Speaker 1: On July ninth, two thousand and six, a shooting ripped
Speaker 1: through a Waterloo, Iowa nightclub. Tanye Jackson was fatally shot.
Speaker 1: Panicked clubgoers flooded nine one one with calls, and in
Speaker 1: the chaos, one name came out, local rapper Jeff Smith.
Speaker 1: The problem Jeff didn't match the description, his car wasn't
Speaker 1: the getaway car. None of it lined up. Yet police
Speaker 1: produced statements that corroborated that initial identification and contradicted the
Speaker 1: facts they already had. This is wrongful conviction. The Fox
Speaker 1: Foundation is proud to support this episode of wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: and the work of After Innocence, a nonprofit that helps
Speaker 1: hundreds of people nationwide rebuild their lives after wrongful incarceration.
Speaker 1: Each year, innocent people are released after spending years behind
Speaker 1: bars for crimes they didn't commit. Nearly all of them
Speaker 1: leave prison with nothing more than the clothes on their backs,
Speaker 1: with no help or compensation from the state as they
Speaker 1: face the steep challenges of rebuilding their lives after wrongful imprisonment.
Speaker 1: After Innocence is changing that After Innocence helps exoneries get
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Speaker 1: Since twenty sixteen, they've brought.
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Speaker 1: Rebuild their lives. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: Bright Pacheco. Today we're joined again by Tom Freerricks, who
Speaker 1: our audience might recall from our coverage of Jeff Bouprey,
Speaker 1: and during that coverage, Tom brought us another case, a
Speaker 1: man out of Waterloo, Iowa named Jeff Smith, who was
Speaker 1: just released in October twenty twenty five. We couldn't be
Speaker 1: happier for you to be home as the fight continues,
Speaker 1: and we're going to get into all of that right now.
Speaker 1: So Tom, welcome back, and Jeff welcome home.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: So just tell me a little bit about you before
Speaker 1: all this happened.
Speaker 3: Growing up, I could say I was always one of
Speaker 3: the favorites by of my family because I always had
Speaker 3: the huge smile and full of joy, and it was
Speaker 3: like no money or anything mattered. It was just the love,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, you give me a hug, and
Speaker 3: it was sincere than that meant more than meeting the
Speaker 3: new pair of shoes. I was staying in des Morning,
Speaker 3: Iowa with my mom and dad, my younger sister, my
Speaker 3: older sister, and I have two older brothers that were
Speaker 3: for me, and we were staying in these apartments called
Speaker 3: Oak Ridge, a very rough neighborhood, and my mom ended
Speaker 3: up catching a drug case. My grandmother came from km
Speaker 3: Mississippi and took back me, my youngest sister and my
Speaker 3: oldest sister, and we were staying in this apartment complex
Speaker 3: called Joe Preacher Homes Public Housing Authority.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm pretty notorious too.
Speaker 3: So growing up there it was rough, the lowest of
Speaker 3: the lows and the highest of the highest. But that
Speaker 3: was also a place where you also learned to appreciate
Speaker 3: what you did have minus what you didn't have. And
Speaker 3: I ended up taking a passion for music because it
Speaker 3: was an outlet. Like even growing up my grandmother when
Speaker 3: she was always cooking dinner, Sunday dinner or whatever, cooking
Speaker 3: and she would always just be humming. You know, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, And it always just sounded soful
Speaker 3: to me, and I'm like I just cop see at
Speaker 3: the table and look at her and listen. I learned
Speaker 3: that through music I could tell my story and I
Speaker 3: was able to write. And then like ten eleven twelve,
Speaker 3: like a lot of my friends was like, yo, wrap
Speaker 3: that again. You know what I mean. You're good, You're great,
Speaker 3: and then I continue to push with the music. But
Speaker 3: growing up in Catton, it was rough for my project.
Speaker 3: So it was like I was nine years old and
Speaker 3: I was going to the school called MacNeil Elementary and
Speaker 3: at that time we were wearing the uniforms. It was
Speaker 3: kaki pants and white shirts. And I was nine years old,
Speaker 3: I remember this. So I was in third grade. So
Speaker 3: I was ironing my clothes and I was looking out
Speaker 3: my window. Now, my grandmother she sold pops candy stuff
Speaker 3: like that. She was a neighborhood Stuart, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. And there was this guy named Etli and
Speaker 3: I saw him and he walked through and he was like, hey,
Speaker 3: give me one of them pops ready, And I'm talking
Speaker 3: through him through the window. So okay, all right, I
Speaker 3: got you. And it was like ten minutes later, it
Speaker 3: was just like the fourth of July and this guy
Speaker 3: gets shot like sixteen times. And seeing this at the
Speaker 3: age of nine was like, wow.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm just thinking of you nine years old, Yes,
Speaker 4: ironing your clothing, trying to put your best foot forward
Speaker 4: and being exposed to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So growing up I had family in Waterloo, Isla.
Speaker 3: And it was like, you know what, I don't want
Speaker 3: to be around here that much longer because my neighborhood
Speaker 3: was just filled with drugs and game bangers. And the
Speaker 3: older you get, the more you're gonna get into the
Speaker 3: being a product of your environment.
Speaker 1: So Jeff took the initiative to improve his life, but unfortunately,
Speaker 1: a similar environment existed in Waterloo, Iowa, like rival gangs
Speaker 1: and drug trafficking, And while Jeff pursued his music career,
Speaker 1: he was not immune.
Speaker 3: You can dibble and dab in certain things because it
Speaker 3: was around you, and that doesn't make you a bad person.
Speaker 3: You're still at that age figuring out who you are
Speaker 3: as a person.
Speaker 1: But an officer named Bose had already decided what sort
Speaker 1: of person Jeff was. Yes, Officer bos, how many times
Speaker 1: had he pulled you over? Before all this happened?
Speaker 3: Woo oh. I gotta say it was like constant harassment,
Speaker 3: like I know you're out here doing this illegal. I
Speaker 3: know you're doing something and I'm gonna get you.
Speaker 1: But Jeff didn't have the criminal record of others in
Speaker 1: his social circle, like Jeff's fiance's cousin, the victim in
Speaker 1: this case, Kanye Jackson, who had just gotten out of prison,
Speaker 1: which brings us to July ninth, two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: Tanye had a minor argument with Jeff earlier in the
Speaker 1: day and then later that night, Tanye went to a
Speaker 1: club called Chrystyles Club.
Speaker 5: Chris Styles didn't have the greatest reputation. I think there
Speaker 5: were more than one shooting that had occurred, there, regular
Speaker 5: run ins with the police. I think they always kind
Speaker 5: of rode that razor's edge of getting shut down because
Speaker 5: of too much activity. As a result a particular, for
Speaker 5: two thousand and six, they put in one of the
Speaker 5: most spectacular systems of cameras pointing everywhere everywhere. There really
Speaker 5: was matt a square foot of that bar, and they
Speaker 5: did that at the pause of the Waterloo Police Department. Okay,
Speaker 5: there was an adult summer basketball league on a Sunday
Speaker 5: night that was finishing and Club Crys Styles was generally
Speaker 5: not open on a Sunday, and a gentleman butt the
Speaker 5: name of Bud Dunn called the owners and said, look
Speaker 5: open up on Sunday night. We'll get some people here, okay,
Speaker 5: So they opened up the bar. There were varying stories
Speaker 5: of fifteen twenty twenty five different people present at the bar,
Speaker 5: but the standard story of those who saw something say
Speaker 5: that a tall guy six foot one hundred and eighty
Speaker 5: pounds opened up the door of the bar, had a
Speaker 5: handgun with a laser sight on it, scanned the bar
Speaker 5: until they got to Tony A. Jackson Boom boom boom,
Speaker 5: put three bullets in him and then runs from the scene,
Speaker 5: gets into the passenger side of a purple Aurora and
Speaker 5: speeds up.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, during the shooting, bud dune sister Chilandra was on
Speaker 1: the phone with her boyfriend Marlon ERSII, who was in
Speaker 1: jail facing federal drug charges. So that call was recorded
Speaker 1: and there's audio of three shots, as well as Bud
Speaker 1: Dunn naming the shooter with Jeff's stage name Jay Rich.
Speaker 1: Then Bud Dunn called nine to one one, gave a
Speaker 1: fake name and named j Rich again. Then while leaving
Speaker 1: the club, he gave the same fake name but didn't
Speaker 1: identify j Rich. Pretty strange, but he did mention seeing
Speaker 1: the Purple Aurora.
Speaker 5: The police at the scene knew that there was some
Speaker 5: people that might potentially be the type of people that
Speaker 5: would be involved into shooting that were connected to a
Speaker 5: Purple Aurora. Some of the cops speed off to that
Speaker 5: house check the Purple aura sitting outside hot muffler. Good
Speaker 5: people bolt outdoors. They don't catch everybody. They eventually go
Speaker 5: into the house. They find drugs, ammunition, nine millimeter ammunition. Importantly,
Speaker 5: they don't do anything with that.
Speaker 1: Officer Bose was part of that mission to track down
Speaker 1: the Purple Aurora.
Speaker 4: A lead that curiously went.
Speaker 1: Cold as tunnel vision set in over the mention of
Speaker 1: j Rich on the call, and soon the Purple Aurora
Speaker 1: morphed into Jeff's blue Monte Carlo. In the police narrative.
Speaker 5: Jeff is well known to have a blue Monty Carlo.
Speaker 1: Right, and on the tenth the police ransacked your apartment.
Speaker 3: Actually it was people who ransacked at first and then
Speaker 3: the police, so it was like a burglary slash search.
Speaker 5: They find some drugs and a coat that's about four
Speaker 5: sizes too big for.
Speaker 1: Jeff, and by some drugs cocaine. Can we reiterate the
Speaker 1: amount we're talking about?
Speaker 3: Zero point three, not a gram, not an ounce, not
Speaker 3: a key, not none of this. It's not even a ram.
Speaker 3: It's zero point three. And all of this took place
Speaker 3: with not me knowing and me not being there.
Speaker 1: So, Jeff, a friend of yours is killed in a nightclub. Yes,
Speaker 1: tell me when you first heard what went down that night.
Speaker 3: When I got that news, it wasn't like they were saying, hey,
Speaker 3: one of your friends got killed. It was hey, people
Speaker 3: trying to say that you killed.
Speaker 1: Somebody, and you turned yourself.
Speaker 3: In because I know I didn't, So, Jeff, you.
Speaker 1: Thought that you could just walk in and clear it up.
Speaker 3: And clear it up, and that was not the case.
Speaker 3: I came in with the attorney and Robert Montgomery. They asked,
Speaker 3: do we have a warrant for me? And they say yes.
Speaker 3: And I looked at my lawyer and he said, don't
Speaker 3: talk to no one. Just sit tight. You're gonna be
Speaker 3: all right and get you out of here. And so
Speaker 3: at that time, they still didn't tell me what the
Speaker 3: warrant was for. And once I go to booking and
Speaker 3: I'm in there and then the officer comes in and
Speaker 3: he says, yeah, you're being charged with a tempt to
Speaker 3: deliver crack cocaine violation of the drug tax stamp. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, this isn't what I heard I was accused of.
Speaker 3: But now something's really fishy because I didn't have any drugs.
Speaker 1: The police allegedly found these drugs after the apartment had
Speaker 1: already been ransacked, in a coat that was four sizes
Speaker 1: too big for Jeff, and in Iowa, point three grams
Speaker 1: for a first possession offense is typically treated as a misdemeanor.
Speaker 3: The warrant was for attempt to deliver crack cocaine, and
Speaker 3: they hailed me on a one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars bun so you would need fifteen thousand dollars to
Speaker 3: bun out.
Speaker 1: The possession arrest allowed them to hold Jeff while they
Speaker 1: built a case that was stronger than just hearing his
Speaker 1: stage name from Bud Dunn using a fake name on
Speaker 1: a nine to one one call. And at this time,
Speaker 1: Schilandra Dunn's boyfriend Marlon Ursie, who was facing federal drug charges,
Speaker 1: alerted investigators to his recorded jail phone call, which gave
Speaker 1: them the exact time of the shooting. They also subpoenaed
Speaker 1: Jeff's cell phone record and located Jeff was last on
Speaker 1: the phone with a girl named Tasha Alexander from nine
Speaker 1: to eight to nine ten PM, a few miles away
Speaker 1: from the scene, but in the official narrative, the time
Speaker 1: of the shooting became nine to seventeen PM, theoretically giving
Speaker 1: Jeff enough time to speed over to club Christiles, kill
Speaker 1: Tanye Jackson, and be identified by Bud Dunn, who they
Speaker 1: now have overheard naming Jay Rich on this jail phone recording,
Speaker 1: so they visit Bud and Chilandra remember neither had subsequently
Speaker 1: identified Jeff to police as they left the club that night.
Speaker 5: At the scene, nobody tells the police Jay Rich. Nobody
Speaker 5: tells the police anything. They didn't really get any stories
Speaker 5: from any of the people that supposedly identified Jeff Smith
Speaker 5: and tell about three days later when they basically were
Speaker 5: going yanking people off the streets and telling them that
Speaker 5: you need to tell your story you may face charges.
Speaker 1: Police spoke with Bud and Schilandra, as well as Lawanda Simpson,
Speaker 1: all of whom we're now willing to name Jeff as
Speaker 1: the shooter. But maybe the contradictory initial statements or what
Speaker 1: they individually stood to gain made them impeachable. So investigators
Speaker 1: turned to jel house snitches like Rayshawn mcclarity, who had
Speaker 1: just informed on his co defendants in an armed assault
Speaker 1: and robbery case.
Speaker 3: This guy, Rayshaw mcclarity tells them, I'm going to cooperate
Speaker 3: with you against my code defendants. Right, So it went
Speaker 3: from twenty five years with a seventeen and a half
Speaker 3: year mandatory to ten years with a seven year mandatory.
Speaker 3: So he got his case dropped it there till hey,
Speaker 3: you know what I want some even better. I'm going
Speaker 3: to testify against Jay Rich Jeff Smith. He says that
Speaker 3: we work together for one day at High V in
Speaker 3: the meat department, which we did. He did quit. He
Speaker 3: had worked there for one day, so no other hanging
Speaker 3: out with each other, know each other, calling each other.
Speaker 3: And he says, for this one day of working at
Speaker 3: the meat department, we went outside on lunch break and
Speaker 3: he said that I told him, hey, you want to
Speaker 3: see a gun. I don't know you, never even met you,
Speaker 3: just working with you for this one day, he says,
Speaker 3: I said, hey, you want to see a gun, and
Speaker 3: I showed him the same kind of gun that they
Speaker 3: said killed my friend.
Speaker 1: And it seems that placing a gun like the one
Speaker 1: used to kill Tanya on Jeff was enough to win
Speaker 1: his release. They also found another jailhouse informant named Jeffrey Grafton, who,
Speaker 1: during his recorded interview, was repeatedly prompted with the answers
Speaker 1: to investigators questions. But it appears that the dodgy statement
Speaker 1: gathering went far beyond jailhouse snitches.
Speaker 5: There's even claims from people who Jeff didn't know, saying
Speaker 5: they were telling people, look, if you got something to say,
Speaker 5: we might have something to pay. Officially, there was never
Speaker 5: any reward money. There's claims pet Jeff went to the
Speaker 5: house of a guy named Ira Harrington that people saw
Speaker 5: him with a gun.
Speaker 1: And those were the grandchildren of Harrington's neighbors, the outlaws,
Speaker 1: and the kids were brought in to give statements.
Speaker 3: When you go into the investigation room, there's a camera
Speaker 3: sitting in the corner. Most people don't know that, so
Speaker 3: when an investigator is in there with the grandfather and
Speaker 3: his granddaughter, he says, I need to take a break
Speaker 3: right quick. I'll be right back, And he left the
Speaker 3: grandfather and the granddaughter in there, and the grandfather says, hey,
Speaker 3: you gotta say you saw a blue car, not a
Speaker 3: green car, so your story can match your cousins. She said, Grandpa,
Speaker 3: I know what I saw.
Speaker 1: I saw.
Speaker 3: No, I told you, you have to say you saw
Speaker 3: a blue car the match up with your cousins. And
Speaker 3: she's quiet because it's their grandfather. And this investigator comes
Speaker 3: back in his room. Now don't forget that camera is
Speaker 3: still rolling, and he's is, oh, yeah, she would like
Speaker 3: to tell you that something else you want to clear up.
Speaker 3: And then the story changes. And even though this is recorded,
Speaker 3: and we take this to the judge, it just says, well,
Speaker 3: that's not up to me to decide. We'll leave that
Speaker 3: up to a jury to the side.
Speaker 1: But at least his attorney was privy to this exculpatory
Speaker 1: video evidence. Meanwhile, there should have been dashcam footage from
Speaker 1: the thirteen police cars that arrived on scene that night.
Speaker 5: Every police car that arrived at the scene arrived with
Speaker 5: the lights and sirens, and in fact, in two thousand
Speaker 5: and three, it was the official policy that the fact
Speaker 5: that the lights and sirens on, automatically turns on their cameras.
Speaker 1: And yet not a single dashboard cam is rolling when
Speaker 1: they pull up.
Speaker 5: And you can come up with a number of potential
Speaker 5: theories of why that might be okay, because as they're
Speaker 5: speeding to the scene, there might have been a purple
Speaker 5: aurora speeding away from the seat, okay.
Speaker 1: Or the dashcam footage just conflicted with their narrative in
Speaker 1: some other monumental way, which we'll discuss later. Now, also
Speaker 1: when available to the defense, there's surveillance footage from Club
Speaker 1: Chris Styles fancy news security system. So fast forward three
Speaker 1: years and Jeff was finally taken to trial in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, facing these poor manipulated children as well
Speaker 1: as the incentivized witnesses.
Speaker 3: Slandra Dunn looked at me and they said, you see
Speaker 3: the person who did the shooting, And then she looked
Speaker 3: at me and he was like, yeah, he's right there,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, how are you gonna put me somewhere?
Speaker 3: I was never there and I didn't understand it, and
Speaker 3: I just looked and I was just praying in my head,
Speaker 3: like wow, you know.
Speaker 1: Then there were the jailhouse snitches, like mclarity, who had
Speaker 1: walked Scott free from his violent crime.
Speaker 3: Went home free after shooting someone with a shaw offsotgod
Speaker 3: who had a bright future and crippling it. But all
Speaker 3: of that didn't matter as long as he was able
Speaker 3: to testify against me.
Speaker 1: A lot just wash the slate clean by setting you up. Yes,
Speaker 1: it so. Without a fuller investigation into the narrative that
Speaker 1: the state had built, the time of the shooting was
Speaker 1: accepted to be nine seventeen PM, neutering Jeff's alibi, the
Speaker 1: purple Aurora became the blue Monte Carlo, A shooter over
Speaker 1: six foot became five foot seven, and a well known
Speaker 1: local rapper who was not named by witnesses at the
Speaker 1: club that night was now identified from those same witnesses
Speaker 1: from the stand.
Speaker 3: The worst part about that whole thing, when they read
Speaker 3: that verdict, it was like I didn't hear nothing else
Speaker 3: in that courtroom except for my mom breaking down crying.
Speaker 3: I didn't hear the victim's family celebrating. I didn't hear
Speaker 3: my friend saying anything to me. The only thing that
Speaker 3: I heard was my mom breaking down crime. Everything else
Speaker 3: was silent. I couldn't even hold my mom. I couldn't
Speaker 3: even tell her it's okay. I couldn't kiss her on
Speaker 3: the forehead, and she just broke down and it was
Speaker 3: just all now, my baby, my baby, my baby. If
Speaker 3: you don't have faith, you better find it and you
Speaker 3: better hold on to it and never lose it. If
Speaker 3: it wasn't for my mom. And keep in mind, my
Speaker 3: mom had a drug addiction for almost my whole life.
Speaker 3: So when I caught this case and she came to Iowa,
Speaker 3: she came on a mission, as if God called her
Speaker 3: and say, you missed a lot of time in your
Speaker 3: son's life, but I need you to get on your
Speaker 3: job now. And she put her boots on and grabbed
Speaker 3: her shield and her armor, and man, she was there,
Speaker 3: and she said, pick your head up. Don't you be mad,
Speaker 3: don't be angry, don't be bitter. Pick your head up
Speaker 3: and smile that same smile that's so beautiful. You better smile.
Speaker 3: And I'll just be like I'm going through the most,
Speaker 3: you know, like I have a right to be angry.
Speaker 3: I didn't do nothing. They got me stuck here, and
Speaker 3: she just said, don't worry about that. Baby. God got you,
Speaker 3: And she said I talk to him every night. I
Speaker 3: know he got you, and I would just look at
Speaker 3: her and I said, Mom, sometimes it hurts the smile.
Speaker 3: And she said, if you acknowledge that pain, and you said,
Speaker 3: it hurts the smile. You letting them win. Your smile
Speaker 3: is the joy. And if you let somebody else take
Speaker 3: your joy away from you, what do you have left?
Speaker 1: But days turned to weeks, turned two months, turned to years,
Speaker 1: turned to two decades.
Speaker 3: I held on to knowing that I was innocent. Eventually
Speaker 3: someone's gonna see this. Eventually the right thing is gonna
Speaker 3: be done. And my mom always reassured me that I'm
Speaker 3: gonna stay on this journey with you because I believe
Speaker 3: in you too, and I too know that you didn't
Speaker 3: do this, and we're gonna get through this.
Speaker 1: But before he could even begin fighting the murder conviction,
Speaker 1: he still had to fight the possession of zero point
Speaker 1: three grams, for which they charged him with intent to sell,
Speaker 1: offering him a plea deal for ten years.
Speaker 3: Catherine Mahoney, she represented me on this drug case and
Speaker 3: we beat this drug case. And she was like, something
Speaker 3: is wrong, and she's seen the same thing that I said.
Speaker 3: If you did everything by the book, why would you
Speaker 3: be trying to give me more time when I have
Speaker 3: life without the possibility of parole, and she went through
Speaker 3: those records.
Speaker 5: She and the drug case hired a private investigator named
Speaker 5: Scott Gracious, and they then did the very difficult work
Speaker 5: that a lot of lawyers don't do and dove through
Speaker 5: every shred of paper in the case. There were a
Speaker 5: ton of search warrants for cell phone records at that time,
Speaker 5: but Jeff's was unlike the other warrants. Jeff's sought location
Speaker 5: information as well, the others didn't.
Speaker 1: Jeff was last on the phone from nine to eight
Speaker 1: to nine ten PM, a few miles away from the scene.
Speaker 5: And this is a really unique instance where there was
Speaker 5: a recording somebody in the jail talking to their girlfriend
Speaker 5: and you literally hear clearly the three shots.
Speaker 1: The state had claimed that the shooting and all the
Speaker 1: subsequent nine to one one calls happened from nine to
Speaker 1: seventeen to nine twenty one, but the recorded jail phone
Speaker 1: call began at nine oh one and thirty five seconds,
Speaker 1: and there were three gunshots heard six minutes and fifty
Speaker 1: eight seconds later, placing the crime at nine oh eight
Speaker 1: and thirty three seconds.
Speaker 3: Catherine bid Jeff, you were on the phone at that time,
Speaker 3: and I said, I knew I was on my phone,
Speaker 3: but I don't know what time the shooting was. She said, no, no, no, no, Jeff,
Speaker 3: you were on the phone at the time of the
Speaker 3: shooting and you were not over there.
Speaker 5: And I was like what She Kin's got to the
Speaker 5: simple math and said it might be difficult for him
Speaker 5: to be paying off a tower that's two towers away
Speaker 5: at the time of the murder.
Speaker 1: Did the prosecution know that?
Speaker 5: That's a tough question to answer directly, because we don't
Speaker 5: know what they knew. What we know is that it
Speaker 5: very easily could have been discovered and should have been
Speaker 5: discovered by the original defense team. But there are circumstantial
Speaker 5: facts that say, you're damn right they knew, and that's
Speaker 5: why they changed the time of the shooting to make
Speaker 5: it about ten minutes after, so that Jeff's cell phone
Speaker 5: records would not be relevant to the case and to
Speaker 5: distract the defense attorneys away from using that powerful evidence
Speaker 5: in their case.
Speaker 1: In cheap Jeff, you're sitting in prison and you find
Speaker 1: out in twenty twelve and this nightmare for you started
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six. Six years later, you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this is it, and.
Speaker 3: You get your hopes up and you're thinking, this is
Speaker 3: that moment it's about to happen. I'm about to get home.
Speaker 3: I'm finally about to be there for my mom. No, okay,
Speaker 3: all right, And it doesn't work that way because, as
Speaker 3: you can see, I didn't get it until thirteen years later.
Speaker 5: For the longest period of time, they were arguing that, well,
Speaker 5: the jails call system and that's just not accurate because
Speaker 5: of the nine to one one calls. The jail phone
Speaker 5: call ends at nine point fifteen. The first official nine
Speaker 5: to one one call doesn't come in until nine seventeen
Speaker 5: nine one one call it nine nineteen nine one call
Speaker 5: nine twenty.
Speaker 1: So one of the systems had to be accurate, right,
Speaker 1: But the burden approving which one was fell to Jeff
Speaker 1: and his team. So at this time, jail calls were
Speaker 1: collect and they could not be received by cell phones.
Speaker 1: So Marlon Ersrie had set up his landline to accept
Speaker 1: the collect call and forward it to Chilandra Done. Cell
Speaker 1: phone actually had.
Speaker 5: A good system for the time, and so we compared
Speaker 5: the landline records with the jail phone call and the
Speaker 5: landlines there by federal law accurate to like a million
Speaker 5: of a second. Those can't be wrong. They will shut
Speaker 5: the tower down otherwise. So all of a sudden, that's
Speaker 5: stuff just started to cement. We had to factor in
Speaker 5: some other things that weren't initially factored in, such as
Speaker 5: the lag time for the phone from the jail to
Speaker 5: connect to the home phone and then forward to his
Speaker 5: girlfriend's phone.
Speaker 1: So even with the additional lag, the landline confirmed that
Speaker 1: the jail phone call time was correct and made Jeff's
Speaker 1: guilt impossible. Yet somehow the state continued to cling to
Speaker 1: the nine to one one calls that placed the crime
Speaker 1: almost ten minutes later. So Tom hired another expert to
Speaker 1: look into the metadata of the digital recordings of the
Speaker 1: nine one one calls, thee.
Speaker 5: IF nine recordings that we got on a compact disc
Speaker 5: back from two thousand and six. Even then, the metadata
Speaker 5: underlying those recordings has been scrubbed.
Speaker 3: Wipe them, wipe them.
Speaker 5: So there's a gap where the metadata is white, and
Speaker 5: that's the period of the shooting and one one calls.
Speaker 5: And then at about nine pm the metadata magically shows
Speaker 5: up again.
Speaker 3: And the prosecutor at that time was Kim Griffin, and
Speaker 3: she kept on continuing the situation and pushing it off,
Speaker 3: and finally the judge tells her that there's no more
Speaker 3: continuous to get him in here, and let's have this trial.
Speaker 3: And what was it to him, like two weeks before
Speaker 3: a trial? She says, well, I don't know how he's
Speaker 3: getting the trial, but I'm not taking him because I'm retiring.
Speaker 3: After she continued the case for eight or nine years.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering how a prosecutor could be so cold
Speaker 1: and glib to just deny, I deflect and delay while
Speaker 1: running out the clock on someone's life, you're not alone.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately Jeff is not alone in that experience. But
Speaker 1: just in case the new prosecutor was cut from the
Speaker 1: same cloth, Tom hired another expert, an audio engineer.
Speaker 5: We hired an audio engineer. Incredible guy that compared the
Speaker 5: jail tape, and you could see it, you know, as
Speaker 5: it crosses the screen and then underneath it and the
Speaker 5: nine one one calls. He's got a big screen. He'd
Speaker 5: lay them over the top of each other and he's
Speaker 5: showing these look these exact same audio signatures of different things.
Speaker 5: In the background, people yelling, screaming, please, radio traffic that
Speaker 5: kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Can be heard in the jail call.
Speaker 5: On a tape that ends at nine fifty, and the
Speaker 5: official nine one one time says they occurred at nine seventeen.
Speaker 3: All of this, but it's happening in the jail call.
Speaker 1: The expert revealed that the nine one one calls can
Speaker 1: be overheard on the recorded jail phone call and vice versa.
Speaker 1: So the nine one one calls happened during the jail
Speaker 1: call that placed the shooting at nine to eight and change,
Speaker 1: while the missing metadata allowed for the incorrect times to
Speaker 1: be assigned to the nine one one calls. Now did
Speaker 1: the police and prosecutors know that? I guess we can't
Speaker 1: know that. But then when you consider what else happened
Speaker 1: in this case, like the purple Aurora just morphing into
Speaker 1: Jeff's blue car, the manipulated statements from the outlaws grandkids,
Speaker 1: the jailhouse snitches, and what happened to all the video evidence,
Speaker 1: like the club's surveillance footage. They had photos of the
Speaker 1: club's camera system monitor.
Speaker 5: It showed right at the front door where the shooter stood,
Speaker 5: and it would have captured that shooter and would have
Speaker 5: also captured the shooter running away and what captured the
Speaker 5: people that were outside when the shooter ran away.
Speaker 3: But just like the dash cam videos that who was going.
Speaker 5: Too, there's no reason for that footage not to exist.
Speaker 1: What reason have you been given?
Speaker 5: The reason was that just simply wasn't operating, was monitoring
Speaker 5: at the time, but it wasn't recording. And that was
Speaker 5: an explanation, mind you, that was finally given officially in
Speaker 5: twoenty sixteen or seventeen.
Speaker 1: It took them over.
Speaker 5: Eleven years to document that the system wasn't working, and
Speaker 5: then it was documented by an officer who wasn't even
Speaker 5: at the crime scene.
Speaker 3: Well, if you ever heard your grandmother mom says, once
Speaker 3: you tell one lie, you have to tell another lie
Speaker 3: to cover up that lie. So many lies. You have
Speaker 3: the dashcam videos, you have the videos from the club,
Speaker 3: you have the nive on one calls, you have the
Speaker 3: actual phone call, the jail phone call. So it's one
Speaker 3: lie after another instead of saying stop this, let's go
Speaker 3: into our job.
Speaker 1: And they didn't, but Jeff's team did. They found additional
Speaker 1: witnesses who believe they know who the actual shooter was.
Speaker 5: We found one witness who has unfortunately now passed away.
Speaker 5: Channette Crispy. We found a guy named Willie mc kentton.
Speaker 5: We found a guy named Patrick Sallas that all pointed
Speaker 5: the finger at a different person as the shooter. Sannette Crispy,
Speaker 5: who said, I was outside hustling selling crack and I
Speaker 5: saw Bud Done. I saw the shooter run by Bud Done.
Speaker 5: I know who Jeff Smith is. It wasn't Jeff Smith.
Speaker 5: And they ran to a purple arm and she described
Speaker 5: somebody who fit the profile of the guy that we
Speaker 5: eventually landed on as our suspect. But anyway, she's talking
Speaker 5: to the police. The police are blowing her up. She
Speaker 5: knows the officery she talked to. That same officer testified
Speaker 5: even back in two thousand and seven, whenever her deposition
Speaker 5: was taken, even at trial. No, I didn't keep track
Speaker 5: of all the names the people that I talked to. No,
Speaker 5: I didn't keep track of all the witnesses that were there.
Speaker 5: I didn't write down any names. I didn't write down anything.
Speaker 1: So what happened to the suspect that you guys have
Speaker 1: settled on.
Speaker 5: Ultimately he has met his maker. He was murdered years
Speaker 5: later at another night glub Yeah, and we also found
Speaker 5: a gentleman who was no friend of Jess Smith, who
Speaker 5: had actually stole Jets cars, ripped his stereo up, and
Speaker 5: then left the car years ago. Right, this guy testified that, Hey,
Speaker 5: this person that you think did it, he confessed to me,
Speaker 5: told me that they buried the gun, which was never found.
Speaker 5: He described the gun, And eventually we found a witness
Speaker 5: who said that, look, I was with these guys when
Speaker 5: they planned the murder, and they discussed why the murder
Speaker 5: was going to happen, in the motive for the murder,
Speaker 5: and that guy had a motive to now want to
Speaker 5: help Jeff either. I mean, that guy when I first
Speaker 5: talked to him, said, you know he slept with my girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Right you know Jeff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so they were pretty much enemies of each other.
Speaker 5: Budd He finally came forward. Supposedly, the victim and one
Speaker 5: of the guys in this other group were in a
Speaker 5: love try and go with a different woman and they
Speaker 5: both kept drugs and money out of her house, and
Speaker 5: Tanye came across the other dudes drugs and money and
Speaker 5: went mine.
Speaker 1: So not only did they prove Jeff's alibi, but they
Speaker 1: also offered an arguably more plausible suspect and theory, and
Speaker 1: they compiled the newly discovered evidence along with an ineffective
Speaker 1: assistance of Council claim and one Jeff a new trial
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: When I got that news, I was thinking that, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm about to go and hug my mom. I'm about
Speaker 3: to be therefore, because at this time she's in a
Speaker 3: nursing home and she suffered from the strokes, and it
Speaker 3: was like, I'm finally about to do this, and that
Speaker 3: didn't happen because first it was well, they're going to
Speaker 3: agree to Lord de bund to this, and then well,
Speaker 3: now they're saying that we're going to take it up
Speaker 3: extra hundred thousand. It's going to go to this, but
Speaker 3: it's still manageable, will be able to get you home.
Speaker 3: To us having a bun hearing and heeds arguing for
Speaker 3: a million dollar bond, We're thinking that, well, okay, we
Speaker 3: got a good argument. I haven't been in any trouble.
Speaker 3: And the judge still says seven hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 1: And Jeff didn't have seventy five thousand dollars plus real
Speaker 1: estate collateral to be released. And while great efforts were
Speaker 1: being made to raise that capital on his behalf, which
Speaker 1: was finally accomplished on October twentieth, twenty twenty five. His
Speaker 1: mother passed away just seven days earlier.
Speaker 3: It was the worst pain that her son could feel.
Speaker 3: Nothing measured up to them taking my freedom away from me.
Speaker 3: Then to know that my mom was no longer here,
Speaker 3: and there's no way you could prepare for it. I
Speaker 3: can see as she's just smiling down at me.
Speaker 5: Now they knew Jeff's mom situation.
Speaker 3: She was helping me fight you evil people. Now she's
Speaker 3: in heaven. She's gonna help with a bigger fight. And
Speaker 3: you have no idea. And a miracle happened.
Speaker 1: And it certainly presents like some kind of divine intervention.
Speaker 1: When total strangers raised the seventy five thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: You know, a group of I think mostly women that
Speaker 5: her Jeff's plight, and they were the Iowa representatives of
Speaker 5: the National Pail Fund. And this group of young moms,
Speaker 5: right little kids, throwing kids into the shoe bees and
Speaker 5: running around, and they went to the national organization and
Speaker 5: they got seventy five thousand dollars in cash raise to
Speaker 5: get jump out.
Speaker 1: Oh so Jeff in your mind, that miracle of those
Speaker 1: moms coming together to raise that bail money for you.
Speaker 1: They were being guided by your mom. At this point,
Speaker 1: the state is appealing the grant of his new trial
Speaker 1: to the Iowa Supreme Court, which, after what we've heard
Speaker 1: here today, I really hope they reconsider. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: I'm left wondering what we can do to help.
Speaker 5: I know they can start listening to Jeff's music. The
Speaker 5: same day he walked out of jail, he walked across
Speaker 5: the street to a recording studio and recorded a video
Speaker 5: and a song with some people that helped him. I
Speaker 5: was just blown away.
Speaker 6: Yes I am, Yes I can who that just beat
Speaker 6: up them charge spelling them to dead, no human them
Speaker 6: hall its ain't big X when they know them the
Speaker 6: Lord just sit on my exig the reflawless at getting.
Speaker 3: The hard it's pissed off. Who's gonna flex?
Speaker 6: And recardless hiding from movie how I'm talking?
Speaker 3: They telling nom who don't get me started? They The
Speaker 3: songs that I've put out after that first video that
Speaker 3: I put out were just songs that I found a
Speaker 3: way to record while in prison to deal with that frustration.
Speaker 3: So actually now I've already started recording new material. I
Speaker 3: hope that I get the ear of one of these
Speaker 3: major record companies to say let's put them to work.
Speaker 1: Where can I find your music?
Speaker 3: You can follow me on TikTok under ATP Richie, Facebook
Speaker 3: under ATP Richie, and Instagram under the Real Underscore ATP Richie.
Speaker 3: The ATP it comes from my mom. It's ambition to prosper.
Speaker 3: My mom used to always tell me her favorite scripture
Speaker 3: from the Bible. She said, no weapon formed against you
Speaker 3: shall prosper. And she says that after every visit, and
Speaker 3: one day she says, no weapons formed against you sell prosper.
Speaker 3: Because you got the ambition to prosper and she didn't
Speaker 3: even know it. Then I was like, she just gave
Speaker 3: me my new name, ambition to prosper, and it stuck
Speaker 3: with me ever since then. ATP, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: We're going to link to that video and your Instagram
Speaker 1: Instagram too. Yeah, I've got to ask you. You know
Speaker 1: this season where we know why wrongful convictions happen, but
Speaker 1: in terms of accountability, what would justice look like to
Speaker 1: you now?
Speaker 3: Going through this system for nineteen years and you see
Speaker 3: that every part of the justice system has a chain
Speaker 3: link that's connected to everything. You even see it. In
Speaker 3: the state of Iowa. You talk about IPI, the Iowa
Speaker 3: prison industries, who make billions of dollars off the parents
Speaker 3: and relatives of incarcerated individuals because this is the only
Speaker 3: place where we can shop and by a coming sari
Speaker 3: even everything from the phone calls. You give us thirty
Speaker 3: cent an hour for working in prison, but they used
Speaker 3: to charge us five dollars for a phone call to
Speaker 3: call our kids, moms or whoever else. So how do
Speaker 3: you keep this bankrolling the rich? How do you continue
Speaker 3: to prosper You continue to incarcerate people and give them
Speaker 3: no choice but to spend money with you. So off
Speaker 3: of that police officer who come and hunt us, I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna say lock up. I'm not gonna say do
Speaker 3: their job. They come and hunt us. A lot of
Speaker 3: families are getting fed. It's gonna pay for their college
Speaker 3: the next ones, and it's gonna continue to profit.
Speaker 1: The system protects the system because their profits off posits
Speaker 1: in prison.
Speaker 3: It does so if you don't destroy that system, you're
Speaker 3: never gonna get justice. And before I got wrongfully convicted,
Speaker 3: I probably looked at hurt this and said, Nah, you're
Speaker 3: just talking but going through it. No, No, this is
Speaker 3: absolutely right, it happens.
Speaker 1: What do you hope people listening take away from your story.
Speaker 3: I hope that they know that you never lose faith.
Speaker 3: And the Bible says the faith the size of a
Speaker 3: poppy seed can move a mountain. We live in proof
Speaker 3: of that. Growing up in prison, I've seen a lot
Speaker 3: of people lose that faith. I've seen people commit suicide.
Speaker 3: I've seen people go crazy. I've seen people get hooked
Speaker 3: on medication that wasn't meant for them. I've seen people
Speaker 3: get institutionalized. I see people just become something other than
Speaker 3: themselves that wasn't meant for them because they lost faith.
Speaker 3: And Tom tell you, even before then, I was talking
Speaker 3: about rapping and I'm home now and I'm rapping because
Speaker 3: I didn't lose faith. I had faith that God had
Speaker 3: something better for me in store. And it took my
Speaker 3: mom to talk to me to say don't be angry,
Speaker 3: because I had every reason to be angry, to hate
Speaker 3: and to be negative. I had every reason, but I
Speaker 3: also had every reason to be positive and keep a
Speaker 3: smile on my face and not hate. You can never
Speaker 3: let no one take your joy. Always keep that smile
Speaker 3: on your face, keep your head up, and just know, Okay,
Speaker 3: having a bad day, you're having a bad moment. It
Speaker 3: only lasts for a couple of minutes. That joy's gonna
Speaker 3: last forever. I would never let them take it from me.
Speaker 1: ME ask you Tom the same question.
Speaker 5: I hope they keep their minds open because there are
Speaker 5: people like Jos out there that don't have the ambition
Speaker 5: to prosper right. I mean, every wrongful conviction that I've
Speaker 5: been involved with that's been overturned, there's not one person responsible.
Speaker 5: There's a mountain of people. That's why this faith of
Speaker 5: a poppy sea usually involves the faith of a lot
Speaker 5: of people, and there are people that don't have that,
Speaker 5: and I hope that they reach out, they understand, and
Speaker 5: when they hear a story they go, I should at
Speaker 5: least pause and listen, because we know this stuff happens.
Speaker 5: We know that there are people in prison that shouldn't
Speaker 5: be there, and a lot of them don't have the resources.
Speaker 5: I mean, Kathy and I and Scott gracious, we took
Speaker 5: the case on pro bonum because we believe there aren't
Speaker 5: a lot of attorneys that can do that. They got
Speaker 5: to keep their doors open, they got to work, they
Speaker 5: got to do other things. Luckily, I've had some other
Speaker 5: successes that have allowed me to do that and then
Speaker 5: to throw myself into something like this for years at
Speaker 5: a time. There are not a lot of people out there.
Speaker 5: There's not a lot of attorneys out there that can
Speaker 5: do that, and there's only so many innocence projects, and
Speaker 5: there's only so many exoneration projects. I get letters every day,
Speaker 5: not even just from Iowa of people, and I know
Speaker 5: that when I write them back and say I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: there's only one of me and I don't the time,
Speaker 5: I know that I'm probably the last person that's going
Speaker 5: to ever listen to them. And it breaks my heart
Speaker 5: every time. But you can only do so much, and
Speaker 5: so I would ask people to keep their ears open
Speaker 5: so that if they hear a story from somebody out
Speaker 5: in the darkness, that they listen, and if they can contribute,
Speaker 5: then they start being part of the community behind that
Speaker 5: person that eventually pushes them through to their freedom, to
Speaker 5: where they need to be, to at least some semblance
Speaker 5: of justice.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to wrongful conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all LoVa for Good podcasts one week
Speaker 1: early and add free by subscribing to LoVa for Good
Speaker 1: Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'd like to thank our production
Speaker 1: team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as executive
Speaker 1: producers Jason Lahm, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn.
Speaker 1: The music and the This production was supplied by three
Speaker 1: time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
Speaker 1: us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good
Speaker 1: and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Lauren Bright Pitchecko. Wrongful Conviction is a production
Speaker 1: of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company
Speaker 1: Number One.
Speaker 6: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 6: in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
Speaker 6: by the individuals featured in this show are their own
Speaker 6: and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.