Speaker 1: On November fifth, nineteen eighty six, Scott Macklum, the son
Speaker 1: of the mayor of Croswell, Michigan, was fatally shot in
Speaker 1: the parking lot of Saint Clair County Community College. A
Speaker 1: fingerprint was pulled from a box of shells at the scene.
Speaker 1: Some students described a potential getaway car as a Redder
Speaker 1: Tan Sedan, but no one had gotten a good look
Speaker 1: at the shoot her. One student, Rennie Gobain, intent on
Speaker 1: involving himself, submitted to hypnotherapy in order to recall the
Speaker 1: license plate number, but it didn't return any results. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the victims alleged fiance, Crystal Merrill, pointed authorities in the
Speaker 1: direction of her ex Temogen Kensu, even though the fingerprints
Speaker 1: didn't match and credible alibi witnesses placed Temagen over four
Speaker 1: hundred miles away. Authorities put his photo in a very
Speaker 1: suggestive lineup, and again Rennie Gobain came to eight investigators
Speaker 1: with an identification. Temasien's rock solid alibi and the lack
Speaker 1: of any physical evidence connecting him to the crime was
Speaker 1: overcome by Rennie Gobain's dubious identification. A character assassination campaign
Speaker 1: that should have been inadmissible. The jury was made to
Speaker 1: believe that Temigen was a Satanic sex raised ninja assassin,
Speaker 1: capable of mind control, and although deeply in debt, he
Speaker 1: was somehow still able to arrange an undocumented private round
Speaker 1: trip flight to commit a murder allegedly over a woman
Speaker 1: who he no longer cared to be within four hundred
Speaker 1: miles of The prosecutor, Robert Cleland is now a federal judge,
Speaker 1: Temogen is still in prison, and the current Attorney General,
Speaker 1: Dana Nessel, who was elected in part to start a
Speaker 1: conviction integrity unit, refuses to end this well recognized injustice.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I
Speaker 1: gotta say, I'm flabbergasted at what we're about to do today.
Speaker 1: It's just nuts. I mean, this case, the case of
Speaker 1: Temwijen Kenzu, is like a masterclass in the failings of
Speaker 1: our criminal legal system and our social system as well.
Speaker 1: By the way, but the criminal legal system is on
Speaker 1: full display in all of its terrors. And this particular
Speaker 1: case is in Michigan, but to be fair, it could
Speaker 1: have been in any state. But here to help us
Speaker 1: tell this story is the man who's been working his
Speaker 1: butt off to get mister Kenzo out of prison. And
Speaker 1: I'm talking, of course about Amorn Sayed, who is the
Speaker 1: co director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic and a professor
Speaker 1: at Michigan Law School. Amorn, thanks so much for being
Speaker 1: here with us today.
Speaker 2: Of course, thank you for having.
Speaker 1: Me, and now I am we are honored to be
Speaker 1: joined from a Michigan prison by Temigen Kenzu. Temigen, thanks
Speaker 1: for calling in.
Speaker 3: Thank you Jason, Thank you to all the listeners out
Speaker 3: there too.
Speaker 1: Now, Temison, you've been in prison since before probably a
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners were even born, and it pains
Speaker 1: me to say that it's really insane. But when they
Speaker 1: hear about the maniacal developments in this case, which should
Speaker 1: have had nothing to do with you because you were
Speaker 1: over four hundred miles away at the time of the
Speaker 1: murder and provably so, I'm going to imagine that they
Speaker 1: will feel exactly the same way. But first, tell us
Speaker 1: about your life before all of this happened.
Speaker 3: I was born in Flint, Michigan, as nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 3: My parents separated when I was very young, around three
Speaker 3: or four years old. From that point on, my mother
Speaker 3: became very resentful towards me, kind of that story. You know,
Speaker 3: you're your father in every possible way, whether it was
Speaker 3: the good or the bad. And it became a very
Speaker 3: violent household, a very abusive household. You know, I was
Speaker 3: not going to strike my mother back, so I basically
Speaker 3: got pounded a lot. It became physically apparent what was
Speaker 3: going on. I ran away a couple of times, and
Speaker 3: eventually I wound up in the Reach foster program in
Speaker 3: Flint until I returned home for the last time at
Speaker 3: about fifteen. And by the time I was sixteen, I
Speaker 3: was gone for good and living with my grandmother and
Speaker 3: pretty much raising myself.
Speaker 1: Now telling Jen that wasn't always your name. I mean,
Speaker 1: you were born Fred Freeman, but you later received the
Speaker 1: name Tamagen Kenzu from your Buddhist instructor, right, and later
Speaker 1: officially change it while you're in prison. But your fascination
Speaker 1: with Eastern philosophies and disciplines had roots in your formative years,
Speaker 1: mostly because of learning martial arts to block all of
Speaker 1: the attacks that have been coming your way.
Speaker 3: You got that, Yeah, that's true. I was getting pounded
Speaker 3: a lot, and as I said, I wasn't going to
Speaker 3: strike my mother and I was at a drive in
Speaker 3: but I was probably nine years old, nine or ten
Speaker 3: years old, and I saw a movie and I saw
Speaker 3: this in crucial artis just blocking every blow that was
Speaker 3: thrown at him. I also lived in a very violent area,
Speaker 3: and I saw this way to defend myself. You know.
Speaker 3: I learned to learn to block and duck and you know,
Speaker 3: jump out of the way and all the magical things
Speaker 3: we see in martial arts movies. And I said, I'm
Speaker 3: going to learn to do that.
Speaker 1: And you really excelled at martial arts, from what I'm told,
Speaker 1: and so much so that you were invited to live
Speaker 1: and train in Korea. Wow, but your mother would not
Speaker 1: allow it. You also excelled academically and went into the
Speaker 1: military after high school. But despite excelling there as well,
Speaker 1: shin splints from your years of martial arts training kept
Speaker 1: you from moving up in ranks, and which of course
Speaker 1: kept you at the minimum pay three or four years there.
Speaker 1: And that couple with some reckless spending as a young man,
Speaker 1: which again I can relate because I did it too,
Speaker 1: you started racking up some debt. Now you were honorably
Speaker 1: discharged and moved to Washington State, where you had a
Speaker 1: child with a woman named Galen. And then at some
Speaker 1: point you lost your job and out of desperation, wrote
Speaker 1: some overdraft checks to cover your debt's thinking that you
Speaker 1: just pay the fees and get the collectors off your back.
Speaker 1: But you ended up getting prosecuted for theft by the
Speaker 1: check insurance company. You didn't go to jail, but you
Speaker 1: were put on probation.
Speaker 3: Yes, I had written some bad checks. I deliberately overdrafted
Speaker 3: my account when I was in Washington State between nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two and nineteen eighty three. Now, just so everyone understands,
Speaker 3: and I'm not defending what I did. I was charged
Speaker 3: with what they call first degree theft out there, and
Speaker 3: I was placed on probation, so no prison or anything
Speaker 3: like that. I didn't agree to pay everything back, and
Speaker 3: i'd actually already begun to do some volunteer work for
Speaker 3: some of the businesses. Actually I paid off my entire
Speaker 3: balance while i'd been in prison on this bit, about
Speaker 3: five six hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: So you made good on it. The point of bringing
Speaker 1: it up is to show that you were both struggling
Speaker 1: financially and now the system had its hooks into you.
Speaker 1: So you were on probation in Washington. Your daughter's mother
Speaker 1: decided to head back to Michigan, and you eventually lost custody.
Speaker 1: You had a few probation violations. They're almost impossible to avoid,
Speaker 1: but somehow Washington State agreed to let you go back
Speaker 1: to Michigan, where you looked up a high school sweetheart
Speaker 1: named Michelle Woodworth. You two connected had a son, but
Speaker 1: you also had an open relationship. Now you live together
Speaker 1: in a cabin in ann Arbor along with your childhood
Speaker 1: friend Tom Ford. You were working studying martial arts and Buddhism,
Speaker 1: very much into health and nutrition at the time, you
Speaker 1: rode a motorcycle or a leather jacket. And to round
Speaker 1: out this picture, I also understand that you were the
Speaker 1: lead singer and a couple of bands back in the day.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't want to brag, but I was
Speaker 3: a pretty good singer. It was a dream when I
Speaker 3: was young, in that horrible life at home, to get
Speaker 3: out maybe through music.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it'll surprise anyone that a lead
Speaker 1: singer can be popular with the ladies right this long history.
Speaker 1: I think it's why people become lean singers sometimes. But anyway,
Speaker 1: there was one young lady in particularly named Crystal Merrill
Speaker 1: from the Boorjuron area, which is a short drive for
Speaker 1: man Arbor, and she became part of the reason why
Speaker 1: we're having this discussion today. But let's back up a
Speaker 1: bit here. So you and Michelle Woodworth, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: had an open relationship, so you were seeing other women.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a secret to her. And to put a
Speaker 1: fine point on how long ago this was, you met
Speaker 1: Crystal Merril at a video store.
Speaker 3: So I was looking at some musical equipment in the
Speaker 3: music store and I went to the video store and
Speaker 3: there was a girl and then that was Crystal Meryl.
Speaker 3: She started hitting on me, and I was young, and
Speaker 3: I was pretty susceptible of that kind of positive attention.
Speaker 3: And she's like, Oh, let me take you out to
Speaker 3: dinner and I'll pay for everything, and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: And you know, I went for it and I went
Speaker 3: out with her. We wound up having physical relations We
Speaker 3: went out several times. She became obsessive. She was trying
Speaker 3: to change my clothing. She was trying to give me
Speaker 3: a change my hair, get rid of my motorcycle, stop
Speaker 3: wearing a leather jacket. Stop singing rock and roll. He
Speaker 3: just went on on. She's basically trying to sculp me
Speaker 3: into the man that she wanted me to be. So
Speaker 3: she liked, let's say six things about me, and didn't
Speaker 3: like ten things about me. One day she comes with
Speaker 3: a bag full of Eyeside shirts. You know, this is
Speaker 3: the eighties, those pink and lime green with a little alligator.
Speaker 3: It's like, I'm not wearing this. I've got on like
Speaker 3: an Iron Maiden T shirt and a leather jacket and
Speaker 3: shredded jeans.
Speaker 1: You know, right, you're a rock and roll guy. I
Speaker 1: mean you weren't trying to hang at the country club
Speaker 1: with Chad and Blake and were penny loafers, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh my god, I swear I used
Speaker 3: to say she wanted me to be Blake.
Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, listen, you don't like anything about me, Okay,
Speaker 3: you don't like my hair, you like my clothes, you
Speaker 3: don't like anything about me. I don't want to be
Speaker 3: with you. She started stalking me and driving by.
Speaker 1: And I understand there was a boiling point where she
Speaker 1: made some dramatic public spectacle at a party and your
Speaker 1: friend Tom became concerned about how Crystal's erratic behavior could
Speaker 1: be dangerous considering your probation status. Once the system gets
Speaker 1: it soaks into you, you have to fly so straight,
Speaker 1: you have to throw at such a needle and be
Speaker 1: like Goodie two shoes just in order to stay at
Speaker 1: a prison. And you had already had another minor brush
Speaker 1: with the law in pleasant Ridge, Michigan. So the three
Speaker 1: of you packed up and moved to Escanaba, which is
Speaker 1: way the hell up in the Upper Peninsula, over four
Speaker 1: hundred miles from Port Huron, where Crystal was licking her wounds,
Speaker 1: and from what we understand, after you left, she got
Speaker 1: involved with some other men and got pregnant. Now, one
Speaker 1: of those men turned out to be the victim in
Speaker 1: this case, Scott macklum, and he was the son of
Speaker 1: the mayor of Croswell, Michigan. And Crystal later claimed that
Speaker 1: they were engaged and that her unborn child was also his,
Speaker 1: But we're not even sure if that's true. And it
Speaker 1: was your previous fling with Crystal that became the basis
Speaker 1: for the States theory for your alleged motive. But what
Speaker 1: seems way more compelling, which is something that the police
Speaker 1: never investigated. Was some of Scott's entanglements in the lead
Speaker 1: up to November of eighty six.
Speaker 3: Prior to his being killed. Supposed that he got in
Speaker 3: some kind of a car chase. All these things were
Speaker 3: happening to this guy. He had a job in some
Speaker 3: kind of a men's clothing store, George and his men's wear,
Speaker 3: and there are multiple instants of these two guys coming
Speaker 3: into his workplace, according to witnesses from the store. And
Speaker 3: I have the reports, and anybody wants to see him,
Speaker 3: we'll share them with you. And says he knew these
Speaker 3: guys on site, and there were two of them, and
Speaker 3: it said the first time they came in the story,
Speaker 3: he had a confrontation with them that almost became violent,
Speaker 3: and it says he challenged them to fight. Says the
Speaker 3: second time they came in the store and he saw them,
Speaker 3: he was so scared he ran in the back of
Speaker 3: the store and he hid. So whatever happened from the
Speaker 3: first incident to the second, he was terrified at these guys.
Speaker 3: The morning that he was murdered at the college, according
Speaker 3: to people there, he was in the college for some reason.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows why. Sub zero morning in November of nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six, but he skipped his classes, but he was
Speaker 3: in the school with his gym bag, but he never
Speaker 3: went to gym. We have his college records. He was
Speaker 3: skipping more and more and more of his classes and
Speaker 3: we know announ it's because he had a drug problem.
Speaker 3: And he was also dealing drugs at the college. And
Speaker 3: we found multiple dealers that have confirmed this. So I
Speaker 3: want people to know that I'm not just saying this
Speaker 3: whatever his family says. They knew he had a drug problem.
Speaker 3: We found dealers that knew his father, that his father
Speaker 3: was paying off his drug debts.
Speaker 1: So Scott was in trouble. I mean, his wealthy father,
Speaker 1: the mayor, had tried to save him several times. And
Speaker 1: you can see how this could have been very embarrassing
Speaker 1: for a local politician like him, especially back in the
Speaker 1: eighties when attitudes about drug use were informed by the
Speaker 1: colossal public policy failure known as the War on Drugs.
Speaker 1: That same policy also created the environment at which violent
Speaker 1: crimes like this one occurred. And that brings us to
Speaker 1: the morning of November fifth, nineteen eighty six, when Scott
Speaker 1: had been at the community college curiously cutting class while
Speaker 1: carrying a gym bag while not going to the gym.
Speaker 1: There were also reports that he appeared to be running
Speaker 1: from the student center to his car when this tragic
Speaker 1: incident occurred around nine am, Imron, can you tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about this.
Speaker 2: It's a tragedy, of course. A man was shot and
Speaker 2: killed in a community a college parking lot in Port Huron, Michigan.
Speaker 2: You know, he was kind of shot near his car.
Speaker 3: He's seen running out of the student center. The witnesses
Speaker 3: said he was running from the student center to his
Speaker 3: vehicle and then was shot somewhere in front of his
Speaker 3: vehicle and made it to the front left tire's vehicle
Speaker 3: where he fell.
Speaker 1: So the assailant fired a shotgun once at Scott Macklum,
Speaker 1: leaving him on the driver's side of the car. The
Speaker 1: key was still in the door. One shellcasing and a
Speaker 1: box of shells were found at the scene. A latent
Speaker 1: print was pulled from the box of shells, and the
Speaker 1: murder weapon was never recovered. So this is a busy,
Speaker 1: bustling community college parking lot, and you would think somebody
Speaker 1: would have seen something, right.
Speaker 2: No one saw the actual shooting itself, at least no
Speaker 2: one has come forward that saw the actual shooting, so
Speaker 2: the case was built through the testimony of people that
Speaker 2: saw things that happened kind of a little bit before
Speaker 2: or right afterward. One of the witnesses said that he
Speaker 2: heard the gunshot and kind of as he was looking around,
Speaker 2: he saw a car driving away kind of fast, and
Speaker 2: you know, he had only got a fleeting look at
Speaker 2: the person.
Speaker 1: Right. This was Rennie Gobain, who said that he heard
Speaker 1: what sounded like a tire had blown out, which caused
Speaker 1: him to notice a light, tan, foreign hatchback style car
Speaker 1: leaving a lot. There's no certainty about whether this car
Speaker 1: was even connected to the crime, but nonetheless he saw
Speaker 1: this alleged assailant through the windshield as he drove by,
Speaker 1: wearing a dark blue ski cap not covering his face,
Speaker 1: but according to Gobain, his head was tilted down the
Speaker 1: entire time, so Gobain didn't even get a good look
Speaker 1: at this alleged assailant. Now, Renny Gobain wrote down a
Speaker 1: license plate number and reported it to police, but the
Speaker 1: number didn't turn up a match, so Gobain was then
Speaker 1: hypnotized by his psychology professor in order to try to
Speaker 1: better recall the plate number. I mean, this is just embarrassing,
Speaker 1: and the results were about as probative as one might think. Now,
Speaker 1: Renny Gobain also initially said that the car was a
Speaker 1: foreign hatchback, but later inexplicably and suspiciously, I would say,
Speaker 1: changed his description to a Ford Escort station wagon. Now,
Speaker 1: this change curiously happened after a nineonymous tip came in
Speaker 1: saying that the alleged assailant had just been spotted driving one. Curiously, again,
Speaker 1: that tip came in after Timodgy had already been arrested.
Speaker 1: So why did Gobain change this initial description to a
Speaker 1: very specific and conflicting description that matched an anonymous tip.
Speaker 1: And was that anonymous tip even real. We don't know
Speaker 1: the answers to either of those questions, but we can
Speaker 1: certainly speculate that Gobain had been fed more information by investigators.
Speaker 1: But anyway, back to the immediate aftermath. So there was
Speaker 1: also this other witness named Richard Krueger, who was even
Speaker 1: further removed from the scene and any meaningful information than
Speaker 1: even Gobain was.
Speaker 2: Right, he had just seen a man that he deemed
Speaker 2: suspicious loitering nearby near some bushes in an adjoining parking lot,
Speaker 2: and that was about an hour before the shooting.
Speaker 1: Right, so not so helpful at the time, until both
Speaker 1: Rennie Gobain and Richard Krueger both viewed a very suggestive
Speaker 1: photo lineup, and the suggestion into both of these witnesses
Speaker 1: was to pick Tamagin Kenzu. And we'll get into how
Speaker 1: it was suggestive in just a bit, But first, how
Speaker 1: does this photo even find its way into this lineup?
Speaker 1: Because early on in the investigation, before these eventual misidentifications
Speaker 1: from Gobin and Krueger, temision wasn't even on Port Huron
Speaker 1: Police Department's radar. How did he even become a suspect
Speaker 1: living over four hundred miles away in the Upper Peninsula.
Speaker 2: Mister Kensu initially becomes a suspect because in talking to
Speaker 2: the victim's girlfriend that they find out that he was
Speaker 2: a former boyfriend of the victims then girlfriend, Crystal Merrill,
Speaker 2: and she describes him as a curious person, let's say,
Speaker 2: someone who's into martial arts, someone who she said, was,
Speaker 2: you know, an aggressive type and was very jealous of
Speaker 2: her and all of that stuff. So that gets police
Speaker 2: really interested in mister Kensu. They started investigating him. They
Speaker 2: find that he's living in Rock, Michigan near Escanaba in
Speaker 2: the Upper Peninsula, which is a whole different world from
Speaker 2: Port Huron, but they don't let that stop them. They
Speaker 2: start trying to figure out how he could have come
Speaker 2: down from Escanaba, committed the shooting and been back.
Speaker 1: So they investigated Temigen's whereabouts to find a way to
Speaker 1: nail him, not knowing that they were just going to
Speaker 1: actually solidify his alibi. They found out that he was
Speaker 1: on a date until I believe around two am with
Speaker 1: a woman named Beth Styr, and his car had actually
Speaker 1: broke down and he got help and then he went
Speaker 1: home to Michelle Woodworth even later. Meanwhile, the shooting occurred
Speaker 1: at nine am, over four hundred miles away. Temwichen was
Speaker 1: then seen by folks all over town that very day,
Speaker 1: including out a dojo in Escanaba around noon. Importantly, not
Speaker 1: everyone at the dojo liked Temagen. He was a cocky
Speaker 1: twenty seven year old guy. But despite any of that
Speaker 1: and their own animosity stores him, they still corroborated his alibi.
Speaker 2: The evidence, even at the time of the investigation, was
Speaker 2: very clear that mister Kinsey was not at the scene
Speaker 2: of the crime, that he was in fact, at least
Speaker 2: four hundred miles away in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. At distance
Speaker 2: it would have taken him I think something like seven
Speaker 2: or eight hours to drive each way at the time.
Speaker 1: So even the prosecution accepted that this round trip journey
Speaker 1: in that timeframe was not possible by car. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk later about how they came up with a preposterous
Speaker 1: travel theory involving a private plane of which there is
Speaker 1: no record, right, no aviation logs, nothing, just to make
Speaker 1: to try to make his guilt plausible for a jury,
Speaker 1: not that they ever proved it at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: the only physical evidence, the fingerprint on the box of shells,
Speaker 1: clearly excluded Temagen, whose alibi was as good as any
Speaker 1: we've ever seen.
Speaker 3: There's more of this two Jason. So remember there's no
Speaker 3: Scott when Crystal and I are together. So there's no
Speaker 3: reason to be jealous of this guy. I knew about
Speaker 3: an RNL Hope, I knew about a Mike Van Dyke,
Speaker 3: there was no Scott. Secondly, the Scott guy has done
Speaker 3: nothing to me. Third I've moved far away, I've got
Speaker 3: girlfriends up. Nor if I'm trying to get this record deal,
Speaker 3: I'm living with Michelle in this duppy little farmhouse, trying
Speaker 3: to live my singing dream. I'm not going back down
Speaker 3: tom Ford confirmed that we never went back down there.
Speaker 3: We never stalked Crystal or stalked Scott or anything. Again.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of the listeners right now are young,
Speaker 3: and they're used to the present technology. There was no
Speaker 3: Internet in my day. There were no cell phones in
Speaker 3: my day. He was killed at college, skipping class on
Speaker 3: a sub zero morning in poor here on How the
Speaker 3: hell could I have known this guy was going to college.
Speaker 3: There's just there's no way I could have done all
Speaker 3: his detective work. You know, I was I was stone broke.
Speaker 3: Michelle was on welfare. I was even more poor by
Speaker 3: the time we were living up north. There's no way
Speaker 3: for me to gather all this data about Scott.
Speaker 1: Right, You'd have to have known where Scott Macklin was
Speaker 1: going to be and when in order to pull this
Speaker 1: off and make your return flight to the Upper Peninsula
Speaker 1: to be seen by nude. It's not like you could
Speaker 1: have found out information about his class schedule online. There
Speaker 1: was no online at the time. So instead of seeing
Speaker 1: the writing on the wall that you were not the
Speaker 1: guy but rather run down some of the potentially embarrassing
Speaker 1: leads involving the shady characters connected to the victim, who
Speaker 1: was the son of a wealthy local politician. They made
Speaker 1: you the fall guy Patsy for this murder, and in
Speaker 1: order to do so, they went back to Rennie Gobain
Speaker 1: and Richard Krueger with this super suggestive photo lineup. And
Speaker 1: we'll share this photo lineup on our socials along with
Speaker 1: what was then shown to you the judge and the
Speaker 1: jury to deliberately misrepresent that the lineup was not suggestive,
Speaker 1: we'll have it all linked in the bio.
Speaker 2: They show Gobain and Krueger a photo lineup in which
Speaker 2: they include mister Kinsu's photo, and what isn't disclosed to
Speaker 2: the defense, the judge and the jury is there are
Speaker 2: a number of ways in which they clue the witnesses
Speaker 2: in that they want them to identify Kensu. Much later,
Speaker 2: Herb Weltzer discovered the photos as they were shown to
Speaker 2: the witnesses, and we found that there were a lot
Speaker 2: of differences between all the photos on one side, and
Speaker 2: mister Kensue was the only one who was looking in
Speaker 2: the opposite direction in his profile view. He was the
Speaker 2: only one wearing a placard of a different city. He
Speaker 2: was the only one who had a striped background. His
Speaker 2: photo was the newest and clearly stuck out from all
Speaker 2: of the others. All of these elements that would have
Speaker 2: biased the witnesses and identifying Kensu were just not known
Speaker 2: at the time of trial.
Speaker 1: And we spoke with Herb Welzer, who was a retired
Speaker 1: detective lieutenant from the poischow On Police Department, and after
Speaker 1: hearing local investigative reporter Bill Procter's coverage of this case,
Speaker 1: he felt compelled to get involved.
Speaker 4: My name is Herb Welser. I'm retired from the Poor
Speaker 4: Earned Police Department and I was with the department for
Speaker 4: thirty one years and then I retired as detective lieutenant.
Speaker 4: I was there my final three years. I was in
Speaker 4: charge of the detective Bureau. In two thousand and seven,
Speaker 4: Bill Procter and myself, along with Fred Freeman's wife Amako,
Speaker 4: were allowed into the Poor Armed Police Department. This is
Speaker 4: after I retired. Lieutenant Jim Jones, who was a very
Speaker 4: good man. He took over my position as detective lieutenant.
Speaker 4: Jim invited us to come in and look at the evidence.
Speaker 4: And one of the first things that we found is
Speaker 4: the five original photographs that were shown to the witnesses.
Speaker 4: There's like ten or eleven things that are different about
Speaker 4: Fred Freeman's picture from the pleasant Rich Police Department compared
Speaker 4: to the other four of the poor In Police Department.
Speaker 4: And I thought to myself, the only way that they
Speaker 4: could have ever got this admitted into court is probably
Speaker 4: to crop everything out of the photograph other than the
Speaker 4: facial view of the person. And when this case went
Speaker 4: to trial, there was an Exhibit twenty six. It was
Speaker 4: a poster board that showed the pictures that were shown
Speaker 4: to the witnesses. For years and years, Fred Freeman and
Speaker 4: his supporters kept filing Foyer requests for Exhibit twenty six
Speaker 4: to see what it looked like, and they kept getting
Speaker 4: responses is that this is no longer available. It's been destroyed.
Speaker 4: So in two thousand and seven, Exhibit twenty six is
Speaker 4: still and missing. So about two months later Jim called
Speaker 4: me and he said, hereby I found the Exhibit twenty six,
Speaker 4: and I was just so sad to see that they
Speaker 4: cropped out everything out of those original five photographs other
Speaker 4: than the facial view. And that's what they showed in
Speaker 4: the courtroom, and it's in the testimony. Bob Cleland said
Speaker 4: to the sergeant Sergeant John Bounce, he said, are these
Speaker 4: the original photographs that you showed to the witnesses? And
Speaker 4: he testified yes they are.
Speaker 2: Well. At the time of trial, as far as the
Speaker 2: judge and the jury knew, the witnesses picked mister Kensu
Speaker 2: out of a fair lineup. We have these two witnesses
Speaker 2: who identify Kensu through a very biased lineup, and really,
Speaker 2: you know, they didn't see the shooting.
Speaker 1: Right, They hadn't seen the actual shooting, and Gobain got
Speaker 1: a fleeting glimpse at best of someone driving away with
Speaker 1: their head down, and we're not even sure that that
Speaker 1: was the actual shooter. So the biased lineup let them
Speaker 1: know who to pick. In fact, when shown live lineups later,
Speaker 1: only ready Gobin even remembered who to pick. Krueger picked
Speaker 1: someone else entirely. Nonetheless, On November thirteenth, thinty eighty six,
Speaker 1: just over a week after the murder, they arrested you
Speaker 1: to Mujin and searched your house. Found zero incriminating evidence,
Speaker 1: no guns, no ammo. Of course, they eventually used all
Speaker 1: of your martial arts weapons as evidence against you at trial,
Speaker 1: even though the cause of death had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with martial arts. So when they took you in, did
Speaker 1: they try to coerce a confession as we often see.
Speaker 3: I was never interviewed. I was never questioned. They literally
Speaker 3: arrested me and threw me into a cell, and I says,
Speaker 3: nonybody even going to talk to me. Well, what I
Speaker 3: was told was that road officers were like the whole
Speaker 3: way down, he was saying he didn't do it. He
Speaker 3: was telling us where he was that day that twenty
Speaker 3: people saw him. He can prove he was completely innocent.
Speaker 3: And I think they were terrified. Remember, they are decided
Speaker 3: to make me the patsy. They decided to make me
Speaker 3: the They've been putting out lies to the press saying
Speaker 3: they had witnesses who saw the murder, the whole nine yards.
Speaker 3: It was all lies. Of course, they didn't have any
Speaker 3: of that. And then by then they had, you know,
Speaker 3: Ray Gobe already willing to set me up. They refused
Speaker 3: to sit down interview because they had to record the
Speaker 3: interview and there'd be a record and probably me talking
Speaker 3: about my alibi and how I was innocent. So they
Speaker 3: went and told the prosecute he's been saying all the
Speaker 3: way down the car, he's innocent, he can prove it.
Speaker 3: And they put me back in the max section of
Speaker 3: the jail before they put me in the isolation area,
Speaker 3: and they refused to talk to me.
Speaker 1: So no police even bothered to interview you. And you
Speaker 1: were an indigen defendant, so you weren't going to make
Speaker 1: bail no matter what number they said it that you
Speaker 1: had no money and you had this quota planet attorney,
Speaker 1: a former prosecutor named David Dean, who he later found
Speaker 1: out was not only get this a good friend and
Speaker 1: the attorney for the lead detective in this case, John Bounds,
Speaker 1: he was defending him in a criminal investigation for his
Speaker 1: potential involvement with drugs and ports. But then get this,
Speaker 1: David Dean was also compromised through his own drug addiction.
Speaker 3: My lawyer was a former prosecutor from Saint Clair County.
Speaker 3: By eighty four, he was severely addicted to crack cocaine.
Speaker 3: By eighty five, he had a cocaine conviction in Ohio
Speaker 3: and was on probation in Michigan overseen by my trial judge.
Speaker 3: He was under investigation by the drug Task Force in town,
Speaker 3: and he was undercover informant and he was doing drugs
Speaker 3: with the police. Now this is all a matter of records.
Speaker 3: He was eventually disbarred for lying to the bar about
Speaker 3: his drug use and because he was observed going into
Speaker 3: crackhouses on nineteen separate occasions. They knew all of this
Speaker 3: about this guy. This is the lawyer they gave me.
Speaker 1: The more I look into your case, it seems like
Speaker 1: the only reason why you're still in there is because
Speaker 1: the official misconduct. It's so rampant that there would seemingly
Speaker 1: be no end to the potential civil litigation if they
Speaker 1: freed you, as they should, and they've known this all along.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if you waved your right to
Speaker 1: civil litigation, they might let you out tomorrow. That's just
Speaker 1: my theory. I don't know, you know, while looking into
Speaker 1: your case, my research became more about investigating the state's
Speaker 1: wrongdoing than it ever was about what happened to Scott
Speaker 1: and macklum. So let's get back to their wrongdoing. First,
Speaker 1: they offered you plea deals, but you were already and
Speaker 1: always adamant about your innocence, so they tried another route
Speaker 1: to get you to submit to a play.
Speaker 3: I was taking out a population early into my time
Speaker 3: in the jail and place, and what was called L cell,
Speaker 3: which is an isolation cell in the back of the
Speaker 3: jail in a hallway. The cell was a freezing cold
Speaker 3: in the winter. They would open the security window in
Speaker 3: front of the cell, so it's like twenty thirty below outside.
Speaker 3: There was a blizzard at that time, and they would
Speaker 3: freeze me out of the cell. They turned the water
Speaker 3: off in the cell, so I literally had to drink
Speaker 3: water out of a toilet. I wasn't enough a shower.
Speaker 3: I wasn't allowed to go to recreation, that was allowed
Speaker 3: to have any books. They took away my visits. I
Speaker 3: wasn't allowed to be personal phone calls, and all my
Speaker 3: attorney calls were monitored, and you probably know that's illegal.
Speaker 3: And we actually had the logs showing where they listened
Speaker 3: to my attorney calls and what was discussed a few
Speaker 3: times that I was allowed to talk to my attorney,
Speaker 3: who was, as you know, in on all this and
Speaker 3: a former prosecutor. So their plan to bring me was
Speaker 3: a part of the scheme they had going with my
Speaker 3: attorney where they would keep bringing me these deals, and
Speaker 3: of course I refuse.
Speaker 1: This, so you're sticking to your innocence. And at this
Speaker 1: point all they had was Renny Gobain's dubious identification. Now
Speaker 1: remember Krueger didn't pick Tamagen out of the live lineup,
Speaker 1: just the suggestive photo lineup that they purposely misrepresented to you,
Speaker 1: the judge and the jury. Considering your alibi, it appears
Speaker 1: that they thought they needed some other nonsense to bolster
Speaker 1: their case. What else did they do.
Speaker 2: The one other piece that we haven't addressed so far
Speaker 2: is the jail house informant supposedly hearing Kensu confess to
Speaker 2: committing this crime, and then apparently in this confession can
Speaker 2: Sue also told them, plus, I have this great out
Speaker 2: that involves many witnesses from the Upper Peninsula. This is
Speaker 2: clearly just either the informant, at his own initiative or
Speaker 2: at the direction of someone has you know, tried to
Speaker 2: take out two birds with one stone. He confessed to me,
Speaker 2: and he confessed to fabricating an alibi. The Joe house
Speaker 2: infemant at the time said he was doing this just
Speaker 2: out of the goodness of his heart. Later on he
Speaker 2: would admit that he was doing it to obtain benefits
Speaker 2: in exchange. He admitted that in an affidavit. Later, he
Speaker 2: recanted in a videotape interview with an investigative reporter in
Speaker 2: the Detroit area, basically said he was just doing it
Speaker 2: to benefit himself and as far as he knew, Kensu
Speaker 2: hadn't done anything. Kens who certainly didn't confess to him.
Speaker 2: That informant's name was Philip Joplin, who unfortunately has now
Speaker 2: passed away. But he did as I said, fully recant
Speaker 2: before he passed away.
Speaker 3: Philip Choplin a long term time with about thirty selonies
Speaker 3: and probably fifty mystic meters been out of prison. He
Speaker 3: was also a past in foreman and he'd been stitching
Speaker 3: for years at the Drug Task Force into the police
Speaker 3: and on his other criminal case is I'm never in
Speaker 3: to cell with the other prisoners, so I know something's
Speaker 3: going on. This guy. He's asking about my case, and
Speaker 3: he's asking a lot of confidential questions. So on my
Speaker 3: guard the entire time. I tell my lawyer what's happening.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh, I wouldn't even worry about it. I said, no, no,
Speaker 3: something's going on. My lawyer knew. Philip Joplin was an
Speaker 3: informantive and even been involved in some of his cases
Speaker 3: when he was a prosecutor. That's how crooked they are. Well,
Speaker 3: sure enough, here comes this long letter from Philip Joplin saying,
Speaker 3: I confess to everything in the holding cell.
Speaker 1: And although it appears that your lawyer may have known
Speaker 1: what was going on but said nothing, of course, any
Speaker 1: benefit to Joplin was not made known to you or
Speaker 1: the jury, right.
Speaker 3: No, of course not no. And what we also didn't
Speaker 3: know was a secret deal had already been made. Philip
Speaker 3: Joplin was facing what's called a habitual offender sentence or
Speaker 3: life in Michigan. The secret deal involved him basically having
Speaker 3: his charges dropped. The CEO was made with my judge.
Speaker 3: There's handwritten letters saying strong recommendation from Judge Cordon. He
Speaker 3: wants this done right away.
Speaker 1: Judge Cordon, your trial judge, the same one overseeing your
Speaker 1: lawyer's cocaine. You know, it's so weird that your lawyer
Speaker 1: never brought up what he knew about Philip Joplin to
Speaker 1: you or the jury on cross examination. So let's get
Speaker 1: to the trial. It's about six months after the arrest Tevijen.
Speaker 1: You had endured this torture process in jail to get
Speaker 1: you to submit to a deal, which you courageously resisted.
Speaker 1: We've just talked about the nonsense testimony that they presented,
Speaker 1: and you've got this literal joke of a public defender
Speaker 1: who's aware of this informant Joplin from other cases from
Speaker 1: when he was a prosecutor. It just gets worse and worse.
Speaker 1: So Imron, please give us a run through of everything
Speaker 1: else that happened a trial.
Speaker 2: So we've already discussed most of the evidence that the
Speaker 2: prosecution presents, which is, you know, these two witnesses, one
Speaker 2: who says I saw guy loitering in the bushes identified
Speaker 2: him as Kensu, another who said I saw a guy
Speaker 2: driving away after the shooting and identified him as Kensue.
Speaker 2: Both got really fleeting looks at this person, and as
Speaker 2: I said already, both had identified mister Kinsu out of
Speaker 2: a very egregiously biased lineup, but the jury and judge.
Speaker 3: Were not told that.
Speaker 2: And then the other evidence that the prosecution presents, and
Speaker 2: the reason this trial is incredibly long, is they put
Speaker 2: in a whole bunch of character testimony that absolutely is
Speaker 2: inadmissible that courts later have agreed should have been inadmissible,
Speaker 2: but Kensu's lawyer didn't object, And so the most egregious
Speaker 2: is the testimony of his ex girlfriend, who describes a
Speaker 2: lot of things that make Kensu seem like a bad guy,
Speaker 2: but have absolutely nothing to do with this case or
Speaker 2: with him shooting anyone ever. So that's the definition of,
Speaker 2: you know, unduly prejudicial evidence that our system endeavors to
Speaker 2: keep out of the courtroom because jurors, being human beings,
Speaker 2: were taking the risk they'll convict someone because they don't
Speaker 2: like him, as opposed to because there's evidence they committed
Speaker 2: the crime. And in my mind, there's no doubt that
Speaker 2: the jury convicted mister Kinsu because they didn't like him,
Speaker 2: because there was all of this evidence brought in that
Speaker 2: he was, you know, abusive to people in his life,
Speaker 2: that he had committed largely petty of the past, and
Speaker 2: this whole narrative was painted of him as a manipulative,
Speaker 2: mind controlling person, which is obviously entirely irrelevant to whether
Speaker 2: he shot a guy in a parking lot. But this
Speaker 2: whole narrative includes weapons being brought in that are supposedly
Speaker 2: the kind of weapons that a ninja warrior would use
Speaker 2: because they try to paint Kensu as a wanna be
Speaker 2: ninja master who can control people and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: So there's throwing stars and nunchucks and all of those
Speaker 2: are just kind of brought in and put on a
Speaker 2: table at the trial. They have absolutely nothing to do
Speaker 2: with a guy getting shot in a parking lot, right,
Speaker 2: but it's a distraction, and it's kind of just painting
Speaker 2: Kensu in the eyes of a jury as an outsider,
Speaker 2: as someone you wouldn't like if you met. And you know,
Speaker 2: unfortunately that ended up working because the actual evidence of
Speaker 2: guilt was very, very tiny.
Speaker 3: Robert Cleveland's entire story about this case was fabricated. It
Speaker 3: wasn't based on any evidence or any witnesses, it wasn't
Speaker 3: based in any experts or any forensics. He just made
Speaker 3: it up. So when he made up the crazy story
Speaker 3: about wanting to recruit Crystal into my ninja organization, the
Speaker 3: media was actually beginning to mock him and say, this
Speaker 3: is stupid, this doesn't make any sense. Then he changed
Speaker 3: it to jealous boyfriend, so now I'm a jealous boyfriend.
Speaker 3: You know, they didn't really use the word stalker as
Speaker 3: much back then, and of course we know that wasn't
Speaker 3: true too, and Crystal never even implied that.
Speaker 2: So, you know, that's the masterful, supposedly case that the
Speaker 2: prosecution has built, which has very little weight and it's
Speaker 2: largely filled in with completely prejudicial, irrelevant, inadmissible evidence. But
Speaker 2: you know that's what the jury but ended up believing.
Speaker 2: In response. You know, Kensu presented several witnesses, none of
Speaker 2: whom were his friends and family. They were people that
Speaker 2: were largely independent, people he associated with, you know, the
Speaker 2: owner of a store or a guy he met at
Speaker 2: a kmart when his car broke down that day, and
Speaker 2: so I think this alibi probably had a big impact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with all of these independent witnesses, his alibi was formidable.
Speaker 1: It was airtight. And this brings us to the ridiculous
Speaker 1: theory that they used to over.
Speaker 2: So on Rebuttal. The prosecution comes up with this theory
Speaker 2: that theoretically he could have chartered a private plane, committed
Speaker 2: the crime, you know, flown back and forth and no
Speaker 2: one would know. There was never any record that any
Speaker 2: such flight took place. There was no showing that mister Kinsu,
Speaker 2: who at the time was indigen even had money to
Speaker 2: make this happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, poor people always fly private, right, Yeah?
Speaker 1: Can you imagine this scenario in real life? He somehow
Speaker 1: finds the private jet department at his local airport in
Speaker 1: the milanoare and then convinces this random pilot who's just
Speaker 1: hanging out to not make any record of the flight.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's all made plausible by his being a
Speaker 1: ninja who's capable of mind control. But let's just say
Speaker 1: that he's able to accomplish all of that, which is
Speaker 1: obviously batshit insane, he's still got to pay for it.
Speaker 1: Up until this point, he would have had to have
Speaker 1: been hiding his vast wealth while drowning in debt and
Speaker 1: living in poverty. But even if he was secretly well healthy,
Speaker 1: he must have blown it all on the private jet
Speaker 1: because he certainly wasn't spending it on his defense attorney.
Speaker 1: So when we spoke to herb Welser, he pointed out
Speaker 1: some things about this charter plane theory and the pilot
Speaker 1: Bob Evans, who testified a trial to boast of this theory,
Speaker 1: and somehow it gets even worse from here.
Speaker 4: I met with the detective that was under the searge
Speaker 4: and detected Harry Hudson, and I talked to Harry about
Speaker 4: three hours one night about this case. When we got
Speaker 4: to the airplane theory, Harry said to me, he says, well, herb,
Speaker 4: you know who the airplane pilot was, don't you. That
Speaker 4: is Bob Cleveland's personal airplane pilot. Bob Cleveland was running
Speaker 4: for attorney general here in the state of Michigan, and
Speaker 4: in fact had just lost the election the day before
Speaker 4: this murder. He lost the election on Tuesday. On Wednesday
Speaker 4: morning was the murder, But he said, Bob Evans is
Speaker 4: the pilot who would take Bob Cleveland to his speaking
Speaker 4: engagements here in the state of Michigan while he was
Speaker 4: running for attorney general. And of course it didn't come
Speaker 4: out in the testimony.
Speaker 2: You know, even having spoken about this case hundreds of times,
Speaker 2: I am still shocked at how how nonsensical all of
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 1: So despite the fact that all the physical evidence was
Speaker 1: exculpatory and that your alibi was rock solid, they stacked
Speaker 1: up this character assassination campaign that should have been inadmissible
Speaker 1: and invented this ridiculous charter playing theory to support the
Speaker 1: one tiny bit of evidence that mattered. The misidentification from
Speaker 1: Rennie Gobain, who had caught this fleeting glimpse or said
Speaker 1: he did, of an alleged assailant with his head tilted
Speaker 1: downward in a car that we're not even sure was
Speaker 1: the shooters. And then when presented with this unduly suggestive
Speaker 1: photo lineup, he chose your picture and said that you
Speaker 1: look like the driver of that car. Then the prosecution
Speaker 1: purposely misrepresented to you, the judge and the jury just
Speaker 1: how suggested that lineup was. So Gobain's testimony, then the
Speaker 1: nonsense testimony, along with a bunch of irrelevant bullshit like
Speaker 1: the testimony from Crystal Merrill, your martial arts weapons collection,
Speaker 1: the mystery around you being some sort of a ninja,
Speaker 1: the fact that you had children by two different women
Speaker 1: and enjoyed an open relationship with Michelle Woodworth. Seeing all
Speaker 1: of that, it seems like the jury was more convinced
Speaker 1: that they just didn't like you, rather than that you
Speaker 1: had committed this crime. So when the jury came back
Speaker 1: in take us back to that moment, that horrible, horrible
Speaker 1: moment when they convicted and sentenced you to life without parole.
Speaker 3: Jaw hit the floor. I couldn't believe it. I literally
Speaker 3: almost fell over and I just I turned him so
Speaker 3: I didn't do this. And I turned to judge and
Speaker 3: said that there's no way you can believe that I
Speaker 3: did this, your honor. I said it my sentence too,
Speaker 3: There's no one you can believe that I committed this crime.
Speaker 3: You watched this whole trial. There was no evidence I
Speaker 3: had anything to do with this. I'd never even met
Speaker 3: this guy. MBoC policy required you had to at least
Speaker 3: twenty seven years old to go to state prison Southern Michigan.
Speaker 3: I was twenty three. In violation that policy. Robert Cleland
Speaker 3: had made demands on the MDOC that they placed me
Speaker 3: in Jackson. Jackson, at that time was the world's largest
Speaker 3: wall prison, and it was also one of the most violent.
Speaker 3: Two corrections officers were killed the year that I came down,
Speaker 3: Josephine McCallum and Jack Bud. Jack Budd was killed in
Speaker 3: front of me, by the way, in December twenty seventh,
Speaker 3: I believe it was in nineteen eighty seven. It was
Speaker 3: insanely violent. I watched a man killed over twenty five
Speaker 3: cent what we call a shot of coffee, a little
Speaker 3: tablespoon of coffee. I mean, it was crazy violent, and
Speaker 3: I was the ninja killer, and I had been in
Speaker 3: the press, so everybody had to try me. And so
Speaker 3: when I got to Jackson, I knew my life was
Speaker 3: in danger, and I was attacked while I was still
Speaker 3: on what's called quarantine. I was able to defend myself, fortunately,
Speaker 3: and after that I began it just trained furiously.
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm going to die in this place, right,
Speaker 1: And you also learned a law even when a couple
Speaker 1: of times pro se, which happens basically almost never.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I beat the NBALLC like thirty forty times now,
Speaker 3: and I just settled some more cases. I settled to
Speaker 3: some diet cases and abuses for our digital content provider
Speaker 3: and some other things. So, but I do this for
Speaker 3: other prisoners.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't do this to get rich. I do this
Speaker 3: to help people. And what I do with my rule
Speaker 3: has always been I try to be the person for
Speaker 3: them that I needed for me when I was a
Speaker 3: young guy that was a mess and didn't have any help.
Speaker 1: And while you help many others, it all started with
Speaker 1: learning how to help yourself and your own legal filings.
Speaker 1: And I want to turn to Amron here. Now we know,
Speaker 1: even with evidence of all of this misconduct, exculpatory evidence,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Post conviction litigation is usually a long and
Speaker 1: winding road to nowhere to no relief. In start contrast
Speaker 1: to how easy it is to get wrongfully convicted, and
Speaker 1: even among a galaxy of other cases, tellisions really stands out.
Speaker 1: Here we are thirty five years later. There are so
Speaker 1: many twists and turns, including a near turnaround moment in
Speaker 1: twenty ten, but even before that, there were times when
Speaker 1: what needs to happen in this case was made painfully
Speaker 1: obvious to any objective observer.
Speaker 2: There are, you know, probably five or six moments when
Speaker 2: this conviction could have been overturned because enough had been
Speaker 2: shown to be wrong with it, and unfortunately all of
Speaker 2: those five or six opportunities were lost. So it starts
Speaker 2: on the direct appeal where his direct appeal attorney is
Speaker 2: trying to obtain the original photos because he wants to
Speaker 2: be able to show that these witnesses identified Kinsu through
Speaker 2: a bias lineup that essentially police framed Kinsu and he's
Speaker 2: not given the original photos, and then ultimately, if the
Speaker 2: transcript is correct, they essentially hand him some other photos
Speaker 2: from the case and say these are the ones, and
Speaker 2: we know they're not the ones because they had different
Speaker 2: people in them, so that direct appeal is unfortunately a failure. Then,
Speaker 2: in the mid nineties is when an investigative reporter starts
Speaker 2: digging into this stuff, a guy named Bill Procter, and
Speaker 2: he interviews jurors, and he interviews some of the alibi witnesses,
Speaker 2: and most significantly gets that videotaped recantation from the jailhouse informant,
Speaker 2: who by that time is admitting not only was he
Speaker 2: given incentives to testify against Kensu and those were not disclosed,
Speaker 2: but also as admitting that it was entirely a fabrication.
Speaker 2: So that's another moment where you know, based on that,
Speaker 2: you could think this conviction should be reversed, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2: Then you pointed out, you know, slowly but surely, we
Speaker 2: get to twenty ten, and a couple of important things
Speaker 2: happened there. First, Kensu, working on his own without an attorney,
Speaker 2: files a federal habeas corpus petition, and it's an absolutely
Speaker 2: massive filing because you know, as far as he realizes,
Speaker 2: he just wants to put everything he has into it.
Speaker 2: A lawyer might say, hey, let's edit this down. Let's
Speaker 2: only keep the most salient stuff. But you know, for Kensu,
Speaker 2: his life is on the line, and he puts it together,
Speaker 2: this massive filing. And interestingly, that is right around the
Speaker 2: time when our Innocence Clinic at Michigan Law School opened
Speaker 2: and we had started to look at this case. And
Speaker 2: we were looking at this case because even by then
Speaker 2: Kensu had a lot of local supporters that were urging
Speaker 2: us to look at this case. We read the trial
Speaker 2: transcripts and found that this was an absolutely silly conviction,
Speaker 2: that he clearly hadn't committed this crime. So we signed on.
Speaker 2: And you know, at the time, I was a law student,
Speaker 2: so I wasn't representing Kensu, but the professors who were
Speaker 2: leading their clinic at the time signed on to be
Speaker 2: Kensu's attorneys in federal district court. You know, they intended
Speaker 2: to file amended habeas petition where they could you know,
Speaker 2: winnow the claims to what they believed was the most
Speaker 2: important But actually by then the judge had, as it
Speaker 2: turned out, already been reviewing Kensu's federal habeas and she
Speaker 2: ended up granting it pretty quickly after we had signed on,
Speaker 2: so clearly she hadn't really even read any new filings
Speaker 2: we made. She granted based on what Kensu had filed.
Speaker 1: Wait, so a federal judge looked into the petition that
Speaker 1: Temagen filed pro say and it was granted. That's incredible.
Speaker 1: So then what happened? Why did this not lead to
Speaker 1: his release?
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the law is very very restrictive on this stuff,
Speaker 2: and so the state has a right to appeal that
Speaker 2: to our intermediate appellate court, the Sixth Circuit Court of
Speaker 2: and they unfortunately reversed and upheld the conviction again. They
Speaker 2: said all of this should have been brought before that
Speaker 2: they couldn't consider the merits of this evidence because it
Speaker 2: should have been presented earlier. So you know, Unfortunately, after
Speaker 2: that loss, a couple of other things happened. In twenty ten,
Speaker 2: Kensu sought clemency from the governor for the first time.
Speaker 2: He succeeded in getting a hearing. Unfortunately, clemency was denied
Speaker 2: and there were a lot of underhanded tactics I feel
Speaker 2: that we used during that time again to just get
Speaker 2: at character assassination instead of focusing on the evidence. Clemency
Speaker 2: was denied at that time. But herb Weltzer had discovered
Speaker 2: this uncrop photo lineup that showed for the first time
Speaker 2: that the witnesses had been biased by the police into
Speaker 2: selecting mister Kensu. So we filed a new state court
Speaker 2: filing based on that. We got a hearing on it
Speaker 2: around twenty thirteen, fourteen, But unfortunately the writings on the wall,
Speaker 2: every time you go to Saint Clair County and talk
Speaker 2: about the Kensu caset, no one's really going to give
Speaker 2: you the time of day. So we had a hearing.
Speaker 2: It was a very very contentious hearing, and the judge
Speaker 2: ended up ruling against us. The appeals on that filed
Speaker 2: a federal habeas petition. Unfortunately that was denied as well.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing here, of course, one of many interesting things,
Speaker 2: is that the prosecutor who had tried Kensu's case subsequently
Speaker 2: was appointed a federal judge, and now it's still a
Speaker 2: federal judge in Detroit, that's Robert Cleland. That's created kind
Speaker 2: of a whole new level of conflict in this case.
Speaker 2: When we filed his second federal habeas petition, all of
Speaker 2: the judges in the Eastern District of Michigan, which is
Speaker 2: the Federal court in Detroit, all of the judges recused themselves,
Speaker 2: and Kensu's case was actually decided by a senior status
Speaker 2: semi retired judge in Kentucky, which is an interesting situation
Speaker 2: and not one I've come across before.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, that was denied as well, and so since he
Speaker 1: has filed for clemency a few more times with subsequent
Speaker 1: Michigan governors. Now one would think that after a federal
Speaker 1: judge agreed with his actual innocence claim and an appellate
Speaker 1: court denied him only on procedural grounds, maybe that should
Speaker 1: have held some weight in the governor's mansion. But he's
Speaker 1: been denied three times there as well. And then in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, Dana Nessel ran for Attorney General, and all
Speaker 1: during that summer she was riding the wave of righteous
Speaker 1: indignation about the state of law enforcement and the criminal
Speaker 1: legal system in this country. She made promises, including that
Speaker 1: they'd start a conviction integrity unit. This, of course, is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that can go around the procedural
Speaker 1: bars that restrict relief throughout the court system. Right But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: after reviewing this case, get this, they didn't disagree that
Speaker 1: he was innocent, but rather they changed the rules after
Speaker 1: he filed and came up with some self imposed restriction
Speaker 1: about a need for new evidence, just like he'd needed
Speaker 1: an appellate court. So now this is the Attorney General's CiU,
Speaker 1: not the Wayne County CiU, which is widely regarded as
Speaker 1: one of the finest and most effective in the country.
Speaker 1: But this age in a Nessl's CiU has only successfully
Speaker 1: granted relief in three or four cases, and they came
Speaker 1: up with a reason to deny Temagit as well, which
Speaker 1: was to require new evidence. So since Temigen was already
Speaker 1: so thorough in its federal habeas petition, there's no currently
Speaker 1: new evidence to present, and I'm just sitting here struggling
Speaker 1: to figure out why they did this. In addition, since
Speaker 1: closing their investigation into Temigen's case, they won't even release
Speaker 1: the summary report as they've done in the past. So
Speaker 1: I can only guess, as I did earlier, that there's
Speaker 1: just such vast official misconduct in this case that admitting
Speaker 1: to the wrongdoing would be very expensive, not to mention,
Speaker 1: probably highly embarrassing for some people in positions of real power.
Speaker 1: So this Conviction Integrity Unit is now totally ignoring Temigen's
Speaker 1: innocence and doing exactly what everyone else did, of course,
Speaker 1: except for that one federal judge, Judge Hood, who alone
Speaker 1: had the courage to recognize Temagin's innocence.
Speaker 2: So that's where we're at now, you know, believing the
Speaker 2: Kenshu's one innocent. We're not going to give up on
Speaker 2: the case, but with each subsequent loss there are fewer
Speaker 2: and fewer options that are still on the table. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: I think we still do have a couple of pathways
Speaker 2: left to us, thanks to the work of Herb Weltzer,
Speaker 2: who has done all this amazing work for him. But
Speaker 2: the craziest part of this case is he's a person
Speaker 2: who should never have been convicted a trial, and yet
Speaker 2: here we are, now thirty five years later, always trying
Speaker 2: to think of more and new evidence of innocence, when
Speaker 2: really all the evidence of innocence has existed in this
Speaker 2: case from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not like this CiU has different evidence
Speaker 1: from what you've all heard here today. They've got it.
Speaker 1: So I hope that with an election looming they would
Speaker 1: take bold action.
Speaker 3: That's what he's saying. You'd start kicking ass. Now you
Speaker 3: can go out there and say, look what I just did.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what they campaigned on and were
Speaker 1: elected to do. And I understand that you phone bank
Speaker 1: for these people, your new wife, Paula, since Amako, your
Speaker 1: previous wife had passed. Paula was literally out there knocking
Speaker 1: on doors. And then their inaction here is It's just
Speaker 1: it's made extra painful by that fact.
Speaker 3: Right, And they made so many promises, and you know,
Speaker 3: Paula has been to so many rallies and listening to
Speaker 3: so many families who were weighing on that unit to
Speaker 3: do something. And they brought any amazing people like Robin
Speaker 3: Frankel and Patricia lil and Louring Montgomery and valorying him
Speaker 3: in the best, the best in this state, great investigators,
Speaker 3: great attorneys, and nothing's coming out. And it's not because
Speaker 3: the investigtors and the attorneys. It's because something happened. I
Speaker 3: don't know if people scared her. I don't know if
Speaker 3: they told her they thought it was going to hurt
Speaker 3: her reelection chances.
Speaker 1: How in the world can setting the innocent free be
Speaker 1: seen as anything other than a moral imperative.
Speaker 3: Everyone agreed the innocent shouldn't be in prison. This is
Speaker 3: a pretty bipartison issue.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure our listeners would like to do whatever
Speaker 1: they can to write this wrong. If you're a Michigan,
Speaker 1: I thought imagine that you're incredibly frustrated by everything you've
Speaker 1: heard on this podcast today, all this evidence. So please,
Speaker 1: we need all of you to sign a petition that's
Speaker 1: linked in the bio, and hopefully your support can help
Speaker 1: move this one over the line as it's done in
Speaker 1: other cases. And so many people have already joined this fight,
Speaker 1: including US Representatives Andy Levin and Rashida Dlaib, as well
Speaker 1: as State Senator Stephanie Chang, who issued a joint statement
Speaker 1: after Temigen's denial in the CiU. I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from that statement. They said, we were deeply disappointed. We
Speaker 1: have great respect for the Attorney General and the other
Speaker 1: attorneys involved in this case. However, the standard used by
Speaker 1: the CiU in its review of the Kenzu case predetermined
Speaker 1: the outcome to us, the wrong outcome. Our point of
Speaker 1: view is not based on technical or procedural flaws in
Speaker 1: the case or discovery of an alibi witness who has
Speaker 1: never presented a trial. It's based on the fact that
Speaker 1: Kenzu could not have committed and did not in fact commit,
Speaker 1: the crime for which the state is taking away the
Speaker 1: entire rest of his life now thirty five years on,
Speaker 1: and the continued resistance to this fact of actual innocence
Speaker 1: by current and former law enforcement officials does nothing to
Speaker 1: change the fact itself. Wow. So if you're as outraged
Speaker 1: as we all are, we'll have links to action steps
Speaker 1: in the bio, so please check those out and get
Speaker 1: involved Separately, if anyone has new information about this case,
Speaker 1: Carl Herbwelzer will be posting his contact info as well.
Speaker 1: And now we turn to closing arguments, where I thank
Speaker 1: both of you for joining us to share your story,
Speaker 1: and then I'll turn my microphone off, kick back in
Speaker 1: my chair and listen to whatever else you feel is
Speaker 1: left to be said. We'll kick it off with them,
Speaker 1: Ron and Temagen, please take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 2: This is one of those cases that really leaves you
Speaker 2: scratching your head because all of the evidence that he
Speaker 2: didn't commit this crime has existed from the beginning, and
Speaker 2: so now it's just a matter of kind of acknowledging
Speaker 2: that evidence and coming to grips with it, as opposed
Speaker 2: to looking for technicalities to skirt around the evidence, which
Speaker 2: is unfortunately what the past. You know, thirty years of
Speaker 2: appeals have been everyone looking for an excuse not to
Speaker 2: consider the actual evidence of the case. Whether that excuse
Speaker 2: is you know, initially he consues a manipulative person, or
Speaker 2: he's a bad guy to women in his life, or
Speaker 2: that he you know, he's the type of person who
Speaker 2: would do this, and then later it turns into, oh,
Speaker 2: you have even more evidence of innocence, but you should
Speaker 2: have presented it earlier. I think we have to look
Speaker 2: past all of this stuff. This is simply a guy
Speaker 2: who should never have been convicted. You know, if he
Speaker 2: was to be let out tomorrow, that would be thirty
Speaker 2: five years too late. There's really not a way to
Speaker 2: give him back what's happened. The only thing is that
Speaker 2: there should be an urgency to right this wrong. And
Speaker 2: I know that's the only thing he's ever wanted. So
Speaker 2: hopefully we're approaching a time though, where we can finally
Speaker 2: come to grips with the reality of his innocence.
Speaker 3: I want everybody to understand it. We say this all
Speaker 3: the time and it becomes cliche, but you know, your
Speaker 3: voice really does matter. You know, we had all these
Speaker 3: protests going on a little while ago, and you know savvy,
Speaker 3: some riots. Change was starting. Because of those protests. They
Speaker 3: create this great bill as George Floyd Bill, And you
Speaker 3: know what, all the protesting stopped, all the noise making stop,
Speaker 3: the media coverage stopped, and the bill's going sit in limbo.
Speaker 3: It's already done. They could pass that bill right now,
Speaker 3: that Policing Act. It's a great act. It's not unfair,
Speaker 3: and it creates necessary protections. But we stopped making noise.
Speaker 3: And when we stop making noise, they don't have to
Speaker 3: pay attention to us anymore, or only a few of
Speaker 3: us are just crickets chirping in a field at night.
Speaker 3: It's pleasant, it's not too irritating, and it can be
Speaker 3: easily ignored and enjoy whatever you want to do. And
Speaker 3: I know people have their own lives, and they have
Speaker 3: their jobs, and they have their kids and all their responsibilities.
Speaker 3: But nothing is going to change until we demand change.
Speaker 3: Nothing's gonna get me better until we stop complaining about it.
Speaker 3: Some people want things to be better, but they feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like my quote, it just doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: It's not going to change anything. It does matter, it
Speaker 3: is going to change something. You don't have to be
Speaker 3: famous and don't have to be wealthy, and you don't
Speaker 3: have to be connected. You just have to want things
Speaker 3: to get Call your senators, call your congressman. If you're
Speaker 3: out there and you hear the story of this case,
Speaker 3: just for example, and it is one of the worst
Speaker 3: cases ever. So it's a great example. But I'm no
Speaker 3: better and no more important than anybody else who's suffering
Speaker 3: in here. But if this story moves you at all,
Speaker 3: if you if you say, I don't ever want to
Speaker 3: see this happen to anybody ever again, not just mister Kensu, nobody,
Speaker 3: call our governor, call our attorney general and demand that
Speaker 3: they fix this, and then demand legislation changes. If you
Speaker 3: make a deal with an informant, you have to put
Speaker 3: in writing that there was a deal, and you have
Speaker 3: to disclose everything because there's no loss, and they have
Speaker 3: to disclose anything. They have the you know, the Brady
Speaker 3: rule and disclosure. But it's so shape. Prosecutors have absolutely immunity.
Speaker 3: Why they'll tell you they can't do their jobs without immunity.
Speaker 3: That's insane. What if a doctor said, I can't do
Speaker 3: any surgery on you unless you wave all of your rights.
Speaker 3: I can leave instruments behind you and cut the wrong
Speaker 3: leg off. You're cool with that, but we do this
Speaker 3: with prosecutors and judges. They don't need immunity unless they're
Speaker 3: doing something wrong.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wartis,
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
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Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flam Raeful Conviction is
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Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one.