Speaker 1: Hey, it's Laura and I writer. This week on False Confessions,
Speaker 1: we're bringing you the deeply compelling story of Tira Patterson,
Speaker 1: a young woman who was coerced into confessing to a robbery,
Speaker 1: but then who ended up with a murder conviction. The
Speaker 1: reasons for this include archaic rules, teenage drama, and plenty
Speaker 1: of dirty police tactics. It's a story too good for
Speaker 1: me to spoil before you get to the episode. But
Speaker 1: this week we wanted to bring you an update on
Speaker 1: Tyra and the incredible impact her story and her work
Speaker 1: has made on the community. She's still working with the
Speaker 1: Ohio Justice and Policy Center as a community outreach strategist,
Speaker 1: and she recently joined represent Justice, a project that turns
Speaker 1: stories like hers into change in the system. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, Ohio State Representative Jean Schmidt proposed a bill
Speaker 1: that would abolish the death penalty in Ohio. She cited
Speaker 1: her meeting with Tyra as a catalyst for the new bill. Tyra,
Speaker 1: you're a rock star and a change maker. Keep doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing, but there's still more to come. Late
Speaker 1: last year, filming wrapped up on a documentary film about
Speaker 1: Tyra's life and work. We're so excited for its twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three release and so excited to see what Tyra
Speaker 1: will accomplish. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura,
Speaker 1: and I writer, and I'm Steve Dressing. In today's episode,
Speaker 1: will take you to Dayton, Ohio to tell you about
Speaker 1: Tyra Patterson. Nineteen year old Tira falsely confessed to stealing
Speaker 1: a necklace, but an obscure law turned her false confession
Speaker 1: to robbery into something far worse.
Speaker 2: I was sitting in my office one day in the
Speaker 2: phone rank and on the other end of the call
Speaker 2: was David Singleton, the director of a group called the
Speaker 2: Ohio Justice and Policy Center. David was looking for somebody
Speaker 2: who could assist him in a case that involved a
Speaker 2: false confession. It was Tyra Patterson's case. We've told a
Speaker 2: lot of stories about people who falsely confessed to murders
Speaker 2: last season, but the crazy thing is, this is a
Speaker 2: case where a false confession to robbery is converted into
Speaker 2: a false conviction for murder. And it's all because of
Speaker 2: an obscure, archaic rule called the felony murder doctrine. The
Speaker 2: felony murder leads to people going down for murders who
Speaker 2: never killed anyone.
Speaker 1: When most people think about people in prison who they'd
Speaker 1: been convicted of murder, they think of truly bad people,
Speaker 1: you know, scary folks. But there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people in prison for murder who never touched a gun
Speaker 1: or a murder weapon at all.
Speaker 2: The prisons are filled with people convicted of felony murder,
Speaker 2: people like Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 1: Today's story starts in Dayton, Ohio. It was a manufacturing
Speaker 1: town back in the day, but those jobs left in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties and never came back now. Dayton's
Speaker 1: claim to fame is that the guys who invented the
Speaker 1: airplane used to live there, Wilbur and Orville Wright. In fact,
Speaker 1: our story starts in a part of town named after
Speaker 1: the Wright brothers, a lower income, mixed race neighborhood called
Speaker 1: Right View. It was just after midnight on a Tuesday
Speaker 1: in Right View, September twentieth, nineteen ninety four. Tyra Patterson
Speaker 1: was awake and bored. Tyra was nineteen and smart as
Speaker 1: hell with a sunny personality. She was full of promise,
Speaker 1: but there weren't many open doors in front of her.
Speaker 1: Tyra's home life was really tough. Her dad was an
Speaker 1: alcoholic who hit her mom when he'd been drinking. He
Speaker 1: left when Tyra was just a kid, and they got
Speaker 1: evicted when her mom couldn't pay the bills. Tyra dropped
Speaker 1: out of school in sixth grade. She was tired of
Speaker 1: the other kids bullying her about being poor. She got
Speaker 1: a job at a fast food restaurant, and they put
Speaker 1: her at the register because she was so friendly. But
Speaker 1: Tyra hadn't learned enough math to make change. She was
Speaker 1: humiliated every time someone handed her at twenty and.
Speaker 2: Quit the job.
Speaker 1: By the time Tyra reached her late teens, the family
Speaker 1: had found an apartment to live in again, but Tyra
Speaker 1: had lost her way. She smoked a lot of weed
Speaker 1: and tried not to think about how her life could
Speaker 1: have been different. It was around two am on September
Speaker 1: twentieth when Tyra's boring night started getting a little too interesting.
Speaker 1: Tyra and her friend Rebecca were hanging out at Tyra's place,
Speaker 1: and they decided to go for a walk outside. They
Speaker 1: ran into five other young people from right View. Tyra
Speaker 1: barely knew most of them, but she and Rebecca stuck
Speaker 1: around anyway. The group was mixed gender and mixed. Five
Speaker 1: were black, including Tyra, and two were white, including Rebecca.
Speaker 1: To keep things clear in our story, we're going to
Speaker 1: call all of them the Right View Group. Sometime after
Speaker 1: two am, a gray Chevrolet rolled into an alley near
Speaker 1: where the group was hanging out. The Chevy was filled
Speaker 1: with five teenagers, all white girls from another part of town.
Speaker 1: They'd driven to Right View to steal stuff from people's
Speaker 1: garages in the alley. Two of these would be thieves
Speaker 1: got out of the Chevy to steal a radio. They
Speaker 1: were gone about ten minutes before they returned to the
Speaker 1: car in a hurry. Following them on foot were three
Speaker 1: members of the Right View Group, Lashawna, Angie, and Joe,
Speaker 1: and on a leash. Joe had a pit bull. Before
Speaker 1: the girls in the Chevy can drive away, another car
Speaker 1: pulls up in front of them, blocking the alley's exit.
Speaker 1: It's the other four members of the Right View Group,
Speaker 1: and crammed into a corner of that car. Wondering what
Speaker 1: she's gotten herself into is Tira Patterson. Tyra's friend. Rebecca
Speaker 1: gets out of the car and heads for the Chevy
Speaker 1: along with the other Right View people. Not knowing what
Speaker 1: else to do, Tyra gets out too, but she's not
Speaker 1: prepared for what happens next. There's a confrontation. Everyone starts yelling.
Speaker 1: One of the right View girls, not Tyra, calls the
Speaker 1: girls in the Chevy white bitches. Two other right View
Speaker 1: girls join in, still not Tyra, and start telling the
Speaker 1: girls in the Chevy to check it in. That means
Speaker 1: throw your money and jewelry on the ground. The girls
Speaker 1: in the Chevy don't immediately comply, and that's when things
Speaker 1: really escalate. Tyra hangs back, but three of the right
Speaker 1: View girls open the car doors and start landing punches.
Speaker 1: Joe lets his pit bull into the car and orders
Speaker 1: it to attack. Now it's a melee. Some of the
Speaker 1: girls in the Chevy do check it in, throwing their
Speaker 1: jewelry onto the ground. Tyra's not used to this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. She doesn't have a record, and she has
Speaker 1: no interest in violence. She tries to calm the situation down,
Speaker 1: but no one listens. As the punch is intensify, Tyra
Speaker 1: and her friend and Rebecca starts slipping away. They want
Speaker 1: no part of this, but as they leave, Tyra spots
Speaker 1: a necklace on the ground costume jewelry, a cheap gold cross.
Speaker 1: She's never owned that kind of jewelry, and it seems
Speaker 1: valuable to her. Tyra picks up the necklace, puts it
Speaker 1: in her pocket, and keeps walking away.
Speaker 2: When Tyra picked up that necklace, at worst it was
Speaker 2: a theft. It might not even have been a crime.
Speaker 2: Picking up a necklace off the ground is not something
Speaker 2: that prosecutors are interested in. It's not something that people
Speaker 2: go to prison for, and it's certainly not murder.
Speaker 1: Right as Tyra's walking away, she hears words being yelled,
Speaker 1: yelled maybe to her by one of the girls in
Speaker 1: the chevy. Eighteen year old Holly Lay, Please make them stop.
Speaker 1: Holly calls, we don't have anything. Before Tyra can respond,
Speaker 1: a gunshot rings out. Lashawn Aa Keeney, part of the
Speaker 1: Right View group, had pulled out a gun and fired
Speaker 1: into the car. The bullet went straight into the temple
Speaker 1: of Michelle Lay, Holly's fifteen year old sister. Michelle died instantly.
Speaker 1: Later on another one of the Right View girls, Angie,
Speaker 1: expressed bewilderment that had all happened so fast. We just
Speaker 1: meant to punk them out, she said. Within minutes though
Speaker 1: punking out turned into murder. The moment the shots rang out,
Speaker 1: everyone scattered. Most members of the Right View Group fled
Speaker 1: to a nearby motel, but Tyra ran to her apartment
Speaker 1: only a few hundred feet away, where she panicked and
Speaker 1: flushed the necklace down the toilet. She was afraid it
Speaker 1: would connect her to a shooting she didn't commit. For
Speaker 1: her part, Holly Lay got out of the Chevy and
Speaker 1: started banging on doors, pleading desperately for someone, anyone to
Speaker 1: call an ambulance help her sister. Eventually, someone did call
Speaker 1: nine one one. It was Tyra. A Police only needed
Speaker 1: about twelve hours to figure out who'd been there when
Speaker 1: Michelle Lay was shot. The girls from the Chevy gave
Speaker 1: some pretty good descriptions of both their assailants and the pitbull.
Speaker 1: Police found the dogs sitting outside its owner's house, and
Speaker 1: when the owner matched the girl's descriptions of Joe, police
Speaker 1: knew they'd found one of the Right View Group. Pretty soon,
Speaker 1: several people had been rounded up and the police were
Speaker 1: knocking at Tyra's door. Two before long, Tyra Patterson found
Speaker 1: herself in an interrogation room.
Speaker 3: This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance
Speaker 3: company and Paul Weiss Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading
Speaker 3: international law firm. The AIG pro Bono program provides free
Speaker 3: legal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and
Speaker 3: in individuals most in need, and recently they announced that
Speaker 3: working to reform the criminal justice system will become a
Speaker 3: key pillar of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long
Speaker 3: had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful pro bono legal
Speaker 3: assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and
Speaker 3: in support of the public interest, including extensive work in
Speaker 3: the criminal justice area.
Speaker 1: The police were angry. The shooting was tragic, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to nail as many people as possible for murder,
Speaker 1: not just Lashana who pulled the trigger, but the others too.
Speaker 1: But how do you get someone who didn't kill anyone
Speaker 1: to go down for murder. Well, one tool that police
Speaker 1: and prosecutors have is that felony murder rule. We mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: This little known law can be the source of enormous injustice.
Speaker 2: In its purest form, the felony murder rule is felony
Speaker 2: plus death equals first to go. So if you commit
Speaker 2: a felony and during the course of that felony, someone dies.
Speaker 2: You are convicted of first degree murder, even though you
Speaker 2: never intended to kill somebody, even though you couldn't have
Speaker 2: foreseen that somebody would have died. It is the intent
Speaker 2: to commit that felony that substitutes for the intent to kill.
Speaker 2: They didn't coerce Tyra into confessing to murder because they
Speaker 2: knew before the interrogation who the murderer was. It was Lashawnakini.
Speaker 2: All they needed to do was get Tyra to say
Speaker 2: that she grabbed a necklace by force from one of
Speaker 2: the girls in the car. That's a robbery. They could
Speaker 2: get her for the same murder that Lashawna Keeney committed.
Speaker 1: So getting Tyra to say she snatched the necklace instead
Speaker 1: of picking it up is what this interrogation is all about. Now,
Speaker 1: like all interrogations that aren't fully recorded, there are two
Speaker 1: stories about what happened in the room. There is the
Speaker 1: official story told in police reports, and then there's the
Speaker 1: story told by the defendant. They almost always diverge. In
Speaker 1: Tyra's case, the police story goes like this. Tyra admitted
Speaker 1: to being there, but she denied being involved in the robbery,
Speaker 1: assault or shooting. But as she was being booked, Tyra
Speaker 1: spontaneously announced that she wanted to tell the truth and
Speaker 1: admitted reaching into the car and grabbing the necklace off
Speaker 1: one of the girls. That's when police captured her confession
Speaker 1: on videotape. No coercion, no drama. But according to Tyra
Speaker 1: and her lawyer, she confessed after a very different sequence
Speaker 1: of events. Here's David Singleton, that lawyer who called Steve
Speaker 1: about this case. David has represented Tyra for the past
Speaker 1: eight years.
Speaker 4: Tyra recalls very clearly the detective screaming at her, saying
Speaker 4: she's a murderer, that she's going to be locked up
Speaker 4: for the rest of her life, cursing at her telling
Speaker 4: her she's an effing liar, was saying I didn't rob anybody,
Speaker 4: I didn't shoot anybody. Eventually, the detective takes Tyra out
Speaker 4: of the interrogation room and walks her past where Tyra
Speaker 4: could see Rebecca sitting in a police car about to
Speaker 4: go home. And Tyra's like, well, you know Rebecca's going home.
Speaker 4: Why am I not going home? The detective said, well,
Speaker 4: she gave us a videotape statement, and Tyra said, well,
Speaker 4: I give you a videotape statement. The detective said, well,
Speaker 4: you don't have anything to tell us, and Tyra said, well,
Speaker 4: I picked up a necklace from the ground, and the
Speaker 4: detective smiled and took her back in to try and
Speaker 4: charge her.
Speaker 1: The police tell Tyra she just needs to change one
Speaker 1: thing in her story about the necklace. She didn't pick
Speaker 1: it up off the ground. Instead, she robbed it from
Speaker 1: the girls. After all, they say, wouldn't it be better
Speaker 1: to go down for a robbery than for murder? Getting
Speaker 1: caught up in a murder is what Tyra's been terrified
Speaker 1: of all along, so this is what breaks her. She
Speaker 1: falsely admits to snatching the necklace off one of the
Speaker 1: girls in the chevy. Now she's confessed to robbery and
Speaker 1: the cops have their felony. It's only at this point
Speaker 1: that the video camera gets turned on.
Speaker 5: Describe the necklace? Is it a gold necklace?
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have web that.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I grab it, okay?
Speaker 2: And from which girl in the back seat did you
Speaker 2: take that?
Speaker 4: Next the driver? Okay, from the person behind the driver okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: What struck me about Tyra's appearance in that video is
Speaker 4: she did look tired.
Speaker 2: She also looks scared.
Speaker 4: At one point, you hear somebody screaming in another room,
Speaker 4: and she's just terrified. And another point I recall very vividly,
Speaker 4: she's looking to the detective for an answer. I mean,
Speaker 4: she was trying to satisfy what he wanted because she
Speaker 4: thought that was her ticket to go back home and
Speaker 4: continue on with her life. And the minute that she
Speaker 4: finished the video and the camera was turned off, she said,
Speaker 4: do I get to go home now? And he said no,
Speaker 4: I'm booking you for murder. That's when the nightmare truly began.
Speaker 1: How is Tyra to know that one little change in
Speaker 1: her story was enough to charge her not just with robbery,
Speaker 1: but with felony murder, That one little change made Tira
Speaker 1: as liable for Michelle Lay's death as the murderer herself.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a huge irony in this case. They
Speaker 2: needed Tyra to confess to a robbery, not a theft,
Speaker 2: and the way they did it was they told her
Speaker 2: it's better to go down for a robbery than it
Speaker 2: is for a murder, and she accepted that explanation.
Speaker 1: She believed that premise.
Speaker 2: Everybody believes that, of course, because they don't understand the
Speaker 2: felony murder rule. We've seen police officers lie before, but
Speaker 2: this is a particularly dangerous lie because it sets somebody
Speaker 2: up for murder charges.
Speaker 1: There's actually a second irony in this case too, because
Speaker 1: here you have the felony murder rule being applied to
Speaker 1: Tyra Patterson. She didn't have a weapon with her that night.
Speaker 1: She didn't know the people who did come to that
Speaker 1: scene with weapons. She tried to intervene and stop the fight.
Speaker 1: She tried to de escalate as things were getting more
Speaker 1: serious and more violent, and when she couldn't stop the fight,
Speaker 1: she walked away after the gunshot. She called nine to
Speaker 1: one to one. Tyra is a hero here. She's not
Speaker 1: a murderer. She's the one, though, who ends up going down.
Speaker 1: Tyra Patterson's only crime, if it even was a crime,
Speaker 1: was picking up a necklace from the ground. But suddenly,
Speaker 1: somehow she was on trial for murder and facing life
Speaker 1: in prison. And like too many murder trials, Tyra's was
Speaker 1: a shit show.
Speaker 4: So Tyra was represented by attorneys in the local public
Speaker 4: Defender office. The problem was that they were overwhelmed and
Speaker 4: didn't have the resources to defend Tyra.
Speaker 2: Appropriately.
Speaker 1: The primary evidence against Tyra was her confession, but her
Speaker 1: attorneys never argued that it was false or coerced. In fact,
Speaker 1: no one, not the judge or the jury, ever heard
Speaker 1: Tyra's account of her interrogation. Her attorneys actually advised her
Speaker 1: not to testify in her own defense, not to tell
Speaker 1: her side of the story, and why not.
Speaker 4: They said that she was too unsophisticated and talked too
Speaker 4: much like she was from the ghetto, that she'd be
Speaker 4: eaten alive by the prosecutors. And I think that Tyra
Speaker 4: got ridden off in that way.
Speaker 1: Did hear though from Holly Lay, who testified that she'd
Speaker 1: seen Tyra reaching into the car. A few other girls
Speaker 1: from the Chevy testified the same way. Their stories went
Speaker 1: unchallenged by Tyra's lawyers, even though they could have called
Speaker 1: Rebecca to testify that Tyra never snatched a necklace off anyone.
Speaker 1: The lawyers didn't even play Tyra's nine one call, which
Speaker 1: would have showed that she was trying to help.
Speaker 4: We were able to find out by talking to the
Speaker 4: jurors years later that that nine to one one call
Speaker 4: would have made a difference had they heard it when
Speaker 4: I played it for them. They were like, we never
Speaker 4: would have convicted her had we known.
Speaker 2: That she had called nine one one.
Speaker 4: But the defense gave the jurors nothing to work with.
Speaker 1: Nothing, And that's how Tira Patterson, the woman who never
Speaker 1: touched a gun or robbed anyone, was convicted of one
Speaker 1: kind of aggravated murder and four counts of aggravated robbery.
Speaker 1: When the jury announced its verdict, she stood up and
Speaker 1: shouted in disbelief. But I didn't do it. It didn't matter.
Speaker 1: She was sentenced to forty three years to life. That's
Speaker 1: thirteen more years than Lashawna, who actually pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1: And in December nineteen ninety five, Tira Patterson became Ohio
Speaker 1: Department of Correction's inmate number three seven seven three seven.
Speaker 1: Fast forward to twenty eleven, Tira Patterson had been in
Speaker 1: prison for just over sixteen years, not even halfway through
Speaker 1: her sentence. When she got her first break. Ohio Governor
Speaker 1: Ted Strickland learned about her case. He thought it was
Speaker 1: unfair that her sentence was more severe than the shooters,
Speaker 1: so he issued what's called a commutation.
Speaker 2: Tyra tried to stop this from happening. She walked away
Speaker 2: before the shots were fired. All she did was pick
Speaker 2: up a necklace off of the ground. Lashawna Keeney brought
Speaker 2: the gun to this event and she pulled the trigger
Speaker 2: that led to Michelle Lay's death. It is grossly unfair
Speaker 2: for Lashawna to be sentenced to thirty years and for
Speaker 2: Tyra to be sentenced to forty three years, and that's
Speaker 2: why the governor commuted tyra sentence to sixteen years to life,
Speaker 2: which made her immediately eligible for parole.
Speaker 1: But Tyra's hopes of freedom were dashed a few months later.
Speaker 1: The Ohio Parole Board denied her request for parole, and
Speaker 1: they said she had to wait up to seven years
Speaker 1: before asking again. They said her crime was too severe.
Speaker 1: That's when David Singleton got involved. He'd heard about her
Speaker 1: case from a friend and he decided to go meet
Speaker 1: Tira Patterson. When David met Tyra in prison, she was
Speaker 1: different from that nineteen year old girl whose future looked
Speaker 1: like a broken promise behind bars. Tyra had redeemed her
Speaker 1: own promise. She had gained skills in prison, working as
Speaker 1: a porter, a food service worker, a maintenance person. She'd
Speaker 1: gone from an illiterate sixth grade dropout to someone who
Speaker 1: earned her ged, she'd participated in more than two hundred
Speaker 1: self improvement programs, and most importantly, she was becoming an
Speaker 1: incredible advocate for herself and for justice. When she told
Speaker 1: David she was innocent, he believed her, and he set
Speaker 1: out to prove it, enlisting Steve Drison's help in the process.
Speaker 2: There's no DNA miracle for people like Tyra and for
Speaker 2: most of the people who are locked up in prison.
Speaker 2: I mean, DNA is only present in maybe ten percent
Speaker 2: of all cases.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing. Even if the shooter had left
Speaker 1: DNA on the gun, everybody already knew that Lashana Kini
Speaker 1: was the one who pulled the trigger. This is not
Speaker 1: a case where DNA testing is going to exonerate Tira Patterson.
Speaker 2: What she needed here was a reinvestigation, an advocacy.
Speaker 1: As David and Steve dove into the case against Tyra,
Speaker 1: they found some major cracks. First, David discovered that the
Speaker 1: victim's sister, Holly Lay, had testified at the trial of
Speaker 1: another one of the Right View girls a year before
Speaker 1: Tyra's trial. Back then, Holly had testified that Tyra wasn't
Speaker 1: the one who reached into the car and snatched the necklace.
Speaker 1: It had actually been someone else. Second, David uncovered the
Speaker 1: very first statements the girls in the chevy gave to
Speaker 1: police right after Michelle Lay was shot. And when he
Speaker 1: and Steve reviewed those early statements, well, it was revealing.
Speaker 2: Remember some of these were given within an hour or
Speaker 2: two of the crime, so the memories were fresh for
Speaker 2: their witnesses, and Tyra was like a ghost. The two
Speaker 2: people who were mentioned far less than everybody else in
Speaker 2: all of these accounts were Tyra and Becca, and so
Speaker 2: that's squared with Tyra's story.
Speaker 1: Third, David talked to some of the other Right View girls,
Speaker 1: the ones who were born involved in what went down
Speaker 1: that night. Three of them signed affid David supporting Tyra's innocence,
Speaker 1: including Lashawna Keeney. Lashawna confirmed that far from participating, Tyra
Speaker 1: had actually tried to stop the confrontation from escalating. Before long,
Speaker 1: Tyra's case was attracting attention among some pretty influential people.
Speaker 1: Ohio State Senator Peggy Lanner visited Tyra in prison, and
Speaker 1: she was so compelled by Tyra's story that she got
Speaker 1: four other state senators to back Tyra's efforts for release.
Speaker 1: Celebrities and advocates also began getting involved, everyone from actor
Speaker 1: Elfrey Woodard to mad Men creator Matthew Weener. They began
Speaker 1: tweeting and posting in support of Tyra, using the hashtag
Speaker 1: I Am Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 4: This I Am Tyra Patterson campaign the hashtag. What it
Speaker 4: meant was they were in solidarity with her. People were
Speaker 4: saying We're there for you, we see you, we hear you,
Speaker 4: and that was a powerful message.
Speaker 1: You know, I think the first time I heard the
Speaker 1: name Tira Patterson was when I opened up my Twitter
Speaker 1: feed one day and there I see a video of
Speaker 1: Steve giving a speech and holding a poster that says,
Speaker 1: in big black letters, I am Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 2: That was take five of that video, because the first
Speaker 2: take went along what I thought was really well, and
Speaker 2: then I picked up the sign I am holding it
Speaker 2: upside down. Great. Great. The point of the campaign was
Speaker 2: to demonstrate that anybody could falsely confess if pressured by
Speaker 2: the police, and I am Tyra Patterson to me, was
Speaker 2: making that message loud and clear. I could have been
Speaker 2: Tira Patterson, nor my child could have been Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 4: That's how Tyra became in my view her best advocate.
Speaker 4: It was exposing people to her so that they could
Speaker 4: see her as a living, breathing daughter, sister, and person
Speaker 4: who was going to shine in the community if we
Speaker 4: could get her free.
Speaker 1: One person this message reached was the victim's sister.
Speaker 4: Twenty sixteen is when Holly Lay got in touch with
Speaker 4: me and her husband said, Holly wants to meet you
Speaker 4: at Michelle's grave on Michelle's birthday. So I showed up.
Speaker 4: I didn't think they were going to come. I was like,
Speaker 4: this cannot be happening. Holly said, you know, Tyra didn't
Speaker 4: do this. And in fact, that night, Tyra walked by
Speaker 4: as we were talking to the police, and the police
Speaker 4: officer looked and said, is that one of the ones
Speaker 4: who was involved? And we all said no.
Speaker 1: On the night of the crime, Holly had seen one
Speaker 1: of the other girls snatch the necklace, not Tyra. But
Speaker 1: when she heard about Tyra's concession, Holly figured she must
Speaker 1: have been mistaken. After all, who would confess to a
Speaker 1: crime they didn't commit. Years later, learned about false confessions
Speaker 1: and she realized Tyra must have given one. Holly's memory
Speaker 1: had been right all along. Tira was innocent. And Holly
Speaker 1: agreed to support Tyra's release. In twenty seventeen, Tira Patterson
Speaker 1: was granted parole after twenty one years behind bars. On
Speaker 1: Christmas morning, she walked out of prison, bent down and
Speaker 1: kissed the winter snow. It wasn't exoneration, but at last
Speaker 1: she was free. To quote Shashank Redemption, Tira Patterson got
Speaker 1: busy living.
Speaker 4: She's my colleague now at the Ohio Justice and Policy Center.
Speaker 4: She's soaring in her job as our community relations expert.
Speaker 4: She speaks multiple times a week to different community groups,
Speaker 4: mentoring young people, not just in our community, but in
Speaker 4: places across the country. Tira basically runs Cincinnati. Everybody knows her.
Speaker 4: She is the brains behind this social justice mural that
Speaker 4: is going up in downtown Cincinnati featuring women who have
Speaker 4: spent a long time in prison and have come home
Speaker 4: and are doing well. And her face is one of
Speaker 4: the ones up there. It's just sad that her life
Speaker 4: was interrupted for twenty three years, but now she's living
Speaker 4: and it's a beautiful thing to see.
Speaker 1: Hello Tira, Hey, Steve, how are you, Hey Tyra?
Speaker 3: It's Laura.
Speaker 5: Hey, Laura, how I'm great?
Speaker 2: Are you at home? I am So Tyra was living
Speaker 2: in an apartment for a while and now she's a homeowner.
Speaker 1: Yes, what was it like to have you in place
Speaker 1: after being in prison so long?
Speaker 5: Oh my god, the privacya no yelling, no strimon no arguing.
Speaker 5: It was beautiful. I slept like a baby.
Speaker 2: I spoke alive.
Speaker 1: Man, if I were you, first thing I would have
Speaker 1: done is like stood in the shower for three hours.
Speaker 1: There's nothing like a long shower.
Speaker 5: No, Laura, I didn't even do that. I stayed in
Speaker 5: a bathtub for three hours. Yes, you know, President, we
Speaker 5: didn't get to take a bath. So all I ever
Speaker 5: wanted to do was just come home and take a
Speaker 5: bubble bath.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go take a bubble bath in your honor.
Speaker 5: To see if I love you.
Speaker 1: Tyra hasn't given up on exoneration. She and her legal
Speaker 1: team are still fighting to clear her name. If you
Speaker 1: want to follow Tyra's case and send her a message
Speaker 1: of support, look her up on Instagram at Tyra dot
Speaker 1: Imani dot seven seven seven. She inspires Steve and Me
Speaker 1: every day. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number
Speaker 1: one special thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardis. Our production team is headed by Senior producer
Speaker 1: and Pope, along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane.
Speaker 1: Our show is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is
Speaker 1: our intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 2: Wrider, and you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizsen.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction