Speaker 1: I'm Jason Flom, host of Rawful Conviction, but this week,
Speaker 1: instead of hearing me, I've invited a legitimate genius from
Speaker 1: the legal world to bring their knowledge and expertise to
Speaker 1: the conversation as guest host here at Rawful Conviction, we
Speaker 1: believe that sharing the stories of the incarcerated innocent can
Speaker 1: create real change in the world, even beyond with these
Speaker 1: real life legal superheroes do every day. In the middle
Speaker 1: of one November night, there was an explosion in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York. Nine different people called to report what they
Speaker 1: heard and what they saw. They reported seeing two men
Speaker 1: running up to a subway token booth on Kingston Avenue.
Speaker 1: They poured gasoline into the coin slot and threatened the
Speaker 1: attendant with a match. Almost immediately, the toll booth burst
Speaker 1: into flames. The attendant was a man named Harry Kaufman,
Speaker 1: and as the toll booth caught on fire, he did too.
Speaker 1: Harry was able to run up the street, where passers
Speaker 1: by helped extinguish the flames on his body. More than
Speaker 1: eight percent of his body was badly burned. He died
Speaker 1: a few weeks later. The crime made headlines in New
Speaker 1: York and around the country. Prominent politicians like Senator Bob
Speaker 1: Dole and Mayor Rudy Giuliani mentioned the case in their
Speaker 1: tough on crime rhetoric. Pressure was mounting for the police
Speaker 1: to find the attackers. With little physical evidence and no
Speaker 1: clear suspects, Detective Louis Scarcella turned to one of his
Speaker 1: favorite tactics, coercing witnesses. One of the nine one one callers,
Speaker 1: James Irons, was forced to give a false confession and
Speaker 1: to name two more accomplicits. Thomas Malik and Vincent Ellerbee,
Speaker 1: were both detained and interrogated, and both eventually gave false
Speaker 1: confessions under pressure. After an investigation and a trial riddled
Speaker 1: with lies and misconduct, Thomas Malie and Vincent Ellerby were
Speaker 1: convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to twenty five
Speaker 1: years to life. This is Wrongful Conviction. Hi, everybody, it's
Speaker 1: Laura and I writer. I am so glad to be
Speaker 1: here guest hosting another episode of Wrongful Conviction. I'm the
Speaker 1: co director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University,
Speaker 1: and you might also recognize my voice from another series
Speaker 1: I co hosted on this podcast, feed False Confessions. Today
Speaker 1: I'm here with a real fighter, a real survivor of
Speaker 1: false confessions, Vincent Ellerby Vince, you've endured more than any
Speaker 1: human should be asked to endure. I am so honored
Speaker 1: to get a chance to talk to you today. Do
Speaker 1: you want to introduce yourself? Hi? My name vincenw four years,
Speaker 1: eleven months in days. Some had nothing to do it.
Speaker 1: I was forced to take the way for crime. I
Speaker 1: had nothing to do it. And I'm Ron Coopy. I
Speaker 1: was the lawyer for Vince's co defendant way back in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and they were tried together, although in front
Speaker 1: of separate juries. Ron, We're so glad to have you here,
Speaker 1: and Vince, I am so glad you said every one
Speaker 1: of those days, because every one of those days, hours
Speaker 1: and minutes counts. But Ron, I'm going to start out
Speaker 1: by asking you what was New York City like in
Speaker 1: the ninety nineties in terms of crime and how people
Speaker 1: were talking about crime. Back then, we were pretty much
Speaker 1: in our tenth year of the crack epidemic, which saw
Speaker 1: a dramatic increase in crime and and a wildly dramatic
Speaker 1: increase in punitive law enforcement. It was a time in
Speaker 1: which the super predator theory was gained and had gained
Speaker 1: tremendous currency in legal circles and sociological circles. It was
Speaker 1: coined by a sociologist who later attracted it, but the
Speaker 1: damage had been done. The theory was there was a
Speaker 1: whole generation of black youth growing up without fathers, living
Speaker 1: on the streets who were committing crimes. There was never
Speaker 1: any consequence to their crimes. They would always get away
Speaker 1: with crime after crime after crime, and as a result,
Speaker 1: they would become super predators. These are people who were
Speaker 1: so feral and so conscious less they would go out
Speaker 1: and do anything to anybody without any empathy, compassion, or mercy.
Speaker 1: And we were in the process of creating a whole
Speaker 1: generation of these people, and the only thing that we
Speaker 1: could do about it as a society was to incarceraate
Speaker 1: them forever. It's one of the most toxic theories out there, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we know this is the theory that led
Speaker 1: to the wrongful conviction of the Central Park five, for example,
Speaker 1: now called the Exonerated five just to few years before
Speaker 1: this happened events and there are so many other cases
Speaker 1: around the country that were driven by the super predator myth.
Speaker 1: Right here in Chicago, the Dicksmore five, the Englewood four,
Speaker 1: the Marquette Park for the Uptown seven. These numbers just
Speaker 1: keep mounting and mounting and mounting. And Vince's case in
Speaker 1: particular is a horrific example of these racist tropes being
Speaker 1: used to incarcerate black kids, Black male children in particular.
Speaker 1: So tell us how this toxic brew of racist myths
Speaker 1: showed up in this case. So on November, outside of
Speaker 1: a token booth in Brooklyn, two people, two people, not three,
Speaker 1: And this will become important later on in the story.
Speaker 1: Two people went to that token boothe One of them
Speaker 1: was armed with a thirty caliber carbine a rifle. The
Speaker 1: other had a bottle with gasoline in it. They were
Speaker 1: trying to rob the token booths. The token booth clerk
Speaker 1: Harry Kaufman, and refused to give up the money, and
Speaker 1: he was behind bulletproof glass, and the perpetrators poured gasoline
Speaker 1: into the slot. According to the prosecution, they then set
Speaker 1: it on fire. The token booth exploded, It blew up
Speaker 1: the booth, it blew up the money, and it burned
Speaker 1: up Harry Kaufman, and he had third degree burns over
Speaker 1: most of his body. And he lingered in the burn unit,
Speaker 1: agonizing day after agonizing day until I think December he died.
Speaker 1: It was one of those horrific crimes that still made
Speaker 1: the headlines in New York even though crime overall actually
Speaker 1: had had dropped as the crack epidemic wane. But it
Speaker 1: was still one of those incredibly high profile crimes that
Speaker 1: people used to illustrate why you can no longer live
Speaker 1: in New York City. Our mayor at the time, a
Speaker 1: guy better known to this audience in his latter incarnation
Speaker 1: as a Trump apologist. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for reasons still unclear,
Speaker 1: noted that the movie Money Trained had just come out,
Speaker 1: and he claimed utterly without evidence, that this particular robbery
Speaker 1: murder had been inspired by the movie Money Train. So
Speaker 1: it was a horrific crime, and everybody agreed. It was
Speaker 1: a horrific crime, of course, made more so by the
Speaker 1: the fableism of of our mayor. What evidence did investigators
Speaker 1: begin to look into? What leads do they have to
Speaker 1: go on? The problem was they had no suspects, There
Speaker 1: were no fingerprints at the scene, the firearm couldn't be traced.
Speaker 1: This was before the days when there were cameras everywhere,
Speaker 1: and everybody had a cell phone. Uh, there were no
Speaker 1: cell phone towers. There was absolutely no evidence, uh that
Speaker 1: the cops had to give them a lead to anybody.
Speaker 1: So when nobody's a suspect, everybody becomes a suspect. Now
Speaker 1: that night, that night, nineteen people called to report an
Speaker 1: explosion in the subway station. One of those people was
Speaker 1: a guy named James Irons and he was in his
Speaker 1: mom's apartment. He called up as well, and later his
Speaker 1: mom got on the phone. And this is noteworthy because
Speaker 1: James iron sounded normal on the phone. That is, obviously
Speaker 1: he was panic. Something horrible. It just happened, but but
Speaker 1: it just seemed like another nine one one caller. So
Speaker 1: I want to take a minute and just ask you
Speaker 1: to tell us a little bit about the cops who
Speaker 1: ended up getting assigned to this investigation. They were out
Speaker 1: of the seventy ninth Precinct. Right. Stephen Camill of the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn North Homicide Squad was lead on this case, and
Speaker 1: he was assisted by Louis Scarcella, which is a name
Speaker 1: that listeners of this podcast will remember. Can you give
Speaker 1: us a little bit of background here, now, Disgrace Detective
Speaker 1: Louis Scarcella and his partner Stephen Camille were known as
Speaker 1: Batman and Robin, and Scarcella was very much Batman. Whatever
Speaker 1: the lead was, whoever the lead detective was named, whether
Speaker 1: it was Camille or Murphy or O'Reilly or Derita or
Speaker 1: O'Toole um, it was Scarcella who was actually in charge.
Speaker 1: He led a homicide task force throughout Brooklyn that had
Speaker 1: a roving commission to stick their nose in any homicide
Speaker 1: they wished. And the amazing thing about Detective Scarcella and
Speaker 1: the reason he received such adulation within the police department
Speaker 1: and the d a's office was he got witnesses, and
Speaker 1: he got confess sessions, even in cases where there appeared
Speaker 1: to be no witnesses, and even in cases where there
Speaker 1: appeared to be no suspects. He was known as the
Speaker 1: closer as well, because he will close this case. At
Speaker 1: this point, there's there's close to I think two dozen
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction cases attributed to Scarcella. I think at this count,
Speaker 1: eighteen have been exonerated. There are still some cases in
Speaker 1: the pipeline that may or may not result in exonerations.
Speaker 1: Out of ninety trials, nine homicide trials that that that
Speaker 1: he works. It's unbelievable. It sounds like he's been responsible
Speaker 1: for so many lost centuries. It's mind blowing. He's been
Speaker 1: responsible for lost millennia of black life. If you add
Speaker 1: all those years together, it's not going to be in
Speaker 1: the hundreds at this point. Pretty sure it's going to
Speaker 1: be in the thousands. And he didn't have any suspects either,
Speaker 1: So so when you have a case like this with
Speaker 1: no suspects, kind of everybody's a suspect. So what you
Speaker 1: do is you go out and you take every snitch,
Speaker 1: every informant, every person on the street that you know of,
Speaker 1: and you basically beat the crap out of them. So
Speaker 1: they go back to the nine one one calls. I
Speaker 1: don't know the television theory the criminal always returns to
Speaker 1: the scene of the crime, and maybe one of the
Speaker 1: nine callers actually committed the crime, right, So so footnote here.
Speaker 1: You know, you're told if you see something, say something.
Speaker 1: The lesson of this case, if you see something and
Speaker 1: you say something, depending on who you are, you may
Speaker 1: end up getting convicted for what you saw and said.
Speaker 1: Because one of those good Samaritans who called nine one one,
Speaker 1: who tried to help out was this kid, eighteen year
Speaker 1: old James Irons. But here's the thing, right, if if
Speaker 1: he did the crime and then called from his home,
Speaker 1: he would have to run really really fast in order
Speaker 1: to get home and call nine one one when their
Speaker 1: call lug say he did. He would have been out
Speaker 1: of breath on that nine one one call, and he wasn't.
Speaker 1: That just doesn't make sense. So right there, right there,
Speaker 1: if you were paying attention, which nobody was, you would
Speaker 1: have had your doubts. Anyway, Scarce and Camille bring him
Speaker 1: in and he gives a confession. He gives a full confession.
Speaker 1: The confession itself is ruddled with things that are completely untrue,
Speaker 1: and he starts to name people that he was with.
Speaker 1: He places himself as the look at. So the way
Speaker 1: this works in interrogations, right, is that when you've got
Speaker 1: a group of people that you want to turn into suspects,
Speaker 1: you bring one of them in and you accuse that
Speaker 1: person of being there. But you say, hey, I'm going
Speaker 1: to cut you a deal. You were probably the lookouts,
Speaker 1: You probably weren't an active participant, and things will go
Speaker 1: easier for you if you just tell us a story
Speaker 1: where you were the lookout, and you some other guys
Speaker 1: do it. Right. You see this over and over and
Speaker 1: over again in all these cases around the country, involving
Speaker 1: multiple defendants, all of whom eventually falsely confessed to the
Speaker 1: same crime. Right, And so they get people to say, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew there was gonna be a robbery, but I
Speaker 1: don't know nothing about a murder. And the guy thinks
Speaker 1: he's getting Okay, I'll do time for the robbery. Lone Behold,
Speaker 1: he just confessed to fell any murder or yeah, you
Speaker 1: were just a lookout. H asked you to look out
Speaker 1: while they went in and did something. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was just like making sure nobody came down. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a weapon. Boom, you've just confessed again to acting
Speaker 1: in concert in a murder. Very very common, and it's
Speaker 1: one of the flashing yellow lights when you see it today, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's a hallmark of a false confession. So here you've
Speaker 1: got the idea that irons would just be a lookout.
Speaker 1: The details of his story aren't matching up with the facts, right,
Speaker 1: the number of people, the gun, he's getting things wildly off.
Speaker 1: But he does put some names forward. He does he
Speaker 1: among other names he puts in our Vincent l RB
Speaker 1: and Thomas Mulwick. So, Vince Ron and I just spoke
Speaker 1: at length about your hometown, Brooklyn, New York, and the
Speaker 1: horrible crime that happened there in novemb Vince, I want
Speaker 1: to ask you, what was it like to realize all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, but you were caught up in this
Speaker 1: case and you were facing these charges. When I went
Speaker 1: to Rackets Island behind, I didn't really have enough time
Speaker 1: to really sit back and dwell on the case, because
Speaker 1: you know, you're walking in the Rackets Island. You know
Speaker 1: you gotta worry about the phone, making sure that nobody
Speaker 1: taken one from you. So in my mind, I just
Speaker 1: blanked it. I just blocked it all out. I just
Speaker 1: put on my faith for my lawyer, because I said
Speaker 1: to myself, it's no way possible that they're gonna find
Speaker 1: me guilty. It's impossible, no matter what, it's impossible, no
Speaker 1: matter the confessions. They're going to see everything. It's it's
Speaker 1: a lie. Is mathematically impossible for you not to see
Speaker 1: it a blind magazine. You were gonna like short term
Speaker 1: survival mode, right like this is gonna be over because
Speaker 1: they're gonna see I'm innocent. Yeah, so it's just out
Speaker 1: here they say this is a normal environment, but when
Speaker 1: you get it locked up, that's an abnormal environment. So
Speaker 1: you gotta adjust to that. I had. I just put
Speaker 1: my faith for my lawyer, and I put my faith
Speaker 1: for my code offending because he already knew the law.
Speaker 1: So for me, it was just I was just in
Speaker 1: survival mode. Survival mode and the Rikers in the nineties,
Speaker 1: it's no joke. No, you gotta make adjustments real fast.
Speaker 1: And there's somebody else and Wrikers at the time, right,
Speaker 1: somebody who ended up giving police what he said was
Speaker 1: information about your case. Yeah, Ray Kuan Sbas, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: called him ice picked Marlin yeh. I met him. I
Speaker 1: knew him for all the three days, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to lie to you. When we went to trial,
Speaker 1: we were sitting there and we're on trial, so I
Speaker 1: never know him as Ray Kuan Sbas. I only knew
Speaker 1: him as Marlin show as we're sitting there. When the
Speaker 1: d A, I mean the d A calls the next witness,
Speaker 1: they say, Ray Kua she Bas, and I turned and
Speaker 1: looked at my co defended and he put his head
Speaker 1: down so I tapped him. I'm like, what's uping? And
Speaker 1: he shook his head like so I'm saying to myself like, okay,
Speaker 1: who And the door opened up and he come out.
Speaker 1: He got this Jene suit on looking fly and in
Speaker 1: my mind, I'm saying, what is he doing here? And
Speaker 1: he gett on the stand and he get the proceed
Speaker 1: of telling him how TIMEY chold him what we did
Speaker 1: and how I told him what we did and that
Speaker 1: I was in one up and with him for like
Speaker 1: three months. And I'm and I'm saying to myself like,
Speaker 1: they got records that will show you how long I
Speaker 1: was up there. So when when when Ron and George's
Speaker 1: question and the guy and you just you just you
Speaker 1: just see it, you see it. Then they brought up
Speaker 1: his past. That's when I found out about we wasn't
Speaker 1: the first individuals he did this too. In my mind,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm coming home now. So you're there, you're
Speaker 1: being tried with Tommy, right, you're being tried together, separate juries,
Speaker 1: but you're being tried together. And Shabaz comes up and
Speaker 1: says that you confessed again to him, and he must
Speaker 1: be sitting there going I'm going home because this guy
Speaker 1: is crazy. When you look at everything, from every witness
Speaker 1: that they had, so all the confessions to everything. If
Speaker 1: you just look at it, it's not a jury in
Speaker 1: the world. It's not a jury in the universe that's
Speaker 1: gonna convict the mother's crime. Ron. Can you of this
Speaker 1: a rundown of this trial? How was this case with
Speaker 1: all these holes, these confessions that are obviously wrong, How
Speaker 1: does it result in these convictions? This was really before
Speaker 1: the time there was much science available on the issue
Speaker 1: of false confessions. UH. Some people had started work on
Speaker 1: its saul cast and I think had been doing it
Speaker 1: for a few years. But the idea of calling a
Speaker 1: false confession expert that that just was not an idea
Speaker 1: that existed UH in New York criminal trial practice at
Speaker 1: the time. And Ray Kwon Shababs I actually did one
Speaker 1: of these these sort of bush league lawyer things. I
Speaker 1: took his criminal record, which at that time was written
Speaker 1: on paper, and I taped all of the sheets together,
Speaker 1: and as I approached him, I left the sheets unspooled
Speaker 1: as they did, and I handed him the document, which
Speaker 1: at this point stretched all the way back to the
Speaker 1: defense table, and I asked him if he recognized it,
Speaker 1: and he said, yes, it's his criminal record. I knew
Speaker 1: that he had done this twice before, and I considered
Speaker 1: him to be a so called professional informant. He worked
Speaker 1: for the d a's office, not regularly, but whenever he
Speaker 1: needed to. Whenever he got in a jam, he would
Speaker 1: cook up some sort of plot, some confession, some conspiracy,
Speaker 1: and go to the d a's office and trade it
Speaker 1: for lighter treatment. The d a's office admitted that, yes,
Speaker 1: he had testified once in Brooklyn, and yes he had
Speaker 1: testified once in Queen's Judge. France's xavier A Geto, a
Speaker 1: name which should also be familiar to your listeners because
Speaker 1: he presided over many of these wrongful convictions, said at
Speaker 1: two times isn't enough to make him a professional witness,
Speaker 1: and they let him testify. What we did not know,
Speaker 1: but the Brooklyn d A's office certainly knew, was that
Speaker 1: in the Brooklyn case which prec did this, he had
Speaker 1: testified that he was a professional liar. He was asked,
Speaker 1: you lie for a living, don't you, Mr Shabaz, and
Speaker 1: he said yes, it's insane. I mean, when you think
Speaker 1: about the way that this playing field was stacked, right,
Speaker 1: It's stacked from the moment that a teenager walks into
Speaker 1: the interrogation room alone, without a parent, without a lawyer,
Speaker 1: without any clue about what's facing him, and a trial
Speaker 1: that all just continues with lies and concealments. Vince, I
Speaker 1: want to ask you if you'll take us back to
Speaker 1: that moment. I mean, this is when the wheels really
Speaker 1: come off. Right. You've been sitting at this trial. You've
Speaker 1: been telling yourself, I just have to make it to
Speaker 1: the acquittal. I just have to make it to the
Speaker 1: moment when the jury realizes that this entire situation is
Speaker 1: constructed bullshit. Well, when they after closing organis, they came
Speaker 1: back with diverting little fat thing it was, and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't even think we probably wasn't even downstairs
Speaker 1: an hour something like that. They called us back upstairs.
Speaker 1: I remember sitting down and I'm saying to myself, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm about to slide up out of here. It's over.
Speaker 1: And he said, we found the defenders guilty on all
Speaker 1: charges so quick fast. I did a calculation in my head.
Speaker 1: I how older people and I go to the board.
Speaker 1: I said, I'd be forty two years old. I said,
Speaker 1: i'd be an old man. My daughter wasn't even born yet,
Speaker 1: a mother was six months pregnantly. But I really didn't
Speaker 1: hit me until I went back to get sentence, because
Speaker 1: even then I still thought they might have made a mistake,
Speaker 1: might be a chance. But I think the one good
Speaker 1: day about that sentence. That day I wore regular clothes, jeans,
Speaker 1: sweat on, sneakers, and my co defended. That's the only
Speaker 1: thing that made me smell that day. He walked into
Speaker 1: the court room. Until this day, I don't know where
Speaker 1: he got it from, but he had on alarme green suit,
Speaker 1: alarm green suit. And I'm looking at him, and I'm
Speaker 1: saying to myself, this guy can't be serious. They're about
Speaker 1: to give us twenty five years and you walking here
Speaker 1: with a live green SUITO. And I remember when I
Speaker 1: was taking me out the court when I started singing Tupac,
Speaker 1: And somehow when I went to the board, somehow it
Speaker 1: changed for me singing Tupac to me cursing the judge
Speaker 1: out the barod board. When I went to the board,
Speaker 1: they asked, They asked me that I cursed the judge out.
Speaker 1: I said, no, I didn't curach the judge out, I said,
Speaker 1: I read a statement that my mother wrote from me,
Speaker 1: I said, And when I walked out, I was singing Tupac.
Speaker 1: I said. I don't know how y'all got that, but
Speaker 1: it really didn't hit me until I got downstate that
Speaker 1: I wasn't going home for a long time. How did
Speaker 1: you survive all those years in prison? Y'all understand something
Speaker 1: rack is outand is different from the penitentiary. And you
Speaker 1: hear all the Harvard stories about the penitentiary. When I
Speaker 1: get downstay the old timer that I ran into, he
Speaker 1: asked me, did I want to do a smooth bed?
Speaker 1: And I said yeah. He said, okay, that's what you do.
Speaker 1: He said, for the first five years of your bid,
Speaker 1: you put in major work. I don't care if somebody
Speaker 1: owe you a stamp, if they don't have your money.
Speaker 1: When they say they're gonna have it, you give him
Speaker 1: the business. So what happens. What happened to me, and
Speaker 1: it still affects me to this day. My heart became
Speaker 1: real cold because that's what the penitentiary turned me into.
Speaker 1: I drink now a lot to shield all the pain
Speaker 1: I go through every day. Nobody knows what it's like
Speaker 1: when you go to prison for a crime you commit,
Speaker 1: and you wake up every morning and you go to
Speaker 1: brush your teeth, wash your face. You can't accept that.
Speaker 1: But when you're there, there the day after hour, year
Speaker 1: after year, for something you didn't do, a lot of
Speaker 1: hate build up, a lot of thoughts about suicide setting.
Speaker 1: I couldn't put a rope around my neck. I couldn't
Speaker 1: take a lot of pills. I couldn't do that, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I would cause a lot of problems hoping that
Speaker 1: the police would kill me because I became tired. Nobody
Speaker 1: knows what it's like for me, even to this day,
Speaker 1: just to fight to get up. I got to get
Speaker 1: myself a reason. They keep getting up every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people see me. I still look young, still got my swag,
Speaker 1: but they don't know what it's like from me. I
Speaker 1: gave these people twenty plus years of my life for
Speaker 1: no reason, and they started detective he's living somewhere suburbs,
Speaker 1: somewhere to get his picture. Yeah all right here, all right,
Speaker 1: No matter how many times people do stories about that
Speaker 1: coward not feeling another happitude. But I thought they say,
Speaker 1: when you committed crime, you go to jail for I
Speaker 1: ain't commit no crime. I went to jail. They exonerated us.
Speaker 1: So that means everything he did, he lied, he can
Speaker 1: committed crumsy he forms to five evidence, they say it's
Speaker 1: a misdemeanor what he did. Okay, cool. I know a
Speaker 1: whole lot of people that got mister meetings that went
Speaker 1: to jail. I went with a few of them, So
Speaker 1: I understand what y'all doing. I appreciate. Let me make
Speaker 1: this clear to y'all, and I'm just being honest. It's
Speaker 1: only one person that's gonna make him pay for what
Speaker 1: he did to all of us. Everyone. It was not
Speaker 1: just me and my code of fitters. We're the only
Speaker 1: ones that coward valet it. We ain't throwny ones. But
Speaker 1: the long I'm making pay for it though, he's gonna
Speaker 1: be Iraq. He gonna be Iraq. They broke me a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I'm gonna keep fighting there. They don't
Speaker 1: my code offending need me to hold him down. Now
Speaker 1: it's my turn. Do you help me? Damn? Do you
Speaker 1: helped me? Damn? While I was in prison, ripping and running,
Speaker 1: he was in a lower live brary fighting for both
Speaker 1: of us. These tears just say for me, he's tear
Speaker 1: for him too. My code defended is hurt. It's the
Speaker 1: way they broke me. They broke my code defended too,
Speaker 1: But he kept fighting for That's what I'm sitting there.
Speaker 1: He got us to this point. No matter how many
Speaker 1: interviews I gotta do, I got us. I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: the people know about that coward. I got nephews that
Speaker 1: I didn't even grow up with. My mom's, my sister.
Speaker 1: What about their paid what about them knowing that they
Speaker 1: huh like no, I was in the same I got
Speaker 1: a door room. We'd never have a relationship because she
Speaker 1: can't never understand why her dad wasn't there. And I
Speaker 1: don't know how to fix that. That coward took that
Speaker 1: from me. That coward took that from me. You know,
Speaker 1: yesterday I watched my daughter come out of the building
Speaker 1: from coming from my mom's house, and she was in
Speaker 1: the cab and she just turned and looked at me,
Speaker 1: and we looked at each other like we were full
Speaker 1: blooded enemies. You know how that feels. Don't nobody know
Speaker 1: how that ship. But it's all right though, So all right,
Speaker 1: it's part of life. That's the only way it could
Speaker 1: make sense for me. That's The only way I could
Speaker 1: survive is if I say it's all right. That's the anyway.
Speaker 1: I ain't got no choice no more. Without that, my
Speaker 1: mom's and my sister be bevery at me. That's how
Speaker 1: it makes sense of it. It's all right. That's how
Speaker 1: I keep going everything. It's all right when I wake
Speaker 1: up every day, it's all right for me. I'm real
Speaker 1: for it because of the moment I stopped saying it's
Speaker 1: all right. It's the moment I don't want to be
Speaker 1: here no more. So it's all right. I don't want
Speaker 1: me it's all right, you know what, Let's let's take
Speaker 1: a break. Okay, let's just take a break for a
Speaker 1: second from having to talk about this for just the NOMA. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I just need a few minutes. I just
Speaker 1: need a few minutes to our listeners. I just want
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that Vince is clearly in a lot of
Speaker 1: pain here. All of us who work on this podcast
Speaker 1: take the health and safety of our guests very seriously.
Speaker 1: Immediately after this interview, we connected Vince with a specialized
Speaker 1: trauma therapist, and we talked to his family to make
Speaker 1: sure he was being taken care of and supported. In
Speaker 1: the days and weeks following this conversation, we also spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking and thinking about which parts
Speaker 1: of this interview to air, whether or not his pain
Speaker 1: was too raw, too fresh, Whether or not Vince really
Speaker 1: wanted all of this out in the world, We asked him,
Speaker 1: and the answer is he does. He wants the world
Speaker 1: to know what happened to him and how it still
Speaker 1: affects him today. You know, wrongful conviction stories are often
Speaker 1: packaged as these stories of triumph, but behind so many
Speaker 1: of them there's deep emotional suffering. So to Vince, I
Speaker 1: just want to say that I'm amazed and humbled by
Speaker 1: your bravery. You're sharing the truth of what happened to you,
Speaker 1: and our shared life work is to stop this from
Speaker 1: happening to anyone else ever again. So with that, let's
Speaker 1: get back to what happened next in Vince's story. So, Ron,
Speaker 1: let's go back to you. You've been involved at the
Speaker 1: time of trial. Years pass and you do get back
Speaker 1: involved with this case. Can you tell us how you
Speaker 1: got involved again and how the case eventually started to
Speaker 1: turn its direction back towards justice. The turning point in
Speaker 1: the case came in early when Tommy Malik, who never
Speaker 1: gave up, sent the most extraordinary document to me that
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. And what Tommy found was a ten
Speaker 1: page order from a state Supreme Court justice regarding ray
Speaker 1: Kwan Shabaz and his most recent false testimony where he
Speaker 1: created a conspiracy to murder a sitting judge. The FBI
Speaker 1: got involved and they quickly realized what the d A's
Speaker 1: office could never face, which this is. This is a hoax.
Speaker 1: This is something that Shabaz is doing simply to to
Speaker 1: create a reason for him to be an informer, to
Speaker 1: get out of prison. And judge the judge issues a
Speaker 1: ten page injunction saying that ray Kwan Shabaz a k a.
Speaker 1: Marlon O. Villa is a clear and present danger to
Speaker 1: the administration of justice. He is permanently enjoined from ever
Speaker 1: intacting anyone in law enforcement. Again. If he feels the
Speaker 1: need to contact someone in law enforcement, he will contact
Speaker 1: a Special Master who I am appointing, And he is
Speaker 1: the only person that Shabbaz is ever to contact because
Speaker 1: his history and his habit of lying, creating cases, falsifying testimony,
Speaker 1: falsifying conspiracies is such that to let him talk to
Speaker 1: law enforcement is, in fact, to to disrupt the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system. I had never seen a document like this before.
Speaker 1: I have never seen a document like that since. And
Speaker 1: I called the head of the conviction Review Unit, who
Speaker 1: I had known from other cases, and he said, just
Speaker 1: wait a little bit. There's gonna be things coming out
Speaker 1: about Detective Scarcella that you're going to want to know.
Speaker 1: Early on, they took this case, this case was handed
Speaker 1: to them in and by the time of this exoneration
Speaker 1: in two it was the oldest case, the longest any
Speaker 1: case had lingered. But in the end they found everything
Speaker 1: they needed to convince everybody beyond any doubt whatsoever, that
Speaker 1: all three of these young men, then young men, were
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted. I started with Tommy, and then in I
Speaker 1: realized that they were all going to stand or fall
Speaker 1: together just like they did at trial. And so you
Speaker 1: ended up representing Vince too in his effort to be exonerated.
Speaker 1: But at this point, Vince, you had already been paroled, right,
Speaker 1: you were parrolled in. How did you and Ron get
Speaker 1: in touch again? I got a letter from him and
Speaker 1: he said he wanted to come see me. All right,
Speaker 1: I already knew who he was, so ang really. You know,
Speaker 1: by this time is two thousand and seventeen. I got
Speaker 1: three years left before I go to the board. So
Speaker 1: all right, I said, my code of fitting. Munster came
Speaker 1: up with something. He pulled the rabbit out of had
Speaker 1: force or something. He comes up here just just for
Speaker 1: no reason. And when he came to see me then
Speaker 1: he said, look, it's a seventy five percent chance we're
Speaker 1: gonna get it over to him. Sorry, seventy five percent.
Speaker 1: I'm saying to myself, that's pretty hard. On the seventy
Speaker 1: five percent note. Normally a lawyer tell you at the
Speaker 1: at the most he might put it at If he's
Speaker 1: trying to be a little cocky, he might put it
Speaker 1: at fifty. So right before I went to the board,
Speaker 1: I let him I was going to the board, and
Speaker 1: I asked me to write me a letter. Now, normally,
Speaker 1: when you go in front of the parole board, you know,
Speaker 1: after you say your name, they tell you who they are,
Speaker 1: they name and everything, and they actually your name. They
Speaker 1: jumped right into the case, said everything. But they didn't
Speaker 1: do that with me. The first thing they asked me
Speaker 1: about what's the letter from my lawyer? And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess after getting a letter from Ron, and Ron
Speaker 1: told him he let him know straight up and down.
Speaker 1: Y'all should do the right thing because this case is
Speaker 1: gonna get over. Trunk. Y'all don't want to be the
Speaker 1: reason why he had to stay in prison any longer,
Speaker 1: so y'all should let him go. And he was right.
Speaker 1: I made my board when I came home, and then
Speaker 1: I was sleeping. Called me early in the morning, like
Speaker 1: you always do. When he called me his greeting, Hey, Vince,
Speaker 1: I said, what's several are you doing? He said, I'm
Speaker 1: all right. He said, listen, you gotta be at the
Speaker 1: court on Friday because your kids getting over. I said yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, yeah. I was tired. I was tired that morning.
Speaker 1: I was tired that morning. But after they told me
Speaker 1: that I couldn't go back to sleep, I started trying
Speaker 1: to put together what I'm away the court, nice white
Speaker 1: white shorts, my fit of hat broke down to the side.
Speaker 1: I still got a little bit of swag. I told
Speaker 1: you all that. Yeah, I came in there, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna lie to them when I got there.
Speaker 1: Ra High, however loyal. She met me out in the hallway.
Speaker 1: She says, I was nervous, so I asked me with
Speaker 1: my code defending, was that so? What Timmy yet? She
Speaker 1: said they're bringing them out, So I said all right,
Speaker 1: And they brought him out in the handcuffs. That kind
Speaker 1: of that that that that that pissed me off seeing
Speaker 1: him come out of handcuffs. We walked out, We walked
Speaker 1: out together. At the end, they asked as what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do now, and I told him We're going to
Speaker 1: Disney World. So when this is all over with, when
Speaker 1: everything is all over with, man my boy going to
Speaker 1: Disney World. Depending on how this turned out, depending on
Speaker 1: how I see that the last the the ending cut,
Speaker 1: I might invite y'all. I don't know yet. And all
Speaker 1: I want to see is him in lime green, you
Speaker 1: and white at Disney World. That is how I want
Speaker 1: to see you. No he no, no, no, he can
Speaker 1: never know. He can never put on lime green again. No, no,
Speaker 1: that is against the rules for him. Ron, We're getting
Speaker 1: to the end of the story. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: you've been working on this case for a long time.
Speaker 1: This has been a twenty seven year labor for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's one of the advantages about living
Speaker 1: to be. My age is that sometimes you do get
Speaker 1: to see stuff come around again. I'm happy that I'm
Speaker 1: old enough now that I am living to see some
Speaker 1: of these things happen. So I wouldn't call it a
Speaker 1: twenty seven year labor. I'd call it twenty seven year
Speaker 1: look at watching what goes around finally finally does come around.
Speaker 1: And while I don't think the moral arc of the
Speaker 1: universe bends towards justice, in fact, I don't think the
Speaker 1: moral ark of the universe freaking exists. I do know
Speaker 1: that sometimes for some people there is a reckoning at least,
Speaker 1: and that's what's happened here, and that reckoning, I think
Speaker 1: is going to come one day for the officers who
Speaker 1: did this. We all know that the law creates exceptions
Speaker 1: for police officers. We know that qualified immunity protects police
Speaker 1: officers even when they do things like this. But what
Speaker 1: I will say is that the world will know their names.
Speaker 1: They will know their names as bad police, and that's
Speaker 1: going to have to be where we leave this for now.
Speaker 1: At the end of every episode of Wrongful Conviction, we
Speaker 1: do what we call closing arguments. Vince. This is where
Speaker 1: you get to close out the show. You can talk
Speaker 1: about anything you want to talk about. And before you do,
Speaker 1: I just want to say thank you to Ron and
Speaker 1: thank you to Vince for sharing your story with us today.
Speaker 1: It has been an honor. Vince. I'll give you the
Speaker 1: floor first and foremost, let me say thank you the
Speaker 1: wrong thank you to my codeffind Thomas Malee, because without there,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be sitting there right now now. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: penitentiary broken. I ain't afraid to say, if you look
Speaker 1: deep enough in my eyes, you're sick. But I'm just
Speaker 1: good at shilling it. That's what the penitentiary is designed
Speaker 1: to make, break your break you down. But for me,
Speaker 1: like I said, I just keep telling myself it's gonna
Speaker 1: be all right. They said, LAWD don't place a burden
Speaker 1: on the person that they can't bear. And I guess
Speaker 1: it was designed for me to carry a heavy burden.
Speaker 1: Some days it is light, like today it's real heavy,
Speaker 1: and for the next couple of days is gonna be
Speaker 1: real heavy. And I may isolate myself. My girlfriend may
Speaker 1: not understand it, my mom's may not understand it. My
Speaker 1: sister will law that's my baby girl, my sister. These
Speaker 1: tear as you see man, he's ain't it for sal
Speaker 1: This is years a hurting pain. Those that we'll see this.
Speaker 1: No one understands something man penitentiary and designed for nobody. Man, white, black,
Speaker 1: blue green, especially for those that didn't do it. If
Speaker 1: you did a crime, you know, would't understand what it is.
Speaker 1: I could have did a million years longer than for
Speaker 1: something I did. But it's all right though. Life goes on.
Speaker 1: Me and my cold and friends are gonna survive because
Speaker 1: the same thing I tell myself, each other, itself, because
Speaker 1: that's all we got. Our family there, but that's all
Speaker 1: we got tell ourself. We all right, We're gonna make it.
Speaker 1: And I'll leave you out with that. Thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest host,
Speaker 1: Laura and I writer. I'd like to thank our executive
Speaker 1: producers Jason Slum and Kevin Wordis. The Senior producer for
Speaker 1: this episode is Jackie Polly, and our producers are Lila
Speaker 1: Robinson and Jeff Clyburne. Our editor is Roxandra Gwedy. The
Speaker 1: music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
Speaker 1: for Good. On all three platforms, you can follow me
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter at Laura and I Writer. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one. Next week, on the
Speaker 1: guest hosted episodes of Wrongful Conviction and Lauren Bright Pacheco
Speaker 1: will sit down with Mark Shannon, the victim of the Springfield,
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Police Department and their blatant disregard for the truth.
Speaker 1: Mark served nearly thirty years behind bars while his family
Speaker 1: and community fought for his freedom, surviving not only prison
Speaker 1: but also a dire medical emergency. Lauren Bry Pacheco is
Speaker 1: a brilliant investigator and she's no stranger to wrongful conviction cases.
Speaker 1: You may know her from her groundbreaking incredible podcast Murder
Speaker 1: in Oregon and Murder in Illinois. Listen next Monday in
Speaker 1: the Wrongful Conviction podcast feed