Speaker 1: I've never been to trouble of my life. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a parking ticket, and you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
Speaker 1: do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like everything,
Speaker 1: this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I
Speaker 1: know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this. How is this possible? I grew up trusting
Speaker 1: the systems. I grew up believing that every human thing
Speaker 1: should do the right thing. And that's why, even though
Speaker 1: I was dealing with corrop people, I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: brave anyone to get me out of prison because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't live with the fact that I braved my way
Speaker 1: out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent to proven guilty.
Speaker 1: I'm guilty until I proved my innocence. And that's absolutely
Speaker 1: what happened to me. Our system. Since I've been out
Speaker 1: ten years, it's coming little ways, but it's still broken,
Speaker 1: a totally little trust in humanity after what happened to me.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. With
Speaker 1: Jason Flam that's me and today we have a very
Speaker 1: interesting and unusual show plan for you. Um Our two
Speaker 1: guests today are Shabaka Shakur, who served twenty seven years
Speaker 1: in prison for double murder that he had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with and Shivaca. Welcome to the show, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. And with him is his attorney,
Speaker 1: who has had a very colorful history, to say the least.
Speaker 1: It's been involved in some of the most controversial and
Speaker 1: interesting cases of the last generation. And I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to hear from you today. So Ron Kubi, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you, Jason, pony Tail and all there.
Speaker 1: He's still a hippy. It's unbelievable. Um We got Ron
Speaker 1: who's got as much hair as you can imagine, and
Speaker 1: Chewbacca who's got absolutely none. So I'm just giving everybody
Speaker 1: a visual. Um So, I want to mention quickly the
Speaker 1: fact that you are a TV star now right you
Speaker 1: have your own show on Stars. I wouldn't go that far,
Speaker 1: but Stars is doing a fantastic series called Wrongman Uh,
Speaker 1: directed and produced by Joe Burlinger, who had done the
Speaker 1: Paradise Lost series, and basically they take three cases of
Speaker 1: people all homicides around the country who claimed they were innocent,
Speaker 1: have done many years in prison, and they put resources
Speaker 1: into the case. They they hire me detectives, former States Attorney,
Speaker 1: Detroit homicide detective, FBI cold case consultant, and they have
Speaker 1: us reinvestigate these cases for scratch. So they're doing this right,
Speaker 1: They're they're absolutely right there providing the resources that defense
Speaker 1: lawyers didn't have originally and most of us don't have now, uh,
Speaker 1: to go through the case from the beginning and to
Speaker 1: determine whether or not it indeed is the wrong Man.
Speaker 1: Six episodes, three cases, One Question, Wrong Man, on Stars
Speaker 1: every Sunday night at nine pm and available for downloading
Speaker 1: on these Stars app All right, shout out to Jeff Hirsch,
Speaker 1: my fad at Stars and and the whole crew in
Speaker 1: Joanna who's here. Um, that's the show that I'm going
Speaker 1: to be watching and I hope everyone else will too,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking forward to learning more about these cases.
Speaker 1: Thanks Vaka. This uh, this story is as terrifying as
Speaker 1: it is typical. Um. And what I mean by that,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into it, is that you are a
Speaker 1: victim of someone who was the detective who was one
Speaker 1: of the most notorious detectives in terms of framing people
Speaker 1: in the history of our country to the world. UM.
Speaker 1: It's a very dubious distinction, and we'll get into all
Speaker 1: of that, um, but let's go back to the beginning. UM,
Speaker 1: did you grow up in Brooklyn. Yes, I was born
Speaker 1: and raised in Brooklyn, lived most of my earlier life
Speaker 1: in Brownsville and Bethor Stubinson areas. Uh, Brooklyn and um
Speaker 1: Shabaka Shakur is not your birth name, no, my um.
Speaker 1: I was named after my father, lou Holmes. UM. But
Speaker 1: going back to your childhood, so did you have a
Speaker 1: traditional family situation. Was it a crazy neighborhood you grew
Speaker 1: up in? Can you paint the picture because this was
Speaker 1: crazy times when you were growing up in um Well.
Speaker 1: I lived in Brownsvill, I lived in the projects. I
Speaker 1: grew up in the projects. UM lived in the projects
Speaker 1: mostly all my life. But I did have both my
Speaker 1: mother and my father. You know, we lived in a
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't a single parent house or the
Speaker 1: normal you know routine that they try to say. I
Speaker 1: had of parents. I went to good schools. UM, have
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters. We were we were a solid family,
Speaker 1: So you grew up around this environment. Um, that's you know,
Speaker 1: well known to anyone who's you know, familiar with New York. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because the time we live in now,
Speaker 1: you know it, contrary to what people would have you believe,
Speaker 1: is that we're hitting historic lows in terms of crime rates.
Speaker 1: And I think that back then we were probably pretty
Speaker 1: close to the high I'm a New Yorker born and bred,
Speaker 1: so I remember it was. You know, it was well
Speaker 1: known that the stuff was. It was crazy in those times, um.
Speaker 1: And then one day in everything went haywire. Your world
Speaker 1: got turned, well, I got turned completely upside down sometimes
Speaker 1: between eight eight and eighty nine, right when you were
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted. But in night, there was a double murder
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood. And it was a couple of guys
Speaker 1: that you knew right right. It was guys that I
Speaker 1: had known them for almost a decade. I went to
Speaker 1: school with one of them, Um, but I knew both
Speaker 1: of them. They were close friends who hung out altogether,
Speaker 1: so I met one through the other. But um, Stephen
Speaker 1: Herewood was a guy that I went to high school with,
Speaker 1: and I knew him from my first year in high
Speaker 1: school and we went through high school together and Fitzgerald Clark,
Speaker 1: who we called c was Steven's best friend and they
Speaker 1: lived in Flatbush. But um, we went to school downtown
Speaker 1: for a green area and we knew each other, so
Speaker 1: we hung out during school and even after school. They
Speaker 1: were they were close friends of mine, and they were
Speaker 1: they were in the game then yeah, um game, they
Speaker 1: were drug dealers. Uh. At the time they were talking
Speaker 1: about this was during the crack academic so not only
Speaker 1: was it high in crime, but you know, the city
Speaker 1: was being devastated by crack and there was a call
Speaker 1: for um aggressive policing because with crack came not only
Speaker 1: did the destruction of people physically from the drug, but
Speaker 1: also an increase of violence. You know. Um, crack was
Speaker 1: one of the most lucrative drug trades at the time,
Speaker 1: and people were killing for for neighborhoods, you know, right.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting when we're going back to this because
Speaker 1: I've that, you know, twenty five years working to decriminalize
Speaker 1: drugs and you know, restore some sanity to our drug policy.
Speaker 1: And the only distinction I want to make there is
Speaker 1: it crack didn't make people violent. Um, the money made
Speaker 1: people violence, right, The people who were committing the violence
Speaker 1: weren't high. They were they were they were the ones
Speaker 1: who weren't high, they were ones who want to get
Speaker 1: everybody else high, and they were competing and fighting and
Speaker 1: killing for the right to have that that income stream. So, um,
Speaker 1: I just want to make that clear to our audience
Speaker 1: who may not be as familiar since this shows, you
Speaker 1: know that we don't spent a lot of time talking
Speaker 1: about drugs. But that being said, so these two guys
Speaker 1: get murdered and what seems like it was a drug head, right, yes?
Speaker 1: And how did they end up focusing on you? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, was it just laziness? Was it? Well? It
Speaker 1: was it was partly laziness, and it was partly um
Speaker 1: I would say, a tunnel vision by by the police.
Speaker 1: Once I became a suspect, they zeroed in on me
Speaker 1: and they ignored everything else. Um So I knew these
Speaker 1: guys and we had a really close relationship. Um So
Speaker 1: at that time I had driven one of them over
Speaker 1: to the black where we were selling drugs and Gates
Speaker 1: Avenue and um in the Bushick section of Brooklyn, and
Speaker 1: we was having a conversation about a car. So I
Speaker 1: was trying to sell them my car because was at
Speaker 1: the time I was working in Queen's Queen's County Registers Department,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to have a more calm life
Speaker 1: when I at one point, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: I was selling drugs with you know what I'm saying, UM,
Speaker 1: I needed money. They they you know, came to me,
Speaker 1: they said, listen, help us out with this. And I
Speaker 1: made runs. I did errands. I did didn't work for
Speaker 1: them to um to make money for myself. But it
Speaker 1: got to the point where I had a decent job.
Speaker 1: I really didn't want to do it no more. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to take a chance on going to prison,
Speaker 1: so I was backing away from that. But I still
Speaker 1: had a good report with them, So I went around there.
Speaker 1: I had met a girl that I was dealing with
Speaker 1: that lived in that neighborhood, So I went around there
Speaker 1: to where their drug spot was. Their brother who didn't
Speaker 1: live in New York, who actually lived in Florida. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was the brother of Fitzgerald Clark, the guy that
Speaker 1: we used to call see and he was the older brother.
Speaker 1: He didn't know what he didn't know me. He had
Speaker 1: just barely Uh, he had just met us because he
Speaker 1: didn't live in New York, and he started becoming involved
Speaker 1: in their drug trade, bringing drugs from Florida New York.
Speaker 1: So this is like one of the few interactions that
Speaker 1: he had with with me personally. That night, UM, me
Speaker 1: and Steve had made an agreement about the car. He
Speaker 1: wanted to buy my car. He was gonna give me
Speaker 1: a certain amount of money. Um. He wanted to give
Speaker 1: me some money from the drug spot that night and
Speaker 1: then owe me the rest. See who was his friend
Speaker 1: and minds. But we used to always argue. We we
Speaker 1: just had that type of relationship where we was always
Speaker 1: arguing about everything, but not a violent relationship or aggressive
Speaker 1: relationship trade each other. We just grew up together and
Speaker 1: we was always um on opposite sides of everything. So
Speaker 1: me and him would argue at about the car and
Speaker 1: sees brother witnessed this argument. So later on, when when
Speaker 1: c and Stephen were murdered, his brother, recalling that I
Speaker 1: was arguing with his brother, went to the police and
Speaker 1: implicated me in the murder, and the police um that
Speaker 1: stip me came and get me to take me to
Speaker 1: the priest and to question me. I answered all the questions,
Speaker 1: told him where I was, told him I wasn't nowhere
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn at that time, explained to them the whole situation,
Speaker 1: gave him the name of alibi witnesses that they could
Speaker 1: contact right there. They contacted him that same night and
Speaker 1: verified my alibi. Uh. But when they went to Detective
Speaker 1: Scarcella and said, we got a guy that was pointed
Speaker 1: out by the brother of the deceased, but the guy
Speaker 1: has an alibi and he's saying he wasn't there and
Speaker 1: we really don't have anything. Scarcella took it upon himself
Speaker 1: two Um join into the interrogation and then fabricated a
Speaker 1: confession against me, right and that's you know, it is interesting,
Speaker 1: you know you talk about how you had alibi witnesses
Speaker 1: more than one. Uh. There was no physical evidence connecting
Speaker 1: you to the crime. They found the gun that was used,
Speaker 1: but it didn't trace back to you in any way.
Speaker 1: There were no fingerprints, there was no there was nothing
Speaker 1: for them to go on. There's nothing to point the
Speaker 1: finger at you, but they didn't care. Um and Scarcella.
Speaker 1: People who are fans of the show listen the show
Speaker 1: have heard his name before because we've had other ex
Speaker 1: honorees on who were framed by the same guy. And
Speaker 1: you know, Ron, this is where I want to turn
Speaker 1: to you, because you have probably as much experience as
Speaker 1: anyone in the country going after police who are on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of the law. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: get your take on as part of the story, because
Speaker 1: obviously you have intimate knowledge of it as well as
Speaker 1: knowledge of the entire world of of you know that
Speaker 1: that that that blew wall, so to speak. So I
Speaker 1: had first met Detective Scarcella in the nineties when he
Speaker 1: was still working as a detective, still doing the things
Speaker 1: that we we know now that that he did, and
Speaker 1: I had cross examined him in a in a very
Speaker 1: high profile case which itself is now under or no.
Speaker 1: This was the token booth bombing case. And he amazed
Speaker 1: me at just how good he was at lying, how charming,
Speaker 1: how how avuncular, how we would look at the jury
Speaker 1: and bond with them. And I knew he was lying
Speaker 1: because I knew the facts of the particular case. But
Speaker 1: but it didn't matter. People really liked Luis Scarcella. Juries
Speaker 1: liked him, Judges loved him. Prosecutors thought he is you know,
Speaker 1: the greatest thing on earth, because he would literally make
Speaker 1: their cases. So I had a lot of experience with
Speaker 1: him from that time before he became famous in the
Speaker 1: public with the rant A case. Shabaka had written to
Speaker 1: me he had done his own post conviction motion was
Speaker 1: all put together and and the singular witness against him
Speaker 1: was the Scarcella confession. And this was a remarkable confession
Speaker 1: because it was not witnessed by anybody else. Scarcella was
Speaker 1: not the case detective. There was no audio tape me,
Speaker 1: there was no video tape made, there was no signature
Speaker 1: of of Shabaka's. The whole confession existed only out of
Speaker 1: Scarcella's mouth, and it was almost the stereotypical conviction. It
Speaker 1: started out like so many of Scarcella's convictions did, and
Speaker 1: the confessions he obtained, with a shout out to the
Speaker 1: cleverness of Scarcella. That is to say, in Shibaka's confession, Uh,
Speaker 1: Scarcella had Sebaka saying, you know what's going on? You
Speaker 1: know the story? Other cases, Uh, you got it right,
Speaker 1: I was there. I mean this that. Phrases like that
Speaker 1: come up in close to a dozen different cases. So
Speaker 1: the confession always starts out with congratulations, Mr detective, You're
Speaker 1: such a smart guy. You got me. Uh. And in
Speaker 1: this case, there was no corroboration, which is unheard of,
Speaker 1: especially since Scarcella was not even the case detective. The
Speaker 1: case detective question Sebaka for hours, and all he got
Speaker 1: was Shabaka's alibi, which by the way, proved to be
Speaker 1: completely correct. Eventually get him out of prison. Eventually comes,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty eight years later though. And so Scarcella
Speaker 1: walks into the cell and then walks out twenty minutes
Speaker 1: later with this confession and didn't even call the case
Speaker 1: detective and say, hey, hey, hey, detective Mahoney, come on in,
Speaker 1: this guy's got something to say. Nothing. It's the only
Speaker 1: place this confession occurred. And and the paperwork showed that
Speaker 1: Scarcella really wanted Mahoney, who was the case detective, to
Speaker 1: take responsibility for the confession. He was willing to give
Speaker 1: it up. Mahoney could say that he got it. Mahoney
Speaker 1: didn't trust it. So Mahoney wrote the statement down but
Speaker 1: never attributed to anybody in any fashion. And and that
Speaker 1: you know what we called the orphan statement, Like Mahoney
Speaker 1: could remember where it came from, who said that he
Speaker 1: knows that Shebaka didn't say that to him, and there
Speaker 1: was a key piece of evidence that got Sbaka convicted.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to that conviction. Because you were arrested.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming on that day after Scarcela came in and
Speaker 1: magically produced this confession in twenty minutes, that this other
Speaker 1: experience detective couldn't get from you in hours and hours
Speaker 1: of questioning. Well, well, I was um. The murder happened
Speaker 1: one night. The next day, I was at work and
Speaker 1: they came to um get me at work to tell
Speaker 1: me that they wanted to take me to the priests
Speaker 1: and to ask me questions. Um. Now, of course I
Speaker 1: didn't know about the murder at the time, So I
Speaker 1: went to the precinct and I answered the question because
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was going on. They didn't take
Speaker 1: take me to the priest and say, oh, we want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about the murder. They just said
Speaker 1: we want to ask you some questions about where you
Speaker 1: were last night. So I'm answering the questions because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to get in trouble. Were you're thinking that
Speaker 1: they knew something about your past drug stuff? For um?
Speaker 1: On the way to the priests and one of the
Speaker 1: cops asked me if I owned a green BMW, which
Speaker 1: I did, right, So that was the car that I
Speaker 1: had given to Steve the night before, so I knew
Speaker 1: who had the car, and I know that they were
Speaker 1: drug dealers. So in my mind, I'm thinking, did they
Speaker 1: get caught with drugs in the car? And now it's
Speaker 1: coming back to me, you know, I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what it is, but I don't want to lie.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to the priests and when they asked me,
Speaker 1: do you know these guys, I'm saying, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: these guys. Is this your car? I'm saying, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is my car. Um, But I didn't have my car
Speaker 1: last night. I wasn't with them last night. I was
Speaker 1: in Queen's. I was with this person. I was with
Speaker 1: that person. So I didn't want to lie, but I'm
Speaker 1: telling them exactly where I'm at so that they would
Speaker 1: realize that whatever happened, I wasn't involved. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: the end of nearly nearing the end of that conversation
Speaker 1: with Detective Mahoney that he tells me about their murders.
Speaker 1: So now I'm like, okay, I don't know nothing about that.
Speaker 1: I had nothing to do with nobody being murdered. Um,
Speaker 1: I already told you where I was. And that was
Speaker 1: the gist of my conversation with with Detective Mahoney. I
Speaker 1: had no previous knowledge prior to him telling me about
Speaker 1: what was going on. Um. When Detective Scott Sella came in, UM,
Speaker 1: like Ron said, he had nothing to do with my case.
Speaker 1: He wasn't assigned to my case. He was just in
Speaker 1: the precinct. And when he came in, they came to
Speaker 1: him and said, look, we got a guy who was
Speaker 1: saying he wasn't there, but he's the only suspect that
Speaker 1: we have. Remember, I was like, I'll take care of this, right,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what he did. He came in and
Speaker 1: he said, Okay, I got it, I'll handle this, and
Speaker 1: he came in there to talk to me. But as
Speaker 1: soon as he came in there, he came in there
Speaker 1: aggressively accusing me. I know you did it. I know
Speaker 1: who you are. You were selling drugs with these guys.
Speaker 1: These guys are drug inners, all of y'all involved you
Speaker 1: You uh, you murdered them so that you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to share the block with dumb or whatever. Right. So
Speaker 1: I looked at him and I said, you know why,
Speaker 1: I don't even want to talk to you, you know,
Speaker 1: and he got aggressive, started banging on the table. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to help you, but instead you're gonna go up
Speaker 1: north for a long time. You're gonna go down for
Speaker 1: these murders. So I was telling them, you know, very politely,
Speaker 1: go f yourself because I didn't want to deal with that,
Speaker 1: and he left. At that point, I had no idea
Speaker 1: that he was going to fabricate a confession. I thought
Speaker 1: that was the end of the conversation. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know about the confession until um I was arrested and
Speaker 1: I was given a quarter pointed attorney and uh, the
Speaker 1: quarter point attorney tells me, you confessed, And I said,
Speaker 1: are you crazy? I didn't confess. I told the people
Speaker 1: where I was. I gave him the alibi witnesses. They
Speaker 1: verified my alibi witnesses, and the quarter point he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you told this detective, but you confess to
Speaker 1: the other detective. And that's when I realized that this
Speaker 1: guy had fabricated a confession. And this is an important
Speaker 1: time to mention that the confession is the most powerful
Speaker 1: evidence that there can be. Um, it's really hard for
Speaker 1: any jury or jurist or juror, I should say, it's
Speaker 1: hard for any juror to understand why someone would confess
Speaker 1: to a crime they didn't commit. And you know, as
Speaker 1: people listen to the show and they hear these stories
Speaker 1: over and over again, they start to understand many cases
Speaker 1: their course confessions. In your case, there was no confession.
Speaker 1: And let's not forget this. Carcela was a guy who
Speaker 1: used the same witness in six different murder cases, who
Speaker 1: was a drug addict, um, part time prostitute, I think
Speaker 1: who he was supplying with drugs and was you know,
Speaker 1: and he she he was so lucky that she having
Speaker 1: to witness six different murders. I mean, that's kind of
Speaker 1: a miracle. But I do want to take this opportunity
Speaker 1: because Ron's here too, um and maybe he could ask
Speaker 1: something of this. But I often tell people on the show,
Speaker 1: and Shabaka would have benefited from this advice. I think
Speaker 1: right that if you get arrested for something you didn't do,
Speaker 1: and you get taken in the only thing you should
Speaker 1: say is your name, your address, And I want a lawyer.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that without a doubt? And whenever
Speaker 1: I debate with cops about this, I always say, let
Speaker 1: me ask you this if if your son called you
Speaker 1: from a precinct and said, Dad, I've just been arrested,
Speaker 1: what should I do? What are you gonna tell? And
Speaker 1: the cops invariably say, I said, don't say anything, We'll
Speaker 1: get you a lawyer. Don't say we're without a lawyer.
Speaker 1: And we know that's true. Now, now, Sebaka had some
Speaker 1: experience in the criminal justice system, so and he knew
Speaker 1: he didn't do anything, so he felt comfortable giving his alibi,
Speaker 1: which was ultimately born out decades later, and he felt
Speaker 1: comfortable telling Scarcella, get the f out of here, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to talk to you. What nobody anticipated was
Speaker 1: that Scarcella would simply make up a confession. So you've
Speaker 1: got the made up confession. You have the brother of
Speaker 1: the dead guy, originally telling a muddled story but thinking
Speaker 1: Shabako was involved, But through a period of time with Scarcella,
Speaker 1: his story changes, evolves, morphs until he saw Shabaka shoot
Speaker 1: both of them, you know, one in the back and
Speaker 1: another in the back as he was running the things
Speaker 1: that he could not have seen because because physically impossible
Speaker 1: because he wasn't there. Well, he wasn't here, but had
Speaker 1: he been there, uh, just the location of the bodies
Speaker 1: was all wrong. But but okay, so now you've got
Speaker 1: your eye witness kind of, you've got your confession, not really,
Speaker 1: and you stop looking for anybody else. Now, had they
Speaker 1: spent all another day or two, they would have discovered
Speaker 1: that one of the guys who got made dead at
Speaker 1: night had been the subject of a previous murder attempt
Speaker 1: just two months earlier by the Rankers. Actually both of them, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: both of them, right right, yes, okay, let me because
Speaker 1: this one came with instructions, right right right. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: they missed the first time, and they shot up the club,
Speaker 1: but they missed the guys the first time, so and
Speaker 1: everybody knew it was the Rankers, which is a Jamaican
Speaker 1: drug dealing group, particularly violent even by the standards of
Speaker 1: the time. And they're not sort of forgive and forget
Speaker 1: kind of people there, and they weren't like, okay, well
Speaker 1: we missed him the first time. We'll give you a pass.
Speaker 1: There was every reason to think that they had fallen
Speaker 1: into conflict with the rankers over drug turf uh, and
Speaker 1: that that's what this murder was, but nobody cared at
Speaker 1: the time. I will note that they continued to look
Speaker 1: at the rankers after Shabaka was convicted. After he was convicted,
Speaker 1: given his forty life and sent up state, there were
Speaker 1: still other detectives who weren't entirely comfortable, and we're pursuing
Speaker 1: those leads, which ultimately went mad. They've done it. At
Speaker 1: the beginning, this whole thing would have been different. Like
Speaker 1: Ron said, the the confession, the alleged confession, Um, nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody would have predicted that, you know what I'm saying. Um,
Speaker 1: it was it was just beyond my thinking that this
Speaker 1: guy was going to say that I confessed to something. Um.
Speaker 1: The situation around it was suspicious from the from the
Speaker 1: get go because you're in a precinct with at least
Speaker 1: thirty forty police officers and not one, not one police
Speaker 1: officer heard the confession. Right, There's no notes, there's no
Speaker 1: there's nothing, there's no proof of it. There's no you know,
Speaker 1: any time you take a confession, any time you see
Speaker 1: a police officer interview anybody, they write it down. There
Speaker 1: was nothing in there. There was no signing of the fashion.
Speaker 1: They didn't even call the prosecutor and say this guy
Speaker 1: just confessed. They didn't take a videotape. There was absolutely
Speaker 1: no proof of a confession other than that detectives car
Speaker 1: seller just saying it out of his mouth, even though
Speaker 1: we're in a precinct full of people. So there was
Speaker 1: no proof that a confession ever existed. Now what Ron
Speaker 1: said about, um, the previous attack on these people. Two
Speaker 1: months prior to that, there was an attempt on both
Speaker 1: of these same guys. So what's the odds that somebody
Speaker 1: tries to kill two guys and then two months later
Speaker 1: those same two guys actually get killed. Have been really unpopular.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's happened, but but those would be
Speaker 1: the likely suspects to begin with. So so what you
Speaker 1: have here, Okay, you've got a bad detective, no question
Speaker 1: about it, but he's not the only person involved. You
Speaker 1: have an allegedly not bad detective, the actual case detective,
Speaker 1: who does nothing. You have a prosecutor who decides to
Speaker 1: go ahead and believe this stuff or at least put
Speaker 1: it in front of the jury. You have a judge
Speaker 1: who who has seen Scarcella before, and we'll see Scarcella
Speaker 1: again and allows this whole case to go forward. And
Speaker 1: ultimately you have a jury that has never seen Scarcella before,
Speaker 1: but gosh, you know, he seems like a much you know,
Speaker 1: dapper dude. Then then the black guy here and and convicts,
Speaker 1: and appeals court after appeals court after appeals court affirms.
Speaker 1: And this has been the pattern, not just in Shabaka's case,
Speaker 1: but but in in over a dozen other cases that
Speaker 1: this detective got involved in. And I want to point
Speaker 1: out that the only winners in this scenario were the rankers, right, Um,
Speaker 1: which is uh, society loses, um. Obviously, Shabaka gets his
Speaker 1: life taken away from or you know, most of it,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, the victims don't get justice. Um.
Speaker 1: And these guys are free to go out there and
Speaker 1: shoot the next guy that crosses their their path. Those
Speaker 1: guys actually ended up going to federal prison for I believe,
Speaker 1: like twelve different murders. Um. But the the amazing thing
Speaker 1: is that how they discovered this um. One of the
Speaker 1: guys in my case, fitz Gerald Clark, had got arrested
Speaker 1: in a shootout with a machine gun against the rinkers
Speaker 1: drawing that previous attempt. So when he ends up dead
Speaker 1: from the case that I'm in jail for, he has
Speaker 1: an open case that he doesn't show up for. When
Speaker 1: he doesn't show up, the judge access okay whereas he at.
Speaker 1: So the family has to go and say, oh, he's dead.
Speaker 1: He's no longer alive. So the judge access for, well,
Speaker 1: let me see some type of proof. You can't just
Speaker 1: come in here and say he's dead. So the proof
Speaker 1: that they give him was the death certificate in my case.
Speaker 1: So at that point, the district attorney's office has connected
Speaker 1: the two cases. Right, They know that this guy had
Speaker 1: a previous attempt on him and then he's dead. They
Speaker 1: know who did the previous attempt, yet their tunnel vision
Speaker 1: prevented them from investigating that this is a suspect. You know,
Speaker 1: here's here's a story that just that the brothers saying, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy had argue with my brother. But here's a
Speaker 1: guy who here's some guys who actually attempted to kill
Speaker 1: him just recently. So their suspects. But because of the
Speaker 1: tunnel vision of the police and the prosecutor, they ignored
Speaker 1: that evidence. If they had searched just a little bit,
Speaker 1: they would have found out that the attorney who bailed
Speaker 1: out fitz Gerald Clark, the guy who got killed in
Speaker 1: my case, was the same attorney who worked for the
Speaker 1: Rankers who got this bar for fraud in working with
Speaker 1: the rankers in fraudulent paperwork that he did for them. Like,
Speaker 1: the connections are all in, So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff there. It could have been investigated, that should
Speaker 1: have been investigated, but Scarcella, like so many of his colleagues,
Speaker 1: decided to short circuit this entire process because he was
Speaker 1: convinced Shibaco was guilty. I have actually never known a
Speaker 1: cop who went out and deliberately framed a person who
Speaker 1: he knew was innocent, planted evidence and somebody he believed
Speaker 1: to be innocent, or lied about a person who believed
Speaker 1: to be innocent. Uniformly. Uniformly, when the police engage in
Speaker 1: this kind of activity, it's because they think the person
Speaker 1: is guilty, and that guilty person they think is going
Speaker 1: to get off because there's not enough evidence against him.
Speaker 1: So it falls to the Scarcella's of the world, of
Speaker 1: whom there were many and remain many. He was just
Speaker 1: better at it than anybody else, it falls to them
Speaker 1: to to put some extra frosting on the cake to
Speaker 1: make sure that the guilty guy gets convicted. Stay tuned,
Speaker 1: will be right back. So you go to trial with
Speaker 1: your public defender, UM, having been held in jail, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming pretty trial for what for about a year? For
Speaker 1: I think it was fourteen months? Did how First of all,
Speaker 1: how long was the trial? The trial was like two
Speaker 1: days a day and a half something like that. Pretty
Speaker 1: question trials when you don't have any of it. You
Speaker 1: have your alibi witnesses and they were never called. What
Speaker 1: happened was, Um, I had uh a public defender who
Speaker 1: did not believe I was innocent, and like you said,
Speaker 1: he just like most people thought, this guy confessed he's guilty.
Speaker 1: So he came to me and tried to say and
Speaker 1: told me, I'm going to get you a good plea.
Speaker 1: And I told him I don't want to plea. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go to trial. I didn't commit this murder.
Speaker 1: And he said, listen, you can't win a trial. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get your good plead. So he never investigated
Speaker 1: my case at all. Um, I wrote to the judge.
Speaker 1: Six months in, I wrote to the judge and told
Speaker 1: the judge, listen, I need a new lawyer. This guy
Speaker 1: does not believe I'm innocne. He's not doing any investigative work. Um,
Speaker 1: he's not gonna be able to prove my innocence. The
Speaker 1: judge ignored it. Six months later, a year in, I
Speaker 1: write to the judge again and file of motion to
Speaker 1: have him dismissed as my um as my attorney because
Speaker 1: he's done no investigation. I've given him the name of
Speaker 1: alibi witnesses. I've given him everything that I can give him.
Speaker 1: You know, I've told him people that I remember that
Speaker 1: live on that block who he could go um interview.
Speaker 1: He does none of this. So right before I'm getting
Speaker 1: ready to go to trial, I go back to the
Speaker 1: judge and the judge on record tells me I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna give rid of your lawyer now you're getting ready
Speaker 1: to start trial. But I'm telling the judge he hasn't
Speaker 1: investigated anything. The day I start trial, I have to
Speaker 1: write a summary of the facts because he didn't even
Speaker 1: know the facts of the case. Did he ever visit
Speaker 1: you in jail? He never visited me. He after court
Speaker 1: that um court dates he would go in the back
Speaker 1: and talk to me, and we would argue, um, because
Speaker 1: I told him, you're not investigating I'm innocent. Um. He
Speaker 1: tried to get me to take a plea. When I
Speaker 1: wouldn't take the plea, and I kept pushing to go
Speaker 1: to trial, he said, Okay, we're gonna go to trial.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I had to write him a summary
Speaker 1: of the facts because he didn't know the facts of
Speaker 1: my case. We went to trial, um, and he did
Speaker 1: terrible because he hadn't he hadn't investigated, he hadn't talked
Speaker 1: to none of the alibi witnesses. I had to get
Speaker 1: on the phone and core one of my alibi witnesses
Speaker 1: and tell him come to court because the lawyer had
Speaker 1: never reached out to her. And she came to court.
Speaker 1: And when she came to court, she stepped in the
Speaker 1: courtroom and told basically the judge, I'm the out of
Speaker 1: our witnesses, you know. And he still did not use
Speaker 1: the out of our witness at try have heard that
Speaker 1: story more times than I would like to have heard it.
Speaker 1: So so take a quick pause. Here, what are the
Speaker 1: elements we have so far? We have a a corrupt detective. Uh,
Speaker 1: we have a system that believes Shakur is guilty, uh,
Speaker 1: and is not looking at any other suspects. We have
Speaker 1: a prosecutor who's more than willing to to put a
Speaker 1: highly dubious story before a jury, and we have a
Speaker 1: judge who's willing to allow it. And now sort of
Speaker 1: the last piece of this is in place an utterly
Speaker 1: incompetent defense lawyer who not only doesn't believe his client
Speaker 1: is innocent, but is unwilling to even prepare a defense
Speaker 1: for the client he believes is guilty. All he wants
Speaker 1: is to plea He hasn't done any work, he's underpaid, uh,
Speaker 1: and just doesn't care. So this is the storm. And
Speaker 1: I was going to say that if you didn't already.
Speaker 1: I mean, the worst part of it, really, the most
Speaker 1: excuseable part, is that he doesn't care. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he's sitting there and I think everyone listening is probably
Speaker 1: feeling the same way I'm feeling. That that the the
Speaker 1: feeling of helplessness that you must have had as a
Speaker 1: person who's literally facing spending the rest of your life
Speaker 1: in prison, um and nobody's helping you. That that word
Speaker 1: is exactly how I felt helpless because I brought it
Speaker 1: to the judge's attention, and the judge said, no, you
Speaker 1: have to go on with disattorney. Even though I'm telling
Speaker 1: the judge he's not doing anything. He's not investigating the case.
Speaker 1: He hasn't spoken to any of the witnesses. There are
Speaker 1: gaping holes in this story, right. The brother of fitz
Speaker 1: Gerald Clark, his initial statement to the police was, um,
Speaker 1: I know who did this? Right, He never said I
Speaker 1: saw it. And then he in his statement that night
Speaker 1: in the precinct, when he did speak in detail to
Speaker 1: the police, he still didn't say he saw me commit
Speaker 1: the crime. A year later, he's not saying, oh, I
Speaker 1: know who did this because he had an argument. He's saying,
Speaker 1: I actually saw the murder. I've seen Shabaka sneak up
Speaker 1: behind my brother and shoot my brother twice in the back.
Speaker 1: Amazing how the memory comes back. Here's the thing. His
Speaker 1: brother died from a single gunshot wound to the chess.
Speaker 1: So the account that he gave a trial didn't even
Speaker 1: match the ballistics or the or the autopsy or anything. Right.
Speaker 1: And and after we got the case and we did
Speaker 1: some reinvestigation. I mean this, the witness had long since died,
Speaker 1: but we did speak to his brother uh and his
Speaker 1: brother was convinced that he was convinced that Shabaka had
Speaker 1: done it. It's not as though he got on the
Speaker 1: witness stand deciding to implicate somebody he thought was innocent.
Speaker 1: He got on the witness stand with the encouragement of
Speaker 1: Scarcella and the district attorney and the judge and and
Speaker 1: embellished a story again because he thought the guy was guilty.
Speaker 1: And if I don't tell these things the way I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to tell them, this guilty guy is going to
Speaker 1: get off. So you were fucked. I mean, basically, the odds.
Speaker 1: If I was a bookie and I was watching this proceeding,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have taken any money from anybody who wanted
Speaker 1: to be guilty. There would have been no odds that
Speaker 1: I would have accepted because it was it was a lock.
Speaker 1: I mean, you were done right. The what jury is
Speaker 1: possibly going to watch that proceeding and come up with
Speaker 1: any other conclusion other than that you're going when he
Speaker 1: has something funny? The jury took longer in deliberation than
Speaker 1: the trial. Wow. The jury took two and a half
Speaker 1: days of deliberation. The trial was only a day a
Speaker 1: day and a half the jury even hearing these stories
Speaker 1: and having no defense because no Alabama was presented, no
Speaker 1: defense at all. The jury had problems because they kept saying,
Speaker 1: this confession doesn't make sense, and this guy's story doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. So they took two and a half days
Speaker 1: of deliberation before they found me guilty. So they come
Speaker 1: back in and obviously they found you guilty. And that moment.
Speaker 1: Can you paint a picture of that moment? Like was
Speaker 1: the courthouse? Was it a hot day? Cold day? Were
Speaker 1: who was there? Was it noisy? Was it? This? Was
Speaker 1: it that? Um my mother was dead. That's what I
Speaker 1: remember because I remember turning around and looking at her
Speaker 1: and she had tears in her eyes, and I just
Speaker 1: kept thinking to myself, like, wow, I can't believe you
Speaker 1: know that this is actually happening. Um it's it's funny
Speaker 1: because to a certain extent, you know, even then, I
Speaker 1: considered myself like conscious, like understanding that the system doesn't work,
Speaker 1: but I still have some faith that it was gonna work.
Speaker 1: I figured they can't find me guilty. They how can
Speaker 1: somebody say they saw me shoot somebody in the back
Speaker 1: and he was never shot in the back. You know,
Speaker 1: how can somebody say, okay, he confessed and they don't
Speaker 1: even have the confession, you know, they have nothing but
Speaker 1: his word. So all of these things was running through
Speaker 1: my mind, and I'm saying, there's no way that that
Speaker 1: these guys can't realize that this is a set up.
Speaker 1: And I was praying for the best, and then I
Speaker 1: was just praying that it would be manslaughter. Um. And
Speaker 1: when they convicted me a murder, I remember the judge.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was then all my senses enough,
Speaker 1: but I remember the judge giving me an opportunity to
Speaker 1: say something, and my lawyer basically saying, to be remorseful,
Speaker 1: you know, And and I remember me telling the judge
Speaker 1: I started to say, you know, I'm sorry about these
Speaker 1: guys deaths. And I remember I said, I'm sorry about
Speaker 1: these guys deaths, but I didn't do it. That's all
Speaker 1: I can say. I said, I I really didn't do it,
Speaker 1: and that was all I can say. And you know,
Speaker 1: like my lawyer was kind of like pushing me say something,
Speaker 1: be a be remorseful, try to you know, but I
Speaker 1: just I was stuck because all I kept telling was
Speaker 1: I didn't do it, and that was it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's shocking to me that I don't think any maybe
Speaker 1: there's one state that has mandatory videotaping of witness statements, right,
Speaker 1: because the witnesses, as you said, can be led very easily.
Speaker 1: They can be influenced, they could be fed information, and
Speaker 1: I wouldness identification is such a tremendous factor. It's it's
Speaker 1: the number one cause of right because even though we
Speaker 1: know how how frequently witnesses eyewitnesses are wrong, even though
Speaker 1: we have a zillion studies that has shown this, when
Speaker 1: somebody gets up there in the courtroom and looks at
Speaker 1: the defendant, points at the defendant, said it's him, I'll
Speaker 1: never forget his face as long as he lives. People
Speaker 1: believe that, just like people believe that only guilty people
Speaker 1: make confessions, um and and so they believe the false confessions.
Speaker 1: They believe the bad eyewitness identification. So that's what I
Speaker 1: think people should. And obviously, if you have no forensic evidence,
Speaker 1: especially these days where you know there's d n A,
Speaker 1: there's cell phone, cell phone towers, Google searches, we all
Speaker 1: leave these electronic signatures. If all of that is kind
Speaker 1: of missing, then you should be really skeptical about this
Speaker 1: in this country, if I was redoing the justice system,
Speaker 1: I might put in a rule that says that if
Speaker 1: there's no corroborating evidence other than a cross racial identification,
Speaker 1: the case is not going identification of a stranger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it happens to be your wife or something,
Speaker 1: then that's right, fair enough, But that's that's not the
Speaker 1: that's not the common Uh. Let me say also that
Speaker 1: I think that there has to be open discovery also,
Speaker 1: um because in in my case specifically, like I said,
Speaker 1: the prosecutor knew that a previous attempt had been made
Speaker 1: on these guys. They noticed a month after my arrest,
Speaker 1: you know, so they if they had turned that information
Speaker 1: over to the defense, you know. And assuming that the
Speaker 1: defense lawyer would have investigated, because he did invested anything else,
Speaker 1: but assuming that he had that information he would investigate it.
Speaker 1: That was reasonable doubt. That's what I needed. And people
Speaker 1: don't realize that even in place like New York, which
Speaker 1: is fancied as a progressive state, we have trial by ambush.
Speaker 1: And by that I mean you don't get the witness
Speaker 1: statements against you until the day of jury selection, or
Speaker 1: maybe a day earlier. Just so we don't have to
Speaker 1: disrupt jury selection. All of that material, all of the
Speaker 1: things the witnesses said they saw you do. You don't
Speaker 1: get that until your trial is just about to begin,
Speaker 1: which of course makes taking an intelligently impossible because you
Speaker 1: have no idea what it is they have against you.
Speaker 1: It makes investigation impossible, especially if you're innocent, you don't
Speaker 1: have any idea who the witnesses are. If you're guilty,
Speaker 1: it's easier because oh, yeah, yeah, Joe and Snappy they
Speaker 1: were there. You know, I can tell you all about
Speaker 1: him what's wrong with them. But if you're totally isnes
Speaker 1: and you have no idea who these people are, then
Speaker 1: there's no investigation that can take place. Right. Trial by
Speaker 1: ambush with dates back to hundreds of years ago in
Speaker 1: England where they used to think that, you know, this
Speaker 1: was the best way to get to the truth was
Speaker 1: by ambushing people so they wouldn't have time to get
Speaker 1: a defense together. Um so, Shabaka, you end up getting
Speaker 1: sentenced to forty years two sentences of twenty to life
Speaker 1: running consecutively fourty years of life. You were twenty two
Speaker 1: years old at the time, right, so we know that
Speaker 1: when you hear these sentenses fifteen to life, twenty to
Speaker 1: life for your life. It really means life unless you're
Speaker 1: willing to take a plea to something you didn't do.
Speaker 1: So because the parole board doesn't want to hear that
Speaker 1: same story you told in the courtroom. I'm innocent, I
Speaker 1: didn't do it. I'm sorry these people that nobody wants
Speaker 1: to hear that. Ship So you go to prison. Um,
Speaker 1: which prison were you sent to? Uh? First prison I
Speaker 1: was sent to was sing sing and sing sing back then? Was?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still a very intimidating place just to visit, um,
Speaker 1: and to go there as young man, uh two years old,
Speaker 1: you must have been scared out of your wits. I
Speaker 1: think that at the beginning, I went through a whole
Speaker 1: transition of emotions at the beginning, Like I said, it
Speaker 1: was my faure to accept what had happened. I just
Speaker 1: kept believing that the best outcome was gonna happen. UM.
Speaker 1: When my appeal started getting denied, UM, there was a
Speaker 1: time of anger in which you know, I ended up
Speaker 1: getting in trouble going to to the box solitary confinement
Speaker 1: for years, you know, because I was just so angry
Speaker 1: that my mind was thinking you know, these guys put
Speaker 1: me in here, I'm gonna give them health, you know.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I think I was in solitary
Speaker 1: confinement that UM. I met other brothers in there that
Speaker 1: have been in there for years, and they would ask me,
Speaker 1: you know, what are you here for? And I would say,
Speaker 1: I'm innocent, but I've been charged with two murders, and
Speaker 1: they would tell me, you can't give up, you know.
Speaker 1: And I started to see guys that I had came
Speaker 1: to prison with who were doing five years, ten years,
Speaker 1: and they were going home. And it started to dawn
Speaker 1: on me that I would never go home, that this
Speaker 1: was going to be my life from now on unless
Speaker 1: I seriously got into trying to find a way out
Speaker 1: and and it and it became a revelation that it
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna be through somebody else helping me, that it
Speaker 1: had to be me. So I started to go to school. UM.
Speaker 1: I went to college, I got a college degree. I
Speaker 1: started to learn law, started taking law classes UM. At
Speaker 1: the time, Cornell was giving law classes inside of the prison,
Speaker 1: so I started signing up for law classes. I got
Speaker 1: a job in the law library. UM started learning by
Speaker 1: working through with other people's cases, helping them with their cases,
Speaker 1: and it happened to be the best thing that could
Speaker 1: have ever happened to me, because working in the lower library,
Speaker 1: I kept running into cases that had to do with
Speaker 1: Detective Scarcella, you know. So as I'm reading people's cases
Speaker 1: and I'm saying, this is the same detective in my case,
Speaker 1: and I'm asking them questions about the case, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: he set me up. And then I'm saying, yeah, he
Speaker 1: set me up too. But then when he became like
Speaker 1: two people, three people, four people, I started to see
Speaker 1: the pattern and I said, wow, he didn't just do
Speaker 1: this to me. He did it to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know. And I started to formulate in my own
Speaker 1: mind that the only way I was going to get
Speaker 1: out was to expose Scarcella. We had to show that
Speaker 1: this guy was a cricket cop um I think it was. UM.
Speaker 1: I had started working on my motion and I met
Speaker 1: up with Derek Hamilton, who was also a Scarceller case.
Speaker 1: He had already put in his motion, so he was
Speaker 1: waiting for his response, and I told him, I said, look,
Speaker 1: we need to expose this guy. We need to really
Speaker 1: concentrate on Scarcella. He's the key, you know. I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, I know about three or four guys who
Speaker 1: he set up. And he told me, well, I know
Speaker 1: about three or four guys too, and we started comparing
Speaker 1: our notes. So, like I said, he had already pushed
Speaker 1: his motion. So in my motion, I started focusing on Scarcella.
Speaker 1: Even though I started arguing the actual innocence claim, a
Speaker 1: portion of it was saying that Scarcella should not be
Speaker 1: believed because if his suspicious actions in all these cases.
Speaker 1: And I started in numerating cases in which it was
Speaker 1: very suspicious of confessions and evidence that, you know. So
Speaker 1: as I did that, we're having to luck up. That
Speaker 1: Derek Um was paroled, and because he was paroled, he
Speaker 1: was outside. And by then we had started um gathering people,
Speaker 1: me and him and Danny vinkoone who was another guy
Speaker 1: that was innocent. We all worked in the law library
Speaker 1: and we started working together as a group, and we
Speaker 1: formed our own group which we call AI, which was
Speaker 1: to us meant the actual innocence guys, and we would
Speaker 1: work on actual innocence cases, Like if somebody came and
Speaker 1: say we're innocent, we would sit down with them and
Speaker 1: really grill them to see, if you know, go over
Speaker 1: the evidence, go over their case to see if they
Speaker 1: were really innocent, and if we believed it, we would
Speaker 1: take them in and we would work with their case too.
Speaker 1: You actually had a law firm in prison, yes, which
Speaker 1: is pretty incredible. You know, all three of us were
Speaker 1: law clerks and we knew the law, but our specialty
Speaker 1: was really the actual innocence. So we started working on
Speaker 1: people's cases like that. It's incredible. I mean they're just visualizing.
Speaker 1: The law firm in president is just so. And I
Speaker 1: know Derek very well as you know I know Derek,
Speaker 1: and he's he's a brilliant guy, I mean, an incredible,
Speaker 1: incredible legal mind. Um and uh. And his story is amazing.
Speaker 1: Of course he's been on the podcast as well on
Speaker 1: wrong for Conviction. So that was your moment where you
Speaker 1: actually sort of found this you know, inner strength and
Speaker 1: this desire to to to better yourself and in the
Speaker 1: process find a way to get yourself out, which you did.
Speaker 1: Um and the same for a number of other guys
Speaker 1: that are still then there. And that's you know, and
Speaker 1: that's so inspiring to people like me who are in
Speaker 1: this movement realize that we don't have endless amounts of time.
Speaker 1: I do want to get to the conclusion and Ron,
Speaker 1: I want to get back to you, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna finish up with you. UM, so you get involved.
Speaker 1: And what was the magic bullet? What was the silver
Speaker 1: bullet here? How did you manage to help um Shabaka
Speaker 1: find his way out of this morass twenty seven years later?
Speaker 1: There wasn't a magic bullet. Uh. There there were a
Speaker 1: lot of numerous small, non magic bullets that eventually perforated
Speaker 1: the target sufficiently. Uh. Shabaka sent me his out of
Speaker 1: papers and and you know, it was an amazing set
Speaker 1: of papers. Uh. It was amazing. If a lawyer had
Speaker 1: done it was even more impressive that it was. It
Speaker 1: came from people who have the fewest resources uh and
Speaker 1: the least formal legal education, although they did have a
Speaker 1: lot of time and they a lot of motivation. And
Speaker 1: I recognized Scarcella from from the earlier days and recognized
Speaker 1: this is exactly the kind of stuff he did, and
Speaker 1: I felt we could win this uh, and so I
Speaker 1: agreed to take the case. Shabaka made it very clear
Speaker 1: that Okay, he's happy that I'm taking the case. But
Speaker 1: he remains in control of strategic decisions. He had had
Speaker 1: enough lawyers telling him what was best for him, and
Speaker 1: I agreed with that and agreed to work under those conditions.
Speaker 1: And then it just became a very long process. The
Speaker 1: judge granted a hearing. Before we went to hearing, all
Speaker 1: of the stuff about Scarcella emerged. New information was found.
Speaker 1: Shabaka had managed to find a couple of witnesses who
Speaker 1: were there with Um Harley Young, the star eye witness
Speaker 1: who were in the building with him at the time
Speaker 1: the shooting took place. They came forward, the alibi witnesses
Speaker 1: whoever the lawyer saw back then, the young women he
Speaker 1: saw back then that he didn't want to put on
Speaker 1: the stand, the the middle aged women right now were
Speaker 1: extremely impressive, regular citizens, hard working, smart, very very persuasive,
Speaker 1: and and over a series of I guess about a
Speaker 1: year of hearings, finally the judge wrote a very strong
Speaker 1: decision vacating his conviction and stating for the record that
Speaker 1: there was a significant likelihood that Scarcella had fabricated the confession.
Speaker 1: And at that point the d a's office, under new leadership,
Speaker 1: now under Ken Thompson, called me and said we're done,
Speaker 1: We're not appealing, we're not retrying. Charge will be dismissed,
Speaker 1: and Shabaka walked out. In in June of how did
Speaker 1: you get the news that that that the conviction was
Speaker 1: being verytated after this crazy ordeal? When where were you?
Speaker 1: I was in prison in Chowanka Correctional facility. At my
Speaker 1: job I used to work um at that point, I
Speaker 1: was working at the grievance department because they would no
Speaker 1: longer let me work in the law library. So uh,
Speaker 1: I was working at the grieve's department and the officer
Speaker 1: came and said, you got a phone call from your wife.
Speaker 1: So I went and got a call and I called
Speaker 1: her and she said, uh, they reversed your case. So
Speaker 1: initially I wasn't sure if she was correct, because you know,
Speaker 1: she could have got it confused, and so I wanted
Speaker 1: to hear from somebody officially. So I hung up and
Speaker 1: I called Leah Busby, who was uh the attorney with
Speaker 1: Ron Coolby on my case. And Leo was like excited.
Speaker 1: She said, they reversed your case and you're gonna come home,
Speaker 1: you know, And I was shocked. But my first question,
Speaker 1: like when is it now? Tomorrow. Win. So they was like,
Speaker 1: as soon as the paper were clear, you're you're getting out.
Speaker 1: And it took a few days, but no, it was
Speaker 1: the shortest time ever because I knew I was getting
Speaker 1: out soon. Did you sleep during those three days? Yes, um,
Speaker 1: everybody thought, and and that's the question that people always ask,
Speaker 1: the anxiety of those last few days. But to be
Speaker 1: honest with you, it was the most common days of
Speaker 1: the whole bit. The anxiety comes when you don't know
Speaker 1: what's happened. But when you know, okay, I'm getting out
Speaker 1: of here in the next couple of day, is like
Speaker 1: all my stress was gone. I was wondering about that
Speaker 1: because there's people people follow me on Instagram, which I'm at.
Speaker 1: It's Jason Flower, of course, but people find me know
Speaker 1: that yesterday I walked the guy out of prison in Virginia,
Speaker 1: Lenny Singleton, after twenty three years, and I was wondering.
Speaker 1: I forgot to ask him that, but I was wondering
Speaker 1: whether he had got any sleep the night before, knowing
Speaker 1: that he was gonna get out the next day. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it's one or the other. You don't sleep
Speaker 1: at all, you sleep like a baby. And now shabaka. Um.
Speaker 1: The best part of the show every week is when
Speaker 1: Um everyone stops talking and lets you well in this
Speaker 1: case you, but whoever the featured UM guest on the
Speaker 1: show is just have the mike to say whatever it
Speaker 1: is you want. UM. One thing I am interested in
Speaker 1: knowing is whether you feel bitter about what happened to
Speaker 1: you and and what and how you're how you're processing
Speaker 1: all this and moving forward. But uh, this is UM,
Speaker 1: this is that time. So the mic is yours. Okay, UM.
Speaker 1: I don't feel better. I feel uh, I feel sad
Speaker 1: that the people having taken that there's been no accountability,
Speaker 1: you know, like he said that Scarsella is still UM
Speaker 1: basically has gotten away with what he's done. He's ruining lives, Uh,
Speaker 1: not just minds, but normal so others. And then people
Speaker 1: don't even realize that it's not just a defendant. It's
Speaker 1: the families. It's the my mother and my father. My
Speaker 1: mother died while I was in prison, and I never
Speaker 1: got a chance to spend no time with her. My
Speaker 1: father died within the year of me coming home, and
Speaker 1: even when I came home, he was suffering from dementia.
Speaker 1: Didn't even though I was home, so they never got
Speaker 1: to see me as a free man. Um. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's families that get destroyed because of the situation that
Speaker 1: he created. And it's and like I said, it's not
Speaker 1: just me, it's doesn't so far. Uh that saddens me
Speaker 1: because they were people who could have stopped it. Not
Speaker 1: only Detective Scarcella, but everybody who allowed it to go
Speaker 1: on is complicit. You know what I'm saying. The district attorneys,
Speaker 1: the other police officers, Uh, the judges who looked at
Speaker 1: this case and seeing all of these gaping holes in
Speaker 1: the story, continue to allow it. Everybody is responsible for this.
Speaker 1: And until we actually take personal responsibility to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do something to not let this go on,
Speaker 1: it's going to continue because that's the way the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system has been created to protect people like Detective Scarcella. UM.
Speaker 1: That's like I said, I'm not better. I'm just satting
Speaker 1: that we haven't realized that and done something more about
Speaker 1: that situation. Um. Since I've been home now, I continue
Speaker 1: to work with certain cases. You know. Um, Danny Rnknen
Speaker 1: is one. Uh, Stephen Brathway is another, James Jenkins. These
Speaker 1: are people who I know are and sending who are
Speaker 1: incarcerated and continue to work with them. I've been able
Speaker 1: to put my life back in order to some extent
Speaker 1: as far as you know, to reconnect with my family,
Speaker 1: my brothers, my sisters, my nephews, my nieces, people who
Speaker 1: you know, I have nephews and nieces who never even
Speaker 1: saw me. You know, they was raised hearing about their uncle,
Speaker 1: but never having an opportunity to see me. So it
Speaker 1: gives me a time to put back my family. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm working now. I own a restaurant in Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: Best Side Live eleven fourteen Forton Street and definitely come
Speaker 1: then and eat with us and enjoy it because not
Speaker 1: only is he a restaurant, but it's an event space
Speaker 1: where we do things to give back to the community.
Speaker 1: Like we are always having some type of event in
Speaker 1: which we interact with the community and we try to
Speaker 1: give back. You know. Um, I spent most of my
Speaker 1: life in prison, so I want to be able to
Speaker 1: really interact with the world now that I'm home and
Speaker 1: to be some type of example for that even in prison,
Speaker 1: you can come out and do something positive that because
Speaker 1: there's a fear of of guys in prison and the
Speaker 1: fear is purposely promoted so that people can do what
Speaker 1: they want to do without anybody having any empathy for
Speaker 1: those guys in prison. Well, I'm really happy to see
Speaker 1: you out here doing good things. Um. If people want
Speaker 1: to reach out to you, if they want to learn
Speaker 1: more about these cases that you just talked about, if
Speaker 1: they want to get involved and help, um, how can
Speaker 1: they do that? Do you do? Do Facebook? Because we
Speaker 1: want to get prick my Facebook pages Shobako shakoor, Um,
Speaker 1: they can go up there. I'm always posting stuff about
Speaker 1: these cases and about stuff that we're involved in and
Speaker 1: stuff that we're doing. So if you follow me on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you you could catch up on everything that we're doing. Okay,
Speaker 1: Shabaka Sakar and of course as s h A b
Speaker 1: A k A and Shako like Tupac shakur. Everybody knows
Speaker 1: how to spell that. So um yeah, I please do
Speaker 1: get involved, follow Shabaka and let's get these other guys
Speaker 1: home and keep this momentum going. So UM, I want
Speaker 1: to thank both of you for coming and dropping some
Speaker 1: knowledge with everybody here on Wrong for Conviction, Ron, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, Ron, kuby uh stars the wrong Man is
Speaker 1: the show, and Shabaka Shakur is the right man for
Speaker 1: the job, and he's gonna go get these other guys
Speaker 1: out and I'm gonna help and your everybody get involved.
Speaker 1: So Shabaka, thank you so much for being here, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. Don't forget to give us a
Speaker 1: fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps.
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 1: to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate
Speaker 1: and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
Speaker 1: Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one