Speaker 1: In three young Arkansas boys, Stevie Branch, Christopher Buyers, and
Speaker 1: Michael Moore, went missing. Three little cub scouts, hog tied
Speaker 1: and left in an Arkansas did one of the most
Speaker 1: controversial legal cases in the state's history. A jury fouldman
Speaker 1: guilty of murdering the eight year old boys back in
Speaker 1: nineteen in what prosecutors at the time had called some
Speaker 1: sort of a satanic ritual. Celebrities fighting for the teen's
Speaker 1: release claimed the kids were railroaded because of their mullets,
Speaker 1: dark clothes, and fascination with the accosting then might have
Speaker 1: been part of a satanic ritual. Convicted murderers Jason Baldwin,
Speaker 1: Jesse ms Kelly, and Damian Eccles are now free men.
Speaker 1: They spent seventeen years in prison for a crime that
Speaker 1: stunned Arkans. So West Memphis three would be allowed to
Speaker 1: walk out of prison, but prosecutors agreed to sign off
Speaker 1: on the deal only if the defendants would plead guilty.
Speaker 1: A long time on death row for something that you
Speaker 1: insist you didn't do. There's always the possibility that the
Speaker 1: person that you're killing. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to wrongful Conviction. Today, I have a special show for you,
Speaker 1: and I think it's going to be a real treat
Speaker 1: because with me, I have a guy who has done
Speaker 1: profound work in film dealing with wrongful convictions. I'm super
Speaker 1: excited to have him here to share some stories and
Speaker 1: some wisdom and his outlook. So Joe Burlinger, welcome to
Speaker 1: Wrongful Convictions and thanks. I'm a big fan of the
Speaker 1: podcast and a fan of you, so I'm glad to
Speaker 1: be here. In fact, it amazes me that since I'm
Speaker 1: I consider myself a music and wrongful conviction guy and
Speaker 1: you're amazing music and wrongful conviction guy, I'm amazed we
Speaker 1: haven't met until recently, which is why this podcast came
Speaker 1: to be. We shared a nice dinner together. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: had dinner recently with Damien Echols and Amanda Knox and
Speaker 1: so we really connected and interesting because I do sort
Speaker 1: of music and justice. You do film music injustice. And
Speaker 1: the thing that you've been known for was your movie
Speaker 1: about the West, Memphis three, because it was such an
Speaker 1: important not only such an important documentary, but also such
Speaker 1: an important moment in the changing of the perception of
Speaker 1: the American public and the worldwide public. As to how
Speaker 1: these things happen, Um, And I'm interested to know how
Speaker 1: did you, because you know, you and I both were
Speaker 1: in criminal justice reform before it was sort of a thing, right,
Speaker 1: I mean we were, We were early adopters, and I
Speaker 1: like to say we were in before it was cool,
Speaker 1: but that sounds ridiculous. But anyway, listen, I'm glad it's
Speaker 1: cool because we need more and more people and have
Speaker 1: enough storytellers shining a light on injustice and activists trying
Speaker 1: to change this miserable system we have no we need
Speaker 1: an army. And so you made this remarkable Paradise Lost
Speaker 1: trilogy that I'm holding in my hand right now, which
Speaker 1: told the story of the three kids. And they were kids.
Speaker 1: They were teenagers, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Miskelly,
Speaker 1: who were persecuted, prosecuted, arrested, tried, convicted for one of
Speaker 1: the most gruesome and notorious triple murders in the history
Speaker 1: of the world. From the three eight year old boys
Speaker 1: that went missing in West Memphis, Arkansas, out riding their
Speaker 1: bikes and turned up in a river bank. Um tortured,
Speaker 1: brutally assaulted, sexually mutilated, and of course dead and how
Speaker 1: did it come to be that? And we'll get into
Speaker 1: how the wrong conviction happened, but how did you go
Speaker 1: from being a filmmaker to being this guy? And how
Speaker 1: were you made aware of this case and how did
Speaker 1: you get involved? And boy, it's a good thing you did,
Speaker 1: or Damien would have been executed by now. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's amazing, um, and thank you for all that. That's
Speaker 1: very kind of you to say, because you've also done
Speaker 1: amazing work, which I appreciate. You know, my first film,
Speaker 1: which I should say, Paradise Lost and Brothers Keeper were
Speaker 1: made with Bruce Sinofsky, who recently passed away. You know,
Speaker 1: so if I revert to the eyes, I I always
Speaker 1: mean we. But you know, we had made Brothers Keeper,
Speaker 1: which there was no sense of social justice behind the
Speaker 1: making of that movie. That was purely an aesthetic exercise
Speaker 1: to push the documentary form a little further. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a handful of filmmakers in the late eighties
Speaker 1: early nineties that were looking to expand what it means
Speaker 1: to be a documentary. Errol Morris did it with Thin
Speaker 1: Blue Line. But his contribution, besides the wrongful conviction aspect,
Speaker 1: was you know, pushing recreations to a whole new level.
Speaker 1: Michael Moore was pushing documentary by you know, the filmmaker
Speaker 1: as on camera curmudgeon, you know, crusading for a social cause.
Speaker 1: That was new. Morgan Spurlock then picked up that kind
Speaker 1: of thread in others. What we were trying to do
Speaker 1: with Brothers Keeper was simply by using a murder trial
Speaker 1: because it has perfect dramatic structure. Is to take the
Speaker 1: documentary and create a just a film that feels like
Speaker 1: a narrative film because of how it shot, how it's edited,
Speaker 1: how it looks, how it's structured, and to push the
Speaker 1: documentary form. I had no interest in social justice, no
Speaker 1: interest in wrongful I didn't even know wrongful convictions took
Speaker 1: place back then. I was very naive about the justice system.
Speaker 1: And Brothers Keeper was very successful. And so Sheila Nevans
Speaker 1: from HBO came a calling. You know, she was until
Speaker 1: very recently the head of documentaries at HBO for you know,
Speaker 1: three decades, and if I had to pick one person
Speaker 1: responsible for expanding the form to what it is today,
Speaker 1: Sheila would would be that woman. Um, but she also
Speaker 1: likes salacious material, and so she read this story about
Speaker 1: three devil worshiping teens who were just been arrested for
Speaker 1: these horrible crimes, and she wanted a satanic kids killing
Speaker 1: kids movie because it seemed like that was the case.
Speaker 1: So one week after the arrests of the three. Of course,
Speaker 1: they weren't called the West Memphis Three back then, they
Speaker 1: were these rotten teenagers accused of these horrible crimes. We
Speaker 1: went down to West Memphis, Arkansas in June of nine,
Speaker 1: thinking we were making a film about kids killing kids.
Speaker 1: All the press was saying they were guilty. Jesse ms
Speaker 1: Kelly's confession without any context. The multiple statements over time
Speaker 1: were reduced to a digestible paragraph without context, published in
Speaker 1: the local paper. So we we thought there was a confession.
Speaker 1: You know, the prosecution and the police were saying at
Speaker 1: press conferences on a scale of one to ten, this
Speaker 1: is an eleven. I was going down as a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: coming off of a really great experience on my first
Speaker 1: film of pushing the form of documentary, but no idea
Speaker 1: of social justice. We go down. We embed with the
Speaker 1: families of the victims, mainly the trial is still seven
Speaker 1: months away. For the first three months of the project,
Speaker 1: we really spent time with the families of the victims,
Speaker 1: and of course they hated these guys and thought they were,
Speaker 1: you know, the devil, and we had no reason to
Speaker 1: believe otherwise. On season seven of Wrongful Conviction, on the
Speaker 1: fifth episode, I interviewed Damien Echols. Here's an excerpt new
Speaker 1: an outcast, right, And there were these very small minded
Speaker 1: people around who sort of came to this instinctual call
Speaker 1: it conclusion that it must be the weird kid, right,
Speaker 1: it must be the kid that wears black and listens
Speaker 1: to heavy metal. And this was during the Satanic Panic
Speaker 1: as well. Right back then, Um, for those of you
Speaker 1: who are old enough to remember, in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: there was this very strange thing that was going on
Speaker 1: in America, Rumors of Satanic cults and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: none of them trying out to be true. But that's
Speaker 1: beside the point. So what happened for me my entire life,
Speaker 1: the thing that has been most important to me, that
Speaker 1: that I love the most, that my life always sort
Speaker 1: of revolved around, was Western hermeticism, ceremonial magic, all the
Speaker 1: way back from when I was a child. But I
Speaker 1: lived in a incredibly right wing fundamentalist town where. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were places in this town where you come to
Speaker 1: a four corner up and on all four corners of
Speaker 1: the street will be churches. It's like Starbucks. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what it was like. Um. And if you
Speaker 1: didn't belong to, you know, one of these mainstream for
Speaker 1: that area, mainstream fundamentalist religions, you were automatically viewed as suspicious.
Speaker 1: You were satanic. That's what they thought. And it didn't
Speaker 1: matter if you were a Buddhist or a Hindu or
Speaker 1: something like that. You're still satanic. You just don't know
Speaker 1: you're a Satanist. You're just being you know, tricked by
Speaker 1: the devil into thinking there's some other religion. You know.
Speaker 1: The fact that I actually did love ceremonial magic, and
Speaker 1: that's been one of their things that you know, they
Speaker 1: harp on forever that that is Satanism. So that was
Speaker 1: a huge part of what made them focus on me
Speaker 1: as well. You know, that was what they thought made
Speaker 1: me a freak. They think, automatically, you're a Satanist. It
Speaker 1: would take a Satanist to commit a crime like this.
Speaker 1: Stick all those things together and they didn't even look
Speaker 1: for anybody or anything else. So in this case, they
Speaker 1: focused on you and then they had to find a
Speaker 1: way to get to you, right because there was no
Speaker 1: evidence connecting, you know, So they found a way and
Speaker 1: that way was Jesse Miskeley exactly. So they originally sort
Speaker 1: of tricked him into confessing and he immediately recanted. After
Speaker 1: he confessed somewhere between seventy and seventy two, and they
Speaker 1: interrogated him. I can't remember exactly how many hours it was.
Speaker 1: It was something like between twelve and fourteen hours. And
Speaker 1: they're telling this guy, who you know, has an i
Speaker 1: Q that's way way below normal. They're telling him things like,
Speaker 1: you know, just tell us what we want to know
Speaker 1: and we'll let you go home. So they finally get
Speaker 1: this guy to confess, and he can't get anything about
Speaker 1: the crime scene, right because he wasn't actually there, So
Speaker 1: we didn't know anything. They didn't care. The only thing
Speaker 1: they cared about was the fact that they got him
Speaker 1: to say yes. And we also know, Damian, that people
Speaker 1: who are most susceptible to this our adolescence. We now
Speaker 1: know that the human brain isn't fully formed until you're
Speaker 1: twenty five. He was sixteen, right seventeen, and with this
Speaker 1: low I Q. He was totally outmatched, overwhelmed, and probably
Speaker 1: after twelves and fourteen hours, he would have confessed, you know, anything,
Speaker 1: killing Abraham Lincoln exactly, I mean, just to go home.
Speaker 1: So he implicated you and Jason. So Jason was sort
Speaker 1: of your one and best and pretty much only friend
Speaker 1: at the time, right, And he was just physical appearances,
Speaker 1: he didn't have the same stigma that you did, right.
Speaker 1: He was sort of just an average looking kid, very
Speaker 1: young looking, must away the hundred pounds or less, didn't
Speaker 1: look like a killer. But to them you did, exactly.
Speaker 1: And he got caught up in all of this too,
Speaker 1: just because he knew me, right, unbelievable. On season two
Speaker 1: of Wrongful Conviction, Episode eight, I interviewed Jason Baldwin. Here's
Speaker 1: what he had to say. And so when the police came, honestly,
Speaker 1: it didn't really scare me or alarm me because I
Speaker 1: figured they were going everywhere. I figured it was door
Speaker 1: to door, you know, that they were talking to everybody
Speaker 1: they could, you know, and to me that made sense,
Speaker 1: you know, that was logical. But what I didn't know
Speaker 1: that they were targeting us. So now everything goes completely haywire,
Speaker 1: and you got to get arrested. Correct. They mug shot
Speaker 1: at me, But when they fingerprinted me, they didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: They took a fingerprint, they took an entire hand impression.
Speaker 1: They took my entire footprints, right, and then they took
Speaker 1: me to the hospital and they took hair samples, they
Speaker 1: took saliva samples, they took blood samples. When they were
Speaker 1: taking these samples from me, it gave me hope because
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, whoever committed this crime, they've left something
Speaker 1: for the police to compare my samples to, right, And
Speaker 1: so that's where my hope was. And now at this point,
Speaker 1: I had already been engaged with the police, and they
Speaker 1: had asked me, you know, questions and stuff, and I
Speaker 1: told them where I was at, and they absolutely refused
Speaker 1: the truth. They kept telling me, no, we've got another story.
Speaker 1: Your friend has told us that you have done this
Speaker 1: and that what you're telling us is not true. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: who is his friend? And they refused to tell me.
Speaker 1: The boys bodies were found May the sixth. We were
Speaker 1: arrested June three. Jesse ms Kelly gave the false confession
Speaker 1: on June three. But what many people have not really
Speaker 1: noticed it. On May the fifteenth, just a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks after the boys bodies found, Jesse went to the
Speaker 1: police with another friend because there was a tipline and
Speaker 1: a reward offered out for any information on who may
Speaker 1: have committed this crime. Now, Jesse did not know who
Speaker 1: committed his crime, but he wanted the reward money. He
Speaker 1: was imagining the brand new truck he could buy his
Speaker 1: father and things like that. So him and another kid
Speaker 1: out of his trailer park went to the police and said,
Speaker 1: there's this suspicious guy in the town that you know,
Speaker 1: you need to um check out. And I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what all he told them about this guy or whatever,
Speaker 1: but they ended up telling him, Jesse, you need to
Speaker 1: come back with a more believable story than that. Right,
Speaker 1: a few weeks go by, now they're saying they've got
Speaker 1: that believable story when they gives the false confession against
Speaker 1: Damia Me. Then we finally negotiated access. They were all
Speaker 1: in county jail awaiting trial, and somehow we talked. You know,
Speaker 1: documentary was a little more naive in those days in
Speaker 1: terms of people's perceptions, and so we were able. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the amazing things about Paradise. Loss is just
Speaker 1: where we stuck our camera. I mean, we got tremendous access,
Speaker 1: which I don't think we'd ever get today, luckily for
Speaker 1: all involved. But we finally negotiated access to the West
Speaker 1: Memphis three and again they weren't called that then, and
Speaker 1: we did our first series of interviews, and I think
Speaker 1: I'm sitting down with killers, you know, horrible kids, wanting
Speaker 1: to understand how three teens could be so disaffected from
Speaker 1: life that they would they would do this horrible thing.
Speaker 1: There was some killings in the UK on railroad tracks
Speaker 1: just a few years before, you know, the Jamie Boulger
Speaker 1: case that actually I had tried to get access to
Speaker 1: and make a film about. So my head is kids
Speaker 1: killing kids, it's a trend, let's make a film about it.
Speaker 1: Of course, the late eighties was the whole Satanic panic
Speaker 1: and satanic hysteria. I was a young filmmaker, and you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have any reason to think that wasn't necessarily true.
Speaker 1: So I went into this project. In the great irony
Speaker 1: is that, you know, two decades and three films later,
Speaker 1: this crusade to get these guys out started off as
Speaker 1: let's make a film about these rotten punks. So we
Speaker 1: sit down, we we do our first series of interviews. Honestly,
Speaker 1: Damien was a little hard to read. I look back now,
Speaker 1: Obviously he was in shock. He didn't believe he would
Speaker 1: actually be convicted. Um, not to be judgmental, I mean,
Speaker 1: Damien's a hero to me, who's gone through the most
Speaker 1: amazing journey. But that first interview I couldn't quite tell
Speaker 1: with him, but the person who really just whatever sense
Speaker 1: of tapping into something that I that I had at
Speaker 1: the time. It was talking to Jason Baldwin where I
Speaker 1: just said this, this doesn't add up four months before
Speaker 1: the trial, three months into being embedded in West Memphis, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: because we spent literally seven months camping out there before
Speaker 1: the trial started. And it's not like a light bulb
Speaker 1: went off and I said, my god, they're innocent. But
Speaker 1: something didn't seem right. And so I remember calling Sheila
Speaker 1: and Evans, who, again, to her credit, she's an amazing
Speaker 1: catalyst for what documentary has become, but she also likes,
Speaker 1: you know, salacious subject matter, and she had sent me down,
Speaker 1: or sent us down to make a film about teen
Speaker 1: satanic killers. So I remember picking up the phone, calling
Speaker 1: her to let her know that something. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure these guys are guilty, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: the film is what you think it's going to be
Speaker 1: a little trepidacious that she was going to cancel the project,
Speaker 1: but I felt I had to tell her. You know,
Speaker 1: we're like four months in and we've gathered enough information
Speaker 1: that these kids seem like they're the wrong guys have
Speaker 1: been picked up. I also created this incredible moral ambiguity
Speaker 1: because we had convinced the parents of the victims that
Speaker 1: we were here to tell their story, and they were
Speaker 1: utterly convinced of their guilt. But I called Sheila, and
Speaker 1: to her credit, she said, oh, that sounds even more interesting.
Speaker 1: Stick with it, because she couldn't have pulled the plug,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's the number one lesson. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if there are filmmakers in the in
Speaker 1: your audience or whatever, but my number one lesson that
Speaker 1: I tell people about filmmaking is never, particularly in documentary,
Speaker 1: never locked into the preconceived idea of what you think
Speaker 1: your film is about, because you'll miss the story. If
Speaker 1: we had locked into teen Satan Killers and hadn't opened
Speaker 1: our eyes to the real story. We might have missed
Speaker 1: the story, but I never imagined that it would actually
Speaker 1: ever get to trial because I had faith in the
Speaker 1: justice system. I never imagined that evidence such as Metallica
Speaker 1: lyrics or Stephen King novels would be presented in a
Speaker 1: court of law in the United States of America as
Speaker 1: the main evidence, and that somebody could be convicted on
Speaker 1: literally no forensic evidence, no blood at the crime scene.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you know the details of this case,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, but it's worth refreshing that we're at
Speaker 1: the police station. Um the only thing. Every so often
Speaker 1: one of the cops would come in and say, are
Speaker 1: you ready to make your confession? Yet I would just
Speaker 1: stand there and look at them. They would leave. I
Speaker 1: stood there all night long until the next day they
Speaker 1: got me and took me into a courtroom. They tell me, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody's already confessed to this crime. They've implicated you.
Speaker 1: They're saying you were the ring leader of this. So
Speaker 1: now what you need to do is confessed to this
Speaker 1: and say no, you weren't the ring leader. They were
Speaker 1: trying to put the blame back on them, or you're
Speaker 1: gonna die because of this. I can't even figure out
Speaker 1: who the hell they're talking about because I've only got
Speaker 1: one friend in the entire world, and that was Jason Baldwin.
Speaker 1: I knew it wasn't him because he was with me,
Speaker 1: and I knew he didn't do it. I knew he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to confess to something he hadn't done. So
Speaker 1: I didn't realize who it even was that it confessed
Speaker 1: until the next day. Whenever they take me into the courtroom,
Speaker 1: they say who it is, and they ask, you know,
Speaker 1: how do you plead all this sort of thing. They
Speaker 1: refused to even read the confession in the courtroom. They
Speaker 1: asked me, did I want it read? I said yes,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't read it even after they asked me
Speaker 1: and I said yes. Instead, they take me out of
Speaker 1: the courtroom into a janitor's closet with mops and brooms.
Speaker 1: They give me a transcript, a type transcript of this confession.
Speaker 1: When I started reading it, it's immediately obvious why they
Speaker 1: didn't want this thing or read in court. It made
Speaker 1: no sense whatsoever. You know, you're talking about this story
Speaker 1: that's like a like a Frankenstein patchwork thing that they've
Speaker 1: sewed together out of many statements made by somebody with
Speaker 1: an i Q of between seventy and seventy two. And
Speaker 1: what they would do is when he would confess to
Speaker 1: something and wouldn't get anything right, they would come back
Speaker 1: into the room and say, well, do you think maybe
Speaker 1: this could have happened or even I mean even more
Speaker 1: blatantly obvious. The first time they asked him when did
Speaker 1: the murders happen? And he says something like eight o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. Well, they knew that wasn't true because
Speaker 1: all three of the kids were in school. So gradually
Speaker 1: what they did was shape this thing to make it
Speaker 1: what they wanted it to be. That's why they didn't
Speaker 1: want it read in court. No, and they ignored obvious
Speaker 1: signs that pointed to at least one, arguably up to
Speaker 1: three other individuals, including there was a local restaurant, was
Speaker 1: it a Bojangles or something? It was a bow Jangles
Speaker 1: where the manager called the cops that night and said
Speaker 1: there was a guy covered in mud and blood that
Speaker 1: stumbled into the fast food place and went into the bathroom.
Speaker 1: And to their credit, the manager called up and a
Speaker 1: police officer came but didn't investigate, and they ultimately collected
Speaker 1: evidence from that bathroom that he went into, which there
Speaker 1: was blood all over the place and mud, and they
Speaker 1: lost it. And there again we're obvious signs. I mean
Speaker 1: the one I just talked about, the various signs pointing
Speaker 1: to the stepfather of one of the boys. I mean,
Speaker 1: this one kind of came with instructions, and I know
Speaker 1: that it's difficult. I'm not an anarchist. I believe we
Speaker 1: do need a system of law and order. I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of very good police and judges
Speaker 1: and prosecutors out there. But in this case, it's a
Speaker 1: small town, high profile, complicated crime. Because the crime scene
Speaker 1: itself was a muddy riverbed, not the easiest place to
Speaker 1: collect evidence. It seemed to have been scrubbed to some degree.
Speaker 1: And then all the pressure you ran into the perfect storm.
Speaker 1: They put me in another sale where I would stay
Speaker 1: for almost the next year while I waited to go
Speaker 1: to trial. When we do go to trial, the evidence
Speaker 1: that they present again stusses things like um Stephen King books, Uh,
Speaker 1: the fact that we owned Metallica T shirts and albums,
Speaker 1: posters that were hanging on our walls, you know, things
Speaker 1: that were from like skateboarding magazines, ceremonial magic books. This
Speaker 1: is the evidence they had that the prosecutors tell the
Speaker 1: jury that these things are not only evidence that we're guilty,
Speaker 1: but their evidence that I don't even have a soul,
Speaker 1: that this is how evil I am. I was totally
Speaker 1: surprised when I went to trial and instead of the
Speaker 1: narration of the story revolving around evidence, the prosecutor John
Speaker 1: Fogoman and Brenton Davis were saying things like the crime
Speaker 1: scene was completely clean, there was absolutely no evidence, no
Speaker 1: physical evidence left behind, and this, in fact is evidence
Speaker 1: of Satanic cult ritual activity because the devil cleaned up
Speaker 1: the crime scene. Basically, when they put that guy in
Speaker 1: the stand who was testifying as an expert on Satanism
Speaker 1: and witchcraft and all, and the defense attorney quite rightly
Speaker 1: said to him, where did you get certified at this?
Speaker 1: And it turned out he had spent like an hour
Speaker 1: doing some online something or whatever. It was ridiculed was laughable, right.
Speaker 1: The fact that he was calling himself an expert was laughable.
Speaker 1: And that's one thing that I was like, well, the
Speaker 1: jury's got to hear that. And the other thing was
Speaker 1: when they had the doctor on the stand, right, It
Speaker 1: was like any orthopedic surgeon or something, and they were
Speaker 1: asking him about the way that the one boy had
Speaker 1: been mutilated, right, and he had the skin cut off
Speaker 1: his penis, and it's really pretty disgusting even thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Intially found out later was animals had actually started eating
Speaker 1: their bodies in the water that they were submerging. And
Speaker 1: so when the police pulled Jesse into the police station
Speaker 1: and they laid out the photos of the bodies, they
Speaker 1: had him make up a story for all the visible wounds,
Speaker 1: The calls and manner of the wounds were unknown. They
Speaker 1: didn't know that all these wounds were animal predation. If
Speaker 1: you remember when the jury went out, what did you
Speaker 1: think was gonna happen? I sincerely believed that we would
Speaker 1: go home, they would find us not guilty, that they
Speaker 1: would be able to totally ignore all the flaming prejudicial
Speaker 1: stuff that the prosecution was bringing up about satan is
Speaker 1: um and everything, and look at the case for what
Speaker 1: it was and follow the evidence. So told all your
Speaker 1: life that the purpose of the judicial system is to
Speaker 1: find the truth, when really it's to get a conviction.
Speaker 1: They came back in they sentenced me to death three times. Uh,
Speaker 1: they sentenced me to die by lethal injection three times.
Speaker 1: They sentenced Jason to life in prison without parole. The
Speaker 1: other guy they sentenced to life plus forty years. They
Speaker 1: immediately take me from the courtroom to death Row, where
Speaker 1: I would not see Jason again. I saw him maybe
Speaker 1: twelve fifteen years later, for maybe twenty to thirty seconds. Um.
Speaker 1: They used to bring other prisoners in to clean the barracks,
Speaker 1: and he was one of the prisoners they brought in
Speaker 1: one day to clean death Row. So he comes by
Speaker 1: myself mopping and sweeping. That was the first contact I've
Speaker 1: had with him in like fifteen years by that point.
Speaker 1: It's truly mind boggling the whole thing, even by our standards,
Speaker 1: being entrenched in this work, you know, and you hear
Speaker 1: one fucked up story after another, but this one takes Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I talk a lot about the idea that
Speaker 1: when we willfully or accidentally you want to call it mistakenly,
Speaker 1: prosecute the wrong person and convict them by definition, we
Speaker 1: stopped looking for the right person. And in this case,
Speaker 1: it sure seems like the prosecutors must have known that
Speaker 1: these guys didn't do it at some point they realized
Speaker 1: that they had the wrong guys. Maybe it was around
Speaker 1: the time you did, maybe it was sooner, maybe it
Speaker 1: was later. But then you're left with, wait a minute, So,
Speaker 1: whoever this sick fuck is that did this terrible or
Speaker 1: whoever these people are that did this there amongst us? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I do believe that during the trial
Speaker 1: and through the conviction, the authorities felt they had the
Speaker 1: right guy. And the reason that's scary is because of
Speaker 1: the uttering competence and the ability to fall victim to
Speaker 1: confirmation bias, to all sorts of problems within our system.
Speaker 1: I actually think that they felt they had the right people.
Speaker 1: What I find evil, the real evil in this case
Speaker 1: because a lot of that initial false conviction I attribute
Speaker 1: to human error, which is scary in some ways scarier
Speaker 1: than a conspiracy. But it's the post conviction period where
Speaker 1: it became quite clear, I think to everybody involved that
Speaker 1: these guys were innocent, and for people to hang onto
Speaker 1: their jobs, for people to not question things, you know,
Speaker 1: for the same judge Judge Burnett, who presided over the
Speaker 1: original trial, to be the post conviction appellate judge ruling
Speaker 1: whether he had reversible error in the original is absurd,
Speaker 1: and that's what the way it was for over a
Speaker 1: decade on that case. So the real evil in this
Speaker 1: case is the post conviction period where people cared more
Speaker 1: about their jobs, and you see that all the time.
Speaker 1: It's why there shouldn't be prosecutorial immunity and all sorts
Speaker 1: of other issues. Um, but just getting back to my
Speaker 1: origin story, you know, in covering this story, I just
Speaker 1: still I didn't have the gene that I thought film
Speaker 1: could be used for social good until the final moments
Speaker 1: of Paradise Lost, which are the final moments of the
Speaker 1: trial where oh my god, they really have convicted this
Speaker 1: guy on no evidence. And you see in Paradise Laws
Speaker 1: in the movie, Jason has already been convicted halfway through
Speaker 1: the movie, and then the second half of the movie
Speaker 1: is focusing on Jason and Damien, and you see Damian
Speaker 1: being chained up and led off to death row. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were in the room with him as he was
Speaker 1: being chained off and led off to death row, and
Speaker 1: Jason was being led off to life without parole sentences
Speaker 1: and they get escorted out of the room and Bruce
Speaker 1: and I look at each other like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I cannot believe what we just witnessed. And that's when
Speaker 1: we vowed to do everything we could. And when the
Speaker 1: gene or the light bulb went off in my head
Speaker 1: where I realized that, yes, I'm sitting on all this
Speaker 1: footage that can help, and that film think can be
Speaker 1: used for shining a light. And so I feel like
Speaker 1: I stumbled onto the criminal justice system as a place
Speaker 1: to place my focus. But seeing how easy it is
Speaker 1: for people to make mistakes, seeing how easy it is
Speaker 1: for somebody to be sent to death, this became my
Speaker 1: calling when I saw that zero evidence and Stephen King
Speaker 1: novels and Metallica lyrics can put you on death row. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: if that's the case, I mean when you add up
Speaker 1: all the Stephen King novels and all the Metallica records
Speaker 1: that would sold about, means there's tens of millions of
Speaker 1: serial killers out there that we should all be very
Speaker 1: scared crazy. And you know he did have an affinity
Speaker 1: for Alistair Crowley and and that was also introduced. But still,
Speaker 1: this is not forensic evidence. You know, there was no
Speaker 1: blood at the crime scene, no forensic evidence. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just this is the worst case probably I've studied
Speaker 1: in you know, in all these years. So your film
Speaker 1: ultimately led to an amazing outpouring of support from people
Speaker 1: all over the world, regular people as well as people
Speaker 1: at the very top echelons of society, um Johnny Depp,
Speaker 1: Eddie Vetter, Natalie Mains, Peter Jackson, amazing, amazing people who
Speaker 1: became like, not casually involved, but deeply involved and that.
Speaker 1: And there's no separating that from the fact that it
Speaker 1: was a direct result of your movie, which had to
Speaker 1: feel good. But then how did it feel when finally,
Speaker 1: eighteen years later, these guys walked out of prison and
Speaker 1: knowing the role that you played in that, well, a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of people played roles in right,
Speaker 1: That's the thing I mean this. I hope this doesn't
Speaker 1: sound falsely humble. I'm very proud of the films, and
Speaker 1: I think the film's definitely played a role. And I
Speaker 1: definitely think that we're the ones who said against all
Speaker 1: the other media, because every night there was a news
Speaker 1: report or story of these monstrous killers. It was so
Speaker 1: prejudicing everything, so we were truly the only media saying
Speaker 1: that they were innocent. I think the film attracted a
Speaker 1: lot of the attention, but it's the activism of tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people and the well known people that
Speaker 1: got them out of prison. But that feels good. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's rare in one's career. You know, when you make documentaries,
Speaker 1: you hope to affect people in some way. When you
Speaker 1: were a storyteller in general, you want to affect people
Speaker 1: in some way, and to have that kind of tangible
Speaker 1: effect on the outcome of a case felt terrific, although
Speaker 1: I will say it was also very bitter sweet because
Speaker 1: a it took way too long, you know, eighteen and
Speaker 1: a half years. Actually, with some cases that's on the
Speaker 1: low end of things, sadly, but still it took so long,
Speaker 1: and the attempts to deny DNA testing and the fact
Speaker 1: that the same judge remained on the case during the
Speaker 1: whole post conviction is just outrageous. And then the end
Speaker 1: result was the Alfred plea, where you know, Damien was
Speaker 1: not well on death row as we know, and you know,
Speaker 1: Jason had to really debate whether he wanted to take
Speaker 1: the deal because he wanted to keep fighting, and some
Speaker 1: evidence that Peter Jackson paid for was coming out and
Speaker 1: very helpful, which, of course scared the prosecution, which is
Speaker 1: why they were even willing to do the Alfred plea.
Speaker 1: Should we explain what the Alfred plea is yet talk
Speaker 1: about I'm a well, the Alfred plea is basically where
Speaker 1: you stand up in court. In this case, Damien and
Speaker 1: Jason and Jesse acknowledged that the prosecution has enough evidence
Speaker 1: to convict, but you maintain your innocence. You state that
Speaker 1: I am innocent of these charges, but I believe the
Speaker 1: state has enough evidence that a conviction could occur, So
Speaker 1: I plead guilty in exchange for time served. Is basically
Speaker 1: what happened. So the death sentence was vacated and turned
Speaker 1: into a first to remurder charge, and he was sentenced
Speaker 1: to life served, which allowed him to go out of
Speaker 1: the prison, and the life without parole sentences were vacated
Speaker 1: and turned into you know, time served. That's you know,
Speaker 1: you can understand why somebody would accept that, especially if
Speaker 1: you're on death row. But it's so cowardly on the
Speaker 1: part of the State of Arkansas. Does anyone really believe
Speaker 1: that if the State of Arkansas had in a by
Speaker 1: ating belief that these were teen child killers who sacrificed
Speaker 1: eight year olds to the devil in a Satanic ritual
Speaker 1: that they would allow them to walk free after eighteen years.
Speaker 1: Of course not they know they're innocent, but they want
Speaker 1: to protect themselves from accountability. You know. Some people have said, well,
Speaker 1: they want to also protect themselves from being sued for
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction, which you know, the average wrongful conviction case
Speaker 1: is worth a million dollars a year times eighteen years
Speaker 1: times three defendants, that's fifty four million dollars if I'm
Speaker 1: doing my math correctly or something like that. But they
Speaker 1: could have even signed, you know, a way that they
Speaker 1: won't sue for wrongful conviction. It's all about accountability, and
Speaker 1: that's how these things happened. That's why post conviction takes
Speaker 1: for so long. Nobody wants to be accountable. And I
Speaker 1: think it's so cowardly and disturbing that this is how
Speaker 1: these guys ended up free. I mean, I took Jason
Speaker 1: to both the Berlin Film Festival with Paradise last three
Speaker 1: and there's a great documentary festival in Amsterdam called IDFA
Speaker 1: and National Documentary Festival of Amsterdam, and both of those
Speaker 1: border crossings were fraught with delays and problems because in
Speaker 1: the computer. It's Jason Baldwood, convicted child killer. Jason wants
Speaker 1: to study law and become a lawyer. He can't do
Speaker 1: it because he's a convicted child killer. So the s
Speaker 1: felt great that the movie had an impact on people,
Speaker 1: and those people pushed and pushed until these guys were
Speaker 1: let out, but sad that it's the alphad plea and
Speaker 1: they're not fully exonerated. The alphad plea is such a
Speaker 1: it's like a Sophie's choice kind of thing. And we've had,
Speaker 1: oh god, I don't know how many people on Ralpha
Speaker 1: conviction who have resorted that. You know, they have so
Speaker 1: much leverage. Um, when you're looking at the amount of
Speaker 1: time it will take to go back for another trial,
Speaker 1: you're gonna spend that time in prison awaiting that trial.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to with yourself in the shoes of
Speaker 1: someone who's face with that choice, If you know that
Speaker 1: you've already been framed once or gotten you know, convicted's
Speaker 1: only you didn't do however it got to that once,
Speaker 1: you would be hard pressed to risk the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. The system that has already Damien and Damion
Speaker 1: was truly unhealthy and being abused by guards, and that's
Speaker 1: ultimately why I think they're all heroes to mean, but
Speaker 1: Jason Baldwin acted very heroically because he was ready to
Speaker 1: stay and fight and clear his name. But everyone felt
Speaker 1: that Damien's health was in such a state that to
Speaker 1: wait any longer might be detrimental, so he made that decision.
Speaker 1: You know what have been had that sentence, Jason Um
Speaker 1: of all the eighties something episodes we've recorded now, UM,
Speaker 1: his was really like it was difficult to even hear
Speaker 1: the stories that he told. Um. He's such an amazingly gentle,
Speaker 1: you know, soul, and you know he was what ninety
Speaker 1: hundred pounds back then, kids who actually did well in school.
Speaker 1: And You're right, that was the vibe he was giving off.
Speaker 1: Was this sweet little boy talking to me about fishing
Speaker 1: and what he likes to do when he's not at
Speaker 1: school and drawing. He was an abad drawer. And while
Speaker 1: he's talking to me, I'm looking at his tiny little
Speaker 1: wrists because if you believe the prosecution story, it's Baldwin
Speaker 1: who wielded the serrated hunting knife that castrated the buyer's boy.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking to this sweet little kid and staring
Speaker 1: at his wrist and trying to imagine that this guy
Speaker 1: knife to these kids in the way that it was alleged,
Speaker 1: and I just I just found it incredible. Jason Baldwin
Speaker 1: on the show, It was an experience I'll never forget
Speaker 1: when this all came down. You were in tenth grade.
Speaker 1: Grade grade, let's just reflect on that first second. You're
Speaker 1: not even anywhere near being an adult attent grade. So
Speaker 1: then you end up getting sent to maximum security prison.
Speaker 1: Right when you first go to prison, and you're not
Speaker 1: going to death row, you go what's called a diagnostic unit,
Speaker 1: and that's where they evaluate you mentally and physically to
Speaker 1: determine what your parent unit in the department corrections will be.
Speaker 1: Because they have a myriad of prisons on various different
Speaker 1: old slave plantations in the South, and each of them
Speaker 1: are different and in different ways by age and your
Speaker 1: strength and things like that. And when I went to diagnostics,
Speaker 1: they saw me like you saw me as a small
Speaker 1: innocent kid, and and and the diagnostics they were like,
Speaker 1: we've got to send you to one of two places, Jason,
Speaker 1: or you're not gonna make it. PC Protective custody or
Speaker 1: what's called SPU suicide Prevention Unit and suicide Prevention you
Speaker 1: you will have your own sell. And you know, I
Speaker 1: looked at it like this. At the time, we didn't
Speaker 1: have very many people on our side. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was just us. And I'm thrust into this incredibly impossible situation.
Speaker 1: And I was escorted everywhere I went into prison, and
Speaker 1: so I'd see the people in SPU going to chow
Speaker 1: and they'd be doing the thorazine shuff full because they're
Speaker 1: so heavily medicated. And I had a fear that if
Speaker 1: I acquiesced and let them put me an SPU, that
Speaker 1: they would forcefully medicate me and I would lose my
Speaker 1: mind and my ability to think and reason and to fight.
Speaker 1: And so I said, no, I can't do that. And
Speaker 1: as far as the PC protective custody, anybody knows if
Speaker 1: you are saying you are so weak that you need protection,
Speaker 1: that people are gonna see that and prey on you
Speaker 1: even more. And so I knew I had to some way,
Speaker 1: in some fashion stand on my own two feet in
Speaker 1: there and earn everybody's respect, from the inmates and guards alike.
Speaker 1: And they said, well, if you're not going to one
Speaker 1: of these places, we're gonna have to send you to
Speaker 1: Barner And at the time, they had just shift all
Speaker 1: these guys from the Little Tucker Unit to Barner and
Speaker 1: they were destroying the place. They said, it was just
Speaker 1: chaos and destruction and just incredibly violent place, and that's
Speaker 1: where they were going to have to send me. And
Speaker 1: I just told him, if that's what you gotta do,
Speaker 1: you gotta do it. And so they did eventually send
Speaker 1: me to Barner unit, and it was everything they said
Speaker 1: it was. How did you survive there? And you know,
Speaker 1: the by the grace of God, you know, as you said,
Speaker 1: I guess I would say I was incredibly luckily, but
Speaker 1: I was incredibly blessed too. I went in there, they
Speaker 1: opened up, and Mr Patton stepped out, and his clerk
Speaker 1: stepped out, and Mr Patton says, in my bowling, Mr Patton,
Speaker 1: Classfication Officer, I'll be assigning you to your housing unit.
Speaker 1: And this is my clerk, Mojo, And they tell me,
Speaker 1: you gotta stand up for yourself in here or these
Speaker 1: people will just will run you over and turn you
Speaker 1: into a sex slave and all these horrible things and
Speaker 1: make you pay money for protection and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And so they assigned me to seven barracks and seven
Speaker 1: barracks at the Barner unit is in take barracks. I
Speaker 1: walked down the hall and as I'm walking, I'm walking
Speaker 1: next to the barracks and it's got bulletproof glass three
Speaker 1: stories high, and these guys are beating on it. Right,
Speaker 1: it's plexi glass. It's got chicken wire in it, and
Speaker 1: there are cell bars on the inside of it going
Speaker 1: all the way up three stories. And I look and
Speaker 1: these guys are literally climbing this thing. They are climbing
Speaker 1: it above one and they're hanging onto the bars looking
Speaker 1: at me, beating the glass and pointing at me. Because
Speaker 1: they've been watching the trial on TV and the hearings
Speaker 1: and stuff for an entire year. It's like a pep rally. Right,
Speaker 1: They're finally going to have their hands on me. Right.
Speaker 1: And I get there and Sergeant Ivy's working the door
Speaker 1: and he tells me, He says, if you go in
Speaker 1: there and stand up for yourself, I got your back.
Speaker 1: If not, they got you. And I'm just holding the
Speaker 1: only thing I have is a bible, a couple of
Speaker 1: letters from a mom. That's it in a little paper bag.
Speaker 1: And they open the door and put me in there,
Speaker 1: and next thing I know, somebody swings up fist at me.
Speaker 1: I ducked that one. The next one catches me and
Speaker 1: I'm fighting. Immediately the door opens back up. There's may sprayed,
Speaker 1: Sergeant obvis yanking people off of me. I'm on the
Speaker 1: ground and he says, are you ready to go to PC? Now?
Speaker 1: Do you need to catch out? And the guys are hollering,
Speaker 1: catch out, bitch, catch out, all these horrible things, you know,
Speaker 1: which catch out means to leave the barracks and to
Speaker 1: go and to protective custody. And like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I knew I needed to earn these people's respect because
Speaker 1: I did not know how long I would be there.
Speaker 1: I know I'm innocent, but I don't know how long
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be in this prison. And so I tell
Speaker 1: him no, leave me. And next thing I know, we
Speaker 1: go from the dayroom tier downstairs and guys like push
Speaker 1: all the racks up against the wall. They're circling around us,
Speaker 1: and I'm fighting this guy. And then I'm fighting this
Speaker 1: guy and there's people hitting me from behind. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of orderly and fair, but then again it's kind
Speaker 1: of not. And so I fight the whole barracks that Friday,
Speaker 1: everybody and then they call shower call, and the barracks
Speaker 1: next door, eight barracks, they called two barracks at a
Speaker 1: time to the shower. The shower holds a hundred people.
Speaker 1: And so when I get there, I gotta fight all
Speaker 1: these guys from eight barracks. And so I thought all
Speaker 1: weekend my whole face was swoll up, my fists were
Speaker 1: swoll up, my body was beat. And so I do
Speaker 1: this all weekend. I get into fights in the chow hall,
Speaker 1: even like, because there's even other people from other barracks
Speaker 1: is wanting to get to me in the chow hall
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Come Monday morning, I'm barely even
Speaker 1: able to walk, you know, and and like the guys
Speaker 1: are like just pushing me and guiding me a bit
Speaker 1: and which way to go and stuff, because I can't
Speaker 1: even see even less than I normally do because my
Speaker 1: eyes and stuff are all swollen up. And I just
Speaker 1: remember thinking that whole weekend about this job out in
Speaker 1: the fields, whole squad. There's gonna be sunshine, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a dawn, and I'm gonna get to witness that.
Speaker 1: I was just looking forward to that first dawn, you
Speaker 1: know that that morning air. And so there was a
Speaker 1: part of me, no matter how bad it was, I
Speaker 1: was just looking forward to that first dawn. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can make it to that. You know. If I
Speaker 1: can make it to that, that's something good. It's interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: Twenty years ago, I was going around two different studios
Speaker 1: in Hollywood and saying, we should do a show that
Speaker 1: features these type of cases and shine a light on
Speaker 1: these injustices. And people were like, no, nobody wants that,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And now it seems like every other
Speaker 1: show you turn on, I have several of them. You
Speaker 1: do you have wrong? Man? On Stars? And I did
Speaker 1: a show for Discovery called Killing Richard Glossop, who another
Speaker 1: horrible case that I wish people would pay more attention to.
Speaker 1: Richard Glossops And on Oklahoma's death Row, the state has
Speaker 1: tried to kill him three times. The last time they
Speaker 1: tried to kill him, the portal was in his arm
Speaker 1: and they were using the wrong execution drugs, and the
Speaker 1: clock struck three, which is the appointed killing hour, and
Speaker 1: the family on the outside thought the stay had not
Speaker 1: come as it had several times before, crying and hugging
Speaker 1: thinking that he had been killed, when in fact, what
Speaker 1: was going on inside the death room was an argument
Speaker 1: between the state's attorney general and the head of prisons
Speaker 1: trying to figure out whether they should kill this guy
Speaker 1: because they had the wrong execution drugs and that fracas,
Speaker 1: and it's the second time there was the wrong execution
Speaker 1: drugs were being used. There's you know, there's a moratorium
Speaker 1: on executions in Oklahoma. That's the only thing that's keeping
Speaker 1: Richard Glossop alive, as opposed to this bizarre story that
Speaker 1: the prosecution you know, has given as to why he
Speaker 1: deserves to be killed, which is completely focused. The case
Speaker 1: of Richard Glossop came to my attention several years ago,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's talk about him, because they do need
Speaker 1: to bring more attention to it. Can you give us
Speaker 1: the capsule summary of this. There's not a long story
Speaker 1: to tell. It's Richard Glasso was the manager of a
Speaker 1: kind of a sleazy motel and he is accused of
Speaker 1: hiring the motel's janitor, who he had given a job
Speaker 1: to only a few months before, to kill the owner
Speaker 1: of the hotel so that he could take it over.
Speaker 1: The whole story on its face when you pick it apart,
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. The guy who actually did the killing is
Speaker 1: the junkie hotel janitor maintenance man named Justin Sneed, and
Speaker 1: he was convicted of the murder, but you know it
Speaker 1: was not sentenced to death. He cut a deal, pointed
Speaker 1: a finger at his boss. There's zero evidence, zero corroboration.
Speaker 1: We did some forensic accounting, or the defense attorney did
Speaker 1: some forensic accounting to show this idea of swindling and
Speaker 1: taking money is bogus. But conspiracy to murder hiring somebody
Speaker 1: to do a murder as a capital offense, and these
Speaker 1: guys wanted that notch on their belt. I'm convinced. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just if you look at the evidence, there is none.
Speaker 1: It's just one of these cases where it's so bizarre.
Speaker 1: And this guy has been on it's been two years
Speaker 1: since I did the show. It's either thirty five days
Speaker 1: or thirty eight days prior to your execution. Your moved
Speaker 1: from one terrible cell in death row to your final
Speaker 1: cell where you're placed on death watch, where the lights
Speaker 1: are on. You now only have one meal a day.
Speaker 1: You are sleeping on a thin like half inch excuse
Speaker 1: for a mattress instead of a real cot and they're
Speaker 1: just trying to wear you down. And this poor guy
Speaker 1: has gone through this process three times. He's had the
Speaker 1: portal placed in his arm awaiting the lethal injection druggs
Speaker 1: when they realized, oh, we have the wrong drugs. That's
Speaker 1: the only thing that has saved this guy. Where two
Speaker 1: mistakes by the prison the first attempt to kill him,
Speaker 1: there was a stay because a new witness came along
Speaker 1: and the government dismissed it as being relevant. But that
Speaker 1: was the first day. The other two days, the last
Speaker 1: two days were because of botched execution. And there's just
Speaker 1: no evidence tying this guy to the murder. The convicted
Speaker 1: killer who confessed to doing it is serving a life sentence,
Speaker 1: whereas the guy who allegedly hired him for which they're proof,
Speaker 1: is on death row under the most miserable conditions, you know.
Speaker 1: And this is where like my big thing is prosecutorial immunity.
Speaker 1: You know, on the one hand, it's been argued to me,
Speaker 1: will prosecutors have to be immune from their actions because
Speaker 1: you know, in many places prosecutors are underpaid, you know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't get good prosecutors to do their job if
Speaker 1: they were fearful of immunity. I get that on a
Speaker 1: certain level. And there's lots of great prosecutors and not
Speaker 1: everyone's a bad guy, and not every cops a bad cop.
Speaker 1: And I's like, like, you can't paint people with a
Speaker 1: broad stroke, But there's got to be a happy medium
Speaker 1: where wilful withholding of evidence, prosecutors have got to be
Speaker 1: held accountable, and a lot of this ship would go
Speaker 1: away in my opinion. I mean, you know, Judge Janine
Speaker 1: Janine Purou, the Fox commentator, in the case of Jeoffrey Deskovic,
Speaker 1: she fought DNA testing for a long time. You know,
Speaker 1: she went off to go run for office, and then
Speaker 1: her successor, janetd Furi, said, of course, we'll test the DNA.
Speaker 1: The DNA was tested and it immediately pointed to another person.
Speaker 1: Season four of ROMPHL Conviction, episode eight, Jeffrey Deskovic. And
Speaker 1: then the trial comes and just before the trial, the
Speaker 1: results of the DNA tests comes back from the FBI laboratory,
Speaker 1: which shows that the semen found in the victim didn't
Speaker 1: match me. Because remember she was raped. She was raped yes.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the lieutenant who oversaw everything in
Speaker 1: the layer that he penned to the FBI asking them
Speaker 1: to expedite the testing. He wrote in the letter that
Speaker 1: the DNA testing would either show my guilt or it
Speaker 1: would exonerate me. But when it came back and it
Speaker 1: didn't match me, my lawyer did try to get the
Speaker 1: indictment dismissed against me based on that, but the judge
Speaker 1: denied that motion. That that alone seems so just incomprehensible
Speaker 1: to me. I mean, the judge is impartial, right, we
Speaker 1: know the prosecutor has an agenda, but the judge is impartial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't understand. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: that back then DNA wasn't it wasn't as well known.
Speaker 1: But to be clear, I mean, DNA started being used
Speaker 1: in the court system as early as and this we're
Speaker 1: on trial now in nineteen nineties, so it's been around
Speaker 1: for three years. So while not in currency like now,
Speaker 1: it is not exactly totally unknown, right, and it's perfect.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the bowl standard. Yeah, so your DNA
Speaker 1: doesn't match. This is an inconvenient truth for the authorities,
Speaker 1: and the judge allows this this circus to go on. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: let's spend a moment talking about the actual perpetrator. Because
Speaker 1: every time, and I sound like a broken record when
Speaker 1: I say this, but every time that somebody like you
Speaker 1: gets convicted wrongfully, the actual perpetrator, they stopped looking for him. Right.
Speaker 1: Cases closed, And in this case the consequences were very real. Yes,
Speaker 1: school teacher Patricia Morrison, who also had a couple of kids.
Speaker 1: She was from peak skill, and she was killed by
Speaker 1: the stame perpetrator, Stephen Cunningham. She was killed three and
Speaker 1: a half years later as a results of Cunningham being
Speaker 1: left free on the street while I was doing time
Speaker 1: for his crime. Now you say, the real perpetrator, how
Speaker 1: do we know that here? Great, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: I am so glad you asked. Because the DNA matched him,
Speaker 1: because he got caught for the second murder Patricia Morrison,
Speaker 1: which resulted in his being incarcerated and having to give
Speaker 1: up a DNA sample which was put into the data bank.
Speaker 1: And so when I eventually got the further testing where
Speaker 1: the Innocence Projects helped, it matched him. And then he
Speaker 1: subsequently confessed and he played guilty in court. When did
Speaker 1: this happen. That happened over a half years after he
Speaker 1: killed a second victim. Wow, So Patricia Morrison today would
Speaker 1: be probably sitting around with her grandchildren, you know, probably
Speaker 1: be a retired school teacher by now, having a nice life.
Speaker 1: Her children would have grown up as they deserved too,
Speaker 1: as everyone deserved too. With their mother. The rest of
Speaker 1: her family wouldn't have gone through this horrendous loss. None
Speaker 1: of it had to happen except for the fact that
Speaker 1: they went on this crazy witch hunt to convict you,
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Deskovic of a crime that they knew he didn't commit.
Speaker 1: So he was exonerated, got millions of dollars from Westchester
Speaker 1: County and Putnam County, which the taxpayers should be livid
Speaker 1: about that. You know, this case was allowed to happen,
Speaker 1: and the same thing in Damien's case. They were you know,
Speaker 1: the seven or eight years was spent with a guy
Speaker 1: on death row. Seven or eight years was spent fighting
Speaker 1: DNA testing because of the finality of judgment concept in
Speaker 1: our legal system, which is absurd. Years later they do
Speaker 1: DNA testing, find out that the DNA does not match
Speaker 1: me or the other two guys. They are convicted to
Speaker 1: this day, they still have not run that DNA through
Speaker 1: CODIS to see who it matches. They refuse to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is so strange because in a case like this,
Speaker 1: especially in the small community, the people who are doing
Speaker 1: the investigating live in that community. By definition, when you
Speaker 1: have somebody out there who is capable of this sort
Speaker 1: of pure evil, you would think it for no other
Speaker 1: reason than purely selfish reasons. You would want to get
Speaker 1: that person off the street. But that that's not what happened,
Speaker 1: and it happens too frequently that these various factors combine
Speaker 1: to result in a tragic outcome. And what people don't
Speaker 1: realize also, you know, just most people's knowledge of the
Speaker 1: legal system comes from watching TV, and it fosters this
Speaker 1: idea that these people, these judges, these prosecutors, these attorney generals,
Speaker 1: that they have these positions because they're somehow moral people,
Speaker 1: they're good people who are looking out for society. In
Speaker 1: actual fact, these are politicians, just like senators, just like congressman.
Speaker 1: Their number one priority is winning that next election. So
Speaker 1: they're going to do for that next case exactly whatever
Speaker 1: the community is pressuring them to do. That's the way
Speaker 1: they're gonna lean because they want to win the next election.
Speaker 1: The legal system should be about finding the truth and
Speaker 1: if there's reason to believe that somebody has a wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction claim, especially with the advent of DNA technology, which
Speaker 1: you know, that's a new that was a new thing.
Speaker 1: The fact that a prosecutor can fight DNA testing like
Speaker 1: they did in Damien's case for eight or nine years,
Speaker 1: like they did in Jeffrey Descovic's case, which resulted in
Speaker 1: the death of another innocent human being, it's just outrageous,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's true too in the Central Park
Speaker 1: five case, where at Linda Fairsteam prosecuted those five kids
Speaker 1: even though she knew she had the evidence, she knew
Speaker 1: they didn't do it, and they had every reason to
Speaker 1: suspect that Matthias Yes was the actual killer, and then
Speaker 1: he went out and raped three other way been and
Speaker 1: killed one of them in front of her kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, I mean, I'm getting the hills just
Speaker 1: thinking about it, Like that is so bad and we
Speaker 1: should all want that to end, right, I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: If some tougher laws were passed about prosecutors being held
Speaker 1: accountable for their actions, I think a lot of this
Speaker 1: ship would end. It's about winning at all costs. It's
Speaker 1: not about the search for the truth. And again, I'm
Speaker 1: friends with a prosecutor. I know many good prosecutors. There's
Speaker 1: good guys out there, so I'm not saying every prosecutor
Speaker 1: is like that. But it's the system is human. It's
Speaker 1: the reason you cannot have a death penalty because the
Speaker 1: system is human, and the the it's so easy. We
Speaker 1: see with Damien how an innocent person can be killed.
Speaker 1: And so I've spent a lot of times talking to
Speaker 1: the mothers of victims of violent crime, and they want vengeance.
Speaker 1: And I understand that desire to have vengeance. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to look a mother in the eye and
Speaker 1: say to her, you don't morally have the right to
Speaker 1: want the death of the killer of your child. But
Speaker 1: we don't even have to get to that moral place
Speaker 1: because the death of one innocent person on death row,
Speaker 1: to me, means you can't have a death penalty because
Speaker 1: the system is fallible. It's run by human beings, some
Speaker 1: of whom want to win at all costs. No, that's
Speaker 1: the argument I have with anybody who's pro death penalty.
Speaker 1: I always say, Okay, what percentage of innocent people are
Speaker 1: you okay with executing five percent, ten percent? I mean,
Speaker 1: we know that the people that have been exonerated from
Speaker 1: death row, there's proof that four percent of people that
Speaker 1: were on death row are innocent, But we don't know
Speaker 1: how many others were executed that were innocent as well,
Speaker 1: because most of those cases just literally die and when
Speaker 1: they're when that death takes place, no one goes in
Speaker 1: and investigates those cases. I want to say too, there
Speaker 1: was one period of time where Harry Conic Senior was
Speaker 1: the d A and New Orleans and he put eight
Speaker 1: people on death row and six of them were exonerated. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether the other two are innocent or
Speaker 1: guilty or what became of them, but that was a
Speaker 1: pretty scary time right there. And there was that amazing
Speaker 1: sixty minutes piece where another the prosecutor from New Orleans
Speaker 1: actually came forward and with tears and said that you know,
Speaker 1: he feels terrible to this day about a guy that
Speaker 1: he put on death row that he knew was innocent
Speaker 1: and he would help the evidence, and he talks about
Speaker 1: his sort of perverse motives and it's just not a
Speaker 1: thing like the death penalty is not a thing, and
Speaker 1: just a slight divergence. You know, when you said earlier
Speaker 1: that the typical exoner you get a million dollars a year,
Speaker 1: the typical exonary actually gets nothing, right. I mean, some
Speaker 1: of them get paid, but even then it varies wildly
Speaker 1: from whether they get paid thousands of dollars or tens
Speaker 1: of thousands, or in the rare case like Jeffrey Deskovic,
Speaker 1: they actually did manage to get millions of dollars, but
Speaker 1: those are rare um you have to prove civil rights violations.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget there was a guy who actually
Speaker 1: was friendly with He's he's gone now, but he was
Speaker 1: sentenced to death in Louisiana and came within days of
Speaker 1: being executed before somebody found with a microscope and some
Speaker 1: brilliant scientific research was able to prove with DNA that
Speaker 1: he was innocent, and he was exonerated and freed, and
Speaker 1: he was awarded fourteen and a half million dollars, and
Speaker 1: the state of Louisiana peeled it all the way to
Speaker 1: the U. S. Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court overturned
Speaker 1: the award five to four. He had proven that they
Speaker 1: had willfully prosecuted him while knowing that he was innocent,
Speaker 1: and the Supreme Court made some bizarre ruling that it
Speaker 1: wasn't the responsibility of the prosecutors to train the younger prosecutors,
Speaker 1: that they had to turn over at culpritory evidence, and
Speaker 1: that he had to prove a pattern of misconduct. You know,
Speaker 1: it was just totally nuts. And he wrote an op
Speaker 1: ed in the New York Times where he said, I
Speaker 1: don't understand why the prosecutor who tried to kill me,
Speaker 1: knowing I was innocent, wouldn't be charged with attempted murder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, rest in peace. He was a he was
Speaker 1: a wonderful guy. And what you know, I had breakfast
Speaker 1: with him. Actually within days of the time the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court overturned his award and he got nothing. It was
Speaker 1: happy to be alive. And I'm glad you said what
Speaker 1: you said, Joe, because I also eve that I still
Speaker 1: believe in in people. I still believe in in prosecutors
Speaker 1: and police, and I believe in a system of laws.
Speaker 1: And I think that the large majority of people in
Speaker 1: our system are good people. I think most of the
Speaker 1: judges are good, but the ones that are bad we
Speaker 1: should all want to get rid of them because they
Speaker 1: do such terrible damage, and they do damage to the
Speaker 1: reputation of the profession as a whole as well. And
Speaker 1: these stories are real, these are real people, right, Richard Glossip.
Speaker 1: It's unimaginable, And I'm glad you brought that up to
Speaker 1: because what the fun kind of sense does it make
Speaker 1: that before they execute you, they go through this torture,
Speaker 1: like literal torture. And you know, there was a guy
Speaker 1: in Virginia whose case I've been involved with, and thankfully
Speaker 1: we were able to prevent his execution because he's innocent,
Speaker 1: guy named me Montelugus. And during the process of you know,
Speaker 1: working through his case, I learned that they have a
Speaker 1: practice in the Commonwealth of Virginia where I think it's uh,
Speaker 1: fifteen days or three weeks before your execution, they move
Speaker 1: you to another cell where you don't have none of
Speaker 1: your books, You have basically nothing. The lights are on,
Speaker 1: like you said, the whole time, and they come and
Speaker 1: check on you every fifteen minutes, so they wake you
Speaker 1: up every fifteen minutes and go, hey, just want to
Speaker 1: make sure Joe everything okay in there, Like I just
Speaker 1: want to you know, like what what, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: who came up with that? Well, I think they're trying
Speaker 1: to wear you down so you just accept your death
Speaker 1: so that you don't make a scene for the witnesses
Speaker 1: who are experiencing it. Is that what it is? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, no one's told me that, but
Speaker 1: I just feel like they're just trying to wear you
Speaker 1: down so you don't fight back. And Glossip told me
Speaker 1: himself like he was so tired that, you know, he
Speaker 1: was accepting of his fate even though he knew it
Speaker 1: was wrong, you know, and if it wasn't for the
Speaker 1: wrong drug, he'd be gone. It's so incredibly troubling because like,
Speaker 1: why just why you got the guy you wanted, You
Speaker 1: got the actual killer. You guys did your job's done?
Speaker 1: What do you need the extra body for what? And
Speaker 1: there's so many richer glossips out there. I Mean. The
Speaker 1: other weird and hard dynamic is that the family of
Speaker 1: the victim in that case believes the clossip is guilty,
Speaker 1: and for years, the families of the West Memphis three, sorry,
Speaker 1: the families of the victims, the parents of Michael Moore,
Speaker 1: Christopher Buyers, and Stevie Branch it thought we were horrible people,
Speaker 1: just Hollywood elites, and so funny what I would call
Speaker 1: the Hollywood elite. I live an hour north of Manhattan,
Speaker 1: and you know that as far away from Hollywood as possible,
Speaker 1: but you know that somehow Hollywood elites conspire to get
Speaker 1: these devil worshipers out of prison. For years, they hated us,
Speaker 1: called us names, and that's painful because you don't want
Speaker 1: to as makers of these things, you want to shine
Speaker 1: a light on the truth, but you don't want to
Speaker 1: cause the families pain. And that's the disservice that these
Speaker 1: police officials and prosecutors who maintain this facade of righteousness,
Speaker 1: that's the damage they inflict on the Emily members because
Speaker 1: a there's no justice because the real killers are running free.
Speaker 1: And secondly, the healing process. You know, we're both parents
Speaker 1: and I can't imagine, uh, you know, anything worse than
Speaker 1: losing a child. And there's no closure for losing a child,
Speaker 1: but there certainly can be finality to the experience, and
Speaker 1: your healing process is predicated on knowing justice has been served.
Speaker 1: And so we came along and upset the apple cart
Speaker 1: by coming out with a film that's saying Hey, everything,
Speaker 1: the police and prosecution and all your ten thousand meetings
Speaker 1: with these people is wrong. And you're putting these families
Speaker 1: through a double tragedy. And for years they hated our
Speaker 1: guts and and two of the three families came to
Speaker 1: accept our point of view by the end of the
Speaker 1: Second Paradise Loss, but even at the by the time
Speaker 1: of the Third Paradise Loss, which came out in eleven
Speaker 1: and coincided with their release, one of the families. You know,
Speaker 1: the movie was nominated for an Academy Award and some
Speaker 1: other prizes. And I mentioned that only because these families
Speaker 1: took the time to write to the Academy and to
Speaker 1: the Director's Guild and every place that had nominated us
Speaker 1: for a prize, to say that these films are works
Speaker 1: of fiction, that we manipulated them, we lied to them,
Speaker 1: that the West Memphis Three are guilty. And I look,
Speaker 1: I have, even though they hate us, I have endless
Speaker 1: reservoirs of sympathy for them, because again going through this
Speaker 1: experience as every parent's worse nightmare, and then to be
Speaker 1: victimized by the system again because the police and the
Speaker 1: prosecution have lied to them. That's the other part that
Speaker 1: people don't really think about is what happens to the
Speaker 1: victims when the truth is just not the truth. Who
Speaker 1: do you think called those kids? I don't want to do.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do to somebody else what I
Speaker 1: think was done to Damian I. What I do know
Speaker 1: is that the case needs to be reopened. That we
Speaker 1: all know that no sane prosecutor would knowingly let convicted
Speaker 1: teen Satanist child killers out into the real world if
Speaker 1: they had any kind of belief that they were guilty.
Speaker 1: If they do, because the argument in Arkansas amongst some
Speaker 1: of these officials, as there was so much pressure from
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp and Eddie Vetter and Peter Jackson, well, shame
Speaker 1: on you. You're gonna let a convicted child killer who
Speaker 1: you believe is capable of castrating little boys in a
Speaker 1: Satanic ritual. You're gonna let them out after eighteen years
Speaker 1: because Johnny Depp said too. So if that's true, shame
Speaker 1: on you. And if you don't believe that, and they're
Speaker 1: actually innocent, as we all know, then shame on you
Speaker 1: for sticking with this Alfred plea and not looking into
Speaker 1: the case. As we all know, there's some evidence that
Speaker 1: points very directly to one of the stepfathers. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say he's guilty or not, but a competent
Speaker 1: authority needs to look into this. And they refused too,
Speaker 1: because they're hiding behind the Alfred plea. And that's the
Speaker 1: crime here. I there. There. There's some simple abuses that
Speaker 1: I think could easily be remedied. One is prosecutorial accountability.
Speaker 1: There's way too much misconduct that needs to be arrested,
Speaker 1: and I think finding the balance between making it so
Speaker 1: scary that a prosecutor doesn't even want to take the job,
Speaker 1: which I understand, versus like just wilful withholding of evidence
Speaker 1: for example, it just needs to be stopped. The other
Speaker 1: thing is that people get a vested interest in staying
Speaker 1: on a case forever. Prosecutors stay on a case. Judges
Speaker 1: in some states like Arkansas are allowed to stay on
Speaker 1: the case if something is up for review. The original
Speaker 1: people should be out of the picture immediately. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just it just doesn't make sense to me. One
Speaker 1: of the cases that the Supreme Court finally is going
Speaker 1: to hear is the Curtis Flowers case, and we profiled
Speaker 1: Curtis Flowers. I mean, he's the guy who think it's
Speaker 1: totally innocent, and we profiled that case on a show
Speaker 1: I do call Wrongman. And the guy has been tried.
Speaker 1: He's the most tried inmate in the history of American jurisprudence. Jurisprudence. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm better at filmmaking than the vocabulary. Um, he's been
Speaker 1: tried six times and each time it's the same prosecutor,
Speaker 1: and they keep affirming his conviction again, circumstantial evidence and
Speaker 1: so many holes in that case. And thankfully the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court a few weeks ago said they're going to hear
Speaker 1: the case again. But even the Supreme Court hearing the case,
Speaker 1: if it's a good result and the state appeal is
Speaker 1: overturned by the Supreme Court, then it gets remanded back
Speaker 1: to you know, to the state to determine if they're
Speaker 1: going to try him a seventh time, which is absurd,
Speaker 1: and it's the same prosecutor. It's like crazy, right, the
Speaker 1: taxpair dollars that are being expanded on this if, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's probably the least important aspect of it, but it's
Speaker 1: still a remarkable amount of time and energy and resources
Speaker 1: being devoted to persecuting this one guy. Curtis Flowers, who
Speaker 1: was convicted of murdering four people in a furniture store
Speaker 1: in um Mississippi, Mississippi for white people. He's a he's
Speaker 1: a black man. And you know that's the other huge problem,
Speaker 1: as I don't need to tell anyone that the extreme
Speaker 1: racial inequities in our system, you know, So we don't
Speaker 1: have a ton of time left. UM, I do want
Speaker 1: to ask you what do you think about the role
Speaker 1: of media in um the criminal justice debate? Right now?
Speaker 1: And then I have one more question for you before
Speaker 1: we go to final thoughts. Sure, um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think one size does not fit all. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of irresponsible reporting. I mean, we saw in the Amanda
Speaker 1: Knox case that reporters were horrible in festering the image
Speaker 1: of Foxy Knoxy and making her seem guilty and really
Speaker 1: did her a disservice in her case, And same thing
Speaker 1: with Echols. I mean, you know, the local media down
Speaker 1: there was just fanning the flames of the monster of
Speaker 1: the daily headline and the daily news report. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of irresponsible reporting. There's a lot of true crime.
Speaker 1: And I hate that phrase again because it somehow implies
Speaker 1: like I'm considered a true crime filmmaker. I'd rather not
Speaker 1: be known as a true crime filmmaker, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a filmmaker who's involved in the criminal justice system. True
Speaker 1: crime implies that you're wallowing and the misery of others,
Speaker 1: you know, for entertainment purposes, and that's the last thing
Speaker 1: I'm doing. But some of that stuff on some of
Speaker 1: these networks does that. Um So, I think the role
Speaker 1: of smart, talented storytellers who are shining a light on
Speaker 1: criminal justice abuse has never been more important. First of all,
Speaker 1: for the first time and because of the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, with the advent of streaming and the growing
Speaker 1: popularity of documentary in general. You know, when I started
Speaker 1: making films five years ago, if you didn't sell your
Speaker 1: documentary to PBS, R HBO, you weren't selling your documentary.
Speaker 1: And now there's just you know, unscripted series were never
Speaker 1: heard of. I mean, that was just not even a concept.
Speaker 1: And with that also has come, you know, the blurring
Speaker 1: of the line between entertainment and news at networks has
Speaker 1: become so blurry that certain stories aren't covered. You know,
Speaker 1: the networks are owned by a handful of corporations. After all,
Speaker 1: and I like all the companies I work with, but um,
Speaker 1: there are certain stories that they won't cover for fear
Speaker 1: of offending advertise. I'm not just talking in the criminal
Speaker 1: justice round, but there's certain stories that either they won't rate,
Speaker 1: you know, in other words, the audience won't be big enough,
Speaker 1: or they'll offend certain advertisers. So today in also because
Speaker 1: of the demise of print journalism because of the Internet,
Speaker 1: you know, the newspapers have been gutted, you know. I
Speaker 1: think the independent documentarians are doing some of the most
Speaker 1: robust social justice reporting, and so that kind of filmmaking
Speaker 1: couldn't be more important and more timely. But it's hard
Speaker 1: to paint it all with the same brush because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of horrible reporting and irresponsible reporting. But generally,
Speaker 1: I think it's a good thing for people that are
Speaker 1: listening now and who are hearing the amazing story of
Speaker 1: how you sort of almost accidentally got involved in this
Speaker 1: or serendipitously got involved in this work and then ended
Speaker 1: up having an outsized impact. I know, for me, more
Speaker 1: than ever, I'm getting inquiries from people, how do I help,
Speaker 1: what do I do? I want to be involved, I
Speaker 1: want to do something I listen to your show, or
Speaker 1: I saw some NTV, or I came to an Innocence
Speaker 1: Project event, And what would you tell people that are
Speaker 1: listening now that want to get involved. What's what's the
Speaker 1: best way for them to, you know, make a difference.
Speaker 1: Someone who's not you know, isn't a rich person, but
Speaker 1: it's someone who has a heart and who hears about
Speaker 1: Richard Glosship or here's about so many of the other
Speaker 1: people Evan tell the Goose or Rob will who I
Speaker 1: recently visited on death Row in Texas, who's his innocent
Speaker 1: as as could be? What do you tell these people?
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all is awareness. You know, I
Speaker 1: myself before I got involved in this accidentally, when because
Speaker 1: I was making a film about something else, I thought
Speaker 1: I had a basic belief that the system works, and
Speaker 1: it works sometimes, but it often fails miserably. So just
Speaker 1: having that basic understanding and awareness is helpful and little
Speaker 1: actions add up to a lot. Again, not saying anything
Speaker 1: discourteous about Johnny Depp or Eddie Vetter or Natalie Mains,
Speaker 1: those guys were amazing. Those names wrote checks and did
Speaker 1: things and did concerts. But what really made the difference
Speaker 1: in my opinion, really what made a difference in that
Speaker 1: case where tens of thousands of regular people who saw
Speaker 1: paradise lost, who did not have an outsized wallet. But
Speaker 1: until the local politicians and prosecutors are politicians in many municipalities,
Speaker 1: they are elected officials. They didn't start taking the case
Speaker 1: seriously until the local population took the case seriously. And
Speaker 1: what made the local population take the case seriously is
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people who banded together on this
Speaker 1: website called Free the West Memphis three went down religiously
Speaker 1: to every action, every appeal, every hearing. There were thousands
Speaker 1: of regular people from all walks of life who chose
Speaker 1: to take their vacation in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to hold up
Speaker 1: a sign and have their voices heard. At the end
Speaker 1: of the day, a lot of these people who hold
Speaker 1: positions of power, who have this unique power to take
Speaker 1: your liberty away, often unjustly, often justly. Again, I don't
Speaker 1: think every prosecutor is a bad guy, but they are
Speaker 1: elected officials for the most part, and people should wake
Speaker 1: up and if you live in Oklahoma, pay attention to
Speaker 1: the Richer Glossop case. I mean, there's a sadly there's
Speaker 1: a case, and there's a wrongful conviction case yet probably
Speaker 1: in every state, and just little actions and awareness I
Speaker 1: think go a long way. You don't have to write
Speaker 1: a big check. So I guess start by watching learning more.
Speaker 1: Watch The Wrong Man you can stream on Amazon. Watch
Speaker 1: An Innocent Man, the amazing documentary about the book that
Speaker 1: John Grisham wrote. Rot these cases in Ada, Oklahoma and
Speaker 1: go to free rob will dot org. Is there a
Speaker 1: richer glossip side. I'm sure there is if you google
Speaker 1: richer glossip and why I'm drawing a blank with the
Speaker 1: website is but just google richer glossip and you'll you'll
Speaker 1: find a lot of supporters. There's a guy named Don
Speaker 1: Knight in Colorado who's running that case. He's the tireless,
Speaker 1: thankless defense attorney who is really has doing amazing work.
Speaker 1: So Don Knight in Colorado is a good guy to
Speaker 1: be in touch with if if you feel you have
Speaker 1: something significant to offer, or just be aware and um
Speaker 1: one minute speed round. First of all, I want to
Speaker 1: thank you for coming. Joe Barlinger, amazing filmmaker and advocate
Speaker 1: for the rothly convicted, and um, I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: doing more work with you. Yeah, me too. And like
Speaker 1: I said, let's let's take the last minute or two
Speaker 1: to any final thoughts that you have, if you have
Speaker 1: any um you know, we have a criminal justice system
Speaker 1: sorely in need of reform, and I think it's the
Speaker 1: number one issue. The thing we hold most dear as Americans,
Speaker 1: the thing that set us apart is our personal liberty,
Speaker 1: and a prosecutor has the unique power to take that
Speaker 1: personal liberty away without accountability. And I think it's time
Speaker 1: to hold those people who are have the power or
Speaker 1: to take our liberty away to be held accountable to
Speaker 1: a higher standard. And I think a lot of these
Speaker 1: problems would go away. But there's all sorts of problems
Speaker 1: in our criminal justice system and people should be aware
Speaker 1: of it because it really needs addressing. I mean, a
Speaker 1: whole generation has been locked away over horrible drug laws.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can go on and on and on.
Speaker 1: You know, we have five percent of the world's population
Speaker 1: and of the world's prison population, more than Russia and
Speaker 1: China combine. That's disturbing and goes against who we think
Speaker 1: we are as Americans. Yeah, we locked black people up
Speaker 1: at six times the rate of South Africa. The height
Speaker 1: of apartheid. It's all in national shame and a disgrace. Um.
Speaker 1: But absolutely yeah, please do get involved, keep listening. We
Speaker 1: appreciate you being here with us. And when you're on
Speaker 1: a jury, UM, we need everybody to show up serve
Speaker 1: because it's just your fellow human being who's up there,
Speaker 1: and they may be the next Damien Echols. So thanks
Speaker 1: again for listening. This is Wrongful Conviction. Don't forget to
Speaker 1: give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
Speaker 1: supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
Speaker 1: how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
Speaker 1: our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music
Speaker 1: on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Speaker 1: Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one