Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, Charles and Julie McCrory were having
Speaker 1: marital trouble and seeing a counselor while amicably sharing both
Speaker 1: the care of their three year old boy, Chad, and
Speaker 1: occasionally the same bed. On May thirtieth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: Charles left Julie's house around ten to fifteen pm and
Speaker 1: made a phone call in the pre cell phone era.
Speaker 1: This corroborated that he had arrived at his apartment the
Speaker 1: following morning. Charles's parents were expecting Julie to drop off
Speaker 1: Chad and began to worry when she did not show.
Speaker 1: After several unanswered calls from Charles and his parents, Charles's
Speaker 1: father was the first to discover Julie's body just inside
Speaker 1: her front door. It was determined that she had died
Speaker 1: of blunt force head trauma sometime in the early hours
Speaker 1: of the morning. A red bandana was found near the body,
Speaker 1: and a clump of hairs were found in her hand
Speaker 1: that did not belong to her or Charles. Besides conflicting
Speaker 1: and dubious reports of a car that looked like Charles's
Speaker 1: at Julie's house that morning, no evidence connected him to
Speaker 1: the crime. Despite a similar incident within a month committed
Speaker 1: by a man known to wear red bandanas, the police
Speaker 1: maintained their focus on Charles. Since the district attorney was
Speaker 1: reluctant to charge Charles, Julie's family hired a private prosecutor
Speaker 1: team who sought the help of notorious junk science dentist
Speaker 1: Dick Suveran. Suveran testified that some of Julie's wounds were
Speaker 1: not only bitemarks, but that they were made by Charles
Speaker 1: at the time of death, effectively sealing his fate. Suveran
Speaker 1: has since recanted that testimony, including the assertion that the
Speaker 1: wounds were even bite marks at all. Yet, somehow Charles
Speaker 1: is still serving a life sentence in an Alabama prison.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. You know,
Speaker 1: when listeners of our show asked me, what are some
Speaker 1: of the most disturbing cases I've ever heard of? I
Speaker 1: will list off Vincent Simmons, Richard Glossip, Pedro Renoso. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many others I could mention, But before we
Speaker 1: even start today, I think Charles McCrory has to be
Speaker 1: added to that horrifying list. Joining us Besides the man himself.
Speaker 1: We have his attorneys first from the Southern Center for
Speaker 1: Human Rights, Mark Louden Brown, Mark, welcome to Wronful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me and a voice
Speaker 1: you'll all recognize, I'm sure, Chris Fabricant. Chris is the
Speaker 1: strategic Litigation director at the Innocence Project, the author of
Speaker 1: the fantastic book You've heard me talk about it before,
Speaker 1: Junk Science and the American criminal justice system. And he's
Speaker 1: also a frequent guest on the show and was featured
Speaker 1: on our Junk Science podcast hosted by Josh Dubin where
Speaker 1: he talked about bite mark analysis, which was the pivotal
Speaker 1: thing in this case. And so Chris, welcome back to
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2: It's great to be back.
Speaker 3: Jason, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: And now calling in from an Alabama prison where he's
Speaker 1: been locked up for I hate I even have to
Speaker 1: say this for over thirty seven years. Charles McCrory, thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1: Well, we're happy to have you here despite the reason
Speaker 1: why you're here, or more to the point where you
Speaker 1: are as you call us today, and that reason is
Speaker 1: bitemark analysis. Which is a proven junk science. It fails
Speaker 1: that not only reliably concluding who made a bite mark,
Speaker 1: but also at reliably identifying wounds as bite marks at all,
Speaker 1: especially because these wounds are found on skin and the
Speaker 1: medium itself is elastic and usually changing over time as
Speaker 1: it heals or decomposes or grows. And then some Charlottan
Speaker 1: comes into court claiming that they can match a suspects
Speaker 1: teeth to usually a photograph of an injury, and they
Speaker 1: say they can do this to the exclusion of every
Speaker 1: other set of teeth on the planet. It's just fuck
Speaker 1: and bananas. But it's only recently that lawyers like Chris
Speaker 1: and Mark have been battling these junk science experts in
Speaker 1: post conviction, because at the time of conviction, everybody bought
Speaker 1: into these lies. And Chris, I've been quoting your book
Speaker 1: left and right, And of course the book I'm talking
Speaker 1: about is junk science and the American criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: But what are some of the other common threads between
Speaker 1: these wrongful convictions that are based on junk science and
Speaker 1: bite mark analysis?
Speaker 3: In particular, what I've seen in all of these cases.
Speaker 3: I feel like I've been involved in all the bite
Speaker 3: mark cases over the last ten years, is that I
Speaker 3: have never seen an effective cross examination of a bitemark
Speaker 3: expert a trial, and all the transcripts that I've read,
Speaker 3: I've never even seen the question, you know, even the
Speaker 3: most basic one. You know, you think about when an
Speaker 3: injury is inflicted, usually during the crime itself, nobody was there.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows the position that the perpetrator or the victim
Speaker 3: was in at that time. But we know one thing
Speaker 3: is that it's not not on a mortuary slab where
Speaker 3: the photographs were taken of this injury. And we know
Speaker 3: that the injury has changed, often quite dramatically as a
Speaker 3: result of decomposition of the body, and they continued decomposition,
Speaker 3: So you may match quote unquote a bitemark quote unquote
Speaker 3: one day and not the next. It might be one
Speaker 3: hour and not the next hour, right, because skin is
Speaker 3: changing all the time, particularly with the deceased victim. So
Speaker 3: you never see that type of cross examination and you
Speaker 3: never see like, how is it that you know that
Speaker 3: this is a bitemark? What is it about being a
Speaker 3: dentist that makes you an expert in diagnosing an injury
Speaker 3: as a bite mark?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: What the proximity to teeth nonsense, right, So you never
Speaker 3: see those. And I think that just as a general
Speaker 3: matter on junk science convictions broadly speaking, is that it's
Speaker 3: almost impossible to cross examine your way out of a
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction with junk science. Once the judge lets it in,
Speaker 3: you got two strikes against you anyway, you know, And
Speaker 3: I'm not sure Johnny cochrane could have saved Charles McCrory
Speaker 3: once Dick subern gets on the stand and you know,
Speaker 3: spouts these invented credentials, right the American Board of Friends
Speaker 3: of go Toontology. That's what I wrote about this in
Speaker 3: the book. It's just an invented organization. Never tested any
Speaker 3: of their members on their abilities to actually match bike
Speaker 3: marks or even diagnose them. They just gave each other
Speaker 3: board certifications to bring into court and Wougers and places
Speaker 3: like andlus Alabama, and they led to a lot of
Speaker 3: wrongful convictions, including at least three others by Dick Suberan.
Speaker 1: And we'll go further into how this junk science applies
Speaker 1: to Charles's case in just a bit, but first I'd
Speaker 1: like to go back before all of this happened. Tell
Speaker 1: us Charles about your life growing up. Were you born
Speaker 1: in Alabama?
Speaker 4: I was born actually in the Panhandle of Florida, and
Speaker 4: lived in Mobile a couple of years when I was
Speaker 4: in like first to second grade, But anyway, we moved
Speaker 4: and Bluja at the beginning of my third grade year
Speaker 4: and grew up there and graduated and Lujah High School.
Speaker 4: Went to junior college there at Lurley Wallace for a
Speaker 4: year or so, and then I transferred to MacArthur Tech
Speaker 4: College and Op which is just fifteen miles or so away,
Speaker 4: and I finished a associate degree in computer science. A
Speaker 4: few months later. They started working for the junior college
Speaker 4: that I had been a student and that previously, and
Speaker 4: set up and then later ran the computer center there.
Speaker 4: They didn't really have one when I started there. You know,
Speaker 4: this is back in seventy nine, so we're in a
Speaker 4: very early period as far as computers were concerned. And
Speaker 4: worked there for five years, and then had gone over
Speaker 4: to the Power Company album an Electric co op it
Speaker 4: was called in it's now Power South. So pretty much
Speaker 4: far a living, That's all I'd really ever done full
Speaker 4: of time was computer work.
Speaker 1: So okay, you were working in the field that has
Speaker 1: become central to all that we do, so plenty of
Speaker 1: potential in your life. And I understand you were also
Speaker 1: a volunteer EMT the Rescue Squad as it was called
Speaker 1: in Andalusia, Alabama.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Rescue Squad was an all volunteer organizations about
Speaker 4: thirty men that provided damas and rescue for that area.
Speaker 4: You know, we wore work, to.
Speaker 1: Say the least, Yes, saving Lise kind of the freaking
Speaker 1: opposite of being a murderer, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And of course during this rise in your career,
Speaker 1: both professional and in the volunteer space, you had married
Speaker 1: your high school sweetheart Julie Bonds in nineteen eighty had
Speaker 1: a great job fulfilling community service, and had your son,
Speaker 1: Chad in nineteen eighty two, through which you and Julie
Speaker 1: shared a bond that could not be broken even if
Speaker 1: your marriage was going through a rough patch.
Speaker 4: Right, and it was, you know, the look back, it
Speaker 4: was just a lot of poor decisions on probably both
Speaker 4: of our part, but certainly on mind and we kind
Speaker 4: of grew apart, I guess, you know. I say we
Speaker 4: had we had a good relationship, very very amicable to
Speaker 4: say the least. We were together pretty much every day
Speaker 4: even during the time that we later separated and I
Speaker 4: had an apartment across town, we were still very involved
Speaker 4: with course with our son as well as you know,
Speaker 4: mutual friends and things like that, and we were together
Speaker 4: constantly even though we were we were separated and trying
Speaker 4: to work out marritder issues and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems that things may have worked out
Speaker 1: in your marriage had all of this tragic series of
Speaker 1: events not come to pass. The night before Julie died,
Speaker 1: you two had actually spent the evening together correct.
Speaker 4: That night, I'd been over there. We had actually been
Speaker 4: to see a marriage counselor, had had an affair before
Speaker 4: that for several months prior to that, and it had
Speaker 4: ended it although I was still talking to the lady
Speaker 4: for a while there, and anyway, Julie and I were
Speaker 4: trying to work through those things, and so we had
Speaker 4: actually had an interview with it marriage counselor that night,
Speaker 4: if and then we had actually met back over at
Speaker 4: the house later and stayed at the house for I
Speaker 4: guess a couple of hours or so, and left around
Speaker 4: ten fifteen, ten thirty, somewhere in that range.
Speaker 1: And this affair that you mentioned, the woman you're referring
Speaker 1: to is Gloria Wiggins. So at least from trial testimony
Speaker 1: said that you had called her on the phone from
Speaker 1: your apartment. I remember this is the era before cell phone,
Speaker 1: so this is corroborative evidence that you were actually at
Speaker 1: the apartment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, at that phone call. I'm at the apartment when
Speaker 4: I made the call. And then, you know, I just
Speaker 4: go to sleep, and the next morning I get up
Speaker 4: at whatever time, six thirty six forty five, had to
Speaker 4: be at work at seven thirty.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is the morning of May thirty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, and you were having what you thought
Speaker 1: was going to be a normal day, and as per usual,
Speaker 1: your parents were waiting for Julie to drop off Chad
Speaker 1: at their house on her way to.
Speaker 4: Work right usually around eighties, and so there was times
Speaker 4: when she'd bring me breakfast her, you know, or whatever.
Speaker 4: And so that morning I had called her about that
Speaker 4: and picking up something on her way and didn't get
Speaker 4: an answer, and turn around call right back. I figured
Speaker 4: I'd just dial the wrong number or something. Still didn't
Speaker 4: get answer, and even then it didn't particularly alarm it.
Speaker 4: You know, you just think, okay, she left for work,
Speaker 4: a little earlier something I really thought a little of it,
Speaker 4: and then later on it was I believe after eight
Speaker 4: I called my mom's house and she hadn't got there yet.
Speaker 4: And my mom, of course, if once something like that
Speaker 4: had she just starts worrying. So, you know, I called
Speaker 4: the house a couple more times and get no answer,
Speaker 4: and so eventually I called her workplace. They had not
Speaker 4: seen her either, and about that time, you know, my
Speaker 4: mom was like, so he Dad's going to check on.
Speaker 4: I said, okay, okay, I'll go there and just you know,
Speaker 4: kind of like we're leaving, you know, fears, so to speak.
Speaker 4: And so I leave work, go toward the house, and
Speaker 4: many of the rescue squad members we had two way
Speaker 4: radios in our personal vehicles, and so as I'm going
Speaker 4: to the house, I hear them on the radio call
Speaker 4: about a namas going to beside Charles McCrory's house or
Speaker 4: near Charles mccrary's house. And even then, you know, my
Speaker 4: thought was maybe a neighbor in trouble or somebody outside,
Speaker 4: or I call and tell him, you know, I look,
Speaker 4: I'm on my way over there anyway, And when I
Speaker 4: get there, my dad's outside and he's just you know,
Speaker 4: he's upset, and said, something's wrong with Julie. You know,
Speaker 4: where is she? And he just kind of like falling
Speaker 4: towards the house. I said, where's Chad, and he said,
Speaker 4: I've already got Chad. He's at the neighbors. He had
Speaker 4: he had already been in the house and founder the
Speaker 4: front door was a jar when he got there.
Speaker 1: So your father was the first to see this horrible
Speaker 1: crime scene before whisking away your three year old boy,
Speaker 1: who was thankfully unharmed. It's the only silver lining in
Speaker 1: this whole thing. And as you mentioned, he had taken
Speaker 1: him to the neighbors. Julie, on the other hand, was
Speaker 1: not so fortunate. She had been beaten to death. Rigormortis
Speaker 1: typically sets in about three to six hours after death,
Speaker 1: and by the time investigators arrived on scene around nine am,
Speaker 1: rigor mortis had not yet set in, so the murder
Speaker 1: must have occurred sometime between three and six am. Well,
Speaker 1: you hadn't seen her since about ten to fifteen pm,
Speaker 1: despite conflicting and dubious reports of a car that looked
Speaker 1: like yours having been allegedly seen at the house during
Speaker 1: those hours. And we're going to get to that in
Speaker 1: a bit, but first I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: crime scene itself. Now, this was a terribly violent struggle.
Speaker 1: A stocking had been tied to her right wrist. Hair
Speaker 1: was found at her left hand, hair that must have
Speaker 1: logically belonged to the person but to whom she was
Speaker 1: fighting for her very life. There was also a red
Speaker 1: bandana found near the body. Now, the fire poker from
Speaker 1: the fireplace appeared to be missing and was never found again.
Speaker 1: From the autopsy, it appears that she was struck four
Speaker 1: times in the back of the head, with one wound
Speaker 1: to the side of the head blunt trauma's the left
Speaker 1: part of her skull, eleven puncture wounds to the left breast,
Speaker 1: fractures on both mandibles, bruises on her face and ribs,
Speaker 1: and two bruises that may or may not have been
Speaker 1: bite marks on her right shoulder. So this is your wife,
Speaker 1: the mother of your son, and now you've come upon
Speaker 1: this unbelievably bloody and brutal crime scene.
Speaker 4: When you walk in and see that, you just mean,
Speaker 4: you don't know, you just don't know what sits to do.
Speaker 4: I mean, you don't know what to think. It's so
Speaker 4: shocking that there's really no standard response for it. You know,
Speaker 4: after I had saying that Julie was dead, and then
Speaker 4: the risky score got there right after that. And of course,
Speaker 4: you know, I knew all the guys on the squad,
Speaker 4: they were all friends of mine, and they were you know,
Speaker 4: wanting to see At that point, the police had not
Speaker 4: arrived or anything. And so as we do that, I
Speaker 4: come out and I go across the street to Chad
Speaker 4: and I remember I remember holding him and just I mean, really,
Speaker 4: the thought that come to mine is, my god, what
Speaker 4: is happening. I remember him kind of pushing back a
Speaker 4: little bit. I guess I was squeezing him too tight
Speaker 4: or something. But and then in the coming days, you know,
Speaker 4: he would ask for and we'd try to answer him
Speaker 4: as best you can.
Speaker 3: This is an incredibly brutal crime and the perpetrator undoubtedly
Speaker 3: would have been very bloody. And there was only lads
Speaker 3: to a been about four hours passed between the last
Speaker 3: time that mister McCrory he saw the victim in this case,
Speaker 3: and when he was first questioned by police at that time,
Speaker 3: they turned over all of his clothes, they searched the
Speaker 3: intertor's car, they searched his house, They found no trace
Speaker 3: of blood on anything. Then they examined the hares that
Speaker 3: were clutched in the victim's hand. Those hairs were not
Speaker 3: from the victim, and they were not from Charles McCrory.
Speaker 3: In other words, they were from a third person. We
Speaker 3: still don't know whose hairs those were. There was also
Speaker 3: a red bandana found near the victim's body. There was
Speaker 3: a construction worker that worked next door to the victim's
Speaker 3: house was known to wear a red bandana. There was
Speaker 3: an open window on that side of the house, the
Speaker 3: same side as the construction site, that had a fresh
Speaker 3: bootprint outside that window. The police took an impression of
Speaker 3: that bootprint, but then never compared it to anything or anybody,
Speaker 3: and never dusted the the window sill that was open
Speaker 3: for fingerprints. But we know that a man who worked
Speaker 3: at that construction site named Ainsworth was known to wear
Speaker 3: a red bandana. And we know that a few weeks
Speaker 3: after this murder, he committed a home invasion rape and
Speaker 3: served twenty years in prison for that crime. Was never
Speaker 3: investigated as a suspect in this case. Then we also
Speaker 3: know that mister McCrory had been entirely cooperative with the
Speaker 3: prosecution from beginning to end, had voluntarily supplied samples of
Speaker 3: his hair, his DNA, his body, all of which was exculpatory,
Speaker 3: nothing to point to mister McCrory's guilt. The only physical
Speaker 3: evidence was concocted, and we'll talk about the bite marks
Speaker 3: in a second. The only other evidence was that neighbor
Speaker 3: across the street who claimed that around four o'clock in
Speaker 3: the morning, his nineteen year old kid decides to get
Speaker 3: up and check on the garden, but he wasn't sure
Speaker 3: of the date, was sure of the truck, but he's
Speaker 3: thought that on the date in question that he had
Speaker 3: seen a truck similar to mister McCrory's.
Speaker 1: And despite this extremely dubious teenage middle of the night
Speaker 1: gardening scenario, we also found out later that he and
Speaker 1: later his grandfather not only exaggerated their vantage point, but
Speaker 1: also several other neighbors with much more credible recollections reported
Speaker 1: only Julie's car in the driveway on the date and
Speaker 1: time in question.
Speaker 3: That's the only evidence that they had apart from this
Speaker 3: bite mark.
Speaker 1: And the bite mark. Even their trial expert Dick Suveran,
Speaker 1: years later admitted that he wasn't even sure if it
Speaker 1: even was a bitemark at all. But even back in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, other than the refuted recollection of this
Speaker 1: teenage middle of the night gardener and his grandfather, all
Speaker 1: other evidence pointed away from Charles. But tunnel Vision had
Speaker 1: already said in and some say that it came back
Speaker 1: to something Charles had said at the crime scene and
Speaker 1: what later the prosecutor tried to use against him a trial.
Speaker 1: It was when at the scene, looking at the body
Speaker 1: with the other rescue squad guys on police and seeing
Speaker 1: the gash on the back of her head, Charles said
Speaker 1: something to the effect of do you think it was
Speaker 1: the licks to her head? Is that what killed her?
Speaker 1: So they just totally ignored the clump of hair in
Speaker 1: her hand, the red bandana, any alternative suspects, the lack
Speaker 1: of blood on anything that Charles owned, and started turning
Speaker 1: their focus on him anyway, on Charles, do you remember
Speaker 1: when that happened?
Speaker 4: I do know there was a time when the fielding
Speaker 4: is almost like the atmosphere changed. You could just feel
Speaker 4: it in the air, And in fact, I believe later Saturday,
Speaker 4: I told my mom that looked you know, they're turning
Speaker 4: this on me. They're looking at me. And then it
Speaker 4: was on Saturday night. The mayor of Andalusia was a
Speaker 4: man named Chalwmers, Brian. He was a longtime family friend
Speaker 4: of ours. He was a deacon in our church and
Speaker 4: I had known Chalmers a long time. He was also
Speaker 4: one of the charge members of the resk You squad,
Speaker 4: so I knew him through that. And he called me
Speaker 4: and said, look, I want to talk to you. So
Speaker 4: we talked on Saturday night for a good while and
Speaker 4: Chalmers told me then he said, you know they think
Speaker 4: you did this. He told me, say, I don't believe that,
Speaker 4: he said, But I'm the mayor. I can't get involved
Speaker 4: in this, you know, I've got to let the police
Speaker 4: do their work.
Speaker 1: Wow. So, okay, if you're at home listening to this
Speaker 1: insane story right now and thinking, well, okay, but you're
Speaker 1: somehow safe, You're somehow insulated from the possibility of being
Speaker 1: the victim of a wrongful conviction. Are you friends with
Speaker 1: the mayor? Because even a friendship like that couldn't save Charles,
Speaker 1: which shows us, in very stark terms that none of
Speaker 1: us are safe. So just after Julie's funeral. On that Monday,
Speaker 1: they brought you in for a more accusatory interview that
Speaker 1: ended up in your arrest. Did they try to extract
Speaker 1: a confession, as we so often see.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, as we were walking over to the county
Speaker 4: jails when one of them said, you know we can
Speaker 4: help you on this. And you got a long record
Speaker 4: of community service, you come from a good family. You know,
Speaker 4: all these kinds of positive things about my life that
Speaker 4: they seem to soon forget. But they say, you know,
Speaker 4: we can do a deal here where you know, we'll
Speaker 4: talk to the DA and see if we can't. You know,
Speaker 4: I think we can do ten years at that time
Speaker 4: manslaughter without a weapon. I believe it was called for
Speaker 4: like ten years is the max. And said, you know
Speaker 4: you'd be home in two or three years for Chad
Speaker 4: even gets in school. Good. You know you'd already be home.
Speaker 4: So I'm not pleading guilty to something I didn't do.
Speaker 4: And that kind of ended that discussion.
Speaker 1: And oddly enough, the Covenant County DA Grady Lanier, had
Speaker 1: no plans on indicting you none. The case against you
Speaker 1: was just too weak. A false confession would have definitely
Speaker 1: changed his tune. But you didn't crumble. This is why
Speaker 1: Julie's family, on this bizarre Alabama law, was able to
Speaker 1: bring in private prosecutors to do with Grady Laneer rightfully
Speaker 1: did not want to do He declined to do it. Mark,
Speaker 1: do I have that right?
Speaker 2: That's right from talking to folks in the community that
Speaker 2: he was at best lukewarm about the prospect of indicting
Speaker 2: mister McCrory and trying the case, as you would think
Speaker 2: he would be, because, as you pointed out, there was
Speaker 2: no evidence against mister McCrory, and the evidence that there
Speaker 2: was was exculpatory, right, And so I believe it was
Speaker 2: Julie's uncle approached this father son duo of Frank and
Speaker 2: Harvey Tippler, who were very well known trial attorneys, and
Speaker 2: so he went out and paid them to prosecute the case.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the point at which this alleged
Speaker 2: bite mark, sort of as Chris said, gets concocted.
Speaker 3: There were a number of puncture wounds on the victim's body.
Speaker 3: It was the tiplars who took this injury and decided
Speaker 3: that these were potentially teeth marks and took this evidence
Speaker 3: to doctor Dick Suveran who rose to fame as one
Speaker 3: of the forensic odentologists. Is they like to call themselves
Speaker 3: when they're in court. It's just a fancy way of
Speaker 3: saying forensic dentist. And Suvron decides that these R and
Speaker 3: D teeth marks, but he's very noncommittal about associating these
Speaker 3: teeth marks with mister McCrory. Then the case gets closer
Speaker 3: and closer to trial. And you see this in wrongful
Speaker 3: conviction after wrongful conviction, particularly as it relates to junk science.
Speaker 3: And this is why junk science is so convenient, because
Speaker 3: it really can say whatever you needed to say. And
Speaker 3: it wasn't saying enough before trial. But by the time
Speaker 3: it got to trial, Dick Suban was saying that it
Speaker 3: was mister McCrory's tea, to exclusion of everybody else on
Speaker 3: the planet's teeth that made this particular bitemark.
Speaker 1: So, according to this letter from Souveran to the Tiplers
Speaker 1: that was hidden from the defensive trial, Souvan shared his
Speaker 1: own doubts about making that match in court, but then
Speaker 1: he later did it anyway a trial. Now how he
Speaker 1: squared that circle for himself know, But the Tiplers now
Speaker 1: had their you know, the piece of evidence that they
Speaker 1: needed to win, not to get justice, but to win
Speaker 1: for trial. And this is just five months later in
Speaker 1: October nineteen eighty five. And remember Charles was doing well
Speaker 1: in life, so he was able to hire a real
Speaker 1: solid team Bubba, Marcel and Larrigus said, who were experienced
Speaker 1: defense layers. They just couldn't overcome what was eventually the
Speaker 1: recanted false testimony of Dick Suveran.
Speaker 2: So it's a short trial, a couple of days. What
Speaker 2: is frustrating is that the opening and closing statements are
Speaker 2: not transcribed, so we only have the testimony of the witnesses.
Speaker 2: And like you mentioned, it really comes down to the
Speaker 2: bitemark by doctor Souverron.
Speaker 1: But in addition to that, the Tiplers presented the marriage
Speaker 1: counselor as well as the woman with whom Charles had
Speaker 1: had an affair, Gloria Wiggins, to solidify their narrative that
Speaker 1: marital trouble was a potential catalyst or motive. But oddly enough,
Speaker 1: this woman, Gloria Wiggins, actually corroborated that Charles was back
Speaker 1: in his apartment around ten thirty pm, not at Julie's.
Speaker 1: They also brought up this comment from Charles at the
Speaker 1: crime scene about the quote licks to the back of
Speaker 1: her head. Now again, he was making an observation and
Speaker 1: she had a massive gash to the back of her head.
Speaker 1: So far, this is not a compelling case at all.
Speaker 1: Then they brought out the nineteen year old with the
Speaker 1: crazy midnight gardening story, Willie Meeks, who had been staying
Speaker 1: with his grandfather, Hubert Walker, Julie's neighbor, who also testified.
Speaker 2: There's this teenager kitty corner from Julie's home who claims
Speaker 2: that he was out at four point thirty at five
Speaker 2: o'clock in the morning checking on his grandfather's garden. It
Speaker 2: may have been the morning of May thirty. First, he's
Speaker 2: not really sure, and he sees this car that looks
Speaker 2: similar to the one that mister McCrory drives parked at
Speaker 2: Julie's house, right, so whatever that is worth. Interestingly, his
Speaker 2: grandfather there, who lives in that home, also testifies and
Speaker 2: claims that he is also up in the morning and
Speaker 2: also says that he sees a similar car, but he
Speaker 2: says that the car is parked somewhere else in a
Speaker 2: different location. So like you have these two stories that
Speaker 2: I think the prosecution probably hoped would corroborate each other,
Speaker 2: which actually didn't corroborate each other, probably because they were inaccurate.
Speaker 4: You know, Mick said that he saw the truck there,
Speaker 4: and my attorney had him draw a sketch, and that's
Speaker 4: part of the trial records. There's actually a hand drawn
Speaker 4: sketch of where the truck was parked. And I think
Speaker 4: it's the point a lot of people just didn't catch
Speaker 4: in the jury at the time. The house has a
Speaker 4: double driveway in it, and Julie's car would always parked it,
Speaker 4: you know, closer to the front door, and my Bronco
Speaker 4: was sit beside it, but there was plenty of room
Speaker 4: in the driveway for both vehicles. So when I got there,
Speaker 4: my dad's car was already there, parked beside Julie's car
Speaker 4: in the drive so I just pull up behind him
Speaker 4: over on the grass to the left side of the driveway.
Speaker 4: So then Danny leaves to go tell mother what had happened,
Speaker 4: and so when he leaves, that leaves an opening in
Speaker 4: the driveway. And so that's exactly how Meeks drew it
Speaker 4: on his diagram, and to me, it's obviously what Meeks
Speaker 4: saying is what he'd remembers seeing that morning after the
Speaker 4: police got there and after all this had happened, And
Speaker 4: there's an aerial photo of the scene taken by the
Speaker 4: police that shows that.
Speaker 1: So it seems like maybe this kid was interviewed in
Speaker 1: the aftermath about seeing Charles's car a few days after
Speaker 1: the fact, and his recollection was a bit fuzzy. Perhaps
Speaker 1: his memory was enhanced by that aerial photo. We'll never know. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: as we've seen in other cases, you just had a
Speaker 1: kid who, for whatever reason, wanted to insert himself into
Speaker 1: an investigation to help the police. However, what we found
Speaker 1: out just before the evidence you hearing that Chris and
Speaker 1: Mark recently tagged him, was that an investigator working for
Speaker 1: Chris checked out the properties and get this, the vantage
Speaker 1: point that Willie Meeks and his grandfather had. They checked
Speaker 1: it out, and what they found is that that vantage
Speaker 1: point was totally misrepresented to the jury. The jury had
Speaker 1: been told that they were right across the street, but
Speaker 1: if you were standing where they said they were standing
Speaker 1: and looking at Julie's house, you would not have been
Speaker 1: able to see the driveway in the way that they claimed.
Speaker 3: This kid who testified they was checking the garden as
Speaker 3: the father of a teenager. It struck me when I
Speaker 3: read the transcript, it was like who does that? Who
Speaker 3: gets up? But like, you know, I think that you know,
Speaker 3: normally when you would have a testimony like that at
Speaker 3: a trial, that you would have some sort of explanation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was part of my job, like to go out
Speaker 3: and you know, make sure that the garden was still
Speaker 3: there at four thirty in the morning, when it's still
Speaker 3: basically dark out.
Speaker 2: The defense called two other neighbors, one of whom had
Speaker 2: an actual explanation that was credible for why they were
Speaker 2: out on the morning of May thirty. First, that is,
Speaker 2: they were getting in their car to go to work.
Speaker 2: These were you know, and it was an adult who
Speaker 2: had a job. These two witnesses said there was no
Speaker 2: car there, meeting that description.
Speaker 1: So this midnight, pre dawned gardening teenager and his grandfather,
Speaker 1: who remember, whose accounts did not corroborate each other, were
Speaker 1: refuted by two other neighbors with credible recollections of that
Speaker 1: morning who said that both said that Charles's car was
Speaker 1: not there. And in addition to this weak evidence, the
Speaker 1: Tiplers presented no confessions, eyewitnesses, forensic evidence because there wasn't any.
Speaker 1: The hares found in Julie's hand were not a match
Speaker 1: for Julie or Charles. Charles's clothes, his car, fingernails, his apartment.
Speaker 1: No blood evidence at all was found. In fact, get
Speaker 1: this prior to trial. At one point they even claimed
Speaker 1: that they had found blood on his tennis shoes, but
Speaker 1: when it came back for the lab it turned out
Speaker 1: to be Coca cola. Now, the defense presented Charles, who,
Speaker 1: of course reiterated the same statement that he had been
Speaker 1: making since day one, recounting his every step and maintaining
Speaker 1: his innocence. The defense tried to up to the evidence
Speaker 1: of an intruder coming through the open rear window, the bootprint,
Speaker 1: and the red bandana, as well as the construction worker
Speaker 1: Ainsworth who worked behind Julie's house and committed a rape
Speaker 1: and home invasion just a month after Julie's murder, but
Speaker 1: none of it gained enough traction to overcome the testimony
Speaker 1: of Dick Suveran.
Speaker 2: Doctor Richard Suveran, fresh off his testimony convicting Ted Bundy.
Speaker 2: Doctor Suveran is a charismatic guy, one of the sort
Speaker 2: of godfathers of forensic odonology. Right, he's got resume full
Speaker 2: of credentials, at least he did in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: At the time of this trial. Fancy doctor flies up
Speaker 2: to ende Lujahl Obama from Miami and wow's the jury
Speaker 2: with this quote unquote science. And you know, I think
Speaker 2: the private prosecutors, the Tipplers, knew how important he was
Speaker 2: because they saved him to the end of their case
Speaker 2: against mister McCrory. And right at the end of his testimony,
Speaker 2: they do this series of questions, is this a bitemark?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Did mister McCrory make this by mark?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Did he do it during the murder? Essentially? Yes? And
Speaker 2: if you're a juror, that's hard to overcome. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's tons of all their expalatory information out there, obviously,
Speaker 2: but you just had this fancy doctor who flew up
Speaker 2: from Miami saying this guy bit her while.
Speaker 1: He was killing her.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It's usually at this point that I ask if you
Speaker 1: were still holding out hope that the jury got it right,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't sound like anyone did. Can you take
Speaker 1: us back to that moment, that awful moment when the
Speaker 1: jury came back in.
Speaker 4: Well, when when they walked in, I mean, I could
Speaker 4: have told you the verdict before they're in, just jurors
Speaker 4: that were smiling and looking at us and so forth.
Speaker 4: But when they came back in that they were not
Speaker 4: looking at our way, and I knew then, you know
Speaker 4: that it was over. When jeordge Balwin, you know, fantastic
Speaker 4: guilt to I told him then that I didn't kill her.
Speaker 4: I knew it wasn't gonna make any real difference, but
Speaker 4: there's something I felt I had to say. I had
Speaker 4: to tell him personally, well, you know, I wanted to
Speaker 4: stay in front of everybody. I need not do this.
Speaker 4: And we were surprised that the judge allowed me to
Speaker 4: remain out on bond until sentence, and that was just
Speaker 4: unheard of. And I've often thought that maybe that was
Speaker 4: a little bit of how he felt about the case,
Speaker 4: because you just don't get convicted the murder and stay
Speaker 4: out on bonding. And I went out for ten more days.
Speaker 4: Prison is a horrible place. You don't want to be there,
Speaker 4: and you don't want your family there, to say the least.
Speaker 4: There's a real adjustment. That's not the word for it.
Speaker 4: It's culture shock. I mean, it's just not something I
Speaker 4: ever dreamed in the worst nightmare, what ever happened. And
Speaker 4: so to get sentenced to a life sentences, you know,
Speaker 4: it takes a while to adjust to that.
Speaker 1: There's no way I'd ever want to even imagine. Must
Speaker 1: us live through it? I mean, seeing what Dick Suvron did,
Speaker 1: did you have any hope that this could ever be undone?
Speaker 4: Uh? Well, we of course did a direct appeal to
Speaker 4: criminal court appeals like you normally would, and that was
Speaker 4: shot down, although there were some comments in their opinion
Speaker 4: that you know, they agreed that Subarun's testimony had substantially
Speaker 4: changed from the time he wrote the letter until he
Speaker 4: actually came in the courtroom and that should have been
Speaker 4: revealed to us under discovery laws. But the judge said
Speaker 4: that Marcel, my attorney, did not object at the proper
Speaker 4: time to preserve it for appellate review. And it's like
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe that, I mean, your attorney doesn't object
Speaker 4: even though they think there's an issue here. And then,
Speaker 4: of course we didn't know until after I was at
Speaker 4: Kilby for a while at a hearing on a motion
Speaker 4: for a new trial. The DA greatly near at the
Speaker 4: time Grady made the comment about Harvey went down there
Speaker 4: one day, and that's when we first learned that Harvey Tippler,
Speaker 4: the young the son of the Tipplers, had act going
Speaker 4: down to Carl Gables, Florida and met with Suverron from
Speaker 4: the time of the letter until the time of the trial.
Speaker 4: So now it's like, Okay, now we're seeing some understanding.
Speaker 4: Why did this testimony change like it did?
Speaker 1: Wow, So now things begin to appear a bit clearer.
Speaker 3: You know, another thing happened after this case. The Tipplers,
Speaker 3: younger member of their duo went to federal prison serving
Speaker 3: life sentence for solicitation and murder as an aside, right,
Speaker 3: So these are the guys that prosecuted an innocent man.
Speaker 1: So it appears Harvey Tippler may have been willing to
Speaker 1: fudge evidence to ruin an innocent man's life, which makes
Speaker 1: his solicitation of murder conviction not that surprising, let's face it.
Speaker 1: So what did the Alabama Supreme Court do with this
Speaker 1: information album?
Speaker 4: The Supreme Court, they really just didn't do anything with it,
Speaker 4: and then it just sat for a while. And I'm
Speaker 4: not sure the date here in the early two thousands
Speaker 4: or someone of the two thousands that the cases involved
Speaker 4: in Michael Way and the dental mess over there in
Speaker 4: Mississippi where two different men were sentenced to death row.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Lavon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer. That was like two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, two thousand and eight. Michael West was
Speaker 1: basically exposed as being a fixer for hire. If you
Speaker 1: didn't have the evidence you needed to con back, he'd
Speaker 1: basically just show up and match any teeth to almost
Speaker 1: any injury.
Speaker 4: Right exactly. That case became public and we got wind
Speaker 4: of it and Newsweek magazine I believe it was, and
Speaker 4: so after that we file Rule thirty two trying to
Speaker 4: attack the dental evidence, but at that point we didn't
Speaker 4: have near the resources. Any serious ammunition didn't come up
Speaker 4: until I got a letter from Mark earlier the Innocence
Speaker 4: Project of New York could ask if we would be
Speaker 4: willing to provide records. They were doing, I think a
Speaker 4: task force or study in dental cases around the country.
Speaker 4: So we provided all the records.
Speaker 3: You know, when we in strategical litigation at the Innocence
Speaker 3: Project decided to focus on bank Mark comparison at evidence
Speaker 3: we identified as well as we possibly could every bite
Speaker 3: Mark conviction in the history of time, and we focused
Speaker 3: on death penalty cases initially, and then we started, you know,
Speaker 3: litigating all of these cases because we know that any
Speaker 3: conviction that rests on junk science is inherently unreliable. And
Speaker 3: because Mark and I have litigated many post conviction cases previously,
Speaker 3: including another wrongful conviction of Shila Denton in Georgia that
Speaker 3: was also a bite Mark case. We reached out to Mark,
Speaker 3: you know, because Mark and the Southern Center for Human
Speaker 3: Rights litigates and Georgia and in Alabama and referred mister
Speaker 3: McCrory's case to him.
Speaker 2: I read the transcript and I thought, yep, we're going
Speaker 2: to take this. You know, mister McCrory's lead trial council's
Speaker 2: deceased now, but the junior trial attorney at the time
Speaker 2: is not. And you know, he was practicing in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five. He's still practicing, So that's a career of
Speaker 2: something like thirty seven thirty nine, forty years. When I
Speaker 2: walked into his office after I learned of this case
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, he had mister McCrory's file
Speaker 2: sitting behind his desk, and he said, that's where I
Speaker 2: keep my file because this is that case, this is
Speaker 2: the case that haunts me. One of the first things
Speaker 2: we did was we've talked with Chris and we said, well,
Speaker 2: let's just see if doctor Suvron what he thinks today,
Speaker 2: and so we asked him.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not very popular with the dentists, as
Speaker 3: you can imagine, particularly after publishing my book, but I
Speaker 3: do have respect for forensic analysts of any discipline that
Speaker 3: are willing to review their prior case work and to
Speaker 3: recant when they know they've been wrong, when they know
Speaker 3: that their opinion may have led to the conviction of
Speaker 3: an innocent person. And I think that with notable exceptions
Speaker 3: that we've talked about on your show before, Jason, but
Speaker 3: most forensic analysts are trying to do the right thing.
Speaker 3: They're not trying to frame innocent people for crimes that
Speaker 3: they didn't commit. And you know, when you have the
Speaker 3: influence of you know, prosecutors saying that that you know,
Speaker 3: this guy is a guilty murderer and we need your
Speaker 3: opinion to help put him away, you know, many friends
Speaker 3: analysts believe that they're doing the right thing by giving
Speaker 3: the opinion to the prosecution that.
Speaker 2: They want dix.
Speaker 3: Zuban went back, he reviewed his testimony, he reviewed the
Speaker 3: evidence at issue, and he entirely recanted his opinion. Once
Speaker 3: that happened, Mark and I decided to co counsel this
Speaker 3: case together and we filed a petition for a new
Speaker 3: trial untainted by false, misleading. Evidence that was presented, nonetheless
Speaker 3: is so called scientific evidence to mister McCrory's jury, So.
Speaker 2: That's what we want.
Speaker 3: We filed this motion for a new trial in the case,
Speaker 3: and we were granted an evidentiary hearing, and in the
Speaker 3: lead up to this evidentiary hearing, the day before, we
Speaker 3: got an offer from the prosecution for time served, which
Speaker 3: means that all mister McCrory has to do is accept
Speaker 3: responsibility for this murder, and he goes home that day
Speaker 3: day that day, goes back to his son, to his sisters,
Speaker 3: to his life after thirty seven years in prison. He
Speaker 3: did not hesitate for one second in rejecting it. I
Speaker 3: think I'd plead guilty almost anything to get out of
Speaker 3: prison after being in for that long, And to me,
Speaker 3: that was as much evidence as anything else that mister
Speaker 3: McCrory is an instant.
Speaker 1: Man, and the fact that it was offered in the
Speaker 1: first place, and the fact that they let him go
Speaker 1: home after he was sentenced, but before he went to prison.
Speaker 1: All of it adds up to an even more searing
Speaker 1: indictment of the whole system.
Speaker 4: Someone asked me recently, did you entertain it? And I
Speaker 4: know I didn't entertain it. I'm not about to plead
Speaker 4: guilty to a murder that I did not do for
Speaker 4: many reasons. I mean, obviously I want to get out
Speaker 4: of prison, but we want to know what happened and
Speaker 4: who did it and so forth, And it seems to
Speaker 4: be that we're the only ones chasing those answers. The
Speaker 4: police have long since given up on trying to help that.
Speaker 4: It seemed like in many ways they've tried to cover
Speaker 4: their tracks on their inepness. Back when all this occurred,
Speaker 4: I mean, investigator blay geartt destroys and burns several things
Speaker 4: that could have been used for DNAs. That's when DNA
Speaker 4: was just becoming known and just becoming popular, and yeah,
Speaker 4: he burns these things.
Speaker 2: Now, we would love to do DNA testing of the
Speaker 2: fingernail scrapings that were taken from Julie right, despite no
Speaker 2: scratches on mister McCrory, the hair that was found clutched
Speaker 2: in her head, the red bandana like the one that
Speaker 2: Ainsworth wore. We'd love to test all of that for DNA,
Speaker 2: but one of the police officers burnt it all and
Speaker 2: so it's unavailable for testing.
Speaker 1: Who burns evidence? This is insane, like at least lie
Speaker 1: to us, right it was, tell us that you lost it,
Speaker 1: but you burned it. It just speaks to the fact
Speaker 1: that all the people in positions of power really must
Speaker 1: know that he's innocent.
Speaker 3: Is just astonishing. So we proceed to the hearing, and
Speaker 3: in addition to the recantation that was done in an
Speaker 3: Affidavid and you know, notably, the prosecution did not call
Speaker 3: pigsu Verron to try to rehabilitate him or to try
Speaker 3: to salvage his commcsion. Instead, we put on the evidence,
Speaker 3: and we put on two forensic dentists, Adam Freeman and
Speaker 3: Cynthia Berezowski, both of whom are to extent that anybody
Speaker 3: can be well qualified in this field. They're both very
Speaker 3: well qualified and studied it, and they both opined that
Speaker 3: this was not a bite mark. They looked at the
Speaker 3: other injuries that had not been called teeth marks and
Speaker 3: pointed out that these things that were called teeth marks
Speaker 3: and these other things that weren't appeared to be the
Speaker 3: same instrument that created all these injuries which were not
Speaker 3: teeth right. And then additionally and importantly, we had an
Speaker 3: investigator go out to the scene a couple of days
Speaker 3: before the hearing and take a look at the vantage
Speaker 3: point that the kid across the street and his grandfather
Speaker 3: claimed to have seen mister McCrory's truck or something that
Speaker 3: looked like his truck, maybe on the.
Speaker 2: Day of the murder, maybe not.
Speaker 3: And the description of the vantage point that they gave
Speaker 3: to mister McCory's jury, it was described as being directly
Speaker 3: across the street. But if you were standing where they
Speaker 3: said they were standing, and you were looking toward the
Speaker 3: victim's house, you would not have been able to see
Speaker 3: the driveway in the way that they claimed. And when
Speaker 3: we put our investigator on the stand, we showed evidence
Speaker 3: from the nineteen eighties that showed that the houses were
Speaker 3: in the same position, that there were no new structures,
Speaker 3: and that they were the same when we did the
Speaker 3: hearing last year. So even this one shred of weak
Speaker 3: evidence was further undermined at this hearing.
Speaker 2: To sort of close out the rest of the hearing.
Speaker 2: You know, we felt like we did it. That's the
Speaker 2: only evidence. It's not there anymore. Right, And so what
Speaker 2: does the prosecution do. A prosecution has an investigator from
Speaker 2: their office read the direct testimony of some of the
Speaker 2: witnesses who testify in nineteen eighty five. So this guy's
Speaker 2: just literally reading the transcript. He's not reading the cross examinations,
Speaker 2: he's not reading any of the defense witnesses.
Speaker 1: He's just reading.
Speaker 2: Certain prosecutor and witnesses from nineteen eighty five, which seems
Speaker 2: to me a concession that they have no response to
Speaker 2: anything that we've said. And then in closing argument, get
Speaker 2: up and create an entirely new theory of guilt.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Liliana Sigoura and Jordan Smith did an article for The
Speaker 2: Intercept on this case, and they called the closing argument
Speaker 2: a fever dream. It was just this story that the
Speaker 2: new prosecutor made up, completely inconsistent with the theory that
Speaker 2: the prosecution had at the time. And so we're sitting
Speaker 2: there like, what is going on? What is this? This
Speaker 2: makes no sense this is a totally new theory. And
Speaker 2: so a few days after the hearing, in Investergeiter and
Speaker 2: I went down to the prison where Harvey Tipler was
Speaker 2: serving his prison. Since he was agreeable he knew the
Speaker 2: case well. He has since passed away. He spoke with
Speaker 2: us for quite a while about his memory of the
Speaker 2: case because I mentioned at the outset, we didn't have
Speaker 2: the opening statement or the closing argument, and so we
Speaker 2: didn't know what the prosecution argut in closing. So we
Speaker 2: went to the source and we said, mister Tipler, what
Speaker 2: did you say in closing? And he said, oh, it
Speaker 2: is the bitemark. That was all we had, you know.
Speaker 2: And so we submitted a notice to the court saying
Speaker 2: we would like to let the court know that mister Tipler,
Speaker 2: the lawyer who tried the case, disagrees with the new tact,
Speaker 2: essentially that the prosecution has taken and the court didn't
Speaker 2: allow us to add that to the record, so they
Speaker 2: had no response to the new evidence and instead made
Speaker 2: up this story. And the real kicker was when they
Speaker 2: said that the jury was free to decide for itself
Speaker 2: that it was mister McCrory's bitemark. So notwithstanding three dentists
Speaker 2: who said it's not a bitemark let alone. Mister McCrory's
Speaker 2: execution said, well, but the jury could have decided that
Speaker 2: it was, and therefore his convictions should stand.
Speaker 3: So to put it differently, lagers are more capable of
Speaker 3: engaging in junk science than the junk scientists themselves, right,
Speaker 3: So that the idea is is that you don't even
Speaker 3: need an expert witness. We can just put this junk
Speaker 3: science in front of the jury and that would be
Speaker 3: good enough for government work.
Speaker 4: You know what, do you bring in somebody LASU or
Speaker 4: all these big fancy pictures and all that, and they're
Speaker 4: gonna believe what he says. And the idea that somehow
Speaker 4: they can take that out and the jury would have
Speaker 4: reached the same verdict is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It's unfucking real. And then on the first of March
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, you guys filed the motion to reconsider
Speaker 1: the order. In it, you've described all of the other
Speaker 1: bitemark cases that resulted in overturned convictions, and this emotion began.
Speaker 1: I think this is so powerful, just with the names
Speaker 1: of thirty five people who combined probably served over a
Speaker 1: thousand years in prison. If I to guess, and we
Speaker 1: know some of these names because they've been on the show,
Speaker 1: and I mean we can read them one at a time,
Speaker 1: I feel like we should go in each take turns
Speaker 1: reading the names.
Speaker 2: Keith Harward, Robert Stinson, Gerard Richardson, Willie Jackson, Roy Brown,
Speaker 2: Ray Cron, Calvin Washington, Joe Williams, James O'Donnell, Levon Brooks,
Speaker 2: Kennedy Brewer, Benny.
Speaker 1: Starks, Michael Christine.
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Muldowan, Anthony Keko, Harold Hill, Dan Young Junior, Greg Wilhoyt,
Speaker 3: Crystal Weimer, Stephen Cheney, William.
Speaker 1: Richards, Alfred Swinton.
Speaker 2: Sherwood Brown, John Kunzo, Garry Sifazzari, Sheila Denton, Robert de Boys,
Speaker 2: Eddie Lee, Howard, Gilbert Pool, and of.
Speaker 1: Course the man we're talking about today, Charles McCrory. And
Speaker 1: each of these people was wrongfully convicted due to bite
Speaker 1: mark evidence. And there are countless other names that could
Speaker 1: be added to this list that we haven't been able
Speaker 1: to help yet. So with that, Charles is in your
Speaker 1: thirty of this slow moving train wreck, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to find out from you guys, is there any
Speaker 1: steps that people can take as their petition. Is there someone?
Speaker 1: What can people do?
Speaker 2: We are appealing the case. We've partnered with some Alabama
Speaker 2: lawyers who are helping us do the best we can
Speaker 2: to try to convince the appellate court that the trial
Speaker 2: court will get it wrong. And so that's the next step.
Speaker 2: And I think just the more people who know about
Speaker 2: the case, the better.
Speaker 3: Reshare the podcast the articles to those listeners in Alabama
Speaker 3: to write into your lawmakers and question, you know why
Speaker 3: Charles McCrory, an instant man, is still in prison and
Speaker 3: this is correctable. Charles McCrory can still live the rest
Speaker 3: of his life and be reunited with his family. So
Speaker 3: I hope that listeners will help spread the word, help
Speaker 3: put pressure on the decision makers to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: We really want people in Alabama to know that this
Speaker 2: is happening in their backyard.
Speaker 3: And this is not a right or a less issue.
Speaker 3: This is a human rights issue. There should be no
Speaker 3: politics in freeing the innocent.
Speaker 1: So please do get involved. We'll put links in the
Speaker 1: bio to action steps you can take. Again. Chris Fabricant,
Speaker 1: go get the book Junk Science. Some of these stories
Speaker 1: are just too crazy to be believed. But you'll understand
Speaker 1: the issue so much better. And it's a great read
Speaker 1: to read like a novel. And now we turn to
Speaker 1: the part of our show that I know everyone looks
Speaker 1: forward to like I do, which is called closing arguments.
Speaker 1: And Chris, you know how it works. Charles was going
Speaker 1: to tell you how it works right now, and Mark,
Speaker 1: So basically I thank you closing arguments. I'm going to
Speaker 1: turn my microphone off and leave it on for each
Speaker 1: of you guys to share any thoughts that you have,
Speaker 1: anything we may have left out, or anything else you
Speaker 1: want to say. So we'll go Chris, then over to
Speaker 1: you Mark, and then of course mister McCrory, Charles, please
Speaker 1: close it out.
Speaker 3: I'd like people to retain their skepticism and that it's
Speaker 3: really important that we all serve on juries, that we
Speaker 3: have skeptical jurors and that don't believe anything that somebody
Speaker 3: tells you just because they're board certified or they're wearing
Speaker 3: a white lab coat.
Speaker 2: I want to just read a quote that I think
Speaker 2: is important for people to keep in mind. You know,
Speaker 2: Chris and I have mentioned a few times that we
Speaker 2: represented a woman by the name of Shila Denton in
Speaker 2: Georgia who was a bitemark case and in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: Miss Denton was granted a new trial. This is died
Speaker 2: in Waycross, Georgia, conservative part of Georgia, and the judge
Speaker 2: chief judge wrote, quote proven unreliable scientific evidence should never
Speaker 2: serve as the basis of a conviction and should be
Speaker 2: dealt with by the courts if and when it is found.
Speaker 2: And like doctor Suveran, who we applaud for admitting his mistake,
Speaker 2: like this judge who wrote this, who applaud for being
Speaker 2: courageous enough to overturn a murder conviction because it was
Speaker 2: based on proving unreliable scientific evidence. I just hope that
Speaker 2: there are more judges and prosecutors out there who have
Speaker 2: the courage that this judge did to see that and.
Speaker 1: To enforce that.
Speaker 4: Well. Again, I appreciate your interest in the case, and
Speaker 4: I just say that I think I wrote this recent
Speaker 4: but there should not be a finality in a case
Speaker 4: where an innocent person is in prison. And I think
Speaker 4: what some courts want to do is close the door.
Speaker 4: This is not the only case we know of thirty
Speaker 4: something exoneries just from dental evidence alone, and how many
Speaker 4: others are out there so juries. While they try to
Speaker 4: make I think good decisions, they do not make perfect
Speaker 4: decisions and there should be a real process for people.
Speaker 4: Seriously look at this when people claim innocence, and I
Speaker 4: appreciate groups like yourself and others that are working on that.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to raw Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis,
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
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Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
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Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is
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