Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, I interviewed Valentino Dixon. He had been
Speaker 1: out of prison for just twenty nine days after serving
Speaker 1: almost three decades for a crime they knew he didn't
Speaker 1: commit from the first moment. There was no need to
Speaker 1: prosecute him. There was no need to arrest him. He
Speaker 1: had alibis. I mean, it's crazy. So the good news
Speaker 1: is some incredible things have been happening for Valentino since
Speaker 1: he got out and since he recorded his episode of
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conpiction that you're about to hear. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: he had his first art show, his solo art show
Speaker 1: in New York City, and since then it's taken off.
Speaker 1: He was a guest of the PGA at the Masters Championship,
Speaker 1: where he famously told Tiger Woods in the Butler cabin
Speaker 1: he said, you're gonna win, and you know what happened.
Speaker 1: He won. The pictures from that trip where extraordinary. Valentino
Speaker 1: has traveled the world, been to golf courses all over
Speaker 1: the place. He's become a favorite among the top PGA players,
Speaker 1: and his art has been selling like hotcakes. I hope
Speaker 1: you get a chance to check it out. He's also
Speaker 1: got a line of greeting cards. That's extraordinary. And Valentino
Speaker 1: is just like a beacon of light. I mean, this guy,
Speaker 1: he drops some knowledge on this episode that is just
Speaker 1: like verbal gold and spiritual gold. He is an extraordinary,
Speaker 1: extraordinary man. I'm honored to be presenting to you my
Speaker 1: episode of Wrongful Conviction with Valentino Dixon.
Speaker 2: I've never been in trouble in my life. I didn't
Speaker 2: even have a Perkin ticket, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what was gonna happen, but I do
Speaker 3: know that everything was stacked against me. Everything everything, This
Speaker 3: isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I know
Speaker 3: I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do with this.
Speaker 3: How is this possible?
Speaker 4: I grew up trusting the systems. I've grew up believing
Speaker 4: that every human being should do the right thing. And
Speaker 4: that's why, even though I knew I was dealing with
Speaker 4: core rough people, I wasn't going to break anyone to
Speaker 4: get me out of prison because I wouldn't live with
Speaker 4: the fact that I braved my way out of my
Speaker 4: wife's death.
Speaker 5: I'm not innocent. Too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I
Speaker 5: prove my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me.
Speaker 1: Our system.
Speaker 2: Since I've been out ten years, it has come a
Speaker 2: little ways, but it's still broken.
Speaker 4: I totally lost trust in humanity after what's happened to it.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrong for Conviction. I am extremely excited
Speaker 1: today to have somebody who I admire greatly, Valentino Dixon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Valentino was released from prison declared actually innocent twenty nine
Speaker 1: days ago, after having been in since nineteen ninety one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we are in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 5: That's right, that's what they tell me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's a long long time.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, it is.
Speaker 1: For crime that not only didn't you commit, but a
Speaker 1: crime that everybody knew you didn't commit from day one,
Speaker 1: because of the simple fact that the actual killer confessed
Speaker 1: on video.
Speaker 5: And here two days after I was arrested.
Speaker 1: Right, so you know, and I hear myself say that,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, Okay, that can't be. I mean, that
Speaker 1: doesn't make any logical sense our system, and that wasn't
Speaker 1: the only time you confessed. But let's go back. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a murder case, seventy witnesses. It would
Speaker 1: seem impossible for this to have happened in a situation
Speaker 1: like this one. This was not an isolated thing on
Speaker 1: a dutchy road somewhere. This was a crowded it was
Speaker 1: a summer night in Buffalo, New York East Buffalo, right, yep.
Speaker 1: And I guess let's go right to it because it's
Speaker 1: such an incredible story and there's so much to it
Speaker 1: as we get to the way that you got out
Speaker 1: is as extraordinary as it is unique, because you basically
Speaker 1: drew yourself out of prison with colored pencils, I mean,
Speaker 1: and a lot of help from a lot of different people,
Speaker 1: including some incredible, incredible students at Georgetown University. And I
Speaker 1: have a very strong connection there in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: So I'm super excited to be able to meet you
Speaker 1: and share this experience in person and not behind walls.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to that, faithful, What was morning, right?
Speaker 1: It was early in the morning, one in the morning
Speaker 1: on August tenth, nineteen ninety one. Take our audience into
Speaker 1: you were nearby. But I don't, I mean, I know
Speaker 1: the story, but I want to hear it in your words.
Speaker 5: Well, I was hanging out with some friends, and before
Speaker 5: I came on the scene, some threats had been made, okay,
Speaker 5: but it wasn't my issue, so I didn't think a
Speaker 5: whole lot of it. You know, where I come from,
Speaker 5: these type of things happen all the time. No, the
Speaker 5: threats were made, I was aware of it. I went
Speaker 5: inside the store to get a beer. I'm reaching in
Speaker 5: the cooler and I hear pop pop. So instead of
Speaker 5: standing in the store, I run out of the store.
Speaker 1: So you knew what it was right away.
Speaker 5: Of course, I've heard gunfire before. I come from the
Speaker 5: worst parts of Buffalo, New York. I mean, very violent area,
Speaker 5: drug infested area, so you know, gunfire wasn't something that
Speaker 5: was new to me. You know. So I'm in the store,
Speaker 5: reaching to get a beer out and I hear the
Speaker 5: pop pop. The only thing that come in my mind
Speaker 5: is that whatever they was talking about just happened. So
Speaker 5: instead of standing in the store, I ran out of
Speaker 5: the store to be nosy or whatever, young and stupid,
Speaker 5: and two or three guys they you know, engaging in
Speaker 5: a gunfight, you know, So I run around the gunfight
Speaker 5: to get to my car, jumps in my car and
Speaker 5: pulls off. Uh shortly thereafter and pulled over, uh, handcuffed,
Speaker 5: And at the time they told me that they wanted
Speaker 5: to just interview me. Okay, so I just figured that,
Speaker 5: uh maybe they figured I was a witness and uh
Speaker 5: maybe I had some information. A couple hours later, they
Speaker 5: charged me with murder, second degree murder, uh, two assaults
Speaker 5: cause four people were shot. So in my mind, there's
Speaker 5: no way that you know, uh, I'm gonna stay in
Speaker 5: jail for this, because there was too many people out there,
Speaker 5: and a lot of people out there knew me, you know,
Speaker 5: they knew my face. You know, when you have sixty
Speaker 5: seventy eighty people out there, Uh, there's no way that
Speaker 5: they can get this wrong. Anyway. The guy that committed
Speaker 5: his crime felt bad about what happened, you know, and
Speaker 5: the guy that he killed, they actually found his gun
Speaker 5: at the scene of the crime, you know, but the
Speaker 5: prosecutor's office said that the gun played no part in
Speaker 5: the crime.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, okay, hold on, let's go back to
Speaker 1: this for a second. So, first of all, you're twenty
Speaker 1: one years old at this time, and four people get shot,
Speaker 1: right Toriano Jackson was killed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and his brother was shot, and Mariol Jarman was
Speaker 5: shot because Tory shot Mario before this guy Lamore ran
Speaker 5: up and shot Tory and Aaron. You know, he came
Speaker 5: to Mario's defense.
Speaker 1: Got it and he said, I saw the video where
Speaker 1: he said that he couldn't control the weapon and it
Speaker 1: just well automatic weapon.
Speaker 5: Yeah, from where when I ran down the street towards
Speaker 5: my car, I actually turned around and the shooting was
Speaker 5: still going on. You know, Lamore was doing the ball
Speaker 5: of the shooting at the time. You know, I could
Speaker 5: see it from where I was. You know. When the
Speaker 5: police you know, pulled me over, of course, I said
Speaker 5: I didn't know who did the shooting. You know, it's
Speaker 5: like a cold thing, you know, that's not my business.
Speaker 5: And they pretty much told me that if I didn't
Speaker 5: tell them who did the shooting, that I was going
Speaker 5: down for the shooting. Not at the time, because I
Speaker 5: knew it was seventy eighty witnesses. All I need to
Speaker 5: do is keep my mouth shut and I'm going home
Speaker 5: because it's the other people that's gonna tell them what happened.
Speaker 5: You know, you can't get this wrong. But at the
Speaker 5: end of the day, after Lamar confessed, they told him
Speaker 5: to leave the police station. They refused to hold him.
Speaker 5: Eight or nine witnesses came forth and told the police
Speaker 5: I didn't do the shooting. They disregarded all of them.
Speaker 5: I found myself going to trial ten months later.
Speaker 1: So you were in jail for these ten months waiting
Speaker 1: no bail, they said, Nobel, you were held with out bail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even if it had been bailed, the probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to bail out, regardless wealthy family or anything
Speaker 1: like that. I had a public defender, public defender. And
Speaker 1: you were the only person arrested for this.
Speaker 5: I was the only person arrested.
Speaker 1: And did they test you for the residue?
Speaker 5: They took my clothes, they took my car. They told me,
Speaker 5: if I fire the weapon and they would know, there's
Speaker 5: no way I would have been able to wipe off
Speaker 5: that much gum part of the residues. This is what
Speaker 5: they told me.
Speaker 1: Of course, I were right right. It was only minutes
Speaker 1: later when you got pulled over.
Speaker 5: So I just knew once they took this stuff to
Speaker 5: the lab or whatever they were going to do with it,
Speaker 5: that I would be okay, you know. But even then,
Speaker 5: with all of those witnesses. You know, I didn't ever
Speaker 5: expect for this guy to come and confessed. You know,
Speaker 5: that was something that people don't do. You know, he
Speaker 5: came and confessed, and they kicked him out of the
Speaker 5: police station said, you know, like get out of here.
Speaker 5: We don't believe you. Okay, that's crazy, you know, it's
Speaker 5: it's you can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 1: But valancing what I mean, what could have You've had
Speaker 1: twenty almost thirty years to think about this, right, the
Speaker 1: better part of three decades to.
Speaker 5: Think about this.
Speaker 1: What could they possibly have been thinking if they had
Speaker 1: the actual killer.
Speaker 5: First of all, it was ego, you know, when you
Speaker 5: have eagles and careers on the line, you know, and
Speaker 5: you don't want to admit that you made a mistake.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm a young black guy from the hood
Speaker 5: with no money. We don't even have to say that
Speaker 5: we made a mistake here. We're just going to go
Speaker 5: through this process and convict him.
Speaker 1: But this wasn't a particularly high profile can we know that?
Speaker 5: You know, No, it wasn't, you know, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 5: the prosecutor at the time, you know, he was, this
Speaker 5: guy was, you know, criminal. I call him a criminal.
Speaker 5: You know, in fact, he was with the DA's officers
Speaker 5: not saying right now that they fired this guy. You know,
Speaker 5: they fired him, and even when I was released, these
Speaker 5: facts never came out. They kicked him out of the office.
Speaker 5: You know, he even admitted that, you know, he could
Speaker 5: have made a mistake in my case six seven years ago,
Speaker 5: that he's only human. But I still sat in prison.
Speaker 5: You know, it's just a matter of like, how do
Speaker 5: you like when you see these guys with women to
Speaker 5: ten twenty thirty forty years and maybe thirty years and
Speaker 5: or wrongful conviction? You say, how did it get to
Speaker 5: this point? And it got to this point because nobody
Speaker 5: wants to take responsibility and you know, and I guess
Speaker 5: they look at it as we'll left the next judge
Speaker 5: and the next prosecutor fix it, and next thing, you know,
Speaker 5: you have ten twenty thirty years in when the evidence
Speaker 5: existed from day one. Right.
Speaker 1: But going back, the thing about your case that's so
Speaker 1: maddening and confusing and just inexplicable.
Speaker 5: Don't try to don't try to figure it out, Jason.
Speaker 5: There's no there's no way to there's nothing to figure
Speaker 5: out here. This is this is our system, and if
Speaker 5: you come up against a bad prosecutor or a couple
Speaker 5: of bad cops, then this is what's gonna happen. People
Speaker 5: are human beings, and this you know, you have some
Speaker 5: bad apples in the system.
Speaker 1: I'm right with you, and I'm picking up what you're
Speaker 1: putting down. But having been doing this for twenty five
Speaker 1: years now and having been we we're in seven seasons
Speaker 1: of the show, so we've gotten in real granular tell
Speaker 1: with so many people who are wrong for the convicted,
Speaker 1: like yourself. And you know, just when I think I've
Speaker 1: heard every story, and of course somebody like you comes
Speaker 1: along and I'm like, oh, I've never heard anything like
Speaker 1: that before. Because in this case, the one thing that
Speaker 1: I'm focusing on right now is the idea that they
Speaker 1: didn't have to worry about being mistaken, because it would
Speaker 1: have been it wouldn't even made the twentieth page of
Speaker 1: the newspaper. They would have just exchanged you for Lamar.
Speaker 1: It was the actual killer, right and they would have
Speaker 1: kept him moving. They would have had a rightful conviction,
Speaker 1: and then nobody else would have got shot. And we
Speaker 1: know that's exactly what did happen till we'll get to.
Speaker 5: That well, let me just say this, I'm a stronger
Speaker 5: believer in God, and I have a strong faith, you know,
Speaker 5: and I believe that he had a plan for me,
Speaker 5: you know, And that was my way of rationalizing what
Speaker 5: happened here and keeping my sanity, you know, because you know,
Speaker 5: prison is designed to break the spirit. So I knew
Speaker 5: that guy had a plan for me, and he kept
Speaker 5: me strong, you know. He you know, allowed me to
Speaker 5: learn a lot, read a lot, educate myself elf, you know.
Speaker 5: And that's I would like to, you know, pretty much
Speaker 5: leave it there, you know, when it comes to trying
Speaker 5: to figure out why did this happened?
Speaker 1: The I'm gonna say.
Speaker 5: I mean, you can go on and on. I'm just
Speaker 5: saying in my mind, you know, I have to keep
Speaker 5: it as simple as possible to keep my sanity, you know,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean, it was like the worst nightmare
Speaker 5: in the world, you know, and you can't even make
Speaker 5: a night you can't even you can't even put a
Speaker 5: script together and make a nightmare out of this thing,
Speaker 5: like it's I mean, even when I went to trial,
Speaker 5: I could have been acquitted. Had my lawyer call the
Speaker 5: witnesses that he promised the jury he would call.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I want to get to now, because
Speaker 1: your case, as much as it has some extremely unique aspects,
Speaker 1: it also has some some characteristics that we see over
Speaker 1: and over again and wrong for conviction cases. And one
Speaker 1: of them was the fact that you were represented by
Speaker 1: a grossly incompetent public defender. And I'm somebody who has
Speaker 1: a ton of respect for public defenders. In fact, if
Speaker 1: anyone who can see that movie Gideon's Promise, you come
Speaker 1: out of that and you watch it and you go, man,
Speaker 1: it's a noble profession. And there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there busting their ass for very little money on
Speaker 1: many hopeless cases. But they believe and they want to
Speaker 1: do the right thing. But there's a lot of public
Speaker 1: defenders who are out there and you can't even believe
Speaker 1: they got out of law school or pass the bar.
Speaker 1: I don't even understand. And you're and you got one
Speaker 1: of those guys. You hit the reverse lottery on that one.
Speaker 5: I mean, they say this before I even started trial.
Speaker 5: You know, I was young, but I knew something was wrong.
Speaker 5: You know, I actually accused him of conspiring with the
Speaker 5: prosecutor at the time, And this is on the trial record,
Speaker 5: you know. And the judge told me too that I
Speaker 5: should be happy to have such a lawyer and that
Speaker 5: we were proceeding forward with the trial. So it's not
Speaker 5: like twenty seven years later I'm stating that you know
Speaker 5: this happened to me. No, this is something that I
Speaker 5: addressed the court from day one.
Speaker 1: So you as a young man with no experience in
Speaker 1: criminal justice, and no, you didn't have a higher education
Speaker 1: like that year. But and from being inside jail, you
Speaker 1: were still able to ascertain or to surmise that this
Speaker 1: guy was not your friend and was not going to
Speaker 1: do you any good, right, because and that's what a
Speaker 1: devastating thing that is too, because here you have the
Speaker 1: one person who's supposed to be your protector and you
Speaker 1: can't even trust them.
Speaker 5: No, well, it's called common sense, you know. Common sense
Speaker 5: is could be worth all the money in the world,
Speaker 5: you know, if you use it at the right moment,
Speaker 5: you know. So he hadn't came to visit me but
Speaker 5: one time for maybe fifteen to twenty minutes. During the
Speaker 5: whole entire time that he represented me, he hadn't interviewed
Speaker 5: ninety percent of the witnesses in the case. So I
Speaker 5: knew something was wrong there, you know, and I told
Speaker 5: the judge. You know, the judge disregarded it, you know,
Speaker 5: not only that he you know, he promised at In fact,
Speaker 5: he didn't even give an opening argument. And what lawyer
Speaker 5: doesn't give an opening argument?
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm trying to envision that too. So first
Speaker 1: of all, let's just get back to fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: minutes in the course of ten months, and your life
Speaker 1: is at stake, and that's all the time he's got
Speaker 1: for you. Now, I know he's busy, he's got a
Speaker 1: lot of lower cases whatever, But have that many murder cases, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure a lot of the cases were more
Speaker 1: minor in terms of the you know, charges, and you
Speaker 1: would hope that somebody that came would prioritize a situation
Speaker 1: like yours. That's the most serious case that there is.
Speaker 1: But okay, short of a death penalty case. But okay, so.
Speaker 5: Let me just say this, Jason. You know, and all
Speaker 5: professions you have bad people. You know, you have good doctors,
Speaker 5: you have bad doctors. You know, have good lawyers and
Speaker 5: bad lawyers. Good judge is a bad Joe. And if
Speaker 5: you get if you end up with one of those
Speaker 5: types of people, then it could be disastrous. It can
Speaker 5: mean your life. And this is just the reality here.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's well said, but this is I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to think for me that there's the same
Speaker 1: percentage of doctors. Right, And there's that big hit podcast
Speaker 1: out now, doctor Death, about a doctor who is deliberately
Speaker 1: killing his patients right, right, but or maiming them or whatever.
Speaker 1: Is horrible, But I got to believe those are outliers,
Speaker 1: and most doctors are doing the right thing, yeah, and
Speaker 1: actually probably helping their patients, you know, more than they're
Speaker 1: hurting them. And most lawyers are too. But there's there's
Speaker 1: too many of these stories about these public defenders who
Speaker 1: are just not interested or they're asleep, or they're high,
Speaker 1: or they're whatever, and then they get this barred, but
Speaker 1: it's too late and it doesn't matter. I think there
Speaker 1: should be an automatic mechanism that if a defense lawyer
Speaker 1: gets this barred, there are cases in which they in
Speaker 1: which they failed so miserably, should get a fresh luck.
Speaker 1: But that's another story for another day. That's not gonna
Speaker 1: happen anytime soon, however, So your attorney, I don't even
Speaker 1: know if you want to say his name, but it's
Speaker 1: up to you. But he didn't even deliver an opening statement.
Speaker 5: Didn't deliver an opening statement, you know. But he promised
Speaker 5: the jury during jury selection that he would call witnesses
Speaker 5: that would clear me. He says, I'm gonna call witnesses
Speaker 5: that's going to tell you that Valentino Dixon didn't do
Speaker 5: this shooting. The problem is is that not only did
Speaker 5: he not give opening he didn't call any witnesses, okay,
Speaker 5: And he asked the judge for advice on what he
Speaker 5: should tell the jury doing his closing summation because they
Speaker 5: excuse the jury. So the judge, he asked. The judge said,
Speaker 5: your honor, you know I did promise the jury doing
Speaker 5: jury selection that I would call witnesses that would clear Valentino.
Speaker 5: I didn't call any. What should I do? What should
Speaker 5: I tell the jury during my closing summation? On the record,
Speaker 5: the judge says, I don't know what you should do.
Speaker 5: That's not my responsibility. I can't help you on that.
Speaker 5: The same judge told me I received a fair trial
Speaker 5: when we filed emotions some years later to get my
Speaker 5: conviction overturned.
Speaker 1: Okay. So just so we're clear, no opening statement, no witnesses.
Speaker 5: No, it's not one. That one. And not only that,
Speaker 5: he didn't introduce one exhibit during the trial. So he
Speaker 5: didn't introduce not one exhibit during the trial. And there
Speaker 5: was plenty of statements that he could have used to
Speaker 5: impeach the prosecuted witnesses because it was clear that they
Speaker 5: were lying, that they were fabricating the story that they
Speaker 5: gave on the stand, and he could have used their
Speaker 5: prior statements, the statements that where they said they didn't
Speaker 5: know who the shooter was then came the trial and
Speaker 5: said that I was a shooter. He didn't used those
Speaker 5: so during deliberations, the jury couldn't even see those previous
Speaker 5: statements because the lewer never put not one single exhibit
Speaker 5: or statement into evidence.
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but if I was on
Speaker 1: the jury, I probably would have convicted you two.
Speaker 5: Well, no, listen to this. Years later, what I found
Speaker 5: out through the Buffalo News paper they wouldn't interview the
Speaker 5: jury foreman. Ten years later and they says, well, we're
Speaker 5: looking into this case, you know, can you tell me
Speaker 5: what happened? The jury foreman says that, and I have
Speaker 5: the statement he says that after I was convicted, he
Speaker 5: went to the judge's chambers and asked the judge could
Speaker 5: he speak with them. The judge allowed him to come in.
Speaker 5: He says, Jre, honor, I don't feel right here or
Speaker 5: something's not right here. Why didn't the lawyer call the
Speaker 5: witnesses that he promised. The judge tells the jury foreman
Speaker 5: to go home, sleep well, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Wow, go home, sleep well, don't worry about it. And now,
Speaker 1: by the way, the jury foreman was a little late too,
Speaker 1: write I mean you know, I mean I respect him.
Speaker 5: Ten years later, ten years after Yeah, but the oh.
Speaker 1: Wait, it was ten years after they went to see
Speaker 1: the judge.
Speaker 5: No, he went to see the judge right after the verdict.
Speaker 5: But we didn't find out until ten years later that
Speaker 5: this happened because nobody reveals this.
Speaker 1: But also, he was late, That's what I'm saying. He
Speaker 1: had a chance to actually do something in the jury
Speaker 1: room that would have actually been meaningful as opposed to
Speaker 1: doing as opposed to doing what was convenient.
Speaker 5: Well, no, listen to this. The first vote was a
Speaker 5: ninety three not guilty. Wow. He says that the sheriff
Speaker 5: deputy knocked on the door and says, hey, you guys
Speaker 5: got to come back with a verdict within thirty minutes
Speaker 5: or we're going to hold you or whatever. And he
Speaker 5: says a particular woman. He kept saying that he just
Speaker 5: got to find this guy guilty. I want to go home,
Speaker 5: And so everybody swayed her vote, and this is how
Speaker 5: they find the finding me guilty.
Speaker 1: That's that's really crazy though, that the three were able
Speaker 1: to convince them.
Speaker 5: Ninety three ninety three not guilty.
Speaker 1: This was the first vote.
Speaker 5: Yeah, without the lawyer calling any witnesses.
Speaker 1: Or anything, right and anything. And what about the videotape
Speaker 1: of did you were you aware that there was a video.
Speaker 5: Of course, of course I was aware that we had
Speaker 5: the videotape. The lawyer never used that trial, He never
Speaker 5: the jury never even knew another person confessed in his crime.
Speaker 5: They kept that a freakway from.
Speaker 1: The Okay, I'm not even right, I can't.
Speaker 5: Even jury never knew that La mor scut confessed. We
Speaker 5: had the videotape. The lawyer didn't use it. He didn't
Speaker 5: even put it before the jury. He didn't bring it
Speaker 5: to your attention at all.
Speaker 1: Did you say to him at the time. Where's the video? Why?
Speaker 5: Of course, was when the judge told me to sit.
Speaker 1: Down, And what did he say to you, lawyer?
Speaker 5: He said that we didn't need to present this stuff
Speaker 5: because they didn't have a case against us. I mean,
Speaker 5: he said they didn't have a strong enough case. So
Speaker 5: why we don't need to call in these witnesses? They
Speaker 5: didn't have a case here?
Speaker 1: But what is that st doesn't explain the video? The
Speaker 1: videotape I watched it an.
Speaker 5: That would have made all the difference in the world.
Speaker 5: If the jury would have knew that somebody else confessed
Speaker 5: that would I would have walked out of there.
Speaker 1: But so did you sit there and say to him, look,
Speaker 1: just play the video.
Speaker 5: I went there and I told him. I asked him,
Speaker 5: was he working with the prosecutor? You know? I was
Speaker 5: so angry and there was nothing I could do. I
Speaker 5: was powerless.
Speaker 1: You couldn't get the.
Speaker 5: Idea, couldn't The judge told me, no, this is all
Speaker 5: on the trial record. It's right there before my trial
Speaker 5: even start. Then he turns around and proves me right.
Speaker 5: You know, that's it that he was you know, up
Speaker 5: to no good. I knew something was wrong, you know,
Speaker 5: and he actually proved me right. He didn't call it
Speaker 5: any wits that didn't present the confession. Jury never knew LAMR.
Speaker 5: Scott confessed.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is so crazy. On so many it's criminal.
Speaker 5: It's criminal.
Speaker 1: And then and then Lamar Scott goes out and kills
Speaker 1: somebody else and actually says again on the video listen,
Speaker 1: that guy never would have had to die it got
Speaker 1: in the first place. I mean, yeah, that's not too
Speaker 1: many cases like this where somebody, the actual killer comes
Speaker 1: clean so early. Sometimes years and years later, they have
Speaker 1: a religious awakening or a spiritual or whatever they do.
Speaker 1: They tell somebody, you know, just by acting.
Speaker 5: Well, his reason, his reasoning was, is that the deceased
Speaker 5: had a weapon. Okay, the deceased shot a guy named
Speaker 5: Mario Jarmon the more ran to his defense, Okay, and
Speaker 5: this is what he told them that you know, I
Speaker 5: lost control of the gun, but it was self defense.
Speaker 5: I was running to my friend's defense, you know, like
Speaker 5: it's this, you know, this is this is the whole
Speaker 5: level of madness. But I've lived through it, you know,
Speaker 5: I've survived the madness. And here we are today, so and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and amen to that. So meanwhile, the jury goes out.
Speaker 1: How long did they deliberate?
Speaker 5: I believe about nine or ten hours.
Speaker 1: And then they come back in. Did you have any
Speaker 1: hope did you?
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I still had hope that I would be acquitted,
Speaker 5: of course, you know, and they read divertedt you know,
Speaker 5: I blanked out. Basically, the family, the whole court was
Speaker 5: there for me, and they started screaming. You know, it's
Speaker 5: just a sad scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I heard you describe it and say that you
Speaker 1: felt like you were in space.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Just at that point, my mind was just not
Speaker 5: even here on earth.
Speaker 1: No, because basically, they gave you a life sentence a
Speaker 1: fro thirty nine years when you're twenty one years old,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, they might as well give you
Speaker 1: a life sentence point. So okay, So then you go
Speaker 1: off and you're taking the prison and you're filing these
Speaker 1: appeals and everything else.
Speaker 5: Everything's denied over and over. Keep fighting, know. I started
Speaker 5: working on my own case, did a lot of research,
Speaker 5: learned how to write, you know, how to put my
Speaker 5: facts together, which was very helpful to even the Georgetown
Speaker 5: students when they got on board. You know that I
Speaker 5: had already had all the facts laid out the exhibits
Speaker 5: to support the facts. So it was, you know, it
Speaker 5: was the process was easier.
Speaker 1: For them, and you were in Attica, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, twenty four years, but the twenty seven years, twenty
Speaker 5: four years was spending Attica.
Speaker 1: Can you describe that because Attica is of course a
Speaker 1: notorious prison where they had that one of the most
Speaker 1: devastating incidents of riot with dozens and dozens people killed,
Speaker 1: and that goes back to the seventies, I think.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but seventy one.
Speaker 1: Can you describe for the audience what that was like?
Speaker 5: Well, when you know, when I got there, the treatment
Speaker 5: was horrible. Stay that way, you know, and they never
Speaker 5: did fire even after the riots. They never did change
Speaker 5: the mentality or the attitude of the officers. And to
Speaker 5: this day, I spoke to some guys yesterday that's in there.
Speaker 5: They called me on the phone. You know. Every day
Speaker 5: it's harassment, you know, it's mistreatment going on there every day,
Speaker 5: and nobody would do anything about it. They're not held accountable,
Speaker 5: you know, And so I feel for them.
Speaker 1: And were you subjected to that same treatment.
Speaker 5: I had some problems, you know, but I carried myself
Speaker 5: a certain way where because I knew my situation that
Speaker 5: I had to be really really smart. I was there,
Speaker 5: but I wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Put it that way, and that leads to a really
Speaker 1: interesting and fascinating part of your story, which is that
Speaker 1: you found some sort of escape from this artwork to
Speaker 1: art right, and and it's it's quite remarkable because we'll
Speaker 1: tell the story. I mean, you began drawing.
Speaker 5: I started drawing when I was about three years old. Okay.
Speaker 5: I went to perform in arts high school for drawing,
Speaker 5: and when I was arrested, I didn't draw for seven
Speaker 5: years straight. I didn't touch a pencil or a paintbrush
Speaker 5: or anything. I didn't have. My spirit was it was dead,
Speaker 5: you know. I didn't have to drive or any of
Speaker 5: that stuff. You know. Around the seventh year of being
Speaker 5: in prison, I have an uncle who named Ronnie Bryant.
Speaker 5: He sent me some our supplies. He begged me to
Speaker 5: start drawing again, you know, and even then I kept saying, no,
Speaker 5: I'm not interested. But eventually he won. He you know,
Speaker 5: he won that battle and I started drawing. And it
Speaker 5: was nineteen ninety seven, and so for the for the
Speaker 5: next twenty years, I would draw every day, up to
Speaker 5: ten hours a day, you know, and none stop. I
Speaker 5: didn't take off three hundred and sixty five days a year,
Speaker 5: and it invigorated my spirit, you know, it gave me hope.
Speaker 5: And then when a golf digest came along, you know,
Speaker 5: through the warden, the superintendent of Attica. You know, I
Speaker 5: was known as the artist, and he came by and
Speaker 5: he asked me, would I draw his favorite golf course.
Speaker 5: I never golf before. You know where I'm from. You know,
Speaker 5: we don't golf, you know what I'm saying. So I
Speaker 5: said sure, short of bringing in, I drew the golf
Speaker 5: you know, I think it was a twelfth hole of Augusta,
Speaker 5: and he loved it. My neighbor, a guy named Adam Roberts.
Speaker 5: He says, hey, you need to draw some more golf
Speaker 5: course scenes. I said, Adam, I'm never going to golf.
Speaker 5: I've never golfed and I don't know anything about the game.
Speaker 5: He went and brought me some old golf died just magazines.
Speaker 5: So I started going through him. I started, you know,
Speaker 5: looking at the landscaping of everything. Basically, if you take
Speaker 5: the poll out, you know, all golf courses is just
Speaker 5: a beautiful landscape, you know. So I said, you know,
Speaker 5: what Let me give it a try. You know. I
Speaker 5: started drawing golf courses every day for the next six
Speaker 5: or seven months, and then I took a couple of
Speaker 5: them and I sent them to the Golf Dieges magazine
Speaker 5: with a letter, and that started everything going on that level.
Speaker 5: You know, the writer Max Aller decided that he wanted
Speaker 5: to come visit me, and then he did a three
Speaker 5: page article in July twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is so remarkable. I mean then it's
Speaker 1: interesting too, because you're drawing three dimensional yeah, pictures of
Speaker 1: courses that you were seeing in two dimensions right, right, right,
Speaker 1: I mean because you could only see it in the magazine, right,
Speaker 1: So you're taking life, a photograph of the real life,
Speaker 1: and turning it back into a picture. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: a very interesting process.
Speaker 5: Let me say to Jason, after a while, I didn't
Speaker 5: even need to pick. I can just make up a
Speaker 5: course on my own. I didn't need the pictures anymore.
Speaker 1: And and we know now that it's it's sort of
Speaker 1: incredible that you're heading out to the West Coast with.
Speaker 5: Tomorrow tomorrow the Pebble Beach, go to beach.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, that's really now that I'm talking about
Speaker 1: life imitating art. That's life imitating art, for sure.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 1: But but so back to the story. So because this
Speaker 1: that we'll get to the ending part at the end,
Speaker 1: which is just an incredible, incredible story to be able
Speaker 1: to tell. But so now about six years ago, golf
Speaker 1: Diye just runs the story. But the next well, the really,
Speaker 1: the the real, the real turning point or tipping point
Speaker 1: in your whole situation came with a group of students
Speaker 1: of all Things or Georgetown, right. And it's such a
Speaker 1: personal thing to me because I've been to Georgetown and
Speaker 1: spoken to that class actually Vice News Peace on on
Speaker 1: the Wrong fu Conection podcasts and they filled me talking
Speaker 1: to the kids at Georgetown, and of course Marty Tankleff,
Speaker 1: who was one of the professors, there's a dear friend
Speaker 1: of mine, his Xgnery, And I'm a sponsor of the class.
Speaker 1: So there's so many interesting connections here that are you know,
Speaker 1: it's very serendipitous. But how did that happen? How did
Speaker 1: you first find out that these Georgetown kids were when
Speaker 1: you must have I mean, it must have thought, but
Speaker 1: these are kids, I mean, how can they help me know?
Speaker 1: There are undergraduate students.
Speaker 5: Well, Marty worked at a firm as a peer illegal
Speaker 5: when he got out. I'm not going to say the
Speaker 5: name of the firm, but at some point he left
Speaker 5: the firm and he had remembered me because he had
Speaker 5: read a lot of my files.
Speaker 1: So you were in prison with Marty.
Speaker 5: No, oh, no, Marty was. When Marty got out, he
Speaker 5: worked as a peer legal at a firm in New
Speaker 5: York City who had took my case. They took my case. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they took my case, but they didn't follow anything. They
Speaker 5: pretty much sat on the case when they took it.
Speaker 5: And after Marty left that firm, he always, you know,
Speaker 5: just kept me in the back of his head because
Speaker 5: he had read my file. And even though the lures
Speaker 5: at that firm hadn't moved to foul anything, Marty remembered me.
Speaker 5: And once he went to Georgetown, I believe he presented
Speaker 5: my story to you and the students.
Speaker 1: Right when I was there, they were talking about you,
Speaker 1: for sure, and it was I mean, I got the
Speaker 1: sense talking to those kids like there's something special going
Speaker 1: on here. These kids are so smart, right, so driven.
Speaker 1: I hope that every college has a class like that,
Speaker 1: because well, I mean, look, at the difference that they
Speaker 1: made You're here. Yeah, so Marty brought it to the kids.
Speaker 1: And then when did you find out that they were
Speaker 1: actually going to create this documentary footage and do this
Speaker 1: whole reinvestigation of your case? O.
Speaker 5: Marty called my mother. Okay, he got her number and
Speaker 5: called her up and he gave her the news. You know,
Speaker 5: when I called home, she told me about it. And
Speaker 5: we had just filed for before that and was denied
Speaker 5: the clemency. So I was really down in a couple
Speaker 5: weeks later, and this is when Marty out of nowhere
Speaker 5: just called my mom up and said, hey, you know,
Speaker 5: we've chosen his case, you know, as a class project,
Speaker 5: and we're going to do a documentary. So that was
Speaker 5: like news that I needed to hear, you know, it was.
Speaker 5: It was the best news I had received, and I
Speaker 5: believe in my whole time since I've been in prison.
Speaker 1: Wow, So you knew you had a feeling, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Because let me just say this, I've had nine different
Speaker 5: lawyers over the twenty year twenty seven year span, nine
Speaker 5: different lawyers. None of them could even get me a
Speaker 5: hearing with all of this evidence that wasn't presented before
Speaker 5: the jury. None of them could even give me a hearing.
Speaker 5: So when Georgetown got involved, you know, it was like
Speaker 5: this is different here. You know, this is different than
Speaker 5: just hiring a lawyer. You have a whole university that's
Speaker 5: supporting this. And whenever I would mention to tell anybody,
Speaker 5: share with anybody that Georgetown was involved, you know you
Speaker 5: could just the response was, oh, now you're going to
Speaker 5: go home now that my family felt the same way.
Speaker 5: I felt the same way. Now it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: And so the kids went and really reinvestigated, right, and
Speaker 1: they found because the difficulty with your case was when
Speaker 1: I'm sure people listening to go, wait a minute. But
Speaker 1: the guy confessed to confess over and over confess.
Speaker 5: He confessed seven times.
Speaker 1: Seven times.
Speaker 5: We have seven different confessions because he wanted to do
Speaker 5: the right thing so bad, and you know, he was
Speaker 5: actually an attica at one time. Did you ever see
Speaker 5: anyone put us in the same yard. We were in
Speaker 5: the same yard. Can you imagine that? No, yeah, the
Speaker 5: same yard. You know, I don't know if it was
Speaker 5: by design, but it was that was crazy within hisself,
Speaker 5: you know, but it worked itself out.
Speaker 1: Did you ever speak to him?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, he well, he approached me and I didn't
Speaker 5: want to talk to him at all. I told him
Speaker 5: to get away from me, you know, and I kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, God sawted my heart up. I don't know,
Speaker 5: maybe a couple months later, I'm always seeing this guy
Speaker 5: walk the yard, you know, I said, you know what,
Speaker 5: you know, he tried to do the right thing, but
Speaker 5: the police didn't want to hear it. So it's really
Speaker 5: not his fault when you look at it. And so
Speaker 5: we became pretty cordial, interesting.
Speaker 1: Hard, right.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm not I'm the type of person that
Speaker 5: you know, I'm very forgiving and I don't harbor stuff.
Speaker 5: I've never been able, you know to I've never been
Speaker 5: the type of person that harbor stuff, you know, bitter, angrier,
Speaker 5: you know, I forgive real fast, you know. But that's
Speaker 5: just who I am.
Speaker 1: So the Georgetown kids get involved, and the difficulty was,
Speaker 1: among other things, is that they couldn't use the confession
Speaker 1: because it wasn't new evidence, right, so they had to
Speaker 1: find new evidence in order to get your case reopened.
Speaker 1: But they did, yes talk about that.
Speaker 5: Well, the new evidence came in, well, when they took
Speaker 5: my car and my clothing, they tested it. But they
Speaker 5: never revealed the results of the testing of the clothing.
Speaker 5: So when Georgetown was asking the DA, like, you know
Speaker 5: what about the testing of his clothing, the DA says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: everything was tested and they came back negative. Oh okay,
Speaker 5: we got a problem now because that sentencing or a trial,
Speaker 5: you never revealed that this happened. You never presented any
Speaker 5: document stating that these items came back negative. So that's
Speaker 5: a clear Brady violation, okay, And there's nowhere around it
Speaker 5: because all of this stuff appeared on the record and
Speaker 5: the videotape too, and the videotape also, Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 1: Video and I was like, oh my god, these kids
Speaker 1: have really done it now. Yeah, right, these are kids,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I can't emphasize that enough. But they're
Speaker 1: great kids. I mean, obviously they're smart kids. They're going
Speaker 1: to Georgetown. You know, there's one thing all Georgetown students
Speaker 1: have in common. They must have some serious mental faculties
Speaker 1: or they would be getting in there in the first place.
Speaker 1: But these kids are really driven, and I can't even
Speaker 1: imagine how good this must feel for them. I Mean,
Speaker 1: I saw them at the on the day that you
Speaker 1: were free and exonerated. And everything, and you know that's
Speaker 1: not an experience any of them will ever forget. I mean,
Speaker 1: I won't even forget it. So and I've been around
Speaker 1: this stuff for so long, so they get a whole
Speaker 1: When did you find out that they had gotten this?
Speaker 1: It's almost like a confession from the prosecutor on the radio.
Speaker 5: Right, That's exactly what it was. And so you know,
Speaker 5: I was in contact with them constantly, you know, I
Speaker 5: would speak to them on the phone maybe a couple
Speaker 5: times a week. So when they revealed it to me,
Speaker 5: you know, I knew that that was the door opener.
Speaker 5: I said, this is it right here, because it opened
Speaker 5: the door for all the evidence that they previously disregarded.
Speaker 5: Now you have to look at this evidence. It's and
Speaker 5: it's the totality right because of this. Yeah, that one
Speaker 5: violation to Brady violation.
Speaker 1: That's and then yeah, and there's no there's no equivocating.
Speaker 1: That's all right, I mean that was that was a quo.
Speaker 5: Not only that, you know, the DA claimed and not
Speaker 5: know about all of these witnesses, yet seven of them
Speaker 5: were on his this witness list before trial. You know,
Speaker 5: he says, like, what witnesses you're talking about? Well, those
Speaker 5: seven witnesses are on your witness list that cleared me
Speaker 5: this crime. They claimed not to know about any witnesses
Speaker 5: that cleared me.
Speaker 1: So you find out that the kids had gotten this right.
Speaker 1: It like smoke called the smoking gun. Bad play on
Speaker 1: words here, but whatever. But then and then and then
Speaker 1: how did things start? They must have started to move
Speaker 1: pretty quickly from now.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, within a matter of months, you know, the
Speaker 5: motion was fouled. Uh that D eight said that they
Speaker 5: wouldn't contestant, you know, But even then, I, you know,
Speaker 5: I was like, I wasn't one hundred percent sure that
Speaker 5: they want to stick to their word. They said to
Speaker 5: follow the motion, we're not contestant. I still didn't trust
Speaker 5: the process, you know. And I didn't trust the process
Speaker 5: all the way up into the day that I got out,
Speaker 5: when I was walking into the courtroom, I didn't trust
Speaker 5: the process. I didn't know if they were going to
Speaker 5: do the right thing or not. You just don't know
Speaker 5: until it actually happens. So it happened.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that, because let's go to We
Speaker 1: talked about the worst moment, but there were a lot
Speaker 1: of them, but the worst moment when you were actually convicted.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the moment when this all finally
Speaker 1: came to an end.
Speaker 5: I had a lot of time to think that day
Speaker 5: because the prison guards would not release me. When the
Speaker 5: judge ordered me release, the prison guard said no, they
Speaker 5: wanted to take me back to the prison to be
Speaker 5: processed out. The judge says, no, he's going to be
Speaker 5: released from the courthouse, So it was a tug of
Speaker 5: wars there, and they had to get a fact from
Speaker 5: Aubury stating that it's okay to release him, and that
Speaker 5: took two hours. So I'm sitting in the room the
Speaker 5: whole time. My mind is just spinning, and I know
Speaker 5: all of my supporters and everybody's outside waiting for me.
Speaker 5: So when I walk out, and I've got to walk
Speaker 5: down these a lot of steps to get to everybody,
Speaker 5: and my legs were so weak, you know, I was
Speaker 5: taking one step at a time because I didn't want
Speaker 5: to fall down the steps, you know, you know, I
Speaker 5: was I almost felt like I wasn't gonna make it down,
Speaker 5: so I was just taking If you look at the video,
Speaker 5: because they have a video of it, you see me
Speaker 5: taking these tiny little steps because I'm aware, I'm conscious
Speaker 5: that you know what, you're gonna fall down these steps
Speaker 5: because your legs is not not your legs right now,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But I made it down there, But you left out
Speaker 1: what I really wanted to hear, which is that moment
Speaker 1: when the judge declared you, oh yeah, I mean, can
Speaker 1: you paint that picture? I know you can paint some pictures.
Speaker 5: Well, let me just say this. I always had faith,
Speaker 5: and I always had to hope that that day would come.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: This is what kept me going is that I didn't know.
Speaker 5: I didn't know when, but I knew it was going
Speaker 5: to happen. I just didn't know when because I was
Speaker 5: never gonna give up. I was on the fight until
Speaker 5: my last breath. So when she declared that, it's like
Speaker 5: I had already lived it before. It's hard to I
Speaker 5: don't know if that makes any sense. It was like
Speaker 5: I had already lived it before in my mind, you know.
Speaker 5: And that's that's what kept me going in prison, is
Speaker 5: that ninety percent of the time I was never there.
Speaker 5: I was on the outside.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I would take myself to France, you know, or I'll
Speaker 5: go fishing, or I would cook a dinner or something
Speaker 5: like that. I was never really there in the prison,
Speaker 5: only maybe ten percent of the time when I had
Speaker 5: to be when there was something going on and I
Speaker 5: needed to know what was going on around me Other
Speaker 5: than that my mind. Whenever I would draw for those
Speaker 5: ten hours, I would put my headphones on, turn the
Speaker 5: music on, and I'm gone and just draw.
Speaker 1: But even still, what was the that that you're in
Speaker 1: the courtroom? I mean, this is the r This is
Speaker 1: actually the opposite of what happened before, right when everybody
Speaker 1: was screaming and crying and everything else, and you were
Speaker 1: in space and blah blah blah. Right, so now you're
Speaker 1: back right in the courtroom and the judge says.
Speaker 5: You know what, I'm gonna be honest with you. I was.
Speaker 5: I was in space then again a different type of space.
Speaker 1: Though, and I'm assuming pandemonium it did?
Speaker 5: It did?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting because I've seen the video and
Speaker 1: anyone who wants to can go online and just google
Speaker 1: your game.
Speaker 5: But let me just say this also, Jason, you know,
Speaker 5: it was a happy day for me and the family
Speaker 5: and everything, but at the same time, I know I
Speaker 5: was leaving behind so many people that's gonna need my help.
Speaker 5: You know, that's gonna need my voice because they don't
Speaker 5: have the avenue, you know, or anybody to advocate for them.
Speaker 5: So at that moment, I was really thinking about them
Speaker 5: and what I needed to say to the media, you know,
Speaker 5: to get the balls rolling as far as is in
Speaker 5: regards to the heart sentencing laws in New York State.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit bittersweet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, because I knew that, you know. Okay,
Speaker 5: now here's a new chapter that's going to begin, you know,
Speaker 5: and it's not a you know, it's it's really not
Speaker 5: about me now, it's about trying to save other people,
Speaker 5: you know, from being wrongfully convicted or or receiving these
Speaker 5: hardt interesting laws you know that's in New York State.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when we talked about that earlier, the
Speaker 1: fact that we are so out of step with the
Speaker 1: rest of the Western world in terms of the way
Speaker 1: we sentenced people, in terms of way we punish people.
Speaker 1: I mean, a great group including my friend Dan Slepion,
Speaker 1: just just toured the prisons in Norway and Germany. They
Speaker 1: have a total of eight solitary confinement so right in
Speaker 1: the whole country Germany, and they don't even use them.
Speaker 5: Right right, we have.
Speaker 1: I think it's eighty to one hundred thousand people in
Speaker 1: solitary solitary confinement. They have eight for the whole time.
Speaker 5: I know, guys that spent nine years in solitary confinement.
Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about family, because your
Speaker 1: daughter's here, an amazing, beautiful woman that she is. I've
Speaker 1: seen videos with some of your family members, your mom, right,
Speaker 1: How important was family to you during this whole situation.
Speaker 5: And what does it mean to family is everything? You know,
Speaker 5: without your support, I wouldn't be sitting here right now.
Speaker 5: You know, we kept each other strong. You know, Whenever
Speaker 5: they were down, I lifted them up. Whenever I was down,
Speaker 5: they lifted me up.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Now it's you know, you know, even getting out. You know,
Speaker 5: my grandmother, I've spent the last two weeks, you know,
Speaker 5: trying to get her house right. Her basement had flooded
Speaker 5: and stuff molded and everything. So me and a buddy
Speaker 5: mine's ripped out all the walls and resealed the basement
Speaker 5: up and you know, just fixed her. She's ninety years old,
Speaker 5: you know, you know, I got a new couch set
Speaker 5: and kitchen set and stuff like that, and painted all
Speaker 5: the outside of the house and all this stuff.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: So she was my tire priority.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Now it's gonna be my mom and then my my kids.
Speaker 1: My grandkids have five generations. Yeah, yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's a lot of Dixons for me.
Speaker 5: It's you know, it's not you know, when something like
Speaker 5: this happens, you realize how precious life is, you know,
Speaker 5: and that tomorrow's not promised. So you have to live
Speaker 5: every moment as if it's your last, you know. And
Speaker 5: even when you don't have money to travel, it's little
Speaker 5: things that you can do, like making breakfast, you know,
Speaker 5: and watch a movie, take a walk in the park,
Speaker 5: things that don't cost any money, you know. And I
Speaker 5: didn't understand this before, but I do now. So every
Speaker 5: day every chance that I get, we're gonna have a moment.
Speaker 1: And you have three girls, I have four girls.
Speaker 5: Wow, Yeah, I have four girls and names Jackie, Uh, Tina, Arianna,
Speaker 5: and Tierra. But Tina's been the main focus here because
Speaker 5: she was doing a lot of advocacy work for me
Speaker 5: online and through her college. You know, she's a school teacher,
Speaker 5: graduated from Outer Beean College in Columbus, Ohio, and so
Speaker 5: she's been out there pushing things, you know, you know,
Speaker 5: like really pushing hard. She was pushing when she was
Speaker 5: in college, and you know, Martin came along, so it
Speaker 5: just made everything a lot better and easier for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I've seen videos of her advocating for
Speaker 1: you so powerfully, and such a beautiful speaker she is,
Speaker 1: and just a really amazing soul from what I can
Speaker 1: tell you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no doubt. She's just like she's so humble and
Speaker 5: soft spoken, and she loves her kids. She knows all
Speaker 5: her names. You know, she spent special time with the kids.
Speaker 5: I mean, she's like one of the greatest teachers on
Speaker 5: the planet.
Speaker 1: Mm hm. Like I said, how proud you are of
Speaker 1: out of her too, I mean for your kids to
Speaker 1: have to because of course, when when we talk about
Speaker 1: this a lot, when someone like yourself is wrongfully convicted,
Speaker 1: it's not just.
Speaker 5: You, right, they suffered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they grew up without their dad, and they could
Speaker 1: have easily gotten on the wrong track and ended up
Speaker 1: behind bars too. But they managed to persevere somehow, and
Speaker 1: they managed to all of them, right, not persevere, but succeed.
Speaker 5: Yeah. That's a miracle, right, that is a miracle. You know,
Speaker 5: but every chance I could, every chance I had, I
Speaker 5: wrote them. We talked on the phone, you know, and
Speaker 5: I know that what I what I've observed is that
Speaker 5: you know, you have parents that's out there that a
Speaker 5: lot of times they don't take the opportunity to spend
Speaker 5: time to speak to the kids about the world and
Speaker 5: different things like that. So I took the opportunity to
Speaker 5: constantly right and speak about life everything, just give them
Speaker 5: as much wisdom as I could on the telephone and
Speaker 5: through a letter.
Speaker 1: A lot more power to you, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's a great tribute to you, the fact that
Speaker 1: they have turned out to them too. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not taking an incredible from them, but I think that
Speaker 1: we cannot downplay the role that you played in your
Speaker 1: own your own freedom, in getting freedom for yourself. And
Speaker 1: then also the family side is just it's a beautiful story.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a tragic story, but it's a beautiful story.
Speaker 1: And now it's about to get better because you're off
Speaker 1: the cot courses that you've painted in your mind and
Speaker 1: on the paper and on the canvas and everything else,
Speaker 1: and we have some of your artwork here. It's phenomenal.
Speaker 1: So This is my favorite part of the show. But
Speaker 1: we have a tradition here at Romful Conviction, which is
Speaker 1: that as we get to the you know, to the
Speaker 1: end of the episode, I like to just thank you.
Speaker 1: Our featured guests are honored guest Valentino Dixon twenty seven
Speaker 1: years in and twenty nine days out right, and it's
Speaker 1: incredible to have you here so soon after your or exoneration.
Speaker 1: But this is the part of the show where I
Speaker 1: get to stop talking and just listen. And so what
Speaker 1: I'd like to do now is just turn the microphone
Speaker 1: over to you. I want to thank you again for
Speaker 1: being here and for everything that you're doing. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to get to know you better and to watch you,
Speaker 1: you know, make your mark in the world and get
Speaker 1: to know your family and everything else. So again, it's
Speaker 1: been a great experience for me. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 1: And now I'm turning it over to you for your
Speaker 1: last thoughts on any subject you want to talk about.
Speaker 5: Well, we have to, you know, make prison reform a
Speaker 5: serious topic to be discussed, you know, and we have
Speaker 5: to inform the public. Most people that don't have anybody
Speaker 5: in prison don't know what's going on in regards to
Speaker 5: the unfairness and how the judicial system operates.
Speaker 2: You know that.
Speaker 5: If you're poor, you know, most of the time, you're
Speaker 5: not going to receive a fair trial, because this is
Speaker 5: if it's not designed or equip to give you a
Speaker 5: fair trial, you know. And my goal is to reach
Speaker 5: out to prosecutors, judges and politicians, you know, to get
Speaker 5: them to you know deep you know, reach deep down
Speaker 5: into their soul, the greater part of their soul, you know,
Speaker 5: and to have this care and this compassion, and it's
Speaker 5: concerned for those outside of your group, you know, because
Speaker 5: most prosecutors and judges, my experience has been that they
Speaker 5: don't really focus or care about those outside of the group,
Speaker 5: you know, And you know, I want to be able
Speaker 5: to bridge that gap. And because we're all human beings,
Speaker 5: you know, and we all make mistakes, you know. But
Speaker 5: you know, like I was telling you earlier, like we're
Speaker 5: the humanity, you know, and you know, we can speak
Speaker 5: about mass incarceration all day long, you know, until our
Speaker 5: eyeballs pop out, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: we need to come down with a solution and we
Speaker 5: need to do something about it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Sentencing laws is the worst We have some of the
Speaker 5: worst centence laws in the in the world, in the country,
Speaker 5: especially in New York State, you know, and there's bills
Speaker 5: on the table that should be passed, we should you know, positives.
Speaker 5: You know, the politicians no longer overlook these, uh, these
Speaker 5: bills that's on the table or the problems that's concerning
Speaker 5: you know, minorities, you know. And I hate to make
Speaker 5: it a race issue, you know, you know, I hate
Speaker 5: to make it a race issue. But just imagine this.
Speaker 5: And when I was speaking with the governor's people or
Speaker 5: two weeks ago, I asked them, I said, can you
Speaker 5: imagine if young black guys were going off to college
Speaker 5: and getting jobs and young white guys were going off
Speaker 5: to prison? Can you imagine this? You can imagine this
Speaker 5: because the problem will be a fixed immediately, you know,
Speaker 5: and because you know, seventy seventy something percent of minorities
Speaker 5: that's locked up in New York State in these prisons,
Speaker 5: you know, and we just have to you know, Martin
Speaker 5: Luther King said it best, you know, he said, people
Speaker 5: are victims of intellectual and spiritual blindness. They know now
Speaker 5: what they do that even those slave owners that own
Speaker 5: slaves were not evil or bad people. They were just
Speaker 5: motivated by greed, you know. And when I look at,
Speaker 5: you know, what's going on with our prison system, the
Speaker 5: mass incarceration. You know, it's jobs and it's greed, and
Speaker 5: it's a certain class of people that receive these benefits,
Speaker 5: and it's devastating for minorities across the country, you know.
Speaker 5: So I just think that, you know, as human beings,
Speaker 5: we need to look at it from that perspective, and
Speaker 5: it makes the changes fast, not five or ten years
Speaker 5: from now, but now. And it's only right, you know,
Speaker 5: when you look at in comparison to other countries. You know,
Speaker 5: we can learn from Norway, you know, we can learn
Speaker 5: from England, you know. Or a ten year sentence over here,
Speaker 5: a lot of cases, it's six months in England, you know,
Speaker 5: and it's not even close. So we know that they're
Speaker 5: not going to change the system as far as getting
Speaker 5: rid of the judges and the prosecutors, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: So guess what we can do here to make it
Speaker 5: a lot more. Just reduce the censusing laws. That's it.
Speaker 5: Reduce the sentencing laws. The mentality is not going to change,
Speaker 5: you know, you either, you know, you have a good heart,
Speaker 5: or you have a heart that's not so good, or
Speaker 5: you have a bad heart. So you know, the mentality
Speaker 5: is not going to change. These people in the system
Speaker 5: are already sett in place. You're not going to remove
Speaker 5: these people. You're not going to change the guards, the judges,
Speaker 5: the prosecutors. The only thing you can do to make
Speaker 5: this right is to reduce these censensing laws across the board.
Speaker 5: That's it. I don't leave on that note.
Speaker 1: And on that note, I just want to say that
Speaker 1: I've been working with Families Against Mandatory Minimums for twenty
Speaker 1: five years. Right, it's a wonderful organization. I hope people
Speaker 1: will take your words and go and get involved. You
Speaker 1: can go to f A m M. That's f like
Speaker 1: Frank a Mmmandatory Minimums dot org or learn more about
Speaker 1: this issue. Let's get this country back on track and
Speaker 1: get back and step with the rest of the Western
Speaker 1: world and stop treating our people the way the way
Speaker 1: we do it in terms of locking them up forever.
Speaker 5: And let me just say that Jason Wimer thing right
Speaker 5: where I come from. I come from the worst part
Speaker 5: of my city, Buffalo, New York, Okay. Whereas it's an
Speaker 5: economic collapse. There's no jobs, there's poverty, there's drugs, there's
Speaker 5: legal weapons, you know, and these kids don't feel like
Speaker 5: they have options. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: what do you think is going to happen in these
Speaker 5: type environments. You know, most of these kids are either
Speaker 5: going to go to jail or they're gonna get killed.
Speaker 5: And that's just the reality here, you know. So the
Speaker 5: only way to change that is government funding, you know, job,
Speaker 5: better jobs, schooling, housing, you know, to these underdeveloped areas
Speaker 5: where there aren't any factories in the inner city, you know,
Speaker 5: where you know, the globalization and the industrialization that has
Speaker 5: changed the infrastructure of America. You know, we have to
Speaker 5: bring jobs back. You know, when you bring jobs back,
Speaker 5: you see a whole totally different society as a whole,
Speaker 5: especially in the inner city. That's the main issue. People
Speaker 5: really want to work, you know, if given the opportunity
Speaker 5: and given a decent job, you know, because the amendmum
Speaker 5: waste jobs is just not enough to cover people's living expenses.
Speaker 5: It's just not enough, so people resort to other things.
Speaker 5: And then you have to look at the the mental
Speaker 5: issues that we're dealing with in America. You know, a
Speaker 5: person's background, you know, the history of the person. You know,
Speaker 5: we have to take consideration of all of these things.
Speaker 5: We decided to give a person thirty or forty years,
Speaker 5: you know. And I think this is where the compassion,
Speaker 5: the empathy, the sympathy, you know, the love for your
Speaker 5: fellow human being comes in that all right now, I'm done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like you need to be running for office,
Speaker 1: is what you need to be doing, because you have
Speaker 1: a lot of h I mean, you have a lot
Speaker 1: of knowledge, a lot of wisdom, and you obviously have
Speaker 1: a great heart and a strong desire to reform the
Speaker 1: system and help other people in the situation you're in.
Speaker 5: Oh, can I just say one more thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Okay, how can I put this without offending anybody? You know,
Speaker 5: people always ask me about black lives matter? Okay, And
Speaker 5: my message to a black lives matter would be is
Speaker 5: to not isolate anyone, to not push anyone away, to
Speaker 5: bring everybody on board. Okay. And Martin Luther King was
Speaker 5: the best that ever did it without without cauedations or
Speaker 5: white or non blacks, Civil Rights nineteen sixty four Civil
Speaker 5: Rights Act wouldn't have been passed, you know, without non Whites.
Speaker 5: Barack Obama had never been president, slavery would never end it,
Speaker 5: you know. So until we put the Eagles aside and
Speaker 5: learn to work together collectively, you know, we're not going
Speaker 5: to get anything done. Okay, now I'm finished.
Speaker 1: We've been Uh what can I even say? All I
Speaker 1: can say is, Valentino, thank you again for being here.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Wrongful Conviction with our very very
Speaker 1: special guest Valentino Dixon today and thank you for thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Tune in again next week. Don't forget
Speaker 1: to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
Speaker 1: supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
Speaker 1: how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
Speaker 1: our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music
Speaker 1: in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Speaker 1: Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good podcasts and association with signal company Number one