WEBVTT - #506 Jason Flom with Keith Harward 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:06.760 I came from a beautiful neighborhood. I had a beautiful life. 0:00:07.040 --> 0:00:09.720 I went to sleep because September seventh was the first 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:11.000 day of my high school year. 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:13.480 I was going to be a senior at twenty two, 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:16.520 I was set to start college. I woke up and 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:19.840 my life was never the same again. Cops came out 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:23.560 with guns drawn, and I never saw freedom ever since 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.759 after that. It's like roach Mota. Once you get in, 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:33.800 you and I can'tnam. 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:55.080 This is wrongful conviction with Jason Plummer, a true rock 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.560 star of the Innocence movement, Keith Allen Harward along with 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:03.000 one of his attorneys, Salzman, of the Great Firm of Scatting. Keith, 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:06.440 you were just a pretty much a regular guy from 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:10.160 from the Carolinas serving in the Navy. Uh in Virginia 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:11.160 at the time, Is that right? 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.200 Yes, I was stationed in Newport News at the time. 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:18.280 I was on aircraft care being built at the shipyard. 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:22.240 Is there? And Uh, that's where it all all kind 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:23.520 of took place fell apart. 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.120 So Keith was in the navy, had been serving for 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:30.080 three years on the ship and uh, it's sort of 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:32.520 interesting how you got to that point in the first place. 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:34.800 You know, at that time, it was six drugs and 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:37.480 rock and roll, and I was kind of involved all 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:43.760 of them, and who wasn't. Yeah, and I got tired 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:46.160 of that lifestyle. It was just it just caught up 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.160 with me and I needed a change. So I sided. 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.160 One day I will joined the military. So I went 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:53.360 to the old Post officer in Greensboro and I sided. 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:56.520 The first door i'd come into recruiting office was going 0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:58.160 to be the door I was going to walk into. 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:00.560 And that's the first door was in the door. So 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:05.000 I walked in there and signed up and went pretty quick. 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:07.520 You know. They wanted you know, well, we delay you 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:10.600 for sixty days. I said, no, I want to go. 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:12.959 So the next day I was in Charlotte day Fees 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:15.400 taking the test, and the next day I was sitting 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.200 in Chicago, Illinois at boot camp. So it was a 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:20.440 matter of three days I was in it. 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.360 That's some radical fixing going on there. I mean, some 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:25.480 people like me would have just walked into AA and 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.400 been like, hey, you know, change of life, but you 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:30.160 decided to take it to the extreme. 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:34.400 Well, I mean, to be able to get away from everything, 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:36.960 you've got to get away from everything, and you know, 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.760 friends or friends and come on, man, let's go. You know, 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:44.240 if I'm away from that, then I can't be influenced. 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.040 So that was my thinking. I got out of town 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.919 and started unnew. Well maybe things would work out. 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:53.000 So there you are, serving in the navy and a 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.800 horrible crime takes place pretty close to the shipyard. 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:56.280 Is that right? 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:58.960 Right? It was just on a few blocks away from 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:01.680 the gate to the shipyards. 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:02.799 And it was it was sort of like what we 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:05.360 would call now a home invasion, right, somebody broke into 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:05.760 a home. 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:09.639 The husband was killed, and after he was they were 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:11.679 in bed together and he came in and beat the 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.040 husband with crowbar and just you know, it just tore 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:19.320 him up. And when he was done doing that, then 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:24.040 he took hold of the wife and sexual assault for 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:25.040 several hours. 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:26.240 Truly horrible situation. 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:27.200 Yeah, it had to be. 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.440 So they didn't have any information other than that she 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:34.280 had said that the perpetrator was wearing a sailor's uniform. 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:34.760 Is that right? 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:35.040 Right? 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:38.360 Right? So that's what clewed them into the the shipyards, 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:43.360 you know, because the Newport News shipyards is away from Norfolk, 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:47.000 which is normally where you would find sailors and uh, 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:49.080 That's what clue the men was the fact that he 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:51.480 was wearing a uniform, So apparently he had to be 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:54.440 on one of the ships or submarines that were there 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:56.280 being repaired or built at the shipyard. 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:58.040 How many sailors are on the ship. 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:01.640 Well, the crew of the of aircraft carrier were after 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:03.800 air wing somewhere aback three to five, but it was 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.000 being built, so it's probably two to three thousand guys. 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:08.440 A lot of guys for the cops that tried to 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:10.120 figure this one out, right, it's a tough one. So 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:12.640 months had gone by, right, and there's a lot of pressure, right, 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.360 nobody wants people take it very personally when someone's home 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:15.800 is invaded. 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:16.240 I know I do. 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:17.920 When I read a story about that in the paper. 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:20.760 Everyone can relate because everyone has a home. There's pressure 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:23.120 on the cops. There's pressure. They got to solve this, 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:24.520 They got to get it there. And there was even 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.159 some politicians involved. And let's turn to you don for 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:29.000 a second. How did they land on Keith? Of these 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:29.920 thousands of guys. 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:33.400 The rape victim had told the police that during the rape, 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:36.599 the rapist had bitten her on the leg a few times, 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:40.280 and the police took photographs of these bite marks that 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.800 appeared on her leg, which were essentially bruises from the 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:48.280 rapist teeth. And so, because the police suspected that one 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:51.279 of the sailors on this ship, the USS Carl Vincent, 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.120 was the rapist, they started looking at the dental records 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:59.600 of hundreds and maybe thousands of these sailors, and they 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.520 were trying to narrow down this big group of people 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.000 to a smaller group, and one of the people who's 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.840 you know, records they looked at was Keith's. But when 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.320 they looked at his records the first time they even 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.599 took an impression of his mouth, the dentist excluded Keith. 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.200 They said he was among the people who didn't match. 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:24.560 And so they kept looking for, you know, other suspects, 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:25.680 and that went on for a while. 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:32.000 But then something happened that led to Keith being to 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.000 them taking a renewed interest in looking at Keith, even 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:39.080 though they had had a professional, someone who was supposedly 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:41.960 certified and would have been qualified to give this opinion 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:43.039 to say that it wasn't him. 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.599 I had a girlfriend and we had gotten into a 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:50.520 fight and I bit her own the shoulder, and the 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:53.680 police took her to the hospital to check her out, 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:58.000 and that's apparently when the light bulb went off that 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.919 you know, hey, we gotta bite or here. You know, 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:04.240 they were looking for somebody for a long time, and 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:06.400 then when the police found out and work got to 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:10.920 the detectives or whoever, that's when the light came home 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:14.159 for them and went on me. They pushed it so 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:16.880 I would show up at court for two reasons. One 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:21.040 the victim was in the audience, whatever you call it, 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:24.040 and also they wanted to get more impressions of my teeth. 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:25.560 I didn't know either one of these. 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:27.720 After having brought in on the charge in the first place, 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:29.640 you couldn't go back home where you were living with 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:32.039 her because you had just had this altercation and she 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:34.440 was an alcoholic and the whole situation was crazy. 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:37.680 So where'd you so tell the story about where'd you 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:38.200 go to sleep? 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:40.000 That I had no place to go, So I slept 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:40.719 in a dumpster. 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:43.400 But it was a particular dumpster, yeah it was. 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:44.320 It was a high end dumpster. 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:44.680 Yeah. 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.880 Yeah. There was a hat manufacturer and made baseball caps, 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.320 and they had a dumpster was filling nothing but material. 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:52.599 It was no food or anything in it. It was 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.800 all styur foam and foam, rubber and cloth and that 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:58.400 kind of stuff. So it was, you know, right outside 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.720 the shipyard gate. I would walk by and I would 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:04.160 notice all this material laying on the ground, and I'd 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.560 stopped one time because on cheap hats, it got the 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.720 little plastic things that you popped the size with and 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:12.480 I saw them on the ground and mine had broke 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:14.800 on my hat, so I went over and picked one up. 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:17.680 I just opened the dumpstrup look and said, man, this 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.320 place is nice. I wonder why there's nobody else living here, 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.720 you know kind of thing. So that night I thought, well, 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:27.640 you know, that was a close place to go. It 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:29.960 was close to the shipyard. It was pueening the house 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:33.040 where I was living, that apartment in the shipyard. So 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:34.040 that's where I stayed. 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:38.000 Even though Keith now became a suspect because of this, 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:41.200 you know, this fight with his girlfriend. During a fight, 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:47.320 he really didn't match the the descript description of the 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.440 that the victim gave because she said that the rapist 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:54.880 was nineteen years old, nineteen twenty years old, clean shaven, 0:07:55.040 --> 0:08:00.840 baby faced. Keith was twenty six years old, had a mustache, 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.600 and he had a not a beard like but he 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:08.080 had a heavy, you know, five o'clock shadow type, you know. 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:13.160 And hair she said his hair was radish. The mom 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:13.760 was brown. 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:17.840 So Keith didn't he didn't match the description. But in 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:22.120 a lot of these cases, once the police and law enforcement, 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:26.560 you know, focus on somebody, they they don't pay attention 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.160 to the things that suggests that they got the wrong person. 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:33.320 And Keith, he did not meet the description of the rapist. 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:37.320 In this case, They've decided they want Keith locked up. 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:42.160 They're going to solve this case. We had this bad science, right, 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.559 We had bitemark evidence, which we now know has been 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:50.760 completely discredited. There was a recent study of dentists, forensic 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.960 dentist and odeontologists in which they found that the error 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:58.520 raid was ninety one percent junk science. Really, we had 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:03.079 also another element, which was which involved hypnosis, which sounds 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:04.440 I'm sure to the audience are going, no. 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:06.320 We can't, that's ridiculous. 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:09.480 You can't have hypnosis in a capital murder case, because 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:11.920 yours was a capital murder case. Is that right? So 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:14.480 let's talk a little bit about that and the element 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:16.199 that this hypnotism played. 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:19.120 This crime got a lot of publicity and actually, you know, 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:21.959 the news media published, you know, it was on TV 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:26.040 and radio, and this this shipyard security guard heard the 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:28.559 story about a murder and a rape that had happened 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:31.319 just a couple of blocks away from the shipyard. And 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:34.280 he actually was eating dinner at his home that night 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:35.760 and heard it on the radio and he said to 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:39.120 his wife, I think I saw someone suspicious. So he 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:41.760 went down to the police and they interviewed him, and 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:44.520 he told the police that he saw a guy who 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:47.680 looked like he was drunk, came to the gate to 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:50.080 pass through, you know, had to show a badge, but 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:52.280 the guy didn't. The guard didn't remember, you know, the name, 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:53.600 or didn't look at the name. 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:54.400 But that the guy. 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:57.320 He remembered the guy because he had blood splat would 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:01.120 look like blood splattered all over his uniform. Later on 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:05.360 six months, during the next couple months, they hypnotized this 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:07.760 guy to try to get more information. And it was 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:11.280 not uncommon back in the day for the police to 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:15.800 hypnotize witnesses to see if they could remember more. The 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:19.040 problem is that that can really ruin someone's memory. It 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:22.319 can change someone's memory the hypnotism. It can have them 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:25.040 fill in gaps say things that they didn't actually remember, 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:29.280 and so it's really unreliable and it can corrupt the 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.560 whole process. So the shipyard security guard had given a 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:36.959 description that was vague, but he was shown a composite 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:40.000 drawing that the victim, the rape victim, had done with 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.480 a police you know, artist, and she had said that 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:46.640 that person looked ninety she was ninety five percent sure 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:48.800 that that's what the rapists looked like, or some very 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:52.440 high percentage. And they showed it to the shipyard security 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:54.480 guard and he said, yeah, that looks like seventy five 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:59.559 percent like the guy I saw walking into the shipyard. 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.880 That composite drawing had no mustache, because the victim has 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:08.920 said that the rapist was babyfaced. But after this guy 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:11.880 was hypnotized, he changed his story. He changed the time 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:14.160 that he said that he saw the guy. Now it 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.079 was closer to five o'clock, which matched, you know, with 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:18.959 the time that the rapists might have been coming back 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:21.839 on the ship's convenient And then he later was shown 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:25.880 a photograph or maybe a series of photos, including Keith's photo, 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:29.080 after the police focused on Keith, and he picked Keith's 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:31.160 photograph out and said that was the guy that I saw. 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:33.960 They didn't have anything to go with. There was really 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:37.120 no evidence in this trial. You know, there was no 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:40.360 finger branch, there were you know, there was there was 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:44.080 hardly nothing to go other than this bike mark stuff. 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:46.720 That's what they you know, that's what they were relying on, 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:49.760 and you know, like you said, it was unreliable. 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:55.359 Keith actually had sort of an alibi because the victim 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.200 had told the police that earlier in the day. You know, 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:01.760 she was tacked at two o'clock in the morning, but 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:06.120 the day before she had taken her kids to the 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:10.000 swimming pool because this was in September, and there was 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:12.280 a guy that she saw when she was getting in 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:14.600 the car with her kids who was hitch hiking, and 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:19.760 he was a sailor and he was angry that she 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:23.120 didn't pick him up hitch hiking, so he swore at 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:27.360 her and flipped her off. And she then said when 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:30.640 she got home from swimming with her kids later, she 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.200 saw what she thought was the same guy looking over 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:36.640 her fence in her backyard. And when she told the 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:39.480 police the next day, when you know, when they were 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.439 interviewing her after the rape, she said she was pretty 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.480 sure that the sailor she had seen the day before 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:50.040 was her rapist and at the time that she saw 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:53.040 the guy the second time looking over her back fence 0:12:53.160 --> 0:12:56.320 was at six pm. That's what she told the police. 0:12:56.520 --> 0:12:58.720 And at six pm Keith had an alibi. He was 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:02.560 at an alcohol at education course he had signed in. 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:07.040 The person who ran the course remembered Keith and verified 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:10.480 that he was there in Norfolk, not in Newport News 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:13.000 in Norfolk at the time that she saw the guy 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:17.720 who looked like her rapist. Researchers who look at wrongful 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:22.320 conviction cases they identify the same problems that happen in 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.800 these cases over and over and over again, and there's 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:29.000 about six of them that commonly occur, and one of 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:35.080 them is poor representation by defense lawyers. In Keith's case, 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:38.439 he actually hit the trifecta in a bad way because 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:42.960 he had three of the common problems that arise in 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:47.959 these wrongful conviction cases happened in his case junk science, misidentification, 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:52.360 and the third one is prosecutorial and police misconduct that 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:54.520 happens in a lot of cases, and in keith case, 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:56.800 we haven't talked about that yet except for the hypnosis, 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:00.800 but there was misconduct by law enforcement in his case, right. 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.000 So he did certainly hit the wrong kind of try 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:06.680 fact that you can't hit it any worse, and ended 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:10.080 up serving thirty three years in prison. And let's let's 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:12.760 talk about that, Keith. Every day's got to be held. 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:14.360 But I mean, I don't want to put words in 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:15.160 your mouth because you share it. 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:18.920 No, no, And people always say that, you know, they can't imagine, 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:21.760 and it's with a good heart they say that, but 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.120 truly they can't. You know, unless you've been there, you 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.600 just don't. You just don't know. But what got me 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:31.000 through was the fact that I knew I was innocent 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:35.320 from day one, and I had hoped that they would 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:37.880 discover it because, like I told you before, this is 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:40.440 the United States of America. People don't get convicted for 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:44.600 crimes they did not do. But they do, and I'm 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:48.000 one of them. So all through the process of a trial, 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.880 and even until I was in prison for a while, 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:55.160 I was thinking, well, they're gonna figure this out. You know, 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:58.840 they made a mistake, They're gonna figure this out. It 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:03.120 didn't happen. But what got me through was was the 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.800 fact that Okay, they already convicted me. They put me 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.640 in prison, but I wasn't gonna allow those criminals. And 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:13.680 when I speak of criminals, I'm talking about the the 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.960 police officers and the prosecutors, the actual criminals of this case, 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:21.840 besides a fellow that did it. I wasn't gonna let 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:25.000 them exact another second from me. They had me, but 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:28.120 they weren't gonna get my mind. And if I allowed 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:33.920 them to make me punish myself even farther or do 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:37.560 anything disruptive in my life, even though I was in prison, 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:40.760 I was given them more, and I wasn't gonna give 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:43.040 no more. I wasn't gonna do it. 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:45.720 That's like a very spiritual approach. 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:50.120 Well, it's a lot of staring at walls and wondering, Wow, 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:53.080 what what just happened? I mean again, you can't you 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:57.640 can't fathom what it's like. It's like, what was this happened? 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:01.360 It's like a car wreck, you know, once all the 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:03.600 movement is stopped and you're sitting there behind the wheel 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.800 with the airbag under your chin, you're thinking wow. 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:21.120 So Keith wrote to The Innocence Project. I think it 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.280 might have been sometime in like two thousand and eight 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:24.120 or something like that. 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:27.560 I didn't know the existed. I was in prison. I 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:31.360 didn't know these outfits existed. In another inmates said, hey, man, 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:34.920 your story is so crazy. What'd you give the Insurance 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.000 Project to try and write them a letter? So I 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:39.280 wrote them a letter and said, hey, you know, there 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.200 was no evidence. They convicted me on blite mark evidence alone. 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.240 I didn't do it, you know, And that basically what 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.640 the letter was, you know, you know, will you think right? 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:52.720 So his letter got to the Innocence Project in New York. 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.520 But they get letters from inmates all over the country, 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:57.440 thousands of. 0:16:57.440 --> 0:16:59.000 Letters at least two months. 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:04.640 Yeah, they have a backlog of several thousand inmates, you know, 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.560 who've written to them, who they haven't yet had a 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:09.359 chance or at that point hadn't had a chance to 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:13.240 look at. The Innocence Project was looking at bitemark cases 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.080 because it is junk science, and there have been twenty 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.080 four now with Keith, twenty five people who had been 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:24.159 indicted based on bitemark evidence and were later exonerated. So 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:28.160 they were looking for cases that involved bite marks. So 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.399 Keith's file got plucked from the middle or somewhere in 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:35.320 the stack and put up to the top for someone 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:38.280 to look at. And one of the law students I 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:43.159 think or interns discovered that the evidence from Keith's case 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.040 was still in existence, you know, the physical evidence like that. 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:48.800 Which is the great marriage. 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:52.760 Yeah, now you've gotten engaged. The Innocence Project has gone 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:53.720 to scatt and right. 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:55.560 Yeah, they reached out to me because. 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:57.640 Which is like bringing in the big guns exactly I mean. 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:00.800 And we put together this team and we started working 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:04.320 with the Innocence Project because they'd found the evidence. It 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:07.440 was this little box called a rape kit that has 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:11.200 you know, swabs from the victim, you know, and and 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:15.320 other evidence that the crime scene folks had taken and 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:19.480 had been taken from the autopsy and the rape exam. 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.880 And they were in the process of arranging to have 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:26.240 that tested, and to their credit, the prosecutor or, the 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:30.719 current prosecutor down in Newport News, agreed to have the 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:31.640 evidence tested. 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:32.480 That's good to hear. 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:36.280 When you were first made aware of Keith's case by 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:38.280 the NISS Project, how long did it take before you 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.760 realized that you had an innocent man on your hands? 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:42.720 You know, I've done a lot of this kind of work. 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:46.119 And when we started looking into his case and we 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:49.320 read the transcripts and we realized how weak a case 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:54.239 of you know, the evidence was. The only evidence that 0:18:54.359 --> 0:19:01.480 the prosecutors used against Keith was this bitemark expert testimony, 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:05.480 which at the time was thought to be an actual 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:09.040 science that had validity, that was reliable, and you know 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:11.800 a bunch of experts. There were two experts who testified 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:12.920 in court and said. 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:15.960 That there are four others. I think about that, right. 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:18.320 If you're in a jury and you're sitting there and 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.720 you go, wow, this guy's a forensic diss and he's 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:23.720 got that. But we know now that it's it's really 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:28.880 an unregulated, uh sort of practice. It's not certified by 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:32.000 any particular You can be a forensic. 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:35.119 Od on tolologist, but basically you get certified by your 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:36.240 friends pretty much. 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:38.480 Show up at the Shart and Old Friday, you know, 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:39.920 Sunday to give you a diploma. 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:42.040 Yeah, it's it's really well, here's the thing, you know, 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:42.920 it's terrible. 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:48.200 This science was actually developed not for use in court, 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:50.840 like in a case for Keith, but when there's like 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:54.440 a mass disaster and they find the remains of victims 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:57.840 and included in the remains or you know, the teeth 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.639 and the jaw, and then they want to try to 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:03.520 identify that person. So they think they know who the 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.280 victims are, but they're not sure who's who. Then they 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.639 can look at dental records, but that's looking at, you know, 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:12.240 someone's full set of teeth, like thirty two teeth in 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:17.400 a john comparing that to X rays or other dental records. 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:21.159 It's very different doing that, which is noble work. You 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.400 know people who do that. But it's very different when 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.320 you try to say, based on a blurry photograph of 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:32.000 a woman's shin, to look at that where you know, 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.680 if someone bites another person, maybe only four teeth make 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:39.080 the bite mark six or two or whatever. Then to 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:44.600 say with almost certainty that the person who bit that 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:49.000 victim's leg was Keith Harwood is a very different matter. 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:52.360 No, I've seen a case where they the bite bark 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:54.879 evidence was the primary cause of the conviction, and it 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:57.879 turned out later on that it wasn't even a human 0:20:58.000 --> 0:20:59.160 it was animal bibars. 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:00.600 The victim had been thrown. 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:03.400 In a scar inver a scar. One of the guys 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.479