Speaker 1: In the early morning hours of August eleven, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: a seventy four year old woman was asleep in her
Speaker 1: den when she awoke to find a black man had
Speaker 1: broken in through the window by the light of her television.
Speaker 1: He brutalized and raped her for over an hour. After
Speaker 1: stealing seventy dollars, The assailant pulled the telephone cord out
Speaker 1: of the wall and fled through the back door. When
Speaker 1: the victim finally was able to contact the police, she
Speaker 1: was taken to the hospital, but in her bloodied state,
Speaker 1: they decided against performing a rape kit. However, other biological
Speaker 1: evidence was collected from the scene. The victim helped that
Speaker 1: Georgia Bureau of Investigation develop a composite sketch, and immediately
Speaker 1: one of the investigators said that it looked like a
Speaker 1: young man named John Jerome White, who was a person
Speaker 1: of interest in a string of burglaries. They arrested John
Speaker 1: and collected physical samples from him, as well as his
Speaker 1: driver's lacens. Even though none of the physical evidence was
Speaker 1: a match for John, the victim might to find him
Speaker 1: at first in a photo array and then again at
Speaker 1: a live lineup, and after all that, how could anyone
Speaker 1: deny her gut wrenching courtroom identification? So they didn't this
Speaker 1: this wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction today. We
Speaker 1: have a unique story, but not rare, and it's just
Speaker 1: a tragic every time something like this happens when a
Speaker 1: black man is misidentified by a white victim. So there's
Speaker 1: this double victimization that happens. And it was much easier
Speaker 1: for these things to happen before the dawn of DNA testing,
Speaker 1: not that they don't still happen today, because they do.
Speaker 1: But here to discuss the matter is the former executive
Speaker 1: director of the Georgia and Its Project. She's now with
Speaker 1: the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit. So Amy Maxwell, without
Speaker 1: for there do thank you for joining us here again
Speaker 1: the wrongful conviction. Thank you for having me and now
Speaker 1: the man she represented, Mr John Jerome White. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for the reason why you're here joining us today,
Speaker 1: but we are really honored to have you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: You're very welcome. So John, as we like to do here,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of almost a tradition. Now, we'd
Speaker 1: like to spend some time getting to know you a
Speaker 1: bit like our audience get to know you a bit,
Speaker 1: So can you tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: your life was like prior to all this insanity. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm from the small what we like to call the
Speaker 1: railroad town, uh and matt Chester, Georgia. That's in South Georgia.
Speaker 1: I'm the only boys, six girls. I was raised by
Speaker 1: my grandmother. It's a little do thing for my grandmother,
Speaker 1: you know, cut wood and working in gods and things
Speaker 1: of that night. You you know, growed up and got
Speaker 1: a chance to experience you know, what we we like
Speaker 1: to call cross Town as you know, that's city of
Speaker 1: match House, you know. And I kind of got away
Speaker 1: from my grandmama's you know, hold long and you know,
Speaker 1: making sure I was doing the right thing thing. And
Speaker 1: during the time all this occur, you know, I had
Speaker 1: started to do a little mount of burgers and things
Speaker 1: of that nature here around match House, convenience stores and
Speaker 1: merchant stores like that. That I was going in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. They were going totally gift the way I
Speaker 1: was brought up, you know, I all have it to me,
Speaker 1: you know, and the way things happened, I feel like
Speaker 1: it was Gods way of putting that putting that roadblock
Speaker 1: in my path. Well, that sounds like one way of
Speaker 1: taking responsibility for the actual wrong that you've admitted to
Speaker 1: doing in the past. And I suppose thinking of your
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction like that is a way to make peace
Speaker 1: with it. But I mean, sometimes on this show we
Speaker 1: speak with folks that are pulled completely out of obscurity
Speaker 1: to be tried for a crime said absolutely nothing to
Speaker 1: do with. But in your case, it just doesn't make
Speaker 1: it right by any means. But you were known entity
Speaker 1: the police because of those burglaries down in Manchester. But
Speaker 1: the crime in question wasn't burglary, was rape, and you
Speaker 1: had never exhibited any sort of violence and certainly no
Speaker 1: sexual violence before. So it's really a hell of a
Speaker 1: label to get saddled with. Yeah, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: You know, I always been the type that you know,
Speaker 1: I respected women. You know, are raised by my grandmother.
Speaker 1: You know I'm alive that, you know, that's all I've
Speaker 1: been around, you know, women, And it was kind of
Speaker 1: hard to believe that, you know, I would be in charge,
Speaker 1: will you know, the whole type of crime. Nevertheless, the
Speaker 1: burglaries had you on the radar of the local police
Speaker 1: when this terrible crime occurred, and it was in the
Speaker 1: early morning hours of August eleven, nineteen seventy nine, when
Speaker 1: a man broke into the Manchester, Georgia home of a
Speaker 1: seventy four year old woman. Well, what we know is
Speaker 1: that she was in the den. She was asleep on
Speaker 1: her couch, and she had her sheets on the couch,
Speaker 1: and she did have the light on in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: and she had her television on, so that was the
Speaker 1: only line available to her. She also were prescription glasses
Speaker 1: and she didn't have her glasses on and someone broke
Speaker 1: in through a window in the den. He attacked her,
Speaker 1: He raped her, He brutalized her for over an hour.
Speaker 1: Then he ripped out the telephone cords out of the
Speaker 1: wall and went out the back door. He also stole
Speaker 1: seventy dollars in cash from her purse. Now, she eventually
Speaker 1: called the cops and was taken to the hospital. But
Speaker 1: do I have this right that no rape kit was collected.
Speaker 1: No rape kit was collected, They said because she was
Speaker 1: so damaged during the rape, The rape was so brutal
Speaker 1: and there was just so much blood. They made a
Speaker 1: determination that they couldn't get any viable evidence. And you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to remember back then they were only able
Speaker 1: to do blood typing, So I think that their thought
Speaker 1: process may have been, there's so much of her blood,
Speaker 1: you know, his blood type is going to just get
Speaker 1: all mixed up in there. They may also have not
Speaker 1: wanted to get Remember this is a small town, right
Speaker 1: They might have been concerned that she was already so
Speaker 1: traumatized that they didn't want to do any more of
Speaker 1: an examination. You know, she was seventy four years old,
Speaker 1: and I can't even imagine how how she was presenting
Speaker 1: to the doctors. Obviously they should have done a sexual
Speaker 1: assault kit, because they certainly would today, but they did not.
Speaker 1: And since there was no rape kit, there's no seminal evidence.
Speaker 1: But there was other blood and biological evidence at the scene,
Speaker 1: which will get into in a bit. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, as Amy mentioned, all we had was prology,
Speaker 1: which had its own limitations. DNA testing, of course, was
Speaker 1: not available yet, and I can't imagine collecting a rape
Speaker 1: kit would have been an easy thing to do with
Speaker 1: this poor seventy four year old woman in the state
Speaker 1: that she was in. But the fact that she did
Speaker 1: somehow survived. She must have been some tough lady. So
Speaker 1: what happened next in this investigation, Well, I should point
Speaker 1: out that this is such a small town that their
Speaker 1: local police didn't do the investigation. They brought in the
Speaker 1: state police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And when they
Speaker 1: were collecting evidence, they collected the bed sheet that was
Speaker 1: on the couch, and the bed sheet had hairs. Now,
Speaker 1: I will say that at trial they only thought there
Speaker 1: was one hair. Turned out there were several hairs on
Speaker 1: that bed sheet, and they preserved that. Now, I will
Speaker 1: say that at trial the hairs were discussed. To use
Speaker 1: the parlance at the time, they were nigroid hairs, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty much all they could say about them. They
Speaker 1: did a microscopic examination of them, and they said that
Speaker 1: they looked almost exactly alike, that they were almost positive
Speaker 1: that they were from the same per son. Of course,
Speaker 1: what that is is a human eye is looking at
Speaker 1: two hairs and their pubic hair, so they're very small hairs, right,
Speaker 1: and saying oh, yeah, they look alike, you know. And
Speaker 1: and back then that was good evidence, right, Not so
Speaker 1: much now, yeah, definitely not. We did the whole episode
Speaker 1: by the way of wrongful conviction junk science that Josh
Speaker 1: Steuben hosted about hair Mike croscopy, and we're gonna link
Speaker 1: to it in the episode Bio. But to think that
Speaker 1: someone could compare hairs from a suspect and a crime
Speaker 1: scene just by looking and match them to the exclusion
Speaker 1: by the way of all other potential suspects, everybody else,
Speaker 1: all other people on the whole planet, is absolutely bonkers. Now,
Speaker 1: remember they used to do that all the damn time. Now,
Speaker 1: they mentioned that these hairs were from a black man,
Speaker 1: as the victim had already told them, But what about
Speaker 1: this piece of skin that I read about. Yes, so
Speaker 1: apparently when the man came in through the window, he
Speaker 1: cut himself on his hand and there was literally like
Speaker 1: a triangular piece of his palm that was also recovered
Speaker 1: from the scene. And it's unclear whether or not they
Speaker 1: did zoological testing on that either. But we're going to
Speaker 1: come back to the piece of skin in a bit.
Speaker 1: But at this point they moved on to relying on
Speaker 1: cross racial identification. Now, study after study has shown these
Speaker 1: are studies of which they used a control group that
Speaker 1: has not seen the crime, that that control group tends
Speaker 1: to be more accurate than victims or witnesses. So get this.
Speaker 1: Cross racial identification has been proven to be less accurate
Speaker 1: than guessing. So if you actually didn't even witness the
Speaker 1: crime and were shown a lineup, you'd have a better
Speaker 1: chance of picking the person just by guessing than someone
Speaker 1: who did its climate. It's an amazing thing, but it's true.
Speaker 1: Look it up. I encourage you. So they do a
Speaker 1: composite sketch of her attacker that she saw in the dark,
Speaker 1: the only light from the kitchen and the television while
Speaker 1: she's being traumatized. Right, So she does do a composite sketch,
Speaker 1: and there is a GPI agent. He was part of
Speaker 1: the investigation. He says, hey, that looks a lot like
Speaker 1: John White. And then everything, of course is often running
Speaker 1: at that point. So John, this wasn't a big town,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure word traveled fast at that point. Had
Speaker 1: you heard about what had happened? We heard that, you know,
Speaker 1: the particularly the gut right, you know, I didn't think
Speaker 1: much of a I really didn't, you know, And uh,
Speaker 1: when all this occurred, they would suspect me for doing
Speaker 1: a little mount of burgers in around town, and come
Speaker 1: to find out, that they were looking for me. So
Speaker 1: I decided to just up and leave Manchester, you know
Speaker 1: that the age nineteen then, and I went to a
Speaker 1: little small town and the cold where I had some people,
Speaker 1: you know, some cousin of the last stand. So this
Speaker 1: crime happened on August eleventh, and they finally caught up
Speaker 1: with you into court Georgia and drove you back to
Speaker 1: Merriweather County around September one. On the ride back, they
Speaker 1: kept on asking me questions about this hill jick little
Speaker 1: crime and go out in the sevenites. I'm of the
Speaker 1: year old lady and uh I had a narrow z
Speaker 1: it called Gnarrea, and you know, being a little smaller
Speaker 1: at it like a whole that. You know, I didn't
Speaker 1: ask the question direct you know, when they kept on acting,
Speaker 1: I said, well, if I did it, she got Gnaria.
Speaker 1: They took that, and I like to say they ran
Speaker 1: with it. This episode is underwritten by A i G,
Speaker 1: a leading global insurance company. A i G is committed
Speaker 1: to corporate social responsibility and it's making a positive difference
Speaker 1: in the lives of its employees and in the communities
Speaker 1: where we work and live. In light of the compelling
Speaker 1: need for pro bono legal assistance and in recognition of
Speaker 1: a i g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform.
Speaker 1: The a i G pro Bono Program provides free legal
Speaker 1: services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. When
Speaker 1: they got me back to the Canada, Ja, they took
Speaker 1: how snapples, being of friends, a lot of the Snapple
Speaker 1: blew it from me. They took my drama lives and
Speaker 1: sam the Social Security call an everything, and you know,
Speaker 1: they locked me up. So they took those samples in
Speaker 1: order to run tests and all the physical evidence that
Speaker 1: they had tried to match the hair. Like we already mentioned,
Speaker 1: they probably did some seriological testing with the patch of
Speaker 1: skin in your blood. We don't know that for sure,
Speaker 1: but that would seem like it would have been the
Speaker 1: least thing they could have done, and had any of
Speaker 1: it matched you, they would have been shouting it from
Speaker 1: the rooftops. Now they already had this composite sketch that
Speaker 1: they thought looked like you. You know, they had to
Speaker 1: jump with you a few towns away and you were
Speaker 1: being held for the burglaries. My Grandmo came to get
Speaker 1: me out the next day. Album you know, they had
Speaker 1: brought me back to me. It was a county, and
Speaker 1: that's when she wasn't on that I would be in charge.
Speaker 1: Will you know, Ray Row reaggibated thought in Burglary. Curiously,
Speaker 1: she got that news before they had even taken your
Speaker 1: driver's license to be viewed by the victim in an
Speaker 1: alleged photo array. I don't know if they took my
Speaker 1: driving lives. They took many pitches. They say they took
Speaker 1: a photo array to her apartment, but I'm assuming they
Speaker 1: did took my drive lins. We don't know much about
Speaker 1: it because, of course, you know, they didn't record a
Speaker 1: lot of information. They certainly didn't record the photo array.
Speaker 1: And I don't believe we ever found that photo arrayed
Speaker 1: with John. I don't think we've ever seen those photos,
Speaker 1: so we don't know who else was in the photo
Speaker 1: and how well they matched, either the composite or John. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe this composite sketch looked enough like you that You're
Speaker 1: likeness was already imprinted in her mind, so photo array
Speaker 1: or not, she had been primed to pick you with
Speaker 1: that composite in mind. And it's also possible that they
Speaker 1: only brought along your driver's license rather than a number
Speaker 1: of other photos that favored your features. We don't know,
Speaker 1: but now you have been chosen from this alleged photo array.
Speaker 1: And things started going down how fast A few you know,
Speaker 1: weeks after they did all this year, they befor on
Speaker 1: the line up. It would just us on the room
Speaker 1: and me standing about can't beat from her, along with
Speaker 1: a few other guys, and I couldn't believe, you know,
Speaker 1: it would take with the gout. They brought another person
Speaker 1: up there, but place I had brought, and she didn't
Speaker 1: pick me out. But they brained old later and then
Speaker 1: and she picked me out. Like I said, I'm quite
Speaker 1: sure they didn't take now one of them other guy
Speaker 1: pictures that was in the line up to her, and
Speaker 1: I'm knowing somebody that she had saying recently on a photo. Again,
Speaker 1: we're not sure what happened at that alleged photo lineup,
Speaker 1: as no documentation has ever been found. But I want
Speaker 1: our audience to note that I witness misidentification is a
Speaker 1: contributing factor in six of all known wrongful convictions, and
Speaker 1: in this case we have a cross racial misidentification. So,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, in study after study, cross racial
Speaker 1: identifications are actually less accurate than guessing. But what about
Speaker 1: the robbery victim also white, and that would have been
Speaker 1: the correct identification. It's crazy, but okay, so cross racial
Speaker 1: or not, she had already been primed to pick you
Speaker 1: out of the lineup by seeing your driver's license, in
Speaker 1: addition potentially to a composite sketch that may have favored
Speaker 1: you or you know, pointed towards you. I mean, seventies Georgia.
Speaker 1: You are already known to police. And then an old
Speaker 1: white lady who had been brutally attacked identified you. I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, but I think your fate was
Speaker 1: pretty much sealed. Did you have a court appointed or attorney?
Speaker 1: At first they gave me a quarter point attorney. But
Speaker 1: my mom and them, you know, they raised some money
Speaker 1: and they high you know, the sound pro bishop and
Speaker 1: he's now a US representative, right, he was a part
Speaker 1: of the legislatior backs. You know, when I was going
Speaker 1: to trial, they took me to trial. You know, they
Speaker 1: picked a jer which was mainly all white. They presented
Speaker 1: the ether thence the fingerprint they said they collected at
Speaker 1: the thing of the crime. They said all of them
Speaker 1: was spunge to the point that they couldn't get no
Speaker 1: kind of identification off of them. They say the blood
Speaker 1: test came back negative. I don't know what they had tested.
Speaker 1: I don't know they tested the skin. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it was. But the crowding in best case said
Speaker 1: the house hopper could be mine. I know they brought
Speaker 1: up the pigmentation of a black person's hair and they
Speaker 1: said it was all of it with someone, which really
Speaker 1: this technician was testifying that the hair was a black
Speaker 1: person's and you were also black, which is just not
Speaker 1: that probitive. And what was it that they tested your
Speaker 1: blood against. I don't really remember what it was they
Speaker 1: tested with the blood, have to be honest with you.
Speaker 1: But also, you know we talked about the piece of skin,
Speaker 1: right that there was the cut, and when they picked
Speaker 1: John up five weeks later, he had a cut on
Speaker 1: his palm, and so that was another piece, right. But
Speaker 1: the item that they tested for blood, which the skin,
Speaker 1: was more than likely the item it excluded him. But
Speaker 1: I suppose none of this matters when you have the
Speaker 1: word of a seven year old white lady who was
Speaker 1: a victim of a brutal assault. The ex picked me
Speaker 1: out in court. She would the problem with eyewitness identification is.
Speaker 1: It's unreliable, but it's incredibly powerful in court. You have
Speaker 1: a now seventy five year old woman who is so
Speaker 1: traumatized the e er didn't even want to do an
Speaker 1: examination of her. Get on the stand and say that's
Speaker 1: the man that did that to me. You know, the
Speaker 1: jury at that point is done right. If there's a
Speaker 1: few little things that they can put together, like oh,
Speaker 1: that hair might be the same or oh and he
Speaker 1: had a cut too, that was enough. I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you combat that? Even pointing out that she wore glasses,
Speaker 1: that it was dark in there. It's debatable whether that
Speaker 1: helps or hurt your client. When you have an emotionally
Speaker 1: charged moment like that, how are you going to try
Speaker 1: to contradict her? The victim? John? At that point, did
Speaker 1: you have any hope that the jury might actually still
Speaker 1: get this right? You know, me knowing that I didn't
Speaker 1: do it, I didn't have no doubt in my mind,
Speaker 1: and I was going on. I was that young, and
Speaker 1: I was so inexperienced that I thought I was going home.
Speaker 1: Can you take us back to that awful moment when
Speaker 1: they read the verdict that it broke down and started crime.
Speaker 1: You know, I was convicted of rape, robbery, aggravated it
Speaker 1: thought and two council burglary. And they asked me that
Speaker 1: I haven't dying to say. I just said I didn't
Speaker 1: do it. When they took me back of the hold
Speaker 1: and said I know, I broke down and started crying.
Speaker 1: I was cards funding with a cluse of the mind.
Speaker 1: You know. He they told me, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: God got the reasons for everything. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And he said it was a reason mine and you
Speaker 1: know for me, you know, it was a reason behind.
Speaker 1: And I saw I just thought that reason behind and
Speaker 1: you know, I just it'sselfter that a god will and
Speaker 1: I moved forward. I couldn't go through that time, all
Speaker 1: the time that they gave me feeling some type of way,
Speaker 1: and I did had to learn how to how to survive.
Speaker 1: And inside the contentions, I found what they called jail
Speaker 1: house attorney, and we tried, you know, by buying the
Speaker 1: Haber corpus against my lawyer that he didn't represent me right.
Speaker 1: We requested, you know, for my trans grew up in
Speaker 1: all the everything that will pertain into my tribe. But
Speaker 1: they you know the kinda mayor, well it didn't send
Speaker 1: me anything about the transfer. They said, theyn't have nothing
Speaker 1: else to send me, and we file themselves assistant accounting
Speaker 1: and they denied that. So I pretty much lay down
Speaker 1: on it from that point on. So at that time,
Speaker 1: it was much easier to be granted parole, even with
Speaker 1: a sentence like yours, which was life plus sixty years.
Speaker 1: And usually, let's face it, they're not going to grant
Speaker 1: you parole without an admission of guilt and a show
Speaker 1: of remorse, even if you didn't permit the crime. That
Speaker 1: that's that's a detail. He gets washed away. But it
Speaker 1: appears that they may have actually believed in your innocence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I altough, I want to say allow the years I
Speaker 1: came up a parole, they told me, in order to
Speaker 1: make parole that I would have to do some type
Speaker 1: of sex upon a program. And I told the lady there,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't do it. They must white. Unless
Speaker 1: you get in some sex, it's been a program, you
Speaker 1: ain't gonna get out of jail. So they sent me
Speaker 1: to Metro up here in the Planta, Georgia where they
Speaker 1: had the programs there, and my mama came up and
Speaker 1: he said, go on, get in this program if they're
Speaker 1: gonna help you get out, even you had to tell
Speaker 1: a lie. And they told me to cry to you
Speaker 1: for getting in the sex offending program, which you had
Speaker 1: to describe what to play during the crime. And so
Speaker 1: I told him, Man, you know I can't do that.
Speaker 1: I say, I can't imagine what took play doing this
Speaker 1: the crime. You know, I couldn't make that lie. So
Speaker 1: I basically just just gave it up again, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh So one day I came in from working
Speaker 1: the ward and called me to his officer and me
Speaker 1: he at, mean, why was it at an institution? And
Speaker 1: I told him that they had something there because fanning say,
Speaker 1: spirical program and that I couldn't you know, participate then
Speaker 1: because I couldn't describe a crime. So he sawing went
Speaker 1: back to the dormitory and some strange things occurred. Then
Speaker 1: told me to pack my stuff up, that I was
Speaker 1: going to hospital line and Augusta, George, you're proud I
Speaker 1: had a stop a certainty in on my knee. So
Speaker 1: in May that was coming in were having to notice
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. They had all the transfers loan
Speaker 1: and everything. And he told me that, say, John, you
Speaker 1: we wasn't going to Augusta Medical hospital, so you're going
Speaker 1: to persstantly on Hairway how and it it totally shot
Speaker 1: me that there I was been to get out of
Speaker 1: prison at the pro board cut you a break or
Speaker 1: was it the warden pointing some strings? I don't know,
Speaker 1: And no one told you, Okay, that's weird. So you
Speaker 1: got paroled, I guess. And now you were starting out
Speaker 1: on a tough road to reacclimate into society. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of obstacles to employment and getting ideas and
Speaker 1: things like that, and those are some of the many
Speaker 1: reasons why residivism rates can be as high as as
Speaker 1: they are in some places. Not to mention that you
Speaker 1: turned to burglary in the past, and so where and
Speaker 1: how did you start that journey? When I first got out,
Speaker 1: I was up in the Atlanta in Hairwell. My proded
Speaker 1: out down to a room and how I got tired
Speaker 1: of the room and house and I moved to moved
Speaker 1: to Manchels. Did you move back in with your mom
Speaker 1: or your grandma? My mom? My grandma had passed while
Speaker 1: I was in constrating, Sorry to hear that, but luckily
Speaker 1: you still had some family, right were your sisters around now,
Speaker 1: most of them they had married, they moved on, and
Speaker 1: that's me and my mom and my dad was still
Speaker 1: living at the time, and my niece. You know, John
Speaker 1: got the opportunity to come out on parole, but he
Speaker 1: came out as a sex offender, right who hires a
Speaker 1: sex offender? You know, it was a struggle when he
Speaker 1: was out on parole. So what did you do for work?
Speaker 1: And I understand you eventually went back to prison when
Speaker 1: I would die back now and yeah, I were doing
Speaker 1: odds and then work. And one day I was at
Speaker 1: McDonald's and seeing this guy and he pulled his wallet
Speaker 1: out and he had a lot of money in it,
Speaker 1: and me and another guy follow him and robbing of
Speaker 1: the guy got caught up some kind of way in
Speaker 1: he he told you know what that album And uh,
Speaker 1: I turned myself in again and I revoke my parole
Speaker 1: and m sent me back. I talked with the d A.
Speaker 1: He gave me ten years ran into what I already had,
Speaker 1: and that he wouldn't have no kind of negative recommendation
Speaker 1: towards if I come up role again. Well, I can't
Speaker 1: say a lot of people are gonna have a ton
Speaker 1: of sympathy for you on that situation. But it's like
Speaker 1: you said earlier about how you made peace with your
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction, you kind of felt deserving of it because
Speaker 1: of the wrong that you had done. And I want
Speaker 1: to point out that in having the wrong guy for
Speaker 1: that ultra violent rape and robbery all those years ago,
Speaker 1: this did a really terrible disservice the entire community, not
Speaker 1: least of which to the victim, because the real perpetrator
Speaker 1: was still free. So now it's you're back to serve
Speaker 1: out this new sentence and your old one. And it's
Speaker 1: not until about four years later when the amazing Amy
Speaker 1: Maxwell became the founding executive director of A Georgia and
Speaker 1: This project. Um, can you run through how you all
Speaker 1: came upon John's case? The Georgia Inesis project started in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. Obviously we got cases coming to
Speaker 1: us fairly quickly. But as we were working on the cases,
Speaker 1: I started thinking, well, what about all those people who
Speaker 1: don't know that we could look at the cases? What
Speaker 1: about those people who have not heard that we exist?
Speaker 1: So in two thousand four, first of all, we tried
Speaker 1: to go through the prison hierarchy and try to get
Speaker 1: notices posted in prison, and they wouldn't do that. So
Speaker 1: what we did is we went through the Department of
Speaker 1: Corrections website and found everybody who was in prison for
Speaker 1: rape and sent them letter. We sent about twelve hundred
Speaker 1: letters and we got about a hundred and twenties, so
Speaker 1: we got about ten return on our our letter, and
Speaker 1: John was actually one of them. I didn't I really
Speaker 1: didn't even know what to write, but I wrote it
Speaker 1: won a week or thought. Later day we looked at
Speaker 1: his evidence and the hair evidence. They only really talked
Speaker 1: about one hair that they compared, and so we were
Speaker 1: under the impression from the crime lab report and from
Speaker 1: the testimony that there was only the one hair. But
Speaker 1: most importantly, we were trying to find that piece of flesh.
Speaker 1: In fact, we called it the piece of flesh case right,
Speaker 1: because it was such an unusual piece of evidence. You know,
Speaker 1: this was a straight up If we could find this evidence,
Speaker 1: we would know who the perpetrator was. So I had
Speaker 1: an intern that went down to Meriweather County looking for
Speaker 1: that piece of flesh. Right. We just could not find it.
Speaker 1: We couldn't fund it the gb I, we couldn't find
Speaker 1: it anywhere, and so we just just kept on and
Speaker 1: it's hard people tell you that the evidence doesn't exist
Speaker 1: or they just haven't looked at all because either they
Speaker 1: didn't care or they were instructed to ignore such request. Well,
Speaker 1: there might be that. So finally we went in person
Speaker 1: to the clerk's office and what they ended up finding
Speaker 1: was not the piece of flesh, but there were several
Speaker 1: of their hairs from the crime scene. Now, let me
Speaker 1: just say that hairs are they're good evidence. If they're
Speaker 1: good evidence, right, if the hairs are pulled out from
Speaker 1: the root, then a DNA profile can be developed, right,
Speaker 1: if they can give us information. But there's also I mean,
Speaker 1: there could be other reasons hairs were there. There was
Speaker 1: another Georgia case that involved hairs, and the theory was
Speaker 1: that she did her wash at the laundromat and she
Speaker 1: might have picked up some random hairs there, which, of course,
Speaker 1: these are pubic hairs, right, Why are you picking up
Speaker 1: pubic hairs at the laundry. So anyway, but we were
Speaker 1: we were concerned. You know, if these hairs didn't match John,
Speaker 1: that helped us, but it might not walk him out
Speaker 1: of prison. So we had to tell John, we've got
Speaker 1: these hairs. We're going to test him. But so we
Speaker 1: sent those hairs for DNA testing and we find out
Speaker 1: that the hairs don't match John, and we all pile
Speaker 1: on the car to staff members and our intern, Cliff Williams.
Speaker 1: Cliff had been working on the case almost from the beginning.
Speaker 1: I can't paar where you John, I can't even remember
Speaker 1: where you were makeing state present. So it's like two
Speaker 1: hours away. We get there and we're getting all we're
Speaker 1: putting all of our stuff in the trunk because you know,
Speaker 1: you can't take anything into the prison with you, and
Speaker 1: I get a call from the g b I and
Speaker 1: they tell me that there's been a code dis match
Speaker 1: and I'm standing in the parking lot going, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: We were just going down to tell him we got
Speaker 1: the DNA but to hold on. And I thought, oh
Speaker 1: my god, we're going to get to go in and
Speaker 1: tell him he's coming home. And I said, who did
Speaker 1: it match? He goes, it matched a man named James Parham.
Speaker 1: And at that point my intern goes, James Parham, I
Speaker 1: think he was a suspect in this case. So he
Speaker 1: pulls out the box, because we of course carry John's
Speaker 1: White's box all the way to the prison with us,
Speaker 1: you know, his his file, and he's going through the
Speaker 1: file and he pulls out the photo of the live lineup,
Speaker 1: turns it over and James Parham is actually in the
Speaker 1: lineup where she picks John White instead of James Parham.
Speaker 1: So we don't even know what to do with all this, right,
Speaker 1: So we get to go in and tell John all
Speaker 1: of this information. And I'm like, John, I don't know
Speaker 1: how quickly you're coming home, but you're coming home. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the photo right now, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: link to it from the bio. I mean, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Like John is in the number three spot, of course
Speaker 1: because he was the target, and James Parham sure enough,
Speaker 1: is right there in number five right. Uh. Actually you
Speaker 1: know student now there he mean there were roommates and
Speaker 1: I am a student. They wanted what Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 1: I'm rarely at a loss for words, but that's insane.
Speaker 1: It was a screen thing. Helm throughout that my whole
Speaker 1: a journey, concerned that he was in the same ruin
Speaker 1: up with me, and I ended up with his Bible
Speaker 1: when I got out and had a name on it.
Speaker 1: I gave you back to its sister to get to him.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Amy came down and told me about I
Speaker 1: was getting out. And when they did come to get
Speaker 1: me out, they came back. They rushed back, now because
Speaker 1: they didn't want the media down at the institution. They
Speaker 1: rushed and didn't want to know. It was ain'tybody to
Speaker 1: come get me. And they went downtown and bought me
Speaker 1: some clothes and maybe so I was dressed, and when
Speaker 1: my mama and dam came with to get me and
Speaker 1: they they show me your own way. They as quick
Speaker 1: as they can get me away from there. So, Amy,
Speaker 1: what were the machinations that you had to go through
Speaker 1: to finish the job and get him home? Well, it
Speaker 1: was so quick. So you know, we get all the information,
Speaker 1: but so does the district's attorney. And so of course
Speaker 1: when the district's attorney, and at that time it was
Speaker 1: Pete Scandalacas, who was now the head of the prosecuting
Speaker 1: attorney's counsel here in Georgia, and uh, he saw what
Speaker 1: we saw. And of course I'm on the phone with him,
Speaker 1: and on the way back from the President, I'm like, Pete,
Speaker 1: they got a code dis match. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: And he contacted the prison and honestly John John's family
Speaker 1: got the notice to come pick him up. But literally
Speaker 1: four days later he his folks are on the way
Speaker 1: down to Oglethorpe, Georgia to pick him up. So John
Speaker 1: was hum So John, what was your first meal? Where
Speaker 1: did you go? What did you what did you do?
Speaker 1: It was like a blur. It was like a blur.
Speaker 1: I can't remember too much of all day. I comembment
Speaker 1: of looking back. When we passed the preoson going out,
Speaker 1: I think I went to sleep. I think I went
Speaker 1: to sleep because somebody we're happening. We went by some
Speaker 1: my sister house and then we went straight to it.
Speaker 1: Now but press conferences and saying of that nature, and uh,
Speaker 1: I had me some bragray tomato as some acre I
Speaker 1: have been worn, it's all. And I remember that night
Speaker 1: that I got up and I walked. I walked up
Speaker 1: to a restaurant and this guy chance just look up
Speaker 1: at this guy, you know, and look at the stars
Speaker 1: and things and and just it's I could just sleep
Speaker 1: beyond that ul, you know, I could get a chance
Speaker 1: to see this s guy, you know, and the stalled
Speaker 1: in the moon. Some of you didn't very often you
Speaker 1: didn't get to see too much or while he was
Speaker 1: in the pen attention. So James Parham pled guilty since
Speaker 1: the twenty years in prison on this rape. Right. And
Speaker 1: then in two thousand nine, the Georgia legislature authorized the
Speaker 1: payment of five thousand dollars in compensation to you. Now,
Speaker 1: no amount of money would ever be enough, and that's
Speaker 1: not even I mean, it's just it's that number is
Speaker 1: tiny compared to what it should be. Yeah, well, you know, Joe,
Speaker 1: just don't help a conversation law. And I got five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars conversation with prescriptions that I gotta maintain
Speaker 1: some type of employment. I got the submitted drug tests
Speaker 1: and ever so often I can't catch another fellow day
Speaker 1: though I'll lose my conversation. I believe they put those stipulations,
Speaker 1: and then because they don't want to get they didn't
Speaker 1: want to give any money anything. It was done for
Speaker 1: me to fail. You know, we asked for a million
Speaker 1: and something. They got it down to seven and fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: and passed one body about our legislature. Then it went
Speaker 1: to the other body about Legers station, and they they
Speaker 1: rejected it. They revised it and they agreed to all
Speaker 1: these stipulations. Yeah, you know, it's just crazy me that
Speaker 1: anybody could look at someone in your shoes and not
Speaker 1: have an instinct to immediately want to help, but rather
Speaker 1: their first instinct is I'm gonna fight this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fight to not right this wrong, to keep
Speaker 1: this wrong as wrong as it could be. Is there
Speaker 1: anythink our audience can do for you, you know, right now,
Speaker 1: giving this opportunity to to say what I'm about to say,
Speaker 1: I never you know, go vote. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: get these unsempensated people that that's a part of our
Speaker 1: Lets later wait up there so we can't get some
Speaker 1: of the be a pass that would that a and
Speaker 1: us getting you know, the support we need not only
Speaker 1: me but other people dance and then you know some
Speaker 1: of the situations. Hell, you know, I you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna look out for me, but that's what we need.
Speaker 1: We need voters, We need the old people that's in office,
Speaker 1: that that's that's voting against. This is a change to
Speaker 1: be removed. I hope our audience really takes those words
Speaker 1: to heart. And what about you, amy, any call to
Speaker 1: action for our audience. Well, I think folks can obviously
Speaker 1: follow the Georgia Innocence Project, particularly about the legislation, but
Speaker 1: there's also an exonary funds, So if folks wanted to
Speaker 1: donate to the Georgia Innocence Project, they could donate and
Speaker 1: specify that it's for the EXONO refund That would be great. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we'll have those action steps linked in the bio,
Speaker 1: which brings us to my favorite part of the show.
Speaker 1: It's called, of course, closing arguments, and this is the
Speaker 1: part of the show where I thank you both for
Speaker 1: being here and just sharing this unbelievable, horrible story. And
Speaker 1: with that, UM, I'm gonna kick back in my chair,
Speaker 1: turn my microphone off, leave my headphones on, UM, and
Speaker 1: close my eyes and just listen for anything else you
Speaker 1: want to share with me and our amazing audience. I
Speaker 1: would highly recommend people google the live lineup photo in
Speaker 1: John's case. When you get a chance to look at
Speaker 1: the live lineup, you're gonna see how different James param
Speaker 1: looked from everybody else in that lineup. And it just
Speaker 1: goes to show how in incredibly difficult it is to
Speaker 1: deal with eyewitness identification. I mean the actual perpetrator was
Speaker 1: there live in front of her, and she still picked
Speaker 1: the wrong man. So I think that we all need
Speaker 1: to be very cautious because, as we said earlier, when
Speaker 1: the eyewitness takes the standard trial and says that's the person,
Speaker 1: it is incredibly powerful. But we need to be very careful.
Speaker 1: The other thing is how really hard it is to
Speaker 1: come out of prison. You know, even though he comes
Speaker 1: out of prison and innocent man, prison doesn't number on you.
Speaker 1: Present physically changes you you and mentally for sure changes you.
Speaker 1: And there's really no support other than the people who
Speaker 1: rally around him. So you know, we've got to got
Speaker 1: to do better because people are going to come out
Speaker 1: of prison and we want them to be able to
Speaker 1: succeed or they're gonna What's gonna happen is their struggle
Speaker 1: and they end up committing a crime because they're struggling.
Speaker 1: I'm there, I'm thankful, I'm thankful, araming she know I
Speaker 1: love them and huh determination to start the inner project.
Speaker 1: My experience being accostrated, it's it's like PGS Deep Soldiers.
Speaker 1: I don't have too much trust for nobody. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: much alone. I don't you know. I don't deal with
Speaker 1: a whole lot of people. It's hard. It's hard, and uh,
Speaker 1: I just want the government to step up to the
Speaker 1: plate and establish our social security benefits, our medical benefits
Speaker 1: and make these things are possible so we can you know,
Speaker 1: at least live, you know, when we do get sick
Speaker 1: or something like that, that we can go see a doctor.
Speaker 1: Were constantly being denied even easier benefits because of we
Speaker 1: were wrongly convicted. We were giving an opportunity to be
Speaker 1: able to eat. You know, they have no kind of
Speaker 1: social security now benefits to build dun it were take
Speaker 1: them promise, so it should be giving back to us.
Speaker 1: That's what I want. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wardis. With research by Lila Robinson. The music
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
Speaker 1: for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
Speaker 1: me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason flom
Speaker 1: Ronvul Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcasts
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one