Speaker 1: With the police banging on the door open up.
Speaker 2: The choice to be in that lineup was the last
Speaker 2: choice I made as a free man.
Speaker 3: A year later, I ended up writing the system.
Speaker 4: I'm going to be one of those people who everyone
Speaker 4: in the world is going to think as a monster
Speaker 4: or suspect as a monster for the rest of my life,
Speaker 4: and I'm just going to have to come to peace
Speaker 4: with that.
Speaker 5: Somebody was able to look at my picture in the
Speaker 5: database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't.
Speaker 6: I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they might.
Speaker 1: Have to play in my hanging.
Speaker 6: They had been told that two prison officers would have
Speaker 6: to participate in my execution. Now I walked back inside
Speaker 6: that prison for the last time. Man, all help broke loose.
Speaker 7: But welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today
Speaker 7: we have a very special episode, not only because of
Speaker 7: our amazing guest, Dennis Mayer. First of all, Dennis, welcome
Speaker 7: to the show.
Speaker 6: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 7: Dennis will get into his story in a minute, but
Speaker 7: let's suffice it to say that he was a sergeant
Speaker 7: in the United States Army. When he was wrongfully convicted
Speaker 7: of three rapes and served almost twenty years in prison.
Speaker 7: I also want to introduce Hannah Riley, who's the director
Speaker 7: of communications for the New England Innocence Project, and she's
Speaker 7: the first time on the show, hopefully not the last.
Speaker 7: And then we have a very close friend of mine,
Speaker 7: Alex Spiro.
Speaker 1: He is a former criminal.
Speaker 7: Prosecutor in New York and currently a defense attorney. He's
Speaker 7: also a professor at Harvard Law School. Alex, it's great
Speaker 7: to have you on the show as well.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 7: So Dennis, let's start with you. Your case is of
Speaker 7: great interest, I think, to anyone who's interested in this genre,
Speaker 7: because it touches on a number of really important and
Speaker 7: tragically common problems in the wrongful conviction world. The mistake
Speaker 7: and I winness identification is unique in your case because
Speaker 7: of the fact that there were three different women who
Speaker 7: identified you under dubious circumstances, but nonetheless that identified you.
Speaker 7: It touches on the storage of evidence because in your
Speaker 7: case the evidence had been supposedly lost but actually it wasn't.
Speaker 7: And that's something that is really disturbing to anyone who's
Speaker 7: interested in justice. It deals with incompetent defense counsel. And
Speaker 7: also it also has an element of willful wrongful prosecution.
Speaker 7: So you really hit the jackpot of causes of getting
Speaker 7: locked up for something you didn't do. So let's go back,
Speaker 7: and this is a while ago, right, we're talking nineteen
Speaker 7: eighty three when this all came down.
Speaker 6: That's when it started.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So nineteen eighty three, paint a picture for us.
Speaker 7: You were were you active to a you in the
Speaker 7: military at this time.
Speaker 6: Yes, I was stationed at Fort Devons.
Speaker 7: Right, and you had been in in the airborne Right.
Speaker 7: I was a paratrooper paraterooper station in Italy.
Speaker 6: Well, first I was at Fort Bragg, then I volunteered
Speaker 6: to serve overseas. Then I re enlisted to come home
Speaker 6: to Massachusetts, and then I got off a jump status
Speaker 6: to work in my field, which was a diesel mechanic.
Speaker 1: And that's another thing.
Speaker 7: It's it's really upsetting to me, as someone who loves
Speaker 7: his country and respects.
Speaker 1: The men and women of our military. Here you are.
Speaker 1: You're twenty three years old at the time.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 1: And what happened. Let's go back to that.
Speaker 6: Well, I graduated from high school in seventy eight and
Speaker 6: enlisted in the Army right out of high school. You know.
Speaker 6: I went through Basic training, Advanced Individual Training, Jump school,
Speaker 6: then went to Fort Bragg, then to Vicenza, Italy in
Speaker 6: the five or nine, and then to ten Special Forces
Speaker 6: up at Fort Devons. Then I got off of jump
Speaker 6: status to work as a diesel mechanic because what I
Speaker 6: worked on doesn't drop out of. And then from there
Speaker 6: I was living at home and Lowell with my parents.
Speaker 6: I was walking down Westword Street and I was stopped
Speaker 6: by the police. They asked me for identification, so I
Speaker 6: gave him my driver's license, which was outdated because when
Speaker 6: you're in the military you get a cod on the
Speaker 6: back of it that says your license never expires, and
Speaker 6: so well, I asked me for identification. They ran my name,
Speaker 6: which came back negative because I had never been in trouble.
Speaker 6: No speed and tickets, no nothing. He gave me back
Speaker 6: my ID and then he searched me and he arrested
Speaker 6: me for possession of marijuana. So they brought me to
Speaker 6: the police station and booked me and put me in
Speaker 6: a hold and sell. A couple of hours later, they
Speaker 6: came out and questioned me and they said, where were
Speaker 6: you on the night of November sixteenth, at five point thirty. Well,
Speaker 6: I said, I was in my CEO's office getting yelled
Speaker 6: at because we failed a nuclear biological chemical test. And
Speaker 6: I didn't leave the base till almost quarter past five,
Speaker 6: so I didn't get home till almost six o'clock. And
Speaker 6: then he put me back in the cell. And then
Speaker 6: the other cop come in a couple of hours later
Speaker 6: and asked me the same questions. I gave him the
Speaker 6: same answers. On a night of November seventeenth, I was
Speaker 6: I left the base early to get my car inspected,
Speaker 6: and I went home and took a nap, and then
Speaker 6: I went over to my friend's house to watch the
Speaker 6: Bruins game. And then they brought me into court the
Speaker 6: next day and arranged me for possession of marijuana. And
Speaker 6: then they did what's called an in court identification. They
Speaker 6: took me out of the box and sat me on
Speaker 6: the bench, and they brought one of the victims in
Speaker 6: and she identified someone else.
Speaker 7: Wait, did you even know what was going on at
Speaker 7: this point? I mean, you were being booked for possession
Speaker 7: of marijuana, but now they're bringing a victim. There's no
Speaker 7: victim of possession of marijuana.
Speaker 6: True. What I missed was the second time they started
Speaker 6: questioning me, I got mad, you know, why what are
Speaker 6: you questioning me about? And he said, well, we're questioning
Speaker 6: you about a rape that happened on November sixteenth, and
Speaker 6: then attempted rape that happened on November seventeenth. So I said, well,
Speaker 6: I guess I need a lawyer. And then next day
Speaker 6: in court they did an in court identification. Now I
Speaker 6: was never arraigned for the rapes or anything. They just
Speaker 6: did an in court identification and the victim I need
Speaker 6: someone else, and the judge said, you have no grounds
Speaker 6: to go forward.
Speaker 1: Seems like case closes right there, I mean.
Speaker 6: So they gave me six months probation and said I
Speaker 6: could leave now they had my boots. So I was
Speaker 6: in stocking feet and going to have to walk home
Speaker 6: and stalking feet. As I was leaving the courtroom, they
Speaker 6: arrested me and charged me with the rape and the
Speaker 6: attempted rape that the judge said there was no grounds
Speaker 6: to go forward on.
Speaker 7: Okay, Alex, do you want to jump in here because
Speaker 7: this whole story is pretty surreal.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: First of all, the thing with the boots, we'll get
Speaker 7: back to that. Like why they're making you walk home
Speaker 7: and this is in Uh it's cold outside, It's it's November.
Speaker 7: It's November. Yeah, walking home? Okay, Well that's that's a
Speaker 7: little surreal. Then you've just spent the night in jail
Speaker 7: for the first time in your life, so I'm sure
Speaker 7: you're a little whacked out anyway at that point. What's
Speaker 7: going on here, Alex? Can you get into this?
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, the use of that sort of identify
Speaker 2: procedure raises serious questions because just presenting him alone or
Speaker 2: him in that sort of a setting when he's already
Speaker 2: being accused of some other crime, is not the right
Speaker 2: way to conduct I think we know now identification procedures,
Speaker 2: but I guess what must have happened is twofold one.
Speaker 2: No doubt that the members of law enforcement were under
Speaker 2: pressure to make an arrest in this case, and secondarily
Speaker 2: during the time in which mister Mayor was incarcerated on
Speaker 2: the initial charge, I'm sure that they noticed things articles
Speaker 2: of clothing putting him near the scene, and other indisha
Speaker 2: that they believed to be corroboration. And so the lack
Speaker 2: of identification obviously did not set this record straight.
Speaker 7: Right and There's a very interesting point that you touch
Speaker 7: on there, which is that there was one of the victims,
Speaker 7: or I guess one of the victims, had said that
Speaker 7: the attacker had had a red hooded sweatshirt, right, and
Speaker 7: that became one of the only sort of circumstantial piece
Speaker 7: of evidence that was even something that they could put
Speaker 7: a hook on.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: That's why I think they stopped me, because they saw
Speaker 6: was wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, you know, and they
Speaker 6: were two hundred feet away from me, and they said
Speaker 6: I fit the out of conception, but I believe it
Speaker 6: was just I had a red hooded sweatshirt on.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: So seven o'clock at night, two hundred fet away, it's
Speaker 7: pretty hard to decide. I mean, you'd have to have
Speaker 7: sort of like really superhuman vision to be able to
Speaker 7: match a suspect at night, seven o'clock in November in Massachusetts.
Speaker 7: I'm not a meteorologist, but I'm guessing it was dark,
Speaker 7: and so it was dark, and you were two hundred
Speaker 7: feet away, and they managed to magically figure out that
Speaker 7: it was you. Now, this goes back to the thing
Speaker 7: I talk about often, which is that this is a
Speaker 7: small town. Right, you have a rapist out there who's
Speaker 7: just attacked two women, raped one of them, sexually assaulted
Speaker 7: and tempted to wape the other one. They got to
Speaker 7: find somebody there. You are walking around in a red
Speaker 7: hooded sweatshirt. It's like, oh, bingo, this is great. We
Speaker 7: can get this off our desks to an extent, right,
Speaker 7: And so Alex, go back to what you were saying before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't know sort of verbat
Speaker 2: him the back and forth. But no, that is not
Speaker 2: a sound identify procedure. I could say that quite assuredly.
Speaker 7: And what point did you you had requested a lawyer,
Speaker 7: At what point did you get assigned a lawyer.
Speaker 6: A lawyer approached my parents and asked if he could
Speaker 6: represent me. Now, this is the lawyer who ended up
Speaker 6: representing me at trial. He approached my parents the same
Speaker 6: day I had one to appoint it to me for possession.
Speaker 6: You know, I got six months probation. But then another
Speaker 6: lawyer approached my parents asking if he could represent me,
Speaker 6: and they said yes, yes, because they knew nothing about
Speaker 6: the law like me, you know, they'd never been in
Speaker 6: trouble or anything. And he said it'd represent me for
Speaker 6: five thousand dollars on a rape case.
Speaker 7: Now nineteen eighty three, five thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, right,
Speaker 7: I mean that's a lot of money back then, so
Speaker 7: you would hope that this guy would be a real star.
Speaker 7: But that's not the way it worked out at all,
Speaker 7: is it. Back to the scene, So now you're about
Speaker 7: to walk home in your socks stocking feet as New
Speaker 7: Englanders call it, and then you get pulled back in
Speaker 7: and you get charged with two counts.
Speaker 6: Of rape and an attempted rape. Right, Well, I didn't
Speaker 6: get charged then, they just arrested me, and then they
Speaker 6: took me back to the police station and kept me
Speaker 6: in the station over the weekend and brought me into
Speaker 6: Cambridge Court House and that's where they charged me with
Speaker 6: rape and put me on ten thousand dollars bail, which
Speaker 6: is one thousand dollars cash. So my parents bailed me
Speaker 6: out and then I went to the first lineup, which
Speaker 6: was me six police officers. They were all standing behind
Speaker 6: a railing. I was standing behind a chair and I
Speaker 6: was ided that was the first one.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff always blows me away. Let's just
Speaker 1: reflect back on that.
Speaker 7: So they were standing behind a railing and you were
Speaker 7: standing behind a chair, so there was really no reason
Speaker 7: that anyone would think there'd be anything different about you, right,
Speaker 7: And there were six police officers in you okay?
Speaker 1: And then the victim, one of the victims, comes in.
Speaker 6: And identified me. You know, it was probably obvious to her,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm standing behind a chair. I really don't
Speaker 6: remember the second lineup, but I think when along the
Speaker 6: same lines, it was me, six police officers, my brother,
Speaker 6: and this time I wasn't standing behind a chair, and
Speaker 6: she id'd me, what.
Speaker 1: Does your brother have to do with it?
Speaker 6: Well, he was just in the line. He was there,
Speaker 6: and they just wanted to stick him in the lineup.
Speaker 1: That seems odd, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, law enforcement would say that
Speaker 2: later they can assert that they did everything in their
Speaker 2: power to find people that look like him and who looks.
Speaker 3: More like a person than their own brother.
Speaker 7: And that's an interesting thing too, because I would this identification,
Speaker 7: as everyone who listens to the show knows, is the
Speaker 7: leading cause of wrongful conviction. And what we also know
Speaker 7: is that in cases where there's a weapon involved and
Speaker 7: someone is in close proximity and really fearing for their life,
Speaker 7: in a very real way, the instance of mistaken identification
Speaker 7: goes up. And that's logical, right as an amateur psychologist,
Speaker 7: if you're freaking out, literally like you're adrenaline is on,
Speaker 7: you know ten, you know your mind's not going to
Speaker 7: function in the way that it would if you were
Speaker 7: just calmly sitting here and just look at somebody. But
Speaker 7: when someone's got a knife to your throat and is
Speaker 7: either raping or attempting to rape you, your faculties are
Speaker 7: not going to be operating in a normal passion, to
Speaker 7: say the least. And so this case had that as
Speaker 7: well because the victims were in that exact situation.
Speaker 4: Have you seen the Gorilla basketball video?
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, have you guys seen that?
Speaker 4: The idea of being we just aren't able to focus
Speaker 4: really clearly on a lot of things at once. So
Speaker 4: if you haven't seen this, I'm completely going to ruin.
Speaker 1: It for you. But no, just watch it. Everyone should watch.
Speaker 4: It, right Google, It's on YouTube's a selective attention.
Speaker 7: Test, right, there's a selective attention test. It involves a
Speaker 7: basketball I strongly recommend that everybody listening to the show
Speaker 7: watched this because it'll give you an idea of just
Speaker 7: how easy it is for your mind to play tricks
Speaker 7: on you. So let's go back to the scene, right.
Speaker 7: So you end up now with this high priced, fancy lawyer, right,
Speaker 7: and you didn't get what you paid for.
Speaker 6: No, I didn't. He never visited where the crime happened.
Speaker 6: He never interrogated witnesses or talked to the witnesses or
Speaker 6: anything like that. We went to trial in March of
Speaker 6: two thousand and four. Well before that, January fifth, nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty four, the police came and arrested me again and
Speaker 6: brought me down to the police station. I said, well,
Speaker 6: what are you arresting me for? They wouldn't say anything,
Speaker 6: and they handed me over to the Air Police department.
Speaker 6: So they brought me back to Air and on the way,
Speaker 6: I asked the cop you know what am I under
Speaker 6: arrest for? She said, just shut up. So I asked
Speaker 6: her again and she said just shut up. I says,
Speaker 6: can you please tell me what I'm under arrest for?
Speaker 6: And she said, well, you're under arrest for a rape
Speaker 6: that happened at the Casa Mano Hotel. I said, where's
Speaker 6: the Casa Mana Hotel? Because I never knew where it
Speaker 6: was until two years ago when I went and spoke
Speaker 6: in air and she said, well, you committed a rape there.
Speaker 6: I said, no, I didn't. And then they brought me
Speaker 6: in the air and put my bail at fifty thousand
Speaker 6: dollars cash. So that was my last day of freedom,
Speaker 6: was January fifth, nineteen eighty four. And then we went
Speaker 6: through another lineup and I was idd again. And in
Speaker 6: March of nineteen eighty four we went to trial.
Speaker 1: Going back to your lawyer.
Speaker 7: So your lawyer didn't visit the crime scene, big red
Speaker 7: flag there. Yeah, didn't interview the witnesses. That seems even
Speaker 7: more insane. Okay, what else did he forget to do
Speaker 7: or neglect to do?
Speaker 6: I should say he didn't show up for some hearings
Speaker 6: at the trial. He presented most of the case for
Speaker 6: the prosecutor. You know, he's standing next to me. Are
Speaker 6: you sure this is the person? Are you sure? There's
Speaker 6: an point at me saying are you sure this is
Speaker 6: the person who raped you? And of course I got
Speaker 6: found guilty.
Speaker 1: I mean, anybody as well to say are you sure
Speaker 1: that this rapist is the one who raped you?
Speaker 7: Right? I mean it's like, I mean, it's crazy. So
Speaker 7: it's incomprehensible. I mean, Alex jump in here because I'm
Speaker 7: freaking out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is not does not sound like good LORI that.
Speaker 7: Now, let's talk about what good lawyering might have looked like,
Speaker 7: because this is an unusual situation we have here where
Speaker 7: we actually have somebody on the show who can give
Speaker 7: us that type of idea.
Speaker 2: I guess I'd break it down into two parts. In
Speaker 2: terms of the identification, I think you have to remember that,
Speaker 2: in terms of Lowell, the women were approached from behind.
Speaker 2: You already mentioned the distraction of a weapon, a high
Speaker 2: tense situation affecting the ability to accurately picture somebody and
Speaker 2: recall it. For one, she had already seen the individual
Speaker 2: that she would later pick out, because she had seen
Speaker 2: him in a courtroom setting on a bench, and so
Speaker 2: even if she just remembered that she would falsely identify him.
Speaker 2: It also wasn't a double blind procedure, meaning that the
Speaker 2: investigator ostensibly knew who she was trying to pick out,
Speaker 2: put him in a unique setting within the lineup and
Speaker 2: everything else. In addition, all of the witnesses were shown
Speaker 2: photographs in which they identified as I understand it, mister
Speaker 2: mayor before they viewed a live lineup, and so what
Speaker 2: often happens is that you end up picking out the
Speaker 2: person that you saw in the photo array, not necessarily
Speaker 2: the person who saw on the night in question. And
Speaker 2: sort of all of that, coupled with law enforcements, desire
Speaker 2: from perhaps a very good place of trying to solve
Speaker 2: this crime, can lead to a series of identification procedures
Speaker 2: not being pristine and not being correctly done, and the
Speaker 2: taint from one bleeds over into the next, because once
Speaker 2: he's identified in these initial cases, the air case becomes
Speaker 2: a foregone conclusion, and I think you have to attack
Speaker 2: that in all of those different ways. I also think
Speaker 2: they used corroborative evidence that is a bit of a
Speaker 2: red herring. They see him in the vicinity near the
Speaker 2: time of the initial rapes and Lowell, but the truth
Speaker 2: is he's from that area. It's not like finding somebody
Speaker 2: in some remote location or finding somebody far away from
Speaker 2: where they normally travel. They see a knife and a
Speaker 2: jacket in his car, but that's military issued, where that
Speaker 2: most of the men in his age demographic in a
Speaker 2: military town might very well have, and he might be
Speaker 2: wearing a red sweatshirt. But as US folks from Boston know,
Speaker 2: a lot of the sports teams there have red sweatshirt,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that is that unique of an item.
Speaker 2: And so there were all of those things that needed
Speaker 2: to be investigated. And on top of that, he had
Speaker 2: an alibi that wasn't properly vetted, that could have been
Speaker 2: properly vetted that would suggest he couldn't have been where
Speaker 2: they say that he was. And the crimes themselves, the
Speaker 2: air crime versus the lower crimes, don't have the same
Speaker 2: fact pattern and don't necessarily suggest that the same person
Speaker 2: perpetrated them. And that wasn't really tested or explored, and
Speaker 2: I think that could have been used effectively to suggest
Speaker 2: law enforcements, tunnel vision.
Speaker 7: Were any of these factors brought up by your attorney
Speaker 7: at trial.
Speaker 1: Or at any other time.
Speaker 6: Well, he brought up part of my alibi because where
Speaker 6: I was at the base for the November sixteenth crime,
Speaker 6: and they just dismissed it. They said, do you have
Speaker 6: that and write And even though I had NCOs the
Speaker 6: sergeants they are testifying on my behalf that they were
Speaker 6: with me.
Speaker 7: So the sergeants actually testified at trial and said that
Speaker 7: you were there. Yeah, those would seem to be relatively
Speaker 7: We're not talking about crackheads, right, We're talking about sergeants
Speaker 7: in the ends United States Army who are saying this
Speaker 7: guy was here.
Speaker 1: Again, I'm not.
Speaker 7: A professor of metaphysics, but you can't be in two
Speaker 7: places at one time. Everybody knows that.
Speaker 2: And the Starhouse had a reason to remember, right. The
Speaker 2: sergeants said that there had been a test failure and
Speaker 2: that it was an intense meeting, and so it wasn't
Speaker 2: a standard meeting. It was a meeting that they would
Speaker 2: have one would think remember, and they remembered him there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's an excellent point again that a good defense
Speaker 7: lawyer would have brought up. And this is very different
Speaker 7: than some of the cases we see where a guy's
Speaker 7: alibi or a woman's alibi is that they were home
Speaker 7: with their parents watching TV or with their wife or something.
Speaker 7: And then they say, wow, the lie for anybody would
Speaker 7: lie to protect their family. This is not family, right.
Speaker 7: These guys are not your uncles or brothers or anything else.
Speaker 7: I mean, these are guys you work with, and in fact,
Speaker 7: they were bitsed at you at this particular time. On
Speaker 7: top of that, So that's just that's just nuts.
Speaker 2: I think what the prosecutor may have countered is, even
Speaker 2: if they were to be believed, he still had enough
Speaker 2: time from five point fifteen to five thirty to make
Speaker 2: to the scene.
Speaker 3: But of course, if you did your job and you
Speaker 3: did an.
Speaker 2: Investigation, you would drive a car from one location to another,
Speaker 2: and you would show what the traffic patterns were at
Speaker 2: that time and show that it was feasibly impossible. And
Speaker 2: so there was a way to draw that out and
Speaker 2: tighten up that alibi that it does not appear what's done.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, I mean, and we'd also don't know how
Speaker 7: long that meeting went on for. But how long would
Speaker 7: it have taken you Even if you had left immediately,
Speaker 7: you had had to walk to get to your car,
Speaker 7: you would have had to drive off the base. I
Speaker 7: imagine there's some you know, some elapsed time there. And
Speaker 7: then how long would it have taken you on a
Speaker 7: typical day to drive from there to where the rape occurred.
Speaker 6: Probably half hour to forty five minutes.
Speaker 7: Case closed, right, I mean, that just doesn't match your honor.
Speaker 7: He wasn't there because he was somewhere else.
Speaker 2: One of the things is you know, he was rested
Speaker 2: so close in time, it's much easier to figure out
Speaker 2: where you were since you were arrested within forty eight
Speaker 2: hours of when.
Speaker 3: The accusation was right.
Speaker 2: So the sergeant's memories would have also been sharp. If
Speaker 2: he was arrested two or three years later, one could say,
Speaker 2: you don't really remember where you were in the night
Speaker 2: of November fifteenth or sixteenth, But because it happened so
Speaker 2: close afterwards, he really did have an independent memory, and
Speaker 2: so did the other individuals that were interviewed.
Speaker 7: Alex brings up a very good point, which is that
Speaker 7: it's contemporaneous. It's like, right now, this is what happened,
Speaker 7: this is where you were. You should be out of
Speaker 7: there at that moment in time with any sort of
Speaker 7: competent defense. What about the prosecutor at that point, I mean,
Speaker 7: how does a prosecutor, having been a prosecutor, you obviously
Speaker 7: have insight that nobody else that's ever been on this
Speaker 7: show does. What is it that causes a prosecutor to
Speaker 7: continue to prosecute somebody and I ultimately lock them up
Speaker 7: or sends them to death when they have real hard
Speaker 7: evidence that it wasn't the guy.
Speaker 2: Well, the notion that they had hard evidence may be
Speaker 2: a bit of an over statement. I guess this is
Speaker 2: why you need to have a strong defense, because what
Speaker 2: the prosecutor's seeing is multiple identifications and seeing evidence that's
Speaker 2: corroberative put before him, right, and we went through the identification,
Speaker 2: and we went through the corroboration, and when you peel
Speaker 2: away at it, it doesn't seem as strong.
Speaker 3: Now, what did he make of the alibi witnesses.
Speaker 2: I have a feeling that he probably thought to himself, well,
Speaker 2: if he left it, if he knew he was going
Speaker 2: to be at that meeting, and he knew that the
Speaker 2: meeting was over at five ish, it gave him exactly
Speaker 2: the right amount of time, not just to little time,
Speaker 2: but exactly the right amount of time to both have
Speaker 2: a supposed alibi and to commit the crimes in question.
Speaker 2: And so he would take facts in the world that
Speaker 2: you might look through a different lens at, and he
Speaker 2: would look through them at a lens that he's guilty.
Speaker 2: I know that he's guilty, So what else proves that
Speaker 2: he's guilty?
Speaker 7: But in this case, as in many other rawful convictions,
Speaker 7: there was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime.
Speaker 2: But in the nineteen eighties, if you were to commit
Speaker 2: a crime in the woods, there usually wasn't forensic evidence.
Speaker 2: So the counter to that would be, you wouldn't expect
Speaker 2: to find forensic evidence outdoors, and you wouldn't expect to
Speaker 2: find videotape because it's not like New York in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: And you wouldn't expect to find DNA because it was
Speaker 2: prior to the modernization of DNA technology. And so what
Speaker 2: you have here is exactly what you'd expect to have.
Speaker 2: You have a woman who is a credible witness who
Speaker 2: swears under oath that he did it, and you have
Speaker 2: other factors such as the clothing, the time and place,
Speaker 2: and the repetition of the events, suggesting that he's a good.
Speaker 7: Suspect, circumstantial but nonetheless enough to be able in a
Speaker 7: prosecutor's mind to rationalize the continued prosecution or persecution in
Speaker 7: this case of somebody like you. So fast forward to
Speaker 7: the trial. We know that this attorney mounted a feeble
Speaker 7: would be a nice way of putting it. In competent
Speaker 7: would probably be a better description of the representation. Horrible
Speaker 7: and overpaid. Those are the ways I would describe the
Speaker 7: defense that you received in this case, which is again typical.
Speaker 7: The only thing that's not typical about is that most
Speaker 7: of the peopleople that are wrongfully convicted are represented by
Speaker 7: public defenders. In this case, you had to pay for
Speaker 7: the privilege of this guy acting like a prosecutor, which
Speaker 7: is beyond reprehensible. It's disgusting. Ultimately, the jury goes out,
Speaker 7: what were you feeling? I mean when they how long
Speaker 7: did they deliberate for?
Speaker 6: I think it was like two hours, an hour and
Speaker 6: a half something like that. They didn't they didn't deliberate
Speaker 6: a real long time.
Speaker 1: No, that's a very short time.
Speaker 7: So again, it's an unimaginable circumstance to anybody on the outside.
Speaker 7: What did you think when they came back in? Did
Speaker 7: you think you were going to be exonerate? You knew
Speaker 7: you were innocent.
Speaker 6: I thought I was going to be found guilty because
Speaker 6: of the way the lawyer represented me. Even though the
Speaker 6: court office was saying, you're going to get found guilty.
Speaker 6: I didn't feel that way because my lawyer was so horrible.
Speaker 6: You know, I had visions of going to prison, being stabbed,
Speaker 6: being raped, being beat up because it was a sex.
Speaker 7: Offense, and you knew that those you know, typically those
Speaker 7: will land you in real hot water once you get
Speaker 7: on the inside. Yeah, so they come back and sure
Speaker 7: enough they find you guilty.
Speaker 6: I was. I was pissed, you know, and I stood
Speaker 6: up in the courtroom. Well, after you get found guilty,
Speaker 6: they asked if you have anything to say. You know,
Speaker 6: I was a soldier, you know, I was a defender
Speaker 6: of my country, and they want to say that I
Speaker 6: did this. So I got up and after the judge
Speaker 6: asked if anything to say, of course I did. I said,
Speaker 6: your honor, if you call this justice, I think you
Speaker 6: when you hold judicial system or a crock of shit.
Speaker 6: And he doubled my sentence to twenty to thirty years. Wow,
Speaker 6: because the DA years later told me that he was
Speaker 6: going to give me a ten to fifteen. Then I
Speaker 6: said that, and he said to the clerk, did you
Speaker 6: sign that ye? And he goes no, he said double
Speaker 6: the sentence.
Speaker 1: In front of you.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh shit.
Speaker 6: I didn't hear him say that, but the DA did,
Speaker 6: and he told me later on that he heard tell
Speaker 6: the clerk to double the sentence.
Speaker 7: And we know now that the DA had his own
Speaker 7: doubts about this right yes, and that I mean, I
Speaker 7: want to get into the prison experience. But your case
Speaker 7: is unusual for another reason, which is that you actually,
Speaker 7: ultimately twenty something years later, received an apology from the
Speaker 7: person who actually put you in there. It seems like
Speaker 7: this was a guy. And it's hard to say based
Speaker 7: on what we've just heard, but it seems like the
Speaker 7: guy who actually had a conscience, well, it is a guy.
Speaker 7: At least he has one now, right, because he tried
Speaker 7: to make amends to you, which is impossible to do,
Speaker 7: but he tried, right, And this was the first case
Speaker 7: that this guy had tried as a prosecutor, right.
Speaker 6: See. I believe it was his first case as a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Right, which is another factor, right, Alex, I mean as
Speaker 1: the first case.
Speaker 3: Even in the criminal realm.
Speaker 2: I think for this to be your first case as
Speaker 2: a prosecutor is a tricky want.
Speaker 7: Now you get taken off to prison. Where were you
Speaker 7: in prison? The first off was an an mci walpole.
Speaker 7: It's called cate of Junction now, but it smacked some
Speaker 7: security and I went in there to be booked and.
Speaker 6: Then they transfer me from there to Conckered. That's where
Speaker 6: they decide where they're going to send you where I
Speaker 6: had a twenty to thirty, I would be behind the walls,
Speaker 6: because anything over eighteen years you've got to do time
Speaker 6: behind the walls. They call it behind the walls, being
Speaker 6: maximum security. Right.
Speaker 7: So on top of the fact that your sentence was doubled,
Speaker 7: and we know typically in a rape case, you know,
Speaker 7: fifteen years would be the general guideline that I've seen.
Speaker 7: But because you trying to stand up for yourself and
Speaker 7: say something, which after what you'd been through, I guess
Speaker 7: it's hard to follow you for wanting to actually speak
Speaker 7: your mind. So this had another negative consequence, not only
Speaker 7: doubling your sense, but putting you in a more dangerous
Speaker 7: and worse in every imaginable way facility than you would
Speaker 7: have been in otherwise. So you end up in Walpole. Walpole,
Speaker 7: What can you tell us about that? Because was it
Speaker 7: as bad as you expected it to be?
Speaker 6: Was it? Well? When you first walk into the prison,
Speaker 6: you get on a long hallway and you go through
Speaker 6: this big door and the door slams behind you, and
Speaker 6: you're in a it's probably twelve by twelve with a
Speaker 6: god up the top with a rifle in his hand,
Speaker 6: with a shotgun in his hand, until you go through
Speaker 6: the next which takes you through the wall and you
Speaker 6: get into the prison itself. And then as you go
Speaker 6: into the prison you could smell the fear in the building.
Speaker 6: Most prisons strive on fear, you know, fear that well,
Speaker 6: someone's going to raip me, someone's going to stab me,
Speaker 6: and that if I do it first, then no one's
Speaker 6: going to do it to me. And that's the way
Speaker 6: prison works, a lot of it, you know. And then
Speaker 6: I was going in there as a sex offender and
Speaker 6: I didn't know what was going to happen. I would
Speaker 6: go walk in the yard and see other people getting
Speaker 6: beat up that was sex offenders and stuff. And then
Speaker 6: I was only there a couple of days and then
Speaker 6: they took me to conquer it, which was less stressful
Speaker 6: than Wallpole. But then when I got my life sentence,
Speaker 6: I went back to Wallpole and was going to ended
Speaker 6: up doing almost a year there. Right before I got
Speaker 6: back there, there was a riot where they broke through
Speaker 6: one of the walls, and for orientation, you go in
Speaker 6: and it's gas. You could smell the gas still in
Speaker 6: the air from when they had gassed the inmates. And
Speaker 6: they put me on an essex Blocks, which was for
Speaker 6: people who were prone to violence. They broke it down
Speaker 6: into Essex, Bristol, and Suffolk, which was Essex would be
Speaker 6: for the ones who rarely acted up, Bristol would be
Speaker 6: for the lesser ones, and then Suffolk would be even
Speaker 6: for lesser than that. So while I was on Essex,
Speaker 6: I got cut. I got three stitches hare and fourteen
Speaker 6: stitches across the back of my neck because I was
Speaker 6: a sexophone. I did really nothing wrong, but that's the
Speaker 6: way it was. You know. The guy called me down.
Speaker 6: I was talking to him and he reached out and
Speaker 6: grabbed me. I had hair down to my shoulders and
Speaker 6: he grabbed me by my hair and pulled me up
Speaker 6: against the jail bars and with a razor blade he
Speaker 6: cut me hair. And then I ducked down to get
Speaker 6: out of the way, and he sliced me across the
Speaker 6: back of the neck. So I went back up into
Speaker 6: my cell and I pushed the skin back in and
Speaker 6: I reached behind my neck and my finger went inside,
Speaker 6: and I says, well, I got to go to the hospital.
Speaker 6: So I went downstairs and I said to the CEO.
Speaker 6: I says, yeah, I got to go down to the hospital.
Speaker 6: He goes why, I says, I caught myself shaven. He
Speaker 6: didn't know that I had to cut that was bleeding
Speaker 6: on the back of my neck. He just knew I
Speaker 6: had the one here. And so I went down there
Speaker 6: and they said what happened. I said, well, I caught
Speaker 6: myself shaven. He says, well, we're not going to do
Speaker 6: anything till you tell us what happened, you know, And
Speaker 6: I'm saying, you know, I got this huge cot on
Speaker 6: the back of my neck. So I told him. I says, yeah,
Speaker 6: the guy caught me. And then he stitched up my
Speaker 6: face with no no anesthesia or nothing, just I could
Speaker 6: feel the thread going through my skin and the needle
Speaker 6: going through my skin. He used anesthesia on the back
Speaker 6: because it was so long. I did another probably five
Speaker 6: months there, and there were fights all the time, people
Speaker 6: getting stabbed. Christmas Eve, there was a racial fight on
Speaker 6: the block between like ten people. Early in January there
Speaker 6: was Blacks and the Muslims. They hate each other in prison,
Speaker 6: and I walk into chow hall, they run around on
Speaker 6: the table stabbing each other. And so you just lean
Speaker 6: up against the wall and hold your steel tray in
Speaker 6: front of you so that you can't get stabbed the
Speaker 6: day shield. Yeah, so the day that I was supposed
Speaker 6: to leave there, there were shots fight in the od
Speaker 6: because there was going to be another race riot in
Speaker 6: the prison. And finally I went to Gardner, which they
Speaker 6: called skin a Mountain because all the sex offenders were there,
Speaker 6: and so there it was less stressful and I could
Speaker 6: do more things. I started lifting weights, and then while
Speaker 6: I was there there was almost another race riot between
Speaker 6: the blacks and the Porto rics. There was like one
Speaker 6: hundred and fifty Puerto Ricans on top of the hill
Speaker 6: and run the same amount of Blacks that were going
Speaker 6: to fight. They evacuated the prison. Nothing happened. But and
Speaker 6: then from there I went to the treatment center where
Speaker 6: I got one day to natural life civil commitment, which
Speaker 6: was just people supposedly in treatment. But while there they
Speaker 6: brought people from the prison system down and one of them,
Speaker 6: who was just about ready to get out, I mean
Speaker 6: he was going to get he was going to minimum,
Speaker 6: he would have been out within two months, he brutally
Speaker 6: raped a woman, and which was horrible, you know, because
Speaker 6: I worked in a staff kitchen, so I dealt with
Speaker 6: all the staff and she was a really nice person.
Speaker 1: Oh, he raped someone in the prison.
Speaker 6: He raped a staff member in the prison.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 6: You know, but in the prison people would get raped.
Speaker 6: Not all the time, but you know, at least once
Speaker 6: a twe a month someone would get raped by another guy.
Speaker 6: You know. I didn't because I lifted. By then, I
Speaker 6: was benching three point fifty and squatting five hundred pounds
Speaker 6: and nobody bothered me, you know. And I treated everyone good,
Speaker 6: you know, And I kept my job in the staff
Speaker 6: kitchen so I could eat good. And when I left
Speaker 6: the staff kitchen, they were disappointed because I was leaving,
Speaker 6: because who was going to cook for him?
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: It takes a minute to process all that. Let's get
Speaker 7: to the good part of the story. Let's call it
Speaker 7: right where things start to turn around.
Speaker 6: Well, in nineteen ninety four, I left work and was
Speaker 6: heading back to the block and someone said, Dennis put
Speaker 6: on the Phil Donahue Show, and Barryshek was on there.
Speaker 6: He had like six or seven ex honorees at that time,
Speaker 6: it was either ninety three or ninety four, and he
Speaker 6: was talking about how he had used DNA to prove
Speaker 6: their innocence. And I knew the only way that I
Speaker 6: was going to be proven innocent was through the use
Speaker 6: of DNA. So my friend Bob Cameron, who has since died,
Speaker 6: helped me find the address to Yeshiva University in a
Speaker 6: Kadoza School of Law, and I wrote them a letter
Speaker 6: asking for help. And I got a twenty six page
Speaker 6: questionnaire back from them, and I filled all that out
Speaker 6: and sent it back and I got another questionairback the
Speaker 6: same thing. I guess they were going to compare it
Speaker 6: to see if they were both the same, if I
Speaker 6: was just making up stories. And then I got a
Speaker 6: letter back from them asking for all my transcripts. Now
Speaker 6: you got to imagine I hadn't had a lawyer since
Speaker 6: nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Nine years earlier.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I wanted to keep things going on in
Speaker 6: the court. Well, first, my lawyer got the spot when
Speaker 6: I was at Walpole, so I had to learn how
Speaker 6: to do a motion for appointment of counsel and motion
Speaker 6: for indigency and whatever else I had to do to
Speaker 6: get an appeals lawyer. So I got an appeals lawyer
Speaker 6: and he didn't represent me the way I wanted him
Speaker 6: to do. I wanted him to raise illegal search and
Speaker 6: seizure because they went and broke into my car and
Speaker 6: took evidence, but he wouldn't, so he just raised that
Speaker 6: the two cases shouldn't have been tried together, and a
Speaker 6: bunch of crap. And so I didn't have a lawyer
Speaker 6: after that, so I learned to file things on my own.
Speaker 6: I filed Rule thirties and whatever I could. I filed
Speaker 6: emotion for a paternity test, just to see if there
Speaker 6: was evidence that they could match against me. But everything
Speaker 6: I ever filed had to go in front of my
Speaker 6: sentence and judge, who didn't think kindly of me because
Speaker 6: I told him him and this whole judicial system were
Speaker 6: a crocod shit and he was a former marine. So
Speaker 6: I send all the stuff to the Innocence Project, which
Speaker 6: was probably twelve hundred pages of information between appeals and
Speaker 6: motions and stuff like that, and they started looking for evidence,
Speaker 6: and they called the police department, and they called the
Speaker 6: courthouse asking for evidence, and they're telling him the evidence
Speaker 6: is lost, the evidence is destroyed. And this goes on
Speaker 6: for like three years, because you know that the Innocence Project,
Speaker 6: the students come in and they work on the cases
Speaker 6: and they try and find the evidence. So in nineteen
Speaker 6: ninety seven, Barry had an attorney in Boston file emotion
Speaker 6: for DNA testing in front of my sentence and judge
Speaker 6: who denied it without a hearing, like had denied everything
Speaker 6: else without a hearing. So at that time I was hopeless.
Speaker 6: You know, I made peace with myself that I was
Speaker 6: going to die in prison as an innocent man. And
Speaker 6: then out of the blue, a reporter from the Boston
Speaker 6: Globe named John Elleman asked if he could come interview me,
Speaker 6: so just as a piece of hope. So I said, yeah, okay,
Speaker 6: you can interview me. And we started talking about it,
Speaker 6: and finally I said to him, I said, who's saying?
Speaker 6: He goes, oh, you know who sent me. I says, no,
Speaker 6: I don't, and he says, well, I was at Boston
Speaker 6: Superior Court and I saw J. W. Connie. Now this
Speaker 6: is the person who prosecuted me back in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 6: and I said, Jay, you know, give me someone to
Speaker 6: do an article on He goes, Now, at this time,
Speaker 6: Jay was a private attorney, and he had represented the
Speaker 6: guy who shot up an abortion clinic in Boston and
Speaker 6: another guy who killed his wife. And he says, I'll
Speaker 6: tell you what if I believe this is right, and
Speaker 6: you do the article on this guy, you may get
Speaker 6: a Pulitzer prize out of it. So he sent him
Speaker 6: to interview me, and so we were talking and he says,
Speaker 6: here's a piece of news I'm going to give you.
Speaker 6: Your judge's retiring in six months. The day he retired,
Speaker 6: I called the New York Innocence Project and asked if
Speaker 6: they could help me again, and he said, I really
Speaker 6: shouldn't take this phone call, but I will. What you
Speaker 6: need to do is contact the New England Innosence Project
Speaker 6: at Testa, Herroitz and Tebow. So I did that, and
Speaker 6: I contacted Neepe and they sent me the twenty six
Speaker 6: page questionnaire, which I had to fill out again. And
Speaker 6: then they asked me for all my things I've ever filed,
Speaker 6: so I got to send them another twelve hundred pages
Speaker 6: of stuff. And then all of a sudden, the lawyer
Speaker 6: shows up and well, I heading back to the walk
Speaker 6: and the lawyer says, may her, you haven't an attorney
Speaker 6: visit He said, I haven't had an attorney in fifteen
Speaker 6: sixteen years. He says, well you do now. So I
Speaker 6: went up and I met with Elisa Kaplan and Karen Burns.
Speaker 6: As you can imagine. I was quite emotional because this
Speaker 6: is my hopes and dreams coming together. And so we
Speaker 6: start talking and introducing ourselves and then Eliza says to me,
Speaker 6: who's the copp the traps. I don't know why. She says, well,
Speaker 6: when we came in, he asked who we were. We
Speaker 6: told him Elisa Kaplan and Karen Burns. He goes, where
Speaker 6: are you from? And we said the New England Innocence
Speaker 6: Project and he goes, who are you here to see?
Speaker 6: And they said Dennis Mayor, And the god said it's
Speaker 6: about time. If anyone in here was innocent, it's Dennis.
Speaker 6: So that was her introduction to me. So they accepted
Speaker 6: the case and they start looking for evidance and Karen's
Speaker 6: calling the courthouse and she's calling the police station. They
Speaker 6: tell him that the evidence has been destroyed or lost.
Speaker 6: She says, well, do you have records of this being
Speaker 6: destroyed a lost? And they said no. So Karen got
Speaker 6: really frustrated at Cambridge Courthouse and she went knocking on
Speaker 6: doors asking for help, and she found a clerk to
Speaker 6: help her. Now, this clerk went down into the evidence
Speaker 6: room and found the evidence. And so Eliza calls me
Speaker 6: and says, we found the evidence. And she says, well,
Speaker 6: you're not too excited. I says, well, I've had so
Speaker 6: many downs that if something really good happens, then I'll
Speaker 6: get excited. But we're sending it to doctor Blake out
Speaker 6: in California, who's one of the foremost forensic scientists in
Speaker 6: the country, but he's not accepted by the government because
Speaker 6: he hates the government. And so they sent that to him.
Speaker 6: And then they came in to take my blood. So
Speaker 6: they bring me down to HSU and they start talking
Speaker 6: to me, and then in walks someone from the DA's office,
Speaker 6: someone from the AG's office, an attorney for me, Karen Burns,
Speaker 6: the superintendent of the prison, in a perimeterive security people
Speaker 6: in a phlebotomus. So they did the chain of evidence.
Speaker 6: They took my blood, took pictures of it, took a
Speaker 6: mouth swab, took pictures of that, handed the evidence to
Speaker 6: a state trooper who went back to the police lab,
Speaker 6: handed it to the chemist who got on a plane
Speaker 6: and hand delivered it to doctor Blake because she didn't
Speaker 6: want to do the testing because the evidence was so
Speaker 6: old and the Lowell cases and so now I have
Speaker 6: to wait so on Christmas Eve two thousand and two,
Speaker 6: Eliza said to call her. So I called her. Now
Speaker 6: she had moved from the New England Innocence Project to
Speaker 6: New York. I called her about twenty five times and
Speaker 6: there was no answer, and so I went outside to
Speaker 6: cool off, you know, because she told me to call
Speaker 6: her on Christmas Eve. And so I went back in
Speaker 6: and the block office says, may her call your attorney.
Speaker 6: I said, I've been calling her all day. So finally
Speaker 6: I call her and I get a hold of her
Speaker 6: and I said, where have you been. She says, oh,
Speaker 6: we were out celebrating. I said, why, She goes, we
Speaker 6: got two test results back today and the DNA's didn't match.
Speaker 6: But they had to talk to the victims because they
Speaker 6: had to find out if the victim had sex with
Speaker 6: their boyfriend or whatever the night before. So now Matha
Speaker 6: Cockley's got to go talk to the victim after nineteen
Speaker 6: years until her she may have sent an innocent man
Speaker 6: to prison. So they went and talked and she was
Speaker 6: freaked out, which I don't blame it. You know, nineteen
Speaker 6: years you on top of being raped, now you're being
Speaker 6: told you may have sent an innocent and to prison.
Speaker 6: That's got to be devastating. So they went and saw
Speaker 6: her a second tang and she was still freaked out,
Speaker 6: but she gave him permission to get the hospital wreckage,
Speaker 6: which can only be gotten through a court order or
Speaker 6: permission from the victim. So they gave her a permission
Speaker 6: and that ended up that she was a virgin when
Speaker 6: she was raped. So now I'm cleared of the Lowell cases.
Speaker 6: My twenty to thirtyer sentence is going to be gone,
Speaker 6: and I have the air case. So they start looking
Speaker 6: for the air evidence and they're getting the same run around.
Speaker 6: We don't know where the evidence is. The evidence has
Speaker 6: been destroyed, the evidence has been lost. So Matha Cokeley
Speaker 6: called Elizer and said, do you want to make a deal.
Speaker 6: We'll give them time served, and Eliza says no and
Speaker 6: had some choice words for Matha Cochley that we're going
Speaker 6: to prove he's innocent. And all of a sudden, a
Speaker 6: slide shows up on Matha Cochley's desk from the case
Speaker 6: that they've been looking for. So they sent the slide
Speaker 6: to Maryland to be tested. So I called Eliza on
Speaker 6: April Fool's Day and I says hi and she says,
Speaker 6: when do you want to go home? This is April
Speaker 6: Fool's Day.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the universe has a strange sense of humor, so
Speaker 7: go ahead.
Speaker 6: She says, no, when do you want to go home?
Speaker 6: The test came back and they were two different DNAs
Speaker 6: on it, and neither one of them was yours. I says, wow.
Speaker 6: I says, well, you better make it Thursday because it's
Speaker 6: going to take my parents at least a day to adjust.
Speaker 6: And so I called my parents and told them. My
Speaker 6: mother says, I'm not going to be in the car room.
Speaker 6: So I called back later on and she says, I
Speaker 6: might be in the court room. And then I called
Speaker 6: her the night before I was going to court and said,
Speaker 6: and she goes, I'll be there. So on April third,
Speaker 6: two thousand and three, I got my last strip search
Speaker 6: went to Cambridge Courthouse in Boston. Now this Zakembridge had
Speaker 6: just opened. Traffic was a nightmare because all the roads
Speaker 6: were dirt and everything else. We get to the courthouse.
Speaker 6: They put me in a two man cell and they
Speaker 6: had the tank on the right side, and there's a
Speaker 6: guy in there whining ned he's getting a three to five.
Speaker 6: So I told him, well, we just shut up. I'm
Speaker 6: going home after doing nineteen years and I'm proven innocent.
Speaker 6: I never heard another peep out of her. So I
Speaker 6: went up to the courtroom. Aliza reads her motion. I
Speaker 6: had told her, I said, you need to file a
Speaker 6: motion to get rid of the civil sentence. She says why,
Speaker 6: I said, just do it. So she files all the motions.
Speaker 6: Martha Cokeley says we're not going to oppose this, and
Speaker 6: Judge says, all I have to do is sign this
Speaker 6: and he can go home. And he said yeah. She says,
Speaker 6: well I'm signing he can leave. So I went back in.
Speaker 6: They took the ankle chains off, they took the waist
Speaker 6: chains off, and they let me go. I walked out
Speaker 6: the first door and met with my parents, went to
Speaker 6: the second door and met with my brothers and friends.
Speaker 6: Walked out the third door into five TV cameras, about
Speaker 6: fifteen microphones, and of course their first question was how
Speaker 6: do you feel? You want to say, how do you
Speaker 6: think I feel? And here comes a leizer and she says, well,
Speaker 6: there's going to be a press conference at Tester Hurwitz
Speaker 6: and Tbow at noontime and we'll see us all there.
Speaker 6: And then I as I was leaving the Senior Court office,
Speaker 6: comes over and says, JW. Connie would like to speak
Speaker 6: with you.
Speaker 1: That's the prosecutor.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the former prosecutor. And so we met in the
Speaker 6: hallway and he apologized and asked for forgiveness. So I
Speaker 6: forgave him, which had a huge effect on me because
Speaker 6: I'm not angry, you know, I'm not bitter. Afterwards, Jay
Speaker 6: told me that if I didn't forgive him, he might
Speaker 6: have stopped being a lawyer, and it still affects him
Speaker 6: to this day because he told me he was in
Speaker 6: his office one day and Barryshak called him and said,
Speaker 6: Dennis May has just been clad and lowell. He said,
Speaker 6: So I sat at my desk and cried, and he
Speaker 6: told me that he called him again and said, Dennis
Speaker 6: May has gone home Thursday. What I didn't know is
Speaker 6: that before I got there, he went and apologized to
Speaker 6: my parents and my brothers, which was my brother is
Speaker 6: still angry. And that's when I went home.
Speaker 7: Alex, it's hard to say anything after hearing that story,
Speaker 7: But since we have you here, you can't get a
Speaker 7: better spokesman for the cause than Dennis. For people listening,
Speaker 7: what kind of insight can you bring.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I'll start at the end, which
Speaker 2: is with the prosecutor. You know, I think this is
Speaker 2: a very good case example, because I think we've become
Speaker 2: too focused on the rogue actor, or focusing on that
Speaker 2: there are bad players in the system, because.
Speaker 3: Those variables affect all systems and all walks of life.
Speaker 2: The prosecutor in this case clearly did the honorable thing,
Speaker 2: and I think that prosecutors by and large are honorable
Speaker 2: and are trying to do the right thing. And if
Speaker 2: you start with that premise rather than the premise of
Speaker 2: this is good versus evil in one direction or another,
Speaker 2: you start to be able to unwind. Where are the
Speaker 2: implicit biases in the system, Where are the false positives?
Speaker 3: Where are the errors?
Speaker 2: And this is a good example of that because I
Speaker 2: don't think he, knowing what I know, did this on purpose.
Speaker 2: And if you can get past that, I think you
Speaker 2: can look at it with a deeper lens. My other reaction,
Speaker 2: initial reaction is this man is a hero, and that
Speaker 2: the work that the Innocence Project is remarkable not just
Speaker 2: for setting people free, but because it creates a system
Speaker 2: of t and balances and creates good law and creates
Speaker 2: people asking the hard questions. But then at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, I go back to being a trial lawyer,
Speaker 2: and I look at the facts of this case, and
Speaker 2: there's only DNA in so many cases, and only so
Speaker 2: many letters get read, and only so many people can
Speaker 2: get exonerated. If everybody in the first instance would fight
Speaker 2: smart and hard for everybody accused of crimes, I think
Speaker 2: that that would create the best checks in the system.
Speaker 3: And you know, hearing this case and.
Speaker 2: Going back, and I'll start with the man that mister
Speaker 2: Mayor is. You know, he's You can just tell that
Speaker 2: he's a good person by being around him. And he
Speaker 2: was a family man at the time, still living with
Speaker 2: his parents when most twenty year olds weren't. He was
Speaker 2: a soldier when most of us wouldn't be. He had
Speaker 2: never been in trouble before when many of us had been.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if the story of him as
Speaker 2: a person was told, because when you think about it,
Speaker 2: he makes an awfully unlikely suspect if you really get
Speaker 2: into his humanity, and to the lawyers defending people and
Speaker 2: advocating on the ground, you have to look at that
Speaker 2: alibi and not just throw it into a courtroom, but
Speaker 2: really firm it up, because that could have just like
Speaker 2: DNA can now essentially prove innocence because of the metaphysical
Speaker 2: comment you made earlier, and I.
Speaker 3: Would have called other soldiers.
Speaker 2: I would have impressed the fact that while Vlahm might
Speaker 2: have a meeting where he shows up around five, when
Speaker 2: military folks say that he didn't leave the base until
Speaker 2: seventeen twenty, that means five twenty, and it means precisely
Speaker 2: five to twenty.
Speaker 3: And there's probably a.
Speaker 2: Logbook that could have been used to show what time
Speaker 2: he actually physically checked out. And then the next thing
Speaker 2: you know, it's not all the resources and the tiers
Speaker 2: and the decades behind bars.
Speaker 3: It's an acquittal because he couldn't have done it.
Speaker 2: And so those are the things I focus on and
Speaker 2: that I come back to in the end.
Speaker 1: But what do we do?
Speaker 7: Because I've always said that I believe most cops are
Speaker 7: good cops, and most prosecutors are good prosecutors. But the
Speaker 7: ones that aren't they wreck a path of destruction that
Speaker 7: is wide and big and devastating to so many people.
Speaker 7: But there are a number of systemic problems, right, I mean,
Speaker 7: it's easy for us to sit here and say this
Speaker 7: is what should have been done, this is what could
Speaker 7: have been done. The system is stacked against Dennis, right,
Speaker 7: It was stacked against Dennis. It's stacked against guys like Dennis. Today.
Speaker 7: Somebody's being wrongfully convicted in America. Hopefully it's only one person, right.
Speaker 7: What can we do? What can people listening do to
Speaker 7: help prevent these things from happening, to prevent the next
Speaker 7: Dennis Mayor from ever having to go through this?
Speaker 3: To me, it all goes back to the role of
Speaker 3: the prosecutor.
Speaker 2: There are tens of thousands of NYPD officers. You're going
Speaker 2: to have good ones, you're going to have bad ones.
Speaker 2: But the office that oversees them, which is a politically
Speaker 2: accountable office, or the offices of the district attorney. And
Speaker 2: when I say politically accountable, I don't mean to suggest
Speaker 2: that any of them are doing anything wrong. It's just
Speaker 2: they are political positions, and the will of the public
Speaker 2: and what people think and concerns people have certainly do
Speaker 2: influence those offices. And those offices have to serve as
Speaker 2: checks and balances not only on the police department, but
Speaker 2: on themselves. And it's very easy to put a lot
Speaker 2: into a case. The adversary process is competitive. You do
Speaker 2: want to win, you do think you are on the
Speaker 2: right side of things, and so it's easy to get
Speaker 2: caught up on that and not pause and say, are
Speaker 2: we sure not pause, especially after a jury says he's guilty,
Speaker 2: to not go back and look at it, and it
Speaker 2: can create a wall, a wall between accountability and the prosecutors,
Speaker 2: in a wall in the person's own mind that doesn't
Speaker 2: allow them to sort of self assess and learn from
Speaker 2: these mistakes.
Speaker 7: But there's so much more awareness now. It's at a peak.
Speaker 7: Right now, we see the rise of conviction integrity units.
Speaker 7: We're starting to see some public activism in terms of
Speaker 7: throwing bad prosecutors out of office, right because ultimately you
Speaker 7: can vote, and I think that's one sort of activism
Speaker 7: that's very simple. That is before we sign off, And
Speaker 7: this is for you too, Hannah. You've spoken so eloquently
Speaker 7: and so powerfully about your experience, the tragedy, ultimately the triumph,
Speaker 7: the grace that you've shown is just sort of mind
Speaker 7: blowing to me and I'm sure to everyone who's listening.
Speaker 7: Is there anything else that either of you would like
Speaker 7: to share?
Speaker 1: With our audience.
Speaker 4: Sure, the vast majority of prosecutors and police are just human.
Speaker 4: You know, this is a human system. Like any other
Speaker 4: human system, there is going to be fault. And I
Speaker 4: find it really interesting that with other human run systems,
Speaker 4: Aviation and medicine are good examples, people expect mistakes to happen. So,
Speaker 4: you know, at a hospital, if a patient dies in
Speaker 4: somebody's care, they're going to have an M and M conference.
Speaker 4: They have all the people who worked on the case
Speaker 4: get together and they pinpoint where a mistake was made.
Speaker 4: It's not blaming, it's saying, you're a human, you did
Speaker 4: your best, something went wrong. We're going to use this
Speaker 4: as a learning moment. And because of these things, the
Speaker 4: aviation field the medical field have improved hugely. We don't
Speaker 4: really have something like that in the legal field right now.
Speaker 4: And Alex maybe you can attest to this, but that
Speaker 4: lawyers and especially people who are going to go into
Speaker 4: prosecution are told you're going to run fully convict someone.
Speaker 4: You know, they're expected somehow to not be human, to
Speaker 4: not make mistakes, and when they do make mistakes, they're
Speaker 4: often covered up. It's seen as shameful. The incentives justice
Speaker 4: is a moving target, and it's kind of an ethereal concept.
Speaker 4: Whereas a conviction is something that you can count, it
Speaker 4: actually takes a pretty rare case to have enough evidence
Speaker 4: to be really fool proof. You know, we forget that
Speaker 4: obviously it's innocent until proven guilty. A lot of people
Speaker 4: think that even if you get to the point of
Speaker 4: a trial, like they must have done something to get there.
Speaker 4: And I think the fact that most cases don't have
Speaker 4: DNA like we talked about, you know, the vast majority
Speaker 4: of wrongful convictions are probably people who are forced to
Speaker 4: take guilty please at a misdemeanor level.
Speaker 7: Right with Dennis, I don't know that there's really what
Speaker 7: could somebody add to what you've already said, but I
Speaker 7: want to turn it over to you to.
Speaker 1: Wrap up this episode of wrongful conviction.
Speaker 6: Well, for us, I want to say hi to my
Speaker 6: kids with my wife names Melissa, Joshua and Eliza. She's
Speaker 6: named after the women who got me out.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: What can people do to help? There are a lot
Speaker 6: of bills and there's different states that are trying to
Speaker 6: get passed. They can call the a politician, or they
Speaker 6: can go on the state house website and look up
Speaker 6: the bills and talk about that and tell them that
Speaker 6: they want to get behind it so that their senators
Speaker 6: or representatives would vote to make changes. You know, there's
Speaker 6: preserving evidence. We already changed witness identification in Massachusetts, which
Speaker 6: I was involved with, and things like that that can help.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: I do a lot of public speaking. I speak at colleges.
Speaker 6: I'm going to go speak at a high school next week.
Speaker 7: How could people reach you if they want you to
Speaker 7: come and speak? Do you have a website? Do you
Speaker 7: have a contact that you want to share with the audience?
Speaker 4: Honestly, if you want to have dnnis come to anything,
Speaker 4: you can email me directly because I would love to
Speaker 4: make that happen.
Speaker 1: What's your email?
Speaker 4: Hiley at New England Innocence dot org.
Speaker 7: And that's ri I l e y okay, Dennis. Well,
Speaker 7: all I can say is I really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 7: Same for you Alex and Hannah. It's been an extraordinary
Speaker 7: experience being with you. All I can tell you is
Speaker 7: we'll never stop fighting. You give us just more and
Speaker 7: more inspiration from just being yourself, So keep being you.
Speaker 5: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 5: get your podcasts.
Speaker 6: It really helps.
Speaker 7: And I'm a proud donor to the Ennessis Project and
Speaker 7: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 7: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 7: to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
Speaker 7: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 7: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
Speaker 7: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
Speaker 7: to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Speaker 7: Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm
Speaker 7: is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association
Speaker 7: with Signal Company Number one