Speaker 1: In the early morning hours of August eighth, nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: shots rang out in downtown Indianapolis. Casey Shane, a young
Speaker 1: man who had been known to frequent a gay bar
Speaker 1: in the area, was found dead in the driver's seat
Speaker 1: of his truck. A young woman who was delivering newspapers
Speaker 1: in the area witnessed the shooting. She described the gunman
Speaker 1: too police as a dark skinned black man wearing a
Speaker 1: black shirt and jogging pants with three white stripes down
Speaker 1: the sides. Later, in a photo array and a live lineup,
Speaker 1: she picked out Leon Benson. Leon lived a few blocks
Speaker 1: from the shooting and was known to police as a
Speaker 1: drug dealer. When Leon was arrested a week later, he
Speaker 1: insisted he had nothing to do with the shooting. He'd
Speaker 1: been in a building across the street that night and
Speaker 1: dozens of people had seen him there. But at trial,
Speaker 1: the young woman who had identified Leon from the lineup
Speaker 1: did so again in front of a jury with convincing certainty.
Speaker 1: She had seen the shooter with her own eyes, she
Speaker 1: told the court, and she pointed at Leon Benson. But
Speaker 1: this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I'm
Speaker 1: kimbas Smith. Criminal justice advocate, formerly incarcerated individual, presidential clemency recipient,
Speaker 1: and author and executive producer. And I'm sitting in today
Speaker 1: for Jason Flahm, who is a good friend, longtime supporter,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited today to be here with Leon Benson. Hi. Leon,
Speaker 1: thanks for being on Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: And we also have us Laura Basilon from the University
Speaker 1: of San Francis Go School of Law, where she is
Speaker 1: the director of the Criminal, Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice
Speaker 1: Clinic Programs. Welcome, Laura.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for your passion and the
Speaker 1: work that you do. Leon. So what was most interesting
Speaker 1: to me about your case was that during that particular
Speaker 1: time when you are arrested in nineteen ninety eight, there
Speaker 1: was this big, you know thing already with the war
Speaker 1: on drugs, but there was an influx now black and
Speaker 1: brown people going into the system. And so my case
Speaker 1: was a drug case, a crack case. And so I
Speaker 1: know with my case, the prosecution withheld discovery information and
Speaker 1: just to read all the many errors that transpired with
Speaker 1: your trial, it just really struck a chur with me,
Speaker 1: and not to mention. I used to live in Indianapolis
Speaker 1: as well, so I'm really excited to just dive in.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about your life before all of
Speaker 1: this happened. You know, where you're from, where you grew up,
Speaker 1: anything about your family life.
Speaker 4: You know, first and foremost, I'm from Flint, Michigan, and
Speaker 4: I'm proud to say that. You know, Flint is a
Speaker 4: blue collar community, you know, the underdog. You know, we
Speaker 4: got that fighting spirit. I think I had a great childhood.
Speaker 4: I mean I didn't know I was poor anything like that.
Speaker 4: I was very creative growing up. I was able to
Speaker 4: see a diverse crowd of people and culture.
Speaker 2: At a young age.
Speaker 4: And you know, I participated in sports, played basketball, you know,
Speaker 4: things like that, you know, typical things of a kid.
Speaker 4: So I did have an affinity for hip hop, but
Speaker 4: I also started to have an affinity for you know,
Speaker 4: the fast life, fast money, things like that.
Speaker 2: You know, growing up, I was a typical.
Speaker 4: Kid who experienced gang violence, experienced street violence, things like that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I eventually moved to Detroit when I was seventeen and
Speaker 4: and love Detroit. You know, I made my bones in
Speaker 4: Detroit very early. You know, fair feeling Puritan. You know,
Speaker 4: at this point, it seems like a very typical urban background.
Speaker 4: As I reflect back on my life, I see a
Speaker 4: lot of things that could have been a lot better,
Speaker 4: but they could have been a lot worse too, you know.
Speaker 1: And at the time that this incident happened, what was
Speaker 1: going on in your life?
Speaker 4: In August eighth, for nineteen ninety eight, I was twenty
Speaker 4: two years old, and at the time, what was happening
Speaker 4: for me in my life? It was like, you know,
Speaker 4: the the hip hop stuff that was going on with Tupac,
Speaker 4: you know, in Big Eie master P.
Speaker 2: You know, this was the backdrop. You know. I was
Speaker 2: in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Speaker 4: I had come down there, not to sell drugs or
Speaker 4: anything like that. I came down there as a professional painter,
Speaker 4: home renovator. I was able to renovate like eighty homes
Speaker 4: before I was laid off, and you know, unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 4: I got back into the street life. So the area
Speaker 4: I was in, it was a transit area in the
Speaker 4: near downtown area Indianapolis. It was a lot going on.
Speaker 4: It was very transit, very moving, and this was one
Speaker 4: of the reasons that attracted me to this particular part
Speaker 4: of the city of Indianapolis because it reminded me of
Speaker 4: Detroit and Flynt.
Speaker 1: And this was also the neighborhood where the crime took place. Laura,
Speaker 1: can you tell us something about the area kind of
Speaker 1: set the stage for what happened that night?
Speaker 3: Indianapolis, the downtown part of it where this crime took place,
Speaker 3: was fairly violent. It was known for a place where
Speaker 3: you could buy and sell drugs, and as Leon also indicated,
Speaker 3: was this interesting mix where this is the late nineties,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of homophobia, and it was also
Speaker 3: a place where people who were gay could go to bars,
Speaker 3: including the Varsity Lounge and meet other people who were gay.
Speaker 1: The victim in the case was twenty five year old
Speaker 1: Casey Shane. He was from Plainville, which was middle class
Speaker 1: subourbon community about twenty miles outside of Indianapolis. What was
Speaker 1: he doing downtown that night?
Speaker 3: Our operating theory has always been that Casey Shane was
Speaker 3: there that night in that particular part of Indianapolis because
Speaker 3: he had visited the Varsity Lounge, and we know he
Speaker 3: had visited that bar in the past because witnesses had
Speaker 3: identified him as being there, and there's fairly strong evidence
Speaker 3: at this point to suggest that he was gay, but
Speaker 3: also closeted for the reasons that you might expect, which
Speaker 3: is that very very few people, even in extremely liberal places,
Speaker 3: which Indianapolis was not, were out of the closet at
Speaker 3: that point in time. And so our theory is that
Speaker 3: he went out that night and went to the Varsity
Speaker 3: and had a few drinks and maybe had an interaction
Speaker 3: with someone there and then maybe arranged to meet them
Speaker 3: a couple of blocks away, which is where the actual
Speaker 3: crime itself occurred.
Speaker 1: With all of that, can you run down roonologically the
Speaker 1: night of August eighth, nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was a fairly ordinary night in that
Speaker 3: Leon was hanging out at a place called the Priscilla Apartments,
Speaker 3: which was also known as Little Vietnam.
Speaker 4: It was a building that I saw drugs out of,
Speaker 4: and at this particular point of the night, I'd been
Speaker 4: out there all day. So I came back to my
Speaker 4: headquarters was this building, and I was in the back
Speaker 4: of the buildings and by the steps, and I was
Speaker 4: there with Timothy Gaither with a whole bunch of other people,
Speaker 4: and you know, it was beer drinking, we smoking.
Speaker 3: And then around a little after three o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 3: there was this sound of gunfire.
Speaker 4: And we heard shots like by popow paw, and it
Speaker 4: was like they were so close.
Speaker 3: And one of Leon's friends, Miss Shirley, who had just
Speaker 3: gone outside, saw what they believed to be this black
Speaker 3: pickup truck parked kind of idling outside across the street,
Speaker 3: and there was a man in the truck in the
Speaker 3: front seat who wasn't moving, and there was a man
Speaker 3: on the sidewalk who had fired multiple times into the vehicle,
Speaker 3: then walked away, walked back and fired again, And this
Speaker 3: was just a completely shocking, seemingly out of nowhere shooting,
Speaker 3: and from Leon's perspective, all he heard were the shots.
Speaker 4: You know, I stay in the back of the building
Speaker 4: for maybe twenty thirty minutes, so I left out that
Speaker 4: back part of the door and went to my apartment
Speaker 4: that was also in that direction, going like several blocks away.
Speaker 3: And he kind of went about his evening and then
Speaker 3: only later realized that it was this young white man
Speaker 3: who was in the neighborhood and this was a really
Speaker 3: big deal that he had essentially been executed in his car,
Speaker 3: and the police just came in kind of swarmed into
Speaker 3: the neighborhood and essentially shut down business as usual there
Speaker 3: for a while because they were extremely intent on finding
Speaker 3: someone to arrest.
Speaker 2: Now went on about my business, and it was a
Speaker 2: parade of police, you know, later on that day, and
Speaker 2: I didn't come back to the area for several days.
Speaker 3: I think there was a lot of pressure in this
Speaker 3: case because the suspect who had been seen by witnesses
Speaker 3: was black, the victim was white. I think that cross
Speaker 3: racial nature put extra pressure on the police, and there
Speaker 3: was just a lot of heat in the neighborhood in
Speaker 3: the next couple of weeks, and a lot of, as
Speaker 3: I said, pressure on the police to solve this crime
Speaker 3: and really get someone in custody and charge them.
Speaker 1: So Leon was nowhere around he heard the shot. What
Speaker 1: led to this investigation? How did they even connect Leon
Speaker 1: to the case?
Speaker 3: Initially, the police were given leads that the person who
Speaker 3: committed the shooting was a man named Joseph Webster, and
Speaker 3: they had that information because there was talk in the
Speaker 3: streets that it was Joseph Webster, and there was other information,
Speaker 3: including from a man named Dakaria Fulton who had actually
Speaker 3: witnessed the shooting, that Joseph Webster had committed that crime,
Speaker 3: but it so happened that a young woman named Christy
Speaker 3: Schmidt was there at the scene. She was a white woman.
Speaker 3: Her reason for being in the neighborhood was that she
Speaker 3: was delivering newspapers. So for your younger listeners back in
Speaker 3: the day, you would put a quarter in a box,
Speaker 3: you'd open the box and you would pull out a newspaper,
Speaker 3: and Christy was the person who would stack those newspapers,
Speaker 3: and that's what she was doing. She was in the
Speaker 3: middle of doing that when she heard the shots and
Speaker 3: she looked up and she saw the shooter and her
Speaker 3: initial description she said, he never got into the light.
Speaker 3: And recall it's very dark to three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3: She was one hundred and fifty feet away, a full
Speaker 3: block away, and according to the lead detective, a man
Speaker 3: named Alan Jones, when she was given different mugshots to
Speaker 3: look at, she was given Joseph Webster's mug shot, and
Speaker 3: she said that it was not Joseph Webster, and then
Speaker 3: detective Jones showed her a picture of Leon and Christy
Speaker 3: Schmid said that his face leapt off the page and
Speaker 3: that she was certain that this was the person that
Speaker 3: this was the shooter, and when that happened, the entire
Speaker 3: trajectory of the case changed.
Speaker 1: So you're saying this key witness pointed out Leon on
Speaker 1: a lineup, despite having only seen the shooter in the
Speaker 1: dark of night for a few seconds and from one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet away.
Speaker 3: And she said, initially to the detective on the scene,
Speaker 3: Detective Leslie van Buskirk, he had a dark complexion. And
Speaker 3: of course, as you can see all too clearly because
Speaker 3: we're all looking at each other and these little zoom pictures,
Speaker 3: Leon is very light complexed. There were a lot of
Speaker 3: things that didn't make any sense about her description, which
Speaker 3: also evolved and became increasingly specific and dramatic over time.
Speaker 1: And I want to point out too that study after
Speaker 1: study has shown the unreliability of cross racial identification. They've
Speaker 1: been fun to be less accurate than just taking a
Speaker 1: wild guess. So, Laura, was there anything else about the
Speaker 1: photo identification or the lineup that seems sketchy.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's a lot of opaqueness around that. They never
Speaker 3: recorded that interview. We have no idea what Detective Jones
Speaker 3: said to her. We don't know if suggestive language was used.
Speaker 3: We don't know how many pictures she actually looked at.
Speaker 3: She does not have a clear memory of that at
Speaker 3: the time. And so once they had this woman as
Speaker 3: their witness, they built the entire case around that, which
Speaker 3: meant essentially that they developed tunnel vision, and it really
Speaker 3: became about propping up her account and making everything revolve
Speaker 3: around and reinforce what she was saying. And every time
Speaker 3: they received a piece of information that pointed away from
Speaker 3: Leon and toward Joseph Webster, they would bury it in
Speaker 3: the file and not turn it over.
Speaker 1: And another thing, there was another witness who came forward
Speaker 1: as well, a neighborhood guy named Donald Brooks who had
Speaker 1: previously gotten into a beef with Leon, I think over
Speaker 1: a drug deal gone sour. He told detective Jones that
Speaker 1: the shooter was a guy named Detroit, which was Leon's nickname.
Speaker 1: Donald Brooks later went back on a statement, but we'll
Speaker 1: hear more about that later. Leon. All of this came
Speaker 1: as a surprise to you because you were arrested on
Speaker 1: the fourteenth of August, about a week after the shooting happened.
Speaker 1: But originally you thought they were picking you up for
Speaker 1: something else.
Speaker 4: Right that day, I was still in my drug business
Speaker 4: at the time. You know, my run in with authorities
Speaker 4: was I got caught with possession of cocaine and so
Speaker 4: I was on a misdemeanor of probation charge. So when
Speaker 4: the police rolled up on me and Shirley now sitting
Speaker 4: on the stool, they said I had a warrant for
Speaker 4: possession of cocaine and probation violation, and you know, I
Speaker 4: was arrested for that. We went to the police station
Speaker 4: and they tained me to the wall in the room.
Speaker 2: And I just fell asleep. I fell out.
Speaker 4: And then I was awakened. I don't know for how long.
Speaker 4: It was cold as hell in there, and they came,
Speaker 4: you know, Detective Jones and Van Buskirk, and it was
Speaker 4: interrogate me. They told me like, hey, what do you
Speaker 4: know about this murder? And instantly for me, I felt
Speaker 4: like this is a game. I was nowhere around, no
Speaker 4: murder scene. I got nothing to do with this stuff.
Speaker 4: I just held my own But I thought it was
Speaker 4: a joke that they had come to me about a
Speaker 4: murder and even saying that somebody'd seen me do it.
Speaker 2: It was laughable. It was laughable.
Speaker 4: My biggest mistake was not asking for a lawyer. You know,
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, hindsight is always there. But you know, when
Speaker 4: I start to understand the law, I realized that most
Speaker 4: people like me at the time, you know, twenty two
Speaker 4: year old, uneducated. Of course, you know, you had this
Speaker 4: notion that if you say get a lawyer, as if
Speaker 4: it's saying you guilty, you know, the system say you're
Speaker 4: innocent to proven guilty.
Speaker 2: But it was quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 4: It was guilty and to proven innocent. So I didn't
Speaker 4: know this at the time. So I'm volunteering my location
Speaker 4: where I was at, and I find out later that
Speaker 4: you know, the detective, you don't manipulated, you know this information.
Speaker 2: You know he omitted.
Speaker 4: Out of forty people in the building, you only can
Speaker 4: find two people who said they didn't see me. And
Speaker 4: I gave you at least ten twelve apartment numbers of
Speaker 4: people that see me right right, and even worse, even
Speaker 4: worse because I gave up that information. You know, I
Speaker 4: wasn't thinking that people, you know, even in the building,
Speaker 4: that they had seen me that day would probably be like,
Speaker 4: I don't want to get involved.
Speaker 2: I'm no, I didn't see nothing what you're talking about.
Speaker 4: And they was right to feel like that, you know
Speaker 4: at the time. You know, so as bad as it sounds,
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of us play this game with
Speaker 4: the system, and I'm talking to my people that's out there,
Speaker 4: you know, in the street life or whatnot. You know,
Speaker 4: on one hand, we want to, you know, be out
Speaker 4: there doing our thing in the dark, selling drugs, you know,
Speaker 4: moving the things that we do. But then on the
Speaker 4: other hand, we wanted to we still want to trust it.
Speaker 4: We don't trust the police, but we want to trust
Speaker 4: the police at the same time, you know, come save.
Speaker 2: Me, right, you know.
Speaker 4: And I was in that type of frame of mind
Speaker 4: at that time, and honestly, as a citizen, whether whether
Speaker 4: I was an accused drug dealer, accused murderer, accused robber,
Speaker 4: or whatnot, the law in the system supposed to be impartial,
Speaker 4: and I was feeling like that, but that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: But you did eventually hire a lawyer to represent you,
Speaker 1: a man named Timothy Miller. How did he feel about
Speaker 1: your chances?
Speaker 4: So he came to me and I gave him a
Speaker 4: little run down. He's like, yeah, yeah, man, I already
Speaker 4: know that. Man, We're going to get this case dismissed.
Speaker 4: You know, I just want twenty thousand. You might not
Speaker 4: have to pay the whole thing because we'd get this dismissed.
Speaker 4: Just give me a five thousand dollars retainer and you
Speaker 4: know we would go from there. Man, hey, I absolutely
Speaker 4: believe you, right.
Speaker 1: And then your trial was set for May of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine in Marion County Superior Court. So, Leon, what
Speaker 1: were you actually feeling as the trial date was approaching?
Speaker 4: You know, I had a lot of different emotions. You know,
Speaker 4: I was very nervous. I had never been to trial before,
Speaker 4: so at this point, me feeling like it was laughable
Speaker 4: was over with.
Speaker 2: I'm going to trial. I'm like, oh, man, oh they
Speaker 2: for real? You know.
Speaker 1: So the state had a couple of our witness says
Speaker 1: Christy Smith, who pitched you out of the lineup as
Speaker 1: the shooter, and Donald Brooks, who had given your name
Speaker 1: to the police. But at trial, Donald try to recant
Speaker 1: a statement saying he didn't remember what he'd said to
Speaker 1: the detective Jones, and he didn't remember seeing you near
Speaker 1: the truck. And not only that, you knew that your
Speaker 1: defense attorney had an acepisleeve. A man named Dakaria Fulton, Laura,
Speaker 1: can you tell us about Dakaria and why he was
Speaker 1: so crucial to the defense.
Speaker 3: Basically, Leon, Joseph Webster, and Dakaria were all drug dealers
Speaker 3: in this area. They didn't work together, but they also
Speaker 3: weren't enemies. He didn't really have anything against anybody. He
Speaker 3: just told Detective Jones exactly what he saw. What had
Speaker 3: happened was he was in his apartment a couple blocks away.
Speaker 3: He decided he wanted to go smoke a blunt. He
Speaker 3: needed some rolling papers. He starts walking towards the seven
Speaker 3: eleven and just by happenstance, he's literally across the street
Speaker 3: and he looks and he sees Casey Shane's park car,
Speaker 3: and he sees this man standing by the car, and
Speaker 3: he watches this interaction go down, and he's pretty close.
Speaker 3: He's much much closer than Christy Schmidt ever was. And
Speaker 3: he recognizes the guy as Joseph Webster because he's wearing
Speaker 3: these very distinct Adidas jogging pants block with three white
Speaker 3: stripes down the side, but also because he and Joseph
Speaker 3: Webster had run into each other earlier that day, and
Speaker 3: Joseph Webster had been carrying a gun and showed it
Speaker 3: to Takaria, who told Webster, you're a fool. You need
Speaker 3: to put that gun away. And so it was this
Speaker 3: very clear, strong identification from someone who knew everyone new Leon,
Speaker 3: knew Joseph Webster and really didn't have any skin in
Speaker 3: the game. And that statement did get turned over to
Speaker 3: Timothy Miller like a.
Speaker 2: Week before the first trial.
Speaker 4: You know, Timothy Miller had finally given me the January
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety nine discovery supplement, and in this it had
Speaker 4: Dakaria Fulton's statement, and I looked, I'm like, oh, man,
Speaker 4: this guy's saying he's seen it right. I'm like, man,
Speaker 4: look hey, I'm not finn to go home, right. So
Speaker 4: I go back to the sale block and I'm showing them.
Speaker 4: I'm like, look, man, I told man, look, they got
Speaker 4: the witness right there, like we giving each other hog fight. Like, bro, man,
Speaker 4: you going home. So I go to the first trial
Speaker 4: that Karly wasn't there. Just the mere mention of him
Speaker 4: is what got a hung jury. In my opinion, I
Speaker 4: was able to listen from the hole and sell to
Speaker 4: the jury pool coming out and them saying, you know,
Speaker 4: where's that other guy on they mentioned him, but where
Speaker 4: is he at?
Speaker 3: In the first trial, the jury hung sex to sex,
Speaker 3: so it was a split vert. There were six people
Speaker 3: who did not think there was enough evidence to convict.
Speaker 4: I say this all the time that my trial wasn't
Speaker 4: a trial really of Leon Benson, but it was a
Speaker 4: trial of urban America against America, because everybody in my
Speaker 4: trial was people who were from the streets, people of color,
Speaker 4: and our challenge was these people in us. That's how
Speaker 4: I felt. It was a clear line drawn, and I
Speaker 4: got the raff of a that energy. I felt some
Speaker 4: nasty energy in there. It was nasty. But when they
Speaker 4: came back and said a mistrial, I wasn't necessarily relieved.
Speaker 4: I was glad not to hear a guilty verdict, but
Speaker 4: I was figuring, like, oh, once we get to Cary Fault,
Speaker 4: I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: So then there was a second trial about six weeks later,
Speaker 1: in July of nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: There were some major differences though, between the first and
Speaker 3: the second trial, and I think maybe the biggest one
Speaker 3: was that in the first trial, Timothy Miller called a
Speaker 3: guy named Tim Gather who alibied Leon because he had
Speaker 3: been sitting next to him inside the building when the
Speaker 3: shots were fired, and so that really did establish an alibi,
Speaker 3: and it's consistent with what Leon had always said. And
Speaker 3: in the second trial, and we don't know why he
Speaker 3: didn't call him. I think one of the things that
Speaker 3: is completely frustrating and not explicable is that he never
Speaker 3: called Fulton, not in the first trial and not in
Speaker 3: the second trial. In the second trial, he also didn't
Speaker 3: call Timothy Gaither and so Leon didn't have an alibi,
Speaker 3: and once again he failed to meaningfully challenge Christy Schmidt's identification.
Speaker 3: And this time the jury came back with a guilty verdict.
Speaker 3: It was chaos in the courtroom. Leon was crying out
Speaker 3: for God to help him. His family was crying. The
Speaker 3: judge had to admonish them. The other side of the
Speaker 3: courtroom was cheering.
Speaker 4: You know, the Leon Benson was murdered in that courtroom
Speaker 4: that day.
Speaker 2: That's what you witness.
Speaker 4: You witness a murder, a legal lynchen And I understand
Speaker 4: the victim's family, they lost a loved one. He can
Speaker 4: never be returned. But I was I was deeply hurt
Speaker 4: by the tears. Guilty in a tear, you know, I
Speaker 4: start to feel and empathize with a deep level of
Speaker 4: what slavery months looked like, you know, back in the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I say it.
Speaker 2: It was burnt. It was kind of burnt me. You know.
Speaker 2: I went back to the hole and sell you know,
Speaker 2: you know, I cried.
Speaker 4: I was like, damn, like this is real, Like I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna see my kids. I was outcast, I was killed,
Speaker 4: and I was buried with sixty one years of dirt
Speaker 4: to lie in the tomb called prison. And I was shattered,
Speaker 4: you know, so much so when I went to prison,
Speaker 4: I had what you call delusions of reprieve. Something good's
Speaker 4: gonna happen. God is gonna open up the door and
Speaker 4: for me. You know, while I was sitting in prison,
Speaker 4: I wore my coat and my boots in my bunk.
Speaker 4: They say, man, why are you doing that? Because they
Speaker 4: gonna come get me. Man, you're tripping. I was broken, right,
Speaker 4: So that's the gist of it.
Speaker 1: But I see it also as just not losing hope.
Speaker 1: You had to believe that you weren't gonna spend sixty
Speaker 1: some years in prison. So I'm really interested in hearing
Speaker 1: because I did six and a half years, and it
Speaker 1: breaks my heart to know that you spent twenty five
Speaker 1: years in prison, and so I just want to hear
Speaker 1: about your strength and how you spent your time in prison,
Speaker 1: especially two of ten years. At that time, I believe
Speaker 1: I read you were in solitary confinement. So how did
Speaker 1: you keep yourself strong?
Speaker 4: So, you know, in order to see somebody at their
Speaker 4: highest heights, you must know where they being that they
Speaker 4: low was lows. When I explained to you why I
Speaker 4: was that I was shattered. I could have gave up,
Speaker 4: but you can never give up on yourself. And you
Speaker 4: know when I came in, you know, I fought from
Speaker 4: day one.
Speaker 2: I hit the law library.
Speaker 4: I learned how to really read a case law and
Speaker 4: understand it. And you know, I was eventually, you know,
Speaker 4: put on solitary for participating in the prison riot that
Speaker 4: I didn't even participate in. So I was left with
Speaker 4: the question why me? And that question was answered, why
Speaker 4: not me?
Speaker 2: Why not me? You know? So I had to get
Speaker 2: myself together.
Speaker 4: I had to eat, eat some spirit full, you know,
Speaker 4: eat some knowledge ful you know, every day. And one
Speaker 4: of the things that I learned when I was in
Speaker 4: solitary was acceptance, right acceptance. I had to accept that
Speaker 4: I was in that moment those circumstances, not the stance,
Speaker 4: the situation, but the things that are circumscribed around it.
Speaker 4: And once I started to accept that I got to
Speaker 4: go through this process, I became more creative with the
Speaker 4: tools around me. So my jail cell wasn't no longer
Speaker 4: a jail cell. It wasn't solitary no more. It became solitude.
Speaker 4: It became a university, It became a healing center for me.
Speaker 4: It became, you know, a public speaking stage, you know,
Speaker 4: to the other solitary prisoners, the other eleven. So I
Speaker 4: did the best that I can do in there, and
Speaker 4: I impacted guys. My best moments in there was when
Speaker 4: I showed guys who were illiterate how to read, how
Speaker 4: to write right, when I gave somebody that was broken, man,
Speaker 4: I put them back together and gave them real confidence
Speaker 4: and healing. See, they didn't see that when we was
Speaker 4: on the inside. When I had the mic, it don't matter.
Speaker 4: I'm the coldest ever, and I said it on record
Speaker 4: because I made them guys in their hope. That feel good,
Speaker 4: That feel good. That's what I do it for it
Speaker 4: right now?
Speaker 1: Right well, Leon, congratulations on your self growth while and
Speaker 1: the shoe in solitary, and then also your motivation for
Speaker 1: you know, when you were in general population to try
Speaker 1: to help lift other young brothers that were in the
Speaker 1: system as well, and I'm sure you'll continue to do
Speaker 1: so while you're home. Laura, I want to circle back
Speaker 1: to you a little bit and talk about some things
Speaker 1: that went wrong in Leon's trials, both of them. When
Speaker 1: you reviewed this case, did you see any evidence of
Speaker 1: ineffective counsel or prosecutor of misconduct, you know, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 3: There was. There was a misconduct by the prosecutor, not
Speaker 3: just by the police, and it was egregious in the
Speaker 3: second trial. And that is also consistent with my experience,
Speaker 3: which is that prosecutors tend to cross ethical and legal
Speaker 3: lines when the case is very close and they're worried
Speaker 3: that they're going to lose. And I think that's what
Speaker 3: was going on with this prosecutor, whose name is Randall Head,
Speaker 3: who later became a state legislator and is now prosecuting
Speaker 3: people once again. But I think because the first trial
Speaker 3: was so close and he almost lost, he was absolutely
Speaker 3: determined that he was going to nail leeon this time,
Speaker 3: and so he did this absolutely unlawful thing, which is
Speaker 3: that when Donald Brooks, the second eyewitness, didn't say what
Speaker 3: he wanted him to say, which is that he saw
Speaker 3: LeAnn by the truck, and instead Donald Brooks started going
Speaker 3: backwards and being contradictory to his initial statement Detective Jones
Speaker 3: rather than impeach him with the statement properly, he got
Speaker 3: frustrated and he said, I want to read his entire
Speaker 3: statement to Detective Jones into the record, all of it,
Speaker 3: and this is a very long statement. It covered the
Speaker 3: beef between Leon and Donald Brooks. It covered all kinds
Speaker 3: of things that made Leon seem like a really bad
Speaker 3: guy and were completely irrelevant. And then to compound what
Speaker 3: he was doing, he said in closing argument that Donald
Speaker 3: Brooks had gone sideways and backtracked because quote, snitches get stitches,
Speaker 3: and that when Donald Brooks was in jail, he was
Speaker 3: afraid for his life. He was afraid he was going
Speaker 3: to be killed, and he implied not just that, but
Speaker 3: that Leon or his family was going to kill him,
Speaker 3: none of which was actually true. And what that's called
Speaker 3: is basically evidence outside of the record, except it's not evidence.
Speaker 3: It's a totally made up story. And he just injected
Speaker 3: that into his closing argument. He made up a bunch
Speaker 3: of effects once again to make Leon look like a terrible,
Speaker 3: violent person, and Timothy Miller didn't object to any of
Speaker 3: that either.
Speaker 1: And Laura, when you heard about Leon's case, what stood
Speaker 1: out to you?
Speaker 3: There are really two reasons why my students and my
Speaker 3: staff attorney and I took this case. And the first
Speaker 3: one was that Leon has a very powerful advocate named
Speaker 3: Shannon Coleman, who's a woman in Philadelphia who's really made
Speaker 3: it her life's work to try to get people out
Speaker 3: of prison who've been wrongfully convicted, and she reached out
Speaker 3: and asked me to take the case. But the second
Speaker 3: reason was that once I met Leon, it was just
Speaker 3: so clear to me not only that he was innocent,
Speaker 3: but just what a complete waste this was, because he's
Speaker 3: such an amazing human being and has so much to
Speaker 3: offer the world as an artist, as a thinker, as
Speaker 3: a brother, as a partner, as a father, as a
Speaker 3: member of the community. And the idea that Leon was
Speaker 3: just going to be rotting in there was so horrifying
Speaker 3: to me. It just I couldn't live with that, And
Speaker 3: so I thought, you know what, this is a long shot,
Speaker 3: but we're going to dig deep, We're going to do
Speaker 3: everything we possibly can. And I felt like at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, if after a few years and
Speaker 3: we did everything we possibly could, I could live with that.
Speaker 3: But what I couldn't live with was listening to Shannon
Speaker 3: and meeting Leon and walking away.
Speaker 1: Laura, you are a real one, and I'm sure Leon
Speaker 1: and I can both say that we're grateful for a turn.
Speaker 1: It's like you that'll take the long shots. Now we
Speaker 1: have to get to the events that led to Leon's
Speaker 1: conviction being vacated. Can you tell us about that process.
Speaker 3: Leon's case was accepted for review by the Conviction Integrity
Speaker 3: Unit of the Marion County Prosecutor's Office, which was a
Speaker 3: new unit at the time, and I think maybe his
Speaker 3: case was the first that was accepted and the co director,
Speaker 3: Kelly Botter, was assigned to it. So we were really
Speaker 3: lucky that we had a true partner in the prosecution,
Speaker 3: the District Attorney Ryan Meers. He was very focused on
Speaker 3: making sure not that the numbers were really high in
Speaker 3: terms of convictions, but that the right people were being
Speaker 3: convicted and that innocent people were not being convicted. And
Speaker 3: so Ryan Mehers had assigned Kelly and her counterpart to
Speaker 3: look back at cases where it seemed like maybe there
Speaker 3: had been a mistake or multiple mistakes that were made.
Speaker 3: And what was really tricky about Leon's case is that
Speaker 3: many of the issues that we had been talking about
Speaker 3: were what we call in the legal world litigated and lost,
Speaker 3: meaning that they had been raised at other times after
Speaker 3: Land was convicted and rejected. And that included the misconduct
Speaker 3: that I described by the prosecutor. It included the failure
Speaker 3: to call Dakaria Fulton, It included the failure to introduce
Speaker 3: testimony about the perils of crossracial identification. All of those
Speaker 3: issues had been raised and lost, and so we had
Speaker 3: to find something new, and that was going to be very,
Speaker 3: very hard because almost a quarter of a century had gone.
Speaker 3: And it occurred to us ultimately that maybe there was
Speaker 3: evidence that was provided by the original people involved in
Speaker 3: the case as witnesses that had never been turned over
Speaker 3: to Leon and his attorney, and so that ended up
Speaker 3: being the key that really unlocked the prison door, so
Speaker 3: to speak. In other words, we were all in agreement
Speaker 3: that once this buried evidence surfaced, it was really clear
Speaker 3: that the trial had been unfair and unconstitutional because there's
Speaker 3: a rule, the Brady rule, that says you have to
Speaker 3: turn that evidence over and had been violated. And in
Speaker 3: addition to it being violated, it was very clear that
Speaker 3: had it been followed, the jury would have reached a
Speaker 3: different verdict.
Speaker 1: You mentioned evidence that was buried, What exactly was that
Speaker 1: buried evidence and how did you dig it up?
Speaker 3: So what we did was Kelly, our partner on the
Speaker 3: other side and the conviction Review Unit, she provided the
Speaker 3: actual police file, which no one in the history of
Speaker 3: the litigation had ever seen, including Leon, and so we
Speaker 3: went through everything in that file and then we compared
Speaker 3: it to the documents that have been turned over to
Speaker 3: Leon and Lo and behold pretty much every time Joseph
Speaker 3: Webster came up as a suspect, whether it was through
Speaker 3: multiple detailed crime stopper tips, or most crucially, a note
Speaker 3: to Detective Jones from another detective citing three different people
Speaker 3: who had either witness the murder or who he had
Speaker 3: told he did. It was buried and Leon had never
Speaker 3: gotten those things. So we went to see Detective Jones.
Speaker 3: He had retired under difficult circumstances, he was older, ailing
Speaker 3: and over a series of hours. Really towards the end
Speaker 3: of this interview, he admitted that he had not turned
Speaker 3: these documents over and that basically every time he wrote
Speaker 3: something down or received something that was handwritten, including this
Speaker 3: note saying my confidential informant saw Joseph Webster shoot the
Speaker 3: white boy and the head, that note too, had not
Speaker 3: been turned over. And so when we asked Detective Jones why,
Speaker 3: he said, well, that was my work product, and there
Speaker 3: is really no such thing as police work product. They
Speaker 3: have to turn over everything in their file to the
Speaker 3: district attorney. And so once he said that, I remember,
Speaker 3: I just had a physical sensation in my body, like
Speaker 3: I just couldn't believe that he was saying what he
Speaker 3: was saying. That's when I realized that in that moment,
Speaker 3: the case was probably over. And then we came back
Speaker 3: and visited him a few months later and he signed
Speaker 3: a declaration basically saying what he had said to us initially,
Speaker 3: and that was, in the end, the most powerful piece
Speaker 3: of evidence that really broke the case completely apart. And
Speaker 3: that was when I understood that that Leon was going
Speaker 3: to be going home.
Speaker 1: And then on March eighth, twenty twenty three, Leon's conviction
Speaker 1: was vacated by Judge Chatries Flowers.
Speaker 4: But I didn't know until March nine, about eleven in
Speaker 4: this and I was reading J. Prince The Art of Respect.
Speaker 4: I was reading that and they called my name, and
Speaker 4: you know, I left out and went there, and the
Speaker 4: council was like, hey, you got immediate release, you know,
Speaker 4: woo woo. So I did have a David Shappel moment, right,
Speaker 4: I did kind of feel like.
Speaker 2: Man woo tang, you know, just slipping over my desk's right.
Speaker 4: So I just pumped my fists and I went and
Speaker 4: got my property together and everything, and I was on
Speaker 4: my way down the walk like an hour later, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. So I threw on my all white,
Speaker 4: you know, I threw my pair, my prayer shaw on.
Speaker 2: I get there to the gate, and uh.
Speaker 4: You know, the first thing when I opened up the door,
Speaker 4: it's like I was blinded by the light.
Speaker 2: You know, I was being rebirthed.
Speaker 4: And the first thing I did, you know, I iron
Speaker 4: at the most High in which I called the most
Speaker 4: High Yahweh. I said, hallelu yah barukata ya huah, which
Speaker 4: means blessed be the name Yahweh. That's what I did
Speaker 4: when I got out. I see my sister Valerie, and
Speaker 4: I heard my brother's voice, and I see my daughters,
Speaker 4: and I seen all my people who looked at like
Speaker 4: angels to me when they sat right there and they
Speaker 4: was looking and I could hear the chant truth never dies,
Speaker 4: Truth never dies. And what you would see if you
Speaker 4: ever look at that footage, it's so authentic because I
Speaker 4: just was in a moment. That's what you're seeing. That's
Speaker 4: the core of me getting out of there. I laugh
Speaker 4: at it when I see it too. It bring me joy.
Speaker 4: That's how joyful I was, you know, with that to
Speaker 4: embrace the people who put in.
Speaker 2: The time to believe me.
Speaker 4: You believe me, so now you know I'm like a
Speaker 4: spiritual Muhammad Ali. I got the people, ain't on telling
Speaker 4: them what I can do with the people you believe.
Speaker 1: Me leon, all of that, it's just phenomenal and definitely
Speaker 1: resonates within me. And I just think with your release
Speaker 1: and what you're doing now, I'm wondering how many of
Speaker 1: the boxes that you checked off with your goals of
Speaker 1: once you come out, because it seems like in five months,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've checked off plenty. But tell us you know,
Speaker 1: what are you doing with your time nowadays? At you're home?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm living here in Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 4: I've been doing a lot of things because I was
Speaker 4: practicing them, you know, on the inside.
Speaker 2: I was mentoring. On the inside, I was.
Speaker 4: Teaching, creating programs, performing organizing events, you know, things like that.
Speaker 4: One of my biggest highlights is, you know, I dropped
Speaker 4: the album Innocent Born Guilty. I recorded it on the inside.
Speaker 2: I don't want to.
Speaker 4: Tell you how when where you know, yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: I don't want to do that, but it was recorded inside.
Speaker 4: It's a soundtrack of what I was feeling in different
Speaker 4: times and whatnot. Beyond that, you know, I'm still active
Speaker 4: in community involvement awareness. You know, every chance I get,
Speaker 4: I put a word in for at risk youth. I
Speaker 4: connect with other organizations like organization Exanna Reads here in Detroit.
Speaker 4: They definitely been huge with helping me re enter the
Speaker 4: back in society. I've been you know, working with the
Speaker 4: Streets Don't Love You Back, you know, these other nonprofits.
Speaker 2: Anything that I can do to.
Speaker 4: Bring awareness, you know, to Room for and conservations, to
Speaker 4: any type of you know, discriminations or injustices in the world.
Speaker 1: Well, Leon, those are really wonderful organizations that are doing
Speaker 1: great work. We'll put links to them in our bio
Speaker 1: page so our listeners can show their support and also
Speaker 1: let them know where they can check out your album,
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty dope by the way. So
Speaker 1: again I feel so humbled and grateful to be able
Speaker 1: to have this opportunity to be a guest host to
Speaker 1: interview you both with wrong For convention podcasts, we always
Speaker 1: close with closing arguments and so just really wanted to
Speaker 1: know what the both of you all have to close with.
Speaker 3: I guess I have two kind of calls to action.
Speaker 3: The first one is and in the time that it
Speaker 3: took between our filing the petition for Lean to be
Speaker 3: released in Leon's actual release, we did get increasingly uncertain
Speaker 3: about whether this was actually going to work and whether
Speaker 3: he was ever going to get out. And the truth
Speaker 3: of the matter is it's a major decision by a
Speaker 3: judge to overturn a conviction. We needed to respect that process.
Speaker 3: I think Leon understood that better than we did. So
Speaker 3: one thing I will say to lawyers out there is
Speaker 3: listen to your clients. Sometimes oftentimes they know best. And
Speaker 3: the second thing I'll say is to the audience, because
Speaker 3: any one of you could be selected to serve on
Speaker 3: a jury, and it's maybe the most important thing that
Speaker 3: you'll ever do, even though you don't realize it. What
Speaker 3: I would ask that you do when you're on that
Speaker 3: jury is really, really take your obligation seriously, whether it
Speaker 3: is presuming somebody innocent, or holding the prosecution to their burden,
Speaker 3: or understanding that your doubts are real. I think so often.
Speaker 3: There was a juror on Leon's case who did have
Speaker 3: a lot of doubts in the second trial, and she
Speaker 3: felt sort of bullied and exhausted, and she got herself excused,
Speaker 3: she left the jury, and then they convicted shortly after
Speaker 3: with a replacement. And if she had just been able
Speaker 3: to hang on a little longer, maybe the result would
Speaker 3: have been different. She could have hung the jury again.
Speaker 3: So I urge people, when you're in the minority and
Speaker 3: you're battling against the majority. Maybe it's even eleven people
Speaker 3: telling you you're wrong and you're crazy, and it's Friday
Speaker 3: afternoon and they want to go home, hang on, hang
Speaker 3: on to your conviction, because you are the person standing
Speaker 3: between this wrongfully accused person and a terrible injustice. And
Speaker 3: so I would ask people when you're being selected for
Speaker 3: a jury to be considerate, to be observant, and to
Speaker 3: be strong.
Speaker 4: Well, I got two thoughts. I got one ounce of
Speaker 4: previncing is better than the town they cure. You know,
Speaker 4: do to things I mean as individuals as well as
Speaker 4: you know public servants do to things in the now
Speaker 4: that you can do to prevent having to go back
Speaker 4: right with a ton of cure. So if you just
Speaker 4: come with an ounce of prevention, let's just have harm reduction,
Speaker 4: you know, in our lives as well as in our
Speaker 4: public spaces. And the next thing is, you know, be
Speaker 4: a part of the solution, not the problem. Don't let
Speaker 4: your silence be the action that you know perpetuates injustice
Speaker 4: in any form, let alone wrong for incarceration. It's so
Speaker 4: many things that we can do as a society, as
Speaker 4: individuals that can get the world out. Okay, maybe you
Speaker 4: didn't you don't want to get behind an innocence case.
Speaker 4: It might take too long for you. Maybe you don't
Speaker 4: want to get behind a particular movement. But what you
Speaker 4: can do is small things. Sign a petition, leave a
Speaker 4: comment of encouragement to somebody you know, sometimes show up
Speaker 4: at a rally that's trying to you know, get humanity
Speaker 4: across whereas being blocked. And one thing I wanted to
Speaker 4: say too, this ain't my story.
Speaker 2: This Casey Shane's story. He was killed because he was closeted.
Speaker 4: Now because he's dead, he don't have no voice, and
Speaker 4: you know, his story should get out because the biggest
Speaker 4: injustice now is not me in prison anymore or the
Speaker 4: time that I'm lost, but as an individual you know,
Speaker 4: who was a family member to others, was killed maybe
Speaker 4: for a sexual preference. And you know, even though you
Speaker 4: know I'm a head of sexual guy, I say I'm
Speaker 4: an ally to the LGBTQ community because I'm being so
Speaker 4: considerate of what they go through and some of those
Speaker 4: experiences I don't fully understand. But one thing I do
Speaker 4: understand is that we are all human. We perfectly imperfect.
Speaker 4: You know, Hey Helheim said we was perfect. We were
Speaker 4: made in their image. You know that's something that to
Speaker 4: even look at, you know, and Taul Ross, so everything
Speaker 4: that's here is supposed to be, you know, because it
Speaker 4: wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to wrongful conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all Lava for Good podcasts one week
Speaker 1: early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank executive producers Jason Blam, Jeff Kempler,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Bortis for inviting me to sit in today,
Speaker 1: and thanks to our production team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea,
Speaker 1: Lyla Robinson and Kathleen Fink. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction, and you
Speaker 1: can also follow me at Kenpasmith on Instagram or go
Speaker 1: to my website Kimbosmith dot com and purchase my book
Speaker 1: Poster a Child, The Kembusmith Story. Wrongful Conviction is a
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