Speaker 1: On October thirteenth, nineteen ninety seven, Julie Ray woke to
Speaker 1: a sound from her ten year old boy, Joel's bedroom.
Speaker 1: When she looked, she did not see Joel, and a
Speaker 1: man in a sche mask lunged from the darkness. Julie,
Speaker 1: a black belt in taekwondo, struggled with the masked man
Speaker 1: as he escaped to the backyard, slamming her head on
Speaker 1: the ground before fleeing into the night. Julie banged on
Speaker 1: her neighbor's door, asking for help and saying that Joel
Speaker 1: was gone. When Jariff Deputy Dennis Yorke searched the house,
Speaker 1: he found Joel between the bed and the nearby wall,
Speaker 1: his pajamas soaked in blood. He had been stabbed twelve times.
Speaker 1: Despite her own injuries and the minuscule amount of Joel's
Speaker 1: blood found on her shirt, authorities came up with a
Speaker 1: theory that there was no intruder and that Julie was
Speaker 1: responsible for the death of her own son. After a
Speaker 1: bumbling tunnel vision investigation searching only for evidence of Julie's
Speaker 1: killed and coming up empty, the prosecution resorted to using
Speaker 1: blood spatter analysis, a known junk science. Experts testified anyway,
Speaker 1: employing no actual demonstration that the bloodstains were consistent with
Speaker 1: Julie wielding the murder weapon. Julie was sentenced to sixty
Speaker 1: five years in prison and subjected to the abuse that
Speaker 1: befalls a person who murdered their own child. Just two
Speaker 1: years later, a serial child murderer facing the death penalty
Speaker 1: for a nearly identical crime and who was linked to
Speaker 1: many other similar crimes, confessed to being the masked man
Speaker 1: from Julie's version of events. His confession was corroborated, and
Speaker 1: she was acquitted at her retrial in two thousand and
Speaker 1: six and formerly exonerated in twenty ten. All of this
Speaker 1: was made possible with the help of the Center on
Speaker 1: Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, and, most notably, staff attorney
Speaker 1: Karen Daniel, to whom this episode is lovingly and respectfully dedicated.
Speaker 1: Karen was a pioneer in the innocentce movement and a
Speaker 1: hero to many. She passed away on December twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Plum. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. I'm your host
Speaker 1: and I'm here today. With a woman who I am
Speaker 1: really kind of in awe of, to put it mildly,
Speaker 1: Julie Ray is a person of incredible integrity, strength, and purpose,
Speaker 1: I would say. And she is an ax hoonnery from
Speaker 1: Illinois who was wrongfully convicted of the murderer of her
Speaker 1: own son. Julie, I'm very happy you're here. I'm obviously
Speaker 1: sorry you have to be here, but I'm happy you're here.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jason.
Speaker 1: And with Julie, it's a guy named Ron Safer. Ron
Speaker 1: is a partner at Riley Safer Homes and Cancilla. And
Speaker 1: Ron is a former Assistant US Attorney for the Northern
Speaker 1: District of Illinois and moreover, he does work today for
Speaker 1: the Center of Wrongful Convictions at the north Western University
Speaker 1: Pritzker School of Law. And he's a colleague and a
Speaker 1: dear friend of the late great Karen Daniel, who will
Speaker 1: speak to you about to whom we'll pay tribute later
Speaker 1: in this episode. So Ron, welcome to Ronfuel Conviction.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a side because I'm going to go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. I read Julie's story when she
Speaker 1: was on the cover of the New York Times magazine
Speaker 1: and the headline was she was exonerated of the murder
Speaker 1: of her son. Her life is still shattered and with
Speaker 1: that it's one of the most powerful pictures I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Let me just say that, you can look it up yourselves,
Speaker 1: but it was. There was so much pain and so much,
Speaker 1: so much more to it than that in this photograph.
Speaker 1: I just thought, this is someone I know. If I
Speaker 1: can do anything to share her story or to help
Speaker 1: in any way, I'm committed to do it. So Julie,
Speaker 1: going back to the beginning, can you take us through
Speaker 1: what your life was like before this happened. I mean,
Speaker 1: you were a woman of tremendous potential and someone who
Speaker 1: had accomplished a great deal of black belt in taekwondo,
Speaker 1: a doctoral student.
Speaker 2: Well, the black belt in taekwon was kind of a joke,
Speaker 2: but it was something Joel and I did together which
Speaker 2: was really fun.
Speaker 1: But you were working towards your doctorate in educational psychology
Speaker 1: right at the time that everything went completely haywire. Can
Speaker 1: you just talk to us a little bit of how
Speaker 1: you chose that field, and that's a hell of a
Speaker 1: thing to take on when you're raising a child, you know,
Speaker 1: as a single mom.
Speaker 2: It was a perfect fit. It gave me time to
Speaker 2: be there for Joel, a flexible schedule. School was a
Speaker 2: good match for me. I really enjoyed graduate work and
Speaker 2: the field was very interesting. I had wonderful mentors, and
Speaker 2: I had a planned on a career in academia, which
Speaker 2: would give me a chance to research things I loved
Speaker 2: and was interested in. It would give me an excellent
Speaker 2: environment for Joel. He was brilliant and intrigued with learning.
Speaker 2: Joel and I enjoyed the life that we had at
Speaker 2: the time. We had a lot of extracurricular activities and friends.
Speaker 2: We had a great neighborhood and community where we lived.
Speaker 2: We were doing a lot of fun things together and
Speaker 2: just really looking forward to the next part of our
Speaker 2: lives together. I remember things that Joel and I used
Speaker 2: to like to do before everything changed. I remember sitting
Speaker 2: by the door when it was storming and listening to
Speaker 2: the rain while we were reading. And his favorite soup
Speaker 2: is chicken noodle, so he had chicken noodle, and I
Speaker 2: like tomatoes, so I had tomato. Just so many good
Speaker 2: memories of all the things we were doing in our
Speaker 2: lives at that time. I remember, I can't sing to
Speaker 2: save my life, and Jall kind of inherited some of
Speaker 2: that ability from me. But we would drive through and
Speaker 2: get tacos from this one place. It was actually a
Speaker 2: little tavern, was a very small talent, so we had
Speaker 2: limited options. And this one night of the week we
Speaker 2: had these great tacos and they had to drive through,
Speaker 2: and then we would drive through and get a hot
Speaker 2: pudge Sunday and we had done that. We were coming
Speaker 2: home from taekwondo and we weren't singing. I don't know
Speaker 2: what those songs in the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle, the
Speaker 2: lines leaps tonight with the windows down, there was just
Speaker 2: a really happy time. So much was going right, So
Speaker 2: much was going right.
Speaker 1: And Ron, if I can turn this over to you,
Speaker 1: because I know this is borderline impossible for Julie to discuss,
Speaker 1: but can you share some of the details of this case.
Speaker 1: You know what happened and how this all went so
Speaker 1: horribly wrong.
Speaker 3: Sure, Julie and Joel were together in Julie's home and
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night, four am, an intruder
Speaker 3: came into the home. Julie didn't tear him. He is
Speaker 3: somebody who has broken into homes and trailers across the
Speaker 3: country without being heard. He was a serial murderer and
Speaker 3: somebody very skilled at this, and so he was not heard.
Speaker 3: He came into Joel's bedroom, stamped him to death, and
Speaker 3: pushed him off the bed. Julie awoke to some sound
Speaker 3: and she looked across from her bed into Joel's bedroom
Speaker 3: and saw that he was not in the bed, and
Speaker 3: so she woke herself up, started going towards his bedroom
Speaker 3: and banged into somebody in the hallway. It was Tommy
Speaker 3: Lynde Sells who she banged into, and the knife that
Speaker 3: he held was found right there where Julie said they
Speaker 3: banged into each other. He then sought to leave the house.
Speaker 3: Julie grabbed onto his legs. Now again, Julie doesn't know
Speaker 3: what's going on. All she knows is that Joel's not
Speaker 3: in his bed. So you can imagine what a flood
Speaker 3: of thoughts anybody would have at that time. So she
Speaker 3: doesn't know what's going on, but she grabs onto this
Speaker 3: guy for dear life. He drags her along the carpet,
Speaker 3: and indeed she has rugburns on her knees from that
Speaker 3: he breaks away get into the garage where there is
Speaker 3: another door to the outside. Julie wants again grabs onto
Speaker 3: him because he's having trouble getting out of that back door.
Speaker 3: He breaks the glass to get out of the back door,
Speaker 3: and Julie grabs onto him again for dear life, thinking
Speaker 3: that he's the only link to Joel, and he drags
Speaker 3: her along. She has scrapes on the top of her
Speaker 3: feet from being dragged across the glass that is broken
Speaker 3: from that door. He goes out into the backyard she's
Speaker 3: holding on has grass stains from that. He then takes
Speaker 3: her head, smashes it into the ground and walks off.
Speaker 3: Julie immediately went to a neighbor's house and they called
Speaker 3: the police, and the police found Joel's at that point
Speaker 3: dying body. And from there, you know, of course, the
Speaker 3: universe is changed, and everything that happened from that minute
Speaker 3: that I started that narrative until Julie got out of
Speaker 3: jail years later went wrong.
Speaker 1: And this one, I mean, even for me, this one
Speaker 1: is absolutely mind boggling because it not only didn't make sense,
Speaker 1: it couldn't have made sense. You have nothing to pin
Speaker 1: this on Julie, And in fact, there's every arrow pointing
Speaker 1: directly at an intruder. Of course, back then, nobody knew
Speaker 1: who it was. That comes clear later at the story
Speaker 1: when he actually confesses. Right.
Speaker 3: The case agent testified under my cross examination ultimately that everyone,
Speaker 3: people who liked Julie, people who didn't like Julie, every
Speaker 3: everyone told him that Julie and Joel had a good
Speaker 3: and loving relationship. This was a quote. He could not
Speaker 3: find anyone who would say that she raised her voice
Speaker 3: to him, let alone her hand. So why would anybody
Speaker 3: think that somebody who is a PhD candidate, an educational psychology,
Speaker 3: with a good and loving relationship with their son, and
Speaker 3: a good and caring person would do something like this.
Speaker 1: And no prior history of violence or mental issues or
Speaker 1: anything nice. Quite the opposite, actually, right, So, in order
Speaker 1: to get to where we're trying to figure out how,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we'll ever really know why the
Speaker 1: authorities in this case chose to pin this on Julie.
Speaker 1: Julie had just lived through a scene from the worst
Speaker 1: horror movie that anyone could ever see, every parent's worst nightmare. So, Julie,
Speaker 1: if you can talk about it from there, you weren't
Speaker 1: arrested then in there. This was something that took time
Speaker 1: to wind its way through, and at some point they
Speaker 1: decided to develop a narrative, maybe just because they couldn't
Speaker 1: figure it out that involved you. But you've spoken to
Speaker 1: me in the article about what your life was like
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of this horror.
Speaker 2: Well, in defense of the police, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: that they were poorly trained. I think that they didn't
Speaker 2: know what to do. It was a small town, they
Speaker 2: weren't used to handling these kinds of crime scenes. They
Speaker 2: showed up mishandled the evidence horribly. I mean where there
Speaker 2: were hair and fiber evidence opportunities, they lost them. They
Speaker 2: actually ruined them. They picked up the quilt that Joel
Speaker 2: had been under and took a picture of themselves destroying
Speaker 2: evidence and then showed that picturing court as though they
Speaker 2: were proud of it. That is the level of incompetence.
Speaker 2: And they did not take fingerprints. They for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: decided that because the way the glass broke and fell
Speaker 2: on the floor or the ground, that it was broken
Speaker 2: out like I told them, the man had broken the
Speaker 2: glass out, that they didn't think that was reasonable, which
Speaker 2: I don't know what is reasonable when you have somebody
Speaker 2: coming into a home and killing someone. He did use
Speaker 2: a knife from my home, and they didn't fingerprint around
Speaker 2: the knife block that they took the knife from. I
Speaker 2: guess they thought that. I really have no clue what
Speaker 2: they thought. I just don't know. I thought they were
Speaker 2: trying to solve the crime. I thought they were trying
Speaker 2: to catch the person. I was in shock.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 2: In denial. When you're in shock, you look for ways
Speaker 2: to fix things. I thought if I helped them, maybe
Speaker 2: somehow we could fix what had happened. I don't know,
Speaker 2: so I just talked to them and try to answer
Speaker 2: all their questions. I had no idea that they could
Speaker 2: possibly consider me a suspect. I mean, they actually came
Speaker 2: to me at one point and said that they had
Speaker 2: satellite photos, and I was thrilled to death because if
Speaker 2: they had satellite photos, then we had evidence that we
Speaker 2: could use to catch the person that did this. And
Speaker 2: so we went back and forth for quite a long
Speaker 2: time because there were no satellite photos, and they thought
Speaker 2: they were going to catch me in some kind of
Speaker 2: a lie or confuse me or trip me up or something.
Speaker 2: So they kept moving the information around like no the
Speaker 2: satellite photos are only of a certain part of the art,
Speaker 2: and so I would say, oh, okay, well that's fine then,
Speaker 2: you know, just broaden the scope of whatever you've got,
Speaker 2: you know, or look at the different time periods. He
Speaker 2: had to have moved through that part of the art
Speaker 2: at some point, and they had no satellite photos at
Speaker 2: that point. I had no idea cops would lie, you know.
Speaker 2: I was looking for some real information. I mean, the
Speaker 2: kind of person that does something like this is going
Speaker 2: to do it again.
Speaker 1: That's a key point. I'm glad you brought that up,
Speaker 1: because as citizens, all of us want to see a
Speaker 1: person like Tommy Linzel's apprehended and brought to justice as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible, because everyone's at risk if not. And
Speaker 1: of course we know from the case after case that
Speaker 1: when the wrong person is pursued, ultimately arrested and then charged,
Speaker 1: they stopped looking for the right person. In this case,
Speaker 1: the right person was a serial killer named tommyland Sells.
Speaker 1: And I think you're right to point out the training.
Speaker 1: This was a small town, right, so it's reasonable to
Speaker 1: assume that these officers didn't have a great deal of
Speaker 1: experience investigating crimes as serious as this one. But the
Speaker 1: fact that they didn't even dust the bedroom or the
Speaker 1: butcher block, as you said, for fingerprints, that they didn't
Speaker 1: preserve critical trace evidence from Joel's bedspread, the fact that
Speaker 1: from the beginning they focused on you and any blood
Speaker 1: that you might have tried to wash away, right they done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, septic tank, they dug up the septic tank. They
Speaker 2: did all kinds of things, and they didn't bother to
Speaker 2: give us this information at the time. But apparently the
Speaker 2: first officer on the scene threw up on the scene.
Speaker 1: Wow, I mean, and that exactly a time when you
Speaker 1: should have been receiving nothing but care and support and they're,
Speaker 1: you know, instead hunting you and trying to pin this
Speaker 1: thing on you.
Speaker 3: Okay, but let me inject a little bit of experience
Speaker 3: into this. I was a prosecutor. These were not only
Speaker 3: local police, they were the Illinois State Police. These people
Speaker 3: had experience where this went off the rails, was where
Speaker 3: cases all too often get off the rails. They did
Speaker 3: not believe Julie from the first second, and often when
Speaker 3: children are murdered, parents become suspects for whatever reason. These
Speaker 3: officers jumped to a conclusion and then took steps that
Speaker 3: resulted in confirmation of that conclusion. That is, they concluded
Speaker 3: that Julie did it with no evidence, no reason, but
Speaker 3: they did. Therefore, why fingerprint because her fingerprints are going
Speaker 3: to be all over the place. Why preserve fibers because
Speaker 3: her fibers are going to be all over the place.
Speaker 3: And then they say, well, there's no evidence of an intruder.
Speaker 3: Of course, there's no evidence of an intruder. You destroyed
Speaker 3: it or did not capture any of the evidence of
Speaker 3: the intruder. So when you view the evidence and then
Speaker 3: either failed to create it or destroy the evidence that
Speaker 3: is counter to the way you view it, then you
Speaker 3: have a self fulfilling prophecy. And by the way, you
Speaker 3: mentioned the investigation went on for years. What happened is
Speaker 3: they investigated, investigated, investigated, got of course no evidence that
Speaker 3: Julie committed the crime because she didn't. Asked her to
Speaker 3: take a polygraph, She took a polygraph, passed the polygraph,
Speaker 3: They investigated some more, asked her to take a second polygraph.
Speaker 3: She passed a second polygraph.
Speaker 2: The local prosecutor would not indict me. He said, there's
Speaker 2: no evidence. I'm not going to indict her. So they
Speaker 2: got a special prosecutor and brought him in. Ed Parkinson
Speaker 2: was a state prosecutor. He came from the specials secutor's office,
Speaker 2: a Pellet prosecutor's office. They indicted with a grand jury,
Speaker 2: and he promised that he would tell the grand jury
Speaker 2: if they asked that I had passed two polygraphs. Not
Speaker 2: only did he not give them that information, he himself,
Speaker 2: who was conducting the grand jury, testified by saying, when
Speaker 2: they asked, did she take a polygraph? He said, out
Speaker 2: of fairness to the defendant, I will not answer that question,
Speaker 2: we won't give you that information, implying I had not
Speaker 2: passed polygraphs.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that at this point, and you're really
Speaker 1: a perfect person to answer this, that the people in
Speaker 1: position to make these decisions knew that they were prosecuting
Speaker 1: an innocent woman.
Speaker 3: I think that the prosecutors, if I had to guess,
Speaker 3: didn't care. I think he certainly misled the jury and
Speaker 3: didn't care one way or the other. The local police,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if they knew, but they ignored all
Speaker 3: of the evidence of the contrary. For example, Julie put
Speaker 3: together a sketch of the intruder. The local bus station
Speaker 3: person called the police and said, Hey, that guy was
Speaker 3: just here. He purchased a bus ticket to win Amacca, Nevada,
Speaker 3: a tiny town. He didn't have enough money. I gave
Speaker 3: him the ticket anyway, I wanted him out of here.
Speaker 3: He gave a horrible vibe and she called the police
Speaker 3: and told him that where was Tommy Lynn Sells arrested
Speaker 3: at one point Winnamucca, Nevada. What is between Winnemucca, Nevada
Speaker 3: and where he bought that bus ticket? Springfield, Missouri where
Speaker 3: two days after he murdered Joel, he murdered a little
Speaker 3: girl named Stephanie Mahaney. The police knew that. The police
Speaker 3: ignored that, unbelievably. It gets worse because even if you
Speaker 3: totally ignored Tommy Lynn Sells, if you examine the physical evidence,
Speaker 3: you realize that it prohibits Julie as a suspect, excludes her.
Speaker 3: And one thing that the state used at her trial
Speaker 3: was a blood spatter expert who testified in a way
Speaker 3: that is unscrupulous, is a compliment. He took over the courtroom,
Speaker 3: he splattered fake blood all over the courtroom, and then
Speaker 3: he testified that the bloodines convicted Julie showed that she
Speaker 3: committed the crime. It showed, in fact, exactly the opposite.
Speaker 3: Julie had three transfer stains on her T shirt that
Speaker 3: had Joel's blood on it, which were smudged. They were
Speaker 3: not transferred by a hand. They were transferred by a
Speaker 3: glove or something something that an intruder might wear. There
Speaker 3: was blood spatter all of this room. Her T shirt
Speaker 3: was Christine of blood spatter, and it was not cleaned.
Speaker 3: They luminoled the house. There was no cleaning that went on.
Speaker 3: And there was one blood spatter from Joel's blood on
Speaker 3: Julie's T shirt. It was a ninety degree that is,
Speaker 3: a drop from directly above it on her back. So
Speaker 3: when could that have possibly happened? Obviously not if she
Speaker 3: was committing the crime. Could not have come from Joel,
Speaker 3: but easily could have come from Tommy Lynn Sells or
Speaker 3: some unnamed intruder at that time who after he smashed
Speaker 3: her head into the ground in the backyard, dropped a
Speaker 3: bit of blood whatever it is. You know that she
Speaker 3: could not have committed that crime from that one drop
Speaker 3: of blood spatter. They put this expert on the stand
Speaker 3: in the second trial, as the juror said, he ended
Speaker 3: up after cross examination after telling the same lies ondirect
Speaker 3: After cross examination, he ended up being a powerful defense
Speaker 3: witness because blood spatter evidence proved beyond any reasonable doubt
Speaker 3: that Julie was totally innocent of this crime.
Speaker 1: And there are no eyewitnesses. Obviously, there's no forensic evidence.
Speaker 1: As we've discussed, there's no motive. So the entire case
Speaker 1: hinged on that tiny amount of blood on the T shirt.
Speaker 1: And we know that blood spatter it's not conducted by scientists.
Speaker 1: Typically is conducted by detectives or other law enforcement personnel
Speaker 1: who may be trained in crime scene stuff, but they're
Speaker 1: not trained in science, generally speaking. And the idea that
Speaker 1: they can get up there with impunity and with authority
Speaker 1: and make assertions to things like they did in this
Speaker 1: case that are so damning when they actually don't know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about or they're lying. It's another reform
Speaker 1: that needs to be made so that this doesn't happen again.
Speaker 3: Right, The blood evidence really was just as you described
Speaker 3: in the first trial. It was distorted, it was lied about,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately Julie's attorney at that time was not equipped
Speaker 3: to take that expert on that and the unanswered question
Speaker 3: of who does this, Who breaks into a home to
Speaker 3: kill a child, leaves an adult essentially unharmed, and forgets
Speaker 3: to bring a murder weapon, uses the weapon from the house, Well,
Speaker 3: the answer is tommylind Sells. He's done that in half
Speaker 3: a dozen cases across the country. But they close their
Speaker 3: mind to the possibility that a person like that existed.
Speaker 2: I think a big part of the reason that jury's
Speaker 2: convict people wrongly, especially in a case like this, is
Speaker 2: because it's terrifying to let this kind of a crime
Speaker 2: go unanswered. And we resume that our detectives have done
Speaker 2: their jobs and brought us the right people, that our
Speaker 2: prosecutors are prosecuting sincerely, that they've done their jobs and
Speaker 2: they've worked hard, and they know that they're prosecuting the
Speaker 2: right people. That we can trust the people in the
Speaker 2: stand when they're under oath, that they wouldn't lie. And sadly,
Speaker 2: we are finding that we can't assume these things, and
Speaker 2: that's a terrifying reality that's got to change. And if
Speaker 2: we as a culture and as a country, as a
Speaker 2: group of people, as jurors don't hold accountable prosecutors and
Speaker 2: detectives and law enforcement, it won't change.
Speaker 3: I would add, by the way, that at the time
Speaker 3: we began Julie's case, I shared the naive assumptions that
Speaker 3: Julie just said that we have to disabuse people of
Speaker 3: that the prosecutor are there to do the right thing,
Speaker 3: that the police are there to do the right thing.
Speaker 3: That had been my experience. I was a prosecutor for
Speaker 3: ten years. The Illinois States Attorney General supervised this. When
Speaker 3: I saw the evidence in this case, I said, we
Speaker 3: need to take this to the state's attorney general because
Speaker 3: they will dismiss this case when they hear this. And
Speaker 3: my colleagues, who were more experienced, said no, that's not
Speaker 3: going to happen, but I insisted on doing it. We
Speaker 3: went to the highest levels of the state's attorney general
Speaker 3: and I said, look, here's the evidence. Here's what we're
Speaker 3: going to say an opening statement. Here's how I'm going
Speaker 3: to cross examine your expert forget about Tommy lind says
Speaker 3: Julie could not have committed this crime. Here's why at trial,
Speaker 3: you're going to be humiliated. We are going to absolutely
Speaker 3: not only prove that you can't prove her guilty, we
Speaker 3: will prove her innocent. Beyond any reasonable doubt. You should
Speaker 3: not put her through this. Stop this now, And I
Speaker 3: was convinced they would. Obviously I was wrong.
Speaker 2: When they arrested me and took me to the county jail,
Speaker 2: I still thought, when they figure out they've made a mistake,
Speaker 2: it's all going to be okay. When they did what
Speaker 2: they did to me in that county jail, I realize
Speaker 2: not only do they not care, they're fully aware you're innocent.
Speaker 2: That's not an issue on the table. That's not what
Speaker 2: this is about. People have no idea what's going on
Speaker 2: when they think privatizing prisons is an option. Think about
Speaker 2: what happens when we privatize military. We call that mercenaries.
Speaker 2: We take the heart out of the military, we take
Speaker 2: the ethics out of it. We have mercenaries. Think about
Speaker 2: what you're doing when you take the value and the
Speaker 2: concern for rehabilitation out of correctional systems, you privatize that
Speaker 2: and make that a business where the bottom line is
Speaker 2: only money. My god, what is going to happen to
Speaker 2: our country when that is a done deal.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to this sham trial that you experience
Speaker 1: when the jury goes out, when they came back, did
Speaker 1: you still hold on to that belief that justice would
Speaker 1: be done?
Speaker 2: You're talking about the first trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when the jury came back, you.
Speaker 2: Hope and trust that the truth will come out and
Speaker 2: that they will have heard it, because you know you're innocent.
Speaker 1: But they didn't. Obviously they didn't, and they did find
Speaker 1: you guilty and convicted you a first degree murder and
Speaker 1: since to sixty five years in prison. At that point,
Speaker 1: how did you even remain sane? Now you're looking at
Speaker 1: spending the rest of your life in prison. Sixty five
Speaker 1: years is very unlikely to survive that, but you stayed
Speaker 1: strong to fight. And then along comes the team from
Speaker 1: the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern, Karen Daniel and
Speaker 1: her team of Avengers. Right, how did you first come
Speaker 1: in contact with them? And what did that mean to
Speaker 1: you when you found out that you were going to
Speaker 1: be represented by this well, let's just call it what
Speaker 1: it was. I mean, she was a legend.
Speaker 2: First, I want to say something about the time I
Speaker 2: was in there and what happened with the conviction. And
Speaker 2: I remember getting a letter from one of the jurors saying,
Speaker 2: can you please forgive me for convicting you, and I
Speaker 2: remember one of the jurors saying something about I just
Speaker 2: needed her to look me in the eye and tell
Speaker 2: me she didn't do it. And my attorney at my
Speaker 2: first child would not let me take the stand I
Speaker 2: wanted to, but he wouldn't let me wow, which was
Speaker 2: very frustrating because obviously I would have been able to,
Speaker 2: you know, tell them, you know, I didn't do it,
Speaker 2: and what had happened, and all those kinds of things,
Speaker 2: and you know, getting that letter and having someone say,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm so sorry I can't sleep at night.
Speaker 2: Can you please forgive me? And I remember thinking, well,
Speaker 2: you know, that makes two of us that can't sleep
Speaker 2: at night, but for different reasons. There's just this futility
Speaker 2: that you feel about life. When something like this happens.
Speaker 2: It takes away your faith in humanity. And that's why
Speaker 2: I wanted to answer these questions together, because when Karen
Speaker 2: told me that there were going to take the case,
Speaker 2: I didn't know all of what that meant. But over
Speaker 2: time I came to understand what it meant, and I
Speaker 2: got my sense of confidence and humanity back through each
Speaker 2: hearing and hug through every time they sat beside me.
Speaker 2: When She told the judge she would be proud to
Speaker 2: have me as her daughter, which she wasn't old enough
Speaker 2: to have me as her daughter. She would have been
Speaker 2: my sister and we became I mean, she did for
Speaker 2: me the things the sister would have done.
Speaker 1: The team from Center of Unwrawful Convictions, again led by Karen,
Speaker 1: they really did the work that the authorities should have
Speaker 1: done and could have done in the first place. Right,
Speaker 1: they found the killer, They got a confession. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about how the whole thing on raph.
Speaker 3: Really the identity of Tommy lynd Cells happened by an accident.
Speaker 3: There was a twenty twenty episode on Julie's case and
Speaker 3: it said, essentially, this is weird. This woman, you know again,
Speaker 3: had a good and loving relationship with her son. There
Speaker 3: was no reason in the world she would do this.
Speaker 3: There was no hard evidence. On the other hand, who
Speaker 3: does this? So it was just weird. And nobody breaks
Speaker 3: into a home to kill a kid, leaves an adult
Speaker 3: essentially not mortally wounded, and forgets to bring a murder weapon.
Speaker 3: A woman who was writing a book on a Texas
Speaker 3: death row inmate Tommy lynd Sells wrote to him and said,
Speaker 3: I just heard somebody say on TV, nobody does this.
Speaker 3: We know that's not true, because she knew as he
Speaker 3: did that he had done this time and time again.
Speaker 3: He wrote back and said, now this is six years
Speaker 3: after the fact. Was it in Illinois? Was it two
Speaker 3: days before? Stephanie Mahaney? And the answer, of course was
Speaker 3: yes and yes. And she said why do you ask
Speaker 3: and he says, because I did it. And then these
Speaker 3: prosecutors went down and they took a tape recorded confession,
Speaker 3: an eighty six page tape recorded confession. Now this is
Speaker 3: a drug adult guy who had committed fifty murders across
Speaker 3: the United States. So we got what the subdivision looked
Speaker 3: like wrong, He got what the outside of the house
Speaker 3: looked like wrong. He got a number of details wrong.
Speaker 3: But he described the conflict with Julie in exactly the
Speaker 3: same terms as she did. He described where he got
Speaker 3: the knife exactly right. He described Joel's bedroom exactly as
Speaker 3: it was. But they ignored all that. Northwestern came along
Speaker 3: Karen Daniel, who was easily the most brilliant legal mind,
Speaker 3: the most fearless lawyer with whom I have ever worked.
Speaker 3: She put all of this together. She put together the
Speaker 3: corroborating evidence that I described earlier about the bus terminal,
Speaker 3: about the fact that he had been arrested in Winnemaka,
Speaker 3: and all of the things that gave teeth to this,
Speaker 3: and she wrapped it up in a beautiful package and
Speaker 3: filed a habeas petition. They vacated the conviction really on
Speaker 3: grounds that had little to do with any of that.
Speaker 3: They vacated the conviction because the prosecutors had been pointed
Speaker 3: pursuing to the wrong statute, which is kind of a technicality.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, they had all of this
Speaker 3: evidence in front of them, so they vacated the conviction.
Speaker 3: Julie is free for a minute, and then they rearrested.
Speaker 2: That's one of the fascinating things to me about our
Speaker 2: court system and our legal system. They specifically said, this
Speaker 2: is not about Tommy Lindzell's you know, our court system
Speaker 2: works that way. It's not about this, i e. It
Speaker 2: is about this. It's not about what's logical, it's not
Speaker 2: about necessarily what's true, and it's certainly not necessarily about
Speaker 2: what's right. It's about legal precedent, it's about technicalities, and
Speaker 2: so it really is a game. It really is a puzzle.
Speaker 2: It really is a whole different language. And that's why
Speaker 2: if you don't have the right attorneys, you don't have
Speaker 2: a chance. It doesn't matter if you're innocent or not.
Speaker 2: At least that's what I've learned. And if I hadn't
Speaker 2: had Karen and Ron and Jeff and the attorneys that
Speaker 2: I had, I would be locked up in a very
Speaker 2: very bad situation for a very very long time if
Speaker 2: I were still alive.
Speaker 1: And it's also quite shocking that the state chose to
Speaker 1: retry you, but they did. By this point, everybody knew
Speaker 1: you were innocent. I mean, I don't know if Iron
Speaker 1: would disagree with that, but I think that it's fair
Speaker 1: to say that this was now a game, right, This
Speaker 1: was about protecting the wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean even the prosecutor he offered me
Speaker 2: twenty years due ten both trials. And both trials, I said, look,
Speaker 2: if you think I'm guilty, you need to be giving
Speaker 2: me the destines because whoever committed this crime needs to
Speaker 2: have capital punishment. That's what needs to happen here. This
Speaker 2: is not the kind of crime that you give somebody
Speaker 2: twenty years do ten for That's just an insult.
Speaker 1: To Joel.
Speaker 2: And for him to say, oh, this woman's evil, which
Speaker 2: he went on record as saying after I was acquitted.
Speaker 2: But to have offered me twenty years due ten, that's
Speaker 2: just well, it doesn't equate well.
Speaker 3: And they did know at that point that Julie was innocent.
Speaker 3: They said at the bond hearing, the first appearance that
Speaker 3: we had on this case. First time I stood in
Speaker 3: front of the judge said, judge, you have to let
Speaker 3: her out on bond, because you yourself said this was
Speaker 3: a very thin, circumstantial case. That first of all, she
Speaker 3: appeared at every pre trial hearing and the trial. Second,
Speaker 3: this circumstantial case went off on one unanswered question. Who
Speaker 3: does this? Now? Not only do we know who does this,
Speaker 3: but he's confessed. And the judge turned to the prosecutor
Speaker 3: and said, yeah, what about this confession thing? And here
Speaker 3: are the words that the state uttered over a decade ago,
Speaker 3: but they are burned in my memory. This is almost verbatim, o, judge,
Speaker 3: don't worry about Tommy lynn Sells. No one will ever
Speaker 3: hear about him, because, first of all, Texas will not
Speaker 3: honor an out of state subpoena for a death row inmate,
Speaker 3: which is true, by the way, because they are afraid
Speaker 3: that he will go to a non death penalty state
Speaker 3: and they won't get him back to kill him. And
Speaker 3: we immunized him for the death penalty. So it is
Speaker 3: not a statement against penal interest. It is hearsay no
Speaker 3: jury will ever hear about Tommy lyn Cells. I said,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, Judge, I do not hear the representative
Speaker 3: of the people of the state of Illinois to be
Speaker 3: telling you that he intends to try this woman for
Speaker 3: essentially her life while concealing from the jury the fact
Speaker 3: that he took a confession from a serial murderer that
Speaker 3: he knows is corroborated by independent evidence. I don't hear
Speaker 3: the representative of the people of the state of Illinois
Speaker 3: to be saying that. But if you hear him to
Speaker 3: be saying that, you ought to say not in my courtroom.
Speaker 3: This is not happening. Judge looked at me, looked at him,
Speaker 3: and then imposed a significant bond. So everybody knew that
Speaker 3: Julie was innocent at that point, and it was, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: as Julie describes it, a game.
Speaker 1: So the retrial goes forward. This time it's all out
Speaker 1: in the open they're not able to railroad her the
Speaker 1: way they did the first time. This time, Julie at
Speaker 1: the stand and proclaimed your innocence, and of course, ultimately
Speaker 1: the jury saw through the bullshit, they're bullshit and returned
Speaker 1: a not guilty verdict. And I've read that your knees
Speaker 1: buckled in the courtroom. Is that? Is that right? When
Speaker 1: the when the verdict was announced.
Speaker 2: I fell. Yes, I don't remember falling. I mean, I
Speaker 2: know I did, but I don't remember that part. What
Speaker 2: I remember is looking at Ron and him looking at me,
Speaker 2: and I was just really, really, really thankful.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what I remember about that day. First
Speaker 3: of all, we were at lunch and Julie said, so,
Speaker 3: in your experience as a criminal defense attorney, how long
Speaker 3: does it take the jury in cases like this? I said, well,
Speaker 3: when the jury comes back, I'll let you know, because
Speaker 3: then I will have one criminal defense case. She said, what,
Speaker 3: You've never done this before.
Speaker 2: Don't you sound excited or worried? I know I didn't.
Speaker 4: Don't you think you should have told me that? I said, well,
Speaker 4: I guess, I said, no. Do you feel underrepresented? But
Speaker 4: we were, we were in the courtroom.
Speaker 3: And look, there was no evidence. It was overwhelming. There
Speaker 3: was no chance, and yet you're standing there. And I
Speaker 3: remember waiting for the verdict, thinking, I don't know what
Speaker 3: tomorrow looks like. If they say guilty, I don't know
Speaker 3: how to go on in life. So I can't imagine
Speaker 3: what Julie is thinking right now. And when they said
Speaker 3: not guilty. I turned to Julie. Her knees did buckle.
Speaker 3: I went to catch her missed, but we picked her up,
Speaker 3: you know, and we all hugged. It was just an
Speaker 3: enormous relief that finally she could put this aspect of
Speaker 3: the nightmare behind her, she would never again be put
Speaker 3: in that kind of danger.
Speaker 1: For all the years I've been doing this, and I'm
Speaker 1: constantly Everyone who knows me knows I'm always out there
Speaker 1: talking to strangers about this cause people will say to me, well, well,
Speaker 1: there's two questions they ask. One is was the prosecutor
Speaker 1: disciplined in any way? And the second is, tell me
Speaker 1: the person who suffered so much the x HOGNERI was
Speaker 1: compensated by the state in your case. We know the
Speaker 1: answer the first question is no, as it is in
Speaker 1: ninety nine point of all cases. And the answer the
Speaker 1: second question I think you have.
Speaker 2: To look at compensation broadly to answer that question. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of different kinds of riches in life. I
Speaker 2: think I appreciate life more and I have been blessed
Speaker 2: with some of the most amazing people in the world
Speaker 2: through this experience. I think that there are lessons that
Speaker 2: you learn when you walk a desperately lonely path where
Speaker 2: your shadow is your only company, and there is a
Speaker 2: homecoming when you find out that the world is full
Speaker 2: of wonderful people. They've just been hidden from you for
Speaker 2: a while and you thought they were gone. So yes,
Speaker 2: I've been compensated.
Speaker 3: So you just heard the grace and generosity and strength
Speaker 3: of character and just uniquely wonderful spirit that Julie has
Speaker 3: to have survived with that kind of an attitude and
Speaker 3: that kind of a desire to help others. The answer
Speaker 3: to your question is no, the state didn't compensate Julie.
Speaker 3: You know, it is unthinkable what she has had to bear,
Speaker 3: and the way she has bored it is equally unfathomable,
Speaker 3: but diametrically opposed way, in a wonderful way. And the
Speaker 3: way we're gonna stop this is for people to stop
Speaker 3: electing prosecutors who only care about statistics and not justice.
Speaker 3: It's going to be to have people stop electing judges
Speaker 3: who are off on crime and more interested in justice.
Speaker 3: It's going to be people who take their oath as
Speaker 3: jurors seriously and not have the naive presumption because you
Speaker 3: can't have it in today's world. There's too much evidence
Speaker 3: that people are wrongfully drawn into these courtrooms. And to
Speaker 3: have jurors who have an open mind and not just
Speaker 3: listen to the prosecution. And people like Karen Daniel devoted
Speaker 3: her life to doing just that, to opening people's eyes
Speaker 3: time and time and time again, to opening the judge's eyes,
Speaker 3: to open the Port of Appeals eyes, the Supreme Court's eyes,
Speaker 3: juror's eyes, citizens' eyes. Through her indomitable spirit, through her
Speaker 3: incredible intellect and energy. And we need more of those,
Speaker 3: and we need more Julie's in the world without the
Speaker 3: nightmare preceding it, and we'll get them.
Speaker 2: Thank you Jason so much for having the show and
Speaker 2: taking the time to do the research you do, and
Speaker 2: I would just really beg people to do. You know
Speaker 2: what Karen did. She didn't just see problems. She went
Speaker 2: about finding solutions. One little endeavor at a time, and
Speaker 2: you just put all those things together and you start
Speaker 2: solving the big problems. And again, just be informed. When
Speaker 2: you know things, when you share information, when you educate others.
Speaker 2: These things can't continue to happen because people won't allow
Speaker 2: them to. Information is very, very powerful, So be informed.
Speaker 1: Well, that's very well said, and I appreciate you. Know,
Speaker 1: you really are doing my for me because you speak
Speaker 1: so eloquently about the problems and the solutions, and I
Speaker 1: think we're moving as a society in that direction. There's
Speaker 1: been a number of positive developments recently, too numerous to
Speaker 1: get into now. And of course also check out Center
Speaker 1: for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern who do such wonderful work,
Speaker 1: and of course the Edocence Project Innocence Project dot org.
Speaker 1: Now clothing arguments. Usually I asked for closing arguments, but
Speaker 1: you guys already did them. I think at this point
Speaker 1: all I can say is, Wow, I'm really honored to
Speaker 1: have had both of you on the show. I think
Speaker 1: the work that you've done and you continue to do
Speaker 1: ron is exemplary and heroic. And Julie, I said it
Speaker 1: before at the beginning of the show, and I'll say
Speaker 1: it again. You are a hero to me and to
Speaker 1: so many others. And I don't even have the right
Speaker 1: words to say. You know what your perseverance and what
Speaker 1: your The best word is grace, as Ron said, means
Speaker 1: to all of us. It makes us all want to
Speaker 1: fight harder, longer, and better and to help people in
Speaker 1: your situation and to help prevent others from falling into
Speaker 1: this trap going forward. So thank you just for being you,
Speaker 1: and thank you for joining us on Wrongful Conviction. This
Speaker 1: has been an amazing experience for.
Speaker 2: Thank you Jason so much so.
Speaker 1: Now it's with a heavy heart that I want to
Speaker 1: offer a tribute to one of the true legends in
Speaker 1: the field of writing wrongful convictions, a woman who we
Speaker 1: lost too soon in a tragic accident a very short
Speaker 1: time ago, and that person is Karen Daniel. Karen was
Speaker 1: the director of the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Moreover.
Speaker 1: She was a warrior. She's described by so many different
Speaker 1: people who worked with her, who loved her, who were
Speaker 1: represented by her as someone who was tough as nails
Speaker 1: and at the same time was warm and soft and
Speaker 1: was a hugger and someone who cared deeply about the
Speaker 1: people that she represented, and that went far beyond the
Speaker 1: courtroom into all aspects of her life. So I think
Speaker 1: today we have two people who were directly touched by
Speaker 1: her in different ways, and I can't find the right words.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to turn it over to you. I
Speaker 1: guess we'll save Julie. We'll save you for last, and
Speaker 1: let Ron first, please share your remembrances of this wonderful woman.
Speaker 1: Karen Daniel.
Speaker 3: Karen was an angel who was lent to us from
Speaker 3: heaven for a two short period of time. She was
Speaker 3: a fierce, fearless, incredibly persuasive lawyer, and she was also
Speaker 3: a teacher. She taught countless students about what is important
Speaker 3: in a law degree. She taught me everything that I
Speaker 3: know about wrongful conviction cases. I had never done any
Speaker 3: I was a prosecutor in a previous life and then
Speaker 3: a corporate lawyer. She had tremendous patience, she had tremendous intellect.
Speaker 3: Anything that I do, anything that her students do, are
Speaker 3: all because of what Karen taught us. And you know,
Speaker 3: the ripple effect of the pebbles that Karen tossed into
Speaker 3: the ocean with all of us would cause a title wave.
Speaker 3: She is one of the few people who we can
Speaker 3: appropriately use the term hero. Karen changed the world for
Speaker 3: the better.
Speaker 1: Julie over to you.
Speaker 2: Karen's story is the stuff that legends are made of.
Speaker 2: She was quiet, kind of like the sun is. She
Speaker 2: could make things grow. She was there in ways that mattered.
Speaker 2: She wasn't always just saying she would do things to
Speaker 2: make the world a better place, but she was doing them.
Speaker 2: She helped exoneries with legal matters beyond their exoneration. She
Speaker 2: would help with their medical emergencies, with personal tragedies, family events, celebrations.
Speaker 2: She was there when they made memories, and she was
Speaker 2: there when their heart was breaking. She was the one
Speaker 2: that walked you to the cab when everybody else had
Speaker 2: already gone home from the party or was still partying.
Speaker 2: She made sure you were safe getting from here to there,
Speaker 2: when you were of otherwise been alone on the road.
Speaker 2: Karen was there. She was the sister that he didn't have,
Speaker 2: the best friend you always wanted. She wasn't about money.
Speaker 2: She was better than money could ever hire or buy.
Speaker 2: She was priceless and the changes and the things that
Speaker 2: we all wish we could do in life, she did
Speaker 2: and She passed that on to a lot of people,
Speaker 2: the desire to do that, the methods for how to
Speaker 2: do it. And I know that all of us who
Speaker 2: were blessed enough to know her, who are struggling still
Speaker 2: with losing her or trying to figure out how in
Speaker 2: the world we're gonna do something to prove that we
Speaker 2: deserved having had her in her life.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Thank you, Julie, and thank you un You're
Speaker 1: welcome Karen wherever you are. You're gone but never forgotten,
Speaker 1: and we're sending our respect and appreciation your way. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud donor
Speaker 1: to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll join
Speaker 1: me in supporting this very important cause and helping to
Speaker 1: prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to
Speaker 1: learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The
Speaker 1: music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one