Speaker 1: With the police banging on the door, open up.
Speaker 2: The choice to be in that lineup was the last
Speaker 2: choice I made as a free man.
Speaker 3: A year later, I ended up writing the system.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be one of those people who everyone
Speaker 1: in the world is going to think as a monster
Speaker 1: or suspect as a monster for the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to have to come to peace
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 4: Somebody was able to look at my picture in the
Speaker 4: database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't.
Speaker 4: I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they
Speaker 4: might have to play in my hanging.
Speaker 2: They had been told that two prison officers would have
Speaker 2: to participate in my execution.
Speaker 3: And I walked back inside that prison for the last time. Man,
Speaker 3: all help broke loops.
Speaker 5: But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 5: with Jason Flomm Today. I'm particularly thrilled, I actually even
Speaker 5: a little nervous, because I have two of my heroes
Speaker 5: in the studio today, Jason Baldwin of the West Memphis three.
Speaker 5: In May nineteen ninety three, three young Arkansas boys, Stevie Branch,
Speaker 5: Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore went missing.
Speaker 1: Three little cub scouts, hog tied and left in an
Speaker 1: Arkansas did.
Speaker 4: One of the most controversial legal cases in the state's history.
Speaker 4: A jury found the man guilty of murdering the eight
Speaker 4: year old boys back in nineteen ninety three in what
Speaker 4: prosecutors at the time had called some sort of a
Speaker 4: satanic ritual.
Speaker 1: Celebrities fighting for the teen's release claimed the kids were
Speaker 1: railroaded because of their mullets, dark clothes, and fascination with
Speaker 1: the occult.
Speaker 3: Sticking killings that might have been part of a satanic ritual.
Speaker 1: Convicted murderers Jason Baldwin, Jesse mss Kelly, and Damian Eccles
Speaker 1: are now free men.
Speaker 5: They spent seventeen years in prison for a crime that
Speaker 5: stunned dark.
Speaker 1: So West Memphis. Three would be allowed to walk out
Speaker 1: of prison, but prosecutors agreed to sign off on the
Speaker 1: deal only if the defendants would plead guilty.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show, Thank you, Jason, it was a
Speaker 2: pleasure to be here.
Speaker 5: We also have in the studio today a recidivius guest,
Speaker 5: a repeat defender on wrongful conviction. The one and only
Speaker 5: Barry Shack, co founder of the Innocence Project. Very welcome.
Speaker 5: Great to be here. So Jason, let's turn to you
Speaker 5: to start with. You have lived the most bizarrely extraordinary life,
Speaker 5: having been wrongfully convicted at sixteen and then spending more
Speaker 5: than half your life in maximum security prison. Let's go
Speaker 5: back to the beginning in Arkansas. You grew up in
Speaker 5: a very poor area. Poor areas, but nonetheless things were
Speaker 5: pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my family had gone through a series of hardships,
Speaker 2: especially my mother. We had an abusive alcoholic step father,
Speaker 2: but at this time she had strengthened herself and we
Speaker 2: had kind of kicked him out because he was just
Speaker 2: so dangerous to us and our family. And she had
Speaker 2: gotten a job in Memphis as a truck dispatcher. And
Speaker 2: so we had like a family plan. The trailer we
Speaker 2: were living in my grandmother left us, so we were landowners.
Speaker 2: We didn't really have to pay rent, We just had
Speaker 2: to pay bills. My mother had a car, it was
Speaker 2: paid for, and so the idea was that we would
Speaker 2: work hard, my mom would work hard and save up
Speaker 2: the money, and we would be able to move back
Speaker 2: to Memphis, Tennessee, to a house and then we could
Speaker 2: rent our trailer out and so we were in this
Speaker 2: huge process of building our lives up again.
Speaker 5: One day, one of the worst crimes probably in history
Speaker 5: of America happens in this little town that you live in.
Speaker 5: Three little eight year old boys were out riding their
Speaker 5: bikes and they disappeared. Correct And were you aware at
Speaker 5: the time that there were these boys who had disappeared?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't. I remember where I was when I
Speaker 2: first became where. It was May the sixth, a Thursday.
Speaker 2: I was at school, and in the school we had
Speaker 2: televisions and usually the televisions were reserved for like programs
Speaker 2: related to the class and stuff we were taking. But
Speaker 2: they just stopped class all of a sudden, turned the
Speaker 2: TV on and everybody got quiet, and it was a
Speaker 2: news bulletin saying they had just found the three boys' bodies.
Speaker 2: So apparently they had been searching for the boys all
Speaker 2: night at the time, I wasn't aware of that. When
Speaker 2: I became aware, they had already found them, and everybody
Speaker 2: was like just freaked out about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm getting the chills thinking about it now. And
Speaker 5: in a small town.
Speaker 2: For me, you know, I just remember thinking it could
Speaker 2: have been my little brother, and I was scared, you know.
Speaker 2: And when I got home from school, my mom had
Speaker 2: stayed from work so she could see us, you know,
Speaker 2: because normally she she left for work at two thirty
Speaker 2: in the afternoon and we get back home at ten
Speaker 2: thirty at night from the trucking agency where she worked
Speaker 2: as a dispatcher. And it was my job to, you know,
Speaker 2: watch after my brothers and things like that.
Speaker 5: So she was there.
Speaker 2: She's like, hey, they found these boys. They were murdered.
Speaker 2: They don't know who did it yet. I want you
Speaker 2: all to stay at home until they find who is
Speaker 2: responsible and just watch after each other.
Speaker 5: So how many days went by before they started looking
Speaker 5: at you guys as possible suspects? And I started with Damien, right.
Speaker 2: I think they went and questioned Damien immediately, Like the boys'
Speaker 2: bodies were found Thursday, they questioned him Friday.
Speaker 5: Right, And that was because he was known in the
Speaker 5: community as being a guy who wore black clothes, listened
Speaker 5: to heavy metal music. He was goth, right, he was
Speaker 5: a goth.
Speaker 2: He was goth before the ward was coined.
Speaker 5: Right, right, And you were just his friends.
Speaker 2: Great, I was his best friend.
Speaker 5: And he's an interesting guy, I mean, from everything I've
Speaker 5: read and seen of him. He's a very intelligent guy,
Speaker 5: and he's a very interesting and introspective guy.
Speaker 2: One day, I was biking home and I passed him
Speaker 2: in front of his house and he was skateboarding. I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I know, you've seen you in study hall.
Speaker 2: He goes, yeah, me and my family we just moved
Speaker 2: out here. I was like, cool, skateboard. He's like, you
Speaker 2: want to skate on it? I was like cool. And
Speaker 2: next thing I know, he's riding my bike around. I'm
Speaker 2: skateboarding on a skateboard. And it just developed from there
Speaker 2: a great friendship.
Speaker 5: When this hall came down, you were in tenh grade,
Speaker 5: tenth grade. Tenth grade, let's just reflect on that for
Speaker 5: a second. You're not even anywhere near being an adulted
Speaker 5: tenth grade. All of a sudden, things got really really serious. Friday,
Speaker 5: twenty four hours after the bodies are discovered, they're already
Speaker 5: talking to Damien. Correct, when were you made aware that
Speaker 5: you were actually going to be wrapped up in the summer.
Speaker 2: The next day, they came to my house and knocked
Speaker 2: on the door, and Detective Allen, Detective Ridge came and
Speaker 2: summoned me. Damien and Dominie out of my house. Course,
Speaker 2: so I was still there babysitting my brothers, you know,
Speaker 2: because they haven't found whoever did this prime yet. So
Speaker 2: the orders from my mom is still the same. We
Speaker 2: got to stay at home and I got a babysit
Speaker 2: And so when the police came, honestly, it didn't really
Speaker 2: scare me or alarm me, because I figured they were
Speaker 2: going everywhere. I figured it was door to door, you know,
Speaker 2: that they were talking to everybody they could, you know,
Speaker 2: and to me that made sense, you know, that was logical.
Speaker 2: But what I didn't know that they were targeting us.
Speaker 2: And the reason they were targeting us was when I
Speaker 2: was eleven years old, when I first moved to Arkansas
Speaker 2: from Memphis to two See and spent that summer there.
Speaker 2: I was eleven, My brother Matthew was nine, my little
Speaker 2: brother Terry was six. The trailer park was full of kids.
Speaker 2: It had a lake, and we made friends fast. We
Speaker 2: swam in the lake every day. We played hide and
Speaker 2: go seek out in the soybean and cotton fields. Well
Speaker 2: out in the middle of the cotton field there was
Speaker 2: this oll ten shack and it had been there so
Speaker 2: long that a tree grown up and lifted the roof
Speaker 2: off of the building and pushed the wall in, and
Speaker 2: so for generations kids had been playing hide and go
Speaker 2: seek there. But one day the cops showed up and
Speaker 2: arrested all of us, all the kids of the trailer park.
Speaker 2: Took us to the police station, called our parents to
Speaker 2: come get us and everything, and to make a long
Speaker 2: story short, when I ended up going to court, and
Speaker 2: of course all the kids in the trailer park ended
Speaker 2: up going to court, the prosecution told the judge, I
Speaker 2: think two years in the state reform school would do
Speaker 2: these kids some good, and our public defender, mister Montgomery, said,
Speaker 2: I agree, you're on her, And at that time my
Speaker 2: mom jumped up said my sons aren't going to prison,
Speaker 2: which basically what reform school is housing for children. I
Speaker 2: was eleven eleven, my brother Matthew was nine, and in
Speaker 2: the range of ages of these kids, which was almost
Speaker 2: every kid in the neighborhood, was anywhere from nine. I
Speaker 2: think the oldest kid was fourteen. But when my mom objected,
Speaker 2: the judge called them up to the bench. Next thing
Speaker 2: I know, instead of two years in the state reform school,
Speaker 2: I've got five years probation and a five hundred dollars fine.
Speaker 2: And for my mom that was a thousand dollars fine
Speaker 2: because she had two sons, our friends down the street.
Speaker 2: She had four of her kids affected by it for
Speaker 2: playing hide and seek, for playing hide and go seek.
Speaker 5: And now you know, in Arkansas, because I didn't know,
Speaker 5: they gave.
Speaker 2: Us criminal they charged was criminal trespassing and breathing and right,
Speaker 2: and I remember our family budget for Christmas was only
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: And so now I'm on the record, right, I have
Speaker 2: a record. I have what's called a criminal record. And honestly,
Speaker 2: it really wasn't that bad. It wasn't that scary. I
Speaker 2: had a probation officer. I would have to go to
Speaker 2: his office, me and my brother would and he would
Speaker 2: look at our case, and he didn't even he didn't
Speaker 2: look at us like we were criminals, because we weren't.
Speaker 2: He would buy us soda pops and ask how we
Speaker 2: were doing in school, ask us for our report cards
Speaker 2: and stuff. And of course when I was at school,
Speaker 2: sometimes I'd be in class and intercom would come on
Speaker 2: and they say, send Jason to the principal's office, you know,
Speaker 2: And I go to the principal's office and there would
Speaker 2: be mister Jones, I'm just checking in on you, you know.
Speaker 2: And this went on for you know, until before I
Speaker 2: got locked up. I became used to it, and so
Speaker 2: that's how I got a record. When Damien came into
Speaker 2: the picture, he still suffered the prejudice of the rest
Speaker 2: of us kids out there, even though he didn't have
Speaker 2: a record, right, But because he suffered the prejudice of it.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't know this part of the story.
Speaker 3: So how could the public defender just immediately agree with
Speaker 3: the court and say, yeah, they ought to be convicted
Speaker 3: of a crime for playing hide and seek.
Speaker 2: That's what he did. And you would think that the
Speaker 2: prosecutor would be on the benefit of the people, the kids, right,
Speaker 2: A reasonable person, a reasonable prosecutor, a reasonable officer of
Speaker 2: the law, would have just called our parents, not charged us,
Speaker 2: and says, hey, I know y'all have been playing hide
Speaker 2: and go seek at this place for years, but y'all
Speaker 2: just don't do that anymore.
Speaker 5: I mean, of course, obviously, And it's interesting to Jason
Speaker 5: because we see this now in poor and urban communities,
Speaker 5: especially where they do these sweeps and they pick up
Speaker 5: everybody with a stop and frisk and all this other stuff,
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden, everybody's got a record, and
Speaker 5: then when something happens, is all of a sudden, you're
Speaker 5: the guy who's got a record, even though you didn't
Speaker 5: do anything wrong. So now everything goes completely haywire and
Speaker 5: you guys get arrested. Correct.
Speaker 2: I remember when I was arrested. Thanks to public media,
Speaker 2: I was expecting things when I was arrested. I was
Speaker 2: expecting a fingerprints. I was expecting a mug shot, and
Speaker 2: I was expecting a phone call. They mug shot in me.
Speaker 2: But when they fingerprinted me, they didn't stop there. They
Speaker 2: took a fingerprint, They took an entire hand in pression.
Speaker 2: They took my entire foot prints right, and then they
Speaker 2: took me to the hospital and they took hair samples,
Speaker 2: they took saliva samples, they took blood samples. And now
Speaker 2: at this point, I had already been engaged with the police,
Speaker 2: and they had asked me, you know, questions and stuff,
Speaker 2: and I had told them where I was at, and
Speaker 2: they absolutely refused the truth. They kept telling me, no,
Speaker 2: we've got another story. Your friend has told us that
Speaker 2: you have done this, and that what you're telling us
Speaker 2: is not true. I'm like, well, who is this friend?
Speaker 2: And they refused to tell me, and honestly, I thought
Speaker 2: they were lying. I'm like, no one has told you
Speaker 2: that I'd done this, because I didn't do this. It
Speaker 2: was like I was just arguing with a brick wall.
Speaker 2: I couldn't make them understand where I was at and
Speaker 2: what I was doing. So when they were taking these
Speaker 2: samples from me, it gave me hope because I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: whoever committed this crime has left the footprint, has left
Speaker 2: a handprint, has left a hair sample, has left a
Speaker 2: saliva sample, or has left a blood sample, something for
Speaker 2: the police to compare my samples to right, And so
Speaker 2: that's where my hope was. Now a couple of months
Speaker 2: go by and I'm in the county jail and they
Speaker 2: had to take all these samples from me again because
Speaker 2: they didn't have a core order for it, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: please take them from me. You can take them today,
Speaker 2: you can take them tonight, you can take them every
Speaker 2: day until you are able to prove that I am innocent.
Speaker 5: But what you're saying is that you actually did believe
Speaker 5: that they were after the truth, which you would hope.
Speaker 5: In a small community like that, you would think that
Speaker 5: if for no other reason than a selfish reason, that
Speaker 5: the authorities would want to get this bad, evil guy
Speaker 5: out of the circulation and get to be in prisons so
Speaker 5: that their family's not victimized next, because that's a real
Speaker 5: possibility exactly. But that wasn't what was happening.
Speaker 2: That wasn't the case. I was totally surprised when I
Speaker 2: went to trial and instead of the narration of the
Speaker 2: story revolving around evidence, the prosecutor John Fogelman and Brenton
Speaker 2: Davis were saying things like the crime scene was completely clean,
Speaker 2: there was absolutely no evidence, no physical evidence leftl behind.
Speaker 2: And this in fact is evidence of satanic cult ritual activity.
Speaker 5: Because the devil finged up the crime scene basically.
Speaker 3: But when did they get the confession from Jesse, miss Kelly.
Speaker 2: It was on June the third of nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: the day that we were arrested. Like, they got the
Speaker 2: confession from him earlier dinner and day, and then they
Speaker 2: came and arrested us. They used that to get the one.
Speaker 3: That's what they were telling you when they said we
Speaker 3: have a friend exactly.
Speaker 5: So, but Jesse was a friend of yours though.
Speaker 2: Right The first time I met Jesse was in the
Speaker 2: sixth grade, when I first started school in Marion. I
Speaker 2: was on the playground and I saw out the corner
Speaker 2: of my eye somebody rushing towards me really fast, right,
Speaker 2: And I look, and next thing I know, a fist
Speaker 2: is coming from my face. So I ducked and I
Speaker 2: ran and it was Jesse. He chased me all around
Speaker 2: the playground, around the Merry go Round, around the swing set.
Speaker 2: I was the new kid, you know. And next thing
Speaker 2: I know, this girl, Donna Spurlock comes running up and
Speaker 2: stops Jesse. Says Jesse, Jesse stop.
Speaker 5: Stop.
Speaker 2: Promise me, Jesse, you will leave him alone. And he
Speaker 2: gave her his word that he would leave me alone.
Speaker 2: And he never messed with me.
Speaker 5: Shout out to Donna on this johna thank you, way
Speaker 5: to go go now.
Speaker 2: Years later he would move down the street from me.
Speaker 2: You know, we got to know each other a little
Speaker 2: bit for a few months until he moved again to
Speaker 2: Highland Trailer Park, when I never got to see him again.
Speaker 5: So, Jesse, and this is where we turned to Barry.
Speaker 5: In this case, you had sort of a typical situation right,
Speaker 5: Jesse had a very low IQ.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: I think the z IQ was as low as seventy two.
Speaker 2: Seventy two.
Speaker 5: Right, he was a teenager. Jesse basically was the perfect
Speaker 5: target for an unscrupulous detective or interrogator to extract a
Speaker 5: confession from.
Speaker 3: And the statistics are shocking on the number of juveniles
Speaker 3: that give false confessions, but particularly juveniles in homicide cases.
Speaker 3: You know, when we're talking about people that were wrongfully
Speaker 3: convicted of murders and were sentenced to death, there's an
Speaker 3: extraordinarily high percentage of juveniles involved. The numbers are actually stunning,
Speaker 3: to the point where the American Psychological Association, when they
Speaker 3: wrote this white paper on what are the risk factors
Speaker 3: for false confessions? Age is one of them. And we've
Speaker 3: long known that. But this was the perfect storm type case.
Speaker 3: It's a horrible, horrible murder in a small town that
Speaker 3: causes really a panic in the community, and they start
Speaker 3: looking for the other They look for the strange person, Damien,
Speaker 3: and then they get Jason Baldwin as good friend, and
Speaker 3: then they find the most vulnerable person to sort of
Speaker 3: feed their version of events to. It turns out to
Speaker 3: be Jesse MSS Kelly and from their bad things.
Speaker 2: Let me add this that most people don't know that
Speaker 2: it's in the record of this case. The boys' bodies
Speaker 2: were found May sixth, we were arrested Jesse Muskelly gave
Speaker 2: the false confession on June third. But what many people
Speaker 2: have not really noticed it. On May the fifteenth, just
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks after the boys' bodies are found,
Speaker 2: Jesse went to the police with another friend because there
Speaker 2: was a tip line and a reward offered out for
Speaker 2: any information on who may have committed this crime. Now,
Speaker 2: Jesse did not know who committed his crime, but he
Speaker 2: wanted the reward money. He was imagining the brand new
Speaker 2: truck he could buy his father and things like that.
Speaker 2: So him and another kid out of his trailer park
Speaker 2: went to the police and said, there's this suspicious guy
Speaker 2: in the town that you know, you need to check out.
Speaker 2: And I don't know exactly what all he told them
Speaker 2: about this guy or whatever, but they ended up telling him, Jesse,
Speaker 2: you need to come back with a more believable story
Speaker 2: than that. Right, A few weeks come by go by.
Speaker 2: Now they're saying they've got that believable story. When they
Speaker 2: gives the false confession against Damian and me right.
Speaker 5: And we know kids that age, especially with low mental capacity,
Speaker 5: are so susceptible to suggestion a. They want to please
Speaker 5: the police, they want to be accepted, they want to
Speaker 5: be sort of almost heroic in a certain sense. You're
Speaker 5: trapped in this room with people you're totally overmatched intellectually
Speaker 5: in terms of authority, in terms of power. You're scared.
Speaker 5: You want to go home. They're allowed to lie to you,
Speaker 5: which they do. They are, And it's actually been shown
Speaker 5: that in many cases, you can convince an adolescent that
Speaker 5: he actually did the crime that he didn't do and
Speaker 5: get them to confess. That way, you get them so
Speaker 5: confused with this psychological protocol, which is the read method
Speaker 5: or other methods, that they eventually just they confess to
Speaker 5: something that they may actually believe they did even they
Speaker 5: didn't do it. So Jesse was the perfect target. He
Speaker 5: confessed and then it's all downhill from there, because we
Speaker 5: know that the confession is the most powerful piece of
Speaker 5: evidence that you can have in acquirement. It overrides DNA
Speaker 5: in the eyes of a jury. We've seen it over
Speaker 5: and over again, which is insane.
Speaker 2: Has psychologically overwhelming to people. You never want to think
Speaker 2: that you would admit to doing something you didn't do.
Speaker 2: You always want to think that you have a strong
Speaker 2: will power that you you would not cave in under
Speaker 2: these coercial pressures. But that's blaming the victim.
Speaker 5: He's paradoxical to Jason, right, because almost everyone's had the experience,
Speaker 5: especially when they were an ao lescent, of lying and
Speaker 5: saying they didn't do something that they did do. But
Speaker 5: almost no one's had the experience of actually confessing to
Speaker 5: something that they didn't do. So for a jury, it's
Speaker 5: so foreign because they're like, it don't make no sense
Speaker 5: to me. Well, that's one of the reasons we're working
Speaker 5: so hard on getting videotaping of interrogation right.
Speaker 3: And you know, if there had been a videotape of
Speaker 3: the Jesse mss kelly interrogation, I think we would have
Speaker 3: found out that most of the details in there were
Speaker 3: probably fed facts, things that the police believed to be
Speaker 3: true but they suggested to him. And that's what's so extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Jerry Being, who is the lawyer for Stephen Avery and
Speaker 3: was featured in Making a Murder, just wrote a book
Speaker 3: called Illusion of Justice. His very good book about his
Speaker 3: life story in his career. But the one thing that
Speaker 3: he pointed out that is kind of amazing is that
Speaker 3: the Innocence Movement was able to get videotaping of interrogations
Speaker 3: as a reform in Wisconsin, but just for juveniles. And
Speaker 3: it's for that reason that we were able to get
Speaker 3: a videotape of the Brendan Dacy interrogation, which I think
Speaker 3: you know, had an enormous impact in this country because
Speaker 3: people could literally say how the facts were fed to
Speaker 3: him and his disability essentially and mental impairment, and how
Speaker 3: that can happen. And you know, when you actually look
Speaker 3: at the statistics on false confessions in the Innocence Project dnaxonerations,
Speaker 3: Brandon Garrett has done an analysis showing that in eighty
Speaker 3: percent of the cases where innocent people proven by DNA
Speaker 3: give false confessions, eighty percent of the cases, they are
Speaker 3: confessing to details that only the police and the real
Speaker 3: perpetrator would know. So how did that happen other than
Speaker 3: the police feeding them the facts? So the videotaping is
Speaker 3: critically important. Then I'd wager that none of you would
Speaker 3: have ever been arrested if they videotaped that interrogation or
Speaker 3: certainly the charges wouldn't have lasted that long.
Speaker 5: Sitting in that court room, it's gotta be just the
Speaker 5: most surreal and terrifying experience. You didn't testify, because why
Speaker 5: would you didn't done anything? I guess right, I mean, well.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I thought I was going to testify. I talked
Speaker 2: to my attorneys, I told them where I was at
Speaker 2: and I wanted to testify, and they assured me. I
Speaker 2: had my Albis, my great granduncle whose yard I was
Speaker 2: mowing that day. I needed him to testify. And they
Speaker 2: were like, do you have anybody that would have seen
Speaker 2: you or known you where you were at that day
Speaker 2: that was not your friend, that was not your family member,
Speaker 2: that would not have so called reason to lie for you.
Speaker 2: And I remember I was thinking, you know what, everything
Speaker 2: I did that day, I played it over my mind
Speaker 2: a million times, and I was like, after I mowed
Speaker 2: my uncle's yard, I was at Walmart and I spent
Speaker 2: a dollar of the money that my uncle paid me
Speaker 2: to get us eatch a soda and we played a
Speaker 2: video game and there was this Asian kid standing next
Speaker 2: to us, waiting on us to get through playing. I
Speaker 2: didn't know the guy. I didn't know what his name
Speaker 2: was or anything, but I remembered him standing there and
Speaker 2: watching us play, waiting on us to get through so
Speaker 2: he could play right. So I said, if you could
Speaker 2: find him, he has no connection to me and no
Speaker 2: reason to lie in the eyes of the law, he
Speaker 2: can verify everything I say is true. And my attorney's
Speaker 2: actually found this guy and he actually told them, you know,
Speaker 2: exactly the truth, that he saw me at Walmart playing
Speaker 2: video games and I did not look like I'd committed
Speaker 2: a murder or was about to go commit a murder
Speaker 2: or anything. He wasn't called. Nobody was called. I wasn't called,
Speaker 2: And next thing I know, my trial is over with.
Speaker 5: Was over with it.
Speaker 2: It was over with and I did not get called
Speaker 2: or any of my witnesses.
Speaker 3: But so upsetting about this case. And you know, it starts,
Speaker 3: frankly with the public defender that's pleading you guilty to
Speaker 3: a misdemeanor, not even pleading you guilty. He's saying, I
Speaker 3: think it's a good idea that you get probation from
Speaker 3: misdemeanor for playing hide and seek through this trial. Because
Speaker 3: the Arkansas public defense system, as I recall it, there
Speaker 3: had been a case where there'd been a finding that
Speaker 3: it was unconstitutionally underfunded, and the three lawyers that were
Speaker 3: representing Damian, yourself and Jesse mss kelly didn't have adequate funds.
Speaker 3: I don't think people fully appreciated that the lawyers didn't
Speaker 3: have money. That they were even given five thousand dollars
Speaker 3: per client as money for investigators or experts, which there's
Speaker 3: some question as to whether they ever spent it on
Speaker 3: that because they were so short of funds that they
Speaker 3: couldn't do an adequate defense, and they waived their right
Speaker 3: in the state of Arkansas to take this trial out
Speaker 3: of the media market. They had a right to keep
Speaker 3: cameras out of the courtroom. And in a case like this,
Speaker 3: where there's whole ridiculous prosecution is being done on the
Speaker 3: grounds of satanism and community panic, it's just all very troubling.
Speaker 3: And I think that the heart of it is unless
Speaker 3: you have a well funded, robust system for giving people lawyers,
Speaker 3: particularly charged with murder in these serious cases, and juvenile's
Speaker 3: adequate counsel, the whole system implodes on itself in some horrible,
Speaker 3: terrible way. You never had a chance.
Speaker 5: A couple things really stuck out to me. One was
Speaker 5: when they put that guy in the stand who was
Speaker 5: testifying as an expert on satanism and witchcraft and all
Speaker 5: this stuff, right, and the defense attorney quite rightly said
Speaker 5: to him, where did you get certified at this? And
Speaker 5: it turned out he had spent like an hour of
Speaker 5: doing some online something or whatever. It was ridiculed. It
Speaker 5: was laughable, right, The fact that he was calling himself
Speaker 5: an expert was laughable. And that's one thing that I
Speaker 5: was like, well, the jury's got to hear that. And
Speaker 5: the other thing was when they had the doctor on
Speaker 5: the stand, right, it was like an orthopedic surgeon or
Speaker 5: something whatever he was, and they were asking him about
Speaker 5: the fact the way that the one boy had been mutilated, right,
Speaker 5: and he had the skin cut off his penis. I mean,
Speaker 5: he's really pretty disgusting even things about it.
Speaker 2: And which we found out later was animal predation. Animals
Speaker 2: had actually started eating their bodies in the water that
Speaker 2: they were submerging. And so when the police pulled Jesse
Speaker 2: into the police station and they laid out the photos
Speaker 2: of the bodies, they had him make up a story
Speaker 2: for all the visible wounds. The calls and manner of
Speaker 2: the wounds were unknown. They didn't know that all these
Speaker 2: wounds were animal predation.
Speaker 5: There's so much more to the story, and I want
Speaker 5: to get to it. But the other things that were
Speaker 5: so bizarre was the fact that they never investigated the
Speaker 5: restaurant manager the bo Jangles who called up and said
Speaker 5: there's a there was a black guy who came in
Speaker 5: leading all over the place. He went right into the
Speaker 5: women's bathroom. I mean, right there, there's two things that
Speaker 5: if I'm a cop over going, you know what, I'm
Speaker 5: gonna get covered in mud, like I'm gonna be like,
Speaker 5: you know what, that's either a crazy ass coincidence or
Speaker 5: I better get my ass over there and I better
Speaker 5: go find out whatever the fuck there is to find
Speaker 5: out about this, because that's weird, right, And maybe it
Speaker 5: was a coincidence, because we don't know if that guy
Speaker 5: was a killer, and we'll probably never know, but that's weird.
Speaker 5: And the cop just came and sort of went up
Speaker 5: to the drive through, might as well order have a
Speaker 5: diet coke while she was there. She didn't need bother
Speaker 5: to go inside and look at the situation. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, well, to give.
Speaker 2: Officer Regina mixed the benefit of the doubt. At that time,
Speaker 2: the guy had already left. She's on a mission to
Speaker 2: find some missing kids, right, so she's probably thinking, Okay,
Speaker 2: he's not in there. I can probably just drive around
Speaker 2: and I will run into him and get him that away, right.
Speaker 2: But what is unacceptable is the next day when they
Speaker 2: have found the bodies, and the bodies were found very
Speaker 2: close to this Bojangles restaurant, and so then they're thinking, Okay,
Speaker 2: a guy came out of the bayou where the bodies
Speaker 2: were found, covered in mud and blood. We need that, right,
Speaker 2: So they go in there and they get just the
Speaker 2: very miniscule scraping of blood samples. And there were a
Speaker 2: pair of glasses, sunglasses that the guy left behind. And
Speaker 2: you wear glasses, and you wear glasses very adjason. You know,
Speaker 2: glasses are the perfect thing for collecting fingerprints, right. But
Speaker 2: Detective Ridge threw the glasses away, and he threw a
Speaker 2: toilet paper roll completely saturated in blood away.
Speaker 5: So back to the trial, back to the courtroom. If
Speaker 5: you remember when the jury went out, what did you
Speaker 5: think was going to happen?
Speaker 2: I sincerely believed that we would go home, they would
Speaker 2: find us not guilty, that they would be able to
Speaker 2: totally ignore all the flaming prejudicial stuff that the prosecution
Speaker 2: was bringing up about Satanism and everything and look at
Speaker 2: the case for what it was and follow the evidence.
Speaker 5: See.
Speaker 3: And this very interesting because one of the things that
Speaker 3: we've identified as a risk factor in being wrongfully convicted
Speaker 3: is just being innocent. Any objective observer watching the way
Speaker 3: the evidence went in at that trial would have told you, Jason,
Speaker 3: that you were in big trouble. But an innocent person thinks, oh,
Speaker 3: it's all a big mistake. It's just the way you sad.
Speaker 3: Thank god they collecting all this saliva from me and
Speaker 3: a footprint and DNA and HARES, because you know this
Speaker 3: will all prove that I didn't do it right. So
Speaker 3: I can't begin to tell you the number of stone
Speaker 3: called innocent people I've spoken to who when you read
Speaker 3: the transcripts of their trial, and you're one of the
Speaker 3: few that we have a video of your trial, you'd say,
Speaker 3: oh my god, they must have been terrified that you
Speaker 3: know they were going down. And yet innocent people don't
Speaker 3: think that, because they say this system should work. This
Speaker 3: is some horrible mistake that's going to be corrected.
Speaker 2: And so you're told all your life that the purpose of
Speaker 2: the judicial system is to find the truth, when really
Speaker 2: it's to get a conviction.
Speaker 5: Okay, but then the jury comes back in and the
Speaker 5: worst thing imaginabile happen, and you're sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 2: The first thing I thought about was my mom and brothers.
Speaker 2: As I told you, we were putting our lives back together.
Speaker 2: My brother Matthew was fourteen, my little brother Terry was nine. Well,
Speaker 2: during the trial, school starts back up. My little brothers
Speaker 2: have to go back to school. They harassed my brothers,
Speaker 2: and so my brothers would get into fights with kids
Speaker 2: in school and they go to the principal's office and
Speaker 2: the principal will be like, oh, you're his brother. So
Speaker 2: they get expelled. For my mom, her employer, the trucking
Speaker 2: agency in Memphis, tells her, hey, I understand you were
Speaker 2: gonna want to be at the hearings and the trial
Speaker 2: for your son, and that's all find and Danny, you
Speaker 2: just won't have a job to come back to. Thankfully,
Speaker 2: our trailer was owned, our car was owned, but they
Speaker 2: didn't have money to pay for electricity anymore. They got
Speaker 2: food stamps so they could eat, but they couldn't put
Speaker 2: gas to come and visit me or anything. Very often,
Speaker 2: I think I saw them just a small handful of times,
Speaker 2: and so I thought about them, you know, not only
Speaker 2: what they've gone through, but what they may continue to
Speaker 2: face because of this. Because at the time, even though
Speaker 2: they were being treated like this, I thought, well, when
Speaker 2: the jury finds me innocent, these people will come forward
Speaker 2: and apologize to all of us, and my brothers will
Speaker 2: be able to go back to school, my mom will
Speaker 2: get her job back, and things will be fine. But
Speaker 2: that wasn't the case, you know, and so I'm worried
Speaker 2: more for them than for myself.
Speaker 5: That's remarkable. I don't know if you know how remarkable
Speaker 5: that sounds of me. It's so crazily selfless, especially at
Speaker 5: your young agent facing what you were facing.
Speaker 2: And so we've been through a lot together as a
Speaker 2: family over the years.
Speaker 5: So then you end up getting sent to maximum security prison.
Speaker 2: Right when you first go to prison, and you're not
Speaker 2: going to death row, you go to what's called a
Speaker 2: diagnostic unit, and that's where they evaluate you mentally and
Speaker 2: physically to determine what your parent unit in the department
Speaker 2: corrections will be because they have a myriad of prisons
Speaker 2: on various different old slave plantations in the South, and
Speaker 2: each of them are different and in different ways by
Speaker 2: age and your strength and things like that. And when
Speaker 2: I went to diagnostics, they saw me like you saw
Speaker 2: me as a small, innocent kid, and diagnostics they were like,
Speaker 2: we've got to send you to one of two places, Jason,
Speaker 2: or you're not gonna make it PC Protective Custody or
Speaker 2: what's called SPU Suicide Prevention Unit and suicide prevention you
Speaker 2: will have your own cell. And you know, I looked
Speaker 2: at it like this. At the time, we didn't have
Speaker 2: very many people on our side. In fact, it was
Speaker 2: just us, and I was thrust in through this incredibly
Speaker 2: impossible situation, and I was escorted everywhere I went in
Speaker 2: the prison, and so I'd see the people in SPU
Speaker 2: going to chow and they'd be doing the thorozine shuffle
Speaker 2: because they're so heavily medicated. And I had a fear
Speaker 2: that if I acquiesced and let them put me in SPU,
Speaker 2: that they would forcefully medicate me and I would lose
Speaker 2: my mind and my ability to think and reason and
Speaker 2: to fight and so I said, no, I can't do that.
Speaker 2: And as far as the PC protective custody, anybody knows
Speaker 2: if you are saying you are so weak that you
Speaker 2: need protection, that people are going to see that and
Speaker 2: prey on you even more. And so I knew I
Speaker 2: had to some way, some fashion stand on my own
Speaker 2: two feet in there and earn everybody's respect back from
Speaker 2: the inmates and guards a light and they said, well,
Speaker 2: you not going to one of these places. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have to send you to Barner. And at the time,
Speaker 2: they had just shipped all these guys from the Little
Speaker 2: Tucker Unit to Barner and they were destroying the place.
Speaker 2: They said, it was just chaos and destruction and just
Speaker 2: incredibly violent place, and that's where they were going to
Speaker 2: have to send me. And I just told them that
Speaker 2: that's what you gotta do. You got to do it.
Speaker 2: And so they did eventually send me to Barner Unit,
Speaker 2: and it was everything they said it was.
Speaker 5: How did you survive there?
Speaker 2: You know, by the grace of God, you know, as
Speaker 2: you said, I guess, I'll say I was incredibly lucky,
Speaker 2: but I was incredibly blessed to I went in there.
Speaker 2: They opened up and mister Patten stepped out, and his
Speaker 2: clerk stepped out, and mister Panton says, in may Bowlin,
Speaker 2: I'm mister Patten, the classification officer. I'll be assigning you
Speaker 2: to your housing unit. And this is my clerk, Mojo.
Speaker 2: And they tell me you got to stand up for
Speaker 2: yourself in here or these people will just will run
Speaker 2: you over and turn you into a sex slave and
Speaker 2: all these horrible things and make you pay money for
Speaker 2: protection and stuff like that. And so they assign me
Speaker 2: to seven barracks, and seven barracks at the Barner unit
Speaker 2: is intake barracks. I walk down the hall and as
Speaker 2: I'm walking, I'm walking next to this barracks and it's
Speaker 2: got bulletproof glass three stories high, and these guys are
Speaker 2: beating on it. Right, it's plexiglass, it's got chicken wire
Speaker 2: in it, and there are sell bars on the inside
Speaker 2: of it going all the way up three stories. And
Speaker 2: I look and these guys are literally climbing this thing.
Speaker 2: They are climbing it above one another, hanging on to
Speaker 2: the bars, looking at me, beating the glass and pointing
Speaker 2: at me. Because they've been watching the trial on TV
Speaker 2: and the hearings and stuff for an entire year. It's
Speaker 2: like a pep rally. Right, They're finally going to have
Speaker 2: their hands on me, right. And I get there and
Speaker 2: Sergeant Ivy's working the door and he tells me. He says,
Speaker 2: if you go in there and stand up for you yourself,
Speaker 2: I got your back. If not, they got you. And
Speaker 2: I'm just holding the only thing I have is a bible,
Speaker 2: a couple of letters from a mom. That's it in
Speaker 2: a little paper bag. And they opened the door and
Speaker 2: put me in there, and next thing I know, somebody
Speaker 2: swings a fist at me. I duck that one. The
Speaker 2: next one catches me and I'm fighting. Immediately the door
Speaker 2: opens back up, there's may sprayed. Sergeant Ivy's yanking people
Speaker 2: off of me. I'm on the ground and he says,
Speaker 2: are you ready to go to PC?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 2: Do you need to catch out? And the guys are hollering,
Speaker 2: catch out, bitch, catch out, oh all these horrible things,
Speaker 2: you know, which catch out means to leave the barracks
Speaker 2: and to go and to protective custody. And like I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I knew I needed to earn these people's
Speaker 2: respect because I did not know how long I would
Speaker 2: be there. I know I'm innocent, but I don't know
Speaker 2: how long I'm going to be in this prison, and
Speaker 2: so I tell them no leave me. And next thing
Speaker 2: I know, we go from the dayroom tier downstairs. The
Speaker 2: guys like push all the racks up against the wall.
Speaker 2: They circle around us, and I'm fighting this guy. And
Speaker 2: then I'm fighting this guy and there's people hitting me
Speaker 2: from behind. So it's kind of orderly and fair, but
Speaker 2: then again it's kind of not. And so I fight
Speaker 2: the whole barracks that Friday, everybody. And then they call
Speaker 2: shower call and the barracks next door, eight bricks, they
Speaker 2: call two barracks at a time to go to shower.
Speaker 2: The shower holds one hundred people, and so when I
Speaker 2: get there, I gotta fight all these guys from eight barracks.
Speaker 2: And so I fought all week in. My whole face
Speaker 2: will swoll up, my fists will swoll up, my body
Speaker 2: was beat. And so I do this all weekend. I
Speaker 2: get into fights in the chowhu even like because there's
Speaker 2: even other people from other barracks is wanting to get
Speaker 2: to me in the chow haw and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Come Monday morning, I'm barely even able to walk, you know,
Speaker 2: and like the guys were like just pushing me and
Speaker 2: guiding me a bit and which way to go and stuff,
Speaker 2: because I can't even see even less than I normally
Speaker 2: do because my eyes and stuff are all swollen up.
Speaker 2: And I just remember thinking that whole weekend about this
Speaker 2: job out in the fields, host squad. There's gonna be sunshine,
Speaker 2: there's gonna be a down, and I'm gonna get to
Speaker 2: witness that. I was just looking forward to that first dawn,
Speaker 2: you know, that that morning air. And so there was
Speaker 2: a part of me just no matter how bad it was,
Speaker 2: I was just looking forward to that first dawn. I'm like,
Speaker 2: if I can make it to that, you know, if
Speaker 2: I can make it to that, that's something good. And
Speaker 2: then I do, you know. I get there and they
Speaker 2: have us march in what they call a deuce two
Speaker 2: by two, and you march and you go through the
Speaker 2: sally port and they count you off and and everything,
Speaker 2: and you're a part of what's called host squad. And
Speaker 2: they march me way off out in the fields and
Speaker 2: in the country and everything. And I'm in the middle
Speaker 2: of the line. We're cleaning out this ditch of bermuda grass,
Speaker 2: and the gouger whose job it is to like talk
Speaker 2: back to you to make you work harder, says Bowling.
Speaker 2: Drop your hole. So I drop my hoe. He says,
Speaker 2: step out of the line. I step out of the line.
Speaker 2: He says, Sergeant Norris wants to speak to you. And
Speaker 2: Sergeant Norris is up on the heel on his horse,
Speaker 2: and I go walking towards him, stumbling towards him, more
Speaker 2: like it, And he says, walk over to that truck
Speaker 2: where the major is. He wants you. And so I
Speaker 2: stumble up to this truck and the major is the
Speaker 2: field major over the entire field operations. His name is Gibson,
Speaker 2: and he's got his pistol out on the driver's side door,
Speaker 2: and he yells out over my head, I'm taking Baldwin
Speaker 2: with me, and he says, you better keep up. I'd
Speaker 2: hate to have to kill you for escape. And so
Speaker 2: he starts driving down this dirt road out on these
Speaker 2: old plantation fields, and I'm running trying to keep up
Speaker 2: with him. I was done so bad that weekend. I
Speaker 2: think I have a size twelve boot on one foot,
Speaker 2: a size ten on the other. I don't have any
Speaker 2: socks on my feet are sliding around. I've already got
Speaker 2: blood blisters on my feet and everything. Of course, I'm
Speaker 2: all beat up. My hands now are like bleeding from blisters,
Speaker 2: not just the tops from fighting, but my hands from
Speaker 2: blisters and stuff. And he's saying all these things I've
Speaker 2: been hearing from people, all these hateful things, you know,
Speaker 2: And I already know that there's no talking to him,
Speaker 2: there's no communicating with him, because he already believes what
Speaker 2: he wants to believe. And he's calling me this horrible satan,
Speaker 2: tanic child murderer, and how I'm gonna die and deserve
Speaker 2: to die. And we get way so far away, like
Speaker 2: even though I'm blind, like I could look back and
Speaker 2: still see a stretch of white, but I kept going
Speaker 2: further and further and further in the white just disappeared
Speaker 2: over the horizon, and it's just me and him way
Speaker 2: out here, and then these feels, and he's got his
Speaker 2: gun on me, and we stop, and he looks me
Speaker 2: in the eye and says, you kill those boys, You
Speaker 2: deserve to die, telling the same thing I told Judge Burnew.
Speaker 2: I tell him I'm innocent, and we just sit there
Speaker 2: and he's got his gun in my face and we
Speaker 2: sit there. I don't know what he was thinking. I
Speaker 2: don't know if he was thinking, by kill Jason, that
Speaker 2: makes me a child killer too. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he was thinking that. I don't know if he looked
Speaker 2: at me and saw his son. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he just looked at me and saw me as a
Speaker 2: scum of the earth. But a long time dragged by,
Speaker 2: and he took the gun back, cranked the vehicle back
Speaker 2: up and says, come on, we're going back. And he
Speaker 2: turned the vehicle around and I made the long march
Speaker 2: back to my squad put me back in the middle
Speaker 2: of the line.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is the craziest fucking story imaginable. We're
Speaker 5: going to fast forward to eighteen years later. Right, So,
Speaker 5: now you've been in prison for longer than you had
Speaker 5: been alive before you went to prison. Right, You were
Speaker 5: sixteen when you got arrested.
Speaker 2: That was a big deal to me too when it happened.
Speaker 5: Eighteen years in prison, and now finally the tide turns,
Speaker 5: the public sentiment turns, and the government realized that they've
Speaker 5: got the wrong guys exactly. They don't want to let
Speaker 5: you out, but they realize that they're going to have to.
Speaker 5: So then one day you get offered sort of almost
Speaker 5: like a Sophie's choice, right, because they came to you
Speaker 5: and offered an Alfred plan and Barry could just speak
Speaker 5: on an Alfred place.
Speaker 3: Second, this is a plea where in theory there's no
Speaker 3: admission of guilt. Sometimes they call them nolo cantandre please,
Speaker 3: where you say I know that the state has enough
Speaker 3: evidence if they take it to trial that they arguably
Speaker 3: could get a conviction, but I am innocent. And then
Speaker 3: they basically say, okay, we're going to sentence you to
Speaker 3: time served, but you get a conviction on your record
Speaker 3: and to a lesser charge. But that was the horrible
Speaker 3: choice that you Jason Rawford, and it was a deal
Speaker 3: that would cover everyone, right.
Speaker 5: And that's the tricky part, right, because she had resolved
Speaker 5: that you were never going to take an Alfred plea,
Speaker 5: because you had worked in the law library, you knew
Speaker 5: what you were doing. You're now a man, and you're
Speaker 5: a smart guy as well, and so you had made
Speaker 5: this decision. But they made it impossible for you to
Speaker 5: stick to your guns because of the fact that they
Speaker 5: were going to execute your friend. Is that right?
Speaker 2: They had my best friend's life at stake. I remember
Speaker 2: very well. It was a Wednesday, August tenth of twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: At this time, I'm working in the school department. I'm
Speaker 2: helping people get their GDS and stuff like that. And
Speaker 2: I came in from work and they're like, bow and
Speaker 2: go back to the control center. You got an attorney visit.
Speaker 2: And I remember thinking, anytime I got an attorney visit,
Speaker 2: it's scheduled well in advanced. And I get there and
Speaker 2: it's Blake and he says, what if I told you
Speaker 2: you could go home tomorrow? And I said, I hear
Speaker 2: a button there, and so he explains to me the
Speaker 2: alpha player. I told him, no, we have an evidentiary
Speaker 2: hearing set for December to twenty second, which isn't that
Speaker 2: far away, and we have all the evidence on our side.
Speaker 2: We're in front of what I believe to be a
Speaker 2: reasonable judge, Judge Laser.
Speaker 5: We're going to.
Speaker 2: Prove our innocence and we're gonna win, and we're going
Speaker 2: to go home. But the choice wasn't all mine. I
Speaker 2: can make that choice for myself, because you've heard how
Speaker 2: horrible it was for me going in well. By this time,
Speaker 2: I'd won the respect of the guards, I'd won the
Speaker 2: respect of the inmates, and instead of people cursing me
Speaker 2: and beating me, they were hugging me and praying for me,
Speaker 2: wishing for my well being. And so even though it
Speaker 2: was not a life I deserved being in prison, it
Speaker 2: was a life I had built at the same time,
Speaker 2: So it wasn't so bad at that point. But for Damien,
Speaker 2: he's on death row. It's like being in the hole
Speaker 2: all the time. And even if they didn't kill him
Speaker 2: for decades more, his health was declining. He's basically being
Speaker 2: tortured every single day, and there wasn't anything really to
Speaker 2: say that they wouldn't execute him, because that was their
Speaker 2: intent there. I had this real nightmare the entire time
Speaker 2: I was in there that one day they actually did
Speaker 2: execute Damien. And honestly, after the Alfred plea was brought
Speaker 2: to me and they'd said it was all or nothing,
Speaker 2: and I thought to myself, if I did not accept
Speaker 2: this Alpha plea and they eventually killed Damien, I would
Speaker 2: not be able to live with myself because I basically
Speaker 2: had the power to save his life, and so I
Speaker 2: had to make the decision. I had to say, what
Speaker 2: is most important? Is it my reputation or is it
Speaker 2: an innocent man's life? And I had to make that
Speaker 2: choice because that's what is real. That's the realest thing
Speaker 2: to save an innocent life, and so to hell with
Speaker 2: my reputation.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not just your reputation. It's also the
Speaker 5: fact that you can't sue for compensation exactly, and you're
Speaker 5: still a convicted felon.
Speaker 2: And in any moment they can come and just take
Speaker 2: me and accuse me of something, just as they've done
Speaker 2: before that I'm totally innocent up and they can put
Speaker 2: me in prison for twenty one years, right because of
Speaker 2: your record.
Speaker 3: Yes, And let's not forget because this is a great dilemma.
Speaker 3: Having been involved in assisting all the different lawyers in
Speaker 3: this case, because by this point there was a legal
Speaker 3: team representing you, team representing Damien, one representing Jesse the
Speaker 3: way it should be, because of these kinds of potential conflicts,
Speaker 3: although everybody had been working together in gathering all this evidence. People,
Speaker 3: you know, frankly, ordinary criminal defense lawyers don't understand this
Speaker 3: that innocent people who have been in prison for so long.
Speaker 3: It is such a big part of your identity. It
Speaker 3: is yourself that I mean, so many clients. If they
Speaker 3: had offered you parole, right if you admit to committing
Speaker 3: the crimes, you would.
Speaker 5: Have turned that down exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so you were going to fight for your
Speaker 3: innocence no matter what. And to make you give that
Speaker 3: up so that your best friend didn't get executed is
Speaker 3: one of the worst coercive And as you said, it's
Speaker 3: a sophie's choice. We all felt horrible for you. I mean,
Speaker 3: you felt horrible for everybody, but you know, we all
Speaker 3: knew how horrible that was for you. In particular. You
Speaker 3: are so articulate and so well read and so insightful.
Speaker 3: I've never asked you, I mean, did you get a
Speaker 3: ged or what was your level of education by the
Speaker 3: time you were getting out.
Speaker 2: I only filed one grievance the entire time I was incarcerated,
Speaker 2: and it was for my education. After I did my
Speaker 2: initial sixty days on what they call whole squad, you
Speaker 2: go up for classification and you can get a different job,
Speaker 2: and they gave me a job in the kitchen. Well,
Speaker 2: like you know, I was rested on my last' schol
Speaker 2: for the tenth grade, and so I put in a
Speaker 2: request for an interview to go to school to get
Speaker 2: my GED. They wrote me back very quickly, so you
Speaker 2: have life without you don't need an education. Well, and
Speaker 2: so I filed my only grievance and said my education
Speaker 2: is important to me. I need school. And it went
Speaker 2: through the processes and I won, and they let me
Speaker 2: go to school, and I got my GED thanks to
Speaker 2: the movement, because of the movies WM three dot org.
Speaker 2: They put together a college fund and paid for me
Speaker 2: to get some college education. And I wasn't able to
Speaker 2: get a complete college education in there, but I was
Speaker 2: able to get a lot of education. And it followed
Speaker 2: me here and now I've got my associates degree. I'm
Speaker 2: about to go back to school from bachelors with the
Speaker 2: hope to go to law school after that.
Speaker 5: So now here you are. You've just moved from Seattle
Speaker 5: to Austin, and tell us about this organization because now you,
Speaker 5: like so many of these honreies, you are somebody who
Speaker 5: is standing up for the rights of others, to help
Speaker 5: other people have been wrongfully convicted, to prevent people from
Speaker 5: being wrongfully convicted. And you have your own organization you're
Speaker 5: now the deputy director. Congratulations, thank you. So can you
Speaker 5: tell us about that.
Speaker 2: There's Proclaimed Justice. My good friend John Harden I built
Speaker 2: this organizations to help people like me, like Damian and Jesse,
Speaker 2: who who are in prison forever for something they didn't do.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of amazing and beautiful organizations that
Speaker 2: do this, like you know, like the Innocence Project. There
Speaker 2: are still so many people that need help and we
Speaker 2: can't possibly cover them all. After experiencing what I experienced,
Speaker 2: I don't want people to suffer that. I don't want
Speaker 2: anybody else to go through that, and so the people
Speaker 2: who are I want to rescue from it, and I
Speaker 2: want policy change to make it more difficult for innocent
Speaker 2: people to be found guilty.
Speaker 5: And if people, Jason, if people want to help Proclaim Justice,
Speaker 5: it's proclaim justice dot org. Correct and you can go
Speaker 5: to the website. You have the Instagram as well, Proclaim Justice. Well,
Speaker 5: let's go to you first, Barry, because I want you
Speaker 5: to have the last word. So, Barry, what do you
Speaker 5: take away from all of this and what can people do?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: You know, there are innocence organizations all across the country, frankally,
Speaker 3: now even the world as part of our Innocence Network
Speaker 3: and other organizations such as Proclaim Justice where people can
Speaker 3: get involved. You should look at the innocence organization in
Speaker 3: your area. Whether you live in California or Texas or
Speaker 3: New York or any place you know there is a
Speaker 3: local innocence organization that you can get involved with, and
Speaker 3: the issue is just get involved. These organizations need help
Speaker 3: spreading the word, raising money. But now we're at to
Speaker 3: point in time in our country's history where people have
Speaker 3: to get involved in the local level. Who's going to
Speaker 3: be elected district attorney? Everybody should care about that. We
Speaker 3: need progressive district attorneys who care about justice in each
Speaker 3: different jurisdiction. There are issues on the ballot or in
Speaker 3: the state legislature that the policy department at the Innocence
Speaker 3: Project and the innocence organizations in our network are pushing
Speaker 3: in virtually every state. So there's a lot of ways
Speaker 3: to get involved.
Speaker 5: Jason, I'm going to turn over to you for last words.
Speaker 5: What would you like to share educate yourselves.
Speaker 2: One of the most maddening, infuriating things. It's a phrase
Speaker 2: that I've encountered as being innocent, and it's this phrase,
Speaker 2: right here, they all say that. Right, you've heard this
Speaker 2: When you say, well, I'm innocent and someone shuts you
Speaker 2: down by basically saying they all say that, Educate yourselves, people,
Speaker 2: and learn that innocent people do go to prison, Innocent
Speaker 2: people do fall victim to the justice system, and they
Speaker 2: don't all say that. Just the innocent ones. The people
Speaker 2: who go to prison who are actually guilty. The justice
Speaker 2: system makes it easier for them because they can make
Speaker 2: deals and things like that and take a plea bargain.
Speaker 2: But when you're innocent, you can't do that. Only thing
Speaker 2: you can do is say I'm innocent, and next thing
Speaker 2: you know, you're going to jury trial and they're trying
Speaker 2: to basically take your entire life from you. And so
Speaker 2: it's much more difficult when you're innocent than is when
Speaker 2: you are guilty.
Speaker 5: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 5: get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 5: donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
Speaker 5: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 5: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 5: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 5: like to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 5: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 5: nominated composer Jay Rowlph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 5: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 5: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 5: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one