Speaker 1: In the early morning hours of October, a young woman
Speaker 1: noticed a man checking her out at a bar in Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: When she left, he followed her outside, abducted her at gunpoint,
Speaker 1: and brought her to nearby Iroquois Park, where he beat, robbed,
Speaker 1: and raped her. The victim described him as a white
Speaker 1: man driving a green car, about five eleven over two
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, with curly, dark brown hair and blue eyes.
Speaker 1: After a rape kid was performed, she helped create a
Speaker 1: composite sketch, which was circulated among the local bars. The
Speaker 1: following day, a man who closely resembled that sketch, Michael
Speaker 1: van Alman, walked into the very same bar from which
Speaker 1: the victim had been abducted. When Michael left, the bar,
Speaker 1: patrons followed him home, tipped off the police, and his
Speaker 1: picture was shown to the victim in a photo array.
Speaker 1: One would think that an uncanny resemblance to the composite
Speaker 1: sketch and a positive even the victim would mean that
Speaker 1: the authorities got the right guy. But this is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today we have a case
Speaker 1: that at the heart of it is a mesmerizing web
Speaker 1: of unfortunate coincidence that then kind of loops back around
Speaker 1: to become fortunate, and hearing it might make you question
Speaker 1: or might reaffirm your belief system. Sometimes our guests are
Speaker 1: victims of a direct evil actor or systemic injustice, but
Speaker 1: this time in Louisville, Kentucky. Not to say there wasn't
Speaker 1: plenty of blame to go around, but well you'll see
Speaker 1: what I mean in a bit, and of course we're
Speaker 1: talking about what happened to Michael van Almond. So, Mike,
Speaker 1: welcome to Wrongful Conviction. Thank you for inviting me and
Speaker 1: with my guess, Ted Shaus, a Louisville defense attorney, the
Speaker 1: former director by the way of the Kentucky Innisance Project,
Speaker 1: who Kentucky voters had the opportunity to elect to the
Speaker 1: bench as a Circuit Court judge in November twenty two,
Speaker 1: but they they missed. I'm gonna say they blew that opportunity,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna say it right now, they would have
Speaker 1: been lucky to have him. So Ted, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Now before we talk about this
Speaker 1: horrible crime and the odd and really unfortunate coincidence that
Speaker 1: led to your wrongful conviction. Mike, you had served in
Speaker 1: the military, which just feels to me like it makes
Speaker 1: it all seemed worse somehow. But before we get into
Speaker 1: any of that, what was your life like growing up?
Speaker 1: Did you grow up in the city of Louisville. Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Louisville grew up close to Churchill Downs, so that was
Speaker 1: certainly bred into me as well, so very loiville. My
Speaker 1: my father was a firefighter for the Louisville Fire Department.
Speaker 1: Working class, middle class. We lived in a neighborhood where
Speaker 1: the whole street was full of kids and you know,
Speaker 1: went to school, clam trees, played ball and what I
Speaker 1: thought was quite normal life. I mean, your story sounds
Speaker 1: so quintessentially American that I can actually smell apple pie
Speaker 1: while you're talking. And then, of course you went into
Speaker 1: the Navy, and how was that experience. Well, the structure
Speaker 1: of of the military wasn't quite conducive to my personality,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was. I was in rebellion the wholetel
Speaker 1: and uh, I was glad to get out of there.
Speaker 1: And so you came home, as I understand it, you
Speaker 1: um celebrated your sort of emancipation. Ever you want to
Speaker 1: call it from the military with um sort of living
Speaker 1: it up right, a lot of girlfriends and we're smoking weed.
Speaker 1: No judgment here. I smoked enough of it when I
Speaker 1: was a kid to to sink a ship and drinking
Speaker 1: it's at her. But you were young, and no judgment here.
Speaker 1: But then you were blindsided by this crazy situation. I mean,
Speaker 1: this crime was an awful crime, make no mistake about it.
Speaker 1: This is something that happened. On October tenth, two year
Speaker 1: old woman was abduct at a gun point outside of
Speaker 1: a tavern in Louisville, Kentucky. She was taken to a
Speaker 1: nearby park called Iroquois Park, where she was beaten, raped,
Speaker 1: and robbed, and the victim described her assailant as a
Speaker 1: guy about five ft eleven inches tall, weighing over two
Speaker 1: dred pounds, with blue eyes and curly, dark brown hair.
Speaker 1: First of all, Mike, did you fit the description of
Speaker 1: the perpetrator. They had a composite drawing that looked identical
Speaker 1: to me except for one very important feature. Mike has
Speaker 1: brown eyes, not blue. And this is not the first
Speaker 1: time we've heard of a situation where our guests looked
Speaker 1: very similar to the actual assailant. We've also heard of
Speaker 1: the actual assailant, varying wildly from the victims initial description
Speaker 1: and ultimate misidentification. So we've heard and we've heard everything
Speaker 1: in between. But remember, our minds are not cameras. Some
Speaker 1: people like to think that they can remember things exactly,
Speaker 1: It's not the way the mind works, especially not with
Speaker 1: visual images. Then, Jennifer Thompson does the best job of
Speaker 1: anyone I know talking about this. Remember she was called
Speaker 1: the perfect witness in a case where she herself was
Speaker 1: raped and for the entire horrible ordeal, which lasted almost
Speaker 1: a half hour, she studied her assailant because she was
Speaker 1: determined that if she lived, she was going to make
Speaker 1: sure that she identified person and that this would never
Speaker 1: happen to anyone else. But ultimately she identified the wrong guy,
Speaker 1: Ronald Cotton, who looked almost identical to the actual assailant.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, DNA ultimately proved Ronald's actual innocence,
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the case here, and we'll get to
Speaker 1: that in a bit. However, a rape it was performed,
Speaker 1: and then a few hours later they worked with the
Speaker 1: victim on the composite sketch. She noticed this guy checking
Speaker 1: her out the whole night, so she really had a
Speaker 1: good picture of who this guy was. So she brought
Speaker 1: together this composite drawing that was almost identical to the
Speaker 1: guy and unfortunately, almost identical to me. The police had
Speaker 1: circulated that picture to all the local bars that Saturday evening,
Speaker 1: and as it turned out, it was the Sunday evening
Speaker 1: the day after they got this composite drawing. I went
Speaker 1: into the very same bar that it happened, not having
Speaker 1: a clue. As I'm sitting here ordering a cold beer,
Speaker 1: They're looking at this composite drawing and saying wow, crazy
Speaker 1: s So be done. Returned to the scene of the
Speaker 1: crap that mobilized everybody in that bar, and they followed
Speaker 1: me home and my blue voteswagon. But the initial description
Speaker 1: and composite sketch said that the assailant was driving a
Speaker 1: green car. So again we have something here that should
Speaker 1: have been a big red flag and should have ended
Speaker 1: this before it began, because not only does Mike have
Speaker 1: brown eyes, not blue, but he has a blue car,
Speaker 1: not a green car. But I lived in this apartment complex,
Speaker 1: and as I pulled in the park, it was right
Speaker 1: next to my neighbor's green Chevrolet and they just added
Speaker 1: the two together, saying, there's the green car, there's the guy.
Speaker 1: They called the police with an anonymous tip of two
Speaker 1: license plates that it could be. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: what a terrible string of coincidences? Would you going to
Speaker 1: this particular bar are at exactly the time that they
Speaker 1: had seen this composite sketch of an assailant that closely
Speaker 1: presembled you except for the eye coller, of course, but
Speaker 1: I don't think you can see that in a composite sketch, obviously, right.
Speaker 1: But what happens was this posse followed you home and
Speaker 1: in another crazy twist of fate, you happened to pull
Speaker 1: in next to your neighbor's green car. Now there was
Speaker 1: a partial plate number from the actual assailants green car.
Speaker 1: The license plates were close enough similar enough that it
Speaker 1: might have been well, it clearly was persuasive to a jury,
Speaker 1: But it really was the composite sketch that did it.
Speaker 1: As you can see even today, Michael Scott frizzy hair.
Speaker 1: At the time he had a full head of curly hair,
Speaker 1: and so did the actual perpetrator. And it really was
Speaker 1: the composite sketch that was that was the driving force
Speaker 1: behind this conviction. Again, what an awful coincidence, and it's
Speaker 1: about as remarkable as the coincident al turn of fate
Speaker 1: that proved your innocence. So did the victim identify you?
Speaker 1: When they had followed me home and and they got
Speaker 1: these two license numbers from that information, they got my name,
Speaker 1: and they took a photo of an olde arrest I'd
Speaker 1: had for some misdemeanor and probably drunk in the public place.
Speaker 1: Through this photo into a photo pack. I think there
Speaker 1: was five, maybe six pictures, but there was only one
Speaker 1: big curly headed guy in that photo pack. So the
Speaker 1: victim was shown the photo pack and when she got
Speaker 1: to the big curly headed gas she said, well, kind
Speaker 1: of looks like him, but not for certain you know,
Speaker 1: certainly there wasn't any blue ass that she could identify
Speaker 1: and say, yeah, that's him. But about a week week
Speaker 1: and a half later, showed her the very same photo
Speaker 1: pack and she made a positive identification. They had three
Speaker 1: felony warrants on me for rape, robbery, and s out
Speaker 1: of me. Right and in the lead up to your arrest,
Speaker 1: since you worked a lot, the police often missed you
Speaker 1: during the day. Right there, wud show at your house
Speaker 1: daylight hours, and you started hearing about this from your neighbors.
Speaker 1: I had come home from work one day and the
Speaker 1: owner of that green car, I met him at the
Speaker 1: mailbox and he asked me, said, hey, what are the
Speaker 1: police looking for you for? I said, police, what you mean?
Speaker 1: He said, well, they've been been by here a couple
Speaker 1: of times this week, knocking on your door. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but thanks, I'll find out what's going on.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that the guy who owned the green
Speaker 1: car that was mistaken for the assailant's car, that that
Speaker 1: was the guy who told you about the cops coming by.
Speaker 1: But soon you did find out what was going on,
Speaker 1: and you learned that these were some really serious charges.
Speaker 1: So they had the partial plate number that compose a
Speaker 1: sketch and the them misidentification. Now, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: you spoke to an attorney and tried to arrange for
Speaker 1: bond with your parents. As I'm on the phone with
Speaker 1: my mother, the police officers pulled up in front of
Speaker 1: my house. I told my mother, and Mama talked to you. Later.
Speaker 1: I ran outside to try to talk to him and
Speaker 1: to give me another hour to find get this bond situated,
Speaker 1: and we'd get be in we get this straightened out,
Speaker 1: and they looked at me like, yeah, give you an
Speaker 1: hour getting this car. So you were arrested. Did you
Speaker 1: end up bonding out or did you end up awaiting
Speaker 1: trial from jail as we saw often here. That was
Speaker 1: another miracle part of my story. One of the people
Speaker 1: that worked in the bond preparing system knew me, went
Speaker 1: to high school with me, and I knew this was
Speaker 1: way out of character. So I don't know what maneuvers
Speaker 1: she had available, but she got this really low two
Speaker 1: thousand dollar bond set for me and it was posted
Speaker 1: right away, So it was I was out on bond
Speaker 1: for about sixteen months before I finally went to trial.
Speaker 1: All right, so you were available to fight the case
Speaker 1: from the outside. This left you in a better position
Speaker 1: than most ted did his lawyer take advantage of that
Speaker 1: to the extent that there's blame in this case, There's
Speaker 1: plenty to go around. First of all, the police were
Speaker 1: second of all the prosecution, but the defense council also
Speaker 1: needs to own some blame here. DNA was not available
Speaker 1: at the time. But what's important to remember is that
Speaker 1: this was an old fashioned case that relied on old
Speaker 1: fashioned work ethic. Mike had an alibi. He was at
Speaker 1: a barbecue an outdoor party on the night that this occurred.
Speaker 1: I had four witnesses test I fan where I was,
Speaker 1: and I think the owner of the green car test
Speaker 1: of fad that I never used this car. Those witnesses
Speaker 1: should have been adequately prepared to present a cogent defense
Speaker 1: for Mike, and they weren't. I've tried many many cases
Speaker 1: in Kentucky, and simply calling witnesses and putting around the
Speaker 1: witness stand that may seem like inappropriate way. Well, the
Speaker 1: witnesses were called, but if they're not properly prepared, and
Speaker 1: if a cogent and complete defense is not prepared before
Speaker 1: the trial begins, you're not really putting out of defense.
Speaker 1: You're just throwing witnesses up there at that point, and
Speaker 1: that's not putting out of defense. Right. Unless there's a
Speaker 1: solid narrative created between the alibi witnesses and the corroborating
Speaker 1: physical evidence, a prosecutor can easily shred the credibility of
Speaker 1: that alibi simply by pointing out that these are Mike's
Speaker 1: friends or relatives who might be willing to lie. The jury, though,
Speaker 1: did hear that her assailant's eyes were blue while Mike's
Speaker 1: were brown, which I think should have meant more to everyone,
Speaker 1: including the judge, the prosecutor, and I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but the victim too. That physical evidence clearly corroborated the alibi,
Speaker 1: but the misidentification and the composite sketch that, just like Mike,
Speaker 1: let's face it, they just outweighed everything. To be fair,
Speaker 1: In those days, the notion of misidentification was in its infancy.
Speaker 1: The notion that trauma and stress lead to misidentification was
Speaker 1: almost unheard of, and so the power of the composite
Speaker 1: sketch cannot be overstated. At this point, were you confident
Speaker 1: that people would see the truth. Certainly I had a
Speaker 1: blund belief that the American justin system would sort out
Speaker 1: the truth in this, especially with everyone testiphoned to where
Speaker 1: I was and myself included. Take us to that moment,
Speaker 1: that which must have been the worst moment of your life,
Speaker 1: when they came in and got it exactly wrong. Total disbelief,
Speaker 1: my family and behind me my head, a sister who
Speaker 1: was eight and a half months pregnant, and behind me
Speaker 1: and she just began she when she started boiling, I
Speaker 1: just couldn't look back. And they just carried me off
Speaker 1: and took me away, and yeah, I couldn't look back
Speaker 1: at my family. We're gonna take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. This episode is underwritten by A
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Speaker 1: provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented communities
Speaker 1: and individuals. I had been arrested plenty of times, but
Speaker 1: I never made it outside of the holding self for
Speaker 1: the little misdemeanors that I had, so I never actually
Speaker 1: went beyond that. And so this was certainly a fearful
Speaker 1: time as far as my normal self going into where
Speaker 1: the mean boys are held up at and uh trying
Speaker 1: to adjust to what the jail house environment was like. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: very fearful, I guess, very confusing and difficult time, and
Speaker 1: it led to a pretty quick transformation into Christianity, which
Speaker 1: was my mother's reason for all this happening. So it
Speaker 1: got me through about the first year of adjustment of
Speaker 1: jail and prison. But eventually I've got to the point
Speaker 1: where I didn't believe God was really doing this and
Speaker 1: uh got back to my old character and adjusting to
Speaker 1: a prison life. You found religion and lost religion through
Speaker 1: this experience. It sounds like redefined it for sure. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we hear stories of you know, men and women have
Speaker 1: gone through similar experience to yours, and they've gone, you know,
Speaker 1: one way or the other. I haven't actually heard the
Speaker 1: full circle version of that, but it's interesting to hear
Speaker 1: you tell it. And and I gonna have to say,
Speaker 1: is understandable. I mean, who who knows how anyone would
Speaker 1: react going through this most incredibly traumatic experience that you
Speaker 1: were subjected to. So since to thirty years you're um
Speaker 1: at that point, how old were you? I was twenty five, right,
Speaker 1: So they're sending you to spend more time in prison
Speaker 1: by a significant margin than you had actually been alive
Speaker 1: on this planet. So I get the prison and of
Speaker 1: course right away trying to prove my innocence and start
Speaker 1: demanding some kind of lie detection, whatever method that they
Speaker 1: could come up with. My course, my lawyer is doing
Speaker 1: the direct appeal, and the direct appeal was affirmed fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: So the next move was back to our trial court
Speaker 1: with the eleven forty two motion, and in an effort
Speaker 1: to arm myself as best as I could, I demanded
Speaker 1: from my new attorney, get me these polygraph tests, and
Speaker 1: let's get something in front of this judge before we
Speaker 1: go with this leven forty two. So he finally hires
Speaker 1: a polygraph operator on his own, a police officer. As
Speaker 1: I passed this test, it wasn't long afterwards that that
Speaker 1: same officer was indicted for an arson charge over his restaurant.
Speaker 1: So that kind of nullified anything this guy had to
Speaker 1: say about anything. It's like you're on a downward spiral
Speaker 1: in a sea of legal quicksand driven by a string
Speaker 1: of unfortunate coincidences. So that blew up that effort and
Speaker 1: the timing of that appeal. So back to getting another
Speaker 1: polygraph test. So as we're working to get this done,
Speaker 1: up jumps another possible suspect, not a big curly headed guy,
Speaker 1: but a big, wavy headed guy, and he had a
Speaker 1: string of sexual assaults that wasn't identical, didn't match up
Speaker 1: to the m O. But he was from the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and everybody focused on him as the possible actual perpetrator,
Speaker 1: and I was hopeful that he was going to confess
Speaker 1: to the crime I was accused of. And then my
Speaker 1: attorney was finally able to get a polygraph set up
Speaker 1: with the Louisville Police Department working with the Commonwealth Attorney's office,
Speaker 1: and when I passed that polygraph test, the police reopened
Speaker 1: my case with that other suspect that I just mentioned
Speaker 1: with him in mad But unfortunately, even though this serial
Speaker 1: rapist did confess to other crimes, he never actually confessed
Speaker 1: the crime for which Mike served eleven years. Now, after
Speaker 1: losing in court twice and this reinvestigation running dry, you
Speaker 1: pivoted to petitioning the parole board for early consideration. And
Speaker 1: maybe that reopening of your case and a fresh look
Speaker 1: had something to do with your being considered for early parole.
Speaker 1: The consideration of early parole is almost unheard of in Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and so when Michael was granted early consideration, you know,
Speaker 1: three times before he eventually got paroled. That's that's almost
Speaker 1: unheard of in Kentucky. Yeah, it sounds like there were
Speaker 1: probably some whispers in the halls of power there, there
Speaker 1: were some recognition that this was a miscarriage. But even
Speaker 1: with that potential recognition, Michael was denied and deferred three times,
Speaker 1: which is how he did eleven long years. And it
Speaker 1: seemed like every time he was up for parole, some
Speaker 1: other parolea would be in the news for having committed
Speaker 1: some sort of other heinous crime. Even though we know
Speaker 1: it's a tiny fraction of the people who come home,
Speaker 1: those are the ones that make news. But this meant
Speaker 1: that any willingness of the parole board to give Michael
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt would just shrivel up. They'd
Speaker 1: give you some bs about you needing to take some
Speaker 1: courses a a sex offender rehab, etcetera, even though there
Speaker 1: was so much doubt in your case, and you did
Speaker 1: pursue those avenues as well. Now before you were eventually paroled,
Speaker 1: there were two other avenues or storylines that we're building steam.
Speaker 1: As DNA testing evolved, he began to seek out the
Speaker 1: biological materials in your case. And then there was a
Speaker 1: girlfriend your neighborhood who ended up being instrumental in your freedom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in the neighborhood that I grew up in was
Speaker 1: a girl lived down the street. As we got to
Speaker 1: high school, she just kind of disappeared, and we had
Speaker 1: heard that she was off with some crazy crowds. So
Speaker 1: I get convicted and my mother comes down here to
Speaker 1: visit me. When she is coming down here to visit
Speaker 1: somebody else in prison as well, but she knows my
Speaker 1: mother really well, and she says, she looks up and
Speaker 1: sees her and says, Wow, what are you doing here?
Speaker 1: And my mother says, well, I'm seeing Mike. Mike's here
Speaker 1: for a rape charge. What are you doing here? She said,
Speaker 1: When I'm here seeing an old friend ten years goes
Speaker 1: by and the guy that she had come to visit
Speaker 1: that time, he's now getting ready to get out on parole.
Speaker 1: And during this ten years I have become really good
Speaker 1: friends with this guy. He sends a letter out to
Speaker 1: this girl. You know, he's looking for somebody to hook
Speaker 1: up with it when he gets out. So he writes
Speaker 1: his letter and she writes him back. So though, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can call me when you get out and oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, any chance you know a guy named
Speaker 1: Mike von Almond I believe my ex is the one
Speaker 1: committed his crime. Well, like I said, we had been
Speaker 1: to good friends. This guy had been listening to me
Speaker 1: whining about my innocence for ten years now. When he
Speaker 1: got this letter, it all made sense to him, and
Speaker 1: he brought it straight to me and said, here, read this.
Speaker 1: And as I'm reading and I get to that point
Speaker 1: Mike von Almond, I says, what did guy look like?
Speaker 1: And the guy says they currently had a guy. And
Speaker 1: then I go to reading back. I said, well, where's
Speaker 1: he at? He says he's dead, killed in a car wreck.
Speaker 1: So your big break still came with a big uphill battle.
Speaker 1: There you were, you must have felt like you'd been
Speaker 1: hit by lightning. But this evidence still needed to be developed.
Speaker 1: So for now your best bet was still the parole board,
Speaker 1: and you had been taking classes, building up a positive
Speaker 1: appearance on paper for these people who usually demanded a
Speaker 1: mission of guilt which you were not fitting to give them.
Speaker 1: And finally the day came, that last parole hearing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's etch in my memory forever. I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: go up there and talk to them any kind of
Speaker 1: way about guilt or innocence. I just wanted to focus
Speaker 1: on what I had done in there was eleven years, uh,
Speaker 1: the sex offense class and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I completed my A A degree. I went in with
Speaker 1: my little spill and they said, oh, that's pretty good,
Speaker 1: pretty impressive, but let's hear about the story again. We
Speaker 1: want to hear it one more time. Are you guilty?
Speaker 1: And I just shrunk. I felt it was going to
Speaker 1: be the end of it. I thought I was going
Speaker 1: to get a servant on my sentence from there. But
Speaker 1: I just shrunk and said numb. And I never saw
Speaker 1: that girl before in my life. I don't know her.
Speaker 1: And uh they said, okay, step out, and uh I
Speaker 1: come back in and they said, we're gonna give you
Speaker 1: the benefit of the down. Do not come back in
Speaker 1: front of us. We won't be as nice the next time.
Speaker 1: Here's your shot, buddy. I've been a criminal defense attorney
Speaker 1: for twenty three years. I was the directing attorney of
Speaker 1: the Kentucky Innocence Project for two of those years. What
Speaker 1: you just heard is one of the gutsiest moves I've
Speaker 1: ever heard. Of criminal defendant. Make Mike stuck to his guns.
Speaker 1: He stuck to the truth. He told those people the truth.
Speaker 1: He took an incredible risk. Might have been easier to
Speaker 1: say what they wanted to hear and increase his chances
Speaker 1: of being released from prison, but he's stuck to his truth.
Speaker 1: He stuck to the truth. That is an incredibly gutsy move.
Speaker 1: It is, it really is. And Michael can count himself
Speaker 1: amongst some rarefied company that we've had on the show,
Speaker 1: courageous men and women who have done a similar thing
Speaker 1: when they could have done and he could have done
Speaker 1: the practical thing it would seem like anyway and maybe
Speaker 1: seen a clear path to freedom, but he didn't and
Speaker 1: still was rewarded. So now he's been paroled, right, but
Speaker 1: his name was not cleared yet. Mike's case was hanging
Speaker 1: in this weird limbo at this time. Of course, he
Speaker 1: was released for prison. At that point everyone said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: no harm, no foul. This was, of course, after Mike
Speaker 1: had spent eleven years in prison for a crime he
Speaker 1: didn't commit. Yes, so this still needed to be made right.
Speaker 1: So you had already pursued DNA testing and were told
Speaker 1: that the evidence didn't exist, but who knows, they may
Speaker 1: have just been stonewalling you, as we've seen time and
Speaker 1: again on this program, where the evidence does exist, but
Speaker 1: they just refused to hand it over. I made every
Speaker 1: move I could possibly make trying to find this biological evidence.
Speaker 1: About a year later or so, you know, I just
Speaker 1: gave up on trying to prove my innocence. I was out,
Speaker 1: get busy living, don't worry about the innocence. You know,
Speaker 1: this freedom thing is pretty damned nice, So just do
Speaker 1: whatever you gotta do to stay with that. And I did.
Speaker 1: I was still Mike Phone m and the very same
Speaker 1: guy that they locked up. I mean, that's an absolutely
Speaker 1: remarkable way to make peace with a terrible injustice. But
Speaker 1: that's not the end of the story. How did Ted
Speaker 1: end up getting involved? Finally, sixteen years goes by, I
Speaker 1: make the coffee flop the newspaper down on the kitchen table,
Speaker 1: and they're right on the front page. Was Ted in
Speaker 1: this grant money to investigate wrong for convictions? And I read?
Speaker 1: That's still emotional too. I read this story, and the
Speaker 1: very first day I was so full of emotion I
Speaker 1: couldn't call. But the second day I mustered up enough
Speaker 1: fortitude that I called down to Tid's office and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: that happened to me in the eighties. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: you're the person we're looking for. And I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: my name's Mike Bonhoman. Let's let's get going. I remember
Speaker 1: that phone call vividly. I had just been hired as
Speaker 1: the directing attorney of the Innocence Project to oversee this
Speaker 1: grant from the United States Department of Justice to do
Speaker 1: research on a narrow group of sex offenses, and the
Speaker 1: thinking of the grant was that DNA would be how
Speaker 1: we would solve these cases. As part of that effort,
Speaker 1: I did a sort of a public relations outreach. There
Speaker 1: were articles in the newspaper. I went on the radio,
Speaker 1: I went on TV trying to reach people, and I
Speaker 1: remember Mike's phone call very well. And retired Lovo Police
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Gary Simpkins, who was my investigator at the time,
Speaker 1: I sent him out to talk to Mike. And Gary
Speaker 1: was and still is a cops cop. He is a
Speaker 1: Vietnam veteran, a veteran of I believe twenty five years
Speaker 1: on the Lobo Police department and did everything you can
Speaker 1: do in those twenty five years from patrol officer to
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I believe Gary's last job was as what
Speaker 1: we call the public Integrity Unit. Most people would call
Speaker 1: that internal affairs. So Gary came after interviewing Mike and said,
Speaker 1: I think this is a legitimate case. I went to
Speaker 1: the then serving Commonwealth attorney and said, we've received this grant.
Speaker 1: We'd like to see if there's any DNA evidence available.
Speaker 1: The then serving comalth attorney said, I have no interest
Speaker 1: in seeing an innocent person wrongfully convicted do it. This
Speaker 1: is where it gets interesting. I then went to see
Speaker 1: a judge to see about tracking down the DNA evidence.
Speaker 1: And the judge who I went to see said about
Speaker 1: this case, who was the defense lawyer? And when I
Speaker 1: told him the defense lawyers name, he then said, who
Speaker 1: is the judge? And I told him the judge's name.
Speaker 1: Who is the prosecutor? And I told him the prosecutor's name,
Speaker 1: and this judge went, ah, what, oh God. So what
Speaker 1: we have here is a case that was a perfect storm.
Speaker 1: I like to say that for criminal cases to work properly,
Speaker 1: there are three gears that have to turn prosecution defense,
Speaker 1: and the judge one of those gears can be wildly
Speaker 1: out of whack and the system can still work. But
Speaker 1: if two or all three of those gears are out
Speaker 1: of whack, the system will not work. So what we
Speaker 1: had here is this perfect storm of a bad identification,
Speaker 1: a bad police sketch, bad defense work, bad prosecution, and
Speaker 1: bad judging all come together. So now you have the
Speaker 1: herculean task of not providing reasonable doubt but actually proving
Speaker 1: his actual innocence. The power dynamic, it's completely flipped in
Speaker 1: post conviction, and you've requested every document of the sun
Speaker 1: as well as physical evidence. And it turned out in
Speaker 1: this case that they were not stonewalling Mike after all,
Speaker 1: but rather that the biological evidence had been destroyed. There
Speaker 1: was no DNA evidence in this case, so we had
Speaker 1: to do it the old fashioned way and persuade the
Speaker 1: court that an injustice had occurred here without the benefit
Speaker 1: of DNA evidence. And that brings us back to this
Speaker 1: woman from Mike's neighborhood who had recognized Mike's mother in
Speaker 1: the visiting room at prison and had been visiting a
Speaker 1: friend of Mike's on the inside. This woman had previously
Speaker 1: been married to this man that she believed had committed
Speaker 1: the crime for which Mike served eleven years. Now she
Speaker 1: was available to be interviewed by your investigator, Gary Simpkins,
Speaker 1: even though her ex husband was not available as he
Speaker 1: had died in a car crash back in He was
Speaker 1: just killed in a car crash. He was killed while
Speaker 1: participating in a high speed chase driving the green car
Speaker 1: with the partial lives of plate that was given to
Speaker 1: the police about Mike's case. The Louisville and Shyvy police
Speaker 1: departments were chasing him and we were able to find
Speaker 1: the police reports from the car crash. So because of
Speaker 1: the circumstances of the wreck, the police took a ton
Speaker 1: of photos of that wreck. The car match the descriptions
Speaker 1: the license plate, his physical description, and the fact that
Speaker 1: he had committed a signature sexual assault, taking the victim
Speaker 1: of this other case to the same location in Iroquois Park,
Speaker 1: saying the same things to the victim in that case
Speaker 1: and doing the same things in that case. I mean,
Speaker 1: the signature was identical in that offense as the one
Speaker 1: that Mike was wrongfully convicted of. Wait, so what color
Speaker 1: were this guy's eyes? Blue? Blue? That girl that grew
Speaker 1: up down the street from me, and it was his
Speaker 1: death that freed her and allowed her to go see
Speaker 1: this other guy and make for this chance meeting at
Speaker 1: the prison with my mother. Had he still been a yeah,
Speaker 1: that chance meeting never would have occurred. And we've still
Speaker 1: been looking for and we'll be right back after this.
Speaker 1: The interviews with the woman from the neighborhood who was
Speaker 1: also a victim of the real perpetrator in that signature crime.
Speaker 1: Her interview was critical, the way in which she recounted
Speaker 1: what he had done to her, what his lifestyle was
Speaker 1: like at the time, the car, the license plate that
Speaker 1: can posit, all of that. But it was also given
Speaker 1: a great deal of credibility I want to point out
Speaker 1: by our investigator, who, as I say, was a retired
Speaker 1: Lovill Police Department lieutenant who had worked alongside some of
Speaker 1: the officers who investigated Mike's case and who knew the
Speaker 1: system intimate, Okay, and so he was able to bring
Speaker 1: that experience to bear. And I also want to point
Speaker 1: out how unusual it is for a retired police lieutenant
Speaker 1: to go to work for the Kentucky Innocence Project, Okay.
Speaker 1: Had Gary come to me early in this case and said,
Speaker 1: I think it's a bum steer. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: anything here that might have been the end of it.
Speaker 1: That's not what happened. Gary came to me and said,
Speaker 1: I want you to meet this guy. I want you
Speaker 1: to meet this woman. I want you to take a
Speaker 1: look at this. I trusted him. I trusted his judgment.
Speaker 1: I trusted his judgment as an investigator. This was sort
Speaker 1: of old fashioned shoe leather detective work and old fashioned
Speaker 1: shoe leather lawyer work. I remember the day I went
Speaker 1: to Mike's house and sat down in his kitchen and
Speaker 1: met him for the first time and was compelled. We
Speaker 1: met the woman from the neighborhood who gave us an
Speaker 1: affid David, a detailed sworn statement um, and we were
Speaker 1: able to put all the pieces together to say this
Speaker 1: is not right. This man did not do this, and
Speaker 1: we know who did. So then we took that to court.
Speaker 1: There's a procedure, it's sort of a safety valve in
Speaker 1: the law that allows for you know, break glass and
Speaker 1: turn the knob here, and so that's how we went
Speaker 1: to court. The court vacated his sentence, and then the
Speaker 1: prosecutors chose not to pursue the prosecution any further. And
Speaker 1: the man's name was Ronald Tackett. Not only had he
Speaker 1: victimized these young women in nineteen seventy eight and nine
Speaker 1: one and very much the same way, but also his
Speaker 1: own wife and who knows how many other women that
Speaker 1: just never spoke up. But luckily for so many others,
Speaker 1: he met his demise in nineteen eighty three before wrecking
Speaker 1: any more havoc. While Michael rotted in prison for eleven years,
Speaker 1: eleven long years and then serving how many years on parole?
Speaker 1: After serves sixteen years on parole, probably about one year's
Speaker 1: worth of investigating. But Ted and Gary I met them
Speaker 1: at about fifteen years on parole. In sixteen years, I
Speaker 1: was exonerated. You laught fifteen was the final day. So
Speaker 1: what was that like? Can you take us there? Well,
Speaker 1: it was really a huge surprise because up until that
Speaker 1: point I was believing that they were going to retry me,
Speaker 1: and that on this particular day, I was just going
Speaker 1: in to get another court date. So I wore my
Speaker 1: blue jeans and T shirt down there because I was
Speaker 1: just gonna sneak out and go back to work right away.
Speaker 1: So Ted starts shuffling around, and uh, he whispered I
Speaker 1: think it's over or something, you know, Really, Ted, I
Speaker 1: gotta say, that's that's a blank moment right in there,
Speaker 1: just just to hear that it's going to be dismissing over.
Speaker 1: It was just unbelievable moment that I've been asked what
Speaker 1: it felt like and I couldn't describe it. The only
Speaker 1: way I could, I'm gonna show it to you now.
Speaker 1: This is the only way I can describe it. If
Speaker 1: y'all can see that, and for our listening audience, since
Speaker 1: we werecording apply from this kind of like zoom, I
Speaker 1: can see Mike as we record this, and he's showing
Speaker 1: us a photo on the wall right behind him, and
Speaker 1: it's that iconic photo of the great Mohammad Ali, a
Speaker 1: Louisville native by the way, where Mohammed is standing over
Speaker 1: the body of Sunny Liston, who he's just knocked down
Speaker 1: in the ring. And you've probably seen the photo yourself.
Speaker 1: It's one of the greatest sports images in history. That's
Speaker 1: what it felt like and does every day. Like I say,
Speaker 1: I was, I was ready to go back to work,
Speaker 1: but no, I took off the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: The yeah, I'm sure you didn't. I mean it must
Speaker 1: have been a glorious day, even better than the day
Speaker 1: of your parole. I'd imagine, absolutely, finally getting it off
Speaker 1: your back, finally the truth being understood by the world
Speaker 1: still the day I was led out on parole. If
Speaker 1: there are two different events, but man, they right way
Speaker 1: way up here, I can only begin to imagine. And
Speaker 1: from what I understand, you two and your families really
Speaker 1: have like a insane connection from the past that you
Speaker 1: only discovered on that faithful day. Is that right? We
Speaker 1: had a catastrophic tornado here in nineteen seventy four that
Speaker 1: did a tremendous amount of damage to the city, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I was finished representing Michael that I
Speaker 1: realized or we discovered that his father had actually done
Speaker 1: repair work on my parents house in nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: when his dad, who was a firefighter, was also doing
Speaker 1: construction as a side gig, and Michael's dad had done
Speaker 1: work on the house I grew up in in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, and we would not meet each other for
Speaker 1: twenty five years later, and we discovered that in the
Speaker 1: courtroom when the court vacated Michael's conviction, I turned around
Speaker 1: and his dad gave me a hug and said, you
Speaker 1: look just like your dad. And I said, how would
Speaker 1: you know that? And he said, because I did work
Speaker 1: on your house when you were a kid after the tornado. Well,
Speaker 1: that really puts a nice exclamation point on what was
Speaker 1: otherwise a great day anyway, a great day that we'd
Speaker 1: hope never would have had to come to pass, as
Speaker 1: it was brought on by the awful flaws in the
Speaker 1: criminal legal system and the flawed human beings who run it,
Speaker 1: which has brought you, Michael, to a cause that is
Speaker 1: so near and dear to me, abolishing the death penalty.
Speaker 1: Become a board member of the Coalition to Abolish the
Speaker 1: Death Penalty. We had some momentum going on that issue.
Speaker 1: We started drawing some national attention, and we got some
Speaker 1: national grants to work on this issue. We have set
Speaker 1: a goal of abolishing the death penalty in Kentucky by
Speaker 1: the year k c a dp dot org. It's the
Speaker 1: Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in Kentucky. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have that site linked in to bio along
Speaker 1: with other action steps, and that brings us two. I
Speaker 1: always called my favorite part of the show. Let's face.
Speaker 1: It's the best part of the show. It's it's the
Speaker 1: part called closing arguments, and it's the part where has
Speaker 1: our listeners know. I turned my microphone off, kicked back
Speaker 1: in my chair with my headphones on, close my eyes,
Speaker 1: and just listen to anything else that you guys have
Speaker 1: to say. So, Ted, why don't you started off? And
Speaker 1: then Michael take us out into the sunset. Mike, you've
Speaker 1: become a friend, a real friend. Your why I became
Speaker 1: a lawyer, the opportunity to represent you, the opportunity to
Speaker 1: fight for you, the opportunity to prove your innocence. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot. It was a life changer, and I knew
Speaker 1: it was for you as well, but just as a lawyer.
Speaker 1: It's just And we've known each other now for what
Speaker 1: fifteen years? Twelve years? Thanks? So yeah, it's getting up right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You came to the visitation when my dad died, and
Speaker 1: I came to the visitation when your dad died. You're
Speaker 1: my friend, Mike. I love you. You stopped at you
Speaker 1: stop You're going too far? All right? I love you too, man.
Speaker 1: My closing thing would be, I guess that all of
Speaker 1: this is a human endeavor, and there are going to
Speaker 1: be mistakes made, allow for mistakes to be corrected, work
Speaker 1: some kind of way into the system that mistakes can
Speaker 1: be corrected. And, as Jesus may say, cast the first stone.
Speaker 1: If you're flawless and you think everything else is flawless,
Speaker 1: cast the first stone. Thank you for listening to ronfl Conviction.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our part action team Connor Hall,
Speaker 1: Jeff Clyburne and Kevin Wordis with research by Lila Robinson.
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: on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast,
Speaker 1: and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at
Speaker 1: Lava for Good. On all three platforms. You can also
Speaker 1: follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flom.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number one