Speaker 1: This interview was recorded pre COVID nineteen at a fundraiser
Speaker 1: for the Innocence Project in front of a live studio audience.
Speaker 2: It was July nineteen ninety six. While on leave from
Speaker 2: his job as a river barge deckhand, twenty two year
Speaker 2: old Damon Thibodeau visited his relatives, the Champagnes. Around noon
Speaker 2: on July nineteenth. Their fourteen year old daughter, Damon's step cousin, Crystal,
Speaker 2: walked to a nearby grocery store and never came back.
Speaker 2: Damon joined what eventually became the entire neighborhood on a
Speaker 2: frenzied search for Crystal that lasted through the night and
Speaker 2: into the next day. When he returned home for some
Speaker 2: much needed sleep, the sheriff came knocking at the door. Inexplicably,
Speaker 2: Damon had become a suspect in what would turn into
Speaker 2: a rape and homicide investigation when they found Crystal's partially
Speaker 2: nude body strangled to death with a red extension cord.
Speaker 2: Damon maintained his innocence, agreeing to a polygraph, which interrogators
Speaker 2: would tell him he had failed. Now, if you've listened
Speaker 2: to our series about false confessions with Laura and I
Speaker 2: writer and Steve Drissen. A lot of the elements of
Speaker 2: Damon's story will sound familiar. The polygraph ploy, the false
Speaker 2: fed facts followed by a false confession, in this case,
Speaker 2: to the rape and murder of an underage family member,
Speaker 2: even with no physical evidence connecting him to the crime,
Speaker 2: the wild disparity between his confession to her rape and
Speaker 2: the fact that she hadn't been raped at all, among
Speaker 2: a host of other inconsistencies, Damon Thibodeau was nevertheless convicted
Speaker 2: and sentenced to death. With the help of the Innisis Project,
Speaker 2: DNA testing, and a surprisingly cooperative district attorney, Damon was
Speaker 2: exonerated on September twenty eighth, twenty twelve. This is Wrongful
Speaker 2: Conviction with Jason Flamm Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today's
Speaker 2: episode is an very interesting when we're recording in front
Speaker 2: of a live audience. But today's particularly special because I
Speaker 2: have Vanessa Popkin, who was the first staff attorney at
Speaker 2: the Endst's Project and is a senior staff attorney now
Speaker 2: and has been on the show before.
Speaker 3: So Vanessa, welcome back.
Speaker 1: It's great to be back.
Speaker 2: And with Vanessa is Damon Thibodeaux, who was sentenced to
Speaker 2: death for a brutal crime that we now know he
Speaker 2: didn't commit. So damon, as I always say, I'm glad
Speaker 2: you're here, but i'm.
Speaker 3: Sorry you're here.
Speaker 4: Thanks for inviting me, Jason.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to the time that all this stuff happened.
Speaker 2: You were twenty two years old, and what was your
Speaker 2: life like?
Speaker 4: You were from Louisiana, right, I'm from Louisiana, spent most
Speaker 4: of my time in Texas. I'd moved back to Louisiana
Speaker 4: and I'd got a job as a deckhand working off shore.
Speaker 4: Just got my job, you know. It was three weeks
Speaker 4: into the job, took some short leave to pay some bills, things.
Speaker 2: Like that, and your stepcousin disappeared.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Yes, I was sitting at the dining room table. Her
Speaker 4: father was sitting across from me. He left to go
Speaker 4: do something. I was working on his watch. He couldn't
Speaker 4: put the band on, so I said, I'll put it
Speaker 4: on for you, and she asked me to take her
Speaker 4: to the store. I told her I couldn't do it
Speaker 4: without your parents' permission, and she said, no, I need
Speaker 4: you to take me now, and I said no, I
Speaker 4: can't do it, and she left and that was the
Speaker 4: last time I saw her.
Speaker 3: Wow, what time was that more or less.
Speaker 4: Just afternoon I believe and she.
Speaker 2: Was fourteen, right, yes, and so that was noon. When
Speaker 2: did you start to become concerned? And how did the
Speaker 2: whole thing unfold? And how did you find out that
Speaker 2: she was missing? And when did the search start? Of me,
Speaker 2: we want to know everything.
Speaker 4: Well, her mother was the one who started to panic
Speaker 4: around what time, maybe to three o'clock. She started making
Speaker 4: calls to try to find out where she is because
Speaker 4: she had never done anything like this before. She never
Speaker 4: disappeared like that, you know. She started calling people to
Speaker 4: help her look for and offered to help her out,
Speaker 4: you know, drive them around the neighborhoods and help them
Speaker 4: look for So.
Speaker 2: How many people went out, I mean, I'm envisiting like
Speaker 2: a large group like you see on TV.
Speaker 4: A whole the whole neighborhood. They had the Coast Guard
Speaker 4: helicopter there as well by nightfall, flying around the neighborhood
Speaker 4: with their light trying to help the search teams in
Speaker 4: the wooded areas. And they had fire trucks out there
Speaker 4: with all their lights and the police were out there,
Speaker 4: and there was a wooded area behind the apartment complex
Speaker 4: where they lived, and everybody in the neighborhood just went
Speaker 4: walking through it and it was like almost side by side.
Speaker 4: We had all driven around the neighborhood some of the
Speaker 4: places that she'd hang out in, some of the friends
Speaker 4: that she would hang out with, none of them had
Speaker 4: seen her.
Speaker 2: After searching all night long and having been up for
Speaker 2: the previous thirty five hours as well, Damon finally went home,
Speaker 2: planning to rejoin the search after getting some much needed rest,
Speaker 2: But just as he was about to lay down, there's
Speaker 2: a knock at the door.
Speaker 3: It's the police.
Speaker 2: Damon wants to help in any way you can, and
Speaker 2: so he.
Speaker 3: Agrees to go with them.
Speaker 2: But while at the police station, everything would change.
Speaker 4: I was in the interrogation room when they found the.
Speaker 3: Body, so they had already identified you as a suspect.
Speaker 4: Yes, why you I still don't know to this day.
Speaker 3: Do you have any theories on evidence?
Speaker 1: The state's theory was that his cousin goes missing, she
Speaker 1: walks out to the store. She's going to the wind Dixie,
Speaker 1: and when her mother starts to worry about her about
Speaker 1: an hour later and there's a search party that Damon
Speaker 1: actually leaves the house and encounters her, and it's at
Speaker 1: that point that he decides to have sex with her
Speaker 1: and kill her and then comes back, you know, to
Speaker 1: be seen and to be part of a search party.
Speaker 1: So it never really added up, but they did, you know,
Speaker 1: take him into custody and start interrogating him. And initially
Speaker 1: they were interrogating him about a missing person, right, and
Speaker 1: then during that questioning, her body's found, and so it
Speaker 1: turns into an interrogation about what happened to this girl
Speaker 1: who's missing too. Now you're a suspect and a homicide.
Speaker 2: And when she was found, the initial thought was that
Speaker 2: she had been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 3: That's correct, because she was.
Speaker 2: Partially nude and she had been strangled with a chord, right,
Speaker 2: an electrical chord.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so they interrogated you for almost half a day
Speaker 2: on no sleep. And they can, and they did, play
Speaker 2: all sorts of dirty tricks in the interrogation room. In America,
Speaker 2: unlike England and many other countries, they can lie to
Speaker 2: you in an interrogation room as.
Speaker 3: Much as they want.
Speaker 4: They are allowed to lie to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they did. They gave you a fake polygraph test,
Speaker 2: among other things. There's a thing actually was developed in
Speaker 2: Chicago about fifty years ago, right, the read technique, which
Speaker 2: is a psychological protocol that's designed to elicit confessions.
Speaker 3: Be they false or true.
Speaker 2: So what happened in the interrogation, Panessa, because you've studied
Speaker 2: this obviously you worked on the case and you got
Speaker 2: him out. I mean, fifteen years in death row, but
Speaker 2: he's here, he's not dead, which is great, right.
Speaker 1: In essence, project worked on the case. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a huge monumental effort to get to the point
Speaker 1: where Damon was released. When we looked at the confession evidence.
Speaker 1: You know, Damon was brought in and he is you know,
Speaker 1: interrogated under as you pointed out, less than ideal circumstances.
Speaker 1: You know, the night before she went missing, he had
Speaker 1: been out hanging out with friends and so he didn't
Speaker 1: get a lot of sleep. And then of course she
Speaker 1: goes missing and there's a search party, and so he's
Speaker 1: not getting sleep that night either, and then the following
Speaker 1: day he's you know, after about thirty five hours of
Speaker 1: being up, he's brought in and interrogated, and for the
Speaker 1: first five hours Damon is adamant about his innocence. Right,
Speaker 1: you brought up the read technique, and you know, in
Speaker 1: the US we went from a time where it was
Speaker 1: permissible to beat confessions out of people, and then we
Speaker 1: became more enlightened and said, no, you can't physically coerce
Speaker 1: the confession. But that coercion turned to mental coercion, and
Speaker 1: so the read technique really is about using different coercive
Speaker 1: techniques to elicit a confession, and many times it is
Speaker 1: an accurate confession, and a lot of times it also
Speaker 1: works so well that it will get people who are
Speaker 1: completely innocent to confess. So for the first five hours,
Speaker 1: Damon is saying, I'm innocent, I had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this. But part of the red technique is to
Speaker 1: not accept the denial. So when you know the suspect
Speaker 1: denies that they were involved, they keep saying, we know
Speaker 1: you're lying, and they will not accept innocence as an answer.
Speaker 1: So they did that to Damon and that ultimately they
Speaker 1: told him the only way you can prove your innocence
Speaker 1: is for you to take a polygraph. So he agrees, right,
Speaker 1: But the polygraph, as you pointed out, Jason, was a
Speaker 1: sham and it was really employed just to advance the interrogation,
Speaker 1: and so he takes what he believes to be a
Speaker 1: polygraph and they come back and they say, you failed,
Speaker 1: and we now know you're lying because you failed. So
Speaker 1: hearing that you know you failed, and if you have
Speaker 1: any belief in a polygraph test and you're twenty two,
Speaker 1: you know, they keep questioning him, how could this happen,
Speaker 1: and ultimately, you know, get him to say, well, I
Speaker 1: had a dream and in a dream, you know, I
Speaker 1: saw my cousin who was killed or girl who was killed.
Speaker 1: And then ultimately, you know, they keep questioning him. And
Speaker 1: you know, what we've seen in so many false confession
Speaker 1: cases is that through questioning, with leading questions, details of
Speaker 1: the crime are conveyed. That then, under pressure, when you know,
Speaker 1: somebody like Damon nine ten hours into the interrogation just
Speaker 1: has had enough and feels their only way out is
Speaker 1: to give the police what they want, they incorporate those
Speaker 1: details that now have been you know, either consciously or
Speaker 1: unconsciously conveyed to them by the detectives who are asking
Speaker 1: the questions. And so ultimately he gives a statement. But
Speaker 1: as we you know, would would come to learn looking
Speaker 1: at the statement. Many of the details that he gave
Speaker 1: about the crime matched what the police believed to be
Speaker 1: true at the time they were doing the interrogation, but
Speaker 1: later turned out to be details that were inconsistent with
Speaker 1: the known facts of the crime.
Speaker 2: Right, they're feeding him information, but it's not even the
Speaker 2: right information. All he's doing is repeating what they're saying
Speaker 2: to him. And if we know that a false confession
Speaker 2: is the worst possible thing in the eyes.
Speaker 3: Of a jury, they don't know it's false obviously.
Speaker 2: And what I've seen is that false confessions typically happen
Speaker 2: after long, long interrogations like yours, because someone who's guilty
Speaker 2: would prefer not to sit in there in that airless
Speaker 2: room that we've all seen on TV for hours and
Speaker 2: hours on end, in a very hostile environment with no
Speaker 2: food and no drink and no nothing, so they might
Speaker 2: as well just spit it out.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just incredible. Innocence is actually a risk
Speaker 1: factor for making a false confession, because an innocent person
Speaker 1: under that pressure feels like, let me just give them
Speaker 1: what they want to hear. And once I get out
Speaker 1: of here, the system is going to work and it's
Speaker 1: going to sort itself. Out, and people are going to
Speaker 1: realize that, you know, as they further investigate, as they
Speaker 1: do their police work that they should do, they're going
Speaker 1: to see that they got the wrong person. And here
Speaker 1: in addition to you know, telling Damon that he failed
Speaker 1: a polygraph, they also threatened him and said, look, if
Speaker 1: you don't admit this, you know, there's going to be
Speaker 1: a media circus and you're going to be granted, you know,
Speaker 1: a pedophile, and you're going to die by lethal injection.
Speaker 1: Of course, by confessing, you know, he didn't save himself
Speaker 1: from the death penalty because that's exactly what he got.
Speaker 2: And we know also that they interrogated you, Dana for
Speaker 2: nine hours, but they only recorded fifty four minutes of it, right,
Speaker 2: so we know how that works too, right, they left
Speaker 2: all the nefarious stuff out.
Speaker 4: Well, the polygraph came out missing as well. They can't
Speaker 4: find it, they don't know where, knows where it's at.
Speaker 4: But this was the premise for them to keep going
Speaker 4: with their investigations.
Speaker 2: The police used the polygraph as a ploy to coerce
Speaker 2: Damon's false confession to having raped, beaten, and strangled Crystal
Speaker 2: with a white or gray speaker wire from his car.
Speaker 3: However, the victim.
Speaker 2: Was strangled with a red extension cord. He also said
Speaker 2: that he ejaculated both in and on the victim, but
Speaker 2: the medical examiner found no semen whatsoever, and that she
Speaker 2: hadn't even been raped. Given these inconsistencies, prosecutors got very
Speaker 2: creative to.
Speaker 3: Salvage their case.
Speaker 1: So basically in the confession statement, they had Damon saying
Speaker 1: that he, you know, had sex with the victim and
Speaker 1: ejaculated on her stomach and inside of her. But as
Speaker 1: Jason said, there was no seaman evidence recovered. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, as wrongful convictions go, you know, a detective
Speaker 1: takes the stand and has asked, how can you explain,
Speaker 1: how can you account for this? And he says, well,
Speaker 1: there were maggots on the body, and so the maggots
Speaker 1: ate the sperm, and the jury bought it.
Speaker 4: The coroner's report says she hadn't even been raped, right,
Speaker 4: So it's just how they found her, and they just
Speaker 4: went off to that conclusion while she was raped, and
Speaker 4: the case there is no case.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 4: I was getting copies of whatever my lawyer at the
Speaker 4: time was getting from the crime labs. You know, I
Speaker 4: had copies of the same thing, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 4: there's no way they're going to convict me, you know,
Speaker 4: but it just didn't turn out that way.
Speaker 3: So you went to trial, and can you explain to
Speaker 3: us what that was like?
Speaker 4: I mean, you sit there and you watch as your
Speaker 4: life falls apart and there's nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 4: You're a spectator on the sideline. You're now in someone
Speaker 4: else's life. I mean, whoever did this was supposed to
Speaker 4: be sitting in that seat, not me. Now I'm sitting
Speaker 4: in that seat. So now I'm in this individual's life.
Speaker 4: I have no idea who it is. And it's just
Speaker 4: you're speechless.
Speaker 2: And when the jury went out, did you think for
Speaker 2: a minute that they would convict you.
Speaker 4: No, I didn't. I'm like, okay, they see the evidence
Speaker 4: put in front of them, you know, they're going to
Speaker 4: look at this and say, okay, there's no way he
Speaker 4: did this. But it's like they didn't even pay attention
Speaker 4: to what was being presented. And most juries don't. They
Speaker 4: don't pay attention to the evidence that's in front of them.
Speaker 4: Like you said, they hear a false confession and they think, oh,
Speaker 4: that's it. Okay, I'm not going to cont is something
Speaker 4: I didn't do, so obviously he did it, and that's
Speaker 4: just not.
Speaker 3: True, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, we know that in the first what was
Speaker 2: the first one hundred and fifty DNA exenerations, almost a
Speaker 2: quarter of them involve false confessions.
Speaker 3: Right, that's how common it is, right.
Speaker 1: And the numbers just growing. So now we have three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five DNA xonerations and we're up to
Speaker 1: twenty eight percent have involved false confessions. It is one
Speaker 1: of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. And yet it's
Speaker 1: very hard for the public and judges and lawyers even
Speaker 1: to understand how you would confess to a rap or
Speaker 1: murder that you didn't commit. With a false confession, you're
Speaker 1: almost certain to be convicted, and more often people than
Speaker 1: will take a guilty plea because the chance of a
Speaker 1: conviction despite innocence is almost certain.
Speaker 2: So the jury comes back and they declare you guilty
Speaker 2: on all counts.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can't imagine.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, there's not a whole lot you can do. Now.
Speaker 4: Your life is not yours anymore. You now belong to
Speaker 4: the state. You are the property of the state. That's
Speaker 4: why they give you a number. You know, they took
Speaker 4: me to Angola, took all of my identification and destroyed
Speaker 4: it everything, gave me a little prison id with a
Speaker 4: prison number on it, and that's it. Put me in
Speaker 4: a cell.
Speaker 2: And Angola, just to paint a picture, is formerly a
Speaker 2: slave plantation. The reason it's called Angola is because the
Speaker 2: slaves were brought over from.
Speaker 4: Angola and it was once the bloodiest prison in the country.
Speaker 2: And there you were, Yeah, how did you deal with it?
Speaker 2: And how did you even find the strength to survive
Speaker 2: and ultimately reach out and get a hold of the
Speaker 2: Innocence Project?
Speaker 3: And you know, how are you even here? It's amazing.
Speaker 4: Well, for the first three years, I contemplated whether or
Speaker 4: not I wanted to be part of the monkey show?
Speaker 3: What's the monkey show?
Speaker 4: The execute? I actually thought about dropping my appeals and
Speaker 4: having them carry out the execution and just be done
Speaker 4: with it. They make a spectacle when they execute someone,
Speaker 4: as everyone knows. You know, it's all on the media.
Speaker 4: You know, it's the taking of a life, and they've
Speaker 4: turned it into some kind of sport. You know, everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 4: I can't wait to kill this guy. And I did
Speaker 4: not want to be part of that. Things are a
Speaker 4: little different now because now they're looking at things, well,
Speaker 4: they're trying to look at it more humanly. But it
Speaker 4: doesn't matter how you kill someone. It's still an inhumane act.
Speaker 4: And with all the exonerations in the country today, I
Speaker 4: have to ask the question, how many more is it.
Speaker 3: Going to take before we abolish it?
Speaker 4: Before we bolish it? How many more you already know
Speaker 4: you've killed innocent people? How many more? Twenty three hours
Speaker 4: a day, no contact with anyone.
Speaker 2: Twenty three hours a day in the cell, with no
Speaker 2: human contact, no, how do you deal with it?
Speaker 3: How did you deal with it? Like? How did you
Speaker 3: not lose your mind?
Speaker 4: You find things to do, like what whatever? You can
Speaker 4: play cards, exercise, clean the cell. I actually scrubbed myself
Speaker 4: with a toothbrush.
Speaker 3: Just to stay busy, just to stay busy.
Speaker 2: So ultimately you ended up somehow or other finding out
Speaker 2: about the Ennos's project and reaching out.
Speaker 4: Well, Denise lebuff had come to see me one day.
Speaker 4: This was, you know, long before I had written the
Speaker 4: Nnocence Project. We'll get to that in a minute. And
Speaker 4: this is the first time I had met Denise. Everyone
Speaker 4: calls her Denny. I call her Denise it's a respect thing.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but she's sitting down in front of
Speaker 4: me and she's like, Okay, look, you didn't do this.
Speaker 4: I know your first lawyer wasn't all that good, but
Speaker 4: give me a chance. And from that point on, I
Speaker 4: made it a point to at least attempt in existence,
Speaker 4: I suppose, instead of just giving up on it. And
Speaker 4: you know, I had heard about the Innocence Project and
Speaker 4: I actually wrote them a letter. I gave them my
Speaker 4: lawyer's information, my information and the case number, and I
Speaker 4: sent it to him and I got a response back saying, Okay,
Speaker 4: this is the only correspondence we're going to have because
Speaker 4: until they actually pick up a case. That's how it works,
Speaker 4: because you know, obviously there are guilty guys out there
Speaker 4: who are writing the Innocence Project trying to find a loophole.
Speaker 4: And that's the type of letter that I got. Next thing,
Speaker 4: I know, you know, there's this law firm in Minnesota
Speaker 4: who's down there taking my case. There's the Innocence Project.
Speaker 4: Barry and Vanessa show up one day and I'm like, okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is that? Like It's like the Avengers ride
Speaker 3: again or something.
Speaker 4: Right now, you look at it. Yeah, it comes through
Speaker 4: with the hammer, you know. But still here I am,
Speaker 4: what six seven years into this death sentence, and it
Speaker 4: takes another three or four years before they're ready to
Speaker 4: go talk to the district attorney. You know. Steve calls
Speaker 4: me Steve Kaplan, he's one of the lawyers from Frederickson
Speaker 4: and Byron who handled my case, and he's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: how do you want to do this? You want to
Speaker 4: just go to courtA, you want to talk to the
Speaker 4: district attorney. I said, talk to the district attorney first,
Speaker 4: and everyone was against the idea. It's not going to work.
Speaker 4: You know who he is. He's a product of Paul
Speaker 4: Connick and they just want to kill people. And I said, well,
Speaker 4: what do I have to lose? You know, it's either
Speaker 4: another ten twenty year fight or maybe just by luck,
Speaker 4: he'll talk to you. So they set up a meeting
Speaker 4: and he agreed to reinvestigate my case.
Speaker 3: And are you in that meeting? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So this was you know, now there's a lot of
Speaker 1: talk about conviction review units, you know, being established throughout
Speaker 1: the country, but this was several years ag go. And
Speaker 1: so you know, we arranged a meeting to go talk
Speaker 1: to the DA Paul Konnick and who's the cousin of
Speaker 1: Harry Connick. So he's the good cousin and he is
Speaker 1: the DA in Jefferson Parish, and you know, big team there.
Speaker 1: They had an investigator, Vince Lamia in the room and
Speaker 1: Steve Wimberley the first assistant. So they assembled the big
Speaker 1: team and we basically went through a presentation of the
Speaker 1: confession of the timeline which just virtually made it impossible
Speaker 1: for Damon to have been involved. So when we walked
Speaker 1: through and we did a presentation, they did acknowledge that
Speaker 1: there were enough problems in the case that they should
Speaker 1: undertake an investigation. And it was quite a massive undertaking.
Speaker 1: Every piece of evidence that existed was sent out for
Speaker 1: DNA testing, and because he had been arrested that night,
Speaker 1: they had taken a male rape kit from him. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was not one piece of physical evidence to suggest
Speaker 1: that he had anything to do with the crime. And
Speaker 1: in fact, the victim had been strangled with a piece
Speaker 1: of wire and it had been burned off of a
Speaker 1: wire that was hanging in a tree. So the perpetrator
Speaker 1: burned it off and then took it to strangle the victim.
Speaker 1: And we were able to get some bloods and DNA
Speaker 1: on that wire at the scene that excluded Damon. So
Speaker 1: you know, there was years of a joint reinvestigation with
Speaker 1: the district attorney's office to get to the point where
Speaker 1: they acknowledged that Damon was innocent and they had convicted
Speaker 1: and sent an innocent man to death row.
Speaker 4: How often is it that a district attorney that's prosecuted
Speaker 4: a case is the same district attorney that comes back
Speaker 4: and releases that individual.
Speaker 3: Rare?
Speaker 4: It's rare. So Connick did something in Louisiana that was
Speaker 4: pretty much unheard of and it could have hurt him.
Speaker 4: You know, he took that chance to step out there
Speaker 4: and say, okay, wait, we got a problem. I'm I'm
Speaker 4: glad he got out of his comfort zone and decided
Speaker 4: to take a step in a new direction.
Speaker 2: So now it comes to the good part of the story, right,
Speaker 2: the moment right when you found out that you were
Speaker 2: actually going to go home?
Speaker 3: How did you find out? What was it like?
Speaker 4: It was a phone call on a Wednesday, I think
Speaker 4: it was. Everything was agreed to. They had set something
Speaker 4: up to have the judge and the district attorney sign everything,
Speaker 4: but the thing. They were trying to get everything done
Speaker 4: before Friday because that's when the prison office is closed.
Speaker 4: So this was all done on a Friday, and they
Speaker 4: had everything faxed over to the prison and the sergeant
Speaker 4: comes down to the cell. He says, pack your stuff.
Speaker 4: You're going home, but first we have to take you
Speaker 4: over to the hospital to have you checked out. So
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm in a full jumpsuit and chains, and
Speaker 4: I go to the hospital and the ranking officers there
Speaker 4: is like, buyse in a jumpsuit and chains, where's his property? Well,
Speaker 4: it's everything's back to the cell where he's going home.
Speaker 4: He's not supposed to be going back, so they have
Speaker 4: to take me back to death row, take me out
Speaker 4: of the jumpsuit, and I gotta put my clothes on
Speaker 4: and grab my stuff. So you know, it's kind of
Speaker 4: it's not real until you walk out the gate.
Speaker 2: And after you worked on this case for all those years,
Speaker 2: what was it like for you?
Speaker 1: Well, it was amazing. I personally wasn't there because I
Speaker 1: was basically nine months pregnant and I couldn't get on
Speaker 1: a plane, so I missed that moment of seeing Damon.
Speaker 1: But it was you know, Barry Shek was there, Steve
Speaker 1: Kaplan from the law firm, Denny Lebuffe from the Capitol
Speaker 1: Resource Center in Louisiana, and it just, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't even know what the estimate is of Steve's hours.
Speaker 4: Steve, I mean, he was so instrumental in helping me
Speaker 4: out while I was there, and post release, he helped
Speaker 4: me out in ways that you know, you just can't repay.
Speaker 4: You know, this man, he flew down here and drove
Speaker 4: me back to Minnesota because I had decided to move
Speaker 4: to Minnesota after I was released to start things over,
Speaker 4: and I lived with him until November of that year,
Speaker 4: got my own place, and he actually the Innocence Project
Speaker 4: helped me get a car, helped me with my rent,
Speaker 4: and Steve helped me out with that as well. And
Speaker 4: you know, I can't repay him for what he's done.
Speaker 2: So damon, I have to ask you. And it's beautiful
Speaker 2: to hear you say that. Have you been compensated? No,
Speaker 2: so you've gotten nothing.
Speaker 4: I've gotten nothing. There is current litigation, right.
Speaker 3: But you know you're tiving to make ends to me
Speaker 3: on your own.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, if I don't do nothing, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: lose my mind. You know, there are things I want
Speaker 4: to do, places I want to go. You know, I
Speaker 4: like that juicy steak, you know, but.
Speaker 3: You gotta pay for it, right, So you're out there.
Speaker 4: So you know, I'm out there doing my job, and
Speaker 4: you know, if it comes through, then hey, I'm all
Speaker 4: for it. But if not, then you know I've got
Speaker 4: a job to do.
Speaker 2: So look, I think, Damon, it's a it's a terrible story.
Speaker 2: It's a remarkable story. You're a remarkable guy. You're out
Speaker 2: there now driving a truck and living life and seeing
Speaker 2: the country and experiencing freedom, and that's awesome and we're
Speaker 2: really proud of you. And now we get to my
Speaker 2: favorite part of the show, which is that I actually
Speaker 2: get to stop talking and just listen. And so before
Speaker 2: I do that, I want to thank you both again
Speaker 2: for coming and being on the show. Vanessa Popkin, senior
Speaker 2: staff attorney at The Innocence Project, badass lawyer and human being.
Speaker 2: And Damon Thibodeau death row xannery and inspirational character. So
Speaker 2: I think we're gonna save the best for last, and
Speaker 2: that's you, Damon. So with all due respect that we're
Speaker 2: going to turn it over to you Vanessa for your
Speaker 2: closing thoughts.
Speaker 1: Well, we've talked about, you know, the number of people
Speaker 1: in prison and the US leading in terms of our
Speaker 1: prison population, leading the world, and you know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to and what the error rates are and how
Speaker 1: many people that means are innocent in prison today, and
Speaker 1: when you take a look just at death row in itself,
Speaker 1: we have about twenty seven hundred people on death row.
Speaker 1: There have been conservative estimates that four four point one
Speaker 1: percent of people on death row are actually innocent, and
Speaker 1: so that would mean there are one hundred and nine
Speaker 1: people incarcerated today on death row facing execution for crimes
Speaker 1: that they didn't commit.
Speaker 4: David, Well, you know, being where I am now as
Speaker 4: opposed to where I was six years ago. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of guys in my position they don't have
Speaker 4: anything when they walk out, and it's sometimes years before
Speaker 4: they get compensation. I had a lot of help getting
Speaker 4: where I am. You know, the reason why I'm driving
Speaker 4: a truck is because I'm at a guy at the
Speaker 4: Minneapolis Auto Show, a guy named Bill Collins, friends of
Speaker 4: truck driving school. He was, you know, at the auto show.
Speaker 4: He drives you know, stock cart as well as a
Speaker 4: hobby and he asked me one day, he said, what
Speaker 4: do you think about driving truck? And I said it's okay.
Speaker 4: He said, well, I want to pay for you to
Speaker 4: go through my school and get your CDL. I'm sitting
Speaker 4: here thinking, okay, I have the Innocence Project doing this,
Speaker 4: I have Steve doing this. Now here's this guy here.
Speaker 4: He's offering to pay for me to go to schools
Speaker 4: to get this license. You know, here I am today,
Speaker 4: I'm pretty much paid to see the country. You know,
Speaker 4: But it takes a lot to give someone their life back.
Speaker 4: And I don't mean life as breathing. I mean we
Speaker 4: walk out. We have no job, we have no social security,
Speaker 4: we have no retirement, we don't have a license, we
Speaker 4: don't have an ID. I had to fight to get
Speaker 4: my birth certificate with my name on it. And if
Speaker 4: not for the Innocence Project and other lawyers involved, then
Speaker 4: I don't know where I'd be right now. More programs
Speaker 4: need to be put in place for exona reeves, because
Speaker 4: someone who actually gets out on parole has more resources
Speaker 4: at their disposal than someone like myself. And you know
Speaker 4: that should not be the case. You know, Being where
Speaker 4: I am now is it's a blessing you know, and
Speaker 4: coming from where I've been, will but Reduce said it best.
Speaker 4: My worst day out here is better than my best
Speaker 4: day in prison. So I think I thank everybody for
Speaker 4: helping me out every day. I try every day to
Speaker 4: do it right, So.
Speaker 3: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
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Speaker 2: And I'm a proud donor to the Ennisis Project, and
Speaker 2: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 2: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 2: to anisonsproject dot org to learn how to donate and
Speaker 2: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 2: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
Speaker 2: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
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Speaker 2: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Vlahm is a production of Lava
Speaker 2: for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one