Speaker 1: On November two, that one am in Ada, Oklahoma. The
Speaker 1: victim felt a gun at the back of her head
Speaker 1: as she unlocked the door to her home. She was
Speaker 1: pushed inside, robbed and raped by a black man who
Speaker 1: was described as between five seven and six two, wearing
Speaker 1: a hat and jacket and perhaps a gold tooth. Detectives
Speaker 1: filmed the Crime Stoppers reenactment video about the robbery and rape,
Speaker 1: and they approached Perry Lott, who was parked nearby. While
Speaker 1: they asked him a few questions about his whereabouts during
Speaker 1: the incident, they noticed that he had a gold tooth,
Speaker 1: and Perry, a bit of a ladies man, explained that
Speaker 1: he was in the area to see his girlfriend, but
Speaker 1: had been with his fiancee from three thirty pm on
Speaker 1: November one through six thirty am the following morning. Despite
Speaker 1: his alibi, police brought him in for further questioning. There
Speaker 1: they put him into a lineup and the rest of
Speaker 1: the men were given get this gold foil from a
Speaker 1: nearby florist to simulate having a gold tooth. The victim
Speaker 1: not surprisingly identified Perry lot that in there as her attacker.
Speaker 1: A rape kid had been done the morning the incident,
Speaker 1: but DNA technology was not yet available to exclude Mr
Speaker 1: Lott as it later would, and Perry Lott tragically was
Speaker 1: sentenced to three hundred years for rape, robbery, burglary, and
Speaker 1: making a bomb threat related to the incident. In this episode,
Speaker 1: which was recorded at an art show opening featuring the
Speaker 1: work of an innocent man on death row in Texas,
Speaker 1: rob Will, we interviewed Perry Lott and Eric Collin, the
Speaker 1: private investigator that was originally tasked with taking Perry's DNA swap,
Speaker 1: only to end up becoming one of his fiercest and
Speaker 1: most loyal advocates. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction. We have two incredible gentlemen in the studio
Speaker 1: with me today, and the studio is not even a studio,
Speaker 1: but I'll tell you more about that later. Um. First
Speaker 1: of all, I'll save the best for last. We have
Speaker 1: Eric Cullen, private investigator who has played an active role
Speaker 1: in more reversals now that I can count on probably
Speaker 1: both hands. It's great to have you here. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you, good to be here. And with
Speaker 1: Eric is a gentleman who he was instrumental in helping
Speaker 1: to free an individual who served three decades thirty one
Speaker 1: years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. D
Speaker 1: n A proved it. Perry, welcome to show. I'm really
Speaker 1: honored to have you here. Greetings, Jason. Is very exciting
Speaker 1: to be here. And also I've been looking forward to
Speaker 1: this for for some months now. That's awesome. And after
Speaker 1: thirty one years in prison, this is your first first
Speaker 1: emper It's very exciting. We can call this the exclusive
Speaker 1: interview with very a lot. Yeah, Perry, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the beginning. First of all, your case took place
Speaker 1: in Ada, Oklahoma, and Ada has become synonymous with wrongful
Speaker 1: convictions because John Grisha exposed the fact that there were
Speaker 1: six wrongful convictions in the space of just over a
Speaker 1: year in this tiny town, and those were profiled in
Speaker 1: his book An Innocent Manner. Four of them were and
Speaker 1: you happen to fall into that town not knowing that
Speaker 1: it was, I mean a trap. And you were a
Speaker 1: young man at the time, twenty four years old. Twenty
Speaker 1: four years old, you still look pretty young for what
Speaker 1: it's worth, thank you old and didn't know it. And
Speaker 1: in this case, um, it has a lot of the
Speaker 1: common factors that we see in wrongful conviction cases. Of course,
Speaker 1: as the most common factor, I witness misidentification across racial
Speaker 1: I witness miss identification, which we know are even more
Speaker 1: unreliable than same race. Uh. And those are notoriously unreliable,
Speaker 1: and they played a factor in the higher percentage of
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction cases than anything else. So let's go back
Speaker 1: to when this happened and how it happened. Because you
Speaker 1: were teaching school at the time, right and aid in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: And in six around Christmas time, I get a call
Speaker 1: from an old girlfriend in a Toka, Oklahoma, and I
Speaker 1: was between jobs, you know, feeling kind of bad about
Speaker 1: my surroundings, seen a lot of negativity that I didn't
Speaker 1: want to get involved with. So relocating Oklahoma was my option,
Speaker 1: my best option, and that's what I did. I went
Speaker 1: to Oklahoma, ended up in a Toka, worked there for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, found a better job in Ada,
Speaker 1: and moved to Ada. And that was the beginning of
Speaker 1: my sorrows. That's a very eloquent way of putting it.
Speaker 1: And Eric, I want to turn to you for a second,
Speaker 1: so can you take us back to this case. And
Speaker 1: this is a horrible crime. The local woman in Ada
Speaker 1: had her home broken into after one in the morning.
Speaker 1: The assailant pushed her into her house, stole money from
Speaker 1: her purse, and did unspeakable things to her. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the victor always contended to police and testified it trial
Speaker 1: that she received several prank calls at her home, harassing calls,
Speaker 1: I think she might have stated. Then she goes to work,
Speaker 1: which is basically across the street to a restaurant she
Speaker 1: managed called Arby's Um. There she works her complete shift
Speaker 1: or just about her complete shift, and she claims that
Speaker 1: a bomb threat was levied by the same voice that
Speaker 1: had been calling her harassing her at her home all day.
Speaker 1: That was a sign like a horror movie, right right,
Speaker 1: And so she clears her store, calls the police, no bomb.
Speaker 1: They go ahead and close the store down, and she
Speaker 1: claims again that the same caller calls the store again
Speaker 1: and asked why she closed the store down. I told
Speaker 1: you I was going to blow the place up if
Speaker 1: you didn't close the store down. Of course, the building
Speaker 1: never blew up. That's what she contended all the way
Speaker 1: through trial. Then she goes at approximately one one thirty
Speaker 1: home back across the street. That's where She testified that
Speaker 1: one black male had pushed her in her home, put
Speaker 1: a condom on and raped her and then took upwards
Speaker 1: of two from her purse. And then she also claims,
Speaker 1: of course she lost deposit receipts from the Arvy's close
Speaker 1: out cash too right, and he did other disgusting things.
Speaker 1: It was a picture of her daughter in the house
Speaker 1: that he apparently uh had sort of did sexual things
Speaker 1: to the photograph and like very very bizarre character. Whoever
Speaker 1: this guy was correct, That's what she testified to Perry.
Speaker 1: Did you know anything about this crime? He is a
Speaker 1: small community, didn't get the word get around. I did
Speaker 1: not know anything about the crime when I was first
Speaker 1: approached by Officer Crosby. I was in that area of
Speaker 1: the crime scene, but I had no idea of crime
Speaker 1: had been committed. I had no idea who this woman was.
Speaker 1: Then remember that name Crosby, everyone who's listening, because that's
Speaker 1: going to be a crazy development as we go on
Speaker 1: with this story. So in this case, we know that
Speaker 1: the eyewitness misidentification was not inadvertence, right, it wasn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't an accident, and she was steered is probably too
Speaker 1: light of a word. To describe how they ended up
Speaker 1: convincing her to identify you. And we know that the
Speaker 1: mind is not a camera. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people think that you see something, you recognize, that you
Speaker 1: remember it. That's not the way it works at all.
Speaker 1: And of course, again in the cross racial situation, it's
Speaker 1: even more prone to mistakes. But the victim had described
Speaker 1: that her assailant had a cold tooth or half a
Speaker 1: gold tooth, right, that's what they say. Personally, I don't
Speaker 1: believe she ever mentioned the gold tooth in her initial
Speaker 1: description of her assailant, mainly because of this. I've seen
Speaker 1: the police report where the victim it was a description
Speaker 1: at the very end was a goal to flag it
Speaker 1: had been added on. She wasn't able to identify his
Speaker 1: his hair color or type because he hated and he
Speaker 1: wore a jacket and things like that. And her description
Speaker 1: was so general that she said that it was just
Speaker 1: a black mail between five seven and six too. That
Speaker 1: describes most people, right, That describes entirely to hold black
Speaker 1: community mostly. Yeah, how did it get from there to
Speaker 1: where Perry ends up in the lineup? He had an
Speaker 1: alibi on top of everything else, a very solid alibi right,
Speaker 1: They didn't care about that. No. How they landed on
Speaker 1: Perry was they were doing a recreation of the crime
Speaker 1: for a show called Crime Stoppers down there at the
Speaker 1: time they would run on unsolved crimes or you know,
Speaker 1: fresh crimes even and they were filming that day and
Speaker 1: Perry had been in the neighborhood visiting someone just to
Speaker 1: block away. He goes, was turned the corner and sees
Speaker 1: his camera crews up there, and he stops on the
Speaker 1: side of the road to watch. Detective Crosby goes and
Speaker 1: approaches Perry at the car, notices the gold tooth and
Speaker 1: it's all downhill from there. Yes, you voluntarily went into
Speaker 1: the police station, and I imagine when you went in
Speaker 1: there you probably thought, well, I mean, I'm just going
Speaker 1: in and tell them what I know and go home. Yes, sir, uh,
Speaker 1: like I said, Mr Crosby came and approached me that night.
Speaker 1: They questioned me for hours at the police station, search
Speaker 1: my car, search my home, took me back to the
Speaker 1: police station, released me with the words you can go home,
Speaker 1: but don't leave town. So I went home and my
Speaker 1: fiance was there, and evidently they had questioned her while
Speaker 1: they were questioning me. And we had a lot of tizzy,
Speaker 1: a little bit of a spat because I just recently
Speaker 1: came to her home from Wisconsin, and now she's hearing that, Hey,
Speaker 1: your boyfriend might be a rapist, you know, so of
Speaker 1: course she's going to be on age somewhat. That next morning,
Speaker 1: at work, I was approached by Crosbie again, would you
Speaker 1: mind helping us out? You need to need you to
Speaker 1: be in a lineup, like you know, I'm just doing
Speaker 1: what any average citizen would do, doing what my dad
Speaker 1: had always taught me to do, is obey the police, cooperate,
Speaker 1: don't get disrespectful. So I'll go to the police station
Speaker 1: with them and participate in his lineup, right, And then
Speaker 1: it's almost comical to think that they had They said,
Speaker 1: there's nothing funny about it. They took the other men
Speaker 1: that they put in lineup and put aluminum foil because
Speaker 1: I have to simulate a gold tooth in their mouth.
Speaker 1: But you were the only one that actually had a
Speaker 1: gold tooth. Plus they had you say the words that
Speaker 1: she said she had heard. And uh, after the lineup,
Speaker 1: he comes with a shit eating green on his face. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: she picked you out and said what she picked me yeah,
Speaker 1: she picked you, and I'm you know, right there. I'm
Speaker 1: just in a whirlpool of confusion. So I'm in the
Speaker 1: city jail for a couple of weeks, you know, screaming, Hey,
Speaker 1: I didn't do this, you guys making a mistake. Nobody
Speaker 1: heard that, nobody wanted to hear that. They moved me
Speaker 1: across the street to the county jail, and I stayed
Speaker 1: there for a couple of months. At least. The quarter
Speaker 1: pointed attorney never came to see me. I never knew
Speaker 1: who I was until just right before time for appearances
Speaker 1: in court. His name was Frank Baber and uh me
Speaker 1: being so naive since I didn't do this, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: this has been easiest flipping over a pancake to get
Speaker 1: me out of this situation. There's so much that he
Speaker 1: allowed to go on that I now know he should
Speaker 1: have been object think it's like, hey, are you on
Speaker 1: my side or you on their side? That's what I
Speaker 1: was thinking in my head because at the time, even
Speaker 1: being totally unaware of what the law says, you get
Speaker 1: a feeling as a defendant if someone is vigorously trying
Speaker 1: to defend you. I didn't get that feeling It sounds
Speaker 1: like it was more processing you than defending you. Processing
Speaker 1: that's right. Did you hold out any hope that they
Speaker 1: were going to find you innocent or were I had
Speaker 1: always thought they would find me innocent because I knew
Speaker 1: that they had no evidence of me doing anything. I
Speaker 1: knew that I had not done anything. I'm thinking that
Speaker 1: this is going all the way up into picking the jury,
Speaker 1: and you guys still think I did this. How can
Speaker 1: you think I did this? What I did not know
Speaker 1: at the time was that I witness testimony was considered evidence.
Speaker 1: That's what out me. I'm sitting there thinking, Okay, where's
Speaker 1: the rick kit, where's the fingerprints, where's the picture that
Speaker 1: you say was taken out of the home, Where's the
Speaker 1: money that you say was missing? I was flat broke
Speaker 1: at the time. Hell, when they searched my house, they
Speaker 1: found a twenty dollar bill that my fiance had hidden
Speaker 1: in her dresser and it floated to the floor. Now
Speaker 1: I asked Jeff Crosby, I said, can I have that?
Speaker 1: And he says, yeah, you can have that. So I
Speaker 1: picked up that twenty dollar bill and put it in
Speaker 1: my pocket. I didn't know better. So I ended up
Speaker 1: in prison and the trial lasted all of eight hours.
Speaker 1: Eight hours. The trial lasted less than a working day,
Speaker 1: and you were sentenced to three hundred years consecutive sentences,
Speaker 1: four charges, four different sentences, one hundred fifty and fifty
Speaker 1: for rape, robbery, burglary, and bomb threatening three hundred years.
Speaker 1: It's such a it's such a preposterous concept. I mean,
Speaker 1: just the idea that we even do that in this country.
Speaker 1: Here you hear these sentences a thousand years and Oklahoma's
Speaker 1: notorious for these and again I'm not minimizing the nature
Speaker 1: of the crime, but Jesus Christ um Anyway, an interesting
Speaker 1: side note, um free trial. I think it's interested that
Speaker 1: back to how they were doing things in pot to
Speaker 1: Taluk County, Aida, Williamson and Fritz were in jail with
Speaker 1: Parish Well and Williamson and Fritz were two of the
Speaker 1: men that were profiled in the John Grisham the only
Speaker 1: nonfiction book that John has ever written, That's The Innocent Man.
Speaker 1: And John told me John was on wrangful conviction. He
Speaker 1: said that when he wrote that book he had to
Speaker 1: write it as nonfiction. He says, because when I write fiction,
Speaker 1: I have to make it believable. And he goes the story,
Speaker 1: the audience is not going to follow along, gonna lose
Speaker 1: my readers because this doesn't make any logical sense. And
Speaker 1: Williamson and Fritz such an unbelievably tragic case of two
Speaker 1: men wrongly convicted and one of whom lost his mind
Speaker 1: in prison and just months after he was released ended up.
Speaker 1: Dad really really sad, and he had been a elkland
Speaker 1: A's pitching prospect. He had had his life ahead of him.
Speaker 1: And the whole thing is a tragedy on top of
Speaker 1: a tragedy. Not to mention that there was no justice
Speaker 1: for the victim, which was a rape and murder case.
Speaker 1: Um and I want to go back to this, um uh,
Speaker 1: witness identification. If you, the listener, end up on a
Speaker 1: jury and you have a Perry Lot in front of you,
Speaker 1: you're in a criminal case and there's no evidence except
Speaker 1: eye witness identification. You should keep this in mind. And
Speaker 1: I'm quoting from the amazing book Convicting the Innocent by
Speaker 1: Brandon Garrett, which is sort of like the Bible of
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction causes and practices that lead to them. He
Speaker 1: said that many DNA exoner ration cases involving mistaken eye
Speaker 1: witnesses involved the use of suggestive identification procedures. A study
Speaker 1: of the first two DNA exonerations revealed that an incredible
Speaker 1: eight percent of the mistaken witness exonerations involved either factors
Speaker 1: that are known to affect the reliability of the identification,
Speaker 1: some suggestiveness and the identification procedure, or both, and in
Speaker 1: this case it was both. So the jury comes in.
Speaker 1: It was the most surreal moment of my life. When
Speaker 1: the jury came back and they found me guilty, all
Speaker 1: I could do was stare in the space. I was
Speaker 1: just sitting there in shock. And when they started reading
Speaker 1: off the terms one years, one hundred years, I was paralyzed,
Speaker 1: wondering what how can they be allowed to count more
Speaker 1: than a person can actually leave? If I die in prison,
Speaker 1: you're still gonna make me do time? What you know?
Speaker 1: I mean, It's like you said, it just don't make
Speaker 1: sense to give a person more time than a lifespan,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? In case you come back
Speaker 1: to life, maybe they want to back back and I
Speaker 1: don't know, and then you have to come back to
Speaker 1: life at least a couple of times and still live
Speaker 1: a long life. Who thing is ridiculous. I had a
Speaker 1: discussion with Eric just last night. I said, you know,
Speaker 1: they should take the sentence and portion of the trial
Speaker 1: out of the jury's hands because they are citizens. They
Speaker 1: get emotional, they're angry when they get the details of
Speaker 1: these crimes. Whether it's uh coherst or whether it's fabricated
Speaker 1: or whether it's just plain fact. These people have emotional
Speaker 1: attachments to that, and that's why they give people these
Speaker 1: exponential amounts of time when you know, a hundred years
Speaker 1: is enough to see a person die in prison, but
Speaker 1: you want to go overkilled and even the just breaking
Speaker 1: it down to the granular level, just the idea that
Speaker 1: they send you to fifty years for robbery and the
Speaker 1: robbery was a dred and twenty dollars, right or whatever
Speaker 1: it was like that, I mean in fifty for the
Speaker 1: bomb threat. Additional fifty the bomb threat as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we know, of course that these threats went on
Speaker 1: and there were other cases after Perry was arrested and
Speaker 1: convicted where whoever the actual perpetrator was continued with the
Speaker 1: same memo, which should be not even a red flag,
Speaker 1: should be a flashing red light where they go, hold up,
Speaker 1: this is we got, We're bucked up, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But that's not what happened. So so you
Speaker 1: get take into prison, yes, prison life. After sitting in
Speaker 1: the counter jail for four or five months, you're kind
Speaker 1: of glad to go to prison. So it's it's a
Speaker 1: real misstep thing in the mind. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: they say, the eyes will play tricks on you. After
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time with the traumatic situation or
Speaker 1: unfamiliar situation, the mind will start playing tricks on YouTube.
Speaker 1: You hear things, you see things, you imagine things. So
Speaker 1: once I did get in the d OC system, I
Speaker 1: was glad to have a bed. I was glad to
Speaker 1: have fresh clothes, a shower, movement of the things you
Speaker 1: don't get into counter jail. So that took a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure off of what I was going through at
Speaker 1: the time. Then I think most people don't realize, but
Speaker 1: I hear from so many of the exonorees that the
Speaker 1: jails are worse than the prisons, And it's actually logical
Speaker 1: when you think about it. I think people theory were jail.
Speaker 1: They think of like the classic thing in the movies
Speaker 1: where it's like a country place and it ain't like
Speaker 1: Barney and Andy like that. So you know like that,
Speaker 1: it's true all over the country and jails it's just
Speaker 1: a powder kick because everybody is in the cell together.
Speaker 1: There's no recreation, there's no education, there's no release of anything,
Speaker 1: there's no outdoors, there's nothing. So and as you said,
Speaker 1: no clean clothes. I mean, it's really and it's designed
Speaker 1: to break people. And I actually make them confessed the
Speaker 1: crimes they didn't commit just to go home. These places
Speaker 1: are dirty, their incubators of disease. They wouldn't worsh it
Speaker 1: on my worst ending. A lot of informant jail house
Speaker 1: and snitch stuff comes out of that environment too. And
Speaker 1: now you went to the prison and you're sentenced to
Speaker 1: well life because three hundred years, you know you weren't
Speaker 1: going to live that long. It's a miracle you lived
Speaker 1: through this whole experience in the first place. It surely is.
Speaker 1: I went in at twenty four years old, waited three
Speaker 1: or four years for the direct appeal once that was affirmed,
Speaker 1: and had no idea how the hell they affirmed that
Speaker 1: affirmed your conviction. How do you do that with the
Speaker 1: facts all laid out. I should have been home after
Speaker 1: three or four I knew enough about law to know
Speaker 1: that what the jury says is what the jury says. However,
Speaker 1: that's what the appeal processes for correct directify with the
Speaker 1: jury in the courtroom allowed that should never been allowed.
Speaker 1: When I was affirmed, I knew that I had a
Speaker 1: war on my hands. I had to become my own
Speaker 1: attorney because my family could not afford to help me.
Speaker 1: They were so far away in Wisconsin. I was basically
Speaker 1: by myself against this eight. I like to point out
Speaker 1: to people when I talked to them about this, when
Speaker 1: it says a lot versus eight, it's just like Oklahoma
Speaker 1: versus Texas, you're at war. I had to learn as
Speaker 1: quick as possible, as much as possible about what avenues
Speaker 1: is going to get me set free, because now I
Speaker 1: am here and it doesn't have a back door. Well,
Speaker 1: once I got to about twelve fifteen years in, I
Speaker 1: started losing it. I started losing hope. I started thinking
Speaker 1: I just might die in here. And two thousand two
Speaker 1: was the first time I went up for parole. Nothing changed,
Speaker 1: And two thousand and five I had a near death
Speaker 1: experience with staff infection. That's why I am partially disabled now.
Speaker 1: Staff infection had gotten into my system. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know what staff was, so it lingered in my body,
Speaker 1: actually got into my blood and mercered and attached to
Speaker 1: my spinal cord in my neck and day it was
Speaker 1: eating through the vertebrae in my net, exposed a few nerves,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm lucky to be alive. So two thousand
Speaker 1: five hours hospitalized. So they skipped over my parole hearing. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they totally skipped over my parole hearing. So I had
Speaker 1: to wait until two thousand and eight. That was probably
Speaker 1: the only time I ever considered dying in prison, And uh,
Speaker 1: that was two thousand five. Between two thousand five and
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, I saw and I sensed that I
Speaker 1: wasn't ever gonna be released by this parole board because
Speaker 1: they probably wanted you to admit gil right. I wrote
Speaker 1: a letter thinking that if I admit to this crime,
Speaker 1: they just maybe give me some relief, because in prison,
Speaker 1: you are under the impression that they want some kind
Speaker 1: of remorse, they want some kind of confession. They want
Speaker 1: to see you broke down, especially when you've been claiming
Speaker 1: to be innocent. So I'm thinking I'm gonna give them
Speaker 1: what they want. I'm going to manipulate my way out
Speaker 1: of here. That's after so many years of being in
Speaker 1: you start thinking like this, well, the truth isn't working,
Speaker 1: so now I'm gonna lie and see if that will
Speaker 1: do anything. Well. Between two thousand and eight and two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, the Innocence Project took my case. The
Speaker 1: first thing I did was told my attorneys, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we got an issue. I've already confessed to these crimes.
Speaker 1: I didn't do them, but I confessed to him trying
Speaker 1: to manipulate and got the letters retracted and we explained
Speaker 1: why I did that. It was kind of like a duress,
Speaker 1: and that was probably the last time I had given
Speaker 1: up hope. But prior to that, I had already started
Speaker 1: feeling like it's hopeless against this. There's no way I'm
Speaker 1: going to be able to I mean, I have done
Speaker 1: a stack of brief like this on my case and
Speaker 1: good good law work, pros a lit again law work,
Speaker 1: and nothing ever worked. I said, damn, you know the
Speaker 1: law is written. Why aren't you guys giving me some relief?
Speaker 1: Why aren't you actually paying attention to the laws That
Speaker 1: very everything in the law says that I should be
Speaker 1: getting some kind of relief from the state. You guys
Speaker 1: never really proved anything here. Why am I in prison?
Speaker 1: What connection do you have other than this high witness testimony?
Speaker 1: Being denied so many times was detrimental because when you
Speaker 1: feel like you have no hope of ever reaching anybody
Speaker 1: with the truth, you become something different. And if you
Speaker 1: don't have good people around you too help you get
Speaker 1: your mind right, you're going to become part of that
Speaker 1: prison and you're never gonna leave. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the saut Shank for diption where the guy says, these
Speaker 1: walls do something to you. They do. Yeah, that movie
Speaker 1: had a profound effect on me and so many other people. Um,
Speaker 1: nobody's listening. The Innocence Project gets involved, that's obviously a
Speaker 1: huge development. That's the only time I regained hope. Yep.
Speaker 1: Actually I took my hands off the wheel when I knew.
Speaker 1: When you hear the word Innocence Project in prison, you
Speaker 1: know you've got the kind of help you need. That
Speaker 1: place is synonymous with God when you're an innocent person.
Speaker 1: The Innocence Project, when you hear that name, you you
Speaker 1: you know you're going home. Wow, that's heavy. Um, that's
Speaker 1: great to hear having been there myself for six years. Um,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. I've never heard it put that way before,
Speaker 1: but it's it's great to hear. That obviously means a lot.
Speaker 1: So innce this project gets involved, how did you get
Speaker 1: involved there and how did you help to resolve this?
Speaker 1: And how the hell is he here instead of serving
Speaker 1: another two D seventy something years, uh, two D sixty
Speaker 1: eight to be exact. That's my champion right there, man.
Speaker 1: So I UM, I was working on some other post
Speaker 1: conviction cases and UM Karen Thompson had reached out to
Speaker 1: me on a referral from some lawyers that I was
Speaker 1: working with on those cases. So in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: Karen wanted me to simply go meet Perry at Dick
Speaker 1: Connor in prison and take his DNA sample and and
Speaker 1: then of course to get that sample to sell Mark,
Speaker 1: which is who the Innocence Project uses to test their
Speaker 1: DNA right the DNA lab very fast day. They're the
Speaker 1: best sel Mark. And in the meantime Karen win hadn't
Speaker 1: assigned me some other duties. One of those things was
Speaker 1: to find an alternate suspect and find an individual who
Speaker 1: actually did this. Well, I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: doing that and doing my own covert methods of obtaining DNA,
Speaker 1: such as posing as somebody from the casino with you know,
Speaker 1: to pull this guy's trash that I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I've done it, and he's a the casino guy, show
Speaker 1: up the gift guard. Hey like this envelope. We actually
Speaker 1: went that far, you know, tested it in the whole
Speaker 1: bit and a gift card trick. That's good, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so but it was very disheartening. Uh, this guy's
Speaker 1: been acquitted of two rapes I think one one dismissal
Speaker 1: and one to quit, all within this somewhat of a
Speaker 1: similar m A and man, we were pretty confident it
Speaker 1: was him, and of course a little heartbroken to find
Speaker 1: out it was. And but then again, we don't want
Speaker 1: to be part of wrongfully accusing people either, So we
Speaker 1: moved on from this this guy, and so we continue
Speaker 1: to move along the whole time, though in the mean meantime,
Speaker 1: Karen is constantly trying to get the d A from
Speaker 1: Potadak County. Who's this guy that's been there since the
Speaker 1: Williamson frit fought no Ward days. They're just so stuck,
Speaker 1: I mean, in their ways and Karen trying to budge
Speaker 1: him just to cooperate. Well, let's at least let my
Speaker 1: investigator interview this victim. And so, long story short, Finally
Speaker 1: Detective Crosby, who's still there as well, finds the victim
Speaker 1: and it was agreed upon that he and I would
Speaker 1: go interview her together. And this is where ship gets real.
Speaker 1: He gets real real. So tell us about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we agreed that he would go first and I
Speaker 1: wouldn't interrupt him, and I would go last and he
Speaker 1: wouldn't interrupt me. We get in there, the victim says
Speaker 1: that going along with a whole bit, everything's the same,
Speaker 1: nothing's really changed today as I sit here, and and
Speaker 1: then at some point, um, of course we've been in
Speaker 1: the room. I've done it. No telling how many interviews
Speaker 1: have individuals, from defendants to suspects. You just get the
Speaker 1: body language. Part two you can't really read in the transcript.
Speaker 1: I could see something change in her body language that
Speaker 1: was very much in line, and the energy was that
Speaker 1: she was ready to get this off of chess and
Speaker 1: tired of carrying this around. And in fact in the
Speaker 1: transcript you can read in there he actually asked her
Speaker 1: if she's okay. During his questioning of her, it was
Speaker 1: really light, you know, and she had to get a
Speaker 1: drink of water. Her mouth was dry, and she stuttering
Speaker 1: things like that. And then it was my turn. And
Speaker 1: then in the beginning of my interview with her, she
Speaker 1: was definitive that it was still Parring. She was definitive
Speaker 1: that it was his voice and that that voice is
Speaker 1: what carried her through her certainty it was Parry. And
Speaker 1: then the best thing I had to do, and I've
Speaker 1: done this many times, was and again I knew she
Speaker 1: had other things to say. Okay, well I'm ready. Is
Speaker 1: that all you have now? Yeah? Okay, well I'm okay.
Speaker 1: Well let's wrap it up. I appreciate your time, and
Speaker 1: this has been tough. And then she tells me more
Speaker 1: I do that about three times. She ends up telling
Speaker 1: me that she IDN'TI fied Perry on a hunch, that
Speaker 1: on a hunch that she did not receive multiple calls
Speaker 1: that day at her home, that she only received one
Speaker 1: call at the Arby's at her work, that there were
Speaker 1: two men there, not one, and the Kuda gral was
Speaker 1: is that it wasn't even his voice. So this was
Speaker 1: I see you smiling on. I mean, that was a
Speaker 1: Eureka moment for you, absolutely, and I was so stunned
Speaker 1: that I didn't even realize she had said the A
Speaker 1: and two men in the interview as we sat there
Speaker 1: as this was unraveling, and at this point, Detective Crosby
Speaker 1: starts to interrupt, interject and sway her, even to the
Speaker 1: point of telling her that deep into her confession, so
Speaker 1: to speak, that he still thinks that Perry's the guy
Speaker 1: that did that to her. Her story totally flipped when
Speaker 1: Eric got in front of her read the transcripts attached
Speaker 1: to post conviction relief filing. I mean, um, you could
Speaker 1: see I was ready to leave her home three times,
Speaker 1: and she wasn't ready for me to leave. She wanted
Speaker 1: to She wanted to get this off her chest, right,
Speaker 1: And then then then things start to really roll. And
Speaker 1: then so, at what point did you know you were
Speaker 1: going home? And I said, the Innocence Project took my
Speaker 1: case in two thousand and eleven, and it was a
Speaker 1: couple of years after that fourteen when you got involved,
Speaker 1: when they came and got my DNA inside the prison.
Speaker 1: I think that was the moment I knew I was
Speaker 1: going home. Eric can you just explain the DNA findings
Speaker 1: in this case and how they impacted the outcome. Yes,
Speaker 1: so there were two contributors found in the victims canal
Speaker 1: her the rape kit done in her ex husband was
Speaker 1: generous enough to to meet with me and allowed me
Speaker 1: to collect his denna as well, And that was one
Speaker 1: of the matches. The other match is still unknown. I
Speaker 1: have my thoughts on who it is as I sit here,
Speaker 1: But Perry was excluded, that didn't do it. Those are
Speaker 1: the magic words. Perry was excluded. Karen and I are
Speaker 1: obviously very excited, the projects excited, but Ada being Ada,
Speaker 1: this none of this was good enough. That still wasn't
Speaker 1: good that they're still gonna fight it. They're still gonna
Speaker 1: fight the DNA, They're still gonna fight basically confession from
Speaker 1: the victim. And then so they're forcing us the state
Speaker 1: all the way to a post conviction relief hearing, and
Speaker 1: so July nine that that was one of what would
Speaker 1: probably be two to three hearings. Jeff Crosby is slated
Speaker 1: to testify on July nine, and of course I'll let
Speaker 1: Perry tell the audience tell you what would happened on
Speaker 1: the ninth, But on the seventh, unbeknownst to Perry and
Speaker 1: the team, Detutive Crosby had taken his own life. So
Speaker 1: two days before the Saturday and Sunday, I was appearing
Speaker 1: in court that Monday. So I mean, obviously we will
Speaker 1: never know, but do you have any theory as to
Speaker 1: why he did that? I mean, the timing is not coincidental,
Speaker 1: that would be the only thought. I'm an investigator, a
Speaker 1: lot of fan of coincidence, so I didn't find it
Speaker 1: coincidental at all. He was getting ready to get chopped
Speaker 1: up on the stand on Monday. I think people at
Speaker 1: home are probably wondering, why in the world, with d
Speaker 1: n A scientifically proving that Perry had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this crime, and with the victim herself recanting her testimony,
Speaker 1: and with no evidence whatsoever connecting him to it, why
Speaker 1: is he on probation. Well, first off, that was something
Speaker 1: that Perry had to discuss with his two attorneys at
Speaker 1: the time. I wasn't part of that conversation, but I
Speaker 1: know enough that I can speak about it. The risk
Speaker 1: out of that county because it's a district judge, so
Speaker 1: that here's this, they transition to a new d A.
Speaker 1: But it's still the same type of mindset in that county.
Speaker 1: So the risk, with all of this being put before
Speaker 1: a judge of still losing was still there, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, And so Perry and his attorneys had to
Speaker 1: decide do we want to take that risk or do
Speaker 1: you want to go home today and live to find
Speaker 1: another day. In almost any other circumstance anywhere else, you
Speaker 1: would just put this up in front of the judge,
Speaker 1: put your evidence you're hearing on. Judge takes some time
Speaker 1: for finding the facts in law, and you get your
Speaker 1: ruling of actual innocence. It makes no sense, and it
Speaker 1: truly is a sophie's choice. I'd spent now twentysothing years,
Speaker 1: twenty five years or so wondering how the hel do
Speaker 1: these people got me in prison and how come I
Speaker 1: can't get myself out of this. Karen helped me figure
Speaker 1: that out by helping me see that all of the
Speaker 1: things that we think should go right, when other people
Speaker 1: in power don't want to to go right, they had
Speaker 1: the power to make it go wrong. So she kept
Speaker 1: asking me, she said, how do you do it? How
Speaker 1: do you do it? And it's talking about keeping a
Speaker 1: smile and a good attitude with all of this other stuff.
Speaker 1: How are you always in such a good mood? I said,
Speaker 1: It's just I love people. I cannot let this situation
Speaker 1: change me. A matter of fact, that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that I decided that that when I told you
Speaker 1: I was sitting at the defendant table and shock, I
Speaker 1: knew at that moment I had to remain in that
Speaker 1: state of mind of who I was. I had to
Speaker 1: really get a tight grip on my identity and hold
Speaker 1: on to that for dear life, because I knew that
Speaker 1: this experience was going to do everything in its power
Speaker 1: to make me something I was not beginning with a rapist.
Speaker 1: Never in my life would I even considered attacking a
Speaker 1: woman when you can you know pretty much, I've called
Speaker 1: myself a player black back in them days, you know
Speaker 1: you you don't. Back in them days when you got
Speaker 1: it like I had it, you didn't have to take
Speaker 1: anything from a woman. You could ask, and you ask
Speaker 1: with a certain amount of finess. I'm not saying, you
Speaker 1: know you have to say anything else. You got it.
Speaker 1: You get the impression I'm trying to make, So you know,
Speaker 1: the thing is, uh, I will always appreciate Karen in
Speaker 1: my life because she helped me understand something I never
Speaker 1: could figure out in twenty five years, is how am
Speaker 1: I doing this? What is it that keeping me bolstered?
Speaker 1: And I realized it was a mixture of family, church,
Speaker 1: good friends around me that had their mind on right.
Speaker 1: As she says, finally, after she had worked on my
Speaker 1: case a little while, she said, Mr Lott, I think
Speaker 1: I got you figured out. I said, oh yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: tell me. She said, I know how you do it.
Speaker 1: And this is after I've been disabled. And I said,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, what do you think? She said, you do
Speaker 1: it one step at a time, day by day. And
Speaker 1: the lights came on up in my head. I said, damn,
Speaker 1: you got it figured out. Now. That's when I knew
Speaker 1: I was going home by continually walking day by day,
Speaker 1: one day at a time, and one step at a time. Said.
Speaker 1: At that time, I was taking a little bitty baby steps.
Speaker 1: The disability I had, I was prognosed to never walk again,
Speaker 1: to never get out of the bed again. But I
Speaker 1: struggled and struggled, and I began walking and a little
Speaker 1: bitty baby steps, and then I started really pushing myself.
Speaker 1: I can take a full stride now with just a
Speaker 1: little bit of pain. And back in that time, I
Speaker 1: could a little bitty baby stuff like that and it
Speaker 1: would hurt like hell. That's how it is. You know, Well,
Speaker 1: you answer the question. Before I asked that, I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask whether you're better, and I don't have to
Speaker 1: ask that anymore. Um penitentiary will do two things to
Speaker 1: a person that will make them better or to make
Speaker 1: them better. And it's a choice that you have to
Speaker 1: make before you go in that institution, before we go
Speaker 1: to what I call our closing arguments, and I'll explain
Speaker 1: to you what that is. Just talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what you're doing now, because you're actually working with
Speaker 1: this guy, right awesome. Yes, Eric approached me about a
Speaker 1: job and I said, well, man, the time to think
Speaker 1: about it. I was disabled, not really confident in my abilities,
Speaker 1: not knowing that I had abilities. A couple of months
Speaker 1: went Bias said hey, I need to answer, that's okay,
Speaker 1: And he told me that I could earn so much money,
Speaker 1: which is like twice as much as I would get
Speaker 1: on disability. And I didn't feel right on disability anyway.
Speaker 1: So when I had the job opportunity, I wanted to
Speaker 1: jump at it, but I was hesitant because of my
Speaker 1: state of mind. You know, what can I do? I'm
Speaker 1: thirty years missing in action, no record of work history,
Speaker 1: no record of medical history. I didn't know I had
Speaker 1: any ability at all. So when Eric offered me the job,
Speaker 1: I said, don't give me time to think about that,
Speaker 1: and I'm just trying to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: tell them new and eventually, man he made an argument
Speaker 1: with me, is I couldn't deny that I could probably
Speaker 1: do this job in prison. I did this for twenty
Speaker 1: five years trying to get out of prison. I call
Speaker 1: it calming the records. You know how they have a
Speaker 1: rape kit and they comb the pubics. They're looking for
Speaker 1: whatever doesn't belong in those pubics. When I calmed the records,
Speaker 1: I looked word for word, line for line, looking for
Speaker 1: what doesn't belong here or it's missing from here. And
Speaker 1: it's a skill that you develop without knowing that you're
Speaker 1: actually developing it. You know, because when you work on
Speaker 1: your own case daily for twenty five years, you don't
Speaker 1: realize it, but you grow old and you grow knowledge
Speaker 1: of the law and how it should be applied. Perry
Speaker 1: works for another five of one C three Another Chance
Speaker 1: Justice Project, and then we work on rowful convictions and
Speaker 1: excessive sentencing and some commutation there. But my private firm
Speaker 1: is calling an associates. Perry is employed through the project,
Speaker 1: calling an associates. Yeah, we should. You should shout that
Speaker 1: out a little bit. And of course, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite human beings who has also been on the show,
Speaker 1: Michelle Murphy, I served twenty years, was exonerated with DNA,
Speaker 1: the only female DNA's honor read from Oklahoma. Encourage people
Speaker 1: to listen to that episode. It's an incredible episode of
Speaker 1: rawful conviction with Michelle Murphy. But show she's working with
Speaker 1: you as well, so you have Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: actually perfectly logical. You're taking people who have actually the
Speaker 1: most profound experience and the most knowledge from having to
Speaker 1: out of necessity, having to do all this research to
Speaker 1: get themselves free and to help others inside penitentiary. So
Speaker 1: you've got to You've got the dream team with Perry
Speaker 1: and Michelle. I love it, you know, um so um,
Speaker 1: you know I always say on the show, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm happy you're here, but I'm sorry you're here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you had to go through what you had
Speaker 1: to go through to get here. But it means an
Speaker 1: awful lot that you came in and came to New York,
Speaker 1: all the way from Oklahoma to share your incredible story,
Speaker 1: your spirit, your wisdom, your outlook. We got the whole
Speaker 1: Perry lot when I found out I was going to
Speaker 1: be here that I just wanted to see you again. Man, Well,
Speaker 1: what can I say? I'm just about to melt into
Speaker 1: a puddle over here, whereas the old saying goes knocked
Speaker 1: me down with a feather. Um. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: why today's episode is unique is be because we are
Speaker 1: recording this in the middle of an art exhibit by
Speaker 1: an innocent man on death row in Texas, a guy
Speaker 1: named Rob Will who has created this remarkable collection of
Speaker 1: work from his tiny cell. I can't not mention that
Speaker 1: it's um sort of a heavy day as well, because
Speaker 1: as we sit here, Texas is probably in the process
Speaker 1: in the last couple hours before they carry out another
Speaker 1: execution of an innocent man. Larry Swerringin is going to
Speaker 1: be executed today, almost certainly in spite of evidence of
Speaker 1: his actual innocence. So um, we'll just have a moment
Speaker 1: of silence for Larry. Okay, so this is the part
Speaker 1: of the show. Um where again, uh, this is my
Speaker 1: favorite part the show. I think it's a lot of
Speaker 1: people's favorite part of the show. We get feedback online, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Where um, I get to once again thank you to
Speaker 1: outstanding freedom fighters for coming and being on rawful conviction
Speaker 1: with me. Um. Eric, I know we'll be doing more
Speaker 1: of these in the future, and we're working together on
Speaker 1: various cases. And I'm a huge fan of your work.
Speaker 1: I think you're one of the top people in the
Speaker 1: country at what you do, and UM, we need more
Speaker 1: of you. So Eric Clin, thank you again for being
Speaker 1: here my pleasure. And Perry again, I thank you before.
Speaker 1: I'll thank you again, and I'm looking forward to working
Speaker 1: with you in the future and spending more time together.
Speaker 1: And now, like I said, this is what we call
Speaker 1: closing arguments. So this is where I get to turn
Speaker 1: my microphone off. I kind of kicked back rock back
Speaker 1: in my chair and just listen and turn the microphones
Speaker 1: over to you for your closing thoughts. I call it
Speaker 1: closing arguments. Was really closing thoughts on anything you want
Speaker 1: to say, anything we may have left out, or anything
Speaker 1: at all. And again we'll save the best for last.
Speaker 1: No offense there. But the start of the show is
Speaker 1: Perry So but but first, um, Eric, you're closing thoughts.
Speaker 1: Perry's case is just a shining example. Again you covered
Speaker 1: it of the eyewitness identification problem. It's also a shining
Speaker 1: example of why Oklahoma is number one in incarcerating African
Speaker 1: American males in the world. And then of course on
Speaker 1: the side twenty eight years in a row for females,
Speaker 1: which is a whole another topic. But there's no surprise
Speaker 1: as to why we're here. When you hear Perry's story,
Speaker 1: when you hear Michelle's story, when you hear Williamson frets,
Speaker 1: all these different ones from Oklahoma, it's horrifying. Um. I
Speaker 1: think we're at a point now where it's it's becoming
Speaker 1: bipartisan this issue, you know. I think the eyes are open,
Speaker 1: and you'd have to be a real fool to say
Speaker 1: that abound for conviction zn't exists now. We're just several
Speaker 1: years ago it wasn't quite there. That's what my closing,
Speaker 1: Earn would be, And I would add one other thing.
Speaker 1: We're not done with Peri's case. We're gonna work on
Speaker 1: this till we get him fully exonerated. Erry. Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: uh I heard you called me to star on the show. Well,
Speaker 1: you guys are the stars of my show. You know,
Speaker 1: without you guys in my life, I would probably be
Speaker 1: dead in prison, still in prison. So I want to
Speaker 1: thank you and honor you for that and your audience.
Speaker 1: I want to honor you for being attentive. And I
Speaker 1: want to admonish everyone under the sound of my voice
Speaker 1: to get involved with this awareness, to get involved with
Speaker 1: the injustice, the police brutality. The only way evil like
Speaker 1: this prevails us. When good people say nothing, a lot
Speaker 1: of people will see crime and close their windows, closed
Speaker 1: their doors, turn their back. And that's why we're in
Speaker 1: the state that we're in right now. We have to
Speaker 1: be courageous enough to say I saw this. I want
Speaker 1: to say something and the truth, you know, of being
Speaker 1: in prison for thirty one years, I came out very
Speaker 1: battle weary, uh, not too much confidence in my abilities.
Speaker 1: As I said before, overwhelmed with the stimulus of the
Speaker 1: free world. I still right now today have not cooked
Speaker 1: my own first meal. After being out of prison for
Speaker 1: it a year and some months. I don't have the
Speaker 1: confidence to cook a meal. I don't really go into
Speaker 1: big shopping malls anymore. There's too many choices. I'm not
Speaker 1: used to that. I am enjoying the freedom of going
Speaker 1: back and forth under certain limits, being on parole or probation.
Speaker 1: But it feels good to be able to go here
Speaker 1: and there without having to ask permission. So to speak.
Speaker 1: Life is good, man, and it's getting better. You know,
Speaker 1: I have a whole lot to be thankful for, even
Speaker 1: though this misfortune happened to me and took away a
Speaker 1: lot of my life. I tell people all the time,
Speaker 1: I got a whole lot more yesterday's than I do tomorrow.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna make the most of it. And all
Speaker 1: I really want to do now is just be the
Speaker 1: best me that I can be, not only for myself
Speaker 1: before anyone who's watching me, because someone's always watching, and
Speaker 1: you never know what they're gonna pick up from you,
Speaker 1: So I do my best to just be the best
Speaker 1: example I can. I'm not perfect. I have a ways
Speaker 1: to go. I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty close to it.
Speaker 1: That's a joke, no, but honestly, you know, my heart
Speaker 1: goes out to the youth of America. You know, the violence,
Speaker 1: the games, the influences find other things to spend your
Speaker 1: time with. I really don't want to be preachy, but
Speaker 1: these are the things I've learned in the heart. Way
Speaker 1: you know is ask questions, don't take anyone's word, find
Speaker 1: your own truth, seek clarity, you know, just be true
Speaker 1: to yourself. S very important. Thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1: Thank you everyone at home. Don't forget to give us
Speaker 1: a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps.
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud owner to the Innocence Project and
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 1: to Inness project dot org to learn how to donate
Speaker 1: and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
Speaker 1: Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominate composer Jay Ralph. Be
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one