Speaker 1: I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
Speaker 2: I was naive enough to believe that I would be
Speaker 2: able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence,
Speaker 2: that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be going to prison because I was a good person.
Speaker 2: I hadn't done anything wrong.
Speaker 1: In the back of your mind, you say, well, when
Speaker 1: we go to a hearing or we go to court,
Speaker 1: the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one
Speaker 1: knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected
Speaker 1: from the lower courts all the way up to the
Speaker 1: United States Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really,
Speaker 3: in that moment, unchecked authority.
Speaker 2: Don't presume that people are guilty when you see them
Speaker 2: on TV, because it may just be a dirty da
Speaker 2: that is trying to rise upward.
Speaker 4: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Ronfuel Conviction with
Speaker 4: Jason Flumm. Today's episode will make your blood boil and
Speaker 4: it will blow your mind. So settle in because this
Speaker 4: is going to be a crazy ride.
Speaker 5: Guilty one word ceiling. Lamont McIntyre's fate.
Speaker 6: Lamont McIntyre aged seventeen in nineteen ninety four has so
Speaker 6: far been imprisoned for twenty two years. Twenty two years ago,
Speaker 6: two young men, twenty one year old Donielle Quinn and
Speaker 6: his thirty four year old cousin, Donald Ewing, were gunned
Speaker 6: down in a horrible double homicide.
Speaker 5: Six hours after the murder's police arrested McIntyre, but never
Speaker 5: searched his house for evidence.
Speaker 6: Moreover, it was a trial which prosecutors offered no physical
Speaker 6: evidence tying McIntyre to the crime, no motive, no connection
Speaker 6: between him and the victims, no weapon, no fingerprints, nor
Speaker 6: did Kansas City, Kansas Belief even requests search warrants to
Speaker 6: find any of that material.
Speaker 5: A retired officer who reviewed the case caused the investigation
Speaker 5: grossly deficient.
Speaker 6: Most notable is that the family of the victims for
Speaker 6: twenty two years have steadfastly insisted that he is innocent.
Speaker 6: Other witnesses, also relatives of the victim, insist that as
Speaker 6: soon as they saw McIntyre sitting at the defense table,
Speaker 6: they knew he was not the shooter. They told the prosecutor,
Speaker 6: but were ignored. One family member has signed an affi
Speaker 6: David claiming that under pressure from police and the prosecutor
Speaker 6: she lied at McIntyre's trial.
Speaker 5: For the first time a jury is speaking publicly about
Speaker 5: the case, Greg Lauber says that he now believes that
Speaker 5: Ryan Dot County jury was wrong.
Speaker 7: They didn't care about anything. They just had their man and.
Speaker 5: It was enough for the twelfth person jury. In deliberations,
Speaker 5: Lauber says he and another juror were holdouts, but it
Speaker 5: was late in the day and there was mounting pressure
Speaker 5: from others who wanted a verdict.
Speaker 6: Maybe I had an opportunity to, you know, do something
Speaker 6: good on that jury, but I sure didn't do it.
Speaker 7: I took a coward's way out.
Speaker 6: It is the speedy investigation and prosecution of that crime
Speaker 6: in this place that a team of exonerators now insist
Speaker 6: was also the focus of a terrible injustice. Lamont McIntyre,
Speaker 6: age seventeen in nineteen ninety four, has so far been
Speaker 6: imprisoned for twenty two years, convicted, and given two consecutive
Speaker 6: life sentences for a crime they say he never committed.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm just going to say I'm really happy that
Speaker 4: today joining us to discuss the insane case of Lamont McIntyre,
Speaker 4: we have with us Lamont's attorney Cheryl Pilot, as well
Speaker 4: as retired FBI special agent Al Jenerich. Cheryl and Al,
Speaker 4: thank you for being here.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much.
Speaker 9: We're glad to be here, happy to be here.
Speaker 4: And we will be hearing later on in the episode
Speaker 4: from Lamont, who will be calling in from prison in
Speaker 4: Kansas where he has been incarcerated for approximately twenty four
Speaker 4: years now since he was a teenage for a crime
Speaker 4: that he did not commit. Now, let's go back to
Speaker 4: the beginning. On April fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, there were
Speaker 4: two men sitting in a Cadillac in Kansas City, Kansas,
Speaker 4: when they were approached by a man with a shotgun.
Speaker 4: These facts are not in dispute right correct, And what
Speaker 4: we know is that four shots were fired into the car,
Speaker 4: killing the passenger, Donielle Quinn instantly and the driver, Donald Ewing,
Speaker 4: who died later in the hospital. And amazingly, within six hours,
Speaker 4: they managed to find a guy who had nothing to
Speaker 4: do with the crime, Lamont McIntyre, who was seventeen at
Speaker 4: the time, and he was arrested and charged with two
Speaker 4: counts of first degree murder in spite of a total
Speaker 4: lack of any physical evidence. Connecting him to the crime.
Speaker 4: How did this happen? Cheryl and Al jump in whenever
Speaker 4: you want.
Speaker 3: Lamont was arrested and prosecuted after police obtained three interviews
Speaker 3: from witnesses, one of them never testified. But the taped
Speaker 3: interviews of these eyewitnesses in a very serious crime, obviously
Speaker 3: where someone can go to prison for the rest of
Speaker 3: their life, amounted to a total of twenty taped minutes,
Speaker 3: and one of the eyewitnesses was only interviewed for four minutes.
Speaker 3: Is that an investigation?
Speaker 7: What is that? So?
Speaker 10: Al?
Speaker 4: You've done a lot of research, and you were in
Speaker 4: the FBI for quite a while, Is that right?
Speaker 9: I was in the FBI for twenty five years. I
Speaker 9: was a special agent. I specialized in investigating police corruption.
Speaker 9: I worked in Chicago very successfully, and then in Kansas City.
Speaker 3: Kansas Agent Generich was not involved with this murder case
Speaker 3: at all when it happened. I knew mister Generich through
Speaker 3: other cases and after he retired a number of years.
Speaker 3: After he retired, actually and I was working on trying
Speaker 3: to achieve Lamont's exoneration, I approached him to talk to
Speaker 3: him about the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department and things
Speaker 3: that I had uncovered in my investigation. And it was
Speaker 3: at that point that Alan and I started talking about
Speaker 3: some of the things he had learned while working for
Speaker 3: the FBI, and they matched up with some of the
Speaker 3: things I had uncovered in my investigation. And it was
Speaker 3: because of that that he became a witness in this
Speaker 3: case that I hoped to use at our hearing.
Speaker 4: So, prior to Lamont's arrest, can we talk about what
Speaker 4: was happening with this particular cop, whose name was Roger Glubski.
Speaker 9: Sometime around nineteen eighty eight or so, I was able
Speaker 9: to open an investigation into police corruption in Kansas City, Kansas,
Speaker 9: And as the investigation went on over time, over many years,
Speaker 9: we developed maybe somewhere between two fifteen police officers who
Speaker 9: were titled the subjects of the investigation. Some of it
Speaker 9: involved civil rights like beating people up, stealing their shoes
Speaker 9: when they were walking down the street because the officer
Speaker 9: liked the shoes, or in the case of Kallupski, you know,
Speaker 9: sexual extortion. But most of it involved corruption involving drugs,
Speaker 9: mostly cocaine. And in the course of this investigation, just
Speaker 9: by talking to people, which is what I'm pretty good
Speaker 9: at over time. You know, a number of people told
Speaker 9: us about Gallupski extorting sex from black women, and he
Speaker 9: liked black women. We never developed enough evidence on Gallupski
Speaker 9: to prosecute him. That's the extent of my knowledge about Gulupski,
Speaker 9: and I had no involvement whatsoever in the murder investigation.
Speaker 4: Now, I always believed that that police were good, and
Speaker 4: the police were on our side and they're there to
Speaker 4: protect us all and so I always find these stories,
Speaker 4: even as long as I've been working on this issue,
Speaker 4: and I've got twenty five years now of experience, but
Speaker 4: I always find these stories so just depressing and shocking,
Speaker 4: and it flips everything upside down.
Speaker 9: Well, like you, I was very naive until I went
Speaker 9: to Chicago and then I sought you police corruption on
Speaker 9: the mass of scale. But then when I got back
Speaker 9: to Kansas City in eighty six and probably got involved
Speaker 9: in Kansas City, Kansas in eighty eight, and I saw
Speaker 9: the same activity there, it wasn't on the grand scale.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 9: It's that it's conducted in Chicago. It's basically police officers,
Speaker 9: most of whom are white, picking on minorities, most of
Speaker 9: whom are black, Some of them are hispanic, because when
Speaker 9: you're a drug dealer, you know, you can't go to
Speaker 9: the police or the FBI and say, hey, these cops
Speaker 9: are stealing my drugs, these cops are stealing my drug money.
Speaker 9: You basically have to you have to suck it up.
Speaker 9: So that's what they do in Chicago, that's what they
Speaker 9: do everywhere.
Speaker 4: So so Lamont his troubles really began when his mom
Speaker 4: was at a car with I guess was her boyfriend
Speaker 4: at the time, Cheryl Right and Glubski approached the car
Speaker 4: and told her to get out and threatened her with
Speaker 4: the rest or the rest of her boyfriend unless she
Speaker 4: agreed to come down to the police station. And then
Speaker 4: the problems really began when she refused to become one
Speaker 4: of his girls, so to speak. Right, I mean, obviously,
Speaker 4: she was in a terrible situation where she's very vulnerable,
Speaker 4: not able to defend herself from a cop who's willing
Speaker 4: to go to almost any lengths to fulfill his desires.
Speaker 4: She had a tremendous problem, and she decided that she
Speaker 4: wanted to maintain her dignity really, right, And so what
Speaker 4: seems like happened is that as a consequence of her action.
Speaker 4: Golubski decided that he would target and frame her son
Speaker 4: in something that is so evil that you just sit
Speaker 4: there and say, I don't you know, it makes me
Speaker 4: want to quit the human race. And not only that,
Speaker 4: but he was also represented by an attorney who was
Speaker 4: so incompetent that he was disbarred not too long after
Speaker 4: the trial. So what kind of a chance did he
Speaker 4: really have.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a lot to untangle right there. There was
Speaker 3: an encounter that Lamont's mother had with the detective some
Speaker 3: years earlier. I mean it was years actually before the
Speaker 3: double homicide happened. And at the time of the double homicide,
Speaker 3: my client was inexplicably dragged into the case. One of
Speaker 3: the eyewitnesses told the police she thought the shooter looked
Speaker 3: like a Lamont dating her Nie. Police never bothered to
Speaker 3: find out what Lamont that was. They don't go ask
Speaker 3: the niece what Lamont that was. They simply put another Lamont,
Speaker 3: and it's undisputed, an entirely different Lamont, my client into
Speaker 3: the case and somehow obtain this identification. What's interesting about
Speaker 3: the lineup, and I've never seen anything like this before,
Speaker 3: is three of the five photos were of young male
Speaker 3: members of the McIntyre family.
Speaker 4: You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to say, well,
Speaker 4: that doesn't make a lot of sense. It's one perpetrator.
Speaker 4: It's not like somebody said there were three brothers that
Speaker 4: were involved. It's one perpetrator, you know. And then the
Speaker 4: justice system, we know, has a tendency to chew people
Speaker 4: up and spit them out when they are poor, particularly
Speaker 4: if they're minorities and underrepresented. It's really it's not a
Speaker 4: fair fight, is it.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean this whole thing was an impossible battle
Speaker 3: for Lamont to begin with. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 3: the investigation itself, I don't think really qualified is a
Speaker 3: true investigation because so little was done. No evidence of
Speaker 3: motive was ever uncovered. There was no physical evidence that
Speaker 3: tied Lamont to the crime. There was not even any
Speaker 3: evidence that he knew the two victims. There are backgrounds
Speaker 3: of the two victims and who might have a motive
Speaker 3: to harm them that was never investigated. There was an
Speaker 3: eyewitness directly across the street who was never interviewed, whose
Speaker 3: mother said, you know, she knows who the suspect is.
Speaker 3: I mean, the failures and lapses and irregularities in this
Speaker 3: case just go on and on. I mean, other than
Speaker 3: the twenty minutes of taped interviews from the eyewitnesses, there
Speaker 3: was very little else And the only evidence at trial
Speaker 3: against were two eyewitnesses who were we contend confuse, coerced, manipulated,
Speaker 3: threatened into implicating Lamont McIntyre, and that was it. There
Speaker 3: was nothing else.
Speaker 4: So you have this cop and this department that is
Speaker 4: so corrupt isn't even the right word, but that's engaged
Speaker 4: in so many illegal activities. And isn't it ironic and
Speaker 4: tragic that Lamont is in prison, living in hell after
Speaker 4: twenty four years and this cop who was from what
Speaker 4: I've read, raping people, robbing people, dealing drugs, protecting drug dealers,
Speaker 4: he's out. How is that? I mean? And that must
Speaker 4: not sit well with you with your whole background either.
Speaker 3: What I'm really hoping for, what our entire team is
Speaker 3: hoping for, and what we have sought for a long time,
Speaker 3: is a very full investigation into the activities of this detective.
Speaker 3: There needs to be an investigation by people who have
Speaker 3: the power and the authority and the ability to follow
Speaker 3: all the leads, develop information, compel the testimony of witnesses
Speaker 3: and obtain other evidence.
Speaker 4: Ah, let me turn it to you for a second,
Speaker 4: because we have not had somebody with your background and
Speaker 4: experience on the show before. And I would venture to
Speaker 4: say that you had a very, very difficult and dangerous job, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, investigating cops, particularly when you're investigating cops who've
Speaker 4: got a lot to hide, makes you a very unpopular person,
Speaker 4: I would think. So, looking back on it, how did
Speaker 4: this manage to go on for so long without somebody
Speaker 4: coming along and saying, you know, besides you, hey, hey,
Speaker 4: we're not going to tolerate this.
Speaker 9: They don't give a shit. At the time we were
Speaker 9: doing these investigations, the police chief of Kansas City, Kansas,
Speaker 9: a guy named Tom Daly. He had previously been indicted
Speaker 9: by the Federal Strike Force for extorting money at a
Speaker 9: whorehouses along the Kaw River in Kansas. He was doing
Speaker 9: that allegedly when it was a captain. He was acquitted
Speaker 9: because it was a real weak case. But after being
Speaker 9: acquitted for extortion, the city wound up eventually making him
Speaker 9: the chief. Is that the actions, you know, wever responsible
Speaker 9: a city administration or a police department. So he had
Speaker 9: the chief over there Tom Daly, who had previously been
Speaker 9: indicted by the FEDS. He despised the federal government. He
Speaker 9: hated the US Attorney's Office and the FBI. And he's
Speaker 9: the chief, he was part of it.
Speaker 4: So you have this guy Golubski, who, in that scenario
Speaker 4: is operating basically with impunity, right because he knows his
Speaker 4: chief doesn't give a shit, and with the chief having literally,
Speaker 4: well for what it sounds like, gotten away with that
Speaker 4: particular pattern of activity as well as I'm sure other
Speaker 4: things that he was doing. The people underneath him are
Speaker 4: probably thinking, hey, this is great, no one's gonna touch us,
Speaker 4: and they're right, and nobody did. So how frustrating was
Speaker 4: that for you? There? You are really fighting an unwinnable war,
Speaker 4: right You're there trying to protect the public from the
Speaker 4: police force with a chief of police who not only
Speaker 4: doesn't give a fuck, but doesn't want that. He wants you.
Speaker 4: He probably wants you the fuck out of his hair,
Speaker 4: so he could just go and run his little you know,
Speaker 4: run the streets how he wants to.
Speaker 9: Right when I started working over there, you had a person,
Speaker 9: you know, some guy I knewed a lot of people
Speaker 9: in the County jail, and they would say so and
Speaker 9: so confronted me and stole my money, stole my drugs.
Speaker 9: You go, what's the cops name? I don't know his name,
Speaker 9: you know what's he looked like? Well, you know he's
Speaker 9: some Well you go to the police. The police did
Speaker 9: not have photographs of their police officers, So if a
Speaker 9: victim came in there alleging that so and so officer
Speaker 9: robbed from me, extorted me, they didn't even have photographs
Speaker 9: to show people so they could identify who the police
Speaker 9: officer was. So good luck, you know, through the US
Speaker 9: Attorney's Office, through Julie Robinson, who was a prosecutor at
Speaker 9: the time, we subpoenaed photographs of every sworn officer in
Speaker 9: the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department, and there was hell
Speaker 9: to pay for that. I was almost removed from the
Speaker 9: investigation because of that.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 3: I think one of the problems is that other law
Speaker 3: enforcement officers don't want to investigate law enforcement and as
Speaker 3: a general rule, I think they find it distasteful something
Speaker 3: they would rather avoid, and there is a tendency to
Speaker 3: minimize misconduct. I found that really pretty shocking.
Speaker 4: Not in light of it, everything else we're talking about.
Speaker 4: But I could see how you would, and it really
Speaker 4: gets easier and easier to see how these wrongful convictions
Speaker 4: are so common. I mean, here we have an interesting situation, right,
Speaker 4: We're talking to Al, who's in there with his badge,
Speaker 4: working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and basically being
Speaker 4: told go fuck himself. So what chance does a seventeen
Speaker 4: year old black kid from the poorer side of town.
Speaker 4: What chance does he have against this blue wall, this
Speaker 4: blue monster that was out to get him. He had
Speaker 4: no chance. So now fast forward to twenty four years later,
Speaker 4: the monsets in the prison studying reading, by all accounts,
Speaker 4: a model prisoner, somebody who maintains a positive outlook in
Speaker 4: spite of this. You know what can only be described
Speaker 4: as the worst fate that can befall individual, to be
Speaker 4: concarcerated with something you didn't do for the rest of
Speaker 4: your life. But now we have hope, right, I mean,
Speaker 4: he has hope thanks to you and the years of
Speaker 4: work that you've done in this case, in Al and
Speaker 4: other brave people who have devoted their time and in
Speaker 4: some cases probably even risk their own personal safety to
Speaker 4: try to get justice. In this case, what does it
Speaker 4: look like now, what happens next? Tell us what's going on.
Speaker 3: We have a evidentiary hearing coming up in October and
Speaker 3: we intend to present somewhere between forty and fifty witnesses
Speaker 3: who provide very powerful testimony on various aspects of the case.
Speaker 3: There was almost nothing really to support the conviction to
Speaker 3: begin with, nothing other than the testimony of the two
Speaker 3: eye witnesses, and I believe that has been thoroughly shredded
Speaker 3: at this point through recantations and admissions and the result
Speaker 3: of other investigations. And we are also focusing on the
Speaker 3: very troubling misconduct in the case. It is intimately connected
Speaker 3: to how the investigation was conducted, and we're going to
Speaker 3: bring all that out and show how we believe this
Speaker 3: went wrong, and we very much hope to be successful.
Speaker 4: What's the data of the hearing October twelfth. October twelfth,
Speaker 4: And is this in a federal court.
Speaker 3: We are in Windott County District Court, which is a
Speaker 3: state court. My client is litigating what's called a successive
Speaker 3: petition under sixtysh fifteen oh seven, and you have essentially
Speaker 3: a procedural barrier to get over before you can get
Speaker 3: back into court, but we do have this evidentiary hearing
Speaker 3: schedule that we are very very excited about. One of
Speaker 3: the most compelling things about the case we haven't mentioned
Speaker 3: this yet, is that the families of both victims have
Speaker 3: always known my client is innocent and are very much
Speaker 3: squarely supporting the quest to free him. They know that
Speaker 3: they did not get justice. Their families did not get justice.
Speaker 4: And that's Cheryl. In your experience, it's not a common thing, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, most of the cases I've seen, even in
Speaker 4: the face of what could be overwhelming evidence to the contrary,
Speaker 4: the victim's family sometimes stick with you what they've been
Speaker 4: told all along because they just can't. They can't even
Speaker 4: process the idea that they may have been lied to
Speaker 4: and that the wrong person may have been serving time
Speaker 4: for the murder of their loved one. So in this case,
Speaker 4: this is a very unusual scenario.
Speaker 8: Isn't it.
Speaker 7: It is?
Speaker 3: And one of the eyewitnesses is related to both of
Speaker 3: the victims, and she her family and the family of
Speaker 3: the second victim to whom she's a bit more distantly related,
Speaker 3: have always told me that they have known from the
Speaker 3: beginning that the authorities got the wrong man. They have
Speaker 3: always known this. They've made periodic efforts to correct this,
Speaker 3: to a d rest this, to try and get some justice,
Speaker 3: all without success.
Speaker 4: And they were never tested, they never called it testify
Speaker 4: a trial.
Speaker 3: One of them was not called to testify. Another has
Speaker 3: admitted that she lied, that she was coerced. The other
Speaker 3: eyewitness seems frankly, very perplexed by her testimony, and it's
Speaker 3: very clear that it's an eyewitness a misidentification based on manipulation.
Speaker 4: And we know also that had this trial taken place
Speaker 4: twenty years later or so, with everything that's known now
Speaker 4: about the unreliability of eyewitness identification, there's a very good
Speaker 4: chance that that would have been discredited because there was
Speaker 4: no other evidence connecting him to the crime.
Speaker 8: You take a person who's traumatized, who has just witnessed
Speaker 8: a really horrific event, and they can be pretty easy
Speaker 8: to pressure or manipulate. And in fact, this witness provided
Speaker 8: in a tape statement my client's last name, a man
Speaker 8: she did not know and had never heard of, which
Speaker 8: raises the very interesting question of who gave her the name.
Speaker 8: It was undisputed at trial that she did not know
Speaker 8: my client. Yet the fact that there was an original
Speaker 8: tape statement where she provided his name never came out
Speaker 8: that was never admitted at trial. She also stated wrongly
Speaker 8: that my client was the Lamont who had dated her niece.
Speaker 8: At trial undisputed that that was not true. It was
Speaker 8: an entirely different Lamont who was in fact identified by
Speaker 8: his name to the jury, an entirely different person. So,
Speaker 8: I mean, the whole thing is troubling beginning to end,
Speaker 8: really a perfect storm of chaos and horror and misconduct,
Speaker 8: things being done improperly.
Speaker 4: And if there wasn't already enough to chew on, this
Speaker 4: is the part that really just sets me off. His
Speaker 4: court a point that Attorney Gary Long was on supervised
Speaker 4: obation at the time of the trial for failing to
Speaker 4: diligently handle three prior cases. He was suspended from the
Speaker 4: bar a couple of years later for failure to adequately
Speaker 4: hnder a separate criminal case. And he was this bar
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety eight. How is it even possible that
Speaker 4: in a life or death situation, because this is really
Speaker 4: somebody's life that they were playing with, right, how could
Speaker 4: it be in this great country of ours that you
Speaker 4: take somebody and you say, you know what We're going
Speaker 4: to give you a lawyer who's already messed up three times.
Speaker 4: You know it's I don't know, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 4: make any sense.
Speaker 9: Well, when I said, nobody gives a shitt, do you
Speaker 9: understand what I mean? Do you know that that you
Speaker 9: know that Tara Morehead. Do you know she's now a
Speaker 9: federal prosecutor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Tara Moorehead was the prosecutor in this case.
Speaker 4: Obviously didn't see anything wrong with her prosecuting a case
Speaker 4: in which a young man's life was at stake in
Speaker 4: a very real way in front of a judge with
Speaker 4: whom she had carried on an affair a few years earlier.
Speaker 4: I think most reasonable people would agree that one or
Speaker 4: the other should have been recused from this particular scenario
Speaker 4: because even if they were saints, and obviously they weren't.
Speaker 4: Because she's also the same woman from what I've read,
Speaker 4: who threatened a witness who tried to come forward with
Speaker 4: the truth with losing custody of her own children. But yes,
Speaker 4: so now she's moved up the ladder. Seems like all
Speaker 4: the bad guys have won here. Al what the fuck?
Speaker 9: Well, I think Tara Moorehead's currently married to a police officer.
Speaker 9: I think there's some other prosecutors over in the federal
Speaker 9: US Attorney's Office that are married to other police officers.
Speaker 9: So you're not going to expect them to investigate police corruption, are.
Speaker 4: You, well, I guess that would make it tricky, and.
Speaker 9: They're not going to do it, and they don't.
Speaker 3: I mean, there is so much that could be investigated
Speaker 3: that ought to be investigated, And you know, I should
Speaker 3: also point out that sexual misconduct among police officers is
Speaker 3: not unusual in some departments. When you have poor and
Speaker 3: vulnerable people encounter folks with ultimate authority over them, ultimate
Speaker 3: authority in that particular moment, you know, those things can
Speaker 3: happen all too easily, and they do, and they happen frequently.
Speaker 9: You know, when I was an agent, I'm about six
Speaker 9: foot four. I had a gun, a badge and a
Speaker 9: radio and everything. At nighttime when I was on my
Speaker 9: way home or on the weekends, I would not drive
Speaker 9: through Kansas City, Kansas unless I was accompanied by another
Speaker 9: FBI agent.
Speaker 4: So because you thought they might have run you off
Speaker 4: the road or something else.
Speaker 10: They could do anything.
Speaker 9: They could pull me over and not saying they don't
Speaker 9: know who I was, and they could say I pulled
Speaker 9: a gun and they could shoot me. Well, I have
Speaker 9: all that power and authority. What does some little black
Speaker 9: kid on the street have? And I was afraid?
Speaker 4: That's uh. I got to take a minute to process that.
Speaker 4: That's a very powerful statement, and it really does bring
Speaker 4: it into perspective. I hope that in exposing the story
Speaker 4: of Lamont and some of the things that you've shared
Speaker 4: out that people, you know, get their backs up and
Speaker 4: get get angry and get involved. These are just people,
Speaker 4: They're just regular people, and they're they're being so terribly
Speaker 4: abused and victimized by people who are supposed to protect them.
Speaker 4: I don't it makes me sick.
Speaker 3: I should say that the fear and the terror that
Speaker 3: some of the citizens experience cannot be overstated. I mean,
Speaker 3: you have someone with a badge with ultimate and really,
Speaker 3: as I said in that moment, unchecked authority. There's enormous
Speaker 3: fear of the police and enormous, sometimes unmovable resistance to
Speaker 3: getting involved in anything that has to do with the
Speaker 3: criminal justice system. I've spent some years, honestly, just earning
Speaker 3: the trust of some people in the community so that
Speaker 3: they will sit down and speak with me so that
Speaker 3: we can investigate the case. Nobody wants anything to do
Speaker 3: with a case you say, courthouse people walk the other way.
Speaker 3: They don't want anything to do with that. And ultimately
Speaker 3: we have been successful in securing some very good witnesses
Speaker 3: because they did want to help someone they viewed as innocent.
Speaker 3: And you know, I should point out here that all
Speaker 3: of the street talk we have ever heard in the
Speaker 3: community is that Lamon is innocent, the guy who got
Speaker 3: wrongfully convicted. It's like everyone knows. The whole community knows,
Speaker 3: the victims' families know, everyone knows Lamont did not do this.
Speaker 3: Everyone knows.
Speaker 4: I'm sure people are listening, doing and saying, God, this
Speaker 4: is horrible. But what can I do? How could I
Speaker 4: possibly help? So if you have any ideas on that
Speaker 4: to share with the audience, Cheryl, let's start with you
Speaker 4: and then go to al and give you last words.
Speaker 4: Take it away.
Speaker 3: In a general sense, I'd say, support honest policing, be
Speaker 3: grateful for the good and honest officers that you know,
Speaker 3: and when you see wrongdoing done by someone with a badge,
Speaker 3: point it out, don't be afraid to make a complaint
Speaker 3: and hope and pray and I don't know, make phone calls,
Speaker 3: write letters and ask for an investigation of the misconduct
Speaker 3: that has come to the surface in this case.
Speaker 9: Now, the problem is working police corruption. You're not very
Speaker 9: popular and even the work I did here were Kansas City, Kansas.
Speaker 9: You're not very popular. I know, a worried about being popular,
Speaker 9: you know. So it didn't affect me, but there's a
Speaker 9: lot of agents that simply don't want to do it
Speaker 9: because they want to be popular. They want people to
Speaker 9: like them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we need more guys like you out there, because
Speaker 4: otherwise it's it's the system's it feels. I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: so depressed after talking to you and hearing that it's
Speaker 4: actually even worse than I thought it was. It makes
Speaker 4: me insane, but it energizes me. Okay, thanks you guys.
Speaker 4: I'll be there in the courtroom with you in spirit
Speaker 4: on October twelfth.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 10: Thank you.
Speaker 11: You have a prepaid call from a monk and in
Speaker 11: me at Kansas Department of Corrections Lansing Correctional Facility to
Speaker 11: accept this call, press or say five to review. This
Speaker 11: call will be recorded and subject to monitoring at any time.
Speaker 11: You may be speaking.
Speaker 4: Now, we just concluded a disturbing and really terrifying interview
Speaker 4: with al Jenrich, the retired FBI agent and Cheryl Pilot,
Speaker 4: who are doing such incredible work, heroic work on a
Speaker 4: case that keeps me up at night, in the case
Speaker 4: of a man named Lamont McIntyre. And now we have
Speaker 4: on the phone from maximum security prison in Kansas, Lamont himself. Lamont,
Speaker 4: Welcome to the show. Thank you have so, Lamont, I
Speaker 4: want to go back to the beginning, when you grew
Speaker 4: up and how this all started. I've seen photos of
Speaker 4: you with your family. Looked like you had not an
Speaker 4: easy but a happy childhood. Is that fair?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Can you just describe what it was like. I've heard
Speaker 4: you talk about Christmas and stuff.
Speaker 7: Ah, we tighten it. You know. It's like my mother
Speaker 7: was just an only parent in the house and he
Speaker 7: was close my siblings. We did everything together. We stayed
Speaker 7: in one house, you know, we took care of each other.
Speaker 7: So glowing up with me was my family was a
Speaker 7: big game. We didn't really fight about a lot of stuff.
Speaker 7: You know. It was me and my three brothers and
Speaker 7: my sister, my odest sister. My mother worked a lot,
Speaker 7: so my sister kind of watched after us a little
Speaker 7: bit some other family members. I used to go to
Speaker 7: my family member's house, my uncles, and be around them.
Speaker 7: Our mother was at work. I kind of still stayed
Speaker 7: around family outside my home, so real family.
Speaker 4: Oriented and where you grew up. You had no idea
Speaker 4: at this time that the police force was really as
Speaker 4: corrupt as anyone could possibly imagine until this terrible incident occurred.
Speaker 4: And I want to go back to that. What happened.
Speaker 4: You were a seventeen year old kid going along with
Speaker 4: your life, trying to make it in a difficult place,
Speaker 4: and then one day out of the blue, you get
Speaker 4: arrested and don't even know what's going on or what happened.
Speaker 7: Uh, that's exactly what happened. And I was it was
Speaker 7: a typical day. It was like a Friday, typical day.
Speaker 7: I was enrolled in a downity college program where there's
Speaker 7: alternative school where they would help you get your high
Speaker 7: school the phone and then they'll get you in college.
Speaker 7: So it was like a little degree program I was
Speaker 7: a part of, and it was just a Friday. I
Speaker 7: wouldn't panish this in the time, or I wasn't looking
Speaker 7: at what I was doing. I wasn't thinking about it
Speaker 7: because it's a typical day. And I get a car
Speaker 7: phone call saying the police is over my grandmother's house
Speaker 7: looking for me. Call my mother. We go to the
Speaker 7: police station, and they started talking about two murders. You
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying. They would ask me questions about
Speaker 7: an event that happened that day, and I had no
Speaker 7: answers for him because I didn't know they were saying
Speaker 7: or what they were talking about. So from that moment,
Speaker 7: I was arrested, charged, and eventually convicted of two murders
Speaker 7: that I had nothing to do with about.
Speaker 4: And we know now that they were deliberately targeting you
Speaker 4: because of this particular police officer who was up to
Speaker 4: all kinds of criminal activity himself. And that's the irony
Speaker 4: of this is that he belongs in jail. And I'm
Speaker 4: hoping that by the end of this that's exactly what's
Speaker 4: going to happen. But the idea that this system, this
Speaker 4: so called justice system, had made a decision that you
Speaker 4: were going to be their guy. There was this double murder, right,
Speaker 4: two guys sitting in a car. They were involved in
Speaker 4: drug activity, They were dealers. We now know also that
Speaker 4: one of them had been beaten by the guys he
Speaker 4: was working for in the drug business. Right, he was
Speaker 4: working as a doorman in a crack then, and he
Speaker 4: had feared for his life, And in fact, he had
Speaker 4: good reason to because I guess he from what I've learned,
Speaker 4: he has been he had been stealing from them, So
Speaker 4: that every reason to know that this was a drug hit.
Speaker 4: And you weren't involved in that gang or that business.
Speaker 4: Did you know these guys.
Speaker 7: I didn't know the witnesses, I didn't know the victims,
Speaker 7: and I wasn't connected to it at all. That's why
Speaker 7: so it so hard for me to understand how somebody
Speaker 7: that could happen, because and I was. I was forefront,
Speaker 7: I was forward about everything. I didn't tried to hide
Speaker 7: nothing I was. I was open to what they wanted
Speaker 7: to ask me about or whatever, because I knew that
Speaker 7: what they were talking about at that time, I had
Speaker 7: nothing to do with it, and I wasn't involved. Was
Speaker 7: I responsible for the death of those men. So I
Speaker 7: still don't know to this day, like what happened, like
Speaker 7: or how I became the main suspect. I don't know
Speaker 7: how that happened. Still to this day, I don't know
Speaker 7: what the police officer's motive was to implement me or
Speaker 7: to plan tell me, or they don't know that this day.
Speaker 4: What happened, Well, it does seem like now with everything
Speaker 4: we've learned, that the officer involved, the first one who
Speaker 4: arrived on the scene was an officer named Glubski, and
Speaker 4: he had it out for you because of a family situation, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, he is a white guy who had a
Speaker 4: proclivity for women of color and when he didn't get
Speaker 4: his way, he would exact revenge. And so what it
Speaker 4: seems like is that in this particular case, he targeted
Speaker 4: you because your mom wasn't having any part of that.
Speaker 4: And that's what makes this particularly sinister and sick. You
Speaker 4: end up going to trial, and I find it interesting,
Speaker 4: among all the other things in your case, that they
Speaker 4: offered you a plea bargain, right, and you didn't take it.
Speaker 7: A woman in the rest in the plea bargain, I
Speaker 7: don't know. I don't even know I was there. So
Speaker 7: it's like they telling me this stuff. They say something happened.
Speaker 7: I'm sitting there and I'm listening. They keep saying things
Speaker 7: to me, but I can't understand how I'm sitting in
Speaker 7: that situation and I don't know nothing about the crime itself,
Speaker 7: so plea bar goes far from my mom. I was
Speaker 7: thinking about the plee barley.
Speaker 4: And why I find that and why I brought that up, Lamont,
Speaker 4: And I've seen the mugshot picture of you, and it
Speaker 4: really hurt my heart because I could see in your
Speaker 4: face just how confused you were and scared of a
Speaker 4: situation that you couldn't possibly imagine what's happening at that time.
Speaker 4: I also would think that if you were guilty and
Speaker 4: they're offering you a deal, and you know your chances
Speaker 4: of winning in the court are going to be low
Speaker 4: because they have all these cops and everybody else that's
Speaker 4: going to testify this, you would have taken the plea bargain.
Speaker 4: Anybody with their right mind would take a plea bargain.
Speaker 4: You're not crazy, are you. I'm not right, you don't
Speaker 4: sound you don't sound crazy at all. So in the
Speaker 4: situation like this, I mean, we have in this country
Speaker 4: over ninety percent and other cases end up in plea bargains.
Speaker 4: So had you been guilty, that would have been a
Speaker 4: very logical thing to do. But as an innocent person
Speaker 4: and probably somebody who still trusted in the system. You
Speaker 4: went forward with your right to a trial. And that's
Speaker 4: where things get really squirrely too, because you were represented
Speaker 4: by a guy who they knew your court appointed lawyer.
Speaker 4: They knew this guy was incompetent because he had already
Speaker 4: been disciplined for three previous cases that he had completely botched.
Speaker 4: It almost sounds like they did it on purpose. They
Speaker 4: assigned a guy who didn't go and interview witnesses, who
Speaker 4: really didn't do anything he was supposed to do. And
Speaker 4: what was that like? Were you aware at that time
Speaker 4: that this guy wasn't I mean, I don't even know
Speaker 4: if it was really on your side, but I mean,
Speaker 4: as you're watching these proceedings, what were you thinking?
Speaker 7: Well, I thought he was. He presented himself like a lawyer.
Speaker 7: He presented himself like a person in there o Moby
Speaker 7: had to take care of this business, and he seeing
Speaker 7: real professional at first. So I didn't know what to
Speaker 7: expect because I've never been in that situation before anyway,
Speaker 7: So his first impression was for me, it was a
Speaker 7: good impression because I didn't know what a lawyer was
Speaker 7: supposed to do or I was so ignorant to the
Speaker 7: law and how things worked. I just believed in the
Speaker 7: justice system at that time. I really did. I thought
Speaker 7: there was no possible way, being an innocent person or
Speaker 7: person that has nothing to do with that crime, that
Speaker 7: I would be found guilty. So I didn't really pay
Speaker 7: too much attention to the credibility of this lawyer. It
Speaker 7: didn't down on me that I would be found guilty
Speaker 7: of the crime that I had nothing to do with.
Speaker 7: So I didn't really think about it in those times.
Speaker 7: I was just thinking, you can give me any lawyer,
Speaker 7: anybody from anywhere, and it'd be okay because once they
Speaker 7: realized they had the wrong person to get ironed out
Speaker 7: in trial. That's what I was thinking. But I didn't
Speaker 7: plan all. I didn't think that people would get on
Speaker 7: the stand and lie. They was gonna fabricate, and I
Speaker 7: didn't think that was gonna happen. I had no idea
Speaker 7: that they had already made it in their mind that
Speaker 7: I was going to be escaped goal for this particular crime,
Speaker 7: so ably being needed at a law have they worked
Speaker 7: in the justice system. I believe in the justice system
Speaker 7: at that time, I really did.
Speaker 4: I think all of us do when we're kids, especially
Speaker 4: brought up in a good home like you were. You
Speaker 4: brought up to believe that people are good and that
Speaker 4: the system is going to work for you. And then
Speaker 4: you had a lawyer who, had he been competent, I
Speaker 4: still think would have won your case in spite of
Speaker 4: all this, because of the simple fact that it was
Speaker 4: an easy case. The witnesses were not credible at all.
Speaker 4: We now know that they also withheld exculpatory evidence, and
Speaker 4: I'm sure that's going to come to light next month
Speaker 4: when you have your hearing. So you really didn't have
Speaker 4: a fair chance, especially not with a lawyer who was incompetent.
Speaker 4: And ultimately, let's not forget that this particular lawyer was
Speaker 4: disbarred not too long after your trial. And again, for
Speaker 4: the listeners out there, think about that, this is a
Speaker 4: guy who had been disciplined in numerous cases prior to
Speaker 4: Lamont's and then ultimately gets disbarred when the extent of
Speaker 4: his gross incompetence is brought to the Supreme Court of
Speaker 4: Kansas the attention of the Supreme Court, and then he
Speaker 4: voluntarily gave up his license to practice law. And that
Speaker 4: wasn't the end of the nightmare. We now know too
Speaker 4: that your appellate lawyer was disbarred. I mean, you can't
Speaker 4: even make this stuff up. So what happened, Like now
Speaker 4: you're in the courtroom, the jury goes out, the arguments
Speaker 4: have been made. You saw these witnesses get up and lie.
Speaker 4: You saw these police officers get up and lie. Your
Speaker 4: defense made whatever arguments they made. Did you believe that
Speaker 4: they would come back and declare you innocent?
Speaker 7: I did. I did being I did. I just didn't
Speaker 7: know that. I didn't know that people can they the
Speaker 7: sejury thing like the jury selection and our course ran
Speaker 7: and I had no idea that this is how the
Speaker 7: system worked. I didn't know that they found me guilty
Speaker 7: based on false evidence or the kind of evidence that
Speaker 7: was presented by a certain district attorney. So basically, what
Speaker 7: she did was set the stage to make it seem
Speaker 7: as if I was guilty and I did something long
Speaker 7: and I had a reason for doing this. So the
Speaker 7: jury heard evidence it didn't really exist. They heard stuff
Speaker 7: about me that wasn't even about Lama Mcatide, and she
Speaker 7: just kind of made stuff up. They told his story
Speaker 7: and the jury believed it. But at the time before
Speaker 7: they came back with a guilty verdict. I still didn't
Speaker 7: think I'll be found guilty because the whole time I'm
Speaker 7: sitting there and the whole time I'm going through the
Speaker 7: process of getting to trial, I still had no knowledge
Speaker 7: of the actual crimes. So I'm thinking, with my young
Speaker 7: mind being naive, that there's no way the jury can
Speaker 7: find me guilty when I'm really not guilty, when I
Speaker 7: had nothing to do with it. I'm not tied to
Speaker 7: it at all. The witnesses, the victims, I'm not tied
Speaker 7: to it. I wasn't in the area when it happened,
Speaker 7: so I'm thinking it it gets dyed out the jury
Speaker 7: have come back. I didn't think I was ever gonna
Speaker 7: be found guilty. I didn't think that I was. It
Speaker 7: was shocking when they came back with a guilty verdict.
Speaker 7: I was I was heart broken.
Speaker 4: And can you talk about that that moment, which is
Speaker 4: the most devastating moment of your life.
Speaker 7: When they came in, I noticed that those jury no
Speaker 7: one looked me in my face, no one looked looked up.
Speaker 7: Everyone came in looking down at the floor. So I
Speaker 7: kind of had an eerie feeling, but I still had
Speaker 7: hope that it would work out in the right way.
Speaker 7: So when they read the verdict and they said guilty,
Speaker 7: it's like I seen my whole life flash before me
Speaker 7: and I and for that moment, I froze and I
Speaker 7: and I was sitting there and I stood up, and
Speaker 7: I just remember saying something. I was screaming something, you know,
Speaker 7: to the effects of I'm not guilty, and you got
Speaker 7: the wrong person whatever. And I felt someone hold me
Speaker 7: or grab me from behind, and I was in shot,
Speaker 7: so I didn't really I was like a lost moment.
Speaker 7: But I turned around. I see my mother hold me, screaming,
Speaker 7: crying like, don't take my baby away from me, don't
Speaker 7: take my baby. And I'm looking at her and I
Speaker 7: realized that this is a serious situation. Now I'm but
Speaker 7: it still didn't feel real. It was my life in
Speaker 7: my situation, but it didn't feel like my life or
Speaker 7: my situation. I felt like I was outside of myself
Speaker 7: looking at this event happened and I couldn't stop it.
Speaker 7: So I was in shot. That shot lasted for a
Speaker 7: few years after that. I was in shot. I just
Speaker 7: couldn't There was nothing inside of me or my intellect
Speaker 7: or my experiences in life that prepared me for that moment.
Speaker 7: It was just something I just couldn't deal with. I
Speaker 7: just didn't know how to deal with that. So emotionally,
Speaker 7: I was just distract I was hurt, I was I
Speaker 7: was frustrated, I was confused. I just it was just
Speaker 7: a horrible moment.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: And when you talk about your whole life flashing in
Speaker 4: front of you as a seventeen year old, did you
Speaker 4: have plans, did you have a career in mind? What
Speaker 4: was the outlook for the future where you're still just
Speaker 4: trying to figure it out?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was things I wanted to do. It was
Speaker 7: just I was misguided a lot, and I was just
Speaker 7: in a place where everybody around me was either dying
Speaker 7: or going to jail or I was just in the
Speaker 7: kind of environment that didn't produce a lot of hope
Speaker 7: or didn't have I didn't have a lot of people
Speaker 7: to look up to or emulate, nothing like that. But
Speaker 7: I did enjoy taking care of my family. So my
Speaker 7: life was just basically about trying to take care of
Speaker 7: my family the best way I knew how, or to
Speaker 7: look out for my loved ones. You know, I had
Speaker 7: skills and things I could do, like I was a barber,
Speaker 7: I was coherisons I was twelve or you know, I
Speaker 7: was a comedian. You know, I had these in the
Speaker 7: back of my mind. I wanted to be a comedian,
Speaker 7: and I had things I wanted to do. I just
Speaker 7: didn't know how to get to where I wanted to be.
Speaker 7: But I still didn't think that my life was of
Speaker 7: being in prison or going to jail or being in
Speaker 7: this kind of situation. And I wanted a life. I
Speaker 7: didn't know how to obtain the kind of life that
Speaker 7: I wanted.
Speaker 4: So now hold on. Now you're convicted of a double
Speaker 4: murder and sense to life in prison? Where did they take.
Speaker 7: You to the process of life? From the funding and evicted?
Speaker 7: Then the county about too much? Then you go to
Speaker 7: Fennister now in Juanna County. They gave me two life
Speaker 7: sentences in toront and second and after that they send
Speaker 7: me to a content center which we call hardy you
Speaker 7: when they see you to determine what classification it would be,
Speaker 7: what custody will be in. I was the sided backs custody.
Speaker 7: So from there they give me to prison. They've been
Speaker 7: in prison at all? Yeah, I was in Hudson. That's
Speaker 7: a that's a prison in Kansas. They called Lady in
Speaker 7: the School one of those tough prisons. You know what, people,
Speaker 7: you know, it's a prison. It's like the work idea,
Speaker 7: you have a prison? Is that more? It's the world
Speaker 7: and at all this dark negative and feel it's hopelessness,
Speaker 7: it's all those stays negativity.
Speaker 4: I mean, you paint a picture that this really is. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't even know what to say to that. It
Speaker 4: just sounds absolutely terrifying and horrible, especially for somebody so
Speaker 4: young as you prefer, anybody, especially an innocent person. And
Speaker 4: then I also want to talk about a very unique
Speaker 4: aspect of your case, which is the fact that it's
Speaker 4: one of the few cases I've ever seen where the
Speaker 4: victim's family has been saying for almost the entire time
Speaker 4: you've been locked up that you are not the guy, right.
Speaker 4: That is not something that we see in this business.
Speaker 4: And I think it's a very brave thing that they've done,
Speaker 4: that they've stood up for you steadfastly from the beginning.
Speaker 4: Have they been in touch with you? Have you spoken
Speaker 4: to them?
Speaker 8: Nah?
Speaker 7: They spoke to my legal team, and they spoke to
Speaker 7: the people who's putting together my defense and stuff. Like that,
Speaker 7: but not personally. I haven't, you know, it's something what
Speaker 7: I read in the newspapers or send the news or
Speaker 7: something like that. But no, I never spoke to nobody
Speaker 7: like that. They tell me what they tell me. I'm
Speaker 7: always getting a word on what's being said or how
Speaker 7: to fetch this field to pitch the family feel so
Speaker 7: I'm aware.
Speaker 4: I also wanted to ask, what is a typical day
Speaker 4: like for you on the inside? How do you get
Speaker 4: through it? What's the schedule a typical day?
Speaker 7: Typical day is re readjusted. It's like from one day
Speaker 7: to the next is finding a way to get by
Speaker 7: for one day, learn something from my days, and then
Speaker 7: I just try to it just sucks. I gotta repeat it.
Speaker 7: Like if I have a bad day or I'm frustrated
Speaker 7: for one day, I go to sleep, wake up to
Speaker 7: repeat this day again. So I try to find the
Speaker 7: best I can. I get the best I can out
Speaker 7: of a day, because waking up and repeat it is
Speaker 7: the anxiety that's where all that the worst stuff is.
Speaker 7: Knowing that for the last twenty three years and two
Speaker 7: hundred something months and eleven hundred weeks in eight thousand days,
Speaker 7: it's the same thing. It never changes. So I devote
Speaker 7: my time to reading and studying and write. I write
Speaker 7: music and write poetry. I try to keep my mind
Speaker 7: free as possible. I try to stay out of prison mentally.
Speaker 7: I try not to. I'm not into prison politics. I'm
Speaker 7: not in prison mentally, but I'm here. I have to
Speaker 7: be in my body here, but I try to keep
Speaker 7: my mind far from as place as I can. So
Speaker 7: it's just a bunch of moments of readjusting every day,
Speaker 7: Like today it's gonna be different than tomorrow because I
Speaker 7: feel there whether I have to readjust readjust you know,
Speaker 7: And like I said, I gotta I got a support team,
Speaker 7: a system of people that's emplaced it always there for me.
Speaker 7: That's all support me. And I have a lot of
Speaker 7: love people that love me and care about me. So
Speaker 7: I focused on that. That's why my attention goes so Finally,
Speaker 7: if it's really it's bad. It used to be a
Speaker 7: lot worse than it is. Now I'm starting to see
Speaker 7: I'm coming alive now because I can see a light
Speaker 7: and then it just toddle. I've been there for so long,
Speaker 7: so I'm better now. But yeah, it wasn't so good before.
Speaker 7: It's better now. But it was always said to wake
Speaker 7: up and have to repeat this same cycle over and
Speaker 7: over again. That stuff is another driving person crazy.
Speaker 4: How in the world can somebody in your situation just
Speaker 4: not give up? You sound like an incredible, incredible person.
Speaker 7: I got a credit that the God and my relationship
Speaker 7: with God always managed to place good people in my life. Man,
Speaker 7: I've had a support system. Follow the moments is a
Speaker 7: lot of moments. While I feel like it, what's the point,
Speaker 7: you know, to keep going to wake up every day
Speaker 7: to have to deal with the exact same nightmare kind
Speaker 7: to SKay from the night before. But I had my mother,
Speaker 7: like she never gave up on me from day one.
Speaker 7: Like when the worst moments of my life, you know,
Speaker 7: I'm felt like I just couldn't do it no more,
Speaker 7: feel like I couldn't take another step, she would show up.
Speaker 7: And when she would grab me and hold me and
Speaker 7: look me my faith and tell me this is not
Speaker 7: my life I'm passing through, this is not my destination.
Speaker 7: And so I had a lot of support my family,
Speaker 7: and I gave my life to God and I pray
Speaker 7: a lot, I meditated a lot. So initially I was
Speaker 7: kind of in this dark place where I was just
Speaker 7: so hurt and sad and depressed. So I kept people
Speaker 7: kept coming to my life. There was like becons of
Speaker 7: light and hope for me. And I thank God for
Speaker 7: all those people came into my life and supported me.
Speaker 7: They sure that I always had something to look forward to,
Speaker 7: because this is a dark place. It's a dark situation
Speaker 7: where if you don't have enough. For me, it was
Speaker 7: just support. I have families important. Then years later Sheryl
Speaker 7: and Centurion Ministries and Innocent Projects, they kept start coming
Speaker 7: into my life. They breathe life into me like my
Speaker 7: second win. And I'm grateful for those people, everybody who
Speaker 7: supported me and everybody who put forth effort go out
Speaker 7: every day and do something that helped me get my
Speaker 7: life back. I'm very grateful for those people.
Speaker 4: Well that's I mean, that says it all. I mean,
Speaker 4: it says so much about your your character that I
Speaker 4: really I'm having trouble composing the right words to say.
Speaker 4: But I am glad that you brought up a number
Speaker 4: of things. Laman. Can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 4: the Centurion Ministries and their role as well as the
Speaker 4: role that the Innocence Project and which Innocence Project it
Speaker 4: was that's been able to help to get this case
Speaker 4: to the point it is now where we could actually
Speaker 4: see light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 7: Okay, that was a other process in itself. Like I
Speaker 7: had written so many different innocent projects and different people,
Speaker 7: the President of the United States, it's just playing at
Speaker 7: the time I was writing, even wrote Open, I was
Speaker 7: writing now kind of people trying to get some type
Speaker 7: of help or some type of support. And after like
Speaker 7: the fiftieth sixtieth letter, I got a response back from
Speaker 7: the Centurion Ministries in New Jersey in print in New Jersey,
Speaker 7: and that was in the first time they responded to me.
Speaker 7: It was in ninety six, ninety seven, but they told
Speaker 7: me that my case had to be dead in the water,
Speaker 7: so it was kind of early in my pill process.
Speaker 7: So they said they weren't able to help me at
Speaker 7: that time. So I've ben teagued with my pill process.
Speaker 7: So two thousand and one I contacted him again and
Speaker 7: they started corresponding with me. Now from two thousand and one,
Speaker 7: they kept writing me, responding and saying they're not taking
Speaker 7: my case. They just looking at it to see if
Speaker 7: it has any mariors, to see if it's a case
Speaker 7: they can take and possibly win. So from two thousand
Speaker 7: and one to two thousand and nine, I just corresponded
Speaker 7: with them. They never promised to take my case. They
Speaker 7: never said they was going to commit any time or
Speaker 7: resources to my case. We just corresponded for years. For
Speaker 7: eight years, there was a process of just corresponding and
Speaker 7: being two thousand and nine, Jim mcclousey came down from
Speaker 7: New Jersey said when me and my mother don't visit
Speaker 7: and said, congratulations, you know we're taking your case and
Speaker 7: we're gonna get you out of there now. Two thousand
Speaker 7: and nine.
Speaker 4: And we know that the wheels of justice, when they're
Speaker 4: moving in the wrong direction, they moved very quickly, but
Speaker 4: when we're moving back in the right direction, they move
Speaker 4: very slowly. But nonetheless, it does seem like there's a
Speaker 4: lot of very positive momentum right now. And what about
Speaker 4: the Innocence Project, Lamona, Which innocence project was it that
Speaker 4: you wrote to? Because there are insist projects all over
Speaker 4: the country.
Speaker 7: All right, answered projects in New York, Georgia, California, Topeka.
Speaker 7: I mean, there was so many different I was getting addresses,
Speaker 7: like my mother was always find an address and something somewhere,
Speaker 7: so I'll end up just send them to me in
Speaker 7: our write them. I was writing all over the place,
Speaker 7: I mean any place I could Kause School of Law,
Speaker 7: different wast Burn School of Law, just different places, like
Speaker 7: everywhere anywhere I could if I knew there was an
Speaker 7: innocent project around, I'm pretty sure. I got in contact
Speaker 7: with them and most of them responded a by saying
Speaker 7: that something they could do. Some never responded, but sit
Speaker 7: through our ministries and pressing New Jersey they responded. You know,
Speaker 7: I responded, I've been grateful ever since.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's projects around the country. They're all
Speaker 4: overloaded and overworked and overburned, and it's important for people
Speaker 4: to give money to them and also to Centurion mindiustries
Speaker 4: to be able to continue this work. The Centurion Ministries
Speaker 4: really has done, from what I can tell, great work
Speaker 4: on your case ever since they got involved, and now
Speaker 4: getting it again to the point where you're going to
Speaker 4: get your day in court, and I think hopefully this
Speaker 4: time you're going to get a fair trial with more
Speaker 4: than competent attorneys, with great attorneys, and the truth will
Speaker 4: come out if you're even allow yourself, if you allow
Speaker 4: your mind to go there. What are you dreaming about
Speaker 4: when you get out, because I'm convinced you are going
Speaker 4: to come home and I'm gonna be there fighting right
Speaker 4: alongside with everybody else. What's the first thing you want
Speaker 4: to do? And then how do you see the future?
Speaker 7: First day, I'm gonna do eat something. I'm gonna go
Speaker 7: eat some breakfast or something. I'm home. You'll stay home
Speaker 7: right here, So I'm gonna eat something. That's what I
Speaker 7: fantasized about. Mostly, I want to eat something that there
Speaker 7: From there, I want to have a couple of impact
Speaker 7: or effect on young people making poor decisions that was
Speaker 7: eventually land them in a situation like this, you know.
Speaker 7: So I want to just raise any kind of awareness
Speaker 7: I can about decision making, because, you know, had I
Speaker 7: been told how to make better decisions myself, I think
Speaker 7: even though I was I to the law and this
Speaker 7: is something that had nothing to do with me, and
Speaker 7: that I still could have been making better decisions for
Speaker 7: myself before this stuff even came about. So I didn't
Speaker 7: want to be able to be there for young people
Speaker 7: as much as I can. So I can I can
Speaker 7: help them understand that even though you don't do something wrong.
Speaker 7: Even though you don't commit a crime, you can be
Speaker 7: you still got to be accountable, and you still got
Speaker 7: to be a mindful of the fact that you're out
Speaker 7: there floating around and you can easily be put in
Speaker 7: a situation like that and if you're not being productive
Speaker 7: and doing something that's productive out there in life. So
Speaker 7: I don't want to be able to reach the young
Speaker 7: people as much as I can, and now that this
Speaker 7: that to be young just anybody that doesn't want to
Speaker 7: be able to share my experience and hopefully it will
Speaker 7: help out in any kind of way.
Speaker 4: You know, well, I'm gonna say this, I'm sure that
Speaker 4: you will do that, and then you're going to have
Speaker 4: a very positive impact on a lot of people because
Speaker 4: you have a very rare combination of intelligence and manner
Speaker 4: that is so positive and strong but still gentle that
Speaker 4: I believe that you'll be able to affect a lot
Speaker 4: of a lot of young people and I'm looking forward
Speaker 4: to watching you do that. There's one other thing I
Speaker 4: wanted to raise. I'm always amazed when I speak to
Speaker 4: someone in your situation, and especially so with you, that
Speaker 4: you don't seem to be bitter after everything that's happened.
Speaker 4: And I know you talked about your faith and family
Speaker 4: and the strength that you get from them, But how
Speaker 4: is it possible that someone can go through this most
Speaker 4: unimaginable nightmare still be in it, and yet be as
Speaker 4: positive and strong as you are now?
Speaker 7: Well, I have my moments with anger, I have my
Speaker 7: moments with I feel frustrated, But I have my moments
Speaker 7: with anger. But you've always like taking poison helping someone
Speaker 7: else die from me. I was the only one affected
Speaker 7: about me being angry. No one else seemed to notice
Speaker 7: a pay attention to me being angry, So I was
Speaker 7: just learning experience like being angry doesn't help me. So
Speaker 7: I just wanted to help myself because I knew, I
Speaker 7: always knew I was gonna be here forever. I knew
Speaker 7: that eventually the truth was surface and I would have
Speaker 7: a life outside of the wall. So I devoted a
Speaker 7: lot of time and energy towards helping myself and not
Speaker 7: hurt myself. So being angry was something that was a
Speaker 7: hindrance to me, not a benefit. So I just stood
Speaker 7: firm on what I believe. That's my life with God,
Speaker 7: and I try to say positive because this place is
Speaker 7: you got to keep up with yourself and take care
Speaker 7: of yourself, and anger and stress and all those things
Speaker 7: is just shorten your life span. And I got the
Speaker 7: life to live. So I just choose. I choose to
Speaker 7: be positive. I choose to not be angry and allow
Speaker 7: anger to kill me. I don't want to die in
Speaker 7: this place, and I don't want to have a short life.
Speaker 7: So I stick farm to what I believe in. And
Speaker 7: I believe in my faithor and I believe in meditation,
Speaker 7: I believe in exercise. I believe in taking care of
Speaker 7: my mom, body and soul. And that's another vote my
Speaker 7: time too.
Speaker 4: Wow. I don't know what else to say. I know
Speaker 4: that people are probably listening to this. I'm feeling the
Speaker 4: same way I'm feeling that they want to do anything
Speaker 4: they can to help. Do you want people to write?
Speaker 7: Yeah, that'd be.
Speaker 4: Fine, all right? So yeah, do you have the prison
Speaker 4: I D number in the address to write to?
Speaker 7: Yeah? Okay, that's a LAMA back into number six oh
Speaker 7: five five a l C l PO box two Lance
Speaker 7: and cans six six four to three.
Speaker 4: Okay, there it is, And hopefully people had a chance
Speaker 4: to write it down and we'll be able to reach
Speaker 4: out and I know hopefully we'll have at least a
Speaker 4: couple of people listening to the show, maybe even in
Speaker 4: a position to do something to help, aside from offer
Speaker 4: their their support, their prayers, whatever it may be. The
Speaker 4: mon I'm I'm just gonna turn it over to you
Speaker 4: and say is your microphone? What do you want to
Speaker 4: share with the audience.
Speaker 7: Well, these kind of cases having more than they should,
Speaker 7: you know. So it's like a I always see on
Speaker 7: TV or Dayline twenty twenty each year and it said
Speaker 7: man so many years in prison, then he get exonerated,
Speaker 7: and you see this happen time and time again. But
Speaker 7: what you never ever see or hear or hear about
Speaker 7: is how much that's the impact of affected the family.
Speaker 7: For those people like I had a close knit family.
Speaker 7: We was close and it was a thing. It's just
Speaker 7: not just like me being affected by an invented happened
Speaker 7: in my life. It affects everyone that's tied to me,
Speaker 7: loved me, or care about me, and it affected my
Speaker 7: family in a way that it's like it hurts me
Speaker 7: to see how much how much it affected not only
Speaker 7: me but my family. And it's difficult because if a
Speaker 7: man has to go through a certain thing by himself.
Speaker 7: That's his life, that's his path and life. He gotta
Speaker 7: go through that. I had to do what I have
Speaker 7: to do no matter what. But when you see somebody
Speaker 7: you care about being affected by what you have to
Speaker 7: do or what you have to endure a different kind
Speaker 7: of feeling. And it's like people don't really pay attentions
Speaker 7: that I know about that, Like when district attorneys of
Speaker 7: being dishonest when they're trying to get convictions and all that,
Speaker 7: I don't think they take that consideration how many people
Speaker 7: they are affected by just not going by the law,
Speaker 7: just not being truthful about certain things. It's not just me,
Speaker 7: whatever issue personal issues they may had about with me.
Speaker 7: My family's affected by that. My brothers, my brother's kids
Speaker 7: when all this happened, and they feel like they lost
Speaker 7: a mother because my mother devoted so much time for
Speaker 7: trying to get me back out of the system that
Speaker 7: they felt like they were neglected. So they were affected
Speaker 7: by that. My older sister was affected, my brother was affected.
Speaker 7: I mean everybody was affected. And when you try to
Speaker 7: hold onto something good, even when you try to get
Speaker 7: something good this kind of situation, it's still nothing good
Speaker 7: come from me, it's just always bad. It's always negative.
Speaker 7: Talent is always hurdles, it's always something. But for the
Speaker 7: person that's in the middle of it, that's just my experience.
Speaker 7: But on the outside of it, that's something that people
Speaker 7: don't ever get a chance to see. That's just a
Speaker 7: harsh or harsh reality. But the person that lives based
Speaker 7: on someone else being in competence when all the stuff
Speaker 7: basically could have been avoided by someone that's doing their job.
Speaker 7: But the job people was employed them to do, you know.
Speaker 7: So I think people should understand that and know that
Speaker 7: there's a lot of people to be affected by something
Speaker 7: like that. I think a lot of pists should be
Speaker 7: brought to this moment and this kind of situation, so
Speaker 7: a lot of people can if you ever find another
Speaker 7: person that situation, it can be more mindful of that.
Speaker 7: It's not to help in a different kind of way.
Speaker 7: They could because it's not just about me, it's somebody
Speaker 7: everybody who care about me too.
Speaker 4: It does have a ripple effect on the whole community.
Speaker 4: All I can do is tell you that you have
Speaker 4: you have all mine I respect and support, and I
Speaker 4: have a saying lamont you know I've seen too many
Speaker 4: miracles to stop believing in miracles. So I'm excited to
Speaker 4: watch you be the next one or one of the
Speaker 4: next ones, and we'll never stop fighting for you and
Speaker 4: for other people in your situation.
Speaker 11: One minute remaining.
Speaker 4: I'm looking forward to a positive outcome and to getting
Speaker 4: to know you on the outside and in the meantime.
Speaker 4: I just all I can say is thank you for
Speaker 4: being on wrongful conviction with me and sharing your thoughts
Speaker 4: and strength and wisdom.
Speaker 7: I appreciate it, Manik for the time they're having me.
Speaker 7: All appreciate it.
Speaker 4: We'll talk again soon. I'll see you when you get out,
Speaker 4: all right, all right, man, thanks, don't forget to give
Speaker 4: us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it
Speaker 4: really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Enesis Project,
Speaker 4: and I really hope you'll join me supporting this very
Speaker 4: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 4: to Innocentsproject dot org to learn how to donate and
Speaker 4: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 4: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
Speaker 4: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph be Sure
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Speaker 4: is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association
Speaker 4: with Signal Company Number one