Speaker 1: Bbcsdis Before we begin, I just want to flag that
Speaker 1: this episode deals with adult themes sexual violence, drugs, and
Speaker 1: it contains some very strong language. Hey everyone, it's Maggie.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome you to the first of two
Speaker 1: special bonus editions of Hands Tied. Before we dive in,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you all for listening to the series. Truly,
Speaker 1: it meant a lot to me that you followed along
Speaker 1: with us as we went into Sandy's case, and I
Speaker 1: really appreciated reading all of your questions and comments throughout
Speaker 1: the series. In this episode, I'm going to catch up
Speaker 1: with the Innocence Project of Texas for some new developments
Speaker 1: in Sandy's case. But first I want to share a
Speaker 1: conversation I had with Amanda Knox. Amanda, you might remember,
Speaker 1: was accused of murdering her roommate Meredith Kircher in Italy.
Speaker 1: As a brief synopsis of what happened in Amanda's case
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, following a trial that gripped
Speaker 1: the world's media, she was found guilty and sentenced to
Speaker 1: twenty six years in prison. In twenty eleven, she and
Speaker 1: her ex who was accused of the same crime, were
Speaker 1: freed on appeal. In twenty fourteen, after a retrial, she
Speaker 1: was once again convicted of murder, and then in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen that conviction was overturned and both Amanda and her
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend were exonerated.
Speaker 2: So I am very close friends with the folks at
Speaker 2: the Texas Innocence Project, and I was really struck by
Speaker 2: how much Sandy's case resembles mine, which is odd because
Speaker 2: my case and her case are not your typical women's
Speaker 2: wrongful conviction cases, right.
Speaker 3: It's very different than men.
Speaker 2: Like they're accused of something happening to some loved one
Speaker 2: in their care and they're held to blame. And the
Speaker 2: typical way that they are held to blame is that
Speaker 2: people look at the way that they acted and say,
Speaker 2: are they grieving properly? Are they giving us sort of weird,
Speaker 2: suspicious vibes by the way that they're responding emotively to
Speaker 2: the tragedy that has occurred. So that is sort of
Speaker 2: a universal response to how women get judged in the
Speaker 2: aftermath of tragedies. But what's really interesting about Sandy's case,
Speaker 2: which is similar to mine, is that she was accused
Speaker 2: of an actual crime that occurred to someone who.
Speaker 3: She cared about, who she lived with, but it was.
Speaker 2: A crime that was committed in all likelihood by a
Speaker 2: man who had broken into her home and assaulted her
Speaker 2: husband and her and locked her in a closet and
Speaker 2: locked him in a closet and just happened to murder
Speaker 2: him and not her.
Speaker 1: It's pretty clear that Amanda believe Sandy is innocent, and
Speaker 1: that is of course her opinion, and she's entitled to it,
Speaker 1: but that's not why I wanted to talk to her.
Speaker 1: And researching Sandy's case and refamiliarizing myself with amandas I
Speaker 1: too was struck by some of the similarities that Amanda sees.
Speaker 2: I think people might famously know that when I was
Speaker 2: studying abroad in Perusia, Italy at twenty, someone broke into
Speaker 2: my home and raped and murdered my roommate. And I
Speaker 2: thankfully was not present when this occurred, but I was
Speaker 2: the one who came home and found the crime scene.
Speaker 2: Me and my boyfriend called the police. And what's very
Speaker 2: similar between Sandy's case and my case is immediately immediately
Speaker 2: when the police arrive, they assume that the break in
Speaker 2: is staged, that it's all part of a conspiracy to
Speaker 2: cover up from what really took place, which is, there
Speaker 2: was some sort of domestic violence sit situation that resulted
Speaker 2: in murder, and even more specifically, there was some kind
Speaker 2: of sexual violence domestic violence situation that resulted in murder.
Speaker 2: So Sandy's you know, celebrating her wedding anniversary with her
Speaker 2: husband so like it's kind of a sex game, and
Speaker 2: then she murders him and gets him in the closet
Speaker 2: and somehow somehow locks herself in a closet while being
Speaker 2: bound to such a degree that she has to be
Speaker 2: cut free. Similarly, in my case, you know, the prosecution
Speaker 2: took one look at my house and said, there's no
Speaker 2: way that a burglar actually broke in the way that
Speaker 2: the burglar actually broke in, So there must be some
Speaker 2: kind of someone in the house is covering up for
Speaker 2: the crime. And they almost immediately fell upon me as
Speaker 2: being the foreigner, the youngest person in the house, the
Speaker 2: person who called the police, and the person who they
Speaker 2: assumed was reacting in not the way that you would
Speaker 2: expect an innocent person to react. So in Sandy's case,
Speaker 2: they're looking at her behavior, they're questioning her in the
Speaker 2: aftermath and she's apparently making some inconsistent statements, and then
Speaker 2: of course they're also looking at her behavior. They look
Speaker 2: at you and they go are you making eye contact?
Speaker 2: Are you avoiding eye contact? Does it seem like you
Speaker 2: want to be there? Are you really crying or are
Speaker 2: you fake crying? Like there's all of these sort of
Speaker 2: subjective interpretations of Sandy's behavior where they are viewing her
Speaker 2: from a lens of guilt. They have a gut feeling
Speaker 2: that she's guilty, and then they're viewing her in her
Speaker 2: responses to their questions in light of this view.
Speaker 3: Very similar thing in my case.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm in a foreign country, so I'm having
Speaker 2: to speak a foreign language while I'm being interrogated, and
Speaker 2: there's some inconsistencies to my statements. I think one because
Speaker 2: of just language difficulties, like I'm trying to explain a
Speaker 2: thing with a language that I'm not familiar with, and
Speaker 2: so there's some fumbling along the way.
Speaker 3: But also like one thing that.
Speaker 2: I did lie about very early on was the fact
Speaker 2: that everyone in the house smoked marijuana, and I was
Speaker 2: very afraid. In fact, I was told by my roommates,
Speaker 2: do not tell the police that we smoke marijuana because
Speaker 2: we'll get into trouble. So I lied about that, and
Speaker 2: they use that as a kind of way to say, well,
Speaker 2: if she's lying about that, what else is she lying about?
Speaker 2: And then it unfolds the way it does so, viewing
Speaker 2: young women or women in general in a moment of
Speaker 2: existential crisis and stress and interpreting their behavior with a
Speaker 2: guilt presumptive lens weirdly similar in these cases because like,
Speaker 2: how often is a woman accused of orchestrating a death
Speaker 2: orgy a sex crime and covering it up by making
Speaker 2: it look like a break in when in fact and
Speaker 2: actual break in took place. Like that's where Sandy and
Speaker 2: my case are very very similar and connected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that the assumption is something that I
Speaker 1: really want to dial into because in her interrogation video,
Speaker 1: even the first time I watched it, you kind of
Speaker 1: can't help but have these assumptions of how you expect
Speaker 1: someone to act right after you know, seeing that your
Speaker 1: husband's died, to being interrogated, but then you know, you
Speaker 1: have to remember it's late at night. She has medical histories, right,
Speaker 1: and like these assumptions that we have, just like you said,
Speaker 1: of how we expect women primarily to act in moments
Speaker 1: of trauma.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not saying that investigators are just trying to
Speaker 2: frame innocent people. In fact, I do not think that
Speaker 2: that's what happened necessarily in Sandy's case or in my
Speaker 2: own case. It's just that police officers are trained to
Speaker 2: have confidence in their gut judgments of people. But the
Speaker 2: unfortunate reality is that they are human beings. They are
Speaker 2: capable of making mistakes in their judgment. But once you
Speaker 2: have that cognitive bias in place, you are going to
Speaker 2: interpret really subjective things, like subtle things of behavior, like
Speaker 2: is she making eye contact with me or not? Is
Speaker 2: she looking to the left or not when she's speaking,
Speaker 2: Like maybe you know, in her case, she's looking to
Speaker 2: the left because she's struggling to remember, or because she's
Speaker 2: had a head injury, like and in my case, maybe
Speaker 2: I'm looking this way or that way because I'm trying
Speaker 2: to remember what word it is in Italian that I'm
Speaker 2: trying to say, you know. So, like, there's there's so
Speaker 2: many innocent explanations for a person's behavior, and I find
Speaker 2: it really obnoxious when because you have assumed guilt, you
Speaker 2: just find fault in the person that you have accused.
Speaker 2: And that's especially tragic in a case where we were
Speaker 2: victims of crime before we became victims of the criminal
Speaker 2: justice system. Right, what an utter betrayal. It's just a
Speaker 2: continued trauma on top of a trauma.
Speaker 1: How much do you think those first couple hours in
Speaker 1: the police interrogation set the same for the rest of
Speaker 1: your trial and examination from the Italian prosecutors.
Speaker 2: Well, unlike Sandy, I was actually questioned for a lot longer.
Speaker 2: So I was questioned for around fifty three hours over
Speaker 2: five days. And we've had to sort of figure out
Speaker 2: that because none of my actual questionings were videotaped or recorded,
Speaker 2: because the police claimed that they were never interrogating me,
Speaker 2: they were only interviewing me as a witness, which is
Speaker 2: really frustrating. But anyway, so I was around ten hours
Speaker 2: of day with them in their custody, answering questions, sharing information,
Speaker 2: going over what I found when I came home to
Speaker 2: the crime scene, all of that, and I was told
Speaker 2: from the very beginning that I was their most important witness.
Speaker 2: I was the one roommate who lived with Meredith, my
Speaker 2: roommate who was murdered, who was around her age, who
Speaker 2: knew her comings and goings, who knew her friendships. So
Speaker 2: it made sense to me that I was spending so
Speaker 2: much time with the police to help them solve this crime.
Speaker 2: But at no point was I ever informed that I
Speaker 2: was a suspect. I was never given my Miranda rights
Speaker 2: or the Italian equivalent of them. What ultimately transpired was
Speaker 2: the police accusing me of lying, accusing me of covering
Speaker 2: up for the actual murderer, gaslighting me, lying to me,
Speaker 2: telling me that I had actually witnessed the crime but
Speaker 2: I couldn't remember it because it was so traumatizing, and
Speaker 2: ultimately sort of feeding me this idea that my boss,
Speaker 2: who had texted me the night of the murder, was
Speaker 2: actually the murderer and I was covering for him. And
Speaker 2: so I eventually was coerced under duress to believing them
Speaker 2: and signing statements to that effect. And I am convinced
Speaker 2: that I never ever would have been arrested, imprisoned, put
Speaker 2: on trial, and convicted were it not for that interrogation.
Speaker 2: There was simply no evidence that I had anything to
Speaker 2: do with this crime. The only evidence that the police
Speaker 2: ever were able to, you know, put out there in
Speaker 2: regards to me was that I lived in the house
Speaker 2: where Meredith was murdered, and everything else was unreliable, speculative,
Speaker 2: all of that, and you know, like no motive. In
Speaker 2: Sandy's case, no motive. They say that she's trying to
Speaker 2: escape an unhappy marriage. In my case, they say, oh,
Speaker 2: I basically was trying to escape an unhappy roommateship, you know,
Speaker 2: And it's just where's the evidence where you know, where's
Speaker 2: the evidence of that conflict? They had just been celebrating.
Speaker 2: They were just in the hot tub together. So I
Speaker 2: think that before they can get the answers from the
Speaker 2: forensic evidence, instead, they're going to hyperfolk some people's behavior,
Speaker 2: and if they have a cognitive bias to the effect
Speaker 2: of assuming the guilt of a certain person, they're going
Speaker 2: to see what they want to see. And in my case,
Speaker 2: they saw what they wanted to see, and they put
Speaker 2: me through an interrogation to get the statement that they
Speaker 2: wanted to get. End of story.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's something moving on to the trial
Speaker 1: that you wrote in your book, which I think connects
Speaker 1: directly to Sandy's case, and indulge me. I'm going to
Speaker 1: read it to you, Okay, So often our courtrooms are
Speaker 1: not like laboratories where competing information is boiled.
Speaker 4: Down to truth beyond a reasonable doubt, but.
Speaker 1: More like battlegrounds were the most compelling story, not the
Speaker 1: most truthful wins. And I think Sandy's case to a
Speaker 1: lot of the jurors, you know, I spoke with one
Speaker 1: of the jurors, and to him, the prosecution had a
Speaker 1: better story. It made more sense. They were able to
Speaker 1: show a theory of how the prosecution believed that Sandy
Speaker 1: would be able to tie her hands and to lock
Speaker 1: herself in the closet. To him, he felt like the
Speaker 1: defense didn't have that strong of a story. So I'd
Speaker 1: love to kind of just cure your reactions to that
Speaker 1: and how story is such a big thing.
Speaker 4: When it comes to trials and murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I look at the prosecutions story in Sandy's case
Speaker 2: and I go, well, that's a much more interesting story.
Speaker 2: Compelling in the sense that it's way more interesting. The
Speaker 2: idea that a woman orchestrated this like sex game murder
Speaker 2: of her husband and then very cunningly tied herself up
Speaker 2: and locked herself in a closet. That's interesting, But does
Speaker 2: it make sense? I don't think so. I think that
Speaker 2: what's interesting about that for me is I look at
Speaker 2: what might be the psychology of a juror who might
Speaker 2: connect the idea that an interesting story means that it
Speaker 2: makes more sense, like for some reason, it's a sticky story,
Speaker 2: a story sorry that stays in our head.
Speaker 3: But does that mean that it actually makes sense.
Speaker 2: That's where the disconnect for me happens, because I think
Speaker 2: it makes a lot more sense in both Sandy's in
Speaker 2: my case to just you know Ockham's razor this thing
Speaker 2: and go. It looks like a break in, It smells
Speaker 2: like a break in, It talks like a break in.
Speaker 2: It's a break in, like someone broke into the house
Speaker 2: and murdered somebody and took advantage of a situation, like
Speaker 2: a vulnerable situation. So they said that in my case,
Speaker 2: you know that the window that the burglar broke into,
Speaker 2: he couldn't physically actually break into it when he has
Speaker 2: a history of breaking into second story windows. They say
Speaker 2: that nothing was stolen from the house, Well, what do
Speaker 2: you mean nothing was stolen from the house, Like Meredith's
Speaker 2: money was gone, her keys were gone, her phones were gone.
Speaker 3: They were stolen.
Speaker 2: But because you have reinterpreted the facts of the case
Speaker 2: to be oh, well, that was just part of the
Speaker 2: staged break in. Now you are just reinterpreting actual facts
Speaker 2: and saying that they aren't what they appear to be.
Speaker 2: So again, I find it incredibly frustrating when and I
Speaker 2: feel so horribly for Sandy, and I wonder if this
Speaker 2: is the reason why I am free today and she
Speaker 2: is not. Is that DNA evidence was found at the
Speaker 2: crime scene that the prosecution was not intending to find.
Speaker 2: It was sort of inevitably found because my roommate was
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted and viciously attacked, and the murderer left copious
Speaker 2: quantities of his DNA all over the crime scene, on
Speaker 2: her body, in her belongings, his footprints and fingerprints were
Speaker 2: left in her blood. It was very bad, but also
Speaker 2: it was inevitable that they were going to discover this person,
Speaker 2: whether they intended to or not, that he was involved
Speaker 2: in the crime. And I think the twist with my
Speaker 2: story is even though they found that evidence of the intruder,
Speaker 2: they just decided to reinterpret that evidence of the intruder as, oh, well,
Speaker 2: it's not really a break in. Yes, he has a
Speaker 2: history of breaking entering but in this case, he was
Speaker 2: let into the house by Amanda and just happened to
Speaker 2: be there to commit the crime with her. Like that's
Speaker 2: the level of like twisting that the prosecution has to
Speaker 2: do to make sense of their theory. In Sandy's case,
Speaker 2: there was unknown DNA found at the crime scene, but
Speaker 2: it remains unknown. And as jurors, as people in society,
Speaker 2: we do not like we do not like cases to
Speaker 2: be unsolved. And so if we have a person who's
Speaker 2: put in front of us to take the responsibility for
Speaker 2: a crime, and the police are telling us this is
Speaker 2: the person, we want to believe that the police are
Speaker 2: not just going to put an innocent person, just a
Speaker 2: random innocent person in front of us. Where there's smoke,
Speaker 2: there must be fire. And therefore, I think we too
Speaker 2: are inclined to be guilt presumptive, even in a situation
Speaker 2: where technically we are supposed to be hearing the various
Speaker 2: stories coming at us with truth beyond a reasonable doubt
Speaker 2: at the core of our reasoning. But I think that
Speaker 2: that is a lot to request of human beings who
Speaker 2: want to find closure. We are instinctively drawn towards closure
Speaker 2: and wanting some kind of finality and sense that the
Speaker 2: universe makes sense that somebody just couldn't be randomly assaulted
Speaker 2: and murdered.
Speaker 1: So We're just going to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then I'll be back with Amanda Knox when she talks
Speaker 1: Pixie Girls and prison hustles, amongst other things. Welcome back.
Speaker 1: I'm going to continue my conversation with Amanda. We're pretty
Speaker 1: much the same age, and when I was reading her
Speaker 1: most recent book, I really was struck by some similarities,
Speaker 1: some similarities I wanted to share with her. I just
Speaker 1: want to say personally, like I finished your book yesterday
Speaker 1: and I couldn't help it feel so much similarity to you,
Speaker 1: because I think I was around the same age that
Speaker 1: you were abroad, And like when you talk about Sailor Moon,
Speaker 1: I was like, I am regressing and have a Sailor
Speaker 1: Moon phone case.
Speaker 5: Right now, Yes, girl, And like Harry Potter, and like
Speaker 5: I just like really felt for you, and like putting
Speaker 5: myself in the shoes of being twenty in a new country,
Speaker 5: totally naive and then being thrown into I can't imagine
Speaker 5: being thrown into the justice system here, let alone in
Speaker 5: another country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I have actually another little like thing that
Speaker 2: I'm actually working on like a little stand up bit
Speaker 2: about because we're also have to remember that in two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven it was also like peak of manic
Speaker 2: pixie dreamgirl vibes, where like it was really cute to
Speaker 2: like strom a ukulele and dye your hair pink and
Speaker 2: just like be a sort of goofy girl up until
Speaker 2: your roommate gets murdered and then you become a law
Speaker 2: and Order episode because everyone's like, oh, you're a freaking psychopath.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know. I Unfortunately, we weren't granted the
Speaker 1: right to interview Sandy.
Speaker 4: It was denied because she's in a medical facility.
Speaker 1: But I have been able to write to her and
Speaker 1: she kind of took me through the daily hum drums
Speaker 1: of prison, you know, the structure of it, and you know,
Speaker 1: one of the major takeaways and just reading that is
Speaker 1: that her world has become so small now. And I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: you know, just from your experience, is that a self
Speaker 1: preservation technique? How do you start to cope when your
Speaker 1: world just becomes smaller and smaller.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that different people respond differently. I know
Speaker 2: that my first two years of imprisonment, I was living
Speaker 2: in a kind of state of denial that I was.
Speaker 2: I felt like I was living somebody else's life by mistake.
Speaker 2: I also spent a significant amount of that time in isolation.
Speaker 2: So when I was arrested, I was not immediately thrown
Speaker 2: into gen POP. I was held in isolation for eight months,
Speaker 2: and so there was this weird limbo space period while
Speaker 2: the investigation was ongoing that I was like not a
Speaker 2: part of the greater world of the prison environment. And
Speaker 2: then I was putting into gen Pop after the investigation
Speaker 2: closed after eight months of imprisonment, and then I spent
Speaker 2: another good amount of time in prison before I was
Speaker 2: actually convicted. And I got through it by really believing
Speaker 2: in the justice system and believing that the truth would
Speaker 2: win out, and that eventually, once the adults sort of
Speaker 2: all gathered into the room and agreed beyond a reasonable doubt,
Speaker 2: I was going to go home. I was going to
Speaker 2: get back to my life. So I was just sort
Speaker 2: of waiting to live, and I was waiting to live
Speaker 2: in a very very scary, very foreign, very punitive environment.
Speaker 2: But I was very much mentally feeling like I'm not here,
Speaker 2: I'm out there. I'm writing letters to my family every day,
Speaker 2: I'm writing letters to my friends, every day, I'm reading books.
Speaker 2: I'm just like hanging in there until I can get
Speaker 2: my life back. And then everything shifted for me after
Speaker 2: I got convicted and I was facing a twenty six
Speaker 2: year sentence, and I realized that my life was not
Speaker 2: somewhere else out there, It was right here in the prison.
Speaker 2: This was my life, and I was almost wasting my
Speaker 2: opportunities to live by waiting to live. Like I started
Speaker 2: looking around me and going, Okay, what possibilities do I
Speaker 2: have to live in here? And they were very limited? Right,
Speaker 2: Like I cannot open a single door, There's very few
Speaker 2: people I can talk to. I only have one ten
Speaker 2: minute phone call a week. I only have one visitation
Speaker 2: a week that lasts for an hour, and only very
Speaker 2: specific people can come visit me. I have very few
Speaker 2: opportunities in life. I my opportunities weirdly expanded once I
Speaker 2: looked around me in the prison environment, and I realized
Speaker 2: that many of the women that I was in prison
Speaker 2: with were actually very less privileged than me, despite me
Speaker 2: being the innocent person in prison, and how unfair that was.
Speaker 2: Like all of these guilty women around me did not
Speaker 2: have loved ones who cared about them could not read
Speaker 2: and write, were you know, dealing with mental illness or
Speaker 2: drug addiction. I had none of those problems, and so
Speaker 2: I discovered that I could develop a prison hustle, so
Speaker 2: a sense of purpose in prison, where I started writing
Speaker 2: and reading people's letters for them, helping them understand their
Speaker 2: court documents. And it became this like invaluable resource that
Speaker 2: both selfishly elevated me within the prison, you know, hierarchy
Speaker 2: as someone to not fuck with, you know, like you
Speaker 2: don't want to, you know, like this is Amanda writes
Speaker 2: our letters for us, do not bother her, you know.
Speaker 2: And on the flip side, it was helpful to other people.
Speaker 2: And so the possibilities for any single person in prison
Speaker 2: are very very limited, but they are there. It's just that,
Speaker 2: you know, for me, surviving in prison meant that I
Speaker 2: took everything day by day. I did not have dreams
Speaker 2: of my future. I had a really hard time imagining
Speaker 2: how I could live a fulfilled life in prison, and
Speaker 2: I had to grieve the things that were stolen from me,
Speaker 2: like the possibility of having children. Women who are imprisoned,
Speaker 2: and especially for long sentences, are facing our biological clocks
Speaker 2: running out while we are in prison, and so not
Speaker 2: only do we lose, you know, the opportunity of a
Speaker 2: career or anything like that, but we lose the opportunity
Speaker 2: of having a family of our own. And I had
Speaker 2: to grieve that and try to imagine a life worth
Speaker 2: living that didn't have that aspect to it, and it
Speaker 2: was really, honestly too difficult for me to imagine. So
Speaker 2: I instead focused on how do I make today worth living?
Speaker 2: And I'll figure out tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow, Yeah, And I imagine. You know, Sandy doesn't have
Speaker 1: the same circumstances, but it's a similar thing of the
Speaker 1: connections that she can get with her grandchildren, the connections
Speaker 1: that she can get with her daughter. You know, one
Speaker 1: thing that you talk about which you know, even though
Speaker 1: I didn't get to meet Sandy in person, I do
Speaker 1: know her daughter and I spent a couple days with
Speaker 1: her in London. And you know, Liz really talks about
Speaker 1: and you talk about it in your book too, as
Speaker 1: this before and after where she really remembers who she
Speaker 1: was before her dad's.
Speaker 4: Murder and her mom's imprisonment and who she is now.
Speaker 1: And you know, she talks about similar things that you
Speaker 1: talked about in your most recent book of not being
Speaker 1: able to trust anybody to feeling, you know, a gloraphobic,
Speaker 1: And I think that that would be a great thing
Speaker 1: if you could just kind of talk about your own
Speaker 1: experience of those two identities, you know, and I imagine
Speaker 1: please correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 4: You know, you were talking about.
Speaker 1: This fantasy of maybe getting out what life will be like,
Speaker 1: maybe isn't what you fantasize, and how you sort of
Speaker 1: start to make sense of this new life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I look back on my life and see it
Speaker 2: as as I've lived three distinct lives, right Like, there's
Speaker 2: before I was arrested for a crama didn't commit, and
Speaker 2: then there's the life that I lived in prison, and
Speaker 2: then there is the life that I have lived since
Speaker 2: I've been fully exonerated. And they are very very different
Speaker 2: lives and very different people in a way who lived
Speaker 2: those lives, right Like, since you know, getting out of prison,
Speaker 2: I went back to Italy, because you know, while I
Speaker 2: was in prison, I had this fantasy that as soon
Speaker 2: as I got out, I would get to go back.
Speaker 3: To that life of before prison.
Speaker 2: I would get to go back to being the anonymous
Speaker 2: college student who was, you know, studying languages and doing
Speaker 2: creative writing, and this horrible thing that just happened to
Speaker 2: me that didn't really have anything to do with me
Speaker 2: would fade away.
Speaker 3: Like it would go away.
Speaker 2: And I was very rudely awakened to the reality that
Speaker 2: that was not the case when I got home, not
Speaker 2: just because I was still on trial after being released
Speaker 2: from prison, and the media were, you know, following me around,
Speaker 2: and I was still the girl accused of murder in
Speaker 2: the in the public imagination, I could never go back
Speaker 2: to being an anonymous person in the world, like I
Speaker 2: was carrying the stigma of that accusation forever with me
Speaker 2: from an external point of view. But on top of that,
Speaker 2: there is the realization that the girl that nothing bad
Speaker 2: had ever happened to no longer existed. And I was
Speaker 2: carrying with me a deep knowledge and experience of suffering
Speaker 2: that I didn't have before that had changed me and
Speaker 2: that I now was burdened with having.
Speaker 3: To make sense of. And it it changed me.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I had emotions that I'd never really
Speaker 2: felt before, a big one being rage. I was not
Speaker 2: somebody who experienced rage when I was a kid. Like
Speaker 2: that was deep deep existential angst or I was never
Speaker 2: the kind of person who was triggered by being around
Speaker 2: other people. Or there was this period of time and
Speaker 2: I got out when everyone in my family sort of
Speaker 2: had to walk around on eggshells around me because they
Speaker 2: didn't know what kind of thing was going to set
Speaker 2: me off, and because they had not, you know, walked
Speaker 2: through the prison experience alongside me, They had not been
Speaker 2: in the interrogation room with me, And so there were
Speaker 2: things that I experienced in the real world that had
Speaker 2: like just a little bit of resonance, or even just
Speaker 2: something like walking down the sidewalk and glimpsing somebody out
Speaker 2: of the corner of my eye who reminded me a
Speaker 2: lot of one of my cellmates. And then immediately I'm
Speaker 2: just like back on the prison block, and I'm just
Speaker 2: and I have to like get that out of my
Speaker 2: head so I can just keep on walking to my
Speaker 2: job at the bookstore.
Speaker 3: Right Like, there are these.
Speaker 2: Things, like you feel haunted by these experiences that you've
Speaker 2: gone through, and you have to make sense of them
Speaker 2: in order to feel like you are not just utterly
Speaker 2: debilitated by them, which is the journey that I then
Speaker 2: describe in my new book, which is taking the question
Speaker 2: of like now what now that I've gone through this?
Speaker 2: Now what how do I have a place in the
Speaker 2: world after this? How do I trust people after this?
Speaker 2: How do I trust myself after all of this? Those
Speaker 2: are big questions that anyone who has gone through trauma
Speaker 2: is going to face, but especially someone who has been
Speaker 2: again victimized by crime and the criminal justice system, those
Speaker 2: institutions like collapsed beneath her, beneath me?
Speaker 3: And how do.
Speaker 2: You rebuild a sense of stability and confidence in the
Speaker 2: world and in humanity after having that taken away from you? Right,
Speaker 2: We've all had loss, We've all had a.
Speaker 3: Worse moment of our lives.
Speaker 2: We've all had something happened to us that was out
Speaker 2: of our control. And it is finding that common ground
Speaker 2: that we can see each other and support each other.
Speaker 1: Beautifully said, thank you so much. Yeah, I think so
Speaker 1: often it's hard for us to fathom what it's like
Speaker 1: going through something like Amanda did. But if we can
Speaker 1: focus on the universal experiences she flagged, like loss, grief,
Speaker 1: having something happen to us outside of our control, it
Speaker 1: may help us better understand each other in the different.
Speaker 4: Paths all our lives take.
Speaker 1: So I want to thank Amanda again for taking the
Speaker 1: time to chat with me, and after a quick break,
Speaker 1: I'll catch up at the Innocence Project of Texas and
Speaker 1: hear some of the latest developments in Sandy's case. So again,
Speaker 1: welcome back, appreciate you staying with us. Before we hear
Speaker 1: from the Innocence Project of Texas, a quick reminder of
Speaker 1: where things were left. Back in twenty twelve, on the
Speaker 1: night Jim's body was found, the police swapped the crime
Speaker 1: scene for DNA and took away more than one hundred
Speaker 1: bits of evidence for further testing, but because they were
Speaker 1: low level samples, many didn't reveal much. As we heard
Speaker 1: in the last episode, technology has come a long way
Speaker 1: since then, and the Innocence Project is trying to get
Speaker 1: some of those bits of evidence retested. We heard about
Speaker 1: the murder weapon, the knife that was found in the jacuzzi,
Speaker 1: and how a new test showed Jim's DNA was found
Speaker 1: on it, but so is at least one other person's,
Speaker 1: someone who isn't Sandy or anyone else in the family. Now,
Speaker 1: other samples from the crime scene have been reanalyzed, like
Speaker 1: the fabric that was used to tie Sandy up in
Speaker 1: the closet where she was found, and Mike Ware from
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project of Texas explains what those tests reveal.
Speaker 6: The bindings on Sandy. They have reanalyzed the data taken
Speaker 6: from the swabs from the bindings on her arms and hands,
Speaker 6: and they have determined that her DNA's on there, but
Speaker 6: so is an unknown person's DNA on there. It's not
Speaker 6: anybody in the families. It doesn't belong to them who
Speaker 6: originally found her and untieder. It is an unknown DNA.
Speaker 6: Now it's not redundant of what's on the knife handle,
Speaker 6: which does tells us there were two people.
Speaker 1: So there's Sandy's DNA as you'd expect on the bindings
Speaker 1: used to tire up, but there's also someone else's DNA,
Speaker 1: and that DNA is different to the DNA on the knife.
Speaker 6: There's no reason to believe there was not at least
Speaker 6: two people. I have no reason to believe there weren't
Speaker 6: two people. One person's DNA on the bindings of Sandy,
Speaker 6: another person's DNA on the murder weapon, which I think
Speaker 6: is enough that she should win a writ on.
Speaker 1: That, a writ of habeas corpus, which basically means they're
Speaker 1: asking for a federal court to re review Sandy's case
Speaker 1: because they believe she is wrongly in prisoned.
Speaker 6: When you look at the evidence at trial vs. IV,
Speaker 6: this new evidence, it's very powerful. And then we decided
Speaker 6: that we wanted to DNA test the hair or hairs
Speaker 6: that were in Jim's hand. They're fairly short, rootless hairs
Speaker 6: in around his hand. This is not you know, a
Speaker 6: case where he was shot by a gun from across
Speaker 6: the room. He was in a struggle that resulted in
Speaker 6: you know, however, many stab and cut wounds, and so
Speaker 6: this was a very as they say, up close and personal.
Speaker 6: So if he has a hair or hairs, regardless of
Speaker 6: the fact that they're very short and rootless in his hands,
Speaker 6: that belonged to an unknown individual, once again, we would
Speaker 6: say that it's highly likely that that unknown individual that
Speaker 6: is not Sandy and is not him, is the person
Speaker 6: he was struggling with in his you know, last moments.
Speaker 6: And the judge has signed the order ordering that done,
Speaker 6: ordering that testing done.
Speaker 1: And so that's the first step to kind of start
Speaker 1: to figure out whose hair, If it isn't Gems or Sandy's,
Speaker 1: whose it could possibly.
Speaker 6: Be well, it belongs to the murderer who's not Sandy.
Speaker 6: That's whose it is. Now. The only way to identify
Speaker 6: whose it is is to have an alternative suspect and
Speaker 6: get a profile from that alternative suspect and do a
Speaker 6: side by side and if it's a match, that in
Speaker 6: and of itself might not be enough to convict that
Speaker 6: person because the numbers are not that high.
Speaker 1: I know, in our last conversation you were saying that
Speaker 1: justice is very much a marathon and not a sprint.
Speaker 1: But in terms of these new developments and these new angles,
Speaker 1: where are you on the hope spectrum?
Speaker 6: I feel very cautiously optimistic. And the thing about getting
Speaker 6: back into court and getting a judge involved, I mean,
Speaker 6: the DA's office has been very cooperative with us, but
Speaker 6: having a judge involved and having a formal motion and
Speaker 6: this is a formal what we call Chapter sixty four
Speaker 6: motion for post conviction DNA testing, we've got kind of
Speaker 6: those guardrails that you know, we've got a judge pushing
Speaker 6: us along too, so hopefully that will speed the process.
Speaker 1: Well. I hope that you'll keep us posted on how
Speaker 1: it goes in these results, because it seems like things
Speaker 1: are moving in ways that when the last time we
Speaker 1: talked it, it seems like there's more momentum now.
Speaker 6: I think so, I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We will continue to be following this story as it progresses,
Speaker 1: and I hope we'll be able to update you with
Speaker 1: any major developments. Not to be all like in subc
Speaker 1: but liken subscribe and any new updates will be uploaded
Speaker 1: to the feed. Next week. I'm going to get into
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that didn't quite make it into
Speaker 1: the series, including more on the home invasions that we're
Speaker 1: plaguing parts of Texas in twenty twelve. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: stay with us, and I hope to see you next week.
Speaker 1: Thanks you've been listening to Hands Tied. I'm Maggie Robinson
Speaker 1: Katz and the producer is Maggie Latham. Sound design and
Speaker 1: mix is by Tom Brignoll. Our script consultant is Emma
Speaker 1: Weatherall production support is from Dan Martini, Elena Boutang, and
Speaker 1: Mabel Finnigan Wright, and our production executive is Laura Jordan Raul.
Speaker 1: The series was developed by Anya Saunders and Emma Shaw
Speaker 1: at iHeart. The Managing Executive producer is Christina Everett. And
Speaker 1: for BBC Studios. The executive producer is Joe Kent.