Speaker 1: On the night of December thirtieth, nineteen seventy four, two
Speaker 1: armed men entered a liquor store on the outskirts of
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City. They ordered one clerk to empty the cash
Speaker 1: register and fatally shot the other one in the head.
Speaker 1: As the surviving clerk nervously fumbled the cash, one of
Speaker 1: the assailants shot eighteen year old Belinda Brown in the
Speaker 1: head as well, but miraculously the girl survived, and she
Speaker 1: described her shooters as black men over six feet tall
Speaker 1: and two hundred pounds. No identifications were made until five
Speaker 1: weeks later, when two young men, Glenn Simmons and Don Roberts,
Speaker 1: took part in a lineup. Even though both young men
Speaker 1: fell well shy of the described height and weight, Belinda
Speaker 1: Brown's ID was enough to convince a jury, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five murder in Oklahoma carried an automatic sentence
Speaker 1: of death. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: wrongful Conviction, where we're covering a robbery homicide out of Edmond,
Speaker 1: Oklahoma that took place while our guest of honor, Glenn Simmons,
Speaker 1: lived hundreds of miles away, just outside of New Orleans.
Speaker 1: But before we try to make sense of all that.
Speaker 1: I'd like to introduce his attorney, Joe Norwood. Joe, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Thank you, and thank you for helping
Speaker 1: win Glenn's release after more than forty eight years, one
Speaker 1: of the longest terms of any previous guests or anybody
Speaker 1: in the long and terrible history of bromful convictions in
Speaker 1: this country. I think Tyrone Clark is the only other
Speaker 1: innocent person that we know of who has served as
Speaker 1: longer longer, and I hope no one else ever comes close.
Speaker 1: So Glenn Simmons, welcome, Thank you. Now, this happened on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of Oklahoma City, in the town called edmund
Speaker 1: same as Julius Jones in nineteen ninety nine, by the way,
Speaker 1: and we'll have his story lengked in the episode description
Speaker 1: as we continue to seek justice.
Speaker 2: There everyone in Oklahoma's whare of that case.
Speaker 1: But the crime in Glenn's story took place twenty five
Speaker 1: years earlier, way back in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2: When Glenn's case happened, Edmunds was a sundown community sundown,
Speaker 2: meaning if you're black, you better get out before sundown
Speaker 2: and most preferably not even show up there. It has
Speaker 2: changed dramatically since then into fourth largest, one of the
Speaker 2: wealthiest cities in Oklahoma now.
Speaker 1: But back in seventy four when the crime in question happened,
Speaker 1: Glenn hadn't even arrived in this sundown town yet. He
Speaker 1: was still living and was actually in Harvey, Louisiana, where
Speaker 1: he had been born back in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 3: One year before Brown Versus Education desegregation of the schools. However,
Speaker 3: schools wasn't really desegregated into nineteen sixty eight. In the
Speaker 3: town where I grew up at, you know, Harvard, Luis
Speaker 3: down It's on the west bank of the Mississippi River,
Speaker 3: New Orleans. Grew up in a very large family, nine
Speaker 3: lords and four girls, went to all black school in
Speaker 3: the neighborhood. Pretty good childhood, not a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: drama now.
Speaker 1: The crime in question occurred during that sleepy week between
Speaker 1: Christmas and New Year's in nineteen seventy four. Glenn had
Speaker 1: just turned twenty one years old, and his aunt, Dorothy,
Speaker 1: who lived Edmond, Oklahoma, was back in Harvey for the holidays.
Speaker 3: Anti Dart did she would come for Christmas In New
Speaker 3: Year's we had this tradition what we called the Turkey Bowl,
Speaker 3: and every New Year's Eve we would go to this
Speaker 3: high school and neighborhood guys would gather around and pick
Speaker 3: teams to play ball. And we did it that year
Speaker 3: and thought I was a little sharp, little pool player
Speaker 3: at the time, so I hung out in the pool
Speaker 3: hall a lot, and we had some pool tournaments that
Speaker 3: weekend also. And this one particular time Anti Dart did
Speaker 3: she came, I decided to go back with her too, Oklahoma,
Speaker 3: which was in January nineteen seventy five. I wasn't intending
Speaker 3: to stay. I was just coming to visit. Well. I
Speaker 3: found me a job within a few days, and I
Speaker 3: liked the job, so I decided to steal a little
Speaker 3: while longer.
Speaker 1: However, before Glenn even arrived in Edmond, Oklahoma, a robbery
Speaker 1: and murder had occurred at a liquor store. On December thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2: Around nine thirty pm. Two perpetrators come into the Edmund
Speaker 2: liquor store and hold it up demand the cash One
Speaker 2: of the cashiers hands it over and they shoot the
Speaker 2: other one in the head, who falls dead. As the
Speaker 2: cashier that was still alive was handing over the cash
Speaker 2: and eighteen year old young lady walks in and as
Speaker 2: soon as she walks past the two perpetrators, they shoot
Speaker 2: her in the back of the head. They grab the
Speaker 2: cash and run off.
Speaker 1: The eighteen year old customer, Belinda Brown, ended up surviving,
Speaker 1: while thirty year old Carolyn Sue Rogers died at the scene.
Speaker 1: The surviving cashier was named Norma Hankins.
Speaker 2: Her initial statement to the police was, I was busy
Speaker 2: looking at that gun. I don't know that I'll be
Speaker 2: able to give a good accurate description. That is what
Speaker 2: she testified to at the preliminary hearing, and that's what
Speaker 2: she testified to at the jury trial.
Speaker 1: As the police canvassed the area, a group of boys
Speaker 1: allegedly saw the getaway, but didn't have anything useful for
Speaker 1: the police until many weeks later. Meanwhile, the eighteen year
Speaker 1: old customer, Belinda Brown, who had been shot in the head,
Speaker 1: was in critical condition.
Speaker 2: She was in the hospital for about a week. She
Speaker 2: had surgery, the bullet was removed and she been it
Speaker 2: up surviving. Not but a day or two after she
Speaker 2: got out of the hospital, she was interviewed by the
Speaker 2: police and from the police report quote unquote, if she
Speaker 2: thought about it anymore, it would get all jumbled up
Speaker 2: in her mind.
Speaker 1: From what we understand, she wanted to give them any
Speaker 1: information she had as soon as possible. She described the
Speaker 1: assailants as two black men, a little over six feet
Speaker 1: tall and two hundred pounds, and she was shown several
Speaker 1: lineups and initially only made partial identifications, like maybe the
Speaker 1: eyes of someone she viewed were similar to the assailants,
Speaker 1: but no concrete ideas. At this point, the investigation began
Speaker 1: to struggle.
Speaker 3: When I got to Oklahoma, this Ed Meligosto murder had
Speaker 3: been going unsolved, and every day there was an article
Speaker 3: about the inadequacies of the police department, how they couldn't
Speaker 3: sell of the crime, and it was coming to a date,
Speaker 3: and it was on the whole lot of pressure to
Speaker 3: solve those crimes. And I just helped to walk into it,
Speaker 3: you know, right into it.
Speaker 1: During what was supposed to be just an extended visit
Speaker 1: with his aunt, Glynn attended a small get together at
Speaker 1: a relative's home on the night of February third into
Speaker 1: the fourth, when another robbery homicide occurred in Oklahoma City,
Speaker 1: and by the fifth police had two suspects in custody
Speaker 1: Leonard and Delbert Patterson, who had been at the same
Speaker 1: party as Glenn.
Speaker 3: They was at the port that night and they left
Speaker 3: him with did something. They come back half an hour
Speaker 3: later kept all parted. So the next day when they
Speaker 3: get arrested on the murder, the accent was they gave
Speaker 3: it out abi that they was at the port and
Speaker 3: who all was at the party, and they started arresting
Speaker 3: people as material witnesses and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: In order to hold some of these material witnesses, the police,
Speaker 1: with no probable cause to do so, charged some of
Speaker 1: the people from the party as suspects in random open cases.
Speaker 3: They arrested me on the Bogies robbery case, which was
Speaker 3: dismissed right there on. The woman who got robbed came
Speaker 3: to the station and said, no, I ain't never seen
Speaker 3: that guy before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something They threw on him to make sure
Speaker 2: they could hold him.
Speaker 1: At some point during this morass where the police had
Speaker 1: all these young folks from the party still in custody,
Speaker 1: Leonard and Delbert Patterson, both of them were about six
Speaker 1: to two and a little over two hundred pounds. They
Speaker 1: eventually confessed to the February robbery homicide in Oklahoma City,
Speaker 1: but the Edmund liquor store robbery homicide in December remained
Speaker 1: an open case.
Speaker 3: I take this out if you look at the police report.
Speaker 3: On February the fifth, February to six officers show over
Speaker 3: at the Oklahoma Police Department. Contacted Officer Garrett at the
Speaker 3: Edmund Police Department and he told him, he said, we
Speaker 3: got two suspects in custody fit the description of the
Speaker 3: Edmund liquor store murder, and you need to come down
Speaker 3: and conduct an ID right now. I don't see who
Speaker 3: these suspects are, but they say they fitted the description
Speaker 3: to composite that Belinda Brown gave him, saying they were
Speaker 3: six feet two hundred some pound right, totally different from
Speaker 3: my description. I was like one hundred and fifty pounds
Speaker 3: five eight. But I was actually to participate in the lineup.
Speaker 3: I didn't know I had the right to refuse or
Speaker 3: a right to a lawyer. Went in, got in the
Speaker 3: lineup and was told that I was picked out the lineup,
Speaker 3: and so Linda Brown, she was so sure she called
Speaker 3: detect the house later on that night and told him say,
Speaker 3: to more I think about it, the more positive I
Speaker 3: am that it was number six. They asked us, way
Speaker 3: you can you come up tomorrow and make another idea.
Speaker 3: She came back the next day to say I picked
Speaker 3: the sam to I picked the day before.
Speaker 1: Belinda Brown was very confident in her choice of position
Speaker 1: six in the first lineup, but only became more confident
Speaker 1: in her second choice the following day. And on February eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, both Glenn Simmons and another young man
Speaker 1: from the party, Don Roberts, were charged with capital murder.
Speaker 1: With no bail available, they awaited trial from jail and
Speaker 1: Glenn hired private counsel.
Speaker 3: He was a friend of my aunt's, Henry Floyd. I
Speaker 3: think I gave him like twenty two hundred dollars, which
Speaker 3: was a lot of money at that time. He didn't
Speaker 3: do nothing, found no pre trial motions or nothing in.
Speaker 1: The case, and perhaps he felt confident considering the glaring
Speaker 1: difference between Glenn and Don smaller statures and the over
Speaker 1: six feet tall, two hundred pounds assailants, a discrepancy that
Speaker 1: seemed to strike a chord with the Linda Brown at
Speaker 1: the preliminary hearing.
Speaker 3: When she comes to preliminary three or four weeks later,
Speaker 3: I'm sitting there next to Don Rbs in the prison uniform.
Speaker 3: It written all over face. I'm confused, she confused all
Speaker 3: the way. Every time she look at m and I'm
Speaker 3: looking at her. You got the wrong one, you know,
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying, you know.
Speaker 2: And she gets on the stand and she does identify them,
Speaker 2: but it's not a real confident ID.
Speaker 3: She said, well, he looked at taller, then he looked
Speaker 3: at heavier. He had a beard. He didn't have a beard.
Speaker 2: And she gets impeached.
Speaker 1: Not only was the defense attacking the credibility of the ID,
Speaker 1: but then, in trusting the lineup report he had received
Speaker 1: from police, Oklahoma County Assistant Prosecutor Bob Mildfeld implied that perhaps,
Speaker 1: after all that she'd been through, maybe Belinda Brown had
Speaker 1: just gotten a little confused about who she had id'd.
Speaker 3: When they kept trying to make it look like she
Speaker 3: was crazy. She was injured when she got shot in
Speaker 3: the head. She couldn't be sure. She got real defined
Speaker 3: was eighteen years old, and they're trying to tell it.
Speaker 3: Were you crazy? You don't know? And she knew she
Speaker 3: had made suits. She got the right one, so she
Speaker 3: got real defined. She put up, back up, and wouldn't
Speaker 3: never back down until this day.
Speaker 1: So the adversity only served to solidify the ID in
Speaker 1: Belinda Brown's mind. Meanwhile, one of the teenage boys who
Speaker 1: were interviewed back in December of seventy four was now
Speaker 1: willing to say that he recognized Don Roberts from a
Speaker 1: car that had passed by the liquor store that night.
Speaker 1: And Glenn and Don were taking the trial in June
Speaker 1: of seventy five, where the defense strategy focused on impeaching
Speaker 1: Belinda Brown, who is now even more confident in her ID.
Speaker 3: And they had us to stand next to each other.
Speaker 3: She was five eight, I was five eighting. She said, well,
Speaker 3: you lucky taller than him, and she said, well, he
Speaker 3: might have had on stack your shoes. She was defined
Speaker 3: because she knows she picked this and a winter. Well
Speaker 3: I could have got to this defense statement, Oh Wilders
Speaker 3: dreams and mob fails Wilder's dream.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, six alibi witnesses made the trip from Harvey, Louisiana
Speaker 1: to testify it by the pool tournament on December thirtieth
Speaker 1: and the Turkey Bowl the following day, which made it
Speaker 1: impossible for Glenn to have been an Edmund to commit
Speaker 1: this crime. No, thanks to his attorney, Henry Floyd, though.
Speaker 3: No. We put that together. My family put that together.
Speaker 3: What he did was so he went to the court
Speaker 3: and solicited money for travel expenses and lodges in and stuff,
Speaker 3: and put that money in his pocket and the people
Speaker 3: had to find their own way to get here. Six
Speaker 3: of them witness. He didn't even call them. All he
Speaker 3: said would be redundant, so he didn't even bring all
Speaker 3: the witness up. But the police never did investigate none
Speaker 3: of the alibi witness and stuff that I gave him.
Speaker 3: You gotta report say anything with the Dallas and looked
Speaker 3: at Don's He had gave alibi that he was in Dallas,
Speaker 3: and the detectives went to Dallas and checked out the
Speaker 3: alibi and come back inconclusively they couldn't prove that he
Speaker 3: was in there, but they decided to say they couldn't
Speaker 3: prove that he was.
Speaker 1: You know, with Glenn and Don's alibi defenses, coupled with
Speaker 1: the impeaching evidence against Belinda Brown, reasonable doubt had certainly
Speaker 1: been raised and there was at least some hope for
Speaker 1: a quittal.
Speaker 3: I thought I was going to walk up out of there. No,
Speaker 3: I couldn't see no conviction. What's nothing to convict me on.
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 3: Then, last two and a half days. Just send us
Speaker 3: a debt in the elected chair. Yeah, I don't have
Speaker 3: to say any more about that. You know, some wounds
Speaker 3: you let stay closed.
Speaker 4: Right, Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people
Speaker 4: in prison.
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Speaker 3: Six seventy five. Dad, what they call a mandatory dead
Speaker 3: penoty if they find you guilty of one two three
Speaker 3: elements of murder, like you kill the police or he
Speaker 3: kills about it being the commission of a feling, he
Speaker 3: kills about it at a certain age or something like that.
Speaker 3: That he was automatically given the dead penety, and the
Speaker 3: jury had no discretion and to rendering up the punishment
Speaker 3: because it was set by legislative back was automatic dead penalty.
Speaker 3: That's one of the reason why it was abolish.
Speaker 1: In June of nineteen seventy two, the Supreme Court ruled
Speaker 1: in Furman versus Georgia that the death penalty violated the
Speaker 1: Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments under certain circumstances, placing a four
Speaker 1: year moratorium on executions until more challenges would bring about
Speaker 1: guidance on the matter.
Speaker 2: US Supreme Court stayed the death penalty across the country,
Speaker 2: saying the death penalties being administered arbitrarily and capriciously, and
Speaker 2: so Oklahoma and several other states response to that was, Okay,
Speaker 2: you don't think that we administered the death penalty evenly
Speaker 2: and equally, great, Well, we're just going to administer it
Speaker 2: to everyone that is convicted of first degree murder. And
Speaker 2: so that's the statute that Glenn was convicted under. Now,
Speaker 2: that statute was appealed, and the Supreme Court came back
Speaker 2: and rendered a decision on a group of statutes, including Oklahoma's,
Speaker 2: saying basically, no, guys, we didn't mean to kill everyone.
Speaker 2: We meant that you got to make it somewhat fair.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, the Supreme Court confirmed that capital
Speaker 1: punishment was still legal in the United States, but under
Speaker 1: limited circumstances, so the interim statutes in states like Oklahoma
Speaker 1: were nullified, and in their place came the aggravating and
Speaker 1: mitigating processes that we see used today, in which juries
Speaker 1: have a say in sentencing. The Supreme Court ruling played
Speaker 1: out differently in each state, but in Oklahoma, Glenn's sentence
Speaker 1: and all others rendered before nineteen seventy six were commuted
Speaker 1: by the Oklahoma Supreme Court to life, with the possibility
Speaker 1: of parole from there. His direct appeal failed and financially
Speaker 1: he was unable to mount anything further, which made the
Speaker 1: parole board his only viable avenue at the time.
Speaker 3: I stayed in for forty eight years because my innocence
Speaker 3: was my burden, so it was more of a luxury
Speaker 3: to be guilty. Guys into guilty please for all kinds
Speaker 3: of atrocious crimes. But they go for the parole board
Speaker 3: and they tell them I feel regret and I feel remorse,
Speaker 3: I take responsibility for my crime, and they give them
Speaker 3: a parole, let them go six to eighteen months, they'd
Speaker 3: be back in again. They let them go again. But
Speaker 3: I went up for thirty something years saying that I'm innocent,
Speaker 3: and it was denied because I didn't show remorse. You know,
Speaker 3: I take responsibility, notwithstanding the fact that the victim's sister
Speaker 3: wrote them a letter, sent them a video deposition telling them,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't think mister Simmons killed my sister.
Speaker 3: I think my sister and mister Simmons victims of the
Speaker 3: same crime.
Speaker 1: In addition to the victim's sister, the prosecuting attorney, Bob
Speaker 1: Mildfeldt also came.
Speaker 3: Forward, like ninety three first letter he wrote, telling him
Speaker 3: that he think I was innocent and I didn't get
Speaker 3: a fair trial. I took it to the parole board
Speaker 3: and they accused me of forging the letter and denied me.
Speaker 3: So at that time it was going up annually for
Speaker 3: the row. So the next year I had mylefel to
Speaker 3: write the parole board itself, and he wrote him and
Speaker 3: told him, he said, this is one case. I'm sure
Speaker 3: a week later that the verdict would have been different
Speaker 3: because of all the unasked questions we had. You know,
Speaker 3: he described the description that didn't fit me in all
Speaker 3: of this. It's in letters that he wrote to the
Speaker 3: parole board.
Speaker 1: The exact quote is very powerful when talking about Belinda
Speaker 1: Brown's description of the assailant at around six foot two
Speaker 1: hundred pounds quote, a physical description greatly different from Glenn's
Speaker 1: stature at the time. The jury on that day at
Speaker 1: that time found him guilty. However, quite candidly, it was
Speaker 1: one of the few cases I've been involved in that
Speaker 1: the verdict a week later could easily have been different
Speaker 1: end quote. Yet he was denied by the parole Board
Speaker 1: again in nineteen eighty six, but Bob milefelt the letter
Speaker 1: was not a dead end. It gave Glynn an idea
Speaker 1: that up until then he hadn't had the funds to
Speaker 1: follow through on.
Speaker 2: In the nineties, Glenn strikes up a relationship with a
Speaker 2: woman on the outside and they get married, and she
Speaker 2: dies about six months after her and Glenn get married.
Speaker 3: And my wife left me some money in an insurance policy,
Speaker 3: and so I took the money, and I had a
Speaker 3: private investigator. I gave him a list of what I wanted,
Speaker 3: but he came back with ten times more than I
Speaker 3: had on the list.
Speaker 2: His name is Mike Noble, and Mike ended up talking
Speaker 2: the Edmund City Attorney into turning over the entire file
Speaker 2: from Glenn's case from seventy four to seventy five.
Speaker 1: If you remember, Belinda Brown seemed confused at the preliminary
Speaker 1: hearing about whether Glenn and Don were the men she
Speaker 1: had identified in the lineup. His private investigator turned up
Speaker 1: the original lineup that seemed to have made Bob mildfelt
Speaker 1: so confident in that idea trial.
Speaker 2: From what we can tell, the only thing the prosecution
Speaker 2: had was the actual lineup that had the names of
Speaker 2: the people, you know, spot one, spot two through seven,
Speaker 2: and it has the date February seventh and eighth, and
Speaker 2: so it's not a report, it's just a lineup. And
Speaker 2: then there are stars above Glenn and Dawn's names. That's it.
Speaker 1: Then in the file from the Edmund City Attorney, that
Speaker 1: lineup sheet was accompanied by the report of who she
Speaker 1: actually chose.
Speaker 2: And so in the report it says Blenda Brown subject
Speaker 2: number six confidently and she's not so sure about subject
Speaker 2: number blank. And then it talks about her coming back
Speaker 2: the next day again affirmatively id in subject number six
Speaker 2: and then saying yes, I am now more confident that
Speaker 2: subject number and the report has a blank. Is the
Speaker 2: other suspect The actual lineup that had the spot one,
Speaker 2: spot two through Glenn was two. Don Roberts was four,
Speaker 2: Delbert Patterson was six, Leonard Patterson was seven.
Speaker 3: She consistently said I picked number six. You see, she
Speaker 3: never picked Linson from a line up all the way
Speaker 3: through and all the narratives is attacking the witness. Well,
Speaker 3: my thing is give the witness to benefit it out.
Speaker 3: Because she told them whose shadow. She told them exactly who.
Speaker 3: She didn't picked nobody else. She never did pick me.
Speaker 2: She picked Delbert Patterson. And then the report says suspect
Speaker 2: number and it has a blank. So we're not actually
Speaker 2: sure who the other person was that she picked, because
Speaker 2: this report that was not disclosed and discovered twenty years
Speaker 2: later is blank on who it is now, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot of other surrounding evidence to make us believe
Speaker 2: that it was Leonard Patterson. Leonard and Delbert were out
Speaker 2: killing people and robin people at this time. They had
Speaker 2: weapons that match the type of caliber that wounded Brown
Speaker 2: and killed Miss Rogers. They were suspected of having been
Speaker 2: in the area. The sketch of the suspect looks very
Speaker 2: much like Leonard Patterson. Matter of fact, I put pictures
Speaker 2: of Leonard in the briefire road along with the composite sketch.
Speaker 2: It's a striking resemblance.
Speaker 1: And as we mentioned, Delbert and Leonard Patterson matched Belinda
Speaker 1: Brown's description of her assailants.
Speaker 3: Six two hundred pounds. And where this would lead to
Speaker 3: clearly is police conspiracy cover up. There's no way I
Speaker 3: could have got to that defense table without the police
Speaker 3: hiding the reports because witness told the mousada.
Speaker 1: And it appears that Bob Mildfeld and everyone else, including
Speaker 1: Belinda Brown, were just led to believe that she had
Speaker 1: chosen Glenn Simmons and Don Roberts by the lineup sheet
Speaker 1: that had been marked with stars. It's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: Bob Mildfeld found out about the treachery after trial, and
Speaker 1: perhaps that's what compelled him to write to the parole
Speaker 1: board on Glenn's behalf.
Speaker 3: I asked him about it, what happened a week later,
Speaker 3: and I concluded that he didn't never have the reports,
Speaker 3: and after week after the conviction, I checked this out.
Speaker 3: He was an upcoming prosecuting attorney, just successfully prosecuted two
Speaker 3: first degree murder case in the high profile murder case
Speaker 3: that was all dissolved. His career is supposed to be
Speaker 3: in skyrocketing at the very least. But when I ran
Speaker 3: into him years later, he was a public defendant for
Speaker 3: the Juvenile Division and he stayed there for years and
Speaker 3: years until he retired.
Speaker 1: Perhaps he made that career choice considering what he was
Speaker 1: led to do to not only Glennon Donn, but also
Speaker 1: the victims, Carol and Sue Rogers and Belinda Brown.
Speaker 2: You had the victim pick who it was, Delbert and
Speaker 2: Leonard Patterson, who were already in custody for doing the
Speaker 2: exact same shit that you're looking for these two suspects on,
Speaker 2: and then you hide that report and you pin it
Speaker 2: on two other guys. Now the big question is why.
Speaker 2: My speculation is we got those two black guys, let's
Speaker 2: get a couple others.
Speaker 1: And this was done with a crime that carried an
Speaker 1: automatic death sentence.
Speaker 3: There's a name for that attempted murder. Nobody didn't want
Speaker 3: to talk about it because it's real explosive, but it
Speaker 3: happened to me, and I'm going to talk about it.
Speaker 3: Not only was it attempted murder, it's excessive to murder
Speaker 3: because you assist the perpetrators in getting away after she
Speaker 3: told you it was. It wasn't just no miscaracter justice
Speaker 3: or a misidentification, and that was deliberate, conscious, and deliberate.
Speaker 3: It wasn't no mistake.
Speaker 2: So Glenn goes and takes the rest of his money
Speaker 2: that he got from his deceased wife and pays an
Speaker 2: attorney to take this report back into court. This was
Speaker 2: Glenn's first post conviction or habeas. It was a straight
Speaker 2: Brady claim. Essentially, you got to turn over exculpatory defendants.
Speaker 2: But it's a skeleton pleading. He doesn't lay out why
Speaker 2: this report is so consequential, and if you are going
Speaker 2: to ask a judge to overturn a black man's murder convention,
Speaker 2: you have to come correct and throwing something that you
Speaker 2: found that is good evidence, exculpatory evidence, onto a skeleton
Speaker 2: pleading that doesn't lay out why it's important and how
Speaker 2: it completely takes out the base of the state's case
Speaker 2: where the government and judges have no choice. That's what
Speaker 2: you got to do to win these things. You have
Speaker 2: to give the government, prosecutors, judges no choice but to
Speaker 2: see innocence and then hope at that point that the prosecutor, judge, pardoner,
Speaker 2: and pro board governor whoever it is with the authority
Speaker 2: you're asking to make this decision has a conscience on him. Well,
Speaker 2: the lawyer in the nineties did not lay it out.
Speaker 2: He said, this is new evidence, this is Brady. You
Speaker 2: got to give us a new trial at least, and
Speaker 2: did not show that this report not only is Brady,
Speaker 2: but it proves Glenn innocent. And he just didn't lay
Speaker 2: it out correctly. Well, the attorney ends up getting shot
Speaker 2: down and state district court takes it to the Court
Speaker 2: of Criminal Appeals. Basically a speed bump on the way
Speaker 2: to federal court goes to federal court district court. They
Speaker 2: don't do anything. Glenn runs out of money, the attorneys
Speaker 2: don't even bother trying to do anything in the Tenth Circuit.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Glenn and Donn had been trying their hands at
Speaker 1: the parole board each year.
Speaker 3: We went up for parole two thousand and five and
Speaker 3: we both got majority to the votes from the parole board,
Speaker 3: but the governor turned us down. In Oklahoma, even when
Speaker 3: you get but George is still up to the governor,
Speaker 3: and so he turned us down. Stipulation to come back
Speaker 3: up in three years. But by the time we rolled around,
Speaker 3: I had two or three misconducts. They started letting sell
Speaker 3: phones into the penitentiary and I had a cell phone,
Speaker 3: so that was on me if you got a write
Speaker 3: up and you can't go off for parole. And so
Speaker 3: I missed it that year and he got out and
Speaker 3: I didn't. After that, politics changed and it was hard
Speaker 3: to get out.
Speaker 1: Glenn faced denials in court and at the parole board,
Speaker 1: even with this report proving that he and Don Roberts
Speaker 1: had not been identified by the victim. And since his
Speaker 1: attorney raised the evidence on appeal and was denied, it
Speaker 1: became procedurally defaulted. Eventually, it took a convergence of events
Speaker 1: and people to bring about justice in this case. First,
Speaker 1: Joe Norwood's work feeing two other innocent men put him
Speaker 1: on Glenn's radar, while media coverage of Glenn's case did
Speaker 1: the same for Joe.
Speaker 2: The local reporter in Oklahoma City, Ali Meyer, did some
Speaker 2: fantastic reporting on Glenn's case. Glenn reached out to me
Speaker 2: and asked me to get into the case, and so
Speaker 2: I read the transcript some of the reports and it
Speaker 2: was clear Glenn was innocent, and at that point I
Speaker 2: knew what I had to do. It was the end
Speaker 2: of twenty nineteen early twenty twe I spent two years investigating,
Speaker 2: putting it together, making sure we had everything.
Speaker 1: In addition, Glenn's evidence of actual innocence could finally be
Speaker 1: raised again in court, this time effectively as a new
Speaker 1: court ruling came to.
Speaker 3: Pass Fortnight versus Crow. It's a tenth circuit case. It's
Speaker 3: deal with newly presented evidence. If you could make a
Speaker 3: colorable showing on actual innocence, then the jug would drive
Speaker 3: all procedure bars and that you proceed if you had
Speaker 3: newly presented evidence. And so became with a new presentation
Speaker 3: of the evidence instead of attacking the witness in corner
Speaker 3: with the same night. If we switched it all the
Speaker 3: way around.
Speaker 2: Glynn had been battling this case for decades, long before
Speaker 2: I ever came around. He knew all this stuff inside
Speaker 2: and out. And he pointed out to me quickly, he's
Speaker 2: just like listen, Blinda Brown was right.
Speaker 3: She picked the right guys.
Speaker 2: I think that's who did it, and I put that
Speaker 2: in the brief, and so we ended up filing Glenn's
Speaker 2: case in mid twenty twenty one and then evidentially hearing
Speaker 2: in being set April twenty twenty three. We ended up
Speaker 2: putting fifteen witnesses on a stand. We had an expert
Speaker 2: and eyewitness identification that looked over the case and rendered
Speaker 2: an opinion that Blenda Brown's identification of Glenn in court
Speaker 2: is just not an identification at all. We ended up
Speaker 2: having total twelve alibi witnesses that testified that Glenn was
Speaker 2: in New Orleans at the time. Bob Mahlefelt testified that
Speaker 2: report was not in the file, and I acknowledged that
Speaker 2: that report does a lot of damage to the state's case.
Speaker 2: It impeaches Blnda Brown's testimony.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Bob Milefelt didn't have any information as to how
Speaker 1: or why that report was missing from his trial evidence,
Speaker 1: as well as who might have starred Don and Glenn's
Speaker 1: names on the bogus lineup sheet. But fortunately all of
Speaker 1: this was playing out across from the newly elected DA
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma County, Vicky Bihenna, who eventually joined their motion
Speaker 1: to vacate, and on July twentieth, twenty twenty three, Judge
Speaker 1: Palumbo vacated a conviction and ordered a new trial, and
Speaker 1: Glenn was released on bond for the first time in
Speaker 1: forty eight years, one month, in eighteen days.
Speaker 3: That was the moment. That was the first moment I
Speaker 3: stepped out, you know, into freedom when they took the
Speaker 3: cuffsafs and I walked out of the courtroom and escored it.
Speaker 3: That was it, but being born again, like the buildable
Speaker 3: card has just been severed. You see the picture that
Speaker 3: I took with my hands up in the air. I
Speaker 3: think it's all my gofund me and it's been getting
Speaker 3: better every day.
Speaker 1: Shortly after this, in September twenty twenty three, Victory Bahenna
Speaker 1: said that they didn't have sufficient evidence to move forward
Speaker 1: with a trial. It was still a far cry from
Speaker 1: being declared innocent.
Speaker 2: Vicky Behenna. She objected to Glenn being found actually innocent,
Speaker 2: So we had to fight that out a lot.
Speaker 3: Oh here's what she said. One of the winds is
Speaker 3: still alive and sticking to a story. We can't find
Speaker 3: you guilty, but we're gonna let you slide. I'm like bullshit.
Speaker 3: I responded that I'm sticking to a story too.
Speaker 2: The victims opinion is that she identified the right people. Well,
Speaker 2: you damn right, she picked the right people. It was
Speaker 2: Delbra Patterson and Leonard Patterson and miss Beheen is correct.
Speaker 2: We need to respect her id.
Speaker 1: As they damn well should have way back in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five.
Speaker 3: So they didn't have nothing to do but to throw
Speaker 3: it out. It was no defense for it.
Speaker 1: In December twenty twenty three, Glenn Simmons was declared actually innocent,
Speaker 1: clearing the path for his civil litigation. But as listeners
Speaker 1: of the show know, that can take a very long time.
Speaker 1: In addition, as we record this, Glenn is undergoing chemotherapy
Speaker 1: as he battles a stage four cancer diagnosis, so he
Speaker 1: needs your support right now. As he mentioned, there's a GoFundMe.
Speaker 1: It's going to be linked in the episode description, so
Speaker 1: please give what you can. And with that, we're going
Speaker 1: to go to closing arguments. It's where first of all,
Speaker 1: I thank you to amazing man Joe Norwood and Glenn Simmons,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna turn off my microphone, kick back in
Speaker 1: my chair with my headphones on and just close my
Speaker 1: eyes and just listen to anything else you have to
Speaker 1: share with me and our phenomenal audience. So Joe, you
Speaker 1: go first, that's our tradition, and then just sort of
Speaker 1: hand the microphone off to Glenn, and Glenn will take
Speaker 1: us off into the sunset.
Speaker 2: You know we've covered it. It's I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: view this as a grandiose statement. It's a historic case.
Speaker 2: He's the longest serving wrongful conviction in the history of
Speaker 2: the United States. He was sentenced to death and eventually
Speaker 2: found and proven by clearing, convincing evidence to be innocent.
Speaker 2: I don't have to say any more for people to
Speaker 2: understand the gravity and what this case says about our
Speaker 2: system planning.
Speaker 3: And I'm trying to launch my nonprofit and nonprofit Grace
Speaker 3: Redempson is salvation perfect for me to foot me integration.
Speaker 3: So I want to get it to this reintegration thing.
Speaker 3: I got this planned by this wrap around support system
Speaker 3: for guys coming out. There's a lot of guys at
Speaker 3: the same position that I was in, even worse because
Speaker 3: they don't have the support that I had, and some
Speaker 3: of them getting ready to be released. Now. My objective
Speaker 3: is to curtail recidivism because these statistics seventy two seventy one,
Speaker 3: seventy two percent of all inmates get out going to
Speaker 3: return back to prison within six to eighteen months, and
Speaker 3: this statistics has stood for twenty thirty years for the
Speaker 3: numbers to see that consistent. Then somebody delibered it, got
Speaker 3: their hands on the scale, and all I know is
Speaker 3: prison in and out. Like I said, I've seen guys,
Speaker 3: brilliant guys who've got college degrees and all kind of
Speaker 3: skills come back over and over again. And I've offered
Speaker 3: wonder why why they come back. They don't come back
Speaker 3: because they wanted to come back, because they haven't had
Speaker 3: time to adjust, they haven't had time to make the transition,
Speaker 3: they haven't had that wrap around support system. And so
Speaker 3: this is what my nonprofit going on intels and I
Speaker 3: would like to focus on the women. Oklahoma quite one
Speaker 3: of the best kept secret is that. And you don't
Speaker 3: hear politicians, of journalists or nobody talking about this. Oklahoma
Speaker 3: is number one and the incarceration of women and they
Speaker 3: have held that do be just distinction for thirty years
Speaker 3: or more. And I'm not just talking about the number
Speaker 3: one in the United States. I'm talking about the world
Speaker 3: over and nobody mentioned this. It's just like you ask
Speaker 3: the questions, why you know it's the women know kaoma
Speaker 3: one inclined to be criminals or they morediv than anybody else,
Speaker 3: and nobody gonna answer that question say yeah. And if
Speaker 3: you can answer that question and say yeah to that question,
Speaker 3: then it's got to be the legislators. We're a nation
Speaker 3: of laws, right, so it's got to be the legislators
Speaker 3: doing this. So, you know, we really need to rethink
Speaker 3: and reconsider the way we do this criminal justice and
Speaker 3: the way we apply these things. And so this is
Speaker 3: where I want to dedicate some of my time and
Speaker 3: effort towards because I've had first saying experience with it.
Speaker 1: You know, thank you for listening to Wrong for Conviction.
Speaker 1: Listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
Speaker 1: one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team,
Speaker 1: Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow
Speaker 1: executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The
Speaker 1: music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
Speaker 1: all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
Speaker 1: It's Jason Vlahm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one