Speaker 1: On Thanksgiving two thousand five, ninety four year old Helen
Speaker 1: Sailor returned to her home, a high rise apartment building
Speaker 1: for the elderly and disabled in Elkharta, Indiana. When phone
Speaker 1: calls went unanswered through the following morning, family members found
Speaker 1: Helen strangled to death, allegedly with the lanyard that had
Speaker 1: gone missing. A partial print of dubious importance was sent
Speaker 1: to the Indiana State Police Lab. Initially, Elkhart p D
Speaker 1: had two viable suspects, but the investigation went cold. The
Speaker 1: case became a priority again when a new homicide unit
Speaker 1: was formed. Detective Mark Daggy had an unfounded theory involving
Speaker 1: a string of burglaries and a younger resident the high rise,
Speaker 1: Lana Canaan. Investigators pressured a vulnerable friend of Lana's to
Speaker 1: claim that she had confessed a murdering Helen Sailor with
Speaker 1: another high rise resident. A disabled band named Andy Royer,
Speaker 1: who was dragged in for a course of interrogation resulting
Speaker 1: in a false confession, took corroborate these false statements. They
Speaker 1: pulled the prints from the Indiana State Police Lab and
Speaker 1: gave them to an untrained analyst just to get him
Speaker 1: to say the print matched Fauna. Andy and Lana went
Speaker 1: to trial together, and we're not able to cross examine
Speaker 1: each other to point out the glaring inconsistencies in Andy's
Speaker 1: recanted statement between the fabricated fingerprint match, false statements, and
Speaker 1: outright perjury by law enforcement. Both Atlanta and Andy were
Speaker 1: sentenced to fifty five years in prison. This is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today. I have a case
Speaker 1: out of Elkhart, Indiana, a town that I have a
Speaker 1: bad feeling. We're going to start to know really well,
Speaker 1: because if just one case can involve so many of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of wrongful convictions in the town of so
Speaker 1: few people, what else must be out there? And the
Speaker 1: case today involves a false confession, a coerced eyewitness, false
Speaker 1: expert testimony, prosecutorial misconduct, official misconduct, and a general reckless
Speaker 1: and almost total disregard for the truth, justice, and public safety.
Speaker 1: In this case, it's not only about what happened to
Speaker 1: an elderly woman, Helen Sailor, but also the two people
Speaker 1: who were wrongfully convicted, Blanakin and the man who is
Speaker 1: with us today, Andy Royer. Andy, Welcome to wrong for conviction.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, thank you for joining us. And
Speaker 1: with him is his attorney from the Notre Dame Exoneration
Speaker 1: Justice Clinic. I've never seen someone who is more effective
Speaker 1: at breaking down the blue wall of silence. Elliott Slosar,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little about where this story takes place. Yeah, Elkhart,
Speaker 1: you know, small town, Indiana, approximately forty people. I think
Speaker 1: it's still considers itself the r V capital of the world.
Speaker 1: R vs are less used now than then we're in
Speaker 1: the nineties, but it's a town that you know, and
Speaker 1: it's hight. People were moving from all over the Midwest
Speaker 1: to go work there and work in the factories and
Speaker 1: you know, build better lives. You know when the RV
Speaker 1: stuff sort of slowed down is when el Khart became
Speaker 1: more written with crime. That uptick ultimately produced a lot
Speaker 1: of bronpool connections, right, And as we saw all over
Speaker 1: the country in the eighties and nineties, you had an
Speaker 1: uptick and crime and politicians then ran quote unquote tough
Speaker 1: on crime campaigns, which I have to say, it's just nonsense.
Speaker 1: It's really just tough on people. Those things never result
Speaker 1: in a reduction in crime, but anyway, that led to
Speaker 1: an era when the authorities were just playing fast and
Speaker 1: loose with the rules and and the civil rights of
Speaker 1: our fellow Americans, arresting just about anyone in order to
Speaker 1: close cases, which, of course, as we often recognize here
Speaker 1: on the show, it leaves the trooper out on the street,
Speaker 1: ready and willing to commit more crimes in most cases. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Night think systemically Elkhart have had police misconduct problems
Speaker 1: dating back to the sixties and seventies. There was a
Speaker 1: real lack of training in place and a real acceptance
Speaker 1: and even encouragement of police misconduct, and that stuff did
Speaker 1: not end in the nineties. And you know, they've had
Speaker 1: a lot of wrong pol convictions, five exonerations so far,
Speaker 1: five exonerations out of a population of fifty thousand, five exonerations.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got like another dozen wrongfully convicted clients
Speaker 1: in Malkhart who are still trying to come home. And
Speaker 1: that's only like the tip of what we're uncovering there, right,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about seventeen out of a population of
Speaker 1: fifty thousand, and those are just the ones we know about.
Speaker 1: I mean just to give you a comparison. By the way,
Speaker 1: they've been three hundred thirty exonerations in New York City.
Speaker 1: Now there are plenty more people fighting for justice as
Speaker 1: we speak, innocent as could be, but still three hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty in a city of about eight and a
Speaker 1: half million people. That nets out to about four per
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand. I think per capita. Elkhart, Indiana, the
Speaker 1: city will be the wrongful conviction capital in the US. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I read another case out of Elkhart, a
Speaker 1: guy named Edgar Garrett in the nineties when interrogations were
Speaker 1: all video recorded. It's a false confession case which preceded Andy's.
Speaker 1: But Edgar Garrett was acquitted because the jury saw the interrogation.
Speaker 1: And I bring it up to illustrate the systemic problem
Speaker 1: in Elkhart. Can you tell us about that case? What
Speaker 1: happened in the case with Edgar Garrett? He was a
Speaker 1: father accused of murdering his child. The child wasn't found yet.
Speaker 1: The police interrogated him for twelve hours and like back,
Speaker 1: it's all video recorded, same interrogation rooms. As you know, Andy,
Speaker 1: a decade later, when that interrogation was going on, it
Speaker 1: produced a false confession where edgar Garrett falsely confessed to
Speaker 1: killing his daughter by hitting her over the head with
Speaker 1: like a pipe. They hadn't found the body yet. They
Speaker 1: then took Garrett to the crime scene, did a reenactment
Speaker 1: with him. A couple of weeks later, they find the body.
Speaker 1: The daughter is stabbed to death like dozens and dozens
Speaker 1: of times. She wasn't killed by being hit in the head,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, shoot, so like in hell cart
Speaker 1: what they did. They went forward with the death penalty trial.
Speaker 1: The jury was shown the interrogation video. They found a
Speaker 1: Garrett not guilty, and the jurors were interviewed and what
Speaker 1: they said was, we saw that it was the cops confession,
Speaker 1: that Garrett was just repeating it, that they brow beat
Speaker 1: him into a false confession. And I mean, this is
Speaker 1: why we obviously and desperately need videotaping of all interactions
Speaker 1: with police. I'm talking about identification proceedings, witness interviews, interrogations,
Speaker 1: because when a jury witnesses how these things go down,
Speaker 1: they could better assess the validity of each of these
Speaker 1: pieces of evidence. Percent So they do this day line episode,
Speaker 1: the elected prosecutors on their sky Michael Constina, and they're like, boy,
Speaker 1: you know, Mr Constantino, this seems like you've got a problem.
Speaker 1: Like the guy confessed in a different way than the
Speaker 1: daughter was killed. That's a real problem, you know. Weren't
Speaker 1: you concerned about that? He's like, well, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't good for the case, which of course begs the
Speaker 1: question why did they go forward with the prosecution, let
Speaker 1: alone go for the death pedal. Yeah, so he went
Speaker 1: forward with it anyways, And so at the end of
Speaker 1: the episode, there's this fascinating thing where they're like, and
Speaker 1: we've spoken to the city of Elkhart and they have
Speaker 1: now changed our policies and they were no longer a
Speaker 1: video recording interrogations. Okay, So, faced with the reality that
Speaker 1: this man had not killed his daughter and was coerced
Speaker 1: at the saying that he had, the remedy was not
Speaker 1: to reprimand the officer figured out some safeguards against getting
Speaker 1: false confessions. No, their solution was to remove the transparency,
Speaker 1: and that of course set the stage for what happened
Speaker 1: in Andy's case. But before we get into that aspect
Speaker 1: of it, let's go back to before any of this
Speaker 1: happened Andy, what was your life like growing up in Elkhart.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood.
Speaker 1: I had a stepdad and he was around for us
Speaker 1: all the time and it turned out good. So, and
Speaker 1: what were some of your favorite things to do? Swimming
Speaker 1: and playing baseball? Junior minor leagues? Wow, junior minor leagues.
Speaker 1: You must have been a pretty decent athlete there, you know,
Speaker 1: it was it was It kept me busy during the summer.
Speaker 1: So you kept busy and never were in trouble with
Speaker 1: the police. What about schools and bs and great? So
Speaker 1: you excelled in sports and in school, but then you
Speaker 1: later went on to qualify to live in a high
Speaker 1: rise building specifically for elderly people and people with disabilities
Speaker 1: because of a tragic accident. Do you feel comfortable telling
Speaker 1: us about that. I don't want to. I had totally understand.
Speaker 1: Is it okay if Elliott tells us about it. Andy
Speaker 1: was working and suffered, you know, a really really tragic
Speaker 1: accident while working, you know, one of those telephone poles.
Speaker 1: He pushed somebody out of the way it was going
Speaker 1: to fall in another colleague, and it caused for Andy
Speaker 1: to suffer a significant traumatic injury to his hand, and
Speaker 1: so he's lost part of his middle finger, he only
Speaker 1: has half of it. He saved somebody's life in the process.
Speaker 1: But the fascinating thing was that the trauma that Andy
Speaker 1: and Dirt from that experience like rewired his brain, and
Speaker 1: so Andy now suffers, you know, significant cognitive functioning disabilities
Speaker 1: that like he didn't have as a teenager. Well, Andy,
Speaker 1: I know you don't want to talk about it, but
Speaker 1: what you did was just straight heroic and it's something
Speaker 1: you should be very proud of. I'm proud of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would be too. And so you were living in
Speaker 1: this high rise, struggling to acclimate and adjust to life
Speaker 1: having gone through this tragic accent, and that's when you
Speaker 1: befriended Lana Canaan, who ends up the second wrongful conviction survivor.
Speaker 1: And this story, now, from what I understand, the detective
Speaker 1: in this case had previously had a theory that Lata
Speaker 1: may have been responsible or a few burglaries in the
Speaker 1: high rise. Now he had nothing to actually back that
Speaker 1: up other than that she had dated a maintenance guy
Speaker 1: there and could have plausibly theoretically had access to his keys.
Speaker 1: So pretty much just pure speculation. But she was on
Speaker 1: the mind of at least one detective before all of
Speaker 1: this happened. Can you tell us about your relationship to her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to hang around her. She didn't seem like trouble.
Speaker 1: She just somebody that they'll talk to and just as
Speaker 1: a friend. Either of you remember what brought her to
Speaker 1: the high rise. My understanding is at Lanta had some
Speaker 1: sort of mental health struggle that qualified as a disability
Speaker 1: which allowed for her to live there. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: the exact type. She was functioning at a much higher
Speaker 1: rate than Andy was at the time, and the prosecution
Speaker 1: then used that as a way to say that Andy
Speaker 1: was the muscle under Lama's control in an incident that
Speaker 1: neither of you had anything to do with the murder
Speaker 1: of another resident at the high rise, a ninety four
Speaker 1: year old blind woman named Helen Sailor. And this blind
Speaker 1: woman she lived alone, but she had a home healthcare
Speaker 1: worker to his sister in her daily task including building
Speaker 1: up her medications, and it's believed that she was killed
Speaker 1: sometime in the evening on November Thanksgiving two thousand two,
Speaker 1: so they had a family dinner. You know. Helen was
Speaker 1: dropped off at the high rise. I think sometime in
Speaker 1: the early evening, her home healthcare worker called, as she
Speaker 1: usually would to, you know, say hey, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be there the next morning to help you out, please,
Speaker 1: you know, have the door unlocked or whatever. And there
Speaker 1: were some phone calls that were missed that night. The
Speaker 1: next morning she also didn't answer, and so ultimately the
Speaker 1: home health care nurse arrived, the family came, They unlocked
Speaker 1: the door, and inside they found a deceased Helen Sailor,
Speaker 1: and one of her relatives was Elkhart p D Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Paul Converse, who initially led this investigation. Now, Helen had
Speaker 1: been strangled to death, and they believed that it may
Speaker 1: have been done with a missing lanyard. Right, so she
Speaker 1: had like a leoniard around her neck, would have like
Speaker 1: her key on it. They couldn't find that, and so
Speaker 1: the thought was that if she was strangled, that it
Speaker 1: likely would have been that the perpetrator used that lanyard.
Speaker 1: There were no like signs of like forest entry, and
Speaker 1: so the police sort of suspected that she either opened
Speaker 1: her door volunteerily, or this is somebody who had a key.
Speaker 1: There was some like pretty significant physical evidence that was there.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that they found on
Speaker 1: her was like a cranberry like substance, like a sticky
Speaker 1: substance around her. And they also found a pill bottle
Speaker 1: out on the counter. They ended up recovering a latent
Speaker 1: print from that pill bottle that became an issue later
Speaker 1: on in the investigation. Yeah, so there's this partial fingerprint
Speaker 1: on the pill bottle in an apartment that is frequented
Speaker 1: by home healthcare workers. But if that print belonged to
Speaker 1: someone who didn't belong in the apartment, like Lanta Canaan,
Speaker 1: then that would appear to be damning evidence. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: subjectivity of fingerprint analysis plays heavily in this case, as
Speaker 1: it does in so many cases. Fingerprints do have approbriate value,
Speaker 1: but the analysis comes down to a subjective comparison made
Speaker 1: by a highly fallible human being. This type of analysis
Speaker 1: is hardly as exact as we've all been led to believe. Now,
Speaker 1: I encourage our audience to listen to our episode of
Speaker 1: Junk Science Romoviction Junk Science, where our host Josh Dubin
Speaker 1: does a deep dive on this subject. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: it linked in the bio. Please check it out, and
Speaker 1: in this case the analysis was later proven to be
Speaker 1: wholly unreliable. But let's put a pin in that for now.
Speaker 1: So we've got no Warner weapon, a partial print which
Speaker 1: may or may not have had anything to do with
Speaker 1: the crime, no signs of a break in, which means
Speaker 1: the purpose probably either new Miss Sailor or had a
Speaker 1: key or forced their way in while the door was
Speaker 1: still a lot. They did DNA testing of her fingernails,
Speaker 1: detecting only Miss Sailor's DNA, and then you've got what
Speaker 1: might be cranberry sauce residue, potentially from somebody thanksgiving leftovers.
Speaker 1: It was Thanksgiving, it for all, but hardly anything to
Speaker 1: go on. And this investigation happened in almost like phases,
Speaker 1: the first of which was before Elkhart p D had
Speaker 1: a homicide unit. And in this first phase the detectives
Speaker 1: from the Criminal Investigations Division did a surprisingly good job
Speaker 1: at developing leads with this little to go on. These
Speaker 1: initial leads, there were two really good alternate suspects developed.
Speaker 1: The first one and you know this isn't a shocker.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, you want to see who the victim
Speaker 1: has contact with? How about the guy who delivers her medicine.
Speaker 1: And so they looked at this guy, Larry Would. They
Speaker 1: went to his apartment. I believe it was the day
Speaker 1: that the body was found. He was very, very anxious.
Speaker 1: According to the officers, they found his shoes and on
Speaker 1: the shoes with blood and they did luminal testing inside
Speaker 1: the apartment which confirmed it was blood, and then they
Speaker 1: took the shoes and so they had this guy. They
Speaker 1: asked Larry at first, they were like, hey, Larry, when's
Speaker 1: the last time you saw Helen Sailor? And he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I had. He saw her on Thanksgiving evening after she
Speaker 1: got dropped off by her family. You know, I helped
Speaker 1: her the elevator. And that becomes important because later when
Speaker 1: Larry is confronted in an interrogation like setting at the
Speaker 1: car police department, he changes a story and said, oh,
Speaker 1: I think I actually went on the elevator with her
Speaker 1: and I may have walked her into the apartment. And
Speaker 1: so Larry would, by all respects, was like the last
Speaker 1: person to see Helen Sailor alive. He would later fail
Speaker 1: a polygraph exam. You know, I know polygraph is an
Speaker 1: admissible evidence in court, but like this is a guy
Speaker 1: that like should have like raised every single red flag.
Speaker 1: So that was like suspect number one. Suspect number two
Speaker 1: is this guy named Tony Thomas who was like visiting
Speaker 1: his grandmother at the high rise over that weekend. He
Speaker 1: had previously been convicted of murder and like Kansas or somewhere,
Speaker 1: and was acting very very suspicious that day. And the
Speaker 1: early investigation they spoke to people who saw Tony Thomas
Speaker 1: on the elevator clicking the buttons for every floor. And
Speaker 1: this would have been after the time that Helen Saylor
Speaker 1: got home, and so there was some real question as
Speaker 1: to whether he may have gotten off on the floor
Speaker 1: that Helen lived on and tried to take money that way,
Speaker 1: because he was asking other people for money in the
Speaker 1: high rise. What's fascinating about Tony Thomas. You would think, hey,
Speaker 1: convicted murder, you bring him into the police station, you'd
Speaker 1: interrogate him. There's nothing indicating that they ever did that.
Speaker 1: And the initial investigators they didn't charge anybody, and eventually
Speaker 1: they consider the case to be cold. And so I
Speaker 1: think by like the summer of two thousand three, so
Speaker 1: this is, you know, roughly six seven months later. That's
Speaker 1: when the car Police Department for in their homicide unit.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Converse was in charge of it. This case became
Speaker 1: the first case that the homicide unit ever investigated, and
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Converse, we believe you know, was determined to close
Speaker 1: the case for a relative of his who got killed.
Speaker 1: But instead of backing those promising leads from phase one
Speaker 1: of the investigation, the newly formed homicide unit assigned the
Speaker 1: case to lead Detective Carl Conway and Detective Mark Daggi,
Speaker 1: who took the case in the wrong direction. So what
Speaker 1: happens in this next phase of the investigation. Phase two
Speaker 1: of the investigation was how they framed Indy and Lana.
Speaker 1: By like August two three, this was a cold case
Speaker 1: and Daggie was like obsessed with Lana Keenan, Like he
Speaker 1: thought that Lana had committed burglaries in the high rise
Speaker 1: because she was dating this maintenance worker, so she would
Speaker 1: have access to a key, he thought. And he can
Speaker 1: never develop probably cause to charge with any of those burglaries.
Speaker 1: He like, he kept coming after and coming after, can
Speaker 1: never charge on Lana was like, I didn't do any
Speaker 1: of this stuff, you know, leave me alone. You're like
Speaker 1: really annoying me. And so Diaggy couldn't get her on this.
Speaker 1: So when him and Conway team up, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go get a long of canan. So on
Speaker 1: September one, two three, Lana Caden Anita Porter or driven
Speaker 1: in a car and they get pulled over for like
Speaker 1: super minor traffic and fractions. And at the time, Nina
Speaker 1: Porter was on prole so she had a lot at risk.
Speaker 1: But in that interaction, Nina Porter was never like, I
Speaker 1: have information about a murder, nothing like that. The only
Speaker 1: thing of value was that Lana was taken into custody
Speaker 1: as a result of that traffic stop. Detective Conway found
Speaker 1: out and he talked to the patrol officer, and troll
Speaker 1: officer was like, oh, yeah, Lana was with this woman
Speaker 1: named Nina Porter. And so Conway took it on his
Speaker 1: own volition to show up a Nina Porter's house the
Speaker 1: next day. And from what I understand is that Carl
Speaker 1: Conway was known for being a case closer, so to speak,
Speaker 1: who would use intimidation tactics to get what he wanted. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think now Detective Conway is known for all of
Speaker 1: his feelings in this particular case, it's what led to
Speaker 1: the end of his career. But you know he had
Speaker 1: a reputation in the department for getting confessions and closing cases.
Speaker 1: I mean, the guy is massive. He's like pro pub
Speaker 1: least six five six six two three hundred pounds. Sounds
Speaker 1: like a really scary guy in the interrogation room. Huh,
Speaker 1: Andy he was. He's not somebody you won't show up
Speaker 1: on your front doorstep either, like he did with Nina Porter.
Speaker 1: And the details of that interaction didn't come out until
Speaker 1: Nina testified about fifteen or sixteen years later in post conviction.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us what she said about that? What
Speaker 1: Nina Porter says is that Conway shows up at her house,
Speaker 1: threatening her from the jump to tell her something about
Speaker 1: implicating Lana Keenan and the murder of Helen Sailor, and
Speaker 1: Nina's like, I don't know anything. I don't know anything.
Speaker 1: He then threatens to like violate her prole have her
Speaker 1: kids removed, then takes her down to the police station
Speaker 1: and interrogates the heck out of this woman who is
Speaker 1: super vulnerable. At some point he promises her reward too,
Speaker 1: because you know reward many have been offering up by
Speaker 1: the home healthcare company that you know assisted Helen Taylor,
Speaker 1: and so like just coerces the heck out of this
Speaker 1: woman for hours to fabricate a false statement implicating Lana
Speaker 1: and Andy and the murder of Helen Sailor. It is
Speaker 1: so freaking disturbing how normalized that tactic of threatening to
Speaker 1: take someone's children away is for the police. It's like
Speaker 1: as common as doughnuts, but much more sinister. And Nina
Speaker 1: later in post conviction had so much more to say
Speaker 1: about the absurd way in which Conway took this false statement.
Speaker 1: So during a recorded to even imagine this, Conaways showing
Speaker 1: her pictures and on the back of it there were
Speaker 1: phrases that she was supposed to repeat once he turned
Speaker 1: the recorder on. The story was that Lana keenan over
Speaker 1: the fourth of July holiday like stalled Nina Porter at
Speaker 1: the high Rise picnic or something. It was just like
Speaker 1: talking about killing Helen Sailor, and like very vague ways.
Speaker 1: And one of the things she remembered that she was
Speaker 1: supposed to say was that Lana told her thanksgiving, thanks
Speaker 1: for giving death, that that's what thanksgiving mentor, which is
Speaker 1: an absurd thing. And then you made some other comment
Speaker 1: implicating her and Andy and the murder by saying that
Speaker 1: and I had like complete control over Andy, and so
Speaker 1: she was basically the brains and Andy was lebron and
Speaker 1: that was something that you know, the police had fed
Speaker 1: to her as well. Okay, so now they have the
Speaker 1: probable cause they needed to drag you in, Lana, and
Speaker 1: for question. Lana denied Eddie Voman and was initially let go.
Speaker 1: But that's not how it went with you. Andy. Tell
Speaker 1: us about when they picked you up. I was in
Speaker 1: my apartment and uh, I heard a knock on the door,
Speaker 1: and they so, do you want to come down? And
Speaker 1: we want to question you know, I thought I thought
Speaker 1: nothing of it. I wasn't even sure what it was
Speaker 1: for because I I had never heard about the murder.
Speaker 1: So and when they interrogated you over the course of
Speaker 1: September three and fourth, how did they come at you?
Speaker 1: What did they say to you? We know you have
Speaker 1: ties with Lanta, and what do you means to you?
Speaker 1: And what do you know about the murderer? And and
Speaker 1: what I was trying to say is I didn't have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. I told him that too.
Speaker 1: He just kept twisting and twisting away, repeating themselves asking
Speaker 1: me would you choke her with and how did you
Speaker 1: get in the door? And how was Landa involved with this?
Speaker 1: And it's not like they were oblivious to your cognitive impairment. Hell,
Speaker 1: it was part of their theory of how Lana could
Speaker 1: control you. So at some point, after hours of this
Speaker 1: intense pressure, you finally gave in, thinking that you'd be
Speaker 1: able to leave if you said what they wanted? Is
Speaker 1: that accurate? I just I gave up. They fed me
Speaker 1: lines and and as we have seen in so many
Speaker 1: false confessions, the lines that they fed you ended up
Speaker 1: being the only things that could be verified, while the
Speaker 1: information that solely came from you, Andy was riddled with falsehoods, nonsense,
Speaker 1: and inconsistencies for the simple and obvious reason that you
Speaker 1: knew nothing about the crime. And Elliott, you were able
Speaker 1: to get Conway to admit to this, right, which is insane?
Speaker 1: Can you take us through that? But Conway eventually admitted
Speaker 1: to this is like an Andy's evidentially hearing was that
Speaker 1: the only two pieces of information that they were able
Speaker 1: to corroborate they were actually true was the fact that
Speaker 1: he lived in the high rise at the time of
Speaker 1: the murder, and that he knew Lana Keenan. Everything else
Speaker 1: that was like in his statement was proven to either
Speaker 1: be false or Detective Conway admitted defeating Andy. First, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of the examples of the stuff that was
Speaker 1: false is they got Andy to say that he sold
Speaker 1: Helen sailors, like some for jewelry or something at like
Speaker 1: a pawn shop. They went to the pawn shop. The
Speaker 1: records objectively proved that Andy Royer never sold anything there.
Speaker 1: Another thing is they got Andy to say that like
Speaker 1: he cleaned up the apartment with some like cowels and
Speaker 1: threw them down the shoot the trash shoot. During the
Speaker 1: underlying investigation, they actually learned that the trash shoot was
Speaker 1: broken from like the twelfth floor down or something like that.
Speaker 1: There was also another thing where you know, they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, what liquid did you pour on her? And
Speaker 1: Andy said milk? That was wrong because they knew it
Speaker 1: was like a cranberry sauce substance wasn't milk. So like,
Speaker 1: unless Conway actually was telling him stuff that was consistent
Speaker 1: with the investigation, everything else was objectively wrong and they
Speaker 1: knew that. And you know, the biggest piece of evidence
Speaker 1: that we have that showed the unreliability of the statement
Speaker 1: was after the statement, according to Detective Conway's report, Andy
Speaker 1: asked can I go home now? And Conway how to
Speaker 1: tell Andy that he just gave a confession to murder
Speaker 1: and didn't even know right. The Pacers Foundation is a
Speaker 1: proud supporter of this episode of awful conviction and of
Speaker 1: the Last Mile organization, which provides business and tech training
Speaker 1: to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re enter the workforce.
Speaker 1: The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving the lives of
Speaker 1: Hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations that are dedicated primarily to
Speaker 1: helping young people and students. For more information on the
Speaker 1: work of the Pacers Foundation or the Last Mile program,
Speaker 1: visit Pacers Foundation dot org or the Last Mile dot org.
Speaker 1: So what they did, though, was because the the statement
Speaker 1: was so bodged, as they captain Indie and custody at
Speaker 1: the police department overnight after charging him with murder so
Speaker 1: that they can interrogate him the next day, which like
Speaker 1: never happens. If you get a confession that's legitimate, why
Speaker 1: need you to keep this guy the next day? And
Speaker 1: the interrogame again he had already been charged with murder.
Speaker 1: They kept him overnight, they didn't give him an attorney,
Speaker 1: he didn't get to go to court, and then they
Speaker 1: did the whole thing the next day, hoping that they
Speaker 1: could like get a more reliable statement that wasn't so
Speaker 1: obviously fabricated by coercion. Yeah, imagine if they still had
Speaker 1: to worry about their misconduct being videotaped for a jury
Speaker 1: to see. And yet somehow there's still has room to
Speaker 1: get even worse. While this two day interrogations going on,
Speaker 1: with this very aggressive, psychologically coercive interrogator and Andy, who's
Speaker 1: got the mind of a child, there are people watching
Speaker 1: the interrogation. And we only found this out after Andy
Speaker 1: was exonerated. Was one of the people watching it was
Speaker 1: the person who ultimately prosecuted him. That she was actually
Speaker 1: sitting there watching this psychologically coercive interrogation take place and
Speaker 1: doing nothing about it. What's her name again, Vicky Becker?
Speaker 1: Vicky Becker, And she's now the elected prosecutor you about
Speaker 1: our county. Our hope is that we can end that
Speaker 1: she was at the interrogete stion. She was the person
Speaker 1: who put on detective Conway to testify a trial about
Speaker 1: the interrogation actually elicited from him. Now, did you feed
Speaker 1: Mr roy or any information? Conway's like, Oh, No, wouldn't
Speaker 1: do that because I knew he had a mental disability.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't feed him a single fact. If she was there
Speaker 1: during the interrogation, which she says she is, she would
Speaker 1: have known what Conway now admits, which is that he
Speaker 1: fed Andy all the information that actually aligned with the
Speaker 1: facts of the case. Whatever those facts were, it came
Speaker 1: from Conway's mouth. And in Detective Conway's own report, he
Speaker 1: admitted that before he took Andy's confession that Andy was confused,
Speaker 1: he was fatigued, and he's later admitted that he believed
Speaker 1: that Andy was mentally broken before he ever took the statement.
Speaker 1: And had this been videotaped, like Edgar Garris's interrogation, had
Speaker 1: the jury seen this, it would have impeached everything, all
Speaker 1: the lies the detective Conway had to say a trial,
Speaker 1: And if the evidence in this case wasn't fraudulent enough,
Speaker 1: that brings us to the only physical evidence, the fingerprint.
Speaker 1: So in phase one they sent the medicine bottle and
Speaker 1: other physical evidence off to the Indiana State Police lab
Speaker 1: and eventually they sent finger prints of suspects a K
Speaker 1: standards for comparison. But in Phase two, when Conaway and
Speaker 1: Daggie got involved, something telling happened with the Prince Conway
Speaker 1: and Daggie story was that Andy and Lana first came
Speaker 1: on their radar through Nina Porter's coerce statement in September
Speaker 1: two thousand three. In August of two thousand three, though
Speaker 1: before Nina and Lana were pulled over, the ol Car
Speaker 1: Police Department removed the physical evidence from the Indiana c
Speaker 1: Police laboratory and sent it to a deputy sheriff at
Speaker 1: the Car County Sheriff's Department named Dennis Chapman for him
Speaker 1: to compare the latent print to Andy Royer standard. Not
Speaker 1: only Andy, but but Lana can as well. They were
Speaker 1: literally targeting Lana and Andy before they manufactured that false
Speaker 1: evidence during the first week of September. Chapman, come to
Speaker 1: find out, never trained to do lating comparisons at all,
Speaker 1: And Dennis Chapman writes like a two page report. It
Speaker 1: says that he matches the print from the medicine bottle
Speaker 1: to the left peaky finger of Lana Canon come to
Speaker 1: find out it ended up not being a peaky figure
Speaker 1: at all. It was like the index finger to somebody.
Speaker 1: He excluded a home healthcare worker, so like he got
Speaker 1: the finger wrong, the person wrong, and then he somehow
Speaker 1: excluded the right person, which all of that shows it
Speaker 1: was just like a total fabrication. Like this guy was
Speaker 1: not doing a legitimate comparison. He was just doing whatever
Speaker 1: the Conway and EPD wanted him to do. You might
Speaker 1: as well have my dog look at it. I mean
Speaker 1: it would be just the same, right, because like Chapman
Speaker 1: is a total fraud anyways. Right, And that's even unfair
Speaker 1: to my dog because Freddie would never do something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they so like we see him as like Elkhart's
Speaker 1: hired gun. You know, this untrained, unqualified deputy sheriff that
Speaker 1: when the All Car Prosecutor's Office or the Car Police
Speaker 1: Department was concerned that the Indian Police Laboratory wouldn't give
Speaker 1: them the findings that they want, they would remove it
Speaker 1: and send it to this illegitimate proxy who would then
Speaker 1: fabricated opinion for them for whoever their suspect was. I
Speaker 1: shuddered to think. But how many other cases has Chapman
Speaker 1: been involved in. So we are digging in a Chapman.
Speaker 1: Now he had been used by the All Car Police
Speaker 1: Department to do Layton print comparisons dating back to the es.
Speaker 1: So we actually have another wrongful conviction case from el Car.
Speaker 1: That's a murder from like two thousand that Vicky Becker
Speaker 1: was the prosecutor on and Lo and Behold. The week
Speaker 1: before trial in that case, Dennis Chapman was brought in
Speaker 1: to exclude all the alternative suspects from the print left
Speaker 1: on what they alleged was a murder weapon. Wow, this
Speaker 1: is a Tandora's box of of evil. And he only
Speaker 1: stopped giving them opinions in eleven ish when Lana Kenyan's
Speaker 1: post conviction petition unraveled the fact that his opinion was
Speaker 1: false all along. So almost twenty years worth of cases,
Speaker 1: this guy Chapman, who has no formal training to do
Speaker 1: fingerprint analysis, would just come in and testify as an expert.
Speaker 1: You've got a real problem in Neil cart and Andy
Speaker 1: was just another one of their countless victims. So they
Speaker 1: had this in putting this in quotation marks fingerprint match
Speaker 1: Nina Porter saying that Lanta confessed to her and implicated
Speaker 1: you Andy, and then they had Andy's false confession. Andy,
Speaker 1: you had been in jail for two years now, and
Speaker 1: they came to see you with your defense attorney to
Speaker 1: see if they could get you to testify and repeat
Speaker 1: your false confession. But this time he wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: How did that all play out? They just kept asking
Speaker 1: me questions again and making sure everything was okay, And
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I don't. I didn't have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the murder. Of course they knew that already.
Speaker 1: So now it's August two thousand five and you walk
Speaker 1: into court. What was that like? I felt like a
Speaker 1: stiff board walking down the hall and going into sit
Speaker 1: down in the courtroom. And and Vicky Becker was, well,
Speaker 1: we got this and we got that. And they never
Speaker 1: asked me or my attorney never did anything at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had a defense attorney who had just heard you
Speaker 1: vehemently recan't your false confession. Yet he made no effort
Speaker 1: to suppress that statement. And from what I understand, when
Speaker 1: he was given a list of false confession experts like
Speaker 1: Dr Richard Leo Dr Off, she that he called exactly
Speaker 1: zero of the names on that list up to testify
Speaker 1: and Elliott. We've seen plenty of cases with multiple code offendants,
Speaker 1: but this one really is problematic and it's hard to
Speaker 1: believe this was allowed to go forward as one trial.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what I'm talking about, because like, oh,
Speaker 1: hand El Carter Indiana, where you have a situation where
Speaker 1: you have two codefendants, one of them falsely confesses and
Speaker 1: implicates his other co defendant, and then Nina Porter attributes
Speaker 1: a confession a Lana Keenan that the state then tries
Speaker 1: to use against Andy. So it's constitutionally problematic because Lana
Speaker 1: can't force Andy on the stand, like he has a
Speaker 1: right to not testify. Andy can't put Lawn on the
Speaker 1: stand to say that she never made these statements to
Speaker 1: Nina Porter, and the states like using all of this
Speaker 1: evidence to convict both of them at the same time,
Speaker 1: Like the trial should have been severed. You know, the
Speaker 1: trial was about two days excluding jury sellection, and you know,
Speaker 1: the state just like completely ran over the defense. So
Speaker 1: you had the latent print fabrication, introduce a trial. Conway
Speaker 1: goes up there, introduces Andy's two recorded statements, which total
Speaker 1: and length are roughly just over an hour combined. So
Speaker 1: like you know, you basically have like eight to nine
Speaker 1: hours of unrecorded interrogation where Andy, who had the mind
Speaker 1: of a child, is psychologically coerced into giving a false confession,
Speaker 1: fed all the facts. Conway testified the trial in response
Speaker 1: to questioning by Miss Becker, never fed him any information,
Speaker 1: you know, never coerced him anyway, wouldn't do that, you know,
Speaker 1: knew that he had a disability. All of that a lie.
Speaker 1: And then Nina Porter went up there on the stand
Speaker 1: and testify that Lana gave this confession to her to
Speaker 1: do in the murder, you know, thanksgiving, thanks for giving death,
Speaker 1: and that she had complete control over Andy to the
Speaker 1: extent that if Lana said Andy go stand in the rain,
Speaker 1: that he would go do it. And the state and
Speaker 1: closing arguments were like, the print corroborates the confession, the
Speaker 1: confession corroborates, need a porter, need a porter corroborates both
Speaker 1: of it. Look at everything together, you've got your puzzle.
Speaker 1: Convict these people and the jury did what the prosecutors wanted,
Speaker 1: and did they present anything in your defense at all?
Speaker 1: I felt it was a no witnesses, no defense witnesses,
Speaker 1: and not even like no defense witnesses, but like the
Speaker 1: police officers went up there and testified to the jury
Speaker 1: that they never had any alternate suspects, and we know
Speaker 1: that's a lie. Like Larry Wood Tony Thomas, people were
Speaker 1: straight up committing perjury left and right. So, Andy, when
Speaker 1: you saw this circus unfolding in front of you, did
Speaker 1: you still hold out any hope that the jury would
Speaker 1: come back in and get it right? I was hoping
Speaker 1: to us, but as we know, with all the lying
Speaker 1: and fabricated evidence, it was probably well, it's hard to
Speaker 1: somewhere near impossible for them to see the truth. So
Speaker 1: can you tell us about that awful moment when they
Speaker 1: did get it so wrong? I've felt nothingness. I was
Speaker 1: just numb. It took me back to the jails, and
Speaker 1: I just walked in like not seeing a ghost, But
Speaker 1: I was a ghost. I got to know people right
Speaker 1: off to hand, and I found me a job, so
Speaker 1: I kept busy most of the time working on a
Speaker 1: wood factory making skids, and the people from the outside
Speaker 1: come and pick up the skids, and we got paid
Speaker 1: for it. We got like fifty cents an hour, and
Speaker 1: if we got so many skids one we got five
Speaker 1: or it was either five cents or a penny for
Speaker 1: each kid that got done. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know a very important and insidious thing about the
Speaker 1: thirteenth Amendment, which is that it did end slavery, but
Speaker 1: they left a loophole in there, and the loophole is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't apply to people who aren't free. So
Speaker 1: that meant that if they put people behind bars like
Speaker 1: they did to you Andie, they can enslave you. They
Speaker 1: can pay. In some states they pay four cents an
Speaker 1: hour in charge attacks on top of that, other states
Speaker 1: is nineteen cents an hour, and tons of products everyday,
Speaker 1: products that many of us use, license plate twists are
Speaker 1: made in these prisons. Big corporations used a slave labor.
Speaker 1: It's a huge problem, and it creates a perverse and
Speaker 1: reverse inceative for people to lock up other people because
Speaker 1: there's money in it. So here you have a system
Speaker 1: in Elkhart where it appears they deliberately wrongfully convicted Andie
Speaker 1: and countless others at a rate that's at least get this,
Speaker 1: eight times higher per capita than a place like New York,
Speaker 1: which has a long and ordered history of lawful convictions,
Speaker 1: and the same prosecutor that it's still in office today.
Speaker 1: Made Andy and so many others essentially into slaves. Yes,
Speaker 1: I worked in the kitchen to you, and they pay
Speaker 1: fifty cents an hour. So were you able to make
Speaker 1: any friends while you were in there? Lots of friends
Speaker 1: played board games. I was on the Houn dorm people
Speaker 1: that didn't get in trouble if you got one little
Speaker 1: ride up here to get kicked out. And I was
Speaker 1: there for two years and never got a ride up.
Speaker 1: And you can go outside and walk around to play basketball,
Speaker 1: and h caught a ride up once before I got
Speaker 1: in the outer Hono dorm. I fell asleep and went
Speaker 1: to the chow hall. Then I went back and went
Speaker 1: to chow hall again, and uh, they had a scanner
Speaker 1: and I got a I actually got two meals. So
Speaker 1: this is probably like the worst thing you've ever done.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, you didn't belong there and desperately needed help,
Speaker 1: and your first appellate lawyer did bring a compelling ineffective
Speaker 1: assistance claim based on the fact that your trial lawyer
Speaker 1: never tried to suppress the false confession of his disabled
Speaker 1: client and never bothered to call a false confession expert
Speaker 1: like Dr Leo or Dr Afshi. And the one thing
Speaker 1: that sticks out of my mind here is that the
Speaker 1: trial lawyer said in his own defense that this was
Speaker 1: actual strategy. Okay, he said that in Elkhart, the jury
Speaker 1: wasn't going to believe an expert from outside the community.
Speaker 1: From outside the community, Yeah, But what's ironic about this
Speaker 1: logic here is that because Dennis Chapman's from within the community,
Speaker 1: they'll believe him, right. I mean, it was an outrageous
Speaker 1: explanation by the attorney, But the judge overseeing that claim
Speaker 1: was this guy, Terry Shoemaker. He was the prosecutor on
Speaker 1: Agregaratt's case who we found out exclude did Richard off
Speaker 1: She from testifying as a false confession expert at that
Speaker 1: mid Ninetese trial, saying false confession expert testimony should never
Speaker 1: be before a jury because it invades the province of
Speaker 1: the jury. So when this guy now who's on the
Speaker 1: on the bench, he's never like, hey, Mr Royer, just
Speaker 1: wants you to know. As a prosecutor, I took the
Speaker 1: position that these types of people should never be allowed
Speaker 1: in a courtroom. Never disclosed. It denied Andy's post conviction position.
Speaker 1: He sat in prison for like another decade, the judge
Speaker 1: should have refused himself. And that's when I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we started talking about systemic misconduct. I mean, frankly, when
Speaker 1: I said the words that there were systemic police and
Speaker 1: prosecutory most conduct that caused wrongfuell convictions in al Carda, Indiana,
Speaker 1: including Andy Royers, the state filed a motion for an
Speaker 1: injunction against me. The state court judge found that, like
Speaker 1: when I said systemic misconduct, that that was defamatory. You
Speaker 1: know what's amusing now is that that judge, formerle Car
Speaker 1: Canny prosecutor, she withheld from us that she was also
Speaker 1: married to a former corrupt car cop in the nineties. Right,
Speaker 1: Like this is like when you talk about systemic, it's
Speaker 1: like you're going before judges who are former prosecutors married
Speaker 1: Alkhart police officers. Like that is the system in our
Speaker 1: cart that is like allowed for people like Andy to
Speaker 1: get wrongfully convicted in like open view. The whole system
Speaker 1: is stacked. You don't have a chance, and that's how
Speaker 1: you end up with five going on seventeen exonerations and
Speaker 1: counting in a town of fifty tho. So, Andy, how
Speaker 1: did you end up getting in touch with Elliott to uh,
Speaker 1: one of my lawyers, Michael Sutherland. You put a newspaper
Speaker 1: article out saying how wrongfully I was done, and Elliott
Speaker 1: happened to see it and took up the case from there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's funny. You know, this goes back to the
Speaker 1: systemic a car misconduct. By the time that I found
Speaker 1: out about Andy's keys, we had another client who is
Speaker 1: agony I identify the name of Keith Cooper, who we'd
Speaker 1: like to cover in the very near future, if you'll
Speaker 1: both join. Yeah, and so Keith had been wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 1: You know, he was framed for a crime he didn't
Speaker 1: commit to, and the indie story started like a wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction series, I want to say, in liketen. Keith then
Speaker 1: was still trying to get a part in an actual
Speaker 1: innocence parton from the governor, and as part of that
Speaker 1: series they did a story ultimately on Andy. I want
Speaker 1: to say. This was like, so, okay, you saw the article,
Speaker 1: you and Sutherland got in touch. What happened next? You know,
Speaker 1: I was like desperate to get my hands on the material.
Speaker 1: My wife and I were going on a vacation to
Speaker 1: Mexico and I had just gotten like the trial transcripts
Speaker 1: and I just remember that whole vacation, like being on
Speaker 1: the beach under an umbrella. Read through the whole trial
Speaker 1: was like ringing through the police reports and was just like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this guy got so framed. You know.
Speaker 1: So by this time, we had a project going at
Speaker 1: Notre Dame Law School in Andy's case was the first
Speaker 1: one that we ever worked on. And so we had
Speaker 1: a number of like great students on the keys and
Speaker 1: incredible investigator named Patty, and we went out and like
Speaker 1: knocked on a ton of doors. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: imagine that Nina Porter got a visit. Yeah, Nina Porter
Speaker 1: was actually the first witness that we talked to. You
Speaker 1: by then, you know, to put this in context. By
Speaker 1: time we talked to Nina Porter, Lana Keenan, his code defendant,
Speaker 1: was exonerated and and sought civil compensation, and he's like
Speaker 1: still sitting there. You know, even the attorney would have
Speaker 1: had this before us. He filed a motion for leave
Speaker 1: to even file a post conviction potition, and the appellate
Speaker 1: court denied, like they weren't letting Andy Rorior even get
Speaker 1: back to court. I mean, it was like fundamentally outrageous.
Speaker 1: So Lana, she got an incredible post conviction lawyer, kar
Speaker 1: Winnicky who dug into the lane print stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: like Dennis Chapman, total fraud. Karwinnick, he is the one
Speaker 1: who unraveled that fraud. They ended up getting a lane
Speaker 1: print expert excluded Lana Keenan found all these differences that
Speaker 1: couldn't be explained away. That science is very subjective. What's
Speaker 1: fast and inning is They filed post conviction petition. State
Speaker 1: challenges it. At some point, the state sends the print
Speaker 1: materials off to the n NFT Police Lab in the st.
Speaker 1: Police laps like this excludes her. They still go to
Speaker 1: an evidentuary hearing. Even though the state lab says not
Speaker 1: a lot of Keenan's, the private person says not a
Speaker 1: lot of Keenan's. Right around the time of the aventuary hearing,
Speaker 1: Chapman gets a chance to look at it and sees
Speaker 1: the print and immediately starts admitting that he got it wrong.
Speaker 1: That was after he already saw, you know what the
Speaker 1: private expert was saying, so he knew that other people
Speaker 1: were saying that he was wrong. By then, they or
Speaker 1: the aventure hearing, the state does an aggressive cross examination
Speaker 1: of Chapman, like it was self preservation mode. You know,
Speaker 1: Bicky Becker still prosecutor in the office. She put him
Speaker 1: on the stand trial. It was a different deputy prosecutor
Speaker 1: doing the cross but it was like saving his boss, right,
Speaker 1: Like make this guy look like he's a fraud, that
Speaker 1: he duped of us and that none of us knew
Speaker 1: about it all along, to save face for the system
Speaker 1: as a whole, exactly. So. Then eventually before ruling has made,
Speaker 1: the state agrees to a new trial for Launa and
Speaker 1: the case gets dismissed. Now one would think this should
Speaker 1: have an effect on her co defend and Andy. It's
Speaker 1: so crazy. They used that evidence at Andy's trial, and
Speaker 1: still they were like, you know what, We've got this
Speaker 1: disabled guy. We're just gonna leave him in prison. He
Speaker 1: hasn't had the rights representation, he hasn't had the funds
Speaker 1: for private representation. We're gonna leave in there. We're going
Speaker 1: to see if they're able to unravel everything else that happened.
Speaker 1: All right, So back to Nina Porter, one of our
Speaker 1: law students, me and our investigator, we knocked on Nina
Speaker 1: Porter's door. She was like, I've been waiting fifteen years
Speaker 1: for somebody to ask me how this whole thing came about.
Speaker 1: And she told us in painful detail how she was
Speaker 1: coerced into lying against Andy and Launa for prime ating command.
Speaker 1: So Nina Order recanted the printice Toast, which brings us
Speaker 1: to the false confession. So did you reach out to
Speaker 1: any of the false confession experts that Andy's trial attorney
Speaker 1: should have called in the first place. Well, we called
Speaker 1: Dr Leo. He began digging through the material. But what
Speaker 1: really changed things? In addition to our investigation, you know,
Speaker 1: so like patting the students knocked on doors, got a
Speaker 1: ton of affidavits, people implicating Larry Wood, people implicating Tony Thomas.
Speaker 1: We also had a former out car police officer, Larry Towns.
Speaker 1: He actually called Mark Daggie and was recording the entire
Speaker 1: conversation and Larry was chatting him up about this case.
Speaker 1: And Daggie admitted there that the interrogation he witnessed it.
Speaker 1: He said he believed that it was actually a video
Speaker 1: recorded and that the interrogation was super leading and among
Speaker 1: the worst he had ever seen. He had no idea
Speaker 1: that a recorder was on you know, this was like
Speaker 1: two police officers talking to each other, and so we
Speaker 1: made these admissions. Towns also called another person who was
Speaker 1: involved in the investigation watched the interrogation as person Peggy's either,
Speaker 1: and she admitted that she always believed Andy was innocent.
Speaker 1: She was the one who signed the charging documents, who
Speaker 1: sought the warrant for Andy's arrest for the murder, and
Speaker 1: was admitting in this call, I always thought that guy
Speaker 1: was in a sense. They didn't think that Larry would
Speaker 1: ever tell They surely didn't think that the Southern Police
Speaker 1: officer would ever record them, but he did because he
Speaker 1: was so fundamentally outraged. Okay, so we not only have
Speaker 1: an expert poking huge holes in the false confession, but
Speaker 1: also two people who were in the room who didn't
Speaker 1: think that anyone would be breaking down their sacred blue
Speaker 1: wall of silence. But then, on top of that, your
Speaker 1: involvement in Keith Cooper's case had a direct effect on Andy,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, and Keith Cooper's wrong Ulle connection lawsuit,
Speaker 1: we were able to do depositions of Conway and Daggie,
Speaker 1: and that's where things finally unraveled because those depositions uncovered
Speaker 1: the truth about what happened the interrogation room. Conway finally
Speaker 1: admitted defeating Andy information, admitted that he believed that he
Speaker 1: was psychologically broken down, admitted it he was informed prior
Speaker 1: to the interrogation that Andy was mentally disabled and had
Speaker 1: the mind of a child, and then testified under oath
Speaker 1: that he disregarded all of that, gave no accommodations to
Speaker 1: a disability, Like this is all like in a deposition.
Speaker 1: You know, this guy was making all these admissions that
Speaker 1: were like completely contrary to what he testified to a trial. Elliott,
Speaker 1: I gotta hand it to you, man, what you were
Speaker 1: able to do here, This is not normal. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is nothing short of and I'm not like a
Speaker 1: magical thinker, but this ship is just miraculous. The things
Speaker 1: you've been able to uncover are shocking. And what was
Speaker 1: also shocking that we found out through the depositions was
Speaker 1: that Conway was removed from the homicide unit of the
Speaker 1: car Police Department before Andy's two thousand five trial from
Speaker 1: misconduct in another interrogation in a different homicide case. Was removed.
Speaker 1: So we got to the bottom of it and ultimately
Speaker 1: had his supervisor testified for US at the at Entry
Speaker 1: hearing that he removed Conway because he believed that he
Speaker 1: lied in order to interrogate another person without their council president,
Speaker 1: and that his lie in that case, the supervisor believe
Speaker 1: could jeopardize the integrity of any further criminal investigations that
Speaker 1: he worked on and would cause credibility issues a trial,
Speaker 1: so they removed him from the homicide unit. This all
Speaker 1: happened before Andy's trial. Conway was like the most important
Speaker 1: witness at Andy's trial because like only Conway could either
Speaker 1: admit or deny what happened the interrogation room before a
Speaker 1: recorder was turned on. And yet the state withheld the
Speaker 1: fact that this guy was removed from homicide due to
Speaker 1: issues with his credibility and integrity. Conway also further admitted
Speaker 1: defeating Andy all the information and that Vickie Becker watched
Speaker 1: it all happen and put Conway on the stand to
Speaker 1: lie anyway, and Chapman had already been exposed as a
Speaker 1: frauded lata's post conviction and by the way, Dennis Chapman,
Speaker 1: we ultimately got his personnel file. What Dennis Chapman admitted
Speaker 1: after Keenan got exonerated. Chapman had to sit down with
Speaker 1: the sheriff and explain how he botched that print so badly.
Speaker 1: And in that interview he said that he was pressured
Speaker 1: by el Car police officers to form an opinion. That
Speaker 1: they told him the theory of the case that Lana
Speaker 1: Canan was the brains, that Andy Warrior was the braun,
Speaker 1: that Andy couldn't do this on his own, so they
Speaker 1: fed him who they wanted him to I D and
Speaker 1: then pressured him into making that fabricated I D. You
Speaker 1: also had those recordings of Daggie and that supervisor Day
Speaker 1: repeated what he had said on the recording on the
Speaker 1: stand as well. I mean, like the state's case imploded.
Speaker 1: A Nina Porter testified for us to she told the
Speaker 1: court how she was coerced into repeating a fabricaid statement.
Speaker 1: And by the way, while Andy was like wrongfully convicted,
Speaker 1: you know, within like forty eight hours of that, Daggie
Speaker 1: and another officer went and gave her the two thousand
Speaker 1: dollar reward that was never disclosed. Like nobody ever knew
Speaker 1: that she was pressured into lying and that like, oh,
Speaker 1: as soon as she got off the stand, she was
Speaker 1: gonna be given thousands of dollars. So there they are
Speaker 1: using the carrot and the stick. So how did it
Speaker 1: all end up with Andy being here with us today?
Speaker 1: When was this this long overdue hearing September into October
Speaker 1: twenty And the fascinating part about it is that we
Speaker 1: agree to only litigate like really like a fourth of
Speaker 1: what it was in our petition. Yeah, we were like Judge,
Speaker 1: you know, like let's just do five or six issues
Speaker 1: because if we went on those issues, we don't need
Speaker 1: to get to the other twenty Wow. So you really
Speaker 1: were ready to embarrass the state further than you even
Speaker 1: needed to in order to convince the court that a
Speaker 1: new trial was in order, and the court agreed with you.
Speaker 1: So Andy, what was it like watching this ship show
Speaker 1: from your perspective? Like there was a superman on my side?
Speaker 1: And uh, I just gonnat believe the lawyers before Elliott
Speaker 1: didn't do anything, you know what I mean? Just they
Speaker 1: just here you go give it to the prosecutor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so safe to say that Elliott is a good guy
Speaker 1: and your book, Yes, he's a cool guy. He's got
Speaker 1: the record straight now, so he's all right around. Great guy.
Speaker 1: Thanks Andy, thank you. So you've just watched Superman come
Speaker 1: in and kick some serious ass, right, right, But this
Speaker 1: being el card, they're not going to just start doing
Speaker 1: the right thing. Now. We got this case kicked out
Speaker 1: of car County. That's why you need to get justice, right. So,
Speaker 1: like we got that judge to recused herself. She actually
Speaker 1: found it was defamatory when I said that Andy was
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted. Like it wasn't just like systemic misconduct. It
Speaker 1: was like this judge is like the most unfair judge
Speaker 1: that we could ever be before. And how this judge
Speaker 1: is oblivious to the system she's been overseeing is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But okay, yeah, so Andy's case outside of our Car Canyon,
Speaker 1: we litigated in Kosciosco County before this super kind, really smart,
Speaker 1: fair judge. The whole proceeding was like very very fair
Speaker 1: to both sides, and we felt like we had a
Speaker 1: real chance given the case that we put on, and
Speaker 1: we submitted proposed fine beeks after the hearing, the state
Speaker 1: did as well, and we waited and when that phone
Speaker 1: call happened, they're like, hey, Elliott, how far away are you?
Speaker 1: Because Andy is ready to get picked up. The judge
Speaker 1: granted a new trial in March thirty one, and I
Speaker 1: was like in a meeting with other students on a
Speaker 1: different Elkhart Wrongfolk conviction case. Like we were in a
Speaker 1: zoom meeting because everything was to resume then, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, guys, Oh my god, and
Speaker 1: he just got a new trial, He's getting released. I
Speaker 1: gotta go. And I ran upstairs put on a suit.
Speaker 1: I was like calling Andy's parents, Jeanie and Mike, and
Speaker 1: you know, obviously one of the most incredible phone calls
Speaker 1: that I'll ever have, and like, and he's coming home, Like,
Speaker 1: we've all got to figure this out. Somebody go by mask,
Speaker 1: you know, Like my wife was like like seven months
Speaker 1: pregnant the time. Like I wasn't leaving the house at all. Right,
Speaker 1: So this was the beginning of the pandemic. No one
Speaker 1: knew how bad this was going to be yet, but
Speaker 1: you forged ahead, no hesitation, drove so fast. Called the students,
Speaker 1: you know, we all sort of like agreed to to
Speaker 1: meet at the jail to to welcome Andy home. So
Speaker 1: finally when I got to Cuscasca Jel, I said You're
Speaker 1: being released. I was like wow, I started shaking color
Speaker 1: started coming back to my face and I started feeling
Speaker 1: like a personal again. It was just unbelievable. It was
Speaker 1: there's no no words to put it out there, so wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can only imagine. And this judge didn't have to
Speaker 1: do what he did, which was to release you on
Speaker 1: a Rocognus responds, it seems because he was so convinced
Speaker 1: of Andy's innocence that he didn't want to see Andy
Speaker 1: back in prison even another day waiting for a new
Speaker 1: trial while the state and COVID dragged this thing out.
Speaker 1: So Andy was released. The state appealed the ruling for
Speaker 1: a new trial, and the appellate court affirmed the ruling, stating,
Speaker 1: and this is a quote, Detective Conway withheld the truth
Speaker 1: when he attempted to bolster the reliability of Rowyer's confessions
Speaker 1: by saying Royer new details about the murder which were
Speaker 1: not known to the public. Again, just like Chapman, Now
Speaker 1: it was Conway's turn to be under the bus, and
Speaker 1: the appellate court ruled Detective Conway that his continued employment
Speaker 1: the el Car Police Department was galling and found that
Speaker 1: he committed perjury back at Andy and Lana's two dozen
Speaker 1: five trial, and after that happened, we put pressure on
Speaker 1: the city of Elkhart and the Elkhart Chief of Police.
Speaker 1: You know, we were calling for Conway's termination and the chief,
Speaker 1: who has a ton of integrity. Finally, they have a
Speaker 1: chief of police there who wants to change things and
Speaker 1: is trying to change things, wrote up a ten page
Speaker 1: notice of termination of Detective Conway about the egregious misconduct
Speaker 1: that he committed in this case. Well we'll see if
Speaker 1: he's actually ever criminally pursued like one of us mere
Speaker 1: mortals would be, but at least he can't do any
Speaker 1: more damage. So the new trial ruling was upheld on appeal.
Speaker 1: Then what happened after the appellate court decision, we file
Speaker 1: the motion suppressed. That was like the first time that
Speaker 1: anybody he had ever filed the motion in suppressed for Andy,
Speaker 1: saying that it is confession was false, involuntary, and unconstitution
Speaker 1: and it should be not admitted at the trial. And
Speaker 1: the state's response was to not respond and dismiss the
Speaker 1: case right because they knew, they always knew. So Andy's
Speaker 1: name was finally clear. On July Conway and Chapman are disgraced.
Speaker 1: Vicky Becker still needs her come up and and it
Speaker 1: appears that she's currently running unopposed in November. Now I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if it's too late to change that, but
Speaker 1: we hope for so much worse for her and Andy.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you'd like to call on our
Speaker 1: audience to do or to support, anything that you'd like
Speaker 1: to see happen. I just hope that they've done wrong
Speaker 1: so that they should pay for her. Yeah, I absolutely agree,
Speaker 1: and I hope that comes to pass. And now we
Speaker 1: go to closing arguments, where first of all, I thank
Speaker 1: you both from the bottom of my heart for being
Speaker 1: here and sharing your incredible story. I know it must
Speaker 1: be difficult to drudge up all of these emotions, so
Speaker 1: thank you for being brave and doing just that. And
Speaker 1: now I'm going to shut my microphone off, leave my
Speaker 1: headphones on, kick back in my chair, and just listen
Speaker 1: to any final thoughts you guys have. Elliott, please kick
Speaker 1: it off for us and Andy you take us home.
Speaker 1: You know, I think Andy's case shows the need for
Speaker 1: why interrogation should be video recorded. You know, from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, Andy was like among the most vulnerable in
Speaker 1: our community and was manipulated and coerced into confessing to
Speaker 1: something that wasn't true. And it's heartbreaking and it was
Speaker 1: completely preventable the state. You know, the prosecutor was watching
Speaker 1: the interrogation, other officers were watching the interrogation. They could
Speaker 1: have stopped it at any point. You know, they didn't
Speaker 1: have to charge him. They knew it wasn't reliable, and instead,
Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty clear what happened, or they just
Speaker 1: wanted to close a case, and they sadly did that
Speaker 1: through framing an innocent really really innocent, not only like
Speaker 1: in this case, but like and he's just like an
Speaker 1: innocent human being. And the students and Notre Dame and
Speaker 1: our team works so so hard to show the injustice
Speaker 1: and to bring Andy home, and in Andy's name, we
Speaker 1: hope to do that for so many other innocent people
Speaker 1: from Elkhart. I just want to thank everybody that worked
Speaker 1: on the case, and the law students and people that
Speaker 1: believed in me, my mom and my stepdad and family,
Speaker 1: and they brought me through a lot. I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to get through it, but I did. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to wrongful conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall Jeff Clyverne and Kevin Wardis,
Speaker 1: with research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
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Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
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Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason flom Rnful Conviction is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one