Speaker 1: With the rise of dual income households throughout the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties, an unprecedented number of families were relying on
Speaker 1: near strangers for childcare. Subsequently, a wave of child sex
Speaker 1: abuse hysteria began, in which any claim at all from
Speaker 1: a child was granted credence, no matter how outlandish or
Speaker 1: probably false they were. At this time, Howard Dudley and
Speaker 1: Diane Moore were jointly raising their daughter Amy, but were
Speaker 1: never married. Eventually, Howard found her a nude sense of faith,
Speaker 1: met his wife, and had two sons. Even though Howard
Speaker 1: paid child support and maintained a presence in Amy's life,
Speaker 1: one can imagine that Howard's new willingness to settle down
Speaker 1: was not well received by the mother of his first
Speaker 1: child or her family, including Amy's babysitter, Lydia May Starkey.
Speaker 1: On October thirteenth, nineteen ninety one, Amy allegedly told miss
Speaker 1: Starkey that her father was quote nasty, already prime to
Speaker 1: believe the worst about Howard, and demanding an explanation. Starkey
Speaker 1: began a series of suggestive questions, and Amy allegedly claimed
Speaker 1: sexual abuse. To look out for Amy's best interest. During
Speaker 1: the social Services investigation. She was assigned at Guardian ad Ltam,
Speaker 1: who determined that Amy's story was untrue. Nonetheless, the trend
Speaker 1: demanded that credence be granted to the child's claims, triggering
Speaker 1: Howard's arrest. The prosecution ignored and hid the Guardian ed
Speaker 1: Lam's recommendation, and even though Amy recanted her allegations immediately
Speaker 1: after trial, Howard's been nearly twenty five years in prison
Speaker 1: as a child sex offender. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to wrongful conviction. I feel a deep sense of
Speaker 1: responsibility to share this story because it's unique in terms
Speaker 1: of the almost three hundred episodes we've done, but it's
Speaker 1: not unique because it was a common story at the
Speaker 1: time that it was happening. It's the story of a
Speaker 1: man named Howard Dudley who was convicted of a crime
Speaker 1: that never happened, and who spent almost three decades incarcerated
Speaker 1: because of a series of lies, superstitions, hysteria that sort
Speaker 1: of swept the nation. So before I introduce the other
Speaker 1: distinguished guest who we have on here, I want to
Speaker 1: introduce mister Dudley himself, Howard Dudley. Welcome to RAFEL conviction.
Speaker 2: Good morning, excited about being here this morning.
Speaker 1: Well, listen, I'm excited to have you here. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: you're here because of what you went through with Howard.
Speaker 1: Today is a remarkable woman named Teresa Newman. Teresa is
Speaker 1: recently retired, but she was a clinical professor of law
Speaker 1: amereta at Duke Law. So this is a serious person.
Speaker 1: You don't get that title by not being tough and smart.
Speaker 1: And you also don't get Howard Dudley out of prison
Speaker 1: without those qualities and characteristics. So Teresa, thank.
Speaker 3: You for being here, Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1: And this story is outrageous. Stories like this have actually
Speaker 1: kept me up at night. And I mean again, this
Speaker 1: one is this is about as bad as it gets,
Speaker 1: but it isn't unique, and that's why I think it's
Speaker 1: all the more important that we tell it. But Howard,
Speaker 1: before we get into the story itself, let's talk about
Speaker 1: your youth. You grew up in a small town in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Is that right?
Speaker 2: That's correct, that's right, a little town called Institute. I
Speaker 2: grew up in a home mom and dad and nine siblings.
Speaker 2: And my dad had quick rules and he enforced the talk,
Speaker 2: the work they're out of trouble not to go out
Speaker 2: and disperse the family.
Speaker 1: Name. Yeah, I guess with that many kids, you'd have
Speaker 1: to have some strict rules or it'd be pure chaos.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like your parents instilled some good values
Speaker 1: in you. And I also understand that you played guitar
Speaker 1: and still do, and eventually you grew up and that
Speaker 1: a woman named Diane Moore. You had a daughter together
Speaker 1: named Amy. But it appears that you never intend on
Speaker 1: marrying Diane and weren't ready to settle down.
Speaker 2: I wasn't really a good boyfriend. I ad met to
Speaker 2: that right there. But we worked out between the court
Speaker 2: and myself and Amoy's mother that I could spend time
Speaker 2: with her. She spent weekends with me. We had a
Speaker 2: great relationship and we was on good.
Speaker 1: Terms, I thought. And while you two tolerated each other
Speaker 1: for the good of your daughter, Diane ended up becoming
Speaker 1: infected with HIV and she was very ill for a while.
Speaker 1: So a relative named Lydia may Starkey began shouldering more
Speaker 1: of Diane's into the bargain. But nonetheless, you moved on
Speaker 1: with your life.
Speaker 2: I met my wife and we got married. She would
Speaker 2: accept me as I was, and after marriage we had
Speaker 2: a son named Dennis who's a musician today, and the
Speaker 2: Adrian living a productive life. I would determine to make
Speaker 2: a good life for my children, and that was my endeavor.
Speaker 2: I worked, my wife went to college, and her last
Speaker 2: year in school she had a major squote, and so
Speaker 2: basically I was the provider for my family.
Speaker 1: So at this time, you were provided for your family,
Speaker 1: living in a trailer while paying child support for Amy,
Speaker 1: who would join you on the weekends and during the
Speaker 1: week her relative, Lydia Mace Darkey would care for her
Speaker 1: as Diane's health continued to deteriorate.
Speaker 3: The babysitter she called Howard mean because he had broken
Speaker 3: up with Diane Moore, who she later died of age
Speaker 3: she was ill, and then Howard, moving on with life,
Speaker 3: became born again. Christian got married, had these two kids.
Speaker 1: So one could easily see how some really you know,
Speaker 1: hard hurt feelings could develop, making it easy for Lydia
Speaker 1: May to believe horrible things about you, and later on
Speaker 1: maybe even to cajole young Amy into making wild accusations
Speaker 1: that she would later recant. Amy, as I understand, was
Speaker 1: a bit more susceptible to suggestion, as she had some
Speaker 1: intellectual limitations. But even before we get into the specifics
Speaker 1: of your case, I think it's important to mention that
Speaker 1: this time period, the late eighties and early nineties, was
Speaker 1: the absolute height of a wave of child sex abuse hysteria,
Speaker 1: and cases were weeping across the country, one nonsensical case
Speaker 1: after the other, and I think probably the most widely
Speaker 1: known one was the McMartin preschool, but very close by
Speaker 1: to Howard and his family in North Carolina was a
Speaker 1: Little Rascals daycare center, where the accusations were beyond absurd,
Speaker 1: I mean just absolutely outlandish things that a kid might
Speaker 1: conjure up on the spot. Now that's not to say
Speaker 1: that there perhaps weren't some real allegations among the false ones,
Speaker 1: but in that climate, social services, police and eventually juries
Speaker 1: were buying the allegations, credible or not.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I wasn't a lawyer when these cases were
Speaker 3: sweeping the nation and frankly internationally, but I remember, just
Speaker 3: like you, Jason, reading it and thinking these were fantasy allegations.
Speaker 3: And people have different theories about what led to this
Speaker 3: period of near hysteria, but I think many believe it
Speaker 3: was a time of two parent families. Both parents were working,
Speaker 3: children were being taken care of by strangers or near strangers,
Speaker 3: and all it takes is rumor and innuendo that something
Speaker 3: untoured is happening in these places. And the Little Rascals
Speaker 3: is a great example, and that's right here in North Carolina.
Speaker 3: The trial which was against every worker and owner at
Speaker 3: that daycare center. That trial was occurring for the owner
Speaker 3: of the center, just minutes away from where Howard Dudley lived.
Speaker 3: The stories were in the New York Times, were in
Speaker 3: the international papers, were in every local newspaper, and in
Speaker 3: that one newborn babies were being tossed to sharks off
Speaker 3: the coast of North Carolina. There were pirate ship allegations.
Speaker 3: Clearly the stories of children. But the other important piece
Speaker 3: of this period of time was that no research had
Speaker 3: really been conducted on whether young children could fabricate such stories.
Speaker 3: So if they told you a quote story, that story
Speaker 3: had to be true. Any listener who is a parent
Speaker 3: today knows that that's a crazy notion. Children make up
Speaker 3: stories all the time. They lived in fantasy. But that
Speaker 3: was that period. Today it is known that children can
Speaker 3: line that it's really important to conduct interviews of children
Speaker 3: in a certain way that the medical evidence that was
Speaker 3: believed to be dispositive abuse at the time.
Speaker 1: Is not a friend of mine named Gus Gussler. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he ever came across him, but he's
Speaker 1: a criminal defense lawyer for a long time in North
Speaker 1: Carolina and he defended one of these cases. He was
Speaker 1: actually representing a man who was a golf pro whose
Speaker 1: wife operated a day care facility, and just because he
Speaker 1: would go and pick her up from work once in
Speaker 1: a while, he got caught up in it as well.
Speaker 1: And I believe he got convicted because at the time
Speaker 1: it was just like everybody was just believing anything that
Speaker 1: anybody said. And of course these were crimes that never
Speaker 1: even happened.
Speaker 3: We represent one of the last surviving multi defendant, multi
Speaker 3: children cases from this period, and the man was convicted
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty seven and it absolutely nothing happened. But
Speaker 3: he was a van driver for a daycare center with
Speaker 3: some cognitively impaired adults on the van as well, and
Speaker 3: two of those adults were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they
Speaker 3: were doing as the children said, the married people were
Speaker 3: doing married people things on the bus and that's how
Speaker 3: it started. And it ended up with our client Junior
Speaker 3: Chandler in prison since nineteen eighty seven and we'll be
Speaker 3: there for the rest of his life unless we can
Speaker 3: successfully petition the cord.
Speaker 1: There are still so many people suffering in prison, like
Speaker 1: Junior Chandler, James King, whose case we've covered on the show.
Speaker 1: And if you have the opportunity, please go back and
Speaker 1: list to that one. That one it hurts my heart
Speaker 1: and we'll have it linked in the bio. And then
Speaker 1: who knows, maybe you know something, maybe there's something you
Speaker 1: can do to help. And Howard, you haven't even been
Speaker 1: home that long. It was only two thy sixteen when
Speaker 1: you got out. Let's turn to the story at hand. Here.
Speaker 1: This was October thirteenth, nineteen ninety one, which was a Sunday.
Speaker 1: Amy had just been returned to her mother and had
Speaker 1: Miss Starkey, and I understand that over the weekend you
Speaker 1: had been firm with Amy about something, as parents off
Speaker 1: and are when trying to raise their children, you know
Speaker 1: the right way, and she had a complaint that you
Speaker 1: were quote nasty, And it was at this point that
Speaker 1: Miss Starkey began a series of leading questions resulting in
Speaker 1: some very serious allegations and accusations.
Speaker 3: Well, what's really important is that the babysitter was predisposed
Speaker 3: to believing that Howard was mean and would do anything right.
Speaker 3: So when Amy said my daddy is nasty, she went
Speaker 3: straight to sexual and said does he put his mess
Speaker 3: inside of you? So at that, given Amy's other characteristics,
Speaker 3: you know, she went with it. And she had been
Speaker 3: inappropriately watching adult TV. So she had seen the Sally
Speaker 3: Jesse Raphael show where they had talked about rape.
Speaker 1: So with a head fall of adult content and being
Speaker 1: pressed for an explanation about her meaning of the word
Speaker 1: nasty by Miss Starkey with a suggestive line of questioning
Speaker 1: like does he put his mess inside you? I mean
Speaker 1: that's the first direction she went in talking about Amy's dad. Eventually,
Speaker 1: under this absurd and obscene pressure, nine year old Amy,
Speaker 1: who was even more impressionable than her contemporaries, allegedly said
Speaker 1: that Howard had quote humped her and quote had s
Speaker 1: e X with her. So the accusation was reported to
Speaker 1: Diane and then the police.
Speaker 2: Diane and Miss Starkey, I think they noted certain things
Speaker 2: that they can run down into the polls with it
Speaker 2: and they gonna come back running with handcuffs and wants.
Speaker 2: I think they you that Auto tried the Little Rascal.
Speaker 2: They you that as an opportune time to vent her
Speaker 2: ang out at me.
Speaker 1: Of course, in this incredibly fraud time period, with the
Speaker 1: Little Rascal case looming in the headlines, the Kingston Police
Speaker 1: and Leonora County DSS were primed to jump on a
Speaker 1: case like this one. But it soon should have been
Speaker 1: clear that these accusations of sexual activity on multiple occasions
Speaker 1: were totally false, because when they began to ask Amy
Speaker 1: to retell it happened. She told at least nine different
Speaker 1: stories to DSS nine, and the stories were both inconsistent
Speaker 1: and wildly implausible, if not impossible. For example, she said
Speaker 1: that on one occasion she had been stabbed and that
Speaker 1: a neighbor came and halted the alleged attack. There was
Speaker 1: no evidence, of course, that she had ever been stabbed,
Speaker 1: and no neighbor could corroborate this story. There was also
Speaker 1: a claim about him putting hot sauce on his privates
Speaker 1: and the hot sauce smelled like goats, and you know,
Speaker 1: it starts to go into really bizarre and obviously patently
Speaker 1: false territory. This was all supposed to be happening inside, remember,
Speaker 1: just a tiny trailer while Howard's wife was there nursing
Speaker 1: their newborn. Just wholly unbelievable. I mean, there was also
Speaker 1: a claim in which she was supposed to have been
Speaker 1: raped while wearing pajamas and underwear.
Speaker 3: Which she said that time with the pajamas, she was
Speaker 3: wearing her pandies and pajamas, and yet she was vaginally
Speaker 3: penetrated by her father. Well, you can't do that through pajamas.
Speaker 3: Amy was the evidence, and blessed her heart, she is
Speaker 3: the faulty evidence in the case, and it's not her fault.
Speaker 1: Remember she was a nine year old child with intellectual
Speaker 1: limitations and didn't know how things worked, including sex, and
Speaker 1: what would happen to her father with these false claims.
Speaker 1: And we know Amy immediately recanted after trial. She clearly
Speaker 1: feels guilt about that all these years later, But she
Speaker 1: was a child nine years old and the adults in
Speaker 1: her life, as well as the authorities, should have known better.
Speaker 1: And as it turned out, there was one person that
Speaker 1: did so. As his protocol in a case where there's
Speaker 1: a dispute between legal guardians and a miner's interest must
Speaker 1: be looked. After Amy was assigned a guardian ed LTAM,
Speaker 1: and this person also looked into the allegations. While Amy
Speaker 1: was being interviewed and the claims were being verified.
Speaker 3: The guardian ed Lightem read everything you know. His job
Speaker 3: is to advocate for the best interests of the child
Speaker 3: and he concluded that it was an Amy's best interest
Speaker 3: not to let her testify falsely against her father, and
Speaker 3: he decided that not from the start of his investigation.
Speaker 3: He decided at the end of his investigation, he did
Speaker 3: a full investigation. He interviewed people who knew Amy, He
Speaker 3: went to her school. He understood Amy's pensions, her limitations,
Speaker 3: her characteristics, the other actors. He read the reports. He
Speaker 3: did a full investigation, a fuller investigation, and really tried
Speaker 3: to stop the prosecution of Howard and to try to
Speaker 3: stop the substantiation of abuse by the Department of Social Services,
Speaker 3: but he was unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned an important word here, substantiation. The police
Speaker 1: were waiting for that to move forward with an indictment
Speaker 1: and as unclear if THESS even knew that. So even
Speaker 1: though the guardian a item could see the writing on
Speaker 1: the wall after the initial investigation in interviews, dss inexplictably
Speaker 1: continued down this course towards substantiation, and on December fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, they filed the petition in Lenor County
Speaker 1: Juvenile Court alleging abuse and neglect, and there was a
Speaker 1: hearing two weeks later in which Howard was ordered to
Speaker 1: seize contact with Amy and Diana, at which point the
Speaker 1: social workers also decided, despite the total lack of evidence
Speaker 1: to corroborate Amy's claims, that they would go with the
Speaker 1: mantra of that time that credence must be given to
Speaker 1: the child's story, thus substantiating the claim and triggering the
Speaker 1: police to act more aggressively. But something else happens here
Speaker 1: that makes absolutely no fucking sense. It's crazy, and it
Speaker 1: all goes to show that the social workers didn't really
Speaker 1: believe Amy's claims. Now, get this. The social workers agreed
Speaker 1: to a plan in which Howard could potentially regain unsupervised
Speaker 1: visits upon completing some kind of counseling for an unspecified
Speaker 1: amount of time. I mean, am I missing something here?
Speaker 3: You're not missing a thing. And they came to that
Speaker 3: conclusion after they had a team meeting how can you
Speaker 3: substantial the allegations, because if they believed them to be true,
Speaker 3: they never could have given visitation to the person who
Speaker 3: perpetrated those kinds of acts. That said, when we interviewed
Speaker 3: the lead social worker years later, I asked, do you
Speaker 3: sometimes just substantiate so you can get access to the family,
Speaker 3: in other words, do a deeper investigation? And she said yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: evidently without any appreciation about what substantiating the allegations would
Speaker 3: lead to, and in fact did lead to in Howard's case.
Speaker 3: The police department then charged because the Department of Social
Speaker 3: Services were substantiating, and they were substantiate largely because they
Speaker 3: had to give creence to the child, which is in
Speaker 3: their report, and also because they wanted to figure out
Speaker 3: what was going on with this family, so they had
Speaker 3: to substantiate something to get DSS access to the family,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense. Of course, couldn't have happened the
Speaker 3: way she described it, given the size of the trailer
Speaker 3: and where people were sleeping, and that Howard's wife was
Speaker 3: home with a newborn and waking up every hour throughout
Speaker 3: the night to take care of this newborn and had
Speaker 3: a two year old close by. It just didn't happen.
Speaker 3: And the guardian Atenliden, who was overridden by DSS and
Speaker 3: Kingston Police Department, he didn't succeed in stopping the train
Speaker 3: that had already headed off the station.
Speaker 1: Right, this is a crime that not only didn't happen,
Speaker 1: you also have that there was no opportunity even for
Speaker 1: Howard to have done this or anyone to have done
Speaker 1: this in the space that they cohabitated. As you just said,
Speaker 1: so Howard turned it to you during this period of
Speaker 1: time time, where were you, were you being held, were
Speaker 1: you out on bond? And what was going on in
Speaker 1: your mind? You were a guy who had no previous
Speaker 1: interaction with the criminal justice system. You were a good
Speaker 1: young man, right.
Speaker 2: That's right. I was sitting back in that count of jail.
Speaker 2: My lawyer, mister Harvey, he comes in. He started talking
Speaker 2: with me about a plea bargain. He told me said
Speaker 2: things ain't looking good for you. And I learned that
Speaker 2: the plea bargain basically saying that you were guilty, and
Speaker 2: that's all I need to hear.
Speaker 1: Right there.
Speaker 2: I said, oh no, I said, no plea bargain for me,
Speaker 2: and he got a little hystericause he said, muster dog.
Speaker 2: This is one thing that he told me was true.
Speaker 2: If you don't take the flea bog, you're gonna be
Speaker 2: gone for a long time. That's what he told me.
Speaker 2: And then it kind of hit me kind of hard.
Speaker 2: Think about my children here, wife here, how were they
Speaker 2: gonna survive? I begin to think about it. So I
Speaker 2: talked it over with my wife. She pointed at me,
Speaker 2: she said, you tell the truth, just like you've been doing.
Speaker 2: And so that's what helped me make my choice to
Speaker 2: stick with it. I don't regret it. I don't regret it.
Speaker 2: I had to leal with Howard. I got to get
Speaker 2: up here more and look at Howard in the mirror.
Speaker 2: If I would had gave them what they wanted to
Speaker 2: taken the pleete boggain, I don't think I'll be sitting
Speaker 2: here talk to y'all today. I think he took me out.
Speaker 1: I think it's easy to understand not being able to
Speaker 1: live with yourself if you had to say publicly not
Speaker 1: only something so disgusting, but also so patently untrue. Although
Speaker 1: some people are fine with things like that, I mean,
Speaker 1: consider our former president, but Howard is not like that.
Speaker 1: So you stuck to your innocence righteously and went to trial. Now,
Speaker 1: as Teresa mentioned earlier, Amy was the only evidence in
Speaker 1: this case, false evidence of course that she immediately recanted
Speaker 1: after trial. But that's all there ever was. And I
Speaker 1: want to turn to Teresa here, because when you dove
Speaker 1: into this case many years after the wrongful conviction, you
Speaker 1: did what Howard's learned really everybody else should have done
Speaker 1: in the first place, was was to appropriately assess Amy's
Speaker 1: mental state and competency to stay on trial. Now we
Speaker 1: alluded to this earlier, the fact that she had some
Speaker 1: intellectual limitations. Can you tell us what you learned.
Speaker 3: Amy has some challenge, a psychological problem, stid then does
Speaker 3: now she has some cognitive limitations more suggestible than ninety
Speaker 3: nine percent of the population. So this was a little
Speaker 3: girl who at nine probably was much younger in her
Speaker 3: affect and her intellectual attainments. There's a real question about
Speaker 3: whether she was competent to stand trial, and I think
Speaker 3: everyone will be interested in learning how they assessed her competence.
Speaker 3: They asked her if she knew her colors, if she
Speaker 3: knew her letters, if she knew a number of things,
Speaker 3: and she answered yes to each of those, without demonstrating
Speaker 3: that she in fact knew her colors knew her letters.
Speaker 3: You could ask a one and a half year old
Speaker 3: yes or no questions and they likely answer yes.
Speaker 1: I mean, this poor girl was just thrust into this
Speaker 1: situation answering questions about these vulgar, terrible ass of which
Speaker 1: she had no knowledge because at most she had heard
Speaker 1: about them from an episode of Sally Jesse, Raphael, her babysitter,
Speaker 1: or more likely the prosecutors. She should have just been
Speaker 1: in school, but instead she was in a courtroom walking
Speaker 1: through these inconsistent and implausible statements of lies let's call
Speaker 1: them what they are, that she had made up? So
Speaker 1: how did they make her sound credible to the jury?
Speaker 3: When she testified, she was asked leading questions because she
Speaker 3: was a child. You usually can't ask leading questions or witnesses.
Speaker 3: There's a prohibition, But with a child you can ask
Speaker 3: leading questions if you request it and you're the stay. So,
Speaker 3: of course, as you might imagine, the testimony was bare bones,
Speaker 3: but also quite different from the previous tellings of the
Speaker 3: story by Amy.
Speaker 1: So the prosecutor was allowed this sort of way of
Speaker 1: leading Amy through a coherent narrative. Meanwhile, I understand the
Speaker 1: DSS reports, which contained all of Amy's interviews. Now those
Speaker 1: reports were all with hell.
Speaker 3: We've been talking about the different retellings by Amy, and
Speaker 3: the wild inconsistencies among the tellings and the outlandish details,
Speaker 3: So all of that was withheld. Howard didn't know about
Speaker 3: them at the time of trial, and his defense lawyer
Speaker 3: didn't know. Now this state new. The prosecutors knew because
Speaker 3: they had access to the DSS records, and certainly the
Speaker 3: DSS social worker who led the investigation knew. Even when
Speaker 3: it's the era of one must give credence to the child,
Speaker 3: there was still one hopes it would have been a
Speaker 3: jur or two at least who would say no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: that's crazy talk, and maybe would have hung the jury.
Speaker 3: I like to believe that the defense lawyer would have
Speaker 3: won to outright acquittal if he had had those documents
Speaker 3: and had done even a modicum of investigation of his own.
Speaker 1: And he had not, and this was a guide I'll
Speaker 1: forget who had been practicing law for only about a
Speaker 1: year and had devoted only about thirty hours of this case,
Speaker 1: including the two day trial. He filed no pretrial motions,
Speaker 1: nor conducted any of the investigation, including it to Amy's
Speaker 1: competency or the story she had told. He could have
Speaker 1: also hired an independent medical expert, who knows how helpful
Speaker 1: could have been.
Speaker 3: When children are believed to have been physically abused sexually abused,
Speaker 3: child medical evaluation report is completed in this case when
Speaker 3: was worn by DSS. I believe it was done three
Speaker 3: weeks later, which is a mistake. But they did three
Speaker 3: weeks later, and there was no physical evidence of abuse. Importantly,
Speaker 3: at trial, Howard's defense lawyer did not call an independent
Speaker 3: medical expert. He called that doctor, the one who conducted
Speaker 3: the child medical evaluation for the state, and he got
Speaker 3: that doctor to say, no, there wasn't any physical abuse.
Speaker 3: But that doctor also said, in a lot of cases
Speaker 3: of sex abuse, the exam is normal. So that was
Speaker 3: completely unhelpful.
Speaker 1: I mean to have the medical examination conducted three weeks later.
Speaker 1: Our bodies are elastic, they heal. Of course, they weren't
Speaker 1: going to find anything three weeks later unless the damage
Speaker 1: was so severe, which I don't even want to imagine,
Speaker 1: and thankfully we don't have to in this case. There
Speaker 1: was no damage even three weeks earlier, so Amy's mother,
Speaker 1: Diane and Lydia made the babysitter also took the stand. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they weren't witnesses to anything, so I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: they had to offer on And Howard, you took the
Speaker 1: stand as well, denying the charges, saying that the comment
Speaker 1: about you being nasty, this all started with you disciplining
Speaker 1: Amy for poor behavior. Your wife also testified about the
Speaker 1: size of your mobile home and how she had never
Speaker 1: heard any screams or anything unusual during Amy's visits, as
Speaker 1: well as how she was up at all hours nursing
Speaker 1: a newborn, which rendered all these claims impossible.
Speaker 2: And one more thing, I heard that a jewis said
Speaker 2: that I was believable and Amy was believable, but they
Speaker 2: said at the end of the day they had to
Speaker 2: go with the daughter.
Speaker 1: No, why not go with.
Speaker 2: The ether dance?
Speaker 1: Right? I mean, if you have two people telling completely
Speaker 1: different stories, now granted one of them as a nine
Speaker 1: year old child, go with the evidence.
Speaker 3: The problem with these cases, particularly during that period of time,
Speaker 3: was that people were told they had to believe the children.
Speaker 3: His daughter is saying it right, Why would she say
Speaker 3: that it has to be true?
Speaker 1: Ultimately, the jury went out. When they came back in,
Speaker 1: did you still have hope that finally the truth would
Speaker 1: come out and you could go back to your normal life.
Speaker 2: When you was an innocent individual. Absolutely, you look for
Speaker 2: them to come back, get this over with, f I
Speaker 2: can go home, go back with my life. As I
Speaker 2: stood that, that's what I was looking to hear. And
Speaker 2: I watched twelve jurors come out and say guilty, guilty, guilty.
Speaker 2: I say, I can't believe this is happening. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: You know what society sometimes saying what people in philm say,
Speaker 2: you were found guilty. I liked to use the term
Speaker 2: I was made guilty, but they had absolutely nothing to
Speaker 2: prove that I was guilty. And inside PRISM, that's a
Speaker 2: terrible case to carry inside the prison because everybody is
Speaker 2: talking have their opinion about your case or what they
Speaker 2: seen on the news. I slung hard to my relationship
Speaker 2: with God and I met other Christians that was in
Speaker 2: prison God that had made some mistakes, bad choices, and
Speaker 2: we connected and sharing my story talking to them, that's
Speaker 2: what helped me to be again to deal with my
Speaker 2: situation at hand, and it got a little better from there.
Speaker 2: And people began to believe in me. I never dropped my.
Speaker 1: Relationship with God.
Speaker 2: I kept it for the twenty four years in prison, prayer,
Speaker 2: read my Bible each and every day. That's something I
Speaker 2: did every day, repetition. That was my survival course.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you found a way through considering what
Speaker 1: prison in life can be like for someone found or
Speaker 1: actually made guilty of a crime like the one that
Speaker 1: never happened in this case. And it must have eased
Speaker 1: your burden in your mind a bit. When your daughter
Speaker 1: Amy came forward to recant immediately after trial, can you
Speaker 1: tell us about that? Did it surprise you? I knew
Speaker 1: my daughter.
Speaker 2: It didn't surprise me. But what surprised me she did
Speaker 2: it so quickly. I knew my daughter. I knew she
Speaker 2: couldn't live with that because she and I were so close.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't have been so bad. We had a close relationship.
Speaker 2: I was a good day and I loved my daughter,
Speaker 2: still love her the day. That's why it affected her
Speaker 2: so bad when she had to live with what she
Speaker 2: had to live with, which was a lot. Right now today,
Speaker 2: she'll tell me right now today that I think I
Speaker 2: owe you an explanation I said, no, you don't owe
Speaker 2: me an explanation. I know I was a good day.
Speaker 2: I wasn't a perfect day. I definitely wasn't a perfect boyfriend.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And by the way, you don't get life in
Speaker 1: prison for being a bad boyfriend. Not even in this
Speaker 1: country did Diane ever come around.
Speaker 2: Before Diane Amy's mother passed away, she was even trying
Speaker 2: to get me out of prison. We went to court
Speaker 2: and she made a statement. I didn't know Amy wood Lyne.
Speaker 2: I thought she was telling the truth. These are her words.
Speaker 1: So with these two very powerful recantations, plus support from
Speaker 1: family and your church, they hired a lawyer to mount
Speaker 1: your post conviction campaign.
Speaker 2: My family hired a seasoned lawyer in Kenston, James Perry.
Speaker 2: We thought that he would do the investigation that never
Speaker 2: occurred previously when we realized that the information that was
Speaker 2: needed to free me. He didn't get it. But he
Speaker 2: did come down to talk to me when I was
Speaker 2: in prison. But his conversation it was only about me
Speaker 2: taking a flea bark and get out of Frism. I
Speaker 2: wasn't about to say I committed a crime against my
Speaker 2: daughter just to get out of film. If I was
Speaker 2: going to do that I would never came to film
Speaker 2: because that door was open for me at the very beginning.
Speaker 3: So the reason the earlier lawyers, including mister Perry, failed
Speaker 3: is in part because they had a fundamental misunderstanding of
Speaker 3: what you needed to do to get relief in a
Speaker 3: recantation case. The recantation the case is when the principal
Speaker 3: witness or a material witness lies during the trial and
Speaker 3: then they admitted, like Amy did immediately after the trial,
Speaker 3: she was with a different babysitter. That babysitter was reading
Speaker 3: a Bible story about truth and Amy started crying and said,
Speaker 3: I lied on my daddy. So that gives you an
Speaker 3: opportunity to go back into court on a recantation claim.
Speaker 3: But what they did was just put Amy on the stand,
Speaker 3: and Amy says, okay, I lied. But they don't give
Speaker 3: the judge anything else because then the judge has, well,
Speaker 3: she told story a trial and now she's telling story
Speaker 3: b How do I decide which one is the truth?
Speaker 3: So when we got it, we said, how can we
Speaker 3: provide the judge the context to understand that Amy's recantation
Speaker 3: is true and her trial testimony is false?
Speaker 1: Right? Not only was his trial lawyer wildly ineffective, but
Speaker 1: his seasoned appellat attorney neglected to do what was necessary
Speaker 1: in a recantation case as well, so as I understand it,
Speaker 1: Howard's friend a volunteer who would come into work in
Speaker 1: the prison chapel, a guy named Lewis Alexander May he
Speaker 1: rest in peace. He advocated for Howard with the Duke
Speaker 1: Wrongful Convisions Clinic, and that really put Howard on the
Speaker 1: radar and on the path of freedom.
Speaker 3: A really important step along that path, though, was a
Speaker 3: series of articles written by a man of a journalist
Speaker 3: named Joseph Neff who's now with the Marshall Project. He
Speaker 3: worked for the Raleigh News and Observer and he wrote
Speaker 3: a series on Howard's case that really helped us, including
Speaker 3: he got an interview with the Guardian at Lightham who
Speaker 3: spoke out of turn. He realized he shouldn't have spoken
Speaker 3: to a journalist and called the journalist the next day,
Speaker 3: I believe and said, can I say now that that
Speaker 3: was all off record? And the journalist said no, And
Speaker 3: so we had what the Guardian and Lightem thought about
Speaker 3: the case. We accepted Howard's case in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 3: and we investigate fully.
Speaker 1: We had a.
Speaker 3: Remarkable expert, a woman named Sally Johnson, an MD psychiatrist,
Speaker 3: and she did testing of Howard and Amy and it
Speaker 3: was extremely helpful information. But it did take five years
Speaker 3: to file the motion for appropriate reliefs that collected all
Speaker 3: of the evidence. During that time, we were also talking
Speaker 3: to the district attorney, which is what we do in
Speaker 3: every case. We try to get the district attorney to
Speaker 3: agree with us and join us in seeking relief for
Speaker 3: our clients. But it didn't work in that case, actually
Speaker 3: lasted through that district attorney and another. We then had
Speaker 3: to go before the judge, Judge Paul Jones, who was
Speaker 3: the last person to deny relief to Howard. We had
Speaker 3: to convince him not to bar us procedurally which is
Speaker 3: a court mechanism, and to allow us to reopen the
Speaker 3: case in court, and we did. He allowed us to
Speaker 3: go forward with all of our claims and then he
Speaker 3: re accused himself, so we had a different judge.
Speaker 1: So now you Jamie Lao, who our listeners will of
Speaker 1: course remember from the Ronnie Long case, and another great
Speaker 1: lawyer of Spencer Paris, a friend of yours. Therese a
Speaker 1: tremendous trial lawyer who came out of retirement just for
Speaker 1: this case. The three of you prepared for this hearing
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: We had seven claims. The very first claim which I
Speaker 3: was amused when I look back at it this morning.
Speaker 3: The very first claim is Howard Dudley is innocent, and
Speaker 3: then we lay out and make just an argument for
Speaker 3: his innocence. You can't win on innocence. There is no
Speaker 3: pre standing claim in North Carolina or nearly anywhere. But
Speaker 3: innocence is enough. But if you actually make a claim,
Speaker 3: a real claim of it, there's just a corresponding increased
Speaker 3: likelihood in the past cases. He looked at of relief,
Speaker 3: so I'm like, we're leading off with claim of innocence.
Speaker 3: So but then the other claims were all the context right.
Speaker 3: So it was that Amy was tested on suggestibility and
Speaker 3: she truly is more suggestible than ninety nine point nine
Speaker 3: percent of the general population. And that was done by
Speaker 3: doctor Sally Johnson. That was a real forensic evaluation that
Speaker 3: Amy has low IQ in the sixty eight range, which
Speaker 3: makes her less able in some ways to understand the
Speaker 3: ramifications of what was happening. That it arose in this
Speaker 3: period of mass hysteria, and we explained the context of
Speaker 3: the little Rascal's trial happening essentially next door. We had
Speaker 3: three claims, and in effective assistance of counsel, that explained
Speaker 3: everything that the lawyer failed to do, including getting all
Speaker 3: the documents from the department's Social services and from Paul Porter.
Speaker 3: The Guardian enlightened, so we put all of that together
Speaker 3: and that bolstered Amy's recantation. One amazing thing that happened
Speaker 3: at that hearing, though, was that when Amy was on
Speaker 3: the stand and it's difficult for her as a nine
Speaker 3: year old, as a teenager again and then as a
Speaker 3: grown woman, but the judge asked if he could speak
Speaker 3: to her directly.
Speaker 2: The judge turned it toward Amy and he said, look
Speaker 2: at me. This ain't got nothing to do with Just
Speaker 2: between me and you. He said, did your daddy do
Speaker 2: anything to you? She said, no, sir, and that was
Speaker 2: all he needed.
Speaker 1: So on March second, twenty sixteen, the Honorable Judge Parsons
Speaker 1: agreed that Amy's recantation was credible, that there was ineffective
Speaker 1: assistance of counsel, and that the prosecution failed to disclose
Speaker 1: both the Social Services report as well as the fact
Speaker 1: that the Guardian ad litem had concluded that Amy's claims
Speaker 1: were false. The prosecution would eventually dismiss all charges two
Speaker 1: months later. But what was that moment like when the
Speaker 1: judge vacated your confection and finally ordered you at least
Speaker 1: from prison and.
Speaker 2: We sit there and caught miss Newman held my arm.
Speaker 2: She would look around at my family and would a
Speaker 2: smile on and I knew it was going in our favor,
Speaker 2: but I had had so many let down so I
Speaker 2: didn't know what to believe, you know, and so when
Speaker 2: things really like to knock me out. When that judge
Speaker 2: turned around and looked at me said most of Della,
Speaker 2: you're going home today, I said to myself, did I
Speaker 2: hear what I think I heard? And I didn't tell
Speaker 2: me Nan, I was more fainted. But that was a
Speaker 2: great moment. My family, everybody started to roy in the
Speaker 2: court room, and it was just a high moment.
Speaker 3: My favorite story is, because I'm a lawyer and a
Speaker 3: rule follower, We're walking out and Howard's wearing his prison
Speaker 3: guard and he's just dropping it behind him on the ground,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, we've got to read Howard we have
Speaker 3: to return these. He looked at me like I was insane.
Speaker 3: I am not worried about returning.
Speaker 1: Close.
Speaker 3: We get outside and they're just throngs of his supporters
Speaker 3: and reporters and Joe Naffer of the series on News
Speaker 3: attended the whole hearing. He was writing more it was
Speaker 3: a truly joyous, joyous day.
Speaker 1: It was great.
Speaker 2: It was great when I walked out the door. Freedom,
Speaker 2: It was freedom. But it hit me that my wife
Speaker 2: wasn't there to see this. She worked so hard, My
Speaker 2: mama wasn't there to see this. That was a moment
Speaker 2: that called me to break down. They were hard at
Speaker 2: this pacificlar moment because they wasn't there. They worked so hard.
Speaker 2: One day my wife just fell digated my mama. I
Speaker 2: visit her the last time in Rex hospital. We sung together,
Speaker 2: we prayed together, we cried together, and I left that day.
Speaker 2: I knew that would be the last time I would
Speaker 2: see her alive. And those emotions just came on me
Speaker 2: all at once when I was walking out, and it
Speaker 2: just overtook me. But very good day, you know, a
Speaker 2: very difficult day.
Speaker 1: Bittersweet, yeah, bittersweet. So then in April twenty eighteen, you
Speaker 1: followed the federal civil rights suit against the City of Kinston,
Speaker 1: seeking compensation. They eventually settled in July twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean nothing they could ever pay
Speaker 1: you with make up for.
Speaker 2: What you lost, absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: And then you are granted a pardon of innocence from
Speaker 1: Governor Roy Cooper. So not only did the prosecution dismiss
Speaker 1: the charges, but then you've got it officially recognized, officially.
Speaker 2: Yes, I got hanging on my wall. I'd like to
Speaker 2: say this right here, Jamie, most of special miss Newman,
Speaker 2: the Duke Law Team. I like to see it like
Speaker 2: this right here.
Speaker 1: They saved my life.
Speaker 2: They saved my life. I can't put it in no
Speaker 2: better words in that right there, all of them.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll be sure to link up to the Duke
Speaker 1: Law School Wrongful Conviction Clinic, but check the link in
Speaker 1: the bio in the episode. And now I'll turn to
Speaker 1: closing arguments. You know, it starts off with me, of course,
Speaker 1: thanking both of you for joining us, Teresa Howard, and
Speaker 1: so now we're going to turn to closing arguments. This
Speaker 1: is the part of the show where I turn my
Speaker 1: microphone off and leave both of yours on and just
Speaker 1: listen to anything else you want to share with me
Speaker 1: in our audience. So, Teresa, why don't you go first?
Speaker 1: Then hand the mic off to Howard, and Howard you
Speaker 1: can take us out into the sunset.
Speaker 3: Every time Howard and I have an opportunity to talk
Speaker 3: about this case, whether it's publicly or in private, I
Speaker 3: learn something new about Howard. And what I learned today
Speaker 3: is that Howard sees himself as sort of every man
Speaker 3: or ordinary man, just a regular person trying to live
Speaker 3: his life, when in fact, I and the people who've
Speaker 3: gotten to know him through this long journey would say
Speaker 3: he's truly extraordinary in that he refused to do what
Speaker 3: I think so many of us would do to go
Speaker 3: home to be with our families. He refused to take
Speaker 3: that early exit with the plea bargain before trial and
Speaker 3: later when it looked like maybe it was going to
Speaker 3: be offered through the previous lawyers, and he refused to
Speaker 3: do that because he is a man of truly remarkable integrity,
Speaker 3: and as he says, I wanted to be able to
Speaker 3: look in the mirror and say, you know, I could
Speaker 3: not have taken that plea and admitted to doing the
Speaker 3: things that I did not do. In that that I
Speaker 3: have lived my life in a different way from what
Speaker 3: they expect me to say. So, Howard, you're truly extraordinary.
Speaker 4: Well on my behalf, I might say that Teresa Jamie Muster, Spencer,
Speaker 4: mister Coleman, the Doke Law students like saying that they
Speaker 4: have helped to restore my integrity of the law.
Speaker 2: Didn't think they were such thing after my situation as
Speaker 2: any lawyer that had a heart, I really didn't think
Speaker 2: that until they restored it. There is some good lawyers
Speaker 2: out there. There is some that got a heart. There
Speaker 2: is some that want to do the right thing. There
Speaker 2: is some that take their work serious. There is something
Speaker 2: that out there that really really care about what they
Speaker 2: are doing people life. Like I said earlier and I
Speaker 2: continue to say this, because they saved my life.
Speaker 1: I was in a.
Speaker 2: Situation that I didn't think I would never get.
Speaker 1: Out of it.
Speaker 2: I had so many nose I didn't think it was
Speaker 2: such things. Yes, when it come down to lawyers and
Speaker 2: this was the turn, I had no idea. But I
Speaker 2: can never say enough about what they had done on
Speaker 2: my behalf, restoring my freedom back and back with my family,
Speaker 2: and children, even though they have wrong now, but I hold.
Speaker 1: It all to them. Well.
Speaker 2: Family will family, real family.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn and Kevin Wardis,
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 1: all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one