Speaker 1: In the early nineties, the crack epidemic was in full swing,
Speaker 1: and violence between rival gangs, the Red Top Crew and
Speaker 1: the Yellow Top Crew, among others, gripped Harlem and other
Speaker 1: parts of the city. On June tenth, nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: a slender, light skinned man in his forties with a
Speaker 1: gray ponytail rolled up to a building on West one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty fifth Street and open fire, wounding fifteen
Speaker 1: year old Henry Gomez and killing eighteen year old Manny Kintero.
Speaker 1: The case went cold for two years. Then two members
Speaker 1: of Yellowtop joined forces with a corrupt detective and officer
Speaker 1: team to bring a close to this case in exchange
Speaker 1: for leniency in their own cases. Officer aj Molino had
Speaker 1: been involved in dealing at some point himself. The detective
Speaker 1: was Mark Tebbins, the same one responsible for Danny Ringcon's
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction in the bungling of another Red Top.
Speaker 2: Cruse shooting in the Bronx.
Speaker 1: These members of Yellowtop made up a story that Pablo
Speaker 1: fort and As had been hired by Redtop to carry
Speaker 1: out the June tenth shooting. Then Tevins and Malino used
Speaker 1: misleading identification tactics to trick or coerce several teenage eyewitnesses
Speaker 1: to build what they knew was a farcical case. The
Speaker 1: prosecution followed suit to turn Pablo, a stocky, darker skin
Speaker 1: twenty two year old with short black hair, into this slender,
Speaker 1: forty something light skin shooter with a gray ponytail. Pablo
Speaker 1: spent almost twenty five years behind bars, and it took
Speaker 1: nearly a decade and a half of pro bono work
Speaker 1: from legal giant Paul Weiss to win his freedom. This
Speaker 1: is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flamm. That's me. I'm your host, and
Speaker 1: today I want to introduce first the tourney who spent
Speaker 1: thousands of hours pro bono on this case. So Dave Brown,
Speaker 1: thanks for being here on the show.
Speaker 3: Today, Thanks for having me Jason, and.
Speaker 1: With us, of course is the person who endured this
Speaker 1: night mare that you're about to hear about and live
Speaker 1: to tell the story. So now it's my great privilege
Speaker 1: to introduce you to Pablo Fernandez Babo. Thank you for
Speaker 1: being here with us today.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: And this story goes back to the early nineties. Pablo,
Speaker 1: you came from the Dominican Republic, right, And you ended
Speaker 1: up as a teenager in Upper Manhattan at the height
Speaker 1: of the crack epidemic. What was it like growing up
Speaker 1: in that crazy time that we've heard so much about.
Speaker 4: It was way deeferent to day crying.
Speaker 5: Every day you walking in this three, you see the
Speaker 5: house in the botto of the crack the floor.
Speaker 4: You see a lot of cracking people walking in this
Speaker 4: three like a son.
Speaker 1: Be Gunshots could be heard regularly around the clock, not
Speaker 1: just at nighttime in those days. And you had a
Speaker 1: police force that out of control as well. And Dave
Speaker 1: take us back to the original crime and how this
Speaker 1: turned into this terribly flawed case and ultimately wonwful conviction.
Speaker 3: The crime in question took place on June tenth, nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three.
Speaker 2: It was a.
Speaker 3: Drive by shooting where a car drives down one hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty fifth Street, stops. The gunman gets out for
Speaker 3: just a few seconds from the passenger side, fires several shots,
Speaker 3: kills Manny Kintaro, wounds Henry Gomez, jumps back in the car,
Speaker 3: and the car drives away. A number of eye witnesses
Speaker 3: saw that shooting. They called in to nine one one
Speaker 3: with descriptions. Some of them were interviewed by the police
Speaker 3: either that evening or in the days that followed, and
Speaker 3: they all described the shooter as having light skin, in
Speaker 3: his thirties or forties, tall, thin build, gray or salt
Speaker 3: and pepper hair pulled back in a pony tail. And
Speaker 3: Pablo looked nothing like that description. In nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 3: he was twenty years old, he had short, dark hair,
Speaker 3: stock built, he had never worn his hair long, much
Speaker 3: less in a ponytail. And the case went cold, we believed,
Speaker 3: because the police failed to follow up on leads. They
Speaker 3: sent officers who didn't speak Spanish to conduct interviews in
Speaker 3: the neighborhood around where the shooting took place, and they
Speaker 3: just came back and reported, well, we couldn't communicate with
Speaker 3: some of the witnesses because they spoke Spanish. Wow, and
Speaker 3: just we think there was no serious effort to really
Speaker 3: solve this clime.
Speaker 2: So the case goes cold.
Speaker 3: Approximately two years later, NYPD officers engaged in a really
Speaker 3: brazen and corrupt scheme to manufacture evidence against Pablo, faced
Speaker 3: with the facts that he bore no resemblance to the
Speaker 3: shooter and there was never any physical or forensics or
Speaker 3: ballistic evidence that connected him to the crime, and there
Speaker 3: was absolutely no motive for him to committed the crime.
Speaker 3: But let me start with the police officers who were
Speaker 3: the primary.
Speaker 2: Architects of this place to falsely.
Speaker 3: Incriminate Pablo, NYPD Officer Albert Molino. He went by aj
Speaker 3: who had ties to the drug trade himself from before
Speaker 3: he went to the police academy, and also Detective Mark Tevians.
Speaker 1: Our audience might remember Mark Tebans from another case that
Speaker 1: we covered recently, Danny Rincolone case, and of course all
Speaker 1: the corrupt tactics that he used to make that preposterous
Speaker 1: case stick as well.
Speaker 3: The corrupt and unconstitutional tactics that they used were not
Speaker 3: unique to them. I mean, these were commonplaces n MIPD,
Speaker 3: homicide and serious felony investigations during the early mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 3: and the way they constructed this false case was based
Speaker 3: on Perger testimony.
Speaker 1: At the center of this corrupt investigation were two members
Speaker 1: of the Yellow Top Crew, who were rivals of the
Speaker 1: Red Top Crew. Now, in those days, of course, the
Speaker 1: crews were named after the colored caps of the crack
Speaker 1: files that they sold. Those Yellow Tops had two motives
Speaker 1: to give up seemingly useful but false information to the police.
Speaker 1: One was to help their own charges and the other
Speaker 1: was to try to inflict damage on their arrivals, the
Speaker 1: Red Top Crew, and these two individuals that worked with
Speaker 1: Melino and Tabins were Raymond Dilly Rivera and the leader
Speaker 1: of the Yellow Top Crew, whose name was Martin Chango Mehias.
Speaker 3: Now Mahias was known in the streets to be a crazy,
Speaker 3: violent drug dealer, and he was arrested in June of
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four charged with three counts of murder, one
Speaker 3: kind of attempted murder, and multiple drug conspiracy charges, and
Speaker 3: he was facing potential life in prison, so he decided
Speaker 3: that he would cooperate with the Manhattan Die's office and
Speaker 3: testify against other people to get a lighter sentence. He
Speaker 3: put away dozens of people who worked for him, and
Speaker 3: around that time Rivera, who was one of the chief
Speaker 3: lieutenants in the Yellow Top Crew, came into the Benhatan
Speaker 3: Die's office and he confessed that he had committed more
Speaker 3: than five hundred felonies, including assaults, robberies, and attempted murder.
Speaker 3: He was never charged for any of those crimes. So
Speaker 3: somehow Melino and Teppans urged these two cooperators, Mihias and Rivera,
Speaker 3: to say that they knew Pablo had been hired to
Speaker 3: do this shooting for the leader of the Red Top crew.
Speaker 3: They said that they saw Pablo being paid money to
Speaker 3: do the shooting, about twenty five hundred dollars, and one
Speaker 3: of them said that after the shooting he saw Pablo
Speaker 3: come back and meet with the person who had hired
Speaker 3: him to do the shooting and take out a shell
Speaker 3: casing and say this is the bullet that killed Kintaro.
Speaker 3: They said that they knew that Pablo wore disguise like
Speaker 3: a wig, or he painted his hair.
Speaker 1: And of course we would have also had to believe
Speaker 1: that he had a makeup artist on hand who could
Speaker 1: have changed his skin color. But you can't be stocky
Speaker 1: and pretend you're skinny. That doesn't work.
Speaker 2: None of this was true.
Speaker 3: And then early nineteen ninety five, detective Tevins and Officer
Speaker 3: Milino found two eyewitnesses who had seen the shooting. Now,
Speaker 3: when these kids saw the shooting, they were approximately thirteen
Speaker 3: years old, and both of them were cousins of Manniquintaro.
Speaker 3: One of them his name was Hiccliffe Rosario and the
Speaker 3: other's name was George Rosario, and both of them had
Speaker 3: reported seeing a light skinned shooter, you know, long gray hair,
Speaker 3: thirties or forties do the killing. But they were pressured
Speaker 3: by Melino and Tebbns to falsely identify Pablo as the shooter,
Speaker 3: in part because the police just kept pointing to pictures
Speaker 3: of Pablo over and over and over saying this is
Speaker 3: a shooter. The police officers lied to Hicckcliffe and George
Speaker 3: Rosario and said, you know, even though he may not
Speaker 3: have been the shooter, he had something to do with
Speaker 3: the crime, so.
Speaker 2: You should say that he did it.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the picture from Pablo's lineup,
Speaker 3: they're six men and five of them are where white
Speaker 3: T shirts. And Pablo was put in completely different clothes
Speaker 3: to make it easier for the witnesses to falsely incriminate him.
Speaker 3: I think this is something they had done many times before.
Speaker 3: You would think that it would be incredibly difficult to
Speaker 3: frame an innocent person for murder. It almost seemed effortless
Speaker 3: for these corrupt police officers.
Speaker 1: And Paba, what was it like going through this for you?
Speaker 1: Did you understand what was going on.
Speaker 4: And the beginning, though I thought I learned a little
Speaker 4: about little, it was real for me.
Speaker 5: I just have my song, my first baby, to change
Speaker 5: that life, that quiet like that that in one one second,
Speaker 5: it's real hard.
Speaker 4: They have me in the Rackets Island, you know by
Speaker 4: that dying Rackets Island was.
Speaker 5: The acquisition that I have something that I know that
Speaker 5: I'm not doing man my song.
Speaker 4: Every time I see my soul in the cool it
Speaker 4: was It's.
Speaker 1: It's impossible, I think for anyone who hasn't been through
Speaker 1: it to imagine what you went through. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: twenty years old, you're still a kid. Now you're thrust
Speaker 1: into a very adult situation that you didn't cause and
Speaker 1: you didn't create. And I want to just highlight one
Speaker 1: of the things on the Innesis project has led to charge,
Speaker 1: among other organizations, to make videotaping of interrogations mandatory, but
Speaker 1: also the photo arrays, lineup procedures, all of that, anything
Speaker 1: involving eye witnesses should also be videotaped. That's the only
Speaker 1: way we can clamp down on these type of practices.
Speaker 1: And they're not always as nefarious as this one was, right,
Speaker 1: but if they're influencing the witness in any way. The
Speaker 1: jury must know about that. And that brings us to
Speaker 1: the trial, which was January nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3: And let me start just a few weeks before the
Speaker 3: trial begins. Actually, because it appears that Melino and Teppans
Speaker 3: they knew approaching the trial as was a weak case.
Speaker 3: They had two cooperators obviously had motives to lie and
Speaker 3: fabricate evidence, and then you had these two teenagers who
Speaker 3: have been pressured to lie, and so it looks like
Speaker 3: they went out to try to bolster this case. And
Speaker 3: they found two more eyewitnesses and one of them, his
Speaker 3: name was Hayes's Canela. Canela recants in the mid two thousands, actually.
Speaker 2: As do the Rosarios.
Speaker 3: But Canela, when he came forward, he said that he
Speaker 3: had been pressured by the police officers and they showed
Speaker 3: him a picture of Pablo, not even a photo array,
Speaker 3: just a single photographic Pablo, saying this is the person
Speaker 3: who did the crime. And then they told him you
Speaker 3: don't have to testify in court about the fact that
Speaker 3: you saw this photo. So this witness is found two
Speaker 3: weeks before the trial, right, it's now two and a
Speaker 3: half years since he saw the murder, and he testifies
Speaker 3: that he still recognizes Pablo, even though you know Pablo
Speaker 3: was supposedly wearing a disguise at the time, and he
Speaker 3: says he's never seen any pictures of Pablo up until then,
Speaker 3: although of course, just two weeks before trial started he
Speaker 3: indeed was some pictures of Pablo, but that's all covered up.
Speaker 5: It's so bad because you can do nothing. You can
Speaker 5: say nothing. It's like it's somebody punching you and you
Speaker 5: can do nothing. Everything was lying.
Speaker 1: So Pablo, when the jury came back, what was that
Speaker 1: moment like.
Speaker 4: When you told me that I'm guilty? Oh man, I
Speaker 4: thought I want to die.
Speaker 5: I feel my bie, like like I hold in one
Speaker 5: thousand pounds my back and look you back to see
Speaker 5: my family. All my family was crying. I was crying.
Speaker 5: I was crying. I can't hold it. When you know
Speaker 5: that you hemasy and they find you guilty or something
Speaker 5: that you want to confront twenty five years, it's crazy.
Speaker 5: I lost my family, love my song, I love everybody.
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by the AIG Pro Bono program.
Speaker 1: AIG is a leading global insurance company, and for over
Speaker 1: a decade, the AIG pro bono program has provided thousands
Speaker 1: of hours of free legal services and other support to
Speaker 1: nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need. More recently, the
Speaker 1: program added criminal and social justice reform as a key
Speaker 1: pillar of its mission.
Speaker 3: The case against Pablo really began to fall apart just
Speaker 3: a few days after the trial when the DA's office
Speaker 3: came to Pablo's trial council and said, we've had to
Speaker 3: arrest Officer aj Malino because we discovered that he was
Speaker 3: under investigation by the New York State Troopers for dealing
Speaker 3: large amounts of cocaine to.
Speaker 2: Undercover cops a few years prior, right.
Speaker 3: Before he went into the police academy, and for some
Speaker 3: reason that investigation stalled, but it was reopened during the trial.
Speaker 3: Alino is arrested right after the trial, but the DA's
Speaker 3: office never follows up to prosecute him, and after about
Speaker 3: five years the case is dismissed for failure to prosecute. Now,
Speaker 3: it's my theory that somebody who's dealing large amounts of
Speaker 3: drugs and it goes into the police academy does not
Speaker 3: stop after they've become a police officer, and we'll see
Speaker 3: what comes to bite in Pablo's civil case. But I
Speaker 3: think this was likely a corrupt officer through and through again.
Speaker 3: We know during this time there were other officers in
Speaker 3: UPTAH Manhattan who were dealing drugs themselves, providing protection to
Speaker 3: drug dealers, robbing drug dealers, and signed the drugs themselves.
Speaker 3: And you know, Melino certainly seems to fit that pattern.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one would think that that would cause an
Speaker 1: immediate reopening of the case or retrial or something. But
Speaker 1: of course we know that it took the most twenty
Speaker 1: five years for this to be resolved, and thousands of
Speaker 1: hours of pro bono legal work from you and your
Speaker 1: team at Paul Weiss. You know, it's one of the
Speaker 1: things that gives me hope, just the fact that there
Speaker 1: are people like you and firms like Paul Weiss and
Speaker 1: so many others that provide almost limitless resources of human
Speaker 1: talent to help someone like Pablo get out of what
Speaker 1: is almost impossible.
Speaker 2: Morassed, Dave, you.
Speaker 1: Didn't get involved to two thousand and five, but talk
Speaker 1: to us about this crazy appellate process.
Speaker 3: The next major event occurs in two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: Hicclab and George Rosaria both recanted their trial testimony. And
Speaker 3: they met with a lawyer who was representing Pablo at
Speaker 3: the time, and they provided sworn testimony stating that Malino
Speaker 3: and others had pressured them to falsely identify Pablo as
Speaker 3: the shooter. That Hicclo stated that he was positive that
Speaker 3: Pablo had not shot Caintaro. George said that he never
Speaker 3: would have identified Pablo as the shooter if he had
Speaker 3: not been told by the police that Pablo was involved,
Speaker 3: and that he had been pressured to identify Pablo after
Speaker 3: being shown.
Speaker 4: Pablo's picture again.
Speaker 3: The appellate courts did not consider this evidence enough.
Speaker 2: To free Publo.
Speaker 3: The next year, in two thousand and three, Henry Gomez
Speaker 3: so the second victim of the shooting. He provided sworn
Speaker 3: testimony that Pablo was not the man who shot him
Speaker 3: and didn't look like the shooter. That is not enough either. Now,
Speaker 3: in two thousand and five, my law firm got involved.
Speaker 1: Paul Wise, what are the top law firms not in
Speaker 1: the city in the world, comes in, you know, to
Speaker 1: the rescue. How did his case land on your radar?
Speaker 3: Now we do a lot of pro bono work at
Speaker 3: Paul Weis, including criminal defense work, criminal justice reform work.
Speaker 3: But as your question indicated, you know why, of all
Speaker 3: of the thousands and thousands of criminal defendants in the
Speaker 3: New York State system, how do we get involved in
Speaker 3: Paplo's case.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a Yale.
Speaker 3: Law student named Andrew Goldstein who, because of a program
Speaker 3: at Yale Law School, became aware of this case. And
Speaker 3: then he came to Paul Weise for our summer associate program,
Speaker 3: which lasts about eight.
Speaker 2: To ten weeks.
Speaker 3: And when he came in, he said, can I get
Speaker 3: some support from Paul Whise to help me on Pablo's case?
Speaker 2: And we said sure.
Speaker 3: We thought this was going to be something that we
Speaker 3: helped Andrew Goldstein with for a summer. Well, that summer
Speaker 3: lasted fourteen years. Andrew ended up coming to the firm
Speaker 3: as an associate where he worked on the case, and
Speaker 3: then he left us after about four or five years,
Speaker 3: and he became a prosecutor in the US Attorney's Office
Speaker 3: in the Southern District, and he went on to work
Speaker 3: on Bob Moller's team a few years ago and is
Speaker 3: now back in private practice and just so overjoyed that
Speaker 3: the case that he brought in as a law student
Speaker 3: ended with such a great result, even though it took
Speaker 3: to such a long time for justice to be delivered.
Speaker 1: What did it mean to you when Dave and his
Speaker 1: team first got involved with your case and to have
Speaker 1: their support, And how did that feel?
Speaker 5: The lawyer that I have so d even the thing came,
Speaker 5: they told me, listen, you look, you got the best
Speaker 5: loyal United States and maybe in the war you got
Speaker 5: one of the best loyal And I was so happy,
Speaker 5: my family too, because you know, I woant to be
Speaker 5: in the best hang.
Speaker 4: That I can be. That's that's the only way I
Speaker 4: came home.
Speaker 1: And I want to get to that, you know, the
Speaker 1: good part, your freedom. So let's go right back to
Speaker 1: that post conviction history. In two thousand and five, Paul
Speaker 1: Weisse took the case, and then there was another recantation.
Speaker 3: In twenty ten, ten Haines's Canela recants, and again that
Speaker 3: motion is denied. One of the reasons that the New
Speaker 3: York State judge said that this witness was not to
Speaker 3: be believed is because he said, well, he was trying
Speaker 3: too hard to be convincing when he recanted, which is
Speaker 3: just such a ridiculous and bizarre thing to say. And
Speaker 3: with lost in all the state court appeals, in the
Speaker 3: Federal District Court, and now we're going up to the
Speaker 3: Federal Appeals Court, and we knew that if we lost,
Speaker 3: it was over. We would have only had the ability
Speaker 3: to appeal to the Supreme Court, and there was almost
Speaker 3: a zero chance that they would ever have taken this case.
Speaker 3: So this was really our last stop. And this is
Speaker 3: really a case that shows you the value of perseverance.
Speaker 1: Well, it certainly does, because in February of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: the US Court of Appeals for the Second District finally
Speaker 1: overturned the conviction, ruling that it was unconstitutional and citing
Speaker 1: the state court's denial as a quote unquote unreasonable determination
Speaker 1: on the grounds that Canela was and again I'm quoting here,
Speaker 1: trying too hard to be convincing end quote. So now
Speaker 1: the conviction is overturned, but the indictment still stands because
Speaker 1: there's no statute of limitations on murder, and the DA
Speaker 1: comes in you with the deal right to go free
Speaker 1: immediately if you plead guilty to manslaughter. But yet on
Speaker 1: the other hand, they could still retry you. You had
Speaker 1: twenty five to life, so parole was just around the corner.
Speaker 1: But there's no guarantee you there either, because who knows,
Speaker 1: Like if you wouldn't have admitted guilt, if you had
Speaker 1: refused the deal, you might still be sitting in prison today.
Speaker 5: I understand, but it's never passed from my mind to
Speaker 5: take any deal with him. From the beginning, I will
Speaker 5: fire for my freedom. So after all this, jed walking
Speaker 5: in MKA and try to be free to prove my
Speaker 5: ino say, I'm not going to take nothing for these
Speaker 5: people nothing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: At first, we have the defense team thought there's no
Speaker 3: way the DA's office is going to retry this case.
Speaker 3: The hicclerf Rosario has recanted, George Rosario has recanted, Jesu's
Speaker 3: Canella has recanted. We learned that Rivera was a quadriplegic
Speaker 3: and gravely ill, not even able to speak, and then
Speaker 3: Mihias was a drug dealer who had served a significant
Speaker 3: amount of time in prison. And there's absolutely no case left.
Speaker 3: And so during the spring of twenty nineteen, the DA's
Speaker 3: office was making one disclosure after another to us that
Speaker 3: showed that the case was even worse than we had known.
Speaker 3: But we contacted Martin Maheis and he made some incredible
Speaker 3: exclosures to us. He told our investigator, you know, when
Speaker 3: I was cooperating with the police, I was supposed to
Speaker 3: go back to the Rikers Island after I testified, or
Speaker 3: after I met.
Speaker 2: With the DIA's office.
Speaker 3: But Melino and Tevins would take me all around the city.
Speaker 3: We would go to Dallas barbecue, we would get drunk.
Speaker 3: They would take me to visit girlfriends, take me shopping.
Speaker 3: I was drinking a lot at the time. I was
Speaker 3: drunk when I testified. I viewed Tevins as a friend,
Speaker 3: basically indicating that he would have done anything to please
Speaker 3: the police. He also said the police had given him
Speaker 3: marijuana to sell in prison. I mean, this was just
Speaker 3: amazing to us. And we got similar disclosures from the
Speaker 3: Manhattan Die's office about Mihias in July of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Information to show that Mihias said, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: testify for you again. The police told me to lie
Speaker 3: in the trial in nineteen ninety six. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to testify again. So then we learned just some shocking
Speaker 3: information about Raymond Rivera. Raymond Rivera said that he saw
Speaker 3: Pablo two days before the murder and that he witnessed
Speaker 3: Pop being hired to shoot Canterero. Now, at this time,
Speaker 3: according to what the DA's office disclosed to US, Rivera
Speaker 3: could not have been in Upper Manhattan witnessing Pablo or
Speaker 3: anybody else being paid to do this murder because during
Speaker 3: this time, Rivera was actually incarcerated in state prison more
Speaker 3: than three hundred miles away from New York City, and
Speaker 3: that meant that his testimony was just outright pergury. He
Speaker 3: could not have been in New York he could now
Speaker 3: have been in Manhattan. They were prison records, new York
Speaker 3: state records that showed that he was incarcerated at the time,
Speaker 3: And when these disclosures came out, the DA's office decided
Speaker 3: to stop fighting the case, and Pablo was first released
Speaker 3: on bail in August of twenty nineteen, and then in
Speaker 3: September of twenty nineteen, the DA's office asked the trial
Speaker 3: court to dismiss the case against Pablo. In September twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: two days before his birthday, Pablo walked out of Manhattan
Speaker 3: Criminal Court. Finally a freeman.
Speaker 1: The day that you've been waiting for for twenty five
Speaker 1: years has finally come. You're innocent, Your lawyers know you're innocent.
Speaker 1: The whole time, your family, You're innocent the whole time.
Speaker 1: Now everyone knows, the court has said it. What was
Speaker 1: that moment like when you were finally declared actually innocent
Speaker 1: and set free?
Speaker 5: Wow, it was amazing day. It was It was my
Speaker 5: day every day. I was thinking in that day, and
Speaker 5: I know that one day going to come.
Speaker 4: That was the date.
Speaker 5: I was so happy that the through came out.
Speaker 4: And that I was rep free.
Speaker 5: But in the same way, I feel a little bad.
Speaker 5: My fatherly passed away when I was in jail twenty fourteen.
Speaker 5: And one other thing that I want to is to
Speaker 5: see my family or in my father, they see my freedom,
Speaker 5: they see me out or my father know how the
Speaker 5: opportunity to see me. He knows that I'm from the beginning,
Speaker 5: so I can show him, you know, my freedom. I
Speaker 5: feel happy that I'm free, pro in the same in
Speaker 5: the same time, I feel little.
Speaker 4: I don't know how to say, but I'm.
Speaker 5: Feeling my father in my in my hall, that I
Speaker 5: can see him, that I can hold him, you know,
Speaker 5: and show him I'm here with you again.
Speaker 1: The good news is your home now You're never going back.
Speaker 1: And Pablo, I have to ask how I mean people
Speaker 1: out here in the free world, trying to find love,
Speaker 1: going everywhere, looking online, on here, on there, going out,
Speaker 1: and you found love from behind the walls of prison.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're a charming guy. But still, that's amazing.
Speaker 5: Can you explain we know each other from outside before
Speaker 5: I get out that when I get told in jail
Speaker 5: a friend of mine, he was my wife Tania best friend. Broadly,
Speaker 5: we see that we from the same Abia, and we
Speaker 5: started talking about people. And when I'm mentioning Manitania, so
Speaker 5: he said, listen, my sister is Tanya's friend. So the
Speaker 5: same day he called so his sister that I was here,
Speaker 5: and next day I got a visit Fontania. Since the
Speaker 5: that day we're together. That happened two thousand and three. See,
Speaker 5: I missed one busy, she allways come to see me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you two got married. She I mean, it's amazing. Really,
Speaker 1: she's stuck by you the whole way. It's beautiful and
Speaker 1: it's just gotta feel amazing. And I know I speak
Speaker 1: for so many others, all of us here at Ronful
Speaker 1: Conviction and everyone in your in your very wide circle.
Speaker 1: Now when I say that we wish you to all
Speaker 1: the best, that life has to offer any other news.
Speaker 4: Now I got a new soul, now come out.
Speaker 1: Ah, great stuff. Congratulations to you both. So I mean,
Speaker 1: there's really nowhere left to go after that. So let's
Speaker 1: just end on a high note here and go straight
Speaker 1: to closing arguments, which is of course a segment on
Speaker 1: the show, my favorite segment when I thank both of you,
Speaker 1: each of you for being here, and then I shut
Speaker 1: my microphone off, just kick back and listen as I
Speaker 1: hear whatever you want to say, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: talk about it. Let's start with David first and leave
Speaker 1: you Pablo for last.
Speaker 3: Thanks Jason. I just want to say that it was
Speaker 3: such an honor and a privilege to represent Pablo, to
Speaker 3: fight for him to meet his family, his mother, his sisters,
Speaker 3: other members of his family, his wife Tanya, who is
Speaker 3: just such a lovely, impressive woman. I'm just so happy
Speaker 3: for Pablo and Tanya that even though Pop in twenty
Speaker 3: four years in prison and fourteen fifteen years of their marriage,
Speaker 3: Pablo was incarcerated, now that they get a chance to
Speaker 3: be together and to have a child together, and they
Speaker 3: have two other children and this will be a third,
Speaker 3: and this is just really wonderful as I said before,
Speaker 3: it's just so rewarding to.
Speaker 2: Do this type of work.
Speaker 3: I would urge every lawyer I know to try to
Speaker 3: get involved in.
Speaker 2: Criminal justice reform work.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be an innocent case, but there's
Speaker 3: so much work that needs to be done around criminal
Speaker 3: justice reform, and especially if you are at a large
Speaker 3: firm like Ballwise, there's so many resources that you can
Speaker 3: bring to bear, and there's so many wrongs that need
Speaker 3: to be righted, especially in the New York.
Speaker 2: Criminal justice system.
Speaker 3: There have been a lot of cases that NYPD has
Speaker 3: been involved in. It had terrible, unjust tragic results, and
Speaker 3: these cases can also be a lot of fun. It
Speaker 3: is fun to be on the right side of his
Speaker 3: tree and on the right side of justice, and it's
Speaker 3: energizing in the morning to get up and know that
Speaker 3: you're fighting for an anescent person.
Speaker 4: I want to say thank you.
Speaker 5: I feel so grateful for Wise, everybody that's working in
Speaker 5: the case.
Speaker 4: That's the only reason they know I'm innocying. They do
Speaker 4: the best.
Speaker 5: Yes, they made my dream through, they made my freedom
Speaker 5: or my family happy. Now I enjoyed my song because
Speaker 5: then and everything, because you know, I feel so happy
Speaker 5: for them. And grateful my family too, like we can
Speaker 5: like family, My family feel like there is my family.
Speaker 4: I feel like they're my family.
Speaker 5: And thank you forming the program to make that through
Speaker 5: come out. You know, I know it's so many people
Speaker 5: like me, innocent people. They know how the opportunity that
Speaker 5: I have is Bray Mahat.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot
Speaker 1: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one