Speaker 1: With the police banging on the door open up. The
Speaker 1: choice to be in that lineup was the last choice
Speaker 1: I made as a free man.
Speaker 2: A year later, I ended up writing the system.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be one of those people who everyone
Speaker 3: in the world is going to think as a monster
Speaker 3: or suspect as a monster for the rest of my life,
Speaker 3: and I'm just going to have to come to peace
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 1: Somebody was able to look at my picture in the
Speaker 1: database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't.
Speaker 2: I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they
Speaker 2: might have to play in my hanging.
Speaker 1: They had been told.
Speaker 4: That two prison officers would have to participate in my execution.
Speaker 2: Now I walked back inside that prison for the last time. Man,
Speaker 2: all help broke loose.
Speaker 1: But welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today
Speaker 1: we have a very special episode, not only because of
Speaker 1: our amazing guest, Dennis Mayer. First of all, Dennis, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Dennis will get into his story in a minute, but
Speaker 1: let's suffice it to say that he was a sergeant
Speaker 1: in the United States Army. When he was wrongfully convicted
Speaker 1: of three rapes and served almost twenty years in prison.
Speaker 1: I also want to introduce Hannah Riley, who's the director
Speaker 1: of communications for the New England Innocence Project, and she's
Speaker 1: the first time on the show, hopefully not the last.
Speaker 1: And then we have a very close friend of mine,
Speaker 1: Alex Spiro. He is a former criminal prosecutor in New
Speaker 1: York and currently a defense attorney. He's also a professor
Speaker 1: at Harvard Law School. Alex, it's great to have you
Speaker 1: on the show as well. Thanks. So Dennis, let's start
Speaker 1: with you. Your case is of great interest, I think, to
Speaker 1: anyone who's interested in this genre, because it touches on
Speaker 1: a number of really important and tragically common problems in
Speaker 1: the wrongful conviction world. The mistake and eye witness identification
Speaker 1: is unique in your case because of the fact that
Speaker 1: there were three different women who identified you under dubious circumstances,
Speaker 1: but nonetheless that identified you. It touches on the storage
Speaker 1: of evidence because in your case the evidence had been
Speaker 1: supposedly lost but actually it wasn't. And that's something that
Speaker 1: is really disturbing to anyone who's interested in justice. It
Speaker 1: deals with incompetent defense counsel. And also it also has
Speaker 1: an element of willful wrongful prosecution. So you really hit
Speaker 1: the jackpot of causes of getting locked up for something
Speaker 1: you didn't do. So let's go back, and this is
Speaker 1: a while ago, right, we're talking nineteen eighty three when
Speaker 1: this all came down.
Speaker 2: That's when it started.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So nineteen eighty three, paint a picture for us.
Speaker 1: You were were you active to do you in the
Speaker 1: military at this time?
Speaker 2: Yes, I was stationed at Fort Devons.
Speaker 1: Right, and you had been in the airborne Right. I
Speaker 1: was a paratrooper paraterooper station in Italy.
Speaker 4: Well, first I was at Fort Bragg, then I volunteered
Speaker 4: to serve overseas. Then I re enlisted to come home
Speaker 4: to Massachusetts, and then I got off a jump status
Speaker 4: to work in my field, which was a diesel mechanic.
Speaker 1: And that's another thing. It's it's really upsetting to me,
Speaker 1: as someone who loves this country and respects the men
Speaker 1: and women of our military. Here you are. You're twenty
Speaker 1: three years old at the time, yep. And what happened.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to that.
Speaker 4: Well, I graduated from high school in seventy eight and
Speaker 4: enlisted in the Army right out of high school, you know.
Speaker 4: I went through Basic training, Advanced Individual Training, Jump school,
Speaker 4: then went to Fort Bragg, then to Becenza, Italy in
Speaker 4: the five or nine, and then to ten Special Forces
Speaker 4: up at Fort Devons. Then I got off of jump
Speaker 4: status to work as a diesel mechanic because what I
Speaker 4: worked on doesn't drop out of. And then from there
Speaker 4: I was living at home and Lowell with my parents.
Speaker 4: I was walking down Westford Street and I was stopped
Speaker 4: by the police. They asked me for identification, so I
Speaker 4: gave him my driver's license, which was outdated because when
Speaker 4: you're in the military you get a cod on the
Speaker 4: back of it that says your license never expires. And
Speaker 4: so well, they asked me for identification. They ran my name,
Speaker 4: which came back negative because I had never been in trouble,
Speaker 4: no speeding, tickets, no nothing. He gave me back my
Speaker 4: ID and then he searched me and he arrested me
Speaker 4: for possession of marijuana. So they brought me to the
Speaker 4: police station and booked me and put me in a
Speaker 4: hold and sell. A couple of hours later, they came
Speaker 4: out and questioned me and they said, where were you
Speaker 4: on the night of November sixteenth, at five point thirty. Well,
Speaker 4: I said, I was in my CEO's office getting yelled
Speaker 4: at because we failed a nuclear biological chemical test. And
Speaker 4: I didn't leave the base till almost quarter past five,
Speaker 4: so I didn't get home till almost six o'clock.
Speaker 2: And then he put me back in the cell.
Speaker 4: And then the other cop come in a couple of
Speaker 4: hours later and asked me the same questions.
Speaker 2: I gave him the same answers.
Speaker 4: On a night of November seventeenth, I was I left
Speaker 4: the base early to get my car inspected, and I
Speaker 4: went home and took a nap, and then I went
Speaker 4: over to my friend's house to watch the Bruins game.
Speaker 4: And then they brought me into court the next day
Speaker 4: and arranged me for possession of marijuana. And then they
Speaker 4: did what's called an in court identification. They took me
Speaker 4: out of the box and sat me on the bench,
Speaker 4: and they brought one of the victims in and she
Speaker 4: identified someone else.
Speaker 1: Wait, did you even know what was going on at
Speaker 1: this point? I mean, you were being booked for possession
Speaker 1: of marijuana, but now they're bringing a victim. There's no
Speaker 1: victim of posession of marijuana.
Speaker 4: True, what I missed was the second time they started
Speaker 4: questioning me, I got mad, you know, why what are
Speaker 4: you questioning me about? And he said, well, we're questioning
Speaker 4: you about a rape that happened on November sixteenth, and
Speaker 4: then attempted rape that happened on November seventeenth. So I said, well,
Speaker 4: I guess I need a lawyer. And then next day
Speaker 4: in court they did an in court identification. Now I
Speaker 4: was never arraigned for the rapes or anything. They just
Speaker 4: did an in court identification and the victim I died
Speaker 4: someone else and the judge said, you have no grounds
Speaker 4: to go forward.
Speaker 1: Seems like case clothes right there, I mean.
Speaker 4: So they gave me six months probation and said I
Speaker 4: could leave now they had my boots. So I was
Speaker 4: in stocking feet and going to have to walk home
Speaker 4: and stalking feet. As I was leaving the courtroom, they
Speaker 4: arrested me and charged me with the rape and the
Speaker 4: attempted rape that the judge said there was no grounds
Speaker 4: to go forward on.
Speaker 1: Okay, Alex, do you want to jump in here because
Speaker 1: this whole story is pretty surreal.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: First of all, the thing with the boots, we'll get
Speaker 1: back to that, like why they're making you walk home
Speaker 1: and this is in uh it's cold outside, it's in November.
Speaker 1: It's November. Yeah, walking home? Okay, Well that's that's a
Speaker 1: little surreal. Then you've just spent the night in jail
Speaker 1: for the first time in your life, so I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're a little whacked out anyway at that point. What's
Speaker 1: going on here, Alex? Can you get into this?
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously, the use of that sort of identify
Speaker 5: vacation procedure raises serious questions because just presenting him alone
Speaker 5: or him in that sort of a setting when he's
Speaker 5: already being accused of some other crime, is not the
Speaker 5: right way to conduct I think we know now identification procedures,
Speaker 5: but I guess what must have happened is twofold one.
Speaker 5: No doubt that the members of law enforcement were under
Speaker 5: pressure to make an arrest in this case, and secondarily
Speaker 5: during the time in which mister Mayor was incarcerated on
Speaker 5: the initial charge, I'm sure that they noticed things articles
Speaker 5: of clothing putting him near the scene, and other indisha
Speaker 5: that they believed to be corroboration. And so the lack
Speaker 5: of identification obviously did not set this record straight.
Speaker 1: Right, And there's a very interesting point that you touch
Speaker 1: on there, which is that there was one of the victims,
Speaker 1: or I guess one of the victims, had said that
Speaker 1: the attacker had had a red hooded sweatshirt, right, and
Speaker 1: that became one of the only sort of circumstantial piece
Speaker 1: of evidence that was even something that they could put
Speaker 1: a hook on. Right.
Speaker 4: That's why I think they stopped me, because they saw
Speaker 4: I was wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, you know, and
Speaker 4: they were two hundred feet away from me, and they
Speaker 4: said I fit the out of conception, but I believe
Speaker 4: it was just I had a red hooded sweatshirt on.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So seven o'clock a night, two hundred feet away, it's
Speaker 1: pretty hard to decide. I mean, you'd have to have
Speaker 1: sort of like really superhuman vision to be able to
Speaker 1: match a suspect at night, seven o'clock in November in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: I'm not a meteorologist, but I'm guessing it was dark,
Speaker 1: and so it was dark and you were two hundred
Speaker 1: feet away, and they managed to magically figure out that
Speaker 1: it was you. Now, this goes back to the thing
Speaker 1: I talk about often, which is that this is a
Speaker 1: small town, right, You have a rapist out there who's
Speaker 1: just attacked two women, raped one of them, sexually assaulted,
Speaker 1: and tempted to wape to the other one. They got
Speaker 1: to find somebody there. You are walking around in a
Speaker 1: red hooded sweatshirt. It's like, oh, bingo, this is great.
Speaker 1: We can get this off our desks to an extent, right,
Speaker 1: And so Alex, go back to what you were saying before.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't know sort of verbat
Speaker 5: him the back and forth. But no, that is not
Speaker 5: a sound identify procedure. I could say that quite assuredly.
Speaker 1: And what point did you you had requested a lawyer,
Speaker 1: At what point did you get assigned a lawyer?
Speaker 4: A lawyer approached my parents and asked if he could
Speaker 4: represent me. Now, this is the lawyer who ended up
Speaker 4: representing me at trial. He approached my parents the same
Speaker 4: day I had one to appoint it to me for possession.
Speaker 4: You know, I got six months probation. But then another
Speaker 4: lawyer approached my parents asking if he could represent me,
Speaker 4: and they said yes, yes, because they knew nothing about
Speaker 4: the law like me, you know, they'd never been in
Speaker 4: trouble or anything. And he said it'd represent me. For
Speaker 4: five thousand dollars on a rape case.
Speaker 1: Now nineteen eighty three, five thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a lot of money back then, so
Speaker 1: you would hope that this guy would be a real star.
Speaker 1: But that's not the way it worked out at all,
Speaker 1: is it. Back to the scene, So now you're about
Speaker 1: to walk home in your socks stocking feet as New
Speaker 1: Englanders call it, and then you get pulled back in
Speaker 1: and you get charged with two counts of.
Speaker 2: Rape and an attempted rape.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, I didn't get charged then, they just arrested me,
Speaker 4: and then they took me back to the police station
Speaker 4: and kept me in the station over the weekend and
Speaker 4: brought me into Cambridge Court House and that's where they
Speaker 4: charged me at rape and put me on ten thousand
Speaker 4: dollars bail, which is one thousand dollars cash. So my
Speaker 4: parents bailed me out and then I went to the
Speaker 4: first lineup, which was me six police officers.
Speaker 2: They were all standing behind a railing.
Speaker 4: I was standing behind a chair and I was ideed,
Speaker 4: that was the first one.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff always blows me away. Let's just
Speaker 1: reflect back on that. So they were standing behind a railing,
Speaker 1: and you were standing behind a chair, So there was
Speaker 1: really no reason that anyone would think there'd be anything
Speaker 1: different about you, right, And there were six police officers
Speaker 1: in you okay? And then the victim, one of the victims,
Speaker 1: comes in.
Speaker 2: And identified me.
Speaker 4: You know, it was probably obvious to her, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm standing behind a chair. I really don't remember the
Speaker 4: second lineup, but I think it went along the same lines.
Speaker 4: It was me, six police officers, my brother, and this
Speaker 4: time I wasn't standing behind a chair, and she id'd me.
Speaker 1: What does your brother have to do with it?
Speaker 4: Well, he was just in a line. He was there,
Speaker 4: and they just wanted to stick him in the lineup.
Speaker 1: That seems odd, doesn't it?
Speaker 5: And I think that, you know, law enforcement would say
Speaker 5: that later they can assert that they did everything in
Speaker 5: their power to find people that look like him and
Speaker 5: who looks more like a person than their own brother.
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting thing too, because I would this identification,
Speaker 1: as everyone who listens to the show knows, is the
Speaker 1: leading cause of wrongful conviction. And what we also know
Speaker 1: is that in cases where there's a weapon involved and
Speaker 1: someone is in close proximity and really fearing for their
Speaker 1: life in a very real way, the instance of mistaken
Speaker 1: identification goes up. And that's logical, right as an amateur psychologist,
Speaker 1: if you're freaking out, literally like you're adrenaline is on,
Speaker 1: you know ten, you know your mind's not going to
Speaker 1: through function in the way that it would if you
Speaker 1: were just calmly sitting here and just look at somebody.
Speaker 1: But when someone's got a knife to your throat and
Speaker 1: is either raping or attempting to rape you, your faculties
Speaker 1: are not going to be operating in a normal passion,
Speaker 1: to say the least. And so this case had that
Speaker 1: as well, because the victims were in that exact situation.
Speaker 3: Have you seen the Gorilla basketball video?
Speaker 1: Yes? Okay, have you guys seen that?
Speaker 3: The idea of being we just aren't able to focus
Speaker 3: really clearly on a lot of things at once. So
Speaker 3: if you haven't seen this, I'm completely going to ruin
Speaker 3: it for you.
Speaker 1: But no, just watch it. Everyone should watch.
Speaker 3: It, right Google, It's on YouTube. A selective attention.
Speaker 1: Test, Right, there's a selective attention test. It involves a
Speaker 1: basketball I strongly recommend that everybody listening to the show
Speaker 1: watched this because it'll give you an idea of just
Speaker 1: how easy it is for your mind to play tricks
Speaker 1: on you. So let's go back to the scene. Right.
Speaker 1: So you end up now with this high priced, fancy lawyer, right,
Speaker 1: and you didn't get what you paid for.
Speaker 4: No, I didn't. He never visited where the crime happened.
Speaker 4: He never interrogated witnesses or talked to the witnesses or
Speaker 4: anything like that. We went to trial in March of
Speaker 4: two thousand and four. Well before that, January fifth, nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four, the police came and arrested me again and
Speaker 4: brought me down to the police station. I said, well,
Speaker 4: what are you arresting me for. They wouldn't say anything,
Speaker 4: and they handed me over to the Air Police department.
Speaker 4: So they brought me back to Air and on the way,
Speaker 4: I asked the cop you know what am I under
Speaker 4: arrest for? She said, just shut up. So I asked
Speaker 4: her again and she said just shut up. I says,
Speaker 4: can you please tell me what I'm under arrest for?
Speaker 4: And she said, well, you're under arrest for a rape
Speaker 4: that happened at the Casa Mano Hotel. I said, where's
Speaker 4: the Casa Mano Hotel? Because I never knew where it
Speaker 4: was until two years ago when I went and spoke
Speaker 4: in air and she said, well, you committed a rape there.
Speaker 2: I said, no, I didn't.
Speaker 4: And then they brought me in the air and put
Speaker 4: my bail at fifty thousand dollars cash. So that was
Speaker 4: my last day of freedom, was January fifth, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 4: And then we went through another lineup and I was
Speaker 4: idd again. And in March of nineteen eighty four we
Speaker 4: went to trial.
Speaker 1: Going back to your lawyer. So your lawyer didn't visit
Speaker 1: the crime scene, big red flag there, didn't interview the witnesses.
Speaker 1: That seems even more insane. Okay, what else did he
Speaker 1: forget to do or neglect to do?
Speaker 4: I should say he didn't show up for some hearings
Speaker 4: at the trial. He presented most of the case for
Speaker 4: the prosecutor. You know, he's standing next to me. Are
Speaker 4: you sure this is the person? Are you sure? There's
Speaker 4: an point at me saying are you sure this is
Speaker 4: the person who raped you? And of course I got
Speaker 4: found guilty.
Speaker 1: I mean you might as well just say are you
Speaker 1: sure that this rapist is the one who raped you? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean it's like I mean it's crazy, so it's incomprehensible.
Speaker 1: I mean, Alex, jump in here because I'm freaking out.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is not does not sound like good lri that.
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about what good lawyering might have looked like,
Speaker 1: because this is an unusual situation we have here where
Speaker 1: we actually have somebody on the show who can give
Speaker 1: us that type of idea.
Speaker 5: I guess I'd break it down into two parts. In
Speaker 5: terms of the identification, I think you have to remember that,
Speaker 5: in terms of Lowell, the women were approached from behind.
Speaker 5: You already mentioned the distraction of a weapon, a high
Speaker 5: tense situation affecting the ability to accurately picture somebody and
Speaker 5: recall it. For one, she had already seen the individual
Speaker 5: that she would later pick out, because she had seen
Speaker 5: him in a courtroom setting on a bench, and so
Speaker 5: even if she just remembered that she would falsely identify him.
Speaker 5: It also wasn't a double blind procedure, meaning that the
Speaker 5: investigator ostensibly knew who she was trying to pick out,
Speaker 5: put him in a unique setting within the lineup and
Speaker 5: everything else. In addition, all of the witnesses were shown
Speaker 5: photographs in which they identified as I understand it, mister Mayor,
Speaker 5: before they viewed a live lineup, And so what often
Speaker 5: happens is that you end up picking out the person
Speaker 5: that you saw in the photo array, not necessarily the
Speaker 5: person you saw on the night in question. And sort
Speaker 5: of all of that, coupled with law enforcements, desire from
Speaker 5: perhaps a very good place of trying to solve this crime,
Speaker 5: can lead to a series of identification procedures not being
Speaker 5: pristine and not being correctly done, and the taint from
Speaker 5: one bleeds over into the next, because once he's identified
Speaker 5: in these initial cases, the air case becomes a foregone conclusion,
Speaker 5: and I think you have to attack that in all
Speaker 5: of those different ways. I also think they used corroborative
Speaker 5: evidence that is a bit of a red herring. They
Speaker 5: see him in the vicinity near the time of the
Speaker 5: initial rapes and Lowell, but the truth is he's from
Speaker 5: that area. It's not like finding somebody in some remote
Speaker 5: location or finding somebody far away from where they normally travel.
Speaker 5: They see a knife and a jacket in his car,
Speaker 5: but that's military issued, where that most of the men
Speaker 5: in his age demographic in a military town might very
Speaker 5: well have, and he might be wearing.
Speaker 6: A red sweatshirt.
Speaker 5: But as US folks from Boston know, a lot of
Speaker 5: the sports teams there have red sweatshirt and I don't
Speaker 5: think that is that unique of an item. And so
Speaker 5: there were all of those things that needed to be investigated.
Speaker 5: And on top of that, he had an alibi that
Speaker 5: wasn't properly vetted, that could have been properly vetted that
Speaker 5: would suggest he couldn't have been where they say that
Speaker 5: he was. And the crimes themselves, the air crime versus
Speaker 5: the lower crimes, don't have the same fact pattern and
Speaker 5: don't necessarily suggest that the same person perpetrated them. And
Speaker 5: that wasn't really tested or explored, and I think that
Speaker 5: could have been used effectively to suggest law enforcement's tunnel vision.
Speaker 1: Were any of these factors brought up by your attorney
Speaker 1: at trial or at any other time.
Speaker 4: Well, he brought up part of my alibi because where
Speaker 4: I was at the base for the November sixteenth crime,
Speaker 4: and they just dismissed it. They said, do you have
Speaker 4: that and write And even though I had NCOs the
Speaker 4: sergeants they are testifying on my behalf that they were
Speaker 4: with me.
Speaker 1: So the sergeants actually testified at trial and said that
Speaker 1: you were there. Yeah, those would seem to be relatively
Speaker 1: We're not talking about crackheads, right, We're talking about sergeants
Speaker 1: in the ens United States Army who were saying this
Speaker 1: guy was here. Again, I'm not a professor of metaphysics,
Speaker 1: but you can't be in two places at one time.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that.
Speaker 5: And the sarcists had a reason to remember, right. The
Speaker 5: sergeant said that there had been a test failure and
Speaker 5: that it was an intense meeting and so it wasn't
Speaker 5: a standard meeting. It was a meeting that they would
Speaker 5: have one would think remember, and they remembered him there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an excellent point again that a good defense
Speaker 1: lawyer would have brought up. And this is very different
Speaker 1: than some of the cases we see where a guy's
Speaker 1: alibi or a woman's alibi is that they were home
Speaker 1: with their parents watching TV or with their wife or something.
Speaker 1: And then they say, wow, the life for anybody would
Speaker 1: lie to protect their family. This is not family, right.
Speaker 1: These guys are not your uncles or brothers or anything else.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are guys you work with, and in fact,
Speaker 1: they were bitsed at you at this particular time. On
Speaker 1: top of that. So that's just that's just nuts.
Speaker 5: I think what the prosecutor may have countered is, even
Speaker 5: if they were to be believed, he still had enough
Speaker 5: time from five point fifteen to five thirty to make
Speaker 5: to the scene. But of course, if you did your
Speaker 5: job and you did an investigation, you would drive a
Speaker 5: car from one location to another, and you would show
Speaker 5: what the traffic patterns were at that time and show
Speaker 5: that it was feasibly impossible. And so there was a
Speaker 5: way to draw that out and tighten up that alibi
Speaker 5: that it does not appear what's done.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean, and we'd also don't know how
Speaker 1: long that meeting went on for. But how long would
Speaker 1: it have taken you? Even if you had left immediately,
Speaker 1: you had had to walk to get to your car,
Speaker 1: you would have had to drive off the base. I
Speaker 1: imagine there's some you know, some elapsed time there. And
Speaker 1: then how long would it have taken you on a
Speaker 1: typical day to drive from there to where the rape occurred.
Speaker 2: Probably half hour to forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: Case closed, right, I mean, that just doesn't match your honor.
Speaker 1: He wasn't there because he was somewhere else.
Speaker 5: One of the things is, you know, he was rested
Speaker 5: so close in time, it's much easier to figure out
Speaker 5: where you were since you were arrested within forty eight
Speaker 5: hours of when the accusation was right. So the sergeant's
Speaker 5: memories would have also been sharp. If he was arrested
Speaker 5: two or three years later, one could say, you don't
Speaker 5: really remember where you were in the night of November
Speaker 5: fifteenth or sixteenth, But because it happened so close afterwards,
Speaker 5: he really did have an independent memory, and so did
Speaker 5: the other individuals that were interviewed.
Speaker 1: Alex brings up a very good point, which is that
Speaker 1: it's contemporaneous. It's like, right now, this is what happened,
Speaker 1: this is where you were. You should be out of
Speaker 1: there at that moment in time with any sort of
Speaker 1: competent defense. What about the prosecutor at that point? I mean,
Speaker 1: how does a prosecutor, having been a prosecutor, you obviously
Speaker 1: have insight that nobody else that's ever been on this
Speaker 1: show does. What is it that causes a prosecutor to
Speaker 1: continue to prosecute somebody and I ultimately lock them up
Speaker 1: or send them to death when they have real hard
Speaker 1: evidence that it wasn't the guy well.
Speaker 5: The notion that they had hard evidence may be a
Speaker 5: bit of an over statement. I guess this is why
Speaker 5: you need to have a strong defense, because what the
Speaker 5: prosecutors seeing is multiple identifications and seeing evidence that's corroberative
Speaker 5: put before him, right, and we went through the identification,
Speaker 5: and we went through the corroboration, and when you peel
Speaker 5: away at it, it doesn't seem as strong. Now, what
Speaker 5: did he make of the alibi witnesses. I have a
Speaker 5: feeling that he probably thought to himself, well, if he
Speaker 5: left it, if he knew he was going to be
Speaker 5: at that meeting, and he knew that the meeting was
Speaker 5: over at five ish, it gave him exactly the right
Speaker 5: amount of time, not just to little time, but exactly
Speaker 5: the right amount of time to both have a supposed
Speaker 5: alibi and to commit the crimes in question. And so
Speaker 5: he would take facts in the world that you might
Speaker 5: look through a different lens at, and he would look
Speaker 5: through them at a lens that he's guilty. I know
Speaker 5: that he's guilty, So what else proves that he's guilty?
Speaker 1: But in this case, as in many other rawful convictions,
Speaker 1: there was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime.
Speaker 5: But in the nineteen eighties, if you were to commit
Speaker 5: a crime in the woods, there usually wasn't forensic evidence.
Speaker 5: So the counter to that would be, you wouldn't expect
Speaker 5: to find forensic evidence outdoors, and you wouldn't expect to
Speaker 5: find videotape because it's not like New York in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: And you wouldn't expect to find DNA because it was
Speaker 5: prior to the modernization of DNA technology.
Speaker 6: And so what you have here is exactly what you'd
Speaker 6: expect to have.
Speaker 5: You have a woman who is a credible witness who
Speaker 5: swears under oath that he did it, and you have
Speaker 5: other factors such as the clothing, the time and place,
Speaker 5: and the repetition of the events, suggesting that he's a good.
Speaker 1: Suspect, circumstantial but nonetheless enough to be able in a
Speaker 1: prosecutor's mind to rationalize the continued prosecution or persecution in
Speaker 1: this case of somebody like you. So fast forward to
Speaker 1: the trial. We know that this attorney mounted a feeble
Speaker 1: would be a nice way of putting it. In competent
Speaker 1: would probably be a better description of the representation. Horrible
Speaker 1: and overpaid. Those are the ways I would describe the
Speaker 1: defense that you received in this case, which is again typical.
Speaker 1: The only thing that's not typical about is that most
Speaker 1: of the peopleeople that are wrongfully convicted are represented by
Speaker 1: public defenders. In this case, you had to pay for
Speaker 1: the privilege of this guy acting like a prosecutor, which
Speaker 1: is beyond reprehensible. It's disgusting. Ultimately, the jury goes out,
Speaker 1: what were you feeling? I mean when they how long
Speaker 1: did they deliberate for?
Speaker 4: I think it was like two hours, an hour and
Speaker 4: a half something like that. They didn't they didn't deliberate
Speaker 4: a real long time.
Speaker 1: No, that's a very short time. So again, it's an
Speaker 1: unimaginable circumstance to anybody on the outside. What did you
Speaker 1: think when they came back in? Did you think you
Speaker 1: were going to be exonerate? You knew you were innocent.
Speaker 4: I thought I was going to be found guilty because
Speaker 4: of the way the lawyer represented me. Even though the
Speaker 4: court office was saying, you're going to get found guilty.
Speaker 4: I didn't feel that way because my lawyer was so horrible.
Speaker 4: You know, I had visions of going to prison, being stabbed,
Speaker 4: being raped, being beat up because it was a sex offense.
Speaker 1: And you knew that those you know, typically those will
Speaker 1: land you in real hot water once you get on
Speaker 1: the inside. Yeah, so they come back and sure enough
Speaker 1: they find you guilty.
Speaker 2: I was. I was pissed, you know, and I stood
Speaker 2: up in the courtroom.
Speaker 4: Well, after you get found guilty, they asked if you
Speaker 4: have anything to say. You know, I was a soldier,
Speaker 4: you know, I was a defender of my country, and they.
Speaker 2: Want to say that I did this.
Speaker 4: So I got up and after the judge asked if
Speaker 4: you had anything to say, of course I did. I said,
Speaker 4: your honor, if you call this justice, I think when
Speaker 4: you hold judicial system or a crock of shit.
Speaker 2: And he doubled my sentence to twenty to thirty years.
Speaker 4: Wow, because the DA years later told me that he
Speaker 4: was going to give me a ten to fifteen. Then
Speaker 4: I said that and he said to the clerk, did
Speaker 4: you sign that yet? And he goes, no, he said
Speaker 4: double the.
Speaker 1: Sentence in front of you. Yeah, oh shit.
Speaker 4: I didn't hear him say that, but the DA did,
Speaker 4: and he told me later on that he heard and
Speaker 4: tell the clerk to double the sentence.
Speaker 1: And we know now that the DA had his own
Speaker 1: doubts about this. Right, yes, and that I mean I
Speaker 1: want to get into the prison experience. But your case
Speaker 1: is unusual for another reason, which is that you actually,
Speaker 1: ultimately twenty something years later, received an apology from the
Speaker 1: person who actually put you in there. It seems like
Speaker 1: this was a guy and it's hard to say based
Speaker 1: on what we've just heard, but it seems like a
Speaker 1: guy who actually had a conscience. Well it is a
Speaker 1: guy at least he has one now, right, because he
Speaker 1: tried to make amends to you, which is impossible to do,
Speaker 1: but he tried, right, And this was the first case
Speaker 1: that this guy had tried as a prosecutor, right.
Speaker 4: See I believe it was his first case as a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Right, which is another factor, right, Alex, I mean as
Speaker 1: the first case.
Speaker 6: Even in the criminal realm.
Speaker 5: I think for this to be your first case as
Speaker 5: a prosecutor is a tricky one.
Speaker 1: Now you get taken off to prison. Where were you
Speaker 1: in prison? The first off was an an mci Walpole.
Speaker 1: It's called cate of Junction now but it's smacked some
Speaker 1: security and I went in there to be booked and
Speaker 1: then they transfer me from there to Cockered that's where
Speaker 1: they decide where they're going to send you where I
Speaker 1: had a twenty to thirty, I would be behind the walls,
Speaker 1: because anything over eighteen years you're going to do time
Speaker 1: behind the walls. They call it behind the walls, being
Speaker 1: maximum security. Right. So on top of the fact that
Speaker 1: your sentence was doubled, and we know typically in a
Speaker 1: rape case, you know, fifteen years would be the general
Speaker 1: guideline that I've seen. But because you trying to stand
Speaker 1: up for yourself and say something, which after what you'd
Speaker 1: been through, I guess it's hard to follow you for
Speaker 1: wanting to actually speak your mind. So this had another
Speaker 1: negative consequence, not only doubling your sense, but putting you
Speaker 1: in a more dangerous and worse in every imaginable way
Speaker 1: facility than you would have been in otherwise. So you
Speaker 1: end up in Walpole. Walpole, What can you tell us
Speaker 1: about that? Because was it as bad as you expected
Speaker 1: it to be? Was it?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: When you first walk into the prison, you get down
Speaker 4: a long hallway and you go through this big door
Speaker 4: and the door slams behind you, and you're in a
Speaker 4: it's probably twelve by twelve, with a god up the
Speaker 4: top with a rifle in his hand, with a shotgun
Speaker 4: in his hand until you go through the next which
Speaker 4: takes you through the wall and you get into the
Speaker 4: prison itself. And then as you go into the prison
Speaker 4: you could smell the fear in the building. Most prisons
Speaker 4: strive on fear, you know, fear that well, someone's going
Speaker 4: to raid me, someone's going to stab me, and that
Speaker 4: if I do it first, then no one's going to
Speaker 4: do it to me. And that's the way prison works,
Speaker 4: a lot of it, you know. And then I was
Speaker 4: going in there as a sex offender and I didn't
Speaker 4: know what was going to happen. I would go walk
Speaker 4: in the yard and see other people getting beat up
Speaker 4: that were sex offenders and stuff. And then I was
Speaker 4: only there a couple of days, and then they took
Speaker 4: me to conquer it, which was less stressful than Walpole.
Speaker 4: But then when I got my life sentence, I went
Speaker 4: back to Walpole and was going to ended up doing
Speaker 4: almost a year there.
Speaker 2: Right before I got back there.
Speaker 4: There was a riot where they broke through one of
Speaker 4: the walls, and for orientation, you go in and it's gas.
Speaker 4: You could smell the gas still in the air from
Speaker 4: when they had gassed the inmates. And they put me
Speaker 4: on an Essex blocks, which was for people who were
Speaker 4: prone to violence. They broke it down into Essex, Bristol
Speaker 4: and Suffolk, which was Essex would be for the ones
Speaker 4: who rarely acted up, Bristol would be for the lesser ones,
Speaker 4: and then Suffolk would be even for lesser than that.
Speaker 2: So while I was on Essex, I got cut.
Speaker 4: I got three stitches hare and fourteen stitches across the
Speaker 4: back of my neck. Because I was a sexophone. I
Speaker 4: did really nothing wrong, but that's the way it was.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: The guy called me down. I was talking to him
Speaker 4: and he reached out and grabbed me. I had hair
Speaker 4: down to my shoulders and he grabbed me by my
Speaker 4: hair and pulled me up against the jail bars and
Speaker 4: would a razor blade.
Speaker 2: He cut me hair, and then I ducked down.
Speaker 4: To get out of the way, and he sliced me
Speaker 4: across the back of the neck. So I went back
Speaker 4: up into my cell and I pushed the skin back
Speaker 4: in and I reached behind my neck and my finger
Speaker 4: went inside, and I says, well, I got to go
Speaker 4: to the hospital. So I went downstairs and I said
Speaker 4: to the CEO. I says, yeah, I got to go
Speaker 4: down to the hospital. He goes why, I says, I
Speaker 4: caught myself shaven. He didn't know that I had to
Speaker 4: cut that was bleeding on the back of my neck.
Speaker 4: He just knew I had the one here. And so
Speaker 4: I went down there and they said what happened. I said, well,
Speaker 4: I caught myself shaven. He says, well, we're not going
Speaker 4: to do anything till you tell us what happened, you know,
Speaker 4: And I'm saying, you know, I got this huge cut
Speaker 4: on the back of my neck.
Speaker 2: So I told him.
Speaker 4: I says, yeah, the guy caught me and then he
Speaker 4: stitched up my face with no no anesthesia or nothing,
Speaker 4: just I could feel the thread going through my skin
Speaker 4: and the needle going through my skin. He used anesthesia
Speaker 4: on the back because it was so long. I did
Speaker 4: another probably five months there, and there were fights all
Speaker 4: the time, people getting stabbed. Christmas Eve, there was a
Speaker 4: racial fight on the block between like ten people.
Speaker 2: Early in January there was Blacks and the Muslims.
Speaker 4: They hate each other in prison, and I walk into
Speaker 4: chow hall, they run around on the table stabbing each other.
Speaker 4: And so you just lean up against the wall and
Speaker 4: hold your steel tray in front of you.
Speaker 2: So that you can't get stabbed.
Speaker 1: The day shield.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the day that I was supposed to leave
Speaker 4: there there were shots fight in the eyd because there
Speaker 4: was going to be another race riot in the prison.
Speaker 4: And finally I went to Gardner, which they called skin
Speaker 4: a Mountain because all the sex offenders were there, and
Speaker 4: so there it was less stressful and I could do
Speaker 4: more things. I started lifting weights, and then while I
Speaker 4: was there there was almost another race riot between the
Speaker 4: blacks and the Porto rics. There was like one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty Puerto Ricans on top of the hill and
Speaker 4: run the same amount of Blacks that were going to fight.
Speaker 4: They evacuated the prison. Nothing happened. But and then from
Speaker 4: there I went to the treatment center where I got
Speaker 4: one day to natural life civil commitment, which was just
Speaker 4: people supposedly in treatment. But while there they brought people
Speaker 4: from the prison system down and one of them, who
Speaker 4: was just about ready to get out, I mean he
Speaker 4: was going to get he was going to minimum, he
Speaker 4: would have been out within two months, he brutally raped
Speaker 4: a woman and.
Speaker 2: Which was horrible, you know, because I.
Speaker 4: Worked in a staff kitchen, so I dealt with all
Speaker 4: the staff and she was a really nice person.
Speaker 1: Oh he raped someone in the prison.
Speaker 2: He raped the staff member in the prison.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: You know, but in the prison people would get raped.
Speaker 4: Not all the time, but you know, at least once
Speaker 4: a tw a month, someone would get right by another guy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I didn't because I lifted By then. I was benching
Speaker 4: three point fifty and squatting five hundred pounds and nobody
Speaker 4: bothered me, you know. And I treated everyone good, you know.
Speaker 4: And I kept my job in the staff kitchen so
Speaker 4: I could eat good. And when I left the staff kitchen,
Speaker 4: they were disappointed because I was leaving because who was
Speaker 4: going to cook for him?
Speaker 1: Wow. It takes a minute to process all that. Let's
Speaker 1: get to the good part of the story. Let's call
Speaker 1: it right where things start to turn around.
Speaker 4: Well, in nineteen ninety four, I left work and was
Speaker 4: heading back to the block and someone said, Dennis put
Speaker 4: on the Phil Donahue Show, and Barry shak was on there.
Speaker 4: He had like six or seven exonarees at that time.
Speaker 4: It was either ninety three or ninety four, and he
Speaker 4: was talking about how he had used DNA to prove
Speaker 4: their innocence. And I knew the only way that I
Speaker 4: was going to be proven innocent was through the use
Speaker 4: of DNA. So my friend Bob Cameron, who has since died,
Speaker 4: helped me find the address to Yeshiva University in the
Speaker 4: Kadouza School of Law, and I wrote them a letter
Speaker 4: asking for help. And I got a twenty six page
Speaker 4: questionnaireback from them, and I filled all that out and
Speaker 4: sent it back and I got another questionairback the same thing.
Speaker 4: I guess they were going to compare it to see
Speaker 4: if they were both the same, if I was just
Speaker 4: making up stories. And then I got a letter back
Speaker 4: from them asking for all my transcripts. Now you got
Speaker 4: to imagine I hadn't had a lawyer since nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Nine years earlier.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I wanted to keep things going on in
Speaker 4: the court. Well, first, my lawyer got the spot when
Speaker 4: I was at Walpole, so I had to learn how
Speaker 4: to do a motion for appointment of counsel and motion
Speaker 4: for indigency and whatever else I had to do to
Speaker 4: get an appeals lawyer. So I got an appeals lawyer
Speaker 4: and he didn't represent me the way I wanted him
Speaker 4: to do. I wanted him to raise illegal search and
Speaker 4: seizure because they went and broke into my car and
Speaker 4: took evidence, but he wouldn't, so he just raised that
Speaker 4: the two cases shouldn't have been tried together, and a
Speaker 4: bunch of crap. And so I didn't have a lawyer
Speaker 4: after that, so I learned to file things on my own.
Speaker 4: I filed Rule thirties and whatever I could. I filed
Speaker 4: the motion for a paternity test, just to see if
Speaker 4: there was evidence that they could match against me. But
Speaker 4: everything I ever filed had to go in front of
Speaker 4: my sentence and judge, who didn't think kindly of me
Speaker 4: because I told him him and this whole judicial system
Speaker 4: were a crocod shit and he was a former marine.
Speaker 4: So I send all the stuff to the Innocence Project,
Speaker 4: which was probably twelve hundred pages of information between appeals
Speaker 4: and motions and stuff like that, and they start looking
Speaker 4: for evidence, and they called the police department, and they
Speaker 4: called the courthouse asking for evidence, and they're telling him
Speaker 4: the evidence is lost, the evidence is destroyed. And this
Speaker 4: goes on for like three years, because you know that
Speaker 4: the Innocence Project, the students come in and they work
Speaker 4: on the cases and they try and find the evidence.
Speaker 4: So in nineteen ninety seven, Barry had an attorney in
Speaker 4: Boston file emotion for DNA testing in front of my
Speaker 4: sentence and judge who denied it without a hearing, like
Speaker 4: had denied everything else without a hearing.
Speaker 2: So at that time I was hopeless.
Speaker 4: You know, I made peace with myself that I was
Speaker 4: going to die in prison as an innocent man.
Speaker 2: And then out of the blue, a reporter.
Speaker 4: From the Boston Globe named John Ellerman asked if he
Speaker 4: could come interview me, so just as a piece of hope.
Speaker 4: So I said, yeah, okay, you can interview me. And
Speaker 4: we started talking about it, and finally I said to him,
Speaker 4: I said, who's saying? He goes, oh, you know who
Speaker 4: sent me. I says, no, I don't, and he says, well,
Speaker 4: I was at Boston Superior Court and I saw J. W.
Speaker 2: Connie.
Speaker 4: Now this is the person who prosecuted me back in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four. And I said, Jay, you know, give
Speaker 4: me someone to do an article on He goes, Now,
Speaker 4: at this time, Jay was a private attorney, and he
Speaker 4: had represented the guy who shot up an abortion clinic
Speaker 4: in Boston and another guy who killed his wife. And
Speaker 4: he says, I'll tell you what if I believe this
Speaker 4: is right, and you do the article on this guy,
Speaker 4: you may get a pula serprise out of it. So
Speaker 4: he sent him to interview me, and so we were
Speaker 4: talking and he says, here's a piece of news I'm
Speaker 4: going to give you. Your judge's retiring in six months.
Speaker 4: The day he retired, I called the New York Innocence
Speaker 4: Project and asked if they could help me again, and
Speaker 4: he said, I really shouldn't take this phone call, but
Speaker 4: I will. What you need to do is contact the
Speaker 4: New England Innocence Project at Testa, Heroitz and Tebow. So
Speaker 4: I did that, and I contacted Neepe and they sent
Speaker 4: me the twenty six page questionnaire, which I had to
Speaker 4: fill out again. And then they asked me for all
Speaker 4: my things I've ever filed, so I got to send
Speaker 4: them another twelve hundred pages of stuff. And then all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, the lawyer shows up and well, I
Speaker 4: heading back to the walk and the lawyer says, may her,
Speaker 4: you haven't an attorney visit? I said, I haven't had
Speaker 4: an attorney in fifteen sixteen years. He says, well you
Speaker 4: do now. So I went up and I met with
Speaker 4: Eliza Kaplan and Karen Burns as you can imagine, I
Speaker 4: was quite emotional because this is my hopes and dreams
Speaker 4: coming together. And so we start talking and introducing ourselves
Speaker 4: and then Eliza says to me, who's the cop the
Speaker 4: trap this is?
Speaker 2: I don't know why.
Speaker 4: She says, well, when we came in, he asked who
Speaker 4: we were. We told him Elisa Kaplan and Karen Burns.
Speaker 4: He goes, where are you from? And we said the
Speaker 4: New England Innocence Project and he goes, who are you
Speaker 4: here to see? And they said Dennis Mayor, And the
Speaker 4: god said it's about time. If anyone in here was innocent,
Speaker 4: it's Dennis. So that was her introduction to me. So
Speaker 4: they accepted the case and they start looking for evenants
Speaker 4: and Karen's calling the courthouse and she's calling the police station.
Speaker 4: They tell him that the evidence has been destroyed or lost.
Speaker 4: She says, well, do you have records of this being
Speaker 4: destroyed a lost? And they said no. So Karen got
Speaker 4: really frustrated at Cambridge Courthouse and she went knocking on
Speaker 4: doors asking for help, and she found a clerk to
Speaker 4: help her. Now, this clerk went down into the evidence
Speaker 4: room and found the evidence, and so Eliza calls me
Speaker 4: and says, we found the evidence. And she says, well,
Speaker 4: you're not too excited. I says, well, I've had so
Speaker 4: many downs that if something really good happens, then I'll
Speaker 4: get excited. But was sending it to doctor Blake out
Speaker 4: in California, who's one of the foremost forensic scientists in
Speaker 4: the country, but he's not accepted by the government because
Speaker 4: he hates the government. And so they sent that to him,
Speaker 4: and then they came in to take my blood. So
Speaker 4: they bring me down to HSU and they start talking
Speaker 4: to me, and then in walks someone from the DA's office,
Speaker 4: someone from the AG's office, an attorney for me, Karen Burns,
Speaker 4: the superintendent of the prison, in a perimeterive security people
Speaker 4: in a phlebotomist. So they did the chain of evidence.
Speaker 4: They took my blood, took pictures of it, took a
Speaker 4: mouth swab, took pictures of that, handed the evidence to
Speaker 4: a state trooper who went back to the police lab,
Speaker 4: handed it to the chemist who got on a plane
Speaker 4: and hand delivered it to doctor Blake because she didn't
Speaker 4: want to do the testing because the evidence was so
Speaker 4: old and the Lowell cases and so now I have
Speaker 4: to wait so on Christmas Eve two thousand and two,
Speaker 4: Eliza said to call her. So I called her. Now
Speaker 4: she had moved from the New England Innocence Project to
Speaker 4: New York. I called her about twenty five times and
Speaker 4: there was no answer, and so I went outside to
Speaker 4: cool off, you know, because she told me to call
Speaker 4: her on Christmas Eve. And so I went back in
Speaker 4: and the block office says, may her call your attorney.
Speaker 4: I said, I've been calling her all day. So finally
Speaker 4: I call her and I get a hold of her
Speaker 4: and I said, where have you been. She says, oh,
Speaker 4: we were out celebrating. I said, why, She goes, we
Speaker 4: got two test results back today and the DNA's didn't match.
Speaker 4: But they had to talk to the victims because they
Speaker 4: had to find out if the victim had sex with
Speaker 4: their boyfriend or whatever the night before. So now Matha
Speaker 4: Coakley's got to go talk to the victim after nineteen
Speaker 4: years until her she may have sent an innocent man
Speaker 4: to prison. So they went and talked and she was
Speaker 4: freaked out, which I don't blame it. You know, nineteen
Speaker 4: years you on top of being raped, now you're being
Speaker 4: told you may have sent an innocent and to prison.
Speaker 2: That's got to be devastating.
Speaker 4: So they went and saw her a second time and
Speaker 4: she was still freaked out, but she gave him permission
Speaker 4: to get the hospital wreckage, which can only be gotten
Speaker 4: through a court order or permission from the victim. So
Speaker 4: they gave her a permission and that ended up that
Speaker 4: she was a virgin when she was raped. So now
Speaker 4: I'm cleared of the Lowell cases. My twenty to thirty
Speaker 4: per sentence is going to be gone, and I have
Speaker 4: the air case. So they start looking for the air
Speaker 4: evidence and they're getting the same run around. We don't
Speaker 4: know where the evidence is. The evidence has been destroyed,
Speaker 4: the evidence has been lost. So Matha Cokeley called Elizer
Speaker 4: and said, do you want to make a deal. We'll
Speaker 4: give them time served, and Eliza says no and had
Speaker 4: some choice words for Matha Cochley that we're going to
Speaker 4: prove he's innocent. And all of a sudden, a slide
Speaker 4: shows up on Matha Cochley's desk from the case that
Speaker 4: they've been looking for. So they sent the slide to
Speaker 4: Maryland to be tested. So I called Eliza on April
Speaker 4: Fool's Day and I said hi, and she says, when
Speaker 4: do you want to go home? This is April Fool's Day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the universe has a strange sense of humor, so
Speaker 1: go ahead.
Speaker 4: She says, no, when do you want to go home?
Speaker 4: The test came back and they were two different DNAs
Speaker 4: on it, and neither one of them was yours. I says, wow.
Speaker 4: I says, well, you better make it Thursday because it's
Speaker 4: going to take my parents at least a day to adjust.
Speaker 4: And so I called my parents and told them. My
Speaker 4: mother says, I'm not going to be in the car room.
Speaker 4: So I called back later on and she says, I
Speaker 4: might be in the court room. And then I called
Speaker 4: her the night before I was going to court and said,
Speaker 4: and she goes, I'll be there. So on April third,
Speaker 4: two thousand and three, I got my last strip search
Speaker 4: went to Cambridge Courthouse in Boston. Now this Zacmbridge had
Speaker 4: just opened. Traffic was a nightmare because all the roads
Speaker 4: were dirt and everything else. We get to the courthouse.
Speaker 4: They put me in a two man cell and they
Speaker 4: had the tank on the right side, and there's a
Speaker 4: guy in there whining ned he's getting a three to five.
Speaker 4: So I told him, well, we just shut up. I'm
Speaker 4: going home after doing nineteen years and I'm proven innocent.
Speaker 4: I never heard another peep out of her. So I
Speaker 4: went up to the courtroom. Eliza reads her motion. I
Speaker 4: had told her, I said, you need to file a
Speaker 4: motion to get rid of the civil sentence.
Speaker 2: She says why, I said, just do it. So she
Speaker 2: files all the motions.
Speaker 4: Martha Cokeley says we're not going to oppose this, and
Speaker 4: Judge says, all I have to do is sign this
Speaker 4: and he can go home. And he said yeah. She says, well,
Speaker 4: I'm signing he can leave. So I went back in.
Speaker 4: They took the ankle chains off, they took the waist
Speaker 4: chains off, and they let me go. I walked out
Speaker 4: the first door and met with my parents, went to
Speaker 4: the second door and met with my brothers and friends.
Speaker 4: Walked out the third door into five TV cameras, about
Speaker 4: fifteen microphones, and of course their first question was how
Speaker 4: do you feel? You want to say, how do you
Speaker 4: think I feel? And here comes a leiser and she says, well,
Speaker 4: there's going to be a press conference at Tester Hurwitz
Speaker 4: and Tebow at noontime and we'll see us all there.
Speaker 4: And then I as I was leaving the Senior Caught office,
Speaker 4: comes over and says, JW. Connie would like to speak
Speaker 4: with you. That's the prosecutor, the former prosecutor, And so
Speaker 4: we met in the hallway and he apologized.
Speaker 2: And asked for forgiveness. So I forgave.
Speaker 4: Him, which had a huge effect on me because I'm
Speaker 4: not angry, you know, I'm not bitter. Afterwards, Jay told
Speaker 4: me that if I didn't forgive him, he might have
Speaker 4: stopped being a lawyer, and it still affects him to
Speaker 4: this day because he told me he was in his
Speaker 4: office one day and Barryshak called him and said, Dennis
Speaker 4: May has just been clear and lowell, he said. So
Speaker 4: I sat at my desk and cried, and he told
Speaker 4: me that he called him again and said, Dennis May
Speaker 4: has gone home Thursday. What I didn't know is that
Speaker 4: before I got there, he went and apologized to my
Speaker 4: parents and my brothers, which was my brothers are still angry.
Speaker 4: And that's when I went home.
Speaker 1: Alex, it's hard to say anything after hearing that story.
Speaker 1: But since we have you here, you can't get a
Speaker 1: better spokesman for the cause than Dennis. For people listening,
Speaker 1: what kind of insight can you bring.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll start at the end,
Speaker 5: which is with the prosecutor. You know, I think this
Speaker 5: is a very good case example because I think we've
Speaker 5: become too focused on the rogue actor, or focusing on
Speaker 5: that there are bad players in the system, because those
Speaker 5: variables affect.
Speaker 6: All systems and all walks of life.
Speaker 5: The prosecutor in this case clearly did the honorable thing,
Speaker 5: and I think that prosecutors by and large are honorable
Speaker 5: and are trying to do the right thing. And if
Speaker 5: you start with that premise rather than the premise of
Speaker 5: this is good versus evil in one direction or another,
Speaker 5: you start to be able to unwind. Where are the
Speaker 5: implicit biases in the system, Where are the false positives?
Speaker 6: Where are the errors?
Speaker 5: And this is a good example of that because I
Speaker 5: don't think he, knowing what I know, did this on purpose.
Speaker 5: And if you can get past that, I think you
Speaker 5: can look at it with a deeper lens. My other
Speaker 5: reaction initial reaction is this man is a hero, and
Speaker 5: that the work that the Innocence Project is remarkable not
Speaker 5: just for setting people free, but because it creates a
Speaker 5: system of checks and balances and creates good law and
Speaker 5: creates people asking the hard questions. But then at the
Speaker 5: end of the day, I go back to being a
Speaker 5: trial lawyer, and I look at the facts of this case,
Speaker 5: and there's only DNA in so many cases, and only
Speaker 5: so many letters get read, and only so many people
Speaker 5: can get exonerated. If everybody in the first instance would
Speaker 5: fight smart and hard for everybody accused of crimes, I
Speaker 5: think that that would create the best checks in the system.
Speaker 5: And you know, hearing this case and going back and
Speaker 5: I'll start with.
Speaker 6: The man that mister Mayor is.
Speaker 5: You know, he's you can just tell that he's a
Speaker 5: good person by being around him. And he was a
Speaker 5: family man at the time, still living with his parents
Speaker 5: when most twenty year olds weren't. He was a soldier
Speaker 5: when most of us wouldn't be. He had never been
Speaker 5: in trouble before when many of us had been.
Speaker 6: And I don't know if the story of him as
Speaker 6: a person was told, because when.
Speaker 5: You think about it, he makes an awfully unlikely suspect
Speaker 5: if you really get into his humanity, and to the
Speaker 5: lawyers defending people and advocating on the ground, you have
Speaker 5: to look at that alibi and not just throw it
Speaker 5: into a courtroom, but really firm it up, because that
Speaker 5: could have just like DNA can now essentially prove innocence
Speaker 5: because of the metaphysical comment you made earlier. And I
Speaker 5: would have called other soldiers.
Speaker 6: I would have.
Speaker 5: Impressed the fact that while Vlahm might have a meeting
Speaker 5: where he shows up around five, when military folks say
Speaker 5: that he didn't leave the base until seventeen twenty, that
Speaker 5: means five twenty, and it means precisely five twenty.
Speaker 6: And there's probably a.
Speaker 5: Logbook that could have been used to show what time
Speaker 5: he actually physically checked out.
Speaker 6: And then the next thing, you know, it's not.
Speaker 5: All the resources and the tiers and the decades behind bars.
Speaker 5: It's an acquittal because he couldn't have done it. And
Speaker 5: so those are the things I focus on and that
Speaker 5: I come back.
Speaker 6: To in the end.
Speaker 1: But what do we do? Because I've always said that
Speaker 1: I believe most cops are good cops, and most prosecutors
Speaker 1: are good prosecutors. But the ones that aren't they wreck
Speaker 1: a path of destruction that is wide and big and
Speaker 1: devastating to so many people. But there are a number
Speaker 1: of systemic problems, right, I mean, it's easy for us
Speaker 1: to sit here and say this is what should have
Speaker 1: been done, this is what could have been done. The
Speaker 1: system is stacked against Dennis, right, It was stacked against Dennis.
Speaker 1: It's stacked against guys like Dennis. Today. Somebody's being wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted in America. Hopefully it's only one person, right, What
Speaker 1: can we do? What can people listening do to help
Speaker 1: prevent these things from happening, to prevent the next Dennis
Speaker 1: Mayor from ever having to go through this.
Speaker 5: To me, it all goes back to the role of
Speaker 5: the prosecutor. There are tens of thousands of NYPD officers.
Speaker 5: You're going to have good ones, you're going to have
Speaker 5: bad ones. But the office that oversees them, which is
Speaker 5: a politically accountable office, or the offices of the district attorney.
Speaker 5: And when I say politically accountable, I don't mean to
Speaker 5: suggest that any of them are doing anything wrong. It's
Speaker 5: just they are political positions, and the will of the
Speaker 5: public and what people think and concerns people have certainly
Speaker 5: do influence those offices. And those offices have to serve
Speaker 5: as checks and balances not only on the police department,
Speaker 5: but on themselves. And it's very easy to put a
Speaker 5: lot into a case. The adversary process is competitive. You
Speaker 5: do want to win, you do think you are on
Speaker 5: the right side of things, and so it's easy to
Speaker 5: get caught up on that and not pause and say,
Speaker 5: are we sure not pause, especially after a jury says
Speaker 5: he's guilty, to not go back and look at it,
Speaker 5: and it can create a wall, a wall between accountability
Speaker 5: and the prosecutors, and a wall in the person's own
Speaker 5: mind that doesn't allow them to sort of self assess
Speaker 5: and learn from these mistakes.
Speaker 1: But there's so much more awareness now. It's at a peak.
Speaker 1: Right now, we see the rise of conviction integrity units.
Speaker 1: We're starting to see some public activism in terms of
Speaker 1: throwing bad prosecutors out of office, right because ultimately you
Speaker 1: can vote, and I think that's one sort of activism
Speaker 1: that's very simple. Then it's before we sign off, and
Speaker 1: this is for you too, Hannah. You've spoken so eloquently
Speaker 1: and so powerfully about your experience, the tragedy, ultimately the
Speaker 1: triumph the grace that you've shown is just sort of
Speaker 1: mind blowing to me and I'm sure to everyone who's listening.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that either of you would like
Speaker 1: to share with our audience.
Speaker 3: Sure, the vast majority of prosecutors and police are just human.
Speaker 3: You know, this is a human system. Like any other
Speaker 3: human system, there is going to be fault. And I
Speaker 3: find it really interesting that with other human run systems,
Speaker 3: aviation and medicine are good examples, people expect mistakes to happen. So,
Speaker 3: you know, at a hospital, if a patient dies in
Speaker 3: somebody's care, they're going to have an eminem conference. They
Speaker 3: have all the people who worked on the case get
Speaker 3: together and they pinpoint where a mistake was made. It's
Speaker 3: not blaming, it's saying, you're a human, you did your best,
Speaker 3: something went wrong. We're going to use this as a
Speaker 3: learning moment. And because of these things, the aviation field
Speaker 3: the medical field have improved hugely. We don't really have
Speaker 3: something like that in the legal field right now. And
Speaker 3: Alex maybe you can attest to this, but that lawyers
Speaker 3: and especially people who are going to go into prosecution
Speaker 3: are told you're going to run fully convict someone. You know,
Speaker 3: they're expected somehow to not be human, to not make mistakes,
Speaker 3: and when they do make mistakes, they're often covered up.
Speaker 3: It's seen as shameful. The incentives justice is a moving
Speaker 3: target and it's kind of an ethereal concept. Whereas a
Speaker 3: conviction is something that you can count, it actually takes
Speaker 3: a pretty rare case to have enough evidence to be
Speaker 3: really fool proof. You know, we forget that obviously it's
Speaker 3: innocent until proven guilty. A lot of people think that
Speaker 3: even if you get to the point of a trial,
Speaker 3: like they must have done something to get there. And
Speaker 3: I think the fact that most cases don't have DNA
Speaker 3: like we talked about, you know, the vast majority of
Speaker 3: wrongful convictions are probably people who were forced to take
Speaker 3: guilty please at a misdemeanor level.
Speaker 1: Right with Dennis, I don't know that there's really what
Speaker 1: could somebody add to what you've already said, but I
Speaker 1: want to turn it over to you to wrap up
Speaker 1: this episode of wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4: Well for us, I want to say hi to my
Speaker 4: kids and my wife names Melissa, Joshua and Elie's she's
Speaker 4: named after the women who got me out.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: What can people do to help?
Speaker 4: There are a lot of bills and there's different states
Speaker 4: that are trying to get passed. They can call the
Speaker 4: a politician or they can go on the state house
Speaker 4: website and look up the bills and talk about that
Speaker 4: and tell them that they want to get behind it
Speaker 4: so that their senators or representatives would vote to make changes.
Speaker 4: You know, there's preserving evidence. We already changed witness identification
Speaker 4: in Massachusetts, which I was involved with, and things like
Speaker 4: that that can help.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I do a lot of public speaking. I speak at colleges.
Speaker 4: I'm going to go speak at a high school next week.
Speaker 1: How could people reach you if they want you to
Speaker 1: come and speak? Do you have a website? Do you
Speaker 1: have a contact that you want to share with the audience.
Speaker 3: Honestly, if you want to have Dnis come to anything,
Speaker 3: you can email me directly because I would love to
Speaker 3: make that happen.
Speaker 1: What's your email?
Speaker 3: Hiley at New England Innocence dot org.
Speaker 1: And that's Ri Ri I l E y okay, Dennis. Well,
Speaker 1: all I can say is I really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 1: Same for you Alex and Hannah. It's been an extraordinary
Speaker 1: experience being with you. All I can tell you is
Speaker 1: we'll never stop fighting. You give us just more and
Speaker 1: more inspiration from just being yourself, So keep being you.
Speaker 7: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 7: get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Speaker 1: Ennessis Project and I really hope you'll join me in
Speaker 1: supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how
Speaker 1: to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our
Speaker 1: production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in
Speaker 1: the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one