Speaker 1: The following interview was recorded in person at the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four Innocent Network conference in New Orleans. On February sixteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, a fight broke out at a party
Speaker 1: in Detroit, Michigan, and three young men were told to leave.
Speaker 1: About a block and a half away, a gunman opened
Speaker 1: fire on them, fatally shooting twenty five year old James Montgomery.
Speaker 1: The police focused on those who attended the party, including
Speaker 1: twenty year old Daryl Singers, even though the shots came
Speaker 1: from about one hundred feet away in the dark. The
Speaker 1: two survivors identified Daryl as a shooter. Then the police
Speaker 1: sergeant testified that bullets found near Darrell's apartment matched bullets
Speaker 1: pulled from the body. But this is wrongful conviction. Wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison,
Speaker 1: and now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us
Speaker 1: at eight three three two o seven four six sixty
Speaker 1: six and tell us how these stories make you feel
Speaker 1: and what you've done to help the cause, even if
Speaker 1: it's something as simple as telling a friend or sharing
Speaker 1: on social media, and you might just hear yourself in
Speaker 1: a future episode. Call Us eight three three two oh
Speaker 1: seven four six sixty six. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Today's episode. Well, if you're not angry by the end
Speaker 1: of this, you weren't paying attention. You should probably rewind
Speaker 1: and do it again. And this is a story that
Speaker 1: comes out of Detroit, Michigan that probably will surprise no
Speaker 1: one who listens.
Speaker 2: To the show.
Speaker 1: So here to tell the story is the man himself,
Speaker 1: Darryl Siggers, who lived through this thirty four year nightmare
Speaker 1: of wrongful conviction. Darryl, glad you're here. Yes, thank you,
Speaker 1: thanks for being here with him to present this incredible story.
Speaker 1: Is his attorney, Wolfgang Mueller. Go by Wolf right Wolf,
Speaker 1: and I love Wolf because Wolf was just flying upside down.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Darryl, before we get into this crime, what
Speaker 1: was your life like growing up?
Speaker 2: Did you grow up in Detroit? Yes, East Satura, Detroit.
Speaker 2: It's real rough, but my mother and father it tried
Speaker 2: to do the best that it could to keep a
Speaker 2: handle on us. At the age of sixteen, some things changed.
Speaker 2: I'm began to smoke weed, I start having sex and
Speaker 2: going to dance parties, and I had a real direction.
Speaker 2: I'm just finding myself at this point.
Speaker 1: Sounds about like my life too, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: except when we grew up in very different zip codes,
Speaker 1: And I'm very aware that the color of my skin
Speaker 1: and the place and neighborhood I grew up and had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with me not ending up where
Speaker 1: you ended.
Speaker 2: Up in my neighborhood. They had all these type of
Speaker 2: different police units. They had STRESS.
Speaker 3: The Detroit police in the late sixties and early seventies
Speaker 3: had a unit. STRESS was the acronym Stop the Robberies
Speaker 3: and enjoys Safe Streets. It was a bunch of big
Speaker 3: white who would abuse black men.
Speaker 2: It was doing horrible stuff to guys in the hood.
Speaker 2: Every time anybody in my neighborhood spoke with the police,
Speaker 2: it was not a good.
Speaker 3: Outcome, including planting evidence on them that one cop was
Speaker 3: charge of planting a knife on a person he shot.
Speaker 3: So there was such abuse of black people, black men,
Speaker 3: particularly in that timeframe. They ended up disbanding the STRESS
Speaker 3: unit because of that abuse. And so when Darryl talks
Speaker 3: about in his neighborhood, if the police are coming, it
Speaker 3: is not going to be a good outcome. It's because
Speaker 3: they had that historical perspective.
Speaker 1: And Detroit was is no different from so many jurisdictions
Speaker 1: across the country where we see co werced and incentivized witnesses,
Speaker 1: junk science, cops or experts test the lying, all of
Speaker 1: which appeared to have been a factor in this case,
Speaker 1: which started in nineteen eighty four when Daryl was twenty
Speaker 1: years old. He had two children with his ex girlfriend, Christine,
Speaker 1: who threw a party on February sixteenth, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: attended by the victims in this case, Derek Lawson, Renard Jackson,
Speaker 1: and James Montgomery.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of people at the party, Daryl
Speaker 3: being one of them and being eighteen nineteen, twenty years old,
Speaker 3: a lot of testosterone mixed with alcohol, I think, and
Speaker 3: somebody dating Daryl's baby mama and he's in the house.
Speaker 3: Things got to be a little heated. There was a
Speaker 3: fight that broke out and a guy who was at
Speaker 3: the party named Toby Red real light skinned guy, black
Speaker 3: guy who passed for white, reddish hair. How he got
Speaker 3: the name. He leaves the party after getting in a
Speaker 3: brawl with one of these guys and he walks out
Speaker 3: of the house threatening I'll be back. I got something
Speaker 3: for your ass. Several minutes later, the three guys who
Speaker 3: were ultimately the victims who got shot at one of
Speaker 3: whom Montgomery got killed. They leave the house. About a
Speaker 3: block and a half away, somebody comes out between two
Speaker 3: houses with a rifle and shoots Montgomery gets killed to
Speaker 3: the other guy as they run away, and the police
Speaker 3: end up finding out that there was this party. The
Speaker 3: interview everybody at the party. They interview a guy named
Speaker 3: Gary Kelly, who lives a block in a half down
Speaker 3: where the shooting happened. Kelly ends up telling the lead detective,
Speaker 3: Joseph Alex, there was a light skin guy. I thought
Speaker 3: it was my white neighbor. He was wearing a light
Speaker 3: blue shirt. This is February, it's cold, but he's wearing
Speaker 3: a light blue shirt. He's carrying a long gun walking
Speaker 3: past his garage. Alex interviews that neighbor. That guy says
Speaker 3: it wasn't me, and so Alex now closes this alternate
Speaker 3: suspect issue.
Speaker 1: There was another neighbor who not only saw, but spoke
Speaker 1: with this light skin man and gave a lot more detail,
Speaker 1: But it appears Detective Alex may have chosen to keep
Speaker 1: that information to himself instead. Daryl's name came up, and
Speaker 1: we're not sure who was the initial source or why
Speaker 1: he was mentioned, but the shooting survivors, Lawson and Jackson,
Speaker 1: a few days after the shooting, eventually claimed to have
Speaker 1: recognized Daryl as the shooter from one hundred feet away
Speaker 1: in the dark.
Speaker 3: The evidence against Darryl came down to a kid who
Speaker 3: was drunk and hi who said it was Darryl Siggers.
Speaker 3: They call him little Man. He was the guy who
Speaker 3: shot us. As soon as they got somebody, the expediency
Speaker 3: of it makes them not look at anybody else and
Speaker 3: ignore all of the other evidence that might suggest it's
Speaker 3: not who they think it is, and they just focused
Speaker 3: on him.
Speaker 2: I didn't know at that time. Somebody got killed. Well,
Speaker 2: a couple days after the party, my son and daughter's mother, Christine,
Speaker 2: calls me. She said, the police came back. They want
Speaker 2: to talk to you. A guy got killed. She said, well,
Speaker 2: I gave them your father's number, so they called. So
Speaker 2: my father convinced me. He said, listen, if you ain't
Speaker 2: got none to hi, woay talk to these people. So
Speaker 2: I agree to talk to him. I come back home.
Speaker 2: As soon as I walked in the door, he said,
Speaker 2: you're under arrested first v murdered, slapped the cuffs on me.
Speaker 2: After they arrest me, they take me to thirteen hundred
Speaker 2: bogiin Detroit downtown. I'm on the ninth floor, and then
Speaker 2: they bring me back down to the fifth floor, which
Speaker 2: is homicide. They put you in this little bitty chair
Speaker 2: and they leave you there for hours, this little iron chair,
Speaker 2: and they begin this good cop, bad cop routine. Good
Speaker 2: cop comes and hey, would you like some water? Would
Speaker 2: you like some coffee? I say yes. He go back
Speaker 2: out me and cop comes back in. We know you
Speaker 2: did this. You're gonna tell us you did this. And
Speaker 2: they go on and on back and forth with this,
Speaker 2: and they keep you there for hours to their way down,
Speaker 2: trying to get me to confess. I don't, so he
Speaker 2: gets frustrated with me after this long ordeal. I keep
Speaker 2: telling this guy, you got the wrong guy. I don't
Speaker 2: know who did this. I don't know nothing about this case.
Speaker 2: And he says, listen, I'm gonna go get a pen
Speaker 2: and a piece of paper and you're gonna tell me
Speaker 2: that you did this or I'm gonna knock the shit
Speaker 2: out of you.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm scared to death. I'm twenty years old, never been
Speaker 2: in trouble, and here's a big white cop screaming and hollering.
Speaker 2: So I look over. I see a window. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm just high up. I run jump out the window,
Speaker 2: five stories halfway down. I thought to myself this was
Speaker 2: not a good idea, but it was nothing I could do.
Speaker 2: I couldn't go back up, so I falled three stories
Speaker 2: down on the landing boom roll over. And at this
Speaker 2: point I'm an autopilot, So at this point I would
Speaker 2: have liked to went back up, but I wasn't going
Speaker 2: to sign a statement confessing to something that I didn't do.
Speaker 2: So I felt like that was the only option. So
Speaker 2: I jumped another two stories, hit a car, jumped on
Speaker 2: the car, fell off, the car rolled over, hop broke
Speaker 2: my ankle, broke my wrists, hobbled away. I got maybe
Speaker 2: a couple of blocks away, thirty cops around me, They
Speaker 2: got the George Floyd knee on my neck, thirty guns
Speaker 2: pointed at me, and I'm an extreme pain. They get
Speaker 2: me up, throw me in the car, take me to
Speaker 2: the hospital, patch up my arm, patch up my leg,
Speaker 2: and then take me to the county jail.
Speaker 1: One minute you're talking to your father, everything's normal. Next
Speaker 1: minute you're like living in this alternate reality. These cops
Speaker 1: are threatening to beat you up or worse, and you
Speaker 1: jump out the fucking window and you literally didn't know
Speaker 1: what floyd you were on.
Speaker 2: They were terrorize me, and Who's I gonna call the police?
Speaker 2: They were the ones who was cheerizing. There's nothing I
Speaker 2: can do.
Speaker 1: That's a miracle you lived through that.
Speaker 2: You know, there was only one other guy had done that,
Speaker 2: and he did die. He broke his neck.
Speaker 1: He broke out that same window.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he broke his neck.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
Speaker 1: and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early
Speaker 1: and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. So now you're taken to jail and
Speaker 1: held there for how long we're waiting trial?
Speaker 2: Six months? Wayne County Jail, which is horrible, just horrible.
Speaker 2: When I first got there, I got cast on my leg,
Speaker 2: cast on my arm. I'm in his bullpin and it's alcoholics,
Speaker 2: it's drug addicts. Is people laying all over the floor.
Speaker 2: The stench is horrible. This room is built for maybe
Speaker 2: like twenty five people. They got fifty in it. There's
Speaker 2: nowhere if you can sit. And the full of was
Speaker 2: just full of grime and dirt. It was just the nastiest,
Speaker 2: funkiest And in my mind, I'm saying to myself, I'm
Speaker 2: not finna sit on this nasty, dirty floor. There's people
Speaker 2: laying all on the benches. So I stood for maybe
Speaker 2: like two hours, but my leg is injured. I can't
Speaker 2: stand no more. So I got to sit on this floor.
Speaker 2: I sit on the floor. They wake you up for
Speaker 2: any court seeing at four thirty in the morning, they
Speaker 2: seem you to another bullpen. You wait a couple hours dead,
Speaker 2: they seems to another bull You're ready a couple hours there.
Speaker 2: It's all part of the processing. You just go from
Speaker 2: bullpen to bullpen and you get to the court where
Speaker 2: you're gonna go to the bullpen that's behind the court
Speaker 2: room where you're about to go to trial. And that
Speaker 2: said like eight thirty, never on time. When these county
Speaker 2: jails are cold, and so all I got on this
Speaker 2: little jail uniform and it's and I'm freezing every day.
Speaker 2: This is how it is every day.
Speaker 1: How are you supposed to think straight when you're coming
Speaker 1: out of an environment like that, sleep deprived, hungry, freezing,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you supposed to present like somebody
Speaker 1: who looks like an upstanding citizen, right that the jury's
Speaker 1: going to look at and go, yeah, I know, he
Speaker 1: like you look now, you know.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really under.
Speaker 1: Reported aspect of the way our system works, the dehumanization
Speaker 1: that's designed to drive people crazy before.
Speaker 2: They get to the court.
Speaker 1: I mean, my exaggerating is you're in the midst of it.
Speaker 3: You are one hundred percent correct. You come in and
Speaker 3: disheveled wreck. My clients have told me the Wayne County
Speaker 3: jail is designed to get you to plead guilty.
Speaker 1: And then here comes to trial.
Speaker 2: I was represented by an attorney called Timothy Murphy. He
Speaker 2: did the best that he could, but the deck was
Speaker 2: stacked even before we got there.
Speaker 1: So the two other guys who were shot at Lawson
Speaker 1: and Jackson, they identified you as a gunman. It's pretty
Speaker 1: ridiculous to think that someone is going to make a
Speaker 1: positive identification in the dark from one hundred feet away
Speaker 1: in a situation that's chaotic and violent and dangerous. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're one hundred feet away from a shoot, you're
Speaker 1: going to be running or turned the other way, or
Speaker 1: you know you can't help it, You're going to be
Speaker 1: your instinct right. But eyouldness identification is a very powerful
Speaker 1: thing in the court of law.
Speaker 2: One of the things we didn't know was these guys
Speaker 2: was in jail also with me. They let these guys collaborate,
Speaker 2: talk to each other so that they could get their
Speaker 2: stories together.
Speaker 1: However, the crazy circumstances of the ideas made these witnesses
Speaker 1: impeachable on cross examination. So police Sergeant Claude Houseworth, an
Speaker 1: alleged ballistics expert, came in to testify about a bullet
Speaker 1: that was allegedly found in an apartment that was neighboring
Speaker 1: Daryl's apartment.
Speaker 2: This expert gets up there and he's with all these
Speaker 2: nice professional words, and he tells the jury he's been
Speaker 2: in the Detroit crime lab for six years. Later on
Speaker 2: I filed the Freedom of a masonach request for his personnel.
Speaker 2: We found out this guy an expert. The report showed
Speaker 2: he had been in a Detroit crime lab for less
Speaker 2: than three hundred and six ft four days, not the
Speaker 2: two years that was required to even give testimony, and
Speaker 2: not the six years that he claimed he had been
Speaker 2: in the Detroit crime Lab. All lies so under oath.
Speaker 2: Under oath, this so called expert claimed that a bullet
Speaker 2: allegedly found at my home matched a bullet that was
Speaker 2: found in the deceased body and according to him, in
Speaker 2: it identical lands and grooves. Now, I don't know nothing
Speaker 2: about ballistic identification at this time. I'm twenty years old.
Speaker 2: I'm a city kid. I don't know nothing about hunting
Speaker 2: guns and none of that type of stuff. But I'm
Speaker 2: telling my lawyer it's not true.
Speaker 1: Ballistics evidence has covered on the tool mark Identification episode
Speaker 1: of Wrong for Conviction Junk Science, and we'll have it
Speaker 1: linked in the episode description. A ballistics evidence is only
Speaker 1: capable and only really meant to rule a gun out.
Speaker 1: It's not able to identify a weapon to the exclusion
Speaker 1: of all others. But that's what Sergeant Houseworth did at
Speaker 1: Dalls trial.
Speaker 3: If you have a weak witness, if you throw on forensics,
Speaker 3: and that supports the testimony cases over because I don't
Speaker 3: have to believe these guys. Maybe they were a little
Speaker 3: bit drunk and high and maybe they didn't see what
Speaker 3: they saw, but there was a bullet came out of
Speaker 3: an apartment next to Darryl Siggers, and it matches the body,
Speaker 3: then he did it. Now it strengthens the identification, and
Speaker 3: everybody knows who's in the business. Eyewitness identifications are notoriously
Speaker 3: the courts know it are notoriously unreliable, but juris don't.
Speaker 3: And why would this person say he did it if
Speaker 3: he didn't, And that's what convicted him.
Speaker 2: When I heard the jury say guilty, it was like
Speaker 2: somebody hit me in the head with a brick because
Speaker 2: I was dizzy.
Speaker 1: So you're convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 2: Yes, without the possibility pull. It was a sensing on
Speaker 2: death rope. I didn't have a date to go to
Speaker 2: the gas chamber. That's how I looked at it. That's
Speaker 2: just the true facts.
Speaker 1: Of their living death sentence.
Speaker 2: Yes, what they do is they put chains around your waist,
Speaker 2: chains on your wrists, chains on your legs, and then
Speaker 2: they march you out and you got a duck or
Speaker 2: they chain me to twenty other guys, and I feel
Speaker 2: like a slave. First. When I got there, I'm seeing
Speaker 2: all types of crazy stuff. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It stabby rapes, you know, I've seen guys hang themselves,
Speaker 2: all types of stuff, drugs, gangs, gambling. So I'm walking
Speaker 2: the yard and an older gentleman sees me. His name
Speaker 2: is Madrick Bonnard. He said, listen, young fellas, you walking
Speaker 2: around there acting tough, you need to be in a
Speaker 2: law library so you can learn the law and get
Speaker 2: your bod out of here. He takes me to the
Speaker 2: law library and he begins to teach me the law.
Speaker 2: And as I began to learn this stuff, I felt
Speaker 2: in powered. The more I learned, the more I wanted
Speaker 2: to learn. The more I read, the more I wanted
Speaker 2: to read. And so now I'm understanding how they got
Speaker 2: me here, At least from a legal standpoint, I was
Speaker 2: laser focused on being in a law library learning the
Speaker 2: law so I could get out. Had children and family,
Speaker 2: mother and father out there, but I wanted to get
Speaker 2: back to and they were my motivating force and inspiration
Speaker 2: to keep going until I could prove that I was innocent.
Speaker 2: And that was the key factor that I knew I
Speaker 2: was innocent. I was not going to just surrender my
Speaker 2: liberty like a coward and just give up. I couldn't
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: With his growing knowledge of the law, Daryl was very
Speaker 1: active in post conviction, but nonetheless he was denied throughout
Speaker 1: his state and federal proceedings. He really needed a team
Speaker 1: on the outside to reinvestigate the case.
Speaker 2: Every day I wrote somebody, I got piles of letters
Speaker 2: denying my requests for saying we couldn't help you. I
Speaker 2: remained undeterred, and I just kept writing. In two thousand
Speaker 2: and two, University of Michigan appointed me four law students,
Speaker 2: two professors. They came worked the case up, researched it,
Speaker 2: and they were the ones who ultimately discovered the identification gaps.
Speaker 2: Where these guys couldn't see what they said he saw
Speaker 2: from where they said he seen it from. It was impossible,
Speaker 2: physically impossible. They found out all type of evidence.
Speaker 1: In addition, Ernard Jackson's cousin came forward saying that Jackson
Speaker 1: admitted to testifying Paulsey against Darrel under threats from the police.
Speaker 1: Then evidence of the hidden alternate suspect came to light.
Speaker 1: If you remember, the neighbor Gary Kelly, had seen a
Speaker 1: light skinned man or potentially his white neighbor, with a
Speaker 1: long gun near the scene that night, But it appears
Speaker 1: Kelly wasn't the only person who mentioned this alternate suspect
Speaker 1: to Detective Alex.
Speaker 3: There was a friend of christineau Daryll's baby mama. His
Speaker 3: name was Fuka. He lived about Kitty corner behind the
Speaker 3: house of the party. He said there was this guy
Speaker 3: Toby Read, who he knew, came to his house with
Speaker 3: a long gun looking for one of the guys at
Speaker 3: the party. Fuka wouldn't let him in his house and
Speaker 3: Toby Red left. So we have two identifications. One who
Speaker 3: says Toby Red has a long gun right after the
Speaker 3: party comes to Fuchal's house a block and a half away.
Speaker 3: You have a neighbor with no connection to any of
Speaker 3: these people, interested witness and he says there's a light
Speaker 3: skin guy. Well, when they eliminated the white neighbor, that
Speaker 3: left a light skin guy with a long gun out there.
Speaker 3: He put two and two together. That's Toby Red.
Speaker 1: They ignored two very credible witnesses, and not only Daryll
Speaker 1: not fit the description, not even by a stretch, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody's going to mistake him for a light
Speaker 1: skin guy with reddish hair. That's ridiculous. If you remember,
Speaker 1: Toby Red had left the party after the fight, saying
Speaker 1: some menacing words on the way out. The Jack Bucher
Speaker 1: Brady violation didn't come out until civil litigation, but the
Speaker 1: Michigan law students found two other witnesses who said that
Speaker 1: Toby Red admitted to being the shooter, and one man,
Speaker 1: Daryl Doolan, claimed to have seen Toby Red shoot James Montgomery.
Speaker 1: But despite this evidence of actual innocence, Darrel's motion for
Speaker 1: a neutrial was denied. The judge ruled that the witnesses
Speaker 1: were not credible, so Daryl moved on to the ballistics evidence.
Speaker 2: Joseph Alex was the officer in charge of the case.
Speaker 2: He testified that he had found a bullet in my home,
Speaker 2: but he himself signed a return wants for my home
Speaker 2: saying nothing taking dry hole results negative. He didn't get
Speaker 2: anything from my home. None of that stuff came out
Speaker 2: at trial.
Speaker 1: They claimed they found the bullet in the wall, right, yes, right,
Speaker 1: like you were shooting guns in your own house.
Speaker 2: Yes, next door was what guys who used as a
Speaker 2: shooting gud and so guys in the hood would come
Speaker 2: in fire weapons in the next door apartment, and so
Speaker 2: this is where they found this bullet.
Speaker 1: But it gets deeper.
Speaker 2: The bullet that they found in the wall that they
Speaker 2: claimed matched. The bullet that was from the deceased body
Speaker 2: had four lands and grooves. The bullet that they got
Speaker 2: from the deceased body had twelve lands and groups, so
Speaker 2: it was impossible for them to match, and even the
Speaker 2: first year of cadets should have known this.
Speaker 3: Fortunately, Darryl obtained an examination by a guy named Dave
Speaker 3: Baalas who was retired in Michigan State Police firearms expert.
Speaker 3: He is the one who busted the DPD crime lab.
Speaker 3: The crime lab was shut down in two thousand and
Speaker 3: eight at the order basically of Kim Worthy who was
Speaker 3: the prosecutor at the time, Wayne Kunty prosecutor, because a
Speaker 3: defense lawyer had Ballish look at some identification issue and
Speaker 3: it was completely wrong. And when Baalish exposed this, the
Speaker 3: MSP did an audit of all of their cases, two
Speaker 3: hundred cases. Ten percent of them were inaccurate. You multiply
Speaker 3: that now on a number of cases that firearms identification
Speaker 3: is important, you have all kinds of potential for WRON provisions.
Speaker 1: So in the aftermath of the demise of the Detroit
Speaker 1: PD crime lab, Daryl got this report shredding his ballistics
Speaker 1: evidence and tried to use the new evidence both in
Speaker 1: the newly formed Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit as well
Speaker 1: as in court. First came an evidentiary hearing in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: At this hearing, it's in front of a notorious judge.
Speaker 3: As soon as you see that the judge's name, you're
Speaker 3: not going to get relief. They came to this hearing
Speaker 3: and the expert was out of town, and as he's
Speaker 3: supposed to get up on the TV, there was a glitch.
Speaker 2: The zoom says, it don't work.
Speaker 3: And because of that glitch, they postponed the hearing and
Speaker 3: they adjourned it, and in that gap of time, the
Speaker 3: newly formed Conviction Integrity Unit says, we'll take a look
Speaker 3: at the case.
Speaker 1: Wow, even an atheists like me can see that's a miracle.
Speaker 3: You would never be out. I wouldn't even know you.
Speaker 3: But this happened a glitch, And the CiU said, we're
Speaker 3: not interested in just finality. We're interested in truth and
Speaker 3: making sure that if you are innocent and you can
Speaker 3: prove it, then we will help.
Speaker 2: And it'shed by a wonderful person, Valerie Newman. She's the
Speaker 2: director of the k Wayne Kiny Conviction Integrity Union and
Speaker 2: kim Worthy, who was Wayne Kinky prosecutor, and so they
Speaker 2: got to look at any case. And that's how this
Speaker 2: whole thing began to unravel, and I ultimately got out
Speaker 2: of prison.
Speaker 1: Because in another jurisdiction, without a Kim Worthy, without a
Speaker 1: Valerie Newman, without a conviction and Integrity unit, and most
Speaker 1: places don't have them, you'd probably still be in prison
Speaker 1: and he would have died there, right, Yes, So these
Speaker 1: people deserve their flowers.
Speaker 3: They're the ones who took the information that Daryl was
Speaker 3: lucky enough to get of this police firearms expert. In
Speaker 3: combination with everything else, Daryl get exonerated. And then we
Speaker 3: were able to discover in the civil lawsuit of the
Speaker 3: Brady violations that the lead detective had that kind of
Speaker 3: broke the case opening from a civil standpoint.
Speaker 1: So now finally the tide has turned. Tell us about
Speaker 1: that I.
Speaker 2: Had an attorney from the State of Public Finis office
Speaker 2: named Michael Waldo. And so now I've been denied so
Speaker 2: many times, and the course I'm expecting and denial, so
Speaker 2: office comes down in my room. So Daryl, you have
Speaker 2: a phone call the lawyer wants to talk to you.
Speaker 2: I get on the phone. The first words out of
Speaker 2: his mouth was, Daryl, they granted they vacated your conviction.
Speaker 2: Imagine walking around every day with a life sentence for
Speaker 2: a crime you didn't commit. I was so filled with
Speaker 2: elation and emotion I could barely say anything else. So
Speaker 2: he kept talking. I didn't hear anything else, and it
Speaker 2: was like I was just floating on air. Officer comes
Speaker 2: back down to the room, sitting cigars. You're no longer
Speaker 2: under the Mission Department of Correction jurisdiction. You got to
Speaker 2: be gone by twelve o'clock. What time was it that
Speaker 2: he said that? About eleven? And I told we can
Speaker 2: go now, you know, we can go now. And I
Speaker 2: had all this stuff he wanted me to pack up,
Speaker 2: you know, because I had foot lockers and at this
Speaker 2: time cassette players and you know something that young people
Speaker 2: don't even know what it is now when you put
Speaker 2: these little tapes in. And I had to pack up
Speaker 2: all my books, all my paper, all the stuff that
Speaker 2: I had accumulated for thirty four years. So I pushed
Speaker 2: all that stuff out into the middle of the hallway
Speaker 2: and say, hey, anybody wants some free stuff. Them guys
Speaker 2: came and grabbed it. He said, mister Cigares, that's not
Speaker 2: what I had. Now, I said it was gone. Something
Speaker 2: went to the court. It was August tenth, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: and the judge said, mister Siggers, the convictions bake. Heeadd
Speaker 2: case dismissed. Free to go. My son was there, my
Speaker 2: daughter was there, Wolf was there, Another lawyer was there,
Speaker 2: my sister was there. Just the most beautiful experience of
Speaker 2: my life, just to be able to breathe some fresh
Speaker 2: air and not be locked in a cage being told
Speaker 2: what to do.
Speaker 3: You know, we had a funny story a couple of
Speaker 3: days after he got out, and this puts in perspective
Speaker 3: of us who live on the outside and are wrapped
Speaker 3: up in our own worlds and our own things that
Speaker 3: we consider important. A couple of days after he got out,
Speaker 3: we went to a mall. I wanted to get him
Speaker 3: some clothes. Mid afternoon, we go to a little restaurant
Speaker 3: and he has a salad and then Darryl tells, me,
Speaker 3: oh my god, this tomato is so good. I haven't
Speaker 3: had a tomato in thirty five years. And that puts
Speaker 3: into perspective, Well, you really got to get past yourself foul,
Speaker 3: because we don't realize our lives on the outside and
Speaker 3: the strength it takes for somebody like him to do
Speaker 3: thirty five years in hell. Guys like him, that's why
Speaker 3: they're so inspiring.
Speaker 1: Oh well, put the tomato is a powerful symbol in
Speaker 1: this case, you know, And we've had different people talk
Speaker 1: about that. For Jason Strong, it was an orange, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, even now, most of my dreams is still
Speaker 2: about prison because you go through that for so many years.
Speaker 2: And I've been in prison where I dreamed many times
Speaker 2: that I was free, only to wake up I'm still
Speaker 2: in prison, And so again, even now sometimes I had
Speaker 2: to say to myself, is this real? Are you really out?
Speaker 2: And my dreaming it's just the most wonderful feeling in
Speaker 2: the world to be free after all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Amidst this incredibly joyous moment. As if the Cigarets family
Speaker 1: hadn't experience enough already, tragedy struck once again.
Speaker 2: My daughter passed and nothing in life could have prepared
Speaker 2: me for that, because I had fought so many years
Speaker 2: to get out just to be with her and my grandchildren,
Speaker 2: and then for her to pass I didn't get a
Speaker 2: chance to really spend no time with her. So I've
Speaker 2: lost all my family while I was in prison. I
Speaker 2: lost my mother, my father, my oldest brother, youngest sister,
Speaker 2: visually all my family. And so to lose her after
Speaker 2: getting out was a punch in the gut. But you
Speaker 2: go on, what else can you do?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: Rest in peace.
Speaker 1: But you have a bunch of grandchildren now right, yes, eight,
Speaker 1: So you get to be a great grandfather, not a
Speaker 1: great grandfather, but a great grandfather. Yeah, and that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: And so now I'm living life on all terms and
Speaker 2: I'm having a book.
Speaker 1: Now we get to come to my favorite part of
Speaker 1: the show, and this part of the show is called
Speaker 1: closing arguments. This is a part of the show where
Speaker 1: first of all, I thank both of you guys, and
Speaker 1: then what I'm going to do is turn my microphone
Speaker 1: off and just kick back in my chair and listen
Speaker 1: to anything else that you think we may have left out,
Speaker 1: that needs to be said, or that you want to say,
Speaker 1: and that literally could be anything. That floor is yours.
Speaker 1: So we always save our most honored guests for last.
Speaker 1: So Darryl, let's turn it over to Wolf. Let him
Speaker 1: share his thoughts and then pick us off into the sunset.
Speaker 3: I think the biggest lesson that can be learned in
Speaker 3: this case is that, fortunately, since the advent of the
Speaker 3: smartphone and videos on phones, we don't put the police
Speaker 3: on such a highest pedestal anymore. We need to look
Speaker 3: at them with the human frailties that everybody else has,
Speaker 3: and they are in such a position of power. With
Speaker 3: power comes at great responsibility, and when you abuse that power,
Speaker 3: you have to be held accountable, just like the rest
Speaker 3: of us. And we went through five years of civil
Speaker 3: litigation before we're able to have a successful result. The
Speaker 3: wheels of justice turn slowly, but when people have the
Speaker 3: strength to be an agent for their own change, his
Speaker 3: story is like so many others that these good things
Speaker 3: can happen, but you have to help fight for yourself.
Speaker 3: You can't just rely on the system. The system is
Speaker 3: not going to do it by itself. And that's why
Speaker 3: guys like Darryl you are such agents for change. And
Speaker 3: then you have to look past yourself, and Darryl understands
Speaker 3: and these other guys. There are so many innocent people
Speaker 3: in prison. Five percent is a conservative number who are
Speaker 3: wrongfully convicted in prison. Most of which are murders, most
Speaker 3: of whom are going to die, either in states that
Speaker 3: have a death penalty or like Michigan without a death penalty,
Speaker 3: but it's still you're on death row because just no
Speaker 3: date certain.
Speaker 2: But that's what they they have.
Speaker 3: The system is not designed to look once you've been
Speaker 3: convicted at whether you were guilty or innocence. And that's
Speaker 3: why it's so important that these innocence projects exist, that
Speaker 3: these conviction integrity units exist to get it right, because
Speaker 3: it's just too important. Freedom is on the line, the
Speaker 3: Constitution is on the line, and that's why it starts
Speaker 3: with the integrity of the police. And if we don't
Speaker 3: do a better job of policing the police, it doesn't
Speaker 3: get better.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I've learned, and it's a
Speaker 2: real sad commentary, is the law really isn't blind. Them
Speaker 2: skills are justice. It really isn't blind. There's so much discrimination, racism, classism,
Speaker 2: and our judicial system. And I've lived with guys who
Speaker 2: I know are innocent, but they didn't have the mental
Speaker 2: acuity to learn the law. And the law is a
Speaker 2: very complex language or science in and of it self.
Speaker 2: Just like you go to a doctor, and if you
Speaker 2: look at all these long terms that they use and
Speaker 2: the medications or whatever. It's the same with law, and
Speaker 2: some guys just give up. It's just too hard. And
Speaker 2: so for me it was just a matter of staying
Speaker 2: with it, learning it, seeing successes. And I didn't try
Speaker 2: to learn all the law. I only wanted to learn
Speaker 2: what was pertaining to me. But the saddest commentary is
Speaker 2: you could look at the judge, see who appointed them,
Speaker 2: and know whether your case is going to be granted
Speaker 2: or do not. If you get a Trump appointee, you
Speaker 2: know your chances are very, very slim. If you get
Speaker 2: somebody who's appointed by Obama, you got a better shot
Speaker 2: because they're going to be more fair. And that's very
Speaker 2: sad because when you submit a brief or emotion, it's
Speaker 2: supposed to be decided based on the facts in that motion,
Speaker 2: not on all these procedures or not how whether you're
Speaker 2: a conservative or liberal, or whether you're a Republican or
Speaker 2: it shouldn't be like that. Well, great lawyer, I've learned
Speaker 2: so much from him. We filed our lawsuit solid issues,
Speaker 2: go to the United States Court of Appeals. We get
Speaker 2: two Trump appointees and a Bush appointee, and they butcher
Speaker 2: to appeal. They reduce it than not want of the claims.
Speaker 2: They've bent over backwards to violate their own law just
Speaker 2: to dey be. That's one of the things that surprises
Speaker 2: me more than anything else. That's why I have no
Speaker 2: faith in the law. I don't believe it. I think
Speaker 2: it's all bs because the real law are the judges.
Speaker 2: They just use the law as a tool to settle
Speaker 2: your lawsuit. But whatever it is, anyway they choose.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ron for Conviction. You can
Speaker 1: listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
Speaker 1: one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team,
Speaker 1: Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow
Speaker 1: executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn. The
Speaker 1: music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
Speaker 1: all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
Speaker 1: It's Jason Vlamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good podcasts and association with signal Company Number one