Speaker 1: A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of suicide.
Speaker 1: Please listen with caution and care.
Speaker 2: So, Jason, I've been working on this one episode about
Speaker 2: a man who went to prison when he was fourteen
Speaker 2: years old, in adult prison, and just thinking about, you
Speaker 2: know what a child's growing up in that kind of environment,
Speaker 2: what that does to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you think about I mean a fourteen year old,
Speaker 3: that's a child. You're in eighth grade, maybe ninth grade.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's unimaginable to take a child and put
Speaker 3: them in a situation that is the most adult of
Speaker 3: adult nightmarriage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so just even the concept that we
Speaker 2: interrogate children, especially you know, when police are allowed to
Speaker 2: lie to.
Speaker 3: Them, That is a Shakespearean type of a scenario, right,
Speaker 3: And of course we know that young people are much
Speaker 3: more likely to confess to crimes that they didn't commit
Speaker 3: because they're so aptible to the tricks and the lies
Speaker 3: and even physical or psychological abuse that they endure.
Speaker 4: You know, I was in a peg, but yet I
Speaker 4: was still aware that I didn't do what they're saying
Speaker 4: that I get, and I stuck to that even though
Speaker 4: they were threatened me with life in prison. And you
Speaker 4: know what happens to kids to go to prison. I
Speaker 4: never wavered from anything.
Speaker 1: That I ever said, from love of for good. This
Speaker 1: is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Michael Polly as
Speaker 1: Dawn broke. On December fifth, nineteen ninety eight, fourteen year
Speaker 1: old Mike Pollet woke up to the smell of something burning.
Speaker 1: His friend Josh was sleeping over and when they opened
Speaker 1: his bedroom door, they were inundated with smoke. Mike and
Speaker 1: Josh screw to crawl out of the house to escape.
Speaker 1: On the way, Mike stopped by his mother's room to
Speaker 1: check on her. What he saw scarred him forever. Rita
Speaker 1: Polyte was laying on the floor, face up, with her
Speaker 1: legs spread open, with just a pair of underwear on.
Speaker 1: Her body was on fire. Thirty nine year old Rita
Speaker 1: Polyte was dead. Josh ran to a neighbors to call
Speaker 1: nine one one, while Mike tried to put the fire
Speaker 1: out with a hose. When the police showed up, they
Speaker 1: immediately made it clear that Mike was the prime suspect
Speaker 1: in his mother's murder, despite other suspects linked more closely
Speaker 1: with the evidence at hand, including his own father. Mike
Speaker 1: was arrested, charged and convicted for the murder of his mother.
Speaker 4: And then at that point that's what he said, is
Speaker 4: your father responsible for what? Haven't I said yes? He
Speaker 4: said did you see him? I said no. He said,
Speaker 4: did you hear anything? I said no, I didn't hear anything.
Speaker 4: I didn't see anything. But he's the only one that
Speaker 4: I know that would hate her that much to do
Speaker 4: that through and what I've seen was evil, it was hatred.
Speaker 1: Michael Pollet was born in Mineral Point, Missouri. He grew
Speaker 1: up in a poor family. He lived with his parents,
Speaker 1: Rita and ed Polyte, and his siblings in a trailer
Speaker 1: in the village.
Speaker 4: I was pretty happy kid growing up kindergarten through fifth grade,
Speaker 4: right I was. I was on honor roll Frede's student,
Speaker 4: loved go to school. I was outgoing. I was always
Speaker 4: always with my friends, ride and by Sibilsfoose motorcycles.
Speaker 1: Mike is the youngest of three kids. His sister Crystal
Speaker 1: is the oldest, and then there's Melanie, who's seven years
Speaker 1: older than him. Here's Melanie.
Speaker 5: So when he was little, he wasn't a terrible kid.
Speaker 6: He was just you know, he was rayloxsious, fun and
Speaker 6: liked to like play outside, and he had like you
Speaker 6: have good friends. They weren't never in like real bad trouble.
Speaker 6: I was always his babysitter. Crystal didn't never have to
Speaker 6: do anything because she was the oldest, so she got
Speaker 6: to go out with her friends do whatever. I was
Speaker 6: always the one stuck at home babysitting Mike. And at
Speaker 6: the time, I'm like, I hated it, hated it, But
Speaker 6: now I'm like, I'm so glad that happened, because you know,
Speaker 6: if it didn't, would we be this close.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I would like to hope that we
Speaker 5: would be, but you never know.
Speaker 1: Mike remembers being especially close with his mom Rita.
Speaker 4: My mom got me into sports, right. She played softball
Speaker 4: when she was younger, giving me my first ball glove.
Speaker 4: She'd always organized practices in our yard and she could
Speaker 4: have all the kids over practice.
Speaker 6: Lying He always took up for our mom, like with
Speaker 6: kids at school, you know, back in the day around
Speaker 6: this time, they were always telling your mama jokes like
Speaker 6: your mama is.
Speaker 5: So fat, blah blah whatever.
Speaker 6: Somebody did that to him and he was very upset
Speaker 6: about it, and he was like, you.
Speaker 5: Better never talk about my mother. He almost got a
Speaker 5: fight with this kid, and it was like, you know, okay.
Speaker 6: It's a joke, but that's how sensitive he is about
Speaker 6: our mom, you know, like.
Speaker 5: You just don't mess with her.
Speaker 1: Mike's dad, Ed also had a special place and makes heart,
Speaker 1: and he helped foster one of his passions racing cars.
Speaker 4: I looked up to him quite a bit. My dad
Speaker 4: raced stock cars at the local dirt track. Made me
Speaker 4: want to do you know, every Saturday night. As a child,
Speaker 4: I remember going to the races, and really it's been
Speaker 4: a child of dream mind to actually raise a late model.
Speaker 4: I'm look forward to that in the future. But growing
Speaker 4: up it was. It was good up until the point
Speaker 4: where our family dynamics began to change because of infidelity
Speaker 4: on my father's part.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there was definitely some physical violence, a lot of arguing,
Speaker 6: a lot of mental abuse for you know, from my
Speaker 6: dad to my mom.
Speaker 5: He also did it to us too, you know, like.
Speaker 6: Guilt trips and he would always talk bad about our
Speaker 6: mom to us.
Speaker 5: Don't know why. That's definitely not good parenting.
Speaker 1: Mike's and Melanie's dad was also pretty absent. You work
Speaker 1: nights at the Ford motor plant, and so Mike and
Speaker 1: his sisters rarely saw him home. Melanie says her mom
Speaker 1: was really the one who raised them and took care
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 6: She was the one going to all of our games
Speaker 6: and all our school functions and Mike's.
Speaker 5: And all of ours. You know, our dad never went.
Speaker 6: You know, he could have went to days if he
Speaker 6: really wanted to spend time with his family, I'm sure.
Speaker 5: But he always just chose to work nights at Ford.
Speaker 6: I wish we were okay with because honestly, we didn't
Speaker 6: like him being around anyway, because he was always cranky
Speaker 6: and he always had the TV.
Speaker 5: So that's when we were kids, like a dad's gonna
Speaker 5: be home.
Speaker 6: Great. Now we're gonna have to leave for the whole
Speaker 6: weekend because nobody wants to be around.
Speaker 1: Mike's parents divorced when he was young. His mom did
Speaker 1: not hide the reason why.
Speaker 4: I guess she recorded the phone conversation with him and
Speaker 4: another woman, and my mom played it for me and
Speaker 4: both my sisters, and she said, this is why I'm
Speaker 4: leaving your father. And we asked him and he denied it,
Speaker 4: and he united that was even him on the line,
Speaker 4: And I think it was that moment and I realized
Speaker 4: that he probably wasn't who I thought he was.
Speaker 1: It was around this time as a pre team that
Speaker 1: Mike started acting out.
Speaker 4: I kind of used the divorce and my parents' separation
Speaker 4: as a crush as far as my bad behavior. I
Speaker 4: would always turn to that and be like, well, it's
Speaker 4: their fault because they're getting divorced and now, and people
Speaker 4: sympathize with it. So it kind of helped me getting
Speaker 4: out of getting getting into trouble with this kind of
Speaker 4: maybe feel like that I can, you know, be as
Speaker 4: mischievous as I was. I wanted to be really.
Speaker 1: So what kinds of things would you do?
Speaker 4: Well? I, you know, we we said a lot of fires,
Speaker 4: me and my friends. I became somewhat of a bully
Speaker 4: as school. I remember once we does It's truck, We
Speaker 4: throw oranges and natos and we stomped on on the
Speaker 4: hood of it and hit it with golf clubs and
Speaker 4: baseball bats, and I ended up stealing CDs and like Walmart.
Speaker 4: That was about the extent of bad behavior.
Speaker 1: And not only did Mike's bad behavior escalate during the divorce,
Speaker 1: but so did his father, Ed's behavior.
Speaker 6: I remember a few violent arguments where they would throw
Speaker 6: like pops and pans at each other and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: It only happened like twice that I remember when I
Speaker 5: was young.
Speaker 6: But as we got older, we only really witnessed like
Speaker 6: the yelling, the arguments. Mike unfortunately ain't got to witness
Speaker 6: the actual violence.
Speaker 4: I remember specifically they were arguing over a sunflower clock
Speaker 4: and a coworker gaze to her that he wouldn't let
Speaker 4: her have it, and the argument became thumps, and I
Speaker 4: grabbed the baseball back to my room. I ran out
Speaker 4: of my room. They were in the living room. He
Speaker 4: was on top of her. I told him to get
Speaker 4: off of her. He did, and my mom got up
Speaker 4: and as we were leaving, she grabbed a picture of
Speaker 4: his girlfriend and off the wall. Food on ground, stopped
Speaker 4: on and we left, throwing her divorce proceedings. I actually
Speaker 4: testified against my father without this incident. It was those
Speaker 4: moments like that It pushed me further away from my
Speaker 4: father right And it's those moments that I remember that
Speaker 4: take me back to when I see my mother burn
Speaker 4: it on the floor, it's easy for me to come
Speaker 4: to the conclusion who's responsible for.
Speaker 1: On December fourth, nineteen ninety eight, Mike's mom, Rita, went
Speaker 1: out with her friends. One of her friends remembers fourteen
Speaker 1: year old Mike calling and saying he was hungry, so
Speaker 1: on her way home around eleven thirty pm, Rita stopped
Speaker 1: to get subway sandwiches. Mike had invited his friend Josh
Speaker 1: to stay over that night. While the boys waited for
Speaker 1: Rita to come home. With food, boys being boys, they
Speaker 1: went and burned railroad ties on the railroad tracks near
Speaker 1: the house. Shortly after midnight, Rita got home soon after
Speaker 1: the boys ate. They all went to bed. Mike's sister, Melanie,
Speaker 1: was twenty one at the time and she also lived
Speaker 1: in the trailer, but she was over at a friend's
Speaker 1: house that night. In the early hours of December fifth,
Speaker 1: as light was just beginning to appear, Mike woke to
Speaker 1: the smell of smoke.
Speaker 4: And I woke up and either I smelled or I
Speaker 4: seemed smoked, and I looked down at Josh and smoking
Speaker 4: a cigarette.
Speaker 1: Josh was not At this point, the trailer was filling
Speaker 1: with smoke and they had to get out. Mike and
Speaker 1: Josh crawled to escape. On the way, Mike stopped at
Speaker 1: his mom's room to check on her. To his horror,
Speaker 1: he found Rita burning on the ground. She was face up,
Speaker 1: her legs spread open, and was only wearing a pair
Speaker 1: of underwear. Mike and Josh both ran out of the house,
Speaker 1: Josh to the neighbors and Mike to get the hose.
Speaker 1: Around six thirty am, police and first responders arrived to
Speaker 1: the ghastly scene. Rita's body was burned from her pubic
Speaker 1: region to her head. Immediately, Mike and Josh were separated
Speaker 1: into different squad cars and taken to the station for questioning.
Speaker 1: Detective Kurt Davis took.
Speaker 4: Mike when he was transporting me from my home to
Speaker 4: the Stares forman that morning. I asked him if he's
Speaker 4: gonna be able to find out half of my mom.
Speaker 4: He says, what do you mean, what happened to your mom? Well, well,
Speaker 4: what happened like if vers throw was cuttered somewhere, you
Speaker 4: guys wanna be able to tell that.
Speaker 1: This conversation was later used against Mike in court, and they.
Speaker 4: Used that as an indication that I was concerned that
Speaker 4: they were going to find out, but I did right.
Speaker 4: Instead of being a concern fourteen year old kid who
Speaker 4: just witness a horrible thing.
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Speaker 7: Mike essentially became the prime suspect within moments of this crime.
Speaker 1: This is making Crane. She's the co director of the
Speaker 1: Missouri office of the MacArthur Justice Center, a civil rights organization,
Speaker 1: and she thinks Mike immediately became a suspect because of
Speaker 1: presumptions around the circumstances.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think the basic premise probably was that
Speaker 7: he was the only family member home at the time,
Speaker 7: and in arson cases, that is the first person who's
Speaker 7: looked at who else was in the home, particularly if
Speaker 7: it's a family member who survived the fire. So he's
Speaker 7: already under the spotlight for that fact. But for there
Speaker 7: things quickly spiraled out of control because the police mischaracterized him.
Speaker 7: They saw this kid who was traumatized, shocked, and they
Speaker 7: misjudged all of his reactions his behaviors as evidence of guilt,
Speaker 7: as evidence of a lack of remorse, as evidence of
Speaker 7: a cold blooded killer, rather than evidence of adolescent behavior,
Speaker 7: which research proves is common to all kids his age,
Speaker 7: and evidence of trauma.
Speaker 8: So after the police picked you up, they pretty quickly
Speaker 8: homed in on you, and you were arrested very quickly.
Speaker 8: What was going through your head? You know when you're
Speaker 8: in this interrogation.
Speaker 4: The interrogations were very intense. There was on occasions there
Speaker 4: was multiple interrogators. There was a fire marshal, there was
Speaker 4: Kerk Davis, who was the lead detective, and then also
Speaker 4: the juvenile officers who were supposed to be there to
Speaker 4: protect me and Josh's right. We're also asking in questions.
Speaker 4: They used the same mind up questions over and over
Speaker 4: and over. I related the same set of facts over
Speaker 4: and over and over.
Speaker 5: So tell me, like, what were they what are they asking?
Speaker 5: They repeatedly, Hey.
Speaker 4: They were asking what happened?
Speaker 1: Thank me?
Speaker 4: Through the day before that evening that morning, and it
Speaker 4: became it became a point where they were trying to
Speaker 4: convince me right that I've done something, and I know
Speaker 4: that I didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: Mike says, every time he got to the park where
Speaker 1: he woke up and found his mom, they would tell
Speaker 1: him he was missing a big gap and ask him
Speaker 1: what happened between the time he went to sleep and
Speaker 1: when he woke up and found his mom. Tell it again,
Speaker 1: over and over.
Speaker 4: It went for hours, and my understanding, they treated Josh
Speaker 4: the same way, and they would they would tell me
Speaker 4: that he's telling on me, and they would tell him
Speaker 4: that I'm telling on him, tactics that shouldn't be used
Speaker 4: on juveniles, on children, for sure, but they completely ignored
Speaker 4: the fact that statements never changed. And throughout all these interrogations,
Speaker 4: there's twenty six consistencies between our statements, and that doesn't
Speaker 4: happen of two kids that are lying about something. We're
Speaker 4: trying to hide something, right, And they completely ignored all
Speaker 4: of this information.
Speaker 1: Back at the crime scene, officer Tammy Bellfield had arrived
Speaker 1: and almost immediately was told by Sheriff Ron Skyles that
Speaker 1: a woman had intentionally been set on fire. Fire Investigator
Speaker 1: Jim Holdman had concluded without any testing that a fire
Speaker 1: accelerant had been poured on Rita. The autopsy also determined
Speaker 1: that Rita had died of carbon monoxide poisoning and sustained
Speaker 1: blunt force trauma to her head. Two baseball bats, a
Speaker 1: fire poker, and a mag light flashlight were collected to
Speaker 1: see if one was the weapon used to hit Rita,
Speaker 1: but when tested later, these items returned no results.
Speaker 2: I mean, what was going through your head where you
Speaker 2: were like, this isn't real, Like what were you thinking?
Speaker 5: You're like a little boy.
Speaker 4: I was in a pack. I was in a panic,
Speaker 4: but yet I was still aware that I didn't do
Speaker 4: what they're saying that I get and I stuck to that,
Speaker 4: even though I was in a panic, even though they
Speaker 4: were threatened me with life in prison, and you know
Speaker 4: what happened to kids to go to prison. I never
Speaker 4: wavered from anything that I ever said.
Speaker 1: Because Mike was a juvenile at the time, a juvenile
Speaker 1: officer was present during this interrogation and his dad, Ed
Speaker 1: was called in to be with him since Mike couldn't
Speaker 1: be questioned alone. But Megan says Mike really did lack
Speaker 1: critical support.
Speaker 7: He did not have an attorney present. The people that
Speaker 7: were there, I guess to arguably protect his rights. Were
Speaker 7: one a juvenile officer who was there for some of
Speaker 7: the interrogation, But it's the record makes clear that this
Speaker 7: juvenile officer acted essentially as another interrogator, not in any
Speaker 7: way as a protector of his rights. And Mike's dad,
Speaker 7: who was indisputably at that point, the other prime suspect
Speaker 7: in this case, So he had a clear conflict of
Speaker 7: interest in that interrogation room and was not an adequate
Speaker 7: protective figure for Mike.
Speaker 1: Which seems obvious given Ed's nasty, violent divorce from Rita,
Speaker 1: but law enforcement didn't seem to consider this, nor did
Speaker 1: they consider how his presence might impact Mike, and in fact,
Speaker 1: Mike was uncomfortable answering questions with Ed in the room.
Speaker 4: When they were interrogating me, they asked me who you know?
Speaker 4: Who do you think heard of your mother? My father
Speaker 4: was like right beside me during these interrogations, and Karkas
Speaker 4: asked me, do you want let me ask your father's stepfather?
Speaker 4: I said yeah, And then at that point that's when
Speaker 4: he said, is your father responsible for what have I
Speaker 4: said yes, he said did you see him? I said no?
Speaker 4: He said Did you hear anything? I said no, I
Speaker 4: did't hear anything. I didn't see anything. But he's the
Speaker 4: only one that I know that would hate her that
Speaker 4: much to do that to her. And what I've seen
Speaker 4: was evil, it was hatred.
Speaker 1: But the cops didn't listen. Mike was interrogated for two days,
Speaker 1: and during that time he was also hooked up to
Speaker 1: a CVSA, a computer voice stress analysis test, which is
Speaker 1: different from a lie detector test. This test supposedly to
Speaker 1: text deception by measuring stress levels in the voice.
Speaker 4: They hooked the microphone up to my other shirt and
Speaker 4: put some on my finger, and they asked me. I
Speaker 4: think it was like five basic questions. Did you murder
Speaker 4: your mother? I said no. Do you know anybody I
Speaker 4: want to hurt your mother? I said no. Did you
Speaker 4: hear anybody? Did you hear anything? I said no. And
Speaker 4: it may have been one or two more I can't remember,
Speaker 4: But ultimately they told me that are true.
Speaker 1: Meaning that the test showed he was lying. And we
Speaker 1: can't corroborate whether Mike failed this stress test since we
Speaker 1: don't have those results ourselves. Not that it really matters, though,
Speaker 1: because these voice stress tests, which were frequently used by
Speaker 1: law enforcement during the nineties have since been determined to
Speaker 1: be wholly unreliable, and even if they were reliable, it
Speaker 1: would have been no surprise that Mike had failed. Because
Speaker 1: what we do know is that Mike was a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old boy distraught after finding his mom brutally murdered,
Speaker 1: that Mike's interrogations were not recorded, and that police officers
Speaker 1: did not properly look into Ed as a suspect.
Speaker 7: They think we can build a case against this kid.
Speaker 7: Ed was a savvier suspect, and he arguably had an alibi.
Speaker 7: They did some investigation into him, not much, but the
Speaker 7: investigation they did do had more hurdles than their case
Speaker 7: they were building against Mike, So I think they went
Speaker 7: with the easier target, the easier case to build. Ed
Speaker 7: supposedly had this alibi that he was at work, but
Speaker 7: there are no time cards from Ford Motor Company proving
Speaker 7: that Ed was not held accountable to be there at
Speaker 7: all times, and even if he left at the time
Speaker 7: that his shift supposedly ended, there still was time to
Speaker 7: make that drive to Hope Well and back, so his
Speaker 7: alibi was never rock solid.
Speaker 1: On December seventh, Mike was arrested for the murder of
Speaker 1: his mother, Rita Polle.
Speaker 7: They arrest him on his lack of emotion and suspicious
Speaker 7: reaction to his mother's death.
Speaker 1: When Mike was arrested, laboratory testing on the items collected
Speaker 1: the baseball, bats, flashlight, and poker had not yet returned results,
Speaker 1: and after the testing was ultimately completed, nothing pointed to
Speaker 1: Accelerant as the fire starter.
Speaker 4: And I woke up my entire wolvers just gone. I
Speaker 4: lost my murder, I lost my sisters, I lost myself,
Speaker 4: like everything was everything was gone.
Speaker 1: So had you guys ever thought about wrongful convictions before?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 6: Was that something that never never, never even thought our
Speaker 6: never crossed our mind that something like that happened.
Speaker 5: No, never what I've ever thought the wrongful convictions happened until.
Speaker 6: Until they really did, like arrest them and take them
Speaker 6: to jail and let him out.
Speaker 1: Mike was sent to a juvenile detention facility to await trial.
Speaker 1: Three days after the murder, a hearing was held to
Speaker 1: determine whether to keep Mike detained, and despite the court
Speaker 1: concluding the case was thin and circumstantial at best, Mike
Speaker 1: remained in custody.
Speaker 4: And it felt like it felt like no one. It
Speaker 4: felt like the only person that would have helped me
Speaker 4: in that situation was my mother. Yeah, she was on
Speaker 4: long with us. So with that, I mean I was.
Speaker 4: I felt completely alone, completely isolated, completely vulnerable, and I
Speaker 4: didn't know how to handle it.
Speaker 1: Exactly one month after his arrest, Mike attempted suicide.
Speaker 4: I was having I was having problems adjusting to it
Speaker 4: and the handling it, and I had enough, I guess,
Speaker 4: and I tried to I tried to hang myself and myself.
Speaker 1: Mike tied a sheet to the vent and hung himself
Speaker 1: from it. Fortunately a guard walked by and saved his life.
Speaker 1: Melanie recalls how her little brother looked when he was arrested.
Speaker 5: Just looking at him, you could tell he could not
Speaker 5: inflict that kind of damn. I'm a john up person.
Speaker 5: He just was a small boy. He was about my.
Speaker 6: Size I am now because I used to wear his clothes,
Speaker 6: and I actually have a pair of his genes from
Speaker 6: back then.
Speaker 5: I just put on the other day and they still fit.
Speaker 1: But by the time his trial started in January of
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, Mike was eighteen years old, four
Speaker 1: years older, four inches taller at thirty pounds, heavier, he
Speaker 1: no longer looked like a little boy. The prosecutors were
Speaker 1: Richard Hicks, Assistant Attorney General of Jefferson City, Missouri, and
Speaker 1: John Rupp, prosecuting attorney for Washington County, Missouri. The state
Speaker 1: called seventeen witnesses, which is a lot, but they presented
Speaker 1: no real evidence. Only the alleged accelerant. Police claimed dogs
Speaker 1: had smelled on my shoes, but which remember, the lab
Speaker 1: never actually found. Before trial, the prosecution actually offered Mike
Speaker 1: a plea deal to confess fifteen years for manslaughter. He
Speaker 1: would have been out by twenty seventeen. Did you ever
Speaker 1: consider taking that?
Speaker 4: No, never, I never considered it.
Speaker 1: Do you wish you had taken it?
Speaker 4: Absolutely not. I'm not going to put guilty somebody in there,
Speaker 4: especially especially if it denies my mother justice.
Speaker 7: All of us have a breaking point when subjected to
Speaker 7: these course of interigation tactics, especially kids. But Mike was
Speaker 7: desperate to know what had happened to his mom, so
Speaker 7: he did withstand this coercion over days, and he never confessed.
Speaker 4: Now, I would rather do this for her and ultimately
Speaker 4: win in the end and make the Sheriff's department and
Speaker 4: prosecutor's office prosecute the people that responsible for what would
Speaker 4: happened here.
Speaker 1: But even with the prosecution's weak evidence, Mike's defense was
Speaker 1: even weaker. They only called three witnesses, and they did
Speaker 1: not have an expert who could challenge the state's experts.
Speaker 1: The trial lasted three days, and after four hours of deliberation,
Speaker 1: on April nineteenth, two thousand and two, Mike was convicted
Speaker 1: of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 1: During his first four years in prison, Mike kept in
Speaker 1: touch with his father ed despite believing that he was
Speaker 1: the one responsible for his mother's murder. Do you think
Speaker 1: that your dad intentionally tried to frame you.
Speaker 4: That's a hard question. The part of me, the part
Speaker 4: of me wants to say yes, right. Another part of
Speaker 4: me wants to think that he just got so lucky
Speaker 4: with the inconfidence of the Washington guys Chaff's department, that
Speaker 4: he just it just happened that way. It was well
Speaker 4: known that I've played with fire as a kid, and
Speaker 4: fire was used to ultimately murder my mother. I can
Speaker 4: say that he never helped me. He never tried to
Speaker 4: help me. I can's that's just one He's never tried
Speaker 4: to help me.
Speaker 1: Yet, after Mike's direct appeal was denied, Ed told his
Speaker 1: son he was going to help him. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, he told Mike that he'd hired an attorney
Speaker 1: to help with his next appeal.
Speaker 7: He kept reaching out to the attorney, never hearing back,
Speaker 7: never hearing back. Finally he got a friend to call
Speaker 7: the attorney's office, and that's when the attorney said, I
Speaker 7: haven't responded to you because we don't have an attorney
Speaker 7: client relationship. I'm not your attorney any longer. And that's
Speaker 7: when Mike learned his father had lied to him. He'd
Speaker 7: never paid this attorney or even asked him if he
Speaker 7: would be willing to file this post conviction petition. And
Speaker 7: that's the last time Mike and his father have ever
Speaker 7: ever spoke, and his sisters have not spoken to their
Speaker 7: father since then either.
Speaker 1: This devastated Mike.
Speaker 4: And that was when my heavy drug use came in.
Speaker 4: When I found out I didn't have a lawyer and
Speaker 4: that he has been He's been misleading me for at
Speaker 4: least a year and a half about having a lawyer,
Speaker 4: and once I found out and understood the significance of
Speaker 4: not having one, he sent me into a drug induce life. Really,
Speaker 4: I mean I left my cell. I didn't come back
Speaker 4: unless I had some heroin. Okay, weat something and that
Speaker 4: was my way of coping with it.
Speaker 1: As for Melanie, she thinks her dad never intended to
Speaker 1: help Mike from the beginning. Her feeling is that Ed
Speaker 1: likely framed Mike.
Speaker 6: Honestly, I think he tried to set Mike up to
Speaker 6: take the fall. I mean that sounds horrible, but honestly
Speaker 6: that is my that those are my thoughts. He didn't
Speaker 6: care about anyone else. He only cares about himself.
Speaker 5: He's like a psychopath.
Speaker 6: I mean, like literally, it's I can't even believe that
Speaker 6: we came from that because we don't act anything like him.
Speaker 5: It's so bizarre knowing him.
Speaker 4: It doesn't suffer me, right, because of what I've seen
Speaker 4: in the end, how I treat my mom, how he
Speaker 4: treated us, It's something that I can honestly look at
Speaker 4: and say, you know what it does, It's fright, it
Speaker 4: is what it is right.
Speaker 1: But I don't need him, and Mike didn't. On his own,
Speaker 1: he was able to get clean from the drugs he
Speaker 1: had used to cope. He wound up getting his ged
Speaker 1: in prison and worked with shelter dogs to rehabilitate them.
Speaker 4: Oh dog program. I love the dog program. The greatest
Speaker 4: con accomplishment I feel like is that I was able
Speaker 4: to train ca Nines for companions the kids that have
Speaker 4: autism right, and that is something that actually touches people
Speaker 4: on the street. It's just not an internal department correction program,
Speaker 4: like something I can actually make the difference with.
Speaker 1: But Mike was still determined to prove his innocence. He
Speaker 1: wrote letters to every attorney and innocence project he could
Speaker 1: find until one wrote back.
Speaker 4: I wrote the MIP seven eight page letters. I'm sure
Speaker 4: they still have it. I explained my whole story. I
Speaker 4: mailed it.
Speaker 1: Within a few months, Mike got a visit from Kim Blocker,
Speaker 1: a staff attorney for the MIP, which is the Midwest
Speaker 1: Innocence Project. Six law students from Missouri University and Kansas
Speaker 1: University accompanied him.
Speaker 4: They sat down the vision room with me and they
Speaker 4: told me tells what happened, And I told him and
Speaker 4: it changed my life. It saved my life. The expressions
Speaker 4: that I seen on those students' faces and Kim's face
Speaker 4: when I was telling my story, stuck with me, and
Speaker 4: I knew that they were going to investigate everything that
Speaker 4: I just said. I knew and everything that they were
Speaker 4: going to find. It's factually true to everything I just
Speaker 4: said and from day on up until so let's save
Speaker 4: my life more ways than one.
Speaker 1: When the Midwest Innocence Project took Mike's case, they filed
Speaker 1: a new petition claiming Mike is innocent based on new evidence,
Speaker 1: including the fact the Mike's shoes did not actually have
Speaker 1: an accelerant on them.
Speaker 7: The material of substance on Mike's shoes, which were determined
Speaker 7: to be gasoline at trial, was actually an aromatic solvent
Speaker 7: that was part of the manufacturing process of these tennis shoes.
Speaker 7: So this material was in every pair of shoes that
Speaker 7: it were sold across the country, was not at all
Speaker 7: unique to Mike's par of shoes, but was the thing
Speaker 7: that was used to convict him and send him to
Speaker 7: prison for a life.
Speaker 1: Mecan says, the state even concedes that this evidence is.
Speaker 7: False, yet they are still fighting his litigation and still
Speaker 7: fighting to keep him in prison.
Speaker 1: One of the detectives has even come forward with her
Speaker 1: own opinion on the case.
Speaker 7: Tammy Bellfield, one of the deputy sheriffs who investigated this case,
Speaker 7: who shared and confirmed that like this, this was a mess.
Speaker 7: This was a police department that was way in over
Speaker 7: its head. They did not have the experience the resources
Speaker 7: to handle this type of case or case of this magnitude,
Speaker 7: and they didn't know what they were doing, and to
Speaker 7: the extent they did, they did it wrong or made
Speaker 7: the wrong judgments.
Speaker 1: Despite the new evidence, all of Mike's appeals have been denied.
Speaker 1: On October thirteenth, twenty twenty one, he filed another petition
Speaker 1: quote seeking a writ of habeas corpus vacating his conviction
Speaker 1: for second degree murder. Mike would have to wait months
Speaker 1: to find out if this one would also be denied,
Speaker 1: But then on February eighth of this year, Mike got
Speaker 1: a surprise. The parole board granted him an early release.
Speaker 1: A new law in Missouri SB twenty six allows certain
Speaker 1: incarcery juvenile's parole after fifteen years, so in January twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, Meghan Crane and the rest of Mike's team
Speaker 1: applied for parole, and despite the difficulty of claiming innocence
Speaker 1: for parole, the board granted Mike's release. Now that Mike
Speaker 1: is finally getting out of prison. I asked him what
Speaker 1: he thinks of his suicide attempt. Do you think back
Speaker 1: on that, and you know think that you're glad that
Speaker 1: they found you?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Okay, there's only there's only one explanation, and I
Speaker 4: can I can draw from everything that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 4: Is that one. I'm strong enough and capable of handling
Speaker 4: everything that they throw at me. I'm also strong enough
Speaker 4: and capable of using it for the better of society. Right.
Speaker 1: Mike, now thirty eight, walked out of prison on April
Speaker 1: twenty second of this year. A few days after his release,
Speaker 1: we spoke again. Mike was at Melanie's house, surrounded by
Speaker 1: his sister's nieces nephews, and of course, yeah we got.
Speaker 10: The puppy dogs. Yeah, a blue heeler and black.
Speaker 11: Lab Okay, so tell me how it's been being home.
Speaker 10: It's been awesome. I ain't got much sleep. I've been
Speaker 10: running on a pure adrenaline. We went to the stock
Speaker 10: car races Saturday night. I met up with some family
Speaker 10: members I ain't seen in over two decades.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker 11: So I think, you know, one of the more incredible
Speaker 11: things about you, Mike, and what happened to is that
Speaker 11: you were so young when you went to prison that
Speaker 11: you really grew up inside prison. And what's it like
Speaker 11: to be an adult now outside?
Speaker 10: It's walking into an alien world, right because I've spent
Speaker 10: two thirds of my life incarcerated, so that's what I knew.
Speaker 10: It's a culture shock. All the technology, the speed of everything,
Speaker 10: opening the refrigerator and seeing all the food, all the choices.
Speaker 10: I went in the Walmart and I.
Speaker 9: Was like, what, yeah, yeah, so, and it's it's just so,
Speaker 9: it's it's just I don't I don't have the proper
Speaker 9: verbs to describe it, but it's just.
Speaker 10: It's just amazing.
Speaker 11: So what do you want people to know about what
Speaker 11: happened to you? And and really anything, it's an open
Speaker 11: ended question.
Speaker 10: You know, what happened to me can happen to anybody.
Speaker 10: And there's there's countless more people that suffered how I suffered,
Speaker 10: and they need help and I look forward to being
Speaker 10: a part of that, you know, for for the greatest
Speaker 10: country in the world. Right, Uh, it shouldn't be this hard.
Speaker 10: When it's discovered that there's innocent people or an innocent
Speaker 10: person in prison and the herculean hurdles that it takes
Speaker 10: to get people out and exonerated, even when it's actually
Speaker 10: proven that that evidence was used against the people. That's
Speaker 10: that's false or misleading, or or if there's new discovered evidence,
Speaker 10: they don't want to hear it, they ignore it, and
Speaker 10: it's it's very disappointing, to say the least, that things
Speaker 10: like that happen.
Speaker 1: Mike plans to work with innocence projects and use his
Speaker 1: experience to inspire the next generation of law students to
Speaker 1: help change the judicial system. But before signing off, I
Speaker 1: had one last question for him.
Speaker 11: Have you thought about your mom a lot since you've
Speaker 11: been out?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think about her every day, you know, regardless
Speaker 10: if I was in there out here. That's something we
Speaker 10: tell stories about her.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: What do you wish she could see right now?
Speaker 10: Oh she's smiling.
Speaker 9: Yeah, she's smiling.
Speaker 4: She knows.
Speaker 10: Uh, she can finally rest right away. I always felt
Speaker 10: that she wasn't at peace with what happened in the
Speaker 10: after math of what happened to her. But there was
Speaker 10: a moment when I was in the parking lot and uh,
Speaker 10: there was two geese that flew over and honked right
Speaker 10: above me, and I just looked up and I said,
Speaker 10: I Mom, And it was just.
Speaker 9: Instant, Yeah, it was It was yeah, yeah.
Speaker 10: I felt like that was her celebrating.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to help Mike get back on his feet,
Speaker 1: go to GoFundMe dot com and search for Michael Polly.
Speaker 1: If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide,
Speaker 1: help is available. Please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Speaker 1: at eight hundred two seven three eight two five y five.
Speaker 1: Next time on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Brian Parnell.
Speaker 12: But when they turned around and said to me, yeah,
Speaker 12: we have your DNA and we got your fingerprints at
Speaker 12: a prime. See you choked this guy from What's just
Speaker 12: I said, wait a minute, you got the wrong guy.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
Speaker 1: links in our bio to see how you can help.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam Kevin Wortis,
Speaker 1: as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson,
Speaker 1: and story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cliburn.
Speaker 1: The music in this production is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
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Speaker 1: Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
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