Speaker 1: I've never been to trouble in my life. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a parking ticket, and you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
Speaker 1: do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like everything,
Speaker 1: this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I
Speaker 1: know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this. How is this possible? I grew up trusting
Speaker 1: the systems. I grew up believing that every human thing
Speaker 1: should do the right thing. And that's why, even though
Speaker 1: I was dealing with corrupt people, I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: brave anyone to get me out of prison because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't live with the fact that I braved my way
Speaker 1: out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent to proven guilty.
Speaker 1: I'm guilty until I proved my innocence. And that's absolutely
Speaker 1: what happened to me. Our system. Since I've been out
Speaker 1: ten years, it's coming little ways, but it's still broken,
Speaker 1: a totally little trust in humanity after what happened to me.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. With
Speaker 1: Jason flam that's me and today we have an episode
Speaker 1: that um, I'm actually kind of intimidated to even do
Speaker 1: because I'm interviewing a personal hero of mine, Damian Echols. Damian,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: And it's extra special because we're here recording in front
Speaker 1: of an audience at the Church of Rock and Roll
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, of which you have been an incredible
Speaker 1: part and I'm so grateful to you for your participation.
Speaker 1: But I want to start this episode by apologizing to
Speaker 1: you on behalf of um, the entire human race, for
Speaker 1: what is just and unbelievable. Um, there's not a right
Speaker 1: word for it, but nightmare, sago ordeal um that never
Speaker 1: should have happened in the first place. And I just
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you upfront that I'm I'm, I'm inspired
Speaker 1: and uh just in incredibly moves by by your presence.
Speaker 1: And so so with that being said, before I get
Speaker 1: all gushy here, UM, let's get right into it. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you questions, some of them I already
Speaker 1: know the answer too, because I'm familiar with your story,
Speaker 1: but not not all the details. But let's go back
Speaker 1: to growing up, Um, your childhood. Um, did you have
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters? I did. My family history is kind
Speaker 1: of odd and convoluted, just because my mother and father
Speaker 1: were both married about five times each. So I have
Speaker 1: a lot of uh you know, half siblings, step siblings,
Speaker 1: full siblings. So, UM, my family into the vary at
Speaker 1: any given time. It could be anything from just me
Speaker 1: and my sister too. I think like the most was
Speaker 1: like seven of us at one time, seven children at
Speaker 1: one time, so it was kind of all over the map.
Speaker 1: And I've heard you talk about the fact that you
Speaker 1: grew up so poor that when you finally moved to
Speaker 1: a trailer, it was like you felt like you were
Speaker 1: like the Jeffersons moving on up right. UM, I mean,
Speaker 1: can you describe how what did that look like? I
Speaker 1: mean you were did you grow up in West Memphis? Well,
Speaker 1: when I was really young. Um. One of the things
Speaker 1: whenever Lorie was working with the investigators looking back over
Speaker 1: the case and they were getting like my school records
Speaker 1: and things like that, one of the investigators was saying, this,
Speaker 1: this can't be right. The school records show that sometimes
Speaker 1: you moved as often as every two weeks and I
Speaker 1: did you know. I lived in Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland,
Speaker 1: um Oregon, just everywhere. We were constantly moving, you know,
Speaker 1: my parents or my dad at you sort of thought,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe if we go to this place, then
Speaker 1: you know, somehow another will escape poverty. You know, there'll
Speaker 1: be a better job, a better place to live, a
Speaker 1: better something down the road. So we were constantly moving
Speaker 1: from place to place looking for something better than what
Speaker 1: we had, trying to escape poverty basically. But we would
Speaker 1: always at the same time end up coming back to
Speaker 1: either Tennessee or Arkansas because that was where we had,
Speaker 1: you know, the most family members at least some sense
Speaker 1: of support or community. So we went all over the place,
Speaker 1: but would always end up coming back there. And for
Speaker 1: you growing up in this really, I mean I didn't
Speaker 1: even know every I mean every two weeks. You were
Speaker 1: literally a nomad, right and an American nomad um. And
Speaker 1: I've heard you talk about I watch your moth presentation,
Speaker 1: which is wonderful if anyone wants to go online and
Speaker 1: see it just I mean, it comes right up on
Speaker 1: your Google Tamyan nichols Um. It's a ten minute video. Um,
Speaker 1: that is very, very powerful. So you talked about how
Speaker 1: for you and this is why it's so exciting and
Speaker 1: interesting to be here right now the Church of Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll. We talked about how music and books, but
Speaker 1: really your way of sort of taking yourself out of
Speaker 1: this really miserable situation in many ways that you were in. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know my family, Um, I have a ninth grade education.
Speaker 1: I dropped out of school when I was in ninth grade.
Speaker 1: And that's more than anyone else in my family has.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look through my whole family tree,
Speaker 1: you won't find anyone with so much as a high
Speaker 1: school diploma. Uh. So we didn't have you know, like
Speaker 1: a lot of books or a library or anything in
Speaker 1: our house. For me, I I used to skip school
Speaker 1: and go hang out at the library all day. As
Speaker 1: odd as that sounds, I would hide in the library,
Speaker 1: read books, bring them home, because when you're reading, you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're even if it's only in your head. You're
Speaker 1: going different places, seeing different things, having different experiences, and
Speaker 1: you don't have to focus on the fact that you're
Speaker 1: eating rice again for the you know of time this week.
Speaker 1: And then you had a sort of an outsider. Um,
Speaker 1: you're you're an outcast, right. Um. And as as partially
Speaker 1: has result of that, or maybe it was a cause
Speaker 1: and effect whatever, you ended up being inadvertently putting yourself
Speaker 1: in a situation where when one of the most terrible
Speaker 1: crimes not only the history of Arkansas but in the
Speaker 1: history of America, um or the world happened, there were
Speaker 1: there were these very small minded uh people around who
Speaker 1: sort of came to this instinctual call it conclusion that
Speaker 1: it must be the weird kid, right, it must be
Speaker 1: the kid that wears black and listens to heavy metal.
Speaker 1: Because this was in the We're going back to right,
Speaker 1: and many people will already know part of this story.
Speaker 1: But on that tragic day, three little eight year old
Speaker 1: boys went out for a bike ride and disappeared, and
Speaker 1: they turned up sexually mutilated. One boy was castrated, they
Speaker 1: were tortured, hog tied. Um. It hurts me just to
Speaker 1: say it, um. And their bodies were dumped in a
Speaker 1: swampy riverbed. Um. So we know, I know from decades
Speaker 1: of working on wrongful convictions that when you get a
Speaker 1: crime like this, especially at a small community but anywhere,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pressure that nobody wants to have
Speaker 1: fat pressure, and everybody wants to calm the community, and
Speaker 1: so the authorities are more prone to developing theories that
Speaker 1: in a in a more calm environment might not make
Speaker 1: sense and they might not pursue. But in this case,
Speaker 1: somehow or other, they and this was their in the
Speaker 1: Satanic panic as well. Right back then, um, for those
Speaker 1: of you who are old enough to remember, in the
Speaker 1: early nineties, there was this very strange thing that was
Speaker 1: going on in America. There was rumors of Satanic cults
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. None of them turned out to
Speaker 1: be true, but that's beside the point. So what happened, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, for me my entire life, the thing that
Speaker 1: has been most important to me, that that I love
Speaker 1: the most, that my life always sort of revolved around,
Speaker 1: was Western hermeticism, ceremonial magic, all the way back from
Speaker 1: when I was a child. But I lived in a
Speaker 1: incredibly right wing fundamentalist town where I mean, there are
Speaker 1: places in this town where you come to a you know,
Speaker 1: four four corner stop and on all four corners of
Speaker 1: the street will be churches. If you weren't like it
Speaker 1: was like Starbucks. Now, yeah, that's exactly what it was like.
Speaker 1: It was like, yeah, churches were like Starbucks is there? Um?
Speaker 1: And if you didn't belong to, you know, one of
Speaker 1: these mainstream for that area, mainstream fundamentalist religions, you were
Speaker 1: automatically viewed as suspicious. You know, you you were Satanic.
Speaker 1: That's what they thought. And it didn't matter if you
Speaker 1: were a Buddhist or a Hindu or something like that.
Speaker 1: You're still satanic. You just don't know you're a Satanist.
Speaker 1: You're just being you know, tricked by the devil into
Speaker 1: thinking there's some other religion. But then whenever you start,
Speaker 1: you know, bringing factors in, like the fact that I
Speaker 1: actually did love ceremonial magic, and that's been one of
Speaker 1: their things that you know, they harp on forever that
Speaker 1: that is Satanism, that those two things, there's no difference
Speaker 1: in those. Um. So that was a huge part of
Speaker 1: what made them focus on me as well. You know,
Speaker 1: that was what they thought made me a freak. They think, automatically,
Speaker 1: you're a Satanist. It would take a Satanist to commit
Speaker 1: a crime like this. Stick all those things together and
Speaker 1: they didn't even look for anybody or anything else. No,
Speaker 1: and they ignored in this case. What's really stomach churning,
Speaker 1: aside from so many other factors, but one of the
Speaker 1: things that's really so upsetting is the idea that they
Speaker 1: ignored obvious signs you have that pointed to at least one,
Speaker 1: arguably up to three other individuals, including uh and this
Speaker 1: this is just it's too strange to even believe. But
Speaker 1: the fact is that there was a local restaurant, was
Speaker 1: a Bojangles or something a Bojangles where the manager called
Speaker 1: the cops that night and said there was a guy
Speaker 1: covered in mud and blood that stumbled into the into
Speaker 1: the fast food place and went into the bathroom. And
Speaker 1: to their credit, the manager called up and a police
Speaker 1: officer came but didn't investigate, and they ultimately collected evidence
Speaker 1: from that bathroom that he went into, which there was
Speaker 1: blood all over the place and mud, and they lost
Speaker 1: They lost it, right, they lost it. So I mean
Speaker 1: not only that, but also even after they did DNA testing,
Speaker 1: you know, years later they do DNA testing, find out
Speaker 1: that the DNA does not match me or the other
Speaker 1: two guys they convicted. To this day, they still have
Speaker 1: not run that DNA through codis to see who it matches.
Speaker 1: They refused to do that. Yeah, which is you know,
Speaker 1: which is so strange. And I talked about on the
Speaker 1: show a lot because in a case like this, especially
Speaker 1: in the small community, the people who are doing the
Speaker 1: investigating live in that community. By definition, they may bring
Speaker 1: in outside experts, but a lot of them live in
Speaker 1: the community. And you know, as as a dad, myself,
Speaker 1: or as as any as a citizen, as anybody, everyone's
Speaker 1: got relatives, everyone should be concerned for their own safety.
Speaker 1: When you have somebody out there who's capable of this,
Speaker 1: this sort of pure evil, you would think it for
Speaker 1: no other reason than purely selfish reasons. You would want
Speaker 1: to get that person off the street because that's a
Speaker 1: you know, that's a really scary situation. So um, but
Speaker 1: that that's not what happened, And it happens too frequently
Speaker 1: that these various factors combine to result in a tragic outcome.
Speaker 1: To tragic outcomes. Well, in this case many because there
Speaker 1: were three of you, all your family members are affected.
Speaker 1: And then the fact that the actual perpetrators rolled out
Speaker 1: to remain free and there and there again we're obvious signs.
Speaker 1: I mean, the one I just talked about. The various
Speaker 1: signs pointing to the stepfather of one of the boys,
Speaker 1: um including a bloody knife that had the kids blood
Speaker 1: on him that was found to belonged to him. I mean,
Speaker 1: this one kind of came with instructions, and I know
Speaker 1: that it's difficult, and I have no one of these
Speaker 1: people that I'm not an anarchist. I believe we do
Speaker 1: need a system of law and order, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of there are a lot of very good
Speaker 1: police and judges and prosecutors out there. But in this case,
Speaker 1: you ran into the perfect storm. It's a small town,
Speaker 1: high profile clime, complicated crime because the crime scene itself
Speaker 1: was a muddy riverbed, not the easiest place to collect evidence.
Speaker 1: It seemed to have been scrubbed to some degree. And
Speaker 1: then all the pressure and what people don't realize also,
Speaker 1: you know, just most people's knowledge of the legal system
Speaker 1: comes from watching TV, which is complete and absolute fiction.
Speaker 1: They don't, you know they And it fosters this idea
Speaker 1: that these people, these judges, these prosecutors, these attorney generals,
Speaker 1: that they have these positions because they're somehow moral people.
Speaker 1: They're good people who are looking out resigned. Since that's
Speaker 1: excuse me, society In actual fact, these are politicians, just
Speaker 1: like senators, just like congressmen. Their number one priority is
Speaker 1: winning that next election. So they're going to do or
Speaker 1: that next case exactly, whatever the community is pressuring them
Speaker 1: to do. That's the way they're gonna lean because they
Speaker 1: want to win the next election. So in this case,
Speaker 1: they focused on you, and then they had to find
Speaker 1: a way to get to you, right because there was
Speaker 1: no evidence connecting you to it. Did you know the
Speaker 1: boys never even heard of them, even in a small
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got to be a very small community.
Speaker 1: I think that everybody would almost know every But of
Speaker 1: course I'm from New York, so I sound ridiculous, but
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it sounds really small to me,
Speaker 1: West Memphis, Arkansas. I mean, we keep in mind, these
Speaker 1: are eight year old kids. You know, it's an entire
Speaker 1: generation than me or the other two guys even convicted.
Speaker 1: Were there were you know, no reason that we would
Speaker 1: know him. They were in elementary school. We were already
Speaker 1: you know, in junior high getting ready to go into
Speaker 1: high school. Um. They also lived in you know, the
Speaker 1: suburbs and the next town over. Technically we didn't even
Speaker 1: live in the same town. They lived in West Memphis.
Speaker 1: Me and the other two guys lived in the next
Speaker 1: town over, which was called Marion, So you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like there was any reason for us to ever
Speaker 1: even come in contact with each other. And Jason Baldwin,
Speaker 1: let's just talk about Jason for a second, because he's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite people. I called him before, the
Speaker 1: best Jason I know, UM, and he's been on the show.
Speaker 1: That was an awesome experience interviewing him, and just an
Speaker 1: amazing guy. He just recently got somebody off of death
Speaker 1: or I saw on Instagram today actually that he uh
Speaker 1: he helped to uh free a guy um from death row,
Speaker 1: which is such an incredible accomplishment with his organization. UM. So,
Speaker 1: Jason was your sort of one and best and pretty
Speaker 1: much only friend at the time, right, And he was,
Speaker 1: I mean from just appearances physical appearances, he was sort
Speaker 1: of he didn't have the same stigma that you did, right.
Speaker 1: He was sort of just an average looking kid, very
Speaker 1: very young looking, uh must away a hundred pounds or less,
Speaker 1: long blonde hair, didn't look like a killer, but but
Speaker 1: to them, you did. And he got caught up in
Speaker 1: all of this too, just because he knew me right, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: So so they found away and that way was Jesse Miscale.
Speaker 1: So from your view, and I want to know the moment,
Speaker 1: like I know, when the when the cops came to
Speaker 1: your door and your life turned into the living nightmare
Speaker 1: that I think is everyone's primal fear um. So they
Speaker 1: originally went after Jesse, and they sort of tricked him
Speaker 1: into confessing and he immediately recanted after where he confessed,
Speaker 1: but he was I mean, he was slow, right. He
Speaker 1: had a few of somewhere between seventy and seventy two,
Speaker 1: and they interrogated him. I think the I can't remember
Speaker 1: exactly how many hours it was, it was something like
Speaker 1: between twelve and fourteen hours. And they're telling this guy,
Speaker 1: who you know, has an i Q that's way way
Speaker 1: below normal. They're telling him things like, you know, just
Speaker 1: tell us what we want to know and we'll let
Speaker 1: you go home. So they finally get this guy to confess,
Speaker 1: and he can't get anything about the crime scene, right
Speaker 1: because he wasn't actually there, so he didn't know anything.
Speaker 1: They didn't care. The only thing they cared about was
Speaker 1: the fact that they got him to say yes. And
Speaker 1: most people you know, on a jury. Even today, they'll say, well,
Speaker 1: nobody would confess to something they haven't actually done. We
Speaker 1: know now that that's not true. You know, all the
Speaker 1: studies show that something like over half of the people
Speaker 1: who are falsely convicted end up being forced into confessions
Speaker 1: in one way or another. And this guy was just
Speaker 1: another person that got forced into a confession. And we
Speaker 1: also know, Damian, that the most people who are most
Speaker 1: susceptible to this our adolescence. We now know that the
Speaker 1: human brain isn't fully formed until you're twenty five, but
Speaker 1: when you're he was sixteen, right, and he was sixteen
Speaker 1: or seventeen seventeen, and with his low i Q, he
Speaker 1: was totally outmatched, overwhelmed, and probably after twelve and fourteen hours,
Speaker 1: he would have confessed to, you know, killing Abraham Lincoln example,
Speaker 1: I mean, just to go home because that that tiny
Speaker 1: room and the you know, and everybody being on top
Speaker 1: of you. Um, you know, it's not a situation anyone
Speaker 1: ever wants to find themselves in. And and we know
Speaker 1: now from study after study that people will say and
Speaker 1: do almost anything to get themselves out of there. So
Speaker 1: and he kept changing his story. It didn't make any sense,
Speaker 1: but it was good enough for them, and then he
Speaker 1: got them to do exactly what they brought him in
Speaker 1: there for, and he was just collateral damage. They didn't
Speaker 1: really care about convicting him, but they had to because
Speaker 1: he had now confessed, and in order to get you
Speaker 1: and to make his confession make even a modicum of sense,
Speaker 1: they had to bring him along for this terrible ride
Speaker 1: as well. And so he implicated you and Jason, and
Speaker 1: then they said, okay, now now we can we can proceed.
Speaker 1: And then one day, one night it was I guess right.
Speaker 1: You were home with Jason, yeah, watching movies. You had me, Jason,
Speaker 1: my younger sister, and my girlfriend. At the time. We're
Speaker 1: just at home watching TV. You know, by this time,
Speaker 1: we had been harassed by the cops for probably a
Speaker 1: month straight. They were at our house, either my house
Speaker 1: or Jason's house, or stopping us on the street, you know,
Speaker 1: just messing with us non stop every single day. So
Speaker 1: when they showed up this night, we figured it was
Speaker 1: just more of the same, you know, we thought they
Speaker 1: were just here to harass us again. We didn't realize
Speaker 1: they were coming to arrest us this time. So take
Speaker 1: us through that because it's it's so terrifying. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, we were sitting there watching
Speaker 1: TV and they start banging on the door. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they're just beating the hell out of it, like
Speaker 1: they're gonna knock it in. And at first, you know,
Speaker 1: I said, don't even answer the door, slid him stand
Speaker 1: out there and beat on it. Um, but they wouldn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't go away this time, so we go open
Speaker 1: the door. Immediately. You know, whenever I opened the door,
Speaker 1: it looked like pretty much every cop in West Memphis
Speaker 1: standing with their guns pointed at me. They rushed into
Speaker 1: the house, start destroying everything. Uh. They put me in Jason,
Speaker 1: both in handcuffs, throw us in the backs of cop cars,
Speaker 1: drive us to jail. Uh, they put me. They immediately
Speaker 1: separated us. I wouldn't see Jason again for years. Well,
Speaker 1: I saw him for a short period of time at
Speaker 1: the trial, but we weren't allowed to communicate in any
Speaker 1: way whatsoever. You know, even though we're sitting at the
Speaker 1: same table, They've got me at one side and him
Speaker 1: at the other, and they will not even let us
Speaker 1: talk to each other. So we wouldn't, you know, talk
Speaker 1: to each other again. For almost twenty years. I think. Uh,
Speaker 1: but okay, here's another thing. My brain goes dead a lot.
Speaker 1: I will forget what I'm talking about, because, like you
Speaker 1: were just saying, people's minds are still forming all the
Speaker 1: way up until they're twenty five years old. I was
Speaker 1: arrested when I was uh nineteen, and I spent almost
Speaker 1: a decade in solitary confinement, So I lost a lot
Speaker 1: of things that people take for granted, like uh, face recognition,
Speaker 1: voice recognition. I have almost no short term memory whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I will a lot of times forget what the hell
Speaker 1: I'm saying right in the middle of a sentence. Uh.
Speaker 1: Whenever I'm doing talks, I'll tell the audience set beforehand,
Speaker 1: I'll say, if I forget what I'm saying, I'll have
Speaker 1: to ask and you'll have to remind me what the
Speaker 1: hell I was even just talking about. The reason I'm
Speaker 1: telling you this now is because I just forgot what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. UM, no problem, I can. I can
Speaker 1: bring you back. And I know you mentioned to me
Speaker 1: UM weeks ago when we were talking about during this event,
Speaker 1: that that that was the case, and that actually there's
Speaker 1: a study being conducted UM at Columbia University about the
Speaker 1: effects of solitary long term solitary confinement on the brain
Speaker 1: because for you, yeah, you didn't, You didn't really need
Speaker 1: those functions exactly when you were in solitary staring at
Speaker 1: four walls all day long with no contact. Well, it
Speaker 1: takes huge tolls on you in many way. You know it.
Speaker 1: It almost cost me my eyesight because you're in this
Speaker 1: small space and out here your eyes are constantly changing focus.
Speaker 1: You know, you're looking at stuff far away, stuff close up,
Speaker 1: You're looking at all different colors. I didn't do that
Speaker 1: for twenty years, so I started losing my eyesight over time.
Speaker 1: Uh My, I was in the hospital for a day
Speaker 1: two weeks ago because my lungs are so screwed up
Speaker 1: from breathing in years of tear gas that I have
Speaker 1: lots of attacks of bronchitis. Uh. It has screwed me
Speaker 1: up so bad that, like two weeks ago, I walked
Speaker 1: into a diner, um ordered some food, passed out on
Speaker 1: the floor. I come to the waiters are around me.
Speaker 1: They're saying, are you okay? Do we need to call
Speaker 1: them that one one? I'm like, no, just give me
Speaker 1: a minute, let me sit here next thing, I know,
Speaker 1: you know they'd called the ambulance because I passed out again.
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize it. Uh. So it takes a
Speaker 1: toll on you in huge ways that last for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. You know, there's no way for
Speaker 1: me to physically rectify the things that they did to me. No,
Speaker 1: and we want to get into that too, because the
Speaker 1: you know, the way you were treated. Um, even had
Speaker 1: you been guilty of this horrendous crime that you were
Speaker 1: in fact innocent of, there's no excuse or justification for
Speaker 1: the torture that was inflicted upon you. Um. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's just shocks my conscience and I think it should
Speaker 1: shock everyone's. So you were thrown in the back of
Speaker 1: the cop car, brought to the police station. Okay, well
Speaker 1: we're at the police station. Uh. I don't know what
Speaker 1: they did with Jason. They carried him off somewhere and
Speaker 1: like I said, I wouldn't see him again for almost
Speaker 1: a year. They put me in a cell that was
Speaker 1: about the size of a phone booth. It's not what
Speaker 1: you see on TV when you think of a prison cell.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no bed, there's no toilet, there's no sink.
Speaker 1: There was no anything. It was literally a cell that
Speaker 1: they had. There was just enough room to stand in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they even could you even sit down? No, I
Speaker 1: mean maybe you could, you know, sit like Indian style
Speaker 1: on the floor if you wanted to. Who But it
Speaker 1: was literally fun I've seen those. Yes. Yeah. They left
Speaker 1: me standing there all night long. Um. The only thing
Speaker 1: every so often one of the cops would come in
Speaker 1: and say, are you ready to make your confession yet?
Speaker 1: I would just stand there and look at them. They
Speaker 1: would leave. I stood there all night long until the
Speaker 1: next day they got me and took me into a
Speaker 1: courtroom and told me I was being charged with Well,
Speaker 1: first they when whenever they take me into the courtroom,
Speaker 1: they tell me, uh, you know, somebody's already confessed to
Speaker 1: this crime. They've implicated you. They're saying you were the
Speaker 1: ring leader of this. So now what you need to
Speaker 1: do is confessed to this and say no, you weren't
Speaker 1: the ring leader. They were trying to put the blame
Speaker 1: back on them, or you're gonna die because of this.
Speaker 1: I can't even figure out who the hell they're talking about, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, I've only got one friend in the
Speaker 1: entire world, and that was Jason Baldwin. I knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't him because he was with me, and I knew
Speaker 1: he didn't do it. I knew he wasn't going to
Speaker 1: confess to something he hadn't done. Um, So I didn't
Speaker 1: realize who it even was that it confessed until the
Speaker 1: next day. Whenever they take me into the courtroom, they
Speaker 1: say who it is, and they ask, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: how do you plead all this sort of thing. They
Speaker 1: refused to even read the confession in the courtroom. Uh.
Speaker 1: They asked me, did I want it read? I said yes,
Speaker 1: And they wouldn't read it even after they asked me
Speaker 1: and I said yes. Instead, they take me out of
Speaker 1: the courtroom into a janitor's closet with mops and brooms.
Speaker 1: They give me a transcript, a type transcript of this confession.
Speaker 1: When I started reading it, it's immediately obvious why they
Speaker 1: didn't want this thing read in court. It made no
Speaker 1: sense whatsoever. You know, you're talking about this story that's
Speaker 1: like a like a Frankenstein patchwork thing that they've sewed
Speaker 1: together out of many statements made by somebody with an
Speaker 1: i Q of between seventy and seventy two and they would.
Speaker 1: What they would do is when he would confess to
Speaker 1: something and wouldn't get anything right, they would come back
Speaker 1: into the room and say, well, do you think maybe
Speaker 1: this could have happened or even I mean even more
Speaker 1: blatantly obvious. The first time they asked him when did
Speaker 1: the murders happen? And he said something like eight o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. Well, they knew that wasn't true because
Speaker 1: all three of the kids were in school. So they
Speaker 1: come back later and they're like, well, do you think
Speaker 1: it could have been a little later in the day,
Speaker 1: like when was it? Was it around like lunch or
Speaker 1: was it around dinner? And he'll say, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: around dinner. Well, they still knew that wasn't true because
Speaker 1: the kids hadn't even disappeared yet. So then they would
Speaker 1: come back and say, well, you know when it happened
Speaker 1: when you did this, was it getting dark outside? And
Speaker 1: he'll say, yeah, it was getting dark outside. Well, at
Speaker 1: that time of year, you know, it's not getting dark
Speaker 1: to like eight or nine o'clock at night in that
Speaker 1: part of the country. So gradually what they did was
Speaker 1: shape this thing to make it what they wanted it
Speaker 1: to be. That's why they didn't want it read in court.
Speaker 1: I read this thing. They put me in another cell
Speaker 1: where I would stay for almost the next year, Uh,
Speaker 1: while I waited to go to trial. When we do
Speaker 1: go to trial, the evidence that they present us against
Speaker 1: us as things like, UM Stephen King books. Uh, the
Speaker 1: fact that we owned Metallica T shirts and albums, UM
Speaker 1: posters that were hanging on our walls. You know, things
Speaker 1: that were from like skateboarding magazines, UM ceremonial magic books.
Speaker 1: This is the evidence they had that the prosecutors tell
Speaker 1: the jury that these things are not only evidence that
Speaker 1: that we're guilty, but their evidence that I don't even
Speaker 1: have a soul, that this is how evil I am.
Speaker 1: They came back in. I think our trial lasted slightly
Speaker 1: under a month something like that. They came back in.
Speaker 1: They sentenced me to death three times. Uh. They sentenced
Speaker 1: me to die by lethal injection three times. They sentenced
Speaker 1: Jason to life in prison without parole. The other guy
Speaker 1: they sentenced to life plus forty years. They immediately take
Speaker 1: me to the court from the courtroom to death row,
Speaker 1: where I would not see Jason again. I saw him
Speaker 1: maybe twelve fifteen years later for maybe twenty to thirty seconds. Um.
Speaker 1: They used to bring other prisoners in to clean the barracks,
Speaker 1: and he was one of the prisoners they brought in
Speaker 1: day to clean death row. So he comes by myself
Speaker 1: mopping and sweeping. That was the first contact I had
Speaker 1: with him in like fifteen years by that point. Uh.
Speaker 1: David Jason talked about when he was on the podcast,
Speaker 1: how the first day in prison he was released into
Speaker 1: the general population and basically the entire weekend. Uh. He said,
Speaker 1: pretty much everybody in the in the prison took turns
Speaker 1: beating him up. Um. He was certainly in no position
Speaker 1: to defend himself, but he did the best he could. Um.
Speaker 1: But obviously he had no chance. He was also he's
Speaker 1: also just a very small, slight guy. I mean he's
Speaker 1: not he's not playing linebacker anywhere, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: He as I said, he was almost a hundred pounds
Speaker 1: when they started and probably barely over by the time
Speaker 1: we were convicted a year later. Um. But for you,
Speaker 1: you were taken to the worst literally the worst part
Speaker 1: of one of the worst prisons. Um, you were taken
Speaker 1: to the whole of of holes. Really, right as I
Speaker 1: heard you describe it, it it was the darkest, deepest, lawless,
Speaker 1: filthiest place in the prison. My situation was different from Jason's,
Speaker 1: and that, like he describes how they put him in
Speaker 1: general population, he spends you know, I don't even know
Speaker 1: how long fighting, sustaining all sorts of physical damage, skull fractures,
Speaker 1: broken collar bones. At one point he was hit in
Speaker 1: the face with a padlock and it messed his nose
Speaker 1: up so bad that it bled for like a year afterwards,
Speaker 1: on and off. Finally, when he did see a doctor
Speaker 1: um they realized what it was is that his nose
Speaker 1: had been shattered and one of the bone shards was
Speaker 1: sticking out, and they had to go in and pull
Speaker 1: the bone shard out of his nose and cauterize it shut.
Speaker 1: For me, it was the guards. Death row is different
Speaker 1: from the rest of the prison just because everybody on
Speaker 1: death Row has a common enemy. You know, everyone knows
Speaker 1: that these people are trying to murder you on a
Speaker 1: daily basis. You don't have time to squabble with each
Speaker 1: other because you're too busy fighting to survive against the system.
Speaker 1: So for me, exactly, every time my life was in danger,
Speaker 1: it was all always prison guards. So whenever I first
Speaker 1: get there, they decided they're just gonna welcome me to
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. You know, it's nothing personal. They take me
Speaker 1: to the whole and spent the next eighteen days beating
Speaker 1: the hell out of me, starving me, uh, pretty much
Speaker 1: doing everything they could possibly think of to torture um
Speaker 1: being to me. Uh. The only reason they didn't kill me,
Speaker 1: and I do believe they planned on murdering me back there.
Speaker 1: The only reason they didn't kill me was because there
Speaker 1: was a deacon from the Catholic Church that used to
Speaker 1: come into the prison and bring communion to inmates on
Speaker 1: death row. So sometimes the sewage would overflow and you
Speaker 1: would end up, you know, spending a couple of days
Speaker 1: standing like ankle deep raw sewage. Well, the guards aren't
Speaker 1: going to clean that up. When that happens, they bring
Speaker 1: other prisoners in to clean it up. So they bring
Speaker 1: these other guys in from population. They see what the
Speaker 1: guards are doing to me and go to this deacon
Speaker 1: from the Catholic church that's coming in, and they told
Speaker 1: him they're killing this guy back there. They're beating him
Speaker 1: to death every day. This guy goes to the war
Speaker 1: and says, I know what you're doing, and if it
Speaker 1: doesn't stop, I'm going to start telling people. I'm going
Speaker 1: to go public with it. That's the only thing they
Speaker 1: care about, you know, the only only concern they have whatsoever,
Speaker 1: is that people in the outside world will find out
Speaker 1: what they're doing inside those walls. So they took me
Speaker 1: out of the hole after about eighteen days and put
Speaker 1: me back in a regular cell on death row. If
Speaker 1: not for that guy and those inmates coming in to
Speaker 1: clean up the sewage, I probably would have not have
Speaker 1: even lived the first year that I was in prison.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like you would have lived the first
Speaker 1: month under those circumstances, but you did. There's so many
Speaker 1: twists and turns, and it's really remarkable the fact that,
Speaker 1: you know, so many incredible people got involved. Um, the filmmakers,
Speaker 1: various celebrities, including Eddie Vetter, not the mains, Johnny Depp,
Speaker 1: Um you actually a little like Johnny by the way, anyway.
Speaker 1: So um, so yes, so many people got involved because
Speaker 1: it was so obvious that this was such a terrible
Speaker 1: miscarriage of justice, and because it was such a such
Speaker 1: a a the crime itself was so unimaginable, right, and
Speaker 1: I think that drew attention to it and then the
Speaker 1: result was so obviously wrong that it made for let's
Speaker 1: face it mean, media is important in these things, and
Speaker 1: in this case the movies. Was it the movies that
Speaker 1: started it? What? How did the I mean? And I
Speaker 1: want to talk about how you survived, and I know
Speaker 1: you're gonna lead us in the meditation afterwards, which I'm
Speaker 1: really looking forward to because if I can find one
Speaker 1: percent of what you've got through that meditation, um, it'll
Speaker 1: make my life better. So, um, so what was the
Speaker 1: tipping point that started to get people interested? Because here
Speaker 1: you are, like just a guy from the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: convicted of the most notorious crime in the history of Arkansas. Um,
Speaker 1: the odds of you ever seeing daylight again were extremely slim.
Speaker 1: The odds of you dying in a prison cell or
Speaker 1: an electric chair were extremely high. Um what happened? The
Speaker 1: only thing that saved me was, you know, really, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: the vanity of the politicians that were involved. They allowed
Speaker 1: cameras in the courtroom. They thought, you know, this was
Speaker 1: gonna be a slam dunk thing. Nobody's gonna question this.
Speaker 1: They're gonna send Jason off to prison, murder me sweep
Speaker 1: this under the rug. They're all gonna go out like
Speaker 1: heroes and everything's gonna be fine. So they let these
Speaker 1: cameras in the courtroom HBO. Uh. Two guys named Joe
Speaker 1: Berlin Dur and Bruce Snowsky. They come in, set cameras
Speaker 1: up and film the entire trial from beginning to end. Uh.
Speaker 1: Though that footage would eventually become a documentary, a series
Speaker 1: of documentaries. But the first one came out, and I
Speaker 1: think it was it was called Paradise Lost, and it
Speaker 1: aired on HBO. If not for that, we would still
Speaker 1: be in prison right now, or I'd probably be dead
Speaker 1: right now. People started to see the documentaries, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: all over the country, and then eventually all over the world.
Speaker 1: You know, these things went all over the world. People
Speaker 1: would see them, and people started getting involved in the case.
Speaker 1: You know, everything from really people would do, uh, bake
Speaker 1: cakes and have like cake sales to raise moneys to
Speaker 1: raise money for to pay for like you know, lawyers,
Speaker 1: private investigators, whatever it was. Because most people also don't
Speaker 1: comprehend the amount of money it takes to fight a
Speaker 1: legal case. Over the I was in for eighteen years
Speaker 1: and seventy six days. Over that time, it cost us
Speaker 1: about five million dollars to fight this case. Because you know,
Speaker 1: even things like DNA testing, when you think of DNA testing,
Speaker 1: you watch it on TV, it's always the state doing it.
Speaker 1: You know, they didn't do anything in our case. We
Speaker 1: had to raise the money to pay for DNA testing ourselves,
Speaker 1: which in and of itself ended up being close to
Speaker 1: half a million dollars. Right, And now the good news
Speaker 1: is it's become much more affordable. Um DNA tests can
Speaker 1: now be done for thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: not tens of thousands, just thousands of dollars. And I
Speaker 1: do want to I'm glad you pointed that out because
Speaker 1: it's important to recognize the role that the general public
Speaker 1: played in this. Right, it wasn't just celebrities, exactly. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just filmmakers. There were people, I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say, all over the world who saw this movie
Speaker 1: and it's so painful to watch. And now we have
Speaker 1: the modern day equivalent with making a murder and Brendan Dascy,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, right, except he wasn't sentenced
Speaker 1: to death. But when you watch Brendan Dascy, you know,
Speaker 1: his interrogation, you can get a sense of what the
Speaker 1: Jesse Miscally interrogation must have been like. And a couple
Speaker 1: of things that I want to mention about his his
Speaker 1: false confession. One is that he recant did it immediately
Speaker 1: after he gave it, but nobody cared. The other thing
Speaker 1: is that they interrogated him for as you said, twelve
Speaker 1: to fourteen hours, but they only recorded a half an
Speaker 1: hour of exact right, So what does that tell you?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really they apparently they didn't want a
Speaker 1: recording of them telling him all the information that he
Speaker 1: didn't know, since he wasn't there. That would have been inconvenient,
Speaker 1: so to say the least. So there you are, and
Speaker 1: I guess you're kind of getting these little rays of
Speaker 1: hope while you're in the most hopeless situation that anyone
Speaker 1: can be in. Right, are you aware at this time
Speaker 1: of everything that's going on? This this and how important
Speaker 1: was it to you when people would write letters? Because
Speaker 1: it's one of the things I tell people when they
Speaker 1: asked me what can I do? I'm just a regular person.
Speaker 1: I don't have any access on any influence whatever. I'll
Speaker 1: tell people. Go to the website, go to Innocence project
Speaker 1: dot org. Go to your local innocence project. There's innocence
Speaker 1: projects all over the country. Um, write letters, talk to
Speaker 1: talk to people, write letters to journalists. But also, I
Speaker 1: mean you must have been getting a lot of mail
Speaker 1: at this time, and how how important was that? Because
Speaker 1: I talked about writing letters to people who are on
Speaker 1: the inside is being you know, one thing that almost
Speaker 1: anybody can do exactly, you know, and it really does
Speaker 1: help because it gives people inside something to focus on
Speaker 1: other than prison, other than you know, the walls you're
Speaker 1: trapped in twenty four hours a day, other than the brutality,
Speaker 1: other than the deprivation and degradation and everything else. It
Speaker 1: gives you something to think about other than all of
Speaker 1: that stuff going on, which really does preserve your sanity.
Speaker 1: So even just doing something as simple as writing a
Speaker 1: letter to someone in prison really does change their life
Speaker 1: in a very marked, profound way. For me, you know,
Speaker 1: this was I still haven't seen the documentaries. Uh, I
Speaker 1: don't watch stuff like that. So the only way that
Speaker 1: I would really know that it was that things were changing,
Speaker 1: that things were happening. One is the mail gradually started
Speaker 1: to change. It went from in the very beginning getting
Speaker 1: you know, there was a trickle of letters started right
Speaker 1: after the documentaries come out, Like you would get three
Speaker 1: five letters a week. It built up two by the
Speaker 1: time I got out. The people in the mail room
Speaker 1: at the prison hated me because they would come to
Speaker 1: my sale with like big plastic you know, mail crates
Speaker 1: full of mail and they would have to stand there
Speaker 1: and get people to come help them open it all
Speaker 1: up and make sure there's no contraband or anything in it.
Speaker 1: And they hated me for that. Um So I knew
Speaker 1: about it from that angle, just because the mail was increasing.
Speaker 1: And I would call Laurie every day and she would
Speaker 1: tell me, you know, Eddie Vetter is doing this, or
Speaker 1: these people in uh, you know Seattle are putting together
Speaker 1: this benefit concert, or you know, whatever it was. She
Speaker 1: would tell me about it. And you know, in one way,
Speaker 1: yet kind of helps you're thinking about it when you're
Speaker 1: on the phone, But in all honesty, the second you
Speaker 1: hang up that phone, that stuff is happening in a
Speaker 1: different world. You know, it's so far away that it
Speaker 1: has almost no impact on the fact that you are
Speaker 1: fighting every fucking day of your life just to survive.
Speaker 1: You know, the fact that you know people are having
Speaker 1: like a bake sale in Nebraska or something. Theoretically, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere in the back of your mind, somehow it gives
Speaker 1: you a little hope, but you don't think about that
Speaker 1: in the course of your daily life. And the course
Speaker 1: of your daily life, all you're doing is trying to
Speaker 1: survive another day in prison. And and you know, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the death penalty too, because everyone
Speaker 1: knows I'm a very vocal opponent of the death penalty.
Speaker 1: I don't think it has any place in a civilized society.
Speaker 1: And most of the world agrees, certainly almost all of
Speaker 1: the western world degrees. America is in the very uh
Speaker 1: in the top five of all countries in the world
Speaker 1: in terms of the number of people we execute. And
Speaker 1: it's not a good list to be on. UM And
Speaker 1: we know now that we execute a lot of innocent people.
Speaker 1: We don't we can't prove the exact numbers, but um
Speaker 1: it's been proven that something like five percent of people
Speaker 1: on death row will have been exonerated. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: that doesn't tell us how anyone are in there still
Speaker 1: that we haven't been able to get to because as
Speaker 1: you said, it's a it's a time time consuming, uh
Speaker 1: difficult and expensive process. And there's also estimates now people
Speaker 1: who do work in this field, like the Southern Poverty
Speaker 1: Law Center organizations like that, they're now estimating that as
Speaker 1: many as one out of every ten to people on
Speaker 1: death row are innocent. So think about the facts. If
Speaker 1: it's one out of every ten, if they told you
Speaker 1: that one out of every ten planes were going to crash,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't fly anymore. Everybody would demand that the system
Speaker 1: be fixed. But since it doesn't affect everybody, you know,
Speaker 1: it's executions. Most people don't have a loved one, a
Speaker 1: family member, anybody else they know on death row, it
Speaker 1: sort of slips under the radar. Yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a really scary number. And we know some of the ones.
Speaker 1: I mean Cameron Todd Willingham as a movie being made
Speaker 1: by professor at Columbia. Now about that case in Texas.
Speaker 1: An innocent guy who was executed for the the arson
Speaker 1: fire that wasn't arson. There was an electrical fire that
Speaker 1: killed his kids. Um, all three of his kids would
Speaker 1: have faith that was um. And so we know that
Speaker 1: there we we have a number of names of people
Speaker 1: who have been executed who we know now were factually innocent,
Speaker 1: where people have confessed to the crimes that they were
Speaker 1: convicted of. Um, it's it's all just very very troubling
Speaker 1: and disgusting and it needs to be abolished. It doesn't
Speaker 1: accomplish anything, it doesn't help, it doesn't reduce crime, it
Speaker 1: doesn't scare anybody off a murder thinking that anyone who's
Speaker 1: crazy enough to go and do something like that is
Speaker 1: not thinking, well, life in prison okay, but death penalty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hold off, you know. I mean, I'll just
Speaker 1: go have a V eight you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like it's not happening so um, But for you, how
Speaker 1: I mean the execution date itself, how did how did you?
Speaker 1: I mean, I want to know how you dealt with
Speaker 1: any of this right and then ultimately talk about your
Speaker 1: exoneration and what you're doing now. Um, so were you
Speaker 1: aware when did you have a date set? How many
Speaker 1: times was it moved? And how did you? I mean,
Speaker 1: how are you even here and not just bouncing off
Speaker 1: the laws? Are not sitting in the corner of some
Speaker 1: bar downtown, you know, with a with a bottle of
Speaker 1: scotsh I think my original execution date was May five,
Speaker 1: of either n or nine. I think something like that.
Speaker 1: They weren't going to waste any time. No, no, they weren't.
Speaker 1: And I got even closer to it than I should
Speaker 1: have gotten because the attorneys that I had were so
Speaker 1: incompetent that they thought I was automatically going to be
Speaker 1: given a stay. I got within weeks of my execution
Speaker 1: date before they realized, oh, we actually have to file
Speaker 1: a stay to keep them from killing this guy. So
Speaker 1: I could have been killed just by accident, just incompetence. Yes, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: After that, usually what happens is you get an execution date.
Speaker 1: Whenever you go from state court to federal court, Like
Speaker 1: after the your state court, your state supreme courts denies
Speaker 1: your appeal, they set you an execution date. The federal
Speaker 1: courts didn't decide whether they're going to hear your case
Speaker 1: or not. If they do decide, and they don't have to,
Speaker 1: if they do decide to hear your case, they'll give
Speaker 1: you a stay of execution, and then they'll hear your
Speaker 1: case and it'll go on for a while longer. If
Speaker 1: they decide, we're not even gonna hear it, then they're
Speaker 1: just gonna kill you. Um I brain went day again.
Speaker 1: If they if they decided to hear your case, they're
Speaker 1: gonna kill you, right And here you are back in
Speaker 1: ready to be executed within weeks. That was it. So
Speaker 1: what happened is, by this time, you know, the documentaries
Speaker 1: had started coming out. People all over the world had
Speaker 1: started to hear about the case. You know, they were
Speaker 1: I don't even you know, can't even count how many
Speaker 1: TV shows and and magazine articles and newspaper articles, and
Speaker 1: you know, people had started putting together website. So it
Speaker 1: I mean, what was happening to us was spreading like crazy.
Speaker 1: They knew that if our case went from state court
Speaker 1: to federal court, there was a good chance the federal
Speaker 1: courts were gonna hear it, that they were going to
Speaker 1: realize what was screwed up, and they were gonna throw
Speaker 1: the whole case out. They didn't want that to happen,
Speaker 1: so instead of setting me an execution and allowing me
Speaker 1: to appeal at to federal court, they just sat on
Speaker 1: it and held it. In the eighteen years and seventy
Speaker 1: six days that I was on death row, Uh, I
Speaker 1: never got to go to federal court, it was still
Speaker 1: I mean, the swelling of support grew so much that
Speaker 1: finally the state court decided, we're going to have to
Speaker 1: do something about this because it's making us look really,
Speaker 1: really bad. It's bringing too much attention. And just like whenever,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was in the hole and I
Speaker 1: told you, the only thing they cared about in the
Speaker 1: prison is that people on the outside world are going
Speaker 1: to realize what they're doing. Same way with with judges, prosecutors,
Speaker 1: all that the only thing they're concerned with is that
Speaker 1: people in the outside are going to realize that this
Speaker 1: case isn't what they're telling people it is. So after
Speaker 1: that amount of time, they finally decided there's going They said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a new evidenciary hearing and all the
Speaker 1: evidence is finally going to be heard, all the new
Speaker 1: DNA evidence. By that point, not only do we have
Speaker 1: the DNA evidence, but we had all sorts of witnesses
Speaker 1: that had come forward and said, you know, one woman
Speaker 1: admitted that the only reason that you tried to implicate
Speaker 1: us was because the police told her she had she
Speaker 1: had committed credit card fraud and they were going to
Speaker 1: charge her unless she helped them out with this case.
Speaker 1: So she came forward and admitted to that there were
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses who said they saw one of the victims family
Speaker 1: members with all three victims within an hour of the
Speaker 1: time they were murdered. And this was not known at
Speaker 1: the time that we went to trial. So the prosecutors
Speaker 1: know all this stuff is about to come out in court,
Speaker 1: so they started talking with our attorneys and they come
Speaker 1: up with this deal um called an Alfred plea. I
Speaker 1: had never even heard of. This thing made no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 1: What an Alfred plea means is that you are accepting
Speaker 1: a guilty plea while being allowed to legally maintain your innocence.
Speaker 1: The only reason this thing exists is so that the
Speaker 1: state can't be held responsible for what they've done to you,
Speaker 1: you know. And like I said, I was dying physically,
Speaker 1: you know, health wise. I knew that if I didn't
Speaker 1: take this deal one way or another, I was an
Speaker 1: We're going to live to see the outside of those walls,
Speaker 1: you know. The prosecutor came to us and pretty much said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll win this case if you go to federal court,
Speaker 1: but we can draw this out for another five years,
Speaker 1: another ten years. Every time the judge sets a date,
Speaker 1: we can ask for an extension, we can appeal any
Speaker 1: decisions made, or you can accept this deal and go
Speaker 1: home tomorrow, literally tomorrow, but you can sign these papers
Speaker 1: and walk out of this prison. But there was another catch,
Speaker 1: which is that they insisted that all three guys do it.
Speaker 1: And they had an amazing amount of leverage there too,
Speaker 1: because now it goes back to your friend Jason Baldwin, right,
Speaker 1: And Jason was ready to fight the case, but he
Speaker 1: wanted to He wanted to be declared innisent after everything
Speaker 1: he had been through. But they held a little bit
Speaker 1: of uh, I mean not a little bit. They held
Speaker 1: a huge um, a huge hammer um, which was that
Speaker 1: they made it known to him that if he decided
Speaker 1: he wanted to fight the case, they were going to
Speaker 1: execute you. And and that friendship that you guys had
Speaker 1: had from when you were teenagers now here it is
Speaker 1: eighteen years later. And it's really interesting, right that one
Speaker 1: woman that you spoke about, who also changed her story
Speaker 1: over time, she got to keep her credit cards while
Speaker 1: sentencing you to death. That's really, let's face it, right,
Speaker 1: that was the deal she made. She somewhere in her head.
Speaker 1: She decided that was a good deal. Now, maybe she
Speaker 1: thought you really were guilty, and they probably convinced her
Speaker 1: of that. Let's hope that was really the case. But
Speaker 1: one or another, for the sake of a couple of
Speaker 1: credit cards, UM, and and the difficulties it would have
Speaker 1: caused her if that, you know, went to court. Whatever,
Speaker 1: she was more than willing to roll over on you
Speaker 1: and and and have an innocent guy go to his death.
Speaker 1: But so Jason now had really a Sophie's choice, right,
Speaker 1: he had to accept this Alfred plea UM allow the
Speaker 1: state to um force him to live his life as
Speaker 1: a convicted felon UM and never be able to sue
Speaker 1: for compensation. And there's the added element of the fact
Speaker 1: that when Alfred please are given an accepted typically it
Speaker 1: means that they won't go reopen the case because as
Speaker 1: far as they're concerned, it's still closed. So there's no
Speaker 1: justice for the kids, there's no justice for their families. UM.
Speaker 1: But it was a convenient thing that allowed a certain
Speaker 1: number of people to save face and allowed you to
Speaker 1: go home. So so you took the Alfred play. I
Speaker 1: think anybody in your situation would have. And UM, when
Speaker 1: you when the alternative was death. It's a pretty easy
Speaker 1: decision to make. And how long after you took that
Speaker 1: did you get to go home? About a week later? Um,
Speaker 1: what the hell was that? Like? I mean, it was honestly,
Speaker 1: it was kind of horrendous because I didn't know that
Speaker 1: I was going to get out until the night before
Speaker 1: I got out. The night before I got out, they
Speaker 1: came and got me and took me to the county jail,
Speaker 1: And I knew then they wouldn't be went through this
Speaker 1: amount of trouble because the county jail was like several
Speaker 1: hours away from the prison. So I knew they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be going through this amount of trouble, you know, taking
Speaker 1: me several hours away from the prison unless I am
Speaker 1: getting out. So I knew there was a chance I
Speaker 1: might get out, but I didn't know I was going to.
Speaker 1: So in that week I did not sleep, I did
Speaker 1: not eat. I began, at that point edging towards a
Speaker 1: nervous breakdown. The day we walked out of prison, I
Speaker 1: did not have one single penny of money in my pocket.
Speaker 1: I didn't have so much as a suit of closed
Speaker 1: the change into I had nowhere to go. I had nothing.
Speaker 1: We didn't think of stuff like that. Whenever I was
Speaker 1: in prison. We're just thinking, keep these people from killing me.
Speaker 1: Go home. That's the finish line. That's it. So that's
Speaker 1: what we had always been working towards. We didn't realize
Speaker 1: what was going to happen whenever I walked out of
Speaker 1: those gates. Keep in mind that not only had I've
Speaker 1: been in prison for almost twenty years by that point,
Speaker 1: I had spent almost the last decade of that in
Speaker 1: solitary con finement. So I went from a decade of
Speaker 1: solitary confinement to being out on the streets of Manhattan
Speaker 1: literally overnight. And it shattered me psychologically. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the first two years that I was out of prison.
Speaker 1: If you put together everything I can remember within the
Speaker 1: first two years that I walked out, it may equal
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. Uh. It destroyed me in every
Speaker 1: way that it possibly could. We weren't counting on any
Speaker 1: of that. I've had two nervous breakdowns due to not
Speaker 1: only that, but also once we're out. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you're constantly You've got the media coming at you, asking
Speaker 1: you every day all these questions about being in prison,
Speaker 1: about the case, all this, so you get to the
Speaker 1: point where you're thinking, why the fund did I even
Speaker 1: get out? I'm not even out of prison, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm out here, but it's the only thing people are
Speaker 1: asking me about. It's the only thing people are talking
Speaker 1: to me about. You know, random people walk up to
Speaker 1: you on the street and start start talking about the case.
Speaker 1: So it's not even like you're out of prison anymore.
Speaker 1: It's just like the prison is in your hit all
Speaker 1: the time, you know. You Maybe it was like when
Speaker 1: I was in prison, at least I could have a
Speaker 1: mental and emotional life separate from the prison. Entire days, weeks,
Speaker 1: months would go by when I wouldn't even think about
Speaker 1: the fact that I was in prison because I was
Speaker 1: so busy trying to build a life for myself. When
Speaker 1: I got out, it almost felt like I was having
Speaker 1: to think more about prison than when I was in
Speaker 1: and it destroyed me in every way that it possibly could.
Speaker 1: But there's a there's a real silver lining here, right
Speaker 1: and that silver lining um sitting only a few feet
Speaker 1: away from us right now. And um, how did how
Speaker 1: did you meet Lori? And how and what's the I mean?
Speaker 1: I can see when you two together it's like there's
Speaker 1: like an orb You're like a glowing orb. I think
Speaker 1: you can probably see it from the space station. Um, so,
Speaker 1: how did you meet her and what's what does that
Speaker 1: meant to you? Laurie was one of the very first
Speaker 1: people who saw the first documentary back in six whenever
Speaker 1: it came out. She was living in New York at
Speaker 1: the time. She was a landscape architect, and she used
Speaker 1: to get before it came out on HBO, they had
Speaker 1: like several small screenings and and like you know, art
Speaker 1: house type theaters, and she got tickets to one of those,
Speaker 1: went and saw the movie and said she couldn't stop
Speaker 1: thinking about it. And you know, just like I was
Speaker 1: saying while ago about how much letters mean to people
Speaker 1: inside the prison, she sat down and wrote me a letter.
Speaker 1: And this was back you know, before the Internet was
Speaker 1: everywhere and you could find anything in the world just
Speaker 1: by googling it in three seconds. You know, she had
Speaker 1: to go through a lot of effort in trouble just
Speaker 1: to get the address of the prison, just to find
Speaker 1: out where I even was. Uh, whenever I got the
Speaker 1: very first letter from her, the minute I opened it,
Speaker 1: I knew that this was someone unlike anyone else that
Speaker 1: I had ever known, And it kind of goes back
Speaker 1: to what you were just saying about the ORB. Honest
Speaker 1: to God, felt like as long as we were together,
Speaker 1: as long as she was looking after me, as long
Speaker 1: as she was in my life and working on this case.
Speaker 1: From that moment on, I honestly felt like these people
Speaker 1: cannot hurt me anymore. I'm safe. And it was true
Speaker 1: as long as she was in my life. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of bad stuff in prison, but
Speaker 1: it was like it never got to worst case scenario.
Speaker 1: Somehow or another. Things would always turn around, Things would
Speaker 1: always work out. It was like we had uh divine
Speaker 1: intervention on our side. In a lot of ways. LORI
Speaker 1: ended up doing more work on my case than the attorneys,
Speaker 1: private investigators, and everybody else put together. After they did
Speaker 1: the DNA testing, She's the one out there digging through
Speaker 1: people's garbage to find cigarette butts to try to match
Speaker 1: the DNA too. She was the one out there, you know,
Speaker 1: doing the fundraising. Um if really she was doing everything
Speaker 1: she could to keep people from forgetting about this case. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean for our landscape part with that, for our
Speaker 1: landscape architects, she's a damn good investigator. Just uh, you know,
Speaker 1: publicists um, advocate um and you know, and it's just uh,
Speaker 1: just a ton of respect and admiration for you, Laurie,
Speaker 1: and I can say because you're sitting here and everything
Speaker 1: that you've done and everything that you are so um.
Speaker 1: So you you're together now, UM you're here at the
Speaker 1: Church of Rock and Roll um at opening weekend, which
Speaker 1: I'm so, like, I said, so grateful to both of
Speaker 1: you for coming and and what's this experience been like
Speaker 1: for you? It's been actually pretty amazing. You know. I
Speaker 1: think I've only started to come out of shock and
Speaker 1: trauma and become happy and everything else probably within the
Speaker 1: last two years. We've been out for about seven years now,
Speaker 1: so probably within the past two years is whenever the
Speaker 1: real actual healing started and I started being able to
Speaker 1: focus on things that I wanted to focus on building
Speaker 1: a life. And you know, one of those things was
Speaker 1: doing what we did here today or last night, like
Speaker 1: with the commitment ceremonies, and being able to talk to
Speaker 1: people about, you know, things that means something to me personally, uh,
Speaker 1: and develop real relationships with people based on things other
Speaker 1: than just the case. Last night. I would have people
Speaker 1: like twenty one year old kids who have no idea
Speaker 1: who the hell I even am, don't care. They were
Speaker 1: coming to the commitment ceremonies, wanted to do the commitments
Speaker 1: not because it was me, but because they love each other.
Speaker 1: They want to be part of it, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Stuff like that, that is what's rewarding. That's what I
Speaker 1: love doing, you know, things that are are real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I've had the opportunity to see parts of some
Speaker 1: of the ceremonies and also to talk to some of
Speaker 1: the people who participated in them, and the stories are beautiful.
Speaker 1: I mean, people who were UM on the verge of
Speaker 1: breaking up after twelve years of marriage and and and came.
Speaker 1: I think they came because you were you and they
Speaker 1: wanted to have that. They wanted to get some of
Speaker 1: your special brand of of magic UM. And now they're
Speaker 1: you know, now they're recommitted to each other. And and
Speaker 1: other people who found some new level to go to
Speaker 1: and whatever relationship they're in UM, and you're giving them
Speaker 1: their certificates and the embossing on the Church of Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll logo, And I mean, for me, it's just
Speaker 1: an unbelievable feeling to know that we're having that kind
Speaker 1: of a positive impact on them, on you because of them,
Speaker 1: and then on everyone who's around, UM, sitting in the pews,
Speaker 1: because we have pews outside and we have the UM
Speaker 1: what do you call that when people do the fingers
Speaker 1: the two fingers up in the air, the rock and
Speaker 1: roll sort of the horns, UM, we have those in
Speaker 1: Neon out by the So I'm trying to give people
Speaker 1: a visual. And we're gonna be taking this on the
Speaker 1: road and hopefully bringing it to other cities near you,
Speaker 1: whoever you are, where you're listening, UM, And I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about that. And I think we're just gonna do
Speaker 1: a lot of really really great stuff together. UM. And
Speaker 1: So my favorite part of the podcast everyone, and we're
Speaker 1: now in our seventh season, UM, is when I get
Speaker 1: to stop talking entirely and just turn turn the mic
Speaker 1: over to you, UM and and get your final thoughts
Speaker 1: on anything you want to talk about, whether it's how
Speaker 1: people can get involved or what people anything at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can talk about the weather if you want, UM.
Speaker 1: So before I do that, I want to say again that, UM,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you being here and sharing your your thoughts
Speaker 1: and your wisdom and your your courage, um, and your story,
Speaker 1: because I know it's not easy with our audience and
Speaker 1: with everyone in the room here at the Church of
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll. So um. And then I'm going to
Speaker 1: turn it over you for final thoughts, and then we're
Speaker 1: all gonna we're all gonna meditate under your guidance, which
Speaker 1: I'm super excited about. So actually, what I usually do
Speaker 1: instead of, you know, always tell people the reason I
Speaker 1: do stuff like this is not to force everyone to
Speaker 1: hear me ram along like a jackass. I'm here to
Speaker 1: talk about whatever people want to talk about, you know.
Speaker 1: That's that's the reason I'm here is because and that's
Speaker 1: the reason everybody else is here. I'm sure you know,
Speaker 1: when people hear these stories, they probably have things that
Speaker 1: come to mind that they wonder about that maybe we
Speaker 1: didn't touch on or whatever it is. So I usually
Speaker 1: just like to give people the opportunity if there was
Speaker 1: anybody that had a question or anything out of everything
Speaker 1: we just talked about that you'd like to know the
Speaker 1: answer to, or hear more about, or anything else, I'm
Speaker 1: willing to you know, whether it's prison life, whether it's
Speaker 1: the case, whether it's life after whatever the hell it
Speaker 1: is you want to know about. If there's any question
Speaker 1: you have, I'm open to it. Oh, this is a
Speaker 1: new thing we since we usually recording the studio without
Speaker 1: an audience. Now we have that opportunity, so we will
Speaker 1: open it up for just a few questions because then
Speaker 1: we do want to get to the to the meditation.
Speaker 1: Does anybody have a question for Damien? Damian? Thank you
Speaker 1: for sharing your story with us. It's flabergassing here that
Speaker 1: all that actually happened to you and you had to
Speaker 1: live through it. Um, through all of your darkest hours,
Speaker 1: how did you find the strength to fight through that?
Speaker 1: I think, um for those at home who might not
Speaker 1: be able to hear the question. Uh, he asked, even
Speaker 1: before Laurie found me, before she started taking on the case,
Speaker 1: Like during my darkest hours, what it was that allowed
Speaker 1: me to keep surviving on a daily basis in prison?
Speaker 1: And really what it comes down to, and this is
Speaker 1: incredibly important. You know, keep in mind they say that
Speaker 1: your average person in prison even when you take you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the guy in our case that gave
Speaker 1: the confession that only had an i Q of seventy
Speaker 1: to seventy two. Even when you take that out of
Speaker 1: the equation, the average i Q of the person in
Speaker 1: prison is only about eighty five, so that's still well
Speaker 1: below you know, average IQ level. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people aren't capable of even doing this, which is why
Speaker 1: it's so important that help come from the outside world.
Speaker 1: But what it comes down to is finding something to
Speaker 1: focus on other than the prison. You know, I would
Speaker 1: see guys in there on a daily basis that didn't
Speaker 1: have people in the outside world, that weren't capable of
Speaker 1: constructing a routine or anything else to give them something
Speaker 1: to focus on. So their full attention was taken up
Speaker 1: by the fact that they were on death row. They're
Speaker 1: waiting to be executed, and you see him snap all
Speaker 1: the time. You know. I would see things like one day,
Speaker 1: this guy, he just starts screaming and beating on the
Speaker 1: walls of his cell with both fists until both of
Speaker 1: his fists are just busted and bloody. They take him
Speaker 1: and he's screaming that the devil is in his cell.
Speaker 1: All they do they take him out, wrap his hands up,
Speaker 1: and throw him back in his cell. People go insane
Speaker 1: because they are focused on the prison all the time.
Speaker 1: So really what I did was I had to find
Speaker 1: ways to give myself a life outside of that environment.
Speaker 1: And for me, a lot of it was you know,
Speaker 1: like we were talking about earlier reading at one point,
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, also, I only had a
Speaker 1: ninth grade education. So after Lorie especially came into my life,
Speaker 1: I started hearing about all these things that I didn't
Speaker 1: have within my frame of reference, you know, like Camu
Speaker 1: and Dickens and told Story and Douystoyevsky and all these
Speaker 1: sorts of things. So I decided, um, I want to
Speaker 1: know what the hell people are even talking about whenever
Speaker 1: they're talking about these things. So I started devouring books
Speaker 1: that I honestly didn't even really have a great deal
Speaker 1: of interest in, you know, even things like the works
Speaker 1: of Freud and Young and things like that, just because
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what it was about, uh, and it.
Speaker 1: I did eventually reach a point where I thought, none
Speaker 1: of this stuff is really feeding me in any substantial way.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm taking in a lot of abstract knowledge
Speaker 1: and concepts and stories and writing styles and things like this,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't make me happy in any way. So
Speaker 1: one day, after we had filled up in entire storage
Speaker 1: facility with books. I stopped and went back to the
Speaker 1: things that meant something to me. So a lot of
Speaker 1: it for me was reading a lot, working out a lot,
Speaker 1: meditation a lot. You know. The heart and soul of
Speaker 1: my life when I was in prison, and even now
Speaker 1: that I'm out of prison, was ceremonial magic. By the
Speaker 1: time I got out of prison, I was doing meditation
Speaker 1: and energy energy work for up to eight hours a day.
Speaker 1: And part of what destroyed me whenever I got out,
Speaker 1: you know, the psychological devastation. For some reason, when I
Speaker 1: walked out of prison, I could not read anymore. Like
Speaker 1: I would try to read a page, and I would
Speaker 1: read the same page over and over and over, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't retain what I had just read when I
Speaker 1: got to the bottom of the page. I couldn't watch
Speaker 1: TV shows, uh, Like I said, I didn't even have
Speaker 1: face and facial recognition. So I would go to dinner
Speaker 1: with people, meet them two days later and not be
Speaker 1: able to even remember who they were. Um. So that
Speaker 1: screwed me up a lot. But really what it came
Speaker 1: down to in prison, what allowed me to survive was
Speaker 1: not thinking about prison, coming up with something else to
Speaker 1: focus on other than the horror that was going on
Speaker 1: around me. Damian, I love your optimism and your lust
Speaker 1: for life. I would love to know what your idea
Speaker 1: of a perfect day is. Now, what does that look like?
Speaker 1: A perfect day is one when I live in New
Speaker 1: York up in Harlem. A perfect day to me is
Speaker 1: a day when I don't have to get on the subway,
Speaker 1: when I don't have to walk out my front door
Speaker 1: at all. I get up in the morning, I start
Speaker 1: going through my daily meditations, daily energy work, take a break,
Speaker 1: and this may sound crazy, but I actually take pleasure
Speaker 1: and clean in the house. That's what really. One of
Speaker 1: the things that also helped me whenever I first got
Speaker 1: out was doing laundry. I had never done laundry in
Speaker 1: my life, but I would go into the laundry room
Speaker 1: where the washer and dryer was, and something about that
Speaker 1: was like being in a rocking chair. To me, it
Speaker 1: calmed and soothed my nerves. So really, a perfect day
Speaker 1: to me, I don't leave my apartment, I don't get
Speaker 1: on the subway. Um, I'm back up now. Like I said,
Speaker 1: you know, it shattered me, like I couldn't even read.
Speaker 1: I'll so couldn't do magic, I couldn't meditate, I couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything. I went from eight hours a day to
Speaker 1: not even being able to do eight minutes a day.
Speaker 1: So I've gradually built up over time until now I'm
Speaker 1: back up. Some days I can do on a really
Speaker 1: good day between five and seven hours, So that's a
Speaker 1: perfect day to me doing that, ordering pizza um and
Speaker 1: playing with my cats. I think we have time for
Speaker 1: one more question. I was just wondering if you were
Speaker 1: aware of any groups that are fighting for justice for
Speaker 1: the three boys. Do you think the real killer will
Speaker 1: ever come to light? I think, honestly I do. I
Speaker 1: think it will come to light. But you know, like
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier about the politics of everything involved,
Speaker 1: I honestly think before that happens, a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who have a vested interest in keeping this covered up,
Speaker 1: who you know, to preserve their jobs, can't let the
Speaker 1: truth come out. I think a lot of those people
Speaker 1: will either have to retire or move on or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, and new people who don't have a vested
Speaker 1: interest in this will have to come on board. Who
Speaker 1: who will actually look at the evidence, who will actually
Speaker 1: hear the case? So yeah, I do think one day,
Speaker 1: eventually something will happen. Um. I honestly, I don't keep
Speaker 1: up with the case. Uh So, I don't know of
Speaker 1: any organization. The only organization I know of two legal organizations.
Speaker 1: One is the Innocence Project, which Jason is on, and
Speaker 1: the other one has Proclaimed Justice, which Jason Baldwin is on. UM.
Speaker 1: And the only reason I know about those two is
Speaker 1: because of you know, personal relationships. I don't keep up
Speaker 1: with UM to me, you know, like I was just
Speaker 1: describing a perfect day. To me, a hellish day would
Speaker 1: be a day when I had to read like a
Speaker 1: court brief or a legal brief or you know, watch
Speaker 1: a true crime show or any of that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So those are, I honestly, the only two organizations that
Speaker 1: I know anything about it at all. I'm really glad
Speaker 1: to ask that question. That was a great question. So anyway, UM, now,
Speaker 1: I just want to say again this has been an
Speaker 1: awesome experience for me. Thank you everyone for being here
Speaker 1: at the Church of Rock and Roll, and thank you
Speaker 1: Damien for everything you're doing and for being a guest
Speaker 1: on Wrongful Conviction. Thank you so much for having me. Well,
Speaker 1: let's fucking meditate don't forget to give us a fantastic review.
Speaker 1: Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm
Speaker 1: a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really
Speaker 1: hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause
Speaker 1: and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence
Speaker 1: Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardis. The music on the show is by three
Speaker 1: time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on face Book
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one