WEBVTT - #006 Jason Flom with Keith Harward 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:06.800 I came from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life. 0:00:07.040 --> 0:00:09.720 I went to sleep because September seventh was the first 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:11.920 day of my high school year. I was going to 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:12.760 be a senior. 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:14.760 At twenty two, I was set to start college. 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.400 I woke up and my life was never the same again. 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:22.439 Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:26.279 freedom ever since after that. It's like roach motw Once 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:28.400 you get in, you and I can't mouth. 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:55.120 This is wrongful conviction with Jason pom a true rock 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.560 star of the innocence movement, Keith Allen Harward along with 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:01.640 one of his attorneys on Salisman of the Great Firm 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:05.000 of Scatting. Keith, you were just a pretty much a 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.720 regular guy from from the Carolinas serving in the navy. 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.160 Uh in Virginia at the time, Is that right? 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:15.200 Yes, I was stationed in uh Newport News at the time. 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.280 I was on aircraft care being built at the shipyard. 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:22.280 Is there? And Uh, that's where it all all kind 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:23.520 of took place fell apart. 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.160 So Keith was in the navy, had been serving for 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.080 three years on the ship and uh, it's sort of 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:32.520 interesting how you got to that point In the first place. 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:34.840 You know, at that time it was six drugs and 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:37.480 rock and roll, and I was kind of involved all 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:43.759 of them, and who wasn't. Yeah, and I got tired 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:46.160 of that lifestyle. It was just it just caught up 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.200 with me and I needed a change. So I sided 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.160 one day I will joined the military. So I went 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:53.400 to the old Post officer in Greensboro and I sided. 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:56.400 The first door I come into recruiting office. It was 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:57.600 going to be the door where I was going to 0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:00.400 walk into and that's the first door was in the door. 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:04.280 So I walked in there and signed up and went 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:05.000 pretty quick. 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:05.280 You know. 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:08.680 They wanted you know, well, we delay you for sixty days. 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:10.960 So I said, no, I want to go. So the 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:13.800 next day I was in Charlotte day Fees taking the test, 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:16.680 and the next day I was sitting in Chicago, Illinois 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:18.799 at boot camp. So it was a matter of three 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:20.480 days I was in it. 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.360 That's some radical fixing going on there. I mean, some 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:25.520 people like me would have just walked into AA and 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.400 been like, hey, you know, change of life, but you 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:30.160 decided to take it to the extreme. 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:34.400 Well, I mean to be able to get away from everything, 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.000 you've got to get away from everything, and you know, 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.760 friends or friends and come on, man, let's go. You know, 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:44.280 if I'm away from that, then I can't be influenced. 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:47.040 So that was my thinking. I got out of town 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.959 and started unnew. Well maybe things would work out. 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:53.000 So there you are, serving in the navy and a 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.920 horrible crime takes place pretty close to the shipyard. Is 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:56.520 that right? Right? 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.519 It was just on a few blocks away from the 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:01.919 gate to the shipyards. 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:02.799 And it was it was sort of like what we 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:05.359 would call now a home invasion, right, somebody broke into 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:05.800 a home. 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:09.639 The husband was killed, and after he was they were 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:11.720 in bed together and he came in and beat the 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.639 husband with a crowbar and just you know, it just 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:19.040 tore him up. And when he was done doing that, 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:23.720 then he took hold of the wife and sexual assault 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:25.040 for several hours. 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:27.880 Truly horrible situation. Yeah, it had to be. So they 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:31.280 didn't have any information other than that she had said 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:35.280 that the perpetrator was wearing a sailor's uniform. Is that right, right? Right? 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:38.640 So that's what cleued them into the shipyards, you know, 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:43.640 because the Newport News shipyards is away from Norfolk, which 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:47.560 is normally where you would find sailors and uh, that's 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:49.240 what clue the men was the fact that he was 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:52.320 wearing a uniform. So apparently he had to be on 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.680 one of the ships or submarines that were there being 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:56.320 repaired or built at the shipyard. 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:58.040 How many sailors are on the ship. 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:01.680 Well, the crew of the of aircraft carreer we're after 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:03.680 air wing somewhere a back three to five. But it 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:07.000 was being built, so it's probably two to three thousand guys. 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:08.480 A lot of guys for the cops to try to 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:10.120 figure this one out. Right, it's a tough one. So 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:12.680 months had gone by, right, and there's a lot of pressure, right, 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.360 nobody wants people take it very personally when someone's home 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:16.760 is invaded. I know I do when I read a 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:18.880 story about that in the paper. Everyone can relate because 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.000 everyone has a home. There's pressure on the cops. There's pressure. 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:23.920 They got to solve this, they got to get it there. 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:26.640 And there was even some politicians involved. And let's turn 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:28.160 to you don for a second. How did they land 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:30.000 on Keith? Of these thousands of guys. 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:33.400 The rape victim had told the police that during the rape, 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:36.200 the rapist had bitten her on the leg a few 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:39.760 times and the police took photographs of these bite marks 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.360 that appeared on her leg, which were essentially bruises from 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:48.040 the rapist teeth. And so, because the police suspected that 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.320 one of the sailors on this ship, the USS Carl Vincent, 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.120 was the rapist, they started looking at the dental records 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:59.600 of hundreds and maybe thousands of these sailors, and they 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.560 were trying to narrow down this big group of people 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.039 to a smaller group, and one of the people who's 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.880 you know, records they looked at was Keith's. But when 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.360 they looked at his records the first time they even 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.640 took an impression of his mouth, the dentist excluded Keith. 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.200 They said he was among the people who didn't match. 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:24.600 And so they kept looking for, you know, other suspects, 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:25.680 and that went on for a while. 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:32.039 But then something happened that led to Keith being to 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.000 them taking a renewed interest in looking at Keith, even 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:39.120 though they had had a professional, someone who was supposedly 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.000 certified and would have been qualified to give this opinion 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:43.040 to say that it wasn't him. 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.599 I had a girlfriend and we had gotten into a 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:50.560 fight and I bit her own the shoulder and the 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.680 police took her to the hospital to check her out, 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:58.000 and that's apparently when the light bulb went off that 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.919 you know, hey, we gotta bite or here. You know, 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.280 they were looking for somebody for a long time. And 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:06.440 then when the police found out and work got to 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:10.960 the detectives or whoever, that's when the light came home 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.200 for them and went on me. They pushed it so 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:16.880 I would show up at court for two reasons. One 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:20.520 the victim was in the audience, whatever you call it, 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:24.040 and also they wanted to get more impressions of my teeth. 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:25.560 I didn't know either one of these. 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:27.720 After having brought in on the charge in the first place, 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:29.640 you couldn't go back home where you were living with 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:32.080 her because you had just had this altercation and she 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:34.800 was an alcoholic and the whole situation was crazy. So 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:37.760 where'd you so tell the story about where'd you go 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:38.200 to sleep? 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:40.000 That I had no place to go, So I slept 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:40.719 in a dumpster. 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:43.159 But it was a particular dumpster, yeah it was. 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:44.320 It was a high end dumpster. 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:44.680 Yeah. 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:47.920 Yeah. There was a hat manufacturer and made baseball caps, 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.360 and they had a dumpster was filling nothing but material. 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:52.600 It was no food or anything in it. It was 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.839 all style foam and foam, rubber and cloth and that 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:58.440 kind of stuff. So it was, you know, right outside 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.680 the shipyard gate. I would walk by and I would 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:04.160 notice all this material laying on the ground, and I'd 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.840 stopped one time because cheap hats. It got the little 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:10.720 plastic things that you popped the size and with. And 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:12.480 I saw him on the ground and mine had broke 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:14.800 on my hat, so I went over and picked one up. 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:17.720 I just opened the dumpstrup look and said, man, this 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.320 place is nice. I wonder why there's nobody else living here, 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.720 you know kind of thing. So that night I thought, well, 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:27.640 you know, that was a close place to go. It 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:29.960 was close to the shipyard. It was pweening the house 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:33.040 where I was living at apartment in the shipyard. So 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:34.080 that's where I stayed. 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:38.040 Even though Keith now became a suspect because of this, 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:41.200 you know, this fight with his girlfriend. During a fight, 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:47.600 he really didn't match the descript description of the that 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:50.760 the victim gave because she said that the rapist was 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:55.880 nineteen years old, nineteen twenty years old, clean shaven, baby faced. 0:07:56.480 --> 0:08:01.040 Keith was twenty six years old, had a mustache, and 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:03.800 he had a not a beard like but he had 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:08.040 a heavy, you know, five o'clock shadow type, you know, 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:09.400 in the air. 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:13.760 She said his head hair was radish. Mom was brown. 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:17.880 So Keith didn't he didn't match the description. But in 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:22.120 a lot of these cases, once the police and law enforcement, 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:26.560 you know, focus on somebody, they they don't pay attention 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.160 to the things that suggests that they got the wrong person. 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:32.800 And Keith, he did not meet the description of the 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:34.200 rapist in this case. 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:37.959 They've decided they want Keith locked up. They're going to 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:42.880 solve this case. We had this bad science, right, We 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:46.880 had bitemark evidence, which we now know has been completely discredited. 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:51.199 There was a recent study of dentists, forensic dentist and 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.360 odeontologists in which they found that the error raid was 0:08:54.480 --> 0:09:00.440 ninety one percent junk science. Really, we had also another element, 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:03.559 which was which involved hypnosis, which sounds I'm sure to 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.440 the audience are going, no, we can't, that's ridiculous. You 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.840 can't have hypnosis in a capital murder case, because yours 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:12.640 was a capital murder case. Is that right? So let's 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:14.679 talk a little bit about that and the element that 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:16.200 this hypnotism played. 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:19.120 This crime got a lot of publicity and actually, you know, 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:21.960 the news media published, you know, it was on TV 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:26.080 and radio, and this this shipyard security guard heard the 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:28.600 story about a murder and a rape that had happened 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:31.480 just a couple blocks away from the shipyard. And he 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.440 actually was eating dinner at his home that night and 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:36.120 heard it on the radio and he said to his wife, 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.600 I think I saw someone suspicious. So he went down 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:42.200 to the police and they interviewed him, and he told 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:45.040 the police that he saw a guy who looked like 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.320 he was drunk, came to the gate to pass through, 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:50.600 you know, had to show a badge, but the guy did. 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:52.720 The guard didn't remember, you know, the name, or didn't 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.480 look at the name, but that the guy. He remembered 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:57.640 the guy because he had blood splat would look like 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:02.000 blood splattered all over his uniform. Later on six months, 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:05.800 during the next couple months, they hypnotized this guy to 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.719 try to get more information. And it was not uncommon 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:12.760 back in the day for the police to hypnotize witnesses 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:16.520 to see if they could remember more. The problem is 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:19.640 that that can really ruin someone's memory. It can change 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.720 someone's memory the hypnotism. It can have them fill in 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.480 gaps say things that they didn't actually remember, and so 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.959 it's really unreliable and it can corrupt the whole process. 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:33.640 So the shipyard security guard had given a description that 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:37.760 was vague, but he was shown a composite drawing that 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:40.520 the victim, the rape victim, had done with a police 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:44.280 you know, artist, and she had said that that person 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:46.959 looked ninety she was ninety five percent sure that that's 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:49.679 what the rapists looked like, or some very high percentage. 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:52.800 And they showed it to the shipyard security guard and 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.080 he said, yeah, that looks like seventy five percent like 0:10:55.800 --> 0:11:01.160 the guy I saw walking into the shipyard. That composite 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.320 drawing had no mustache, because the victim has said that 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:09.720 the rapist was babyfaced. But after this guy was hypnotized, 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:12.240 he changed his story. He changed the time that he 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:14.640 said that he saw the guy. Now it was closer 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.520 to five o'clock, which matched, you know, with the time 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:19.200 that the rapist might have been coming back on the 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:23.319 ship's convenient And then he later was shown a photograph 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:26.280 or maybe a series of photos, including Keith's photo, after 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:29.600 the police focused on Keith, and he picked Keith's photograph 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:31.199 out and said that was the guy that I saw. 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:33.960 They didn't have anything to go with. There was really 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:37.160 no evidence in this trial. You know, there was no 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:40.400 finger prance, there were you know, there was there was 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:44.120 hardly nothing to go other than this bike mark stuff. 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:46.760 That's what they you know, that's what they were relying on, 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:49.760 and you know, like you said, it was unreliable. 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:55.359 Keith actually had sort of an alibi because the victim 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.200 had told the police that earlier in the day. You know, 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:01.760 she was tacked at two o'clock in the morning, but 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:06.120 the day before she had taken her kids to the 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:10.040 swimming pool because this was in September, and there was 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:12.280 a guy that she saw when she was getting in 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:14.600 the car with her kids who was hitch hiking, and 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:19.760 he was a sailor and he was angry that she 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:23.360 didn't pick him up hitchhiking, so he swore at her 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:27.440 and flipped her off. And she then said when she 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:31.000 got home from swimming with her kids later, she saw 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:33.480 what she thought was the same guy looking over her 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:37.120 fence in her backyard. And when she told the police 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:40.000 the next day, when you know, when they were interviewing 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:42.680 her after the rape, she said she was pretty sure 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:46.360 that the sailor she had seen the day before was 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:50.160 her rapist and at the time that she saw the 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:53.280 guy the second time looking over her back fence was 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:56.600 at six pm. That's what she told the police. And 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:58.920 at six pm Keith had an alibi. He was at 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:03.800 an alcohol education course he had signed in. The person 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:07.440 who ran the course remembered Keith and verified that he 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:11.280 was there in Norfolk, not in Newport News in Norfolk 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:14.040 at the time that she saw the guy who looked 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:18.560 like her rapist. Researchers who look at wrongful conviction cases 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:23.040 they identify the same problems that happen in these cases 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.559 over and over and over again, and there's about six 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:29.640 of them that commonly occur, and one of them is 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:35.600 poor representation by defense lawyers. In Keith's case, he actually 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.800 hit the trifecta in a bad way because he had 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:43.559 three of the common problems that arise in these wrongful 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:48.680 conviction cases happened in his case junk science, misidentification, and 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.800 the third one is prosecutorial and police misconduct that happens 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:54.600 in a lot of cases, and in keith case, we 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.240 haven't talked about that yet except for the hypnosis, but 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:00.880 there was misconduct by law enforcement in his case, right. 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.000 So he did certainly hit the wrong kind of try 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:06.680 fact that you can't hit it any worse, and ended 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:10.040 up serving thirty three years in prison. And let's let's 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:12.760 talk about that, Keith. Every day's got to be held. 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:14.360 But I mean, I don't want to put words in 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:15.160 your mouth because you share it. 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:18.920 No, no, And people always say that, you know, they can't imagine, 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:21.760 and it's with a good heart they say that, but 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.120 truly they can't. You know, unless you've been there, you 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.600 just don't. You just don't know. But what got me 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:31.000 through was the fact that I knew I was innocent 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:35.320 from day one, and I had hoped that they would 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:37.880 discover it because, like I told you before, this is 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:40.440 the United States of America. People don't get convicted for 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:44.640 crimes they did not do. But they do, and I'm 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:48.000 one of them. So all through the process of a trial, 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:51.880 and even until I was in prison for a while, 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:55.160 I was thinking, well, they're gonna figure this out. You know, 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:58.840 they made a mistake, They're gonna figure this out. It 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:03.120 didn't happen. But what got me through was was the 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.800 fact that Okay, they already convicted me, they put me 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.640 in prison, but I wasn't gonna allow those criminals. And 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:13.720 when I speak of criminals, I'm talking about the the 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.960 police officers and the prosecutors, the actual criminals of this case, 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:21.880 besides a fellow that did it. I wasn't gonna let 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:25.040 them exact another second from me. They had me, but 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.120 they weren't gonna get my mind. And if I allowed 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:33.960 them to make me punish myself even farther or do 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.600 anything disruptive in my life, even though I was in prison, 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:40.800 I was given them more, and I wasn't gonna give 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:43.080 no more. I wasn't gonna do it. 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:45.720 That's like a very spiritual approach. 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:50.160 Well, it's a lot of staring at walls and wondering, Wow, 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:53.080 what what just happened? I mean again, you can't you 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:57.680 can't fathom what it's like. It's like, what this happened. 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:01.400 It's like a car wreck, you know, once all the 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:03.640 movement is stopped and you're sitting there behind the wheel 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.840 with an airbag under your chin, you're thinking wow. 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:21.120 So Keith wrote to the Innocence Project. I think it 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:23.280 might have been sometime in like two thousand and eight 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:24.160 or something like that. 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:27.520 I didn't know the existed. I was in prison. I 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:31.400 didn't know these outfits existed. In another inmates said, hey, man, 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.960 your story is so crazy, why'd you give the Inciance 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.000 Project to try and write them a letter? So I 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.280 wrote them a letter and said, hey, you know, there 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.280 was no evidence. They convicted me on blite mark evidence alone. 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.280 I didn't do it, you know, And that basically what 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.640 the letter was, you know, you know, will you think right? 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:52.720 So his letter got to the Innocence Project in New York. 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.560 But they get letters from inmates all over the country, 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:57.440 thousands of. 0:16:57.480 --> 0:16:59.000 Letters at least two months. 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:04.639 Yeah, they have a backlog of several thousand inmates, you know, 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.560 who've written to them, who they haven't yet had a 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:09.399 chance or at that point hadn't had a chance to 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:13.240 look at. The Innocence Project was looking at bitemark cases 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.080 because it is junk science, and there have been twenty 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.120 four now with Keith, twenty five people who had been 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:24.159 indicted based on bitemark evidence and were later exonerated. So 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:28.159 they were looking for cases that involved bite marks. So 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.399 Keith's file got plucked from the middle or somewhere in 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:35.320 the stack and put up to the top for someone 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:38.280 to look at. And one of the law students I 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:43.160 think or interns discovered that the evidence from Keith's case 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.080 was still in existence, you know, the physical evidence like that. 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:48.840 Which is the great marriage. 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:52.800 Yeah, now you've gotten engaged. The Innocence Project has gone 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:53.760 to scatt and right. 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:55.560 Yeah, they reached out to me because. 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:57.640 Which is like bringing in the big guns exactly, I mean. 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:00.800 And we put together this team and we started working 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:04.359 with the Innocence Project because they'd found the evidence. It 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:07.440 was this little box called a rape kit that has 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:11.200 you know, swabs from the victim, you know, and and 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.320 other evidence that the crime scene folks had taken and 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:19.480 had been taken from the autopsy and the rape exam. 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.880 And they were in the process of arranging to have 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:26.280 that tested, and to their credit, the prosecutor or the 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:30.719 current prosecutor down in Newport News, agreed to have the 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:31.640 evidence tested. 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.960 That's good to hear. When you were first made aware 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:37.680 of Keith's case by the NISS Project, how long did 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:39.479 it take before you realized that you had an innocent 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:40.760 man on your hands? 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:42.720 You know, I've done a lot of this kind of work. 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:46.119 And when we started looking into his case and we 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:49.320 read the transcripts and we realized how weak a case 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:54.280 of you know, the evidence was the only evidence that 0:18:54.359 --> 0:19:01.520 the prosecutors used against Keith was this bitemark expert testimony, 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:05.480 which at the time was thought to be an actual 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:09.040 science that had validity, that was reliable, and you know 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:11.880 a bunch of experts. There were two experts who testified 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:12.920 in court and said that. 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:15.639 And there are four others. Well, I think about that, 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:17.960 right if you're in a jury and you're sitting there 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.480 and you go, wow, this guy's a forensic diss and 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:23.760 he's got that. But we know now that it's really 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:28.879 an unregulated, uh sort of practice. It's not certified by 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:33.399 any particular You can be a forensic od On toleraniologist, 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:35.880 but basically you get certified by your friends. 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:38.240 Pretty much show up at the Shart and Old Friday, 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:39.960 you know, Sunday to give you a diploma. 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:42.040 Yeah, it's it's really well, here's the thing, you know, 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:42.920 it's terrible. 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:48.200 This science was actually developed not for use in court, 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:50.840 like in a case for Keith, but when there's like 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.440 a mass disaster and they find the remains of victims 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:57.879 and included in the remains or you know, the teeth 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:00.679 and the jaw, and then they want to try to 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:03.560 identify that person. So they think they know who the 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.280 victims are, but they're not sure who's who. Then they 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.679 can look at dental records, but that's looking at, you know, 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:12.240 someone's full set of teeth, like thirty two teeth in 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:17.480 a john comparing that to X rays or other dental records. 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:21.159 It's very different doing that, which is noble work. You 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:24.400 know people who do that. But it's very different when 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.359 you try to say, based on a blurry photograph of 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:32.040 a woman's shin to look at that where you know, 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.680 if someone bites another person, maybe only four teeth make 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:39.080 the bite marks six or two or whatever. Then to 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:44.600 say with almost certainty that the person who bit that 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:49.040 victim's leg was Keith Harwood is a very different matter. 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:52.360 No, I've seen a case where they the bite bark 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:54.919 evidence was the primary cause of the conviction, and it 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:57.879 turned out later on that it wasn't even a human 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:00.440 it was animal bibars. The victim had been thrown in 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:02.040 a scar inver a scar. 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.000 One of the guys testified that it was a bike Martin. 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:08.000 It turned out to be a scar from injury. But 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:12.080 that's what swayed that jury. So is when that character. 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.600 Levigne is his name, and when he started getting up 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:19.520 and giving all his props, he helped go. He went 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:24.680 to Argentina for the mingle at, you know, the Nazi 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.600