Speaker 1: On the evening of January fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine, a
Speaker 1: masked man approached two teenage boys in front of a
Speaker 1: bodega in the Bronx on a corner known for drug activity.
Speaker 1: The assailant drew a gun and shot one of the
Speaker 1: young men several times while the other ran off. The
Speaker 1: gunman chased the other young man down the block and
Speaker 1: around the corner before paralyzing him with one shot to
Speaker 1: the back. While both victims survived, only one was conscious,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't or wouldn't provide a lead. An eyewitness
Speaker 1: said that she recognized the shooter as a guy from
Speaker 1: the neighborhood named Drey. The police remembered Andre Brown, a
Speaker 1: neighborhood kid who was shot in the leg one year
Speaker 1: prior in a drug dispute. The specter of his injured
Speaker 1: leg and alternate suspects were ignored when both the witness
Speaker 1: and the victim agreed that Andre was the assailant. But
Speaker 1: this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction. Recently,
Speaker 1: Jason Flamm and I were asked to record an interview
Speaker 1: in front of a live audience at the annual United
Speaker 1: Justice Coalition Summit. The UJC aims to raise awareness around
Speaker 1: social justice issues and the need for criminal legal system reform.
Speaker 1: So for our live interview, we thought of a mutual friend,
Speaker 1: someone whose case I covered on my podcast Unjustin Unsolved
Speaker 1: while he was still wrongfully incarcerated, Andre Brown. Andre agreed
Speaker 1: to join us at the summit along with his attorney
Speaker 1: Oscar Michelin.
Speaker 2: Thanks everybody for being here.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna ask, first of all, how many people in
Speaker 3: this room were wrongfully convicted and sentenced? Oh my god,
Speaker 3: see that? And how many people here know somebody who
Speaker 3: was wrongfully convicted? Oh my god, that's a lot of hands. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this shit is everywhere. It's horrible, and I'm really really
Speaker 3: thrilled to be here with these amazing, amazing people. Maggie Feeling, Oscar,
Speaker 3: and of course Andre Brown. And I'm so glad that
Speaker 3: Andrea is here. I mean, I'm so glad you're here,
Speaker 3: because I'm so glad you're here with your amazing, beautiful
Speaker 3: family and everything.
Speaker 2: But his case start with this, Okay.
Speaker 3: It features a witness who didn't testify, but her testimony
Speaker 3: was allowed in any way, which meant that no one.
Speaker 2: Was allowed to cross examine her.
Speaker 3: Second of all, the shooter shot one guy execution style,
Speaker 3: then chased his friend caught up to him on the street. Now,
Speaker 3: this is an eighteen year old kid running for his life,
Speaker 3: and somehow this guy was fast enough to catch up
Speaker 3: with him and shoot him and paralyze him too. Andre
Speaker 3: had a bullet wound in his leg and had a
Speaker 3: syndrome that meant that he could barely walk, much less run.
Speaker 3: And it also features a lawyer who, while he was
Speaker 3: representing Andrea A. Try Well, had a side hustle which
Speaker 3: was committing so many crimes for the Banano crime family
Speaker 3: that he ended up being the only attorney in American
Speaker 3: history to enter the Witness Protection program.
Speaker 2: So it's a shit show.
Speaker 3: So get ready to hear what we're about to hear,
Speaker 3: because this is just different and Andre is just a
Speaker 3: different kind of guy.
Speaker 2: I mean to no one is to love him.
Speaker 4: So with that, Maggie all right, So hello everyone, thanks
Speaker 4: for coming. So we're just gonna start from the top
Speaker 4: with Andre. Why don't you tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about yourself.
Speaker 5: I was raised in a two parent household. It was
Speaker 5: the Uptime area, the Northeast Bronx. The crack epidemic was
Speaker 5: going on a lot of gun shots being fired continuously.
Speaker 5: The trains were littered homeless people, and it was just
Speaker 5: a real, just tragic time in the Bronx. My life
Speaker 5: was a fair life. My mother was a stewardess for
Speaker 5: the airlines, and she raised us and groomed us to
Speaker 5: be good individuals.
Speaker 6: And then my mother and my father separated.
Speaker 5: At that time, I was in high school, and now
Speaker 5: I was taken on the onus of raising my brothers.
Speaker 5: So I said, how can I now change the course
Speaker 5: of their lives and allow myself to continue in an
Speaker 5: upward manner. First I took on a job at creating barrel,
Speaker 5: trying to think that it would be able to fit
Speaker 5: the bill, and it didn't. It couldn't feed my little
Speaker 5: sister or my other two brothers. So at that time
Speaker 5: I said, you know what, I have to do something else.
Speaker 5: And my friend introduced me to selling drugs. And when
Speaker 5: I started to sell drugs, literally I thought I was
Speaker 5: a genius at it. And this is how your mind
Speaker 5: gets cultivated poorly in the streets. You start to really
Speaker 5: engage and think that you know better than law enforcement,
Speaker 5: you know better than society, and you also know better
Speaker 5: than that old adage car tune the turtle and the rabbit,
Speaker 5: thinking that, oh, I know what I'm doing. I'm running
Speaker 5: past this little working man, this turtle. So in selling
Speaker 5: drugs and thinking I was a genius, I got shot,
Speaker 5: a simple leg shot, mind you, It hit my major
Speaker 5: artery and I almost led to death. And that was
Speaker 5: the turning point in my life.
Speaker 4: So you almost died, So you got on a better
Speaker 4: path in life.
Speaker 5: Yes, First of all, you have to be an enforcer
Speaker 5: on a block in order to hold it down. I
Speaker 5: was injured, critically injured. I was at the point where
Speaker 5: I couldn't walk, I could no longer hold down a block.
Speaker 5: So I said, what am I going to do now
Speaker 5: with my life? And I started going back to college.
Speaker 5: At that point I enrolled in BMCC. And that's when
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 4: Tragedy occurred, right, And I want to bring that to Oscar.
Speaker 4: January fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine. What happened that day?
Speaker 7: So, on that day there was a shooting on a
Speaker 7: street corner in the Bronx Allerton Avenue, White Planes Road.
Speaker 8: That area.
Speaker 7: The corner there was Little Bodeig, a little corner store
Speaker 7: had been a spot where young Jamaican gang had started
Speaker 7: selling marijuana out of for the past about year or so,
Speaker 7: and the cops were aware of that, and so there
Speaker 7: became a little bit of a rival turf war for
Speaker 7: that location from the earlier crews that had been working
Speaker 7: there selling marijuana. And so the first incident that happened
Speaker 7: was on January eleventh, there was a shootout on that corner,
Speaker 7: two exchanges of gunfire. Nobody got shot, some cars were
Speaker 7: shot up, so the police responded. On January thirteenth, two
Speaker 7: days later, one of the guys that hustles on that corner,
Speaker 7: guy named O'Neil virgo, got arrested, and sure enough the
Speaker 7: gun he had on him was connected to the shooting
Speaker 7: on the eleventh, so he gets the rest of for
Speaker 7: a gun charge. And then on the fifteenth, O'Neil Virgo
Speaker 7: and another man, Sewann Nicholson or out on that corner
Speaker 7: selling drugs. Somebody comes up right down White Planes Road,
Speaker 7: sees them on the corner, They see the gun, got
Speaker 7: a mask on. The shooter literally stands over O'Neil virgo
Speaker 7: and shoots him several times and then runs down the
Speaker 7: street to try to get the other guy, Sewan Nicholson
Speaker 7: they were in a full city block.
Speaker 8: He makes a left turn onto the.
Speaker 7: Next block, which is Alinville, and the shooter shoots him
Speaker 7: there one time, hits him in the spine and paralyzes him.
Speaker 7: Somehow they both survived, so his attempted murder, there was
Speaker 7: lots of discrepancies as to what the shooter was wearing.
Speaker 7: Was it a face mask, was it a handkerchief of bandana,
Speaker 7: et cetera. So they asked the victim at that time,
Speaker 7: Sean Nicholson, mister Virgo could not speak. He was the
Speaker 7: one who shot five or six times. And that initial
Speaker 7: police report Sewan Nicholson, he says, I can't identify the shooter,
Speaker 7: and so the police start scouring the area looking for witnesses.
Speaker 3: So how did it end up with them settling on
Speaker 3: a guy who, it should have been painfully obvious from
Speaker 3: the very beginning not only didn't do it, but couldn't
Speaker 3: have done it.
Speaker 7: They started listening to rumors in the in the street
Speaker 7: and one of the women who later recanted said, you know,
Speaker 7: the shooter looked a little bit like this guy I
Speaker 7: know from the neighborhood dre. So the next thing they
Speaker 7: do with that is go to the hospital and get
Speaker 7: Sean Nicholson, who had repeatedly said I didn't see the
Speaker 7: guy he had a mask to pick Andre allegedly out
Speaker 7: of a photo array. So what Nicholson actually said, or
Speaker 7: what the police got him to say, was, as he
Speaker 7: was falling to the ground, he looked over his shoulder
Speaker 7: and saw the shooter pulled the mask off his face
Speaker 7: and he could recognize Andre from the neighborhood.
Speaker 8: Sounds totally legit exactly happens all the time.
Speaker 7: Two days later, a witness comes forward who claims she
Speaker 7: was in her car when the shooting occurred. And this
Speaker 7: is about five point thirty six o'clock at night on
Speaker 7: a winter night, so it was just starting to get
Speaker 7: dark in January. And then she says she saw the
Speaker 7: shooter run past her and pull up his mask just
Speaker 7: as he passed her car window. She also said that
Speaker 7: the shots were fired by her car, but the shots
Speaker 7: that shot mister Nicholson as a described around the corner,
Speaker 7: so she would not have been able to see what
Speaker 7: she said she saw. And she said that she was
Speaker 7: so upset that night she reported to the police because
Speaker 7: she almost had a heart attack and she was treated
Speaker 7: for angina. That night, so she didn't come forward until
Speaker 7: two days later. After there was already the rumors in
Speaker 7: the neighborhood and they were already looking for Andre.
Speaker 4: So, Andre, when you found out they were looking for you,
Speaker 4: you turned yourself in with a lawyer.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 5: They came to my girlfriend's house early in the morning.
Speaker 5: They missed me. I had just went out to get
Speaker 5: breakfast really quick and came back. She was trembling and
Speaker 5: she said, listen, the police were here. They left the
Speaker 5: card that they searched the home. I immediately reached out
Speaker 5: to my mom and she said, Andre, they were just
Speaker 5: here also, I was just about to call you. And
Speaker 5: I went to the Bar Association to meet Martin Fisher.
Speaker 5: Martin Fisher was a family attorney, and I said, Marty,
Speaker 5: they're looking for me. I don't know what they're looking
Speaker 5: for me for. They were contacted by Martin and they said,
Speaker 5: we want to ask him a few questions. He said, no,
Speaker 5: he's represented by me. You cannot ask him any questions.
Speaker 5: I said, okay, Well, if we need him, we'll contact you.
Speaker 5: Two days later, on the Wednesday morning, they contacted him.
Speaker 6: Which was the twentieth of January.
Speaker 5: And I went down there with my mom and my
Speaker 5: girlfriend at the time, and walked right into the prison.
Speaker 5: I didn't have a worry in the world because I
Speaker 5: knew that I didn't have anything to do with this case.
Speaker 5: So at that time I was not a prisoner yet.
Speaker 5: I was actually seated outside of the push door. And
Speaker 5: it's ironic because one of the detectives there, he said, Andre,
Speaker 5: don't you remember me?
Speaker 6: And I'm like, no, I don't. Who are you?
Speaker 5: He said, when you were shot? I came to the hospital,
Speaker 5: so they knew that I was shot already before even
Speaker 5: any questions were occurring. And then my attorney went inside
Speaker 5: spoke to them, and he came back out, and at
Speaker 5: that point they arrested me. And I became enraged. You know,
Speaker 5: I was yelling at my attorney. I was yelling at them.
Speaker 5: I said, listen, I could have never committed this crime.
Speaker 5: I showed them my injury. They noted it. It was
Speaker 5: on the police reports. And then I went to a lineup,
Speaker 5: and when I went to the lineup, I was picked
Speaker 5: out of the lineup as the suspect.
Speaker 3: It's a perfect time to highlight the fact that I
Speaker 3: witness identification has been proven in experiments to be less
Speaker 3: accurate than guessing when you're in a hyper tense situation,
Speaker 3: like your own life is on the line, when there's
Speaker 3: gunshots being fired, when it's a running gun situation. Literally
Speaker 3: in this case, your adrenalinees going. And most people think
Speaker 3: their minds work like a camera, but in fact we're
Speaker 3: so easily influenced that in this case, it seems like
Speaker 3: the police may have influenced these witnesses, and I'm being
Speaker 3: very kind.
Speaker 2: They may have, and.
Speaker 7: We believe that she did witness it, that she was there,
Speaker 7: that we do believe, but we believe that she was
Speaker 7: guided into picking the wrong person.
Speaker 1: In addition to any guidance the victim and the witness
Speaker 1: may have received from law enforcement, Andre's case features a
Speaker 1: very unfortunate coincidence. It became clear many years later when
Speaker 1: the true assailant was discovered that he and Andre could
Speaker 1: easily be mistaken for one another, especially given the alleged
Speaker 1: quick glances that the witness and victim were relying on
Speaker 1: to make their identifications.
Speaker 2: What were the.
Speaker 6: Charges to attempted murders?
Speaker 5: Two assaults, breakless endangerment, and the list just goes on and.
Speaker 7: On and everything under a gun possession, gun possession. The
Speaker 7: family hired a well known criminal defense attorney named Ira Brown,
Speaker 7: and the first appearance, Ira says to the judge, but
Speaker 7: the family retained me, but they don't have enough money
Speaker 7: to pay for an expert. Can the court pay for
Speaker 7: an expert? You see, Judge, my client just recently started
Speaker 7: being able to walk without a cane. He's still undergoing
Speaker 7: physical therapy, and at the time of this shooting, he
Speaker 7: couldn't possibly have ran the two city blocks that the
Speaker 7: shooter did. So I want to get the medical records,
Speaker 7: and I want to hire an expert orthopedist. And the
Speaker 7: judge said, well, that sounds like a pretty strong defense.
Speaker 7: So let me start with five hundred dollars get the
Speaker 7: medical records, and then when you hired the expert, let
Speaker 7: me know, you know what else you need, because yes,
Speaker 7: we'll pay for that. What happened was Ira was on
Speaker 7: trial two or three times in a row when Andrea's
Speaker 7: case was on and the family decided we have to
Speaker 7: get somebody else. At that time, there were a lot
Speaker 7: of mafia trials going on, you know, the Gotti cases,
Speaker 7: and mafia lawyers were kind of considered the cream of
Speaker 7: the crop, and they hired a guy named Thomas Lee
Speaker 7: to take over the case, and that's where everything fell apart.
Speaker 7: So even though the judge had approved this money, Thomas
Speaker 7: never pursued the medical evidence after that. And there were
Speaker 7: two witnesses that he told the court he was trying
Speaker 7: to locate who would name another shooter, a witness named
Speaker 7: Graham and a witness named Cleveland. And he gave subpoenas
Speaker 7: to the judge and he didn't have the addresses on
Speaker 7: the subpoenas, so the judge said, I can't sign a
Speaker 7: blank subpoena. Get me the addresses and I'll sign them.
Speaker 7: And he never did anything else after that. The last straw,
Speaker 7: and what Jason was referring to, was that the one
Speaker 7: eyewitness was going to testify. The woman in the car
Speaker 7: ran into Andre's mother and a family friend at a
Speaker 7: laundromat and they pleaded with her, you know, you made
Speaker 7: a mistake.
Speaker 8: My son didn't do this.
Speaker 7: She reports that to the DA, who reports it to
Speaker 7: the judge, and the judge said, well, that's perfectly normal.
Speaker 7: They didn't threaten her. They just told her they think
Speaker 7: her son is innocent. But what the DA was saying
Speaker 7: was that she didn't want to come forward and testify.
Speaker 7: We believe she didn't want to come forward and testify
Speaker 7: because she knew that she probably did not identify the
Speaker 7: right person. But what happened after that is the day
Speaker 7: before she's supposed to testify, a bullet in an envelope
Speaker 7: ends up under her windshield wiper and it says, this
Speaker 7: is what happens to rats, you fat bitch.
Speaker 5: And it was written in reading and ready with two
Speaker 5: bullets in a left on her windshield.
Speaker 7: Right, so of course Andre's incarcerated, so so he didn't
Speaker 7: do it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: The point about Lee being involved, what the judge said
Speaker 7: was it had to have been someone connected to the defendant.
Speaker 7: What she didn't consider it was the lawyer was a
Speaker 7: fully made member of the Banano crime family and one
Speaker 7: of the crimes he got arrested for and turned informant
Speaker 7: was that he would go to the jail and speak
Speaker 7: to the dawn who was arrested because he could go
Speaker 7: see him without anybody listening. He's a lawyer, and he
Speaker 7: would go back and give instructions including who to give
Speaker 7: a garbage contract to in Staten Island, who to give
Speaker 7: a garbage contract to in the Bronx and who to
Speaker 7: kill and who to promote within the family, who's more
Speaker 7: likely to intimidate it Like that's their game, that's what
Speaker 7: they do.
Speaker 8: This sounds like a mob guy.
Speaker 7: And it would also explain why he wouldn't do the
Speaker 7: rest of the work because he says, there's one witness.
Speaker 7: If she doesn't show up, the case is over, and
Speaker 7: I can't you know, many times they would tell clients,
Speaker 7: you know, they would say, don't worry, she's not going
Speaker 7: to show up. And I would say them, you know,
Speaker 7: the third floor in Attica is called a she showed
Speaker 7: up wing. Okay, you know, don't count on someone not
Speaker 7: showing up. She's going to show she hates you, okay.
Speaker 7: But so he was probably counting on that he was
Speaker 7: going to be able to intimidate her and I don't
Speaker 7: need to worry about it.
Speaker 1: Even though it's believed that this witness refused to testify
Speaker 1: due to her doubts over her identification, the appearance of
Speaker 1: witness intimidation probably did not reflect well on Andre. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: his attorney's trial strategy hinged on both her absence and
Speaker 1: being able to cross examine the victim, who had initially
Speaker 1: said that he could not identify the shooter. Well, both
Speaker 1: of those things came to pass. The witness's absence at
Speaker 1: trial had an unforeseen and unfortunate result.
Speaker 7: They let the DA read her testimony from the grand jury.
Speaker 7: It was a total of six questions. Where were you
Speaker 7: on that night in my car?
Speaker 8: What happened?
Speaker 7: Somebody ran behind me? What happened after that? I saw
Speaker 7: a second person would have gone ran after him? What
Speaker 7: happened after that? I heard shots? What happened after that?
Speaker 7: He pulled his mask off. Were he able to see
Speaker 7: his face?
Speaker 8: Yes? Did you recognize him? Yes?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 8: Andre Bran?
Speaker 7: Now she didn't know the name Andre Brown. She only
Speaker 7: knew was Dre. But by the time the grand jury
Speaker 7: she had learned the name, and he said, how do
Speaker 7: you know him from around the neighborhood?
Speaker 8: That's it?
Speaker 7: Okay, those eight questions, whatever I just went through. That
Speaker 7: was her testimony. That's what convicted Andre essentially was those
Speaker 7: eight questions. But she wasn't cross examined about being in
Speaker 7: the car at night, being scared. The jury never heard
Speaker 7: she almost had a heart attack. The jury never saw
Speaker 7: how similar Andrea looked to the real shooter. Obviously, Now,
Speaker 7: Nicholson testified, you know also that he saw him as
Speaker 7: he fell, and he was pretty well cross examined by Lee.
Speaker 7: I will say that that's what he was good at
Speaker 7: to say how incredible it could be that you could
Speaker 7: be falling down looking over your shoulder and catch a
Speaker 7: glimpse of a guy, you know. So that was the
Speaker 7: whole evidence.
Speaker 4: Right there, right So to just summarize the entire evidence
Speaker 4: against you, Andre, was not cross testimony from this witness.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 8: That's it. No motive, no physical evidence.
Speaker 4: Those eight questions convicted Andre.
Speaker 3: So Andre, that moment when the jury came back in,
Speaker 3: can you take us inside your heart, your soul, your
Speaker 3: experience of being in that courtroom jury comes back and
Speaker 3: says guilty.
Speaker 5: At that very moment, I was shaking the pinnacle of
Speaker 5: either I'm going home or I received this forty years.
Speaker 5: And I sat there and the judge came in and
Speaker 5: we all rose, and there was one guy I'll never
Speaker 5: forget in the jury and he kept looking at me
Speaker 5: and he was shaking his head like, yo, Yo, it's
Speaker 5: not good, man, it's not good. And I looked at him.
Speaker 5: I said what happened? He said, Yo, they found you guilty.
Speaker 5: And I told Lee I hit him. I said, Yo,
Speaker 5: they're gonna find me guilty. He said, what are you
Speaker 5: talking about. I put on a great defense and he
Speaker 5: put on no defense. Didn't bring my medical records anything
Speaker 5: like that to the jury's attention. And I was trembling
Speaker 5: knowing that I was about to be convicted. I just
Speaker 5: felt like an entire cold go over my body. It's
Speaker 5: almost as if your soul leaves you, because you know
Speaker 5: this is the trend information of life itself. After I
Speaker 5: was convicted, I was taken back upstairs. I was crying continuously,
Speaker 5: taking back to records island. So the judge waited. I
Speaker 5: think it was like three months before sentencing, and I
Speaker 5: thought that the judge would have saw the lies and
Speaker 5: would have changed her mind and sent me home. I
Speaker 5: can remember it clearly. I said, she's going to see it.
Speaker 5: She'll see the lies, she'll see that Thomas Lee didn't
Speaker 5: put on the defense. She'll be able to see medical
Speaker 5: records something. But when I come back, I'm going to
Speaker 5: be freed. And when I was sentenced, I snapped again
Speaker 5: and I said, do you see what you're doing to
Speaker 5: an innocent man? Do you see what you're taking me
Speaker 5: away from? Do you see that you're taking me from
Speaker 5: my college, from my family, from my potential girlfriend, everything
Speaker 5: that I've worked so hard for. Do you see what
Speaker 5: you're taking away from me? And she said, mister Brown,
Speaker 5: I'll understand, but you have an appeal. And she sentenced me.
Speaker 5: She said, for the first count, I'm going to sentence
Speaker 5: you to twenty years, and then she said for the
Speaker 5: second count, I'm going to sentence you to twenty years.
Speaker 5: And both of these sentences will run consecutive to one another.
Speaker 5: And I didn't understand what that meant at the time.
Speaker 5: And then when I got back and they gave me
Speaker 5: my sentence and commitment papers, it said forty years. I
Speaker 5: want our audience to really understand going through a bullpen
Speaker 5: therapy in the three stages of prison because it changes
Speaker 5: the cognition of your mind.
Speaker 4: Well, so you were a child, so your brain is
Speaker 4: still developing when you went into prison.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, so you know I'm arrested, kicking, screaming, being dragged
Speaker 5: into prison saying you did something that you didn't do.
Speaker 5: I go through the central booking is the first stage
Speaker 5: of prison. Straight madness and chaos. People sleeping on the floor,
Speaker 5: You're trying to get to the phone system. You're trying
Speaker 5: to lay on a bench where individuals is fighting and
Speaker 5: pulling and tugging and saying if you're not built like that,
Speaker 5: you're not sleeping on the bench. You're going to sleep
Speaker 5: under the bench. You're going to sleep on the floor.
Speaker 5: You may sleep near the toilet whereas all urine filled.
Speaker 5: So this is the first stage of being thrown inside
Speaker 5: the madness. And then the second stage is going through
Speaker 5: reyk As Island. And now you're fighting to get on
Speaker 5: the phones again, you're fighting in the yard. You're making
Speaker 5: sure now you're exercising so that you can stay you know,
Speaker 5: built for anything that's going to come at you. So
Speaker 5: it's a war zone from Central Book and two reyk
Speaker 5: As Island. And now you're getting thrown inside the Department
Speaker 5: of Corrections where they're supposed to rehabilitate you. But now
Speaker 5: it's more gangs, it's more violence, it's more police assault,
Speaker 5: it's more just the pitfalls of the criminal justice system.
Speaker 5: So immediately my mind started to trigger Andre. Now you're
Speaker 5: going to be like them. You have to now engage
Speaker 5: into the brutality to make it to take phone, to
Speaker 5: carry raisers, to carry sharp objects, to protect yourself. You
Speaker 5: have to battle in order to have your core beliefs
Speaker 5: and your freedom's met in the minds of these men
Speaker 5: who understand that we're criminals.
Speaker 4: When you put an innocent child in prison with people
Speaker 4: that are actually dangerous, there are dangerous people in prison.
Speaker 4: You have to survive, absolutely, and that could also be
Speaker 4: a huge hindrance to him getting out if he got
Speaker 4: in a fight or someone attacked him and something happened.
Speaker 4: I mean, we don't even think about that when we
Speaker 4: put someone like you in prison that's innocent, you could
Speaker 4: come out an actual criminal.
Speaker 6: At that point, it came up.
Speaker 7: But as strong as you got into a fight, and
Speaker 7: the DA brought it to the attention that he got
Speaker 7: into a violent altercation at prison because they made a
Speaker 7: bail application. So even though you didn't know that, that's
Speaker 7: exactly what happened.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that, but yeah, that could have hurt
Speaker 4: your chances of getting out absolutely. So, Oscar, how did
Speaker 4: you get this man out of prison?
Speaker 6: Yeah, let's get to the good stuff here.
Speaker 7: Well, So, one of the reasons I got involved in
Speaker 7: Andrea's case is this is my neighborhood. We went to
Speaker 7: the same high school, Christopher Columbus and the bronx for Columbus.
Speaker 2: He wrongly identified a whole country.
Speaker 7: Exactly wasn't even on the same continent. But in any event,
Speaker 7: the case right, I said, it spoke to me, but
Speaker 7: also showed how weak it was. We just found out
Speaker 7: a lot during freedom information laws, which is everybody's good friend.
Speaker 7: We first found a report at DD five that was
Speaker 7: not given to either mister Ira Brown or to Lee
Speaker 7: that showed that the police had actually tested the bullets
Speaker 7: and found that the bullets on the fifteenth matched the
Speaker 7: gun that was used on the eleventh, So we already
Speaker 7: knew that Virgo had one of the guns, so this
Speaker 7: had to be the gun that was shooting at Virgo
Speaker 7: on the eleventh. So frankly, I felt that was almost
Speaker 7: enough because now we had a motive for the jury
Speaker 7: that the same person who shot at these two young
Speaker 7: men also shot them on the fifteenth. And O'Neil Virgo
Speaker 7: had told the police he got a look at the
Speaker 7: person who shot him on the eleventh and he didn't
Speaker 7: think it was Andre. So if Andre didn't shoot him
Speaker 7: on the eleventh, and how could Andre have had the
Speaker 7: gun on the fifteenth, And the judge at his hearing
Speaker 7: had a lot of questions about that. That was the
Speaker 7: first thing. We then found another DD five of a witness,
Speaker 7: Courtney Weezy, who said that the shooter was wearing a TAM.
Speaker 7: A tam is what Jamaica men were to hold the dreads.
Speaker 7: It's a big woolf cat. Courtney Weezy said the shooter
Speaker 7: had a TAM and he was showing a photo array
Speaker 7: with Andrea's picture in it and said he couldn't recognize
Speaker 7: anybody in the photo ray or we only got the
Speaker 7: first page and I noticed there was a check mark
Speaker 7: on the front page as witness can I d yes?
Speaker 7: And then no one ever got the second page, said
Speaker 7: makes I.
Speaker 4: Know, so that's a Brady violation.
Speaker 7: That would be a Brady violation. But they argued that
Speaker 7: the shooter had a mask on, so you know, it
Speaker 7: wasn't a big deal and he couldn't see it. But
Speaker 7: the point is he had a right to know that,
Speaker 7: and so I said, well, there'd be no reason for
Speaker 7: Andre to be wearing a tan. So this shooter was
Speaker 7: likely Jamaican, and I knew that back then there was
Speaker 7: a lot of battle between Jamaicans and American blacks over
Speaker 7: turf as the Jamaicans are moving into the Bronx. So
Speaker 7: didn't make sense to me that both of the victims
Speaker 7: were Jamaican. Why would a Jamaican shoot these victims. But
Speaker 7: we found out when we located the witnesses was that
Speaker 7: the real shooter was a Jamaican guy who happened to
Speaker 7: have gotten into the neighborhood little bit earlier and was
Speaker 7: working with American blacks to sell weed at that location,
Speaker 7: and even though they were Jamaican, he didn't like that
Speaker 7: they were working his corner, and that's what the shooting
Speaker 7: was all about. The guy who we discovered was the
Speaker 7: real shooter, we did some research and tried to get
Speaker 7: his yearbook picture, and we got his middle school yearbook picture.
Speaker 7: By sheer coincidence. The principal of the middle school that
Speaker 7: he went to ended up being my teacher from back
Speaker 7: in seventh grade. So there's a lot of connections for
Speaker 7: me in the case. If you put these pictures side
Speaker 7: by side, Andre and the real shooter look extremely similar.
Speaker 7: And that's a key factor is that the person who
Speaker 7: might have seen the real shooter when his mass was
Speaker 7: off could have easily picked him as Andre. They were
Speaker 7: the exact same height and the exact same weight, okay,
Speaker 7: and a very similar face. When we found the motion,
Speaker 7: we showed, hey, look what TAM means. The real shooter
Speaker 7: we found out was Jamaican. He would wear that the
Speaker 7: victims were selling weed. Andre never sold weed. This guy
Speaker 7: only sold weed. Seven months after this shooting, guess what happened.
Speaker 7: Real shooter gets gunned down.
Speaker 5: Just finding the funeral picture where he actually had dreads, right,
Speaker 5: we were able to actually put together the two pieces
Speaker 5: of the TAM and now the dreads with the funeral pictures.
Speaker 7: Right, we found his funeral program, which is great because
Speaker 7: it said his real name, but in the middle of
Speaker 7: it said Bonkers. Okay, his nickname was Bonkers. And the
Speaker 7: witness said, this guy was crazy. This guy would shoot
Speaker 7: you up for no reason. So it's like, let's put
Speaker 7: this together here, okay. And then we actually found a
Speaker 7: surgeon who did the surgery on Andre's leg. He had
Speaker 7: a very serious condition called compartment syndrome. And what happens
Speaker 7: there is you get shot and your leg swells up
Speaker 7: so much that they have to expose all four quadrants
Speaker 7: of your calf. They cut it open, and they leave
Speaker 7: you lying in bed with open wounds until the pressure
Speaker 7: goes down. He had skin grasps. We're talking about a
Speaker 7: scar from his thigh down to his ankle, proven atrophy.
Speaker 7: And the doctor actually remembered the case, which is unbelievable.
Speaker 7: He's the head of trauma at Jacobi in the Bronx,
Speaker 7: which is a trauma one center, so this is not
Speaker 7: some quack. And now he was head of medicine and
Speaker 7: surgery at Mymodny's in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: And listen, I just want to say that when you're
Speaker 5: wrongfully convicted, you better know God. All right, We're not
Speaker 5: going to allow that not to be set on this
Speaker 5: forum right now.
Speaker 8: It really must.
Speaker 5: Be stated because a lot of this is sheer luck
Speaker 5: and God's umbrella had to be on me because my
Speaker 5: surgeon was alive.
Speaker 7: And he said, there's no way someone with this injury
Speaker 7: could have ran. He said, maybe he could pull his
Speaker 7: leg along, he said, but he would have a noticeable
Speaker 7: limp at best. And the judge at Andrea's hearings said,
Speaker 7: could he jog? He said no, he could not jog.
Speaker 7: He could not jog. He could not run this quickly.
Speaker 7: The problem was because the case was so old, there
Speaker 7: were no physical therapy records, to show how far along.
Speaker 6: To when it got those medical.
Speaker 9: Records, to make us his amazing wife, and not to
Speaker 9: mention my brother Devon who's not here, also where we
Speaker 9: were on the phone like illegally at that point making
Speaker 9: three week calls to Jacobe Hospital to locate these records.
Speaker 7: This surgeon he actually called over there to try to
Speaker 7: get him himself. I mean, he really knew that something
Speaker 7: wrong was going on. Ronald Simon, he said, there's got
Speaker 7: to be pt records there, maybe Ifi Coal, you know,
Speaker 7: we'll find them. And no one could find those therapy
Speaker 7: recordscause they don't preserve them. It's talking about the nineteen
Speaker 7: ninety we'll looking for them in twenty twenty, you know.
Speaker 7: But we did have Ira Brown telling the judge at
Speaker 7: his first court appearance, my client is still undergoing physical
Speaker 7: therapy and only recently was able to walk without a cane,
Speaker 7: and so that formed the basis.
Speaker 3: You know, there are a series of sort of miracles
Speaker 3: right that led to.
Speaker 2: You being here.
Speaker 3: But it points out, you know, my estimate is that
Speaker 3: there's probably around two hundred thousand innocent people in prison
Speaker 3: while we're sitting here right now in this country and
Speaker 3: that's probably conservative. And those people, many of them, don't
Speaker 3: have a way out. They don't have an Oscar Michelin, right,
Speaker 3: they don't have a Maggie Feeling to do a podcast
Speaker 3: about the case.
Speaker 2: In fact, this goes back to very early when we first.
Speaker 3: Started the Wrongful Conviction podcast and our producer back then
Speaker 3: was a woman named Sabine Jas and she alerted me
Speaker 3: to your case. I brought it to our fantastic PR
Speaker 3: person named Don Cameron.
Speaker 2: Amazed to generate some interest.
Speaker 6: We brought Jeffrey Deskovic in.
Speaker 3: I was about to go there and let me brag
Speaker 3: on Jeffrey for a second. So Jeffrey Deskovic right there,
Speaker 3: sitting in the front row, standing in the front row,
Speaker 3: standing now wrongfully convicted, served sixteen years in New York
Speaker 3: State and is now a member of the bar.
Speaker 2: And he turned out to be Listen.
Speaker 5: As a joke, and as a joke, you know, we
Speaker 5: say that Jeffrey is the media whore.
Speaker 6: Okay, Now they.
Speaker 4: Love your case because the jeff you brought the case.
Speaker 5: Listen, they love jeff the media so immediately, and it's
Speaker 5: not a.
Speaker 6: Joke, guys.
Speaker 5: Its a lot of attention to this, Yes, because Jeff
Speaker 5: is my brother. Jeff is the guy who went hard,
Speaker 5: extremely hard in the media for my case him and
Speaker 5: then Sabine will never forget Sabine because she contacted Jason
Speaker 5: and Jason said, who's Andre Brown, and so being explained
Speaker 5: it and he said, listen, we got to put Dawn
Speaker 5: on this because the only thing that Governor Cuomo does
Speaker 5: in the morning is he reads and not bad. So
Speaker 5: at that point he put Dawn right in the fray
Speaker 5: of everything, and the campaign began.
Speaker 7: First, we went to the Conviction Review Unit. They rejected
Speaker 7: the case and so we filed a four to forty.
Speaker 5: At that time, it was COVID and they were not
Speaker 5: trying to bring me down on a hearing.
Speaker 7: We had asked for a virtual hearing because the courts
Speaker 7: were closed to in person hearings, and the DA opposed that,
Speaker 7: and then Jeff organized a rally in front of her
Speaker 7: office to try to get her to agree to a
Speaker 7: virtual hearing, and we had a hearing and the judge
Speaker 7: agreed that at the very least Lee was ineffective for
Speaker 7: not presenting the medical evidence, and just to put the
Speaker 7: icing on it. I've known Jeff for a long time.
Speaker 7: We kind of mentored him through with his law school experience,
Speaker 7: and he became an admitted attorney right before we had
Speaker 7: got a hearing granted, so I asked him to second seat. Mean,
Speaker 7: Andre was just first client. So and he's back in
Speaker 7: a hundred.
Speaker 4: So actually, Oscar, I do want to point out not
Speaker 4: exactly a hundred Andre.
Speaker 8: No, I shouldn't say that's right.
Speaker 4: Andrea is not exonerated yet, which is why we're here
Speaker 4: telling his story because the bronx DA is actually still
Speaker 4: fighting his conviction, wanting to put Andre back in prison.
Speaker 4: So not only do we need to exonerate him, we
Speaker 4: need to make sure that he doesn't go back to prison.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they're they're filed an appeal of the vacature of
Speaker 7: the conviction, and I got to tell you, you know,
Speaker 7: the odds of its success are are not high, the low.
Speaker 7: But this room speaks to what happens when you caught
Speaker 7: up in the criminal justice system. Right if you if
Speaker 7: you're counting on the criminal justicism to work out for you,
Speaker 7: you know you're going to get very sorely disappointed. So
Speaker 7: it really, you know, is a case that should not
Speaker 7: be appealed. Never mind the fact that he served well
Speaker 7: over twenty years for a crime that we established, you know,
Speaker 7: he didn't commit, but to just drag it on, have
Speaker 7: this over his head. They fought bail. Now after the
Speaker 7: judge vacated his conviction, they asked for five hundred thousand
Speaker 7: dollars bail. Okay, the judge released him, but to supervise release,
Speaker 7: just like it wouldn't give us the measure that he
Speaker 7: was actually innocent. Took the safe path and said he
Speaker 7: was ineffective. You know, as I said to Jason before
Speaker 7: we came out here, I've been involved in a lot
Speaker 7: of cases. I've never had a case with this much
Speaker 7: evidence of innocence. And the judge just couldn't get there.
Speaker 7: And then he couldn't just do roar. He had to
Speaker 7: send him to supervised release. So it's just constant. The
Speaker 7: justice system loves finality. They want to, you know, keep
Speaker 7: that hold on you. To the point where when he
Speaker 7: first started going to the supervised release place, which is
Speaker 7: now run by the Fortune Society, they called us and said,
Speaker 7: why are we supervising this person. He went to another
Speaker 7: program to be interviewed and they ended up hiring them
Speaker 7: instead of supervising.
Speaker 6: He works there.
Speaker 7: Now, Yes, I mean, it's really daunting and it's very
Speaker 7: discomforting to believe that.
Speaker 8: You know, we now have to wait.
Speaker 7: It'll take about two years to decide this appeal.
Speaker 3: And I want to get to what people here can do,
Speaker 3: if they can write letters, or if there's anything else
Speaker 3: they could do to make their voices heard for Andre.
Speaker 4: Well, I do know there's a go fundme for Andre.
Speaker 4: It's GoFundMe such support Andre Brown, So that exists, so
Speaker 4: please donate.
Speaker 2: To that if you can, and we'll link to it
Speaker 2: in the episode. Yeah description as well.
Speaker 4: And you guys have the power to vote for the DA.
Speaker 4: I mean, we can vote in progressive district attorneys. So
Speaker 4: just so you guys know that you have the power
Speaker 4: to make sure that there are conviction review units, that
Speaker 4: there are progressive das that don't fight these convictions that
Speaker 4: are so obvious, so obvious.
Speaker 3: And before we go to we have a tradition on
Speaker 3: the show, we call it closing arguments. But before we
Speaker 3: do that, there's one other very special person in this
Speaker 3: room I want to acknowledge, and this is a young
Speaker 3: man named right, your.
Speaker 2: Son's daf Aj.
Speaker 3: I heard somewhere that he scored thirty points in a
Speaker 3: basketball game this week, So if there's any agents in
Speaker 3: the room, might want to get in now because he's
Speaker 3: only twelve.
Speaker 4: Actually, I did want to talk about Aja Tamika and Andre.
Speaker 4: You knew each other from high school, yes, and now
Speaker 4: you're married. You did over twenty years in prison, and
Speaker 4: actually we talked about how you're lucky that you're alive,
Speaker 4: because if you're a leg you're lucky now that you're
Speaker 4: out a lot of people get out and don't have family,
Speaker 4: and you have a wonderful wife and a son, yes,
Speaker 4: that you're coming home to right.
Speaker 2: There, right there, right look for.
Speaker 5: Not only do people not have family, they don't have hope,
Speaker 5: they don't have faith. They lose their souls inside of
Speaker 5: prison because they don't have friends. I've seen individuals walk
Speaker 5: in the yard until they turn mad because they're innocent
Speaker 5: and now everybody has shunned them. So what does that
Speaker 5: really mean when society itself make you the treads and
Speaker 5: then inside of the prison you're a nobody.
Speaker 7: Well, it's just a dangerous place. Where we were waiting
Speaker 7: for Andrea's hearing because of COVID. One of the reasons
Speaker 7: we filed for the virtual hearing was Andre was actually
Speaker 7: on the phone with Tamika on Thanksgiving Day and some
Speaker 7: other guy in the prison thought he was on the
Speaker 7: phone too long and nearly took Andre's eyes, stabbed him
Speaker 7: in the face with a pen. Yeah, while he was
Speaker 7: on the phone with Tamika, right, Yes, And you know
Speaker 7: I wrote to the judge and said, look, we got
Speaker 7: to get this guy hearing like he's in the Honors prison.
Speaker 7: By way, this is the place in the Eastern those
Speaker 7: are here know they call it Happy Nap because it's
Speaker 7: like the place where you're supposed to be the safest.
Speaker 7: And he got attacked just on the phone. So you know,
Speaker 7: sending someone to prison is you know, it could potentially
Speaker 7: be a death sentence.
Speaker 3: It is for too many people. And we know that
Speaker 3: right here in Manhattan and right here in New York
Speaker 3: Rikers Island. Since may Or Adams took office, twenty nine
Speaker 3: people at last count, have been murdered and Riker's Island,
Speaker 3: and most of them, overwhelming the jar of them had
Speaker 3: even been convicted of anything.
Speaker 8: Yet most of them were presumed innocent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just waiting for trials.
Speaker 6: Detainees.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: That could have been you, or could have been so
Speaker 3: many other people in this room. So anyone who's just
Speaker 3: listened to the Wrongful Conviction podcast knows this is my
Speaker 3: favorite part of the show. We call it closing Arguments.
Speaker 3: It's where we thank each of you, Maggie and I
Speaker 3: for being here with us today, everybody in the audience,
Speaker 3: everybody listening at home, and then turn it over to
Speaker 3: Oscar first to say anything else is left to be said,
Speaker 3: and then you take us off into the sunset anything
Speaker 3: you want to say.
Speaker 7: First of all, thank you for being involved in the
Speaker 7: issue and spread the word. Tell people that there are
Speaker 7: folks in there who don't belong there. There are many
Speaker 7: people who serve their time in a route that will
Speaker 7: never get the justice that they deserve and that time
Speaker 7: has been lost. Will let people know that this is
Speaker 7: an issue that should be addressed at every time that
Speaker 7: there's a DA running for office.
Speaker 5: And for me, I got to mention some of my
Speaker 5: great colleagues, Michael Cobb, who we all know is shot,
Speaker 5: do Raphael Martine, as Pedro Rodriguez, Noachia Rose, Ronaldo Morgan.
Speaker 5: These men are still fighting for their freedom today and
Speaker 5: I mentioned them because I want everybody here in the
Speaker 5: live audience at home to take a second look. I
Speaker 5: give you the analogy that I give to some of
Speaker 5: the students when I did my last speech with Jeff,
Speaker 5: and it is like when you guys are driving home
Speaker 5: and you just see something as simple as a pedestrian
Speaker 5: pulled over on the side of the road, and you're
Speaker 5: just like, oh, it must be a lawful stop, so
Speaker 5: you just keep moving. Take a second look, take a
Speaker 5: second look when you see somebody in trouble, because you
Speaker 5: never will know when it's your time to give that
Speaker 5: help in hand.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 3: You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Speaker 3: Good podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for
Speaker 3: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
Speaker 3: production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 3: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn.
Speaker 3: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 3: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
Speaker 3: across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
Speaker 3: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 3: at It's Jason flamm Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 3: Lava for Good podcasts and association with Signal Company Number
Speaker 3: one