Speaker 1: Back in the nineties, the crime and murder rate in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia was at its peak.
Speaker 2: There were more than five hundred.
Speaker 1: Murders in nineteen ninety and the rate remained above four
Speaker 1: hundred through nineteen ninety seven. A lot of this crime
Speaker 1: happened in North Philadelphia, in areas notorious for sex work
Speaker 1: and were open air drug markets thrived. I've reported on
Speaker 1: and spoken to people who lived and grew up in
Speaker 1: the area for years, people who've been punished by a
Speaker 1: system hell bent on jailing its way out of social
Speaker 1: problems like poverty, addiction, and mental health. Most of these
Speaker 1: people were young men and boys of color, considered quote
Speaker 1: super predators by politicians of the time like Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: They are not just gangs of kids anymore.
Speaker 3: They are often the kinds of kids that are called
Speaker 3: super predators.
Speaker 2: No conscience, no empathy.
Speaker 3: Without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscience developing.
Speaker 1: One of those boys was David Luis Suave Gonzalez. Suave
Speaker 1: grew up in prison, but he was given a chance
Speaker 1: to prove he was more than the mistake that landed
Speaker 1: him behind bars. While doing time, Suave earned degrees and
Speaker 1: created enrichment programs aimed at things like helping men behind
Speaker 1: bars with kids become better fathers. Throughout his years of mentorship,
Speaker 1: Save met a young man named Eddie Ramirez, also from
Speaker 1: North Philadelphia.
Speaker 4: I remember when he came to the prison. He came
Speaker 4: looking for me because he had heard of me in
Speaker 4: another prison. I took him under the way, and you know,
Speaker 4: I became his mentor and he became out of the.
Speaker 1: Brother Swave told me that during the decades he'd spent
Speaker 1: in prison meeting people from all walks of life, Eddie
Speaker 1: Ramirez stuck out.
Speaker 5: He started talking to me about all I'm innocent, and
Speaker 5: I was like, okay, everybody in prison is innocent, you know,
Speaker 5: because that's something we don't discuss in the prison system.
Speaker 4: But what I noticed was that Eddie really lived like
Speaker 4: an innocent person in prison, and he had to. He
Speaker 4: only told me one time. He never ran around saying
Speaker 4: to me, convincing me or nothing. He'd just said, I'm innocent,
Speaker 4: but I gotta do what I got to do to
Speaker 4: somebody here and to get out.
Speaker 1: Before life in prison, Eddie was a hyper little kid,
Speaker 1: doing the things kids in cities do.
Speaker 6: I just wanted to just be happy. I just want
Speaker 6: to have a comfortable life, celebrating it with family and friends.
Speaker 2: What would that look like at.
Speaker 6: The time, It probably would have been like smoking weed,
Speaker 6: watching rap videos, skateboarding. Yeah, like that. And I'm trying
Speaker 6: to think how much of that has changed last thirty years.
Speaker 2: Eddie was fortunate unlike Suave.
Speaker 1: He grew up in a stable home with both parents, siblings,
Speaker 1: and love. In fact, Eddie's father was a police officer
Speaker 1: with the Philadelphia Police, and Eddie grew up respecting the law.
Speaker 6: I just never thought of the police as being corrupt.
Speaker 2: Do you think they were corrupt in your case?
Speaker 6: I mean I ended up in prison for something I
Speaker 6: didn't do.
Speaker 1: From Lava for Good, this is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 6: My name is Eddie Ramirez, and I was in prison
Speaker 6: for twenty seven and a half years for something I
Speaker 6: didn't do.
Speaker 2: Today Eddie Ramirez.
Speaker 1: Eddie was born on November tenth, nineteen seventy six, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: He's one of three kids.
Speaker 6: I have two older sisters who were both my protectors
Speaker 6: and my bullies, and I love them.
Speaker 2: What was it like being the little brother to two
Speaker 2: older sisters?
Speaker 6: Do you have Eddie younger siblings, you should ask them
Speaker 6: see what they see about that.
Speaker 1: So he said you guys were his protectors, but also
Speaker 1: his bullies.
Speaker 2: What does he mean by that.
Speaker 7: Well, he'll have the actually clear which one was the
Speaker 7: actual bully.
Speaker 6: I'm not going to say anything.
Speaker 8: Other than that.
Speaker 2: This is Emily, Eddie's sister.
Speaker 7: He's five years younger than me. So imagine I was
Speaker 7: five years old when this little baby boy comes to
Speaker 7: the world, and my sister's only like a year and
Speaker 7: a half older than me.
Speaker 8: So he was just, you know, the little boy of
Speaker 8: the house.
Speaker 6: I was the pesky little brother. But at the same
Speaker 6: time they adored me.
Speaker 1: Emily says she did and does adore Eddie and remembers
Speaker 1: him as an active kid, always getting into everything.
Speaker 3: Kid.
Speaker 8: Eddie was a lot of imagination.
Speaker 7: He was just always active the way he is now,
Speaker 7: always active. He's trying to do something at home. We
Speaker 7: have this this saying only us. The Ramier says know
Speaker 7: that we say to each other we fike it, because
Speaker 7: he used to say every time he would go underneath
Speaker 7: the table and make pretend he's fixing something, and then
Speaker 7: he'll tell Mom, I fake it. I fike it, so
Speaker 7: all of us now whenever we fix something, we just
Speaker 7: say we fike it.
Speaker 6: We did have a driveway behind my house with the
Speaker 6: kids from Ninth Street and the kids from Hutchinson Street
Speaker 6: gathered to play sports, freeze.
Speaker 7: Tag, football, baseball, king, we did everything. So the majority
Speaker 7: of the people were our age, my sister and I.
Speaker 7: I think Eddie might have been the youngest of them all,
Speaker 7: and there was a couple of older guys. So yeah,
Speaker 7: Eddie was so hyper that, you know, people didn't want
Speaker 7: to you know, and they didn't want him to be around,
Speaker 7: so we would have to come to his defense. I
Speaker 7: know one time I fought a little boy because this
Speaker 7: something to Eddie and Eddie was crying and I went
Speaker 7: out and I fought him.
Speaker 8: I still get called the mean girl because of that.
Speaker 8: I'm the mean sister because of that.
Speaker 1: Although Eddie grew up with older sisters, he still found
Speaker 1: boy time.
Speaker 6: My cousins were the closest thing I had to brothers,
Speaker 6: and I did everything with them. We played Street Fighter,
Speaker 6: we played Nintendo. We would go to Hunting Park play
Speaker 6: football or basketball. We went shopping, We chased girls, everything
Speaker 6: that you can think about. I did everything with my
Speaker 6: family In fact, I like to tell people I didn't
Speaker 6: have friends. My friends were family members.
Speaker 2: Tell me about growing up in Philly back then, you
Speaker 2: said North Philly.
Speaker 6: It depends on what you define as North Philly. It
Speaker 6: is technically North Philly, but people from North Philly might
Speaker 6: not think of my neighborhood as being North Philly. I'm
Speaker 6: logan north of the Boulevard. There were trees on my block. Like,
Speaker 6: maybe our experience isn't typical of the North Philly experience.
Speaker 6: But all of my cousins graduated from college or went
Speaker 6: to the military, have stable lives. None of them ever
Speaker 6: been arrested for anything while they were drugs in my neighborhood.
Speaker 6: It probably wasn't as visible as some of the other
Speaker 6: neighborhoods throughout North Philly. My upbringing was pretty modest, pretty
Speaker 6: working class family. I never knew poverty. I never I
Speaker 6: never wanted for anything.
Speaker 1: This sounds very different from a lot of stories I've
Speaker 1: heard from North Philly at the time. So were you
Speaker 1: ever involved in any kind of crime, drugs, anything like that.
Speaker 6: No, I mean I was a graffiti writer as a kid,
Speaker 6: so you know that.
Speaker 2: No robberies, no guns.
Speaker 6: No, no, No, I've in fact, being the son of
Speaker 6: a police officer, I've never even seen a gun.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, Eddie's father was a Philadelphia police officer.
Speaker 6: I sort of like idolized the police because I actually
Speaker 6: saw them as heroes. Because not only was my father
Speaker 6: a police officer, I have several uncles who were sheriffs
Speaker 6: and prison guards. I grew up in a law enforcement family.
Speaker 7: Upbringing was nothing but police officers. I mean, we used
Speaker 7: to go camping, and it used to be all my
Speaker 7: father's buddies.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, Like we used to go camping in
Speaker 6: Coatsville in the summertime every weekend. And so I grew
Speaker 6: up with all those famis and they were all like
Speaker 6: cousins to me.
Speaker 1: February nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, was like any day for
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Eddie Ramirez.
Speaker 2: He was looking to have fun and hang out with friends.
Speaker 1: Eddie's dad gave him permission to spend the night at
Speaker 1: his friend Mary Emmanuel's house. His friend eighteen year olds
Speaker 1: William Billy why he was there, and Pete Goesy.
Speaker 6: Well Pete I didn't know that well at all. Pete
Speaker 6: was Billy's friends. Billy was someone where I'd met in
Speaker 6: years prior to that, not many years, I didn't where
Speaker 6: I would have said I loved Billy like a brother.
Speaker 6: The truth of the matter is that I didn't know
Speaker 6: Billy that well. Apparently I didn't know him that well,
Speaker 6: and I think that it was it was obvious to
Speaker 6: everybody that him and I did not compliment each other.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 6: We were into different things, Like I'm a big dreamer.
Speaker 6: I don't know what he's into. But it wasn't that
Speaker 6: I like to it's, you know, now thinking about it,
Speaker 6: I'm like, man, I didn't know that guy at all.
Speaker 1: But Billy wanted to playing a key role in Eddie's case,
Speaker 1: and you'll be hearing more about him later. Back to
Speaker 1: that winter day in nineteen ninety five, So they're all
Speaker 1: hanging out at Mary Emmanuel's house and at around eleven PM,
Speaker 1: Eddie heads out to the laundromat across the street to
Speaker 1: get a soda for Mary's dad, Jay Darnell Senior. He
Speaker 1: asked for the soda earlier in the night, but the
Speaker 1: kids forgot so Mary sent Eddie. According to Eddie and
Speaker 1: his attorneys, he was at the laundromat for fifteen to
Speaker 1: thirty minutes he says he met a girl there and
Speaker 1: started flirting. She was one of the last customers of
Speaker 1: the night. They exchanged numbers and Eddie headed back Around
Speaker 1: one am, he actually called the girl and they spoke
Speaker 1: for a few minutes, and shortly after Ja Darnell asked
Speaker 1: everyone to leave. Peter Gozi gave Eddie and Billy why
Speaker 1: He a ride back to Billy's house and that was
Speaker 1: that the end of a mostly uneventful night. The next day,
Speaker 1: on February twentieth, police found the body of a woman
Speaker 1: bludgeoned to death in the laundromat. Forty year old Joyce
Speaker 1: Dennis was an employee there. She was a mother in
Speaker 1: a newlywed and it was her first shift back from
Speaker 1: her honeymoon in Mexico. When Joyce didn't come home after
Speaker 1: her shift at two am, her husband Jim went to
Speaker 1: look for her.
Speaker 3: She would close up the laundromat late at night, and
Speaker 3: she hadn't come home and hadn't called, so he went
Speaker 3: to the laundromat and when he went inside, he saw
Speaker 3: blood and he flagged out a cop who arrived at
Speaker 3: the scene, and they investigated and discovered a victim's body
Speaker 3: and she was beaten to death.
Speaker 2: Basically, this is Michael Wiseman.
Speaker 3: I'm a lawyer in Pennsylvania. I work in a small
Speaker 3: firm called Wiseman and Schwartz.
Speaker 1: Michael says Joyce had been hit in the head at
Speaker 1: least no. Nine times with a metal bar. The police
Speaker 1: had found at the scene when they arrived. There was
Speaker 1: blood everywhere and the door handles inside, dead bolts all
Speaker 1: on the floor. They found a fleece with blood on it,
Speaker 1: and the place also appeared to have been robbed. While investigating,
Speaker 1: the police talked to Jay Darnell a few days after
Speaker 1: the killing.
Speaker 3: The dad of this girl who wanted the soda, reported
Speaker 3: to the police that, oh, Eddie went to the launderrath
Speaker 3: against soda and that's it. They were off to the races.
Speaker 3: Eddie's the suspect.
Speaker 2: Police start asking about Eddie.
Speaker 3: The cops got all these you know, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen
Speaker 3: year olds you know in the station whereas they used
Speaker 3: to call it the round house, and basically six or
Speaker 3: so people who gave statements against Eddie.
Speaker 1: What follows is a month's long investigation in which a
Speaker 1: story starts to develop about Eddie and a party and
Speaker 1: a confession a story that unfolds like a game of telephone.
Speaker 1: A key part of the story comes from a known
Speaker 1: drug dealer named Corey Watkins. Police interview Watkins and he
Speaker 1: tells them a seventeen year old kid named Joseph Mayo
Speaker 1: told him that Billy Why he had killed a woman
Speaker 1: at the laundromat. Remember, Billy was Eddie's friend, the one
Speaker 1: he was with that night. Watkins does not mention anything
Speaker 1: about Eddie. Police also bring in Billy why He for questioning,
Speaker 1: and Billy ends up telling police that Eddie killed Joyce
Speaker 1: Dennis during a robbery while he stood look out, and
Speaker 1: after he and Eddie went to a friend's party to
Speaker 1: buy drugs. Fifteen year old Luis Rivera says he was
Speaker 1: at that party and he tells police that Billy told
Speaker 1: him he and Eddie quote went to do a stick
Speaker 1: up and Eddie hurt the lady and that the lady died.
Speaker 1: Watkins's girlfriend, Melanie Foreman, also a local drug dealer, tells
Speaker 1: police she saw Eddie a few days later and he
Speaker 1: confessed to her. The police eventually reinterviewed Mayo, who remember
Speaker 1: hadn't said anything about Eddie originally, but now he says,
Speaker 1: Billy and Eddie told him they were involved in the
Speaker 1: death of Joyce Dennis at the laundromat, almost a year
Speaker 1: and a half after Joyce Dennis was found bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 1: Billy why he was arrested the following day, on the
Speaker 1: fourth of July, Eddie was working the overnight attendant shift
Speaker 1: at a gas station when police showed up and arrested him.
Speaker 6: And I thought, Okay, they clearly they made a mistake
Speaker 6: and cool a headge will prevail. Let me do what
Speaker 6: I care so I can get back to work.
Speaker 2: But that's not what happened.
Speaker 6: I's been in jail for twenty months with waiting trial.
Speaker 1: Both were charged with murder, robbery, and criminal conspiracy. Billy
Speaker 1: took a deal, pleading to a lesser sentence in exchange
Speaker 1: for testifying as the star witness against Eddie at trial.
Speaker 1: What followed for Eddie's family was mostly confusion.
Speaker 7: We remember that day when we were told he was arrested.
Speaker 7: I immediately went over to my sister's house and we
Speaker 7: were just like in shock and what we were going
Speaker 7: to do, and we didn't even know what to do.
Speaker 7: We did not know what to do. It was embarrassing.
Speaker 7: In the beginning, family didn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 7: And you know, everybody thinks that you go to jail,
Speaker 7: you have something to do with it. Nobody was going
Speaker 7: to believe or the innocent. My brother's innocent. He had
Speaker 7: nothing to do with it, like nothing.
Speaker 8: You know, nobody believed that. Nobody believed it. There was
Speaker 8: always doubt in people's minds.
Speaker 2: Emily says her dad was desperate and being a former cop,
Speaker 2: he started to look into the case too, to see
Speaker 2: if anything implicated Eddie.
Speaker 7: My dad checked the house I think a thousand times.
Speaker 7: He tried to investigate the case. He tried to be
Speaker 7: detective and found nothing. And it was just mind boggling.
Speaker 6: What person says, Hey, let me prepare for a rainy
Speaker 6: day in the case I get arrested for something I
Speaker 6: didn't do. So you don't know, that's not something you
Speaker 6: prepare for. It's just something you're in in the moment,
Speaker 6: and when the moment comes for some people, it catches
Speaker 6: you off guard.
Speaker 1: And nothing could have prepared him for what came next.
Speaker 1: Eddie's trial began in December nineteen ninety seven. Assistant District
Speaker 1: Attorney Mark Gilson called Star witness Billy Wyhee to the
Speaker 1: stand along with Joseph Mayo Melanie Foreman, who repeated what
Speaker 1: they had told police.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he made admissions to me. I saw him with
Speaker 3: blood on him. I saw him with a pocket full
Speaker 3: of quarters quarters.
Speaker 1: It was all over the press when Eddie was first arrested.
Speaker 1: Police were saying the teenagers had killed Joyce Dennis over
Speaker 1: a bucket of change from the machines. Then, according to
Speaker 1: the prosecution, they went to a party, got high and
Speaker 1: bragged about what they had done. Eddie's defense attorney was
Speaker 1: a former DA named Jack McMahon. There was no evidence
Speaker 1: linking Eddie to the crime for McMahon to refute with experts,
Speaker 1: the case was all based on alleged witness testimony, so
Speaker 1: he had to challenge the credibility of each witness. He
Speaker 1: pointed out that except for why he, none of them
Speaker 1: had implicated Eddie in their original statements with police.
Speaker 2: None.
Speaker 6: His strategy was to rely on his obeities to impeach
Speaker 6: the witnesses based on their own inconsistent testimony.
Speaker 1: He was trying to point out that all these kids.
Speaker 3: You know, were forced to implicate.
Speaker 2: Eddie, and these were all teenagers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the teenagers without their families involved in the interrogation,
Speaker 3: which is itself problematic, and you know, it's just threats
Speaker 3: and threats and threats and the you know, if you
Speaker 3: don't give up Eddie, then you must have done it.
Speaker 3: You know something on that you're not telling us, And
Speaker 3: it's just, you know, it takes an extraordinary person, especially
Speaker 3: as a teenager, to resist that kind of pressure, or.
Speaker 1: It would take someone who is not in a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble. Witness Melanie Foreman, for example, was facing two
Speaker 1: state drug charges and three federal drug charges at the time.
Speaker 1: McMahon also called Sarah Hurd, the girl who allegedly threw
Speaker 1: the party or Eddie had confessed, and she testified the
Speaker 1: party had been the night before the murder and she
Speaker 1: never heard Eddie say anything about Joyce.
Speaker 2: Dennis.
Speaker 1: Eddie's dad, also testified that Eddie came home the next
Speaker 1: day wearing the same clothes he'd been in the day before.
Speaker 3: The defense was trying to make a point that Eddie
Speaker 3: was not seen with blood on him.
Speaker 2: Remember, the laundromat was a bloody mess.
Speaker 3: It was really inconceivable that a person who had committed
Speaker 3: this crime would have gotten away from there. With literally
Speaker 3: no blood, but they hid the fact that the place
Speaker 3: was a wash of blood.
Speaker 1: The prosecution was able to suppress evidence at trial, so
Speaker 1: the defense could not bring up the blood. So the
Speaker 1: whole case hinged on the word of these witnesses against Eddie,
Speaker 1: and on January second, nineteen ninety eight, Eddie was convicted
Speaker 1: of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 6: When I was convicted, I thought to myself, well, I'm
Speaker 6: a arrest did I'm health for trial? And I think
Speaker 6: to myself, Okay, cool. At some point, they're gonna realize
Speaker 6: this is a mistake, and they're gonna drop the charges
Speaker 6: and they're gonna release me.
Speaker 2: Like I was in denial, what were the first years, Like.
Speaker 6: I was still super young and had no real identity,
Speaker 6: but he's.
Speaker 1: Had a lot of time to think about what put
Speaker 1: him in prison and who he could trust.
Speaker 6: I stayed to myself like now, I wasn't so much
Speaker 6: isolated as I wanted to learn from my mistakes. And
Speaker 6: my biggest mistake was associating with people who I had
Speaker 6: who I didn't have much in common with right and
Speaker 6: to this day I don't do it. And so for
Speaker 6: those first few years, like I'd played cards with you,
Speaker 6: but we weren't boys.
Speaker 2: Years past and the reality of prison set in.
Speaker 6: I remember the date, November tenth, two thousand and why
Speaker 6: that date, That's my birthday. And the clock struck midnight
Speaker 6: and I realized I had just turned thirty and I
Speaker 6: had spent all of my twenties in prison. And I
Speaker 6: was like, oh, this is real.
Speaker 2: Time passed for Eddie's family as well.
Speaker 8: It was just mind boggling. All the years the hope
Speaker 8: was being lost.
Speaker 2: But then Eddie was transferred.
Speaker 6: I ended up at Greaterford and that changed my life.
Speaker 1: Greaterford was a maximum security prison in Pennsylvania's largest able
Speaker 1: to house about thirty five hundred men, and Eddie says
Speaker 1: it was really those men at Greiderford who changed him.
Speaker 6: Oh where my family taught me love and tolerance. My
Speaker 6: brother's at Greaterford taught me how to be a man.
Speaker 6: I met guys like Soabre Tyrone Works, Albert Bandy, Sam
Speaker 6: Magic Brown. They taught me how to be an adult.
Speaker 6: And when I say and I don't mean no, no
Speaker 6: kind of toxic masculinity.
Speaker 1: Eddie says, these men taught him how to have integrity, honor,
Speaker 1: and a sense of purpose.
Speaker 2: How does that happen in a prison?
Speaker 1: You know, how do these guys, some of them did
Speaker 1: do crimes, how do they suddenly just become these like
Speaker 1: Dali Lama guru guys.
Speaker 6: Because most of the crimes that were committed were committed
Speaker 6: when they were young men, and they you know, you
Speaker 6: sit in you go to prison, and you start to
Speaker 6: see the effect of the crimes you've committed, and then
Speaker 6: they start to like, you're mature. And so for those guys,
Speaker 6: I mean, it happens for everyone, but it happens differently, right,
Speaker 6: And so those guys who are fall intensive purposes never
Speaker 6: going to leave the prison. What do you have? You
Speaker 6: have your legacy, you have the way that you affect
Speaker 6: other people going out into the world, and they take
Speaker 6: that piece of you with them.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of what you were thinking, because you
Speaker 2: were never going to go home.
Speaker 6: Oh no, I knew I was going to go home,
Speaker 6: did I mean? Listen, there were times where I questioned it,
Speaker 6: but I would like snap myself back to reality, like yo, prepare.
Speaker 6: And so from the minute like these guys, I met
Speaker 6: them and they were like, are you going home? And
Speaker 6: I'd be like, yeah, I'm going home. All right, well,
Speaker 6: stop preparing right now.
Speaker 2: So Eddie got to work.
Speaker 1: Not only did he complete a paralegal certificate course, but
Speaker 1: he earned a bachelor's degree. He pushed so that incarcerated
Speaker 1: students became eligible for the Dean's List, and he collaborated
Speaker 1: as an artist with a mural arts program in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: And by his side the entire time was his family.
Speaker 3: I can tell you that that Eddie's family was as
Speaker 3: steadfast as any I've ever seen. I mean, just the
Speaker 3: tenacity and the gumption of the family was.
Speaker 2: Amazing, especially his sisters.
Speaker 7: I became his voice out here to let people know, Hey,
Speaker 7: this happened, This is happening. This is happening. People are innocent,
Speaker 7: and so by me doing it out here, it was
Speaker 7: motivating him inside prison to do to better himself, to
Speaker 7: prepare himself to come out here.
Speaker 1: But Eddie wasn't just preparing to get out. He was
Speaker 1: fighting to get out. In the early two thousands, Eddie
Speaker 1: filed a series of appeals, one of the main ones
Speaker 1: being that the prosecution had found DNA under fingernail clippings
Speaker 1: from Joyce Dennis and that was never disclosed to the defense.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, testing was done on the
Speaker 1: samples that excluded Eddie as a contributor, but his conviction
Speaker 1: was upheld in twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: Then Michael comes in, Michael, do you think that his
Speaker 2: trial was fair?
Speaker 3: Well, it can't be a fair trial when evidence is suppressed.
Speaker 3: That's fundamental to any system of justice. Answers and obvious
Speaker 3: and resecting.
Speaker 1: Now, in twenty fifteen, Eddie filed a petition for relief
Speaker 1: with the help of Michael Weisman.
Speaker 3: So that was when I first met Eddie. And over time,
Speaker 3: you know, I've come to truly admire him as an individual,
Speaker 3: as man, and as a resilient human being.
Speaker 6: So and he's learned to sort of bear with my
Speaker 6: sort of like overbearing personality.
Speaker 1: If there's anything I've learned from you guys at Greaterford
Speaker 1: and Philadelphia, you are all big personalities. Yes, there's anything
Speaker 1: I've learned from meeting all you. Michael also had the
Speaker 1: help of the Philadelphia Innocence Project.
Speaker 3: When the Innocence Project got involved, the case kind of exploded,
Speaker 3: and you know, went in all kinds of different directions
Speaker 3: that I don't know that any of us anticipated.
Speaker 6: At the time.
Speaker 1: Not only did they follow up on the DNA motions
Speaker 1: and suppressed blood evidence. But Eddie's claim for innocence was
Speaker 1: now bolstered by recantation from key witnesses. Drug dealer Corey
Speaker 1: Watkins and his girlfriend Melanie Foreman, said they'd been pressured
Speaker 1: to falsely implicate Eddie. Watkins said the police held him
Speaker 1: for hours until he signed a statement. Foreman said the
Speaker 1: police threatened to charge her as an accomplice. She was
Speaker 1: cooperating with the federal government on other cases when she
Speaker 1: gave her initial statement against Eddie. Remember, she was facing
Speaker 1: two state drug charges and three federal gun and drug
Speaker 1: charges at the time. Joseph Mayo said the police had
Speaker 1: threatened to charge him with an unrelated stabbing if he
Speaker 1: didn't implicate Eddie, and Sarah Hurd would later say in
Speaker 1: an Affidavid that the police screamed at her and threatened
Speaker 1: to take away her baby and to charge her with
Speaker 1: hiding evidence.
Speaker 3: The harassment and the threats against these teenagers to finger
Speaker 3: any is something that now has the name. It's called
Speaker 3: the homicide Hotel, So it's it's pretty much an established
Speaker 3: practice back at that time that what the Philadelphia Hama
Speaker 3: Side Unit would do is they would bring in witnesses
Speaker 3: and they'd basically just hold them for days. So you know,
Speaker 3: that combined with the DNA combined with what we learned
Speaker 3: to be the suppressed blood evidence, was like, you know,
Speaker 3: just the trifecta of strong extalpatory evidence.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, additional DNA testing was done on items
Speaker 1: at the scene, including a broom and the bloody fleece
Speaker 1: I'd mentioned earlier. Testing found the same male DNA on
Speaker 1: the fleece as on the presumed murder weapon, the pipe.
Speaker 1: Eddie was again excluded as a contributor. But the wheels
Speaker 1: of justice move slow, and the years go by with
Speaker 1: new motions and delays and setbacks, I.
Speaker 3: Mean every court appearance. I mean I used to like
Speaker 3: dread having to go to court because it'd be like,
Speaker 3: I have nothing I can tell Eddie's mom, who just
Speaker 3: sits there with tears in her eyes and you know,
Speaker 3: waiting for good news.
Speaker 1: Then finally, in August of twenty twenty three, the state
Speaker 1: responded to Eddie's petition for relief, agreeing that they had
Speaker 1: failed to disclose significant exculpatory evidence to Eddie's attorney that
Speaker 1: would have helped his defense at his original trial. A
Speaker 1: November two, Judge Scott de Claudio vacated Eddie's conviction and
Speaker 1: ordered a new trial.
Speaker 6: At that point, I was kind of like, Okay, I
Speaker 6: could breathe a little easier now. Yeah, I'm not out
Speaker 6: the woods yet because I'm still in prison.
Speaker 1: But the prosecution had thirty days to decide if they
Speaker 1: wanted to retry him, and they took their time deciding.
Speaker 8: I was just like, my brother is going out of
Speaker 8: his mind in prison.
Speaker 6: They're going to get every minute out of me that
Speaker 6: they can. I was pissed.
Speaker 1: Finally, on November thirtieth, twenty days after his forty seventh birthday,
Speaker 1: Eddie was on his way to court to find out
Speaker 1: what the state had decided.
Speaker 7: It's very last minute, the very last minute. We were
Speaker 7: just like holding our breath because we had been there,
Speaker 7: done that so many times.
Speaker 1: Eddie was on the prison transport van, filled with nerves
Speaker 1: when there was an announcement.
Speaker 6: One of the chefs was watching on his phone and
Speaker 6: so he yells to the back of the van, Hey, Ramirez,
Speaker 6: they just announced it. Man, You're going home, right, And
Speaker 6: so people in the van are like really happy, like,
Speaker 6: oh man, congratulations, congratulations. There was this one kid. He
Speaker 6: was like, Yo, how long you been down? I said, man,
Speaker 6: I've probably been down your whole life. And he's twenty
Speaker 6: four years old. So he was like, I'm twenty four.
Speaker 6: I'm like, yeah, man, you weren't even born when I
Speaker 6: went to prison.
Speaker 1: He tells Eddie about the street and gang violence that
Speaker 1: surrounds him at home, and he says.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I just want to be somewhere where I could
Speaker 6: take my son out and not be afraid it was
Speaker 6: going to hap happened. And so I said to him,
Speaker 6: how important is that? He said's everything? And so I said, well,
Speaker 6: then everything you do should be about that. And then
Speaker 6: it dawned on me, Yo, God put me on this
Speaker 6: van to give that one last lesson to somebody on
Speaker 6: the inside. And so, however long the trip was, I
Speaker 6: stopped thinking about the time because I was like, man,
Speaker 6: I got an opportunity to do that in that location
Speaker 6: one last time, because I'm going to for the rest
Speaker 6: of my life. I'm going to do whatever I can
Speaker 6: to be a brother to whoever needs it.
Speaker 1: Eddie's entire family, including his parents, were there the day
Speaker 1: he was released.
Speaker 6: And my father, who I had not seen run in
Speaker 6: thirty years, ran to me that was gonna be with
Speaker 6: me for a while.
Speaker 2: What's your relationship with him?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 6: Now, oh, man, that's my best friend. That's my best friend.
Speaker 6: And I'm just so happy. Like I wonder sometimes if
Speaker 6: he thought he was going to live to see the
Speaker 6: day that I would come home. And I'm so happy
Speaker 6: that he did.
Speaker 1: Eddie wasted no time picking up where he left off
Speaker 1: at nineteen years old.
Speaker 6: I still skateboard. Wow. Yeah, well, I mean not exaggerate
Speaker 6: the greatness of my skateboard.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, did you skateboard in prison? Because
Speaker 2: you've only been out a few months and I.
Speaker 6: Have skateboarding since I've been home. And I can tell
Speaker 6: you that as a forty eight year old, it affects
Speaker 6: the joints differently.
Speaker 2: Scary.
Speaker 6: I am worried about falling. I'm going to break a hip.
Speaker 1: Billy why he is the only witness against Eddie who
Speaker 1: didn't change his story, and that was Eddie's friend though
Speaker 1: when he thought he knew. He took a deal to
Speaker 1: testify against Eddie and only served five years in prison,
Speaker 1: while Eddie could have spent his life in there. At first,
Speaker 1: Eddie couldn't help but be resentful towards Billy. Why he
Speaker 1: but today he looks at things differently.
Speaker 6: Wouldn't want his victim yea. And I you know, like
Speaker 6: I hate to put it like that because it's a
Speaker 6: part of me that.
Speaker 2: That's the guy that put you in prison.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so there's a part of me that doesn't
Speaker 6: want to defend him. But how could I not How
Speaker 6: could I talk about integrity and character and just throw
Speaker 6: that guy to the wolves even though he did that
Speaker 6: to me? And so I do got to stand up
Speaker 6: for what's right and say that it took advantage of
Speaker 6: a kid.
Speaker 1: These days, Eddie tries to share the wisdom and perspective
Speaker 1: he gained from his friends in prison with the new
Speaker 1: men in his life, his nephews.
Speaker 7: You know, he gives them the manly talk, get up
Speaker 7: off your butt and do this, and he's always talking
Speaker 7: criminal reform.
Speaker 8: To them, which in my case, I have a son
Speaker 8: who you know, has a little criminal history, so you know,
Speaker 8: he tries to teach him what he can do.
Speaker 7: And all of Eddie's friends are also in that criminal
Speaker 7: reform stuff. So I feel like that's a really good
Speaker 7: vole model for guys like my sons and his nephews.
Speaker 8: And his niece.
Speaker 2: Look at good and he just lives life.
Speaker 6: Why don't you tell the world what you're about to do.
Speaker 2: Goes to the driving range with his dad and sisters.
Speaker 6: Great job, you look good, Man, smile for me.
Speaker 1: Man look at me a smile, and spends time with
Speaker 1: his family as much as he can.
Speaker 7: You know, everybody's been trying to get a piece of him.
Speaker 7: He is booked solid. We have to literally plan around
Speaker 7: his schedule.
Speaker 2: But there was one date that Eddie couldn't miss.
Speaker 7: She got arrested in the middle of the night on
Speaker 7: the fourth of July. So this fourth of July was
Speaker 7: the first time that we got to celebrate with him
Speaker 7: in twenty seven years, and it was very special for
Speaker 7: me and my sister that we did something.
Speaker 1: Emily wasn't going to let Eddie miss another Fourth of
Speaker 1: July with his family.
Speaker 7: I talk a lot about my dad, but my mom,
Speaker 7: she's super, super faithful. She's a faithful woman, and she
Speaker 7: had no doubt that he was going to come home
Speaker 7: one day. And I can tell you that she has
Speaker 7: bought him things all throughout his prison life. She had
Speaker 7: racked up items for him for when he came out,
Speaker 7: household stuff, socks.
Speaker 8: All kinds of stuff. Not when he came out.
Speaker 7: Of course, those are like old stuff. He wants new things,
Speaker 7: so you know, we have to try to do something
Speaker 7: with those things. But she is like so happy that
Speaker 7: she got her son back, and like that is the woman.
Speaker 7: That woman is so the fourth of July, she got
Speaker 7: to see her three children swimming and playing in the
Speaker 7: pool like we were when we were kids, when we
Speaker 7: used to go camping. That my dad didn't experience because
Speaker 7: he came and left, but my mom actually stood around
Speaker 7: and she saw us playing in the pool.
Speaker 8: I said, Mom, does this remind you of camping? And
Speaker 8: she she just said yeah. She had this big smile
Speaker 8: on the face.
Speaker 7: She was just so happy that she got to see
Speaker 7: all her kids, especially her son.
Speaker 8: Playing in the pool like little kids, splashing each other.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
Speaker 1: links in the episode description to see how you can help.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story
Speaker 1: editing and mixing by senior producer Rebecca Ibada. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Kathleen Fink. Our researcher Is Shelby Sorels, additional mixing
Speaker 1: by Josh Allen. Our executive producers are Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wordis, with additional production help by Jeff Cleiburn
Speaker 1: and Connor Hall. The music is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Make sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on all platforms
Speaker 1: at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a
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