Speaker 1: On the night of November twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, Angela Garcia,
Speaker 1: a single mother, was at home with her two toddlers.
Speaker 1: It was a quiet, peaceful evening. The girls were upstairs
Speaker 1: in her bedroom watching Rugrats on TV. Downstairs, Angela was
Speaker 1: on the phone with her family making Thanksgiving plans. Angela
Speaker 1: went up to use the bathroom, and while there, she
Speaker 1: noticed it was getting hard to breathe. She began coughing.
Speaker 2: I knew something was going on, but I couldn't really
Speaker 2: figure out what was happening in the house.
Speaker 1: When she came out of the bathroom, Angela saw smoke
Speaker 1: billowing up from downstairs. Frantically, she searched for her daughters,
Speaker 1: but the smoke was too thick.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find them, and so the only thing I
Speaker 2: thought about was I needed somebody to help me.
Speaker 1: Angela broke the window, jumped down from the second story,
Speaker 1: and ran to the neighbor's house.
Speaker 2: I went to her house, and not to please help me,
Speaker 2: Please help me find my kids. Can't get I can't
Speaker 2: get my kids.
Speaker 1: Both of her children died in the fire. Angela was
Speaker 1: convicted of arson and murder and given a life sentence,
Speaker 1: and then after spending over sixteen years in prison, she
Speaker 1: was faced with an agonizing choice.
Speaker 2: I cried so hard, and I remember praying to God
Speaker 2: and asking God, like, whatever you want me to do
Speaker 2: or do because I just I had to make a
Speaker 2: decision within a couple of minutes that was gonna change
Speaker 2: the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: From LoVa for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Speaker 1: Freeling today Angela Garcia. Angela Garcia was born in New
Speaker 1: York in nineteen seventy seven. She moved to Cleveland when
Speaker 1: she was fourteen.
Speaker 2: My mom got married to my stepdad when I was
Speaker 2: really young, so he kind of raised me. I lived
Speaker 2: with him and my mom. So I have a bunch
Speaker 2: of step brothers and sisters, but for my mom, I
Speaker 2: only have. It's me and I have one sister, my
Speaker 2: sister Judy, for my mom were seven years apart.
Speaker 3: She was just a little sister. She always wanted to
Speaker 3: be up under me, as little sisters always want to do.
Speaker 1: This is Angela's older sister, Judy Cotto Nichols, and despite
Speaker 1: their age difference, the two have always been close.
Speaker 2: I have this one memory that I always think about
Speaker 2: my mom had I don't know how old I was.
Speaker 2: I had been really young. My mom had bought these
Speaker 2: telephones and we had this long hallway, and I remember
Speaker 2: us being on these like I think they were blue phones.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that is so silly.
Speaker 3: Yes, my mother had bought her for Christmas, these little phones,
Speaker 3: remember them princess phones. Well there was two of them
Speaker 3: attached to one that She'd be in one room and
Speaker 3: I'd be in the other room. We talked.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that is so silly.
Speaker 2: Hi, Angela, Hi Judy. I just that's like one of
Speaker 2: the memories from my childhood that is so fond in
Speaker 2: my mind.
Speaker 3: I think we had a good childhood. You know, we
Speaker 3: would know it was never hungry.
Speaker 2: We lived nicely.
Speaker 1: The sisters stayed close as they grew older and both
Speaker 1: started families. Judy had a son, dj and Angela had
Speaker 1: two girls, Nayima and Nysa. Their children were around the
Speaker 1: same age and constantly together.
Speaker 2: My oldest daughter was like real bubbly, real talkative, and
Speaker 2: just really outgoing, and then my youngest daughter was kind
Speaker 2: of quiet, like real observant. She would be quick to
Speaker 2: speak to people, but like she would try to get
Speaker 2: a feel of people. I A would say that they
Speaker 2: like they were both of my characters kind of like
Speaker 2: split up and got into both of them.
Speaker 3: Naima she was always smiling. She thought she was big
Speaker 3: sister to her little sister and my son. Yeah, she
Speaker 3: was a smart one. And Nida, Yeah she was the.
Speaker 1: Roly poly one.
Speaker 3: She was more quiet. She was just she was like
Speaker 3: a little Buddha. She's so adorable.
Speaker 2: And I used to love to do to hear, used
Speaker 2: to like braid to hear and for men here.
Speaker 3: And it was spoiled by everyone. They were babies that couldn't.
Speaker 1: Do no wrong. How was she as a mom?
Speaker 3: She was a good mom. Yeah. I kept the kids
Speaker 3: a lot because I had a younger son, so so
Speaker 3: they can play together all the time. So basically I
Speaker 3: had them mostly all the weekends.
Speaker 1: Angela was a single mother, twenty two years old and
Speaker 1: engaged to be married. She was raising her daughters in
Speaker 1: a two story house she rented from her parents in
Speaker 1: East Cleveland. Judy and her family lived nearby. Angela was
Speaker 1: in school and dreamed of becoming a paramedic.
Speaker 2: But it was like schooling was expensive. So me and
Speaker 2: my sister had I think we had went somewhere and
Speaker 2: we met a recruiter, and he told me like, hey,
Speaker 2: if you sign up for you know, to be in
Speaker 2: a navy, you know, we'll pay for you go to school.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I just figured why not, Like, who
Speaker 2: wouldn't want to do that? And knowing that somebody that
Speaker 2: your whole schooling is going to be paid for.
Speaker 1: Basic training would take six weeks, and Angela knew she
Speaker 1: would need someone to take care of her daughters during
Speaker 1: that time, So naturally she asked Judy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not a problem. It wasn't a problem, you know.
Speaker 3: I just say, it takes a village to raise a family,
Speaker 3: you know, so we was our little village.
Speaker 2: But yeah, of course that never happened.
Speaker 4: So this case started with a fire at Angela's house
Speaker 4: on November twentieth, nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: This is Joanna Sanchez.
Speaker 4: Managing counsel of the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Office
Speaker 4: of the Ohio Public Defender.
Speaker 1: It was the weekend before Thanksgiving and Angela was at
Speaker 1: home with the girls.
Speaker 2: My daughters used to love Rugrats, so we used to
Speaker 2: watch that all the time they were two and three,
Speaker 2: So it really wasn't like we were doing like a
Speaker 2: whole lot.
Speaker 1: The house was calm and quiet. While the girls watched TV.
Speaker 1: Up in her bedroom, Angela lit a couple of candles.
Speaker 1: I was talking with her stepsister on the phone downstairs.
Speaker 2: And we were just talking about Thanksgiving and who's gonna
Speaker 2: cook and what they're gonna cook and all that. I
Speaker 2: had Winnes say as he used the restroom, and my
Speaker 2: oldest daughter, Naima, she had came in the bathroom and
Speaker 2: I told him, like, get out the bathroom, and she
Speaker 2: said something to me, but I didn't pay any attention
Speaker 2: whatever she was saying. And to this day, I always
Speaker 2: think about if I would have listened to her. Maybe
Speaker 2: she was telling me something, maybe she seen something, heard
Speaker 2: something and was trying to tell me, But at the
Speaker 2: time I didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 4: When she came out of the bathroom, she noticed she
Speaker 4: was coughing and she saw smoke, so she kind of
Speaker 4: went towards the stairs and saw just smoke billowing up
Speaker 4: the stairs.
Speaker 2: I knew something was going on, but I couldn't really
Speaker 2: figure out what was happening in the house. And I
Speaker 2: knew I was having problems breathing and I couldn't breathe.
Speaker 1: The first thing Angela thought of was her children.
Speaker 2: They were in my bedroom at the time, and so
Speaker 2: I was feeling all over my bed for them, and
Speaker 2: I couldn't find them.
Speaker 4: And by this point the house was just filling with
Speaker 4: thick black smoke.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find them, and so the only thing I
Speaker 2: thought about was I needed somebody to help me. So
Speaker 2: I opened up the window and I was screaming out
Speaker 2: the window, and then somehow I broke. I busted the
Speaker 2: window out trying to get out, and then I jumped down.
Speaker 2: I jumped out of the house. And in my mind
Speaker 2: at the time, I thought that if I jump, if
Speaker 2: I jumped out and found somebody to help me, I
Speaker 2: could find my daughters.
Speaker 4: So she did break out the second story window, went
Speaker 4: onto what was the roof of the porch, jumped down
Speaker 4: to the yard, and ran to her neighbor's house to
Speaker 4: get help.
Speaker 2: You don't think like I didn't think about if you
Speaker 2: jump out the window, how are you gonna get back
Speaker 2: in the house. I never even thought about that. The
Speaker 2: only thing I thought about was trying to get back in,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to trying to stay them, trying to
Speaker 2: find them. And so I went to the next door
Speaker 2: neighbor's house, and I said, please help me, Please help
Speaker 2: me find my kids. Can't get I can't get my kids,
Speaker 2: and me and her went back to the house. I
Speaker 2: don't remember everything that happened. I remember me and her
Speaker 2: being on the porch because we couldn't get back in
Speaker 2: the house.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, by the time the firefighters came, Nija and Naima
Speaker 4: had died. Initially, the firefighters, they looked at the house,
Speaker 4: they documented the scene. They brought in an accelerant sniffing
Speaker 4: dog who found no accelerant, and they determined that this
Speaker 4: was an accidental fire, and they destroyed the house.
Speaker 1: Is that normal? I thought that was so crazy. Two
Speaker 1: days later, the house is destroyed.
Speaker 4: It's very quick. I mean it prevented certainly the defense
Speaker 4: from ever collecting any evidence in the house. But really
Speaker 4: no evidence was collected. I mean they took photos, but
Speaker 4: no materials were collected for any store of testing for
Speaker 4: accelerance or anything of that nature. So it's very strange.
Speaker 1: So then walk me through. It's an accident. The house
Speaker 1: is leveled. How do we get to where we are?
Speaker 4: So the house is leveled. A couple months later, Angela
Speaker 4: submitted her insurance claim for her renter's insurance, and they
Speaker 4: believed that she had overvalued the contents of her home.
Speaker 4: And so at that point the police and the fire
Speaker 4: investigation unit started looking at this again and determined instead
Speaker 4: that this was an incendiary fire.
Speaker 1: How do they come to that conclusion without the house?
Speaker 4: So what they did was they looked back at some
Speaker 4: of the photographs. There's a large burned through pattern in
Speaker 4: the dining room floor, and so they believed that was
Speaker 4: the area of origin. I think when they had called
Speaker 4: it an accidental fire, the presumption had been that maybe
Speaker 4: one of the gandals had fallen over and caused this fire.
Speaker 4: And so one of the fire investigating unit officers indicated
Speaker 4: that he thought now the candle was too sturdy and
Speaker 4: too far away from any combustibles to have caused the fire,
Speaker 4: and so they came to the conclusion that it must
Speaker 4: have been an intentional fire.
Speaker 1: Angela was barely into her twenties. She had lost both
Speaker 1: her daughters as well as her home.
Speaker 2: That hope time period. I can't even say, you know
Speaker 2: how when you're sleep in like you think you're dreaming,
Speaker 2: but you're not sure because sometimes it looks real. Something
Speaker 2: parts of the dream looks real something parts to fake.
Speaker 2: And that's just how I felt for that time period.
Speaker 2: You know, I was I was a young mom, and
Speaker 2: I never really experienced losing anybody. I didn't know how
Speaker 2: to feel. I didn't how to feel. I didn't know
Speaker 2: what I was supposed to feel. Now I know that
Speaker 2: I was in a real bad depression.
Speaker 1: And then just three months later, in February of two thousand,
Speaker 1: Angela was arrested. She was charged with insurance fraud and
Speaker 1: aggravated murder.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe I was arrested. Actually, I was like,
Speaker 2: what is this crazy? You know, it didn't make no
Speaker 2: sense to me, none whatsoever. I knew I didn't hurt
Speaker 2: my daughters. You know, I knew I didn't them. I
Speaker 2: love them like I love myself. You know, I always
Speaker 2: believed that the truth will prevail. I always thought that
Speaker 2: if somebody got arrested, whatever they got arrested for, they did,
Speaker 2: because that's what society teaches you to think, That's what
Speaker 2: the news teaches you to think. So why would I
Speaker 2: ever think that the system would let me down?
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 1: You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Speaker 1: Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing
Speaker 1: to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Angela's two daughters,
Speaker 1: three year old Naima and two year old Nyja, had
Speaker 1: died in the house fire, and on August twenty first,
Speaker 1: two thousand, Angela went to trial for the first time
Speaker 1: before Judge Bridget McCafferty. The state sought the death penalty.
Speaker 1: Their case hinged on the theory that Angela had burned
Speaker 1: down her house and killed her children to get the
Speaker 1: insurance money.
Speaker 4: She had a render's insurance policy. She had life insurance
Speaker 4: on herself, and their theory was that she burned down
Speaker 4: her house and murdered her children so that she could
Speaker 4: collect some money on those insurance policies and sort of
Speaker 4: start a new life child free.
Speaker 1: Remember the year before, Angela had been thinking about joining
Speaker 1: the navy.
Speaker 4: And because she was a single mother, she was told,
Speaker 4: you can't join the navy with dependence, you know. So
Speaker 4: Angela looked into having her older sister, who she was
Speaker 4: very close with and very close with her children, to
Speaker 4: take temporary custody of them while she pursued this navy career.
Speaker 4: Ultimately Angela changed her mind and didn't do that.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, the state used that information at trial to bolster
Speaker 1: their narrative that Angela was trying to free herself from
Speaker 1: the responsibility of motherhood by setting fire to her own home.
Speaker 4: They put on their fire investigation unit, a couple officers
Speaker 4: from there, and they testified about what we now know
Speaker 4: are really outdated myths that used to use that indicated
Speaker 4: arson in their minds, so different types of char like
Speaker 4: alligator char on the walls, burned through pattern. They put
Speaker 4: that evidence on.
Speaker 1: The prosecution also presented an insurance adjuster to testify that
Speaker 1: Angela had recently purchased a large renter's insurance policy as
Speaker 1: well as a policy on herself and her daughters.
Speaker 4: The defense put on evidence that indicated she actually hadn't
Speaker 4: sought out those policies. These are salesmen who had come
Speaker 4: to her work and sort of given her a sales pitch,
Speaker 4: and she had reluctantly signed up for insurance.
Speaker 1: In addition to those witnesses, the prosecution presented firefighters and
Speaker 1: neighbors who had witnessed the events that night. They also
Speaker 1: presented a hospital worker who testified that when Naimo was
Speaker 1: brought into the er. She was wrapped in a cord
Speaker 1: from the window blind.
Speaker 4: They alleged that Angela had tied up one of her children.
Speaker 4: There's lots of testimony that shows why she might have
Speaker 4: ended up bound in those blinds. There was testimony from
Speaker 4: the firefighters that they actually came in and they used
Speaker 4: a tool to knock out the windows and knock down
Speaker 4: all the blinds and curtains, and so those blinds would
Speaker 4: have landed on her child. The firefighter then scooped her
Speaker 4: up with the blinds, went outside with her, handed her
Speaker 4: to an EMS worker, who then handed her to someone else,
Speaker 4: and so it's easy to see how during this whole
Speaker 4: process she may have become entangled in the blinds.
Speaker 1: The prosecution also alleged that Angela wasn't reacting properly at
Speaker 1: the hospital, that she wasn't behaving the way a grieving
Speaker 1: mother should.
Speaker 4: You know, that's something that's really interesting about this case
Speaker 4: because originally what the witnesses that the scene were saying
Speaker 4: was that Angela was hysterical. She was sitting on the ground,
Speaker 4: she was rocking back and forth. You know, she was
Speaker 4: screaming about her children. Really, you know, couldn't be consoled,
Speaker 4: and when she was interviewed at the hospital by the
Speaker 4: firefighters and the police detectives, they wrote up a report
Speaker 4: said nothing about her demeanor thing out of sorts. Later,
Speaker 4: after they changed the fire to incendiary, they went back
Speaker 4: and added a report about their reflections of her demeanor
Speaker 4: that night in the hospital and said that she was
Speaker 4: too calm.
Speaker 1: When the defense presented their case, they didn't call any
Speaker 1: witnesses to testify.
Speaker 4: What they did was aggressively cross examine the state's witnesses.
Speaker 4: So these trials happened in two thousand and two thousand
Speaker 4: and one, and by then fire science was starting to evolve.
Speaker 4: This guide that fire investigators use n FPA nine to
Speaker 4: twenty one had started to debunk some of these long
Speaker 4: held myths, and so the defense at trial really used
Speaker 4: that to cross examine the fire investigators about, you know,
Speaker 4: all these things that they were relying on that weren't
Speaker 4: supported by science.
Speaker 1: The first trial ended in a hung jury. A few
Speaker 1: months later, there was a second trial, which started in
Speaker 1: January of two thousand and one. The same judge and prosecutors.
Speaker 4: For the second trial, the state presented much of the
Speaker 4: same evidence they did at the first but then also
Speaker 4: brought in a jailhouse informant.
Speaker 1: That informant's name was Tanya Lanham.
Speaker 4: Tanya and her husband Tim were arrested for passing bad
Speaker 4: checks and they hit the jail at the same time.
Speaker 4: He was on the men's side, she was on the
Speaker 4: women's side with Angela, and so then she would later
Speaker 4: testify that Angela confessed to her during that time.
Speaker 1: And as we've seen in so many wrongful conviction cases,
Speaker 1: that jailhouse confession never actually happened.
Speaker 4: Years later, Tim would write a letter to Angela indicating
Speaker 4: that you know that was a lie, and what he
Speaker 4: said was that the police approached them. After her first
Speaker 4: trial about testifying against Angela.
Speaker 1: The prosecution denied that Tanya and Tim had been offered
Speaker 1: any kind of deal, but after she gave that information
Speaker 1: to the police, Hanya received a sixty day suspended sentence
Speaker 1: for the bad checks charge. That second trial also ended
Speaker 1: in a mistrial. The jury couldn't reach a verdict there either,
Speaker 1: but the state just would not give up.
Speaker 4: By the time we got to the third trial, the
Speaker 4: prosecution had completely changed its prosecutors. They really enhanced their
Speaker 4: evidence about the financial motives. It really became a trial
Speaker 4: almost entirely about that. And they also alleged that in
Speaker 4: between the second and third trial, they had discovered a
Speaker 4: second area of origin for the fire in the house.
Speaker 4: So now they were saying this didn't just start in
Speaker 4: the dining room. There was also a poor pattern on
Speaker 4: the stairs, and so the state's theory was an accidental
Speaker 4: fire couldn't start in two different locations. They also brought
Speaker 4: on and this is kind of maybe one of the
Speaker 4: more shocking parts of the third trial, they had a
Speaker 4: firefighter testify that he was at the scene the night
Speaker 4: of the fire and that on the stairs he found
Speaker 4: an intact bit lighter that he didn't photograph, didn't tell
Speaker 4: anyone about. He just looked at it, put it back
Speaker 4: down and never said anything until trial number three. And
Speaker 4: then the other thing the defense did in the third trial,
Speaker 4: which they hadn't done in the first two is they
Speaker 4: called an expert witness. So they brought in doctor Richard Roby,
Speaker 4: who was a chemical engineer and an expert on fire science,
Speaker 4: and he testified that the fire investigators had relied on
Speaker 4: outdated signs of arson. He really debunked a lot of
Speaker 4: what the state's evidence was. He described this concept of
Speaker 4: flashover that really changes how fire investigations should be conducted.
Speaker 4: And so he was really kind of ahead of his time.
Speaker 4: And the state at the third trial called him junk
Speaker 4: science and said that he had kind of created a
Speaker 4: quote miracle theory of flashover and tried to discredit him,
Speaker 4: and they effectively so, and Angela was convicted at the
Speaker 4: end of that trial.
Speaker 2: By the time my second trial happened, I just I
Speaker 2: really believe that, you know, I had two hung juries. Okay,
Speaker 2: they don't let me go because why would you still
Speaker 2: why would you still keep trying me? And it's like
Speaker 2: mentally it starts to weigh you down, and you know,
Speaker 2: hearing people say things about me that's not true, or
Speaker 2: you know, certain people call me a predator, and you know,
Speaker 2: all these different type of names and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So I was really going through it and I just
Speaker 2: had like this overwhelmingly tired feeling, you know, I was.
Speaker 2: I was just so overwhelmingly tired.
Speaker 1: Joanna. I feel like we'd think after one or two
Speaker 1: mistrials they would just let this go, but they did not.
Speaker 1: The state kept coming for Angela. Was there something else
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think that there's certainly racism and misogyny are a
Speaker 4: big factor in Angela's conviction. You know, we often see
Speaker 4: this with women who are wrongfully convicted of killing their children.
Speaker 4: This idea that they're a horrible mutter is running throughout
Speaker 4: their trial, right And in Angela's trial, there's also a
Speaker 4: huge degree of racism the way she was characterized throughout
Speaker 4: the trial. Angela's Puerto Rican She was referred to as
Speaker 4: a predator, as an animal. They suggested that her family
Speaker 4: were engaged in fraudulent business or fraudulent practices without any
Speaker 4: proof of that. Jurors were interviewed after the first and
Speaker 4: second trial, and we know that the deliberations often broke
Speaker 4: down along racial lines, and so I think race was
Speaker 4: a huge undercurrent in this trial.
Speaker 1: Angela was convicted of three counts of arson, two counts
Speaker 1: of murder, and four counts of aggravated murder. She was
Speaker 1: given two life sentences. She would not become eligible for
Speaker 1: parole for almost fifty years. When they convicted you, what
Speaker 1: did you think? I mean, that was the moment that
Speaker 1: it all became pretty real.
Speaker 2: Do you know I wasn't in like a state of shock,
Speaker 2: because when I got found guilty I didn't believe it.
Speaker 2: I didn't believe it. How do you send someone innocent
Speaker 2: to prison when you know I didn't do this. I
Speaker 2: was like in never never Land, like I was in
Speaker 2: a world by myself, in my own head, because I
Speaker 2: just could not believe that these people are sending me
Speaker 2: to prison for forty nine and a half the life life.
Speaker 2: When I was in prison, you know, sometimes women can
Speaker 2: be very cruel, you know, and people would say, oh,
Speaker 2: I would have died with my kids, I would have
Speaker 2: did this, and I would have did that. But you know,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, no one could honestly
Speaker 2: say what they would or wouldn't do.
Speaker 1: And so what was life like for you in prison
Speaker 1: before this happened? You were going to school? Were you
Speaker 1: able to continue with that when you entered prison?
Speaker 2: So initially I was doing forty nine and a half
Speaker 2: the life, so I wasn't able to go to school.
Speaker 2: So I just kind of like had nothing to do
Speaker 2: for the most part. And so until I gentleman as
Speaker 2: he was a teacher there. He helped me a whole lot,
Speaker 2: and he taught me a whole lot of like by
Speaker 2: construction and things like that, and Blue Princess just like
Speaker 2: a lot of different things, and so like he let
Speaker 2: me become his aid for the class, and he let
Speaker 2: me take an apprenticeship, and so he let me weld
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. So if it wasn't for him,
Speaker 2: I don't know what I would have been doing in there,
Speaker 2: because it's so easy to get caught up in drama
Speaker 2: and all type of other stuff. So that kind of
Speaker 2: kept me out the way.
Speaker 1: Some Judy, your two nieces died and then your sister
Speaker 1: is arrested for their deaths. What were you thinking when
Speaker 1: all of this was happening.
Speaker 3: For one, I used to live in that house and
Speaker 3: there was already issues going on with the electrical, and
Speaker 3: there was already issues going on. Everyone already knew that,
Speaker 3: you know. The first thing my dad said, oh my god,
Speaker 3: the electrical. You know, I should have got the guys
Speaker 3: in there. And electrician actually went in there. He told Angela,
Speaker 3: I'll be back. So many people have guilt over this.
Speaker 3: The guy that's supposed to come back to the electricity,
Speaker 3: he had guilt. Everyone felt I had some sort of
Speaker 3: guilt over this. You know, I did, because usually I
Speaker 3: get the kids on the weekends, and I didn't have
Speaker 3: the kids that day. I don't know what happened, but
Speaker 3: I didn't have the kids that weekend.
Speaker 1: When she was in prison. Were you guys still close?
Speaker 1: Did you talk often?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yes, one hundred and ten percent. We was going
Speaker 3: every weekend. Wow, until they changed the visitation and it
Speaker 3: got to the point where the guards knew us. They
Speaker 3: would be like, hey, how you doing.
Speaker 1: Hi?
Speaker 3: I see it from Yeah, I got to that point.
Speaker 3: But we was there all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't ask her, and I usually do,
Speaker 1: but did she struggle in prison? Did she ever tell
Speaker 1: you about any really hard times she was having in there?
Speaker 3: She didn't want us to know anything that was going on.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't ask any questions. I told her,
Speaker 3: whatever happened in here, leave it there. Don't nobody want
Speaker 3: to relive that. You know, if she wants to share,
Speaker 3: whenever she's ready, she can share. But I told her,
Speaker 3: when you come home, you leave that there.
Speaker 1: Angela's family continued to support her and believe in her innocence,
Speaker 1: and so did the fathers of Naima and Nija.
Speaker 2: Both my daughter's fathers did yes, anything I needed. They
Speaker 2: were there for me. Even after we had children together,
Speaker 2: we still we had a good relationship, and I've talked
Speaker 2: them through my whole the whole time I was in prison.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, Angela applied for assistance to
Speaker 1: the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Ohio Public Defender's Office.
Speaker 4: We had just started that year, in fact, and so
Speaker 4: it was one of our very first cases that we
Speaker 4: really dug into. And what we did is we had
Speaker 4: some expert witnesses look at the fire in light of
Speaker 4: new evidence and particularly the shift in science related to
Speaker 4: fire investigation.
Speaker 1: One of those witnesses was the renowned fire expert John
Speaker 1: de Haan. His expertise has been key in reinvestigating many
Speaker 1: other arson convictions, including Karen Bow's and Deborah Nichols. We've
Speaker 1: covered them both on previous episodes.
Speaker 4: What he found was that, again the state really relied
Speaker 4: on unreliable factors, unscientific signs of arson. He also noted
Speaker 4: that there were other potential accidental causes of the fire
Speaker 4: that the state completely failed to consider.
Speaker 1: And one of those possible causes ties in with something
Speaker 1: Judy told us about earlier.
Speaker 4: They found pretty compelling proof that this was actually an
Speaker 4: electrical fire. There was what they called like an unsystemic
Speaker 4: mix of wires and that was visible in the ceiling
Speaker 4: of the basement, the floor of the dining room, and
Speaker 4: there's evidence that there was like a low burning, sustained
Speaker 4: fire in that section. They were also able to use
Speaker 4: fire toxicology, which wasn't really used in fire investigation in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty nine, to show that there couldn't possibly have
Speaker 4: been a second poor pattern on the stairs. So with that,
Speaker 4: we filed emotion asking for Angela to have a new trial,
Speaker 4: and we are actually supposed to have a hearing on
Speaker 4: that in May twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: And then on the morning of the hearing, there was
Speaker 1: a surprise development.
Speaker 4: The prosecution came in and they offered Angela a plea
Speaker 4: deal and essentially what they said is plead guilty to
Speaker 4: a lesser offensive involuntary manslaughter, will let you go home
Speaker 4: from prison in five years.
Speaker 1: This type of plea is known as a dark plea.
Speaker 4: Dark plea is a term that Ohio Supreme Court Justice
Speaker 4: Michael Donnelly actually coined after learning about Angela's case, and
Speaker 4: he uses it to refer to please that happened exactly
Speaker 4: like how angelus did. So we think about plea bargaining
Speaker 4: in the system, and we usually think about it before trial, right,
Speaker 4: somebody decides to enter into a plea instead of going
Speaker 4: to trial. A dark plea is one that happens after
Speaker 4: an individual has already been convicted. They're incarcerated, and they've
Speaker 4: found proof of their innocence, and they're asking for a
Speaker 4: new trial, and that dark plea offer comes right at
Speaker 4: that time. The danger in it is that it's incredibly
Speaker 4: coercive because this person has been convicted, they're living in prison,
Speaker 4: they've lost their liberty, and what they're looking at is
Speaker 4: take a risk, take a gamble on my future and
Speaker 4: hope that the system that has wrongfully convicted me gets
Speaker 4: it right, or have this certain freedom and justice. Donley
Speaker 4: describes it as essentially negotiating with a gun to your head.
Speaker 2: I always said that I'm innocent and I would never
Speaker 2: plead anything. Nope, I'm going to fight, fight, fight. However,
Speaker 2: as time go on, I stepdad, past, my moms, getting older,
Speaker 2: you know, you start thinking differently. So Joanna said, hey,
Speaker 2: they offered you something.
Speaker 1: I'm like what she was like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: And it was like a last minute thing they gave her,
Speaker 3: you know, didn't even give it time to think about anything,
Speaker 3: but what ten minutes, fifteen minutes, not even.
Speaker 1: You know, there was like make a.
Speaker 3: Decision to make it now? You know, come on, does
Speaker 3: somebody's life you don't just tell them, make a decision
Speaker 3: to make it now.
Speaker 2: I cried so hard, and I remember praying to God
Speaker 2: and asking God, like, whatever you want me to do,
Speaker 2: I'll do. I can't do this on my own. I
Speaker 2: need you, you know. And that's the one time in
Speaker 2: my life that I was all by myself. But I
Speaker 2: didn't feel alone. And I'm not a very like religious person,
Speaker 2: but I felt like God's spirit with me because I
Speaker 2: just I had to make a decision within a couple
Speaker 2: of minutes that was gonna end change the rest of
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 1: This deal.
Speaker 3: I told her, Angela, you have all the people standing
Speaker 3: behind you. We had the workers, the kids' fathers all
Speaker 3: standing behind her. But Angela was frightened. She was scared.
Speaker 2: I think I was forty at the time and don't
Speaker 2: have to worry about doing another thirty seventhing years in
Speaker 2: prison for something I didn't do. And then, you know
Speaker 2: what makes it even worse for me is that I
Speaker 2: didn't take my children's lives, and now here I am.
Speaker 2: I did the one thing that I said I would
Speaker 2: never do. I took the plea.
Speaker 1: That morning rather than face a fourth trial, Angela pled
Speaker 1: guilty to one count of aggravated arson and two counts
Speaker 1: of involuntary manslaughter. Under the plea agreement, her sentence was
Speaker 1: reduced to twenty two years. She would be out in
Speaker 1: less than six years.
Speaker 2: I didn't have time to think about, Oh, when you
Speaker 2: get out, you're gonna be a convicted felon.
Speaker 1: Angela was finally released in January of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: but life isn't exactly back to normal with the felony
Speaker 1: convictions still on her record. Even the most basic things
Speaker 1: in life can be a challenge when.
Speaker 2: You get out. You can never get an apartment because
Speaker 2: they don't rent apartments to convict the felons. You know
Speaker 2: how hard it is to get a job having a record.
Speaker 2: You know, it's so many different things that I didn't
Speaker 2: get a chance to think about, you know, And then
Speaker 2: now I you know, of course, now I think about, like,
Speaker 2: did I make the right decision?
Speaker 1: Well, do you regret doing it?
Speaker 2: Sometimes I do? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I wish I
Speaker 2: had the courage to fight. But you know, all the
Speaker 2: things that I've seen that happen in the courtroom, and
Speaker 2: I was scared, did I have the mental strength to
Speaker 2: go through all that again? Did I want to take
Speaker 2: my mom through all that again? Or anybody else in
Speaker 2: my family, you know? And I just figured, like, if
Speaker 2: I took this plea, like I could be home. I
Speaker 2: could be home my mom. I could take her out
Speaker 2: to eat, you know, and I can lay to bed
Speaker 2: with her and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: When Angela first got out of prison, adjusting to her
Speaker 1: new life was harder than she expected.
Speaker 2: When I first got locked up, I had to figure
Speaker 2: out prison. I had to figure out how and what
Speaker 2: I had to do to survive. And it's like kind
Speaker 2: of the same concept, but being free, it's not like
Speaker 2: the prison or anybody says, you know, hey, listen, here's
Speaker 2: a manual. This is what this is, this is life,
Speaker 2: this is what you need to do. This is how
Speaker 2: things are going to be. You know, you don't get that.
Speaker 2: When I I came home, it was weird being around
Speaker 2: my friends because we were all once young. Now they're
Speaker 2: older women, and not only are they older women, but
Speaker 2: their grandmas. Sometimes I will you go out with my friends,
Speaker 2: and I will feel out of place, because it's just
Speaker 2: like I think that, like when you're in prison, especially
Speaker 2: for a long time, it's like that's how you picture them.
Speaker 2: Even with my mom, Like my mom's in her seventies now,
Speaker 2: but I still picture her as this forty seven year
Speaker 2: old woman, you know, And so like sometimes I look
Speaker 2: at my mom and she'll do something and I'll be like, man,
Speaker 2: my mom's old lady now.
Speaker 1: But Angela, still in the prime of her life and
Speaker 1: with a renewed sense of purpose, plans to get married
Speaker 1: and start a nonprofit organization.
Speaker 2: Like a sober living home to help people that have
Speaker 2: been in prison, let them have a place to come to.
Speaker 2: So I've been trying to work on that and just
Speaker 2: trying to work on myself and just trying to become
Speaker 2: a better me, a better daughter. A bet it's still
Speaker 2: a better n You're.
Speaker 1: Still quite young, do you do you want to have
Speaker 1: kids or adopt kids or anything like that. I'm young,
Speaker 1: I think forty six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I can know fifties doors like, come on in, no,
Speaker 2: I can't have any more children. After I had my children,
Speaker 2: I had complications. And that's another reason why my daughters
Speaker 2: meant so much to me because I just felt like
Speaker 2: God gave me these two.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you. I mean, this is so
Speaker 1: hard to talk about, so how come you do talk
Speaker 1: about it?
Speaker 2: I talk about it because my situation can happen to
Speaker 2: anybody else out there, and I want people to be
Speaker 2: aware of the things that happened to me and to
Speaker 2: many others. I want people to understand that ah judicious
Speaker 2: system is not always right, and our judicial system is
Speaker 2: not always fair. And you know, a lot of people
Speaker 2: are not aware of all the people that have been
Speaker 2: wrongfully convicted. It's my same situation. Could be your daughter,
Speaker 2: your mother, your sister. You know, it could happen to anybody.
Speaker 2: I want people to understand that everybody that takes it
Speaker 2: plea is not guilty.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie FREELINGK.
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
Speaker 1: links in the episode description to see how you can help.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wortis, as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea,
Speaker 1: producer Kathleen Fink, story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels.
Speaker 1: Mixing and sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional
Speaker 1: production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in
Speaker 1: this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on all social media platforms
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
Speaker 1: also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one