Speaker 1: It was Thanksgiving the eve, and after visiting her daughter
Speaker 1: at Wycoff Hospital in Queen's, Maureen Fernandez went to a
Speaker 1: few of her usual bars with a man who was
Speaker 1: unfamiliar to the other bar patrons. The next morning, her
Speaker 1: body was found in an empty lot next to a
Speaker 1: stretch of the Long Island Railroad. She had been stabbed
Speaker 1: thirty five times. Investigators spoke with the bar patrons and
Speaker 1: a night watchman near the empty lot, who described a
Speaker 1: white Cadillac type car leaving the lot at four am.
Speaker 1: The detectives began looking into people who worked at the hospital,
Speaker 1: and it turned out that a security guard named Taper
Speaker 1: Ramos owned a white Oldsmobile. Detectives leaned hard on Ramo's
Speaker 1: extracted a confession about lending his car to a friend
Speaker 1: named Richard Pereira. Ramos claimed Pereira had returned the vehicle
Speaker 1: with a mysterious red liquid on the passengers side, and
Speaker 1: admitted to the murder before Ramos thoroughly cleaned the car.
Speaker 1: When Pereira was cleared in the line, police arranged for
Speaker 1: Pereira to record a conversation with Ramos, who admits to
Speaker 1: making up the story, even admitting that his car battery
Speaker 1: was dead denighted the murder, but instead of switching directions,
Speaker 1: the cops interrogate Ramos again, extracting the same story with
Speaker 1: a new suspect, Phelipe Rodriguez, without the Pereira recording being
Speaker 1: presented at trial. Phelipe ended up spending over twenty six
Speaker 1: years in prison after being identified by a man who
Speaker 1: knew nothing about the murder of a woman who Phelipe
Speaker 1: had never even met. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. That's me.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, and today I am well you can
Speaker 1: probably hear. I'm excited because we have not one, but
Speaker 1: two of my favorite human beings on the show today. First,
Speaker 1: Nina Morrison is the senior litigation attorney at the Instance
Speaker 1: Project in New York and just all around certified badass lawyer,
Speaker 1: human mom, person, friend, and so Nina, I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to have you back on. Welcome Thanks, Jason. Great to
Speaker 1: be back. And now, in our tradition of saving the
Speaker 1: best for last, we have one of the kindest, gentlest,
Speaker 1: funniest and best dressed humans that you're ever going to
Speaker 1: come across so Phelippe Rodriguez. Welcome to wrongful Conviction. Thank you, Jason,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Philippa. Let's start at the beginning. You
Speaker 1: grew up in Puerto Rico, right, Yes, I was born
Speaker 1: in Bosta, Puerto Rico, on August fifteen, nineteen And you
Speaker 1: came to New York and at what time? I actually
Speaker 1: came to New York with my mother and my stepfather,
Speaker 1: late seventies. I was like thirteen or fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: Can you just describe to us what your life was
Speaker 1: like for this incident. In nineteen five, I actually get
Speaker 1: married to my now ex wife, Glaris Rodriguez, and I
Speaker 1: had a kid with her, Felippe Wiland Rodriguez, Jr. He
Speaker 1: was born on July two x. By eighty six, I
Speaker 1: started working for a subcontracting company for the City of
Speaker 1: New York. I was getting paid good, I had good
Speaker 1: health care, so I was doing pretty well for myself.
Speaker 1: And then you were implicated in a murder that you
Speaker 1: had absolutely nothing to do with. And this particular murder
Speaker 1: was really gruesome, Nina. Can you take us back to
Speaker 1: the crime itself and how they came to sort of
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say settled because they settled on Philippe. Yeah, Phelippe.
Speaker 1: I wasn't arrested and charged for this crime until sixteen
Speaker 1: months after the victim in this case, Marini Fernandez, was murdered.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, it was an extraordinarily brutal crime. She
Speaker 1: was stabbed thirty five times and her body was found
Speaker 1: in a deserted lot in Queens, New York, near the
Speaker 1: Long Island railroad tracks, behind a food warehouse. Her body
Speaker 1: was actually found on Thanksgiving morning. She had been at
Speaker 1: a local hospital visiting her two year old daughter, who
Speaker 1: was in the hospital the night before, went out to
Speaker 1: a bar with a man that the other bar patrons
Speaker 1: didn't recognize, but it was a bar that she went
Speaker 1: to with some frequency, left there around two in the
Speaker 1: morning and was never seen again. You know, we get
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, Jason, where there's some reasonable evidence
Speaker 1: pointing to our clients as a suspect, and then later
Speaker 1: through DNA or further investigation or advanced science some other evidence,
Speaker 1: we find the picture changes. And when we at the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project took on Philippe's case, it was just so
Speaker 1: clear that this investigation was pointing far away from Phelipe
Speaker 1: for the beginning, and eventually, sixteen months later, when they
Speaker 1: had no viable suspect, the police just decided to coerce
Speaker 1: witnesses and argh Philippe. The police had the description of
Speaker 1: the most likely culprit from the bar patrons, right, you know.
Speaker 1: The thing that was so obvious was that the man
Speaker 1: who was with the victim is Fernandez at the bar,
Speaker 1: did not remotely resemble Philippe. Phelipe is your desk and
Speaker 1: see if they google him is a tall, slender, very
Speaker 1: dark haired, handsome man of Puerto Rican descent. And yet
Speaker 1: the man at the bar, who was the last person
Speaker 1: to come to the bar with and leave with the victim,
Speaker 1: the obvious likely suspect, was described by witnesses as white
Speaker 1: or Italian, clean shaven. Phelippe, had a black mustache stocky
Speaker 1: which Phelippe definitely is not and never was, and had
Speaker 1: reddish brown hair Recasalies. I mean, the list goes on
Speaker 1: and on. One of the patrons at the bar, Robert Thompson,
Speaker 1: who was heavily intoxicated, said that he had tried to
Speaker 1: sell a watch to Maureene Fernandez and the man she
Speaker 1: was with and then this Thompson described the potential perpetrator's
Speaker 1: hands as large, calloused and wearing rings. Then later on
Speaker 1: he sort of agreed with the detectives that the man
Speaker 1: who may have had writing on his left hand. Again,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to hang a murder conviction on this.
Speaker 1: And then there's this Peter Saloni guy. He was a
Speaker 1: night watchman at the food wholesaler near the empty lot
Speaker 1: where the body was found, and he told police that
Speaker 1: he witnessed a white car with a lone mail driver
Speaker 1: leaving the warehouse area at four am. He said the
Speaker 1: car may have been aes ere at Catillac. There wasn't
Speaker 1: really any evidence that anybody's white car was necessarily the
Speaker 1: car used in this crime. The security guard thought he
Speaker 1: saw a white car with a loan drive or leaving
Speaker 1: the warehouse area around four am. No one knows what
Speaker 1: time Ms Fernandez was brought there or when she was killed.
Speaker 1: There were different reports about when she left the bar,
Speaker 1: and originally the investigation focused on a black car, which
Speaker 1: had a much closer connection to the crime because several
Speaker 1: witnesses described seeing an unfamiliar shiny black Monte Carlo with
Speaker 1: nted windows outside the bar, and people started suggesting to
Speaker 1: police that maybe the perpetrator drove her to and from
Speaker 1: the bar in that car. And it was only when
Speaker 1: six eight months later the case remained unsolved that suddenly
Speaker 1: a new detective on the case, Jack Bizell, said oh, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's maybe it was the white car scene by
Speaker 1: the security guard, and from that little read of a hypothesis,
Speaker 1: they reverse engineered a case designed to find anyone they
Speaker 1: could with a connection to White Coff Hospital who happened
Speaker 1: to have a white car of that general description. So
Speaker 1: the Texas began looking at the staff of the hospital
Speaker 1: that this poor woman had been visiting her sick child
Speaker 1: at a pediatric ward. Because people were staying around the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: It was like a picked up spot, which is bizarre
Speaker 1: in itself, but okay. So the detective started talking about
Speaker 1: the staff and there was a security guard named Javier
Speaker 1: Ramos who had a white oldmobile at the time of
Speaker 1: the murdera a Catillac. But he had gotten off work
Speaker 1: at the hospital at midnight on the night of the murder,
Speaker 1: and a few months later, in February or March of
Speaker 1: Ramos had sold the oldsmobile to another staff or a
Speaker 1: guy named Pedro Sierra, and he had painted the roof
Speaker 1: of the Oldsmobile read and Saloni. The night watchman guy
Speaker 1: was taken to the area where the car formerly owned
Speaker 1: by Ramos was parked. They drove him around the block,
Speaker 1: pasted it several times and he didn't pick it out,
Speaker 1: and then by self finally says to him or detective
Speaker 1: said to him, Hey, if that car didn't have a
Speaker 1: red roof, couldn't have been the car. And he said, probably,
Speaker 1: maybe like an eight out of ten. So that's not
Speaker 1: exactly an unbiased, spontaneous identification of the car. It's about
Speaker 1: a suggestive and equivocal as you get. And then Detective
Speaker 1: by Zell aggressively interrogated and intimidated, i would say Ramos
Speaker 1: for hours and hours, and finally the interrogation ended when
Speaker 1: Ramos told the story that they wanted to hear, and
Speaker 1: he signed the state not implicating Phelippe, but a friend
Speaker 1: and co worker named Richard Pereira. Ramass original story implicating
Speaker 1: Pereira said, Tarrera Barrow the car, brought it back on
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving morning. There was a reddish stain in the car.
Speaker 1: It smelled terrible, and that Pereira allegedly said to him
Speaker 1: that he had to stab some bitch to show her
Speaker 1: that he was a man and not some boy. So
Speaker 1: essentially admitted to a murder, and it was a very
Speaker 1: damning statement. The problem is it was completely hit up.
Speaker 1: The police bringing Richie. We don't know the full extent
Speaker 1: of the investigation they did, but we know that he
Speaker 1: was not picked out of a lineup by any of
Speaker 1: the eyewitnesses from the bar, or by the security guard,
Speaker 1: and for that or for other reasons, they decided Ray
Speaker 1: must have given them the wrong guy. So they go
Speaker 1: back to Ramos and they work him over, and they
Speaker 1: work him over, but before they do that, they go
Speaker 1: to Pereira and they say, hey, Ramos implicated you. We
Speaker 1: think Ramos might be the killer. Can you wear a
Speaker 1: wire and go talk to him? Now. None of this
Speaker 1: was heard by Phelippe jury. This didn't come out till
Speaker 1: after he was convicted. But Ramos was taped by Pereira,
Speaker 1: the man he falsely implicated, essentially admitting he made up
Speaker 1: the whole story, and on this audio tape that none
Speaker 1: of the juror's ever heard, Ramos said, look, the cops
Speaker 1: were coming at me. And coming at me. It was
Speaker 1: going to be me or you, and I had to
Speaker 1: give them somebody or else I was going to go
Speaker 1: to prison for the rest of my life. And then
Speaker 1: he said my car wasn't even working that day, the
Speaker 1: battery was dead, and there was no blood on the cushion.
Speaker 1: That was juice that my girlfriend's kid spilled there. He
Speaker 1: admitted the whole thing was fabricated, not just naming Pereira,
Speaker 1: but the whole entire story, and Felippe's jury never heard that.
Speaker 1: What they did here at Phelippe's trial was that Ramos
Speaker 1: gave another version of that statement implicating Phelippe. The only
Speaker 1: two differences in that statement we're one, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: he switched the names. So he gave the exact same statement,
Speaker 1: but he said, oh, was actually Felippe Rodriguez who brought
Speaker 1: the car back to me that morning and said all
Speaker 1: these terrible things, not Richie Perga. Okay, So to believe
Speaker 1: he's telling the truth, you have to believe he implicated
Speaker 1: one innocent man to protect another man. Felippea Rodriguez not
Speaker 1: exactly the most reliable witness in the world. In addition,
Speaker 1: another thing that always jumped out at us, is that
Speaker 1: Ramo said in his second statement that he cleaned the
Speaker 1: car himself. In his first statement, the false one implicating
Speaker 1: Richie Pereira, he said that his grandfather helped him clean
Speaker 1: the car, and suddenly, in the second statement, the grandfather disappears.
Speaker 1: Grandfather never testifies a trial, and to this day we
Speaker 1: have never seen a single piece of paper indicating whether
Speaker 1: the police ever talked to the grandfather. And you know, Jason,
Speaker 1: I probably don't need to connect the dots for your
Speaker 1: very crime savvy listeners are even the ones who aren't right. Like,
Speaker 1: the first thing you would do as a rookie cop
Speaker 1: if somebody says, oh, I cleaned blood off of a
Speaker 1: vehicle that was used in a grizzly murder and this
Speaker 1: person helped me, is you'd go find that person and
Speaker 1: interview them and see if they corroborate or contradict what
Speaker 1: this witness has just told you. And the fact that
Speaker 1: there is no record of them talking to the grandfather,
Speaker 1: along with the fact that we now now Ramos made
Speaker 1: it all up, leads me to the conclusion that the
Speaker 1: police absolutely talked to him, and that he told them
Speaker 1: my grandson's full of you know what, I never went
Speaker 1: near a stinky, bloody car or also what it called
Speaker 1: the cops. So they took that detail out of the
Speaker 1: second statement, but everything else he subbed one name for another,
Speaker 1: and in the second statement he subbed in an innocent
Speaker 1: man who did twenty seven years in prison for a
Speaker 1: crime commit felipe. Had you even heard about it? When
Speaker 1: they get to me, that was the first I heard it,
Speaker 1: and I was shocked this out. So they put Phelipe
Speaker 1: in a live lineup, and they brought in several of
Speaker 1: the people from the bar, and none of them identified
Speaker 1: Phelipe except for the one guy who had admitted that
Speaker 1: he was drunk as a skunk that night, And you
Speaker 1: would have to be drunk as a skunk to pix
Speaker 1: up a guy who's described as Italian five eight with
Speaker 1: reddish brown hair and chunky too with a guy who's
Speaker 1: slender eleven, jet black hair and a mustache. But with
Speaker 1: Ramos's statement and Thompson's identification that they felt was enough
Speaker 1: to indicte Phelipe for murder, you know, I was truly
Speaker 1: truly baffled of y. Phelippe also passed a polygraph denying
Speaker 1: his involvement and was released on bail pre trial, which
Speaker 1: again gives me some indication that they didn't think he
Speaker 1: was that dangerous or they wouldn't have sent it back
Speaker 1: to the neighborhood. And then there was the issue with
Speaker 1: the trial itself. Right, So, originally Philippe was represented by
Speaker 1: Kenneth Litwack, but then replaced by an attorney named Jennifer Maalo.
Speaker 1: As we later found out, she was defending Phelipe with
Speaker 1: one hand time behind her back because there was a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence of his innocence that she never got.
Speaker 1: Some of the best lawyers in the world will lose
Speaker 1: trials when the prosecution doesn't play fair and the police
Speaker 1: don't play fair and they don't get all the evidence
Speaker 1: that they're entitled to get. And that was exactly the
Speaker 1: situation that was happening here in April. Your trial was
Speaker 1: held in the Queen's County Supreme Court, and I know
Speaker 1: that Ramos repeated his false narrative about lending his car
Speaker 1: to Phelippe, and he said that he had delaid reporting
Speaker 1: the crime and initially shifted the blame to Pieric because
Speaker 1: Phelippe was quote like a brother to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole thing stinks. As you know, many jurors, when
Speaker 1: they show up for jury duty, assume that the police
Speaker 1: have it right, that the person who's charged with the
Speaker 1: crime wouldn't be sitting there if they weren't guilty, and
Speaker 1: despite the legal burden of innocent until proven guilty, in
Speaker 1: reality it's often just the opposite, where jurors assumed the
Speaker 1: person is guilty, and if there's any evidence to support
Speaker 1: that conclusion, they often latch onto that evidence. And so
Speaker 1: I can see a world where a man who represents
Speaker 1: himself to be a close friend of Phelippe's, claims to
Speaker 1: be like a rather to him, comes in and says
Speaker 1: I didn't want to turn him in, but I had
Speaker 1: to because it was the right thing to do. Never
Speaker 1: mind that he implicated another admittedly innocent person in between
Speaker 1: might give them what they need, or they might have
Speaker 1: been swayed by just the horrible glory nature of the
Speaker 1: crime and not want to let it go unsolved. So
Speaker 1: the prosecution calls these two witnesses that claimed to have
Speaker 1: seen the writing on Felippe's hands in the past. This
Speaker 1: so this also seems just so dicey. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a sign of how thin the case was that they're
Speaker 1: relying on things like a witness twenty months later who
Speaker 1: says she thought she saw something written on Felippe's hands
Speaker 1: that happens to match something that another drunkenness said ten
Speaker 1: months after the crime that he thought he saw written
Speaker 1: on Phelippe's hand. And that's really emblematic of just how
Speaker 1: weak a case this was. But um and the other
Speaker 1: key piece of it was that the police witnesses testified
Speaker 1: really to back up the whole theory about the white car.
Speaker 1: You know, the prosecution was allowed to walk detectives by
Speaker 1: cell and Sullivan through the investigation. Oh and also they
Speaker 1: had the bartender who would initially not pickedly be out
Speaker 1: of a lineup, came into court and said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the guy between the white car. Romis a testimony
Speaker 1: some of the other incredibly shaky ideas and some dubious
Speaker 1: testimony about writing and things Philippe elegedly said. And that
Speaker 1: was enough to send this man away for what could
Speaker 1: have been the rest of his life. Phelippe was convicted
Speaker 1: of second degree murder and since the twenty five years
Speaker 1: to life in prison. When they said that they had
Speaker 1: found me guilty of murder in the second degree. My
Speaker 1: niece buckled. Man, I m put both of my hands
Speaker 1: on the table, and I just that was a rough date. Man.
Speaker 1: It was at that time I was married to Loida Castagnero,
Speaker 1: and all I heard was her screens. It was like
Speaker 1: a screen when somebody dies. And then the judge said,
Speaker 1: you remanded, and he told the alto to take meet
Speaker 1: cross and that's what the whole time may began. This
Speaker 1: episode is brought to you by Stand Together. Stand Together
Speaker 1: is a philanthropic community dedicated to helping people improve their lives.
Speaker 1: For more than twenty years, Stand Together and its partners
Speaker 1: have been on the front lines of criminal justice reform.
Speaker 1: By empowering people to take action, supporting nonprofits, and working
Speaker 1: with businesses, Stand Together tackles the root causes of problems
Speaker 1: in our communities and empowers those closest to the problems
Speaker 1: to drive solutions. Solutions like reducing unjust prison sentences through
Speaker 1: the First Step Act, empowering community based programs that help
Speaker 1: people re enter society, and now working to bridge divides
Speaker 1: in our communities. To learn how you may get involved,
Speaker 1: visit stand together dot org. Slash conviction. I was twenty
Speaker 1: three four. One of the first maximum security persons that
Speaker 1: I arrived at was Great Metals Correctional Facility better known
Speaker 1: as Gladiator School or Calm Stock. There I seen the violence,
Speaker 1: almo sexuality, the drugs, the gangs, and I said, how
Speaker 1: can I pull myself out of this dungeon safely and
Speaker 1: returned to my son. So the first few months were crucial.
Speaker 1: I prayed a lot, I cried a lot. That was
Speaker 1: nice when you know, I put myself to sleep crying
Speaker 1: thinking about my son and you know who was being
Speaker 1: there for him. I was angry, of course, I was angry.
Speaker 1: I was angry at the system. I was angry that
Speaker 1: I was thrown in prison for twenty five to life
Speaker 1: for something that I haven't done. And I was completely
Speaker 1: confused on how I was going to solve this mystery.
Speaker 1: But quickly I understood that in order for me to
Speaker 1: think clearly, in order for me to see things for
Speaker 1: what they were, I needed to forgive everybody. I needed
Speaker 1: to take all hatred, I needed to take all resentment,
Speaker 1: and I needed to get that out of my system
Speaker 1: so that I won't get more hurt than what I
Speaker 1: was already, because you know, most people don't understand hatred, resentiment.
Speaker 1: All that does. It hurts you, It doesn't hurt the
Speaker 1: person you're angry at, because the person you're angry at
Speaker 1: is actually in the house, sleeping or having fun with
Speaker 1: their family while you are doing in all this madness.
Speaker 1: So very early in my incarceration, I got rid of
Speaker 1: all that, and I devoted myself to giving thanks to
Speaker 1: God for me being healthy and alive and ask him
Speaker 1: to protect my son. And I started learning and reading
Speaker 1: every book I get my hands on. And it was
Speaker 1: a hell of a quest for sure. I can't picture
Speaker 1: you in this gladiator school, but you turned it into
Speaker 1: a positivity. But then there was still so much more
Speaker 1: to come, right, and we're gonna go quickly through the proceedings.
Speaker 1: In the early nineties, Philippe got appointed some terrific lawyers
Speaker 1: from the Legal Aid Society for his initial round of
Speaker 1: appeals right after his conviction. Right, and this is Martin Lucente,
Speaker 1: of course, of the Legal Aid Society. We're talking about
Speaker 1: a very very talented lawyer, and they very quickly through
Speaker 1: some catching a reference to it in another report, discovered
Speaker 1: that this tape of the lead witness against Philippe. I
Speaker 1: have your Ramos existed, was in the state's possession and
Speaker 1: had never been turned over. So they got a copy
Speaker 1: of the tape in which Ramos admits to making up
Speaker 1: the whole story about the car and the bloodstains and
Speaker 1: his car having into the battery, and they go to
Speaker 1: a hearing. And as we've seen so many times times,
Speaker 1: when you go toal hearing with the claim that the
Speaker 1: prosecution withheld evidence you're supposed to have, it's a very
Speaker 1: hard claim to win because the prosecutor will often come
Speaker 1: in and say, well, I turned it over, I handed
Speaker 1: it to the defense layer. I gave it to her.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what he said here. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, the judge's decision denying Phelippe a
Speaker 1: new trial didn't say this wasn't significant evidence. He never says, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this wouldn't have made a difference anyway, it was so
Speaker 1: obvious how important it is. He says, I find that
Speaker 1: there's not enough proof or evidence that it wasn't disclosed.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to call the prosecutor a liar. So
Speaker 1: essentially he's saying that maybe Phelippe's trial or missed it.
Speaker 1: But you know, she was cross examining Ramo's pretty hard.
Speaker 1: It's something that would have been almost impossible to miss
Speaker 1: if she'd had this kind of ammo to cross examine
Speaker 1: him further about making it up. So he lost that round,
Speaker 1: but it was still more evidence that, by the time
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project took the case was on record, further
Speaker 1: undermining this already incredible, way tenuous conviction. So none of
Speaker 1: these initial emotions or appeals led to the result that
Speaker 1: they should have, which is of course for Philippa to
Speaker 1: come home. And then it comes to two thousand one,
Speaker 1: when Philippe you wrote to the Innocence Project, they sent
Speaker 1: me a letter. They said, look, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of requests and right now, you know, we only have
Speaker 1: a certain amount of staff, so we will take a
Speaker 1: look at it. We'll let you know. And but then
Speaker 1: I was transferred to Sullivan, and the Sullivan I met
Speaker 1: Father Bona, who became my mentor. I really got immerged
Speaker 1: into the Calcolic religion and and I started serving. They
Speaker 1: made population. It became chaplain's aide, and the Chaplain Kirk,
Speaker 1: the eucharistic minister. I was in charge of the entire mass,
Speaker 1: and I was also in charge of the prayer nice
Speaker 1: the Bible studies. You know, we started a formation class
Speaker 1: that allow people to become secular Franciscans, which I am today.
Speaker 1: And I forgot about the instance project. I just you know,
Speaker 1: I left it up to God. And and then I
Speaker 1: started working with a sir killer. His name is author
Speaker 1: John show Cross. He was a Stanic worshiper and everybody
Speaker 1: hated him in the prison. Actually, one day I came
Speaker 1: from formation class on a Sunday after Mass, and I
Speaker 1: was sitting at my table with two of the chairs empty,
Speaker 1: and Mr shaw Cross, when he rest in peace, was
Speaker 1: sitting on the floor because nobody wanted them on their tables.
Speaker 1: And I felt so hypocritical. I felt like, here I
Speaker 1: am teaching Bible study and holding mass, and and I
Speaker 1: have a guy that's sitting on the stairs eating its
Speaker 1: food because people think that they are better than him.
Speaker 1: I said, who am I to judge this guy? Or
Speaker 1: what saying do I have? And saying that this guy
Speaker 1: is indeed mobile not redeemable, that's not all to me,
Speaker 1: that's not all to any human being deserved. That's up
Speaker 1: to God. Whatever we want to call God. So I
Speaker 1: got up from my table and I went up to
Speaker 1: short Cross and I said, come on, man, sit on
Speaker 1: the table. So he came up and side on the table.
Speaker 1: I said, as long as I'm in this prison, you
Speaker 1: sit on this table with me, and whoever has a
Speaker 1: problem with it, I'll take care of it. He said,
Speaker 1: why why are you doing that? I said, everybody this
Speaker 1: searched a little bit of humanity. I'm not here to
Speaker 1: deprive you of that. I've been deprived of that myself,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to deprive you of that. And
Speaker 1: from that day he started asking me questions about religion
Speaker 1: and what I believe and why I didn't believe. And
Speaker 1: one day he came out and he said, um, what
Speaker 1: would you do if I wanted to go to church?
Speaker 1: You think they allowed me in church? I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. Why don't you come Sunday to
Speaker 1: Mass with me? If you don't like it, you don't
Speaker 1: never have to come again, and nobody's gonna judge you
Speaker 1: or whatever. And he said, are you sure? People, I said, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm sure God would love to have you in his house.
Speaker 1: And he said okay. That day was the greatest day
Speaker 1: from me. I got blessed by God for me. It
Speaker 1: was the best letter I've ever received. Nina Morrison was
Speaker 1: assigned to my case. From there, Nina became my guardian Andrew,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's ever gonna be a woman more
Speaker 1: important to me aside from my mother than Nina Morrison.
Speaker 1: And I'm married and I love Karen, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you and I told Karen a hundred times and
Speaker 1: you can ask, and she could tell you. Eve. Nina
Speaker 1: called me from China today and told me that she
Speaker 1: needed me over there. Karen will stay here and I
Speaker 1: go to China, because that's just the way it's gonna be.
Speaker 1: This is where the Innocence Project stands with me. Nina
Speaker 1: takes a case and the physical evidence had been destroyed.
Speaker 1: There was almost nothing left to go on. Philippe's case
Speaker 1: for a few years in our office was literally hanging
Speaker 1: by some hairs because the hairs were among the few
Speaker 1: things we haven't found yet. We actually managed, with the
Speaker 1: help of a pretty diligent newer prosecutor in the years
Speaker 1: office or rosen Bomb, tracked down some of the hairs,
Speaker 1: and then Hurricane Sandy hit and they lost. The enemy
Speaker 1: had to wait another eighteen months, and after that testing
Speaker 1: and some testings we found on some biological material left
Speaker 1: over from the car yielded no DNA that was of
Speaker 1: any use to the investigation. The hairs were all from
Speaker 1: the victim herself. The cuttings from the car didn't yield
Speaker 1: a thing, no nothing. We were kind of stuck. You know,
Speaker 1: it would have been at that point not an illogical
Speaker 1: thing for someone in Nina's position to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: like we would love to help you, but we just
Speaker 1: don't have what we need. But that's not how this
Speaker 1: rolled out. I was to joke in the office that
Speaker 1: we could have a TV show, you know, like the
Speaker 1: old show Everybody Loves Raymond called Everybody Loves Phelipe, because
Speaker 1: if I so much as suggested that we might close
Speaker 1: his case, I was going to have five law students
Speaker 1: in my office telling me I was insane or worse.
Speaker 1: So we just kind of kept it open. So I
Speaker 1: brought in my old law school classmate, Zach Margatie's anama
Speaker 1: to do some work with me on the case and
Speaker 1: lighten the load so I could justify keeping full this
Speaker 1: file up in And then in the Hall of Seen
Speaker 1: we started to think we might be able to get
Speaker 1: Flip out of prison another way, not a prison break,
Speaker 1: although I think that had this failed, that probably would
Speaker 1: have been Nina and a helicopter. I have no problems
Speaker 1: prison breaks. I'm glad it didn't come to that. So
Speaker 1: the next and only probably remaining option was couberatorial clemency.
Speaker 1: So we actually got a call in our office, the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project, from one of the lawyers in Governor Cuomo's
Speaker 1: office in New York saying that they were actively soliciting
Speaker 1: clemency applications from people who had I think what they
Speaker 1: called exemplary prison work, So people who had done very
Speaker 1: well inside and had proven that they would be no
Speaker 1: threat to anyone on the outside. And of course it
Speaker 1: helps if you have a lot of evidence that they're innocent,
Speaker 1: and you know, many of our innocent clients, they're they're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a healthscape, nightmare, get into some fights,
Speaker 1: get into drugs, get into all kinds of things just
Speaker 1: to survive. And you know who among us can judge
Speaker 1: who has never spent a night in one of those places.
Speaker 1: But Philippe and a few of our other clients had
Speaker 1: managed to have really truly extraordinary records inside of community service, peacefulness,
Speaker 1: the respect and trust of the staff and the CEOs,
Speaker 1: and so it was pretty obvious that Philippe would be
Speaker 1: one of the people who we would want to put forward.
Speaker 1: But when I went to go talk to Philippe about it,
Speaker 1: he said, well, it's not an exoneration. And Philippe, before
Speaker 1: you get into that, as the man of principle that
Speaker 1: you are, you had refused to go in front of
Speaker 1: the parole board because of the fact that they were
Speaker 1: expecting or even insisting that you were going to admit
Speaker 1: guilt and remorse a crime you didn't commit. So you
Speaker 1: had made a conscious decision that you would rather stay
Speaker 1: in prison than tell a lie and admit to something
Speaker 1: you didn't do. When they told me that I was
Speaker 1: for parole, I told the depth of security at the time,
Speaker 1: Peter Early. He came to see me and said, you listen,
Speaker 1: you offer parole. You know I'm gonna. I want to
Speaker 1: give you a letter of commendation so that you could
Speaker 1: give parole. I said, I don't want a letter. With
Speaker 1: all due respect, I appreciate your intentions, but I'm not
Speaker 1: appearing before parole. I don't want to go out that way.
Speaker 1: I'm not negotiating my innocence. I said, I am willing
Speaker 1: to die in prison if they're not going to recognize
Speaker 1: that I'm an innocent man. And then came Nina surely thereafter,
Speaker 1: with this great idea of a partner or a commentation
Speaker 1: from the governor. I said, no, I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: interested in that. I that's not an exameration. She said,
Speaker 1: hold on, I got some nice tickets to the Yankees,
Speaker 1: great box seats. When you want to go to a game,
Speaker 1: we Filippino and you know, man, she saw that ship
Speaker 1: to me immediately though, Dude, she said, well, we're still
Speaker 1: fine for your exageration, and we're gonna we're gonna cut
Speaker 1: your name, but at least we'll get you out of here.
Speaker 1: So I said, all right, try it. So it was
Speaker 1: almost by Christmas the depth of security came Tepp early
Speaker 1: he would come like with buddies and and I was
Speaker 1: on the ladder painting, and the death of security came,
Speaker 1: and he said, a rod get down from the ladder.
Speaker 1: So the way he said it, I thought I was
Speaker 1: in trouble. I said, in what did I do? So
Speaker 1: I getting answer? What's up? That? He said? Get in
Speaker 1: my truck. I said, what happened? What did I do?
Speaker 1: He said, you didn't do nothing. Get in the truck.
Speaker 1: So I got in the truck. You can't get in
Speaker 1: the depth struck, dude, no inmate guests you no depth truck.
Speaker 1: So I knew something was was amiss when a depth
Speaker 1: of security tell you to get on his struck and
Speaker 1: then take you outside of the jail to his office.
Speaker 1: So once I've seen that, I was going outside the gate,
Speaker 1: I said, you're death. He said, relaxed, everything is good.
Speaker 1: So we went to his office and there it is
Speaker 1: the Superintendent, the dep of Administration, dep of Programs, tepperarily
Speaker 1: and the Lieutenant. So he says, sit on my chair man.
Speaker 1: I say, I mean I can tell the bricks. I
Speaker 1: supposed up that. He said, sit on my chair. Go ahead.
Speaker 1: So I sat on the depth chair and the Superintendent said,
Speaker 1: in all the years that I've been in corrections, I
Speaker 1: never had the privilege to do this. The governor of
Speaker 1: the state, under your constitu grant you a commutation. Dep said, um,
Speaker 1: my phone is your phone. You could do whatever you
Speaker 1: want with my phone. Go ahead and die whatever you
Speaker 1: want to die. This is your phone. Is your office
Speaker 1: for today. The first phone call I made my son.
Speaker 1: I called my son and I don't flip it, I said,
Speaker 1: R I said, he's overdue. I said, uh, coming home.
Speaker 1: I called Nina, and you already knew. She's a bump.
Speaker 1: She didn't let me know, but she already knew. And
Speaker 1: Zack knew too. And he's another bomb. He didn't tell
Speaker 1: me either, So it was like a big bomb dropped
Speaker 1: on me. You know. I didn't think a commentation will
Speaker 1: feel the way that felt. But to get out and
Speaker 1: be able to hold my son and and see the
Speaker 1: city after almost three decades, see it and walk free
Speaker 1: and smell the air, and get in the car and
Speaker 1: and do the things that we so much take for granted.
Speaker 1: It was amazing to be restarted back to some extent
Speaker 1: of humanity, to feel that sense of belonging, to sense
Speaker 1: that freedom that only comes from you doing what you
Speaker 1: want when you want to do it. Most people don't
Speaker 1: know what it feels like because they never lost their freedom.
Speaker 1: Freedom is a gift. It is the greatest gift any
Speaker 1: human being ever has. I am in eternal debt to
Speaker 1: the entire staff of the INS Project. Governor Cuomo also
Speaker 1: deserves some gratitude from me, and the next step was
Speaker 1: even better. But this was a crucial moment in my
Speaker 1: life after spending twenty six years and nine months in prison,
Speaker 1: So the best was yet to come. And I'll never
Speaker 1: forget your sort of homecoming lunch in New York City.
Speaker 1: I was sort of very blessed to be there for
Speaker 1: your first free hug with your son. I had some
Speaker 1: amazing photographs. I think I was a designated photographer for
Speaker 1: that moment, and it was just the type of moment
Speaker 1: that I think we live for all of us who
Speaker 1: work in this field. And of course then there's still
Speaker 1: more good news. On a cold day in Queens, New York,
Speaker 1: we witnessed the formal exoneration three years to the day
Speaker 1: after he got his clemency. December is Philippe's lucky day,
Speaker 1: So watch out powerball people, because if he plays the
Speaker 1: lottery on that day, things his way exactly. And I
Speaker 1: didn't plan it that way. It just happened, and it
Speaker 1: was pretty much the last official act from the outgoing
Speaker 1: administration of Richard Brown. Mr Brown died in office about
Speaker 1: six months before Philip they was exonerated, but one of
Speaker 1: his top aids. Bob Masters agreed. After Philip they was
Speaker 1: granted clemency. Bob Masters, who was one of the most
Speaker 1: senior officials in a very large Day's office, agreed to
Speaker 1: my pleading to have somebody with authority take a closer
Speaker 1: look at the case. And I spent about close to
Speaker 1: the better part of those three years working with him
Speaker 1: to dig up every last bit of paper that they
Speaker 1: could find and help them understand on the significance of
Speaker 1: what they saw by explaining and really opening up our
Speaker 1: files for the whole case to them. And on December
Speaker 1: twenty three I finally got a call from Bob Masters
Speaker 1: that he agreed that there was a lot of evidence
Speaker 1: in that Day's file and then the police file that
Speaker 1: none of us had ever seen the Philippe based trial
Speaker 1: lawyers certainly never had, and that the jury never had.
Speaker 1: That convinced him that philip Based right to a fair
Speaker 1: trial had been egregiously violated. Okay, so they found a
Speaker 1: statement from Ramos taken by a Long Island Railroad detective
Speaker 1: with Ramo's claiming that Philippe was with a black man
Speaker 1: when he allegedly returned the car. So that's a totally
Speaker 1: different story. There and then, in front of Robert Masters,
Speaker 1: Ramos recanted his identification of Phelipe, blaming pressure from police
Speaker 1: at the time. I mean, there was also a statement
Speaker 1: from a bar patron named William Perry that a friendly
Speaker 1: stated that the couple had arrived in the black Monty car,
Speaker 1: which undermined the entire theory about the white car seen
Speaker 1: by Soloni. And if that wasn't enough, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest red flags of all was that Detective by Zell
Speaker 1: had gained permission to arrest Phelippe. Get this eight days
Speaker 1: before Ramos had changed his story from Pereira to Phelipe.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's unsucking believable, and it left the d
Speaker 1: a's office no choice. Finally, Bob Masters agreed, and he
Speaker 1: had convinced the district Attorney that throwing out fully based
Speaker 1: conviction and exonerating him was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: And I was able to give fully by pretty good
Speaker 1: Christmas presents. I called him on Christmas Eve and said,
Speaker 1: can you come to the office. And I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: him why I wanted him to come in, because he'd
Speaker 1: want to know what was going on, and so what
Speaker 1: do I don't you look? I think I said, I
Speaker 1: need you to look at some papers. You need to
Speaker 1: start scions of papers. Come look at some papers. Every
Speaker 1: typical lawyer excuse. And he was working at a hotel
Speaker 1: and town and on the way home he stopped off.
Speaker 1: And when I got there, she's all smiley and you know,
Speaker 1: being you know, you know how you doing? What's up?
Speaker 1: And I said, was a documents? Because the documents? She said, relax.
Speaker 1: You know Santa Claus brought you a gift. And I
Speaker 1: said what gift? She said, what You finally got what
Speaker 1: you wanted. And I looked at Nina say like, nah,
Speaker 1: I don't drive this again. And she said, well, on decembertery,
Speaker 1: you will be exagerated. I made my whole world turned
Speaker 1: upside down, dude, and my then eighteen years of the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project, this was the first client that I'd ever
Speaker 1: gotten to tell in person that he was getting exonerated.
Speaker 1: I done a lot of joyful phone calls, but the
Speaker 1: first time, because he was a New Yorker and he
Speaker 1: was already free and body if not a name, that
Speaker 1: I got to actually tell someone in my office and
Speaker 1: be there with him when he got to call all
Speaker 1: his family members and tell them the good news. So
Speaker 1: that was pretty special. So now we get to the
Speaker 1: part of the show that everyone especially looks forward to,
Speaker 1: and that part of the show is called closing arguments,
Speaker 1: and this is where, first of all, I thank each
Speaker 1: of you. Um Nina Morrison, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being on the show again. Thanks Jason, great to be back.
Speaker 1: And Felipe Rodriguez, thanks again for being here and sharing
Speaker 1: your story with us. Thank you very much. And now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna turn my mic off, kick back
Speaker 1: in my chair, closed my eyes and leave the mic on. Nina,
Speaker 1: why don't you go first, and then when you're done,
Speaker 1: just hand the mike off to Felipe, and then Felipe
Speaker 1: you do the mic drop. It's hard to know what
Speaker 1: to say to some up or make meaning out of
Speaker 1: what Felipe went through. We do know a few things.
Speaker 1: Why is that he never should have been arrested or
Speaker 1: charged in the first place, That there was so much
Speaker 1: evidence even at the time that made very clear that
Speaker 1: they had the wrong man. Another is that if police
Speaker 1: and prosecutors had turned over still more evidence that no
Speaker 1: one on the defense team in Phelippe himself didn't know
Speaker 1: was there, he never would have been convicted. Fortunately, New
Speaker 1: York has since changed its laws on what's called pre
Speaker 1: trial discovery, meaning the universe of documents that you get
Speaker 1: not but as a prosecutor says, well, I think this
Speaker 1: is helpful to you, so I'm going to provide it,
Speaker 1: and I'm legally obligated to provide it. But all of
Speaker 1: the documents collected in connection with an investigation, police reports
Speaker 1: and notes now need to be turned over as a
Speaker 1: matter of right. So had these laws been in place
Speaker 1: at the time Phelipe was charged, I like to think
Speaker 1: that he never would have been convicted. So we are
Speaker 1: grateful to the legislature and to the governor for enacting
Speaker 1: its discovery reform, as we call it, into law, and
Speaker 1: for keeping the bill strong because it will prevent more
Speaker 1: Phelifa Rodrigous. It's from going to prison for crimes I
Speaker 1: didn't commit. So I came out of prison on January.
Speaker 1: A week and a half later, Nina Morrison got me
Speaker 1: to go and walk into the President of Locals six
Speaker 1: Total Trades Council Union, Mr Peter Ward. He was really
Speaker 1: taken aback by what I've been through, and he said, look,
Speaker 1: if nobody wants to hire you, I'll make the call myself.
Speaker 1: And I became a hotel worker and I just got
Speaker 1: laid off because of the COVID, But I was making
Speaker 1: good money healthcare. I got a great family and it.
Speaker 1: Nina is the one responsible for me marrying Karen Rodriguez.
Speaker 1: Nina has done so much for me. Nina is so
Speaker 1: intertwined in my home, in my life, in my future,
Speaker 1: in my past. It's amazing. I'm in a great position
Speaker 1: even though with this COVID. You know, I hear people
Speaker 1: saying that, oh, we feel like we're in jail. They
Speaker 1: don't even know what jeal is like. This is no
Speaker 1: way compared to jail. Trust me, I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: you something that people should be thanking COVID. COVID has
Speaker 1: given the people a chance to know their children, to
Speaker 1: know their wives, to know their mothers, to talk to
Speaker 1: share moments with them. So what I say to people
Speaker 1: is I took prison and I made something good out
Speaker 1: of it. Let's take COVID and make something good out
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, sometimes it's stressful, you know, overwhelming
Speaker 1: with kids, you know, because you're not used to it.
Speaker 1: But let's see the positive. I mean, prison is a
Speaker 1: dark place. I welcomed it. I used the tool that
Speaker 1: that was placed on my feet and I did something positive.
Speaker 1: We could do that during COVID. We we just gotta
Speaker 1: take it one day at a time, you know, and
Speaker 1: the rest should be history. Man, don't forget to give
Speaker 1: us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it
Speaker 1: really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence
Speaker 1: Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting
Speaker 1: this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrong
Speaker 1: for convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
Speaker 1: how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
Speaker 1: our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin wardas The music
Speaker 1: on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Speaker 1: Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one