Speaker 1: I'm Jason Flam you know. At Wrongful Conviction. We're so
Speaker 1: proud to be a part of the ever growing landscape
Speaker 1: of true crime shows that revealed just how our criminal
Speaker 1: legal system works and just how often it fails, and
Speaker 1: how grotesquely in some cases it just collapses on people
Speaker 1: who are innocent. And this week I've invited a colleague
Speaker 1: from another podcast, a podcast that I really love, to
Speaker 1: bring their own unique style to our coverage of yet
Speaker 1: another insane wrongful conviction case. Late at night on September
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, five people on Detroit's East Side. We're
Speaker 1: at a house party watching a football game on TV.
Speaker 1: Without warning, two men burst into the house and shot
Speaker 1: the place up. They killed four of the five people,
Speaker 1: but one woman survived by hiding under a bed. One
Speaker 1: of the gunmen found her there and told her to
Speaker 1: play dead. A few blocks away, neighbors were gathering on
Speaker 1: the street, including fourteen year old DeVante Sanford. When police
Speaker 1: talked to Davante, he told them that his aunt's boyfriend
Speaker 1: was a retired homicide cop. So police asked Davante to
Speaker 1: help them with the investigation, to tell them what he
Speaker 1: knew about the people in the neighborhood. But in the
Speaker 1: end police forced Davante to confess to this brutal quadruple homicide.
Speaker 1: He was tried and convicted, then sentenced to thirty seven
Speaker 1: to ninety years in prison. And remember he was only fourteen.
Speaker 1: In this case, it would take a truly unexpected turn
Speaker 1: of events for DeVante's innocence to come to light. This
Speaker 1: is wrongful conviction. Hey guys, it's Laura and I writer
Speaker 1: and I'm honored to be guest hosting this episode of
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. I'm the co director of the Center on
Speaker 1: Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Universe City. And if my voice
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, it's because I've guest hosted other episodes of
Speaker 1: this podcast, and I co host another series on this
Speaker 1: feed called False Confessions. Today's episode is one of the
Speaker 1: most important and shocking cases of wrongful conviction that I
Speaker 1: know of, and I am so honored to tell you
Speaker 1: the story. I'm here with two very special guests, Megan
Speaker 1: Crane and DeVante Sanford. I'm Megan Crane, I'm an attorney,
Speaker 1: and I'm the co director of the Missouri office of
Speaker 1: the MacArthur Justice Center. We are so excited to have you,
Speaker 1: and there's no one in this world like Davante Sandford. Davante,
Speaker 1: we are so happy to have you here. Do you
Speaker 1: mind introducing yourself to how you doing my name with
Speaker 1: Davante Sanford. I'm Ags, Honoree, I'm a son, I'm my father,
Speaker 1: entrepreneur and all around amazing human being. We are so
Speaker 1: grateful to have you here. Davante. You know your case.
Speaker 1: When I think about all of the wrongful conviction cases
Speaker 1: that I've worked on, that people like Megan, who's one
Speaker 1: of my heroes, have worked on, that all of us
Speaker 1: in this entire space have worked on, yours is always
Speaker 1: the first one that comes to my mind as one
Speaker 1: of the most difficult examples of of just sheer injustice,
Speaker 1: and it's it starts when you're a fourteen year old
Speaker 1: kid living in Detroit, Michigan, on the east side of
Speaker 1: Detroit on Balan Streets. What was life like for you
Speaker 1: back in the day. Back in the day, Um, it
Speaker 1: was it was kind of hard. You know, I was
Speaker 1: going through a lot mentally, spiritually, emotionally, Like the family
Speaker 1: dynamic was really wasn't there as far as like a
Speaker 1: lot of support, you know, my mother like she was
Speaker 1: dealing with a drug abuse issue. So like I had
Speaker 1: like a lot going on, honesty. So you're living on
Speaker 1: Balan Streets. It's a tough life. You're there with your
Speaker 1: mom's and siblings. There's there's drugs in the house. This
Speaker 1: is a street in a tough block in a tough
Speaker 1: part of Detroit. When you think back, de Vante to
Speaker 1: yourself at fourteen, what did you think your future was
Speaker 1: going to be growing up? Like, I didn't hear as
Speaker 1: often as I hear it now. I didn't hear the
Speaker 1: word opportunity. I didn't hear the word growth. I didn't
Speaker 1: hear the word future. I didn't I didn't hear those
Speaker 1: type of words. You know, somebody would have asked me
Speaker 1: what your future looked like when I was fourteen, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to even answer that. I can
Speaker 1: answer right now, but not back then. So you grew
Speaker 1: up not hearing words like future and opportunity. What what
Speaker 1: words did you hear instead? Get rich and die trying,
Speaker 1: you know, hustle and no luck. The East side of
Speaker 1: Detroit is like one of the worstest parts of betrayal honesty.
Speaker 1: Like very high crime rate, very very high crime rate,
Speaker 1: very high poverty rate, very low rates when it comes
Speaker 1: to reading and education amongst like the youth. And you
Speaker 1: know you're you're growing up at that invit a mint,
Speaker 1: and you had a couple of extra obstacles, one in
Speaker 1: particular that not every kid had grown up on the
Speaker 1: East side of Detroit. I want to ask you if
Speaker 1: it's okay about your site, because I know you've had
Speaker 1: some issues with your site. Can you tell us about that.
Speaker 1: I'm partially blind and like one of my eyes that
Speaker 1: happened when I was maybe four or fifth grade. Um,
Speaker 1: actually I had a scarred cornio, so I had to
Speaker 1: get like I just had to get surgeries. You know.
Speaker 1: At the time, I just felt like it was just
Speaker 1: different things they was trying on me to see if
Speaker 1: someone was was gonna work. You know. It caused me
Speaker 1: a lot of like trauma. Just had the simple fact,
Speaker 1: you know, being in grade school, I then to go
Speaker 1: with where like I patches kids making like jokes and
Speaker 1: stuff like you and stuff like that. So like that
Speaker 1: was very like traumatizing. I just gotta ask you one
Speaker 1: other question about who you were before this case happened
Speaker 1: to you. How do you spend your time when you
Speaker 1: want to have fund What do you do for fun?
Speaker 1: I was too busy trying to like look the food
Speaker 1: to eat because I probably even like two days, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: I didn't really know too much alike fun or enjoying
Speaker 1: myself or honestly outside and maybe going to like, uh
Speaker 1: a neighborhood like basement party. But it's like, looks gonna
Speaker 1: be this season look at now, Like I didn't know
Speaker 1: about opportunity. I know everything about opportunity now, I didn't
Speaker 1: know about what the future looked like you're asking me
Speaker 1: that question. Now, My future is very bright. Your future
Speaker 1: is bright, and I want to hear so much more
Speaker 1: about that. But but first I want to talk about
Speaker 1: what you had to go through to get to that future, right,
Speaker 1: what you had to go through to get from being
Speaker 1: that fourteen year old kid on Bilin Streets to the
Speaker 1: man you are. Now. This is where I'm going to
Speaker 1: bring in your lawyer, Megan Crane. Megan, it's fantastic to
Speaker 1: have you here. Can you take us back to the
Speaker 1: night of September two seven, which is when something pretty
Speaker 1: horrible happened right around the corner from where Davonte I
Speaker 1: lived at the time. That set a whole chain of
Speaker 1: events into motion almost unstoppably from the beginning. So it's
Speaker 1: a Monday night, September seventeen, two thousand seven. Um, it's
Speaker 1: around eleven thirty at night. I think it was a
Speaker 1: Monday night football night. So a football game had gone
Speaker 1: late and was wrapping up, and there are five people
Speaker 1: inside nineteen seven forty one Runnion Street watching the end
Speaker 1: of the game when two adult men multiple witnesses report
Speaker 1: they're around six ft tall, skinny, approached the house with
Speaker 1: two guns. They start firing a lot of bullets from
Speaker 1: the outside of the house into the front window, and
Speaker 1: then they bombard through the screen and front door of
Speaker 1: this house and just shoot up the living room. They
Speaker 1: shoot all five adults sitting in that room, killing four
Speaker 1: of them, including the owner of the house, Michael Robinson,
Speaker 1: a thirty three year old man who we now know
Speaker 1: to have been a local marijuana grower and dealer in
Speaker 1: the community, and four of his friends. Three of us
Speaker 1: friends pass away, but one of them is shot a
Speaker 1: couple of times but escapes to a back bedroom. In
Speaker 1: that back bedroom, Michael Robinson's seven year old son happens
Speaker 1: to be asleep at the time. And the surviving victim
Speaker 1: hides under his bed. She later reports that one of
Speaker 1: the shooters comes into the bedroom and actually says play dead,
Speaker 1: be quiet, and so she survives, maybe thanks to those
Speaker 1: words of that shooter. And as she's hiding in that bedroom,
Speaker 1: she hears someone in the basement of the house moving around, rustling,
Speaker 1: a lot of activity down there, and then they say,
Speaker 1: let's get out of here, and they both leave the scene.
Speaker 1: Multiple witnesses report only two people. One of those witnesses
Speaker 1: is a man named Jesse King who lived across the street.
Speaker 1: He was a chaplain actually for the Detroit Police. He
Speaker 1: had firearms in his house, partially because of his professional position,
Speaker 1: and he fired back because he had heard the shots
Speaker 1: and he saw these shooters fleeing the scene, and he
Speaker 1: exchanges fire with the shooters. He definitively says these were
Speaker 1: two men, and he describes their physical build, their height
Speaker 1: in some detail, and the attire they were wearing. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: is all this is going on. Davante lives just around
Speaker 1: the corner from nineteen forty one Runyon Street, As he said,
Speaker 1: on Blon Street, Davante had heard the commotion. He heard
Speaker 1: that something was happening around the corner. So it's late
Speaker 1: at night, he's in his pajamas. He comes outside to
Speaker 1: see what's going on. So I just want to be clear.
Speaker 1: So what you've got here is horrific act of bloodshed,
Speaker 1: but it has witnesses and they all said the same thing. Right,
Speaker 1: They said it was two adult men, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty good lead to go on. But the police go
Speaker 1: somewhere a little different with this. FI go around the
Speaker 1: corner to Bilan Street. How did the police get there?
Speaker 1: And how does this go down? When they start talking
Speaker 1: to Davante. My understands the police were just canvassing the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: There are a couple different officers out going down different
Speaker 1: streets looking for anyone who has something to say. And
Speaker 1: so as part of that campus, they're walking by Davante's
Speaker 1: house and they approached him to say, did you see anything?
Speaker 1: Do you know what's going on? But things quickly evolved
Speaker 1: from there and become much different than from that casual conversation. Now, Davante,
Speaker 1: you are outside your house when this happens. You're in
Speaker 1: your pajama pants, right, You're a fourteen year old kid
Speaker 1: who heard heard the commotion, comes out like all the
Speaker 1: other neighbors did, to see what's going on. And the
Speaker 1: Detroit police approach you. What's going through your head as
Speaker 1: they start to talk to you, not really like understanding
Speaker 1: what was going on that whole little ordeal you changed
Speaker 1: my life or honestly, I never forget it. And like
Speaker 1: they was asking me questions where I live, where I'm from, there,
Speaker 1: that I hear anything, that I see anything, I believe.
Speaker 1: I had told him I had just came from being
Speaker 1: with my auntie boyfriend. He was a retired detective for
Speaker 1: the head to homicide. They actually knew him, so they
Speaker 1: hopped on the phone and they called them. He was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he just came from being with me. I guess.
Speaker 1: They explained to him what had like the case they
Speaker 1: was working on, the different things like that, and um.
Speaker 1: They handed me the phone and he was like, look,
Speaker 1: these is my guys, man, so if you know something
Speaker 1: helped him out. I know nothing, but all right. They
Speaker 1: proceeded to take me home and they had my grandmother
Speaker 1: signed a waiver. She signed a waiver. From there, they
Speaker 1: took me to back to the crime scene. If I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken, and they gave me a gunshop b listice tests, So, Megan,
Speaker 1: I just want to make some sense of what's going
Speaker 1: on here. These police somehow come across the fourteen year
Speaker 1: old kid in the pajama pants right, who's just as
Speaker 1: confused as everybody else in the neighborhood, and end up
Speaker 1: taking him into the police station for questioning. What's what's
Speaker 1: going on here? How did they settle on Davante. I'll
Speaker 1: be honest, I find it pretty hard to explain even today,
Speaker 1: um decade, more than a decade after this, and after
Speaker 1: so many years working on this case, but he years
Speaker 1: my best understanding of how this went down. I think
Speaker 1: the police officers were doing this canvas of the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They come upon Davante, they're kind of just asking him
Speaker 1: the same general questions as anyone else. But when they
Speaker 1: realize this Bill Rice connection and they get Bill on
Speaker 1: the phone with Davante, and Bill encourages Davante to help
Speaker 1: him out, cooperate, do what he can. That kind of
Speaker 1: is the first domino to go that sets this sets
Speaker 1: things in motion. At that point, they are looking for
Speaker 1: someone who can kind of like tell him what's up
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood, Like who in this neighborhood has guns?
Speaker 1: Who in this neighborhoods involved with drugs? Who do you
Speaker 1: think might be involved in this? And so Davante, because
Speaker 1: he's just been encouraged cooperate, says, sure, I can kind
Speaker 1: of tell you who I know who has guns or
Speaker 1: who's involved with trouble. You know, he was used to
Speaker 1: being picked on and someone that when he got positive attention,
Speaker 1: it felt good and had a powerful effect like any
Speaker 1: fourteen year old kid, So it felt good to be
Speaker 1: needed by these police officers. And so they say, can
Speaker 1: you show us? Can you give us a tour? And
Speaker 1: so Davante gets in the car and kind of shows
Speaker 1: them the way around the neighborhood. Things transpire from there.
Speaker 1: They take him to the high school. They sit in
Speaker 1: the parking lot in the high school for a while
Speaker 1: and try to get information out of Davante. They take
Speaker 1: Davante to get some fast food. Davante just told us
Speaker 1: sometimes he'd go two days without eating. They buy him
Speaker 1: a burger and fries to entice them to share more.
Speaker 1: Give us more, tell us anything you can, and the
Speaker 1: more juicy stuff, the more relevant information he can give
Speaker 1: about drugs, guns, crimes, the better maybe the more burgers,
Speaker 1: more fries, you'll get right. Be a hero, this, this
Speaker 1: quadruple homice. I just went down in your neighborhood. Be
Speaker 1: a hero. But the thing is, you know, Davante, they
Speaker 1: took you around the area, they brought you the burger,
Speaker 1: they brought you back to the station. But at some
Speaker 1: point the tables turned right. They were no longer looking
Speaker 1: for information. They were looking for you to confess. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us how it came about that you ended
Speaker 1: up confessing to committing this quadruple homicide on Disaswer. I
Speaker 1: wanted to go home. I was scared. Um, they can't
Speaker 1: promised me that if I was hurry up and get
Speaker 1: this over with, that's theo quicker, I can go home.
Speaker 1: I was at a point I just I wanted to
Speaker 1: be anywhere except for there. I'm fourteen, barely like experience
Speaker 1: anything for real. And you know, um, the promise was
Speaker 1: if I basically complied and you know I go through
Speaker 1: with this, you know my reward was going home. Megan,
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: interrogation when you've looked at it through here's eyes? How
Speaker 1: long did it last? What kind of techniques were they
Speaker 1: using against somebody as young and vulnerable as Davante in
Speaker 1: order to get this confession. Well, first, I think it's
Speaker 1: important to note that I mean this starts in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night. So they have Davante, whether it's
Speaker 1: in the car, in the parking lot of high school,
Speaker 1: or in the police station from one am through up
Speaker 1: until some point the next day, eight to twelve hours
Speaker 1: for round one. And that's only round one of multiple
Speaker 1: rounds that are to come over the next forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: In that first round, they are playing the friend. They're
Speaker 1: buying him the burger, they're buying him the fries. He
Speaker 1: goes to the police station. He's playing on the computer.
Speaker 1: He's looking on social media to help him find people
Speaker 1: to show him pictures to the guns of the people
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood who might have done this. And that's
Speaker 1: making him feel important, and he has access to computer
Speaker 1: that he doesn't always have access to at home. And
Speaker 1: at the end of that, by the mid day the
Speaker 1: next day, when they bring Davante home, he has signed
Speaker 1: a handwritten statement saying five kids from the neighborhood did this.
Speaker 1: He names them Tone Tone Tone lows Um. They did
Speaker 1: it with five guns. He names those five guns a
Speaker 1: Mini fourteen, a handgun, a thirty eight caliber, an assault
Speaker 1: style weapon, and he tells a story that they met
Speaker 1: up at a fast food restaurant earlier that day Coney
Speaker 1: Island to talk about this. Davante was with them leading
Speaker 1: up to it, but he freaked out and he didn't
Speaker 1: stick around. He went home and didn't go to this
Speaker 1: to Runyon Street with them, but he knows what happened.
Speaker 1: Do the police check out Davante's story? They do check
Speaker 1: out some of it, some of it doesn't match, and
Speaker 1: they kind of proceed full steam ahead. Uh inexplicitly the
Speaker 1: five furfetrators versus the witnesses that take two uh Okay,
Speaker 1: who cares ballistics from the scene show definitively that this
Speaker 1: gun was an a K forty seven and a forty
Speaker 1: five pistol. There's no question about that. The ballistics are
Speaker 1: not from a Mini fourteen, they're not from a thirty
Speaker 1: five caliber, they're not from a handgun. They go check
Speaker 1: out this fast food restaurant they supposedly met up at
Speaker 1: the Coney Island that Coney Island is closed for construction
Speaker 1: and has been for months. They check out the people
Speaker 1: Davante has named Tone Tone Lows. They go pick up
Speaker 1: multiple of them, They question them that night. That morning,
Speaker 1: they're cleared by Alibis and they're let go, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't take their sites off Davante. The story is by
Speaker 1: this point riddled with errors. Right, it's the wrong people,
Speaker 1: the wrong guns, the wrong place at this Coney Island
Speaker 1: restaurant that's closed. Nothing there makes sense. But the police
Speaker 1: still have you in their sights, Davante. They come back
Speaker 1: and get you, right, and they bring you back to
Speaker 1: the station, and that's when things start to get even worse. Megan.
Speaker 1: They questioned Davante again and tell us about the confession
Speaker 1: that results after the second round. So they do take
Speaker 1: Davanta home briefly. I think during that time they're picking
Speaker 1: up Tone Tone Lows the other guys they're questioning them,
Speaker 1: and when they clear them and they realize, huh, this
Speaker 1: isn't making much sense, they decid, we gotta go get
Speaker 1: Davante again, so they go pick up Davanteane's mom is
Speaker 1: home at the time. They tell her, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't think your son's telling us the truth. We need
Speaker 1: to bring him back in and talk to him about
Speaker 1: this homicide. His mom says okay, and she as a mom,
Speaker 1: as you know, socialized to do that encourages Davante to
Speaker 1: tell the truth, to tell the police, and from what
Speaker 1: Davante has always told me, things dramatically changed from there.
Speaker 1: They had been his friends, they've been helpful, they've been
Speaker 1: encouraging before that. As soon as he's back in the car,
Speaker 1: they are aggressive. They're confronting him, they're yelling at him,
Speaker 1: they're telling we know you're lying. And at this point
Speaker 1: they use a very common tactic of lying to Davante
Speaker 1: and using false evidence. They had taken his shoes earlier
Speaker 1: when they had him at the police station. They said,
Speaker 1: we tested your shoes. You have blood on your shoes,
Speaker 1: so we now know you were there. We know you
Speaker 1: did this, and we know you're lying to us, So
Speaker 1: we don't want to hear anything else. We just want
Speaker 1: to hear the truth. Tell us what happened. Wow. So
Speaker 1: I mean, Davante, I'm just a picture the mental whirlwind
Speaker 1: that you must have been experiencing at this time. After
Speaker 1: being picked up off the street in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, right after the shooting. What what was it
Speaker 1: like to realize that all of a sudden, these officers
Speaker 1: who just a few hours earlier had been your friends.
Speaker 1: What was it like to realize that they were coming
Speaker 1: for you? It was hell. It was very um stressful,
Speaker 1: very traumatizing. You feel hopeless in situations like that, right,
Speaker 1: because it's like, how did I get to this point? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: I went from walking down the street to them showing
Speaker 1: me pictures of like the decease people, people who was
Speaker 1: once alive, not these people are deceased, right, And on
Speaker 1: top of that, like everything was just like happening so fast.
Speaker 1: So it was you know, it was here stuff that
Speaker 1: we shouldn't expect even the most experienced adult to withstand,
Speaker 1: let alone a fourteen year old kid who's by himself
Speaker 1: and scared. You end up changing your story to try
Speaker 1: and please these guys, to try and get out of there,
Speaker 1: to try and go home, like you were saying. And
Speaker 1: the story that it becomes clear they want is a
Speaker 1: story where you were involved, where you did this. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us, Megan, what the final story was in
Speaker 1: Davante's final confession. The final story Davante tells isn't that
Speaker 1: much different than the original story he told that didn't
Speaker 1: make much sense and didn't match most of the facts,
Speaker 1: except that it now includes Davante as an active participant
Speaker 1: and as a shooter. So it has these four other
Speaker 1: people from the neighborhood who we now know some of
Speaker 1: those names were given to police. Buy a witness that
Speaker 1: during that canvas that night. Um, it has these five
Speaker 1: guns that that don't match the ballistics at the scene. UM,
Speaker 1: But it has Davante going in, it has Davante doing
Speaker 1: the shooting, and then it has Davante running away on
Speaker 1: foot from this scene to his house, which also doesn't
Speaker 1: match the evidence. And then Davante told police he threw
Speaker 1: his Mini fourteen was which was the gun he fired
Speaker 1: at the scene, into a vacant field on a T
Speaker 1: and T property. Afterwards police went and check that field. Um,
Speaker 1: they did not find any gun. And this usually is
Speaker 1: like a real red flag of an unreliable confession. If
Speaker 1: a suspect gives you a new fact that police don't
Speaker 1: already know, and you conduct follow up investigation and you
Speaker 1: prove it true, well, then that's the gold star standard
Speaker 1: of a reliable confession. But if you don't prove it true,
Speaker 1: that's a red flag and you need to question this
Speaker 1: confession and this suspect. It's a perfect storm, right, It's
Speaker 1: a unfortunately perfect recipe for how to get a false confession,
Speaker 1: from the sleep deprivation to the interrogation techniques that we used.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the lies about the evidence rights, the lack
Speaker 1: of council, lack of parent for somebody as young as
Speaker 1: Davante in that room, and once Davante gave that confession
Speaker 1: that they were driving for that they were coming to
Speaker 1: get during those thirty six hours of often on interrogation,
Speaker 1: Davante's charged as an adult and you get a lawyer
Speaker 1: Davante whose name, unfortunately is pretty notorious in the world
Speaker 1: of wrongful conviction. His name is Robert Slamaca. Megan, can
Speaker 1: you educate us about just who Robert Slamka is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Robert Slamka was a private attorney in Detroit who I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was well known at that time,
Speaker 1: but at this point is now notorious for misconduct and
Speaker 1: doing essentially a really bad, a really bad job at
Speaker 1: being a defense attorney. He was reprimanded formally by Bar
Speaker 1: Association at least six times, including in one other exoneration
Speaker 1: case where he helped helped essentially get an innocent man,
Speaker 1: convicted and sent away for life. And since then, in
Speaker 1: more recent years, he has actually been disbarred for misconduct
Speaker 1: and criminal conduct. And I think we'll hear a bit
Speaker 1: more from Davante about what he did or didn't do
Speaker 1: for DeVante's case. But Davante essentially received no, no defense
Speaker 1: from this man. So my whole time and um juvenile,
Speaker 1: I was in the juvenile detend facility for around eight
Speaker 1: months fighting four councils first degree murder, four council felonty murder, robbery,
Speaker 1: assault with the tempted murder and felt the firearm. My
Speaker 1: attorney only came you see me what four times? If that?
Speaker 1: What a minute? Visits never brought any paperwork with him,
Speaker 1: no files, never, no nothing, no sense of come on,
Speaker 1: like let's try to build the defense. He didn't try
Speaker 1: to put up no type of fight, no effort. No,
Speaker 1: I don't even think he even called the witness. He
Speaker 1: didn't call any character witnesses. Nothing like he he didn't
Speaker 1: try whatsoever, you know, for him, I felt as if
Speaker 1: like it was just all about the money and like degreed,
Speaker 1: you know, he saw my family was a knee desperinaty
Speaker 1: trying the best to like, you know, be there and
Speaker 1: protect me and try to help figure figure it out
Speaker 1: with me. He knew that he took advantage of that.
Speaker 1: So is there charging your family money while he's only
Speaker 1: visiting you four times, you know, short visits each one,
Speaker 1: and providing you with essentially no help. So what what
Speaker 1: goes down at trial? Megan with with Slamica at the
Speaker 1: helm of this so called defense of this innocent kid. Well,
Speaker 1: at first, I just want to point out what goes
Speaker 1: down or doesn't go down before trial. Slamica essentially, I
Speaker 1: mean not essentially, he does no investigation of this case.
Speaker 1: And as we've already discussed, from all of the glaring
Speaker 1: inconsistencies or latent differences between the facts of the crime
Speaker 1: and Davante's confession, there was a lot to investigate. There
Speaker 1: was a lot to look into, a lot to disprove
Speaker 1: he did nothing. One thing that happens in between that
Speaker 1: time nothing to do Islamica. But there's a state ordered
Speaker 1: forensic psychological evaluation a couple of months after the crime.
Speaker 1: In that Davant recants his confession. He tells the psychologist
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. In that interrogation room, he tells him
Speaker 1: this was false. He tells him he didn't do this,
Speaker 1: and he tells him why he falsely confessed. Slamica does
Speaker 1: nothing with that, and he doesn't admit that at trial.
Speaker 1: So what happens at trial? The state puts on a
Speaker 1: parade of very compelling witnesses. They put on the detectives
Speaker 1: to talk about the horrific facts of this tragic crime.
Speaker 1: They put on the surviving victim to describe her experience
Speaker 1: of laying under this bed seeing her friends shot and killed,
Speaker 1: thinking she's going to be killed. And then they have
Speaker 1: her have Davante stand up and say a couple of words,
Speaker 1: and they say, does that sound like the voice you
Speaker 1: heard at the crime scene? And she says, sounds like it.
Speaker 1: We now know, we should have known then, But voice
Speaker 1: comparisons are not a reliable form of evidence. It's meaningless.
Speaker 1: At that point, though, Slamica takes Davanta in side and says,
Speaker 1: there's really nothing I can do here. You confessed this way,
Speaker 1: and it says your voice matches the shooter, so you're
Speaker 1: gonna get convicted. I think you should plead guilty. And
Speaker 1: that's what happens. This is unreal, right, I mean, what
Speaker 1: was it like, despite the fact that there could have
Speaker 1: been such a robust defense, to have your lawyer bring
Speaker 1: you into that back room and tell you that you
Speaker 1: should plead guilty to a quadruple homicide. It was, it
Speaker 1: was very it was it was a mess. You know,
Speaker 1: um at the time, like I didn't even know how
Speaker 1: to like read and write right. So he got the
Speaker 1: plea deal from the prosecutor, brought the plea deal to me,
Speaker 1: like I didn't even understand what is a a guideline
Speaker 1: score with his gear three G and I didn't understand
Speaker 1: none of that. And he just handed me, uh, the
Speaker 1: paper and the pants and walked away from the table.
Speaker 1: It was like sign this went over and was doing
Speaker 1: something in court talking to somebody, came back and got
Speaker 1: it from unbelievable railroaded from beginning to what turned out
Speaker 1: to be the end of your trial. You entered those
Speaker 1: please of guilty barely known what it was you were doing.
Speaker 1: You signed a piece of paper in which you pled
Speaker 1: guilty to four homicides you didn't commit, and you were
Speaker 1: sentenced to thirty seven to ninety years in prison at
Speaker 1: age fifteen. This is a story that shocks the conscience.
Speaker 1: It should shock anyone who hears it. But here's the thing, Davante,
Speaker 1: even as you're being shipped off at age fifteen to
Speaker 1: start serving that thirty seven to ninety years, the story doesn't.
Speaker 1: Instead of takes a twist. What is the twist that happens?
Speaker 1: Megan Not long after Davante enters that guilty plea, get sentenced,
Speaker 1: and goes off to start serving his time. Exactly two
Speaker 1: weeks to the day from the day DeVante is sentenced
Speaker 1: to that thirty seven to ninety year sentence as a
Speaker 1: fifteen year old kid, exactly two weeks to that day,
Speaker 1: a man named Vincent Smothers is arrested at his home
Speaker 1: for a series of unrelated and unrelated shooting. The Detroit
Speaker 1: Police Department, same police department that had DeVante, that interrogated him,
Speaker 1: that charged him, that convicted him, bring Smothers in and
Speaker 1: they interrogate him about an unrelated shooting. Smothers because he's
Speaker 1: recently had an infant and has a family to protect,
Speaker 1: he does roll over and he admits some things. He
Speaker 1: admits a lot of things. He confesses to a series
Speaker 1: of twelve murders. Turns out Vincent Smothers is an assassin,
Speaker 1: a hired hitman, and he works for local Detroit drug dealers.
Speaker 1: He confesses to these twelve murders in detail on video.
Speaker 1: Unlike DeVante's interrogations, they video tape the entire course of
Speaker 1: Vincent Smother's interrogation and confessions. Four those twelve murders, well,
Speaker 1: four those twelve murders are then forty one Runyon murders.
Speaker 1: Smothers confesses to them in detail on video. And you
Speaker 1: know what, those details match the crime scene facts perfectly.
Speaker 1: He tells the accomplice he did it with. There are
Speaker 1: two men. There are an a K forty seven and
Speaker 1: a forty five caliber pistol, the two guns that perfectly
Speaker 1: match the ballistics at the crime scene. He can describe
Speaker 1: the house, the layout of that living room where the
Speaker 1: bodies fell when they shot them. And he can describe
Speaker 1: the conversation that he himself had with that surviving victim
Speaker 1: in the back bedroom as she lay under the bed
Speaker 1: while a kid slept. That's not it. Smothers then tells
Speaker 1: them where they can find the gun he used. They
Speaker 1: go to that address, they get the gun, and it
Speaker 1: is a match. It's a confirmed match. It is the
Speaker 1: gun that was used at this crime scene. So this
Speaker 1: is two weeks after they put Davante away for life,
Speaker 1: and yet nothing happens, nothing changes. Please tell me that
Speaker 1: the second this serial hit man confesses in accurate detail
Speaker 1: to the Runyon Street shootings. Please tell me that someone
Speaker 1: in the Detroit Police Department, or in the prosecutor's office,
Speaker 1: or anyone who knew anything about this went to Davante
Speaker 1: or his family or his lawyer and said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: we got the wrong person. It's Smothers, not Davante Sanford.
Speaker 1: It's the hitman, not the kid. I'm appalled to tell you, Laura,
Speaker 1: that not a single one of those things happened. I
Speaker 1: would say the Detroit police did nothing about it, but
Speaker 1: actually they did something about it because the detective who
Speaker 1: took Smothers to the bathroom in the middle of his
Speaker 1: interrogation was one of the detect those who interrogated Davante,
Speaker 1: and so he did something about it. He told Smothers,
Speaker 1: you know what, we already got the guy who did
Speaker 1: those Runyon Street murders, and Smothers said, well, you've got
Speaker 1: the wrong guy then, And what they did was they
Speaker 1: hit it. They hid s mother's confession unbelievable, unbelievable. So
Speaker 1: some mothers confesses to twelve murders, they end up charging
Speaker 1: him with eight. Right, they don't charge him with the
Speaker 1: quadruple homicide on Running Street that Davante had just planted
Speaker 1: out to. They convicts mothers on those eight and it's
Speaker 1: like his confession to the Runyon Street homicides, they it's
Speaker 1: like it never happened. And we later heard some information
Speaker 1: that he may have even been offered a sweeter plea
Speaker 1: deal premised on the fact that he would never mention
Speaker 1: or testify to the fact that he did the Runyon
Speaker 1: Street murders. He was offered to pleado not to come
Speaker 1: testify for me because at the time, like my lawyers
Speaker 1: was trying to give him to testify multiple times, and
Speaker 1: the prosecutor because he was deal fighting um multiple murder
Speaker 1: cases as well, and um, the prosecutors reached out to
Speaker 1: him and basically I'll trying to offer him a deal
Speaker 1: where he wouldn't come to court in landis testimony and
Speaker 1: fight for my innocence. Wow, it's one of the worst
Speaker 1: cover ups I have seen in fourteen years of doing
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction work. Who was it that actually exposed this
Speaker 1: unbelievable cover up. It was media. Um. The only reason
Speaker 1: this ever came to light was a reporter who heard
Speaker 1: that there was another person detained at the jail talking
Speaker 1: about that he actually did the Runyon Stream murders and
Speaker 1: talking about that he did the murders. That this kid
Speaker 1: was in prison for um and at the time. This
Speaker 1: is like, I think, a year after davante sentence. So
Speaker 1: Davante has a post conviction attorney and she hears, Thank goodness,
Speaker 1: a reporter reaches out here and says, hey, I've got
Speaker 1: something you need need to know. So this comes to light.
Speaker 1: It's you're a year in Davante. What's prison life been
Speaker 1: like for you during that year. I can only say
Speaker 1: that if I were in that position at age fift,
Speaker 1: I'd be scared out of my mind. I was. I
Speaker 1: was more than just scared. I was terrified. I was
Speaker 1: all in one, you know. Um. I never went through
Speaker 1: any of that before, So to have all that coming
Speaker 1: at me and all that coming at me at one time,
Speaker 1: it was just Yeah, I'm trying to put myself in
Speaker 1: your position, trying to imagine the emotions that anyone would
Speaker 1: feel hearing that that some mothers confessed. You know, I
Speaker 1: can imagine you went through anger, you went through sadness,
Speaker 1: you went through who is this guy? I didn't even
Speaker 1: have no anger towards him. I'm not into I'm not
Speaker 1: into judging people because I hate when I get judged,
Speaker 1: you know. So I mean like, I'm not into judging
Speaker 1: people where I am right. I'm thankful for Mrs Smothers.
Speaker 1: Smothers the reason why I got these headphones on and
Speaker 1: I'm able to do this sit here in my home
Speaker 1: and talk to you guys. You know, it took a
Speaker 1: quote unquote hitman to save my life, not the Detroit police,
Speaker 1: not you know, the Wayne County prosecutor office, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially a hitman and in the team of lawyers. Smothers
Speaker 1: tried hard once he knew what the injustice that had
Speaker 1: been done to Davante, to right this wrong. He confessed
Speaker 1: to this crime at least eight to ten times that
Speaker 1: first time, to police, to his lawyer, to multiple rounds
Speaker 1: of Devant's lawyer, to the media. He wanted to go
Speaker 1: to the court. He signed multiple sworn affidavits under the
Speaker 1: penalty of perjury. I think Vincent Smothers is kind of
Speaker 1: the portrait of that even the people who have done
Speaker 1: some of the worst things, some of the most horrible things,
Speaker 1: still have humanity. And he was the only one at
Speaker 1: that point willing to fight to right that wrong. How
Speaker 1: does Davante's case and this this crazy situation of the
Speaker 1: hitman trying to help the kid, how does this come
Speaker 1: to you? Megan? As we had mentioned, when mother's confession
Speaker 1: came to light, it was about a year after and
Speaker 1: he was in post conviction in Michigan State Court, represented
Speaker 1: by the Michigan State Public Defender system. Well, you would think, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have the reliable, corroborated, um confirmed, ballistically confirmed confession
Speaker 1: from the true perpetrator. We should be able to get
Speaker 1: this undone right. It proved true that No, that's that's
Speaker 1: not how the system works. That's not not in Michigan
Speaker 1: and not in most states and court systems across our country.
Speaker 1: So Davante's case ended up working its way through the
Speaker 1: Michigan court system for another seven eight years, and that's
Speaker 1: how it came to us. He had a public defender
Speaker 1: for a while. Um it went all the way up
Speaker 1: to Michigan's Name Court, but he lost and he lost
Speaker 1: because of a technicality. It was all the evidence was there.
Speaker 1: Smothers was there. It was crystal clear Smothers did this.
Speaker 1: Davante Sandford did not do this. But the Michigan Supreme
Speaker 1: Court said, Okay, we see your evidence, but it's in
Speaker 1: the wrong motion. What does that mean? The wrong motion?
Speaker 1: It the form of document that was filed in the
Speaker 1: court that presented this crystal clear evidence that a kid
Speaker 1: was wrongfully in prison for life, it had the wrong
Speaker 1: title on it. And instead of just saying, Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: treat this as the right motion, or instead of letting
Speaker 1: you refile in our court and come back to us
Speaker 1: in a month, they said, you need to go back
Speaker 1: to the beginning, and at a minimum that's gonna take years. Meanwhile, Davante,
Speaker 1: you're a teenager, right and you're going from you've gone
Speaker 1: from fourteen to fifteen already, are going fifteen to sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.
Speaker 1: These are some of the most important years of life.
Speaker 1: These are the years of growing up, of learning how
Speaker 1: to move as an adult, learning who you are and
Speaker 1: who you want to be as an adult in this world.
Speaker 1: Right as you're watching your case wade through the morass
Speaker 1: of the Michigan Court bureaucracy. What's it feel like to
Speaker 1: be sitting there as the minutes and the hours and
Speaker 1: the days take by, when the proof is so clear
Speaker 1: that you're innocence. It was like a roller coaster. And
Speaker 1: not only was I like fighting for my freedom, like
Speaker 1: I was also in prison, and like, literally I can
Speaker 1: fight for my life that time. Seriously, you know, I
Speaker 1: was at war on like two fronts. Right at times
Speaker 1: I felt as if, okay, I'm not I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: win one of these, so which one? You know, which
Speaker 1: which ones is the one worth losing? Get what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So it was stressful. It was it was times why
Speaker 1: I had all the hope in the world. Then it
Speaker 1: was times I'm like, man, I might look around and
Speaker 1: nine prison you know, so uh so already for my language.
Speaker 1: But it was times I didn't see this, I couldn't
Speaker 1: picture this, but but it happened. So I'm I'm father
Speaker 1: grateful and thankful for that. Were there times that you
Speaker 1: let yourself hope when you were in prison? Yeah? Did
Speaker 1: that make it easier and harder to wait to have
Speaker 1: that hope? Harder, way, harder, way harder? You you would
Speaker 1: do whatever it takes to get about that place. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be there more than thirty minutes, let alone,
Speaker 1: you know, multiple years. You know, I'm I'm father grateful
Speaker 1: that I had the support. And my support wasn't just
Speaker 1: regular support. My support came with a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of strength, a lot of like um, well grounded people,
Speaker 1: and that's what got me through. You know, times like
Speaker 1: I would be having conversations with my attorneys and I
Speaker 1: would be telling them like and I don't know how
Speaker 1: to like how I'm gonna keep doing this, Like I
Speaker 1: just feel like giving up. They had said about emotion
Speaker 1: or a court day, or maybe we was waiting for
Speaker 1: a report. I remember one time we was waiting for
Speaker 1: like the Michigan State Police report, and that report took forever.
Speaker 1: But I had them people around me. Man who who
Speaker 1: whom They held my hand At times when I ain't
Speaker 1: want to even get up at that and probably ran
Speaker 1: twenty miles, they come and come on, get up. We
Speaker 1: gotta go, Dante, We gotta you know, you gotta be
Speaker 1: on it. You know, my my legal team is the
Speaker 1: ones who like gave me, like my supporters, the ones
Speaker 1: gave me like that hope like, you know, you're gonna
Speaker 1: make it up about of this. You're gonna make it
Speaker 1: up aout of this because you ain't. You ain't gotta
Speaker 1: worry about you. We got to just, you know, keep
Speaker 1: your head up. I don't know how anyone that could
Speaker 1: be expected to get through anything remotely like this without
Speaker 1: an army of people behind you. One of those people
Speaker 1: was you began a pretty important person him. You took
Speaker 1: Davante's case. It can be impossible so many times to
Speaker 1: do a wrongful conviction, but you made the impossible possible
Speaker 1: in this case. Tell me what you what do you
Speaker 1: have to do? Who you had to get involved? Ultimately
Speaker 1: to free Davante Sanford. Thankfully, we didn't have to wait
Speaker 1: the years that it would have taken for that motion
Speaker 1: to work its way through the court system again because
Speaker 1: an unusual thing happened. But a Michigan State Police officer,
Speaker 1: um a law enforcement body of Michigan that had never
Speaker 1: previously been involved in Davante's case, they read our motion
Speaker 1: and they called a member of our team and they said,
Speaker 1: this is one of the most shocking cases I've ever seen,
Speaker 1: and one of the most compelling packages of evidence we've
Speaker 1: ever seen. We want to look into this case because
Speaker 1: we think an injustice has been done and thank thank
Speaker 1: God for that call. Um, And we often talk about
Speaker 1: working with kind of odd belld fellows or finding partners
Speaker 1: in this work that you don't expect. We certainly and
Speaker 1: expect to kind of partner with the Michigan State Police.
Speaker 1: But they did. They kicked off and as Davante said,
Speaker 1: it took a long time, a year long reinvestigation of
Speaker 1: this case. It was a painful weight, but it shows
Speaker 1: the lengths they were willing to go do because they
Speaker 1: put a multi officer team on this case and they
Speaker 1: reinterviewed everybody, and they turned up evidence that made it
Speaker 1: impossible for the state to keep turning a blind eye.
Speaker 1: And is that what finally pushed Davante's case over the
Speaker 1: finish line? It is Um. The Michigan State Police pulls
Speaker 1: all this together into a lengthy final report and the judge,
Speaker 1: the trial judge on his case, vacates his conviction and
Speaker 1: thankfully orders Davante's immediate release from prison. And I'm smiling
Speaker 1: because I'm just picturing Davante walking out that day, and
Speaker 1: it's still surreal because after all that weight, this stuff
Speaker 1: happened pretty fast once that report was turned over, that
Speaker 1: order got signed, and and he was walking out. What
Speaker 1: was it like those first first few minutes and hours
Speaker 1: of freedom? Hopeful? It's crazy. I had to go through
Speaker 1: all that to get the future, but I came home
Speaker 1: with the future, you know, UM planning, aspirations, goals, visions
Speaker 1: and um to this day. You know, I tried my best,
Speaker 1: one day, one step at the time to accomplish everything
Speaker 1: you know, UM that I start out to do from
Speaker 1: in prison. That future is your present day, it's your now,
Speaker 1: and you got a lot of future ahead of you too.
Speaker 1: So what's what's life like now? I think for me,
Speaker 1: the most amazing part of my life it wasn't even
Speaker 1: getting out, Like, the most amazing part of my life
Speaker 1: is my son. My son is like everything you know
Speaker 1: I wish uh I had the chance to be like,
Speaker 1: which was a kid like that freedom of of growing
Speaker 1: and yeah, just just being a dad, you know, UM,
Speaker 1: spending quality time with my son, Um, my son. I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be here. My son is a blessing, So
Speaker 1: that's how I treat him as such, you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: spending quality time with him, working on my nonprofit giving
Speaker 1: back to the community. Um, doing my motivational speaking work,
Speaker 1: lending my ear, like not my ear, but my voice
Speaker 1: whenever like someone may need it. You know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to like criminal justice reform, gang prevention, violence, adventure
Speaker 1: and inner cities. I just want to give back and
Speaker 1: trying to help as many people as I can. Not
Speaker 1: happen to go through some of the things I have
Speaker 1: gone through, and if they are facing some of the
Speaker 1: things that I'm facing, they get some type of inspiration
Speaker 1: and um, you know too, don't give up, but don't
Speaker 1: give in. You know, I'm curious if there's anything you
Speaker 1: want to say to Vincent's mothers, thank you that man
Speaker 1: saved my life that that man say like literally, like say,
Speaker 1: I don't know too many people you know who live
Speaker 1: those type of lifestyles and go through them type of
Speaker 1: things who will be willing to like standing up in
Speaker 1: a sept responsibility. You know, Um, I got friends and
Speaker 1: I know people that's in prison for crimes they didn't commit,
Speaker 1: you know. Only the reason why they sitting in prison
Speaker 1: years because the no snitching rule. I'm not gonna snitch.
Speaker 1: I know my cousin did this or I know my
Speaker 1: friend did this. But I'm not gonna say anything, right,
Speaker 1: and I don't hold none against them people. You know,
Speaker 1: what you believe in is what you believe in, right,
Speaker 1: But like some of those people in prison are living
Speaker 1: in some of the worst conditions and like possible, no
Speaker 1: no money, no food, no letters, no anything. You basically
Speaker 1: just sitting in prison for something you didn't do them
Speaker 1: because you didn't want to tell give what I'm saying
Speaker 1: it for that man and want to come and step
Speaker 1: up to the plate and take four responsibly before his
Speaker 1: for his actions. To me, that's the true definition of
Speaker 1: a man. You know. Uh, he didn't have to do that,
Speaker 1: but he did began. If you could change one thing
Speaker 1: about the system so that it does not happen again,
Speaker 1: what should we be doing, What reform should we be
Speaker 1: pushing right? What needs to be changed? Davante was only
Speaker 1: convicted because of his confession. One that is a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old sleep deprived kid. It was inevitable. Youth, as
Speaker 1: we have long known, needs special protections in the interrogation room.
Speaker 1: And one that I know you're working on every day, Laura,
Speaker 1: but is getting is banning deception and interrogations for kids.
Speaker 1: And it has now passed in multiple states. There's no
Speaker 1: reason that law can't be asked in every state. And
Speaker 1: that is what the turning point in Davante's interrogation was
Speaker 1: when the police lied to him about the evidence and
Speaker 1: said we now know you did this because we found
Speaker 1: blood on your shoes. That was the turning point. That's
Speaker 1: what broke him down to that point of hopelessness where
Speaker 1: he would say anything to go home. And so if
Speaker 1: we can ban deception, I think that is a big
Speaker 1: starting point um that can change how things are playing
Speaker 1: out for kids in the interrogation room. As we get
Speaker 1: to the end of this conversation, I am sitting at
Speaker 1: Jason Flam's chair. I'm lucky to be here talking to
Speaker 1: you both today. He always ends this podcast with a
Speaker 1: segment he calls closing arguments, where he turns off his
Speaker 1: mic and sits back and let's the person in your position, Davante,
Speaker 1: talk about whatever does you want to talk about. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stay quiet. I'm gonna thank you both for being
Speaker 1: here and sharing your stories and your wisdom. And Davante,
Speaker 1: this is your closing argument. I just think common sense
Speaker 1: need to be used in some of these cases. This
Speaker 1: basic common sense I understand. You know, um, people be
Speaker 1: having childs to do and those jobs comes a lot
Speaker 1: of stress. You gotta think on homicide that somebody that's
Speaker 1: lost their lives, someone is no longer with us. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you know, people need
Speaker 1: to step back and look at the whole picture first.
Speaker 1: It's just looking at just just just one little box.
Speaker 1: You get what I'm saying, because like when you go
Speaker 1: back and you just when you speak on my case,
Speaker 1: even the average person with no type of law background,
Speaker 1: no type of anything scratch their head. How Like when
Speaker 1: I go out and I meet people, they he was fourteen,
Speaker 1: how you know, like how so if if if if
Speaker 1: they're coming up with that conclusion, how how come these
Speaker 1: professional these detectives, people college degrees and different things like
Speaker 1: that could come up with that type of conclusion. I
Speaker 1: called on wait some miss off here, you know, like
Speaker 1: it's we're missing something instead of having oh gas, no brakes,
Speaker 1: you know, if that makes any sense. Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest host Laura and
Speaker 1: I writer. I'd like to thank our executive producers, Jason
Speaker 1: Flam and Kevin Words. The senior producer for this episode
Speaker 1: is Jackie Polly and our producers are Lila Robinson and
Speaker 1: Jeff Clyburne. Our editor is Roxandra Gweedy. The music in
Speaker 1: this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 1: all three platforms, you can follow me on Instagram and
Speaker 1: Twitter at Laura and I Writer. Wrongful Conviction is a
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number one. Next week, on the guest hosted episodes
Speaker 1: of wrang Ful Conviction, Kembas Smith will talk with Joyce Watkins,
Speaker 1: a woman who has lit up the world with not
Speaker 1: only her story but her incredible spirit of perseverance. Joyce
Speaker 1: was imprisoned for twenty eight long years after her great
Speaker 1: niece died in her care, even though anyone looking even
Speaker 1: a little bit closer at the details would have and
Speaker 1: should have known right away that Joyce deserved none of
Speaker 1: the blame. This is a must listen episode and it's
Speaker 1: going to be right here next Monday. In the Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction podcast feed