Speaker 1: I'm Jason Flamm, you know. At Wrongful Conviction. We're so
Speaker 1: proud to be a part of the evergrowing landscape of
Speaker 1: true crime shows that revealed just how our criminal legal
Speaker 1: system works and just how often it fails, and how
Speaker 1: grotesquely in some cases it just collapses on people who
Speaker 1: are innocent. And this week I've invited a colleague from
Speaker 1: another podcast, a podcast that I really love, to bring
Speaker 1: their own unique style to our coverage of yet another
Speaker 1: insane wrongful conviction case.
Speaker 2: Late at night on September seventeenth, two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: five people on Detroit's East Side were at a house
Speaker 2: party watching a football game on TV. Without warning, two
Speaker 2: men burst into the house and shot the place up.
Speaker 2: They killed four of the five people, but one woman
Speaker 2: survived by hiding under a bed. One of the gunmen
Speaker 2: found her there and told her to play dead. A
Speaker 2: few blocks away, neighbors were gathering on the street, including
Speaker 2: fourteen year old Davante Sandford. When police talked to DeVante,
Speaker 2: he told them that his aunt's boyfriend was a retired
Speaker 2: homicide cop. So police asked Davante to help them with
Speaker 2: the investigation, to tell them what he knew about the
Speaker 2: people in the neighborhood. But in the end police forced
Speaker 2: Davante to confess to this brutal quadruple homicide. He was
Speaker 2: tried and convicted, then sentenced to thirty seven to ninety
Speaker 2: years in prison. And remember he was only fourteen. In
Speaker 2: this case, it would take a truly unexpected turn of
Speaker 2: events for DeVante's innocence to come to light. This is
Speaker 2: wrongful conviction. Hey guys, it's Laura and I writer and
Speaker 2: I'm honored to be guest hosting this episode of Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2: I'm the co director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions
Speaker 2: at Northwestern Universe. And if my voice sounds familiar, it's
Speaker 2: because I've guest hosted other episodes of this podcast, and
Speaker 2: I co host another series on this feed called False Confessions.
Speaker 2: Today's episode is one of the most important and shocking
Speaker 2: cases of wrongful conviction that I know of, and I
Speaker 2: am so honored to tell you the story. I'm here
Speaker 2: with two very special guests, Meghan Crane and DeVante Sandford.
Speaker 3: I'm Meghan Crane, I'm an attorney, and I'm the co
Speaker 3: director of the Missouri office of the MacArthur Justice Center.
Speaker 2: We are so excited to have you, and there's no
Speaker 2: one in this world like DeVante Sandford. Davante, we are
Speaker 2: so happy to have you here. Do you mind introducing
Speaker 2: yourself to.
Speaker 4: How you doing. My name is DeVante Sandford. I'm a zannerie,
Speaker 4: I'm a son, I'm a father, entrepreneur and.
Speaker 2: All around amazing human being. We are so grateful to
Speaker 2: have you here, Davante. You know your case. When I
Speaker 2: think about all of the wrongful conviction cases that I've
Speaker 2: worked on, that people like Megan, who's one of my heroes,
Speaker 2: have worked on, that all of us in this entire
Speaker 2: space have worked on, yours is always the first one
Speaker 2: that comes to my mind as one of the most
Speaker 2: difficult examples of just sheer injustice. And it starts when
Speaker 2: you're a fourteen year old kid living in Detroit, Michigan,
Speaker 2: on the East side of Detroit on Belin Street. What
Speaker 2: was life like for you back in the day?
Speaker 5: Back in the day, it was it was kind of hard.
Speaker 4: You know, I was going through a lot mentally, spiritually, emotionally,
Speaker 4: like the family dynamic was really wasn't there as far
Speaker 4: as like a lot of support, you know, my mother,
Speaker 4: like she was dealing with a drug abuse issue, So
Speaker 4: like I had like a lot going on.
Speaker 2: Or Honesty, So you're living on Bilin Street. It's a
Speaker 2: tough life. You're there with your mom and siblings. There's
Speaker 2: drugs in the house. This is a in a tough
Speaker 2: block in a tough part of Detroit. When do you
Speaker 2: think back DeVante to yourself at fourteen, what did you
Speaker 2: think your future.
Speaker 4: Was going to be growing up? Like, I didn't hear
Speaker 4: as often as I hear it now. I didn't hear
Speaker 4: the word opportunity. I didn't hear a word growth. I
Speaker 4: didn't hear a word future. I didn't I didn't hear
Speaker 4: those type of words. You know, somebody would have asked
Speaker 4: me what your future looked like when I was fourteen,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have been able to even answer that.
Speaker 5: I can answer it now, but not back then.
Speaker 2: So you grew up not hearing words like future and opportunity.
Speaker 2: What words did you hear instead?
Speaker 4: Get rich and die trying, you know, hustle and no luck.
Speaker 4: The East side of Detroit is like one of the
Speaker 4: worstest parts of Detroit. Or Honesty, like very high crime rate,
Speaker 4: very very high crime rate, very high poverty rate, very
Speaker 4: low rates when it comes to reading and education amongst
Speaker 4: like the youth.
Speaker 2: And you know you're you're growing up at that and
Speaker 2: you had a couple of extra obstacles, one in particular
Speaker 2: that not every kid had grown up on the East
Speaker 2: side of Detroit. I want to ask you if it's
Speaker 2: okay about your site, because I know you've had some
Speaker 2: issues with your site. Can you tell us about that.
Speaker 4: I'm partially blind in like one of my eyes. That
Speaker 4: happened when I was maybe fourth fifth grade, and I
Speaker 4: actually I had to scar corneal so I had to
Speaker 4: get like I used to have to get surgeries.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: At the time, I just felt like it was just
Speaker 4: different things they was trying on me to see if
Speaker 4: someone was going to work.
Speaker 5: You know. It caused me a lot of like trauma.
Speaker 4: Just had the simple fact, you know, being in grade school,
Speaker 4: I then to go with where like eypatches, kids making
Speaker 4: like jokes and stuff for you and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So like that was very like traumatizing.
Speaker 2: I just got to ask you one other question about
Speaker 2: who you were before this case happened to you. How'd
Speaker 2: you spend your time when you want to have fun?
Speaker 2: What'd you do for fun?
Speaker 4: I was too busy trying to like look for food
Speaker 4: to eat because I probably ain't eating like two days.
Speaker 4: You know, I didn't really know too much of like
Speaker 4: fun or enjoying myself or honestly outside and maybe going
Speaker 4: to like a neighborhood like basement party. But it's like
Speaker 4: looks coming dece even look at now, Like I didn't
Speaker 4: know about opportunity. I know everything about opportunity now, I
Speaker 4: didn't know about what a future looked like you asking
Speaker 4: me that question.
Speaker 5: Now, my future is very bright.
Speaker 2: Your future is bright, and I want to hear so
Speaker 2: much more about that. But first I want to talk
Speaker 2: about what you had to go through to get to
Speaker 2: that future, right, what you had to go through to
Speaker 2: get from being that fourteen year old kid on Beeland
Speaker 2: Street to the man you are.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: This is where I'm going to bring in your lawyer,
Speaker 2: Meghan Crane. Megan, it's fantastic to have you here. Can
Speaker 2: you take us back to the night of September seventeenth,
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, which is when something pretty horrible
Speaker 2: happened right around the corner from where Defonte lived at
Speaker 2: the time that set a whole chain of events into motion,
Speaker 2: almost unstoppably from the beginning.
Speaker 3: So it's a Monday night, September seventeenth, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3: It's around eleven thirty at night. I think it was
Speaker 3: a Monday night football night. So a football game had
Speaker 3: gone late and was wrapping up, and there are five
Speaker 3: people inside nineteen seven forty one Runyon Street watching the
Speaker 3: end of the game when two adult men multiple witnesses
Speaker 3: report they're around six feet tall skinny, approach the house
Speaker 3: with two guns. They start firing a lot of bullets
Speaker 3: from the outside of the house into the front window,
Speaker 3: and then they bombard through the screen and front door
Speaker 3: of this house and just shoot up the living room.
Speaker 3: They shoot all five adults sitting in that room, killing
Speaker 3: four of them, including the owner of the house, Michael Robinson,
Speaker 3: a thirty three year old man who we now know
Speaker 3: to have been a local marijuana grower and dealer in
Speaker 3: the community, and four of his friends. Three of his
Speaker 3: friends pass away, but one of them is shot a
Speaker 3: couple times but escapes to a back bedroom. In that
Speaker 3: back bedroom, Michael Robinson's seven year old son happens to
Speaker 3: be asleep at the time, and the surviving victim hides
Speaker 3: under his bed. She later reports that one of the
Speaker 3: shooters comes into the bedroom and actually says play dead,
Speaker 3: be quiet, and so she survives, maybe thanks to those
Speaker 3: words of that shooter. And as she's hiding in that bedroom,
Speaker 3: she hears someone in the basement of the house moving around, rustling,
Speaker 3: a lot of activity down there, and then they say
Speaker 3: let's get out of here, and they both flee the scene.
Speaker 3: Multiple witnesses report only two people. One of those witnesses
Speaker 3: is a man named Jesse King who lived across the street.
Speaker 3: He was a chaplain actually for the Detroit Police. He
Speaker 3: had firearms in his house, partially because of his professional position,
Speaker 3: and he fired back because he had heard the shots
Speaker 3: and he saw these shooters fleeing the scene, and he
Speaker 3: exchanges fire with the shooters. He definitively says these were
Speaker 3: two men, and he describes their physical build, their height
Speaker 3: in some detail, and the attire they were wearing. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: as all this is going on, Davante lives just around
Speaker 3: the corner from nineteen seventy forty one Runyon Street. As
Speaker 3: he said, on Beelin Street, Davante had heard the commotion.
Speaker 3: He heard that something was happening around the corner. So
Speaker 3: it's late at night, he's in his pajamas. He comes
Speaker 3: outside to see what's going on.
Speaker 2: So I just want to be clear. So what you've
Speaker 2: got here is a horrific act of bloodshed, but it
Speaker 2: has witnesses and they all said the same thing, right,
Speaker 2: They said it was two adult men, which is a
Speaker 2: pretty good lead to go on. But the police goes
Speaker 2: somewhere a little different with this. They go around the
Speaker 2: corner to Beelin Street. How do the police get there
Speaker 2: and how does this go down? When they start talking
Speaker 2: to Davante.
Speaker 3: My understand is the police were just canvassing the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: There are a couple different officers out going down different
Speaker 3: streets looking for anyone who has something to say, and
Speaker 3: so as part of that canvas, they're walking by DeVante's
Speaker 3: and they approach him to say, did you see anything?
Speaker 3: Do you know what's going on? But things quickly evolve
Speaker 3: from there and become much different than from that casual conversation.
Speaker 2: Now, Davante, you are outside your house when this happens.
Speaker 2: You're in your pajama pants, right, You're a fourteen year
Speaker 2: old kid who heard the commotion, comes out like all
Speaker 2: the other neighbors did, to see what's going on, and
Speaker 2: the Detroit police approach you. What's going through your head
Speaker 2: as they start to.
Speaker 4: Talk to you, not really like understanding what was going on.
Speaker 4: That whole little ordeal. It changed my life or honesty,
Speaker 4: I'll never forget it. And like they was asking me questions,
Speaker 4: where I live, where I'm from, did I hear anything,
Speaker 4: did I see anything? I believe I had told him
Speaker 4: I had just came from being with my auntie's boyfriend.
Speaker 4: He was a retired detective for the head of homicide.
Speaker 4: They actually knew him, so they hopped on the phone
Speaker 4: and they called them.
Speaker 5: He was like, yeah, you know, he just came from
Speaker 5: being with me. I guess.
Speaker 4: They explained to him what had like the case they
Speaker 4: was working on, the different things like that, and they
Speaker 4: handed me the phone and he was like, look, these
Speaker 4: is my guys, man, So if you know some helped
Speaker 4: them out. I don't know nothing, but I They proceeded
Speaker 4: to take me home and they had my grandmother signed
Speaker 4: a waiver. She signed a waiver. From there, they took
Speaker 4: me to back to the crime scene. But I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 4: and they gave me a gun shop ballistics test.
Speaker 2: So Megan, I just want to make some sense of
Speaker 2: what's going on here. These police somehow come across the
Speaker 2: fourteen year old kid in the pajama pants right, who's
Speaker 2: just as confused as everybody else in the neighborhood, and
Speaker 2: ended up taking him into the police station for questioning
Speaker 2: what's going on here? How did they settle on DeVante?
Speaker 3: I'll be honest, I find it pretty hard to explain
Speaker 3: even today, a decade more than a decade after this
Speaker 3: and after spend many years working on this case, is
Speaker 3: my best understanding of how this went down. I think
Speaker 3: the police officers were doing this canvas of the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: They come upon Davante, they're kind of just asking him
Speaker 3: the same general questions as anyone else. But when they
Speaker 3: realize this Bill Rice connection and they get Bill on
Speaker 3: the phone with Davante, and Bill encourages Davante to help
Speaker 3: him out, cooperate, do what he can. That kind of
Speaker 3: is the first domino to go that sets this sets
Speaker 3: things in motion. At that point, they are looking for
Speaker 3: someone who can kind of like tell them what's up
Speaker 3: in the neighborhood, like who in this neighborhood has guns,
Speaker 3: who in this neighborhood's involved with drugs? Who do you
Speaker 3: think might be involved in this? And so Davante, because
Speaker 3: he's just been encouraged to cooperate, says, sure, I can
Speaker 3: kind of tell you who I know who has guns
Speaker 3: or who's involved with trouble. You know, he was used
Speaker 3: to being picked on and someone that when he got
Speaker 3: positive attention it felt good and had a powerful effect
Speaker 3: like any fourteen year old kid. So it felt good
Speaker 3: to be needed by these police officers. And so they say,
Speaker 3: can you show us? Can you give us a tour?
Speaker 3: And so Davante gets in the car and kind of
Speaker 3: shows them the way around the neighborhood. Things transpire from there.
Speaker 3: They take him to the high school. They sit in
Speaker 3: the parking lot in the high school for a while
Speaker 3: and try to get information out of Davante. They take
Speaker 3: Davante to get some fast food. Davante just told us
Speaker 3: sometimes he'd go two days without eating. They buy him
Speaker 3: a burger and fries to entice him to share more.
Speaker 3: Give us more, tell us anything you can, and the
Speaker 3: more juicy stuff, the more relevant information he can give
Speaker 3: about drugs, guns crimes, the better. Maybe the more burgers,
Speaker 3: the more fries you'll get.
Speaker 2: Right, be a hero. This quadruple hamas, I just went
Speaker 2: down in your neighborhood, be a hero. But the thing is,
Speaker 2: you know, Davante, they took you around the area, they
Speaker 2: brought you the burger, they brought you back to the station.
Speaker 2: But at some point the tables turned right. They were
Speaker 2: no longer looking for information. They were looking for you
Speaker 2: to confess. Can you tell us how it came about
Speaker 2: that you ended up confessing to committing this quadruple homicide.
Speaker 5: Honest answer. I wanted to go home. I was scared.
Speaker 4: They can't promise me that if I was hurry up
Speaker 4: and get this over with, that's the quicker I can
Speaker 4: go home. I was at a point I just I
Speaker 4: wanted to be anywhere except for their.
Speaker 5: I'm fourteen, barely like experienced anything for real.
Speaker 4: And you know the promise was if I basically apply,
Speaker 4: and you know, I go through with this, you know
Speaker 4: my reward was going home.
Speaker 2: Megan, Can you tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 2: the interrogation when you've looked at it real eyes? How
Speaker 2: long did it last? What kind of techniques were they
Speaker 2: using against somebody as young and vulnerable as Davante in
Speaker 2: order to get this confession?
Speaker 3: Well, first, I think it's important to note that, I
Speaker 3: mean this starts in the middle of the night. So
Speaker 3: they have Davante, whether it's in the car, in the
Speaker 3: parking lot of high school, or in the police station,
Speaker 3: from one am through up until some point the next
Speaker 3: day eight to twelve hours for round one, and that's
Speaker 3: only round one of multiple rounds that are to come
Speaker 3: over the next twenty four to forty eight hours. In
Speaker 3: that first round, they are playing the friend. They're buying
Speaker 3: him the burger, they're buying him the fries. He goes
Speaker 3: to the police station. He's playing on the computer. He's
Speaker 3: looking on social media to help them find people to
Speaker 3: show them pictures of the guns of the people in
Speaker 3: the neighborhood who might have done this. And that's making
Speaker 3: him feel important, and he has access to computer that
Speaker 3: he doesn't always have access to at home. And at
Speaker 3: the end of that, by the mid day the next day,
Speaker 3: when they bring Davante home, he has signed a handwritten
Speaker 3: statement saying five kids from the neighborhood did this. He
Speaker 3: names them Tone Tone, Tone loose. They did it with
Speaker 3: five guns. He names those five guns a Mini fourteen,
Speaker 3: a handgun, a thirty eight caliber, an assault style weapon,
Speaker 3: and he tells a story that they met up at
Speaker 3: a fast food restaurant earlier that day Coney Island to
Speaker 3: talk about this. Davante was with them leading up to it,
Speaker 3: but he freaked out and he didn't stick around. He
Speaker 3: went home and didn't go to this to run in
Speaker 3: street with them, but he knows what happened.
Speaker 2: Do the police check out Davante's story.
Speaker 3: They do check out some of it, some of it
Speaker 3: doesn't match, and they kind of proceed full steam ahead. Inexplicably.
Speaker 3: They have five perpetrators versus the witnesses that Tay Too
Speaker 3: h Okay, who cares ballistics from the scene, show definitively
Speaker 3: that this gun was an AK forty seven and a
Speaker 3: forty five pistol. There's no question about that. The ballistics
Speaker 3: are not from a Mini fourteen, they're not from a
Speaker 3: thirty five caliber, They're not from a handgun. They go
Speaker 3: check out this fast food restaurant they supposedly met up
Speaker 3: at the Coney Island that Coney Island is closed for
Speaker 3: construction and has been for months. They check out the
Speaker 3: people Davante has named Tone Tone Loas they go pick
Speaker 3: up multiple of them, they question them that night. That morning,
Speaker 3: they're cleared by Alibis and they're let go, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't take their sites off Davante.
Speaker 2: The story is by this point riddled with errors. Right,
Speaker 2: it's the wrong people, the wrong guns, the wrong place,
Speaker 2: at this Coney Island restaurant that's closed. Nothing there makes sense.
Speaker 2: But the police still have you in their sights, Davante.
Speaker 2: They come back and get you right, and they bring
Speaker 2: you back to the station, and that's when things start
Speaker 2: to get even worse.
Speaker 5: Megan.
Speaker 2: They question Davante again and tell us about the confession
Speaker 2: that results after the second round.
Speaker 3: So they do take Davante home briefly. I think during
Speaker 3: that time they're picking up Tone Tone loas the other
Speaker 3: guys they're questioning them, and when they clear them and
Speaker 3: they realize, huh, this isn't making much sense, they decide
Speaker 3: we got to go get Davante again, so they go
Speaker 3: pick up Davante's mom is home at the time. They
Speaker 3: tell her, you know, we don't think your son's telling
Speaker 3: us the truth. We need to bring him back in
Speaker 3: and talk to him about this homicide. His mom says okay,
Speaker 3: and she, as a mom, is you know, socialized to
Speaker 3: do that encourages Davante to tell the truth, to tell
Speaker 3: the police, and from what Davante has always told me,
Speaker 3: things were dramatically changed from there. They had been his friends,
Speaker 3: they'd been helpful, they'd been encouraging before that. As soon
Speaker 3: as he's back in the car, they are aggressive. They're
Speaker 3: confronting him, they're yelling at him, they're telling him, we
Speaker 3: know you're lying. And at this point there is a
Speaker 3: very common tactic of lying to DeVante and using false evidence.
Speaker 3: They had taken his shoes earlier when they had him
Speaker 3: at the police station. They said, we tested your shoes.
Speaker 3: You have blood on your shoes, so we now know
Speaker 3: you were there. We know you did this, and we
Speaker 3: know you're lying to us. So we don't want to
Speaker 3: hear anything else. We just want to hear the truth.
Speaker 3: Tell us what happened.
Speaker 2: Wow, So I mean, Devonte, I'm just picture the mental
Speaker 2: whirlwind that you must have been experiencing at this time.
Speaker 2: After being picked up off the street in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night, right after the shooting. What was it
Speaker 2: like to realize that all of a sudden, these officers
Speaker 2: who just a few hours earlier had been to your friends.
Speaker 2: What was it like to realize that they were coming
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 4: It was hell. It was very stressful, very traumatizing. You
Speaker 4: feel hopeless in situations like that, right, because it's like,
Speaker 4: how did I get to this point?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: I went from walking down the street to them showing
Speaker 4: me pictures of like the deceased people, people who was once.
Speaker 5: Alive, not these people are deceased.
Speaker 4: Right, And on top of that, like everything was just
Speaker 4: like happening so fast.
Speaker 5: So it was you know.
Speaker 2: It was stuff that we shouldn't expect even the most
Speaker 2: experienced adult to withstand, let alone a fourteen year old
Speaker 2: kid who's by himself and scared. You end up changing
Speaker 2: your story to try and please these guys, to try
Speaker 2: and get out of there, to try and go home,
Speaker 2: like you were saying. And the story that it becomes
Speaker 2: clear they want is a story where you were involved, where.
Speaker 5: You did this.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us, Megan, what the final story was?
Speaker 2: In DeVante's final confession.
Speaker 3: The final story Davante tells isn't that much different than
Speaker 3: the original story he told that didn't make much sense
Speaker 3: and didn't match most of the facts, except that it
Speaker 3: now includes Davante as an active participant and as a shooter.
Speaker 3: So it has these four other people from the neighborhood
Speaker 3: who we now know. Some of those names were given
Speaker 3: to police by a witness that during that canvas that night.
Speaker 3: It has these five guns that don't match the ballistics
Speaker 3: of the scene, but it has Davante going in, It
Speaker 3: has Davante doing the shooting, and then it has Davante
Speaker 3: running away on foot from this scene to his house,
Speaker 3: which also doesn't match the evidence. And DeVante told police
Speaker 3: he threw his Mini fourteen, which was the gun he
Speaker 3: fired at the scene, into a vacant field on AT
Speaker 3: and T property. Afterwards, police went and checked that field.
Speaker 3: They did not find any gun. And this usually is
Speaker 3: like a real red flag of an unreliable confession. If
Speaker 3: a suspect gives you a new fact that police don't
Speaker 3: already know, and you conduct follow up investigation and you
Speaker 3: prove it true, well then that's the gold star standard
Speaker 3: of a reliable confession. But if you don't prove it true,
Speaker 3: that's a red flag and you need to question this
Speaker 3: confession and this suspect.
Speaker 2: It's a perfect storm, right, It's an unfortunately perfect recipe
Speaker 2: for how to get a false confession. From the sleep
Speaker 2: deprivation to the interrogation techniques that we used. You mentioned
Speaker 2: the lies about the evidence, right, the lack of council,
Speaker 2: lack of parent for somebody as young as Davante in
Speaker 2: that room, and once Davante gave that confession that they
Speaker 2: were driving for that they were coming to get during
Speaker 2: those thirty six hours of often on interrogation DeVante's church
Speaker 2: as an adult, and you get a lawyer DeVante whose name,
Speaker 2: unfortunately is pretty notorious in the world of wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2: His name is Robert Slamica. Megan, can you educate us
Speaker 2: about just who Robert Slamica is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Robert Slamica was a private attorney in Detroit who
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was well known at that time,
Speaker 3: but at this point is now notorious for misconduct and
Speaker 3: doing essentially a really, a really bad job at being
Speaker 3: a defense attorney. He was reprimanded formally by bar association
Speaker 3: at least six times, including in one other exoneration case
Speaker 3: where he helped helped essentially get an innocent man convicted
Speaker 3: and sent away for life. And since then, in more
Speaker 3: recent years, he has actually been disbarred for misconduct and
Speaker 3: criminal conduct. And I think we'll hear a bit more
Speaker 3: from Davante about what he did or didn't do for
Speaker 3: Devantee's case, But Davante essentially received no defense from this man.
Speaker 4: So my whole time I and juvenile, I was in
Speaker 4: the juvenile detention facility for around eight months fighting four
Speaker 4: council first degree murder, four council felaity murder, on robbery
Speaker 4: sought with attentive murder and felaty firearm.
Speaker 5: My attorney on he came and seen me what four times?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 5: If that what? Ten many visits?
Speaker 4: It never brought any paperwork with him, no files, never,
Speaker 4: no nothing, no sense of come on, like, let's try
Speaker 4: to build a defense. He didn't try to put up
Speaker 4: no type of fight, no effort. No, I don't even
Speaker 4: think he even called the witness He didn't call any
Speaker 4: character witnesses, nothing like. He didn't try whatsoever you know
Speaker 4: for him. I felt as if like it was just
Speaker 4: all about the money and like degreed. You know, he
Speaker 4: saw my family was a knee desperate need trying a
Speaker 4: best to like you know, be there and protect me
Speaker 4: and to try to help figure it out with me.
Speaker 4: He knew that he took advantage of that.
Speaker 2: So is there charging your family money while he's only
Speaker 2: visiting you four times, you know, short visits each one,
Speaker 2: and providing you with essentially no help. So what goes
Speaker 2: down at trial, Megan with Slamica at the helm of
Speaker 2: this so called defense of this innocent kid.
Speaker 3: Well, at first they just want to point out what
Speaker 3: goes down or doesn't go down before trial. Slamica, essentially,
Speaker 3: I mean not essentially, he does no investigation of this case.
Speaker 3: And as we've already discussed, from all of the glaring
Speaker 3: inconsistencies or latent differences between the facts of the crime
Speaker 3: and DeVante's confession, there was a lot to investigate. There
Speaker 3: was a lot to look into, a lot to disprove
Speaker 3: he did nothing. One thing that happens in between that
Speaker 3: time nothing to do with Slamica. But there's a state
Speaker 3: ordered forensic psychological evaluation a couple months after the crime.
Speaker 3: In that DeVante recants his confession. He tells the psychologist
Speaker 3: exactly what happened in that interrogation room. He tells him
Speaker 3: this was false. He tells him he didn't do this,
Speaker 3: and he tells him why he falsely confessed. Slamica does
Speaker 3: nothing with that. He doesn't admit that at trial so
Speaker 3: what happens at trial? The state puts on a parade
Speaker 3: of very compelling witnesses. They put on the detectives to
Speaker 3: talk about the horrific facts of this tragic crime. They
Speaker 3: put on the surviving victim to describe her experience of
Speaker 3: laying under this bed seeing her friend shot and killed,
Speaker 3: thinking she's gonna be killed. And then they have her
Speaker 3: have Davante stand up and say a couple words, and
Speaker 3: they say, does that sound like the voice you heard
Speaker 3: at the crime scene? And she says, sounds like it.
Speaker 3: We now know, we should have known then. But voice
Speaker 3: comparisons are not a reliable form of evidence. It's meaningless.
Speaker 3: At that point, though, Slamica takes Davante's side and says,
Speaker 3: there's really nothing I can do here. You confessed this way,
Speaker 3: and it says your voice matches the shooter, so you're
Speaker 3: going to get convicted. I think you should plead guilty.
Speaker 3: And that's what happens.
Speaker 2: This is unreal, right, I mean, what was it like,
Speaker 2: despite the fact that there could have been such a
Speaker 2: robust defense, to have your lawyer bring you into that
Speaker 2: backroom and tell you that you should plead guilty to
Speaker 2: a quadruple homicide.
Speaker 5: It was, it was very it was.
Speaker 4: It was a mess, you know at the time, Like
Speaker 4: I didn't even know how to like read and write write.
Speaker 4: So he got the plea deal from the prosecutor, brought
Speaker 4: the plea deal to me, like I didn't even understand
Speaker 4: what is a guideline score or what is gear three
Speaker 4: G And I didn't understand none of that. And he
Speaker 4: just handed me the paper and a pen and walked
Speaker 4: away from the table and was like sign this, went
Speaker 4: over and was doing something in court talking to somebody,
Speaker 4: came back and got it.
Speaker 2: From unbelievable railroaded from beginning to what turned out to
Speaker 2: be the end of your trial. You entered those pleas
Speaker 2: of guilty barely knowing what it was you were doing.
Speaker 2: You signed a piece of paper in which you pled
Speaker 2: guilty to four homicides you didn't commit, and you were
Speaker 2: sentenced to thirty seven to ninety years in prison at
Speaker 2: age fifteen. This is a story that shocks the conscience.
Speaker 2: It should shock anyone who hears it. But here's the thing, DeVante,
Speaker 2: even as you're being shipped off at age fifteen to
Speaker 2: start serving that thirty seven to ninety years, the story
Speaker 2: doesn't instead, it takes a twist. What is the twist
Speaker 2: that happens? Megan? Not long after DeVante enters that guilty plea,
Speaker 2: get sentenced, and goes off to start serving his time.
Speaker 3: Exactly two weeks to the day from the day Davante
Speaker 3: is sentenced to that thirty seven to ninety year sentence
Speaker 3: as a fifteen year old kid. Exactly two weeks of
Speaker 3: that day, a man named Vincent's Smothers is arrested at
Speaker 3: his home for a series of unrelated shooting. The Detroit
Speaker 3: Police Department, say police department that had Davante, that interrogated him,
Speaker 3: that charged him, that convicted him. Brings mothers in and
Speaker 3: they interrogate him about an unrelated shooting. Smothers because he's
Speaker 3: recently had an infant and has a family to protect,
Speaker 3: he does roll over and he admits some things. He
Speaker 3: admits a lot of things. He confesses to a series
Speaker 3: of twelve murders. Turns out Vincent's Smothers is an assassin,
Speaker 3: a hired hitman, and he works for local Detroit drug dealers.
Speaker 3: He confesses to these twelve murders in detail on video.
Speaker 3: Unlike DeVante's interrogations, they video tape the entire course of
Speaker 3: Vincent's mother's interrogation and confessions for those twelve murders, well,
Speaker 3: for those twelve murders are the nineteen seven forty one
Speaker 3: Runyon murders. Smothers confesses to them in detail on video.
Speaker 3: And you know what, those details match the crime scene
Speaker 3: facts perfectly. He tells the accomplice he did it with.
Speaker 3: There are two men. There are an AK forty seven
Speaker 3: and a forty five caliber pistol, the two guns that
Speaker 3: perfectly match the ballistics at the crime scene. He can
Speaker 3: describe the house, the layout of that living room where
Speaker 3: the bodies fell when they shot them, and he can
Speaker 3: describe the conversation that he himself had with that surviving
Speaker 3: victim in the back bedroom as she lay under the
Speaker 3: bed while a kid slept. That's not it. Smothers then
Speaker 3: tells them where they can find the gun he used.
Speaker 3: They go to that address, they get the gun and
Speaker 3: it is a match. It's a confirmed. It is the
Speaker 3: gun that was used at this crime scene. So this
Speaker 3: is two weeks after they put Davante away for life,
Speaker 3: and yet nothing happens, nothing changes.
Speaker 2: Please tell me that the second this serial hit man
Speaker 2: confesses in accurate detail to the run Yuan Street shootings.
Speaker 2: Please tell me that someone in the Detroit Police Department,
Speaker 2: or in the Prosecutor's office, or anyone who knew anything
Speaker 2: about this went to Davante or his family or his
Speaker 2: lawyer and said, oh my god, we got the wrong person.
Speaker 2: It's Smothers, not DeVante Sandford. It's the hit man, not
Speaker 2: the kid.
Speaker 3: I'm appalled to tell you, Laura, that not a single
Speaker 3: one of those things happened. I would say the Detroit
Speaker 3: police did nothing about it, but actually they did something
Speaker 3: about it because the detective who took Smothers to the
Speaker 3: bathroom in the middle of his interrogation was one of
Speaker 3: the detects actives who interrogated Davante, and so he did
Speaker 3: something about it. He told Smothers, you know what, we
Speaker 3: already got the guy who did those Runyan Street murders,
Speaker 3: and Smothers said, well, you've got the wrong guy then.
Speaker 3: And what they did was they hid it. They hid
Speaker 3: smothers confession.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable, unbelievable. So Smothers confesses to twelve murders. They end
Speaker 2: up charging him with eight. Right, they don't charge him
Speaker 2: with the quadruple homicide. On Running Street that Dafante had
Speaker 2: just pled out to. They convicts mothers on those eight
Speaker 2: and it's like his confession to the Runyan Street homicides.
Speaker 2: They it's like it never happened.
Speaker 3: And we later heard some information that he may have
Speaker 3: even been offered a sweeter plea deal premised on the
Speaker 3: fact that he would never mention or testify to the
Speaker 3: fact that he did the Runyan Street murders.
Speaker 4: He was offered a plea deal not to come testify
Speaker 4: for me because at the time, like my lawyers was
Speaker 4: trying to get him to testify multiple times, and the prosecutor,
Speaker 4: because he was still fighting multiple murder cases as well,
Speaker 4: and the prosecutors reached out to him and basically I've
Speaker 4: tried to offer him a deal where he wouldn't come
Speaker 4: to court Inlandi's testimony and fight for my innocence.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's one of the worst cover ups I have
Speaker 2: seen in fourteen years of doing wrongful conviction work. Who
Speaker 2: was it that actually exposed this unbelievable cover up?
Speaker 3: It was media. The only reason this ever came to
Speaker 3: light was a reporter who heard that there was another
Speaker 3: person detained at the jail talking about that he actually
Speaker 3: did the Runyan Stream murders and talking about that he
Speaker 3: did the murders that this kid was in prison for.
Speaker 3: And at the time this is like, I think, a
Speaker 3: year after Davante's sentenced. So Davante has a host conviction
Speaker 3: attorney and she hears Thank goodness, a reporter reaches out
Speaker 3: there and says, hey, I've got something you need to know.
Speaker 2: This comes to light. It's you're a year in Davante.
Speaker 2: What's prison life been like for you during that year.
Speaker 2: I can only say that if I were in that
Speaker 2: position at age fifteen, I'd be scared out of my mind.
Speaker 5: I was. I was more than just scared. I was terrified.
Speaker 5: I was all in one. You know.
Speaker 4: I never went through none of any of that before,
Speaker 4: So to have all that coming at me and all
Speaker 4: that coming at me at one time, it.
Speaker 2: Was just Yeah, I'm trying to put myself in your position,
Speaker 2: trying to imagine the emotions that anyone would feel hearing that.
Speaker 2: Some mothers confessed, you know, I can imagine you went
Speaker 2: through anger, you went through sadness, you went through who
Speaker 2: is this guy?
Speaker 5: I didn't even have no anger towards him.
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm not into judging people because I hate
Speaker 4: when I get judged, you know, so I'm in like,
Speaker 4: I'm not into judging people. But where I am, I'm
Speaker 4: thankful for Vince's mothers. Vince's mother is the reason why
Speaker 4: I got these headphones on and I'm able to do
Speaker 4: this sit here in my home and talk to you guys.
Speaker 5: You know, it took.
Speaker 4: A quote unquote hitman to save my life, not the
Speaker 4: Detroit Police, not you know, Dwayne County prosecutor office, you know,
Speaker 4: essentially a hitman in a team of lawyers.
Speaker 3: Smothers tried hard once he knew what the injustice that
Speaker 3: had been done to Davante, to right this wrong. He
Speaker 3: confessed to this crime at least eight to ten times
Speaker 3: that first time, to police, to his lawyer, to multiple
Speaker 3: rounds of DeVante's lawyer, to the media. He wanted to
Speaker 3: go to the court. He signed multiple sworn affidavits under
Speaker 3: the penalty of perjury. I think Vincent Smothers is kind
Speaker 3: of the portrait of that even the people who have
Speaker 3: done some of the worst things, some of the most
Speaker 3: horrible thing things, still have humanity. And he was the
Speaker 3: only one at that point willing to fight to right
Speaker 3: that wrong.
Speaker 2: How does DeVante's case and this crazy situation of the
Speaker 2: hitman trying to help the kid, how does this come
Speaker 2: to you, Megan?
Speaker 3: As we had mentioned, when Smother's confession came to light,
Speaker 3: it was about a year after and he was in
Speaker 3: post conviction in Michigan State Court, represented by the Michigan
Speaker 3: State Public defender system. While you would think, Okay, we
Speaker 3: have the reliable, corroborated, confirmed, ballistically confirmed confession from the
Speaker 3: true perpetrator, we should be able to get this undone right,
Speaker 3: it proved true that No, that's not how the system works,
Speaker 3: not in Michigan and not in most states and court
Speaker 3: systems across our country. So DeVante's case ended up working
Speaker 3: its way through the Michigan court system for another seven
Speaker 3: eight years, and that's how it came to us. He
Speaker 3: had a public defender for a while. It went all
Speaker 3: the way up to Michigan's court, but he lost, and
Speaker 3: he lost because of a technicality. It was all the
Speaker 3: evidence was there. Smothers was there. It was crystal clear
Speaker 3: Smothers did this. DeVante Sanford did not do this. But
Speaker 3: the Michigan Supreme Court said, okay, we see your evidence,
Speaker 3: but it's in the wrong motion.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? The wrong motion?
Speaker 3: It the form of document that was filed in the
Speaker 3: court that presented this crystal clear evidence that a kid
Speaker 3: was wrongfully in prison for life. It had the wrong
Speaker 3: title on it. And instead of just saying, okay, we'll
Speaker 3: treat this as the right motion, or instead of letting
Speaker 3: you refile in our court and come back to us
Speaker 3: in a month, they said, you need to go back
Speaker 3: to the beginning, and at a minimum that's going to
Speaker 3: take years.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Davante, you're a teenager, right, and you're going from
Speaker 2: You've gone from fourteen to fifteen already, you're going fifteen
Speaker 2: to sixteen, seventeen eighteen. These are some of the most
Speaker 2: important years of life. These are the years of growing up,
Speaker 2: of learning how to move as an adult, learning who
Speaker 2: you are and who you want to be as an
Speaker 2: adult in this world. Right as you're watching your case
Speaker 2: wade through the morass of the Michigan court bureaucracy, what's
Speaker 2: it feel like to be sitting there as the minutes
Speaker 2: and the hours and the days tick by, when the
Speaker 2: proof is so clear that you're innocent.
Speaker 5: It was like a roller coaster.
Speaker 4: And not only was I like fighting for my freedom,
Speaker 4: like I was also in prison and like literally have
Speaker 4: to fight for my life at times. Seriously, you know,
Speaker 4: I was at war on like two fronts, right, and
Speaker 4: at times I felt as if, Okay, I'm not I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna win one of these, So which one? You know,
Speaker 4: which which one? This is the one worth losing? You
Speaker 4: get what I'm saying. So it was stressful. It was
Speaker 4: It was times where I had all the hope in
Speaker 4: the world. Then it was times I'm like, man, I
Speaker 4: might fuck around and die in prison, you know, so uh,
Speaker 4: sorry for my language, but it was times I didn't
Speaker 4: see this, I couldn't picture this, but it happened. So
Speaker 4: I'm faver grateful and thankful for that.
Speaker 2: Were there times that you let yourself hope when you
Speaker 2: were in prison?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did that make it easier or harder to wait to
Speaker 2: have that hope?
Speaker 5: Harder? Way? Harder, way harder?
Speaker 4: You would do whatever it takes to get about that place.
Speaker 4: You didn't want to be there more than thirty minutes,
Speaker 4: let alone, you know, multiple years. You know, I'm fever
Speaker 4: grateful that I had the support. And my support wasn't
Speaker 4: just regular support. My support came with a lot of
Speaker 4: a lot of strength, a lot of like well grounded people,
Speaker 4: and that's what got me through. You know, times like
Speaker 4: I would be having conversations with my attorneys and I
Speaker 4: would be telling them like and I don't know how
Speaker 4: to like how I keep doing this? Like I just
Speaker 4: feel like giving up. They had said about emotion or
Speaker 4: court day, or maybe we was waiting for a report.
Speaker 4: I remember one time we was waiting for like the
Speaker 4: Michigan State Police report. Man, that report took forever.
Speaker 5: But I had them people around me. Man who who who?
Speaker 4: They held my hand at times when I ain't want
Speaker 4: to even get up at that and probably ran twenty miles.
Speaker 5: They come and come home. Get up. We gotta go
Speaker 5: to Fantee. We gotta you know, you gotta be on it.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: My legal team is the ones who like gave me
Speaker 4: like and my supporters the ones gave me like that hope,
Speaker 4: like you know, you're gonna make it up out of this.
Speaker 5: You're gonna make it up out of this because you ain't.
Speaker 5: You ain't gotta worry about you. We got you. Just
Speaker 5: you know, keep your head up.
Speaker 2: I don't know how anyone could to be expected to
Speaker 2: get through anything remotely like this without an army of
Speaker 2: people behind you. One of those people was you, Megan,
Speaker 2: a pretty important person. You took DeVante's case. It can
Speaker 2: be impossible so many times to ondo a wrongful conviction,
Speaker 2: but you made the impossible possible in this case. Tell
Speaker 2: me what you had to do, who you had to
Speaker 2: get involved ultimately to free DeVante Sandford.
Speaker 3: Thankfully, we didn't have to wait the years that it
Speaker 3: would have taken for that motion to work its way
Speaker 3: through the court system again because an unusual thing happened.
Speaker 3: But a Michigan State Police officer, a law enforcement body
Speaker 3: in Michigan that had never previously been involved in DeVante's case,
Speaker 3: they read our motion and they called a member of
Speaker 3: our team and they said, this is one of the
Speaker 3: most shocking cases I've ever seen and one of the
Speaker 3: most compelling packages of evidence we've ever seen. We want
Speaker 3: to look into this case because we think an injustice
Speaker 3: has been done. And thank God for that call. And
Speaker 3: we often talk about working with kind of odd beldfellows
Speaker 3: or finding partners in this work that you don't expect.
Speaker 3: We certainly didn't expect to kind of partner with the
Speaker 3: Michigan State Police, but they did they kicked off, and
Speaker 3: as Davante said, it took a long time, a year
Speaker 3: long reinvestigation of this case. It was a painful wait.
Speaker 3: But it shows the lengths they were willing to go
Speaker 3: do because they put a multi officer team on this
Speaker 3: case and they reinterviewed everybody, and they turned up evidence
Speaker 3: that made it impossible for the state to keep turning
Speaker 3: a blind eye.
Speaker 2: And is that what finally pushed Davante's case over the
Speaker 2: finish line?
Speaker 3: It is the Michigan State Police pulls all this together
Speaker 3: into a lengthy final report and the judge, the trial
Speaker 3: judge on his case, vacates his conviction and thankfully orders
Speaker 3: Davante's immediate release from prison. And I'm smiling because I'm
Speaker 3: just picturing Davante walking out that day. And it's still
Speaker 3: surreal because after all that weight, this stuff happened pretty
Speaker 3: fast once that report was turned over, that order got signed,
Speaker 3: and he was walking out.
Speaker 2: What was it like those first first few minutes and
Speaker 2: hours of freedom?
Speaker 5: Hopeful? It's crazy.
Speaker 4: I had to go through all that to get a future,
Speaker 4: but I came home with a future, you know, planing, aspirations, goals, visions,
Speaker 4: and to this day, you know, I tried my best,
Speaker 4: one day, one step at a time to accomplish everything
Speaker 4: you know that I start out to.
Speaker 5: Do from in prison.
Speaker 2: That future is your present day, it's your now, and
Speaker 2: you got a lot of future ahead of you too.
Speaker 2: So what's what's life like now?
Speaker 4: I think for me, the most amazing part of my
Speaker 4: life it wasn't even getting out, Like the most amazing
Speaker 4: part of my life is my son. My son is
Speaker 4: like everything you know I wish I had the chance
Speaker 4: to be like, which was a kid, like that freedom
Speaker 4: of growing and yeah, just being a dad, you know,
Speaker 4: Spending quality tie with my son, my son, I'm supposed
Speaker 4: to be here. My son is a blessing, So that's
Speaker 4: how I treat them as such, you know, Spending quality
Speaker 4: tie with him, working on my nonprofit, giving back to
Speaker 4: the community, doing my motivational speaking work, lending my ear,
Speaker 4: like not my ear, but my voice whenever like someone
Speaker 4: may need it, you know, when it comes to like
Speaker 4: criminal justice, reform, gain prevention, violence, adventure and inner cities.
Speaker 4: I just want to give back and try to help
Speaker 4: as many people as I can, not having to go
Speaker 4: through some of the things I have gone through, and
Speaker 4: if they are facing some of the things that I'm facing,
Speaker 4: maybe getting some type of inspiration and you know too,
Speaker 4: don't give up, but don't give in.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm curious if there's anything you want to
Speaker 2: say to Vincent's mothers.
Speaker 5: Thank you that man saved my life. That man say
Speaker 5: like literally like say, I don't know too many people
Speaker 5: you know who.
Speaker 4: Live those type of lifestyles and go through them type
Speaker 4: of things who will be willing to like stand up
Speaker 4: in a sept responsibility. You know, I got friends and
Speaker 4: I know people that's in prison for crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 4: You know, only reason why they sitting in prison is
Speaker 4: because they're no snitching rule. I'm not gonna snitch. I
Speaker 4: know my cousin did this or I know my friend
Speaker 4: did this, but I'm not gonna say anything, right, and
Speaker 4: I don't hold none against them people. You know, what
Speaker 4: you believe in is what you believe in, right, But
Speaker 4: like some of those people in prison are living in
Speaker 4: some of the worst conditions like possible, no no money,
Speaker 4: no food, no letters, no anything. You basically just sitting
Speaker 4: in prison for something you didn't do and because you
Speaker 4: didn't want to tell. Get what I'm saying it for
Speaker 4: that man to want to come and step up to
Speaker 4: the plate and take four responsible for his actions.
Speaker 5: To me, that's the true definition of a man. You know,
Speaker 5: he didn't have to do that, but he did.
Speaker 2: Megan, if you could change one thing about the system
Speaker 2: so that it does not happen again, what should we
Speaker 2: be doing, What reform should we be pushing right? What
Speaker 2: needs to be changed?
Speaker 3: Davante was only convicted because of his confession, one that
Speaker 3: has a fourteen year old sleep deprived kid. It was inevitable.
Speaker 3: Youth as we have long known, need special protections in
Speaker 3: the interrogation room, and one that I know you're working
Speaker 3: on every day, Laura, but is banning deception and interrogations
Speaker 3: for kids. And it has now passed in multiple states.
Speaker 3: There's no reason that law can't be paid in every state.
Speaker 3: And that is what the turning point in DeVante's interrogation was.
Speaker 3: When the police lied to him about the evidence and
Speaker 3: said we now know you did this because we found
Speaker 3: blood on your shoes. That was the turning point. That's
Speaker 3: what broke him down to that point of hopelessness where
Speaker 3: he would say anything to go home. And so if
Speaker 3: we can ban deception, I think that is a big
Speaker 3: starting point that can change how things are playing out
Speaker 3: for kids in the interrogation room.
Speaker 2: As we get to the end of this conversation, I
Speaker 2: am sitting on Jason Floum's chair. I'm lucky to be
Speaker 2: here talking to you both today. He always ends this
Speaker 2: podcast with a segment he calls closing arguments, where he
Speaker 2: turns off his mic and sits back and let's the
Speaker 2: person in your position, Davante, talk about whatever it is
Speaker 2: you want to talk about. I'm going to stay quiet.
Speaker 2: I'm going to thank you both for being here and
Speaker 2: sharing your stories and your wisdom, and Davante, this is
Speaker 2: your closing argument.
Speaker 5: I just think common sense need to be used in
Speaker 5: some of these cases, just basic common sense. I understand.
Speaker 4: You know, people be having jobs to do, and those
Speaker 4: jobs comes a lot of stress. You gotta think a homicide,
Speaker 4: that's somebody that's lost their lives, someone is no longer
Speaker 4: with us. But at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 4: people need to step back and look at the whole
Speaker 4: picture versus just looking at just one little box. You
Speaker 4: get what I'm saying, because like when you go back
Speaker 4: and you just speak on my case, even the average
Speaker 4: person with no type of law background, no type of anything,
Speaker 4: scratch they head. How Like when I go out and
Speaker 4: I meet people, they you was fourteen?
Speaker 5: How you know?
Speaker 4: Like how so if they coming up with that conclusion,
Speaker 4: how come these professional, these detectives, people college degrees and
Speaker 4: different things like that can come up with that type
Speaker 4: of conclusion like hold on, wait, something is off here,
Speaker 4: you know, like it's we missing something instead of having
Speaker 4: aw gas no breaks, you know, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest host,
Speaker 2: Laura and I Writer. I'd like to thank our executive
Speaker 2: producers Jason Flumm and Kevin Wartis. The Senior producer for
Speaker 2: this episode is Jackie Polly, and our producers are Lila
Speaker 2: Robinson and Jeff Cliburn. Our editor is Lexandra Greedy. The
Speaker 2: music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 2: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 2: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
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Speaker 1: Lava for Good.
Speaker 2: On all three platforms, you can follow me on Instagram
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Speaker 1: Next week, on the guest hosted episodes of Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: Kembus Smith will talk with Joyce Watkins, a woman who
Speaker 1: has lit up the world with not only her story
Speaker 1: but her incredible spirit of perseverance. Joyce was imprisoned for
Speaker 1: twenty eight long years after her great niece died in
Speaker 1: her care, even though anyone looking even a little bit
Speaker 1: closer at the details would have and should have known
Speaker 1: right away that Joyce deserved none of the blame. This
Speaker 1: is a Musslesten episode and it's going to be right
Speaker 1: here next Monday in the Wrongful Conviction podcast Feed