Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty nine, Paul Anderson lived in a Jamaica
Speaker 1: queen's drug house owned by his sister but operated by
Speaker 1: a man named Jomo Kenyada. On March sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Jomo Kenyada and one of his associates, Lloyd Witter, were
Speaker 1: shot at the house, leaving wid Or dead and Kenyada
Speaker 1: in a coma. Police found Paul Anderson alone, bound, handcuffed,
Speaker 1: and unharmed outside the home, under pressure from Lee Detective
Speaker 1: William Peppe and desperately trying to divert attention away from himself.
Speaker 1: Anderson's initial description of four unknown men quickly changed to
Speaker 1: that of two acquaintances who did not fit his initial descriptions,
Speaker 1: Carlton Roman and Hollis Laylor. With no physical or forensic
Speaker 1: evidence tying Carlton or Hollis to the shooting, the state's
Speaker 1: case relied solely on the inconsistent and outright false testimonies
Speaker 1: of Anderson, Kenyada, and Detective Peppe. Carlton, a twenty six
Speaker 1: year old bother at college due with no connection to
Speaker 1: the drug trade, was portrayed by the prosecution as a
Speaker 1: dangerous drug kingpin, and despite the testimony of alibi witnesses,
Speaker 1: Carlton was convicted and sentenced over forty three years in prison.
Speaker 1: The Queen Za blocked Carlton's attempts at justice for over
Speaker 1: three decades until the election of District Attorney of Olympic
Speaker 1: Cats and the formation of a new conviction Integrity Unit.
Speaker 1: A reinvestigation revealed the misdeeds of Paul Anderson, Joe Mukanyata,
Speaker 1: and Detective Peppe, as well as led to Carlton's freedom
Speaker 1: after thirty two long years in prison. This is Wronful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wronful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flahman.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start today's episode by issuing an apology
Speaker 1: and I'm going to direct that at our featured guest,
Speaker 1: Carlton Roman, because what he went through doesn't make any
Speaker 1: logical sense whatsoever, even by our crazy standards. And so,
Speaker 1: mister Roman, thank you for being here. And then with
Speaker 1: mister Roman today is his attorney, James Henning. James, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having us. Jason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm glad you're here as well to help
Speaker 1: tell this crazy story because honestly, when I was researching this.
Speaker 1: I was kind of just like turning the paper upside down,
Speaker 1: back and forth and saying, maybe somebody left something out,
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a mistake or an omission here somewhere. I mean, Carlton,
Speaker 1: you were a twenty six year old man who was
Speaker 1: a father boyfriend, going to college, living in Queens, New York,
Speaker 1: no criminal record whatsoever. So if a guy like you
Speaker 1: can get caught up in something like this, then the
Speaker 1: uncomfortable fact is that nobody's safe. Right, So let's go
Speaker 1: back to that. First of all, where are you from?
Speaker 3: But I'm Jamaican. I was born Derek into this country
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty one. I was nineteen, and my mother
Speaker 3: migrated before me, and she worked two tree four jobs
Speaker 3: sometimes until she was able to sponsor me and get
Speaker 3: me up here. The one point of me coming here
Speaker 3: was educational purposes.
Speaker 4: To go to college.
Speaker 3: We started going around trying to get me into a college,
Speaker 3: and she kept bringing me to different colleges and I'd
Speaker 3: be looking at the hamphuses. I have no frame of
Speaker 3: reference to what to go by. I mean, it's completely different.
Speaker 3: It's a first world country and all that. We started
Speaker 3: looking at colleges in Queens, and I fell in love
Speaker 3: with Queensboro, which was a community of college.
Speaker 4: That's what I settled on.
Speaker 3: So my mom and her husband started looking at place
Speaker 3: in Queens and then we moved there within like maybe
Speaker 3: ten months of me coming up here.
Speaker 1: So it seems like everything was going pretty well until,
Speaker 1: of course, one day in nineteen eighty nine, and that's
Speaker 1: when it all went terribly wrong. Now, this was the
Speaker 1: late eighties in New York, a time that was rife
Speaker 1: with both drug dealing and police corruption that stretched through
Speaker 1: the nineties. And I'm not breaking any news here, right.
Speaker 1: It was the epidemic, the War on drugs. A lot
Speaker 1: of bad shit happened on both sides of the law.
Speaker 1: And in Jamaica, Queen's there was a house known for
Speaker 1: drug activity and a guy Carlton knew Paul Anderson lived there.
Speaker 1: It was his sister's house, and a guy named Jomo Kenyada,
Speaker 1: who we later find out was a very violent guy
Speaker 1: operating under a number of aliases, who was dealing drugs
Speaker 1: out of that house. There was also a dude that
Speaker 1: Carlton knew, Lloyd Witter or Jimbo as people call them,
Speaker 1: who hung around with those guys and may or may
Speaker 1: not have been involved in drugs as well. Now, on
Speaker 1: March sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine, a shooting happened at this
Speaker 1: drug house, killing Lloyd Witter and putting Jomo Kenyada into
Speaker 1: a coma that lasted for weeks. And when police first
Speaker 1: arrived at the crime scene, they found Paul Anderson outside
Speaker 1: bound and handcuffed, but somehow unharmed. James tell us where
Speaker 1: the investigation went from there.
Speaker 5: Lloyd Witter is obviously killed and can't give an account
Speaker 5: of the crime. Jomo Kenya is in a coma for
Speaker 5: several weeks following the crime, and so the initial stories
Speaker 5: come from Paul Anderson, and he gives several Initially, he
Speaker 5: claims that a group of individuals came to his house,
Speaker 5: unknown individuals that he describes in detail, and they force
Speaker 5: him inside at gunpoint, and they handcuff him and tie
Speaker 5: him up, and they tell him that they're after Jomo
Speaker 5: Kanyada and Lloyd Witter, and then they do nothing to
Speaker 5: him when they go and shoot Jomo Kanyada and Lloyd
Speaker 5: Witter when they show up. It isn't until the next
Speaker 5: day that Carlton is purportedly identified by Paul Anderson as
Speaker 5: one of the individuals along with another guy he knew
Speaker 5: Hollis Laylor from among the shooters. And this is the
Speaker 5: same day that Carlton learns of the shooting of his
Speaker 5: very good friend Lloyd Witter and calls up Witter's wife
Speaker 5: and says is this true?
Speaker 2: And she says, yes, it's true.
Speaker 5: And Carlton, being a good friend, runs over to his
Speaker 5: friend's house to check what's going.
Speaker 1: On, and it was found out that the victim's wife,
Speaker 1: Andrea Witer, was told by someone we don't know who
Speaker 1: that Carlton was responsible for her husband's death. We know
Speaker 1: she was contacted on her husband's beeper after the shooting
Speaker 1: took place. It may have been Paul Anderson perhaps Detective Peppe,
Speaker 1: were not exactly sure, so when Carlton got to her house,
Speaker 1: she called the police.
Speaker 5: When he shows up, nobody answers the door at the
Speaker 5: Witer home and he goes across the street to a
Speaker 5: payphone to call up the house and see what's going on.
Speaker 5: And as he's calling, a number of unmarked carrs show
Speaker 5: up and missus Whitter crosses the street, points at Carlton
Speaker 5: and says that's the man who killed my husband, and
Speaker 5: things are just off to the races. From there, Carlton
Speaker 5: is identified as being one of the shooters and is
Speaker 5: taken into custody by Detective William Peppe. And this is
Speaker 5: the morning of the seventeenth, and it just changes Carlton's.
Speaker 1: Life, James, as you're talking about these various different stories
Speaker 1: that Anderson told, this is where the whole thing starts
Speaker 1: to become surreal, right because Anderson initially told Detective John
Speaker 1: Loguercio that four men came to his house and that
Speaker 1: he couldn't identify the men.
Speaker 5: And there's no dispute here, Jason, that he knew who
Speaker 5: Carlton was at that point.
Speaker 1: Right, So major red flag right there. But this initial
Speaker 1: description given to Detective Leagercio was never even presented to
Speaker 1: the jury and was only discovered recently, and he gave
Speaker 1: a detailed description for the police report. According to Paul Anderson,
Speaker 1: he didn't know any of the men, but the apparent
Speaker 1: leader was five to two or five to three and
Speaker 1: walked with a limp. Two other guys no taller than
Speaker 1: five to four, and then the fourth guy was about
Speaker 1: six feet tall with a cameo haircut, which you remember
Speaker 1: from the music videos. At that time, this meant tight
Speaker 1: on the sides and tall on top. But then Anderson's
Speaker 1: account and descriptions changed six times before this thing even
Speaker 1: went to trial, and it comes out much later that
Speaker 1: according to Anderson, he was under a great deal of
Speaker 1: pressure from Detective Peppi, who fed various details along the way,
Speaker 1: but before his narrative changed, his description definitely did. When
Speaker 1: they get Anderson to the precinct, he allegedly identified Carlton
Speaker 1: Roman as the shooter. So somehow he magically remembered that
Speaker 1: his friend was the shooter from these four unknown men
Speaker 1: who he described with some detail, right, an even stranger, Carlton,
Speaker 1: You had no criminal record whatsoever, no involvement with this
Speaker 1: drug house. You didn't match any of the initial descriptions
Speaker 1: of his initial descriptions. He's talking about guys who are
Speaker 1: under five to four and then one over six feet,
Speaker 1: but you're five to seven. Help me out here, Do
Speaker 1: you have any other matching characteristics from the initial police report?
Speaker 4: No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: And if Anderson knew it was you, Carlton, why in
Speaker 1: the world didn't he say so from the very beginning,
Speaker 1: right when the police first showed up after the shooting.
Speaker 1: How in the world is he not going to say, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was my friend that did this, and here's where
Speaker 1: he lives and here's his phone number. That would have
Speaker 1: been the easiest id ever if you were the guy
Speaker 1: who actually did it.
Speaker 5: I think the other thing that flows into that, Jason,
Speaker 5: which has always been a big point to me and
Speaker 5: was a big point to the judge who ultimately exonerated Carlton,
Speaker 5: is I kind of referred to it as like a
Speaker 5: Batman or James Bond scenario where Paul Anderson says that
Speaker 5: these guys came in told him their entire criminal plot,
Speaker 5: shot two other guys to pieces that they told him
Speaker 5: they were going to shoot, and then leave him completely
Speaker 5: unscathed and able to tell this story.
Speaker 2: Nobody questioned that from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was wondering about that too. And then it
Speaker 1: gets weirder, right because with Kenyata drifting in and out
Speaker 1: of consciousness for several weeks at the hospital, they went
Speaker 1: in and did some really crazy stuff in the hospital
Speaker 1: in order to get him to make an identification. Right,
Speaker 1: how did that work?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 5: According to Detective Pepe, the lead investigator, when Kenyata awakens
Speaker 5: from this coma, he goes to visit with him, and
Speaker 5: he displays a board with letters it because Kenyata is
Speaker 5: supposedly nonverbal, and he has Kenyada supposedly spell out the
Speaker 5: names of the people who shot him, and according to Pepe,
Speaker 5: he identifies Carlton, Hollis Laylor by their nicknames, and the
Speaker 5: other two people who by this point, Paul Anderson has
Speaker 5: identified a pair of brothers named Bigger and Richie. Now,
Speaker 5: there are a couple problems with this. Number One, there's
Speaker 5: no basis in any police procedure for going and showing
Speaker 5: a nonverbal witness a letter board to identify people. Number two,
Speaker 5: there's no indication that Kenyada is separated from Paul Anderson
Speaker 5: or other people who could have influenced an identification. There's
Speaker 5: no indication that another officer is present or involved in
Speaker 5: this procedure. And number three, when Kenyada ultimately testifies at
Speaker 5: Carlton's trial, he says, I didn't spell out these guys' names.
Speaker 5: I gave three letters. So he's only claiming to have
Speaker 5: identified three people during this procedure, and they don't correspond
Speaker 5: to the claims that Pepe made of this. When Carlton's
Speaker 5: attorney makes a motion to see what procedures produced identifications
Speaker 5: in this case, the prosecution essentially hides Kenyata's ID. They
Speaker 5: represent that only Paul Anderson has made an idea, and
Speaker 5: because he knows Carlton, there's nothing suggestive in any way,
Speaker 5: shape or form. But Carlton's trial attorney's actually saying somebody
Speaker 5: in Kenyata's condition could have easily been led to make
Speaker 5: a misidentification. And the people's response, which is relied upon
Speaker 5: by a court, is that no, there's no problem because
Speaker 5: the only witness to make an ID knew the defendant.
Speaker 5: So they kind of push forward without any review. These
Speaker 5: two IDs by these guys who were years later acknowledged
Speaker 5: to be completely incredible and all over the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if I'm hearing you correctly, there was only
Speaker 1: the two of them in the hospital room at the time. Anyway, Right,
Speaker 1: he could have said he identified, you know, Santa Claus
Speaker 1: or Helen Keller as the shooter, right, anybody, because it
Speaker 1: was just his word.
Speaker 5: And there's an interesting aspect there where he aims that
Speaker 5: Kenyada spelled out the name of Hollis Laylor's girlfriend which
Speaker 5: he doesn't explain why Kenyada would have found that to
Speaker 5: be at all relevant. And the first three letters of
Speaker 5: that name just happened to be the same as Carlton's nickname.
Speaker 5: So it kind of stinks all around here.
Speaker 1: This is how you sort of rash they were back
Speaker 1: in those days. Right, They didn't even bother to attempt
Speaker 1: to pretend to make this sound credible because they knew
Speaker 1: they'd get away with it anyway. Right. Was there any
Speaker 1: other evidence, physical, forensic, or anything tying you to the shooting?
Speaker 4: Absolutely nothing.
Speaker 3: During trial they said they'scovered the entire house from top
Speaker 3: to bottom, and they found no fingerprints that.
Speaker 5: Were usable, no gun, no confession, no physical or biological evidence.
Speaker 5: It really just comes down to the word of Jomo
Speaker 5: Kenyada and Paul Anderson.
Speaker 1: And then how long were you held before the trial?
Speaker 3: The trial took eighteen months before it got there. I
Speaker 3: was in I did and you know, March Ju the system,
Speaker 3: a female associate of mister Greenberg. She came to represent me.
Speaker 3: She came back, I'm such and such and you're go
Speaker 3: in front of a judge, this is what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: And I remember selling this woman like what do you
Speaker 3: mean I'm not going to be able to go home today?
Speaker 3: And she's like, no, this is such a I'm like, listen,
Speaker 3: I'm a working man, I have college, I have a
Speaker 3: girlfriend and the child home, and I'm going And she
Speaker 3: started writing all this stuff down, and when we went
Speaker 3: in front of a judge, she hammered him exactly with
Speaker 3: all the information I'd just given her a minute ago.
Speaker 3: And the judge granted me bail. Okay, bail said that
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand dollars. Bankers gabble and left and she
Speaker 3: was like, amazing, the judge gave you bail, and you
Speaker 3: know you have a great record. All that, my family
Speaker 3: ran around, they put the house up, and I was
Speaker 3: bailed out and I remained at liberty, going back and
Speaker 3: forth to court for another sixteen seventeen months until certain
Speaker 3: changes were made in my case. It was a new
Speaker 3: judge and suddenly a new DA When Miss Lemucia came
Speaker 3: on the case, everything changed. I think on a second
Speaker 3: or so appearance with her, he acts for my bid
Speaker 3: to be revoked. The new judge did it, and you know,
Speaker 3: my life went completely in the toilet from that point on.
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
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Speaker 1: Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in
Speaker 1: partnership with more than forty organizations, bringing meaningful change to
Speaker 1: people and communities worldwide. And so we moved the trial
Speaker 1: so because of the fact that there was no evidence,
Speaker 1: no actual evidence. The entire case of the state relied
Speaker 1: solely on the testimony of Detective Peppy, who we find
Speaker 1: out is totally unreliable. And then, of course the contradictory
Speaker 1: and inconsistent testimonies of two perhaps incentivized, if not at
Speaker 1: least coerced witnesses, Anderson and Kenyata, and they each described
Speaker 1: the shooting and the events leading up to it. So
Speaker 1: Anderson's testimony, he said that Carlton Roman, Hollis Laylor, Jomo Kanyada,
Speaker 1: and Lloyd Witter were at Paul Ederson's house on March fifteen,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, the day before the shooting, a quote
Speaker 1: unquote bus occurred after Jomo Kanyada and Lloyd witter took
Speaker 1: a gun from Carlton Roman. Did you ever have a gun? Carlton,
Speaker 1: by the way, did you ever own a gun?
Speaker 4: Absolutely not, No, of course not.
Speaker 1: And now back to Anderson's bogus account again, he said
Speaker 1: that day after this alleged bus over a gun that
Speaker 1: you never owned, Jomo Kenyatta and Lloyd Witterer were supposed
Speaker 1: to come over to help him, Paul Anderson, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about move. But allegedly before they arrived, Carlton Roman, Hollis
Speaker 1: Laylor and these two other made up characters Bigger at
Speaker 1: Richie came by handcuffed Anderson and put him in the basement.
Speaker 1: Several hours later, he heard the doorbell and then a
Speaker 1: series of shots. He also testified that he was an architect.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're gonna lie, why not just say
Speaker 1: you're a freaking astronaut. He also testified that he was
Speaker 1: not involved with drug dealing, and when it was alleged
Speaker 1: that he Paul Anderson had been shot by the victim
Speaker 1: Lloyd winner just a few months earlier, in November nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, he denied that he had been shot or
Speaker 1: treated at a hospital for the shooting. He also refused
Speaker 1: to show the leg where it was alleged that he
Speaker 1: had been shot. So he was an architect, had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with drug dealing or any ill will toward
Speaker 1: the victim in this case.
Speaker 5: What we know now is Paul Anderson's residence was a
Speaker 5: drug house. It was used for drugs and gambling. And
Speaker 5: the underlying thing is that the law enforcement actors involved
Speaker 5: in this case had to have known the truth about
Speaker 5: Paul Anderson and what he was doing. So to let
Speaker 5: him get on the stand and say, oh, yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: an architect, I've never been shot, it was just fundamentally unfair.
Speaker 1: Now we get to Kenyata's testimony, so he said that
Speaker 1: the initial March fifteenth argument was about drugs and involves
Speaker 1: Carlton Roman, Hollis Laylor, and Lloyd Witter, not a gun
Speaker 1: as Paul Anderson said. According to Kenyatta, he and Lloyd
Speaker 1: went back to Anderson's house on March sixteenth, and when
Speaker 1: they walked into the house, the door shut quickly behind them,
Speaker 1: followed by gunshots, and he allegedly saw Hollis Laylor and
Speaker 1: Carlton Roman shooting Lloyd Witter. When he tried to run away,
Speaker 1: Carlton Roman allegedly shot him on the stairs. On direct examination,
Speaker 1: Kenyada testified that his criminal record consisted of a single
Speaker 1: conviction for reckless driving and that he was not involved
Speaker 1: in dealing drugs. He was recalled to the stand after
Speaker 1: Carlton's attorneys showed events of him pleading guilty to attempted
Speaker 1: possession of a weapon after being charged with attempted murder.
Speaker 1: So not only does he lie on the stand, but
Speaker 1: the two lying liars who lied don't match up with
Speaker 1: each other. Not surprising, and they both just directly lied
Speaker 1: about their own backgrounds and ways that were provably false
Speaker 1: and in this case were in fact proven false. And Carlton,
Speaker 1: I have to ask you before we even get to
Speaker 1: Peppy's testimony. You lived through this, right, I mean, what
Speaker 1: were you thinking at that time?
Speaker 4: Well? I was so stupid. I was just so naive.
Speaker 3: I still expected Kenyada to come in there and say, no,
Speaker 3: it's not this guy.
Speaker 4: He wasn't there.
Speaker 3: So I was sitting there listening to this guy talking
Speaker 3: about how I shot him and all this other stuff,
Speaker 3: and I was like, I'm sitting there with my mouth
Speaker 3: hanging out. I remember at one point turning around to
Speaker 3: look at my mom, and my grandmother was there. They
Speaker 3: were also sitting there with their mouths hanging out. I
Speaker 3: couldn't believe he was actually saying any of this stuff.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting there like a train hit me listening to
Speaker 3: this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you must have felt like you just
Speaker 1: want to scream out and say, wait a minute, that's
Speaker 1: not true, right.
Speaker 3: I wanted to do that, and I made several attempts
Speaker 3: on mister Greenberg. He had a hand on my knee
Speaker 3: under the table and he kept squeezing my knee. Just relaxed,
Speaker 3: don't worry, take it easy, don't make a scene.
Speaker 4: In the court.
Speaker 3: It's not like I was going to turn the table
Speaker 3: over or anything. But I wanted to really like stand
Speaker 3: up and scream at this do like you're lying. You
Speaker 3: understand what I'm saying. And I've always regretted that I
Speaker 3: listened to my attorney.
Speaker 1: From what I read in the research, there was very
Speaker 1: little defense to speak of. James, Can you talk about
Speaker 1: what did this guy do wrong? And what did he
Speaker 1: leave out and how did he manage to blow what
Speaker 1: should have been an easy win.
Speaker 5: We only have one podcast, so I can't really go
Speaker 5: through everything he did wrong. Carlton's attorney had in alibi
Speaker 5: that Carlton provided to him. He had alibi witnesses that
Speaker 5: supported that Carlton was nowhere near Paul Anderson's house on
Speaker 5: the day of the shootings. Carlton testified in his own defense.
Speaker 5: His testimony was coherent with his alibi witnesses. Mister Greenberg,
Speaker 5: the trial attorney, called some of them, but then he
Speaker 5: permitted so much of this false insinuation by the prosecution
Speaker 5: that Carlton was a drug dealer. One example of this
Speaker 5: is that Carlton had a car that his mother had
Speaker 5: put the down payment on, and all mister Greenberg would
Speaker 5: have needed to do is bring in the financing agreement
Speaker 5: for that car, which was a fairly easy thing to
Speaker 5: do to show that this wasn't the product of drug money.
Speaker 5: It was a car that was financed by his mother.
Speaker 5: And instead, because he didn't do that, the prosecutor was
Speaker 5: able to make it seem as if, look, this is
Speaker 5: a drug dealer who's buying new cars and living high
Speaker 5: on drug money. But mister Greenberg just didn't rise to
Speaker 5: the occasion in response to these bogus allegations by the prosecution.
Speaker 5: There were so many opportunities where he just showed that
Speaker 5: he had not been engaged in the case. And maybe
Speaker 5: that's because in the time between the shootings and the trial,
Speaker 5: it didn't seem like Paul Anderson was actually going to
Speaker 5: come back from Jamaica to testify. He had fled to
Speaker 5: Jamaica after the grand jury, and from what I gather
Speaker 5: from the transcripts, I think think Greenberg thought this was
Speaker 5: going to be dismissed. But you don't not prepare based
Speaker 5: on that. You've still got a client on trial for murder.
Speaker 5: You've got to be ready to defend them.
Speaker 1: And so with the fact that these lies were allowed
Speaker 1: to be foisted on the jury and that your own
Speaker 1: team didn't really do much of anything to help you,
Speaker 1: the results were predictable and ultimately you were convicted of
Speaker 1: second degree murder as well as other counts and sentenced
Speaker 1: to forty three and a half years in prison. Can
Speaker 1: you describe what you were feeling in that moment.
Speaker 3: They said guilty and I just fell into a black
Speaker 3: hole like I couldn't think. I don't remember was in
Speaker 3: the court. I don't remember even if I looked around
Speaker 3: at anybody. Everything that's closed in at me at once,
Speaker 3: and like I was just dragged into a black hole.
Speaker 4: I couldn't think. I was a complete wreck.
Speaker 3: It was like the worst thing in the world that
Speaker 3: could happen to anybody. The thing that never left me
Speaker 3: was like, I did not do this, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to have to prove that to everybody. So I never
Speaker 3: lost any of that hope. Over all the years, I
Speaker 3: always knew deep down that some way, somehow I'm getting
Speaker 3: out of this. You're going to know I did not
Speaker 3: do this. I'm an only child from my mother and
Speaker 3: I have one daughter now, and those are the most
Speaker 3: two important people for me in the world. And I
Speaker 3: knew if I broke what it would do to my
Speaker 3: mom it would destroy her completely. I really felt that
Speaker 3: that hanger that this had happened to me, and that
Speaker 3: I'm dragging my mother right along with me through all
Speaker 3: of this stuff.
Speaker 4: So I could not stop, and I never did.
Speaker 1: No, you did not. And facing denial after denial from
Speaker 1: the courts and vicious opposition from Richard Brown's DA office,
Speaker 1: in Queen's Justice did not look like it must have
Speaker 1: looked like a very distant possibility, but you just didn't quit. So, James,
Speaker 1: when did you get involved in how does the situation
Speaker 1: finally get to where we are now? And how did
Speaker 1: the Queen's District Attorney's race play a role in all
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 5: In twenty fifteen, the Queen's Day's Office certifies Carlton's file
Speaker 5: as completely missing. The prosecution file for his case is gone.
Speaker 5: And this is although since his conviction in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 5: Carlton had been litigating his conviction. I come in in
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen as co counsel for another attorney who had
Speaker 5: been working on Carlton's case, and we put in a
Speaker 5: motion based on some material that we felt was newly
Speaker 5: discovered from the Hollas Lalor file, and we were unsuccessful
Speaker 5: in that motion. It was denied in twenty nineteen. A
Speaker 5: lot of this is because they could kind of argue
Speaker 5: whatever they wanted in the absence of a prosecution file.
Speaker 5: There's no reference point for saying this is what occurred
Speaker 5: or this is what was said, because all of the
Speaker 5: material was purportedly lost. The attorney that I had been
Speaker 5: working with left the case and Carlton asked me if
Speaker 5: I would stay on as lead counselor, and I said sure,
Speaker 5: And we sent an investigator to Jamaica to locate Paul
Speaker 5: Anderson because we said, look, there's not a lot of
Speaker 5: moving parts in this case. And in twenty nineteen we
Speaker 5: went down and spoke with Paul Anderson and he recanted
Speaker 5: in an affidavit and on tape. And as you alluded
Speaker 5: to Jason, there was a race for Queen's DA. Richard
Speaker 5: Brown had been there for years. His office had steadfastly
Speaker 5: opposed any attempt by Carlton to try and get a
Speaker 5: review of this evidence.
Speaker 2: Carlton had never had a hearing on any of his motions.
Speaker 5: And we brought the recantation of Paul Anderson to the
Speaker 5: new district attorney who had been elected, Melinda Katz her
Speaker 5: newly formed Conviction Integrity Unit, and they agreed to a
Speaker 5: reinvestigation of this case, and ultimately what they found and
Speaker 5: what we put forward made them agree that Carlton should
Speaker 5: no longer in prison, that this conviction should be vacated.
Speaker 1: So what were the major points that ultimately tipped the
Speaker 1: scales of justice back to where they should have been
Speaker 1: in the first place.
Speaker 5: So, for one, it's Paul Anderson unsurprisingly comes forward and
Speaker 5: acknowledges that his story was bs and he knew that
Speaker 5: the cops were looking at his house, which belonged to
Speaker 5: his sister, and that they knew that there was a
Speaker 5: legal activity going on there, that there was a drug
Speaker 5: operation running out of there which was headed up by
Speaker 5: Jomo Kenyata. And we also learned that Jomo Kenyatta was
Speaker 5: operating under we don't know how many different aliases, but
Speaker 5: other than the crimes that were revealed at trial, he
Speaker 5: was wanted for at least one murder that's still a
Speaker 5: cold case in Queen's He was a heavy drug dealer,
Speaker 5: His brother was a drug dealer. Essentially, there was motive
Speaker 5: for many other people other than Carlton, who had no
Speaker 5: criminal record, to have committed this crime.
Speaker 1: Including even the state's main witness, Paul Anderson, who, according
Speaker 1: to new eyewitnesses, had survived being shot by the victim
Speaker 1: in this case, Lloyd Witter. In November of nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 5: A conviction integrity unit did a number of interviews with
Speaker 5: Carlton and his alibi witnesses, and those essentially corroborated the
Speaker 5: alibi that was or should have been presented at trial,
Speaker 5: and interviews with Andrea Witter and others demonstrate that Detective
Speaker 5: Pepe was unreliable to say the least. Detective Pepe fabricated
Speaker 5: a visa to bring Paul Anderson back from Jamaica to
Speaker 5: testify at Carlton's trial. The fact that he's willing to
Speaker 5: break federal law fabricate an official document to push forward
Speaker 5: this case. Where does that end? Does that end with
Speaker 5: fabricating witness statements? You have to take a hard look
Speaker 5: at that this is the guy that pushes forth the
Speaker 5: evidence in this case. Ultimately, what they come down to
Speaker 5: is that the original descriptions from Paul Anderson that did
Speaker 5: not match Carlton Roman are nowhere in the transcript, and
Speaker 5: that new evidence completely and totally undermines the two witnesses,
Speaker 5: Paul Anderson and Jomo Kenyatta, whose testimony is used to
Speaker 5: convict him.
Speaker 1: So now you're still in at this point, Carlton. You've
Speaker 1: been through everything at this point, and you've been through
Speaker 1: every heartbreak and disappointment, But are you now feeling like
Speaker 1: there really is finally light at the end of this
Speaker 1: horrible tunnel.
Speaker 3: Yes, I realized then that this was the closest I've
Speaker 3: come to getting the truth revealed and my freedom back.
Speaker 3: I've been to the Appellate Division, I've tried to, been
Speaker 3: to the Court of Appeals, as I did Federal Aid.
Speaker 3: I've done everything, and everywhere that I went it was
Speaker 3: just a consistent slam in the face, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny. It,
Speaker 3: like James correctly said, despite all the craziness you're seeing
Speaker 3: in my case, no judge that actually looked at it
Speaker 3: and seeing fit to at least grant me a hearing.
Speaker 3: So nobody wanted to hear anything at all from me.
Speaker 3: I just kept going back like a boxer getting punched
Speaker 3: in the face every time, and just kept going back.
Speaker 3: But when this was happening now, it kind of felt different.
Speaker 3: It felt different, mainly because at the DA's office there
Speaker 3: were different people there and it seemed like they were serious.
Speaker 3: There was actually new people here who might be receptive
Speaker 3: to correct in what had happened to me.
Speaker 1: So finally, August ninth, twenty twenty one, the Queen's District
Speaker 1: Attorney and you James, filed the joint motion asking the
Speaker 1: Court to vacate Carlton Romans convictions. In that affirmation, the
Speaker 1: District Attorney's office said, quote, it had concluded that three
Speaker 1: witnesses and the facts undermining the credibility of the key
Speaker 1: trial witnesses Anderson and Kenyata could not have been discovered
Speaker 1: in the context of your trial, Carlton, with the exercise
Speaker 1: of due diligence, and are of such character that they
Speaker 1: would have probably led to a verdict more favorable to
Speaker 1: the defendant. So on August ninth, twenty twenty one, Justice
Speaker 1: Michelle Johnson of Queen's County Supreme Court granted the motion
Speaker 1: and dismissed the charges against you and Dia. Melinda Katz said,
Speaker 1: this is a quote. We are not so arrogant to
Speaker 1: think that the system doesn't make mistakes. Powerful words. She
Speaker 1: went on to say, when we find miscaracters of justice,
Speaker 1: we do everything in our power to correct them quickly.
Speaker 1: And into the daily news, it's quoted you, carl that
Speaker 1: I was saying right outside the courtroom. I'm not technically
Speaker 1: a shy person. I've nothing prepared to say to you all,
Speaker 1: but let me say one thing. The justice system everybody
Speaker 1: knows is broken. I've read a thousand reports that say that,
Speaker 1: but words alone aren't going to get that fixed. You
Speaker 1: all have a part to play in this also. But
Speaker 1: I'm here now. But there's a lot of people in
Speaker 1: there who need your attention. Now. There's people in there
Speaker 1: who have been fighting for justice longer than I have end. Quote,
Speaker 1: what a fucking thing. By the way, here, you are
Speaker 1: just getting out of this thirty two year ordeal that's
Speaker 1: something out of a Greek tragedy or something, and the
Speaker 1: first thing you're doing is thinking about other people. I mean,
Speaker 1: who are you, dude? Who are you?
Speaker 3: I've heard that so much different times. A lot of
Speaker 3: it is a blurnout too. I have to watch the
Speaker 3: thing to digest fully the entire moment. It was just
Speaker 3: so overwhelming for me. I had a conversation with somebody
Speaker 3: that was locked in sing saying that I knew for
Speaker 3: a long time, you know, made a secure as phone
Speaker 3: call and I was talking to him and he said, Man,
Speaker 3: I just want to to talk to you about one thing,
Speaker 3: and it's what you said when you came out of
Speaker 3: the court. He said, there's dozens of people here who
Speaker 3: don't know you, and they're just so happy you said that.
Speaker 3: They're praising you and all this other stuff. I use
Speaker 3: this reference. It's like if you're in the desert and
Speaker 3: you're dying of thirst and there's while animals circling you,
Speaker 3: and you're there with a bunch of people and some
Speaker 3: are miraculously you stumble and make it out. The first
Speaker 3: thing and a decent human being should do is say, wait,
Speaker 3: there's more people in there that needs help. So that's
Speaker 3: the point of view where I was coming from. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's a day for justice and all that,
Speaker 3: but we can't forget all the people in there who
Speaker 3: going to the very same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just speaks a lot to your character. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's a lot of people listening now. You're inspiring
Speaker 1: them to want to take action to make a difference,
Speaker 1: and you're inspiring me to want to do more. And
Speaker 1: what would you suggest as a course of action.
Speaker 3: The first thing that come to mind for me is
Speaker 3: when people wind up in my situation and they finally
Speaker 3: get exonerated, something needs to be done to reintegrate them
Speaker 3: into a society. For instance, I've lost all my paperwork.
Speaker 3: I have no idea where my Social Security card is, passport,
Speaker 3: my immigration papers, my driver's license. All that stuff has gone.
Speaker 3: I have to go to hell just to get a
Speaker 3: learners permit on the way to get a driver's license.
Speaker 3: I went to the DMV and I had nothing to
Speaker 3: show them that would make them allow me to take
Speaker 3: the written tests to start the old process over. The
Speaker 3: thing that helped me most get that accomplished was the
Speaker 3: front page of the Daily News with my picture on
Speaker 3: the cover saying I was exonerated after thirty two years.
Speaker 3: I know right now off the top of my head
Speaker 3: three other exonerated people who's out here and we're in
Speaker 3: regular touch, and all of us had the same problem.
Speaker 3: You can't go to a bank and establish an account
Speaker 3: because when you go there, dear first thing, you're asking
Speaker 3: you for his ID. I remember pulling out out the
Speaker 3: last jlight D they gave me and it was told like, well,
Speaker 3: that's absolutely useless. I went to try to get my
Speaker 3: Social Security card. Rea shirt, well you need a driver's
Speaker 3: license and you need a pass, but I don't have
Speaker 3: any of those things. And when I go to another office,
Speaker 3: they asks me for my Social Security card. So it's
Speaker 3: like this catch twenty two thing happening, and something needs
Speaker 3: to be done about.
Speaker 1: That now we have. But I always referred to as
Speaker 1: my favorite part of the show, and everybody who's listening
Speaker 1: knows what I'm talking about because you hear me say
Speaker 1: it every week. But this is the part of the
Speaker 1: show called closing arguments, and it works like this. First
Speaker 1: of all, I thank each of you again, James Henning
Speaker 1: for the great work you've done for mister Roman and
Speaker 1: on behalf of other clients. Thank you for that, and
Speaker 1: thank you for taking your time to be on the
Speaker 1: show with us today.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having us Jason, what you're doing means a lot.
Speaker 1: And of course same for you, Carlton again, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for just being yourself and inspiring everybody to
Speaker 1: march forward and try to pick change. And now the
Speaker 1: closing arguments works like this. I turned my microphone off,
Speaker 1: I leave yours on. James, You're going to go first,
Speaker 1: if that's okay, and save the best for last. With
Speaker 1: all due respect to you, and all you have to
Speaker 1: do now is say whatever you want, anything that we
Speaker 1: may have left out or anything that's left unsaid. This
Speaker 1: is closing arguments. James Henning, you go drop the mic,
Speaker 1: pass it off to Carlton, and that's how we'll close
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 5: I think basically what I would say is that Carlton's case,
Speaker 5: the cliche never give up gets thrown around a lot.
Speaker 5: There was not a tremendous amount of hope after his
Speaker 5: entire file was lost, but he always kept fighting, and
Speaker 5: I think that's the spirit that this story should inspire
Speaker 5: in people. The people who actually did this were allowed
Speaker 5: to go free and potentially take other lives, but Carlton
Speaker 5: absolutely refused to let his life be taken, and I
Speaker 5: think that should be a message to everybody in whatever
Speaker 5: situation they're in. This guy was in the darkest of
Speaker 5: places and he just never gave up. And it's a
Speaker 5: beautiful thing to see because he's a truly remarkable person.
Speaker 2: And I'm very proud.
Speaker 5: To have played whatever role I did in helping bring
Speaker 5: him back to society because he's an important guide and
Speaker 5: you know, he's great.
Speaker 2: So that's what I'll say, and I'll pass on to him.
Speaker 3: Hold public officials accountable, hold the district attorney and the
Speaker 3: idea is accountable, and even more important, all the judges accountable.
Speaker 3: People tend to forget how much power a judge as
Speaker 3: and how much thing a judge can look away from
Speaker 3: from my point of view, if my case atlanted in
Speaker 3: front of a fear judge, even say twenty five years ago,
Speaker 3: this should have been over. Then judges can be allowed
Speaker 3: to just ignore cries of Pinnis and people because they
Speaker 3: just don't feel like reviewing it or granting a hearing
Speaker 3: or looking further into what happened or whatever. So there
Speaker 3: needs to be a spotlight on what judges are doing,
Speaker 3: how they're coming to the conclusions that they're coming to,
Speaker 3: and when they're shirking your duties. Man, they got to
Speaker 3: get out of there. And it's the same thing with
Speaker 3: the district attorney's offices. And again, none of that stuff
Speaker 3: is secret stuff. Start calling pesterin, hammering whoever it is
Speaker 3: that's in the points of authority that's responsible for what's
Speaker 3: going on in these courtrooms. When they can't live up
Speaker 3: to the holtes they take, get them out of there,
Speaker 3: hold public officials accountable, make them do better.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. Please support your
Speaker 1: local innocence organizations and go to the links in our
Speaker 1: bio to see how you can help. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team, Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wadis. The music on the show, as always,
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number one