Speaker 1: South central Los Angeles was plagued by gang violence, and
Speaker 1: in Kierra Newsom's neighborhood, the block Crips and the eleven
Speaker 1: Deuce Hoovers ran the streets. Kiera avoided the gang life,
Speaker 1: but it still took the life of her boyfriend, Marcel
Speaker 1: Norman on December tenth, two thousand. On April sixteenth, two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, in retaliation for another gang shooting, three
Speaker 1: female hoovers rolled up to some block Crips and one
Speaker 1: of the women got out and shot into the crowd,
Speaker 1: mortally wounding Christian Hinton. She got back into the car
Speaker 1: and shot again as she sped away, grazing the torso
Speaker 1: of Chante Allen. The shooter was described as African American
Speaker 1: in her twenties, with a lazy eye and a tattoo
Speaker 1: on her upper right sigh. This incident happened at eleven
Speaker 1: thirty am on a school day, ten miles from where
Speaker 1: Kierra Newsom was in class. But despite this rock solid
Speaker 1: alibi and the fact that she didn't have a car
Speaker 1: or even a driver's license, to prosecute came up with
Speaker 1: a theory that Kiera, in retaliation for her boyfriend's murder,
Speaker 1: had somehow snuck out of her lockdown school, changed her clothes,
Speaker 1: dyed her hair, drove over thirty minutes of the scene,
Speaker 1: committed the crime, and somehow managed to return to her
Speaker 1: desk just seven feet from her teacher, with her absence
Speaker 1: going completely unnoticed, but with coerced eyewitnesses and the fact
Speaker 1: that she happened to have a tattoo on her upper
Speaker 1: right thigh, Kiera ended up serving nearly twenty years, tormented
Speaker 1: by her co defendant Tonielle Flynn aka Astro, who is
Speaker 1: believed to have been the actual shooter. This is Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction today.
Speaker 1: I am so excited and honored because I have, first
Speaker 1: of all, Chris Hawthorne. Chris is the founder, director and
Speaker 1: clinical professor at the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentencing Clinic
Speaker 1: at Loyola Law School. Welcome to rofl con Piction.
Speaker 2: Thanks Jason, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And with him, the featured guest on our show today
Speaker 1: is the one and only Kiera Newsom. And Kiera, thank
Speaker 1: you for being here. Thank you Jason and this story
Speaker 1: it's a California story, and Kiera, you grew up in
Speaker 1: South central LA. Can you tell us what that was
Speaker 1: like growing.
Speaker 3: Up in south central LA. My father grew up without
Speaker 3: his dad, so he gravitated to the gang lifestyle, which
Speaker 3: most young men do. And the neighborhood I grew up
Speaker 3: in the blocks and the Hoovers are what we consider
Speaker 3: it to be enemies. They always have gang violence. Before
Speaker 3: I was seventeen years old, I went to so many
Speaker 3: funerals I can't even tell you. But one thing I
Speaker 3: can say is that my mom was always as the
Speaker 3: type of person she really imposed education on this big
Speaker 3: time you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I understand you did very well at school,
Speaker 1: and that's despite all of the violence and hardship that
Speaker 1: surrounded you, including one murder that hit so close to home.
Speaker 1: And that was the murder that actually started the snowball
Speaker 1: effect that ended in your tragic, wrongful conviction. I'm referring,
Speaker 1: of course, to the murder of your boyfriend, Markel Norman,
Speaker 1: who at the time of his death was in fact
Speaker 1: an eleven Duce Hoover, but he wasn't in a gang.
Speaker 1: At age thirteen when you started.
Speaker 3: Dating Markel, at the time was a straight a student
Speaker 3: living with his grandmother. So when his grandmother passed away,
Speaker 3: Markel and his sisters had to go back and live
Speaker 3: with his mom. She was addicted to crack cocaine. So
Speaker 3: when he went back to live with his mom, there
Speaker 3: were times that they didn't have food to eat. So
Speaker 3: I will sneak food out of my grandmother's house, in
Speaker 3: my mother's house to make sure that they would be
Speaker 3: able to eat. So one day in particular, remember him
Speaker 3: calling me and he told me that he was gonna
Speaker 3: be put on the gang, and I was so upset,
Speaker 3: But then he started to explain to me the benefits
Speaker 3: that the gang was giving him. He'll have means to
Speaker 3: provide for his sisters and his mom, and everything was
Speaker 3: gonna be okay. And he really believed that. He believed
Speaker 3: this so much that he could go to school and
Speaker 3: beat a straight A student and be a gang member
Speaker 3: outside of school. And that's what our whole little bet
Speaker 3: was about. And he was able to keep up that
Speaker 3: little facade for like the first report card or so,
Speaker 3: and I lost the bet, and that's how I ended
Speaker 3: up with the tattoo that I have. So after that
Speaker 3: things began to change. Markel got deeper into the gang,
Speaker 3: and I was barely seeing them. And I will never
Speaker 3: forget when my mom looked me in my eyes and
Speaker 3: she said, I'm gonna end up walking you to a
Speaker 3: jail to see this boy. I'm gonna end up you
Speaker 3: to a gravesite to see this boy.
Speaker 1: And of course you're talking about what happened on December
Speaker 1: tenth of two thousand.
Speaker 3: And that was on a Sunday. It was a church
Speaker 3: day and it was early and I remember walking outside
Speaker 3: and I remember seeing Markel and he had on all
Speaker 3: black and I remember a car driving down the street
Speaker 3: looking at us. When we turned around, these guys were
Speaker 3: no longer in a car. One was on a sidewalk,
Speaker 3: one was standing in the street. They both had their
Speaker 3: arms posted to us, and they had something covering their arms,
Speaker 3: and you can hear the gunshots. Markel pushed me out
Speaker 3: the way and I ran into the house and I
Speaker 3: look out the window. I see Markel laying on the ground,
Speaker 3: and I remember when he turned his body around, he
Speaker 3: had a gash at the top of his head, and
Speaker 3: that's when I knew that he was shot.
Speaker 1: I don't think many people have probably ever lived through
Speaker 1: anything nearly as traumatic as that, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: believe that that was just the beginning of this awful journey.
Speaker 1: It's at this point, too, that the first hero in
Speaker 1: the story emerges, right, and I'm talking about the principal
Speaker 1: at Duke Ellington High School.
Speaker 3: Yes, his name is mister maclynn. When that happened to
Speaker 3: Marco and I became a witness, I didn't know at
Speaker 3: the time that the gang members ran into the school
Speaker 3: looking to kill me. Mister McLynn called my mom and
Speaker 3: he said, no, don't bring her back here. I got
Speaker 3: a school for her. If it wasn't for him, I
Speaker 3: probably wouldn't be here today.
Speaker 4: So the school Sehrter was a lockdown school, normally for
Speaker 4: kids who were involved in the juvenile justice system. Kiera
Speaker 4: wasn't involved in the juvenile justice system, but she was
Speaker 4: definitely in danger and so she was safer at a
Speaker 4: lockdown school than at a regular school.
Speaker 1: Now things get really complicated April fifteenth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: Easter Sunday, when three associates of the Hoovers were shot
Speaker 1: in the park parking a lot of Red's Liquor store
Speaker 1: on West Century Boulevard. That's Rudy tiny Head and another man,
Speaker 1: and then the victims returned to a party, and police
Speaker 1: showed up at the party to ask questions about the shooting.
Speaker 4: One of the things about gang shootings is most people
Speaker 4: who participate in gangs are teenagers, and they tend to
Speaker 4: be really reactive. Most of what they do is very
Speaker 4: impetuous and very sudden. So it makes sense that the
Speaker 4: next day someone from the eleven Duce Hoovers would try
Speaker 4: to take a shot at the block cribs. It's not
Speaker 4: typical you wait around for four months before you decide
Speaker 4: to react to a shooting. So why the police didn't
Speaker 4: look at Red's liquor store is a mystery to me,
Speaker 4: especially since Rudy, who was one of the guys in
Speaker 4: the car who was shot at, was the boyfriend of
Speaker 4: one of the women who was in the car.
Speaker 1: The next day, Yeah, I mean this is we're talking
Speaker 1: literally the day afterwards, at eleven thirty in the morning
Speaker 1: on April sixteen, two thousand and one, when three young
Speaker 1: African American women pulled up in front of fourteen thirty
Speaker 1: five West one hundred and thirteenth Street in the Westmont
Speaker 1: neighborhood of Los Angeles. There was a group of men outside,
Speaker 1: all of whom were block crips. One of the women
Speaker 1: got out of the car, and this is important, so
Speaker 1: she was described as wearing all red tube top corduroy shorts,
Speaker 1: sneakers and visor. One or more of the men on
Speaker 1: the scene described her as having a lazy eye and
Speaker 1: a name tattooed on her upper right thigh. So she
Speaker 1: asked about someone named Nakia, but none of the men
Speaker 1: knew who she was talking about. The young woman then
Speaker 1: walked back to the car, turned and fired a handgun
Speaker 1: once into the group of men, mortally wounding Christian Hinton,
Speaker 1: and the woman got into the car. They sped off
Speaker 1: and she fired a few more rounds, grazing Seante Allen's
Speaker 1: tour show, but Allan luckily survived. Henton, however, died two
Speaker 1: weeks later in the hospital.
Speaker 4: They said that the woman who had shot Christian Hinton
Speaker 4: was in her early twenties and fairly tall. Ki's still
Speaker 4: looking kind of like a baby. Then she's still a teenage.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would have seemed obvious for them to
Speaker 1: look towards a hoover named Doniel Flynn, also known as Astro,
Speaker 1: who would have been retaliating for the shooting of her
Speaker 1: boyfriend and the two other hoovers the night before, right,
Speaker 1: But one way or another, the really important part of
Speaker 1: this is that we know exactly where Kiera was at
Speaker 1: the time of the shooting, in my classroom. And how
Speaker 1: do we know that you were in your classroom?
Speaker 3: I signed in in the morning, My teacher collected hay
Speaker 3: counts all throughout the day, and they would have noticed
Speaker 3: if I would have left, they would have caught the
Speaker 3: police on me, because that's what the school does.
Speaker 1: Would you have been able to show up at school
Speaker 1: wearing all red, No, I wear.
Speaker 3: A uniform, white polar shirt, black pants.
Speaker 4: A couple of other things about that school. The classroom
Speaker 4: she was in where her teacher, Rebecca Woodruff, taught her,
Speaker 4: is very small, and Rebecca's desk was about six to
Speaker 4: seven feet from Kiera's desk.
Speaker 5: H I am Rebecca Woodruff. I was Kiera Newsom's teacher
Speaker 5: in the spring of two tho. There was only one
Speaker 5: door to my classroom, and I always had a view
Speaker 5: of the door whether I was at my desk or
Speaker 5: in front of the class and my desk was actually
Speaker 5: positioned between the door and the students. So it's just
Speaker 5: impossible for somebody to get out and come back and
Speaker 5: have me not notice right away, And even if somebody
Speaker 5: were to have gotten past me, which wouldn't happen. The
Speaker 5: front door was operated by the secretary, and she kept
Speaker 5: it locked, and they would have to be buzzed in
Speaker 5: or out. And the back door led to a locked
Speaker 5: gate on top of the locked gate with barbed wire.
Speaker 5: And it was the day after Easter that day, and
Speaker 5: I had actually noticed that Kiera had purple hair braided
Speaker 5: in She had said that her grandmother had done it
Speaker 5: for her.
Speaker 3: So everyone know what African American ladies to take braids.
Speaker 3: Now that would have to take you anywhere from three
Speaker 3: to six hours. It just don't make sense.
Speaker 1: No one's going to miss the fact that you have
Speaker 1: purple hair. Rangely enough, nobody said that in the description.
Speaker 1: But still anyone who wanted to believe that you were
Speaker 1: actually the shooter would have had to believe is that
Speaker 1: somehow or other, you vanished into thin air without your teacher,
Speaker 1: who was seven feet away from you noticing it, snuck
Speaker 1: through multiple doors that were locked, climbed over barbed wire,
Speaker 1: got into a car which I don't even know if
Speaker 1: you had a car, changed your outfit, drove ten miles,
Speaker 1: which would have been at least a thirty minute drive
Speaker 1: because LA traffic, god knows, it could be a two
Speaker 1: hour drive, and then killed someone calmly changed your clothes back,
Speaker 1: dispose of the other outfit, and magically snuck back into
Speaker 1: the thing, sat down your seat. And she also managed
Speaker 1: to dye her hair on the way while she was
Speaker 1: speeding through traffic. It's all so preposterous. So the state
Speaker 1: had nothing except for three eye witnesses. These guys who
Speaker 1: were on the lawn were definitely intimidated, not only by
Speaker 1: members of their own gang, but also by Donielle Flynn,
Speaker 1: who had a fearsome reputation the neighborhood. In addition to that,
Speaker 1: they really didn't want to talk to the police. They
Speaker 1: didn't think it was any of the police's business. I've
Speaker 1: had local law enforcement complain to me and saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the problem to talking to gang members, that
Speaker 1: they just don't want to talk to us, And I said,
Speaker 1: the problem is that nobody wants to talk to you.
Speaker 1: It's never a good thing when a policeman is walking
Speaker 1: up your front walk and appearing at your door. No
Speaker 1: one wants to talk to police in these neighborhoods. They're
Speaker 1: not bringers of good tidings. They're not people who help you.
Speaker 1: They are only people who make your life more difficult.
Speaker 1: Ryan Faust, of course, only appeared in court because the
Speaker 1: police threatened him with an arrest in another matter. Joe Cook,
Speaker 1: of course, didn't appear in court. After his preliminary earing.
Speaker 1: He fled to Mississippi where they were apparently unable to
Speaker 1: find him, and they had to arrest Bobby Johnson to
Speaker 1: get him into court. But none of them particularly care
Speaker 1: about telling the truth on the stand because they don't
Speaker 1: regard this as a police thing. This is a block
Speaker 1: crip E Love and Douce Hoover thing, And frankly, they
Speaker 1: don't care who goes down for it. What they care
Speaker 1: about is their own value sitem and what they're going
Speaker 1: to do about it on the street. But talking about
Speaker 1: the street, every person I talked to in this case
Speaker 1: knew who actually did this crime. It's not a secret
Speaker 1: that Kiera is innocent. So June fifth of two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, they brought you to the precinct right under
Speaker 1: the auspices of looking at a lineup to find your
Speaker 1: boyfriend's killer. But that was not what they had in mind.
Speaker 3: By this time, they already came out to my grandmother
Speaker 3: house at least five or six times, trying to get
Speaker 3: me to put the murder off on a block crypt member,
Speaker 3: and I wouldn't do it. So I'm like, Okay, I'll
Speaker 3: go see these lineups. So I remember them picking me
Speaker 3: up and my dad said, Kiara, the longest they could
Speaker 3: hold you with seventy two hours. And I'm thinking in
Speaker 3: my head, like why would he say that?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: When we got there, and they were like, Kiera knew
Speaker 3: some and I'm like yes. So I walked to the
Speaker 3: guy I'll never forget this. He has a poster in
Speaker 3: his hand, and I was so in shocked. It's like
Speaker 3: my soul left my body instead wanted for a murder,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, murder, Who did I murder? And they
Speaker 3: put the handcuffs on me. All you hear is chained.
Speaker 3: I was placed in the hallway. The woman stripped me
Speaker 3: down and look for tattoos in a room full of men.
Speaker 3: I was only seventeen, and I'm not understanding why I'm here.
Speaker 3: I believe for seventy two hours that I was arrested
Speaker 3: for the murder of Mark Hill.
Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Stand Together. Stand
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Speaker 1: justice reform. By empowering people to take action, supporting nonprofits,
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Speaker 1: the problems in our communities and empowers those closest to
Speaker 1: the problems to drive solutions. Solutions like reducing unjust prison
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Speaker 1: divides in our communities. To learn how you may get involved,
Speaker 1: visit standtogether dot org slash conviction. When did they reveal
Speaker 1: to you that they were going to charge you with
Speaker 1: a different murder? Entirely?
Speaker 3: I walk into the room and I noticed one of
Speaker 3: the old detectives from Markel's case and a new detective.
Speaker 3: I remember sitting down and them starting to ask to
Speaker 3: me about mister Christiani, Hinti and all these people. Then
Speaker 3: they're saying all this stuff about retaliation for Markel and listen,
Speaker 3: and I'm confused, And then they bring up now, I'm
Speaker 3: really confused. Then when he say the day that it happened,
Speaker 3: the time it all hit, I'm in school at that
Speaker 3: time and now and I'm hopeful because I'm like, as
Speaker 3: soon as he go back, he talks to my parents,
Speaker 3: they go down to the school, they get the paperwork,
Speaker 3: they bring it. I'm free to go.
Speaker 4: I've seen all the investigative materials in this case, and
Speaker 4: the police were focused on Kiera very early in this investigation,
Speaker 4: and they didn't check her alibi out until after they
Speaker 4: had arrested her in June. They originally had targeted Kiera
Speaker 4: as the driver of the car in this murder, I
Speaker 4: think because they thought that the person who was the
Speaker 4: shooter answered the description of Douniell Flynn pretty well. But
Speaker 4: then they discovered that Kiera couldn't drive, and so suddenly
Speaker 4: they put her on the street shooting Christian Hinton.
Speaker 1: Right, And so now you know she would have had
Speaker 1: been leaving school and then driving a car that didn't
Speaker 1: exist with a license she didn't have. They're willing to
Speaker 1: go to just extraordinary lanes and not to serve and protect,
Speaker 1: but to frame and destroy. Now comes the next phase,
Speaker 1: going through the courts. And the juvenile and the jail systems.
Speaker 1: You were a minor, so they started you off in
Speaker 1: juvie where you were at least safe from donniel Flynn's
Speaker 1: reach at that time. But that was temporary. It was
Speaker 1: only until you turned eighteen, and then you were sent
Speaker 1: to the women's jail. So now Donniel Finn has access
Speaker 1: to you for the first time.
Speaker 3: I've heard about her, but I've never seen her in action,
Speaker 3: you know. So my attorney at the time, mister Tahan,
Speaker 3: he felt that the best thing was to get me
Speaker 3: separated from her. He did a court order. They come
Speaker 3: through and they switch my wristband, so we were to
Speaker 3: not even be in the same dorm as each other,
Speaker 3: let alone the same holding tink as each other, or
Speaker 3: the same bus. So when we went to court that day,
Speaker 3: and that was my first time running to her seating her,
Speaker 3: she walks into the room and she sits down next
Speaker 3: to me. Lady, it's like the devil itself. She says, Oh,
Speaker 3: everything is gonna be fine, It's gonna be all right.
Speaker 3: I need you to take this one for me. I
Speaker 3: need you to go to try with me. That's how
Speaker 3: she does me. What do you need me to go
Speaker 3: to try with you for because at this time we're
Speaker 3: trying to separate this case and get far away from
Speaker 3: her as possible.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: And right then and there, it was like a switch
Speaker 3: popped off in her head and she just went crazy.
Speaker 3: She spit on me and I jumped back, and the
Speaker 3: officers came in, grabbed her, they took her out. That
Speaker 3: was the first attack. So they separated us. We went
Speaker 3: on two separate buses and everything, and then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, word through the jail was I was a snitch.
Speaker 3: Don't snitches tell on people. Don't snitches know what actually happened.
Speaker 3: I don't understand how she manipulated these people to believe
Speaker 3: that I was a snitch. And our next court date,
Speaker 3: the police officers put us on the same floor and
Speaker 3: I walked past and I heard somebody go snitch. It
Speaker 3: was her. She kicked me and she got hold of
Speaker 3: me and it was the officer. I'll never forget this.
Speaker 3: She jumped on top of my back and she had
Speaker 3: me down and she said, don't do anything. We've seen everything.
Speaker 3: So we were late for court that day.
Speaker 1: We're talking December fourth, two thousand and two, during jury selection,
Speaker 1: Kiera's lawyer files a nine to nine to five motion
Speaker 1: to dismiss on the grounds of the teacher, Rebecca Woodruff's testimony.
Speaker 1: The judge dismisses the case on the credibility of the testimony. Okay.
Speaker 1: Then six hours later the DA reindicts and Kiera was rearrested.
Speaker 1: So when she's alone with the detective in his car,
Speaker 1: he drove her to a motel, the Magic Carpet, where
Speaker 1: he offered her a deal, have sex with him and
Speaker 1: he'll give her an hour to run. Kiera refused. He
Speaker 1: brought her in and while booking her and taking her fingerprints,
Speaker 1: he asked if the finger he was holding at the
Speaker 1: time was the one she masturbated with. The room was
Speaker 1: full of chuckles from the other officers.
Speaker 4: I sometimes think that the police never actually wanted Kiera
Speaker 4: to go down for this murder, but they were hoping
Speaker 4: that if they put her in terror, in fear of
Speaker 4: her life, that eventually Kiera would break and she would
Speaker 4: tell them everything she knew. Unfortunately, she didn't know anything
Speaker 4: because Kiera is not a gang member, and in part
Speaker 4: that's why she ended up getting convicted here, because everybody
Speaker 4: else in this case is a member of a gang
Speaker 4: and people have their back, but no one ever had
Speaker 4: Kiera's back because she was not a member of a gang.
Speaker 2: She was an outsider. The police were.
Speaker 4: Looking out for themselves, gang members are looking out for themselves.
Speaker 2: No one's looking out for Kiera. And that's just wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, now we get to the trial. They put
Speaker 1: her on trial with Donnielle Flynn, who the prosecution had
Speaker 1: now decided was the driver on that date, and Kiera
Speaker 1: was defended by Anthony Ta Hunnett Gran. A guy named
Speaker 1: Larry Williams offended Flynn, and the witnesses had described this
Speaker 1: tattoo on the upper right thigh of the shooter. The
Speaker 1: thing is, both Kiera and Donniel Flynn have a tattoo
Speaker 1: on their right thigh. It's a crazy coincidence, but in
Speaker 1: a preliminary hearing something quite consequential and very shady transpired.
Speaker 4: Kira has a tattoo on her thigh, very very high
Speaker 4: on her thigh, almost on our hip bone. Donielle Flynn
Speaker 4: has a tattoo much lower on the thigh, which is
Speaker 4: quite visible when you're wearing shorts. However, at the preliminary hearing,
Speaker 4: when Joe Cook was testifying, Doniell's lawyer did something that
Speaker 4: I think should be in the museum of clever tricks
Speaker 4: by defense attorneys. He said, I'd like to have my client,
Speaker 4: Doniell Flynn, pull up her pants leg and show that
Speaker 4: she doesn't have a tattoo on her thigh, which Donielle did,
Speaker 4: but she only pulled it up about three or four
Speaker 4: inches above her knee, and so the tattoo wasn't visible.
Speaker 4: And even though this tattoo is in police reports, there
Speaker 4: are pictures of it, that tattoo exists. And yet during
Speaker 4: that preliminary hearing, the district attorney allowed the court to
Speaker 4: place on the record that dauniel f Lunn didn't have
Speaker 4: that tattoo.
Speaker 1: So in the jury's mind, Kiera is the only one
Speaker 1: of the two defendants with a tattoo on her right eye.
Speaker 1: But the defense presents her alibi very well. Again, she
Speaker 1: had signed in at eight am, again, mark President at
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen am, and twelve fifteen am, and the
Speaker 1: murder was at eleven thirty. Her teacher, Rebecca wood Troup,
Speaker 1: gave testimony verifying her presence in class and presented six
Speaker 1: dated assignments.
Speaker 5: The way that I taught class, I would teach and
Speaker 5: then I would give assignments. All of the assignments had
Speaker 5: to be completed during class time. For example, you would
Speaker 5: not be able to get a packet of assignments from
Speaker 5: me if you had missed something from before. You'd actually
Speaker 5: have to be there every hour of the day to
Speaker 5: get each of the assignments. And Kiera had completed all
Speaker 5: six assignments that day, so it just would have been
Speaker 5: impossible for her if she had left and come back.
Speaker 4: So this is where gang evidence plays such an important
Speaker 4: role in this trial. A gang evidence, which is put
Speaker 4: in evidence by a gang expert who's just a gang
Speaker 4: policeman who works the neighborhood, is really a way to
Speaker 4: get race into the courtroom. Gang evidence is race evidence,
Speaker 4: and the people who are the victims of this kind
Speaker 4: of evidence are always black and brown youth. It convinces
Speaker 4: the jury that the person sitting at the defendant's table
Speaker 4: is capable of anything. Kiera Newsom gang member can commit
Speaker 4: murder and then go back and finish her civil rights
Speaker 4: assignment that afternoon without breaking a sweat. That is what
Speaker 4: gang evidence does to a trial. Now, in this case,
Speaker 4: gang evidence was appropriate for some of the people involved,
Speaker 4: Christian Hanton, Bobby Johnson, Ryan Faust, Danielle Flynn were all
Speaker 4: in the col gang's database and all had what we
Speaker 4: call FI cards validating that they were gang members. Kiera
Speaker 4: Newsom had only one thing. She had a boyfriend tattoo
Speaker 4: on her upper thigh, and it was a tattoo so
Speaker 4: high under thigh that the only person who was going
Speaker 4: to see that tattoo was Mark Hal. That tattoo was
Speaker 4: identified as a gang tattoo by the gang expert at
Speaker 4: the trial. He said, you could not have a tattoo
Speaker 4: on your thigh like that unless you were a fully
Speaker 4: paid up gang member, or you would be shot on
Speaker 4: site on the streets of South LA. Now that's a myth.
Speaker 4: You don't walk around with an invisible boyfriend tattoo and
Speaker 4: other gang members are prowling the streets.
Speaker 2: Looking to waste you.
Speaker 4: But that was the myth that they pushed at that trial,
Speaker 4: and frankly, it is the myth that I think convicted
Speaker 4: Kiera Newsom.
Speaker 1: So Chante Allen, who was shot in the torys So,
Speaker 1: testified that he had gone to school with Kiera and
Speaker 1: knew her. He dispelled the identificases, saying that it was
Speaker 1: not her in the car at the shooting. How the
Speaker 1: fuck could she get convicted in spite of this, Chris,
Speaker 1: you got to help us out here.
Speaker 4: Kiera is convicted of the murder of Christian Hinton, but
Speaker 4: she's acquitted of the attempted murder of Chante Allen, even
Speaker 4: though clearly the woman who shot Christian Hinton is also
Speaker 4: the person who shoots at Chantey Allen halfway down the block.
Speaker 4: It feels irrational, but I suspect it was the jury
Speaker 4: had a momentary crisis of conscience and wondered maybe if
Speaker 4: they got the wrong person, and so they thought they'd
Speaker 4: throw Kiera a bone, even though they convicted her of
Speaker 4: a crime she never committed.
Speaker 1: July two thousand and three, Carrie, You've now been through
Speaker 1: almost everything a human being can go through, and you're
Speaker 1: still just a kid. And now the jury goes out.
Speaker 3: They called Danielle Flynn, they called her Dean out first.
Speaker 3: It was like, not guilty first degree murder, not guilty
Speaker 3: second arg murder, and all these not guilties, you know,
Speaker 3: And she's sitting in the courtroom and she's crying, she's
Speaker 3: happy and everything, and they're like, Kiaraen k NewsOne not
Speaker 3: guilty attempted murderer and guilty first degree murder and I'm
Speaker 3: like what and I'm it's tears and she looks at
Speaker 3: me and say, that's what snitches get. It walks out with.
Speaker 4: Many wrongful convictions. The person who actually committed the murder
Speaker 4: is still out on the street. What's even stranger is
Speaker 4: the person who committed the murder is sitting next to
Speaker 4: Kierra at the defendant stable. Daniel Flynn stays out and
Speaker 4: years later, she's convicted of an execution style drug murder
Speaker 4: on the streets of Las Vegas. And she's now doing
Speaker 4: twenty to life in Nevada State Prison. And you could
Speaker 4: say that that poor guy in that alleyway might be
Speaker 4: alive today if justice were done at this trial.
Speaker 1: So Kira sends to sixty years to late. And now
Speaker 1: the torture wasn't over by any stretched the imagination.
Speaker 3: When I had prison, not only did they have me
Speaker 3: as a Hoover Crip member, but also the people that
Speaker 3: was already there had got worked. I was a snitch,
Speaker 3: you know. So not only am I this gang member
Speaker 3: now supposedly, but I'm a snitch too. When I got
Speaker 3: up there, In my first few years, all I did
Speaker 3: was fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, And the only people
Speaker 3: that ever fought me was the hoovers. The blocks never
Speaker 3: fought me. They lost someone, but they knew the truth.
Speaker 3: I wasn't the best fighter, but I learned to become
Speaker 3: good at it because I did it so much for
Speaker 3: least like three years straight. I had at least like
Speaker 3: two fights today, if not more.
Speaker 1: But there were some correction officers that looked out for you.
Speaker 1: There's one named Lieutenant Norman who was one of the
Speaker 1: good guys.
Speaker 3: Is that right, Yes, he's one of the good guys,
Speaker 3: you know. And Lieutenant Norman, he had me in his
Speaker 3: office and he told me, you gonna tell me what's
Speaker 3: going on with you now. Mind you, the other lifers
Speaker 3: had already told him what was going on. The fact
Speaker 3: that I was innocent, they already had told him. But
Speaker 3: my whole perception of the law and the system and
Speaker 3: police officers was to not talk to them about anything
Speaker 3: because it'll get twisted. The wrong thing could happened. I
Speaker 3: was in fear of the justice system, you know. And
Speaker 3: he let me know that I can trust him. So
Speaker 3: I laid everything out to him and explained to him
Speaker 3: what was going on with me and what actually happened,
Speaker 3: and he reassured me that he already knew. So as
Speaker 3: long as he was on the yard that I was on,
Speaker 3: I was okay. I didn't have to worry if he
Speaker 3: started shifting people over, moving them to different yards and
Speaker 3: different things to make sure that these gang members stayed
Speaker 3: away from me. That was good for like a few years,
Speaker 3: up until the time when he moved further along up
Speaker 3: to captain and he was no longer on the yards anymore.
Speaker 3: Every so many years, you'll have people coming in like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the girl that sniched on Astro, And I'm like,
Speaker 3: are they serious? If I said something about this lady,
Speaker 3: wouldn't this lady be incarcerated right now? It was just crazy.
Speaker 3: So I just physically and mentally fought to approve to people, Oh,
Speaker 3: I'm innocent, I'm innocent. I'm innocent, to the point to
Speaker 3: where I just gave up one day and said, you
Speaker 3: know what, I'm gonna stop doing that, and I decided
Speaker 3: to write letters. I would write every day, and I
Speaker 3: wrote the Innocence Project. The first time they told me
Speaker 3: they had too many people, and the day that I
Speaker 3: planned my own suicide. I get a paper from the
Speaker 3: Innocence Projects saying that they accept in my case, and
Speaker 3: that's the only reason why I decided to live.
Speaker 1: The California Innocence Project. They did something great. They recognized
Speaker 1: that since you were a juvenile at the time of
Speaker 1: the alleged incident, they could reach out to the Juvenile
Speaker 1: Innocence and Fair Sentenced in Clinic, a Loyal Law School
Speaker 1: also known as Jeff's and Chris, that's when you got involved?
Speaker 1: What year did you get involved in? And then how
Speaker 1: did things progress from there?
Speaker 4: Winter twenty thirteen, Justin Brooks came up here to speak
Speaker 4: at Loyal LA Law School and he brought Kiera's file
Speaker 4: with him and we went out to dinner that and
Speaker 4: I do. He handed me this file, this big red
Speaker 4: weald full of random papers, and he said, we kind
Speaker 4: of reached a dead end on this case. Can you
Speaker 4: put your students on this case? And we were a
Speaker 4: relatively new clinic, and I said, yeah, I'll take this
Speaker 4: case on. And I just want to tell you how
Speaker 4: the Jeff's Clinic works. I mean, students do everything in
Speaker 4: the jeff Clinic. So when we got the case, we
Speaker 4: noticed that CIP had interviewed a lot of people from
Speaker 4: the school, but they hadn't been able to get to
Speaker 4: people in the neighborhood, and so we thought, well, that's
Speaker 4: where we need to start our work. So we went
Speaker 4: down to South la and with the help of Kiera's mom,
Speaker 4: we started fanning out and talking to people in and
Speaker 4: around the neighborhood. And then we caught a lucky break.
Speaker 4: We were able to through a documentary filmmaker who was
Speaker 4: making a movie about that neighborhood. We were able to
Speaker 4: get in touch with Ryan Faust, and Ryan simply said, well,
Speaker 4: you know, I know that it was and Kiera who
Speaker 4: did that. I was under pressure from my family and
Speaker 4: from the police to identify somebody. When they walked in
Speaker 4: with the six pack, they had already circled Kiera's face,
Speaker 4: and so I knew that's what they wanted. So I
Speaker 4: simply initial that photograph and that became part of my testimony.
Speaker 4: And once I had that testimony, I felt like I
Speaker 4: had to keep going into court and saying the same
Speaker 4: thing or I was going to get arrested and sent
Speaker 4: away for this bottle of vodka he had lifted from
Speaker 4: local Albertson's. I sent an investigator to talk to Joe Cook.
Speaker 4: Joe Cook didn't want to help because he'd been trying
Speaker 4: to avoid this case for I don't know how long.
Speaker 4: He said, I don't want to help anybody. I don't
Speaker 4: want to change my testimony. And then he says to
Speaker 4: my investigator, he said, but the one thing I remember
Speaker 4: is that woman who pulls her pant leg up at
Speaker 4: the preliminary hearing, that was the shooter. And I'm not
Speaker 4: even sure Joe knew that. He was saying that was
Speaker 4: Donielle Flynn. And then we talked to somebody else who
Speaker 4: was in the neighborhood who said that Donielle Flynn had
Speaker 4: shown up at his house the day of the murder
Speaker 4: and had been looking for other people to help her
Speaker 4: do this thing. And then it said to this guy,
Speaker 4: there's going to be something going down. You better better
Speaker 4: lie low for a while. And sure enough, not long
Speaker 4: after that, the sirens started going off and that.
Speaker 2: Murder took place.
Speaker 4: So we put together what I thought was a pretty
Speaker 4: compelling case, but we still had to deal with the
Speaker 4: requirements of habeas corpus and the incredibly steep hill you
Speaker 4: have to climb in order to prove that in superior court,
Speaker 4: and frankly we were unable to prove it to the
Speaker 4: satisfaction of the Torrent Superior Court, they rejected the petition.
Speaker 4: Now Luckily, in twenty thirteen, the California Innoscence Project needed
Speaker 4: an extra person for their California twelve March, and someone
Speaker 4: had dropped off.
Speaker 3: That Brian Banks he was exonerating.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, And by the way, if you haven't seen
Speaker 1: the movie by that same name, I suggest you do
Speaker 1: watch it tonight. I mean, Brian is a great, great guy.
Speaker 1: And for those of you who don't know what the
Speaker 1: California twelve Innocence March was, justin Brooks, Melissa Burkal and
Speaker 1: Mike Simanchik of the California and this is project March.
Speaker 1: Get this all the way from San Diego to Sacramento,
Speaker 1: seven hundred and twelve miles to deliver clemency petitions to
Speaker 1: Governor Brown's office for twelve clients aka the California twelve,
Speaker 1: all of whom had compelling evidence of actual innocence. The
Speaker 1: march took something like fifty five days and it started
Speaker 1: at the end of April of twenty thirteen.
Speaker 4: So in May twenty thirteen, they said, can we submit
Speaker 4: a clemency petition to the governor Kira Newsom? Will you
Speaker 4: co sign that petition? And I said absolutely, we will
Speaker 4: do that. That was early in the Jerry Brown governorship.
Speaker 4: So towards the end of Jerry Brown's governorship, I got
Speaker 4: a call from a Border Parole hearing investigator and she said,
Speaker 4: I want to talk to you about Kiara Newsom's case.
Speaker 4: And so I sat down with my petition and the
Speaker 4: investigator sat down in Sacramento and for two hours we
Speaker 4: went through every piece of evidence there and I made
Speaker 4: the case that Kiara Newsom was innocent. At the end
Speaker 4: of that then the investigators said thank you very much.
Speaker 4: And that's the last I heard until on Christmas Eve,
Speaker 4: Christina Lindquist and the Governor's office called me up and said,
Speaker 4: I've just talked to your client. Her sentence is being
Speaker 4: commuted to twenty years to life. She should be eligible
Speaker 4: for parole.
Speaker 3: Immediately, I thought I was gonna be sent directly home
Speaker 3: right away. I didn't know that I was going to
Speaker 3: have to go before the parole board, but I had
Speaker 3: to tell myself. I said, Kara, you always said whether
Speaker 3: through the boardroom or through the court room. You was
Speaker 3: going to get out of here. You can fight another day.
Speaker 3: Just do what you have to do. I'll do the
Speaker 3: court thing later. It's not justice all the way from me,
Speaker 3: but it's something. And like I told them, the only
Speaker 3: thing that Kara Knewsom is guilty of is dating a
Speaker 3: gang member. I feel so bad for the victim's family.
Speaker 3: They still don't have the justice that they deserve. Okay,
Speaker 3: this is about them. I'll have my moment one day,
Speaker 3: and I believe that that day is coming eventually.
Speaker 1: So April seventh, twenty twenty, Yes, you walked out of
Speaker 1: prison a free woman after serving nearly nineteen years in
Speaker 1: prison for a crime you didn't commit, you didn't know about,
Speaker 1: you had no knowledge of. And what did you do
Speaker 1: when you walked out of prison?
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing I did is run into the
Speaker 3: arms of my fiance. But when we got out the gates,
Speaker 3: Rebecca was right there. And I was told that Hawthorne
Speaker 3: was not going to be there because of this pandemic.
Speaker 3: And when I seen him, even though it was a pandemic,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm like, I'm gonna hug him anyway. I
Speaker 3: got to see my top two people outside of my
Speaker 3: family and outside of you know, my loved ones. And
Speaker 3: then my crew was there, Marisa, all the students, everybody
Speaker 3: was there and it was just so exciting.
Speaker 1: I mean, here it is now and you're seven months pregnant, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exciting, you know. So do you know if it's
Speaker 1: a girl or a boy.
Speaker 3: It's a boy.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you have a name picked out?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna name him Champion. I've been through a lot
Speaker 3: as well as you know. His father has a tremendous
Speaker 3: story too. We both went to that school together, you know.
Speaker 3: So this baby deserves to be called Champion. This baby
Speaker 3: been through a lot. Even since yeah, even since I've
Speaker 3: been out, this baby's still been through a lot because
Speaker 3: whatever I feel, he feels. And I'm still going through
Speaker 3: it out here, still trying to find work. I have
Speaker 3: all these college degrees, and this big feeling just keeps
Speaker 3: popping up, you know. But eventually things is going to change.
Speaker 3: I know, something's going to happen for me.
Speaker 1: What remains to be done for Kiera Newsom? How does
Speaker 1: this eventually get truly righted? And what can people do
Speaker 1: to help her? And help you help others.
Speaker 4: So Kiera is out of prison, she's free, but she's
Speaker 4: not exonerated. The next step for us, as you may
Speaker 4: have heard, we have a new DA in town here,
Speaker 4: George Gascon, and he is going to revamp the Conviction
Speaker 4: Integrity Unit where I hope to take this case again.
Speaker 4: We will have a petition up on change dot org.
Speaker 4: Gierra should get the justice she's been deserving for so
Speaker 4: long and should be able to walk around a woman
Speaker 4: without a conviction to her name, which has kept a
Speaker 4: lot of doors closed for her so far, and it's
Speaker 4: not fair she should be walking around without this conviction
Speaker 4: hanging around her neck. And so if you want to help,
Speaker 4: please look at the change dot org petition and also
Speaker 4: support the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentence and Clinic so
Speaker 4: that we can help more kids who were convicted and
Speaker 4: sent to the California prison system, kids like Kiera.
Speaker 1: So we will put a link in our bio to
Speaker 1: support Kiera and to support Jeff's as well. And now
Speaker 1: we have what we call closing arguments. Closing arguments is
Speaker 1: the section of the show where once again I think
Speaker 1: our two extraordinary guests Chris Hawthorn and Kiera Newsom and
Speaker 1: Chris and Kierra. Here's how this works. This is the
Speaker 1: part of the show where I turned my microphone off,
Speaker 1: kicked back, close my eyes and just listen anything that
Speaker 1: you want to say. It's all yours for the closeout.
Speaker 1: So Chris Hawthorne, why don't you go first, and then
Speaker 1: you can just hand the mic off to Kiera and
Speaker 1: she can do the mic drop.
Speaker 4: We started the Juvenile Innocence in Fair Sentence in Clinic
Speaker 4: in twenty twelve because Los Angeles is the capital of
Speaker 4: juvenile over sentencing. There are so many kids during the
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties, during the early part of this century who
Speaker 4: got sent off to California prisons to serve really long sentences,
Speaker 4: some of them wrongfully convicted, all of them over sentenced.
Speaker 4: It is so important for us as a city and
Speaker 4: a county to live up to the ideals we believe
Speaker 4: Los Angeles stands for, to be the city that we
Speaker 4: say we are, this big, beautiful, diverse city which values
Speaker 4: its citizens, values every citizen. Kiara Newsom is just one
Speaker 4: of the most egregious examples of how unjustly children are
Speaker 4: treated in the criminal justice system here in Los Angeles
Speaker 4: and were for many many years. I have a lot
Speaker 4: of faith that the new District Attorney's office is going
Speaker 4: to change that. I'm hoping that we'll be able to
Speaker 4: continue the work we've been doing, and I'm so excited
Speaker 4: to be able to do it with Kiara Newsom free
Speaker 4: and at the side of all of our amazing students
Speaker 4: and staff who are going to keep doing this work
Speaker 4: as long as we can possibly do it.
Speaker 3: First of all, I would like to thank each and
Speaker 3: every one of you guys for taking the time out
Speaker 3: to listen to my story. I am not the first
Speaker 3: that this what happened to, and I know that I
Speaker 3: am not the last that this what happened to. And
Speaker 3: I also know that where I come from, there are
Speaker 3: many many others I was just incarcerated, and I know
Speaker 3: at least ten more in me that's there that don't
Speaker 3: even have the opportunities that I have right now. I
Speaker 3: won't for anyone that ever has to do jury duty
Speaker 3: and deal with cases that has to deal with gangs
Speaker 3: and threats and violence and things like that, to really
Speaker 3: really pay attention to the evidence, because one small mistake
Speaker 3: this can happen to anyone. And I just want to
Speaker 3: say that I blame no one for this happening to me,
Speaker 3: and I realized that everyone had a job to do,
Speaker 3: whether it was a judge, whether it was a da
Speaker 3: whether it was the officers. In due time, God would
Speaker 3: deal with everybody accordingly. I just want everybody to have
Speaker 3: a peaceful twenty twenty one and enjoy themselves, and each
Speaker 3: one teach one and each one reach one and go
Speaker 3: out there and make a difference in the change in
Speaker 3: someone else's life, because you never know who you'll touch.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org
Speaker 1: to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like
Speaker 1: to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good podcasts and association with signal Company Number one