Speaker 1: On October seventeenth, two thousand and seven, Chris Smith was
Speaker 1: on parole for a previous robbery conviction when an armed
Speaker 1: robbery happened at a Cincinnati Bell wireless store in his area.
Speaker 1: A disguised sail at brandishing a gun commanded the customers
Speaker 1: to hit the floor and demanded all the money for
Speaker 1: the register before fleeing in a Blue Ford Expedition. The
Speaker 1: owner of that car Chrismis's girlfriend. Soon after the robbery,
Speaker 1: the Blue Expedition was all over the news, and Chris
Speaker 1: texted his girlfriend to report the vehicle stolen. As police
Speaker 1: were preparing to arrest him, Chris fled to the apartment
Speaker 1: of an old friend, Charles Allen, where he removed his
Speaker 1: ankle monitor. It wasn't long before Chris was arrested, prosecuted,
Speaker 1: and convicted by circumstantial evidence that was so powerful it
Speaker 1: overwhelmed physical evidence to the contrary. After all, he'd done
Speaker 1: things like this before. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Wrongful Conviction. Today's episode features some circumstantial evidence
Speaker 1: that definitely twists somebody's head around. If you were sitting
Speaker 1: on a jury so fasting your seatbelt, this is a
Speaker 1: crazy story. I'm really honored to have the people here
Speaker 1: to tell it, including the man himself who lived this
Speaker 1: night mare, Chris Smith. So, Chris, it's about time we
Speaker 1: did this, and I'm glad you're here. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you honor to be here.
Speaker 1: And with him is his attorney, Michelle Berry Godsey, who
Speaker 1: actually began her career, as I understand that at the
Speaker 1: Ohio and isis project with this case. So Michelle, thanks for.
Speaker 3: Being here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: And of course it'll surprise exactly no one that we
Speaker 1: have another case out of Ohio, because man, Ohio it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's at Yeah, with all due respect to
Speaker 1: anybody who lives there, but in terms of justice it
Speaker 1: ain't great. And Avid Listener knows that because we have
Speaker 1: really the high proportional cases out of Ohio. But before
Speaker 1: we get into that part of the story, Chris, what
Speaker 1: was your life like? I understand you were a musician,
Speaker 1: had a couple of kids growing up in Cincinnati. Is
Speaker 1: all that accurate?
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, seven year old son and just had darted
Speaker 2: with seven months when all this happened.
Speaker 1: What kind of music would you play? What was your thing?
Speaker 2: So I was a hip hop artist and a writer
Speaker 2: as well. I was discovered by a manager who signed
Speaker 2: boy band Youngstown, discovered Neo and gave me an opportunity,
Speaker 2: took me out to LA and they had me as
Speaker 2: the next big thing. And so I was writing with Neo,
Speaker 2: Mike Citi, Shinghi, working with Polly Paul Grammy nominated producers
Speaker 2: and things like that. So I was on my way.
Speaker 1: Before making this progress in the music industry. Chris had
Speaker 1: a prior robbery conviction, but by two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: he had served his time and was living cleanly on parole. Then,
Speaker 1: on October seventeenth, two thousand and seven, at around three
Speaker 1: forty pm, a man wearing a wig, sunglasses, and his
Speaker 1: T shirt collar pulled up over his mouth, ran into
Speaker 1: a Cincinnati Bell wireless store with a gun, ordered the
Speaker 1: customers to the ground, told the manager to empty the
Speaker 1: cash register, and fled with about eight hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: a blue Ford expedition. So, with his prior conviction, in
Speaker 1: addition to some other circumstantial evidence, Chris became a prime suspect.
Speaker 3: The police in the area admitted that they immediately suspected
Speaker 3: Chris and his brother Ricky Now Ricky was lucky because
Speaker 3: he was actually in the county jail at the time
Speaker 3: on some petty drug possession thing, so he immediately was eliminated.
Speaker 3: But they still latched onto Chris simply because he was
Speaker 3: on parole at the time and they knew that he
Speaker 3: lived in this area. So that's one thing. The second
Speaker 3: thing is it was known fairly early on that the
Speaker 3: get Us truck that was used the blue Ford expedition
Speaker 3: it was traced to his girlfriend at the time, who
Speaker 3: told the police that she had basically given the truck
Speaker 3: to Chris for his personal use. So those two things
Speaker 3: don't look good on Chris. But the bigger picture that
Speaker 3: was really unfolding here, like you mentioned, this was the
Speaker 3: robbery of a Cincinni Bell wireless store. There was one
Speaker 3: eyewitness to this crime and he was across the street
Speaker 3: driving and he saw the man run out of the
Speaker 3: store carrying a laptop. He believed it was a laptop,
Speaker 3: that's what he told on the nine one one call
Speaker 3: and described the gunman as a light skinned black man.
Speaker 3: And even knowing how this caller had described the gunman,
Speaker 3: police came to the scene with lineups already matching Chris's description.
Speaker 1: Chris, have you ever been a light skinned man?
Speaker 2: No, I've been pretty dark on my life.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you pointed that out. So the robber hopped
Speaker 3: in this getaway car, a blue Ford expedition. The a
Speaker 3: nine to one one caller tried to follow him but
Speaker 3: lost the truck, and soon police were on the scene
Speaker 3: and they found the truck along with the robbers costume.
Speaker 3: So this was two thousand and seven. Everyone knew at
Speaker 3: that point to do DNA testing. That testing did occur
Speaker 3: before trial, but happened a little bit further down the.
Speaker 1: Line before the DNA testing. During the immediate aftermath. Chris
Speaker 1: was the focus of the investigation, something that became clear
Speaker 1: to him when he recognized the truck that he shared
Speaker 1: with his girlfriend on the five o'clock news.
Speaker 2: On a breaking news story. You're looking at it, You're like,
Speaker 2: hold on, wait a minute, Like what do I do?
Speaker 2: And so when you're from the city hood whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it is just like, you don't call
Speaker 2: the police because grow up not to trust the police. Right.
Speaker 2: So I'm reaching out to the person who named the
Speaker 2: truck is in and I'm like, listen, I didn't do this.
Speaker 2: So report this stolen.
Speaker 3: And we ended up getting Chris's text messages at the
Speaker 3: exact moment that this new story aired, so we had
Speaker 3: that in our favor to show, but no one ended
Speaker 3: up caring with.
Speaker 1: The circumstantial even it's available. It wasn't long before police
Speaker 1: began surrounding Chris's apartment.
Speaker 2: And so you see all these plain clothes officers around
Speaker 2: the properties. Then you have my daughter Mom in there,
Speaker 2: who was with me years prior when I went to
Speaker 2: jail the same way, right, So she's remembering this. So
Speaker 2: it's a lot of trauma and stuff going on, and she's,
Speaker 2: oh my god, you have to go, and I'm like, go,
Speaker 2: not I didn't do nothing. So I'm thinking, like, okay,
Speaker 2: what can I do? I don't just want to run.
Speaker 1: Chris had to be more proactive about clearing his name
Speaker 1: beyond reporting the vehicle stolen. After all, he had lent
Speaker 1: it to an old friend, Charles Allen.
Speaker 2: So I'm trapped between the rock and a hard place.
Speaker 2: I'm a rapper, a street rapper at that. I'm talking
Speaker 2: about gangster stuff at the time, Right, I can't call
Speaker 2: the police and say such and such did it my
Speaker 2: credibility yet be done. Career be over with. So I
Speaker 2: have to do it in the creative way because I
Speaker 2: got all this good stuff going for me, and then
Speaker 2: I have the cold. And so what I do was
Speaker 2: call my parole officer immediately, and I got a GPS monitor, right,
Speaker 2: So it's two parts of the GPS, so no one
Speaker 2: is confused. You have the box where I have to
Speaker 2: download my data from the GPS, which is important that
Speaker 2: I left at my house for my parole officer to get.
Speaker 2: Then you have the actual ankle tracker that's tracking you
Speaker 2: everywhere you go. That's on my ankle at the time.
Speaker 2: And so what I do was tell my parole officer listen,
Speaker 2: you could find my tracking device downstairs. But I still
Speaker 2: have the ankle monitor on now.
Speaker 1: His parole officer was in possession of Chris his alibi evidence,
Speaker 1: which proved his whereabouts at the time of the crime,
Speaker 1: while Chris went ahead and made contact with Charles Allen.
Speaker 2: I call this guy, bru, What did you do with
Speaker 2: my up bron will tell you about to come to
Speaker 2: the place. I go to his place.
Speaker 1: Wait, how did you get past the detectives that were
Speaker 1: outside the undercovers?
Speaker 2: It's different cuts and stuff you could go. His mom
Speaker 2: stays like, probably like a mile away. So I went there,
Speaker 2: cut off my ankle monitor there, thinking my ankle thing
Speaker 2: will be tracked here, right, and maybe this will lead
Speaker 2: to people to the right guy. He's telling me the story,
Speaker 2: who's involved. I'll call my brother, call my team. They like, listen,
Speaker 2: get out of there, come here, let's figure this out.
Speaker 2: And then I went right. And the whole time I'm
Speaker 2: in communication with my parole officer. I'm cooperating, getting information,
Speaker 2: and they saying, well, they retrieved the costume and this
Speaker 2: and that, and the first thing I said was, run
Speaker 2: a DNA. You have all this stuff, run a DNA
Speaker 2: and please let me know.
Speaker 3: Thankfully, they found all three pieces, the wig, the sunglasses,
Speaker 3: and there was a black T shirt that the robber
Speaker 3: was using to pull up over the lower half of
Speaker 3: his face. Ultimately, those items were tested and came back
Speaker 3: to exclude Chris and identify this man, Charles Allen. So
Speaker 3: the one eyewitness described the gunman as a light skinned
Speaker 3: black man, and Charles Allen, the man that was ultimately
Speaker 3: identified being a light skinned man. It's always the first
Speaker 3: thing people describe him as. That's the way he's described
Speaker 3: in his file with the Hamilton County Police Department. Chris
Speaker 3: ultimately did say in an interview before the DNA test
Speaker 3: was conducted that he loaned his truck to Charles Allen.
Speaker 3: He said what he looks like. He also said light skinned.
Speaker 3: In short, all of the fingerprints also excluded Chris, and
Speaker 3: three of them came back to Charles Allen. He was
Speaker 3: in the APHIS system. So they had Charles Allen from
Speaker 3: Chris's mouth, from fingerprints GPS, they had a description from
Speaker 3: a neutral eyewitness of a light skinned man that matches
Speaker 3: Charles Allen. They finally did the DNA testing and boom,
Speaker 3: it's also Charles Allen. All of this was known before
Speaker 3: Chris's trial. No one was interested in going after Charles Allen.
Speaker 2: I mean word on a street seas he was helping
Speaker 2: them with more bigger things gang stuff, murders, organized crime
Speaker 2: and things like that. That's why he was given immunity.
Speaker 1: It starts with circumstantial evidence against Chris, and then it
Speaker 1: turns into literally the easiest case to solve. Literally, Jesus
Speaker 1: could have popped up and said, that's the guy who
Speaker 1: did it. And it seems like the judge throwing a went, sorry, Jesus,
Speaker 1: I got a different idea. I mean, and this was
Speaker 1: a bench trial. Now we got to talk about that too.
Speaker 1: But first of all, of course, it's Hamilton County and
Speaker 1: we know they have a history of hiding overwhelming evidence
Speaker 1: of innocence, for instance Elwood Jones, who we interviewed on
Speaker 1: this podcast. So Hamilton County very notorious.
Speaker 3: The head prosecutor, of course, was Joe Dieters, the district
Speaker 3: attorney at the time, but the actual line prosecutor doing
Speaker 3: the case it was a guy named Clay Tharp. It
Speaker 3: wasn't the usual suspects of Seth Ti or Pete Meyer.
Speaker 1: Chris, how did you end up with Michelle? An attorney
Speaker 1: who actually could defend you, which a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't even have that.
Speaker 2: I had an attorney that people was trying to get
Speaker 2: me to work with, one that's been practicing law for
Speaker 2: thirty plus years. I really didn't trust this lawyer. And
Speaker 2: Michelle was there seeing someone else. She was up on
Speaker 2: our floor in a bullpen, and I seen her and
Speaker 2: then I just seen the energy and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: she looked like she's fairly no. I needed somebody fresh
Speaker 2: that was going to actually fight for me, and I'm
Speaker 2: not taking no plea deal, right. So I approached Michelle
Speaker 2: and I just sat down with her and I was
Speaker 2: telling her about the situation. She was like, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: love to take this case, and this probably like one
Speaker 2: of the best decisions I made, even though I was convicted,
Speaker 2: because I think no matter what attorney I had, I
Speaker 2: would have been convicted at this point because they was
Speaker 2: just so deep and put so much in their eggs
Speaker 2: in one basket that it was no turning back.
Speaker 3: What they were going to try to say to still
Speaker 3: say that this was Chris was to say that because
Speaker 3: Chris and Charles knew each other, that somehow Charles's DNA
Speaker 3: just briefly rubbed off on the costumes and somehow Chris
Speaker 3: just got lucky and wasn't on it. So for that reason,
Speaker 3: we had specifically requested the lab notes and all the
Speaker 3: data underlying the DNA testing, but that was never turned
Speaker 3: over at the time of trial.
Speaker 1: In addition to demanding the DNA testing and underlying data,
Speaker 1: they turned their sights on Charles Allen.
Speaker 3: Chris, and I worked with a private detective to wire
Speaker 3: up Chris's brother Ricky to go talk to Charles the
Speaker 3: strategy where we were using is Ricky would feed him
Speaker 3: some wrong facts and see if Charles would like correct
Speaker 3: it since he was there and he knew would he
Speaker 3: did so, Remember I said the eyewitness said he saw
Speaker 3: the gunman come out carrying a laptop. It actually was
Speaker 3: a cash registered drawer, but the eyewitness thought it was
Speaker 3: a laptop. So Ricky, when he's wired up, says to Charles,
Speaker 3: they're saying that Chris was coming out of the store
Speaker 3: carrying a laptop, and Charles says, on the recording, I
Speaker 3: wasn't carrying a motherfucking laptop. It was a cash drawer.
Speaker 3: First person, I wasn't carrying a motherfucking laptop. It was
Speaker 3: a cash drawer. So we have this on recording. We
Speaker 3: have eventually additional recordings to this, but we're like, okay,
Speaker 3: well this is rock solid now.
Speaker 1: And of course it ends up as a bench trial
Speaker 1: with Judge Robert Ruhlman, which I'm curious to know how
Speaker 1: that decision was made.
Speaker 3: So Cincinnati, the criminal justice community here is like everybody
Speaker 3: knows everybody. So I was talking to every criminal defense
Speaker 3: attorney and universally, the one thing to know about Robert
Speaker 3: Ruhlman is if he takes you back in chambers and
Speaker 3: is talking with you about the case and he says,
Speaker 3: this sounds like a bench trial, that is your signal
Speaker 3: that he is going to acquit your person. But at
Speaker 3: that time he had been on the bench for decades.
Speaker 3: I think people get so inundated in the system unless
Speaker 3: they are actively checking themselves. They get a mindset that
Speaker 3: they can just judge a case and that they just
Speaker 3: know what the right answer is. And so despite that,
Speaker 3: I think Robert Ruhlman is a good person and he
Speaker 3: used his This looks like a bench trial to me,
Speaker 3: he conned us and the reason that happened. Although this
Speaker 3: played out after the fact, this was not far from
Speaker 3: his neighborhood and the police in that area talked with
Speaker 3: him frequently about the crime in that area of town.
Speaker 3: And I think that, like Chris was saying, this would
Speaker 3: have happened with any attorney, because he was going to
Speaker 3: commit Chris no matter what.
Speaker 1: So trial began in two thousand and eight and the
Speaker 1: state presented their theory about Charles and Chris committing the
Speaker 1: robbery together, Charles as the driver and Chris donned in
Speaker 1: the costume and holding up to Cincinnati Bell wireless store.
Speaker 1: The eyewitness testified about what he saw, as well as
Speaker 1: Chris's girlfriend, saying that she had basically given him the expedition.
Speaker 3: So the whole trial is playing out, all the DNA
Speaker 3: is presented. Sure enough, the state tries to go with
Speaker 3: this theory that Chris just got lucky that his DNA
Speaker 3: didn't rub off, and Charles somehow got unlucky that his
Speaker 3: DNA did rub off when he somehow briefly touched these items.
Speaker 3: So the state closed their case. We put on our case,
Speaker 3: and the state ended up calling Charles Allen as a
Speaker 3: rebuttal witness. And I was hoping this is exactly what
Speaker 3: would happen, that he would somehow be called on the stand,
Speaker 3: because I got to present his statements to him. Now,
Speaker 3: of course, these had already been played in court and
Speaker 3: he wasn't there to hear them. Four people had already
Speaker 3: identified his voice on them. But unsurprisingly he's like, that's
Speaker 3: not my voice. So that day he was waiting in
Speaker 3: the jail to be called as a witness in this trial,
Speaker 3: and I got his recorded calls. The first call he makes,
Speaker 3: he starts complaining that he's salty that Ricky wired up
Speaker 3: on him and recorded him talking about the robbery. So
Speaker 3: when he's on the stand saying that's not my voice.
Speaker 3: I got to then play for him the recording of
Speaker 3: him saying, man, I'm so salty that Ricky wired up
Speaker 3: on me and recorded me, to make it very obvious
Speaker 3: that this actually is him. In addition, Chris called him
Speaker 3: many times and got him to talk about things too.
Speaker 3: You got him to say that he would meet with
Speaker 3: me his attorney, to describe other people who were there.
Speaker 3: He made other dominating statements like they must be paying
Speaker 3: the witnesses to say that Chris did this because they
Speaker 3: know that he didn't.
Speaker 1: You can't be a worse criminal than this guy, right,
Speaker 1: And now here you are at trial, you're watching this
Speaker 1: unfold and it comes to the moment that the judge
Speaker 1: is going to make his ruling.
Speaker 2: We all knew that I was through. It's very rare
Speaker 2: to go to trial as a defendant and prove your innocence,
Speaker 2: not just raising the doubt. Right. And it's like the
Speaker 2: harder Michelle went for me, the more irritated this judge became.
Speaker 2: And it was just a lot of comments and how
Speaker 2: he said to Michelle, well, you did a great job.
Speaker 2: For a public defender are Yeah, this is not the
Speaker 2: futuitive movie. It's like he said so many sly comments
Speaker 2: and convicting me and giving me twenty eight years for
Speaker 2: robbery when no one was hurt. To go to jail
Speaker 2: period is something. But to be given all that time
Speaker 2: for something didn't do, it's just a whole nother feeling.
Speaker 2: It's the whole conditioning of it, right. It goes beyond
Speaker 2: just the wrong for conviction, right, the conditioning of it,
Speaker 2: from the time you walk into the county jail, how
Speaker 2: they have you stand, how they process you, taking you
Speaker 2: to a floor where you sit in here all day,
Speaker 2: let you out, take you to the bullpen, go to court,
Speaker 2: sing you up to another thing. One call is about
Speaker 2: that control, and it gets in your mind to tell
Speaker 2: you this is your life, this is all you work.
Speaker 2: Don't expect nothing more, right, And so you do this
Speaker 2: for years and years, and you just conditioned to feel
Speaker 2: like shit, to feel like you nothing, to feel like
Speaker 2: you don't deserve nothing more from being an adult and
Speaker 2: having correctional officers have a key to yourself that's ten
Speaker 2: fifteen years younger than you, and you have to say
Speaker 2: miss such and such or CEO, and it dehumanizes you.
Speaker 2: And so you go through that for years and years
Speaker 2: to where it becomes a part of you, right shaping
Speaker 2: me into who I became or who I am today.
Speaker 2: So how do you find balance of staying true to
Speaker 2: who you are but surviving this right? Because I knew
Speaker 2: I was coming home and I just didn't know when.
Speaker 2: Because I knew I had a fighter with Michelle, I
Speaker 2: knew I had a great organization such as the op
Speaker 2: with me. I'm one of the fortunate ones that came
Speaker 2: home with an opportunity to get back into society, to
Speaker 2: have the humanity back in the store. And I found
Speaker 2: myself coming home from work and coming in and confining
Speaker 2: myself to my bedroom just at one space when I
Speaker 2: got two floors, because I'm like unconsciously conditioned to be
Speaker 2: right here just in the bed, having a refrigerator full
Speaker 2: of food but only eating chips and news. Like. I
Speaker 2: really went through this phase for at least ninety days,
Speaker 2: and I woke up one day. I was making some
Speaker 2: noodles for breakfast, Raymond noodles, and I was stirring the
Speaker 2: noodles and I'm the only one in here, and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, shit, I'm really eating noodles at ten
Speaker 2: o'clock in the morning, made the noodles and took them
Speaker 2: back in my room, like I had to go there.
Speaker 2: That's what my incarceration did. I took a lot. I
Speaker 2: went through a life. My mom died, which was my
Speaker 2: best friend, only one of the main supports I had,
Speaker 2: and me not being able to go to her funeral
Speaker 2: and listening to it from a jail phone, and things
Speaker 2: like that, missing your children grow up and all this,
Speaker 2: and so you like, you have to deal with it
Speaker 2: because you don't want to come out out of this
Speaker 2: thing destroyed.
Speaker 1: And so many of the stories we hear as our
Speaker 1: guest struggle with prison life. They also typically received denials
Speaker 1: on their direct appeals. While exonerating information remains hidden. But
Speaker 1: in Chris's case, Chris already had Michelle and they knew
Speaker 1: what they needed to do, and still it took twelve
Speaker 1: long years.
Speaker 3: After Chris was convicted. One of the things I was
Speaker 3: hell bent on doing was getting the data underlying the
Speaker 3: DNA evidence, and my expert re ran all the tests.
Speaker 3: So she retested the wig, the sunglasses, and the T
Speaker 3: shirt and it showed from her lab notes and the
Speaker 3: state's lab notes that were withheld during his trial that
Speaker 3: Charles Allen's DNA was present across the board fourteen out
Speaker 3: of fifteen and fifteen out of fifteen low SI on
Speaker 3: the wig and the T shirt the sunglasses. The States
Speaker 3: testing came back inconclusive, but my expert post trial came
Speaker 3: back and also identified Charles Allens. We were able to
Speaker 3: have a post conviction hearing and present all of this
Speaker 3: evidence and get it in the record also with Judge
Speaker 3: Ruhlman and my expert. She explained that contrary to the
Speaker 3: state's theory that that is not consistent with somebody who
Speaker 3: just briefly handles something, especially a wig. You think about
Speaker 3: if you just touch wig, you're touching like the outside
Speaker 3: of it, the inner part that touches your head when
Speaker 3: you're wearing it was heavily present with his DNA, and
Speaker 3: so was the shirt. And she explained that this is
Speaker 3: evidence that Charles Allen was wearing these items. And we
Speaker 3: were before the same judge that convicted Chris, and he said,
Speaker 3: on the record, Okay, I understand the evidence. The evidence
Speaker 3: shows that Chris isn't the one who committed this robbery,
Speaker 3: but I think he was involved somehow, So I'm going
Speaker 3: to deny this motion and keep his convictions in place,
Speaker 3: which is insane, truly insane, because the state's theory from
Speaker 3: start to finish and even to that point, was that
Speaker 3: Chris was the one who wore the costume and came
Speaker 3: in with the gun and committed this robbery, and Charles
Speaker 3: claimed that he was the getaway driver. So the judge
Speaker 3: deny this motion. But at least we were able to
Speaker 3: get all of this crucial DNA evidence in addition to
Speaker 3: our DNA testing of the sunglasses that also identified Charles
Speaker 3: Allen on the record.
Speaker 1: Now with the Brady material on the record, they could
Speaker 1: present it on direct appeal, for which Chris had to
Speaker 1: hire a different attorney.
Speaker 3: I was sending this attorney all kinds of emails, voicemails,
Speaker 3: Please meet with me. I have to explain this to you,
Speaker 3: and will you believe that appellat attorney didn't even raise
Speaker 3: the error of a Brady violation and didn't even include
Speaker 3: any of the evidence from the post conviction hearing. Basically,
Speaker 3: the errors that she raised were non errors. So of
Speaker 3: course he lost his appeal.
Speaker 2: This was the same attorney that I was working with
Speaker 2: before I end up retaining Michelle that's been practicing law
Speaker 2: for thirty plus years. Everybody that knows her and is like,
Speaker 2: how did she miss that? And then not communicate with Michelle.
Speaker 3: At that point, if there's anything that you don't raise
Speaker 3: in one court, you can never raise it in a
Speaker 3: higher court. It's considered procedurally defaulted. So I was still
Speaker 3: desperate to fix this. So what I did at that
Speaker 3: point was I got the Ohio Public Defender's Office involved
Speaker 3: to file a non routine motion in the appellate Court
Speaker 3: called a Rule twenty six B motion, which it's available
Speaker 3: for situations like this where the appellate attorney is ineffective
Speaker 3: to try to reopen the appeal and put forth the
Speaker 3: error that the appellaate attorney didn't raise. Now, again, this
Speaker 3: is still obvious that we should win this. But the
Speaker 3: court denied the Rule twenty six B motion and said
Speaker 3: that the appellate attorney was not ineffective for raising this because,
Speaker 3: in their opinion, this DNA evidence that was presented in
Speaker 3: the post conviction motion was only cumulative to what was
Speaker 3: already presented at the trial and it really didn't shed
Speaker 3: any new light. So they really missed the entire point
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 1: While the appeals unfolded over a decade of Chris's life
Speaker 1: ticked away, and they moved on to federal court, where
Speaker 1: there are ways to raise procedurally defaulted issues. After one denial,
Speaker 1: they had a win at the next level in the
Speaker 1: Sixth Circuit.
Speaker 3: They issued an amazing decision in June of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: and this was the first court that ever understood that
Speaker 3: the state was repeatedly putting forth false claims. Like the
Speaker 3: judge did, Chris was involved somehow. I have a hunch
Speaker 3: he was involved in this somehow, and that's not a
Speaker 3: valid basis for conviction, And in fact, all the evidence
Speaker 3: showed the exact opposite. The Sixth Circuit had to remand
Speaker 3: it back to the district court to actually decide the
Speaker 3: merits of the Brady claim and the ineffective assistance of
Speaker 3: a Pellet Council claim, and they ended up not having
Speaker 3: to rule on the ineffective assistance of a Pellet council
Speaker 3: claim because the Brady violation trumped it. So finally, in
Speaker 3: April of twenty twenty, height of the COVID pandemic, Chris
Speaker 3: was finally released.
Speaker 1: Chris was supposed to be released on April ninth, twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and with a co morbidity. His release during the early
Speaker 1: days of the COVID pandemic could not have been more urgent.
Speaker 2: April ninth, com and Michelle we have steadied communication. She's like,
Speaker 2: it's going to happen, like, yeah, you're being released, and
Speaker 2: Saw I'm just like ready sale, pack case, sleep. The
Speaker 2: night before my son, who's at this time is what
Speaker 2: nineteen years old, haven't seen him since seven. He comes
Speaker 2: up to Toledo with Michelle and all day just waiting,
Speaker 2: not getting answers anything, and Dan finally eleven o'clock eleven
Speaker 2: thirty that evening they come into my sale and saying, okay,
Speaker 2: you being released and just to have that sense of freedom,
Speaker 2: right and you're getting dressed out and things like that,
Speaker 2: and then walk out and highway patrol is sitting there waiting,
Speaker 2: not your family, but highway patroler sitting there waiting with
Speaker 2: chains and saying, hey, you're coming with us. So I'm like,
Speaker 2: hold up, wait a minute, where is my lawyer? Like
Speaker 2: are you coming with us? Don't worry about it, and
Speaker 2: chaining me not in the back, but in the front
Speaker 2: of a highway patrol car. Highway patrol may get in
Speaker 2: the back behind me, and it's like, at this point,
Speaker 2: twelve thirty one in the morning, and we drive it
Speaker 2: from Toledo to Cincinnati, which is a three and a
Speaker 2: half hour drive, and you just got this patrol man
Speaker 2: sitting behind you when you up front with your hands
Speaker 2: visible and I'm just sitting up. Came the scariest thing
Speaker 2: in my life because in my mind, I'm like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, I'm just waiting to hear drop the weapon,
Speaker 2: drop the weapon, or he reached for my gun and
Speaker 2: they kill me right there. I mean, I'm having to
Speaker 2: like scratch my nose. I don't want to move. I'm
Speaker 2: just right here, just sitting straight up, just watching the road,
Speaker 2: not asking questions in anything. Just take me where I'm going.
Speaker 2: They end up processing me in the county jail.
Speaker 3: The writ hit said that Chris was to be immediately
Speaker 3: released under no conditions, so they weren't following the orders.
Speaker 3: So I got a ruling from the federal judge saying
Speaker 3: that he essentially was going to hold the state in
Speaker 3: contempt if you weren't released. And what we found out
Speaker 3: a couple days later, ironically, Judge Ruleman came to our
Speaker 3: aid is that on April ninth, when the federal court
Speaker 3: issued the ordering Chris released, Hamilton County called Judge Ruleman
Speaker 3: and said, there's this order on this case that was
Speaker 3: your case, saying that Chris Smith is to be released,
Speaker 3: but we want to continue to hold him to bring
Speaker 3: him to trial again. Can we get an order to
Speaker 3: that which they were not allowed to do. That's in
Speaker 3: direct violation of the federal order. And Judge Roulman said
Speaker 3: to them, I need to see the federal order first
Speaker 3: before I can do that. They didn't give it to him,
Speaker 3: so he thought the issue was just dropped. But no,
Speaker 3: that is not what happened. Because this was COVID, not
Speaker 3: all the judges were present. They were having like alternate
Speaker 3: judges coming in. The prosecutors went to the judge who
Speaker 3: was the presiding judge, who was physically there at the courtroom,
Speaker 3: and told her that Judge Rulman said for her to
Speaker 3: sign this order on his case to have Chris Smith
Speaker 3: brought back, which he explicitly did not do. But she
Speaker 3: signed it because that's what she was told Roulman wanted,
Speaker 3: and Chris was brought back to Hamilton County and defiance
Speaker 3: of the federal order, and a few days later we
Speaker 3: finally got in court in front of Judge Roulman. Judge
Speaker 3: Roulman was then one hundred percent on our side and
Speaker 3: saying no, Chris Smith has to be released, very very
Speaker 3: angry with the county prosecutors at what they had done
Speaker 3: deceiving him.
Speaker 1: The Hamilton County Court of Common Please issued a release
Speaker 1: order as well, but the state continued on appealing whether
Speaker 1: the federal court even had the jurisdiction to rule on
Speaker 1: the Brady material. Nevertheless, Chris was freed on April fourteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I just came home and hit the ground running. Just
Speaker 2: got back to things I was doing before I went in,
Speaker 2: as such as my music, just building a brand, a
Speaker 2: lot of things that I started even before I was released,
Speaker 2: as far as start my own company and got into
Speaker 2: promotion and things like that. Got married, and I got
Speaker 2: a job, a good opportunity at a dealership here. Started
Speaker 2: excelling in that, working with found village organization of at
Speaker 2: risk youth, coaching football, mentoring youth, just doing everything I
Speaker 2: could to contribute to the goodness of this world, and
Speaker 2: just to stay busy. I just really want to think
Speaker 2: about where it came from and kind of just put
Speaker 2: it behind me and just pressed forward.
Speaker 3: State appealed Chris's habeas petition on the basis of saying
Speaker 3: that the state appellate court, when they denied that rule
Speaker 3: twenty six B motion, if you'll remember back, that was
Speaker 3: the one to get his direct appeal reopened to raise
Speaker 3: the Brady claims. When appealing his habeast grant, the state
Speaker 3: said that twenty six B motion ruled on the Brady claim.
Speaker 3: They said something like the appellate attorney didn't mess up
Speaker 3: here because any claim of a Brady violation wasn't material.
Speaker 1: Even though the Brady violation in question was most definitely material.
Speaker 1: The DNA testings underlying data thwarted the state's theory and
Speaker 1: prove Chris's innocence.
Speaker 3: The state was now saying the federal District court was
Speaker 3: wrong to grant the habeat petition because the state court
Speaker 3: already ruled on your Brady claim and they didn't get
Speaker 3: it wrong. And the federal court can't undo a state
Speaker 3: court ruling unless it's contrary to or an unreasonable application
Speaker 3: of US Supreme Court precedent. And so when we went
Speaker 3: before the Sixth Circuit the second time with a horrendous panel,
Speaker 3: they agreed with the state and said, yes, in fact,
Speaker 3: despite everything that our same court said about the DNA,
Speaker 3: evidence shows that you weren't the gunman. The trial evidence
Speaker 3: shows that you weren't an accomplice. The State appellate Court's
Speaker 3: ruling when they rejected your twenty six B motion has
Speaker 3: to stand because some reasonable minds could think that way.
Speaker 3: So the Sixth Circuit reversed the grant of the habeas petition.
Speaker 2: Once that decision came back, I lost their drift and
Speaker 2: I stopped writing, I stopped creating, I stopped moving the
Speaker 2: company forward, and just became content with working. This is
Speaker 2: how you conditioned like when you're in prison, like going
Speaker 2: to Chilhall or having your port a job and being
Speaker 2: going on back to Yosee.
Speaker 3: So where his case technically stands now, there's kind of
Speaker 3: two parts to it. Sixth Circuit remanded it back to
Speaker 3: the District Court again to rule on the merits of
Speaker 3: the ineffective assistance of appellate Council claim. We had to
Speaker 3: brief that in May of twenty twenty one, and it's
Speaker 3: still been pending since then. And Chris was, of course,
Speaker 3: under threat of having to go back to prison because
Speaker 3: his habeas grant was reversed, and so Judge Rolmand recused himself,
Speaker 3: passed the case off to a different judge, a newly elected,
Speaker 3: absolutely fantastic judge Jennifer Branch on his case in state
Speaker 3: court now, who granted Chris' judicial release basically commuted the
Speaker 3: remainder of his sentence so that he could not go
Speaker 3: back to prison on this but left it so that
Speaker 3: he's on supervision by the state court, so to speak,
Speaker 3: so that we still retained jurisdiction and federal court to
Speaker 3: get his convictions officially wiped off theirroat record once and
Speaker 3: for all.
Speaker 2: You know, I have a probation officer, a parole officer,
Speaker 2: so technically I'm not free. And when I'm here and
Speaker 2: enjoying my day and I get a knock on the
Speaker 2: door and look out the people, it's too probation officers
Speaker 2: with guns and badges invest on like I'm a threat
Speaker 2: one standing on the side of the door and not
Speaker 2: let them in, and it could just pop up and
Speaker 2: evade my home at any given time. There's no freedom
Speaker 2: in that. I don't feel free. And in that process,
Speaker 2: you damaging and undermine it and uprooting everything that I've
Speaker 2: worked so hard for since I've been home, and just recently,
Speaker 2: I claim that freedom back. On my forty second birthday
Speaker 2: November third, I woke up and I said, you know what,
Speaker 2: this chapter forty two is going to represent freedom, true
Speaker 2: freedom with themself and I'm getting back to me, putting
Speaker 2: in to me, and I'm not about to let no
Speaker 2: prison or even being exonerated to find my sense of freedom.
Speaker 1: Well, I wish you all the best on your journey,
Speaker 1: all the best of everything, and I hope this means
Speaker 1: you'll be making more music too. Is that fair to assume?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm on major platforms, I'm everywhere. I'm back creating.
Speaker 2: Michelle is actually on the first song that I recorded
Speaker 2: when I came home is remember Me. We have a
Speaker 2: video of add on YouTube reality with what whole.
Speaker 3: Have I have to just brag on Chris for just
Speaker 3: a minute. He's a brilliant writer. And that video that
Speaker 3: he was just talking about he was released in mid
Speaker 3: April twenty twenty. He recorded this about a month later.
Speaker 3: I mean, just to think about that whirlwind he was
Speaker 3: going through and then you see what he was able
Speaker 3: to put together in just a few weeks. If you
Speaker 3: watch that video, remember me, it's mind boggling. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just the tip of the iceberg of his talent.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to be sure to have your music,
Speaker 1: your YouTube channel, and Instagram linked in the episode description
Speaker 1: for everyone to follow. And with that, we're going to
Speaker 1: go to closing arguments. First of all, thank you for
Speaker 1: being here and sharing this remarkable story. And then I'm
Speaker 1: going to switch my microphone off, kick back in my
Speaker 1: chair with my headphones on, and close my eyes and
Speaker 1: just listen to anything else you want to share with
Speaker 1: me and our incredible audience. So Michelle, why don't you
Speaker 1: go first, and then just hand the mic off to
Speaker 1: Chris and he'll take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 3: I think an important takeaway is that people get involved
Speaker 3: in elections to an extent, thinking about, oh what president
Speaker 3: am I going to elect? What congressman? But it's really
Speaker 3: important to look at what judges are on the ballot,
Speaker 3: and it might be a little more difficult to know
Speaker 3: which judge is the right judge to elect. So go
Speaker 3: seek out information from your local innocence project or your
Speaker 3: local public defender's office and seek advice about who will
Speaker 3: be a fair judge on that ballot, because I think
Speaker 3: something that's overlooked is the power of judges here in
Speaker 3: our country at the state court level. Our judges are elected.
Speaker 3: They are politicians like anyone else at that point, and
Speaker 3: they will decide cases based on their ideology, and that
Speaker 3: can lead to wrongful convictions, and it did here, and
Speaker 3: so it's very important to educate yourself on who to
Speaker 3: elect and pay attention to those elections to not just
Speaker 3: the president and the congressman. I think Chris's case is
Speaker 3: a case in point for that, and Chris's case points
Speaker 3: out also tunnel vision and what that can do. This
Speaker 3: often happens in court cases and in wrongful conviction cases,
Speaker 3: but this can happen in everyday life too. You hear
Speaker 3: just in your everyday encounters. You hear some gossip of
Speaker 3: something crazy, You hear bits and pieces, and you form
Speaker 3: a conclusion, and then when you hear a few days
Speaker 3: later the full story or the other person's side to it,
Speaker 3: what actually happened is completely different. Or you hear a
Speaker 3: news headline of a world event and it seems unbelievable
Speaker 3: or maybe very believable to you and you start leaping
Speaker 3: to conclusions based on that, and then time plays out
Speaker 3: and there's more to the story. So I think it's
Speaker 3: just very important in life. These wrongful convictions teach us this.
Speaker 3: Don't jump to conclusions, don't jump down those tunnels and
Speaker 3: have your decisions made up so early that you can't
Speaker 3: have an open mind to hearing things out, hearing what
Speaker 3: the bigger picture might be. I think overall people would
Speaker 3: have more peaceful lives, the world would be a more
Speaker 3: peaceful place. Certainly there would be less wrongful convictions. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just an important concept to learn that Chris's case
Speaker 3: teaches about hear all sides, look at objective facts, educate yourself,
Speaker 3: and then form your conclusions.
Speaker 2: I just want to say in close, and it's not
Speaker 2: about guilt, it's not about innocence. It's about us just
Speaker 2: plan our part to just contribute to the goodness out
Speaker 2: the world. Everybody make mistakes, whether it's the defendant on
Speaker 2: the prosecution, the judges, the pillaricle. Everybody make mistakes, but
Speaker 2: it's about what we do afterwards. It's like you can
Speaker 2: think about that storm I went through, but we're still
Speaker 2: talking about that storm right now and because we made
Speaker 2: it out that storm. Right, It's about what we do now,
Speaker 2: It's about what we learned while we was in the
Speaker 2: midst of that storm. We hear this so so often,
Speaker 2: it's so common, right. Would it stopped next year, five
Speaker 2: years from now, two years from now. Probably not. But
Speaker 2: we just got to do our part because each one
Speaker 2: of us can make a difference. How we need is
Speaker 2: that one opportunity.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ron for Conviction. You can
Speaker 1: listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
Speaker 1: one week early by subscribing to the Lava for Good
Speaker 1: Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team,
Speaker 1: Connor Hall and Kathleen fa as well as my fellow
Speaker 1: executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The
Speaker 1: music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
Speaker 1: all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
Speaker 1: It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one