Speaker 1: The Innocence Network is a loose affiliation of independent innocence organizations,
Speaker 1: and each year, members of these organizations, as well as
Speaker 1: the hundreds of exanneries who they've helped free, gather for
Speaker 1: the Innocence Network Conference, and it's a beautiful thing for
Speaker 1: one weekend. The ex honorees can all count on the
Speaker 1: fact that there are other people around who share their experience,
Speaker 1: and our team was honored to join them for their
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two gathering in Arizona. We recorded a number
Speaker 1: of interviews and the damage that these stories due to
Speaker 1: your faith in humanity is only then restored by the
Speaker 1: amazing people telling those stories. Clay Shabbau and his friend
Speaker 1: Doug Graham were bikers who dealt some drugs in Garland, Texas.
Speaker 1: Clay's brother in law, Jerry Papps, was a customer with
Speaker 1: a newborn son. Clay was beginning to leave that life
Speaker 1: behind when on April nineteenth, nineteen eighty six, Doug Graham's
Speaker 1: common law wife was found in her home having been
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted and shot down when Paps returned a gun
Speaker 1: that he'd taken from his sister. He told her husband Clay,
Speaker 1: about how he was at Doug's that morning to buy drugs,
Speaker 1: heard gunshots and fled. Witnesses had seen PAP's car there,
Speaker 1: and he was later found wearing bloody clothing. However, even
Speaker 1: with all of this evidence pointing towards PAPS, he was
Speaker 1: able to redirect detectives towards his rough looking brother in law,
Speaker 1: Clay Chabeau. A rape kit was performed, but in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, the DNA testing that would one day exclude
Speaker 1: Clay was not available. Curiously, no blood type evidence was presented.
Speaker 1: Instead of simply using the evidence that implicated PAPS, detectives
Speaker 1: decided that they needed a statement from Clay. When Clay
Speaker 1: refused to testify to something that he didn't know, detectives
Speaker 1: chose to ignore all evidence and the inconsistent statements from
Speaker 1: PAPS to focus their efforts squarely on Clay, using PAPS
Speaker 1: as their star witness and the implicit bias against bikers.
Speaker 1: Clay Schabeau was sentenced to life prison. It took the
Speaker 1: evolution of DNA testing, the post conviction statutes allowing it,
Speaker 1: and the dedicated team at the Innocis Project to finally
Speaker 1: prove what seemed to be evident to the prosecutor at
Speaker 1: Clay's original trial. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction today's episode. How can I say this? If
Speaker 1: I was going to teach a third grade class how
Speaker 1: to solve a crime, I might present them with the
Speaker 1: evidence that was available and abundant in this case, and
Speaker 1: they would solve this case. I would say within an
Speaker 1: hour at the most. I mean, this one came with instructions,
Speaker 1: and yet the authorities managed to not only lock up
Speaker 1: an NCMA, but let the obvious suspect remain free. And
Speaker 1: of course I'm talking about the case of Clay Shabou. Clay,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for everything you went through. So thank you
Speaker 1: for being here today. Thank you for having me and
Speaker 1: with Clay one of his attorneys, Jason Craig from the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project in New York. Jason, I think this is
Speaker 1: your first time on the show, but hopefully not the last.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to be here and so thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: All right, So, Clay, you were born a couple of
Speaker 1: years before I was, and grew up in Texas, no Ohio, Ohio.
Speaker 1: So tell us about that. What was your childhood like?
Speaker 3: My father was a truck driver mother. You know, home
Speaker 3: cared a lot of kids, and my parents boke up
Speaker 3: when I was eight years old and I got shuttled
Speaker 3: for one family member to the other for about seven
Speaker 3: years or so until I was about fifteen and decided
Speaker 3: to just take off my own so I started cross
Speaker 3: country hitchacking across country, wound up in California for a
Speaker 3: few years, got married that lasted about a year, got divorced,
Speaker 3: coming back to Ohio, and decided to join the military.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty one. I was on an aircraft carrier.
Speaker 3: There was a large ship with a five thousand guys
Speaker 3: and we all could find a small spaces and under authority.
Speaker 3: So I think it gave me the strength in the
Speaker 3: fortitude to endure whatever went through later in life. Wow
Speaker 3: served about three three and a half years of the
Speaker 3: military and I got run over by hit and run
Speaker 3: drug driver on my motorcycle. So I got discharged and
Speaker 3: went back to Ohio.
Speaker 1: And we're here at the INNOCENTCE Network conference. I'm so
Speaker 1: happy to be recording live and in person again. And
Speaker 1: you can't see Clay, but I can. And the way
Speaker 1: he dresses today, he looks like being a corporate boardroom somewhere.
Speaker 1: But you were a tough guy back then, right, And
Speaker 1: no judgment here. You were involved in some let's just say,
Speaker 1: extra legal activities.
Speaker 3: Right absolutely where I was raised in Ohio, you know, impoverished.
Speaker 3: There's actually the Hell's Angels club to house, so a
Speaker 3: lot of people there indulging mind altering drugs. We can't
Speaker 3: afford to go to bail for skiing trips, so we
Speaker 3: take ours locally.
Speaker 1: Internally, yes, I understand. And by the way, like I said,
Speaker 1: no judgment here. I mean when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: we probably could compare our old photos because I had
Speaker 1: so much hair I couldn't even see. I looked like
Speaker 1: cousin it. And I used to smoke weed from sun
Speaker 1: up to sundown, and I was involved in some stuff
Speaker 1: I definitely shouldn't have been involved in it. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so you were into motorcycles, the Hell's Angels, drugs, You
Speaker 1: did some dealing, and you moved to Texas at some point.
Speaker 1: You got married, had a son, Harley, a few months
Speaker 1: before all this happened, and he's here with us today.
Speaker 1: And Harley's uncle, your brother in law, Jerry Paps. He
Speaker 1: lived nearby with his wife and he used to come
Speaker 1: to you and a friend of yours, Doug Graham, for drugs. Now,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, Paps was into speed and coke
Speaker 1: and was led to believe that Doug had cut a
Speaker 1: batch of whatever he was taking with too much baking
Speaker 1: soda or some other substance, even though it was you, Clay,
Speaker 1: who did the cutting, and Doug was aware of this,
Speaker 1: And that leads us up to April nineteen, nineteen eighty six, Garland, Texas.
Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to Clay, Paps had taken a gun from his sister,
Speaker 1: Clay's wife, and later that day, Doug Graham's common law wife,
Speaker 1: who was twenty eight years old, her body was found
Speaker 1: in their home. And this is just awful, so brace yourself.
Speaker 1: But she had been tied, gagged, shot three times, and
Speaker 1: she had been raped. A rape kit was performed, but
Speaker 1: that evidence, unfortunately wasn't useful, or perhaps the blood type
Speaker 1: evidence wasn't useful to the state, because you got to
Speaker 1: imagine if it was, they would have brought it up.
Speaker 1: But we don't know either way. And however, the biological
Speaker 1: evidence didn't become useful to Clay and really all of
Speaker 1: us until DNA testing became available. Many years later. And
Speaker 1: I want to turn to Jason here, because this really
Speaker 1: was a horrific crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's absolutely true, and that did get attention immediately,
Speaker 2: even on the local news. And it just so happened
Speaker 2: to be someone who Clay knew of.
Speaker 3: The victim's husband. They weren't really legally married. Doug Graham
Speaker 3: was really one of my best friends, and I mean
Speaker 3: we associated on Christmas, we played cards, we hung out
Speaker 3: together for several years, and.
Speaker 2: So that was the initial nexus that even started any
Speaker 2: interest in Clay for any reason.
Speaker 1: There was no physical evidence connecting Clay to the crime.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the case for his brother in law.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right when you said in the introduction that
Speaker 2: most elementary school children could have solved this case within
Speaker 2: a few hours and actually identified the actual perpetrator.
Speaker 3: You're right.
Speaker 2: The police they had one individual, Gerald Papps, who was
Speaker 2: telling a series of different stories over and over again.
Speaker 2: A person who had been found with blood on his
Speaker 2: shirt within hours of this homicide. A person who had
Speaker 2: proceeds from the victim's home, person who had pawned some
Speaker 2: items that were taken there, whose car had been at
Speaker 2: the victim's home earlier. In that day. None of this
Speaker 2: information was dependent on anyone else's statement. This was actual
Speaker 2: physical evidence linking him to the crime. What the detectives
Speaker 2: also had was someone else, Clay, who was actually helping,
Speaker 2: who actually reached out and said there might be something
Speaker 2: to what had just happened when his brother in law
Speaker 2: had shown back up to return this gun.
Speaker 3: Correct, they came to my house, asked me a few questions,
Speaker 3: and I told him all about how my brother in
Speaker 3: law had taken the gun from his sister's purse prior
Speaker 3: to this. And he was standing at the door and
Speaker 3: I said, come on in. He said no, no, I got
Speaker 3: to go, I said, And he handed me the gun
Speaker 3: and I said, what are you doing with this? He said, well,
Speaker 3: I parted this morning for Sandy's purse. I looked and
Speaker 3: I said, where's the clip? He said, oh yeah, and
Speaker 3: he hand me the clip and I noticed the clip
Speaker 3: was empty. I said, were it's the bullet? He said.
Speaker 3: I threw him out. I said, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Him in here? So he came in and he tells
Speaker 3: me the story of He claimed he was supposed to
Speaker 3: meet the victim's husband, Doug Graham, but he said he
Speaker 3: got over there, and before he could even get out
Speaker 3: of his car and go in, he saw two men
Speaker 3: pull up in a car and they went inside and
Speaker 3: he heard gunshots. So he got scared and the left.
Speaker 3: So he came back to my house and he returned
Speaker 3: this gun. He left my house, and I'm thinking that
Speaker 3: I didn't know anybody had been hurt at the time,
Speaker 3: so I'm thinking, you know, he's just been up all
Speaker 3: night on speed. So I didn't pay much attention to it.
Speaker 3: And later that afternoon, I was supposed to meet Doug
Speaker 3: or another deal we're gonna do, but and I wasn't
Speaker 3: even paying attention to the TV. It's almost like it
Speaker 3: played and then I heard it and I had to
Speaker 3: replay it in my mind to say, what did they
Speaker 3: just say? And my wife, she knew the victims, and
Speaker 3: she said that's her.
Speaker 1: I said, what And for some reason in your mind,
Speaker 1: you didn't leap to that conclusion.
Speaker 3: I just couldn't believe that he could do something like that.
Speaker 3: It'd be like somebody trying to tell you your brother
Speaker 3: or your mother or something, which cape I mean, I
Speaker 3: knew the guy for several years. I'd been married to
Speaker 3: his sister for several years, and I just couldn't conceive it.
Speaker 3: That's just so far out of my realm and world
Speaker 3: of you know, Like I said, I've never really heard
Speaker 3: anybody about myself through my own abuse of things. So
Speaker 3: I believed this story. I believed that he was there,
Speaker 3: saw a couple people, and I really wanted him to
Speaker 3: just try to lead them to help solve the situation itself.
Speaker 3: I got to tell you, I pondered over it. I
Speaker 3: didn't call Doug until like the next day, because I
Speaker 3: tried to reach Doug that night because I was supposed
Speaker 3: to meet and somebody strange answered his house phone, and
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, I don't know who that is. I said, well,
Speaker 3: who are you trying to get ahold of? What do
Speaker 3: you want for it? So I hung up? So I said, man,
Speaker 3: something that's really gone wrong over there. So I went
Speaker 3: back down to Jerry's house and I said, Jerry, I'm
Speaker 3: going to drive over to Dougs. You want to go
Speaker 3: with me? He said, oh, no, no, no, man, I don't
Speaker 3: want to go anywhere near that place. And then I
Speaker 3: started getting little more larry and worried. And now I'm
Speaker 3: in a situation to note where you know, if I
Speaker 3: do do this. I got to live with this sister.
Speaker 3: You know, how do you live with your wife when
Speaker 3: you reported her brother for something like that? I mean,
Speaker 3: just the conflict in that my head and heart was.
Speaker 3: I thought to myself, you know what, if this was
Speaker 3: my sister, my wife, I'd want somebody help me. And
Speaker 3: the next day is when I decided to call Doug
Speaker 3: and tell him how I think I had information. He
Speaker 3: had just been born, he was five months old, and
Speaker 3: I was trying to knock off the stupid stuff, straighten
Speaker 3: myself up, because he was finally something more important to.
Speaker 1: Me and for our listeners. Clays Son Harley's here with
Speaker 1: us now. He's about twice the size of his father,
Speaker 1: and he's now thirty six years old.
Speaker 3: And I just turned, you know, like twenty five, you know,
Speaker 3: and they say the prefront of cortex and mailes doesn't
Speaker 3: develop until twenty five when you start having huge consequences.
Speaker 3: So I think it was just a matter of you know,
Speaker 3: age and plus like I said, him being born, and
Speaker 3: it was my friend. So I wanted to do the
Speaker 3: right thing.
Speaker 1: But we see too often people like you who come
Speaker 1: forward trying to help and wanted to be you know,
Speaker 1: good citizens and believed in the system as you did,
Speaker 1: and it ends up putting them in the crosshairs.
Speaker 3: Let me say this, in fairness of things, I kind
Speaker 3: of created this whole scenario in a way for myself.
Speaker 3: Jerry wanted more drugs. I didn't want to get him
Speaker 3: to him. I told him should call my friend Doug.
Speaker 3: I just wanted him to get out of my house
Speaker 3: and leave, So that's what led him to go over
Speaker 3: To's house. Later though, Jerry would tell a story about
Speaker 3: how the drugs I had had had gotten from Doug
Speaker 3: earlier were inadequate. Well, quite frankly, it was my own doing.
Speaker 3: I had put too much cut on the drugs. So
Speaker 3: there was no animosity between me and Doug because Doug
Speaker 3: didn't do anything wrong. But I had told Jerry that
Speaker 3: just to get him out of my house. I said, Man,
Speaker 3: this does no good joining this. So in fairness man,
Speaker 3: I sort of set the stage that led the police
Speaker 3: to believe that I had a reason that I was
Speaker 3: angry with Doug over it, but they didn't really look
Speaker 3: at the smaller facts, like Doug knew that wasn't true.
Speaker 3: Doug knew that I was supposed to meet him again,
Speaker 3: that night to do another deal. I mean, so when
Speaker 3: they left my house that afternoon, they asked me if
Speaker 3: they could have the gun. They asked if I had
Speaker 3: any more of the same kind of bullets, and I
Speaker 3: happily rented and given to him. They left, and within
Speaker 3: a few hours my brother in law's wife came to
Speaker 3: the house screening about how the police had showed up
Speaker 3: arrested him. And as I understood it, by then, they
Speaker 3: had already had a witness that positive identified his cart
Speaker 3: to see the crime. They called him with blood on
Speaker 3: his clothes, tickets for stolen merchandise and maybe some stole merchandise.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, you know, like I said, it
Speaker 3: was clean cut. I was a rough looking guy, and
Speaker 3: so he gave him the story that I had borrowed
Speaker 3: his car, and then he didn't go there, and they
Speaker 3: allowed him just change his story every time his facts
Speaker 3: proved wrong. They just let him change his story because
Speaker 3: they didn't see why Jerry would do something like that.
Speaker 3: You know, they were looking for the motive. And I'll
Speaker 3: tell you this, the detectives simply didn't want to believe
Speaker 3: that I had handed them the solution to this case
Speaker 3: on a silver platter. They were like, no, where detectives.
Speaker 3: There's gotta be more to this. It's got to be
Speaker 3: more complicated, you know, something for us to unravel and figure.
Speaker 3: I just don't think they could accept the fact that
Speaker 3: this would have been so simple had they just looked
Speaker 3: at the evidence as it stood. So they came back
Speaker 3: and arrested me.
Speaker 1: So you're arrested, taking to jail. Were you in jail
Speaker 1: awaiting trial? Did you can't bail out?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Well they had me on a I think a quartermain
Speaker 3: and how long did you think about eight months? Eventually
Speaker 3: just rolled out to where they came to me and
Speaker 3: they said, look, we don't think you're actually there, but
Speaker 3: we need somebody to testify. If you'll testify against your
Speaker 3: brother law, will let you go.
Speaker 2: This was a situation where the state felt they needed
Speaker 2: a confession, someone who could turn into a witness who
Speaker 2: was actually there and one person had information because there
Speaker 2: was only one person there, Gerald Pepps, and Clay was
Speaker 2: not there, was not involved, and so he had no
Speaker 2: ability to offer what the state wanted, what the state
Speaker 2: felt they needed to prove a case.
Speaker 3: I believed in the just system whole hardly. I just
Speaker 3: come out of the military. I'd never been in a
Speaker 3: serious trouble in any kind before, and so I said, listen,
Speaker 3: I can't do that. You want me to lie to
Speaker 3: possibly send this guy to death throw for something I
Speaker 3: don't know he did or not. It was okay. Well,
Speaker 3: they went to Jerry, my brother in law, and said
Speaker 3: same thing, and she got the standpoint of the figure,
Speaker 3: said yeah, we're both there. He pulled the trigger. They
Speaker 3: let him go, and they gave me a licence.
Speaker 2: So he gave the state what they needed and he
Speaker 2: got a benefit and immediate benefit that lasted for him
Speaker 2: a couple of decades. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's that saying a body for a body, right,
Speaker 1: and we know that sadly, in too many cases, the
Speaker 1: authorities are happy to just get somebody, close the case
Speaker 1: and move on. And then the idea that in this
Speaker 1: case they had every reason to know, they may even
Speaker 1: have known that the guy who was weaving these bizarre tales.
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody could possibly believe that, but they did,
Speaker 1: or at least the jury did.
Speaker 2: There's a very telling note that we uncovered in the
Speaker 2: prosecutor's file years later when we're looking into the case,
Speaker 2: acknowledging that pass he was found within ours bloody T shirt.
Speaker 2: And the quote is you know something like this is
Speaker 2: a problem for us. Well, yeah, it's a big problem
Speaker 2: for us. You literally had the person who was connected
Speaker 2: to the crime physically, with physical evidence. Who is your
Speaker 2: star witness. That's a huge problem for the state. And
Speaker 2: we can never know exactly what was in the prosecutor's
Speaker 2: mind when she wrote that note, but the context clues
Speaker 2: are fairly clear she understood that the person that they
Speaker 2: were relying on to solve this homicide was someone who
Speaker 2: was actually involved in the homicide. And of course now
Speaker 2: we know that with certainty based on the DNA testing
Speaker 2: that was done years later, but even at the time
Speaker 2: of trial, the contemporaneous notes that the prosecutor had recognized
Speaker 2: that they had a problem because perhaps their star witness
Speaker 2: was the person who was found with blood. And of
Speaker 2: course this is the person who initially said he had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with the crime at all, wasn't even there,
Speaker 2: and then puts himself there. Eventually it changes the story
Speaker 2: that way, and then changes the story a little bit more,
Speaker 2: and puts himself there, and then changes the story a
Speaker 2: little bit more, and all of a sudden, he's now
Speaker 2: inside the house, but never willing to say what we
Speaker 2: now know he actually did.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really stuck out to me
Speaker 1: when I was reading about the trial was the idea that,
Speaker 1: and I think this should be a red flag in
Speaker 1: every case, is when Jerry said that you forced him
Speaker 1: at gunpoint to tie up the victim. That's not a
Speaker 1: thing that happens except maybe in some weird TV show
Speaker 1: or movie.
Speaker 3: Right, supposed to be your criminal partner? Yeah, and you're
Speaker 3: pointing to God at him, now, did I'd put a
Speaker 3: gun in and making care of the TV out too, Jason?
Speaker 1: Unless there was something else presented, I don't even understand
Speaker 1: how a Jerry could get this one wrong.
Speaker 2: So what did they hear? They have a witness who
Speaker 2: claims to have been there during the entire crime, who
Speaker 2: is now backed by the state, called by the state,
Speaker 2: who's walking them through what we now know is and
Speaker 2: what Clay obviously knew then was a fictitious story about
Speaker 2: what happened. I mean, they're hearing it blow by blow
Speaker 2: from this witness as the state solicits information from him,
Speaker 2: and then the state calls other witnesses to vouch for
Speaker 2: Jerry to present Jerry as this person who was overwhelmed
Speaker 2: by the ringleader. Who's the defendant there, Clay. But Jerry,
Speaker 2: of course, in the state's eyes, was this person who
Speaker 2: wasn't a violent person, hadn't done other bad things, didn't
Speaker 2: look like Clay looked at the time.
Speaker 3: So what they presented was me as a criminal in general,
Speaker 3: wrote Harley Davison's carried John's did drugs looked like Charles Manson.
Speaker 1: So, Clay, what was the evidence that was presented in
Speaker 1: your defense at the trial?
Speaker 3: Unfortunately? I mean my defense was, look, I was at
Speaker 3: home sleeping. I mean, how do you approve that? So
Speaker 3: the only person that was able to testify in my
Speaker 3: behalf was my wife, which was the sister of the
Speaker 3: witness against me, And so they just claimed she was
Speaker 3: a liar to protect me, not considering that, how do
Speaker 3: you think she could get up there and say, you know, look,
Speaker 3: he didn't do it, indirectly implicating her own brother.
Speaker 2: I think the failure is that the prosecutor, they knew
Speaker 2: the limitations of what they knew. They didn't need DNA
Speaker 2: testing in nineteen eighty six to know the limitations of
Speaker 2: their case. They wrote about it in their notes and
Speaker 2: they should have been the ones who check the beyond
Speaker 2: a reasonable doubt standard before they put someone's life at stake.
Speaker 1: The jury goes out, how long did they deliverate Clay.
Speaker 3: I didn't have time to smoke a cigarette before they
Speaker 3: send the jury is back?
Speaker 1: Wow, so as minutes. Yeah, if you could take us
Speaker 1: back to that moment.
Speaker 3: I just went into a sort of shock state because
Speaker 3: they really didn't impact me or hit me until they
Speaker 3: immediately conducted the penalty phase. And my wife at the time,
Speaker 3: Harley's mother, had got up and went to the bathroom
Speaker 3: and they ran a penalty face so fast. By the
Speaker 3: time she came back in the bathroom, they were already
Speaker 3: ann ounce of life. You know. As soon as I
Speaker 3: do that, they should stand up and I drag you
Speaker 3: the back, and I remember asking if they would put
Speaker 3: me in a private self because I didn't want to
Speaker 3: be in with the crowd of you know, other people
Speaker 3: being transport around and I just wanted to scream and
Speaker 3: tear and I did. In my mind, prison is ninety
Speaker 3: percent border punctuated by ten percent cheer stark terror. You
Speaker 3: just after the over the years, you adapt you have to.
Speaker 3: When I went in Texas, Francisco. It was a run
Speaker 3: by what they call the Building ten or system. Inmates
Speaker 3: were running it. There was only a handful of guards
Speaker 3: through three thousand inmates. The inmates were empowered with authority
Speaker 3: weapons to maintain the for the system. It was brutal,
Speaker 3: absolutely brutal. You know, it's odd even though it was
Speaker 3: run by prisoners and it was brutal if you follow
Speaker 3: the rules with them, there was a lot more internal
Speaker 3: freedom and it was more of a physical thing. In fact,
Speaker 3: it wasn't until some years to follow that a large
Speaker 3: lawsuit Federal brought in special masters and they brought the
Speaker 3: guards in and they took the building tenders out. Became
Speaker 3: more of a mental pressure. But I had to say
Speaker 3: again because I was a little older, i think, and
Speaker 3: I had gone through the military, and I used my
Speaker 3: head the gang members and things. I taught him how
Speaker 3: to do things that they weren't doing that made it
Speaker 3: profitable for them. So I became an asset, and so
Speaker 3: they would say leave him alone. So I tried to stay,
Speaker 3: you know, just actively involved with either education or something
Speaker 3: to keep my mind off of, you know, the day
Speaker 3: to day mundane.
Speaker 1: And was there a lowest and the highest point for
Speaker 1: you while you were in there.
Speaker 3: I had a number of them, the one in the
Speaker 3: first when my father died, and at those points I
Speaker 3: considered suicide, but that's not in my day. I even
Speaker 3: had it all figured out several ways to do it.
Speaker 3: But quite frankly, I knew this. I see my mind
Speaker 3: strip away everything else. My mind knew it didn't do
Speaker 3: what it was being punished for, and it just needed
Speaker 3: to know it had a way out if it had
Speaker 3: to at all last resort. So once I had that
Speaker 3: option of suicide, knowing that I do have the option
Speaker 3: to get out of this if I have to, it
Speaker 3: gave me the strength to go on. Finally, when you know,
Speaker 3: after the years and years of Dallas telling me that
Speaker 3: they had lost the evidence, I knew that had to
Speaker 3: be a lie, and I fought it for ten twelve
Speaker 3: years and finally found it. And then the high point
Speaker 3: would have been on a little step was when Texas
Speaker 3: finally passed a law whatever that said, you know, if
Speaker 3: you want to apply for DNA testing. That gave me
Speaker 3: some hope. But this would have been when DNA testing
Speaker 3: proved that Jerry Papp's semen was recovered from the rape
Speaker 3: kit his DNA was on her hands, DNA on his fingernails,
Speaker 3: and then I knew that, you know, we probably had
Speaker 3: a pretty good shot of at least, you know, convincing
Speaker 3: them that they had it wrong and might want to
Speaker 3: look at it.
Speaker 2: Again, identifying perhaps DNA in the extremely probative items of evidence.
Speaker 2: As Clay recounted, it was the key that turned the story.
Speaker 2: And at that point in time, I think Clay's perception
Speaker 2: is as accurate even the people who were absolutely convinced
Speaker 2: that the prosecutor might have been on the right path
Speaker 2: from the get go, even those individuals had to start
Speaker 2: opening their eyes and wonder, now, what was going on.
Speaker 1: While this case came with instructions from the very beginning,
Speaker 1: now twenty years later or so, it came with scientific certainty.
Speaker 1: The actual perpetrator was identified, the.
Speaker 2: State located him. He had gone back to Ohio by
Speaker 2: that point in time, and eventually was arrested for the crime.
Speaker 2: Now this is the state's star witness, but they did,
Speaker 2: with the DNA evidence testing that was done, identify him
Speaker 2: and ultimately convict him. After Clay's conviction was overturned.
Speaker 1: Jason, I think most people in the audience are probably
Speaker 1: thinking now, well, amen, right, finally justice, exoneration, compensation, and
Speaker 1: in this case.
Speaker 2: That's not the story of Clay's case right now. So tragically,
Speaker 2: after the DNA evidence identified Paps, the state decided to
Speaker 2: re prosecute Clay. They knew that they had been lied to,
Speaker 2: that they allowed someone to lie to the jury, they
Speaker 2: knew the actual perpetrator who had been convicted. They decided
Speaker 2: to re prosecute Clay. And it gets worse. By that
Speaker 2: important time. Clay was fortunate that some of the physical
Speaker 2: evidence was retained, the evidence that identified Paps, but much
Speaker 2: of the physical evidence had been lost by that point
Speaker 2: in time. So the state's plan was to just run
Speaker 2: it back now recognizing that the person who they had
Speaker 2: put all their faith in the first time was the
Speaker 2: actual perpetrator, but unwilling to recognize that the case had
Speaker 2: no legs to stand on against Clay, and Clay was
Speaker 2: forced to contemplate going to trial again without even the
Speaker 2: ability to examine and retest some of the other evidence
Speaker 2: that the state at this point had lost. So, for example,
Speaker 2: the purported murder weapon we mentioned earlier, Jerry Papps, when
Speaker 2: he was arrested, had a bloody T shirt that had
Speaker 2: been lost. We couldn't demonstrate that even perhaps fourth or
Speaker 2: fifth or eighth version of events wasn't accurate had we
Speaker 2: been able to identify the victim's blood on his T shirt.
Speaker 3: For example.
Speaker 2: And I have to say I was actually hopeful that
Speaker 2: we would be able to convince the judge once we
Speaker 2: knew we couldn't convince the prosecutor to just dismiss it
Speaker 2: against Clay, because the misconduct in this case was so deep.
Speaker 2: We tried from all angles, both negotiating with the prosecutor,
Speaker 2: we tried with a judge, and we weren't successful. And
Speaker 2: ultimately that left Clay once again in the moment where
Speaker 2: he's posed with a question that he should have never
Speaker 2: had to face. What to do when the prosecutor comes
Speaker 2: to him. Now, you can walk out time served, but
Speaker 2: on one condition, you have to play guilty.
Speaker 1: It's hard to figure out what master they're serving at
Speaker 1: this point in time, too. Right, they have the guy.
Speaker 1: The guys they got him the right guy. Now finally
Speaker 1: he got the right guy. Even though you guys did
Speaker 1: everything you possibly could to fuck this up as bad
Speaker 1: as you possibly could, now the right guy's in prison.
Speaker 2: And that was extremely frustrating, and so, as Clay mentioned,
Speaker 2: you know, he had been failed by the system before
Speaker 2: he had seen that happen. He'd seen what jurors did
Speaker 2: very quickly at the original trial. And I don't fault
Speaker 2: Clay for a second for making the decision that allowed
Speaker 2: him to walk out and be with us today.
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned earlier, Clay's son, Harley is here
Speaker 1: with us right now, so we wanted to give him
Speaker 1: a chance to talk about his memories and what the
Speaker 1: day his father was freed, what that time was like
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 4: I don't know how to explain happiness and anger at
Speaker 4: the same time. His brother is the one that brought
Speaker 4: him a home, and I remember, I remember it was
Speaker 4: it was a silver Dodge Ram that turned the corner.
Speaker 4: I remember staying in the front yard. I was so
Speaker 4: excited he was home, jumping up and down, obviously crying
Speaker 4: as soon as you got out of the truck. Happy, happy,
Speaker 4: and mad. I don't know how to explain it happy
Speaker 4: about at the same time. You know, I hugged him
Speaker 4: and told him I love him, And then I have
Speaker 4: to share because him taking that guilty plea was partly
Speaker 4: my decision. He had called me when they offered him that,
Speaker 4: and he said, what do I do?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 4: He said, I can, I can come home now, but
Speaker 4: I'm gonna They're gonna leave it on my record.
Speaker 3: They're gonna call me a murderer.
Speaker 4: Or I can fight this. And I didn't do this hardly.
Speaker 4: I know I didn't do it, so I know I
Speaker 4: can fight him. I could probably get some money on us.
Speaker 4: You know, well we'll both be fighting. You know, everybody
Speaker 4: will be fighting. Yeah, I said that. Who fucking cares
Speaker 4: if they call you a murderer?
Speaker 3: Are you? He says, no, Harley, it's grew it. Man.
Speaker 4: You alread gave him twenty three years. They're gonna look
Speaker 4: for every reason they can't. I love to gamble. I
Speaker 4: already gave you twenty three years for nothing. The odds
Speaker 4: are clearly not in my favor. I'll go home. That
Speaker 4: affected me for twenty three years. That affected all of
Speaker 4: his family. My mother, who asking her Almi. You know,
Speaker 4: she stayed married to him til I was about nineteen.
Speaker 4: She was in a pretty brutal place as well. You know,
Speaker 4: it's your brother and your husband. She never called him
Speaker 4: the dad guilty, and she never defended Jerry. So it
Speaker 4: makes me feel like she knew more, but she was
Speaker 4: just in a hard place. And it always kind of
Speaker 4: barked me because Jerry was around her family. I almost
Speaker 4: feel like a bad human for saying it sometimes, and
Speaker 4: I'm glad that everything happened and happened now, you know,
Speaker 4: he passed away in prison, which is perfect in my mind.
Speaker 4: I think I'm allowed to feel that way. But it
Speaker 4: ripped our paint apart. But we can do this to
Speaker 4: humans and throw them in prison and it there not
Speaker 4: be a lot of recourse, you know, the prosecutor. I
Speaker 4: actually learned some of the day that I didn't know.
Speaker 4: You know, this could be a problem for us. You
Speaker 4: were aware of that, even you destroy your life. Oh well, sorry,
Speaker 4: well no, you owe me more than that. I don't
Speaker 4: want money. You go to prison, now, you know that's
Speaker 4: what you should do. How many other people did you
Speaker 4: do this too? Was this the only one you got
Speaker 4: caught in? And that's just one, one time era, one
Speaker 4: prosecutor in one city. How often does this happen all
Speaker 4: over the United States, over the world. This is the
Speaker 4: first time since conference that I've been to. I was
Speaker 4: shocked by how many axon rees there are. I thought
Speaker 4: it was only a couple, you know, or like ten
Speaker 4: or fifteen, which is still that's still too many. Now,
Speaker 4: if this was an airline, statistically speaking, if this was
Speaker 4: an airline they had planes crashing, they would shut it
Speaker 4: down and fix it immediately. They're being outrage everywhere. Something
Speaker 4: has to change. This has got to be fixed.
Speaker 1: I also want to point out that these people who
Speaker 1: were making these decisions to reprosecute, or at least we're
Speaker 1: threatening to reprosecute the Clay. We're more than happy to
Speaker 1: spend countless more tax dollars on a ridiculous sham trial,
Speaker 1: a second ridiculous sham trial, but we're somehow so protective
Speaker 1: of the idea that we wouldn't want to use those
Speaker 1: same tax dollars to compensate this man.
Speaker 3: It's a little more complicated for one reason, and that's
Speaker 3: something we've kind of missed over in that it's my
Speaker 3: original prosecutor. See, as you've known, they have various laws
Speaker 3: for set amounts of conversation when someone's determined wrongly convicted,
Speaker 3: and you can't prosecute a prosecutor if they're just doing
Speaker 3: their job within the limits of the law. But if
Speaker 3: they violate the law, you can take that out and
Speaker 3: sue for untold amounts. And that's what we proved. My
Speaker 3: original prosecutor broke the law, like withholding evidence that presenting
Speaker 3: testimony that she knew was false. So we had special earrings.
Speaker 3: Went to the bar. She was found guilty, but I
Speaker 3: caa'head the bar protect themselves and they they have a punishment,
Speaker 3: but it was considered what do they call a private
Speaker 3: sense or something that they wouldn't tell us what they
Speaker 3: did to her. She still remained a current DA in
Speaker 3: another county at that time.
Speaker 1: Listen whether or not they want to put it in
Speaker 1: a legal document. I don't think there's any sane or
Speaker 1: rational person that believes you had anything to do with
Speaker 1: this crime. The good news is you're here. You're never
Speaker 1: going back, and I'm glad that we're here to put
Speaker 1: a sort of a stamp on it and tell this
Speaker 1: story in the way that you've told it today. Okay,
Speaker 1: and now we have a tradition it's called closing arguments.
Speaker 1: First of all, I think both of you again, Jason
Speaker 1: Craig from the Innocence Project, Clay Chabeau, Dona Ree for
Speaker 1: being here and sharing your story. And then I'm going
Speaker 1: to turn off my microphone, kick back in my chair,
Speaker 1: and turn it over to you guys for any final
Speaker 1: thoughts you want to share with me and our audience.
Speaker 1: As is also traditional, Jason, We're going to let you
Speaker 1: go first and then have the man himself take us out.
Speaker 2: Excellent, Jason, Thank you, and thank you for your team
Speaker 2: for doing the podcast. I think it's super important to
Speaker 2: share these stories. So I guess i'd just say this
Speaker 2: when I see Clay, or particularly when I'm here at
Speaker 2: these annual conferences and see hundreds of people who have
Speaker 2: overcome similar challenges, I'm reminded by some of the people
Speaker 2: who didn't have the same strength to get to the end,
Speaker 2: or didn't have the same time because their life just
Speaker 2: ended in prison, or gave up. Had Clay not had
Speaker 2: the fortitude to keep fighting, to write the next letter,
Speaker 2: to just say no, I'm not going to stop right now,
Speaker 2: so Clay, just like everyone who's here at this conference,
Speaker 2: they're the strongest people who we know. If Clay couldn't
Speaker 2: keep going, if Clay couldn't figure out how to live
Speaker 2: the next day in prison, just like everyone who's here
Speaker 2: at the conference now, had they not had the fortitude
Speaker 2: to keep going. We wouldn't know their story, we wouldn't
Speaker 2: be able to tell their story. And so I guess
Speaker 2: the closing thought that I wanted to see is, you know,
Speaker 2: when I see Clay sitting here, I see the hundreds
Speaker 2: or thousands of additional people who some of us know
Speaker 2: them very well because we worked on their cases and
Speaker 2: we could never get them to the innocence finish line.
Speaker 2: They still are in prison, or tragically they died in prison.
Speaker 2: And I think that seeing Clay here everyone else here
Speaker 2: is absolutely wonderful and energizing, and it's a reminder of
Speaker 2: the additional work we can do and some of the
Speaker 2: work that we can't do because those cases will never
Speaker 2: be identified. We'll just never know about thousands of people
Speaker 2: who have the same tragedy, but we won't know their names.
Speaker 3: Mine would be for the public decide, people to wake
Speaker 3: up and recognize that, you know, they have the power
Speaker 3: to assess the evidence as it's presented to them, not
Speaker 3: just accept what the prosecutors tell them. And just keep
Speaker 3: this in mind because these things, at least they're coming
Speaker 3: more to like because of scientific DNA evidence has made
Speaker 3: it conclusive, fully proven. But just remember this. It could
Speaker 3: be your brother, your sister, your mother, your father that's
Speaker 3: on that stand next time being accused. You know, if
Speaker 3: you think you just walk in there and you want
Speaker 3: to go home, you don't really want to delve into it,
Speaker 3: just remember, let's gild be you next time.
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
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Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flahm. Ronvel Conviction is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
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