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Speaker 1: Last time we talked about the West Memphis Three, we

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Speaker 1: interviewed documentarian Joe Burlinger about his experience filming the victim's

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Speaker 1: families and the three suspected killers before and during the trial,

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Speaker 1: and how his realization of their innocence changed the direction

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Speaker 1: of his life's work. To add greater context in our episode,

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Speaker 1: we edited in excerpts from our previous interviews with Jason

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Speaker 1: Baldwin and Damian Eccles of the West Memphis Three, who

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Speaker 1: to recap, had been released on an Alfred plea along

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Speaker 1: with Jesse Miskale, were all excluded from some crime scene

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Speaker 1: evidence by later DNA testing, and one hair sample also

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Speaker 1: included one of the victim's stepfathers, but the West Memphis

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Speaker 1: Three are still fighting to clear their names. A twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty one Arkansas law allowed for new DNA testing with

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Speaker 1: more modern methodologies, and when they sought this testing, the

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Speaker 1: state represented in court that all crime scene evidence had

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Speaker 1: been destroyed, But in the same year a box belonging

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Speaker 1: to the West Memphis Police Department was located and it

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Speaker 1: held some missing evidence from their case, including the shoelaces

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Speaker 1: that had been used to bind the three young victims,

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Speaker 1: as well as a hare that might match the long

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Speaker 1: ignored alternative suspect from the po Jangles restaurant twenty twenty two.

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Speaker 1: Denial of further testing was reversed in twenty twenty four,

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Speaker 1: and after additional proceedings, testing is finally going to move forward,

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Speaker 1: hopefully towards the real perpetrator or perpetrators of this horrible crime. Now,

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Speaker 1: without any further ado, here's our interview mashup with Joe

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Speaker 1: Burlinger and the West Memphis Three.

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Speaker 2: In May nineteen ninety three, three young Arkansas boys Stevie Branch,

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Speaker 2: Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore went missing.

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Speaker 3: Three little cub scouts, hog tied and left in an

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Speaker 3: Arkansas dis one.

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Speaker 4: Of the most controversial legal cases in the state's history,

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Speaker 4: they found the man guilty of murdering the eight year

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Speaker 4: old boys back in nineteen ninety three, in what prosecutors

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Speaker 4: at the time had called some sort of a satanic ritual.

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Speaker 3: Celebrities fighting for the teen's release claimed the kids were

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Speaker 3: railroaded because of their mumllets, dark clothes, and fascination with.

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Speaker 1: The occult sticking killings that might have been part of

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Speaker 1: a satanic ritual. Convicted murderers Jason Baldwin, Jesse mss Kelly,

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Speaker 1: and Damian Eccles are now free men.

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Speaker 3: They spent seventeen years in prison for a crime that

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Speaker 3: stunned dark and so West Memphis three would be allowed

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Speaker 3: to walk out of prison, but prosecutors agreed to sign

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Speaker 3: off on the deal only if the defendants would plead guilty.

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Speaker 5: A long time on death row for something that you

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Speaker 5: insist you didn't do. There's always the possibility that the

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Speaker 5: person that you're killing is asking this is wrongful conviction.

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Speaker 2: Hey y'all, it's Maggie. I'm here to tell you about

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Speaker 2: a new show I've been working on for the past

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Speaker 2: two years called Graves County. And it's an investigative series

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Speaker 2: about the murder of a young mom in Kentucky and

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Speaker 2: just how far our legal system will go in order

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Speaker 2: to find someone to blame. Here is the trailer for

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Speaker 2: Graves County.

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Speaker 1: All I know is what I've been told, and that's

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Speaker 1: a half truth is a whole live.

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Speaker 2: For almost a decade, the murder of an eighteen year

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Speaker 2: old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky,

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Speaker 2: went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a

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Speaker 2: handful of girls came forward with a story.

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Speaker 6: I'm telling you, we know, we know a story that

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Speaker 6: law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got

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Speaker 6: the Citizen Investigator on national TV.

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Speaker 4: Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give

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Speaker 4: justice to Jessica Current.

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Speaker 2: My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer winning journalist producer,

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Speaker 2: and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that

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Speaker 2: easy to find.

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Speaker 3: I did not know her, and I did not kill

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Speaker 3: her or raid or burn or any of that other

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Speaker 3: stuff that y'all said it.

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Speaker 6: They literally made me say that I took a match

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Speaker 6: and struck and threw it on her. They made me

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Speaker 6: say that I'm pore guests on her.

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Speaker 2: From LoVa for Good. This is Graves County, a show

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Speaker 2: about just how far our legal system will go in

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Speaker 2: order to find someone to blame Marka.

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Speaker 7: Y'all gotta work the hell up.

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Speaker 8: Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

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Speaker 2: Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley Feed starting

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Speaker 2: September seventeenth, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

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Speaker 2: you get your podcasts, and to binge. The entire season

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Speaker 2: ad free subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction today. I have a special

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Speaker 1: show for you, and I think it's going to be

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Speaker 1: a real treat because with me, I have a guy

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Speaker 1: who has done profound work in film dealing with wrongful convictions.

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Speaker 1: I'm super excited to have him here to share some

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Speaker 1: stories and some wisdom and his outlooks. So Joe Burlinger,

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction.

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Speaker 7: Jason.

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Speaker 1: Thanks.

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Speaker 7: I'm a big fan of the podcast and a fan

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Speaker 7: of you, so I'm glad to be here. In fact,

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Speaker 7: it amazes me that since I consider myself a music

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Speaker 7: and wrongful conviction guy and you're amazing music and wrongful

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Speaker 7: conviction guy, I'm amazed. We haven't met until recently, which

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Speaker 7: is why this podcast came to be. We shared a

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Speaker 7: nice dinner together.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we had dinner recently with Damian Eccles and Amanda

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Speaker 1: Knox and so we really connected. And it's interesting because

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Speaker 1: I do sort of music and justice. You do film

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Speaker 1: music injustice. And the thing that you've been known for

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Speaker 1: is your movie about the West, Memphis three, because it

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Speaker 1: was such an important not only such an important documentary,

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Speaker 1: but also such an important moment in the changing of

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Speaker 1: the perception of the American public and the worldwide public

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Speaker 1: as to how these things happen. And I'm interested to

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Speaker 1: know how did you because you know, you and I

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Speaker 1: both were in criminal justice reform before it was sort

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Speaker 1: of a thing, right, I mean, we were early adopters,

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Speaker 1: and I like to say we were before it was cool,

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Speaker 1: but that sounds ridiculous, but anyway, true. Listen, I'm glad

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Speaker 1: it's cool because we need more and more people.

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Speaker 7: We didn't have enough storytellers shining a light on injustice

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Speaker 7: and activists trying to change this miserable system we have.

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Speaker 1: No we need an army. And so you made this

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Speaker 1: remarkable Paradise Lost trilogy that I'm holding in my hand

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Speaker 1: right now, which told the story of the three kids.

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Speaker 1: And they were kids. They were teenagers, Damian Eccles, Jason Baldwin,

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Speaker 1: and Jesse Miss who were persecuted, prosecuted, arrested, tried, convicted

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Speaker 1: for one of the most gruesome and notorious triple murders

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Speaker 1: in the history of the world. Yeah, from the three

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Speaker 1: eight year old boys that went missing in West Memphis, Arkansas,

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Speaker 1: out riding their bikes and turned up in a riverbank, tortured,

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Speaker 1: brutally assaulted, sexually mutilated, and of course dead. And how

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Speaker 1: did it come to be that? And we'll get into

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Speaker 1: how the wrong conviction happened, but how did you go

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Speaker 1: from being a filmmaker to being this guy? And how

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Speaker 1: were you made aware of this case? And how did

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Speaker 1: you get involved? And boy, it's a good thing you did,

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Speaker 1: or Damien would have been executed by now.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, it's amazing and thank you for all that.

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Speaker 7: That's very kind of you to say, because you've also

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Speaker 7: done amazing work, which I appreciate. You know, my first film,

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Speaker 7: which I should say, Paradise Lost and Brothers Keeper were

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Speaker 7: made with Bruce Sinofsky, who recently passed away. You know,

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Speaker 7: so if I revert to the eyes, I always mean we.

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Speaker 7: But you know we had made Brothers Keeper, which there

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Speaker 7: was no sense of social justice behind the making of

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Speaker 7: that movie. That was purely an aesthetic exercise to push

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Speaker 7: the documentary form a little further. You know, there was

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Speaker 7: a handful of filmmakers in the late eighties early nineties

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Speaker 7: that were looking to expand what it means to be

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Speaker 7: a documentary. Errol Morris did it with thin Blue Line.

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Speaker 7: But his contribution, besides the wrongful conviction aspect, was you know,

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Speaker 7: pushing recreations to a whole new level. Michael Moore was

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Speaker 7: pushing documentary by you know, the filmmaker as on camera curmudgeon,

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Speaker 7: you know, crusading for a social cause. That was new.

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Speaker 7: Morgan Spurlock then picked up that kind of thread in others.

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Speaker 7: What we were trying to do with Brothers Keeper was

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Speaker 7: simply by using a murder trial because it has perfect

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Speaker 7: dramatic structure. Is to take the documentary and create a

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Speaker 7: just a film that feels like a narrative film because

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Speaker 7: of how it shot, how it's edited, how it looks,

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Speaker 7: how it structured, and to push the documentary form. I

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Speaker 7: had no interest in social justice, no interest in wrongful

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Speaker 7: I didn't even know wrongful convictions took place back then.

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Speaker 7: I was very naive about the justice system. And Brother's

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Speaker 7: Keeper was very successful. And so Sheila Nevians from HBO

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Speaker 7: came a calling. You know, she was until very recently

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Speaker 7: the head of documentaries at HBO for three decades. And

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Speaker 7: if I had to pick one person responsible for expanding

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Speaker 7: the form to what it is today, Sheila would be

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Speaker 7: that woman. But she also likes salacious material, and so

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Speaker 7: she read this story about three devil worshiping teens who

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Speaker 7: were just been arrested for these horrible crimes, and she

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Speaker 7: wanted a satanic kids killing kids movie because it seemed

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Speaker 7: like that was the case. So one week after the

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Speaker 7: arrests of the three. Of course they weren't called the

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Speaker 7: West Memphis three back then, they were these rotten teenagers

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Speaker 7: accused of these horrible crimes. We went down to West Memphis, Arkansas,

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Speaker 7: in June of ninety three, thinking we were making a

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Speaker 7: film about kids killing kids. All the press was saying

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Speaker 7: they were guilty Jesse miss Kelly's confession without any context.

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Speaker 7: The multiple statements over time were reduced to a digestible

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Speaker 7: paragraph without context, published in the local paper. So we

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Speaker 7: thought there was a confession. You know, the prosecution and

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Speaker 7: the police were saying at press conferences on a scale

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Speaker 7: of one to ten, this is an eleven. I was

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Speaker 7: going down as a filmmaker, coming off of a really

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Speaker 7: great experience on my first film of pushing the form

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Speaker 7: of documentary, but no idea of social justice.

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Speaker 1: We go down.

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Speaker 7: We embed with the families of the victims. Mainly the

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Speaker 7: trial is still seven months away. For the first three

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Speaker 7: months of the project, we really spent time with the

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Speaker 7: families of the victims, and of course they hated these

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Speaker 7: guys and thought they were, you know, the devil, and

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Speaker 7: we had no reason to believe otherwise.

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Speaker 1: On season seven of Wrongful Conviction, on the fifth episode,

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Speaker 1: I interviewed Damien eccles. Here's an excerpt. We were an outcast, right,

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Speaker 1: and there were these very small minded people around who

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Speaker 1: sort of came to this instinctual call it conclusion that

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Speaker 1: it must be the weird kid, right, it must be

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Speaker 1: the kid that wears black and listens to heavy metal.

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Speaker 1: And this was during the Satanic Panic as well. Right

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Speaker 1: back then, for those of you who are old enough

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Speaker 1: to remember, in the early nineties, there was this very

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Speaker 1: strange thing that was going on in America with rumors

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Speaker 1: of Satanic cults and stuff like that. None of them

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Speaker 1: turned out to be true. But that's beside the point.

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Speaker 5: So what happened for me my entire life, The thing

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Speaker 5: that has been most important to me, that I love

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Speaker 5: the most, that my life always sort of revolved around,

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Speaker 5: was Western hermeticism ceremonial magic. All the way back from

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Speaker 5: when I was a child but I lived in an

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Speaker 5: incredibly right wing fundamentalist town where I mean, there were

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Speaker 5: places in this town where you come to a four

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Speaker 5: corner stop and on all four corners of the street

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Speaker 5: will be churches.

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Speaker 1: It's like Starbucks.

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Speaker 5: Now, yeah, that's exactly what it was like. And if

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Speaker 5: you didn't belong to, you know, one of these mainstream

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Speaker 5: for that area, mainstream fundamentalist religions, you were automatically.

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Speaker 1: Viewed as suspicious.

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Speaker 5: You were Satanic.

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Speaker 1: That's what they thought.

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Speaker 5: And it didn't matter if you were a Buddhist or

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Speaker 5: a Hindu or something like that. You're still satanic. You

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Speaker 5: just don't know you're a Satanist. You're just being tricked

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Speaker 5: by the devil into thinking there's some other religion.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 5: The fact that I actually did love ceremonial magic, and

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Speaker 5: that's been one of their things that you know, they

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Speaker 5: harp on forever that that is Satanism. So that was

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Speaker 5: a huge part of what made them focus on me

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Speaker 5: as well. You know, that was what they thought made

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Speaker 5: me a freak. They think, automatically, you're a Satanist. It

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Speaker 5: would take a Satanist to commit a crime like this.

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Speaker 5: Stick all those things together and they didn't even look

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Speaker 5: for anybody or anything else.

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Speaker 1: So in this case, they focused on you, and then

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Speaker 1: they had to find a way to get to you,

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Speaker 1: right because there was no evidence connecting you, no, So

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Speaker 1: they found a way, and that way was Jesse Mscally exactly.

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Speaker 1: So they originally sort of tricked into confessing and he

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Speaker 1: immediately recanted after he confessed.

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Speaker 5: Of somewhere between seventy and seventy two, and they interrogated him.

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Speaker 5: I can't remember exactly how many hours it was. It

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Speaker 5: was something like between twelve and fourteen hours. And they're

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Speaker 5: tilling this guy who has an IQ that's way way

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Speaker 5: below normal. They're telling him things like, you know, just

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Speaker 5: tell us what we want to know and we'll let

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Speaker 5: you go home. So they finally get this guy to confess,

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Speaker 5: and he can't get anything about the crime scene, right

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Speaker 5: because he wasn't actually there, so he didn't know anything.

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Speaker 1: They didn't care.

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Speaker 5: The only thing they cared about was the fact that

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Speaker 5: they got him to say yes.

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Speaker 1: And we also know, Damien, that people who are most

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Speaker 1: susceptible to this are adolescents. We now know that the

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Speaker 1: human brain isn't fully formed until you're twenty five. He

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Speaker 1: was sixteen, right seventeen, and with his low IQ, he

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Speaker 1: was totally outmatched, overwhelmed, and probably after twelve to fourteen

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Speaker 1: hours he would have confessed to know anything killing Abraham

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Speaker 1: Lincoln exactly, I mean, just to go home. So he

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Speaker 1: implicated you and Jason. So Jason was sort of your

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Speaker 1: one and best and pretty much only friend at the time, right,

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Speaker 1: And he was just physical appearances, he didn't have the

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Speaker 1: same stigma that you did, right. He was sort of

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Speaker 1: just an average looking kid, very young looking, must have

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Speaker 1: weighed one hundred pounds or less. Didn't look like a killer, right,

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Speaker 1: But to them you did exactly. And he got caught

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Speaker 1: up in all of this too, yep, just because he

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Speaker 1: knew me, right, unbelievable. On season two of Wrongful Conviction,

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Speaker 1: Episode eight, I interviewed Jason Baldwin. Here's what he had

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Speaker 1: to say.

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Speaker 9: And so when the police came, honestly, it didn't really

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Speaker 9: scare me or alarm me, because I figured they were

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Speaker 9: going everywhere. I figured it was door to door, you know,

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Speaker 9: that they were talking to everybody they could, you know,

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Speaker 9: And to me that made sense, you know, that was logical.

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Speaker 9: But what I didn't know that they were targeting us.

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Speaker 1: So now everything goes completely haywire and you guys get arrested.

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Speaker 9: Correct, They mugshot in me, But when they fingerprinted me,

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Speaker 9: they didn't stop there. They took a fingerprint, They took

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Speaker 9: an entire hand impression. They took my entire footprints, right,

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Speaker 9: and then they took me to the hospital and they

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Speaker 9: took hair samples, they took saliva samples, they took blood samples.

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Speaker 9: When they were taking these samples from me, it gave

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Speaker 9: me hope because I thought, Okay, whoever committed this crime,

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Speaker 9: they've left something for the police to compare my samples to, right,

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Speaker 9: and so that's where my hope was. And now at

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Speaker 9: this point I had already been engaged with the police,

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Speaker 9: and they had asked me, you know, questions and stuff,

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Speaker 9: and I told them where I was at, and they

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Speaker 9: absolutely refused the truth. They kept telling me, no, we've

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Speaker 9: got another story. Your friend has told us that you

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Speaker 9: have done this and that what you're telling us is

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Speaker 9: not true. I'm like, well, who is this friend? And

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Speaker 9: they refused to tell me. The boys' bodies were found

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Speaker 9: May the sixth, we were arrested. Jesse Muskelli gave the

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Speaker 9: false confession on June third, But what many people have

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Speaker 9: not really noticed it. On May the fifteenth, just a

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Speaker 9: couple of weeks after the boys' bodies were found, Jesse

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Speaker 9: went to the police with another friend because there was

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Speaker 9: a tip line and a reward offered out for any

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Speaker 9: information on who may have committed this crime. Now, Jesse

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Speaker 9: did not know who committed his crime, but he wanted

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Speaker 9: the reward money. He was imagining the brand new truck

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Speaker 9: he could buy his father and things like that. So

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Speaker 9: him and another kid out of his trailer park went

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Speaker 9: to the police and said, there's this suspicious guy in

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Speaker 9: the town that you know, you need to check out.

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Speaker 9: And I don't know exactly what all he told them

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Speaker 9: about this guy or whatever, but they ended up telling him, Jesse,

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Speaker 9: you need to come back with a more believable story

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Speaker 9: than that. Right, a few weeks go by, now they're

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Speaker 9: saying they've got that believable story when he gives the

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Speaker 9: false confession against Damian on me.

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Speaker 7: Then we finally negotiated access. They were all in county

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Speaker 7: jail awaiting trial, and somehow we taught you know, documentary

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Speaker 7: was a little more naive in those days in terms

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Speaker 7: of people's perceptions, and so we were able. I mean,

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Speaker 7: one of the amazing things about Paradise losses just where

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Speaker 7: we stuck our camera. I mean, we got tremendous access,

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Speaker 7: which I don't think we'd ever get today, luckily for

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Speaker 7: all involved. But we finally negotiated access to the West

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Speaker 7: Memphis three and again they weren't called that then, and

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Speaker 7: we did our first series of interviews, and I think

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Speaker 7: I'm sitting down with killers, you know, horrible kids, wanting

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Speaker 7: to understand how three teens could be so disaffected from

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Speaker 7: life that they would they would do this horrible thing.

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Speaker 7: There were some killings in the UK on railroad tracks

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Speaker 7: just a few years before, you know, the Jamie Bolger

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Speaker 7: case that actually I had tried to get access to

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Speaker 7: and make a film about. So my head is kids

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Speaker 7: killing kids, it's a trend, let's make a film about it.

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Speaker 7: Of course, the late eighties was the whole Satanic panic

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Speaker 7: and Satanic hysteria. I was a young filmmaker and you know,

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Speaker 7: didn't have any reason to think that wasn't necessarily true.

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Speaker 7: So I went into this project. In the great irony

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Speaker 7: is that, you know, two decades and three films later,

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Speaker 7: this crusade to get these guys out. Started off as

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Speaker 7: let's make a film about these rotten punks. So we

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Speaker 7: sit down, we do our first series of interviews. Honestly,

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Speaker 7: Damien was a little hard to read. I look back now,

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Speaker 7: Obviously he was in shock. He didn't believe he would

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Speaker 7: actually be convicted. Not to be judgmental, I mean, Damien's

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Speaker 7: a hero to me, who's gone through the most amazing journey.

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Speaker 7: But that first interview I couldn't quite tell with him.

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Speaker 7: But the person who really just whatever sense of tapping

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Speaker 7: into something that I had at the time. It was

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Speaker 7: talking to Jason Baldwin where I just said, this doesn't

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Speaker 7: add up four months before the trial, three months into

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Speaker 7: being embedded in West Memphis, Arkansas, because we spent literally

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Speaker 7: seven months camping out there before the trial started. And

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Speaker 7: it's not like a light bulb went off and I said,

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Speaker 7: oh my god, they're innocent. But something didn't seem right.

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Speaker 7: And so I remember calling Sheila Evans, who, again, to

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Speaker 7: her credit, she's an amazing catalyst for what documentary has become,

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Speaker 7: but she also likes, you know, salacious subject matter. And

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Speaker 7: she had sent me down, or sent us down to

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Speaker 7: make a film about teen Satanic Killers. So I remember

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Speaker 7: picking up the phone calling her to let her know

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Speaker 7: that something. You know, I'm not sure these guys are guilty,

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Speaker 7: and I'm not sure the film is what you think

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Speaker 7: it's going to be a little trepidacious that she was

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Speaker 7: going to cancel the project, but I felt I had

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Speaker 7: to tell her. You know, we're like four months in

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Speaker 7: and we've gathered enough information that these kids seem like

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Speaker 7: they're the wrong guys had been picked up. I also

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Speaker 7: created this incredible moral ambiguity because we had convinced the

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Speaker 7: parents of the victims that we were here to tell

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Speaker 7: their story, and they were utterly convinced of their guilt.

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Speaker 7: But I called Sheila, and to her credit, she said, oh,

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Speaker 7: that sounds even more interesting. Stick with it, because she

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Speaker 7: couldn't pulled the plug.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 7: And it's the number one lesson. I mean, I'm not

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Speaker 7: sure if there are filmmakers in the in your audience

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Speaker 7: or whatever, but my number one lesson that I tell

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Speaker 7: people about filmmaking is never, particularly in documentary, never lock

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Speaker 7: into the preconceived idea of what you think your film

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Speaker 7: is about, because you'll miss the story. If we had

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Speaker 7: locked into teen Satan Killers, and hadn't opened our eyes

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Speaker 7: to the real story, we might have missed the story.

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Speaker 7: But I never imagined that it would actually ever get

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Speaker 7: to trial because I had faith in the justice system.

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Speaker 7: I never imagined that evidence such as Metallica lyrics or

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Speaker 7: Stephen King novels would be presented in a court of

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Speaker 7: law in the United States of America as the main evidence,

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Speaker 7: and that somebody could be convicted on literally no forensic evidence,

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Speaker 7: no blood at the crime scene. I mean, you know,

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Speaker 7: you know the details of this case, and.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, but it's worth refreshing that.

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Speaker 5: We're at the police station. The only thing. Every so

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Speaker 5: often one of the cops would come in and say,

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Speaker 5: are you ready to make your confession? Yet I would

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Speaker 5: just stand there and look at them.

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Speaker 1: They would leave.

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Speaker 5: I stood there all night long until the next day

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Speaker 5: they got me and took me into a courtroom. They

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Speaker 5: tell me, you know, somebody's already confessed to this crime.

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Speaker 5: They've implicated you, saying you were the ring leader of this.

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Speaker 5: So now what you need to do is confess to

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Speaker 5: this and say no, you weren't the ring leader they were.

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Speaker 5: Try to put the blame back on them, or you're

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Speaker 5: going to die because of this. I can't even figure

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Speaker 5: out who the hell they're talking about because I've only

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Speaker 5: got one friend in the entire world, and that was

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Speaker 5: Jason Baldwin. I knew it wasn't him because he was

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Speaker 5: with me, and I knew he didn't do it. I

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Speaker 5: knew he wasn't going to confess to something he hadn't done.

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Speaker 5: So I didn't realize who it even was that had

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Speaker 5: confessed until the next day. Whenever they take me into

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Speaker 5: the courtroom, they say who it is, and they ask,

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Speaker 5: you know, how do you plead all this sort of thing.

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Speaker 5: They refuse to even read the confession in the courtroom.

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Speaker 5: They asked me, did I want it read? I said yes,

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Speaker 5: and they wouldn't read it even after they asked me

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Speaker 5: and I said yes. Instead, they take me out of

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Speaker 5: the courtroom into a janitor's closet with mops and brooms.

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Speaker 5: They give me a transcript, a type transcript of this confession.

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Speaker 5: When I started reading it, it's immediately obvious why they

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Speaker 5: didn't want this thing or read in court. It made

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Speaker 5: no sense whatsoever. You know, you're talking about this story

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Speaker 5: that's like a Frankenstein patchwork thing that they've so did

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Speaker 5: together out of many statements made by somebody with an

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Speaker 5: IQ of between seventy and seventy two. And what they

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Speaker 5: would do is when he would confess to something and

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Speaker 5: wouldn't get anything right, they would come back into the

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Speaker 5: room and say, well, do you think maybe this could

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Speaker 5: have happened? Or I mean even more blatantly obvious. The

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Speaker 5: first time they asked him when did the murders happen?

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Speaker 5: And he says something like eight o'clock in the morning. Well,

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Speaker 5: they knew that wasn't true because all three of the

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Speaker 5: kids were in school. So gradually what they did was

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Speaker 5: shape this thing to make it what they wanted it

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Speaker 5: to be. That's why they didn't want it read in court.

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Speaker 1: No, and they ignored obvious signs that pointed to at

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Speaker 1: least one, arguably up to three other individuals. Yes, including

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Speaker 1: there was a local restaurant, was it Bojangles or something?

434
00:22:46,040 --> 00:22:48,520
Speaker 1: Was a Bojangles where the manager called the cops that

435
00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:50,560
Speaker 1: night and said there was a guy covered in mud

436
00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:54,320
Speaker 1: and blood that stumbled into the fast food place and

437
00:22:54,600 --> 00:22:58,480
Speaker 1: went into the bathroom. And to their credit, the manager

438
00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:01,240
Speaker 1: called up and a police officer came but didn't investigate,

439
00:23:01,800 --> 00:23:05,359
Speaker 1: and they ultimately collected evidence from that bathroom that he

440
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:07,439
Speaker 1: went into, which there was blood all over the place

441
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:10,480
Speaker 1: and mud, and they lost it. Yes, and there again

442
00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:12,960
Speaker 1: were obvious signs. I mean the one I just talked about,

443
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:15,200
Speaker 1: the various signs pointing to the stepfather of one of

444
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:19,160
Speaker 1: the boys. I mean, this one kind of came with instructions,

445
00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:22,520
Speaker 1: and I know that it's difficult. I'm not an anarchist.

446
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:24,480
Speaker 1: I believe we do need a system of law and order.

447
00:23:24,560 --> 00:23:26,600
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of very good police

448
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:29,879
Speaker 1: and judges and prosecutors out there. But in this case,

449
00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:33,639
Speaker 1: it's a small town, high profile, complicated crime. Because the

450
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:36,359
Speaker 1: crime scene itself was a muddy riverbed, not the easiest

451
00:23:36,359 --> 00:23:38,400
Speaker 1: place to collect evidence. It seemed to have been scrubbed

452
00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:41,200
Speaker 1: to some degree. And then all the pressure you ran

453
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:42,520
Speaker 1: into the perfect storm.

454
00:23:42,680 --> 00:23:44,360
Speaker 5: They put me in another sale where I would stay

455
00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:46,800
Speaker 5: for almost the next year while I waited to go

456
00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:50,640
Speaker 5: to trial. When we do go to trial, the evidence

457
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:53,840
Speaker 5: that they present against us is things like Stephen King books,

458
00:23:54,640 --> 00:23:57,960
Speaker 5: the fact that we owned Metallica T shirts and albums,

459
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 5: posters that were hanging on our wall, you know, things

460
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:05,920
Speaker 5: that were from like skateboarding magazines, ceremonial magic books. This

461
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 5: is the evidence they had. That the prosecutors tell the

462
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:11,120
Speaker 5: jury that these things are not only evidence that were guilty,

463
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:12,920
Speaker 5: but their evidence that I don't even have a soul,

464
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:15,119
Speaker 5: that this is how evil I am.

465
00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:18,879
Speaker 9: I was totally surprised when I went to trial and

466
00:24:18,960 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 9: instead of the narration of the story revolving around evidence,

467
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:26,280
Speaker 9: the prosecutor John Fogeman and Brenton Davis were saying things

468
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:30,480
Speaker 9: like the crime scene was completely clean, there was absolutely

469
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:35,479
Speaker 9: no evidence, no physical evidence left behind, and this, in

470
00:24:35,560 --> 00:24:40,440
Speaker 9: fact is evidence of Satanic cult ritual activity.

471
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:42,679
Speaker 1: Because the devil faned up the crime scene. Basically, when

472
00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: they put that guy in the stand who was testifying

473
00:24:45,359 --> 00:24:48,479
Speaker 1: as an expert on Satanism and witchcraft and all, and

474
00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:51,919
Speaker 1: the defense attorney quite rightly said to him, where did

475
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 1: you get certified at this? And it turned out he

476
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:57,320
Speaker 1: had spent like an hour doing some online something or whatever.

477
00:24:57,440 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: It was ridiculed. It was laughable, right, The fact that

478
00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:02,240
Speaker 1: he was called himself an expert was laughable. And that's

479
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:04,160
Speaker 1: one thing that I was like, well, the jury's got

480
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:07,080
Speaker 1: to hear that. And the other thing was when they

481
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:09,159
Speaker 1: had the doctor on the stand, right, it was like

482
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 1: orthopedic surgeon or something, and they were asking him about

483
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:15,320
Speaker 1: the way that the one boy had been mutilated, right,

484
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 1: and we had the skin cut off his penis. I mean,

485
00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:19,880
Speaker 1: he's really pretty disgusting even thinking about it now. Now.

486
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:22,639
Speaker 9: We found out later was animals had actually started eating

487
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:25,600
Speaker 9: their bodies in the water that they were submerging. And

488
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:28,639
Speaker 9: so when the police pulled Jesse into the police station

489
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:31,200
Speaker 9: and they laid out the photos of the bodies, they

490
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:34,360
Speaker 9: had him make up a story for all the visible wounds.

491
00:25:34,600 --> 00:25:36,919
Speaker 9: The calls and manner of the wounds were unknown. They

492
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:39,680
Speaker 9: didn't know that all these wounds were animal predation.

493
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 1: If you remember when the jury went out, what did

494
00:25:41,800 --> 00:25:43,200
Speaker 1: you think was going to happen?

495
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 9: I sincerely believed that we would go home, they would

496
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 9: find us not guilty, that they would be able to

497
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:53,120
Speaker 9: totally ignore all the flaming prejudicial stuff that the prosecution

498
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:56,880
Speaker 9: was bringing up about Satanism and everything, and look at

499
00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:59,679
Speaker 9: the case for what it was and follow the evidence.

500
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 9: So told all your life that the purpose of the

501
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:05,800
Speaker 9: judicial system is to find the truth, when really it's

502
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 9: to get a conviction.

503
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:11,520
Speaker 5: They came back in they sentenced me to death three times.

504
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 5: They sentenced me to die by lethal injection three times.

505
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 5: They sentenced Jason to life in prison without parole. The

506
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 5: other guy they sentenced to life plus forty years. They

507
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 5: immediately take me from the courtroom to death Row, where

508
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:29,600
Speaker 5: I would not see Jason again. I saw him maybe

509
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:35,879
Speaker 5: twelve fifteen years later, for maybe twenty to thirty seconds.

510
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:39,560
Speaker 5: They used to bring other prisoners in to clean the barracks,

511
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 5: and he was one of the prisoners they brought in

512
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:43,640
Speaker 5: one day to clean death row. So he comes by

513
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:47,240
Speaker 5: mysell mopping and sweeping. That was the first contact I'd

514
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:49,280
Speaker 5: had with him in like fifteen years by that point.

515
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:55,600
Speaker 1: It's truly mind boggling the whole thing, even by our standards,

516
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,080
Speaker 1: being entrenched in this work, you know, and you hear

517
00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:02,639
Speaker 1: one fuck up story after another, but this one takes

518
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 1: the King go, yeah, you know. I talk a lot

519
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:09,560
Speaker 1: about the idea that when we willfully or accidentally, want

520
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: to call it mistakenly, prosecute the wrong person and convict them,

521
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 1: by definition, we stop looking for the right person exactly.

522
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: And in this case, it sure seems like the prosecutors

523
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: must have known that these guys didn't do it. At

524
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 1: some point they realized that they had the wrong guys.

525
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: Maybe it was around the time you did, maybe it

526
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,440
Speaker 1: was sooner, may it was later. But then you're left with,

527
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:35,199
Speaker 1: wait a minute, So, whoever this sick fuck is that

528
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 1: did this terrible, or whoever these people are that did this,

529
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 1: they're amongst us. Yeah.

530
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,679
Speaker 7: Well, first of all, I do believe that during the

531
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:47,840
Speaker 7: trial and through the conviction, the authorities felt they had

532
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:50,679
Speaker 7: the right guy. And the reason that's scary is because

533
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:54,280
Speaker 7: of the utter incompetence and the ability to fall victim

534
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:58,320
Speaker 7: to confirmation bias, to all sorts of problems within our system.

535
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:01,479
Speaker 7: I actually think that they felt they had the right people.

536
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:05,399
Speaker 7: What I find evil, the real evil in this case

537
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:10,359
Speaker 7: because a lot of that initial false conviction I attribute

538
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:14,400
Speaker 7: to human error, which is scary in some way scarier

539
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 7: than a conspiracy. But it's the post conviction period where

540
00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 7: it became quite clear, I think to everybody involved that

541
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:25,159
Speaker 7: these guys were innocent, and for people to hang on

542
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:28,919
Speaker 7: to their jobs, for people to not question things, you know,

543
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:32,199
Speaker 7: for the same judge Judge Burnett, who presided over the

544
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:37,640
Speaker 7: original trial, to be the post conviction appellate judge ruling

545
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 7: whether he had reversible error in the original is absurd,

546
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:43,520
Speaker 7: and that's what the way it was for over a

547
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 7: decade on that case. So the real evil in this

548
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 7: case is the post conviction period where people cared more

549
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:51,000
Speaker 7: about their jobs. And you see that all the time.

550
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 7: It's why there shouldn't be prosecutorial immunity and all sorts

551
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 7: of other issues. But just getting back to my origin story,

552
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 7: you know, in covering this story, I just still I

553
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 7: didn't have the gene that I thought film could be

554
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 7: used for social good until the final moments of Paradise Lost,

555
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 7: which are the final moments of the trial where oh

556
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 7: my god, they really have convicted this guy on no evidence.

557
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 7: And you see in Paradise Laws in the movie, Jason

558
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:19,719
Speaker 7: has already been convicted halfway through the movie, and then

559
00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 7: the second half of the movie is focusing on Jason

560
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 7: and Damien, and you see Damien being chained up and

561
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:26,360
Speaker 7: led off to death row. I mean, we were in

562
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 7: the room with him as he was being chained off

563
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 7: and led off to death row, and Jason was being

564
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 7: led off to life without parole sentences and they get

565
00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 7: escorted out of the room, and Bruce and I look

566
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 7: at each other like, oh my god, I cannot believe

567
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 7: what we just witnessed. And that's when we vowed to

568
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,680
Speaker 7: do everything we could. And when the gene or the

569
00:29:43,760 --> 00:29:48,000
Speaker 7: light bulb went off in my head where I realized that, yes,

570
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 7: I'm sitting on all this footage that can help, and

571
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 7: that film I think can be used for shining a light.

572
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 7: And so I feel like I stumbled on to the

573
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:00,480
Speaker 7: criminal justice system as a place to place my f focus.

574
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 7: But seeing how easy it is for people to make mistakes,

575
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:06,160
Speaker 7: seeing how easy it is for somebody to be sent

576
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 7: to death, this became my calling when I saw that

577
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 7: zero evidence and Stephen King novels and Metallica lyrics can

578
00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:14,080
Speaker 7: put you on death row.

579
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: Right, Well, if that's the case, I mean when you

580
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 1: add up all the Stephen King novels and all the

581
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 1: Batallica records that would sold out, means there's tens of

582
00:30:21,280 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: millions of serial killers out there that we should all

583
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: be very scared crazy.

584
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 7: And you know, he did have an affinity for Aleister

585
00:30:28,280 --> 00:30:31,320
Speaker 7: Crowley and that was also introduced. But still, this is

586
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:34,440
Speaker 7: not forensic evidence. You know, there was no blood at

587
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,239
Speaker 7: the crime scene, no forensic evidence. I mean, it's just

588
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 7: this is the worst case probably I've studied, you know,

589
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 7: in all these years.

590
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 1: So your film ultimately led to an amazing outpouring of

591
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 1: support from people all over the world, regular people as

592
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: well as people at the very top echelons of society.

593
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:01,640
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder, Natalie Maine to Peter Jackson. Amazing,

594
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 1: amazing people who became like, not casually involved, but deeply involved.

595
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 1: And there's no separating that from the fact that it

596
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 1: was a direct result of your movie, which had to

597
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:16,200
Speaker 1: feel good. But then how did it feel when finally,

598
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,800
Speaker 1: eighteen years later, these guys walked out of prison and

599
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:23,200
Speaker 1: knowing the role that you played in that, right, well,

600
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 1: and a lot of people played roles in it, right,

601
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 1: That's the thing I mean this. I hope this doesn't

602
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:29,960
Speaker 1: sound falsely humble. I'm very proud of the films, and

603
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: I think the film's definitely played a role. And I

604
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: definitely think that we're the ones who said against all

605
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,280
Speaker 1: the other media, because every night there was a news

606
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 1: report or story of these monstrous killers. It was so

607
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:44,800
Speaker 1: prejudicing everything, so we were truly the only media saying

608
00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: that they were innocent. I think the film attracted a

609
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:50,920
Speaker 1: lot of the attention, but it's the activism of tens

610
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: of thousands of people and the well known people that

611
00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 1: got them out of prison.

612
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:56,959
Speaker 7: But that feels good. I mean, it's rare in one's career.

613
00:31:57,040 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 7: You know, when you make documentaries, you hope to affect

614
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:02,000
Speaker 7: people in some way. When you're a storyteller in general,

615
00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 7: you want to affect people in some way, and to

616
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 7: have that kind of tangible effect on the outcome of

617
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 7: a case felt terrific, although I will say it was

618
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 7: also very bittersweet because a it took way too long,

619
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:17,560
Speaker 7: you know, eighteen and a half years. Actually, with some

620
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:19,800
Speaker 7: cases that's on the low end of things, sadly, but

621
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 7: still it took so long, and the attempts to deny

622
00:32:22,840 --> 00:32:25,720
Speaker 7: DNA testing and the fact that the same judge remained

623
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 7: on the case during the whole post conviction is just outrageous.

624
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 7: And then the end result was the Alfred plea, where

625
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 7: you know, Damien was not well on death row as

626
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:37,960
Speaker 7: we know, and you know, Jason had to really debate

627
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 7: whether he wanted to take the deal because he wanted

628
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 7: to keep fighting, and some evidence that Peter Jackson paid

629
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 7: for was coming out and very helpful, which of course

630
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,400
Speaker 7: scared the prosecution, which is why they were even willing

631
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 7: to do the Alfred plea. Should we explain what the

632
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 7: Alfred plea is?

633
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me talk about it. Go ahead.

634
00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 7: Well, the Alfred plea is basically where you stand up

635
00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:04,120
Speaker 7: in court. In this case, Damien and Jason and Jesse

636
00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 7: acknowledged that the prosecution has enough evidence to convict, but

637
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 7: you maintain your innocence. You state that I am innocent

638
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 7: of these charges, but I believe the state has enough

639
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 7: evidence that a conviction could occur, So I plead guilty

640
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 7: in exchange for time served. Is basically what happened. So

641
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:27,440
Speaker 7: the death sentence was vacated and turned into a first

642
00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 7: degree murder charge, and he was sentenced to life served,

643
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 7: which allowed him to go out of the prison, and

644
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 7: the life without parole sentences were vacated and turned into

645
00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 7: time served. That's you know, you can understand why somebody

646
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 7: would accept that, especially if you're on death row. But

647
00:33:43,920 --> 00:33:47,320
Speaker 7: it's so cowardly on the part of the State of Arkansas.

648
00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 7: Does anyone really believe that if the State of Arkansas

649
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 7: had an abiding belief that these were teen child killers

650
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:57,760
Speaker 7: who sacrificed eight year olds to the devil in a

651
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 7: satanic ritual that they would allow them to walk free

652
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:04,000
Speaker 7: after eighteen years. Of course not they know they're innocent,

653
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 7: but they want to protect themselves from accountability.

654
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:07,000
Speaker 1: You know.

655
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:08,800
Speaker 7: Some people have said, well, they want to also protect

656
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:11,920
Speaker 7: themselves from being sued for wrongful conviction, which you know,

657
00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:15,280
Speaker 7: the average wrongful conviction case is worth a million dollars

658
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 7: a year. Times eighteen years times three defendants, that's fifty

659
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:21,440
Speaker 7: four million dollars if I'm doing my math correctly or

660
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 7: something like that. But they could have even signed, you know,

661
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 7: a way that they won't sue for wrongful conviction. It's

662
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:32,239
Speaker 7: all about accountability, and that's how these things happen. That's

663
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 7: why post conviction takes for so long. Nobody wants to

664
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 7: be accountable. And I think it's so cowardly and disturbing

665
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 7: that this is how these guys ended up free. I mean,

666
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:45,440
Speaker 7: I took Jason to both the Berlin Film Festival with

667
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:49,279
Speaker 7: Paradise Lost three and there's a great documentary festival in

668
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 7: Amsterdam called IFA International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam, and both

669
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 7: of those border crossings were fraught with delays and problems

670
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:03,280
Speaker 7: because as in the computer, it's Jason Bald with convicted

671
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 7: child killer. Jason wants to study law and become a lawyer.

672
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:08,600
Speaker 7: He can't do it because he's a convicted child killer.

673
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:13,320
Speaker 7: So yesfl great that the movie had an impact on people,

674
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:17,399
Speaker 7: and those people pushed and pushed until these guys were

675
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:20,360
Speaker 7: let out. But sad that it's the alphad plea and

676
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:22,120
Speaker 7: they're not fully exonerated.

677
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:31,320
Speaker 1: The alpha plea is such a it's like a Sophie's

678
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:34,880
Speaker 1: choice kind of thing. And we've had Oh god, I

679
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 1: don't know how many people on Ralph conviction who have

680
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:42,320
Speaker 1: resorted to that. You know, they have so much leverage

681
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:44,839
Speaker 1: when you're looking at the amount of time it will

682
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 1: take to go back for another trial, Yeah, you're going

683
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:50,560
Speaker 1: to spend that time in prison awaiting that trial. If

684
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:52,719
Speaker 1: you're trying to put yourself in the shoes of someone

685
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:55,439
Speaker 1: who's face with that choice, If you know that you've

686
00:35:55,440 --> 00:36:00,120
Speaker 1: already been framed once or gotten you know, convicted, he

687
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: didn't do however it got to that once, you would

688
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: be hard pressed to risk the rest of your life

689
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:07,360
Speaker 1: in the system that has already.

690
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:12,000
Speaker 7: Ye, Damien was truly unhealthy and being abused by guards.

691
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:15,000
Speaker 7: And that's ultimately why I think they're all heroes to me.

692
00:36:15,080 --> 00:36:18,280
Speaker 7: But Jason Baldwin acted very heroically because he was ready

693
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:20,960
Speaker 7: to stay and fight and clear his name. But everyone

694
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 7: felt that Damien's health was in such a state that

695
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:28,279
Speaker 7: to wait any longer might be detrimental, so he made

696
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 7: that decision a death sentence.

697
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 1: Jason. Of all the eighty something episodes we recorded, now,

698
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:42,319
Speaker 1: his was really like it was difficult to even hear

699
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: the stories that he told. He's such an amazingly gentle,

700
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:51,400
Speaker 1: you know, soul, and you know he was what ninety

701
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:55,840
Speaker 1: one hundred pounds back then, right, actually did well.

702
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 7: In school, And you're right. That was the vibe he

703
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 7: was giving off. Was this sweet little boy talking to

704
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:02,759
Speaker 7: me about phishing and what he likes to do when

705
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:05,640
Speaker 7: he's not at school and drawing. He was an avid drawer.

706
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:07,920
Speaker 7: And while he's talking to me, I'm looking at his

707
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 7: tiny little wrists, because if you believe the prosecution story,

708
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 7: it's Baldwin who wielded the serrated hunting knife that castrated

709
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 7: the buyer's boy. And I'm talking to the sweet little

710
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 7: kid and staring at his wrist and trying to imagine

711
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 7: that this guy knifed these kids in the way that

712
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,879
Speaker 7: it was alleged, and I just found it incredible.

713
00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:33,279
Speaker 1: Jason Baldwin on the show. It was an experience I'll

714
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:36,080
Speaker 1: never forget when this all came down. You were in

715
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 1: tenth grade.

716
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:37,400
Speaker 9: Tenth grade.

717
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:39,799
Speaker 1: Tenth grade. Let's just reflect on that for a second.

718
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 1: You're not even anywhere near being an adult in tenth grade.

719
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:46,880
Speaker 1: So then you end up getting sent to maximum security prison.

720
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:49,799
Speaker 9: Right when you first go to prison and you're not

721
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 9: going to death row, you go to what's called a

722
00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:55,239
Speaker 9: diagnostic unit, and that's where they evaluate you mentally and

723
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 9: physically to determine what your parent unit in the department

724
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 9: corrections will be. Because they have a myriad of prisons

725
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:06,759
Speaker 9: on various different old slave plantations in the South, and

726
00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:09,919
Speaker 9: each of them are different and in different ways by

727
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 9: age and your strength and things like that. And when

728
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:16,200
Speaker 9: I went to diagnostics, they saw me like you saw

729
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 9: me as a small innocent kid, and a diagnostics they

730
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:21,680
Speaker 9: were like, we've got to send you to one of

731
00:38:21,719 --> 00:38:24,360
Speaker 9: two places, Jason, or you're not gonna make it PC

732
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 9: Protective custody or what's called SPU Suicide Prevention Unit and

733
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:31,920
Speaker 9: suicide prevention unit. You will have your own cell. And

734
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:34,319
Speaker 9: you know, I looked at it like this. At the time,

735
00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 9: we didn't have very many people on our side. In fact,

736
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:41,600
Speaker 9: it was just us. And I'm thrust into this incredibly

737
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 9: impossible situation. And I was escorted everywhere I went in

738
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:48,320
Speaker 9: the prison, and so I'd see the people in SPU

739
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:51,680
Speaker 9: going to chow and they'd be doing the thorizine shuffle

740
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:54,800
Speaker 9: because they're so heavily medicated. And I had a fear

741
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:57,840
Speaker 9: that if I acquiesced and let them put me in SPU,

742
00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 9: that they would forcefully make me and I would lose

743
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:05,160
Speaker 9: my mind and my ability to think and reason and

744
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:08,560
Speaker 9: to fight. And so I said, no, I can't do that.

745
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:12,799
Speaker 9: And as far as the PC protective custody, anybody knows

746
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:15,200
Speaker 9: if you are saying you are so weak that you

747
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 9: need protection, that people are gonna see that and prey

748
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:22,279
Speaker 9: on you even more. And so I knew I had

749
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:26,080
Speaker 9: to some way, some fashion stand on my own two

750
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 9: feet in there and earn everybody's respect from the inmates

751
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:32,719
Speaker 9: and guards a light and they said, well, you not

752
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:34,799
Speaker 9: going to one of these places. We're gonna have to

753
00:39:34,840 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 9: send you to Barner. And at the time they had

754
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 9: just shipped all these guys from the Little Tucker Unit

755
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:43,799
Speaker 9: to Barner and they were destroying the place. They said,

756
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 9: it was just chaos and destruction and just incredibly violent place,

757
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 9: and that's where they were going to have to send me.

758
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 9: And I just told them that that's what you got

759
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:55,799
Speaker 9: to do. You got to do it. And so they

760
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 9: did eventually send me to Barner Unit, and it was

761
00:39:59,560 --> 00:40:00,960
Speaker 9: everything they said it was.

762
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:02,439
Speaker 1: How did you survive there?

763
00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 9: And you know, by the grace of God, you know,

764
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 9: as you said, I guess, I'll say I was incredibly luckily,

765
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 9: but I was incredibly blessed to I went in there,

766
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:13,960
Speaker 9: they opened up and mister Patten stepped out, and his

767
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:18,200
Speaker 9: clerk stepped out, and mister Panton says, in May Bowlin,

768
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:21,719
Speaker 9: I'm mister Patten, the classification officer. I'll be assigning you

769
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 9: to your housing unit. And this is my clerk, Mojo.

770
00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 9: And they tell me you got to stand up for

771
00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 9: yourself in here or these people just will run you

772
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 9: over and turn you into a sex slave and all

773
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:37,160
Speaker 9: these horrible things and make you pay money for protection

774
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 9: and stuff like that. And so they assign me to

775
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 9: seven barracks, and seven barracks at the Barner unit is

776
00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:46,640
Speaker 9: in take barracks. I walk down the hall and as

777
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 9: I'm walking, I'm walking next to this barracks and it's

778
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 9: got bulletproof glass three stories high, and these guys are

779
00:40:53,560 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 9: beating on it. Right, it's plexiglass, it's got chicken wire

780
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:59,759
Speaker 9: in it, and there are sell bars on the inside

781
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:01,799
Speaker 9: of it, going all the way up three stories. And

782
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 9: I look and these guys are literally climbing this thing.

783
00:41:05,600 --> 00:41:08,560
Speaker 9: They are climbing it above one another're hanging on to

784
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:12,480
Speaker 9: the bars, looking at me, beating the glass and pointing

785
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:15,720
Speaker 9: at me. Because they've been watching the trial on TV

786
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:18,080
Speaker 9: and the hearings and stuff for an entire year. It's

787
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 9: like a pep rally. Right, They're finally going to have

788
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:22,279
Speaker 9: their hands on me.

789
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 1: Right.

790
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 9: And I get there and Sergeant Ivy's working the door

791
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:27,799
Speaker 9: and he tells me, He says, if you go in

792
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:30,439
Speaker 9: there and stand up for yourself, I got your back.

793
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 9: If not, they got you. And I'm just holding the

794
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 9: only thing I have is a bible, a couple of

795
00:41:36,200 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 9: letters from a mom. That's it in a little paper bag.

796
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 9: And they opened the door and put me in there,

797
00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:44,640
Speaker 9: and next thing I know, somebody swings a fist at me.

798
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:47,960
Speaker 9: I duck that one. The next one catches me and

799
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 9: I'm fighting. Immediately the door opens back up, there's may sprayed.

800
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:55,960
Speaker 9: Sergeant Ivy's yeanking people off of me. I'm on the

801
00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:59,080
Speaker 9: ground and he says, are you ready to go to PC?

802
00:41:59,320 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: Now?

803
00:41:59,920 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 9: You need to catch out, and the guys are hollering,

804
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 9: catch out, bitch, catch out, O all these horrible things,

805
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:09,719
Speaker 9: you know, which catch out means to leave the barracks

806
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:13,000
Speaker 9: and to go and to protective custody. And like I said,

807
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:15,240
Speaker 9: you know, I knew I needed to earn these people's

808
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:17,720
Speaker 9: respect because I did not know how long I would

809
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 9: be there. I know I'm innocent, but I don't know

810
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:22,400
Speaker 9: how long I'm going to be in this prison. And

811
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 9: so I tell them no leave me. And next thing

812
00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:27,880
Speaker 9: I know, we go from the dayroom tier downstairs of

813
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:30,760
Speaker 9: guys like push all the racks up against the wall.

814
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:34,319
Speaker 9: They circle around us, and I'm fighting this guy. And

815
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:36,440
Speaker 9: then I'm fighting this guy and there's people hitting me

816
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:39,759
Speaker 9: from behind. So it's kind of orderly and fair, but

817
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:42,240
Speaker 9: then again it's kind of not. And so I fight

818
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:46,600
Speaker 9: the whole barracks that Friday, everybody, and then they call

819
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:50,080
Speaker 9: shower call and the barracks next door eight bricks. They

820
00:42:50,080 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 9: call two barracks at a time to go to shower.

821
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 9: The shower holds one hundred people, and so when I

822
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:58,719
Speaker 9: get there, I gotta fight all these guys from eight barracks.

823
00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:01,959
Speaker 9: And so I fought all weekend. My whole face would

824
00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:05,239
Speaker 9: swollen up, my fists were swoll up, my body was

825
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:08,799
Speaker 9: beat And so I do this all weekend. I get

826
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:11,800
Speaker 9: into fights in the chowhau even like because there's even

827
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 9: other people from other barracks is wanting to get to

828
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 9: me in the chow haw and stuff like that. Come

829
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:21,560
Speaker 9: Monday morning, I'm barely even able to walk, you know,

830
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 9: and like the guys are like just pushing me and

831
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:27,680
Speaker 9: guiding me a bit and which way to go and stuff,

832
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 9: because I can't even see even less than I normally

833
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 9: do because my eyes and stuff are all swollen up.

834
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:36,640
Speaker 9: And I just remember thinking that whole weekend about this

835
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 9: job out in the fields, whole squad. There's gonna be sunshine,

836
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:43,440
Speaker 9: there's gonna be a dawn, and I'm gonna get to

837
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:48,000
Speaker 9: witness that. I was just looking forward to that first dawn,

838
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:51,000
Speaker 9: you know, that morning air. And so there was a

839
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 9: part of me just no matter how bad it was,

840
00:43:53,239 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 9: I was just looking forward to that first dawn. I'm like,

841
00:43:55,680 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 9: if I can make it to that, you know, if

842
00:43:57,520 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 9: I can make it to that, that's something good.

843
00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:06,120
Speaker 1: It's interesting. Fifteen to twenty years ago, I was going

844
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: around to different studios in Hollywood and saying, we should

845
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:12,719
Speaker 1: do a show that features these type of cases and

846
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 1: shine a light on these injustices. And people were like, no,

847
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,440
Speaker 1: nobody wants that, you know, And now it seems like

848
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: every other show you turn.

849
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:25,880
Speaker 7: On I have several of them. Yeah you do ye

850
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:28,239
Speaker 7: a wrong man on Stars. And I did a show

851
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:33,319
Speaker 7: for Discovery called Killing Richard Glossop, who another horrible case

852
00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:35,080
Speaker 7: that I wish people would pay more attention to.

853
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:35,960
Speaker 1: Richard Glossops.

854
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:38,799
Speaker 7: And on Oklahoma's death Row, the status tried to kill

855
00:44:38,840 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 7: him three times. The last time they tried to kill him,

856
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 7: the portal was in his arm and they were using

857
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 7: the wrong execution drugs and the clock struck three, which

858
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:49,080
Speaker 7: is the appointed killing hour, and the family on the

859
00:44:49,120 --> 00:44:51,680
Speaker 7: outside thought the stay had not come as it had

860
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 7: several times before, crying and hugging, thinking that he had

861
00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:58,160
Speaker 7: been killed, when in fact, what was going on inside

862
00:44:58,200 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 7: the death room was an argu between the state's attorney

863
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:03,520
Speaker 7: general and the head of prisons trying to figure out

864
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 7: whether they should kill this guy because he had the

865
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 7: wrong execution drugs and that fracas, and it's the second

866
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 7: time there was the wrong execution drugs were being used.

867
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 7: There's you know, there's a moratorium on executions in Oklahoma.

868
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 7: That's the only thing that's keeping Richard Glossop alive, as

869
00:45:18,560 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 7: opposed to this bizarre story that the prosecution, you know,

870
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:25,359
Speaker 7: has given as to why he deserves to be killed,

871
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:26,600
Speaker 7: which is completely bogus.

872
00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 1: The case of Richard Glossop came to my attention several

873
00:45:30,239 --> 00:45:33,279
Speaker 1: years ago, and I felt like I'd been kicked in

874
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:36,279
Speaker 1: the stomach. I mean, let's talk about him, because they

875
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 1: do need to bring more attention to it. Can you

876
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:41,239
Speaker 1: give us the capsule summary of this.

877
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:44,320
Speaker 7: There's not a long story to tell. It's Richard Glossop

878
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 7: was the manager of a kind of a sleazy motel,

879
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:54,759
Speaker 7: and he is accused of hiring the motel's janitor, who

880
00:45:54,760 --> 00:45:57,400
Speaker 7: he had given a job to only a few months before,

881
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 7: to kill the owner of the hotel that he could

882
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:03,719
Speaker 7: take it over. The whole story on its face when

883
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:06,280
Speaker 7: you pick it apart is ridiculous. The guy who actually

884
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:09,839
Speaker 7: did the killing is the junkie hotel janitor maintenance man

885
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:13,280
Speaker 7: named Justin Snead, and he was convicted of the murder,

886
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 7: but you know, was not sentenced to death. He cut

887
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 7: a deal, pointed a finger at his boss. There's zero evidence,

888
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:23,280
Speaker 7: zero corroboration. We did some forensic accounting or the defense

889
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:26,120
Speaker 7: attorney did some forensic accounting to show this idea of

890
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:32,840
Speaker 7: swindling and taking money is bogus. But conspiracy to murder

891
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 7: hiring somebody to do a murder as a capital offense,

892
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 7: and these guys wanted that notch on their belt. I'm convinced.

893
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:40,920
Speaker 7: I mean, there's just if you look at the evidence,

894
00:46:41,080 --> 00:46:43,359
Speaker 7: there is none. It's just one of these cases where

895
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:48,239
Speaker 7: it's so bizarre. And this guy has been on it's

896
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:49,879
Speaker 7: been two years since I did the show. It's either

897
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 7: thirty five days or thirty eight days prior to your execution,

898
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 7: your move from one terrible cell in death row to

899
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:01,160
Speaker 7: your final cell where you're placed on death watch, where

900
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 7: the lights are on twenty four seven. You now only

901
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:06,600
Speaker 7: have one meal a day. You are sleeping on a

902
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:10,800
Speaker 7: thin like half inch excuse for a mattress instead of

903
00:47:10,840 --> 00:47:13,839
Speaker 7: a real cot and they're just trying to wear you down.

904
00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 7: And this poor guy has gone through this process three times.

905
00:47:17,560 --> 00:47:20,279
Speaker 7: He's had the portal placed in his arm awaiting the

906
00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 7: lethal injection drugs. When they realized, oh, we have the

907
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:25,399
Speaker 7: wrong drugs. That's the only thing that has saved this guy.

908
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 7: We're two mistakes by the prison. The first attempt to

909
00:47:28,719 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 7: kill him, there was a stay because a new witness

910
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,960
Speaker 7: came along and the government dismissed it as being relevant.

911
00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:37,360
Speaker 7: But that was the first day. The other two stays,

912
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:40,799
Speaker 7: the last two stays were because of botched execution. And

913
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:43,760
Speaker 7: there's just no evidence tying this guy to the murder.

914
00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 7: The convicted killer who confessed to doing it is serving

915
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:50,759
Speaker 7: a life sentence, whereas the guy who allegedly hired him

916
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:53,879
Speaker 7: for which there's snow proof, is on death row under

917
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:55,400
Speaker 7: the most miserable conditions.

918
00:47:55,640 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 5: You know.

919
00:47:56,200 --> 00:48:02,200
Speaker 7: And this is where my big thing is prosecutorial immunity.

920
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:04,359
Speaker 7: You know, on the one hand, it's been argued to me, well,

921
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 7: prosecutors have to be immune from their actions because you know,

922
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 7: in many places prosecutors are underpaid. You know, you wouldn't

923
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 7: get good prosecutors to do their job if they were

924
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:17,319
Speaker 7: fearful of immunity. I get that on a certain level.

925
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:20,040
Speaker 7: And there's lots of great prosecutors and not everyone's a

926
00:48:20,080 --> 00:48:22,640
Speaker 7: bad guy, and not every CoP's a bad cop. And

927
00:48:22,719 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 7: I'm like, like, you can't paint people with a broad stroke.

928
00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:30,200
Speaker 7: But there's got to be a happy medium where willful

929
00:48:30,400 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 7: withholding of evidence. Prosecutors have got to be held accountable

930
00:48:35,560 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 7: and a lot of this shit would go away in

931
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 7: my opinion. I mean, you know, Judge Janine Janine Piro,

932
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:45,640
Speaker 7: the Fox commentator in the case of Jeffrey Dskovic, she

933
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 7: fought DNA testing for a long time. You know, she

934
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:53,600
Speaker 7: went off to go run for office, and then her successor, Janetdfiori, said,

935
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:56,400
Speaker 7: of course, we'll test the DNA. The DNA was tested

936
00:48:56,480 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 7: and it immediately pointed to another person.

937
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:04,040
Speaker 1: Season four of Romful Conviction, Episode eight, Jeffrey Deskovic.

938
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:07,400
Speaker 8: And then the trial comes in. Just before the trial,

939
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:11,520
Speaker 8: the results of the DNA test comes back from the

940
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:15,759
Speaker 8: FBI laboratory, which shows that the seamen found and the

941
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 8: victim didn't.

942
00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:18,760
Speaker 1: Match me, right, because remember she was raped.

943
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:21,839
Speaker 8: She was raped, yes, And by the way, the lieutenant

944
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 8: who oversaw everything. In the letter that he penned to

945
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:29,800
Speaker 8: the FBI asking them to expedite the testing. He wrote

946
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:32,640
Speaker 8: in the letter that the DNA testing would either show

947
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:36,399
Speaker 8: my guilt or it would exonerate me. But when it

948
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 8: came back and it didn't match me, my lawyer did

949
00:49:40,719 --> 00:49:44,279
Speaker 8: try to get the indictment dismissed against me based on that,

950
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 8: but the judge denied that motion.

951
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: That alone seems so just incomprehensible to me. I mean,

952
00:49:53,160 --> 00:49:55,680
Speaker 1: the judge is impartial, right, we know the prosecutor has

953
00:49:55,719 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 1: an agenda, but the judge's impartial. Yeah, I don't know,

954
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:01,720
Speaker 1: I don't understand. You know that back then DNA wasn't

955
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:03,399
Speaker 1: it wasn't as well known.

956
00:50:03,480 --> 00:50:05,879
Speaker 8: But to be clear, I mean, DNA started being used

957
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:08,840
Speaker 8: in the court system as early as nineteen eighty seven,

958
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:11,920
Speaker 8: and this we're on trial now in nineteen ninety, so

959
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:14,880
Speaker 8: it's been around for three years. So while not in

960
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 8: currency like now, it is not exactly totally unknown.

961
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:21,320
Speaker 1: Right, and it's perfect I mean.

962
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:22,720
Speaker 8: Right, it's the gold standard.

963
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, so your DNA doesn't match. This is an inconvenient

964
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:32,600
Speaker 1: truth for the authorities, and the judge allows this. This

965
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:36,920
Speaker 1: circus to go on. Meanwhile, let's spend a moment talking

966
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 1: about the actual perpetrator. Yes, because every time, and I

967
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:44,719
Speaker 1: sound like a broken record when I say this, but

968
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: every time that somebody like you gets convicted wrongfully, the

969
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 1: actual perpetrator, they stop looking for him. Right, the case

970
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:56,680
Speaker 1: is closed, And in this case, the consequences were very real.

971
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 8: Yes, school teacher Patricia Morrison who had a couple of kids.

972
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:04,799
Speaker 8: She was from Peak Skill, and she was killed by

973
00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 8: the stained perpetrator, Stephen Cunningham. She was killed three and

974
00:51:08,080 --> 00:51:11,279
Speaker 8: a half years later as a result of Cunningham being

975
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 8: left free on the street while I was doing time

976
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 8: for his crime.

977
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 1: Now you say, the real perpetrator, how do we know that?

978
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 8: Well, here, great, that's a great question. I'm so glad

979
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:26,840
Speaker 8: you asked. Because the DNA matched him, because he got

980
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 8: caught for the second murder Patricia Morrison, which resulted in

981
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 8: his being incarcerated and having to give up a DNA

982
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:36,880
Speaker 8: sample which was put into the data bank. And so

983
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 8: when I eventually got the further testing with the Innocence

984
00:51:41,040 --> 00:51:47,239
Speaker 8: Projects help, it matched him. Then he subsequently confessed and

985
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:48,560
Speaker 8: he played guilty in court.

986
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:51,719
Speaker 1: When did this happen that happened.

987
00:51:51,239 --> 00:51:54,239
Speaker 8: Twelve and a half years after he killed a second victim.

988
00:51:54,360 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 1: Well, so, Patricia Morrison, yes, today would be probably a

989
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:02,680
Speaker 1: LUs sitting around with her grandchildren, you know, probably be

990
00:52:02,680 --> 00:52:05,200
Speaker 1: a retired school teacher by now having a nice life.

991
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 1: Her children would have grown up as they deserve too,

992
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:10,440
Speaker 1: as everyone deserves to with their mother. The rest of

993
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:14,879
Speaker 1: her family wouldn't have gone through this horrendous loss. None

994
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:16,759
Speaker 1: of it had to happen except for the fact that

995
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:20,520
Speaker 1: they went on this crazy witch hunt to convict you,

996
00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:23,400
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Deskovic, of a crime that they knew you didn't commit.

997
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:29,279
Speaker 7: So he was exonerated, got millions of dollars from Westchester

998
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,400
Speaker 7: County and Putnam County, which the taxpayers should be livid

999
00:52:32,440 --> 00:52:34,760
Speaker 7: about that. You know, this case was allowed to happen,

1000
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:37,600
Speaker 7: and the same thing in Damien's case. They were you know,

1001
00:52:37,680 --> 00:52:40,640
Speaker 7: the seven or eight years was spent with a guy

1002
00:52:40,719 --> 00:52:45,120
Speaker 7: on death row. Seven or eight years was spent fighting

1003
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 7: DNA testing because of the finality of judgment concept in

1004
00:52:50,719 --> 00:52:52,719
Speaker 7: our legal system, which is absurd.

1005
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:56,719
Speaker 5: Years later they do DNA testing, find out that the

1006
00:52:56,760 --> 00:52:58,600
Speaker 5: DNA does not match me or the other two guys

1007
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:01,600
Speaker 5: they convicted to this they still have not run that

1008
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:04,640
Speaker 5: DNA through CODIS to see who it matches. They refuse

1009
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 5: to do that.

1010
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:08,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is so strange because in a case like this,

1011
00:53:09,320 --> 00:53:11,680
Speaker 1: especially in the small community, the people who are doing

1012
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:14,200
Speaker 1: investigating live in that community. By definition, When you have

1013
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:16,720
Speaker 1: somebody out there who's capable of this sort of pure evil,

1014
00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:20,360
Speaker 1: you would think, if for no other reason than purely

1015
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:22,759
Speaker 1: selfish reasons, you would want to get that person off

1016
00:53:22,800 --> 00:53:26,520
Speaker 1: the street. But that's not what happened, and it happens

1017
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:31,040
Speaker 1: too frequently that these various factors combine to result in

1018
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: a tragic outcome.

1019
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:36,000
Speaker 5: And what people don't realize also, you know, just most

1020
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:38,840
Speaker 5: people's knowledge of the legal system comes from watching TV,

1021
00:53:39,160 --> 00:53:41,840
Speaker 5: and it fosters this idea that these people, these judges,

1022
00:53:41,920 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 5: these prosecutors, these attorney generals, that they have these positions

1023
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 5: because there's somehow moral people. They're good people who are

1024
00:53:48,520 --> 00:53:51,799
Speaker 5: looking out for society. In actual fact, these are politicians,

1025
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:55,799
Speaker 5: just like senators, just like congressmen. Their number one priority

1026
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,279
Speaker 5: is winning that next election. So they are going to

1027
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:01,960
Speaker 5: do or that next case exactly whatever the community is

1028
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 5: pressuring them to do. That's the way they're going to

1029
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:06,120
Speaker 5: lean because they want to win the next election.

1030
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 7: The legal system should be about finding the truth and

1031
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:17,120
Speaker 7: if there's reason to believe that somebody has a wrongful

1032
00:54:17,160 --> 00:54:20,600
Speaker 7: conviction claim, especially with the advent of DNA technology, which

1033
00:54:20,680 --> 00:54:22,839
Speaker 7: you know, that's a new that was a new thing.

1034
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:28,319
Speaker 7: The fact that a prosecutor can fight DNA testing like

1035
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:30,480
Speaker 7: they did in Damien's case for eight or nine years,

1036
00:54:30,840 --> 00:54:33,680
Speaker 7: like they did in Jeffrey Dskovic's case, which resulted in

1037
00:54:33,719 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 7: the death of another innocent human being, it's just outrageous.

1038
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:38,680
Speaker 1: You know. And that's true too in the Central Park

1039
00:54:38,719 --> 00:54:42,520
Speaker 1: five case, where Linda Fairstein prosecuted those five kids even

1040
00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 1: though she knew she had the evidence, she knew they

1041
00:54:45,040 --> 00:54:47,840
Speaker 1: didn't do it, and they had every reason to suspect

1042
00:54:47,840 --> 00:54:50,279
Speaker 1: that Matthias Rays was the actual killer. Ye, and then

1043
00:54:50,320 --> 00:54:52,560
Speaker 1: he went out and raped three other women and killed

1044
00:54:52,560 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: one of them in front of her kids. I mean,

1045
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:56,799
Speaker 1: it's like, I mean, I'm getting the shells just thinking

1046
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,360
Speaker 1: about it. Like that is so bad and we should

1047
00:54:59,480 --> 00:55:01,719
Speaker 1: all want that to end, right.

1048
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 7: I'm telling you, If some tougher laws were passed about

1049
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:07,960
Speaker 7: prosecutors being held accountable for their actions, I think a

1050
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:10,640
Speaker 7: lot of the shit would end, it's about winning at

1051
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:13,160
Speaker 7: all costs. It's not about the search for the truth.

1052
00:55:13,320 --> 00:55:16,760
Speaker 7: And again, I'm friends with a prosecutor. I know many

1053
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:19,880
Speaker 7: good prosecutors. There's good guys out there, so I'm not

1054
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 7: saying every prosecutor is like that. But it's the system

1055
00:55:22,760 --> 00:55:25,719
Speaker 7: is human. It's the reason you cannot have a death

1056
00:55:25,760 --> 00:55:29,200
Speaker 7: penalty because the system is human and it's so easy.

1057
00:55:29,239 --> 00:55:33,280
Speaker 7: We see with Damien how an innocent person can be killed.

1058
00:55:33,800 --> 00:55:36,440
Speaker 7: And so I've spent a lot of times talking to

1059
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:40,120
Speaker 7: the mothers of victims of violent crime, and they want vengeance.

1060
00:55:40,160 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 7: And I understand that desire to have vengeance. And I

1061
00:55:42,600 --> 00:55:44,239
Speaker 7: don't want to look a mother in the eye and

1062
00:55:44,239 --> 00:55:47,520
Speaker 7: say to her, you don't morally have the right to

1063
00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:51,920
Speaker 7: want the death of the killer of your child. But

1064
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 7: we don't even have to get to that moral place

1065
00:55:54,800 --> 00:55:59,080
Speaker 7: because the death of one innocent person on death row,

1066
00:55:59,280 --> 00:56:01,000
Speaker 7: to me, means you can can't have a death penalty

1067
00:56:01,040 --> 00:56:03,760
Speaker 7: because the system is fallible. It's run by human beings,

1068
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:06,120
Speaker 7: some of whom want to win at all costs.

1069
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:08,759
Speaker 1: No, that's the argument I have with anybody who's pro

1070
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:12,000
Speaker 1: death penalty. I always say, okay, what percentage of innocent people,

1071
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:15,000
Speaker 1: Are you okay with executive exactly ten percent? I mean,

1072
00:56:15,040 --> 00:56:16,960
Speaker 1: we know that of the people that have been exonerated

1073
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:19,680
Speaker 1: from death row, there's proof that four percent of people

1074
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:22,120
Speaker 1: that were on death row are innocent. But we don't

1075
00:56:22,160 --> 00:56:24,319
Speaker 1: know how many others were executed that were innocent as well,

1076
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:28,359
Speaker 1: because most of those cases just literally die when that

1077
00:56:28,400 --> 00:56:31,880
Speaker 1: death takes place. No one goes and investigates those cases.

1078
00:56:32,080 --> 00:56:34,000
Speaker 1: I want to say too, there was one period of

1079
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 1: time where Harry Conic Senior was theda in New Orleans

1080
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:41,600
Speaker 1: and he put eight people on death row, and six

1081
00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:44,279
Speaker 1: of them were exonerated. I don't know whether the other

1082
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:46,439
Speaker 1: two are innocent or guilty or what became of them,

1083
00:56:46,480 --> 00:56:49,759
Speaker 1: but that was a pretty scary time right there. And

1084
00:56:49,800 --> 00:56:53,000
Speaker 1: there was that amazing sixty minutes piece where another prosecutor

1085
00:56:53,000 --> 00:56:56,239
Speaker 1: from New Orleans actually came forward and with tears and

1086
00:56:56,280 --> 00:56:59,359
Speaker 1: said that you know, he feels terrible to this day

1087
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:01,480
Speaker 1: about a guy that he put on death row that

1088
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:03,680
Speaker 1: he knew was innocent, and he witheld the evidence, and

1089
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:06,600
Speaker 1: he talks about his sort of perverse motives and it's

1090
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:09,440
Speaker 1: just not a thing, like the death penalty is not

1091
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:12,560
Speaker 1: a thing, and just a slight divergence. You know, when

1092
00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:16,320
Speaker 1: you said earlier that the typical exonnery gets a million

1093
00:57:16,360 --> 00:57:19,439
Speaker 1: dollars a year, the typical exunery actually gets nothing, right.

1094
00:57:19,520 --> 00:57:21,560
Speaker 1: I mean, some of them get paid, but even then

1095
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:25,000
Speaker 1: it varies wildly from whether they get paid thousands of

1096
00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 1: dollars or tens of thousands, or in the rare case

1097
00:57:27,880 --> 00:57:30,400
Speaker 1: like Jeffrey Eskobic, they actually did manage to get millions

1098
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:32,680
Speaker 1: of dollars. But those are rare. You have to prove

1099
00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 1: civil rights violations. And I'll never forget there was a

1100
00:57:35,560 --> 00:57:38,480
Speaker 1: guy who actually was friendly with he's gone now, but

1101
00:57:39,160 --> 00:57:43,360
Speaker 1: he was sentenced to death in Louisiana and came within

1102
00:57:44,120 --> 00:57:48,720
Speaker 1: days of being executed before somebody found with a microscope

1103
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:52,560
Speaker 1: and some brilliant scientific research was able to prove with

1104
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:56,400
Speaker 1: DNA that he was innocent, and he was exonerated and freed,

1105
00:57:56,520 --> 00:58:00,200
Speaker 1: and he was awarded fourteen and a half million dollars,

1106
00:58:00,320 --> 00:58:02,280
Speaker 1: and the State of Louisiana appealed all the way to

1107
00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:05,120
Speaker 1: the US Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court overturned the

1108
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:08,120
Speaker 1: award five to four. He had proven that they had

1109
00:58:08,160 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: willfully prosecuted him while knowing that he was innocent, and

1110
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:14,560
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court made some bizarre ruling that it wasn't

1111
00:58:14,600 --> 00:58:18,560
Speaker 1: the responsibility of the prosecutors to train the younger prosecutors,

1112
00:58:18,600 --> 00:58:21,160
Speaker 1: that they had to turn over culpatory evidence, and that

1113
00:58:21,200 --> 00:58:23,560
Speaker 1: he had to prove a pattern of misconduct. You know,

1114
00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:27,360
Speaker 1: it was just totally nuts. And he wrote an op

1115
00:58:27,520 --> 00:58:30,200
Speaker 1: ed in the New York Times where he said, I

1116
00:58:30,240 --> 00:58:34,440
Speaker 1: don't understand why the prosecutor who tried to kill me,

1117
00:58:34,960 --> 00:58:38,640
Speaker 1: knowing I was innocent, wouldn't be charged with attempted murder. Yeah,

1118
00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:41,520
Speaker 1: I mean, rest in peace. He was a wonderful guy.

1119
00:58:41,680 --> 00:58:43,760
Speaker 1: And what you know, I had breakfast with him actually

1120
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:46,200
Speaker 1: within days of the time the Supreme Court overturned his

1121
00:58:46,240 --> 00:58:49,000
Speaker 1: award and he got nothing. I was happy to be alive.

1122
00:58:49,720 --> 00:58:51,280
Speaker 1: And I'm glad you said what you said, Joe, because

1123
00:58:51,320 --> 00:58:54,840
Speaker 1: I also believed that. I still believe in in people.

1124
00:58:54,840 --> 00:58:57,920
Speaker 1: I still believe in in prosecutors and police, and I

1125
00:58:57,960 --> 00:58:59,800
Speaker 1: believe in a system of laws. And I think that

1126
00:58:59,840 --> 00:59:02,800
Speaker 1: the the large majority of people in our system are

1127
00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:04,800
Speaker 1: good people. I think most of the judges are good.

1128
00:59:04,960 --> 00:59:07,240
Speaker 1: But the ones that are bad, we should all want

1129
00:59:07,280 --> 00:59:10,200
Speaker 1: to get rid of them because they do such terrible

1130
00:59:10,280 --> 00:59:12,600
Speaker 1: damage that they do damage to the reputation of the

1131
00:59:12,600 --> 00:59:15,760
Speaker 1: profession as a whole as well. And these stories are real,

1132
00:59:15,800 --> 00:59:19,640
Speaker 1: These are real people, right, Richard Glossip. It's unimaginable, And

1133
00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:22,640
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up too, because what the

1134
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:26,080
Speaker 1: fuck kind of sense does it make that before they

1135
00:59:26,120 --> 00:59:30,240
Speaker 1: execute you, they go through this torture, like literal torture.

1136
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:32,680
Speaker 1: And you know, there was a guy in Virginia whose

1137
00:59:32,680 --> 00:59:34,760
Speaker 1: case I've been involved with, and thankfully we were able

1138
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:38,960
Speaker 1: to prevent his execution because he's innocent, guy Naman Bontelugus.

1139
00:59:39,400 --> 00:59:43,200
Speaker 1: And during the process of you know, working through his case,

1140
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:46,800
Speaker 1: I learned that they have a practice in the Commonwealth

1141
00:59:46,840 --> 00:59:50,200
Speaker 1: of Virginia where I think it's fifteen days or three

1142
00:59:50,280 --> 00:59:53,400
Speaker 1: weeks before your execution, they move you to another cell

1143
00:59:53,480 --> 00:59:55,520
Speaker 1: where you to have none of your books. You have

1144
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:58,960
Speaker 1: basically nothing. The lights are on, like you said, the

1145
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:01,320
Speaker 1: whole time, and they come and check on you every

1146
01:00:01,320 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, So they wake you up every fifteen minutes

1147
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:06,080
Speaker 1: and go, hey, just want to make sure Joe everything

1148
01:00:06,160 --> 01:00:08,160
Speaker 1: okay in there, Like I just want to you know,

1149
01:00:08,240 --> 01:00:13,720
Speaker 1: like what what I mean, Well, who came up with that?

1150
01:00:13,800 --> 01:00:15,520
Speaker 7: Well, I think they're trying to wear you down. So

1151
01:00:15,680 --> 01:00:17,960
Speaker 7: why so you just accept your death so that you

1152
01:00:17,960 --> 01:00:22,040
Speaker 7: don't make a scene for the witnesses who are experiencing it.

1153
01:00:22,120 --> 01:00:22,800
Speaker 1: Is that what it is?

1154
01:00:22,840 --> 01:00:25,000
Speaker 7: I don't know, I mean, and no one's told me that,

1155
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:26,720
Speaker 7: but I just feel like they're just trying to wear

1156
01:00:26,760 --> 01:00:29,000
Speaker 7: you down so you don't fight back. And Glossop told

1157
01:00:29,040 --> 01:00:31,360
Speaker 7: me himself, like he was so tired that, you know,

1158
01:00:31,400 --> 01:00:33,760
Speaker 7: he was accepting of his fate even though he knew

1159
01:00:33,760 --> 01:00:35,840
Speaker 7: it was wrong, you know, and if it wasn't for

1160
01:00:35,880 --> 01:00:38,200
Speaker 7: the wrong drug, he'd be gone.

1161
01:00:38,880 --> 01:00:43,120
Speaker 1: It's so incredibly troubling because like, why just why you

1162
01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:45,520
Speaker 1: got the guy you wanted, you got the actual killer.

1163
01:00:45,560 --> 01:00:48,480
Speaker 1: You guys did your job right, It's done. What do

1164
01:00:48,480 --> 01:00:50,880
Speaker 1: you need the extra body for what? And there's so

1165
01:00:50,960 --> 01:00:52,600
Speaker 1: many richer Glossops out there, I mean.

1166
01:00:52,840 --> 01:00:58,200
Speaker 7: The other weird and hard dynamic is that the family

1167
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:02,480
Speaker 7: of the victim in that case believes the Golossip is guilty.

1168
01:01:02,640 --> 01:01:08,400
Speaker 7: And for years, the families of the West Memphis Three, sorry,

1169
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:12,280
Speaker 7: the families of the victims, the parents of Michael Moore,

1170
01:01:12,480 --> 01:01:16,880
Speaker 7: Christopher Buyers, and Stevie branch It thought we were horrible people,

1171
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:19,520
Speaker 7: just Hollywood elites, and so funny when I don't call

1172
01:01:19,560 --> 01:01:21,960
Speaker 7: the Hollywood elite. I live an hour north of Manhattan,

1173
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:26,040
Speaker 7: and you know that as far away from Hollywood as possible,

1174
01:01:26,360 --> 01:01:30,000
Speaker 7: But you know that somehow Hollywood elites conspire to get

1175
01:01:30,040 --> 01:01:32,920
Speaker 7: these devil worshipers out of prison. For years, they hated us,

1176
01:01:33,320 --> 01:01:36,520
Speaker 7: call us names, and that's painful because you don't want

1177
01:01:36,520 --> 01:01:39,520
Speaker 7: to as makers of these things. You want to shine

1178
01:01:39,560 --> 01:01:41,400
Speaker 7: a light on the truth, but you don't want to

1179
01:01:41,480 --> 01:01:45,320
Speaker 7: cause the famili's pain. And that's the disservice that these

1180
01:01:45,440 --> 01:01:49,880
Speaker 7: police officials and prosecutors who maintain this facade of righteousness,

1181
01:01:50,160 --> 01:01:53,000
Speaker 7: that's the damage they inflict on the family members because

1182
01:01:53,040 --> 01:01:57,760
Speaker 7: a there's no justice because the real killers are running free.

1183
01:01:58,160 --> 01:02:01,400
Speaker 7: And secondly, the healing process. You know, we're both parents

1184
01:02:01,400 --> 01:02:04,360
Speaker 7: and I can't imagine, you know, anything worse than losing

1185
01:02:04,360 --> 01:02:07,080
Speaker 7: a child, and there's no closure for losing a child,

1186
01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:11,160
Speaker 7: but there certainly can be finality to the experience, and

1187
01:02:11,200 --> 01:02:16,640
Speaker 7: your healing process is predicated on knowing justice has been served.

1188
01:02:16,920 --> 01:02:19,960
Speaker 7: And so we came along and upset the apple cart

1189
01:02:19,960 --> 01:02:22,080
Speaker 7: by coming out with a film that's saying, hey, everything,

1190
01:02:22,120 --> 01:02:25,440
Speaker 7: the police and prosecution and all your ten thousand meetings

1191
01:02:25,440 --> 01:02:29,320
Speaker 7: with these people is wrong, and you're putting these families

1192
01:02:29,480 --> 01:02:34,160
Speaker 7: through a double tragedy. And for years they hated our guts,

1193
01:02:34,200 --> 01:02:36,920
Speaker 7: and two of the three families came to accept our

1194
01:02:36,920 --> 01:02:39,840
Speaker 7: point of view by the end of the Second Paradise Loss,

1195
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:43,720
Speaker 7: but even by the time of the Third Paradise Loss,

1196
01:02:43,720 --> 01:02:46,640
Speaker 7: which came out in twenty eleven and coincided with their release.

1197
01:02:47,160 --> 01:02:50,120
Speaker 7: One of the families. You know, the movie was nominated

1198
01:02:50,120 --> 01:02:52,280
Speaker 7: for an Academy Award and some other prizes. And I

1199
01:02:52,360 --> 01:02:56,400
Speaker 7: mentioned that only because these families took the time to

1200
01:02:56,560 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 7: write to the Academy and to the Director's Guild and

1201
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:02,400
Speaker 7: every place that had nominated us for a prize, to

1202
01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:05,160
Speaker 7: say that these films are works of fiction, that we

1203
01:03:05,360 --> 01:03:08,960
Speaker 7: manipulated them, we lied to them, that the West Memphis

1204
01:03:09,040 --> 01:03:12,240
Speaker 7: Three are guilty. And I look, I have, even though

1205
01:03:12,280 --> 01:03:15,240
Speaker 7: they hate us, I have endless reservoirs of sympathy for them,

1206
01:03:15,280 --> 01:03:19,320
Speaker 7: because again, going through this experience is every parent's worst nightmare,

1207
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:22,200
Speaker 7: and then to be victimized by the system again because

1208
01:03:22,240 --> 01:03:25,600
Speaker 7: the police and the prosecution have lied to them. That's

1209
01:03:25,640 --> 01:03:27,920
Speaker 7: the other part that people don't really think about, is

1210
01:03:27,960 --> 01:03:30,480
Speaker 7: what happens to the victims when the truth is just

1211
01:03:30,640 --> 01:03:31,320
Speaker 7: not the truth.

1212
01:03:31,760 --> 01:03:33,880
Speaker 1: Who do you think killed those kids?

1213
01:03:34,680 --> 01:03:37,760
Speaker 7: Oh, I don't want to do. I don't want to

1214
01:03:37,800 --> 01:03:41,600
Speaker 7: do to somebody else what I think was done to Damien.

1215
01:03:42,720 --> 01:03:44,640
Speaker 7: What I do know is that the case needs to

1216
01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:50,680
Speaker 7: be reopened. That we all know that no sane prosecutor

1217
01:03:50,880 --> 01:03:55,200
Speaker 7: would knowingly let convicted teen Satanist child killers out into

1218
01:03:55,240 --> 01:03:57,600
Speaker 7: the real world if they had any kind of belief

1219
01:03:57,640 --> 01:04:00,000
Speaker 7: that they were guilty. If they did, because the argus

1220
01:04:00,160 --> 01:04:03,120
Speaker 7: been in Arkansas amongst some of these officials is there

1221
01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:05,880
Speaker 7: was so much pressure from Johnny Depp and Eddie Vedder

1222
01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:09,720
Speaker 7: and Peter Jackson. Well, shame on you. You're gonna let a

1223
01:04:09,720 --> 01:04:13,760
Speaker 7: convicted child killer who you believe is capable of castrating

1224
01:04:13,760 --> 01:04:16,600
Speaker 7: little boys in a Satanic ritual. You're going to let

1225
01:04:16,600 --> 01:04:19,440
Speaker 7: them out after eighteen years because Johnny Depp said to

1226
01:04:19,760 --> 01:04:22,400
Speaker 7: So if that's true, shame on you. And if you

1227
01:04:22,440 --> 01:04:25,080
Speaker 7: don't believe that and they're actually innocent, as we all know,

1228
01:04:25,680 --> 01:04:28,120
Speaker 7: then shame on you for sticking with this Alfred plea

1229
01:04:28,240 --> 01:04:30,960
Speaker 7: and not looking into the case. As we all know,

1230
01:04:31,080 --> 01:04:35,000
Speaker 7: there's some evidence that points very directly to one of

1231
01:04:35,040 --> 01:04:38,400
Speaker 7: the stepfathers. I don't want to say he's guilty or not,

1232
01:04:39,040 --> 01:04:42,240
Speaker 7: but a competent authority needs to look into this, and

1233
01:04:42,320 --> 01:04:45,240
Speaker 7: they refuse to because they're hiding behind the Alfred plea.

1234
01:04:45,280 --> 01:04:47,960
Speaker 7: And that's the crime here. I mean, there are some

1235
01:04:48,000 --> 01:04:50,840
Speaker 7: simple abuses that I think could easily be remedied. One

1236
01:04:50,880 --> 01:04:55,320
Speaker 7: is prosecutorial accountability. There's way too much misconduct that needs

1237
01:04:55,320 --> 01:04:58,480
Speaker 7: to be arrested, and I think finding the balance between

1238
01:04:58,600 --> 01:05:01,280
Speaker 7: making it so scary that a prosecutor doesn't even want

1239
01:05:01,320 --> 01:05:04,040
Speaker 7: to take the job, which I understand, versus like just

1240
01:05:04,240 --> 01:05:07,720
Speaker 7: wilful withholding of evidence for example, it just needs to

1241
01:05:07,760 --> 01:05:10,720
Speaker 7: be stopped. The other thing is that people get a

1242
01:05:10,800 --> 01:05:14,120
Speaker 7: vested interest in staying on a case forever. Prosecutors stay

1243
01:05:14,160 --> 01:05:16,800
Speaker 7: on a case. Judges in some states like Arkansas are

1244
01:05:16,840 --> 01:05:19,200
Speaker 7: allowed to stay on the case if something is up

1245
01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:21,400
Speaker 7: for review. The original people should be out of the

1246
01:05:21,440 --> 01:05:24,560
Speaker 7: picture immediately. I mean, it just doesn't make sense to me.

1247
01:05:25,520 --> 01:05:29,320
Speaker 7: One of the cases that the Supreme Court finally is

1248
01:05:29,360 --> 01:05:32,320
Speaker 7: going to hear is the Curtis Flowers case, and we

1249
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:34,680
Speaker 7: profiled Curtis Flowers. I mean, he's the guy I think

1250
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:37,280
Speaker 7: is totally innocent, and we profiled that case on a

1251
01:05:37,320 --> 01:05:40,240
Speaker 7: show I do call wrong Man, and the guy has

1252
01:05:40,240 --> 01:05:44,560
Speaker 7: been tried. He's the most tried inmate in the history

1253
01:05:44,600 --> 01:05:48,000
Speaker 7: of American jurisprudence. Jurisprudence.

1254
01:05:48,560 --> 01:05:50,720
Speaker 1: He said, yes, that's right.

1255
01:05:50,760 --> 01:05:55,000
Speaker 7: I'm better at filmmaking than vocabulary. He's been tried six

1256
01:05:55,080 --> 01:06:00,640
Speaker 7: times and each time it's the same prosecutor, and they

1257
01:06:00,720 --> 01:06:04,919
Speaker 7: keep affirming his conviction again, circumstantial evidence and so many

1258
01:06:04,960 --> 01:06:08,120
Speaker 7: holes in that case. And thankfully the Supreme Court a

1259
01:06:08,120 --> 01:06:10,080
Speaker 7: few weeks ago said they're going to hear the case again.

1260
01:06:10,120 --> 01:06:12,120
Speaker 7: But even the Supreme Court hearing the case, if it's

1261
01:06:12,120 --> 01:06:14,800
Speaker 7: a good result and the state appeal is overturned by

1262
01:06:14,800 --> 01:06:17,520
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court, then it gets remanded back to you know,

1263
01:06:17,600 --> 01:06:20,120
Speaker 7: to the state to determine if they're going to try

1264
01:06:20,200 --> 01:06:22,480
Speaker 7: him a seventh time, which is absurd, and it's the

1265
01:06:22,520 --> 01:06:23,480
Speaker 7: same prosecutor.

1266
01:06:23,560 --> 01:06:26,880
Speaker 1: It's like crazy, right, the taxpayer dollars that are being

1267
01:06:27,000 --> 01:06:30,040
Speaker 1: expended on this if, I mean, it's probably the least

1268
01:06:30,080 --> 01:06:33,000
Speaker 1: important aspect of it, but it's still a remarkable amount

1269
01:06:33,040 --> 01:06:35,880
Speaker 1: of time and energy and resources being devoted to persecuting

1270
01:06:35,880 --> 01:06:38,920
Speaker 1: this one guy, Curtis Flowers, who was convicted of murdering

1271
01:06:39,040 --> 01:06:42,960
Speaker 1: four people in a furniture store in Mississippi.

1272
01:06:42,360 --> 01:06:46,680
Speaker 7: Mississippi, four white people. He's a black man. And you

1273
01:06:46,720 --> 01:06:49,760
Speaker 7: know that's the other huge problem, as I don't need

1274
01:06:49,800 --> 01:06:53,200
Speaker 7: to tell anyone that the extreme racial inequity is in

1275
01:06:53,240 --> 01:06:54,160
Speaker 7: our system, you know.

1276
01:06:54,840 --> 01:06:57,600
Speaker 1: So we don't have a ton of time left. I

1277
01:06:57,640 --> 01:06:59,640
Speaker 1: do want to ask you what do you think about

1278
01:06:59,640 --> 01:07:04,920
Speaker 1: the role of media in the criminal justice debate? Right now?

1279
01:07:05,680 --> 01:07:08,120
Speaker 1: And then I have one more question for you before

1280
01:07:08,120 --> 01:07:09,320
Speaker 1: we go to final thoughts.

1281
01:07:09,400 --> 01:07:12,680
Speaker 7: Sure, you know, I think one size does not fit all.

1282
01:07:12,760 --> 01:07:15,400
Speaker 7: There's a lot of irresponsible reporting. I mean, we saw

1283
01:07:15,400 --> 01:07:19,760
Speaker 7: in the Amanda Knox case that reporters were horrible in

1284
01:07:19,760 --> 01:07:23,160
Speaker 7: festering the image of Foxy Noxy and making her seem

1285
01:07:23,200 --> 01:07:26,480
Speaker 7: guilty and really did her a disservice in her case.

1286
01:07:26,560 --> 01:07:28,560
Speaker 7: And same thing with Echoles. I mean, you know, the

1287
01:07:28,600 --> 01:07:31,640
Speaker 7: local media down there was just fanning the flames of

1288
01:07:31,720 --> 01:07:34,840
Speaker 7: the monster of the daily headline and the daily news report.

1289
01:07:35,520 --> 01:07:39,320
Speaker 7: So there's a lot of irresponsible reporting. There's a lot

1290
01:07:39,360 --> 01:07:42,240
Speaker 7: of true crime And I hate that phrase again because

1291
01:07:42,240 --> 01:07:46,280
Speaker 7: it somehow implies like I'm considered a true crime filmmaker.

1292
01:07:46,320 --> 01:07:48,360
Speaker 7: I'd rather not be known as a true crime filmmaker,

1293
01:07:48,360 --> 01:07:50,760
Speaker 7: you know, I'm a filmmaker who's involved in the criminal

1294
01:07:50,840 --> 01:07:54,520
Speaker 7: justice system. True crime implies that you're wallowing in the

1295
01:07:54,560 --> 01:07:57,520
Speaker 7: misery of others, you know, for entertainment purposes, and that's

1296
01:07:57,560 --> 01:07:59,480
Speaker 7: the last thing I'm doing. But some of that stuff

1297
01:07:59,480 --> 01:08:03,000
Speaker 7: on some of the networks does that. So I think

1298
01:08:03,040 --> 01:08:08,480
Speaker 7: the role of smart, talented storytellers who are shining a

1299
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:12,080
Speaker 7: light on criminal justice abuse has never been more important.

1300
01:08:12,240 --> 01:08:14,320
Speaker 7: First of all, for the first time because of the

1301
01:08:14,400 --> 01:08:17,160
Speaker 7: last couple of years, with the advent of streaming and

1302
01:08:17,200 --> 01:08:20,760
Speaker 7: the growing popularity of documentary in general. You know, when

1303
01:08:20,800 --> 01:08:23,840
Speaker 7: I started making films twenty five years ago, if you

1304
01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:26,400
Speaker 7: didn't sell your documentary to PBS or HBO, you weren't

1305
01:08:26,400 --> 01:08:29,160
Speaker 7: selling your documentary. And now there's just you know, unscripted

1306
01:08:29,240 --> 01:08:31,280
Speaker 7: series were never heard of. I mean, that was just

1307
01:08:31,360 --> 01:08:34,479
Speaker 7: not even a concept. And with that also has come,

1308
01:08:35,080 --> 01:08:37,600
Speaker 7: you know, the blurring of the line between entertainment and

1309
01:08:37,720 --> 01:08:43,160
Speaker 7: news at networks has become so blurry that certain stories

1310
01:08:43,160 --> 01:08:45,120
Speaker 7: aren't covered. You know, the networks are owned by a

1311
01:08:45,120 --> 01:08:47,760
Speaker 7: handful of corporations after all, and I like all the

1312
01:08:47,760 --> 01:08:50,559
Speaker 7: companies I work with, but there are certain stories that

1313
01:08:50,720 --> 01:08:53,240
Speaker 7: they won't cover for fear of offending advertise. I'm not

1314
01:08:53,320 --> 01:08:55,320
Speaker 7: just talking in the criminal justice realm, but there's certain

1315
01:08:55,360 --> 01:08:59,240
Speaker 7: stories that either they won't rate, you know, in other words,

1316
01:08:59,280 --> 01:09:03,680
Speaker 7: the audience won't be big enough, or they'll offend certain advertisers.

1317
01:09:03,720 --> 01:09:08,120
Speaker 7: So today in twenty nineteen, also because of the demise

1318
01:09:08,200 --> 01:09:11,120
Speaker 7: of print journalism because of the Internet, you know, newspapers

1319
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:15,240
Speaker 7: have been gutted. You know, I think the independent documentarians

1320
01:09:15,280 --> 01:09:19,760
Speaker 7: are doing some of the most robust social justice reporting,

1321
01:09:19,960 --> 01:09:23,839
Speaker 7: and so that kind of filmmaking couldn't be more important

1322
01:09:23,840 --> 01:09:26,800
Speaker 7: and more timely. But it's hard to paint it all

1323
01:09:26,840 --> 01:09:29,080
Speaker 7: with the same brush because there's a lot of horrible

1324
01:09:29,120 --> 01:09:33,280
Speaker 7: reporting and irresponsible reporting. But generally I think it's a

1325
01:09:33,280 --> 01:09:33,799
Speaker 7: good thing.

1326
01:09:34,880 --> 01:09:39,799
Speaker 1: For people that are listening now and who are hearing

1327
01:09:39,960 --> 01:09:45,040
Speaker 1: the amazing story of how you sort of almost accidentally

1328
01:09:45,120 --> 01:09:47,800
Speaker 1: got involved in this or serendipitously got involved in this

1329
01:09:47,920 --> 01:09:50,760
Speaker 1: work and then ended up having an outsize impact. I know,

1330
01:09:51,200 --> 01:09:55,080
Speaker 1: for me, more than ever, I'm getting increase from people.

1331
01:09:55,120 --> 01:09:56,880
Speaker 1: How do I help? What do I do? I want

1332
01:09:56,880 --> 01:09:58,599
Speaker 1: to be involved? I want to do something. I listen

1333
01:09:58,640 --> 01:10:00,720
Speaker 1: to your show, or I saw some a TV or

1334
01:10:00,760 --> 01:10:03,240
Speaker 1: I came to an Innocence Project event, And what would

1335
01:10:03,240 --> 01:10:05,880
Speaker 1: you tell people that are listening now that want to

1336
01:10:05,880 --> 01:10:07,960
Speaker 1: get involved, What's what's the best way for them to,

1337
01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:10,360
Speaker 1: you know, make a difference. Someone who's not you know,

1338
01:10:10,680 --> 01:10:13,200
Speaker 1: isn't a rich person, but it's someone who has a

1339
01:10:13,200 --> 01:10:16,040
Speaker 1: heart and who hears about Richard Glossip or hears about

1340
01:10:16,120 --> 01:10:19,280
Speaker 1: so many of the other people Yvonne Tellegus or Rob

1341
01:10:19,280 --> 01:10:21,479
Speaker 1: will who I recently visited on death row in Texas,

1342
01:10:21,520 --> 01:10:24,280
Speaker 1: who's as innocent as as could be. What do you

1343
01:10:24,320 --> 01:10:24,920
Speaker 1: tell these people?

1344
01:10:24,960 --> 01:10:27,439
Speaker 7: I mean, first of all is awareness. You know, I myself,

1345
01:10:27,479 --> 01:10:30,400
Speaker 7: before I got involved in this accidentally went because I

1346
01:10:30,439 --> 01:10:32,680
Speaker 7: was making a film about something else. I thought I

1347
01:10:32,720 --> 01:10:35,320
Speaker 7: had a basic belief that the system works, and it

1348
01:10:35,400 --> 01:10:39,080
Speaker 7: works sometimes, but it often fails miserably. So just having

1349
01:10:39,080 --> 01:10:43,720
Speaker 7: that basic understanding and awareness is helpful and little actions

1350
01:10:44,040 --> 01:10:48,080
Speaker 7: add up to a lot. Again, not saying anything discourteous

1351
01:10:48,120 --> 01:10:52,160
Speaker 7: about Johnny Depp or Eddie Vedder or Natalie Mains, those

1352
01:10:52,200 --> 01:10:57,240
Speaker 7: guys were amazing. Those names wrote checks and did things

1353
01:10:57,320 --> 01:11:01,800
Speaker 7: and did concerts. But what really made the difference, in

1354
01:11:01,840 --> 01:11:04,439
Speaker 7: my opinion, really what made a difference in that case

1355
01:11:04,439 --> 01:11:08,799
Speaker 7: were tens of thousands of regular people who saw paradise loss,

1356
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:13,680
Speaker 7: who did not have an outsized wallet. But until the

1357
01:11:13,800 --> 01:11:19,040
Speaker 7: local politicians and prosecutors are politicians in many municipalities, they

1358
01:11:19,080 --> 01:11:23,240
Speaker 7: are elected officials. They didn't start taking the case seriously

1359
01:11:23,320 --> 01:11:27,439
Speaker 7: until the local population took the case seriously. And what

1360
01:11:27,640 --> 01:11:31,320
Speaker 7: made the local population take the case seriously is tens

1361
01:11:31,400 --> 01:11:34,840
Speaker 7: of thousands of people who banded together on this website

1362
01:11:34,880 --> 01:11:38,840
Speaker 7: called Free the West Memphis III. Went down religiously to

1363
01:11:38,960 --> 01:11:43,400
Speaker 7: every action, every appeal, every hearing. There were thousands of

1364
01:11:43,640 --> 01:11:46,240
Speaker 7: regular people from all walks of life who chose to

1365
01:11:46,280 --> 01:11:49,479
Speaker 7: take their vacation in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to hold up a

1366
01:11:49,560 --> 01:11:53,000
Speaker 7: sign and have their voices heard. At the end of

1367
01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:56,280
Speaker 7: the day, a lot of these people who hold positions

1368
01:11:56,320 --> 01:11:59,240
Speaker 7: of power, who have this unique power to take your

1369
01:11:59,280 --> 01:12:05,599
Speaker 7: liberty away, often unjustly, often justly. Again, I don't think

1370
01:12:05,640 --> 01:12:09,120
Speaker 7: every prosecutor is a bad guy, but they are elected

1371
01:12:09,160 --> 01:12:11,840
Speaker 7: officials for the most part, and people should wake up

1372
01:12:12,360 --> 01:12:14,600
Speaker 7: and if you live in Oklahoma, pay attention to the

1373
01:12:14,680 --> 01:12:15,639
Speaker 7: Richard Glossop case.

1374
01:12:15,680 --> 01:12:16,280
Speaker 1: I mean, there's.

1375
01:12:16,280 --> 01:12:19,280
Speaker 7: Sadly there's a case, and there's a wrongful conviction case.

1376
01:12:19,320 --> 01:12:23,240
Speaker 7: Yet probably in every state and just little actions and

1377
01:12:23,280 --> 01:12:25,559
Speaker 7: awareness I think go a long way. You don't have

1378
01:12:25,600 --> 01:12:26,479
Speaker 7: to write a big check.

1379
01:12:27,280 --> 01:12:31,520
Speaker 1: So I guess start by watching learning more. Watch The Wrong.

1380
01:12:31,320 --> 01:12:33,240
Speaker 7: Man you can stream on Amazon.

1381
01:12:33,680 --> 01:12:37,960
Speaker 1: Watch An Innocent Man, the amazing documentary about the book

1382
01:12:37,960 --> 01:12:40,920
Speaker 1: that John Grisham wrote about these cases in Ada, Oklahoma,

1383
01:12:41,000 --> 01:12:44,360
Speaker 1: and go to free Robwill dot org. Is there a

1384
01:12:44,439 --> 01:12:45,320
Speaker 1: Richard glossupside.

1385
01:12:45,320 --> 01:12:47,799
Speaker 7: I'm sure there is if you google Richard glossop and

1386
01:12:47,800 --> 01:12:50,160
Speaker 7: why I'm drawing a blank what the website is, But

1387
01:12:50,240 --> 01:12:53,640
Speaker 7: just google Richard Glossip and you'll find a lot of supporters.

1388
01:12:53,760 --> 01:12:56,719
Speaker 7: There's a guy named Don Knight in Colorado who's running

1389
01:12:56,720 --> 01:13:00,599
Speaker 7: that case. He's the tireless, thankless defense attorney who is

1390
01:13:00,800 --> 01:13:04,400
Speaker 7: really is doing amazing work. So Don Knight in Colorado

1391
01:13:05,040 --> 01:13:07,439
Speaker 7: is a good guy to be in touch with if

1392
01:13:07,520 --> 01:13:10,160
Speaker 7: you feel you have something significant to offer, or just

1393
01:13:10,280 --> 01:13:11,200
Speaker 7: be aware.

1394
01:13:11,080 --> 01:13:14,160
Speaker 1: And one minute speed round. First of all, I want

1395
01:13:14,160 --> 01:13:17,440
Speaker 1: to thank you for this has been fun coming Joe Berlinger,

1396
01:13:17,680 --> 01:13:22,800
Speaker 1: amazing filmmaker and advocate for the wrongfully convicted, and I'm

1397
01:13:22,800 --> 01:13:25,080
Speaker 1: looking forward to doing more work with you. Yeah, me too,

1398
01:13:25,439 --> 01:13:27,880
Speaker 1: And like I said, let's sake the last minute or

1399
01:13:27,960 --> 01:13:30,759
Speaker 1: two any final thoughts that you have, if you have any.

1400
01:13:31,240 --> 01:13:34,320
Speaker 7: You know, we have a criminal justice system sorely in

1401
01:13:34,400 --> 01:13:36,839
Speaker 7: need to reform, and I think it's the number one issue.

1402
01:13:37,040 --> 01:13:40,320
Speaker 7: The thing we hold most dear as Americans. The thing

1403
01:13:40,360 --> 01:13:43,479
Speaker 7: that's set us apart is our personal liberty, and a

1404
01:13:43,560 --> 01:13:47,080
Speaker 7: prosecutor has the unique power to take that personal liberty

1405
01:13:47,160 --> 01:13:50,479
Speaker 7: away without accountability. And I think it's time to hold

1406
01:13:50,560 --> 01:13:53,080
Speaker 7: those people who have the power to take our liberty

1407
01:13:53,120 --> 01:13:55,840
Speaker 7: away to be held accountable to a higher standard. And

1408
01:13:55,920 --> 01:13:57,800
Speaker 7: I think a lot of these problems would go away.

1409
01:13:57,840 --> 01:14:00,000
Speaker 7: But there's all sorts of problems in our criminal jobs

1410
01:14:00,080 --> 01:14:02,200
Speaker 7: to system, and people should be aware of it because

1411
01:14:02,280 --> 01:14:05,040
Speaker 7: it really needs addressing. I mean, a whole generation has

1412
01:14:05,080 --> 01:14:07,479
Speaker 7: been locked away over horrible drug laws. I mean, we

1413
01:14:07,479 --> 01:14:09,360
Speaker 7: can go on and on and on. You know, we

1414
01:14:09,439 --> 01:14:12,240
Speaker 7: have five percent of the world's population and twenty five

1415
01:14:12,280 --> 01:14:14,760
Speaker 7: percent of the world's prison population, more than Russia and

1416
01:14:14,840 --> 01:14:18,040
Speaker 7: China combined. That's disturbing and goes against who we think

1417
01:14:18,080 --> 01:14:19,200
Speaker 7: we are as Americans.

1418
01:14:19,360 --> 01:14:21,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, we locked black people up at six times the

1419
01:14:21,720 --> 01:14:24,240
Speaker 1: rate of South Africa the height of apartheid. It's all

1420
01:14:24,280 --> 01:14:28,000
Speaker 1: a national shame and a disgrace. But absolutely yeah, please

1421
01:14:28,040 --> 01:14:31,679
Speaker 1: do get involved, keep listening. We appreciate you being here

1422
01:14:31,720 --> 01:14:33,880
Speaker 1: with us. And when you're on a jury, we need

1423
01:14:33,920 --> 01:14:37,759
Speaker 1: everybody to show up serve because it's just your fellow

1424
01:14:37,880 --> 01:14:39,559
Speaker 1: human being who's up there, and they may be the

1425
01:14:39,600 --> 01:14:43,000
Speaker 1: next Damien Echols. So thanks again for listening. This is

1426
01:14:43,040 --> 01:14:56,799
Speaker 1: wrongful Connection. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review

1427
01:14:56,840 --> 01:15:00,519
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm

1428
01:15:00,560 --> 01:15:03,200
Speaker 1: a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really

1429
01:15:03,200 --> 01:15:06,320
Speaker 1: hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause

1430
01:15:06,520 --> 01:15:10,200
Speaker 1: and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence

1431
01:15:10,240 --> 01:15:13,360
Speaker 1: Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.

1432
01:15:13,720 --> 01:15:16,240
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and

1433
01:15:16,360 --> 01:15:19,040
Speaker 1: Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three

1434
01:15:19,080 --> 01:15:22,479
Speaker 1: time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow

1435
01:15:22,520 --> 01:15:26,000
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at

1436
01:15:26,120 --> 01:15:29,960
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a

1437
01:15:29,960 --> 01:15:33,799
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal

1438
01:15:33,800 --> 01:15:36,639
Speaker 1: Company Number one