Speaker 1: America has two point two million people in prison. If
Speaker 1: just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two thousand people.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people's lives destroyed.
Speaker 2: If the system want to take you out of society,
Speaker 2: they will do it no matter what laws they have
Speaker 2: to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, but
Speaker 2: they're breaking the lord.
Speaker 1: Having to hear those people say that I was guilty
Speaker 1: of a crime that I did not commit, and then
Speaker 1: hear my family break down behind me and not be
Speaker 1: able to do anything about it. I can't describe the
Speaker 1: crushing weight that was.
Speaker 3: I'm not anti police, I'm just anti corruption.
Speaker 2: A lot of times we look and we see something
Speaker 2: happen to somebody and that's the first thing we said,
Speaker 2: that could never happen to me, But.
Speaker 4: They can.
Speaker 5: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Ronfuel Conviction with
Speaker 5: Jason Flom. Today we're going to tell the story of
Speaker 5: Angel Cordero, which is an ongoing story and it is
Speaker 5: in some ways sadly typical of the system, and I'll
Speaker 5: explain that. In other ways it's terrifying.
Speaker 6: A bronx ban is released from prison after serving thirteen
Speaker 6: years for a crime. He says he didn't commit. Angel
Speaker 6: Cordero came home two years early for good behavior. Cordero
Speaker 6: was found guilty of murder and sentenced to fifteen years
Speaker 6: for the stabbing of a Bronx resident in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 6: The victim was walking home when he was attacked by
Speaker 6: a group of strangers. Officers responding to the attack arrested
Speaker 6: five minutes the scene, including Cordero and his brother. Mounting
Speaker 6: evidence in favor of Cordero's innocence and motions filed to
Speaker 6: appelas case have not been successful. Cordero's brother was also
Speaker 6: convicted for the same crime, but was really earlier, where
Speaker 6: Daro insisted he will continue fighting for an exoneration.
Speaker 5: Angel. Welcome to ronful conviction. Thank you, Jason, and with
Speaker 5: him is his beautiful wife, Michelle. Michelle, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so.
Speaker 5: Angel, your case makes no fucking sense. What's I mean,
Speaker 5: It just doesn't make any sense. But before we get
Speaker 5: into all of that, Yeah, and we'll get into all
Speaker 5: that for sure, but let's go back to before any
Speaker 5: of this insanity happened. And of course it's it's a
Speaker 5: family tragedy because you and your brother were both convicted
Speaker 5: of this crime along with other people. But how was
Speaker 5: life treating you before everything went upside down and sideways
Speaker 5: and turned into a nightmare.
Speaker 4: I had a regular teenage light, you know. I was
Speaker 4: into sports, working out New York City, New York City, Bronx,
Speaker 4: what kind of sports? My favorite basketball Bolso played BASB
Speaker 4: one football as well.
Speaker 5: So you're having this, you know, happyildhood pretty much right.
Speaker 5: How many brothers and sisters.
Speaker 4: Did you have? I have one brother and three sisters,
Speaker 4: but two of my sisters off my father's side, so
Speaker 4: I wasn't in contact with them as much. But I
Speaker 4: lived with my brother and my sister and my mother, So.
Speaker 5: You had it's sort of a typical childhood. You were
Speaker 5: never in trouble, right, in trouble, no prior record before
Speaker 5: this happened. Because that's the thing, angel I get asked
Speaker 5: a lot from people. Well, this guy got wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 5: He probably was doing something else or there must have
Speaker 5: been some reason. But we know that most of the
Speaker 5: people who were wrongfully convicted had no prior record, just
Speaker 5: like you didn't when this thing happened. Let's go back
Speaker 5: to the night going into the morning. Well May fifteenth
Speaker 5: and sixteenth nineteen ninety nine. Yes, this was a stabbing, right,
Speaker 5: It's a very bloody crime. Yes, And the cops were
Speaker 5: there quickly after the fact, right after the fact.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So how did this incident unfold?
Speaker 4: I must start around eight o'clock that night, my brother
Speaker 4: and I was invited to a birthday party for one
Speaker 4: of our neighbors sons. He was gonna turn one. So
Speaker 4: we went to the party and we stood there till
Speaker 4: like two in the morning, and then by two in
Speaker 4: the morning with up the party because there was already
Speaker 4: winding down by that time, and we went outside to
Speaker 4: the corner store cause my brother wanted to get a
Speaker 4: pack of cigarettes. And then while he's in the corner store,
Speaker 4: I'm in the corner talking some you know, some people,
Speaker 4: some ladies that were there. So he gets a pack
Speaker 4: of cigarettes, he comes back towards me, and then all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, we just see fight break out across
Speaker 4: the street from where we were at, and my brother's like,
Speaker 4: always go check it out, see what happened. Then I
Speaker 4: just started following. As he crosses the street, I see
Speaker 4: the cops turning the corner, just jumping out of the car.
Speaker 4: It was on my mom car. I knew what a
Speaker 4: cop car looked like. I'm from from the Bronx. I'm
Speaker 4: from a neighborhood where if you're not paying attention your surroundings,
Speaker 4: then you're kind of being dumb. So when they pulled out,
Speaker 4: I noticed all four officers jumping out, and then one
Speaker 4: of the officers went towards my brother directly, for no
Speaker 4: parent reason, grabbed him and that's when I got involved.
Speaker 4: Went through the crowd, and I was just trying to
Speaker 4: question the officer. Why was the reason he was grabbing
Speaker 4: on my brother. He turned around and just puts the
Speaker 4: gun to my face. Instinctively, just put my hands down
Speaker 4: like yo, and then he get against the wall.
Speaker 5: Did you even know at this point that someone had
Speaker 5: been stabbed?
Speaker 4: I didn't know what the fuck was going on. I
Speaker 4: knew there was a fight going on. Other than that,
Speaker 4: I didn't know what happened.
Speaker 5: Because you heard like yelling, screaming.
Speaker 4: From across the street. You can see two kids fighting, right,
Speaker 4: you know, you can see a commotion happening.
Speaker 5: But now there was a crowd, so you're just sort
Speaker 5: of in the crowd.
Speaker 4: My view is catching my brother being grab out. This
Speaker 4: officer where his gun out.
Speaker 5: This is your little brother, my little brother, So you're
Speaker 5: doing what a big brother does. You're sort of trying
Speaker 5: to come to his you know, hey.
Speaker 4: I'm focusing on him now. I don't know anything else
Speaker 4: but what was going on in front of me.
Speaker 5: And then the next thing, you know, the cops got
Speaker 5: a gun in your face.
Speaker 4: Next thing, you know, the guns in my.
Speaker 5: Face, and what happens next?
Speaker 4: So I put my hands up and the next thing,
Speaker 4: he's yelling at me to get against the wall, and
Speaker 4: I'm like, for what, I'm questioning him, why just get
Speaker 4: against the wall, And I'm refusing. I'm not getting against
Speaker 4: the wall for nothing. So he just smashed me with
Speaker 4: a gun. And next thing, you know, I feel a
Speaker 4: bunch of hits happening, and I go down to put
Speaker 4: the handcuffs on me, and one of the officers said, hey, hey,
Speaker 4: look up. I look up and I'm maced. And so
Speaker 4: the rest of the now, all I could do is
Speaker 4: hear people around me talking and screaming, and but I
Speaker 4: can't see anything.
Speaker 5: Wow, this is this is heavy. I mean, you're one
Speaker 5: minute you're just buying cigarettes and the next minute you're
Speaker 5: in this insane situation of being beaten up by the cops,
Speaker 5: pistol whipped, and now you're blind and.
Speaker 4: The gun was to my face. At the time, the
Speaker 4: officers were cowboys, were talking about the nineties where the
Speaker 4: officer was killing just about any innocent person that was
Speaker 4: in the bronx.
Speaker 5: You knew that the cops were out of control at
Speaker 5: that time in that neighborhood. But yet you had said,
Speaker 5: I'm not getting up against the wall. You must have
Speaker 5: known what you were heading into by sort of disobeying
Speaker 5: in order, right, so you still believe in the system
Speaker 5: somewhat if you said, well, if I know I'm innocent,
Speaker 5: if I just stayed up for my right, so I'm.
Speaker 4: Gonna be all right, Right, I did nothing wrong.
Speaker 5: So now you're laying on the ground, you're bleeding, you've
Speaker 5: been beaten up, you're blind, you're handcuffed.
Speaker 4: So I go to the hospital, and the hospital and
Speaker 4: one of the cops started messing with me. He started
Speaker 4: rough housing me that even the nurse, one of the
Speaker 4: nurses had to get involved and she was leaving them alone,
Speaker 4: leave them alone. She came and took care of me.
Speaker 4: She stished me up and everything.
Speaker 3: Because they cracked the angels head open. They had million
Speaker 3: staples in the back of his head.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this was not like this is now of them
Speaker 5: slapping you around. I mean they almost they I mean
Speaker 5: nine staples in your head. That's uh. I mean even
Speaker 5: just hearing about it now, and even though it's Jesus
Speaker 5: almost twenty years ago, it's just sickening. I mean, like
Speaker 5: the whole thing is really uh. Like I said, it's
Speaker 5: terrifying and it's sickening. There's just so many things wrong
Speaker 5: with this story already, and then it gets worse, right,
Speaker 5: then it gets worse. I mean you're probably thinking at
Speaker 5: this point, what the hell else can go wrong? But
Speaker 5: did you still feel like, Okay, well, I'm going to
Speaker 5: get out of this. I mean all times now you're
Speaker 5: laying in the hospital, did you know what had happened?
Speaker 4: Didn't know?
Speaker 5: So you have no idea, what the hell?
Speaker 4: Nothing other than the cors beat me up. And then
Speaker 4: I think I mentioned to one of them, I'm anaue
Speaker 4: your asses after all this is said and done. And
Speaker 4: then I guess I sparked something in them or something.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know the motive to what,
Speaker 4: What was their motive for putting me in prison? I
Speaker 4: forgot to mention that when I was getting beat up,
Speaker 4: Dario already had been apprehended before that. Yeah, I got
Speaker 4: hit with the butt of a gun in the back
Speaker 4: of his head, your brother, No, Dariel the perpetration, right, Okay,
Speaker 4: he was apprehended as the Coptenson was all for da
Speaker 4: on me. That's when Daril got the opportunity to get
Speaker 4: up and run. So they had him. He was on
Speaker 4: the floor, apprehended. They had him and physically had him
Speaker 4: that same moment that the crime happened.
Speaker 3: They let the bad guy get away and they couldn't
Speaker 3: admit it.
Speaker 5: Well, that's the weird thing in this story too, right,
Speaker 5: And I was doing my homework to get ready for
Speaker 5: the episode. I'm sitting here going were they friends with
Speaker 5: this guy? Like? Why would they have done this guy?
Speaker 5: The favor of life? This one came with instructions, right,
Speaker 5: like the Academy one on one like this is it?
Speaker 5: You got your guy right there? I mean, so the
Speaker 5: cops roll up on this scene minutes after it happened, right,
Speaker 5: almost record speed, and they got the perpetrator there covered
Speaker 5: in blood.
Speaker 4: Yes, right, And.
Speaker 5: This is like a dream, right, this is like you
Speaker 5: could get this case done quick and get home in
Speaker 5: time for dinner. So absolutely, So that's the crazy thing.
Speaker 5: And this guy Bdario Rodriguez, Sai Barrio Rodriguez, he's no dummy.
Speaker 5: He takes the opportunity. Once all this commotion happens and
Speaker 5: you're getting beat up and your brother's getting beat up,
Speaker 5: he's like, well, I'm getting the fuck out of here. Absolutely,
Speaker 5: and he said he crawled and then he got up,
Speaker 5: and then he ran and he got rid of his
Speaker 5: bloody clothes, right and then he was like, man, I
Speaker 5: mean and considering.
Speaker 3: How many times he'd been in jail, he knew, he
Speaker 3: knew what could possibly happen if he didn't run away.
Speaker 5: So okay, now let's go back to that for a second.
Speaker 5: I'm glad you brought to that, Michelle. So, this guy
Speaker 5: Dario is a known bad guy. It's fair to say
Speaker 5: the cops knew about him from the neighborhood because he
Speaker 5: was a guy he was in and out of jail
Speaker 5: all the time.
Speaker 4: At the time, I think he was like twenty eight
Speaker 4: and he's been getting on arrested since the age of fourteen.
Speaker 4: So it's a news record.
Speaker 5: Wow, hard to hard to process this one. A little
Speaker 5: bit okay. So now you're in the hospital. Yes, how
Speaker 5: long was the hospital for?
Speaker 4: Four or five hours?
Speaker 5: And then they take you to jail.
Speaker 4: We left on eight o'clock that morning to the TENTI booking. Now,
Speaker 4: when I get into the cop car from the hospital,
Speaker 4: this is Sugan Delaney. What happened last night? He's actually
Speaker 4: me what happened last night?
Speaker 5: And you still don't know?
Speaker 4: And I said, I don't know. He's asking me what
Speaker 4: happened last night. So I'm on the back seat. It's me,
Speaker 4: it's Delaney. I think it's Curry anyhow. So then he
Speaker 4: in terms of mind asked me, asked me what happened
Speaker 4: last night? And I'm like, y'all fucked me up. That's
Speaker 4: the only thing that happened last night. I'm'a fucking sue ya.
Speaker 4: I got a voiceous And he was like, man, he
Speaker 4: seems like such a nice guy. I can't believe what
Speaker 4: you did. And I'm like, I like, hell, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I already anew where that was going, Like, I'm from
Speaker 4: a neighborhood where I got already told you. You your
Speaker 4: senses and your awareness is a little more keen to things,
Speaker 4: especially with bullshit. So he was like, why why you
Speaker 4: stabbed that kid last night? And I was like, man, I'm
Speaker 4: not even talking to you guys, no more, don't even
Speaker 4: talk to me. Don't even talk to me, you know shit, yeah,
Speaker 4: bugging right now. We went to forty first Precinct. That's
Speaker 4: when I saw the other guys that was arrested.
Speaker 5: With me that night, including your brother, including my brother.
Speaker 4: And that's how I found out by Dario being there
Speaker 4: that night, caught up through Pierre and Julio. They told me,
Speaker 4: what the fuck are you doing here? They didn't even
Speaker 4: know I got arrested. Then when it's on me coming in,
Speaker 4: they asked me, what the fuck are you doing here?
Speaker 4: I said, what the fuck you mean? I'm doing here
Speaker 4: for the shit that just happened. He was like, but why,
Speaker 4: I said, the constans fucked me up, and then they
Speaker 4: arrested me and then put me in here with you.
Speaker 3: Guys at their original arrest questioning where the DA comes
Speaker 3: in the very first time, all three of them, Julio, Pierre,
Speaker 3: and Gregory all say we know the guy who did
Speaker 3: it that same night. That was that night, it was
Speaker 3: maybe an hour after the incident. Will take you to
Speaker 3: where he is. We know where he is. He's colored
Speaker 3: in blood, we know where he lives.
Speaker 4: His name is that.
Speaker 3: We will take you to him. This is all in transcripts.
Speaker 3: The first night, they just ignored it.
Speaker 5: Right, Let's just reflect on that for a second too,
Speaker 5: because with these guys, crackheads, with these guys like young kids,
Speaker 5: there was no reason for the cops to think that
Speaker 5: they would be making up a story, right, and especially
Speaker 5: there's three of them, three of them, So there's three
Speaker 5: of them all going.
Speaker 4: I know where he's at. I'm not going down for this.
Speaker 4: I know where he's.
Speaker 5: At, and they never followed up on.
Speaker 4: It, and then never followed up on that. They just
Speaker 4: ignored it.
Speaker 5: It's so weird.
Speaker 4: Well, when you put it together with they had him apprehended,
Speaker 4: So then there goes three kids telling you, I know
Speaker 4: where he's at, let's go get him. What's going on?
Speaker 4: What happened here? What's the motive? What's the motive? That's
Speaker 4: what the question I always ask myself, what's the motives?
Speaker 4: Put me in jail?
Speaker 5: I Mean, the only thing which still doesn't make any
Speaker 5: sense that I could possibly think of is that they
Speaker 5: maybe feel a little embarrassed that they had already had
Speaker 5: the guy. They let him go. But why nobody's gonna
Speaker 5: know that? That doesn't make any difference.
Speaker 4: Why doesn't matter when the end of the day, he
Speaker 4: did the right thing. Gituation.
Speaker 5: But I'm thinking, I'm not thinking about doing the right thing.
Speaker 5: There's not a lot of right things being done here
Speaker 5: so far, right I mean, And I'm thinking about you
Speaker 5: in this situation too. Had you called anybody by this point,
Speaker 5: your parents, anybody else.
Speaker 4: Sister knew she was at the scene. She came to
Speaker 4: the scene.
Speaker 3: Someone called her, just got arrested.
Speaker 5: So she figured out that you were at the precinct
Speaker 5: and she came.
Speaker 4: She came to the crime scene. We was laid on
Speaker 4: the floor for a while, like they didn't just arrests
Speaker 4: picked us up and let leave.
Speaker 3: By the way, just a visual, Hunts Point is small
Speaker 3: and someone is small.
Speaker 4: The whole community really knows each other.
Speaker 3: You could walk that neighborhood in a few minutes.
Speaker 4: It's a small person. If somebody knows your neighborhood, most
Speaker 4: likely fifty people's gonna know your neighborhood. But there's a
Speaker 4: small community.
Speaker 3: So your sister did Tony's Angel's brother. She told Tony,
Speaker 3: you know why you're here. And he's like, no, oh,
Speaker 3: and she said it's murdered. There was a stabbing and
Speaker 3: he went no, like he didn't even know why he
Speaker 3: was there until Keisha, my sister in law.
Speaker 5: Told now you're in the precinct, you get fingerprinted, booked,
Speaker 5: et cetera.
Speaker 4: And then what happened, Well, before I went to the precinct,
Speaker 4: they had all of us talked to the DA. The
Speaker 4: fair printed me and all that. Then we all talked
Speaker 4: to the guy so to the DA and I refused
Speaker 4: to talk to the DA. I said, isn't need for
Speaker 4: me to talk to the I don't.
Speaker 5: Know, don't talk about Well, that was the right thing
Speaker 5: to do because you had no lawyer. They read your
Speaker 5: Maranda rights and did you wave your Miranda rights?
Speaker 4: I did not anything that I recorded remumba actually.
Speaker 5: So you're the right to remain silent, and that's exactly
Speaker 5: way you should do, and that's important to them. And
Speaker 5: they interrupted you for a second because I like to
Speaker 5: tell people on the show that you should know, if
Speaker 5: you're listening right now, if you or someone you love
Speaker 5: gets picked up for something you didn't do and the
Speaker 5: cops want to talk to you about it. All you
Speaker 5: say is I want a lawyer. That's all you tell them,
Speaker 5: telling your name, your address, and I want a lawyer,
Speaker 5: and stop talking. If you get picked up, you have
Speaker 5: the right to remain sound. There's a reason for that.
Speaker 5: The reason is that if you say something, it can
Speaker 5: be held against you. And don't say anything.
Speaker 4: It could be school and twisted around.
Speaker 5: You talking you're at their mercy, So don't talk. But
Speaker 5: you didn't, right, So that was smart, and yet things
Speaker 5: just continued to go Soundhill. Yeah, So so what happened
Speaker 5: whether they said bail, no, you were held without bail.
Speaker 4: That I recall. Yeah, I was held without bail.
Speaker 5: Where were you held in jail? And how long were
Speaker 5: you held for prior to your trials? I'm assuming you
Speaker 5: didn't make trial.
Speaker 4: I was on Records Island. I was also on the
Speaker 4: boat on the Bronx and Point, which is part of
Speaker 4: Records Island. Oh, Bronx House, Yeah, that I was also in.
Speaker 3: And it was thirteen months before his trial.
Speaker 5: Thirteen months in some of the worst places in the world.
Speaker 4: I set before trying all that. But I think the
Speaker 4: bill with something like what it's an astronomical number, something
Speaker 4: I couldn't afford.
Speaker 5: So you were there, So I was there. If you
Speaker 5: can't post it, you can't post it. And I always
Speaker 5: think bail is such a strange thing too, because if
Speaker 5: you're rich and violent, you can go home. No. I
Speaker 5: mean that's what we say, you know, because I've been
Speaker 5: working on bail reform for many years, and you know
Speaker 5: there's a saying in the bailiform movement that a system
Speaker 5: in which Robert Thurst goes home and Sandra Blamb goes
Speaker 5: to prison is a broken system, right, I mean Robert Thurst,
Speaker 5: I don't know if he saw the jinx. He was
Speaker 5: arrested for murdering and dismembering his next door neighbor, Like
Speaker 5: he cut his head off, he put his body in
Speaker 5: little bags and a whole thing like and bails two fifty.
Speaker 5: He was like, you want cash, you right check? Any
Speaker 5: went right home. I mean, so it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 5: Like as a society, I think we should say, Okay,
Speaker 5: if we think that this guy is really dangerous, then
Speaker 5: we got to hold you, and money shouldn't make the difference.
Speaker 5: And if you're not dangerous, you should be sent home
Speaker 5: until your trial, go home to your You had a
Speaker 5: kid at the time. But okay, so you're held for
Speaker 5: thirteen months in this cination of horrible places, right places?
Speaker 5: I mean and Rikers the boat. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: we have a jail in New York City that's literally
Speaker 5: on a boat. We haven't talked about that on the
Speaker 5: show because you're the first person I've interviewed who's actually
Speaker 5: been on the boat. But is that as bad as Rikers?
Speaker 5: How bad is it?
Speaker 4: How bad is it? It is bad? Yeah, it's just
Speaker 4: as bad. I mean, whatever stories you hear, you hear
Speaker 4: about Rikers, it's the same stories you're going to hear
Speaker 4: about the boat. And it's dirty, the food's not that great.
Speaker 4: Then the conditions are horrible. I mean, you have like
Speaker 4: forty different personalities in one area, sleeping with each other,
Speaker 4: spending each other's feet, spending each other's thoughts.
Speaker 5: And that's the thing about Chelse. You have a violent
Speaker 5: little mixture of people who are violent people and non
Speaker 5: violent people are guilty, people are innocent. But everybody has
Speaker 5: one thing common. They want to go home, and they're frustrated,
Speaker 5: and it gets violent and it's chaotic. You know, there's
Speaker 5: nothing good about any of it. And then there you
Speaker 5: are for thirteen months. Now, when did you first get
Speaker 5: a lawyer? And how much time did you get to
Speaker 5: spend with your lawyer prior to trial? Is it a
Speaker 5: public defender?
Speaker 4: Public defender? So my first love was a lady. She
Speaker 4: actually sat down, sat down with me, looked me in
Speaker 4: my face, and she just tells me she believes that
Speaker 4: I'm guilty.
Speaker 5: Would you say?
Speaker 4: I forget that my exact words, but I know my
Speaker 4: exact thought was like, okay, so you need to be here.
Speaker 4: So then I think I got the manco.
Speaker 5: And did you get to spend any meaningful amount of
Speaker 5: time with any of your attorneys before the trial?
Speaker 4: Me and the Manchael spoke a couple of times.
Speaker 5: We spoke a couple of times.
Speaker 4: We have Yeah, no, But I just want you to know how.
Speaker 5: That sounds to me. Right. So here you are, you're
Speaker 5: facing a sentence of fifteen years to life. I think
Speaker 5: people would like to think that you spent some time
Speaker 5: with your lawyer going through documents evidence that that's not
Speaker 5: the way it was. You spoke to him a couple
Speaker 5: of times.
Speaker 4: I spoke to them a couple of times.
Speaker 5: How you doing.
Speaker 4: We didn't go through no paperwork. It was just a
Speaker 4: couple of questions and a couple of answers.
Speaker 5: Right, and that's you know, I mean, look, public de
Speaker 5: there's a lot of very good ones. I have a
Speaker 5: lot of respect for people who go into that line
Speaker 5: of work because it's a thankless job. They're dealing with
Speaker 5: hundreds of cases, they're underpaid, overworking, and even the best
Speaker 5: ones are really really have an uphill battle in every situation.
Speaker 5: You eventually end up at trial, eventually with a lawyer
Speaker 5: who's senior. A couple of times it's fair to say
Speaker 5: he's probably unprepared.
Speaker 4: He put a good show, though he did. I mean
Speaker 4: a show doesn't mean he put up a good fight.
Speaker 4: It's two different things.
Speaker 5: That's an interesting way of putting it. So you're a trial,
Speaker 5: you have the three cops testify against you, and the
Speaker 5: one witness, right, which was actually the guy who was stabbed.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 5: And it's important to talk about this to Angel because
Speaker 5: the guy who was stabbed this is thirteen months later, right,
Speaker 5: and he's trying to remember a very traumatic incident that
Speaker 5: happened in the dark, in the middle of the night.
Speaker 5: And we know the way memory works, you know, the
Speaker 5: leading cause of raeful convictions, of course, is mistaken eye
Speaker 5: withness identification. Then that could be it could be the eyewitness,
Speaker 5: or it could be the victim themselves. But we know
Speaker 5: that memory not only doesn't function like a camera in
Speaker 5: the first place. Right, if somebody runs in here now
Speaker 5: and assaults one of us and then they put him
Speaker 5: us in a lineup in ten minutes, we're still going
Speaker 5: to probably get it wrong. That's been proven in experiments
Speaker 5: after experiments, But thirteen months later, the memory is really
Speaker 5: not great. It fades and it changes, and you get
Speaker 5: influenced by things that people say and things that you see.
Speaker 5: So somehow or other, this guy who had been stabbed.
Speaker 5: And also we know that when a weapon is involved,
Speaker 5: the incidence of wrongful identification go up dramatically because your
Speaker 5: senses are you're freaking out right, You're in it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you're in extreme danger, You're everything. All the synapses are firing,
Speaker 5: every nerve ending is going nuts, and it messes with
Speaker 5: your mind, so it messes with your memory. So we know,
Speaker 5: like I said, that instances of rumfele identification go up
Speaker 5: dramatically when there's a weapon involved. But even if it's
Speaker 5: a personatching with no weapon whatever, we know that still
Speaker 5: ey wouldnesses get it wrong more often to get it right.
Speaker 5: So there you are. You must be like, what the
Speaker 5: hell's going on? Why is this guy? Why is this
Speaker 5: guy saying I did it? Shouldn't he know who stabbed him?
Speaker 3: Of course at the trial, which is the first time
Speaker 3: Jason ever saw Angel. Jason's the victim, first time he
Speaker 3: ever saw Angel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you didn't know it.
Speaker 4: I've never seen him either. Like, I'm from the neighborhood.
Speaker 4: I've been in the neighborhood most of my life and
Speaker 4: I've never saw it, okay at all. And to go
Speaker 4: backtracked a little bit, the cops, like you were saying,
Speaker 4: told him about or we got the guys, but you.
Speaker 3: Were talking about like influencing someone's mind. The night that Jason,
Speaker 3: I mean, his lung was collapsed, he was stabbed. He
Speaker 3: was seriously injured.
Speaker 5: But this was not a little slice, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was bad. He he didn't.
Speaker 4: Even know it was the cops that was coming to rescue.
Speaker 4: Hening and who it was. It was just to him,
Speaker 4: it was somebody came and a fight started, and he
Speaker 4: got the opportunity to get away, and he got away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he crawled home.
Speaker 5: The victim.
Speaker 3: The victim but his house was like three houses from
Speaker 3: where the incident happened. He was like almost home when
Speaker 3: the incident happened. When he was in the hospital, the
Speaker 3: police officers were saying to him, we got him, we
Speaker 3: got him. No lineup, no finger pointing, no prior arrest
Speaker 3: book with photos because the angel had no history, right,
Speaker 3: no mugshot, right, none of this. Fast forward thirteen months later,
Speaker 3: they asked, Jason, you know, where's the guy who did it?
Speaker 3: And it's not like he had to look around really far.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's going to point to the guy sitting
Speaker 3: in the defendant's chair right there he is. Wait a minute,
Speaker 3: he looks taller and heavier.
Speaker 5: That's what he said.
Speaker 3: That's what he said.
Speaker 5: But it is important to note that you bear a
Speaker 5: physical resemblance to the actual purpetare, right, which is really
Speaker 5: another here. You were a wrong place, wrong time, and
Speaker 5: you happen to, you know, have some physical characteristics that
Speaker 5: you share. Another piece of bad bad luck. But okay,
Speaker 5: but still he's saying, he's questioning himself.
Speaker 3: He's going, yeah, and this is in try transcripts. You
Speaker 3: know he looks he looks taller. Well, yeah, Dario's significantly shorter.
Speaker 3: Than Angel, and he looks a lot heavier. In the meantime,
Speaker 3: Angel had lost more than thirty pounds on Riker's islence.
Speaker 5: But nonetheless, you know, as you said, you know it
Speaker 5: makes sense. He's in the courtroom, he's thinking, well, all
Speaker 5: these people are here because this guy Stabby is probably
Speaker 5: the guy.
Speaker 3: He looks close enough the guy, right, I mean the guy.
Speaker 4: He's a little taller, a little heavier. But yeah, the
Speaker 4: cop said it was him, so I had to be.
Speaker 5: Had the jury goes out, how long did they deliberate
Speaker 5: for him?
Speaker 4: Remember a day, full day, twenty four hours.
Speaker 5: That's gotta be a long fucking day waiting for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to get convicted, you because I
Speaker 4: knew that my lawyer wasn't working throughly on my behalf.
Speaker 4: He didn't give me the best chance to win. He
Speaker 4: didn't really get out the full details I needed to
Speaker 4: be out there. And even though he didn't do that,
Speaker 4: with the information that they had was I think was
Speaker 4: enough for me to win the case.
Speaker 3: During the trial, Dario's girlfriend comes into the courtroom. This
Speaker 3: is like a movie. She comes into the courtroom and
Speaker 3: she's like, I want to speak, I want to speak.
Speaker 4: During the deliberation, timeberation.
Speaker 3: I want to speak, I want to testify. He wasn't
Speaker 3: with me that night. She was his alibi.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he said that night that he was with her.
Speaker 4: She really wasn't.
Speaker 5: So she came clean, but too late to help you.
Speaker 4: Because judgment judge had to open the case. Yere.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's a heavy one. I mean, I wonder how
Speaker 5: that even works, Like if you're the judge. I don't
Speaker 5: know what the legal principle is or whether he would
Speaker 5: be allowed to reopen the case.
Speaker 4: He would have been been It's a judgment call. That's
Speaker 4: why he's a judge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it would be his duty.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we know that we found out later that
Speaker 5: a nun testified and said that she was in the
Speaker 5: homeless shelter, that the nun worked on the night that
Speaker 5: he claimed that he was with.
Speaker 3: Her with curfew, with walking, So she was no.
Speaker 5: Question that his alibi was totally false. Right. So, and again,
Speaker 5: if your attorney had had more time, had been more diligent,
Speaker 5: had been more interested, he probably could have fished out
Speaker 5: some of these things.
Speaker 4: He was more diligent, That's what he needed to be.
Speaker 4: He needed to be interested in me. He wasn't interested
Speaker 4: in me.
Speaker 3: He didn't you didn't care about you.
Speaker 5: No, he was processing representing. But it is interesting that
Speaker 5: the jury deliberated for a full day even though you
Speaker 5: had three police officers and the victim testifying saying this
Speaker 5: is the guy that did it. You could see how
Speaker 5: it would be more likely that they would deliberate for
Speaker 5: an hour if they were sure, and they would have said,
Speaker 5: we don't even want lunch. Right, yeah, I'm going home. Absolutely,
Speaker 5: I got my kids at home. Oh I got this,
Speaker 5: I got that right. And that's why it's important for
Speaker 5: people listening. Many of them will end up on juries
Speaker 5: and criminal trials. You know, you have somebody's life in
Speaker 5: your hands. You got to take this seriously. It sounds
Speaker 5: like the jury actually did do their job, and even
Speaker 5: though they got the wrong answer, at least it sounds
Speaker 5: like they took it seriously. So they come back in
Speaker 5: and that moment, even though you thought you were going
Speaker 5: to be found guilty, the system had let you down
Speaker 5: in so many different ways at this point, What was
Speaker 5: that moment like when they come back in, they shuffle in.
Speaker 5: What were you going through at that moment?
Speaker 4: I was hope football, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Speaker 4: That's their hurts. It still hurts nine, but it definitely hurt.
Speaker 4: It tremids back then I just looked in my brother's face.
Speaker 4: He was crying, My mother was crying, my sister, and
Speaker 4: then I just came another judge, but we have another witness.
Speaker 4: We have the perpetrator's wife here ready to testify. It
Speaker 4: was that chance he paint me no mind. It threw
Speaker 4: us out the court, and I just told my mother
Speaker 4: that was gonna be all right. It's gonna be all right.
Speaker 4: And I don't know how the time, I already don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I kept strong, well, man, I guess
Speaker 4: there's reasons.
Speaker 3: You always believe till the day he walked out that door,
Speaker 3: he always believed he was going to get exonerated. I
Speaker 3: did every denial, every shitty answer in the mail.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about that, because your brother was convicted also,
Speaker 5: but his conviction was overturned on the technicality and he
Speaker 5: was freed after six years.
Speaker 4: The technicality was that I got boisterous and that it
Speaker 4: threw us out, and he didn't get to hear his
Speaker 4: verdict because it threw both That wasn't supposed to throw
Speaker 4: me out because I'm screaming with But the girl is here.
Speaker 4: She gotted to testify, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So you're gonna try with your brother, Yes, And he
Speaker 5: got thrown out of the court room.
Speaker 4: Both of us got thrown out. He was not supposed to.
Speaker 4: That was said accuntity, that he got the reversal on.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's the only good break in this whole story that.
Speaker 3: Seven years later did seven years before he got the reversal.
Speaker 5: Right, and that's seven years a hard time. But but
Speaker 5: then even for you, it still was worse because you
Speaker 5: had so many appeals and you had new evidence that
Speaker 5: kept coming up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, different witnesses.
Speaker 5: And let's not forget the fact that there was never
Speaker 5: any physical evice.
Speaker 4: They tried. They tried with the DNA with the blood.
Speaker 3: They said during trial that the blood that was on
Speaker 3: Angels clothes belonged to the victim. The clothes tested, but
Speaker 3: the results didn't and air quotes didn't come in in
Speaker 3: time for the conclusion of the trial, so it wasn't
Speaker 3: brought up at the trial any further than that.
Speaker 5: Okay, so they they had thirteen months to test the
Speaker 5: blood on your clothes, but that wasn't enough time.
Speaker 4: Apparently that wasn't enough time.
Speaker 3: There's even a letter from the DNA testing lab that
Speaker 3: says we have the results to submit something to the result.
Speaker 4: There is never turned it over to its purpose.
Speaker 3: That because of all of the blood.
Speaker 4: The results knowing whose blood it was. But on top
Speaker 4: of that, there's still got tended jerviy lies. Well, you
Speaker 4: already knew ahead of time before you entold the Jervisy's
Speaker 4: lies that the blood it was my own. It was
Speaker 4: not the blood of the victims, as you were betraying
Speaker 4: it to be.
Speaker 5: Wow. So they yeah, it gets deeper. Now it's not
Speaker 5: just police misconduct, it's also prosecutoral miskind of a very
Speaker 5: serious nature. And I'm glad this is coming out now
Speaker 5: and it will hopefully come out in the future in
Speaker 5: an official manner. So they withheld that evidence, they buried it,
Speaker 5: they lied about it, they actually twisted it. It's just
Speaker 5: worse than hiding. Get it's actually they they knew that
Speaker 5: what they were saying at the time was bullshit, actually
Speaker 5: totally false. It was the opposite of what they were saying,
Speaker 5: And that's pretty compelling evidence for a jury to hear.
Speaker 5: You got the victims blood on your clothes. I mean,
Speaker 5: if I'm on the jury, I'm going unless you were
Speaker 5: trying to help the guy, which we knew you weren't
Speaker 5: because you didn't even see him. So so you end
Speaker 5: up with these appeals. And let's talk about that too,
Speaker 5: because obviously you're not a dumb guy, and you're a
Speaker 5: resourceful guy, and you were able to fight from inside
Speaker 5: prison to get a new trial and to get new
Speaker 5: evidence admitted, and you kept getting new evidence, compelling evidence,
Speaker 5: including a confession by the act by the actual guy
Speaker 5: who did the crime, the stabber actually confessed. I mean,
Speaker 5: that would seem like the golden ticket, the golden ticket, right, Like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I'm going home now.
Speaker 4: I actually gave everything away. I'm going home. This is
Speaker 4: my throat process. Now. There was no ifs about anything else.
Speaker 4: I said, I'm going home finally, damn thank you. All
Speaker 4: my stuff, all my books, all my best sheets, all
Speaker 4: my clothes, all my sneakers. I gave him away. I said,
Speaker 4: I'm not going back to this.
Speaker 5: Place because you went back to court with the evidence that.
Speaker 3: Yes, he testified at that hearings area and admitted guilt.
Speaker 4: I made it, how he did it, why he did it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: everything that happened that night, admitted everything the judge.
Speaker 5: So again, I mean, I'm pretty experienced at this. I've
Speaker 5: been doing this for almost twenty five years. But for
Speaker 5: people who might be new to the show, they're sitting
Speaker 5: at home, they're going but wait a minute, that's where
Speaker 5: the story ends, right, But what happened is that the
Speaker 5: the powers that be, the judge, decided that he was
Speaker 5: not a credible witness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, their favorite word, credibility.
Speaker 5: He was not a credible witness, but.
Speaker 4: He was credible during the time that he's still on
Speaker 4: the stand against me on my trial, doing my trial, right,
Speaker 4: But he's not credible.
Speaker 5: Now, that's got to be almost as bad as the
Speaker 5: original conviction.
Speaker 4: That was worse, really, kan Off, that might be had
Speaker 4: to hang.
Speaker 5: Because by now you've been in for six or seven years,
Speaker 5: already seven years, yeah, and you're going home. You gave
Speaker 5: your stuff away.
Speaker 4: I get everything.
Speaker 5: This wasn't the only new evidence that came out, right.
Speaker 4: No, it was plenty of evidence beforehand before he even
Speaker 4: came out.
Speaker 5: But let's talk about that too. What was the other
Speaker 5: evidence that came out that allowed you to get your appeals?
Speaker 4: Heard eyewitnesses, a lot of them twenty eight of them,
Speaker 4: twenty eight, twenty eight.
Speaker 3: There were people who said they saw Dario steal a
Speaker 3: knife from the party.
Speaker 5: That was just and there was a dozen people who
Speaker 5: testified that you weren't there, right, yes, right, So twenty
Speaker 5: eight witnesses that might be a record is I don't know, we.
Speaker 4: Got to look it up. I've never heard of it.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of witnesses for those.
Speaker 5: People again listening to home, this is your tax dollars
Speaker 5: at work, right, this is the system. So twenty eight
Speaker 5: eye witnesses, a confession from the killer.
Speaker 4: A confession from the perpetrated, yes.
Speaker 5: A confession from the from the purpose.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nobody died, thank god, would have been in jail.
Speaker 4: You imagine that.
Speaker 5: And they're like, no, we're not interested. None of this
Speaker 5: stuff is moving us. So you ended up going from
Speaker 5: state court to federal.
Speaker 4: Right, yes?
Speaker 5: And how'd that work? Same thing, deny, How did you
Speaker 5: get into federal court as opposed to state court for
Speaker 5: people who not familiar with the system.
Speaker 4: Once you exhaust all your state of peals, then you
Speaker 4: can present everything you presented to the state, to the
Speaker 4: fas to the higher court, the higher court.
Speaker 5: I mean, you really had overwhelming evidence at this point
Speaker 5: of innocence. I don't know what else you can do.
Speaker 4: From day one, I had overwhelming evidence from day one.
Speaker 4: As soon as three kids tell you, I know where
Speaker 4: he's at, that should have been the end of the story.
Speaker 4: I shouldn't have gone no further than that.
Speaker 5: And the element of clamsham. We're going back to that again.
Speaker 5: So much doom and gloom in this story. But let's
Speaker 5: talk about a happy thing. How did you guys meet?
Speaker 3: I lived in Florida. I'm from New York, but I
Speaker 3: lived in Florida. I went to graduate school in Florida.
Speaker 3: I became friends with Angel's first cousin. My Space was
Speaker 3: the big thing at the time, and you could change
Speaker 3: who your top friend was on MySpace until her top
Speaker 3: friend was him. But I'd never seen this guy before.
Speaker 3: I kind of knew the guy she hung out with, Like,
Speaker 3: who is this guy? She's like my cousin. I'm like
Speaker 3: he's cute. She's like he's in prison. I'm like, no way.
Speaker 3: And she told me his story and then it unfolds
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 5: Did she tell you he was innocent?
Speaker 3: That was the first thing out of her mouth that
Speaker 3: his brother was either just came home or about to
Speaker 3: come home, I don't remember. And we talked a little
Speaker 3: about the case. She's like, you guys would totally hit
Speaker 3: it off as like you're totally insane.
Speaker 5: You're like, that's my dream, A guy in prison.
Speaker 3: So a guy in prison. You know at this point,
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's innocent or guilty.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, so what compelled you to want to
Speaker 5: find out more? I mean you thought he was cute.
Speaker 3: I actually I googled it and I'm a social worker,
Speaker 3: so I like to research and investigate. It's just in
Speaker 3: my blood. And I came across this article that was
Speaker 3: in the Daily News, but it talked about how he
Speaker 3: was innocent and how Dariel had confessed, and I was like,
Speaker 3: this is crazy. I want to know more.
Speaker 5: Okay, so you want to know more? And then how
Speaker 5: did you end up first meeting?
Speaker 3: Well, I did write in the first letter, like, you know,
Speaker 3: I could be your friends. Your case is interesting, you know.
Speaker 3: We wrote for a while, then it went to phone
Speaker 3: calls for a while, and then I went to visit him.
Speaker 3: I don't know how the visit first visit happened. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you asked me.
Speaker 4: To come on the first visit.
Speaker 3: I mean I remember the first visit obviously, but I
Speaker 3: don't know how it all went down that. You know,
Speaker 3: we decided I was going to go visit him, and
Speaker 3: I never stopped visiting. Here we are, we're together, ten years.
Speaker 4: Two kids, two kids, two beautiful kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's home. Six years just a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3: Me and six years ago.
Speaker 4: You got a parole year ago, usber vision parole. Same shit.
Speaker 4: And we have two beautiful kids.
Speaker 5: Amazing.
Speaker 4: One of the names lug and Danny four years old Jujuicio,
Speaker 4: practitioner beast and my little star lit Danny Daniella.
Speaker 5: And you have your daughter from before you went away.
Speaker 4: And I also, yeah, I have the oldest daughter. How
Speaker 4: does she know she is twenty three?
Speaker 5: Well, that's amazing. Congratulations on that. That's actually a beautiful
Speaker 5: love story. You know, you mentioned something which is obviously
Speaker 5: going to get people's attention because I'm sure people are thinking, well,
Speaker 5: wait a minute, he's here, he must have been exonerated.
Speaker 5: But in fact you still have to fight this case.
Speaker 4: I am still fighting the case.
Speaker 5: Yes, And let's talk about that too, because ultimately you
Speaker 5: were released on parole, as you said after twelve years.
Speaker 4: Supervision same a split bit like a two to four.
Speaker 4: They consider that going home to parole. When there's a
Speaker 4: flat bait, they considered it a supervision basically the same thing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, when Angel was originally sentenced, he didn't plea bargain.
Speaker 3: He blew trial. So when he got sentenced, he got
Speaker 3: sentenced to fifteen years flat bit, which meant in thirteen
Speaker 3: or close to thirteen years he could get out on
Speaker 3: good behavior and that was it. There was no supervision involved.
Speaker 4: Yes, there wasn't supervision involved.
Speaker 3: There was shifted at some point and allowed I forgot
Speaker 3: about that the Department of Corrections to impose supervision on people.
Speaker 3: So they were like slapping people with all the supervision.
Speaker 3: I guess they were working in connection with Department of
Speaker 3: the people.
Speaker 4: That won't fully put on them. That was getting a play.
Speaker 4: That was either getting the time cut and they go
Speaker 4: home there on supervision, or they could finish out their
Speaker 4: time and the supervision was taken out, but you had
Speaker 4: to do both adventity.
Speaker 3: So they placed five years post release supervision on Angel.
Speaker 3: They were putting this on everyone. Now this is after
Speaker 3: your trial's over. You're serving your time here in the
Speaker 3: middle of your time and you get this notice that
Speaker 3: now you have post released supervision, which is what they
Speaker 3: term it versus parole. A lot of guys were getting
Speaker 3: it reversed because they had plea bargains, and plea bargain
Speaker 3: is like a legal binding agreement, and this was a
Speaker 3: violation of disagreement. But Engel didn't. He went to trial.
Speaker 3: So we go to court. His first appellat is hurting
Speaker 3: Claudia trup. We go to court with Clodia that this
Speaker 3: is an injust addition to his sentence. He had already
Speaker 3: been sentenced by the judge, by the judicial system, the
Speaker 3: Department of Corrections, and this has no right to impose
Speaker 3: a sentence, and the judge denied him.
Speaker 5: So now on.
Speaker 3: Top of this wrongful conviction years, he gets another five
Speaker 3: years on supervision when he comes home. And this happened,
Speaker 3: we were already together.
Speaker 4: I was already better to go home. I was ten
Speaker 4: years into the bit after being ten years, and then
Speaker 4: that added extra five years on top of everything.
Speaker 5: And the good news is that's over now and you
Speaker 5: have a chance to fight and actually get this conviction overturned,
Speaker 5: at which point you could sue and hopefully get damages
Speaker 5: and things that you deserve.
Speaker 4: All they had to start is with a sorry. I'll
Speaker 4: take a sorry right now, an apology.
Speaker 5: And that's a powerful thing that you just said. I mean,
Speaker 5: I'll take a sorry. I mean, yeah, I'll give you one. Michelle.
Speaker 5: I want to turn to you for a second. So
Speaker 5: what was it like for you having this unusual relationship
Speaker 5: let's call it, right? I mean, obviously you're in love.
Speaker 5: We know that crosses all boundaries and goes over walls
Speaker 5: and everything else. But what was that like being in
Speaker 5: a relationship? Did you get people judging you?
Speaker 3: And sure, of course I did. There were people who
Speaker 3: didn't know my job didn't know. I mean I told
Speaker 3: one person who I work with, who's a friend, but
Speaker 3: I went to work every day and it was my secret.
Speaker 5: Must have been people saying, hey, Michelle, I got a
Speaker 5: nice guy for you to me whatever. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, times, I mean all of my friends knew people
Speaker 3: in my life who judged it as soon as they
Speaker 3: met Angel. While the judgment went away, I think they
Speaker 3: judged circumstance. I like to say I surround myself with
Speaker 3: been minded people, but yeah, there was definitely even judgment
Speaker 3: from them. It's it's it's weird.
Speaker 5: What about your parents?
Speaker 3: My father passed away when I was nineteen. It was heartbreaking.
Speaker 3: It to my mom it was difficult. I'm sure that
Speaker 3: she was disappointed. But then when she met Angel, because
Speaker 3: she went up to visit him. I remember when we left,
Speaker 3: I'm like, whoa, what do you think She's like, he's
Speaker 3: really even keeled. The way I told my mom was.
Speaker 3: I handed her a book that was written by Angel's
Speaker 3: first appellet, attorney Claudia Trump, where angels like featured in
Speaker 3: one of the chapters titled Guilty of Sin, talking about
Speaker 3: Dario clearly not Angel, And I handed her a copy
Speaker 3: of the book and I said, read this, and I'm
Speaker 3: not talking to you until after you read this. So
Speaker 3: she kind of knew from the beginning that you were
Speaker 3: serious and that he was innocent. I kind of needed
Speaker 3: to establish that I'm not, you know, with a guy
Speaker 3: who's a murderer or attempted murderer.
Speaker 5: So you know the next question I'm going to ask,
Speaker 5: because you were in various different prisons at the time,
Speaker 5: were stuck in one place the whole twelve years.
Speaker 4: After my first prison I was in was sing sing.
Speaker 4: Then after Attica and Kaiksaki and then I came home
Speaker 4: from Eastern Did.
Speaker 5: Any of these places have conjugal visits? Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: How often are you allowed to have.
Speaker 3: At that time it was ninety every ninety days, not
Speaker 3: often enough.
Speaker 5: Every ninety day, four times a year?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Is that it?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Every three months.
Speaker 3: And as wonderful as those things are, and everybody, oh,
Speaker 3: you're so lucky, you know, as wonderful as it is,
Speaker 3: it's awful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, can you explain that? Like, what does that even
Speaker 5: look like too? I mean, so you go to the prison,
Speaker 5: you obviously had months of anticipation for you, even more
Speaker 5: so if you're sitting there looking at four walls. At
Speaker 5: least you're out doing your job and you have to
Speaker 5: distract you. But you got to be so much pent up,
Speaker 5: you know, and then you see each other, and I
Speaker 5: mean it sounds like a really strange date speak.
Speaker 4: But I mean we just felt before we even got
Speaker 4: a conjugal we knew each other for a year, so
Speaker 4: we got to know each other. That's one thing about
Speaker 4: prison there, that's all you have time for is to
Speaker 4: sit down and talk and make eye contact.
Speaker 3: And there's time since Angel's been home that I've said
Speaker 3: to him in rough moments of adjusting, especially when he
Speaker 3: first came home, that I missed our visits, as crazy
Speaker 3: as that might sound, but I missed the six hours
Speaker 3: of just sitting and talking. Even with the trailers as
Speaker 3: it's horrible. They treat the families horribly. They treat you
Speaker 3: like you're a criminal. You take this horrible van and
Speaker 3: you go through all these gates and wires, and it's
Speaker 3: not a pretty environment. I mean, it's not meant to
Speaker 3: be a pretty environment. And you get into this trailer
Speaker 3: where the door shuts. In New York they call conjugal
Speaker 3: visits trailers. It's like a bungalow. It's like a little cottage.
Speaker 3: They're nice inside, the door shut and you're secluded for
Speaker 3: forty four hours, and then all of a sudden, the
Speaker 3: horn beeps and it's over, and you're ripped away from
Speaker 3: the person that you love, and you're thrown back on
Speaker 3: this horrible, dilapidated van and dropped off in front of
Speaker 3: the gate, and you have no contact like that again
Speaker 3: with your husband. So that's what I mean when I say,
Speaker 3: as wonderful as it is, it's so emotionally draining going
Speaker 3: to the conjugal visit.
Speaker 5: On the van.
Speaker 3: It's all the wives and moms and sons and family
Speaker 3: on the van going to the area in this wall
Speaker 3: where the trailers are, and everybody's lively and happy and
Speaker 3: having a good time and talking about what they're gonna
Speaker 3: cook or what movies they're gonna watch, or we should
Speaker 3: all barbecue together and going back. No one says one word.
Speaker 3: Everybody's just crying.
Speaker 5: It's impossible. Obviously, family hasn't been through it to imagine it.
Speaker 5: But for me, even when I visit people in prison,
Speaker 5: I feel terrible when I leave because they can't leave.
Speaker 5: So I can get just a fraction of a sensation
Speaker 5: of what that must have been like for you. Listen.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm sure you know all things being equal
Speaker 5: much better than not having them, obviously, but still, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's a very stark thing, Like I imagine counting down
Speaker 5: the minutes till the end, when you know that that
Speaker 5: forty four dollars coming up, and then you're back another
Speaker 5: three months. But it's a testament to both of you
Speaker 5: that you managed to stay together through that, because that's
Speaker 5: not an easy way to maintain a relationship under any circumstances.
Speaker 5: But here you are. Now you got two great kids, right,
Speaker 5: so you know that's a beautiful thing. And you're off parole,
Speaker 5: so off supervision. You have a chance to fight back
Speaker 5: and to finally prove your innocence and clear your name.
Speaker 5: I guess some justice, get that sorry that you deserve,
Speaker 5: as well as everything else that's coming to you after
Speaker 5: this horrible miscarriage of justice. And I want to say
Speaker 5: a miscarriage of justice was perpetrated on the people of
Speaker 5: New York State as well. When you have Dario Rodriguez out,
Speaker 5: they're walking the streets and other citizens being put in
Speaker 5: danger as a direct result of the police just deciding
Speaker 5: they don't care. I mean, they just didn't care. Said
Speaker 5: they didn't care about you, they didn't care about him,
Speaker 5: and they didn't care about people in the neighborhood either,
Speaker 5: And they didn't care.
Speaker 3: About the victim either. I mean, how much should they
Speaker 3: really care about him if they weren't willing to find
Speaker 3: out the true story?
Speaker 5: Not at all, just another day at the office. So
Speaker 5: now you went from having, in the first instance, as
Speaker 5: bad of a lawyer as you could possibly have a
Speaker 5: guy who literally shows up and says, yeah, I'm pretty
Speaker 5: sure you're guilty, right, I mean, you're just sitting there
Speaker 5: and go, wait a minute, that's not even possible except
Speaker 5: in the movie. And now you literally now you literally
Speaker 5: have the dream team. Literally, yes, you got. You got
Speaker 5: Barry Sheck and Cima Safi. So you went from having
Speaker 5: as bad a representation as almost anybody's ever had in
Speaker 5: the beginning to now having the literal dream team Barry
Speaker 5: Check and Cima Safi, who are obviously buried, the co
Speaker 5: founder of the NISS Project, and Seemia as a senior
Speaker 5: staff attorney at the Answers Project. So that's got to
Speaker 5: feel pretty good to know you've got.
Speaker 4: Throughout this whole bad old deal. You know, there's been
Speaker 4: many good things that have happened as well. Now everything's bad,
Speaker 4: and my wife, you know, I got two beautiful kids
Speaker 4: out of that. My mother and my relationship became closer.
Speaker 4: She was always there for me, sticking it out through things,
Speaker 4: and thin I had some pretty good appeal lawyers. Unfortunately
Speaker 4: they didn't have a gut defense lawyer. But you know,
Speaker 4: Claudia True was wonderful and trying to get me justice.
Speaker 4: She did a wonderful job. She's an angel to me.
Speaker 3: Mary Pollock who if it wasn't for him the project.
Speaker 4: To just out of the pebrew Sky just took the case,
Speaker 4: I mean, for no apparent reasons, and he believed. And
Speaker 4: and then from Barry Potter, we we we come to
Speaker 4: the to the present with Barry and Seema. So as
Speaker 4: followed representation after the fact, I've been very blessed, but unfortunately,
Speaker 4: you know, if it has come of it yet. But
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's many great things.
Speaker 5: And what else do you want people to know? I mean,
Speaker 5: there's the website.
Speaker 3: Angel Cordero is Innocent dot com.
Speaker 5: There's the movie Coming Watch, which won a bunch of awards.
Speaker 4: Right then one on about three or four awards, and
Speaker 4: iron the.
Speaker 5: Movie is called Coming Coming Home.
Speaker 3: What the film is about is not so much about
Speaker 3: Angel's case. It talks about his case. Dario is featured
Speaker 3: in the film, but what it really talks about is
Speaker 3: what it does to the family. And that's I think
Speaker 3: what a lot of people forget. It has families apart.
Speaker 3: It ruins relationships.
Speaker 4: My daughter, my relationship, I mean, we're not even on
Speaker 4: speaking terms. It's been about a year now, and the
Speaker 4: whole time when I came home, I tried and tried
Speaker 4: and tried.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a very poignant look at how that does affect,
Speaker 5: you know, the other victims in the situation, or the
Speaker 5: family members of the people. There's so many.
Speaker 4: Yeah's not just one person I'm doing the time, it's
Speaker 4: sometimes a whole family.
Speaker 5: Especially if it's you, it's your son or daughter. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's hard enough on your parents, brothers, sisters, but for
Speaker 5: son or daughter, I'm sure they don't know what to think.
Speaker 5: And it's just a tragedy all the way around. But
Speaker 5: you know, the good news is you're here, Michelle's here.
Speaker 5: You got a lot of good people that care about you,
Speaker 5: that are fighting for you. Lucky that way, and I
Speaker 5: do believe that justice. You know, it's been terribly delayed,
Speaker 5: but it's not going to be denied, not with that team.
Speaker 5: And hopefully people will learn from listening to you and
Speaker 5: learning about your case about how these things happen, and
Speaker 5: you know, maybe we'll be able to prevent future future
Speaker 5: wrongful convictions. And now, in keeping with our tradition, here
Speaker 5: at Wrongful Conviction, I think this is probably people's favorite
Speaker 5: part of the show. This is where I step back.
Speaker 5: I like to let our guests have the last word.
Speaker 5: And just share anything else that's on your mind, anything
Speaker 5: you want the audience to hear. And Michelle, let's start
Speaker 5: with you.
Speaker 3: The victim of this stabbing was a victim, but Angels
Speaker 3: also a victim. His family's a victim, his daughter's a victim.
Speaker 3: There's a lot more victims than just the guy sitting
Speaker 3: in the defendant chair with a wornful conviction.
Speaker 5: Angel, what are your thoughts, anything else you have to
Speaker 5: share with the audience.
Speaker 4: I'm surprised that I'm not exonerated yet. By this time,
Speaker 4: I thought I wouldn't have to deal with this issue anymore.
Speaker 4: I've always been hopeful that one person will finally in
Speaker 4: his heart to tell the truth, and that would be
Speaker 4: the victim himself, Jason Mercardo, because I know in his heart,
Speaker 4: I know for one hundred percent fact that he knows
Speaker 4: it wasn't me. That would be a dream for him
Speaker 4: to come forward and finally give me my overlong due justice.
Speaker 5: My last question, what do you want your young children
Speaker 5: to know? If they're ever listening to this years from now,
Speaker 5: maybe someday they get a chance to hear it, what
Speaker 5: would you say to them about this whole situation?
Speaker 4: Then they made life after that worthwhile, Evan, that's it.
Speaker 4: It was all worth it, and I would do it
Speaker 4: all over again. I find you that I was going
Speaker 4: to get the same, the same two kids waiting for
Speaker 4: me at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 5: Well, I got nothing to say after that except for
Speaker 5: I just want to thank both of you for coming
Speaker 5: here and being so brave and sharing this incredible saga.
Speaker 5: It's not over yet and I hope we'll get a
Speaker 5: chance to celebrate together. And so to everyone listening, thank
Speaker 5: you for tuning in. And I want to thank you
Speaker 5: Michelle Cordero, an Angel Cordero, thank you for coming in
Speaker 5: and sharing your story.
Speaker 4: Thank you for allowing it's a story. Thank you, pig to.
Speaker 5: Us, don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever
Speaker 5: you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a
Speaker 5: proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope
Speaker 5: you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and
Speaker 5: helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project
Speaker 5: dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
Speaker 5: I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Speaker 5: Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three
Speaker 5: time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
Speaker 5: us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at
Speaker 5: Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a
Speaker 5: production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal
Speaker 5: Company Number one