WEBVTT - #055 Jason Flom with John Moss 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:05.080 America has two point two million people in prison. If 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:08.200 just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two thousand people. 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:11.039 That's a lot of people's lives destroyed. 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:18.440 If the system want to take you out of society, 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:21.800 they will do it no matter what laws they have 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.680 to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, but 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:25.800 they're breaking the lord. 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.360 Having to hear those people say that I was guilty 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:32.519 of a crime that I did not commit, and then 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:34.559 hear my family break down behind me and not be 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:37.600 able to do anything about it. I can't describe the 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:38.640 crushing weight that was. 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.680 I'm not anti police, I'm just anti corruption. 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:46.840 A lot of times we look and we see something 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.200 happen to somebody and that's the first thing we said, 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:50.720 that could never happen to me, But. 0:00:52.200 --> 0:01:14.399 They can. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Ronful 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:19.400 Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today we have a very unusual, 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:24.880 amazing group of guests. I have the honor of having 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:29.440 the distinguished Professor of Government and Law, Mark Howard on 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.040 the show. And Mark's been on before, and that's what 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:33.679 I want to say. Welcome back to Ronfak. 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:36.119 It's great to be back, Jason. Thanks for having me, and. 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:38.600 This time he brought back up with him is one 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.880 of his star students in the pre law class at 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:45.880 Georgetown that he teaches with Marty Tankcliffe. So, Jessica Scarato, 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:47.319 I'm glad you're here, Thanks for. 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:49.559 Coming, Thanks for having me Jason and. 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:53.080 Calling in soon will be an incredible man, John Moss 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:55.920 who has been incarcerated for almost four decades for a 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:59.520 crime he most obviously did not commit. So we're looking 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:01.640 forward to get his call. Just any minute now. 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:06.040 Hello, you have a call from John Mossler and Innate 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:10.160 at not all the Correctional Complex. This call will be 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:12.760 recorded and subject to monitoring at any time. 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.200 John, I'm sorry where you are, but it's good to 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:17.760 have you on the air with us and give the 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:20.680 public some idea of what's really going on in this 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:24.040 terrible case and in this crazy system that we have. So, John, 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.079 I want to go back to the beginning. You grew 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:30.360 up in Cleveland, right, Yeah? And what was that like? 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:33.440 Did you have a happy childhood? Was it difficult? Can 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:35.280 you just give us a painted little picture of what 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:36.880 your upbringing was like? 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:40.639 Well it was it was a good upbringing. I'll come 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:45.720 up will both parents at home and both working parents 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:49.400 and I have two brothers, two sisters. I grew up. 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.520 Will you know what did your parents do well? 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:56.919 My mother she worked in the transportation of patients at 0:02:56.919 --> 0:03:01.079 the Cleveland Prennick Hospital in my father he worked out 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:06.520 Cleveland Builders. You know, my parents was well providers. They 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:08.040 took care of all of us. 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.760 So then you ended up in West Virginia, which was 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.840 the worst place you could have possibly been, as it happens, 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:17.120 but you had no way of knowing that. But you 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:19.120 had you had family in West Virginia. Is that what 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:19.880 you were doing there? 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:24.320 Yeah, my father's grandparents lived here in West Virginia. It 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.320 was the reason that I had come here. You know, 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:32.079 I wouldn't say I was the best kid growing up. 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:34.840 You know, I gave my parents, you know, a hard time, 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:38.040 and you know, they thought that coming to West Virginia 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:41.160 might do me some good. And you know, my grandparents 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:43.640 they needed help. We had a little farm there in 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:47.000 Saint Albans, and you know I worked in the farm 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:51.040 and helped my my grandfather out around here. And you know, 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:53.760 I started going to school there here in West Virginia. 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:58.480 It was because my grandparents needed a little help around 0:03:58.480 --> 0:03:59.080 the houses. 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.840 You know, come to Western Junior, and of course that 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:06.360 was where this tragedy took place. And it really is 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:10.400 a tragedy what happened. And it's a tragedy on a 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:12.680 lot of levels, because not only was the entire family 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.839 brutally gruesomely murdered, and not only was the actual killer 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.719 allowed to walk free. But of course what's happened to 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:24.839 you is just an unimaginable fate that you've been locked 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:27.280 up for almost four decades now for a crime that 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:30.480 everybody knew from the beginning who actually did it. And 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:32.920 this is where I want to bring Mark and Jessica 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:37.360 into the conversation, because obviously they've been doing some terrific 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:41.640 work on trying to get you finally out and home 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:45.840 where you belong. So Mark, how the hell did this happen? 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:48.360 So this case came to my attention about six months 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:50.400 ago when I was starting to teach a class with 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:53.200 Marty Tankliffe about wrongful convictions, and we were looking at 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:57.480 cases of wrongful convictions, and I talked to Brian Ferguson, 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:01.000 who himself is an ex Hoonnery and who's a student 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.560 of mine of Georgetown, and Brian said, wait till you 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:07.480 hear about this case about John Moss, it is surreal 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.000 and he kind of talked me through it. I talked 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:14.039 to Jimmy Gardner and realized about the friendship, which added 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.720 a whole dimension to this. And the more I learned, 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:20.559 the more I realize we have to take on this case. 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:23.800 And so we have a team of three students who've 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:26.320 been working on it, and Jessica's here to represent them, 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:29.160 and I'll let her tell a little bit more about 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:31.520 their experience as they learned about the case. But it's 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:34.120 something to think about. Thirty eight years, it's just an 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:38.039 astronomical amount of time. But also the fact that from 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.880 day one, literally day one, we knew who committed these 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:45.839 murders and we have no idea how on earth John 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.000 Moss ever got connected to this. 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.240 Well, Jessica, let's go back to the murders themselves, because 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:55.000 this is an innocent family. It's almost like a Manson 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.520 style killing, right, This is how terrible this was. So 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.440 can you take us through that tragedy that happened that 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:03.440 John ultimately was turned into a scapegoat. 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:07.200 For absolutely so is A triple homicide took place in 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.760 Saint Albans, West Virginia, which is right outside of Charleston, 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:12.920 in nineteen seventy nine, December of nineteen seventy nine. It 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:15.360 was a mother and her two children. The children were 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:18.240 seven and four years old. They were brutally slain. The 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.800 mother was stabbed multiple times. Both children were hanged in 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.960 some way and suffocated. One of the children was drowned, 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:28.039 the other was hanged over the door. And juxtaposed that 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:30.240 with the fact that it was almost Christmas. It was December, 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:32.800 so you have a Christmas tree, and then on the 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:34.440 other side of the crime scene photo you'll see a 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:39.000 child hanging over the door. So it is it extremely intimate, passionate, 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:40.800 just gruesome, horrific killing. 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:44.599 And this case is so bizarre because the father confessed 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:48.320 on the spot pretty much ver he walked through in 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:52.200 great detail and took the police to the house and explained. 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:54.600 And again this is where it goes to like, I mean, 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:58.120 a monster, this guy's a monster. He said that he 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:01.240 drowned the one child because a kid liked to swim. 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:04.400 He hung the other one because she liked to swing right, 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:06.479 And I forgot what he said about the mom, But 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:08.120 I mean, when you get to that, it's like, oh, 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:12.080 my god, this is really macabre, and one would think 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:15.000 that law enforcement would be interested in getting an individual 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:17.320 like that off the street where he can't do that 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.640 to any other innocent people. But what the hell happened? 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:22.480 How did John end up? Why is he on the 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:24.880 phone with us right now instead of being raising grandkids 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:26.080 or whatever he's supposed to be doing. 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:27.600 Yeah, that's a great question. 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.080 Yeah no, And I've been stuck with that for thirty 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:34.920 eight years. And you know, and they kill me. It 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:39.000 goes back to my uncle, my uncle Alton, who lives 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.280 here in West Virginia. It was something about him, but 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:46.960 I didn't find out a few years later that he 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:51.200 was the one that told law enforcement there's a John Moster, 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:54.440 and you know, he might know something about the class. 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.800 And you know, I was dumbfounded when the troopers said 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:03.040 that on the stand. And to this day, I don't know, 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.080 and if anybody else know, they haven't told me yet. 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:11.080 Why he told police that I knew something about these friends. 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:16.080 I wasn't there. I knew nothing about the family. Besides, 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.640 they lived in my uncle's hotel and later moved into 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.720 one of my relatives houses. I see the kids in 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:27.800 the yard, they're playing, But these are kids, Why would 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:30.440 anybody want to do that? And they try to say 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:34.280 the reason of being robbery. These are people that didn't 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:38.080 have anything, the furniture and everything that they had. My 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:42.440 fam began to these folks, and why would I pick 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:45.920 one of the poorest families in the neighborhood to. 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.400 Rob right, that's crazy. And why would you steal furniture 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.679 that you already gave them? That's completely bizarre. And this 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:54.840 is so nuts, right, And let's go back to you Mark, 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:59.000 what the hell happened? Right? Because here you had a 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:02.920 case that was over and shut. Yep, right easy, this one, 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:06.680 this one came with instructions. Right, you have the killer 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.320 going here it is. Here's what I did. Let me 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:10.880 walk you through it. He was almost like he was 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:11.360 proud of. 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:13.760 It, that's right. And he also apparently had been abusive 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:15.640 towards his wife. He'd said, I'd never wanted to have 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:19.079 a family, never wanted to have kids. It all made sense. 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:21.280 It was done, and we still don't know this, and 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:24.079 we'll never know because he's no longer alive. He did 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:27.239 remarry the husband, he did remarry. There are some allegations 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:29.559 that he was abusive towards his second wife. But he's 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:31.840 no longer alive. But we don't know why the police 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:34.760 let him go. John has no idea. I mean, we've 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:38.680 all tried to think of every possible angle. It defies logic, 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:41.560 common sense, common decency obviously. 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.720 I mean you'd think too, even if a prosecutor is 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:48.680 so morally bankrupt that they don't care about locking up 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:52.160 an innocent guy, or this one't involve children, right, These 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:55.520 are innocent children that were slaughtered in a gruesome manner, 0:09:55.760 --> 0:10:00.160 and so anybody would want, any citizen, any human being, 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:04.560 would want that killer locked up forever to keep society safe. 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.360 But it gets even worse because there was essentially a 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:11.439 cover up that came into play once they somehow got John. Now, 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:14.679 they picked up John, who was incarcerated on another charge 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:20.200 unrelated at age seventeen, and brought him in and beat 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.679 the crap out of him and got what's probably a 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:27.839 classic case of a false confession with physical violence, threatening him, 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.000 threatening to kill him, and at some point he broke down, 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:35.560 and that led to his conviction and the fact that 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:37.920 it has stuck for all of these decades. 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.120 So they replaced a true confession with a false compression. 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.880 That nothing matched the crime scene. It's absolutely clear that 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:47.800 the person who made that false confession, John knew nothing 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.360 about the crime. And there's more in terms of the 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:56.000 medical examiner changing his report. The medical examiner initially filed 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:59.600 a report that stated that the killings took place at 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.880 a certain time when the husband was home, and eleven 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:05.920 months later, when they picked up John, for reasons that 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.200 we still barely understand had to do with his uncle 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:13.920 calling in and saying that John was somehow involved, the 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.479 medical examiner changed the time of death by a substantial 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:21.520 number of hours, something that we've talked to medical experts 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:23.680 and medical examiners and they say they've never seen something 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:26.080 like this before. So that suggests there was a much 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:37.040 bigger cover up that was involved. 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:45.440 Jessica, You've been diving deep into this case now, and 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:48.440 I've been so impressed with the work that the Georgetown 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:52.440 pre law students have been doing, you and your team 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:55.000 as well as the other teams. So do you have 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.560 any theory Do you think that there was some connection 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:02.640 between the actual killer and the authorities that they would 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:03.959 have wanted to protect him, and so he was a 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:06.280 ups driver. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.920 Yeah, Initially we looked for that kind of connection, something 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:13.480 that would explain why they made this very sudden switch 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.120 in focus from the person that we believe is the 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.480 true killer and the person who all the evidence points 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:21.760 to to John. And it's interesting because there had been 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:25.520 previous allegations by the father and husband that his confession 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:29.200 was coerced. He claimed that there's very little evidence to 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:31.920 actually support that. Of course, we don't have the video 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:37.040 recorded interrogation itself, but a judge upheld that confession as voluntary, 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.960 so they were picking a jury for his trial. The 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:43.680 judge upheld his confession as voluntary. That exact same day, 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:47.360 the West Virginia State Police dispatched troopers to Ohio to 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.000 pick up John. So it's very unclear why when you 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:53.679 have somebody who all the evidence points to, who has 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:57.200 confessed that confession is upheld as voluntary in a court 0:12:57.200 --> 0:12:59.240 of law, you're picking a jury, why all of a 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:02.000 sudden you would go seek out another suspect, even on 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.600 a random tip from a person in the community, right Like, 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:08.000 that doesn't make a lot of sense. And to me, 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:12.080 there's no way that that isn't suspicious. There's no way 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:15.840 that that isn't a miscarriage of justice. All the evidence, 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:18.079 all of the science point to this one particular person, 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:21.120 and they're obviously seeking out for some reason that I 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:22.360 don't know another person. 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.679 Well, I mean, it's hard not to think. You have 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:29.440 West Virginia, which may be the whitest state in America, right, 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:34.720 and you have initially the confession of the white male 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:39.120 suspect replaced by the false confession of a black male suspect. 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:42.640 I mean, I don't know. I wasn't there, but it 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.720 sounds like that may have had some role in it. Again, 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:47.880 which impossible to figure out these motives because it doesn't 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:50.480 make any damn sense. Okay, so let's go back to it. 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:54.120 So John, you get picked up and brought back to 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:56.120 West Virginia. What's going through your mind? 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:00.320 Well, we can go back farther than that. When I 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:04.000 first met these troopers, I was in the detention home 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:09.200 on the unrelated charge, and these two troopers the chief 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:13.680 investigators of a triple homicide. They come to Ohio while 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:15.640 I was in the detention home to talk to me 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:21.400 about these murders, and they wanted a sample of my blood, 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.520 and I told them I didn't have anything to hide, 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.560 and if they wanted, you know, they pricked my fingers, 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:32.640 squeezed samp of my blood on a cotton swath. If 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:37.760 there was a lady attorney visiting, another client came over 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:41.800 to ask the officers what were they doing, and the 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:45.640 troopers said they had talked to my attorneys in Ohio 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:48.160 and it was okay, and they would be over there 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:52.120 later to talk to me about it. The lady attorney 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:56.080 advised them that they should come back when my attorney 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:59.920 was there. So when my attorney finally got there, he said, 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:03.680 never talked to any West Virginia troopers about coming over 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.680 and getting the sample of my blood, and he went 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:12.320 to court. Supposedly he got the blood back, but years later, 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.320 come to find out this sample of blood that these 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:18.920 troopers took while I was in the detention home made 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:22.000 it back to West Virginia. But my lawyers were telling 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:24.240 me he was able to get the sample of blood 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:28.680 back before these troopers left Ohio. But come to find 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:33.120 out they took this blood supposedly, and they gave it 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.960 to Fred Zane and then I didn't find anything out 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:41.520 about into the Zain investigation, and that's when it come 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:47.320 out about kim fabricating and falsifying reports and everything. And 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:51.240 this sample was never disclosed to any of my attorneys 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:55.920 doing my first trial, knowing my second trial. But that's 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:57.720 how I come to meet these. 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.480 Two troopers and Mark. Talk about Fred Zayne for a second, 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.680 because this is one of the most notorious figures in 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:09.840 American if there was a hall of fame of malfeasance 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:12.400 in the court system, and malfeas is not a strong 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:14.800 enough word because it's actually criminal activity that he was 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:17.040 engaged in. But if there was a guy who was 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.880 one of the worst framers of innocent people in the country, 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:22.600 he'd be up there, right. 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:25.400 There are so many layers of misconduct in this. First 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:29.120 of all, why are they coming and taking a blood 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.480 sample from a seventeen year old in another state? Right, 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:35.920 so raises the possibility what do they do with that blood? 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:38.840 They may have actually planted it at the crime scene. 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:41.280 Then you've got the person coming in to analyze that 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:43.760 is Fred Zayne, who's been found in at least one 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:48.120 hundred and forty cases to have falsified blood and other 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:51.120 forensic evidence, and probably they're countless more that we don't 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:57.040 even know about. So here we have John who gets 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:00.240 convicted based on a false confession that the police beat 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.840 out of him. That's classic and completely unreliable. And this 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:07.840 so called blood evidence that had the testimony of somebody 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:11.119 who perjured himself and falsified evidence and as a criminal 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:14.719 in every respect. And that's the totality of the evidence 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:19.160 against John. And so what has unfortunately blocked John from 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:22.520 having a chance of coming out is that Zayne at 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:25.840 the time was not the head of the office. He 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:29.120 did all of the work in John's case, but there 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:32.240 was a supervising person and even though that supervisor said 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:35.639 I just signed off on everything Fred Zaye did, the 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:38.320 fact that Fred Zaye wasn't the supervisor he became the 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.760 supervisor a few years later, means that courts have rejected 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.760 John's challenge to his conviction based on the work of 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:47.920 Fred Zaane. They're somehow saying that it wasn't actually a 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:50.359 Zay case, even though Zayn did all of the work, 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.840 because there was a supervisor who just was a rubber stamp. 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.639 And so there are a lot of people who've gotten 0:17:56.680 --> 0:17:59.840 exonerated who were so called Zain cases, and Jimmy Gardner 0:17:59.880 --> 0:18:03.639 is one of them. But unfortunately they're not letting John 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:07.040 join this group even though he clearly belongs in it. 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:08.480 And that's just outrageous. 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:11.400 And let's not forget the fact that fred Zaye himself 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:15.159 was convicted, right, that's hard, right in this system for 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:18.560 the idea that a chief stroologist would actually be convicted 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:21.919 and sentenced to four to twelve years at prison himself. 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.240 So we have the actual real criminal is the one 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:30.920 who falsely testifies and inculpates an innocent guy, which is 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:32.960 John who's on the phone with us. Now it's all 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:36.280 completely backwards. And what about the public defender? I mean, John, 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:38.680 were you? I mean it sounds like just from the 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.520 little bit that you've told us already, that this public 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:44.639 defender you had was not up for the task. 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:49.680 Well, the first attorney I had in my first trail, 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:53.399 he was a Pase attorney. My parents hired him. I 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:57.040 didn't have a crump defender into my second trial. But 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:01.800 everybody took what was fred Zane was doing being the gospel. 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:05.560 You know, nobody went back to check anything after my 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:09.560 conviction in eighty four. My attorney in my first trial, 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:13.360 he made a statement in the newspaper during the Inzane 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.680 investigations that he had talked to one of the jurors 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:20.639 on the elevator and the juror told him that you 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:25.280 had everything covered, but you just could not explain the blood. 0:19:25.800 --> 0:19:30.000 You could not explain that blood. But the lawyer even then, 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:34.600 nobody would go back to check out Jane's credentials, to 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.399 check out any of the testing. They just took his 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:41.520 word as being the gospel. My second trial attorney, he'd 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:45.520 done nothing. He didn't do no investigative work in trying 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:49.639 to find out if the blood was reliable anything. Sped 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:53.800 of West Virginia wanted to do DNA tests and fred 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:57.200 Zane they called him back from Texas during my second trial. 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:02.040 And when Zane done tests in my second trial, he 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:07.320 destroyed everything. And you know, I was not able to 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:12.560 have any other lawyer, any other investigators, any other doctor, 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:16.600 sciences or whatever to review any of fred Zane's work 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:20.280 when he was doing the DNA and he just destroyed anything. 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:23.840 And that's why today I don't have the evidence to 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:27.200 try to test to find out who is the real perpetrator. 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:30.879 Fred Zane knew who he was because fred Zane he 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:33.919 had to blood evidence and when he found out it 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:39.159 wasn't me, he destroyed everything. And my lawyers they dropped 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:43.280 the ball in the early years of mind cancelations of 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:45.960 questioning the terrology work in my case. 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.760 And Jessica, as a pre law student and soon to 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:52.479 be lawyer, you didn't get into Georgetown without having a 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:55.520 lot of active brain cells, right, And obviously you have 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:57.720 a big heart. But when you hear this, it must 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:02.119 pain you to think about these lawyers just basically doing nothing, 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:05.720 I mean, not helping their client. It's almost like the 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.120 doctor just letting somebody die. Right. How does this sit 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:10.639 with you and thinking back on it, what would you 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:11.480 have done differently? 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:12.440 Yeah? 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:16.800 Absolutely? And John, for that matter, his attorney's never looked 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:19.320 for the blood evidence. That's something that we think is 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:23.000 insane about this case is that the assumption that every 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:26.640 attorney from the revelation that Zane had been contaminating evidence 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:30.120 onward has never actually gone to the West Virginia crime 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:32.840 lab and looked for the blood evidence. And the assumption 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:35.000 was that it was destroyed. But we don't know that. 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:38.720 And in all five Zane related Kanawa County exonerations, which 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.280 is where John was incarcerated, they had found the blood 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:44.840 evidence after the fact, after having assumed that it was destroyed. 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:46.040 They had found it later. 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:47.439 So it might still be there in other way, So. 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:49.320 It might still be there in other words, and nobody 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:51.840 had looked for it. And obviously it's much harder to 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:53.760 try to find it now than it was when all 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.160 these revelations came out in the late nineteen eighties early 0:21:56.240 --> 0:22:00.159 nineteen nineties. And so it's so terrifying and disheartening to 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:02.360 me that why would you not look for that? 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:04.960 That's crazy And it's so crazy too. I mean, John, 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:07.560 when you were first arrested, who is President Jimmy Carter? 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:09.520 So long ago? I'm just trying to give the audience 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:10.600 a sense of how long. 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:14.320 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it was Jimmy. 0:22:14.119 --> 0:22:16.760 Yeah, Jimmy Carter. I name. Some people were listening won't 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:19.960 even recognize it's so long ago, right, I mean, so yeah, 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:23.000 it's just it's so it's so devastating, I mean, and listen, 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:24.840 more power to you. I mean, the fact that you're 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:27.720 still here and still standing strong and still fighting is 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:30.680 a great testament to your character. And so I salute 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:32.560