Speaker 1: In the early morning hours of August eleventh, 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 court 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 sketche 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 license. Even though none of the physical evidence was
Speaker 1: a match for John, the victim I to fight them
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 wrench in courtroom identification? So they didn't.
Speaker 1: This is wrawful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction today.
Speaker 1: We have a unique story, but not rare, and it's
Speaker 1: just as tragic every time something like this happens when
Speaker 1: a black man is misidentified by a white victim. So
Speaker 1: there's this double victimization that happens. And it was much
Speaker 1: easier for these things to happen before the dawn of
Speaker 1: DNA testing. Not that they don't still happen today, because
Speaker 1: they do. But here to discuss the matter. As the
Speaker 1: former executive director of the Georgia Andasis Project, she's now
Speaker 1: with the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit. So Amy Maxwell
Speaker 1: without two, thank you for joining us here again on
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: And now the man she represented, mister John Jerome White.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sorry for the reason why you're here
Speaker 1: joining us today, but we are really honored to have you.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm from the small what we like to call
Speaker 3: it a railroad town, uh and matt Chester, Georgia. That's
Speaker 3: in South Georgia. I'm the only boy, six girls. I
Speaker 3: was raised by my grandmother, just a love to do
Speaker 3: things for my grandmother, you know, cutwood and working in
Speaker 3: guardens and things of that nature. You know. Growed up
Speaker 3: and got a chance to experience you know, what we
Speaker 3: like to call Crosstown as you know, that city of Manchester,
Speaker 3: you know. And I kind of got away from my grandmama,
Speaker 3: you know, hold on it, you know, making sure I
Speaker 3: was doing the right thing and thing. And during the
Speaker 3: time all this occurred, you know, I had started to
Speaker 3: do little mount of burgers and things of that nature
Speaker 3: here around Manchauter convenience stores and merchant stores like that.
Speaker 3: I were going in the wrong direction. They were going
Speaker 3: totally against the way I was brought up. You know.
Speaker 3: I all happened to me, you know, and the way
Speaker 3: things happen, I feel like it regard's way of putting
Speaker 3: that putting that roadblock in my path.
Speaker 1: Well, that sounds like one way of taking responsibility for
Speaker 1: the actual wrong that you've admitted to doing in the past.
Speaker 1: And I suppose thinking of your wrongful conviction like that
Speaker 1: is a way to make peace with it. But I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes on this show we speak with folks that are
Speaker 1: pulled completely out of obscurity to be tried for a
Speaker 1: crime that had absolutely nothing to do with But in
Speaker 1: your case, and this doesn't make it right by any means,
Speaker 1: but you were known the entity the police because of
Speaker 1: those burglaries down in Manchester. But the crime in question
Speaker 1: wasn't burglary. It was rape. And you had never exhibited
Speaker 1: any sort of violence and certainly no sexual violence before.
Speaker 1: So it's really a hell of a label to get
Speaker 1: saddled with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't believe it. You know, I always been
Speaker 3: the type that you know, I respected women. You know,
Speaker 3: I was raided by my grandmother, you know, all my
Speaker 3: live that you know, that's all I've been around, you know, women,
Speaker 3: And it was kind of hard to believe that, you know,
Speaker 3: I would be in charge with, you know, the whole
Speaker 3: type crime.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, the burglaries had you on the radar of the
Speaker 1: local police when this terrible crime occurred, and it was
Speaker 1: in the early morning hours of August eleventh, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: when a man broke into the Manchester, Georgia home of
Speaker 1: a seventy four year old woman.
Speaker 2: Well, what we know is that she was in the den.
Speaker 2: She was asleep on her couch, and she had her
Speaker 2: sheets on the couch, and she did have the light
Speaker 2: on in the kitchen, and she had her television on,
Speaker 2: so that was the only available to her. She also
Speaker 2: wore prescription glasses and she didn't have her glasses on
Speaker 2: and someone broke in through a window in the den.
Speaker 2: He attacked her, He raped her, He brutalized her for
Speaker 2: over an hour. Then he ripped out the telephone cords
Speaker 2: out of the wall and went out the back door.
Speaker 1: He also stole seventy dollars in cash from her purse. Now,
Speaker 1: she eventually called the cops and was taken to the hospital.
Speaker 1: But do I have this right that no rape kit
Speaker 1: was collected.
Speaker 2: No rape kit was collected, They said because she was
Speaker 2: so damaged during the rape, The rape was so brutal
Speaker 2: and there was just so much blood. They made a
Speaker 2: determination that they couldn't get any viable evidence. And you know,
Speaker 2: you got to remember back then they were only able
Speaker 2: to do blood typing, So I think that their thought
Speaker 2: process may have been, there's so much of her blood,
Speaker 2: his blood type is going to just get all mixed
Speaker 2: up in there. They may also have not wanted to
Speaker 2: got to remember, this is a small town, right They
Speaker 2: might have been concerned that she was already so traumatized
Speaker 2: that they didn't want to do any more of an examination.
Speaker 2: You know, she was seventy four years old, and I
Speaker 2: can't even imagine how how she was presenting to the doctors.
Speaker 2: Obviously they should have done a sexual assault kit. They
Speaker 2: 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 we'll get into in a bit. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, as Amy mentioned, all we had was serology,
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 is she did
Speaker 1: somehow survive. She must have been some tough lady. So
Speaker 1: what happened next in this investigation.
Speaker 2: Well, I should point out that this is such a
Speaker 2: small town that their local police didn't do the investigation.
Speaker 2: They brought in the state police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 2: And when they were collecting evidence, they collected the bed
Speaker 2: sheet that was on the couch, and the bed sheet
Speaker 2: had hairs. Now, I will say that at trial they
Speaker 2: only thought there was one hair. Turned out there were
Speaker 2: several hairs on that bed sheet, and they preserved that. Now,
Speaker 2: I will say that at trial, the hares were discussed,
Speaker 2: to use the parlance at the time, they were negroid hares,
Speaker 2: and that's pretty much all they could say about them.
Speaker 2: They did a microscopic examination of them, and they said
Speaker 2: that they looked almost exactly alike, that they were almost
Speaker 2: positive that they were from the same person. Of course,
Speaker 2: what that is is a human eye is looking at
Speaker 2: two hairs and their pubic hair, so they're very small hairs, right,
Speaker 2: and saying, oh, yeah, they look alike, you know, And
Speaker 2: back then that was good evidence, right, Not so much.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, definitely not. We did a whole episode by
Speaker 1: the way of a wrongful conviction junk science that Josh
Speaker 1: Duben hosted about hair microscopy, and we're going to 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.
Speaker 2: Yes, so apparently when the man came in through the window,
Speaker 2: he cut himself on his hand, and there was literally
Speaker 2: like a triangular piece of his palm that was also
Speaker 2: recovered from the scene.
Speaker 1: And it's unclear whether or not they did seriological testing
Speaker 1: on that either. But we're going to come back to
Speaker 1: the piece of skin in a bit. But at this
Speaker 1: point they moved on to relying on cross racial identification. Now,
Speaker 1: study after study has shown these are studies which they
Speaker 1: used a control group that has not seen the crime,
Speaker 1: that that control group tends to be more accurate than
Speaker 1: victims or witnesses. So get this. Cross racial identification has
Speaker 1: been proven to be less accurate than guessing. So if
Speaker 1: you actually didn't even witness the crime and were shown
Speaker 1: a lineup, you'd have a better chance of picking the
Speaker 1: person just by guessing than someone who did. Mister crime.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing thing, but it's true. Look it up.
Speaker 1: I encourage you.
Speaker 2: So they do a composite sketch of her attacker that
Speaker 2: she saw in the dark, the only light from the
Speaker 2: kitchen and the television while she's being traumatized. Right, So
Speaker 2: she does do a composite sketch, and there is a
Speaker 2: GBI agent who was part of the investigation. He says, hey,
Speaker 2: that looks a lot like John White. And then everything,
Speaker 2: of course, is often running at that point.
Speaker 1: So John, this wasn't a big town. So I'm sure
Speaker 1: word traveled fast at that point. Had you heard about
Speaker 1: what had happened?
Speaker 3: We heard that, you know, this particular lady had got right.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't think much of it. I really didn't,
Speaker 3: you know. And when all this occurred, they would suspect
Speaker 3: me of doing those mount of burgers around town and
Speaker 3: come to find out that they were looking for me.
Speaker 3: So I decided to just up and leave Manchester. You know,
Speaker 3: I was at the age nineteen then, and I went
Speaker 3: to a little small town and the cordial the way.
Speaker 3: I had some people, you know, some cousins, and I
Speaker 3: to stay in.
Speaker 1: So this crime happened on August eleventh, and they finally
Speaker 1: caught up with you in Decre, Georgia and drove you
Speaker 1: back to Meriweather County around September twenty first.
Speaker 3: On the ride back, they kept on asking me questions
Speaker 3: about this here tick little crime involved in the seventy
Speaker 3: something the year old lady and I had a venera
Speaker 3: disease they called gongria, and you know, being a little
Speaker 3: smart addict like I was, you know, I didn't answer
Speaker 3: the question directly. You know. When they kept on asking me,
Speaker 3: I said, well, if I did it, she got Gongarria.
Speaker 3: They took that, and I like to say they ran
Speaker 3: with it.
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Speaker 3: When they got me back to a County, Jay, they
Speaker 3: took the house and apples being a princes an apple
Speaker 3: blood from me, and they took my driving license and
Speaker 3: a social Security car and everything, and you know, they
Speaker 3: locked me up.
Speaker 1: So they took those samples in order to run tests
Speaker 1: on all the physical evidence that they had tried to
Speaker 1: match the hair. Like we already mentioned, they probably did
Speaker 1: some seriological testing with the patchers skin in your blood.
Speaker 1: We don't know that for sure, but that would seem
Speaker 1: like it would have been the least thing they could
Speaker 1: have done, and had any of it matched you, they
Speaker 1: would have been shouting it from the rooftops. Now they
Speaker 1: already had this composite sketch that they thought looked like you.
Speaker 1: You know, they had to jump with you a few
Speaker 1: times away and you were being held for the burglaries.
Speaker 3: My grandma came to get me out the next day
Speaker 3: after you know, they had brought me back to Milweather County.
Speaker 3: That's when she was in on that I was be
Speaker 3: in charge with, you know, ray Rod reaggravated thaw and murdering.
Speaker 1: Curiously, she got that news before they had even taken
Speaker 1: your driver's license to be viewed by the victim in
Speaker 1: an alleged photo array.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they took my driving license or
Speaker 3: they took many pictures. They say they took a photo
Speaker 3: array to her apartment, but I'm assuming they took my
Speaker 3: driver license.
Speaker 2: We don't know much about it because, of course, you know,
Speaker 2: they didn't record a lot of information. They certainly didn't
Speaker 2: record the photo of Ray and I don't believe we
Speaker 2: ever found that photo array did with John. I don't
Speaker 2: think we've ever seen those photos, so we don't know
Speaker 2: who else was in the photo and how well they
Speaker 2: matched either the composite or John.
Speaker 1: Now, maybe this composite sketch looked enough like you that
Speaker 1: your likeness was already imprinted in her mind, So photo
Speaker 1: array or not, she had been primed to pick you
Speaker 1: with that composite in mind. And it's also possible that
Speaker 1: they only brought along your driver's license rather than a
Speaker 1: number of other photos that favored your features. We don't know,
Speaker 1: but now you had been chosen from this alleged photo array,
Speaker 1: and things started going down how fast?
Speaker 3: A few you know, weeks after they did all this year,
Speaker 3: they performed the line up. It was just us on
Speaker 3: the room and me standing about ten feet from her,
Speaker 3: along with a few other guys. And I couldn't believe,
Speaker 3: you know, it was tick with it because they brought another
Speaker 3: person up there of a place I had robbed, and
Speaker 3: she didn't pick me out, but they bringed this old
Speaker 3: lady nine, and she picked me out. Like I said,
Speaker 3: I'm quite sure they any take now one of no
Speaker 3: other guy pictures that was in that line up to her,
Speaker 3: and I'm the only somebody she had seen recently on
Speaker 3: a photo.
Speaker 1: Again, 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 witnessed misidentification is a
Speaker 1: contributing factor in sixty nine percent of all known wrongful convictions,
Speaker 1: and 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, nineteen seventies, Georgia,
Speaker 1: you were 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 3: At first they gave me a quarter point of attorney.
Speaker 3: But my mom and them, you know, they raised some
Speaker 3: money and they hired you know, sound for Bishop.
Speaker 1: And he's now a US representative, right.
Speaker 3: He was a part of the legislature back you know,
Speaker 3: when I was going to trial. They took me to trial.
Speaker 3: You know, they picked a jury which was mainly all white.
Speaker 3: They presented the evidence. The finger pressed they said they
Speaker 3: collected at the scene of the crime. They said all
Speaker 3: of them were sponged to the point that they couldn't
Speaker 3: get no kind of identification off of them. They say,
Speaker 3: the blood test came back negative. I don't know what
Speaker 3: they had tested. I don't know they tested the skin,
Speaker 3: I don't know what it was. But the crime left
Speaker 3: investigator said the house table could be mine. I know
Speaker 3: they brought up the pigmentation of a black person's hair
Speaker 3: and they said it was all of it was similar.
Speaker 1: Which really this technician was testifying that the hair was
Speaker 1: a black person's and you were also black, which is
Speaker 1: just not that probative. And what was it that they
Speaker 1: tested your blood against.
Speaker 2: I don't really remember what it was they tested with
Speaker 2: the blood. I have to be honest with you. But also,
Speaker 2: you know we talked about the piece of skin, right
Speaker 2: that there was the cut, and when they picked John
Speaker 2: up five weeks later, he had a cut on his palm,
Speaker 2: and so that was another.
Speaker 1: Piece, right. But the item that they tested for blood,
Speaker 1: which the skin, was more than likely the item it
Speaker 1: excluded him. But I suppose none of this matters when
Speaker 1: you have the word of a seventy year old white
Speaker 1: lady who was a victim of a brutal assault.
Speaker 3: They actually to peak me out in court why she
Speaker 3: was only stand.
Speaker 2: The problem with eyewitness identification is it's unreliable, but it's
Speaker 2: incredibly powerful in court. You have a now seventy five
Speaker 2: year old woman who is so traumatized the er didn't
Speaker 2: even want to do an examination of her. Get on
Speaker 2: the stand and say that's the man that did that
Speaker 2: to me. You know, the jury at that point is
Speaker 2: done right. If there's a few little things that they
Speaker 2: can put together, like oh, that hair might be the
Speaker 2: same or oh and he had a cut too, that
Speaker 2: was enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you combat that even pointing out
Speaker 1: that she wore glasses, that it was dark in there.
Speaker 1: It's debatable whether that helps or hurts your client. When
Speaker 1: you have an emotionally charged moment like that, how are
Speaker 1: you going to try to contradict her the victim?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: John, at that point, did you have any hope that
Speaker 1: the jury might actually still get this right?
Speaker 3: You know, me, knowing that I didn't do it, I
Speaker 3: didn't have no doubt in my mind that I was
Speaker 3: going home. I was that young and I was so
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: It broke down and started crying. You know, I will convicted.
Speaker 3: The rate robbery aggravated thought and two council burgery. And
Speaker 3: they asked me, did I have anything to say. I
Speaker 3: just said I didn't do it. When it took me
Speaker 3: back to the holding, said I know, I broke down
Speaker 3: and started crying. I was corresponding with a cousin of mind.
Speaker 3: You know. He just told me, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: God got his reasons for everything. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And he said it was a reason behind it, you
Speaker 3: know for me, you know, it was a reason behind
Speaker 3: and I thought, I just thought that reason behind it.
Speaker 3: You know, I just accepted it that God will and
Speaker 3: I moved forward. I couldn't go through that time, all
Speaker 3: that time that they gave me feeling some type of way,
Speaker 3: and I just had to learn how to how to
Speaker 3: survive inside the penitent I found what they called jail
Speaker 3: house attorney, and we tried, you know, by filing ahabor
Speaker 3: corpus against my lawyer that he didn't represent me, right.
Speaker 3: We they requested, you know, from my transcript and all
Speaker 3: that everything that will pertaining into my trial. But they,
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of mayor whether they didn't send
Speaker 3: me anything but a transcript. They said, didn't have nothing
Speaker 3: else to send me and we buy ourselves assistant accounting,
Speaker 3: and they denied that. So I pretty much lay down
Speaker 3: on it from that point on.
Speaker 1: So at that time, it was much easier to be
Speaker 1: granted parole, even with a sentence like yours, which was
Speaker 1: life plus sixty years. And usually, let's face it, they're
Speaker 1: not going to grant you parole without an admission of
Speaker 1: guilt and a show of remorse, even if you didn't
Speaker 1: commit the crime. That that's that's a detail, it gets
Speaker 1: washed away, but it appears that they may have actually
Speaker 1: believed in your innocence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, after I want to say, eleven years, I came
Speaker 3: up a parole. They told me, in order to make
Speaker 3: parole that I would have to do some type of
Speaker 3: sex offlinal program. And I told the lady that, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't do it. Must white. Unless you'd get in
Speaker 3: some sex offenal program, you ain't gonna get out of jail.
Speaker 3: So they sent me to Metro up here in Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 3: where they had the programs at and my mama came
Speaker 3: up to see, Tay, go on, get in this program
Speaker 3: if it gonna help you get out, even you had
Speaker 3: to tell a lie, and they told me to cry
Speaker 3: till you for getting into safe Defending program which you
Speaker 3: had to describe what to play during the crime. And
Speaker 3: so I told him, man, you know I can't do that.
Speaker 3: I say, I can't imagine what took play doing it
Speaker 3: said crime. You know I couldn't make that lie up.
Speaker 3: So I basically just just gave it up again, you know.
Speaker 3: And uh So one day I came in from work
Speaker 3: and the warden called me to his office at me,
Speaker 3: he ad me why I was at his institution, and
Speaker 3: I told him that they had sent me there participate
Speaker 3: in the safe Spherical program and that I couldn't, you know,
Speaker 3: participlate in because I couldn't describe the crime. So he
Speaker 3: sing on back to the dormitor and some strange things
Speaker 3: occurred there, told me to pack my stuff up, that
Speaker 3: I was going to hospital lie and Augusta, Georgia for
Speaker 3: a year. Proud I had opposcopic survey then on my knee.
Speaker 3: So the inmates that was coming in from work having
Speaker 3: to notice a piece of paper that had all the
Speaker 3: transfers on and everything. And he told me that, said John,
Speaker 3: you wasn't going to Augusta Medical Hospital, Say you going
Speaker 3: to constantly on halfway house. And it totally shocked me
Speaker 3: that they're all finn to get out of prison.
Speaker 1: Had the pro board cut you a brake or was
Speaker 1: it the warden points of strings?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: And no one told you.
Speaker 3: Nobody told them.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's weird. So you got paroled, I guess. And
Speaker 1: now you were starting out on a tough road to
Speaker 1: reacclimate into society. There are a lot of obstacles to
Speaker 1: employment and getting IDs and things like that, and those
Speaker 1: are some of the many reasons why recidivism rates can
Speaker 1: be as high as they are in some places. Not
Speaker 1: to mention that you turned to burglary in the past,
Speaker 1: and so where and how did you start that journey?
Speaker 3: When I first got out, I was up in the
Speaker 3: Atlanta in the halfwhouse. I parode out down to a
Speaker 3: room and house. I got tired of the room and
Speaker 3: house and I moved to moved to Manchester.
Speaker 1: Did you move back in with your mom or your grandma?
Speaker 2: My mom?
Speaker 3: My grandma had passed while I was incarcerated.
Speaker 1: Sorry to hear that, but luckily you still had some family,
Speaker 1: right Were your sisters around now?
Speaker 3: Most of them had, they had married. They moved on
Speaker 3: it was most of just me and my mom and
Speaker 3: my dad was still living at the time, and my niece.
Speaker 2: You know, John got the opportunity to come out on parole,
Speaker 2: but he came out as a sex offender, right who
Speaker 2: hires a sex offender? You know, it was a struggle
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: When I was dining back down here, I was doing
Speaker 3: odds and then work. And one day I was at
Speaker 3: McDonald's and seeing this guy and he pulled his wallet
Speaker 3: out and he had a lot of money in it,
Speaker 3: and me and another guy follow him and robbing. The
Speaker 3: guy got caught up some kind of way and he told,
Speaker 3: you know what, that albumed And I turned myself in
Speaker 3: again and I revoked my parole and sent me back.
Speaker 3: I talked with the DA. He gave me ten years
Speaker 3: ran into what I already had, and that he wouldn't
Speaker 3: have no kind of negative recommendation towards if I was
Speaker 3: to come up with a role again.
Speaker 1: Well, I can't say a lot of people are going
Speaker 1: to have a ton of sympathy for you on that situation.
Speaker 1: But it's like you said, earlier about how you made
Speaker 1: peace with your wrongful conviction. You kind of felt deserving
Speaker 1: of it because of the wrong that you had done.
Speaker 1: And I want to point out that in nabbing the
Speaker 1: wrong guy for that ultra violent rape and robber all
Speaker 1: those years ago, this did a really terrible disservice the
Speaker 1: entire community, not least of which to the victim, because
Speaker 1: the real perpetrator was still free. So now it's nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven year back to serve out this new sentence
Speaker 1: and your old one. And it's not until about four
Speaker 1: years later when the amazing Amy Maxwell became the founding
Speaker 1: executive director of Georgia AND's project. Can you run through
Speaker 1: how you all came upon John's case?
Speaker 2: The Georgia Ennison's Project started in two thousand and one. Obviously,
Speaker 2: we got cases coming to us fairly quickly. But as
Speaker 2: we were working on the cases, I started thinking, well,
Speaker 2: what about all those people who don't know that we
Speaker 2: could look at the cases? What about those people who've
Speaker 2: not heard that we exist? So in two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: first of all, we tried to go through the prison
Speaker 2: hierarchy and try to get notices posted in prison, and
Speaker 2: they wouldn't do that. So what we did is we
Speaker 2: went through the Department of Corrections website and found everybody
Speaker 2: who was in prison for rape and sent them a letter.
Speaker 2: We sent about twelve hundred letters and we got about
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty, so we got about ten percent
Speaker 2: return on our letter. And John was actually one of them.
Speaker 3: I didn't I really didn't even know what to write,
Speaker 3: but I wrote it won a week with soold, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna respond.
Speaker 2: We looked at his evidence and the hair evidence. They
Speaker 2: only really talked about one hair that they compared, and
Speaker 2: so we were under the impression from the crime lab
Speaker 2: report and from the testimony that there was only the
Speaker 2: one hair. But most importantly, we were trying to find
Speaker 2: that piece of flesh. In fact, we called it the
Speaker 2: piece of flesh case right, because it was such an
Speaker 2: unusual piece of evidence. You know, this was a straight
Speaker 2: up If we could find this evidence, we would know
Speaker 2: who the perpetrator was. So I had an intern that
Speaker 2: went down to Meriweather County looking for that piece of flesh. Right,
Speaker 2: we just could not find it. We couldn't find it
Speaker 2: at the GBI, we couldn't find it anywhere, and so
Speaker 2: we just just kept on. It's hard people tell you
Speaker 2: that the evidence doesn't exist, or.
Speaker 1: They just haven't looked at all because either they didn't
Speaker 1: care or they were instructed to ignore such requests.
Speaker 2: Well, there might be that. So finally we went in
Speaker 2: person to the clerk's office and what they ended up
Speaker 2: finding was not the piece of flesh, but there were
Speaker 2: several of their hairs from the crime scene. Now, let
Speaker 2: me just say that hairs are they're good evidence.
Speaker 1: If they're good evidence, right, if the hairs are pulled
Speaker 1: out from the root, then a DNA profile can be developed, right,
Speaker 1: if they can.
Speaker 2: Give us information. But there's also I mean, there could
Speaker 2: be other reasons hairs were there. There was another Georgia
Speaker 2: case that involved hairs, and the theory was that she
Speaker 2: did her wash at the laundromat and she might have
Speaker 2: picked up some random hairs there, which, of course, these
Speaker 2: are pubic hairs, right, Why are you picking up pubic
Speaker 2: hairs at the laundry. So anyway, but we were concerned,
Speaker 2: you know, if these hairs didn't match John, that helped us,
Speaker 2: but it might not walk him out of prison. So
Speaker 2: we had to tell John, we've got these hairs. We're
Speaker 2: going to test on. But so we sent those hairs
Speaker 2: for DNA testing and we find out that the hairs
Speaker 2: don't match John, and we all pile in the car
Speaker 2: to staff members and our intern, Cliff Williams. Cliff had
Speaker 2: been working on the case almost from the beginning. I
Speaker 2: can't where were you, John, I can't even remember where
Speaker 2: you were.
Speaker 3: Macon Stay Prison.
Speaker 2: So it's like two hours away. We get there and
Speaker 2: we're getting all we're putting all of our stuff in
Speaker 2: the trunk because you know, you can't take anything into
Speaker 2: the prison with you. And I get a call from
Speaker 2: the GBI and they tell me that there's been a
Speaker 2: CODIS match and I'm standing in the parking lot going,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh. We were just going down to tell
Speaker 2: him we got the DNA but to hold on. And
Speaker 2: I thought, oh my god, we're going to get to
Speaker 2: go in and tell him he's coming home. And I said,
Speaker 2: who did it match? He goes, oh, it matched a
Speaker 2: man named James Parhum. And at that point my intern goes,
Speaker 2: James Parham, I think he was a suspect in this case.
Speaker 2: So he pulls out the box, you know, because we
Speaker 2: of course carry John's White's box all the way to
Speaker 2: the prison with us, you know, his file, and he's
Speaker 2: going through the file and he pulls out the photo
Speaker 2: of the live lineup, turns it over and James Parham
Speaker 2: is actually in the lineup where she picks John White
Speaker 2: instead of James Parum. So we don't even know what
Speaker 2: to do with all this, right, So we get to
Speaker 2: go in and tell John all of this information. And
Speaker 2: I'm like John, and don't know how quickly you're coming home,
Speaker 2: but you're coming home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at the photo right now, and we're
Speaker 1: going to link to it from the bio. I mean,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Like John is in the number three spot,
Speaker 1: of course because he was the target. And James Parham
Speaker 1: sure enough, is right there in number five right.
Speaker 3: Oh, actually you know ed al Susan, Now was there? Men? Know,
Speaker 3: a roommates that a suit that.
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god. I'm rarely at a loss for words,
Speaker 1: but that's insane.
Speaker 3: It was the strange thing happened throughout that my whole
Speaker 3: journey concerned that he was in the same room up
Speaker 3: with me. And I ended up with his Bible. When
Speaker 3: I got out, it had the name on it. I
Speaker 3: gave it back to his sister to get him. But yeah,
Speaker 3: Amy came down and told me about I was getting out.
Speaker 3: And when they did come to get me out, they
Speaker 3: came back. They rushed back there because they didn't want
Speaker 3: no media out at the institution. They rushed me in.
Speaker 3: Wanted to know it was anybody to come get me,
Speaker 3: and they went downtown and bought me some clothes and
Speaker 3: made sure I was dressed. And when my mom and
Speaker 3: them came to get me and they they me on
Speaker 3: the way as quick as they can get me away
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 1: So, Amy, what were the machinations that you had to
Speaker 1: go through to finish the job and get him home?
Speaker 2: Well, it was so quick. So you know, we get
Speaker 2: all the information, but so does the district's attorney. And
Speaker 2: so of course when the district's attorney, and at that
Speaker 2: time it was Pete Scandalacus, who is now the head
Speaker 2: of the Prosecuting Attorney's Council here in Georgia, and he
Speaker 2: saw what we saw, and of course I'm on the
Speaker 2: phone with him, and on the way back from the prison,
Speaker 2: I'm like, Pete, they got a codis match.
Speaker 3: What are you gonna do?
Speaker 2: And he contacted the prison and honestly, John John's family
Speaker 2: got the notice to come pick him up, but literally
Speaker 2: four days later his folks are on the way down
Speaker 2: to Oglethort, Georgia to pick him up. So John was
Speaker 2: hum So.
Speaker 1: John, what was your first meal? Where did you go?
Speaker 1: What did you what did you do?
Speaker 3: It was like a blur. It was like a blur.
Speaker 3: I can't remember too much of the only thing I
Speaker 3: can remember looking back, when we passed the Prills and
Speaker 3: going out, I think I went to sleep. I think
Speaker 3: I went to sleep because somebody were happening. We went
Speaker 3: by some my sister house, and then we went straight
Speaker 3: to Atlanta, but press conferences and sayings of that nature.
Speaker 3: And I had me some frid greade tomatoes, had some
Speaker 3: some ochre. I've had been worn, it's all. And I
Speaker 3: remembered that night that I got up and I walked.
Speaker 3: I walked up to a restaurant, and this guy's a
Speaker 3: chance just look up at the sky, you know, and
Speaker 3: look at the stalls and things, and just it's well,
Speaker 3: I could just see beyond that, you know, I could
Speaker 3: get a chance to see the sky, you know, and
Speaker 3: the stall and in the moon. Some of you didn't
Speaker 3: very often, you didn't get to see too much of
Speaker 3: why you was inde penal attention.
Speaker 1: So James Parham played guilty. Who since the twenty years
Speaker 1: in prison on this rape right. And then in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, the Georgia legislature authorized the payment of
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand dollars in compensation to you. Now, no
Speaker 1: amount of money would ever be enough, and that's not
Speaker 1: even I mean, that's that number is tiny compared to
Speaker 1: what it should be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, Joe or you don't have a
Speaker 3: conversation law, And I got five hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 3: conversation with prescriptions that I gotta maintain some type of employment.
Speaker 3: I got submit to drug tests and every so often
Speaker 3: I can't catch another fella there though I'll lose my conversation.
Speaker 3: I believe they put those stipulations in it because they
Speaker 3: don't want to get it. They didn't want to give
Speaker 3: me any money, and that it was done for me
Speaker 3: to fail. You know, we asked for a million and something.
Speaker 3: They got it down to seven undred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 3: It passed one body of our legislature. Then it went
Speaker 3: to the other body of our legislation and they they
Speaker 3: rejected it. They revised it, and they agreed to all
Speaker 3: these sipulations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's just crazy to me that anybody
Speaker 1: could look at someone in your shoes and not have
Speaker 1: an instinct to immediately want to help, but rather their
Speaker 1: first instinct is I'm gonna fight this. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna fight to not write this wrong, to keep this
Speaker 1: wrong as wrong as it could be. Is there any
Speaker 1: thing our audience can do for you, you know, right now?
Speaker 3: Give them this opportunity to say what I'm about to say,
Speaker 3: I never you know, go vote. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: Get these unsimpensated people that that's a part of our
Speaker 3: legislation wave up there, so we can't get some of
Speaker 3: the bill pass that would that a and us getting
Speaker 3: you know, the support we need not only me, but
Speaker 3: other people that's in then you know, the similar situations. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I you know, I'm gonna look out for me,
Speaker 3: but that's what we need. We need voters. We need
Speaker 3: those people that's in office that that's that's voting against
Speaker 3: this is a change to be removed.
Speaker 1: I hope our audience really takes those words to heart.
Speaker 1: And what about you, Amy, any call to action for
Speaker 1: our audience.
Speaker 2: Well, I think folks can obviously follow the Georgia Innocence Project,
Speaker 2: particularly about the legislation, but there is also an Axigonnery,
Speaker 2: So if folks wanted to donate to the Georgia Edison's project,
Speaker 2: they could donate and specify that it's for the exoner refund.
Speaker 2: That would be great.
Speaker 1: Okay, 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, I'm going to kick back in my chair,
Speaker 1: turn my microphone off, leave my headphones on, and close
Speaker 1: my eyes and just listen for anything else you want
Speaker 1: to share it with me and our amazing audience.
Speaker 2: I would highly recommend people google the live lineup photo
Speaker 2: in John's case. When you get a chance to look
Speaker 2: at the live lineup, you're going to see how different
Speaker 2: James Parham looked from everybody else in that lineup. And
Speaker 2: it just goes to show how incredibly difficult it is
Speaker 2: to deal with eyewitness identification. I mean, the actual perpetrator
Speaker 2: was there live in front of her, and she still
Speaker 2: picked the wrong man. So I think that we all
Speaker 2: need to be very cautious because, as we said earlier,
Speaker 2: when the Eyewinness takes the standard trial and says that's
Speaker 2: the person, it is incredibly powerful. But we need to
Speaker 2: be very careful. The other thing is how really hard
Speaker 2: it is to come out of prison. You know, even
Speaker 2: though he comes out of prison an innocent man, prison
Speaker 2: does a number on you. Prison physically changes you, you
Speaker 2: and mentally for sure changes you. And there's really no
Speaker 2: support other than the people who rally around him. So
Speaker 2: you know, we've got to got to do better because
Speaker 2: people are going to come out of prison and we
Speaker 2: want them to be able to succeed or they're going
Speaker 2: to What's going to happen is their struggle and they
Speaker 2: end up committing a crime because they're struggling.
Speaker 3: I'm thankful, I'm thankful aiming she know our love and
Speaker 3: her determination to start to NSER project. My experience being
Speaker 3: incost rated is it's like PGSD soldiers. I don't have
Speaker 3: too much trust for nobody. I'm pretty much a loner.
Speaker 3: I don't you know. I don't deal with a whole
Speaker 3: lot of people. It's hard. It's hard, and I just
Speaker 3: want the government to step up to the plate and
Speaker 3: establish our social security benefits, our medical benefits and make
Speaker 3: these things are possible so we can, you know, at
Speaker 3: least live, you know, when we do get sick or
Speaker 3: something like that, that we can go see a doctor.
Speaker 3: We constantly being denied either easier benefit because we were
Speaker 3: wrongly convicted. We weren't given an opportunity to build up,
Speaker 3: to eat, you know, to have no kind of social
Speaker 3: security in our benefits built up, it would take them
Speaker 3: from us. So it should be giving back to us.
Speaker 3: That's what I want.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Kleibern, and Kevin Wardis,
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
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