Speaker 1: Hey, it's me Jason Plum and I'm Lauren Brai Pacheco.
Speaker 2: So for any of my listeners who aren't already familiar
Speaker 2: with you, Lauren is the I'm going to embarrass you now,
Speaker 2: the absolutely brilliant investigative journalist and the host of the
Speaker 2: wildly popular series started with Murder in Oregon my favorite,
Speaker 2: then Murder in Illinois incredible, and coming in January twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to podcasts, Murder in Miami.
Speaker 1: Well, I am a'm flattered by that, but you know
Speaker 1: you are one of my idols. Really, the work that
Speaker 1: you've done in the wrongful Conviction space and judicial reform
Speaker 1: is just phenomenal, and Wrongful Conviction is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite podcasts. And congratulations to you guys for hitting now
Speaker 1: the milestone of three hundred episodes. And that I mean,
Speaker 1: the fact that there are three hundred of these cases
Speaker 1: of wrongfully convicted men and women who have suffered needlessly
Speaker 1: in prison for decades is just overwhelming.
Speaker 2: Well, the fact is, three hundred isn't even the beginning
Speaker 2: of the top of the tip of the iceberg. There
Speaker 2: are tens of thousands of wrongfully convicted people. We are
Speaker 2: just telling some of the stories of some of the
Speaker 2: ones we know about, and they're outrageous. Everyone blows my mind.
Speaker 2: And you know, in order to help spread this word,
Speaker 2: I've asked some of the people I most admire, including
Speaker 2: some who are wrongfully convicted, some of the best attorneys
Speaker 2: in the country, crimals, attorneys, and of course some of
Speaker 2: my favorite podcast hosts and journalists, and you, Lauren, were
Speaker 2: at the top of my list.
Speaker 1: I really sincerely appreciate that vote of confidence, but I
Speaker 1: have to say I was so appreciative and honored to
Speaker 1: get the chance to fill in for you, but to
Speaker 1: also have the opportunity to speak with Mark Shand and
Speaker 1: his attorney. It's an incredibly heartbreaking, moving and infuriating story.
Speaker 2: Well, you did a phenomenal job. I'm so excited to
Speaker 2: be able to present this to audience. Please listen to
Speaker 2: this important episode of Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen eighty six in Springfield, Massachusetts, the After
Speaker 1: Five night club was a place where a few shady
Speaker 1: characters liked to hang out. Two of them were the
Speaker 1: Stokes brothers, and on the night in question, they were
Speaker 1: outside selling cocaine, but that night, their cocaine deal went bad.
Speaker 1: A couple young guys approached the brothers and their two customers.
Speaker 1: One of them lunged for a gold chain and a
Speaker 1: scuffle began. Someone pulled out a gun and started shooting.
Speaker 1: One of the customers, Anthony Cook, was shot in the
Speaker 1: shoulder and meet it out alive, but an innocent bystander,
Speaker 1: Victoria Seymour, was killed. Witnesses to the shooting reported seeing
Speaker 1: a blue van with Connecticut plates, so during their investigation,
Speaker 1: the Springfield cops reached out to the police in Hartford, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: looking for some leads. In a completely unprofessional investigation, the
Speaker 1: Hartford police landed on Mark Shand, a teenager who had
Speaker 1: recently moved into the city. On November twentieth, nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: he was convicted of murder and sentenced to natural life
Speaker 1: in prison without the possibility of parole. This is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Brai Pacheco. I'm a broadcast journalist and a podcaster.
Speaker 1: You may have listened to my shows Murder in Oregon
Speaker 1: and Murder in Illinois, Mark and John. I am so
Speaker 1: excited to be sitting in this chair guest hosting for Jason,
Speaker 1: because I have to tell you. In my career, I've
Speaker 1: covered wrongful convictions and stories of corruptions. But this is
Speaker 1: such an insane story that I found myself screaming up
Speaker 1: my monitor while I was doing research for it. It's
Speaker 1: just unbelievable. So thank you both for speaking with me.
Speaker 1: I'd love you both to introduce yourselves. Mark, why don't
Speaker 1: you start.
Speaker 3: Well, my name is Mark Shan. I am originally from
Speaker 3: I was born in Queen's, New York, raised in Queens.
Speaker 3: My father and my mom came in from Panama when
Speaker 3: they were pretty young, and you know, I was basically
Speaker 3: raised in New York. My dad relocated to Hartford, Connecticut
Speaker 3: area when I was very young. He was a small
Speaker 3: business owner. He had several small businesses. Kind of make
Speaker 3: a long story, stort and get to the meat of it.
Speaker 3: I came up to help him with some of his
Speaker 3: small businesses. I was subsequently arrested, as you know, taken
Speaker 3: to Massachusetts. I was put on trial for murder. I
Speaker 3: had absolutely no involvement in. I was found guilty, sentenced
Speaker 3: to natural life without the eligibility of parole, and as
Speaker 3: you also know, I started twenty seven years in prison
Speaker 3: for a crime I didn't commit.
Speaker 1: And John, you were instrumental in helping write this wrong.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, I am my partner Linda Thompson, and Linda
Speaker 4: is actually the one who first became involved in Mark's case.
Speaker 4: Linda and I are partners in a small firm of
Speaker 4: Thompson and Thompson in Springfield, mass I've been practicing law
Speaker 4: since nineteen seventy four, Linda since nineteen seventy six, so
Speaker 4: we're veterans. Linda became involved in Mark's trial when Mark's
Speaker 4: trial lawyer consulted her about whether Mark should testify in
Speaker 4: his own defense, and so we were not directly involved
Speaker 4: in the trial, but we were present when the verdict
Speaker 4: was returned, and very shortly after that we took over
Speaker 4: the case to do appeals and motions for a new trial.
Speaker 4: So we worked on this case for almost as long
Speaker 4: as Mark was in prison, about twenty six twenty seven years.
Speaker 1: Which is very unusual with the wrongful conviction case that
Speaker 1: you were involved from the beginning, Mark, could you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit more about your life in Hertford
Speaker 1: before all of this began.
Speaker 3: When I came up here, I was just turned eighteen
Speaker 3: before this happened. You know, I kind of lived a
Speaker 3: normal teenage life. You know, I wasn't the best kid,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean I got into a little bit
Speaker 3: of trouble stuff like that, not that major at all.
Speaker 3: I think I was eighteen going on nineteen when I
Speaker 3: was arrested. But before my arrest, you know, I would
Speaker 3: help my dad out with his small business. I would
Speaker 3: go back and forth to New York. And you know
Speaker 3: it was kind of short, you know, my life before
Speaker 3: this happened. In regards to me relocating in Connecticut, I
Speaker 3: was not here long before I was arrested.
Speaker 1: But right before you were arrested, you actually met the
Speaker 1: woman who became the love of your life and the
Speaker 1: mother of your third son. Yes, Quentin, John, if you
Speaker 1: could take me now, you were living in Hartford, Mark,
Speaker 1: but the crime that you were convicted of committing actually
Speaker 1: occurred in Springfield, Massachusetts, which is about twenty seven twenty
Speaker 1: eight miles away. You're from Springfield, John, correct, If you
Speaker 1: could just kind of paint a picture of Springfield in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six for me, particularly around the club where
Speaker 1: the crime that Mark was convicted of committing occurred.
Speaker 4: Well, Springfield at that time was a fairly segregated city
Speaker 4: and at the time, in the mid eighties, there was
Speaker 4: a lot of drug trafficking and use, particularly cocaine. There
Speaker 4: were quite a few homicides compared to the size of
Speaker 4: the city, and the police were typical of the police
Speaker 4: around this area at that time. That is, most of
Speaker 4: the police training was on the job training. There were
Speaker 4: a lot of problems with the in the criminal justice system,
Speaker 4: with the process of discovery, so there was a constant
Speaker 4: struggle on the defense side trying to get information and
Speaker 4: evidence that would help the defendant in court.
Speaker 1: It's safe to say that it wasn't exactly a level
Speaker 1: playing field, and that is something, particularly with the exculpatory
Speaker 1: evidence that very much plays into Mark's case. But let's
Speaker 1: actually go to the night of the crime. So shortly
Speaker 1: after eleven PM on September second, nineteen eighty six in Springfield, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: there is a drug deal that goes bad outside the
Speaker 1: After five lounge and there's four gentlemen involved, Charles heavy Stokes,
Speaker 1: his brother David, and they're engaged in a drug deal
Speaker 1: with two other guys, Anthony Cook and Michael Houston, and
Speaker 1: that's when things go wrong. Apparently they're approached by several
Speaker 1: unidentified young men who basically ask if they can see
Speaker 1: what's going on, and in that scuffle, one of them
Speaker 1: grabs towards one of the gentlemen's chains, and that's when
Speaker 1: a gun's produced. Shots are fired, and very unfortunately, an
Speaker 1: innocent bystander, five year old Victoria Seymour is shot and killed,
Speaker 1: and Anthony Cook is shot in the shoulder but survives.
Speaker 1: Now at that time, mark, where were you at that
Speaker 1: exact moment where this unfolds.
Speaker 3: Earlier that day, I had a root canal. I was
Speaker 3: kind of in pain all day, and I was you know,
Speaker 3: I would go back and forth to pick my wife
Speaker 3: up from work.
Speaker 1: Because Maya was working at a beauty salon.
Speaker 3: Right right, probably about I want to say, five ten minutes,
Speaker 3: maybe ten minutes away from my father's bar. So the
Speaker 3: reason I kept going back and forth because she said
Speaker 3: she was gonna be reading fifte minutes. So in fifteen minutes,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking we're going home. You know, I'm in pain
Speaker 3: for a root canal earlier that day, but around that
Speaker 3: time she finally was ready, I put her in the car.
Speaker 3: But if I'm not mistaken, around that time I was
Speaker 3: actually in a bar, and I stopped at a bar
Speaker 3: because someone suggested take a shot. And you know, I
Speaker 3: wasn't a drinker, but I was willing to try anything.
Speaker 3: At that point, I was in the scruciate pain and
Speaker 3: I went home and laid down.
Speaker 1: You are almost thirty miles away at that exact time,
Speaker 1: and you have multiple people who can back you up
Speaker 1: on that story. So how did they settle upon Mark?
Speaker 1: How does Mark get dragged into this?
Speaker 4: It's not clear to us exactly how that happened. We
Speaker 4: know that for this happened on September second, nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 4: and we know that for the next two weeks they
Speaker 4: took statements from a lot of different people. They never
Speaker 4: got a consistent description of the assailant. After about two weeks,
Speaker 4: they developed some information that it was some group of
Speaker 4: young men from Hartford who came up to Springfield. The
Speaker 4: Springfield police got in touch with the Hartford police. Then
Speaker 4: in about a week, a detective from Hartford produced about
Speaker 4: thirty mugshots, and from those photographs, somehow Mark's photo became
Speaker 4: the subject of attention, and it began they begin to
Speaker 4: use it prominently. At the same time, they had obtained
Speaker 4: The Springfield police had obtained three polaroid photographs.
Speaker 1: So this was one of the things that I was
Speaker 1: shouting at my screen over. So those polaroid pictures were
Speaker 1: taken of Mark, not related to this shooting at all.
Speaker 1: But they told you, Mark that there was some kind
Speaker 1: of traffic infraction based on your motorcycle.
Speaker 3: Correct, it was maybe, like I want to say, like
Speaker 3: forty five to fifty motorcycles. We drove to New Haven
Speaker 3: to a parade. When we came back, we all lined
Speaker 3: up in front of my father's bar. Well, there's almost
Speaker 3: forty bikes there, and the cop walked across the street
Speaker 3: and came straight to my bike. He put his hand
Speaker 3: on the on the tank and he said, oh, this
Speaker 3: bike is warm. You've been riding this bike and you
Speaker 3: don't have a motorcycle license. Now, he didn't ask me
Speaker 3: for my license, he didn't ask me my name, He
Speaker 3: didn't he didn't know I didn't have a motorcycle license.
Speaker 3: There's forty guys there, so apparently he already knew something
Speaker 3: about me. So he said, I'm going to I told
Speaker 3: your bike, and you're going downtown. They took me downtown
Speaker 3: and while I was downtown. You know, I had nothing
Speaker 3: to hide, So he said, you mind if I take
Speaker 3: a photovoid of you? Mind if I take a picture
Speaker 3: of you? I said, you know, I'm thinking I'm gonna
Speaker 3: get a ticket and get out of there. But apparently
Speaker 3: this was a part of the whole thing. Is kind
Speaker 3: of blatantly obvious, because you don't toll a guy's bike
Speaker 3: and give him a ticket and take them downtown for
Speaker 3: driving a motorcycle without a permit. First of all, that's
Speaker 3: a warning, you know. Second of all, he didn't see
Speaker 3: me driving a motorcycle. He just walked over here, right.
Speaker 1: And they clearly didn't pick you out at random. But
Speaker 1: one of the reasons they might have picked you out
Speaker 1: were the glasses you were wearing, because the police interviewed
Speaker 1: two teenage boys who said they were at a pizza
Speaker 1: King restaurant on the night of the nightclub shooting. They
Speaker 1: tell the police that six men came in asking about
Speaker 1: a gold chain that was stolen at a run DMC concert,
Speaker 1: and the chain they were looking for sounded a lot
Speaker 1: like the one that Heavy Stokes was wearing. The teenage
Speaker 1: boys described the men asking about the chain to be
Speaker 1: about five seven with cornrows and gazelle glasses and John
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. They also said that these men
Speaker 1: left in a customized blue and gray van with Connecticut plates.
Speaker 4: That's right, Lauren. These were two fifteen year old middle
Speaker 4: school students. They reported that they had this encounter, and
Speaker 4: that does introduce Randy Weaver into the case. And there
Speaker 4: are some notable things about Randy, and he's probably the
Speaker 4: person that the police were actually looking for because he
Speaker 4: was While he was not a look alike, he resembled
Speaker 4: Mark strongly. They are about the same size. They were
Speaker 4: both run DMC officionados. They both followed or used the
Speaker 4: run DMC style of dress and cornrows, braids, gazelle glasses,
Speaker 4: and Randy had a two toned blue Chevrolet van with
Speaker 4: Connecticut license plates. That van was also spotted or a
Speaker 4: van like that was spotted leaving the vicinity of the
Speaker 4: after five after the shooting. Randy Weaver was later stopped
Speaker 4: in Hartford and his van was impounded. Weaver was a
Speaker 4: guy who had they had mixed with the Hartford police
Speaker 4: as a drug dealer earlier in his career, and he
Speaker 4: lived in the same vicinity and so he got word
Speaker 4: that people were looking at him and pointing out that
Speaker 4: he looked like Mark Shand who had already been arrested.
Speaker 4: He changed his appearance, he cut his hair, and he
Speaker 4: kind of disappeared himself because he figured, as he told
Speaker 4: us later, the police didn't know who they were after,
Speaker 4: but they had already grabbed Mark. Randy knew that Mark
Speaker 4: wasn't involved, and he was afraid that he would be,
Speaker 4: that he would be arrested because he was there. He
Speaker 4: came to us later and he told us that he
Speaker 4: was there at the time that the shooting occurred.
Speaker 1: And so that makes it that much more suspicious. Mark,
Speaker 1: that you're targeted out of one of forty bikes and
Speaker 1: you're brought in because you're wearing these gazelles. You match
Speaker 1: the basic description of Randy Weaver, and now they've taken
Speaker 1: polaroid shots of you that then pop up almost as
Speaker 1: training tools to retrofit placing you at the scene of
Speaker 1: the crime. John, will you just dive in a little
Speaker 1: bit about the way in which photos were used to
Speaker 1: in this case misidentify the person.
Speaker 4: We have a fairly definite and also kind of sketchy
Speaker 4: at the same time understanding of that what we do
Speaker 4: know is that the police had somewhere between thirty and
Speaker 4: forty photos that they were using. But what we also
Speaker 4: know is that they were so disorganized. That is, not
Speaker 4: deliberately disorganized, but just not professionally trained. They were not
Speaker 4: well coordinated. So they would guys would go police officers
Speaker 4: would go out on their own shift and take photographs
Speaker 4: with them, find witnesses, take statements, show the photographs, and
Speaker 4: not make good records either of what photographs they were showing,
Speaker 4: what combinations we call them arrays. But they didn't do
Speaker 4: that systematically, and they in particular, they didn't make a
Speaker 4: record of negative responses. They would not write that down
Speaker 4: because that didn't help their case. At this point, they
Speaker 4: were not really investigating as much as they were putting
Speaker 4: together a case against Mark shand.
Speaker 1: So tunnel vision had definitely set.
Speaker 4: In yes, And since they weren't keeping good records, their
Speaker 4: work could be adjusted as their information developed and as
Speaker 4: they moved along. So if they had had an unsatisfactory
Speaker 4: interview or an unsatisfactory showing with a witness, they didn't
Speaker 4: need to deal with that because they didn't necessarily keep
Speaker 4: a record of it, and they could go back to
Speaker 4: that witness later with a different set of photographs and
Speaker 4: come up with an identification.
Speaker 1: Which led to your arrest. Mark, can you take me
Speaker 1: to the exact day and time of your arrest and
Speaker 1: how that went down.
Speaker 3: That day, I stopped by to talk to my dad.
Speaker 3: He was in the bod door of various things, and
Speaker 3: I spoke with him a little bit. I went to
Speaker 3: talk to my sister, not doing nothing in particularly. One
Speaker 3: guy drove by and he told me, he says, you know,
Speaker 3: they call me Cash was my nickname, and he said Cash. Listen,
Speaker 3: I don't know, keep looking at you. The driving back
Speaker 3: forth looking at you. I said, okay, whatever. So I
Speaker 3: saw them go this way, you know, I'm talking or
Speaker 3: whatever to someone, and the cop car comes back this
Speaker 3: way and it stops, and you know, they an officer
Speaker 3: got out and he said are you Mark. Shannon said yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, he says you're under the rest for murder.
Speaker 3: I was like what, And he pulled out his handcuffs
Speaker 3: and a couple of people heard it. Like you know,
Speaker 3: people thought like we was being punked or something, or
Speaker 3: you know, it's a TV show. Nobody thought it was serious.
Speaker 3: I didn't, you know, I really thought it was a joke.
Speaker 3: I said, well, would you say he said you're under
Speaker 3: rest for murder?
Speaker 1: Well, tell me tell me about the interrogation that took place.
Speaker 3: Well, it wasn't much of an interrogation. It was blatantly
Speaker 3: obvious that the Harford cops didn't know much of what's
Speaker 3: going on. You know, you could tell it was a
Speaker 3: thing where they was just told like, you know, some
Speaker 3: youth from here, and they went and snatched me. And
Speaker 3: I could see that they were just holding me and waiting,
Speaker 3: and then so could Turney by the name of Francis Bloom,
Speaker 3: and two officers came in. And it wasn't much of
Speaker 3: an arrogation. You know. He told me stuff like I
Speaker 3: know you was in Springfield and you're a you're a
Speaker 3: no good, murdering piece of shit, and I'm gonna put
Speaker 3: you away, and you know, just it was. It's a
Speaker 3: little foggy now, but he was basically telling me. He
Speaker 3: wasn't asking me anything. He's basically telling me he knew
Speaker 3: I did it, and I'm gonna get you for murder,
Speaker 3: and why'd you come up to Springfield? And that said,
Speaker 3: I've never been in Springfield, called me a liar, and
Speaker 3: you know that sort of thing. So it wasn't an
Speaker 3: interrogation per se. They didn't sit me down and say,
Speaker 3: have you ever been to Springfield? Do your own a van?
Speaker 3: None of it wasn't that kind of thing. It was
Speaker 3: more accusatory. You know. He was screaming at me. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it was for effect or not. And
Speaker 3: I think he was a little flustered that I wasn't,
Speaker 3: you know, flustered. I think that bothered him a little because,
Speaker 3: quite frankly, I wasn't fluster because I didn't kill anybody.
Speaker 3: So I'm thinking this is gonna blow over, Like maybe
Speaker 3: they'll come and be like, Mark, you know, we made mistake.
Speaker 3: Maybe they'll get me up there, and some people look
Speaker 3: at me back, that's not the guy, and I'll be
Speaker 3: home tomorrow. I'll be out tomorrow. And I didn't come
Speaker 3: home for three decades.
Speaker 1: So you're arrested, you're in jail, and then at some
Speaker 1: point a lineup is suggested and you say, let's do it.
Speaker 1: You know, the lineup is presented to Heavy Stokes, who
Speaker 1: was one of the guys involved in the cocaine deal.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that lineup, Mark, So.
Speaker 3: The lineup was really suggestive and it was beyond suggestive.
Speaker 3: John probably could speak to it better than I can.
Speaker 3: But within this lineup, it was myself. It was an
Speaker 3: officer that had previously arrested the guy that was doing
Speaker 3: a lineup. One of them saved his life by sticking
Speaker 3: his finger in a bullet hole, so he knew that guy.
Speaker 3: It was another guy who grew up with him, another
Speaker 3: guy who he knew from the neighborhood, and it was me.
Speaker 3: So it was quite obviously, you know, it was quite
Speaker 3: obviously who he was supposed to point out. I mean,
Speaker 3: he know the cop didn't come from Harvard to kill anyone.
Speaker 3: He knew the other cop who stuck his finger in
Speaker 3: his bullet hole didn't do it. He knew the guy
Speaker 3: he knew from the neighborhood didn't do it. You know.
Speaker 3: So the lineup was really suggestive, and you know, I
Speaker 3: guess I was the only guy in there that could
Speaker 3: have been, you know, in his mind, could have been
Speaker 3: responsible for it.
Speaker 1: So exactly that that was another point where I'm screaming
Speaker 1: at my screen. You're the only guy in that lineup
Speaker 1: that the person who's supposed to identify you doesn't.
Speaker 3: Know, right exactly, That's right.
Speaker 4: The lineup was a staged lineup. It was designed to
Speaker 4: produce an identification of Mark. The second thing that was
Speaker 4: at work here is the practice of rewarding witnesses. Nobody
Speaker 4: else gets to do that. We the rest of us,
Speaker 4: have to get our witnesses the honest way. That is,
Speaker 4: we want you to tell us what you know. We
Speaker 4: want you to testify to what you know, and if
Speaker 4: you do that, all we can do is say thank you.
Speaker 4: The police and the prosecutors can say to a witness,
Speaker 4: you are facing charges in another case. If you testify
Speaker 4: for us in this case, we'll give you a break
Speaker 4: on the prosecution we have against you in that other case.
Speaker 4: So that witness is compromised by that offer of leniency
Speaker 4: in exchange for testimony. That's a common standard practice around
Speaker 4: the United States, and it is a terrible problem.
Speaker 1: And that definitely was on display in the trial because
Speaker 1: there were six witnesses who testified against you, and they
Speaker 1: all had incentive to identify you in one form or another.
Speaker 1: Take me to the trial, John, I know that Linda,
Speaker 1: your partner, was actually at the trial at some point.
Speaker 1: How would you give me a brief synopsis of the trial.
Speaker 1: How would you categorize it.
Speaker 4: As we've noted, there were six eyewitnesses who claimed that
Speaker 4: they were at the after five and saw this brief
Speaker 4: flurry of events. It was a pretty straightforward case in
Speaker 4: that sense. The big handicap to the defense was that
Speaker 4: they were not Roy Anderson was not aware of silent
Speaker 4: arrangements for testimony. For example, not only Heavy Stokes, who
Speaker 4: was one of the victims, but Anthony Cook, who was
Speaker 4: also a victim that he was shot, and his shooting
Speaker 4: was one of the charges that Mark was tried on.
Speaker 4: Both of them had to be bribed, They had to
Speaker 4: be rewarded to testify. The victims wouldn't testify without a deal.
Speaker 4: That's how thoroughly corrupt this trial was.
Speaker 1: So the trial takes place between November ninth and twentieth
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighty seven, and the prosecutor is the Assistant
Speaker 1: District Attorney, Francis Bloom, who has a rather spotty history
Speaker 1: in terms of protocol. You're going into trial knowing that
Speaker 1: there is no physical evidence linking you to any of
Speaker 1: the crimes that took place on September second, nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: because you were thirty miles away at the time. Did
Speaker 1: you go into trial fairly confident.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of thought that, you know, it'll come out,
Speaker 3: you know, it'll all come out and to wash and
Speaker 3: one of the Drews, two or the Drews, someone had
Speaker 3: judged it. Someone will see that this is not driving,
Speaker 3: it's not you know, it's not coming together.
Speaker 1: But Mark, you had an alibi that was confirmed by
Speaker 1: seven people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that should have been convincing as well.
Speaker 1: You're right, you had a dental procedure that was done
Speaker 1: that day. You weren't up for clubbing that night or
Speaker 1: driving half an hour? So how does that fall apart
Speaker 1: in the courtroom?
Speaker 4: First of all, eyewitness testimony is special, a special kind
Speaker 4: of testimony. The jurors are inclined to look at them
Speaker 4: sympathetically and expect them to know the truth. That can
Speaker 4: be very convincing. Just one person, six of them all
Speaker 4: saying the same thing. That's powerful evidence.
Speaker 1: But Mark has seven eyewitnesses who back up as alibi.
Speaker 1: How does that fall apart in court?
Speaker 4: There are two basic problems with an alibi. Usually your
Speaker 4: alibi witnesses are friends or family. Okay, So one of
Speaker 4: Mark's problems was that he was not involved in this crime. Therefore,
Speaker 4: he couldn't say when it happened or what he was doing,
Speaker 4: where it was, and so forth. This happened on September second,
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty six. Mark was arrested October twenty ninth, So
Speaker 4: it's almost two full months before Mark is aware that
Speaker 4: he's even a suspect. And what do they do. They
Speaker 4: notify the people that they were with to let them
Speaker 4: know that there's a problem that they need help with.
Speaker 4: And so Maya is calling her sisters and other family
Speaker 4: members and saying, do you remember September second? Do you
Speaker 4: remember what we were doing? And so they talk about
Speaker 4: what they were doing. They all discuss it, and they
Speaker 4: get it down and then they go tell the lawyer. Well,
Speaker 4: in the trial, after they've given their testimony, the cross
Speaker 4: examination goes something like this. When Maya's cross examined, the
Speaker 4: prosecutor says, so, when you found out when Mark was charged,
Speaker 4: you contacted all of these witnesses, didn't you, Yes? And
Speaker 4: you told them when this happened. Yes, I did. And
Speaker 4: you all discussed your testimony, didn't you, Yes? And you
Speaker 4: all decided that you had an alibi for Mark, didn't
Speaker 4: you yes? Okay, And that's all true, But it sounds
Speaker 4: like they all got together and cooked up a story
Speaker 4: for him.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Mark, take me to the moment when the
Speaker 1: verdict is decided.
Speaker 3: Well, uh, you know, in true dramatic fashion, they asked
Speaker 3: me to stand. They said, Mark shamt please stan and
Speaker 3: they read the verdict. They said, you know, basically guilty
Speaker 3: on all accounts. And I can recall distinctively. I almost
Speaker 3: didn't hit anything else after that, but my mother's scream,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Do you remember turning? Was Maya in the courtroom when
Speaker 1: they announced the verdict.
Speaker 3: My whole family. Yeah, my whole family's in the court room.
Speaker 3: I kind of couldn't turn around to him because I
Speaker 3: didn't want to look at my mother. I heard her
Speaker 3: screams and it bothered me so much. I didn't want
Speaker 3: to look at her on top of her hearing her,
Speaker 3: you know, So I just stared straight ahead. I just
Speaker 3: heard him screaming, and I glanced back one time and
Speaker 3: it was kind of holding my mom up, and I
Speaker 3: just started looking straight ahead again. I didn't want to
Speaker 3: look back, you know. Yeah. So yeah, that's what I
Speaker 3: remember most. And the judge was explaining to me what
Speaker 3: had just happened, and do I understand what had just happened?
Speaker 3: And yeah, you know, at that moment when I went myself,
Speaker 3: I kind of really came to the realization that I
Speaker 3: was excuse me, French, but I was fucked. You know.
Speaker 3: I really came to the conclusion like, wow, you know,
Speaker 3: this is the culmination of what the fuck was going
Speaker 3: on in the back back scenes of whatever the hell
Speaker 3: Bloom had going on. But I kept saying to myself, like,
Speaker 3: they really convicted me of this crime. I just couldn't
Speaker 3: believe it. I you know, I had to like come
Speaker 3: to terms with that, you know, And that took me
Speaker 3: literally twenty seven years to come to terms with that.
Speaker 3: You know, I never really, like you know, said, okay,
Speaker 3: all right, you convicted. That never happened. Ever, literally every day,
Speaker 3: every moment for twenty seven years, I was in disbelief
Speaker 3: in what had happened. I really was.
Speaker 1: So you end up serving twenty seven years in prison,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile Maya is at home and she never gives
Speaker 1: up on you. Tell me about your support system while
Speaker 1: you were inside, and how Maya created a home for
Speaker 1: your three sons.
Speaker 3: Well, oh my gosh, that's immeasurable. I mean, right from
Speaker 3: the beginning, she supported me. She you know, she came
Speaker 3: in to see me in jail. She would get my
Speaker 3: other two sons from previous relationships and made sure they
Speaker 3: got to meet each other and knew each other and
Speaker 3: grew up together step fast. And she she was there
Speaker 3: for me the entire time. You know, I would see
Speaker 3: her like every week, unless it was like a snowstorm
Speaker 3: or death in the family. I want to say it
Speaker 3: was like an hour and a half to our ride sometime,
Speaker 3: but nothing would stop her. She you know, she kept
Speaker 3: my family together. She supported me, She did what she
Speaker 3: could financially. You know, we would scrape up money to
Speaker 3: pay investigators and attorneys. And you know, she was dead
Speaker 3: when I was arrested, and she was dead to day
Speaker 3: stepped foot out of it. So you know, you can't
Speaker 3: say enough about what she did.
Speaker 1: John, Do you want to walk me through the post
Speaker 1: conviction litigation.
Speaker 4: We had information early on about Randy Weaver and Tracy Fisher,
Speaker 4: in particular, those two witnesses. Those two men were being
Speaker 4: talked about and were saying things that implicated them and
Speaker 4: exonerated Mark. We couldn't find Randy Weaver, we found Tracy
Speaker 4: Fisher because he was in prison. We believed that Weaver
Speaker 4: and and Fisher were key witnesses in Mark's case, but
Speaker 4: they were we couldn't get any evidence from them. We
Speaker 4: were in the position now where we were doing the
Speaker 4: appeal of Mark's conviction, saying that the trial was unfair,
Speaker 4: but we were also investigating to try to discover additional
Speaker 4: evidence to show that he was not guilty. That was
Speaker 4: the time when the falsified report surfaced, the two page
Speaker 4: report that showed that Charles Stokes had described someone who
Speaker 4: could not possibly have been Mark. That was on the
Speaker 4: second page of a two page document that had been
Speaker 4: altered to look like a one page document.
Speaker 1: So you have this information that was hidden from Mark's
Speaker 1: original defense attorney. What did you do next?
Speaker 4: So we went back to the trial judge Judge Murphy,
Speaker 4: and Judge Murphy laughed it off. He said, well, I
Speaker 4: don't understand why the police did this, but the defense
Speaker 4: had all that information anyway, which was just false, and
Speaker 4: that's the way the motion for the new trial went.
Speaker 4: We lost that and then we appealed. Of course, each
Speaker 4: time we got a ruling like that, we had to go.
Speaker 4: I went and met with Mark and had to explain
Speaker 4: to him how we had lost. So by that time,
Speaker 4: by the time we finished that litigation, it was nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety five. I had to say to Mark, this is it.
Speaker 4: This is the last thing. There's nothing left to do.
Speaker 4: You're stuck here. And we both I remember we held
Speaker 4: hands and cried. Mark said to me, John, I'm not
Speaker 4: giving up. I do not accept this. There's got to
Speaker 4: be some way. I'm not giving up. And I said, Mark,
Speaker 4: there's only one thing that's going to get you out here.
Speaker 4: It's going to be new evidence. We have to get
Speaker 4: new evidence. And it looked really, really bleak until Jim
Speaker 4: McCloskey and Centurion Ministries finally said we're going to take
Speaker 4: the case. Jim McCloskey talked Randy Weaver into coming in
Speaker 4: and making sworn statements that implicated him. That is, Randy
Speaker 4: Weaver was willing to say. I was there at the
Speaker 4: after five when the shooting occurred, and I know Mark
Speaker 4: Shand and he wasn't there.
Speaker 3: Centario took a while to come full circle and accept
Speaker 3: my case. They didn't accept it initially, you know, for
Speaker 3: whatever reason, maybe they weren't fully convinced. I mean, their
Speaker 3: reputable organization and their name carries a lot of weight,
Speaker 3: so I understand how they have to be one hundred
Speaker 3: percent convinced of your innocence before they take your case.
Speaker 3: And as I mentioned, they did their due diligence investigate
Speaker 3: the case before they literally told me we're accept officially
Speaker 3: accepting your case. And from the time they did that
Speaker 3: to the time I was out was a very short
Speaker 3: period of time. I think, you know, I could be
Speaker 3: wrong in regards of the timeframe of how these things go,
Speaker 3: but from the day they accepted my case, I think
Speaker 3: I was out two years later.
Speaker 1: There was all so though, a sense of urgency, because
Speaker 1: take me to the medical crisis you had. What year
Speaker 1: was it, and what happened?
Speaker 3: In two thousand and eight, I had an aneurysm, a
Speaker 3: subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is a bleeding of the brain. I
Speaker 3: was sitting there and I thought it was it was
Speaker 3: like an instant headache, almost like someone just hit me
Speaker 3: in ahead with a hammer, like it was instant. A
Speaker 3: couple of guys that always come when the count planned
Speaker 3: prison and asked me, do I want to play chess?
Speaker 3: It was three of us. We would play whoever lose,
Speaker 3: get up and we would just play all day and
Speaker 3: drink coffee and talk about sports and play chess. And
Speaker 3: we did that often. And they came to my door
Speaker 3: and say, coming out to play chess, and I said,
Speaker 3: give me a minute, and I had an headache. So
Speaker 3: they came back fifteen minutes, like, come on, where you at?
Speaker 3: Like we you know he's getting ready to lose this game.
Speaker 3: Come on, you're next. The third time they came back
Speaker 3: to the cell to ask me to come, I didn't
Speaker 3: understand their words, so I was acutely aware something was
Speaker 3: really screwed up. And I picked myself up and I
Speaker 3: walked to the office's station and I couldn't talk. And
Speaker 3: from what they say, my pupils were dilating, and they
Speaker 3: you know, my eyes were rolling up my head. I
Speaker 3: couldn't answer no questions. The shift commander came in and
Speaker 3: he said, this guy is fuck something ain't right. He
Speaker 3: don't even know his own name. And I woke up
Speaker 3: in the hospital and I found out it was an
Speaker 3: aneurism and almost died in prison. And the doctor came
Speaker 3: in and was explaining to me. I could hear him,
Speaker 3: but I couldn't respond that I had an aneurysm, and
Speaker 3: they was gonna take me downstairs and try to tie
Speaker 3: it off and stop the bleeding. And he, you know,
Speaker 3: he was brutally honest with me. He said, Mark, almost
Speaker 3: seventy percent of the people to have these don't live
Speaker 3: through them. So it's a good chance you may not
Speaker 3: come upstairs from this, he said. He directed their officers,
Speaker 3: he said, you want to take some phone numbers and
Speaker 3: call his family members immediately, because he may not come upstairs.
Speaker 3: And I told him to call those numbers. I don't
Speaker 3: remember him doing it. And then I asked them for
Speaker 3: a piece of paper and gave me an envelope, and
Speaker 3: I wrote on the paper, man, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I wrote on the paper. I just wrote down,
Speaker 3: please help me. And I told them to get that
Speaker 3: paper to Jim McCloskey, because I can really remember like
Speaker 3: thinking to myself, like, fuck, I'm gonna die in here
Speaker 3: for a crimea and do like never mind going through this,
Speaker 3: but I'm literally about to die in prison for a
Speaker 3: crime and command and I could just recall begging them
Speaker 3: to get that envelope to Jim McCloskey, and uh, I
Speaker 3: remember waking up with just like twenty people in the
Speaker 3: room just kissing me and crying and hugging me, and
Speaker 3: the doctor kind of standing there and waiting for him
Speaker 3: and explaining to him that it's a good chance I
Speaker 3: may not come back upstairs and explain it to them,
Speaker 3: you know what the subarachnoise hemorrhage was. And he said
Speaker 3: he's gonna take me downstairs, and I'm listening, and everyone
Speaker 3: was crying, and they you know, they kind of just
Speaker 3: whisked me downstairs, and you know, I made it through that.
Speaker 3: But Jim McCloskey would later say that that was kind
Speaker 3: of the catalyst for them to like say, like, we
Speaker 3: got to get this guy the fuck out of here.
Speaker 3: You know. I don't know if they particularly skipped any
Speaker 3: cases because of that, but they really started, you know,
Speaker 3: really accepting my cases and started to work it a
Speaker 3: little more, I would say because of that, because he
Speaker 3: explained to me, by that time, they was fully convinced
Speaker 3: of my innocence and they didn't want to see me
Speaker 3: die in prison for a crime and didn't commit, never mind,
Speaker 3: to spend the rest of my life in prison. So
Speaker 3: I think they worked a little hard on my case,
Speaker 3: you know, than they normally would have. The letter got
Speaker 3: to him and he hasn't framed and he has it
Speaker 3: in his office now. If I'm not mistaken, and I
Speaker 3: think in my whole ordeal, the two things that stick
Speaker 3: out to me most was that and my mom's screaming
Speaker 3: in court, Like those are two things. They literally flashed
Speaker 3: through my mind every fucking day. Every day, one of
Speaker 3: the two of those flashed through my mind, you know,
Speaker 3: sometime once twice a week or something, I would just
Speaker 3: I'll be in the car by myself and I'll just
Speaker 3: ball out and cry like a baby and tears my
Speaker 3: shirt to be wet, and I just cry about you know,
Speaker 3: I say shit, like what the hell did they do
Speaker 3: to me? They took a third in my life, and
Speaker 3: you know, and I just wipe my face and going
Speaker 3: about my day. And it still happens. You know. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you could say I feel sight for myself.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is, but every now and
Speaker 3: then it still hits me. And I'm waiting for that
Speaker 3: to dissipate and stop, but it hasn't stopped yet. So
Speaker 3: you know, I deal with it. You know, I deal
Speaker 3: with it. I can't say I got over it. Yet
Speaker 3: I couldn't say that to you and be telling the
Speaker 3: truth because I didn't.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine Mark, It's it's not just something that
Speaker 1: you get over. I mean, you had some extra dreamly
Speaker 1: harrowing experiences. But eventually you did get out of prison
Speaker 1: and you were exonerated. The work of Centurion and your lawyer,
Speaker 1: John Thompson, all their investigative work paid off and the
Speaker 1: case was dismissed. That must have been such a happy day.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me what it was like when the
Speaker 1: judge finally said that you were free to go? Do
Speaker 1: you remember the exact words he used?
Speaker 3: He kept kind of short. He said, you're free to go.
Speaker 3: He said you're free to go. I didn't believe it.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at John and Linna like, what the hell
Speaker 3: did you just say? Like I really couldn't believe he
Speaker 3: said that, and you know, it kind of washed over me.
Speaker 3: But you know, I remember my whole body just I
Speaker 3: had pins and needles, you know, on my skin, like
Speaker 3: and he said you're free to go, and everybody went
Speaker 3: crazy again, just like they did twenty seven years before.
Speaker 3: Before different reason is done. You know, he had to
Speaker 3: calm the court down again, and John's trying to explain
Speaker 3: to me, like, you know, you can go home. It's
Speaker 3: like John had to explain to me like I was
Speaker 3: a three year old. I'm like, what the hell just happened?
Speaker 3: Like he said you could go and yeah, I walked
Speaker 3: out of the courtroom free men.
Speaker 1: And at the point you were released, you had four grandkids,
Speaker 1: cracked and you had met them all while you were
Speaker 1: in while you were in prison.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they was all brought to me. His infants, Yeah,
Speaker 3: little babies, yep. And I had four when I got
Speaker 3: I have seven now.
Speaker 1: So take me to your life today and the family
Speaker 1: that you reconnected and reunited with that that Maya had
Speaker 1: really capt together while you were in prison.
Speaker 3: I reconnected with my entire family and my immediate family
Speaker 3: I see every day if I could, you know, I
Speaker 3: try to go see my grandkids every single day. It's
Speaker 3: hard because I got a lot going on, but you know,
Speaker 3: we do the regular stuff, you know, get together for
Speaker 3: Sunday dinner and all that kind of stuff. I have
Speaker 3: more the house. And you know, when I went in,
Speaker 3: I had three sons. They were literally two to one
Speaker 3: and Quinton was almost a newborn. And when I got out,
Speaker 3: they were twenty nine, thirty and thirty one, so we
Speaker 3: had a lot of reconnecting to do, and we've done that.
Speaker 3: We're good. We're in a good place. And you know,
Speaker 3: I've just been I've been really busy. I keep creating
Speaker 3: problems for myself, like you know, uh, you know, I
Speaker 3: watched my father with small business, you know, try to
Speaker 3: be an entrepreneur. I'm kind of following his footsteps. So
Speaker 3: every time I start a little project in it it's
Speaker 3: off and running, and it's I find another issue for myself. So,
Speaker 3: you know, my first business was a smoothie shop. I
Speaker 3: opened a smoothie shop. It's been open for seven years now,
Speaker 3: and I currently have a coach store in a major
Speaker 3: mall in Connecticut, and I'm opening my second smoothie shop
Speaker 3: as well. So I'm constantly, you know, busy, and I
Speaker 3: literally don't have a moment to breathe. But I'd take
Speaker 3: that over the previous twenty seven years any day.
Speaker 1: All right, we are getting to the end of our
Speaker 1: interview here, and I want to thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being here and for sharing your stories. You know,
Speaker 1: something we like to do is close this show by
Speaker 1: giving the last word to our guest and Mark, you
Speaker 1: have been through so much and you have had such
Speaker 1: an amazing life experience. It would be my honor if
Speaker 1: you would be willing to share your closing argument with us.
Speaker 3: My story is, you know, as bad at it as
Speaker 3: it is, it's not the end of this thing. What
Speaker 3: happened to me and how it happened to me, and
Speaker 3: the way it was allowed to happen to me is
Speaker 3: a culture. What Francis Bloom did is a culture. It's
Speaker 3: accepted all the way to the top. And I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, you got judges overlooking case, overlooking trials. They
Speaker 3: see this stuff, they know something doesn't jive, and they
Speaker 3: oversee the trial and watch it happen. Right, This is
Speaker 3: a culture until and unless we start to address it.
Speaker 3: Until and unless district attorneys are held accountable for knowingly
Speaker 3: wrongfully getting a person convicted and watching them do three
Speaker 3: decades in jail knowing that their case wasn't a righteous
Speaker 3: case until they literally put in handcuffs for that. Until
Speaker 3: and unless that happens, this is going to happen a
Speaker 3: lot more.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest
Speaker 1: host Lauren Bright Pacheco I'd like to thank our executive
Speaker 1: producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wards. Our senior producer this
Speaker 1: episode is Jackie Paully and our producers are Lyla Robinson
Speaker 1: and Jeff Cliburn. Our editor is Rexandra Guidi. The music
Speaker 1: in this production is by thre ever 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 Lava for
Speaker 1: Good On all three platforms. You can find me online
Speaker 1: at Lauren Bright Pacheco, and you can find my podcasts
Speaker 1: Murder and Oregon and Murder in Illinois wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to podcast and my latest Murder in Miami, is out
Speaker 1: this January. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this episode of Wrongful Conviction. As regular
Speaker 1: listeners will know, the show is usually hosted by Jason Flahm,
Speaker 1: but this fall he invited an amazing group of guest
Speaker 1: hosts to bring their own talents and perspectives to the interview.
Speaker 1: I am honored to be closing out this season, which
Speaker 1: has included hosts like Ear hustles ERLN Woods, legal experts
Speaker 1: Chris Fabrikant and Laura and I Ryder, author Gilbert King
Speaker 1: and Xaneries, Patrick Parsley and Jimmy Dennis. You can listen
Speaker 1: to all fifteen guest hosted episodes in the Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: Podcast Feed starting January ninth. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Maggie
Speaker 1: Freeling is back for a second season. Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Maggie Freeling features heartbreaking and inspiring stories of people who
Speaker 1: have been incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit, told in
Speaker 1: Maggie's unique personal style. Season two will shine a light
Speaker 1: on cases of wrongfully convicted women, a cause that Maggie
Speaker 1: is passionate about and one that doesn't get the attention
Speaker 1: it deserves. This is a must listen show for anyone
Speaker 1: interested in the real life impact of the criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: Listen every Monday in the Wrongful Conviction Podcast Feed starting
Speaker 1: January ninth.