Speaker 1: America has two point two million people in prison. If
Speaker 1: just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two thousand people.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people's lives destroyed.
Speaker 2: If the system want to take you out of society,
Speaker 2: they will do it no matter what laws they have
Speaker 2: to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, but
Speaker 2: they're breaking the lord.
Speaker 1: Having to hear those people say that I was guilty
Speaker 1: of a crime that I did not commit, and then
Speaker 1: hear my family break down behind me and not be
Speaker 1: able to do anything about it. I can't describe the
Speaker 1: crushing weight that was.
Speaker 3: I'm not anti police, I'm just anti corruption.
Speaker 2: A lot of times we look and we see something
Speaker 2: happen to somebody and that's the first thing we said,
Speaker 2: that could never happen to me, But.
Speaker 3: They can. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Ronful
Speaker 3: Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today we have a very unusual,
Speaker 3: amazing group of guests. I have the honor of having
Speaker 3: the distinguished Professor of Government and Law, Mark Howard on
Speaker 3: the show. And Mark's been on before, and that's what
Speaker 3: I want to say. Welcome back to Ronfak.
Speaker 4: It's great to be back, Jason. Thanks for having me, and.
Speaker 3: This time he brought back up with him is one
Speaker 3: of his star students in the pre law class at
Speaker 3: Georgetown that he teaches with Marty Tankcliffe. So, Jessica Scarato,
Speaker 3: I'm glad you're here, Thanks for.
Speaker 4: Coming, Thanks for having me Jason and.
Speaker 3: Calling in soon will be an incredible man, John Moss
Speaker 3: who has been incarcerated for almost four decades for a
Speaker 3: crime he most obviously did not commit. So we're looking
Speaker 3: forward to get his call. Just any minute now.
Speaker 5: Hello, you have a call from John Mossler and Innate
Speaker 5: at not all the Correctional Complex. This call will be
Speaker 5: recorded and subject to monitoring at any time.
Speaker 3: John, I'm sorry where you are, but it's good to
Speaker 3: have you on the air with us and give the
Speaker 3: public some idea of what's really going on in this
Speaker 3: terrible case and in this crazy system that we have. So, John,
Speaker 3: I want to go back to the beginning. You grew
Speaker 3: up in Cleveland, right, Yeah? And what was that like?
Speaker 3: Did you have a happy childhood? Was it difficult? Can
Speaker 3: you just give us a painted little picture of what
Speaker 3: your upbringing was like?
Speaker 6: Well it was it was a good upbringing. I'll come
Speaker 6: up will both parents at home and both working parents
Speaker 6: and I have two brothers, two sisters. I grew up.
Speaker 3: Will you know what did your parents do well?
Speaker 6: My mother she worked in the transportation of patients at
Speaker 6: the Cleveland Prennick Hospital in my father he worked out
Speaker 6: Cleveland Builders. You know, my parents was well providers. They
Speaker 6: took care of all of us.
Speaker 3: So then you ended up in West Virginia, which was
Speaker 3: the worst place you could have possibly been, as it happens,
Speaker 3: but you had no way of knowing that. But you
Speaker 3: had you had family in West Virginia. Is that what
Speaker 3: you were doing there?
Speaker 6: Yeah, my father's grandparents lived here in West Virginia. It
Speaker 6: was the reason that I had come here. You know,
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say I was the best kid growing up.
Speaker 6: You know, I gave my parents, you know, a hard time,
Speaker 6: and you know, they thought that coming to West Virginia
Speaker 6: might do me some good. And you know, my grandparents
Speaker 6: they needed help. We had a little farm there in
Speaker 6: Saint Albans, and you know I worked in the farm
Speaker 6: and helped my my grandfather out around here. And you know,
Speaker 6: I started going to school there here in West Virginia.
Speaker 6: It was because my grandparents needed a little help around
Speaker 6: the houses.
Speaker 3: You know, come to Western Junior, and of course that
Speaker 3: was where this tragedy took place. And it really is
Speaker 3: a tragedy what happened. And it's a tragedy on a
Speaker 3: lot of levels, because not only was the entire family
Speaker 3: brutally gruesomely murdered, and not only was the actual killer
Speaker 3: allowed to walk free. But of course what's happened to
Speaker 3: you is just an unimaginable fate that you've been locked
Speaker 3: up for almost four decades now for a crime that
Speaker 3: everybody knew from the beginning who actually did it. And
Speaker 3: this is where I want to bring Mark and Jessica
Speaker 3: into the conversation, because obviously they've been doing some terrific
Speaker 3: work on trying to get you finally out and home
Speaker 3: where you belong. So Mark, how the hell did this happen?
Speaker 4: So this case came to my attention about six months
Speaker 4: ago when I was starting to teach a class with
Speaker 4: Marty Tankliffe about wrongful convictions, and we were looking at
Speaker 4: cases of wrongful convictions, and I talked to Brian Ferguson,
Speaker 4: who himself is an ex Hoonnery and who's a student
Speaker 4: of mine of Georgetown, and Brian said, wait till you
Speaker 4: hear about this case about John Moss, it is surreal
Speaker 4: and he kind of talked me through it. I talked
Speaker 4: to Jimmy Gardner and realized about the friendship, which added
Speaker 4: a whole dimension to this. And the more I learned,
Speaker 4: the more I realize we have to take on this case.
Speaker 4: And so we have a team of three students who've
Speaker 4: been working on it, and Jessica's here to represent them,
Speaker 4: and I'll let her tell a little bit more about
Speaker 4: their experience as they learned about the case. But it's
Speaker 4: something to think about. Thirty eight years, it's just an
Speaker 4: astronomical amount of time. But also the fact that from
Speaker 4: day one, literally day one, we knew who committed these
Speaker 4: murders and we have no idea how on earth John
Speaker 4: Moss ever got connected to this.
Speaker 3: Well, Jessica, let's go back to the murders themselves, because
Speaker 3: this is an innocent family. It's almost like a Manson
Speaker 3: style killing, right, This is how terrible this was. So
Speaker 3: can you take us through that tragedy that happened that
Speaker 3: John ultimately was turned into a scapegoat.
Speaker 7: For absolutely so is A triple homicide took place in
Speaker 7: Saint Albans, West Virginia, which is right outside of Charleston,
Speaker 7: in nineteen seventy nine, December of nineteen seventy nine. It
Speaker 7: was a mother and her two children. The children were
Speaker 7: seven and four years old. They were brutally slain. The
Speaker 7: mother was stabbed multiple times. Both children were hanged in
Speaker 7: some way and suffocated. One of the children was drowned,
Speaker 7: the other was hanged over the door. And juxtaposed that
Speaker 7: with the fact that it was almost Christmas. It was December,
Speaker 7: so you have a Christmas tree, and then on the
Speaker 7: other side of the crime scene photo you'll see a
Speaker 7: child hanging over the door. So it is it extremely intimate, passionate,
Speaker 7: just gruesome, horrific killing.
Speaker 3: And this case is so bizarre because the father confessed
Speaker 3: on the spot pretty much ver he walked through in
Speaker 3: great detail and took the police to the house and explained.
Speaker 3: And again this is where it goes to like, I mean,
Speaker 3: a monster, this guy's a monster. He said that he
Speaker 3: drowned the one child because a kid liked to swim.
Speaker 3: He hung the other one because she liked to swing right,
Speaker 3: And I forgot what he said about the mom, But
Speaker 3: I mean, when you get to that, it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: my god, this is really macabre, and one would think
Speaker 3: that law enforcement would be interested in getting an individual
Speaker 3: like that off the street where he can't do that
Speaker 3: to any other innocent people. But what the hell happened?
Speaker 3: How did John end up? Why is he on the
Speaker 3: phone with us right now instead of being raising grandkids
Speaker 3: or whatever he's supposed to be doing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 6: Yeah no, And I've been stuck with that for thirty
Speaker 6: eight years. And you know, and they kill me. It
Speaker 6: goes back to my uncle, my uncle Alton, who lives
Speaker 6: here in West Virginia. It was something about him, but
Speaker 6: I didn't find out a few years later that he
Speaker 6: was the one that told law enforcement there's a John Moster,
Speaker 6: and you know, he might know something about the class.
Speaker 6: And you know, I was dumbfounded when the troopers said
Speaker 6: that on the stand. And to this day, I don't know,
Speaker 6: and if anybody else know, they haven't told me yet.
Speaker 6: Why he told police that I knew something about these friends.
Speaker 6: I wasn't there. I knew nothing about the family. Besides,
Speaker 6: they lived in my uncle's hotel and later moved into
Speaker 6: one of my relatives houses. I see the kids in
Speaker 6: the yard, they're playing, But these are kids, Why would
Speaker 6: anybody want to do that? And they try to say
Speaker 6: the reason of being robbery. These are people that didn't
Speaker 6: have anything, the furniture and everything that they had. My
Speaker 6: fam began to these folks, and why would I pick
Speaker 6: one of the poorest families in the neighborhood to.
Speaker 3: Rob right, that's crazy. And why would you steal furniture
Speaker 3: that you already gave them? That's completely bizarre. And this
Speaker 3: is so nuts, right, And let's go back to you Mark,
Speaker 3: what the hell happened? Right? Because here you had a
Speaker 3: case that was over and shut. Yep, right easy, this one,
Speaker 3: this one came with instructions. Right, you have the killer
Speaker 3: going here it is. Here's what I did. Let me
Speaker 3: walk you through it. He was almost like he was
Speaker 3: proud of.
Speaker 4: It, that's right. And he also apparently had been abusive
Speaker 4: towards his wife. He'd said, I'd never wanted to have
Speaker 4: a family, never wanted to have kids. It all made sense.
Speaker 4: It was done, and we still don't know this, and
Speaker 4: we'll never know because he's no longer alive. He did
Speaker 4: remarry the husband, he did remarry. There are some allegations
Speaker 4: that he was abusive towards his second wife. But he's
Speaker 4: no longer alive. But we don't know why the police
Speaker 4: let him go. John has no idea. I mean, we've
Speaker 4: all tried to think of every possible angle. It defies logic,
Speaker 4: common sense, common decency obviously.
Speaker 3: I mean you'd think too, even if a prosecutor is
Speaker 3: so morally bankrupt that they don't care about locking up
Speaker 3: an innocent guy, or this one't involve children, right, These
Speaker 3: are innocent children that were slaughtered in a gruesome manner,
Speaker 3: and so anybody would want, any citizen, any human being,
Speaker 3: would want that killer locked up forever to keep society safe.
Speaker 4: But it gets even worse because there was essentially a
Speaker 4: cover up that came into play once they somehow got John. Now,
Speaker 4: they picked up John, who was incarcerated on another charge
Speaker 4: unrelated at age seventeen, and brought him in and beat
Speaker 4: the crap out of him and got what's probably a
Speaker 4: classic case of a false confession with physical violence, threatening him,
Speaker 4: threatening to kill him, and at some point he broke down,
Speaker 4: and that led to his conviction and the fact that
Speaker 4: it has stuck for all of these decades.
Speaker 3: So they replaced a true confession with a false compression.
Speaker 4: That nothing matched the crime scene. It's absolutely clear that
Speaker 4: the person who made that false confession, John knew nothing
Speaker 4: about the crime. And there's more in terms of the
Speaker 4: medical examiner changing his report. The medical examiner initially filed
Speaker 4: a report that stated that the killings took place at
Speaker 4: a certain time when the husband was home, and eleven
Speaker 4: months later, when they picked up John, for reasons that
Speaker 4: we still barely understand had to do with his uncle
Speaker 4: calling in and saying that John was somehow involved, the
Speaker 4: medical examiner changed the time of death by a substantial
Speaker 4: number of hours, something that we've talked to medical experts
Speaker 4: and medical examiners and they say they've never seen something
Speaker 4: like this before. So that suggests there was a much
Speaker 4: bigger cover up that was involved.
Speaker 3: Jessica, You've been diving deep into this case now, and
Speaker 3: I've been so impressed with the work that the Georgetown
Speaker 3: pre law students have been doing, you and your team
Speaker 3: as well as the other teams. So do you have
Speaker 3: any theory Do you think that there was some connection
Speaker 3: between the actual killer and the authorities that they would
Speaker 3: have wanted to protect him, and so he was a
Speaker 3: ups driver. It doesn't really make a lot of sense.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Initially we looked for that kind of connection, something
Speaker 7: that would explain why they made this very sudden switch
Speaker 7: in focus from the person that we believe is the
Speaker 7: true killer and the person who all the evidence points
Speaker 7: to to John. And it's interesting because there had been
Speaker 7: previous allegations by the father and husband that his confession
Speaker 7: was coerced. He claimed that there's very little evidence to
Speaker 7: actually support that. Of course, we don't have the video
Speaker 7: recorded interrogation itself, but a judge upheld that confession as voluntary,
Speaker 7: so they were picking a jury for his trial. The
Speaker 7: judge upheld his confession as voluntary. That exact same day,
Speaker 7: the West Virginia State Police dispatched troopers to Ohio to
Speaker 7: pick up John. So it's very unclear why when you
Speaker 7: have somebody who all the evidence points to, who has
Speaker 7: confessed that confession is upheld as voluntary in a court
Speaker 7: of law, you're picking a jury, why all of a
Speaker 7: sudden you would go seek out another suspect, even on
Speaker 7: a random tip from a person in the community, right Like,
Speaker 7: that doesn't make a lot of sense. And to me,
Speaker 7: there's no way that that isn't suspicious. There's no way
Speaker 7: that that isn't a miscarriage of justice. All the evidence,
Speaker 7: all of the science point to this one particular person,
Speaker 7: and they're obviously seeking out for some reason that I
Speaker 7: don't know another person.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it's hard not to think. You have
Speaker 3: West Virginia, which may be the whitest state in America, right,
Speaker 3: and you have initially the confession of the white male
Speaker 3: suspect replaced by the false confession of a black male suspect.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know. I wasn't there, but it
Speaker 3: sounds like that may have had some role in it. Again,
Speaker 3: which impossible to figure out these motives because it doesn't
Speaker 3: make any damn sense. Okay, so let's go back to it.
Speaker 3: So John, you get picked up and brought back to
Speaker 3: West Virginia. What's going through your mind?
Speaker 6: Well, we can go back farther than that. When I
Speaker 6: first met these troopers, I was in the detention home
Speaker 6: on the unrelated charge, and these two troopers the chief
Speaker 6: investigators of a triple homicide. They come to Ohio while
Speaker 6: I was in the detention home to talk to me
Speaker 6: about these murders, and they wanted a sample of my blood,
Speaker 6: and I told them I didn't have anything to hide,
Speaker 6: and if they wanted, you know, they pricked my fingers,
Speaker 6: squeezed samp of my blood on a cotton swath. If
Speaker 6: there was a lady attorney visiting, another client came over
Speaker 6: to ask the officers what were they doing, and the
Speaker 6: troopers said they had talked to my attorneys in Ohio
Speaker 6: and it was okay, and they would be over there
Speaker 6: later to talk to me about it. The lady attorney
Speaker 6: advised them that they should come back when my attorney
Speaker 6: was there. So when my attorney finally got there, he said,
Speaker 6: never talked to any West Virginia troopers about coming over
Speaker 6: and getting the sample of my blood, and he went
Speaker 6: to court. Supposedly he got the blood back, but years later,
Speaker 6: come to find out this sample of blood that these
Speaker 6: troopers took while I was in the detention home made
Speaker 6: it back to West Virginia. But my lawyers were telling
Speaker 6: me he was able to get the sample of blood
Speaker 6: back before these troopers left Ohio. But come to find
Speaker 6: out they took this blood supposedly, and they gave it
Speaker 6: to Fred Zane and then I didn't find anything out
Speaker 6: about into the Zain investigation, and that's when it come
Speaker 6: out about kim fabricating and falsifying reports and everything. And
Speaker 6: this sample was never disclosed to any of my attorneys
Speaker 6: doing my first trial, knowing my second trial. But that's
Speaker 6: how I come to meet these.
Speaker 3: Two troopers and Mark. Talk about Fred Zayne for a second,
Speaker 3: because this is one of the most notorious figures in
Speaker 3: American if there was a hall of fame of malfeasance
Speaker 3: in the court system, and malfeas is not a strong
Speaker 3: enough word because it's actually criminal activity that he was
Speaker 3: engaged in. But if there was a guy who was
Speaker 3: one of the worst framers of innocent people in the country,
Speaker 3: he'd be up there, right.
Speaker 4: There are so many layers of misconduct in this. First
Speaker 4: of all, why are they coming and taking a blood
Speaker 4: sample from a seventeen year old in another state? Right,
Speaker 4: so raises the possibility what do they do with that blood?
Speaker 4: They may have actually planted it at the crime scene.
Speaker 4: Then you've got the person coming in to analyze that
Speaker 4: is Fred Zayne, who's been found in at least one
Speaker 4: hundred and forty cases to have falsified blood and other
Speaker 4: forensic evidence, and probably they're countless more that we don't
Speaker 4: even know about. So here we have John who gets
Speaker 4: convicted based on a false confession that the police beat
Speaker 4: out of him. That's classic and completely unreliable. And this
Speaker 4: so called blood evidence that had the testimony of somebody
Speaker 4: who perjured himself and falsified evidence and as a criminal
Speaker 4: in every respect. And that's the totality of the evidence
Speaker 4: against John. And so what has unfortunately blocked John from
Speaker 4: having a chance of coming out is that Zayne at
Speaker 4: the time was not the head of the office. He
Speaker 4: did all of the work in John's case, but there
Speaker 4: was a supervising person and even though that supervisor said
Speaker 4: I just signed off on everything Fred Zaye did, the
Speaker 4: fact that Fred Zaye wasn't the supervisor he became the
Speaker 4: supervisor a few years later, means that courts have rejected
Speaker 4: John's challenge to his conviction based on the work of
Speaker 4: Fred Zaane. They're somehow saying that it wasn't actually a
Speaker 4: Zay case, even though Zayn did all of the work,
Speaker 4: because there was a supervisor who just was a rubber stamp.
Speaker 4: And so there are a lot of people who've gotten
Speaker 4: exonerated who were so called Zain cases, and Jimmy Gardner
Speaker 4: is one of them. But unfortunately they're not letting John
Speaker 4: join this group even though he clearly belongs in it.
Speaker 4: And that's just outrageous.
Speaker 3: And let's not forget the fact that fred Zaye himself
Speaker 3: was convicted, right, that's hard, right in this system for
Speaker 3: the idea that a chief stroologist would actually be convicted
Speaker 3: and sentenced to four to twelve years at prison himself.
Speaker 3: So we have the actual real criminal is the one
Speaker 3: who falsely testifies and inculpates an innocent guy, which is
Speaker 3: John who's on the phone with us. Now it's all
Speaker 3: completely backwards. And what about the public defender? I mean, John,
Speaker 3: were you? I mean it sounds like just from the
Speaker 3: little bit that you've told us already, that this public
Speaker 3: defender you had was not up for the task.
Speaker 6: Well, the first attorney I had in my first trail,
Speaker 6: he was a Pase attorney. My parents hired him. I
Speaker 6: didn't have a crump defender into my second trial. But
Speaker 6: everybody took what was fred Zane was doing being the gospel.
Speaker 6: You know, nobody went back to check anything after my
Speaker 6: conviction in eighty four. My attorney in my first trial,
Speaker 6: he made a statement in the newspaper during the Inzane
Speaker 6: investigations that he had talked to one of the jurors
Speaker 6: on the elevator and the juror told him that you
Speaker 6: had everything covered, but you just could not explain the blood.
Speaker 6: You could not explain that blood. But the lawyer even then,
Speaker 6: nobody would go back to check out Jane's credentials, to
Speaker 6: check out any of the testing. They just took his
Speaker 6: word as being the gospel. My second trial attorney, he'd
Speaker 6: done nothing. He didn't do no investigative work in trying
Speaker 6: to find out if the blood was reliable anything. Sped
Speaker 6: of West Virginia wanted to do DNA tests and fred
Speaker 6: Zane they called him back from Texas during my second trial.
Speaker 6: And when Zane done tests in my second trial, he
Speaker 6: destroyed everything. And you know, I was not able to
Speaker 6: have any other lawyer, any other investigators, any other doctor,
Speaker 6: sciences or whatever to review any of fred Zane's work
Speaker 6: when he was doing the DNA and he just destroyed anything.
Speaker 6: And that's why today I don't have the evidence to
Speaker 6: try to test to find out who is the real perpetrator.
Speaker 6: Fred Zane knew who he was because fred Zane he
Speaker 6: had to blood evidence and when he found out it
Speaker 6: wasn't me, he destroyed everything. And my lawyers they dropped
Speaker 6: the ball in the early years of mind cancelations of
Speaker 6: questioning the terrology work in my case.
Speaker 3: And Jessica, as a pre law student and soon to
Speaker 3: be lawyer, you didn't get into Georgetown without having a
Speaker 3: lot of active brain cells, right, And obviously you have
Speaker 3: a big heart. But when you hear this, it must
Speaker 3: pain you to think about these lawyers just basically doing nothing,
Speaker 3: I mean, not helping their client. It's almost like the
Speaker 3: doctor just letting somebody die. Right. How does this sit
Speaker 3: with you and thinking back on it, what would you
Speaker 3: have done differently?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Absolutely? And John, for that matter, his attorney's never looked
Speaker 7: for the blood evidence. That's something that we think is
Speaker 7: insane about this case is that the assumption that every
Speaker 7: attorney from the revelation that Zane had been contaminating evidence
Speaker 7: onward has never actually gone to the West Virginia crime
Speaker 7: lab and looked for the blood evidence. And the assumption
Speaker 7: was that it was destroyed. But we don't know that.
Speaker 7: And in all five Zane related Kanawa County exonerations, which
Speaker 7: is where John was incarcerated, they had found the blood
Speaker 7: evidence after the fact, after having assumed that it was destroyed.
Speaker 7: They had found it later.
Speaker 4: So it might still be there in other way, So.
Speaker 7: It might still be there in other words, and nobody
Speaker 7: had looked for it. And obviously it's much harder to
Speaker 7: try to find it now than it was when all
Speaker 7: these revelations came out in the late nineteen eighties early
Speaker 7: nineteen nineties. And so it's so terrifying and disheartening to
Speaker 7: me that why would you not look for that?
Speaker 3: That's crazy And it's so crazy too. I mean, John,
Speaker 3: when you were first arrested, who is President Jimmy Carter?
Speaker 3: So long ago? I'm just trying to give the audience
Speaker 3: a sense of how long.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it was Jimmy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jimmy Carter. I name. Some people were listening won't
Speaker 3: even recognize it's so long ago, right, I mean, so yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just it's so it's so devastating, I mean, and listen,
Speaker 3: more power to you. I mean, the fact that you're
Speaker 3: still here and still standing strong and still fighting is
Speaker 3: a great testament to your character. And so I salute
Speaker 3: you for that. And you know, I just want you.
Speaker 6: To know you can never give up. You know, there's
Speaker 6: so many things I haven't done, and the one thing
Speaker 6: I want to do is have control over my own life.
Speaker 6: I'm fifty five years old and not once have I
Speaker 6: been able to decide or what John Mall should do
Speaker 6: or what John Mom can't do.
Speaker 3: John, you've been in for thirty eight years. Can you
Speaker 3: tell us what is the worst thing that's happened since
Speaker 3: you've been in prison? And are there any bright spots?
Speaker 3: Was there any moment of hope or redemption that you
Speaker 3: found while you were in there over all these years?
Speaker 6: Well, the worst thing that ever happened was the loss
Speaker 6: of family. You know, my mother passed. She was she
Speaker 6: was my rock. You know, she missed everything. You know,
Speaker 6: it was because of her that I was able to fight.
Speaker 6: I kept to fight. Then I lose my father, my
Speaker 6: two brothers. I lost over half my family. That's the
Speaker 6: pain of being in prison, of losing the loved one
Speaker 6: and you can't show any support to the rest of
Speaker 6: your family. That's what makes time so hard. And the
Speaker 6: fact that you're innocent and these people are doing what
Speaker 6: they're doing to you. They won't hear your cage. That's
Speaker 6: the hard thing about it. And my hope is when
Speaker 6: I see other guys, guys that I grew up with
Speaker 6: in prison, they make it out there and start doing
Speaker 6: things like what Brian and Jimmy are doing. That's what
Speaker 6: gives me hope that the door's not completely closed on me,
Speaker 6: that I can still get out there, and you know,
Speaker 6: I can live the life that I've dreamed of that
Speaker 6: I've always wanted to have, maybe have a family, you know,
Speaker 6: them guys that would give me hope. And then you know,
Speaker 6: and what's happening now in Georgetown, Oh man, I'm just
Speaker 6: blown over. And I tell Jessica, Maddie and Alex all
Speaker 6: the time, and Mark whenever I'm talking to him that,
Speaker 6: you know, I love them for what they're doing for me.
Speaker 6: But never, never in all my life, in all the
Speaker 6: years that I've been locked up, that I ever thought
Speaker 6: that I would get what I am getting right now.
Speaker 6: I did not know there were still people out there
Speaker 6: that would do the things that they are doing them.
Speaker 6: I didn't know this, and for them to do what
Speaker 6: they're doing, it's phenomenal. I mean, this is just unbelievable.
Speaker 6: And I love them. I mean, I'm gonna be in
Speaker 6: their life for the rest of my life. You know,
Speaker 6: whether they walk me or not. I'm about them, you know,
Speaker 6: but you know these are the people that's helping me
Speaker 6: with my home.
Speaker 3: Well, I can say, John, and I know I'm speaking
Speaker 3: for Mark and Jessica that when you get out and
Speaker 3: we're going to get you out, you'll have a new
Speaker 3: family and we're all going to be here to back
Speaker 3: you up and support you any way that we can.
Speaker 3: We can't replace the ones you've lost, but you know
Speaker 3: we'll do everything we can both to get you out
Speaker 3: and then to help you when you do get out,
Speaker 3: and I know you'll be successful and you have a
Speaker 3: chance on the outside to accomplish all those things that
Speaker 3: you missed out on. So thank you. And I think
Speaker 3: we jump to the trial itself, because that's got to
Speaker 3: be the worst day of your life, where that verdict
Speaker 3: was read and you were and you were convicted of
Speaker 3: a crime you did not commit and sentenced to life
Speaker 3: in prison. How did you deal with it?
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I was dumbfounded. What I could think
Speaker 6: about is my family. What I'm going to say to
Speaker 6: my family, Say to my mother because you know, she
Speaker 6: had high hopes that I was be able to prove
Speaker 6: my innocence. Because my family is in Cleveland. You know,
Speaker 6: I was there alone. I think one of my cousins,
Speaker 6: he might have been there, but I just felt alone.
Speaker 6: You know, there was nobody there. The only thing was
Speaker 6: around me is a bunch of white faces. There's nobody
Speaker 6: that judged the jury, the lawyers, everybody. You know. I
Speaker 6: just sat there in that quarter alone. It was it
Speaker 6: was devastating. Here. I was convicted of a crime that
Speaker 6: I had nothing to do with, and they lewis and
Speaker 6: for some reason, they want to put me away for
Speaker 6: the rest of my life. And I was dumbfounded over
Speaker 6: my second trial. You know, I just knew. I knew
Speaker 6: that I was going to win this, this was my
Speaker 6: second trial. But then I got to thinking about all
Speaker 6: the things that the attorney didn't do, and it just
Speaker 6: it was just a heavy weight. It was a heavyweight,
Speaker 6: and it's just it's just it's hard to describe, you know,
Speaker 6: what they've done. And you know, I had high hopes
Speaker 6: that I would get back in there and I would
Speaker 6: prove my innocence. But it has been over two decades
Speaker 6: since my last trial, and I haven't given up. I
Speaker 6: continue to fight with the help of you know, I
Speaker 6: called sharpshooters in here because they know this law in
Speaker 6: and out. And with the help of a few inmates,
Speaker 6: you know, I was able to get back in court.
Speaker 6: I even had one of West Virginia top lawyers, Lonnie Simmons,
Speaker 6: went to my father again, which I hated, for help
Speaker 6: and getting legal representation. And it didn't know the way
Speaker 6: we thought it was. Lonnie is not who the family
Speaker 6: or I thought he was. And that was a devastating bloke.
Speaker 6: And you know, because of the money wasn't there. You know,
Speaker 6: due process was denied to me. I just didn't understand it.
Speaker 6: And why that I was being convicted again. Why was
Speaker 6: I going through all this? And because they knew, they
Speaker 6: knew who've done it. Here's a guy that confessed. He
Speaker 6: showed the prosecutors and police and the medical examiners how
Speaker 6: he committed the crimes. And he said, why he committed
Speaker 6: the crimes. There's no loving father. It's going to make
Speaker 6: up the story like that because he wanted to stay.
Speaker 6: Police to stop beating on him. There's no story to
Speaker 6: be made up. This is the truth. This is what
Speaker 6: he said. That's no story. And then come along he
Speaker 6: takes the confession back, but they beat his kid a
Speaker 6: black kid in the Faukinsburg police detachment. But they don't
Speaker 6: want to believe that. They don't want to believe that
Speaker 6: a young kid was beat like he was going down
Speaker 6: the highway and then at the police station. They don't
Speaker 6: want to believe that. But they will believe that this
Speaker 6: grown man thirty forty years old was told and beat
Speaker 6: into making a confession. But the cop showing how he
Speaker 6: did it. It's what the medical examiner said. The medical
Speaker 6: examiner said that these are the things that happened, and
Speaker 6: what had happened was what Paul Records has said in
Speaker 6: his confession that the troopers didn't know what had happened
Speaker 6: because nobody had a copy of that report. Nobody had
Speaker 6: a copy of the medical examiner's report. They didn't know
Speaker 6: that the kids was packing up. They didn't know that
Speaker 6: the kids were spank No. Paul Reagan said that in
Speaker 6: his confession the medical examiner didn't know this until he
Speaker 6: did in outopsy. He had the food that was in
Speaker 6: the kids' stomach, the bruises that were on their body.
Speaker 6: Nobody knew this but Paul Records and then the medical
Speaker 6: examiner he confirmed it. You know, and knowing all this
Speaker 6: and I'm sitting there in court and they said you've
Speaker 6: done it. You done it, And I said, what are
Speaker 6: you to do? What am I to do? So here
Speaker 6: I am pleading, begging for me.
Speaker 3: The only good news is you have an amazing team
Speaker 3: behind you now, and you have all and you have
Speaker 3: a lot of good people out here that care about you.
Speaker 3: And you know, listen, I can only apologize for society
Speaker 3: as a whole to you for what's been done. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's not gonna it's not going to do much, but
Speaker 3: I can tell you that it's it's a disgrace. And
Speaker 3: I think when people hear about it on the show,
Speaker 3: they're going to be outraged as well, and there'll be
Speaker 3: a lot more people that are going to want to help.
Speaker 3: What are the next steps now, Like, how do we
Speaker 3: correct this horrendous injustice? You know, a lot of the
Speaker 3: cases we talk about on the show and cases that
Speaker 3: we've covered are cases where they weren't able to find
Speaker 3: the actual killer so they framed somebody, right, which is
Speaker 3: totally inexcusable as well. But this one's just fucking confusing, right,
Speaker 3: It's like you already got this, It's done. As much
Speaker 3: as I've been doing this For twenty five years, I
Speaker 3: can't remember seeing anything so wrong as this. It's just,
Speaker 3: it's wild. It's just it's like aggressive mouthfeasons right, it's
Speaker 3: like aggressive misconduct because you're undoing a rightful conviction and
Speaker 3: trading it in for a wrongful conviction. You're undoing a
Speaker 3: rightful confession and trading it for a false confession. It's nuts.
Speaker 3: So I want to turn it back over to Mark
Speaker 3: and Jessica to talk about what the next steps are,
Speaker 3: and then how can people who are listening, who are
Speaker 3: hearing the voice of this incredible man who's been locked
Speaker 3: up for two and a half times as long as
Speaker 3: he was not locked up right When you think about
Speaker 3: the fact that he was sixteen years old when he
Speaker 3: was arrested and now he's been in for thirty eight years,
Speaker 3: the math is crazy. So what are the next steps?
Speaker 3: How do we get him home? And what can anybody
Speaker 3: else do to help?
Speaker 4: Well, let me just first say that I had the
Speaker 4: pleasure of meeting John along with Jessica and Maddie and
Speaker 4: Alex at the mount With Correctional Complex, and for about
Speaker 4: two hours it felt like we were in the outside
Speaker 4: world in a restaurant talking to a good friend. We
Speaker 4: had an instant connection. John's a great person, caring, gentle,
Speaker 4: and I know that you can just see when you're
Speaker 4: in a prison. You see how the staff respect him.
Speaker 4: They all know he doesn't belong in there, They all
Speaker 4: know that he shouldn't be there. So it added a
Speaker 4: real human dimension to be able to meet John in person,
Speaker 4: and I think solidified our friendship and our bond which
Speaker 4: will never be broken and that I hope will lead
Speaker 4: to a happy ending of him coming out of prison.
Speaker 4: In terms of what to do, I mean what we're
Speaker 4: focusing on in this class, in this project, I mean,
Speaker 4: we're looking at cases where there's not much legal hope
Speaker 4: right now. I mean, obviously, as Jessica mentioned, if we
Speaker 4: can find the blood evidence that, if it still exists,
Speaker 4: and if we can test it, that obviously could be
Speaker 4: an actual innocence claim that could lead to John getting out.
Speaker 4: Beyond that, the legal appeals process is very, very limited
Speaker 4: in general, and in John's case, there's not that much hope.
Speaker 4: So here's where we come in. We're trying to provide
Speaker 4: broad public audience and support and mobilization to understand that
Speaker 4: this was a wrong that needs to be corrected. We
Speaker 4: want to get the public galvanized. We want to get
Speaker 4: them mobilized, we want to get them pissed off, and
Speaker 4: we want to get them to force West Virginia to
Speaker 4: finally do the right thing, which is to free John Moss.
Speaker 3: Jessica, what are your thoughts? People who are listening? Can
Speaker 3: they write letters? Can they call someone? What would you suggest?
Speaker 3: People are sitting there listening and they're going, I want
Speaker 3: to be Jessica. I want to do what she's doing.
Speaker 3: I get that all the time from people. I want
Speaker 3: to get involved. What do I do? What do they do?
Speaker 3: How do they help John Moss?
Speaker 7: The third Yeah, the question that I was left with
Speaker 7: after examining this case for so long, and the question
Speaker 7: that I hope you is the audienceer left with right now,
Speaker 7: is why would the police switch from somebody who is
Speaker 7: obviously to us the real killer and go to a
Speaker 7: seventeen year old black teenager who had nothing to do
Speaker 7: with anything? And I want to pressure that question. And
Speaker 7: the same folks who were the prosecutors back then are
Speaker 7: in the prosecutor's office now, and I want to push
Speaker 7: those folks to answer that question. And I don't think
Speaker 7: that they have a good answer. So right now, we
Speaker 7: have a petition up on change dot org for John
Speaker 7: and you can find that petition linked at our website
Speaker 7: that's Justice for Johnmoss dot com, so you can go
Speaker 7: visit that. We have a Facebook page, we have an Instagram,
Speaker 7: and through all of those mechanisms you can find the
Speaker 7: phone number for the West Virginia Prosecutor. You can give
Speaker 7: them a call, you can write them letters. Because I
Speaker 7: want to push that question that they've refused to answer
Speaker 7: and that they've been unable to answer, is why would
Speaker 7: you let a real killer walk free for heinous, gruesome,
Speaker 7: disgusting triple murder and put this young black boy in
Speaker 7: prison for no reason?
Speaker 3: So, Jessica, I want to give that website information again,
Speaker 3: it's Justice for Johnmoss dot com. That'll take you to
Speaker 3: all the different information that you need in order to
Speaker 3: get activated. And we're going to build an army around
Speaker 3: this case and then eventually we'll get them to back off,
Speaker 3: because that's what we do. We have a tradition on
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction, which is that every show I like to
Speaker 3: close with just open up the microphone to you to
Speaker 3: say anything you want about anything you want in whatever
Speaker 3: way you want to. You know, let Mark go last
Speaker 3: because he's the professor, and so we'll have the student first. Jessica,
Speaker 3: what are your closing thoughts?
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, first, I want to thank you for having us,
Speaker 7: Jason and Mark, for the opportunity to participate in this class.
Speaker 7: It's truly for myself and for the other two folks
Speaker 7: on my team, Mattie and Alex has been life changing
Speaker 7: and transformative. To be able to not only work on
Speaker 7: John's case, but to get to know John's case. John
Speaker 7: as a person, and I'm sure that everyone who's listening
Speaker 7: to this loves him almost as much as I do.
Speaker 7: He's so compassionate and carrying and warm, and it's an
Speaker 7: honor to not only be able to help him in
Speaker 7: his rightful fight to get out of prison, but to
Speaker 7: call him a friend and a close friend. And I'm
Speaker 7: so grateful for the opportunit unity to be participating in
Speaker 7: something as big as this, because, like John said, it's
Speaker 7: not just him that's wrongfully incarcerated. There were you know,
Speaker 7: nobody knows the exact number, but tens of thousands of
Speaker 7: people across the country right now who are in prison
Speaker 7: for things that they didn't do. It's about reforming the
Speaker 7: system on the whole. And I can say that myself
Speaker 7: and certainly other folks in this class have, as a
Speaker 7: result of this project, a more solidified and a stronger
Speaker 7: commitment to changing the way that system works, to make
Speaker 7: sure that folks who are in prison for crimes are
Speaker 7: there because they did it, and we shouldn't just as
Speaker 7: a society, be putting innocent folks in prison anymore. So,
Speaker 7: all in all, I'm just so grateful and happy to
Speaker 7: be able to get to know John and be friends
Speaker 7: with John and be able to be a voice for
Speaker 7: him on the outside.
Speaker 3: Well said, And now, Professor Howard, what do you got
Speaker 3: to say?
Speaker 4: Well, first, let me say what Jessica I think has
Speaker 4: shown is that she belongs at any law school in
Speaker 4: the country, and any firm and any organization would be
Speaker 4: so lucky to have her. And also that applies to
Speaker 4: Maddie and Alex as students. They came into this class.
Speaker 4: It's an unusual class. It's taught by a Georgetown professor
Speaker 4: along with an Exannaree who have this close bond and
Speaker 4: we're childhood friends, and we gave them a set of
Speaker 4: cases and what they've done with them. I mean, there
Speaker 4: are three other cases that are mind boggling. To John's,
Speaker 4: I think is just surreal. But what Jessica, Maddie and
Speaker 4: Alex have done is extraordinary. They really deserve the credit
Speaker 4: for having created the website, for having brought all the attention,
Speaker 4: for having investigated. I mean, they've worked tirelessly on this case.
Speaker 4: They've invested their lives, and that's not easy to do
Speaker 4: when you're a student, when you're a senior, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of other things going on in your life. But
Speaker 4: they've made this their priority, and they're so committed and
Speaker 4: devoted to John, and that is infectious. And I'm completely
Speaker 4: committed as well, especially having met John in person. And
Speaker 4: I just want to close by bringing it back to
Speaker 4: something that I think I want the audience to just
Speaker 4: think about, which is thirty eight years. Think about what
Speaker 4: that amount of time is. Think about what you've done
Speaker 4: in your life. If you've even been alive for thirty
Speaker 4: eight years uggles my mind. That my friend Marty did
Speaker 4: seventeen and a half years. I mean, that is alone
Speaker 4: is crazy and surreal. But when you think about thirty
Speaker 4: eight years, almost four decades, right, it's just extraordinary and John,
Speaker 4: for you to be as strong as you are and
Speaker 4: inspiring and kind. You're just a wonderful person and we
Speaker 4: will do everything we can to try to bring you
Speaker 4: out and bring you home.
Speaker 3: John, I would like to turn it over to you too,
Speaker 3: so it's all yours.
Speaker 6: Well. First, I would like to thank you for allowing
Speaker 6: me to speak on your show. I appreciate it very much,
Speaker 6: and I can never say enough of about my good
Speaker 6: friends there from Georgetow, Mark and Jessica, Maddie and Alex
Speaker 6: and I can't forget Marty again, you know the home
Speaker 6: I'm I'm just overwhelmed with everything that's going on, with
Speaker 6: the tension and the guy's bringing to my case and
Speaker 6: the miscarriage of justice that has happened. It is my
Speaker 6: hope that the people would reach out and continue to
Speaker 6: talk about the wrongful convictions throughout the country, not just me,
Speaker 6: but throughout the country of guys like me just too.
Speaker 6: When I tell you, it's it's hard in time to
Speaker 6: express you know how I feel what I'm feeling. Oh
Speaker 6: jee Oh, I really appreciated the cases that you're giving
Speaker 6: me this opportunity. You know, it's it's been hard because
Speaker 6: you know I don't have my family. That's what I
Speaker 6: always fall back on, my family get out of here.
Speaker 6: You know, that's one of the problems I would have
Speaker 6: to faith in not having my family. When I come
Speaker 6: to prison, there were seven of us. Now there's only
Speaker 6: three of us, my two sisters. And that's one of
Speaker 6: the things that I worry about and dealing with, you know,
Speaker 6: my family not being there. And it's gonna be hard,
Speaker 6: and a lot has changed. And you know, some people
Speaker 6: say that John's gonna be hard, You're gonna need all
Speaker 6: kind of help, and I'm sure I know that I
Speaker 6: wouldn't need it because the world has changed out there.
Speaker 6: You know. When I was out there, I was a
Speaker 6: kid and now I'm a grown old man. And and
Speaker 6: it's one of the things that just I like to
Speaker 6: be able to rule my own life, you know, just
Speaker 6: thinking about you all life out there, and it's uncomparable.
Speaker 6: And I like to have the opportunity to one day
Speaker 6: or drive a car, go to a movie again, and
Speaker 6: go see a show. These things were taken away from
Speaker 6: me for no apparent reasons. I've done nothing to deserve this,
Speaker 6: and it is my hope, my prayer that you know,
Speaker 6: society now would listen, we'll hear my cry and come
Speaker 6: to my hand and come and help me, because I
Speaker 6: need all the help I can get it. You know,
Speaker 6: I haven't found many many petitions, and I can't there's
Speaker 6: no more. Like you said, now, it's time to bring
Speaker 6: awareness to the corruption of the judicial system. But I
Speaker 6: thank you. I thank you around me the offertility to speak,
Speaker 6: I'm not much your own speaking like this, but I
Speaker 6: very much appreciated Jessica and Marti. They spoke very good
Speaker 6: above my my case in my situation, and I appreciate
Speaker 6: all they have in what you are now doing, and
Speaker 6: I really do. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 3: You should know, John, that they speak so highly of you,
Speaker 3: and I think that I'm speaking for them when I
Speaker 3: say that. I think they feel the same way about
Speaker 3: you that you feel about them. And I know now
Speaker 3: just getting to know you over the phone, I can
Speaker 3: understand why. John. I want to say, it's been an
Speaker 3: honor for me to have you on the show. You're
Speaker 3: one of the bravest people I know of I'm looking
Speaker 3: forward to get to know you in person. Your army's
Speaker 3: getting bigger and uh and it's like I said, It's
Speaker 3: a privilege for me to be able to be a
Speaker 3: part of the solution, and I'm going to keep fighting
Speaker 3: for you right alongside these great people. So thank you
Speaker 3: again for joining us. I'm looking forward to meeting you,
Speaker 3: preferably on the outside and that's where that's what we're
Speaker 3: gonna be working for.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It really helps.
Speaker 3: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
Speaker 3: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 3: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 3: to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate
Speaker 3: and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
Speaker 3: Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show
Speaker 3: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
Speaker 3: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
Speaker 3: on Facebook at Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm
Speaker 3: is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association
Speaker 3: with Signal Company Number one