that he had never seen before at night, and the
Speaker 2: guy shot him as he tried to run away. He said, yes,
Speaker 2: he don't right there, sitting right there now.
Speaker 1: Importantly, he reported that this was a blackmail, but changed
Speaker 1: this description to hispanic mail and id Jerome an id
Speaker 1: that he appears to have been incentivized and guided to
Speaker 1: may He also testified to having cooperated in other prosecutions,
Speaker 1: which could mean that he regularly traded testimony to maintain
Speaker 1: his own freedom and was not thereby a reliable source.
Speaker 1: But with Jerome's own statement corroborating this witness, he probably
Speaker 1: didn't have a chance anyway, how didn't think so.
Speaker 2: One is because I wasn't allowed to take the stand
Speaker 2: and speak and defend myself and for representation that I had.
Speaker 2: He never used his private investigator to go to the
Speaker 2: ABBA and interview witnesses, and so I knew I was
Speaker 2: in trouble. They came in and they just handed out they'd.
Speaker 1: On March seventeenth, nineteen ninety eight. Predictably, they found him
Speaker 1: guilty in both cases, ultimately resulting in two consecutive terms
Speaker 1: of twenty five and ten years for a total of
Speaker 1: thirty five years. And then his second trial for the
Speaker 1: Meyers murder began that August.
Speaker 3: The only evidence against Jerome Curry is Guzman and Curry's statement.
Speaker 3: Henrikuz does not testify a trial. He provides a statement
Speaker 3: to Ba DeLeon, and interestingly, Henriquez and Guzman's statements almost
Speaker 3: match identically, like almost word for word. We all have
Speaker 3: different perception. Okay, so you're gonna have different versions of
Speaker 3: the same event. Now that it's not going to contradict
Speaker 3: each other, but it's going to be slightly different. You're
Speaker 3: not going to have exactly the same statement right word
Speaker 3: for word. That's not gonna happen. They don't write those
Speaker 3: statements Deleone does, right. But Henriquez doesn't testify a trial.
Speaker 2: No, he didn't testify. And he told me that. He said, listen,
Speaker 2: even though I implicated you in this murder, I know
Speaker 2: you wasn't there. They forced me to say these things
Speaker 2: about are he said, Detective Lyon forced me. Crime is
Speaker 2: you know. They put me in a room. They threatened
Speaker 2: to hit me. This is a guy that never been arrested.
Speaker 2: And he took a plee. He said, I'm not doing it.
Speaker 2: He said, I'm not going to testify. I'd rather take
Speaker 2: a plea offer. Just get on with my life and
Speaker 2: do whatever amount of years I have to do before
Speaker 2: I come in here and do that. And he never
Speaker 2: testify either. He refused to testify.
Speaker 3: I forget how much time he gets. He does do
Speaker 3: a lot of time in prison. Enriquez, he does much
Speaker 3: more time than Guzman does, who does cooperate.
Speaker 2: I think he did about seven in some months. He
Speaker 2: did less than what he was supposed to do, so
Speaker 2: I don't know if they threw in a letter of
Speaker 2: consideration in there for him.
Speaker 3: And Guzman says that when Henriquez comes into the car,
Speaker 3: the victim runs up to the front of the windshield
Speaker 3: and slaps the windshield.
Speaker 2: They said that he was standing in front by the
Speaker 2: hood of the car with both hands raised in the
Speaker 2: air in a position to strike the wing shield. So
Speaker 2: that means that the bullet wood has struck him through
Speaker 2: his left.
Speaker 3: Side, and he says, Curry shoots through the front of
Speaker 3: the windshield. And what we know from the autopsy report
Speaker 3: is that they're stippling on the wound, which means two things.
Speaker 3: That this is a close gunshot wound. The other thing
Speaker 3: is there can't be an intermediate between the wound and
Speaker 3: the gun completely refutes what Guzman is saying. And it's
Speaker 3: more that the victim, Myers, is running towards the car,
Speaker 3: reaching into the car, and is shot into the side
Speaker 3: of his body.
Speaker 1: The autopsy says that the bullet entered through the back
Speaker 1: of his upper right arm, then entered the chest under
Speaker 1: the armpit, and traveled through the lungs and heart, which
Speaker 1: further makes sense when you know that the car was
Speaker 1: moving away from him. Picture of the car with the
Speaker 1: passenger side pulled up to the curb, Enriquez darting back
Speaker 1: into the car, Myer's lunging for him. The car pulls
Speaker 1: away and the shot was fired, making that back of
Speaker 1: the upper right arm through the chest trajectory possible.
Speaker 3: Those ded files that said there were some witnesses that
Speaker 3: said the car was already moving when Myers was shot,
Speaker 3: those ded files weren't turned over a trial because it
Speaker 3: would have contradicted Guzman's trial testimony and Curry that the
Speaker 3: shooting happens when the car stationary.
Speaker 1: The jury never heard how the States narrative was impossible,
Speaker 1: nor did they hear from a single alibi witness.
Speaker 3: Jerome's girlfriend and mother both said that he was in Trenton.
Speaker 3: He has another guy named Figueroa. He was with Figaroa
Speaker 3: at like a birthday party at the time in Trenton.
Speaker 3: None of those people were called in Jerome's defense a trial.
Speaker 3: The defense attorney essentially he relied on his ability to
Speaker 3: cross examine Guzman and to basically say, hey, the thirty
Speaker 3: eight is not in fact a murder weapon. And of
Speaker 3: course Jerome gets convicted.
Speaker 1: Which is predictable considering that the jury heard Jerome's false statement,
Speaker 1: so he got another twenty five year sentence.
Speaker 2: At the moment, I did really comprehend who's going I
Speaker 2: couldn't put together the sentence. I just heard what I
Speaker 2: hear by sentence you to twenty five a life, and
Speaker 2: I started adding off for years and which turned the
Speaker 2: entire sentence into sixty to life. Sixty to life. Yep.
Speaker 2: But at that moment, everything just goes quiet, everything goes numb.
Speaker 2: It's everything just going in slow motion. Then you go
Speaker 2: up stay at that age, you go up stay. They
Speaker 2: send you all close to Canada, the Client and Correctional facility,
Speaker 2: and you know, that's when you feel that, you know
Speaker 2: it's over. You know, with all the histories and officers
Speaker 2: killing prisoners and prisoners killing prisoners, you know, all the
Speaker 2: violence and all the drugs and all everything that just
Speaker 2: goes on in places life that it was horrible. You know,
Speaker 2: there's no way to prepare for that.
Speaker 1: While and during the worst of New York State prisoners,
Speaker 1: Jerome began to learn the law, meanwhile receiving denials on
Speaker 1: appeal until he filed his federal habeas petition.
Speaker 2: They granted me a hearing, they said they he asked
Speaker 2: the questions in two of them, Where did my defense
Speaker 2: council ever make an attempt to contact those witnesses that
Speaker 2: described me as being six y to one and if
Speaker 2: he didn't, whether that deficiency affected the trial. So they
Speaker 2: vacated that conviction and sent it back to the district court.
Speaker 2: And when I got a hearing, I wasn't as prepared.
Speaker 2: You know, I wasn't as educated. I really didn't know
Speaker 2: the law as much as I know now. So when
Speaker 2: I went to the hearing, the magistrate judge, which is
Speaker 2: a guy named Andrew Peck, he was very tough and
Speaker 2: instead of answering the questions or having the question answered
Speaker 2: by the second Circuit, he turned it around and made
Speaker 2: it into whether I asked my counsel to call these witnesses,
Speaker 2: But I was not the question by the court. They
Speaker 2: asked whether his deficient performance in calling these witnesses affected
Speaker 2: the trial, and he'd never addressed that. He turned it
Speaker 2: around and found a way that to not the motion
Speaker 2: based on that. He said, oh, well, you never asked
Speaker 2: him to call these witnesses, which I did, by the way,
Speaker 2: I testified at the hearing, and I said, yes, I
Speaker 2: did ask them multiple times. You know, I was very
Speaker 2: interested in hearing from these witnesses that described me as
Speaker 2: being six ' one and then you know, here I
Speaker 2: am at five seven and he never called them in.
Speaker 1: While these witness descriptions in the Meyers case likely referred
Speaker 1: to Miguel Enriquez, those same witnesses allegedly identified Jerome while
Speaker 1: he was seated, But regardless of how problematic all of
Speaker 1: that is, the judge still found a way to deny
Speaker 1: the claim. The next bit of progress came with Justin's
Speaker 1: involvement in twenty sixteen, when he did what Jerome's trial
Speaker 1: attorney never did, an actual investigation, starting with alibi witnesses
Speaker 1: like Eduardo Figueroa.
Speaker 2: I knowed this guy for years, and my mother had
Speaker 2: ran into his family his father in Trenton, New Jersey,
Speaker 2: so his father gave him the number. He immediately traveled
Speaker 2: up here and I haven't seen this guy in abbly
Speaker 2: twenty five years, and he was shocked to hear that
Speaker 2: I have been in call made a full crime to
Speaker 2: happen when we were together in Trenton, New Jersey.
Speaker 3: So FIGUREO. It gives an affidavids that Jerome was at
Speaker 3: a party in Trenton at the time of the homicide,
Speaker 3: and Jerome's mother and girlfriend both say during that week
Speaker 3: right that he was down in Trenton.
Speaker 1: He also did a reinvestigation of the Meyers crime scene
Speaker 1: with two forensic pathologists, doctors Thomas Kubick and Cyril Weck,
Speaker 1: the latter of whom is such a legendary figure. I
Speaker 1: mean he actually worked the Kennedy assassination and countless other
Speaker 1: cases since then.
Speaker 3: Doctor Wek has probably been involved with over fifty thousand autopsies,
Speaker 3: and he gave the report back in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: And doctor Kuick basically says the same thing as doctor Wex.
Speaker 3: So we have two experts that basically say that Guzman's
Speaker 3: trial testimony and Enriquez's statement are physically impossible.
Speaker 1: Everything we've been saying about how the ballistics contradict the
Speaker 1: state's evidence comes from them. And as we've already mentioned,
Speaker 1: Justin also got an affidavid from Miguel Enriquez saying that
Speaker 1: Jerome was never involved in any way. So, as Justin
Speaker 1: has said, his initial focus is the Meyers case, which
Speaker 1: he has now fully dismantled. The only way this could
Speaker 1: be better would be if Guzman reappeared from the Dominican
Speaker 1: Republic to corroborate everything we already know well enough even
Speaker 1: without him. And then there's the state star witness from
Speaker 1: the first trial none other than Reggie Fraser.
Speaker 2: I found on a foil request in recent years. I
Speaker 2: think it was in twenty seventeen or eighteen, with the
Speaker 2: help of a friend of mine, This guy, Reginald Fraser,
Speaker 2: gave two different descriptions, but that was never turned over.
Speaker 2: I just recently found that.
Speaker 1: Out, and this is when Jerome finally knew what we've
Speaker 1: been saying about Fraser's credibility issues. Then, once again, contrary
Speaker 1: to Fraser's testimony, the ballistics in Long's case proved that
Speaker 1: the shooter must have been on the sidewalk and not
Speaker 1: in a passing white sedan. And the backdrop for Fraser's
Speaker 1: participation in both trials is the police ignoring his drug
Speaker 1: trafficking while giving him a sweetheart deal for his rape charge.
Speaker 1: While we still don't have definitive proof that Jerome didn't
Speaker 1: shoot Fraser in the ass on July fifteenth, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: we do have the word of a thirty eight year
Speaker 1: old man who impregnated a thirteen year old child. In addition,
Speaker 1: Jerome has said in writing that he's ready and willing
Speaker 1: to submit to DNA testing to exclude himself from the
Speaker 1: thirty eight. While that weapon is excluded from the Meyers case,
Speaker 1: it's just one more corroboration that he was not involved
Speaker 1: in the other two incidents in which the police say
Speaker 1: that gun was involved. So hopefully Justin's going to be
Speaker 1: able to obtain that testing as well as additional info
Speaker 1: further discrediting Fraser. In the meantime, they're awaiting the decision
Speaker 1: on the four to forty motion in the Meyers case.
Speaker 3: And what I believe is you'll have to take one
Speaker 3: piece at a time here. And what we know is
Speaker 3: one of his convictions, at the very least is wrong,
Speaker 3: and it's the most serious conviction, and it shows this
Speaker 3: conviction and shows it is a testament that the other
Speaker 3: convictions that he has are at the very least highly
Speaker 3: highly problematic, and that they just went all out didn't care.
Speaker 3: They used coercive tactics, they manufactured evidence, they just didn't care.
Speaker 3: So I don't want to move on anything until I'm sure.
Speaker 3: And what I am very very certain about is that
Speaker 3: Jerome Curry did not kill Reginald Myers, and he was
Speaker 3: not there when Reginald Myers was killed. And we have
Speaker 3: a person that's in the car Miguel Enriquez is now
Speaker 3: saying that Jerome Curry wasn't even in the car. It
Speaker 3: wasn't there, wasn't president at all. And he's admitting that
Speaker 3: I was there, I took the bag. He's admitting his
Speaker 3: involvement in the murder. He's admitting it, and he's saying
Speaker 3: Curry had nothing to do with it. And we have alibis.
Speaker 3: And the question I have is is what part of
Speaker 3: this case isn't isn't covered by the evidence that we
Speaker 3: put in that motion. Why aren't we working with the
Speaker 3: prosecutor's office when and they discover that you have a
Speaker 3: detective that has a pattern, We've begun to establish a pattern.
Speaker 3: The FBI says a serial killer is defined by what
Speaker 3: two or more murders. I think it is that's the definition. Here.
Speaker 3: We know that Deleone beat at least one person found
Speaker 3: guilty of that internally from the NYPD, and that the
Speaker 3: New York County District Attorney's office has made allegations that
Speaker 3: he fabricated and manufactured evidence in another case that led
Speaker 3: to an exoneration of all I men. Shouldn't we now
Speaker 3: begin to look at everything BA Deleone does? But I
Speaker 3: could tell you. I spoke to him about Jerome's case,
Speaker 3: and he still believes that that thirty eight was the
Speaker 3: murder weapon. It's in his notes. It's in his notes.
Speaker 3: He still believes that. And he told me techniques that
Speaker 3: he used to get people to identify people in photo
Speaker 3: rays and lineups and things like that. Basically, in six packs,
Speaker 3: he would put people in two and five, and in
Speaker 3: lineups he would push people into three and four because
Speaker 3: people go to the middle the lineup first, and that
Speaker 3: increased the chance of identification exponentially. And then he had
Speaker 3: techniques about confessions. Obviously, Jerome knows about the confessions better
Speaker 3: than I do. I don't think I was with BA
Speaker 3: for over forty hours straight.
Speaker 1: I sincerely hope that the Manhattan DA's office takes a
Speaker 1: hard look at this case. You've got two incidents in
Speaker 1: which the ballistics cleared Jerome Curry and expose the false
Speaker 1: testimony of the victim from another incident who appears to
Speaker 1: have had plenty to gain from cooperating. So now with that,
Speaker 1: let's go to closing arguments. I'm being the first. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys for being here and sharing this incredibly important story.
Speaker 1: So with that, I'm going to turn off my microphone
Speaker 1: and kick back in my chair and just listen to
Speaker 1: anything else you have to say. Justin let's start with
Speaker 1: you and then hand it off to Jerome and he'll
Speaker 1: take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 3: Once you see one of these tainted investigations where the
Speaker 3: cops don't care, you then have to look at the
Speaker 3: other ones. The DA's office even has more information on
Speaker 3: lpdo de Leone. I'm still fighting for the rest of
Speaker 3: the information about his involvement, and his involvement is only
Speaker 3: in the Meyers case, but the other detectives that were
Speaker 3: involved in the other two cases were feeding off of him.
Speaker 3: They were obligated even twenty eight years ago to turn
Speaker 3: over the fact that Ba had abused another witness. Okay,
Speaker 3: they were obligated when they exonerated Jabbar Walker to turn
Speaker 3: over their findings in November of twenty twenty three, where
Speaker 3: lpdo de Leone was the lead investigator. And here every
Speaker 3: single piece of evidence against Jerome Curry was tainted by
Speaker 3: confirmation bias, contextual bias, by police officers that thought that
Speaker 3: their intuition took them to the right person, by witnesses
Speaker 3: that were willing to say whatever they had to say
Speaker 3: to get out of jail. And I know that's a
Speaker 3: common theme, but here we can prove that physical eviden
Speaker 3: and said, we can prove, we can prove that your
Speaker 3: own Curry was held, even by the NYPD's own admission,
Speaker 3: for well over a day, over thirty hours, by the
Speaker 3: NYPD's own admission, they kept him and interrogate him over
Speaker 3: and over and over again until they got the information
Speaker 3: out of him that they wanted, not true, factual information,
Speaker 3: not information that was corroborated by the physical evidence. And
Speaker 3: that's what I want people to understand. The police's own
Speaker 3: techniques saying that the physical evidence should match the statement
Speaker 3: of the person that's confessing. We don't have any of
Speaker 3: that here. There's not one piece of evidence that's used
Speaker 3: to convict your own Curvey the Reginald Myer's case, that's reliable,
Speaker 3: not one.
Speaker 2: I want to address your listeners, those that are familiar
Speaker 2: with the criminal justice system, as well as those that
Speaker 2: are not, you know, as well as the Manhattan District
Speaker 2: Attorney's office and even the judge you know, who's passion
Speaker 2: I'm seeking and improving my innocent in this case that
Speaker 2: is before her. President you know, in her office right now,
Speaker 2: as far as I know, no one is above the
Speaker 2: law in this country, and the cornerstone of our constitutional
Speaker 2: law stays a normal one is above the law. And
Speaker 2: this includes members of the District Attorney's office in Manhattan
Speaker 2: as well as law enforcement. Now people may not know this,
Speaker 2: but in emotion such as the one that my attorney
Speaker 2: put together and submitted to the core, that is for
Speaker 2: requesting a new trial based on newly discover evidence, it's
Speaker 2: the judge has a duty or is required conduct a
Speaker 2: careful and dispassionate examination of the facts has presented in
Speaker 2: the papers that we submitted, and most importantly, the application
Speaker 2: of the law to those facts, which is what we
Speaker 2: have been requested. We are requested that the law is
Speaker 2: applied to the facts that we have presented and all
Speaker 2: our submissions. That's it, you know, I want to emphasized
Speaker 2: that from the auset from the inception of my criminal
Speaker 2: prosecutions have always claimed my innocence and as it is
Speaker 2: demonstrated the reinvestigation of my case, as well as the
Speaker 2: large amount of compelling newly discover everye this that is
Speaker 2: attached to the four to forty motion, that is pending
Speaker 2: right now in New York kind of Supreme Court. My
Speaker 2: role for conviction was the result of sufficient representation by
Speaker 2: my trial attorney, by the suppression of a squad that
Speaker 2: told me ever it is by the Mahaman District Attorney's office,
Speaker 2: and I think also very importantly by the outrageous misconda
Speaker 2: and corrupt investigative techniques of detective Opedia the Lyon. Detective
Speaker 2: Lyon has an expensive career history of engaging in action
Speaker 2: misconda and using corrupt investigative practices against criminal defenders and
Speaker 2: suspense for approximately twenty eight years. I have been claiming
Speaker 2: that it's very sane actions wisconder were used against me
Speaker 2: by Detective Apitia. The Lyon forced me to make a
Speaker 2: terminating confection against myself and the crime that I did
Speaker 2: not commit. Just like Yabaul Walker, I am also one
Speaker 2: hundred percent innocent, and I'm just requested for justice to
Speaker 2: be delivered in my favor and for the application of
Speaker 2: the law through the facts of my case to be implemented.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm innocent. I just want my day in court,
Speaker 2: and I want to be able to prove my innocence,
Speaker 2: and I would like to be exonerated from this crime.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
Speaker 1: week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 1: Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive
Speaker 1: producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn. The music
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all
Speaker 1: social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one.
Speaker 2: Hello, my name is Jose Fernandez and the Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 2: podcast just opened my eyes to the world of wrongful
Speaker 2: convictions and the innocent movements and just how often this
Speaker 2: happens to everyday people. But I would say this podcast
Speaker 2: did influence me to pursue my legal career.
Speaker 1: Now going to my second year of Loyola Law School
Speaker 1: and I'm going to be a part of their Loyola
Speaker 1: Project for the Innocent this upcoming semester, so I'm really
Speaker 1: excited for that, and I owe it all to the
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction Podcast for really leading me that way and
Speaker 1: inspire me to do the work that I hear so
Speaker 1: many of these insurting to do. Thank you, and keep
Speaker 1: up with the great work, keep pumping out those stories,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait to join the movement.