Speaker 1: I've never been in trouble in my life. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a parking ticket, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
Speaker 2: do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like
Speaker 2: everything this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent.
Speaker 2: I know I'm innocent.
Speaker 3: I know I had nothing to do with this.
Speaker 1: How is this possible?
Speaker 3: I grew up trusting the systems. I grew up believing
Speaker 3: that every human being should do the right thing. And
Speaker 3: that's why, even though I knew I was dealing with
Speaker 3: Coore other people, I wasn't going to break anyone to
Speaker 3: get me out of prison because I wouldn't live with
Speaker 3: the fact that I break my way out of my
Speaker 3: wife's death.
Speaker 2: I'm not innocent, too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I
Speaker 2: prove my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me.
Speaker 3: Our system.
Speaker 4: Since I've been out ten years, it's coming a little ways,
Speaker 4: but it's still broken.
Speaker 3: I totally little trusting humanity after what's happened to me.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 5: Welcome back to wrongful conviction with Jason Flamm that's me,
Speaker 5: And today I have an extraordinary person as my guest,
Speaker 5: a man named Rafael Madrigal.
Speaker 1: Raphael, welcome to the show. Good and Raphael.
Speaker 5: You know I often say it, I'm going to say
Speaker 5: to you, I'm happy you're here, but i'm sorry you're
Speaker 5: here because there's absolutely no excuse for what happened to you.
Speaker 5: And as a member of as an American and as
Speaker 5: a human, I apologize to you on behalf of everyone
Speaker 5: because this this story, it literally makes no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Are you know better than anyone and I and.
Speaker 5: I want to get into all those details because your
Speaker 5: story has so many things that we see again and
Speaker 5: again right. It has mistaken eye witness identification. It has
Speaker 5: an incompetent defense attorney. It has an air tight alibi
Speaker 5: that anybody in you know, any with any degree of
Speaker 5: sanity or education or knowledge of justice with nobody could
Speaker 5: have possibly convicted you based on those factors. But we're
Speaker 5: going to unravel all of that and find out how
Speaker 5: you got charged with first degree murder and how you
Speaker 5: got exonerated as we go along.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, let's go back, like at a.
Speaker 5: Time, machine to when you were a kid. Where where
Speaker 5: did did you grow up in California?
Speaker 4: Yes? I did. I grew up in Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: So was it a difficult childhood or a happy family life?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 5: What can you paint a picture for us to the audience?
Speaker 5: What what was it like growing up?
Speaker 4: Actually it was a more lifestyle. Yeah, it was in
Speaker 4: a rough neighborhood, but I mean my early teen years,
Speaker 4: I mean it was just the bigger neighborhood. Everybody was
Speaker 4: going on and you know, trying to find themselves. But
Speaker 4: later on, if we started getting older, then yeah, things
Speaker 4: started changing. You know. It wasn't rough neighborhood. A lot
Speaker 4: of gang violence around, and as the nineties started hitting many,
Speaker 4: I started getting a little bit worse and worse and
Speaker 4: worse as time went along, you know. But as myself,
Speaker 4: I mean, I made the best of it. I graduated
Speaker 4: from high school. I got a job right after high school.
Speaker 4: College wasn't for me. I tried it for about a year,
Speaker 4: and I think, you know what, college is going to
Speaker 4: follow me? So you know, I decided, you know what,
Speaker 4: I think I read the work and being that I
Speaker 4: was already going to be a farther at nineteen. Then
Speaker 4: you know, I knew my responsibility and.
Speaker 5: That's and both of those things you just mentioned are
Speaker 5: important parts of your story. Right, The fact that you
Speaker 5: did become a father very young, and we know what
Speaker 5: this wrongful incarceration took from you. We're going to discuss that.
Speaker 5: But also the fact that you did start working very
Speaker 5: young is an important thing as your story goes. Was
Speaker 5: along because of the fact that in your alibi, what
Speaker 5: made it so air tight, I mean, I was gonna
Speaker 5: say bulletproof, you know, is the fact that you were
Speaker 5: a highly skilled person who was the only person that
Speaker 5: could operate the machinery at your job, which meant that,
Speaker 5: you know, there's no way you could have committed this
Speaker 5: crime fifty miles away when you were the only guy
Speaker 5: there that knew how to do what you were doing,
Speaker 5: and the whole factory would have shut down, right, So
Speaker 5: the whole operation was so But let's get into that
Speaker 5: by way of this crime, right, because it was I mean,
Speaker 5: this sounds like it was a hit, right, I mean,
Speaker 5: this was a this was a shooting.
Speaker 1: Can you can you explain the crime itself?
Speaker 5: Obviously you weren't there, but you're super familiar with there
Speaker 5: was a guy named Aguilera, right correct.
Speaker 4: The victim his name was ricordagu I mean I ended
Speaker 4: up seeing him when he came as a fighting court,
Speaker 4: But other than that, I've never had seen the gentleman.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It wasn't dry by shooting. It was a game that
Speaker 4: was going on at the time cloth one list. You know,
Speaker 4: I was forty five miles away from the incident, you know,
Speaker 4: nowhere near it, and I was still put in a
Speaker 4: situation where I lost ten years of my life.
Speaker 5: Well how did and and you were senced to twenty
Speaker 5: five to life, which is I mean unimaginable to think
Speaker 5: of how that must have you know, just devastated you.
Speaker 5: But how did your name come up in the first
Speaker 5: place when you so obviously weren't there and you could
Speaker 5: prove it. And who was it that first? I know
Speaker 5: there were witnesses that identified you, but how did they
Speaker 5: even come to bring your name up?
Speaker 1: Did you ever find out how that happened?
Speaker 4: Or it all started off with the picture that this
Speaker 4: Los Angeles sheriff had on myself. The picture had took
Speaker 4: me when I was I had just turned sixteen years
Speaker 4: old at the time of the crime. I was twenty
Speaker 4: five already, So they used that picture to show the
Speaker 4: witnesses and the victim, and they all started with one
Speaker 4: of the witnesses maid that I resembled the shooter.
Speaker 5: Okay, wait a minute now, first of all, wait, wait,
Speaker 5: let's go back. Let's go back for a second. So, Raphael,
Speaker 5: you were sixteen when your picture was taken.
Speaker 4: Great?
Speaker 5: Is it even appropriate for that picture to still even
Speaker 5: be in the books? Isn't that supposed to be sealed
Speaker 5: after you turn eighteen?
Speaker 4: I'm not sure. I don't know how exactly that works,
Speaker 4: or is any law that prohibits them from using the
Speaker 4: almost a ten year old picture?
Speaker 1: And what was the original? Sorry?
Speaker 5: Interrupted, but why was your picture in the book in
Speaker 5: the first place? What we what were you picked up
Speaker 5: for when? And I don't judge anything because I know
Speaker 5: where you grew up, as a lot of people get
Speaker 5: picked up for a lot of things, they do the
Speaker 5: sweeps and everything else. And you know, we've had people
Speaker 5: talk about how they were almost tricked into having their
Speaker 5: pictures taken and put into the mug Shot book when
Speaker 5: they were just barely teenagers. And it's also sort of
Speaker 5: ridiculous to point out that you were they were using
Speaker 5: a nine year old can imagine how much your appearance
Speaker 5: changes from sixteen to twenty five. But yeah, so why
Speaker 5: was your picture in the book in the first place?
Speaker 4: A picture that I said it was taken when I
Speaker 4: was sixteen, when they were in front of my house
Speaker 4: and gang unit ended up swooping by and everybody that
Speaker 4: was there inside my house. They pulled us home out
Speaker 4: and they took pictures of us and they went on
Speaker 4: their way. Never did I imagine in my life that
Speaker 4: that picture would come in hunt me almost ten years later.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, so you were literally doing nothing, standing around
Speaker 5: in front of your own house and they took a
Speaker 5: picture that ended up actually turning your life completely upside
Speaker 5: down for the most random of reasons. And we'll get
Speaker 5: into that too. The fact is that we know that
Speaker 5: there are ways to improve eyewitness identification procedures, including the
Speaker 5: fact that I'm guessing in your case, like in most cases,
Speaker 5: they were using six pictures on that page in the
Speaker 5: Mugshot book. And you know, decades of research have now
Speaker 5: proven scientifically that the human mind, if you give it
Speaker 5: that many options, will go towards somebody that sort of
Speaker 5: resembles a little bit. They'll start you'll start to make
Speaker 5: up things subconsciously that don't even that aren't real because
Speaker 5: you see all these different pictures. So by making the
Speaker 5: simple change of putting one picture per page, we know
Speaker 5: that the incidents of wrongful identifications go down by around
Speaker 5: fifty percent. So that's the change that we're trying to
Speaker 5: get made all over the country and in any case.
Speaker 5: So so I mean, this is this is an unbelievable thing.
Speaker 5: So you're now far away, have no idea what's going
Speaker 5: on somewhere in a police station in these Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: these witnesses, one of them randomly pickts your photo and
Speaker 5: then what happens.
Speaker 4: And then from there, I mean, the night marriages started
Speaker 4: from when the incident happened, I believe the incident took
Speaker 4: please and from there after the incidet I believe, they
Speaker 4: showed the pictures, the pictures to the nick to the witnesses,
Speaker 4: tell me about that to the witnesses, and fifteen days
Speaker 4: later after the incident, that's when I got picked up.
Speaker 4: I got picked up on anchel of twentieth.
Speaker 1: July the twenties.
Speaker 5: So paint this picture for us place, So you're July
Speaker 5: the twenties, where were you.
Speaker 4: July twenty, I had just dropped off my wife at work.
Speaker 4: I was because she went a little bit earlier than
Speaker 4: I did. I dropped lass at work, I was heading
Speaker 4: back home to get ready myself. And when I was
Speaker 4: driving into I used to live in a Culdsfec at
Speaker 4: the time. When I was driving in, I noticed that
Speaker 4: there was a bunch of a shelf deputy patrol cars
Speaker 4: on the side of the street and they were all
Speaker 4: putting under gear. And uh, I see them. I said, Oh,
Speaker 4: they're going to give somebody a rude awakening right now.
Speaker 4: Little did I know they were going to my house.
Speaker 1: And you.
Speaker 5: I read an article about you in San Francisco magazine
Speaker 5: where you were talking about how you were literally, I'm
Speaker 5: going to quote you. You said, I was literally living in
Speaker 5: the American dream and then I got everything pulled out
Speaker 5: from under my feet.
Speaker 1: You had two kids at this point, your.
Speaker 5: Wife was pregnant, You had a good job, right, so
Speaker 5: life was looking pretty pretty damn good.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, I mean literally, I had we had just
Speaker 4: thirty had been a year ago. We had bought on
Speaker 4: in a house, so I mean, I mean, therefore we
Speaker 4: were striving for it. The fire own house and retired
Speaker 4: paint where so I mean we put we put our
Speaker 4: nesteak together and everything that we have saved up for
Speaker 4: we eased to move. But little did we know that,
Speaker 4: I mean, this nightmare was going to start at night
Speaker 4: of twenty year.
Speaker 5: So you had two boys six and three and a
Speaker 5: little girl on the way and then you get picked
Speaker 5: up taken in for questioning. I assume right, and explain it,
Speaker 5: explain that process.
Speaker 4: Well. The funny point is when I when I see
Speaker 4: that take the sales patrol course in the coulda sat.
Speaker 4: I came to the stop sign and they had a
Speaker 4: picture of me, a blown up picture that they were
Speaker 4: going to my house with. So when I got to
Speaker 4: the stop sign, one of the deputies that had the picture,
Speaker 4: it happened to me he had the pie was looking
Speaker 4: at the picture at the time when I turned around
Speaker 4: and I looked at and relactizing to each other, and
Speaker 4: he drew his weapon on me and he yelled at
Speaker 4: him trying to get off my map. So yeah, sure enough,
Speaker 4: they got me off the van, and they said the
Speaker 4: first one who tell me all, they need to talk
Speaker 4: to you down the station. So I tell them all
Speaker 4: of this here because they need to talk to me,
Speaker 4: and he said, you know what, they'll explain to you
Speaker 4: a little bit more. Well, from there, they took me
Speaker 4: to the station. They put me in a vat outside
Speaker 4: of the station and they left me there for it.
Speaker 4: I say, m good, four hours So what reason? I'm
Speaker 4: not sure, but I was here that for four hours.
Speaker 4: Follows lady put me inside the whole treat and I
Speaker 4: ask again, who needs to talk to me? What do
Speaker 4: we need to talk to me about? And they said, oh,
Speaker 4: you know what, they'll talk to you. They'll talk to you.
Speaker 4: That whole day went through, nobody came to talk to me. Uh.
Speaker 4: Finally there was two other inmates in the cell next
Speaker 4: to me when the detective involved in my case can't
Speaker 4: talk to them, and I asked them, Hey, who's going
Speaker 4: to talk to me? And he says, you know what,
Speaker 4: wait to turn, I'll talk to you in that time.
Speaker 4: So I told him, I'm looking at you. You're I'm
Speaker 4: gonna talk to me now. Let me know, I'm going
Speaker 4: to bail out because I got to go to work.
Speaker 4: And his words to me where, you know what, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna give you some advice. Save your money because you're
Speaker 4: gonna need it.
Speaker 1: Who said that to you one? The need to take
Speaker 1: you in my case, now you're there.
Speaker 5: First of all, this I'm trying to process this whole
Speaker 5: idea of sitting for four hours in a van, not
Speaker 5: knowing what's going on, just like just left there. No,
Speaker 5: I mean, it's got to be a terrifying thing in
Speaker 5: and of itself. But okay, So now finally they come
Speaker 5: and talk to you and they tell you you're being
Speaker 5: charged with first degree murdered.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, actually no, they didn't come back to me.
Speaker 4: It wasn't into my arrangement because I got to rest
Speaker 4: them on a Thursday morning. I got arranged on Monday morning.
Speaker 4: The following week. When I went into my arrangement that
Speaker 4: seem to take they came to talk to me and
Speaker 4: he asked me but my co defendant, and he asked me,
Speaker 4: when was the last thing you seen him?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: And this is an important point because the co defendant
Speaker 5: ultimately testifies that you were not involved.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: No, he didn't testify to it. What it was was
Speaker 4: that there was a tape recording from the county jail.
Speaker 4: Because me and me and my co defendant, I was
Speaker 4: first enough to tell me who did this? I know
Speaker 4: I have nothing to do with this. Somebody else was
Speaker 4: with you, and he just got like very upset because
Speaker 4: I was questioning them, and I told me, you know what,
Speaker 4: I'm he'll be here this. I have nothing to do
Speaker 4: with this. So me and him got into a real
Speaker 4: big argument and we ended up video to a fight.
Speaker 4: Two days later, his girlfriend came and visited him in
Speaker 4: the county jail. Well, when his girlfriend came to visit him,
Speaker 4: he had a black guy and his girlfriend started question
Speaker 4: and what's going on with you? What's going on with you?
Speaker 4: And said jail. So he told us, you know what,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna tell you the children that's going on. You
Speaker 4: know what, Ralph has nothing to do with this. He's
Speaker 4: asking around who was involved. And I told him to
Speaker 4: stand up his business and he needs to keep this
Speaker 4: his questions to himself and he shouldn't have nobody else
Speaker 4: asking about this clime.
Speaker 1: And that was that was that was said.
Speaker 4: That yes, that was O. And originally when the tape
Speaker 4: recording came to life, they had told my my my
Speaker 4: attorney that it was me in the in the tamp
Speaker 4: recording confess to the crime. So, uh, right before a
Speaker 4: travel he said, we got a tape recording was this
Speaker 4: confession to the crime. We didn't use it. So when
Speaker 4: my attorney asked me about this recording, I said, look
Speaker 4: at Andrew's names. That understand. I said, look at from
Speaker 4: the day that I hired. I told you I had
Speaker 4: nothing to do with this. I'm not going to change
Speaker 4: up on you. I still stand one hundred percent that
Speaker 4: I have nothing to do with this. So he teld me, Okay,
Speaker 4: you know what, We're going to ask for an extension
Speaker 4: and I'm going to listen to the recordings and we'll
Speaker 4: come back in a month. So a month later, we
Speaker 4: come back and I asked him what happened to recordings?
Speaker 4: We doesn't know what. Don't worry about it. There's nothing
Speaker 4: in that can help you, and there's nothing in there
Speaker 4: that can hurt you.
Speaker 5: None of that makes any sense. So first of all,
Speaker 5: let me backtrack. Were you out on bail or you
Speaker 5: and were you locked up this whole time?
Speaker 4: Well? I was locked up this whole time because originally,
Speaker 4: when I went for my arrangement, my bill was at
Speaker 4: thirty thousand. When I went to my arrangement, they raised
Speaker 4: my bill from thirty kundred dollars to two million.
Speaker 5: Dollars two million, So they didn't want you going anywhere
Speaker 5: and correct. And this attorney who we know, made a
Speaker 5: series of mistakes that are literally out This is the
Speaker 5: only word I can think of to explain.
Speaker 1: The nature the.
Speaker 5: So many of them and so egregious that any law
Speaker 5: student would have been able to handle this case better
Speaker 5: than he did. Obviously, this was a quarter pointed attorney.
Speaker 4: I'm assuming No, actually he was a private attorney.
Speaker 5: Wow, So this was a private attorney. I mean, was
Speaker 5: he Do you have any theory as to what was
Speaker 5: wrong with him in terms of was why why was
Speaker 5: he so ill suited for this job?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 5: What was there something going on in his personal life?
Speaker 5: Was there some did you ever find out?
Speaker 4: No? Actually, you know what when when my family first
Speaker 4: hired him, I mean he talked a real good story
Speaker 4: to my family, said, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 4: get home and I'm going to prove his innocence. And
Speaker 4: I mean he just said everything that you'll be said.
Speaker 4: But as time was going by and postponement of post
Speaker 4: it's like his whole demeanor just change, like you know,
Speaker 4: like he just literally gave it up on the kiss.
Speaker 4: Because of the almost three years that I spent in
Speaker 4: the county jail fighting this case. One time he came
Speaker 4: within me. That was when when my family hired him.
Speaker 4: After that, never again did he come and see me,
Speaker 4: ask me questions, nothing. It was just I would only
Speaker 4: see him and would go to court.
Speaker 1: He came to see you one time in three years.
Speaker 1: In three years, Oh my god. You know, this is
Speaker 1: so it's so outrageous, and it's amazing too. You know.
Speaker 5: I'm just finishing reading the amazing book by Anthony ray.
Speaker 1: Hinton called The Sun Does Shine.
Speaker 5: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by
Speaker 5: Anthony ray Hinton with Lara lov Harden, and in it
Speaker 5: he talks about Brian Stevenson, the legendary attorney who would
Speaker 5: visit him on death row over fifteen years, like incredible
Speaker 5: in a remote prison in Alabama, and here it is
Speaker 5: like one time in three years. I like, I'm you know,
Speaker 5: I'm so angry at this whole thing. It's like I
Speaker 5: can't process how that could even be. And then in
Speaker 5: the meantime he also made like mistakes that are unimaginable
Speaker 5: in terms of the idea that you had a tape recording.
Speaker 5: I'm just reflecting on this, right you had a tape
Speaker 5: recording with the actual perpetrator saying that you his co defendant,
Speaker 5: wasn't there and and he he couldn't even work with that,
Speaker 5: Like he couldn't even and he's telling you that the
Speaker 5: tape recording doesn't matter, and then he doesn't bring it
Speaker 5: up at court, among other things, right, because I'm not
Speaker 5: stopping there. I mean the idea that during the trial
Speaker 5: he was unable to he did well, he wasn't unable.
Speaker 5: He didn't call your coworker who would have testified and said.
Speaker 1: That it was impossible for you to have.
Speaker 5: Committed this crime since, as I said earlier in the podcast,
Speaker 5: the whole you were the only guy there that could
Speaker 5: operate the machinery, and we know that the machinery was operating,
Speaker 5: and we know that you were You were there, you
Speaker 5: were clocked in, you were I mean, it's just mine
Speaker 5: by how you know how this could have transpired the
Speaker 5: way it did and you lived it. So so I
Speaker 5: want to get to this so it finally comes to
Speaker 5: the trial. It took three years to get to trial.
Speaker 4: Yeah, about two and a half years, which.
Speaker 1: Is crazy in itself.
Speaker 5: And meanwhile, your kids are growing up without their father,
Speaker 5: your wife is in the situation of trying to figure
Speaker 5: out how to make ends meet, which I know that
Speaker 5: ultimately she had to move out of the house that
Speaker 5: your dream house, because I mean, who can raise three
Speaker 5: kids and work a job, and I mean it's you know,
Speaker 5: and in the meantime she's left with the task of
Speaker 5: trying to explain to the kids. I'm sure they're asking,
Speaker 5: when's daddy coming home? Right, I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 5: so I mean, it's so much. It's just so much.
Speaker 5: So you finally come to trial, and by the time
Speaker 5: you got to trial, now, I mean you've got to
Speaker 5: be almost a basket case by this point.
Speaker 4: I'm literally just I mean, words wouldn't even baber explain it.
Speaker 4: And just the worst part about it was that the
Speaker 4: doubt was there from the beginning year for the prosecution.
Speaker 4: Keep in mind, I went through Ford justic attorneys. It
Speaker 4: wasn't intil the fourth one that decided to take you
Speaker 4: to trial. The first three came in. I mean the
Speaker 4: first one, mister Dan Baker, which was the top gang
Speaker 4: prosecutor in Los Angeles County at the time. He came
Speaker 4: and he told my attorney at the time, you know what,
Speaker 4: I have an offer for him. My offer for him
Speaker 4: is twenty five with life. That's the only thing that
Speaker 4: will offer him, you know. A year later he leaves
Speaker 4: the case. They bring another prosecutor in from another city
Speaker 4: and he comes in the same way. You know what.
Speaker 4: There's no deals, there's no deals. Finally, when he's up,
Speaker 4: maybe about ten months into the case, he says, you
Speaker 4: know what, I might have a deal for you. We'll
Speaker 4: see how that turns out. The following month he was
Speaker 4: off the case. They bought another gentleman from the city
Speaker 4: of Compton. He was on the case for a month.
Speaker 4: He let the case go. They finally brought in This
Speaker 4: is Ramibors Marie Remiors, which is the one that finally
Speaker 4: took me to trial, and she's the one that finally
Speaker 4: convicted me, you know.
Speaker 5: And my team was, yeah, Raf, where you tried, If
Speaker 5: it's okay if I call you Ralf. Were you tried
Speaker 5: together with all of ours or separately?
Speaker 4: No? Together?
Speaker 5: But he didn't take the stand, and you had the
Speaker 5: tape recording. But the lawyer didn't bother to tell anybody
Speaker 5: about this tape recording where he was admitting that you
Speaker 5: weren't there.
Speaker 4: Exactly. It's like the stay recording. The prosecution is the
Speaker 4: one that brought them to light. But at the end,
Speaker 4: nobody used them. And when we when we got our
Speaker 4: appeal granted, and we came to the federal courthouse and
Speaker 4: he asked mister Stein about the tape recording. All he
Speaker 4: responded was, you know what, I think my secretary listened
Speaker 4: to them.
Speaker 5: Wow, my secretary listened to them. Doesn't that say at all?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: That that is what's so nuts to me is that
Speaker 5: there that there are people in this less justice system
Speaker 5: I call it sometimes in justice system that are so
Speaker 5: cavalier about someone's life, because in your case, it really
Speaker 5: was your life. I mean, twenty five to life is
Speaker 5: a life sentence. Let's face it. I mean there's when
Speaker 5: twenty five to life sentence as a twenty five year
Speaker 5: old man, you're basically looking at spending the rest of
Speaker 5: your life behind bars. And this guy had his secretary
Speaker 5: listen to the recording. Okay, that's I'm just gonna think
Speaker 5: about this for a second. So when you went to trial,
Speaker 5: by now, you I mean, I'm assuming you had lost
Speaker 5: faith in your attorney, had did you consider it firing him,
Speaker 5: hiring somebody else?
Speaker 4: Well, I really did a system of what you could
Speaker 4: and can do. It was my first time in being
Speaker 4: in a position like this. Keep in mind, I have
Speaker 4: never been arrested soon, I have never been turned before.
Speaker 4: So I was lost. You know, my only guidance was
Speaker 4: my attorney.
Speaker 5: Right, and you and you want to have you want
Speaker 5: to have faith in him at this point, I'm assuming
Speaker 5: because you need to have faith in somebody or something,
Speaker 5: and he's your advocate, he's your champion.
Speaker 1: But when you went to trial, did you feel like,
Speaker 1: how can I say this?
Speaker 5: Did you feel like you were going to be exonerated?
Speaker 5: I mean, at this point the system had already you know,
Speaker 5: shown you it's its worst sides. So but but still
Speaker 5: you knew you were innocent. So what was your like
Speaker 5: going in to the court room finally after all these
Speaker 5: years or two and a half years, three years? Did
Speaker 5: you feel like you were going to be exonerated? Or
Speaker 5: you were you like, oh, you know they've got me
Speaker 5: and that's going to be it.
Speaker 7: No, know, I I like, honestly, I never did my
Speaker 7: faith in the truth.
Speaker 4: I was always under the impression, you know, one sec
Speaker 4: of the trial, I'm going to.
Speaker 7: Be able to pull my innocent I'm going to prove it.
Speaker 7: And the trial masted two days deliberations, ris and lot
Speaker 7: of it in the childhood deliberation was on four days.
Speaker 7: And they kept on and they kept on coming back.
Speaker 7: The jury kept on coming back to pursuing my alibi.
Speaker 7: So the doubt was there from the beginning. There wasn't
Speaker 7: the doubt just to the jury.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 7: It was there for the beginning, even with the prosecution.
Speaker 1: But here's another thing.
Speaker 5: As I was reading and rereading your story, I was thinking,
Speaker 5: you're sitting there next to your lawyer. He's not calling
Speaker 5: your alibi witness. Uh, from the I don't know what
Speaker 5: the guy's name was. From the factory or was it
Speaker 5: a factory, or or what was the place that you
Speaker 5: were working at?
Speaker 1: What was it called?
Speaker 4: It was it was a manufacturing company.
Speaker 5: And what was the name of the guy who never
Speaker 5: was called that should have been called, that could have act. Actually,
Speaker 5: you know, absolutely without any doubt, established your your alibi
Speaker 5: as being factual.
Speaker 4: That was my manager of Bob Howard's.
Speaker 1: Was he in the courtroom, No, he was never in
Speaker 1: the courtroom.
Speaker 4: Actually he got to the court room and to my understanding,
Speaker 4: by attorney told him that he was not going to
Speaker 4: be called to testified, but he did show up.
Speaker 5: Did you at any point say to your attorney, where
Speaker 5: is Bob Howard? Why isn't he here? Why aren't you
Speaker 5: calling him to the stand?
Speaker 4: No, I mean I was.
Speaker 6: My head was just just so lost when I kept
Speaker 6: on just hearing how the prosecution kept on just making
Speaker 6: me look like this animal, you know.
Speaker 4: And even when the victim himself got up in the standing,
Speaker 4: they asked him, do you see the person who shot
Speaker 4: who shot you here today in this court room. The
Speaker 4: gentleman said, the person who shot me, he's not here.
Speaker 4: He wasn't lying, He was never lying. He was saying
Speaker 4: the truth. But what would make that bad was that
Speaker 4: right after he got understand, was that they put to
Speaker 4: take to the move, understand, and they asked him to
Speaker 4: take to the move. Why do you feel a missie
Speaker 4: Aguilla is saying that the person who shot him is
Speaker 4: not here? So his comments were, oh, well, he feels
Speaker 4: he doesn't want to be label to snitch, he doesn't
Speaker 4: want to be labeled to rap, he doesn't want any repercussions.
Speaker 4: But it was never that the gentleman was saying the
Speaker 4: truth the person that shot him was not important.
Speaker 5: I'm again trying to figure. I'm trying to put myself
Speaker 5: inside the mind of the jury, because even with such
Speaker 5: even with such a I mean, inadequate is not a
Speaker 5: strong enough word, but even with such an incompetent, disinterested,
Speaker 5: even still with that alone, you would think that the
Speaker 5: jury would go well, okay, I guess that's it, you know.
Speaker 5: And obviously they thought long and hard before they finally
Speaker 5: decided what they decided and and sentenced you to to
Speaker 5: this this terrible uh, this terrible term in prison. So
Speaker 5: that moment must have been the worst moment of your life.
Speaker 5: I mean, I can't imagine anything worse. When the jury
Speaker 5: came back in, did they look at you? Was your
Speaker 5: family in the courtroom? Can you was it hot?
Speaker 1: Was it cold? Do you remember? Can you paint the
Speaker 1: picture for us of what that was like?
Speaker 4: And I remember it clearly, like it was yesterday. It
Speaker 4: was almost days in for the jury, and I was
Speaker 4: under the impression it was I believe a flighting. They
Speaker 4: were gonna just bring us back on Monday. The bailiff
Speaker 4: called called us in from the from the holding tank decision,
Speaker 4: and when I think they came back with the verdict,
Speaker 4: three o'clock to me thirty in the afternoon, and I
Speaker 4: remember my pums were sweating so bad, and I don't
Speaker 4: know if it was hot and narrow it was cold.
Speaker 4: I was. I was nervous, you know, And the jury
Speaker 4: came back and just hearing those words, you know, when
Speaker 4: we find the defending guilty, it's like if I had
Speaker 4: the world on my shoulders at the time, the world
Speaker 4: just came crashing down on me.
Speaker 5: And you can't help thinking, oh, sorry, go ahead, Ralph.
Speaker 4: I mean it was just then turning along fee my
Speaker 4: family and just everybody breaking down trying because they knew
Speaker 4: the truth. I mean, nobody better than my family knew
Speaker 4: the truth. And them hearing the word's guilty as like
Speaker 4: they just took the air out of their ownness.
Speaker 5: And I can't help thinking that the fact that it
Speaker 5: was the weekend coming up and the jury didn't want
Speaker 5: to have to come back or be I don't know
Speaker 5: if they were sequestered, but that probably played a role
Speaker 5: inside that room of them saying you know what, maybe
Speaker 5: there was one or two holdouts and they finally said,
Speaker 5: you know what, this weekend and Monday, I gotta go
Speaker 5: to work whatever.
Speaker 1: And so for anybody who's listening.
Speaker 5: I always say, please, if you get called for jury duty,
Speaker 5: first of all, show up. I know it's annoying, it's difficult,
Speaker 5: it's in a position on all of our life.
Speaker 1: Show up, serve on a jury.
Speaker 5: Pay attention, and remember that somebody like Raphael is hanging
Speaker 5: in the balance. His whole life is hanging in the balance.
Speaker 5: When you're sitting there, and you know, it's all of
Speaker 5: our duty to our fellow citizens, so orofellow human beings
Speaker 5: that we give it, you know, all the attention that
Speaker 5: it deserves, and that we remember that these mistakes happen
Speaker 5: as often as they do, and you're living proof of it.
Speaker 5: So you're now convicted a sense to twenty five years
Speaker 5: to life. The worst thing that could possibly happen, you
Speaker 5: go to prison. I guess I want to get to
Speaker 5: the I want to get to the good part, right,
Speaker 5: the exoneration and what's happening now. But if you can
Speaker 5: tell us during those see you had been waiting almost
Speaker 5: three years for the trial, and you were in for
Speaker 5: another almost seven in a maximum security prison. And was
Speaker 5: that as bad as everyone is imagining it to be?
Speaker 5: Was there anything? Was there any bright spot in that
Speaker 5: whole time you were there. What was the best and
Speaker 5: the worst aspect of that entire miserable time of seven years.
Speaker 5: And then again this is in adding because you were
Speaker 5: in almost ten but the seven years inside prison after
Speaker 5: you had been tried and convicted, you.
Speaker 4: Know, I could honestly say the best point of those
Speaker 4: of those ten years was coming across Eric Moltop, which
Speaker 4: was the attorney who originally contacted the California interspodseet. Mister
Speaker 4: Moltop was referred to me by my state appointed appeal attorney,
Speaker 4: Laura Seaffer. And when Laura Seaffer got my case originally
Speaker 4: after I got sentenced, you know, she was very honest
Speaker 4: with me. She told me the way it was, the
Speaker 4: system works. She says, Looking, you got to understand, we're
Speaker 4: state appointed appeal attorneys. They don't pay us to do
Speaker 4: extra labors. They just pay us to do push PayPal
Speaker 4: fore days. You know. But after going through your case,
Speaker 4: you're not supposed to be here. And I told him,
Speaker 4: you know what, I know, I'm not supposed to be here.
Speaker 4: And she went as far as telling them, but you
Speaker 4: know what, you're gonna have to get a private attorney
Speaker 4: to be able to help you out. And she referred
Speaker 4: me to the gentleman Eric moltip out of No Valley, California.
Speaker 4: And this gentleman from the beginning when he got a
Speaker 4: hold of my case, he contacted me and within a
Speaker 4: month a month and a half, I want to say,
Speaker 4: he wrote me a letter and he explained to me,
Speaker 4: He goes, look, I read your case already. I don't
Speaker 4: know what you're doing in prison. You know, we need
Speaker 4: to get you home. And from there he got the
Speaker 4: bone rolling. He started investigating. And the first thing that
Speaker 4: I call him when he came to visit me, I
Speaker 4: told him, Eric, the only thing I need you to
Speaker 4: do is because I have never listened to the tape recordings.
Speaker 4: I asked him, please listen to the tape recording to
Speaker 4: send being there. It always stood in the back of
Speaker 4: my mind, there has to be since there. And he goes, okay,
Speaker 4: you know where I'm gonna listen to him.
Speaker 1: I kid you not.
Speaker 4: Maybe within a month he went back to the prisoners
Speaker 4: in the game and he asked me, is that you
Speaker 4: and the tape recordings. I said, look, Errett, I haven't
Speaker 4: listened to them. I don't know what's in them. So
Speaker 4: he brought a copy of tape recordings and he played it,
Speaker 4: and as soon as the first work came out of
Speaker 4: the tape recording, I told him that's Francisco. I recognized
Speaker 4: his voice immediately. He says, are you sure? I said,
Speaker 4: look at them, one hundred percent sure, that's Francisco and
Speaker 4: Waters on the tape recordings. And that's what just got
Speaker 4: the ball rolling. We're able to admit the tape recordings
Speaker 4: back in todment because originally the prosecutions prosecution is the
Speaker 4: one that you have brought them out to light, but
Speaker 4: they were never used. So it goes you know what,
Speaker 4: I got to get this back in there. And sure enough,
Speaker 4: that was one of the key things that the magistrate
Speaker 4: in the Federal appeals court asked, why were these tape
Speaker 4: recorders never used in his defense?
Speaker 5: It's a damn good question. And it was newly discovered
Speaker 5: evidence at that point as well, which is great.
Speaker 1: So okay, so let's fast forward.
Speaker 5: Now what must have been maybe other than the to
Speaker 5: your kids or I don't know, but it must have
Speaker 5: been the happiest.
Speaker 1: Day of your life, which is the day that you were.
Speaker 5: Back in court. How did you get end up getting exonerated?
Speaker 1: Released?
Speaker 5: And must have been like this million pound weight has
Speaker 5: lifted off your shoulders now, So can you explain that right?
Speaker 4: Well, the flip side is that we first had a
Speaker 4: file of motion FORVID injury hearing and we got that
Speaker 4: advent hearing granted. So I was brought from prison back
Speaker 4: down to Orange County where the evidence your hearing was
Speaker 4: going to take place. So during that evident you're hearing,
Speaker 4: we were able to call my attorney who represented me,
Speaker 4: we put him on a stand, and we were able
Speaker 4: to bring mister Bob Howards and put him on the stand, so,
Speaker 4: I mean all the pieces that were missing at the trial.
Speaker 4: We put him in front of the fell of the
Speaker 4: courthouse and that's what was able to bring the light.
Speaker 4: So once we got mister Stein under Stein on the
Speaker 4: stand and he was able to just literally deny everything
Speaker 4: that he did and also put mister how I was
Speaker 4: understanding him, admit you know what he was at work.
Speaker 4: I'm one hundred percent positlyn to use at work. There's
Speaker 4: no way he could have been gone. You know. That's
Speaker 4: what took turn bottom. This was in October. In June
Speaker 4: of two thousand and nine, my appeal was granted.
Speaker 5: I mean, how did you feel. What were you freed
Speaker 5: from the courtroom. Explain the whole thing, because this is
Speaker 5: my favorite part of the show, right, the good part.
Speaker 4: Right. Well, the next day, all that day, I just
Speaker 4: slep all night. Literally I slipped not one hour of shady.
Speaker 4: The next morning, I'm thinking, Okay, they're going to come
Speaker 4: me early in the morning. Then they're gonna walk me
Speaker 4: out seven o'clock, eight o'clock. Let there, finally winning the
Speaker 4: Tipitis came the to my cell and said, you know,
Speaker 4: we'll get your stuff ready. I got to take you
Speaker 4: down to our which is receiving a release. And he
Speaker 4: told me, oh, your Turney is supposed to be here
Speaker 4: to pick you up at eleven o'clock. But if he's
Speaker 4: not here, we have to that you go those that's
Speaker 4: the court order. So eleven o'clock came and they walked
Speaker 4: me to the gate and mister Eric Moltop was there
Speaker 4: waiting for me. You know, it was it was an
Speaker 4: unexplainable relief happiness. I don't know if there was just
Speaker 4: a bunch of emotions going through me.
Speaker 7: You know, my dad just passed away eight months.
Speaker 4: Earlier, so it was it was just a bunch of
Speaker 4: things going through my mind. You know, how was I
Speaker 4: going to get back into society? What was I going
Speaker 4: to do? You know, it's just a minute things going
Speaker 4: through your mind. I get home, man, there's a bunch
Speaker 4: of camera that was waiting for me, my family. I
Speaker 4: mean literally, it was the best day of my life.
Speaker 4: The only bad plub about it in there My dad
Speaker 4: wasn't there waiting for me.
Speaker 5: I want to talk about something else that's really important
Speaker 5: in your case. And I know we don't have a
Speaker 5: lot of timele left, but you were ultimately fully exonerated, conviction,
Speaker 5: reverse charges dropped, declared.
Speaker 1: Actually innocent. Is that right?
Speaker 4: That's correct?
Speaker 5: And so it's amazing Ralph, because I've been doing this
Speaker 5: work for twenty five twenty six years now, and I
Speaker 5: talk about it all the time, no matter where I am,
Speaker 5: I'm always talking about it. And I tell these stories
Speaker 5: about your case, about all these different cases that I know,
Speaker 5: because it drives me crazy. And the first question everybody
Speaker 5: asks me is did he get Did the person the
Speaker 5: man or woman the exgonery? Did they get compensated? So
Speaker 5: the first thing everybody wants to know. Their eyes get
Speaker 5: real wide, they say did the guy get? I hope
Speaker 5: they get and I have to tell them, well, it's
Speaker 5: not what you think. And you're living proof of that,
Speaker 5: right because you have gone through almost like another trial.
Speaker 5: It really it is another trial, just trying to get
Speaker 5: what's due for you. And in California the compensation statute,
Speaker 5: and I'm working on getting it fixed. But it's so crazy.
Speaker 5: Can you explain that a little bit? Because most people
Speaker 5: think you get out, they send you a check. Hey man, sorry,
Speaker 5: we've messed up your life, like, uh, you know, let
Speaker 5: me give you a little way.
Speaker 1: To get started here, you know, But that's not the
Speaker 1: way it is.
Speaker 4: It's actually the total opposite. I mean California. And it's
Speaker 4: sadly saying that California, up until recently, their whole exonerate
Speaker 4: exoneration passive was never there. I mean, the gates open
Speaker 4: for you, and you know, there's no apology, there's no,
Speaker 4: like you said, a check waiting for you. There's nothing
Speaker 4: waiting for you. It's their opening and they just kick
Speaker 4: you out into the world. You know, I've been out.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, it's been nine years. On Saturday,
Speaker 4: October of six, it's been my nine year anniversary that
Speaker 4: I've been home.
Speaker 1: Happy birthday, Happy University.
Speaker 4: Up until now, I haven't seen any type of help
Speaker 4: from the State of California. I've been to hearings after hearing,
Speaker 4: and every time we go with it's like on the
Speaker 4: trail because you have these people on the board who
Speaker 4: are more into denying you, not the compensation, but the truth,
Speaker 4: denying you. They keep on denying the truth, you know,
Speaker 4: for what reason, I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker 4: holds them back from saying, you know what, a mistake
Speaker 4: was made here, we have to fix it. But up
Speaker 4: until this date, nobody, nobody in the state of California
Speaker 4: has said, you know what we done, these people wrong,
Speaker 4: we have to fix it. And I'm not the only one.
Speaker 4: There's several individual Exanna Revees that are here in California
Speaker 4: where I haven't been compensated. They're in the same situation
Speaker 4: that I'm in. They've been fighting for their compensation for six, seven, eight,
Speaker 4: nineteen years.
Speaker 5: No I know, and I've read some of those stories
Speaker 5: and it's really horrible, including some that have ended up
Speaker 5: going back to prison just because they haven't been able
Speaker 5: to support themselves because they're facing the same thing that
Speaker 5: you're facing, which is that coming out and having to
Speaker 5: tell their prospective employer that they have a conviction even
Speaker 5: though it was overturned, and then they're either not getting
Speaker 5: hired or getting fired from the jobs that they know
Speaker 5: that they should have. I think as a society, we
Speaker 5: have to open our hearts and minds, and we have
Speaker 5: to open our companies. I talked to CEOs and other
Speaker 5: people in positions of power that run.
Speaker 1: Big companies about this all the time.
Speaker 5: I think there's a lot more openness to this now,
Speaker 5: to this concept that we need to give people a
Speaker 5: second chance, innocent or guilty, but particularly if you're innocent,
Speaker 5: to get back on their feet.
Speaker 1: And yet people like.
Speaker 5: Kenneth Foley is a classic example, right, who was convicted
Speaker 5: of armed robbery ninety five cents to twenty five years
Speaker 5: to life and exonerated in two thousand and seven, and
Speaker 5: then denied compensation and couldn't get a job and ultimately
Speaker 5: had PTSD and all these other things that ended up
Speaker 5: with a fifteen year cents for a vehicular manslaughter because
Speaker 5: he was high on drugs or whatever it was. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's a tragedy on top of a tragedy. So it's
Speaker 5: amazing to staydy is willing to pay all this money
Speaker 5: to keep you locked up, but they're not willing to
Speaker 5: pay anything to help you when you get out.
Speaker 1: It's so strange. What do you and and Rob?
Speaker 5: It's like to me, it seems like the people sitting
Speaker 5: on that board their job should be to figure out
Speaker 5: how to get you this money and how to help
Speaker 5: you manage it once you do get it. That would
Speaker 5: be the job of that board. If I was running it,
Speaker 5: I would say, Okay, let's make sure that not only
Speaker 5: are you going to get it, but you're going to
Speaker 5: know how to invest it. We're going to show you
Speaker 5: how to you know, I mean because a lot of
Speaker 5: people in your situation coming out and what you were
Speaker 5: actually successful businessman already, but many people are not and
Speaker 5: this is their first experience having a lump sum of money.
Speaker 1: So how would you fix this? Because it's crazy.
Speaker 5: You're literally having to prove your innocence again after a
Speaker 5: judge and a jury and a prosecutor everybody else has
Speaker 5: decided you're innocent. How would you fix the system? What
Speaker 5: do you think it should be?
Speaker 4: Well, I think the first thing off the top, it
Speaker 4: makes no sense to me for you to put a
Speaker 4: prosecutor on the compensation board. I mean, to me, that's
Speaker 4: the number one biggest mistake they could do. You know,
Speaker 4: a prosecutor to me, will always be a prosecutor no
Speaker 4: matter how you look at it. You know, he's never
Speaker 4: going to go against other prosecutors who probably convicted you
Speaker 4: and they know for a fact you were innocent. There
Speaker 4: is a situation that happened in my in my, in
Speaker 4: my situation. You know, mister Mike Cromwolls, who was no
Speaker 4: longer on the board, but I mean this here, Never
Speaker 4: once did he even take the time to say, you
Speaker 4: know what, I have an innocent individual here and suddenly,
Speaker 4: what am I going to do fix this problem? Instead,
Speaker 4: he was up on that seat being a prosecutor. He
Speaker 4: questioned me so much in regards to what took place
Speaker 4: twenty years ago, instead of focusing on, you know, we
Speaker 4: have an individual years That was the case with him.
Speaker 5: It's important to recognize that there are thirty one states
Speaker 5: that have compensation statues in nineteen that have none, and
Speaker 5: even then in some of those states it's only you
Speaker 5: have to have a DNA proof or you have to
Speaker 5: have this or that. It's not a streamline system like
Speaker 5: it should be. I think to me, once you're proven
Speaker 5: innocent and you're out, there should be there's like in Texas,
Speaker 5: there should be a very ironically, Texas has the best system.
Speaker 1: You get eighty thousand per year.
Speaker 5: For every year you in you get an annuity, and
Speaker 5: sort of ironic that Texas, which most people would think
Speaker 5: would have one of the worst systems, actually has one
Speaker 5: of the best.
Speaker 1: I know why that is.
Speaker 5: It's thanks to Rodney Ellis, who was a state senator
Speaker 5: who passed a bill that really changed it, turned it
Speaker 5: upside down. And we need to do the same thing
Speaker 5: in California. And there are a lot of you should know,
Speaker 5: there are a lot of good people working on it,
Speaker 5: and I'm going to be helping to lead this charge
Speaker 5: to fix it for you and for everyone else like you,
Speaker 5: because it's absolutely it's disgusting in my opinion that you
Speaker 5: are now having to fight. And by the way, not
Speaker 5: only is it as you said, it's the opposite of
Speaker 5: what it should be because on top of everything else,
Speaker 5: you have to make time in your life, which you
Speaker 5: have enough obligations with three kids, work, struggling everything else,
Speaker 5: to go and appear in all these different hearings and
Speaker 5: everything else. It's ridiculous. There should just be a check
Speaker 5: in the mailbox for you with your name on it
Speaker 5: that says, hey, good luck, sorry this happened to you,
Speaker 5: you know, looking forward to seeing you succeed moving forward.
Speaker 5: Hope this helps something like that, You know what I mean.
Speaker 5: But man, it's really I think it's so important that
Speaker 5: you're here and talking about this because that problem has
Speaker 5: to get fixed, and it has to get fixed at
Speaker 5: the highest levels, right And I think I'm going to
Speaker 5: be I'm going to be keeping in touch with you,
Speaker 5: if it's all right, because I'm going to call on
Speaker 5: you maybe to have some meetings with some you know,
Speaker 5: people in positions of power who can who can make
Speaker 5: these changes, because I believe if if the people that
Speaker 5: make these decisions are made aware, which is why it's
Speaker 5: so important that you're here, they're going to want to
Speaker 5: fix this because it's it's just it just doesn't make
Speaker 5: any sense. But I just think people aren't really focused
Speaker 5: on it. So the more attention we can bring, the
Speaker 5: better it's going to be, obviously for you and everybody else.
Speaker 1: So before before.
Speaker 5: We have to wrap up, I wanted to ask you
Speaker 5: one more question. There was actually two more questions. One question,
Speaker 5: how how is your How are your kids doing?
Speaker 4: My kids are doing great, thank god. You know. My
Speaker 4: oldest Andrew, he's twenty four. He has about one more year,
Speaker 4: about a year and a half left a Long Beach
Speaker 4: State to complete the major. My second oldest, he just
Speaker 4: gotta to accept this letter to Long be State and
Speaker 4: one to Keelsetate Folish and also so I mean, family wise,
Speaker 4: I cannot complete one bit. You know. I thank god
Speaker 4: that I came out, that my wife done such a
Speaker 4: great job with them in those ten years. She you know,
Speaker 4: guided them in the right direction. And now these kids
Speaker 4: are open and they're they're leading a good life.
Speaker 5: It's amazing. That's really an amazing testament to them. And
Speaker 5: like you said to your wife, because to grow up
Speaker 5: in that situation without their dad and and to be
Speaker 5: able to, you know, take that adversity and turn it
Speaker 5: into they can call it triumph because it sounds like
Speaker 5: they're they're they're knocking it out of the park. I mean,
Speaker 5: they're they're doing amazing and that's and it's also it's
Speaker 5: also a tribute to you. I mean, you obviously have
Speaker 5: had a tremendously positive influence on them. So you know
Speaker 5: I wish, I wish you and them all the best
Speaker 5: and everything that you deserve before we go, and I
Speaker 5: know you have to run, but I always like to
Speaker 5: end the show the same way, which is that I
Speaker 5: like to This is I think everyone's favorite part of
Speaker 5: the show. When I stopped talking, and I just first
Speaker 5: of all want to thank you again for being here
Speaker 5: taking time. I'm out of your schedule to share your
Speaker 5: story with the audience here on Wronfel Conviction. And now
Speaker 5: I'm going to turn it over to you just for
Speaker 5: any last thoughts that you want to share about anything.
Speaker 5: So the microphone is yours, and thank you again for
Speaker 5: being here.
Speaker 4: Thank you well. I just want to take the time
Speaker 4: more than anything to thank my family and my wife,
Speaker 4: my kids, my mom, my dad who was no longer
Speaker 4: with me, but I mean all my thanks goes to
Speaker 4: him because he was one of the ones always in
Speaker 4: the front right with me fighting for this. I also
Speaker 4: want to think Justin and all of the California Indusry Project,
Speaker 4: Eric Moltop.
Speaker 7: Eric Moltop was the.
Speaker 4: Key piece to exonerating me, to getting me home, you know,
Speaker 4: and lesson, but at least you know, to those prosecutors
Speaker 4: and to take us out there. You know, if you're
Speaker 4: hearing me, you know, take the time to investigate your cases.
Speaker 4: Don't just look for a conviction. It's not right putting
Speaker 4: people in prison as in that command. You're not only
Speaker 4: destroying their life, but you're destroying many lives behind their
Speaker 4: their kids, their families, I mean, their parents. It just
Speaker 4: takes a toll on society itself. You know, I was
Speaker 4: one of the lucky ones who it only took ten
Speaker 4: years to his alrea. But there are gentlemen out there
Speaker 4: who were concentrated for twenty thirty years. Thirty years later,
Speaker 4: there's not a life out of here for you. You know,
Speaker 4: everything has changed.
Speaker 5: I think that's that's a great way to wrap up.
Speaker 5: I'm glad you brought up the California Innocence Project. I've
Speaker 5: had Justin on the podcast a couple of times, I think,
Speaker 5: and he is a huge source of inspiration for me
Speaker 5: and everybody in the movement. Of course, right now he's
Speaker 5: marching to Sacramento to deliver to deliver petitions for clemency
Speaker 5: on behalf of the California twelve. And he really is
Speaker 5: just a great, great man, And I want to encourage
Speaker 5: everyone to go to California Innocenceproject dot org. That's California
Speaker 5: Innocence Project dot org. Get involved, volunteer, donate, hold a fundraiser,
Speaker 5: do a bake sale, whatever your thing is. There's too
Speaker 5: many people in the same situation that Raphael was in
Speaker 5: and we need to go get them out. And uh
Speaker 5: and I will say to you now again, Raphael, and
Speaker 5: I'll never stop fighting. There's a there's a ton of
Speaker 5: good people who care about you and everyone else like
Speaker 5: you out there, so I know you got to get
Speaker 5: to work, so I'm not gonna hold you up anymore.
Speaker 5: But thanks again. I'm looking forward to meeting you in
Speaker 5: California the next time. And uh and and all my
Speaker 5: best to you and your family. Likewise, don't forget to
Speaker 5: give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It really helps.
Speaker 5: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
Speaker 5: I really hope you'll join me and supporting this very
Speaker 5: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 5: to Innocentsproject dot org to learn how to donate and
Speaker 5: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 5: Hall and Kevin Wartis the music in the show is
Speaker 5: by three time OSCAR nominated.
Speaker 1: Composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 5: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 5: and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 5: Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 5: and association with Signal Company Number one