Speaker 1: On July twenty first, nineteen ninety seven, a young man
Speaker 1: was fatally shot while being driven past a building in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York. The driver, Carlos Bethune, told police that he
Speaker 1: hadn't seen the shooter, but later named a resident of
Speaker 1: that building, Jermaine Archer, who ran for his life from Bethune,
Speaker 1: the victim's family, and the police. In retaliation, Jermaine's brother
Speaker 1: was shot but survived. Soon tensions cooled when the family
Speaker 1: figured out who the actual shooter was, but the police
Speaker 1: stayed stuck on Jermaine and Carlos Bethune went along for
Speaker 1: the ride. This is Wrongful Conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: You can listen to this and all the Lava for
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Speaker 1: to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Wrong for Conviction. Today's episode, well, let's just say
Speaker 1: it features a man named Jermaine Archer, who I consider
Speaker 1: a friend and a personal hero. And I'm so glad
Speaker 1: to welcome you to the show, Jermaine, because this is
Speaker 1: the story people need to hear. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming, thanks for inviting me to the show.
Speaker 3: And I want to shout out my attorney, Peter Cross,
Speaker 3: who's here with me, who's been with me through the fire.
Speaker 3: When a bunch of other people walked away, attorneys included Peter,
Speaker 3: didn't go nowhere.
Speaker 2: Peter stood here, worked with me pro bono.
Speaker 3: He believed in me, he believed in my innocence, and
Speaker 3: eventually he helped me.
Speaker 1: Prove it well. I was about to introduce Peter, but
Speaker 1: you did a much better job than I could have
Speaker 1: possibly done. So thank you for that, and Peter, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming on the show. My pleasure. Let's go back
Speaker 1: in time, Jermaine. You grew up in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: Brooklyn, New York, Massy Projects and then eventually Flatbush back it.
Speaker 3: My childhood was great. I mean, we weren't rich by
Speaker 3: any means. I'm the seventh of eleven or twelve, whoever
Speaker 3: you want to believe. My father says eleven, my mother
Speaker 3: says twelve. She said my father went and had another child.
Speaker 3: We don't know about what. We were kind of separated
Speaker 3: through the years. I grew up with five boys and
Speaker 3: one girl living in my apartment, and I just always
Speaker 3: felt protected, like I'm the seventh, the baby, and the
Speaker 3: family on that side, and my mother went to work
Speaker 3: at five in the morning. She didn't come home till
Speaker 3: sometime nine o'clock at night. But we had everything we needed.
Speaker 3: I might have didn't have the latest, most expensive sneakers
Speaker 3: that I might have wanted, but it was nothing but love.
Speaker 2: Growing up in.
Speaker 1: Brooklyn and you were growing up in the nineties, which
Speaker 1: was a crazy time, rife with street crime and police
Speaker 1: violence and corruption and those go together sometimes unfortunately, and
Speaker 1: of course the news media, any crime that happened, they
Speaker 1: would amplify it as alt saying if it bleeds, it leads,
Speaker 1: and then that would of course drive the pressure on
Speaker 1: the police to make arrests and for ultimately people to
Speaker 1: get convicted.
Speaker 3: I would say because of the Giuliani Pataki tough on
Speaker 3: crime era, I know personally fifteen people that were wrongly convicted.
Speaker 3: It was five district attorneys across New York City that
Speaker 3: were just prosecuting people. It didn't matter if they got
Speaker 3: the right person for the crime. They were holding witnesses hostage,
Speaker 3: they were holding witnesses in hotels, they were paying witnesses
Speaker 3: and lying about it. They were using drug addicts to testify.
Speaker 1: And when you lock up the wrong person, the right
Speaker 1: person remains free. And everybody's endangerous.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't about making the streets safer. It was
Speaker 3: about incarcerating as many black and brown bodies as they
Speaker 3: could from poor communities.
Speaker 2: Who was going to really complain?
Speaker 1: And when this crime took place, it was the time.
Speaker 1: For people who can remember this far back, it was
Speaker 1: the same summer as Abner Louima.
Speaker 3: First off, Abner Louima was violated by the same precinct
Speaker 3: that investigating eventually charged me, in this case seven to
Speaker 3: zero Precinct.
Speaker 1: So for those who don't recall, Admir Luimo was scooped
Speaker 1: up from the scene of a fight and was brought
Speaker 1: back to the seventieth precinct where he was not only
Speaker 1: brutally beaten by the police, but was also and brace yourself,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I have to even say this, but he
Speaker 1: was sexually assaulted with a broomstick. Thankfully, those officers were
Speaker 1: charged and convicted. But this was the precinct where just
Speaker 1: a few weeks before, in late July, there was some
Speaker 1: friction between two groups Jermaine's family and friends at twenty
Speaker 1: Westminster Road, and the victim Patrick Niles. His people, specifically
Speaker 1: his older brother Ronaldo, and a guy named Carlos Bethune.
Speaker 3: Carlos Betun was Ronaldo's right hand man, that was his friend.
Speaker 3: I only knew him as the short, chubby guy that's
Speaker 3: always with Ronaldo. I didn't even know his name until
Speaker 3: this case actually happened. I didn't know Ronaldo's name. We
Speaker 3: called him Crocodile because he got a long face. Crocodile
Speaker 3: is crocodile a Spanish, but cocodrillo, and that's his nickname.
Speaker 3: We didn't give him that name. He was known for violence.
Speaker 3: He was a street guy. I can't really say that
Speaker 3: I've witnessed him do certain things that other people said
Speaker 3: he did, but I know he was one not to
Speaker 3: be played with.
Speaker 2: I know that.
Speaker 3: Looking back, I understand that they was just troubled young
Speaker 3: people like me, and that was involved in some things
Speaker 3: we probably had no business being involved in.
Speaker 1: And that sets the stage for July twentieth, nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3: July twentieth, nineteen ninety seven, I was walking down the
Speaker 3: street with a friend of mine. We wanted to go
Speaker 3: to the store, and there was a girl sitting on
Speaker 3: a bike and she was talking to a couple of
Speaker 3: people from the neighborhood that we knew.
Speaker 2: I asked her if I could borrow her bike. She
Speaker 2: looked hesitant.
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm gonna give you back your bike,
Speaker 3: and my friend offered her some money to hold. It
Speaker 3: was like a lot of money. So the guy she
Speaker 3: was talking to, Ronaldo he felt, showed up and he
Speaker 3: snatched the bike and said, YO, don't ever disrespect me again.
Speaker 3: And I was like, we cool, Like where's this coming from.
Speaker 3: He had just given me a ride the other day
Speaker 3: to my sister's house, so we grew up together.
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I found out later that his father died that night.
Speaker 3: That's where the attitude was coming from. But I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I was like, no problem, they ain't even worth it.
Speaker 3: I went back in front of my building. I told
Speaker 3: my brother Michael what happened, because they were the same age,
Speaker 3: and he said, just stay in front of the building.
Speaker 2: I'll talk to him in the morning. I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe he going through something.
Speaker 3: A little while later, as I'm walking to the store,
Speaker 3: he pulled up in the car and pulled out a gun.
Speaker 3: The people that I was with ran except one. He said, Yo,
Speaker 3: I know you went and got a gun. Don't make
Speaker 3: me leave you. One brother's less, all this craziness, and
Speaker 3: then he leaves again. I go back and tell my
Speaker 3: brother again, and my brother tells me stay upstairs for
Speaker 3: the night. The next day, I'm in the house the
Speaker 3: entire day with my children's mother. I don't want to
Speaker 3: go outside. I want my brother to be able to
Speaker 3: talk to him. I don't know what he's going to do.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's going to send anybody. He's notorious.
Speaker 3: People knows who he is.
Speaker 1: So the kids who hung out in front of Jermaine's
Speaker 1: building twenty Westminster Road, they were aware of the danger
Speaker 1: from Ronaldo and his crew while doing what they normally did.
Speaker 1: And the police, well, they were doing what they normally did.
Speaker 2: Normally.
Speaker 3: We were on the corner shooting dice, smoking weed, drinking beer,
Speaker 3: talking to girls. It was literally like that was the hangout.
Speaker 3: But that night I stood in front of the building.
Speaker 3: This is those days of tough on crime. The police came.
Speaker 3: They did this almost every night. They would search us
Speaker 3: literally two or three times a night.
Speaker 2: So they came.
Speaker 3: They put us on a wall, even in front of
Speaker 3: my building. They patted everybody down that was there, and
Speaker 3: they drove off. When they drove off, I got up.
Speaker 3: I went to the alley to piss. While I was
Speaker 3: in the alley, I was talking to three girls in
Speaker 3: the window and I'm joking with them like this is
Speaker 3: kind of heavy because y'all hold this for me, wash
Speaker 3: your hands. I'm having fun with these girls the things
Speaker 3: we do in the neighborhood. And while we're all talking,
Speaker 3: one of them stuck ahead back in the window. The
Speaker 3: other two stood While we were talking. We heard three shots,
Speaker 3: so they literally had eyes on me when the shots
Speaker 3: were fired. After that, I'm trying to get my stuff
Speaker 3: together because i don't know what's going on. I'm thinking
Speaker 3: it's Ronaldo. He's back, he's shooting at us.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't Ronaldo. Out in front of the building,
Speaker 1: Carlos Bethune had driven by and someone shot into the car,
Speaker 1: killing Ronaldo's brother Patrick Niles.
Speaker 2: I go up to my roof.
Speaker 3: My best friend comes up to the roof and I'm
Speaker 3: like why, and he's like, what are you asking me for?
Speaker 3: I don't know, and so I'm thinking it's going to
Speaker 3: be a problem. Because they notorious. They got guns. They gangsters.
Speaker 3: Why would this guy do this in front of Like,
Speaker 3: I'm upset at the time, I don't know what's going
Speaker 3: on now.
Speaker 1: The police came to investigate, and luckily a neighbor kid
Speaker 1: named Kester Jones saw the whole thing and was interviewed. However,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem to have been memorialized.
Speaker 4: Kester thinks he was interviewed. I don't know if it
Speaker 4: was in fact by the police. He had been playing
Speaker 4: basketball at the park down the street. His apartment was
Speaker 4: all the way at the end of the block, and
Speaker 4: so as he was walking home, he happened to be
Speaker 4: there when this happened. He saw the guys outside Germaine's
Speaker 4: apartment building, and he didn't want to walk by there
Speaker 4: because you know, he didn't want to get haressed. So
Speaker 4: he was trying to get over to the other side
Speaker 4: of the street, and that's how he was right there
Speaker 4: behind it when he saw exactly what happened.
Speaker 3: He said he saw a car stop near the first building,
Speaker 3: which was ten, then he saw another cost by twenty,
Speaker 3: which was my building, and then he saw someone run
Speaker 3: into the street and shoot at the car from behind
Speaker 3: it As he was driving down the block. It went
Speaker 3: through the back passenger window. It struck a victim behind
Speaker 3: his right ear and went from right to left. According
Speaker 3: to the medical examiner, So Carlos Bethune went to the
Speaker 3: precinct that night and he said, I don't know what happened.
Speaker 3: I was driving down the block. I heard three shots.
Speaker 3: I took off. My friend got shot in the head.
Speaker 3: That must have been true. Three days later he went
Speaker 3: back to the precinct and said, I lied to y'all.
Speaker 2: Jermaine did it? Bang did it? They called me Bang,
Speaker 2: Bang did it? Now?
Speaker 3: The story he gave couldn't have been true because one,
Speaker 3: he's the driver of the car, So the only way
Speaker 3: you could see somebody shoot your friend in the back
Speaker 3: of the head is if you're driving looking backwards. But
Speaker 3: he said Bang came and jumped in front of the car,
Speaker 3: The car stopped, ran to the side, and shot the
Speaker 3: passenger in the head. The medical examine a proof that
Speaker 3: couldn't have happened that way because there was no stippling,
Speaker 3: There was no gunpowder residue on the person's head. The
Speaker 3: crime scene invests to get it said it couldn't happen
Speaker 3: that way because the bullet didn't come through the passenger window.
Speaker 3: It came through the back window, so none of the
Speaker 3: stuff he said lined up, But he said I did it.
Speaker 3: We found out later Ronaldo convinced Carlos to implicate me
Speaker 3: so that they could track me down.
Speaker 1: So Ronaldo believed Jermaine had done it, even though the
Speaker 1: folks at twenty Westminster knew otherwise. And now, as the result,
Speaker 1: Jermaine was in real danger.
Speaker 3: So I'm not trying to get shot for something I
Speaker 3: didn't do, and I'm not trying to get arrested for
Speaker 3: something I didn't do. So I ended up leaving. I
Speaker 3: went through New Jersey, I came back up state, and
Speaker 3: I went to Pennsylvania, and eventually I just dropped off
Speaker 3: my children's mother and my children, and then I just
Speaker 3: was like living on the road. I was just I
Speaker 3: had a car. I was just driving back and forth
Speaker 3: from state to state. I wasn't staying in any place
Speaker 3: too long because I figured, over time the police realized
Speaker 3: I didn't do it, and I'll be able to figure
Speaker 3: out what comes next.
Speaker 1: So while Jermaine was out of town, Rinaldo tried something
Speaker 1: else to try to smoke him out.
Speaker 3: About three weeks after that, I'm not sure the exact date,
Speaker 3: but it was August nineteen ninety seven. My brother was
Speaker 3: at his house in Queen's and Ronaldo pulled up. We're
Speaker 3: still unsure how he found that way he lived or
Speaker 3: Ronaldo pulled up on him. He was with his daughter
Speaker 3: and they just shot him up.
Speaker 1: And Carlos Bethune was allegedly the driver. Now, miraculously Jermaine's
Speaker 1: brother lived, and now this attempted murder with a surviving
Speaker 1: witness was looming over them. Meanwhile, about seven months rolled
Speaker 1: by before the police caught up with Jermaine and Allentown, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: where he was arrested and sent back to New York.
Speaker 3: When they arrested me, they say, you're gonna tell us
Speaker 3: who did it, or we're gonna lock you up. And
Speaker 3: I was like, I didn't see the crime. I'm being honest,
Speaker 3: like I said, I was in the alley, so that
Speaker 3: was part of the problem.
Speaker 2: I didn't see the crime. Well who did it?
Speaker 3: And I said, you can't put this on me. I
Speaker 3: remember telling office to that and he said, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: tell you what's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna lock you up.
Speaker 3: You're gonna go in the lineup and you're gonna get
Speaker 3: picked out and then you'll take your chances at trial,
Speaker 3: or you could just tell me who did it right now.
Speaker 3: And I remember saying something slick like, did jacket don't fit?
Speaker 3: Everyone knew me I was a petty drug dealer at
Speaker 3: the time, the jacket don't fit, And as if we
Speaker 3: had both seen the same movie, he spit right back,
Speaker 3: I know a good tale. So when Carlos implicated me
Speaker 3: and the police arrested me, he came to the lineup
Speaker 3: and said, I'm not really sure, and then he made
Speaker 3: a phone call, and somebody on the phone call, according
Speaker 3: to the detective, was trying to convince him not to
Speaker 3: identify me. My belief was that they wanted to get
Speaker 3: me back in New York and then let me walk
Speaker 3: out of the precint where they knew I would be unarmed.
Speaker 3: Thedn't gonna be down That's what I'm thinking, Like, you're
Speaker 3: coming out the precinct, you definitely can't defend yourself, and
Speaker 3: they're gonna be down there.
Speaker 2: But they didn't realize I had a probation violation.
Speaker 1: Which sent him to Rikers Island while the police arrested
Speaker 1: his child's mother's brother.
Speaker 3: They got him for some drugs and they said, we
Speaker 3: don't even want you. You just got to save what
Speaker 3: we need you to save for bang And he said
Speaker 3: that he didn't see who shot, but that I went
Speaker 3: to his house and he had a bunch of guns
Speaker 3: in his house, and I put a bunch of guns
Speaker 3: in a book bag and came downstairs and started handing
Speaker 3: him out, which was a cold bloody line.
Speaker 1: And so he was indicted, but Carlos Bethune had still
Speaker 1: not identified him.
Speaker 3: When they didn't identify me in a lineup, I was thinking,
Speaker 3: either they're gonna try to work this out or they're
Speaker 3: going to try the exact street revenge. Rinaldo ended up
Speaker 3: tracking down my brother said I thought he shot my
Speaker 3: brother my bag, so I knew by then they knew
Speaker 3: I didn't do it. So I wasn't really concerned we're
Speaker 3: going to trial because I didn't think they was going
Speaker 3: to testify against me. And I found out later that
Speaker 3: the district attorney and the police Prussian Carlos. It would
Speaker 3: reach a certain point where he was also hiding from Ronaldo.
Speaker 3: That's in those transcripts too. He was hiding from Ronaldo
Speaker 3: because he said According to him, he thought Ronaldo wanted
Speaker 3: to kill him.
Speaker 1: It appears Carlos was willing to cooperate, which conflicted with
Speaker 1: Ronaldo's plan to avoid his own charges see King Michael's
Speaker 1: forgiven for the attempted murder by not helping the prosecutors
Speaker 1: close his brother's murder case with Jermaine, who it appears
Speaker 1: they knew was the wrong person, and Jermaine's attorney, Jesse Young,
Speaker 1: was trying to expose whether or not Carlos had accepted
Speaker 1: a deal.
Speaker 3: There was back and forth whether they let Carlos off
Speaker 3: the hook in my brother's shooting. He brought his paperwork
Speaker 3: to the court and the judge went through his file
Speaker 3: and they said they couldn't find anything. We knew there
Speaker 3: was a deal made. We just wasn't sure where the
Speaker 3: deal was made. We thought it was in Queen's but
Speaker 3: it wasn't. It was actually in King's County.
Speaker 1: Jermaine's attorney tried to admit Michael Archer as a witness
Speaker 1: as to why Carlos might have had a reason to testify.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't let my brother testify because he was not
Speaker 3: a witness to the crime that I was being charged with.
Speaker 3: What happened on July twenty first, nineteen ninety seven, in
Speaker 3: front of twenty Westminster Road. If you have nothing to
Speaker 3: say about that, we're not going to let you come
Speaker 3: in and testify. So they took me to trial. Carlos
Speaker 3: said what he said.
Speaker 1: Carlos testified about the confrontations and the lead up to
Speaker 1: the shooting, and then his alleged EXPERI parents that night,
Speaker 1: stopping his car near twenty Westminster Road to let a
Speaker 1: disabled person across the street. Well, such an upstanding guy, right,
Speaker 1: and then Jermaine allegedly emerged from the minivan, firing into
Speaker 1: the vehicle. Carlos was cross examined with how that differed
Speaker 1: from his original statement and how he'd said that he
Speaker 1: hadn't seen the shooter.
Speaker 3: I had no concerns whatsoever, Like, there's no way they're
Speaker 3: going to convict me on it because I didn't do it,
Speaker 3: and also because he don't flip the story a couple
Speaker 3: of times, and because there's people that saw it that's
Speaker 3: willing to come and testify. For my children's mother, her sister,
Speaker 3: and my best friend all came and said it wasn't Bang.
Speaker 3: Bang was in an alley when it shots fired my
Speaker 3: children's mother was on the street, so she's seen it.
Speaker 3: They all testified that it wasn't me.
Speaker 1: And they even named the person who they'd all seen shoot,
Speaker 1: Patrick Niles. However, being Jermaine's friends and family appears to
Speaker 1: have hurt their credibility. But what about the other guy,
Speaker 1: Kester Jones.
Speaker 3: Kester wanted to testify, He was in court To this day,
Speaker 3: I have no idea why he didn't testify. Kester even
Speaker 3: recently he brought it up. He said he went to
Speaker 3: court ready to testify, and someone came and told him,
Speaker 3: we don't need you.
Speaker 1: But they needed everything they had because Carlos Pethune and
Speaker 1: the prosecutor strategy appear to have been enough for the jury.
Speaker 3: It's off the record, but one of the jurors reached
Speaker 3: out to my brother after the trial, not sure how
Speaker 3: she found them, and said it couldn't get over the
Speaker 3: nickname Bang.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not helpful.
Speaker 2: Wasn't helpful.
Speaker 3: But my mother named me after Bang Bang Morales. It
Speaker 3: was a boxer in the seventies, so she nicknamed me
Speaker 3: after him. But the prosecutor, if you go through the transcripts,
Speaker 3: she doesn't call me archer, she doesn't call me Jermaine
Speaker 3: and Bang did this, and Bang did that, and she
Speaker 3: was emphasizing it. Most people cursed the lawyer out when
Speaker 3: they get convicted, and I remember just telling him, thank
Speaker 3: you man, you tried. And I remember my mother telling
Speaker 3: me that she was hysterical and crying and everything. But
Speaker 3: to judge Michael Duval actually saw her in the hallway
Speaker 3: and said, your son should have took a bench trial. Basically,
Speaker 3: if I had took a bench trial, I would have
Speaker 3: beat the case of trial.
Speaker 1: Following the verdict, Jermaine's attorney filed the motion to vacate
Speaker 1: and set aside the verdict, questioning whether the preclusion of
Speaker 1: Michael Archer had denied jermaine affair trial. Additionally, Jermaine's brothers
Speaker 1: had secretly recorded alleged confessions from the actual shooter. They
Speaker 1: had a hearing, but the recordings were difficult to hear. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Ronaldo was trying to avoid his own trial.
Speaker 3: After I got convicted. He sent word through a family friend.
Speaker 3: He said, let's do what we can to make it right.
Speaker 3: If you don't press charges against me, I'll make this
Speaker 3: guy recant the story against your brother. And then Rinaldo
Speaker 3: convinced Carlos to recant his testimony, which was the second
Speaker 3: time he changed the story. He turned around and said,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure it was him. They saying it was
Speaker 3: this guy I heard they look alike. I don't want
Speaker 3: to send an acent man in prison. So then he
Speaker 3: changed the story and then they overturned the conviction.
Speaker 1: At this point, Jermaine was released pending a new trial.
Speaker 3: And then I don't know if specifics of that deal,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to give here say. I just know
Speaker 3: that deal fell apart at three four months after that,
Speaker 3: they changed the story again. It was like, you know what,
Speaker 3: on second thought, it wasn't. I heard the judge tell Peggy,
Speaker 3: and this is Assistant District Attorney Peggy Hoffman, you're over
Speaker 3: trying this case. He's clearly not an angel, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't look like he did this. The judge told her
Speaker 3: that it was in an off the record, you know, sidebar,
Speaker 3: but I heard her and she said, I'm just following
Speaker 3: instructions from up top your eye. So basically Charles Hines
Speaker 3: or whoever he delegated, they were saying, we're gonna fight
Speaker 3: this case all the way through, and they put me
Speaker 3: back in prison behind.
Speaker 5: Them after I got convicted.
Speaker 2: You know, my children's mother, she had to move on.
Speaker 3: I don't have the best relationship with my three biological
Speaker 3: children because they didn't bring them up to visit me.
Speaker 2: She had to move on.
Speaker 3: She got into another relationship, had another child, and.
Speaker 2: She had to focus on that. So I suffered from that.
Speaker 2: I watched my mother grow old in prison.
Speaker 3: My health suffered, my mother's health suffer because she knew
Speaker 3: I didn't do it.
Speaker 2: Not to say it would have been okay if she
Speaker 2: knew I did it, but it hurt on more.
Speaker 3: That her baby was in prison for something he didn't do,
Speaker 3: and she couldn't do anything to help me out, to
Speaker 3: get me out.
Speaker 2: So this case just destroyed so many people's lives, not
Speaker 2: just mine.
Speaker 3: I realized my time was the same, whether I was
Speaker 3: in prison or not, be doesn't matter when I hit
Speaker 3: that grave, that tombstone, that dash, all of this time count.
Speaker 3: These twenty two years are gonna go by, and I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have a twenty two year gap in my resume.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be twenty two years older, so I can't
Speaker 3: do the construction work and all the stuff that I
Speaker 3: may have been inclined to do. I'm gonna be competing
Speaker 3: with people that never been in prison in the job
Speaker 3: market and don't have felonies, and a lot younger and
Speaker 3: probably better looking at me. So I knew I had
Speaker 3: to do the best I could. While I was in there.
Speaker 3: I got my parer legal certification, and I earned a
Speaker 3: master's degree. I was asleep bachelor's and associates. I joined
Speaker 3: Carnegie Hall and learned how to play the piano. I
Speaker 3: taught classes on ag V and AIDS, aggression replacement training,
Speaker 3: on alternatives to violence, on parenting, on healthy relationships. I
Speaker 3: would have taken classes on marbles if they offered it.
Speaker 3: It didn't matter. Whatever was there that was therapeutic, educational, academic.
Speaker 3: I was a part of it, which made my parole
Speaker 3: packet over four hundred pages. But I felt like, I'm
Speaker 3: going to get all of these tools in my tool
Speaker 3: belt and when I go home, I'll figure out what
Speaker 3: I can apply.
Speaker 2: But I didn't turn down anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean not to mention reading, writing, and speaking Spanish,
Speaker 1: French and German, and creating a Chinese Mandarin language course,
Speaker 1: the only one ever to be taught inside of New
Speaker 1: York State Prison. And I think the one thing we must.
Speaker 2: Talk about is voices from within.
Speaker 1: Voices from within, That's what we got to talk about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I was going there next. So it was
Speaker 3: me and ten other guys and some of us wrongly convicted,
Speaker 3: some of us not. It doesn't matter. Some of us
Speaker 3: were out there doing some things. We weren't living the
Speaker 3: best life. How can we pay our debt to society?
Speaker 3: How can we make a better community, How can we
Speaker 3: come together and just be assets even from the inside.
Speaker 3: It started out as advocacy lobbying. We were bringing senators
Speaker 3: and legislators and judges and community activists into the prison,
Speaker 3: hosting town halls, and eventually we specialized in preventing youth
Speaker 3: gun violence because we realized who better to deter them
Speaker 3: from that behavior than people that was either a victim
Speaker 3: of it that were perpetrators of it. So we created workshops,
Speaker 3: We created a curriculum choices, choose a healthier options and
Speaker 3: confront in every situation. And we were doing exercises play
Speaker 3: back theater where a young person to come in and
Speaker 3: explain how they had got in trouble and then they
Speaker 3: get to pick people to re enact that and they
Speaker 3: would see it play out in front of their eyes
Speaker 3: and then they could see where they could have made
Speaker 3: a different decision instead of us just saying that was wrong,
Speaker 3: Maybe you should have did this.
Speaker 2: And there were other exercises that we did.
Speaker 3: We were able to get people that's incarcerated to have
Speaker 3: more time with their non incarcerated youth in their life.
Speaker 3: I believe that was one of the most impactful programs
Speaker 3: that I was a part of. I'm glad to have
Speaker 3: created it, and I feel like we also created a
Speaker 3: fraternity through that program all of us are still close
Speaker 3: to this day. I think Voices from Within has the
Speaker 3: power to really change young people's trajectory because it's not
Speaker 3: those typical listen I did thirty years.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you what it is. It's caring. They
Speaker 2: don't care how much you know.
Speaker 3: They want to know how much you care, and we
Speaker 3: actually showed them that we care about you.
Speaker 1: Jermaine kept himself very busy in prison, including with a
Speaker 1: program that was very important to other former guests on
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction podcast. It was actually recently featured Get This
Speaker 1: in the OSCAR nominated film Sing Sing, And of course
Speaker 1: I'm talking about a theater program called Rehabilitation through the
Speaker 1: Arts or RTA.
Speaker 3: I have to say one, I'm the executive director now,
Speaker 3: but two, rehabilitation due to OZ gave me a childhood
Speaker 3: that I never had really as a teenager, I felt
Speaker 3: like I was grown when I got to rehabilitation, to
Speaker 3: to Oars, I was able to do goofy things.
Speaker 2: Again. I was too cool to do that in high school.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm not doing that, I'm not doing foolishness.
Speaker 3: But we rolled around the floor, we danced, We created
Speaker 3: safe spaces in there and the arts heals. So many
Speaker 3: people went through rehabilitation and either ended up going to
Speaker 3: college or they ended up creating their own programs, and
Speaker 3: I have to put that front and center. We created
Speaker 3: voices from within. I was already a member of rehabilitation
Speaker 3: through the arts. We took some of the exercises to
Speaker 3: incorporate it, tweaked it to fit out purposes, But a
Speaker 3: lot of that came from rehabilitation to the arts. Because
Speaker 3: people on RTA knew my name. I wasn't a cell number,
Speaker 3: I wasn't a department identification number.
Speaker 2: I was Jermane Like. It actually restored humanity as so
Speaker 2: many of us.
Speaker 1: In addition is staying busy with programs. Jermaine also continued
Speaker 1: to fight his case. He was denied on his direct appeal,
Speaker 1: and then in two thousand and three he found out
Speaker 1: about a recording that Ronaldo had made of conversations with
Speaker 1: Carlos Bethune, which may have been missed by his attorney
Speaker 1: during his motion to vacate the verdict.
Speaker 3: Somehow, my mother ran into a private investigator, Kevin Hinkson.
Speaker 3: He turned over all the files in the case. I
Speaker 3: didn't read realized that there was a recorded transcript between
Speaker 3: Ronaldo and Carlos Bethune. When I took my time and
Speaker 3: started going to the little library and reading it, I
Speaker 3: realized Carlos admitted that they gave him three thousand dollars
Speaker 3: to move. That's what he said on the tape. So
Speaker 3: now I'm trying to figure out how can I prove this.
Speaker 3: I don't know a lot about law, but I know
Speaker 3: that they denied giving him anything. There has to be
Speaker 3: something illegal or unconstitutional about that. So I filed the
Speaker 3: freedom of information request. They didn't answer it. They didn't
Speaker 3: answer it. Eventually I peeled it and then they answered
Speaker 3: it with a certification that says they never gave him anything.
Speaker 3: There's no records to prove it. They don't have anything
Speaker 3: in the King's County District Attorney office that says they
Speaker 3: ever had an agreement with him. So, okay, I know
Speaker 3: what happened, I can't prove it.
Speaker 1: And without the proof, he moved forward with post conviction motions,
Speaker 1: citing ineffective assistance of trial council, saying that his attorney
Speaker 1: should have called Kester, Jones and other alibi witnesses, and
Speaker 1: again they were denied. Meanwhile, Ken Thompson was elected Brooklyn
Speaker 1: District Attorney and before and died too young in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: he formed a conviction review unit and at this point
Speaker 1: Peter took on Jermaine's case.
Speaker 4: So, fortunately for us, before Ken Thompson passed away, we
Speaker 4: had gone pretty far down the road with the reinvestigation
Speaker 4: of the case by the conviction review Unit. The assistant
Speaker 4: district attorney was a really nice person, very ethical, right.
Speaker 4: We signed a cooperation agreement where we agreed that we
Speaker 4: would turn over to them whatever evidence we had, and
Speaker 4: they agreed they would turn over all the evidence that
Speaker 4: they had, and in that agreement they also said they
Speaker 4: would give us witness statements at some point. But I
Speaker 4: signed the agreement. My client signed the agreement. We never
Speaker 4: got a sign copy of the agreement back from them,
Speaker 4: but they were operating under the agreement.
Speaker 3: And Peter asked her, is there anything that shows whatever
Speaker 3: you may have given benefits to any of the witnesses.
Speaker 3: We left it broad on purpose. She turned over three
Speaker 3: sheets of paper that shows, according to that summer, he
Speaker 3: was thirteen hundred dollars or something like that.
Speaker 2: That was the start. I said, Peter, get that, and
Speaker 2: I got it, and I got it.
Speaker 3: I said, get anything else she got, so she went
Speaker 3: back to look for more. They transferred off the case
Speaker 3: as soon as they found out she gave us that documentation.
Speaker 3: She was no longer working the case.
Speaker 2: She was gone.
Speaker 4: The good thing is we discovered that the only alleged
Speaker 4: eyewitness had a cooperation agreement. He got housing and other
Speaker 4: compensation from them his testimony, and they never disclosed that.
Speaker 1: In addition to this Brady violation, both the ADA and
Speaker 1: Carlos Bethune denied the deal existed a trial, and at
Speaker 1: this point the Conviction Review Unit went unresponsive. Meanwhile, Jermaine
Speaker 1: paroled out in twenty twenty from prison.
Speaker 3: I married a beautiful woman and helped raise her children,
Speaker 3: and their father was murdered, so I got to raise
Speaker 3: two children from prison. I walked out of prison on
Speaker 3: November thirty of twenty twenty. My wife, my children, my mother,
Speaker 3: my brothers, like everyone was waiting on me.
Speaker 2: There was a film crew waiting on me. I couldn't
Speaker 2: believe I was out.
Speaker 3: I wanted to jump in the car goal I wanted
Speaker 3: to pinch myself make sure I wasn't sleeping. They asked
Speaker 3: me what I wanted to do first. I said McDonald's
Speaker 3: and they told me order whatever I want. And I
Speaker 3: went up to the register and no one paid me
Speaker 3: any mind. Of course, I'm not going to make a scene.
Speaker 3: I was in prison twenty minutes ago. So I'll wait patiently,
Speaker 3: and eventually one of the clerks. So one of the
Speaker 3: cashiers told me, you got to order on the kiosks.
Speaker 3: So I go to this little black looking thing. I've
Speaker 3: been in prison twenty two years. I don't know how
Speaker 3: to turn it on. I don't know about touchscreen or
Speaker 3: any of that stuff. At the time, my family got
Speaker 3: a good kick out of that. That was my introduction
Speaker 3: to technology and how far I had been behind. I
Speaker 3: didn't even know how to order food at McDonald's on
Speaker 3: the Kiosk, and then they took me home, had a
Speaker 3: nice little reception and family and friends and supporters, and
Speaker 3: I got a job at the Legal Aid Society of
Speaker 3: Westchester five weeks later, and Peter and I were discussing, like,
Speaker 3: when do we file the motion, because we wanted to
Speaker 3: wait till I came home. I wanted to be in
Speaker 3: the courtroom. I didn't want them to deal with a
Speaker 3: paper motion like all the other ones that had got denied.
Speaker 3: I wanted them to have to deal with a human being.
Speaker 3: We waited until September of twenty twenty one to file
Speaker 3: the motion.
Speaker 1: During these proceedings, they tried to compel the DA to
Speaker 1: share whatever evidence they had that had dried up when
Speaker 1: the Conviction Review Unit went unresponsive. After all, they had
Speaker 1: this twenty fourteen cooperation agreement.
Speaker 4: When we tried to get them to turn over the
Speaker 4: witness statements, they said, oh, this is an unsigned agreement.
Speaker 4: The court to my chagrin, and said, yeah, there's no
Speaker 4: evidence there was in fact disagreement, and obviously there was
Speaker 4: because we were cooperating under the agreement both sides.
Speaker 3: Because they never provided us with a signed copy of
Speaker 3: the agreement. Like the gamesmanship, I lost my cool a
Speaker 3: couple of times, and they Peter calmed me down because
Speaker 3: it was at a point where y'are.
Speaker 2: Playing games with my life.
Speaker 3: And the judge ordered them to turn over whatever else
Speaker 3: there was in relation to this cooperation agreement. They turned
Speaker 3: over eight more pages, so now we have eleven sheets
Speaker 3: of paper that put the whole thing together. We ended
Speaker 3: up getting granted a hearing, but official hearings started twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, blasted about six different court dates, and they
Speaker 3: had given us mission to pursue actual innocence. Under actual innocence,
Speaker 3: you can bring up things outside of the record.
Speaker 2: When I got on.
Speaker 3: A stand, the district attorney brought up things that I
Speaker 3: was accused of fifth grade.
Speaker 2: Like it was just chaos.
Speaker 3: We weren't talking about the murder I was in prison for.
Speaker 3: We were talking about things that I was never accused of,
Speaker 3: never convicted, I've never charged with, and it was wearing
Speaker 3: me out. I ended up in the hospital that night.
Speaker 3: I ended up back on my medication, and after a
Speaker 3: good long, lengthy discussion of our attorney, I went back
Speaker 3: in the courtroom told the judge were withdrawing that we're
Speaker 3: just going to deal with the Brady violation, which is
Speaker 3: the fact that you paid someone and you lied about it.
Speaker 3: They didn't want to talk about Brady violation. They had
Speaker 3: four hundred pages and when the judge said you have
Speaker 3: to talk about the Brady violation, she said no further questions, John,
Speaker 3: because they couldn't talk about that. They were just going
Speaker 3: to try to smear me in front of the court.
Speaker 3: We know when it started. It started the day before trial.
Speaker 3: And when my lawyer, Jesse Young, intimated that she may
Speaker 3: have made a deal with him, she said, I just
Speaker 3: want to point out for the record, no one from
Speaker 3: my own if this has promised him anything. You had
Speaker 3: just promised him at the date before, and we got
Speaker 3: the paperwork to prove it. And as the hearing went
Speaker 3: on it became obvious there was a deal made, you're
Speaker 3: lying about it. You're still lying about it. And the
Speaker 3: judged overturned the conviction based on the Brady violation.
Speaker 1: And importantly a material violation that this would have caused
Speaker 1: a different verdict at trial. So the conviction was overturned.
Speaker 1: And we wish you all the luck in the world
Speaker 1: in civil litigation as well as at your new job
Speaker 1: working for rehabilitation through the arts, this time though from
Speaker 1: outside the walls. And for anyone who wants to get
Speaker 1: involved or donate, we're going to link to the places
Speaker 1: you can go in the episode description and with that
Speaker 1: we're going to go to closing arguments. First of all,
Speaker 1: I thank each of you from the bottom of my heart,
Speaker 1: and now I'm just going to kick back in my chair,
Speaker 1: close my eyes, and leave my headphones on and listen
Speaker 1: to anything else you guys feel has been left unset.
Speaker 1: So Peter you go first, and then and the microphone
Speaker 1: off to Jermaine and he'll take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 4: I think we said it all.
Speaker 2: I have a final thought.
Speaker 3: Anybody that's a resident of Kings County, anybody with connection
Speaker 3: to the King's County District Attorney office, reach out prove
Speaker 3: me wrong.
Speaker 2: I'm telling everybody I didn't do this crime.
Speaker 3: Contact the District attorney and ask them where's the evidence
Speaker 3: that I did this crime? Contact them and ask them
Speaker 3: why are they still wasting tax payer money or something
Speaker 3: that is obvious how to can do?
Speaker 2: Reach out and.
Speaker 3: Find out if you can find any evidence other than
Speaker 3: the liar that I did this crime. Then hey, now
Speaker 3: we're talking. But otherwise this is just political theater.
Speaker 2: This is just a.
Speaker 3: Lot of waste of taxpayer money, people getting paid to
Speaker 3: uphold something that can't be held up. It's ridiculous. Yes,
Speaker 3: he's supposed to be a progressive prosecutor. Find out why
Speaker 3: he has me in the scope and why he won't
Speaker 3: do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
Speaker 1: week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
Speaker 1: production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 1: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber.
Speaker 1: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 1: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
Speaker 1: across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 1: at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 1: in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
Speaker 1: by the individuals featured in this show are their own
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good