Speaker 1: I'm Jason Flamm, host of Wrongful Conviction, but this week,
Speaker 1: instead of hearing me, I've invited a true genius from
Speaker 1: the legal world to bring their knowledge and expertise to
Speaker 1: the conversation as guest host here at Wrongful Conviction. We
Speaker 1: believe that sharing the stories of the incarcerated innocent can
Speaker 1: create real change in the world, even beyond what these
Speaker 1: real life legal superheroes do every day.
Speaker 2: On June seventh, nineteen eighty eight, joggers were out on
Speaker 2: a wooded trail in Pontiai, Michigan when they discovered the
Speaker 2: body of thirty five year old Robert Mihia. He had
Speaker 2: been stabbed to death. Mahia was last seen at a
Speaker 2: bar a couple of nights before, and he left.
Speaker 3: With a stranger.
Speaker 2: Witnesses described that person to police, who created a composite
Speaker 2: sketch and published it in the local newspaper.
Speaker 3: There were no other leads.
Speaker 2: Connie Cook lived in Pontiac back then, and when she
Speaker 2: saw the suspect sketch and heard about the reward money,
Speaker 2: she decided to turn in her ex boyfriend, Gilbert Pool.
Speaker 2: She told police he'd confessed to a murder shortly before
Speaker 2: they moved together to North Carolina. Police went to North
Speaker 2: Carolina and arrested Gilbert and took him back to Michigan
Speaker 2: for trial. Among the other evidence that was presented, the
Speaker 2: state called forensic identologist doctor Alan Warnick to explain the
Speaker 2: supposed bitemark found on the victim's body. Even at the time,
Speaker 2: there was a suspicion of this type of junk science,
Speaker 2: but doctor Warnick's testimony was presented to Gilbert's jury as
Speaker 2: scientific fact. Gilbert looked nothing like the suspect's sketch, and
Speaker 2: his blood type did not match any of the blood
Speaker 2: found near the victim's body. But on June sixth, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine, Gilbert Poole was convicted of murder sentenced to
Speaker 2: life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 3: I'm Chris Fabricat. I'm the director of Strategic Litigation at
Speaker 3: the Innocence Project in New York and author of the
Speaker 3: book Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 5: Hello, my name is Gilbert Poole. I was recently exonerated
Speaker 5: through the Innocence Project and the Conviction Integrity Unit in
Speaker 5: the state of Michigan.
Speaker 4: Hi, I'm Marla Mitchell Sisian and I'm the former director
Speaker 4: of the WMU Cooley Innocence Project and currently serving of
Speaker 4: council with the office.
Speaker 3: And mister Poole.
Speaker 2: Tell us how you got involved in the criminal legal
Speaker 2: system and what led to your original conviction.
Speaker 5: I was briefly living in Michigan. I moved from Michigan
Speaker 5: back down in North Carolina in nineteen eighty eight, and
Speaker 5: I met a girl up here in Michigan and she
Speaker 5: went with me back down in North Carolina. Subsequently, our
Speaker 5: relationship ended and we broke up. She came back to Michigan.
Speaker 5: Unbeknownst to me, she had went to the police down
Speaker 5: there and told them that I had committed a crime
Speaker 5: in Michigan.
Speaker 3: And this was out of nowhere. Had you been to
Speaker 3: Pontiac and did you think that your girlfriend might say
Speaker 3: something like this about you.
Speaker 5: I was twenty two years old and I was working
Speaker 5: as a plumber in North Carolina doing plumbing repair work.
Speaker 5: I was briefly living in Michigan. I had moved up
Speaker 5: here from North Carolina, but I found it hard to
Speaker 5: maintain employment up here because I was not from the
Speaker 5: state and it's a union state. You had to establish
Speaker 5: a five year residency in the state before you could
Speaker 5: join the union. So I decided this wasn't a place
Speaker 5: for me, and I moved back to North Carolina. My
Speaker 5: girlfriend and I, Connie Cook. When we separated. It wasn't
Speaker 5: a friendly separation, to put it lately, and I didn't
Speaker 5: think it was beyond her to make up something, but
Speaker 5: I didn't think it was to this degree or here.
Speaker 5: After we had separated, I was out working and I
Speaker 5: came home from work one day and my door was open.
Speaker 5: Everything in the mobile home was gone, and I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 5: she came back and stole everything I had. There's no
Speaker 5: note or anything, but that's okay. If she needed that,
Speaker 5: that's fine. Moving on. It wasn't until a couple of
Speaker 5: weeks later that the police came to my workplace and
Speaker 5: serve me with this warrant, and then everything made sense. Then, oh, okay,
Speaker 5: she used me to basically get a ride back to
Speaker 5: Michigan and claim a reward that was open for a
Speaker 5: murder case that was unsolved in Michigan. She has me
Speaker 5: confessing to a murder six months before it actually happened.
Speaker 3: It's a problem.
Speaker 5: They took her in and they gave her a polygraph test,
Speaker 5: so she worked with the polygraph examiner until they came
Speaker 5: up with a test that she could pass.
Speaker 3: Well, let's bring in Marla talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: the crime that mister Pool really had no idea what
Speaker 3: the details were. Marla, can you tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about the crime that mister Poole was ultimately charged with.
Speaker 4: Yes, So, mister Poole was convicted of murdering a man
Speaker 4: in Pontiac, Michigan. And mister Mieha was actually pretty well
Speaker 4: known in the Pontiac community at that time. He had
Speaker 4: worked for Pontiac and he had worked for the county
Speaker 4: in a variety of government jobs, and he was actually
Speaker 4: pretty popular individual at the time. He was living what
Speaker 4: would have been considered at that time sort of a
Speaker 4: double life, meaning he was a gay man in Pontiac,
Speaker 4: Michigan in nineteen eighty eight, and he frequented a gay bar,
Speaker 4: which was the last place he was seen alive. So
Speaker 4: Miha had left with a stranger that evening. Stranger, through
Speaker 4: the narrative, became mister Poole. Gil became a suspect when
Speaker 4: his ex girlfriend Connie Cook said, I have information about
Speaker 4: a murder which at that point in time when she
Speaker 4: came forward the murder, the case of gone cold for
Speaker 4: about seven or eight months, and that's when mister Pool
Speaker 4: became the suspect.
Speaker 3: And so, mister Poole, tell us about when you first
Speaker 3: learned that you weren't just going to be able to
Speaker 3: take care of this quick and go back to work.
Speaker 3: What was the first moment where you recognized that you
Speaker 3: were beginning a long, slow slide into the criminal justice system.
Speaker 5: After I got back to Michigan things, Yeah, we really
Speaker 5: were setting in back in Oakland County jail. The investigator
Speaker 5: started taking samples from me, hair samples, blood samples, bite impressions,
Speaker 5: dental molds.
Speaker 3: A dental mold. We'll definitely get to the dental mold.
Speaker 3: So they were starting to cook up the junk science
Speaker 3: right away.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, And I hired an attorney in Michigan who
Speaker 5: contacted me once. While I was introduced to the county jail.
Speaker 5: They had composite drawings ran in a newspaper that was
Speaker 5: not me. He showed me the newspaper he said, look,
Speaker 5: this is the paper that they had. It doesn't even
Speaker 5: match you. It's not even close. And it was just
Speaker 5: a matter of a beneful girlfriend and started a process
Speaker 5: that we're just going to have to take care of.
Speaker 5: But not to worry he was seeing. He seemed to
Speaker 5: be kind of nonchalant about it. So it was kind
Speaker 5: of calling to me a little bit. But as Tom
Speaker 5: moved on in the months in the county jail, crep
Speaker 5: up on me and then it became a lot more serious.
Speaker 3: Marlin, let me bring you in to talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about the investigation that was going on, where this
Speaker 3: composite sketch came from, and who the people were that
Speaker 3: saw the victim on the night the victim was murdered.
Speaker 4: Yes, so the victim was a regular at this bar
Speaker 4: and most of the patrons were individuals that were either
Speaker 4: his friends or knew him. And so obviously one of
Speaker 4: the first things that the police did to investigate this
Speaker 4: case is to interview everyone that was in the bar
Speaker 4: that evening, and they all provided descriptions, and there were
Speaker 4: two composite drawings that came out in the local newspaper,
Speaker 4: the Oakland Press, and as mister Poole stated, they didn't
Speaker 4: look anything like mister Pool. Unfortunately, when Connie Cook served
Speaker 4: mister Poole up on a silver platter. What the government
Speaker 4: did and what the police investigation did is it focused
Speaker 4: then on mister Pool. This problem was compounded because instead
Speaker 4: of the composites that were published in the newspaper a
Speaker 4: week after or the murder, the government produced new drawings.
Speaker 4: We to this day do not know where they came from,
Speaker 4: and they proceeded to suggest to the witnesses and the
Speaker 4: jury that these were the drawings that were in the newspaper,
Speaker 4: and those drawings looked exactly like mister Poole Wow. In fact,
Speaker 4: to this day, I personally believe that they drew those
Speaker 4: drawings from photographs that they obtained through their investigation.
Speaker 3: So they took a new sketch and essentially painted a
Speaker 3: bullseye around their new target and got their identification that way. No,
Speaker 3: and we all know that eyewitness misidentification as a leading
Speaker 3: contributing factor to wrongful conviction. It's played a role in
Speaker 3: nearly seventy percent of all convictions that and overturned by
Speaker 3: DNA evidence. But usually those are honest mistakes by well
Speaker 3: intentioned actors that are using a suggestive lineup. It's usually
Speaker 3: not manipulating an image to gain an identification. Mister Pool
Speaker 3: were you aware that this was going on at the time.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. I was poking my lawyer in the side. I said, listen,
Speaker 5: object to this, and he did a very poor job
Speaker 5: during trial of getting to the bottom of the composite
Speaker 5: drawing switcheroo that they that they came to. And I
Speaker 5: wanted to jump in when you said misidentification. This was
Speaker 5: not a misidentification. This was absolutely a fabrication. A miss
Speaker 5: identification suggests that somebody made a mistake. I don't think
Speaker 5: there were any mistakes made here. I think this was
Speaker 5: planned out and intentional. And if you look at it
Speaker 5: from that perspective, all the puzzles fit like they orchestrated
Speaker 5: this whole thing to get a conviction. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you know. I mean, and I didn't mean to
Speaker 3: suggest that there was some sort of a mistake, you know.
Speaker 3: I just hadn't heard something like a new composite spetch
Speaker 3: to match the suspect before. And I've been around the block,
Speaker 3: so that's a new one for me, you know. And
Speaker 3: then we're going to bring in the junk science in
Speaker 3: a minute. But I want to just go back, Marli,
Speaker 3: if you could just talk a little bit about how
Speaker 3: the victim was discovered and some of the evidence that
Speaker 3: was alledgs to have been found on the victim's body
Speaker 3: and ultimately associated with mister Poole.
Speaker 4: Sure the victim left the bar at closing time on
Speaker 4: a Sunday night Monday morning, and the next day he
Speaker 4: failed to show up for work and towards the end
Speaker 4: of that day this was very out of character for him.
Speaker 4: He was considered a missing person and he was discovered
Speaker 4: on a running path by two runners who were out
Speaker 4: for an early morning run, and of course they called
Speaker 4: the police immediately. They identified his body rather quickly and
Speaker 4: when they took him. When they arrived at the crime scene,
Speaker 4: there was a lot of blood because he had been
Speaker 4: stabbed to death, but there was also less concentrated blood
Speaker 4: around the body, so they as a result, they collected
Speaker 4: some blood droplets from some stones and some grass near
Speaker 4: the body. This is another actually extremely heartbreaking piece of
Speaker 4: this case in terms of having this information back in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty eight and how it was treated. So they
Speaker 4: used blood typing at the time, which only allows us
Speaker 4: to put ourselves in a category of undreds, thousands, sometimes
Speaker 4: millions of people, and they determined that the victim's blood
Speaker 4: was oh and that there was also a foreign blood
Speaker 4: type present B type blood, which, as we now know
Speaker 4: mister Pool, is a B.
Speaker 3: He was excluded from the evidence before the trial. Right,
Speaker 3: that's what we're telling here, Right, So, mister Pool, you
Speaker 3: have at this point you've given up all forcibly had
Speaker 3: blood samples taken from you, hair samples taken from you,
Speaker 3: a dental mold taken from you. You've been an identification
Speaker 3: has been manufactured against you. Your girlfriend has falsely accused
Speaker 3: you of a crime. You're in jail and you're about
Speaker 3: to start trial. Tell us about when the dentist came
Speaker 3: for your teeth.
Speaker 5: Well, forensic odentologist, self proclaimed expert in BikeE marks came
Speaker 5: to the county jail and took marks in wax. I
Speaker 5: say he's self proclaimed. I guess he was certified by
Speaker 5: a Board of American Board of Odentologists.
Speaker 3: By foe junk scientists certified him.
Speaker 5: Right. But the certification comes in the form of certifying
Speaker 5: identification of remains that are unidentifiable otherwise. So if you
Speaker 5: had a body that was burnt, and you could take
Speaker 5: the teeth from that body and compare them to dental
Speaker 5: records and identify that victim but to take that science
Speaker 5: and stretch it to say, okay, well we're going to
Speaker 5: take a bruise. It's essentially what they found on the
Speaker 5: victim was a bruise, and I'd match it to somebody's
Speaker 5: teeth and say those teeth matched to bruise is a
Speaker 5: far stretch. It's not a solid substrate like wax that
Speaker 5: they're taking my impressions from. Skin is fluid, it's movable,
Speaker 5: it's elastic. It's going to stretch, and so you're not
Speaker 5: going to have depth or angulation, registration, all these things
Speaker 5: that would come into play when you're identifying.
Speaker 3: A course bitemark.
Speaker 2: Evidence is subject to speculation masquerading as scientific evidence. As
Speaker 2: mister Poole just said, skin does move and it changes,
Speaker 2: and that makes it nearly impossible to say for sure
Speaker 2: which teeth made which marks. More fundamentally, these forensic dentists
Speaker 2: don't even know a bite mark from any other type
Speaker 2: of injury. And beyond that, skin changes constantly in a
Speaker 2: decomposing body, and it changes constantly in a healing victim.
Speaker 2: So teeth that might match one day or even one
Speaker 2: hour might not match the next hour or the next day.
Speaker 2: The Friends of godentologists in this case was doctor Allan Warnick,
Speaker 2: the only one practicing in Michigan at that time. Any
Speaker 2: good defensi lawyer is supposed to question the expert or
Speaker 2: its credentials in front of the jury in a process
Speaker 2: called vordere. So today, if we were listening to this
Speaker 2: case today, if a jury was hearing this case today,
Speaker 2: they would learn that this type of evidence that doctor
Speaker 2: Allan Warnick was about to convict mister Poole with has
Speaker 2: been responsible for at least thirty five known wrongful convictions
Speaker 2: and indictments. The jury would also learn that the National
Speaker 2: Academy of Sciences calls forensic identatology junk science and gross speculation,
Speaker 2: as has every other scientific entity that has ever examined
Speaker 2: this fundamental junk science. I wrote an entire book on
Speaker 2: the subject of junk science, and I've been on another
Speaker 2: of our podcast Junk Science, talking about the outrageous practice
Speaker 2: of bitemark identification and matching. But let's get back to
Speaker 2: mister Poole's case. Despite the fact that he and his
Speaker 2: lawyer both knew that this wasn't a credible witness, doctor
Speaker 2: Allan Warnick was nevertheless allowed to get up on the
Speaker 2: witness stand, raise his right hand, and testify as a
Speaker 2: so called expert practicing in a valid field of forensic
Speaker 2: science sciences.
Speaker 5: So when he gets on the stand and you know,
Speaker 5: with his little white lab coat on, and says, well,
Speaker 5: the odds of winning the lottery were better than it
Speaker 5: not being mister Poole, That's exactly what he told the
Speaker 5: jury word for word. So the jury hears that, which
Speaker 5: is a personal opinion, but they're instructed to regard it
Speaker 5: as a truth. How do I win? How do I
Speaker 5: come back that?
Speaker 3: So let's take us from the moment of the opening
Speaker 3: statement and describe how you experienced your trial as this
Speaker 3: nightmare unfolded.
Speaker 5: I believe I'll see my attorney twice before the trial.
Speaker 5: Both times it was less than ten minutes. He was
Speaker 5: a paid attorney at trial. He gave me a notepad
Speaker 5: and a piece of paper here, if you want to
Speaker 5: make notes, just write it down and show it to me.
Speaker 5: And I was kind of keeping score. Well, well okay,
Speaker 5: well that didn't sound good for me. So you know
Speaker 5: that was one against me. Well, well that didn't sound good.
Speaker 5: There's another mark against me. While the marks kept adding
Speaker 5: up and it doesn't look good. Column here on. I'm
Speaker 5: getting very nervous as lack of preparation, i would say,
Speaker 5: was coming to light, and it was not looking good
Speaker 5: for the home.
Speaker 2: Team, Okay for the audience with their own score seats
Speaker 2: at home. The evidence presented against mister Poole was limited
Speaker 2: to this, the doctored up composite sketch, his ex girlfriend's
Speaker 2: false testimony that he admitted to the crime, and the
Speaker 2: junk science the bitemark evidence. A Michigan State Police scientists
Speaker 2: also conducted blood type testing at the crime scene and
Speaker 2: did not find any type AB blood that would have
Speaker 2: matched to mister Pool. Due to illness, this scientist did
Speaker 2: not testify, and instead of delaying the trial to get
Speaker 2: this crucial testimony in front of the jury, mister Poole's
Speaker 2: lawyers just entered the paper report into evidence, which isn't
Speaker 2: close to us convincing. So yeah, it was definitely not
Speaker 2: looking good for the home team. So at this point,
Speaker 2: mister Poole, you decided to testify on your own behalf.
Speaker 2: Take us through that experience and how you were feeling
Speaker 2: at this time.
Speaker 5: I'm sunk, I am absolutely beside myself. I'm in a
Speaker 5: panic state. When the prosecutor ended his his presentation. The
Speaker 5: judge asked my attorney to put on his witnesses. My
Speaker 5: attorney says, yeah, no, we're good defense. Rest He put
Speaker 5: on no witnesses at all, whatsoever. I said, wait, wait
Speaker 5: a minute, wait a minute, you're not going to put
Speaker 5: on any witnesses at all. Somebody's got to go up
Speaker 5: with my defense. I'll testify. He said, well, I went
Speaker 5: to you're getting on the stand. The prosecutor is really
Speaker 5: gonna I don't care. Somebody's got to stand up for me.
Speaker 5: So I demanded to be put on the stand, and
Speaker 5: I got up.
Speaker 3: So let me interrupt you here for a second. Your
Speaker 3: attorney had not talked to you about whether or not
Speaker 3: you're going to testify until that moment. You had no
Speaker 3: conversation about that. No, he didn't prep you for any
Speaker 3: of this testimony. No, so you had no idea what
Speaker 3: you might say or might not say. No, and he
Speaker 3: just advised you not to do it, and that was it, right.
Speaker 5: But I said, no, no, no, no, I'm getting on the stand.
Speaker 5: Somebody's got to say I didn't do it. Somebody's got
Speaker 5: to see me, my reaction or whatever I mean, however
Speaker 5: it plays out, I can't be convicted and just sit
Speaker 5: here and not say anything. If I'm going to go down,
Speaker 5: I'm want to go down kicking and screaming. So I
Speaker 5: did my best. I got on the stand and against
Speaker 5: the prosecutors manipulations of wording or his learned techniques of
Speaker 5: interviewing somebody, I did my best. But I guess it
Speaker 5: didn't translate to the jury.
Speaker 3: It's very you know, I mean that anybody can be
Speaker 3: made to sound like a liar under those heightened circumstances.
Speaker 3: And so tell us about was your family at the
Speaker 3: there for the verdict and your testimony?
Speaker 5: You know, due to my attorney's initial response or initial investigation,
Speaker 5: it was just a matter of routine. This is not you.
Speaker 5: The evidence says that's not you. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 5: You'll never be convicted. No, my family's in North Carolina.
Speaker 5: I wasn't going to have them fly up to Michigan.
Speaker 5: So I had no family or friends or anybody. I
Speaker 5: had no support there in the courtroom at all.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And so you walked into this believing that you know,
Speaker 3: a day or two later you'd be acquitted, go back
Speaker 3: to your life.
Speaker 5: Exactly. I could see that this was orchestrated for a
Speaker 5: conviction of an unsolved murder of a very important person,
Speaker 5: well loved by the community. We're satisfying a community need
Speaker 5: for a conviction. And I was just a young twenty
Speaker 5: two year old kid, so you know I was served up.
Speaker 3: Wow, I mean you were just you know, in a
Speaker 3: life raft on your own, cut from the shore. It
Speaker 3: sounded like, with no support, no family support, no lawyally support,
Speaker 3: no scientific support, you get convicted and sentenced to life
Speaker 3: without parole. Is that right?
Speaker 5: Correct?
Speaker 3: Tell us the role that Hank Clayton played in this trial.
Speaker 4: Hank Clayton was in this storyline as an individual who
Speaker 4: had spent a considerable amount of time with the victim
Speaker 4: leading up to the time of his disappearance, and it
Speaker 4: was basically uncontroverted that on the night of the murder,
Speaker 4: leading up to the murder, that Miha had left the
Speaker 4: bar at least once with mister Clayton and returned with him,
Speaker 4: And in fact, there were witness statements and testimony at
Speaker 4: the prelim that suggested that he in fact left the
Speaker 4: bar with Hank Clayton. The police did question mister Clayton,
Speaker 4: and they did search his truck they did find a knife,
Speaker 4: They didn't find anything unusual in the back of his truck,
Speaker 4: and they pretty much dropped him as a suspect.
Speaker 3: And the victim was stabbed right, so there was no
Speaker 3: testing of this knife.
Speaker 4: There was testing, and they did not find any blood.
Speaker 4: We had an investigator look into his background and he
Speaker 4: was known to threaten people with knives and behave in
Speaker 4: a jealous manner, if you want to call it that.
Speaker 4: We also spent many, many years trying to determine what
Speaker 4: mister Clayton's blood type was. We were unsuccessful in trying
Speaker 4: to determine that, and we had to remind ourselves that
Speaker 4: we might not be able to solve the crime, and
Speaker 4: we had to step back and think through how are
Speaker 4: we going to exonerate mister Poole.
Speaker 3: So, mister Pool, after your sentenced, tell us about your
Speaker 3: life in prison before Marla took on your case. What
Speaker 3: was your appeals like? What was your prison life like?
Speaker 5: I started trying to educate myself as to how I
Speaker 5: got in there, the law, the statutes, what was required
Speaker 5: for a conviction, how do I appeal? Just started ordering
Speaker 5: books and reading case law. I formulated a list of
Speaker 5: I guess I could say demands. I was going to
Speaker 5: make sure I was in control of this of this
Speaker 5: journey here, because leaving it up to my attorney, even
Speaker 5: though when I had paid, did turn out well. The
Speaker 5: court appointed lawyer, I got him on the phone maybe
Speaker 5: twice throughout the whole Pillot process. I never once seen him.
Speaker 5: Don't know what it looks like to this day.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. And the lawyering you got, mister Poole,
Speaker 3: it just outrages me. I see a lot of bad
Speaker 3: lawyering in this job. But you know, here, you know,
Speaker 3: you have such stark evidence of innocence before you even
Speaker 3: get indicted, and just go through a trial where they,
Speaker 3: you know, aren't being straightforward with the blood evidence, and
Speaker 3: they're using all this junk science and they're inventing sketches,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, it's hard to believe that we're
Speaker 3: talking about the United States.
Speaker 5: I was absolutely myself. I said, I'm not going to
Speaker 5: lose the appeal too. So I had to start out
Speaker 5: from basics. So in too much time, I got my
Speaker 5: GD I went to an office occupation class to learn
Speaker 5: how to type, so I could type my briefs. And
Speaker 5: then so I got me a typewriter, and I started
Speaker 5: writing myself, formulating my own supplemental briefs to put in
Speaker 5: on behalf of myself, and I put everything but the
Speaker 5: kitchen sink in there. Actually took my case all the
Speaker 5: way up to the United States Supreme Court, and every
Speaker 5: court got it wrong. Yeah. I can only attribute that
Speaker 5: to just not giving me the time of day because
Speaker 5: I was a prisoner. I mean, listen, I've been studying
Speaker 5: law for twenty five years.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 5: How could I not know what I'm talking about by
Speaker 5: this time.
Speaker 3: I have no doubt that you're a pell of briefs
Speaker 3: or stronger than ninety percent of the briefs that are
Speaker 3: filed in these cases. I want to get to your
Speaker 3: decision to reach out to Marl's clinic, and how you
Speaker 3: came when you began to learn about the power of
Speaker 3: DNA evidence, and how you decided to reach out to
Speaker 3: the instance prior to that, Marla runs.
Speaker 5: The whole time. I reached out to attorneys trying to
Speaker 5: get assistance because I needed a signature behind my briefs,
Speaker 5: behind my research. I need somebody to side on and
Speaker 5: say yes, this is legit. I needed somebody. I needed
Speaker 5: a voice to stand behind me. Eventually the stars aligned,
Speaker 5: Marla came to my aid, and Marla has been working
Speaker 5: diligently on my case ever since.
Speaker 4: We actually were looking pretty closely at Gil's case after
Speaker 4: he wrote us, because we could tell based on just
Speaker 4: his questionnaire that if half of this was true, he
Speaker 4: was wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 2: Marla and her law students submitted hundreds of freedom of
Speaker 2: information requests to reinvestigate the case and do their own
Speaker 2: forensic DNA testing on the evidence that remained. Unfortunately, because
Speaker 2: mister Poole had, as he said, put everything but the
Speaker 2: kitchen sink into trying to get himself out on his own,
Speaker 2: Marla and her students weren't allowed to submit everything they
Speaker 2: found to the appellate courts because it wasn't technically new evidence.
Speaker 2: But the turning point in this case finally comes when
Speaker 2: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel launches the first statewide conviction
Speaker 2: Integrity Unit in twenty nineteen. And Marla, this is the
Speaker 2: same year you filed an application for mister Poole's case.
Speaker 4: When we did his application, we went in full guns.
Speaker 4: We had the expert's opinion on the DNA, We had
Speaker 4: the expert's opinion on the identification, and then we had
Speaker 4: the full history of the role that Alan Warnick played
Speaker 4: in the case, along with his association with other wrongful
Speaker 4: convictions in the state of Michigan. We didn't argue that
Speaker 4: the bipe mark evidence was new. We just argue that
Speaker 4: once you find this other stuff to be new, you're
Speaker 4: going to take a look at the whole case, and
Speaker 4: you're going to want to take a really close look
Speaker 4: at this bipe mark.
Speaker 5: When they formulated the Conviction Integrity Unit, my case was
Speaker 5: one of them. They started initially considering they're going to
Speaker 5: make sure they got it right. And the detectives actually
Speaker 5: told me, we're either going to be your best friend
Speaker 5: or your worst enemy, because we're not pulling any punches here.
Speaker 5: We're going to put it all out on the table.
Speaker 5: So I knew in my heart I was getting out,
Speaker 5: and I started bragging, Hey, I'm gonna get out of here.
Speaker 5: I'm telling people around me, I'm getting out of here,
Speaker 5: and regularly I'm getting updates from Marlow. I got notified
Speaker 5: that I had a Zoom meeting the next day.
Speaker 4: I remember very specifically. We were in the midst of
Speaker 4: COVID ill so we couldn't tell you in person.
Speaker 5: She says, it's going before the judge next week, and
Speaker 5: there's nobody opposing you. Everybody is in agreement that you're innocent.
Speaker 4: And I am pretty sure I was crying before I
Speaker 4: probably got the words out. But it was one of
Speaker 4: the happiest days for me to say, your case, after
Speaker 4: working on it for almost twenty years, is finally turning
Speaker 4: the corner.
Speaker 5: I was shaken up. I mean, I think I can
Speaker 5: remember crying twice in my conviction. Once when the judge
Speaker 5: sentenced me and I had to make that phone call
Speaker 5: to my mother, and the other time was when Marla
Speaker 5: told me that that next day I had to hear
Speaker 5: And within hours, Marla and her team of attorneys were
Speaker 5: at the prison walking me out the door. I didn't
Speaker 5: even have a pair of shoes to put on. They
Speaker 5: brought me pants and shoes from the church, and I
Speaker 5: was met there by easily one hundred people. Everybody from
Speaker 5: the Attorney General's office was there. There were tears and
Speaker 5: apologies all around, and I guess that's when I was
Speaker 5: kind of reborn. I was able to start a new life,
Speaker 5: which was not easy. I'm not going to complain about it,
Speaker 5: but I'm going to tell you it was not easy,
Speaker 5: and it's still difficult at times. I've been out for
Speaker 5: a year now and I'm just now getting the hang
Speaker 5: of some of this technology. They didn't even have cell
Speaker 5: phones when I went to prison, so and there's been
Speaker 5: a lot, a big learning curve of how to act
Speaker 5: in society because this is a whole new world. It's
Speaker 5: not the end because there's so many cases, so many
Speaker 5: cases that still have to be reviewed and vetted, and
Speaker 5: that I wasn't only one. So there's people all left behind,
Speaker 5: and I feel like obligated to kind of pay it
Speaker 5: forward here and help some others here. So there's a
Speaker 5: lot of people that are caught up in a procedural
Speaker 5: morass that they can't dig out of, especially some people
Speaker 5: that are in there that have less than a full education,
Speaker 5: or don't have the skills to navigate these waters, or
Speaker 5: don't have the support. I didn't have any support, but
Speaker 5: I fought a long time tooth and nail to get support.
Speaker 5: That's just a testament to my tenacity. Some people just
Speaker 5: don't have that. There's no reason for somebody to be
Speaker 5: condemned to prison because they don't have the fight in them.
Speaker 2: So I hear your call to action is for people
Speaker 2: to support the Cooler Innocence Project or righteous Endeavor, no doubt.
Speaker 2: But Marla, what can listeners do to help people like
Speaker 2: mister Poole and your work.
Speaker 4: Well, certainly we would welcome your financial support, but also
Speaker 4: I would just say that there's a number of really
Speaker 4: promising policy issues going on in the state right now.
Speaker 4: We're working on amendments to our Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act.
Speaker 4: We want to make sure that our clients are adequately compensated.
Speaker 4: If you care about criminal justice issues, it's a great
Speaker 4: time to just touch base with your legislator and say
Speaker 4: that you'd like to support improvements to the criminal justice system.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm always available to answer questions about
Speaker 4: our office or about the policy work that's going on
Speaker 4: in Michigan.
Speaker 3: Right Let's put the justice in the criminal justice system.
Speaker 3: I hear that. Thank you both so much for taking
Speaker 3: the time to share your incredible story with the listeners
Speaker 3: of Wrongful Conviction Podcast. We're at the point of the
Speaker 3: show called closing Arguments. Do a round robin as to
Speaker 3: any final thoughts that you want to share with our
Speaker 3: audience and We'll begin with you, Marla.
Speaker 4: I would just say that when you look back at
Speaker 4: mister Poole's case, all of the heartbreakings and mistakes could
Speaker 4: have been avoided and corrected. You know that actually kind
Speaker 4: of makes me get up every day and do the work.
Speaker 4: But I guess you know. My final thought to those
Speaker 4: who are listening is just you know, a wrongful conviction
Speaker 4: can happen to anyone, and we all love someone, so
Speaker 4: that means it could happen to someone that we love.
Speaker 4: Everyone's entitled to an effective attorney at trial and on appeal.
Speaker 4: Everyone is entitled to a fair proceeding where things are
Speaker 4: not made up in their criminal trial. We have to
Speaker 4: start looking at innocents cases differently. We can't treat them
Speaker 4: like typical appellate cases for sure, because years this When
Speaker 4: we look back, right, we see Gill's case and we're like,
Speaker 4: how did this take thirty two years? But yet Gill
Speaker 4: knows and Chris knows, and I know that even after
Speaker 4: thirty two years, it was a mirror.
Speaker 3: Called mister Poole, what's your closing argument?
Speaker 5: If you ask anybody what's the best criminal justice system
Speaker 5: in the world. I don't think anybody's going to come
Speaker 5: up with anything better than what the United States has.
Speaker 5: But when you have human actors, and when you have
Speaker 5: human interaction, personalities getting away, bad choices get in the way,
Speaker 5: and bad actors get in the way. A lot of
Speaker 5: that comes from no penalties for the bad actors. I
Speaker 5: think the takeaway is here, take a real deep look
Speaker 5: at the things that are presented from different perspectives. If
Speaker 5: you look at things from a perspective that this was
Speaker 5: all fabricated, it all makes sense. It was not because
Speaker 5: I was guilty, It was because they had the ability
Speaker 5: to do it without any penalty. So I think that
Speaker 5: needs to be corrected.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 2: thank our executive producers The Deadly Doctor, Jason Flamm and
Speaker 2: Kevin Wardis. The senior producer for this episode is Jackie Pauley,
Speaker 2: and our producers are Leila Robinson and Jeff Claiborne. Our
Speaker 2: editor is Roxindra Gweedy. The music in this production is
Speaker 2: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
Speaker 2: to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook
Speaker 2: at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter. At wrong Conviction
Speaker 2: as well as at Lava for Good on all three platforms.
Speaker 2: You can also follow me on Twitter at Chris Underscore
Speaker 2: Fabricant and on Instagram at Chris Underscore Fabricant. Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 2: is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association
Speaker 2: with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: If you were riveted by the staircase, as I know
Speaker 1: I was, you're gonna want to tune in next week
Speaker 1: for the guest hosted episode of Wrongful Conviction Because get this,
Speaker 1: the two incredible lawyers from the show, David Rudolph and
Speaker 1: Sonya Pfeiffer, are going to talk to David's former client,
Speaker 1: Michael Peterson, and you know that name about one of
Speaker 1: the most famous and infamous wronful conviction stories in the
Speaker 1: history of America. You know about the case, but now
Speaker 1: you're going to hear the real story behind it. Tune
Speaker 1: in listen next Monday in the Wrongful Conviction podcast feed.