Speaker 1: This Paul is from a correction facility, and it's subject
Speaker 1: to monitoring and recording contactly elevenarisma.
Speaker 2: Here. And it hasn't been.
Speaker 3: Easy one hundred years.
Speaker 4: That's man.
Speaker 3: I'm a kid. I didn't do anything, you know, and uh,
Speaker 3: you know that was a that was real painful, man,
Speaker 3: you know, because my life was discarded as if you know,
Speaker 3: like I was a piece of trash or something, you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred years and I had dreams and I wanted
Speaker 3: to do things. I wouldn't committing crimes.
Speaker 4: You know. I was a very good young man.
Speaker 2: That is what happens in so many cases. The cops
Speaker 2: have a hunch, because they're so smart at the scene,
Speaker 2: they have a hunch, and once they act on that hunch,
Speaker 2: they sort of developed tunnel vision and they take off
Speaker 2: marching in the wrong direction. And that happens in so
Speaker 2: many of these wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: The opening the cell door and I'll walk down stave
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 shackles on my feet. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a dream. But then again, it wasn't a dream.
Speaker 4: This is a wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 5: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm that's me.
Speaker 5: I'm your host, and today we have a very special
Speaker 5: and unusual episode featuring the one and only John Grisham.
Speaker 4: John, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Delighted to be here.
Speaker 5: So, John, I want to talk to you about this
Speaker 5: incredible TV series I just watched on Netflix, The Innocent Man,
Speaker 5: which is based on the book by the same name
Speaker 5: that you wrote several years ago, and it for anyone
Speaker 5: who hasn't watched it, I highly recommend it because it
Speaker 5: just rocked my world. How did you get involved in
Speaker 5: this case in the first place, the case of Ron
Speaker 5: Williamson and Dennis Fritz.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, thanks for having me. Delighted to
Speaker 2: be here, look forward to it. And we've served together
Speaker 2: on the board of the Innisis Project for probably ten
Speaker 2: years now, right, yeah, quite a while, go way back.
Speaker 2: I'm on that board because I wrote this book. And
Speaker 2: I wrote this book because I saw an obituary in
Speaker 2: the New York Times in December of two thousand and
Speaker 2: four for a guy named Ron Williamson who had just
Speaker 2: died obviously in Oklahoma, and he was my age, my
Speaker 2: same background, everything, and he had come within five days
Speaker 2: of being executed in Oklahoma for a crime for murder
Speaker 2: he did not commit. And the obituary was fascinating. I mean,
Speaker 2: I love New York Times obituaries because well, they don't
Speaker 2: write about boring people really well, and they write about
Speaker 2: people these fantastic stories of people I've you've never heard of,
Speaker 2: and uh so I've always check out the Times obituaries,
Speaker 2: but normally there are people in New York. But Ron's
Speaker 2: story was, uh it just captured my imagination. And but
Speaker 2: by the time the day was over, I had talked
Speaker 2: to both of his sisters, one in Tulsa, one in Dallas,
Speaker 2: and I said, hey, I'm gonna I'm going to write
Speaker 2: this book, and they said whatever, and one thing led
Speaker 2: to another. I took off to Oklahoma to start digging,
Speaker 2: and I had no idea what I was doing. I
Speaker 2: I'm not a journalist, I'm not trained in you know,
Speaker 2: that type of work, and I had no idea how
Speaker 2: to go about telling that a real story.
Speaker 5: And this is your only nonfiction book. And it's interesting
Speaker 5: because there's that classic adage the truth is changed than fiction.
Speaker 5: I think you spent your life as probably the most
Speaker 5: you know, prolific crime novelist, maybe ever right, and and
Speaker 5: coming up with these stores. It's what you do, dreaming
Speaker 5: these stories up literally, But then then you bump into
Speaker 5: this one and it's beyond anything that you probably could
Speaker 5: have dreamed up, right, I mean, it's interesting. On the
Speaker 5: trailer for the Netflix show, I heard you say if
Speaker 5: you wrote this, nobody would believe it, right.
Speaker 2: That's true with a lot of these innocent stories. As
Speaker 2: I have come to know over the past dozen years,
Speaker 2: the facts are so incredible that first of all, I
Speaker 2: couldn't dream these things up. I couldn't create these these
Speaker 2: these cases because nobody can. There's so remarkably unbelievable. And
Speaker 2: if you did, if you try to pass this off
Speaker 2: as in a novel, it's not gonna work. A novel
Speaker 2: has to be plausible. This story can be can be
Speaker 2: fiction and what you know, it's it's it can be
Speaker 2: science fiction, can be you know, real, you know, all
Speaker 2: kinds of different genres of fiction, but it has to be.
Speaker 2: There has to be a level of plausibility in the
Speaker 2: story to make it work. Some of the cases we
Speaker 2: deal with in the innocence world are hard to believe,
Speaker 2: impossible to believe almost some of the factual scenario in
Speaker 2: the case in Oklahoma, the Ron Williamson case. The murder
Speaker 2: itself was easy to believe because it was a horrible
Speaker 2: crime and those happen all the time. But what happened
Speaker 2: after that, and how he was railroaded and convicted in
Speaker 2: Ada is just a really remarkable story in the once
Speaker 2: I started digging out, I couldn't stop.
Speaker 5: It is a remarkable story, and in so many ways
Speaker 5: and on so many different levels, the victim in this case,
Speaker 5: Debbie Sue Carter, is it's a tragic. All these cases
Speaker 5: are tragic, but in hers, especially as a father, it's
Speaker 5: just such a horrific circumstance, which speaks to what we're
Speaker 5: talking about right now, because in her case, Debbie Sue
Speaker 5: Carter was raped and murdered and tortured. Her killer made
Speaker 5: sure that she suffered agonizing, an agonizing death, And what
Speaker 5: that speaks to is the injustice that's done to everyone,
Speaker 5: her family, her memory, and everyone else when the wrong
Speaker 5: person is convicted. But also what boggles my mind, John,
Speaker 5: is that in a community, especially a small community like Ada,
Speaker 5: you would think that even if an authority figure, a
Speaker 5: police detective or whatever they had an an investigator was
Speaker 5: so sort of morally bankrupt that they didn't mind, didn't
Speaker 5: lose a wink of sleep convicting an innocent guy. By definition,
Speaker 5: they were allowing this sick, twisted, psychotic individual who did
Speaker 5: these terrible, terrible things to w su Carter to remain free.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they knew him.
Speaker 4: They knew him.
Speaker 2: He was a local boy. He grew up there. He
Speaker 2: went to hoschool with Debbie. That's how he got an apartment.
Speaker 2: He was the last person seen alive with her when
Speaker 2: she was in a honky TNK late at night as
Speaker 2: she was leaving, he was at her car. They were
Speaker 2: arguing and she sort of shoved him away and got
Speaker 2: in the car and she drove off, and there were
Speaker 2: witnesses to that, and the police knew it. And a
Speaker 2: few hours later he knocked on her apartment and she
Speaker 2: let him in because she knew him. She didn't I
Speaker 2: don't think she liked him, but wanted to be with him.
Speaker 2: But because they were acquainted going to school together, he
Speaker 2: had the entree, the ability to get into her apartment.
Speaker 2: And once he did, you know, it was a bad night.
Speaker 2: But again the police did not did not pursue him
Speaker 2: the obvious person. For years, years and years of the
Speaker 2: murder was unsolved. The cops were thoroughly incompetent, and at
Speaker 2: the crime scene. The crime scene was horrendous because it
Speaker 2: was a terrible killing. And he hung around and he
Speaker 2: wrote messages with her blood on the wall and wrote
Speaker 2: messages on the kitchen table with a bottle of ketchup,
Speaker 2: and there was just a horrible thing. He stayed there
Speaker 2: for a long time, trying to devise a way to
Speaker 2: deflect or point to blame in somebody else, and anyway,
Speaker 2: he was there for a long time. So it was
Speaker 2: a horrific scene. And these two Keystone cops who are
Speaker 2: on the scene decide, because it's so violent and it's
Speaker 2: so bloody, it had to be the work of two people. Okay,
Speaker 2: that was that decision. Hey, it's got to be two people.
Speaker 2: We had two defendants here. And that is what happens
Speaker 2: in so many cases. The cops have a hunch, because
Speaker 2: they're so smart at the scene, they have a hunch,
Speaker 2: and once they act on that hunch, they sort of
Speaker 2: developed tunnel vision and they take off marching in the
Speaker 2: wrong direction. And that happens in so many of these
Speaker 2: wrongful convictions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in this case, it's fair to say that this
Speaker 5: case actually came with instructions which were ignored and they
Speaker 5: didn't go after the actual killer. I'm forgetting his name,
Speaker 5: Glenn Gore. Glenn Gore, Right, what a name.
Speaker 4: Right, He's in Gore House, Like.
Speaker 2: He's serving life with no parole in Oklahoma, convicted by
Speaker 2: the jury in Ada many years too late.
Speaker 5: Right, I mean, talk about I mean, what an ironic
Speaker 5: thing that the guy's name would be Glenn Gore. Like
Speaker 5: I said, more instructions as if they were coming from
Speaker 5: it and it was a local criminal. He had a record,
Speaker 5: He was a bad dude. The cops were doing for drugs.
Speaker 5: He was a rough family that I mean, he was
Speaker 5: well known to the police, and they still didn't pursue him.
Speaker 5: They didn't prosecute him until they actually had to write.
Speaker 5: It became you know, it became impossible for them to
Speaker 5: continue to deflect the blame from him. They sort of
Speaker 5: and I've seen this in other cases, they sort of
Speaker 5: protected him, right, which is you know, really hard to
Speaker 5: process as to you know, I mean, I grew up
Speaker 5: like most people, you know, respecting the uniform and you know, really,
Speaker 5: I think we all played cops like when we were kids,
Speaker 5: and you know, and I still do. I mean, I
Speaker 5: still I am a person who believes in law and order,
Speaker 5: and I uh, you know, I have a lot of
Speaker 5: respect for most of the people in the criminal justice system.
Speaker 5: But when you get bad actors like these guys, the
Speaker 5: damage that they can inflict is enormous.
Speaker 2: I don't know how bad they were, it's obvious how
Speaker 2: incompetent they were. Uh, you know, there was some allegations
Speaker 2: that these guys, there's some of the some of the
Speaker 2: some of the cops there were later convicted of selling drugs,
Speaker 2: and there was some evidence that Gore was selling drugs
Speaker 2: and the good Gore was selling drugs with the cops,
Speaker 2: and you know, there was never really a clear uh
Speaker 2: path to prove that he was with the cops obviously
Speaker 2: knew him. Some of the cops were shady, but still
Speaker 2: just to sheer incompetence of not investigating the two league
Speaker 2: cops in the case. I don't think any history with
Speaker 2: drug dealing or whatever. They were pretty you know, just
Speaker 2: a couple of stand up guys, uh, doing their best.
Speaker 2: But the incompetence of just not even considering uh the
Speaker 2: last person seeing with the victim.
Speaker 4: Yeah, who became a witness against uh Ron? I guess right,
Speaker 4: Yeah he was.
Speaker 5: He was cleverly, I guess you could say deflected the blame,
Speaker 5: as we see not infrequently in these cases where the
Speaker 5: actual perpetrator uh becomes a witness for the prosecution, because
Speaker 5: it's probably the simplest way to uh, you know, put
Speaker 5: turn the attention away from you and onto somebody else's
Speaker 5: make yourself into a witness. And that's exactly what he did,
Speaker 5: and he got away with it for quite a while.
Speaker 5: So in this case, you know, you talked about how
Speaker 5: you were so taken with the story of Ron Williamson.
Speaker 5: It is a fascinating and and sort of terrible story
Speaker 5: in that this was a young man who had once
Speaker 5: had so much promise right he was a He was
Speaker 5: a professional baseball player, drafted by the Oakland A's and
Speaker 5: seemed to have his whole life laid out in front
Speaker 5: of him until he was injured, never made it to
Speaker 5: the big leagues.
Speaker 4: And what a strange thing to think about.
Speaker 5: The cruel, sort of capricious or arbitrary nature of this
Speaker 5: whole thing that he went from a major League prospect
Speaker 5: to being on death row, and as you said, coming
Speaker 5: within five days of being executed for a crime that
Speaker 5: everyone should have known. He didn't come in, and of
Speaker 5: course he lost his mind in prison and died tragically
Speaker 5: soon after he was released. And there was another innocent man,
Speaker 5: Dennis Fritz.
Speaker 2: Dennis's crime was that he was hanging around with Ron,
Speaker 2: and Ron became when Ron was growing up by the town.
Speaker 2: Ron was in high school in this section of southeastern Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: A lot of coaches and scouts believe that he was
Speaker 2: the next Mickey Mental Mickey's small town in Oklahoma and
Speaker 2: a little bit to the north of this, and Mickey was,
Speaker 2: of course Mickey, but Ron was in the same mold,
Speaker 2: big strong guy, great athlete, solid legs, could hit, and
Speaker 2: he certainly had a huge ego. Small town guy, but
Speaker 2: you know, he was attracting attention from the scouts, and
Speaker 2: he had a great high school baseball coach, and they
Speaker 2: won all these games, and Ron was the man, and
Speaker 2: he was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. And
Speaker 2: he got drafted by the Aids in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 2: in the first round. They paid him somewhere between fifteen
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand bucks for the bonus, which is not bad.
Speaker 2: Back then, he didn't it didn't last ron very long.
Speaker 2: He went through it pretty fast, lost most of it
Speaker 2: in a poker game. But he went off to the
Speaker 2: minor leagues because he was gonna make plenty of money
Speaker 2: and you know, injuries, and he at some point he
Speaker 2: began showing signs of some pretty unstable mental issues and
Speaker 2: undiagnosed later diagnosed as being BiPOL or and crashed and burned,
Speaker 2: and he never he never got over the fact the
Speaker 2: baseball career was so important to him as a small
Speaker 2: kid in small town boy in Oklahoma. You know, he
Speaker 2: couldn't accept the fact that he was not gonna he
Speaker 2: was not gonna be famous, he was not gonna be
Speaker 2: playing in Yankee Stadium, he was not gonna be Mickey Mantle.
Speaker 2: And it just so, it crashed, It crashed on him,
Speaker 2: and he just he went back to Ada and acted
Speaker 2: more and more, uh, more and more bizarre different way.
Speaker 2: He became kind of the town not town drunk, but
Speaker 2: kind of the town misfit, uh, unemployed, drinking too much,
Speaker 2: partying too much, fighting too much. Uh. And he was
Speaker 2: up and down. They they tried to get him some
Speaker 2: help with the local mental health people. They tried their best,
Speaker 2: but it was not enough, and he was he was
Speaker 2: just spiraling down and he became sort of it was
Speaker 2: it was easy to convict Ron because everybody knew it.
Speaker 2: He became the town weirdo, the town goofball, the town
Speaker 2: ne'er do well. That was kind of Ron Williamson. And
Speaker 2: people for a few bucks, he would cut your grass
Speaker 2: with an old beat up lawnmower with his shirt off.
Speaker 2: He pushes mower up and down the street, trying to
Speaker 2: get you know, a few jobs here and there, that
Speaker 2: kind of life. Lived almost homeless and somebody's shed in
Speaker 2: the backyard, and it was a hard fall for him
Speaker 2: and it really affected him mentally. And then and then
Speaker 2: he lived fairly close to where Debbie Sue Carter was murdered.
Speaker 2: And the cops early on, and the cops and the
Speaker 2: prosecutor felt for a long time like Ron was the killer.
Speaker 2: They just believe they just again tunnel vision, They had
Speaker 2: a hunch he was their man, and they had no proof,
Speaker 2: but they didn't stop him. They just kind of manufactured
Speaker 2: a case against.
Speaker 5: Him, right There was no physical evidence connecting them to
Speaker 5: the crime obviously because they weren't there.
Speaker 2: You know, so well, there was physical evidence in that
Speaker 2: this part of what was wrong with the prosecution. There
Speaker 2: were seventeen I think seventeen scalp and pubic hair is
Speaker 2: taken from the victim's bed crime scene, and at trial,
Speaker 2: this you know, certified analyst with the Oklahoma Crime Lab testified.
Speaker 5: That the.
Speaker 2: Scalp in pubic hair matched Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz.
Speaker 2: So they had physical proof junk science, okay, and ten
Speaker 2: years later all seventeen hares were excluded by DNA. There
Speaker 2: was no DNA available in nineteen eighty seven when they
Speaker 2: went to trial, so there was a little bit of
Speaker 2: a little bit of physical proof. It was almost all hearsay,
Speaker 2: jailhouse snitch, bogus testimony by cops, a dream confession, just
Speaker 2: garbage prosecution, and the prosecutor was pushing hard. He got
Speaker 2: a jury, local jury, they wouldn't change venue, and so
Speaker 2: he ram runned you through a conviction.
Speaker 5: Yeah, junk science is an important part of this too.
Speaker 5: And you know it's interesting because I do want to
Speaker 5: talk about the death penalty and how this affected you
Speaker 5: and maybe your views on the death penalty. I don't
Speaker 5: know what they were leading into this. I don't know
Speaker 5: what they are now, but I'm interested to hear. But
Speaker 5: the other thing is with this case, it's just so
Speaker 5: it's so easy to put yourself in the shoes of
Speaker 5: the people on that jury. Right, who were you know
Speaker 5: from the town. As you said, there was no change
Speaker 5: of venue. There's a highly publicized case, A terrifying murder
Speaker 5: in a small community always will generate that kind of
Speaker 5: media attention and extra pressure on the police. But I
Speaker 5: wanted to ask you, you know, one of my goals
Speaker 5: in doing this show. Well, my main goal in doing
Speaker 5: this show was to educate people, all of whom everyone
Speaker 5: who's listening right now is a potential jurors. So are
Speaker 5: you and I I don't know who would put me
Speaker 5: on a jury never know?
Speaker 2: Exclude you as a defense lawyer. I'd kick you off
Speaker 2: my jury exactly. So a defense learn so not a prosecutor.
Speaker 5: Okay, So, so you know, my my hope is that
Speaker 5: in doing this show, and with the now almost eight
Speaker 5: million listens that we've had over the course of the
Speaker 5: first seven seasons, that we have helped to educate people
Speaker 5: so that when they are called to serve on a
Speaker 5: jury at a criminal trial, and when they hold a
Speaker 5: Ron Williamson or Dennis Fritz's life in their hands, and
Speaker 5: that they will be better educated and more maybe I
Speaker 5: would say more attentive, but maybe a little bit more skeptical.
Speaker 4: And you know, I don't want to prevent a rightful
Speaker 4: conviction from happening.
Speaker 5: You know, there is the famous saying Ben Franklin said, right,
Speaker 5: it's better that a one hundred guilty men go free
Speaker 5: than the one innocent man should suffer. Dan's beIN Franklin
Speaker 5: kind of a great American, And so I'm interested in
Speaker 5: your take on that, John, what would you say to
Speaker 5: anyone who's listening now, as having lived through this and
Speaker 5: research that have done all this work on this case
Speaker 5: and all the other things that you've done throughout your
Speaker 5: career looking at the criminal justice matters, how would you
Speaker 5: advise yourors if they're going next week into a trial.
Speaker 5: What would you tell them that could help them to
Speaker 5: make the best decision in the interest of justice?
Speaker 2: Well, I would urge anybody to ask themselves the basic question,
Speaker 2: what is the physical evidence? Where let's start with the proof.
Speaker 2: If it is something like hair analysis or bitemark analysis
Speaker 2: or bootprint analysis, or any one of fifteen different analyzes
Speaker 2: that have all been proven to be rather shaky.
Speaker 4: Entire tracksco precise stuff is all. You know.
Speaker 2: When the FBI says that ninety five percent of its
Speaker 2: crack hair analysts got it wrong, ninety five percent from
Speaker 2: the FBI, you can imagine what's happening out in the States.
Speaker 2: It's junk science. It's unreliable. So go back to the
Speaker 2: basic proof and if a prosecution does not have hard
Speaker 2: physical evidence, and in most cases they do. Okay, most
Speaker 2: of these cases are not that close, but as we
Speaker 2: know in this type of work, there are a lot
Speaker 2: of cases where the evidence is very flimsy. Number two,
Speaker 2: I would say, if they show up with a jail
Speaker 2: house snitch, who is going to testify that while he
Speaker 2: was in the sale with the defendant six months ago,
Speaker 2: he heard the defendant give up full confession, talked about
Speaker 2: the case, knew the facts, blah blah blah. Don't believe
Speaker 2: a word of what the snitch is saying because the
Speaker 2: snitches cut a deal with the prosecutor or the police
Speaker 2: to get some time off. Snitches should not be allowed period. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, I would if there's a false confession, if
Speaker 2: there's a if there's a confession, okay, asked some basic questions.
Speaker 2: Did the defendant recant the following day as soon as
Speaker 2: he coud get away from the cops and he recan't?
Speaker 2: Has he recanted every day since then? And most importantly,
Speaker 2: does his confession? Do the facts match up with the
Speaker 2: fiscal evidence? Because in almost every false confession there's no match.
Speaker 2: You know what if the guy confessed to he said
Speaker 2: to get out of the room with the cops and
Speaker 2: they are notoriously unreliable. You and I, sir, on the
Speaker 2: Innocence Project Board, we have three hundred and seventy DNA
Speaker 2: exonerations in the past twenty five years. Twenty five percent
Speaker 2: involved false confessions. False confessions are a huge problem that
Speaker 2: happen all the time. And if you're a juror, say, okay,
Speaker 2: the guy confessed in police custody. Was a lawyer present, No,
Speaker 2: because if the lawyer's there, he wouldn't be confessing. So
Speaker 2: if the lawyer wasn't there, how long did the interrogation last?
Speaker 2: Was it twelve hours throughout the night? And when he
Speaker 2: did confess, what did he say about the facts of
Speaker 2: the case do the matchup is pretty basic stuff, but
Speaker 2: not all not all durors, you know, or I guess
Speaker 2: curious enough to ask those questions. Although I got to say, Jason,
Speaker 2: they are getting more and more skeptical because we are
Speaker 2: seeing fewer and fewer death verdicts, far fewer death verdicts,
Speaker 2: far fewer executions, far fewer people on death row, because
Speaker 2: jurors are far more skeptical.
Speaker 5: I want to harp on one point that you made,
Speaker 5: which is that in that FBI, in the investigation that
Speaker 5: was done into the FBI forensic analysts who testified.
Speaker 4: In hair cases, specifically in cases where hair was.
Speaker 5: The predominant factor leading to the conviction, they found I
Speaker 5: think they examined almost four hundred cases, and they found that,
Speaker 5: as you said, over ninety five percent of them, the
Speaker 5: FBI agents or experts were wrong. But in one hundred
Speaker 5: percent of the cases at which they were wrong, they
Speaker 5: were wrong in favor of the prosecution. So whether they
Speaker 5: were mistaken, it's hard to believe that they were mistaken
Speaker 5: in all those cases because it just statistically doesn't add
Speaker 5: up that they would every single time make a mistake
Speaker 5: in favor of the prosecution. So I think again, we
Speaker 5: have to really take a hard look at what's being
Speaker 5: presented in these context think about what people's motivations are
Speaker 5: when they're testifying. In the case of the jailhouse snitches,
Speaker 5: it couldn't be clearer, right, And it's so interesting in
Speaker 5: our criminal justice system. You know, everyone knows that you
Speaker 5: can't bribe a witness, right, that's a crime, that's a felony.
Speaker 5: You know, you can't bribe a witness. But the government
Speaker 5: has the ability to offer the best bribe that there is.
Speaker 5: I'm calling it a bribe. It's not called the bribe technically, right,
Speaker 5: it's a deal. Yeah, they can offer the deal that
Speaker 5: it's you know, you can go get out of jail
Speaker 5: free card, right, walk out today, so or reduce charge
Speaker 5: or whatever else they want to do.
Speaker 4: So yeah, so that that is I'm really glad you
Speaker 4: brought that up.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about the death penalty because support for the
Speaker 5: death penalty in America's at an all time low, and
Speaker 5: I think it's the first time that more than half
Speaker 5: of Americans are opposed to death penalty. How have your
Speaker 5: views will you? Will you anti death penalty? Are you
Speaker 5: anti death play? Have they evolved as a result of
Speaker 5: dealing with this case.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, the numbers are down, but there's still a
Speaker 2: significant number of people in the majority of states who
Speaker 2: are favorite. If you look at the death belt thirty
Speaker 2: six thirty eight states, the people who live there and
Speaker 2: vote there the majority, and it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty, but in some places it's slightly more
Speaker 2: who are in favor still favor the death penalty. So
Speaker 2: it's popular in a lot of areas. You know, where
Speaker 2: you live, it's probably not other places. It's not California,
Speaker 2: the biggest state that they have six hundred people on
Speaker 2: death row, but they know they executed one person. Not
Speaker 2: serious about it, but they you'll have death row and
Speaker 2: it cost the mozillion bucks a year.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Growing up in the Deep South as a Southern Baptist,
Speaker 2: you know that eye for an eye, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: and it was it was the Old Testament version of retribution.
Speaker 2: And we not only believe that, we we really sort
Speaker 2: of advocated the death penalty. And we no one back
Speaker 2: then and I can't ever remember uh was ever opposed
Speaker 2: to the death penalty, and are many of them now.
Speaker 2: Once I became a lawyer, though, and became into a
Speaker 2: lot of criminal defense cases. You know, slowly I realized
Speaker 2: that we have some pretty serious problems in the criminal
Speaker 2: justice system, and some very serious problems with the death
Speaker 2: penalty the way it is used. And I just, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty five years ago, I said this, even if you
Speaker 2: support the death penalty, you cannot support this death penalty
Speaker 2: and the way it's used against minorities, the way it's used.
Speaker 2: Different different states use it differently for the same crimes.
Speaker 2: It's just it's a mess, okay. And so I'm very
Speaker 2: much opposed.
Speaker 5: To the argument I make to people, and I speak
Speaker 5: to people who are in favor of the death penalty.
Speaker 5: Is I asked them what percentage of people of innocent
Speaker 5: people is it okay to execute? So they will say, well, no, no,
Speaker 5: you can't execute innocent people, and I go, but you
Speaker 5: do understand that the system is not It's far from perfect,
Speaker 5: but it can never be perfect, even if everybody in
Speaker 5: the system did the best job that they possibly could.
Speaker 5: And we know there are so many different causes. There's
Speaker 5: some of it's on the defense, right. We have defense
Speaker 5: lawyers who slept through capital cases. We have defense lawyers
Speaker 5: who are underpaid, they may be alcoholics. We have cases
Speaker 5: of death people sends to death, whether the death the
Speaker 5: the not. Too long after their verdict was rendered, their
Speaker 5: defense attorney was disbarred or even arrested or you know,
Speaker 5: found to be you know, in competence too kind of
Speaker 5: a word. So my question is, even if everybody did
Speaker 5: the best job that they could, we're still going to
Speaker 5: make mistakes. So my question for anyone who's listening who's
Speaker 5: still pro death penalty would be, what how many innocent
Speaker 5: people is it okay to execute? Out of one hundred
Speaker 5: or whatever it is, Because if your answer is none,
Speaker 5: then you can't be in favor of the death penalty
Speaker 5: because we know we've executed incent people. Cameron Todd, Willingham,
Speaker 5: There's so many other Jesse to Farah, There's so many
Speaker 5: that come to mind, and I, you know, I can't.
Speaker 5: I don't want to live in a country that executes
Speaker 5: innocent people. In America is it's so far behind the
Speaker 5: rest of the civilized world in this area. You know,
Speaker 5: we are among the top five nations and the number
Speaker 5: of executions, and it's not it's not a good list
Speaker 5: to be on. The other nations are not nations you'd
Speaker 5: be proud to be associated with in that way. Western
Speaker 5: Europe has abolished it. I mean in the rest of
Speaker 5: the civilized world they've for some reason, they have a
Speaker 5: much worrier I think.
Speaker 2: It's us in Pakistan and North Korea, places.
Speaker 4: Like that, China.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So it's it's not a it's not a good
Speaker 5: it's a it's a bad distinction, and it's something that
Speaker 5: we can change and we must change. And you know,
Speaker 5: we're going to keep fighting until we do.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Good thing about Jason the death Penlly is dying. It's
Speaker 2: it's dying because not because of courageous lawmakers, not because
Speaker 2: of courageous judges, but because of courageous jurors. And uh
Speaker 2: nowadays the jurors as for the same reason we've reasons
Speaker 2: we've been discussing. Because of so many high profile exonerations
Speaker 2: where these bogus prosecutions were exposed, Jurors today are far
Speaker 2: more skeptical about the abusive tactics used by police and
Speaker 2: prosecutors to get convictions. That's one factor. Another factor is
Speaker 2: that most states today are spending more money to train
Speaker 2: defense lawyers. The defense lawyer and capital cases is far
Speaker 2: better than it was just a few years ago, so
Speaker 2: so that the play and field is kind of level now.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: And and when you go to trial, and in most
Speaker 2: of your capital cases, the defendant is not only guilty,
Speaker 2: but very guilty. The proof is there, and so it
Speaker 2: becomes a question of how do you save this person's life?
Speaker 2: And what happens now? Because the defense lawyers are so
Speaker 2: much better, they are able to present to the jury
Speaker 2: the whole picture of this defendant and where he came from,
Speaker 2: and his background and the fact that he probably never
Speaker 2: had a chance in life and jura, and once that
Speaker 2: whole story is exposed in a court room, once the
Speaker 2: jurors hear the whole story, we are seeing it weekly
Speaker 2: in this country. They're far more willing to go with
Speaker 2: life with no parole and spare the guy's life. They're
Speaker 2: more sympathetic, right.
Speaker 4: And then there's a chance to fix it.
Speaker 5: I just finished reading the remarkable book by Richard Jaffey,
Speaker 5: who I think he's a hero of mine. He's I think,
Speaker 5: one more successful. He's one more death penalty reversals than
Speaker 5: any other or appeals than any other lawyer that I
Speaker 5: know of. And his book, the subtitles Defending the damned.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to remember the first the actual title. It's
Speaker 5: a wonderful book and it really speaks to what we're
Speaker 5: talking about. I mean, you see these cases where it
Speaker 5: would be apparent to anyone seemingly that these people were innocent.
Speaker 5: Anthony ray Hinton is a great example of that, you know,
Speaker 5: and going back to even the Innocent Man cases, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, or the Innocent Man Show, because in the
Speaker 5: show there were two different cases, right, It wasn't just
Speaker 5: w Sue Carter.
Speaker 2: Eighteen months later, a young lady named Denise Harroway was
Speaker 2: abducted from a convenience store late at night where she
Speaker 2: worked in Ada and vanished and there was no evidence,
Speaker 2: There was no the crime scene was contaminated, the police
Speaker 2: did not secure the crime scene, and the cashrish was open,
Speaker 2: and she was gone, and some people had seen her
Speaker 2: leave with a couple of sketchy guys in an old truck,
Speaker 2: but she They couldn't find the body. They couldn't find her.
Speaker 2: They could, they searched and searched, they couldn't. And this
Speaker 2: went on for eighteen months, and then the police there
Speaker 2: there was some composite police drawings that were pretty good,
Speaker 2: and the people called in. They said that look looks
Speaker 2: like Billy, looks like Joey, looks like Charlie, looks like
Speaker 2: Tommy whoever. And so the cops are getting a lot
Speaker 2: of input from from the composite drawings, and they just
Speaker 2: sort of settled on a guy named Tommy Ward, who
Speaker 2: was a twenty year old kid with no record, and
Speaker 2: they called him in for interrogation, didn't tell him what,
Speaker 2: didn't tell him why they wanted him, wanted to talk
Speaker 2: to him, and so he goes to the police station
Speaker 2: without any clue that that would be his last day
Speaker 2: of freedom for the rest of his life. And they
Speaker 2: began interrogating him, and things deteriorated quickly when he realized
Speaker 2: they were suspicious of him. He had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with the crime. He was nowhere near the crime scene,
Speaker 2: he never met the victim. There's not one shred of
Speaker 2: physical evidence that links him to the crime now or
Speaker 2: thirty five years ago, no evidence at all. And the
Speaker 2: interrogation went on for a long time, hours and hours NonStop,
Speaker 2: and Tommy has said he wanted to talk to a lawyer.
Speaker 2: That's not clear from the record. There is really no
Speaker 2: record because it was not recorded. There were cameras in
Speaker 2: the room, but they didn't record the bad stuff, and
Speaker 2: Tommy finally snapped. He just snapped, which is not unusual
Speaker 2: after eight or ten years of hours of abusive interrogation.
Speaker 2: And Tommy said, okay, finally, you know, he said, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to give these guys a story, and it's
Speaker 2: going to be so outrageous that once they investigate it,
Speaker 2: they'll realize I'm lying. Okay, So he just felt them
Speaker 2: a big story about grabbing the girl, taking her out,
Speaker 2: raping her, cutting her throat, burning her body, disposing it
Speaker 2: over here. And while he was actually doing this, the
Speaker 2: cops said, were where did you dispose of her bodies? So, well,
Speaker 2: I threw it down the dish, So they had a
Speaker 2: cops in EIGHTA would run to that location and couldn't
Speaker 2: find a body. So he called back to the police
Speaker 2: station and said, we can't find the body. So the
Speaker 2: cops see tom the body's not there. Where's the body?
Speaker 2: And they say, oh, you'd make up some other Well,
Speaker 2: the body's over in the warehouse, you know whatever. So
Speaker 2: the cops would go over there, Well it wasn't there. Well,
Speaker 2: the copsure it's in the bottom of a silo that'd
Speaker 2: go this goes on all night long. He's stupid. Cops
Speaker 2: would runn around Ada trying to find the body because
Speaker 2: Tommy's making stuff up. Okay, Tommy's just making stuff up
Speaker 2: because he's crazy, he's half crazed. Okay. And finally they said, okay,
Speaker 2: enough of that, let's have the confession. And after about
Speaker 2: I don't know, fifteen hours, they turned the machine on
Speaker 2: and they recorded Tommy. And you see this in the
Speaker 2: Netflix episode where he's sitting there, punched, drunk out of
Speaker 2: his mind and he can't get the facts straight. The
Speaker 2: cops are feding the facts and he keeps making mistakes
Speaker 2: and so the cops correct him on tape. You see
Speaker 2: this in the show. I saw it, and it's I mean,
Speaker 2: that's been reviewed by some experts who experts in false confessions,
Speaker 2: who just shake their head at how bad the false
Speaker 2: confession is. I mean, as far as false confessions go,
Speaker 2: it's not even it's horrible anyway that they never found
Speaker 2: the body, okay, but they had a confession. So they
Speaker 2: go to trial without the body, and tom he's found
Speaker 2: guilty of capital murder, rape and capital murder with nobody. Okay,
Speaker 2: he goes off to death throw In Oklahoma. Six months later,
Speaker 2: a hunter stumbled across a body in a shallow grave
Speaker 2: a few miles from Ada, in a remote section of
Speaker 2: the county, and they do the dental exams and it's
Speaker 2: these airway and she'd been shot once in the back
Speaker 2: of the head and that was the cause of death,
Speaker 2: not burnt, not stab not you know whatever. And in
Speaker 2: most jurisdictions, in most places in the country, once the
Speaker 2: body was found, and once the people realized it had
Speaker 2: nothing even remotely familiar with the confession, it's time to
Speaker 2: call time out and rethink things. But not an Ada.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean, when I think about this case,
Speaker 5: and it's been you know, several weeks since I watched
Speaker 5: the show, but I think back on it and I go,
Speaker 5: how in this country could Tommy Ward and Carl Fontano
Speaker 5: be convicted of a stabbing that was actually a shooting, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, it wasn't even the right crime. And furthermore,
Speaker 5: in their testimony they said that they were with another guy, right,
Speaker 5: and who we know wasn't there because his alibi was
Speaker 5: air tight.
Speaker 4: So everything was wrong with this case.
Speaker 2: Everything was wrong. Yeah, everything was wrong.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And the tragedy is and it the human side
Speaker 5: of this, which of course, you know, affects me and
Speaker 5: I think anyone who's got empathy for their fellow man
Speaker 5: or humans.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: You see Tommy particularly in the in the show, who's
Speaker 5: been in prison now for about thirty three years, thirty
Speaker 5: four years. He was a ninety four case, and he
Speaker 5: comes across as just sort of a sort of a
Speaker 5: big bear of a man, but kind of like a
Speaker 5: gentle giant, you know, and just sort of a very
Speaker 5: just a very kind He's got a kind way about him.
Speaker 2: You know, he's you know, he's he's a sweet guy.
Speaker 2: He was a sweet he's a sweet boy. I mean,
Speaker 2: he grew up in a church, big family, all devout churchgoers.
Speaker 2: He was, you know, twenty years old. He was a
Speaker 2: little bit on the wild side for a while. But
Speaker 2: now after after thirty three years, thirty four years in prison,
Speaker 2: he's he's earned his g D. He's earned his degree.
Speaker 2: He's he's earned several Bible study awards. To the mail,
Speaker 2: he teaches several Bible study groups. He's sort of like
Speaker 2: the official chaplain at This guy has a perfect prison
Speaker 2: record and he's never spilled a couple coffee in prison,
Speaker 2: and he's a wonderful human being who sort of accepted
Speaker 2: his fate in life that this is just, you know
Speaker 2: what I get for some reason. I've been dealt this
Speaker 2: hand and I'll survive it. And you know, but he's
Speaker 2: lost his childhood, he's lost the chance to marry, have
Speaker 2: a family. He worries about his mother, who's ninety and
Speaker 2: obviously in the failing and he would love to see her.
Speaker 2: But it's a huge tragedy. And the tragedy is we
Speaker 2: talk about Jason so many times, is you get frustrated
Speaker 2: at the at the authorities and the bogus conviction and
Speaker 2: the you know, the cops and all the horrible things
Speaker 2: they did. But the real killer, you know, this was
Speaker 2: still out there, still is still out there. We have
Speaker 2: a few suspects in mind, but these people have not
Speaker 2: been brought to justice. Thirty five years later, yeah, thirty
Speaker 2: four years later, they still have never been brought to
Speaker 2: justice because the cops blew the case. And that's what
Speaker 2: happens with awful convictions. That's another reason to be so
Speaker 2: frustrated by them, is the real rapist and the real
Speaker 2: murderers are left free to rome and they almost always
Speaker 2: repeat their crimes.
Speaker 5: They almost always do. And of course there's another victim
Speaker 5: in this case. And when I say victim, I mean
Speaker 5: another innocent man who was convicted, which is Carl Fontano,
Speaker 5: who was a.
Speaker 4: Guy who was.
Speaker 5: You know, very clearly, you know slow he was. He
Speaker 5: was a guy who had you know, developmental issues of
Speaker 5: some sort. I'm not a psychologist, but you know you can.
Speaker 5: You can watch that tape and you just you watching
Speaker 5: that show. I want to jump through the screen and
Speaker 5: stop the process because you're sitting there watching it kind
Speaker 5: of reminds me of making a murder when they're interviewing
Speaker 5: Brendan Dacy, right, because he just doesn't understand what's going on,
Speaker 5: and he is so easily led like a lamb to
Speaker 5: the slaughter, right. And we know that in false confession
Speaker 5: cases it's so much well obviously it's easier to get
Speaker 5: someone who's of limited mental acuity, but also people who
Speaker 5: are most likely to falsely confessor, people who are teenagers
Speaker 5: and ironically people in the military. And you had that,
Speaker 5: of course here with the case that you were deeply
Speaker 5: involved with with the Norfolk for because they are used
Speaker 5: to and this is counterintuitive, but they because you know,
Speaker 5: I think most of us think that a military guy
Speaker 5: would be able to stand up for himself. But they're
Speaker 5: used to obeying authority figures and orders, so they.
Speaker 2: Respect authority figures and they kind of want to do
Speaker 2: something to help the authority figures with their job. And
Speaker 2: a lot of times you'll see people who are vulnerable
Speaker 2: step way out of line to kind of help the
Speaker 2: cops out. That's why a lot of interrogations, the police
Speaker 2: are quick to say, okay, would you agree to a polygraph? Well,
Speaker 2: innocent people jump in the chance to do a polygraph
Speaker 2: to prove themselves guilty. People never do okay, but innocent
Speaker 2: guys in interrogation, oh yeah, I'll take a polygraph, which
Speaker 2: is fatal okay, because what the cops are allowed to
Speaker 2: do is give the polygraph, a true, real polygraph, okay.
Speaker 2: And usually the defendant passes the polygraph and the cops
Speaker 2: are allowed to then lie about it. They walk back
Speaker 2: in the room with the graph paper, they throw it
Speaker 2: in the guy's face and so you flunk the polygraph.
Speaker 2: Now we have proof you're lying. We can use this
Speaker 2: in cord you get in the death penalty and just bam, bam,
Speaker 2: bam and it's all a lie. But our Supreme Court
Speaker 2: so that's okay.
Speaker 5: Right, And America is I don't think a loan in this,
Speaker 5: but is an outlier in this, and that police are
Speaker 5: allowed to lie during the interrogation probaly, Yes.
Speaker 2: Low they want to tell exactly any low they want
Speaker 2: to tell during the interrogation. They can do it with impunity. Right.
Speaker 5: So when you're sitting there going well, I would never
Speaker 5: confess to a crime, but then they bring in they
Speaker 5: go John, listen, man, we got your fingerprints on the
Speaker 5: murder weapon, we got your DNA on the on the
Speaker 5: body with we just tested.
Speaker 4: We did a quick test, we did an instant test.
Speaker 2: Whatever they say, right, and your two buddies next door
Speaker 2: and several rooms have both said total truth. They've said
Speaker 2: you pulled the trigger.
Speaker 3: We know you did.
Speaker 2: Okay, these gowns are testifying against you. You look at
Speaker 2: the death penalty and and your toast man. But if
Speaker 2: you if you'll trust us and go along with we
Speaker 2: know the judge, we know the prosecutors. You know we
Speaker 2: can we can help you cut a deal. But to
Speaker 2: save your skin, you better tell us now and we'll
Speaker 2: we'll we'll help you out right.
Speaker 5: There's a there's a movie that actually is out now
Speaker 5: called False Confessions that actually, uh, I'm in it because
Speaker 5: they've they taped an episode of the podcast.
Speaker 4: But you're in a movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know that maybe you had
Speaker 5: that content maybe why it hasn't become a HITCHES yet,
Speaker 5: but it will but anyway, but no, it's it's a
Speaker 5: it's a really good movie. And in it you see
Speaker 5: that what they do is they they they sort of
Speaker 5: close this circle where they finally come to you and
Speaker 5: go listen. Now, you know that we've got all this
Speaker 5: evidence against you, and we know that the other guy
Speaker 5: said you did it, So you can either be a
Speaker 5: perpetrator or a witness, which one do you want to be?
Speaker 4: And then once so.
Speaker 5: That speaks to another thing that I wanted to ask
Speaker 5: for your take on as someone who's got this vast
Speaker 5: experience chronicling writing about participating in so many different aspects
Speaker 5: of the criminal justice system. Let's say someone's listening now
Speaker 5: and they or a family member gets picked up for
Speaker 5: something they didn't do.
Speaker 4: What's your advice?
Speaker 5: What what what's the dos and don'ts when you get
Speaker 5: first picked up and and and remember of course, you know,
Speaker 5: as you touched on, many people get picked up not
Speaker 5: realizing that they're suspect. And I told their suspects, just
Speaker 5: come to the police stage. We want to ask a
Speaker 5: few questions about something. What would you advise.
Speaker 2: We're assuming it's a serious crime that they are being
Speaker 2: questioned about. I would, well, I'm a lawyer, okay, So
Speaker 2: I would say, you know, I'll be there with my lawyer.
Speaker 2: I'll be there with put it. You can put them off, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll be there to more at whatever time with my lawyer.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: Is that that's the way I would start it. Most
Speaker 2: folks don't think like that, because, you know, the innocent
Speaker 2: people don't really worry about it. They they want to
Speaker 2: cooperate with the cops. They want to help the cops
Speaker 2: solve the crime. So they walk into this and oftentimes
Speaker 2: get burned. But I would never listen. I've had in
Speaker 2: the past twenty years, I've had two on two separate occasions,
Speaker 2: I've had the doorbell rings. I go to the door,
Speaker 2: say FBI agent, and they have the badge FBI. I
Speaker 2: always kind of laugh, you know something you see on television.
Speaker 2: I've done nothing wrong, and both times it was sort
Speaker 2: of an ancillary issue to a bigger case somewhere that
Speaker 2: I've never got involved in. And the guy said, Both
Speaker 2: guys said, I'd like to ask some questions. And I said, okay,
Speaker 2: what's it about? And before they come in the house, okay,
Speaker 2: tell me, tim, what are you talking about? And so
Speaker 2: they would give me some you know, the kind of
Speaker 2: pushy they'd give me some of the background. And both
Speaker 2: times I said, Okay, I'll be happy to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Let me call my lawyer. Where's your office I'll be
Speaker 2: there tomor with my attorney and we'll have a conversation.
Speaker 2: And they don't like that. But that's as far as
Speaker 2: they can go. Because if you if you were to inadvertently,
Speaker 2: if tell an FBI agent something is not really true,
Speaker 2: that's a federal crime. Okay, you can go to prison.
Speaker 2: Martha Stewart went to jail for that. Okay, that happens.
Speaker 2: Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, that's happening now. You see it
Speaker 2: all the time. Now those those folks are on an investigation.
Speaker 2: But if if if a FBI agent or a cop
Speaker 2: stopped me on the street and said, hey, can we
Speaker 2: ask you a couple of questions. I can I ask
Speaker 2: you some questions. I would say, what's it about whatever crime,
Speaker 2: whatever situation, whatever inquiry. Yeah, I'll talk to you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: tell me when and where, and I'll have my lawyer there.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: That's something I talk about on the show, is that,
Speaker 5: you know, I advise people. I mean, everybody wants to
Speaker 5: help in solving a crime, your witness to a crime.
Speaker 5: I don't want to tell you not to, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean we all want we all want safe streets,
Speaker 5: we all want a safe society. But you know, at
Speaker 5: a minute, there's an inflection point at which you know
Speaker 5: in Marty Tankliff's a great example of this too, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, at some point it became clear that they
Speaker 5: weren't interviewing him as they said they were about his
Speaker 5: business partner or anything like that, about the father's business partners.
Speaker 5: They were they were looking at him as a suspect.
Speaker 5: And at that point, the only words he should have said,
Speaker 5: and I wish I could go back in time and
Speaker 5: tell him this or I want a lawyer, and that's it,
Speaker 5: and then the questioning stops. It took way too long
Speaker 5: for that to happen, and they were able to extract
Speaker 5: at least some very some form of a false confession
Speaker 5: out of him, and the next thing you know, it
Speaker 5: took seventeen and a half years to overturn that conviction.
Speaker 5: And it's just it's a tragedy. And you know, we
Speaker 5: both know Marty and how much we think of him.
Speaker 5: I mean, what a beautiful, amazing, amazing guy, and what
Speaker 5: a terrible fate to lose both parents and then be
Speaker 5: blamed for it. And meanwhile, the still the real perpetrator,
Speaker 5: who it seems abundantly clear who it is, remains remains
Speaker 5: free and is enjoying his retirement in Florida right now.
Speaker 5: So you know, there's that, and it just doesn't it
Speaker 5: doesn't add up at all.
Speaker 2: So I tell listen, I've raised two kids of their
Speaker 2: adults now, but when they were teenagers. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: a former criminal defense lawyer, and I've always told my
Speaker 2: kids and my wife. If you get pulled over and
Speaker 2: the cop says, can I search your car? The answers no,
Speaker 2: I don't care what, I don't care where you are.
Speaker 2: The answers know if they show up at the door, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you if you have a search warrant, If they
Speaker 2: come to your house and knock on the door and
Speaker 2: want to search. Sure, give me a show me a
Speaker 2: search warrant. If they want to interrogate you. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 2: be happy to talk, but let me get my lawyer involved.
Speaker 2: You don't ever trust, have a healthy distrust for people
Speaker 2: who show up and want to talk or search.
Speaker 5: That's that's good advice, I mean. And again, if we
Speaker 5: can help by virtue of you being on the show. Uh,
Speaker 5: you know, one person, avoid this horrible faith that Ron
Speaker 5: Williams and Dennis Fritz, Carl Fontano, and Tommy Ward all
Speaker 5: in a small town of So let's think about that too, right,
Speaker 5: because I'm a statistical guy. You have this small little
Speaker 5: speck of a town aight to Oklahoma. You have four
Speaker 5: wrongful convictions inside the space of two years.
Speaker 2: Well, actually you had six in the span of five years.
Speaker 2: And four of the six have been exonerated by DNA.
Speaker 2: Ron and Dennis and then Perry Lott and Cavalie Scott
Speaker 2: were served twenty and thirty years for rapes they didn't commit.
Speaker 2: And then that's four. With the Tommy and Carl, that's six.
Speaker 2: They're still locked up. They have not been exonerated. And
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not sure they're going to be.
Speaker 5: We know they're innocent, and so yes, I'm I'm just
Speaker 5: extrapolated six six and five years in Ada, Oklahoma, the.
Speaker 2: Same same police, same cops, same prosecutor, same DA's office,
Speaker 2: same everything. Six wrongful convictions in five.
Speaker 5: Years, right, and social scientists, the studies that have been done.
Speaker 5: Obviously it's no one can know for sure. We'll never
Speaker 5: know for sure. But as to make that, around five
Speaker 5: percent of people in prison in America are innocent, So
Speaker 5: that number is pretty close to one hundred thousand people
Speaker 5: innocent people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two million behind bars, which is the largest incarceration
Speaker 2: rate in the world, this civilized world. So you have
Speaker 2: two million behind bars, and you know, some people say
Speaker 2: five percent is low, that's still one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 2: But there. I didn't I was not aware of that
Speaker 2: until I wrote the book and I realized how many
Speaker 2: innocent people are in prison, and there are a lot
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 5: So yeah, and I encourage anyone who knows someone who
Speaker 5: is innocent in prison to get out there and make
Speaker 5: as much noise as you can, bring as much attention
Speaker 5: talk about it. You never know, even if you're talking
Speaker 5: about it in a nine or there might be somebody
Speaker 5: sitting at the next table that might be a you know,
Speaker 5: somebody of influence, talk to a journalist, talk to write letters.
Speaker 5: I mean, we have to bring as much attention to
Speaker 5: these cases as we can, and that's what we're here for. So, John,
Speaker 5: we have a tradition on Wrongful Conviction, which is at
Speaker 5: the end of each episode, and this is my favorite
Speaker 5: part of the episode. I think it's one our producer.
Speaker 5: I think it's his favorite part of the episode, and
Speaker 5: it's our audience's favorite part. This is the part where
Speaker 5: I stopped talking and I thank you. It'll be a
Speaker 5: good thing, That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you can't insult
Speaker 5: me when I are in Selton. This is the EM
Speaker 5: and M defense I'm using right where you put all
Speaker 5: this stuff out there first, so as he did in
Speaker 5: the famous wrap battle Inn eight Mile. But so, first
Speaker 5: of all, I want to thank you for being here
Speaker 5: on Wrongful Conviction, and I want to turn the mic
Speaker 5: over to you for final thoughts.
Speaker 2: Final thoughts. Well, first of all, selfishly, I encourage you
Speaker 2: to watch The Innocent Man, the Netflix series which I
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with, although I'm the executive producer,
Speaker 2: which means I did nothing. Every show now has fourteen
Speaker 2: executive producers, and I still don't know what one does.
Speaker 2: But I was involved in it a little bit because
Speaker 2: it's from a storytelling point of view. It's a fantastic story,
Speaker 2: very well done by somebody else. I wrote the book
Speaker 2: you know, years ago and got all the attention I
Speaker 2: needed for that. But the Netflix is of series is compelling,
Speaker 2: and it's informative, and it lays out so many reasons
Speaker 2: for wrongful convictions.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you again for being here and you've been
Speaker 5: listening to an extra special episode of Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 5: the one and only John Grisham.
Speaker 4: John, thanks again my pleasure.
Speaker 5: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 5: get your podcasts.
Speaker 4: It really helps.
Speaker 5: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
Speaker 5: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 5: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 5: to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
Speaker 5: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 5: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
Speaker 5: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph be sure
Speaker 5: to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Speaker 5: Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm
Speaker 5: is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association
Speaker 5: with Signal Company Number one