Speaker 1: I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
Speaker 2: I was naive enough to believe that I would be
Speaker 2: able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence,
Speaker 2: that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be going to prison because I was a good person.
Speaker 2: I hadn't done anything wrong.
Speaker 1: In the back of your mind, you say, well, when
Speaker 1: we go to a hearing or we go to court,
Speaker 1: the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one
Speaker 1: knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected
Speaker 1: from the lower courts all the way up to the
Speaker 1: United States Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really,
Speaker 3: in that moment, unchecked authority.
Speaker 2: Don't presume that people are guilty when you see them
Speaker 2: on TV, because it may just be a dirty da
Speaker 2: that is trying to rise upward.
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Ronful Conviction with
Speaker 3: Jason Flamm. Today, we have an amazing cast of characters
Speaker 3: and I'm going to introduce the star of our show first,
Speaker 3: David McCollum.
Speaker 4: It is freedom after twenty eight years lost in prison
Speaker 4: for a New York man wrongly convicted of murder.
Speaker 5: David McCallum.
Speaker 6: In nineteen eighty six, McCallum and another teen, Willie Stucky,
Speaker 6: were sentenced to twenty five years to life for the
Speaker 6: kidnapping and murder of a twenty year old man. The
Speaker 6: only evidence linking them to the crime was their videotape confessions,
Speaker 6: which the boys claimed were fed to them by police
Speaker 6: for nearly thirty years. McCallum insisted he was innocent. A
Speaker 6: judge agreed. Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson supported the release.
Speaker 5: We concluded that there was no physical evidence, no DNA evidence,
Speaker 5: no testimonial evidence.
Speaker 6: That conclusion came from Thompson's Conviction Review Unit, which was
Speaker 6: created this year to look at past cases. Out of
Speaker 6: the thirty they've examined, ten convictions have been overturned.
Speaker 3: Welcome to wrongful conviction. Thank you for having me, and
Speaker 3: with David, we have someone who I consider to be
Speaker 3: a rock star. We have the sitting Brooklyn DA Eric
Speaker 3: Gonzalez is here to talk about this case. Eric. Welcome,
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jason, thank you for having me. And we
Speaker 3: have a very dapper gentleman. You can't see him on
Speaker 3: the radio, but trust me, he's got a very good tailor.
Speaker 3: And he's a wonderful lawyer responsible for six exonerations of
Speaker 3: wrongfully convicted people, including you, David. So, I want to
Speaker 3: welcome Oscar Michelin to the show.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Jason, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: So, David, this case is so extraordinary, not only because
Speaker 3: of the length of time you served twenty nine years
Speaker 3: wrongfully convicted, but because of the way that you got
Speaker 3: convicted in the first place, way back in well the
Speaker 3: mid eighties, right, that's how long.
Speaker 5: That's correct, Yes, nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: So take us back to that time. You were just
Speaker 3: a child, really, I mean you were an adolescent boy
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 5: Right, that's correct. I'm sixteen years old.
Speaker 3: Sixteen years old. You were convicted of murder. Right, that's
Speaker 3: not just murder, but other charges as well.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was a guy named Nathan Blenner who was
Speaker 3: abducted and murdered.
Speaker 5: That's correct. Yes, did you.
Speaker 3: Know this guy?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 5: I never never seen him in my entire life.
Speaker 3: No, what were the circumstances of the crime. What happened
Speaker 3: with this Nathan Blenner guy?
Speaker 7: Okay, So on October twenty of nineteen eighty five, I
Speaker 7: will say sometime around three twenty in the afternoon. According
Speaker 7: to postryposts, of course, mister Blenner, Nathan Blenner, was sitting
Speaker 7: in his car in front of his home. He was
Speaker 7: attempting to start the engine for whatever reason, and so
Speaker 7: as a result of that, two young African American boys
Speaker 7: approached Nathan Bunna and engaged in the conversation with him.
Speaker 7: At some point there after, these individuals got into the
Speaker 7: Carbineatan Blenna and they drove off with mister Blenner. About
Speaker 7: the next day, on October twenty first, so Benna body
Speaker 7: was found in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, in a
Speaker 7: park called Aberdeen Park. His body was found in the
Speaker 7: back of this park with a gunshot going to the
Speaker 7: back of the head.
Speaker 3: How did it come to pass that they picked you
Speaker 3: up in Stucky Well?
Speaker 7: The week later, on October twenty seventh, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 7: Missus Stukey was arrested sometime around seven point thirty. According
Speaker 7: to the information that of course I have, Missus Stukey
Speaker 7: was approached. It was he was getting on the train
Speaker 7: to go out to a basketball game and two detectives
Speaker 7: walked up to him, approached him and acts but he
Speaker 7: mind coming to the police station. Stucky agreed to go
Speaker 7: to the police station with these individuals. They went down
Speaker 7: to the police station. They questioned Missus Stukey about this
Speaker 7: particular crime. Missus Stukey said that he was with me
Speaker 7: when his crime was committed, which in fact he was
Speaker 7: because on that day that this crime was said to
Speaker 7: have been committed, we know Willie was in a park
Speaker 7: playing hamble for my sister and their friends. So Willie
Speaker 7: Stucky said that he was with me. Missus Stucky eventually
Speaker 7: confessed to witnessing a crime and that crime was that
Speaker 7: a shot miss of Blenna while Sustuki stood by and watched.
Speaker 3: And Oscar, you spent ten years working on this case, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, let's just reflect on that for a second.
Speaker 3: Ten years to unravel this wrongful conviction. First of all,
Speaker 3: kudos to you, because that's a hell of a commitment.
Speaker 3: And David's here is living proof of your work. What
Speaker 3: kind of a game were they playing here? And why
Speaker 3: did they do this? And how did even Stuck you get?
Speaker 3: Was he just chosen at random?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 8: No, we actually think that it was far more nefarious
Speaker 8: than that. So it all started with some excellent police
Speaker 8: work at the beginning of the case where there were
Speaker 8: two young men who witnessed these two African American males
Speaker 8: kidnapped and carjack Nathan Blenner in Queens and gave a
Speaker 8: general description. One was taller than the other. They looked
Speaker 8: to be about in their twenties. And then the police
Speaker 8: did a canvas and they found a woman who lived
Speaker 8: around the corner who said, hey, you know that same day,
Speaker 8: just about an hour earlier, two young African American males,
Speaker 8: one taller than the other, about in their twenties, one
Speaker 8: with corn rows in his hair, approached me where I
Speaker 8: was washing my car and said, hey, that's a nice car,
Speaker 8: and it was a Buick Regal, the same car as
Speaker 8: Nathan Blenner. So they use that description. They put that
Speaker 8: description out to try to look for people. Two African
Speaker 8: American males with carjack history, one of them in corn rows,
Speaker 8: one taller than the other, and sure enough a Queen's
Speaker 8: pricinct called the Brooklyn Detectives and said, hey, I think
Speaker 8: we got your guys. They go to find these two
Speaker 8: guys who match the description perfectly, have a history of
Speaker 8: violent crime, and one of them works in a hardware
Speaker 8: store where a kerosene can which was used to burn
Speaker 8: the car was purchased from. So that looks that sounds great, right, Yeah,
Speaker 8: cases should be over. So what ended up happening is
Speaker 8: they let one of those two guys give them a
Speaker 8: lead about a gun being sold down the street allegedly
Speaker 8: by somebody named Supreme, and that this guy named James
Speaker 8: Johnson knows that this gun allegedly was used to commit
Speaker 8: that crime. And they turn away from these two guys
Speaker 8: and they go to James Johnson. James Johnson gives him
Speaker 8: the name Supreme. The cameras in the neighborhood they find
Speaker 8: that Willy Stuckey goes by the name Supreme, and that's
Speaker 8: how Willy is arrested. It's from two people who were
Speaker 8: prime suspects to a rat because he got a great deal.
Speaker 8: He was a suspect in shooting up of bodega James Johnson,
Speaker 8: and in exchange for giving them information about the gun,
Speaker 8: they didn't even arrest him for this robbery and shooting
Speaker 8: in a bodega. And they had that He said, this kid, Willy,
Speaker 8: who's known as Supreme in the neighborhood, is accused of
Speaker 8: doing this. He had a gun, he was trying to
Speaker 8: unload that he got from my aunt.
Speaker 3: Now I want to turn too, Eric here for a second.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons I'm so happy that Eric is
Speaker 3: here not only because of the respect I have f
Speaker 3: him and the work that he's doing, but also because
Speaker 3: it's a Brooklyn case. You're the guy in Brooklyn now,
Speaker 3: and you know what I want to ask you is
Speaker 3: this seems almost like it's not funny but almost comical. Right,
Speaker 3: you have these two guys who are obvious suspects, and
Speaker 3: it wasn't that easy for them to throw the cops off,
Speaker 3: because it's pretty clever what they did, right, Otherwise they
Speaker 3: would have been in prison for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 3: They just went, hey, there's a gun, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, the cops go, let's go chase down the hallway.
Speaker 3: Here it sounds like it's Beector Cluso.
Speaker 4: Quite frankly, David had applied to have this case looked
Speaker 4: at before under a different district attorney at the time,
Speaker 4: and they denied to you know, reopen the case and
Speaker 4: re investigate the case in a serious way. And because
Speaker 4: what David said, because they had a confession, and once
Speaker 4: the police came upon Willie Stucky and he was a
Speaker 4: young boy fifth sixteen as well, and he was confessing.
Speaker 4: Then all the other evidence that would have led to
Speaker 4: the rightful killers of Nathan Blenner. And you know, I
Speaker 4: need to say that you feel very sad for his
Speaker 4: family because they suffered along with David in a different
Speaker 4: type of way. But the criminal justice system failed, not
Speaker 4: just David, but also the blend of family and all
Speaker 4: of us. But once they had this confession, all the
Speaker 4: other pieces of evidence that made sense, the descriptions that
Speaker 4: fit the other people, the kerosene car, anything that was
Speaker 4: inconsistent with that confession was then cast aside and not
Speaker 4: used and not presented, and really led to what we had,
Speaker 4: which was this travesty of justice, This evidence that should
Speaker 4: have been before jury, and had it been before jury,
Speaker 4: would have cast all doubts on his confession.
Speaker 3: We talk on the show about false confessions a lot,
Speaker 3: because I think it's one of the most important things
Speaker 3: that we can educate the public too, is the idea
Speaker 3: that just because somebody confessed to a crime, everybody thinks
Speaker 3: the same way, why the hell would that guy confess?
Speaker 3: So David, So people say, well, I don't know what
Speaker 3: he confessed, why did you confess to the crimes?
Speaker 7: Okay, So first let me just say that sometimes I
Speaker 7: think when people hear confession, they automatically assume that the
Speaker 7: person or the persons in this particular case actually committed
Speaker 7: the crime or else why would they confess to the crime.
Speaker 7: But I think what sometimes go unnoticed in the public
Speaker 7: is that things happened in the police precinct that basically
Speaker 7: forces suspects to, you know, confess the crime they didn't commit.
Speaker 5: Such as was the case with being really stucky.
Speaker 7: Well, I'll confessed to the crime for a number of reasons,
Speaker 7: and I think, well, one of the first ones that
Speaker 7: was physically beaten while the officers in the case, well,
Speaker 7: to be more specific, I was beat by the investigative officer,
Speaker 7: Joseph Budda at the time, also confessed because I was
Speaker 7: promised that if fact actually confessed to the crime, that
Speaker 7: I would.
Speaker 5: Be allowed to go home.
Speaker 7: And I think sometimes in hindsight, when I think about
Speaker 7: it now, for example, that I really think I was
Speaker 7: going home at that time, as a sixteen year old
Speaker 7: kid confessed to this heinage crime but murder, I actually
Speaker 7: thought I was going home.
Speaker 8: They didn't make him confess to the crime. Remember, you know,
Speaker 8: people say, like, why would someone confess to the crime.
Speaker 8: Either he nor Wally ever said I took a gun,
Speaker 8: put it to the back of Nathan's head and shot him.
Speaker 8: I think if they had asked either of these two
Speaker 8: boys at that time to say that, they would just say, hey, yo,
Speaker 8: slow down a second now, because they knew that they
Speaker 8: would know they weren't going home. But they were specifically
Speaker 8: told you were just a witness. We know the other
Speaker 8: guy shot him. So if you say you saw him
Speaker 8: shoot him, you're out here. What are you so worried about?
Speaker 8: Plus he already ratted you out, So who are you
Speaker 8: trying to protect your friend who already sold you down
Speaker 8: the river? You're going to be a fool. And so
Speaker 8: I think you know, first obviously the physical abuse, the deception,
Speaker 8: the pressure, not having a parent there, not having a
Speaker 8: lawyer there, not knowing what the heck is going on,
Speaker 8: wondering why your friend would kill somebody number one and
Speaker 8: number two, why would your friend then rat you out
Speaker 8: of old people when you know you didn't do it.
Speaker 5: It shouldn't be lost.
Speaker 4: These are still children, the children sixteen years old children,
Speaker 4: and the confession, and I'm sure you're going to get
Speaker 4: into it, but the confessions don't make any sense, even
Speaker 4: when they stand up to the evidence that was known
Speaker 4: and even what was said between each other, the confessions
Speaker 4: just don't make any sense.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would ask the audience to put themselves
Speaker 3: in your shoes. David, you were sixteen years old, you
Speaker 3: must have been scared shitless.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, I was definitely afraid, and the fact that I
Speaker 7: was afraid was so obvious though. But before you than that, though,
Speaker 7: so when they take it down to the precinct, they
Speaker 7: played the psychological game with you.
Speaker 5: So they played this sort.
Speaker 7: Of good cop backup thing whereas one cop would come
Speaker 7: in and his tone of voice would be sort of
Speaker 7: subtle and very calm, and he would ask me questions like,
Speaker 7: you know, what's your name? Of course we live, and
Speaker 7: you know, do you play any sports? Who is your
Speaker 7: favorite team? That sort of thing, And then the officer,
Speaker 7: the other officer came into so Buddha and I noticed
Speaker 7: this tone was completely different from the other officers, and
Speaker 7: you know, he was very very nasty in my opinion,
Speaker 7: and very aggressive. And I knew then that this guy
Speaker 7: was not the same guy that I spoke to obviously earlier,
Speaker 7: so the tones of the two individuals were vastly different
Speaker 7: from another.
Speaker 8: St You're in a small windowless room, metal table, metal chair,
Speaker 8: large officer hulking over you. At one point, Detective Buddha,
Speaker 8: was now deceased, picked up a chair and held it
Speaker 8: over his head. He goes, is this how we're going
Speaker 8: to have to do this? After he'd slapped David around.
Speaker 8: But one of the things that DNA did is teach
Speaker 8: people that innocent people confess. Because the Innocent Project has
Speaker 8: exonerated somewhere around four hundred people with the use of DNA,
Speaker 8: twenty five percent of those exonerations had a confession, and
Speaker 8: so those are people who are demonstrably proven innocent. There's
Speaker 8: no doubt the DNA shows they didn't do it, And
Speaker 8: in one out of every four DNA exonerations there's a
Speaker 8: false confession. So the police are trained to interrogate in
Speaker 8: a certain way. They all use this technique called the
Speaker 8: read technique, which allows the deception, allows pressure, lets them
Speaker 8: make up facts, lets them pit one against the other,
Speaker 8: lots of different things. And in hindsight, I guess you
Speaker 8: would say, why would I do that? But again, until
Speaker 8: you've gone through it, it's hard to understand.
Speaker 3: Let's look at it this way, right, you're sixteen years old.
Speaker 3: You're totally disoriented because everything is upside down. You have
Speaker 3: the police, who all of us grew up respecting and
Speaker 3: thinking they were out for our best interest. And that's
Speaker 3: the guy you go to if you're in trouble, right,
Speaker 3: That's how I grew up for sure, and I think
Speaker 3: most police that is the case. Were you a violent
Speaker 3: guy prior to this?
Speaker 5: Oh no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 3: So this is all a totally crazy experience in every
Speaker 3: possible way. You had nothing to prepare you for it.
Speaker 3: You're all alone and you see no way out, and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, if that wasn't crazy enough,
Speaker 3: the violence, the threat of further violence. They bring your friend,
Speaker 3: or they show your friend, they say, hey told you,
Speaker 3: she said you did, and all you got to do
Speaker 3: is say he did it.
Speaker 7: One of the interesting things in my particular case, so
Speaker 7: when I was first approached by these detectives on the
Speaker 7: streets in Brooklyn, I was with friends. We were sort
Speaker 7: of in the game where we were sort of hung
Speaker 7: outland and so one of the officers approached me you
Speaker 7: have my picture in his hand. They said, would you
Speaker 7: mind coming out to the police station for question?
Speaker 5: That said sure.
Speaker 7: You know, I didn't do anything, So I felt like
Speaker 7: maybe they want to come down. Maybe something happened in
Speaker 7: the neighborhood that they wanted to speak to me about.
Speaker 7: Maybe I have some information or whatever the case may
Speaker 7: have been. So I had no reason to sort of
Speaker 7: be afraid of anything.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: It wasn't until I got into the police station where
Speaker 7: they placed a squad car, where they placed Hanckers on
Speaker 7: me to an extent where they were very tight. At
Speaker 7: that point, that's where the sort of the red flag
Speaker 7: went up and I knew something was something was wrong
Speaker 7: at that particular time.
Speaker 5: So I came down to the precpt.
Speaker 7: Like I said, I had no reason to think that
Speaker 7: I was gonna be in trouble for anything.
Speaker 3: Did they read your Miranda rights?
Speaker 5: No, not in a squad car on the street.
Speaker 7: And know that I got down to the police station
Speaker 7: and at some point after some of the questions occurred,
Speaker 7: that's when they read me my rights.
Speaker 3: But you probably, like most people who were innocent, you
Speaker 3: probably thought I don't need a lawyer because I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna answer some questions and go home because they everyone's
Speaker 3: gonna know I didn't do this because I was. I
Speaker 3: wasn't there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think sometimes I'm know my particular situation, I
Speaker 7: was so afraid and intimidated really that I wasn't even
Speaker 7: thinking rationally.
Speaker 5: I wasn't even thinking at all.
Speaker 7: I was just kind of numb to the point of
Speaker 7: being accused of killing somebody when I know I didn't
Speaker 7: and I know that police suck. He didn't do anything either,
Speaker 7: So I think it was sort of maybe I don't
Speaker 7: know if it was shock or anything like that, but
Speaker 7: I know I was. I was sort of numb to
Speaker 7: the entire situations. So even for example, when when the
Speaker 7: Miranda warners were being read to, now, I heard what
Speaker 7: the officer was saying, but it didn't generate one way
Speaker 7: or the other.
Speaker 4: Just back then, these interrogations were not video, and so
Speaker 4: what the jury's got to see is after the confession
Speaker 4: had been extracted and written down and sometimes talked through
Speaker 4: from the defense perspective practiced, then a video machine would
Speaker 4: be brought into the room to take a confession that
Speaker 4: seemingly the person is confessing they're not handcuffed. The circumstances
Speaker 4: at that moment look fairly friendly, considering it's a wider, open,
Speaker 4: bigger room, there's more light, but everything that happened before
Speaker 4: that is not captured. And then you're left with the
Speaker 4: juror who's saying, I would never have confessed I was
Speaker 4: in a cent of a homicide. So all they see
Speaker 4: is then the video confession that had been caught in
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's twelve hours later. I mean, it's a long
Speaker 4: time later, so that they've been with the police for
Speaker 4: a very long time.
Speaker 8: These quote unquote confessions which had very little facts. David's
Speaker 8: confession statement on the videotape is about three minutes long.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 5: There's no details.
Speaker 8: He's not asked what caliber weapon, he's not asked what handy.
Speaker 5: Held the gun in.
Speaker 8: It literally is about a series of about eight to
Speaker 8: ten questions he's asked by the prosecutor who comes down
Speaker 8: to take the confession.
Speaker 5: Willie's was a little bit longer, about six or seven minutes.
Speaker 8: It should have been obvious at that point that obviously
Speaker 8: someone who had committed the crime would have known a
Speaker 8: little bit more about what had happened, and it was
Speaker 8: clear that the police officer and maybe even the DA
Speaker 8: who was involved are a little bit afraid to get
Speaker 8: into much detail because it was going to show that
Speaker 8: they didn't have the knowledge of it. But the confessions
Speaker 8: left a lot more questions unanswered than they resolved.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been a prosecutor for twenty two years and
Speaker 4: I've taken these videotape confessions when I was writing assistant DA.
Speaker 4: I've viewed hundreds and hundreds of these confessions. And in
Speaker 4: this case, when David's file landed on my desk, it
Speaker 4: had entered the conviction review Unit, and the district attorney
Speaker 4: at the time, Ken Thompson, said, Eric, I want you
Speaker 4: to pay attention to this case. I want you to
Speaker 4: look at the confessions and tell me what you think.
Speaker 4: Got myself readied with all the evidence around me to
Speaker 4: take a look, and I watched the confessions. I walked
Speaker 4: in to Ken's office and I said, we have a
Speaker 4: problem here. That was a confession that did not mean anything.
Speaker 5: It was the most.
Speaker 4: Perfunctory confession ever. I mean, this was a case that
Speaker 4: was supposed to be a carjacking, a robbery. There was
Speaker 4: not a single question about the robbery aspect of the case.
Speaker 4: What was taken, where did the property go? There was
Speaker 4: not a single question about the gun, the type of gun,
Speaker 4: the caliber of the gun.
Speaker 3: These are not the type.
Speaker 4: Of confessions that you would imagine that a jury would
Speaker 4: convict on. And you have to wonder whether the racial
Speaker 4: aspects of this part case mattered because you had two,
Speaker 4: you know, young black men accused of kidnapping someone from
Speaker 4: Queens and bringing them into Brokelyn and killing them.
Speaker 3: You know, was the victim white? Yes, you know, that's
Speaker 3: the problem. And then the other thing that Oscar pointed
Speaker 3: out before is the idea that the jury was led
Speaker 3: to believe that you guys had driven this car throughout
Speaker 3: New York City, but neither one of you had ever
Speaker 3: driven a car or had a driver's license. You were
Speaker 3: sixteen years old, so somehow or other you magically taught
Speaker 3: yourself how to drive during the course of this carjacking
Speaker 3: and robbery and everything else. I mean, you really have
Speaker 3: to suspend a lot of layers of disbelief.
Speaker 8: With a kidnap victim, alive kidnap victim in the back
Speaker 8: holding him down supposedly with a gun, and the other
Speaker 8: one is driving from Queens to Brooklyn, and then the
Speaker 8: police had evidence that this car had been gassed up
Speaker 8: at one in the morning with the victim's credit card
Speaker 8: at an Amico gas station. And those days you had
Speaker 8: to go give the credit card to the person. There
Speaker 8: was no pay at the pump, you know. And wouldn't
Speaker 8: they mention that I got gassed? They didn't ask them, well,
Speaker 8: what about did you ever get guessed? I mean, there
Speaker 8: were so many details they could have asked these two
Speaker 8: boys to fill in. And it was just perfunctory is
Speaker 8: exactly the right word.
Speaker 5: Eric. It was just bare boned. David.
Speaker 3: I want to get back to you, but I also
Speaker 3: want to say that Ken Thompson, who was I guess
Speaker 3: your mentor right. Ken was the DA until this year
Speaker 3: when he died way too young, and he took such
Speaker 3: great pride in the Conviction Review Unit, and he was
Speaker 3: so proud of the work that he had done to
Speaker 3: get justice for you and other people. So may he
Speaker 3: rest in peace, David. So back to you. You end
Speaker 3: up going to trial, I'm assuming you couldn't make bail, right.
Speaker 5: No, you know, to have a bell. Actually he was
Speaker 5: rematted that day.
Speaker 8: Was he didn't see his mother out the street for
Speaker 8: twenty nine years after that.
Speaker 5: Day.
Speaker 3: So you were held in Rikers Yes, I was as
Speaker 3: a sixteen year old boy. What an experience that had
Speaker 3: to have been. And then you go to trial. Did
Speaker 3: you still have any hope? Did you think that the
Speaker 3: system was actually going to correct itself and that people
Speaker 3: would understand that you could not have done this?
Speaker 5: Well? Absolutely I did.
Speaker 7: For example, when I was on record, Islan, I never
Speaker 7: like saw my lawyer at all when I was on records, Allen,
Speaker 7: the very first time I saw my lawyer was like
Speaker 7: the first day of trial. So he came to the bullpen.
Speaker 7: And when he came to the bullpen, he just simply
Speaker 7: came to the bullpen to sort of sort of get
Speaker 7: me prepared for what would happen when I walk into
Speaker 7: the court room. So that was the very first time
Speaker 7: I've seen this attorney in almost almost almost twelve months.
Speaker 3: Actually, Okay, hold on, let's just let's just reflect on this.
Speaker 3: So you're facing the murder charge. Your life is at stake.
Speaker 3: You've been in Rikers Island for a year and no
Speaker 3: one has come to visit you, no lawyer, nothing, No,
Speaker 3: no they have so he has basically you, he's never
Speaker 3: interviewed you.
Speaker 7: No, So what happens when I was on Records Island.
Speaker 7: For example, I forget my court The would be a
Speaker 7: journal on a monthly basis. So I would walk into
Speaker 7: court and they every time I would actually I should
Speaker 7: say Willie and I will walk into court, and every
Speaker 7: time we walk into court, it would be one of
Speaker 7: those situations where they just sort of make the schedule
Speaker 7: for another court day for the you know. So it
Speaker 7: was never a conversation with my attorneys about anything about
Speaker 7: in terms of the case. And you know, I mean
Speaker 7: he knew I had alibi witnesses that needed to be interviewed.
Speaker 7: I mean of the interviewed them himself.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: So it was a series of things that this lay
Speaker 7: failed to do for me during the course of the case.
Speaker 4: So, if I'm correct, you didn't even make an opening statement,
Speaker 4: you have a legal option of waiving and opening statement.
Speaker 4: His attorney decided that it wasn't even worth talking to
Speaker 4: the jury about what his theory of the case would
Speaker 4: be and what the evidence he intended to show where
Speaker 4: there was in fact a defense to be had. I mean,
Speaker 4: they were fingerprints and DNA evidence that came back to
Speaker 4: other folks when they found the vehicle. I mean the
Speaker 4: gun had not been recovered.
Speaker 8: They had those two guys who were arrested on the APB,
Speaker 8: the old points bulletin that matched the description one of
Speaker 8: them worked at the hardware store.
Speaker 5: This was not a mystery to his lawyer. David didn't
Speaker 5: know it. David didn't know any of that evidence. He
Speaker 5: was ever told.
Speaker 8: But the lawyer had the police reports, and he could
Speaker 8: have offered evidence of someone else's involvement.
Speaker 4: And start shaping the jury for what you expect to
Speaker 4: the jury to hear, because I mean here, obviously they
Speaker 4: have to contest the confession. They have to start laying
Speaker 4: the groundwork for that, and then the jury understand that
Speaker 4: there's so much other evidence that goes to David's actual innocence.
Speaker 4: And he does not even bother to make those arguments
Speaker 4: in the opening statement. He just chooses not to make
Speaker 4: it one.
Speaker 8: And we ended up getting as part of our investigation
Speaker 8: this guy's billing records because he was what was called
Speaker 8: AT and B so where you get paid by the
Speaker 8: government on an hourly basis to do the case even
Speaker 8: though you're not legal AID legally cannot handle homicide cases
Speaker 8: in New York. So ATMB panel gets the homicide cases.
Speaker 8: So we know what he did because I have his hours,
Speaker 8: and I'll tell you people put more hours in on
Speaker 8: a shop lift, Jason. This guy never went to the
Speaker 8: crime scene, he never interviewed witnesses. He met once with
Speaker 8: his investigator, who we ended up finding out was very diligent.
Speaker 8: He never visited Rikers, So we have the proof that
Speaker 8: he never visited David's. That's as David's word, because he
Speaker 8: built for it. And as Eric knows from experience, when
Speaker 8: you get on ateen B and you're a private lawyer,
Speaker 8: a lot of times your bill is limited. The judge
Speaker 8: won't let you spend ten thousand dollars shoplifting case. But
Speaker 8: when you have a homicide case, that's where eighteen B
Speaker 8: lawyers make their money. A judge will never say you
Speaker 8: shouldn't have gone to the scene three times. A judge
Speaker 8: will never restrain you on a murder case from spending
Speaker 8: time on the case. So normally you see an a
Speaker 8: eighteen B bill on a homicide case, it's pages, and
Speaker 8: I'm talking pages and pages and pages long. This was
Speaker 8: one page about a third field of entries on the
Speaker 8: case and just have never seen anything like it. It
Speaker 8: was the most disgusting, disgusting, terrible representation. Wait listen, just
Speaker 8: to put the nail in his coffin, because fortunately he's gone.
Speaker 8: I found the investigator. The guy was still alive, and
Speaker 8: older guy's seventy six years old, Anthony Cordero. He had
Speaker 8: developed the same theory that we did, we didn't know it,
Speaker 8: which was that the police those two guys had a relationship,
Speaker 8: not above board relationship, and that's why they had to
Speaker 8: turn away from those two guys that they found in
Speaker 8: that Queen's priests because he was going to point back
Speaker 8: to the police officer involved. So he was working on that,
Speaker 8: and then he said to me, you know, I remember now,
Speaker 8: I used to pick up Murto that's his name, because
Speaker 8: he lived in Brooklyn. I lived in a Long Island. When
Speaker 8: I would drive to court, he'd say, can you do
Speaker 8: me a favorite? Pick me up on your way in.
Speaker 8: And every morning when I picked him up, he was
Speaker 8: in his kitchen with a bottle of cheap vodka and
Speaker 8: a toll glass of ice, and he would offer me
Speaker 8: a drink and I would say, mister Murdle, it's eight
Speaker 8: thirty in the morning. I don't drink at eight thirty
Speaker 8: in the morning, and he'd have a drink and sometimes
Speaker 8: two glasses of vodka before getting in the car and
Speaker 8: going to try David's case.
Speaker 3: It starts to sound like a lynching.
Speaker 8: It was a travesty, is what it was. It was
Speaker 8: a total travesty. And you know, it's not easy to
Speaker 8: say when I speak at bar groups a lot of
Speaker 8: times about rome for convictions, but bad lawyering and not
Speaker 8: having qualified attorneys represent those people who are accused of
Speaker 8: these crimes is a big cause. It's easy to blame
Speaker 8: over zealous prosecutors and all of that, but the defense
Speaker 8: bar has a lot of guilt on these wrawful convictions.
Speaker 3: And David, you don't have any knowledge of all this
Speaker 3: stuff that's going on, that your lawyers are drunk, that
Speaker 3: he hasn't done any work, that none of this stuff
Speaker 3: that is supposed to be there to protect you is
Speaker 3: operating for you. It's all actually working against you. But
Speaker 3: yet you remained optimistic. The jury goes out and they
Speaker 3: come back and they find you guilty. I mean that moment,
Speaker 3: can you walk us through that?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 7: So for me leaving in the system, still believing that
Speaker 7: I had truth on my side, still believing that the
Speaker 7: jury is going to find both Willy and I not guilty.
Speaker 7: So when the verdict came in, I was sitting, of course,
Speaker 7: back into the book, and they are ready call us
Speaker 7: out to the courtroom and they read the verdicant and
Speaker 7: they said guilty. I was initially stunned, but I had
Speaker 7: to make sure that a Hilma can POI and not
Speaker 7: only for myself, but I had my mother sitting in
Speaker 7: the back of the court room. I didn't want her
Speaker 7: to see my reaction, and I also didn't want to
Speaker 7: turn around to see hers because that would have probably
Speaker 7: got me very, very upset. So what I tried to
Speaker 7: do is I tried to sort of have a sort
Speaker 7: of even killed straight face. But I was really, really
Speaker 7: I was in disbelief because I really had my heart
Speaker 7: set on not guilty verdict. So when they actually came
Speaker 7: back into that Willie and I were actually guilty of
Speaker 7: killing this person, I was also in a state of disbelief.
Speaker 7: But it more importantly for me, I think I was
Speaker 7: more concerned about my family at that time, who was
Speaker 7: in court on a daily basis, you know, supported me
Speaker 7: and that sort of thing. Because, for example, one thing
Speaker 7: my mother said to me the very first time she
Speaker 7: even mentioned a case for me, like when I was
Speaker 7: in a precinct. The very next day I went to
Speaker 7: court and she asked me, she said, David, you know,
Speaker 7: did you commit this crime? And I said, no, mind
Speaker 7: did not. So that that conversation or questions never came
Speaker 7: up again throughout this whole entire experience. So that and
Speaker 7: of itself allowed me some confidence that, you know, my
Speaker 7: mom believed in me, she believed what I said to her.
Speaker 7: So when this verdict was rare, I just couldn't find
Speaker 7: myself to turn around and look at it because I
Speaker 7: just know that, you know, she was hurting obviously, and
Speaker 7: just for me to see that that it would have
Speaker 7: got some kind of reaction out of me, not sort
Speaker 7: of in a volatile way, but in a I mean
Speaker 7: I probably would have got over emotional, and that's something
Speaker 7: they want to do at that particular time.
Speaker 5: So I just sort of help my.
Speaker 7: Compolsion just just you know, just walked out of the
Speaker 7: courtroom after the verdicts were read, and I was able,
Speaker 7: of course, to you know, call her on the telephone
Speaker 7: that protected that night and talk to her and sold
Speaker 7: try to calm it down and try to let her
Speaker 7: know everything was going to be fine. This thing is
Speaker 7: going to work itself out. You know, the truth is
Speaker 7: eventually going to come to light. And just to have patience,
Speaker 7: something she always told me to do. Just have patience.
Speaker 7: So that was the best way I tried to deal
Speaker 7: with such a it what can best be described as
Speaker 7: a really tragic event.
Speaker 4: And Willly Stucky was convicted as well, and as we know,
Speaker 4: he never got out of jail. He passed away in
Speaker 4: two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and let's talk about that for a second. So Willie,
Speaker 3: you're code defendant who was equally let down by the
Speaker 3: system and a lot of the same things that you did,
Speaker 3: and unbelievably had a heart attack at thirty one years
Speaker 3: old in prison and died, never got to have his
Speaker 3: day in court and his freedom again. So it's just
Speaker 3: another tragic aspect of this horrible case.
Speaker 8: And when we were going back to his family, his family,
Speaker 8: even when we were starting to look at the case,
Speaker 8: they were almost afraid. They were like, you know, I
Speaker 8: don't know that we want to look into this. I
Speaker 8: don't know that they were prepared to try to think
Speaker 8: about They would rather just you know, I don't want
Speaker 8: to talk about it.
Speaker 5: I don't want to think about it.
Speaker 8: And at first that was kind of shocked by that,
Speaker 8: but almost in some way that would almost be worse
Speaker 8: for them to then find out that obviously they believed
Speaker 8: in him, but now that there was proof there, there
Speaker 8: was all this stuff that could have been done. It's
Speaker 8: like a second death when you think about how wasteful
Speaker 8: it is. And you know, the correctional facility never even
Speaker 8: really told them. If they say heart attack, but everyone
Speaker 8: dies of a heart attack, Okay, it's just cardiac arrest.
Speaker 5: They'll tell how.
Speaker 8: Did he die, what caused it? And they heard different stories.
Speaker 8: A bad time to let the sepsis, you know, had
Speaker 8: a heart attack in the yard. They had so many questions,
Speaker 8: and I think they were just afraid to look under
Speaker 8: the rock and see that it was such a waste
Speaker 8: of a life.
Speaker 3: I'm going to ask you Eric a very difficult question,
Speaker 3: which is that in this particular case, so many things
Speaker 3: didn't make any sense right because of the nature of
Speaker 3: this crime, very violent, with the kidnapping and the driving
Speaker 3: all over and the holding the guy down at gunpoint
Speaker 3: in the backseat, and everything else that went on in
Speaker 3: the murder, you would have to know that a couple
Speaker 3: of kids who didn't have a history of trouble, this
Speaker 3: would not be the first crist It wouldn't be your
Speaker 3: starter crime, right, so I would think, But I want
Speaker 3: your opinion that the prosecutor probably knew they were innocent too.
Speaker 3: Do you think the prosecutor ever had a thought, well,
Speaker 3: this doesn't really make any sense when I'm just going
Speaker 3: to go ahead and do my job anyway, and just
Speaker 3: well not even do my job. I'm just going to
Speaker 3: go ahead and get this conviction and keep it moving.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have to believe that the prosecutor did not.
Speaker 4: I have to believe, as the district attorney that a
Speaker 4: person who's sworn to uphold the law. You know, one
Speaker 4: of the things that I've said publicly about prosecutors is
Speaker 4: that prosecutors have a way of trying to synthesize evidence
Speaker 4: to make things holes in their cases close and to
Speaker 4: close reasonable doubt before juries, and they become trained to
Speaker 4: think that way and sometimes the humanity of being a
Speaker 4: prosecutor and thinking about this because you know, listen, for me,
Speaker 4: I grew up in East New York and Brooklyn, roughly
Speaker 4: maybe a year or two younger than David. But the
Speaker 4: thought of me traveling at that age into Ozelon Park
Speaker 4: under the time that we lived in New York City
Speaker 4: in the eighties is not something that a black kids
Speaker 4: would do at that time who had never been in
Speaker 4: that neighborhood before the middle They stand out and it's
Speaker 4: very important because we mentioned this, but the two gentlemen
Speaker 4: that were there in Queens did not fit the physical
Speaker 4: descriptions of either David or Willie. So you ask, how
Speaker 4: can a prosecutor go forward on this case? And I
Speaker 4: think that you start to believe in your own theory
Speaker 4: of the case. And prosecutors and detectives, I think too
Speaker 4: often they get a suspect, they have some evidence right here,
Speaker 4: they had the confession, and so you have a prosecutor
Speaker 4: who's not thinking anything differently than an ordinary person. He's confessed,
Speaker 4: they have some evidence. You have these conversations with the detective,
Speaker 4: and the grand jury has now indicted the case. And
Speaker 4: what I'm really critical about and what I tell my prosecutors,
Speaker 4: and this is one of the important way work of
Speaker 4: the Conviction Review Unit is that in the eighties and
Speaker 4: the nineties, I became a prosecutor in the nineties there
Speaker 4: was so much crime, and so much violent crime that
Speaker 4: often it was let the juries decide and let the
Speaker 4: jury decide whether someone is innocent or guilty. And I
Speaker 4: think that was a complete abdication of our responsibility to
Speaker 4: do justice.
Speaker 5: If a prosecutor.
Speaker 4: Cannot believe in their case, they have no business bringing it.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that I instruct the Brooklyn
Speaker 4: das now is if you have doubt about your case,
Speaker 4: you should not be trying that case, and let's look
Speaker 4: at the case. But when I came up as a prosecutor,
Speaker 4: I will tell you that often it says, well, there's
Speaker 4: twelve people in the box, let them decide guilty or innocence.
Speaker 4: And so I think in some cases, and I'm not
Speaker 4: saying in David's case or Willie's case, but in some
Speaker 4: cases prosecutors just said, well, we're going to let the
Speaker 4: jury's decide it. And that's wrong, and that's not going
Speaker 4: to happen again. It can happen again, not.
Speaker 3: Going to happen again in Brooklyn for the next four years.
Speaker 3: I know that much because we got you in there,
Speaker 3: which is great. So, David, you seem like a very composed, thoughtful,
Speaker 3: decent man, who has a From what I can tell
Speaker 3: knowing you a short time that I have a positive
Speaker 3: outlook on life. How the fuck does somebody survive twenty
Speaker 3: nine years in a maximum security prison and come out?
Speaker 3: And because when you came out you'd never been on
Speaker 3: an airplane, you didn't know I mean a phone. The
Speaker 3: phone used to be a thing with a cord that
Speaker 3: was stuck to the wall.
Speaker 5: Right, that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So how the hell did you first of all,
Speaker 3: survive as an innocent man in prison for almost three decades?
Speaker 3: And then how has it been coming out? And how
Speaker 3: have you managed to become the man that you are now?
Speaker 7: Oh wow, Well, thanks for the very kind words. And
Speaker 7: I think for me on that a lot of things
Speaker 7: fortunately working in my favor. So, for one, I always
Speaker 7: always knew that Willie and I were innocent, so the
Speaker 7: truth always believed it couldn't be compromisive for that respect. Also,
Speaker 7: I have an older sister who's disabled. You know, she
Speaker 7: has cerebal palsy. She was born without a spine. Her
Speaker 7: name was Ella. She's been bedridden her entire life. So
Speaker 7: anytime something would happen in prison, anytime I would feel
Speaker 7: a particular way in prison, I would always think about
Speaker 7: my sister because she was she was really inspiration for
Speaker 7: someone like myself who was also going through some difficult times,
Speaker 7: but in my mind, not as difficult as she had been,
Speaker 7: so she was I drew inspiration from her, and of
Speaker 7: course my mom, who never wavered in believing in me
Speaker 7: from the very beginning to the very end, you know.
Speaker 7: So I had those things in my favor. But then
Speaker 7: as time grew on, of course, I was able to
Speaker 7: develop a really good support system. And so what I
Speaker 7: mean by that is a really good attorney and Oscar
Speaker 7: michelind because Ruber and Hurricane Carter came into my life
Speaker 7: at a time where I really needed him the most,
Speaker 7: so when I had all the whole bulk of other
Speaker 7: friends who factored into my life as well. So I would,
Speaker 7: you know, get visits in prison this sort of thing,
Speaker 7: and I mean some of the visits that were that
Speaker 7: I would get. We would just talk about things that
Speaker 7: would happen on the outside. Because one thing Ruben instilled
Speaker 7: in me, and he said it was very important that
Speaker 7: I think this way is sort of think outside of
Speaker 7: prison and put myself outside of prison, at least spiritually.
Speaker 7: And that's what I tried to do, and I found
Speaker 7: that once I started doing that, I started sort of
Speaker 7: like just feeling much better about a lot of different things.
Speaker 7: And so when things of course got tough, as they
Speaker 7: often did in prison, at least in my experience, I
Speaker 7: thought about all the people that I came into my
Speaker 7: life of course by the time, and I needed them
Speaker 7: the most. And that was really beneficial for someone like me,
Speaker 7: because in prison it made so not afford the sort
Speaker 7: of a latitude and blessing that I were given. So
Speaker 7: I never took it for granted from that regard. But again,
Speaker 7: the fact that I can see me here and be humble,
Speaker 7: I hope is really the testament of other people coming
Speaker 7: into my life, not just David McCallum himself.
Speaker 4: David, it's an exceptional man. I was immediately touched when
Speaker 4: I met him. I know Ken Thompson was as well.
Speaker 4: We had David come to the office and talk to
Speaker 4: our young interns and make sure that our people who
Speaker 4: want to be prosecutors understood what happened to him. David
Speaker 4: is just an exceptional man, and I know that we've
Speaker 4: done it before, but as the District Attorney of Brooklyn,
Speaker 4: I apologize to you, brother for what happened to you,
Speaker 4: for how the system lets you down.
Speaker 5: Thank you much about.
Speaker 3: That that As a New Yorker and a human being,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna add my apologies because we let you down,
Speaker 3: I mean, everybody let you down. But you're here, yes,
Speaker 3: and that's a great thing. I mean, I'm thrilled to
Speaker 3: have you here.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 3: You mentioned Ruben Hurricane Carter right, Yes, a legend not
Speaker 3: only for his boxing abilities, the former number one middleweight contender,
Speaker 3: immortalized in the Bob Dylan song. But how did he
Speaker 3: come to find out about your case and get involved
Speaker 3: and then write a letter that really helped tip the
Speaker 3: scales for you? Right?
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, thank you for asking that question. That was
Speaker 7: actually the foundation of how really all this really began.
Speaker 7: I mean, look, I started a letter writing campaign long
Speaker 7: after my state and federal appeals were exhausted, because at
Speaker 7: that particular time of that have any able legal recourts
Speaker 7: other than the post conviction motion. Then with that, you
Speaker 7: normally have to present Newt's govern evidence, which I didn't
Speaker 7: have that at that time obviously. So when I started
Speaker 7: my letter writing campaign, I was sitting in a place
Speaker 7: called Eastern correctional facility, and I was a law clerk
Speaker 7: in the low library and a friend of mine named
Speaker 7: Eric Coleman was reading this magazine called The Sun.
Speaker 5: Some magazine is like a literal magazine where it has a.
Speaker 7: Lot of like short stories and that that it may
Speaker 7: soften read in poems and stuff like that, where it
Speaker 7: may so often, you know, recite it not necesly to
Speaker 7: themselves but to other inmates for example. So what I
Speaker 7: had no real really had no real intention of reading
Speaker 7: the magazine. All I simply they wanted to do is
Speaker 7: to sort of peruse it. So because I want to
Speaker 7: go back to my house in units to get ready,
Speaker 7: you know, for the next day. So I got this
Speaker 7: magazine and I thumbed through the pages and I came
Speaker 7: across the injin of view with Ken Klosky in Ruben
Speaker 7: Hurricane Carter. So I knew who Ruben Hurricane Carter was.
Speaker 7: I know he was a former prize fighter. I know
Speaker 7: he had spent nineteen years in prison for a triple
Speaker 7: homicide in Pattison, New Jersey, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 7: So I wrote Ken Klosky letter hoping that he can
Speaker 7: get me in touch with Ruben so and That's pretty
Speaker 7: much how this whole story sort of evolved into basically
Speaker 7: where I'm actually sitting there now because once I was able,
Speaker 7: kin Klowski was able to get me in cont touch
Speaker 7: with Ruben. I had an opportunity to meet Ruben on
Speaker 7: several occasions. He became sort of a mentor for me.
Speaker 7: We had very intense conversations on the telephone. Ruben was
Speaker 7: a very intense individual and that sort of thing. So
Speaker 7: once Kim was able to put me in touch with him,
Speaker 7: that really set the stage for me meeting other people
Speaker 7: that came into my life too and basically sort of
Speaker 7: prepared me. So when Ruben's were was when I actually
Speaker 7: eventually got out, not there for the movement was sort
Speaker 7: of a positive individual that way, So meeting all these
Speaker 7: people sort of set the stage for preparation for me
Speaker 7: to get out. So when I got out, of course,
Speaker 7: I was shocked at some of the things that I
Speaker 7: saw initially, but I wasn't overly shocked about a lot
Speaker 7: of things because again, meeting all these individuals who shared
Speaker 7: their stories with me about travels and stuff like that,
Speaker 7: that allowed me to get a sense of what society
Speaker 7: would be like if got out of prison and that
Speaker 7: sort of thing. So I was kind of prepared, it's
Speaker 7: but in a lot of ways, I was not prepared.
Speaker 5: To be honest with youself. This was also the ad
Speaker 5: points of having a really really good support system.
Speaker 3: You're not a person that gives up easy, are you?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, what's my state filler appills were exhausted.
Speaker 7: But I just kept thinking about my family, for example,
Speaker 7: and at that time, Uli Suckyn. Of course he was
Speaker 7: he was still among us, but we had lost communication
Speaker 7: for a while. So I just wanted to just someone
Speaker 7: to fight, not necessarily for myself, but for the both
Speaker 7: of us.
Speaker 8: Ruben was forced to be reckoned with. I had just
Speaker 8: done my first exoneration, a guy named Angelo Martinez, and
Speaker 8: back in the in those days, it was a very
Speaker 8: rare event, so there was a lot of press, a lot.
Speaker 5: Of media about it.
Speaker 8: And about a week two weeks later, my secretary says,
Speaker 8: there's a phone call for you. It's Rubin Hurricane Carter
Speaker 8: on the phone. So I said, it's one of my
Speaker 8: idiot friends from the Bronx, just trying to bust my chops,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 5: I said, I said, all right, put it through. I said,
Speaker 5: so what do you want?
Speaker 8: And he said, hello, this is doctor Carter, and I
Speaker 8: wanted to actually in the case. I want to talk
Speaker 8: to you about your next case. And I said, what
Speaker 8: are you talking about. I could have believe it was
Speaker 8: actually the hurricane like you, Jason, I mean that song,
Speaker 8: that story is.
Speaker 5: Legend right, I mean, you know.
Speaker 8: And he said, I'm going to send you this file.
Speaker 8: We need a lawyer in New York, and I want
Speaker 8: you to look at the file and call me when
Speaker 8: you're done and what you think about the case. So
Speaker 8: I called him back after I looked at the file.
Speaker 8: I said, this guy got the worst trial I've ever
Speaker 8: seen in my life. This guy's trial was horrific. He
Speaker 8: should never have been convicted. So Rubin said, yeah, but
Speaker 8: do you think he's innocent? And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 8: I didn't really look at it, you know, from that aspect.
Speaker 8: He said, well, call me back when you've looked at
Speaker 8: me from an aspect, because I'm not interested in a
Speaker 8: procedural error. I want to establish this guy is innocent.
Speaker 8: So then I went back and looked over everything, and
Speaker 8: then I found some inconsistencies almost immediately in the confession,
Speaker 8: one of which was the thing that the lynchpin really
Speaker 8: to the whole wrongful conviction. And I called him and said,
Speaker 8: neither of these guys did it. And he said, okay,
Speaker 8: I'm coming down to New York. Let's go visit him.
Speaker 8: And I said, okay. And as you could tell anybody
Speaker 8: who meets David, you know, you're five minutes into it,
Speaker 8: You're like, this guy's not a murderer.
Speaker 5: This guy was never a murderer.
Speaker 8: And we spent a lot of time that day with David,
Speaker 8: and then we brainstormed after it. But Rubin was the
Speaker 8: one who got his name, helped us get the leading
Speaker 8: false confession expert on the case, a guy named Steve Drizzen.
Speaker 8: He helped us get Laura Cohen from Rucers University and
Speaker 8: her students to help Dave with the parole piece, and
Speaker 8: then they became involved in the reinvestigation as well. And
Speaker 8: his letter to the Daily News moved the case to
Speaker 8: the top of the pile. And I don't think David
Speaker 8: would have been here if Ruben hadn't gotten into his life,
Speaker 8: or frankly, David hadn't just decided to pick up the
Speaker 8: Sun magazine that day.
Speaker 5: How many times do you think about that.
Speaker 7: I think about that a lot, because I had plenty
Speaker 7: of opportunities to say, you know what, I'm just going
Speaker 7: to go back early tonight. You know, I'm not going
Speaker 7: to stay around. I'm not going to stick around. I
Speaker 7: didn't have any any more work to do that particular
Speaker 7: nights he worked in a law lit Yeah, so it
Speaker 7: would have been very easy for me to just sort
Speaker 7: of shut it down early, which I did at times,
Speaker 7: you know, we feeling tired, that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: You want to kind of and then you know, in
Speaker 4: two thousand and thirteen Brooklyn elected Ken Thompson.
Speaker 5: Well, I have a story about that.
Speaker 4: And you have to have a prosecutor who's willing to
Speaker 4: take a case that's, you know, thirty years old and say, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're going to actually take a look at it, reinvestigate it,
Speaker 4: reopen it. Because we know that prosecutors are loath to
Speaker 4: do that across the United States, and in fact, even
Speaker 4: in the Brooklyn DA's office, the answer had been previously know.
Speaker 7: And I'm glad he mentioned that because I remember in
Speaker 7: twenty thirteen when during the campaign, when Ken Thompson was
Speaker 7: he was campaigning, and so that time I was at
Speaker 7: a place called Otisville. So that's a medium correction for city.
Speaker 7: It's like a place like basically made up of dormitory.
Speaker 7: So I remember staying up late at night just trying
Speaker 7: to hear any sort of campaign news that I could, because,
Speaker 7: you know, I want I wanted this guy to when
Speaker 7: not because it would guarantee an any freedom or anything
Speaker 7: like that. Well, at least we will guarantee change, and
Speaker 7: people like myself in that situation, all I really wanted
Speaker 7: was an opportunity, and all as a legal team, all
Speaker 7: we really wanted was an opportunity, a fair chance, you know,
Speaker 7: to have our case heard, because under the previous regime,
Speaker 7: we really believed that we wasn't, you know, given a
Speaker 7: fair opportunity to present our case in a way that
Speaker 7: we that we needed to. So when Sir Thompson eventually
Speaker 7: got itighted, I know that he made some campaign promises
Speaker 7: that he would investigate wrong for convictions thoroughly and that
Speaker 7: sort of thing. And once I heard that, I really
Speaker 7: was really I was emotionally I cried a lot, because
Speaker 7: that's what you want to hear, especially someone in my position.
Speaker 7: You just want someone to say, you know what, we're
Speaker 7: going to do this thing fairly, and however it would
Speaker 7: have turned out after that, of course I would have
Speaker 7: been disappointed, but at least I would have known that
Speaker 7: this individual delivered on a promise on the campaign promise
Speaker 7: that some individuals don't normally do under those circumstances. So
Speaker 7: when he became the attorney, I think the people of
Speaker 7: Brooklyn can attest to this. That really change the dynamics
Speaker 7: of the I think the criminals as a system in
Speaker 7: general an impression.
Speaker 4: We've vacated well under his tenure, twenty one cases in
Speaker 4: destroyed period of time that I've been serving as the
Speaker 4: acting DA. I've vacated two additional cases who are up
Speaker 4: to twenty three cases, and the work of our conviction
Speaker 4: review unit is ongoing and there's much more work to
Speaker 4: be done.
Speaker 3: Well, you have a real dedicated team, right, I mean
Speaker 3: in some of these convicted review units around the country,
Speaker 3: they have one part time guy or whatever, and you
Speaker 3: have a ten detectives assigned to this.
Speaker 4: We have full time prosecutors who only handle these reinvestigations.
Speaker 4: Currently we have nine full time prosecutors and we have
Speaker 4: full time detectives. We have full time paralegals. It's a
Speaker 4: many law firm that's working on reviewing cases of wrongful conviction.
Speaker 5: It's simply a model.
Speaker 8: There really is no other word for it, and no
Speaker 8: other place has replicated it. No place has tried to
Speaker 8: replicate it. And you know, I knew Ken from Gating.
Speaker 8: We were adversaries on a couple of big cases against
Speaker 8: each other. When he got elected DA, I called him
Speaker 8: and said, I got talked about this case because we
Speaker 8: had been rebuffed countless times by Joe Hines's office. We
Speaker 8: were told, come back to us when you get the
Speaker 8: real killers. And I said, I thought, that's your job.
Speaker 8: You know I'm not here to catch the real killers.
Speaker 8: I'm here to show you that this guy and his
Speaker 8: co defender of innocent. And he said, wait till you
Speaker 8: see what we're gonna do. Okay, call me in January,
Speaker 8: call me in February. And I said, I'll give you
Speaker 8: some time, but you really got to look at this case.
Speaker 8: He said, done, just call me. And I never expected
Speaker 8: him to do the breath that he did, and him
Speaker 8: and Eric developed this unit that was second to none.
Speaker 8: The standard that Ken said was is it a conviction
Speaker 8: I could live up to? I don't care whether he
Speaker 8: already made this argument. I don't care whether anybody else
Speaker 8: has already looked at it. I want to be able
Speaker 8: to stand by this conviction. That's the tone that Eric said.
Speaker 8: Also because he helped develop the unit with Ken, and
Speaker 8: he put him directly on David's case. And I remember
Speaker 8: telling him, I said, you were the only elected official, Ken,
Speaker 8: that I can think of in modern history who got
Speaker 8: elected promising more rights to the criminally accused. Every other
Speaker 8: prosecutor before Ken was tough on crime. I'm going to
Speaker 8: lock them up, I'm going to stafe streets, war on drugs.
Speaker 8: And this was the first guy who said I'm going
Speaker 8: to try to reform the system, and he put his
Speaker 8: money where his mouth is. Like you said, I couldn't
Speaker 8: believe it when I went up and saw the unit.
Speaker 3: By the way, there's nothing that helps public safety about
Speaker 3: convicting the wrong guys. In fact, that's the opposite effect.
Speaker 3: So let me ask were the real perpetrators ever caught
Speaker 3: in this case? Because if not, then that's another crime
Speaker 3: against society, right right.
Speaker 8: I mean, one of the things that no one thinks
Speaker 8: about a wonful conviction is if the conviction was wrongful,
Speaker 8: it means that the people who actually committed this.
Speaker 5: Crime are still out there, and the people who come.
Speaker 8: Into this crime, unless they're in prison for other things
Speaker 8: they've done since, or who're still.
Speaker 4: Out there, they've never been held accountable. But we believe
Speaker 4: that we know who did this crime, and there is
Speaker 4: no statute of limitations, and if the evidence can never
Speaker 4: be brought and I'm in office, I will bring that case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think all of us would like to see
Speaker 3: these guys brought to justice because these are dangerous, scary
Speaker 3: individuals who committed a really terrible crime and got away
Speaker 3: with it. What was the moment when you found out
Speaker 3: that you were going home?
Speaker 5: Sure, guiny motion was substance, So please excuse me on
Speaker 5: that one. My correction.
Speaker 7: Counselor will see the telephone call from Oscar Michelin and
Speaker 7: Laura Colin, and I was summoned to her office to
Speaker 7: speak to them. And so when I got on the phone,
Speaker 7: Oscar pretty much said to me that you're going to
Speaker 7: be coming to court the next day. I believe it
Speaker 7: was Wednesday, as a matter of fact. And when he
Speaker 7: and Laura said that to me, it is not that
Speaker 7: I didn't believe them, it's that for me, for some
Speaker 7: I just wanted to get to court and hear the
Speaker 7: judge actually say the words that their convention is going
Speaker 7: to be vacated. And I remember leaving my Correctional Counselor's
Speaker 7: office that afternoon, walking back up the hill to my
Speaker 7: housing unit, really crying, and in some ways really didn't
Speaker 7: know you know what I was crying about. It's because
Speaker 7: I was. I mean, I had a lot of mixed emotions.
Speaker 7: Not that I necessarily didn't think that I was going
Speaker 7: to go home, but the fact that I was going
Speaker 7: to be going to court and something big was going
Speaker 7: to happen. So from that standpoint, I was like on
Speaker 7: pins and needles for the rest of the night. And
Speaker 7: on that particular night, for example, I didn't go to
Speaker 7: sleep because I just simply couldn't. I just kept thinking
Speaker 7: about the very next day when I was asked to
Speaker 7: pack up my stuff and I was.
Speaker 5: Going to court.
Speaker 7: And so for me, what I did was when I
Speaker 7: packed up my stuff and getting ready to go to court,
Speaker 7: I gave a lot of my stuf up away, not
Speaker 7: necessarily knowing specifically that I was gonna be coming back,
Speaker 7: but I just I just felt like, you know what,
Speaker 7: I'm gonna I'm gonna give people stuff that I think
Speaker 7: they deserve and they need, and that's what I did.
Speaker 7: So when two investigators from the Brooklyn Districttorney's office came
Speaker 7: to pick me up and they put me in a
Speaker 7: car and he drove off. They were playing the song
Speaker 7: The Hurricane, and so one of the investigators asked me,
Speaker 7: do you know who this guy is? Said, of course,
Speaker 7: I know who that guy is. He said, do you
Speaker 7: know what he's singing, and said, of course I know
Speaker 7: what he's singing. That's Bob Dylan and he's singing the Hurricane.
Speaker 7: And I thought that was really cool. We had a
Speaker 7: really cool woman with these guys coming down to Brooklyn
Speaker 7: because these guys actually grew up in Brooklyn themselves, these investigators,
Speaker 7: and they were just talking to me about how things
Speaker 7: changed in Brooklyn, and so we got downtown. They was
Speaker 7: pointing out certain things to me and it even offered
Speaker 7: me some real food that I've had and had ever
Speaker 7: since I've been in concentrated and that sort of thing.
Speaker 5: So it was sort of that kind of moment. And
Speaker 5: when I actually got into.
Speaker 7: The courtroom, and well, actually before I got to the
Speaker 7: court room, I was taking them to the Brooklyn Districttorney's
Speaker 7: office and take upstairs and I'm not sure what floor
Speaker 7: I was on, and Ken Thompson came in and he
Speaker 7: introduced himself and he told me on certain terms that
Speaker 7: when I walked out of this building to the courthouse,
Speaker 7: that he wanted me to hold my.
Speaker 5: Head up high.
Speaker 7: And I really appreciated those comments because I think he
Speaker 7: was saying that I'm probably gonna do. I'm going to
Speaker 7: be a hack of but because I got hack it
Speaker 7: was on me. Don't look at yourself as as a criminal.
Speaker 7: I think that it was his message. So I did
Speaker 7: what he what he asked me to do, and I
Speaker 7: walked down to the courthouse and we went upstairs and
Speaker 7: eventually went into.
Speaker 5: The courtroom, and I seen all.
Speaker 7: These individuals in there, whether it was the media or
Speaker 7: a lot of a lot of people in the courtroom,
Speaker 7: of course, and as they would say, you know, the
Speaker 7: rest is history.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and Oscar, your take on this? So when
Speaker 3: you called him the night before, did you knew what
Speaker 3: was going to happen the next time? You didn't tell him?
Speaker 8: Well, Ken had called me and said, once you come
Speaker 8: down in Columbus day, bring one other member of your team.
Speaker 8: The office was closed except for the interview, and Laura
Speaker 8: Cohen and I met with him and we talked for
Speaker 8: a while, and he said, we're going to do it Wednesday.
Speaker 8: We're going to vacate the conviction, and we're going to
Speaker 8: vacate Willie's conviction also. And you know, it was a
Speaker 8: very very emotional obviously, and No, I called and told him.
Speaker 8: I didn't hide anything from him. He just didn't want
Speaker 8: to believe it until he heard the judge.
Speaker 7: That's like for years of being beaten down by the system,
Speaker 7: being told no all the time, even during my letter
Speaker 7: writing campaign, for example, so before I actually wrote Cad
Speaker 7: that letter, I wrote hundreds of letters to law firms, newspapers,
Speaker 7: New York Times, Daily News, the New York Post, I mean,
Speaker 7: all different sort of kind of publication that I wrote,
Speaker 7: some magazine that I wrote. I'm just trying to get
Speaker 7: some help, you know, because at that time it didn't
Speaker 7: really have any So again, it was not a matter
Speaker 7: of not necessarily believe in them, because I really had
Speaker 7: no reason not to believe them. It's just that I
Speaker 7: just I just wanted to hear this judge say that man,
Speaker 7: and this everything in my life had come to up
Speaker 7: to that point where I just sort of culminated to
Speaker 7: that one moment and the fact that when I got
Speaker 7: into the courtroom, and actually prior to me getting in
Speaker 7: the courtroom, I had a conversation with Willie Stucky's mom
Speaker 7: and I recall her very specifically saying to me, you know,
Speaker 7: you're my son now, and those words resonated me with
Speaker 7: me in a way that I'll never forget. And so
Speaker 7: when the judge, of course, the da and Oscar was
Speaker 7: in the courtroom and the judge finally you know, of
Speaker 7: course made this decision, I just hugged her and I
Speaker 7: just looked at her. It was a very very bittersweet
Speaker 7: moment for me because at that time, I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 7: you know, here I am going to be walking out
Speaker 7: of the courtroom very happy, but very sad at the
Speaker 7: same time, because Willie Stucky, you should have been walking
Speaker 7: out out of this very courtroom.
Speaker 4: With me, and having sat in the first row in
Speaker 4: that courtroom.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of wet eyes all throughout.
Speaker 4: But it was a very emotional moment, the sense that
Speaker 4: justice was delayed for so many years, but there was
Speaker 4: at least at this moment a reckoning and the reckoning
Speaker 4: that the system had failed, and we've discussed did here.
Speaker 4: It wasn't just a prosecutor or a bad detective. It
Speaker 4: was a systemic failure of the criminal justice system. While
Speaker 4: it was bittersweet for everyone, it was finally that we've
Speaker 4: writed this wrong.
Speaker 3: We have a tradition here on wrongful conviction, which is
Speaker 3: that I like to turn the microphone over to you, David,
Speaker 3: for closing thoughts, But in this case, because we have
Speaker 3: other special guests here, I'd like to actually do a
Speaker 3: round robin and finish with you. So let's start with Oscar.
Speaker 3: Is there anything else you want to share with our audience.
Speaker 8: No, I just think that for folks out there who
Speaker 8: are listening that say what can I do? And I
Speaker 8: think the most important thing is to just keep an
Speaker 8: open mind when you read stories about people being arrested,
Speaker 8: serve on a jury, if you're called, demand that your
Speaker 8: criminal justice system, that your prosecutors and police live up
Speaker 8: to these standards that we've talked about today, and for
Speaker 8: those who are prosecutors to follow the model, frankly that
Speaker 8: Brooklyn has set. You know, Ken and then Eric have
Speaker 8: followed that. I have not seen replicated throughout the country,
Speaker 8: and I just thank everybody, yourself included, because shedding light
Speaker 8: on these things is the only way that we're going
Speaker 8: to avoid these wrongful convictions in the first place. That's
Speaker 8: the goal is to develop a criminal justice system that's
Speaker 8: fair to the people, that's fair to the accused, and
Speaker 8: that gets it right more often than it currently does.
Speaker 8: So I appreciate this opportunity to give this information out
Speaker 8: to folks, and hopefully they'll take it with them and
Speaker 8: remember that when they have the opportunity to somehow affect
Speaker 8: the criminal justice system.
Speaker 4: We have an obligation to do justice and not just
Speaker 4: to try to secure convictions. But I also believe that
Speaker 4: part of my job is to protect the innocent, and
Speaker 4: that needs being proact and not just waiting for things
Speaker 4: to play out in the courtroom. And so much of
Speaker 4: what I've tried to do in the short period of
Speaker 4: time is I've done things like hired immigration attorneys to
Speaker 4: protect people who are accused of crimes who may have
Speaker 4: immigration issues, something that people think is not in the
Speaker 4: role of a prosecutor. But making sure that we protect
Speaker 4: the innocent is important, and we can't lose track of that.
Speaker 4: And for David, you should know that every assistant district
Speaker 4: attorney that we've hired now gets taught on false fed facts,
Speaker 4: which were a key lachpin of on your false confession.
Speaker 4: The science of wrongful identifications and false fed facts, and
Speaker 4: these things were things that prosecutors never trained on. And
Speaker 4: when we make these exonerations, the first thing that we
Speaker 4: go back is we do what could we have done differently,
Speaker 4: and we train on it. So I want you to
Speaker 4: know that the generation of prosecutors in my office for
Speaker 4: being trained and they learned about your case when they
Speaker 4: learned about you know, a lot of the other people
Speaker 4: we've exonerated. To make sure that this never happens again.
Speaker 4: This can't happen again.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to say before turn over to you, David,
Speaker 3: that for everybody listening, vote, go out and vote in
Speaker 3: your district attorney's racist because you can make a difference. So, David,
Speaker 3: now the highlight of the show is just to turn
Speaker 3: it over to you for any closing thoughts.
Speaker 7: Okay, yeah, thank you, thank you for that. You know,
Speaker 7: during my twenty nineties in prison, in prison in general,
Speaker 7: the notion is that you know, you should never trust anybody,
Speaker 7: and I guess in a lot of cases that's actually true.
Speaker 7: But for me, I didn't necessarily subscribe to that theory
Speaker 7: because I didn't feel it was appropriate for me, because
Speaker 7: I felt like I was in a position to have
Speaker 7: to trust somebody in order to get where I needed
Speaker 7: to go, and that was home, you know. So I
Speaker 7: really put my faith in a lot of people to
Speaker 7: help me because I really needed to help. I really
Speaker 7: trust me, I really desperately needed to help. And one
Speaker 7: of the things so I do, like public speaking, every
Speaker 7: every once in a while, I'll tell people so with
Speaker 7: the word the politics come up, with all the stuff
Speaker 7: that's happening in our you know, in our country these days.
Speaker 7: I always tell people just believing, believing people. If you
Speaker 7: don't believe in your left and officials to the extent
Speaker 7: that you don't trust him, believe in people, because it's
Speaker 7: the people that surround you who's going to make the difference.
Speaker 7: It is going to create the change that's necessary. And
Speaker 7: I know for me, in meeting Ken Thompson, and I
Speaker 7: had the privilege of being invited to his funeral by
Speaker 7: his wife, and I can say that when I had
Speaker 7: the opportunity to speak for the time that I did,
Speaker 7: and I shared with the audience that I at that
Speaker 7: time I had to find my fuld daughter at the Quinn,
Speaker 7: and I specifically said that Ken Thompson is the reason
Speaker 7: why I have my daughter, and that was totally sincere
Speaker 7: about that, because if this individual didn't show the courage
Speaker 7: that he showed in taking on this particular endeavor of
Speaker 7: wrongful conviction cases, a lot of people, not necessarily myself,
Speaker 7: but a lot of other people would be in the
Speaker 7: world of trouble right now. Uite, frankly would probably still
Speaker 7: be incarcerated. And I just saw dis close with this
Speaker 7: when the acres I was, you know, introduced me to
Speaker 7: his children and his wife. That was a very touching
Speaker 7: moment for someone like me because I'm sitting there and
Speaker 7: I'm looking at his sous and I got the opportunity
Speaker 7: to meet these guys, and you know, that was doubt
Speaker 7: for me, was the privilege. And I would like to
Speaker 7: say that that that said more about the Gonzales than
Speaker 7: than it did about me.
Speaker 5: And so I just want to thank.
Speaker 7: You because that really struck a chord with me even
Speaker 7: after I met with you going my way.
Speaker 5: Home, and so I felt really good good about that.
Speaker 7: I looked at that as a as a privilege and
Speaker 7: I just wanted to, you know, for some of us,
Speaker 7: when I see the ex outs getting going, to really
Speaker 7: let him know and thank him for that, because that
Speaker 7: that touched some That touched the emotional chord for me,
Speaker 7: and it just showed me and it just really confirmed
Speaker 7: and reinforced for me what I just mentioned earlier about people,
Speaker 7: and that's important for people just to have faith in
Speaker 7: each other. And that's simply when I what I did
Speaker 7: during my time in prison and it paid off.
Speaker 5: Well. Thank you, David.
Speaker 4: It's been a privilege to have met you you and
Speaker 4: to know you and to see you doing the great
Speaker 4: work that you're doing, the awareness that you bring, and
Speaker 4: to see you happy with your own family makes me
Speaker 4: very grateful.
Speaker 3: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 3: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 3: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 3: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 3: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 3: like to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 3: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 3: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 3: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm is a production of Lava
Speaker 3: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One
Speaker 4: And What Will