Speaker 1: Hi, This is Laura and I writer. Because of COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: Steve and I recorded this episode from our homes, not
Speaker 1: together in the studio. We might sound a little difference,
Speaker 1: but I think the story we tell is as inspirational
Speaker 1: as always be well and stay healthy. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drissen.
Speaker 1: Today we'll tell you the story of David McCallum, one
Speaker 1: of two New York teens wrongfully convicted of murder. In
Speaker 1: Luckily for David, he had incredible allies in his corner,
Speaker 1: the famous boxer Reuben Hurricane Carter and a district attorney,
Speaker 1: Ken Thompson, who was dedicated to real justice. Here comes
Speaker 1: the story of the d A and the Hurricane and
Speaker 1: one of the men they saved. So it was two
Speaker 1: thousand and six and I had just become the legal
Speaker 1: director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, and my colleague
Speaker 1: Rob Warden came into my office and handed me a
Speaker 1: VHS tape. On the tape there were confessions from David
Speaker 1: McCallum and Willie Stucky. And Rob told me he said,
Speaker 1: Ruben Hurricane Carter would like you to look at this.
Speaker 1: You know, when Ruben Hurricane Carter asked you to do something,
Speaker 1: you do it. At the time, Ruben Carter was the
Speaker 1: most famous person who had ever been wrongly convicted. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, he was a prize winning professional boxer,
Speaker 1: nicknamed Hurricane for his record of early round knockouts. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixties six he was convicted of a triple
Speaker 1: murder he didn't commit. After twenty years behind bars, Reuben
Speaker 1: was exonerated. He dedicated the rest of his life to
Speaker 1: advocating for others he'd been wrongly convicted. To invent sex.
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan wrote the song Hurricane as a tribute to
Speaker 1: Ruben Carter. You know, I had met Reuben a couple
Speaker 1: of years before Rob handed me that tape. Ruben was
Speaker 1: at Northwestern he was at a conference to honor dozens
Speaker 1: of people who had been exonerated off of death row,
Speaker 1: and for me, it was you know, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of hero worship on my part. I was eager
Speaker 1: to meet him because I was so impressed with the
Speaker 1: way he remade himself. You know, from a brawler to
Speaker 1: a deep thinker. To be honest, you need both of
Speaker 1: those skills to work on cases of wrongful conviction, and
Speaker 1: you need plenty of perseverance. I got hooked on a
Speaker 1: ten year struggle to represent David after watching that tape.
Speaker 1: Today's story begins in Queens, New York, in South Ozone Park,
Speaker 1: a working class neighborhood next to JFK Airport. It's phil
Speaker 1: with single family homes, storefronts, and the sound of jet
Speaker 1: planes circling overhead. It's three thirty on a Sunday afternoon October.
Speaker 1: Twenty year old Nathan Blenner is behind the wheel of
Speaker 1: his nineteen seventy nine black Buick Regal. It's parked on
Speaker 1: a neighborhood street and he's trying to get the car
Speaker 1: to start. A couple of kids playing in a nearby
Speaker 1: yard were the only witnesses to what happened next. According
Speaker 1: to the kids, Nathan is fiddling with the ignition when
Speaker 1: two men approach him from behind. They're about to pass
Speaker 1: the car when they turn around, go to the driver's
Speaker 1: side and tell Nathan to move over. The men push
Speaker 1: him into the backseat, get in, managed to start the
Speaker 1: car and drive off. It's over in the blink of
Speaker 1: an eye. A car jacking and a kidnapping. Police from
Speaker 1: the local precinct and Queen's canvass the neighborhood looking for leads.
Speaker 1: About a block away, they find a woman who says
Speaker 1: she'd been outside washing her Buick Regal a red one,
Speaker 1: when two men walked by, clearly checking out her vehicle.
Speaker 1: One of them said nice car, She answered, if it
Speaker 1: goes missing, I'll know where to look. The two men
Speaker 1: didn't say anything else. Instead, they kept on walking in
Speaker 1: the direction of Nathan Blenner. The woman gave a description
Speaker 1: to the police. Both men were black and in their twenties.
Speaker 1: They were also of noticeably different heights. One was around
Speaker 1: five ft six and the taller guy who had braided
Speaker 1: hair was five ft ten. But this car theft and
Speaker 1: kidnapping soon got even more serious. The next day, October one,
Speaker 1: police in Brooklyn get a phone call a d O
Speaker 1: a dead on arrival in a wooded area near a cemetery.
Speaker 1: Nathan Blenner's body had been found. He was lying face
Speaker 1: down with a single gunshot wound to the back of
Speaker 1: his head. And two days after the car jacking, Brooklyn
Speaker 1: lease were called to Fulton Street, about a mile from
Speaker 1: where they discovered Nathan's body. A car had been set
Speaker 1: on fire. It was Nathan's Buick. Regal police douse the flames,
Speaker 1: search the car and find fingerprints, along with some cigarette
Speaker 1: butts in the ashtray. Brooklyn cops get in touch with
Speaker 1: NYPD Central Robbery. They learned there's been a string of
Speaker 1: eight car thefts in Queens over the two days leading
Speaker 1: up to Nathan's kidnapping. In every case, the offenders were
Speaker 1: described as two black men around age twenty one, five
Speaker 1: ft six, the other five ft ten and armed with
Speaker 1: a gun. This was a two man car theft crime
Speaker 1: spree that culminated in Nathan Blenner's murder, and police were
Speaker 1: feeling intense pressure to stop it in its tracks. A
Speaker 1: few days later, on October to Brooklyn men Terence Hayward
Speaker 1: and Herman Mumford are arrested for snatching a chain off
Speaker 1: a subway rider. One of these guys was five ft six,
Speaker 1: the other one who had braided hair, was five ft ten.
Speaker 1: Both were black. In other words, they matched the car
Speaker 1: thief descriptions pretty well. Police question Hayward and Mumford about
Speaker 1: the string of car thefts and about Nathan's death. Now
Speaker 1: we'll never definitively know whether these two were involved in anything.
Speaker 1: They didn't confess, and police stopped investigating them pretty soon.
Speaker 1: That's because Hayward deflects attention away by telling the cops
Speaker 1: he knows about a gun that had been used in
Speaker 1: a murder. Now stick with me here, because like a
Speaker 1: lot of police investigations, this gets messy. Hayward told the
Speaker 1: police that his friend James Johnson knew more about the gun.
Speaker 1: It turns out that James was a suspect in a
Speaker 1: grocery store robbery in which a gun had been used.
Speaker 1: When police interviewed James, he said that he'd given the
Speaker 1: grocery store gun to his aunt Lottie, who then gave
Speaker 1: the gun to a man named Jamie, and then, shortly
Speaker 1: before Nathan's murder, Jamie supposedly gave the gun to a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old Brooklyn teenager named Willie Stuckey. What kind
Speaker 1: of story is that you got James's and Jamie's and
Speaker 1: Lotties and who are all these people? No kidding? This
Speaker 1: is a ridiculous story, and it's even worse because it's
Speaker 1: coming from two guys who matched the descriptions of the
Speaker 1: car thieves it's never clear whether the supposed grocery store
Speaker 1: gun had anything to do with the car thefts or
Speaker 1: Nathan Blenner, and there's no record of police ever speaking
Speaker 1: to Aunt Lottie or Jamie. Instead, police go straight for
Speaker 1: Willie Stucky. For some reason, they jumped to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that Willie used that gun to kill Nathan. At about
Speaker 1: seven pm on October, police pick up sixteen year old
Speaker 1: Willie Stuckey and bring him to the eighty third Precinct
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn for questioning, And within a few hours police
Speaker 1: also pick up Willie's sixteen year old buddy, David McCallum
Speaker 1: and bring him in for questioning who Willie and David
Speaker 1: were longtime friends who played handball together at a local park. Now,
Speaker 1: Willie had never been in trouble with the law before,
Speaker 1: but for David it was a different story. David's family
Speaker 1: had moved from South Carolina to Brooklyn when he was
Speaker 1: just seven years old, and the culture shock had been
Speaker 1: pretty severe. You know. He went from a very rural
Speaker 1: environment where he would play in the fields and go
Speaker 1: fishing and not have that many worries in his life.
Speaker 1: But once he hit the streets at Brooklyn, he took
Speaker 1: on this sort of aura of a big, tough guy
Speaker 1: because he needed that to survive, and he began to
Speaker 1: act out on the street in ways to fit his profile.
Speaker 1: But it was really more bravado than anything else. Police
Speaker 1: feel like they're hot on the trail and they begin
Speaker 1: interrogating Willie and David in separate rooms at the police station. Now,
Speaker 1: neither one of their interrogations was recorded, so we'll never
Speaker 1: have a perfect record of what happened inside the box,
Speaker 1: but suffice to say that the detectives described the interrogations
Speaker 1: very differently than William David did. In court, the lead
Speaker 1: detective testified that both Willie and David voluntarily confessed to
Speaker 1: killing Nathan Blenner after just a few questions. But Willie
Speaker 1: testified that police handcuffed him and then hit him three
Speaker 1: or four times. David also testified that police hit him
Speaker 1: in the mouth hard enough to draw blood and they
Speaker 1: threatened to use a chair next time. You know. The confession,
Speaker 1: when I first looked at it had a very rehearsed
Speaker 1: quality to it. It was very short. But there's one
Speaker 1: moment it gave me pause. It's when David McCallum looks
Speaker 1: with a moment of sheer terror at the police officer
Speaker 1: who's not on the screen but is clearly sitting in
Speaker 1: the room, and it was a look like and like
Speaker 1: doing okay, um, I telling the story the way the
Speaker 1: story needs to be told. And I remember Freeze framing
Speaker 1: that one frame of terror, and that suggested to me
Speaker 1: that what David was saying in terms of getting hit,
Speaker 1: it was probably true. Both David and Willie testified that
Speaker 1: after they agreed to confess, the police rehearsed a story
Speaker 1: with them. Willie in particular, testified that police fed him
Speaker 1: details about the perpetrator's conversation with that woman washing her
Speaker 1: red Buick Regal. But the police claimed that all the
Speaker 1: information in Willie and David's confessions came straight from them.
Speaker 1: This is exactly why you need to record the entire
Speaker 1: interrogation process. If you don't do that, it's the police
Speaker 1: versus the suspects, and the suspects are never going to
Speaker 1: be found more credible by a judge or a jury.
Speaker 1: Police officers are professional witnesses, they testifying court on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, and really and David were just kids. They
Speaker 1: never stood a chance on cross examination. But David and
Speaker 1: Willie's confessions were both really problematic. The stories they told
Speaker 1: didn't match the actual evidence. Willie said Nathan had been
Speaker 1: shot three times, when in fact he had only been
Speaker 1: shot once. Both Willie and David said the shooting happened
Speaker 1: at night, but the medical examiner said the murder happened
Speaker 1: during the day, probably right after the carjacking. Willie told
Speaker 1: the police that he had hidden the gun under his mattress,
Speaker 1: but when police went to Willie's home and looked, they
Speaker 1: couldn't find any gun. There were other problems too, Like
Speaker 1: a lot of New York City kids, David and Willie
Speaker 1: didn't know how to drive, making them unlikely suspects for
Speaker 1: a car theft ring, and most importantly, they didn't match
Speaker 1: the descriptions of the car thieves. David and Willie were
Speaker 1: sixteen years old, not twenty something, neither one of them
Speaker 1: had braids, and both were short, nowhere near five ft ten.
Speaker 1: But despite all this, Willie and David were charged with
Speaker 1: the murder of Nathan Blenner based on their confessions and
Speaker 1: nothing else. Both were convicted on October six. Each was
Speaker 1: sentenced to twenty five years to life. The story fast
Speaker 1: forwards now more than eighteen years to two thousand four,
Speaker 1: David McCallum was thirty four years old. He had transformed
Speaker 1: from an insecure teenager into a man known by other
Speaker 1: prisoners for his unshakable integrity. David had always maintained his innocence,
Speaker 1: but he'd lost all his appeals and was running out
Speaker 1: of options. Tragically, Willie Stucky had died in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: at the age of thirty one, from what the prison
Speaker 1: said was a heart attack. So this was David's fight now,
Speaker 1: and for too long, he'd been fighting alone. By two
Speaker 1: thousand and for, David had written over six hundred letters.
Speaker 1: He wrote to lawyers, he wrote to TV stations, radio stations,
Speaker 1: he wrote to anybody, and he always insisted that he
Speaker 1: was innocent, But all he got back were rejections until
Speaker 1: one of those letters made its way to Ruben Hurricane Carter.
Speaker 1: Remember Ruben Carter was the famous boxer who had spent
Speaker 1: twenty years in prison for a triple murder he didn't commit,
Speaker 1: whose long fight to clear himself was immortalized by Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan in the song Hurricane Now. Ruben wasn't exonerated until
Speaker 1: the same year that David and Willie went down for
Speaker 1: Nathan Blenner's murder. When he got out, Reuben was malnourished
Speaker 1: from decades of prison food, and he'd lost sight in
Speaker 1: one eye from a botched prison surgery. He couldn't fight
Speaker 1: for the middleweight crown any longer, so instead he started
Speaker 1: fighting for the wrongfully convicted. After working for one of
Speaker 1: North America's leading innocence organizations, Ruben founded his own group,
Speaker 1: Innocence International. Ruben recognized that he was probably the most
Speaker 1: well known figure who had been wrongfully convicted, and that
Speaker 1: if he didn't use his voice in some way to
Speaker 1: be a champion for the wrongfully convicted, that it would
Speaker 1: be a terrible waste. For twenty years, I was incuscerated
Speaker 1: as a racist, triple murderer, condemned by history, repudiated by
Speaker 1: the court, and sentenced to die amid the squalor and despair,
Speaker 1: and you creation of a maximum security prison. And tonight
Speaker 1: I am standing here at the United Nations making this address. Now,
Speaker 1: if that's not miraculous, then I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. David was at his
Speaker 1: wits end. His best friend had died, and every day
Speaker 1: was a struggle for him because he didn't see a
Speaker 1: way out. In February two thousand four, David McCallum read
Speaker 1: a magazine interview with Ruben Hurricane Carter, and he sent
Speaker 1: a letter asking for help to the author, a man
Speaker 1: named Ken Klonsky. Reuben and Ken had started working together
Speaker 1: on wrongful conviction cases, and today Ken is the director
Speaker 1: of Innocence International. David sent me a letter and he
Speaker 1: explained his case and the situation he was in. Now,
Speaker 1: I have no legal back and I had no background
Speaker 1: in wrongful convictions, so I just thought, well, here's a
Speaker 1: person sounds honest, and I'll just tell Reuben about him.
Speaker 1: And Reuben at first he took it in and he
Speaker 1: said at some point, well, let's go visit the brother
Speaker 1: and see what he's like. Both Ken Klonsky and Ruben
Speaker 1: Carter read up on David's case and came to visit
Speaker 1: him in prison. This was a prison in New York
Speaker 1: called Eastern Correctional. When we visited, first of all, I've
Speaker 1: never been in a prison in my life, and the
Speaker 1: place itself was enormous. It looked like a medieval castle.
Speaker 1: In a visiting room, Ruben and David sat on opposite
Speaker 1: sides at the table, silently studying each other. Later, David
Speaker 1: would remember feeling like Ruben was reading him, and David
Speaker 1: refused to break the silence. The eye contact was like
Speaker 1: love at first sight, and they had a conversation which
Speaker 1: David started going on about case and Reuben interrupted says,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not interested right now in your case.
Speaker 1: I want to know who you are. Ruben was a
Speaker 1: tough interviewer. He grilled David about you know, if I
Speaker 1: get involved in your case, I don't want you to
Speaker 1: come out of prison and act like a fool and
Speaker 1: I'm wasting my time. And he got from David the
Speaker 1: said that this was somebody who was going to make
Speaker 1: him proud. And Ruben left that meeting knowing that he
Speaker 1: was going to do everything in his power to get
Speaker 1: David McCallum out of prison. I think we were there
Speaker 1: about two hours, and I remember us getting up and leaving,
Speaker 1: and I look back at that enormous prison and I said, Reuben, really,
Speaker 1: who's who's going to get him out of there. Reuben
Speaker 1: and Ken hired a defense lawyer, Oscar Michelin, and in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, the three of them sent the
Speaker 1: con session tapes to the Center on Wrongful Convictions for
Speaker 1: Steve to review. Now, David had read about your work, Steve,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to out you here. He considers you
Speaker 1: the Lebron James of false confessions. Look, Laura, we're in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and out of respect for the greatest basketball player of
Speaker 1: all time, I think we should go with the Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's of false confessions. Slow down, Steve. First of all,
Speaker 1: you're from Philly, that's right. So actually, the more I
Speaker 1: think about it, I prefer to be known as the
Speaker 1: Doctor j of false confessions. As in the Doctors in
Speaker 1: the house, the doctor makes house calls, the doctor is
Speaker 1: on the case. Okay, Dr j you analyze these confessions
Speaker 1: and you found a pretty revealing error what we call
Speaker 1: a false fed fact. I did. A false fed fact
Speaker 1: is a fact that comports with the police theory at
Speaker 1: the time of the interrogation, and it's adopted by the
Speaker 1: suspect in his or her confession. Um, but the fact
Speaker 1: later turns out to be false. If it is in
Speaker 1: the suspect's confession, then you know that the police fed
Speaker 1: that fact to the suspects. And that's exactly what happened here.
Speaker 1: At the time of the interrogations, the police believed that
Speaker 1: Willie and David were the ones who had talked to
Speaker 1: that woman with a red Buick Regal just before going
Speaker 1: around the block and attacking Nathan Blenner. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: right there in Willie Stucky's confession is a story about
Speaker 1: talking to that woman and saying nice car. But David
Speaker 1: and Willie didn't match their description. Remember, the woman had
Speaker 1: described two guys five ft six and five ten, one
Speaker 1: with braids. Now David and Willie were both five six
Speaker 1: and neither of them had braids. They couldn't have been
Speaker 1: the guys who talked to that woman. And by the
Speaker 1: time of trial even the state agreed that David and
Speaker 1: Willie were not the ones she'd seen. So how did
Speaker 1: story get into Willie's confession? It must have been fed
Speaker 1: by the police. That was enough to make Steve joined
Speaker 1: the team right then and there, and I decided to
Speaker 1: recruit Laura Cohen, a law professor and an attorney at
Speaker 1: Rutgridge University, to join our defense team. Laura Cohen and
Speaker 1: Steve approached the Brooklyn d A's office and got them
Speaker 1: to agree to do forensic testing on the cigarette butts
Speaker 1: and fingerprints found in Nathan Blenner's car, and the results
Speaker 1: the cigarette butts had DNA on them that excluded both
Speaker 1: David and Willie. Instead, the DNA matched a different Brooklyn
Speaker 1: teenager they had no connection to. The fingerprints also excluded
Speaker 1: David and Willie. They matched yet another Brooklyn teenager who
Speaker 1: had been killed years before in an altercation with the police.
Speaker 1: This was more powerful evidence of both Willie and David's innocence,
Speaker 1: and the whole team, including Rubin, was very excited. But
Speaker 1: this evidence still wasn't enough to persuade the Brooklyn d
Speaker 1: A to exonerate David, not yet. Then two big things happened. First,
Speaker 1: an election in a new Brooklyn d A was elected
Speaker 1: a reformer named Ken Thompson who had campaigned on a
Speaker 1: platform of rooting out wrongful convictions. David's legal team immediately
Speaker 1: contacted Thompson and told him about the case. We used
Speaker 1: every bit of our connections to try to get David's
Speaker 1: case on Ken Thompson's radar screen, and it worked. The
Speaker 1: second big thing that happened was a terrible blow to
Speaker 1: the whole team. In Ruben announced that he had prostate cancer,
Speaker 1: and it was spreading fast. You know. When Ruben announced
Speaker 1: that he had cancer, he and I were kind of
Speaker 1: at odds with one another. Ruben was upset with me
Speaker 1: because he thought that we um coddled the d A
Speaker 1: instead of looking for an opportunity to land a knockout
Speaker 1: blow with new evidence. So Ruben's answer to us was,
Speaker 1: stopped fiddling around with the d a's office, stopped dealing
Speaker 1: with state court. You need to go to federal court
Speaker 1: in order to get David out of prison. And we
Speaker 1: told Ruben that's just not gonna work. And it created
Speaker 1: a tension between Reuben and me at this point in time.
Speaker 1: But the announcement that he had prostate cancer was devastating
Speaker 1: because even though we were at odds, I had tremendous
Speaker 1: respect for Reuben and I knew that his voice was
Speaker 1: going to be crucial if we were ever going to
Speaker 1: win this case. Reuben was very sick and quickly got
Speaker 1: much sicker, but he was still the ultimate fighter. On
Speaker 1: his deathbed, with ken Klonsky's help, Reuben wrote an o
Speaker 1: ed for the New York Post urging the New Brooklyn
Speaker 1: d A to exonerate David McCallum. It was one of
Speaker 1: the last things he did with his life. Here's some
Speaker 1: of what Reuben Hurricane Carter wrote. My single regret in
Speaker 1: life is that David McCallum is still in prison. My
Speaker 1: aim in helping this fine man is to pay it forward,
Speaker 1: to give the help that I received as a wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted man to another who needs such help. Now now
Speaker 1: I'm looking death straight in the eye, Reuben wrote, He's
Speaker 1: got me on the ropes, but I won't back down.
Speaker 1: And then Reuben asked the new Brooklyn d A to
Speaker 1: look straight into the eye of truth, a tougher customer
Speaker 1: than death, and not to back down either. To this day,
Speaker 1: Ken Klonsky remembers helping Reuben write that abed. We wrote
Speaker 1: a utter together and it didn't have a proper ending,
Speaker 1: and finally I hit on something to live in a
Speaker 1: world where truth matters, and just as however late still happens,
Speaker 1: that world would be heaven enough for us all. So
Speaker 1: it was out there that Reuben was dying and that
Speaker 1: Reuben had made a last wish. That op Ed was
Speaker 1: the knockout blow that we were looking for. Reuben's dying please,
Speaker 1: combined with the new DNA evidence made the difference. A
Speaker 1: few months after Reuben passed away, the Brooklyn d A.
Speaker 1: Ken Thompson announced that he was going to exonerate David
Speaker 1: McCallum and posthumously exonerate Willie Stuck two. And while this
Speaker 1: news was incredibly welcome, the way Ken Thompson's office handled
Speaker 1: the exonerations was extraordinary. I had never seen so much
Speaker 1: grace in an exoneration. And let me explain what I
Speaker 1: mean by that. When we exonerate people, most of the time,
Speaker 1: it's after a hard fought legal battle that brings the
Speaker 1: state down to its knees and the state reluctantly gives up,
Speaker 1: and on the day of exoneration it's oftentimes a kind
Speaker 1: of anticlimactic moment. But David's case was so different. When
Speaker 1: David was picked up by the detectives from prison, he
Speaker 1: was taken to the courthouse and then the d a's
Speaker 1: office brought him a lunch of barbecue chicken and whatever
Speaker 1: he wanted to drink, and one by one, members of
Speaker 1: the d a's conviction Review unit congratulated David. David not
Speaker 1: only met Ken Thompson the d A, but he also
Speaker 1: met Ken Thompson's wife, and there was such a recognition
Speaker 1: of the humanity of David throughout this process. I'm Brooklyn
Speaker 1: District Attorney Ken Thompson, and I'm here today with some
Speaker 1: members of my conviction review team. And it continued because
Speaker 1: from day one I made a pledge to the people
Speaker 1: of Brooklyn, and my pledge was to put the guilty away,
Speaker 1: but also to make sure that our criminal justice system
Speaker 1: was based on fundamental fairness. That's what we're doing here today. Normally,
Speaker 1: when prisoners are brought into the courtroom, they had come
Speaker 1: in through the back door. They're handcuffed and they are shackled.
Speaker 1: When it came time for David's case to be called,
Speaker 1: he walked in through the front door with his head
Speaker 1: held high, knowing that he would soon be a freeman.
Speaker 1: Mr McCallum asked me to look at his case. I
Speaker 1: agreed to do so because my duty is not just
Speaker 1: to convict, but to do justice. We have conducted a
Speaker 1: thorough and fair investigation of this matter, and as a
Speaker 1: result of that investigation, we've determined that there's not a
Speaker 1: single piece of evidence that linked David McCallum or William
Speaker 1: Stuckey to the abduction of Nathan Blunt. Of unbeknownst to David,
Speaker 1: they had brought really Stucky's mother in for the exoneration
Speaker 1: and it was a reunion that was just heartbreaking and
Speaker 1: incredibly tender. She was there also to feel that her
Speaker 1: son was being vindicated at the same time. And so
Speaker 1: today at two pm before Judge Demmick in Brooklyn State
Speaker 1: Supreme I will move in the inches of justice is
Speaker 1: to vacate the convictions of David McCallum and Willie Stucky.
Speaker 1: This was not a reluctant exhoneration, but a public reckoning,
Speaker 1: and that kind of exoneration really is such an important
Speaker 1: step in the healing process for people who get out
Speaker 1: of prison. David McCallum walked into prison as a boy.
Speaker 1: Today he will walk out of the courthouse as a man.
Speaker 1: The District Attorney had a press conference and in the
Speaker 1: press conference he said, I've inherited a legacy of disgrace
Speaker 1: with respect to wrongful convictions. And at that moment you
Speaker 1: knew his intention to change things, to write everything was
Speaker 1: gonna be realized. It was just a wonderful moment. You know.
Speaker 1: The only thing missed from David McCallum's exoneration was Ruben
Speaker 1: Hurricane Carter, and the state even found a way to
Speaker 1: bring Reuben into these proceedings. On the day of David's exoneration,
Speaker 1: the d a's office dispatched two detectives to take him
Speaker 1: from prison to court, and on the way back from prison,
Speaker 1: one of the detectives pulled out his iPhone and he
Speaker 1: pressed play, and of course it was the Story of
Speaker 1: the Hurricane by Bob Dylan. It comes the story of
Speaker 1: the Hurricane, the man the authorities came to blame. Reuben
Speaker 1: Carter wasn't the only hero of this story who passed
Speaker 1: away too soon. On October nine, Ken Thompson, that reform
Speaker 1: minded Brooklyn da who exonerated David McCallum and will He's
Speaker 1: stucky with such grace, also died of cancer. He had
Speaker 1: exonerated by that point in time about thirteen or fourteen people,
Speaker 1: and so when he died it was a really terrible
Speaker 1: blow for justice. But one of the things that happened
Speaker 1: after Ken's death was his wife actually reached out to
Speaker 1: David McCallum and invited David to speak at the going
Speaker 1: home service for Ken Thompson, and so David McCallum stood
Speaker 1: up at the packed memorial service for the d A
Speaker 1: who had agreed to free him and gave a powerful eulogy.
Speaker 1: He promised that he would investigate vawful convictions in a
Speaker 1: very fair way and my legal team and uh, that's
Speaker 1: all we ever wanted. It was two years to the
Speaker 1: day after David had been exonerated. Mr Thompson touched me
Speaker 1: in a way that I don't think anybody ever would again.
Speaker 1: Because Mr Thompson didn't only give me my freedom. Mr Thompson,
Speaker 1: and this may sound quaint to some who don't believe
Speaker 1: making passion. Mr Thompson gave me my father an old daughter, Quinn.
Speaker 1: Because had he not did what he promised he would do,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where I would be right now. David, Yes,
Speaker 1: how still seek It's been a while, so you've been
Speaker 1: out now for five and a half years almost. You know,
Speaker 1: what are your hopes and dreams? And what are your
Speaker 1: hopes and dreams for Quinn? What about hopes and dreams
Speaker 1: is to become even the more effective than I think.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good at it now, but I just want
Speaker 1: to be really really good at it because the hard working,
Speaker 1: very hard work if it's all worth it at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. And I embraced it, you know,
Speaker 1: set myself at hands on dad. She had daddy's little girl. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I could tell you how many times I'm picked us
Speaker 1: to school and so as I'm coming to door, oh
Speaker 1: my god. You know, he doesn't runs from what else
Speaker 1: she's doing. And that's uh, it's almost underscinal one someday,
Speaker 1: but it's really really good sailing up. And that's the
Speaker 1: story of David McCallum. Join us next week for the
Speaker 1: last episode in our first season, we'll tell you about
Speaker 1: one of the first modern day cases of false confession
Speaker 1: from Peter Riley was just sixteen when he was wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted of murdering his own mother. Peter's innocence was championed
Speaker 1: by everyone from neighborhood moms to New York celebrities. His
Speaker 1: people powered campaign for exoneration has been the inspiration for
Speaker 1: the work Steve and I do till then. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions
Speaker 1: is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association
Speaker 1: with Signal Company. Number one special thanks to our executive
Speaker 1: producer Jason Flom and the team at Signal Company Number
Speaker 1: one executive producer Kevin Wardace Senior Producer and Pope, and
Speaker 1: additional production and editing by Connor Hall. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: jog Hammer for additional script editing and for wrangling and
Speaker 1: writing like a madwoman. Our music was composed by j Ralph.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
Speaker 1: ni Writer and you can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: s Drizzing. For more information on the show, visit Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction podcast dot com and be sure to follow the
Speaker 1: show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction d