Speaker 1: Hello again. It's Connor Hall, senior producer for Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: with another case update and behind the scenes insights, and
Speaker 1: I have to revisit John Juka. I remember the first
Speaker 1: time I heard about him, not the murderer itself. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you were in New York at that time, you
Speaker 1: couldn't escape the coverage, probably because this tragic murder fulfilled
Speaker 1: every suburbanites nightmares about big, bad New York City. And
Speaker 1: this was only about a decade after the highest number
Speaker 1: of murders ever recorded here. So when something happens that
Speaker 1: actually fits that terrifying belief about dangerous people lurking around
Speaker 1: every corner, it becomes pretty easy to sell copies of
Speaker 1: The New York Post. And just like so many others,
Speaker 1: at that time, I was clueless about the prevalence of
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions. It wasn't until working with Jason that I
Speaker 1: found out that the sparse view that I knew about
Speaker 1: at that time were in much greater company. But John's
Speaker 1: case came to me not from Jason, who already knew
Speaker 1: John's mother, Doren, but from a famous pizza spot in
Speaker 1: Carol Gardens, Brooklyn. I used to live right around the
Speaker 1: corner and one of the servers who I knew, you know,
Speaker 1: we were catching up on the subway. She had just
Speaker 1: had a newborn, and I told her about the podcast
Speaker 1: that I just started producing, and she just like stopped
Speaker 1: me and was like, you need to look up John Juca.
Speaker 1: And eventually I ended up reaching out to his mom,
Speaker 1: Doren on social media, and after covering the case, I
Speaker 1: remember how grateful she was that I had nailed down
Speaker 1: all the moving parts and people and motivations at play
Speaker 1: in John's story. You know, it's one of those cases
Speaker 1: where you have to understand the misconduct more than the
Speaker 1: incident itself. And so that was twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 1: since then, Doreen and I we make time to see
Speaker 1: each other. Every once in a while, we have meals together.
Speaker 1: She introduces me to other folks in this community, journalists
Speaker 1: and exonarees legal advocates. I think she also introduced me
Speaker 1: to James Henning, who brought us Carl Miller's case, who
Speaker 1: was just recently exonerated, and James eventually became John's new lawyer.
Speaker 1: Now where we left off in twenty twenty three, it
Speaker 1: seemed like the best bet for John was petitioning the
Speaker 1: New York Governor to take jurisdiction away from Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: give it to a special prosecutor. I mean, that's how
Speaker 1: little faith they had at attaining justice here in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: But James Henning has pulled off a miracle in John's
Speaker 1: case and gotten him back into court with newly discovered evidence.
Speaker 1: Another recantation, and I'll tell you about that during this
Speaker 1: new edit of John Jukea's episode. Used to be in
Speaker 1: two parts, Now it's one, Okay. Anyway, I'll be popping
Speaker 1: back in when the time comes to better explain where
Speaker 1: things stand for John.
Speaker 2: On October eleventh, two thousand and three, three three groups
Speaker 2: of college kids, one from Long Island, another from Brooklyn
Speaker 2: as well as New Jersey, ran into one another at
Speaker 2: a bar on the Upper East side of Manhattan. A
Speaker 2: mutual friend among them, Angel DiPietro, New Brooklyn night Albert Cleary,
Speaker 2: as well as her Fairfield University classmate Mark Fisher, a
Speaker 2: football player from New Jersey. When the Knight started to
Speaker 2: wind down and all of the trains a Long Island
Speaker 2: and New Jersey had stopped running, Albert Cleary's friend, twenty
Speaker 2: year old John Juca offered up his house in Flatbush,
Speaker 2: Brooklyn for an after party and a place to crash.
Speaker 2: A few of John and Albert's friends joined, including a
Speaker 2: neighborhood tough guy named Antonio Russo. Sometime before six am,
Speaker 2: Angel and Albert walked to his nearby house. Since Angel
Speaker 2: was the only person Mark Fisher knew, he left to
Speaker 2: find his way over to Albert's with Antonio Russo and
Speaker 2: soon ended up fatally shot without his wallet on the
Speaker 2: driveway across from Albert Cleary's house, a blanket from John's
Speaker 2: house at its feet. In the immediate aftermas Antonio Russo
Speaker 2: cut his dreadlocks and absconded to California. A police investigation
Speaker 2: revealed that other voices at a car door were heard
Speaker 2: before the gunshots. Albert and Angel denied any knowledge, and
Speaker 2: soon statements were made that alleged that John Juca was involved.
Speaker 2: The motivations and level of involvement varied, but with this
Speaker 2: many witnesses placing blame on John. There had to be
Speaker 2: something to it. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to wrongful conviction. Today. We have a story that was
Speaker 2: front page news all over in New York City when
Speaker 2: it happened with flaring headlines, salacious headlines about wanna be
Speaker 2: Brooklyn gangsters who allegedly conspired at an after party to
Speaker 2: kill a suburban college football star who just happened to
Speaker 2: be in their midst, when in fact, there were no gangsters,
Speaker 2: only a group of friends and and the murder was
Speaker 2: not a group effort at all. The only group effort
Speaker 2: here took the form of multiple conflicting false statements against
Speaker 2: a member of that group, John Juca, and John is
Speaker 2: calling in from prison in upstate New York right now.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but we're very
Speaker 2: honored to have you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: The only good news in this whole, miserable story is
Speaker 2: that his attorney is Mark Betra. Welcome to ronful conviction.
Speaker 4: Glad to be here, Thanks for having me and Mark.
Speaker 2: Why was this such a high profile case?
Speaker 4: This was a big one. I mean, at the time
Speaker 4: I was a prosecutor in Manhattan. It was in the
Speaker 4: fall of two thousand and three. It felt like there
Speaker 4: was an update on this flawed investigation every day. It
Speaker 4: was the grid Kid murder case. Because Mark Fisher was
Speaker 4: a nineteen year old, good looking college football player from
Speaker 4: New Jersey who went to Brooklyn for the first time
Speaker 4: in his life and unfortunately he ended up dead on
Speaker 4: the street. The grid Kid murder case became sensational from day.
Speaker 2: One when that moniker actually referred to the admitted grid
Speaker 2: Kid killer, John's co defendant, Antonio Russo. But somehow John's
Speaker 2: face was also plastered on the front page of tabloids
Speaker 2: as if he was some sort of criminal mastermind or
Speaker 2: co conspirator to somehow actually involved. The prosecution never actually
Speaker 2: decided on any one theory. They just put all this
Speaker 2: stuff out there and the press ate it up and
Speaker 2: polluted the jury pool. Now, don't forget the HBO series
Speaker 2: The Sopranos was an absolute cultural phenomenon at this time.
Speaker 4: By the time his trial came around, you actually had
Speaker 4: the prosecutor comparing him to Tony Soprano and talking about
Speaker 4: ordering hits to build up street credibility for a non
Speaker 4: existent gang, which in fact was just a bunch of
Speaker 4: knucklehead teenagers in Brooklyn calling themselves names.
Speaker 2: And this alleged gang was called the ghetto Mafia. Right, So, John,
Speaker 2: what exactly was the ghetto Mafia?
Speaker 3: Oh? My god, we had some people who used to
Speaker 3: hang out with us who never even heard of that name.
Speaker 3: Some people who considered it a joke, and there were
Speaker 3: other people who didn't. One thing was never was an
Speaker 3: actual gang.
Speaker 4: John was just a regular, you know, nineteen year old
Speaker 4: Brooklyn kid.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about your life before all of this, John,
Speaker 2: you grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: Right, It's like a little enclave in flat Bush called
Speaker 3: Prospect Park South. I guess you could say I grew
Speaker 3: up in a regular, middle class upbringing. First, I went
Speaker 3: to public school PS one thirty nine. Then I went
Speaker 3: to Catholic school around third grade when my mother met
Speaker 3: my stepfather.
Speaker 2: So your parents broke up when you were.
Speaker 3: Young, Yes, when I was five years old my stepfather,
Speaker 3: but considered him like my father. Also, I didn't look
Speaker 3: at it as a negative thing. Really, My real father
Speaker 3: went on to get married again, and that woman who
Speaker 3: he married already had kids, so he had a family
Speaker 3: over there too, and I considered them family. Also. I
Speaker 3: looked at it as I had two fathers, like two
Speaker 3: men in my life who loved me and wanted to
Speaker 3: see me succeed and supported me.
Speaker 2: And your biological father ended up suffering a stroke when
Speaker 2: you were nineteen, which ended up having relevance in this case.
Speaker 2: But at that time, like you said, both he and
Speaker 2: your stepdad were supportive of you. You were trying to
Speaker 2: succeed as an actor and actually got some work as
Speaker 2: a teenager.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was on School of Rock. I got to
Speaker 3: meet Jack Black, the guys from Law and Order. I
Speaker 3: was in Lawn Order like ten times. I played a
Speaker 3: dead kid on Law and Order. I remember one funny
Speaker 3: story that I'm on Law and Order and I'm the
Speaker 3: dead kids. I'm laying on the pavement and I have
Speaker 3: fake blood all over my head and everything, and I
Speaker 3: remember the two actors, Jerry or Back and the other one,
Speaker 3: Chris not Yeah, and they have to kneel down and
Speaker 3: search my pockets. I have a pair of keys, so
Speaker 3: Jerry Orbank kneels down and he kneels right on the
Speaker 3: keys and he's son of a bitch and they're like cut.
Speaker 3: And then I had to smoke some weed before I went,
Speaker 3: and this is not part of script. And he goes
Speaker 3: it smells like marijuana, and they're like cut, Andy, what
Speaker 3: are you talking about. He's like, I don't know, it
Speaker 3: smells like marijuana. And my stepfather's looking at me like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I'm gonna fuck kill.
Speaker 2: You and Jerry orback rest in peace. And your stepfather
Speaker 2: was there too, So it sounds like you had this great,
Speaker 2: sort of blended Brady bunch sort of a family situation.
Speaker 2: And the woman at the center of it your mom, Doreen.
Speaker 2: I know her from rallies and events and calls and texts,
Speaker 2: and she's just a pillar of strength and somebody I
Speaker 2: admired greatly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she always told me that law enforcement was a
Speaker 3: good guy. I remember this growing up. She was encouraging
Speaker 3: me to go to John j encouraging me to become
Speaker 3: a comp Her brother is a correctional So my uncle Eddie.
Speaker 2: That's another crazy irony about your story, which is that
Speaker 2: while you were pursuing an acting career, you were also
Speaker 2: studying criminal justice at John Jay College.
Speaker 3: Yes, and what you learn about the criminal justice system
Speaker 3: in school is just one hundred and eighty degrees from
Speaker 3: the reality. They say that you have all these rights,
Speaker 3: and they're not going to arrest people unless this standard
Speaker 3: is mad, and then they don't get convicted unless this
Speaker 3: standard is mat and on. It's just none of that
Speaker 3: is true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you saw those standards go out the window pretty
Speaker 2: quickly when the false statements that were used to obtain
Speaker 2: your arrest, warrant, and conviction didn't even form a cohesive narrative. Now,
Speaker 2: one of the people who gave false testimony against you
Speaker 2: was your girlfriend at the time, Lauren Calciano. Now we're
Speaker 2: going to read from her recantation later. But you two
Speaker 2: had started dating in high school. Right.
Speaker 3: She was my first love. I was with hers since
Speaker 3: I was about I don't know, fifteen or sixteen. Why
Speaker 3: you used to practically live at her house sometimes I
Speaker 3: knew her whole family.
Speaker 2: You ended up hiring her family's attorney, Sam Gregory, who
Speaker 2: had previously represented her father, Sal Calciano.
Speaker 3: He was head of maintenance in the World Trade Center.
Speaker 3: He went to Federal prisons because the World Trade Center
Speaker 3: got robbed. They said it was about four million Americans.
Speaker 3: This is in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, for whatever her father's mistakes were, the DA was
Speaker 2: eventually able to use her father's situation, among other things,
Speaker 2: in order to coerce her false testimony against you. They
Speaker 2: were also able to coerce or incentivize your friend Albert
Speaker 2: Cleary as well, who was arguably closer to this incident
Speaker 2: than you were. Albert's mother, Susan Cleary, was the vice
Speaker 2: president of the King's County GOP Executive Committee, the group
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn that can authorize what is known as a
Speaker 2: Wilson pacula, which allows a candidate from another party to
Speaker 2: run on that party's ticket, and it can be used
Speaker 2: in order to run unopposed or in the case when
Speaker 2: a candidate loses their party's primary election. Whether or not
Speaker 2: that was a bargaining ship used to keep her son's
Speaker 2: name out of the investigation, that's something we'll never know.
Speaker 3: A lot of people say the system is broken. I
Speaker 3: don't think it's broken. I think it's working exactly how
Speaker 3: they intended it to work, as like a battering ramp
Speaker 3: for the rich and powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as we've seen in cases like yours, the
Speaker 2: prosecutor's office will use high profile cases for publicity with
Speaker 2: the hope of reaping those benefits come election time. Now,
Speaker 2: back in two thousand and three, the DA was Charles
Speaker 2: Joe Hines. Now, anyone who's familiar with our podcast is
Speaker 2: familiar with the problems in Brooklyn during the Hinz era
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety to twenty thirteen.
Speaker 4: Maybe in the last ten or fifteen years when people
Speaker 4: have really been paying attention to the problem of wrongful convictions.
Speaker 4: But I think a lot of the momentum on this
Speaker 4: really started when people like Ken Thompson were running against
Speaker 4: Hines ten years ago and exposing bad case after bad case.
Speaker 4: And this is exhibit A.
Speaker 2: And many of the people who worked under Hines, who
Speaker 2: were responsible and complicit and so many of the wrongful
Speaker 2: convictions of that era are still there today. And those
Speaker 2: who have moved on to private practice or even careers
Speaker 2: in media, like the trial prosecutor in this case, Anna
Speaker 2: Segon Nickolazzi, those former heinz Adas, their reputations in public
Speaker 2: fates are arguably tied to the political fate of the
Speaker 2: Brooklyn DA's office.
Speaker 4: In terms of the graduates of the Hines DA's office,
Speaker 4: this trial prosecutor was their superstar. She's on TV today
Speaker 4: as an expert on everything that's right in criminal justice,
Speaker 4: and it would have been humiliating for the Brooklyn DA
Speaker 4: to take her down.
Speaker 2: Why would anyone be proud of sending an innocent man
Speaker 2: to prison and effectively compounding the tragic loss of another
Speaker 2: young man's life. So let's get to the incident the
Speaker 2: crux of everything we're discussing the awful night of October
Speaker 2: eleventh into the twelfth of two thousand and three.
Speaker 4: It was Columbus Day weekend. Mark Fisher, who went to
Speaker 4: Fairfield University in Connecticut and some of his friends went
Speaker 4: to the city and partied. John Juca and his friend
Speaker 4: Albert Cleary and a few others also went to the city,
Speaker 4: and the groups ended up being connected through a very
Speaker 4: interesting person in this sordid process named Angel DiPietro, who
Speaker 4: was a college classmate and theoretically friend of Mark Fisher,
Speaker 4: who also was friendly with Albert Cleary.
Speaker 2: So you had the Brooklyn contingent, which was John, Albert Cleary,
Speaker 2: and two more neighborhood friends, Angel di Pietro and her
Speaker 2: friend Meredith Denahan from Long Island and Mark Fisher who
Speaker 2: had come in from New Jersey, and they met at
Speaker 2: a bar on the Upper east side of Manhattan, which
Speaker 2: at the time was known to college kids for being
Speaker 2: the home of many bars that had pretty loose id policies.
Speaker 2: And so now it was getting late and the Long
Speaker 2: Island and New Jersey kids had to figure out a
Speaker 2: way home on the train.
Speaker 3: The last train left the next one didn't leave till
Speaker 3: sometime the next morning, so they were stranded. So I
Speaker 3: opened my house to them. In the cab it was me, Albert,
Speaker 3: Mary Mark, and Angel. Me and Albert paid for the cab,
Speaker 3: and then after we got there, a few more people
Speaker 3: showed up. I'm pretty sure it was Tommy. Jimmy, my
Speaker 3: brother was home, and then Antonio Russo.
Speaker 4: Russo had a house right behind John, so they were
Speaker 4: certainly friendly from the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Now, Antonio Russo was a strongly built high school dropout
Speaker 2: who wore dreadlocks and sold weed, which was the reason
Speaker 2: he gave for coming over to John's house in a
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen interview with the cops to sell weed to
Speaker 2: some of those who were interested, and according to three people,
Speaker 2: Russo had a gun in his waistband both before and
Speaker 2: after the murder. One of those three people said they
Speaker 2: had been threatened with it.
Speaker 4: He's the tough guy. He's a little bit crazy, not
Speaker 4: in the legal sense, just in the real world sense,
Speaker 4: making everyone uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: But for now he's supplying weed to this otherwise fun
Speaker 2: after party at John's house. Now, what's nice about Antonio
Speaker 2: Russo's statement to detectives in twenty eighteen. Is that it
Speaker 2: takes some of the guest work out of what actually happened. Now,
Speaker 2: Russo said that he and Fisher went to the ATM
Speaker 2: together so Fisher could buy weed. Their re seat said
Speaker 2: for twenty three, but according to the bank it was
Speaker 2: an hour behind. This was five twenty three am. So
Speaker 2: Russo and Fisher returned to John's house a little after that. Now,
Speaker 2: Albert and Angel were there when they returned, so they
Speaker 2: soon left together to go to Albert's which was only
Speaker 2: a couple of blocks away.
Speaker 3: They were there when they came back from the ATM. Yes,
Speaker 3: and then they slip out. They say they said goodbye
Speaker 3: to people, but I don't remember them saying goodbye to anybody.
Speaker 3: I just remember them disappearing.
Speaker 2: Without merit of the remark. By the way, both of
Speaker 2: whom had a reasonable expectation that they'd be sticking with
Speaker 2: Angel and Albert, which was their only connection to this
Speaker 2: after party. Now we're not sure why they were left behind,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless, Meredith had fallen asleep and before Mark actually
Speaker 2: did you called Albert at five fifty seven am to
Speaker 2: let him know that Mark was on his way over,
Speaker 2: and then Russo left with him. Correct now, it was
Speaker 2: cold out right, so Mark asked John if you could
Speaker 2: take the blanket that he had draped over his shoulders.
Speaker 2: And that becomes an interesting topic of conversation or evidence,
Speaker 2: if you could call it that later on. What we
Speaker 2: know is that forty minutes later, Mark Fisher was shot
Speaker 2: and killed in front of one fifty Argyle Road, which
Speaker 2: was just a few blocks from John's house and directly
Speaker 2: across the street from Albert's correct now, according to Google Maps,
Speaker 2: this is about a five minute walk less than a
Speaker 2: quarter of a mile, so we're not sure what happened
Speaker 2: in those other thirty five minutes. The free floating radicals,
Speaker 2: if you will, are Mark Fisher, Antonio Russo, Angel Di Pietro,
Speaker 2: and Albert Cleary.
Speaker 4: The people who lived on Argyle Road, they heard voices,
Speaker 4: and the woman whose bedroom was right above the driveway
Speaker 4: where Mark was found, car doors opening and closing, also
Speaker 4: heard young voices, and she was adamant that one of
Speaker 4: those was a female voice.
Speaker 2: Right the ocupant of one point fifty Argyle, wrote Hiroko
Speaker 2: Swornick said that she was awakened by her dog barking
Speaker 2: and heard the sound of a car door opening and shutting.
Speaker 2: Swornick went on to say that the view from her
Speaker 2: second story window was obstructed by foliage, but she heard
Speaker 2: more than two young people talking. The conversation specifically did
Speaker 2: not sound like an argument, and one of the voices
Speaker 2: was female. She said that she went back to bed,
Speaker 2: and a bit later she and her husband heard gunshots
Speaker 2: and called police. Now from Russo's twenty eighteen detectives report,
Speaker 2: Russo said that while on Argyle Road, he pulled out
Speaker 2: his German Luger nine millimeter, which belonged to him and
Speaker 2: him alone. He took Fisher's wallet and told him to
Speaker 2: run before firing a shot at the ground to let
Speaker 2: Fisher know that the gun was real and loaded. He
Speaker 2: then fired a shot at Fisher, who fell to the ground.
Speaker 2: When Fisher asked him why he had shot him, Russo
Speaker 2: emptied his clip into him, killing him on the spot.
Speaker 2: The blanket from John's house lay underneath his feet mark
Speaker 2: Fisher's body had been shot five times.
Speaker 3: They did a canvas of the neighborhood. Some people said
Speaker 3: that they hurt shots and also saw a dark colored
Speaker 3: car speeding away.
Speaker 2: Now Russo said that there was a woman in a
Speaker 2: car who could identify him. When he was fleeing the scene,
Speaker 2: he got rid of the wallet at a sewer near his house.
Speaker 2: It was later recovered by police. Now, immediately after the crime,
Speaker 2: Antonio Russo did a few things that a guilty person might.
Speaker 3: He used to wear braids and whole life, and he
Speaker 3: shaved his head.
Speaker 4: Russo then decides to take a vacation in California for
Speaker 4: a month and just disappear.
Speaker 2: And it'll become clear that Russo's twenty eighteen account is
Speaker 2: definitely missing a few details. But what is absolutely certain
Speaker 2: is that he said he did this alone with his
Speaker 2: own gun.
Speaker 4: Our working theory has always been that Albert and Angel
Speaker 4: stuck mumbled in to Russo doing something bad and didn't
Speaker 4: want to get involved in coming after him because he's
Speaker 4: a monster. Russo said he saw a girl. The neighbors
Speaker 4: heard a girl. By their own admission, Albert and Angel
Speaker 4: are across the street, now, wouldn't you know it? Who
Speaker 4: do you think the only people on the block when
Speaker 4: they interviewed people at the houses who said they didn't
Speaker 4: hear anything.
Speaker 2: I've been to this neighborhood and the neighbors driveways are
Speaker 2: maybe at most twenty thirty yards across the street from
Speaker 2: the other neighbor's front doors.
Speaker 4: The morning after the murder, Albert and Angel quickly decamped
Speaker 4: to her Long Island home, where they hung out with
Speaker 4: her father all day, a place Cleary had never been before.
Speaker 2: And Angel's father, James D. Pietro, was a prominent defense attorney.
Speaker 4: He's a prominent lawyer, frequent financial donor close friend to Hines.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, Angel had plans to follow in her dad's footsteps
Speaker 2: and later passed the bar.
Speaker 4: And then a short time later she gets hired as
Speaker 4: a prosecutor, to the point where her and Nicolozzi are
Speaker 4: colleagues for years.
Speaker 2: You can't make this up, so okay, So back to
Speaker 2: the immediate aftermath. At around ten am that morning, Angel
Speaker 2: began receiving phone calls from family and friends of Mark Fisher,
Speaker 2: and she told them that Meredith Denahan had given Mark
Speaker 2: trainfair and he had taken a train around eight or
Speaker 2: nine am. Angel also told detectives that she had spoken
Speaker 2: e Meredith on the morning of October twelfth, who allegedly
Speaker 2: told her that Mark had woken John up around six
Speaker 2: am and asked where to catch a train, but Meredith
Speaker 2: denied that this conversation ever took place. This is two
Speaker 2: days in and they knew that Angel wasn't telling the truth.
Speaker 4: In two thousand and four, late spring, early summer. You
Speaker 4: could see they spent a lot of time tracking her
Speaker 4: and trying to interview her friends and roommates, and they
Speaker 4: all said, we didn't believe her. She's telling different stories.
Speaker 4: And the people who believe Angel is not telling the
Speaker 4: truth more than anyone else are Mark Fisher's family. They
Speaker 4: I went so far as to sue both her and Cleary.
Speaker 4: After John was convicted, they asked the DA for this
Speaker 4: police paperwork that talked about these neighbors on Argyle Road
Speaker 4: who said we heard a girl, and the Brooklyn DA's
Speaker 4: response was we're not giving you that. They were protecting
Speaker 4: Angel even back then.
Speaker 2: It at least appears as if some deal was made
Speaker 2: with her, or perhaps with her father, to keep her
Speaker 2: out of the crosshairs. So this is all super interesting.
Speaker 2: But how do the vulnerabilities of Albert and Angel having
Speaker 2: maybe seen Russo commit this crime and covering for that fact,
Speaker 2: How does this get directed towards John and this narrative
Speaker 2: with the ghetto mafia.
Speaker 4: When the cops interviewed Antonio Russo a couple days after
Speaker 4: the murder. He is the one who planted the seed
Speaker 4: in the cops ears that there was this big tough
Speaker 4: gang named Ghetto Mafia, of which John and others were
Speaker 4: involved in, and that they could have been behind this.
Speaker 3: As soon as I found out that the police wanted
Speaker 3: to talk to me, I went right there to the preescing.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, Lauren Calciano drove me that
Speaker 3: was the seven oh Precinct detectives, which are the same
Speaker 3: guys who stuck a punger up this guy's ass, abnue Luima.
Speaker 2: And for those who don't remember the awful case of
Speaker 2: abnue Luima, embrace yourself. It was nineteen ninety seven and
Speaker 2: the seventieth Precinct, or the seven O as it was called,
Speaker 2: and mister Luima was effectively kidnapped by police from the
Speaker 2: scene of a fight outside of a club. They accused
Speaker 2: him of assaulting one of the four police officers with them,
Speaker 2: then brutally beat him, and when back at the seventieth Precinct,
Speaker 2: they sexually assaulted mister Luima with a broken broomstick. And
Speaker 2: so these officers knew that you knew that story.
Speaker 3: They tried to like subtly threaten me with that too.
Speaker 3: When I was in the precinct, they said you have
Speaker 3: to use the bathroom.
Speaker 5: They said, I don't have to use the bathroom.
Speaker 3: They said you have to use the bathroom. I'm like what,
Speaker 3: And they took me to the bathroom and then tried
Speaker 3: to question me in the bathroom, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: my fucking.
Speaker 2: God, unrecking believable.
Speaker 3: The interviews didn't go so well in the sense that,
Speaker 3: you know, they just wanted me to either confess or
Speaker 3: frame someone before my lawyer got there. So that's the
Speaker 3: only thing you guys want to hear. That's it. We
Speaker 3: have nothing more to faith.
Speaker 2: And it appears that Albert Cleary was under the same
Speaker 2: sort of intense pressure.
Speaker 4: Now Cleary had denied knowing anything, and he actually had
Speaker 4: his lawyer go on national TV to say we're cooperating,
Speaker 4: we know nothing. They even commissioned a polygraph in which
Speaker 4: Cleary passed the polygraph in which he said, I don't
Speaker 4: know anything about this. I've been truthful. I've told the
Speaker 4: police everything I know, which ostensibly at that time was
Speaker 4: I know nothing.
Speaker 2: So John, when did you get the feeling that this
Speaker 2: investsgation had shifted and the heat was being directed towards.
Speaker 3: You when they appointed this elite investigative unit consisting of
Speaker 3: Brooklyn Adas and Major K Squad detectives, and Michael Vickione
Speaker 3: was spearheading that team.
Speaker 2: So even with Albert shouting from the rooftops that he
Speaker 2: passed a polygraph saying that he didn't know anything, this
Speaker 2: elite investigative you that headed by the now disgraced Michael Vecchioni,
Speaker 2: had Albert ready to say whatever the hell he could
Speaker 2: dream up in order to save himself. And as we mentioned,
Speaker 2: he wasn't the only one. The two most important pieces
Speaker 2: of false testimony centered around when Albert and your girlfriend
Speaker 2: at the time, Lauren Calciano, met up with you at
Speaker 2: your house sometime on October twelfth, in the aftermath of
Speaker 2: the murder.
Speaker 4: What the DA claims is later that night or the day,
Speaker 4: according to Lauren, that John is meeting with his girlfriend
Speaker 4: Lauren and Albert in his bedroom. According to the he
Speaker 4: tells them what happened, and according to Cleary, John tells
Speaker 4: him Mark disrespected my house by sitting on a table.
Speaker 3: At one point, Mark sat on a table and to
Speaker 3: tell you it wasn't a big deal. This is something
Speaker 3: that they tried to blow out a proportion later on
Speaker 3: and make it like it was a big deal, but
Speaker 3: it was actually nothing. Tommy said something told me. He
Speaker 3: got off the.
Speaker 2: Table, and that was it, right sitting on a table.
Speaker 2: I've never heard that besided as a reason to kill anyone.
Speaker 4: According to Cleary, John tells him it pissed me off,
Speaker 4: so I told Russo take my gun and show him
Speaker 4: what's up. Basically gave the order. Lauren, again ostensibly at
Speaker 4: the exact same meeting, says what happened is John told
Speaker 4: us Russo had approached him that night and said, I
Speaker 4: want to rob Mark. Can I borrow your gun? She
Speaker 4: claims it's during the day, Albert claims it's at night.
Speaker 4: And the common denominator here is that both of these
Speaker 4: witnesses had denied for a year knowing anything until they
Speaker 4: were pressured and threatened with all kinds of things. Lauren
Speaker 4: was threatened with her future, very embarrassing details about her
Speaker 4: personal life. Albert was threatened with jail, perjury, all kinds
Speaker 4: of things. He was on probation for kicking the crap
Speaker 4: out of somebody a few months earlier, and so at
Speaker 4: a bare minimum, you have conclusive proof that either one
Speaker 4: of Lauren or Albert take your pick. I would argue
Speaker 4: it doesn't even matter, just demonstrates they're all full as shit.
Speaker 4: But you have conclusive proof that the prosecution has no
Speaker 4: problem calling at least one witness it knows is flat
Speaker 4: out perjuring themselves. Now, Cleary, you also added to that
Speaker 4: story that you know, I was talking to John and
Speaker 4: this guy, Rob Register, the head of Ghetto mafia, and
Speaker 4: John and Rob were talking about how we don't have
Speaker 4: enough street credibilities, so we need to catch a body
Speaker 4: at the time was a college student North Carolina. And
Speaker 4: we of course have a sworn AFFI David from this
Speaker 4: Register guy saying this is all a bunch of nonsense.
Speaker 4: He's never called to testify to any of this. But
Speaker 4: yet at the trial you have Nicolazzi talking about Capo's
Speaker 4: soldiers orders Tony Soprano. It's insane.
Speaker 2: So these are the two false statements that eventually got
Speaker 2: John indicted at a secret grand jury. Now, Antonio Russo
Speaker 2: had already been arrested in November two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: Why that took so long, nobody knows.
Speaker 3: After Russoll got arrested. That was it, I thought, And
Speaker 3: then I went shopping. It was a couple of days
Speaker 3: before Christmas, on December twenty one, two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: and I bought a whole bunch of Christmas gifts for everyone.
Speaker 3: And I was on my way home to put up
Speaker 3: the Christmas tree for my mother and they were there
Speaker 3: in front of my house.
Speaker 2: So you spent Christmas on Riker's Island. And Joe Hines
Speaker 2: had a serious primary challenge in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: As part of his taxpayer funded election campaign. He was
Speaker 2: making a big splash in the media with the York case.
Speaker 3: After I got arrested, they rushed my case to trial
Speaker 3: in eight months because.
Speaker 2: Of that election, and they didn't plan on losing, so
Speaker 2: they needed to support their two false witnesses with more bullshit.
Speaker 2: And it went out and found another friend of yours
Speaker 2: with a vulnerability to exploit, a guy named Anthony Bahari.
Speaker 4: Yes, he was another witness who satisfied the formula of
Speaker 4: claimed for a year and a half that he didn't
Speaker 4: know anything, but after being heavily pressured, claimed that the
Speaker 4: morning after the homicide that John called him up and
Speaker 4: asked him to do him a favor and pick up
Speaker 4: an item and leave it on the corner for somebody
Speaker 4: else to pick up, and Biharry testified that he looked
Speaker 4: at the item and that it was a firearm. So
Speaker 4: that testimony was potentially very damaging, but it was problematic
Speaker 4: for a lot of reasons. He was threatened with losing
Speaker 4: his son and with being prosecuted for actually possessing the gun,
Speaker 4: which is a legal fiction. The DA was threatening to
Speaker 4: prosecute him for possession of a gun that they had
Speaker 4: no evidence of where it was, or whether it was operable,
Speaker 4: or anything else.
Speaker 2: It was alleged that John and Bahari had called each
Speaker 2: other back and forth to plan how he would leave
Speaker 2: the gun under a box on the street for some
Speaker 2: mystery buyer who would leave the money in its place.
Speaker 3: All they had to do to prove that that wasn't
Speaker 3: true was get these phone records.
Speaker 2: And then what case with this many coerced and or
Speaker 2: incentivized witnesses would be complete without a jailhouse snitch. So
Speaker 2: in walks Johnavido, who did time at Rikers while you
Speaker 2: were there, he had a burglary charge and was eventually
Speaker 2: sent to a drug rehab program with the burglary sentence
Speaker 2: suspended pending his completion of the program. But he fell
Speaker 2: off the wagon, and now all of a sudden, In
Speaker 2: swooped the Brooklyn DA's office to snatch up another willing
Speaker 2: participant in John's railroading. So you and Antonio Russo went
Speaker 2: to trial together. Tell us about this case.
Speaker 4: The jury's being told essentially that Juka's childhood friend, Albert
Speaker 4: Cleary's going to come in and tell you that John,
Speaker 4: as a member of this gang ghetto mafia, told Albert
Speaker 4: that they wanted to increase their street credibility, so they
Speaker 4: needed to kill someone. That Mark Fisher sat on a
Speaker 4: table in his family room. This was such an act
Speaker 4: of disrespect that it made jukea rage to the point
Speaker 4: where he told Antonio Russo take my gun and you
Speaker 4: quote unquote show Fisher what's up, which apparently is their
Speaker 4: way of saying shoot him.
Speaker 3: I remember that he tried to say that I told
Speaker 3: Russo to wait in the bushes and ambush him on
Speaker 3: Turner plate. There was no blood trail from Turner all
Speaker 3: the way to his house, so it was just an
Speaker 3: obvious lie. And he pushed a one pm phone call
Speaker 3: up to eleven.
Speaker 2: Which Angel Dpietro testified falsely to as well. You had
Speaker 2: called Albert just before one pm that day. The phone
Speaker 2: wreckers corroborated that, but both of them testified to an
Speaker 2: eleven am call, So it might be plausible that you
Speaker 2: were the alleged source of all of their shady information
Speaker 2: during the immediate aftermath. Now there's something else about Albert's
Speaker 2: time on the stand. Nicolazzi brought up the polygraph he
Speaker 2: had taken to prove he didn't know anything about the crime,
Speaker 2: but in a very misleading context.
Speaker 3: When he was on the stands after he says the
Speaker 3: exact opposite of that polygraph, he says, he does know
Speaker 3: who did this, and he does know everything about it.
Speaker 3: She asks him, didn't you take a polygraph? And he
Speaker 3: said yes, And then, of course, knowing polygraphs are admissible
Speaker 3: in course, so she knew Van Gregory would object and
Speaker 3: it was a firm So the jury thought that he
Speaker 3: took and past that polygraph what he was saying. Now,
Speaker 3: it was never cleared up that he took a polygraph
Speaker 3: to the exact opposite of what he was saying.
Speaker 2: Now, that is really devious. Now, they called your ex
Speaker 2: girlfriend Lauren Calciana to the stand, whose testimony just can't
Speaker 2: be squared with Albert Cleary's version of the same exact
Speaker 2: conversation between the three of you on October twelve.
Speaker 4: Both stories could not be true. There could not have
Speaker 4: been the same meeting that Albert and Lauren are talking about,
Speaker 4: and Albert's talking about John complaining about disrespect and ordering
Speaker 4: Russo to commit a murder when Lauren is saying, no,
Speaker 4: what happened is Russo said I just want to rob
Speaker 4: the guy. Can I borrow your gun?
Speaker 2: And John, this was the first time that you were
Speaker 2: hearing the one time love of your life falsely implicating
Speaker 2: you in a murder.
Speaker 3: That was crushed. She stared at me the whole time
Speaker 3: she was up there, and it wasn't like a malicious like.
Speaker 3: She wasn't staring me down. She was looking at me
Speaker 3: like as if she was saying I'm sorry with her eyes.
Speaker 2: So we've gone over three of the four substantive witnesses,
Speaker 2: Albert Cleary, Lauren Calciano, and Anthony Bajari. Lauren and Anthony
Speaker 2: have both recanted, as has the jail house snitch John Evito,
Speaker 2: whose testimony were about to.
Speaker 4: Cover he claims that I was in jail with John,
Speaker 4: and I was having visitation in Riker's Eye Island the
Speaker 4: same time John was, and he was with his father
Speaker 4: and two women, and a Vito says, I overheard John
Speaker 4: in response to the question from his father, why did
Speaker 4: you have a gun with you? John said, I don't know,
Speaker 4: I just did, and in essence acknowledge having a gun.
Speaker 4: What the jury never learns is that John Juca's father
Speaker 4: prior to this jailhouse visitation, which did happen, by the way,
Speaker 4: and it's not surprising that the snitch would use a
Speaker 4: kernel of truth that could be documented by looking at
Speaker 4: jail records. But what the jury didn't know, and presumably
Speaker 4: the DA didn't know it, was that John's father had
Speaker 4: a series of debilitating strokes and as a result, he
Speaker 4: couldn't speak.
Speaker 3: He could only say one or maybe sometimes he would
Speaker 3: string two words together. At the time. He couldn't say
Speaker 3: what Alvito said that she said.
Speaker 4: The jury also didn't know that the family relatives, the
Speaker 4: women who were present, would have strenuously denied that occurred.
Speaker 4: They have sworn under oath in AffA Davis if this
Speaker 4: never happened.
Speaker 2: And there was even more to this false testimony where
Speaker 2: a Vito claimed to hear incriminating statements directly from John,
Speaker 2: this time completely changing the location of the crime.
Speaker 4: The murder unquestionably is on Argyle Road, the shots were
Speaker 4: heard by the residents, but a Vito says, no, what
Speaker 4: happened is John told me that he went to the
Speaker 4: ATM with Mark Fisher, which, as you also said earlier,
Speaker 4: was an hour before the murder. But this is what
Speaker 4: snitches do. They read papers, they see the news, and
Speaker 4: they concoct He says when Mark Fisher withdrew money at
Speaker 4: the ATM that John told me he pulled out a
Speaker 4: gun pistol with Mark Fisher beat him up, and then
Speaker 4: Russo took the gun and shot him. So the story
Speaker 4: changes dramatically on top of the fact that this is
Speaker 4: coming from a jailhouse snitch who again was trying to
Speaker 4: avoid a prison sentence.
Speaker 2: So what did Sam Gregory do about a Vito.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately he didn't even know about John a Veto until
Speaker 4: right before a trial. There's no offer of proof, meaning
Speaker 4: here's what he's going to say. There's no notice to
Speaker 4: the defense that, oh, by the way, we're going to
Speaker 4: argue through this witness that Juca was physically there and
Speaker 4: did it. So he wasn't prepared to try a case
Speaker 4: on a theory other than the nonsense inconsistencies that was
Speaker 4: going to come out of Lauren and Albert. You know,
Speaker 4: if the defense had been aware of this from the beginning,
Speaker 4: they could have tactically prepared differently.
Speaker 2: He could have prepared to have John's father's doctor testify
Speaker 2: to his father's limitations, or the two women could have
Speaker 2: testified to the actual substance of the conversation.
Speaker 4: Instead, they're caught with their pants down.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: The defense did argue in their summation that the mere
Speaker 4: fact that they called the Vito as a witness was
Speaker 4: kind of a hail mary, because Lauren and Albert had
Speaker 4: inconsistent stories that led the prosecutor to respond that John
Speaker 4: Avito was just for once in his life, being a
Speaker 4: good guy, motivated to do the right thing, and that's
Speaker 4: the only reason he's cooperating, and that was just a
Speaker 4: bald face lie.
Speaker 2: So they squashed his problems in exchange for testimony.
Speaker 4: For the time being, they kept him out of jail
Speaker 4: despite repeated violations in a mandatory prison sentence, and then
Speaker 4: once he was no longer needed. A year later, when
Speaker 4: he violated the program again, they threw him out with
Speaker 4: the trash and into prison he went when he no
Speaker 4: longer had any value to them.
Speaker 2: So this exchange of leniency for testimony represents just one
Speaker 2: Brady violation. But there's another major one in which Russo
Speaker 2: admitted to a fellow inmate named Joe Ingram to acting alone.
Speaker 2: And we'll get into that Ingram evidence and more detail later,
Speaker 2: but back to trial. So now they go from two
Speaker 2: conflicting versions of this crime to three convicting versions of
Speaker 2: this crime.
Speaker 3: They're really supposed to take one theory and prove it
Speaker 3: beyond a reasonable doubt, not give the jurors Chinese food
Speaker 3: menu of different theories, because then you might have some
Speaker 3: jurors that believe this and some jurors that believe that.
Speaker 3: It's called the unanimity issue where they have to be unanimous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to offer a menu of theories and basically say
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter, you know he did it, which is
Speaker 4: essentially what the summation amounted to, is not consistent with
Speaker 4: due process, and it leads to a jury possibly being
Speaker 4: six jurors say what if he ordered a murder? Four
Speaker 4: jurors saying, what if he gave him a gun for
Speaker 4: a robbery? And what if two jurors say maybe he
Speaker 4: was physically there, Okay, but we all agree he did it. Okay, guilty,
Speaker 4: that's absurd.
Speaker 3: It was the worst day of my life. I was
Speaker 3: sentenced to twenty five to life on October nineteenth, two
Speaker 3: thousand and five. It wasn't even a lie for twenty
Speaker 3: five years at that point when I got sentence, I
Speaker 3: didn't even know what twenty five years.
Speaker 5: When I came.
Speaker 3: Up state, they automatically started trying to go to the
Speaker 3: Low Library alive. But it's hard to even get up
Speaker 3: out of bed in the morning knowing what's being done
Speaker 3: to you. But I was going to the Low Library
Speaker 3: every day at one point, trying to get to know
Speaker 3: the law. And that's when I saw that my prosecutor, Nicolazzi,
Speaker 3: used the prosecutorial misconduct playbook. She suppressed evidence more than
Speaker 3: once that we could prove between course and witnesses, misstating
Speaker 3: the full record, or even misstating the law. She told
Speaker 3: the jury that what Lauren said alone is enough to
Speaker 3: convict me of fill any murder. Because that's not really
Speaker 3: true either. But then, really those early years were more
Speaker 3: about my jura misconduct issue.
Speaker 2: I understand that one of your friends was with your
Speaker 2: mom and noticed somebody in the jury that he recognized.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure it was the day the verdict. He
Speaker 3: saw one of the jurors and he was like, holy shit,
Speaker 3: I know this guy from the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And then your mom puts on her literal superhero cape.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to hear this to believe it.
Speaker 2: I can't say enough about Doreen.
Speaker 3: My mother tried to go to multiple private investigators. First,
Speaker 3: she got ripped Dolph and she just had to take
Speaker 3: matters into her own hands, and she did.
Speaker 4: She watched him for a period of time and eventually
Speaker 4: started communicating with him, recorded her interactions with him. They
Speaker 4: began an ostensible friendship, and after a period of time
Speaker 4: she started talking about the case, and this guy, Jason
Speaker 4: Alo started saying things, including admitting that he never should
Speaker 4: have been on the jury because he knew some of
Speaker 4: the people.
Speaker 3: He said that his cousin, who also used to hang
Speaker 3: out at a house that I hung out at, she
Speaker 3: thought I was guilty. He said his cousin wouldn't lie
Speaker 3: to me about something like that he said, guys that
Speaker 3: I used to hang out with used to bully his brother.
Speaker 3: I didn't even recognize the names that he was talking about.
Speaker 3: Another thing was that he said he couldn't get off
Speaker 3: for work, but once he told them about which case
Speaker 3: it was, his boss gave him off and said, I
Speaker 3: want to see that fucking kid. Fry told him he'll
Speaker 3: give him off with pay. Something like that.
Speaker 4: All kinds of things were coming out of the Skuys,
Speaker 4: including that he didn't like Jews. Obviously, the name Djuca
Speaker 4: sounds like Jew, but it's Italian.
Speaker 2: I can't even process this.
Speaker 4: There's just no question that the case should have been
Speaker 4: tossed because of the ger misconduct.
Speaker 3: She even admitted that he was pushing these other jurors into.
Speaker 4: A guilty party when they filed a motion to reverse
Speaker 4: the conviction on that issue. For whatever reason, those recordings
Speaker 4: were not authenticated in the proper way, and so the
Speaker 4: motion was denied on procedural grounds. But the judge who
Speaker 4: denied the motion went farther and said, even if it
Speaker 4: was proper, I would deny it on the merits because
Speaker 4: this is, you know, an assault on the judicial system
Speaker 4: for somebody to be going after a juror, so the
Speaker 4: criticism was actually leveled entirely at Doreen for exposing this,
Speaker 4: rather than the juror, who clearly had no business being
Speaker 4: on the case.
Speaker 3: She didn't do anything wrong, she didn't commit any crimes.
Speaker 3: It was just she dug for the truth and she
Speaker 3: got it, and they didn't like what they found out
Speaker 3: what they heard.
Speaker 4: So I got involved in this. In twenty twelve, was
Speaker 4: contacted by Doreen, John's mother or who some Noah's mother
Speaker 4: justice when she showed up in my office with just
Speaker 4: stacks of papers. The first piece of paper that was
Speaker 4: on top of this whole pile was a transcript in
Speaker 4: the People of the State of New York versus John Avito,
Speaker 4: and it was the court appearance in which a. Vito
Speaker 4: had gone to court after he started meeting with John's prosecutor,
Speaker 4: and the appearance for the da on the cover of
Speaker 4: this transcript was Anna Sega Nicolozzi, who was John's prosecutor.
Speaker 3: She showed up to one of his court appearances and
Speaker 3: made sure he didn't go to jail.
Speaker 4: There was no reason why a homicide prosecutor on the
Speaker 4: biggest murder case in New York city would be appearing
Speaker 4: on a mundane return on warrant for some mope who
Speaker 4: had a burglary sentence because he violated a drug program
Speaker 4: other than the fact he had to be cooperating in
Speaker 4: the murder case.
Speaker 3: But the major one was the whitewashed drug program violation
Speaker 3: documents that they gave us for John of Vito. They
Speaker 3: put him up on a stand and got him to
Speaker 3: say that he wasn't getting anything and didn't want anything
Speaker 3: in return for his testimony, no leniency and no benefits
Speaker 3: at all. Meanwhile, he just fucked up seven or eight
Speaker 3: drug programs and got like all these violations, But they
Speaker 3: gave us drug program violation reports that didn't have any
Speaker 3: of that stuff on there. And then later when we
Speaker 3: got the case file, we got the real copy of
Speaker 3: the exact same document. If you pulled them up to
Speaker 3: each other, they are the same document, but they have
Speaker 3: more sentences in them. So somebody just highlighted that part
Speaker 3: presidently and printed it out and gave it to us.
Speaker 3: They just prepped him up there and made it look
Speaker 3: like he was just testifying to be a good citizen
Speaker 3: and that he didn't want anything in exchange for his testimony.
Speaker 4: Total why, And so I knew within the first day
Speaker 4: I met Doreen that this case was sideways.
Speaker 2: And all of this is happening in the ramp up
Speaker 2: to the historic run of Ken Thompson.
Speaker 4: During the election in twenty twelve thirteen, a lot of
Speaker 4: this news about angel di Pietro came out, and again
Speaker 4: the idea that she could be hired by Hines as
Speaker 4: a prosecutor and be Nicolozzi's colleague years later just so
Speaker 4: absurd on his face that Ken he asked me about
Speaker 4: what is all this? In my view, he wanted to
Speaker 4: campaign on Djuka. Ironically enough, and maybe it was my
Speaker 4: mistake at the time, but I told him, I don't
Speaker 4: want to talk to you about anything Juka related because
Speaker 4: you're probably going to be the next DA And I'm
Speaker 4: telling you right now, I'm going to be coming to
Speaker 4: you to right this wrong. And I look back and
Speaker 4: one of my sins in this case is probably not
Speaker 4: unloading to him, because ironically, what he would have probably
Speaker 4: done is campaigned on it.
Speaker 2: So Ken Thompson challenges Hines against Long Eyes and the
Speaker 2: primary he wins, and what does Joe Hines do? He'd
Speaker 2: had to call in a favor from Albert's mother on
Speaker 2: the King's County GOP Executive Committee and get the Wilson
Speaker 2: Pacula waiver to allow him to run as a Republican.
Speaker 3: He pulled the sneaky political move to take a second
Speaker 3: bite at the apple.
Speaker 2: But Ken Thompson, he wins. So now, Mark, at this point,
Speaker 2: you're thinking it's time to resolve this once and for all. Yeah.
Speaker 4: When we did bring the case to the Conviction Review Unit,
Speaker 4: we presented them with all kinds of evidence, including literally hundreds,
Speaker 4: if not thousands, of pages of medical records of John
Speaker 4: Jucus Senior, who had the strokes that we talked about,
Speaker 4: which meant that the Avido's story couldn't happened. We presented
Speaker 4: them with the sworn affidavits of the two women who
Speaker 4: were at that jailhouse visit, who denied that conversation ever
Speaker 4: took place. We presented them with overwhelming proof of how
Speaker 4: Angel and Albert clearly testified falsely and how it contradicted
Speaker 4: what they told the police and contradicted all the other
Speaker 4: available evidence.
Speaker 2: And while this is in the CiU, we're talking twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen. Amazingly, this is when the recantation start rolling
Speaker 2: in so In twenty fourteen, Lauren Calciano recanted. Here's her quote.
Speaker 2: I have regretted this testimony since I was first pressured
Speaker 2: to claim this by law enforcement officials. I repeatedly told
Speaker 2: them that he did not have any information regarding John's
Speaker 2: a legend involvement in this crime. Law enforcement pressured and
Speaker 2: frightened me to the point that I ultimately relented and
Speaker 2: told them what they wanted to hear. Specifically, I was
Speaker 2: pressured to admit that John had told me that he
Speaker 2: gave Tony Russell a gun before Tony shot and killed
Speaker 2: Mark Fisher. She goes on to say law enforcement officials
Speaker 2: suggested that I was involved in the aftermathod the crime
Speaker 2: by telling me that Albert Cleary had told them that
Speaker 2: I removed a gun, bag or evidence from John's house.
Speaker 2: Although this was untrue, I recognized the seriousness of this claim.
Speaker 2: Law enforcement officers threatened me with jail and told me
Speaker 2: that I could be charged with obstruction and or perjury.
Speaker 2: Ada Nicolazzi told me that if I did not cooperate
Speaker 2: with her, the police would show open my place of
Speaker 2: employment with a subpoena. Ada Nicolozzi repends the very personal
Speaker 2: issue between John and me, which was discussed only in
Speaker 2: our private letter. She told me, you do not want
Speaker 2: this to come out of trial. I interpreted this as
Speaker 2: a not so subtle threat that I would be publicly
Speaker 2: humiliated by the DA if I did not cooperate. Adia
Speaker 2: Nicolozzi and detectives told me that they were aware that
Speaker 2: my father was in prison and that by not cooperating
Speaker 2: with them, I was quote going to make this hard
Speaker 2: on him and my family. More than any other factor,
Speaker 2: this threat influenced me to testify in the manner that
Speaker 2: they desired. Now this thing goes on for eight full pages.
Speaker 4: She also, in her affidavit, explained how Albert Cleary lied
Speaker 4: because I was there and what he said was not
Speaker 4: true either. And she also gave a little insight into
Speaker 4: what ghetto Mafia was. She said, I was around these
Speaker 4: people during this time period. In Ghetto Mafia is the
Speaker 4: name of a bunch of local kids and knuckleheads, not
Speaker 4: some sophisticated street gang. We also gave them a sworn
Speaker 4: Affid Davit from if you recall when we talked about
Speaker 4: Albert Cleary, the guy that he said was the boss
Speaker 4: of the gang, who had spoken to John about let's
Speaker 4: catch a body and that's why maybe Mark Fisher was shot,
Speaker 4: And he very calmly explained under oath that I was
Speaker 4: going to college in North Carolina and I was not
Speaker 4: the leader of a gang. And John and I did
Speaker 4: not discuss how to get a body or anything like that.
Speaker 2: And then John Evito recan'ts.
Speaker 4: He did and a veto. We got all of his
Speaker 4: Riker's Island jail record. Sure enough. He was a diagnosed
Speaker 4: paranoid schizophrenic who had been taking psychotropic drugs, including Sarahquill,
Speaker 4: and part of his symptoms and what Sarah Quill treats
Speaker 4: are people who suffer auditory hallucinations. So it turns out
Speaker 4: that the guy who says I overheard a man who
Speaker 4: can't speak ask questions about a murder. You can't make
Speaker 4: this up, had a history of actually hearing voices and
Speaker 4: seeing snakes was another one of his visual hallucinations. We
Speaker 4: had many, many meetings with their conviction review unit, and
Speaker 4: they declined to overturn the conviction, either on innocence or
Speaker 4: on any constitutional violations.
Speaker 3: Once Ken Thompson took over, there was twenty five generations
Speaker 3: and that gave me so much hope. The difference between
Speaker 3: me and all those other guys is that the ADA
Speaker 3: that put them in jail doesn't work there anymore. But
Speaker 3: when it came to me, when Ken Thompson got elected,
Speaker 3: he didn't fire Nicolazzi, so she did still work there.
Speaker 4: When Jonavito and Lauren Calciano and others at risk to
Speaker 4: themselves their controverting sworn testimony with new sworn testimony when
Speaker 4: they went in to see the conviction Review Unit, what
Speaker 4: the DA did was record them, swear them in, make transcripts,
Speaker 4: and put them under oath. When the Brooklyn DA witnesses
Speaker 4: were interviewed Anna Sega, Nicolazzi, others, they weren't sworn. There's
Speaker 4: no record of their interviews, and the report has never
Speaker 4: been made public. It's never been shared, like so many
Speaker 4: others that they do share. It's as if they viewed
Speaker 4: the JUGA conviction review as an exercise in preparing for
Speaker 4: a post conviction motion and locking down these witnesses to
Speaker 4: cross examine them if they testify for the defense.
Speaker 3: They covered for her instead of doing justice like they
Speaker 3: should have. I mean, there was a mountain of evidence
Speaker 3: that pointed away from me, and they just didn't care.
Speaker 3: You know, they denied me and use what we gave
Speaker 3: them to try to count me in the course.
Speaker 4: This was in late fourteen, and by the first couple
Speaker 4: of months and fifteen we filed the motion that culminated
Speaker 4: in a reversal in February of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I got the reversal of the John of
Speaker 3: Vido issue and the fact that Nikolauzi did give him benefits.
Speaker 3: My jury should have known about that. I got an
Speaker 3: unanimous decision this kid should be reversed and he should
Speaker 3: get a new trial. And then I go back down
Speaker 3: to Ryka's Island and I sit there for a year
Speaker 3: and a half.
Speaker 2: And during the discuss process, you discover this recording that
Speaker 2: was made with a guy named ingram Ada.
Speaker 3: Nicolazzi made a recording in two thousand and five before
Speaker 3: the trial. And this was a guy who was probably
Speaker 3: trying to help himself somehow, you know. He told them
Speaker 3: he had information and he said things that she didn't
Speaker 3: want to hear.
Speaker 4: Joseph ingram was in the same cell block as John
Speaker 4: and traveled to Bellevue for medical treatment one day with
Speaker 4: Antonio Russo, and him and Russo were on the bus
Speaker 4: chit chatting.
Speaker 5: He said.
Speaker 3: Russo admitted he did this alone, that I wasn't there,
Speaker 3: I had nothing to do with it, none of that.
Speaker 4: And Russo admitted to Ingram that I tried to get
Speaker 4: John to take the gun after the murder. I went
Speaker 4: to his house and he wouldn't do it. He told
Speaker 4: me leave go. No, this tape was not disclosed prior
Speaker 4: to trial. It was disclosed to me in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: and when the DA was contemplating a retrial, they actually
Speaker 4: so desperate to get Juka they sent these detectives up
Speaker 4: there to interview Russo to secure his cooperation to testify
Speaker 4: against John, and instead what he tells them is I
Speaker 4: did it alone with my own gun.
Speaker 2: But the new trial was never actualized, so for now
Speaker 2: they didn't have to contend with this evidence. In June
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, the New York Court of Appeals reinstated the
Speaker 2: conviction that you had reversed in twenty eighteen, and John
Speaker 2: went back to state prison.
Speaker 3: And it was obvious by the decision that they didn't
Speaker 3: know the facts of the case.
Speaker 4: Although they agreed with us that Nicolazzi suppressed evidence, they
Speaker 4: argued it was not material to the outcome of trial,
Speaker 4: which is reasoning, which is mind boggling, given that Nicolozzi's
Speaker 4: whole summation, as I told you earlier, was about how
Speaker 4: critical a witness A. Vito was, and how credible he was,
Speaker 4: and how altruistic he was, and how he established the
Speaker 4: real theory of what happened. And one would think that
Speaker 4: if the defense had known the full story about his
Speaker 4: credibility and demolished him as it should have been, that
Speaker 4: would somehow have impacted the significance of his testimony. But
Speaker 4: in the five to one opinion against us, they argued
Speaker 4: it wasn't material because a Veto had been impeached about
Speaker 4: other things. And it was Judge Rivera, in a very
Speaker 4: lengthy descent, who explained why that reasoning was flawed, and
Speaker 4: why his credibility on this particular issue is so important,
Speaker 4: and why the behavior of the trial prosecutor was intended
Speaker 4: to mislead the judge, the jury, and defense. You don't
Speaker 4: usually see a judge of the Court of Appeals call
Speaker 4: out a prosecutor and essentially say you engaged in deliberate
Speaker 4: misconduct in violation of your ethical responsibilities. But again in Brooklyn,
Speaker 4: nobody cares.
Speaker 2: They do care, it seems though, about bending over backwards
Speaker 2: and doing mental gymnastics to maintain this inexplicable wrongful conviction,
Speaker 2: which as they did when you were able to get
Speaker 2: a hearing on this Brady material, this recording that was
Speaker 2: made with a guy named Ingram in front of Justice
Speaker 2: Danny Chun.
Speaker 4: Now, I have sworn statements, and there's been sworn testimony
Speaker 4: from Russo's lawyer and from Sam Gregory that they didn't
Speaker 4: get this evidence and they would have remembered it if
Speaker 4: they did. And then we had testimony from Nicolotzi who said,
Speaker 4: I can't say whether I did or didn't, but if
Speaker 4: I did, it wasn't on purpose, but I probably did.
Speaker 4: And this was litigated a couple of years ago in
Speaker 4: front of Justice Chun, who found that the DA probably
Speaker 4: disclosed it, notwithstanding the fact that Russo's lawyer and Sam
Speaker 4: Gregory explained why this would have been significant evidence and
Speaker 4: steps they would have taken had they known about it
Speaker 4: back then. But nevertheless, Justice Chun found that we did
Speaker 4: not satisfy our burden that it wasn't disclosed. And I
Speaker 4: just respectfully because I like him personally. But the ruling
Speaker 4: on that case is just flat out one hundred percent wrong.
Speaker 1: So that brings us to twenty twenty three, at which
Speaker 1: point I believe there was a petition to the governor
Speaker 1: to appoint a special prosecutor taking the case out of Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: But eventually John and Doreen were looking for new blood,
Speaker 1: and they found an attorney here in Brooklyn named James Henning, And,
Speaker 1: perhaps without some of the baggage from Mark's strategy, Albert Cleary,
Speaker 1: after twenty one years with no contact from John since
Speaker 1: his conviction, decided to unburden himself and go on the
Speaker 1: record now. As we presumed, he and Angel Dpahro were
Speaker 1: targeted early on when they circled the wagons in an
Speaker 1: attempt to protect themselves from both law enforcement and Anthony Russo.
Speaker 1: Not only had they threatened Albert with prosecution, but also
Speaker 1: with dragging his mother in for the grand jury. In
Speaker 1: his sworn affidavit, he recalls that he was convinced that
Speaker 1: John's prosecution was inevitable and that he needed to protect
Speaker 1: himself and his family, so he cooperated and molded his
Speaker 1: statements to the state's narrative, even as their needs changed. Now,
Speaker 1: he admits that the whole ghetto mafia street cred business
Speaker 1: was just made up. That John never told him about
Speaker 1: ordering Russo to show Fisher what's up, nor had he
Speaker 1: given Russo a gun, which begs a question that has
Speaker 1: bothered me since I found out about this case. Why
Speaker 1: couldn't investigators just accept that Russo did this alone, like
Speaker 1: he said to Ingram before trial and again in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: What's it that Cleary and Dpetro were so buttoned up
Speaker 1: that they got, you know, hungry for another body? Thinking
Speaker 1: that someone else was involved? Was the mafia theory in
Speaker 1: the age of the Sopranos just so irresistible?
Speaker 2: Who knows? Now?
Speaker 1: Henning's new four to forty motion just one an evidentiary hearing,
Speaker 1: but curiously not on actual innocence, only on newly discovered evidence,
Speaker 1: which is a shame considering that that will exclude the
Speaker 1: totality of exculpatory evidence, misconduct, and constitutional violations that we've
Speaker 1: just covered here. Instead, Judge Danny Chun has only agreed
Speaker 1: to hear Albert Cleary and Lauren Calciano's recantations. It turns
Speaker 1: out that her powerful recantation quoted earlier was never ruled
Speaker 1: on in court. So we really hope this hearing isn't
Speaker 1: just some opportunity for Danny Chun to try to ignore
Speaker 1: the entire context of John's innocence and deny him again
Speaker 1: on the grounds that these two recantations they're not enough
Speaker 1: to overturn the conviction get John a new trial. And
Speaker 1: I mean, take a second, imagine a new trial without
Speaker 1: Cleary Calciano, Dpietro Bajari or a veto, just Anthony Russo
Speaker 1: saying he did it by himself with his own gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, if this goes as I sincerely hope I'll be
Speaker 1: able to keep a promise that I made John back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, I'm going to buy you one
Speaker 1: of those giant beers at Farrell's. You know where to
Speaker 1: find me as soon as you get home. Everyone else
Speaker 1: stave vigilant because they only really do their dirt in
Speaker 1: the dark. And with that, I'll leave you with Bedro
Speaker 1: and John's closing thoughts from the original episode.
Speaker 4: I know that you know, in the eyes of the
Speaker 4: Brooklyn DA at this point, they just wish we would
Speaker 4: go away and fade away, and he would do his
Speaker 4: time and Doreen would stop fighting. I believe in this
Speaker 4: one hundred percent. I have no doubt that John was
Speaker 4: wrongfully convicted. I have confidence in his actual innocence. I
Speaker 4: believed my core that he didn't commit this crime, and
Speaker 4: that's after reviewing all the evidence. And I certainly believe
Speaker 4: and know, based on my review of the evidence of
Speaker 4: the law that his rights were violated several different ways,
Speaker 4: and that this was not a trial. It was a
Speaker 4: railroad just Brooklyn style justice in the Charles Hines administration,
Speaker 4: and those skeletons are still there.
Speaker 3: It's just been too much suffering for too long. It's
Speaker 3: wrong palm on top and wrong palm on top of injustice.
Speaker 3: It's an ongoing tragedy. Not only am I being affected,
Speaker 3: but my family is being crushed for this. They took
Speaker 3: my youth for me and all the experiences I would
Speaker 3: have had it, and I feel like a financial burden
Speaker 3: on my family too. I can anchor around their neck.
Speaker 3: And my mother is a getting older now on I
Speaker 3: pray every day that I can come home while she's
Speaker 3: still alive and she makes it. And they took all
Speaker 3: that time away from me that I was supposed to
Speaker 3: have with her. Being in prison wrongfully is much different
Speaker 3: than being here for something you actually did. That's what
Speaker 3: me and a lot of these other guys have already
Speaker 3: been on your show have in common. That's why I
Speaker 3: feel it's touch it for them, some of them who
Speaker 3: I even never met. Because when you're here for something
Speaker 3: you actually did, I see these other guys they get
Speaker 3: into a routine and they just accept it. But when
Speaker 3: you hear wrongfully, it's impossible for you to accept.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 2: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
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Speaker 2: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
Speaker 2: production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 2: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber.
Speaker 2: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 2: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
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Speaker 2: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 2: at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 2: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company number one.
Speaker 1: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 1: in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
Speaker 1: by the individuals featured in this show are their own
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good