Speaker 1: We originally released our interview with Doug de Losan November
Speaker 1: twenty eight, twenty sixteen. It was our eighth episode that
Speaker 1: we ever recorded, and Doug and I go back even
Speaker 1: further than that. So running into him at the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three Instance Network conference was like seeing an old friend.
Speaker 1: So we caught up on everything he's been up to
Speaker 1: his organization, the first seventy two plus, which aids people
Speaker 1: in re entry to society coming out of prison. We'll
Speaker 1: have that linked in the bio, but mostly we talked
Speaker 1: about the people who do the time with the wrongfully convicted,
Speaker 1: their loved ones. Doug, it's been a long time since
Speaker 1: you came home after fourteen years of a life sentence.
Speaker 2: What's going on now? Update everybody?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm now in my twenty third year of freedom
Speaker 3: and I'm happily married. I don't know if I was
Speaker 3: married when we did the other episode. My children are
Speaker 3: even older now. My daughter, who will be forty two.
Speaker 2: This h year.
Speaker 3: She managed to graduate from college with honors, has a
Speaker 3: degree in finance. She's been working as an accountant for
Speaker 3: the same company seventeen eighteen years.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: She's a single mom. She has my grandson who's getting
Speaker 3: ready to turn seventeen and she owns her own home.
Speaker 3: My son has married, he is living in Sacramento, California,
Speaker 3: and he's expecting twins, which I couldn't be more delighted
Speaker 3: to become a grandfather again.
Speaker 1: That's great, and it's great to hear about the new
Speaker 1: family members coming your way. But I have to ask
Speaker 1: you this, Doug So, you talked about on the podcast
Speaker 1: when we recorded it back in I think it was
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, about how when you were almost at the
Speaker 1: fourteenth year of your life sentence without parole, you had
Speaker 1: felt like you had become such a burden to your
Speaker 1: kids coming to visit you week in and week out,
Speaker 1: instead of doing the things that you hoped that they
Speaker 1: would be doing and that kids wont to be doing.
Speaker 1: Let's face it, now, your kids enduring the loss of
Speaker 1: their mother who was murdered, the ronful imprisonment of their father,
Speaker 1: and yet it seems like they have led good lives
Speaker 1: and seem to be doing good things in the world.
Speaker 2: How do you explain the fact that those kids could
Speaker 2: go through this.
Speaker 1: Double trauma and still, you know, flourish in the world.
Speaker 3: Well, I think they deserve all the credit for where
Speaker 3: they are in life today. My daughter, I couldn't be
Speaker 3: more proud of her because she's overcome so many obstacles
Speaker 3: in her life. But she says all the time, biggest
Speaker 3: thing in her life is she wished she would have
Speaker 3: had a childhood. But she's doing fantastic today. She could
Speaker 3: be happier, but you know again, I think she's done
Speaker 3: a fantastic job of helping raise herself and reaching where
Speaker 3: she has in life. As far as my son, who
Speaker 3: will turn forty five this year, my son has experienced
Speaker 3: a number of problems. I hate to say it, but
Speaker 3: there's no sense in trying to hide it. He had
Speaker 3: a terrible problem with drugs and alcohol, and he had
Speaker 3: spiraled so far out of control in his late teens
Speaker 3: and early twenties that I didn't know if I'd get
Speaker 3: a phone call any given night given me bad news
Speaker 3: regarding him. But somehow, when he reached about thirty years old,
Speaker 3: he woke up, looked at himself in the mirror and said,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do it anymore. And he still
Speaker 3: has an occasional drink. I don't think he has a
Speaker 3: drinking problem. He doesn't do drugs. He's happily married. His
Speaker 3: wife's a doctor, moved to California, and they have twins
Speaker 3: on the way. And I guess the biggest thing I
Speaker 3: wonder is given all the credit to my son and
Speaker 3: daughter for managing to succeed in life. Where would they
Speaker 3: be today if the police hadn't framed me, the DA
Speaker 3: hadn't framed me, and they had grown up with a
Speaker 3: loving father and had some direction in life. Because they
Speaker 3: had none, they did it all on their own.
Speaker 1: And now Doug's story our eighth episode ever and one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful ones I have to say I've
Speaker 1: ever heard here.
Speaker 2: It is as it originally aired.
Speaker 4: I came from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life.
Speaker 5: I went to sleep because September seventh was the first
Speaker 5: day of my high school year. I was going to
Speaker 5: be a senior at twenty two, I was set to
Speaker 5: start college. I woke up and my life was never
Speaker 5: the same again.
Speaker 3: Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
Speaker 3: freedom ever since after that.
Speaker 5: It's like groach mode ta once you get in and
Speaker 5: I can't now.
Speaker 2: This is wrong for conviction with Jason.
Speaker 1: Klom particularly thrilled today to have as our guest, my
Speaker 1: good friend Doug Delosa.
Speaker 2: Doug, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jason.
Speaker 1: Having worked with the Nisis Project now for twenty years
Speaker 1: in my role as a founding board member, I thought
Speaker 1: I had heard everything until I heard Doug's story. So
Speaker 1: you were living in Louisiana, right.
Speaker 3: I grew up there. I was born and raised in
Speaker 3: New Orleans, Louisiana. At the time, I wasn't living in
Speaker 3: New Orleans proper, but I was living just outside of
Speaker 3: New Orleans in the city of Cana. I was married.
Speaker 3: My wife and I had been together a little over
Speaker 3: ten years. We had two beautiful children and a son
Speaker 3: who was seven at the time and a daughter who
Speaker 3: was five.
Speaker 1: Right, So you had a little yard and basically some
Speaker 1: neighbors and sort of like they we think of in
Speaker 1: New York. We think everything's a culled the sack. Right,
Speaker 1: we have this strange region know America as a series
Speaker 1: of called the sack. But basically, am I painting the
Speaker 1: right picture?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Until it all went wrong?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, until that American dream turned into the American nightmare?
Speaker 1: Right, And it's a nightmare of proportions that are impossible
Speaker 1: to overstate. You were at home with your wife and kids. Right,
Speaker 1: and tell us what happened.
Speaker 3: It was a typical Friday evening in our lives. Fast
Speaker 3: forward to about two thirty in the morning on Saturday morning,
Speaker 3: September twenty seventh, and I woke up, sat up in bed.
Speaker 3: I heard a noise. The noise that I was positive
Speaker 3: I heard was our pet parrot squawking and fluttering around
Speaker 3: in its cage. I get up from bed, Tell my wife,
Speaker 3: I'm going to check on Andy. That was the name
Speaker 3: of the bird.
Speaker 2: And what was your wife's name.
Speaker 3: My wife's name was Glinda. Right, I get up, I
Speaker 3: go downstairs. As soon as I got to the foot
Speaker 3: of the stairs, one person came from the side of
Speaker 3: me out of our bathroom area, and this person immediately
Speaker 3: struck me with an object that I think was a
Speaker 3: piece of mob pandle or a broomstick. Another person came
Speaker 3: from the kitchen area and immediately knocked me to the ground.
Speaker 3: And the two individuals, I don't know how long it lasted,
Speaker 3: probably less than thirty seconds, kicked me, beat me until
Speaker 3: I lost consciousness. Sometime later I was regaining consciousness. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure how long I laid on the floor. But
Speaker 3: I realized thing that sort of frightened me. At first,
Speaker 3: I couldn't move my fans and feet were tied behind
Speaker 3: my back. I was hog tied, and I was struggling
Speaker 3: to gain consciousness and put my thought process together to
Speaker 3: figure out what had happened. And after whether it was
Speaker 3: one minute or ten minutes, I started calling for my wife.
Speaker 3: Didn't get any response at all.
Speaker 2: So you're at the foot of the stairs, at the.
Speaker 3: Foot of the stairs, inside of what would have been
Speaker 3: our den.
Speaker 2: Right, and she's and she's upstairs. She's ups upstairs.
Speaker 3: In the bedroom. Getting no response at all from my wife.
Speaker 3: I called for my seven year old son, Dennis, and
Speaker 3: on the third of the fourth call from my son,
Speaker 3: I heard him stirring upstairs. He answered me. Initially, he
Speaker 3: went into the master bedroom and I could hear him say, Daddy,
Speaker 3: where are you? I see mommy, but she's sleeping, and
Speaker 3: I said, Daddy's downstairs, Please come downstairs. He came downstairs
Speaker 3: and I told him, Dennis, two bad men had broken
Speaker 3: in the house and they hurt Daddy. But I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be all right. I need you to untie my hands.
Speaker 3: He couldn't untie my hands. Because the rope was tied
Speaker 3: so tightly. Then I asked him to go in the kitchen,
Speaker 3: please get a knife and try to cut the rope.
Speaker 3: He came back with a knife, but he was panicking
Speaker 3: because he said, Daddy, I'm scared because I can see
Speaker 3: four legs under the blind or the curtain in the
Speaker 3: kitchen leading out to the patio. I can see people
Speaker 3: standing on the patio, and I'm afraid it's the bad
Speaker 3: men that hurt you. And I sort of panicked myself then,
Speaker 3: and I said, Dennis, pick up the phone. The phone
Speaker 3: was right there on the landing of the stairs. I said,
Speaker 3: dial nine one one, and he immediately picked up the phone,
Speaker 3: dial nine one one. He says, what do I say?
Speaker 3: And I said, just tell him you need help, that
Speaker 3: your daddy's hurt. And you had seen two men standing
Speaker 3: on the patio. I don't think he told them that
Speaker 3: exact anyway, he got their attention, and within minutes police
Speaker 3: arrived on the scene.
Speaker 1: And then the police arrive on the scene, and then
Speaker 1: this is where things start to really get crazy, right,
Speaker 1: because it seems like a pretty simple situation.
Speaker 2: You're hog tied, right.
Speaker 3: The police enter. The first thing, one of them does
Speaker 3: is kneel down next to me, ask me if I'm
Speaker 3: all right. I guess I basically tell him, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker 3: He doesn't untime, he doesn't do anything, and I hear
Speaker 3: another officer goes upstairs, and at that point in time,
Speaker 3: the next thing I hear him is kicking the door
Speaker 3: off the hinges. And it turned out that after my
Speaker 3: son had gone in the bedroom when I called him
Speaker 3: and he found his mother what he described as being asleep,
Speaker 3: he must have pulled the door shut behind him and
Speaker 3: it just automatically locked.
Speaker 2: So he kicks in the door.
Speaker 3: He kicks in the door. When he kicks in the door,
Speaker 3: he really startles my daughter, who's in the bedroom next door,
Speaker 3: and she starts crying hysterically. And at that point then
Speaker 3: my son starts crying hysterically. And I'm getting pretty hysterical myself.
Speaker 3: Laying on the floor. I'm still hog tied, and I'm
Speaker 3: telling you what's going on, what's going on, And policemen
Speaker 3: is trying to restrain me and keep me on the ground.
Speaker 2: Which is not that hard.
Speaker 3: You're but go ahead, and I'm like, and he says,
Speaker 3: don't worry, Everything'll be fine, And I mean within moments,
Speaker 3: it seems like ambulance attendants arrived on the scene. I
Speaker 3: couldn't hear exactly what they were being told, but they
Speaker 3: were being told something about my wife was in the
Speaker 3: bedroom upstairs, and that somebody needed to get my daughter
Speaker 3: and bring a downstairs, which they did. And again I
Speaker 3: don't know how much time was elapsing, but at some
Speaker 3: point in time, more police officers arrived on the scene.
Speaker 3: Eventually someone cut me free. Moments after they cut me free,
Speaker 3: they told me that that I would have to be
Speaker 3: taken to the emergency room, and that the other paramedic
Speaker 3: team was working on my wife and I'd see her there.
Speaker 3: And also at some point in time they asked me
Speaker 3: if there was anybody that they could call to take
Speaker 3: care of my children. I'm being treated in the emergency room.
Speaker 3: I don't know how much later again, was it ten
Speaker 3: or fifteen minutes? Was it an hour later? My brother
Speaker 3: and a priest come into the emergency room, and they
Speaker 3: informed me that my wife had been killed.
Speaker 1: And at this point, you're I mean, you've just been
Speaker 1: through an impossibly traumatic experience and now you're getting hit
Speaker 1: with this news and the whole world must be collapsing
Speaker 1: around you.
Speaker 3: At this point in time, it was pretty hard to
Speaker 3: believe what I was being told. I think I almost
Speaker 3: went in the shock when they told me my wife
Speaker 3: had been killed, And I mean, I just can't process
Speaker 3: what I'm being told and come up with any logical
Speaker 3: reason why it had happened.
Speaker 1: And then you get back with your kids and try
Speaker 1: to piece things back together. You had given the police
Speaker 1: the information that they wanted right about it, basically the story.
Speaker 2: That you just told us.
Speaker 3: I had recalled everything I could remember to the police.
Speaker 1: Except for when you were unconscious, of course, which was
Speaker 1: that's the only missing part. And then they were having
Speaker 1: trouble solving the case.
Speaker 3: Right There had been considerable criticism of the police department
Speaker 3: for not solving having any viable leads in this case,
Speaker 3: demanding to know from the police chief what were they doing,
Speaker 3: how were they protecting the neighborhood. I had gotten a
Speaker 3: little bit vocal, and I probably said on more than
Speaker 3: one occasion, all of these stupid son of a bitches
Speaker 3: need to be fired because they don't appear to know
Speaker 3: what they're doing. Their actions were, in my mind, reminiscent
Speaker 3: of the old Keystone cops in slapstick comedies because they
Speaker 3: just didn't appear to be very.
Speaker 1: Bright, right, Okay, And so obviously the police, you know,
Speaker 1: they're feeling a lot of pressure and they're feeling a
Speaker 1: little they're getting their back up about this, right, right.
Speaker 1: So then comes the craziest part, in some ways the
Speaker 1: craziest part of the story, right, which is that now
Speaker 1: we're three months from the day to the crime basically.
Speaker 3: Right, we're now the morning of December twenty ninth.
Speaker 2: I was it's hot, it's hot in.
Speaker 3: It's very warm in Louisiana. I'm deciding I'm going to
Speaker 3: put out the Christmas tree. It's starting. It was a
Speaker 3: live tree. It's starting to drop needles all over. So
Speaker 3: I tell my children, I'll be right back. I'm just
Speaker 3: going to put the Christmas tree out for the trash.
Speaker 3: I've got a pair of cutoff jeans on, nothing else.
Speaker 3: And as I'm putting the tree in the back of
Speaker 3: my house by the curve for the trash, I hear
Speaker 3: Doug Delosa turn around, and I sort of turn around
Speaker 3: and I'm like almost in shock. I have no idea
Speaker 3: how many police officers are there, at minimum of six,
Speaker 3: maybe ten or more. I have many. No idea how
Speaker 3: many news cameras are there. Probably as many personnel were
Speaker 3: there as there were police officers pointing cameras at me,
Speaker 3: and the police pointing guns at me, and they say,
Speaker 3: you know why we're here. We're here to rest you
Speaker 3: for the murder or your wife. And I'm just like
Speaker 3: thinking to myself, this can't be true. This nightmare just
Speaker 3: keeps getting worse and worse. I knew that I had
Speaker 3: been labeled to suspect, but I never, in my wildest imagination,
Speaker 3: thought that it would evolve into an arrest. I'm not
Speaker 3: dressed except for with a pair of cutoffs on. My
Speaker 3: children are in their pajamas, and I asked the one detective,
Speaker 3: could I please go dress my children and call somebody
Speaker 3: to take them well. As I was changing their clothes,
Speaker 3: I turned to this man who couldn't have been more
Speaker 3: than two to three feet away from me, standing right
Speaker 3: in my face, and I asked him. I said, detective Dote,
Speaker 3: why are you doing this to me? Why are you
Speaker 3: doing this to my children? You know that I didn't
Speaker 3: kill my wife, and this police officer, when I asked
Speaker 3: him that question, he had the look of a wild
Speaker 3: man on his face, and he almost I don't know
Speaker 3: how to describe it. His voice was almost venomous, and
Speaker 3: he says, man, fuck you, fuck your children, and fuck
Speaker 3: that dead wife of yours. I didn't ask that stupid
Speaker 3: bitch to die in my city. And he goes on
Speaker 3: to say, he says, why should I give a fuck
Speaker 3: about you or your children? Do you care about me
Speaker 3: and my children? My job's on the line, and he said,
Speaker 3: you have asked that I be terminated in competence. Well,
Speaker 3: you know what, I don't know who did it. Maybe
Speaker 3: I know you didn't do it, but I can build
Speaker 3: the case against you. So you're it.
Speaker 1: So you're you know, you go to trial, and well
Speaker 1: they withheld several critical pieces of evidence from the defense,
Speaker 1: that which is called a Brady violation, which which would
Speaker 1: have excluded you and would have led to you being
Speaker 1: found innocent. Do you want to talk about the trial?
Speaker 3: From start to finish, nine days had passed, and from
Speaker 3: the very beginning, the two district attorneys prosecuting me told
Speaker 3: the jury that they were never going to hear any
Speaker 3: direct evidence that tied me to this crime. That basically
Speaker 3: what they were trying to convict me on was a
Speaker 3: theory of how I did it and why I did it,
Speaker 3: and what was going to be important to the jury
Speaker 3: to find me guilty was that I had no evidence
Speaker 3: to support my story that two black men broke into
Speaker 3: my house that night, beat me unconscious, hog tied me,
Speaker 3: and at some point in time killed my wife.
Speaker 1: Right now, But the reason we know that you couldn't
Speaker 1: provide any proof is because they were withholding the proof
Speaker 1: that they had. They had the investigators. You didn't have investigators.
Speaker 1: They had all the guys sweeping the and doing the
Speaker 1: whole thing exactly.
Speaker 3: There were fingerprints found in several places throughout the house
Speaker 3: that didn't belong to me, any of my family members,
Speaker 3: any of our friends, anyone any member of the investigative
Speaker 3: team that had all been ruled out, and these fingerprints
Speaker 3: found throughout the house belonged to someone. But we have
Speaker 3: no idea who they belonged to.
Speaker 2: But they didn't tell you that.
Speaker 3: No, their fingerprint expert committed perjury on the stand when
Speaker 3: he said absolutely no other fingerprints were found in the house.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about the cab driver for a second,
Speaker 1: because that's one to me, that's one that's always stuck
Speaker 1: in my mind.
Speaker 2: That's really you know.
Speaker 3: Sometime after I was arrested, well, actually, let's back up
Speaker 3: to right after my wife's funeral, three days after the murder,
Speaker 3: a taxi driver came forward to the can of Police
Speaker 3: department and he said, I think I may have some
Speaker 3: testimony that would help you catch the people who killed
Speaker 3: this lady, meaning my wife. And as the story goes
Speaker 3: in his written deposition to the police, he was dropping
Speaker 3: off affair in that neighborhood, which at that time was
Speaker 3: exclusively white. There would have been no reason whatsoever to
Speaker 3: have seen blacks in that particular neighborhood.
Speaker 2: At least aboot three in the morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, least of all at three to four o'clock in
Speaker 3: the morning. And he goes on to give in his
Speaker 3: written deposition that as he was driving down this one street,
Speaker 3: he saw two black men leaving the vicinity of the
Speaker 3: front of my house carrying what would have fit the
Speaker 3: description of some of the items I told police were
Speaker 3: taken from my house. And he says that as his
Speaker 3: lights shone on the two men, it appeared that they panicked.
Speaker 3: They ran to a silver van that was waiting, and
Speaker 3: they sped off in a reckless manner and he found
Speaker 3: that very unusual and thought it was important to bring
Speaker 3: that testimony to the police, which he did.
Speaker 2: As it was, but they, of course withheld that from.
Speaker 3: The defense illegally. They withheld that and said that there
Speaker 3: was nobody had ever seen anything regarding any black men
Speaker 3: in that neighborhood, much less in the vicinity of my home.
Speaker 3: Now fast forward another six to seven months, I'm at
Speaker 3: trial this you know, good citizen is reading in the
Speaker 3: newspaper and hearing on the TV that I'm undergoing a
Speaker 3: trial for the murder of my wife. Well, he just
Speaker 3: doesn't understand, and at this point he doesn't trust the
Speaker 3: police because he's already gone to the police twice. So
Speaker 3: he shows up at the courthouse somehow manages to talk
Speaker 3: to one of the two or maybe perhaps both, of
Speaker 3: the district attorneys who were trying the case, and he
Speaker 3: tells his story to them, and they very nonchalantly brush
Speaker 3: him off and said, oh, don't worry. We presented your
Speaker 3: written statement to mister Dolosa's attorney. He reviewed it, but
Speaker 3: in light of the overwhelming evidence against him, he knows
Speaker 3: that your testimony wouldn't do any good, so he decided
Speaker 3: not to call you as a witness, which was a
Speaker 3: total lie. They hadn't given any of that information to
Speaker 3: my attorney. And one of the biggest parts of their
Speaker 3: case was over and over again they repeated to the jury,
Speaker 3: no one repeat, no one saw anything suspicious in that
Speaker 3: neighborhood that night, much less two black men. And that's
Speaker 3: why you must find mister Dolosa guilty because he was lying.
Speaker 1: The jury comes back, they find you guilty and sends
Speaker 1: you to life in prison. Now, the only thing that
Speaker 1: can make it worse is they're going to send you
Speaker 1: to what is arguably the worst prison in America, in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: which is the state which has the highest prison population
Speaker 1: by far. Louisiana does have three times higher rate of
Speaker 1: incarceration than the rest of the country per capita, and
Speaker 1: of course America has a five times higher rate than
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. So it's off the chain.
Speaker 1: But now you're being sent to Angola prison farm, and
Speaker 1: let's talk about that.
Speaker 3: Well. Arriving at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which they call Angola,
Speaker 3: it was beyond culture shock. I didn't know what to expect.
Speaker 3: I'd heard numerous rumors that scared the hell out of me.
Speaker 3: But I arrived at Angola and one of the first
Speaker 3: things that I guess was really strange was they put
Speaker 3: you in an initial classification to decide where you're going
Speaker 3: to be housed. And I'm going before these classification officers
Speaker 3: and they decide that they're going to put me in
Speaker 3: a working cell block for my protection rather than general population.
Speaker 3: And then they make a statement that's pretty odd. They
Speaker 3: said that they don't have a white cell available to
Speaker 3: put me in, so I'd have to be sent to
Speaker 3: a security cell while they prepare a white cell. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, what the hell is a white cell. At
Speaker 3: that time, they still believed in segregating the white and
Speaker 3: black prisoners at Angola. They didn't mix and blacks in
Speaker 3: the same cell. But my very first night in Angola,
Speaker 3: I'm in a disciplinary tier and I'm in a cell
Speaker 3: and there's someone down the tier in another cell acting up,
Speaker 3: and at some point in time he throws human waste
Speaker 3: on a security guard, and I'm just like, scared shitless.
Speaker 3: I don't know what's going on. Their guards would appear
Speaker 3: to be swat uniforms and riot shields and everything. Coming
Speaker 3: down the tier. They're dragging this person out by force.
Speaker 3: They're beating him, and I guess I'm curious. I'm sort
Speaker 3: of looking, you know. I guess maybe I should have
Speaker 3: known better than to try to look. When one of
Speaker 3: the gods saw me looking, he's like, what the fuck
Speaker 3: are you looking at? He turns around and sprayed me
Speaker 3: with a pepper spray of mace for about twenty thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And the only thing I knew was my lungs were burning,
Speaker 3: my face was burning, and it was sort of like
Speaker 3: a welcomed angola. That was my first night in the penitentiary.
Speaker 1: So and then things get even crazier. So you end
Speaker 1: up working on a chain gang.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know that chain gang is a
Speaker 3: little bit misleading because we're not actually linked by chains.
Speaker 2: Right, But it's a term that applies.
Speaker 3: To It's a group of inmates working under the supervision
Speaker 3: of gun guards on horses in the swamps. It could
Speaker 3: be swamps, it could be anywhere on the farm.
Speaker 1: Here's a clip where Burl Caine, the warden, talks about
Speaker 1: the infamous history of Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Speaker 6: The work in the farm is critical angela. That's what
Speaker 6: it is. It's a plantation in prison. It was that
Speaker 6: way throughout its entire history important that we have agriculture
Speaker 6: here on the farm that provide work for the innate,
Speaker 6: which you know is good for them because they have
Speaker 6: something to do to use after energy and so forth.
Speaker 3: It turned out that I was working in what they
Speaker 3: called camp a Line twenty one under one of the
Speaker 3: most vicious inhuman farm bosses that Angola had at the time,
Speaker 3: and I found it difficult at my age and my
Speaker 3: physical condition to keep up with the average man who
Speaker 3: was only in their early twenties and I'm thirty seven
Speaker 3: thirty eight years old at this time in horrible shape.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that this particular field foreman
Speaker 3: used to enjoy doing to torment the people under his supervision.
Speaker 3: He would put us, say on the levee cutting high
Speaker 3: grass with what they called ditch bank blade, which is
Speaker 3: it's impossible to describe on air, but it's this huge,
Speaker 3: heavy cutting blade. And what he would do is they
Speaker 3: might have been close to one hundred men in the line.
Speaker 3: He would put us up on the levee and there
Speaker 3: would be two inmates with a water bucket, and he'd
Speaker 3: tell the people with the water bucket. I want y'all
Speaker 3: to move about a mile down the road with the
Speaker 3: gun guard supervising you, and he said, y'all keep moving
Speaker 3: that water bucket and don't let anybody have water, because
Speaker 3: it says until ten people pass out from the heat,
Speaker 3: I'm not letting anybody drink water. And that was a
Speaker 3: typical day working for this man mac Shaw, where he
Speaker 3: would see people pass out fall out, as we'd say,
Speaker 3: from heat stroke, heat exhaustion, from lack of water, and
Speaker 3: once a whatever number he arbitrarily determined he wanted to
Speaker 3: pass out and be carried off in the back of
Speaker 3: a truck for disciplinary purposes. Then he'd let everybody else
Speaker 3: have a drink of water.
Speaker 1: And then things got really crazy because at one point
Speaker 1: you were singled out.
Speaker 3: It was at more than one point, I mean, it
Speaker 3: seemed it was something that happened day after day, every
Speaker 3: time I'd go in the field. I never had the
Speaker 3: distinction of being one of the people. I guess I
Speaker 3: was fortunate enough that I could go without drinking water
Speaker 3: longer than other people that I might not be one
Speaker 3: of the first five to ten people to pass out
Speaker 3: from heatstroke and lack of water. But I certainly wasn't
Speaker 3: keeping up with the work quote according to this field form,
Speaker 3: and he would just almost every day that I went
Speaker 3: to work, he would write me up on a disciplinary report,
Speaker 3: lock me up in administrative segregation to be disciplined by
Speaker 3: the disciplinary court. They would hear my case and say
Speaker 3: it would say something like I flatly refused to work. Well,
Speaker 3: I never ever flatly refused to work. I simply worked
Speaker 3: until I couldn't work anymore, or I worked at the
Speaker 3: fastest pace I was capable of. But the field foreman
Speaker 3: never wrote the truth on a disciplinary report, and the
Speaker 3: disciplinary board that helped court, they didn't. They knew what
Speaker 3: the truth was, but they would just continue to stack
Speaker 3: punishment on you, and I'd be sent back out to work.
Speaker 1: It's it's just I don't I can't even I can't
Speaker 1: find any words. The good news is you're a smart guy.
Speaker 1: You're a guy of an educated guy, somebody who can
Speaker 1: can really think for himself.
Speaker 2: So you get to the point.
Speaker 1: Where you realize, if you're going to get out, you're
Speaker 1: going to have to be the one to do it.
Speaker 2: Is that a fair statement?
Speaker 3: That absolutely? And I would say that I worked as
Speaker 3: a clerk in an air conditioned office in the print
Speaker 3: shop silkscreen shop at Angola for a little bit over
Speaker 3: a year, but I knew I my ultimate goal was
Speaker 3: I want to get the hell out of prison. And
Speaker 3: everybody that I associated with said, you know, you'd probably
Speaker 3: be better off going to be what they call an
Speaker 3: inmate council substitute or prison lawyer working in the law library,
Speaker 3: and I finally decided I'd apply for that job. I
Speaker 3: did end up with a job over there, and over
Speaker 3: the next several years, I learned the law. I think
Speaker 3: I became pretty proficient with it. And after I had
Speaker 3: exhausted all of my appeals in state court, after I
Speaker 3: had gone through hundreds of thousands of dollars on about
Speaker 3: seven different lawyers who all promised to do something, but
Speaker 3: no one followed through and did what I hired him
Speaker 3: to do, I finally sat back, spent six months researching
Speaker 3: and another two to three months writing my own federal
Speaker 3: writ one hundred percent on my own or with having
Speaker 3: other inmate counsels review it give me their critique. I
Speaker 3: filed my rit a Habeas Corpus into the federal court
Speaker 3: system on my own. I didn't know what my chances
Speaker 3: were going to bed. I figured slim to none at best,
Speaker 3: but I felt like, at this point in time, if
Speaker 3: I'm denied, I'm going to be denied on my own terms,
Speaker 3: and I'll have given it my best shot. Finally, one
Speaker 3: day they call me for legal mail. So I get
Speaker 3: up at like five o'clock in the morning, go eat breakfast.
Speaker 3: I went to the window where they pass out the
Speaker 3: legal mail. They had me a little brown envelope and
Speaker 3: I was scared shitless to open it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, because if if it's if it's the wrong answer,
Speaker 1: you're done.
Speaker 2: This is your last appeal, right.
Speaker 3: It's the wrong answer. I had a plan to escape
Speaker 3: from Angola, and my escape from Mangola was I had
Speaker 3: enough drugs in my possession hidden that probably within twenty
Speaker 3: four hours, I was gonna od and that's how I
Speaker 3: was going to get out of prison. And that had
Speaker 3: been something I had planned for months, anticipating a negative
Speaker 3: response from the court.
Speaker 1: So I'm getting the chills right now. So you've got
Speaker 1: this envelope and it's gonna it's gonna basically tell you
Speaker 1: whether you're gonna will ever die. At this point, you've
Speaker 1: been in prison for fourteen years, fourteen years. It's been
Speaker 1: a long time, exactly. I'd put up with as much
Speaker 1: as I felt like I could live with. And I
Speaker 1: felt like my children were getting up in age, and
Speaker 1: as much as I love them, as much as I
Speaker 1: felt that they loved me, they continue to visit me
Speaker 1: almost every opportunity that they got. I felt I was
Speaker 1: doing them a disservice by having them come to visit
Speaker 1: me in prison, by having them try to explain to
Speaker 1: their friends in college, well, why can't you hang out
Speaker 1: with us this weekend? Oh, because I'm going to the
Speaker 1: penitentiary to see my dad. And I think I probably
Speaker 1: was looking at it the wrong way, and I know
Speaker 1: I would have heard them tremendously, but I felt like
Speaker 1: the best thing for myself and for my children in
Speaker 1: the long run.
Speaker 3: Was to take my life.
Speaker 2: Fortunately it to that.
Speaker 1: Because you're sitting here now, and so you've got this envelope,
Speaker 1: what do you do?
Speaker 2: Do you open it?
Speaker 3: I went to the law library where I worked, and
Speaker 3: I locked it in the bottom cabinet. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 3: the only person here this early in the morning. I
Speaker 3: just need somebody else around me. When I opened this up,
Speaker 3: So about half hour forty five minutes later, a couple
Speaker 3: of my close friends that work in the law library
Speaker 3: lived around me. They came in and I told my
Speaker 3: one friend, Mike Singletary, who was my closest friend in
Speaker 3: the law library at that time. I said, Mike, I
Speaker 3: got my decision from the federal court. And he says, well,
Speaker 3: what's it say? I said, I don't know, Mike, I
Speaker 3: don't have the nerve to open it. And he says,
Speaker 3: oh my god, he said, come on, give me that envelope.
Speaker 3: I'll open it for you. So I said, yeah, but
Speaker 3: I said he took it out of my hands. After
Speaker 3: I got it out the cabinet, he opened it. I said,
Speaker 3: now let me read that, Mike, don't so I took
Speaker 3: a couple of big, deep breaths uh. And I don't
Speaker 3: know how. My heart was probably beaten two hundred beats
Speaker 3: a minute, and I was shaking, and nine is right now,
Speaker 3: and I know the aser and I opened the UH
Speaker 3: writ to the last page, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: I just stopped shaking, and I guess sort of a
Speaker 3: smile came over my face, and for the first time
Speaker 3: since my wife's funeral, I cried. I started crying almost
Speaker 3: uncontrollably when I read that the magistrate judge recommended that
Speaker 3: my conviction be set aside and that I'll be you know, freed.
Speaker 3: I just, against all odds, I went up against the
Speaker 3: most conservative federal magistrate in the Eastern District for the
Speaker 3: State of Louisiana, who, according to what I had been told,
Speaker 3: had never before granted a writ filed by an inmate
Speaker 3: on their room. Behalf.
Speaker 1: That's a happy ending to an incredibly terrible saga. And
Speaker 1: you're back and I've gotten to know you well. Doug
Speaker 1: is now working closely with the Rising Foundation in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: helping other exoneries to rebuild their lives on the outside,
Speaker 1: using the skills that he has to help them with
Speaker 1: everything from you know, you name a job applications to
Speaker 1: tax problems to building their houses to you know, fixing things,
Speaker 1: getting employment. He's he's become a tremendous advocate for not
Speaker 1: only the Innocence Project and innocence projects, although in your
Speaker 1: case you represented yourself, but really somebody who has devoted
Speaker 1: himself to helping others, which is quite an extraordinary thing.
Speaker 1: It makes me really so proud to know you and
Speaker 1: to be a part of your life. It's important to
Speaker 1: note in all of this that the compensation that you
Speaker 1: were given ultimately by the state was paltry, to say
Speaker 1: the least, right because people ask me all the time, well,
Speaker 1: these guys must get they must get millions of dollars
Speaker 1: when they get out. I mean, after what you went
Speaker 1: through fourteen years in Angola prison and all the stuff,
Speaker 1: almost being beaten to death, all the other indignities that
Speaker 1: you suffered, and the fact that you were so egregiously framed.
Speaker 3: The compensation in the state of Louisiana allows for twenty
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars a year for a maximum of ten
Speaker 3: years of incarceration. It's doled out at twenty five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars a year over ten years, which gives a person
Speaker 3: barely enough to exist on if you have a very
Speaker 3: modest lifestyle for ten years. But the other thing, I mean,
Speaker 3: in my case, it fell short one hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: seven thousand dollars short of my actual expenses, so I
Speaker 3: didn't even recoup what I spent.
Speaker 2: Right, because you had actually spent the money on.
Speaker 3: Attorneys on my legal defense.
Speaker 1: You basically paid ten thousand dollars a year to be
Speaker 1: locked up for fourteen.
Speaker 2: Years is what it comes down to.
Speaker 3: That's about what it comes down to.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that there are twenty states that
Speaker 1: have no compensation statutes, and the ones that do have
Speaker 1: compensation statutes, some of them are even worse than Louisiana,
Speaker 1: like Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: You know, people think that, oh, you were proven that
Speaker 3: you were wrongfully convicted, you must have gotten millions. Well no,
Speaker 3: I'm still struggle to this day. I was never able
Speaker 3: to repay my children for selling their interest in their
Speaker 3: family homes so I could hire that lust attorney. And
Speaker 3: it's just not right, not just for me, but for
Speaker 3: all of the men in Louisiana and elsewhere too, and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: According to the National Registry of his Honerations, there have
Speaker 1: been forty six exonerations in Louisiana since nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: and a quarter them occurred in Jefferson County, the same
Speaker 1: office that prosecuted you. The sad truth is that there's
Speaker 1: probably hundreds, if not thousands of other Doug deloss in
Speaker 1: Louisiana alone. It's certainly around the country, and I can
Speaker 1: tell you that we won't stop until we exonerate as
Speaker 1: many of them as we possibly can.
Speaker 2: People say to me, you know my work, I think
Speaker 2: it's inspired.
Speaker 1: They say, what that? But prosecutors they don't lie that.
Speaker 1: People don't understand like it's it's it's Unfortunately, it's common,
Speaker 1: which is why we asked Nina Morrison to join us
Speaker 1: in the studio today. Welcome to Ronful Conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: Flommer's good.
Speaker 2: To have you here. Thank you, good to be here.
Speaker 1: So Nina is the your staff attorney at the Innocence Project.
Speaker 1: She litigates claims for access to post conviction DNA evidence
Speaker 1: under both federal civil rights laws and state DNA testing statutes.
Speaker 1: To date, Ms Morrison has served as lead or co
Speaker 1: counsel for more than twenty innocent prisoners who were freed
Speaker 1: from prison or even death row based on DNA or
Speaker 1: other newly discovered evidence. So, can you explain to us
Speaker 1: what exactly is a Brady violation? We talk about it
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: On the show.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, a Brady violation is where a prosecutor doesn't
Speaker 4: give the defense evidence that either the prosecutor or the
Speaker 4: police or some other agent of the state like a
Speaker 4: crime lab has that is favorable to the defendant's case.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's proof of their innocence. You know, another suspect
Speaker 4: who was seen in the area, somebody else who admitted
Speaker 4: to the crime. Sometimes it's evidence that shows that a witness,
Speaker 4: you know, who claimed to be an eyewitness, was you know,
Speaker 4: high out of their minds that night according to five
Speaker 4: other people, or couldn't have seen what they said they said.
Speaker 4: There's a whole array of stuff. It's basically anything that
Speaker 4: helps the defense. And it's a strange system when you
Speaker 4: think about it, because you know, prosecutors and defense layers
Speaker 4: go into court, they're fighting hard in these big murder
Speaker 4: cases or rape cases or other hard fought criminal trials,
Speaker 4: and the way the law is set up is the
Speaker 4: prosecutor has to give the other side something voluntarily that
Speaker 4: might make them lose, and we trust them in most
Speaker 4: places to turn it over, so they say, I'm fulfilling
Speaker 4: my Brady obligations, and there's no check on it until
Speaker 4: after the case is over, and sometimes not even then until.
Speaker 2: It's literally too late.
Speaker 1: And this leaves a very wide lane open for the
Speaker 1: bad actors in the system, the bad prosecutors to do
Speaker 1: what they feel like on a given day, and to
Speaker 1: really railroad people who are just regular people like you
Speaker 1: and I who get find themselves stuck in this nightmare.
Speaker 1: People like Doug Delosa.
Speaker 4: Yeah so, and they're even worse news in terms of
Speaker 4: how it gets dealt with after the trial. Because if
Speaker 4: you discover that a prosecutor in your case withheld Brady
Speaker 4: material something favorable to you, your conviction doesn't automatically get reversed.
Speaker 4: You then, according to US Supreme Court case law, have
Speaker 4: to show an appeals court that the violation is what
Speaker 4: the courts call material, which means it actually made a difference.
Speaker 4: So you basically have to come in after the fact
Speaker 4: when a jury never heard this information, a witness was
Speaker 4: never cross examined on it, and say, you know, Judge,
Speaker 4: if I'd had this, I would have argued this. I
Speaker 4: would have said that the jury wouldn't have believed this person.
Speaker 4: And here's why you have to kind of have a
Speaker 4: mental do over a hypothetical due over of the trial.
Speaker 4: And if they say, eh, you know, it made a difference, maybe,
Speaker 4: but we don't know, it might not necessarily have made
Speaker 4: a difference in the outcome. So it's what's called harmless error.
Speaker 1: So, Nina, I wanted to ask you how common are
Speaker 1: these Brady violations it you know, we.
Speaker 4: Don't know because by definition, men of them are hidden.
Speaker 4: We know that we have seen them in a very
Speaker 4: significant proportion of our cases. You know, there's at least
Speaker 4: fifteen featured cases on the Innocence Project website just from
Speaker 4: the last few years that involve serious Brady violations which
Speaker 4: we uncover in the course of investigating a client's other
Speaker 4: claim of innocence. And there is no scientific way to
Speaker 4: study them because by definition, there are things that haven't
Speaker 4: been turned over. It's sort of like everyone we find
Speaker 4: is in some ways by chance. You don't have a
Speaker 4: right to get a lot of files. After somebody has
Speaker 4: been convicted. Things get destroyed. I wake up at nights
Speaker 4: sometimes worrying about you know, these days, when almost everything
Speaker 4: is electronic, we don't have the piece of paper in
Speaker 4: the file anymore the way we used to in the
Speaker 4: cases from the eighties and early nineties. Now it's all
Speaker 4: in a memo on somebody's computer and they hit delete,
Speaker 4: or that person leave the office and it's gone. It's
Speaker 4: in an email, it's in a voicemail, it's in a
Speaker 4: text from a witness.
Speaker 1: It's you know, you know, it's really a level of
Speaker 1: evil that in this particular case, I don't know what
Speaker 1: else to call it.
Speaker 2: The prosecutor is.
Speaker 4: And you know, I know, Barry check in one of
Speaker 4: your other episodes when you had Barry Gibson was talking
Speaker 4: about this concept of noble cause corruption, which I think
Speaker 4: is a very real phenomenon. You know, I don't think
Speaker 4: even the prosecutors that we've caught red handed withholding evidence,
Speaker 4: I think most, if not all of them honestly believed
Speaker 4: that they were doing it for a higher purpose, which is,
Speaker 4: they had a killer sitting in the courtroom who was
Speaker 4: going to get away with murder if they didn't win
Speaker 4: their case, and so they convinced themselves that whatever they
Speaker 4: were holding back was not really proof of innocence. It
Speaker 4: was something the defense would use to create a smoke screen. Right.
Speaker 2: But the law's the law.
Speaker 4: You have a job as an officer of the court
Speaker 4: to follow the law and turn it over. And now
Speaker 4: we know that many of those people were actually innocent,
Speaker 4: So we see what the real harm is from that
Speaker 4: skirting the ethical line.
Speaker 1: So bring this to the sort of the practical question
Speaker 1: of what can be done.
Speaker 4: We at the Innocence Project are working on a couple
Speaker 4: of things to police things before trial happens. So one
Speaker 4: of the things we are trying to do is get
Speaker 4: judges to take a more active role in ensuring that
Speaker 4: Brady's guarantee is a real one by putting prosecutors on
Speaker 4: the record issuing court orders to say, I want you
Speaker 4: to check these five locations to see if there's anything
Speaker 4: favorable to the defense, and I'm going to have a
Speaker 4: conference a month before the trial to see how it's going.
Speaker 4: What have you turned over, what are you looking for?
Speaker 4: And at that point the defense lawyer will have an
Speaker 4: opportunity to speak up and say, I haven't gotten anything
Speaker 4: on the witness statements. I don't know who what these
Speaker 4: witness statements are. And our theory is, you know, for example,
Speaker 4: two black men came in and did this crime. Are
Speaker 4: there any reports of suspicious African Americans in the area,
Speaker 4: whether you think they did it or not? You know,
Speaker 4: is there anything we should invest to gate? And the
Speaker 4: reason why you want to have the judges be policing
Speaker 4: it is that if you lie to a judge, you
Speaker 4: can get charged with contemptive court and lose your law
Speaker 4: license and even go to jail. And on the back end,
Speaker 4: we need to take accountability seriously, you know, we need
Speaker 4: to make sure that the state bars have a culture
Speaker 4: where they can go after just as they would a
Speaker 4: lawyer who doesn't give a client all their money back
Speaker 4: or didn't do the job they were hired to do
Speaker 4: in a trust, some estates case or a civil case,
Speaker 4: that they will go after the prosecutors who break the law,
Speaker 4: even if it's not politically easy to do. And then lastly,
Speaker 4: you know, it is very hard, as you know, and
Speaker 4: you've talked about on your show, for prosecutors to ever
Speaker 4: be sued civilly and even for states or counties to
Speaker 4: be held liable for the misconduct of prosecutors. Prosecutors are
Speaker 4: what's called immune from suit in all but a few
Speaker 4: very rare cases. And so if a prosecutor knows of
Speaker 4: some favorable evidence and doesn't turn it over, the court
Speaker 4: Supreme Court has said, well, you can go after them
Speaker 4: on bar discipline, or you can maybe criminally prosecute them.
Speaker 4: Talk about Fox and Penhouse, right, but you can't see
Speaker 4: them unless there's a pattern and practice of violations, and
Speaker 4: those are very hard to prove, and.
Speaker 1: Criminal prosecutions of prosecutors are extremely difficult, not least it,
Speaker 1: which was because prosecutors generally don't like prosecuting prosecutors.
Speaker 4: Correct, and they will air I mean, you know, they
Speaker 4: will give every benefit of the doubt. Oh they missed it,
Speaker 4: they were busy, they thought they turned it over, they
Speaker 4: put it in the wrong notebook. You know, yes they did.
Speaker 4: The defense layer says they didn't have it, but we
Speaker 4: think they did. I mean, you know, and look, our
Speaker 4: clients should have been so lucky to get the benefit
Speaker 4: of every doubt when they were being accused of a crime.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason Flom And it was great.
Speaker 2: It's great to have you here.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: It really helps.
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 1: to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
Speaker 1: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
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