Speaker 1: When we first recorded our interview with Dennis and Lee Horton,
Speaker 1: they had just gotten out of prison on a sentence
Speaker 1: commutation less than a year prior, and that happened in
Speaker 1: large part because of the incredible efforts of John Fetterman.
Speaker 1: After losing the Democratic Senate primary, John set his sights
Speaker 1: on winning Lieutenant governorship, which put him on the Pardons
Speaker 1: and Parole Board. He then campaigned his fellow board members
Speaker 1: for the Hortons climency and despite a denial in John
Speaker 1: never gave up on the Hortons. By the time we
Speaker 1: recorded this episode, Dennis and Lee were already hard at
Speaker 1: work campaigning for John on his center race. It was
Speaker 1: truly surreal to see Dennis and Lee reacting to the
Speaker 1: win on social media. What a turn of faith from
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted to having a true friend in the United
Speaker 1: States Senate. We're rereleasing this episode to congratulate our great
Speaker 1: friends Dennis, Lee and John. On May thirty one, Dennis
Speaker 1: Horton went to his brother Lee's home for a Memorial
Speaker 1: Day weekend cook out. Later in the day, they visited
Speaker 1: their father in North Philadelphia, as well as their childhood
Speaker 1: friend Robert Leaf. Unbeknownst to the Hortons, Robert Leaf had
Speaker 1: committed an armed robbery earlier that day, in which two
Speaker 1: women were injured and one man was fatally shot. The
Speaker 1: Hortons pulled up to their friend Robert Leaf on the
Speaker 1: street and made plans to watch a basketball game back
Speaker 1: at Leeds. Robert asked the brothers to meet him one
Speaker 1: block up, where he got into their car with a gun.
Speaker 1: Police had been following Robert and immediately pulled them over,
Speaker 1: where all three men were arrested. The two injured women,
Speaker 1: who initially had said that there were only two armed robbers,
Speaker 1: gave a shaky idea of all three men, sending them
Speaker 1: to trial together. Robert Leaf's attorney used confusion amongst the
Speaker 1: witnesses over the identities of the three men to change
Speaker 1: the narrative from Robert Leef as the shooter to Dennis,
Speaker 1: delivering a lighter sentence to the actual culprit, while the
Speaker 1: Hortons were sentenced to life without parole. Years later, a
Speaker 1: statement by Robert Leaf admitting his role and excluding the
Speaker 1: Horton brothers was unearthed, along with the fact that police
Speaker 1: had identified Robert Leef as the shooter from the very start. However,
Speaker 1: with this new evidence being ruled inadmissible on purely procedural grounds,
Speaker 1: it took the tireless advocacy of Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John
Speaker 1: Fetterman to win a commutation and release for the brothers
Speaker 1: after nearly three long decades in prison. This is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful conviction. My best advice tea right
Speaker 1: now is fasten your seatbelt because this is gonna be
Speaker 1: a crazy ride that you're about to go on. But
Speaker 1: before I introduced the two brothers who were wrongly convicted
Speaker 1: of the same crime together and ended up serving almost
Speaker 1: twenty seven years together in the same cell for the
Speaker 1: crime didn't commit. I just want to say that this
Speaker 1: is Philadelphia in the nineties. You've heard stories on here
Speaker 1: before about Philadelphia in the nineties, and it was it
Speaker 1: was the time and place where a black man had
Speaker 1: a better chance of getting justice in Philadelphia, Mississippi than
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And this is another example of that. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, let me introduce to you. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to have these guys on the show today because
Speaker 1: there's such inspiring people. Lee and Dennis Horton the Brothers. Horton,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrong for Conviction. Good afternoon. How's everybody doing
Speaker 1: out there. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for
Speaker 1: in brighting us on. So let's get right into it.
Speaker 1: First of all, I want to say the both of
Speaker 1: you guys that while I am obviously delighted to have
Speaker 1: you on the show, I'm sorry that you're here because
Speaker 1: of what you had to go through and it should
Speaker 1: have never happened. So let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about how was childhood for you guys growing
Speaker 1: up together while you moved to Philly and seventy seven, right,
Speaker 1: but give us a quick look at what your childhood
Speaker 1: was like. So when we was young, growing up, we
Speaker 1: lived uneventful but a wonderful life. You know. My mom
Speaker 1: and my father was married in the early sixties. Four
Speaker 1: of us four kids. We grew up in some of
Speaker 1: the roughest places in the city. But our family, my mom,
Speaker 1: my grandmother, my father always instilled in us that you
Speaker 1: had to work for what you wanted in life, and
Speaker 1: so we started working at an early age. My mom
Speaker 1: and father, unfortunately they split up in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: My mom, she was trying to take care four kids
Speaker 1: on home. We wind up moving to the projects, which
Speaker 1: was at the time East Falls Projects. I was around
Speaker 1: twelve years old. My brother was seven at the time.
Speaker 1: So the projects was a rough project. You know, you
Speaker 1: had to prove the people up there that you was
Speaker 1: willing to fight in order for you to be able
Speaker 1: to stay, or they chased you out the projects. That's
Speaker 1: how it was. And so I had got into a
Speaker 1: fight with an individual and I wanted to fight. That
Speaker 1: was a blessing to some degree, but it was also
Speaker 1: accursed because now I was at eyes with a lot
Speaker 1: of guys my age twelve and thirteen year olds in
Speaker 1: the projects. And one day I wound up on the
Speaker 1: wrong side of the projects when we was approached by
Speaker 1: a group of individuals and it was maybe about twenty
Speaker 1: something thirty guys, and they approached this and they wanted
Speaker 1: me to fight a guy. And you know that it
Speaker 1: was a bunch of guys that was about to jump us.
Speaker 1: And then these other guys came out of nowhere and
Speaker 1: came to our rescue. And it was only a few
Speaker 1: of them, but they were like the neighborhood tough guys
Speaker 1: to some degree. One of these guys who would become
Speaker 1: a really good friend of mine was an individual named
Speaker 1: Robert Leaf. And so I fell in with these guys
Speaker 1: and we became good friends. He came to my house,
Speaker 1: stayed at my house, slept in my house, ate at
Speaker 1: my house. My mom to somebody, we became his mom.
Speaker 1: And then we moved out of projects. By that time,
Speaker 1: we kind of veered off a little bit, although I
Speaker 1: would go see my friends who were still living in
Speaker 1: the products and some living in North Philadelphia, from town
Speaker 1: to town. And so now we move up towards the
Speaker 1: time of the actual crime, and I'm talking about Memorial
Speaker 1: Day weekend, May thirty first. So there was an arm
Speaker 1: robbery at Poldo's Bar. Now, initial descriptions say it was
Speaker 1: two men, but later it was changed to three. One
Speaker 1: man with a two caliber semi automatic rifle and another
Speaker 1: with a black pistol robbed the bar and its patrons.
Speaker 1: Samuel A Limo, six ft three and over two pounds,
Speaker 1: wrestled with the gunmen for the gun, but was overpowered
Speaker 1: and was shot and killed. Lose our Cella and Lose
Speaker 1: Martinez were injured, but both recovered, and a witness described
Speaker 1: chasing after the pleaing assailants who saw them in a
Speaker 1: small blue car and supplied police with a partial license
Speaker 1: plate number. And again, remember this is Philadelphia in the nineties.
Speaker 1: So we'll get to the you know, myriad problems with
Speaker 1: the state story, but first let's hear your story. So
Speaker 1: it's Memorial Day weekend. You had four kids, right, including
Speaker 1: a two week old baby, and at the time, Dennis,
Speaker 1: you were just recently engaged to be married, and had
Speaker 1: also recently been badly injured at work and we're recovering, right,
Speaker 1: so you were in absolutely no condition to be engaging
Speaker 1: in hand to hand combat wrestling right with a very
Speaker 1: large man, right, strong man. So can you take us
Speaker 1: through that day that that day that this armed robbery
Speaker 1: and murder, this whole tragedy happened. So Lee and his
Speaker 1: wife invited me and fiance had it's over to his house.
Speaker 1: So of course I went to Lee's house, had a
Speaker 1: cook out with him and his wife and his kids,
Speaker 1: and later on that evening we decided we was going
Speaker 1: to take a ride, you know, we've been in the
Speaker 1: house all day, stopped by my father's house see him,
Speaker 1: and then Lee was gonna stop by just to see
Speaker 1: a few guys that he knew, and we headed for
Speaker 1: North Philadelphia, when my father lived at the time, and
Speaker 1: we swung by his house, but his light was out
Speaker 1: so he would sleep. So Lee said, okay, let's stop
Speaker 1: around Leaf's house. So, you know, we drove around Leaf's house.
Speaker 1: He was standing out on the corner with some other
Speaker 1: guys and Lee beat the horn and Leif came over
Speaker 1: to the car and him and le talked for a
Speaker 1: little bit. So Robert Leaf was supposed to come back
Speaker 1: to Leave's house. We're just gonna watch the basketball game.
Speaker 1: So Leif said, pull up a block and I'll be there,
Speaker 1: and I gotta just take care of something real quick.
Speaker 1: And we pulled up to the block and Leif came
Speaker 1: maybe about ten fifteen minutes later, got in the car,
Speaker 1: and then we pulled off, and about a couple of
Speaker 1: blocks later, we saw sirens and we pulled over and
Speaker 1: the police jumped out of their bands and cars with
Speaker 1: guns drawn and told us to get out of the car.
Speaker 1: And we got out of the car and they handcuffed
Speaker 1: us and they put us into the Patty wagon and
Speaker 1: they took us to the hospital. When identification to take place,
Speaker 1: and all I remember is that the van doors opened up.
Speaker 1: And next thing you know, I've seen i think two
Speaker 1: ladies point to rob relief and said, yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: guy right there. And then they said, well, what about
Speaker 1: these other guys and they said, yeah, them too, they
Speaker 1: were with them too, And then they shut the doors
Speaker 1: back and then that was it. And next thing you know,
Speaker 1: we were down the roundhouse where they charge you for
Speaker 1: a homicide. So okay, right away we see problems emerged
Speaker 1: with what the witnesses are describing. Right the alleged number
Speaker 1: of individuals involved in the robbery went from went up fifty,
Speaker 1: right from two to three. And when you're there at
Speaker 1: the hospital and the police patty wagon right outside the
Speaker 1: hospital with the witnesses saying yeah them too. Also, one
Speaker 1: of the witnesses described a blue are and gave a
Speaker 1: partial plate number. So did that match your own vehicles?
Speaker 1: The only witness who claimed to see the car said
Speaker 1: it was a blue small car. It was supposed been
Speaker 1: a Chevy Svette. He said the name of the car
Speaker 1: in his statement. Now, Lee's car is a Priest Classic,
Speaker 1: a four door large car, two tones, two different colors.
Speaker 1: But this witness, for some reason, we could never find
Speaker 1: him and never bring him to trial. The person the
Speaker 1: police put down is giving out this partial plate number.
Speaker 1: When we got the witness on the stand, she said,
Speaker 1: right then there, I navi gave the police anything. I
Speaker 1: never saw a car, So how could I have ever
Speaker 1: given him Their name is on this paper though they
Speaker 1: said you gave it to him, She said, it's impossible.
Speaker 1: I didn't see a car. I didn't give him anything.
Speaker 1: And the thing about the officers who did this first thing,
Speaker 1: you got to give you a context who these officers are.
Speaker 1: The first officer was somebody who had strangled a guy
Speaker 1: to death early on, and then later, right after he
Speaker 1: was arrested, he shot a guy unarmed in a car.
Speaker 1: The second officer, she was involved in internal fears investigation
Speaker 1: about a law as quantity of drugs being found in
Speaker 1: the police station and them suspecting it or connected it
Speaker 1: to her. As you start ap peeling the layers away,
Speaker 1: you start seeing that it's more to this than just
Speaker 1: the police picking up some guys, and they were involved.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask, do you think that they
Speaker 1: knew from the beginning that you guys had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with us. That's a really good question, and our
Speaker 1: heart of hearts, we believe in the beginning maybe they
Speaker 1: wasn't sure, but as things begin to unfold, they had
Speaker 1: to be clear that we weren't involved, just didn't care.
Speaker 1: And the reason why we know is because the prosecuted
Speaker 1: them came to us with a deal. It was like
Speaker 1: five to ten years, and we were like, we're innocent,
Speaker 1: We're not taking any deal. Why should we take any
Speaker 1: deal to go to jail for when we didn't do anything?
Speaker 1: And now it was sort of like, okay, you won't
Speaker 1: take the deal, all right, Well, the chip's gonna for
Speaker 1: what they meant, right, And it's very uncommon that in
Speaker 1: the crime as serious as this one armed robbery where
Speaker 1: someone was killed, right, that they're gonna offer someone two
Speaker 1: guys and this case five years. Right. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be a legal scholar to figure this
Speaker 1: one out. So now we get to the trial and
Speaker 1: all three of you, Lee, Dennis, and Robert Leaf are
Speaker 1: tried together, and they have three witnesses. Now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put witnesses and quotation marks here. Three of them came
Speaker 1: to trial and they eventually identified Dennis as the shooter.
Speaker 1: But did they have any physical evidence at all? Any fingerprints,
Speaker 1: any security footage. There was no security footage. What they
Speaker 1: had was they actually had the gun they said with
Speaker 1: the murdered weapon. They never actually could trace it to
Speaker 1: any bullets they got out of the body. They didn't match.
Speaker 1: But this is the gun that Leif had on him.
Speaker 1: He left the gun in the car. The cops retrieved
Speaker 1: it and when they checked it, it it had fingerprints. But
Speaker 1: we've been always trying to get these fingerprints checked because
Speaker 1: they could never trace him to any of us, and
Speaker 1: they took all of our fingerprints, they didn't fit any
Speaker 1: of us. Now, the way that my brother got to
Speaker 1: become the shooter is a clear case of mistaken identific cation.
Speaker 1: Initially in the case, they all identified Robert Leave at
Speaker 1: the shooter. And this is where the cold case turns.
Speaker 1: If this don't ever happen, we probably would have walked
Speaker 1: The one witness would identify different person every hearing when
Speaker 1: she identified Robert Leave. Robert Leave's attorney he would read
Speaker 1: in those testimony of her identifying my brother and to
Speaker 1: it got to the point where when the judge asked her, well,
Speaker 1: who are you saying did this? She said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say it's the one right there, and she was identified
Speaker 1: me and we had already told the court that they
Speaker 1: was identified as based where we were sitting there, so
Speaker 1: we switched seats. So when we switched seats, she was
Speaker 1: identified based on who the witness before her told her
Speaker 1: to identify, and then she thought that the person was
Speaker 1: sitting in that seat, but it wound up being me
Speaker 1: Lee Horton. When she heard my name, she said, hold it,
Speaker 1: what's the name? And they just said, why do you
Speaker 1: want to know the name? Because, uh, Dennis did it.
Speaker 1: It's Dennis. He said Dennis, and then she said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard him. They was calling Dennis. And then after
Speaker 1: that we were in the case and they knew that
Speaker 1: this woman just had made this up out of the sky,
Speaker 1: just right then and there. Everybody refused to pull back,
Speaker 1: and they could have corrected that right then and there
Speaker 1: and said, well, hold up the honor, she's wrong. Mr
Speaker 1: Leaf was wearing a red jacket. We know that for sure.
Speaker 1: That's a fact. They identified him as a shooter. That's
Speaker 1: a fact. They didn't say any of that. They just
Speaker 1: let the witnesses go on and order or with these
Speaker 1: wrong identifications. And this woman had identified every last one
Speaker 1: of us as a shoot at one given time. This
Speaker 1: episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading global
Speaker 1: insurance company, and by Accenture, a global professional services company
Speaker 1: with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working to
Speaker 1: reform the criminal justice system is a key pillar of
Speaker 1: the A i G pro Bono Program, which provides free
Speaker 1: legal services and other support to men, nonprofit organizations, and
Speaker 1: individuals most in need as part of Accenture's commitment to
Speaker 1: racial and civil justice. Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro
Speaker 1: bono legal services in partnership with more than forty organizations
Speaker 1: bringing meaningful change to people and communities worldwide. Three weeks
Speaker 1: prior to our arrest, I had injured my leg on
Speaker 1: my job in such a fashion that I needed a
Speaker 1: c L repair. The holiday was on a Monday. I
Speaker 1: was supposed to go talk about the day that week
Speaker 1: I was going to have the surgery done. I just
Speaker 1: came off the crushes. So when we were arrested, it
Speaker 1: was impossible for me to be able to wrestle with
Speaker 1: this guy. I think they said he was like six
Speaker 1: four six three something like that. I was supposed that
Speaker 1: overpowered him. Wrestled allway to the ground with this guy
Speaker 1: overpowered the gun out of his hand. And then after
Speaker 1: I was supposed that I I shot him, I was supposed
Speaker 1: to that ran away at as I could. There was
Speaker 1: no way I could run on that lade at all,
Speaker 1: and my medical records and all that would have shown
Speaker 1: that would approve that, and this would have disqualified me
Speaker 1: from even remotely possibly being the shooter. And the thing
Speaker 1: is they knew this, but nobody cared. So you both
Speaker 1: had different lawyers. So two people who were supposed to
Speaker 1: be working on your behalf, what were they doing with
Speaker 1: all of this information? At trial, he made the mistake
Speaker 1: of a friend of my mom's told her that their
Speaker 1: son could be a good lawyer force that. We accepted that,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't a criminal defense attorney. He had not
Speaker 1: tried one criminal case, and he wound up being a
Speaker 1: person putting our defense together. My lawyer had been retired,
Speaker 1: and he was kind of older, and he was a
Speaker 1: little out of step. We were just not prepared for
Speaker 1: a capital case. Now, the difference is Robert Leath was prepared.
Speaker 1: He knew the system and he knew how to work
Speaker 1: the system. We was naive. We thought that we were
Speaker 1: innocent and it was gonna be shown and it never was.
Speaker 1: Like literally, if you put this in the movie, you say, well,
Speaker 1: one guy's represented by a friend of a friend who
Speaker 1: never tried a criminal case before this capital murder we're
Speaker 1: talking about, and the other guys tried by a guy
Speaker 1: that they literally pulled out a retirement and we ailed
Speaker 1: them into the courtroom. You guys didn't even know that
Speaker 1: you're doomed. You're thinking, hey, we go in and tell
Speaker 1: the truth. You were the only guys in the courtroom
Speaker 1: telling the truth. That's the only problem, right, and that
Speaker 1: doesn't work. And that's the thing that you know, even
Speaker 1: now gets to me a little bit because I spent
Speaker 1: twenty seven years in prison when this could have been
Speaker 1: nipping it early on and I didn't have to never
Speaker 1: go to prison. Back to twenty seven years, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes in your mind you think, well, you should have
Speaker 1: took there, But what would We just said, we didn't
Speaker 1: commit the crime. We didn't know anything about it. Took
Speaker 1: us twenty eight years to learn enough about this case
Speaker 1: to be able to talk about it. With that we
Speaker 1: knew some of the facts that happened. We had to
Speaker 1: find in the police file. They went to court knowing
Speaker 1: that these witnesses was identifying my brother, but they had
Speaker 1: determined that Leaf was the shooter. The prosecutors new this,
Speaker 1: the detectives new this. But this is the problem with
Speaker 1: the system. Nobody cared about the truth. It was about
Speaker 1: let's get the conviction at all costs. Okay. So they
Speaker 1: knew you weren't involved from the jump, but since you
Speaker 1: wouldn't please to lesser charges that you knew and I
Speaker 1: think they knew were false, they threw you into this
Speaker 1: kangaroo court situation, tied to Robert Leif who was the
Speaker 1: actual culprit here, and then let the chips fall where
Speaker 1: they may. That's how they put it, right. So then
Speaker 1: you were represented by people who had no business whatsoever
Speaker 1: really even being in this courtroom, right, I mean definitely
Speaker 1: not as lawyers in a capital murder case. And you're
Speaker 1: literally on trial for your lives. So what was that like?
Speaker 1: I canna tell you what it was like. Robert Leaf's
Speaker 1: attorney communicated with our attorneys and they smothy at a
Speaker 1: joint defense, and right towards the time the jury was
Speaker 1: going out to deliberation, I remember my attorney looking back
Speaker 1: and saying, I don't think that his attorney was with us,
Speaker 1: and I said, you think like he was the one
Speaker 1: everything in its power to get his client the best
Speaker 1: possible verdict he could get. He used the defense two
Speaker 1: paying a picture so that we would wind up with
Speaker 1: the most out of this and his client would, if
Speaker 1: not walk free, get the least. So the jury goes out,
Speaker 1: they come back in four or five hours later. Did
Speaker 1: you guys have hope that they were going to actually
Speaker 1: see the light that you were going to be vindicated.
Speaker 1: I mean it was just a blurd of a moment.
Speaker 1: Of course, you hold out hope that the system is
Speaker 1: going to do the right thing. I mean, we were
Speaker 1: raised like everybody else, watching police shows and court shows,
Speaker 1: and from what they show on TV, it always seemed
Speaker 1: like the system does the right thing, that everything would
Speaker 1: turn out right, even though everything was looking wrong. We
Speaker 1: believe the system to the point where I had put
Speaker 1: an application to the police force, proud to being arrested.
Speaker 1: Like round the time when I got convicted, my wife
Speaker 1: received the letter saying that I was accepted to go
Speaker 1: to the next phase. Jesus Christ, I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: you had this was like an alternate reality the life
Speaker 1: that should have been right, but Okay, so the jury
Speaker 1: comes back in and the verdict is guilty. I mean,
Speaker 1: can you tell us about that moment. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's obviously horrible for anyone who experiences it, but here
Speaker 1: it's worse because one brother had to hear the other
Speaker 1: brother being declared guilty, followed by being declared guilty himself.
Speaker 1: I canna tell you. Being oldest, I'll probably with the weakest.
Speaker 1: When I heard the verdict, it was like I was
Speaker 1: in a state of shock, and my legs buckled, and
Speaker 1: I remember I felt like I was going down on
Speaker 1: to the floor, and I remember hearing my grandmom's voice
Speaker 1: in the back saying, stand up real loud, don't you
Speaker 1: fall on that ground. Stand up that part. I ain't
Speaker 1: never going to forgive. When they rented di verdict, I
Speaker 1: felt like I was in the twilight zone, like this
Speaker 1: wasn't happening, Like somebody's gonna come in and say, we're
Speaker 1: just kidding. This is not how I was supposed to
Speaker 1: end for us. I mean, we played by the rules.
Speaker 1: You know. We were taught to work hard for whatever
Speaker 1: we get in life, and that's what we did. We
Speaker 1: were taught to mind the people in the neighborhood, the
Speaker 1: elders respect people. You know that this don't happen to
Speaker 1: decent people. And it was crazy because he immediately says
Speaker 1: as a life without the possibility for rule immediately, And
Speaker 1: you know, when our family got a chance to speak
Speaker 1: on our behalves, each one of our family members got
Speaker 1: up there. They said that we didn't commit the crime.
Speaker 1: And the judge got bad at some point, but I
Speaker 1: think he told my sister that if you want to
Speaker 1: say that they didn't commit this crime, then I don't
Speaker 1: need to get up here. Hadn't hurt enough of that,
Speaker 1: So I mean, we were described beyond words can describe it.
Speaker 1: I became angry, angry at the system, angry at myself
Speaker 1: for allowing myself to even be in that situation around
Speaker 1: a die like this. And as time went on, my
Speaker 1: grandmother came to see us. My grandmother my mother, and
Speaker 1: we would just complain and complain about everything that was
Speaker 1: going on. We was talking about how dark prison was,
Speaker 1: you know, how cold it always seems to be in there.
Speaker 1: You know how these folks around here they don't care
Speaker 1: about anything. And I remember my grandmother said, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's cold, then heat it up. With love and
Speaker 1: if it's dark, then light it up with hope. And
Speaker 1: my brother and I we looked at each other and said, Grandma,
Speaker 1: how must have lost her mind? He was looking at
Speaker 1: each other like if this lady for real? Like did
Speaker 1: she realize that we in the prison for a crown?
Speaker 1: We didn't commit she telling us to do what so
Speaker 1: the thing is didn't makes sense to us at that time.
Speaker 1: But as the years would go by and we would
Speaker 1: begetting the process us like reading you know, self help books,
Speaker 1: history books, psychology books, and we were beginning to taking
Speaker 1: the various programs that was available towards to educate ourselves.
Speaker 1: And we would go to the Law Liberate at least
Speaker 1: five days a week and we were just being in
Speaker 1: four hours reading this law, trying to decipher this law,
Speaker 1: these cases and figure out ways how to argue and
Speaker 1: plead because at some point we had to take our
Speaker 1: own representation because the lawyers they were assigned and that
Speaker 1: supposed to up to part. And through that process more
Speaker 1: we became educated, the anger got directed in different directions,
Speaker 1: and that anger all of a sudden started becoming more
Speaker 1: about helping men in prison that was wrongfully convicted as
Speaker 1: well men that got more time than they should have.
Speaker 1: The revenge was gonna be to try to send as
Speaker 1: many guys home as we could that would not come
Speaker 1: back to prison. And he talks about the law library,
Speaker 1: and that law library, we had a couple of tables
Speaker 1: of men who are all home now we've all been exonary.
Speaker 1: All of us was at those tables in nineteen We're
Speaker 1: all sitting around a table. And as the years were about,
Speaker 1: more and more men came into the institution and they
Speaker 1: would sit at those tables, and at the end of
Speaker 1: the day it was two of us as left. At
Speaker 1: the time, nobody was going home. Years later, everybody started
Speaker 1: trickling out. So eventually we would get transferred to another
Speaker 1: prison which was a treatment facility more so get towards
Speaker 1: programming and things like that. And so this prison, which
Speaker 1: was a c I Chester, was kind of telling maybe
Speaker 1: for men like Lee and I. And one of the
Speaker 1: first things that we do is become a certified pair
Speaker 1: support specialists. That means we work with people who struggle
Speaker 1: with mental health issues, struggle with all kinds of issues, addiction,
Speaker 1: struggle with anger issues, people who just having a hard
Speaker 1: time adjusting the prison life. And we went to work
Speaker 1: and they started seeing how the assault on officers, rate
Speaker 1: on staff started to drop. They started seeing the rate
Speaker 1: on prisoner on prisoner assaults drop, write ups started to drop.
Speaker 1: Everything in the prison started getting better as a result
Speaker 1: of the Certified Pair Support Specialist program. And from there
Speaker 1: we began to branch out into other areas. The warden,
Speaker 1: the superintendent, and the deputy superintendent allowed Lee and I
Speaker 1: to be able to facilitate many programs. You know. We
Speaker 1: facilitated programs like Thresholds, which was a six step decisional
Speaker 1: making program. We taught men how to make better decisions
Speaker 1: in their lives so that they can also get through
Speaker 1: prison much better, but not only get through prison, but
Speaker 1: go home to their families and do better in society.
Speaker 1: We facilitated a health and wellness program and through this program,
Speaker 1: we founded that their responsibility in that particular institution. What
Speaker 1: we did was we created a play and the play
Speaker 1: would have areas and that we would talk about recidivism,
Speaker 1: the impact of crime, dysfunction, trauma. I think it took
Speaker 1: us like fifty five fifty seven people to at this
Speaker 1: play on and it was like a full production. We
Speaker 1: put the roles out for men to sign up and
Speaker 1: they had to try out for the parts. It was
Speaker 1: so widely successful that the administration said, well, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: why you guys didn't do this bigger. So we went
Speaker 1: on to do another three more plays within that institution,
Speaker 1: and we went from fifty seven people being involved in
Speaker 1: the year after that, a hundred of something people was involved.
Speaker 1: The following year. We put workshops on the right after
Speaker 1: the play, So not only did we do to play,
Speaker 1: but we also put together thy workshops where we would
Speaker 1: talk about these various things that were playing in our community.
Speaker 1: And then those workshops we would invite people from the community, organizations,
Speaker 1: from the community that was involved in stopping violence like ceasefire,
Speaker 1: and universities to come in, students and professors, we would
Speaker 1: invite politicians to come in. So while you're doing this
Speaker 1: amazing work, you're also, of course, you know, simultaneously fighting
Speaker 1: to overturn your own wrong for convictions. But so much
Speaker 1: of the information that you were discovering, exculpatory evidence right
Speaker 1: tons of it was time bard, which means it was
Speaker 1: held back, you know, or Bard from being introduced because
Speaker 1: of procedural bullshit. I mean, it was a lot of
Speaker 1: things that we came, like you know, the police officer
Speaker 1: we found out about the internal fair investigation. They said
Speaker 1: that was public information that we should have known about it,
Speaker 1: even though we had no idea that she was going
Speaker 1: through this, so how would we even know to look
Speaker 1: for it? So that was time Bard. We had a
Speaker 1: witness individual we ran across who Robert Leaf had confessed
Speaker 1: to because he was also incarcerated. When we met him.
Speaker 1: They said that wasn't usable because he's a prisoner, so
Speaker 1: of course he would help you. They used confessions against you,
Speaker 1: but you can't use one from somebody to get out
Speaker 1: of prison. But he said clearly what happened. Robert Leaf
Speaker 1: made a statement, and in his statement he identified the
Speaker 1: person he was with as somebody named Ay. And in
Speaker 1: the statement he said, clearly when they said that this
Speaker 1: man died and they believed he did it at the
Speaker 1: time because they took his jacket and they did paraffint
Speaker 1: tests on it, and they did nitrate tests on his
Speaker 1: hands and all this kind of stuff like this. And
Speaker 1: he said, if the man died, it was his time
Speaker 1: to die. Then if I got to do the time
Speaker 1: for then I'll do the time for it. That's what
Speaker 1: he said in his statement, and he said something in
Speaker 1: the statement referring to us that put us not even
Speaker 1: with him. So everything that we would get would be
Speaker 1: time barner. So we spent twenty years pretty much fighting
Speaker 1: to overcome procedural hurdles. When we was transferred to sci Chester,
Speaker 1: a staff member who was watching us at the time,
Speaker 1: he was a counselor, and he started talking to us
Speaker 1: in general conversation, and then Monday he called us and
Speaker 1: then and he asked what was be doing to get
Speaker 1: out of prison, and we told him about our fight
Speaker 1: in the courts and about our innocence and everything like this,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, I believe y'all, and I
Speaker 1: really believe everything you've been telling me. And he is
Speaker 1: the one that suggested to us that we filed for commutation,
Speaker 1: and at the time we told him that we were
Speaker 1: actually innocent and that wasn't the venue for commutation. And
Speaker 1: he spent months trying to convince us to file for commutation,
Speaker 1: and just to give in, just to agree with him.
Speaker 1: We said okay, and he introduced us to a professor
Speaker 1: whose name is Kathleen Brown, who helped a lot of
Speaker 1: other guys with commutation applications, and she came to see
Speaker 1: us and we told her our story and she said, well,
Speaker 1: won't you follow actual innocence application. She said it would
Speaker 1: be the first one, but just right, and just tell
Speaker 1: him what you told me. And that's what we did.
Speaker 1: And the first time we went before the Board of
Speaker 1: Parts and we was denied and we were distraught. And
Speaker 1: around that time, my mom was sick and she passed
Speaker 1: away not too long after that, and she was so supported.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk a lot about her, but she was
Speaker 1: the person that was fueling our fight for all those years.
Speaker 1: You know, my grandma's bird just kept bringing in our
Speaker 1: ears that keep fighting. And we had developed the philosophy
Speaker 1: of free men have freed themselves. So we went back
Speaker 1: to the courts and then we filed for reconsideration and
Speaker 1: that was denied. And then we came back and filed
Speaker 1: for reconsideration again and they granted the reconsideration based on
Speaker 1: some other stuff. But right before that that, Lieutenant Governor
Speaker 1: John Federman started taking up our calls. He looked at
Speaker 1: the application, he's seen everything in it, and he just
Speaker 1: started doing what it was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: He started fighting for us and the rest of his history.
Speaker 1: I am a Lieutenant Governor John Federman of Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 1: I also chair of the Board of Pardons and Commutation
Speaker 1: here and I became acquainted with Dennis and Lee's case
Speaker 1: during one of their reapplications for commutation, and when I
Speaker 1: read through it, I was blown away that these men
Speaker 1: were ever in prison, let alone struggling to be sent home.
Speaker 1: It's their background is astonishing. In Pennsylvania, the Board of
Speaker 1: Pardons requires a unanimous vote of five members. It has
Speaker 1: to be unanimous. If you don't get that threshold, that
Speaker 1: person is going to die in prison. And that, to
Speaker 1: me triggered campaign to make sure that Lee and Dennis
Speaker 1: would be able to return to their families, because this
Speaker 1: is a gross miscarriage of justice. Not only are they
Speaker 1: profoundly deserving that they have always maintained their innocence. Everyone
Speaker 1: believes that these men, including the warden and the Department
Speaker 1: of Corrections, that they have no business being in prison,
Speaker 1: and I'm so grateful that they're out on so many levels.
Speaker 1: In fact, I actually hired them to work on our campaign.
Speaker 1: They are far better a person and stronger person than
Speaker 1: I could ever be. For what they went through to
Speaker 1: have emerged with the kind of humanity that they just
Speaker 1: radiate is nothing short of remarkable. So paint a picture
Speaker 1: for me. It's February twelve, just two days before Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: Governor Wolf signs of papers, and you're about to see
Speaker 1: your wife again. I would tell you honestly, it was
Speaker 1: extremely amazing and difficult at the same time. It was
Speaker 1: like a miracle. It brought a sense of anxiety, but
Speaker 1: also it was a great feeling of hope. Prison For me,
Speaker 1: it was darkness I was in and when I walked
Speaker 1: out of seeing like everything was bright, everything was beautiful.
Speaker 1: I could see everything, Dennis, how about for you and
Speaker 1: for me? It was a bitter sweet at the same
Speaker 1: time because my mother was no longer there. She never
Speaker 1: gave up. Were fighting with us and to come home,
Speaker 1: and for her not to be here, I mean, it
Speaker 1: was just so painful, but it felt good to be free.
Speaker 1: It was just unbelievable. I felt like I can breathe again.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I'm still like bewildered because some
Speaker 1: may not even get this chance, and I want to
Speaker 1: see others that are deserving of the same opportunity to
Speaker 1: get it. We found our sense of purpose while we
Speaker 1: were in prison, and that purpose was helping others, helping
Speaker 1: others to know that prison, you may be here, but
Speaker 1: this is not who you are, and this is not
Speaker 1: who you have to be. And we did that by leading,
Speaker 1: by showing people we cared about them, and through that
Speaker 1: care and through that love, we begin to inspire men
Speaker 1: to be more hopeful about and more optimistic about their future.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really just an amazing, amazing story of
Speaker 1: perseverance and triumph over struggle and tragedy. And you know
Speaker 1: the fact it, you guys, with the inspiration and the
Speaker 1: support of your families and other people, were able to
Speaker 1: take this unimaginable burden and rise above it and turn
Speaker 1: it into something that enabled you to transform the lives
Speaker 1: of so many other people, and that you're still doing
Speaker 1: it today. It's nothing short. It's magical. Really, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: And for the people who are listening right now, who
Speaker 1: are inspired and who are going to want to take
Speaker 1: action and make a difference because of what you guys
Speaker 1: have been able to accomplish. Is there anything you guys
Speaker 1: want to suggest? What I just would say my call
Speaker 1: action would be to pay attention to what's going on
Speaker 1: in society, and to support criminal justice before. Every innocent
Speaker 1: man is not going to make it out of prison,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot left behind, so we need some
Speaker 1: sort of criminal justice before to make a way for
Speaker 1: others to be able to come out. Now we've come
Speaker 1: to the part of the show that's well, it's the
Speaker 1: closing of the show, but it's become my favorite part
Speaker 1: of the show. And of course it's called closing arguments.
Speaker 1: And I want to say, first of all, I appreciate
Speaker 1: you guys tremendously just for being here and and sharing
Speaker 1: your story. You know, you guys are heroes to me
Speaker 1: and so many other people, and I'm excited to get
Speaker 1: this out there and get this story out in a
Speaker 1: way in the way that it should have been told
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. And so closing arguments what we
Speaker 1: do here, how this works is I'm just gonna turn
Speaker 1: my microphone off and leave both of yours on, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to just sit back in my chair and
Speaker 1: listen to anything that you feel has been left unsaid.
Speaker 1: So Dennis, how about you go first, and then Lee
Speaker 1: you'll be bad and clean up. So, folks, first of all,
Speaker 1: thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: my brother and I we count our story. The thing
Speaker 1: is this, at the end of the day, the people
Speaker 1: control the system. The system don't control you. But we've
Speaker 1: gotten to a place where we allowed the system to
Speaker 1: control us. This is supposed to be our system, and
Speaker 1: we're supposed to hold people accountable for the decisions they
Speaker 1: make on our behalfs. So the only thing I would
Speaker 1: say is, please get involved and know with the prosecutors,
Speaker 1: know what the district attorney, know what the police are
Speaker 1: doing on your dime, because we pay the taxes that
Speaker 1: pay their salaries, and if this is how they're doing business,
Speaker 1: then we need to make sure we hold them accountable.
Speaker 1: My brother not with free, but there are countless others
Speaker 1: that are not sure. My grandma once told us that
Speaker 1: life gives you what life gives you, and it's up
Speaker 1: to you to make something out of it. So when
Speaker 1: we went to prison, that wasn't the end of our story.
Speaker 1: That was just another leg in our journey. The next
Speaker 1: part of our journey, we hope, is spectacular. We want
Speaker 1: to do a lot of things out here in society.
Speaker 1: We did a lot of positive working inside and we
Speaker 1: do a lot of positive work out here, and so
Speaker 1: what I would say is make sure you pay attention
Speaker 1: to what's going on, and when somebody say they've been
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted, try to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1: I think it would be just like us, two individuals
Speaker 1: who just took a ride and wind up being arrested
Speaker 1: and sent away and spent twenty eight years trying to
Speaker 1: come back home. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden,
Speaker 1: Jeff Claver, and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lila Robinson.
Speaker 1: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 1: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast,
Speaker 1: and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at
Speaker 1: Lava for Good. On all three platforms. You can also
Speaker 1: follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason
Speaker 1: flop ravul Conviction is the production of Lava for Good
Speaker 1: Podcasts and Association, a Signal Company number one