Speaker 1: Since our original coverage of Andre Brown's case, there have
Speaker 1: been some terrifying developments. Our listeners might recall that Andre's
Speaker 1: team revealed a very compelling alternate suspect in this case,
Speaker 1: someone who looked like Andrea, lived in the neighborhood, had
Speaker 1: a motive, and who at the time of the crime,
Speaker 1: was not recovering from a debilitating injury, unlike Andrea, who
Speaker 1: could barely walk, let alone chase the victims in this case, so,
Speaker 1: Andrea's conviction was overturned. But despite this information, the Bronx
Speaker 1: District Attorney's office appealed the decision that overturned Andrea's conviction,
Speaker 1: and they won. So this Friday, yes, this upcoming Friday,
Speaker 1: April twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, they aimed to take
Speaker 1: Andre from his wife and children and the freedom that
Speaker 1: he richly deserves to serve out the remaining seventeen years
Speaker 1: of someone else's forty year sentence. So I am pleading
Speaker 1: with you to help save an innocent man from further injustice.
Speaker 1: There's a petition for clemency linked in the episode description.
Speaker 1: Scroll to it, sign it, share it, and perhaps by
Speaker 1: this weekend there will be one less terrible thing happening.
Speaker 2: In this world.
Speaker 1: On the evening of January fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine, a
Speaker 1: masked man approached two teenage boys in front of a
Speaker 1: bodega in the Bronx, on a corner known for drug activity.
Speaker 1: The assailant drew a gun and shot one of the
Speaker 1: young men several times while the other ran off. The
Speaker 1: gunman chased the other young man down the block and
Speaker 1: around the corner before paralyzing him with one shot to
Speaker 1: the back. While both victims survived, only one was conscious,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't or wouldn't provide a lead. An eyewitness
Speaker 1: said that she recognized the shooter as a guy from
Speaker 1: the neighbor named Drey. The police remembered Andre Brown, a
Speaker 1: neighborhood kid who was shot in the leg one year
Speaker 1: prior in a drug dispute. The specter of his injured
Speaker 1: leg and alternate suspects were ignored when both the witness
Speaker 1: and the victim agreed that Andre was the assailant.
Speaker 2: But this is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 3: You're listening to wrongful conviction. You can listen to this
Speaker 3: and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early
Speaker 3: and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good plus
Speaker 3: on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Welcome Back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Recently, Jason Flamm and I were asked to record an
Speaker 1: interview in front of a live audience at the annual
Speaker 1: United Justice Coalition Summit.
Speaker 2: The UJC aims to raise awareness around.
Speaker 1: Social justice issues and the need for criminal legal system reform.
Speaker 1: So for our live interview, we thought of a mutual friend,
Speaker 1: someone whose case I covered on my podcast Unjustin Unsolved. Well,
Speaker 1: he was still wrongfully incarcerated, Andre Brown. Andrea agreed to
Speaker 1: join us at the summit along with his attorney Oscar Michelin.
Speaker 4: Thanks everybody for being here.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna ask, first of all, how many people in
Speaker 3: this room were wrongfully convicted and sentenced? Oh my god,
Speaker 3: see that? And how many people here know somebody who
Speaker 3: was wrongfully convicted? Oh my god, that's a lot of hands.
Speaker 4: Yeah. This shit is everywhere.
Speaker 3: It's horrible, and I'm really really thrilled to be here
Speaker 3: with these amazing, amazing people, Maggie Feeling, Oscar and of
Speaker 3: course Andre Brown. And I'm so glad that Andrea is here.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm so glad you're here, because I'm so
Speaker 3: glad you're here with your amazing, beautiful family and everything.
Speaker 4: But his case start with this, okay.
Speaker 3: It features a witness who didn't testify, but her testimony
Speaker 3: was allowed in any way, which meant that no one.
Speaker 4: Was allowed to cross examine her.
Speaker 3: Second of all, the shooter shot one guy execution style,
Speaker 3: then chased his friend caught up to him on the street.
Speaker 3: Now that this was an eighteen year old kid running
Speaker 3: for his life and somehow this guy was fast enough
Speaker 3: to catch up with him and shoot him and paralyze
Speaker 3: him too. Andre had a bullet wound in his leg
Speaker 3: and had a syndrome that meant that he could barely walk,
Speaker 3: much less run. And it also features a lawyer who,
Speaker 3: while he was representing Andrea a trial, had a side
Speaker 3: hustle which was committing so many crimes for the Banano
Speaker 3: crime family that he ended up being the only attorney
Speaker 3: in American history to enter the witness Protection program.
Speaker 4: So it's a shit show.
Speaker 3: So get ready to hear what we're about to hear,
Speaker 3: because this is just different and Andre is just a
Speaker 3: different kind of guy.
Speaker 4: I mean to no one is to love him. So
Speaker 4: with that, Maggie, all right.
Speaker 1: So hello everyone, thanks for coming. I'm just gonna start
Speaker 1: from the top with Andre, why don't you tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 5: I was raised in a two parent household. It was
Speaker 5: the Uptime area, the Northeast Bronx. The crack epidemic was
Speaker 5: going on, a lot of gun shots being fired continuously.
Speaker 5: The trains were littered homeless people, and it was just
Speaker 5: a real, just tragic time in the Bronx. My life
Speaker 5: was a fair life. My mother was a stewardess for
Speaker 5: the airlines, and she raised us and groomed us to
Speaker 5: be good individuals. And then my mother and my father separated.
Speaker 5: At that time, I was in high school and now
Speaker 5: I was taken on the onus of raising my brothers.
Speaker 5: So I said, how can I now change the course
Speaker 5: of their lives and allow myself to continue in an
Speaker 5: upward manner. First, I took on a job at creating barrel,
Speaker 5: trying to think that it would be able to fit
Speaker 5: the bill, and it didn't. It couldn't feed my little
Speaker 5: sister or my other two brothers. So at that time
Speaker 5: I said, you know what, I have to do something else.
Speaker 5: And my friend introduced me to selling drugs. And when
Speaker 5: I started to sell drugs, literally I thought I was
Speaker 5: a genius Sabbath, And this is how your mind gets
Speaker 5: cultivated poorly in the streets. You start to really engage
Speaker 5: and think that you know better than law enforcement, you
Speaker 5: know better than society, and you also know better than
Speaker 5: that old adage cartoon the Turtle and the rabbit, thinking that, oh,
Speaker 5: I know what I'm doing. I'm running past this little
Speaker 5: working man, this turtle. So in selling drugs, in thinking
Speaker 5: I was a genius, I got shot a simple leg shot,
Speaker 5: mind you. It hit my major artery and I almost
Speaker 5: bled to death. And that was the turning point in
Speaker 5: my life.
Speaker 1: So you almost died, So you got on a better
Speaker 1: path in life.
Speaker 5: Yes, First of all, you have to be an enforcer
Speaker 5: on a block in order to hold it down. I
Speaker 5: was injured, critically injured. I was at the point where
Speaker 5: I couldn't walk, I could no longer hold down a block.
Speaker 5: So I said, what am I going to do now
Speaker 5: with my life? And I started going back to college.
Speaker 5: At that point, I enrolled in BMCC. And that's when
Speaker 5: you know, tragedy.
Speaker 1: Occurred, right, And I want to bring that to Oscar.
Speaker 1: January fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine. What happened that day?
Speaker 6: So on that day there was a shooting on a
Speaker 6: street corner in the Bronx Allerton Avenue, White Plains Road.
Speaker 6: That area. The corner there was Little Bodeiga, a little
Speaker 6: corner store had been a spot where young Jamaican gang
Speaker 6: had started selling marijuana out of for the past about
Speaker 6: year or so, and the cops were aware of that,
Speaker 6: and so there became a little bit of a rival
Speaker 6: turf war for that location from the earlier crews that
Speaker 6: had been working there selling marijuana. And so the first
Speaker 6: incident that happened was on January eleventh, there was a
Speaker 6: shootout on that corner, two exchanges of gunfire. Nobody got shot,
Speaker 6: some cars were shot up, so the police responded. On
Speaker 6: January thirteenth, two days later, one of the guys that
Speaker 6: hustles on that corner, guy named O'Neil virgo, got arrested,
Speaker 6: and sure enough the gun he had on him was
Speaker 6: connected to the shooting on the eleventh, so he gets
Speaker 6: the rest of for a gun charge. And then on
Speaker 6: the fifteenth O'Neil Virgo and another man Sewn Nicholson or
Speaker 6: out on that corner selling drugs. Somebody comes up right
Speaker 6: down White Planes Road sees them on the corner, they
Speaker 6: see the gun. He's got a mask on. The shooter
Speaker 6: literally stands over O'Neil Virgo and shoots him several times
Speaker 6: and then runs down the street to try to get
Speaker 6: the other guy, Sewn Nicholson, They were in a full
Speaker 6: city block. He makes a left turn onto the next block,
Speaker 6: which is Olinville, and the shooter shoots him there one time,
Speaker 6: hits him in the spine and paralyzes him. Somehow they
Speaker 6: both survived. So his attempted murder, there was lots of
Speaker 6: descriptions as to what the shooter was wearing. Was it
Speaker 6: a face mask, was it a handkerchief of bandana, et cetera.
Speaker 6: So they asked the victim at that time, Sean Nicholson.
Speaker 6: Mister Virgo could not speak. He was the one who
Speaker 6: shot five or six times. And that initial police report,
Speaker 6: Sewn Nicholson, he says, I can't identify the shooter, and
Speaker 6: so the police start scouring the area looking for witnesses.
Speaker 3: So how did it end up with them settling on
Speaker 3: a guy who, it should have been painfully obvious from
Speaker 3: the very beginning not only didn't do it, but couldn't
Speaker 3: have done it.
Speaker 6: They started listening to rumors in the in the street,
Speaker 6: and one of the women who later recanted said, you know,
Speaker 6: the shooter looked a little bit like this guy I
Speaker 6: know from the neighborhood, Dre. So the next thing they
Speaker 6: do with that is go to the hospital and get
Speaker 6: Sean Nicholson, who had repeatedly said I didn't see the
Speaker 6: guy he had a mask to pick Andre allegedly out
Speaker 6: of a photo array. So what Nicholson actually said, or
Speaker 6: what the police got him to say, was, as he
Speaker 6: was falling to the ground, he looked over his shoulder
Speaker 6: and saw the shooter pulled the mask off his face,
Speaker 6: and he could recognize Andre from the neighborhood.
Speaker 4: Sounds totally legit exactly happens all the time.
Speaker 6: Two days later, a witness comes forward who claims she
Speaker 6: was in her car when the shooting occurred. And this
Speaker 6: is about five point thirty six o'clock at night on
Speaker 6: a winter night, so it was just starting to get
Speaker 6: dark in January. And then she says she saw the
Speaker 6: shooter run past her and pull up his mask just
Speaker 6: as he passed her car window. She also said that
Speaker 6: the shots were fired by her car, but the shots
Speaker 6: that shot mister Nicholson, as a described, were around the corner,
Speaker 6: so she would not have been able to see what
Speaker 6: she said she saw, and she said that she was
Speaker 6: so upset that night she reported to the police because
Speaker 6: she almost had a heart attack and she was treated
Speaker 6: for angina that night. So she didn't come forward until
Speaker 6: two days later after there was already the rumors in
Speaker 6: the neighborhood and they were already looking for Andre.
Speaker 1: So, Andre, when you found out they were looking for you,
Speaker 1: you turned yourself in with a lawyer.
Speaker 5: Yes, they came to my girlfriend's house early in the morning.
Speaker 5: They missed me. I had just went out to get
Speaker 5: breakfast really quick and came back. She was trembling, and
Speaker 5: she said, listen, the police were here. They left the
Speaker 5: card that they searched the home. I immediately reached out
Speaker 5: to my mom and she said, Andre, they were just here. Also,
Speaker 5: I was just about to call you. And I went
Speaker 5: to the Bar Association to meet Martin Fisher. Martin Fisher
Speaker 5: was a family attorney, and I said, Marty, they're looking
Speaker 5: for me. I don't know what they're looking for me for.
Speaker 5: They were contacted by Martin and they said we want
Speaker 5: to ask him a few questions. He said, no, he's
Speaker 5: represented by me. You cannot ask him any questions. I said, okay, well,
Speaker 5: if we need him, we'll contact you. Two days later,
Speaker 5: on the Wednesday morning, they contacted him, which was the
Speaker 5: twentieth of January, and I went down there with my
Speaker 5: mom and my girlfriend at the time, walked right into
Speaker 5: the prison. I didn't have a worry in the world
Speaker 5: because I knew that I didn't have anything to do
Speaker 5: with this case. So at that time I was not
Speaker 5: a prisoner yet. I was actually seated outside of the
Speaker 5: push door. And it's ironic because one of the detectives there,
Speaker 5: he said, Andre, don't you remember me? And I'm like, no,
Speaker 5: I don't. Who are you? He said, when you were shot?
Speaker 5: I came to the hospital, so they knew that I
Speaker 5: was shot already before even any questions were occurring. And
Speaker 5: then my attorney went inside spoke to them, and he
Speaker 5: came back out, and at that point they arrested me,
Speaker 5: and I became enraged. You know, I was yelling at
Speaker 5: my attorney. I was yelling at them. I said, listen,
Speaker 5: I could have never committed this crime. I showed them
Speaker 5: my injury. They noted it. It was on the police
Speaker 5: reports and then I went to a lineup, and when
Speaker 5: I went to the lineup, I was picked out of
Speaker 5: the lineup as the suspect.
Speaker 3: Freedom Agenda is a proud sponsor of this episode of
Speaker 3: Wrawful Conviction. Freedom Agenda is led by people to directly
Speaker 3: impacted by incarceration, and they're organizing to get Mayor Eric
Speaker 3: Adams to follow the law and shut down Rikers Island.
Speaker 3: Right now, thousands of people are awaiting trial there in
Speaker 3: life threatening conditions. Freedom Agenda is committed to creating a
Speaker 3: safer and more just city by winning investments in long
Speaker 3: neglected communities, protecting the rights of people involved in the
Speaker 3: criminal legal system, and ending the cycle of violence that
Speaker 3: Rikers perpetuates. To learn more about the campaign to Close
Speaker 3: Rikers and to sign up for Freedom Agenda's mailing list,
Speaker 3: go to Campaign to Close Rikers dot org, slash, get involved,
Speaker 3: or follow at Freedom Agenda and Why on social media.
Speaker 3: It's a perfect time to highlight the fact that eyewitness
Speaker 3: identification has been proven in experiments to be less accurate
Speaker 3: than guessing when you're in a hyper tense situation like
Speaker 3: your own life is on the line, when there's gunshots
Speaker 3: being fired, when it's a running gun situation. Literally in
Speaker 3: the case, your adrenalinees going, and most people think their
Speaker 3: minds work like a camera, but in fact we're so
Speaker 3: easily influenced that in this case, it seems like the
Speaker 3: police may have influenced these witnesses, and I'm being very kind.
Speaker 4: They may have.
Speaker 6: And we believe that she did witness it, that she
Speaker 6: was there, that we do believe, but we believe that
Speaker 6: she was guided into picking the wrong person.
Speaker 1: In addition to any guidance the victim and the witness
Speaker 1: may have received from law enforcement, Andre's case features a
Speaker 1: very unfortunate coincidence. It became clear many years later when
Speaker 1: the true assailant was discovered that he and Andrea could
Speaker 1: easily be mistaken for one another, especially given the alleged
Speaker 1: quick glances that the witness and victim were relying on
Speaker 1: to make their identifications.
Speaker 5: What were the charges to attempted martis? Two assaults, reckless endangerment,
Speaker 5: and the list just goes on and on and everything
Speaker 5: under a gun possession gun possession. The family hired a
Speaker 5: well known criminal defense attorney named Ira Brown, and the
Speaker 5: first appearance, Iira says to the judge, but the family
Speaker 5: retained me, but they don't have enough money to pay
Speaker 5: for an expert.
Speaker 6: Can the court pay for an expert? You see, Judge,
Speaker 6: my client just recently started being able to walk without
Speaker 6: a cane. He's still undergoing physical therapy, and at the
Speaker 6: time of this shooting, he couldn't possibly have ran the
Speaker 6: two city blocks that the shooter did. So I want
Speaker 6: to get the medical records, and I want to hire
Speaker 6: an expert orthopedist. And the judge said, well, that sounds
Speaker 6: like a pretty strong defense. So let me start with
Speaker 6: five hundred dollars, get the medical records, and then when
Speaker 6: you hire the expert, let me know you know what
Speaker 6: else you need, because yes, we'll pay for that. What
Speaker 6: happened was Ira was on trial two or three times
Speaker 6: in a row when Andrea's case was on and the
Speaker 6: family decided we have to get somebody else. At that time,
Speaker 6: there were a lot of mafia trials going on, you know,
Speaker 6: the gotty cases, and mafia lawyers were kind of considered
Speaker 6: the cream of the crop, and they hired a guy
Speaker 6: named Thomas Lee to take over the case. And that's
Speaker 6: where everything fell apart. So even though the judge had
Speaker 6: proved this money, Thomas never pursued the medical evidence after that.
Speaker 6: And there were two witnesses that he told the court
Speaker 6: he was trying to locate who would name another shooter,
Speaker 6: a witness named Graham and a witness named Cleveland. And
Speaker 6: he gave subpoenas to the judge and he didn't have
Speaker 6: the addresses on the subpoenas, so judge said, I can't
Speaker 6: sign a blank subpoena. Get me the addresses and I'll
Speaker 6: sign them. And he never did anything else after that.
Speaker 6: The last straw, and what Jason was referring to, was
Speaker 6: that the one eyewitness was going to testify. The woman
Speaker 6: in the car ran into Andre's mother and a family
Speaker 6: friend at a laundromat and they pleaded with her, you know,
Speaker 6: he made a mistake, my son didn't do this. She
Speaker 6: reports that to the DA, who reports it to the judge,
Speaker 6: and the judge said, well, that's perfectly normal. They didn't
Speaker 6: threaten her. They just told her they think her son
Speaker 6: is innocent. But what the DA was saying was that
Speaker 6: she didn't want to come forward and testify. We believe
Speaker 6: she didn't want to come forward and testify because she
Speaker 6: knew that she probably did not identify the right person.
Speaker 6: But what happened after that is the day before she's
Speaker 6: supposed to testify, a bullet in an envelope ends up
Speaker 6: under her windshield wiper and it says, this is what
Speaker 6: happens to rats, you fat bitch.
Speaker 5: And it was written in reading and ready with two
Speaker 5: bullets in a left on her windshield right.
Speaker 6: So of incarcerated. So he didn't do it right the
Speaker 6: point about Lee being involved, what the judge said was
Speaker 6: it had to have been someone connected to the defendant.
Speaker 6: What she didn't consider it was the lawyer was a
Speaker 6: fully made member of the Bonano crime family and one
Speaker 6: of the crimes he got arrested for and turned informant
Speaker 6: was that he would go to the jail and speak
Speaker 6: to the dawn who was arrested because he could go
Speaker 6: see him without anybody listening. He's a lawyer, and he
Speaker 6: would go back and give instructions including who to give
Speaker 6: a garbage contract to in Staten Island, who to give
Speaker 6: a garbage contract to in the Bronx, and who to
Speaker 6: kill and who to promote within the family, who's more
Speaker 6: likely to intimidate it Like that's their game, that's what
Speaker 6: they do. This sounds like a mob guy. And it
Speaker 6: would also explain why he wouldn't do the rest of
Speaker 6: the work because he says, there's one witness. If she
Speaker 6: doesn't show up, the case is over, and I can't
Speaker 6: you know, many times they would tell clients, you know,
Speaker 6: they would say, don't worry, she's not going to show up.
Speaker 6: And I would say that, you know, the third floor
Speaker 6: in Attica is called that she showed up wing. Okay,
Speaker 6: you know, don't count on someone not showing up. She's
Speaker 6: going to show up. She hates you, okay. But so
Speaker 6: Heap was probably counting on that he was going to
Speaker 6: be able to intimidate her and I don't need to
Speaker 6: worry about it.
Speaker 1: Even though it's believed that this witness refused to testify
Speaker 1: due to her doubts over her identification, the appearance of
Speaker 1: witness intimidation probably did not reflect well on Andre. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: his attorney's trial strategy hinged on both her absence and
Speaker 1: being able to cross examine the victim, who had initially
Speaker 1: said that he could not identify the shooter. Well, both
Speaker 1: of those things came to pass. The witness's absence at
Speaker 1: trial had an unforeseen and unfortunate result.
Speaker 6: They let the DA read her testimony from the jury.
Speaker 6: It was a total of six questions, Where were you
Speaker 6: on that night in my car? What happened? Somebody ran
Speaker 6: by me? What happened after that? I saw a second
Speaker 6: person would have gone ran after him. What happened after that?
Speaker 6: I heard shots? What happened after that? He pulled his
Speaker 6: mask off. Were he able to see his face? Yes?
Speaker 6: Did you recognize him? Yes? Who Andre Brown? Now she
Speaker 6: didn't know the name Andre Brown, She only knew was
Speaker 6: Dre But by the time the grand jury she had
Speaker 6: learned the name, and he said, how do you know
Speaker 6: him from around the neighborhood? That's it? Okay, those eight questions,
Speaker 6: whatever I just went through. That was her testimony. That's
Speaker 6: what convicted Andre essentially was those eight questions. But she
Speaker 6: wasn't cross examined about being in the car at night
Speaker 6: being scared. The jury never heard she almost had a
Speaker 6: heart attack. The jury never saw how similar Andrea looked
Speaker 6: to the real shooter. Obviously, Now Nicholson testified, you know
Speaker 6: also that he saw him as he fell, and he
Speaker 6: was pretty well cross examined by Lee. I will say
Speaker 6: that that's what he was good at to say how
Speaker 6: incredible it could be that you could be falling down
Speaker 6: looking over your shoulder and catch a glimpse of the guy,
Speaker 6: you know. So that was the whole evidence.
Speaker 1: Right there, right So to just summarize the entire evidence
Speaker 1: against you, Andre, was not cross testimony from this witness.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 5: That's it.
Speaker 6: No motive, no physical evidence.
Speaker 2: Those eight questions convicted Andre.
Speaker 3: I said, so, Andre, that moment when the jury came
Speaker 3: back in, can you take us inside your heart, your soul,
Speaker 3: your experience of being in that courtroom jury comes back
Speaker 3: and says guilty.
Speaker 5: At that very moment, I was shaking the pinnacle of
Speaker 5: either I'm going home or I received this forty years.
Speaker 5: And I sat there and the judge came in and
Speaker 5: we all rose, and there was one guy I'll never
Speaker 5: forget in the jury and he kept looking at me
Speaker 5: and he was shaking his head like, Yo, Yo, it's
Speaker 5: not good, man, it's not good. And I looked at him.
Speaker 5: I said what happened? He said, Yo, they found you guilty.
Speaker 5: And I told Lee, I hit him. I said, Yo,
Speaker 5: they're gonna find me guilty. He said, what are you
Speaker 5: talking about. I put on a great defense here, and
Speaker 5: he put on no defense didn't bring my medical records
Speaker 5: anything like that to the jury's attention. And I was
Speaker 5: trembling knowing that I was about to be convicted. I
Speaker 5: just felt like an entire cold go over my body.
Speaker 5: It's almost as if your soul leaves you, because you
Speaker 5: know this is the transformation of life itself. After I
Speaker 5: was convicted, I was taken back upstairs. I was crying
Speaker 5: continuously taking back to records island. So the judge waited.
Speaker 5: I think it was like three months before sentencing, and
Speaker 5: I thought that the judge would have saw the lies
Speaker 5: and would have changed her mind and sent me home.
Speaker 5: I can remember it clearly. I said, she's going to
Speaker 5: see it. She'll see the lies, she'll see that Thomas
Speaker 5: Lee didn't put on the defense, She'll be able to
Speaker 5: see medical records something. But when I come back, I'm
Speaker 5: going to be freed. And when I was sentence, I
Speaker 5: snapped again and I said, do you see what you're
Speaker 5: doing to an innocent man? Do you see what you're
Speaker 5: taking me away from? Do you see that you're taking
Speaker 5: me from my college, from my family, from my potential girlfriend,
Speaker 5: everything that I've worked so hard for. Do you see
Speaker 5: what you're taking away? From me, and she said, mister Brown,
Speaker 5: I understand what you have an appeal, and she sentenced me.
Speaker 5: She said, for the first count, I'm going to sentence
Speaker 5: you to twenty years, and then she said for the
Speaker 5: second count, I'm going to sentence you to twenty years,
Speaker 5: and both of these sentences will run consecutive to one another.
Speaker 5: And I didn't understand what that meant at the time.
Speaker 5: And then when I got back and they gave me
Speaker 5: my sentence and commitment papers, it said forty years. I
Speaker 5: want our audience to really understand going through a book
Speaker 5: pin therapy the three stages of prison because it changes
Speaker 5: the cognition of your mind.
Speaker 2: Well, so you were a.
Speaker 1: Child, so your brain is still developing when you went
Speaker 1: into prison.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, so you know I'm arrested, kicking, screaming, being dragged
Speaker 5: into prison saying you did something that you didn't do.
Speaker 5: I go through the central Booking is the first stage
Speaker 5: of prison. Straight madness and chaos. People sleeping on the floor,
Speaker 5: you're trying to get to the phone system, You're trying
Speaker 5: to lay on a bench where individuals is fighting and
Speaker 5: pulling and tugging and saying if you're not built like that,
Speaker 5: you're not sleeping on the bench. You're going to sleep
Speaker 5: under the bench. You're going to sleep on the floor.
Speaker 5: You may sleep near the toilet, whereas all urine filled.
Speaker 5: So this is the first stage of being thrown inside
Speaker 5: the madness. And then the second stage is going through
Speaker 5: reik As Island. And now you're fighting to get on
Speaker 5: the phones again, you're fighting in the yard. You're making
Speaker 5: sure now you're exercising so that you can stay, you know,
Speaker 5: buil for anything that's going to come at you. So
Speaker 5: it's a war zone from Central Book and two ryk
Speaker 5: As Island, and now you're getting thrown inside the Department
Speaker 5: of Corrections where they're supposed to rehabilitate you. But now
Speaker 5: it's more gangs, it's more violence, it's more police assault,
Speaker 5: it's more just the pitfalls of the criminal justice system.
Speaker 5: So immediately my mind started to trigger Andre. Now you're
Speaker 5: going to be like them. You have to now engage
Speaker 5: into the brutality to make it to take phone, to
Speaker 5: carry raisers, to carry sharp objects, to protect yourself. You
Speaker 5: have to battle in order to have your core beliefs
Speaker 5: and your freedom's met. In the minds of these men
Speaker 5: who understand that we're criminals.
Speaker 1: When you put an innocent child in prison with people
Speaker 1: that are actually dangerous through d fist people in prison,
Speaker 1: you have to survive, absolutely, and that could also be
Speaker 1: a huge hindrance to him getting out if he got
Speaker 1: in a fight or someone attacked him and something happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't even think about that when we
Speaker 1: put someone like you in prison that's innocent, you could
Speaker 1: come out an actual criminal.
Speaker 6: At that point, it came up but as strong because
Speaker 6: he got into a fight and the DIA brought it
Speaker 6: to the attention that he got into a violent altercation
Speaker 6: at prison because they made a bail application. So even
Speaker 6: though you didn't know that, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, but yeah, that could have hurt
Speaker 1: your chances of getting out absolutely.
Speaker 2: So Oscar, how did you get this man out of prison?
Speaker 5: Yeah? That's good to the good stuff here. Well.
Speaker 6: So one of the reasons I got involved in Andrea's
Speaker 6: case is this is my neighborhood. We went to the
Speaker 6: same high school, Christopher Columbus.
Speaker 4: In the Bronx for Columbus, he wrongly identified a whole country.
Speaker 6: Exactly, wasn't even on the same continent. But in any event,
Speaker 6: the case right, I said, it spoke to me, but
Speaker 6: also showed how weak it was. We just found out
Speaker 6: during freedom of information laws, which is everybody's good friend.
Speaker 6: We first found a report at DD five that was
Speaker 6: not given to either mister Ira Brown or to Lee
Speaker 6: that showed that the police had actually tested the bullets
Speaker 6: and found that the bullets on the fifteenth matched the
Speaker 6: gun that was used on the eleventh, So we already
Speaker 6: knew that Virgo had one of the guns, so this
Speaker 6: had to be the gun that was shooting at Virgo
Speaker 6: on the eleventh. So frankly, I felt that was almost
Speaker 6: enough because now we had a motive for the jury
Speaker 6: that the same person who shot at these two young
Speaker 6: men also shot them on the fifteenth, and O'Neil Virgo
Speaker 6: had told the police he got a look at the
Speaker 6: person who shot him on the eleventh and he didn't
Speaker 6: think it was Andre. So if Andre didn't shoot him
Speaker 6: on the eleventh, and how could Andre have had the
Speaker 6: gun on the fifteenth, And the judge at his hearing
Speaker 6: had a lot of questions about that. That was the
Speaker 6: first thing. We then found another DD five of a witness,
Speaker 6: Courtney Weezy, who said that the shooter was wearing a TAM.
Speaker 6: Tam is what Jamaica men were to hold. It's a
Speaker 6: big woolf cat. Courtney Weezy said the shooter had a
Speaker 6: TAM and he was showing a photo array with Andrea's
Speaker 6: picture in it and said he couldn't recognize anybody in
Speaker 6: the photo ray. We only got the first page and
Speaker 6: I noticed there was a check mark on the front
Speaker 6: page as witness can I d yes? And then no
Speaker 6: one ever got the second page, said makes.
Speaker 2: Id no, so that's a Brady violation.
Speaker 6: That would be a Brady violation. But they argued that
Speaker 6: the shooter had a mask on, so you know, it
Speaker 6: wasn't a big deal and he couldn't see it. But
Speaker 6: the point is he had a right to know that.
Speaker 6: And so I said, well, there'd be no reason for
Speaker 6: Andre to be wearing a TAM. So this shooter was
Speaker 6: likely Jamaican. And I knew that back then there was
Speaker 6: a lot of battle between Jamaicans and American blacks over
Speaker 6: turf as the Jamaicans are moving into the Bronx, So
Speaker 6: didnt makes sense to me that both of the victims
Speaker 6: were Jamaican. Why would a Jamaican shoot these victims. But
Speaker 6: we found out when we located the witnesses was that
Speaker 6: the real shooter was a Jamaican guy who happened to
Speaker 6: have gotten into the neighborhood a little bit earlier and
Speaker 6: was working with America Blacks to sell weed at that location.
Speaker 6: And even though they were Jamaican, he didn't like that
Speaker 6: they were working his corner, and that's what the shooting
Speaker 6: was all about. The guy who we discovered was the
Speaker 6: real shooter, we did some research and tried to get
Speaker 6: his yearbook picture, and we got his middle school yearbook picture.
Speaker 6: By sheer coincidence. The principal of the middle school that
Speaker 6: he went to ended up being my English teacher from
Speaker 6: back in seventh grade. So there's a lot of connections
Speaker 6: for me in the case. If you put these pictures
Speaker 6: side by side, Andre and the real shooter look extremely similar.
Speaker 6: And that's a key factor is that the person who
Speaker 6: might have seen the real shooter when his mass was
Speaker 6: off could have easily picked him as Andre. They were
Speaker 6: the exact same height and the exact same weight, okay,
Speaker 6: and a very similar face. When we found the motion,
Speaker 6: we showed, hey, look what tam means. The real shooter
Speaker 6: we found out was Jamaican. He would wear that the
Speaker 6: victims were selling weed. Andre never sold weed. This guy
Speaker 6: only sold weed. Seven months after this shooting, guess what happened.
Speaker 6: Real shooter gets gunned down.
Speaker 5: Just finding the funeral picture where he actually had dreads, right,
Speaker 5: we were able to actually put together the two pieces
Speaker 5: of the tim and now the dreads with the funeral pictures. Right.
Speaker 6: We found his funeral program, which is great because it
Speaker 6: said his real name, but in the middle it said Bonkers. Okay,
Speaker 6: his nickname was Bonkers, and the witness said, this guy
Speaker 6: was crazy. This guy would shoot you up for no reason.
Speaker 6: So it's like, let's put this together here, okay. And
Speaker 6: then we actually found a surgeon who did the surgery
Speaker 6: on Andre's leg. He had a very serious condition called
Speaker 6: compartment syndrome. And what happens there is you get shot
Speaker 6: and your leg swells up so much that they have
Speaker 6: to expose all four quadrants of your calf. They cut
Speaker 6: it open, and they leave you lying in bed with
Speaker 6: open wounds until the pressure goes down. He had skin grasps.
Speaker 6: We're talking about a scar from his thigh down to
Speaker 6: his angle, proven atrophy, and the doctor actually remembered the case,
Speaker 6: which is unbelievable. He's the head of trauma at Jacobi
Speaker 6: in the Bronx, which is a trauma one center, so
Speaker 6: this is not some quack. And now he was head
Speaker 6: of medicine and surgery at my Moderny's in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: And listen, I just want to say that when you're
Speaker 5: wrongfully convicted, you better know God. All right, We're not
Speaker 5: going to allow that not to be set on this
Speaker 5: forum right now. It really must be stated because a
Speaker 5: lot of this is sheer luck and God's umbrella had
Speaker 5: to be on me because my surgeon was alive.
Speaker 6: And he said, there's no way someone with this injury
Speaker 6: could have ran. He said, maybe he could pull his
Speaker 6: leg along, he said, but he would have a noticeable
Speaker 6: limp at best. And the judge at Andrea's hearings said,
Speaker 6: could he jog? He said, no, he could not jog.
Speaker 6: He could not jog. He could not run this quickly.
Speaker 6: The problem was because the case was so old, there
Speaker 6: were no physical therapy records to show how far along
Speaker 6: to me when in.
Speaker 1: God those medical record to because his amazing wife, and
Speaker 1: not to mention my.
Speaker 5: Brother Devon who's not here. Also where we were on
Speaker 5: the phone, like illegally at that point, making three week
Speaker 5: calls to Jacobe Hospital to locate these records.
Speaker 6: This surgeon he actually called over there to try to
Speaker 6: get him himself. I mean, he really knew that something
Speaker 6: wrong was going on. I got to give him Ronald Simon.
Speaker 6: He said, there's got to be pt records there. Maybe
Speaker 6: I five call, you know, we'll find them. And no
Speaker 6: one could find those therapy recordscause they don't preserve them.
Speaker 6: It's talk about the year in nineteen ninety, we're looking
Speaker 6: for them in twenty twenty, you know. But we did
Speaker 6: have Ira Brown telling the judge at his first court appearance,
Speaker 6: my client is still undergoing physical therapy and only recently
Speaker 6: was able to walk without a cane, and so that
Speaker 6: formed the basis.
Speaker 3: You know, there are a series of sort of miracles,
Speaker 3: right that led to you being here. But it points out,
Speaker 3: you know, my estimate is that there's probably around two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand innocent people in prison while we're sitting here
Speaker 3: right now in this country, and that's probably conservative. And
Speaker 3: those people, many of them don't have a way out.
Speaker 3: They don't have an Oscar Michelin, right, they don't have
Speaker 3: a Maggie feeling to do a podcast about the case.
Speaker 4: In fact, this goes back to.
Speaker 3: Very early when we first started the Wrongful Conviction podcast
Speaker 3: and our producer back then was a woman named Sabine Jansen.
Speaker 4: She alerted me to your case.
Speaker 3: I brought it to our fantastic PR person named Don Cameron.
Speaker 3: To generate some interest, we brought Jeffrey Deskovic. I was
Speaker 3: about to go there and let me brag on Jeffrey
Speaker 3: for a second. So Jeffrey Deskovic right there sitting in
Speaker 3: the front row, standing in the front row, wrongfully convicted,
Speaker 3: served sixteen years in New York State and is now
Speaker 3: a member of the bar.
Speaker 4: And he turned out to be Listen.
Speaker 5: As a joke, and as a joke, you know, we
Speaker 5: say that Jeffrey is the media whore.
Speaker 2: Okay, they love your case because you brought the case.
Speaker 5: Listen, they love jeff the media so immediately. And it's
Speaker 5: not a joke, guys.
Speaker 6: He pays a lot of attention to this.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's for sure, because Jeff is my brother. Jeff
Speaker 5: is the guy who went hard, extremely hard in the
Speaker 5: media for my case. Him and then Sabine will never
Speaker 5: forget Sabine because she contacted Jason, and Jason said, who's
Speaker 5: Andre Brown? And Sabin explained it and he said, listen,
Speaker 5: we got to put Dawn on this because the only
Speaker 5: thing that Governor Cuomo does in the morning is he
Speaker 5: reads and not bad. So at that point he put
Speaker 5: Dawn right in the fray of everything, and the campaign began.
Speaker 6: First, we went to the Conviction Review Unit. They rejected
Speaker 6: the case and so we filed a four to forty.
Speaker 5: At that time, it was COVID and they were not
Speaker 5: trying to bring me down on a hearing.
Speaker 6: We had asked for a virtual hearing because the courts
Speaker 6: were closed to in person hearings, and the DA opposed that,
Speaker 6: and then Jeff four organized a rally in front of
Speaker 6: her office to try to get her to agree to
Speaker 6: a virtual hearing, and we had a hearing and the
Speaker 6: judge agreed that at the very least Lee was ineffective
Speaker 6: for not presenting the medical evidence, and just to put
Speaker 6: the icing on it. I've known Jeff for a long time.
Speaker 6: We kind of mentored him through with his law school experience,
Speaker 6: and he became an admitted attorney right before we had
Speaker 6: got a hearing granted. So I asked him to second
Speaker 6: seat me and Andre was 's first client. So and Jeff,
Speaker 6: he's bat in one hundred.
Speaker 1: So actually, Oscar, I do want to point out not
Speaker 1: exactly one hundred Andre.
Speaker 6: Oh, I shouldn't say that's right.
Speaker 1: Andrea is not exonerated yet, which is why we were
Speaker 1: here telling his story because the bronx DA is actually
Speaker 1: still fighting his conviction, wanting to put Andre back in prison.
Speaker 1: So not only do we need to exonerate him, we
Speaker 1: need to make sure that he doesn't go back to prison.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they're filed an appeal of the khure of the conviction,
Speaker 6: and I got to tell you, you know, the odds
Speaker 6: of its success are not high, they're low. But this
Speaker 6: room speaks to what happens when you caught up in
Speaker 6: the criminal justice system. Right, if you're counting on the
Speaker 6: criminal justicism to work out for you, you know you're
Speaker 6: going to get very sorely disappointed. So it really, you know,
Speaker 6: is a case that should not be appealed. Never mind
Speaker 6: the fact that he served well over twenty years for
Speaker 6: a crime that we established, you know, he didn't commit,
Speaker 6: but to just drag it on, have this over his head.
Speaker 6: They fought bail. Now after the judge vacated his conviction.
Speaker 6: They asked for five hundred thousand dollars bail. Okay, the
Speaker 6: judge released him, but to supervise release, just like it
Speaker 6: wouldn't give us the measure that he was actually innocent.
Speaker 6: Took the safe path and said he was ineffective. You know,
Speaker 6: as I said to Jason before we came out here,
Speaker 6: I've been involved in a lot of cases. I've never
Speaker 6: had a case with this much evidence of innocence. And
Speaker 6: the judge just couldn't get there. And then he couldn't
Speaker 6: just do he had to send him to supervised release.
Speaker 6: So it's just constant. The justice system loves finality. They
Speaker 6: want to, you know, keep that hold on you. To
Speaker 6: the point where when he first started going to the
Speaker 6: supervised release place, which is now run by the Fortune Society,
Speaker 6: they called us and said, why are we supervising this person?
Speaker 6: He went to another program to be interviewed and ended
Speaker 6: up hiring him instead of supervising. He works there. Now, Yes,
Speaker 6: I mean it's really daunting and it's very discomforting to
Speaker 6: believe that. You know, we now have to wait. It'll
Speaker 6: take about two years to decide this appeal, and I want.
Speaker 3: To get to what people here can do, if they
Speaker 3: can write letters, or if there's anything else they can
Speaker 3: do to make their voices heard.
Speaker 1: For Andre, well, I do know there's a GoFundMe for Andre.
Speaker 1: It's GoFundMe such support Andre Brown, So that exists, so
Speaker 1: please donate to.
Speaker 4: That if you can, and we'll link to it in
Speaker 4: the episode. Yeah description as well.
Speaker 1: And you guys have the power to vote for the DA.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can vote in progressive district attorneys. So
Speaker 1: just so you guys know that you have the power
Speaker 1: to make sure that there are conviction review units, that
Speaker 1: there are progressive das that don't fight these convictions that
Speaker 1: are so obvious, so obvious.
Speaker 4: And before we go to we have a tradition on
Speaker 4: the show. We call it closing arguments.
Speaker 3: But before we do that, there's one other very special
Speaker 3: person in this room I want to acknowledge, and this
Speaker 3: is a young man named Aj.
Speaker 4: Right, your son's daf Aj, And I.
Speaker 3: Heard somewhere that he scored thirty points in a basketball
Speaker 3: game this week.
Speaker 5: So if there's any.
Speaker 3: Agents in the room, might want to get in now
Speaker 3: because he's only twelve.
Speaker 1: Actually, I did want to talk about Ajamika Tamika and
Speaker 1: Andre you knew each other from high school, yes, and
Speaker 1: now you're married.
Speaker 2: You did over twenty years in prison.
Speaker 1: And actually we talked about how you're lucky that you're alive,
Speaker 1: because if you're a leg you're lucky now that you're out,
Speaker 1: a lot of people get out and don't have family,
Speaker 1: and you have a wonderful wife and a son, yes,
Speaker 1: that you're coming home to right.
Speaker 5: There, right there, right Look for only do people not
Speaker 5: have family, They don't have hope, they don't have faith.
Speaker 5: They lose their souls inside of prison because they don't
Speaker 5: have friends. I've seen individuals walk in the yard until
Speaker 5: they turn mad because they're innocent, and now everybody has
Speaker 5: shunned them. So what does that really mean when society
Speaker 5: itself make you the treads and then inside of the
Speaker 5: prison you're a nobody.
Speaker 6: Well, it's just a dangerous place. Where we were waiting
Speaker 6: for Andrea's hearing because of COVID. One of the reasons
Speaker 6: we filed for the virtual hearing was Andrew is actually
Speaker 6: on the phone with Tamika on Thanksgiving Day and some
Speaker 6: other guy in the prison thought he was on the
Speaker 6: phone too long and nearly took Andre's that stabbed him
Speaker 6: in the face with a pen. Yeah, while he was
Speaker 6: on the phone with Tamika, right, Yes, And you know
Speaker 6: I wrote to the judge and said, look, we got
Speaker 6: to get this guy hearing like he's in the Honors prison.
Speaker 6: By way, this is the place in the Eastern that
Speaker 6: those are here. They call it happy Nap because it's
Speaker 6: like the place where you're supposed to be the safest.
Speaker 6: And he got attacked just on the phone. So, you know,
Speaker 6: sending someone to prison is you know, it could potentially
Speaker 6: be a death sentence.
Speaker 3: It is for too many people. And we know that're
Speaker 3: right here in Manhattan and right here in New York
Speaker 3: Rikers Island. Since may Or Adams took office, twenty nine
Speaker 3: people at last count, have been murdered and Rikers Island,
Speaker 3: and most of them, over one in b jar of
Speaker 3: them had even been convicted of anything.
Speaker 6: Yet most of them were presumed innocent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just waiting for trials detainees.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: That could have been you, or could have been so
Speaker 3: many other people in this room. So anyone who's listened
Speaker 3: to the Wrongful Conviction podcast knows this is my favorite
Speaker 3: part of the show. We call it closing arguments. It's
Speaker 3: where we thank each of you, Maggie and I for
Speaker 3: being here with us today, everybody in the audience, everybody
Speaker 3: listening at home, and then turn it over to Oscar
Speaker 3: first to say anything else is left to be said,
Speaker 3: and then you take us off into the sunset anything
Speaker 3: you want to say.
Speaker 6: First of all, thank you for being involved in the
Speaker 6: issue and spread the word. Tell people that there were
Speaker 6: folks in there who do belong there. There are many
Speaker 6: people who serve their time and are route that will
Speaker 6: never get the justice that they deserve, and that time
Speaker 6: has been lost. WI let people know that this is
Speaker 6: an issue that should be addressed at every time that
Speaker 6: there's a DA running for office.
Speaker 5: And for me, I got to mention some of my
Speaker 5: great colleagues, Michael Cobb, who we all know is shat Do,
Speaker 5: Raphael Martinez, Pedro Rodriguez, Nochia Rose, Ronaldo Morgan. These men
Speaker 5: are still fighting for their freedom today and I mentioned
Speaker 5: them because I want everybody here in the live audience
Speaker 5: at home to take a second look. I give you
Speaker 5: the analogy that I give to some of the students
Speaker 5: when I did my last speech with Jeff and it
Speaker 5: is like when you guys are driving home and you
Speaker 5: just see something as simple as a pedestrian pulled over
Speaker 5: on the side of the road, and you're just like, oh,
Speaker 5: it must be a lawful stop, so you just keep moving.
Speaker 5: Take a second look, take a second look when you
Speaker 5: see somebody in trouble, because you never will know when
Speaker 5: it's your time to give that help in hand.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You
Speaker 3: can listen to this and all the Lava for Good
Speaker 3: podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good
Speaker 3: Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production
Speaker 3: team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my
Speaker 3: fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn.
Speaker 3: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 3: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
Speaker 3: across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
Speaker 3: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 3: at it's Jason Vlamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 3: Lava for Good Podcasts association with Signal Company Number one