Speaker 1: This call is from a correction facility and it's subject
Speaker 1: to monitoring and recording. Eleven a hundred years. That's manly.
Speaker 1: I'm a kid. I didn't do anything, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know that was that was real payingful man, No,
Speaker 1: because my life was discarded as if you know, like
Speaker 1: I was a piece of trash or something, you know,
Speaker 1: a hundred years. I had dreams and I wanted to
Speaker 1: do things I wouldn't committing crimes. You know. That was
Speaker 1: a very good young man. That is what happens in
Speaker 1: so many cases. The cops have a hunch because they're
Speaker 1: so smart at the scene, they have a hunch, and
Speaker 1: once they act on that hunch, they sort of developed
Speaker 1: tunnel vision and they take off marching in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: And that happens in so many of these wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: The opening, uh the cell door, and I locked downstairs
Speaker 1: and I actually walked downstairs to be outside. It felt
Speaker 1: very strange to be, like I said, to be walking
Speaker 1: without no chakos on my feet. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a dream, But then again, it wasn't a dream. This
Speaker 1: is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: Flam that's me. I'm your host, and today we have
Speaker 1: a very special and unusual episode featuring the one and
Speaker 1: only John Grisham. John, Welcome to the show. Delighted to
Speaker 1: be here. So, John, I want to talk to you
Speaker 1: about this incredible TV series I just watched on Netflix,
Speaker 1: The Innocent Man, which is based on the book by
Speaker 1: the same name that you wrote several years ago, and
Speaker 1: it for anyone who hasn't watched it, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: it because it just rocked my world. Um, how did
Speaker 1: you get involved in this case in the first place,
Speaker 1: the case of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. Yeah, by
Speaker 1: the way, the thanks for having me. Delighted to be here,
Speaker 1: look forward to it. And uh we've served together on
Speaker 1: the board of the Instance Project for probably ten years now,
Speaker 1: right quite a while, go way back. I'm on that
Speaker 1: board because I wrote this book. And I wrote this
Speaker 1: book because I Um, I saw an obituary in the
Speaker 1: New York Times in December two thousand and four, Uh,
Speaker 1: for a guy named Ron Williamson who had just died
Speaker 1: obviously in Oklahoma, and uh he was Ma Maje, my
Speaker 1: same background, everything, and he had come within five days
Speaker 1: of being executed in Oklahoma for a crime for murder
Speaker 1: he did not commit. And the obituary was fascinating. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love New York Times obituaries because they well they
Speaker 1: don't write about boring people really well, and they write
Speaker 1: about people these fantastic stories of people you've never heard of.
Speaker 1: And uh so I've always check out the Times of obituaries,
Speaker 1: but uh normally there are you know, people in New York.
Speaker 1: But Ron's story was the just captured my imagination. But
Speaker 1: by the time the day was over, I had talked
Speaker 1: to both of his sisters, one in Tulsa, one in Dallas,
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna write this
Speaker 1: book and they said, um, for whatever, and one thing
Speaker 1: led to another. I took off to Oklahoma to start digging,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea what I was doing. I
Speaker 1: I'm not a journalist, I'm not trained in you know,
Speaker 1: that type of work, and I had no idea how
Speaker 1: to go about telling that a real story. And this
Speaker 1: is your only nonfiction book. And it's interesting because there's
Speaker 1: that classic adage the truth is changer than fiction. I
Speaker 1: think you spend your life as probably the most you know,
Speaker 1: uh prolific uh crime novelists maybe ever right and m
Speaker 1: and coming up with these stories, right, it's what you do,
Speaker 1: dreaming these stories up. Literally, But then then you bump
Speaker 1: into this one and it's beyond anything that you probably
Speaker 1: could have dreamed up, right, I mean, it's interesting. On
Speaker 1: the trailer for the Netflix show, I heard you say
Speaker 1: if you wrote this, nobody would believe it. That's true
Speaker 1: with a lot of these innocent stories. As I have
Speaker 1: come to know over the past dozen years, the facts
Speaker 1: are so incredible that first of all, I couldn't dream
Speaker 1: these things up. I couldn't create these these uh, these
Speaker 1: cases because nobody can. There's so remarkably uh unbelievable. And
Speaker 1: if you did, if you try to pass this off
Speaker 1: as in a novel, uh, it's not gonna work. A
Speaker 1: novel has to be plausible. The story can be can
Speaker 1: be fiction and what you know, it's it's it can
Speaker 1: be science fiction, can be you know really you know,
Speaker 1: all kinds of different uh genres of fiction, but it
Speaker 1: has to be. There has to be a level of
Speaker 1: plausibility and in the story to make it work. Um,
Speaker 1: some of the cases we deal with in the innocence
Speaker 1: world are hard to believe, impossible to believe almost some
Speaker 1: of the factional scenaria in the case in Oklahoma that
Speaker 1: Ron Williamson case. Um. The murder itself was easy to
Speaker 1: believe because it was a horrible crime and those happened
Speaker 1: all the time. But what happened after that, how he
Speaker 1: was well roaded and convicted in Aida, UH, is just
Speaker 1: a really remarkable story in the once I, once I
Speaker 1: started digging out, couldn't stop. It is a remarkable story.
Speaker 1: And and so in so many ways and on so
Speaker 1: many different levels. The victim in this case, Debbie Sue
Speaker 1: Carter um is it's a tragic. All these cases are tragic,
Speaker 1: but in hers, especially as a father, UM, it's just
Speaker 1: such a horrific uh circumstance, which speaks to what we're
Speaker 1: talking about right now, because in her case, Debbie Sue
Speaker 1: Carter was raped and murdered and tortured. Her killer made
Speaker 1: sure that she suffered agonizing uh, an agonizing death. And
Speaker 1: what what that speaks to is the injustice that's done
Speaker 1: to everyone, her family, her memory, and everyone else when
Speaker 1: when the wrong person is convicted. But also what boggles
Speaker 1: my mind, John, is that in a community, especially a
Speaker 1: small community like Ada, you would think that even if
Speaker 1: an authority figure a police a police detective or whatever
Speaker 1: they had an investigator was so sort of morally bankrupt
Speaker 1: that they didn't mind, didn't lose a wink of sleep
Speaker 1: convicting innocent guy. By definition, they were allowing this sick, twisted,
Speaker 1: psychotic individual who did these terrible, terrible things to debb
Speaker 1: Suit Carter to remain free. Yeah, and they knew him.
Speaker 1: They knew him. He was a local boy. He grew
Speaker 1: up there. He went to hospool with Debbie. That's how
Speaker 1: he got in an apartment. He uh he he was
Speaker 1: the last person seen alive with her when she was
Speaker 1: uh in a hockey talk late at night as she
Speaker 1: was leaving, he was at her car. They were arguing
Speaker 1: and she sort of shoved him away and got in
Speaker 1: the car and she drove off and they were witnesses
Speaker 1: to that, and the police knew it. And a few
Speaker 1: hours later he um knocked on her apartment and she
Speaker 1: led him in because she knew him. She didn't I
Speaker 1: don't think she liked him wanted to be with him,
Speaker 1: but because they were acquainted going to school together, he
Speaker 1: had the entree, the ability to get into her apartment
Speaker 1: and uh, once he did. You know, it was a
Speaker 1: bad night. Uh. But again the police did not did
Speaker 1: not pursue him, the obvious person. UH. For oh years,
Speaker 1: years and years of the murder was unsolved. The cops
Speaker 1: uh were thoroughly incompetent. And at the crime scene. The
Speaker 1: crime scene was horrendous because it was a uh, horrible killing.
Speaker 1: And he hung around and he and he wrote messages
Speaker 1: with her blood on the wall, and he wrote messages
Speaker 1: on the kitchen table with a bottle of catchup, and
Speaker 1: and there was just a horrible thing. He stayed there
Speaker 1: for a long time, trying to devise a way to
Speaker 1: deflect our point, to blame a somebody else. And anyway,
Speaker 1: he was there for a long time. So it was
Speaker 1: a horrific scene. And these two Keystone cops who are
Speaker 1: on the scene decide, because it's so violent and it's
Speaker 1: so bloody, it had to be the work of two people. Okay,
Speaker 1: that that was that decision. Hey, it's got to be
Speaker 1: two people. We we have two defendants here. And that
Speaker 1: that is what happens in so many cases. The cops
Speaker 1: have a hunch, because they're so smart. At the scene,
Speaker 1: they have a hunch, and then once they act on
Speaker 1: that hunch. They sort of developed tunnel vision and they
Speaker 1: take off marching in the wrong direction. And that happens
Speaker 1: in so many of these wrongful convictions. Yeah, in this case,
Speaker 1: it's fair to say that this this case actually came
Speaker 1: with instructions which were ignored and they didn't go after
Speaker 1: the actual killer. I'm forgetting his name, Glenn Gore, Right,
Speaker 1: what a name he's on Gore? How he's like he's
Speaker 1: serving a life with no parole in Oklahoma, convicted by
Speaker 1: the jury in Ada many years too late, right, I
Speaker 1: mean talk about I mean, what an ironic thing that
Speaker 1: the guy's name would be Glenn Gore. Like I said,
Speaker 1: more instructions as if they were coming from and it
Speaker 1: was a local criminal. He had a record, He was
Speaker 1: a bad dude the cops were doing for drugs. He
Speaker 1: was a rough family that I mean, he was well
Speaker 1: known to the police, and they still didn't, uh pursue him.
Speaker 1: They didn't prosecute him until they actually had to write.
Speaker 1: It became you know, it became impossible for them to
Speaker 1: continue to deflect the blame from him. Uh, they sort
Speaker 1: of and I've seen this in other cases, they sort
Speaker 1: of protected him, right, which is you know, really hard
Speaker 1: to process um as to you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: grew up like most people, you know, UM, respecting uniform
Speaker 1: and um. You know, really I think we all played
Speaker 1: cops like when we were kids, and you know, and
Speaker 1: I still do. I mean, I still I'm a person
Speaker 1: who believes in law and order, and I uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of respect for most of the
Speaker 1: people in the criminal justice system. But when you get
Speaker 1: bad actors like these guys, the damage that they can
Speaker 1: inflect is the norm. I don't know how bad they were,
Speaker 1: it's obviously how incompetent they were. Uh, you know, there
Speaker 1: there was some allegations that these guys there some of
Speaker 1: the some of the some of the cops there were
Speaker 1: later convicted for of selling drugs, and there was some
Speaker 1: evidence of Gore was selling drugs and the Gore was
Speaker 1: selling drugs with the cops, and you know, there was
Speaker 1: never really a clear, uh path to prove that he
Speaker 1: was with the cops obviously knew him. Some of the
Speaker 1: cops are shady, but still just just the sheer incompetence
Speaker 1: of not investigating the two lead cops in the case.
Speaker 1: I don't think any history with drug dealing or whatever.
Speaker 1: They were pretty you know, just a couple of stand
Speaker 1: up guys, uh doing their best, but the incompetence of
Speaker 1: just of not even considering uh, the last person seeing
Speaker 1: with the victim. Yeah, who became a witness against uh
Speaker 1: ron as right, Yeah he was. He was cleverly, I
Speaker 1: guess you could say deflected the blame, as we see
Speaker 1: not infrequently in these cases where the actual perpetrator becomes
Speaker 1: a witness for the prosecution, because it's probably the simplest
Speaker 1: way to uh, you know, turn the attention away from
Speaker 1: you and onto somebody else's make yourself into a witness.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what he did, and he got away
Speaker 1: with it for quite a while. Um So in this case,
Speaker 1: you know, you talked about how you were so taken
Speaker 1: with the story of Ron Williamson. It is a fascinating
Speaker 1: and and sort of terrible story, and that this was
Speaker 1: a young man who had once had so much promise.
Speaker 1: Right he was he was a professional baseball player, uh,
Speaker 1: drafted by the Oakland A's and you know, seemed to
Speaker 1: have his whole life laid out in front of him
Speaker 1: till he was injured, never made it to the big leagues.
Speaker 1: And what a strange thing to think about, the cruel,
Speaker 1: sort of capricious or or or arbitrary nature of this
Speaker 1: whole thing. That he went from a major league prospect
Speaker 1: to being on death row, and as you said, coming
Speaker 1: within five days of being executed for a crime that
Speaker 1: everyone should have known he didn't commit. And and of
Speaker 1: course he lost his mind um in prison and and
Speaker 1: died tragically soon after he was released. And there was
Speaker 1: another innocent man, Dennis Fritz. Dennis's crime was that he
Speaker 1: was hanging around with Ron, and uh Ron became when
Speaker 1: Ron was growing up by the town. Ron was in
Speaker 1: high school in this section of southeastern Oklahoma. A lot
Speaker 1: of coaches and scouts believe that he was the next
Speaker 1: Mickey Mental Mickey some a small town in Oklahoma, and
Speaker 1: and uh a little bit to the north of this,
Speaker 1: and Mickey was, of course Mickey Um. But Ron was
Speaker 1: in the same mold, big strong guy, great athlete, UH,
Speaker 1: solid legs, could hit, and he certainly had a huge ego.
Speaker 1: Small town guy, but he you know, he was attracting
Speaker 1: attention from the scouts and uh he had a great
Speaker 1: high school baseball coach and they won all these games
Speaker 1: and Ron was the man and he was gonna be
Speaker 1: the next Mickey Mantle. And he got drafted by the
Speaker 1: A's in nineteen seventy two in the first round. Uh
Speaker 1: they paid him somewhere between fifty a hundred thousand bucks
Speaker 1: for the bonus, which is not bad back then. He
Speaker 1: didn't I didn't last ron very long. He went to
Speaker 1: it pretty fast, lost most of it in a poker game.
Speaker 1: But he went off to the minor leagues because he
Speaker 1: was gonna make plenty of money and um, you know, injuries,
Speaker 1: and he at some point he begins showing um signs
Speaker 1: of some pretty unstable mental issues and uh undiagnosed later
Speaker 1: diagnosis being bipo or and um crashed and burned and
Speaker 1: he never he never got over the fact the baseball
Speaker 1: career was so important to him as a small kid
Speaker 1: in Oklaha, a small town born in Oklahoma. You know,
Speaker 1: he couldn't accept the fact he was not gonna he
Speaker 1: was not gonna be famous, he was not gonna be
Speaker 1: playing in Yankees Statum, he was not gonna be Mickey Mantle.
Speaker 1: And it just saw it crashed, he crashed on him,
Speaker 1: and he just he went back to Aida and acted
Speaker 1: more and more uh more and more bizarre different way.
Speaker 1: He became kind of town not town drunk, but the
Speaker 1: kind of town misfit, unemployed, drinking too much party and
Speaker 1: too much fighting, too much uh and he was up
Speaker 1: and down. They tried to get him some help with
Speaker 1: local mental health people. They tried their best, but it
Speaker 1: was not enough, and he was he was just spiraling down.
Speaker 1: And he became sort of it was he was easy
Speaker 1: to convict Ron because everybody knew him. Became the town weirdo,
Speaker 1: the town goofball, the town near do Well today, that
Speaker 1: was kind of Ron Williamson. And people um for for
Speaker 1: for buff for a few bucks, he would cut your
Speaker 1: grass with a beat up lawnmore with his shirt off.
Speaker 1: He pushes mower up and down the street, trying to
Speaker 1: get a you know, a few jobs here and there.
Speaker 1: That kind of life. Lived almost homeless and somebody's shed
Speaker 1: in the backyard. And it was a hard fall for
Speaker 1: him and it really affected him mentally. And then and
Speaker 1: then he lived fairly close to where Debbie suit Carter
Speaker 1: was murdered in the cops early on, and the cops
Speaker 1: and the prosecutor felt for a long time like Ron
Speaker 1: was the killer. They just believe they just again tunnel vision,
Speaker 1: they had a hunch he was their man, and they
Speaker 1: had no proof, and but they didn't stop him. They
Speaker 1: just kind of manufactured a case against him. Right. There's
Speaker 1: no physical evidence connecting them to the crime, obviously because
Speaker 1: they weren't there, you know, so well, there was physical
Speaker 1: evidence in that. Uh. This part of the part of
Speaker 1: what we were wrong in the prosecution. There were uh
Speaker 1: seventeen I think seventeen scalp and pubic hair is taken
Speaker 1: from the victim's bed crime scene and at trial this
Speaker 1: you know, uh certified Uh analysts with the Oklahoma Crime
Speaker 1: Lab testified um that the that the scalp and pubic
Speaker 1: hair matched Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. So they had
Speaker 1: physical proof junk science, okay, uh. And ten years later
Speaker 1: all seventeen hares were excluded by DNA. There was no
Speaker 1: DNA available in nineteen seven when they went to trial. Uh,
Speaker 1: so there was a little bit of a little bit
Speaker 1: of physical proof. Uh. It was almost all uh hearsay,
Speaker 1: jailhouse snitch, uh, bogus testimony by cops, a dream confession,
Speaker 1: just guard garbage prosecution, and the prosecutor was pushing hard.
Speaker 1: He got a jury, local jury. They wouldn't change the venue. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so he ramloded you through a conviction. Yeah, junk
Speaker 1: science is an important part of this too. And you
Speaker 1: know it's interesting because I do want to talk about
Speaker 1: the death penalty and how this affected you and maybe
Speaker 1: your views on the death penalty. I don't know what
Speaker 1: they were leading into this. I don't know what they
Speaker 1: are now, but I'm interested to hear. But um, the
Speaker 1: other thing is with this case, it's just so um,
Speaker 1: it's so it's so easy to put yourself in the
Speaker 1: shoes of the people on that jury. Right, who were
Speaker 1: you know from the town? As you said, there was
Speaker 1: no change of venue. There's a highly publicized case. A
Speaker 1: terrifying murder in a small community always will generate that
Speaker 1: kind of media attention and extra pressure on the police.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to ask you, you know one of
Speaker 1: my goals in doing this show. Well, my main goal
Speaker 1: in doing this show was to educate people, all of
Speaker 1: whom everyone who's listening right now is a potential juror
Speaker 1: so are you and I, Um, I don't know who
Speaker 1: would put me on a jury, but never know. As
Speaker 1: a defense lawyer, I kick jury exactly. So a defense
Speaker 1: laur so, Um, not a prosecutor, Okay, so UM. So
Speaker 1: you know, my my hope is that in doing this
Speaker 1: show and with the now almost eight million lessons that
Speaker 1: we've had over the course of the first seven seasons,
Speaker 1: that we have helped to educate people so that when
Speaker 1: they are called to serve on a jury at a
Speaker 1: criminal trial, and when they hold a Ron Williamson or
Speaker 1: Dennis Fritz's life in their hands, that they will be
Speaker 1: better educated and more um, maybe I would say more attentive,
Speaker 1: but maybe a little bit more skeptical. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to prevent a rightful conviction from happening. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, there's the famous saying Ben Franklin said, right,
Speaker 1: it's better that a hundred guilty men go free than
Speaker 1: the one innocent man should suffer. Um. Benjamin Franklin kind
Speaker 1: of a great American Um. And so I'm interested in
Speaker 1: your take on that, John, What would you say to
Speaker 1: anyone who's listening now, as having lived through this uh
Speaker 1: and research that have done all this work on this
Speaker 1: case and all the other things that you've done throughout
Speaker 1: your career looking at the criminal justice matters, how would
Speaker 1: you advise jurors if they're going next week into a trial,
Speaker 1: what would you tell them that could help them to
Speaker 1: make the best decision and the interest of justice. Well,
Speaker 1: I would urge anybody to ask themselves the basic question,
Speaker 1: what is the physical evidence? Where let's start with the proof.
Speaker 1: If it is something like um hair analysis or bite
Speaker 1: mark analysis, or bootprint analysis, or any one of fifteen
Speaker 1: different analyses that have all been proven to be rather shaky,
Speaker 1: entire tracks stuff is all you know. When the FBI
Speaker 1: says that it's crack hair analysts got it wrong. Long
Speaker 1: from the FBI, you can imagine what's happening out in
Speaker 1: the States. It's junk science. It's unreliable. So go back
Speaker 1: to the basic proof. And if a prosecution does not
Speaker 1: have hard, hard physical evidence, and in most cases they do. Okay,
Speaker 1: most of these cases are not that close. But but
Speaker 1: as we know in this type of work, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of cases where the evidence is very flimsy.
Speaker 1: Number two, I would say, if they show up for
Speaker 1: the jail house snitch, who is going to testify that
Speaker 1: while he was in the sale with the defendant six
Speaker 1: months ago, he heard the defendant give a full confession,
Speaker 1: talked about the case, knew the facts, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Don't believe a word of what the snitchers saying, because
Speaker 1: the snitches could a deal with the prosecutor of the
Speaker 1: police to get some time off. Snitches should not be
Speaker 1: allowed period. Okay, um, you know, I would if there's
Speaker 1: a false confession, if if there's a if there's a confession, okay, Uh.
Speaker 1: It leaves asked some basic questions. Did the defendant recant
Speaker 1: the following day as soon as he could get away
Speaker 1: from the cops and he recan't? Has he recanted every
Speaker 1: day since then? And most importantly, does his confession to
Speaker 1: the facts match up with the fiscal evidence, because in
Speaker 1: almost every false confession there's no match. You know, whatever
Speaker 1: the guy confessed to he said to get out of
Speaker 1: the room with the cops, and and they are notoriously unreliable.
Speaker 1: Uh you and I served on the Innocence Project Board.
Speaker 1: We have three seventy DNA exonerations in the past twenty
Speaker 1: five years involved false confessions. False confessions are a huge
Speaker 1: problem that happened all the time. And if you're a juror, say, okay,
Speaker 1: the guy confessed and police custody him. Was a lawyer present, No,
Speaker 1: because if the lawyers are he wouldn't be confessing. So
Speaker 1: if the lawyer wasn't there, how long did the interrogation last?
Speaker 1: Was a twelve hours throughout the night. Uh? And when
Speaker 1: he did confess, what did he say about the facts
Speaker 1: of the case? Do the match up? Is pretty basic stuff?
Speaker 1: But not all, not all durrawers, you know, are are
Speaker 1: I guess, um curious enough to ask those questions? Although
Speaker 1: I gotta say, Jason, they are getting more and more
Speaker 1: skeptical because we are seeing fewer and fewer death verdicts,
Speaker 1: far fewer death vertics, far fewer executions, far fewer people
Speaker 1: on death row because durwors are far more skeptical. I
Speaker 1: want to harp on one point that you made, which
Speaker 1: is that in that FBI UH, in the investigation that
Speaker 1: was done into the FBI forensic analysts who testified in
Speaker 1: hair cases, specifically in in cases where hair was the
Speaker 1: predominant factor leading to the conviction. UM, they found I
Speaker 1: think they examined almost four cases and they found that,
Speaker 1: as you said, over them, the FBI agents or experts
Speaker 1: were wrong. But in a hundred percent of the cases
Speaker 1: of which they were wrong. They were wrong in favor
Speaker 1: of the prosecution. So whether they were mistaken, it's hard
Speaker 1: to believe that they were mistaken in all those cases
Speaker 1: because it just statistically doesn't add up that they would
Speaker 1: every single time make a mistake and favor of the prosecution.
Speaker 1: So I think again, we have to really take a
Speaker 1: hard look at what's being presented in these contexts, think
Speaker 1: about what people's motivations are when they're testifying. In the
Speaker 1: case of the jail house nitches, you couldn't be clearer, right,
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting in our in our kernel justice system.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone knows that you can't bribe a witness, right,
Speaker 1: that's a crime, that's a felony. You know, you can't
Speaker 1: bribe a witness. But the government has the ability to
Speaker 1: offer the best bribe that there is. I'm calling it
Speaker 1: a bribe. It's not called the bribe technically. Deal. They
Speaker 1: can offer the deal that it's you know, you can
Speaker 1: go get out of jail free card right, walk out today,
Speaker 1: so or reduce charge or whatever else they want to do. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that is I'm really glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the death penalty, because support for the
Speaker 1: death penalty in America is at an all time low. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think it's the first time that more than
Speaker 1: half of Americans are opposed to death penalty. Um. How
Speaker 1: have your views? Uh were you? Were you anti death penalty?
Speaker 1: Are you anti death play? How they evolved as a
Speaker 1: result of dealing with this case? Well, okay, the numbers
Speaker 1: are down, but there's still a significant number of people
Speaker 1: in a in the majority of states, who are your
Speaker 1: favorite If you look at the death belt thirties states, Uh,
Speaker 1: the people who lived there in both there the majority,
Speaker 1: and it's not it's you know, it's it's fifty fifty,
Speaker 1: but in some places it's slightly more who are in
Speaker 1: faith still favorite the death building. So it's popular in
Speaker 1: a lot of areas. You know, where you live, it's
Speaker 1: probably not other places it's not. California is the biggest
Speaker 1: state that they have six d people on death row,
Speaker 1: but they know they've execute one person, not serious about it,
Speaker 1: but they you'll have death row and it cost them
Speaker 1: a zillion bucks a year. Uh. Yeah. Growing up growing
Speaker 1: up in the Deep South as a Southern Baptist, you
Speaker 1: know that eye for and eye that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and it was it was the Old Testament version of retribution.
Speaker 1: And we not only believe that, we we really um
Speaker 1: sort of advocated the death penalty. And we no one
Speaker 1: back then and I can't ever remember, uh was ever
Speaker 1: opposed to the death penalty. And there aren't many of
Speaker 1: them now. Uh. Once I became a lawyer, though, and
Speaker 1: became into a lot of criminal defense cases, you know,
Speaker 1: slowly I realized that, um, we have some pretty serious
Speaker 1: problems in the criminal justice system, and and some very
Speaker 1: serious problems with the death penalty the way it is used.
Speaker 1: And um, I just you know, twenty five years ago,
Speaker 1: I said this, even if you support the death penalty,
Speaker 1: you cannot support this death penalty and the way it's
Speaker 1: used against minorities, the way it's used. Uh, different different
Speaker 1: states use it differently for the same crimes. It's just
Speaker 1: it's a mess, okay. And so I'm very much opposed
Speaker 1: to the argument. I make two people, and I speak
Speaker 1: to people who are in favor of the death penalty,
Speaker 1: is I asked them what percentage of people of innocent
Speaker 1: people is it okay to execute? Um? Uh, So they
Speaker 1: will say, well, not, no, you can't execute innocent people,
Speaker 1: and I go, but you do understand that the system
Speaker 1: is not It's far from perfect, but it can never
Speaker 1: be perfect. Even if everybody in the system did the
Speaker 1: best job that they possibly could, and we know there
Speaker 1: are so many different causes. There's some of it's on
Speaker 1: the defense, right. We have defense lawyers who slept through
Speaker 1: capital cases. We have defense lawyers who are underpaid, they
Speaker 1: may be alcoholics. We have cases of death people sense
Speaker 1: to death, whether death the not. Too long after their
Speaker 1: verdict was rendered, their defense attorney was disbarred or even arrested,
Speaker 1: or you know, um found to be you know, incompetence
Speaker 1: too kind of a word. So my question is, even
Speaker 1: if everybody did the best job that they could, we're
Speaker 1: still going to make mistakes. So my my question for
Speaker 1: anyone who's listening who's still pro death penalty would be
Speaker 1: what how many innocent people is it okay to execute
Speaker 1: out of a hundred or wherever it is, Because if
Speaker 1: your answer is none, then you can't be in favor
Speaker 1: of the death penalty because we know we've executed innocent people.
Speaker 1: Um Cameron Todd Willingham. There's so many other jestice to Pharaoh.
Speaker 1: There's so many that come to mind, and um, you
Speaker 1: know I can't. I don't want to live in a
Speaker 1: country that executes innocent people. In America is it's so
Speaker 1: far behind the rest of the civilized world in this area.
Speaker 1: You know, we are among the top five nations and
Speaker 1: the number of executions and and it's not a it's
Speaker 1: not a good list to be on. The other nations
Speaker 1: are not nations you'd be proud to be associated with
Speaker 1: in that way. Western Europe has abolished it. I mean,
Speaker 1: in the rest of the civilized world, they've for some reason,
Speaker 1: they have a much more I think it's us in
Speaker 1: Pakistan and North Korea, places like that, China. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's uh, it's not a it's not a good
Speaker 1: it's a it's a bad thinction. And it's something that
Speaker 1: we can change and we must change. And and you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep fighting until we do well. The good
Speaker 1: thing about Jason the Deathendal is dying. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: dying because not because of courageous lawmakers, not because of
Speaker 1: courageous judges, but because of courageous jurors, and nowadays the
Speaker 1: jurors for the same reason. We have reasons we've been discussing.
Speaker 1: Because of so many high profile e generations where these
Speaker 1: bogus prosecutions were exposed, Jurors today are far more skeptical
Speaker 1: about the abusive tactics used by police and prosecutors to
Speaker 1: to get convictions. That's one factor. Another factor is that
Speaker 1: most states today are spending more money to um train
Speaker 1: defense lawyers. The defense lawyer and capital cases is far
Speaker 1: better than it was just a few years ago, so
Speaker 1: so that the playing field is kind of level now.
Speaker 1: And and when you go to trial and the most
Speaker 1: of your capital cases, the defendant is not only guilty,
Speaker 1: but very guilty. Is the proof is there? And so
Speaker 1: it becomes a question, how do you say this person's life?
Speaker 1: And what what happens? Now? Because the defense lawyers are
Speaker 1: so much better, they are able to present to the
Speaker 1: jury the whole picture of this defendant and where he
Speaker 1: came from and his background and the fact that he
Speaker 1: probably never had a chance in life and jural and
Speaker 1: what's the whole story is exposed in a court room
Speaker 1: once the jurors here the whole story, uh, we're seeing
Speaker 1: it weakly. In this country, they're far more willing to
Speaker 1: go with life with no parole and spare the guy's life.
Speaker 1: They're more sympathetic, right, and then there's a chance to
Speaker 1: fix it. And I just finished reading the remarkable book
Speaker 1: by Richard Jaffee, who I think is he's a hero
Speaker 1: of mine. Uh, he's I think one more successful. He's
Speaker 1: he's one more death penalty reversals than any other or
Speaker 1: appeals than any other lawyer that I know of. And
Speaker 1: his book the subtitle is Defending the Damned. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember the first uh, the actual title. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful book, and it really speaks to what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. I mean, you see these cases where
Speaker 1: it would be apparent to anyone seemingly that these people
Speaker 1: were innocent. Anthony ray Hinton is a great example of that, um,
Speaker 1: you know. And and going back to even the Innocent
Speaker 1: Man cases, right, I mean or the Innocent Man Show,
Speaker 1: because in the show there were two different cases, right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just Debbie Sue Carter. Eighteen months later, a
Speaker 1: young lady named Denise Haroway was abducted from a convenience
Speaker 1: store late at night where she worked in Ada, and
Speaker 1: uh vanished and uh, there was no there was no evidence,
Speaker 1: there was no the crime scene was contaminated. The police
Speaker 1: did not secure the crime scene, and she the the
Speaker 1: the cash raish was open and she was gone on
Speaker 1: and uh some people had seen her leave with a
Speaker 1: couple of sketchy guys in an old truck. But she
Speaker 1: they couldn't find the body. They couldn't find her. They
Speaker 1: could They searched and searched, they couldn't. And this one
Speaker 1: on for um eighteen months, and then UM the police,
Speaker 1: UM there were there was some composite police drawings that
Speaker 1: were pretty good, and uh the people called in. They
Speaker 1: said that it looks like Billy, looks like Joey, looks
Speaker 1: like Charlie, looks like Tommy Loui whoever. And so the
Speaker 1: cops are getting a lot of input from um from
Speaker 1: the composite drawings, and they just sort of settled on
Speaker 1: a guy named Tommy Ward who was a twenty year
Speaker 1: old kid with no record, UM, and they called him
Speaker 1: in for an interrogation, didn't tell him what, didn't tell
Speaker 1: him why they wanted to want to talk to him.
Speaker 1: And so he uh goes to the police station without
Speaker 1: any clue that that would be his last day of
Speaker 1: freedom for the rest of his life. And uh, they
Speaker 1: began interrogating him, and things deteriorated quickly when he realized
Speaker 1: they were suspicious of him. He had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the crime. He was not He was nowhere near
Speaker 1: the crime scene. He never met the victim. There's not
Speaker 1: one shred of physical evidence that links him to the
Speaker 1: crime now or thirty five years ago. Uh, no evidence
Speaker 1: at all. And Uh the interrogation went on for a
Speaker 1: long time, hours and hours NonStop. And um, Tommy has
Speaker 1: said he wanted to talk to a lawyer. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: not clear from the record. There is really no record
Speaker 1: because it was not recorded. There were cameras in the room,
Speaker 1: but they didn't record the bad stuff. And Uh, Tommy
Speaker 1: finally snapped. He just snapped, which which is not unusual
Speaker 1: after eight or ten years of hours of abusive interrogation.
Speaker 1: And Tommy said, okay, finally, you know too, He said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna give these guys a story, and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be so outrageous that once they investigate it,
Speaker 1: they'll realize I'm lying. Okay, So he just felt him
Speaker 1: a big story about um grabbing the girl, taking her out,
Speaker 1: raping her, cutting her throat, burning her body, disposing it
Speaker 1: over here, and while he was actually doing this, the
Speaker 1: cops that are where where did you dispose her body? Said, well,
Speaker 1: I threw it down the dish. So they had cops
Speaker 1: in Ada would run to that location and couldn't find
Speaker 1: a body. So they called back to the police station
Speaker 1: and said, we can't find the body. So the cops
Speaker 1: the time, the body is not there. Where's the body?
Speaker 1: And they said, oh, you can make up some other Well,
Speaker 1: the body is over in the warehouse, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: So the cops would go over there. Well it wasn't there. Well,
Speaker 1: the cops it's it's in the bottom of a silo.
Speaker 1: They go. This goes on all night long. He he's stupid.
Speaker 1: Cops are running around eight or trying to find the
Speaker 1: body because Tommy's making stuff up. Okay, tom he's just
Speaker 1: making stuff up because he's crazy. He's half crazed. Okay.
Speaker 1: And uh, finally they said, okay, enough of that, let's
Speaker 1: have the confession. And after about I don't know, fifteen hours,
Speaker 1: they turned the machine on and they recorded Tommy. And
Speaker 1: you see this in the Netflix uh episode where he's
Speaker 1: sitting there, punched, drunk out of his mind and he
Speaker 1: can't get the facts straight, the cops are fed in
Speaker 1: the facts, and he keeps making mistakes and so the
Speaker 1: cops correct him on tape. You see this in the show.
Speaker 1: And it's uh. I mean that that's been reviewed by
Speaker 1: some experts, who experts and false confessions, who just shake
Speaker 1: their head at how bad the false confession is. I mean,
Speaker 1: as far as false confessions go, it's not even it's
Speaker 1: horrible anyway that they never found the body, okay, but
Speaker 1: they had a confession. So they go to trial without
Speaker 1: the body and time he's found guilty of capital murder,
Speaker 1: rape and capital murder with nobody Okay. He goes off
Speaker 1: to death row in Oklahoma. Six months later, a hunter
Speaker 1: stumbled across a body in a shallow grave a few
Speaker 1: miles from Ada, in a remote section of the county.
Speaker 1: And um, they do the dental exams and it's it's
Speaker 1: the hairway and she'd been shot once in the back
Speaker 1: of the head and that was the cause of death,
Speaker 1: not burnt, not stabb not you know whatever. Um, And
Speaker 1: in in most jurisdictions, in most places in the country,
Speaker 1: once the body was found and once the people realized
Speaker 1: it had nothing even remotely familiar with the confession uh,
Speaker 1: it's time to call time out and rethink things. But
Speaker 1: not so yeah. I mean when I think about this case,
Speaker 1: and it's been you know, several weeks since I watched
Speaker 1: the show, but I think back on it and I go,
Speaker 1: how in this country could Tommy Ward and Karl Fontano
Speaker 1: be convicted of a stabbing that was actually a shooting? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't even the right crime. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: in their testimony they said that they were with another guy, right,
Speaker 1: and who we know wasn't there because his alibi was
Speaker 1: air tight. So everything was wrong with this. Everything was wrong.
Speaker 1: Everything was wrong, and the tragedy is and it's the
Speaker 1: human side of this, which, of course, you know, affects me,
Speaker 1: and I think anyone who's got empathy for their fellow
Speaker 1: man or humans. Um. You know, you see Tommy particularly
Speaker 1: in the in the show, who's been in prison now
Speaker 1: for about thirty three years or thirty four years. It
Speaker 1: was a case, and he comes across as just sort
Speaker 1: of act of a big bear of a man, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a gentle giant, you know, and
Speaker 1: just sort of h very um, just a very kind
Speaker 1: He's got a kind way about him. You know he's um.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a he's a sweet guy. He was
Speaker 1: a sweet he was a sweet boy. And he grew
Speaker 1: up in a church UH big family, all uh devout churchgoers.
Speaker 1: He he was, you know, twenty years old. He was
Speaker 1: on the wild side for a while. But now after
Speaker 1: after thirty three years thirty or four years in prison,
Speaker 1: he's He's earned his g D, has earned his degree.
Speaker 1: He's um. He's earned several Bibble study awards to the
Speaker 1: male he teaches, uh, several bibble study groups. UM. He's
Speaker 1: sort of like the official chaplain at UH. This guy
Speaker 1: has a perfect prison record and he's never spilled a
Speaker 1: cup coffee in prison. Uh. And he's a wonderful human
Speaker 1: being who sort of accepted his fate in life that
Speaker 1: this is just you know what I get for some reason.
Speaker 1: I've been dealt this hand and I'll survive it. And
Speaker 1: you know, but he's lost his child, and he's lost
Speaker 1: the chance to marry, have a family. He worried about
Speaker 1: his mother, who's ninety and obviously the failing and he
Speaker 1: would love to see her. But it's a huge tragedy.
Speaker 1: And the tragedy is we talked about Jason so many
Speaker 1: times you get frustrated at the at the authorities and
Speaker 1: the bogus conviction and the you know, the cops and
Speaker 1: all the horrible things they did. But the real killer,
Speaker 1: you know, this was still out there, still is still
Speaker 1: out there. We have a few suspects in mind, but
Speaker 1: these people have not been brought to justice. The thirty
Speaker 1: five years later, thirty thirty four years later, they still
Speaker 1: have never been brought to justice because the cops blew
Speaker 1: the case. And that's what happens. And with awful convictions,
Speaker 1: that's that's another reason to be so frustrated by them,
Speaker 1: is the real rapist and the real murderers are left
Speaker 1: free to rome and all. They almost always repeat their crimes.
Speaker 1: They almost always do. And and of course there's another
Speaker 1: victim in this case. And when I say victim, I
Speaker 1: mean another innocent man who was convicted, which is Karl Fontino,
Speaker 1: who was a guy who was um, you know, very
Speaker 1: clearly um you know slow he was. He was a
Speaker 1: guy who had uh, you know, developmental issues of some sort.
Speaker 1: I'm not a psychologist, but you know you can you
Speaker 1: can watch that tape and you just you just you
Speaker 1: watching that show. I want to jump through the screen
Speaker 1: and stop the process because you're sitting there watching it
Speaker 1: kind of remind me making a murder when they're interviewing
Speaker 1: Brendan Dascy right, because he just doesn't understand what's going
Speaker 1: on and he has so easily led like a lamb
Speaker 1: to the slaughter, right, And we know that in false
Speaker 1: confession cases it's so much well obviously it's easier to
Speaker 1: get someone who's a limited mental acuity, but also people
Speaker 1: who are most likely to to falsely confessor, people who
Speaker 1: are teenagers and ironically, people in the military. And you
Speaker 1: had that, of course here with the case that you
Speaker 1: were deeply involved in the Norfolk four because they are
Speaker 1: used to and this is counterintuitive, but they because you know,
Speaker 1: I think most of us think that a military guy
Speaker 1: would be able to stand up from self, but they're
Speaker 1: used to obeying authority figures and orders, so they respect
Speaker 1: authority figures and they kind of want to do something
Speaker 1: to help the authority figures with their job. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times you'll see uh, people who are vulnerable,
Speaker 1: um step way out of line to kind of help
Speaker 1: the cops out them. That's why a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of interrogations, the police are quick to say, okay, uh,
Speaker 1: would you agree to a polygraph? Well, innocent people jump
Speaker 1: at the chance to do a polygraph to prove themselves guilty.
Speaker 1: People never do okay, but innocent guys and interrogation, they oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll take a polygraph, which is fatal. Okay, because what
Speaker 1: the cops are allowed to do is give the polygraph,
Speaker 1: a true, real polygraph, okay. And usually the defendant passes
Speaker 1: the polygraph and the cops are allowed to then lie
Speaker 1: about it. They won't back in the room with the
Speaker 1: graph paper. They throw it in the guy's face. And
Speaker 1: so you flunked the polygraph. Now we have proof you're lying.
Speaker 1: We can use us in court. You're getting the death penalty.
Speaker 1: And just bam bam bam, and saw a lie. But
Speaker 1: our Supreme Court, so that's okay, right. And and America
Speaker 1: is I don't think alone in this, but is an
Speaker 1: outlier in this. And that uh, police are allowed to
Speaker 1: lie during the interrogation, repeatedly allowed they want to tell
Speaker 1: any low they want to tell during interrogation. They can
Speaker 1: do it with impunity. Right. So when you're sitting there
Speaker 1: going I would never confess to a crime. But then
Speaker 1: they bring in they go John, listen man. We got
Speaker 1: your fingerprints on the murder weapon, we got your DNA
Speaker 1: on the on the body with we just tested. We
Speaker 1: did a quick test, we did instant tests. Whatever they say, right,
Speaker 1: And two buddies next door in several rooms have both
Speaker 1: said to us truth. They said, you pull the trigger.
Speaker 1: We know you do it. Okay, these guns are testified
Speaker 1: against you. You look at the death penalty and and
Speaker 1: your toast man. But if you if you'll trust us
Speaker 1: and go along with we know, we know the judge,
Speaker 1: we know the prosecutors. You know we can we can
Speaker 1: help you cut a deal. But to save your skin,
Speaker 1: you better tell us now and we'll we'll we'll help
Speaker 1: you out. Right. There's a there's a movie that actually
Speaker 1: is out now called False Confessions. Um that actually, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm in it because they taped an episode of the podcast.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, and you know that maybe you had
Speaker 1: that contact. Maybe why it hasn't becoming hitches, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it will. But anyway, but no, it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a really good movie. And in it you see that
Speaker 1: what they do is they they sort of close this
Speaker 1: circle where they finally come to you and go listen now,
Speaker 1: you know that we've got all this evidence against you,
Speaker 1: and we know that the other guy said you DoD is.
Speaker 1: So you can either be a perpetrator or a witness,
Speaker 1: which one do you want to be? And then once
Speaker 1: so that speaks to another thing that I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask for your take on as someone who's got this
Speaker 1: vast experience chronicling writing about participating in so many different
Speaker 1: aspects of the criminal justice system. Let's say someone's listening
Speaker 1: now and they or a family member gets picked up
Speaker 1: for something they didn't do. What's your advice, what's you do?
Speaker 1: What what's the dues? And don't when you get first
Speaker 1: picked up and and and be remember of course you
Speaker 1: know as you touched on um many people get picked
Speaker 1: up not realizing that they're suspect. And I told their
Speaker 1: suspects just come to the police stage. We want to
Speaker 1: ask a few questions about something. What would you advise
Speaker 1: We're assuming it's a serious crime that they are being
Speaker 1: questioned about. I would well, I'm a lawyer, okay, so
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, I'll be there with my lawyer.
Speaker 1: I'll be there with you can put them off, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, I'll I'll be there to more whatever
Speaker 1: time with my lawyer. Okay, is that that's the way
Speaker 1: I would start it. Most folks don't think like that
Speaker 1: because you know, the the innocent people don't really worry
Speaker 1: about it. They still they want to cooperate with the cops.
Speaker 1: They want to help the cops solve the crime. So
Speaker 1: they walk into this and UM oftentimes get burned. But
Speaker 1: I would never listen. I've had in the past twenty years,
Speaker 1: I've had UM two on two separate occasions. I've had
Speaker 1: the doorbell rings. I got to the door, it's the
Speaker 1: FBI agent and they have the badge FBI. I always
Speaker 1: kind of laugh, you know, somebody see on television. I've
Speaker 1: done nothing wrong. And both times it was sort of
Speaker 1: an ancillary issue to a bigger case somewhere that I've
Speaker 1: never got involved in. Uh, And the guy said uh.
Speaker 1: Both guys said, UM, I'd like to ask some questions,
Speaker 1: and I said, okay, what's it about? And uh, before
Speaker 1: they come in the house, okay, tell me, tell me
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. And so they would give me
Speaker 1: some you know, they kind of pushy. They give me
Speaker 1: some of the background. And both times I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll be happy to talk to you. Let me call
Speaker 1: my lawyer. Where's your office. I'll be there tomorrow with
Speaker 1: my attorney and we'll have a conversation. And they don't
Speaker 1: like that, but that's as far as they can go.
Speaker 1: Because if you, if you were to uh in it,
Speaker 1: Burton le uh, if tell an FBI agents something is
Speaker 1: not really true, that's a federal crime, Okay, you can
Speaker 1: go to prison. Martha Stewart went to jail for that. Okay,
Speaker 1: that happens. Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, that's happening now, you
Speaker 1: see it all the time. Now, those those folks are
Speaker 1: an investigation. But if if if if a FBI agent
Speaker 1: or a cops stopped me on the street and said, hey,
Speaker 1: can we ask you a couple of questions? I can
Speaker 1: ask you some questions. I would say, what's it about,
Speaker 1: whatever crime, whatever situation, whatever inquiry. Um, yeah, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, tell me when and where and I'll
Speaker 1: have my lawyer there. Right. That's something I talked about
Speaker 1: on the show, is that you know, I advise people.
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody wants to help in solving a crime.
Speaker 1: If you're witness to a crime, I don't want to
Speaker 1: tell you not to uh to you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we all want we all want safe streets, we all
Speaker 1: want a safe society. But you know, in the minute,
Speaker 1: there's an inflection point at which, you know, and Marty
Speaker 1: tank Clifts a great example of this too, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: at some point it became clear that they weren't interviewing him,
Speaker 1: as they said they were about his business partner or
Speaker 1: anything like that, about the father's business partners. Um, they
Speaker 1: were they were looking at him as a suspect. And
Speaker 1: at that point, the only words he should have said,
Speaker 1: and I wish I could go back in time and
Speaker 1: tell him this, or I want a lawyer, and that's it,
Speaker 1: and then the questioning stops. Um. It took way too
Speaker 1: long for that to happen, and they were able to
Speaker 1: extract at least some there some form of a false
Speaker 1: confession out of him, and the next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: it took seventeen and a half years to overturn that conviction.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's just it's a tragedy. And you know,
Speaker 1: we both know Marty and how much we think of him.
Speaker 1: I mean, what a what a beautiful, amazing, amazing guy,
Speaker 1: and what a what a terrible faith to lose both
Speaker 1: parents and then be blamed for it. And I meanwhile,
Speaker 1: there still the real perpetrator, who it seems abundantly clear
Speaker 1: who it is, remains remains free and is enjoying his
Speaker 1: retirement in Florida right now. So you know, there's that,
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't It doesn't add up at all.
Speaker 1: So I tell listen, I've raised two kids and they're
Speaker 1: adults now, but when they were teenagers. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a former criminal defense lawyer, and I've always told my
Speaker 1: kids and my wife. If you get pulled over and
Speaker 1: the cops is cann search your car, the answers, no,
Speaker 1: I don't care what. I don't care where you are.
Speaker 1: The answers no. If they show up at the door, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you have a search warrant. If they
Speaker 1: come to your house and knock on the door, I
Speaker 1: want to search, sure, give me a show me a
Speaker 1: search warrant. If they want to terogate you, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: be happy to talk, but let me get my lawyer involved.
Speaker 1: You don't ever trust, have a have a healthy distrust
Speaker 1: for people who show up and want to talk or search.
Speaker 1: That's that's good advice. And again, if if we can
Speaker 1: help by virtue of you being on the show. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, one person avoid this horrible faith that uh
Speaker 1: Ron Williams and Dennis Fritz, uh Karl Fontano, and Tommy
Speaker 1: Ward all in a small town of So let's think
Speaker 1: about that too, right, because I'm a statistical guy. You
Speaker 1: have this small little speck of a town aid to Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: You have four wrongful convictions inside the space of two years.
Speaker 1: Well actually had you had six in the span of
Speaker 1: five years, and four of the six have been exonerated
Speaker 1: by DNA, Ron and Dennis, and then uh Perry Lott
Speaker 1: and Kevin Lee Scott were served twenty and thirty years
Speaker 1: for rapes they didn't commit. And then that's full within
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl, that's six. They're still locked up. They
Speaker 1: have not been exonerated, and you know, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: they're gonna be. We know they're innocent, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm just I'm just extrapolated six six and five
Speaker 1: years in Aida, Oklahoma, same same police, same cops, same prosecutor,
Speaker 1: same d a's office, same everything. Six wrongful convictions in
Speaker 1: five years. Right, and social scientists, the studies that have
Speaker 1: been done, obviously it's an no one can know for sure,
Speaker 1: and we'll never know for sure. But as I made that,
Speaker 1: around five percent of people in prison America are innocent,
Speaker 1: So that numbers is pretty close to a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people innocent people and two million behind bars, which is
Speaker 1: the the largest incarceration rate in the world, the civilized world.
Speaker 1: So you have two million behind bars, and you know,
Speaker 1: some people say five percent is below, that's still a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people. But there I didn't I was not
Speaker 1: aware of that until I wrote the book and I
Speaker 1: realized how many innocent people are in prison, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them. So yeah, and I encourage
Speaker 1: anyone who knows someone who who is innocent uh in
Speaker 1: prison to um to get out there and make as
Speaker 1: much noise as you can, bring as much attention talk
Speaker 1: about it. You never know, even if you're talking about
Speaker 1: it in a dining or there might be somebody sitting
Speaker 1: at the next table that might be a you know,
Speaker 1: somebody of influence, talked to a journalist, talked to write letters. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have to bring as much attention to
Speaker 1: these cases as we can, and that's what we're here for.
Speaker 1: So um, John, we we have a tradition on Wrongful Conviction, Um,
Speaker 1: which is at the end of each episode, and this
Speaker 1: is my favorite part of the episode. I think it's
Speaker 1: one our producer. I think it's his favorite part of
Speaker 1: the episode, and it's our audience's favorite part. This is
Speaker 1: the part where I stopped talking and I thank you.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. You can't solve me when Aaron
Speaker 1: Selta this is the eminem defense I'm using right where
Speaker 1: you put all this stuff out there first, so um,
Speaker 1: as he did in the famous rap battle inn eight Mile.
Speaker 1: But so, first of all, I want to thank you
Speaker 1: for being here on Wrongful Conviction, and uh, I want
Speaker 1: to turn the mic over to you for final thoughts.
Speaker 1: Final thoughts, UM. Well, First of all, selfishly, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to watch The Innocent Man, the Netflix series which
Speaker 1: I had nothing to do with, although I'm the executive producer,
Speaker 1: which means I did nothing. Every show now has fourteen
Speaker 1: executive producers, and I still don't know what one does.
Speaker 1: But I was involved in a little bit because it's
Speaker 1: a from a storytelling point of view, it's a fantastic
Speaker 1: six story, very well done by somebody else. I wrote
Speaker 1: the book you know, years ago, and and got all
Speaker 1: the attention I needed for that. But the Netflix is
Speaker 1: of series is is compelling, and it's informative and it
Speaker 1: it lays out so many reasons for wrongful convictions. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you again for being here and you've been listening
Speaker 1: to an extra special episode of Wrongful Conviction with the
Speaker 1: one and only John Grisham and John, thanks again my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 1: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Awards.
Speaker 1: The music on the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nomine composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production go Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one