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 twenty sixteen Democratic Senate primary, John set
Speaker 1: his sights on winning the Lieutenant governorship, which put him
Speaker 1: on the Pardons and Parole Board. He then campaigned his
Speaker 1: fellow board members for the Horton's clemency, and despite a
Speaker 1: denial in twenty nineteen, John never gave up on the Hortons.
Speaker 1: By the time we recorded this episode, Dennis and Lee
Speaker 1: were already hard at work campaigning for John on his
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two Senate race. It was truly surreal to
Speaker 1: see Dennis and Lee reacting to the win on social media.
Speaker 1: What a turn of faith from wrongfully convicted to having
Speaker 1: a true friend in the United States Senate. We're re
Speaker 1: releasing this episode to congratulate our great friends Dennis, Lee
Speaker 1: and John. On May thirty first, nineteen ninety three, Dennis
Speaker 1: Horton went to his brother Lee's home for a Memorial
Speaker 1: Day weekend cookout. Later in the day, they visited their
Speaker 1: father in North Philadelphia, as well as their childhood friend,
Speaker 1: Robert Leif. Unbeknownst to the Hortons, Robert Leaf had committed
Speaker 1: an armed robbery earlier that day, in which two women
Speaker 1: were injured and one man was fatally shot. The Hortons
Speaker 1: pulled up to their friend Robert Leaf on the street
Speaker 1: and made plans to watch a basketball game back at Lee's.
Speaker 1: Robert asked the brothers to meet him one block up,
Speaker 1: where he got into their car with a gun. Police
Speaker 1: had been following Robert and immediately pulled them over, where
Speaker 1: all three men were arrested. The two injured women, who
Speaker 1: initially had said that there were only two arm 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 them the identities of the three men to
Speaker 1: change the narrative from Robert Leaf 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 Leaf 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. Best advice to you right
Speaker 1: now is fasten your seatbelt because this is going to
Speaker 1: be a crazy ride that you're about to go on.
Speaker 1: But before I introduced the two brothers who were wrongful
Speaker 1: convicted of the same crime together and ended up serving
Speaker 1: almost twenty seven years together in the same cell for
Speaker 1: the crime that didn't commit. I just want to say
Speaker 1: that this is Philadelphia in the nineties. You've heard stories
Speaker 1: on here before about Philadelphia in the nineties, and it
Speaker 1: was it was the time and place where a black
Speaker 1: man had a better chance of getting justice in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: Mississippi than in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And this is another example
Speaker 1: of that. So, without further ado, let me introduce to you.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have these guys on the show
Speaker 1: today because there's such inspiring people. Lee and Dennis Horton,
Speaker 1: the brothers Horton. Welcome to Ronful Conviction.
Speaker 2: All right, good afternoon. How's everybody doing out there.
Speaker 3: I'm glad to be here. Thank you for inviting us on.
Speaker 1: So let's get right into it. First of all, I
Speaker 1: want to say to both of you guys that while
Speaker 1: I am obviously delighted to have you on this show,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that you're here because of what you had
Speaker 1: to go through and it should have never happened. So
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. I'm talking about how
Speaker 1: was childhood for you guys growing up together while you
Speaker 1: moved to Philly in seventy seven, right, but give us
Speaker 1: a quick look at what your childhood was like.
Speaker 2: So when we was young growing up, we lived uneventful
Speaker 2: but a wonderful life.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: My mom and my father was married in the early sixties.
Speaker 2: Four of us four kids. We grew up in some
Speaker 2: of the roughest places in the city. But our family,
Speaker 2: my mom, my grandmother, my father always instilled in us
Speaker 2: that you had to work for what you wanted their life,
Speaker 2: and so we started working at an early age. My
Speaker 2: mom and father. Unfortunately they split up in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 2: My mom, she was trying to take care of four
Speaker 2: kids on our own. We wind up moving to the projects,
Speaker 2: which was at the time East Falls Projects. I was
Speaker 2: around twelve years old, my brother was at the time.
Speaker 2: So the projects was a rough project. You know, you
Speaker 2: had to prove the people up there that you was
Speaker 2: willing to fight in order for you to be able
Speaker 2: to stay, or they chased you out the projects. That's
Speaker 2: how it was. And so I had got into a
Speaker 2: fight with an individual and I wanted to fight. That
Speaker 2: was a blessing to some degree, but it was also
Speaker 2: a curse because now I was at eyes with a
Speaker 2: lot of guys my age twelve or thirteen year olds
Speaker 2: in the projects. And one day I wound up on
Speaker 2: the wrong side of the projects when we was approached
Speaker 2: by a group of individuals and it was maybe about
Speaker 2: twenty something thirty guys, and they approached us and they
Speaker 2: wanted me to fight a guy. And you know, there
Speaker 2: was a bunch of guys that was about to jump us,
Speaker 2: and then these other guys came out of nowhere and
Speaker 2: came to our rescue. And it was only a few
Speaker 2: of them, but they were like the neighborhood tough guys
Speaker 2: to some degree. One of these guys who would become
Speaker 2: a really good friend of mine was an individual named
Speaker 2: Rob Relief. And so I fell in with these guys
Speaker 2: and we became good friends. He came to my house,
Speaker 2: stayed at my house, slept at my house, ate at
Speaker 2: my house. My mom to somebody, rebecame his mom. And
Speaker 2: then in nineteen eight three, we moved out of the projects.
Speaker 2: By that time we kind of veered off a little bit,
Speaker 2: although I would go see my friends who were still
Speaker 2: living in the projects and some living in North Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: from town to town.
Speaker 1: And so now we move up towards the time of
Speaker 1: the actual crime, and I'm talking about Memorial Day weekend,
Speaker 1: May thirty first, nineteen ninety three. So there was an
Speaker 1: arm robbery at Toledo's Bar. Now, initial descriptions say it
Speaker 1: was two men, but later it was changed to three.
Speaker 1: One man with a twenty two caliber semi automatic rifle
Speaker 1: and another with a black pistol robbed the bar and
Speaker 1: its patrons. Samuel Alimo, six foot three and over two
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, wrestled with the gunman for the gun, but
Speaker 1: was overpowered and was shot and killed. Blues our Cella
Speaker 1: and Louis Martinez were injured, but both recovered, and a
Speaker 1: witness described chasing after the pleaing assailants who saw them
Speaker 1: in a small blue car and supplied police with a
Speaker 1: partial license plate number. And again, remember this is Philadelphia
Speaker 1: in the nineties, So we'll get to the myriad problems
Speaker 1: with the state story, but first let's hear your story.
Speaker 1: So it's Memorial Day weekend, May thirty first, nineteen ninety three. Lee.
Speaker 1: You had four kids, right, including a two week old baby,
Speaker 1: and at the time, Dennis, you were just recently engaged
Speaker 1: to be married, and had also recently been badly injured
Speaker 1: at work. And we're recovering, right, so you were in
Speaker 1: absolutely no condition to be engaging in hand to hand
Speaker 1: combat wrestling right with a very large man, right strong man.
Speaker 1: So can you take us through that day, the day
Speaker 1: that this armed robbery and murder, this whole tragedy happened.
Speaker 4: So Lee and his wife invited me and my fiancee
Speaker 4: over to his house. So of course I went to
Speaker 4: Lee's house, had a cookout with him and his wife
Speaker 4: and his kids, and later on that evening we decided
Speaker 4: we was going to take a ride. You know, we've
Speaker 4: been in the house all day. Stopped by my father's
Speaker 4: house see him, and then Lee was going to stop
Speaker 4: by just see a few guys that he knew, and
Speaker 4: we headed for North Philadelphia, where my father lived at
Speaker 4: the time, and we swung by his house, but his
Speaker 4: light was out so he was sleep So Lee said, okay,
Speaker 4: let's stop around Leaf's house. So, you know, we drove
Speaker 4: around Leaf's house. He was standing out on the corner
Speaker 4: with some other guys and Lee beat the horn and
Speaker 4: Leif came over to the car, letting him and Lee
Speaker 4: talk for a little bit. So Robert Leif was supposed
Speaker 4: to come back to Lee's house. We was going to
Speaker 4: watch the basketball game. So Leif said, pull up a
Speaker 4: block and I'll be there. And I got to just
Speaker 4: take care of something real quick, and we pulled up
Speaker 4: to the block and Leif came maybe about ten to
Speaker 4: fifteen minutes later, got in the car, and then we
Speaker 4: pulled off, and about a couple of blocks later, we
Speaker 4: saw sirens and we pulled over and the police jumped
Speaker 4: out of their vans and cars with guns drawn and
Speaker 4: told us to get out.
Speaker 3: Of the car and we got out of the car
Speaker 3: and they.
Speaker 4: Handcuffed us and they put us into the paddy wagon
Speaker 4: and they took us to the hospital when identification to
Speaker 4: take place, and all I remember is that the van
Speaker 4: doors opened up, and next thing you know, I've seen it.
Speaker 4: I think two ladies point to rob Belief and say, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's the guy right there. And then they said, well,
Speaker 4: what about these other guys and they said, yeah, them too,
Speaker 4: They were with them too, And then they shut the
Speaker 4: doors back and then that was it.
Speaker 3: And next thing you know, we were.
Speaker 4: Down the roundhouse where they charged you for a homicide.
Speaker 1: So, okay, right away we see problems emerge with what
Speaker 1: the witnesses are describing. Right the alleged number of individuals
Speaker 1: involved in the robbery went from went up fifty percent,
Speaker 1: right from two to three. And when you're there at
Speaker 1: the hospital in the police paddy wagon right outside the hospital,
Speaker 1: with the witnesses saying yeah them too. Also, one of
Speaker 1: the witnesses described a blue and gave a partial plate number,
Speaker 1: So did that match your own vehicles?
Speaker 2: The only witness who claimed to see the car said
Speaker 2: it was a blue small car. It was a suppos
Speaker 2: been a Chevy Chavette. He said the name of the
Speaker 2: car in his statement.
Speaker 3: Now Lee's car is a Priest Classic.
Speaker 2: A four door large car.
Speaker 3: Two tones, two different colors.
Speaker 2: But this witness, for some reason, we could never find
Speaker 2: him and never bring him the trial. The person the
Speaker 2: police put down is giving out this partial plate number.
Speaker 2: When we got the witness on the stand, she said,
Speaker 2: right then there, I never gave a police anything. I
Speaker 2: never saw a car, So how could I have ever
Speaker 2: given him The name is on this paper though they
Speaker 2: said you gave it to him, she said, it's impossible.
Speaker 2: I didn't see a car. I didn't give him anything.
Speaker 2: And the thing about the officers who did this first thing,
Speaker 2: you got to give you a context to who these
Speaker 2: officers are. The first officer was somebody who had strangled
Speaker 2: a guy to the early on, and then later, right
Speaker 2: after we was arrested, he shot a guy unarmed in
Speaker 2: a car. The second officer, she was involved in internal
Speaker 2: fears of investigation about a law quantity of drugs being
Speaker 2: found in the police station and them suspecting it or
Speaker 2: connected it to her. As you start appeeling the layers away,
Speaker 2: you start seeing that it's more to this than just
Speaker 2: 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 this.
Speaker 4: That's a really good question, and our heart of hearts,
Speaker 4: we believe in the beginning maybe they wasn't sure, but
Speaker 4: as things begin to unfold, they had to be clear
Speaker 4: that we wasn't involved in it, just didn't care. And
Speaker 4: the reason why we know is because the prosecuted them
Speaker 4: came to us with the deal. It was like five
Speaker 4: to ten years, and we were like, we're innocent, We're
Speaker 4: not taking any deal. Why should we take any deal
Speaker 4: to go to jail when we didn't do anything? And
Speaker 4: now it was sort of like, okay, you won't take
Speaker 4: the deal, all right, Well, the chip's going to forward.
Speaker 1: They made right, And it's very uncommon that in the
Speaker 1: crime as serious as this one armed robbery where someone
Speaker 1: was killed, right, that they're going to offer someone two
Speaker 1: guys in this case five years.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to be a legal scholar
Speaker 1: to figure this one out. So now we get to
Speaker 1: the trial and all three of you, Lee, Dennis, and
Speaker 1: Robert Leaf are tried together and they have three witnesses.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to put witnesses in quotation marks here.
Speaker 1: Three of them came to trial, and they eventually identified
Speaker 1: Dennis as the shooter. But did they have any physical
Speaker 1: evidence at all, any fingerprints, any security footage.
Speaker 2: There were no security footage. But they had was they
Speaker 2: actually had the gun, they said with the murdered weapon.
Speaker 2: They never actually could trace it to any bullets they
Speaker 2: got out of the body. They didn't match. But this
Speaker 2: is the gun that Leif had on him. He left
Speaker 2: the gun in the car. The cops retrieved it and
Speaker 2: when they checked it, it had fingerprints. But we've been always
Speaker 2: trying to get these fingerprints checked because they could never
Speaker 2: trace them to any of us. They took all of
Speaker 2: our fingerprints, they didn't fit any of us. Now, the
Speaker 2: way that my brother got to become the shooter is
Speaker 2: a clear case of mistaken identific Initially in the case,
Speaker 2: they all identified Robert Leeve as the shooter. And this
Speaker 2: where the whole case turns. If this don't ever happen,
Speaker 2: we probably would have walked. The one witness would identify
Speaker 2: different person every hearing. When she identified Robert leave Robert
Speaker 2: Leaf's attorney, he would read the noose some testimony of
Speaker 2: her identifying my brother, until it got to the point
Speaker 2: where when the judge asked her, well, who are you
Speaker 2: saying did this? She said, I'm going to say it's
Speaker 2: the one right there, and she was identifying me, and
Speaker 2: we had already told the court that they was identified
Speaker 2: as base where we were sitting at, so we switched seats.
Speaker 2: So when we switched seats, she was identified based on
Speaker 2: who the witness before her told her to identify, and
Speaker 2: then she thought that the person was sitting in that seat,
Speaker 2: but it wound up being me Lee Prton. When she
Speaker 2: heard my name, she said, hold it, what's the name?
Speaker 2: And the jadge said, why do you want to know
Speaker 2: the name? Because, uh, Dennis did it. It's Dennis. He
Speaker 2: said Dennis, and then she said, yeah, I heard him.
Speaker 2: They was calling Dennis. And then after that we were
Speaker 2: in the case and they knew that this woman just
Speaker 2: had made this up out of the sky just right
Speaker 2: then and there. Everybody refused to pull back and they
Speaker 2: could have corrected that right then and there and said,
Speaker 2: well hold up, Yonner, she's wrong. Mister Leaf was wearing
Speaker 2: a red jacket. We know that for sure. That's a fact.
Speaker 2: They identified him as a shooter. That's a fact. They
Speaker 2: didn't say any of that. They just let the witnesses
Speaker 2: go on and on and on with these wrong identifications.
Speaker 2: And this woman had identified every last one of us
Speaker 2: as a shooter at one given time.
Speaker 6: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
Speaker 6: and by Accenture, a global professional services company with leading
Speaker 6: capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the
Speaker 6: criminal justice system is a key pillar of the AIG
Speaker 6: pro Bono Program, which provides free legal services and other
Speaker 6: support to men, nonprofit organizations, and individuals most in need
Speaker 6: as part of Accentsure's commitment to racial and civil justice.
Speaker 6: Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in
Speaker 6: partnership with more than forty organizations bringing meaningful change to
Speaker 6: people and communities worldwide.
Speaker 4: Three weeks prior to our arrest, I had injured my
Speaker 4: leg on my job in such a fashion that I
Speaker 4: needed to acl repair. The holiday was on a Monday.
Speaker 4: I was supposed to go talk about the day that
Speaker 4: week I was going to have the surgery done. I
Speaker 4: just came off the crutches, so when we were arrested,
Speaker 4: it was impossible for me to be able to wrestle
Speaker 4: with this guy.
Speaker 3: I think they said he was like sixty four sixty
Speaker 3: three something like that.
Speaker 4: I was supposed to have overpowered him, wrestled all the
Speaker 4: way to the ground with this guy, overpowered the gun
Speaker 4: out of his hand, and then after I was supposed
Speaker 4: to have shot him, I was supposed to ran away
Speaker 4: at us as I could. There was no way I
Speaker 4: could run on it laid at all, and my medical
Speaker 4: records and all that would have shown that would have
Speaker 4: proved that, and this would have disqualified me from even
Speaker 4: remotely possibly being the shooter.
Speaker 3: And the thing is they knew this, but nobody cared.
Speaker 1: So you both had different lawyers, So two people who
Speaker 1: were supposed to be working on your behalf, what were
Speaker 1: they doing with all of this information? At trial, we.
Speaker 2: Made the mistake of a friend of my mom's told
Speaker 2: her that their son could be a good lawyer for us,
Speaker 2: and we accepted that, but he wasn't a criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 2: He had not tried one criminal case, and he wound
Speaker 2: up being a person putting our defense together. My lawyer
Speaker 2: had been retired, and he was kind of older, and
Speaker 2: he was a little out of step. Were just not
Speaker 2: prepared for a capital case. Now, the difference is Robert
Speaker 2: Leef was prepared. He knew the system and he knew
Speaker 2: how to work the system. Were naive. We thought that
Speaker 2: we were innocent and it was going to be shown
Speaker 2: 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 it. And the other guys tried by a
Speaker 1: guy that they literally pulled out a retirement and wheeled
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 tell the truth.
Speaker 1: You were the only guys in the courtroom telling the truth.
Speaker 1: That's the only problem, right, and that doesn't work.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing that you know, even now gets
Speaker 2: to me a little bit because I spent twenty seven
Speaker 2: years in prison when this be nipping of it early on,
Speaker 2: and I didn't have to never go to prison after
Speaker 2: twenty seven years. You know, sometimes in your mind you think,
Speaker 2: well you should have took there, But what would we
Speaker 2: have said. We didn't commit the crime, We didn't know
Speaker 2: anything about it. Took us twenty eight years to learn
Speaker 2: enough about this case to be able to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Where though we knew some of the facts that happened,
Speaker 2: we had to find in the police file. They went
Speaker 2: to court knowing that these witnesses was identifying my brother,
Speaker 2: but they had determined that Leif was the shooter.
Speaker 3: The prosecutors knew this, the detectives knew this. But this
Speaker 3: is the problem with the system. Nobody cared about the truth.
Speaker 3: It was about let's get the conviction at all costs.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they knew you weren't involved from the jump,
Speaker 1: but since you wouldn't plead to lesser charges that you
Speaker 1: knew and I think they knew were false, they threw
Speaker 1: you into this kangaroo court situation tied to Robert Leif,
Speaker 1: who was the actual culprit here, and they let the
Speaker 1: chips fall where they may. That's how they put it, right.
Speaker 1: So then you were represented by people who had no
Speaker 1: business whatsoever really even being in this courtroom, right, I
Speaker 1: mean definitely not as lawyers in a capital murder case,
Speaker 1: and you're literally on trial for your lives. So what
Speaker 1: was that like?
Speaker 2: I can tell you what it was like. Robert Leif's
Speaker 2: attorney communicated with our attorneys and they spold the head
Speaker 2: a joint defense, and right towards the time the jury
Speaker 2: was going out the deliberation, I remember my attorney looking
Speaker 2: back and saying, I don't think that his attorney was
Speaker 2: with us, And I said, do you think like he
Speaker 2: was doing everything in his power to get his client
Speaker 2: the best possible verdict he could get. He used the
Speaker 2: defense to paint a picture so that we would wind
Speaker 2: up with the most out of this and his client would,
Speaker 2: if not walk free, get the least.
Speaker 1: So the jury goes out, they come back in four
Speaker 1: or five hours later. Did you guys have hope that
Speaker 1: they were going to actually see the light that you
Speaker 1: were going to be vindicated.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was just a blur of a moment.
Speaker 4: Of course, you hold out hope that the system is
Speaker 4: going to do the right thing. I mean we were
Speaker 4: raised like everybody else, watching police shows and court shows,
Speaker 4: and from what they show on TV, it always seemed
Speaker 4: like the system does the right thing, everything would turn
Speaker 4: out right, even though everything was looking wrong.
Speaker 2: We leave the system to the point where I had
Speaker 2: put an application to the police force prior to being arrested,
Speaker 2: Like around the time when I got convicted, my wife
Speaker 2: received the letter saying that I was accepted to go
Speaker 2: to the next phase.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. I mean, it's like you had this was
Speaker 1: like an alternate reality, the life that should have been right.
Speaker 1: But okay, so the jury comes back in and the
Speaker 1: verdict is guilty. I mean, can you tell us about
Speaker 1: that moment. It's I mean, it's obviously horrible for anyone
Speaker 1: who experiences it, but here it's worse because one brother
Speaker 1: had to hear the other brother being declared guilty, followed
Speaker 1: by being declared guilty himself.
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you, being the oldest, I probably was
Speaker 2: the weakest. When I heard the verdict. It was like
Speaker 2: I was in a state of shock and my legs buckled,
Speaker 2: and I remember I felt like I was going down
Speaker 2: to the floor, and I remember hearing my Grandmam's voice
Speaker 2: in the back saying, stand up real loud, don't you
Speaker 2: fall on that ground. Stand up that part. I ain't
Speaker 2: never gonna forget.
Speaker 3: When they've been to divertict.
Speaker 4: I felt like I was in the twilight zone, like
Speaker 4: this wasn't happening, Like somebody's going to come in and
Speaker 4: say we're just kidding. This is not how it's supposed
Speaker 4: to end for us. I mean, we played by the rules.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: We were taught to work hard for whatever we get
Speaker 4: in life, and that's what we did. We were taught
Speaker 4: to mind the people in the neighborhood, the elders, to
Speaker 4: respect people. You know that this don't happen to decent people.
Speaker 2: And it was crazy because he immediately says this life
Speaker 2: without the possibility for rule immediately. And you know, when
Speaker 2: our family got a chance to speak on our behalf,
Speaker 2: each one of our family members got up there. They
Speaker 2: said that we didn't commit the crime, and the judge
Speaker 2: got bad at some point. I think he told my
Speaker 2: sister that if you're going to say that they didn't
Speaker 2: commit this crime, then don't need to get up y'
Speaker 2: I have heard enough of that.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, we were distraught beyond words can describe it.
Speaker 4: I became angry, angry at the system, angry at myself
Speaker 4: or allowing myself to even be in that situation around
Speaker 4: a guy like this. And as time went on, my
Speaker 4: grandmother came to see us, my grandmother and my mother,
Speaker 4: and we would just complain and complain about everything that
Speaker 4: was going on. We was talking about how dark prison was,
Speaker 4: you know, how cold it always seems to be in there.
Speaker 4: You know how these folks around here they don't care
Speaker 4: about anything. And I remember my grandmother said, you know,
Speaker 4: if it's cold, then heat it up with love, and
Speaker 4: if it's dark, then lighted up with hope. And my
Speaker 4: brother and I we looked at each other and said, Grandma,
Speaker 4: how much have lost her mind?
Speaker 2: He was looking at each other like this lady for real?
Speaker 2: Like did she realize that were in the prison for
Speaker 2: a crime we didn't commit. She telling us to do what?
Speaker 3: So the thing is didn't make sense to us at
Speaker 3: that time.
Speaker 4: But as the years would go by and we would
Speaker 4: begin the process us like reading you know, self help books,
Speaker 4: history books, psychology books, and we were beginning to taking
Speaker 4: the various programs that was available towards to educate ourselves.
Speaker 4: And we would go to the law library at least
Speaker 4: five days a week and we were just being there
Speaker 4: for hours reading this law, trying to decipher this law,
Speaker 4: these cases and figure out ways how to argue and
Speaker 4: plead because at some point we had to take over
Speaker 4: our own representation because the lawyers they were signing us
Speaker 4: was to up to park, and through that process more
Speaker 4: we became educated. The anger got directed in a different direction,
Speaker 4: and that anger all of a sudden started becoming more
Speaker 4: about helping men in prison that was wrongfully convicted as well,
Speaker 4: men that got more time than they should have.
Speaker 2: The revenge was going to be to try to send
Speaker 2: as many guys home as we could that would not
Speaker 2: come back to prison. And he talks about the law library,
Speaker 2: and that law library, we had a couple of tables
Speaker 2: of men who are all home now, we've all been exignery.
Speaker 2: All of us was at those tables in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: We all sitting around a table. And as the years
Speaker 2: were about, more and more men came into the institution
Speaker 2: and they would sit at those tables, and at the
Speaker 2: end of the day it was two of us as
Speaker 2: left that at the time, nobody was going home. Years later,
Speaker 2: everybody started trickling out, so eventually we would get transferred
Speaker 2: to another prison, which was a treatment facility more so
Speaker 2: geared towards programming and things like that. And so this prison,
Speaker 2: which was at Cichester, was kind of telling maybe for
Speaker 2: men like le and I. And one of the first
Speaker 2: things that we do is become a certified pair Support Specialists.
Speaker 2: That means we work with people who struggle with mental
Speaker 2: health issues, struggle with all kinds of issues, addiction, struggle
Speaker 2: with anger issues, people who.
Speaker 3: Just having a hard time adjusting the prison life.
Speaker 4: And we went to work and they started seeing how
Speaker 4: the assault on officers, rate on staff started to drop.
Speaker 4: They started seeing the rate on prisoner on prisoner assaults drop,
Speaker 4: write ups started to drop. Everything in the prison started
Speaker 4: getting better as a result of the certified pay Support
Speaker 4: Specialist program. And from there we began to branch out
Speaker 4: into other areas. The ward, the superintendent, and the deputy
Speaker 4: superintendent allowed Lee and I to be able to facilitate
Speaker 4: many of programs.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: We facilitated programs like Thresholds, which was a six step
Speaker 4: decisional making program. We taught men how to make better
Speaker 4: decisions in their lives so that they can also.
Speaker 3: Get through prison much better.
Speaker 4: But not only get through prison, but go home to
Speaker 4: their families and do better in society. We facilitated a
Speaker 4: health and wellness program and through this program, we founded
Speaker 4: the day Responsibility in that particular institution.
Speaker 3: What we did was we created.
Speaker 4: A play and the play would have areas and it
Speaker 4: would talk about recidivism, the impact of crime, dysfunction, trauma.
Speaker 4: I think it took us like fifty five fifty seven
Speaker 4: people to put this play on, and it was like
Speaker 4: a full production. We put the rolls out for men
Speaker 4: to sign up and they had to try out for
Speaker 4: the parts. It was so widely successful that the administration said, well, hey, listen,
Speaker 4: why you guys didn't do this bigger. So we went
Speaker 4: on to do another three more plays within that institution,
Speaker 4: and we went from fifty seven people being involved the
Speaker 4: year after that, one hundred and something people was involved.
Speaker 4: The following year. We put workshops on right after the play,
Speaker 4: So not only did we do the play, but we
Speaker 4: also put together twenty to thirty workshops where we would
Speaker 4: talk about these various things that were plaguing our community.
Speaker 4: And then those workshops we would invite people from the community, organizations,
Speaker 4: from the community that was involved in stopping violence like ceasefire,
Speaker 4: and universities to come in. Students and professors, we would
Speaker 4: invite politicians to come in.
Speaker 1: So while you're doing this amazing work, you're also, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, simultaneously fighting to overturn your own wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: But so much of the information that you were discovering
Speaker 1: exculpatory evidence right, tons of it was time barred, which
Speaker 1: means it was held back, you barred from being introduced
Speaker 1: because of procedural bullshit.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a lot of things that came, like,
Speaker 2: you know, the police officer when we found out about
Speaker 2: the internal fair investigation, they said that was public information
Speaker 2: that we should have known about it, even though we
Speaker 2: had no idea that she was going through this, so
Speaker 2: how would we even know to look for it? So
Speaker 2: that was time bard. We had a witness, an individual
Speaker 2: we ran across who Robert Leif had confessed to because
Speaker 2: he was also incarcerated when we met him. They said
Speaker 2: that wasn't usable because he's a prisoner, so of course
Speaker 2: he would help you. They use confessions against you, but
Speaker 2: you can't use one from somebody to get out of prison.
Speaker 2: But he said clearly what happened. Robert Leaf made a statement,
Speaker 2: and in his statement he identified the person he was
Speaker 2: with as somebody named Eddie. And in the statement he said, clearly,
Speaker 2: when they said that this man died, they believed he
Speaker 2: did it at the time because they took his jacket
Speaker 2: and they did paraffine tests on it. They did nitrate
Speaker 2: tests on his hands and all this kind of stuff
Speaker 2: like this, and he said, if the man died it
Speaker 2: was his time to die, then if I got to
Speaker 2: do the time for it, then I'll do the time
Speaker 2: for That's what he said in his statement. And he
Speaker 2: said something in the statement referring to us that put
Speaker 2: us not even with him. So everything that we would
Speaker 2: get would be toim barne. So we spent twenty years
Speaker 2: pretty much fighting to overcome procedural hurdles. When we was
Speaker 2: transferred to sci Chester, a staff member who was watching
Speaker 2: us at the time he was a counselor, and he
Speaker 2: started talking to us in general conversations and then one
Speaker 2: day he called us any and he asked what was
Speaker 2: we doing to get out of prison, And we told
Speaker 2: him about our fight in the courts and about our
Speaker 2: innocence and everything like this, and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: I believe y'all, I really believe everything you've been telling me.
Speaker 2: And he is the one that suggested to us that
Speaker 2: we filed for commutation, and at the time we told
Speaker 2: him that we were actually innocent and that wasn't the
Speaker 2: venue for commutation. And he spent months trying to convince
Speaker 2: us to file for commutation and just to give in,
Speaker 2: just to agree with him. We said okay, and he
Speaker 2: introduced us to a professor whose name is Kathleen Brown,
Speaker 2: who helped a lot of other guys with commutation applications.
Speaker 2: And she came to see us and we told her
Speaker 2: our story and she said, well, won't you follow actual
Speaker 2: innocence application. She said it would be the first one,
Speaker 2: but just write and just tell him what you told me.
Speaker 2: And that's what we did. And the first time we
Speaker 2: went before the board and parts and we was denied
Speaker 2: and we were distraught. And around that time, my mom
Speaker 2: was sick and she passed away not too long after that,
Speaker 2: and she was so supportive. We didn't talk a lot
Speaker 2: about her, but she was the person that was fueling
Speaker 2: our fight for all those years. You know, my grandma's
Speaker 2: words just kept bringing in our ears that keep fighting.
Speaker 2: And we had developed the philosophy of freemen have freed themselves.
Speaker 2: So we went back to the courts and then we
Speaker 2: filed for reconsideration and that was denied, and then we
Speaker 2: came back and filed for reconsideration again, and they granted
Speaker 2: the reconsideration based on some other stuff. But right before that,
Speaker 2: the Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman started taking up our calls.
Speaker 2: He looked at our application, he'd seen everything in it,
Speaker 2: and he just started doing what it was the right
Speaker 2: thing to do. He started fighting for us, and the
Speaker 2: rest is history.
Speaker 7: I am a Lieutenant Governor, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and
Speaker 7: I also chair of the Board of Partings and Commutations
Speaker 7: here and I became acquainted with Dennis and Lee's case
Speaker 7: during one of their reapplications for commutation, and when I
Speaker 7: read through it, I was blown away that these men
Speaker 7: were ever in prison, let alone struggling to be sent home.
Speaker 7: It's their background is astonishing. In Pennsylvania, the Board of
Speaker 7: Pardons requires a unanimous vote of five members. It has
Speaker 7: to be unanimous. If you don't get that threshold, that
Speaker 7: person is going to die in prison. And that, to
Speaker 7: me triggered a campaign to make sure that Lee and
Speaker 7: Dennis would be able to return to their families, because
Speaker 7: this is a gross miscarriage of justice. Not only are
Speaker 7: they profoundly deserving that they have always maintained their innocence.
Speaker 7: Everyone believes that these men, including the warden and the
Speaker 7: Department of Corrections, that They have no business being in prison,
Speaker 7: and I'm so grateful that they're out on some levels.
Speaker 7: In fact, I actually hired them to work on our campaign.
Speaker 7: They are far better a person and stronger a person
Speaker 7: than I could ever be. For what they went through
Speaker 7: to have emerged with the kind of humanity that they
Speaker 7: just radiate is nothing short of remarkable.
Speaker 1: So paint a picture for me. It's February twelfth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, just two days before Valentine's Day. Governor Wolfe
Speaker 1: signs the papers, and you're about to see your wife again.
Speaker 2: I would tell you honestly, it was extremely amazing and
Speaker 2: difficult at the same time. It was like a miracle.
Speaker 2: It brought a sense of anxiety, but also it was
Speaker 2: a great feeling of hope. Prison For me it was
Speaker 2: a darkness I was in, and when I walked out
Speaker 2: it seemed like everything was bright, everything was beautiful. I
Speaker 2: could see everything.
Speaker 1: Dennis, how about for you and for me?
Speaker 3: It was bitter sweet at the same time because my
Speaker 3: mother was no longer there.
Speaker 4: She never gave up with fighting with us, and to
Speaker 4: come home and for her not to be here, I mean,
Speaker 4: it was just so painful, but it felt good to
Speaker 4: be free.
Speaker 3: It was just unbelievable. I felt like I can breathe again.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, I'm still like bewildered because
Speaker 5: some may not even get this chance, and I want
Speaker 5: to see others that are deserving of the same opportunity
Speaker 5: to get it. We found our sense of purpose while
Speaker 5: we were in prison, and that purpose was helping others,
Speaker 5: helping others to know that prison, you may be here,
Speaker 5: but this is not who you are, and this is
Speaker 5: not who you have to be.
Speaker 4: And we did that by leading, by showing people we
Speaker 4: cared about them, and through that care and through that love,
Speaker 4: we begin to inspire men to be more hopeful about
Speaker 4: and more optimistic about their future.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really just an amazing, amazing story and
Speaker 1: perseverance and triumph over struggle, a tragedy, and you know
Speaker 1: the fact that you, guys, with the inspiration and the
Speaker 1: support of your families and other people, we're 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?
Speaker 2: What I just would say my call action would be
Speaker 2: to pay attention to what's going on out in society
Speaker 2: and to support criminal justice reform. Every innocent man is
Speaker 2: not going to make it out of prison, and it's
Speaker 2: a lot left behind, so we need some sort of
Speaker 2: criminal justice before and to make a way for others
Speaker 2: to be able to come out.
Speaker 1: Now we've come to the part of the show that's well,
Speaker 1: it's the closing of the show, but it's become my
Speaker 1: favorite part of the show. And of course it's called
Speaker 1: closing arguments. And I want to say, first of all,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys tremendously just for being here and
Speaker 1: sharing your story. You know, you guys are heroes to
Speaker 1: me and so many other people, and I'm excited to
Speaker 1: get this out there and get this story out in
Speaker 1: a way in the way that it should have been
Speaker 1: told from the very beginning. And so closing arguments what
Speaker 1: we do here, how this works is I'm just going
Speaker 1: to turn my microphone off and leave both of yours on,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to just sit back in my chair
Speaker 1: and 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.
Speaker 4: So, folks, first of all, thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 4: Thank you for listening to my brother and I recount
Speaker 4: our story.
Speaker 3: The thing is this, at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: the people control the system. The system don't control you.
Speaker 4: But we've gotten whole place where we allow the system
Speaker 4: to control us. This is supposed to be our system,
Speaker 4: and we're supposed to hold people accountable for the decisions
Speaker 4: they make on our behalfs. So the only thing I
Speaker 4: would say is please get involved and know with the prosecutors, no,
Speaker 4: with the district attorney, no, what the police are doing
Speaker 4: on your dime, because we pay the taxes that pay
Speaker 4: their salaries, and if this is how they're doing business,
Speaker 4: then we need to make sure we hold them accountable.
Speaker 4: My brother not with free, but there are countless others
Speaker 4: that are not fake.
Speaker 2: My grandma once told us that life gives you what
Speaker 2: life gives you, and it's up to you to make
Speaker 2: something out of it. So when we went to prison,
Speaker 2: that wasn't the end of our story. That was just
Speaker 2: another leg in our journey. The next part of our journey,
Speaker 2: we hope is spectacular. We want to do a lot
Speaker 2: of things out here in society. We did a lot
Speaker 2: of positive working inside and we'll do a lot of
Speaker 2: positive work out here. And so what I would say
Speaker 2: is make sure you pay attention to what's going on,
Speaker 2: and when somebody say they've been wrongfully convicted, try to
Speaker 2: give them the benefit of the doubt, because the think
Speaker 2: it'd be just like us, two individuals who just took
Speaker 2: a ride and wind up being arrested and sent away
Speaker 2: and spend twenty eight years trying to come back home.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wartis. With research by Lyla Robinson. The music
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
Speaker 1: for Good. On all three platforms. You can also follow
Speaker 1: me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flopp.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcasts
Speaker 1: and association a Signal Company Number one