Speaker 1: In the late nineteen eighties. Randall Paget was a poultry
Speaker 1: farmer and family man in the small town of Arab, Alabama, who,
Speaker 1: by his own admission, made the biggest mistake of his
Speaker 1: life when he stepped out and his wife Kathy with
Speaker 1: a coworker.
Speaker 2: Named Judy Smith.
Speaker 1: The affair was on and off again over the years,
Speaker 1: and during one of those on again times, Judy and
Speaker 1: Randall took a road trip to Florida, only to be
Speaker 1: awoken the first night they were there with some harrowing news.
Speaker 1: On August seventeenth, nineteen ninety Cathy's body had been discovered
Speaker 1: in her bed. She had endured a violent struggle and
Speaker 1: had sustained forty six stab wounds, which ultimately killed her,
Speaker 1: and to make matters worse, seamen was found inside of her.
Speaker 1: Even though there was no indication that she had been raped.
Speaker 1: The night before this Florida trip, that Paget children had
Speaker 1: stayed with Randall in his tiny trailer, they knew that
Speaker 1: he hadn't left in the middle of the night to
Speaker 1: do anything, much less kill their mother. No signs of
Speaker 1: a break in at her home, Randall became the suspect,
Speaker 1: and he was arrested when the seamen turned.
Speaker 3: Out to be his.
Speaker 1: The state would commit misconduct during the trial, involving blood
Speaker 1: found at the crime scene that didn't match Kathy or Randall.
Speaker 1: This misconduct was one of the factors that led ultimately
Speaker 1: to Randall being sentenced to death. The prosecutor misconduct would
Speaker 1: result in a retrial, and a defense investigation would uncover
Speaker 1: some of the craziest perversities, proving that Paget had been
Speaker 1: innocent all along and rescuing Randall from death.
Speaker 3: Row is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 2: That's me.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, and today I'm actually I kind of butterflies.
Speaker 1: I gotta be honest because today you're going to hear
Speaker 1: a story that I've been wanting to tell for as
Speaker 1: long as I've known about it. And when you hear it,
Speaker 1: you'll understand why. Because this is one of the craziest
Speaker 1: stories I believe in the history of American jurisprudence. And
Speaker 1: to help tell the story, we have an attorney. He's
Speaker 1: a personal hero of mine. Richard S. Jaffy is with us.
Speaker 1: So Richard, Welcome to Wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4: I'm so happy to be here, Jason, and today.
Speaker 1: We're going to be telling the incredible saga of Randall.
Speaker 1: Paget Randall, as I always say, I'm sorry you have
Speaker 1: to be here, but I'm happy you're here.
Speaker 2: I'm real happy to be here. I've been in a
Speaker 2: lot worse places.
Speaker 1: Well said Randall. Let's start with you, because you grew
Speaker 1: up in a small town in Alabama, a town called Arab.
Speaker 1: I had never heard of Arab, But can you just
Speaker 1: give us an idea of what your life was like
Speaker 1: before everything went so crazy?
Speaker 2: Okay, the town has pronounced Ara. Yeah. I grew up
Speaker 2: in the fifties. Well, a matter of fact, I was
Speaker 2: born in nineteen fifty small town population probably about seven
Speaker 2: thousand now. Grew up on a farm. For this simple life.
Speaker 2: I had good parents. They worked hard, they carried me
Speaker 2: to church, and well, I went to college. I got
Speaker 2: a degree in business and started to work with this plant.
Speaker 2: And I always loved outside, and so I ended up
Speaker 2: buying a poetry farm, got married, had two children, and
Speaker 2: had a pretty good life. Thirty two acres of land
Speaker 2: and the house had the land paid for, the house
Speaker 2: almost paid for, and I made probably the biggest mistake
Speaker 2: in my life. I had an extramarital affair.
Speaker 1: When you're referring to Judy Smith, Now you used to
Speaker 1: work together when all that started. Was it when you
Speaker 1: already had the poultry farm?
Speaker 2: No, it was was eating corporation, another plant, and we
Speaker 2: lived close together. One day here and work, she had
Speaker 2: a swimming pool. Something was said about going skinny dipping.
Speaker 2: So I remember when night we'd been working late and
Speaker 2: almost at home, and I seen her car in front
Speaker 2: of me and she pulled up in her driveway. So
Speaker 2: I kept thinking about the skinny dipping joke, so I
Speaker 2: put my headlights in behind her, trying to scare her.
Speaker 2: I figured she knew it was me, and then I
Speaker 2: went on home and didn't think anything else about it.
Speaker 2: Or the next day at worked, she said, well did
Speaker 2: you chicken out last night? So next night, same thing.
Speaker 2: I got almost her place, which was just before I
Speaker 2: got to my place, the he car is again pulled in.
Speaker 2: I pulled in, let's go skinny. Didn't well, she starts
Speaker 2: stripping off clothes. I thought it's all a big joke.
Speaker 2: So we got totally naked and wanted to do the deed,
Speaker 2: and I said no, I'm going home. Well, I did
Speaker 2: a long weekend, and all weekend the devil got my
Speaker 2: brain and said, you should just do it once. You
Speaker 2: should just do it once. And then did it once,
Speaker 2: and then it just more and more and more, and
Speaker 2: I was I was miserable. I guess it was mainly
Speaker 2: six and my wife and I Kathy, her name was Kathy.
Speaker 2: We had separated and she got murdered. I stay up
Speaker 2: numerous times, and right after she was dead, they said,
Speaker 2: my children, I learned later, who were six and eleven
Speaker 2: at the time, they really want that found the body
Speaker 2: of their mother. And I'm thinking about all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And I got physically ill when I first found out
Speaker 2: about it. But it was like a nightmare, especially when
Speaker 2: the police were kind of putting their finger at me.
Speaker 2: I couldn't even mourn the death of my wife with
Speaker 2: all that hanging over me. And I felt a lot
Speaker 2: of guilt. If I had been home with my wife
Speaker 2: where I should have been, she would probably be a lie.
Speaker 2: And well, the police accused me of doing it, which
Speaker 2: I can understand why. I've seen all the TV movies
Speaker 2: about the affairs and all that stuff, But DNA was
Speaker 2: brand new back then. It was nineteen ninety when she
Speaker 2: was killed, and I was just learning about doing Most
Speaker 2: people didn't know about that stuff back then, so I
Speaker 2: willingally gave my blood sample and thought, man, I can't
Speaker 2: wait till the UNITESK gets back, so they will start
Speaker 2: looking at the right place, because I wanted every kill
Speaker 2: my wife to be found.
Speaker 1: I read about your case in Richard's amazing book. It's
Speaker 1: called Quest for Justice Defending the Damned by Richard S. Jaffe,
Speaker 1: and now there's a second edition out. And this case
Speaker 1: is extraordinary in so many ways. But I can understand
Speaker 1: why the jury voted to convict you because even though
Speaker 1: there was significant evidence that it couldn't have been you,
Speaker 1: but this one thing was really almost impossible for your
Speaker 1: attorneys to overcome. And Richard, you talk about this in
Speaker 1: your book. So this murder happened on August seventeenth of nineteen.
Speaker 4: Ninety, Randall and his paramour, Judy Smith, went to Florida
Speaker 4: on a scuba diving trip. It's about six or seven
Speaker 4: hours from arab While in Florida on the evening of
Speaker 4: August sixteenth, the early mornings of August seventeenth, nineteen ninety,
Speaker 4: Randall's asleep. They just got there and a phone call
Speaker 4: comes from Randall's brother saying that his wife Kathy was murdered.
Speaker 4: Randall immediately went and threw up, and then Judy and
Speaker 4: Randall immediately turned around and drove back, and they drove
Speaker 4: right to the Sheriff's department. The interesting thing is that
Speaker 4: you would think that Randall was so shook up, so distraught,
Speaker 4: that Judy would have driven the whole way back, But
Speaker 4: apparently Judy was up all night and couldn't keep the
Speaker 4: car in the road on these windy rural roads in Florida,
Speaker 4: and after about thirty or forty minutes, they were about
Speaker 4: colliding with everything, and Randall had to drive the entire
Speaker 4: way back and Judy went to sleep in the passenger side.
Speaker 4: They go straight to the station and both give interviews separately.
Speaker 4: And then the next morning Randall invited them out to
Speaker 4: his home, the home of the murder, and he was
Speaker 4: videotaped for forty five minutes, going through the entire house
Speaker 4: and basically excluding himself from not being a suspect because
Speaker 4: every time he was offered an opportunity to, I guess
Speaker 4: put himself out of harm's way. He didn't for example,
Speaker 4: or the scuff marks in the door, are they fresh,
Speaker 4: meaning maybe the house of burger eyes. Randall said, no,
Speaker 4: they were Oh when was the last time you had
Speaker 4: sex with your wife?
Speaker 2: Kathy?
Speaker 4: Randall said, oh, it's been many months, three or four months,
Speaker 4: which if he were guilty, he would have probably said
Speaker 4: within the last few days, explaining what turned out to
Speaker 4: be a DNA match, and on and on and on,
Speaker 4: and then Randall gave a polygraph test, and he voluntarily
Speaker 4: gave his blood for DNA testing, and then he thought,
Speaker 4: as soon as it comes back, he'll be excluded as
Speaker 4: a suspect. But it didn't happen that way.
Speaker 1: So the circumstantial evidence starts to mount. Right, it looked
Speaker 1: a little strange that Randall and Judy had left town
Speaker 1: the morning after the murders, and of course, with the
Speaker 1: affair and it being a small town and everything else,
Speaker 1: people are going to think whatever they think. But at
Speaker 1: the same time they put out these crazy theories, like
Speaker 1: the idea that Randall might have been after the life insurance,
Speaker 1: when we know that she only had ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in life insurance anyway, which would barely cover the cost
Speaker 1: of the funeral, and it never made any sense on
Speaker 1: the face of it. Why would Randall want to make
Speaker 1: his children, who nobody had anything to say other than
Speaker 1: that he loved and they loved him. And why would
Speaker 1: he want to make them effectively orphans or at a
Speaker 1: minimum take even if you got away with it, take
Speaker 1: their mother from them. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that, the circumstances, and then you know where ultimately
Speaker 1: it went when the DNA test came back.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the first suspect, of course is the spouse.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, when authorities focus on one person,
Speaker 4: they get myopic and the tunnel vision, and they never
Speaker 4: look at anything else. And the investigation then is all
Speaker 4: about finding information to confirm their suspicion or their bias
Speaker 4: or their focus. In this case, though, nothing made sense.
Speaker 4: As you point out initially, clearly Kathy was in a
Speaker 4: fight for her life. She was in the bed, she
Speaker 4: was accosted by her killer, and there was a life
Speaker 4: and death struggle. Kathy was stabbed forty six times, almost
Speaker 4: all of those were defensive wounds, and it took a
Speaker 4: long time for finally a couple of stab wounds to
Speaker 4: penetrate her organs and kill her. Randall is six two
Speaker 4: hundred and thirty pounds. Kathy was very demure, very small.
Speaker 4: In addition to that, the alleged rape was clearly staged.
Speaker 4: The body was moved from a normal sleeping position to
Speaker 4: across the bed. The left leg was propped down, the
Speaker 4: right leg was propped up on a table where an
Speaker 4: alarm clock was No one could be raped in that position.
Speaker 4: All the blood was consistent to the body being moved.
Speaker 4: The underwear was neatly cut off with scissors of Kathy.
Speaker 4: There was zero trauma to her vaginal area, zero none, zero.
Speaker 4: And what the pathologist testified to in both trials was
Speaker 4: that Kathy was dead before the seaman ever entered her vagina,
Speaker 4: meaning that if someone had raped her, that person would
Speaker 4: have raped a corpse. So you had an extraordinary amount
Speaker 4: of information that clearly show that someone else committed this
Speaker 4: crime other than Randall Patchet.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot more to that. You know, the
Speaker 1: idea that she was allegedly raped in that position with
Speaker 1: one leg up on the nightstand, but that the alarm
Speaker 1: clock was undisturbed didn't make any sense. Very little of
Speaker 1: this made any sense, But the detectives ignored the statements
Speaker 1: of Randall's children who had been in the trailer with
Speaker 1: him all night, including one the little one that's left
Speaker 1: in the bed with him, and they had told the
Speaker 1: detectives that he had never left the trailer that night
Speaker 1: and that they would have heard it if he had,
Speaker 1: that he hadn't showered. He had no blood on him,
Speaker 1: of course, which we know it was a bloody struggle.
Speaker 1: They didn't search his residence or his car, nor did
Speaker 1: they search Judy's residence or car, and an investigator clumsily,
Speaker 1: supposedly accidentally, let's call it, that destroyed a bloody fingerprint
Speaker 1: on Kathy's body. So six weeks go by October fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety Randall, they come and rescue it, and then
Speaker 1: you were charged with capital murderer.
Speaker 2: I was at my in law's home, Ketty's parents. I
Speaker 2: went over there, me, me and the kids. I guess
Speaker 2: the police were following me or what. I don't know
Speaker 2: how they knew I was there. It was in a
Speaker 2: town about thirty miles away from where I live. Anyways,
Speaker 2: there was a knock on the door and mother in
Speaker 2: law said there was someone to see me. And I
Speaker 2: went outside and the detective says, you're under the rest
Speaker 2: for the murder of Katy. I said, you rested their
Speaker 2: own person. They put the handcuffs on me and said,
Speaker 2: let me go back in tell my children by no,
Speaker 2: you can't do that. And man, my mind was spinning.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what was happening. And I was gravely
Speaker 2: concerned about my kids. They don't have a mother, now
Speaker 2: they don't have a father, and what's going to happen
Speaker 2: to them. But I was only in jail, I think
Speaker 2: about three days. I didn't need a thing I could eat,
Speaker 2: but anyhows, I got bonded out after about three days.
Speaker 2: So that part of my incarceration was kind of quick.
Speaker 2: But the other part, when I got to prison was
Speaker 2: kind of long.
Speaker 1: That's a whole different story death row. We'll get to that.
Speaker 1: But Richard, in your book, you talk about the first trial,
Speaker 1: and unlike most of the people that we've interviewed on
Speaker 1: the show, Randall had not just competent but highly skilled
Speaker 1: attorneys on the first trial. But they were up against
Speaker 1: it because the state, well they broke the rules. To
Speaker 1: put it mildly, they withheld evidence that I think would
Speaker 1: be deemed to be exculpatory until the very last minute.
Speaker 1: And there was other stuff going on. So can you
Speaker 1: walk us through to first trial and explain to us
Speaker 1: how it ended up the way it did.
Speaker 4: Randall did have good lawyers, and they retained an expert
Speaker 4: in DNA, and when the expert was cross examined, the
Speaker 4: expert had to concede that the DNA testing of the
Speaker 4: semen was consistent with the DNA of Randall, meaning that
Speaker 4: the expert basically confirmed the state's case. So once Randall testified,
Speaker 4: the jury was pretty uninterested because they made up their mind.
Speaker 1: And there's more to this than that as well, because
Speaker 1: what I was making reference to before is the fact
Speaker 1: that there was blood at the scene, which is typical
Speaker 1: in a case where someone had stabbed numerous times, because
Speaker 1: the stabber in this case, the murderer would normally cut
Speaker 1: themselves because the knife gets slippery and done the demonstrations
Speaker 1: so many times, we just take a pen and you
Speaker 1: stab a book or a table or whatever, and by
Speaker 1: the third time down, your hand's already down on what
Speaker 1: would be the blade. So that's why we almost always
Speaker 1: find blood from the person doing the stabbing at the
Speaker 1: crime scene, and in this case that was also the case.
Speaker 1: Plus it was a violent struggle, and we know that
Speaker 1: Kathy fought for her life and she scratched the assailant
Speaker 1: numerous times. So there was blood found at the crime
Speaker 1: scene that was not Kathy's and it was not Randal's.
Speaker 2: You're in the first trial. There was one point in
Speaker 2: time when the zerologist was on the stand testifying that
Speaker 2: my bloodtop had changed from one day to the next,
Speaker 2: and he had never seen that happen. And here's twenty
Speaker 2: five years of work. I thought, well, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to get on your feet. I'm going to go home today.
Speaker 1: So the rologist is up on the stand saying Randall's
Speaker 1: blood type changed, which we know isn't a thing. It can't,
Speaker 1: I mean. So the conclusion is that there was blood
Speaker 1: from the scene that they were testing that did not
Speaker 1: belong to Randal and was also not Kathy's, so mixed
Speaker 1: in with Kathy's blood, someone else's blood was at the
Speaker 1: crime scene, but the prosecution did not hand over that
Speaker 1: evidence until after the DNA experts who had come to
Speaker 1: town to testify had already left. And then Randall's lawyer
Speaker 1: appropriately asked for a mistrial, and the judge seemingly inappropriately
Speaker 1: denied the motion. So this is where things start to
Speaker 1: really stack up and where you know, you can start
Speaker 1: to understand or I can how the jury would have
Speaker 1: found Randall guilty because it was hard for them to
Speaker 1: get past the idea of how could his sperm have
Speaker 1: ended up inside of her when he said he hadn't
Speaker 1: seen her in such and such amount of time and
Speaker 1: that is a you know, that's a pretty big albatross.
Speaker 1: But this other evidence was either ignored with hell, there
Speaker 1: were searches that were not done. There was all sorts
Speaker 1: of leads left unexplored.
Speaker 4: The huge pink elephant in the room was Randall's ex paramore,
Speaker 4: Judy Smith. Neither side was willing to call her to
Speaker 4: testify in the first trial. The state would have given
Speaker 4: her immunity if she would have implicated Randall, but she
Speaker 4: wouldn't do it. So Judy never testified in the first trial,
Speaker 4: and the video that we talked about earlier of Randall
Speaker 4: going through the crime scene with the detectives was not
Speaker 4: played either. The interesting twist in this case is that
Speaker 4: the jury found him guilty and recommended a life without
Speaker 4: parole sentence. In that time, Alabama had an override statue,
Speaker 4: and the trial judge overwrote it and sentenced Randall to death.
Speaker 1: So Randall, that's May twenty second, nineteen ninety two, us
Speaker 1: through that awful, awful moment.
Speaker 2: Well my twenty second, that was my birthday. Matter of fact,
Speaker 2: the sentence, I mean that bothered me a lot. But
Speaker 2: I could anybody think that I would do such a thing.
Speaker 2: And then they're going to kill the wrong person. Somebody's
Speaker 2: up there that really done this and it's not me.
Speaker 2: The whole world is going to believe what the court says.
Speaker 2: The court says I'm guilty and that I must be
Speaker 2: put to death.
Speaker 1: As a father myself, the idea of you being torn
Speaker 1: away from your kids, who you now have even a
Speaker 1: more intense responsibility to care for and protect after everything
Speaker 1: they've been through and now they're effectively being orphaned, and
Speaker 1: you're thrust into the most horrible situation imaginable and being
Speaker 1: torn away from the people.
Speaker 3: You love the most at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's horrible and helpless. Flect. I can't help myself.
Speaker 2: Nothing I can do is going to help my children.
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Speaker 1: justice area.
Speaker 2: When I got to prison, it was it was I
Speaker 2: don't know, about ten o'clock at night and never been
Speaker 2: in a prison. Go in and it's all loud. People
Speaker 2: locked up there. They're screaming, and you hear the metal
Speaker 2: doors slamming shut and open, and that strip hole you
Speaker 2: close off, and they spread you down with some kind
Speaker 2: of chemical handcuffs and shackle on your legs and a
Speaker 2: chain going from your hands to your feet and then
Speaker 2: chain around your waist and all that lot and say
Speaker 2: little bitty stay ups back to where death throw was,
Speaker 2: and the guard would holler, and somebody would slide a
Speaker 2: metal door open and it'd slide behind you and the
Speaker 2: other inmates yelling at you and all this stuff and screaming,
Speaker 2: and get back to my little cell, which is I
Speaker 2: think was five feet by eight or nine feet and
Speaker 2: there's no lot in there, a lot boy but shot
Speaker 2: and it was completely dark. And get in there. They
Speaker 2: take the cuss off of me and slammed the door
Speaker 2: behind me and im and I'm all alone on a
Speaker 2: different planet. And I can remember I kept thinking, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get out of here. I'm gonna get out here,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get out here. But after years went by,
Speaker 2: I remember carried up one night in the feet of
Speaker 2: position and just won't to give up, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to die. I don't die in this place, and nobody don't.
Speaker 2: The whole world don't care of world to be glad
Speaker 2: when I do. But finally I got closer to God
Speaker 2: than I've ever been in my life. I was confident
Speaker 2: that God wouldn't want to let me die for something
Speaker 2: I didn't do, and he didn't. You get me out
Speaker 2: of there through Richard Jeffish.
Speaker 1: Wow, Richard, to the table's turn. When you got involved?
Speaker 1: But how did you come to be involved? And I'm
Speaker 1: so fascinated by the process and the way you describe
Speaker 1: it in the book, the decisions that you had to make,
Speaker 1: which are actually literally life and death decisions because you
Speaker 1: are the backstop. Right Have you failed, Randall would have
Speaker 1: been put to death. So can you pick us through
Speaker 1: that whole process.
Speaker 4: The way that I met Brenda Massingil, who later and
Speaker 4: currently became Randall's wife, they hardly knew each other, but
Speaker 4: I was speaking at the sixteenth Street Baptist Church in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety two, that's where the four young girls were
Speaker 4: murdered in the bombing of the church, and we were
Speaker 4: speaking on the death penalty. It was a kind of
Speaker 4: a small rally. Brenda approached me after I spoke and
Speaker 4: asked me if I had heard of Randall's case. I hadn't,
Speaker 4: and I refused to intervene at that point because he
Speaker 4: was well represented and I didn't expect ever to hear
Speaker 4: from anyone again about that. And then a few years later,
Speaker 4: in ninety five, Randall's family called the office through Brenda
Speaker 4: and wanted to meet with me. Randall's case had been
Speaker 4: reversed because the prosecution had failed to disclose the blood
Speaker 4: typing evidence that was, as you say, exculpatory, and because
Speaker 4: of that Randall was given a new trial. So when
Speaker 4: I got involved, I began to learn immediately all kinds
Speaker 4: of things about Judy, about her history, about how she
Speaker 4: was totally obsessed with Randall to the point where she
Speaker 4: actually constructed in her home a duplication of Randall's children's bedroom.
Speaker 4: And Judy had actually confronted Kathy prior to the murder
Speaker 4: in a church parking lot. Judy had a raincoat on
Speaker 4: and sunglasses on a Wednesday night. Cathy went to church
Speaker 4: every Wednesday night. Judy was hiding in Kathy's backseat. There
Speaker 4: was a confrontation. A church deacon broke it up.
Speaker 2: When Kathy told me about that, Judy came up with
Speaker 2: you know, I just wanted to talk to her. And
Speaker 2: I wasn't dressed up thing more than my normal dress,
Speaker 2: and so I don't know, I guess I'll let the
Speaker 2: devil tak me into kind of believing that Judy wasn't
Speaker 2: anything that was no good and instead of believing it
Speaker 2: can't be like I should have. And I can't explain it.
Speaker 2: It was just a crazy time in my life.
Speaker 4: The problem that Judy was having was patience. Because Randall
Speaker 4: separated from Kathy, several times, but each time came back
Speaker 4: to her. On this occasion, when the brutal murder happened,
Speaker 4: it became clear to me that Judy wasn't going to
Speaker 4: take the chance of the divorce not going through. So
Speaker 4: apparently she took matters in her own hands. And then
Speaker 4: now we have a gory, horrific, unimaginable crime scene that
Speaker 4: ultimately led to Randall's arrest, conviction, and death sentence.
Speaker 1: Randall, were there any other moments besides the church parking
Speaker 1: lot incident that kind of made you think to yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, Judy might just be a little bit.
Speaker 2: Off thinking back through all the stuff. I remember one time,
Speaker 2: when this was before Kethy got killed, when I was
Speaker 2: at Judy's place and I saw a zip blocked bag
Speaker 2: that had some I'm a smoker, I had some cigarette
Speaker 2: butts in it and some fingernail clippings. What is this?
Speaker 2: And Oh, I love you so much. I wanted to
Speaker 2: save these, you know, And I said, well, what a
Speaker 2: thing to say, is what I'm thinking. But thinking back,
Speaker 2: you know, she might have been up to some mischief
Speaker 2: with that, so I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, And then, you know, then things get weirder, right,
Speaker 1: you are investigator. I'm forgetting his name now. Who was
Speaker 1: the investigator in this case.
Speaker 4: Our investigator was Rick Blake, and he was our in
Speaker 4: house investigator, and he was amazing. What was really fascinating
Speaker 4: is is that after the murder, Judy took two weeks
Speaker 4: off from work, two weeks off, and we developed evidence
Speaker 4: that Judy had scratch marks all up and down her arms,
Speaker 4: meaning that she was apparently in some type of vicious
Speaker 4: life or death struggle, and so she stayed at home
Speaker 4: until those scratches healed. Another thing is is that Judy's
Speaker 4: blood was never tested, her DNA was never tested, her
Speaker 4: home was never searched, her car was never searched. The police,
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, completely ignored her as I suspect.
Speaker 1: Listen, if somebody had done this work that you did
Speaker 1: all those years later. Initially, it's entirely possible, maybe even likely,
Speaker 1: that the trial, the first trial, would have ended up
Speaker 1: in an acquittal, because there's more right. There's also a
Speaker 1: truck driver who came forward who said that he had
Speaker 1: seen a car matching the description of Judy's car, which
Speaker 1: was a very distinct car right a hubcap of a
Speaker 1: certain color, leaving Kathy's home in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: That's pretty powerful. It's hard to come up with a
Speaker 1: good excuse for that. But then comes the craziest part
Speaker 1: of all of this, right and again, your investigator had
Speaker 1: you know. I reread the chapter in your book this
Speaker 1: morning talking about how he had gone to beauty parlors
Speaker 1: trying to find people who knew Judy, thinking that in
Speaker 1: the town, a small town with only a few beauty parlors,
Speaker 1: she might have frequented one of them. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: he found people that knew her. And what he discovered
Speaker 1: from that point turns out to be really important evidence
Speaker 1: and really bizarre.
Speaker 4: He found three different people that told him clearly that
Speaker 4: Judy had this fetish with saving her then ex husband
Speaker 4: Tommy Smith Simon and putting it in milkshakes.
Speaker 2: I can remember before Kathy was killed, usually after six,
Speaker 2: we would both I'm talking about Judy would go up
Speaker 2: to sleep. I don't know weeks before Kathy was killed.
Speaker 2: After six, Judy she would immediately get up, go to
Speaker 2: the bedroom. Then, while I'm sitting in there in prison,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, what was she doing in the bathroom? Was
Speaker 2: she saving some stuff? I don't know, But I don't.
Speaker 4: Know Rick Blake, our investigator. He found three different people.
Speaker 4: We tried to get all three to court, but we
Speaker 4: could only get one, the milkshake lady. She was one
Speaker 4: of the three that Judy had discuss this whipt on
Speaker 4: many occasions, and we hauled her to testify and it
Speaker 4: was dynamic and powerful, and the prosecution did everything they
Speaker 4: could to keep it out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've told this story to a fair number
Speaker 1: of people and it doesn't get crazier than that. And
Speaker 1: that wasn't all though, Richard, the trial itself.
Speaker 4: The biggest decision that I've ever had to make in
Speaker 4: any trial was whether to call Judy to testify. That
Speaker 4: was crucial because again the prosecution kept holding out immunity
Speaker 4: if she testify against Randall. We were back in the
Speaker 4: judge's chambers. Time would run out. The judge looked up
Speaker 4: and said, all right, call your next witness, and I said,
Speaker 4: we're going to call Judy Smith. And at that point
Speaker 4: the prosecutors jaws rocked to the floor. It was stunned
Speaker 4: silence because no one believed we had the I guess
Speaker 4: they guts to call her, and we did, and her
Speaker 4: testimony was the most both powerful and bizarre testimony anyone
Speaker 4: could envision. On the one hand, she testified that she
Speaker 4: prayed every night. She loved Randall so much that every
Speaker 4: night she prayed that something would happen to Kathy and
Speaker 4: that she would get killed in a car wreck so
Speaker 4: she could be with Randall, and she still loved him.
Speaker 4: When I asked her about her ability to enter the home,
Speaker 4: it slipped from her mouth almost that there was a
Speaker 4: and I knew she meant key that was hidden in
Speaker 4: a particular place for Randall's children to get when they
Speaker 4: return home from school. Well, she knew about it where
Speaker 4: it was hidden, and that slipped out of her mouth almost.
Speaker 4: She tried to take it back, but she couldn't. And
Speaker 4: Drawors remembered that during deliberations. But the most powerful thing
Speaker 4: was and again you point out something very, very so crucial,
Speaker 4: as every question asked of a witness in a death
Speaker 4: penalty case, especially a witness like her, Judy could be
Speaker 4: the bomb that destroy you. It could be the landmine
Speaker 4: that blows the case up. So every question had to
Speaker 4: be so measured. But I asked her, if that is
Speaker 4: Randall's DNA in Kathy's vaginal canal, how do you think
Speaker 4: it got there, it's an objectionable question, but the prosecution
Speaker 4: didn't object because clearly they thought that she would either
Speaker 4: say I have no idea, but her answer was if
Speaker 4: that was Randall's DNA, and it had to have come
Speaker 4: from me in that standing room only courtroom and you
Speaker 4: could hear a pin drop.
Speaker 1: So the jury now has heard her try to walk
Speaker 1: back her explanation of how she could have gotten into
Speaker 1: the house, because, of course, one of the things that
Speaker 1: the prosecution theory hinged on was the idea that there
Speaker 1: was no break in. There was no signs of breaking
Speaker 1: and entering, so it must have been somebody logically who
Speaker 1: knew Kathy and was admitted into the house. But now
Speaker 1: that the key and the location of the key was
Speaker 1: known to Judy and that was out in the open,
Speaker 1: that was one thing. And now, of course her making
Speaker 1: this unbelievable admission in open court is a huge moment.
Speaker 1: But even still, the jury goes to deliberate Randall, what
Speaker 1: did you think they were gone for close to three
Speaker 1: full days. Did you allow yourself to hope that they
Speaker 1: would come back with a not growthy verdict or were
Speaker 1: you what were you thinking?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think I slipped any here those three days,
Speaker 2: going back and forth to the jail, which was to
Speaker 2: cross the street in the courthouse, but I had.
Speaker 1: Hope and Richard. So the jury's out two and a
Speaker 1: half days and the judge is basically at his wits end,
Speaker 1: I would say, and is on the verge of declaring
Speaker 1: a mistrial, which would have been devastating. Did you talk
Speaker 1: about this in the book as well? How the judge
Speaker 1: called you and the prosecution team into his chambers, I
Speaker 1: guess right for a conference.
Speaker 4: He did, and he was very clear. He said, gentlemen,
Speaker 4: I'm going to declara mistrial. I don't believe in forcing
Speaker 4: drawers to give up o their feelings and beliefs. And
Speaker 4: I tried to talk him out of it, and he went, no,
Speaker 4: I've made up my mind. And this is a judge
Speaker 4: that when he makes up his mind, he does. As
Speaker 4: we filed out into the courtroom, I was the last
Speaker 4: one other than he was behind me. As we began
Speaker 4: to enter the courtroom, I turned around, I looked at
Speaker 4: him right in the eyes, and I went, judge just
Speaker 4: asked the jurors if they think they can come to
Speaker 4: a verdict. He didn't say anything. We sat down, he
Speaker 4: faced the jury. He said, ladies and gentlemen, I have
Speaker 4: no choice but two. And then he paused just for
Speaker 4: a second, and he turned to his left and looked
Speaker 4: me right in the eye, and we locked. And then
Speaker 4: he turned back around to the jury and he did
Speaker 4: a one eighty. He said, is there anyone on the
Speaker 4: jury that believes that you could come to a unanimous verdict?
Speaker 4: And two or three people nodded their heads and said yes.
Speaker 4: I was stunned or a reversal. The jury went back
Speaker 4: to deliberate. The courthouse continued to be totally packed, standing
Speaker 4: room only, and people were basically in prayer. And forty
Speaker 4: five minutes later they came out and it was not guilty.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not gonna lie. I cried this morning when
Speaker 1: I read the book and I knew the story, I'd
Speaker 1: read it before. Randy, what was that moment like when
Speaker 1: you were vindicated and you were on the verge of
Speaker 1: being returned to your family, to your community, your good
Speaker 1: name was given back to you. I can't imagine. Can
Speaker 1: please explain?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if I can, But like I
Speaker 2: had been held underwater to the point of drownding, I
Speaker 2: had to come up and I'm at the point where
Speaker 2: I'm either going to drowned or not, and then the
Speaker 2: not guilty bird it just pulls me up into the air.
Speaker 2: I can breathe again, and I'm going to live. It
Speaker 2: was just total jubilation.
Speaker 1: And you hadn't really slept or eating in a few days,
Speaker 1: as you said, so.
Speaker 2: The judge, I remember Judd saying, and you're free to go,
Speaker 2: mister Paget and Jaylor came over to take me back
Speaker 2: to the jail, would have someone to get my stuff,
Speaker 2: and I going back to jail and could keep my stuff,
Speaker 2: you know. And then my son, who had grown and
Speaker 2: got his driver's license, got to drive his daddy home.
Speaker 2: Was just wonderful, wonderful, Richard, What about you?
Speaker 4: It was a feeling of elation that it's really hard
Speaker 4: to imagine unless you have heard not guilties on death
Speaker 4: fumily cases before. This being a retrial made it all
Speaker 4: that much more unimaginable.
Speaker 1: No, you have the best job in the world, at
Speaker 1: least on days like that. You do. Now, before we
Speaker 1: go to the closing of the show, talk about the
Speaker 1: juror who approached you on your way out of the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Richard.
Speaker 1: Probably the credit for the jury's correct not guilty verdict,
Speaker 1: A lot of it goes to her at.
Speaker 2: The end of the day.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right what happens in these trials. Having tried
Speaker 4: hundreds myself, you often misread drawers. We thought that the
Speaker 4: older lady and a younger lady, the one you're talking of,
Speaker 4: probably in her forties, we thought that they hated us,
Speaker 4: But it was the opposite. The initial vote was eight
Speaker 4: to four for guilty, we later learned. And when we
Speaker 4: walked out of the courtroom towards our car, the one
Speaker 4: you allude to, the female, the forty year old forty
Speaker 4: something you old, walked up to me and said, mister Jaffie,
Speaker 4: can have a word with you? And I said, sure,
Speaker 4: she said, and she just looked at me right in
Speaker 4: the eye, was like a foot from her, and she said,
Speaker 4: you know, only a woman would know you can't have
Speaker 4: sex in that position. So I climbed on the table
Speaker 4: and put my right leg up and my left leg down,
Speaker 4: and I made it clear to the mostly male jury
Speaker 4: that Randall Paget could not have had sex with Cas
Speaker 4: in that position, and that flipped other jurors and ultimately
Speaker 4: All twelve found Randall not guilty. The last thing she
Speaker 4: said to me was you tell Randal Paga to stay
Speaker 4: away from Judy Smith and go spend time with his kids.
Speaker 2: And then we walked away.
Speaker 4: And the truth is that Randall hadn't seen Judy since
Speaker 4: the night at the police station when they arrived back
Speaker 4: from Florida, and he of course hasn't since.
Speaker 1: Do you know what became of Judy Smith after all
Speaker 1: these years?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Richard.
Speaker 1: Is it strange to you that they never prosecuted her?
Speaker 4: It's not strange because the prosecution had already publicly made
Speaker 4: it clear that they didn't think she was involved at
Speaker 4: all and knew nothing. So the chances of them getting
Speaker 4: a conviction while it existed weren't really high. And I
Speaker 4: think the prosecution was just done with that case. They
Speaker 4: had pretty much been embarrassed enough, I guess.
Speaker 1: And Randall before I keep saying this, but one last
Speaker 1: question before we get to the wrap up, how are
Speaker 1: your kids doing? These poor children had to live through
Speaker 1: a nightmare that is unimaginable, you know, losing their mom
Speaker 1: and then almost losing their dad, losing their dad for
Speaker 1: six years. How are they doing now?
Speaker 2: Well, they're doing good, and I've got three granddaughters now
Speaker 2: from them. My son has two little red headed girls.
Speaker 2: He lives in Nashville and he's an architect. My daughter
Speaker 2: lives in Alabama and one time was president of the
Speaker 2: company she worked for. She's since moved to a different
Speaker 2: place of than go woman, and she has one little girl.
Speaker 2: I'm so proud of them and love them.
Speaker 1: The basis, well, that's great, and I wish them all
Speaker 1: the blessings in the world because they deserve. As to you,
Speaker 1: everything good. So now we come to the wrap up
Speaker 1: of our show, which is a segment that is my
Speaker 1: favorite part call closing Arguments, where I first of all,
Speaker 1: thank both of you, Richard Jaffe, criminal defense lawyer, author
Speaker 1: and amazing advocate, Thank you for being here, and of
Speaker 1: course Randall, thank you Randall Paget for sharing your story
Speaker 1: so eloquently and beautifully. And this part of the show
Speaker 1: is where I get to kick back in my chair,
Speaker 1: switch off my microphone, and let you just share any
Speaker 1: other thoughts that you may want to share with our audience. Randall,
Speaker 1: we're going to save you for last. If that's okay, Richard,
Speaker 1: You're first.
Speaker 4: It has been a true privilege, honor, and joy to
Speaker 4: get to know and represent Randall Paget and become close
Speaker 4: with he and his now wife, Brenda Massenguel of fifteen years.
Speaker 4: This is the kind of case where reality really trump's fiction,
Speaker 4: because had it not been for the failure to disclose
Speaker 4: the exculpatory conflicting information of blood typing, Randall would never
Speaker 4: have got a chance for a new trial. And it
Speaker 4: amazes me that the prosecution hid that until it was
Speaker 4: too late. The only other thing I would say would
Speaker 4: be that law enforcement often excludes a wider investigation once
Speaker 4: they focus on one suspect, and when that happens, the
Speaker 4: wrong person can easily be convicted. And a really thorough
Speaker 4: investigation would have revealed the truth that Randall was innocent.
Speaker 4: And I thank God that Randall is here with us
Speaker 4: to share his story. He is a true salt of
Speaker 4: the earth human being.
Speaker 2: Randall. I would just like to say, I think mister
Speaker 2: Richard Jeffy is the greatest attorney in the world. He
Speaker 2: believed in me, He believed the truth. I want to
Speaker 2: thank Richard. I will love you Richard very much. One
Speaker 2: thing about me, I guess I was naive about the
Speaker 2: justice system in America. I had heard of people getting
Speaker 2: wrongfully convicted. I didn't pay much attention to it, but
Speaker 2: but I thought, you know, when you go to trial
Speaker 2: in the United States, the foremost thing in the court's
Speaker 2: mind is supposed to be the truth. But I don't
Speaker 2: think it works that way. I think if a piece
Speaker 2: of truth comes up, that's bad for whichever side. I
Speaker 2: think it gets twisted around or or try to cover
Speaker 2: it up or something. And I guess for people listening
Speaker 2: to this, if you're ever sitting on a jury, I
Speaker 2: would ask that you don't just believe because a defendant
Speaker 2: has been accused of something that he probably did something
Speaker 2: or he wouldn't be there. And I would ask that
Speaker 2: you would make the prosecution show you some concrete proof
Speaker 2: to back up what they're saying. If I got just
Speaker 2: one other minute, I'd like to talk about my friend
Speaker 2: and now wife, Brenda. When I was in prison, she
Speaker 2: was so nice to me. She was trying to raise
Speaker 2: money for me and writing legal aid places. I think
Speaker 2: she wrote the governor and I don't know who all.
Speaker 2: I thought, well, why is this woman being so nice
Speaker 2: to me? I thought she's a spy for the prosecution,
Speaker 2: because I was pretty sure I was going to get
Speaker 2: a retrial because prosecution had withheld that exculpatory evidence. And
Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, they know it's going to be a retrial.
Speaker 2: And she's a spy, and she kept wanting to come
Speaker 2: and visit me, and I wouldn't let her. I thought,
Speaker 2: if I don't let her come down here, she can't
Speaker 2: say I said something. But if I do let her come,
Speaker 2: she can go back and say Randal said this. Randal
Speaker 2: said that I wouldn't let her come. And a couple
Speaker 2: of years, all my letters dwindled away except hers, and
Speaker 2: so finally, through her letters, got to trust and she
Speaker 2: did not be a spy but a great hey yep,
Speaker 2: And after I got out, we've married about five years later.
Speaker 2: But he's the most wonderful person.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 1: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at.
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one.
Speaker 2: I hope you may the land of your