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 3: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today's
Speaker 3: featured guest is Blaize Lobato, who only recently was freed
Speaker 3: from prison after serving over sixteen years for a crime
Speaker 3: she didn't commit.
Speaker 5: July first, two thousand and one, a homeless man named
Speaker 5: Duran Bailey was found brutally murdered. An eighteen year old
Speaker 5: was found guilty of that crime. Lobata was sentenced to
Speaker 5: thirteen to forty five years after being found guilty of
Speaker 5: manslaughter in two thousand and six. At the crime scene
Speaker 5: there were cigarette butts, chewing gum, bloody shoe prints, fingerprints,
Speaker 5: pubic hair, and seamen.
Speaker 1: Dozens of the items at the crime scene were never tested.
Speaker 5: The family of Lobato and her supporters maintained it was
Speaker 5: a botched police investigation in which DNA was never tested,
Speaker 5: leeds were never followed, and more importantly, the family says
Speaker 5: the savage killer or killers are still out there.
Speaker 3: Blaze, welcome to the show. I'm sorry you're here.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate that.
Speaker 4: You know. I'm sorry as well, but it is what
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 3: And with Blaze are two of her attorneys, Innocence Project
Speaker 3: staff attorneys Jane Boucher and Odd Non Sultan. Jane od Non.
Speaker 6: Welcome, Hi, Hi, thank you for having us.
Speaker 3: Glad to have you here. So Blaze, your story, even
Speaker 3: among all the crazy stories that we cover on this show,
Speaker 3: has elements that we've never heard about. And I want
Speaker 3: to get right into it. Let's go back to your childhood.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're still a child pretty much when all
Speaker 3: this happens, you're still a teenager. But where did you
Speaker 3: grow up? How did you grow up? How was your
Speaker 3: life before the before the storm hit?
Speaker 4: Well, I was born in Last Crisis, New Mexico. When
Speaker 4: I was about two years old, my biological mother and
Speaker 4: my father came to Las Vegas to begin their new
Speaker 4: life together, and shortly thereafter things didn't work out in
Speaker 4: their relationship. My mother took my father to court and
Speaker 4: gained custody of me. When I was about five years old,
Speaker 4: she took me to California where I was sexually abused
Speaker 4: by her boyfriend for an extended period of time. And
Speaker 4: because of that abuse, my dad got me back without
Speaker 4: going through the courts.
Speaker 3: How six nice Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4: So from that point on we lived in Las Vegas.
Speaker 4: You know, there were periods of feast and famine because
Speaker 4: of my parents' lifestyle. At times, my father sold drugs
Speaker 4: to support our family. And when that was the case,
Speaker 4: everything was wonderful. We had everything, and when it wasn't,
Speaker 4: you know, we were living on beans and rice for
Speaker 4: months at a time. So my childhood was was you know,
Speaker 4: it was tough. It was tough, and you know, when
Speaker 4: my family would get too far over the edge, or
Speaker 4: later on, when I started getting in trouble as a teenager,
Speaker 4: they would ship me to Texas to be with my grandparents.
Speaker 4: So it was kind of a back and forth game.
Speaker 4: At some point, I think I was about ten or eleven,
Speaker 4: my dad's drug abuse became so so bad that my
Speaker 4: stepmom gave him an ultimatum that either they leave or
Speaker 4: she would leave him. So we moved to a small
Speaker 4: town in northern Nevada called Panaka, and it was very difficult.
Speaker 4: It was a predominantly Mormon community and we stood out.
Speaker 4: We were the outcasts, and it made it difficult for me.
Speaker 4: So when I had junior high school, the only place
Speaker 4: that I found acceptance was with the bad crowd, and
Speaker 4: thus the drug abuse began.
Speaker 3: Right, So you ended up getting involved and drugs, But
Speaker 3: it's important to note that you were actually drug free
Speaker 3: at the time that the criminal justice system collapsed inwards
Speaker 3: on you. Yeah, okay, so you you got involved with drugs.
Speaker 3: You were around drugs so much was probably almost inevitable.
Speaker 4: Right when I was seventeen, I was raped by my
Speaker 4: best friend's father, and it was at that point that
Speaker 4: I decided never again and So when I was assaulted
Speaker 4: in Las Vegas later and I escaped, I was so
Speaker 4: proud of myself for being able to defend myself and
Speaker 4: not be a victim yet again that I told everyone.
Speaker 3: And by the way, that's not a story you hear
Speaker 3: every day, right, You don't hear too many stories of
Speaker 3: rapes going wrong unless somebody walks in on them, or
Speaker 3: you know, there's a you know, there's some outside interference.
Speaker 3: Otherwise people get trapped and some of them considers it
Speaker 3: was likely just to survive. Right, So how did you
Speaker 3: manage to escape this rapet to where was it?
Speaker 4: It was at the Budget Suite on Boulder Highway and
Speaker 4: Las Vegas.
Speaker 3: How did it come about?
Speaker 4: I was out late partying and I was leaving my
Speaker 4: car and I got attacked in the parking lot and
Speaker 4: I had a knife on me, and I fended off
Speaker 4: the attack with a knife. I don't know what I
Speaker 4: cut if I cut him, you know, I don't know
Speaker 4: the extent of his injuries, obviously, but I was able
Speaker 4: to get out from underneath him and get away, get
Speaker 4: in my car and drive.
Speaker 3: So he tried to rape you in the parking lot.
Speaker 3: In the parking lot in the middle of the night,
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night, so you got away
Speaker 3: for once, for once, finally, and you're feeling sort of triumphant.
Speaker 3: So you go home and you tell people about it,
Speaker 3: because I mean, I'm excited to tell people about it
Speaker 3: right now. So I imagine it would have been something
Speaker 3: you would have been spreading the news.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was. I was proud of myself. So things
Speaker 4: got a little crazy after that. I continued the drug use,
Speaker 4: and at some point I decided that that was not
Speaker 4: the life that I wanted to live. So I left
Speaker 4: Las Vegas and went back to Panaka to get clean.
Speaker 4: And there was a little bit of back and forth
Speaker 4: in there. I can't remember exactly the dates and times,
Speaker 4: but I know that I came back to Vegas for
Speaker 4: a very short period of time and called my dad
Speaker 4: and made him come get me so that I could
Speaker 4: leave again. And then actually, on the night of the
Speaker 4: eighth was when I was going to go back to
Speaker 4: Vegas again and try again and again without success, and
Speaker 4: ended up back in Panaka. So when the homicide detective
Speaker 4: showed up in my house, the first thing that they
Speaker 4: said to me was, we know what happened to you
Speaker 4: as a child. Because there was police reports and such,
Speaker 4: so they were able to find it in their system
Speaker 4: and they used that as a tool to manipulate me.
Speaker 3: So how did they use that as a tool to
Speaker 3: manipulate you?
Speaker 4: At that point, I hadn't worked through the trauma, so
Speaker 4: when they brought it up and they started asking questions,
Speaker 4: it immediately shut me down and made me emotional. And
Speaker 4: then they were like, we know you were attacked. They
Speaker 4: acted like they were on my side. They asked me
Speaker 4: three times, they questioned me through three times before they
Speaker 4: ever recorded, and they didn't give me my Miranda rights
Speaker 4: until after the fact, which you know, we never made
Speaker 4: an issue of because it's neither here nor there. I mean,
Speaker 4: it should have been maybe, but I don't have any
Speaker 4: proof because I signed the Miranda card, so I can't
Speaker 4: say it was before or it was after.
Speaker 3: You know, when they started questioning you, did you know
Speaker 3: what they were questioning you about?
Speaker 4: No. I assumed that it was the situation I went through,
Speaker 4: and I thought, oh, I must have really, you know,
Speaker 4: it must have been a traumatic injury and it must
Speaker 4: have killed the guy. I had no idea they were
Speaker 4: talking about something else in another part of town at
Speaker 4: another time, of the year. I had no idea.
Speaker 3: How crazy, right, So you're having two different conversations at
Speaker 3: the same time, and the.
Speaker 4: Police never they never questioned me further to iron out
Speaker 4: the discrepancies.
Speaker 3: This is like surreal, right, they're actually questioning you about
Speaker 3: a crime that you don't even know they're and you've
Speaker 3: got this other thing in your head. There must be
Speaker 3: like some very strange moments in that conversation.
Speaker 6: Her statement is about the attack from budget suites. That's
Speaker 6: what she's actually describing. And they had I mean, we
Speaker 6: talked about this tunnel vision that they weren't willing to question,
Speaker 6: like some of the things she said doesn't make sense.
Speaker 4: Everything that was inconsistent. They just said, oh, she used drugs,
Speaker 4: right and discounted it.
Speaker 3: That's a catch all. And Jane to talk about that,
Speaker 3: and I also like to get your just a summary
Speaker 3: of this gruesome crime that they decided that she must
Speaker 3: have been a suspect in, but they were questioning her
Speaker 3: about something that was completely foreign to her.
Speaker 7: Sure, So just to give a little bit of timeline,
Speaker 7: you know, this crime, this person, Duran Bailey was the
Speaker 7: name of the victim, was killed on July eighth and
Speaker 7: on July twentieth, the police drive the three hours you know,
Speaker 7: from Las Vegas to Panaka and basically bombard plays in
Speaker 7: her home. It's sort of you know, her family home.
Speaker 7: Put her in a room, you know, tell her parents
Speaker 7: that they can't be in the room, close the doors,
Speaker 7: and they start interrogating her about what she thinks, as
Speaker 7: you just said, was something that happened two months earlier
Speaker 7: when you were attacked and these this man tried to rape.
Speaker 3: You, which was self defense exactly.
Speaker 7: And you know when Blaze left the parking lot that
Speaker 7: night and drove off and got away from this man,
Speaker 7: the man was standing, you know, he was you know,
Speaker 7: I think ripping his groin area and in pain. You know,
Speaker 7: maybe there was a struggle, but he was alive, and
Speaker 7: he was, you know, for someone who was going to
Speaker 7: move on from this. The person who was a victim
Speaker 7: in this case that she ultimately gets prosecuted for, was
Speaker 7: brutalized so badly. There is no question that there could
Speaker 7: be a confusion between the man that sexually assaulted her
Speaker 7: and this person who ends up being victimized. He was
Speaker 7: found with his penis completely severed five feet away from
Speaker 7: his body. Both of his eyes were beaten shut to
Speaker 7: the point that no one could even look inside them.
Speaker 7: He had I think something like eighteen or nineteen gashes
Speaker 7: all over his body. He had led out, you know,
Speaker 7: entirely in a garbage dump, and he was completely covered
Speaker 7: by garbage to the point where no one found him
Speaker 7: for probably a few hours. So the scene where this
Speaker 7: person is found is completely different than what Blaze describes
Speaker 7: to the police during that interrogation. And I think one
Speaker 7: of the most incredible things about this case is that
Speaker 7: interrogation is recorded. There is a recording of it, there's
Speaker 7: a transcription of that recording, and so we talk. I'm
Speaker 7: sure you've talked in this podcast before about false confessions
Speaker 7: and the importance of recording statements. The crazy thing here
Speaker 7: is that statement was recorded, the police could review it,
Speaker 7: the prosecutors could review it, and the tunnel vision was
Speaker 7: so extreme that they didn't even see She's not talking.
Speaker 7: She can't be talking about this assault, this person being killed.
Speaker 7: She's talking about something that happened two months before.
Speaker 3: What a bizarre set of circumstances. And the reason that
Speaker 3: they came to what was the name of the town again, Panaka? Yeah,
Speaker 3: not a place I've ever heard of before. I guess
Speaker 3: most people haven't. But the reason they came there was
Speaker 3: because somebody had mentioned to somebody else about you, having
Speaker 3: said to them or a friend about this assault that
Speaker 3: you survived by defending yourself, and they thought, well, if
Speaker 3: this guy was cut with a knife somewhere near the
Speaker 3: groin area, then you must be this crazy killer who
Speaker 3: goes around cutting men's penises off and throwing them on
Speaker 3: the street. I mean, this crime from what it sounds like.
Speaker 3: I mean, people can't see you on the radio, but
Speaker 3: you're not a giant, imposing figure. It sounds like whoever
Speaker 3: did this was probably a very strong probably a man
Speaker 3: can't say that for sure.
Speaker 4: But well, you know, it's interesting that you brought that up,
Speaker 4: because one of their own experts said that the crime
Speaker 4: itself was inconsistent with a woman, and that, in fact,
Speaker 4: because of the severity of the injuries, they wouldn't be
Speaker 4: surprised if there was more than one perpetrator.
Speaker 3: Well, and actually they overlooked what should have been an
Speaker 3: obvious clue. Do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 6: It's absurd. There was a woman who had actually been
Speaker 6: attacked by mister Bailey a week or so before reported it.
Speaker 4: It told the police where they could find him, and
Speaker 4: they never did, so if they had, maybe he would
Speaker 4: still be alive.
Speaker 6: Most remarkable, I mean a sipham is that the day
Speaker 6: the police where they're investigating and sort of at the scene,
Speaker 6: she lived like right behind the dumpster era, there's like
Speaker 6: an apartment complex. She comes to the scene and speaks
Speaker 6: with the police officers and oh, is that Durant Bailey
Speaker 6: who's dead, and tells them about this past incident with him.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's right there for them to look into.
Speaker 3: And there was more to that too, right there was.
Speaker 7: She also tells the police that she has a number
Speaker 7: of male friends who live kind of with her or
Speaker 7: near her in this apartment complex, and that she had
Speaker 7: told them about this attack, that she had been raped
Speaker 7: by Duran Bailey, and you know that they were upset
Speaker 7: by it and they had actually some of them apparently
Speaker 7: had had issues with mister Bailey in the past. So
Speaker 7: what appears at a crime scene like a crime that
Speaker 7: is committed by at least one man with a weapon,
Speaker 7: if not several. I mean, it seems like a gang beating.
Speaker 6: Of sorts with a lot of anger, with a lot.
Speaker 7: Of anger and a lot of power and a lot
Speaker 7: of blood that somehow does not encourage the police to
Speaker 7: investigate these men and to look into their backgrounds and
Speaker 7: pursue them as suspects. Instead, the case is cold for
Speaker 7: two weeks and when they get a phone call saying
Speaker 7: from Panaka saying there's a girl up here talking about
Speaker 7: an injury with the penis, They drive up there get
Speaker 7: what they consider to be a confession, and that's it.
Speaker 3: Did they never even talk to these three guys? No?
Speaker 7: I mean, they claim that they made some cursory efforts
Speaker 7: to look into their background, but they never spoke with them,
Speaker 7: and there's.
Speaker 4: No proof that they actually did that, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, granted, maybe they didn't, maybe they didn't treat
Speaker 3: it as a super high priority because he was a
Speaker 3: homeless guy. But this was a vicious, terrible, gruesome crime
Speaker 3: that it's not illogical to think that if someone has
Speaker 3: the capability or some people have the capability of doing
Speaker 3: that to this homeless man, he's probably not going to
Speaker 3: be the last victim.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, And when you think about all of the harms
Speaker 7: that are compounded in this case, right, like, not only
Speaker 7: was Blaize victimized two months before this, and she it
Speaker 7: was you managed to escape, but you know, only by
Speaker 7: her own strength and determination, not because of help by
Speaker 7: the police. You then have this woman who's actually raped
Speaker 7: by mister Bailey, the person who ultimately is killed and
Speaker 7: the victim in this case, and the police never pursue him,
Speaker 7: you know, and never go after him or try to
Speaker 7: prosecute him against hers, and then he ends up falling.
Speaker 3: Victim to vigilant, just exactly.
Speaker 7: Because that's what has to step in to fix it.
Speaker 3: So at no point did anybody in law enforcement get anything, right,
Speaker 3: is that fair to say?
Speaker 4: That's fair to say.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile you're in the center of this and you
Speaker 3: don't even know what the fuck is going on.
Speaker 1: No, And.
Speaker 4: The more along the way we found more and more
Speaker 4: and more things out At the first trial, there were
Speaker 4: so many things that weren't available to us. We didn't
Speaker 4: know that there was pubic hairs found. We didn't know
Speaker 4: that there was a rape kit dona and that none
Speaker 4: of it had been tested. We didn't know that he
Speaker 4: had cards in his pocket that indicate that he was
Speaker 4: a police informant. We didn't know these things.
Speaker 3: Wow, this is getting deeper and deeper, right.
Speaker 4: So, I mean there was plenty of avenues for them
Speaker 4: to pursue to investigate, and they did not.
Speaker 3: Wow, so strange. I mean, it just doesn't And then
Speaker 3: they just decide to drive three hours when all they
Speaker 3: had to do was go next door. Instead of going
Speaker 3: next door, they drove three hours and found you.
Speaker 4: And it gets worse because you can clearly see the
Speaker 4: malice behind their actions. It's illustrated very well in the
Speaker 4: second trial when Detective thousand lied on the stand claiming
Speaker 4: that his secretary did the investigation. We had no idea.
Speaker 4: But it turns out detectives don't have secretaries, So who
Speaker 4: did the investigation? Nobody exactly exactly and.
Speaker 3: We don't even know which investigation which as well as
Speaker 3: who knows well there was none, so it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 3: He could have been refright to anything, right, but.
Speaker 4: At the second trial we didn't have that information. There
Speaker 4: was no way for us because when you're not a
Speaker 4: part of their system, you don't know how it works.
Speaker 4: You don't know what they have and what they don't have,
Speaker 4: So how do you defend yourself against that?
Speaker 3: I just it's it's so difficult for me to understand
Speaker 3: why they would want to victimize a victim. Right, you're
Speaker 3: a victim. I mean even we were a victim your
Speaker 3: whole life to this point. They knew that, right. It's
Speaker 3: just so it's so weird to me how the morality
Speaker 3: breaks down so totally.
Speaker 7: I think one thing in this case is, you know,
Speaker 7: Blaize wasn't living in Las Vegas. She was living three
Speaker 7: hours north in a tiny town, which I think in
Speaker 7: the trial got painted as a place that's really different
Speaker 7: from where we live in Las Vegas. You know, listen
Speaker 7: jury members to what I'm saying. She's not one of us.
Speaker 7: She's from a different place, and she's a teenager. We're
Speaker 7: going to paint her as wild and drug addicted and
Speaker 7: different and the kind of person that we don't want
Speaker 7: in our community. I think the prosecution did a really effective,
Speaker 7: evil job of painting her as this wild child who
Speaker 7: we just want to make sure we can punish and
Speaker 7: keep off our streets. And there was a lot of othering,
Speaker 7: and that's a huge part of I think what the
Speaker 7: criminal justice system does generally is to make people seem
Speaker 7: like Pariah's when you know, in fact, she was never
Speaker 7: investigated and they didn't look clearly into the case. But
Speaker 7: I think she was really hurt by the fact that
Speaker 7: she wasn't from Las Vegas, and they knew about her
Speaker 7: drug issues at the time and were able to just
Speaker 7: use that as a character assassination as opposed to an
Speaker 7: actual prosecution.
Speaker 3: Do you think that the prosecutor knew that he was
Speaker 3: prosecuting a cent woman?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and in fact, I'm not the first person that
Speaker 4: he did it too.
Speaker 6: And their theory at trial was that Blaize left Panaka
Speaker 6: in the early morning hours ago find drugs. She went
Speaker 6: all the way to Las Vegas to do that, which
Speaker 6: is three hours away.
Speaker 3: Because there's nowhere in between Panaca and right so you could.
Speaker 6: Get drub and that, of all the places in Las
Speaker 6: Vegas to get drugs, she went to this behind the
Speaker 6: bank across the street from the Palms Hotel, which is
Speaker 6: like off the street. It exist, it didn't even it's
Speaker 6: actually being built at the time. And then she met
Speaker 6: this man who she's never met. I mean, this was uncontract.
Speaker 6: There were strangers. She meets this guy, mister Bailey, and
Speaker 6: mister Bailey in exchange for drugs, wanted a sexual favor,
Speaker 6: and that Blaze flipped out and cut his penis off
Speaker 6: and killed him. Brutally murdered him, then hopped into her
Speaker 6: car and high tailed it back to Panaka three hours away.
Speaker 6: When I was there a thing and no one, no
Speaker 6: one in their office, was like, hmm, does this make sense?
Speaker 6: Maybe this is not quite right.
Speaker 3: Maybe there should be some blood in the car, or
Speaker 3: there should be some leather evidence of biological level. This
Speaker 3: is just not how people.
Speaker 6: This is insane, Like no one does this, and that
Speaker 6: maybe there's someone else who lives in Las Vegas who
Speaker 6: committed this car and maybe that's a more likely explanation
Speaker 6: for what happened. I mean, that's what you do as
Speaker 6: a lawyer, right, You look at a case, you analyze
Speaker 6: the faction, think what makes sense, what doesn't make sense.
Speaker 6: And they're the prosecution. They don't have to go to
Speaker 6: trial in these cases. They chose to go to trial
Speaker 6: on these sets of facts, like their job is to
Speaker 6: do justice. They don't inherent cases like defense attorneys and
Speaker 6: have to defend someone to make best what they do.
Speaker 6: They choose the theory they go forward with. And the
Speaker 6: fact that no one, not a district attorney, not the
Speaker 6: district attorney, looked at this case said you know what,
Speaker 6: this doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: Is really scary.
Speaker 4: Well, in addition to that, the original DA had a
Speaker 4: discussion with my attorney at the time, who was Phil Cone,
Speaker 4: and he put a deal of three years on the
Speaker 4: table and I was like, absolutely not. I'm not taking that.
Speaker 4: I didn't do it.
Speaker 3: At this point, you probably still I.
Speaker 4: Believed in the justice system. I thought everything would would
Speaker 4: work out a trial.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I had no idea that the prosecution was going to
Speaker 4: use smoke and mirrors on their own science and try
Speaker 4: and paint it to the jury that there was evidence
Speaker 4: that wasn't there. Like, for instance, when they did the
Speaker 4: luminol and phenal failing test on my car, they got
Speaker 4: a reaction, it was a false positive. They did the
Speaker 4: hemoglobin test, which is what actually determines if it's blood,
Speaker 4: and it was negative, but they painted it to the
Speaker 4: jury like there was something there when there was nothing there.
Speaker 6: That's just to put context. That's what you were talking about, Jason,
Speaker 6: that there should be blood in her car.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: They ran these tests that they had an expert to
Speaker 6: testify about, these sorts of tests that confirmed the existence
Speaker 6: of blood. As Blay says, they came up negative. There
Speaker 6: was a false positive, but they inferred they left this
Speaker 6: insinuation that she tried to clean up the blood with
Speaker 6: bleach or something like.
Speaker 3: That, right, But then Luminaul would show the bleach. I mean,
Speaker 3: you can't hide bleach. You can't have it both ways, right, you.
Speaker 6: Can't say twist the science, right, which at some point,
Speaker 6: when you look at the facts, you're like, nothing's adding
Speaker 6: up here. Maybe the conclusion is she didn't do it,
Speaker 6: rather than well, that doesn't fit our theory, that doesn't
Speaker 6: fit our narrative.
Speaker 3: No, they went with, maybe we can convince the jury
Speaker 3: that she did do it, even though we know she
Speaker 3: didn't do it. It hurts me to think of the
Speaker 3: fact that so much of it was avoidable, and so
Speaker 3: much of it was willful, but it happened. It's reality,
Speaker 3: and it's your reality. And so do you finally go
Speaker 3: to trial? Right, And I'm assume you were held in
Speaker 3: jail awaiting trial.
Speaker 4: I was in jail for several months and then I
Speaker 4: was able to post bail and bey on house arrest.
Speaker 3: So okay, a period of time that went by and
Speaker 3: finally it's time for the trial. And how long was
Speaker 3: your trial?
Speaker 4: The first trial was two weeks.
Speaker 3: So it's a long trial. That taxpayer expense. So when
Speaker 3: the jury went out, how long did they deliverate for.
Speaker 4: I believe the first time was five hours.
Speaker 3: And now you had seen a lot of the dark
Speaker 3: sides of the justice system, did you still believe that
Speaker 3: you would be declared innocent and free?
Speaker 4: By that point? I was afraid because I had seen
Speaker 4: their maneuvers, and I had seen the way that things
Speaker 4: were taking shape, and I had seen, you know, my defense,
Speaker 4: and I just I felt like the odds were stacked
Speaker 4: against me.
Speaker 3: They were, for sure, you know. And then the jury
Speaker 3: comes back in and what was that moment? Like, well,
Speaker 3: you had said so many terrible moments in your young life,
Speaker 3: but this moment must have been just as devastating as
Speaker 3: it could be.
Speaker 4: I mean, there were several devastating moments, you know. The
Speaker 4: most horrific for me was actually when I first got
Speaker 4: arranged and they handed me a sheet of paper that
Speaker 4: said they reserved the right to pursue the death penalty.
Speaker 4: That was a moment that I will never forget. I
Speaker 4: had a physical reaction where I felt so sick, and
Speaker 4: I think my heart stopped beating for a moment, and
Speaker 4: I was just so overwhelmed, Like I could not believe
Speaker 4: that this was happening to me. And when the jury
Speaker 4: came back and found me guilty, it was a similar feeling.
Speaker 4: And I remember looking back because my family had been
Speaker 4: subpoena so they weren't allowed to be in the courtroom
Speaker 4: with me, so I was completely alone. I looked back
Speaker 4: he was finally able to be there, and I saw
Speaker 4: my dad and he was green. He was green, and
Speaker 4: he was crying. And all I could do was just
Speaker 4: hold myself together because I didn't want to break down
Speaker 4: in front of them and make it even worse for them.
Speaker 3: Now we hear that from others who've been through your
Speaker 3: situation as well. It's so amazing that you feel that
Speaker 3: you need to be strong for other people when the
Speaker 3: whole earth just opened up and swallowed you. Right, But
Speaker 3: that says a lot about your character. So then you're
Speaker 3: convicted and sentenced to.
Speaker 4: Forty two one hundred years at nineteen years.
Speaker 3: Old, So essentially now you've been given a life sentence
Speaker 3: and off you go to prison, right? And where were
Speaker 3: you in prison?
Speaker 4: At FMWCC in Las Vegas?
Speaker 3: And is that as bad as it sounds, It's.
Speaker 4: Not wonderful, you know, it's not the Hilton. No, it's
Speaker 4: not the Ritz Carlton.
Speaker 3: How did you survive sixteen plus years in that situation?
Speaker 3: And if you can remember any happy moment, if there
Speaker 3: was a happy moment in prison, and what was the
Speaker 3: worst moment while you were there?
Speaker 4: Oh, there were absolutely happy moments. I encountered some really
Speaker 4: beautiful people while I was in there, and I encountered
Speaker 4: some really horrible people. You know, it's like anywhere you go,
Speaker 4: there's good and there's bad. But there were some experiences
Speaker 4: that I had that were unique in that I had
Speaker 4: a jailhouse snitch that had testified against me in the
Speaker 4: first trial. I had never spoken to her. I didn't
Speaker 4: even know who she was when she got on the stand,
Speaker 4: but they pulled phone records and apparently she was somebody
Speaker 4: that had had taken advantage of my kindness and came
Speaker 4: to me at the phones and asked for a three
Speaker 4: way call, and I gave it to her. But I
Speaker 4: had no idea who she was. So she read about
Speaker 4: me in the paper. She called the DA's office, and
Speaker 4: I presume that there was an exchange of information to
Speaker 4: help her testify. So she got to prison before me.
Speaker 4: I had to deal with seeing her everywhere. First thing
Speaker 4: she did was say that she was afraid for her life.
Speaker 4: So the warden pulled me into an office and told
Speaker 4: me that he was going to transfer me to another state.
Speaker 4: I begged him, literally begged him. I said, listen, I'm
Speaker 4: in appeals. I don't care about her. And he made
Speaker 4: it very clear. He said, if I had any issues
Speaker 4: with her whatsoever, they would ship me out of there
Speaker 4: so fast they would make my head spin. And at
Speaker 4: that time, I didn't want to be shipped out because
Speaker 4: I wanted to be able to see my family and
Speaker 4: my friends. So I had to see her everywhere. And here,
Speaker 4: you know, in a roundabout way, all the lies that
Speaker 4: she was telling to justify her actions, because it was
Speaker 4: in the newspaper that she was a snitch, and so
Speaker 4: she was telling everybody that she was my friend from
Speaker 4: the streets and that I had taken her to the
Speaker 4: crime scene and all this crazy shit to justify her
Speaker 4: actions to everyone else.
Speaker 3: Wow, and can we talk for a minute about jail
Speaker 3: house snitches and how pernisious this whole practice is.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's so easy for them. It's so easy
Speaker 4: for them to seize an opportunity to try and get
Speaker 4: less time. You know, they lie, they cheat, they still
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter. They don't have morals or ethics. They'll
Speaker 4: do whatever it takes not to go to prison or
Speaker 4: to be there for less time.
Speaker 3: It's so weird. Everybody knows you can't bribe a witness, right,
Speaker 3: Anybody who watches TV, anyone who's been to eighth grade
Speaker 3: knows you can't bribe a witness. But the government can,
Speaker 3: and they can bribe them with the best thing you
Speaker 3: can imagine, which is get out of jail free cards, right,
Speaker 3: and how that can be used in court is nuts.
Speaker 3: When you have such an obvious motive to lie, it's right,
Speaker 3: but it happens a lot of it happened to you,
Speaker 3: and then you had to live with this woman, So Jesus,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that ain't great, And it's not at.
Speaker 7: All surprising that you know, in about seventeen percent of
Speaker 7: post conviction DNA exonerations, snitch testimony played a role.
Speaker 4: That's a huge.
Speaker 7: Amount, you know, and there are probably many more cases
Speaker 7: than that, but you know, in terms of the cases
Speaker 7: where DNA testing has led to an exoneration, about seventeen
Speaker 7: percent of those have involved snitch testimony.
Speaker 3: You went through a second trial. Let's just talk about
Speaker 3: that for a minute, and if you could explain the
Speaker 3: chronology of this, right, So, because you had multiple trials, I.
Speaker 4: Did, and I won my first appeal based on the
Speaker 4: perjury of the jail house snitch because we were able
Speaker 4: to prove that she perjured her testimony. And so I
Speaker 4: was granted an appeal, granted a new trial based on
Speaker 4: those grounds, and sent back for a retrial. And basically
Speaker 4: they said any other issues that we had stated, we
Speaker 4: could remedy and retrial. However, we went back to the
Speaker 4: same judge and the same prosecutors and they pulled the
Speaker 4: same shit, so we were in the same boat. In
Speaker 4: addition to that, Michelle had mortgaged her house and second
Speaker 4: mortgage actually to finance Tony Sarah out of California to
Speaker 4: represent me. Unfortunately, he got indicted for tax evasion and
Speaker 4: so we were given two less experienced attorneys from his
Speaker 4: office and they were going to work in conjunction with
Speaker 4: the Special Public Defender's office in order to work under
Speaker 4: his license and to help finance experts and such. It
Speaker 4: was a rough, rough, rough time because everything that my
Speaker 4: female attorneys out of California suggested or tried to strive
Speaker 4: for in regards to expert testimony, was blocked by the
Speaker 4: special public defender because he didn't want to finance them.
Speaker 3: So wait, so your own attorney blocked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was like, Oh, we don't need that, we
Speaker 4: don't need that, We'll be fine. Everything the girls suggested,
Speaker 4: he shut it down.
Speaker 6: I don't know if it's clear. Tony Sarah is a
Speaker 6: legendary defense attorney out from California who I guess has
Speaker 6: issues paying taxes and didn't pay his taxes the time
Speaker 6: they hired him and was indicted.
Speaker 3: For tax fraud.
Speaker 6: But I guess let two of his younger associates continue
Speaker 6: to work on Blaze's case, and those were the I
Speaker 6: guess the two female lawyers had Blaze referring to It.
Speaker 3: Sounds like they were trying to do the right thing
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 4: They were, but at the same time, like he was
Speaker 4: the more experienced attorney and they deferred to his judgment.
Speaker 4: So it was a tough situation. I begged him to
Speaker 4: get all of all of the evidence tested for DNA,
Speaker 4: and he said it wasn't until that point that he
Speaker 4: even believed in my innocence. And they still to this
Speaker 4: day have never tested all of the evidence.
Speaker 3: So you survived somehow? This I mean it was really
Speaker 3: half almost half of your life in prison. I mean
Speaker 3: you were eighteen when you were arrested, right, and you
Speaker 3: were in for sixteen plus years and half of your
Speaker 3: life maxim security prison. And then what happened? How did
Speaker 3: you find? Well? How did you find the strength to survive?
Speaker 3: Is one question. The second question is how did you
Speaker 3: get in contact with the lawyers who ultimately freed you?
Speaker 3: And who is your angel in all this whole situation?
Speaker 4: Well, Michelle Ravelle is my angel. She has become my mom.
Speaker 4: She has been my staunchest supporter and my biggest advocate.
Speaker 4: She has fought for me tirelessly. She has put in
Speaker 4: so many hours of time and energy and given me
Speaker 4: so much love.
Speaker 3: How did you find how did you first get in
Speaker 3: contact with her?
Speaker 5: Actually?
Speaker 4: I dated her son at one point before all of
Speaker 4: this happened, and I continued the relationship through my stints
Speaker 4: of freedom in between my.
Speaker 3: Trials, when you're on house arrest and stuff.
Speaker 4: When I was on house arrest, and then later when
Speaker 4: I was on bail for my second trial.
Speaker 3: But even still, you know, one would sort of assume
Speaker 3: that once you get sent away, those things fade, right,
Speaker 3: and they do. I mean, but she didn't fade.
Speaker 4: She did not fade.
Speaker 3: If anything, the opposite, right. It sounds like she, like
Speaker 3: like a lot of us, she got mad and decided
Speaker 3: to do something about it. And she's here in the
Speaker 3: studio today and maybe we'll have a little cameo appearance
Speaker 3: from her a little while. But so she became your rock, yes,
Speaker 3: And I love talking about that because it's inspiring and
Speaker 3: she deserves a ton of credit for that, and I
Speaker 3: see how emotionally you get talking about her. But it's
Speaker 3: important also to talk about it because of the fact
Speaker 3: that our listeners out there need to know that you
Speaker 3: can make a difference, right, even though a lot of
Speaker 3: people say, well what can I do? I don't know
Speaker 3: what to do? You can make it different.
Speaker 4: Just be there, listen, spread the word.
Speaker 3: I mean, everybody seems like, you know, there's probably you know,
Speaker 3: social scientists estimates is probably one hundred thousand innocent people
Speaker 3: in prison.
Speaker 6: And Michelle's not just I mean, she's been like sort
Speaker 6: of an emotional support for Blaze, but she's also done
Speaker 6: a lot of advocacy on behalf of Blaze during the
Speaker 6: sort of the appeals process, and she's been talking about
Speaker 6: how we're sort of talking about people listen, they don't
Speaker 6: know what to do, and I think she was in
Speaker 6: a similar position. And she started off put a website
Speaker 6: together about Blaze's case and what was going on with Blaze,
Speaker 6: and drummed up some support with that and has social
Speaker 6: media's advance. With Facebook, she got a Facebook page with
Speaker 6: about Blaze's case and has garnered a lot of support. Unfortunately,
Speaker 6: like you know, after convictions and trials happened, cases and
Speaker 6: people fade away and people forget. And I think Michelle,
Speaker 6: to her credit, really wouldn't let anyone forget about Blaze.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: She herself and she's come up with all kinds of
Speaker 4: clever ideas. She had t shirts made with my face
Speaker 4: on it that said what if this was your daughter?
Speaker 4: To spread the word, she did stickers, any any little
Speaker 4: idea that she thought might help ran with it.
Speaker 3: And that's again, if you're listening, you know these are
Speaker 3: things you can do, I mean, just talk about it.
Speaker 3: Do you think without Michelle's help you would have ever
Speaker 3: gotten out?
Speaker 4: Absolutely not. I would have served every day of my sons.
Speaker 4: Probably the original sentence.
Speaker 3: So there you go. So then somehow or other, the
Speaker 3: Innocence Project got a hold of your case.
Speaker 4: Yes, Vannison's project first got involved offering to pay to
Speaker 4: have all of the items tested at any lab that
Speaker 4: Nevada chose, and Nevada repeatedly said no, despite petitions, despite
Speaker 4: you know whatever, they said, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't do it.
Speaker 7: What year was this, I think it was around twenty
Speaker 7: ten when the first consulting, and there was some back
Speaker 7: and forth over a couple of years, and when the
Speaker 7: Innocence Project when we came on as a team, so
Speaker 7: with Vanessa Potkin, the director of post conviction Litigation myself,
Speaker 7: odd none came on in full force. Was after the
Speaker 7: Nevada Supreme Court remanded Blaze's case for an evidentiary hearing
Speaker 7: having to do with issues around time of death and entomology,
Speaker 7: which will I'm sure get into more in a minute.
Speaker 7: But so, even though the Innocence Projects had come on
Speaker 7: to consult and agreed to pay for some testing to
Speaker 7: try to get more DNA testing done, there had been
Speaker 7: a lot of roadblocks on that path, and so we
Speaker 7: ultimately were able to exonerate her, not through DNA testing,
Speaker 7: but through this evidentiary hearing that we had about six
Speaker 7: months ago at this point, Okay.
Speaker 6: I just make one point because I do think Blaze's
Speaker 6: comments about her public defender not willing to test items
Speaker 6: for budgetary reasons, that's certainly played out to be the
Speaker 6: wrong choice. But I do think it highlights issues of
Speaker 6: public defenders not being funded properly to sort of properly
Speaker 6: work up cases all over the country where I think
Speaker 6: there is a need to sort of even out the
Speaker 6: playing field so that people can be properly defended who
Speaker 6: don't have the funds to get the best lawyers up there.
Speaker 3: Sure, because if we are the public, right, everyone is
Speaker 3: the public. I mean, it sounds like I think there's
Speaker 3: a little disconnect when people don't realize that this could
Speaker 3: actually be you, and if these changes aren't made and
Speaker 3: you end up in that situation, you could be the
Speaker 3: next Blaze Levato.
Speaker 7: And an additional issue too that I think played out
Speaker 7: in Blaze's case as well, is DNA testing is not
Speaker 7: always going to be the thing that can prove someone's innocence.
Speaker 7: In most cases, it isn't you know, there are other
Speaker 7: avenues that need to be pursued. And so I think
Speaker 7: because of the power of these post conviction DNA exonerations
Speaker 7: and the age of innocence that we're living in, I
Speaker 7: think there's sometimes a false idea that that's always going
Speaker 7: to be able to solve it. And there are people
Speaker 7: who are really trying to get back into court to
Speaker 7: fight their convictions and just don't have a way to
Speaker 7: do that because DNA either didn't play a role in
Speaker 7: their case, or they did some testing and it didn't
Speaker 7: lead to clear results that could lead to an exoneration.
Speaker 7: And so it's really because the Nevada Supreme Court took
Speaker 7: her habeas petition very seriously and found issues that merited
Speaker 7: a post conviction evidentiary hearing that we're here today and
Speaker 7: those issues didn't have to do with DNA in this case,
Speaker 7: which is a unique thing.
Speaker 4: For our project.
Speaker 3: Yes, second trial you end up with the same people
Speaker 3: from the first trial, which also strikes me as not perfect,
Speaker 3: you know, because they're coming in with a bias, I mean,
Speaker 3: not great, and so the results are somewhat predictable. You know.
Speaker 3: You now have the additional problem, like you said, of
Speaker 3: a public defender who's almost we've heard this story Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: too many times a public defender who's not acting in
Speaker 3: your best interest in this case for budgetary reasons. What
Speaker 3: the fuck budgetary reasons when you're talking about somebody's life.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just like, uh, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's not okay either. And just for context, I mean,
Speaker 3: this crime happened in two thousand and one, so we're
Speaker 3: not talking twenty to ten and out here we are
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen. Ultimately, who reached out to the MS Project?
Speaker 3: What was that like when you How did you find
Speaker 3: out that we were coming to the rescue.
Speaker 4: Well, that's all thanks to Michelle Revel again my mom.
Speaker 4: She reached out to them. I found out. I think
Speaker 4: I found out on my birthday.
Speaker 3: How did you find out? Did Michelle tell you? Did
Speaker 3: you get a letter over the phone from MICHELLEP? So
Speaker 3: Michelle got the letter? Yep. And then what was your reaction?
Speaker 4: Cautiously optimistic? You know, at that point I couldn't afford
Speaker 4: to get my hopes too high because I still had
Speaker 4: to survive on the inside.
Speaker 3: What year was that, twenty sixteen, sixteen? So actually this
Speaker 3: case moved quickly by our standards, ye, because it usually
Speaker 3: takes longer and you've been out now for how long?
Speaker 4: Sixty three days?
Speaker 3: Sixty three days? Wow? Amazing. So you got your day
Speaker 3: in court again, right, third time around, third times the
Speaker 3: charm right.
Speaker 4: Although this time it was for an evident you're hearing,
Speaker 4: not a trial.
Speaker 3: I want to capture that moment.
Speaker 4: Well, I finally got a different judge and I only
Speaker 4: had one of my original prosecutors to deal with. So
Speaker 4: I was feeling optimistic about those two things off top,
Speaker 4: not to mention that I had the dream team. So
Speaker 4: as things were going and I saw the response of
Speaker 4: the judge, and I listened to all the testimony from
Speaker 4: the experts, and I compared both sides, I felt really good.
Speaker 4: But I was so scared to get my hopes up
Speaker 4: because I know how the system works, or at least
Speaker 4: had worked for me up until that point, and I
Speaker 4: was terrified to get too excited about it because I
Speaker 4: didn't want to be devastated, you know.
Speaker 3: And from your perspective, Jane, I know you were both
Speaker 3: in the courtroom. Yes, yes, And what was your feeling.
Speaker 3: Obviously it's always difficult to me if you're feeling optimistic,
Speaker 3: you're not going to share that with Blaze. Because for
Speaker 3: the same reasons we're talking about, right, But did you
Speaker 3: know you had a winning hand?
Speaker 7: I think we went in there confident, knowing that we
Speaker 7: were very well prepared, that we had some incredible experts
Speaker 7: on our side, people who were really smart scientists who
Speaker 7: had looked at her case and had objectively determined individually
Speaker 7: on their own that there is no way that Blaize
Speaker 7: Lobado could have committed this crime based on objective signs
Speaker 7: of the victim's body. So the issue at the evident
Speaker 7: you're hearing had to do with time of death, which
Speaker 7: was a crucial issue at both of her trials, because
Speaker 7: Blaize had very solid alibi evidence putting her in Panaka
Speaker 7: for almost the entire day of July eighth. R. Duran
Speaker 7: Bailey's body is found around ten oh eight pm on
Speaker 7: July eighth. Almost that whole day up until the early
Speaker 7: morning of July eighth, Blaize had alibi evidence putting her
Speaker 7: three hours away in Panaca, and so the state's theory
Speaker 7: had been that she had committed this crime in the
Speaker 7: very early morning hours of July eighth, sometime around one
Speaker 7: or two in the morning, because that's the only way
Speaker 7: it could have happened, because they conceded that she was
Speaker 7: with family and friends three hours away the rest of
Speaker 7: the day. And so our experts looked at photographs and
Speaker 7: the autopsy report and many other reports related to the
Speaker 7: case and determined, based on how this body had decomposed,
Speaker 7: and also the total lack of bug activity on the body,
Speaker 7: the fact that there were no insects, no larvae whatsoever,
Speaker 7: that this person could have only been dead for probably
Speaker 7: a few hours at most, if not less. And the
Speaker 7: reason that was so significant is because that means factually, objectively,
Speaker 7: Blaze could not have committed this crime something she always knew,
Speaker 7: something we knew because we believed in her innocence, but
Speaker 7: this showed scientifically that she couldn't have done this. So
Speaker 7: our hearing had to do with putting on a forensic pathologist,
Speaker 7: a man named doctor Andrew Baker, and three forensic entomologists,
Speaker 7: doctor Gail Anderson, doctor Robert Kimsey, and doctor Jeffrey Tomberlin
Speaker 7: to talk about first of all, how bodies decompose and
Speaker 7: how this was a body that couldn't have been at
Speaker 7: this crime scene for that long, and then also how
Speaker 7: insects are attracted to decomposing bodies, and the fact that
Speaker 7: there was no bug activity on this per means he
Speaker 7: couldn't have been there for very long.
Speaker 3: And we know bugs like dumpsters too.
Speaker 4: Yes, not to mention that it was July and vegas,
Speaker 4: which changes the decomposition process because of the temperature and
Speaker 4: attracts more bucks, right, and.
Speaker 6: The body was so brutally beaten that it was sort
Speaker 6: of ripe for insect activity because there was blood, lots
Speaker 6: of cuts. That's the sort of thing that insects are
Speaker 6: attracted to. And so just to add on to a chance,
Speaker 6: I think the other thing that gave us confidence during
Speaker 6: the hearing was and Blaze sort of alluded to this
Speaker 6: about the judge, was that the judge was sort of
Speaker 6: asking the right questions and picking up on the right
Speaker 6: issues and seemed to be getting what we were sort
Speaker 6: of arguing and presenting, which I think made us feel that, Okay,
Speaker 6: she's thinking about this the way we are thinking about it,
Speaker 6: and that's a that's a good sign.
Speaker 3: And so the moment comes the arguments are done, you
Speaker 3: know now that you've presented a very strong case with
Speaker 3: as you said, the dream team, and now you're going
Speaker 3: through this again. The moment, right, and what was that moment?
Speaker 4: Like, it's really terrible to have your life hanging in
Speaker 4: the balance and to have to wait for the answer
Speaker 4: and not know which way it's going to go.
Speaker 3: So this was a hearing in front of a judge.
Speaker 3: But how did that work? So the arguments were finished,
Speaker 3: prosecutors says whatever they said, You guys said, whatever you said,
Speaker 3: and then how long do you have to wait for
Speaker 3: the judge to rule?
Speaker 6: So the timeline was that we had the hearing middle
Speaker 6: of October. We submitted post hearing briefs to sort of
Speaker 6: make our arguments in writing. That we submitted November one,
Speaker 6: I think was the deadline, and then the judge came
Speaker 6: down with the decision granting us a new trial. That
Speaker 6: I was saying that we won the hearing right before Christmas,
Speaker 6: So right before Christmas we knew that we were going
Speaker 6: to have a new trial, and that the sort of
Speaker 6: in the prosecutor's court whether or not they actually wanted
Speaker 6: to have a third trial on this or whether or
Speaker 6: not that we're going to dismiss the charges. Same prosecutor, yes,
Speaker 6: same office.
Speaker 7: And I think something that's particularly important to know here is,
Speaker 7: you know, we got the email decision from the judge
Speaker 7: saying that the charges you know that we should be
Speaker 7: granted a new trial, that they found that it was
Speaker 7: an effective assistance of counsel not to call forensic entomologists
Speaker 7: and pathologists to prove what the time of death would
Speaker 7: have been in this case. We couldn't reach our client
Speaker 7: at the prison. You know, it took us several days
Speaker 7: to be able to communicate this really exciting news to
Speaker 7: her that her conviction had been vacated and she'd be
Speaker 7: granted a new trial. It's not because people at the
Speaker 7: prison couldn't have gotten the message to her.
Speaker 4: It's not because she was.
Speaker 7: Hard to reach. They know where she is at all times.
Speaker 7: It's because nobody wanted to communicate that to her, and
Speaker 7: so it took probably about forty eight hours before we
Speaker 7: could actually have a conversation with her. And this is
Speaker 7: right around the holidays. Obviously we want to get her
Speaker 7: this good news. So just the inhumanity that she had
Speaker 7: to deal with on a daily basis and the anxiety
Speaker 7: of not knowing what's going to happen with her life
Speaker 7: is incredible.
Speaker 4: Do you know how I found out that the charges
Speaker 4: had business missed?
Speaker 3: No, I would love to know.
Speaker 4: An officer put a newspaper clipping in my window, woke
Speaker 4: me up, and I couldn't even like comprehend what it said.
Speaker 4: I had to illegally obtain our newspaper later on in
Speaker 4: the day to find out my own fate because they
Speaker 4: wouldn't allow my attorneys to talk to me.
Speaker 6: And that's really what we were, like, really scared of happening.
Speaker 6: Like we wanted to deliver the news to her. We
Speaker 6: didn't want people gossiping or telling her in prison about it.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and I guess it was on the news,
Speaker 4: but the cable was out, so I didn't see it.
Speaker 3: You're in like a media blackout, yes, and a lawyer
Speaker 3: black eut. It just doesn't make any sense. But you
Speaker 3: did find out. I did find out, and then.
Speaker 4: And then it took three or four more days for
Speaker 4: me to be released. They came with the proper documents
Speaker 4: to the prison and the warden said no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: not letting her out.
Speaker 7: In order for her to be released from the prison,
Speaker 7: they had to get a certified copy directly delivered from
Speaker 7: the court. And because this is around the holidays, things
Speaker 7: had gotten slowed down a little bit, and so even
Speaker 7: though we had the certified copies in our hands as lawyers,
Speaker 7: as members of the bar walking up to the warden,
Speaker 7: they wouldn't accept it from us because it hadn't yet
Speaker 7: gotten received by FedEx from the court. So this is
Speaker 7: just again another example of the insanity that you have
Speaker 7: to deal with when you're imprisoned and waiting for your
Speaker 7: fate to be decided.
Speaker 3: They just felt like they hadn't fucked you over enough
Speaker 3: yet maybe to get a little.
Speaker 4: We had to get their last little lugs in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know what, here you are here, I
Speaker 3: am he who laughed in this case, she who laughed,
Speaker 3: you know what.
Speaker 4: And I still have a smile on my face.
Speaker 3: So it's all right, you do it. And I'm going
Speaker 3: to tell you that I was very taken by this
Speaker 3: whole scenario and very interested in finding out what had happened,
Speaker 3: because it just struck me as such an outrageous set
Speaker 3: of circumstances, and also because you came across in the
Speaker 3: media that did exist as somebody who was just really
Speaker 3: want to root for. I mean, you just have a
Speaker 3: very lovely demeanor thing, and you know, your spirit kind
Speaker 3: of comes through even in a one dimensional format. Like
Speaker 3: in the newspaper.
Speaker 7: And I think something so remarkable about Blaize is just
Speaker 7: her concern and her care for others, not only now
Speaker 7: that she's out, but when she was in. I mean,
Speaker 7: you talked about, you know, other people you were concerned
Speaker 7: about in there. Heck, you always asked us on the
Speaker 7: phone how we were doing and really meant it and
Speaker 7: wanted to, you know, make sure we were okay as
Speaker 7: people that were connected to you. But I think the
Speaker 7: drive that you've seemed to have since getting out to
Speaker 7: really make changes and to not forget about the people
Speaker 7: you left behind is so inspirational and hopefully inspires people
Speaker 7: listening to get involved in those cases too.
Speaker 4: I think it's really important for people to know what's
Speaker 4: going on inside, because it's not right, it's inhumane, and
Speaker 4: people are being abused inside the system, not just by
Speaker 4: wrongful convictions, but just the whole process of incarceration.
Speaker 3: We have a tradition here, okay at Wrongful Conviction, which
Speaker 3: is that at the end of each episode, I like
Speaker 3: to just turn the microphone over to you and you
Speaker 3: and you in reverse order and just share any closing thoughts.
Speaker 3: But before we do that, I want to do something
Speaker 3: we've never done before, which I'd like to bring someone
Speaker 3: in the studio out here. So today, Blaze, Yes, we
Speaker 3: have with us making a special guest appearance someone who
Speaker 3: is probably the most important person in your life. Is
Speaker 3: that fair to say?
Speaker 4: It's fair to say she's one of the most important
Speaker 4: people in my life. You know, I'm blessed because I
Speaker 4: have a whole tribe of people that love me and
Speaker 4: support me.
Speaker 3: Well, your tribe just got bigger today. I want to
Speaker 3: have you introduce Michelle all Right.
Speaker 4: Hello world, to introduce you to my mom, also known
Speaker 4: as Michelle.
Speaker 8: Ravel Well, thank you, sweetheart. People who are listening to
Speaker 8: this podcast are obviously interested in things like wrongful conviction
Speaker 8: and how this all takes place. I encourage anyone who
Speaker 8: has one present itself in their life to not run away,
Speaker 8: to take advantage of the opportunity of assisting someone who
Speaker 8: has no voice to have a voice. And I would
Speaker 8: also like to a special request of all the journalists
Speaker 8: I know, pick one case, research it, highlight it, get
Speaker 8: it out there in the world, and help free these
Speaker 8: innocent people. There are too many people in prison who
Speaker 8: don't belong there.
Speaker 3: Well, Michelle, I want to thank you for being here
Speaker 3: and what you've done is extraordinary. It's just an amazing
Speaker 3: example of citizen activism, which is you know, we can't
Speaker 3: do without it. You literally saved Blaze's life, and I
Speaker 3: know she wouldn't be here without you, and I see
Speaker 3: how she gets talking about you, and that says all
Speaker 3: I need to know. So I'm glad you're here. Thank you,
Speaker 3: thank you for sharing your thoughts. And now I'm going
Speaker 3: to give you both a big hug. Unless you have
Speaker 3: something else you want.
Speaker 4: To say, perfect right.
Speaker 3: Non any closing thoughts to share with the audience, anything
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 6: I mean, I just think. I mean, Blaze has been
Speaker 6: here for about a couple of days now. It's just
Speaker 6: so amazing to see her out and just enjoying life,
Speaker 6: and her spirits just really inspiring. I said this, I
Speaker 6: think last night, whatever it is, she has it like
Speaker 6: that sort of she brings you in. And I think
Speaker 6: that's why people really bond with Blaze, because she has that.
Speaker 3: You love your job, yes I do. Yeah, in some
Speaker 3: ways we wish we could all be out of business.
Speaker 3: Like the best thing that could possibly happen would be
Speaker 3: for the Instance project to be closed, because all these
Speaker 3: people go home but we know that's not realistic. But
Speaker 3: in the meantime, we love our job and it's because
Speaker 3: of people like you. So Jane, Yes.
Speaker 7: I'm excited for you, Blaze, to go to the conference,
Speaker 7: the Innocent Network Conference in a couple of weeks and
Speaker 7: meet some of your brothers and sisters out there, because
Speaker 7: I know that as much as we can all talk
Speaker 7: about this and celebrate you and stand with you, we
Speaker 7: don't understand what's happened. And I think that you just
Speaker 7: have such incredible strength and character and I hope that
Speaker 7: you're able to let your guard down a little bit
Speaker 7: in a couple of weeks with those folks and really
Speaker 7: feel some healing because you deserve that in a big way.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: And the Innocent Network Conference, just to put some context,
Speaker 3: is a conference that we actually started eleven years ago,
Speaker 3: I think in New York, and it's a it's a
Speaker 3: conference in which we bring together well, it was originally dozens,
Speaker 3: now it's hundreds of exoneries for a weekend of healing
Speaker 3: and hope and strength and just it's an incredible thing
Speaker 3: to be a part of the amount of energy, positive
Speaker 3: energy that's generated and the number of dedicated people activists,
Speaker 3: social workers, lawyers. It's so many people there who care
Speaker 3: that it's really a cathartic experience, and so I hope
Speaker 3: you'll have a great experience that I know you will. Okay,
Speaker 3: so now we're going to turn it over to you.
Speaker 3: You can talk about anything you want. The microphone is yours.
Speaker 4: I just want to say how happy I am to
Speaker 4: be free, and how grateful and thankful I am to
Speaker 4: all the people who have facilitated that. And I want
Speaker 4: to tell people in the world that it's really important
Speaker 4: to get involved and to try to make a difference,
Speaker 4: because we really really need to change our judicial system.
Speaker 4: It's important for everyone because this could happen to anyone.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. This episode has
Speaker 3: been a profound experience for me, and I hope it
Speaker 3: has been for you out there in the audience. So
Speaker 3: once again I want to thank our distinguished guests, the
Speaker 3: Innocence Project attorneys on Nonsultan, Jane Putcher, and of course
Speaker 3: you with you, you radiant little thing that you are,
Speaker 3: blaze the bottle. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: For being here, thank you for having me, thank you,
Speaker 4: thank you.
Speaker 3: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 3: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 3: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 3: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 3: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 3: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 3: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 3: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 3: Instagram at Raw Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 3: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one