Speaker 1: I've never been in trouble in my life. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a parking ticket, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I was brought up like copsure the good guys.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
Speaker 1: do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like
Speaker 1: everything this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent.
Speaker 1: I know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this. How is this possible? I grew up
Speaker 1: trusting systems. I've grew up believing that every human being
Speaker 1: should do the right thing. And that's why, even though
Speaker 1: I knew I was dealing with four other people, I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to break anyone to get me out of
Speaker 1: prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that I
Speaker 1: break my way out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent,
Speaker 1: too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I prove my innocence.
Speaker 1: And that's absolutely what happened to me. Our system.
Speaker 3: Since I've been out ten years, it has come a
Speaker 3: little ways, but it's still broken.
Speaker 1: I totally lost trusting humanity after what's happened to me.
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today's
Speaker 3: episode is a very special one. My friend Pete Uko
Speaker 3: is here all the way from Kenya, where he was
Speaker 3: sentenced to death even though a jury unanimously found him innocent. Pete,
Speaker 3: I'm glad you're here. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for hosting me, Jason.
Speaker 3: First time in America, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, first time in America.
Speaker 3: Could still dis in full amazing. Well, we're happy you're here.
Speaker 3: Your story is remarkable in so many ways. Of course,
Speaker 3: the craziest part of all is the fact that you
Speaker 3: were found innocent by a jury unanimously, and then the
Speaker 3: judge overruled the jury and sentenced you to death. Obviously
Speaker 3: they didn't succeed in killing you, because you're here, and
Speaker 3: I'm very happy about that, so you're sort of immortal.
Speaker 3: And then eighteen years in prison later, and now this
Speaker 3: story is just it's phenomenal. But let's start at the beginning.
Speaker 3: So you were born in Kenya.
Speaker 1: I wasn't born in Kenya forty eight years ago. A
Speaker 1: big family of twelve. My mom had nine girls and.
Speaker 3: Three boys, which one were you?
Speaker 1: I'm number eight back down in.
Speaker 3: The line, number eight, okay, and two same parents for
Speaker 3: all twelve kids. Yeah, amazing, that's what we thought is
Speaker 3: in Africa sometimes. And what about your parents? What did
Speaker 3: they do?
Speaker 1: Oh? My dad passed twenty nineteen ninety seven, just a
Speaker 1: year before I went to prison. And my mom is
Speaker 1: still alive. She's a retired teacher. She stays up country
Speaker 1: does farming. We're just aging gracefully.
Speaker 3: And what was your dad doing before he died.
Speaker 1: My dad was a lecturer, He was a civil servant.
Speaker 1: Both my parents actually are teachers. My mom taught me
Speaker 1: grade one to three.
Speaker 3: So you grew up in this big, happy family. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it was in the city or.
Speaker 1: No, I grew up half of us grew up in
Speaker 1: the city with my dad who my dad was working
Speaker 1: in Arobi, and me and the others grew up country.
Speaker 1: Mom said she wanted to keep at least one of
Speaker 1: the sons up country because she didn't want the town
Speaker 1: influence to mess up her son. Then she picked on me.
Speaker 3: I don't know why you went to school and graduated.
Speaker 3: How did the education start?
Speaker 1: And then I went to primary school from class one
Speaker 1: to seven, I imagine as the best, one of the
Speaker 1: best in the country in nineteen eighty two exams primary
Speaker 1: school exams. Then I was admitted to Alliance High School,
Speaker 1: which is one of the top schools in the country,
Speaker 1: where I did my old levels. After that, I went
Speaker 1: from my A levels to another school and straight from school,
Speaker 1: my mom wanted me to go study in India. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go study in India, so I went
Speaker 1: straight to business. I was employed by Buttershoe Company as
Speaker 1: a shop manager at nineteen years, just before I turned twenty.
Speaker 3: And you got married young.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was twenty two and my late wife was eighteen.
Speaker 3: Is that sort of typical in Kenya? So people get
Speaker 3: married in their teens early twenties.
Speaker 1: No, in some instances it tease. Now it's changed, But
Speaker 1: for me, I felt that getting married at that age
Speaker 1: you'd help me cool down. I led a pretty white
Speaker 1: life and I was just living the life so I
Speaker 1: want today. I mean, I just say that the girl
Speaker 1: would get my baby, just Maria straight. So when she
Speaker 1: told me she was expecting my baby, I say it fine,
Speaker 1: we make it happen.
Speaker 3: And you did, and you did, and you had two kids.
Speaker 3: And then one night everything went horribly wrong in a
Speaker 3: way that is almost unimaginable. So your wife was raped
Speaker 3: and murdered in handcuffs, in front of the police station.
Speaker 3: And this is one of the things about this story
Speaker 3: that just absolutely boggles the mind of everyone who hears it.
Speaker 3: But the fact is, this is what happened. So first
Speaker 3: of all, how did this unwind that faithful night? Like,
Speaker 3: what were you doing? Where was she? What were the circumstances?
Speaker 3: How did this go so horribly wrong?
Speaker 1: I mean, just like you've said, many people when they
Speaker 1: hear my story and they see the mood, I mean,
Speaker 1: they think it's you know, they don't believe what it is.
Speaker 1: But yeah, on the eighteenth evening of December nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: the story is I was told my wife left work
Speaker 1: to come home and she didn't come home. At that time,
Speaker 1: I was with my friend Willie. I was with Willie's family,
Speaker 1: his late brother John, and we did dinner then really
Speaker 1: dropped me home. Later Jennifer was supposedly leaving her work
Speaker 1: at nine pm, just I think around nine pm according
Speaker 1: to the evidence, I sawn got and then when she
Speaker 1: didn't come home, I arrived home I think eleven when
Speaker 1: I will dropped me and I didn't find a home.
Speaker 1: Back then, we didn't have mobile phones and Kenya, we
Speaker 1: didn't have easy communications. So you had to rely on
Speaker 1: the landlines. So I waited patiently. I didn't see her.
Speaker 1: I was like, it's not normal for her not to
Speaker 1: come home, But I don't know where to go start searching,
Speaker 1: So I just assumed maybe she could have gone to
Speaker 1: a cousin or a friend or relative. And yet I
Speaker 1: had this nagging that something was wrong, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know just what to do about it.
Speaker 3: And she was working in a soon.
Speaker 1: She was working in a salon, and she had a
Speaker 1: late client that night who was having a wedding the
Speaker 1: next day. These are things that came out in evidence
Speaker 1: on you in court. So the client came in just
Speaker 1: before Jenny was to leave work, and she kept Jennie
Speaker 1: until nine o'clock and then she left Jenny in the salon.
Speaker 3: And that turns out to be an important detail later on,
Speaker 3: but go ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the next day, on nineteenth, we woke up
Speaker 1: in the morning. I didn't see Jenny. The house, I
Speaker 1: didn't find Jenny. So I woke up very early, called
Speaker 1: the office her workplace the phone was entering, and then
Speaker 1: I went to my office was just not so far
Speaker 1: from where her office was, made another call, a second
Speaker 1: call because I was now getting agitated. Where could she be?
Speaker 1: She didn't tell me. I didn't have information about if
Speaker 1: she was supposed to go out anywhere, and I remember
Speaker 1: it was a Friday. So the next thing I did
Speaker 1: was I called again at around nine point thirty, and
Speaker 1: then the lady on the other hand picked in the
Speaker 1: salon and told me, Hey, Pete, we're sorry, but Jenny
Speaker 1: has been found murdered. And I just went blank. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what to think. I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: react to it. I couldn't even cry because I just
Speaker 1: didn't know. It just hit me. I was twenty eight
Speaker 1: and Jennie was twenty four, and we had these small kids,
Speaker 1: and it just hit me like a thunderstorm. I just
Speaker 1: got flomox and just stopped for a minute. And then
Speaker 1: I had to recollect myself very first, because for one,
Speaker 1: I knew I had left my kids in the house
Speaker 1: with the house help, and my sister in law also
Speaker 1: was staying with us, and I just didn't know how
Speaker 1: to face it. I just lost my dad a couple
Speaker 1: of months before, and Jenny was closest to me at
Speaker 1: that moment, and I mean she was a darling to
Speaker 1: my mom, very close to my mom, and she helped
Speaker 1: mom go through that grieving moment and now here she was.
Speaker 1: So I didn't know how I was going to face it,
Speaker 1: tell my mom, tell my kids. I just didn't know
Speaker 1: how to handle that moment. So the first thing I
Speaker 1: did because I asked her where has it happened? Then
Speaker 1: she told me the body's been found right outside the
Speaker 1: fence of the police station. So I just carried my
Speaker 1: guide and asked myself, how can something like that happened
Speaker 1: outside the police station? And I know the police station
Speaker 1: is heavily guarded.
Speaker 3: Just I just wanted to say, so the police station,
Speaker 3: it wasn't like an outpost. It was like a proper
Speaker 3: police station.
Speaker 1: The police it's a big compound because the police lines
Speaker 1: are there, the police stay there are the very rare,
Speaker 1: and then the officers are in the front. So it's
Speaker 1: a reasonably big not three acres, let me say, And
Speaker 1: it's a reasonably big compound. And so the body was
Speaker 1: found on the outside, just behind the police lines. We
Speaker 1: call them the police lines, the police quoters are called
Speaker 1: police lines in Kenya. So the body was just found
Speaker 1: outside the fence there. So when she told me that,
Speaker 1: I couldn't understand how because I knew that even on
Speaker 1: the other end, the police quoters are guided from back
Speaker 1: and front.
Speaker 3: If somebody was going to take somebody and murder them,
Speaker 3: the last place they would take them instead the police station.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's what's hard to believe about this matter,
Speaker 1: because initially you're like, how could that happen? I mean,
Speaker 1: anyone would have said this guy would fear been caught
Speaker 1: somewhere here. And one of the things that seen in
Speaker 1: Kenya was that if someone rapped a lady, he'd take
Speaker 1: off if the lady didn't know that person, but if
Speaker 1: that lady got killed in the process of rape, it
Speaker 1: was out of fear that that person would be identified.
Speaker 1: And then it happened right out of the police station.
Speaker 1: The postmotem report came that the riga motives set in
Speaker 1: when the hand was handcufft. That was the report of
Speaker 1: the chief government pathologists at that time, and it's the
Speaker 1: very handcuffs that I used to strangle around the neck.
Speaker 1: So these are reports that I got to find later.
Speaker 1: But at the initial stage I went to the police station.
Speaker 1: I found my in laws, who apparently hadn't approved of
Speaker 1: our marriage before because they felt had taken out their
Speaker 1: young girl before they had a chance to be long enough.
Speaker 1: Maybe my mother in law is very supportive. My father
Speaker 1: and lawyers didn't like me. He just didn't want that.
Speaker 1: But first forward to that evening, I reached there. I
Speaker 1: find of my late wife's relatives, Jenny's relatives there. Then
Speaker 1: they tell the cops lock this guy in. As simple
Speaker 1: as that. I go to the police station. No one
Speaker 1: gives me an apology, no one tells me pete sorry
Speaker 1: or anything. The next thing I hear come into this room.
Speaker 1: I get into the police room, I'm told to strip off.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm being told to strap off.
Speaker 1: I strip off, they do body search. Then I just
Speaker 1: hear someone say out there, lock this guy in.
Speaker 3: What time of day was this?
Speaker 1: That was around eleven o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3: Right, so this is now about twelve hours since the
Speaker 3: murder occurred. Yeah, so you show up there, the other
Speaker 3: relatives are there, and they see you being taken into
Speaker 3: the police station.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who said that I should be locked in.
Speaker 3: Because they didn't like you, because they didn't like me.
Speaker 1: That's why it all started. It was about selling scores,
Speaker 1: like we didn't like this guy, so maybe let us
Speaker 1: keep him somewhere. But they did know the ramifications. Just
Speaker 1: to make it clear. They later came on to prison
Speaker 1: and apologies to me, but it was too late because
Speaker 1: I'd already been convict it.
Speaker 3: They knew from the beginning that Jennifer was murdered in handcuffs,
Speaker 3: raped and murdered in handcuffs. Rangle with the handcuffs, where
Speaker 3: would you have gotten handcuffs from?
Speaker 1: Because the big question, you know, the handcuff issue came
Speaker 1: at the postmotem stage when the autopsy was being conducted.
Speaker 1: But when the body was found there it was, as
Speaker 1: they said, the recamotes set in when the hands were
Speaker 1: upp here in a defensive position.
Speaker 3: And they had taken the handcuffs off by now.
Speaker 1: Yeah I think, yeah, now, I think they've taken the
Speaker 1: handcuffs off because she had scratch marks around her wrists
Speaker 1: and on her neck, so the larynx was broken by
Speaker 1: whatever it was.
Speaker 3: I don't name her. And so so they take you
Speaker 3: into the police station. First, they make you strip. Obviously
Speaker 3: they were trying to see if you had some some
Speaker 3: scratch marks because obviously she fought right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jenny could have let anyone do that. To her
Speaker 1: without a fight, of course.
Speaker 3: Not especially a young man, but anybody. So you had
Speaker 3: no scars, no scratches, nothing, And then they started asking
Speaker 3: you questions, how does it work?
Speaker 1: No question. I was just told I was just put in.
Speaker 1: I wasn't asked a single question. I wasn't told anything.
Speaker 1: The moment I was told put this guy in, I
Speaker 1: was thrown in for two weeks without talking to anyone.
Speaker 1: The law said that I should be taken to after
Speaker 1: fourteen days, but I was kept there for another fourteen
Speaker 1: days and then two more days, which was one month.
Speaker 3: And can you describe that that's a jail, right, that's
Speaker 3: not a present that you were in.
Speaker 1: No, that's police custody. It's just in the police custody.
Speaker 1: I was illegally detained for thirty days.
Speaker 3: And can you describe what that was like?
Speaker 1: The police jail cells like ten by ten feet, four
Speaker 1: four men and two four ladies on the other side,
Speaker 1: so that total of six. But then it's a place
Speaker 1: where they bring in every kind of person. The place
Speaker 1: where my little wife was found murdered was Ina, densely
Speaker 1: populated Eastland side of Nairobi, so they arrest drunks every
Speaker 1: other day. The cells are always full. They're no blankets,
Speaker 1: they're no beddings, there's not nothing. I mean, you're there
Speaker 1: with drunks here there, with all kinds of people brought
Speaker 1: in every day, and then they have to go to
Speaker 1: court and you just kept there. You don't know why
Speaker 1: you're being kept there. No one is telling you anything.
Speaker 1: You get your newspapers, you read like everything is going
Speaker 1: on normally, but there's no communication.
Speaker 3: And they bring the food into the cell.
Speaker 1: I didn't take any food there. My secretary used to
Speaker 1: bring me food because at that time i'd I'd started
Speaker 1: my own business, and so I got food from home.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to take any food because I didn't
Speaker 1: trust anyone other time.
Speaker 3: I was very smart, actually, because considering that the conspiracy
Speaker 3: was pretty clear from the beginning, you were the convenien
Speaker 3: escape goat, and they had to get somebody because they
Speaker 3: weren't going to arrest one of their own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at that time, we didn't even know it was
Speaker 1: one of their own, but we had strong suspicions that
Speaker 1: someone was hiding something there. I mean, I had a
Speaker 1: very good lawyer, George came and took that matter as
Speaker 1: if it was his own. It's like he was fighting
Speaker 1: his own life. George is the lawyer, right, yeah, George
Speaker 1: is my lawyer.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's confusing to me sometimes George and judge. But
Speaker 3: George is your lawyer and the judge is the judge,
Speaker 3: and two very different characters. Because George was an honest
Speaker 3: guy and the judge was corrupt.
Speaker 1: He asked for everything that was needed. They kept stolling
Speaker 1: him for a full month, and they told me we
Speaker 1: have nothing against this guy. Then he was asking, why
Speaker 1: an't you releasing me if you have nothing against him?
Speaker 1: So I think after a month, I had to write
Speaker 1: a letter to the police commissioner and to the Toorney
Speaker 1: General of the country because I'd noticed a pattern of
Speaker 1: cover ups and pattern of travesty of justice. And also
Speaker 1: the police were there. Because I'd stayed so long, I
Speaker 1: became like the local there. Now they started telling me stuff,
Speaker 1: right because everybody.
Speaker 3: Else is in and out, they're drunk and go home
Speaker 3: the next day, and you're still the.
Speaker 1: Staff still there. I became a permanent feature there, and
Speaker 1: they didn't know why I was being held. Mind you,
Speaker 1: by that time, no evidence, nobody had written any statement
Speaker 1: about me or against me. Nothing that was nothing. The
Speaker 1: fellow was empty.
Speaker 3: So you had an empty file thirty days go by
Speaker 3: because you weren't actually formally charged for four months, right.
Speaker 1: No, I after thirty days when I wrote the letter.
Speaker 1: I wrote an official letter of complaint to the Attorney
Speaker 1: General and to the Police Commissioner. And I was very
Speaker 1: blunt in it. I said, I don't understand why I'm
Speaker 1: in a police custody. I'm supposed to be moaning my wife.
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be finding out what happened.
Speaker 3: To my wife and taking care of your children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and taking care of my children. But someone has
Speaker 1: turned it into a circus and they're using that opportunity
Speaker 1: to make up stuff and to cover up everything. So
Speaker 1: I said, for heaven's sake, take me to court if
Speaker 1: you feel you have anything against me. I'm the one
Speaker 1: was take me to court. And when they got that,
Speaker 1: because it was published in the media, they felt that
Speaker 1: I'd really got into them. I mean, back then, the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system was very rotten. You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: question the police, You're not supposed to question anybody. And
Speaker 1: so they said, okay, you've reported us to our bosses,
Speaker 1: so now let's get down to it. So I was
Speaker 1: taken to quote after a month. On the thirty first day,
Speaker 1: there was nothing, so I was told go back to
Speaker 1: remand prison. At the remand prison, I waited for two weeks.
Speaker 1: I was taken back again to the police station because
Speaker 1: I couldn't be kept in remand custody without a file,
Speaker 1: without any evidence, I couldn't prepare for anything. There was
Speaker 1: nothing on me, and so I went back to the
Speaker 1: police station. They kept me again for another thirty days,
Speaker 1: then they charged me after sixty days. By the time
Speaker 1: they were charging me, they didn't have a single evidence
Speaker 1: or any statement. So the first statement was written four
Speaker 1: months after my arrest in April. Because I have all
Speaker 1: the statements, we have all the dates, so we could
Speaker 1: see when that thing was written.
Speaker 3: Right right right, That's the number I had in my head,
Speaker 3: was the four months, because that's when the only quote
Speaker 3: unquote witness who wasn't even really a witness. It certainly
Speaker 3: wasn't a witness of the murder. But this guy all
Speaker 3: of a sudden comes out and remembers details. And we
Speaker 3: see this again and again in frame ups right where
Speaker 3: suddenly you have somebody have a miraculous recollection of something
Speaker 3: that happened weeks or months or years ago that they
Speaker 3: couldn't remember when they were initially questioned. And that's what
Speaker 3: happened here. They had obviously somebody went and spoke to
Speaker 3: this guy and told them what to remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think God like, I think, you can
Speaker 1: try to hide some things, but you can't hide everything.
Speaker 1: And this guy when he came to court, he was
Speaker 1: very frank and candid. Adding his statements, he says he
Speaker 1: only wrote that statement after he was approached by the
Speaker 1: police to go to the police station and write it.
Speaker 1: He had nothing. He was told, now, come and do this,
Speaker 1: and that's why his statement was so disjointed. He had
Speaker 1: two statements. He wrote the first stedment, he wrote the
Speaker 1: second statement, which contradicts the first statement. Luckily, unluckily, they
Speaker 1: gave me both statements. So he just choose those two
Speaker 1: statements to discredit his evidence. They're not adding up.
Speaker 3: Okay, So what did he even say that he saw?
Speaker 1: He said, he's saw someone come to pick Jennifer from
Speaker 1: work at eight, then they left at nine. Now that
Speaker 1: person was supposed to be me and me I was
Speaker 1: somewhere else with Willie and Linda and John and their family.
Speaker 3: So you had an alibi, and it was a good
Speaker 3: albi because these weren't even family members of yours.
Speaker 1: There were family members, and my alibi is too it.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's the other absad thing about my case.
Speaker 1: My other laba was accepted and I was still convicted.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's getting weirder and weird, but how long did
Speaker 3: it take from this point to actually get to trial.
Speaker 1: We went to travel in July because Judge, my lawyer,
Speaker 1: was very insistent that we had together think cracking. He
Speaker 1: didn't see a reason why I was supposed to be
Speaker 1: in prison for something I didn't do. And George incidentally
Speaker 1: also knew my late wife. They come from the same
Speaker 1: region me. I'm married from Kenya. There was this issue
Speaker 1: of this tribe should not marry this tribe at that stage.
Speaker 1: Nowadays it's more common in people into Marian stuff. So
Speaker 1: there was that and it was basically political, but it
Speaker 1: got ingrained in many people's psyche that certain tribes should
Speaker 1: not intermarriage due to political competition. But then I went
Speaker 1: against the green and my dad had told me human
Speaker 1: beings are equal, so it doesn't matter where your friends
Speaker 1: come from. But just to go back to your question,
Speaker 1: this guy when he came and wrote that statement. He
Speaker 1: came to court and said, I was told to do
Speaker 1: X y Z. I was taken to the cell where
Speaker 1: Pitt was before I wrote the statement, so he didn't
Speaker 1: even know who he was talking about. He was brought
Speaker 1: to the police cell. He will showed these a guy.
Speaker 1: After that he went and wrote the statement. These are
Speaker 1: stuff that in his official statement to the police and
Speaker 1: evidence in court. But at that point, no one wanted
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. The judicial system was totally corrupt.
Speaker 1: Judges were taking bribes left, right and center. Some judges
Speaker 1: were even giving the litigants as long as they were paid.
Speaker 1: You write the judgment, bring it for me to sign.
Speaker 1: And that was one of the causes that the and
Speaker 1: you had a total overhaul of the judiciary in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three because it was throttened to the core.
Speaker 3: So the judges were the richest guys in town. I
Speaker 3: guess right.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they were doing with the money.
Speaker 1: I think they were drinking it off and just running
Speaker 1: around with pretty people. Maybe I don't know, But the
Speaker 1: thing is, my judge was one of the first to
Speaker 1: be sucked for corruption.
Speaker 3: You really hit the reverse jackpot in terms of getting
Speaker 3: a judge and then an a Pellet judge as well.
Speaker 3: Both of them were proven later and fired for being
Speaker 3: totally corrupt. Back to the story, so you go to
Speaker 3: trial in July. Now let me just remember, so you've
Speaker 3: now been behind bars for.
Speaker 1: That's the seventh month. Now when the trail starts was
Speaker 1: pretty fast, because back then you could start a trail
Speaker 1: after two years Kenya, there was a big backlog. Judges
Speaker 1: didn't want to do cases. But thank god to my
Speaker 1: lawyer George, he was very, very persistent and he really
Speaker 1: pushed to have everything done because he didn't see the
Speaker 1: reason no I should be in prison. So this gay
Speaker 1: comes to court says he's so Jennifer being walked away
Speaker 1: by this guy who's supposed to be me. Then he
Speaker 1: forgets at the same time, Jennifer had a client at
Speaker 1: the very time he's talking about, Jenny was with a
Speaker 1: clant in the salon and that's why she stayed late
Speaker 1: until nine. So this clent comes to quote and says,
Speaker 1: the very time this gay says that Jenny was picked,
Speaker 1: I was actually with Jenny in the salon. No one
Speaker 1: came to pick Jenny. I left at nine. No one
Speaker 1: I didn't meet anyone in the stairs, and there's no
Speaker 1: one I don't know this gay. This guy didn't come
Speaker 1: to pick Jenny.
Speaker 3: So he's now been proven to be a liar.
Speaker 1: He was a left from the word go.
Speaker 3: So how many people were on the jury? Three? So
Speaker 3: the jury are listening to the very stuff that we're
Speaker 3: talking about now, right, the unraveling of the government's case,
Speaker 3: and they saw through all of it. It was so
Speaker 3: transparent that it's actually ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. And I'll just let you know that there
Speaker 1: was so bewildered that there are times this top trial
Speaker 1: to ask questions to the witnesses directly because it was
Speaker 1: just not making sense to them, and because they law
Speaker 1: allowed them to ask questions. When the judge noticed that
Speaker 1: they were asking questions that were beneficial to me, he
Speaker 1: would stop them. And that's when we suspected something was
Speaker 1: a miss. But we believe that since I was innocent,
Speaker 1: we had nothing to lose, we had nothing to fear.
Speaker 1: I grew up trusting systems. I grew up believing that
Speaker 1: every human being should do the right thing. That's what
Speaker 1: my dad taught me. And that's why even though I
Speaker 1: knew I was dealing with corup people. I was not
Speaker 1: going to bribe anyone to get me out of prison
Speaker 1: because I wouldn't live with the fact that I bribed
Speaker 1: my way out of my wife's death. I said, if
Speaker 1: someone wants to charge me, I need to clear my
Speaker 1: name the right way.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a pretty strong statement. Back to the trial,
Speaker 3: So how long did the trial last?
Speaker 1: The trial lasted the first year and then we had
Speaker 1: to take a break because two of the jury members
Speaker 1: were taken out to go do something somewhere. You said
Speaker 1: it lasted the first year and then the second because
Speaker 1: it ended in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: Wait, but how long how many days or weeks or
Speaker 3: months did the trial?
Speaker 1: No, you'd have a trial two days in a week,
Speaker 1: then you're given an adjudgment for another three months. You
Speaker 1: come back, you have three days, you're giving another judgment
Speaker 1: for six months. I mean, it's nothing like you have
Speaker 1: one week of trial and the decision is meant.
Speaker 3: So that's an interesting system because that gives everybody just
Speaker 3: enough time to forget everything that they just heard exactly.
Speaker 3: But that's so ridiculous, Like why it doesn't make I mean, listen,
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm not going to be critical because I
Speaker 3: know just how backwards our system is in so many ways.
Speaker 3: But that seems completely crazy. Why wouldn't you have a
Speaker 3: trial that is contiguous? Is there any rationale for that?
Speaker 1: I mean, hard walking judges, consenttious judges insist on having
Speaker 1: trills started and completed at the best name. But I
Speaker 1: wasn't dealing with a concenttious judge, just like I've said,
Speaker 1: so he had his own agenda.
Speaker 3: Okay, now I understand when you said the trial lasted
Speaker 3: a year two years. I'm thinking, you're going every day
Speaker 3: to court.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no no. You go for a day or
Speaker 1: two adjuntment for one reason or another. The next day
Speaker 1: you're giving another three months to wait. You go back
Speaker 1: to prison, you just hung out there, You come back again.
Speaker 1: Maybe the witnesses are not there to go back home.
Speaker 3: That's another thing. Like even the jurors, what if I mean,
Speaker 3: this is so crazy for them too, because what if
Speaker 3: they go away or somebody moves and then you haven't
Speaker 3: But it was the same jurors throughout the whole.
Speaker 1: It was the same jurors. I mean, there were people
Speaker 1: who are I just looked at them and felt these
Speaker 1: days could do justice because they had no emotions. They
Speaker 1: were just stunfist. So but they were listening through every
Speaker 1: single thing.
Speaker 3: So the trial takes forever two.
Speaker 1: Years, which was very fast by Kenyon's standards. At that time.
Speaker 3: Two years.
Speaker 1: Trials were going for five years, six years.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. The trial takes in your case two years,
Speaker 3: which is an eternity. When you're in the situation you're
Speaker 3: in having lost your wife, you had to be super
Speaker 3: worried about your kids. I mean, they're having a normal upbringing,
Speaker 3: happy family. Next thing you know, mom's been murdered and
Speaker 3: then dad's gone, and then everyone's probably talking to them
Speaker 3: saying horrible things about you. I mean, it's a miracle
Speaker 3: that they're doing well today. Not would more power to
Speaker 3: them because it's absolutely unimaginable what they went through. So
Speaker 3: the trial winds down, the jury do they go out
Speaker 3: to a room to deliberate.
Speaker 1: They go out to deliberate, and they come out to
Speaker 1: give their decision.
Speaker 3: How long did that take?
Speaker 1: They took a day?
Speaker 3: And what did they say?
Speaker 1: And they say, every one of them has to give
Speaker 1: their own reasons. They had the lead jura, but all
Speaker 1: of them asked to give the individual reasons by the judge.
Speaker 1: So they sturned up. The first one says they've looked
Speaker 1: at the case, They've realised new investigations is done, there's
Speaker 1: a blind focus on getting a conviction, and I'm innocent.
Speaker 3: And the second one scond.
Speaker 1: And one same story. No investigations or done by the police.
Speaker 1: In fact, what came out very clearly in all their
Speaker 1: assessment was that there was no investigation that had been done.
Speaker 1: There was a blind focus, a decision had been made,
Speaker 1: predetermined decision that this guy had to go to prison.
Speaker 1: So they looked through the evidence, they asked, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were bewildered. They said, the police lands are guided.
Speaker 1: Something like this cannot happen at a police station. And
Speaker 1: if I told it happened, then the police could have
Speaker 1: arrested those people at that time or that person at
Speaker 1: other time. The crazy thing is that I was child,
Speaker 1: my child, she reads pete with others, not before the
Speaker 1: court committed the offense. And I took that as a
Speaker 1: insult because my wife has been raped and madered and
Speaker 1: he told me I took people to go rape my
Speaker 1: wife outside a corps station. You know, that was the
Speaker 1: biggest insult to me. But I just said I have
Speaker 1: to look through this. I mean, I could have gone
Speaker 1: crazy at that point. I could have gone very mad
Speaker 1: at that point, but I realized that I was fire.
Speaker 1: I had a system that was so rigged, pre rigged
Speaker 1: to make people suffer injustices. So I just pray, don't
Speaker 1: asked God give me the strength to go through this.
Speaker 3: So I didn't even realize that until now. They claimed
Speaker 3: that you brought other people with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they said, I was child the charge she treats
Speaker 1: Pete with others, not before the court.
Speaker 3: Right, I get it, but that is not before the credit. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you would be the only person who's ever done that
Speaker 3: in the history of the world if that was the case.
Speaker 3: But wife to be raped and murdered by you and others,
Speaker 3: whoever those others were, which were unnamed, as of course
Speaker 3: they were imaginary. You all had the same great idea
Speaker 3: to bring her to the police station, right, total madness.
Speaker 3: So the jurors and this is where it's supposed to end, right,
Speaker 3: this is where you're supposed to go home.
Speaker 1: Jurors make their decision, and I say, you know, I
Speaker 1: sat down. I had seen the drama that was going on,
Speaker 1: and I said, because the jurors picked for the public.
Speaker 1: Whatever decision they'll make, I live with it. So to me,
Speaker 1: my trail ended the day the juris to up and
Speaker 1: said you are innocent, all of them unanimously. That is
Speaker 1: when I felt I'm vindicated. Anything that happened after that
Speaker 1: didn't matter to me.
Speaker 3: But did you You had no indication that anything else
Speaker 3: could happen? I mean, did you have any idea?
Speaker 1: At that point, I expected the judge to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. And then he told me to come from
Speaker 1: my judgment. On the day of the judgment, he didn't
Speaker 1: treat the judgment. He asked for two more weeks. I
Speaker 1: come back again. He postponed it again for the second time.
Speaker 1: And that was a process. If a judge wanted to
Speaker 1: be bribed, he would always push your judgment forward so
Speaker 1: that you go bribing before he releases you. And I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to do that. I told my family, I
Speaker 1: told my friends, I don't have any money. We've used
Speaker 1: our money in the legal briefs, but we are not
Speaker 1: going to bribe anyone. No one should bribe anyone for this.
Speaker 3: But the problem was, even if you had bribed him,
Speaker 3: he was being bribed already by the other side.
Speaker 1: By the other side. He could have taken from both sides.
Speaker 3: It would have been just the highest bidder. Right, It's
Speaker 3: really it's almost like a justice auction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean back then it was a justice auction.
Speaker 1: Kenya has gone through a very tough moment. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the new president, President Quebuck in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: the justice system had a complete overhaul. They had to
Speaker 1: turn everything upside down in a good way, in a
Speaker 1: good way, in a positive way, and we had to
Speaker 1: start fighting these things in prison. The good thing is
Speaker 1: that the judge who came up in twenty ten in
Speaker 1: the new constitution had been detained by the former government
Speaker 1: that convicted me. He had been detained in prison in
Speaker 1: the same prison I was in on political reasons, so
Speaker 1: he knew what people are going through in prison. And
Speaker 1: he used to tell us pet and make colleagues just
Speaker 1: write petitions, literate and bring them to court. Will make
Speaker 1: a decision.
Speaker 3: Let's get to the verdict. So finally, after weeks of
Speaker 3: delays and delays and more delays and presumably more payoffs
Speaker 3: and bribes, and him waiting to see if your family's
Speaker 3: going to come up with even more money or whatever.
Speaker 3: You finally brought back to court for the decision, which
Speaker 3: again would seem like, at least in our justice system,
Speaker 3: and I think in most of the world, there is
Speaker 3: no decision have to be made because the judge doesn't
Speaker 3: get to overrule the journey. So you come back. Finally,
Speaker 3: this ordeal is presumably coming to an end, but actually
Speaker 3: it was just beginning.
Speaker 1: It was just beginning because okay, the judge makes the
Speaker 1: final decision. But the law in Kenyon says, the case
Speaker 1: that had been established stated that in the event he
Speaker 1: goes against the decision of the jury, he's supposed to
Speaker 1: give reasons. He's supposed to say I don't agree with
Speaker 1: them because of one to three. In this case, it
Speaker 1: was nothing. Instead, he wrote into his judgment things that
Speaker 1: were not even mentioned it court.
Speaker 3: So he was actually not only the judge in this case,
Speaker 3: he was also playing the prosecutor.
Speaker 1: He was playing the prosecutor, and he has a prosecutor
Speaker 1: all passed by the way. He was a prosecutor before
Speaker 1: his appointed the judge, and I was a prosecutor in
Speaker 1: one of the darkest moments of Kenya's history.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you come back. He started reading off all
Speaker 3: these supposing new information, new lives, new fairy tales, with
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it. And then he says
Speaker 3: you're guilty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he says you're guilty. You're sentenced to death by
Speaker 1: hanging until certified did by a medical doctor.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And so Georgie is sitting down there. I'm sitting on
Speaker 1: a raised platform there. Our coats are not like yours,
Speaker 1: they're more British. So the suspects of the accused persons
Speaker 1: sit on a higher pedestal in the dock, and the
Speaker 1: witnesses sitting on the other side, and the lawyers sit
Speaker 1: down there. So Georgie looks back at me, joined my
Speaker 1: lawyer and I look at George and instead of crying,
Speaker 1: we laughed at the absurdity of it all. We were
Speaker 1: so disgusted, we just laughed. We couldn't believe what we
Speaker 1: were hearing him read. But my family everyone broke down.
Speaker 1: We're not laughing because we were happy. We were laughing
Speaker 1: because we're disgusted. You're so mad that the only thing
Speaker 1: you can do is laugh, you know, that's the only
Speaker 1: way you can placate yourself. And then my mom was there.
Speaker 1: She had believed in the justice system. She was totally broken.
Speaker 1: My mom hasn't recovered up to twenty years later, she's
Speaker 1: here to recover from that. She's yet to recover from
Speaker 1: the betrayal of two thousand and one, which is seventeen
Speaker 1: years ago, and my mom broke down my siblings. People
Speaker 1: just got confused because it never had the death sentence pronounced,
Speaker 1: and then they thought maybe that I'm going to be
Speaker 1: hang the next day. And the media is all there.
Speaker 1: They're all chasing this jewsy story. He had called them,
Speaker 1: that the circus judge had already called them to be there,
Speaker 1: all of them. So they're all following up on this
Speaker 1: jewsy story. They want to take pics. And I said
Speaker 1: one thing, I don't want to see my kids in
Speaker 1: my kids to see me in handcuffs. I always believed
Speaker 1: I was going to see my kids, even though he
Speaker 1: had mentioned that I was supposed to be killed. I
Speaker 1: said one thing, I'll not allow my kids to see
Speaker 1: me in handcuffs. Any picture of mine for my kids
Speaker 1: to see me in handcuffs. So the media was out there.
Speaker 1: We leave the court room. He just tells me to
Speaker 1: take out you're going to appeal immediately. And so as
Speaker 1: we're leaving the court room. The media has been told
Speaker 1: to and on one side they were waiting to take
Speaker 1: pictures and just being tiation because I had my family
Speaker 1: and friends. I just tell them walk beside me, and
Speaker 1: as we get out of the court, they block off
Speaker 1: the media. I walk on the other side. The media
Speaker 1: is on the other side trying to break through to
Speaker 1: come take photos of me, and then me I walk
Speaker 1: down very fast to go to the cells. And that
Speaker 1: was it. I'm taken to prison, not to the same
Speaker 1: prison had spent the previous nighting because I came to
Speaker 1: court ready to go home. I'm not taking to the
Speaker 1: maximum security prison.
Speaker 3: And what was that like?
Speaker 1: It was crazy because the transport first would tell you
Speaker 1: that things are not the same. We will never be
Speaker 1: the same again. We had trucks. We didn't have buses
Speaker 1: as we do have in KENYAA. So these trucks had
Speaker 1: two compartments at their air and two small benches wooden benches,
Speaker 1: and a small truck would carry more than one hundred inmates,
Speaker 1: so you're packed. You had to stand. For a tall
Speaker 1: person like me, I had to bend and just standing
Speaker 1: in this truck with one hundred other people plus the
Speaker 1: awarders in that track and you just pray that you
Speaker 1: reach wherever you're going because there are small holes at
Speaker 1: the top that's supposed to bring ventilation, ventilation holes. They're
Speaker 1: no windows. It's just a metal cage. It's like a cage,
Speaker 1: let me use the word a cage. And so the
Speaker 1: journey is long. We are ever at the prison, the
Speaker 1: maximum security prison, at night around eight o'clock. So who's
Speaker 1: these person who's been brought in a meeting new people
Speaker 1: for the first time. All the cops want to know
Speaker 1: about my case. Everyone is asking many questions which I'm
Speaker 1: not answering, of course, because I'd learned how to live
Speaker 1: with people. By that time, I totally lost trust in
Speaker 1: humanity after what happened to me, and I just didn't
Speaker 1: want to start talking to anyone. I didn't know whether
Speaker 1: they were asking me questions. So I was processed through
Speaker 1: the system, then taken to the cells.
Speaker 3: And that's all block your own cell.
Speaker 1: No, I was sharing that cell, the eight by seven
Speaker 1: foot cell, with thirteen other guys.
Speaker 3: What eight by seven foot seal with thirteen other guys
Speaker 3: and I'm six four, Yes you are as You're not
Speaker 3: a small guy, larger than life character in many many ways.
Speaker 3: So there's thirteen other guys. So you you, I mean,
Speaker 3: could you even lie down in there?
Speaker 1: You can't lie down? You sit now around in a corner.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just have to agree on yourself. One
Speaker 1: thing I loved about prison is that inmates really agree
Speaker 1: on things as a unit. In Kenya, we have no choice.
Speaker 1: We have no choice, so we say if we get
Speaker 1: in with our shoes or with our slippers, we could
Speaker 1: easily get sick because there was no water so to speak.
Speaker 1: There was no running water at that time, and food
Speaker 1: was not guaranteed at that time because even the jailer
Speaker 1: at that time was very corrupt, and it was always
Speaker 1: ensuring that we had a mil one or the other
Speaker 1: day into alternating days so that in between he would
Speaker 1: know what to do with it. But when we went
Speaker 1: to prison at that time, we agreed, okay, we are
Speaker 1: many in the small cell, so you leave your sleepers outside,
Speaker 1: you get in, you put them back to back. Then
Speaker 1: we had made somewhere to hook them so that you
Speaker 1: don't get diseases. In the cell. We had a bucket
Speaker 1: toilet that had to be hung on the door because
Speaker 1: there was no space to put it down there, and
Speaker 1: we slept side by side. There was no blankets back
Speaker 1: then nineteen ninety eight to two and one. There are
Speaker 1: no blankets in our prisons. So if you manage to
Speaker 1: get a small piece to cover yourself, fine, But it
Speaker 1: was so hot in there because you're thirteen grown up
Speaker 1: men in a small cell or fourteen in that case,
Speaker 1: and then it's so hot. I mean, the next guy
Speaker 1: is literally on your skin. We had lots of skin diseases.
Speaker 1: Likely I never got stick for the eighteen years old
Speaker 1: in prison.
Speaker 3: A miracle.
Speaker 1: So basically like sorry, I mean on my side, I
Speaker 1: had I had marks on my side here, you know,
Speaker 1: on my hip because you sleep on this hip. It's
Speaker 1: not a carpeted flow. It's a terrazzo flow. The guys
Speaker 1: on this side you all face right. The guys on
Speaker 1: the other side face left. So when you want to turn,
Speaker 1: your prog on what time to turn so that the
Speaker 1: other guy is gone the other side you get turned
Speaker 1: to the other side.
Speaker 3: Right, so literally like sardines. Then you have to turn
Speaker 3: at the same time, which is and by then you
Speaker 3: have cramps, and it's got to be cramps.
Speaker 1: But after two weeks you get used to it and
Speaker 1: your body becomes immune and mutant. You just go with
Speaker 1: the motions, you become robotic.
Speaker 3: And you would be allowed out of the cell thirty
Speaker 3: minutes in a day. Thirty minutes in a day, yeah,
Speaker 3: if at all.
Speaker 1: That's only Monday to Friday. But from Saturday and Sunday,
Speaker 1: oh no, nothing, nothing, nothing unless you had a visitor,
Speaker 1: then you'd got So it was a privilege. Actually, when
Speaker 1: I came home, there's a day just stood out some
Speaker 1: and so the sunset for the first time in eighteen years,
Speaker 1: and they just stood and watched the sun got and
Speaker 1: I was like, this is what I was denied for
Speaker 1: so long, something I never saw in prison. I never
Speaker 1: go to see the sunset for eighteen.
Speaker 3: Years, right, because you're walkinglo and so how the hell
Speaker 3: did you maintain your sanday? I mean there must be
Speaker 3: guys in there literally losing their mind, because I mean,
Speaker 3: how can you put people that close together and so
Speaker 3: hot and so uncomfortable physically and no room to move
Speaker 3: and no room to do anything? You have? Did you
Speaker 3: have any books in there or anything else?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I could get books. Newspapers were illegal, were prohibited
Speaker 1: at that time. Later on they were allowed. But initially
Speaker 1: I loved reading, and I'm a man of faith, so
Speaker 1: I really kept to the faith. And the good thing
Speaker 1: with people were in their faith, you'd be allowed sometimes
Speaker 1: to go out more than once, so thirty minutes in
Speaker 1: the morning, thirty minutes in the afternoon, and many people
Speaker 1: actually came to the faith just because he wanted that opportunity.
Speaker 1: I just learned how to keep my head underwater, not
Speaker 1: to stick out, not to ruffle feathers, but not also
Speaker 1: to walk on with anything. I mean, I became a
Speaker 1: voice to many of my colleagues in prison. They appointed
Speaker 1: me as one of their leaders, so I would speak out.
Speaker 1: We said, I told the officer in charge of the
Speaker 1: one and in charge, we want to do things differently.
Speaker 1: We're not going to be confrontational because we are going
Speaker 1: to write memoranda. If we have an issue, we want
Speaker 1: to write a memoranda, call us the people involved, and
Speaker 1: then we face it with them. So we started writing
Speaker 1: memoranda about congestion, about torture, about every other thing that
Speaker 1: you could imagine. There. We brought issues because we realized
Speaker 1: that the government was giving enough money for our food,
Speaker 1: which food we are not getting. So we said, this
Speaker 1: is not the problem of the government. It's an institutional problem.
Speaker 1: So we demanded for what was rightfully ours. Luckily, by
Speaker 1: that time the new president had come in the prisons
Speaker 1: department had moved from punishment to correction and rehabilitation.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're a big guy. You're much bigger than
Speaker 3: an average person. So getting so little nourishment in there,
Speaker 3: did you lose a ton of weight? No?
Speaker 1: I think I could have lost some weight, but I
Speaker 1: always believe it's all in the mind. I learned to
Speaker 1: appreciate whatever I have. I don't go for the big
Speaker 1: things in life. I just try to live within my
Speaker 1: jacket and just appreciate every little thing I get. Are
Speaker 1: very appreciative, by the way, and I work within that budget.
Speaker 1: The good thing is that by doing that, I don't
Speaker 1: stress myself out like I can't get this and this
Speaker 1: and that. I just live and appreciate whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And contrary to what you might think, I don't eat much.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's amazing. Well that's a good thing for that too.
Speaker 3: So were you in that same prison for eighteen years. No.
Speaker 1: After one month, I was taken to another security prison
Speaker 1: in a place called Naivasha. Now that's the biggest prison
Speaker 1: in the country. In fact, I think in East Africa.
Speaker 1: It's massive, it's got a football field inside it. But
Speaker 1: that's one prison that's feared by many people because the
Speaker 1: wind blows from the Rift valley into the prison and
Speaker 1: so if you don't have anything to cover, you'd get cold,
Speaker 1: you'd get tuberculosis. And if someone visits you the first time,
Speaker 1: they onlyn't want to come the second time because it
Speaker 1: was so far removed from the road from the transport network.
Speaker 1: So it's one of the most feared prisons back then,
Speaker 1: but now it has the biggest school population of all
Speaker 1: prisons in Africa. Yeah, it's become a model institution. The
Speaker 1: new reforms that were brought by the Kenya Prison Service.
Speaker 1: They first accepted the admit mistakes. They had a paradegm
Speaker 1: shift and we thank the former Vice president who was
Speaker 1: made in charge of the prison's docket. Prisons in Kenya
Speaker 1: public institutions. So he said he wanted to see prisoners
Speaker 1: treated humanly. We started having that chance and that's how
Speaker 1: we started now getting more hours out in the sun.
Speaker 1: Torture became outlawed and inmates had a chance to go
Speaker 1: to school, land skills, get visitors. We have an open
Speaker 1: door police in our prisons in Kenya, and we could
Speaker 1: manage all that I learned at in prison. I started
Speaker 1: training my colleagues in art. I formed the organization I
Speaker 1: ran now while I was on death row, and we
Speaker 1: started doing activities outside prison, but organizing from prison, and
Speaker 1: people thought that we were so well funded. I didn't
Speaker 1: have any money. What I did was design T shirts,
Speaker 1: designed cards, sell them to my fellow inmates, sell them
Speaker 1: to the other guys out there, use those proceeds to
Speaker 1: run the crimes awareness campaigns. That word denounced it and
Speaker 1: I just thank God because there was so much ownership
Speaker 1: of the process that being in prison now didn't become
Speaker 1: a bud and it became an opportunity to invent myself
Speaker 1: and to find myself. I forgive the people who took
Speaker 1: me there. I removed all the beatterness and said, I
Speaker 1: have to live my life and if that's the purpose
Speaker 1: I have, and since I believe I'll go home. At
Speaker 1: one point every single day I believe I was going
Speaker 1: to go home, then I had to start doing things differently.
Speaker 3: Well, that's just I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so remarkable that you exist in this
Speaker 3: state of the only way I can describe it as grace.
Speaker 3: I've never heard anybody describe it quite the way you
Speaker 3: just did. But it's always so remarkable for me just
Speaker 3: to be in the presence of somebody like you who
Speaker 3: has found this. You know what, I guess you could
Speaker 3: call it the meaning of life which allowed you to survive, really,
Speaker 3: because otherwise you probably would have died in there.
Speaker 1: I totally agree there. I mean, in prison you have
Speaker 1: number one, you have to let go. You have to
Speaker 1: let go of all bitterness. You have to let go
Speaker 1: of assuming that life is the same, and you justus
Speaker 1: and recalibrate through that life. You don't become part of
Speaker 1: that life. It's there, but you live your life in
Speaker 1: that situation so that it doesn't get really into you
Speaker 1: and you feel like it's a punishment. You get to
Speaker 1: learn to coexist with your fellow people. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like a United Nations. You're meeting all kinds of people
Speaker 1: that may some very wonderful people. In prison. It's not
Speaker 1: just about the struggles of being in prison. Wrong Fully
Speaker 1: convicted people are going through what's out here. There are
Speaker 1: worse prisons out here than what we go through in prison.
Speaker 1: People addicted and close down to drugs in their own world,
Speaker 1: they can't come out of that. My prayer always when
Speaker 1: I work with the youth to get them out of
Speaker 1: crimes and drugs is that they just find purpose wherever there.
Speaker 1: So that's what I started doing in prison. You don't
Speaker 1: believe this, is Jason, but when you're on death row,
Speaker 1: when we're getting that small amount of food, we mobilized
Speaker 1: all the fifty two thousand inmates in Kenya to forget
Speaker 1: their meals and to donate to people in Kenya who
Speaker 1: were dying of hunger. And people like, are you guys
Speaker 1: doing this so that you can be reacent? We said, no,
Speaker 1: we are eating food in prison and we're not working.
Speaker 1: We're just sleeping. We eat and sleep, so why can't
Speaker 1: we just do something different? And we came together as
Speaker 1: inmates and I was taken from prison. That's the first
Speaker 1: time I got out to walk in the streets of
Speaker 1: Nairobi without handcuffs, and I was taken to the office
Speaker 1: of the Vice President. I made the donation on behalf
Speaker 1: of my colleagues and from there we just felt we
Speaker 1: had to grow. So the different programs that were brought
Speaker 1: the leadership of the Kenya prison service helped us change that.
Speaker 1: The judiciary was revamped, the corrupt guys were taken out
Speaker 1: with seeing changes, and now we were using the law
Speaker 1: now to help overturn most of these things. I was
Speaker 1: writing appeals and petitions for my colleagues in prison last year,
Speaker 1: the year before I left, that was twenty sixteen. I
Speaker 1: got six gays out of death row and I hadn't
Speaker 1: even cleared my law decree, you know, But that was
Speaker 1: just we learned how to write those things after so
Speaker 1: many years. You just learned naturally to some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Look at the evidence, look at the case. Slow, make
Speaker 1: your presentations in court. Crazy enough, Some of the cases
Speaker 1: I've used in my pleadings were influenced by what the
Speaker 1: Nuisance Project is doing in America. I've always been a
Speaker 1: great fan of the Nuisance Project. They intend to set
Speaker 1: up something similar in my country.
Speaker 3: You studied the law, well, you got your college degree
Speaker 3: in prison, and then you studied the law, and now
Speaker 3: you're about to graduate from the University of London Law School,
Speaker 3: which is a part of the story that we have
Speaker 3: to get to. But before that, how did you get
Speaker 3: released or.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen August, my son was going to graduate.
Speaker 1: They were clearing the university. And one thing that had
Speaker 1: really killed my mood in prison was that I was
Speaker 1: not able to be there for my kids' primary school graduation,
Speaker 1: high school graduation, and now they had their final graduation
Speaker 1: in university. And I felt that if I was not
Speaker 1: going to attend that, then had no business getting out
Speaker 1: of prison. It came to that. That's when I was depressed,
Speaker 1: just to feel that my kids had grown without me.
Speaker 1: They had not seen me, they had had visits from
Speaker 1: other families, they'd seen other kids being visited, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't have their dad there. They couldn't tell their colleagues
Speaker 1: in school that their dad is in prison for allegedly
Speaker 1: murdering their mum. I mean, I felt that those kids
Speaker 1: dissolved me to be there with them for their graduation.
Speaker 1: So I took a lip of faith and wrote to
Speaker 1: the President of the country, President Kinata, and told him,
Speaker 1: your excellency, I was chilged with this offense of murder.
Speaker 1: I still maintained my innocence. I don't agree with the decision,
Speaker 1: but as a law abiding citizen, I respect it. And
Speaker 1: so the position is that my son, my kids are
Speaker 1: going to graduate and I need to be home with
Speaker 1: them for their graduation, So could you use your prerogative
Speaker 1: to set me free?
Speaker 3: And he did, he did in October. How did you
Speaker 3: get the news?
Speaker 1: I was assisting? Like in prison, I was always in
Speaker 1: the documentation office, helping appeals and process the appeals for
Speaker 1: the inmates. And then those is breaking news. So one
Speaker 1: of the awardens in the office said, Pitt, something has happened.
Speaker 1: Guys are being released. I mean, the president has just
Speaker 1: signed an order releasing guys, and we know you must
Speaker 1: be in there. And then I was like, people have
Speaker 1: been released before, but have never been there. I mean
Speaker 1: every other year people tell me, Peter, you're going home.
Speaker 1: You don't deserve to be here. But it never happened.
Speaker 1: But I just felt in my spirit at that time
Speaker 1: like the time has come. So I left the documentation
Speaker 1: office and went to my cell. By the time I
Speaker 1: was leaving, I was living in my own cell, though
Speaker 1: it didn't have a toilet, but it was a different block.
Speaker 1: We're only eleven of us in that cell. It's a
Speaker 1: privilege I was given by the office and child. So
Speaker 1: I went down to my cell and just prayed and
Speaker 1: told God, if it's your will, let it be done,
Speaker 1: and I just hang on there. Then an hour later,
Speaker 1: the Commissioner General of Prisons drives in with the paw
Speaker 1: of massy staff with this team. So I'm told you
Speaker 1: have been called outside, so working out. The commissioner tells me,
Speaker 1: you know what, he wrote a letter to the present
Speaker 1: and he said you can go home. And it's such
Speaker 1: an amiable person. He talks like it's just a joke.
Speaker 1: So first I'm like, ah, but when I look at
Speaker 1: the team he has with, then I have reason to believe.
Speaker 1: After that, we are called to the hall and the
Speaker 1: names are read out, and when we're just about to leave,
Speaker 1: I called my daughter. I went to the office and
Speaker 1: called my daughter and told her, Whitney, I'm going home.
Speaker 1: I'm coming home, And she was like, Dad, you always
Speaker 1: like cracking jokes. I mean, I don't trust what you're
Speaker 1: telling me, so let someone else tell me. So I
Speaker 1: give the cops the phone and tell them tell this
Speaker 1: girl I've been released. And she says, no, I'll only
Speaker 1: believe when I see you. That's how stubborn my daughter is.
Speaker 1: And then she she goes like, okay, Dad, if I
Speaker 1: see you, then i'll believe. But I'm not telling anyone.
Speaker 1: And then the prison ward and tells us Pete and colleagues.
Speaker 1: You know, this is late in the evening. It's raining heavily.
Speaker 1: We'd like this thing to be covered by the media.
Speaker 1: So do you guys just mind spending an extra night
Speaker 1: in prison? Then you go in the morning if you will,
Speaker 1: because it's for us sake that we don't know if
Speaker 1: we'll see you guys again, and we just wanted this
Speaker 1: story to come out, so we indulge them and to
Speaker 1: go and sleep.
Speaker 3: And so he spent an extra night in prison.
Speaker 1: I spent an extra night after release. Did you sleep, No,
Speaker 1: I slept. I slept very deeply. I was just thankful.
Speaker 1: I listened to a lot of music. I slept late.
Speaker 1: I slept at a round three. I just listened to
Speaker 1: lots of music because I had my laptop for studies
Speaker 1: in my room. And then I went to bed at
Speaker 1: a round three a m. So I woke up late.
Speaker 1: The other guys, I think they didn't believe, because they
Speaker 1: woke up at six. By six, they were in the
Speaker 1: office like we want to go home now, you know.
Speaker 1: So even just the moment the doors were opened out
Speaker 1: of the documentary office, asking to go home, and so
Speaker 1: my mom came in. My mom came in with those
Speaker 1: are one of the pictures I look at, and she
Speaker 1: just hugged me and broke down. And I did not
Speaker 1: to handle my mom crying. I mean it was deep.
Speaker 1: Then she started singing, thanking God, crying just on my chest,
Speaker 1: and I was just trying to reassure them that also, okay,
Speaker 1: it's all over. But she still had this heavy hat,
Speaker 1: like why did it have to happen? For eighteen years?
Speaker 1: She lost her good health because of that depression, and
Speaker 1: as we speaking right now, yeah, she's struggling with her health.
Speaker 1: But then God, she's strong.
Speaker 3: So then they take you and your mom and they
Speaker 3: and they.
Speaker 1: Passed through the office of the African Prisons Project just
Speaker 1: to say hi. And then after that we go over
Speaker 1: to my sister's place, who had come with my mom.
Speaker 1: And now my daughter still doesn't come. She still doesn't
Speaker 1: believe that I've been released. And I've called both my
Speaker 1: daughter and my son. So as I'm leaving because I
Speaker 1: had to take a de tour and we used a
Speaker 1: long route because of traffic, it was around three o'clock,
Speaker 1: I call a friend of mine very close friend of
Speaker 1: mine and a mental of mine, and I tell him, Carol,
Speaker 1: you know what, I've been looking for you, but I
Speaker 1: don't know where to find you. So they know I
Speaker 1: was looking for your son because your son was supposed
Speaker 1: to go for an interview and I can't trace him.
Speaker 1: So I tell him, Oh, I'll tell him I'm going
Speaker 1: to meet him. Then i'll tell him the next me,
Speaker 1: where are you at? Said, I'm home, Like, come on,
Speaker 1: stop kidding me, because people think when I was in prison,
Speaker 1: I liked cracking jokes just to keep people's moods on
Speaker 1: the app So he thinks it's another wild joke again,
Speaker 1: so he invites me to his office. Nice nice catch
Speaker 1: up is a childhood friend. After that, you go to
Speaker 1: my sister's place. Then by that time, my daughter started
Speaker 1: believing because now she's getting calls from different people, and
Speaker 1: she joins me at my sister's place where my son
Speaker 1: was staying. My sister is my hero, Christine. She took
Speaker 1: good care of those kids for a while, for more
Speaker 1: than eight years, you know, through high school teenage staff,
Speaker 1: and she just took good care of them. And she's
Speaker 1: just sickling. She doesn't have the best of health, but
Speaker 1: She took them in like our own and really saw
Speaker 1: them through what they were going through.
Speaker 3: What was it like when you saw your kids for
Speaker 3: the first time in eighteen years as a free man?
Speaker 3: I mean, did you beat them both together at the
Speaker 3: same time?
Speaker 1: Now you know, I wasn't seeing them for the first time,
Speaker 1: and the prison is in Kenya. When the laws were changed,
Speaker 1: we editated for a law to be enacted called the
Speaker 1: Persons Deprived of Liberty Act, and in that act we
Speaker 1: have parental visits, so four times in a year by law,
Speaker 1: parents and visitors and friends can just come and hang
Speaker 1: out the way you know, you just hang out. You
Speaker 1: bring food from home, you see to make food from home.
Speaker 1: You come and sit on with the family and staff
Speaker 1: a quality time. And other than that, you can also
Speaker 1: apply on special days like when my daughter came to
Speaker 1: introduce her. Then boyfriend told me that I want to
Speaker 1: introduce someone to you, and I asked for permission from
Speaker 1: the off Saint Gege. We were given a room we
Speaker 1: just hang out. So I'd already seen them from the
Speaker 1: time they were after the first eight years when they
Speaker 1: had been told that I was dead. I didn't tell
Speaker 1: you that they grew up knowing that I was dead.
Speaker 1: For the first eight years, the identity had been changed.
Speaker 1: So when I met my daughter for the first time,
Speaker 1: my country recognized after eight years, and then when they
Speaker 1: went to first from ninth grade, now I started seeing them.
Speaker 1: They could come to prison and see me.
Speaker 3: Wait, so they grew up thinking you were dead.
Speaker 1: I told her I was dead.
Speaker 3: Wow by who?
Speaker 1: But the very people said I should be locked in
Speaker 1: the in laws Wow. But the good thing. I thank
Speaker 1: my mom in law because she's the one who told
Speaker 1: me Pete, I'm sorry, but I told your kids that
Speaker 1: you're dead, and they told her, Mom, I have nothing
Speaker 1: against you. I love you just like my mom. I
Speaker 1: don't always love you. Whatever you did, I don't know
Speaker 1: why you did it. I have nothing against you. And
Speaker 1: we just have to live their life. God as the
Speaker 1: loved us to live.
Speaker 3: Amazing. So I do want to talk about the African
Speaker 3: Prisons Project. I was very honored and humbled to be
Speaker 3: asked by the founder of the African Prisons Project, Alexander McLean,
Speaker 3: to come over to Uganda give a ted X talk
Speaker 3: inside a maximum security prison in Kampala. And of course
Speaker 3: it was during that trip that you and I met,
Speaker 3: So can you share with our listeners what the African
Speaker 3: Prison Project is and what it does and how you're
Speaker 3: involved in it. Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, The African Prisons Project was started ten years ago
Speaker 1: by Alexander. I met Alexander when I was in prison,
Speaker 1: and just about that time, I'd been invited by the
Speaker 1: Judicial Service Commission to go give my views on behalf
Speaker 1: of the inmates about revamping the judicial system. And so
Speaker 1: when I went to that interview, I met all the
Speaker 1: top players in the criminal just system and the Attorney
Speaker 1: General then asked me are you a lawyer? Then I
Speaker 1: told him no, I'm not a lawyer. They told me,
Speaker 1: would you like to study law? I told him yeah,
Speaker 1: if you pay for me, sir, I'll gladly study. They said, Pete,
Speaker 1: we know what you have in you and we know
Speaker 1: what your motivation is to study, so we are going
Speaker 1: to help you. You're going to pay how for your fees?
Speaker 1: And Alexander said fine. At African Prisons Project, we don't
Speaker 1: have a budget for education right now. We're not doing
Speaker 1: legal education. But if you have someone to pay for
Speaker 1: you have, I'll gladly pay for you the other half.
Speaker 1: That's how we started off in twenty twelve, ive went
Speaker 1: to university through the African Prisons Project in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: I had to be taken from prison to go to
Speaker 1: my exams outside at the British Council, which is a
Speaker 1: great owner. Then the officer and Jire asked me, Pete,
Speaker 1: why are you doing this thing alone? And there's so
Speaker 1: many people are suffering and we need that help. And
Speaker 1: I got in touch with Alexander told him, come on,
Speaker 1: could you try and get more guests to be supported
Speaker 1: in this course, And later on more people joined the
Speaker 1: program and the inmates are being trained to be change makers.
Speaker 1: They're doing that in three prisons to the being trained
Speaker 1: in law in Kenya three prisons in Uganda, I think
Speaker 1: it's zero, and they're being trained in law and paralegal
Speaker 1: staff to assist their fellow inmates and also when they
Speaker 1: go out since the Indealentin Society, so that's the project
Speaker 1: that goes there. After that. After my first year, I
Speaker 1: of course I graduated and after the first year, Alexander
Speaker 1: African Prisons Projects started paying for my fees at the
Speaker 1: University of London and the money because my gracious guest
Speaker 1: hosts or supporters Justice Isaac will still giving me four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars per year. I use that to pay for
Speaker 1: my children's school fees, and that's how my children went
Speaker 1: through school amazing, because I'd exhausted all my funds at
Speaker 1: my trial. I mean so so, Justice Allah Isaac and
Speaker 1: Ahmed Nasir and Alexander helped get me on my feet
Speaker 1: to what I'm about to complete right now.
Speaker 3: So Alexander MacLean is a hero of mine. I'm a
Speaker 3: big supporter of his work, proudly. And he has been
Speaker 3: going for a long time now into one of the
Speaker 3: most hopeless places on Earth, some of the prisons in
Speaker 3: Kenya and Uganda, and I think other parts of Africa,
Speaker 3: and training people like Pete who's sitting in front of
Speaker 3: me now in the law so that they can do
Speaker 3: exactly what you did, which is find a way to
Speaker 3: get yourself out and then in the process help other inmates. So, Pete,
Speaker 3: this story is absolutely remarkable. The tradition here is that
Speaker 3: at the end of each episode I like to just
Speaker 3: turn the mic over to the guest, in this case,
Speaker 3: you to share any further thoughts that you have with
Speaker 3: our audience.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you, Jason, Thank you for having to New York.
Speaker 1: It's a great pleasure. I didn't know I would even
Speaker 1: get a visa to come here, but I'm grateful that
Speaker 1: it happened. And here I've met wonderful people. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: being with the Felex and Ruiz at the Gala. I
Speaker 1: just want to think the Innocence Project and I thank
Speaker 1: you and all the support you guys are given to
Speaker 1: that project. It's something also want to replicate in my country.
Speaker 1: I left the African Prisons Project and on my organization
Speaker 1: called the Youth Safety Our Initiative. We're focusing on getting
Speaker 1: the youth out of crime. We're focused on getting inmates
Speaker 1: or living prison to have something gainful to do. And
Speaker 1: as I'm speaking to you right now, we've assisted fifteen
Speaker 1: of our inmates open bank accounts. So we're doing social
Speaker 1: enterprises and means of reducing recidivism. I had a double
Speaker 1: treat on twenty eighth of April, the same day I
Speaker 1: was granted a visa. I also got a call from
Speaker 1: one of the biggest landowners in our country, Cana, and
Speaker 1: we're going to put a re entry home there. Funds
Speaker 1: allowing We're going to put the first halfway home in
Speaker 1: a big conservancy where you can also watch game.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. And the name of the organization again.
Speaker 1: Youth Safety Awareness Initiative, and.
Speaker 3: How can people learn more and get involved.
Speaker 1: You can go to www dot crimec poor crime c
Speaker 1: poor c r Ime Sipoa crime Cyper means crime is
Speaker 1: not cool. So we used a local to reach out
Speaker 1: to the youth. That's what we started doing in prison.
Speaker 1: And when we go to register, they said they cannot
Speaker 1: register the name crime as an angio. So we got
Speaker 1: Youth Safety Awareness Initiative. But the brand name which is
Speaker 1: registered brand name now is crime Syple. Crime is not.
Speaker 3: Cool, Okay, So the organization's Youth Safety Awareness Initiative. Go
Speaker 3: and visit and learn about this amazing work of this
Speaker 3: amazing man who's sitting here in front of me now,
Speaker 3: which is a miracle in and of itself, and join
Speaker 3: me in supporting this work because this is in fact
Speaker 3: a global problem. We focus a lot on America on
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction, but it's a global problem and there's so
Speaker 3: many people who need our help. So I want to
Speaker 3: thank you Pete Uko for coming on the show and
Speaker 3: sharing your thoughts and your amazing journey with our audience.
Speaker 1: Thank you Jesseon for hosting me.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: It really helps.
Speaker 2: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
Speaker 2: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 2: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 2: to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
Speaker 2: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 2: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
Speaker 2: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
Speaker 2: to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Speaker 2: Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm
Speaker 2: is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association
Speaker 2: with Signal Company Number one