Speaker 1: I think we have the best legal system.
Speaker 2: It's just the people that implement it.
Speaker 3: They get lost along the way and.
Speaker 1: Forget what the job really is.
Speaker 2: He just kept on trying to remind me that who
Speaker 2: was in authority, who was in control, and how easy
Speaker 2: it was for my body to be found in any
Speaker 2: alley of New York City.
Speaker 1: It's a tough prison when you have the guards going
Speaker 1: against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
Speaker 1: They do that.
Speaker 4: They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home
Speaker 4: in East Spaghetti like it was nothing.
Speaker 2: And anybody that said, well, why would you confess to
Speaker 2: something that you didn't do? My question to them will
Speaker 2: be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to kill
Speaker 2: your life?
Speaker 3: The judge, he said, how you feel? I said, I'm okay.
Speaker 3: He said, well the day as you're lucky, day you
Speaker 3: go home.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason Flomm. Today we have a very special episode. We
Speaker 1: have two fabulous Pennsylvania ladies. Our very special guest is
Speaker 1: Krystal Weimer, who is an ax hoonery from Western Pennsylvania.
Speaker 5: January two thousand and one, someone killed Curtis Hath outside
Speaker 5: his Fayette County home. He had been beaten and shocked
Speaker 5: after being convicted of plotting the murder that spanned three
Speaker 5: towns in Fayette County. Crystal was behind bars for twelve
Speaker 5: years at the time. They said her teeth led.
Speaker 1: Them to her.
Speaker 5: A dental impression was taken over teeth, and they were
Speaker 5: compared to a picture of a bite mark on the
Speaker 5: victim's body, which we're found to be a match. Actually,
Speaker 5: that's not true. Scientific expert who testified to all of
Speaker 5: that in court later said it was junk science and
Speaker 5: he was wrong.
Speaker 6: At today's post conviction relief Act, doctor Constantine car Zulas
Speaker 6: testified that a bitemarked fan on the victim's hand was
Speaker 6: Weimer's due to a bitemark analysis that he now considers
Speaker 6: to be junk science. After doctor Carzulas testified and without
Speaker 6: hearing any further testimony, President Judge John Wagner granted a
Speaker 6: retrial for Wimer.
Speaker 5: It was Crystal who started her own path to freedom,
Speaker 5: acting as her own attorney, filing paperwork. The Pennsylvania Innocence
Speaker 5: Project and the Jones Day Law Firm got involved. They
Speaker 5: found other problems with the police investigation and the prosecution
Speaker 5: and convinced to judge she is not the killer. Weimer's
Speaker 5: attorneys believe the real killer has never been caught.
Speaker 1: Crystal, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: And with Crystal is her fabulous lawyer, Neila M. Sangvie,
Speaker 1: who is the legal director of the Pennsylvania Innists Project,
Speaker 1: and really looking forward to hearing from you and learning
Speaker 1: from the first time we've had some from the Pennsylvanian
Speaker 1: Instance Project on the show. So welcome, Thanks for happy
Speaker 1: to be here. So, Crystal, your story is insane, even
Speaker 1: by our very lofty standards of insanity. Here at wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: You had the whole pot pirie of causes of wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: I mean, your case involved false confession by a co defendant,
Speaker 1: It involved police and prosecutoral misconduct. It involved bitemark evidence,
Speaker 1: which we know is put it politely, horseshit right. And
Speaker 1: there's more. It's a fascinating study and terrifying study into
Speaker 1: just how many things can go wrong. So let's go
Speaker 1: back to two thousand and one and even before you
Speaker 1: grew up in Pennsylvania. Yes, and what was that like?
Speaker 1: What was your We always like to spend a few
Speaker 1: minutes talking about what life was like before this catastrophe happened.
Speaker 3: It was good.
Speaker 4: I used to work at a plan in newsday and
Speaker 4: assembling TVs and radios and things of that nature.
Speaker 3: And I was working three on, three.
Speaker 4: Off, two one two off days, twelve hour shifts. I
Speaker 4: was a single mother, raising my children by myself.
Speaker 1: What are their names?
Speaker 4: My oldest is Rose, she was ten, Miranda was seven,
Speaker 4: and the baby was Bridget and she was four. The
Speaker 4: high life of my life was them raising them and
Speaker 4: making sure they were off to school and went to work,
Speaker 4: and was living life on an everyday basis.
Speaker 1: Not an easy life by any stretch, right, working a
Speaker 1: difficult job, but a good job, and still raising three kids.
Speaker 1: And I have so much respect for single moms everywhere
Speaker 1: I see the amount of work that goes into raising children.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. So the idea that you were able to
Speaker 1: hold it together, you know, while working, is really my
Speaker 1: hat's off to you. So how could this have possibly happened?
Speaker 1: How could you sort of, I guess you could call
Speaker 1: a typical American, right, working, raising children, living sort of
Speaker 1: a regular type of place, right, How could you become
Speaker 1: ensnared in this craziest possible situation.
Speaker 4: I don't even have the answers. I don't know how
Speaker 4: to even say how it all began.
Speaker 1: Or let me give some details to the audience and then, Neil,
Speaker 1: if you could jump in any time you want. So,
Speaker 1: this was a case where a guy named Curtis Hayth
Speaker 1: was murdered outside his apartment building around four am on
Speaker 1: January twenty seventh of two thousand and one. And I
Speaker 1: guess the only reason that it even any attention was
Speaker 1: paid to you in the first place was because that
Speaker 1: night you had been at a party with him, right,
Speaker 1: with a lot of other people. Yes, attending a party
Speaker 1: with somebody and murdering them or very different legally.
Speaker 7: Speaking, right, I mean, I think what the police did
Speaker 7: made sense because when this man died, they wanted to know, okay,
Speaker 7: who else saw him, what was he doing? So it
Speaker 7: actually kind of made sense as a starting point for
Speaker 7: the investigation to talk to everybody he'd been with. But
Speaker 7: then obviously things took a wrong turn from that point on.
Speaker 1: Right, So, Crystal, you and a friend had given him
Speaker 1: a ride home from the party around ten o'clock.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it was me and my cousin.
Speaker 1: God could, yes, but then you went back to the party.
Speaker 3: I went back to uniont where I was.
Speaker 1: Right, and he was murdered six hours later or so,
Speaker 1: at four o'clock in the morning. And by that time,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming you were home asleep with your kids. Right,
Speaker 1: So how did this start to go wrong? Because it
Speaker 1: took a long time. I mean, this kid, this was
Speaker 1: a cold case, right, you know? Right?
Speaker 7: They investigated for about a year after mister Hayes murder
Speaker 7: and really didn't have any leads. They questioned Crystal and
Speaker 7: a lot of other people, but didn't really have any leads.
Speaker 7: And then about a year into it, they brought in
Speaker 7: a Pennsylvania State trooper from the Cold Case Squad to
Speaker 7: try to investigate more. Because this is a relatively small
Speaker 7: town and an unsolved Thomas side is kind of big news,
Speaker 7: So they brought in the cold case squad and it's
Speaker 7: at that point that they started looking into the potential
Speaker 7: bitemark evidence that really became a lynchpin of the case
Speaker 7: against Crystal as things went.
Speaker 1: For so the victim had been bitten.
Speaker 7: Well supposedly, we don't based on what we know now,
Speaker 7: are not even sure whether it was a human bitemark.
Speaker 7: There was an oval shaped bruise on the victim's hand
Speaker 7: that was not identified as a bitemark during the autopsy.
Speaker 7: But when this person from the cold case squad came
Speaker 7: in and was looking at the autopsy photographs, she saw
Speaker 7: it and said, well, I think this is a bitemark,
Speaker 7: even though she was not a dentist or an odentologist
Speaker 7: by training, and then started looking at it from that angle.
Speaker 1: So the trained mortician or corner right, the.
Speaker 7: Forensic pathologist right that did the autopsy.
Speaker 1: Wasn't able to see a bitemark and clearly was looking
Speaker 1: for any signs that they could find because it was
Speaker 1: a murder, right right.
Speaker 7: And we looked into this when we were investigating the case.
Speaker 7: What do you look for in an autopsy? And if
Speaker 7: you're a forensic pathologist, bite marks are one of the things,
Speaker 7: even at that time, that you were supposed to look
Speaker 7: for and account for and preserve in a certain way
Speaker 7: if you saw it. And the pathologist did none of
Speaker 7: those things, right.
Speaker 1: So, what I'm trying to wrap myself around here is
Speaker 1: and this is just the first of so many I mean,
Speaker 1: whacky is a weird way to put it, but so
Speaker 1: many whacky things about this case. But I'm trying to
Speaker 1: wrap myself around to the idea that you have a
Speaker 1: trained pathologist forensic pathologist who is examining the body and
Speaker 1: looking with a fine tooth comb or microscope what everyone
Speaker 1: to call it, for any signs of foul play, but
Speaker 1: yet does not see or report anything to do with
Speaker 1: any bite marks. But yet a state trooper. Right, there's
Speaker 1: no training in this area, Right, A lay person is
Speaker 1: going to look at a photograph one dimensional a year
Speaker 1: later and go, I got this. I figured it out
Speaker 1: like some sort of Sherlock Holmes moment and say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a bite mark. And we know, from having examined
Speaker 1: and uncovered and had to undo cases around the country
Speaker 1: related to bitemark evidence, it is probably the junkiest form
Speaker 1: of science that there is. I mean, there's so many
Speaker 1: cases that we've seen where they don't know whether it's
Speaker 1: a human bitemark, it could be an animal, it could
Speaker 1: be totally something, totally right exactly. So this was the
Speaker 1: beginning of what became a real life nightmare for Crystal.
Speaker 1: So then things start getting really tangled, right, and really complicated,
Speaker 1: because there's a whole cast of characters here that are
Speaker 1: all out for themselves and are all working across purposes
Speaker 1: and all working at trying to well save their own asses, right, right,
Speaker 1: This is where the incentivized witness thing comes into play, right.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about that a little.
Speaker 7: Bit now, Yeah, So, the incentivized witnesses in this case,
Speaker 7: it's interesting, actually didn't start even coming forward until Crystal
Speaker 7: had already been arrested and charged with the murder. So
Speaker 7: after this BikeE mark story comes out, they're talking to
Speaker 7: other people and there's a guy in the county jail
Speaker 7: named Joey Stenger who offers to give the police some
Speaker 7: information about Crystal and about this murder, and he's got
Speaker 7: a bunch of charges, so I think he was hoping
Speaker 7: for something, but at this point he wasn't promised anything,
Speaker 7: so it wasn't really incentivized at that point. But he
Speaker 7: essentially confesses to committing the murder and implicates Crystal in
Speaker 7: it with him. So they move forward based on this
Speaker 7: spiite mark evidence, based on this witness Joey Stenger, and
Speaker 7: some other things they had cobbled together. And then years
Speaker 7: after Curtis's deaths in two thousand and four and two
Speaker 7: thousand and five, when Crystal's in the County jail. You
Speaker 7: get other prisoners coming out of the woodwork saying they've
Speaker 7: heard Crystal confess to them, which just seems ludicrous given
Speaker 7: the you know, in particular, the amount of time that
Speaker 7: had passed since the murder, and they, as it turns out,
Speaker 7: we found out much later, we're all asking for deals
Speaker 7: in exchange for implicating Crystal.
Speaker 1: Again, we're supposed to believe that you, in an effort
Speaker 1: to purge your soul, are going up to total strangers
Speaker 1: in the jail and telling each of them your story
Speaker 1: about how you murdered Curtis haythe one night in January
Speaker 1: of two thousand and one.
Speaker 4: Well, the sad part was, I didn't even know a
Speaker 4: lot of the people. I just met them through testimony
Speaker 4: or paperwork and stuff to that nature. I didn't I
Speaker 4: never even met him, like want a face to face basis,
Speaker 4: So I didn't even know who most.
Speaker 3: Of them were.
Speaker 1: So what happened here, it sounds to me like is
Speaker 1: going back fifteen years to when all this stuff was
Speaker 1: taking place. Is that, as we see time and again,
Speaker 1: the police and prosecutor came up with a theory and
Speaker 1: then in the absence of any physical evidence, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't any They had to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: convince a jury that you were this cold blooded killer.
Speaker 1: Did you have prior violent arrests in your past? No,
Speaker 1: you never murdered anybody else, never like it can blow
Speaker 1: up anything record. No, No, you weren't like a You
Speaker 1: weren't like a mugger karthif I's kidding, I mean.
Speaker 3: Like I said, you find sense of humor and all
Speaker 3: this madness.
Speaker 1: I tried to because otherwise it's just too depressing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they would have had without having gone to these lengths
Speaker 1: that they did to fabricate evidence against you. Very hard
Speaker 1: to imagine that the jury would have convicted you, because
Speaker 1: what would they have said, Here's this woman who was
Speaker 1: raising three children, working a job, respectable citizen, with no
Speaker 1: prior history of violence. One day just up and murdered
Speaker 1: this guy at four o'clock in the morning, and we
Speaker 1: have no evidence to show you, but you should take
Speaker 1: our word for it. That basically would have been the
Speaker 1: case a judgment. I mean, somebody would have thrown that
Speaker 1: thing out. Our jury would have said, they would have
Speaker 1: taken ten minutes and they would have said, this is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: We're going home. Right.
Speaker 7: And actually the charges against Crystal were thrown out the
Speaker 7: very first time they tried to bring them. This is
Speaker 7: when the additional informants and people start coming in, and
Speaker 7: they charged her again, and it was the second time
Speaker 7: that the charges stuck. So what you're saying actually did
Speaker 7: happen essentially the first time around.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's in two thousand and four, right, which is
Speaker 1: already more than three years after the crime was committed.
Speaker 1: The case was dismissed against you because Beale recanted his
Speaker 1: earlier that you the murder, and he refused to testify.
Speaker 4: He was the very first one that recanted. Joey's singer
Speaker 4: was the second one that recanted his statement. So whenever
Speaker 4: Bill recanted, they released me. But they never released me
Speaker 4: because of prejudice. They just released me and the judge
Speaker 4: gave them the option to refel charges against me for
Speaker 4: the second arrest. So I was begging to go back
Speaker 4: to prison, which is absurd, knowing that they were going
Speaker 4: to do this again to me, just to have a
Speaker 4: trial so I didn't have to go through all this
Speaker 4: again the second time.
Speaker 1: And then who's taking care of your children this well.
Speaker 4: My two oldest daughters were with their grandmother. Whenever all
Speaker 4: this took place, she was putting them off to school
Speaker 4: and making sure they were okay. Well that year, whenever
Speaker 4: I got released, I had three different apartments, Like I
Speaker 4: was trying to come out and get myself back together,
Speaker 4: and here they come again.
Speaker 3: It was just crazy.
Speaker 4: So I couldn't get myself together and make sure I
Speaker 4: was taking care of them, not knowing what they were going.
Speaker 3: To do to me again.
Speaker 4: So I wanted to make sure they were in a
Speaker 4: stable environment, which I left them with their grandparents, not
Speaker 4: knowing if they were going to come rearrest me again
Speaker 4: for the second time, or what was going to occur.
Speaker 4: So I wanted them in a safe environment.
Speaker 3: That's why I left them where they were.
Speaker 1: But even still, the idea, I mean, what is that
Speaker 1: like being locked up for something you didn't do and
Speaker 1: then not being able to tuck your kids in or
Speaker 1: read them a story or you know. I mean, especially
Speaker 1: as they're sort of their only parent and as a mom, like,
Speaker 1: how how did you deal with that when you're in prison?
Speaker 1: How did you keep your sanity?
Speaker 3: It was extremely hard.
Speaker 4: I mean, as far as being depressed and crying all
Speaker 4: the time, emotional. I would go see a therapist and
Speaker 4: the counsel all the time. I tried to go to
Speaker 4: a church. It was just so hard on a daily basis.
Speaker 4: A part of you just gone. Your baby's just gone.
Speaker 4: And no words can even describe that feeling.
Speaker 3: That's horrible. That's the worst feeling in the world. Like
Speaker 3: the babies that.
Speaker 4: You bore, that you were supposed to be secure and
Speaker 4: love and neuturing and mom and make sure their needs
Speaker 4: are met and just quality time, security time, just everything
Speaker 4: just being ripped apart and away from Oh, it is
Speaker 4: this horrible, horrible in my heart and my mind, my emotions.
Speaker 4: I don't even know how I cope and dealt with it.
Speaker 3: I just.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I just try one day at a time. I just
Speaker 4: kept praying. I didn't know what else to do. But
Speaker 4: it pushed me to be persistent. Knowing I was innocent
Speaker 4: and I was wrong. Then I was coming home, So
Speaker 4: it pushed me even more so to fight and take
Speaker 4: a stand for what I believe in. And I knew
Speaker 4: in my heart I was going to come home. I
Speaker 4: just didn't know when or how long.
Speaker 1: Well I'm getting the chills thinking about this. So you
Speaker 1: were rearrested in September of two thousand and four, and
Speaker 1: you went to trial. Yes, and you were represented by
Speaker 1: a public deffect at the time. Yes, right. They have
Speaker 1: a lot of respect for lawyers in general. But we
Speaker 1: do know that the public defender situation in this country
Speaker 1: is a crisis, nothing less than a crisis. We have
Speaker 1: a situation, I think in every state where they are underpaid,
Speaker 1: they're overburdened, they're overworked. Some of them are incompetent, but
Speaker 1: many of them are very competent, but they have an
Speaker 1: impossible task. So if you're in this situation and don't
Speaker 1: have money to defend yourself, and sometimes even if you do,
Speaker 1: you have really a snowballs chance in hell of getting justice,
Speaker 1: and you now go to trial, it must have seemed
Speaker 1: like a circus.
Speaker 3: It was a circus.
Speaker 4: I was just in awe with all these people coming
Speaker 4: on and stand and testifying, and I was just like,
Speaker 4: what where did this come from? I'm shaking my head
Speaker 4: and looking like wow.
Speaker 1: And Neilon. Not only were they coming in and saying
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that wasn't true, but they were
Speaker 1: also changing their lives. There were different lives on different days,
Speaker 1: right from the same person. The stinger guy changed his
Speaker 1: story again and again, I mean doesn't at some point
Speaker 1: somebody go, wait a minute, this guy is totally full
Speaker 1: of shit, right, I mean that forgive my language, but
Speaker 1: I mean he just kept coming up with new lies.
Speaker 7: Yeah. By our account, by the time we got through
Speaker 7: the trial, the post conviction procedure and we're looking at
Speaker 7: a potential new trial, Stanger had given about fifteen different
Speaker 7: accounts of the events, and there were changes every time.
Speaker 7: So you wonder how the jury could believe this guy,
Speaker 7: which they really had to do because he was the
Speaker 7: only evidence that claimed to have firsthand knowledge of Crystal
Speaker 7: being at the scene, which of.
Speaker 5: Course was not true.
Speaker 7: But the jury really had to believe him, and they did,
Speaker 7: which I think just shows you that if it's the
Speaker 7: prosecution putting up the witness, sometimes that's really all you
Speaker 7: need and it doesn't matter that much what they say.
Speaker 1: He admitted that he was coached by the police, right,
Speaker 1: which is again it's a fact. I think most people
Speaker 1: sit there and go, well, that can't happen. That's not allowed.
Speaker 1: And he admitted that the police told him what to say.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he recanted. He said that they fed him the
Speaker 7: information basically.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's done in ways, both subtle and not
Speaker 1: so subtle. Right. You know. The fact is we see
Speaker 1: in so many of these wrongful convictions police that feed
Speaker 1: information either like I said, sort of artfully right by
Speaker 1: in a suggestive in a roundabout way. In this case,
Speaker 1: it was much more blatant. Right, They just told them
Speaker 1: what they wanted him to say. But jury's I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes they don't hear that. Sometimes they don't know. If
Speaker 1: it's not videotape, it should be. Videotips should always be videotaped.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things we are working so hard
Speaker 1: on at innocence projects around the country, especially one in
Speaker 1: New York as the mandatory videotaping of interrogation. Strangely enough,
Speaker 1: New York State doesn't have it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, in Pennsylvania we don't have it. A couple of
Speaker 7: counties have started doing it just within the last.
Speaker 4: Year or so.
Speaker 7: In this case, it's interesting one of Joey's statements to
Speaker 7: police was videotaped, but they didn't start the tape until
Speaker 7: after they'd alreadyn talked tucking him for a few hours,
Speaker 7: So by the time he's on the tape, there's a
Speaker 7: relatively for lack of a better word, canned story coming
Speaker 7: from him, so we didn't get to see what went
Speaker 7: into it, which really you want to see the whole
Speaker 7: thing obviously, to see how it unfolded.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let me go to my soapbox here for
Speaker 1: a second. So, Crystal, one of the reasons that I'm
Speaker 1: so happier here is because you literally represent everybody in America.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's fair to say that if
Speaker 1: this could happen to you, it could happen to anyone,
Speaker 1: because you just don't fit the profile of somebody who
Speaker 1: would get picked up, you know. And I think there
Speaker 1: are some people who say, well, they must have been
Speaker 1: involved with something else, And people have this different attitudes
Speaker 1: about exonnaies. We know that half of our exanneries had
Speaker 1: no prior record before they were wrongfully arrested and convicted.
Speaker 1: But the fact is that everyone should be concerned and
Speaker 1: everyone should be angry as I am now at the
Speaker 1: idea that we don't have mandatory videotaping of interrogations. It
Speaker 1: is preposterous. What could possibly be the reason why we
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be able to see what goes on
Speaker 1: inside that interrogation room and know that the person is
Speaker 1: actually the right person. Right. None of us want murderers
Speaker 1: walking the streets. But the idea that we forget as
Speaker 1: a society upon basically arrest and certainly upon incarceration, we
Speaker 1: forget that you are one of us. Right, You're an American,
Speaker 1: you're a person, you're a human, you're a woman. All
Speaker 1: that's gone out the window. You're just somebody to be
Speaker 1: chewed up and spit out by the system once you're
Speaker 1: in it. And I don't get that. I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not okay with it, and I'm going to continue
Speaker 1: to do everything I can fix it. Okay, So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get off myself bucks now. So Anyway, when you
Speaker 1: were a trial and you're watching this crazy circus unfold
Speaker 1: in front of you and you're unfortunately stuck in the
Speaker 1: middle of it, did you think that this was still
Speaker 1: going to be okay, that the jury was gonna make
Speaker 1: the right decision, that you were going to go home.
Speaker 3: I believed in my heart that the tchurth was gonna
Speaker 3: send me for it. I was confident. I felt really
Speaker 3: good about everything.
Speaker 4: And I knew that I was innocent, So I felt
Speaker 4: like I was going to walk out.
Speaker 3: That courtroom and go home where I should have been.
Speaker 3: But when they came back and.
Speaker 4: After they gave the verdict it was guilty, guilty, guilty.
Speaker 4: I was just an awe, Like what where did that
Speaker 4: come from?
Speaker 1: Can you describe that scene? Because nobody can imagine going
Speaker 1: through that, like the pressure of being in that situation
Speaker 1: and the idea that they're coming back in and they're
Speaker 1: going to decide your fate literally with a life in
Speaker 1: that situation, and so how it was a.
Speaker 4: Murder charge to at that and I'm like, what what
Speaker 4: are we talking about? Like a murder trial? And then
Speaker 4: you're sitting there and you're waiting for all leads people
Speaker 4: to decide your future.
Speaker 3: What's going to happen to you? It just it's like.
Speaker 4: Your heart wants to stop, like your throat and everything.
Speaker 4: Everything's just like ah, you want to scream and it's
Speaker 4: just like all bottled inside of you because you don't
Speaker 4: know what they're going to say. But yet on the
Speaker 4: same note, on the good side of your head, you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: well you're fine, you're getting ready to go home, and hey,
Speaker 4: you're happy. But then there's another side like what's going
Speaker 4: to happen? So it's like a mixed emotion thing going
Speaker 4: on inside of you, just waiting to hear what they say,
Speaker 4: guilty or not guilty.
Speaker 1: And imagine that. So I mean and I think that
Speaker 1: people again have a tendency to be able to distance
Speaker 1: themselves when they're serving on a jewelry from that emotion
Speaker 1: from that person that is sitting in front of them,
Speaker 1: And they have a tendency to trust the system and
Speaker 1: want to believe people in positions of authority who are
Speaker 1: telling them this woman is a murderer, she's terrible, she's
Speaker 1: all these things they're saying about you, right, And I
Speaker 1: always say that people have to take an extra hard
Speaker 1: look at what's being shown to them when they're on
Speaker 1: that jury and realize that there's a lot of bad
Speaker 1: actors in the system, there's a lot of good ones,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of bad actors in the system, and
Speaker 1: that people like you get caught up in the crosshairs,
Speaker 1: and that in fact, those roles could be reversed one day.
Speaker 3: I highly believe that.
Speaker 4: I believe that them being in the position that they're in,
Speaker 4: some people have more heartfelt and are educated in that area,
Speaker 4: but they also need to be mindful as well, that
Speaker 4: it's not always good, The system isn't always for you,
Speaker 4: and there is people out there that do corruption and
Speaker 4: do do bad things and harmful things.
Speaker 1: How about this logic, right, So, if you're on a jury,
Speaker 1: and especially in a small town like yours, right, and
Speaker 1: you actually are witnessing and unfortunately playing an unwitting part
Speaker 1: in a terrible deception and a prosecution, not only are
Speaker 1: you then subject to being victimized by the actual murder
Speaker 1: who's still walking in the streets, but also those people,
Speaker 1: those the farious, corrupt people, police and prosecutors who are
Speaker 1: perpetrating this terrible act on you and in fact on
Speaker 1: the public while I'm going to do it again because
Speaker 1: it's convenient, they get away with it, and that could
Speaker 1: be you, dur number seven sitting in the jury box.
Speaker 1: That could be you or somebody you love right that
Speaker 1: next time could get caught up just because they can't
Speaker 1: solve the case and they need they need somebody because
Speaker 1: they need to get it off their desk, and they
Speaker 1: want to keep moving up the ranks. And we see
Speaker 1: that people get promoted even when it's exposed that they
Speaker 1: were responsible to these wrongflmakers. So you get found guilty
Speaker 1: and the worst moment of your life, I'm assuming, right.
Speaker 4: Sh Yeah, it was a shock. It was just unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And then you get taken away in handcuffs, yeah, and
Speaker 1: taken to well back to jail, but then ultimately to prison.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well they had to escort like my sister out of
Speaker 4: the court room because my dad, he had to walk
Speaker 4: out and calm her down, because she was with me
Speaker 4: that night. And of course your sister can lie for you,
Speaker 4: but there's the difference whenever you see her with your
Speaker 4: own eyes with you. So she was so determined to
Speaker 4: try to help me, to get me to the truth,
Speaker 4: to give me freed, and when they say guilty, she
Speaker 4: just like it was just a mess in that whole
Speaker 4: courtroom that day.
Speaker 1: Right, that's a crazy thing because for her, I I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to put myself in her shoes, and you're
Speaker 1: sitting there going, not only do I believe that my sister,
Speaker 1: my son, whatever it is, is innocent. She knew you
Speaker 1: were right, right, I Mean, you can't be in two
Speaker 1: places at once.
Speaker 4: That's why she was like so determined. She was like,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to give up fighting for you. I'm
Speaker 4: going to do everything in my willpower just to get
Speaker 4: you freed. There's no reason why they should have did
Speaker 4: this to you. It was just like she was mindset
Speaker 4: and of course like yeah, your family, my tell.
Speaker 3: Little fib or little story here or there.
Speaker 4: But whenever you know with that is shadow of doubt
Speaker 4: with your own personal wise, and it's a total different story.
Speaker 1: What can you tell us about the experience that you
Speaker 1: had in prison? Was every day the same? Were there
Speaker 1: any bright spots? Was there somebody that inspired you? Just
Speaker 1: give us a sense of what that was like.
Speaker 3: It was really difficult.
Speaker 4: Like whenever I first went in, there was only five
Speaker 4: hundred and maybe five eighty individuals women incarcerated. Towards the
Speaker 4: end there was over like twelve hundred women, so the
Speaker 4: prison population increased like over half. As far as survival,
Speaker 4: on an everyday basis, I would have a routine. I
Speaker 4: would try to walk, jall, go to the yard a lot.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of spiritual churches and services. I
Speaker 4: would always go to them to try to help me
Speaker 4: to get through it all. There was people that would
Speaker 4: visit me through the prison society. They would come and
Speaker 4: see me. They were like men and nights. They would
Speaker 4: come and visit me. That helped and inspired me as well.
Speaker 4: There was definitely support as far as church and stuff
Speaker 4: like that, but it's just hard being surrounded by people
Speaker 4: from all different nationalities cult roles.
Speaker 3: You just don't know these people.
Speaker 4: They're just strangers and you're just thrown in this cell
Speaker 4: with these different people. But you do grow close to
Speaker 4: some of the individuals and you really find out who
Speaker 4: is loyal and who is really honest and genuine and
Speaker 4: every person an individual would find like their sense of
Speaker 4: group and they're fitting in and belonging. That's all I
Speaker 4: could do, just on a daily basis, just try to
Speaker 4: maintain and journal and keep myself mentally going.
Speaker 1: Well, it's remarkable and of all my respect for having
Speaker 1: persevered through this and actually found a way out, And
Speaker 1: I want to get to that now. How did the
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Innocence Project first hear about the case? Why did
Speaker 1: you decide to take this particular case, and how did
Speaker 1: you unravel this web of lies and deceit?
Speaker 7: So Crystal wrote to us, that's how we get all
Speaker 7: of our cases. We won't even start to look at
Speaker 7: a case until a person writes us a letter. So
Speaker 7: that's how she first got into our process, and Crystal's
Speaker 7: letters were really compelling, you know, going back to what
Speaker 7: we were talking about earlier with her being a single mom.
Speaker 7: A refrain in all of her letters was I'm single
Speaker 7: mom of three girls and I just want to get
Speaker 7: home to them, which doesn't speak to innocence necessarily, but
Speaker 7: it was really personally compelling. So she went through our
Speaker 7: review process, which takes years. She was sometimes patient, sometimes
Speaker 7: not with that, but we really vet the cases through
Speaker 7: a multi step process.
Speaker 3: We read every piece.
Speaker 7: Of paper we could find, every trial transcript, We talked
Speaker 7: to prior lawyers, we meet with the with the person
Speaker 7: to really assure ourselves this is an innocence case. And
Speaker 7: just from you know, talking, you've seen how complicated Crystal's
Speaker 7: case was. So it took us a long time to
Speaker 7: try to even figure out what the heck was the
Speaker 7: prosecution's theory, what the heck actually may have happened, Who
Speaker 7: are all these players. There's so many different strands to
Speaker 7: it that it took a lot of time just to
Speaker 7: figure out what a coherent narrative of the case might
Speaker 7: have been. But Crystal really did a lot of the
Speaker 7: work herself. She lost her first couple of state court appeals,
Speaker 7: and so she went to federal court on her own
Speaker 7: to ask for a new trial.
Speaker 3: There after, she'd already.
Speaker 7: Written to us and we were reviewing the case, and
Speaker 7: the federal judge appointed a lawyer for her from the
Speaker 7: Federal Defender's Office in Western Pennsylvania, and they started investigating
Speaker 7: the case. They talked to Joey Stenger. He recanted his
Speaker 7: testimony and said everything he said was a lie. They
Speaker 7: knew we were looking at the case, and they knew
Speaker 7: we'd have to go back to state court. So we
Speaker 7: ended up partnering together with them, and that's when we
Speaker 7: really started getting actively involved and representing Crystal because we
Speaker 7: determined by that point it was an innocent's case. She
Speaker 7: met all of our criteria. So we started working together
Speaker 7: with the federal lawyers and developed more about what was
Speaker 7: wrong with Stenger's testimony. We went back with them and
Speaker 7: then again on our own to interview this dentist that
Speaker 7: had testified against her, claiming she bit the victim, and
Speaker 7: he said everything he'd said at trial was complete junk
Speaker 7: based on advancements in the field since then. So we
Speaker 7: went through every piece of evidence that they put on
Speaker 7: and tried to see was there any validity to it,
Speaker 7: and it turned out we could debunk every single piece
Speaker 7: of it, and so we went back into state court
Speaker 7: based on that task for a new trial.
Speaker 1: And I want to just take a second here to say,
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned something very important, which is the
Speaker 1: length of time it takes for the Pennsylvanians, this project,
Speaker 1: or anything in this project to get to these cases.
Speaker 1: And that's why it's so important that people who are
Speaker 1: listening out there donate money. I mean, time is great too,
Speaker 1: but money is important because very simply if you donate
Speaker 1: to the Pennsylvanian Project, what is the website, by the way,
Speaker 1: projectpa dot org, Innocence projectpa dot org, because then they
Speaker 1: can hire more lawyer lawyers or lawyers or paralegals, more
Speaker 1: more office space for students law students to come in
Speaker 1: and take more cases like crystals in a more expeditious
Speaker 1: manner and get more innocent people out because unfortunately, we
Speaker 1: know from the best social science estimates that over one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people in President of America are innocent, and
Speaker 1: that's a lot. And every one of those hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people has a story, not all as crazy as crystals,
Speaker 1: but they all have a story, and they all have families,
Speaker 1: and they all have hopes and dreams that are being
Speaker 1: taken away from them. So yes, donate Innocence PROJECTPA dot org.
Speaker 1: So now things have gone full circle. You went from
Speaker 1: hitting the jackpot of all the causes of wrongful conviction,
Speaker 1: not all of them, but so many of the causes
Speaker 1: of wrongful convictions. It went from that to having this
Speaker 1: wonderful team of lawyers representing you and to having them
Speaker 1: not just debunk one theory of the prosecution, but all
Speaker 1: of them. Right, I mean, that's that's pretty unusual too.
Speaker 1: I mean to be able to come back at the
Speaker 1: court and go, not only was this piece of evidence wrong,
Speaker 1: it's all wrong and we could prove it. And I
Speaker 1: see you starting to break out in a big, warm
Speaker 1: smile there thinking about it, because, Yeah, how incredible is
Speaker 1: that victory?
Speaker 4: Yeah, after fighting all the years and being persistent and
Speaker 4: just getting turned down States, Superior, State, Supreme and just
Speaker 4: all these different nos and just fighting and just keep going.
Speaker 1: So you go back to court feeling very confident.
Speaker 7: I guess right, you know, we felt pretty confident. And
Speaker 7: Crystal Bay this point had the Federal Defender's office. She
Speaker 7: had every attorney in my office, which at that point
Speaker 7: was just three were not very big, and also this
Speaker 7: private team of lawyers from the Jones Day Law firm.
Speaker 7: So we felt like we had put together the best
Speaker 7: case we possibly could. So we felt confident, and we
Speaker 7: were prepared to put on a three or four day
Speaker 7: hearing with multiple pieces of evidence witnesses. But in Pennsylvania
Speaker 7: we have one of the most restrictive post conviction laws
Speaker 7: in the country. So we had put together, we thought
Speaker 7: the strongest case we could. We were nervous because in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 7: the judge can't even listen to your request for a
Speaker 7: new trial, can't even hear those witnesses if he determines
Speaker 7: that you didn't file your petition on time. So the
Speaker 7: das always argue like, well, this is great, you have
Speaker 7: all this new evidence. You should have found it sooner.
Speaker 7: You're too late. Doesn't matter what the evidence is, and
Speaker 7: we were really worried about that aspect, whether we could
Speaker 7: even get over that initial hurdle and have the judge
Speaker 7: listen to what we had to say. So we were
Speaker 7: confident on the one hand, but we also knew the
Speaker 7: legal landscape that we were facing is incredibly tough.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about that? By the way, neither
Speaker 1: one of you can answer this. The idea that it's
Speaker 1: I guess it's called the sunset clause, right, The idea
Speaker 1: that the courts can say, well, sorry but or not
Speaker 1: even sorry, but you know what, you may be innocent,
Speaker 1: but we don't care because you didn't get the s
Speaker 1: you didn't get the information to us on time. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like the Twilight Zone, right, I mean, how can
Speaker 1: that be personally?
Speaker 4: I think sometimes the system just wants to wrap cases up.
Speaker 4: They don't care if it's right, if it's wrong, if
Speaker 4: it's indifferent, if it's personal, if it's biased. Not always,
Speaker 4: but a lot of times, when they get in this
Speaker 4: little hump and they have no other way out, they
Speaker 4: have no other choice. It's just wrapping that case and
Speaker 4: that whole outcome and that situation up.
Speaker 1: How is it that we are able as human beings
Speaker 1: to say that we no longer care about you mean,
Speaker 1: we don't care, right, because we have to feed the system. Right,
Speaker 1: The system has to go on, the machine has to
Speaker 1: go on, and we've seen it over and over again.
Speaker 1: I remember Florida years ago tried to pass the sunset
Speaker 1: clause where they were saying, And some states have this
Speaker 1: right where even if you had DNA evidence of your innocence,
Speaker 1: you had to present it within like a month after
Speaker 1: your try. Otherwise they weren't going to look at it. Now,
Speaker 1: who the hell's going to have it a month after
Speaker 1: their trial? But there are states that have that. In
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania's one of them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, in Pennsylvania, it's pretty draconian. Once your conviction is final,
Speaker 7: you have a year to seek a new trial, which
Speaker 7: is not that long, especially if witnesses, you know, they
Speaker 7: just testified against you not that long before. Are they
Speaker 7: really going to be prepared to tell the truth now?
Speaker 7: After that year, if you file that new trial motion
Speaker 7: and you lose, you're presumptively barred from ever seeking relief again,
Speaker 7: with a few exceptions. So if you find new evidence
Speaker 7: of innocence, like in Crystal's case, we had a witness recantation,
Speaker 7: we had this fite mark expert disavowing its testimony, et cetera,
Speaker 7: you only have two months. You have sixty days to
Speaker 7: go back to court, and even if you get in
Speaker 7: within the sixty days, that doesn't mean the judge is
Speaker 7: going to find that your petition was filed on time.
Speaker 7: It means that he's going to look at Okay, while
Speaker 7: you got in with sixty days, but could you have
Speaker 7: found that evidence even earlier sixty days from what sixty
Speaker 7: days from? Basically when you get in, inkling that the
Speaker 7: person might be willing to recant or you have a
Speaker 7: new expert opinion, whatever new evidence is. So it's a
Speaker 7: really short period of time, particularly if you don't have
Speaker 7: a lawyer. But it also isn't the end of the game.
Speaker 7: Because you get in within sixty days, that's just the
Speaker 7: start of the process. The judge then has to see
Speaker 7: whether that literally was the first time you could have
Speaker 7: brought this evidence, or if you could have found it
Speaker 7: sooner somehow, And the das will always say, well, they
Speaker 7: could have talked to this person a year ago, six
Speaker 7: months ago, whatever it is. In my job, this is
Speaker 7: what makes me bang my head against the desk the most.
Speaker 3: Are you talking about the PCR?
Speaker 7: A PCR okay, And it's what we call a jurisdictional requirement.
Speaker 7: So if you don't meet these things, the judge, even
Speaker 7: if he or she wanted to, has no authority to
Speaker 7: hear the actual evidence.
Speaker 1: It's so maddening. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So then the day comes you're back in court. At
Speaker 1: this point, you'd been through everything. How do you resign
Speaker 1: yourself like oh, they're just going to screw me again,
Speaker 1: or like what was your before before?
Speaker 4: We have been through so much like my good days,
Speaker 4: my good times. I'd done fired her one time and
Speaker 4: then rehired her the same day. But it was just
Speaker 4: all from anger, frustration, perseverance, just everything bottled up in me.
Speaker 4: I mean, it wasn't her personally, it was the fact
Speaker 4: about the system, what happened to me and what's been done,
Speaker 4: And here she is trying to assist and help me,
Speaker 4: but yet I'm firing her and hiring her back in
Speaker 4: the same day.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's been real interesting.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was just so grateful though here comes
Speaker 4: my whole team and I'm soon to get victory. I
Speaker 4: was happy, but on the same note, I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: they're not.
Speaker 3: Going to help me. It's going to be the same stuff.
Speaker 4: Over crap, I'm saying in my mind over and over
Speaker 4: because I wasn't getting nowhere, it seemed like. But then
Speaker 4: all these doors started opening so fast. It was just
Speaker 4: like one court date. Here we go, Oh, another court
Speaker 4: date scheduled.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Here, I'm going back to the county. Here they're coming
Speaker 4: to see me every day. I'm getting visits and getting
Speaker 4: out of my room and out of my cell, and
Speaker 4: I'm all excited because I know it's getting closer. Here
Speaker 4: comes the big day. So when the big day came
Speaker 4: and they said we're releasing her. October first, twenty fifteen
Speaker 4: was the very special day. Very next day, they just
Speaker 4: opened the doors and just released me right to the street.
Speaker 4: Here it is freezing outside in the middle of rain,
Speaker 4: and you know, we have jackets and different possessions and
Speaker 4: properties and things like that. After being there for what
Speaker 4: ten twelve years, so you accumulate a lot of belongings
Speaker 4: and things being in there. And it was just unbelievable.
Speaker 4: Here I am just being released to the streets. I
Speaker 4: didn't even get to go back to my home prison
Speaker 4: to collect what a little bit of belongings I had.
Speaker 4: So I was just released right from the county Joel,
Speaker 4: and you know, I had to get my self shipped
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 3: So it was just shock.
Speaker 4: I was just in all with everything and how they
Speaker 4: went about doing the results of everything. I mean, totally
Speaker 4: unbelievable twelve years and here you just throw somebody out
Speaker 4: on the street and don't give them their a little
Speaker 4: bit of belongings and possessions and let them have transportation
Speaker 4: and have everything in order. They could care less, it
Speaker 4: didn't matter to them.
Speaker 1: So it is full circle because you went into the
Speaker 1: first trial thinking that justice was going to be done
Speaker 1: and it wasn't. And then you went into the second
Speaker 1: trial thinking that justice wasn't going to be done, and
Speaker 1: it was. And then all of a sudden, here you
Speaker 1: are like a baby being born right out back into
Speaker 1: the world, like you said, like what the hell do
Speaker 1: I do now? Type of thing. Right, But the good
Speaker 1: news is you're free. At that point, you're exonerated, formally exonerated.
Speaker 4: We didn't get I got exonerated October one, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 4: was my hearing. That's whenever I got freed. They put
Speaker 4: a GPS monitor and was still dangle with me for
Speaker 4: nine months. So from October to June twenty seventh, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: last year, I had a bracelet one that was my
Speaker 4: fully exoneration day. When they were they took that bracelet
Speaker 4: off and released me.
Speaker 7: From that point, yeah, So in Pennsylvania, when somebody's innocent,
Speaker 7: you can't you know, some states you can ask for
Speaker 7: like a certificate of innocence, and that leads to an exoneration.
Speaker 7: All we can get is a new trial. So in
Speaker 7: October of twenty fifteen, we were lucky enough to be
Speaker 7: able to get Crystal the new trial. But all that
Speaker 7: that meant was that the d could appeal if they
Speaker 7: wanted to, They could retry her if they wanted to. Luckily,
Speaker 7: they didn't appeal, but they did say they were going
Speaker 7: to proceed a trial. So she was out on bail
Speaker 7: as if she'd never been convicted, and it was back
Speaker 7: as if she'd been before the first trial, and she
Speaker 7: was on this electronic monitoring, and the judge said a
Speaker 7: really aggressive trial schedule. We got a pre trial order
Speaker 7: saying you're going to trial in December or January, and
Speaker 7: so we hit the ground running and did pre trial
Speaker 7: work for Crystal. In the course of that, more information
Speaker 7: about incentivized witnesses came out that we hadn't been able
Speaker 7: to get during the post conviction process, and we filed
Speaker 7: motions to have all the charges dismissed with prejudice, meaning
Speaker 7: they could never charge her again, and ultimately, after a
Speaker 7: bunch of hearings on that, that was finally granted in
Speaker 7: June of twenty sixteen. So it wasn't over with the release.
Speaker 7: That took another good nine months of lawyering and of
Speaker 7: Crystal hanging in there being on this electronic monitor before
Speaker 7: she could be truly free.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that drives me crazy too.
Speaker 1: What people don't understand is that the indictment, the original indictment,
Speaker 1: still stands, even though the conviction has been overturned. The
Speaker 1: basically what the court saying is that your trial was wrong,
Speaker 1: the result was wrong, but the original indictmentsill stands and
Speaker 1: they can still try you. We talked about that moment
Speaker 1: when you were convicted something you didn't do, in the
Speaker 1: horror and shock of that with your sister and your
Speaker 1: dad and the whole terrible scene in the courtroom. What
Speaker 1: was a moment like when you were exonerated?
Speaker 4: Oh so wonderful, Oh man, happy tears again. I always
Speaker 4: call them a moment because I always.
Speaker 3: Cry, you know, emost one tear eye just thinking of it.
Speaker 4: It's just like the victory after like persevering and fighting
Speaker 4: and just everything for so long and so hard, and
Speaker 4: you know, want to give up hope and you know,
Speaker 4: throw the toweling.
Speaker 3: You just got to keep going. And then it's just.
Speaker 4: Like all that weight is finally off you. You're just like,
Speaker 4: oh wow, you're in awe. It's like awe moment. I
Speaker 4: call it a awe moment, but it's just relief, just
Speaker 4: like ten thousand things off your chest, your heart, your mind.
Speaker 3: You'll know how to start, where to begin, but you know.
Speaker 4: You're ready and you're doing something somehow, some way.
Speaker 3: So it's just amazing. It's amazing.
Speaker 4: Like I'm so grateful and thankful just small things that
Speaker 4: people take maybe for granted on a daily bisis. I
Speaker 4: just I'm just grateful and thank god just to be
Speaker 4: out because I could have still been in there, and
Speaker 4: you know, they might have tried to put me through
Speaker 4: a trial again and gave me a life sentence and say,
Speaker 4: oh death row sentence.
Speaker 3: Who's to say, you never know?
Speaker 4: With all this being said, you know, I'm just so
Speaker 4: happy and grateful that all this is just now it's
Speaker 4: behind me and I can move forward to my future
Speaker 4: and what lies ahead. And I'm just grateful to my
Speaker 4: team and all the ones that did all the work
Speaker 4: and put up with all my naughtiness and my good
Speaker 4: days and bad days and moments and times, and you know,
Speaker 4: and here I am today and I'm so grateful to
Speaker 4: meet you and be here and spend this time with you.
Speaker 3: Is a blessing. Well, I mean, I'm.
Speaker 1: Honored people who listen to the show. No, I'm really
Speaker 1: at a loss for words, but this is one of
Speaker 1: those moments. I do know that when we're done talking
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna give you a big hug. So the
Speaker 1: and when you meet Chris, it's the first thing you think,
Speaker 1: is this, I want to give this person a hug
Speaker 1: If you don't know so anyway, But you know, I
Speaker 1: think you may have already done this. But at the
Speaker 1: end of each episode, we have a tradition here at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction where I like to ask if there's any
Speaker 1: last words you'd like to share. I feel like you
Speaker 1: may have already just done that. So in this case,
Speaker 1: we'll do it differently, and we will turn it over
Speaker 1: to your distinguished attorney Neil m and see if there's
Speaker 1: anything Is there anything you'd like to leave with the audience,
Speaker 1: or any final thoughts.
Speaker 4: That you have, Oh, I'm just grateful that you have
Speaker 4: shows like this to get this in the public eye,
Speaker 4: to help people to be more aware of their surroundings
Speaker 4: and what occurs out there in the world in our society,
Speaker 4: to make change and make a difference for good and better.
Speaker 7: Well said, I'm just so happy that you invited us
Speaker 7: here and that it gives Crystal a chance to give
Speaker 7: voice to her story and also the other women anxigneries.
Speaker 7: You know, there's a lot more men in prison. We've
Speaker 7: only had two female clients in our office, but I
Speaker 7: think the challenges are really different, and it's a story
Speaker 7: that's not told as much as it needs to. Be
Speaker 7: so grateful that we have the opportunity to be here
Speaker 7: and have Crystal give kind of the women's perspective on
Speaker 7: this problem and a mom's perspective as well well.
Speaker 1: This has been an extraordinary experience talking to both of
Speaker 1: you and learning thank you from you, and you are
Speaker 1: a perfect example of why those of us in this
Speaker 1: innocence movement are so passionately devoted to doing what we do.
Speaker 1: Now you're home and with your children and your grandchildren
Speaker 1: and able to get on with your life, which is great.
Speaker 1: I want to thank both of you, Crystal and Neilam
Speaker 1: for joining us and tracking all the way here from Pennsylvania. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you, and thank you everyone for listening. This has
Speaker 1: been a very special episode of Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 3: Than thank you.
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 Nisis 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 Innison's 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 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