Speaker 1: Back in twenty seventeen, I recorded in an episode with
Speaker 1: Michelle Murphy and Michelle was wrongfully convicted of the murder
Speaker 1: of her baby, Trevor, of fifteen week old boy. She
Speaker 1: was egregiously framed and served twenty years to the day
Speaker 1: in prison of a life sentence. Upon her release, a
Speaker 1: judge said through tears that in his four decades on
Speaker 1: the bench, it was the worst miscarriage of justice he'd
Speaker 1: ever seen. She's been fully exonerated, and she is an
Speaker 1: extraordinary person who is full of life, very brilliant, and
Speaker 1: is working at the Bail Fund in Oklahoma helping two
Speaker 1: free other women from sentences they don't deserve and getting
Speaker 1: them back home with their.
Speaker 2: Families where they belong.
Speaker 1: Sad news is that in twenty eighteen March of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: she lost a lawsuit that she filed against the city
Speaker 1: of tall for violating her civil rights. There are ongoing
Speaker 1: developments and hopefully this wrong will be eventually righted. But
Speaker 1: it's shocking to say that now, almost five years since
Speaker 1: her release, she has gotten nothing from the state of
Speaker 1: Oklahoma or anyone else for her twenty years of wrongful incarceration.
Speaker 1: Her daughter from whom she was taken at the age
Speaker 1: of seventeen. When this tragedy happened, she was taken directly
Speaker 1: to interrogation. She was interrogated for nine hours, without an attorney,
Speaker 1: without a parent. It was an illegal interrogation, and from
Speaker 1: that interrogation she was taken to jail and never saw
Speaker 1: her daughter again. The good news is that in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: in May, she was reunited with her daughter, and I
Speaker 1: was there. It was an unbelievably emotional scene. Her daughter,
Speaker 1: not twenty five, has a daughter of her own, and
Speaker 1: so there's still a lot of healing to be done.
Speaker 1: But Michelle is one of the strongest and bravest people
Speaker 1: I've ever known, and you have to hear her story
Speaker 1: to believe it. Michelle Murphy Wrongful Conviction Shout out to Michelle.
Speaker 3: I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
Speaker 4: I was naive enough to believe that I would be
Speaker 4: able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence,
Speaker 4: that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't
Speaker 4: be going to prison because I was a good person.
Speaker 4: I hadn't done anything wrong.
Speaker 3: In the back of your mind, you say, well, when
Speaker 3: we go to a hearing, we go to court, the
Speaker 3: truth will come out. The prosecution from day one knew
Speaker 3: I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected from
Speaker 3: the lower courts all the way up to the United
Speaker 3: States Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: You have someone with a badge with ultimate and in
Speaker 5: that moment unchecked authority.
Speaker 4: Don't presume that people are guilty when you see him
Speaker 4: on TV, because it may just be a dirty DA
Speaker 4: that is trying to rise upward.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flomp. I'm actually
Speaker 1: almost at a loss for words already today because one
Speaker 1: of my favorite humans is here in the studio with us.
Speaker 1: Michelle Murphy, the only female ax honery in the history
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: Twenty years in prison for a crime she didn't commit.
Speaker 6: On September twelfth, nineteen ninety four, Murphy's fifteen week old son,
Speaker 6: Travis was found debt his throat slit. One year later,
Speaker 6: Murphy was found guilty of murder received a life sentence
Speaker 6: without the possibility of parole. This morning at Tulsa County
Speaker 6: judge dismissed Mischelle Murphy's conviction. Prosecutors asked for the conviction
Speaker 6: to be vacated because of new evidence they just became
Speaker 6: aware of. It involves DNA evidence. They say it wasn't
Speaker 6: available twenty years ago. Murphy's attorneys, however, say the Ditrich
Speaker 6: attorney's office always had the evidence and it was im
Speaker 6: Haarriss himself who applied to jurors twenty years ago. The
Speaker 6: blood the crime scene belonged to Murphy.
Speaker 5: After two decades in prison, including four years of legal work, Murphy,
Speaker 5: now thirty seven, gets a second.
Speaker 7: Chance at life.
Speaker 2: Michelle welcome, Thank you. Yeah, it's good to you. Hear.
Speaker 1: And with Michelle is her attorney, Shannon McMurray, and is
Speaker 1: working on her civil suits. So Shannon, welcome to ronful conviction.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 1: So Michelle, your case is really it's just beyond I mean,
Speaker 1: your case is so extreme that the judge in your
Speaker 1: original hearing said that in his more than four decades
Speaker 1: on the bench, it was the most terrible miscarriage of
Speaker 1: justice he'd ever seen. But let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: You were born in Tulsa, Yes, that's great. And what
Speaker 1: was your upbringing like? You had a difficult childhood.
Speaker 2: Did you not?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 5: I did. I was brought up in poverty stricken projects,
Speaker 5: and welfare. I was in and out of foster homes.
Speaker 5: I went through pretty much every form of abuse you
Speaker 5: can think of as.
Speaker 1: A child, and then you ended up at the age
Speaker 1: of seventeen with two kids, right, yeah, which may not
Speaker 1: be as unusual in Oklahoma, but certainly in many parts
Speaker 1: of America, people be like, wow, that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. And you had a difficult relationship with the
Speaker 1: father of your children.
Speaker 5: As well, right, It was a dysfunctional relationship, but I
Speaker 5: had kicked him out, and I was raising my kids
Speaker 5: on my own because that's all I wanted was kids
Speaker 5: in my own to raise.
Speaker 7: I've pretty much brought up my sisters and my brother,
Speaker 7: so I.
Speaker 8: Wanted to get out there and have my own.
Speaker 7: So I started a little early.
Speaker 1: You raise your sisters and your brothers as well, so
Speaker 1: you were you had experience at this, right, right, Although
Speaker 1: at seventeen, how much experience can you really have? You'd
Speaker 1: been through some crazy stuff already, as you said, every
Speaker 1: kind of abuse and everything else, So I guess you
Speaker 1: were sort of prepared.
Speaker 5: You know, I knew it all, but I was seventeen.
Speaker 5: What seventeen year old doesn't think that they know everything?
Speaker 5: And they're ready to take on the world. All I
Speaker 5: ever wanted was my own kids, and I was ready
Speaker 5: to make it happen, and I did so.
Speaker 1: Now we fast forward to that faithful night we're talking
Speaker 1: about September twelfth, nineteen ninety four, right when you went
Speaker 1: to sleep, probably more or less like any other night,
Speaker 1: you had your two and a half year old daughter
Speaker 1: right right and your baby son, Travis. Can you just
Speaker 1: walk us through what happened that night, because it's, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really the beginning of what is going to be
Speaker 1: an unbelievable saga.
Speaker 5: Well, after I left visiting a friend of mine, I
Speaker 5: went home. I fed Michelle, my daughter, and I fed
Speaker 5: Travis and gave him his little bath and everything else,
Speaker 5: prepared him for sleeping, went to sleep, and I couldn't
Speaker 5: sleep for some reason, so I stayed up and I
Speaker 5: was going through baseball cards that I was trying to
Speaker 5: save for him for his future, because I just wanted
Speaker 5: him to have something that could possibly be a collectible
Speaker 5: one day or something, you know. And I was making
Speaker 5: a list of them and stuff until I finally was
Speaker 5: able to go to sleep. And I can't even remember
Speaker 5: what time it was that I went to sleep, and
Speaker 5: when I woke up, my my lights were on, my
Speaker 5: head was hurting, and I noticed my son wasn't where
Speaker 5: he was when I laid him down to sleep.
Speaker 2: You were sleeping with the kids right at the time.
Speaker 5: My ac from upstairs had fallen out the window, and
Speaker 5: so at that time we were all just sleeping downstairs
Speaker 5: where it would be cooler, and we were sleeping on
Speaker 5: a couch, all three of us. I had a huge
Speaker 5: L shaped couch and so we were all in different
Speaker 5: areas on it asleep.
Speaker 1: And so the first thing you would have noticed when
Speaker 1: you woke up is that your son was missing. I mean,
Speaker 1: because you're I mean, he would have been right in
Speaker 1: your immediate vicinity. He would have been in your eyesighted
Speaker 1: as soon as you woke up.
Speaker 5: So he was gone, right, And my first instinct is
Speaker 5: to look and make sure that they're there and they're
Speaker 5: asleep and they're okay, because I woke up to try
Speaker 5: to go use the restaurroom.
Speaker 1: Right and there's nowhere he could have gone. It was
Speaker 1: only fifteen weeks solds now that he walked somewhere, and
Speaker 1: I just.
Speaker 5: I started panicking because I was like, where's where's my baby?
Speaker 5: You know, my front door was open and my closest
Speaker 5: friends lived right behind me at that time, so I
Speaker 5: went to go out the back door and that's when
Speaker 5: I found Travis.
Speaker 2: He was in the kitchen.
Speaker 7: Yeah, in a pull of his own blood.
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate nightmare of anybody who's ever had a child.
Speaker 2: So what did you do?
Speaker 5: I freaked out. I went to my friends to get help.
Speaker 9: And it's the last time I got to see my daughter,
Speaker 9: and it was the last time I felt complete half
Speaker 9: of my kids. You know.
Speaker 5: After I went to my friends and they seen what
Speaker 5: had happened with Travis, they went and they called the police,
Speaker 5: and then they came out and I was in a
Speaker 5: police car. I remember sitting there and people just kept
Speaker 5: coming up to the car asking me what was going on.
Speaker 5: And eventually they took me to the police station where
Speaker 5: an officer of the law, if you could call him that,
Speaker 5: interrogated me. And it wasn't so much an interrogation, it
Speaker 5: was more like a browbeating, like he told me I
Speaker 5: had done this, and this is what I did and
Speaker 5: how I did it, and why I did this and
Speaker 5: just and all I could say was I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: There's so many things wrong with this story, even just
Speaker 1: this beginning part of the story, because it's illegal in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma for a seventeen year old you're a minor to
Speaker 1: be interrogated without an adult in the room, a guardian
Speaker 1: or an attorney, right, But that didn't.
Speaker 10: Stop them at that time in Oklahoma. It was not proper.
Speaker 10: It's legal today, they've changed the law. But what they
Speaker 10: did to Michelle is nothing less than despicable.
Speaker 1: But why would they do this? And here you were
Speaker 1: just an innocent child. I mean, you're still a child.
Speaker 1: And they interrogated you for seven fucking hours, and that
Speaker 1: is a long long time, particularly when you are in
Speaker 1: such a fragile state, right and you're seventeen, you have
Speaker 1: an eighth grade education, you're totally overmatch. You've apparently been
Speaker 1: hitting the ad right because you wake up with this
Speaker 1: horrible headache. And yet they really didn't manage to extract
Speaker 1: the confession from you. Seven hours and they finally get
Speaker 1: you to say they say, you said something that was
Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, well, maybe I could have
Speaker 1: accidentally dropped a knife for what.
Speaker 5: He had guided me to say. The investigator was guiding
Speaker 5: me and things that I needed to say this is
Speaker 5: how I did it, And I was more like asking
Speaker 5: him a question as to instead of making a statement,
Speaker 5: I was asking him that's what he wanted to hear,
Speaker 5: because because I wanted to see my daughter. I wanted
Speaker 5: to make sure my daughter was okay. I wanted to
Speaker 5: hold my daughter.
Speaker 10: He made false promises. Just say it was an accident.
Speaker 10: Just say this, and you'll get to go home, and
Speaker 10: you'll get to see your daughter. We'll get you counseling,
Speaker 10: we'll get you therapy. You just need to say it
Speaker 10: this way. When he didn't like what Michelle said, he
Speaker 10: would start the recording over again. Michael Lee William was
Speaker 10: very likely the person who decapitated Travis and left him
Speaker 10: dead in Michelle's kitchen. There was no knife, no weapon
Speaker 10: ever found, absolutely no blood evidence on Michelle. They never luminalled.
Speaker 10: There were five separate sets of fingerprints that they never tested.
Speaker 10: They didn't test the screen door for fingerprints. They didn't
Speaker 10: test a chair that was seemed like blocking the front
Speaker 10: screen door and it had blood on it. There was
Speaker 10: an open back window that they've later admitted William could
Speaker 10: have crawled through. There's so many inconsistencies between his interviews
Speaker 10: and his testimony at preliminary hearing, and then after preliminary hearing,
Speaker 10: he was found hung quite suspiciously and dead. So the
Speaker 10: only person who really knows the truth is dead. After
Speaker 10: he testified and what the preliminary hearing, judge pulled the
Speaker 10: prosecutor and the defense attorney in after the preliminary hearing
Speaker 10: and said, you need to seriously consider him as the suspect.
Speaker 1: Well, I was reading about this, Shannon, and I found
Speaker 1: it absolutely extraordinary that the judge at your preliminary hearing
Speaker 1: was Judge Messler, And in an interview he called this
Speaker 1: case and I'm quoting, the biggest miscarriage of justice end
Speaker 1: quote that he had ever been connected to, and he
Speaker 1: was holding back tears when.
Speaker 2: He said it.
Speaker 1: What does that tell you about I mean, for a
Speaker 1: judge who'd been on the bench for over four decades
Speaker 1: to say something that holding back tears, this is where
Speaker 1: it really gets me. And I've never heard this before.
Speaker 1: At one point during this preliminary hearing, which is when
Speaker 1: this should have stopped, he actually called the attorneys to
Speaker 1: his chambers to ask if the quote unquote witness who
Speaker 1: we now know was almost.
Speaker 2: Certainly the perpetrator murderer.
Speaker 1: William Michael Lee if he had an attorney, And when
Speaker 1: the prosecutor asked why, Judge Messler responded, and I'm quoting,
Speaker 1: because that's the murderer of this baby, and everybody in
Speaker 1: the courtroom knows it except you apparently.
Speaker 2: Wow. You know, like.
Speaker 1: You would hope that at that point somebody would have said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're done, that's enough.
Speaker 2: We could stop.
Speaker 1: Now, we can shift our focus. You sit there and go, wait,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, stop like something, just stop, right, You
Speaker 1: have that feeling like this has to This can't be right.
Speaker 2: It can't be that the judge.
Speaker 1: Said something so strong and so profound, and yet everybody
Speaker 1: felt fine just going ahead with this. Let's not call
Speaker 1: it a prosecution. Let's call it a persecution, right, because
Speaker 1: and that's really what was happening. It wasn't an interrogation
Speaker 1: that Michelle endured. It was like a witch hunt, basically.
Speaker 1: And it's so nuts because this kid who was another neighbor, right,
Speaker 1: and who hadn't made unwanted sexual advances towards.
Speaker 2: You, right. And it gets worse.
Speaker 1: And worse as this unravels because of the fact that
Speaker 1: there was evidence that was not allowed in court. Because
Speaker 1: the kid's self asphyxiated and hung himself between the time
Speaker 1: of your arrest and the time of the trial.
Speaker 2: It's all just totally bizarre.
Speaker 1: But the testimony was not allowed that was going to
Speaker 1: be presented that he had decapitated a cat, that he
Speaker 1: had shown up at school the day of the murder,
Speaker 1: joyful and talking about how he had, you know, exacted
Speaker 1: some revenge on you and other details. Yeah, right, So,
Speaker 1: I mean that would have been the end of the
Speaker 1: trial right there. Right, it would have been like, oh,
Speaker 1: I mean, any jury, I don't care, any jury is
Speaker 1: going to hear that stuff.
Speaker 2: And there was more.
Speaker 1: There was a psychologist who had said that he was
Speaker 1: ten years old, he had examined him, and that he
Speaker 1: had shown when he feels rejected that he had violent tendencies.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is textbook, right, That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: He had this rejection, and obviously he was pretty twisted
Speaker 1: considering the way he died, right. Self asphyxiation is a
Speaker 1: bizarre thing at any age, but the fact that he
Speaker 1: was doing that when he was fourteen or fifteen when
Speaker 1: he died is really it takes it to a whole
Speaker 1: other level. So there's just so many bad actors in
Speaker 1: this particular play. So back to this crazy judicial nightmare
Speaker 1: of yours.
Speaker 2: Right, So.
Speaker 1: They decide to proceed even though everybody knows that you're innocent,
Speaker 1: and they just went ahead anyway, which is shocking. So
Speaker 1: what happens next? Now you're in jail awaiting trial. Right,
Speaker 1: they didn't let you see your baby. They lied to
Speaker 1: you in the interrogation room. You're in jail.
Speaker 5: I was put in a cell by myself because I
Speaker 5: was seventeen, with a barrier front of my door until
Speaker 5: I turned eighteen. Even though I was being charged as
Speaker 5: an adult, I was still treated as a juvenile. And
Speaker 5: I didn't get out. I didn't get out but for
Speaker 5: an hour day after everybody else was locked down and
Speaker 5: have access.
Speaker 7: To the phone, so the shower, what have you. And
Speaker 7: it was only for an hour at a time.
Speaker 2: You're in solitary confinement.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's correct, right.
Speaker 1: No, nobody bothered to think that she needed a psychologist,
Speaker 1: any sort of counseling after what you've been through.
Speaker 2: I mean, okay, I can't I can't even process that.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, are you even aware of what's going on
Speaker 1: with your daughter at this point?
Speaker 2: Has anybody told you.
Speaker 7: I couldn't get any answers from anybody.
Speaker 2: Did you have parents that you could talk to or anybody?
Speaker 5: Mother?
Speaker 7: But she didn't know either.
Speaker 5: Well, they just denied her access as well because of
Speaker 5: things that had happened to me in her care as
Speaker 5: a child.
Speaker 7: They kept her out of the loop too.
Speaker 2: My entire family was anyone visiting you.
Speaker 5: I got a few visits from family, but they were
Speaker 5: in the dark just as much as I was.
Speaker 1: And we find out later that your daughter was adopted
Speaker 1: by close friends of the prosecutor, right, correct, which again
Speaker 1: just adds a layer to this that is off the
Speaker 1: fucking wall. I mean, it's just like I mean, it
Speaker 1: just doesn't make any logical sense. And then you go
Speaker 1: to trial. You turned eighteen in prison, right, the worst
Speaker 1: eighteenth parent?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Ever?
Speaker 5: Spent some of the best birthdays or supposed to be
Speaker 5: the best birthdays in jail or prison.
Speaker 10: And back then, you know, I've been a lawyer now
Speaker 10: twenty some years, but I was an intern for the
Speaker 10: Public Defender's Office and would have to go to the
Speaker 10: adult detention center, and these women and men were either
Speaker 10: in cages or in a bunk or so to speak,
Speaker 10: lying on top of each other, roaches, rats, my it
Speaker 10: was despicable, and this smell was unfathomable. I mean I
Speaker 10: would throw up in my mouth every time.
Speaker 7: It was just awful.
Speaker 10: But you had to go out there as a public defender,
Speaker 10: intern or lawyer. We would go out there just to
Speaker 10: check on their well being and we would report the
Speaker 10: conditions and it never changed. I could not even imagine
Speaker 10: having to endure that, even if I did do something wrong,
Speaker 10: but knowing I didn't do anything and being in that
Speaker 10: just it just.
Speaker 2: This is the jail.
Speaker 7: It's unspeakable. That's where Michelle was held right prior to
Speaker 7: the trial. The adult.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was horrible, and that's something that is worth understanding.
Speaker 1: Jails by and large, are worse than prisons for some
Speaker 1: of the reasons that you're talking about.
Speaker 2: There's no recreation.
Speaker 1: Many people are held, as Michelle was, in their cell
Speaker 1: for twenty three hours a day. The lights don't go off,
Speaker 1: they're never cleaned. They're literally breathing grounds for disease, violence, rape,
Speaker 1: because there's so much pressure built up because there's nothing
Speaker 1: to do except for sit there. You've got people in
Speaker 1: there who are innocent, like Michelle. You've got people in
Speaker 1: there who are accused of crimes but can't post bail,
Speaker 1: but they may or may not be innocent. We have
Speaker 1: no idea, and then we have them mixed in with
Speaker 1: violent criminals. It sounds like a more benign word than prison,
Speaker 1: and it's important for people to understand that it's the
Speaker 1: farthest thing from it.
Speaker 5: Well, and then also especially whenever the media crucifies you
Speaker 5: and makes you out to be one of the most
Speaker 5: horrific monsters there is and you're charged with any form
Speaker 5: of a.
Speaker 7: Child crime and they broadcast it.
Speaker 5: These people, these women or men in jail, they see that,
Speaker 5: they watch the news.
Speaker 7: You get taunted.
Speaker 5: You just get fucked with really bad in there, and
Speaker 5: it's twenty four hours.
Speaker 7: You get fucked with, excuse my language, messed with in there.
Speaker 5: And especially for well, the crime that I was charged
Speaker 5: with and the goryinous, the horror of it, and what
Speaker 5: they would say on the news and stuff. People will
Speaker 5: take that and then they twist it and make it
Speaker 5: even worse, as if you could make it any worse.
Speaker 7: But being in there and you're innocent of this as well,
Speaker 7: and you don't know, like me, I.
Speaker 5: Didn't know where my daughter was and just I'm going
Speaker 5: through this, and then I'm having people yelling through the vents,
Speaker 5: hollering at me all the time, calling me a baby killer.
Speaker 5: I got threats all the time. They were going to
Speaker 5: make sure my food had something in it. They were
Speaker 5: gonna do the same thing to me that I had
Speaker 5: supposedly done to my job. I mean, you learn to
Speaker 5: just kind of try to block it out as much
Speaker 5: as you can, but you can't block it all out.
Speaker 7: And it's twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine how. It's just bad and worse. And
Speaker 2: it's a miracle that.
Speaker 1: You survived that ordeal, because you're right, it can't be
Speaker 1: any worse than that. To be in there accused of
Speaker 1: what you were accused of, having lost your child, being
Speaker 1: deprived of the scene. I mean, it's like it's literally the
Speaker 1: ultimate nightmare, and yet you live through it and here
Speaker 1: you are today, which is that's a miracle. So then
Speaker 1: there's the trial and you're finally going to trial.
Speaker 2: Did you believe that.
Speaker 1: Things were going to work out and that finally somebody
Speaker 1: would tell the truth and you would be able to
Speaker 1: go home.
Speaker 5: I knew that I was innocent, and I believe that
Speaker 5: once they heard all this bs that they had made
Speaker 5: up about me, and everything else is somebody was going
Speaker 5: to see what I knew and they would let me
Speaker 5: go home. But they were so narrow minded and blinded
Speaker 5: by what the prosecutor portrayed, and.
Speaker 7: I got a life without pearls sins, and so the
Speaker 7: lawyer was asleep.
Speaker 10: As a defense attorney, and I've done it my entire career,
Speaker 10: I know that we as attorneys are the only thing
Speaker 10: that can stop the mountain of the United States and
Speaker 10: the government. We're the stop gap and we have to
Speaker 10: If you can't get in there and fight like hell,
Speaker 10: then get the hell out of the courtroom. I see
Speaker 10: it day in and day out lawyers that aren't prepared.
Speaker 10: But they weren't just not prepared. It's almost like they
Speaker 10: just went with the prosecution and whatever their theory of
Speaker 10: the case was, they did not control anything in that
Speaker 10: courtroom or anything leading up into the courtroom, and they
Speaker 10: didn't do what they're supposed to do. And so that
Speaker 10: was a part of the problem as well.
Speaker 1: Is a problem that we see all too frequently is
Speaker 1: that people are not adequately represented by their defenders. And
Speaker 1: you're certainly a textbook case of that as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was a case where even though there was prosecutorial misconduct,
Speaker 1: gross prosecutor miscrossed, including lies about the blood evidence, which
Speaker 1: had they told the truth, would have exonerated you instantly
Speaker 1: because your blood type didn't match the blood that was
Speaker 1: found with the crime scene. And of course it even
Speaker 1: goes further. There was blood presumably from the perpetrator at
Speaker 1: the crime scene.
Speaker 7: And going out the front door, and going out.
Speaker 2: The front door. I mean, this one comes with instructions.
Speaker 5: I mean it was on the chair as well, that
Speaker 5: was propped up against the outside of my front door
Speaker 5: to where I couldn't go out the front door if
Speaker 5: I had went out the front door, so I'd have
Speaker 5: to have gone at the back.
Speaker 1: On top of everything else, you have no blood on you, right,
Speaker 1: And so any investigator right out of school would go.
Speaker 2: Well, wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense. You
Speaker 2: can't commit.
Speaker 1: Violent, terrible stabbing with blood everywhere, but you don't get
Speaker 1: any blood on you, right, And so immediately there should
Speaker 1: have been like, she didn't do it. Let's take care
Speaker 1: of her, right, She's been through the most traumatic experience
Speaker 1: that anyone can go through. Let's get her some help.
Speaker 1: Let's make sure her daughter's okay. That would be the
Speaker 1: appropriate reaction, and let's go find who did this.
Speaker 7: You would think that that would be the proper way.
Speaker 2: To do well, that is the proper one.
Speaker 1: Well, I think, but that's not what they did, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, in a civilized society, there's no
Speaker 1: question that that's what should have been done. They had
Speaker 1: their sight set on you, and it's it's hard.
Speaker 7: It was an easier target for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, except for not really though when you think
Speaker 1: about it, because they had all evidence that they needed to.
Speaker 1: I mean, they had blood evidence and everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: they knew that.
Speaker 11: I'm going to get too angry.
Speaker 1: So back to where we left off. At trial, you
Speaker 1: needed a dream team, you needed a superstar attorney, and
Speaker 1: you got someone who was let's say, borderline incompetent and
Speaker 1: that maybe being kind. At the same time, not only
Speaker 1: was the prosecution on this crazy mission to convict you
Speaker 1: at all costs, but they also broke so many different rules.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The misconduct in this case is extreme, including I think
Speaker 1: it was Harris was the prosecutor right, he lied about
Speaker 1: the evidence. Not only did they withhold the culpatory evidence,
Speaker 1: which is a Brady violation. They lied about the actual evidence.
Speaker 1: They at least suggested to the jury that the blood
Speaker 1: that was found at the crime scene could have been
Speaker 1: or was probably yours, which they knew was one hundred
Speaker 1: percent on tropline. They knew it was not yours, but
Speaker 1: they led the jury to believe that it was. And
Speaker 1: that's hard when you're in the jury seat, right You're
Speaker 1: one of these jurors, and you're sitting there and you
Speaker 1: been hit with all this publicity around your case and
Speaker 1: everything else, and you know you're feeling, I'm sure, very
Speaker 1: stressed out because it was a baby killed.
Speaker 5: They even showed the jurors and autopsy of my son. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's horrific too, so they I can only imagine what
Speaker 5: it was like for them to sit there and see that.
Speaker 7: I mean, I had to just listen to it. I
Speaker 7: was forced to.
Speaker 5: I didn't want to see it, you know, I already
Speaker 5: had enough horrors, but I had to sit in there
Speaker 5: and I could hear the video plan and all the
Speaker 5: things that they were doing. So I can only imagine
Speaker 5: that that made a big impact on the jurors too,
Speaker 5: And they wanted somebody to pay for it, And I
Speaker 5: get that I want somebody to pay for it too,
Speaker 5: but not me.
Speaker 7: I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: So there had been this circus of a trial, and
Speaker 1: ultimately the jury was out. You were probably, even as
Speaker 1: a seventeen eighteen year old girl with an eighth grade education,
Speaker 1: you were probably aware that your own attorney wasn't doing
Speaker 1: such a great job, right, But did you think that
Speaker 1: they were going to come back and actually find you guilty?
Speaker 5: I never lost hope, and I was just I was
Speaker 5: praying that they would see the truth and that they
Speaker 5: would know I couldn't do something like that, but it
Speaker 5: was wrong.
Speaker 1: So that moment, Michelle, Now you've been through everything a
Speaker 1: human being can endure from the time you were a child,
Speaker 1: and what was that moment?
Speaker 5: Like, I can't forget it. There's a lot of things
Speaker 5: I wish I could forget. When the jurors come back
Speaker 5: in and I was in there, I was just holding
Speaker 5: onto my faith and that they were going to know
Speaker 5: there is no way that I could do that.
Speaker 8: There's too many holes in what they tried to portray,
Speaker 8: and that they would see through that. And I kept
Speaker 8: holding on to the fact that I knew I was
Speaker 8: innocent and that I was hoping that they were. They
Speaker 8: weren't too blind to see that I was innocent, because
Speaker 8: it was clear I was wrong, because they found me
Speaker 8: guilty and.
Speaker 7: Gave me a life without pearl sentence.
Speaker 5: I remember my grandfather and my uncle in the courtroom,
Speaker 5: and I had never seen them cry, and they both
Speaker 5: broke down and cried. I remember my sister break down
Speaker 5: and she was screaming at the jurys, telling them that
Speaker 5: how could they do it, that they were wrong. And
Speaker 5: I remember seeing my mom over there.
Speaker 7: And she was breaking down crying as well. Well everybody
Speaker 7: that was there.
Speaker 5: My family was were all broke down and cried because
Speaker 5: they all believed I was going to come home. And
Speaker 5: I didn't know what the sentence was that they had
Speaker 5: given me until I was able to talk to my
Speaker 5: mom later and I asked her, I said, what was
Speaker 5: the sense they gave me? All I heard was guilty
Speaker 5: in life. Everything else was just kind of like blacked out.
Speaker 5: I just I couldn't believe it that they had found
Speaker 5: me guilty, and just hearing them say that, it was
Speaker 5: like I lost my heart, it was ripped out again
Speaker 5: what was left of it anyhow, And then seeing my
Speaker 5: family breakdown like that it was.
Speaker 7: It was hard, and then they took me back to
Speaker 7: the county jail and put me in my room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't believe even now that they can.
Speaker 1: To you, it's something that all of us as Americans
Speaker 1: and human beings should be ashamed of.
Speaker 2: And I am.
Speaker 1: So you're sentenced to life in prison, and you had
Speaker 1: a lot of life left to live when you're eighteen
Speaker 1: years old and you end up going to prison. I
Speaker 1: want to get to how you managed to persevere and
Speaker 1: find the strength to fight for yourself when you could
Speaker 1: have so easily given up. I mean, I think most
Speaker 1: people in your situation would have given up.
Speaker 5: There are times that I wanted to give up, but
Speaker 5: I couldn't.
Speaker 7: I just couldn't because.
Speaker 5: I have a daughter and now I know I have
Speaker 5: a granddaughter too, and tell with everybody else, I had
Speaker 5: to prove to her that I didn't do this, and
Speaker 5: in order for that, I had to get my innocence proven.
Speaker 5: And that's what kept me going through the twenty years
Speaker 5: and even now is what keeps me going is one day,
Speaker 5: haven't the possibility of let her in heart know the facts,
Speaker 5: not what she's been led to believe, and being.
Speaker 7: A part of her life.
Speaker 1: The fact that you still now two years after being
Speaker 1: three years after being fully exonerated.
Speaker 7: And found actual innocent, found.
Speaker 1: Actual innocent, and the ruling was with prejudice, so that
Speaker 1: means they can't retry you. The idea that you still
Speaker 1: haven't been able to re establish a relationship with hers
Speaker 1: is something that troubles me a lot.
Speaker 2: But I'm hopeful.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that ultimately you will and hopefully
Speaker 1: there'll be a happy ending to this.
Speaker 5: And I believe one day she will come around and
Speaker 5: she'll let me be a.
Speaker 7: Part of her life.
Speaker 1: It is going to happen, because it has to. You know,
Speaker 1: there's another couple of twists and turns in this, right
Speaker 1: because you ended up serving twenty years. But halfway through
Speaker 1: that there was light, there was a break in the case.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Before my mom passed away, my mother had written the
Speaker 5: Innocence Project.
Speaker 7: She wrote a lot of people because she.
Speaker 5: Wanted to get me in my dream team, my own
Speaker 5: dream team, so what she called it. They had taken
Speaker 5: my case on it and.
Speaker 7: They had requested all this exculpatory.
Speaker 5: Evidence to be turned over to them to be were
Speaker 5: in and tested, and come to find out, now not
Speaker 5: all that evidence was provided to them. They supposedly couldn't
Speaker 5: find some or it didn't exist anymore or whatever.
Speaker 2: Right, the games continued.
Speaker 1: There were three envelopes at one point that were sent
Speaker 1: in the mail and two of them were empty, right,
Speaker 1: which is really like, and let's just reflect on just
Speaker 1: that alone.
Speaker 2: It's so nuts, right, like, really, are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous. But it's not funny. It sounds it sounds
Speaker 1: ridiculous now, but it's not funny. It's very it's a
Speaker 1: very real.
Speaker 5: They were still trying to cover their masses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the NS Project took your case, which is
Speaker 1: the blessing of blessings when you're stuck in that nightmare, right,
Speaker 1: and the Ennis Project takes your case. But in two thousand,
Speaker 1: this is two thousand and five.
Speaker 5: I believe it was before that. They think it was
Speaker 5: two thousand and four. I'm not sure on the timeline.
Speaker 5: But whenever they ran the test on what they were
Speaker 5: provided with, there was nothing that they could do because
Speaker 5: it was all just Travis's blood. There was none of
Speaker 5: the perpetrators. It was just Travis's blood that was provided
Speaker 5: to them. So they had said that there was nothing
Speaker 5: that they could do. They did what they could do,
Speaker 5: so it kind of lost hope for a moment in
Speaker 5: a sense. But at the same time, I was like,
Speaker 5: I'm not giving up. I just didn't know how to
Speaker 5: go about doing it because I didn't have money.
Speaker 7: I was in prison. I had already lost my parents, I.
Speaker 5: Lost a lot of people, and finances don't exist really
Speaker 5: in prison.
Speaker 7: You can't make it living in there.
Speaker 5: So I didn't know how I was going to do it,
Speaker 5: but I knew it was going to happen one day.
Speaker 2: And you didn't give up. And Nina's Project didn't give
Speaker 2: up either.
Speaker 5: Well, they weren't able to assist with what was provided
Speaker 5: to him, and they had done what they did. So
Speaker 5: eventually a friend of mine had found my attorneys that
Speaker 5: helped prove my innocence, and my sister and her guy
Speaker 5: at the time, he was a doctor. He paid for
Speaker 5: my attorneys, and the Innocence Project got involved with them
Speaker 5: on proof of my innocence because they were able to
Speaker 5: locate the evidence that was held back from the Innocence
Speaker 5: Project the first time to be ran and tested again.
Speaker 1: And those lawyers the ones that came to your rescue
Speaker 1: at this time, it's worth giving them a shout out here, right.
Speaker 5: I am grateful for them bringing me home and doing
Speaker 5: the work that they did to brieve my innocence.
Speaker 1: And that was Richard and Charisse o' caroll, right correct.
Speaker 1: So you finally got a team on your side that
Speaker 1: was up to the task, right, right. And then the
Speaker 1: Inns Project got reinvolved because the evidence was found, right,
Speaker 1: which existed all along with this group of very sinister
Speaker 1: people had successfully hidden for as long as they had.
Speaker 2: It was finally found.
Speaker 5: And I believe it took Charise and some interns going
Speaker 5: in theirselves and looking through the evidence theirselves in order to.
Speaker 7: Get it and have it tested.
Speaker 5: But see, the thing is is that it had already
Speaker 5: been tested before my trial.
Speaker 7: Tim Meritis had already had it tested.
Speaker 1: He knew right the Oklahoma State grew up investigations, had
Speaker 1: tested the evidence and had provided it to the projector,
Speaker 1: which was Harris. But he just chose to ignore it.
Speaker 2: He chose to.
Speaker 1: Hide it and ignore it and then lie about it
Speaker 1: and do basically everything he had to do in order
Speaker 1: to turn your life into more of a living hell
Speaker 1: than it already was. Ultimately, you come back to court
Speaker 1: with appropriate representation, strong representation, actually, let's call it what
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, and you finally get justice.
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 5: It was like a huge weight of the world just
Speaker 5: lift it off of me. And it was a major relief.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, it was like it had
Speaker 5: a moment of sadness because my parents couldn't be there,
Speaker 5: especially my mom.
Speaker 7: My dad wasn't really a part of my life, but
Speaker 7: my mom couldn't be there to experience it with.
Speaker 2: Me or my daughter who I was there that day,
Speaker 2: Michelle with you. Besides Richard and Cheris, I had.
Speaker 5: Some family in the courtroom that day. I believe my
Speaker 5: baby sister was there with her husband.
Speaker 7: And the doctor was there, Doctor.
Speaker 5: Fizzelle, who paid Charis and Ritual Carol to take my
Speaker 5: case on.
Speaker 2: Well that's I mean, that's pretty heroic of him.
Speaker 1: So finally some good people have come to your aid rescue.
Speaker 1: It's bittersweet because obviously your parents weren't there to see
Speaker 1: their baby beat but it was.
Speaker 5: Awesome to be able to finally the court system acknowledges
Speaker 5: that I am innocent, and to all the people that
Speaker 5: had prosecuted me and even in prisoned, those that beat
Speaker 5: me down and talked horribly about me, and made my
Speaker 5: life hell in there to all those people that.
Speaker 7: Had misjudged me. And it was just like I told
Speaker 7: you I was innocent.
Speaker 2: What did judge say?
Speaker 7: Really, he looked.
Speaker 5: Straight at me and he said, Michelle Lomurphy, you are
Speaker 5: actually innocent. And he said that three times and said
Speaker 5: that we were dismissed.
Speaker 2: Did anybody apologize?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, Well, not that it would have really
Speaker 1: changed anything, but it might have been a nice gesture.
Speaker 10: And for Christ's sakes, I would just add and not
Speaker 10: only has nobody apologized to Michelle from law enforcement, that
Speaker 10: it's their intent to attempt to try and retry her
Speaker 10: in her civil suit for the murder of Travis in
Speaker 10: order to convince the jury that Michelle should not receive
Speaker 10: money damages for the twenty years she's spent in prison innocent.
Speaker 10: So I think that that's important for everyone to know.
Speaker 10: The nightmare persists. She can never be convicted or go
Speaker 10: to prison or jail. But it is their attempt in
Speaker 10: the civil trial, which is going to be in April,
Speaker 10: to put her on trial for killing Travis and to
Speaker 10: try to get this confession before the jury. And so no,
Speaker 10: nobody's apologized to her.
Speaker 2: Kind of the object.
Speaker 5: They still want to try to prosecute me innocence. They
Speaker 5: don't want to admit that they were wrong, and they
Speaker 5: don't want to compensate. There's not enough money in the
Speaker 5: world that could.
Speaker 7: Ever replace what was taken from me.
Speaker 5: I would rather go penniless and have my kids than
Speaker 5: have all the money in the world.
Speaker 1: And that's something I want to talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit to Michelle, because it's important for people to understand
Speaker 1: the struggle that happens after you get out. I think
Speaker 1: people see on the news, the coverage on the courthouse steps.
Speaker 1: There's cameras, and there's hugging, and there's crying, and there's cheering,
Speaker 1: and there's everything. But then you walk out into a
Speaker 1: world that doesn't really want you. You've got a resume
Speaker 1: that's got a twenty year hold in it, and you
Speaker 1: haven't had a chance to develop skills when everybody else
Speaker 1: has been out building their career or their family or
Speaker 1: their and you get nothing. Here we are three years later,
Speaker 1: and now you have to still wait until April to
Speaker 1: go and fight for compensation that should be provided to you,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, immediately, I mean so that you can
Speaker 1: start rebuilding your life.
Speaker 5: I'm grateful to be free and living on this side
Speaker 5: of the world, but it's so hard to survive sometimes
Speaker 5: out here because we have to play catch up.
Speaker 7: Me for instance, I have no computer skills. I'm learning
Speaker 7: them now. I had never had a job.
Speaker 5: I was seventeen years old. I had never drove a
Speaker 5: car day in my life. I never had a house alown,
Speaker 5: you know, I had never experienced so much that most
Speaker 5: people have experienced in their life or the beginning of
Speaker 5: their life, you know.
Speaker 7: So it's a struggle.
Speaker 5: And the panic attacks, the anxiety of trying to catch up,
Speaker 5: which would.
Speaker 7: Probably never catch up to the rest of the world.
Speaker 7: But I'd like to know somethings, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the PTSD has got to be profound.
Speaker 1: It's just like I said another sentence.
Speaker 7: Almost right form of another prison in a sense.
Speaker 1: But you know, you're even with physical problems related to
Speaker 1: your time you spent in prison and everything else, and
Speaker 1: you're still here, right, I'm.
Speaker 7: Still a fighter and a survivor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we've got your back, and you're taking classes
Speaker 1: now with an organization called Goodwill, is that right?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Goodwill? It also works.
Speaker 5: The thing is a lot of people out there don't.
Speaker 7: Realize what all is available.
Speaker 5: They know is the donation sites and the stores that
Speaker 5: they have, but they don't realize that there's classes.
Speaker 7: That are available to them. For me, I didn't have
Speaker 7: any computer skills.
Speaker 5: I didn't know how to do Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and
Speaker 5: Excel and all this stuff. And I'm learning that extremely
Speaker 5: quickly and I'm loving it. I know how to do
Speaker 5: a power point, I know how to do a spreadsheet now.
Speaker 5: I'm very quick learner. And they've taught me how to
Speaker 5: do resume, which I don't have much of a resume,
Speaker 5: but I know how to do one. I know how
Speaker 5: to carry myself in an interview. I know more about
Speaker 5: this process that it takes.
Speaker 7: To get a job now. But as soon as I complete.
Speaker 5: This class, I am going to start a plus certification
Speaker 5: which does harder and the motherboards and stuff like that
Speaker 5: and building computers. And I'm going to take forklifting classes
Speaker 5: as well. And then in January they're supposed to be
Speaker 5: starting in an OSHA program so it can be certified
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a lot. That's really great.
Speaker 1: It's great and it's important because people ask me what
Speaker 1: can I do to help? So programs like this Goodwill program.
Speaker 1: Do you know that there's not enough of them? People
Speaker 1: could start one. You could learn more about it, check
Speaker 1: out the Goodwill program, tutor mentor you know, help provide
Speaker 1: equipment or clothes. There's a million things you can do
Speaker 1: and we're gonna help.
Speaker 7: It just takes somebody to believe in us. Sometimes, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 7: I'm always hungry for knowledge. I want to learn everything.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: There's so many great stories of xuneries coming out and
Speaker 1: succeeding and triumphing. If there's anything else you can think
Speaker 1: of that you could recommend for people to do. Who
Speaker 1: are going to hear this and they're going to say,
Speaker 1: I want to do something to help, what would you
Speaker 1: recommend people do.
Speaker 7: I would like to.
Speaker 5: See more programs that are going to help, especially exoneries.
Speaker 5: There are some programs that are available to people coming
Speaker 5: out of prison that are being released from their time
Speaker 5: re entry programs. Well, one of us, exoneries, we come out.
Speaker 5: We don't meet their criteria because we're not being released.
Speaker 5: We've been exonerated for a crime we did not commit,
Speaker 5: and we can't get into those programs because their focus
Speaker 5: is to help those coming out of prison from serving
Speaker 5: a time and for crime that they did commit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have in this country. We have various re
Speaker 1: entry programs and also, you know, parole probation officers, I
Speaker 1: should say probation officers for people who are released after
Speaker 1: serving the time of the crime that they were guilty of.
Speaker 1: But when you're an exonnery, you come out to nothing, right,
Speaker 1: it's actually paradoxical. You don't get any of those services
Speaker 1: because you weren't guilty in.
Speaker 2: The first place. It's ass backwards, actually, I mean, yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Mean help them by all means, but help us as well.
Speaker 5: Because now I had never even talked on it cell
Speaker 5: phone or used a cell phone.
Speaker 7: I had never even seen it except for on TV,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 5: And as soon as I walk out the county jail,
Speaker 5: doctor Vizille hands me my first phone, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: how do I use this? You know? And my sister's
Speaker 5: calling me on it. I don't even know how to
Speaker 5: answer it. We don't know how to live in this
Speaker 5: side of the world.
Speaker 7: We've been trained.
Speaker 5: To live by prison rules, prison structure, if you can
Speaker 5: call it that. We just need more programs and more awareness.
Speaker 5: I want to get stuff out there that's going to
Speaker 5: help people coming out and provide them with resources.
Speaker 10: Not just financial and educational, but emotional mental health counseling,
Speaker 10: because re entry after certainly twenty years in prison proves
Speaker 10: to be extremely overwhelming. I've represented clients who have spent
Speaker 10: most of their life in prison and come out and
Speaker 10: don't know how to run a microwave or a CD
Speaker 10: player or a phone. Without that support family or community,
Speaker 10: such as Michelle has had, they literally either violate parole
Speaker 10: or reoffend in some way so they can go back
Speaker 10: to what they know, which is prison where they feel safe,
Speaker 10: which is tragic I've had I'm like, why did you
Speaker 10: do that? Because I don't know how to live in
Speaker 10: this world and I can't cope.
Speaker 1: So, Michelle, we have a tradition on wrongful conviction, as
Speaker 1: people who listen to the show already know, which is that.
Speaker 1: I like to just turn the microphone over to you
Speaker 1: for any closing thoughts at all. What's on your mind.
Speaker 5: I'm determined I'm going to change some things. I want
Speaker 5: to change a fewel all that, especially in Oklahoma, and
Speaker 5: I want to start a program that's going to go
Speaker 5: back into facilities and help prove the innocence of those
Speaker 5: that need to be home, and I want to get
Speaker 5: programs in the facilities that's going to teach individual skills
Speaker 5: to survive out here. I want to provide resources for
Speaker 5: them on what is available out here for them. I
Speaker 5: want to go into schools and to speak out and
Speaker 5: teach to let kids know, Hey, you don't have to
Speaker 5: commit anything, you don't have to be doing anything.
Speaker 7: You can still.
Speaker 5: Get caught up and your life can be taken away
Speaker 5: from you in the blink of an eye, especially the
Speaker 5: way this is going out here in the world now.
Speaker 7: And I just want to help.
Speaker 2: Michelle, what can I say?
Speaker 1: You are amazing and it's been really a profound experience
Speaker 1: for me well having you in my life and having
Speaker 1: you on wrongful conviction today.
Speaker 2: So I want to thank our.
Speaker 1: Two guests, our star Michelle Murphy and her wonderful attorney
Speaker 1: Seana McMurray. So thank you both for being here, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to the next.
Speaker 2: Phase of your life.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: It really helps.
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 1: to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate
Speaker 1: and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
Speaker 1: Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated.
Speaker 2: Composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason Flahm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one