Speaker 1: On May thirty first, nineteen ninety three, Dennis Horton went
Speaker 1: to his brother Lee's home for a Memorial Day weekend cookout.
Speaker 1: Later in the day, they visited their father in North Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: as well as their childhood friend Robert Leif. Unbeknownst to
Speaker 1: the Hortons, Robert Leaf had committed an armed robbery earlier
Speaker 1: that day in which two women were injured and one
Speaker 1: man was fatally shot. The Hortons pulled up to their
Speaker 1: friend Robert Leaf on the street and made plans to
Speaker 1: watch a basketball game back at Lee's. Robert asked the
Speaker 1: brothers to meet him one block up, where he got
Speaker 1: into their car with a gun. Police had been following
Speaker 1: Robert and immediately pulled them over, where all three men
Speaker 1: were arrested. The two injured women, who initially had said
Speaker 1: that there were only two arm robbers, gave a shaky
Speaker 1: idea of all three men, sending them to trial together.
Speaker 1: Robert Leif's attorney used confusion amongst the witnesses over the
Speaker 1: identities of the three men to change the narrative from
Speaker 1: Robert Leaf as the shooter to Dennis delivering a lighter
Speaker 1: sentence to the actual culprit while the Hortons were sentenced
Speaker 1: to life without parole. Years later, a statement by Robert
Speaker 1: Leaf admitting his role and excluding the Horton brothers was unearthed,
Speaker 1: along with the fact that police had identified Robert Leaf
Speaker 1: as the shooter from the very start. However, with this
Speaker 1: new evidence being ruled inadmissible on purely procedural grounds, it
Speaker 1: took the tireless advocacy of Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman
Speaker 1: to win a commutation and release for the brothers after
Speaker 1: nearly three long decades in prison. This is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful conviction. My best advice to you
Speaker 1: right now is fasten your seatbelt because this is going
Speaker 1: to be a crazy ride that you're about to go on.
Speaker 1: But before I introduced the two brothers who were wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted of the same crime together and ended up serving
Speaker 1: almost twenty seven years together in the same cell for
Speaker 1: the crime that didn't commit, I just want to say
Speaker 1: that this is Philadelphia in the nineties. You've heard stories
Speaker 1: on here before about Philadelphia in the nineties, and it
Speaker 1: was the time and place where a black man had
Speaker 1: a better chance of getting justice in Philadelphia, Mississippi than
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and this is another example of that.
Speaker 1: So without further ado, let me introduce to you. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited to have these guys on the show today
Speaker 1: because there's such inspiring people. Lee and Dennis Horton, the
Speaker 1: brothers Horton. Welcome to Ronful Conviction.
Speaker 2: All right, good afternoon. How's everybody doing out there. I'm
Speaker 2: glad to be here. Thank you for inviting us on.
Speaker 1: So let's get right into it. First of all, I
Speaker 1: want to say to both of you guys that while
Speaker 1: I am obviously delighted to have you on the show,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that you're here because of what you had
Speaker 1: to go through and it should have never happened. So
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. I'm talking about how
Speaker 1: was childhood for you guys growing up together while you
Speaker 1: moved to Philly in seventy seven, right, but give us
Speaker 1: a quick look at what your childhood was like.
Speaker 3: So when we was young, growing up, we lived uneventful
Speaker 3: but a wonderful life. You know, my mom and my
Speaker 3: father was married in the early sixties.
Speaker 2: It four of us, four kids. We grew up in
Speaker 2: some of the roughest places in the city, but our family.
Speaker 2: My mom, my grandmother, my father always instilled in us
Speaker 2: that you had to work for what you wanted their life,
Speaker 2: and so we started working at an early age my
Speaker 2: mom and father.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately they split up in nineteen seventy two. My mom,
Speaker 3: she was trying to take care of four kids on
Speaker 3: our own. We wind up moving to the Projects, which
Speaker 3: was at the time East Falls Projects. I was around
Speaker 3: twelve years old, my brother was seven at the time.
Speaker 3: So the projects was a rough project.
Speaker 2: You know, you had to prove the people up there
Speaker 2: that you was willing to fight in order for you
Speaker 2: to be able to stay, or they chased you out
Speaker 2: the projects. That's how it was.
Speaker 3: And so I had got into a fight with an
Speaker 3: individual and I wanted to fight.
Speaker 2: That was a blessing to some degree, but it was
Speaker 2: also a curse because now I was at ies with
Speaker 2: a lot of guys my age twelve or thirteen year
Speaker 2: olds in the projects, and one day I wound up
Speaker 2: on the wrong side of the projects when we was
Speaker 2: approached by a group of individuals and it was maybe
Speaker 2: about twenty something thirty guys, and they approached us and
Speaker 2: they wanted me to fight a guy. And you know,
Speaker 2: there was a bunch of guys that was about to
Speaker 2: jump us.
Speaker 3: And then these other guys came out of nowhere and
Speaker 3: came to our rescue. And it was only a few
Speaker 3: of them, but they were like the neighborhood tough guys
Speaker 3: to some degree. One of these guys who would become
Speaker 3: a really good friend of mine was an individual named
Speaker 3: Rob Relief. And so I fell in with these guys
Speaker 3: and we became really good friends. He came to my house,
Speaker 3: stayed at my house, slept in my house, ate at
Speaker 3: my house. My mom to somebody, we became his mom.
Speaker 3: And then in nineteen eight three, we moved out of
Speaker 3: the projects.
Speaker 2: By that time we kind of veered off a little bit,
Speaker 2: although I would go see my friends who were still
Speaker 2: living in the projects and some living in North Philadelphia
Speaker 2: from town to town.
Speaker 1: And so now we move up towards the time of
Speaker 1: the actual crime, and I'm talking about Memorial Day weekend,
Speaker 1: May thirty first, nineteen ninety three. So there was an
Speaker 1: arm robbery at Toledo's Bar. Now, initial descriptions say it
Speaker 1: was two men, but later it was changed to three,
Speaker 1: one man with a twenty two caliber semi automatic rifle
Speaker 1: and another with a black pistol robbed the bar and
Speaker 1: its patrons. Samuel Alimo, six foot three and over two
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, wrestled with the gunman for the gun, but
Speaker 1: was overpowered and was shot and killed. Lous Archella and
Speaker 1: Louis Martinez were injured, but both were covered, and a
Speaker 1: witness described chasing after the fleeing assailants who saw them
Speaker 1: in a small blue car and supplied police with a
Speaker 1: partial license plate number. And again, remember this is Philadelphia
Speaker 1: in the nineties. So we'll get to the myriad problems
Speaker 1: with the state story, but first let's hear your story.
Speaker 1: So it's Memorial Day, weekend, May thirty first, nineteen ninety three. Lee,
Speaker 1: you had four kids, right, including a two week old baby,
Speaker 1: and at the time, Dennis, you were just recently engaged
Speaker 1: to be married, and had also recently been badly injured
Speaker 1: at work and we're recovering, right, So you were in
Speaker 1: absolutely no condition to be engaging in hand to hand combat,
Speaker 1: wrestling right with a very large man, right strong man.
Speaker 1: So can you take us through that day, the day
Speaker 1: that this armed robbery and murder, this whole tragedy happened.
Speaker 2: So Lee and his wife invited me and my fiancee
Speaker 2: at the time over to his house. So of course
Speaker 2: I went to Lee's house, had a cookout out with
Speaker 2: him and his wife and his kids, and later on
Speaker 2: that evening, we decided we was going to take a ride.
Speaker 2: You know, we've been in the house all day. Stopped
Speaker 2: by my father's house see him, and then Lee was
Speaker 2: going to stop by just see a few guys that
Speaker 2: he knew, and we headed for North Philadelphia, where my
Speaker 2: father lived at the time, and we swung by his house,
Speaker 2: but his light was out so he was sleep So
Speaker 2: Lee said, okay, let's stop around Leaf's house. So, you know,
Speaker 2: we drove around Leaf's house. He was standing out on
Speaker 2: the corner with some other guys and Lee beat the
Speaker 2: horn and Leif came over to the car, letting him
Speaker 2: and Lee talk for a little bit. So rober Leif
Speaker 2: was supposed to come back to Lee's house. We was
Speaker 2: going to watch the basketball game. So Leif said, pull
Speaker 2: up a block and I'll be there. And I got
Speaker 2: to just take care of something real quick, and we
Speaker 2: pulled up to the block and Leif came maybe about
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen minutes later, got in the car and
Speaker 2: then we pulled off, and about a couple of blocks later,
Speaker 2: we saw sirens and we pulled over and the police
Speaker 2: jumped out of their vans and cars were gunn drawn
Speaker 2: and told us to get out of the car. And
Speaker 2: we got out of the car and they handcuffed us
Speaker 2: and they put us into the paddy wagon and they
Speaker 2: took us to the hospital when identification take place, and
Speaker 2: all I remember is that the van doors opened up,
Speaker 2: and next thing you know, I've seen it. I think
Speaker 2: two ladies point to rob Belief and say, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the guy right there. And then they said, well, what
Speaker 2: about these other guys and they said, yeah, them too.
Speaker 2: They were with them too, And then they shut the
Speaker 2: doors back and then that was it. And next thing
Speaker 2: you know, we were down the roundhouse where they charge
Speaker 2: you for a homicide.
Speaker 1: So, okay, right away we see problems emerge with what
Speaker 1: the witnesses are describing. Right the alleged number of individuals
Speaker 1: involved in the robbery went from went up fifty percent,
Speaker 1: right from two to three. And when you're there at
Speaker 1: the hospital in the police paddy wagon right outside the
Speaker 1: hospital with the witnesses saying yeah them too. Also one
Speaker 1: of the witnesses described a blue car and gave a
Speaker 1: partial plate number. So did that match your own vehicles?
Speaker 2: The only witness who claimed to see the car said
Speaker 2: it was a blue small car. It was as supposed
Speaker 2: to been a Chevy Chavette. He said the name of
Speaker 2: the car in his statement. Now Lee's car is a
Speaker 2: Priest Classic, a four door large car, two tones, two
Speaker 2: different colors.
Speaker 3: But this witness, for some reason, we could never find
Speaker 3: him and never bring him the trial. The person the
Speaker 3: police put down giving out this partial plate number. When
Speaker 3: we got the witness on the stand, she said, right
Speaker 3: then there, I.
Speaker 2: Never gave a police anything.
Speaker 3: I never saw a car, so how could I have
Speaker 3: ever given him the name is on this paper. Though
Speaker 3: they said you gave it to him, She said, it's impossible.
Speaker 3: I didn't see a car. I didn't give him anything.
Speaker 3: And the thing about the officers who did this first thing,
Speaker 3: you got to give you a context to.
Speaker 2: Who these officers are. The first officer was somebody who
Speaker 2: had strangled a guy to the early on, and then later,
Speaker 2: right after we was arrested, he shot a guy unarmed
Speaker 2: in a car. The second officer, she was involved in
Speaker 2: internal fears of investigation about a large quantity of drugs
Speaker 2: being found in the police station and them suspecting it
Speaker 2: or connect it to her. As you start appeeling the
Speaker 2: layers away, you start seeing that it's more to this
Speaker 2: than just the police picking up some guys and they
Speaker 2: were involved.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask, do you think that they
Speaker 1: knew from the beginning that you guys had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this.
Speaker 2: That's a really good question, and our heart of hearts,
Speaker 2: we believe in the beginning maybe they wasn't sure, but
Speaker 2: as things begin to unfold, they had to be clear
Speaker 2: that we wasn't involved, just didn't care. And the reason
Speaker 2: why we know is because the prosecuted came to us
Speaker 2: with the deal. It was like five to ten years,
Speaker 2: and we were like, we're innocent, We're not taking any deal.
Speaker 2: Why should we take any deal to go to jail
Speaker 2: when we didn't do anything? And now it was sort
Speaker 2: of like, okay, you won't take the deal, all right, Well,
Speaker 2: the chip's gonna forward.
Speaker 1: They made, right, And it's very uncommon that in the
Speaker 1: crime as serious as this one armed robbery where someone
Speaker 1: was killed, right, that they're going to offer someone two
Speaker 1: guys in this case five years, right, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be a legal scholar to figure this
Speaker 1: one out. So now we get to the trial and
Speaker 1: all three of you, Lee, Dennis, and Robert Leaf are
Speaker 1: tried together, and they have three witnesses. Now I'm going
Speaker 1: to put witnesses in quotation marks here. Three of them
Speaker 1: came to trial, and they eventually identified Dennis as the shooter.
Speaker 1: But did they have any physical evidence at all, any fingerprints,
Speaker 1: any security footage.
Speaker 2: There were no security footage.
Speaker 3: What they had was they actually had the gun they
Speaker 3: said with the murdered weapon. They never actually could trace
Speaker 3: it to any of the bullets they got out of
Speaker 3: the body.
Speaker 2: They didn't match. But this is the gun that Leif
Speaker 2: had on him. He left the gun in the car.
Speaker 2: The cops retrieved it and when they checked it, it had fingerprints.
Speaker 2: But we've been always trying to get these fingerprints checked
Speaker 2: because they could never trace them to any of us.
Speaker 2: If they took all of our fingerprints, they didn't fit
Speaker 2: any of us.
Speaker 3: Now, the way that my brother got to become the
Speaker 3: shooter is a clear case of mistaken identification. Initially in
Speaker 3: the case, they all identified Robert Leaf at the shooter,
Speaker 3: and this where the whole case turns. If this don't
Speaker 3: ever happen, we probably would have walked. The one witness
Speaker 3: would identify different person every hearing. When she identified Robert Leave,
Speaker 3: Robert Leaf's attorney, he would read the know some testimony
Speaker 3: of her identifying my brother, until it got to the
Speaker 3: point where when the judge asked her, well, who are
Speaker 3: you saying did this? She said, I'm going to say
Speaker 3: it's the one right there, and she was identifying me,
Speaker 3: and we had already told the court that they was
Speaker 3: identified as base where we were sitting at, so we
Speaker 3: switched seats. So when we switched seats, she was identified
Speaker 3: based on who the witness before her told her to identify,
Speaker 3: and then she thought that the person was sitting in
Speaker 3: that seat, but it wound up being me Lee Horton.
Speaker 3: When she heard my name, she said, hold it, what's
Speaker 3: the name? And they JEG said why do you.
Speaker 2: Want to know the name? Because, uh, Dennis did it.
Speaker 2: It's Dennis. He said Dennis, and then she said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I heard him. They was calling Dennis. And then after
Speaker 2: that we were in the case and they knew that
Speaker 2: this woman just had made this up out of the sky,
Speaker 2: just right then and there, everybody refused to pull back,
Speaker 2: and they could have corrected that right there, and they
Speaker 2: had said, well, hold up, Yonner, she's wrong. Mister Leaf
Speaker 2: was wearing a red jacket. We know that for sure.
Speaker 2: That's a fact. They identified him as a shooter. That's
Speaker 2: a fact. They didn't say any of that.
Speaker 3: They just let the witnesses go on and on and
Speaker 3: on with these wrong identifications. And this woman had identified
Speaker 3: every last one of us as a shooter at one
Speaker 3: given time.
Speaker 4: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
Speaker 4: and by Accenture, a global professional services company with leading
Speaker 4: capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the
Speaker 4: criminal justice system is a key pillar of the AIG
Speaker 4: pro Bono Program, which provides free legal services and other
Speaker 4: support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need
Speaker 4: as part of censures commitment to racial and civil justice.
Speaker 4: Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in
Speaker 4: partnership with more than forty organizations bringing meaningful change to
Speaker 4: people and communities worldwide.
Speaker 2: Three weeks prior to our arrest, I had injured my
Speaker 2: leg on my job in such a fashion that I
Speaker 2: needed to acl repair. The holiday was on a Monday,
Speaker 2: I was supposed to go talk about the day that
Speaker 2: week I was going to have the surgery done. I
Speaker 2: just came off the crutches, so when we were arrested,
Speaker 2: it was impossible for me to be able to wrestle
Speaker 2: with this guy. I think they said he was like
Speaker 2: sixty four sixty three something like that. I was supposed
Speaker 2: to have overpowered him, wrestled all the way to the
Speaker 2: ground with this guy, overpowered the gun out of his hand,
Speaker 2: and then after I was supposed to have shot him,
Speaker 2: I was supposed to have ran away as fast as
Speaker 2: I could. There was no way I could run on
Speaker 2: that leg at all. And my medical records and all
Speaker 2: that would have shown that would have proved that, and
Speaker 2: this would have disqualified me from even remotely possibly being
Speaker 2: the shooter. And the thing is they knew this, but
Speaker 2: nobody cared.
Speaker 1: So you both had different lawyers, So two people who
Speaker 1: were supposed to be working on your behalf, what were
Speaker 1: they doing with all of this information?
Speaker 3: At trial, we made the mistake of a friend of
Speaker 3: my mom's told her that their son could be a
Speaker 3: good lawyer for us, and we accepted that, but he
Speaker 3: wasn't a criminal defense attorney. He had not tried one
Speaker 3: criminal case, and he wound up being a person putting
Speaker 3: our defense together. My lawyer had been retired and he
Speaker 3: was kind of older and he was a little out
Speaker 3: of step. Were just not prepared for a capital case. Now,
Speaker 3: the difference is Robert Leef was prepared. He knew the
Speaker 3: system and he knew how to work the system. We
Speaker 3: were naive.
Speaker 2: We thought that we were innocent and it was going
Speaker 2: to be shown and it never was.
Speaker 1: Literally, if you put this in the movie, you say, well,
Speaker 1: one guy's represented by a friend of a friend who
Speaker 1: never tried a criminal case before this capital murder we're
Speaker 1: talking about, and the other guys tried by a guy
Speaker 1: that they literally pulled out a retirement and wheeled him
Speaker 1: into the courtroom. You guys didn't even know that you're doomed.
Speaker 1: You're thinking, hey, we go in tell the truth. You
Speaker 1: were the only guys in the courtroom telling the truth.
Speaker 1: That's the only problem, right, and that doesn't work.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing that you know, even now gets
Speaker 2: to me a little bit because I spent twenty seven
Speaker 2: years in prison when this be nipping of it early on,
Speaker 2: and I didn't have to never go to prison after
Speaker 2: twenty seven years. You know, sometimes in your mind you think, well,
Speaker 2: you should have took there, But what would we have said.
Speaker 2: We didn't commit the crime, We didn't know anything about It.
Speaker 2: Took us twenty eight years to learn enough about this
Speaker 2: case to be able to talk about it. Where though
Speaker 2: we knew some of the facts that happened, we had
Speaker 2: to find in the police file. They went to court
Speaker 2: knowing that these witnesses was identifying my brother, but they
Speaker 2: had determined that was the shooter. The prosecutors knew this,
Speaker 2: the detectives knew this. But this is the problem with
Speaker 2: the system. Nobody cared about the truth. It was about
Speaker 2: let's get the conviction at all costs.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they knew you weren't involved from the jump,
Speaker 1: But since you wouldn't plead to lesser charges that you
Speaker 1: knew and I think they knew were false, they threw
Speaker 1: you into this kangaroo court situation tied to Robert Leaf,
Speaker 1: who was the actual culprit here, and to let the
Speaker 1: chips fall where they may, that's how they put it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So then you were represented by people who had no
Speaker 1: business whatsoever really even being in this courtroom, right, I
Speaker 1: mean definitely not as lawyers in a capital murder case
Speaker 1: and you're literally on trial for your lives. So what
Speaker 1: was that like.
Speaker 2: I can tell you what it was like. Robert Leif's
Speaker 2: attorney communicated with our attorneys and they spolly had a
Speaker 2: joint defense, and right towards the time the jury was
Speaker 2: going out the deliberation, I remember my attorney looking back
Speaker 2: and saying, I don't think that his attorney was with us,
Speaker 2: And I said, you think like he was doing everything
Speaker 2: in his power to get his client the best possible
Speaker 2: verdict he could get. He used the defense to paint
Speaker 2: a picture so that we would wind up with the
Speaker 2: most out of this and his client would, if not
Speaker 2: walk free, get the least.
Speaker 1: So the jury goes out, they come back in four
Speaker 1: or five hours later. Did you guys have hope that
Speaker 1: they were going to actually see the light and that
Speaker 1: you were going to be vindicated.
Speaker 2: I mean it was just a blur of a moment.
Speaker 2: Of course, you hold out hope that the system is
Speaker 2: going to do the right thing. I mean we were
Speaker 2: raised like everybody else, watching police shows and court shows,
Speaker 2: and from what they show on TV, it always seemed
Speaker 2: like the system does the right thing, everything would turn
Speaker 2: out right, even though everything was looking wrong.
Speaker 3: We believed in the system to the point where I
Speaker 3: had put an application to the police force to being arrested.
Speaker 3: Like around the time when I got convicted, my wife
Speaker 3: received the letter saying that I was accepted to go
Speaker 3: to the next phase.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. I mean, it's like you had. This was
Speaker 1: like an alternate reality, the life that should have been right.
Speaker 1: But okay, so the jury comes back in and the
Speaker 1: verdict is guilty. I mean, can you tell us about
Speaker 1: that moment. It's I mean, it's obviously horrible for anyone
Speaker 1: who experiences it, but here it's worse because one brother
Speaker 1: had to hear the other brother being declared guilty, followed
Speaker 1: by being declared guilty himself.
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you, being oldest, I probably was the weakest.
Speaker 2: When I heard the verdict.
Speaker 3: It was like I was in a state of shock,
Speaker 3: and my legs buckled, and I remember I felt like
Speaker 3: I was going down to the floor, and I remember
Speaker 3: hearing my grandmom's voice in the back.
Speaker 2: Saying, stand up real loud, don't you fall on that ground.
Speaker 2: Stand up that part. I ain't never gonna forget when
Speaker 2: they've been to divertict. I felt like I was in
Speaker 2: the twilight zone, like this wasn't happening, Like somebody's going
Speaker 2: to come in and say, we're just kidding. This is
Speaker 2: not how it's supposed to end for us. I mean,
Speaker 2: we played by the rules. You know, we were taught
Speaker 2: to work hard for whatever we get in life, and
Speaker 2: that's what we did. We were taught to mind the
Speaker 2: people in the neighborhood, the elders, to respect people. You
Speaker 2: know that this don't happen to decent people.
Speaker 3: And it was crazy because he immediately SAIDs us to
Speaker 3: life without the possibility for rule immediately. And you know,
Speaker 3: when our family got a chance to speak on our behalf,
Speaker 3: each one of our family members got up there. They
Speaker 3: said that we didn't commit the crime, and the judge
Speaker 3: got bad at some point. I think he told my
Speaker 3: sister that if you're going to say that they didn't
Speaker 3: commit this crime, then don't need to get up y.
Speaker 2: I haven't hurt enough of that. So, I mean, we
Speaker 2: were to distraught beyond words can describe it. I became angry,
Speaker 2: angry at the system, angry at myself for allowing myself
Speaker 2: to even be in that situation. Around a guy like this.
Speaker 2: And as time went on, my grandmother came to see
Speaker 2: as my grandmother and my mother and we would just
Speaker 2: complain and complain about everything that was going on. We
Speaker 2: was talking about how dark prison was, you know, how
Speaker 2: cold it always seems to be in there. You know
Speaker 2: how these folks around here they don't care about anything.
Speaker 2: And I remember my grandmother said, you know, if it's cold,
Speaker 2: then heated up with love, and if it's dark, then
Speaker 2: lighted up with hope. And my brother and I we
Speaker 2: looked at each other and said, Grandma, how much I
Speaker 2: have lost her mind? He was looking at each other
Speaker 2: like this lady for real? Like did she realize that
Speaker 2: were in the prison for a crime we didn't commit.
Speaker 2: She's telling us to do what? So the thing is
Speaker 2: didn't make sense to us at that time. But as
Speaker 2: the years would go by and we would begin the
Speaker 2: process like reading you know, self help books, history books,
Speaker 2: psychology books, and we were beginning taking the various programs
Speaker 2: that was available towards to educate ourselves. And we would
Speaker 2: go to the law library at least five days a
Speaker 2: week and we were just being there for hours reading
Speaker 2: this law, trying to decipher this law these cases and
Speaker 2: figure out ways how to argue and plead, because at
Speaker 2: some point we had to take over our own representation
Speaker 2: because the lawyers they were signing us was to up
Speaker 2: to park. And through that process more we became educated.
Speaker 2: The anger got directed in a different direction, and that
Speaker 2: anger all of a sudden started becoming more about helping
Speaker 2: men in prison that was wrongfully convicted as well, men
Speaker 2: that got more time than they should have.
Speaker 3: The revenge was going to be to try to send
Speaker 3: as many guys home as we could that would not
Speaker 3: come back to prison.
Speaker 2: And he talks about the law library, and that law library,
Speaker 2: we had a couple of tables of men who are
Speaker 2: all home now, who've all been exonerated. All of us
Speaker 2: was at those tables in nineteen ninety five, we all
Speaker 2: sitting around a table. And as the years were about,
Speaker 2: more and more men came into the institution and they
Speaker 2: would sit at those tables, and at the end of
Speaker 2: the day it was two of us as left. At
Speaker 2: the time, nobody was going home. Years later, everybody started
Speaker 2: trickling out, so eventually we would get transferred to another prison,
Speaker 2: which was a treatment facility more so geared towards programming
Speaker 2: and things like that. And so this prison, which was
Speaker 2: at Cichester, was kind of telling maybe for men like
Speaker 2: Le and I. And one of the first things that
Speaker 2: we do is become a certified pair Support Specialists. That
Speaker 2: means we work with people who struggle with mental health issues,
Speaker 2: struggle with all kinds of issues, addiction, struggle with anger issues,
Speaker 2: people who just having a hard time adjusting the prison life.
Speaker 2: And we went to work and they started seeing how
Speaker 2: the assault on officers, rate on staff started to drop,
Speaker 2: They started seeing the rate on prison on prisoner assaults drop,
Speaker 2: write ups started to drop. Everything in the prison started
Speaker 2: getting better as result of a certified pay support Specialist program.
Speaker 2: And from there we began to branch out into other areas.
Speaker 2: The ward, the superintendent, and the deputy superintendent allowed Lee
Speaker 2: and I to be able to facilitate many a programs.
Speaker 2: You know. We facilitated programs like Thresholds, which was a
Speaker 2: six step decisional making program. We taught men how to
Speaker 2: make better decisions in their lives so that they can
Speaker 2: also get through prison much better, but not only get
Speaker 2: through prison, but go home to their families and do
Speaker 2: better in society. We facilitated a health and Wellness program,
Speaker 2: and through this program we founded the day Responsibility in
Speaker 2: that particular institution. What we did was we created a
Speaker 2: play and the play would have areas in it would
Speaker 2: talk about recidivism, the impact of crime, dysfunction, trauma. I
Speaker 2: think it took us like fifty five fifty seven people
Speaker 2: to put this play on, and it was like a
Speaker 2: food production. We put the roles out for men to
Speaker 2: sign up and they had to try out for the parts.
Speaker 2: It was so widely successful that the administration said, well, hey, listen,
Speaker 2: why you guys didn't do this bigger. So we went
Speaker 2: on to do another three more plays within that institution,
Speaker 2: and we went from fifty seven people being involved in
Speaker 2: the year after that, one hundred and something people was involved.
Speaker 2: The following year. We put workshops on right after the play,
Speaker 2: so not only did we do the play, but we
Speaker 2: also put together twenty to thirty workshops where we would
Speaker 2: talk about these various things that were plaguing our community.
Speaker 2: And then those workshops, we would invite people from the community, organizations,
Speaker 2: from the community that was involved in stopping violence, like ceasefire,
Speaker 2: and universities to come in students and professors. We would
Speaker 2: invite politicians to come in.
Speaker 1: So while you're doing this amazing work, you're also, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, simultaneously fighting to overturn your own wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: But so much of the information that you were discovering,
Speaker 1: exculpatory evidence, right tons of it was time barred, which
Speaker 1: means it was held back, you barred from being introduced
Speaker 1: because of procedural bullshit.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was a lot of things that came, like,
Speaker 3: you know, the police officer when we found out about
Speaker 3: the internal fair investigation, they said that was public.
Speaker 2: Information that we should have known about it, even though
Speaker 2: we had no idea that she was going through this,
Speaker 2: so how would we even know to look for it,
Speaker 2: So that was time barred. We had a witness individual
Speaker 2: we ran across who Robert Leif had confessed to because
Speaker 2: he was also incarcerated.
Speaker 3: When we met him, they said that wasn't usable because
Speaker 3: he's a prisoner, so of course he would help you.
Speaker 2: They use confessions against you, but you can't use one
Speaker 2: from somebody to get out of prison. But he said
Speaker 2: clearly what happened. Robert Leaf made a statement, and in
Speaker 2: his statement he identified the person he was with as
Speaker 2: somebody named Eddie and in the state he said, clearly
Speaker 2: when they said that this man died, and they believed
Speaker 2: he did it at the time because they took his
Speaker 2: jacket and they did paraffine tests on it, they did
Speaker 2: nitrate tests on his hands and all this kind of
Speaker 2: stuff like this.
Speaker 3: And he said, if the man died, it was his
Speaker 3: time to die, then if I got to do the
Speaker 3: time for it, then I'll do the time for it.
Speaker 2: That's what he said in his statement. And he said
Speaker 2: something in the.
Speaker 3: Statement referring to us that put us not even with him,
Speaker 3: so everything that we would get would be time barne.
Speaker 3: So we spent twenty years pretty much fighting to overcome
Speaker 3: procedural hurdles. When we was transferred to ci Chester, a
Speaker 3: staff member who was watching us at the time, he
Speaker 3: was a counselor, and he started talking to us in
Speaker 3: general conversation and then one day he called us in
Speaker 3: they and he asked what was we doing to get
Speaker 3: out of prison, And we told him about our fight
Speaker 3: in the courts and about our.
Speaker 2: Innocence and everything like this, and he said, you know.
Speaker 3: I believe y'all, I really believe everything you've been telling me.
Speaker 3: And he is the one that suggested to us that
Speaker 3: we filed for commutation, and at the time we told
Speaker 3: him that we were actually innocent and that wasn't the
Speaker 3: venue for commutation.
Speaker 2: And he spent months trying to convince us to file
Speaker 2: for commutation and just to give in, just to agree
Speaker 2: with him. We said okay, and he introduced us to
Speaker 2: a professor whose name is Kathleen Brown, who helped a
Speaker 2: lot of other guys with commutation applications. And she came
Speaker 2: to see us and we told her our story and
Speaker 2: she said, well, won't you follow actual innocence application. She
Speaker 2: said it would be the first one, but just write
Speaker 2: and just tell him what you told me. And that's
Speaker 2: what we did.
Speaker 3: And the first time we went before the board far
Speaker 3: as we was denied and we were distraught. And around
Speaker 3: that time my mom was sick and she passed away
Speaker 3: not too long after that, and she was so supportive.
Speaker 3: We didn't talk a lot about her, but she was
Speaker 3: the person that was fueling our fight for all those years.
Speaker 2: You know, my grandma's word just kept bringing in our
Speaker 2: ears that keep fighting. And we had developed the philosophy
Speaker 2: of freemen have freed themselves. So we went back to
Speaker 2: the courts, and then we filed for reconsideration and that
Speaker 2: was denied. And then we came back and filed for
Speaker 2: reconsideration again and they granted the reconsideration based on some
Speaker 2: other stuff. But right before that, the Lieutenant Governor John
Speaker 2: Fetterman started taking up our calls. He looked at our application,
Speaker 2: he'd seen everything in it, and he just started doing
Speaker 2: what it was the right thing to do. He started
Speaker 2: fighting for us, and the rest is history.
Speaker 5: I am a Lieutenant Governor, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and
Speaker 5: I also chair of the Board of Partons and Commutations
Speaker 5: here and I became acquainted with Dennis and Lee's case
Speaker 5: during one of their reapplicat for commutation, and when I
Speaker 5: read through it, I was blown away that these men
Speaker 5: were ever in prison, let alone struggling to be sent home.
Speaker 5: It's their background is astonishing. In Pennsylvania, the Board of
Speaker 5: Pardons requires a unanimous vote of five members. It has
Speaker 5: to be unanimous. If you don't get that threshold, that
Speaker 5: person is going to die in prison. And that, to
Speaker 5: me triggered a campaign to make sure that Lee and
Speaker 5: Dennis would be able to return to their families because
Speaker 5: this is a gross miscarriage of justice. Not only are
Speaker 5: they profoundly deserving that they have always maintained their innocence.
Speaker 5: Everyone believes that these men, including the warden and the
Speaker 5: Department of Corrections, that they have no business being in prison,
Speaker 5: and I'm so grateful that they're out on so many levels.
Speaker 5: In fact, I actually hired them to work on our campaign.
Speaker 5: They are far better a person and stronger a person
Speaker 5: than I could ever be. For what they went through
Speaker 5: to have emerged with the kind of humanity that they
Speaker 5: just radiate is nothing short of remarkable.
Speaker 1: So paint a picture for me. It's February twelfth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, just two days before Valentine's Day. Governor Wolfe
Speaker 1: signs the papers, and you're about to see your wife again.
Speaker 3: I would tell you honestly, it was extremely amazing and
Speaker 3: difficult at the same time.
Speaker 2: It was like a miracle. It brought a sense of anxiety,
Speaker 2: but also it was a great feeling of hope. Prison
Speaker 2: For me it was a darkness I was in, and
Speaker 2: when I walked out it seemed like everything was bright,
Speaker 2: everything was beautiful. I could see everything.
Speaker 1: Dennis, how about for you and for me?
Speaker 2: It was bitter sweet at the same time because my
Speaker 2: mother was no longer there. She never gave up with
Speaker 2: fighting with us and to come home, and for her
Speaker 2: not to be here, I mean, it was just so painful,
Speaker 2: but it felt good to be free. It was just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: I felt like I can breathe again. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, I'm still like bewildered because some may not
Speaker 2: even get this chance, and I want to see others
Speaker 2: that are deserving of the same opportunity to get it.
Speaker 2: We found our sense of purpose while we were in prison,
Speaker 2: and that purpose was helping others, helping others to know
Speaker 2: that prison, you may be here, but this is not
Speaker 2: who you are, and this is not who you have
Speaker 2: to be. And we did that by leading, by showing
Speaker 2: people we cared about them, and through that care and
Speaker 2: through that love, we begin to inspire men to be
Speaker 2: more hopeful about and more optimistic about their future.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really just an amazing, amazing story perseverance
Speaker 1: and triumph over struggling tragedy. And you know the fact
Speaker 1: that you guys, with the inspiration and the support of
Speaker 1: your families and other people, we're able to take this
Speaker 1: unimaginable burden and rise above it and turn it into
Speaker 1: something that enabled you to transform the lives of so
Speaker 1: many other people, and that you're still doing it today.
Speaker 1: It's nothing short. It's magical. Really, it's incredible. And for
Speaker 1: the people who are listening right now, who are inspired
Speaker 1: and who are going to want to take action and
Speaker 1: make a difference because of what you guys have been
Speaker 1: able to accomplish. Is there anything you guys want to suggest?
Speaker 3: What I just would say my call action would be
Speaker 3: to pay attention to what's going on out here in
Speaker 3: society and to support criminal justice reform. Every innocent man
Speaker 3: is not going to make it out of prison, and
Speaker 3: it's a lot left behind, so we need some sort
Speaker 3: of criminal justice before and to make a way for
Speaker 3: others to be able to come out.
Speaker 1: Now we've come to the part of the show that's well,
Speaker 1: it's the closing of the show, but it's become my
Speaker 1: favorite part of the show. And of course it's called
Speaker 1: closing arguments, And I want to say, first of all,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys tremendously just for being here and
Speaker 1: sharing your story. You know, you guys are heroes to
Speaker 1: me and so many other people, and I'm excited to
Speaker 1: get this out there, and get this story out in
Speaker 1: a way in the way that it should have been
Speaker 1: told from the very beginning, and so closing arguments. What
Speaker 1: we do here, how this works is I'm just going
Speaker 1: to turn my microphone off and leave both of yours on,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to just sit back in my chair
Speaker 1: and listen to anything that you feel has been left unsaid.
Speaker 1: So Dennis, how about you go first, and then Lee
Speaker 1: you'll be bad and clean up.
Speaker 2: So, folks, first of all, thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to my brother and I recount
Speaker 2: our story. The thing is this, at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, the people control the system. The system don't
Speaker 2: control you, but we've gotten to a place where we
Speaker 2: allow the system to control us. This is supposed to
Speaker 2: be our system, and we're supposed to hold people accountable
Speaker 2: for the decisions they make on our behalf. So the
Speaker 2: only thing I would say is please get involved and
Speaker 2: know with the prosecutors, Know with the district attorney, know
Speaker 2: what the police are doing on your down because we
Speaker 2: pay the taxes that pay their salaries, and if this
Speaker 2: is how they're doing business, then we need to make
Speaker 2: sure we hold them accountable. My brother not with free,
Speaker 2: but there are countless others that are not free. My
Speaker 2: grandma once told us that life gives you what life
Speaker 2: gives you, and it's up to you to make something
Speaker 2: out of it. So when we went to prison, that
Speaker 2: wasn't the end of our story.
Speaker 3: That was just another leg in our journey. The next
Speaker 3: part of our journey, we hope is spectacular. We want
Speaker 3: to do a lot of things out here in society.
Speaker 3: We did a lot of positive working inside and we'll
Speaker 3: do a lot of positive work out here.
Speaker 2: And so what I would say is make sure you
Speaker 2: pay attention to what's going on. When somebody say they've
Speaker 2: been wrongfully convicted, try to give them the benefit of
Speaker 2: the doubt because they could be just like us, two
Speaker 2: individuals who just took a ride and wind up being
Speaker 2: arrested and sent away and spend twenty eight years trying
Speaker 2: to come back home.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
Speaker 1: for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
Speaker 1: me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flopp.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcasts
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one