Speaker 1: On Thanksgiving two thousand and five, ninety four year old
Speaker 1: Helen Sailor returned to her home, a high rise apartment
Speaker 1: building for the elderly and disabled in Elkhardidiana. 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, Elk Cahrd PD
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 to murdering Helen Sailor with
Speaker 1: another high rise resident, a disabled man named Andy Royer,
Speaker 1: who was dragged in for a course of interrogation resulting
Speaker 1: in a false confession. Corroborate these false statements. They pulled
Speaker 1: the prints from the Indiana State Police ladder and gave
Speaker 1: them to an untrained analyst just to get him to
Speaker 1: say the print match Faana. Andy and Lana went to
Speaker 1: trial together and were not able to cross examine each
Speaker 1: other to point out the glaring inconsistencies in Andy's recanted
Speaker 1: statement between the fabricated fingerprint match, false statements, and outright
Speaker 1: perjury by law enforcement. Both Lana and Andy were sentenced
Speaker 1: 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 eye witness,
Speaker 1: false expert testimony, prosecutorial misconduct, official misconduct, and a general
Speaker 1: reckless and almost total disregard for the truth, justice, and
Speaker 1: public safety. And this case is not only about what
Speaker 1: happened to an elderly woman, Helen Sailor, but also the
Speaker 1: two people who were wrongfully convicted, Vlana Kane and the
Speaker 1: man who is with us today, Andy Royer. Andy, Welcome
Speaker 1: to wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. And with him is his
Speaker 1: attorney from the Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic. I've never
Speaker 1: seen someone who is more effective at breaking down the
Speaker 1: blue wall of silence. Elliott Slosar, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little about where this story takes place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Elkhart, you know, small town, Indiana, approximately forty fifty
Speaker 4: thousand people. I think it still considers itself the RV
Speaker 4: capital of the world. RVs are less used now than
Speaker 4: then we're in the nineties, but it's a town that
Speaker 4: you know, at its height, people were moving from all
Speaker 4: over the Midwest to go work there and work in
Speaker 4: the factories and you know, build better lives. You know
Speaker 4: when the RV stuff sort of slowed down is when
Speaker 4: Elkhart became more written with crime. That uptick ultimately produced
Speaker 4: a lot of wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: Right, And as we saw all over the country in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, you had an uptick in crime,
Speaker 1: and politicians then ran quote unquote tough on crime campaigns,
Speaker 1: which I have to say is just nonsense. It's really
Speaker 1: just tough on people. Those things never result in a
Speaker 1: reduction in crime, but anyway, that led to an era
Speaker 1: when the authorities were just playing fast and loose with
Speaker 1: the rules and the civil rights of our fellow Americans,
Speaker 1: arresting just about anyone in order to close cases, which,
Speaker 1: of course, as we often recognize here on the show,
Speaker 1: it leaves the trooper out on the street, ready and
Speaker 1: willing to commit more crimes in most cases.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think systemically Elkhart have had police miss conduct
Speaker 4: problems dating back to the sixties and seventies. There was
Speaker 4: a real lack of training in place and a real
Speaker 4: acceptance and even encouragement of police mist conduct, and that
Speaker 4: stuff did not end in the nineties.
Speaker 3: And you know, they've had a lot of wrongful convictions.
Speaker 4: Five exonerations so far, five exonerations out of a population
Speaker 4: of fifty thousand, five exonerations. You know, we've got like
Speaker 4: another dozen wrongfully convicted clients from Melkart who are still trying.
Speaker 3: To come home.
Speaker 4: And that's only like the tip of what we're uncovering there.
Speaker 1: Right, So we're talking about seventeen out of a population
Speaker 1: of fifty thousand, and those are just the ones we
Speaker 1: know about. I mean, just to give you a comparison.
Speaker 1: By the way, there have been three hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: exonerations in New York City. Now there are plenty more
Speaker 1: people fighting for justice as we speak, innocent as could be,
Speaker 1: but still three hundred and thirty in a city of
Speaker 1: about eight and a half million people. That nets out
Speaker 1: to about four per one hundred thousand.
Speaker 4: I think that per capita Elkhart, Indiana, the city will
Speaker 4: be the wrongful conviction capital in the US.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. I read another case out of Elkhart,
Speaker 1: a guy named Edgar Garrett in the nineties when interrogations
Speaker 1: were all video recorded. It's a false confession case which
Speaker 1: preceded Andy's. But Edgar Garrett was acquitted because the jury
Speaker 1: saw the interrogation. And I bring it up to illustrate
Speaker 1: the systemic problem in Elkhart. Can you tell us about
Speaker 1: that case?
Speaker 4: What happened in the case with Edgar Garrett? He was
Speaker 4: a father accused of murdering his child. The child wasn't
Speaker 4: found yet the police interrogate him for twelve hours. This
Speaker 4: is like back in like ninety three, ninety four. It's
Speaker 4: all video recorded, same interrogations rooms. As you know, Andy,
Speaker 4: a decade later, when that interrogation was going on. It
Speaker 4: produced a false confession where edgar Garrett falsely confessed to
Speaker 4: killing his daughter by hitting her.
Speaker 3: Over the head with like a pipe.
Speaker 4: They hadn't found the body yet. They then took Garrett
Speaker 4: to the crime scene, did a reenactment with him. A
Speaker 4: couple weeks later, they find the body. The daughter is
Speaker 4: stabbed to death like dozens and dozens of times. She
Speaker 4: wasn't killed by being hit in the head, and they're like, oh, shoot,
Speaker 4: so like in hell, caart what they did? They went
Speaker 4: forward with the death penalty trial. The jury was shown
Speaker 4: the interrogation video. They found Eggre Garrett not guilty, and
Speaker 4: the jurors were interviewed and what they'd said was we
Speaker 4: saw that it was the cops confession that Egregarrett was
Speaker 4: just repeating it, that they browbeat him into a false confession.
Speaker 1: And I mean, this is why we obviously and desperately
Speaker 1: need videotaping of all interactions with police. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: identification proceedings, witness interviews, interrogations, because when a jury witnesses
Speaker 1: how these things go down, they can better assess the
Speaker 1: validity of each of these pieces of evidence.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent so they do this dayline episode, the
Speaker 4: Electric prosecutors on there, Michael Consteina, and they're like, boy,
Speaker 4: you know, mister Constantino, this seems like you've got a problem.
Speaker 4: Like the guy canfest in a different way than the
Speaker 4: daughter was killed.
Speaker 3: That's a real problem. You know.
Speaker 4: Weren't you concerned about that? He's like, well, you know,
Speaker 4: wasn't good for the case.
Speaker 1: Which of course begs the question why did they go
Speaker 1: forward with the prosecution, let alone go for the death penalty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so he went forward with it anyways. And so
Speaker 4: at the end of the episode, there's this fascinating thing
Speaker 4: where they're like, and we've spoken to the city of
Speaker 4: Elkhart and they have now changed their policies and they
Speaker 4: were no longer video recording interrogations.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, faced with the reality that this man had
Speaker 1: not killed his daughter and was coerced at to saying
Speaker 1: that he had, the remedy was not to reprimand the
Speaker 1: officer or figured out some safeguards against getting false confessions. No,
Speaker 1: their solution was to remove the transparency, and that of
Speaker 1: course set the stage for what happened in Andy's case.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that aspect of it, go
Speaker 1: back to before any of this happened, Andy, what was
Speaker 1: your life like growing up in Elkhart. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about your childhood.
Speaker 2: I had a stepdad and he was around for us
Speaker 2: all the time and it turned out good. So.
Speaker 1: And what were some of your favorite things to do?
Speaker 2: Swimming and playing baseball? Junior minor leagues?
Speaker 1: Wow, junior minor leagues. You must have been a pretty
Speaker 1: decent athlete there, you know.
Speaker 2: 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 school?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a's and b's and great.
Speaker 1: So you excelled in sports and in school. But then
Speaker 1: you later went on to qualify to live in a
Speaker 1: high rise building specifically for elderly people and people with
Speaker 1: disabilities because of a tragic accident. Do you feel comfortable
Speaker 1: telling us about that?
Speaker 2: No, I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I totally understand. Is it okay if Elliott tells us
Speaker 1: about it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Andy was working and suffered you know, a really really
Speaker 4: tragic accident while working, you know, one of those telephone poles.
Speaker 4: He pushed somebody out of the way it was going
Speaker 4: to fall in. Another colleague and it caused for Andy
Speaker 4: to suffer significant traumatic injury to his hand, and so
Speaker 4: he's lost part of his middle finger.
Speaker 3: He only has half of it.
Speaker 4: He saved somebody's life in the process. But the fascinating
Speaker 4: thing was that the trauma that Andy endured from that
Speaker 4: experience like rewired his brain, and so Andy now suffers,
Speaker 4: you know, significant cognitive functioning disabilities that like he didn't
Speaker 4: have as a teenager.
Speaker 1: Well, Andy, I know you don't want to talk about it,
Speaker 1: but what you did was just straight heroic and it's
Speaker 1: something you should be very proud of.
Speaker 2: I'm proud of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would be too. And so you were living
Speaker 1: in this high rise, struggling to acclimate and adjust to
Speaker 1: life having gone through this tragic accent, and that's when
Speaker 1: you offended Lana Canaan, who ends up the second wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction survivor in this story. Now, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: the detective in this case had previously had a theory
Speaker 1: that Lana may have been responsible for or a few
Speaker 1: burglaries in the high rise. Now he had nothing to
Speaker 1: actually back that up other than that she had dated
Speaker 1: a maintenance guy there and could have plausibly theoretically had
Speaker 1: access to his keys, so pretty much just pure speculation.
Speaker 1: But she was on the mind of at least one
Speaker 1: detective before all of this happened. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: about your relationship to her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to hang around her. She didn't seem
Speaker 2: like trouble somebody talk to and just as a friend.
Speaker 1: Dude, either of you remember what brought her to the
Speaker 1: high rise.
Speaker 4: My understanding is that Lana had some sort of mental
Speaker 4: health struggle that qualified as a disability which allowed for
Speaker 4: her to live there. I'm not sure the exact type.
Speaker 4: She was functioning at a much higher rate than Andy was.
Speaker 1: At the time, and the prosecution then used that as
Speaker 1: a way to say that Andy was the muscle under
Speaker 1: Lana's control in an incident that neither of you had
Speaker 1: anything to do with the murder of another resident at
Speaker 1: the high rise, a ninety four year old blind woman
Speaker 1: named Helen Sailor. And this blind woman she lived alone,
Speaker 1: but she had a home healthcare worker to a sister
Speaker 1: in her daily task including filling up her medications, and
Speaker 1: it's believed that she was killed sometime in the evening
Speaker 1: on November twenty eighth, Thanksgiving, two thousand and two.
Speaker 4: So they had a family dinner. You know, Helen was
Speaker 4: dropped off at the high rise. I think sometime in
Speaker 4: the early evening. Her home healthcare worker called, as she
Speaker 4: usually would to, you know, say hey, I'm going to
Speaker 4: be there the next morning to help you out, please,
Speaker 4: you know, have the door unlocked or whatever. And there
Speaker 4: were some phone calls that were missed that night. The
Speaker 4: next morning she also didn't answer, and so ultimately the
Speaker 4: home health care nurse arrived, the family came, They unlocked
Speaker 4: the door, and inside they found a deceased Helen Saylor.
Speaker 1: And one of her relatives was Elkhard PD Lieutenant Paul Converts,
Speaker 1: who initially led this investigation. Now, Helen had been strangled
Speaker 1: to death, and they believed that it may have been
Speaker 1: done with a missing lanyard.
Speaker 4: Right, so she had like a lanyard around her neck,
Speaker 4: would have like her key on it. They couldn't find that,
Speaker 4: and so the thought was that if she was strangled,
Speaker 4: that it likely would have been that the perpetrator used
Speaker 4: that lanyard. There were no signs of like forced entry,
Speaker 4: and so the police sort of suspected that she either
Speaker 4: opened her door voluntarily or this is somebody who had
Speaker 4: a key there was some like pretty significant physical evidence
Speaker 4: that was there.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: One of the things that they found on her was
Speaker 4: like a cranberry like substance, like a sticky substance around her.
Speaker 4: And they also found a pill bottle out on the counter.
Speaker 4: They ended up recovering a latent print from that pill
Speaker 4: bottle that became an issue later on in the investigation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's this partial fingerprint on the pill bottle
Speaker 1: in an apartment that is frequented by home healthcare workers.
Speaker 1: But if that print belonged to someone who didn't belong
Speaker 1: in the apartment, like Lanna Canaan, then that would appear
Speaker 1: to be damning evidence. Unfortunately, the subjectivity a fingerprint analysis
Speaker 1: plays heavily in this case, as it does in so
Speaker 1: many cases. Fingerprints do have appropriate value, but the analysis
Speaker 1: comes down to a subjective comparison made by a highly
Speaker 1: fallible human being. This type of analysis is hardly as
Speaker 1: exact as we've all been led to believe. Now, I
Speaker 1: encourage our audience to listen to our episode of Junk
Speaker 1: Science ronfl Coviction Junk Science, where our host Josh Duben
Speaker 1: does a deep dive on this subject. We're going to
Speaker 1: have it linked in the bio please check it out.
Speaker 1: And in this case, the analysis was later proven to
Speaker 1: be wholly unreliable, but let's put a pin in that
Speaker 1: for now. So we've got no werner weapon, a partial
Speaker 1: print which may or may not have had anything to
Speaker 1: do with the crime, no signs of a break in,
Speaker 1: which means the perp probably either new missailor or had
Speaker 1: a key or forced their way in while the door
Speaker 1: was still a lot. They did DNA testing of her fingernails,
Speaker 1: detecting only missailors DNA. And then you've got what might
Speaker 1: be cranberry sauce residue, potentially from somebody thanksgiving leftovers. It
Speaker 1: was Thanksgiving it for all, but hardly anything to go on.
Speaker 1: And this investigation happened in almost like phases, the first
Speaker 1: of which was before ELK CARDPD had a homicide unit.
Speaker 1: And in this first phase, the detectives from the Criminal
Speaker 1: Investigation Division did a surprisingly good job at developing leads
Speaker 1: with this little to go on.
Speaker 4: These initial leads, there were two really good alternative suspects developed.
Speaker 4: The first one and you know this isn't a shocker.
Speaker 4: It's like, well, you want to see who the victim
Speaker 4: has contact with how about the guy who delivers her medicine.
Speaker 4: And so they looked at this guy, Larry Wood. They
Speaker 4: went to his apartment. I believe it was the day
Speaker 4: that the body was found. He was very, very anxious.
Speaker 4: According to the officers, they found his shoes and on
Speaker 4: the shoes was blood and they did luminol testing inside
Speaker 4: the apartment which confirmed it was blood, and then they
Speaker 4: took the shoes and so they had this guy. They
Speaker 4: asked Larry at first, they were like, hey, Larry, when's
Speaker 4: the last time you saw Helen Sailor? And He's like, oh,
Speaker 4: saw her on Thanksgiving evening, after she got dropped off
Speaker 4: by her family. You know, I helped her the elevator.
Speaker 4: And that becomes important because later when Larry's confronted in
Speaker 4: an interrogation like setting at the Olkcar Police department, he
Speaker 4: changes his story and said, oh, I think I actually
Speaker 4: went on the elevator with her, and I may have
Speaker 4: walked her into the apartment. And so Larry would, by
Speaker 4: all respects, was like the last person to see Helen
Speaker 4: Sailor alive. He would later fail a polygraph exam. You know,
Speaker 4: I know polygraph is an admissible evidence in court, but
Speaker 4: like this is a guy that like should have like
Speaker 4: raised every single red flag. So that was like suspect
Speaker 4: number one. Suspect number two is this guy named Tony
Speaker 4: Thomas who was like visiting his grandmother at the high
Speaker 4: rise over that weekend. He had previously been convicted of
Speaker 4: murder in like Kansas or somewhere, and was acting very
Speaker 4: very suspicious that day. And the early investigation they spoke
Speaker 4: to people who saw Tony Thomas on the elevator clicking
Speaker 4: the buttons for every floor. And this would have been
Speaker 4: after the time that Helen Saylor got home, and so
Speaker 4: there was some real question as to whether he may
Speaker 4: have gotten off on the floor that Helen lived on
Speaker 4: and tried to take money that way, because he was
Speaker 4: asking other people for money in the high rise. What's
Speaker 4: fascinating about Tony Thomas. You would think, hey, convicted murder,
Speaker 4: you bring him to the police station, you'd interrogate him.
Speaker 4: There's nothing indicating that they ever did that. And the
Speaker 4: initial investigators they didn't charge anybody, and eventually they consider
Speaker 4: the case to be cold. And so I think by
Speaker 4: like the summer of two thousand and three, so this is,
Speaker 4: you know, roughly six seven months later, that's when the
Speaker 4: Elkhar Police Department formed their homicide unit. Lieutenant Converse was
Speaker 4: in charge of it. This case became the first case
Speaker 4: that the homicide unit ever investigated. In Lieutenant Converse, we
Speaker 4: believe you know, was determined to close the case for
Speaker 4: a relative of his who got killed.
Speaker 1: But instead of racking those promising leads from phase one
Speaker 1: of the investigations, the newly formed homicide unit assigned the
Speaker 1: case to lead Detective Carl Conway and Detective Mark dag
Speaker 1: who took the case in the wrong direction. So what
Speaker 1: happens in this next phase of the investigation.
Speaker 4: Phase two of the investigation was how they framed Andy
Speaker 4: and Lana. By like August the two thousand and three,
Speaker 4: this was a cold case and Daggie was like obsessed
Speaker 4: with Lana Keenan, Like he thought that Lana had committed
Speaker 4: burglaries in the high rise because she was dating this
Speaker 4: maintenance worker, so she would have access to a key,
Speaker 4: he thought. And he can never develop proble cause to
Speaker 4: charge with any of those burglaries, like he kept coming
Speaker 4: after and coming after, can never charge on Alna was like,
Speaker 4: I didn't do any of this stuff, you know, leave
Speaker 4: me alone. You're like really annoying me. And so Daggy
Speaker 4: couldn't get her on this. So when him and Conway
Speaker 4: came up, they're like, Oh, we're gonna go get Lana Kanaan.
Speaker 4: So on September one, two thousand and three, Lana Cayden
Speaker 4: Anita Porter are drive in in a car and they
Speaker 4: get pulled over for like super minor traffic infractions. And
Speaker 4: at the time, Nina Porter was on prol so she
Speaker 4: had a lot at risk. But in that interaction, Nina
Speaker 4: Porter was never like I have information about a murder,
Speaker 4: nothing like that. The only thing of value was that
Speaker 4: Lana was taken into costody as a result of that
Speaker 4: traffic stop. Detective Conway found out and he talked to
Speaker 4: patrol officer, and patrol officer was like, oh, yeah, Lana
Speaker 4: was with this woman named Nina Porter. And so Conway
Speaker 4: took it on his own volition to show up at
Speaker 4: Nina Porter's house the next day.
Speaker 1: And from what I understand is that Carl Conway was
Speaker 1: known for being a case closer, so to speak, who
Speaker 1: would use intimidation tactics to get what he wanted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think now Detective Conway is known for
Speaker 4: all of his feelings in this particular case. It's what
Speaker 4: led to the end of his career. But you know,
Speaker 4: he had a reputation in the department for getting confessions
Speaker 4: and closing cases. I mean, the guy is massive. He's
Speaker 4: likely sixty five sixty six, two fifty to three hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a really scary guy in the interrogation room,
Speaker 1: Andy who 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?
Speaker 4: What Nina Porter says is that Conway shows up at
Speaker 4: her house, threatening her from the jump to tell her
Speaker 4: something about implicating Lana Keenan and the murder of Helen Sailor,
Speaker 4: and Nina's like, I don't know any think I don't
Speaker 4: know anything. He then threatens to like violate her parle,
Speaker 4: have her kids removed, then takes her down to the
Speaker 4: police station and interrogates the heck out of this woman
Speaker 4: who is super vulnerable. At some point he promises her
Speaker 4: reward too, because you know reward money have been offering
Speaker 4: up by the home healthcare company that you know assisted
Speaker 4: Helen Taylor, and so like just coerces the heck out
Speaker 4: of this woman for hours to fabricate a fallse statement
Speaker 4: implicating Laana and Andy and the murder of Helen Sailor.
Speaker 1: It is so freaking disturbing how normalized that tactic of
Speaker 1: threatening to take someone's children away is for the police.
Speaker 1: It's like as common as donuts, but much more sinister.
Speaker 1: And Nina later in post conviction had so much more
Speaker 1: to say about the absurd way in which Conway took
Speaker 1: this false statement.
Speaker 4: So during a recorded setment, imagine this con is showing
Speaker 4: her pictures and on the back of it there were
Speaker 4: phrases that she was supposed to repeat once he turned
Speaker 4: the recorder on. The story was that Lana keenan over
Speaker 4: the Fourth of July holiday like stall Nina Porter at
Speaker 4: a high rise picnic or something, and was just like
Speaker 4: talking about killing Helen Sailor in like very vague ways.
Speaker 4: And one of the things she remembered that she was
Speaker 4: supposed to say was that Lana told her Thanksgiving thanks
Speaker 4: for giving death, that that's what thanksgiving mentor which is
Speaker 4: an absurd thing. And then you know, made some other
Speaker 4: comment implicating her and Andy in the murder by saying
Speaker 4: that I had like complete control over Andy and so
Speaker 4: she was basically the brains and Andy was the bron
Speaker 4: and that was something that the police had feed to
Speaker 4: her as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now they have the probable cause they needed
Speaker 1: to drag you and Lana in for question. Lana denied
Speaker 1: any Vomban and was initially that go. But that's not
Speaker 1: how it went with you. Andy, tell us about when
Speaker 1: they picked you up.
Speaker 2: I was in my apartment and I heard a knock
Speaker 2: on the door and they said, do you want to
Speaker 2: come down? And we want to question you know, I
Speaker 2: thought nothing of it. I wasn't even sure what it
Speaker 2: was for because I had never heard about the murders.
Speaker 1: So and when they interrogated you over the course of
Speaker 1: September third and fourth, how did they come at you?
Speaker 1: What did they say to you?
Speaker 2: We know you have ties with Atlanta and what do
Speaker 2: means to you? And what do you know about the murder?
Speaker 2: And what I was trying to say is I didn't
Speaker 2: have nothing to do with it. I told him that too.
Speaker 2: He just kept twisting and twisting away, repeating himself asking
Speaker 2: me what'd you choke her with? And how'd you get
Speaker 2: in the door? And how was Lana involved with this?
Speaker 1: And it's not like they were oblivious to your cognitive
Speaker 1: impairment health. It was part of their theory of how
Speaker 1: Lana could control you. So at some point, after hours
Speaker 1: of this intense pressure, you finally gave in, thinking that
Speaker 1: you'd be able to leave if you said what they wanted.
Speaker 1: Is that accurate?
Speaker 2: Yes, I just I gave up. They fed me lines, and.
Speaker 1: As we have seen in so many false confessions, the
Speaker 1: lines that they fed you ended up being the only
Speaker 1: things that could be verified, while the information that solely
Speaker 1: came from you, Andy was riddled with falsehoods, nonsense, and
Speaker 1: inconsistencies for the simple and obvious reason that you knew
Speaker 1: nothing about the crime and Elliott, you were able to
Speaker 1: get Conway to admit to this, right, which is insane?
Speaker 1: Can you take us through that?
Speaker 4: But Conway eventually admitted to this. Is like at Andy's
Speaker 4: evidentiary hearing, was that the only two pieces of information
Speaker 4: that they were able to corroberate they were actually true
Speaker 4: was the fact that he lived in the high rise
Speaker 4: at the time of the murder, and that he knew
Speaker 4: Lana Kanan. Everything else that was like in his statement
Speaker 4: was proven to either be false or Detective Conway admitted
Speaker 4: to feeding Andy.
Speaker 3: First.
Speaker 4: You know, a couple of the examples of the stuff
Speaker 4: that was false is they got Andy to say that
Speaker 4: he sold Helen Sailors, like some r jewelry or something
Speaker 4: at like a pawnshop. They went to the pawnshop. The
Speaker 4: records objectively proved that Andy Royer never sold anything there.
Speaker 4: Another thing is they got Andy to say that like
Speaker 4: he cleaned up the apartment with some like towels and
Speaker 4: threw them down the chute, the trash chute. During the
Speaker 4: underlying investigation, they actually learned that the trash chute was
Speaker 4: broken from like the twelfth floor down or something like that.
Speaker 4: There was also another thing where you know, they're like,
Speaker 4: you know, what liquid did you pour on her? And
Speaker 4: Andy said milk. That was wrong because they knew it
Speaker 4: was like a Cranberry saw substance and wasn't milk. So like,
Speaker 4: unless Conway actually was telling him stuff that was consistent
Speaker 4: with the investigation, everything else was objectively wrong.
Speaker 3: And they knew that.
Speaker 4: And you know, the biggest piece of evidence that we
Speaker 4: had that showed the unreliability of the statement was after
Speaker 4: the statement, According to Detective Conway's report, Andy asked can
Speaker 4: I go home now?
Speaker 3: And Conway had to tell.
Speaker 4: Andy that he just gave a confession to murder and
Speaker 4: didn't even know right.
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Speaker 4: So what they did, though, was because the statement was
Speaker 4: so botched, as a captain Andy in custody at the
Speaker 4: police department overnight after charging him with murder so that
Speaker 4: they can interrogate him the next day, which lake never happens.
Speaker 4: If you get a confession that's legitimate, why you need
Speaker 4: to keep this guy the next day? And the interrogate
Speaker 4: him again. He had already been charged with murder. They
Speaker 4: kept him overnight, they didn't give him an attorney, he
Speaker 4: didn't get to go to court, and then they did
Speaker 4: the whole thing the next day, hoping that they could
Speaker 4: get a more reliable statement that wasn't so obviously fabricated
Speaker 4: by coercion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine if they still had to worry about their
Speaker 1: misconduct being videotape for a jury to see. And yet
Speaker 1: somehow this still has room to get even worse.
Speaker 4: While this two day interrogations going on, with this very aggressive,
Speaker 4: psychologically coercive interrogator and Andy, who's got the mind of
Speaker 4: a child, there are people watching the interrogation and we
Speaker 4: only found this out after Andy was EXONDERI it was
Speaker 4: one of the people watching. It was the person who
Speaker 4: ultimately prosecuted him, that she was actually sitting there watching
Speaker 4: this psychologically coercive interrogation take place and doing nothing about it.
Speaker 1: What's her name again, Vicky Becker?
Speaker 4: Vicky Becker, and she's now the elected prosecutor you know
Speaker 4: Aboutkark County. Our hope is that we can end that
Speaker 4: she was at the interrogaate. She was the person who
Speaker 4: put on Detective Conway to testify a trial about the
Speaker 4: interrogation actually elicited from him. Now, did you feed mister
Speaker 4: roy or any information? Conway's like, Oh, No, wouldn't do
Speaker 4: that because I knew he had a mental disability. Wouldn't
Speaker 4: feed him a single fact. If she was there during
Speaker 4: the interrogation, which she says she is, she would have
Speaker 4: known what Conway now admits, which is that he fed
Speaker 4: Andy all the information that actually aligned with the facts
Speaker 4: of the case. Whatever those facts were, it came from
Speaker 4: Conway's mouth. And in Detective Conway's own report, he admitted
Speaker 4: that before he took Andy's confession that Andy was confused,
Speaker 4: he was fatigued, and he's later admitted that he believed
Speaker 4: that Andy was mentally broken before he ever took the statement.
Speaker 1: And had this been videotaped, like Edgar Garrett's interrogation, had
Speaker 1: the jury seen this, it would have impeached everything, all
Speaker 1: the lies that 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 fingerprints of suspects aka standards for comparison.
Speaker 1: But in Phase two, when Conway and Daggy got involved,
Speaker 1: something telling happened with the Prince. Conway and Daggy's story
Speaker 1: was that Andy and Lana first came on their radar
Speaker 1: through Nina Porter's coerce statement in September two thousand and three.
Speaker 4: In August of two thousand and three, though before Nina
Speaker 4: and Lana were pulled over, the Alkhar Police Department removed
Speaker 4: the physical evidence from the Indiana c Police Laboratory and
Speaker 4: sent it to a deputy sheriff at the Elkhart County
Speaker 4: Sheriff's Department named Denis Chapman for him to compare the
Speaker 4: Leyden print to Andy Warrior's standard. Not only Andy, but
Speaker 4: but Lana can as well. They were literally targeting Lana
Speaker 4: and Andy before they manufactured that false evidence during the
Speaker 4: first week of September. Chapman, come to find out, never
Speaker 4: trained to do leaking different comparisons at all. And Dennis
Speaker 4: Chapman writes like a two page report that says that
Speaker 4: he matches the print from the medicine bottle to the
Speaker 4: left peaky finger of Lana Canna. Come to find out,
Speaker 4: it ended up not being a peaky figer at all.
Speaker 4: It was like the index finger to somebody. He excluded
Speaker 4: a home healthcare worker. So like he got the finger wrong,
Speaker 4: the person wrong, and then he somehow excluded the right person,
Speaker 4: which all of that shows it was just like a
Speaker 4: total fabrication. Like this guy was not doing a legitimate comparison.
Speaker 4: He was just doing whatever the conway An EPD wanted
Speaker 4: him to do.
Speaker 1: You might as well have my dog look at it.
Speaker 4: I mean, it would be just the same, right, because
Speaker 4: like Chapman is a total fraud anyways.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's even unfair to my dog because Freddy
Speaker 1: would never do something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like we see him as like Elkhart's hired gun.
Speaker 4: You know, this untrained, unqualified deputy sheriff that when the
Speaker 4: elk Car Prosecutor's Office or the el Car Police Department
Speaker 4: was concerned that the Indy NFC Police Laboratory wouldn't give
Speaker 4: them the findings that they want, they would remove it
Speaker 4: and send it to this illegitimate proxy who would then
Speaker 4: fabricated opinion for them for whoever their suspect was.
Speaker 1: I shuddered to think. But how many other cases has
Speaker 1: Chapman been involved in?
Speaker 4: So we are digging into Chapman now. He had been
Speaker 4: used by the elkar Police Department to do Leyton print
Speaker 4: comparisons dating back to the nineteen nineties. So we actually
Speaker 4: have another wrongful conviction case from Elkhart. That's a murder
Speaker 4: from like two thousand that Vicky Becker was the prosecutor
Speaker 4: on and Lo and Behold.
Speaker 3: The week before trial.
Speaker 4: In that case, Dennis Chapman was brought in to exclude
Speaker 4: all the alternati suspects from the print left on what
Speaker 4: they alleged was a murder weapon.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is a Fandora's box of evil.
Speaker 4: And he only stopped giving them opinions in twenty eleven
Speaker 4: ish when Lana Kingan's post conviction petition unraveled the fact
Speaker 4: that his opinion was false all along.
Speaker 1: So almost twenty years worth of cases, this guy Chapman,
Speaker 1: who has no formal training to do fingerprint analysis, would
Speaker 1: just come in and testify as an expert. You've got
Speaker 1: a real problem in Elkhart and Andy was just another
Speaker 1: one of their countless victims. So they had this in
Speaker 1: and I'm putting this in quotation marks fingerprint match Nina
Speaker 1: Porter saying that Lana confessed to her and implicated you Andy,
Speaker 1: And then they had Andy's false confession. Andy, you had
Speaker 1: been in jail for two years now, and they came
Speaker 1: to see you with your defense attorney to see if
Speaker 1: they could get you to testify and repeat your false confession.
Speaker 1: But this time he wouldn't do it. How did that
Speaker 1: all play out?
Speaker 2: They just kept asking me questions again and making sure
Speaker 2: everything was okay, And I was like, no, I didn't
Speaker 2: have nothing to do with the murder.
Speaker 1: Of course they knew that already. So now it's August
Speaker 1: two thousand and five and you walk into court. What
Speaker 1: was that like? Uh?
Speaker 2: I felt like a stiff board walking down the aisle
Speaker 2: and going into sit down in the courtroom. And Vicky
Speaker 2: Becker was, well, we got this and we got that.
Speaker 2: And they never asked me or my attorney never did
Speaker 2: anything at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you had a defense attorney who had just heard
Speaker 1: you vehemently recant your false confession. Yet he made no
Speaker 1: effort to suppress that statement. And from what I understand,
Speaker 1: when he was given a list of false confession experts
Speaker 1: like doctor Richard Leo doctor offshe 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 defendants,
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.
Speaker 4: About, Because like ol In el Card Indiana, when you
Speaker 4: have a situation where you have two code defendants, one
Speaker 4: of them falsely confesses and implicates his other Code defendant,
Speaker 4: and then Nina Porter attributes a confession to Alanna Keenan
Speaker 4: that the state then tries to use against Andy. So
Speaker 4: it's constitutionally problematic because Lana can't force Andy on the
Speaker 4: stand like he has a right to not testify. Andy
Speaker 4: can't put Lana on a stand to say that she
Speaker 4: never made these statements to Nina Porter, and the states
Speaker 4: like using all of this evidence to convict both of
Speaker 4: them at the same time, Like the trial should have
Speaker 4: been severed. You know, the trial was about two days
Speaker 4: excluding jury selection, and you know the state just like
Speaker 4: completely ran over the defense. So you had the lead
Speaker 4: in print fabrication introduce a trial. Conway goes up there,
Speaker 4: introduces Andy's two recorded statements, which total and length are
Speaker 4: roughly just over an hour combined. So like, you know,
Speaker 4: you basically have like eight to nine hours of unrecorded
Speaker 4: interrogation where and Andy, who had the mind of a child,
Speaker 4: is psychologically coerced into giving a false confession, fed all
Speaker 4: the facts. Conway testified the trial in response to questioning
Speaker 4: by miss Becker, never fed him any information, you know,
Speaker 4: never coerced him anyway, won't do that, you know, knew
Speaker 4: that he had a disability. All of that a lie.
Speaker 4: And then Nina Porter went up there on the stand
Speaker 4: and testified that Lana gave this confession to her to
Speaker 4: doing the murder, you know, thanksgiving, thanks for giving death,
Speaker 4: and that she had complete control over Andy to the
Speaker 4: extent that if Lana said Andy, go stand in the rain,
Speaker 4: that he would go do it. And the state and
Speaker 4: closing arguments were like, the print corroborates the confession, the
Speaker 4: confession corroborates, need a porter, need a porter corroborates both
Speaker 4: of it. Look at everything together, You've got your puzzle
Speaker 4: conduct these people and the jury did what the prosecutors wanted, And.
Speaker 1: Did they present anything in your defense at all?
Speaker 2: No, I felt it was all one silence.
Speaker 4: No witnesses, no defense witnesses, no, and not even like
Speaker 4: no defense witnesses. But like the police officers went up
Speaker 4: there and testify to the jury that they never had
Speaker 4: any alternate suspects, and we know that's a lie, Like
Speaker 4: Larry would Tony Thomas, people were straight up committing perjury
Speaker 4: left and right.
Speaker 1: So, Andy, when you saw this circus unfolding in front
Speaker 1: of you, did you still hold out any hope that
Speaker 1: the jury would come back in and get it right.
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: I was hoping, yes, but as we know, with all
Speaker 1: the lying and fabricated evidence, it was probably well hard
Speaker 1: to somewhere near impossible for them to see the truth.
Speaker 1: So can you tell us about that awful moment when
Speaker 1: they did get it so wrong?
Speaker 2: I felt nothingness. I was just numb. It took me
Speaker 2: back to the jail cell and I just walked in
Speaker 2: like I not seeing a ghost, but I was a ghost.
Speaker 2: I got to know people right off the hand, and
Speaker 2: I found me a job, so I kept busy most
Speaker 2: of the time, working in a wood factory making skids,
Speaker 2: and that people would from the outside had come and
Speaker 2: pick up the skids, and we got paid for it.
Speaker 2: We got like fifty cents an hour, and if we
Speaker 2: got so many skids done, we got five or it
Speaker 2: was either five cents or a penny for each kid
Speaker 2: that got done.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people don't know a very important
Speaker 1: and insidious thing about the thirteenth Amendment, which is that
Speaker 1: it did end slavery, but they left a loophole in there.
Speaker 1: And the loophole is that it doesn't apply to people
Speaker 1: who aren't free. So that meant that if they put
Speaker 1: people behind bars like they did to you, Andy, they
Speaker 1: can enslave you. It can pay. In some states they
Speaker 1: pay four cents an hour and charge attacks on top
Speaker 1: of that. Other states it's nineteen cents an hour. And
Speaker 1: tons of products everyday, products that many of us use
Speaker 1: license plates, instance, are made in these prisons. Big corporations
Speaker 1: use this slave labor. It's a huge problem, and it
Speaker 1: creates a perverse and reverse insteadive for people to lock
Speaker 1: up other people because there's money in it. So here
Speaker 1: you have a system in Elkhart where it appears they
Speaker 1: deliberately wrongfully convicted Andy and countless others at a rate
Speaker 1: that's at least get this eight times higher per capita
Speaker 1: than a place like New York, which has a long
Speaker 1: and ordered history of lawful convictions, and the same prosecutor
Speaker 1: that is still in office today made Andy and so
Speaker 1: many others essentially into slaves.
Speaker 2: Yes, I worked in the kitchen too, and they pay
Speaker 2: fifty cents an hour.
Speaker 1: So were you able to make any friends while you
Speaker 1: were in there? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, lots of friends, played board games. I was in
Speaker 2: the Ounder doorm. People that didn't get in trouble. If
Speaker 2: you got one lettle ride up here get kicked out.
Speaker 2: And I was there for two years and never got
Speaker 2: a ride up. And you could go outside and walk
Speaker 2: around to play basketball. And I caught a ride up
Speaker 2: once before I got in an honor dorm. I fell
Speaker 2: asleep and went to the chow hall. Then I went
Speaker 2: back and went to chowhaw again, and they had a
Speaker 2: scanner and I got a I accidentally got two meals.
Speaker 1: So this is probably like the worst thing you've ever done. Yes,
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 doctor Leo or doctor Afshi. And the one thing
Speaker 1: that sticks out in 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.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was an outrageous explanation by the attorney,
Speaker 4: But the judge overseeing that claim was this guy, Terry Schumaker.
Speaker 4: He was the prosecutor on Egar Gerrit's case who we
Speaker 4: found out exclude did Richard off She from testifying as
Speaker 4: a false confession expert at that midnighteties trial, saying false
Speaker 4: confession expert testimony should never be before a jury because
Speaker 4: it invades the province of the jury. So when this
Speaker 4: guy now who's on the on the bench, he's never like, hey,
Speaker 4: mister Royer just wants you to know. As a prosecutor,
Speaker 4: I took the position that these types of people should
Speaker 4: never be allowed in a court room never disclosed. It
Speaker 4: denied Andy's post conviction petition. He sat in prison for
Speaker 4: like another decade. The judge should have recused himself. And
Speaker 4: that's when I think, you know, we start talking about
Speaker 4: systemic misconduct. I mean, frankly, when I said the words
Speaker 4: that there were systemic police and prosecutor and mist conduct
Speaker 4: that caused wrong quel convictions in Alcarda, Indiana, including Andy Royers,
Speaker 4: the state filed emotion for an injunction against me. The
Speaker 4: stakehourt judge found that like when I said systemic misconduct,
Speaker 4: that that was defamatory. You know what's amusing now is
Speaker 4: that that judge Formal Cark Kenny prosecutor, she withheld from
Speaker 4: us that she was also married to a former corrupt
Speaker 4: Olkar cop in the nineties. Right, Like this is like
Speaker 4: when you talk about systemic, it's like you're going before
Speaker 4: judges who are former prosecutors married to Alcar police officers.
Speaker 4: Like that is the system in Elkhart that is like
Speaker 4: allowed for people like Andy to get wrongfully convicted in
Speaker 4: like open view. The whole system is stacked.
Speaker 3: You don't have a.
Speaker 1: Chance, and that's how you end up with five going
Speaker 1: on seventeen exonerations and counting in a town of fifty thousand. So, Andy,
Speaker 1: how did you end up getting in touch with Elliott?
Speaker 2: Oh, to one of my lawyers, Michael Sutherland, you put
Speaker 2: a newspaper article out saying how wrongfully I was done,
Speaker 2: and Elliott happened to see it and took up the
Speaker 2: case from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So it's funny, you know, this goes back to the
Speaker 4: systemic Elkhart misconduct. By the time that I found out
Speaker 4: about Andy's keys, we had another client who was exonerated
Speaker 4: by then, by the name of Keith Cooper.
Speaker 1: Who we'd like to cover in the very near future
Speaker 1: if you'll both join us.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And so Keith had been wrongfully convicted. You know, he
Speaker 4: was framed for a crime he did commit too, and
Speaker 4: the Indie Star started like a wrongful Conviction series. I
Speaker 4: want to say, in like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, Keith
Speaker 4: them was still trying to get a part in an
Speaker 4: actual innocence pardon from the governor, and as part of
Speaker 4: that series they did a story ultimately on Andy. I
Speaker 4: want to say, this was like twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: So, okay, you saw the article you and Sutherland got
Speaker 1: in touch what happened next.
Speaker 4: You know, I was like desperate to get my hands
Speaker 4: on the material.
Speaker 3: My wife and I were going on.
Speaker 4: A vacation to Mexico and I had just gotten like
Speaker 4: the trial transcripts, and I just remember that whole vacation,
Speaker 4: like being on the beach under an umbrella, read through
Speaker 4: the whole trial, was like reading through the police reports
Speaker 4: and was just like, oh my god, this guy got
Speaker 4: so framed.
Speaker 3: You know. So by this.
Speaker 4: Time, we had a project going at Notre Dame Law
Speaker 4: School in Andy's case was the first one that we
Speaker 4: ever worked on, and so we had a number of
Speaker 4: like great students on the case and incredible investigator named Patty,
Speaker 4: and we went out and like knocked on a ton
Speaker 4: of doors.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to imagine that Nina Porter got a visit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Nina Port was actually the first witness that we
Speaker 4: talked to. You know, by then, you know, to put
Speaker 4: this in context, By the time we talked to Nina Porter,
Speaker 4: Lana Keenan, his co defend it was exonerated and sought
Speaker 4: civil compensation. Andy's like still sitting there, you know, even
Speaker 4: though the attorney who had this before us, he filed
Speaker 4: e motion for leave to even file a post conviction
Speaker 4: petition in the appellate court denied like they weren't letting
Speaker 4: Andy Royer even get back to court. I mean, it
Speaker 4: was like fundamentally outrageous. So Lana, she got an incredible
Speaker 4: post conviction lawyer, Karen Winnicky who dug into the Layte
Speaker 4: Prince stuff, you know, like Dennis Chapman total fraud. Kara
Speaker 4: Winnikey is the one who unraveled that fraud. They ended
Speaker 4: up getting a lane print expert excluded Lana Keenan found
Speaker 4: all these differences that couldn't be explained away. That science
Speaker 4: is very subjective. What's fascinating is they filed post conviction petition.
Speaker 4: State challenges it. At some point, the state sends the
Speaker 4: print materials off to the DNST Police Lab. Any usctate
Speaker 4: police cops.
Speaker 3: Like this excludes her.
Speaker 4: They still go to an evidentiary hearing. Even though the
Speaker 4: state lab says not a lot of Caenans, the private
Speaker 4: person says not a lone of Keenans. Right around the
Speaker 4: time of the evidentiary hearing, Chapman gets a chance to
Speaker 4: look at it and sees the print and immediately starts
Speaker 4: admitting that he got it wrong. That was after he
Speaker 4: already saw you know what the private expert was saying,
Speaker 4: so he knew that other people were saying that he
Speaker 4: was wrong. By then they go to the adventure hearing,
Speaker 4: the state does an aggressive cross examination of Chapman, like
Speaker 4: it was self preservation mode. You know, Vicky Becker still
Speaker 4: prosecutor in the office. You put him on the stand trial.
Speaker 4: It was a different deputy prosecutor doing the cross but
Speaker 4: it was like saving his boss, right, Like make this
Speaker 4: guy look like he's a fraud, that he duped all
Speaker 4: all of us and that none of us knew about
Speaker 4: it all along.
Speaker 1: To save face for the system as a whole, exactly.
Speaker 4: So then eventually before ruling is made, the state agrees
Speaker 4: to a new trial for Lana and the case gets dismissed.
Speaker 1: Now one would think this should have an effect on
Speaker 1: her co defend and Andy.
Speaker 4: It's so crazy they use that evidence at Andy's trial
Speaker 4: and still they were like, you know what, We've got
Speaker 4: this disabled guy. We're just going to leave him in prison.
Speaker 4: He hasn't had the rights representation, he hasn't had the
Speaker 4: funds for private representation. We're going to leave him there.
Speaker 4: We're going to see if they're able to unravel everything
Speaker 4: else that happened.
Speaker 1: All right, So back to Nina Porter.
Speaker 4: One of our law students, me and our investigator, we
Speaker 4: knocked on Nina Porter's door. She was like, I've been
Speaker 4: waiting fifteen years for somebody to ask me how this
Speaker 4: whole thing came about. And she told us, in painful detail,
Speaker 4: how she was coerced into lying against Andy and Lana
Speaker 4: for crimeate in commitment.
Speaker 1: So Nina Order recanted. The print is toast, which brings
Speaker 1: us to the false confession. So did you reach out
Speaker 1: to any of the false confession experts at Andy's trial
Speaker 1: attorney should have called in the first place.
Speaker 4: Well, we called doctor Leo. He began digging through the material.
Speaker 4: But what really changed things? In addition to our investigation,
Speaker 4: you know, so like patting the students knocked on doors,
Speaker 4: got a ton of affidavits, people implicating Larry Wood, people
Speaker 4: implicating Tony Thomas. We also had a former outcar police officer,
Speaker 4: Larry Towns. He actually called Mark Daggie and was recording
Speaker 4: the entire conversation and Larry was chatting him up about
Speaker 4: this case. And Daggy admitted there that the interrogation. He
Speaker 4: witnessed it. He said he believed that it was actually
Speaker 4: video recorded, and that the interrogation was super leading and
Speaker 4: among the worst he had ever seen. He had no
Speaker 4: idea that a recorder was on. You know, this was
Speaker 4: like two police officers talking to each other, and so
Speaker 4: he made these admissions. Towns also called another person who
Speaker 4: was involved in the investigation watched the interrogations, person Peggy's,
Speaker 4: and she admitted that she always believed Andy was innocent.
Speaker 4: She was the one who signed the charging documents, who
Speaker 4: sought the warrant for Andy's arrest for the murder, and
Speaker 4: was admitting in this call, I always thought that guy
Speaker 4: was innocent. So they didn't think that Larry would ever
Speaker 4: tell They surely didn't think that this other police officer
Speaker 4: would ever record them, but he did because he was
Speaker 4: so fundamentally outraged.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we not only have an expert poking huge
Speaker 1: holes in the false confession, but also two people who
Speaker 1: were in the room who didn't think that anyone would
Speaker 1: be breaking down their sacred blue wall of silence. But then,
Speaker 1: on top of that, your involvement in Keith Cooper's case
Speaker 1: had a direct effect on Andy as it turns.
Speaker 4: Out, in Keith Cooper's wrong quol conviction lawsuit, we were
Speaker 4: able to do depositions of Conway and Daggy, and that's
Speaker 4: where things finally unraveled, because those depositions uncovered the truth
Speaker 4: about what happened the interrogation room. Conway finally admitted defeating
Speaker 4: Andy information, admitted that he believed that he was psychologically
Speaker 4: broken down, admitted that he was informed prior to the
Speaker 4: interrogation that Andy was mentally disabled and had the mind
Speaker 4: of a child, and then testified under oath that he
Speaker 4: disregarded all of that, gave no accommodations to his disability.
Speaker 4: Like this is all like in a deposition. You know,
Speaker 4: this guy was making all these admissions that were like
Speaker 4: completely contrary to what he testified to a trial.
Speaker 1: Elliott I got a hand it to you, man, what
Speaker 1: you were able to do here. This is not normal.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is nothing short of and I'm not
Speaker 1: like a magical thinker, but this shit is just miraculous.
Speaker 1: The things you've been able to uncover are shocking.
Speaker 4: And what was also shocking that we found out through
Speaker 4: the depositions was that Conway was removed from the homicide
Speaker 4: unit of the Ulkhar Police Department before Andy's two thousand
Speaker 4: and five trial, from his conduct in another interrogation in
Speaker 4: a different homicide case was removed. So we got to
Speaker 4: the bottom of it and ultimately had his supervisor testify
Speaker 4: for us at the entry hearing that he removed Conway
Speaker 4: because he believed that he lied in order to interrogate
Speaker 4: another person without their council present, and that his lie
Speaker 4: in that case, the supervisor belief could jeopardize the integrity
Speaker 4: of any further criminal investigations that he worked on and
Speaker 4: would cause credibility issues a trial, so they removed him
Speaker 4: from the homicide unit. This all happened before Andy's trial.
Speaker 4: Conway was like the most important witness at Andy trial
Speaker 4: because only Conway could either admit or deny what happened
Speaker 4: the interrogation room before a recorder was turned on. And
Speaker 4: yet the state withheld the fact that this guy was
Speaker 4: removed from homicide due to issues with his credibility and integrity.
Speaker 1: Conway also further admitted defeating Andy all the information and
Speaker 1: then Vicki Becker watched it all happen and put Conway
Speaker 1: on the stand to lie anyway, and Chapman had already
Speaker 1: been exposed as a frauded a lot of post conviction.
Speaker 4: By the way, Dennis Chapman, we ultimately got his personnel file.
Speaker 4: What Dennis Chapman admitted. After Keenan got exonerated, Chapman had
Speaker 4: to sit down with the sheriff and explain how he
Speaker 4: botched that print so badly. And in that interview he
Speaker 4: said that he was pressured by el Car police officers
Speaker 4: to form an opinion. That they told him the theory
Speaker 4: of the case, that Lana Kanaan was the brains, that
Speaker 4: Andy Warrior was the brawn. That Andy couldn't do this
Speaker 4: on his own, so they fed him who they wanted
Speaker 4: him to id, and then pressured him into making that
Speaker 4: fabricated ID.
Speaker 1: You also had those recordings of Daggie and that supervised
Speaker 1: Daggie repeated what he had said on the recording on
Speaker 1: the stand as well.
Speaker 4: I mean, like the state's case imploded. And Nina Porter
Speaker 4: testified for us too. She told the court how she
Speaker 4: was coerced into repeating a fabricad statement. And by the way,
Speaker 4: while Andy was like wrongfully convicted, you know, within like
Speaker 4: forty eight hours of that, Daggy and another officer went
Speaker 4: and gave her the two thousand dollars reward that was
Speaker 4: never disclosed, you know, like nobody ever knew that she
Speaker 4: was pressured into lying and that like, oh as soon
Speaker 4: as she got the stand, she was going to be
Speaker 4: given thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: So there they are using the carrot and the stick.
Speaker 1: So how did it all end up with Andy being
Speaker 1: here with us today? When was this this long overdue.
Speaker 4: Hearing September into October twenty nineteen? And the fascinating part
Speaker 4: about it is that we agree to only litigate like
Speaker 4: really like a fourth of what it was in our petition. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we were like Judge, you know, like let's just do
Speaker 4: five or six issues, like because if we went on
Speaker 4: those issues, we don't need to get to the other
Speaker 4: twenty Wow.
Speaker 1: So you really were ready to embarrass the state further
Speaker 1: than you even needed to in order to convince the
Speaker 1: court that a new trial was in order, and the
Speaker 1: court agreed with you. So Andy, what was it like
Speaker 1: watching this shit show from your perspective?
Speaker 2: Like there was a superman on my side, and uh,
Speaker 2: I just couldn't believe the lawyers before Elliott didn't do anything,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? It just they just here,
Speaker 2: you go give it to the prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so safe to say that Elliott is a good guy. Book.
Speaker 2: Yes, he's a cool guy. He's got the records straight now,
Speaker 2: so he's all right around. Great guy.
Speaker 3: Thanks Andy, thank you.
Speaker 1: So you've just watched Superman come in and kick some
Speaker 1: serious ass, right right, But this being outid, they're not
Speaker 1: going to just start doing the right thing now.
Speaker 4: We got this case kicked out at Khark County. That's
Speaker 4: why I need to get justice, right. So, like we
Speaker 4: got that judge to recuse herself. She actually found that it
Speaker 4: was defamatory when I said that Andy was wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 4: Like it wasn't just like systemic misconduct. It was like
Speaker 4: this judge is like the most unfair judge that we
Speaker 4: could ever be before.
Speaker 1: And how this judge is oblivious to the system she's
Speaker 1: been overseeing is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: But okay, Yeah, so Andy's case outside of Alkhark Counyon,
Speaker 4: we litigated in Coskiosco County before this super kind, really smart,
Speaker 4: fair judge. The whole proceeding was like very very fair
Speaker 4: to both sides, and we felt like we had a
Speaker 4: real chance given the case that we put on and
Speaker 4: we submitted proposed find After the hearing, the state did
Speaker 4: as well, and we waited and when that phone call happened,
Speaker 4: They're like, hey, Elliott, how far away are you? Because
Speaker 4: Andy's ready to get picked up. The judge granted a
Speaker 4: new trial in March thirty first, and I was like
Speaker 4: in a meeting with other students on a different Elkhart
Speaker 4: wrongful conviction case, like we were in a zoom meeting
Speaker 4: because everything was through zoom then, and I was like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, guys, Oh my god, Andy just got
Speaker 4: a new trial. He's getting released. I gotta go, And
Speaker 4: I ran upstairs put on a suit. I was like
Speaker 4: calling Andy's parents, Janie and Mike, and you know, obviously
Speaker 4: one of the most incredible phone calls that I'll ever have,
Speaker 4: and like Andy's coming home, Like we've all got to
Speaker 4: figure this out. Somebody go by mask, you know, Like
Speaker 4: my wife was like like seven months pregnant at the time.
Speaker 3: Like I wasn't leaving the house at all.
Speaker 1: Right, So this was the beginning of the pandemic. No
Speaker 1: one knew how bad this was going to be yet,
Speaker 1: but you forged ahead.
Speaker 4: No hesitation, drove so fast. I called the students you know,
Speaker 4: we all sort of like, I agreed to meet at
Speaker 4: the jail to welcome Andy home.
Speaker 2: So finally when I got to teskiaskau Joe, I said,
Speaker 2: you're being released. I was like, wow. I started shaking,
Speaker 2: color started coming back to my face, and I started
Speaker 2: feeling like a person again. It was just unbelievable. It
Speaker 2: was there's no words to put it out there.
Speaker 1: So wow, yeah, I can only imagine. And this judge
Speaker 1: didn't have to do what he did, which was to
Speaker 1: release you on a ricognos response, It seems because he
Speaker 1: was so convinced of Andy's innocence that he didn't want
Speaker 1: to see Andy back in prison even for another day
Speaker 1: waiting for a new trial while the state and COVID
Speaker 1: dragged this thing out. So Andy was released. The state
Speaker 1: appealed the ruling for a new trial, and the appellate
Speaker 1: court affirmed the ruling, stating, and this is a quote,
Speaker 1: Detective Conway withheld the truth when he attempted to bolster
Speaker 1: the reliability of Royer's confessions by saying Royer knew details
Speaker 1: about the murder which were not known to the public. Again,
Speaker 1: just like Chapman. Now it was Conway's turn to be
Speaker 1: under the.
Speaker 4: Bus, and the appellate court ruled Detective Conway that his
Speaker 4: continued employment at the Elkre Police Department was galling and
Speaker 4: found that he committed perjury back at Andy I. Llana's
Speaker 4: two thousand and five trial. And after that happened, we
Speaker 4: put pressure on the city of Elcar and the Elkhar
Speaker 4: Chief of Police. You know, we were calling for Conway's
Speaker 4: termination and the chief, who has a ton of integrity.
Speaker 4: Finally they have a chief of police there who wants
Speaker 4: to change things and is trying to change things wrote
Speaker 4: up a ten page notice of termination of Detective Conway
Speaker 4: about the egregious misconduct that he committed in this case.
Speaker 1: Well we'll see if he's actually ever criminally pursued like
Speaker 1: one of us mere mortals would be, but at least
Speaker 1: he can't do any more damage. So the new trial
Speaker 1: ruling was upheld on appeal.
Speaker 4: Than what happened after the appellate court decision, we filed
Speaker 4: the motion suppress. That was like the first time that
Speaker 4: anybody had ever filed the motion in express for Andy
Speaker 4: saying that is confession, what's false, involuntary and unconstitutional and
Speaker 4: it should be not admitted at the trial, and the
Speaker 4: state's response was to not respond and dismiss the case.
Speaker 1: Right because they knew. They always knew. So Andy's name
Speaker 1: was finally cleared on July nineteen, twenty twenty one. Conway
Speaker 1: and Chapman are disgraced. Vicky Becker still needs her come
Speaker 1: up and and it appears that she's currently running unopposed
Speaker 1: in November twenty twenty two. Now I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: it's too late to change that, but we hope for
Speaker 1: so much worse for her and Andy. Is there anything
Speaker 1: that you'd like to call on our audience to do
Speaker 1: or to support, anything that you'd like to see happen.
Speaker 2: I just hope that they've done wrong so they should
Speaker 2: pay for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I absolutely agree, and I hope that comes to pass.
Speaker 1: So now we go to closing arguments, where first of all,
Speaker 1: I thank you both from the bottom of my heart
Speaker 1: for being here and sharing your incredible story. I know
Speaker 1: it must be difficult to drudge up all of these emotions,
Speaker 1: so thank you for being brave and doing just that.
Speaker 1: And now I'm going to shut my microphone off, leave
Speaker 1: my headphones on, kick back in my chair, and just
Speaker 1: listen to any final thoughts you guys have Elliott please
Speaker 1: kick it off for us and Andy, you take us home.
Speaker 4: You know, I think Andy's case shows the need for
Speaker 4: why interrogation should be video recorded. You know, from beginning
Speaker 4: to end, Andy was like among the most vulnerable in
Speaker 4: our community and was manipulated and coerced into confessing to
Speaker 4: something that wasn't true. And it's heartbreaking, and it was
Speaker 4: completely preventable the state. You know, the prosecutor was watching
Speaker 4: the interrogation, other officers were watching the interrogation. They could
Speaker 4: have stopped it at any point. You know, they didn't
Speaker 4: have to charge him, they knew it wasn't reliable, and instead,
Speaker 4: you know, it's pretty clear what happened. They just wanted
Speaker 4: to close a case, and they sadly did that through
Speaker 4: framing an innocent really really innocent, not only like in
Speaker 4: this case, but like Andy's just like an innocent human being.
Speaker 4: And the students and Notre Dame and our team worked
Speaker 4: so so hard to show the injustice and to bring
Speaker 4: Andy home, and in Andy's name, we hope to do
Speaker 4: that for so many other innocent people from Elkhart.
Speaker 2: I just want to thank everybody that worked on my
Speaker 2: case and law students and.
Speaker 1: The people that.
Speaker 2: Believed in me, my mom and my stepdad and family,
Speaker 2: and they brought me through a lot. I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to get through it, but I did.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
Speaker 1: for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
Speaker 1: me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flam.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one