Speaker 1: I came from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life.
Speaker 1: I went to sleep because September seventh was the first
Speaker 1: day of my high school year.
Speaker 2: I was going to be a senior.
Speaker 1: At twenty two, I was set to start college.
Speaker 2: I woke up and my life was never the same again.
Speaker 1: Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
Speaker 1: freedom ever since after that.
Speaker 2: It's like roach mode town.
Speaker 1: Once you get in, you and I can'tnam.
Speaker 2: This is wrong for conviction with Jason Flamm, I'm particularly
Speaker 2: thrilled today to have as our guest my good friend
Speaker 2: Doug Delosa. Doug, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, Jason.
Speaker 2: Having worked with the Nisis Project now for twenty years
Speaker 2: as my role as a founding board member, I thought
Speaker 2: I had heard everything until I heard Doug's story. So
Speaker 2: you were living in Louisiana, right, I grew up there.
Speaker 1: I was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. At
Speaker 1: the time, I wasn't living in New Orleans proper, but
Speaker 1: I was living just outside of New Orleans in the
Speaker 1: city of Kenna. I was married. My wife and I
Speaker 1: had been together a little over ten years. We had
Speaker 1: two beautiful children, a son who was seven at the
Speaker 1: time and a daughter who was five.
Speaker 2: Right, So you had a little yard and basically some
Speaker 2: neighbors and sort of like we think of in New York,
Speaker 2: we think everything's a cull the sack. Right, we have
Speaker 2: this strange region America as a series of called the Sack.
Speaker 2: But basically, am I paying the right picture?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Until it all went wrong?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, until that American dream turned into the American nightmare.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's a nightmare of proportions that are impossible
Speaker 2: to overstate. You were at home with your wife and kids, right,
Speaker 2: and tell us what happened.
Speaker 1: It was a typical Friday evening in our lives. Fast
Speaker 1: forward to about two thirty in the morning on Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: September twenty seventh, and I woke up, sat up in bed.
Speaker 1: I heard a noise. The noise that I was positive
Speaker 1: I heard was our pet parrot, squawking and fluttering around
Speaker 1: in its cage. I get up from bed, Tell my wife,
Speaker 1: I'm going to check on Andy. That was the name
Speaker 1: of the bird.
Speaker 2: And what was your wife's name.
Speaker 1: My wife's name was Glinda. Right, I get up, I
Speaker 1: go downstairs. As soon as I got to the foot
Speaker 1: of the stairs. One person came from the side of me,
Speaker 1: out of our bathroom area, and this person immediately struck
Speaker 1: me with an object that I think was a piece
Speaker 1: of mob pandle or a broomstick. Another person came from
Speaker 1: the kitchen area and immediately knocked me to the ground,
Speaker 1: and the two individuals, I don't know how long it lasted,
Speaker 1: probably less than thirty seconds, kicked me, beat me until
Speaker 1: I lost consciousness. Sometime later I was regaining consciousness. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how long I laid on the floor, but
Speaker 1: I realized thing that sort of frightened me. At first,
Speaker 1: I couldn't move my fans and feet were tied behind
Speaker 1: my back. I was hog tied, and I was struggling
Speaker 1: to gain consciousness and put my thought process together to
Speaker 1: figure out what had happened. After whether it was one
Speaker 1: minute or ten minutes, I started calling for my wife.
Speaker 1: Didn't get any response at all.
Speaker 2: So you're at the foot of the stairs, at the.
Speaker 1: Foot of the stairs, inside of what would have been
Speaker 1: our den, right.
Speaker 2: And she's and she's upstairs, she's upstairs, upstairs in the bedroom.
Speaker 1: Getting no response at all from my wife. I called
Speaker 1: for my seven year old son, Dennis. And on the
Speaker 1: third of the fourth call from my son, I heard
Speaker 1: him stirring upstairs. He answered me. Initially, he went into
Speaker 1: the master bedroom and I could hear him say, Daddy,
Speaker 1: where are you. I see Mommy, but she's sleeping, and
Speaker 1: I said, Daddy's downstairs. Please come downstairs. He came downstairs
Speaker 1: and I told him, Dennis, two bad men had broken
Speaker 1: in the house and they hurt Daddy. But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be all right. I need you to untie my hands.
Speaker 1: He couldn't untie my hands because the rope was tied
Speaker 1: so tightly. Then I asked him to go in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: please get a knife and try to cut the rope.
Speaker 1: He came back with a knife, but he was panicking
Speaker 1: because he said, Daddy, I'm scared because I can see
Speaker 1: four legs under the blind or the curtain in the
Speaker 1: kitchen leading out to the patio. I can see people
Speaker 1: standing on the patio, and I'm afraid it's the bad
Speaker 1: men that hurt you. And I sort of panicked myself then,
Speaker 1: and I said, Dennis, pick up the phone. The phone
Speaker 1: was right there on the landing of the stairs. I
Speaker 1: said dial nine one one, and he immediately picked up
Speaker 1: the phone dial nine one one. He says, what do
Speaker 1: I say? And I said, just tell him you need help,
Speaker 1: that your daddy's hurt. And you had seen two men
Speaker 1: standing on the patio. I don't think he told them
Speaker 1: that exact anyway, he got their attention, and within minutes
Speaker 1: police arrived on the scene.
Speaker 2: And then the police arrive on the scene. And then
Speaker 2: this is where things start to really get crazy, right,
Speaker 2: because it seems like a pretty simple situation. You're hog tied. Right.
Speaker 1: The police enter. The first thing one of them does
Speaker 1: is kneel down next to me, ask me if I'm
Speaker 1: all right. I guess I basically tell him, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: He doesn't untime, he doesn't do anything, and I hear
Speaker 1: another officer goes upstairs, and at that point in time,
Speaker 1: the next thing I hear him is kicking a door
Speaker 1: off the hinges. And it turned out that after my
Speaker 1: son had gone in the bedroom when I called him
Speaker 1: and he found his mother what he described as being asleep,
Speaker 1: he must have pulled the door shut behind him and
Speaker 1: it just automatically locked. So so he kicks in the door.
Speaker 1: He kicks in the door. When he kicks in the door,
Speaker 1: he really startles my daughter, who's in the bedroom next door,
Speaker 1: and she starts crying hysterically, and at that point then
Speaker 1: my son starts crying hysterically. And I'm I'm getting pretty
Speaker 1: hysterical myself, laying on the floor. I'm still hogtied, and
Speaker 1: I'm telling you what's going on, what's going on? And
Speaker 1: policeman is trying to restrain me and keep me on
Speaker 1: the ground.
Speaker 2: Which is not that hard.
Speaker 1: You're but go ahead, and I'm like, and he says,
Speaker 1: don't worry, Everything'll be fine, and I mean, within moments,
Speaker 1: it seems like ambulance attendants arrived on the scene. I
Speaker 1: couldn't hear exactly what they were being told, but they
Speaker 1: were being told something about my wife was in the
Speaker 1: bedroom upstairs and that somebody needed to get my daughter
Speaker 1: and bring her downstairs, which they did. And again I
Speaker 1: don't know how much time was elapsing, but at some
Speaker 1: point in time, more police officers arrived on the scene.
Speaker 1: Eventually someone cut me free. Moments after they cut me free,
Speaker 1: they told me that I would have to be taken
Speaker 1: to the emergency room and that the other paramedic team
Speaker 1: was working on my wife and i'd see her there,
Speaker 1: and also at some point in time they asked me
Speaker 1: if there was anybody that they could call to take
Speaker 1: care of my children. I'm being treated in the emergency room.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much later again, was it ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen minutes? Was it an hour later? My brother
Speaker 1: and a priest come into the emergency room, and they
Speaker 1: informed me that my wife had been killed.
Speaker 2: And at this point, you're I mean, You've just been
Speaker 2: through an impossibly traumatic experience, and now you're getting hit
Speaker 2: with this news, and the whole world must be collapsing
Speaker 2: around you. At this point in time.
Speaker 1: It was pretty hard to believe what I was being told.
Speaker 1: I think I almost went in the shock when they
Speaker 1: told me my wife had been killed, And I mean,
Speaker 1: I just can't process what I'm being told and come
Speaker 1: up with any logical reason why it had happened.
Speaker 2: And then you get back with your kids and try
Speaker 2: to piece things back together. You had given the police
Speaker 2: the information that they wanted right about it, basically the
Speaker 2: story that you just told us.
Speaker 1: I had recalled everything I could remember to the police.
Speaker 2: Except for when you were unconscious, of course, which was
Speaker 2: that's the only missing part. And then they were having
Speaker 2: trouble solving the case.
Speaker 1: Right, There had been considerable criticism of the police department
Speaker 1: for not solving having any viable leads in this case,
Speaker 1: demanding to know from the police chief what were they doing,
Speaker 1: how were they protecting the neighborhood. I had gotten a
Speaker 1: little bit vocal, and I probably said on more than
Speaker 1: one occasion, all of these stupid son of a bitches
Speaker 1: need to be fired because they don't appear to know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Their actions were, in my mind, reminiscent
Speaker 1: of the old Keystone cops in slapstick comedies, because they
Speaker 1: just didn't appear to be very.
Speaker 2: Bright, right, Okay, And so obviously the police, you know,
Speaker 2: they're feeling a lot of pressure and they're feeling a
Speaker 2: little they're getting their back up about this, right, right.
Speaker 2: So then comes the craziest part, in some ways the
Speaker 2: craziest part of the story, right, which is that now
Speaker 2: we're three months from the day to the crime basically.
Speaker 1: Right, we're now the morning of December twenty ninth.
Speaker 2: I was it's hot, it's hot, inis, it's.
Speaker 1: Very warm in Louisiana. I'm deciding I'm going to put
Speaker 1: out the Christmas tree. It's starting. It was a live tree.
Speaker 1: It's starting to drop needles all over, so I tell
Speaker 1: my children I'll be right back. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: put the Christmas tree out for the trash. I've got
Speaker 1: a pair of cutoff jeans on, nothing else. And as
Speaker 1: I'm putting the tree in the back of my house
Speaker 1: by the curve for the trash, I hear Doug Delosa
Speaker 1: turn around and I sort of turn around, and I'm
Speaker 1: likes in shock. I have no idea how many police
Speaker 1: officers are there, at minimum of six, maybe ten or more.
Speaker 1: I have many no idea how many news cameras are there.
Speaker 1: Probably as many personnel were there as there were police
Speaker 1: officers pointing cameras at me, and the police pointing guns
Speaker 1: at me, and they say, you know why we're We're
Speaker 1: here to rest you for the murder or your wife.
Speaker 1: And I'm just like thinking to myself, this can't be true.
Speaker 1: You know, this nightmare just keeps getting worse and worse.
Speaker 1: I knew that I had been labeled to suspect, but
Speaker 1: I never, in my wildest imagination thought that it would
Speaker 1: evolve into an arrest. I'm not dressed except for with
Speaker 1: a pair of cutoffs on. My children are in their pajamas,
Speaker 1: and I asked the one detective, could I please go
Speaker 1: dress my children and call somebody to take them well.
Speaker 1: As I was changing their clothes, I turned to this
Speaker 1: man who couldn't have been more than two to three
Speaker 1: feet away from me, standing right in my face, and
Speaker 1: I asked him. I said, detective Dote, why are you
Speaker 1: doing this to me? Why are you doing this to
Speaker 1: my children? You know that I didn't kill my wife.
Speaker 1: And this police officer when I asked him that question,
Speaker 1: he had the look of a wild man on his face,
Speaker 1: and he almost, I don't know how to describe it.
Speaker 1: His voice was almost venomous, and he says, man, fuck you,
Speaker 1: fuck your children, and fuck that dead wife of yours.
Speaker 1: I didn't ask that stupid bitch to die in my city.
Speaker 1: And he goes on to say, he says, why should
Speaker 1: I give a fuck about you or your children? Do
Speaker 1: you care about me and my children? My job's on
Speaker 1: the line, and he said, you have asked that I
Speaker 1: be terminated in competence. Well, you know what, I don't
Speaker 1: know who did it. Maybe I know you didn't do it,
Speaker 1: but I can build the case against you, So you're it.
Speaker 2: So you're you know, you go to trial, and well,
Speaker 2: they withheld several critical pieces of evidence from the defense,
Speaker 2: that which is called the Brady violation, which which would
Speaker 2: have excluded you and would have led to you being
Speaker 2: found innocent. Do you want to talk about that.
Speaker 1: The trial from start to finish, nine days had passed,
Speaker 1: and from the very beginning, the two district attorneys prosecuting
Speaker 1: me told the jury that they were never going to
Speaker 1: hear any direct evidence that tied me to this crime.
Speaker 1: That basically what they were trying to convict me on
Speaker 1: was a theory of how I did it and why
Speaker 1: I did it, And what was going to be important
Speaker 1: to the jury to find me guilty was that I
Speaker 1: had no evidence to support my story that two black
Speaker 1: men broke into my house that night, beat me unconscious,
Speaker 1: hogtied me, and at some point in time killed my wife.
Speaker 2: Right now, But the reason we know that you couldn't
Speaker 2: provide any proof is because they were withholding the proof
Speaker 2: that they had. They had the investigators. You didn't have investigators.
Speaker 2: They had all the guys sweeping the house and doing
Speaker 2: the whole thing exactly.
Speaker 1: They were fingerprints found in several places throughout the house
Speaker 1: that didn't belong to me, any of my family members,
Speaker 1: any of our friends, anyone, any member of the investigative
Speaker 1: team that had all been ruled out. And these fingerprints
Speaker 1: found throughout the house belonged to someone, but we have
Speaker 1: no idea who they belonged to.
Speaker 2: But they didn't tell you that.
Speaker 1: No, their fingerprint expert committed perjury on the stand when
Speaker 1: he said absolutely no other fingerprints were found in the house.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about the cab driver for a second,
Speaker 2: because that's one to me, that's one that's always stuck
Speaker 2: in my mind. It's really you.
Speaker 1: Know, sometime after I was arrested, well, actually let's back
Speaker 1: up to right after my wife's funeral, three days after
Speaker 1: the murder, a taxi driver came forward to the Kent
Speaker 1: of Police Department and he said, I think I may
Speaker 1: have some testimony that would help you catch the people
Speaker 1: who killed this lady, meaning my wife. And as the
Speaker 1: story goes in his written deposition to the police, he
Speaker 1: was dropping off affair in that neighborhood, which at that
Speaker 1: time was exclusively white. There would have been no reason
Speaker 1: whatsoever to have seen blacks in that particular neighborhood.
Speaker 2: At least aboot three in the morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, least of all at three to four o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning. And he goes on to give in his
Speaker 1: written deposition that as he was driving down this one street,
Speaker 1: he saw two black men leaving the vicinity of the
Speaker 1: front of my house carrying what would have fit the
Speaker 1: description of some of the items I told police were
Speaker 1: taken from my house. And he says that as his
Speaker 1: lights shone on the two men, it appeared that they panicked.
Speaker 1: They ran to a silver van that was waiting, and
Speaker 1: they sped off in a reckless manner. And he found
Speaker 1: that very unusual and thought it was important to bring
Speaker 1: that testimony to the police, which he did.
Speaker 2: As it was, But they, of course withheld that from
Speaker 2: the defense illegally.
Speaker 1: They withheld that and said that there was nobody had
Speaker 1: ever seen anything regarding any black men in that neighborhood,
Speaker 1: much less in the vicinity of my home. Now fast
Speaker 1: forward another six to seven months. I'm at trial. This
Speaker 1: good citizen is reading in the newspaper and hearing on
Speaker 1: the TV that I'm undergoing a trial for the murder
Speaker 1: of my wife. Well, he just doesn't understand, and at
Speaker 1: this point he doesn't trust the police because he's already
Speaker 1: gone to the police twice. So he shows up at
Speaker 1: the courthouse somehow manages to talk to one of the
Speaker 1: two or maybe perhaps both, of the district attorneys who
Speaker 1: were trying the case, and he tells his story to them,
Speaker 1: and they very nonchalantly brush him off and said, oh,
Speaker 1: don't worry. We presented your written statement to mister Dolosa's attorney.
Speaker 1: He reviewed, but in light of the overwhelming evidence against him,
Speaker 1: he knows that your testimony wouldn't do any good, so
Speaker 1: he decided not to call you as a witness, which
Speaker 1: was a total lie. They hadn't given any of that
Speaker 1: information to my attorney. And one of the biggest parts
Speaker 1: of their case was over and over again they repeated
Speaker 1: to the jury, no one repeat, no one saw anything
Speaker 1: suspicious in that neighborhood that night, much less two black men.
Speaker 1: And that's why you must find mister Dolosa guilty because
Speaker 1: he was lying.
Speaker 2: The jury comes back, they find you guilty and sends
Speaker 2: you to life in prison. Now, the only thing that
Speaker 2: can make it worse is they're going to send you
Speaker 2: to what is arguably the worst prison in America in Louisiana,
Speaker 2: which is this date, which has the highest prison population.
Speaker 2: By far, Louisiana does have three times higher rate of
Speaker 2: incarceration than the rest of the country per capita, and
Speaker 2: of course America has a five times higher rate than
Speaker 2: the rest of the world. So it's off the chain.
Speaker 2: But now you're being sent to Angola prison farm, and
Speaker 2: let's talk about that. Well.
Speaker 1: Arriving at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which they call Angola,
Speaker 1: it was beyond culture shock. I didn't know what to expect.
Speaker 1: I'd heard numerous rumors that scared the hell out of me.
Speaker 1: But I arrived at Angola and one of the first
Speaker 1: things that I guess was really strange was they put
Speaker 1: you in an initial classification to decide where you're going
Speaker 1: to be housed. And I'm going before these classification offices
Speaker 1: and they decide that they're going to put me in
Speaker 1: a work cell block for my protection rather than general population.
Speaker 1: And then they make a statement that's pretty odd. They
Speaker 1: said that they don't have a white cell available to
Speaker 1: put me in, so I'd have to be sent to
Speaker 1: a security cell while they prepare a white cell. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, what the hell is a white cell. At
Speaker 1: that time, they still believed in segregating the white and
Speaker 1: black prisoners at Angola, they didn't mix white and blacks
Speaker 1: in the same cell. But my very first night in Angola,
Speaker 1: I'm in a disciplinary tier and I'm in a cell,
Speaker 1: and there's someone down the tier in another cell acting up,
Speaker 1: and at some point in time, he throws human waste
Speaker 1: on a security guard, and I'm just like, scared shitless.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on. Their guards would appear
Speaker 1: to be swat uniforms and riot shields and everything coming
Speaker 1: down the tier. They're dragging this person out by force.
Speaker 1: They're beaten him, and I guess I'm curious. I'm sort
Speaker 1: of looking, you know, I guess maybe I should have
Speaker 1: known better than to try to look. When one of
Speaker 1: the gods saw me looking, He's like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: are you looking at? He turns around and sprayed me
Speaker 1: with a pepper spray of mace for about twenty thirty
Speaker 1: seconds wow. And the only thing I knew was my
Speaker 1: lungs were burning, my face was burning, and it was
Speaker 1: sort of like a welcomed Angola. That was my first
Speaker 1: night in the penitentiary.
Speaker 2: So and then things get even crazier. So you end
Speaker 2: up working on a chain gang is that right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that chain gang is a
Speaker 1: little bit misleading because we're not actually linked by chains.
Speaker 2: Right, But it's a term that applies.
Speaker 1: To it's a group of inmates working under the supervision
Speaker 1: of gun guards on.
Speaker 2: Horses in the swamps.
Speaker 1: It could be swamps, it could be anywhere on the farm.
Speaker 2: Here's a clip where Burl camee the warden talks about
Speaker 2: the infamous history of Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Speaker 3: The work in the farm is critical, Angela. That's what
Speaker 3: it is. It's a plantation prison. It was that way
Speaker 3: throughout its entire history, so very important that we have
Speaker 3: agriculture here on the farm that provides work for the inmate,
Speaker 3: which you know is good for them because they have
Speaker 3: something to do to use after energy and so forth.
Speaker 1: It turned out that I was working in what they
Speaker 1: called camp A Line twenty one under one of the
Speaker 1: most vicious inhuman farm bosses that Angola had at the time,
Speaker 1: and I found it difficult at my age and my
Speaker 1: physical condition to keep up with the average man who
Speaker 1: was only in their early twenties. And I'm thirty seven,
Speaker 1: thirty eight years old at this time, in horrible shape,
Speaker 1: but one of the things that this particular field foreman
Speaker 1: used to enjoy doing to torment the people under his supervision.
Speaker 1: He would put us, say on the levee cutting high
Speaker 1: grass with what they called the ditchbank blade, which is
Speaker 1: it's impossible to describe on air, but it's this huge,
Speaker 1: heavy cutting blade. And what he would do is they
Speaker 1: might have been close to one hundred men in the line.
Speaker 1: He would put us up on the levee and they
Speaker 1: would be two inmates with a water bucket, and he'd
Speaker 1: tell the people with the water bucket, I want y'all
Speaker 1: to move about a mile down on the road with
Speaker 1: the gun guard supervising you. And he said, y'all keep
Speaker 1: moving that water bucket and don't let anybody have water,
Speaker 1: because it says until ten people pass out from the heat,
Speaker 1: I'm not letting anybody drink water. And that was a
Speaker 1: typical day working for this man mac Shaw, where he
Speaker 1: would see people pass out fall out, as we'd say,
Speaker 1: from heat stroke, heat exhaustion, from lack of water, and
Speaker 1: once whatever number he arbitrarily determined he wanted to pass
Speaker 1: out and be carried off in the back of a
Speaker 1: truck for disciplinary purposes. Then he'd let everybody else have
Speaker 1: a drink of water.
Speaker 2: And then then things got really crazy because at one
Speaker 2: point you were singled out.
Speaker 1: It was at more than one point. I mean, it
Speaker 1: seemed it was something that happened day after day every
Speaker 1: time I'd go in the field. I never had the
Speaker 1: distinction of being one of the people. I guess I
Speaker 1: was fortunate enough that I could go without drinking water
Speaker 1: longer than other people that I might not be one
Speaker 1: of the first five to ten people to pass out
Speaker 1: from heatstroke and lack of water. But I certainly wasn't
Speaker 1: keeping up with the work quote according to this field forman,
Speaker 1: and he would just almost every day that I went
Speaker 1: to work, he would write me up on a disciplinary report,
Speaker 1: lock me up in administrative segregation to be disciplined by
Speaker 1: the disciplinary court. They would hear my case and say
Speaker 1: it would say something like I flatly refused to work. Well,
Speaker 1: I never ever flatly refused to work. I simply worked
Speaker 1: until I couldn't work anymore, or I worked at the
Speaker 1: fastest pace I was capable of. But the field foreman
Speaker 1: never wrote the truth on a disciplinary report, and the
Speaker 1: disciplinary board that helped court, they didn't they knew what
Speaker 1: the truth was, but they would just continue to stack
Speaker 1: punishment on you and I'd be sent back out to work.
Speaker 2: It's it's just I don't I can't even I can't
Speaker 2: find any words. The good news is you're a smart guy.
Speaker 2: You're a guy of an educated guy, somebody who can
Speaker 2: can really think for himself. So you get to the
Speaker 2: point where you realize, if you're going to get out,
Speaker 2: you're going to have to be the one to do it.
Speaker 2: Is that Is that a fair statement?
Speaker 1: That absolutely? And I would say that. I worked as
Speaker 1: a clerk in an air conditioned office in the print
Speaker 1: shop silk screen shop at Angola for a little bit
Speaker 1: over a year, but I knew I my ultimate goal
Speaker 1: was I want to get the hell out of prison.
Speaker 1: And everybody that I associated with said, you know, you'd
Speaker 1: probably be better off going to be what they call
Speaker 1: an inmate council substitute or prison lawyer working in the
Speaker 1: law library, and I finally decided I'd apply for that job.
Speaker 1: I did end up with a job over there, and
Speaker 1: over the next several years, I learned the law. I
Speaker 1: think I became pretty proficient with it, and after I
Speaker 1: had exhausted all of my appeals in state court. After
Speaker 1: I had gone through hundreds of thousands of dollars on
Speaker 1: about seven different lawyers who all promised to do something,
Speaker 1: but no one followed through and did what I hired
Speaker 1: him to do. I finally sat back, spent six months researching,
Speaker 1: in another two to three months writing my own federal
Speaker 1: writ one hundred percent on my own or with having
Speaker 1: other inmate councils review it give me their critique. I
Speaker 1: filed my rit of habeas corpus into the federal court
Speaker 1: system on my own. I didn't know what my chances
Speaker 1: were going to bed. I figured slim to none at best,
Speaker 1: but I felt like, at this point in time, if
Speaker 1: I'm denied, I'm going to be denied on my own terms,
Speaker 1: and I'll have given it my best shot. Finally, one
Speaker 1: day they call me for legal mail. So I get
Speaker 1: up at like five o'clock in the morning go eat breakfast.
Speaker 1: I went to the window where they pass out the
Speaker 1: legal mail. They had me a little brown envelope and
Speaker 1: I was scared shitless to open it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, because if it's if it's the wrong answer,
Speaker 2: you're done. This is your last appeal, right.
Speaker 1: It's the wrong answer, I had a plan to escape
Speaker 1: from Angola, and my escape from Mangola was I had
Speaker 1: enough drugs in my possession hidden that probably within twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, I was going to od and that's how
Speaker 1: I was going to get out of prison. And that
Speaker 1: had been something I had planned for months, anticipating a
Speaker 1: negative response from the court.
Speaker 2: So I'm getting the chills right now. So you've got
Speaker 2: this envelope and it's gonna basically tell you whether you're
Speaker 2: gonna live or die. At this point, you've been in
Speaker 2: prison for fourteen years.
Speaker 1: Fourteen years. It's been a long time, exactly. I'd put
Speaker 1: up with as much as I felt like I could
Speaker 1: live with. And I felt like my children were getting
Speaker 1: up in age, and as much as I love them,
Speaker 1: as much as I felt that they loved me, they
Speaker 1: continue to visit me almost every opportunity that they got.
Speaker 1: I felt I was doing them a disservice I having
Speaker 1: them come to visit me in prison, by having them
Speaker 1: try to explain to their friends in college, well, why
Speaker 1: can't you hang out with us this weekend? Oh, because
Speaker 1: I'm going to the penitentiary to see my dad. And
Speaker 1: I think I probably was looking at it the wrong way,
Speaker 1: and I know I would have heard them tremendously, but
Speaker 1: I felt like the best thing for myself and for
Speaker 1: my children in the long run was to take my life.
Speaker 2: Fortunately it didn't come to that. Because you're sitting here now,
Speaker 2: and so you've got this envelope, what do you do?
Speaker 2: Do you open it?
Speaker 1: I went to the law library where I worked, and
Speaker 1: I locked it in the bottom cabinet. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: the only person here this early in the morning. I
Speaker 1: just need somebody else around me when I open this up.
Speaker 1: So about half hour forty five minutes later, a couple
Speaker 1: of my close friends at work in the law library
Speaker 1: lived around me. They came in and I told then
Speaker 1: my one friend, Mike Singletary, who was my closest friend
Speaker 1: in the law library at that time. I said, Mike,
Speaker 1: I got my decision from the Federal court. And he says, well,
Speaker 1: what's it say? I said, I don't know, Mike, I
Speaker 1: don't have the nerve to open it. And he says,
Speaker 1: oh my god, he said, come on, give me that envelope.
Speaker 1: I'll open it for you. So I said, I said yeah,
Speaker 1: but I said he took it out of my hands
Speaker 1: after I got it out of the cabinet. He opened
Speaker 1: it and I said, now, let me read it, Mike,
Speaker 1: don't so. I took a couple of big, deep breasts,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how. My heart was probably beaten
Speaker 1: two hundred beats a minute, and I was shaking.
Speaker 2: And mine is right now, and I know the aser, and.
Speaker 1: I opened the writ to the last page, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I just stopped shaking, and I guess
Speaker 1: sort of a smile over my face, and for the
Speaker 1: first time since my wife's funeral, I cried. I started
Speaker 1: crying almost uncontrollably, when I read that the magistrate judge
Speaker 1: recommended that my conviction be set aside and that I'll
Speaker 1: be freed. I just, against all odds, I went up
Speaker 1: against the most conservative federal magistrate in the Eastern District
Speaker 1: for the State of Louisiana, who, according to what I
Speaker 1: had been told, had never before granted a writ filed
Speaker 1: by an inmate on their own. Behalf.
Speaker 2: That's a happy ending to an incredibly terrible saga. And
Speaker 2: you're back and I've gotten to know you. While Doug
Speaker 2: is now working closely with the Rising Foundation in New Orleans,
Speaker 2: helping other ax hooneries to rebuild their lives on the outside,
Speaker 2: using the skills that he has to help them with
Speaker 2: everything from you know, you name a job applications, to
Speaker 2: tax problems, to building their houses to you know, fixing things,
Speaker 2: getting employments. He's become a tremendous advocate for not only
Speaker 2: the Innocence Project and innocence projects, although in your case
Speaker 2: you represented yourself, but really somebody who has devoted himself
Speaker 2: to helping others, which is quite an extraordinary thing. It
Speaker 2: makes me really so proud to know you and to
Speaker 2: be a part of your life. It's important to note
Speaker 2: in all of this that the compensation that you were
Speaker 2: given ultimately by the state was paltry, to say the least,
Speaker 2: right because people ask me all the time, well, these
Speaker 2: guys must get they must get millions of dollars when
Speaker 2: they get out. I mean, after what you went through
Speaker 2: fourteen years and a goal to prison and all this stuff,
Speaker 2: almost being beaten to death, all the other indignities that
Speaker 2: you suffered, and the fact that you were so egregiously framed.
Speaker 1: The compensation in the state of Louisiana allows for twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars a year for a maximum of ten
Speaker 1: years of incarceration. It's doled out at twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year over ten years, which gives a person
Speaker 1: barely enough to exist on if you have a very
Speaker 1: modest lifestyle for ten years. But the other thing, I mean,
Speaker 1: in my case, it fell short one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars short of my actual expenses, So I
Speaker 1: didn't even recoup what I spent.
Speaker 2: Because you had actually spent the money on attorneys.
Speaker 1: On my legal defense.
Speaker 2: You basically paid ten thousand dollars a year to be
Speaker 2: locked up for fourteen years, is what it comes down to.
Speaker 1: That's about what it comes down to.
Speaker 2: It's important to note that there are twenty states that
Speaker 2: have no compensation statutes, and the ones that do have
Speaker 2: compensation statutes, some of them are even worse than Louisiana,
Speaker 2: like Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: You know, people think that, oh, you were proven that
Speaker 1: you were wrongfully convicted, you must have gotten millions. Well no,
Speaker 1: I'm still struggle to this day. I was never able
Speaker 1: to repay my children for selling their interest in their
Speaker 1: family homes so I could hire that last attorney. And
Speaker 1: it's just not right, not just for me, but for
Speaker 1: all of the men in Louisiana and elsewhere too, and elsewhere.
Speaker 2: According to the National Registry of his Hoonerations, there have
Speaker 2: been forty six exonerations in Louisiana since nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: and the coarter them occurred in Jefferson County, the same
Speaker 2: office that prosecuted you. The sad truth is that there's
Speaker 2: probably hundreds, if not thousands of other DOUGDA in Louisiana alone.
Speaker 2: It's certainly around the country, and I can tell you
Speaker 2: that we won't stop until we exonerate as many of
Speaker 2: them as we possibly can. People say to me, you
Speaker 2: know my work at the Innstance Pride, They say what,
Speaker 2: But prosecutors, they don't lie that. People don't understand likes.
Speaker 2: It's unfortunately, it's common, which is why we asked Nina
Speaker 2: Morrison to join us in the studio today. Welcome to
Speaker 2: Ronful Conviction with Jason Flammer's good to have you here.
Speaker 2: Thank you, good to be here.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: Nina is the senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project.
Speaker 2: She litigates claims for access to post conviction DNA evidence
Speaker 2: under both federal civil rights laws and state DNA testing statutes.
Speaker 2: To date, Ms Morrison has served as lead or co
Speaker 2: counsel for more than twenty innocent prisoners who are freed
Speaker 2: from prison or even death row based on DNA or
Speaker 2: other newly discovered evidence. So, can you explain to us
Speaker 2: what exactly is a Brady violation? We talk about it
Speaker 2: a lot on the show. Yeah, So, a Brady violation is.
Speaker 4: Where a prosecutor doesn't give the defense evidence that either
Speaker 4: the prosecutor or the police or some other agent of
Speaker 4: the state like a crime lab has that is favorable
Speaker 4: to the defendant's case. Sometimes it's proof of their innocence,
Speaker 4: you know, another suspect who is seen in the area,
Speaker 4: somebody else who admitted to the crime. Sometimes it's evidence
Speaker 4: that shows that a witness, you know, who claimed to
Speaker 4: be an eyewitness, was you know, high out of their
Speaker 4: minds that night according to five other people, or couldn't
Speaker 4: have seen what they said they said. There's a whole
Speaker 4: array of stuff. It's basically anything that helps the defense.
Speaker 4: And it's a strange system when you think about it,
Speaker 4: because you know, prosecutors and defense lawyers go into court,
Speaker 4: they're fighting hard in these big murder cases or rape
Speaker 4: cases or other hard fought criminal trials, and The way
Speaker 4: the law is set up is the prosecutor has to
Speaker 4: give the other side something voluntarily that might make them lose,
Speaker 4: and we trust them in most places to turn it over,
Speaker 4: so they say, I'm fulfilling my Brady obligations, and there's
Speaker 4: no check on it until after the case is over,
Speaker 4: and sometimes not even then until.
Speaker 2: It's literally too late. And this leaves a very wide
Speaker 2: lane open for the bad actors in the system, the
Speaker 2: bad prosecutors to do what they feel like on a
Speaker 2: given day, and to really railroad people who are just
Speaker 2: regular people like you and I who get find themselves
Speaker 2: stuck in this nightmare, people like Doug Delosa.
Speaker 4: Yeah so, and there's even worse news in terms of
Speaker 4: how it gets dealt with after the trial, because if
Speaker 4: you discover that a prosecutor in your case withheld Brady
Speaker 4: material something favorable to you, your conviction doesn't automatically get reversed.
Speaker 4: You then, according to US Supreme Court case law, have
Speaker 4: to show an appeals court that the violation is what
Speaker 4: the courts call material, which means it actually made a difference.
Speaker 4: So you basically have to come in after the fact
Speaker 4: when a jury never heard this information. A witness was
Speaker 4: never cross examined on it, and say, you know, Judge,
Speaker 4: if I'd had this, I would have argued this. I
Speaker 4: would have said that the jury wouldn't have believed this person.
Speaker 4: And here's why you have to kind of have a
Speaker 4: mental do over, a hypothetical duover of the trial. And
Speaker 4: if they say, eh, you know, it made a difference, maybe,
Speaker 4: but we don't know, it might not necessarily have made
Speaker 4: a difference in the outcome. So it's what's called harmless error.
Speaker 2: So, Nina, I wanted to ask you how common are
Speaker 2: these Brady violations.
Speaker 4: You know, we don't know because by definition many of
Speaker 4: them are hidden. We know that we have seen them
Speaker 4: in a very significant proportion of our cases. You know,
Speaker 4: there's at least fifteen featured cases on the Innocence Project
Speaker 4: website just from the last few years that involve serious
Speaker 4: Brady violations which we uncover in the course of investigating
Speaker 4: a client's other claim of innocence. And there is no
Speaker 4: scientific way to study them because by definition, there are
Speaker 4: things that haven't been turned over. It's sort of like
Speaker 4: everyone we find is in some ways by chance. You
Speaker 4: don't have a right to get a lot of files
Speaker 4: after somebody has been convicted. Things get destroyed. I wake
Speaker 4: up at night sometimes worrying about you know, these days,
Speaker 4: when almost everything is electronic, we don't have the piece
Speaker 4: of paper in the file anymore the way we used
Speaker 4: to in the cases from the eighties and early nineties.
Speaker 4: Now it's all in a memo on somebody's computer and
Speaker 4: they hit delete, or that person leaves the office and
Speaker 4: it's gone. It's in an email, it's in a voicemail,
Speaker 4: it's in a text from a witness.
Speaker 2: It's you know, you know, it's really a level of
Speaker 2: evil that, in this particular case, I don't know what
Speaker 2: else to call it. The prosecutor is just evil.
Speaker 4: And you know, I know, Barry check in one of
Speaker 4: your other episodes when you had Barry Gibbson, was talking
Speaker 4: about this concept of noble cause corruption, which I think
Speaker 4: is a very real phenomenon. You know, I don't think
Speaker 4: even the prosecutors that we've caught red handed withholding evidence.
Speaker 4: I think most, if not all of them honestly believed
Speaker 4: that they were doing it for a higher purpose, which
Speaker 4: is they had a killer sitting in the courtroom who
Speaker 4: was going to get away with murder if they didn't
Speaker 4: win their case, and so they convinced themselves that whatever
Speaker 4: they were holding back was not really proof of innocence.
Speaker 4: It was something the defense would use to create a
Speaker 4: smoke screen, right. But the laws of the law, you
Speaker 4: have a job as an officer of the court to
Speaker 4: follow the law and turn it over. And now we
Speaker 4: know that many of those people were actually innocent, so
Speaker 4: we see what the real harm is from that skirting
Speaker 4: the ethical line.
Speaker 2: So that brings us to the sort of the practical
Speaker 2: question of what can be done.
Speaker 4: We had the Innocence Project are working on a couple
Speaker 4: of things to police things before trial happened. So one
Speaker 4: of the things we are trying to do is get
Speaker 4: judges to take a more active role in ensuring that
Speaker 4: Brady's guarantee is a real one by putting prosecutors on
Speaker 4: the record issuing court orders to say, I want you
Speaker 4: to check these five locations to see if there's anything
Speaker 4: favorable to the defense, and I'm going to have a
Speaker 4: conference a month before the trial to see how it's going.
Speaker 4: What have you turned over, what are you looking for?
Speaker 4: And at that point the defense lawyer will have an
Speaker 4: opportunity to speak up and say I haven't gotten anything
Speaker 4: on the witness statements. I don't know who what these
Speaker 4: witness statements are. And our theory is, you know, for example,
Speaker 4: two black men came in and did this crime. Are
Speaker 4: there any reports of suspicious African Americans in the area,
Speaker 4: whether you think they did it or not? You know,
Speaker 4: is there anything we should investigate? And the reason why
Speaker 4: you want to have the judges be policing it is
Speaker 4: that if you lie to a judge, you can get
Speaker 4: charged with contemptive court and lose your law license and
Speaker 4: even go to jail. And on the back end, we
Speaker 4: need to take accountability seriously, you know, we need to
Speaker 4: make sure that the state bars have a culture where
Speaker 4: they can go after just as say what a lawyer
Speaker 4: who doesn't give a client all their money back or
Speaker 4: didn't do the job they were hired to do in
Speaker 4: a trust and a states case or a civil case,
Speaker 4: that they will go after the prosecutors who break the law,
Speaker 4: even if it's not politically easy to do. And then lastly,
Speaker 4: you know, it is very hard, as you know, and
Speaker 4: you've talked about on your show, for prosecutors to ever
Speaker 4: be sued civilly and even for states or counties to
Speaker 4: be held liable for the misconduct of prosecutors. Prosecutors are
Speaker 4: what's called immune from suit in all but a few
Speaker 4: very rare cases.
Speaker 2: And so if a prosecutor.
Speaker 4: Knows of some favorable evidence and doesn't turn it over,
Speaker 4: the court Supreme Court has said, well, you can go
Speaker 4: after them on bar discipline, or you can maybe criminally
Speaker 4: prosecute them. Talk about Fox and Penhouse, right, but you
Speaker 4: can't see them unless there's a pattern and practice of violations,
Speaker 4: and those are very hard to prove.
Speaker 2: And criminal prosecutions of prosecutors are extremely difficult. Not least
Speaker 2: it was because proctters generally don't like prosecuting prosecutors.
Speaker 4: Correct, and they will air I mean, you know, they
Speaker 4: will give every benefit of the doubt. Oh they missed it,
Speaker 4: they were busy, they thought they turned it over, they
Speaker 4: put it in the wrong notebook, you know, yes they did.
Speaker 4: The defense layer says they didn't have it, but we
Speaker 4: think they did. I mean, you know, and look, our
Speaker 4: clients should have been so lucky to get the benefit
Speaker 4: of every doubt when they were being accused of a crime.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being on Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 2: Jason Flumm And it was great it's great to have
Speaker 2: you here.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 2: donor to the Ennocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 2: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 2: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 2: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 2: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 2: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 2: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
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Speaker 2: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
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