Speaker 1: We originally aired the following episode on February twenty, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: It was only our twelfth episode. Peter Pringle was a
Speaker 1: death row ex Honery in Ireland, and you'll hear all
Speaker 1: about that situation just after this, But he actually ended
Speaker 1: up marrying a death row ex Hognerie out of Florida,
Speaker 1: a wonderful human named Sunny Jacobs. They're both wonderful people,
Speaker 1: or were. Unfortunately, Peter Pringle passed away on December thirty first,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, New Year's Eve, at their home in
Speaker 1: Clinic Muran Costello, County, Galway. Peter devoted himself tirelessly to
Speaker 1: his family, to his beloved animals, and most of all
Speaker 1: to helping other ex houneries get back on their feet
Speaker 1: and find their footing through meditation, yoga, diet. He just
Speaker 1: was a guy who never stopped giving back. And I'm
Speaker 1: honored to have known you, Peter, and I hope you're
Speaker 1: in a better place. He survived by his wife, Sonny,
Speaker 1: daughter Anna, and sons Thomas and John, as well as
Speaker 1: their twelve grandchildren. Rest in peace and power, Peter Pringle.
Speaker 2: With the police banging on the door, open up.
Speaker 3: The choice to be in that lineup was the last
Speaker 3: choice I made as a free man.
Speaker 4: A year later, I ended up writing the system.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be one of those people who everyone
Speaker 1: in the world is going to think.
Speaker 3: As a monster or suspect as a monster for the
Speaker 3: rest of my life, and I'm just going to have
Speaker 3: to come to peace with that.
Speaker 2: Somebody was able to look at my picture in a
Speaker 2: database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely was.
Speaker 4: I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they
Speaker 4: might have to play in my hanging. They had been
Speaker 4: told that two prison officers would have to participate in
Speaker 4: my execution. Now I walked back inside that prison for
Speaker 4: the last time. Man all held broke loose.
Speaker 1: But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: with Jason Fomm. Today's guest is a dear friend of
Speaker 1: mine and an extraordinary person, Peter Pringle.
Speaker 3: Pringle was accused of participating in a murder of two
Speaker 3: police officers following a bank robbery in Ireland.
Speaker 1: After his conviction, he was sentenced to.
Speaker 4: Death by hanging, and the police officer who had lied
Speaker 4: to get me convicted was now a retired detective superintendent.
Speaker 4: He had been promoted up to the top just.
Speaker 3: Days before a noose was to be tied around his neck.
Speaker 3: Peter learned that our Land's president had commuted his sentence
Speaker 3: to forty years without pole.
Speaker 4: It faced the forty years, which wasn't the possibility for
Speaker 4: me at the time. I could kill myself, which at
Speaker 4: the time was a reasonable.
Speaker 1: I was, Peter, what an extraordinary story. So happy to
Speaker 1: have you here. You're also the first guest on wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction who's not born in America.
Speaker 4: Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Thank you
Speaker 4: very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just saying, it's exciting that you're here because,
Speaker 1: as I said, we're taking it international now, right. You're
Speaker 1: as Irish as Irish can be. So Peter, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the we're talking. This is a very interesting
Speaker 1: time right when things were going sort of crazy in
Speaker 1: your home country, right, So bring us back to what
Speaker 1: was give us the climate.
Speaker 4: In the What happened was in nineteen eighty there was
Speaker 4: a bank robberty in Ireland, which the police say was
Speaker 4: carried out by two three men rather and the getaway car,
Speaker 4: traveling across country small country roads, collided with a police
Speaker 4: car at a small crossroads.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a movie. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, and this is now the police version of events
Speaker 4: because it goes I wasn't there, so I really can't
Speaker 4: give you the I can give you what I think
Speaker 4: is the accurate event of what happened because of my
Speaker 4: later investigations. But there was the two cars collided, there
Speaker 4: was an exchange of going far and two police officers
Speaker 4: were killed, and the three raiders escaped cross country.
Speaker 1: With three bank crappers. Yeah, and where did this happen?
Speaker 4: In a town called Balhadrin and County ross Common in Ireland.
Speaker 1: But at the time you were far away.
Speaker 4: I was in a different region, different county altogether.
Speaker 1: That's an important detail.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So that evening one man was arrested not too
Speaker 4: far away and he had a bullet wound in his chest.
Speaker 4: And the following morning a second man was arrested and
Speaker 4: the third man escaped cross country and two after the crime,
Speaker 4: a police officer managed to catch the man that were chasing,
Speaker 4: actually caught hold of him and was the only police
Speaker 4: officer to see the man when the man wasn't wearing
Speaker 4: a mask. But the man struggled and got away from
Speaker 4: the police officer ran away across the fields, stole a
Speaker 4: car and escaped again, and apparently he passed through the
Speaker 4: town where I was and got away again from the police,
Speaker 4: and twelve days after the crime, they arrested me and
Speaker 4: brought me in and framed me up for the crime
Speaker 4: I hadn't committed.
Speaker 1: Now there's a backstory there too, right, there was a
Speaker 1: reason they wanted you, right, you were known to the
Speaker 1: cops and you were a person that they would have
Speaker 1: liked to pin something on, and this was sort of
Speaker 1: a con.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I was known in the context that I
Speaker 4: was a political activist. I'd been a political activist from
Speaker 4: the time I was sixteen years of age, and I'd
Speaker 4: been involved with the IRA and I had been interned
Speaker 4: when I was eighteen years of age. From nineteen fifty
Speaker 4: seven to fifty nine, I was imprisoned in a prison
Speaker 4: camp on the Courra in Ireland without interment. It means
Speaker 4: that you're imprisoned without any charge or trial on suspicion.
Speaker 4: So they had this background. They classified me as a subversive,
Speaker 4: so it was handy for them to get me off
Speaker 4: the streets. That's the way they saw it. But at
Speaker 4: the time, at the crime happened. I had a very
Speaker 4: serious alcohol problem, and I was on a binge. I
Speaker 4: was drinking, and I had been drinking with buddies for days
Speaker 4: and days and days. And then they told me that
Speaker 4: they thought the police might be looking for me. I
Speaker 4: said for what. So I decided, well, you know, I'd
Speaker 4: have to come off the drink and go and go
Speaker 4: to the police and find out what this is all about.
Speaker 4: But before that happened, I had come off the drink.
Speaker 4: But before I could go to them, they found me
Speaker 4: in the house of a friend and arrested me and
Speaker 4: took me in.
Speaker 1: They found you in the house of friends. So you
Speaker 1: were on this binge, yeah, knowing you're you're someone who's
Speaker 1: prone to extremes, right.
Speaker 4: Some days I've been drinking.
Speaker 1: Twelve days of drinking. Well that's a lot of drinking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I imagine this is this is not casual drinking.
Speaker 4: This is no this was serious alcoholic drinking. Yes. And
Speaker 4: I've been a fisherman you see at sea, which probably
Speaker 4: saved me because when you go to see in a trawler,
Speaker 4: you don't drink. There's no drinking a boat. And so
Speaker 4: I only drank when when I got Ashore, which was
Speaker 4: a different story. And at the time of my arrest,
Speaker 4: I was a skipper of a boat carrying cargo out
Speaker 4: to the Arten Islands, which are three islands off the
Speaker 4: west coast of Ireland at all Away, off Galway Bay
Speaker 4: and habited islands. So my job was to carry different
Speaker 4: cargoes on the ship boat out of the islands of
Speaker 4: landed safety and bring the boat back safely. That was
Speaker 4: my job at the time.
Speaker 1: Now, just to give some context, Peter looks like the
Speaker 1: skipper of a boat. He's very tall and strong and
Speaker 1: very well built. I mean, he's got long flowing hair.
Speaker 1: You know. For someone like me who grew up in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: what would I know about skippers of boats? Right? We
Speaker 1: have rowboats in Central Park here. That's about it. But
Speaker 1: in any case, yes, he very much looks the part.
Speaker 1: So you were, so this was your job at the time.
Speaker 4: That was my job, And as luck would have it,
Speaker 4: I took the day off work the day that the
Speaker 4: robbery happened. I went on a binge and they used
Speaker 4: that against me as I had taken the day off
Speaker 4: work to go and commit the robbery, which hadn't happened.
Speaker 4: But anyway, when I was arrested and I was taken
Speaker 4: to the police station. And that's a funny thing about
Speaker 4: that too, because after twelve days on drinking, you know,
Speaker 4: I was entering into detox because this was the first
Speaker 4: day I hadn't drank. And when they arrested me and
Speaker 4: took me into the police card, two detectives each side
Speaker 4: of me, I had to shiver it and they said
Speaker 4: I was shivering because of fear, because of gilt ski.
Speaker 4: I was shivering because I was after a binge. But
Speaker 4: when they got me into the police station, they first
Speaker 4: thing they did was strip me naked and a team
Speaker 4: of detectives walked around and inspected my body, which I
Speaker 4: found to be very weird, and they all looked very disappointed,
Speaker 4: and I didn't know why. I later discovered they were
Speaker 4: disappointed because I didn't have a bullet wound. Because remember
Speaker 4: the guy that they arrested that had been shot told
Speaker 4: him that his friend had also been shot, so they
Speaker 4: were looking to see had I a bullet wound, And
Speaker 4: when I didn't have a bullet wound, that looked pretty disappointed.
Speaker 4: But that didn't stop them framing me up. So I
Speaker 4: was arrested at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, and
Speaker 4: at four o'clock this commenced interrogations. And I was interrogated
Speaker 4: from four pm Saturday afternoon until four point thirty a m.
Speaker 4: On Sunday morning, twelve and a half hours. Yeah, there
Speaker 4: was a break when I had a visit, two breaks
Speaker 4: when I had two short visits with my lawyers in
Speaker 4: the middle, but that was twelve hours.
Speaker 1: Basically, Chris, you and two detectives in the room had that.
Speaker 4: May and the team of detectives they were coming in
Speaker 4: relays of twos and trees and interrogating and you know,
Speaker 4: with the occasional beating in the thrown in for good
Speaker 4: measure because two colleagues had been killed and they were very,
Speaker 4: very angry. And so then at four am in the morning,
Speaker 4: I was brought down into a dirty cell and put
Speaker 4: into a dirty cell, and a police officer was outside
Speaker 4: with a baton and it's the solid door, and they
Speaker 4: closed the door and then he was outside banging on
Speaker 4: the metal door with his baton so that I couldn't
Speaker 4: fall asleep. And then at eight am they took me
Speaker 4: out of the cell and at eight thirty recommenced interrogations
Speaker 4: and I was interrogated from eight thirty am on Sunday
Speaker 4: morning right through until four thirty am on Monday morning.
Speaker 1: Wow, so that's another twenty hours.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And during that day it's very interesting actually in
Speaker 4: the afternoon that was on the Sunday what we're known
Speaker 4: in Ireland as the Heavy Gang. These were the Serious
Speaker 4: Crime Squad who had a terrible reputation. They took over
Speaker 4: the police station and they allowed they let all the
Speaker 4: local police go off to a football match or something,
Speaker 4: and so the only people in the police station with
Speaker 4: me on Sunday afternoon were the Serious Crime Squad and
Speaker 4: Special Branch. And at one point in the afternoon I
Speaker 4: was being interrogated and I was they when they beat you,
Speaker 4: they make sure not to leave mark, so you get
Speaker 4: kidney punches. They I'd be standing while they'll be questioning
Speaker 4: me and one would come behind me with his pistol
Speaker 4: and you know, whack you in the in the kidneys,
Speaker 4: which is very very painful. And are they take their
Speaker 4: boots and rask them down along my shins, you know,
Speaker 4: along the shin bone, along the skin to tear the skin.
Speaker 4: Stuff like that. You wouldn't think about a stamp on
Speaker 4: your toes. These are big, heavy men, you know, and
Speaker 4: you're you're wearing a pair of canvas shoes that they've
Speaker 4: given me. And at one point that I knew I
Speaker 4: needed a break. This was you know, I knew I was.
Speaker 4: I was getting very tired of this. So I said
Speaker 4: I wanted to use the toilet, and they said you're
Speaker 4: not going to use the toilet. You're not going to
Speaker 4: use the toilet, you know, because they use fierce language,
Speaker 4: you know. And I waited a little while and then
Speaker 4: I said to the inspector who was conducting matters, I said,
Speaker 4: it's like this now. I said, if you don't let
Speaker 4: me use the toilet, I said, I'm going to piss
Speaker 4: on the floor here in this office. They went there
Speaker 4: and he said, well he would too. He would too
Speaker 4: to be you know. So with that they left the
Speaker 4: room and they called in two other detectives and they
Speaker 4: left the room, and after about ten minutes they were
Speaker 4: told they could take me out of the toilet. So
Speaker 4: the two detectors took me out. I was in front,
Speaker 4: walked out the door, down the corridor and turned right
Speaker 4: along a long corridor, and about halfway down this corridor
Speaker 4: there's an alcove to a staircase going stairs ways gone up.
Speaker 1: And the.
Speaker 4: Men's room was on the left, near the opposite that
Speaker 4: that's alcove. And at the end of the corridor the
Speaker 4: door was open out onto the car park and the street.
Speaker 4: And I'm walking now, but you know, you can imagine
Speaker 4: I'm sort of hypertense because of all that's happening, and
Speaker 4: I'm walking down along the corridor, and I had the
Speaker 4: door open because they wanted me to make a run.
Speaker 1: For it so they could show you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And when I got just at this alcohol, a
Speaker 4: detective standing in the alcohol that I couldn't see put
Speaker 4: his foot out to trip me. But I was so
Speaker 4: hypertense I saw it and I lift him. I stepped
Speaker 4: over his foot, and the detective behind me says, ah,
Speaker 4: you won't catch Peter like that. And with that, the
Speaker 4: guy that had tried to trip me says, I'll fucking
Speaker 4: catch me, he says, and he cocked a noozy submachine gun.
Speaker 4: He said, I'll kill the bastard. And I got on
Speaker 4: a merciful push in my back and I was propelled
Speaker 4: through the door of the men's room and up against
Speaker 4: the wall to the side, and the detective behind me,
Speaker 4: who was a special Branch detective, shielded my body, put
Speaker 4: his hands up like that. She lied my body and
Speaker 4: said into my ears, say nothing, say nothing, Say nothing,
Speaker 4: And he said to his college shut that door, and
Speaker 4: they shut the door. And there was a big for
Speaker 4: already going on out in the hallway. The guy with
Speaker 4: a gun was wanting to get at me. And the
Speaker 4: next thing we heard a torretive voice saying, what's going
Speaker 4: on here? And then hand me that weapon and then
Speaker 4: to somebody has take care of that weapon, and he says,
Speaker 4: you to my office, and I gather what happened to
Speaker 4: as a superintendent came in and saw what was going
Speaker 4: on and stopped it. But in the toilet, the detective
Speaker 4: that was protecting me still covered my back, covered me
Speaker 4: with his body, which is a very brave thing to do,
Speaker 4: because that other lunatic was going to shoot me. And
Speaker 4: then when everything out quiet and down, he says to me,
Speaker 4: I need to have a pin out too, he says,
Speaker 4: after all that, and so that was it and I
Speaker 4: was brought back and the interrogations continued.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've heard these stories from people who were
Speaker 1: wrongfully arrested and subjected to awful interrogations in America. And
Speaker 1: we don't really know much about the audience here because
Speaker 1: we haven't covered it in any detail what goes on overseas,
Speaker 1: but it sounds every bit as bad as anything that
Speaker 1: goes on in America. And of course we do know that,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, when police officers are killed, they
Speaker 1: get crazy, they get into an irrational state, and they
Speaker 1: probably do things that there they wouldn't normally do normally do,
Speaker 1: that's correct, And so you were subject to I mean
Speaker 1: from I'm just trying to do the math, like almost
Speaker 1: forty hours of interrogation thus far, and I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: there was well we know that you didn't get any sleep.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you weren't given anything to eat.
Speaker 4: Well, no, they would bring along a coup of tea
Speaker 4: or something like that, you know, maybe a sandwich, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, so they okay, so the at least you had
Speaker 1: that going for yourself. But that which is better than
Speaker 1: you would have thought based on the way they're treating you. Right,
Speaker 1: But then again, they like to do that, right, They
Speaker 1: like to pull you in a little bit and then
Speaker 1: put you back out right and do that whole like
Speaker 1: psychological torture thing as well, Jennifer.
Speaker 4: When I was put into the cell down on Monday
Speaker 4: morning at four point am on Monday morning, I was
Speaker 4: taken out again at eight o'clock and I was interrogated
Speaker 4: then til noon on Monday, and then I was taken
Speaker 4: under an armed desk card of perlice to Dublin and
Speaker 4: brought before the Special Criminal Court, where I was charged
Speaker 4: with capital model and robbery.
Speaker 1: But you never confessed, absolutely not.
Speaker 4: I should tell you this one. My father was a policeman.
Speaker 4: My father had been a police officer. Yeah, and at
Speaker 4: the time when I was a young man, and he
Speaker 4: knew of my involvement with the Republican movement, and he
Speaker 4: tried to talk me out of it, of course, and
Speaker 4: he said to me at one stage he said to me,
Speaker 4: if you're going to stay with these people that you're
Speaker 4: involved in now, he said, I want to tell you
Speaker 4: to give you some advice. He says, if you're ever
Speaker 4: arrested by that crowd. And I said, what crowd? He said,
Speaker 4: that crowd in the castle, Dublin Castle was the center
Speaker 4: for the Special Branch, and he was referring to a
Speaker 4: special Branch. He said, if they deal with political matters.
Speaker 4: He says, if you're arrested, don't answer any questions. He said,
Speaker 4: give them me your name, address, and date of bert
Speaker 4: and say nothing else. And I said, why that, he says,
Speaker 4: because no matter what you say, they'll twist it and
Speaker 4: use it against you. So when I was arrested, and
Speaker 4: that was my policy when I had been arrested many
Speaker 4: times before, because if anything happened in the area that
Speaker 4: I was in, they would do a sort of round
Speaker 4: up the usual suspects. Anything political happened, I didn't mean,
Speaker 4: and they'd pulled me in and they questioned me, and
Speaker 4: I'd say nothing, and they'd released me and that was
Speaker 4: the end of it. So I knew about the procedures
Speaker 4: when I was arrested, but they brought me before the
Speaker 4: Special Criminal Court which was established for the trial of
Speaker 4: political offenses, which is a tribunal of three judges, no jury,
Speaker 4: and there I was charged and remandement custody to the
Speaker 4: maximum security prison where I was put. And in truth,
Speaker 4: when I got to the maximum security prison, that even
Speaker 4: on the Monday evening, and I was That was kind
Speaker 4: of interesting too, because when I was brought into what
Speaker 4: they call reception in the prison. I was stripped, of course,
Speaker 4: they stripped out to you're going into the prison, and
Speaker 4: there was a senior chief officer what they call the
Speaker 4: chief officer there, Jaylor, and they handed me prison clothes.
Speaker 4: I said them, They said, you have to put them on.
Speaker 4: You have to wear prison clothes. I said, no, I'm
Speaker 4: a political prisoner. I don't wear prison clothes. And they said,
Speaker 4: but you have to, that's it. No, I said, I'm
Speaker 4: not wearing. No, I want my own clothes back. And
Speaker 4: I said, if you don't give me my own clothes,
Speaker 4: I'll go naked.
Speaker 1: How did they respond to that.
Speaker 4: And they said what Well, some of them wanted to
Speaker 4: beat me up again. You see. I wanted to beat
Speaker 4: me up. And the chief said no, no, no, don't
Speaker 4: do that. He said, are you serious? I said, of course,
Speaker 4: I'm serious. I said, I'm a politicod prisoner. I'm not
Speaker 4: wearing prison clothes. And he said, give me fucking clothes.
Speaker 4: So I got my clothes and I was brought into
Speaker 4: the prison wing where I was where everybody else was
Speaker 4: not wearing their own clothes too, because it was a
Speaker 4: politic good wing. You see. I was put into a
Speaker 4: cell and I can tell you this much to get
Speaker 4: into that prison cell with a clean bed, even though
Speaker 4: it's a narrow, army type of bed, take off my
Speaker 4: clothes and get into the bed and sleep. It was
Speaker 4: such a relief after forty eight harrowing hours and me
Speaker 4: I was detoxing during all this time that I was
Speaker 4: in the police station, and there I was. And then
Speaker 4: three months later I was given a copy of the
Speaker 4: Book of evidence, and I saw in the book of
Speaker 4: evidence where one detective sergeant was claiming that on the
Speaker 4: Monday morning that would have been after thirty four hours
Speaker 4: of interrogation, I had supposedly suddenly blurted out these words.
Speaker 4: I know that you know I was involved, but on
Speaker 4: the advice of my solicitor, I'm saying nothing, and you'll
Speaker 4: have to and you'll have to prove it all the way.
Speaker 4: I'd never spoken those words, because, as I said, all
Speaker 4: I gave was my name, addressed, date of bed and
Speaker 4: if I wanted to use the toilet, I said, I
Speaker 4: want to use the toilet.
Speaker 1: So for thirty four hours of them interrogating you and
Speaker 1: alternately beating you and witching people and going in and
Speaker 1: out and depriving you of sleep and everything else, all
Speaker 1: you gave them was your name.
Speaker 4: Address, and birth day of parrot and to say to them,
Speaker 4: I am innocent of what you're accused me of.
Speaker 1: So your dad's advice really stuck with.
Speaker 4: You absolutely because he knew, I mean, he was a
Speaker 4: police officer.
Speaker 1: Right, which is an iron ironic twist. It is a thing, right,
Speaker 1: the fact that your dad was a police officer and
Speaker 1: you end up being accused of killing two police officers
Speaker 1: and then tortured by police officers. Yeah, it's very strange.
Speaker 1: Life is very strange, and your story is particularly insane.
Speaker 1: So and what an odd thing to just reflect for
Speaker 1: a second on the fact that you were just expressing
Speaker 1: how you felt the sense of relief and you almost
Speaker 1: sounded joyful at the idea that you were being put
Speaker 1: into a cell in a maximum security prison just because
Speaker 1: you had just been through this unbelievable ordeal.
Speaker 4: Because I was away from the ardel, you see, right,
Speaker 4: I was safe from it. That's why I could relax.
Speaker 1: I know. But you got to understand, like for anyone
Speaker 1: else you know who's in society to hear that or
Speaker 1: me right now, to go to think of how that
Speaker 1: could be that you could actually feel happy about being
Speaker 1: an innocent person put into a tiny cell with a
Speaker 1: hard cut. But then again it was the best thing
Speaker 1: you had seen in at least forty eight hours. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: I could get some sleeps, so.
Speaker 4: My mind didn't go to that fact that I was
Speaker 4: in the maximum security prisoner, that I was accused wrongly.
Speaker 4: At that stage my exhaustion, all I wanted was rest.
Speaker 4: And then a funny thing happened the following morning. I
Speaker 4: woke up at seven o'clock in the following morning. The
Speaker 4: cell I was in was on the ground floor, and
Speaker 4: I woke up the following morning at seven o'clock to
Speaker 4: hear a voice outside the cell in the prison yard
Speaker 4: outside the cell screaming, Jesus help me, help me, help me.
Speaker 4: Oh Jesus Christ helped me. Like I heard a scream,
Speaker 4: and I thought, oh my god, what's going on here?
Speaker 4: Because I didn't know. I thought maybe some prisoner was
Speaker 4: being battled or something. And then I heard other voice saying,
Speaker 4: come on, come on, come on, you know the cut
Speaker 4: that down, come on, And there was a whole commercial
Speaker 4: going on outside in the prison yard. I didn't know
Speaker 4: what it was, and I thought, really, I'm in a
Speaker 4: right hell hale here this is this is a prisoner
Speaker 4: being battered.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It was only afterwards when the cell or opened I
Speaker 4: heard that actually it was a prison officer had had
Speaker 4: a nervous breakdown in the heard and they were trying
Speaker 4: to take them away.
Speaker 1: That was your first morning.
Speaker 4: That was my first morning experience in the maximum security prison.
Speaker 1: What was the name of the prison, port Lesha prison.
Speaker 4: It was in the Midlands for prison.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, welcome to port Leicia.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was known it's known colloquially as the bark
Speaker 5: the Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at this point, had you already been sentenced?
Speaker 4: No, no, just accused.
Speaker 1: They've thrown you into this prison while you await your trial.
Speaker 4: That's right. And I was swing. There was no such
Speaker 4: thing as putting me in with other people and romand
Speaker 4: I was put in with people that had already been convicted.
Speaker 4: It was a politic good wing. So the way it
Speaker 4: worked there, in one way, it was a tough place
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 1: So let's go forward to the trial and the conviction,
Speaker 1: because there's so much more to your story. So the
Speaker 1: trial takes, how long does it take to get to
Speaker 1: the trial?
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, three months after I was arrested, I got
Speaker 4: a copy of the Book of evidence, and when I
Speaker 4: read the book of evidence, I saw where the detective
Speaker 4: sergeant was claiming that after thirty four hours of interrogation,
Speaker 4: I had suddenly blurted out these words, that did I
Speaker 4: say to them already? I know you know yeah, which
Speaker 4: I never said. And the first time I came across
Speaker 4: these words was when I read the book of evidence,
Speaker 4: and that was the principal evidence against me.
Speaker 1: You're so called confession, my so called oral confession.
Speaker 4: So when we went to try now the two other
Speaker 4: people had been arrested, the three of us were tried together, right,
Speaker 4: So the trial took twenty three court days over six weeks,
Speaker 4: and for the first twelve days of the trial, my
Speaker 4: name wasn't even mentioned, apart from the fact the chargers
Speaker 4: were read out to me. After that, my name wasn't
Speaker 4: mentioned for twelve days. So I'm sitting in the dock.
Speaker 4: It's surreal as if I'm one of the audience, because
Speaker 4: they're talking about stuff about these other guys and nothing
Speaker 4: about me. And then after twelve days they went to
Speaker 4: my case, and when my case was then opened, they
Speaker 4: opened the case against me. The police officer who had
Speaker 4: captured the guy they were chasing, whom they claimed was me,
Speaker 4: went in the witness box and he was asked to
Speaker 4: see the man again, and he said, yes, he's in
Speaker 4: the court and can you point him out? And he said, yes,
Speaker 4: I'm sitting in the docks. So he pointed to a
Speaker 4: man in the public gallery, standing in the public gallery,
Speaker 4: and he says, that's him standing up there. And it
Speaker 4: was really bizarre because the public gallery in the court
Speaker 4: was packed, but all the people standing beside this man
Speaker 4: moved away from him and somehow found space, and he
Speaker 4: was left standing like this on his own, like something
Speaker 4: you can see in the movies, you know, And the
Speaker 4: whole courtroom started laughing. It seemed so funny. But I
Speaker 4: was convicted. They never stopped that man, they never arrested him,
Speaker 4: They allowed him leave the court.
Speaker 1: Is it your belief that was actually the guy?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Well, the police officer who had caught him in spoke
Speaker 4: to him, said that was actually the guy, and he
Speaker 4: had the and he knew I was in the dock.
Speaker 4: He knew I was the accused.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting and bizarre, though we've seen this before,
Speaker 1: that the actual killer would come to the courtroom to
Speaker 1: watch the proceedings.
Speaker 4: Right, apparently he did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a phenomenon that happened. It's so weird.
Speaker 4: And so he was allowed to leave the court. And
Speaker 4: I was convicted on the evidence of the detective sergeant
Speaker 4: that had spoken those words I told you about that.
Speaker 4: I never said, right, and that was the evidence of
Speaker 4: which I was convicted and sentence death.
Speaker 1: Did your attorney bring up the fact that the other
Speaker 1: defendant had said that you had the guy?
Speaker 4: But he said to me afterwards, what that evening? He
Speaker 4: said to me, Now I should explain the situation in
Speaker 4: the Special Priminent court, not like in America. I was
Speaker 4: the accused of not allowed sippy side these lawyers. Okay,
Speaker 4: So you have the tribunal, the registrar, the solicitors, the barristers,
Speaker 4: the journalists, and then behind una raised slightly elevated the dock.
Speaker 4: I'm sitting in the dock, so I am about I
Speaker 4: suppose I'm about the equivalent of about six rows of
Speaker 4: seats behind my lawyers, and they're facing the opposite direction
Speaker 4: from me. They're facing the court as I am, so
Speaker 4: I can only see their backs and I can't consult
Speaker 4: with them. And the only time I can consult with
Speaker 4: them is when the trial that day is over. So
Speaker 4: when I raised the matter with my lawyers at the time,
Speaker 4: they told me, oh, well, you can't be convicted now,
Speaker 4: as the detective has said, the police officer has made
Speaker 4: that identification, there's no way you can be convicted. And
Speaker 4: I thought, okay, I knew nothing about the law at
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 1: Well it seems logical though, understand it says, yeah, the
Speaker 1: guy's here, there, he is, he is, and you're going okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good. But the thing about it is, if that
Speaker 4: had happened in the North of Ireland, if my lawyers
Speaker 4: had been any good, they would have asked for a
Speaker 4: mistrial straight away. They would ask for the dismissal straight away.
Speaker 4: But they didn't. And actually, my senior counsel, who didn't
Speaker 4: even turn around to look at this man and didn't
Speaker 4: even turn around to look what the police officer pointed to.
Speaker 4: He said to the police officer, so you've identified the
Speaker 4: defendant as the man, and the police officer said yes.
Speaker 4: And then the prosecution council stood up and he said,
Speaker 4: in fairness to the accused, my lords, he said, I
Speaker 4: have to point out, he said that this witness was
Speaker 4: shown a photograph of the accused before the trial, and
Speaker 4: they're not allowed to do that, you see, So then
Speaker 4: that meant that his evidence was disallowed.
Speaker 1: Oh so his evidence of having pointed out the actual killer,
Speaker 1: who we believe is the actual killer, was disallowed because
Speaker 1: of that, but not your false confession. Were you able
Speaker 1: to testify in your defense?
Speaker 4: No, my lawyer said there had no evidence against me
Speaker 4: and that if I went into the witness box it
Speaker 4: would mitigate against me and that the state would pull
Speaker 4: me apart. And I wasn't afraid to go into the
Speaker 4: witness box. In fact, I wanted to go into the
Speaker 4: witness box, but my lawyer's misdirected me and said, no,
Speaker 4: there's no evidence against you, so there's no need for
Speaker 4: you to go into the witness box.
Speaker 1: So again another common factor that we see, well, a
Speaker 1: couple of common factors that we see in these wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: You're a victim of police misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, and incompetent
Speaker 1: defense attorneys, and ultimately you're convicted and sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that moment, and then let's move forward
Speaker 1: to the craziness that happens on the eve of your execution. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, when the case was over, when the prosecution
Speaker 4: case in the defense case was finished, the court reserved
Speaker 4: judgment to the following day and we were brought back
Speaker 4: to the prison to be brought up the following day
Speaker 4: to hear their judgment. When we were convicted and so.
Speaker 1: So you had been convicted in that sentenced No, I
Speaker 1: hadn't been convicted. Oh oh, so you had to go
Speaker 1: You had to go back to the prison and wait there, wonder.
Speaker 4: Off the court as to whether they were going to
Speaker 4: convict or not.
Speaker 1: That's a long night and it was.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 4: It's pretty clear that they were going to convict the
Speaker 4: other two guys because there was evidence against them. But
Speaker 4: there was no The only evidence against me was the
Speaker 4: word of this police officer, which I had disputed, and
Speaker 4: plus the fact that the other police officer I had
Speaker 4: identified the actual culprit who was not me. So when
Speaker 4: we went up the following day anyway, they convicted me
Speaker 4: and they sentenced me to death, and the sentence went
Speaker 4: like this. The presiding member of the court said, you
Speaker 4: should be taken from this court to the place in
Speaker 4: which you were last held. And this was now on
Speaker 4: the twenty seventh of November nineteen eighty and on the
Speaker 4: nineteen day of November nine and the year of Our
Speaker 4: Lord nineteen eighty you should be made to suffer debt
Speaker 4: by execution in the manner prescribed by law. And then
Speaker 4: and you're also sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for the robbery.
Speaker 4: My inner response at the time was, this is crazy.
Speaker 4: If I'm going to be executed in three weeks time,
Speaker 4: I can't save the fifteen years. And if I'm going
Speaker 4: to say out the fifteen years, I can't be executed
Speaker 4: three weeks time. But that was the way my head
Speaker 4: was around the whole time. And then I was taken
Speaker 4: down underneath the courtroom to the cells. I was putting
Speaker 4: the cell, and then my lawyers come down to see
Speaker 4: me in this alcove that was there, and I was
Speaker 4: brought out to the alcohol to meet with my lawyers.
Speaker 4: But the senior lawyer hadn't yet come. And when he
Speaker 4: came in a few moments later and he came up
Speaker 4: to me, he was weeping. He was crying, he was
Speaker 4: in tears. And I found myself in this bizarre situation
Speaker 4: that I was standing up with my arm around. His
Speaker 4: name is Seamus Egan. The lawyer. My arm was around
Speaker 4: him and I was saying, it's okay, it's okay, don't worry,
Speaker 4: which we haven't appealed, don't worry, and he's crying his
Speaker 4: eyes out, and I think it was.
Speaker 2: This is weird, go backwards, this is this is about face.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he should be consoling me and I, you know,
Speaker 4: whereas I'm consoling him. And so I was brought back
Speaker 4: to the prison. Now, when I was brought back to
Speaker 4: the prison, now I'm a sentence I condemn prisoner, right,
Speaker 4: so I'm put in a death cell. And at first,
Speaker 4: actually they didn't put me in a death cell. They
Speaker 4: put me in an isolation area. And they put me
Speaker 4: in an ordinary cell in an isolation area with two
Speaker 4: jailers in this stale seal with me. And that night
Speaker 4: there was no sleep because these guys were sitting reading papers, rustling, talking,
Speaker 4: you know, and I couldn't get to sleep until eventually
Speaker 4: during the night I sat up and I said to
Speaker 4: them and I said, now listen here to me, you guys,
Speaker 4: the chief has told me that in this situation that
Speaker 4: I mean, I can have whatever jailer's I want with me,
Speaker 4: and unless you pair be totally quiet, I'm going to
Speaker 4: ask for you every night, and they went, oh, jeess,
Speaker 4: don to that, and they were as quite as lambs,
Speaker 4: and I got through the night.
Speaker 2: But then the follow that was a very good reverse
Speaker 2: psychology there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well it's almost it's sort of like an
Speaker 1: active rebellion, I guess in a certain way.
Speaker 4: And also I'm a bit rebellious.
Speaker 1: And an element of controlling your own situation which is
Speaker 1: completely out of your control.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And then then I protested the following day and
Speaker 4: they put us into a they created what they called
Speaker 4: the death cell, which was a larger cell, and the
Speaker 4: three condemned prisoners were put in there, and I had
Speaker 4: bed down again in the wall.
Speaker 1: You and the other two the natural bankroppers, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you didn't know until that point, right, No, well I.
Speaker 4: Knew one of them previously because I knew them from drinking,
Speaker 4: but otherwise I didn't know them. And of course it's
Speaker 4: often asked to me, why didn't they say you weren't
Speaker 4: with them? And the fact of the matter is each
Speaker 4: of them were conducting a defense of not guilty. They
Speaker 4: were pleading not guilty, and if they were had said
Speaker 4: that I wasn't with them. That would prove that they
Speaker 4: were guilty, and the charge carried a mandatory death sentence.
Speaker 1: So they had nothing to lose.
Speaker 4: They weren't going to They were just trying to save
Speaker 4: their own next and I understood that. But anyway, in
Speaker 4: that condemned cell that was I was in there on
Speaker 4: the twenty seventh of November and about a week before
Speaker 4: Christmas of that year in ninety eight, the way the
Speaker 4: rule was, the condemned prisoner wasn't allowed to speak to
Speaker 4: any of the prisoners, and the jailers were told not
Speaker 4: to speak the condemned prisoner for their own protection, because
Speaker 4: if a jailer, like a prison guard, gets to like
Speaker 4: a condemned prisoner or have respect for a condemned prisoner,
Speaker 4: it would be very difficult for them to participate in
Speaker 4: cold bloodedly taking that person's life, which is logically true.
Speaker 4: But on this particular occasion, about a week before Christmas,
Speaker 4: I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they
Speaker 4: might have to play in my hanging.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: They were sitting as close as I am to you, Jason,
Speaker 4: and they were discussing this as if I wasn't there,
Speaker 4: as if I wasn't a human being. They had been
Speaker 4: told that two prison officers would have to participate in
Speaker 4: my execution, and they were very concerned to know would
Speaker 4: bonus they would receive for doing this job, because of
Speaker 4: course it was outside of their normal work, and what
Speaker 4: role they would have to play. And the role they
Speaker 4: would have to play, they said, was that when my
Speaker 4: body would go down to the trap door of the gallows,
Speaker 4: there would be two prison officers underneath, and each one
Speaker 4: would have to pull on one of my legs to
Speaker 4: make sure my neck was broken.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm almost never at a loss for words,
Speaker 1: but I don't even know what to say about that.
Speaker 1: That's a whole note.
Speaker 4: Well, I didn't know what to say about it either,
Speaker 4: but I was already angry over what they had done
Speaker 4: to me. But this made me enraged, but in a
Speaker 4: funny kind of way, and if it's are kind of way,
Speaker 4: it helped me because it forced me to face the
Speaker 4: reality straight in front of me that I was likely
Speaker 4: to be hanged. How old were you at the time,
Speaker 4: forty one? And facing that reality, to my surprise, I
Speaker 4: discovered that I wasn't afraid to die, but what I
Speaker 4: was afraid of was that I might not be able
Speaker 4: to die with dignity. I was terribly afraid that they
Speaker 4: might succeed in taking away my human dignity, and I
Speaker 4: determined I wouldn't have let them do that. Now they
Speaker 4: had imprisoned me physically, but they couldn't imprison my mind,
Speaker 4: or my heart or my spirit. And so I determined
Speaker 4: that it was in those realms of myself I would
Speaker 4: exist while I was in that situation.
Speaker 1: And that's what I did, in the mind, the heart,
Speaker 1: and the spirit. Yeah, and so you came within eleven
Speaker 1: days of being executed.
Speaker 4: That's correct. But before that, my lawyers made an application
Speaker 4: for leave to appeal, which put a stay on the execution.
Speaker 4: But then the appeal court refused my application for leave
Speaker 4: to appeal, so I got no appeal, and they said
Speaker 4: a new day for my execution, which was the eighth
Speaker 4: of June nineteen eighty one. And about two weeks after
Speaker 4: the new date was set, my lawyers come on to
Speaker 4: visit me in the prison and they wanted me to
Speaker 4: allow them to put in a plea for clemency on
Speaker 4: my behalf, and I refused. I said no way, and
Speaker 4: the senior counsel, the guy who had been crying after
Speaker 4: the trial, he was in tears again, you know, very
Speaker 4: emotional man, and he's but they might hang you, Peter Well,
Speaker 4: I said, if they do, it wouldn't be the first
Speaker 4: innocent person they've hanged. But I will not plea for
Speaker 4: clemency for something I didn't do. And I actually asked
Speaker 4: for a piece of paper and I wrote, gave them
Speaker 4: written instructions to that effect, because I was afraid they
Speaker 4: would actually go and do it anyway. Oh yes. The
Speaker 4: reason they said this was that government cabinet had met
Speaker 4: and discussed whether I would be executed or not and
Speaker 4: couldn't come to an agreement about it. And they were
Speaker 4: concerned that the following week the cabinet was going to
Speaker 4: meet again and the cabinet might decide to execute me.
Speaker 4: So they went away very upset, and I went back
Speaker 4: to my cell and the following week when the cabinet met,
Speaker 4: I later learned that the Prime ministers before any discussion
Speaker 4: would happen and said, we're not executing Pringle. It would
Speaker 4: be political suicide. And then they instructed the President to
Speaker 4: commute the sentence, and the President commuted sentence from debt
Speaker 4: to forty years penal servitude without any possibility of parole
Speaker 4: or mission, and I was put out into the general
Speaker 4: prison population where I could talk to people and I
Speaker 4: could exercise the yard.
Speaker 1: So it's almost like a I mean, better than being executed,
Speaker 1: I guess, but not by a whole lot, because essentially
Speaker 1: it's a death sentence. You're forty one years old, you
Speaker 1: got forty years in prison. You're going to die in prison, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. But that's not what.
Speaker 4: Happened, no, because at the time I knew I had
Speaker 4: three options. You know, I could face the forty years,
Speaker 4: which wasn't a possibility for me at the time. I
Speaker 4: could kill myself, which at the time was a reasonable proposition,
Speaker 4: not let them refuse, to allow them to keep me
Speaker 4: for forty years. But then I realized if I did that,
Speaker 4: they'd say I had done it out of given remorse.
Speaker 4: So I couldn't allow that. So I determined I was
Speaker 4: going to try and prove my innocence.
Speaker 1: And ultimately you did, yeah, fifteen years later. So let's
Speaker 1: walk through that because I want to get to the
Speaker 1: next phase of your life, which is so extraordinary.
Speaker 4: Well, I should also tell you that there was no
Speaker 4: law library in the prison.
Speaker 1: So how did you go about innocence.
Speaker 4: I had a friend who worked in the university outside
Speaker 4: and she had access to the law library in the university,
Speaker 4: and I arranged with her to photocopy sections of law
Speaker 4: books and find out which were the best criminal law
Speaker 4: books and constitutional law books and photocopy sections of them.
Speaker 1: You had plenty of time to study.
Speaker 4: Well, then I couldn't study. You see, I left school
Speaker 4: when I was thirteen years of age, and I'd worked
Speaker 4: all my life and had no formal education, and my
Speaker 4: anger was such that I just couldn't read the documents understandable.
Speaker 4: So I determined I had to try and learn how
Speaker 4: to relax. So I got a friend to leave me
Speaker 4: in a little book on yoga with illustrations of the postures,
Speaker 4: and I began to teach myself yoga in the cell
Speaker 4: on my own, and teach myself meditation. And as I
Speaker 4: mastered does two disciplines, my anger got less than I
Speaker 4: was able to study. And I spent my time studying.
Speaker 4: And then what happened was other guys in the prison
Speaker 4: would come to me with their documents, with their cases
Speaker 4: and asked me would I look at their cases? And
Speaker 4: I said, yeah, sure, and I would because it was
Speaker 4: helping them, was also helping me, and so that's what
Speaker 4: I did most of my time in the jail. In
Speaker 4: the prison, I studied law as best I could, and eventually,
Speaker 4: in January of nineteen ninety two, I opened my own
Speaker 4: case on my own behalf in the High Court in
Speaker 4: Dublin under the Irish Constitution. Now I had no money,
Speaker 4: i'd know lawyers, so I had to prepare the case myself,
Speaker 4: filet myself and conduct the case myself, so which meant
Speaker 4: that they had to take me on their armed escort
Speaker 4: of military and police up to the court where I
Speaker 4: represented myself against the top lawyers of the state and
Speaker 4: the case ran from January nineteen ninety two until May
Speaker 4: of nineteen ninety five, where my conviction was overturned. But
Speaker 4: in July of nineteen ninety two I won an order
Speaker 4: for discovery in the High Court. And that's another I'll
Speaker 4: tell you. There's reams to this story that it's kind
Speaker 4: of important to say this one to you. One of
Speaker 4: the cars used in the crime had been stolen in
Speaker 4: Galway on the second of July. The crime happened the seventh.
Speaker 4: It was stolen on the second of July between eleven
Speaker 4: PM and eleven forty five pm from the car park
Speaker 4: of a hotel. Right, and the evidence of the stealing
Speaker 4: of that car was allowed into the trial because the
Speaker 4: court ruled that the stealing of the car formed part
Speaker 4: of the res yestay of the offense, which meant that
Speaker 4: the person who stole the car had done the killing. Right. Okay,
Speaker 4: But on the date that the car was stolen. At
Speaker 4: the time the car was stolen, I was delivering four
Speaker 4: thousand concrete blocks on the art And Islands with fifty
Speaker 4: or more witnesses there. Now, I delivered the concrete bucket.
Speaker 4: But five years after I had been I was imprisoned.
Speaker 4: I got a letter from my former boss, the guy
Speaker 4: who owned a little company that owned the boat that
Speaker 4: I was skippering, asking me if i'd been paid for
Speaker 4: the delivery and for the blocks to the value of
Speaker 4: six hundred pounds, which I didn't know about because that
Speaker 4: wasn't my role. My role was simply to be the
Speaker 4: skipper to take the cargo out. I didn't even know
Speaker 4: what a cost. I wrote back and told him that,
Speaker 4: and he said, no, we believe you, we understand that.
Speaker 4: But he said, the man that you delivered to has
Speaker 4: refused to pay his bill, and five years later, when
Speaker 4: they threatened court action to get the money, he told
Speaker 4: them that he had paid me the money because I'm
Speaker 4: in prison. You see, I'm in prison doing forty years
Speaker 4: for murder capital word than a robbery. So he was
Speaker 4: going to blame me. So I wrote him out of
Speaker 4: the letter saying that of course I'd never done it.
Speaker 4: And when the case came for court, the man never
Speaker 4: appeared in court, and the court ruled against him and
Speaker 4: accept my account, and the matter was finished. But I
Speaker 4: went into the book of evidence, and I saw that
Speaker 4: my boss supposedly had made a statement in the book
Speaker 4: of evidence saying I sailed at eleven o'clock in the
Speaker 4: morning and come back at eleven o'clock that night, which
Speaker 4: would have meant I had the possibility of stealing the car. Okay,
Speaker 4: whereas I sailed at four o'clock in the afternoon and
Speaker 4: didn't get back to go with un till two am
Speaker 4: the following morning. Now I knew he had to, and
Speaker 4: I knew as a charge of the accountant he kept
Speaker 4: all records. So I wrote to him and I said,
Speaker 4: if you a record of the sailing on that day,
Speaker 4: and he said he had you sail at four o'clock
Speaker 4: in the afternoon and you got back at two am
Speaker 4: in the morning. So I wrote to him again, I said, well,
Speaker 4: then tell me this, why did you make this statement,
Speaker 4: this false statement?
Speaker 1: What do you say?
Speaker 4: I never made a statement.
Speaker 1: Oh, they made it up.
Speaker 4: They made it up.
Speaker 2: He never made a stake back your conviction.
Speaker 4: To try and keet me convicted. He never made a
Speaker 4: statement and he was never even asked to make a statement.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: And so later when I got a lot more discovery,
Speaker 4: I discovered there were actually twenty three prosecution witnesses in
Speaker 4: the case had never made any statements, although there were
Speaker 4: statements in the book of evidence attributed to them, and
Speaker 4: had he He told me that if he had been
Speaker 4: asked to make a statement, he would have told the truth.
Speaker 4: And had he been asked and made a statement and
Speaker 4: told the truth, I couldn't have been convicted. So I
Speaker 4: asked him, would he make an affidavits? Would he swear
Speaker 4: an affidavit? At that and I drafted and Affidavid sent
Speaker 4: it out to him. He got it notorized and swore
Speaker 4: and sent it back in to me. So when I
Speaker 4: heard in the court and the High Court and looked
Speaker 4: for an order for discovery, and the lawyers for the
Speaker 4: state were saying, ah, he's only fishing. He hasn't got anything.
Speaker 4: I said, yes, I have, and I produced two copies
Speaker 4: of this affidat, and I said, I have here the
Speaker 4: sworn affidavit of a prosecution witness stating clearly that he
Speaker 4: not only did he not make a statement of tribute
Speaker 4: to him, but he was never even asked to make
Speaker 4: a statement. And I offered it to the court and
Speaker 4: the judge woudn't accept it. And I offered it the
Speaker 4: state lawyers and they wouldn't accept it, because of course,
Speaker 4: if they'd accepted it, they would have had to deal
Speaker 4: with it.
Speaker 1: But wouldn't the judge want to deal with it?
Speaker 4: You would think, no, no, no, don't forget. He wasn't
Speaker 4: being I mean, he was looking at me as if
Speaker 4: I was a piece of dirt.
Speaker 1: So what happened there?
Speaker 4: So I won my order for discovery? And then when
Speaker 4: I got my order for discovery, didn't I get a
Speaker 4: photocopy of the notebook of the detective who had claimed
Speaker 4: I'd spoken those words in a particular period interrogation, and
Speaker 4: he has warned us on notes and that he had
Speaker 4: recorded the interrogation and recorded these words. And when I
Speaker 4: got his notebook, I saw in the notebook it's very
Speaker 4: clear he wrote the words in before the period of
Speaker 4: interrogation in which he claimed us said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's tricky.
Speaker 4: Well there's nothing against me, and they decided this was
Speaker 4: what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very organized and very insidious, absolutely
Speaker 1: very coordinated. I mean the lengths that they went to
Speaker 1: to get the conviction, to protect the conviction, to basically
Speaker 1: run rough shot over the truth, or extraordinary to still
Speaker 1: at it.
Speaker 4: By the way, which I'll tell you about as we
Speaker 4: get on through this. But in January of nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 4: a human rights lawyer offered me his help. When I
Speaker 4: took it, we got a legal team, we went to
Speaker 4: the Court of Criminal Appeal on the new legislation, and
Speaker 4: the case ran from nineteen ninety four to ninety ninety five.
Speaker 4: And the police officer who had lied to get me
Speaker 4: convicted was now a retired detective superintendent. He had been
Speaker 4: promoted up to the top. By the way, the cops
Speaker 4: who lied in the trial were all promoted, and the
Speaker 4: cop who saved my life and who refused to lie
Speaker 4: in the trial was never promoted.
Speaker 1: Well, I am I not surprised. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: such a web of deceased absolutely lies and bad actors
Speaker 1: and everything else. So your convictions thrown out, your freed right.
Speaker 1: And then you told me a great story about your
Speaker 1: first day on the outside or your first what was
Speaker 1: the first thing you did when you got out?
Speaker 4: Well, when I was released out of the special court,
Speaker 4: out on the street, I was met with a plethora
Speaker 4: of media people with microphones and cameras and ads took
Speaker 4: my face, strong questions at me, and I didn't have
Speaker 4: time to sort of realize that I was free, if
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. I didn't have time to
Speaker 4: let it sink in. And then I was taken by
Speaker 4: my lawyer to the TV station, the national TV station
Speaker 4: where I was. We were interviewed for the news that evening,
Speaker 4: and then my friends organized a party. A bunch of
Speaker 4: people had set up a defense committee for me outside
Speaker 4: and they took a floor of a pub and organized
Speaker 4: a big party. And there was a huge, big party
Speaker 4: going on, and we went to that and that went
Speaker 4: on all that evening and everybody got drunk except me.
Speaker 4: I wasn't drinking, and I stayed with two friends that
Speaker 4: night in their house, and the following morning, when I
Speaker 4: got up, I was the first one up. I went
Speaker 4: down to the kitchen and I went out to the
Speaker 4: back garden, which was a lovely long back garden, and
Speaker 4: the sunwishine was a beautiful day. There were no big
Speaker 4: walls around me. There was flowers and trees and bushes.
Speaker 4: And I walked down the garden and at the bottom
Speaker 4: of the garden there was a big old apple tree,
Speaker 4: really big old gnarled. The other way they'd become gnarled
Speaker 4: apple tree. And I could hear in the distance the sound,
Speaker 4: the background noises of the city. But I went to
Speaker 4: this tree, and I stood with the tree, and I
Speaker 4: realized that and all the time I'd been in jail,
Speaker 4: and all the time the trouble I had gone through,
Speaker 4: this tree was growing in this garden on its own,
Speaker 4: with nature, producing its fruit and shedding its leaves every
Speaker 4: year in year out, doing its own thing, and immune
Speaker 4: from the corruption, the greed, the rat race, the injustices
Speaker 4: and everything else. And I put my arms around the
Speaker 4: trunk of the tree, and I wept and I released
Speaker 4: And that's when I knew for certain I was free.
Speaker 4: That was in May nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: So that's twenty one years ago. And then another extraordinary
Speaker 1: thing happened in your life, right, which is something I'm
Speaker 1: very well aware of. Well something or someone say.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, three years after I got out. And it
Speaker 4: was difficult times for a while after I got out,
Speaker 4: because it's very difficult to fit into society again when
Speaker 4: you're locked up. But I had yoga meditation and I
Speaker 4: used that and a little bit of prayer. And three
Speaker 4: years after, one day I got a phone call from
Speaker 4: an American lady who told me her name was Sunny Jacobs,
Speaker 4: and she told me she was speaking at a meeting
Speaker 4: three days later where I was, and invited me to
Speaker 4: come in here talk. And I said, what are you
Speaker 4: going to talk about? And she said the death penalty.
Speaker 4: I said, yes, I'm interested in that. I'll come along,
Speaker 4: and I brought two friends and I went along and
Speaker 4: it was a room above a public course. At one
Speaker 4: o'clock on a Friday, I went up to the room.
Speaker 4: There was nobody there, and after a few minutes the
Speaker 4: door opened to the fire side of the room, and
Speaker 4: this little woman walked in and I walked over to
Speaker 4: her and I said, you must be Sunny Jacobs, and
Speaker 4: she looked up at me with a big smile, and
Speaker 4: that's how we met. And I listened to her story
Speaker 4: and I was hugely emotionally upset by listening to it,
Speaker 4: and I knew I had to talk with her. And
Speaker 4: I said to her, I need to talk with you,
Speaker 4: and she said, got to be good. I needed to
Speaker 4: talk with you too. But she said, I'm leaving in
Speaker 4: an hour. This was on a Friday. I said, where
Speaker 4: are you going? She says, I have to go to
Speaker 4: Cork for the annual General Meeting of Amnesty into an
Speaker 4: Irish section of Amnist International. I should be there at
Speaker 4: eight o'clock tomorrow evening. I said, stay over with me,
Speaker 4: I said, and I guarantee I'll get you down there.
Speaker 2: And so she went how far away was Cork for
Speaker 2: our drive?
Speaker 4: And she went to Mary Lawler, who was the General
Speaker 4: Secretary of Amnesty at the time, and asked Mary, because
Speaker 4: of course she was unsure about whether she should go
Speaker 4: with a stranger in the strange country. And Mary knew
Speaker 4: me and knew my story, and she said, oh, that's wonderful.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Peter yeah, yeah, great. So we transferred Sunday's
Speaker 4: case from her car into my audio loppy and she
Speaker 4: stayed in my house that night. In the following morning,
Speaker 4: we went to my friend on a cafe and go away.
Speaker 4: We went to his place for breakfast. He asked us
Speaker 4: to come for breakfast and he said to me, are
Speaker 4: you driving her down the Cork? And I said yeah.
Speaker 4: He said, you can't go drive sbody to Cork and
Speaker 4: dot your lopy. He said here, and he reached his
Speaker 4: hand in his pocket and he gave me the keys
Speaker 4: of his Mercedes. He said, just get it back to
Speaker 4: me tomorrow morning. So I drove Sunny down the Cork
Speaker 4: in the Mercedes. We traveled in style. And as we
Speaker 4: were on the car fairly crossing the river, Shannon eating
Speaker 4: a pack lunch which he'd made up for us, she
Speaker 4: said to me, what's your interest in all of this?
Speaker 4: And I told her that I too had been wrongly
Speaker 4: convicted and sentenced to death, and she said, you seem
Speaker 4: to got through very well. She said, then, how did
Speaker 4: you get through so easy so well? And I said,
Speaker 4: yoga and meditation.
Speaker 1: First of all. By the way, this is a hell
Speaker 1: of a first date. I got to give it up
Speaker 1: to you for a guy who had been in prison
Speaker 1: for fifteen years, you got game, okay, And so so
Speaker 1: that yeah, it's extraordinary, as I keep using that word
Speaker 1: because I don't know what else other words. You use
Speaker 1: the fact that Sonny, of course, had also been sentenced
Speaker 1: that for a similar crime that happened a continent away,
Speaker 1: five six thousand miles from where you were charged and convicted.
Speaker 1: She was charged and convicted. Both of you were actually
Speaker 1: and absolutely innocent, and you served similar amounts of time
Speaker 1: in prison. She actually a little bit longer than you,
Speaker 1: and both of you had more in common than that, right,
Speaker 1: both were committed to a lifestyle of meditation and yoga.
Speaker 1: You're vegetarians, right, So it's sort of the universe organizing
Speaker 1: itself in a way, that is.
Speaker 4: It was inevitable that we should come together, if you.
Speaker 1: Think about serendipity as synchronisy and everyone cause metaphysics. So
Speaker 1: then you drive her there.
Speaker 4: We drive her there and to Cork.
Speaker 1: To Cork.
Speaker 4: Now, Amnesty had got us two rooms in a hotel
Speaker 4: across from the hotel where the convention was, and each
Speaker 4: of us lay on a bed separately, and for three
Speaker 4: and a half hours. We discussed forgiveness. Well that was
Speaker 4: the key forgiveness. And then I brought her back to
Speaker 4: her room and she said to me, would I call
Speaker 4: her when as I leave at six in the morning,
Speaker 4: Would I call her in the morning. I said yes,
Speaker 4: So on the morning I knocked on her door and
Speaker 4: she got up and we said goodbye to each other
Speaker 4: and we'd keep in touch. I had got my friend's
Speaker 4: car and drop back to go away.
Speaker 1: Did you guys kiss or was there any physical interaction?
Speaker 1: Hold hands?
Speaker 4: Exactly?
Speaker 6: What happened was.
Speaker 1: A perfect gentleman.
Speaker 6: He said to me, I don't want you to think
Speaker 6: I'm not attracted to you, but I'm in a kind
Speaker 6: of a relationship, and I like to try to leave
Speaker 6: an honorable life. And that's what clicked in my mind,
Speaker 6: because at that point in my life I had no
Speaker 6: time for bs, you know, and so that impressed me.
Speaker 1: How long have you been out of prison by this time?
Speaker 6: I was out three years?
Speaker 4: It's almost yeah, three years you were Oh he.
Speaker 1: Was out eight Right, so you've been sex and you've
Speaker 1: been out three Okay, fine, that's nothing.
Speaker 4: But we joke and say, you see that she's five
Speaker 4: years older than me, right, think I got it five
Speaker 4: years out before.
Speaker 1: Me and anyway, okay, so then it was what happened.
Speaker 6: And then we hadn't made any arrangement, but when he
Speaker 6: got home he called me, and that's I knew that
Speaker 6: it had clicked for him too.
Speaker 1: So then you ultimately were married, yea, which is onto
Speaker 1: my favorite part of the story actually, But what.
Speaker 4: We'd actually did was about ten years ago. We decided
Speaker 4: that we were going to exchange vows to each other,
Speaker 4: and we bought two clad of rings and on the
Speaker 4: winter salts it's the shortest day of the year, because
Speaker 4: Sonny said we should do it on the shortest day
Speaker 4: of the year because we don't have a long engagement.
Speaker 4: We gave rings to each other in the morning, and
Speaker 4: we were engaged in the evening, and we went down
Speaker 4: to the seashore with our dogs and we exchanged vows
Speaker 4: on the seashore in the evening time, and the sun
Speaker 4: and the moon were both in the sky at the
Speaker 4: same time, which we thought was very auspicious. And then
Speaker 4: what happened. We were having some difficulty when we'd leave
Speaker 4: the country coming back because we were given to Sonny
Speaker 4: hassle about whether she could come back into the country
Speaker 4: or not. And this was because she was with me,
Speaker 4: you see. So we decided we were going to get married.
Speaker 4: But getting married in Ireland is much more aureocratically difficult
Speaker 4: than it is in America. And we found out that
Speaker 4: you could apply in New York and get a license
Speaker 4: and get married the next day. But we had no
Speaker 4: money to come to New York. So now at that stage,
Speaker 4: by the way, we were existing on my state pension,
Speaker 4: which is like very small. So the theater that had
Speaker 4: put on The Exonerated the film called contacted us. They
Speaker 4: were doing a producers weekend and they wanted us to
Speaker 4: come and speak at two dinners that they were hosting.
Speaker 4: And suddenly said, oh, we wanted to go to New
Speaker 4: York to get married, and they said, you got to
Speaker 4: get married in New York. We'll host the wedding. So
Speaker 4: they hosted the wedding. They brought us to New York
Speaker 4: and they follow us open a hotel and they hosted
Speaker 4: the wedding. So there were about one hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: one hundred and thirty people at the wedding. We only
Speaker 4: knew six or seven of them, and none of our
Speaker 4: family were there. It was so funny it was hilarious. Brookshields,
Speaker 4: Amy Irving, Marlo Thomas, and Stockard Channing were at the wedding.
Speaker 4: They were four people actress who had played Sonny in.
Speaker 1: The play of the Exoneration extraordinary play. Yeah, and Sunny
Speaker 1: story is one of six that are profiled in this
Speaker 1: remarkable play in which so many incredible actresses have portrayed you.
Speaker 1: And so they showed up at the wedding. So you
Speaker 1: have this sort of celebrity wedding which adds a certain
Speaker 1: element of strangeness to the whole thing.
Speaker 4: The best part of it was that when Sonny was
Speaker 4: asked do you take this man to be your lawfully
Speaker 4: whether husband, the four actresses step forward and said, with Sonny, we.
Speaker 1: Do hilarious, that's amazing, Oh my god, funny. So you
Speaker 1: may actually be married to five women at this point.
Speaker 1: Hard to say, and I'm not judging you. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying you might want to have somebody look into it.
Speaker 1: So there's a wonderful announcement if you google Peter Pringle
Speaker 1: and Sonny Jacob's wedding. My belief I can't prove this
Speaker 1: is that you're the only two Death Row ex hogneries
Speaker 1: who have ever been married after exonerations, because there are
Speaker 1: very few women who've been sentenced to death and even
Speaker 1: many fewer who have been exonerated. So you really, you
Speaker 1: really hit the jackpot. And so I do want to
Speaker 1: put in a plug because now Sonny and Peter operate
Speaker 1: a phenomenal organization called the Sunny Sanctuary and it is
Speaker 1: sort of a haven or whatever you want to call
Speaker 1: it where they bring a newly exonerated people over to
Speaker 1: the coast of Ireland and help them reintegrate, right this
Speaker 1: is probably the best word, and get their get their
Speaker 1: lives back, and get their their spirits back, so to speak.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, it's kind of healing from the inside out.
Speaker 4: We helped them to release the anger and business that
Speaker 4: they carry over what was done to them.
Speaker 1: And paint the picture of the Sunny Sanctuary for people
Speaker 1: out there who can't really visualize.
Speaker 4: Okay, well we managed. We managed to rent a three
Speaker 4: bedroom house on four acres on the side of a
Speaker 4: hill overlooking a lake and there's there's hazel woods down
Speaker 4: to the lake and each bedroom is on sweet so
Speaker 4: they have every person that comes has their own bathroom
Speaker 4: and toilet and it's on the coast it's four miles
Speaker 4: from the sea, but it's it's only just a bit
Speaker 4: above the lake, and it's in a very it's at
Speaker 4: the end of the road. The nearest store is six
Speaker 4: miles away.
Speaker 1: There's more than a few animals there.
Speaker 4: Oh, yes, we have. Let us see now, we have
Speaker 4: three cats and four dogs, four hens and five.
Speaker 1: Goats, and aparture in a pear tree.
Speaker 4: Something like that. I jokingly call it the menagerie. Sometimes
Speaker 4: we milk the goats and Sunny processes the milk, and
Speaker 4: Sunny makes wonderful goats cheese, three different types of goat cheese.
Speaker 4: So we also have what they call a polytunnel, which
Speaker 4: is the equivalent of a greenhouse, where we grow around vegetables.
Speaker 4: So when people come to us, we feed them on
Speaker 4: an organic food and organic free range of eggs, and
Speaker 4: they have milk and cheese, homemade goat cheese, organic goat cheese.
Speaker 1: And do you teach them meditation yoga?
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, we share with them. We don't conduct therapies
Speaker 4: as such. But what happens is that when they come
Speaker 4: at first, they will tell us what has happened to them,
Speaker 4: They release the things they need to release, and then
Speaker 4: we can share with them how we dealt with the
Speaker 4: issues that are causing them problems and open the way
Speaker 4: for them to the realization that actually they're more than
Speaker 4: just an ex honery. They're not just a person who's
Speaker 4: been in prison. They're more than that. The fact that
Speaker 4: they were wrongfully in prison is just an episode in
Speaker 4: their life, and it's an episode they can put behind
Speaker 4: them now. It always travels with them, but they don't
Speaker 4: have to live in the past, and they have an
Speaker 4: opportunity of realizing them themselves as full human beings. And
Speaker 4: we bring them out and socialize with our friends, and
Speaker 4: we go to events and to the theater, and so
Speaker 4: they get a chance to mingle with people as ordinary people.
Speaker 1: It's so inspiring to me and to many of us
Speaker 1: who work in the innocence movement that a very large
Speaker 1: percentage of xuarees are driven to help others who have
Speaker 1: gone through a similar ordeal. And so it's I think
Speaker 1: the most powerful thing I've witnessed, and I was asked
Speaker 1: this question yesterday, is the coming together of xenaies and
Speaker 1: the sharing of the experiences and the healing that comes
Speaker 1: from that and from being with others who are the
Speaker 1: only people alive who can possibly begin to understand what
Speaker 1: you've been through. Even though every situation is unique and
Speaker 1: every story is unique, but still the experience is more
Speaker 1: similar than not. And it's so wonderfully inspiring to hear
Speaker 1: the stories, both of your stories and the fact that
Speaker 1: they're now one, and what you've done and how you've
Speaker 1: turned this unimaginable set of circumstances into such a force
Speaker 1: for positivity and change and good is something that I
Speaker 1: think everyone who's listening and so many others are going
Speaker 1: to be affected by, and it's inspiring me and so
Speaker 1: many others to want to do more and help more,
Speaker 1: or as many as we possibly can. I should say
Speaker 1: before we have to wrap this up, if any of
Speaker 1: you are listening now and haven't heard the Sunny Jacob's episode,
Speaker 1: I strongly encourage everyone to check out the Sunny Jacob's episode.
Speaker 1: But before we sign off, Peter, are there any last
Speaker 1: words that you'd like to share with the audience?
Speaker 4: Learn not to carry anger. Anger is a national natural phenomenon.
Speaker 4: We get angry, I get angry, everybody gets angry, but
Speaker 4: don't hold it. Don't hold it. Don't hate because hate
Speaker 4: consumes the hater and anger consumes the angry person that
Speaker 4: doesn't consume the person you're angry against, and it damage
Speaker 4: your held. Let it go and try and be into
Speaker 4: spirit of forgiveness, because that's where your real strength is.
Speaker 4: Our real strength is in the fact that we decided
Speaker 4: we would move towards healing and forgiveness and echo of
Speaker 4: all those negative emotions. And I wish everyone the best.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis,
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 1: all three platforms. You can also follow me on both
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason plom Raeful Conviction is
Speaker 1: a product action of Lava for Good Podcasts and association
Speaker 1: with Signal Company Number one