Speaker 1: Hi, it's Connor Hall, the producer for Wrongful Conviction. Today
Speaker 1: we're sharing Lamont Hunter's story not because of a new
Speaker 1: development in his case, but for how closely it resembles
Speaker 1: that of Robert Robertson and how different the outcomes have
Speaker 1: been so far. In both cases, there were unfounded accusations
Speaker 1: of sexual assault that loomed large over their death penalty prosecutions,
Speaker 1: while medical experts for the state touted tenets of the
Speaker 1: now debunked hypothesis known as shaken baby syndrome. This hypothesis
Speaker 1: was taken on faith by an establishment of science and
Speaker 1: could only be tested by time, which eventually revealed a
Speaker 1: flawed theory. The neurologist who developed it back in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, doctor Norman guth Kelch, before his death in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, said quote, I am frankly quite disturbed that
Speaker 1: what I intended as a friendly suggestion for avoiding injury
Speaker 1: to children has become I'm an excuse for imprisoning innocent parents.
Speaker 2: End quote.
Speaker 1: Yet many prosecutors and lawmakers around the globe have not
Speaker 1: found the same courage as they continue to fight to
Speaker 1: maintain wrongful convictions as well as prosecute newly aggrieved in
Speaker 1: innocent parents, and Robert Robertson will be the first of
Speaker 1: them to be put to death if we do not
Speaker 1: continue to fight those that value finality over humanity. Robert
Speaker 1: was scheduled to be executed in the state of Texas
Speaker 1: on October seventeen, twenty twenty four, but through an unprecedented
Speaker 1: series of legal maneuvers, the Texas Supreme Court issued his stay.
Speaker 1: A new death warrant will likely be sought as Robert
Speaker 1: lives to fight another day. Governor's attorneys, general, lawmakers, prosecutors,
Speaker 1: they have the power, but not a responsibility, to do
Speaker 1: something about injustice. We saw that play out last month
Speaker 1: with the execution of Marcella's Williams in Missouri. Innocence is
Speaker 1: not enough to set you free. The Supreme Court decided
Speaker 1: that back in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Three Herrera v. Collins.
Speaker 1: That's your system to them, and it's why folks who
Speaker 1: are in my opinion, in humane and Mortley bankrupt. They're
Speaker 1: just carrying out the law. I mean, it's only as
Speaker 1: a matter of what seems to be chance in both
Speaker 1: cases that you know, I was lucky enough to meet
Speaker 1: Lamont Hunter as a freeman on a boat in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: while the image of Robert touching the plexiglasses Jason and
Speaker 1: I walked away from the visiting area is going to
Speaker 1: continue to haunt me, especially if the efforts to kill
Speaker 1: this innocent man succeed.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and six, Lamont Hunter lived with his
Speaker 3: girlfriend los Milda, along with their blended family in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Speaker 3: Leismilda's three year old son, Trustin, had been previously hospitalized
Speaker 3: for what was believed to be injuries resulting from child abuse. However,
Speaker 3: no charges ever materialized. Then, on January nineteenth, two thousand
Speaker 3: and six, Trustin was in Lamont's care when paramedics were
Speaker 3: called to take Trustin again to the hospital, where he
Speaker 3: passed away. Lamont told police that Trusten took a tumble
Speaker 3: down the stairs, but the state's experts believed that the
Speaker 3: medical evidence told a different story, that Trustin's injuries could
Speaker 3: not have resulted from a fall down the stairs, but
Speaker 3: rather from violent shaking coupled with forceful impact. In addition,
Speaker 3: that the three year old boy may have been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 3: With evidence like this, it didn't take long for a
Speaker 3: three judge panel to sentence Lamont Hunter to death. But
Speaker 3: this is wrongful conviction. Wrongful conviction has always given voice
Speaker 3: to innocent people in prison, and now we're expanding that
Speaker 3: voice to you. Call us at eight three three two
Speaker 3: O seven four six sixty six and tell us how
Speaker 3: these stories make you feel and what you've done to
Speaker 3: help the cause, even if it's something as simple as
Speaker 3: telling a friend or sharing on social media, and you
Speaker 3: might just hear yourself in a future episode. Call us
Speaker 3: A three three two O seven four six sixty six.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today we have a story
Speaker 3: of a crime that never happened, that resulted in a
Speaker 3: death sentence for a man who should have been given
Speaker 3: time to grieve. Laman Hunter a sentenced to death in
Speaker 3: the state of Ohio for a crime that never happened,
Speaker 3: and here to help him tell his story. I'm going
Speaker 3: to introduce I actually asked how she would like to
Speaker 3: be introduced, and Laman jumped right in and said, just
Speaker 3: call her the amazing Aaron Barnhardt. But for context, she
Speaker 3: is Assistant Public Defender at the Southern Ohio Federal Public
Speaker 3: Defender Capital Habeas Unit. So Aarin, thank you for being.
Speaker 4: Here, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: And here to tell his own story with this assist
Speaker 3: from Aaron and myself is the man himself who survived
Speaker 3: this incredible ordeal. Lamont Hunter La Mont. I'm so happy
Speaker 3: you're here.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a miracle that you're here, and you know,
Speaker 3: and Aaron, you are a big part of that miracle.
Speaker 3: So let's go back to your upbringing. The place that
Speaker 3: you were born and where you lived has a lot
Speaker 3: to do with your wrongful conviction. But did you actually
Speaker 3: grow up there in Hamilton County.
Speaker 2: Ohio, Cincinnati. Yes, I did Hamilton County.
Speaker 5: I was born in the late sixties, so I grew
Speaker 5: up through the seventies and eighties and nineties. My mother,
Speaker 5: my father, hit my heroes work their fingers to the
Speaker 5: bone to provide a good life for me and my siblings.
Speaker 2: My childhood was amazing.
Speaker 5: Like I always say, I was fortunate to be born
Speaker 5: in a family that I was born in school. I
Speaker 5: mean cousins, aunts, uncles. We are all very close knit family,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: I understand eventually you became a father as well.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I got four biological children and two children that
Speaker 5: I raised, and I have an honorary daughter, Aisha.
Speaker 3: What are the kids' names, Ashley.
Speaker 5: Mariah, Lamont Junior, Valita, Eric, Aisha, and Trinity. I've been
Speaker 5: instrumental in very hands on and raising all my children,
Speaker 5: all six of them.
Speaker 3: To support his family, Lamont worked as a roofer, but
Speaker 3: also he had a side hustle sending drugs through Federal Express,
Speaker 3: which landed him in federal prison. Now, drug trafficking is
Speaker 3: in no way related to how Lamont ended up on
Speaker 3: Ohio's death row, but his prior conviction comes up later
Speaker 3: in the story. So after his stint in prison, he
Speaker 3: went back to roofing and met a woman named los Milda,
Speaker 3: and together they had Lamont's youngest child, Trinity. Louis Milda
Speaker 3: also had three boys from a previous relationship, Tyree, Tyrell,
Speaker 3: and Trustin.
Speaker 4: So Lamont actually didn't spend much time.
Speaker 6: With trust In.
Speaker 4: The little boy who died in this case, Trustan was
Speaker 4: Luzmilda's son, and because of complications with her health, he
Speaker 4: was born. He was basically raised by other people family
Speaker 4: friends and relatives.
Speaker 3: Right Wilma Forte and Amber White.
Speaker 5: Yes, after she delivered Trusting she had kidney stones, so
Speaker 5: she had immediately go back in for kidney surgery, and
Speaker 5: she couldn't care for Trusting. So they were loving enough
Speaker 5: to take Trusting And for some reason I don't agree
Speaker 5: with luz Milde on this, she just chose to let
Speaker 5: him stay there. That's where Trustin lived.
Speaker 3: Now, Loismilda Lamont rarely took care of Trusting, and prior
Speaker 3: to the two thousand and sixth incident that resulted in
Speaker 3: Trustin's death, there had been some suspected abuse back in
Speaker 3: two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: In January of two thousand and four, Lamont had been
Speaker 4: carrying trust In up a flight of stairs and tripped
Speaker 4: and fell on trust In and ended up breaking his
Speaker 4: leg bone his tibia. At the time, his two older
Speaker 4: half siblings were there, saw what happened. It was obviously
Speaker 4: an accident. No one even suspected it wasn't an accident.
Speaker 4: He was treated and let go. Then in June of
Speaker 4: two thousand and four, Trustin had sort of a constellation
Speaker 4: of injuries, some swelling, scratches, rashes, some other abrasions like
Speaker 4: by his lips and his ears. When Luizmilda goes to
Speaker 4: change trust In's diaper, she sees that it's really raw
Speaker 4: and red and irritated. Luzimlda wondered if his genital swelling
Speaker 4: was a bug bite or diaper rash, so she takes
Speaker 4: him to a local urgent care. When they see these conditions,
Speaker 4: they end up sending him to the hospital and it's
Speaker 4: treated as a case of abuse. Now, I don't think
Speaker 4: we'll ever know what happened to Trustin. I think it's
Speaker 4: probably a combination of things. We found in medical records
Speaker 4: that Trustin had a lot of skin conditions ezema, other
Speaker 4: sort of conditions where his hair was falling out, environmental
Speaker 4: stressors and things like that, and then he was playing
Speaker 4: with two older, rambunctious kids. And I think probably what
Speaker 4: happened was there was some combination of maybe a little
Speaker 4: rough housing, maybe some irritation that trust In himself could
Speaker 4: have scratched or irritated that resulted in these conditions. No
Speaker 4: matter what happened, everyone agrees Lamont wasn't involved, but these
Speaker 4: circumstances were treated as abuse. And at the hospital when
Speaker 4: they did a skeletal survey an X ray, they discovered
Speaker 4: that Trusten had a number of older healing fractures in
Speaker 4: his hands and feet. Now, Trustin was hardly ever taken
Speaker 4: care of by his mother, and therefore Lamont so at
Speaker 4: the time that these injuries would have been dated when
Speaker 4: he sustained them. Trustin was not around either Lamont or
Speaker 4: his mother. He was in the care of other.
Speaker 2: People, so he had lived with them.
Speaker 4: Right, So even if these older injuries were the result
Speaker 4: of the abuse, it was not from Lamont or his mother.
Speaker 3: No one was charged in this two thousand and four incident,
Speaker 3: but child protective services were made aware, and even though
Speaker 3: Lamont was never even considered a suspect in two thousand
Speaker 3: and four, the Hamilton County prosecutors raised the specter of
Speaker 3: ongoing abuse while seeking the death penalty for Lamont in
Speaker 3: two thousand and six.
Speaker 4: The Death Penalty Information Center has a report called the
Speaker 4: two Percent Report. If you look statistically, Hamilton County and
Speaker 4: Kyga County in Ohio, Cleveland and Cincinnati are part of
Speaker 4: the two percent of counties in the entire nation that
Speaker 4: account for more than half of people on death row
Speaker 4: and more than half of people who've been executed in
Speaker 4: this country.
Speaker 3: We've covered a lot of Ohio wrongful convictions, too many
Speaker 3: to list, but we're going to link Elwood Jones and
Speaker 3: Keith Lamar both death penalty cases handled by Hamilton County
Speaker 3: prosecutors in which they hid or ignored exculpatory evidence at trial,
Speaker 3: and Lamont's story is no different. So let's get to that.
Speaker 3: On January nineteenth, two thousand and six, tragedy struck when
Speaker 3: Trustin was staying with Liz, Milda and Lamont Lois Milton.
Speaker 5: Well, she get up and go to work, and about
Speaker 5: an hour or two later, I get the boys up
Speaker 5: to get ready for school themselves. So I get Jordan
Speaker 5: and Tiree out the door on their way to school.
Speaker 5: And now I got trust In in Trinity, and I
Speaker 5: get trust and situated for breakfast in our living room
Speaker 5: that I made him French toes sticks and little sausage links.
Speaker 5: He wanted to watch the new Jurassic Park movie, so
Speaker 5: set him in a chair, put it on for him,
Speaker 5: and decided to start my daily chorice. I grabbed Trinity,
Speaker 5: my nine month old, and I went downstairs in the
Speaker 5: basement to finish doing the laundry. That's when I first
Speaker 5: heard him running across the floor above me. Next thing,
Speaker 5: I hear he's coming tumbling down the stairs and hit
Speaker 5: his head. So I immediately run over. His head was
Speaker 5: back and his eyes were fluttering. Now I'm scared. I
Speaker 5: just scooped him up and run up the stairs. So
Speaker 5: I figured I throw some water on his face to
Speaker 5: try to jug him awake, and his eyes were still fluttering.
Speaker 5: So I seeing that he was struggling to take a breath.
Speaker 5: I don't know how to do CPR, but I attempted it,
Speaker 5: so I had to open his mouth. I noticed a
Speaker 5: piece of sausage lodged in the back of his mouth,
Speaker 5: blocking his airway, so I got that out on my finger.
Speaker 5: I held his nose and I blew in his mouth
Speaker 5: like I see people do on TV.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know how to do it.
Speaker 5: I'm not certified or nothing that so I probably blew
Speaker 5: too much in his mouth because his stomach was getting bloated.
Speaker 5: I got scared, so I called his mother and she
Speaker 5: immediately came home. They made a big deal of this,
Speaker 5: by the way, at my trial that I didn't immediately
Speaker 5: call the paramedics instead of calling his mother.
Speaker 2: They thought it was something to Farius, but it wasn't.
Speaker 5: It was just I panicked, and so paramedics got there
Speaker 5: very quick and started tending to him.
Speaker 2: I was just a mess.
Speaker 6: The dog is running around parking.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I could never prove this, but I know my
Speaker 5: dog when I left the room, tried to take his
Speaker 5: food from him while he was sitting in that chair.
Speaker 5: I believe that's what prompted Trusting to run across that.
Speaker 3: Floor, and that might explain why he ended up with
Speaker 3: a piece of food lodge in his throat.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, the sausage, and I know my dog was harassing
Speaker 5: for it. But they get Trusting in the ambulance and
Speaker 5: Zamilda gets in the ambulance with him, and me and
Speaker 5: Trinity we followed them to the emergency room at Children's.
Speaker 5: That's how my day started. January nineteenth, one thousand and six.
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Speaker 3: on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 4: Trustin had head injuries that were fatal. He had blood
Speaker 4: trapped between the layers of his brain, which they call
Speaker 4: subdural hematoma, and then his brain also swelled, which is
Speaker 4: what happens anytime there's any sort of injury or trauma.
Speaker 4: To the brain. They call it cerebral edema. And anytime
Speaker 4: your brain swells that also puts pressure on your optic
Speaker 4: nerve and results in rental hemorrhages, so bleeding on the
Speaker 4: back of your eye.
Speaker 3: And by now our listeners are familiar with these findings
Speaker 3: as what are commonly associated with the grotesque junk science
Speaker 3: prosecution theory as shaking baby syndrome. We're going to have
Speaker 3: our shaken baby syndrome episode of wronful conviction junk science
Speaker 3: lenked as well. For years, the theory was widely accepted
Speaker 3: across the medical establishment that the presentation of these three
Speaker 3: things could mean only one thing, that the infant or
Speaker 3: toddler had been shaken to death by their most recent caretaker,
Speaker 3: denying any other potential or even probable causes. But over
Speaker 3: time this theory has gradually fallen apart.
Speaker 4: And this field has been very nimble because anytime someone
Speaker 4: shows well guess what this person, we know it was
Speaker 4: an accident and they show these injuries and then they
Speaker 4: say like, oh, okay, well, first of all, we're not
Speaker 4: going to call it shaking baby. Because they did experiments.
Speaker 4: They had big, beefy football players shaik a crash test
Speaker 4: dummy baby, and they could not generate the type of
Speaker 4: force needed to cause the brain injuries without breaking the
Speaker 4: child's neck. And so they said, okay, so so maybe
Speaker 4: shaking alone can't cause it. So shaking with impact, that's
Speaker 4: what we'll say, shaking with impact. So we don't call
Speaker 4: it shaken baby, will call it abusive head trauma. And
Speaker 4: they just keep morphine and adapting to whatever fits.
Speaker 3: No matter what has been revealed through biomechanical studies and
Speaker 3: a confluence of medical histories that prove that in addition
Speaker 3: to accidental causes like a fall down the stairs, there
Speaker 3: are eighty one pre existing medical conditions and counting that
Speaker 3: can cause the presentation of those findings. And yet there
Speaker 3: are still proponents of this theory that refused to admit
Speaker 3: that limiting the cause to shaking alone is an unscientific
Speaker 3: leap in logic. And so, in two thousand and six,
Speaker 3: even though some of the medical establishment had begun to
Speaker 3: realize the problem with this theory, including the neuroscientists who
Speaker 3: had developed it, the state's witnesses attributed Trusten's triad of
Speaker 3: findings to shaking and any other injuries, including a sheared
Speaker 3: vertebrae and what appeared to be an impact injury to
Speaker 3: further violence. Lamount was arrested on January twenty second, two
Speaker 3: thousand and six, three days after Trustin's death. He's taken
Speaker 3: a trial in June two thousand and seven.
Speaker 4: The prosecutor, through their child abuse pediatrician witnesses, said these
Speaker 4: kinds of injuries could not have come from a fall
Speaker 4: down the stairs. It had to have been abuse. You know,
Speaker 4: we only see these kinds of injuries from forces like
Speaker 4: in a car accident or maybe LaMotte swung trusting around like.
Speaker 6: A base ball base.
Speaker 4: You know, that's what have caused it, but not from
Speaker 4: falling down the stairs. And then in addition, Trusten had
Speaker 4: some injuries in his anal rectal era. He had three
Speaker 4: puncture wounds in his rectal mucosa, so kind of up
Speaker 4: in his rectum. There were three wounds. I think they
Speaker 4: were about two millimeters in diameter, and then kind of
Speaker 4: on the outside lip of his anus. It's not entirely
Speaker 4: clear if it's a tear or a cut. It wasn't
Speaker 4: that accurately described. And so those injuries were used to
Speaker 4: support a charge of rape.
Speaker 3: As we'll explained later there was a completely innocent explanation
Speaker 3: for those anal and rect injuries, yet the child abuse
Speaker 3: pediatrician painted a completely different picture.
Speaker 4: The child abuse pediatrician did say that the injuries were
Speaker 4: consistent with an adult penis. Now that's the magic word, right, consistent,
Speaker 4: which I think a lot of fact finders here and
Speaker 4: think that means a match, but it doesn't at all.
Speaker 4: It just means we can't exclude it as the cause.
Speaker 3: I mean, what adult penis is two millimeters in diameter.
Speaker 4: So macrof is only talking about the external injury kind
Speaker 4: of along the edge of the anus. She never saw
Speaker 4: the internal injuries, the puncture wounds.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: So the child abuse pediatrician did not have a full
Speaker 3: understanding of the injuries, which may explain why the coroner,
Speaker 3: doctor Gretel Stevens, true different conclusions.
Speaker 4: What the coroner said was that it looked like the
Speaker 4: interior wounds were like poked with something sharp, like maybe
Speaker 4: a pencil. And the prosecutors argued at trial that this
Speaker 4: wasn't penile rape, but this was rape with some sort
Speaker 4: of object.
Speaker 3: While that explanation is still incorrect, at least doctor Stevens's
Speaker 3: assumptions were more grounded in reality. However, the investigation failed
Speaker 3: to find any such object or any efforts to cover
Speaker 3: up that kind of crime. Doctor Stevens also acknowledged the
Speaker 3: evolving science on shaking baby syndrome, saying that a rotational
Speaker 3: fall would be consistent with the shearing of the neck
Speaker 3: that trust And experienced, and that stairfalls are responsible for
Speaker 3: the kinds of findings that were present in trust In situation.
Speaker 4: And that's the thing, like doctor Stevens pretty much was
Speaker 4: a straight shooter at trial, and it was just the
Speaker 4: fact that she hadn't seen the photographs of the actual
Speaker 4: staircase to know that there was a ledge abutting one
Speaker 4: side of the stairs that kind of mashed up with
Speaker 4: some injuries that she saw. There was also a throw
Speaker 4: rug if he had slipped on, that may have contributed.
Speaker 4: She didn't know that Lamont had reported hearing trust and running.
Speaker 3: In addition, the coroner was unaware of the innocent explanation
Speaker 3: for these anal and rectal injuries. So since neither one
Speaker 3: of the state's experts had a full picture of the incident, this,
Speaker 3: along with Lamont's ineffective council, allowed the state's erroneous narrative
Speaker 3: to take hold.
Speaker 4: Lamont's trial counsel, Clyde Bennett is the attorney's name, is
Speaker 4: not a bad criminal defense attorney. He's actually pretty well
Speaker 4: known as a good criminal defense attorney. But there are
Speaker 4: a couple things that just weren't going to work in
Speaker 4: Lamont's case. Number One, a death penalty case is different,
Speaker 4: A dead kid is different, and you can't just kind
Speaker 4: of rely on your old tricks and techniques in this
Speaker 4: kind of case. Number two, this is a case where
Speaker 4: the evidence is all based on medical expert testimony. The
Speaker 4: evidence is the state expert coming in and saying you
Speaker 4: can only get these injuries from abuse, period. And his
Speaker 4: trial council did not hire an expert, not only not
Speaker 4: to testify or just even to consult with an expert
Speaker 4: to explain the medical records to him, to explain the
Speaker 4: flaws in the state experts testimony and reasoning. He said
Speaker 4: he thought that he could just rely on cross examination.
Speaker 4: And his theory was that this chatabusee pediatrician. She's not
Speaker 4: qualified to be talking about retinal hemorrhages. She's not an ophthalmologist.
Speaker 4: She's not qualified to be talking about the mechanism of injury.
Speaker 4: She doesn't have a degree in biomechanics or anything. Now,
Speaker 4: this is all true. The problem was when he made
Speaker 4: that objection, the court overruled it, and he had no
Speaker 4: plan B. So when that didn't work, he was left
Speaker 4: to just kind of on his own try to cross examine.
Speaker 4: And he knew enough to be dangerous, and so he's
Speaker 4: asking questions about stuff that's not relevant. Like he's trying
Speaker 4: to say, isn't it true that you could have a
Speaker 4: delayed onset of injury? And that is true sometimes, except
Speaker 4: for that's not what happened in Tresten's case. We know
Speaker 4: what happened. He fell down the stairs and was immediately unresponsive,
Speaker 4: So that line of questioning was completely irrelevant. Also, he
Speaker 4: didn't hire an expert to look through the medical records.
Speaker 6: And he didn't look through the records himself.
Speaker 3: I mean, Lamont would have been better off with his
Speaker 3: original court appointed attorney, not I mean much better off.
Speaker 3: Because it turns out that mister Bennett was more than
Speaker 3: a little bit distracted at the time.
Speaker 4: That's true, he was a little distracted with his own
Speaker 4: legal troubles. Mister Bennett himself was being investigated for some
Speaker 4: pretty serious federal crimes. And in fact, shortly after Lamont
Speaker 4: was sentenced to death, he signed his own plea agreement
Speaker 4: and turned himself into federal custody and went away to
Speaker 4: federal prison. He pled to structured deposits, so depositing money
Speaker 4: just under the reporting limit.
Speaker 3: Unbeknownst to Lamont, Clyde Bennett was connected to a major
Speaker 3: drug dealer out of Dayton, Ohio, both of whom were
Speaker 3: subjects of a federal investigation that ended in cooperation and
Speaker 3: a plea deal for Clyde. Meanwhile, in Lamont's trial, Clyde
Speaker 3: neglected to prepare the vital medical expert testimony, as well
Speaker 3: as advised Lamont to take a bench trial in front
Speaker 3: of a three judge panel, reasoning that a jury might
Speaker 3: be susceptible to the emotion surrounding a dead child.
Speaker 4: Turns out, so are three judge panels.
Speaker 5: Exactly, especially when we know for sure that this judge
Speaker 5: who's now passed on. Norbert Natel told Clyde Bennett and
Speaker 5: his chambers it wouldn't be wise for him to bring
Speaker 5: me in front of him on a bench trial because
Speaker 5: I lose, And he still advised me not to have
Speaker 5: a jury.
Speaker 4: Now, the advantage of not having a jury is that
Speaker 4: you can save a lot of time because you don't
Speaker 4: have to go through vaidir and get a death qualified jury.
Speaker 6: So Clyde took a flat fee.
Speaker 4: From Lamont's family. So it's just economical to make the
Speaker 4: trial go as fast as possible, and so great way
Speaker 4: to cut down on time is to wave jury.
Speaker 3: It sounds to me like the judge actually was telling
Speaker 3: him if you do this, you're going to lose, and
Speaker 3: he was like, great. I mean, I'm glad you're laughing
Speaker 3: a lot, because you know, sometimes I feel like I'm
Speaker 3: laughing to keep from crying. But you live through this.
Speaker 5: That what I'm doing I've been doing in society. Oh
Speaker 5: my god, I've been laughing to keep from crying.
Speaker 2: Man. It's just so much trauma on this journey. Man,
Speaker 2: It's just a lot of trauma.
Speaker 3: So this bench troul played out exactly as this judge
Speaker 3: told Lamont's attorney it would.
Speaker 4: It was pretty easy for them to convict because all
Speaker 4: of the state's expert testimony was entirely unrebutted. So they
Speaker 4: have these experts from the States saying this had to
Speaker 4: be abuse. There is no way this could have come
Speaker 4: from a fall down the stairs. And then on top
Speaker 4: of that, they had the state saying and look at
Speaker 4: all this other suspicious stuff injuries in his anal rectal era,
Speaker 4: these injuries in the past when Lamont was around, trust in.
Speaker 5: Clyde Bennett pops up in the jail on a Sunday
Speaker 5: and I'm pissed at this point.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what are you doing here?
Speaker 5: And he just said, man, you know, I just wanted
Speaker 5: to come and ask you how are federal prisons, how
Speaker 5: are they ran, what it's like in federal prison. I'm
Speaker 5: looking at him, like, what does that have to do
Speaker 5: with my case? He said, well, he's well, I know
Speaker 5: you've been in federal prison before, and I'm going there.
Speaker 5: I'm fighting for my own life, Lamont, so I just
Speaker 5: wanted to know how these federal prisons. I walked off
Speaker 5: on him and went back to my sale. Man, I
Speaker 5: was done with him at the time, so all hope
Speaker 5: was lost at that point. I was convicted and then
Speaker 5: mitigation will you have to get the most closest loving
Speaker 5: person in your life. They had to literally beg the
Speaker 5: courts to save my life. It was humiliating for me
Speaker 5: and my family, and it didn't work, so they were
Speaker 5: dug in.
Speaker 2: So I still got sentenced to death.
Speaker 5: And my father, who I have a lot of love
Speaker 5: and respect for, he's actually my hero. I getting on
Speaker 5: a stand and testifying and asking the course to save
Speaker 5: my life and telling the story that he did about
Speaker 5: me and growing up with my siblings. He had a
Speaker 5: heart attack right there in the courtroom.
Speaker 3: He had a heart attack right there in the courtroom.
Speaker 5: Right in the courtroom. Ambulance was called. They saved his
Speaker 5: life there, but he had a heart attack right in
Speaker 5: the courtroom. They never got talked about in the media
Speaker 5: or nothing like that. They was too busy calling me
Speaker 5: a monster and a child rapist. And my father, he's
Speaker 5: no longer with us. He died in twenty eighteen before
Speaker 5: I got home, but from that day his health.
Speaker 2: Just declined since to death.
Speaker 5: Isolated away from general population, there's no programming set up
Speaker 5: for us back there. It's just mundane and waking up
Speaker 5: every day knowing that your name is on a list
Speaker 5: to be executed. The State of Ohio intents on executing you.
Speaker 5: And that's like having a gorilla constantly on your shoulders,
Speaker 5: weighing you down. And this is it from far as
Speaker 5: you can see, is it every day? It's like the
Speaker 5: same day. The first year I was there, I was
Speaker 5: still in the haze. I didn't know what to expect
Speaker 5: as far as the courts. I've never appealed the sentence before,
Speaker 5: so I was, of course jaded and kind of paranoid
Speaker 5: of my attorneys after coming through the horror show of
Speaker 5: the trial that I went through and being served up
Speaker 5: by my trial attorney, like, well, what's going to happen
Speaker 5: at this phase.
Speaker 4: Although Lamont had pretty capable post conviction attorneys from the
Speaker 4: Ohio Public Defender's Office, unfortunately they couldn't get any traction
Speaker 4: in state court, which is not uncommon. But their claims
Speaker 4: that they raised were not that different than what we
Speaker 4: raised in our federal habeas petition, and the problem is
Speaker 4: they didn't have access to the evidence they needed. They
Speaker 4: asked for discovery to get the medical records to depose
Speaker 4: the coroner, just like we did, and it was all denied.
Speaker 3: As we've mentioned a trial, both states experts Macaroff and
Speaker 3: Stevens have been operating with incomplete understandings of the incident. Additionally,
Speaker 3: Makarov had ignored the evolving science on SBS, which continued
Speaker 3: through post conviction. Even as the science continued to evolve
Speaker 3: further and further away from her position.
Speaker 4: Doctor macaroff, she's doubling down on everything, as everyone in
Speaker 4: her sort of little industry has to do. This is
Speaker 4: what makes this field so dangerous and unscientific is the
Speaker 4: feedback loop that exists. During our deposition, doctor Macroff cited
Speaker 4: an article about stairfalls, saying, look, we know stairfalls aren't
Speaker 4: fatal because we draw all this data from different hospitals.
Speaker 4: All these kids come in after falling down the stairs
Speaker 4: and they didn't die. And I said, okay, I said,
Speaker 4: would trust In's case be included in that data set?
Speaker 4: And she said, well, what do you mean? I said, well,
Speaker 4: is his case classified as a stairfall because you guys
Speaker 4: don't believe mister Hunter that he fell down the stairs.
Speaker 6: Right, And she was like, oh, that's.
Speaker 4: A good point. They're self selecting the data they're using
Speaker 4: to draw the conclusions that they used to exclude the
Speaker 4: data that they don't want. And then they say that,
Speaker 4: you know these are so rare, and I agree. You know,
Speaker 4: most kids who tumble down the stairs don't die. From it,
Speaker 4: But that doesn't mean that it's impossible, which is what
Speaker 4: they say to put people on death row. And just
Speaker 4: because something is rare doesn't mean that they know which
Speaker 4: is the rare case and which isn't. So there's all
Speaker 4: this bad science that goes into it. The thing that
Speaker 4: actually is scientific about this would be biomechanics, right Force
Speaker 4: chaw Tobe s Pediatricians don't think biomechanics have any place
Speaker 4: in their world. And when doctor Macroff, she says, I
Speaker 4: didn't say lamont use trust and I just said that
Speaker 4: his report does not match the mechanism of injury.
Speaker 6: And I said, well, when.
Speaker 4: You're talking about the mechanism of injury, that kind of
Speaker 4: sounds like force.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Oh, no, I'm not a physicist. Biomechanics doesn't fit there
Speaker 4: or whatever. I don't know how right, I don't know
Speaker 4: how you can talk about a mechanism without using biomechanics. Anyway,
Speaker 4: we did hire a biol mechanical engineer and we went
Speaker 4: to the site and he took measurements of the stairs
Speaker 4: and the elasticity of the surface, and he used a
Speaker 4: computer program and he put in the height that Trustin
Speaker 4: was and his weight and the.
Speaker 6: Average that a child his age.
Speaker 4: Could run, and you know, ran through all these different
Speaker 4: scenarios of how he could have fallen and showed that,
Speaker 4: like the forces generated were well within the range that
Speaker 4: have been shown to be enough to generate the kind
Speaker 4: of injuries.
Speaker 6: That he had.
Speaker 4: So absolutely stair falls can cause this. And also now
Speaker 4: with cell phones and security cameras, like, people have started
Speaker 4: capturing injuries that otherwise would have been indicted as abuse
Speaker 4: if we didn't have proof that it was actually accidental.
Speaker 4: And doctor Macaroff claims it.
Speaker 2: Even that could be doctors, even that could be doctored.
Speaker 4: She maybe would have to see it with her own
Speaker 4: eyes to be convinced, and so you know, there's just
Speaker 4: no pleasing the child abuse pediatricians.
Speaker 3: However, the defense was able to please the Carner doctor
Speaker 3: Stevens when they provided a fuller picture of the incident,
Speaker 3: including photographs of the staircase, a biomechanical expert, and finally
Speaker 3: the innocent explanation for the anal and rectal injuries that
Speaker 3: were available to prosecutors, the States, experts, and even la
Speaker 3: Mon's attorney at the trial. Had he even bothered to look.
Speaker 4: He would have found like our investigator Pam Swanson did
Speaker 4: when we took over the case notations in the medical
Speaker 4: records that staff at the hospital in the pice had
Speaker 4: attempted to take Trusten's temperature three times with a rector thermometer,
Speaker 4: had been unsuccessful, and immediately after that had noted blood
Speaker 4: in his rectum, which of course perfectly matches up with
Speaker 4: the three puncture wounds that the coroner identified and said
Speaker 4: could have been caused by something sharp like a pencil.
Speaker 4: And in fact, and in another piece of undisclosed evidence,
Speaker 4: the coroner even told detectives that she couldn't rule out
Speaker 4: a temperature probe as the cause of this. Now, nobody
Speaker 4: turned that over to Lamont at trial, and the prosecutor
Speaker 4: didn't ask the coroner that question, but he did ask
Speaker 4: the child abuse pediatrician at trial if Trusten's injuries could
Speaker 4: have been caused by a thermometer, and she said no.
Speaker 4: When we deposed the coroner and showed her these records,
Speaker 4: she immediately changed her opinion on the cause of those injuries.
Speaker 4: She still said it was non accidental, but it was
Speaker 4: inflicted medically, not as an assault. For me, I saw
Speaker 4: that and felt like I was just shouting into the
Speaker 4: void for.
Speaker 2: Years after that.
Speaker 4: Nobody seemed to care about it until the coroner did.
Speaker 6: But I was like, people, this is it.
Speaker 5: This explains everything, because that was a huge void in
Speaker 5: my defense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a huge gag because nobody could explain I.
Speaker 5: Never could explain the rape to the time we found
Speaker 5: that in the record, I could not explain the rape.
Speaker 2: I didn't rapeing.
Speaker 3: So these idiots couldn't even figure out the three pokes
Speaker 3: with the thermometer were what caused what otherwise sounded like
Speaker 3: an awful thing that was done to this child, right.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that's the really troubling thing is that I
Speaker 4: think nobody looked at these records, including doctor Stevens. You know,
Speaker 4: at the time, had she she would have learned things
Speaker 4: about the scene that would have explained the mechanism of injury,
Speaker 4: plus the findings about the anal and rectal injuries, and
Speaker 4: so then like she did her deposition when we showed
Speaker 4: them to her, she would have changed her opinion not
Speaker 4: only about the injuries that supported the rape, but also
Speaker 4: about the cause of death that it was not a homicide.
Speaker 4: And his trial attorney is just as much to blame.
Speaker 3: So in addition to the Brady violations. This was also
Speaker 3: a clear case of ineffective assistance of counsel as well.
Speaker 4: When we went back to our judge in federal court judgment,
Speaker 4: Michael Watson, with the deposition testimony from Clyde, he kind of,
Speaker 4: in his opinion went through all the things he didn't do,
Speaker 4: you know, didn't hire experts, didn't talk to witnesses, didn't
Speaker 4: look at the records, blah blah blah. And then the
Speaker 4: way he put it was he appeared to settle on
Speaker 4: his strategy of not using an expert, not as a
Speaker 4: result of a strategic investigation, but rather in lieu of one,
Speaker 4: which is kind of the classic definition of being an
Speaker 4: effective lawyer. You know, like all these people participate in
Speaker 4: a process that could result in a man's execution, and
Speaker 4: that there's so little you know, I mean plenty of time.
Speaker 4: I think there's outright misconduct and malicious intent, and I
Speaker 4: think there's some of that here with the Brady evidence,
Speaker 4: the withheld evidence that we see, but a lot of
Speaker 4: other is I think just in competence, a lack of thoroughness.
Speaker 4: I don't know that might even be worse, because you know,
Speaker 4: you care so little about being careful in case.
Speaker 2: It was such magnitude as a person's life.
Speaker 3: Right, with proceeding so fraught with constitutional violations and convincing
Speaker 3: evidence of innocence. The Hamilton County Prosecutor's office joined Lamont's
Speaker 3: motion for a new trial in April twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: but this didn't mean that they were finally seeking justice
Speaker 3: for Lamont.
Speaker 4: After Lamont had a new trial and we are trying
Speaker 4: to get him out on bond, the prosecutor's office ran
Speaker 4: to the coroner's office and got the other pathologists in
Speaker 4: the office to issue this addendum to the original autopsy
Speaker 4: report that basically just says, like, we think the coroner
Speaker 4: was wrong to change her opinion under oath and the deposition.
Speaker 4: We do think that this should still be a homicide
Speaker 4: and still be a rape with zero explanation. And then
Speaker 4: those we just refused to talk to us without the
Speaker 4: prosecutors being present. It just became so obvious to us
Speaker 4: that I believe the Hamilton County Corner's Office, there's supposed
Speaker 4: to be neutral experts guided by science, considers itself an
Speaker 4: arm of the prosecutor's office.
Speaker 3: So while Lamont was still trying to get out on bond,
Speaker 3: and the lead up to his new trial, the prosecutor's
Speaker 3: office began to apply pressure and here comes to please offer.
Speaker 4: Basically, Lamont had this pressure of stay here in jail
Speaker 4: for at least another year, or take a plea and
Speaker 4: get out time served. Lamont could walk out the door. Well,
Speaker 4: we decided to fight it and ask for bond, and
Speaker 4: the prosecutors fought dirty.
Speaker 6: Basically had to go through.
Speaker 4: A little mini trial where they're allowed to summarize their
Speaker 4: case by presenting evidence, including evidence that wasn't even presented
Speaker 4: at trial the first time, so stuff that isn't tested
Speaker 4: in any way, but just allegations. We were able to
Speaker 4: beat them there. The judge ruled that they hadn't met
Speaker 4: their burden to keep him locked up. But then the
Speaker 4: bond was five hundred thousand dollars, which he would have
Speaker 4: needed to get fifty thousand dollars together cash to meet.
Speaker 2: Which would have been very hard, which we couldn't.
Speaker 4: Do, I mean, So that was one problem. And then
Speaker 4: the other problem was the prosecutor convinced the judge to
Speaker 4: order no contact for Lamont with anyone under eighteen, so
Speaker 4: that meant all of his nine grandchildren eight.
Speaker 2: At the time and went on the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, he wouldn't be able to meet them.
Speaker 5: My children was in the courtroom when they asked for that,
Speaker 5: and just seeing them cry, man, and they want me
Speaker 5: to meet their kids so bad, and I want to
Speaker 5: meet my grandchildren so bad.
Speaker 2: They're right there.
Speaker 5: That's when you know the decision was firmly made that
Speaker 5: I'm taking his plea agreement.
Speaker 3: It sounds like the prosecutor, Seth Tiger, was just trying
Speaker 3: to have it both ways.
Speaker 4: You're saying that he's so dangerous and such a monster
Speaker 4: that you don't think you should be let at at all.
Speaker 4: But you've offered him a plea, and if he agrees
Speaker 4: to that, he.
Speaker 6: Walks out of the door today.
Speaker 4: With no conditions at all, no conditions, which is what
Speaker 4: he ended up doing.
Speaker 3: Lamar took the plea for time served, which also meant
Speaker 3: that he's not eligible for state compensation regardless. He was
Speaker 3: finally free after sixteen long years on June fifteenth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: Three, one of the best days of my life mine too,
Speaker 5: on Aaron's birthday, by the way, and ironically I was
Speaker 5: convicted on her birthday as well, sixteen years earlier. Aaron
Speaker 5: had already told me it's a bank of cameras and
Speaker 5: reporters out there, so be prepared when you walk through
Speaker 5: the door. One of the questions was how are you
Speaker 5: feeling getting your freedom back? And my answer then and
Speaker 5: today is still the same. Imagine feeling all of the
Speaker 5: emotions anger, stress, joy and relief, frustration, all of those
Speaker 5: emotions at the same time. I'm still going through it,
Speaker 5: trying to figure it out.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: It's been amazing though, and I actually got a good
Speaker 5: start on everything too, got my driver's license, my cousin
Speaker 5: gave me a vehicle. I got a job rather quickly.
Speaker 5: It took a little longer for me to get in
Speaker 5: an apartment. I have to go in for a full
Speaker 5: knee replacement surgery because the writer is on set in
Speaker 5: on it, bone on bone, so I haven't been able
Speaker 5: to work, and that is frustrating. So I'm just trying
Speaker 5: to figure things out. Aaron set up a GoFundMe page
Speaker 5: that's been helping a little bit.
Speaker 3: Well, we're hoping our audience can help out a whole
Speaker 3: bunch more. And who knows how long it's going to
Speaker 3: be till Lemon is on his feet again. So if
Speaker 3: you have a few bucks, a few thousand bucks, a
Speaker 3: few million bucks laid around, whatever you can spare, and
Speaker 3: you want to help this man who has already been
Speaker 3: through so much. We're going to have the GoFundMe linked
Speaker 3: in the episode description along with Lamont's LinkedIn page. He's
Speaker 3: begun public speaking, and he's a great speaker, so if
Speaker 3: anyone's interested, I'm sure he'd be very happy to have
Speaker 3: work that's not as physically demanding as a job he
Speaker 3: was able to find before the surgery. And with that,
Speaker 3: we're going to go to closing arguments, where first of all,
Speaker 3: I want to thank Aaron and Lamont, both of you
Speaker 3: so much for joining us today. And now I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna do what I do best. I'm going to kick
Speaker 3: back in my chair, turn off my microphone, leave my
Speaker 3: headphones on, close my eyes, and just listen to anything
Speaker 3: you feel is left to be said. So let's start
Speaker 3: with you Erin and then just hand the mic off
Speaker 3: to Lamont, and Lamont you take us out into the sunset.
Speaker 4: Nothing like this happens without the help of a village,
Speaker 4: and that's certainly true in Lamont's case. In our office,
Speaker 4: attorneys Tasiplesio and Justin Thompson. We're also on Lamont's team.
Speaker 4: I mentioned Pam Swanson, she's retired now, but she's the
Speaker 4: investigator that kick things off. And then our paralegal extraordinary
Speaker 4: Shannon Flammer.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, yes, who runs.
Speaker 4: The office and is really the backbone of everything. Was
Speaker 4: absolutely wonderful. But I honestly don't know if there's a
Speaker 4: single person in the Capitol Habeus unit who didn't help
Speaker 4: in some way with Lamont's case. And that includes a
Speaker 4: lot of our law student externs who helped us with
Speaker 4: research and writing, people helped with site checking, just brainstorming
Speaker 4: figuring out how to approach this crazy developments in the case,
Speaker 4: especially when the Supreme Court is changing the law on
Speaker 4: what we're allowed to present in the state court and
Speaker 4: federal court, you know, as it's going on, you know.
Speaker 4: And then he had post conviction attorneys Melissa Jackson and
Speaker 4: Kim Rigby at the Ohio Public Defender's Office who fought
Speaker 4: valiantly and kept hitting a brick wall but stayed supportive
Speaker 4: of Lamont. And then we are just so grateful for
Speaker 4: al Gerhartstein who's been so supportive and brought on some
Speaker 4: amazing attorneys to help us in state court, Sarah Jelsonino
Speaker 4: and Elizabeth Bonham and Marcus Siddodi. They really made an
Speaker 4: awesome team. And then Kate Jutson, who's the executive director
Speaker 4: at the Center for Integrity of Forensic Sciences, helped with
Speaker 4: in particular her expertise in shaking baby science and abuse
Speaker 4: of head trauma. Finally, I think a big part of
Speaker 4: Lamont's success has been his family. He's mentioned, I think
Speaker 4: he has maybe one of the most supportive families that
Speaker 4: I've ever seen. It's been a real privilege to have
Speaker 4: Lamont and his family trust me with his life and
Speaker 4: with his case, because it's pretty scary, especially when it's
Speaker 4: so complicated and technical and you don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4: And they let me into their home to explain things
Speaker 4: and we're patient as I explained why we need to
Speaker 4: be patient and why it takes so long, and that
Speaker 4: kind of thing.
Speaker 5: So one of the things I talk about, especially when
Speaker 5: talking to the law students, is about you know, how
Speaker 5: to try your best to meet your client where they are,
Speaker 5: you know, intellectually, emotionally if you could. Because I just
Speaker 5: had an attorney asked me you know, after doing the
Speaker 5: talk up there, she said, what could I do better?
Speaker 5: I have a kind of a guarded client. You know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying that I can't seem to get through too,
Speaker 5: you know, and he don't trust me. I said, well,
Speaker 5: my recommendation, this is what worked for me and my family.
Speaker 5: It might not work for everybody. If you could pinpoint
Speaker 5: somebody in his family or trusted a friend or something
Speaker 5: who he listens to and try to get through to
Speaker 5: that person and let that person be the liaison or whatever,
Speaker 5: maybe you can, you know, get a better working relationship
Speaker 5: with your client.
Speaker 2: You know, Aaron took the time, Aaron justin to you.
Speaker 5: They took the time to explain the process going forward
Speaker 5: when Aaron first came on my case, when we first
Speaker 5: met each other, and it was very effective. I don't
Speaker 5: know what other attorneys do with their clients, but Aaron
Speaker 5: took the necessary time literally explain what to expect going
Speaker 5: forward and to relate the same information to my family
Speaker 5: through a liaison, which we chose to be my sister Debbie,
Speaker 5: who has been amazing in this process as well as
Speaker 5: keeping me straight when I give Aaron problems and have
Speaker 5: phone calls and stuff, So it's a whole village. Like
Speaker 5: like Aaron just mentioned, on both sides, it's just it
Speaker 5: takes a village.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 3: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
Speaker 3: week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team Connor
Speaker 3: Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive
Speaker 3: producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music
Speaker 3: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 3: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all
Speaker 3: social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 3: You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm.
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 3: and association with Signal Company Number one