Speaker 1: Beginning on January third, nineteen eighty four, and stretching over
Speaker 1: the next five weeks, five women were victims of some
Speaker 1: degree of sexual assault in East Richmond, Virginia. Due to
Speaker 1: the location, nature of the attacks and similar descriptions of
Speaker 1: the assailant, police believed that there was a single attacker.
Speaker 1: On February fifth, nineteen eighty four, eighteen year old Thomas
Speaker 1: Hainsworth was misidentified.
Speaker 2: By one of the victims and arrested.
Speaker 1: All five victims eventually echoed the misidentification. Two of the
Speaker 1: attacks included biological evidence, but in nineteen eighty four, with
Speaker 1: no DNA testing available, roology could only determine that Thomas's blood.
Speaker 2: Type matched that of the attacker.
Speaker 1: After one of the charges was dropped, he was tried
Speaker 1: four separate times, convicted in three cases, and sentenced to
Speaker 1: seventy four years. Although Thomas was in custody, the assaults
Speaker 1: continued through December of nineteen eighty four, concluding with the
Speaker 1: arrest of Leon Davis, a neighbor of Thomas's. According to
Speaker 1: both men, they wrongly resembled one another. Despite their similar
Speaker 1: appearances and the continued attacks. Authorities maintained that both men
Speaker 1: were guilty. Finally, in two thousand and five, DNA testing
Speaker 1: excluded Thomas from his only conviction in which there was
Speaker 1: biological evidence, simultaneously inculpating Leon Davis. After an investigation, the
Speaker 1: prosecutors joined Thomas and the mid Atlantic Inniscence Project, laying
Speaker 1: responsibility for all of the attacks on mister Davis. Yet,
Speaker 1: even without opposition, Thomas's case just barely succeeded in the
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals, but nevertheless he was finally exonerated after
Speaker 1: twenty seven years. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flaman. I want to
Speaker 1: start by say this episode demonstrates a classic example of
Speaker 1: why eyewitness identification is so terribly unreliable and why we
Speaker 1: must keep working to institute practices that safeguard us against
Speaker 1: the problems with cross racial misidentification as happened in this case,
Speaker 1: keeping an innocent man in prison for twenty seven years.
Speaker 1: And that man is our guest today, Thomas Hainsworth. Thomas,
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you here, even though I
Speaker 1: hate the reason why you're here, but thank you for taking.
Speaker 2: The time to be with us on the show today.
Speaker 1: You're wil And with Thomas as somebody who our avid
Speaker 1: listeners will recognize. Sean Arburst is the sort of the
Speaker 1: straw that stirs the drink at the mid Atlantic Innocence Project.
Speaker 1: She is an attorney, she's an advocate, she's a fighter,
Speaker 1: and she's my friend. And I'm super glad to have
Speaker 1: you here as well, Shawn, So welcome back to Rawful Conviction.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jason. Great to be here, and it always
Speaker 3: grew to be with Thomas.
Speaker 1: So Thomas, take us back, if you would, what was
Speaker 1: your life like growing up?
Speaker 4: No, Michelle grew up with three sisters and a younger brother,
Speaker 4: you know, into sports, into music, Like I said, my
Speaker 4: child it was falling friend, you know.
Speaker 1: And you grew up in Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 2: Is that right, right?
Speaker 5: Richmond, Virginia? Right?
Speaker 1: So it sounds about like what the childhood is more
Speaker 1: or less I want to say supposed to be like,
Speaker 1: but pretty much sports music. You know. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: had your ups and downs like any other teenager. But
Speaker 1: a series of terrible, terrible crimes sort of rock the
Speaker 1: city of Richmond at this time. And Sean, can you
Speaker 1: describe to us what happened?
Speaker 3: So the crimes Thomas initially got caught up in were
Speaker 3: a group of five crimes between January third and February
Speaker 3: first of nineteen eighty four, and they were all rapes
Speaker 3: or sexual assaults in the tiny corner of Richmond that's
Speaker 3: also right on the border of Henryko County. It was
Speaker 3: four crimes in Richmond, one in Henrico County. And these
Speaker 3: are eerily similar crimes. They happen at the same time
Speaker 3: of day, all white victims. They all describe I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a fairly generic description because it's white victims describing
Speaker 3: a black perpetrator. But they all describe someone who looks
Speaker 3: fairly similar, someone who typically approaches with a knife, who
Speaker 3: has a series of kind of odd behaviors, says a
Speaker 3: bunch of odd things. So the sort of prototypical one
Speaker 3: of these crimes was either early in the morning or
Speaker 3: right around dusk. Victim would be approached by a perpetrator
Speaker 3: outside on the street, and the perpetrator would take the
Speaker 3: victim to various locations and commit different types of sexual assault,
Speaker 3: so sometimes vaginal rape, sometimes oral sodomy, sometimes adle sodomy,
Speaker 3: and would make the victims kind of pretend to be
Speaker 3: his girlfriend as they were walking around. And when you're
Speaker 3: looking at a pattern like this, obviously not every crime
Speaker 3: fits precisely into the pattern. Some get interrupted. In this case,
Speaker 3: the attacker was pretty easily scared away. This is part
Speaker 3: of how he avoided being caught for so long. But
Speaker 3: it's that same basic arc and these are terrifying crimes.
Speaker 1: And the first case the one that said all of
Speaker 1: this in motion. I believe it was not only the
Speaker 1: crime itself that was so jarring, but also the location
Speaker 1: that had occurred in that threw the story to the forefront.
Speaker 1: So tell us what happened there.
Speaker 3: The first case took place on January third, and the
Speaker 3: victim in that case went to her work at a
Speaker 3: church preschool and she was waiting for students to come
Speaker 3: in for the day and was very quickly accosted by
Speaker 3: a rapist who held her at nice point, raped her,
Speaker 3: and ran away as the first parents started coming in
Speaker 3: for the day. And so, you know, if you can
Speaker 3: imagine it, a woman who she's in her late teen's
Speaker 3: early twenties, she is in a church, she is waiting
Speaker 3: for three year olds to come in and is dealing
Speaker 3: with the fact that she's just been raped. So right,
Speaker 3: off the bat, these crimes are really horrific and the
Speaker 3: kind of crime that make you think you're not safe anywhere, right,
Speaker 3: And I think it's that mentality that really started making
Speaker 3: these crimes particularly high profile in Richmond.
Speaker 1: And the second crime took place just a few weeks
Speaker 1: after the first, on January twenty first, and it took
Speaker 1: place in a grocery store. Again, I think it added
Speaker 1: to the horror that these assaults were happening in places
Speaker 1: that we normally think of as being safe spaces, right,
Speaker 1: A nursery school, a grocery store, And they continued on
Speaker 1: with alarming regularity, because then the time between the crimes
Speaker 1: started shrinking. So we're talking about on January twenty seven,
Speaker 1: and so now only six days after the second attack,
Speaker 1: a man with a knife approached a woman outside of
Speaker 1: her home and demanded money and sex. Sheilo luckily went
Speaker 1: inside and slammed the door shut and locked it and
Speaker 1: called the police, so she escaped. Then on January thirtieth,
Speaker 1: so just three days later, an eighteen year old woman
Speaker 1: was abducted, raped, and sodomized at gunpoint in Henrico County,
Speaker 1: just a few blocks from the other attacks. And then
Speaker 1: on February first, So again, the windows are just shrinking
Speaker 1: faster and faster. A nineteen year old woman was adducted
Speaker 1: at gunpoint outside her East Richmond home. The gunman forced
Speaker 1: her to go inside the house, but he fled when
Speaker 1: the family dog began barking at him. And wow, I mean,
Speaker 1: what a close call that was. So all of these
Speaker 1: incidents happened within a one mile radius. This guy was
Speaker 1: almost begging to be caught, but he continued getting away
Speaker 1: with it. Now, because of the locations of the attacks,
Speaker 1: a description of the attacker, and the nature of the assaults,
Speaker 1: everyone was pretty much on the same page that it
Speaker 1: was one person that was responsible, right, But what happens
Speaker 1: in these cases that we see again and again is
Speaker 1: that there was a misidentification which set this awful chain
Speaker 1: of events in motion. Take us through that, Sean, if
Speaker 1: you don't mind.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. So, Thomas was walking to the store to get
Speaker 3: sweet potatoes for his mom and one of the victims
Speaker 3: saw him and said, that's my rapist. She called police.
Speaker 3: Police came picked him up, arrested him, and then four
Speaker 3: more victims identified him as the perpetrator, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Now, these are all cross racial eye with its identifications,
Speaker 1: and that comes with its own problems already, and we
Speaker 1: find out later that the actual perpetrator did in fact
Speaker 1: resemble Thomas as well, just adding to the confusion and
Speaker 1: making it even harder for the victims to make the
Speaker 1: correct idea. But before we even get into that, Sean,
Speaker 1: can you tell us a bit about cross racial idea
Speaker 1: dentification in general.
Speaker 3: So what we know, and we know this based on
Speaker 3: now decades of social science research, is that people are
Speaker 3: not good at identifying people of different races. We also
Speaker 3: know that white people are particularly bad at identifying people
Speaker 3: of different races, particularly when those people are African American.
Speaker 3: So what we have seen over and over and over
Speaker 3: again is that the likelihood of an error by an
Speaker 3: eyewitness is just magnified when it is a cross racial identification,
Speaker 3: that is, a white person identifying a black person. If
Speaker 3: you look at the actual percentage of black on white
Speaker 3: rapes in the country, it is infinitesimally small. If you
Speaker 3: look at the percentage of DNA exonerations in rape cases
Speaker 3: that are black on white rape, it is extraordinarily large.
Speaker 3: And just those two numbers can tell you all you
Speaker 3: need to know about the enhanced risk of error when
Speaker 3: you have black and white idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it fits into the stereotype, this sort of
Speaker 1: racist mythology that has been a part of unfortunately, our
Speaker 1: culture and our judicial system for as long as we've
Speaker 1: had one.
Speaker 3: And then you can't look at the cross racial nature
Speaker 3: of these crimes and not talk about where you are
Speaker 3: and when you're there. So you're in Richmond, which is
Speaker 3: the capital of the Confederacy, and it's nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 3: and you cannot divorce these cases from that time period
Speaker 3: and that place either.
Speaker 1: Now, Thomas, tell us what happened when they arrested you
Speaker 1: and what was going through your mind.
Speaker 4: These stopped me in the morning. They said, the lady
Speaker 4: she picked you out, and she can dentify you. And
Speaker 4: that's where I was going. I said, I'm going to
Speaker 4: the store. He said what he used to do. Right here,
Speaker 4: she could identify the person. I said, yeah, I ain't
Speaker 4: gonna have que I'm not gonna want So they want
Speaker 4: to get the female big and brought it back and
Speaker 4: she looked at me like she won too shore and
Speaker 4: then he sees some tour and she looked at me
Speaker 4: again like she won too. Shoe about the person, and
Speaker 4: then they did it for the third time. They talked
Speaker 4: to her in the third time and she just put
Speaker 4: her hands up, and then they came and said he
Speaker 4: was unarrest said, I'm the rest for what. They put
Speaker 4: her handcufs on me and they put me in back patrol
Speaker 4: car and he took me to the Richardson in jail and.
Speaker 5: They got dan Neil. Then when it came to reality,
Speaker 5: to me what was.
Speaker 4: Going on the child's will, rape, production and burking the innswer,
Speaker 4: I ain't know what to think, you know.
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
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Speaker 1: Legal Access program provides pro bono legal services in partnership
Speaker 1: with more than forty organizations, bringing meaningful change to people
Speaker 1: and communities worldwide. Okay, so the initial identification at least from.
Speaker 2: Your perspective looked shaky right.
Speaker 1: The victim seemed to go back and forth a few
Speaker 1: times until throwing her hands up in the air. Then
Speaker 1: you're arrested, and eventually all five victims misidentified you as
Speaker 1: the attacker. All five dealing with the cross racial nature
Speaker 1: of this idea as well as the fact that you
Speaker 1: actually did resemble the attacker. So you're charged with rape,
Speaker 1: along with a slew of other charges that came with
Speaker 1: each incident. I'm talking about our abduction, breaking and entering, robbery,
Speaker 1: and then you go to trial.
Speaker 4: One of my lord they came with suggestion, you know
Speaker 4: you got these seed childs. I think it the best
Speaker 4: you will. Please get to, you know, get a life sentence,
Speaker 4: to get fishball role with Somewhere down the line you
Speaker 4: got aldy seated charge. You're going to get a license,
Speaker 4: And I said, now, I'm not gonna plead get into nothing.
Speaker 5: Ain't do.
Speaker 4: I said, I'd rather pull the try out and I
Speaker 4: could be found get to convict the license.
Speaker 5: I deal with it, but I'm never getting my right
Speaker 5: up to be innocent though.
Speaker 1: So you've got your own defense team trying to push
Speaker 1: you to admit guilt, which is not unfortuately exactly uncommon. Obviously,
Speaker 1: some people are actually guilty while others plead guilty just
Speaker 1: because it's a smarter decision to do so. I mean,
Speaker 1: fased with the choice of a lenient sentence or the
Speaker 1: unknown at trial, right, especially when life or even death
Speaker 1: sentences are you know, dangling over your head. I mean,
Speaker 1: with that at play. It's no wonder that convictions are
Speaker 1: obtained through guilty please, at a rate of close to
Speaker 1: ninety eight percent, right over ninety seven percent a melody.
Speaker 1: Convictions of the United States are a result of guilty.
Speaker 2: Please.
Speaker 1: It's a very understandable choice to make. But when given
Speaker 1: that choice, Thomas, you held firm in your innocence. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a courageous and principled stand to take. Now, Okay,
Speaker 1: so we go to the trial, right, or should I
Speaker 1: say the trials, because there were four separate trials. The
Speaker 1: charges in the January twenty seventh incident where the attacker
Speaker 1: approached with a knife and the victim fled to her house,
Speaker 1: those charges were dropped. So for the four trials, though
Speaker 1: the prosecution relied on the victims misidentifications of Thomas. Now,
Speaker 1: in two of the four cases, there was some biological evidence,
Speaker 1: but in the early eighties there was no DNA testing,
Speaker 1: only sorology, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what you have in terms of physical evidence in
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties is you can test semen for blood type,
Speaker 3: and you also can test for something that's known as
Speaker 3: secretor status. If I am a secretor I'm somebody whose
Speaker 3: blood type shows up in my other bodily fluids. So
Speaker 3: like if I spit on a table, you can figure
Speaker 3: out my blood type from the spit. A non sec
Speaker 3: rereader is somebody whose blood type isn't in the spit,
Speaker 3: So they were in you know, at least a couple
Speaker 3: of Thomas's cases able to do that very limited amount
Speaker 3: of science, but that's science. It could give you percentages,
Speaker 3: but the percentages were pretty big, right, So think about
Speaker 3: all the people in the world who have type oh blood. Well,
Speaker 3: that's what you can really narrow down to. So you know,
Speaker 3: Thomas was in that case in the population of people
Speaker 3: who could have committed the crime. But that's a really
Speaker 3: big population of people.
Speaker 1: Right, So it really doesn't do a great job of
Speaker 1: proving anything at all. Zerology is actually really better at
Speaker 1: ruling a suspect out rather than in and There's also
Speaker 1: a moment in one of the trials where Thomas's height
Speaker 1: should have ruled him completely out.
Speaker 3: So in the case in Henrico County, the victim had
Speaker 3: sworn and believed correctly, it turns out that her rapist
Speaker 3: was taller than her. She described the rapist as being
Speaker 3: about five to ten Thomas's five six. So Thomas's lawyer
Speaker 3: actually had the two of them stand next to each
Speaker 3: other in that trial to demonstrate that Thomas was actually
Speaker 3: shorter than this victim. But this is part of why
Speaker 3: I witnessed testimony is so powerful. Right, This still didn't
Speaker 3: shake her confidence that Thomas was the perpetrator. She was
Speaker 3: still one hundred percent sure that Thomas did it. And
Speaker 3: so there's not much a defense lawyer could do in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four in the face of that kind of testimony.
Speaker 1: So the charges had been dropped in the January twenty
Speaker 1: seventh incident, but you still had to sit through similar
Speaker 1: proceedings four times over, where the facts of four very real,
Speaker 1: unspeakably horrible assaults were presented, but along with no meaningful
Speaker 1: physical evidence to implicate you, even the fact that you
Speaker 1: didn't match the January thirtieth victims, description of the assailant's height.
Speaker 1: And now the jury goes out four times on you,
Speaker 1: and I've got to imagine that the first time was
Speaker 1: probably the hardest pill to swallow. Right the January third
Speaker 1: break in and rape at the nursery school. How long
Speaker 1: did that particular trial last?
Speaker 5: I reme in the first trial they last I think
Speaker 5: a day and a half.
Speaker 4: The Jid could not come to a verdict, and Jill
Speaker 4: Center back home overnight and told them to think about him,
Speaker 4: and they came back the next day, I think about
Speaker 4: three hours they deliberated, and then they came back for.
Speaker 5: The gilt, the virtue. And I was devastated.
Speaker 4: My family devastated because the three charges at the beginning
Speaker 4: with rape, breaking the interest, and Robert Lloyd got them
Speaker 4: to miss the robber child. So I left the jew
Speaker 4: only with two charges and rape and bringing the interest.
Speaker 4: They came back. Their family get to the rape, but
Speaker 4: their family not get to breaking into the entrant. The
Speaker 4: parpartrat had to break into the place and rate the person.
Speaker 4: So I would wonder how you could find me guilt
Speaker 4: to on one and not the other. And I noticed
Speaker 4: something about the jerid and all my trials, every time
Speaker 4: their family guilty, they give me the lowest sentence on
Speaker 4: each charges. If they cared fired in life, they get
Speaker 4: five year. If you get twenty to life, they give
Speaker 4: me twenty years. Because they had no sustained evidence that
Speaker 4: placed me at the cram scene.
Speaker 5: The only thing to hear is her words against my worry.
Speaker 1: So now you're since ten years, and I mean, this
Speaker 1: would seem to be the worst day in anybody's life,
Speaker 1: but you have to still stay on trial in these
Speaker 1: other cases. Then you got thirty six years for January thirtieth,
Speaker 1: Then you were acquitted for the January twenty first incident,
Speaker 1: and finally wrongfully convicted again for the February first incident
Speaker 1: and sentenced to another twenty eight years. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: hard to even read this stuff, and you lived it,
Speaker 1: and thus begins your saga of being a number instead
Speaker 1: of a name.
Speaker 4: When I got into the penitential, I think was that
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna see here lay there to take this.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna sit here and to be a part
Speaker 4: of this corrupt system. I'm not gonna sit here that
Speaker 4: accept your selve it for my family and my life.
Speaker 4: You know, at the age of eighteen, I'm not gonna see,
Speaker 4: you know, waste all my life and penitendence. So I
Speaker 4: had to go there. I'm right to the end. I
Speaker 4: had things I know I had to do when I
Speaker 4: first added to the system. The third thing I asked
Speaker 4: with the old library was and I signed them for that.
Speaker 4: Then I signed up for the GED class and I
Speaker 4: signed them for college. So my thing was that, you know,
Speaker 4: I won't prove these people wrong. Now I'm in the
Speaker 4: place that I had to grew up overnight. I had
Speaker 4: become a man over night. It took me three years
Speaker 4: just to open up to people. I did nothing for
Speaker 4: three years this working went to school. I had to
Speaker 4: learn quick and be quick on my feet of thinking
Speaker 4: all the time. And you know, I had a couple
Speaker 4: older guys guide me, telling me the young blood sign
Speaker 4: up for school, take all the trades, and take a
Speaker 4: opportunity to and get some of the guys that stayed
Speaker 4: me in the right way. And they gave me good
Speaker 4: device and I took each to that.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like there were some good people in
Speaker 1: there who were mentors to you. So I guess there
Speaker 1: was a little bit of light in this miserable dark tunnel.
Speaker 2: That you were in.
Speaker 1: And now we've got to turn our attention to a
Speaker 1: very important part of this terrible story, which is that
Speaker 1: while you were incarcerated, when the rapes should have stopped,
Speaker 1: they didn't stop at all. They actually increased. They continued
Speaker 1: throughout the East Richmond area, where another at least ten
Speaker 1: women reported being attacked by a young African American man
Speaker 1: who actually asked his victims to call the police and
Speaker 1: referred to him as the quote black ninja. Now, on
Speaker 1: December nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, two Richmond residents saw a
Speaker 1: man following a woman down the street. He was arrested.
Speaker 1: This was a guy named Leon Davis. Now this is crazy, right.
Speaker 1: So Leon was actually your neighbor, Thomas, and you saw
Speaker 1: him on January thirtieth, right after that incident. But it
Speaker 1: didn't click for you, right, The dots didn't connect until
Speaker 1: you were hearing the victim's story and the witnesses at
Speaker 1: your own preliminary hearing for that incident.
Speaker 5: Right, what was on January thirtieth?
Speaker 4: I was in my nixt birthday pond and I came
Speaker 4: outside of the front one of my friend they did
Speaker 4: who was on the front talking and Leon Davis came
Speaker 4: from the side of the house.
Speaker 5: He's a leopard, and I looked at him. I said, well,
Speaker 5: happ to you?
Speaker 4: And he said I would come down downtown mess with
Speaker 4: the white girls down there, and so they'll say, man,
Speaker 4: you don't you gonna put me down there?
Speaker 5: He said yeah, he said, it chased me and I failed.
Speaker 5: It hit my leg.
Speaker 4: At that time I had on one interacted with him.
Speaker 4: So then when my preminer here and when the victor
Speaker 4: seid what happened? How she told her friend and he
Speaker 4: chased them. I was saying to myself, Wow, there was
Speaker 4: to day on my niece birthday party. I was at
Speaker 4: home the day and I told my lawyer, I said,
Speaker 4: look at this guy named lil Lin in the street
Speaker 4: from me. I think he had something to do with it.
Speaker 4: And I told her to take the heart. Also, the
Speaker 4: leader taken on my case. But you know, my worry
Speaker 4: fell on death.
Speaker 5: Yeah. They ain't pay me, no man.
Speaker 1: And if only they would have, who knows how many
Speaker 1: of these other crimes could have been prevented. Sean tell
Speaker 1: us about this Leon Davis guy and how they managed
Speaker 1: to miss what should have been obvious signs.
Speaker 3: So in the opinion of the Richmond Police Department and
Speaker 3: the Hunreca Police Department. The crimes that Thomas was convicted of,
Speaker 3: those types of crimes stopped when Thomas was arrested, and
Speaker 3: there was a break in crimes like this until April,
Speaker 3: and that is when Leon Davis, according to the original
Speaker 3: government narrative, began his crime spree. I think what the
Speaker 3: police missed, of course, is that he just never stopped
Speaker 3: his crime spring, but he was committing crimes that looked
Speaker 3: an awful lot like, specifically like the last crime Thomas
Speaker 3: was convicted of, which is the one in Henriiko County
Speaker 3: where he made the woman walk around and pretend she
Speaker 3: was his girlfriend. And so he was able to keep
Speaker 3: committing these crimes in an incredibly brazen way until his
Speaker 3: arrest in December nineteen eighty four. One of the most
Speaker 3: interesting stories I think in this case is what I
Speaker 3: didn't believe when Thomas told me at first. He told
Speaker 3: me that when he and Leon were locked up together,
Speaker 3: Leon approached him in the Richmond City jail and said, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, we kind of look alike. I've got a
Speaker 3: hearing coming up in my case. Would you Thomas mind
Speaker 3: standing in for me Leon at defense table to see
Speaker 3: if we can confuse the victim, to see if the
Speaker 3: victim would identify you instead of me. Wow, And I
Speaker 3: thought Thomas had to be making that up because it's
Speaker 3: too crazy to be true. But I actually confirmed it.
Speaker 3: So this is something Leon new, it's something Thomas knew.
Speaker 3: And even though it didn't appear that the police were
Speaker 3: putting two and two together, there was one interrogation record
Speaker 3: of Leon Davis where he was asked if he knew Thomas.
Speaker 3: But I think for a lot of the police officers
Speaker 3: at the time, there's that ongoing stereotype about black men
Speaker 3: being sexual predators, and so I think it was probably
Speaker 3: quite conceivable to the police department at the time that
Speaker 3: there could just be two people who were black men
Speaker 3: going around and doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a crazy coincidence. And you've mentioned earlier, Sean,
Speaker 1: about the fact that these crimes are exceedingly rare, in fact,
Speaker 1: that that stereotype based on nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the lone black speak up in Thomas's neighborhood.
Speaker 3: He apparently told detectives at the time, you got the
Speaker 3: wrong kid, like this just isn't him. But detectives didn't
Speaker 3: buy it. Even the juries struggled in this case. The
Speaker 3: January third rape that went to trial first was supposed
Speaker 3: to be the strongest case. But as you heard Thomas say,
Speaker 3: the jury really struggled to reach a verdict. And that
Speaker 3: first case sentenced Thomas to ten years, and that was
Speaker 3: supposed to be the strong case. So even at the time,
Speaker 3: there should have been warning signs that this wasn't right
Speaker 3: and someone should have put two and two together, but
Speaker 3: they didn't.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's get to the good part. Because in
Speaker 1: Thomas's case, just as his trials were particularly screwy, the
Speaker 1: process of getting him out took some twists and turns
Speaker 1: that we don't often see.
Speaker 3: All Right, Thomas's case first came to our attention because
Speaker 3: he wrote to us, but the context in which he
Speaker 3: wrote to us was a little bit different. There had
Speaker 3: been several people at that point who had been exonerated
Speaker 3: based on DNA tests done on evidence like little tiny
Speaker 3: clippings of evidence, clippings of Q tips, clippings of underwear
Speaker 3: clothing that had been saved by a particular analyst at
Speaker 3: Virginia's Department of Forensic Science. After a few of those exonerations.
Speaker 3: Then Virginia Governor Mark Warner ordered the State Crime Lab
Speaker 3: to do DNA testing in every single case between nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy three and nineteen eighty nine where there was physical
Speaker 3: evidence saved in these files. The Lab sent out of
Speaker 3: letters to people who had been convicted and who now
Speaker 3: had DNA testing happening in their cases, and I was
Speaker 3: listed as the contact person in those letters. So he
Speaker 3: already wrote to me as a potential DNA case. But
Speaker 3: then I got a call from a Richmond Times Dispatch
Speaker 3: reporter named Frank Green who said, there's a case you
Speaker 3: got to jump on. It's this guy, Thomas Hainsworth. I
Speaker 3: covered his trial. I also covered the trial of the
Speaker 3: guy who did it. Frank had gotten hold of the
Speaker 3: DNA reports in the case, and it was one of
Speaker 3: the three cases where Thomas had been convicted. The DNA
Speaker 3: excluded Thomas as the perpetrator and linked to Leon Davis
Speaker 3: as the perpetrator, and this was great news for Thomas.
Speaker 3: But the problem was that we only had DNA in
Speaker 3: one of the three cases where Thomas was convicted. What
Speaker 3: we did have was potential DNA in the case where
Speaker 3: Thomas had been acquitted. So we worked with the Richmond
Speaker 3: Commonwealth's Attorney to get that evidence tested, and once again
Speaker 3: it cleared Thomas and linked to Leon Davis.
Speaker 1: Wow, and it would seem like this is where things
Speaker 1: should have just opened up for Thomas, that he should
Speaker 1: have been right on his way out of there, right,
Speaker 1: But unfortunately that's just not the way this played out.
Speaker 3: So at that point, what we had was five rapes
Speaker 3: and sexual assaults in a five week period that everyone
Speaker 3: thought were committed by the same person, and we know
Speaker 3: concretely that two were committed by Leon Das for most people, logically,
Speaker 3: that gets you to a place where you say, well,
Speaker 3: Leon Davis did the rest of these crimes, right, everyone
Speaker 3: thought they were the same person. But that kind of
Speaker 3: deduction is an evidence, right. So even though at that
Speaker 3: point the Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney thought Thomas was innocent, the
Speaker 3: Virginia Attorney General hen Kuchinelli, a very right wing conservative,
Speaker 3: was on the way to thinking Thomas was innocent. You
Speaker 3: can't prove anything in court that way. What you have
Speaker 3: to do is go to the Virginia Court of Appeals
Speaker 3: and file something very legal sounding called a writ of
Speaker 3: actual innocence, and you have to have proof, so we
Speaker 3: did a couple of different things to try to get
Speaker 3: us there. Thomas took polygraph tests, one for the Richmond
Speaker 3: crimes that he was convicted of and one for the
Speaker 3: Henriko County crime he was convicted of. Passed both with
Speaker 3: flying colors. Of course, we don't necessarily believe too much
Speaker 3: in the reliability of polygraph tests, but it was something
Speaker 3: that the prosecutors could use to sort of justify why
Speaker 3: they believed in Thomas's innocence. And then what we had
Speaker 3: was the similarities between the crimes. So we worked with
Speaker 3: the Attorney General's Office and the Commonwealth Attorney to meticulously
Speaker 3: document all of the similarities between the crimes that we
Speaker 3: knew Leon Davis had committed and the remaining convictions on
Speaker 3: Thomas's record, and using all of that, we filed a
Speaker 3: rid of actual innocence in the Court of Appeals and
Speaker 3: I think February of twenty eleven, so Thomas was still
Speaker 3: in prison, we were able to get him paroled and
Speaker 3: released unfortunately as a sex offender. While the case was pending.
Speaker 3: We had an oral argument in March of twenty eleven,
Speaker 3: and again there was no one opposing Thomas's exoneration except
Speaker 3: the court. That oral argument did not go well. It
Speaker 3: was pretty clear that the court just didn't believe we
Speaker 3: had met the burden we were supposed to meet in
Speaker 3: the case. In the summer of twenty eleven, the Court
Speaker 3: of Appeals came back to us and said, all of
Speaker 3: the judges on the court want to sit for another
Speaker 3: oral argument in this case. And at the time, in
Speaker 3: order to win a rid of actual innocence, you had
Speaker 3: to prove by clear and convincing evidence that no rational
Speaker 3: trier of fact could find proof of guilt beyond a
Speaker 3: reasonable doubt. And that is, to anyone normal out there,
Speaker 3: that just sounds like a bunch of like legal legal,
Speaker 3: legal boring. It's about as highest standard as you can have.
Speaker 3: So we did that oral argument. Thankfully, six of the
Speaker 3: ten judges ultimately agreed that Thomas deserved to have his
Speaker 3: convictions overturned and to be exonerated. So we won by
Speaker 3: six to four. But to put that in perspective, we
Speaker 3: only won by one vote in a case where the
Speaker 3: Attorney General's office agreed with us, which is pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Pretty terrifying, actually, I mean it's absolutely terrifying. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you almost lost. In other words, with overwhelming evidence of innocence,
Speaker 1: the attorney General, prosecutors, everybody going, hey, guess what, this
Speaker 1: was a mistake. Here, a terrible mistake. This guy's innocent,
Speaker 1: and yet you won by one vote. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is well, this is.
Speaker 3: What happens when you have bad laws. So many exonerations
Speaker 3: depend on just having a decent person on the other
Speaker 3: side who's gonna wink and nod when the bad laws
Speaker 3: in front of them, And that's not what happens in Virginia.
Speaker 3: Winking and nodding doesn't work, so you're stuck with the
Speaker 3: bad law.
Speaker 1: So, Thomas, from your perspective, finally you've got a fantastic
Speaker 1: team and all the things are lining up. Everybody's starting
Speaker 1: to acknowledge what you've been saying all along, that you're innocent.
Speaker 1: But you're finally freed with all these conditions. You got
Speaker 1: to wear an ankle monitor, you're on the sex offender registry.
Speaker 1: What was it like to walk out into the light,
Speaker 1: even with all those sort of caveats and restrictions.
Speaker 5: It was frustrated. I mean I would have to.
Speaker 4: Be out, just come home, get on the bat. I
Speaker 4: wanted to this because I was paying attentional and you
Speaker 4: come home and be back with your family.
Speaker 5: When I first came home, I had to meet with
Speaker 5: one of my probation office. I think Sean was with me.
Speaker 4: I knew damn high condition because I was still, you know,
Speaker 4: a regular sex offender.
Speaker 5: I didn't have no problem with that.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm gonna apply to the law, and I'm
Speaker 4: gonna be obedient to the law what I got to
Speaker 4: do to maintain my freedom. But when she told me
Speaker 4: that if I choose to date somebody, I had to
Speaker 4: bring in person down before she could meet them and
Speaker 4: she could tell.
Speaker 5: Them what I'm locked up for.
Speaker 4: You know, while my cues are and I looked at Sean,
Speaker 4: and I told Sean I had more freedom in rites
Speaker 4: and prison I had on the street. It was a
Speaker 4: little bit hard getting adjusted to it, because really, you home,
Speaker 4: you got all the conditions, still leave as a sex
Speaker 4: offender and still convict the feather. You still ain't even
Speaker 4: really free. For me, I couldn't go nowhere. I had
Speaker 4: to be in the house by five o'clock. I couldn't
Speaker 4: go out the house after that. I couldn't leave one
Speaker 4: hundred feet from my house. I had this mom so
Speaker 4: I had the word round my leg and I had
Speaker 4: this big wad you had to put in my pocket contraction,
Speaker 4: and it was frustrated when I told Sean, look, we
Speaker 4: got to get this over. I'm tired of the rest
Speaker 4: of six offenom signed the feather, you know, I just
Speaker 4: want this over and done.
Speaker 1: Now we get to the best part, which is that
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, ten years ago, when you were freed
Speaker 1: and then finally you were exonerated, formally exonerated, cut that
Speaker 1: ankle bracelet off, and Governor Bob McDonald signed legislation which
Speaker 1: provided you with compensation as well, which is unfortunately most
Speaker 1: exogneries never get compensation. But I'm really glad that you did.
Speaker 1: It wasn't nearly enough, but at least it gave you
Speaker 1: a chance to get started, I would say, with a
Speaker 1: new life. So what was it like when you finally
Speaker 1: were vindicated.
Speaker 4: It's something that I've strived to do since day one,
Speaker 4: just to prove my innocative. I mean Sean and Kean Kuchen,
Speaker 4: you know, they did an outstand the child. I couldn't
Speaker 4: ask nothing out. I mean, just being literated, being back
Speaker 4: and getting clams off my back, getting my name stored
Speaker 4: that be the person that you know. You all not
Speaker 4: be who they want you to be, the bravest monster
Speaker 4: that me portrayed me to be.
Speaker 5: That's how I want, you know. Once I got my.
Speaker 4: Name clear, none have to matter. In a day, she
Speaker 4: called me and say you want sixty four. I didn't
Speaker 4: care like she said. We're one by one folk and
Speaker 4: I did a function one time and one of the
Speaker 4: judges who went against me, he got there, spoke and
Speaker 4: he got them.
Speaker 5: He looked at me, sir Thomas, I'm sorry, I got
Speaker 5: it wrong.
Speaker 4: I went against you. I told him, hey, I don't
Speaker 4: want no girls against you. What happened, happy, and I'm free.
Speaker 4: That's all that matters.
Speaker 3: That calls one of the best calls I've ever gotten
Speaker 3: to make.
Speaker 1: So now we turned to my favorite part of the show,
Speaker 1: which is called closing arguments. And closing Arguments is part
Speaker 1: of the show where I first of all, thank both
Speaker 1: of you again, Sean Armbers from the mid Atlantic Innocence
Speaker 1: Project and Thomas Haynesworth for sharing your incredible stories here
Speaker 1: today and just for being who you are in the world.
Speaker 1: Because I can't even describe how much respect I have
Speaker 1: for each of you for them reasons. And with that,
Speaker 1: here's how closing arguments works. I'm going to turn off
Speaker 1: my microphone, kick back in my chair and leave my
Speaker 1: headphones on, probably close my eyes, and just listen to
Speaker 1: whatever else you want to share with our audience. Let's
Speaker 1: start with you, Sean, and save the man Thomas Haynesworth
Speaker 1: for the final closing argument.
Speaker 3: So what I want to say is that sometimes people
Speaker 3: listen to these stories and hear them as proof that
Speaker 3: the system works. They hear them as proof that, well,
Speaker 3: we got it wrong, but eventually we did get it right.
Speaker 3: And in every single one of these cases that I
Speaker 3: have worked on, every exoneration I've seen has been an
Speaker 3: example of the system actually not working the way it
Speaker 3: was intended to work. Innocent people getting out is the
Speaker 3: opposite of what's supposed to happen. There's an extraordinary confluence
Speaker 3: of circumstances that has to happen to even put someone
Speaker 3: in a position to be exonerated. Mary Jane Burton, the
Speaker 3: lab technician of the Department of Front Sciences, had to
Speaker 3: decide that she was going to be the analyst who
Speaker 3: kept random clippings of stuff in her files. She had
Speaker 3: to be assigned to Thomas's case. Three other people had
Speaker 3: to be exonerated. The governor had to order testing in
Speaker 3: those cases, the lab had to agree to notify people,
Speaker 3: and that person had to be me, and Thomas had
Speaker 3: to be Thomas. All of those things had to happen
Speaker 3: just to put Thomas in a position to even prove
Speaker 3: his innocence, and then from there. The scariest thing to
Speaker 3: me about Thomas's case is that the standard to actually
Speaker 3: win was so high that the court wasn't necessarily wrong
Speaker 3: that we should lose. That's how high it was, even
Speaker 3: in a case where innocence is as obvious as Thomas's,
Speaker 3: and we won anyway. And so his freedom isn't the
Speaker 3: result of anything going the way it was supposed to.
Speaker 3: It was really the result of everything going the opposite
Speaker 3: of the way it's.
Speaker 5: Designed to work.
Speaker 3: So for all of you out here who are taking
Speaker 3: the time to learn about this issue, which is super
Speaker 3: important and one of the many reasons why I think
Speaker 3: Jason is a national treasure, try to remember that changing
Speaker 3: that system is absolutely crucial if we really are going
Speaker 3: to try to protect people who get convicted of things
Speaker 3: they didn't do.
Speaker 2: Thomas over to you, yeah.
Speaker 4: I just want to say to the any surpriject that
Speaker 4: Sean I should appreciate the hard way did y'all do?
Speaker 5: Fore the New feel and all them. I can't speak
Speaker 5: for having more about their surproject.
Speaker 4: I just want to say to people, whatever you're going through,
Speaker 4: you feel you've been wrong convicted wrong because don't give
Speaker 4: up stand on your brand. You know if you don't
Speaker 4: give up a BIS, you will overcome. If you know
Speaker 4: anybody who'll be wrong, speak up for them. I'm living
Speaker 4: the best life. Things ain't turning where I want them,
Speaker 4: but it ain't turn out batter for me, and I
Speaker 4: just want you to keep chinue to stride, don't give
Speaker 4: your claim but to be right standing, your innocent and
Speaker 4: they's stand up for yourself.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wardis. With research by Lyla Robinson. The music
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction as well as at Lava
Speaker 1: for Good on all three platforms. You can also follow
Speaker 1: me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flam.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one