Speaker 1: On November two, nineteen eighty seven, at one point fifteen
Speaker 1: am and eighta, Oklahoma. The victim felt a gun at
Speaker 1: the back of her head as she unlocked the door
Speaker 1: to her home. She was pushed inside, robbed and raped
Speaker 1: by a black man who was described as between five
Speaker 1: seven and six two, wearing a hat, a jacket, and
Speaker 1: perhaps a gold tooth. Detectives filmed a crime Stoppers re
Speaker 1: enactment video about the robbery and rape, and they approached
Speaker 1: Perry Lot, who was parked nearby. While they asked him
Speaker 1: a few questions about his whereabouts during the incident, they
Speaker 1: noticed that he had a gold tooth and Perry, a
Speaker 1: bit of a lady's man, explained that he was in
Speaker 1: the area to see his girlfriend, but had been with
Speaker 1: his fiancee from three thirty pm on November first through
Speaker 1: six thirty am the following morning. Despite his alibi, police
Speaker 1: brought him in for further questioning. There they put him
Speaker 1: into a lineup and the rest of the men were
Speaker 1: given get this gold foil from a nearby florist to
Speaker 1: simulate having a gold tooth. The victim not surprisingly identified
Speaker 1: Perry Lot that in there as her attacker. A rape
Speaker 1: kit had been done the morning of the incident, but
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven, DNA technology was not yet available
Speaker 1: to exclude mister Lott as it later would, and Perry
Speaker 1: Lott tragically was sentenced to three hundred years for rape, robbery, burglary,
Speaker 1: and making a bomb threat related to the incident. In
Speaker 1: this episode, which was recorded at an art show opening
Speaker 1: featuring the work of an innocent man on death row
Speaker 1: in Texas, rob Will, we interviewed Perry Lott and Eric Cullin,
Speaker 1: the private investigator that was originally tasked with taking Perry's
Speaker 1: DNA swap, only to end up becoming one of his
Speaker 1: fiercest and most loyal advocates. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to wrongful Conviction. We have two incredible gentlemen in
Speaker 1: the studio with me today, and the studio is not
Speaker 1: even a studio, But I'll tell you more about that later.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'll save the best for last. We
Speaker 1: have Eric Cullen, private investigator who has played an active
Speaker 1: role in more reversals now that I can count on
Speaker 1: probably both hands. It's great to have you here. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, good to be here.
Speaker 1: And with Eric is a gentleman who he was instrumental
Speaker 1: in helping to free an individual who served three decades
Speaker 1: thirty one years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
Speaker 1: DNA proved it. Perry, Welcome the show. I'm really honored
Speaker 1: to have you here.
Speaker 3: Greetings, Jason is very exciting to be here at Also,
Speaker 3: I've been looking forward to this for some months now.
Speaker 1: Well, that's awesome. And after thirty one years in prison
Speaker 1: and this is your first first ever, it's very excited.
Speaker 1: So we can call this the exclusive interview with very lot. Yeah, Perry,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. First of all, your
Speaker 1: case took place in Ada, Oklahoma, and Aida has become
Speaker 1: synonymous with wrongful convictions. Yes, sir, because John Grisha exposed
Speaker 1: the fact that there were six wrongful convictions in the
Speaker 1: space of just over a year in this tiny town,
Speaker 1: and those were profiled in his book An Innocent Manner,
Speaker 1: Four of them were and you happen to fall into
Speaker 1: that town not knowing that it was I mean a trap, right,
Speaker 1: And you were a young man at the time, twenty
Speaker 1: four years old. Twenty four years old. You still look
Speaker 1: pretty young for what it's worth.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I grew old and didn't know it.
Speaker 1: In this case, it has a lot of the common
Speaker 1: factors that we see in wrongful conviction cases. Of course,
Speaker 1: as the most common factor, I witness miss identification across
Speaker 1: racial eye witness misidentification, which we know are even more
Speaker 1: unreliable than same race, and those are notoriously unreliable, and they
Speaker 1: played a factor in the higher percentage of wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: cases than anything else. So let's go back to when
Speaker 1: this happened and how it happened. Because you were teaching
Speaker 1: school at the time.
Speaker 3: Right, and moved to Aden in Wisconsin. And in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six, around Christmas time, I get a call from
Speaker 3: an old girlfriend in a Toka, Oklahoma, and I was
Speaker 3: between jobs, you know, feeling kind of bad about my surroundings,
Speaker 3: seeing a lot of negativity that I didn't want to
Speaker 3: get involved with. So relocating Oklahoma was my option, my
Speaker 3: best option, and that's what I did. I went to Oklahoma,
Speaker 3: ended up in a Toka, worked there for a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks, found a better job in Ada, and moved
Speaker 3: to Ada. And that was the beginning of my sorrows.
Speaker 1: That's a very eloquent way of putting it. Eric I
Speaker 1: want to turn to you for a second, So can
Speaker 1: you take us back to this case. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was a horrible crime. The local woman in Ada had
Speaker 1: her home broken into after one in the morning. The
Speaker 1: assailant pushed her into her house, stole money from her purse,
Speaker 1: and did unspeakable things to her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the victor always contended to police and testified
Speaker 2: the trial that she received several prank calls at her home,
Speaker 2: harassing calls.
Speaker 3: I think she might have stated.
Speaker 2: Then she goes to work, which is basically across the street,
Speaker 2: to a restaurant she managed called Arby's. There she works
Speaker 2: her complete shift or just about her complete shift, and
Speaker 2: she claims that a bomb threat was levied by the
Speaker 2: same voice that had been calling her harassing at her
Speaker 2: home all day.
Speaker 1: Now, sound like a horror movie, right.
Speaker 2: Right, And so she clears her store, calls the police,
Speaker 2: no bomb. They go ahead and close the store down,
Speaker 2: and she claims again that the same caller calls the
Speaker 2: store again and asked why she closed the store down.
Speaker 2: I told you I was going to blow the place
Speaker 2: up if you didn't close.
Speaker 3: The store down.
Speaker 2: Of course, the building never blew up. That's what she
Speaker 2: contended all the way through trial. Then she goes at
Speaker 2: approximately one one thirty home back across the street. That's
Speaker 2: where she testified that one Blackmail had pushed her in
Speaker 2: her home, put a condom on and raped her and
Speaker 2: then took upwards of two hundred dollars from her purse.
Speaker 2: And then she also claims, of course she lost deposit
Speaker 2: receipts from the RB's close out cash.
Speaker 1: To right, and he did other disgusting things. There was
Speaker 1: a picture of her daughter in the house that he
Speaker 1: apparently yes, had sort of you know, 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. Did it get the word get around?
Speaker 3: I did not know anything about the crime when I
Speaker 3: was first approached by Officer Crosby. I was in that
Speaker 3: area of the crime scene, but I had no idea
Speaker 3: crime had been committed. I had no idea who this
Speaker 3: woman was.
Speaker 1: And 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 an accident.
Speaker 1: She was steered as probably too light of a word
Speaker 1: to describe how they ended up convincing her to identify you.
Speaker 1: And we know that the mind is not a camera.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think that you see something,
Speaker 1: you recognize it, you remember it. That's not the way
Speaker 1: it works at all. And of course, again in the
Speaker 1: cross racial situation, it's even more prone to mistakes. But
Speaker 1: the victim had described that her assailant had a gold
Speaker 1: tooth or half a gold tooth, right.
Speaker 3: That's what they say personally. I don't believe she ever
Speaker 3: mentioned the gold tooth in her initial description of her assailant,
Speaker 3: mainly because of this. I seen the police report where
Speaker 3: the victim, it was a description at the very end
Speaker 3: was a gold tooth like it had been added on.
Speaker 1: She wasn't able to identify his hair color or tighte
Speaker 1: because he wore a hat, and he wore a jacket
Speaker 1: and things like that. And her description was so general
Speaker 1: that she said that it was just a black male
Speaker 1: between five seven and six two. That describes most people, right.
Speaker 3: That describes entirely the whole black community mostly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did it get from there to where Perry
Speaker 1: ends up in a lineup. He had an alibi on
Speaker 1: top of everything else, a very solid alibi, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't care about that. No.
Speaker 2: How they landed on Perry was they were doing a
Speaker 2: recreation of the crime for a show called Crime Stoppers
Speaker 2: down there at the time, they would run on unsolved
Speaker 2: crimes or you know, fresh crimes even and they were
Speaker 2: filming that day. Perry had been in the neighborhood visiting
Speaker 2: someone just a block away. He goes, turns the corner
Speaker 2: and sees these camera crews up there and he stops
Speaker 2: on the side of the road to watch. Detective Crosby
Speaker 2: goes and approaches Ferry at the car, notices the gold tooth,
Speaker 2: and it's all downhill from there.
Speaker 1: Yes, you voluntarily went into the police station, and I
Speaker 1: imagine when you went in there you probably thought, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just going in and tell them what
Speaker 1: I know and go home.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, like I said, mister Crosby came and approached
Speaker 3: me that night. They questioned me for hours at the
Speaker 3: police station, search my car, search my home, took me
Speaker 3: back to the police station, released me with the words
Speaker 3: you can go home, but don't leave town. So I
Speaker 3: went home and my fiance was there, and evidently they
Speaker 3: had questioned her while they were questioning me, And we
Speaker 3: had a lot of tizzy, a little bit of a
Speaker 3: spot because I just recently came to her home from Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: and now she's hearing that, Hey, your boyfriend might be
Speaker 3: a rapist, you know, so of course she's going to
Speaker 3: be on age somewhat. That next morning, at work, I
Speaker 3: was approached by Crosby again, would you mind helping us out?
Speaker 3: We need to need you to be in a lineup.
Speaker 3: Like you know, I'm just doing what any average citizen
Speaker 3: would do, doing what my dad had always taught me
Speaker 3: to do, is obey the police, cooperate, don't get disrespectful.
Speaker 3: So I'll go to the police station with them and
Speaker 3: participate in his lineup.
Speaker 1: Right, And then it's almost comical to think that they
Speaker 1: had this said. There's nothing funny about it. They took
Speaker 1: the other man that they put in a lineup and
Speaker 1: put aluminum foil as if to simulate a gold tooth
Speaker 1: in their mouth. But you were the only one that
Speaker 1: actually had a gold tooth, that's right. Plus they had
Speaker 1: you say the words that she said she had.
Speaker 3: Heard and after the lineup he comes with a shit
Speaker 3: eat and green on his face. Yeah she picked you out,
Speaker 3: said what she picked me? Yeah, she picked you, And
Speaker 3: I'm right there. I'm just in a whirlpool of confusion.
Speaker 3: So I'm in the city jail for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 3: you know, screaming, Hey, I didn't do this, you guys
Speaker 3: making a mistake. Nobody heard that, nobody wanted to hear that.
Speaker 3: They moved me across the street to the county jail,
Speaker 3: and I stayed there for a couple of months at
Speaker 3: least the quarter point of attorney never came to see me,
Speaker 3: never knew who I was until just right before time
Speaker 3: for appearances in court. His name was Frank Baber, and
Speaker 3: me being so naive since I didn't do this, I'm
Speaker 3: thinking this is the easiest flipping over a pancake to
Speaker 3: get me out of this situation. It's so much that
Speaker 3: he allowed to go on that I now know he
Speaker 3: should have been object I think it's like, hey, are
Speaker 3: you on my side or are you on their side?
Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking in my head because at
Speaker 3: the time, even being totally unaware of what the law says,
Speaker 3: you get a feeling as a defendant, if someone is
Speaker 3: vigorously trying to defend you, I didn't get that feeling.
Speaker 1: Sounds like it was more processing you than defending your processing.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: Did you hold out any hope that they were going
Speaker 1: to find you innocent?
Speaker 3: Or I had always thought they would find me innocent
Speaker 3: because I knew that they had no evidence of me
Speaker 3: doing anything. I knew that I had not done anything.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking that this is gone all the way up
Speaker 3: into picking the jewelry, and you guys still think I
Speaker 3: did this. How can you think I did this? What
Speaker 3: I did not know at the time was that eye
Speaker 3: witnessed testimony was considered evidence. That's what me. I'm sitting
Speaker 3: there thinking, Okay, where's the rake kit, where's the fingerprints,
Speaker 3: where's the picture that you say was taken out of
Speaker 3: the home? Where's the money that you say was missing.
Speaker 3: I was flat broke at the time. Hell, when they
Speaker 3: searched my house, they found a twenty dollar bill that
Speaker 3: my fiance had hidden in her dresser and it floated
Speaker 3: to the floor. Now I asked Jeff Crosby, I said,
Speaker 3: can I have that? And he says, yeah, you can
Speaker 3: have that. So I picked up that twenty dollar bill
Speaker 3: and put it in my pocket. I didn't know better,
Speaker 3: so I ended up in prison. And the trial lasted
Speaker 3: all of eight hours.
Speaker 1: Eight hours.
Speaker 3: The trial lasted less than a.
Speaker 1: Working day, and you were sentenced to three hundred years three.
Speaker 3: Years consecutive sentences, four charges, four different sentences, one hundred,
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty and fifty for rape, robbery, burglary,
Speaker 3: and bomb threatening.
Speaker 1: Three hundred years. It's such a preposterous concept. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the idea that we even do that in this country.
Speaker 1: Here the sense is a thousand years, and Oklahoma is
Speaker 1: notorious for these and again I'm not minimizing the nature
Speaker 1: of the crime. But Jesus Christ anyway, Eric.
Speaker 2: An interesting side note free trial. I think it's interested
Speaker 2: back to how they were doing things in pot of
Speaker 2: Talk County. Eight of Williamson and Fritz were in jail
Speaker 2: with Perrys.
Speaker 1: And Williamson and Fritz were two of the men that
Speaker 1: were profiled in the John Grisham, the only nonfiction book
Speaker 1: that John has ever written, The Innocent Man, and John
Speaker 1: told me John was on wrongful conviction. He said that
Speaker 1: when he wrote that book, he had to write it
Speaker 1: as nonfiction, he says, because when I write fiction, I
Speaker 1: have to make it believable, and he goes the story.
Speaker 1: The audience is not going to follow. Al I'm going
Speaker 1: to lose my readers because this doesn't make any logical sense.
Speaker 1: And Williamson and Fretz such an unbelievably tragic case of
Speaker 1: two men wrongfully convicted and one of whom lost his
Speaker 1: mind in prison and just months after he was released
Speaker 1: ended up dead, really really sad, and he had been
Speaker 1: an open age pitching prospect, he had his life ahead
Speaker 1: of him. And the whole thing is a tragedy on
Speaker 1: top of a tragedy, not to mention that there was
Speaker 1: no justice for the victim, which was a rape and
Speaker 1: murder case. And I want to go back to this
Speaker 1: eye witness identification. If you, the listener, end up on
Speaker 1: a jury and you have a pery lot in front
Speaker 1: of you, you're in a criminal case and there's no
Speaker 1: evidence except eyewitness identification. You should keep this in mind.
Speaker 1: And I'm quoting from the amazing book Convicting the Innocent
Speaker 1: by Brandon Garrett, which is sort of like the Bible
Speaker 1: of wrongful conviction. Causes and practices that lead to them,
Speaker 1: he said it. Many DNA ex on cases involving mistaken
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses involved the use of suggestive identification procedures. A study
Speaker 1: of the first two hundred and fifty DNA exonerations revealed
Speaker 1: that an incredible eighty eight percent of the mistaken witness
Speaker 1: exonerations involved either factors that are known to affect the
Speaker 1: reliability of the identification, some suggestiveness in the identification procedure,
Speaker 1: or both, And in this case it was both. So
Speaker 1: the jury comes in.
Speaker 3: It was the most surreal moment of my life. When
Speaker 3: the jury came back and they found me guilty, all
Speaker 3: I could do was stare in the space. I was
Speaker 3: just sitting there in shock. And when they started reading
Speaker 3: off the terms one hundred years, one hundred years, I
Speaker 3: was paralyzed, wondering, what how can they be allowed to
Speaker 3: count more than a person can actually live? If I
Speaker 3: die in prison, you're still going to make me do time,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, it's like you said, it just
Speaker 3: don't make sense to give a person more time than
Speaker 3: a lifespan, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Right? And in case you come back to life, maybe
Speaker 1: they want to back and then you have to come
Speaker 1: back to life of these a couple of times and
Speaker 1: still live a long life. Each thing is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I had a discussion with Eric just last night. I said,
Speaker 3: you know, they should take the sentence and portion of
Speaker 3: the trial out of the jury's hands because they are citizens.
Speaker 3: They get emotional, They are angry when they get the
Speaker 3: details of these crimes. Whether it's coherst or whether it's fabricated,
Speaker 3: or whether it's just plain fact. These people have emotional
Speaker 3: attachments to that, and that's why they give people these
Speaker 3: ex financial amounts of time. When you know, one hundred
Speaker 3: years is enough to see a person die in prison,
Speaker 3: but you want to.
Speaker 1: Go overkill and even the just breaking it down to
Speaker 1: the granular level, just the idea that they sends you
Speaker 1: to fifty years for robbery and the robbery was one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty dollars, right or whatever it was, two
Speaker 1: hundred dolls like that, I mean.
Speaker 2: In fifty for the bumb threat. Additionally fifty the.
Speaker 1: Bumb threat as well. Yeah, and we know, of course
Speaker 1: that these threats went on, and there were other cases
Speaker 1: after Perry was arrested and convicted, where whoever the actual
Speaker 1: perpetrator was continued with the same memo, which should be
Speaker 1: not even a red flag should be a flashing red
Speaker 1: light where they go, hold up, this is we got
Speaker 1: were bucked up, you know what I mean. But that's
Speaker 1: not what happened. So you get take into prison.
Speaker 3: Yes, prison life. After sitting in the county jail for
Speaker 3: four or five months, you're kind of glad to go
Speaker 3: to prison. So it's a real messed up thing in
Speaker 3: the mind.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like they say, the eyes will play tricks on you.
Speaker 3: After a certain amount of time, with a traumatic situation
Speaker 3: or unfamiliar situation, the mind will start playing tricks on
Speaker 3: you to you hear things, you see things, you imagine things.
Speaker 3: So once I did get in the doc system, I
Speaker 3: was glad to have a bed. I was glad to
Speaker 3: have fresh clothes, a shower, movement of the things you
Speaker 3: don't get in the counter jail. So that took a
Speaker 3: lot of pressure off of what I was going through
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 1: Then I think most people don't realize, but I hear
Speaker 1: from so many of the exogneries that jails are worse
Speaker 1: than the prisons, and it's actually logical when you think
Speaker 1: about it. I think people if they're the word jail,
Speaker 1: they think of like the classic thing in the movies
Speaker 1: where it's like a country place and they.
Speaker 3: Ain't like Barney and Andy like that.
Speaker 1: So you know, like that, it's true all over the country.
Speaker 1: In jails, it's just a powder cake because everybody's in
Speaker 1: the cell together. There's no recreation, there's no education, there's
Speaker 1: no release of anything, there's no outdoors, there's nothing so
Speaker 1: and as you said, no clean clothes. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: really and it's designed to break people and actually make
Speaker 1: them confess the crimes that didn't commit just to go home.
Speaker 1: These places are dirty, they're incubators of disease.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't worship on my worst ending.
Speaker 2: A lot of informant Joie Howson snitch stuff comes out
Speaker 2: of that environment too.
Speaker 1: But now you went to the prison and your sentenced
Speaker 1: to well life because three hundred years, you know you
Speaker 1: weren't going to live that long. It's a miracle you
Speaker 1: lived through this whole experience in the first place.
Speaker 3: It surely is. I went in at twenty four years old,
Speaker 3: waited three or four years for the direct appeal. Once
Speaker 3: that was affirmed, I had no idea how the hell they.
Speaker 1: Affirmed that affirmed your conviction.
Speaker 3: How do you do that with the facts all laid out,
Speaker 3: I should have been home after three or four. I
Speaker 3: knew enough about law to know that what the jury
Speaker 3: says is what the jury says. However, that's what the
Speaker 3: appeal process is for, correctly, to rectify what the jury
Speaker 3: in the courtroom allowed that should never been allowed. When
Speaker 3: I was affirmed, I knew that I had a war
Speaker 3: on my hands. I had to become my own attorney
Speaker 3: because my family could not afford to help me. They
Speaker 3: were so far away in Wisconsin. I was basically by
Speaker 3: myself against the state. I like to point out the
Speaker 3: people when I talk to them about this, when it
Speaker 3: says lot versus state, it's just like Oklahoma versus Texas.
Speaker 3: You're at war. I had to learn as quick as possible,
Speaker 3: as much as possible about what avenues is going to
Speaker 3: get me set free, because now I am here and
Speaker 3: it doesn't have a back door. Well, once I got
Speaker 3: to about twelve fifteen years in, I started losing it.
Speaker 3: I started losing hope. I started thinking I just might
Speaker 3: die in here. And two thousand and two was the
Speaker 3: first time I went up for parole. Nothing changed. In
Speaker 3: two thousand and five, I had a near death experience
Speaker 3: with staff infection. That's why I am partially disabled now.
Speaker 3: Staff infection had gotten into my system. I didn't even
Speaker 3: know what staff was, so it lingered in my body,
Speaker 3: actually got into my blood and mercered and attached to
Speaker 3: my spinal cord in my neck. It was eating through
Speaker 3: the vertebrae in my net, exposed a few nerves, and
Speaker 3: I'm lucky to be alive. So two thousand and five
Speaker 3: I was hospitalized. So they skipped over my parole hearing. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: they totally skipped over my parole hearing, so I had
Speaker 3: to wait until two thousand and eight. That was probably
Speaker 3: the only time I ever considered dying in prison, and
Speaker 3: that was two thousand and five. Between two thousand and
Speaker 3: five and two thousand and eight, I saw and I
Speaker 3: sensed that I wasn't ever going to be released by
Speaker 3: this parole board.
Speaker 1: Ouse they probably wanted you to admit guil right.
Speaker 3: I wrote a letter, thinking that if I admit to
Speaker 3: this crime, they just may give me some relief, because
Speaker 3: in prison, you are under the impression that they want
Speaker 3: some kind of remorse, they want some kind of confession,
Speaker 3: They want to see you broke down, especially when you've
Speaker 3: been claiming to be innocent. So I'm thinking I'm going
Speaker 3: to give them what they want. I'm going to manipulate
Speaker 3: my way out of here. That's after so many years
Speaker 3: of being in you start thinking like this, Well, the
Speaker 3: truth isn't working, so now I'm going to lie and
Speaker 3: see if that'll do anything. Well. Between two thousand and
Speaker 3: eight and twenty eleven, the Innocence Project took my case.
Speaker 3: The first thing I did was told my attorneys, hey,
Speaker 3: look we got an issue. I've already confessed to these crimes.
Speaker 3: I didn't do them, but I confessed to them trying
Speaker 3: to manipulate and got the letters retracted, and we explained
Speaker 3: why I did that. It was kind of like a duress,
Speaker 3: and that was probably the last time I had given
Speaker 3: up hope. But prior to that, I had already started
Speaker 3: feeling like it's hopeless against this. There's no way I'm
Speaker 3: going to be a I mean, I have done a
Speaker 3: stack of briefs like this on my case, and good
Speaker 3: good law work, proslit againt law work, and nothing ever worked.
Speaker 3: I said, damn, you know the law is written. Why
Speaker 3: aren't you guys giving me some relief?
Speaker 1: Why aren't you actually paying attention to the laws that.
Speaker 3: Were Everything in the law says that I should be
Speaker 3: getting some kind of relief from the state. You guys
Speaker 3: never really proved anything here. Why am I in prison?
Speaker 3: What connection do you have other than this high witness testimony?
Speaker 3: Being denied so many times was detrimental because when you
Speaker 3: feel like you have no hope of ever reaching anybody
Speaker 3: with the truth, you become something different. And if you
Speaker 3: don't have good people around you to help you get
Speaker 3: your mind right, you're going to become part of that
Speaker 3: prison and you're never going to leave. It's kind of
Speaker 3: like the soft Shank prediction where the guy says, these
Speaker 3: walls do something to you. They do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that movie had a profound effect on me and
Speaker 1: so many other people. Nobody's listening. The Innocence Project gets involved,
Speaker 1: that's obviously a huge development.
Speaker 3: That's the only time I regained hope.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Actually I took my hands off the wheel when I knew.
Speaker 3: When you hear the word Innocence Project in prison, you
Speaker 3: know you got the kind of help you need. That
Speaker 3: place is synonymous with God when you're an innocent person,
Speaker 3: the Innocence Project, when you hear that name, you you
Speaker 3: know you're going home.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's heavy. It's great to hear. Having been there
Speaker 1: myself for twenty five twenty six years, it's amazing. I
Speaker 1: never heard it put that way before, but it's great
Speaker 1: to hear. That obviously means a lot. So instance project
Speaker 1: gets involved. How did you get involved, Erek, and how
Speaker 1: did you help to resolve this? And how the hell
Speaker 1: is he here instead of serving another two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy something years or two hundred and sixty eight to
Speaker 1: be exact.
Speaker 3: That's my champion right there. Man.
Speaker 2: So I was working on some other post conviction cases
Speaker 2: and Karen Thompson had reached out to me on a
Speaker 2: referral from some lawyers that I was working with on
Speaker 2: those cases. So in twenty thirteen, Karen wanted me to
Speaker 2: simply go meet Perry at Dick Connor in prison and
Speaker 2: take his DNA sample and then of course to get
Speaker 2: that sample to sell Mark, which is who the Innocence
Speaker 2: Project uses to test their.
Speaker 1: DNA by the DNA lab very fast lab.
Speaker 2: They're the best. And in the meantime Karen winahead and
Speaker 2: assigned me some other duties. One of those things was
Speaker 2: to find an alternate suspect and find the individual who
Speaker 2: actually did this. Well, I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: doing that and doing my own covert methods of obtaining DNA,
Speaker 2: such as posing as somebody from a casino with you know,
Speaker 2: I've pulled this guy's trash that I thought, you know,
Speaker 2: I've done it, and he's a big casino guy. I
Speaker 2: show up the gift guard, Hey, lick this envelope. We
Speaker 2: actually went that far, you know, tested it in the
Speaker 2: whole bit and a gift card trick.
Speaker 1: That's good, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: So but it was very disheartening. Uh, this guy been
Speaker 2: acquitted of two rapes I think one one dismissal and
Speaker 2: one a quttle, all within this somewhat of a similar
Speaker 2: mL and man, we were pretty confident it was him,
Speaker 2: and of course a little heartbroken to find out it was.
Speaker 2: And but then again, we don't want to be part
Speaker 2: of wrongfully accusing people either, so that we moved on
Speaker 2: from this guy, and so we continue to move along
Speaker 2: the whole time, though in the mean meantime, Karen is
Speaker 2: constantly trying to get the DA from Potna Talk County.
Speaker 2: Who's this guy that's been there since the Williamson Frint
Speaker 2: Fontinea Award days. They're just so stuck, I mean, in
Speaker 2: their ways, and Karen trying to budget him just to cooperate. Well,
Speaker 2: let's at least let my investigator interview this victim. And so,
Speaker 2: long story short, Finally Detective Crosby, who's still there as well,
Speaker 2: finds the victim and it was agreed upon that he
Speaker 2: and I would go interview her together.
Speaker 1: And this is where shit gets real and he gets
Speaker 1: real real. So tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we agreed that he would go first and
Speaker 2: I wouldn't interrupt him, and I would go last and
Speaker 2: he wouldn't interrupt me. We get in there, the victim
Speaker 2: says that going along with a whole bit, everything's the same,
Speaker 2: nothing's really changed today as I sit here, and then
Speaker 2: at some point, of course, me being in the room,
Speaker 2: I've done no telling how many interviews have individuals, from
Speaker 2: defendants to suspects. You just get the body language. Part two.
Speaker 2: You can't really read in the transcript. I could see
Speaker 2: something change in her body language that was very much
Speaker 2: in line, and the energy was that she was ready
Speaker 2: to get this off of chess and tired of carrying
Speaker 2: this around. And in fact, in the transcript you can
Speaker 2: read in there. He actually asked her if she's okay
Speaker 2: during his questioning of her. It was really light, you know,
Speaker 2: and she.
Speaker 1: Had to get a drink of water.
Speaker 2: Her mouth was dry, and she stuttering things like that.
Speaker 2: And then it was my turn. And then in the
Speaker 2: beginning of my interview with her, she was definitive that
Speaker 2: it was still Pairy. She was definitive that it was
Speaker 2: his voice and that that voice is what carried her
Speaker 2: through her certainty it was Parry. And then the best
Speaker 2: thing I had to do, and I've done this many times,
Speaker 2: was and again I knew she had other things to say, Okay.
Speaker 3: Well I'm ready.
Speaker 1: Is that all you have?
Speaker 2: No? Yeah, okay, well I'm okay. Well let's wrap it up.
Speaker 2: I appreciate your time, and this has been tough. And
Speaker 2: then she tells me more, I do that about three times.
Speaker 2: She ends up telling me that she identified Perry on
Speaker 2: a hunch, that on a hunch, that she did not
Speaker 2: receive multiple calls that day at her home, that she
Speaker 2: only received one call at the Arby's at her work,
Speaker 2: that there were two men there, not one, and the
Speaker 2: koupdo gral was is that it wasn't even his voice.
Speaker 1: So this was a I see you smiling now, I
Speaker 1: mean that was a Eureka moment for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I was so stunned that I didn't even
Speaker 2: realize she had said that. And two men in the
Speaker 2: interview as we sat there as this was unraveling, and
Speaker 2: at this point, Detective Crosby starts to interrupt, interject and
Speaker 2: sway her, even to the point of telling her that
Speaker 2: deep into her confession, so to speak, that he still
Speaker 2: thinks Perry's the guy that did that to her.
Speaker 3: Her story totally flipped when Eric got in front of him.
Speaker 2: I read the transcripts attached the post conviction relieve filing.
Speaker 3: I mean you could.
Speaker 2: See I was ready to leave her home three times,
Speaker 2: and she wasn't ready for me to leave. She wanted
Speaker 2: to get this off her.
Speaker 1: Chest, right, And then then things start to really roll.
Speaker 1: And then so at what point did you know you
Speaker 1: were going home?
Speaker 3: Like I said, the Innocence Project took my case in
Speaker 3: twenty eleven, and it was a couple of years after
Speaker 3: that fourteen when you got involved, when they came and
Speaker 3: got my DNA inside the prison. I think that was
Speaker 3: the moment I knew I was going home.
Speaker 1: Eric, can you just explain the DNA findings in this
Speaker 1: case and how they impacted the outcome.
Speaker 2: Yes, so there were two contributors found in the victims
Speaker 2: canal per the rape kit done in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Her ex husband was generous enough to meet with me
Speaker 2: and allowed me to collect his DNA as well, and
Speaker 2: that was one of the matches. The other match is
Speaker 2: still unknown. I have my thoughts on who it is
Speaker 2: as I sit here, But Perry.
Speaker 1: Was excluded, that didn't do it. Those are the magic words.
Speaker 1: Perry was excluded.
Speaker 2: Yes, Karen and I are obviously very excited, the projects excited,
Speaker 2: but Ada being Ada, none of this was good enough.
Speaker 2: That still wasn't going They're still going to fight it.
Speaker 2: They're still going to fight the DNA. They're still going
Speaker 2: to fight basically a confession from the victim and then
Speaker 2: so they're forcing this the state all the way to
Speaker 2: a post conviction relief hearing. And so July ninth of
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, that was one of what would probably be
Speaker 2: two to three hearings. Jeff Crosby is slated to testify
Speaker 2: on July ninth, and of course I'll let Perry tell
Speaker 2: the audience tell you what would happened on the ninth.
Speaker 2: But on the seventh, unbeknownst to Perry and the team detached,
Speaker 2: Crosby had taken his own life.
Speaker 3: So two days before this Saturday and Sunday, I was
Speaker 3: appearing in court that Monday.
Speaker 1: So I mean, obviously we'll never know, but do you
Speaker 1: have any theory as to why he did that? I mean,
Speaker 1: the timing is not coincidental.
Speaker 3: That would be my only thought.
Speaker 2: I'm an investigator. I'm not a fan of coincidence, so
Speaker 2: I didn't find it coincidental at all. He was getting
Speaker 2: ready to get chopped up on the stand on Monday.
Speaker 1: I think people at home are probably wondering, why in
Speaker 1: the world, with DNA scientifically proving that Perry had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with this crime, and with the victim herself
Speaker 1: recanting her testimony, and with no evidence whatsoever connecting him
Speaker 1: to it, why is he on probation.
Speaker 2: Well, first off, that was something that Perry had to
Speaker 2: discuss with his two attorneys at the time. I wasn't
Speaker 2: part of that conversation, but I know enough that I
Speaker 2: can speak about it. The risk out of that county
Speaker 2: because it's a district judge that here's this. They transitioned
Speaker 2: to a new DA, but it's still the same type
Speaker 2: a mindset in that county. So the risk, with all
Speaker 2: of this being put before a judge of still losing
Speaker 2: was still there, believe it or not, And so Perry
Speaker 2: and his attorneys had to decide do we want to
Speaker 2: take that risk or do you want to go home
Speaker 2: today and live to fight another day. In almost any
Speaker 2: other circumstance anywhere else, you would just put this up
Speaker 2: in front of a judge, put your evidence you're hearing on.
Speaker 2: Judge takes some time for finding the facts in law,
Speaker 2: and you'd get your ruling bactual innocence. It makes no sense,
Speaker 2: and it truly is a sophie's choice.
Speaker 3: I'd spent now twenty something years, twenty five years or
Speaker 3: so wondering how the hell do these people got me
Speaker 3: in prison and how come I can't get myself out
Speaker 3: of this. Karen helped me figure that out by helping
Speaker 3: me see that all of the things that we think
Speaker 3: should go right, when other people in power don't want
Speaker 3: it to go right, they have the power to make
Speaker 3: it go wrong. So she kept asking me, she said,
Speaker 3: how do you do it? How do you do it,
Speaker 3: and it's talking about keeping a smile and a good
Speaker 3: attitude with all of this other stuff. How are you
Speaker 3: always in such a good mood, I said, It's just
Speaker 3: I love people. I cannot let this situation change me.
Speaker 3: Matter of fact, that's one of the things that I
Speaker 3: decided at that when I told you I was sitting
Speaker 3: at the defendant table in shock, I knew at that
Speaker 3: moment I had to remain in that state of mind
Speaker 3: of who I was. I had to really get a
Speaker 3: tight grip on my identity and hold on to that
Speaker 3: for dear life, because I knew that this experience was
Speaker 3: going to do everything in its power to make me
Speaker 3: something I was not. Beginning with a rapist. Never in
Speaker 3: my life would I even considered attacking a woman when
Speaker 3: you can you know pretty much, I've called myself a
Speaker 3: player back in them days. You know you don't Back
Speaker 3: in them days, when you got it like I had it,
Speaker 3: you didn't have to take anything from a woman. You
Speaker 3: could ask, and you ask what a certain amount of finess.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying, you know, you don't have to.
Speaker 1: Say anything else. You got it.
Speaker 3: You get the impression I'm trying to make, So you know,
Speaker 3: The thing is, I will always appreciate hearing in my
Speaker 3: life because she helped me understand something I never could
Speaker 3: figure out in twenty five years, as how am I
Speaker 3: doing this? What is it that's keeping me bolstered? And
Speaker 3: I realized it was a mixture of family, church, good
Speaker 3: friends around me that had their mind on right. She says. Finally,
Speaker 3: after she had worked on my case a little while,
Speaker 3: she said, mister Lott, I think I got you figured out.
Speaker 3: I said, oh, yeah, we're to me. She said, I
Speaker 3: know how you do it. And this is after I've
Speaker 3: been disabled. And I said, oh yeah, what do you think?
Speaker 3: She said, you do it one step at a time,
Speaker 3: day by day. And the lights came on up in
Speaker 3: my head. I said, damn, you got it figured out.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: That's when I knew I was going home by continually
Speaker 3: walking day by day, one day at a time, and
Speaker 3: one step at a time. See, at that time, I
Speaker 3: was taking little bitty baby steps. The disability I had,
Speaker 3: I was prognosed to never walk again, to never get
Speaker 3: out of the bed again. But I struggled and struggled,
Speaker 3: and I began walking in little bitty baby steps, and
Speaker 3: then I started really pushing myself. I can take a
Speaker 3: full stride now with just a little bit of pain,
Speaker 3: and back in that time, I could a little bitty
Speaker 3: baby step like that and it would hurt like hell.
Speaker 3: That's how it is.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, you answered the question before I asked it.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask whether you're better, and I
Speaker 1: don't have to ask that anymore.
Speaker 3: Penitentiary will do two things to a person. It will
Speaker 3: make them better or to make them better. And it's
Speaker 3: a choice that you have to make before you go
Speaker 3: in that institution, before we.
Speaker 1: Go to what I call our closing arguments, and I'll
Speaker 1: explain to you what that is. Just talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what you're doing now, because you're actually working
Speaker 1: with this guy, right awesome.
Speaker 3: Yes, Eric approached me about a job and I said, well,
Speaker 3: give me time to think about it. I was disabled,
Speaker 3: not really confident in my abilities, not knowing that I
Speaker 3: had abilities. A couple of months went by and said, hey,
Speaker 3: I need an answer, that's okay, And he told me
Speaker 3: that I could earn so much money, which is like
Speaker 3: twice as much as I would get on disability. And
Speaker 3: I didn't feel right on disability anyway. So when I
Speaker 3: had the job, opportunity. I wanted to jump at it,
Speaker 3: but I was hesitating because of my state of mind.
Speaker 3: You know, what can I do? I'm thirty years missing
Speaker 3: in action, no record of work history, no record of
Speaker 3: medical history. I didn't know I had any ability at all.
Speaker 3: So when Eric offered me the job, I said, Man,
Speaker 3: give me time to think about that, and I'm just
Speaker 3: trying to figure out a way to tell him new
Speaker 3: and eventually, Man, he made an argument with me. I
Speaker 3: couldn't deny that I could probably do this job in prison.
Speaker 3: I did this for twenty five years trying to get
Speaker 3: out of prison. I call it combing the records. You
Speaker 3: know how they have a rake kit and they combed
Speaker 3: the pubics. They're looking for whatever doesn't belong in those pubics.
Speaker 3: When I combed the records, I look word for word,
Speaker 3: line for line, looking for what doesn't belong here. It's
Speaker 3: missing from here. And it's a skill that you develop
Speaker 3: without knowing that you're actually developing it. You know, because
Speaker 3: when you work on your own case daily for twenty
Speaker 3: five years, you don't realize it, but you grow old
Speaker 3: and you grow knowledge of the law and how it
Speaker 3: should be applied.
Speaker 2: Perry works for another five oh one C three, another
Speaker 2: Chance Justice Project, and then we work on wrongful convictions
Speaker 2: and excessive sentencing and some commutation there. But my private
Speaker 2: firm is calling and Associates. Perry is employed through the project's.
Speaker 1: Calling and associates. Yeah, we should shout that out a
Speaker 1: little bit. And of course, one of my favorite human
Speaker 1: beings who has also been on the show, Michelle Murphy
Speaker 1: served twenty years, was exonerated with DNA, the only female
Speaker 1: DNA exignery from Oklahoma. I encourage people to listen to
Speaker 1: that episode. It's an incredible episode of wrongful conviction with
Speaker 1: Michelle Murphy. But she's working with you as well, So
Speaker 1: you have Yeah, I mean, it's actually perfectly logical. You're
Speaker 1: taking people who have actually the most profound experience and
Speaker 1: the most knowledge from having to out of necessity, from
Speaker 1: having to do all this research to get themselves free
Speaker 1: and to help others inside. Yeah, tentry, So you've got
Speaker 1: You've got the dream team with Perry and Michelle. I
Speaker 1: love it, you know that. So you know I always
Speaker 1: say on the show, you know, I'm happy you're here,
Speaker 1: but I'm sorry you're here. I mean, I'm sorry you
Speaker 1: had to go through what you had to go through
Speaker 1: to get here. But it means an awful lot that
Speaker 1: you came in and came to New York, all the
Speaker 1: way from Oklahoma to share your incredible story, your spirit,
Speaker 1: your wisdom, your outlook. We got the whole Perry lot.
Speaker 3: When I found out I was going to be here,
Speaker 3: that I just wanted to see you again.
Speaker 1: Man, Well, what can I say? I'm just about to
Speaker 1: melt into a puddle over here, whereas the old say goes,
Speaker 1: knock me down with a feather. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: why today's episode is unique is because we are recording
Speaker 1: this in the middle of an art exhibit by an
Speaker 1: innocent man on death row in Texas, a guy named
Speaker 1: Rob Will who has created this remarkable collection of work
Speaker 1: from his tiny cell. I can't not mention that it's
Speaker 1: sort of a heavy day as well, because as we
Speaker 1: sit here, Texas is probably in the process in the
Speaker 1: last couple hours before they carry out another execution of
Speaker 1: an innocent man. Larry Sweringen is going to be executed today,
Speaker 1: almost certainly in spite of evidence of his actual innocence.
Speaker 1: So we just have a moment of silence for Larry. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is the part of the show where again
Speaker 1: this is my favorite part the show. I think it's
Speaker 1: a lot of people's favorite part of the show. We
Speaker 1: get feedback online, etc. Where I get to once again
Speaker 1: thank you to outstanding freedom fighters for coming and being
Speaker 1: on rawful conviction with me. Eric. I know we'll be
Speaker 1: doing more of these in the future, and we're working
Speaker 1: together on various cases and I'm a huge fan of
Speaker 1: your work. I think you're one of the top people
Speaker 1: in the country at what you do and we need
Speaker 1: more of you. So Eric Cullin, thank you again for
Speaker 1: being 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 kick 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. It was really closing thoughts on anything you
Speaker 1: want to say, anything we may have left that out,
Speaker 1: or anything at all. And again we'll save the best
Speaker 1: for last. No offense are. I know, but the start
Speaker 1: of the show is Perry. So but first, Eric, you're
Speaker 1: closing thoughts.
Speaker 2: Perry's case is just a shining example again, you covered
Speaker 2: it of the eyewitness identification problem. It's also a shining
Speaker 2: example of why Oklahoma is number one in incarcerating African
Speaker 2: American males in the world. And then of course on
Speaker 2: the side twenty eight years in a row for females,
Speaker 2: which is a whole other topic. But there's no surprise
Speaker 2: as to why we're here. When you hear Perry's story,
Speaker 2: when you hear Michelle's story, when you hear Williams and Fritz,
Speaker 2: all these different ones from Oklahoma. It's horrifying. I think
Speaker 2: we're at a point now where it's becoming bipartisan this issue.
Speaker 2: You know, I think the eyes are open. You'd have
Speaker 2: to be a real fool to say that ron fold
Speaker 2: convictions don't exists now. We're just several years ago, it
Speaker 2: wasn't quite there. That's what my closing earner would be,
Speaker 2: And I would add one other thing. We're not done
Speaker 2: with Arry's case. We're going to work on this till
Speaker 2: we get him fully exonerated.
Speaker 3: Very yes, sir, I heard you called me the start
Speaker 3: of the show. Well, you guys are the stars of
Speaker 3: my show. You know, without you guys in my life,
Speaker 3: I would probably be dead in prison, still in prison.
Speaker 3: So I want to thank you and honor you for
Speaker 3: that and your audience. I want to honor you for
Speaker 3: being attentive. And I want to admonish everyone under the
Speaker 3: sound of my voice to get involved with this awareness,
Speaker 3: to get involved with the injustice, the police brutality. The
Speaker 3: only way evil like this prevails is when good people
Speaker 3: say nothing. A lot of people will see crime and
Speaker 3: close their windows, close their doors, turn their back. And
Speaker 3: that's why we're in the state that we're in right now.
Speaker 3: We have to be courageous enough to say I saw this.
Speaker 3: I want to say something and the truth. You know.
Speaker 3: Of being in prison for thirty one years, I came
Speaker 3: out very battle weary, not too much confidence in my abilities.
Speaker 3: As I said before, overwhelmed with the stimulus of the
Speaker 3: free world. I still right now today have not cooked
Speaker 3: my own first meal. After being out of prison for
Speaker 3: it a year and some months, I don't have the
Speaker 3: confidence to cook a meal. I don't really go into
Speaker 3: big shopping malls anymore. There's too many choices. I'm not
Speaker 3: used to that. I am enjoying the freedom of going
Speaker 3: back and forth under limits being on parole or probation.
Speaker 3: But it feels good to be able to go here
Speaker 3: and there without having to ask permission. So to speak.
Speaker 3: Life is good, man, and it's getting better. You know.
Speaker 3: I have a whole lot to be thankful for, even
Speaker 3: though this misfortune happened to me and took away a
Speaker 3: lot of my life. I tell people all the time,
Speaker 3: I got a whole lot more yesterday's than I do tomorrow.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to make the most of it. And
Speaker 3: all I really want to do now is just be
Speaker 3: the best me that I can be, not only for
Speaker 3: myself but for anyone who's watching me, because someone's always
Speaker 3: watching and you never know what they're going to pick
Speaker 3: up from you. So I do my best to just
Speaker 3: be the best example I can. I'm not perfect. I
Speaker 3: have a ways to go. I'm not perfect, but I'm
Speaker 3: pretty close to it. That's a joke, no, but honestly,
Speaker 3: you know, heart goes out to the youth of America.
Speaker 3: You know, the violence, the games, the influences. Find other
Speaker 3: things to spend your time with. I really don't want
Speaker 3: to be preachy, but these are the things I've learned
Speaker 3: the hard way, you know, is ask questions, don't take
Speaker 3: anyone's word, find your own truth, seek clarity, you know,
Speaker 3: just be true to yourself. It's very important.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for listening. Thank you everyone at home.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 1: owner to the Ennisis Project, and I really hope you'll
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org
Speaker 1: to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like
Speaker 1: to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one