Speaker 1: We first told you the story of ed Eduardo Dembrique
Speaker 1: and John Clenny in July twenty twenty two, and I
Speaker 1: was so excited to run into them both again at
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty three INNOCENTCE Network Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 1: That's an annual opportunity to gather with others in the
Speaker 1: innocence community axuneries, attorneys, advocate, social workers, and even a
Speaker 1: few fellow podcasters like me running around sticking mics in
Speaker 1: people's faces and jokes aside. I look forward to reuniting
Speaker 1: with everybody every year.
Speaker 2: We're going to hear.
Speaker 3: John and a.
Speaker 1: Dwardo's story again in a minute, but first, here's a
Speaker 1: bit of the conversation we had when we met up
Speaker 1: at this year's conference. I started off by asking John
Speaker 1: how life's been treating him in the free world.
Speaker 4: Life's been great, been living life, working, traveling, you know,
Speaker 4: eating good, spending time with my family, my friends, making
Speaker 4: up for miss time.
Speaker 3: For sure, it's been amazing.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And what about you at Duardo, What's what's life
Speaker 1: been like for you on the outside? And I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously you're doing good. You're here, you're representing people Gravitate
Speaker 1: towards you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I feel great, man, I feel so great.
Speaker 3: I feel grateful to be here, to be amongst all
Speaker 3: these brothers that have been through what we've been through,
Speaker 3: and they understand they're all at different stages of you know,
Speaker 3: their transition and reconnecting with their families, reconnecting with their lives.
Speaker 3: I'm grateful and really appreciative of the Peace and Justice
Speaker 3: Law Center, Fullerton, California, but taking me on as a
Speaker 3: legal apprentice. It's a four year program administered by the
Speaker 3: California Bar I'm on my way to become attorney. I'm
Speaker 3: so strong and passionate for juvenile rights. I'm really really
Speaker 3: excited and encouraged by the opportunities that I have in
Speaker 3: front of me and to speak my experience, to speak
Speaker 3: my truth, to speak my understanding of what I believe
Speaker 3: justice is for juveniles and their parents.
Speaker 1: Oh No, it's incredible though, because you went in at
Speaker 1: fifteen years old. Right at fifteen, you're just fairly a teenager.
Speaker 1: You're not a man, you're a child. And then to
Speaker 1: be put into that environment at that age, and now
Speaker 1: to come out on the other side and transform that
Speaker 1: pain into healing for other people who are strangers to you. Right.
Speaker 1: What an amazing full circle story that is.
Speaker 3: You know, it's the children and their families, and this
Speaker 3: is happening all across America. You got fourteen, fifteen, sixty
Speaker 3: to seventeen year old treated differently. Some are giving life
Speaker 3: said and some are put with the adults, you know,
Speaker 3: forced to fend for themselves. Their families are at home worried.
Speaker 3: You know, that family unit is destroyed by that child
Speaker 3: going into an adult prison. I mean, on all ends
Speaker 3: of the spectrum, it's not going to end well. And
Speaker 3: so I am passionate about fighting for these people. They
Speaker 3: have a right to be treated equally and fairly and educated.
Speaker 3: And now I'm in a position that I can do
Speaker 3: something about it, and I feel deep responsibility. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not the easiest thing, but I'm really excited about
Speaker 3: this next chapter. I really am.
Speaker 1: In the eighties and nineties, Los Angeles gang culture was
Speaker 1: much more nuanced than anyone outside of it bothered to know.
Speaker 1: For some, gangs meant socializing, while the criminal activity of
Speaker 1: others colored all affiliated with the same broad brush. Gangs
Speaker 1: were viewed as a problem that needed a swift and
Speaker 1: harsh solution, and it seems that simply connecting it defended
Speaker 1: to a gang was enough to get a conviction. While
Speaker 1: fifteen year old de Duardo Dombrica and eighteen year old
Speaker 1: John Clennie were affiliated with LAWNDEL thirteen for the girls,
Speaker 1: parties and camaraderie, three older LAWNDEL thirteen members, Santo Alvarez,
Speaker 1: Lester Momlor, and Chad Landrum were in IT for the
Speaker 1: drugs and violence. On June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: Antonio Alarcan, a rival gang member, was killed in a
Speaker 1: drive by shooting. A few days later, to escape unrelated charges,
Speaker 1: Santo Alvarez used his knowledge of that drive by to
Speaker 1: blame Duardo and John. A few weeks later, Alvarez, Monmore,
Speaker 1: and Landrum committed another murder, and the police were happy
Speaker 1: to pin Alvarez's role on a woman who knew the
Speaker 1: deceased rather than their star witness against Eduardo and John.
Speaker 1: With Alvarez's statement and a corrupt identification process that was
Speaker 1: immediately recanted and protested by the witness, the two boys
Speaker 1: were taken to trial. Chad Landrum was willing to confess
Speaker 1: to the drive bite, but his continued violence behind bars
Speaker 1: kept him unavailable. Despite both Alvarez and the witness's less
Speaker 1: than willing participation to trial, the prosecutor and the detectives
Speaker 1: were able to harp on at Duardo and John's gang
Speaker 1: affiliation in order to send them away for life without parole.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction today.
Speaker 1: We're covering a case. It gives us a peek into
Speaker 1: the gang world of Los Angeles in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: and the way in which the LAPD and the Prosecutor's
Speaker 1: office dealt with that issue. We have two men that
Speaker 1: were affected by those policies when they were just boys.
Speaker 1: There's a third wrongfully convicted person, Susan Mellen, from a
Speaker 1: related crime. She's not recording with us today, but their
Speaker 1: amazing lawyer is one of the founders of Innocence Matters.
Speaker 1: Deirdre O'Connor, Welcome to Wrongful Conviction. Thank you for having
Speaker 1: me and now our guests of honor, the two men themselves.
Speaker 1: You know I always say this, but it's true. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that you guys are here because of why you're here,
Speaker 1: but I'm really happy to have you on Wrongful Conviction today.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to introduce John Clenny. First, John, thank
Speaker 1: you for being here with us today on Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: And of course Ed Dombrique, thank you for joining.
Speaker 3: Us, Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So you two guys grew up together. Can you give
Speaker 1: us a little background there.
Speaker 4: I've known Ed since I was about maybe fifteen. We
Speaker 4: both grew up in Londale, California. Londeal's kind of typical
Speaker 4: middle class city in the South Bay. You know, it
Speaker 4: has its little areas that aren't so great, and it's
Speaker 4: some areas are decent.
Speaker 3: So it's about ten minutes fifteen minutes from the beach.
Speaker 2: I think it's a nice city. It's got a good
Speaker 2: high school.
Speaker 1: So growing up in Lawndale, there was a gang in
Speaker 1: your neighborhood called the Londale thirteen.
Speaker 3: Well, we grew up there and we were part of that.
Speaker 1: So you too grew up in the gang culture of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles in the eighties and nineties and really came
Speaker 1: of age in the nineties. And I think it's news
Speaker 1: to some people that the word gang and gang culture
Speaker 1: in general is a bit more nuanced than most of
Speaker 1: the country realized back then. You know, many of our
Speaker 1: listeners are old enough to remember seeing news reports of
Speaker 1: the violence associated with gangs, and that's pretty much all
Speaker 1: anyone outside of that culture knew about it at the time.
Speaker 1: Only negative connotations, of course, So society reacted to that
Speaker 1: by electing quote unquote tough on crime politicians who implemented
Speaker 1: these kinds of ham fisted policing tactics, which of course
Speaker 1: had very real effects, as you can both attest to
Speaker 1: locking people up for the sake of doing it, but
Speaker 1: not the right people, and in too many cases it's
Speaker 1: the wrong people, like in yours. But gang culture was
Speaker 1: not just criminality and violence, right, It was much much
Speaker 1: more nuanced than that. Would you say that's an accurate depiction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. Even in a single gang, it may
Speaker 4: be like, you know, some people are just families, some
Speaker 4: people are just friends. Of course you have a criminal
Speaker 4: element to it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone
Speaker 4: is involved in crime. The term gang is not a
Speaker 4: good one, but it's like when you're young and growing
Speaker 4: up and you experienced the friendship and the camaraderie, and
Speaker 4: I mean that's kind of where you end up at,
Speaker 4: especially if you're growing up like in a neighborhood, you
Speaker 4: know where gangs are there.
Speaker 3: You know, not everybody is on the same page. Not
Speaker 3: everybody gets along. We were having fun, you know, whether
Speaker 3: we're trying to get girls, trying to have a good time,
Speaker 3: that's what it was. But you definitely had other guys
Speaker 3: that their version of fun or you know, what they
Speaker 3: would do is drugs and violence.
Speaker 5: What I think is true for all gangs, right is
Speaker 5: that there are little subsets inside the gangs where people
Speaker 5: gravitate towards certain activities, you know, chasing girls, maybe scoring
Speaker 5: some weed, that kind of thing. And there was that
Speaker 5: kind of group, and then there were the people like Payaso,
Speaker 5: which is Santo Alvarez, or Ghost Chad Landrum or Wicked
Speaker 5: Lester Monlore that were really wanting to make a name
Speaker 5: for themselves. They were getting high all the time and
Speaker 5: doing some real vicious stuff. And they were the ones
Speaker 5: out there doing the drive bys and the kind of
Speaker 5: gratuitous violence that everybody associates gangs with.
Speaker 1: Did you get along with these guys?
Speaker 4: We know them. They're all significantly older than us. I
Speaker 4: knew Lester when I was growing up a little bit,
Speaker 4: like just as a as a younger kid, but he
Speaker 4: kind of went the druggy kind of violent route, and
Speaker 4: I just was there for kind of like the camaraderie
Speaker 4: and the friendships and the fun I saw Santos on
Speaker 4: my block a lot here and there, and my neighbor
Speaker 4: that lived in the backhouse. I guess he got his
Speaker 4: radio stolen, you know, out of his car in my driveway,
Speaker 4: you know, And I always pretty much suspected Santos as
Speaker 4: being the one that stole it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so so much for camaraderie. So this kind of
Speaker 1: accurately paints a picture of the divide that's at the
Speaker 1: crux of this story. And I mean by that the
Speaker 1: larger perception of gangs in the nineties, and then how
Speaker 1: the issue was dealt with, like I said, in a
Speaker 1: ham fisted kind of way, by detectives like the ones
Speaker 1: in this case. There was Sergeant Riggs, but also Marcella
Speaker 1: Win in a related case Deirdre. Have either of them
Speaker 1: had any other wrongful convictions that they've been tied to.
Speaker 5: Win certainly does. She's a serial offender. There's at least
Speaker 5: five known people ob Anthony and Reggie Cole case. They
Speaker 5: were code defendants. It was Wynn's first murder case at
Speaker 5: South Bay Homicide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we covered that case here on Raefel Conviction and
Speaker 1: we'll have it linked in the bio.
Speaker 5: Then she had these two guys, Ed and John. Now
Speaker 5: she had a tangential role in that, but had she
Speaker 5: done the right thing, these guys would not have been
Speaker 5: in custody. She also had the Susan Mellon case where
Speaker 5: she relied on a non reliable person, but obviously unreliable,
Speaker 5: there was no question about it. And then she had
Speaker 5: another case, the Michelle Pulo's case, she relied on the
Speaker 5: same unreliable witness that she used against Susan Mellon.
Speaker 1: That is really disgusting tactic that we see over and
Speaker 1: over again revisiting and reusing the same useful liars, like
Speaker 1: Mark Tavins did in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. And
Speaker 1: this kid Joey Morales who was a witness in six
Speaker 1: different murders and each time he was out getting milk
Speaker 1: for his mom, and Danny Rincon who we interviewed on
Speaker 1: this podcast, which is still in prison three decades later
Speaker 1: because of this fake witness, and of course Mark Tevans,
Speaker 1: it looks like win was cut from the same cloth.
Speaker 5: She was a terrible detective and didn't follow the rules
Speaker 5: at all.
Speaker 1: Now, as far as Sergeant Riggs is concerned, you're going
Speaker 1: to see what he does in this case in terms
Speaker 1: of the identification process, and one can only surmise that
Speaker 1: if he was so comfortable running rough shot over a
Speaker 1: witness who was protesting at the identification in the courtroom
Speaker 1: and in post conviction, yeah, while at the identification, he's
Speaker 1: literally going, I can't see that, bar I can't do
Speaker 1: this identification for you because I can't see. So this
Speaker 1: guy tried to stand up and do the right thing
Speaker 1: and was overruled and overridden and bullied.
Speaker 2: By these cops.
Speaker 1: So it's fair to say that this is something that
Speaker 1: this particular officer had done before.
Speaker 5: The one thing I would say, Jason, in these gang cases,
Speaker 5: you know, all bets are off with these detectives. They
Speaker 5: can do whatever they want because they know that nobody
Speaker 5: has any sympathy. All they have to do is say
Speaker 5: the word gang member, and the prosecutors, the jurors, judges,
Speaker 5: everybody rallies around a conviction. So the rules are completely
Speaker 5: different in a gang case, and that's why you see
Speaker 5: detectives violate the rules as much as they do because
Speaker 5: they can.
Speaker 1: Get away with it, right, They violate the rules while
Speaker 1: lumping every gang member in under the umbrella of quote
Speaker 1: violent gang member, regardless of what subset of the gang
Speaker 1: that individual identified with. And what happened in this case,
Speaker 1: as happens unfortunately all over the country tragically, is that
Speaker 1: you have a violent character like Santo Alvarez who conveniently
Speaker 1: trades false information for his own freedom, and then he
Speaker 1: and they remain free, I mean, other people like him
Speaker 1: to commit more acts of violence while getting innocent folks
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted, and according to the false information that Alvarez
Speaker 1: eventually gave the police. This story began to unfold on
Speaker 1: the day before the incident in question, June twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, when a few kids from around the
Speaker 1: Lowndeal thirteen neighborhood who were not in any way affiliated,
Speaker 1: were the victims of a drive by. This was allegedly
Speaker 1: perpetrated by members of the Lil Watts game. Now, none
Speaker 1: of this was ever investigated or substantiated, but this story
Speaker 1: from Santo Alvarez was used as the alleged motive for
Speaker 1: a retaliatory drive by the following night. But did either
Speaker 1: of you guys even know the kids who were shot
Speaker 1: or shot at the night before, and particularly did you
Speaker 1: know nineteen year old Luis Madrano.
Speaker 4: I didn't know the guy. Those guys were not associates
Speaker 4: of Londo. They were not friends of Londo that I
Speaker 4: know of. But somehow I guess to maybe create a
Speaker 4: motive for our case, they got brought into that as
Speaker 4: being a good way to say, oh, yeah, these guys
Speaker 4: are retaliating for this.
Speaker 1: And what happened the following night, June twenty thirty ninety
Speaker 1: seen was that a member of the Little Watts Gang,
Speaker 1: twenty five year old Antonio Alercon, was at an autobody
Speaker 1: shop and while outside using the payphone next door, out
Speaker 1: of sight of those in the autobody shop, he was
Speaker 1: killed by a drive by shooter. Dieu, what else can
Speaker 1: you tell us?
Speaker 5: Allar Khan had a truck that was being worked on
Speaker 5: over a period of time at the shop, and the
Speaker 5: shop owner, Daniel Curio, was at the shop that night
Speaker 5: with a couple of other people in the shop and
Speaker 5: Aller Khan happened to stop by and while he was there,
Speaker 5: I think he got a page and he wanted to
Speaker 5: use the phone to call this woman who turned out
Speaker 5: to be his mistress. So he was offered to use
Speaker 5: the inside phone, but he declined and decided to go
Speaker 5: outside because he wanted privacy. So he went out of
Speaker 5: the shop. There's an adjacent building and there's a payphone
Speaker 5: outside of that, and he went to the payphone to
Speaker 5: speak with his mistress, and then suddenly a car pulled up.
Speaker 5: Somebody got out of the car and just unloaded multiple shots,
Speaker 5: and he was killed, really, probably before he had any
Speaker 5: chance to react in any way. And then the shooter
Speaker 5: got back in the car and the car drove off,
Speaker 5: and as it drove off, it passed the opening of
Speaker 5: the body shop garage door. So basically there's the storefront
Speaker 5: on the corner. Adjacent to it is the body shop,
Speaker 5: but the body shop sits in from the sidewalk so
Speaker 5: that there's parking in front of it. So when you're
Speaker 5: inside the body shop with the door open and looking out,
Speaker 5: you would not have a direct line to the phone
Speaker 5: booth because the wall of the building would be blocking it.
Speaker 5: But once the car moved forward, they would be able
Speaker 5: to see the car.
Speaker 1: Pass by right, so no one actually got a good
Speaker 1: look at the shooter, including the shop owner who told
Speaker 1: detectives that, but detectives cajoled him anyway into making an
Speaker 1: id that he has never supported. Curiel even demonstrated later
Speaker 1: at trial that he can't reliably see twenty feet in
Speaker 1: front of him. Can you talk a bit about his
Speaker 1: vantage point.
Speaker 5: Curio's working on a car with his back to the street.
Speaker 5: He hears the sound of the gunshots going off, but
Speaker 5: he thought it was fireworks, and because of the echoing effect,
Speaker 5: he thought it was coming from the back. So he
Speaker 5: goes to the back and he looks out to see
Speaker 5: what's going on back there, and that's when he realizes
Speaker 5: it's coming from the front. And by then the car
Speaker 5: is moving past the shop, so he would have been
Speaker 5: I think more than twenty feet away from the car
Speaker 5: at the time that he first observed it.
Speaker 1: So what he and others did see was that this
Speaker 1: was a black or dark green colored sedan and that
Speaker 1: the front passenger had yelled some kind of gang epithet
Speaker 1: at Alarkhan as they drove off. So this shooting happened
Speaker 1: around eleven pm on June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: and from looking into this case, I realized that this
Speaker 1: state has some other significance and the audience will remember
Speaker 1: this like I do. Because earlier that same night, Mike
Speaker 1: Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear off during a heavyweight championship fight.
Speaker 1: So people remember that night very, very clearly. In fact,
Speaker 1: you guys were friends. Ed was fifteen, John was eighteen,
Speaker 1: and you were hanging out to watch the fight together.
Speaker 3: Is that right, Yes, sir. Yeah, on the day of
Speaker 3: he had you know, barbecue, invited me.
Speaker 4: It was actually a great night. You know, we'd never
Speaker 4: seen something like that before, right, It was pretty memorable.
Speaker 4: There was multiple people there, you know, cooking, eating, drinking it.
Speaker 4: It was a good night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was insane. I remember calling my friends and
Speaker 1: family just to check if they had seen it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: People called the house, a few people and they're like,
Speaker 4: what the hell happened? Seeing it on the news, and
Speaker 4: you know, if they didn't watch the fight, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, they knew you were watching and called to ask
Speaker 1: about it. You were seen on the front lawn talking
Speaker 1: on your cordless phone by a neighbor as well, who
Speaker 1: got home around eleven. So not only do people at
Speaker 1: the party, but also those that called you and your neighbor.
Speaker 1: They all placed you at home at the time of
Speaker 1: the shooting, which was about an eight to twelve minute
Speaker 1: drive away from your home. And this shooting was alleged
Speaker 1: to be in retaliation for the shooting of some kid
Speaker 1: you didn't even know. Now, this case was being investigated
Speaker 1: by Sergeant DORYL.
Speaker 3: Riggs.
Speaker 1: Several days go by, and on July first, Santo Alvarez
Speaker 1: Akapayaso got picked up for possession of a weapon and
Speaker 1: a hypodermic needle by Torrence PD. And this is when
Speaker 1: the story start.
Speaker 4: So basically, Santos Alvarez is in jail trying to find
Speaker 4: his way out of jail, starts telling the I believe
Speaker 4: it was a Torrance Police department where he was at.
Speaker 4: You know, hey, I know something about a murder that happened,
Speaker 4: and they called the Sheriff's Homicide.
Speaker 1: Right, So Torrance PD called over to La County Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Homicide Department and Sergeant Riggs came to interview Santo Alvarez
Speaker 1: and they started asking about this dark colored car, maybe
Speaker 1: perhaps green, and while distancing himself from Londeale gang activity,
Speaker 1: he said that the only person he can think of
Speaker 1: from Londale with a car like that was a guy
Speaker 1: named Robert Caputo, and he said that he saw the
Speaker 1: two of you in Kaputo's car on the day of
Speaker 1: the murder, among other things.
Speaker 4: But also Santo Alvarez creates this story that he saw
Speaker 4: me the day of the murder and I was upset
Speaker 4: about that shooting from the prior day of Luis Madrano,
Speaker 4: and that I wanted to retaliate. And then he said
Speaker 4: that he saw me like you know, a few days
Speaker 4: later or whatever, and says that he overhears me talking
Speaker 4: to someone else saying that I shot someone or blasted
Speaker 4: that for or something like along those lines is what
Speaker 4: he used. So with that, from my understanding, they let
Speaker 4: him out. Then they go back to the witnesses. I
Speaker 4: feel they put pressure the most on probably Daniel Curriel
Speaker 4: since he was a shop owner and showed him six
Speaker 4: packs and coerced him into identifying us because of what
Speaker 4: Santos said.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned that Alva said that we were in
Speaker 3: Carpule's car, right, but computer had turned that car in
Speaker 3: or sold it. They could tell there that he was
Speaker 3: lying about that, and that's a significant thing to lie
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: You said, they were in a car that the guy
Speaker 2: doesn't have exactly.
Speaker 1: Capudle had sold it in February nineteen ninety seven, about
Speaker 1: five or six months before the shooting. Yet Riggs and
Speaker 1: his partner Garcia brought a six pack photo array over
Speaker 1: to Curiel with the purpose of getting him to id
Speaker 1: YouTube as if they couldn't spot that lie about Capudo's
Speaker 1: car right off the bat. This bogus photo lineup happened
Speaker 1: on July tenth, I believe, before Ed's arrest, and Curiel
Speaker 1: has always disputed this, but Riggs says that he identified
Speaker 1: Ed as the shooter and John is the front passenger.
Speaker 1: He held a gang epithet, So what really happened here?
Speaker 4: Well, Riggs convinces him basically, look, you're never going to
Speaker 4: have to go to court. We don't even need you.
Speaker 4: This is just to help our case a little bit.
Speaker 4: We already got these guys, but in reality he was
Speaker 4: their entire case. So he convinces Curiel to say, all right,
Speaker 4: I'll sign for you today.
Speaker 3: My arrest July tenth, nineteen ninety seven, on my way
Speaker 3: to the gym with a friend, and he noticed that
Speaker 3: there was cow cars behind us, and there was three
Speaker 3: of them, and then there was three coming in front
Speaker 3: of us. It had a bad feeling, like this is
Speaker 3: not a traffic ticket. They pulled us over, pulled the
Speaker 3: guns out, drive us off the car, and one of
Speaker 3: my mom's friends happened to be driving by, and so
Speaker 3: she was across.
Speaker 2: The street just observing.
Speaker 3: But I was trying to communicate with her to call
Speaker 3: my mom. Dude, I didn't want my mom not to
Speaker 3: know what happened to me either, you know. So I
Speaker 3: was fifteen. They tried me as an adult and they
Speaker 3: sent me to the county jail, and I found myself
Speaker 3: in a very binding section of the Alkan and that
Speaker 3: was my kind of introduction to the system.
Speaker 5: Three weeks after the Alerkhan shooting, Santo Alvarez, Lester Moanler,
Speaker 5: and Chad Landrum were hanging out in this house that
Speaker 5: had been vacated that was referred to as the Melon
Speaker 5: Patch because the family that owned it their last name
Speaker 5: was Melon. So they break in the back. They're getting high.
Speaker 5: A homeless guy, Richard Daly, who had prior connection with
Speaker 5: the woman who used to live there, Susan Mellon, stops by.
Speaker 5: They're originally partying with him, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: Chad Landrum viciously attacks Daily Max's head multiple times with
Speaker 5: a hammer and kills him. And then with the help
Speaker 5: of Santo and Lester, they wrap up the body and
Speaker 5: bring it to an alley in sam Pedro, where they
Speaker 5: set it on fire in hopes of destroying any evidence. Said, well,
Speaker 5: enable the police to connect them.
Speaker 1: Right, And you all didn't find out about this until
Speaker 1: post conviction, even though the person who prosecuted both Ed
Speaker 1: and John prosecuted this case as well, and we talked
Speaker 1: a bit about her before. But the Daily murder fell
Speaker 1: on Marcella Win's desk, right, All of these informants came
Speaker 1: to her saying it was Piasso ghost and wicked with
Speaker 1: the hammer right in the melon patch, open and shut, right,
Speaker 1: But that's not what happened. This person, Susan Mellon, ended
Speaker 1: up getting dragged into it in Piaso's stead right instead
Speaker 1: of him. How did that happen?
Speaker 5: Well, I think initially when you know, she takes the
Speaker 5: path of least resistance in all of her investigations, so
Speaker 5: when people were handing up the three gang members, she
Speaker 5: was going to pursue that and go after them. She
Speaker 5: even submitted a Maffi David for arrest warrants for all
Speaker 5: three of them. However, she doesn't want to do any
Speaker 5: heavy lifting, so there wasn't enough evidence for the DA
Speaker 5: to pursue Piasso, and Wynn didn't do the investigations she
Speaker 5: needed to build a case against them. So at the
Speaker 5: same time that it was becoming clear that she'd have
Speaker 5: to work to get Piasso further implicated in it, this
Speaker 5: other tweaker, June Patty, came along and said, Hey, I
Speaker 5: got some information on Melon. You can pursue her. And
Speaker 5: so Wind shifted gears and went after Melon. And while
Speaker 5: she was doing this, she was in communication with Riggs
Speaker 5: about Piasso's role as a witness as their star witness
Speaker 5: in that case. So in those conversations that were never documented,
Speaker 5: the substance of that was never documented. Clearly, these detectives
Speaker 5: made decisions that benefited both of them. So Riggs was
Speaker 5: allowed to use Payasso in the Aller Khan shooting, and
Speaker 5: Win was free to pursue Melon, another innocent person, for
Speaker 5: the Daily murder.
Speaker 1: So ultimately Chad Landrum and Lester Monlaur were rightfully pursued,
Speaker 1: along with Susan Mellon, who was wrongfully pursued. They were
Speaker 1: all tried separately, and Landrum and Mellon were both convicted.
Speaker 1: Monlare was acquitted, So both monlaur and Alvarez got off
Speaker 1: scott free, ready willing and able to commit even more crimes.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, Jesus Chris. So now August fourteenth rolls around,
Speaker 1: and John, you were arrested for the alar Khan drive
Speaker 1: by as the front seat passenger.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was the shocker, obviously, but for the first
Speaker 4: you know, six months of going to jail. When I
Speaker 4: got arrested, I thought the next court date they would realize, hey,
Speaker 4: this guy's not supposed to be here, We're going to
Speaker 4: go ahead and release them. And you know, every court
Speaker 4: date turned into a next court date till I finally realized, like,
Speaker 4: these guys are so they really, you know, they're really
Speaker 4: trying to charge me with this.
Speaker 1: So now October thirtieth, nineteen ninety seven, curial was brought
Speaker 1: into view a live lineup, and on the advice of
Speaker 1: your lawyer, John, you tried to change your appearance. So
Speaker 1: even though you were innocent of this crime, this move
Speaker 1: made you look not so great.
Speaker 4: My lawyer, Frank ta Jacomo. He tells me, you know, hey,
Speaker 4: this guy, he's already seen pictures of you. They've shown
Speaker 4: him your six pack or whatever. Let's kind of make
Speaker 4: it a little more difficult for him to pick you out. So,
Speaker 4: you know, grow your hair out, shave your mustache. And
Speaker 4: I'm listening to the advice of my attorney. So I say,
Speaker 4: all right, you know, I grow my hair out, shave
Speaker 4: my mustache. I go to my lineup and then I'm waiting.
Speaker 4: They bring me off the stage from the lineup, and
Speaker 4: the deputy is like, who are you? And I'm like,
Speaker 4: what do you mean You're not John Plenty? Who are you?
Speaker 4: And I'm like, yes, I am. And he's like, no
Speaker 4: one recognizes you out there. Your lawyer doesn't recognize you.
Speaker 4: The detective doesn't recognize you. You did you switch wristbands?
Speaker 4: And I'm like, no, I didn't switch ristbands. Like it's me,
Speaker 4: you know, And I said, how does my lawyer not
Speaker 4: recognize me? He just saw me two weeks ago. He's
Speaker 4: the one that told me to change my appearance. Little
Speaker 4: did I know that was going to be used against me.
Speaker 4: They used that as a sign of a consciousness of guilt.
Speaker 1: So later on Curio and identifying you in the live lineup.
Speaker 1: He went on to testify that he had just recognized
Speaker 1: John from the photo race and in referring to Riggs, quote,
Speaker 1: I already knew who he was looking for. End quote.
Speaker 1: Now you two are on your way to be tried together,
Speaker 1: and Chad Landrum has already been convicted and sentenced to
Speaker 1: life without the possibility of parole. Amazingly, Landrum reached out
Speaker 1: to Ed's family because he wanted to come clean about
Speaker 1: the Alarchan drive by.
Speaker 2: He wanted to testify in the case, and my Lord
Speaker 2: did bring him down to our.
Speaker 3: Trial or it was maybe a pre trial pulls or something,
Speaker 3: and they never got his statement. It didn't give him
Speaker 3: much chance to testify or confess.
Speaker 1: From what I've read, there's a reason why he didn't
Speaker 1: get that chance. Right, he was actually brought down to
Speaker 1: the courthouse.
Speaker 4: What happened, Yeah, I guess he got into it or
Speaker 4: something with someone. I think it was on the bus
Speaker 4: or not too sure, but he ended up stabbing him
Speaker 4: in the courthouse tank and that was the end of that.
Speaker 1: So you're one shot at getting around the false testimony
Speaker 1: of Alvarez and this protested identification just got dragged away
Speaker 1: for acting out violently again stabbing another guy. And then
Speaker 1: you go to trial in La County Superior Court and
Speaker 1: no one brought up Landrum's involvement or went again an
Speaker 1: affi David nothing. So Ed was represented by Walter Urbin
Speaker 1: and John by Frank Dajacomo. The prosecutor was Valerie Cole,
Speaker 1: and so the prosecution's theory was that Ed, John and
Speaker 1: a third Londale thirteen gang member were in the dark
Speaker 1: green car. John was in the front passenger seat, Ed
Speaker 1: was in the back seat, and Ed was the shooter.
Speaker 1: So they never caught up with this alleged driver. Right,
Speaker 1: John allegedly shouted an epithet about the Little Watch gang.
Speaker 1: This was allegedly a retaliation for this other shooting. But
Speaker 1: of course this entire theory came from Santo Alvarez, who
Speaker 1: was deflecting the blame from his own crew. What was
Speaker 1: presented by the prosecution to support this wacky ass theory.
Speaker 5: The prosecution was entirely dependent on pre trial statements of
Speaker 5: Santo Alvarez and the pre trial identification of Curio. At
Speaker 5: the actual trial, Curio did not identify either Ed or John.
Speaker 5: He specifically testified that the only reason he made the
Speaker 5: pre trial identification was because he was, you know, kind
Speaker 5: of pressure to and he gave the whole story about
Speaker 5: how the police pointed out the pictures and said, hey,
Speaker 5: this guy's ragging about it, this guy was in the
Speaker 5: front seat, this guy's a shooter, or all that. So
Speaker 5: the jurors weren't basing their verdict on what the testimony
Speaker 5: in front of them. They were basing their verdict on
Speaker 5: the statements made outside of their presence. Same thing Paiaso
Speaker 5: when he gets into trial, he's like, I don't know,
Speaker 5: I don't know, I don't know what I said, might
Speaker 5: have said whatever. So they use the tape recording of
Speaker 5: the statement that Paiasso made to Rigs. And by the way,
Speaker 5: they rehearsed it before they did the official tape, right,
Speaker 5: they talked to him off record, and then they put
Speaker 5: the tape on and they talked to them. And so
Speaker 5: the jurors were told, hey, look it, this is a
Speaker 5: gang case. Piasso doesn't want to come in here and
Speaker 5: rat out his homies, so you can believe what he
Speaker 5: said to Riggs when he's trying to get out of custody.
Speaker 5: And Curio, poor Curial. He's being intimidated and threatened by
Speaker 5: all these gang members. So that's why he's not going
Speaker 5: to say it in front of you all. But he
Speaker 5: looked what he said to the cops. You know, he
Speaker 5: made this idea, and that was the entirety of the
Speaker 5: prosecutor's case. And the other thing she did, without any
Speaker 5: legitimate basis for doing so, is she made every single
Speaker 5: one of the alibi witnesses look like liars and made
Speaker 5: it sound like the alibi was this last minute defense
Speaker 5: that defense lawyers put together at the very end, when
Speaker 5: John's mother had presented the lawyers with line by line,
Speaker 5: minute by minute timeline of where everybody was, who showed up, when,
Speaker 5: who left when, the names, the phone numbers and all
Speaker 5: of that the day she hired John's lawyer. So the
Speaker 5: alibi was known right from the get go, but the
Speaker 5: jurors were misled into believing it was all some fabrication
Speaker 5: by the tricky defense lawyers.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can see how you could impeach alibi
Speaker 1: witnesses as friends and loved ones, or as they did
Speaker 1: in this case, fellow gang members and friends of long
Speaker 1: till thirteen. So the message is that everyone is gang
Speaker 1: related and therefore lying. But your lawyer could have backed
Speaker 1: up the alibi with phone records. It's not that complicated
Speaker 1: it but even without that support though, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: the one witness that was used in this corrupt identification process, Curiol,
Speaker 1: was adamant that he did not stand by this identification.
Speaker 1: Really take off his glasses to demonstrate how bad his
Speaker 1: vision was, because that would have been pretty powerful. Does
Speaker 1: anyone remember that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I remember that he took off his glasses in court
Speaker 4: and couldn't see anything. I mean, you could tell he
Speaker 4: couldn't see anything. You know when when someone I can
Speaker 4: take off my glasses and you can tell I need
Speaker 4: them just by looking at me. So, I mean, it
Speaker 4: was amazing, man, it was.
Speaker 2: It was crazy.
Speaker 3: Another thing that I remember happening was the district attorney
Speaker 3: she said that I gave him my thumbs up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I read about that to Curio, like as if he
Speaker 1: was helping you out.
Speaker 3: And I'm curious, now she's ever used that tactic against
Speaker 3: other defendants.
Speaker 2: Because the whole courtroom focused.
Speaker 3: On me, And this is did you just give the
Speaker 3: guy a thumbs up and open courte room?
Speaker 2: Now mine?
Speaker 3: He wasn't doing me any favors. There was no reason,
Speaker 3: and I did not give him my thumbs up. I'm
Speaker 3: looking at the jury like I did not. But it
Speaker 3: was effective. Yeah, those dirty.
Speaker 1: It sounds like they were just running the disgraceful playbook.
Speaker 1: I mean, part of Curro's testimony was that the cops
Speaker 1: just convinced him that they had the right guys, and
Speaker 1: at that time, everyone believed the police right. And then
Speaker 1: all they had to do was say gang and gang
Speaker 1: member enough times and it's almost like Pavlov's Dog. It
Speaker 1: just almost a knee jerk reaction from the jury to say, okay, great,
Speaker 1: when do I get to vote guilty. The alibis and
Speaker 1: the witness protesting the identification just didn't seem to matter
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 4: You got it one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: And then so that thumbs.
Speaker 5: Up in there, if I could jump in on that point.
Speaker 5: And in LA they created this hardcore gang unit in
Speaker 5: the late eighties, I believe it was eighty eight or
Speaker 5: eighty nine, and the whole purpose of that hardcore gang
Speaker 5: unit was like, damn, it's hard to prove these cases
Speaker 5: because everybody's a liar and everybody has baggage, and we
Speaker 5: don't have good witnesses. We got to figure out a way.
Speaker 5: And basically what they did was they created this unit
Speaker 5: where they recruited all these overzealous prosecutors and say, hey,
Speaker 5: you get to be the shine star here and you
Speaker 5: can make these cases that nobody else can make. And
Speaker 5: then they gave them strategies for how to do that.
Speaker 5: How do what's the work around when you really can't
Speaker 5: prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt, Just say gang gang, gang, gang, gang,
Speaker 5: as many times as you can make everything be about
Speaker 5: scaring the hell out of the jurors and making them
Speaker 5: think that whoever sitting in the defendanc seat is the
Speaker 5: worst person in the world, just because they happened to
Speaker 5: have affiliated with a gang for whatever reason, and regardless
Speaker 5: of their level of involvement, let's get them off the street.
Speaker 5: Evidence be damned.
Speaker 1: Even their use of the word homies, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a racist dog whistle.
Speaker 4: If I ever heard what I saw, the gang gang
Speaker 4: gang push by the prosecutor, by the you know, by
Speaker 4: the detectives. You know, I saw my lawyer not do
Speaker 4: a good job at all. The combination of all those things,
Speaker 4: I felt my life slipping away from me.
Speaker 3: When they read the verdict. I remember they hear you know,
Speaker 3: my family, my mom or. I remember looking up at
Speaker 3: the lights in the courtroom trying to not you know,
Speaker 3: let no tears come out.
Speaker 4: Man, I think I probably did shed a couple tears.
Speaker 4: You know, people talk about the worst moment in their life.
Speaker 4: That was for sure the worst moment right there.
Speaker 3: You know, I get to prison on brand new. I
Speaker 3: don't know what to expect. I know that I'm surrounded
Speaker 3: by a bunch of guys that are violent, angry, confrontational,
Speaker 3: and so I'm navigating through that. You got to walk
Speaker 3: on eggshells to be sure. And I used to work
Speaker 3: out a lot because if I did end up having
Speaker 3: to get into a confrontation, I wanted to be able
Speaker 3: to defend myself, and so I used to work out
Speaker 3: for three hours a day in the beginning.
Speaker 4: I I tell people this story all the time, like
Speaker 4: my kind of welcome to prison moment. I'm scared, but
Speaker 4: I'm also trying not to show fear. You know, that's
Speaker 4: not a good idea in prison. I'm walking on the yard,
Speaker 4: some guys sitting down on a curb, and as I'm walking,
Speaker 4: I'm you know, probably a foot or two away from him,
Speaker 4: and a guy comes up behind him and just slices
Speaker 4: his whole face open, from like his lip to his ear.
Speaker 4: And just seeing that happen, like, you know, a foot
Speaker 4: away from me, it was like, where the fuck am I? So,
Speaker 4: like Ed said, it's just survival mode.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 3: As soon as I could, I started to read books,
Speaker 3: and then I learned that, you know, the way that
Speaker 3: the criminal appeal process works is your lawyer's gonna dump
Speaker 3: the case on you, and then it's gonna be on
Speaker 3: you to represent yourself. And that's when I started to
Speaker 3: go into the library. I would go to the yard.
Speaker 3: I would go to the library instead because you only
Speaker 3: choose one or the other. And started to learn the law.
Speaker 3: And then I found myself in solitary and I had
Speaker 3: to try to figure out way how am I going
Speaker 3: to get out of solitary was? I started to study
Speaker 3: solitary confinement cases and I put together a memorandum of
Speaker 3: law on why lawyers should come to California and challenge
Speaker 3: long term solitary confinement. And in those efforts I managed
Speaker 3: to meet Professor Jose Lobel from the University of Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3: It was through his student Brett Grot, who's now the
Speaker 3: director of the Abolitionist Law Center. They read my memorandum,
Speaker 3: they researched it, and they decided to come to California
Speaker 3: follow class action, and that case settled in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. And you know, I was partly responsible for
Speaker 3: getting guys that had been in there for thirty five years,
Speaker 3: eight years, twenty seven years. Me myself, I was there
Speaker 3: for thirteen years. It is one of the things that
Speaker 3: I've done in my life that I still feel the
Speaker 3: rewards of because today there's people that are outside and
Speaker 3: seeing the sky, seeing their family, and that is due
Speaker 3: to the work that I did. Obviously, I wasn't acted alone.
Speaker 3: I had there was a team of lawyers. But I
Speaker 3: put in the work and it paid off.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: You should be very proud of that. And as part
Speaker 1: of that settlement, California can no longer put a prisoner
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement for indeterminate periods. In Ed's case, it
Speaker 1: was thirteen years with no end in sight, simply based
Speaker 1: upon alleged gang membership. So now that you fought your
Speaker 1: way out of the prison. Within the prison, let's get
Speaker 1: to how you guys are here speaking with us today.
Speaker 1: So your initial appeals were denied. As far as I
Speaker 1: could see here, there's no real movement on this until
Speaker 1: Landrum once again reached out to Ed's family saying that
Speaker 1: he wanted to confess to murdering alercon Right. We knew
Speaker 1: this already, but I guess he hadn't ever gone on
Speaker 1: the record about it and wasn't exactly easily reachable. He
Speaker 1: was also by this time in solitary doing life without parole.
Speaker 1: So John, take us through this.
Speaker 4: My friend told me when I got convicted, like, I'm
Speaker 4: going to get you a lawyer. I don't care how
Speaker 4: long it takes. You know, once I can afford one,
Speaker 4: I'm going to get you one. So when this stuff
Speaker 4: came up with Landrum, that's when I talked to my
Speaker 4: best friend and I told him, you know, now's the time.
Speaker 4: You know, this guy's coming forward and confessing, Like, we
Speaker 4: need to get a lawyer, and thank god we got
Speaker 4: Deir Dr.
Speaker 5: John's friend reached out to me in May of twenty twelve,
Speaker 5: and what had happened prior to that was Chad Landrum
Speaker 5: had written out a confession and provided it to Ed's
Speaker 5: family and then Ed used it to file his own
Speaker 5: habeas petition, but he didn't have any resources or a
Speaker 5: lawyer to help him, so it was just the paper
Speaker 5: that went in and the judge just dismissed it without
Speaker 5: any thoughtful analysis at all. So when John's friend reached
Speaker 5: out to me, the first thing we did is we
Speaker 5: scheduled a trip to Pelican Bay to meet with Chad
Speaker 5: Landrum and Ed Dunbriky. Both of them were in the
Speaker 5: shoe unit and they had no ability to communicate with
Speaker 5: one another. My sense of it was if there was
Speaker 5: merit to Chad Landram's confession, we needed to do a
Speaker 5: lot more work to build it up, and so we
Speaker 5: asked all kinds of details, including who else would have
Speaker 5: known back in the day about Chad's role in this
Speaker 5: killing and the details. He had not a single note
Speaker 5: in front of him reminding him about any of the
Speaker 5: details of the case, and he could give me specific
Speaker 5: information consistent with the police report, including the fact that
Speaker 5: he got out of the car and shot alar Khan.
Speaker 5: There were only two witnesses that saw that they were
Speaker 5: women across the street, and they were never used in
Speaker 5: the trial, so none of that was in the trial record,
Speaker 5: all of the people from the auto body shop never
Speaker 5: saw anybody out of the car because the car doesn't
Speaker 5: come into their line of sight until after the shooting
Speaker 5: is done. He also knew that Alercan was shot with
Speaker 5: different types of bullets. That was a fact that, although
Speaker 5: it was contained in the records, would not be something
Speaker 5: that some random person would have known about. So there
Speaker 5: was a lot of key points in Chad Landrum's statements
Speaker 5: to me that made me think that he probably was
Speaker 5: telling the truth. And so I asked him to tell
Speaker 5: me confirmation as to who else knew back then, and
Speaker 5: he told me his brother knew, and we followed up
Speaker 5: and talked to the brother, and the brother gave us
Speaker 5: all kinds of information. And I also asked Chad if
Speaker 5: he would take a polygraph, and he immediately agreed to,
Speaker 5: but the prison wouldn't allow us to go up there.
Speaker 5: And so then you know all of the places you
Speaker 5: would go logically in an investigation like this, including contacting
Speaker 5: Curiel stop by his work out of the Blue. Reaes
Speaker 5: to talk to us at an Eyehap as soon as
Speaker 5: he gets off of work, and he lays it all out.
Speaker 5: He tells us consistent with his recantation everything, and it's
Speaker 5: all on tape, so nobody can say we put words
Speaker 5: in his mouth or anything. And then we did the
Speaker 5: same thing with all the alibi witnesses to find out,
Speaker 5: you know, was there more that could have been done
Speaker 5: to show that they were telling the truth, including the
Speaker 5: logical things like phone records and other people who could
Speaker 5: corroborate what they said. And it all fell into place,
Speaker 5: and it was like I remember talking to John. You know,
Speaker 5: we filed our brief in three months after investigation, and
Speaker 5: we felt like, this is a no brainer. He should
Speaker 5: be out that year.
Speaker 1: I think that's how we all hope our system works,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately that's not how it usually goes, and this
Speaker 1: was no exception. So John Savias was filed in October
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. He presented all this material, and like you said,
Speaker 1: it was a no brainer. In twenty thirteen, Landram made
Speaker 1: a formal confession on the record, then ed joined the
Speaker 1: habeas as well. So it seems like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of momentum. And in an effort to further support Landrum's confession,
Speaker 1: you reached out to his co defendant on the Richard
Speaker 1: Daily murder another wrongfully convicted person, Susan Mallon.
Speaker 5: Right, So we went and visited her. There were some
Speaker 5: delays along the way because she was being represented by
Speaker 5: someone else, but a year later I ended up representing her,
Speaker 5: and in a lot of what I needed to prove
Speaker 5: her innocence overlapped with what I needed to prove for
Speaker 5: John and ultimately Ed, because there were so many witnesses
Speaker 5: in common, and representing Susan gave me access to witnesses
Speaker 5: that I didn't have before that.
Speaker 1: So this is twenty fourteen, Landram and even Alvarez one
Speaker 1: on the record confessing to their roles in the daily
Speaker 1: murder and clearing Susan of any responsibility. And after seventeen
Speaker 1: years in prison, seventeen long years, Susan's conviction was vacated,
Speaker 1: charges were dismissed and she went on to sue Marcello
Speaker 1: win and won twelve million, and good for her. So
Speaker 1: we're obviously very happy for Susan. That seemed to be
Speaker 1: our system operating at the speed that it should, I mean,
Speaker 1: notwithstanding the seventeen long years wrongfully incarcerated. But for John
Speaker 1: and Ed. There was a court order in November of
Speaker 1: twenty twelve for the DA to respond to this habeas petition.
Speaker 1: What happened, Deirdre?
Speaker 5: There was one delay after another. There was transfers of
Speaker 5: district attorneys and all kinds of stuff that just a
Speaker 5: month turned into six month, turned into a year, turned
Speaker 5: into five years. And it's hard. I can't even imagine,
Speaker 5: excuse me, what it's like for these guys to have
Speaker 5: to count on a lawyer on the outside saying, don't worry,
Speaker 5: I got you back. I'm I'm going to do this.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm going to get it taken care of,
Speaker 5: when they have been disappointed every step of the way.
Speaker 5: And I, you know, my experience of it is like,
Speaker 5: you know, the frustration I feel on my end can't
Speaker 5: even begin to compere to what these guys are going through.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Imagine having the keys to the prison gate staring you
Speaker 1: in the face for eight years before the district attorney
Speaker 1: or the courts even pretend to not ignore them. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until twenty twenty that a judge finally made a
Speaker 1: ruling that amounts to basically a brain fart of a
Speaker 1: man in cognitive decline. So tell us about this, judge,
Speaker 1: Edmund Clark Junior and how this thing finally turned around.
Speaker 5: So it was clear we weren't going to be able
Speaker 5: to force anybody's hand until we filed this supplemental brief.
Speaker 5: And I mean, this is this brief because of all
Speaker 5: of the evidence that was developed during Susan Mellon's case
Speaker 5: was even stronger than what we had, and we had
Speaker 5: a clear winner from the beginning. But it lands in
Speaker 5: the hands of a judge who couldn't care less and
Speaker 5: in a heartbeat, without any hearing or anything, he denies it.
Speaker 5: He characterizes it as a pro say proper petition. When
Speaker 5: I have my name all over it, I'm representing him,
Speaker 5: and I had already been on the record, and he
Speaker 5: completely distorted the history of it and made it sound
Speaker 5: like it was a brand new petition that was relitigating
Speaker 5: issues that had already been decided against John. So he
Speaker 5: dismissed it, and then he retired soon after that. So
Speaker 5: I file two motions, one for reconsideration and one for
Speaker 5: a ruling on the original petition. And either way we
Speaker 5: were prepared to go to the Court of Appeal, that's
Speaker 5: where we thought we were going to end up. But
Speaker 5: fortunately the judge who took the other judge's place really
Speaker 5: was concerned that this might be a case involving innocent people,
Speaker 5: and she told the DA you're going to need to
Speaker 5: commit get yourself on paper, tell me what your position
Speaker 5: is on this case, because if these are innocent people,
Speaker 5: we have to deal with it. And once they were
Speaker 5: forced to deal with it, then they submitted. Then they
Speaker 5: just read the document and answered the document. Back in
Speaker 5: twenty twelve, it would have been the same answer they submitted.
Speaker 5: They said that based on the cumulative error in the case,
Speaker 5: that the conviction should be vacated and they were not
Speaker 5: going to pursue the charges. They were going to recommend
Speaker 5: that it'd be dismissed. They could have done that back
Speaker 5: in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: I'm rarely at a loss for words, but this just
Speaker 1: really makes my stomach turn. I mean, it's just so
Speaker 1: it makes me so angry, frustrated, and just I feel
Speaker 1: a sense of deep sadness. And this didn't even happen
Speaker 1: to me, but I just hate injustice and this is
Speaker 1: such a grotesque example of the system at its worst.
Speaker 1: We see it a lot on the show, but this one,
Speaker 1: this one's really leaving a bitter taste. But the silver lining,
Speaker 1: of course, is that you're out, even if it took
Speaker 1: so much longer that it should have, and never mind
Speaker 1: that it should have never even happened in the first place.
Speaker 1: And John, I understand despite it all, you have somehow
Speaker 1: managed to maintain a positive outlook.
Speaker 4: Every day is a blessing for sure, you know. And
Speaker 4: as each day goes by, it seems so much farther
Speaker 4: away from everything that happened. But it just feels great
Speaker 4: to be out and great to be free, and words
Speaker 4: can't express it or describe it. Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I getting arrested at fifteen and sent
Speaker 3: off to prison. There's a lot of things in normal
Speaker 3: society that I've never experienced, you know. Just this last
Speaker 3: year was the first time I took a plane ride,
Speaker 3: first time I've been to a lake, to a river.
Speaker 3: But also like the first time I had to pay bills,
Speaker 3: the first time I had to keep up with appointments, responsibilities,
Speaker 3: balancing school and work. What I'm finding is that it
Speaker 3: doesn't just fall into place. It doesn't, and I'm working
Speaker 3: through that. But there are times when I feel a
Speaker 3: little bit lost out here. I really do, I really do.
Speaker 3: But I'm confident and optimistic that it's going to come together.
Speaker 1: And Ed, I understand that you'd like to start a nonprofit.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about what you're
Speaker 1: doing now.
Speaker 3: I applied for a job in Pittsburgh at a nonprofit
Speaker 3: to Abolitionist Law Center. I'm hopeful that I get the job.
Speaker 3: If I do, I'm headed out that way in order
Speaker 3: for me to work there, but also to learn about
Speaker 3: nonprofits and how it runs, and with the goal of
Speaker 3: creating my own. I want to call it Juvenile Justice
Speaker 3: for All, and the goal would be to have children
Speaker 3: treated equally and fairly, to have their parents rights respected.
Speaker 3: A lot of times they just adopt adult laws. The
Speaker 3: adult prison system doesn't help children at all. I look
Speaker 3: to filing cases in court, but also working on policy changes,
Speaker 3: speaking to other nonprofits and getting them to support some
Speaker 3: of these ideas. My goal is to have a uniform
Speaker 3: system in America treating children equally and fairly across the board.
Speaker 1: Well, Ed, you've already been able to accomplish so much
Speaker 1: from behind bars. So we're going to be on the
Speaker 1: lookout for juvenile Justice for All. And we'll also link
Speaker 1: to Innocence Matters, the organization that Deirdre co founded, so
Speaker 1: please show them your support and John's Instagram as well,
Speaker 1: where he'll keep you up to date on the continued
Speaker 1: fight for justice. In this case. The courts are still
Speaker 1: trying to deny the factual innocence claim here, but after
Speaker 1: what we've heard here today, I can't see any reason
Speaker 1: for it. And with that, we're going to go to
Speaker 1: closing arguments, where first of all, I thank each of
Speaker 1: you from the bottom of my heart for joining us here,
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna kick back in my chair, shut
Speaker 1: my microphone off, and leave my headphones on and just
Speaker 1: listen to anything else you feel is left to be said. Deirdre,
Speaker 1: please start us off, and then we'll leave it to
Speaker 1: the guys to take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 5: I think that it's essential for these stories to be told,
Speaker 5: and I'm so grateful that you guys give people like
Speaker 5: John and Ed the opportunity to tell the stories that
Speaker 5: they live through. I think it's important for the public
Speaker 5: to understand how fallible the system is, and I wish
Speaker 5: it was limited to the nineties, but I represent people
Speaker 5: who are charged today. It's the same fight, the same struggle,
Speaker 5: and we've got to get it right. The first time.
Speaker 5: We have to want to get it right the first time,
Speaker 5: because it doesn't serve anybody, even if all we care
Speaker 5: about collectively as a society is the money aspect of this.
Speaker 5: We're throwing money away. We're paying for people to be
Speaker 5: housed in prisons for crimes they didn't commit, and the
Speaker 5: real criminals are out there committing other crimes. So we
Speaker 5: need to get it right. We need to want to
Speaker 5: get it right, and we need to applaud people like
Speaker 5: John and Ed who have gone through hell and back
Speaker 5: and we need to make their lives easier once they
Speaker 5: get out. We need to help them in whatever way
Speaker 5: we can.
Speaker 3: Well, I do appreciate this opportunity to speak about our
Speaker 3: case and what we went through. I know that there's
Speaker 3: a lot of other people out there that are in
Speaker 3: the same circumstances and they're in the same struggle. So
Speaker 3: I do appreciate the work that you're doing, and I
Speaker 3: just I'm happy to be free, you know. I'm happy
Speaker 3: to be free. I'm looking forward to making a difference
Speaker 3: out here. I think it kind of for me would
Speaker 3: give my life meaning when I feel like I've lost
Speaker 3: so much of it already. I'm hopeful that what's left
Speaker 3: of it. I can actually make a difference, and my
Speaker 3: experience will help other people.
Speaker 4: A couple of things. I'd just like to thank you
Speaker 4: Jason for what you do and Wrongful Conviction Podcast Lava
Speaker 4: for Good. I follow all that stuff very closely, keep
Speaker 4: it up because it's needed. I think it helps a lot,
Speaker 4: and even if it helps a little, a little is
Speaker 4: more than nothing. So for me, the one thing I
Speaker 4: would tell people is never to lose hope, never to
Speaker 4: give up. That's the key to everything, because I know
Speaker 4: in my case, I never gave up hope. I kept
Speaker 4: the fight, never got away from that. If you're innocent,
Speaker 4: you better fight until you can't fight anymore. Hope is
Speaker 4: all you got, That's all that's going to keep you going.
Speaker 4: Don't lose it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Kleibern, 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
Speaker 1: all three platforms. You can also follow me on both
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one.
Speaker 4: The Woman burned the land in the Dream