Speaker 1: I've never been in trouble in my life. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a parking ticket, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was brought up with cops are the good guys.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
Speaker 2: do know that everything was stacked against me.
Speaker 1: Everything like everything.
Speaker 3: This isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I
Speaker 3: know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do
Speaker 3: with this. How is this possible?
Speaker 4: I grew up trusting systems. I've grew up believing that
Speaker 4: every human being should do the right thing. And that's why,
Speaker 4: even though I knew I was dealing with corp people,
Speaker 4: I wasn't going to break anyone to get me out
Speaker 4: of prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that
Speaker 4: I break my way out of my wife's death.
Speaker 1: I'm not innocent, too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I
Speaker 1: prove my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me.
Speaker 1: Our system. Since I've been out ten years, it has
Speaker 1: come a little ways, but it's still broken.
Speaker 4: I totally lost trusting humanity after what's happened to me.
Speaker 5: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction with
Speaker 5: Jason flamm that's me and today we have a very
Speaker 5: interesting and unusual show planned for you. Our two guests
Speaker 5: today are Shabaka Shakur, who served twenty seven years in
Speaker 5: prison for a double murder that he had nothing to
Speaker 5: do with. And Chabaca. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: And with him is his attorney, who has had a
Speaker 5: very colorful history, to say the least. It's been involved
Speaker 5: in some of the most controversial and interesting cases of
Speaker 5: the last generation. And I'm really excited to hear from
Speaker 5: you today. Ron Kooby, welcome to the show.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Jason, Ponytail and all still there. He's still a hippy.
Speaker 5: It's unbelievable. We got Ron who's got as much hair
Speaker 5: as you can imagine, and Chabacca who's got absolutely none.
Speaker 5: So I'm just giving everybody a visual, so thank you.
Speaker 5: I want to mention quickly the fact that you are
Speaker 5: a TV star now right you have your own show
Speaker 5: on Stars.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't go that far, but Stars is doing a
Speaker 6: fantastic series called Wrong Man, directed and produced by Joe Berlinger,
Speaker 6: who had been the Paradise Loss series, and basically they
Speaker 6: take three cases of people all homicides around the country
Speaker 6: who claim they were innocent, have done many years in prison,
Speaker 6: and they put resources into the case. They hire me
Speaker 6: detective's former States attorney, Detroit homicide detective, FBI cold case consultant,
Speaker 6: and they have us reinvestigate these cases scratch.
Speaker 5: So they're doing this right.
Speaker 6: They're absolutely right. They're providing the resources that defense lawyers
Speaker 6: didn't have originally and most of us don't have now
Speaker 6: to go through the case from the beginning and to
Speaker 6: determine whether or not it indeed is the wrong Man.
Speaker 6: Six episodes, three cases, One Question, Wrong Man on Stars
Speaker 6: every Sunday night at nine pm and available for downloading
Speaker 6: on these Stars.
Speaker 5: App All right. Shout out to Jeff Hirsch, my friend
Speaker 5: at Stars, and the whole crew and Joanna who's here.
Speaker 5: That's the show that I'm going to be watching and
Speaker 5: I hope everyone else will too, and I'm looking forward
Speaker 5: to learning more about these cases. Thanks Shebaka. This story
Speaker 5: is as terrifying as it is typical. And what I
Speaker 5: mean by that, and we'll get into it, is that
Speaker 5: you were a victim of someone who was detective who
Speaker 5: was one of the most notorious detectives in terms of
Speaker 5: framing people in the history of our country, the world.
Speaker 5: It's a very dubious distinction, and we'll get into all
Speaker 5: of that, but let's go back to the beginning. Did
Speaker 5: you grow up in Brooklyn?
Speaker 2: Yes, I was born and raised in Brooklyn, lived most
Speaker 2: of my earlier life in Brownsville and Bedford Stuvestant areas
Speaker 2: of Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: And Shabaka Shakur is not your birth name.
Speaker 1: No, I was named after my father, Lou Holmes.
Speaker 5: But going back to your childhood, so did you have
Speaker 5: a traditional family situation. Was it a crazy neighborhood you
Speaker 5: grew up in? Can you paint the picture, because this
Speaker 5: was crazy times when you were growing up.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, I lived in browns but I lived in
Speaker 1: the projects.
Speaker 2: I grew up in the projects, lived in the projects
Speaker 2: mostly all my life. But I did have both my
Speaker 2: mother and my father. You know, we lived in a
Speaker 2: you know, I wasn't a single parent house or the
Speaker 2: normal you know routine that they try to say. I
Speaker 2: had parents, I went to good schools, have brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: We were a solid family.
Speaker 5: So you grew up around this environment that's you know,
Speaker 5: well known to anyone who's you know, familiar with New York.
Speaker 5: And it's interesting because the time we live in now,
Speaker 5: you know, contrary to what people would have you believe,
Speaker 5: is a we're hitting historic lows in terms of crime rates.
Speaker 5: And I think that back then we were probably pretty
Speaker 5: close to the high I'm a New Yorker born and bred,
Speaker 5: so I remember it was, you know, it was well
Speaker 5: known that this stuff was. It was crazy in those times.
Speaker 5: And then one day in nineteen eighty eight, everything went haywire.
Speaker 5: Your world got turned well, got turned completely upside down
Speaker 5: sometime between eighty eight and eighty nine, right when you
Speaker 5: were wrongfully convicted. But in nineteen eighty eight, there was
Speaker 5: a double murder in your neighborhood. And it was a
Speaker 5: couple guys that you knew right right.
Speaker 2: It was guys that I had known them for almost
Speaker 2: a decade. I had went to school with one of them,
Speaker 2: but I knew both of them. They were close friends
Speaker 2: who hung out all together, so I met one through
Speaker 2: the other. But Stephen Hewitt was a guy that I
Speaker 2: went to high school with, and I knew him from
Speaker 2: my first year in high school and we went through
Speaker 2: high school together. And Fitzgerald Clark what we called c
Speaker 2: was Steven's best friend and they lived in Flatbush, but
Speaker 2: we went to school downtown for a green area, and
Speaker 2: we knew each other, so we hung out during school
Speaker 2: and even after school.
Speaker 1: They were they were close friends of.
Speaker 5: Mines and they were they were in the game. They
Speaker 5: were yeah, drug game.
Speaker 1: They were drug dealers. Uh.
Speaker 2: At the time that we're talking about, this was during
Speaker 2: the crack academic So not only was it high in crime,
Speaker 2: but you know, the city was being devastated by crack
Speaker 2: and there was a call for aggressive police because with
Speaker 2: crack came not only the destruction of people physically from
Speaker 2: the drug, but also an increase of violence. You know,
Speaker 2: Crack was one of the most lucrative drug trades at
Speaker 2: the time, and people were killing for neighborhoods, you know.
Speaker 5: Right. And it's interesting when we're going back to this
Speaker 5: because I've spent you know, twenty five years working to
Speaker 5: decriminalize drugs and you know, restore some sanity to our
Speaker 5: drug policy. And the only distinction I want to make
Speaker 5: there is that crack didn't make people violent. The money
Speaker 5: made people violence, right. They people who were committing the
Speaker 5: violence weren't high, they were they were they were ones
Speaker 5: who weren't high. They were ones who wanted to get
Speaker 5: everybody else high, and they were competing and fighting and
Speaker 5: killing for the right to have that that income stream.
Speaker 5: So I just want to make that clear to our
Speaker 5: audience who may not be as familiar, since it shows,
Speaker 5: you know, we don't spend a lot of time talking
Speaker 5: about drugs. But that being said, so these two guys
Speaker 5: get murdered in what seems like it was a drug hit, right, yes,
Speaker 5: And how did they end up focusing on you? You know?
Speaker 5: Was it just laziness? Was it?
Speaker 2: Well, it was it was partly laziness and it was partly,
Speaker 2: I would say, a tunnel vision by the police. Once
Speaker 2: I became a suspect, they they zeroed in on me
Speaker 2: and they ignored everything else. So I knew these guys
Speaker 2: and we had a really close relationship. So at that
Speaker 2: time I had driven one of them over to the
Speaker 2: block where we were selling drugs and Gates Avenue and
Speaker 2: in the Busherk section of Brooklyn, and we was having
Speaker 2: a conversation about a car. So I was trying to
Speaker 2: sell them my car because at the time I was
Speaker 2: working in Queen's Queen's County Register's department, and I was
Speaker 2: trying to have a more calm life when I at
Speaker 2: one point, to be honest with you, I was selling
Speaker 2: drugs with them. You know what I'm saying. I needed money.
Speaker 2: They they you know, came to me. They said, listen,
Speaker 2: help us out with this, and I made runs. I
Speaker 2: did errane. I did do the work for them to
Speaker 2: make money for myself. But it got to the point
Speaker 2: where I had a decent job. I really didn't want
Speaker 2: to do it no more. I didn't want to take
Speaker 2: a chance on going to prison, so I was backing
Speaker 2: away from that. But I still had a good report
Speaker 2: with them, So I went around there. I had met
Speaker 2: a girl that I was dealing with that lived in
Speaker 2: that neighborhood, so I went around there to where the
Speaker 2: drug spot was. Their brother who didn't live in New York,
Speaker 2: who actually lived in Florida. He was the brother of
Speaker 2: Fitzgerald Clark, the guy that we used to call See and.
Speaker 1: He was the older brother. He didn't know us, he
Speaker 1: didn't know me.
Speaker 2: He had just barely he had just met us because
Speaker 2: he didn't live in New York. And he started becoming
Speaker 2: involved in their drug trade, bringing drugs from Florida to
Speaker 2: New York. So this is like one of the few
Speaker 2: interactions that he had with with me personally. That night,
Speaker 2: me and Steve had made an agreement about the car.
Speaker 2: He wanted to buy my car. He was gonna give
Speaker 2: me a certain amount of money. He wanted to give
Speaker 2: me some money from their drug spot that night and
Speaker 2: then owe me the rest. See who was his friend
Speaker 2: and mins, But we used to always argue. We we just
Speaker 2: had that type of relationship where we was always arguing
Speaker 2: about everything, but not a violent relationship or aggressive relationship
Speaker 2: to each other. We just grew up together and we
Speaker 2: was always on opposite sides of everything. So me and
Speaker 2: him were arguing about the car, and SE's brother witnessed
Speaker 2: this argument. So later on, when she and Stephen were murdered,
Speaker 2: his brother, recalling that I was arguing with his brother,
Speaker 2: went to the police and implicated me in the murder,
Speaker 2: and the police.
Speaker 1: Arrested me, came and get me to take me to
Speaker 1: the priest and to question me.
Speaker 2: I answered all the questions, told him where I was,
Speaker 2: told him I wasn't nowhere in Brooklyn at that time,
Speaker 2: explained to him the whole situation. Gave him the name
Speaker 2: of alibi witnesses that they could contact right there. They
Speaker 2: contacted him that same night and verified my alibi. But
Speaker 2: when they went to Detective Scarsella and said, we got
Speaker 2: a guy that was pointed out by the brother of
Speaker 2: the deceased, but the guy has an alibi and he's
Speaker 2: saying he wasn't there, and we really don't have anything,
Speaker 2: Scarcella took it upon himself to join into the interrogation
Speaker 2: and then fabricated a confession against.
Speaker 5: Me, right, and that's you know, it is interesting. You know,
Speaker 5: you talk about how you had alibi witnesses, more than one.
Speaker 5: There was no physical evidence connecting you to the crime.
Speaker 5: They found the gun that was used, but it didn't
Speaker 5: trace back to you in any way. There were no fingerprints,
Speaker 5: there was no there was nothing for them to go on.
Speaker 5: There's nothing to point the finger at you. But they
Speaker 5: didn't care. And Scarcella, people who are fans of the
Speaker 5: show listen to the show, have heard his name before
Speaker 5: because we've had other exoneries on who were framed by
Speaker 5: the same guy. And you know, Ron, this is where
Speaker 5: I want to turn to you, because you have probably
Speaker 5: as much experience as anyone in the country. Going after
Speaker 5: police who are on the wrong side of the law.
Speaker 5: So I'd love to get your take on this part
Speaker 5: of the story because obviously you have intimate knowledge of it,
Speaker 5: as well as knowledge of the entire world of you
Speaker 5: know that that blue wall, so to speak.
Speaker 6: So I had first met Detective Scarcela in the nineteen
Speaker 6: nineties when he was still working as a detective, still
Speaker 6: doing the things that we know now that he did,
Speaker 6: and I had cross examined him in a very high
Speaker 6: profile case, which itself is now under no This was
Speaker 6: the token booth bombing case. And he amazed me at
Speaker 6: just how good he was at lying, how charming, how avuncular,
Speaker 6: or how we would look at the jury and bond
Speaker 6: with them. And I knew he was lying because I
Speaker 6: knew the facts of the particular case, but it didn't matter.
Speaker 6: People really liked Luis Scarcela. Jurys liked him, Judges loved him.
Speaker 6: Prosecutors thought he would, you know, the greatest thing on
Speaker 6: earth because he would literally make their cases. So I
Speaker 6: had a lot of experience with him from that time
Speaker 6: before he became famous in the public with the Rantic case.
Speaker 6: Shabaka had written to me he had done his own
Speaker 6: post conviction motion was all put together, and the singular
Speaker 6: witness against him was the Scarcella confession. And this was
Speaker 6: a remarkable confession because it was not witnessed by anybody else.
Speaker 6: Scarcella was not the case detective. There was no audio
Speaker 6: tape made, there was no video tape made, there was
Speaker 6: no signature of Sabacca's. The whole confession existed only out
Speaker 6: of Scarcella's mouth, and it was almost a stereotypical conviction.
Speaker 6: It started out, like so many of Scarcella's convictions did,
Speaker 6: and the confessions he obtained, with a shout out to
Speaker 6: the cleverness of Scarcella. That is to say, in Shebacca's confession,
Speaker 6: Scarcella had Shabacca saying, you know what's going on, you
Speaker 6: know the story. Other cases, you got it right, I
Speaker 6: was there, I mean this that. Phrases like that come
Speaker 6: up in close to a dozen different cases. So the
Speaker 6: confession always starts out with congratulations, mister detective, you're such
Speaker 6: a smart guy.
Speaker 5: You got me.
Speaker 6: And in this case there was no corroboration, which is
Speaker 6: unheard of, especially since Scarcella was not even the case detective.
Speaker 6: The case detective questioned Sheabaka for hours and all he
Speaker 6: got was Shabacca's alibi, which by the way, proved to
Speaker 6: be completely correct. Eventually get him out of prison. Eventually
Speaker 6: comes you know, twenty eight years later though, And so
Speaker 6: Scarcella walks into the cell and then walks out twenty
Speaker 6: minutes later with this confession and didn't even call the
Speaker 6: case detective and say, hey, hey, hey, detective, Mahoney, come
Speaker 6: on in. This guy's got something to say. Nothing. It's
Speaker 6: the only place this confession occurred. And the paperwork showed
Speaker 6: that Scarcelo really wanted Mahoney, who was the case detective,
Speaker 6: to take responsibility for the confession. He was willing to
Speaker 6: give it up. Mahoney could say that he got it.
Speaker 6: Mahoney didn't trust it, so Mahoney wrote the statement down
Speaker 6: but never attributed to anybody in any fashion, and that,
Speaker 6: you know what we call the orphan statement, Like Mahoney
Speaker 6: could remember where it came from. Who said that he
Speaker 6: knows that Shebacca didn't say that to him, And that
Speaker 6: was the key piece of evidence that got Shebacca convicted.
Speaker 5: Let's go back to that conviction, because you were arrested,
Speaker 5: I'm assuming on that day after Scarcela came in and
Speaker 5: magically produced this confession in twenty minutes that this other
Speaker 5: experienced detective couldn't get from you in hours and hours
Speaker 5: of questioning.
Speaker 2: Well, I was The murder happened one night. The next day,
Speaker 2: I was at work and they came to get me
Speaker 2: at work to tell me that they wanted to take
Speaker 2: me to the preescint to ask me questions. Now, of
Speaker 2: course I didn't know about the murder at the time,
Speaker 2: so I went to the precinct and I answered the
Speaker 2: questions because I didn't know what was going on. They
Speaker 2: didn't take take me to the priest and say, oh,
Speaker 2: we want to talk to you about a murder. They
Speaker 2: just said we want to ask you some questions about
Speaker 2: where you were last night. So I'm answering the questions
Speaker 2: because I didn't want to get in trouble.
Speaker 5: Were you thinking that they knew something about your past
Speaker 5: drug stuff or.
Speaker 2: On the way to the preescint, one of the cops
Speaker 2: asked me if I owned a green BMW, which I
Speaker 2: did right, So that was the car that I had
Speaker 2: given to Steve the night before. So I knew who
Speaker 2: had the car, and I know that they were drug dealers.
Speaker 2: So in my mind, I'm thinking, did they get caught
Speaker 2: with drugs in the car? And now it's coming back
Speaker 2: to me, you know, I'm trying to figure out what
Speaker 2: it is, but I don't want to lie. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to the priests, and when they're asking me, do
Speaker 2: you know these guys, I'm saying, yeah, I know these guys.
Speaker 2: Is this your car? I'm saying, yeah, that is my car.
Speaker 2: But I didn't have my car last night. I wasn't
Speaker 2: with them last night. I was in Queen's. I was
Speaker 2: with this person. I was with that person. So I
Speaker 2: didn't want to lie, but I'm telling them exactly where
Speaker 2: I'm at so that they would realize that whatever happened,
Speaker 2: I wasn't involved.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the.
Speaker 2: End of nearly nearing the end of that conversation with
Speaker 2: Detective Mahoney that he tells me about their murders. So
Speaker 2: now I'm like, Okay, I don't know nothing about that.
Speaker 2: I had nothing to do with nobody being murdered. I
Speaker 2: already told you where I was, and that was the
Speaker 2: gist of my conversation with Detective Mahoney. I had no
Speaker 2: previous knowledge prior to him telling me about what was
Speaker 2: going on when detectives Scott Sella came in, like Ron said,
Speaker 2: he had nothing to do with my case. He wasn't
Speaker 2: assigned to my case. He was just in the prisint
Speaker 2: And when he came in, they came to him and said, look,
Speaker 2: we got a guy who was saying he wasn't there,
Speaker 2: but he's the only suspect that we have.
Speaker 1: And remember I was like, I got this, I'll take
Speaker 1: care of this, right, And that's exactly.
Speaker 5: What he did.
Speaker 1: He came in and he said, okay.
Speaker 2: I got it, I'll handle this, and he came in
Speaker 2: there to talk to me. But as soon as he
Speaker 2: came in there, he came in there aggressively accusing me.
Speaker 2: I know you did it. I know who you are.
Speaker 2: You were selling drugs with these guys. These guys are
Speaker 2: drug dealers, all of y'all involved. You murdered them so
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't have to share the block with them
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right. So I looked at him and I said, you
Speaker 1: know why, I don't even want.
Speaker 2: To talk to you, you know, and he got aggressive,
Speaker 2: started banging on the table. I'm trying to help you,
Speaker 2: but instead you're going to go up north for a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 1: You're going to go down for these murders.
Speaker 2: So I was telling them, you know, very politely, go
Speaker 2: f yourself because I didn't want to deal with that,
Speaker 2: and he left. At that point, I had no idea
Speaker 2: that he was going to fabricate a confession. I thought
Speaker 2: that was the end of the conversation. I didn't even
Speaker 2: know about the confession until I was arrested and I
Speaker 2: was given a quarter pointed attorney and the quarter point
Speaker 2: attorney tells me, you confessed, And I said, are you crazy?
Speaker 2: I didn't confess. I told the people where I was,
Speaker 2: I gave them the alibi witnesses. They verified my alibi witnesses,
Speaker 2: and the quarter pointed said, yeah, that's what you told
Speaker 2: this detective, but you confessed to the other detective. And
Speaker 2: that's when I realized that this guy had fabricated a confession.
Speaker 5: And this is an important time to mention that the
Speaker 5: confession is the most powerful evidence that there can be.
Speaker 5: It's really hard for any jury or jurist or juror,
Speaker 5: I should say, it's hard for any juror to understand
Speaker 5: why someone would confess to a crime they didn't commit.
Speaker 5: And you know, as people listen to the show and
Speaker 5: they hear these stories over and over again, they start
Speaker 5: to understand many cases are coerse confessions. In your case,
Speaker 5: there was no confession. And let's not forget this. Scarcella
Speaker 5: was a guy who used the same witness in six
Speaker 5: different murder cases, who was a drug addict, part time prostitute.
Speaker 5: I think who he was supplying with drugs and was
Speaker 5: you know? And he was so lucky that she having
Speaker 5: no witness six different murders. I mean, that's kind of
Speaker 5: a miracle. I do want to take this opportunity because
Speaker 5: Ron's here too, and maybe he can ask me this.
Speaker 5: But I often tell people on the show, and Shabaka
Speaker 5: would have benefited from this advice. I think right that
Speaker 5: if you get arrested for something you didn't do, and
Speaker 5: you get taken in the only thing you should say
Speaker 5: is your name, your address and I want a lawyer.
Speaker 5: Would you agree with that without a doubt?
Speaker 6: And whenever I debate with cops about this, I always say,
Speaker 6: let me ask you this. If your son called you
Speaker 6: from a precinct and said, Dad, I've just been arrested.
Speaker 6: What should I do? What are you going to tell?
Speaker 6: And the cops invariably say I said, don't say anything,
Speaker 6: We'll get you a lawyer. Don't say we're without a lawyer.
Speaker 6: And we know that's true. Now, Shabaka had some experience
Speaker 6: in the criminal justice system, so and he knew he
Speaker 6: didn't do anything, so he felt comfortable giving his alibi,
Speaker 6: which was ultimately born out decades later, and he felt
Speaker 6: comfortable telling Scarcela, get the f out of here, I'm
Speaker 6: not going to talk to you. What nobody anticipated was
Speaker 6: that Scarcella would simply make up a confession. So you've
Speaker 6: got the made up confession. You have the brother of
Speaker 6: the dead guy, originally telling a muddled story but thinking
Speaker 6: Schabacca was involved. But through a period of time with Scarcela,
Speaker 6: his story.
Speaker 7: Changes, evolves, morphs, until he saw Shabaka shoot both of them,
Speaker 7: you know, one in the back and another in the
Speaker 7: back as he was running things that he could not
Speaker 7: have seen because physically impossible.
Speaker 6: Because he wasn't there, well he wasn't there, had he
Speaker 6: been there, just the location of the bodies was all wrong.
Speaker 6: But okay, so now you've got your eyewitness kind of,
Speaker 6: you've got your confession, not really, and you stop looking
Speaker 6: for anybody else now had they spent all another day
Speaker 6: or two, they would have discovered that one of the
Speaker 6: guys who got made dead at night had been the
Speaker 6: subject of a previous murder attempt just two months earlier
Speaker 6: by the Rankers.
Speaker 1: Actually both of.
Speaker 6: Them, right yeah, both of them, right right, yes, yes.
Speaker 5: Steve, Okay, let's just pass this. So this one came
Speaker 5: with instructions, right right.
Speaker 6: Right right, It's like, Okay, they missed the first time.
Speaker 6: I mean, they shot up the club, but they missed
Speaker 6: the guys the first time. So and everybody knew it
Speaker 6: was the Rankers, which is a Jamaican drug dealing group,
Speaker 6: particularly violent even by the standards of the time, and
Speaker 6: they're not sort of forgiven for that kind of people.
Speaker 6: They weren't like, oh okay, well we missed them the
Speaker 6: first time. We'll give you a pass. There was every
Speaker 6: reason to think that they had fallen into conflict with
Speaker 6: the Rankers over drug turf and that that's what this
Speaker 6: murder was, but nobody cared at the time. I will
Speaker 6: note that they continued to look at the Rankers after
Speaker 6: Shabaka was convicted. After he was convicted, given his forty
Speaker 6: life and sent up state, there was still other detectives
Speaker 6: who weren't entirely comfortable and were pursuing those leads which
Speaker 6: ultimately went nowhere. But had they done it at the beginning,
Speaker 6: this whole thing would have been different.
Speaker 8: Like Ron said, the the confession, the alleged confession, nobody,
Speaker 8: nobody would have predicted that, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It was It was just beyond my thinking that this
Speaker 2: guy was going to say that I confess to something.
Speaker 2: The situation around it was suspicious from the get go
Speaker 2: because you're in a precinct with at least thirty forty
Speaker 2: police officers and not one, not one police officer heard
Speaker 2: the confession. Right, There's no notes, there's no there's nothing,
Speaker 2: there's no proof of it. There's no you know, anytime
Speaker 2: you take a confession, anytime you see a police officer
Speaker 2: interview anybody, they write it down. There was nothing written there.
Speaker 2: There was no signing of the confession. They didn't even
Speaker 2: call the prosecutor and say this guy just confessed. They
Speaker 2: didn't take a video tape. There was absolutely no proof
Speaker 2: of a confession other than that Detective Scartsella just saying
Speaker 2: it out of his mouth. Even though we're in a
Speaker 2: priestinct full of people, so there was no proof that
Speaker 2: a confession ever existed. Now what Ron said about the
Speaker 2: previous attack on these people. Two months prior to that,
Speaker 2: there was an attempt on both of these same guys.
Speaker 2: So what's the odds that somebody tries to kill two
Speaker 2: guys and then two months later those same two guys
Speaker 2: actually get killed.
Speaker 5: It must have been really unpopular.
Speaker 6: I mean, look, it's happened, but those would be the
Speaker 6: likely suspects to begin with. So so what you have here, Okay,
Speaker 6: you've got a bad detective, no question about it, but
Speaker 6: he's not the only person involved. You have an allegedly
Speaker 6: not bad detective, the actual case detective, who does nothing.
Speaker 6: You have a prosecutor who decides to go ahead and
Speaker 6: believe this stuff or at least put it in front
Speaker 6: of the jury. You have a judge who who has
Speaker 6: seen Scarcella before and will see Scarcella again and allows
Speaker 6: this whole case to go forward. And ultimately you have
Speaker 6: a jury that has never seen Scarcela before. But gosh,
Speaker 6: you know, he seems like a much you know that dude.
Speaker 6: Then the black guy here and convicts, and appeals court
Speaker 6: after appeals court after Appeals Court affirms. And this has
Speaker 6: been the pattern, not just in Schabacca's case, but in
Speaker 6: over a dozen other cases that this detective got involved in.
Speaker 5: And I want to point out that the only winners
Speaker 5: in this scenario were the rankers, right, which is, uh,
Speaker 5: society loses obviously, Sabacca gets his life taken away from
Speaker 5: or you know, most of it, and you know, the
Speaker 5: victims don't get justice, and these guys are free to
Speaker 5: go out there and shoot the next guy that crosses
Speaker 5: their path.
Speaker 2: Those guys actually ended up going to federal prisident for
Speaker 2: I believe, like twelve different murders. But the amazing thing
Speaker 2: is that how they discover this. One of the guys
Speaker 2: in my case, Fitzgerald Clark, had got arrested in a
Speaker 2: shootout with a machine gun against the Rinkers during that
Speaker 2: previous attempt. So when he ends up dead from the
Speaker 2: case that I'm in jail for, he has an open
Speaker 2: case that he doesn't show up for. When he doesn't
Speaker 2: show up, the judge acts is, okay, where is he at?
Speaker 2: So the family has to go and say, oh, he's dead.
Speaker 2: He's no longer alive. So the judge actses for well,
Speaker 2: let me see some type of proof. You can't just
Speaker 2: come in here and say he's dead. So the proof
Speaker 2: that they give him was the death certificate in my case.
Speaker 2: So at that point, the District Attorney's office has connected
Speaker 2: the two cases.
Speaker 1: Right, They know that this guy had.
Speaker 2: A previous attempt on him and then he's dead. They
Speaker 2: know who did the previous attempt. Yet their tunnel vision
Speaker 2: prevented them from investigating that this is a suspect. You know,
Speaker 2: here's a story that the brother's saying, Oh, this guy
Speaker 2: had arguing with my brother.
Speaker 1: But here's a guy who here's.
Speaker 2: Some guys who actually attempted to kill him just recently.
Speaker 1: So their suspects.
Speaker 2: But because of the tunnel vision or the police and
Speaker 2: the prosecutor, they ignored that evidence. If they had searched
Speaker 2: just a little bit, they would have found out that
Speaker 2: the attorney who bailed out Fitzgerald Clark, the guy who
Speaker 2: got killed in my case, was the same attorney who
Speaker 2: worked for the Rankers who got disbarred for fraud in
Speaker 2: working with the Rankers in fraudulent paperwork that he did
Speaker 2: for them. Like, the connections are all there.
Speaker 6: So there was a lot of stuff there that could
Speaker 6: have been investigated that should have been investigated, but Scarcella,
Speaker 6: like so many of his colleagues, decided to short circuit
Speaker 6: this entire process because he was convinced Shebaca was guilty.
Speaker 6: I have actually never known accoup who went out and
Speaker 6: deliberately framed a person who he knew was innocence, planted
Speaker 6: evidence and somebody he believed to be innocent, or lied
Speaker 6: about a person he believed to be innocent uniformly. Uniformly,
Speaker 6: when the police engage in this kind of activity, it's
Speaker 6: because they think the person is guilty, and that guilty
Speaker 6: person they think is going to get off because there's
Speaker 6: not enough evidence against him. So it falls to the
Speaker 6: Scarcellas of the world, of whom there were many and
Speaker 6: remain many. He was just better at it than anybody else.
Speaker 6: It falls to them to put some extra frosting on
Speaker 6: the cake to make sure that the guilty guy gets convicted.
Speaker 5: Stay tuned, will be right back. So you go to
Speaker 5: trial with your public defender having been held in jail.
Speaker 5: I'm assuming pre trial for what for about a year?
Speaker 1: For I think it was fourteen months.
Speaker 5: Did you how first of all, how long was the trial?
Speaker 1: The trial was like two days, a day and a
Speaker 1: half something like that.
Speaker 5: That's a pretty question.
Speaker 1: You don't have any evidence, right, you.
Speaker 5: Have your alibi witnesses, and they if they.
Speaker 1: Were never caught.
Speaker 2: What happened was I had a public defender who did
Speaker 2: not believe I was innocent, and like you said, he
Speaker 2: just like most people thought, this guy confessed he's guilty.
Speaker 2: So he came to me and tried to say and
Speaker 2: told me I'm going to get you a good plea.
Speaker 2: And I told him I don't want to plea. I'm
Speaker 2: going to go to trial. I didn't commit this murder.
Speaker 2: And he said, listen, you can't win a trial. I'm
Speaker 2: going to get your good plead. So he never investigated
Speaker 2: my case at all. I wrote to the judge. Six
Speaker 2: months in, I wrote to the judge and told the judge, listen,
Speaker 2: I need a new lawyer. This guy does not believe
Speaker 2: him in his saying, he's not doing any investigative work.
Speaker 2: He's not going to be able to prove my innocence.
Speaker 2: The judge ignored it. Six months later, a year in,
Speaker 2: I write to the judge again and file of motion
Speaker 2: to have him dismissed as my as my attorney because
Speaker 2: he's done no investigation. I've given him the name of
Speaker 2: alibi witnesses. I've given him everything that I can give him.
Speaker 2: You know, I've told him people that I remember that
Speaker 2: live on that block who he could go.
Speaker 1: Interview. He does none of this.
Speaker 2: So right before I'm getting ready to go to trial,
Speaker 2: I go back to the judge, and the judge on
Speaker 2: record tells me I'm not going to get rid of
Speaker 2: your lawyer. Now you're getting ready to start trial. But
Speaker 2: I'm telling the judge he he hasn't investigated anything. Today
Speaker 2: I start trial, I have to write a summary of
Speaker 2: the facts because he didn't even know the facts of
Speaker 2: the case.
Speaker 5: Did he ever visit you in jail?
Speaker 1: He never visited me.
Speaker 2: He after court court dates, he would go in the
Speaker 2: back and talk to me and we would argue because
Speaker 2: I told him, you're not investigating. I'm innocent. He tried
Speaker 2: to get me to take a plea. When I wouldn't
Speaker 2: take the plea, and I kept pushing.
Speaker 1: To go to trial. He said, Okay, we're going to
Speaker 1: go to trial.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I had to write him a summary
Speaker 2: of the facts because he didn't know the facts of
Speaker 2: my case. We went to trial and he did terrible
Speaker 2: because he hadn't he hadn't investigated, he hadn't talked to
Speaker 2: none of the alibi witnesses.
Speaker 1: I had to get on the phone and call one
Speaker 1: of my alibi.
Speaker 2: Witnesses and tell him come to court because the lawyer
Speaker 2: had never reached out to her.
Speaker 1: And she came to court.
Speaker 2: And when she came to court, she stepped in the
Speaker 2: courtroom and told basically the judge, I'm the alibi witnesses. No,
Speaker 2: and he still did not use the alibi witness at try.
Speaker 5: I've heard that story more times than I would like
Speaker 5: to have heard it.
Speaker 6: So take a quick pause here. What are the elements
Speaker 6: we have so far? We have a corrupt detective. We
Speaker 6: have a system that believes Shakur is guilty and is
Speaker 6: not looking at any other suspects. We have a prosecutor
Speaker 6: who's more than willing to put a highly dubious story
Speaker 6: before a jury, and we have a judge who's willing
Speaker 6: to allow it. And now sort of the last piece
Speaker 6: of this is in place an utterly incompetent defense lawyer
Speaker 6: who not only doesn't believe his client is innocent, but
Speaker 6: is unwilling to even prepare a defense for the client
Speaker 6: he believes is guilty. All he wants is a plea.
Speaker 6: He hasn't done any work, he's underpaid, and just doesn't care.
Speaker 6: So this is the storm.
Speaker 5: And I was going to say that if you didn't already.
Speaker 5: I mean, the worst part of it, really, the most
Speaker 5: excusable part, is that he doesn't care. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: he's sitting there and I think everyone listening is probably
Speaker 5: feeling the same way. I'm feeling that the feeling of
Speaker 5: helplessness that you must have had as a person who's
Speaker 5: literally facing spending the rest of your life in prison
Speaker 5: and nobody's helping you.
Speaker 2: That that word is exactly how I felt helpless because
Speaker 2: I brought it to the judge's attention and the judge said, no,
Speaker 2: you have to go on with this attorney, even though
Speaker 2: I'm telling the judge he's not doing anything. He's not
Speaker 2: investigating the case. He hasn't spoken to any of the witnesses.
Speaker 2: There are gaping holes in this story, right. The brother
Speaker 2: of fitz Gerald Clark, his initial statement to the police
Speaker 2: was I know who did this, right, He never said
Speaker 2: I saw it. And then in his statement that night
Speaker 2: in the precinct, when he did speak in detail to
Speaker 2: the police. He still didn't say he saw me commit
Speaker 2: the crime. A year later, he's not saying, oh I
Speaker 2: know who did this because he had an argument.
Speaker 1: He's saying, I actually saw the murder.
Speaker 2: I seen Shebacca sneak up behind my brother and shoot
Speaker 2: my brother twice in the back.
Speaker 5: Amazing how the memory comes back. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
Speaker 2: His brother died from a single gunshot wound to the chest.
Speaker 2: So the account that he gave a trial didn't even match.
Speaker 1: The ballistics or the autopsy or anything.
Speaker 5: It wasn't even close.
Speaker 6: No, right, And after we got the case and we
Speaker 6: did some reinvestigation. I mean this, the witness had long
Speaker 6: since died, but we did speak to his brother, and
Speaker 6: his brother was convinced that he was convinced that Shabak
Speaker 6: had done it. It's not though he got on the
Speaker 6: witness stand deciding to implicate somebody he thought was innocent.
Speaker 6: He got on the witness stand with the encouragement of
Speaker 6: Scarsella and the district attorney and the judge and embellished
Speaker 6: a story again because he thought the guy was guilty.
Speaker 6: And if I don't tell these things the way I'm
Speaker 6: supposed to tell them this guilty guy is going to
Speaker 6: get off.
Speaker 5: So you were fucked. I mean, basically, the odds. If
Speaker 5: I was a bookie and I was watching this proceeding,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have taken any money from anybody who wanted
Speaker 5: to bet guilty. There would have been no odds that
Speaker 5: I would have accepted because it was a lock. I mean,
Speaker 5: you were done, right. What jury is possibly going to
Speaker 5: watch that proceeding and come up with any other conclusion
Speaker 5: other than that You're getting to.
Speaker 1: Want to hear some funny.
Speaker 2: The jury took longer in deliberation than the trial. Wow,
Speaker 2: the jury took two and a half days of deliberation.
Speaker 2: The trial was only a day and a half. The
Speaker 2: jury even hearing these stories and having no defense because
Speaker 2: no alibi was presented, no defense at all, the jury
Speaker 2: had problems because they kept saying, this confession doesn't make
Speaker 2: sense and this guy's story doesn't make sense. So they
Speaker 2: took two and a half days of deliberation before they
Speaker 2: found me guilty.
Speaker 5: So they come back in and obviously they found you guilty. Yes,
Speaker 5: and that moment. Can you paint a picture of that moment?
Speaker 5: Like was the courthouse? Was it a hot day? A
Speaker 5: cold day. Well, who was there? Was it? Noisy?
Speaker 1: Was it?
Speaker 5: This? Was it?
Speaker 1: That my mother was dead?
Speaker 2: That's what I remember, because I remember turning around and
Speaker 2: looking at her, and she had tears in her eyes.
Speaker 2: And I just kept thinking to myself, like, wow, I
Speaker 2: can't believe, you know that this is actually happening. It's
Speaker 2: funny because to a certain extent, you know, even then,
Speaker 2: I considered myself like conscious, like understanding that the system
Speaker 2: doesn't work, but I still have some faith that it
Speaker 2: was gonna work. I figured they can't find me guilty.
Speaker 2: They How can somebody say they saw me shoot somebody
Speaker 2: in the back and he was never shot in the back.
Speaker 2: You know, How can somebody say, Okay, he confessed and
Speaker 2: they don't even have the confession, you know, they have
Speaker 2: nothing but his word. So all of these things was
Speaker 2: running through my mind, and I'm saying, there's no way
Speaker 2: that these guys can't realize that this is a setup.
Speaker 1: And I was praying for.
Speaker 2: The best, and then I was just praying that it
Speaker 2: would be manslaughter. And when they convicted me of murder,
Speaker 2: I remember the judge. I don't know if it was
Speaker 2: then or my senses, but I remember the judge giving
Speaker 2: me an opportunity to say something, and my lawyer basically.
Speaker 1: Saying to be remorseful, you know, And.
Speaker 2: I remember me telling the judge I started to say,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sorry about these guys' deaths. And I
Speaker 2: remember I said, I'm sorry about these guys' deaths, but
Speaker 2: I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: That's all I can say.
Speaker 2: I said, I really didn't do it, and that was
Speaker 2: all I can say it, you know, Like my lawyer
Speaker 2: was kind of like pushing me say something, be remorseful,
Speaker 2: try to, you know, but I just I was stuck
Speaker 2: because all I kept telling was I didn't do it,
Speaker 2: and that was it.
Speaker 5: You know. It's shocking to me that I don't think
Speaker 5: any maybe there's one state that has mandatory videotaping of
Speaker 5: witness statements, right, because the witnesses, as you said, can
Speaker 5: be led very easily. They can be influenced, they could
Speaker 5: be fed information, and eyewitness identification is such a tremendous factor.
Speaker 5: It's the number one cause of wrongful company.
Speaker 6: Right because even though we know how frequently witnesses eyewitnesses
Speaker 6: are wrong, even though we have a zillion studies that
Speaker 6: has shown this, when somebody gets it up there in
Speaker 6: the courtroom and looks at the defendant and points at
Speaker 6: the defendant and said, it's him. I'll never forget his
Speaker 6: face as long as he lives. People believe that, just
Speaker 6: like people believe that only guilty people make confessions, and
Speaker 6: so they believe the false confessions. They believe the bad
Speaker 6: eyewitness identification. So that's what I think people should. And obviously,
Speaker 6: if you have no forensic evidence, especially these days where
Speaker 6: you know there's DNA, there's cell phones, cell phone towers,
Speaker 6: Google searches, we all leave these electronic signatures. If all
Speaker 6: of that is kind of missing, then you should be
Speaker 6: really skeptical about this.
Speaker 5: In this country, if I was redoing the justice system,
Speaker 5: I might put in a rule that says that if
Speaker 5: there's no corroborating evidence other than a cross racial identification,
Speaker 5: the case is not going well.
Speaker 6: At least a cross racial identification of a stranger. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, if it happens to be your wife or something,
Speaker 6: then that's.
Speaker 5: Right, fair enough, But that's that's not the that's not
Speaker 5: the common.
Speaker 2: Let me say also that I think that there has
Speaker 2: to be open discovery also because in my case specifically,
Speaker 2: like I said, the prosecutor knew that a previous attempt
Speaker 2: had been made on these guys. They knewice a month
Speaker 2: after my arrest, you know, so.
Speaker 1: They if they had.
Speaker 2: Turned that information over to the defense, you know, and
Speaker 2: assuming that the defense lawyer would have investigated, because he
Speaker 2: did invested anything else, but assuming that he had that information,
Speaker 2: he would investigate it.
Speaker 1: That was reasonable doubt. That's what I needed.
Speaker 6: And people don't realize that even in place like New York,
Speaker 6: which is fancied as a progressive state, we have trial
Speaker 6: by ambush. And by that I mean you don't get
Speaker 6: the witness statements against you until the day of jury selection,
Speaker 6: or maybe a day earlier, just so we don't have
Speaker 6: to disrupt jury selection. All of that material, all of
Speaker 6: the things the witnesses said they saw you do, you
Speaker 6: don't get that until your trial is just about to begin,
Speaker 6: which of course makes taking an intelligent plea impossible because
Speaker 6: you have no idea what it is they have against you.
Speaker 6: It makes investigation impossible, especially if you're innocent, you don't
Speaker 6: have any idea who the witnesses are. If you're guilty,
Speaker 6: it's easier because oh yeah, yeah, Joe and Snappy they
Speaker 6: were there. You know, I can tell you all about them,
Speaker 6: what's wrong with them. But if you're totally innocent, you
Speaker 6: have no idea who these people are, then there's no
Speaker 6: investigation that can take place.
Speaker 5: Right. Trial by ambushers dates back to hundreds of years
Speaker 5: ago in England where they used to think that, you know,
Speaker 5: this was the best way to get to the truth
Speaker 5: was by ambushing people so they wouldn't have time to
Speaker 5: get a defense together. So, Shabaka, you end up getting sentenced.
Speaker 2: To forty years two sentences of twenty to life running consecutively.
Speaker 5: Forty years life. You were twenty two years old at
Speaker 5: the time, right, so we know that when you hear
Speaker 5: these census fifteen to life, twenty to life, forty to life,
Speaker 5: it really means life unless you're willing to take a
Speaker 5: plea to something you didn't do. So because the parole
Speaker 5: board doesn't want to hear that same story you told
Speaker 5: in the courtroom, I'm innocent, I didn't do it. I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: these people are dead. Nobody wants to hear that shit.
Speaker 5: So you go to prison. Which prison were you sent to?
Speaker 1: First prison I was sent to was sing sing.
Speaker 5: And sing sing back then? Was? I mean, it's still
Speaker 5: a very intimidating place just to visit, and to go
Speaker 5: there as young man at twenty two years old, you
Speaker 5: must have been scared out of your wits.
Speaker 2: I think that at the beginning, I went through a
Speaker 2: whole transition of emotions at the beginning, Like I said,
Speaker 2: it was my failure to accept what had happened. I
Speaker 2: just kept believing that the best outcome was gonna happen.
Speaker 2: When my appeals started getting denied, there was a time
Speaker 2: of anger in which, you know, I ended up getting
Speaker 2: in trouble going to the box solitary confinement for years,
Speaker 2: you know, because I was just so angry that my
Speaker 2: mind was thinking, you know, these guys put me in here,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna give them hell, you know. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: until I think I was in solitary confinement that I
Speaker 2: met other brothers in there that had been in there
Speaker 2: for years, and they would ask me, you know, what
Speaker 2: are you here for? And I would say, I'm innocent,
Speaker 2: but I've been charged with two murders and they would
Speaker 2: tell me, you can't.
Speaker 1: Give up, you know.
Speaker 2: And I started to see guys that I had came
Speaker 2: to prison with who were doing five years, ten years,
Speaker 2: and they were going home, and it started to dawn
Speaker 2: on me that I would never go home, that this
Speaker 2: was going to.
Speaker 1: Be my life from now on unless I.
Speaker 2: Seriously got into trying to find a way out. And
Speaker 2: it became a revelation that it wasn't going to be
Speaker 2: through somebody else helping me, that it had to be me.
Speaker 2: So I started to go to school. I went to college,
Speaker 2: I got a college degree. I started to learn law,
Speaker 2: started taking law classes. At the time, Cornell was giving
Speaker 2: law classes inside the prison, so I started signing up
Speaker 2: for law classes. I got a job in the law library,
Speaker 2: started learning by working through with other people's cases, helping
Speaker 2: them with their cases, and it happened to be the
Speaker 2: best thing that could have ever happened to me, because
Speaker 2: working in the law library, I kept running into cases.
Speaker 1: That had to do with Detective Scarseller. You know.
Speaker 2: So as I'm reading people's cases and I'm saying, this
Speaker 2: is the same detective in my case, and I'm asking
Speaker 2: them questions about their case, and he said, yeah, he
Speaker 2: set me up. And then I'm saying, yeah, he set
Speaker 2: me up too. But then when it became like two people,
Speaker 2: three people, four people, I started to see the pattern
Speaker 2: and I said, wow, he didn't just do this to me,
Speaker 2: He did it to.
Speaker 1: A lot of people, you know.
Speaker 2: And I started to formulate in my own mind that
Speaker 2: the only way I was going to get.
Speaker 1: Out was to expose Scarsella.
Speaker 2: We had to show that this guy was a crooked cop,
Speaker 2: I think it was.
Speaker 1: I had started working on my motion.
Speaker 2: And I met up with Derek Hamilton, who was also
Speaker 2: a scar Seller case.
Speaker 1: He had already put in his motion.
Speaker 2: He was waiting for his response, and I told him,
Speaker 2: I said, look, we need to expose this guy. We
Speaker 2: need to really concentrate on Scarseller. He's the key, you know.
Speaker 2: I told him, I said I know about three or
Speaker 2: four guys who he set up, and he told me, well,
Speaker 2: I know about three or four guys too, and we
Speaker 2: started comparing our notes. So, like I said, he had
Speaker 2: already pushed his motion. So in my motion, I started
Speaker 2: focusing on Scarseller. Even though I started arguing the actual
Speaker 2: innocence claim, a portion of it was saying that Scarsella
Speaker 2: should not be believed because of his suspicious actions in
Speaker 2: all these cases. And I started enumerting cases in which
Speaker 2: it was very suspicious of confessions and evidence that, you know.
Speaker 2: So as I did that we happened to look up
Speaker 2: that Derek was paroled, and because he was paroled, he
Speaker 2: was outside.
Speaker 1: And by then we had started.
Speaker 2: Gathering people, me and him and Danny Mincom, who was
Speaker 2: another guy that was innocent. We all worked in the
Speaker 2: law library and we started working together as a group,
Speaker 2: and we formed our own group which we call AI,
Speaker 2: which was to us, meant the actual innocence guys, and
Speaker 2: we would work on actual innocence cases. Like if somebody
Speaker 2: came and said we're innocent, we would sit down with
Speaker 2: them and really grill them to see, if you know,
Speaker 2: go over their evidence, go over their case to see
Speaker 2: if they were really innocent, and if we believed it,
Speaker 2: we would take them in and we would work with
Speaker 2: their case too.
Speaker 5: Now you actually had a law firm in prison, Yes,
Speaker 5: which is pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: You know, all three of us were law clerks and
Speaker 2: we knew the law, but our specialty was really that
Speaker 2: actual innocence. So we started working on people's cases like that.
Speaker 5: It's incredible. I mean, just visualizing the law firm in prison,
Speaker 5: it's just so. And I know Derek very well, you know,
Speaker 5: I know Derek, and he's he's a brilliant guy. I
Speaker 5: mean an incredible, incredible legal mind, and his story is amazing.
Speaker 5: Of course he's been on the podcast as well on
Speaker 5: wrongful conviction. So that was your moment where you actually
Speaker 5: sort of found this, you know, inner strength and this
Speaker 5: desire to better yourself and in the process find a
Speaker 5: way to get yourself out, which you did the same
Speaker 5: for a number of other guys that are still in there.
Speaker 5: And that's you know, and that's so inspiring to people
Speaker 5: like me who are in this movement. Realize that we
Speaker 5: don't have endless amounts of time. I do want to
Speaker 5: get to the conclusion, and Ron I want to get
Speaker 5: back to you, and then we're going to finish up
Speaker 5: with you. So you get involved. And what was the
Speaker 5: magic bullet? What was the silver bullet here? How did
Speaker 5: you manage to help Shebaka find his way out of
Speaker 5: this morass? Twenty seven years later?
Speaker 6: There wasn't a magic bullet. There were a lot of
Speaker 6: numerous small, non magic bullets that eventually perforated the target sufficiently.
Speaker 6: Shebacca has sent me hist of papers, and you know,
Speaker 6: it was an amazing set of papers. It was the
Speaker 6: amazing if a lawyer had done it was even more
Speaker 6: impressive that it was. It came from people who have
Speaker 6: the fewest resources and the least formal legal education, although
Speaker 6: they did have a lot of time and they had
Speaker 6: a lot of motivation. And I recognized Scarcella from the
Speaker 6: earlier days and recognized this is exactly the kind of
Speaker 6: stuff he did, and I felt we could win this,
Speaker 6: and so I agreed to take the case. Shebaka made
Speaker 6: it very clear that Okay, he's happy that I'm taking
Speaker 6: the case, but he remains in control of strategic decisions.
Speaker 6: He had had enough lawyers telling him what was best
Speaker 6: for him, and I agreed with that and agreed to
Speaker 6: work under those conditions. And then it just became a
Speaker 6: very long process. The judge granted a hearing. Before we
Speaker 6: went to hearing, all of the stuff about Scarcella emerged.
Speaker 6: The new information was found. Shabaka had managed to find
Speaker 6: a couple of witnesses who were there with Harley Young,
Speaker 6: the star eye witness, who were in the building with
Speaker 6: him at the time the shooting took place. They came
Speaker 6: forward the alibi witnesses whoever the lawyer saw back then,
Speaker 6: the young women he saw back then that he didn't
Speaker 6: want to put on the stand. The middle aged women
Speaker 6: right now were extremely impressive, regular citizens, hard working, smart,
Speaker 6: very very persuasive, and over a series of I guess
Speaker 6: about a year of hearings, finally the judge wrote a
Speaker 6: very strong decision vacating his conviction and stating for the
Speaker 6: record that there was a significant likelihood that Scarcela had
Speaker 6: fabricated the confession. And at that point the DA's office,
Speaker 6: under new leadership now under Ken Thompson, called me and
Speaker 6: said we're done, We're not appealing, we're not retrying. Charges
Speaker 6: will be dismissed, and Shabaka walked out. In June of
Speaker 6: twenty fifteen.
Speaker 5: Yes, how did you get the news that the conviction
Speaker 5: was being vacated after this crazy ordeal? Where were you?
Speaker 2: I was in prison in Shriwanka Correctional Facility. At my
Speaker 2: job I used to work at that point, I was
Speaker 2: working at the Grievance Department because they would no longer
Speaker 2: let me work in the law library. So I was
Speaker 2: working at the grievance department and the officer came and said,
Speaker 2: 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 they reversed your case. So initially
Speaker 1: I wasn't.
Speaker 2: Sure if she was correct, because you know, she could
Speaker 2: have got it confused and wanted to hear from somebody officially.
Speaker 2: So I hung up and I called Leah Busby, who
Speaker 2: is the attorney with Ron Cooby on my case. And
Speaker 2: Leah was like excited. She said, they reversed your case
Speaker 2: and you're gonna come home, you know, And I was shocked.
Speaker 1: But my first question, like, when is now tomorrow? When?
Speaker 2: So they was like, as soon as the paperwork clear,
Speaker 2: you're getting out. And it took a few days, but no,
Speaker 2: it was the shortest time ever because I knew I
Speaker 2: was getting out soon.
Speaker 5: Did you sleep during those three days?
Speaker 2: Yes, everybody thought, and that's a question that people always ask,
Speaker 2: the anxiety of those last few days, But to be
Speaker 2: honest with you, it was the most common days of
Speaker 2: the whole bit. The anxiety comes when you don't know
Speaker 2: what's happened, but when you know, okay, I'm getting out
Speaker 2: of here in the next couple of days, like all
Speaker 2: my stress was gone.
Speaker 5: I was wondering about that because there's people people follow
Speaker 5: me on Instagram, which I'm at. It's Jason Flommer, of course,
Speaker 5: but people follow me know that. Yesterday I walked a
Speaker 5: guy out of prison in Virginia, Lenny Singleton, after twenty
Speaker 5: three years, and I was wondering. I forgot to ask
Speaker 5: him that, but I was wondering whether he had got
Speaker 5: any sleep the night before, knowing that he was going
Speaker 5: to get out the next day. But yeah, I guess
Speaker 5: it's one of the others. You don't sleep at all.
Speaker 5: You sleep like a baby. And now shabaka. The best
Speaker 5: part of the show every week is when everyone stops
Speaker 5: talking and lets you well in this case you, but
Speaker 5: whoever the featured guest on the show is just have
Speaker 5: the mic to say whatever it is you want. One
Speaker 5: thing I am interested in knowing is whether you feel
Speaker 5: bitter about what happened to you and what and how
Speaker 5: you're how you're processing all this and moving forward. But uh,
Speaker 5: this is this is that time, So the mic is yours.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't feel bitter. I feel.
Speaker 2: I feel sad that the people haven't taken that there's
Speaker 2: been no accountability, you know, like he said that Scarcella
Speaker 2: is still basically has gotten away with what he's done.
Speaker 2: He's ruined lives, not just minds, but noumerous others, and
Speaker 2: then people don't even realize that it's not just a defendant,
Speaker 2: it's the families.
Speaker 1: It's my mother and my father.
Speaker 2: My mother died while I was in prison, and I
Speaker 2: never got a chance to spend no time with her.
Speaker 2: My father died within the year of me coming home,
Speaker 2: and even when I came home, he was suffering from
Speaker 2: dementia and didn't even know I was home, so they
Speaker 2: never got to see me as a free man. It's
Speaker 2: families that get destroyed because of the situation that he created.
Speaker 2: And it's and like I said, it's not just me,
Speaker 2: it's doesn't so far. That saddens me because they were
Speaker 2: people who could have stopped it. Not only Detective Scarseller,
Speaker 2: but everybody who allowed it to go on is complicit,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. The district attorneys, the other
Speaker 2: police officers, the judges who looked at this case and
Speaker 2: seeing all of these gaping holes in the story, continue
Speaker 2: to allow it. Everybody's responsible for this, and until we
Speaker 2: actually take personal responsibility to say, Okay, I'm gonna do
Speaker 2: something to not let this go on, it's going to continue.
Speaker 2: Because that's the way the criminal justice system has been
Speaker 2: created to protect people like Detective Scarseller. That's like I said,
Speaker 2: I'm not bitter, I'm just saden that we haven't realized
Speaker 2: that and done something more about that situation. Since I've
Speaker 2: been home now, I continue to work with certain cases.
Speaker 2: You know, Danny wyn Kong's one, Stephen Brathway is another,
Speaker 2: James Jenkins. These are people who I know are and
Speaker 2: a centing who are incarcerated, and continue to work with them.
Speaker 2: I've been able to put my life back in order
Speaker 2: to some extent, as far as you know, to reconnect
Speaker 2: with my family, my brothers, my sisters, my nephews, my nieces,
Speaker 2: people who you know, I have nephews and nieces who
Speaker 2: never even saw me. You know, they was raised hearing
Speaker 2: about their uncle, but never having the opportunity to see me.
Speaker 2: So it gives me a time to put back my family.
Speaker 2: I'm working now. I own a restaurant in Brooklyn and
Speaker 2: Bedstine seven one eight Live eleven fourteen Forton Street and
Speaker 2: definitely come there and eat with us and enjoy it
Speaker 2: because not only is he a restaurant, but it's an
Speaker 2: event space where we do things to give back to
Speaker 2: the community. Like we're always having some type of event
Speaker 2: in which we interact with the community and we try
Speaker 2: to give back. You know, I spent most of my
Speaker 2: life in prison, so I want to be able to
Speaker 2: really interact with the world now that I'm home, and
Speaker 2: to be some type of example for that. Even in prison,
Speaker 2: you can come out and do something positive that because
Speaker 2: there's a fear of guys in prison, and the fear
Speaker 2: is purposely promoted so that people can do what they
Speaker 2: want to do without anybody having any empathy for those
Speaker 2: guys in prison.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm really happy to see you out here doing
Speaker 5: good things. If people want to reach out to you,
Speaker 5: if they want to learn more about these cases that
Speaker 5: you just talked about, if they want to get involved
Speaker 5: in help, how can they do that? Do you do Facebook?
Speaker 5: Because you want to get paid at.
Speaker 1: My Facebook page is shabakakor they can go up there.
Speaker 2: I'm always posting stuff about these cases and about stuff
Speaker 2: that we're involved in and stuff that we're doing.
Speaker 1: So if you follow me on Facebook, you can catch
Speaker 1: up on everything that we're doing.
Speaker 5: Okaybacca Shakur and of course that's s h A b
Speaker 5: A k A and Shakour like Tupac Shakur. Everybody knows
Speaker 5: how to spell that, So yeah, I please do get involved,
Speaker 5: follow Shabaka and let's get these other guys home and
Speaker 5: keep this momentum going. So I want to thank both
Speaker 5: of you for coming and dropping some knowledge with everybody
Speaker 5: here on Wrong for Conviction. Ron, thank you, Thank you, Ron,
Speaker 5: Kooby stars the wrong Man is the show and Shabacca
Speaker 5: Shakur is the right man for the job, and he's
Speaker 5: going to go get these other guys out and I'm
Speaker 5: going to help him. Everybody get involved. So Shabaka, thank
Speaker 5: you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 5: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 5: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 5: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 5: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org
Speaker 5: to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like
Speaker 5: to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 5: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 5: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 5: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Speaker 5: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava
Speaker 5: for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one