Speaker 1: Previously on Empire on Blood who stayed a full name
Speaker 1: for the record, my name is Calvin Lures.
Speaker 2: If this is satisfactory for conviction, I might be in
Speaker 2: for an extremely long haul.
Speaker 3: All right, cal you did it.
Speaker 4: You did it.
Speaker 2: We were two inmates who had sentences that ended with
Speaker 2: life on the back. Neither one of us knew if
Speaker 2: we would ever get out of prison.
Speaker 5: We're always gonna come.
Speaker 3: Out on top.
Speaker 6: It was a nineteen nineties hip hop party, loud music, lights,
Speaker 6: all filled a teenagers email.
Speaker 1: McDowell had been at a party, a Sweet sixteen party
Speaker 1: at a community center in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. It was
Speaker 1: October nineteen ninety. He was seventeen years old, an honorall
Speaker 1: student in twelfth grade. Email had gone with a couple
Speaker 1: of friends, arriving about eleven pm, fashionably late. It was
Speaker 1: a chilly evening and everyone crowded inside the center.
Speaker 6: They ain't really meant to hold that many people put
Speaker 6: there in there?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: Do you have a DJ there with speakers that are
Speaker 6: saved probably up to your waist, glaring ll cool J
Speaker 6: and everybody singing along, screaming a favorite lyric.
Speaker 1: Email was at one end of the community Center. At
Speaker 1: the other end, there was a fight, and then the
Speaker 1: fight moved outside and there was a shooting. One bullet
Speaker 1: in the chest. A nineteen year old died.
Speaker 2: They asked me to come to the precinct. I walked
Speaker 2: over there by myself.
Speaker 1: I figured, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I was at the party, so they would want
Speaker 2: to speak to me, like almost the other one hundred
Speaker 2: people that were there, which was fine. I'm always sent
Speaker 2: up to the homicide squad. They asked me, did I
Speaker 2: want to be in a lineup? I was like okay.
Speaker 2: Final three witnesses were brought in. One witness said that
Speaker 2: he couldn't identify anyone. Another witness he wasn't sure, and
Speaker 2: they said the third person identified me as having committed
Speaker 2: the crime. So I was arrested, charged with murdering the
Speaker 2: second degree.
Speaker 1: Email wouldn't go home for two decades. It was like
Speaker 1: years of confusion for me. How did this happen? This
Speaker 1: is Steve Fishman and this is Empire on Blood the
Speaker 1: director's cut a story of murder, betrayal, and a man
Speaker 1: who fought the law for two decades. In this new episode,
Speaker 1: we continue Email mcdowe's story because something life changing has
Speaker 1: happened to Email. Over the years, Email and I had
Speaker 1: struck up a friendship. I came to trust his judgment.
Speaker 1: You know, I am so outside the culture, and so
Speaker 1: I had a question for him. It's going to seem
Speaker 1: like I'm a spectator, you know, kind of tapping on
Speaker 1: the aquarium.
Speaker 2: To me, it gives more credibility because it's coming from
Speaker 2: someone that can't be labeled as like you're just a sympathizer,
Speaker 2: whereas someone like me who grew up in Brooklyn bephist ivisaid.
Speaker 2: That's one of the things that I have to deal
Speaker 2: with because when I tried to advocate certain issues, people
Speaker 2: see me where if I had lived in the suburbs,
Speaker 2: it would be different.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's that's encouraging. In nineteen ninety, the
Speaker 1: police arrested Email. For the cops, it was an open
Speaker 1: and shutcase. They solved the murder in under twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: A trial. Email pleaded not guilty, The jury found him guilty,
Speaker 1: and the judge sentenced him to twenty two years to life,
Speaker 1: longer than he'd been alive. Email sometimes thought about his
Speaker 1: decision to go to the precinct voluntarily.
Speaker 5: Go in, thinking you're being cooperative, and you get stuck
Speaker 5: like glue.
Speaker 1: At the age of seventeen, Email was brought to Riker's Island,
Speaker 1: where his face was slashed while using a prison pay
Speaker 1: phone in his cell. Email contemplated his life.
Speaker 2: I was just trying to make sense of it. How
Speaker 2: did this happen? I was always under the belief that
Speaker 2: to get a conviction, they want to make sure they
Speaker 2: get the right guy, especially in the murder case. And
Speaker 2: I finally got it. If I was going to prove
Speaker 2: that I did not shoot this guy, that I did
Speaker 2: not have anything to do with him getting killed, I
Speaker 2: needed to take matters into my own hand. I needed
Speaker 2: to learn the law to start to fight for myself,
Speaker 2: being my own advocate.
Speaker 1: You might remember, Email was what you could call an
Speaker 1: accomplished prison citizen. His reputation for accomplishment spread through the institution.
Speaker 1: COAL noticed and.
Speaker 7: I was just looking at him from a far and
Speaker 7: I really could see why he was never supposed to
Speaker 7: be in prison. He never fell into the mold of prison.
Speaker 7: He was running Cornell University College inside the prison. He
Speaker 7: was running a lot of programs inside of prison. He
Speaker 7: actually ran the whole industry that I made. The license
Speaker 7: plates in the prison, Email was doing a lot of
Speaker 7: positive things in prison.
Speaker 1: By then, Email had taught himself a lot of law.
Speaker 1: He was recognized throughout the New York State prison system
Speaker 1: for his legal prowess. For six years at Auburn Correctional Institution,
Speaker 1: he taught a legal research class.
Speaker 2: Everybody knew that that was my prim everything legal research, litigation,
Speaker 2: and working on actual innocence type stuff.
Speaker 1: Inmates regularly came to him with their legal problems. They
Speaker 1: wanted help. Email turned most everyone away because most weren't serious.
Speaker 2: I was willing to help the other inmates, but I've
Speaker 2: had my time wasted a lot of times where I
Speaker 2: could have spent that time on my own case.
Speaker 1: Half a dozen years after Call entered prison, he started
Speaker 1: showing up at Email's door. You can imagine that Email
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly impressed with a drug dealer accused of murdering
Speaker 1: a couple of guys near his place of business, and
Speaker 1: so Email put cal to the test.
Speaker 2: The little library is like the place that had the plague.
Speaker 8: It.
Speaker 2: We didn't have computers, we had typewriters.
Speaker 1: We had to use the.
Speaker 2: Books, so we had to do it the old fashioned way.
Speaker 1: When you walk in it's.
Speaker 2: Just rolls and bookshelves with just books, tons of books.
Speaker 1: The little library opened for the evening at five thirty.
Speaker 1: One day, Email told Cal to meet him in the library.
Speaker 1: At five thirty.
Speaker 2: Cal was there and he actually came down with a
Speaker 2: big fold of papers and he was patient. Actually, it
Speaker 2: was like he's organizing this stuff because he wants to
Speaker 2: make a presentation.
Speaker 1: But Email lets Col know he's busy. This was the test.
Speaker 2: If he wasn't serious, if he really wanted to go
Speaker 2: to the yard, he would have left on the early
Speaker 2: go back. But he stated, And I waited until about
Speaker 2: seven o'clock and I went and sat down next to him.
Speaker 2: Library had pretty much emptied out, and so I was saying,
Speaker 2: you know what you got here? And he started telling
Speaker 2: me his story.
Speaker 1: That meeting changed CON's life.
Speaker 7: Oh Man, email was very important to me. Man was like, yo, Cal,
Speaker 7: I know very emotional with your case, but you can't
Speaker 7: put all this stuff in your case.
Speaker 1: Cal rambles.
Speaker 2: He was more caught up in his own you know,
Speaker 2: anger and frustration. Well, he's saying like, I don't know
Speaker 2: what to do. He said, you know, would would you
Speaker 2: help me? I'm not asking you to do it for me,
Speaker 2: but just guide me.
Speaker 1: But Email did do some of it for him.
Speaker 7: I were a hundred page packet, right, Email turned that
Speaker 7: packet into fifteen or twenty pages. But it was so
Speaker 7: concise and so powerful. I was sending this packet out
Speaker 7: to a lot of the attorneys. I was getting a
Speaker 7: greater reception.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 7: So that's when I really learned Yo, Email know his shit.
Speaker 1: Email spent almost all of his free time in the
Speaker 1: law library, and not just to help other inmates. Once
Speaker 1: Email realized he had to help himself, he was energized.
Speaker 1: He started focusing granularly on that sweet sixteen party, the
Speaker 1: one at the community center with the teenagers jammed inside
Speaker 1: the building, dancing and shouting on a chilly night, and
Speaker 1: he concentrated on the shooting, the fatal shooting that happened
Speaker 1: towards midnight. He pieced the story together.
Speaker 2: I'm in jail, so I'm calling everybody saying what specifically happened?
Speaker 8: What would that?
Speaker 2: And different people are telling me different stories.
Speaker 1: Remember, Email says that at the party, he didn't see
Speaker 1: the fight or the shooting that followed, so he needed
Speaker 1: more information. He learned that there had been a beef
Speaker 1: between two groups of teenagers. One was led by an
Speaker 1: older teen a bully. He and his friends had beat
Speaker 1: up a couple of kids, and then someone put a
Speaker 1: bullet in the bully's chest. The prosecution supposed eyewitness claimed
Speaker 1: that someone was Email.
Speaker 2: Once I realized where the prosecution witness was saying that
Speaker 2: he allegedly was, I told my defense attorney, I need
Speaker 2: him to get photos of the crime scene, because what
Speaker 2: the prosecution witness was testifying to was that he stood
Speaker 2: in a doorway and literally seen through a brick wall.
Speaker 1: But in court, the prosecutor repeatedly and with an attitude
Speaker 1: like he was annoyed by the question, denied that he
Speaker 1: had the crime scene photos, which is bizarre. Cops always
Speaker 1: take crime scene photos and the prosecutor always receives them.
Speaker 1: Email was frustrated and depressed. Prison is a very lonely place,
Speaker 1: and Email's quote unquote investigation had stoled. Then one day
Speaker 1: out of blue, Email received a letter in the mail.
Speaker 1: It was handwritten and signed by a friend, a friend
Speaker 1: who'd accompanied Email to the party. This letter will prove
Speaker 1: crucial to Email's case, and so I'm going to read
Speaker 1: it to you. Email. You know me and you were
Speaker 1: friends for a very long time, and that incident that
Speaker 1: occurred should not break up our friendship. I want you
Speaker 1: to know that if it were the other way around,
Speaker 1: I would hold out and try to make the best
Speaker 1: of things. Is it just me or does the writer
Speaker 1: seem to be admitting to the crime, not straight out,
Speaker 1: but reading between the lines, and also suggesting that Email
Speaker 1: live with it and do the time, even if it
Speaker 1: was time he shouldn't be doing. The letter continues, Email,
Speaker 1: don't think for one bit because I'm out here. I'm
Speaker 1: not suffering because I am man. I'm suffering. I have nightmares,
Speaker 1: I can't sleep or eat. Sometimes I just pray for death.
Speaker 1: I don't think I deserve to walk the face of
Speaker 1: the earth because one of my best friends is locked
Speaker 1: up for something that he didn't do. I feel like this,
Speaker 1: if whoever didn't do what they had to do, we
Speaker 1: probably would have been dead. I'm not out here hiding.
Speaker 1: I'm in Florida so I can try to get peace
Speaker 1: of mind and soul. That letter was signed by Baron Blount,
Speaker 1: Email's friend. They'd gone to the party together. On the street.
Speaker 1: It was rumored that Baron was the shooter, and the
Speaker 1: cops did talk to Baron. Barron told them he heard shots,
Speaker 1: but only from a distance, and so the cops arrested Email.
Speaker 1: After all, they had supposed eyewitness who identified Email. When
Speaker 1: Email received the letter, he was elated he had something
Speaker 1: time barren to the crime. But for Email there was
Speaker 1: a problem, a legal problem. His appeals had to challenge
Speaker 1: what had happened during the trial and the letter it
Speaker 1: arrived after the trial. Email understood the problem.
Speaker 6: If it's not part of the record, you can't use it.
Speaker 6: It doesn't even exist.
Speaker 1: Email filed every possible appeal, but he could never include
Speaker 1: the letter. The DA dug in. He opposed each of
Speaker 1: Email's appeals, and each time the DA prevailed. By two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, that's seventeen years after Email entered prison,
Speaker 1: his state appeals were exhausted. Like cal he had one
Speaker 1: last shot, a four to forty motion. The four forty
Speaker 1: offered a legal advantage. It allowed Email to argue that
Speaker 1: he was actually innocent, and this is key. He didn't
Speaker 1: have to stick to the record made in court. He
Speaker 1: could now introduce newly discovered evidence. He could submit the letter.
Speaker 1: By the time Email filed his four to forty motion,
Speaker 1: the DA's office had coughed up the crime scene photos,
Speaker 1: the photos they had been saying didn't exist. Email could
Speaker 1: show that the supposed eyewitness could not have seen what
Speaker 1: he claimed to have seen. Email now knew the prosecutor
Speaker 1: had cheated.
Speaker 2: All you wanted to do was convict somebody for homicide.
Speaker 2: You knew they were I, and that's on the oath.
Speaker 2: And then you allowed him again to go on the
Speaker 2: oath to say I looked dead in this guy's.
Speaker 1: Eyes, this guy being Email.
Speaker 2: I've seen his entire face. I seen him reaching his
Speaker 2: waist pull a gun out, and I watched him pull
Speaker 2: a trigger, and I saw that gun flash and it
Speaker 2: hit the decease in the chest. That's a blatant material lie.
Speaker 1: In his four forty papers, Email included the letter from
Speaker 1: Baron Blount, a letter he'd been waiting seventeen years to use. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the letter might not be a full confession, but it
Speaker 1: was close, and it surely qualified as newly discovered evidence.
Speaker 1: Email was recognized as a master jailhouse lawyer, but still
Speaker 1: he needed a licensed attorney to defend him in court.
Speaker 1: He'd recently read in the newspaper about a lawyer named
Speaker 1: Oscar mitchellin Oscar had won a big case for a
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted man. Email wrote to him, and Oscar agreed
Speaker 1: to step in, and it.
Speaker 6: Was it was a relief for me, right talking to
Speaker 6: somebody who fucking got it. It didn't feel like I
Speaker 6: was trying to explain a foreigner language.
Speaker 1: Oscar grew up in the Bronx. He lives in Long
Speaker 1: Island now, a bald, middle aged man with electric guitars
Speaker 1: from his rock and roll days strewn around the house.
Speaker 1: In the Bronx, he'd attended public school. He'd been to
Speaker 1: parties like the one that landed Email in jail.
Speaker 6: Talking to Oscar. You know, everything that I explained to
Speaker 6: him is not subjected to this sense of you're lying
Speaker 6: because it doesn't jive with my life experience.
Speaker 1: An Email likes something else about Oscar.
Speaker 6: He's aggressive. He doesn't just let them walk him around
Speaker 6: the courtroom like a fucking puppy like a lot of
Speaker 6: these lawyers, do you know, Ostill rolls up the sleeves
Speaker 6: and like, fuck it, this is a rumble, let's get
Speaker 6: to it.
Speaker 1: Email one is for forty motion, and that earned him
Speaker 1: a hearing on the merits of his case. At that hearing,
Speaker 1: he could win a reversal of his conviction, and so
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, Email was seated at the
Speaker 1: defense table with Oscar. There's no recording of this hearing,
Speaker 1: but I know there was one key spectator, Email's mother.
Speaker 1: She sat in the back. Email was prepared for a
Speaker 1: legal war, but then surprisingly, before the hearing started, the
Speaker 1: prosecutor approached Oscar. He didn't really know what to expect.
Speaker 1: He certainly didn't expect that the prosecutor would offer a deal.
Speaker 6: He said, no, no, no, we don't think you shot him.
Speaker 6: We think you were involved. And that's when my head
Speaker 6: probably should have exploded.
Speaker 1: Twenty years earlier, Email had been indicted as the sole actor,
Speaker 1: not for anything else, not for being.
Speaker 5: Involved, me solo by myself.
Speaker 3: He said, I know, you guys probably didn't do this.
Speaker 1: That's Oscar talking about the prosecutor.
Speaker 9: But I got nothing on Blount.
Speaker 1: Of course, at that point, the DA's office didn't think
Speaker 1: it worth the effort to speak to Baron Blount, the
Speaker 1: author of the letter. So yeah, they had nothing on Blount.
Speaker 3: Know me that he said to.
Speaker 1: Me, he being the prosecutor, He.
Speaker 8: Said to me, sometimes we can't let the truth get
Speaker 8: in the way of justice.
Speaker 3: I said, what the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 1: In effact, the prosecutor is talking to Email.
Speaker 6: You're basically telling me I don't care. That's the truth
Speaker 6: getting lost in a pursuit of justice.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor said he was sure that Email was a
Speaker 1: participant in the murder.
Speaker 6: I believe that he was involved somehow, So I'm going
Speaker 6: to continue to pursue him. He's going to cheat like
Speaker 6: they did in my first droute.
Speaker 3: Yes, I wasn't going to get a fair hamon or
Speaker 3: fair dropper.
Speaker 1: Even though the prosecutor seemed convinced that Email was not
Speaker 1: the shooter, he had no intention of letting him off.
Speaker 1: Even if the judge ruled in Email's favor and vacated
Speaker 1: his conviction. The prosecutor assured Email he would not relent.
Speaker 1: He promised to oppose bail and to take Email to
Speaker 1: trial again.
Speaker 3: He's despicable. This was a piece of shit movie did here.
Speaker 1: But the prosecutor did have an alternative. The prosecutor agreed
Speaker 1: to overturn the murder conviction, but he insisted that Email
Speaker 1: plead guilty to being an accomplice the complete fiction. In exchange,
Speaker 1: the DA would get Email out on time served. He'd
Speaker 1: never get those nineteen years back. But he could walk
Speaker 1: out in the next few days.
Speaker 5: I'm asking you don't make him take the offer. I
Speaker 5: said he would admit to kidnapping Charle Limbrough's baby right
Speaker 5: now to get out.
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 5: It's Christmas in a week, it's his birthday in a
Speaker 5: little while.
Speaker 1: She wants to be home, and Email's mother wanted him home.
Speaker 1: In the back of the courtroom, she was in tears.
Speaker 1: Her son had been kidnapped by the state and now
Speaker 1: he faced a terrible choice. If he pleads guilty, he
Speaker 1: won't be able to sue the government for wrongfully imprisoning him.
Speaker 1: Col got more than five million dollars in compensation, and
Speaker 1: he was a drug dealer who helped bring crack to
Speaker 1: the Bronx. Email was an honor student snatched out of
Speaker 1: high school, and he'd qualify for nothing. Horrible Email took
Speaker 1: the deal. Four days later, he was home, looking for
Speaker 1: a job and for justice. Fast forward. Email has been
Speaker 1: out of prison for fourteen years and a lot has changed.
Speaker 1: He's put his acute legal mind to work. He landed
Speaker 1: a job as a paralegal at a respected defense firm.
Speaker 1: His employer took a gamble on an admitted accomplished to murder.
Speaker 1: He even bought Email a suit for work emails first,
Speaker 1: and Email proved himself leading cases, winning multimillion dollar settlements.
Speaker 1: During this time, Email and I have become good friends.
Speaker 1: We met at my bar. May it rest in peace.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Cal joined us. Occasionally Email came to dinner at
Speaker 1: my house. He and my wife, who's a lawyer, decided
Speaker 1: to work on legal projects together, and when my wife
Speaker 1: became pregnant in twenty twenty two, Email was thrilled for us. Meantime,
Speaker 1: the city had changed in Brooklyn. The DA's office had
Speaker 1: a new outlook. Eric Gonzalez was the DA now and
Speaker 1: his office was a aggressively reinvestigating questionable convictions. Eric had
Speaker 1: grown up in a rough Brooklyn neighborhood, a neighborhood a
Speaker 1: lot like Emails.
Speaker 6: And I really, honestly do believe that he thinks it's
Speaker 6: fucked up the way some of us just got fucking manhattaned.
Speaker 1: Email would never say so, but I knew he was angry.
Speaker 1: I could hear it in his voice, angry at what
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system had done to him. And so
Speaker 1: he and Oscar came up with a plan. Oscar sent
Speaker 1: a letter asking DA Gonzalez to reinvestigate Email's case. On
Speaker 1: the face of it, Oscars asked, was ridiculous. No one
Speaker 1: I'd ever spoken to could recall the DA's Conviction Review
Speaker 1: Unit reopening the case of someone who'd pled guilty and who,
Speaker 1: on top of that, was out of prison and doing well.
Speaker 1: Gonzalez's CRU is among the best funded in the country
Speaker 1: and one of the most respected. But it does not
Speaker 1: have unlimited resources, and it has lots of demand. But
Speaker 1: inside Oscar's letter was another letter. The letter Email had
Speaker 1: held on to for three decades. This is the one
Speaker 1: with Baron Bount's signature on it. That letter made its
Speaker 1: way to the head of the CRU.
Speaker 6: When he read Baron's letter, he said, he read it
Speaker 6: two or three times. He's like, this fucking guy.
Speaker 3: Did this shit.
Speaker 1: Suddenly there was energy behind Email's claims, the wheels of justice,
Speaker 1: a different sort of justice started to turn. The letter
Speaker 1: traveled to the desk of Assistant District Attorney Rachel Kalman,
Speaker 1: who'd been at the CRU for four years. Rachel is
Speaker 1: not someone whose vibe shouts I love a fight, and
Speaker 1: in all likelihood that's what was in store if the
Speaker 1: investigation went forward. But she was determined to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of this. Where did she start?
Speaker 4: So the first step was to authenticate this letter. Anyone
Speaker 4: could have written a.
Speaker 1: Letter, including Email, so.
Speaker 4: I had to get the original copy of the letter,
Speaker 4: which I did. We were satisfied that he had written
Speaker 4: that letter.
Speaker 1: So now Rachel wanted to hear what Baron Blount had
Speaker 1: to say for himself. These days, Baron seemed to be
Speaker 1: an upstanding citizen. I looked at his Facebook page. On
Speaker 1: it Baron's tall and in his photos he's rarely smiling.
Speaker 1: He lives in New York and Facebook says he works
Speaker 1: at the Department of Education. Along the way, he'd become
Speaker 1: a pastor. One post says God. First. Family. Second, there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of photos of kids in one of
Speaker 1: a Father's daycard. Any man can be a father. It
Speaker 1: takes a special man to be a dad, says the car.
Speaker 1: He's been married for nineteen years. All these artifacts of
Speaker 1: family life make me think about Email. Baron's life has
Speaker 1: gone on. Email's life has been on hold for two decades.
Speaker 1: Rachel brings two detectives with her to talk to Baron.
Speaker 4: We finally found him at his job.
Speaker 1: Baron Blount worked at a school.
Speaker 4: I had no idea what we'd be walking into, particularly
Speaker 4: where I was going to say, did you murder someone
Speaker 4: that your friend went to jail for doing that? But
Speaker 4: as soon as I saw him, I got an immediate
Speaker 4: sense of him then a little stooped, extremely red eyes,
Speaker 4: as if he hadn't slept in days and days and days.
Speaker 8: Where do you talk to him?
Speaker 4: We were in a classroom. He's a janitor. I was
Speaker 4: in elementary school.
Speaker 1: So they were sitting in an empty classroom, Rachel Baron
Speaker 1: and two detectives sitting at those child sized tables. It
Speaker 1: must have been a bizarre scene. One detective is over
Speaker 1: six feet tall. His knees must have been in his chest.
Speaker 4: I was more looking at him. I wasn't checking out
Speaker 4: the decorations all too carefully.
Speaker 1: But in my imagination, the letters of the alphabet are
Speaker 1: strung across the top of a blackboard, block letters, and
Speaker 1: there's probably a fish tank. Certainly everything is in bright colors,
Speaker 1: and in the middle of that room where everything projects
Speaker 1: optimism and possibilities, is this woebegone janitor in a janitor's
Speaker 1: uniform green or tan, with the name stitched into a
Speaker 1: patch near the pocket. Rachel had the original letter and
Speaker 1: they'd established that it was from Barn, but they needed more.
Speaker 1: The letter wasn't a confession after all, Remember it referred
Speaker 1: to the killer's identity, coyly, whoever did this?
Speaker 4: We had got very far in the investigation, but it
Speaker 4: had to go farther.
Speaker 1: They needed Baron to come in and give a full confession.
Speaker 8: Did you think he was going to come in?
Speaker 1: Fifty Barn did come in. Everyone sat in a big
Speaker 1: conference room with walls that seemed drained of color. The
Speaker 1: place had the look of a bunker. It wasn't clear
Speaker 1: what Baron had come to tell the das he brought
Speaker 1: his lawyer with him, who knew maybe Baron had come
Speaker 1: to bargain.
Speaker 4: I thought that maybe he would be defensive, that he
Speaker 4: would be denying, But he had come in ready to
Speaker 4: unburden himself. Baron Blunt was sitting across the table, shuddered,
Speaker 4: hoveled and started to cry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Baron had carried a burden for a long time and.
Speaker 4: Said it had been torturing him for years.
Speaker 8: But he admits shooting him, right, he certainly did. How
Speaker 8: did he say I shot him?
Speaker 1: I shot him as easy as that. This all made
Speaker 1: me think about Email, who'd been forced to take that
Speaker 1: plea in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 8: I'm trying to square the fact that you went back
Speaker 8: investigated this and found essentially that that was bullshit, and
Speaker 8: for whatever reason, the district attorney's office didn't do that
Speaker 8: in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 4: Well, we've progressed.
Speaker 1: We've progressed. That covered a lot of sins. It's July
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, two years after Oscar sent that letter
Speaker 1: asking the district attorney to reinvestigate Email's case. Email had
Speaker 1: just heard from Oscar. He learned that the letter had
Speaker 1: finally finally borne fruit. Oscar told him that Baron had confessed.
Speaker 1: Email had been waiting for this news for thirty three years.
Speaker 1: It occurred to me that Email might not just get
Speaker 1: a reversal of his conviction. He might be awarded a
Speaker 1: full exoneration. After all, someone else had confessed to the crime.
Speaker 1: Email was indisputably innocent of murder. Yeah, when that's actual innocence.
Speaker 1: A generation nobody gets exoneration, a.
Speaker 2: Full exoneration of data.
Speaker 1: Sound, Yeah, that's the only thing he could be So
Speaker 1: you are so motherfucking lo kating. Come on, have you
Speaker 1: gone through all the emotions yet? No? No, Email said,
Speaker 1: Email has been given a date to go to court
Speaker 1: so that a judge can rule on the motion to exonerate.
Speaker 1: Nothing is official until a judge bangs the gallo. They
Speaker 1: said the sixteenth.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, all right, boo, Mar sixteen whatever. It's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: Now I'll wait to with standing side by side and
Speaker 2: hear you say it out to me, just to make
Speaker 2: sure there's no other little tweak that's gonna send me
Speaker 2: left right.
Speaker 1: So March sixteenth would make it official. I really wanted
Speaker 1: to be there, but I had plans. Our baby was
Speaker 1: due March sixteenth, and I wasn't going to leave my
Speaker 1: wife in the hospital alone. But she said go, She
Speaker 1: said I should be there. Email is our friend. So
Speaker 1: I dashed across town to the CRU's offices. I stood
Speaker 1: in the same gloomy bunker where Baron Blount had confessed.
Speaker 1: Email entered the room, seeming a little shy looking around.
Speaker 1: This was the preliminary to the court appearance. Die Gonzalez
Speaker 1: wanted a few minutes with Email before the proceedings. Email
Speaker 1: wore a suit and a thin tie. Here's a shaved
Speaker 1: head now and a round belly. I noticed the scar
Speaker 1: above his top lip.
Speaker 3: And you know it was more comfortable for me because
Speaker 3: when I walked in there, my buddy Sea was there.
Speaker 1: Email figured they could still pull a fast one. I've
Speaker 1: heard people say it's amazing that defendants whose convictions are
Speaker 1: overturned don't hold a grudge despite decades in prison. But
Speaker 1: Email had been snatched off the street as a teenager.
Speaker 1: You don't just walk past that.
Speaker 2: It's thirty three years since this happened. Not once did
Speaker 2: anybody say sorry for your experience.
Speaker 4: Nothing.
Speaker 6: Every other people who are victimized in some form it's
Speaker 6: a gunshot, rape, child abuse, whatever is like victim services, etc. Right,
Speaker 6: we are the only group of motherfuckers who get victimized
Speaker 6: and then get.
Speaker 5: Re abused again.
Speaker 1: Well, he waited for Da Gunzalez. Email it out just
Speaker 1: a bit of his anger.
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, let's see what the fuck y'all want
Speaker 3: to play with today? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: because I'm like, Steve got my back. He's gonna record
Speaker 3: these motherfuckers this time too, and we're gonna put this
Speaker 3: shit out of somewhere y'all gonna keep playing these stupid
Speaker 3: fucking games.
Speaker 1: Da Gunzalez walks into the bunker. He's stout, serious, halting,
Speaker 1: not naturally charismatic, but I'd known him for a while
Speaker 1: and he always struck me as sincere. He followed Email's case.
Speaker 1: It meant something to him personally.
Speaker 9: I was basically entering college as you were going upstate.
Speaker 9: Your life could have been different. I I I need
Speaker 9: to on behalf of this office and the criminal legal system,
Speaker 9: you know, tell you that you've been wronged, and that
Speaker 9: today is another shot to finally correct there. So congratulations,
Speaker 9: thank you, and I'm sorry it took us as long
Speaker 9: as it took us to get to this place.
Speaker 1: So Email got an apology finally, and then everyone marched
Speaker 1: over to the courtroom in an adjacent building on the
Speaker 1: park woar calendar.
Speaker 7: And they have been one to zero eight eighth.
Speaker 2: Of nineteen ninety Emil McDowell.
Speaker 4: Rachel Kalman for the offer of the District Attorney, Good
Speaker 4: morning the bell.
Speaker 7: It's pursuing to CBL four forty point ten one G
Speaker 7: and four forty point ten one H.
Speaker 1: That is to vacate uh the previous combination on this
Speaker 1: matter that was entered based uponish Dellat took just a
Speaker 1: few minutes and then Email had the judge's order in
Speaker 1: his hands. Actually innocent. Email had been exonerated not only
Speaker 1: of murder, but the judge wiped away the guilty plea
Speaker 1: Email had entered for being an accomplice to murder. Nothing
Speaker 1: was on his record any longer.
Speaker 3: I read it like five times.
Speaker 1: Email called me and my wife the next day at
Speaker 1: the hospital.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, to us. I was just really like,
Speaker 3: all right, this really happened, and he had really signed it,
Speaker 3: and it's really a thing. So it was, you know,
Speaker 3: it was, it was, it was, it was, I mean,
Speaker 3: it was great.
Speaker 1: Email asked if he could stop by to see the baby.
Speaker 1: Of course, by then, he'd started just a bit letting
Speaker 1: himself daydream there'd be a settlement. Email is in line
Speaker 1: for millions. They'll fight over how many. But he he
Speaker 1: started to think, yeah, he liked classic cars, maybe he'd
Speaker 1: get one, and he'd definitely buy a house for his mother.
Speaker 3: Well kids.
Speaker 6: Part of what my game plan is. At a certain point,
Speaker 6: I plan on sitting down, you know.
Speaker 5: For a little therapy session.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Email had never been in therapy So what do you
Speaker 1: think that therapy will help with.
Speaker 6: It's just I'm getting it out hoping. It's just something
Speaker 6: to try, right.
Speaker 3: That's what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But what he wanted to do.
Speaker 3: What I wanted to do.
Speaker 6: Is exercise, not like bike exercise like you know, the Exorcist.
Speaker 5: I wanted to helped me exhale.
Speaker 1: The re release of Empire on Blood is produced and
Speaker 1: sound designed by Emil Klein. Austin Smith is our associate
Speaker 1: producer and production coordinator. Fact checking by Ryan Alderman. The
Speaker 1: original production of the Empire on Blood was also produced
Speaker 1: by Emil Klein. Miel Lobell was our executive producer. Julia
Speaker 1: Barton our story editor, fact checking by Stephanie Daniel. Our
Speaker 1: advisor was Joel Ducett. Original scoring by Joel Saint Julian
Speaker 1: and our theme song was by mister Land. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Andy Bowers, who championed the original production at Paniplin.
Speaker 7: A Kingdom Built on Blood leadsday king, lonely, bear the
Speaker 7: burdens of your citizen, then lonely.
Speaker 2: But wear the blurred line between friend and foe. The
Speaker 2: last words you hear ghost
Speaker 8: M hmm