Speaker 1: This call is from a correction facility, and it's subject
Speaker 1: to monitoring and recording.
Speaker 2: Fact ere and it hasn't been easy.
Speaker 3: One hundred years that sad man. I'm a kid.
Speaker 4: I didn't do anything, you know, and uh, you know
Speaker 4: that was ah, that was real painful, man, you know,
Speaker 4: because my life was discarded as if you know, like
Speaker 4: I was a piece of trash or something, you know,
Speaker 4: one hundred years and I had dreams and I wanted
Speaker 4: to do things I wouldn't commit in crimes.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I was a very good young man.
Speaker 5: That is what happens in so many cases. The cops
Speaker 5: have a hunch because they're so smart at the scene,
Speaker 5: they have a hunch, and once they act on that hunch,
Speaker 5: they sort of developed tunnel vision and they take off
Speaker 5: marching in the wrong direction. And that happens in so
Speaker 5: many of these wrongful convictions.
Speaker 3: They open it to cell door and I'll walk down
Speaker 3: stif and I actually walked downstairs to be outside.
Speaker 2: It felt very strange to.
Speaker 5: Be, like I said, to be walking without no shackles
Speaker 5: on my feet.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a dream. But then again it
Speaker 2: wasn't a dream.
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back, to wrongful conviction. Today
Speaker 3: I have Gloria Chillian, who served seventeen years for a
Speaker 3: murder that well, double murder that of course she had
Speaker 3: no part in. And when you hear how this all
Speaker 3: came down, you're going to be scratching your head like
Speaker 3: I am now, and with her is one of my
Speaker 3: favorite humans. The senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project,
Speaker 3: Nina Morrison. So, Gloria, Nina, welcome, Thank you, Hi Jason.
Speaker 3: And like I always say, I'm glad you're here, but
Speaker 3: I'm sorry you're here.
Speaker 1: So you know, here than somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I read about your case in that amazing book,
Speaker 3: Anatomy of Innocence by Laura Caldwell, and I was dumbfounded, actually,
Speaker 3: I mean forgetting the fact that you look. I mean,
Speaker 3: you can't judge a book by its cover, but you
Speaker 3: look so unlike anyone that would be a double murderer
Speaker 3: that's actually sort of hard to process. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you ever looked like a double murderer back in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty one, did you?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Hardly, No, not so much. And if you don't believe me,
Speaker 3: just take a look at my Instagram and you'll see
Speaker 3: what I mean, because I posted pictures of Gloria on there,
Speaker 3: and then I defy you to identify her as anything
Speaker 3: other than just what she is, just this sweet, lovely
Speaker 3: woman that.
Speaker 1: Was not a master criminal.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: In fact, you were a law student. But we'll get
Speaker 3: to that in a minute. And this is a bizarre
Speaker 3: case because on December ninth, nineteen eighty one, just to
Speaker 3: set the stage, two men disguised as telephone repairman this
Speaker 3: is what we know, entered the home of an elderly
Speaker 3: couple in Rosemont, California. Sounds sort of ominous. Already, Ed
Speaker 3: Davies was fatally shot, his wife, Grace was shot in
Speaker 3: the head but survived, and six suitcases full of silver
Speaker 3: were stolen. I mean, it's like the beginning of a
Speaker 3: novel or something. It's weird. Okay. This was obviously a
Speaker 3: terrible crime and raised I'm sure a lot of anxiety
Speaker 3: in the community, which leads to pressure. But you were
Speaker 3: an unlikely suspect for a lot of reasons. I mean,
Speaker 3: you weren't anywhere near there. So this whole situation makes
Speaker 3: absolutely no sense to me and for you, I can't
Speaker 3: even imagine. So can you take us back to nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty one. Can you explain how this all happened?
Speaker 1: Yes, back then I was going to law school. I
Speaker 1: also worked as a process server and did small investigative
Speaker 1: work in order to make enough money. I had just
Speaker 1: gone through a divorce and it was not particularly pleasant,
Speaker 1: so we were fighting about everything. So I actually took
Speaker 1: a semester's leave from law school so that I could
Speaker 1: make enough money because it looked like the settlement for
Speaker 1: my divorce wasn't going to go through. I worked for
Speaker 1: a man named Virgil Fletcher who owned a coin store.
Speaker 1: It was called Allied Coins, and mister Davies was one
Speaker 1: of the customers there. We found out later Virgil Fletcher
Speaker 1: did not like mister Davies for some reason which I
Speaker 1: didn't know at the time, which made it even more confusing.
Speaker 1: Virgil Fletcher and his partner were splitting up, and that
Speaker 1: also was a very acrimonious split, and he and his
Speaker 1: partner were trying to pull everything on each other that
Speaker 1: they could, you know. So what I was doing for
Speaker 1: him was a lot of the accounts that had been
Speaker 1: assigned to him. I had to go out and find
Speaker 1: them and do things like that. But this whole case
Speaker 1: is centered around coins and coin shop dealers and the
Speaker 1: people that were were fully involved in that scene. At
Speaker 1: that time, there were several robbery murders from people that
Speaker 1: were in that particular world.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting too reading back to the story of
Speaker 3: how you were first arrested. I mean, it's sort of
Speaker 3: very cinematic too. Right, you were visiting your boyfriend. I
Speaker 3: guess he was right and preparing to have a little
Speaker 3: afternoon delight type situation. And I'm not saying anything that
Speaker 3: the book.
Speaker 1: Why that always comes up, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, but it's sort of a It sort of does
Speaker 3: paint the picture, and then here comes a knock on
Speaker 3: the door.
Speaker 1: Yes, And the knock on the door, unfortunately, was the
Speaker 1: Sacramento County Sheriff's Department. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: you mentioned was, you know, creating a problem in the community.
Speaker 1: Sacramento County sheriffs had not solved one single homicide in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one. Wow, so they were really pushing on
Speaker 1: this one as well. The Sheriff's department had set up
Speaker 1: a tip line and someone called in. It was a
Speaker 1: woman and it was later to learned that it was
Speaker 1: Virgil Fletcher's girlfriend. He got her to make this call,
Speaker 1: but it's said you should check out a law student
Speaker 1: named Gloria, And that is how the police got to me.
Speaker 1: They had interviewed Fletcher the night before and the next
Speaker 1: day when the knock came on the door at the
Speaker 1: most inauspicious time, what they told me was that they
Speaker 1: wanted to ask me some questions about Fletcher, which, okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't really get it, but I went downtown with
Speaker 1: them and the minute they got me in a room
Speaker 1: everything changed. That was very cinematic as well. You know,
Speaker 1: you have the poor suspects locked up in the room
Speaker 1: with these guys and they're accusing me of planning this crime.
Speaker 1: They're starting from the position that they know I did
Speaker 1: it and they can prove it. And you know, I
Speaker 1: talked to him for a little while and finally I
Speaker 1: just said, you know, this is ridiculous. I want a lawyer.
Speaker 3: When people get picked up as you did, who had
Speaker 3: nothing to do with and had no knowledge of a
Speaker 3: situation a crime, they generally go in as you did,
Speaker 3: waving their right to an attorney, expecting that everything's going
Speaker 3: to go smoothly. And you, being a law student, you
Speaker 3: had reason to believe that the system would work. You're
Speaker 3: studying the law, and you're a smart woman, so if
Speaker 3: you just say what you got to say, you can
Speaker 3: get home in time for the six o'clock news. But
Speaker 3: that was not anything like what happened.
Speaker 1: I actually ended up on the six o'clock news right
Speaker 1: because once they stood up and arrested me and they
Speaker 1: took me outside, I realized this had to have been
Speaker 1: a setup. The media was everywhere. Obviously, they had been
Speaker 1: notified and it had been called, and this had been
Speaker 1: their intention from the very beginning. One of the cops
Speaker 1: I was wearing a long sweater coat, and he took
Speaker 1: it and put it over my head, which was the
Speaker 1: perfect image right there.
Speaker 3: Right this way they could begin the process of sort
Speaker 3: of shaping public opinion in the way that they wanted to,
Speaker 3: which is to turn you into this master criminal, which
Speaker 3: was again ironic, since you had no prior record of
Speaker 3: any kind. Do you think that they actually thought that
Speaker 3: you did it at that time?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I do know that years later, when
Speaker 1: my investigator went to Sacramento, he interviewed Lieutenant Beyondy, who
Speaker 1: was the head of homicide at that time, and he
Speaker 1: asked him specifically if Beyondy thought I was guilty, and
Speaker 1: Beyondy said, quote, I don't know, I know Ray thought
Speaker 1: she was.
Speaker 6: Sounds like sometimes in these cases there's a little thread
Speaker 6: where they have one fact that they can't quite figure out,
Speaker 6: or a lead, and then they run with it in
Speaker 6: a direction that has no basis in fact, but fits
Speaker 6: what they think they know. Was there a temporarly on
Speaker 6: or some information that a woman had shown up to
Speaker 6: case the house with the two actual killers at.
Speaker 1: Some point, yes, And that made the case even more
Speaker 1: confusing because that particular I guess pattern style of operating
Speaker 1: had been used in Sacramento County, and one of the
Speaker 1: victims was a woman named Elizabeth Lee. Elizabeth Lee happened
Speaker 1: to be in the courthouse when she saw Gary Massey's
Speaker 1: wife and she went running to the nearest dep He's saying,
Speaker 1: that's the woman, Those are the people that robbed me,
Speaker 1: And she ran around the courthouse in a state of panic,
Speaker 1: and eventually she ended up talking to Christopher Cleland, who
Speaker 1: was the district attorney who was prosecuting me, and he
Speaker 1: told her if she didn't shut up and get out
Speaker 1: of the courthouse, he would have her arrested. He was
Speaker 1: not interested in anything that she had to say. If
Speaker 1: she identified Joanne Massey as a woman who came to
Speaker 1: her door with that same particular fact pattern, it would
Speaker 1: just make my guilt even more dubious as far as
Speaker 1: a jury was concerned.
Speaker 3: Right, it would have made his job more difficult. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was not part of the plan.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: They held you in jail for almost five months awaiting trial.
Speaker 1: They tried to get an extension. I was being prosecuted
Speaker 1: by John o'mera at the time, but the judge who
Speaker 1: was hearing the case ruled that there was insufficient evidence
Speaker 1: and he ordered me released right then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was insufficient evidence. There was noah evidence, and
Speaker 3: you go back home, try to, I guess, rebuild, right.
Speaker 1: I was really in a state of shock and I
Speaker 1: just kind of wandered around, both dazed and numb. But
Speaker 1: I had a horrible feeling in the back of my
Speaker 1: head somewhere that this wasn't over. And I don't know
Speaker 1: why I had that feeling, but I was right, it
Speaker 1: wasn't over.
Speaker 3: And then there's another knock on the door.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Literally about a year later they came and they
Speaker 1: rearrested me. And this, of course was after Gary Massey
Speaker 1: had gone to trial and had made the deal that
Speaker 1: he had made, which I knew nothing of at the time.
Speaker 3: So Massy was the killer, yes, and he had been
Speaker 3: sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 1: Life without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 3: And as soon as he got that sentence, he decided
Speaker 3: he was going to try to take a little more
Speaker 3: active role than his own sort of destiny, right. He
Speaker 3: wanted to make a deal with the cops, and he
Speaker 3: immediately contacted the Sheriff's department offering the same day.
Speaker 1: Same day, he went back to the jail and picked
Speaker 1: up the phone and called them and said, I can
Speaker 1: help you.
Speaker 3: And at that point it's fair to say me and
Speaker 3: I guess he would have said anything they wanted him
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's hard to believe he just suddenly had a
Speaker 6: crisis of conscience. On the same day he got sentenced
Speaker 6: to life without parole. And this is again pretty common.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: Sometimes we see people who've committed crimes, who are arrogant,
Speaker 6: assume they're going to get away with it. Suddenly the
Speaker 6: trial or the investigation doesn't go so well. They're facing
Speaker 6: serious time, and then they become desperate and say, what
Speaker 6: can I do to help myself. My lawyers aren't going
Speaker 6: to get me out of this. I got to help
Speaker 6: myself and offer up somebody who had nothing to do
Speaker 6: with the crime as a way to try to reduce
Speaker 6: their own sentence. That's perfectly legal. They can do that,
Speaker 6: they can offer cooperation, but the law says that the
Speaker 6: prosecutor has to turn that information, all discussions, all agreements,
Speaker 6: all suggestions or promises of benefits to these witnesses over
Speaker 6: to the accused so that the jury can hear about it.
Speaker 6: Because a jury is going to feel very differently about
Speaker 6: someone who they think is getting a better fit to
Speaker 6: themselves from turning in another person, versus someone who claims
Speaker 6: there's nothing in it for me. I just am doing
Speaker 6: the right thing. And in Massi's case, because he'd already
Speaker 6: been sentenced, it allowed the prosecutor to say he's got
Speaker 6: nothing to gain, he's already going to prison for the
Speaker 6: rest of his life. In some ways it makes it
Speaker 6: much more believable because he's doing his time, he's going
Speaker 6: to pay the price, and he's just come and clean
Speaker 6: on what really happened, and that wasn't.
Speaker 3: The truth, right, And if they would have asked him
Speaker 3: to identify you as the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby.
Speaker 3: That probably would have been what he would have done,
Speaker 3: absolutely right, I mean, because at that point he really
Speaker 3: did have nothing to lose. We know that guy's not
Speaker 3: a stand up guy, and he's looking to make a
Speaker 3: deal and they've got a great offer. So he identifies
Speaker 3: you for allegedly planning this crime, and we say incentivized witness,
Speaker 3: we could say extremely incentivized witness. In this case.
Speaker 1: Incentivized almost doesn't apply to the treatment that they gave him.
Speaker 1: They took him out to dinner in nice restaurants, They
Speaker 1: let him have sex with his wife in some of
Speaker 1: their offices. They he actually took his twelve year old
Speaker 1: son with them when they went up in the hills
Speaker 1: with Massey to reclaim the property that he had buried
Speaker 1: up there. The district Attorney Kit Cleveland gave this twelve
Speaker 1: year old boy a coin that had come from the robbery.
Speaker 1: It had belonged to mister Davies, and allowed him to
Speaker 1: keep it, apparently as some sort of souvenir, which still
Speaker 1: appalled me to this day. I think that's absolutely sick.
Speaker 1: It's macabre, yes, very.
Speaker 3: But I'm still trying to get a grip on this.
Speaker 3: So all these perks that he was offered, this was
Speaker 3: after he was convicted.
Speaker 6: Yes, people have been convicted of serious crimes can get
Speaker 6: a lot of benefits after they testify. I mean, we've
Speaker 6: got on the Innocent Project website examples of benefits that
Speaker 6: convicted people get while they're in jail, video games, and
Speaker 6: you know, extra visits and hotel rooms when they go
Speaker 6: travel to testify that the rest of us could never afford.
Speaker 6: You know, Thankfully, it doesn't happen in every case, or
Speaker 6: even most cases, but it does happen. And again, the
Speaker 6: rule is prosecutor's office can give people benefits within the law,
Speaker 6: depending on whatever the law is of that jurisdiction, but
Speaker 6: they've got to let the defense know. And that's really
Speaker 6: where the outrage comes in because when jurors hear about this,
Speaker 6: if they hear about this criminal getting treated like a king,
Speaker 6: they're obviously going to feel very differently about their testimony.
Speaker 6: And prosecutors know that, so they either don't give the
Speaker 6: benefits in the first place, or if they do, they
Speaker 6: have to disclose them.
Speaker 3: And the inverse is true too, Like in Sonny Jacob's case,
Speaker 3: when the real murderer wanted to confess, they kept giving
Speaker 3: him perks in prison in order to get him not
Speaker 3: to confess.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So that's actually the flip side of the same sort
Speaker 3: of very strange problem. And it is such a strange
Speaker 3: thing because everybody knows that you can't bribe a witness, right,
Speaker 3: All kinds of penalties come with that. Nothing good happens
Speaker 3: out of that, but they can anyway, So he identifies you,
Speaker 3: they come and arrest you, and you go to trial.
Speaker 1: Actually, when they came and arrested me, they'd charged me
Speaker 1: with the death penalty again, even though Cleland, who was
Speaker 1: now the prosecutor, knew for a fact where he'd gotten
Speaker 1: his new witness from and his new information. But fortunately
Speaker 1: for me, the California Supreme Court made a decision in
Speaker 1: People versus Carlos that took my actual charges out from
Speaker 1: underneath the death penalty. So they released me on bail.
Speaker 1: The judge let me out on twenty five thousand dollars bail,
Speaker 1: and I was out for almost three and a half years.
Speaker 3: Crazier and crazier. I mean, I've never been a judge,
Speaker 3: but I would say that if I was a judge,
Speaker 3: and I thought that you were responsible for shooting two
Speaker 3: elderly people, killing one of them during a robbery in
Speaker 3: cold Blood. I'm not sure twenty five thousand would be
Speaker 3: the number I would choose, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: I think it would be a high multiple of that.
Speaker 3: So you're out for three and a half years with
Speaker 3: this gigantic anvil hanging over your head. How did you
Speaker 3: function during that time?
Speaker 1: Very poorly?
Speaker 3: What did you do?
Speaker 1: Mostly have a nervous breakdown? I mean, I was really
Speaker 1: as you said, it's like having an anvil hanging over
Speaker 1: your head. It's a true sort of damocles. But I worked.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to explain, and part of it was my
Speaker 1: own state of mind. But it was almost as if
Speaker 1: I didn't have this case. I never went to court
Speaker 1: except to get an extension. Nobody seemed to be interested
Speaker 1: in me. Nobody paid any attention to me until everything
Speaker 1: else was done. The other problem was that I could
Speaker 1: no longer afford private counsel. I had hired a lawyer
Speaker 1: from my first arrest. This time I had a lawyer
Speaker 1: who was appointed from the Appellate defenders because the public
Speaker 1: defenders were already involved in Massey's case, and I guess
Speaker 1: he was just good enough to get me convicted.
Speaker 3: Well, it's good enough to process you, but not represent you. Right,
Speaker 3: it's pretty nuts that you were sentenced to thirty two
Speaker 3: years to life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Oh. Yes, the prosecutor on the day that I was sentenced,
Speaker 1: and the standard sentence for this type of case would
Speaker 1: have been twenty five years to life, but mister Cleland
Speaker 1: stood up in court and he went on to this
Speaker 1: short rant about how I'd always been a model citizen,
Speaker 1: I'd never been in trouble, I was going to law school,
Speaker 1: and therefore I should get more time than anybody. And
Speaker 1: the judge granted his request and they sentenced me to
Speaker 1: thirty two years to life, despite the fact that the
Speaker 1: actual killer was already going to be sentenced to twenty
Speaker 1: five years to life.
Speaker 3: Right, So you got an extra seven years for allegedly
Speaker 3: planning this crime. Yes, and when you're experiencing that, this
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like and I don't want to come off
Speaker 3: sounding the wrong way, but this doesn't seem like the
Speaker 3: type of crime that a young woman who's on her
Speaker 3: way up in the world as a law student would
Speaker 3: participate in. Like if you were really desperate for money,
Speaker 3: would you go and rob and shoot an elderly couple
Speaker 3: to steal some silver.
Speaker 6: I mean, a lot of our clients get prosecuted on
Speaker 6: theories that make absolutely no sense, you know. And oftentimes
Speaker 6: what we find in these wrongful conviction cases is the
Speaker 6: police come up with a suspect or a theory and
Speaker 6: then come up with a motive to make it fit.
Speaker 6: So they think that somebody must have killed his spouse
Speaker 6: or girlfriend, and even though there's no history of animosity,
Speaker 6: they come up with a crazy hypothesis. Like our client
Speaker 6: Michael Morton in Texas, they said he killed his wife
Speaker 6: because she wouldn't have sex with him on his birthday
Speaker 6: because she was tired, because they had been out to
Speaker 6: dinner with their toddler son and he was disappointed they
Speaker 6: didn't have sex, which is true because he left a
Speaker 6: note along those lines, but he didn't kill her over it.
Speaker 6: And in Glorious case, there's some indications that they thought
Speaker 6: that there was a woman involved helping them case the
Speaker 6: joint and then it seems like somebody came up with
Speaker 6: this concept like, oh, maybe it's that law student who's
Speaker 6: hanging around with that coin dealer she's a smart broad,
Speaker 6: maybe she's the mastermind, and they ran with it. The
Speaker 6: problem is there was no evidence to supported except these
Speaker 6: incentivized witnesses facing criminal charges themselves, and in some cases
Speaker 6: like Glorias, they build an entire prosecution around these highly
Speaker 6: dubious witnesses and an unsupported theory.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was no evidence whatsoever except for the
Speaker 3: word of the killer. Yes, I mean it almost seems
Speaker 3: like that should be not okay, not okay.
Speaker 6: Well, state courts are free to set the parameters of
Speaker 6: what constitutes sufficient evidence to convict someone. So just because
Speaker 6: a jury says you're guilty doesn't mean the conviction stands.
Speaker 6: That's not even because of new evidence, but even just
Speaker 6: evaluating what happens at trials. A lot of times courts
Speaker 6: will undertake what's called a sufficiency review and say that's
Speaker 6: just not enough. In Texas, for example, of all places,
Speaker 6: the highest criminal court has ruled that you cannot be
Speaker 6: convicted of murder based on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice.
Speaker 6: So if someone were to be charged in a situation
Speaker 6: like Gloria's, where the only evidence against them was the
Speaker 6: word of one or two people who admitted their own
Speaker 6: involvement in the crime. You couldn't be convicted without corroboration.
Speaker 6: The problem is that in a lot of places that
Speaker 6: even have those rules, almost anything counts as corroboration. So
Speaker 6: one eyewitness saying oh, I saw someone who looked like
Speaker 6: a woman with short brown hair fleeing the scene could
Speaker 6: be corroboration. Or a witness who's not an accomplice saying, oh,
Speaker 6: she said something about you know, they did something bad
Speaker 6: last week. I mean, people can interpret it pretty loosely.
Speaker 6: It really depends on the judges you're in front of.
Speaker 6: But at least there's a corroboration requirement. And I don't know.
Speaker 6: I don't practice in California now, so I don't know
Speaker 6: what the law currently is. It's hard to imagine many
Speaker 6: courts today, knowing what we know about Jeilhouse informants, would
Speaker 6: allow that testimony to be the basis for a conviction,
Speaker 6: even if the jury believed it.
Speaker 3: Right, at least all of the conviction in which I
Speaker 3: mean thirty two years to life's basically a life sentence. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in thirty two years eligibility right, So, and that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean you're walking out the door at thirty two years either.
Speaker 6: No, I mean, and as you know, Jason, and you
Speaker 6: know most parole boards, the innocent get penalized. So you
Speaker 6: get a sentence of thirty two to life. But as
Speaker 6: soon as you come up for parole, if you're not
Speaker 6: ready to quote unquote express remorse for the crime, which
Speaker 6: really means admitting guilt. You can't say I'm sorry those
Speaker 6: people died, but I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 6: You have to say, I'm sorry they died and I
Speaker 6: did it, and I regret what I did. And if
Speaker 6: you don't show that appropriate remorse in their view, you're
Speaker 6: not going to get parole in most cases. And so
Speaker 6: in glorious case, you know, she was exonerated before I think,
Speaker 6: right before you had to go before the board.
Speaker 1: No, I still had several years left to see even
Speaker 1: though I had been in there for seventeen and a
Speaker 1: half years. But when I went for my first parole
Speaker 1: board review, which they later did away with, but the
Speaker 1: woman from the board talked to me and I told
Speaker 1: her I was innocent. I had nothing to do with this,
Speaker 1: and she actually said to me, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: going to come up for parole for a long time,
Speaker 1: but you need to realize that if you don't accept responsibility,
Speaker 1: and if you don't express your remorse and make a
Speaker 1: miss for what you did, then you are not going
Speaker 1: to get out on parole.
Speaker 3: Right. So isn't it bizarre that we have a system
Speaker 3: in which you plead innocent, you go to prison, and
Speaker 3: you plead guilty and you go home. Yes, that's truly
Speaker 3: Alice in Wonderland, right, except not the cute kids version.
Speaker 3: So we can go back to the trial, that moment
Speaker 3: in the courtroom when the jury went out, and now
Speaker 3: you're dealing with your appellate defender who's not Clarence Daryl, right,
Speaker 3: and the jury goes out. I mean, you've been now
Speaker 3: through sort of Kafka escortdeal for the last four plus
Speaker 3: years already, starting with the time that you were first
Speaker 3: you know, taken in well, yeah, before you've even arrested it,
Speaker 3: starting for the time to knock on the door. Did
Speaker 3: you think that there was still a chance that the
Speaker 3: jury would see the light and do the right thing.
Speaker 1: It's difficult for me to put that into words. At
Speaker 1: times my law school education really betrayed me, and at
Speaker 1: other times it served me well. On this particular issue,
Speaker 1: I simply decided that, you know, I hadn't done this.
Speaker 1: They couldn't possibly convict me. I mean, there wasn't anything
Speaker 1: there except for this guy on the witness stand, and
Speaker 1: I don't know the jury was out for two and
Speaker 1: a half days, if I recall it correctly. But I
Speaker 1: rocketed from one side to the other half the time.
Speaker 1: I believed that I was going to go home. When
Speaker 1: my boyfriend dropped me off at court that last time,
Speaker 1: he said, I'll pick you up for dinner. You know,
Speaker 1: we'll go out someplace nice, assuming that I would be
Speaker 1: found innocent, and so I went with that fantasy for
Speaker 1: a while. It's difficult to explain how the mind deals
Speaker 1: with some of these things that are simply impossible to
Speaker 1: deal with. I mean, you think I'm going to lose
Speaker 1: my mind. This is insane, and it is insane. And
Speaker 1: then again, somehow or other, you managed to switch over
Speaker 1: to another state of thought or of being. Most people
Speaker 1: that have been through this experience have experienced that same
Speaker 1: thing to where they're you're not even thinking logically anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm having a hard time articulating it because it is
Speaker 1: that difficult to understand. Yeah, and I still don't get it.
Speaker 3: It was something you were ill prepared for, to say
Speaker 3: the least, right, based on your previous life. You know,
Speaker 3: I mean you were going to have you were on
Speaker 3: your way to having a very pleasant existence. Right. What
Speaker 3: kind of lawyer were you planning on being?
Speaker 1: By the way, actually I was interested in estates and trusts,
Speaker 1: but I also would occasionally give some thought to criminal law.
Speaker 1: But like everybody else, the only thing I knew about
Speaker 1: criminal law was what I learned in the first year
Speaker 1: of law school. You know. I didn't want to have
Speaker 1: anything to do with criminals, not those people. Well, I
Speaker 1: rapidly became one of those people and found out that
Speaker 1: those people are not at all who we think they are.
Speaker 3: You know, when I started recording these podcasts Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 3: my main goal wasn't is that we would by telling
Speaker 3: these stories and sharing the real life situations that happen
Speaker 3: to people just like you, we would educate the audience
Speaker 3: so that when they go to serve on a jury,
Speaker 3: they are woke right and they are for lack of
Speaker 3: a better where that's a technical term, and they are
Speaker 3: you know, armed with the knowledge that these things happen,
Speaker 3: and also that you know, it's really terrifying. You know
Speaker 3: a friend of mine who is herself from a Harvard
Speaker 3: Law school graduate lawyer, she was on a jury or
Speaker 3: not that long ago, and she told me by the
Speaker 3: third day, people were like, I really don't care anymore
Speaker 3: whether they're guilty or not. I want to go home.
Speaker 3: I got stuff to do. Like so if you need
Speaker 3: me to vote guilty, so be it. Like that was
Speaker 3: literally conversations that were happening in the jury room. And
Speaker 3: we don't know what was happening in your jury room.
Speaker 3: But the fact is all I can do is say
Speaker 3: to people that are listening, you know, listen to the
Speaker 3: words of Gloria. Even though it's all that long, you
Speaker 3: can still hear the pain and you know, recognize that,
Speaker 3: you know, the extra day of your life or whatever
Speaker 3: it is. And of course then there's that saying, which
Speaker 3: I'm gonna start using a tag line of my emails.
Speaker 3: I think you know that it's better that one hundred
Speaker 3: guilty men go free than the one incent should suffer
Speaker 3: William Blakston.
Speaker 1: And people seem to literally believe that it's better and
Speaker 1: they are safer if all the innocent people go to
Speaker 1: prison just so they get the one guilty.
Speaker 3: Person, right, And then the irony of that is that,
Speaker 3: of course, we know in most cases, when the innocent
Speaker 3: person goes to prison, the guilty person remains free. In
Speaker 3: your case, if there was another perpetrator, that person was free.
Speaker 3: We know the actual killer in your case did go
Speaker 3: to prison. But in most cases, and you know we
Speaker 3: know this from the Innocence Project, there's so many cases
Speaker 3: where we have used DNA to identify an innocent person
Speaker 3: or to prove the innocence of the person who is convicted,
Speaker 3: and then whila, a hit comes up in the National
Speaker 3: Database CODIS and we are able to identify the actual
Speaker 3: perpetrator or the authorities identify the actual perpetrate.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that all the
Speaker 6: innocents cases, the DNA cases, and the non DNA cases
Speaker 6: have shown is that this false choice we were sold
Speaker 6: in the nineties by the tough on crime crowd, that
Speaker 6: you have to choose between safety and due process or
Speaker 6: safety and justice, is a myth, because sending innocent people
Speaker 6: to prison doesn't keep us any safe, or it makes
Speaker 6: us less safe. We've you know, as you mentioned, in
Speaker 6: a number of our cases, in fact, close to half
Speaker 6: of them. One hundred and sixty out of the first
Speaker 6: three hundred and sixty four DNA exonerations. The investigation that
Speaker 6: was done to clear the innocent person also led to
Speaker 6: the apprehension of someone who had actually gone on to
Speaker 6: commit other violent crimes while the innocent person was sitting
Speaker 6: in prison. And that includes murders, that includes rapes, that
Speaker 6: includes robberies, you name it. Sometimes multiple crimes by the
Speaker 6: same person. And we created additional crime victims and additional
Speaker 6: suffering while this innocent person was sitting in prison. So
Speaker 6: you know, juror should know that by sending someone to
Speaker 6: prison in who they have some doubts about their guilt,
Speaker 6: they're not making the streets safe or they're not doing
Speaker 6: the safe thing or the right thing. They're doing a
Speaker 6: pretty reckless thing.
Speaker 3: No, they're actually making themselves left safe. Yeah, even on
Speaker 3: just a purely selfish basis. Right, And you look at
Speaker 3: probably one of the most glaring examples that would be
Speaker 3: Ronald Cotton, right, because we know when he was wrongfully
Speaker 3: convicted of rape, the actual perpetrator remained free and raped
Speaker 3: over thirty other women before he was apprehended. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: what a terrifying thought that is it's just my heart
Speaker 3: goes out to everyone involved in that situation. It's just unimaginable.
Speaker 3: So how did you manage to survive this ordeal in
Speaker 3: seventeen and a half years? And it seems like your
Speaker 3: mind is intact? Right? I mean I only know you
Speaker 3: for days. No, from what I know of you, you've
Speaker 3: accomplished amazing things since you've been out, So you can't
Speaker 3: have lost your mind completely while you were in. Can
Speaker 3: you explain that?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: How does that? No one can really understand, including me,
Speaker 3: and I've been doing this for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Actually, it goes back to what I said earlier about
Speaker 1: having to separate states of mind. But I was also
Speaker 1: saved by a peculiar situation at that particular time. When
Speaker 1: you first go to prison, you have to appear before
Speaker 1: what's known as a classification committee, and they look over
Speaker 1: your past, your conviction, et cetera, et cetera, and they
Speaker 1: decide where you should best work. When I told them
Speaker 1: that I'd been to law school, this particular group of
Speaker 1: people laughed at me. They said I was lying, They
Speaker 1: said it was impossible, and then they assigned me the
Speaker 1: law library and I remained working there for sixteen years,
Speaker 1: and it was a strange time and place. It has
Speaker 1: never happened before with California Department of Corrections, and it
Speaker 1: will never happen again, that's for certain. But I worked
Speaker 1: for people that had absolutely no information about a law
Speaker 1: library or how to staff it, how to run it,
Speaker 1: or how to do anything else. And they quickly realized
Speaker 1: that I could help them learn this, and then I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: what the heck, We'll just let her do it. So
Speaker 1: I eventually ended up buying all the books organizing the institution,
Speaker 1: and I spent all of my days helping women, not
Speaker 1: just with their various convictions, but also with a lot
Speaker 1: of institutional stuff. And about that time, there was a
Speaker 1: senator from San Diego and she wanted to hold a
Speaker 1: hearing on battered women because it was just at that
Speaker 1: time period that people were becoming interested in battered women,
Speaker 1: and in California at that time, they were not allowed
Speaker 1: to present any evidence of abuse or violence against them
Speaker 1: in their defense, which made those convictions a definite slam dug.
Speaker 1: So anyhow, this had all they had been institution had
Speaker 1: been contacted. Chief Deputy Warden came down and he asked
Speaker 1: me to put together panel and to do some other
Speaker 1: stuff for these various interviews that were coming up, which
Speaker 1: I did, and after that they just pretty much let
Speaker 1: me do whatever I wanted to do. I ordered all
Speaker 1: the books. I instituted services across the fence, which means
Speaker 1: that there were areas of the prison where the confinement
Speaker 1: is far more restrictive. One area of the prison was
Speaker 1: simply for people who were suffering from mental illness, and
Speaker 1: so I was able to establish legal services for them.
Speaker 3: So it's fair to say that you maintained your own
Speaker 3: well being by helping other people, right.
Speaker 1: I had my little underground law practice going on there,
Speaker 1: and some very strange clients by the way, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew I could not figure out what had happened
Speaker 1: to me. The only thing that I seized on and
Speaker 1: I don't know why, and as it turns out, it
Speaker 1: was presciented. But I always believed in the back of
Speaker 1: my head that if the Ninth Circuit ever saw my case,
Speaker 1: they would not let it stand. And as it happened,
Speaker 1: it was the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that reversed
Speaker 1: my conviction.
Speaker 3: So I'm just going to read paragraph that I think
Speaker 3: is going to really shake people up because it shakes
Speaker 3: me up, which is that Ten years later, after a
Speaker 3: federal petition for rid of habeas corpus had been filed,
Speaker 3: defense investigators discovered evidence of Massey's agreement with the prosecution,
Speaker 3: including a letter. This is where it gets deep, right,
Speaker 3: that's me editorializing, including a letter Massy sent to the
Speaker 3: prosecutor soon after you were arrested. In the letter, brace yourself,
Speaker 3: Massey said, quote, I lied my ass off for you people.
Speaker 3: The letter, as well as two others Massey wrote that
Speaker 3: detailed the resentencing agreement, were never disclosed to the defense
Speaker 3: by the prosecution. M Nina, you want to shine a
Speaker 3: little light on this one, because that's illegal.
Speaker 6: I'm going to use my actual law.
Speaker 1: Degree to tell you that's illegal.
Speaker 6: No, it's in all seriousness. That is a textbook example
Speaker 6: of the kind of correspondence from a witness that has
Speaker 6: to immediately be turned over to the defense. Whether or
Speaker 6: not the prosecutor thinks that Massey is telling the truth,
Speaker 6: that is, did he lie his ass off?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 6: Is he lying his ass off now when he says
Speaker 6: he did? Is the truth somewhere in between? The defense
Speaker 6: has to have access to that statement so that they
Speaker 6: can cross examine him on it, and obviously a witness
Speaker 6: who's telling the prosecutor I lied my ass off for
Speaker 6: you people is not going to have much credibility in
Speaker 6: the eyes of the jury. So the prosecution has to
Speaker 6: know that turning that over will be fatal to Gloria's prosecution.
Speaker 1: They still have to turn it over. At my Hebe's hearing,
Speaker 1: the district attorney when he was questioned about these letters
Speaker 1: and what he had done with them, he was asked,
Speaker 1: why didn't you turn them over to the defense at once,
Speaker 1: and he said, I didn't know where to send them. Obviously,
Speaker 1: once your conviction is final, you no longer have the
Speaker 1: same trial attorney that you had, But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that the guy fell off the end of the earth either.
Speaker 1: He should have turned them over immediately to him. He
Speaker 1: could have sent them to me. He could have done anything,
Speaker 1: and he knew precisely what he should have done, but
Speaker 1: he was determined enough to stand there and come up
Speaker 1: with a bald face.
Speaker 6: Lie Lauria was pretty easy to find. He could have
Speaker 6: found her. She was in the California Department of Corrections
Speaker 6: with a number attached to her name, and he knew
Speaker 6: exactly where to find her, and he could have sent
Speaker 6: the letter to her, and he certainly knew who her
Speaker 6: prior lawyers were.
Speaker 1: Yes, And the idea that he would even have a
Speaker 1: gall to say something like that, it just bothered me,
Speaker 1: and it still does. There are a few things that
Speaker 1: have been said and done in my case that just
Speaker 1: still blow my mind.
Speaker 6: And I think it says a lot about the culture
Speaker 6: of lack of accountability for the minority of prosecutors, and
Speaker 6: it is fortunately still a minority. But who commit these
Speaker 6: egregious acts of misconduct that he thought he could get
Speaker 6: away with such a ridiculous answer. You know, anybody, anybody
Speaker 6: else caught red handed hiding a letter like that, I mean,
Speaker 6: could have come up with a better excuse, a lie,
Speaker 6: a something. And the fact that he just gave this
Speaker 6: completely ridiculous explanation that doesn't hold water just shows how
Speaker 6: he thought nobody was going to care and nobody would
Speaker 6: believe him. And Gloria, you know, was the rare convicted
Speaker 6: defendant who was able to get a federal court to
Speaker 6: throw out her conviction based on undisclosed evidence. It's very
Speaker 6: hard to do these kinds of violations. By definition, stay
Speaker 6: hidden right, They're designed to stay in the shadows, and
Speaker 6: many of those letters get shredded, never to be seen again.
Speaker 6: And it's you know, as in so many of these cases, Jason,
Speaker 6: of people you talk to, they are both the unluckiest
Speaker 6: and the luckiest people in the world. The unluckiest for
Speaker 6: what happened to them, and the luckiest that the proof
Speaker 6: of their innocence and of the state's misconduct was available
Speaker 6: and that their lawyers found it.
Speaker 3: Someday and Massy, in some sort of strange attack of conscience,
Speaker 3: later admitted that much the evidancy gave was false, including
Speaker 3: all the testimony that what he said that he didn't
Speaker 3: make a deal with the prosecution in exchange for a
Speaker 3: sestimony that is nessimarily that you were the mastermind behind
Speaker 3: the robbery. You admitted all of that was false. Yes,
Speaker 3: And ultimately, as we said in two thousand and two
Speaker 3: of the Ninth Circuit Court reversed your conviction and ultimately
Speaker 3: the charges were dropped. From all the years of me
Speaker 3: working with Nina and the good people at the Innocence
Speaker 3: Project and serving on their board, the two questions I
Speaker 3: get asked most frequently are in cases like this, did
Speaker 3: somebody go after the prosecutor. And the second question I
Speaker 3: get asked the most is did this person who served
Speaker 3: seventeen this killian lady, did she get compensation? I mean,
Speaker 3: please tell me she got taken care of.
Speaker 1: He was brought up on charges by the California State
Speaker 1: Bar Association from what he had done to me. And
Speaker 1: they had fooled around with my case for apparently quite
Speaker 1: a few years. They were considering raising charges, then they did,
Speaker 1: then they didn't whatever. But eventually he had a trial
Speaker 1: at the State Bar Association. He was found guilty and
Speaker 1: he was censured. The judge said that the real problem
Speaker 1: with the case was that it was so old that
Speaker 1: he had a wonderful career except for these minor laughs.
Speaker 1: And if the case had been recent then her decision
Speaker 1: would have been very different because he had already retired,
Speaker 1: and so she censured him and that was it. It
Speaker 1: did make a difference to me because it was at
Speaker 1: least an acknowledgment by the state of California that somebody
Speaker 1: had done something wrong to me. Personally, I would have
Speaker 1: liked to have seen him locked up, even though that
Speaker 1: wasn't on the table at that particular time. But at
Speaker 1: least they acknowledged that there was an issue there other
Speaker 1: than that the whole thing was a big joke.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's extremely rare for any prosecutor caught committing
Speaker 6: misconduct ever face any accountability from the state bar in
Speaker 6: any state. And we actually have data in California. There
Speaker 6: was this study done about ten years ago by our
Speaker 6: friends at the Northern California Anison's Project and the Veritas
Speaker 6: Initiative where they tracked court findings of misconduct by prosecutors
Speaker 6: over a twelve year period, and they found more than
Speaker 6: six hundred cases where they could identify the prosecutors by
Speaker 6: name who were found by a court who have committed misconduct,
Speaker 6: and only six of them had faced any professional discipline whatsoever,
Speaker 6: So less than one percent of the ones they could find,
Speaker 6: and of those, many were what glorious prosecutor got, which
Speaker 6: was a slap on the wrist. I mean, he got
Speaker 6: a finding that he had violated the ethics rules, which
Speaker 6: is what the state bar has jurisdiction over. But all
Speaker 6: he got was a what's called an admonishment, so just
Speaker 6: don't do that again. Yeah, And she lost seventeen years
Speaker 6: of her life plus all the time she spent before
Speaker 6: she went to prison, with the hanging of her head,
Speaker 6: and then the lifelong consequences and repercustoms that she'll have
Speaker 6: to deal with for having had her life stolen and
Speaker 6: her career stolen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and society lost out too, because you
Speaker 3: could have been out here contributing and you know, doing
Speaker 3: good stuff and paying taxes and instead of us paying
Speaker 3: for you to be locked up, right for Californians to
Speaker 3: be And that's a whole other consequence of all these things.
Speaker 3: It's probably the least dire consequence, but it's still a consequence.
Speaker 3: And when you multiply it by the number of people
Speaker 3: who end up in a situation like yours, it becomes
Speaker 3: a real number. Since you got out. I mean, one
Speaker 3: of the things that I find interesting because of my
Speaker 3: you know, sort of obsession with this advocacy work on
Speaker 3: behalf of people who are formally incarcerated, is this organization
Speaker 3: that you founded, which is called the Action Committee for
Speaker 3: Women in Prison. And all I know is what I read,
Speaker 3: which is that it's an organization that works to improve
Speaker 3: conditions for female prisoners. Of course, it's worth noting that
Speaker 3: in America, many people know that we have four point
Speaker 3: four percent of the world's population twenty five percent of
Speaker 3: the world's prison population. But what people don't seem to
Speaker 3: talk about as much is the fact that we have
Speaker 3: thirty three percent of the world's female prison population. So,
Speaker 3: you know, organizations like yours are so needed, and can
Speaker 3: you talk about the organization and what led you to
Speaker 3: found it and what is due and where's it at now.
Speaker 1: I wanted to help the women that I left behind,
Speaker 1: and at the time when I was in prison, there
Speaker 1: was a lot going on in there, not just with
Speaker 1: battered women, although that was where I developed my interest
Speaker 1: in expertise and battered women because I didn't believe they
Speaker 1: should have been in prison in the first place. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, when someone is strangling you or attempting to
Speaker 1: shoot you, I think you have the right to defend
Speaker 1: yourself or to defend your child. Other than that, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of women that I knew that deserved
Speaker 1: to get out regardless, and the parole board was a
Speaker 1: real problem at that time. There was also a tremendous
Speaker 1: problem with the medical department. They were killing us on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, and that also includes in the men's prisons,
Speaker 1: and beyond that, I wanted to do what I could
Speaker 1: to ensure that they did not feel that they were forgotten.
Speaker 1: When I first went to prison, things were a lot different.
Speaker 1: We wore our own clothes, we got various privileges, we
Speaker 1: got Christmas gifts. There was a lot that was done
Speaker 1: to try to make people feel women feel that they
Speaker 1: were not forgotten by society and that they were still
Speaker 1: decent people. That changed radically, particularly in the nineties. The
Speaker 1: composition the pro board changed totally. It was all former
Speaker 1: law enforcement basically, and I certainly didn't think that they
Speaker 1: could understand what it was like to be small, female
Speaker 1: and in fear of your life. I started a Christmas
Speaker 1: project so that people would not feel that they had
Speaker 1: been forgotten, and it still goes on to this day.
Speaker 1: Last year, my organization helped provide approximately five thousand gift
Speaker 1: bags for incarcerated women in southern California. That includes the
Speaker 1: prison and the fire camps and the jail as well.
Speaker 1: The main thing that I thought that I could do
Speaker 1: was to tell people what I had learned, which was
Speaker 1: that women in prison were not who I thought they were.
Speaker 1: They're just basically people like you and me who've made
Speaker 1: wrong choices. Or who've been in intolerable circumstances. That of
Speaker 1: course applies to people who acquired their convictions in defense
Speaker 1: of their life or in defense of their children. I
Speaker 1: thought that people in prison must be vicious, bizarre, every
Speaker 1: stereotype you could possibly think of. And I learned very
Speaker 1: quickly that that is not who those women were at all.
Speaker 1: And a lot of those women helped to save my life,
Speaker 1: because there was a lot of times when I didn't
Speaker 1: think I could make it another three and a half seconds.
Speaker 1: And there are times when it just closes in on
Speaker 1: you and you can't do this anymore. With women, it
Speaker 1: usually happens between five and seven years. It happened to
Speaker 1: me at about six years, and I had a very
Speaker 1: good friend. Her name is Janet Dixon. We're still trying
Speaker 1: to get her out. She's been in almost forty three years.
Speaker 1: But she would pick me up every night after dinner
Speaker 1: with a friend of hers, another lifer, and they would
Speaker 1: make me come out and they would just walk me
Speaker 1: around the yard for two three hours at a time.
Speaker 1: I guess the purpose was just to keep my feet
Speaker 1: moving and to keep my head from the darker places,
Speaker 1: and somehow or other, I mean, with their love and
Speaker 1: their care. I got through it. There were definitely times
Speaker 1: when I looked at the fence and thought, why isn't
Speaker 1: that stupid thing electrified? And why can't I get to it.
Speaker 1: I was devastated when they told me they didn't shoot
Speaker 1: to kill. There are times when that is exactly where
Speaker 1: you go. Suicide is an alternative to an intolerable reality.
Speaker 1: And there were plenty of times when I spent that
Speaker 1: time thinking about that, thinking about some way to end
Speaker 1: this all, when I didn't think I could stand in
Speaker 1: the pain anymore. But then I would, something would happen,
Speaker 1: and I would get interested in something else, like getting
Speaker 1: somebody out of prison, or you know, beating their one fifteens,
Speaker 1: which are disciplinary reports. And somehow I got through it.
Speaker 1: You just put one foot in front of the other
Speaker 1: day after day. I do not know how people that
Speaker 1: are sentenced to life without the possibility of parole get
Speaker 1: through a day. I don't believe that I could have
Speaker 1: done it if that had been my sentence. I'm not
Speaker 1: a stupid woman. I would not have been there. If
Speaker 1: I was facing something like that, I would have taken
Speaker 1: myself out.
Speaker 6: Can I ask you about something that you know we
Speaker 6: hear and read a lot about women in prison that
Speaker 6: there are a lot of women there who end up
Speaker 6: because they have a relationship with someone, typically but not always,
Speaker 6: a man who is kind of high up in a
Speaker 6: crime or a criminal enterprise, and the woman might have
Speaker 6: some tangential involvement, agreeing to carry something or transport something
Speaker 6: or make a phone call once, but they don't have
Speaker 6: access to information they can trade with law enforcement when
Speaker 6: they get caught. Was that something that you found to
Speaker 6: be common among the women that you met inside.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. In fact, there were cases where the women weren't
Speaker 1: even involved in the crime at all, but they were
Speaker 1: convinced by the man, usually a man that they were with,
Speaker 1: that if they would plead guilty and take the case,
Speaker 1: that you know, they'd only get like sixteen months in
Speaker 1: prison and he would love them forever and take care
Speaker 1: of them and send them boxes and whatever. And some
Speaker 1: of these women actually walked into court and did that,
Speaker 1: they took the case, and of course everything turned out
Speaker 1: totally different. They ended up getting longer sentences, like maybe
Speaker 1: ten years, and the guy was gone in the wind.
Speaker 1: Another thing is that people who were involved with crime
Speaker 1: or have been arrested or have dealt with the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system in some way know how to work the system.
Speaker 1: There are cases that I know of where women have
Speaker 1: confessed to doing something that is physically impossible for them
Speaker 1: to have done. And I'm thinking of the woman who
Speaker 1: was about my size. I'm five feet tall and if
Speaker 1: I lie about it, I weigh one hundred and thirteen pounds.
Speaker 1: This woman was convicted of strangling her six foot one
Speaker 1: husband to death manual strangulation, and it was her son
Speaker 1: who committed the crime, and the prosecution just went along
Speaker 1: with it. I mean, what do you tell him, just
Speaker 1: lie there and I'll try to make this quick. It's insane.
Speaker 1: And yet they go ahead and they accept those cases.
Speaker 1: They accept those please, and the women end up doing
Speaker 1: the time. Oftentimes the man will say something like, you know,
Speaker 1: you'll get less time, the women get more time. Or
Speaker 1: if the man says that she is the mastermind, she's
Speaker 1: the one who planned all of this, she will get
Speaker 1: a longer sentence than he will. He'll get twenty five
Speaker 1: to life, she'll get life without he'll get fifteen to life.
Speaker 1: She'll get twenty five to life. And they are held
Speaker 1: to longer terms by the parole board. It's a type
Speaker 1: of discrimination that. I mean, you think it can happen
Speaker 1: until you see it and it's right there in front
Speaker 1: of you on the paperwork. It amazes me to this
Speaker 1: day that someone would even accept a plea bargain like that.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to ask you this. I'll ask both
Speaker 3: of you this, and then we'll go to closing comments.
Speaker 3: If people are listening now and they want to get involved,
Speaker 3: and they want to help with your organization, or they
Speaker 3: want to help with women in prison in general, because
Speaker 3: I have a number of amazing women who have approached
Speaker 3: me and wanted to volunteer and wanted to do stuff,
Speaker 3: so we started to put together our own sort of
Speaker 3: impromptu group. We came up with an interim name called
Speaker 3: Women for Women who Shouldn't be in Prison. But then
Speaker 3: I found out that you've already been doing this work,
Speaker 3: and so I wanted to hear more about that and
Speaker 3: how can other people, women or otherwise get involved.
Speaker 1: I do have a website. I haven't been doing much
Speaker 1: with it lately. I've been focusing more on the exoneration
Speaker 1: issue and my work with the Exonerated Nation. But my
Speaker 1: website is acwip dot net. It's always a struggle to
Speaker 1: come up with enough gifts. We can definitely use donations
Speaker 1: and anybody who wants to get involved. I think the
Speaker 1: saddest thing about prison that is so different in the
Speaker 1: United States from other countries is that we isolate our prisoners.
Speaker 1: We demonize our prisoners. They're all murderers and maniacs, and
Speaker 1: nobody should have anything to do with them or to
Speaker 1: get involved. And that just isn't true in other countries
Speaker 1: where they have a different philosophy, they help people rehabilitate
Speaker 1: themselves and reintegrate themselves into society. We don't do that here.
Speaker 1: But visiting programs, gift programs, letter writing programs, all of
Speaker 1: those things are really important, and.
Speaker 3: People can access that information on your website.
Speaker 1: Yes they can.
Speaker 6: Maybe there'll be some web designers out there who want
Speaker 6: to take that duty over from you so you can
Speaker 6: focus on the other piece.
Speaker 1: That's a wonderful idea.
Speaker 6: You know, everyone in prison needs outside support, but for
Speaker 6: women it can be particularly lonely and isolating. Because of
Speaker 6: the way our society is structure and the way we're raised.
Speaker 6: Women are often the caretakers when a man goes to prison.
Speaker 6: They're the glue that keeps the family together, keeps the
Speaker 6: relationship together. And sadly, when women go to prison. You know,
Speaker 6: there are exceptions to every rule, but by and large,
Speaker 6: a lot of men, a lot of family members, they're
Speaker 6: overwhelmed with their own lives and they move on and
Speaker 6: the women get left behind. And that's why the support
Speaker 6: from people who are generous of heart is so critical.
Speaker 1: Women get dumped at the gate.
Speaker 3: Okay, So once again it's acwip dot net and you
Speaker 3: can go there and learn about how to get involved
Speaker 3: and write letters and volunteer or send donations. Glory, can
Speaker 3: you tell us about your book.
Speaker 1: Yes, my book is called full Circle because it begins
Speaker 1: with my arrest and it ends with my district attorney
Speaker 1: being brought up on charges, and in that sense, the
Speaker 1: circle will is closed, despite the fact that so much
Speaker 1: has continued to go on. It's available on Amazon, It's
Speaker 1: available on Barnes and Noble or any place else where
Speaker 1: you can normally buy a book. I talk about my case,
Speaker 1: but I also have about a third of the book
Speaker 1: explaining what happens in prison and what goes on behind
Speaker 1: the walls. And it actually is like a real little universe,
Speaker 1: but it's not one you'd ever want to get caught
Speaker 1: up in again. The book is full circle, like Gloria
Speaker 1: Chillian and Sandy Coburn, full.
Speaker 3: Circle like Gloria Chillian. I'm going to read it, and
Speaker 3: I hope you will too. So we have a tradition.
Speaker 3: Nina knows this, I'll tell you, Gloria at rofuel conviction,
Speaker 3: don't be scared.
Speaker 1: I don't like surprises.
Speaker 3: So the tradition is that at the end of each episode,
Speaker 3: I first of all thank you both for being here,
Speaker 3: Lauria Achillian and Nina Morrison. And then I get to
Speaker 3: stop talking, which I think you know is not something
Speaker 3: I'm great at, but I'm going to do it anyway
Speaker 3: and just listen and just leave the mic open for
Speaker 3: any final thoughts that you have. And so let's start
Speaker 3: with you, Nina, and then you will be the closer.
Speaker 3: You're the headline act.
Speaker 6: One thing you asked about earlier that I don't think
Speaker 6: we got to because our conversation was going in so
Speaker 6: many other interesting directions is whether Gloria ever got financial
Speaker 6: compensation for any of the time that she lost or
Speaker 6: what happened to her. And the answer is no, And
Speaker 6: her case highlights a glaring whole of injustice in the
Speaker 6: compensation system, which is that if your civil rights are violated,
Speaker 6: which Gloria's clearly were, in the course of a criminal case,
Speaker 6: you often can sue the law enforcement officials responsible under
Speaker 6: the federal civil rights laws or under state law. The
Speaker 6: catch is that if the prosecutor is the one responsible
Speaker 6: for those civil rights violations, they have what's called immunity.
Speaker 6: It's like those of you who read Harry Potter may
Speaker 6: remember the invisibility cloak where you can put it on
Speaker 6: and be seen. Prosecutors get the lawsuit equivalent of an
Speaker 6: invisibility cloak. By and large, were anything they do during
Speaker 6: the course of a criminal trial, no matter how egregious,
Speaker 6: they can't be sued for by order of the US
Speaker 6: Supreme Court from many years ago. And so if the
Speaker 6: letters from Massi the real killer, had been in the
Speaker 6: police file but the prosecutor had never seen them, Gloria
Speaker 6: might have had a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the state
Speaker 6: and one. However, because they were in the prosecutor's file,
Speaker 6: everyone involved gets immunity, and that's incredibly unfair.
Speaker 1: It needs to change, thank you, Nina. It's often said
Speaker 1: that you can judge a society by looking at its prisons,
Speaker 1: and if that is true, then our society is in
Speaker 1: really terrible shape. As I said earlier, we demonize our prisoners,
Speaker 1: We separate them, We do everything that we can to
Speaker 1: act as if they're not even humans, they're not part
Speaker 1: of us. I think maybe it makes people feel safer.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I probably felt the same way
Speaker 1: decades and decades ago before I had any real experience.
Speaker 1: But we need to stop sending innocent people to prison.
Speaker 1: And I know that sounds like a no brainer, but
Speaker 1: it happens all the time. My guess is that at
Speaker 1: any given time, there are at least probably one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people you know in prison who do not deserve
Speaker 1: to be there, who are wrongfully convicted. Most of them
Speaker 1: have short sentences. You can't even get organized to help
Speaker 1: them because it is so expensive and so time consuming
Speaker 1: to exonerate a person. I am, as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: one of the luckiest people alive, because the evidence that
Speaker 1: saved my life and that got me out of that
Speaker 1: hell hole was there for me to be able to use.
Speaker 1: But I need to help the people that I left behind.
Speaker 1: I have to believe this happened to me for a
Speaker 1: reason other than just plain ill luck. We need to
Speaker 1: take a look at what goes on in our criminal
Speaker 1: justice society. And the last thing that I can say
Speaker 1: to you is the most important thing. This could happen
Speaker 1: to you. Don't ever believe it couldn't.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening. This has been a very special
Speaker 3: episode for me and hopefully for you too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Gloria, thanks for coming.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 3: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 3: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 3: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org
Speaker 3: to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like
Speaker 3: to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 3: The music in the show is by three time Oscar
Speaker 3: nominade composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 3: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm is a production of Lava
Speaker 3: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one