Speaker 1: I had the privilege of interviewing Jimmy Dennis on April
Speaker 1: first of twenty nineteen, shortly after he was released from
Speaker 1: death row in Pennsylvania. He served twenty five and a
Speaker 1: half years and had two execution dates actually scheduled. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about they asked him what his last meal
Speaker 1: was going to be, where he wanted his remains to
Speaker 1: be taken. It's unbelievable. Twenty five and a half years
Speaker 1: he lived in his tiny cell on death row with
Speaker 1: the lights on. They never turned him off, and yet
Speaker 1: he came out joyful, with a bounce in his step,
Speaker 1: ready to get back, you know, as much as he
Speaker 1: could of what he had lost. And here's the incredible thing.
Speaker 1: He was a singer when he was wrongfully arrested when
Speaker 1: he was eighteen years old. He was on the verge
Speaker 1: of getting a record deal with his group. And the
Speaker 1: good news is that a few months ago he made
Speaker 1: his on stage singing debut in New York City at
Speaker 1: the Church of Rock and Roll event. At Gospel he's
Speaker 1: saying Hallelujah, and he killed it. I gotta be honest
Speaker 1: with you. Now, he's in the process of launching a
Speaker 1: dog grooming business with his wife. The business plan is
Speaker 1: set and I think they're going to make it a
Speaker 1: real success. He's also been the subject of the first
Speaker 1: Now This video documentary of the Rawful Conviction podcast and
Speaker 1: it is a beautiful, beautiful piece. He's a beautiful, beautiful guy.
Speaker 1: And Jimmy, if you're listening, I hope you're smiling and
Speaker 1: sleeping well too, because you deserve nothing but the best
Speaker 1: of everything, and we're here to share your story. Please
Speaker 1: sit back and listen to Jimmy Dennis.
Speaker 2: This Paul is from a correction facility and is subject
Speaker 2: to monitoring and recording.
Speaker 3: And a hundred years that's man.
Speaker 4: I'm a kid.
Speaker 3: I didn't do anything, you know, and uh, you know
Speaker 3: that was ah, that was real painful, man, you know,
Speaker 3: because my life was discarded as if you know, like
Speaker 3: I was a piece of trash or something, you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred years and I had dreams and I wanted
Speaker 3: to do things. I wasn't committing crimes, you know. I
Speaker 3: was a very good young man.
Speaker 5: That is what happened. In so many cases, the cops
Speaker 5: have a hunch because they're so smart. At the scene,
Speaker 5: they have a hunch, and once they act on that hunch,
Speaker 5: they sort of developed tunnel vision and they take off
Speaker 5: marching in the wrong direction, and that happens in so
Speaker 5: many of these wrongful convictions.
Speaker 6: They opened it uh to sell door, and I walked downstairs,
Speaker 6: and I actually walked downstairs to be outside. It felt
Speaker 6: very strange, like I said, to be walking without those
Speaker 6: shackles on my feet. I thought it was a dream.
Speaker 6: But then again, it wasn't a dream.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today,
Speaker 1: I have a guest whose story has to be heard
Speaker 1: to be believed. It's a Philadelphia story. It's a death
Speaker 1: penalty story. And it's sort of a miracle actually that
Speaker 1: you're even here at all under the circumstances, much less
Speaker 1: with a smile on your face. So and he does
Speaker 1: have a big smile. So I want to welcome to
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction. Jimmy Dennis.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Jason, Oh, you're welcome. And like I always say, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry you're here, but I'm glad you're here. And I
Speaker 1: want to get right into it because I think it's
Speaker 1: super important to talk about this case, not only because
Speaker 1: it was a death penalty case, but also because of
Speaker 1: the facts of your case being so bizarre and that
Speaker 1: there was never anything to connect you to this crime,
Speaker 1: not that I know about it right now.
Speaker 7: The case happened October twenty second, nineteen ninety one, in
Speaker 7: the Fern Rock station of Philadelphia.
Speaker 4: A young lady by the name A Shadell.
Speaker 7: Williams was rutally murdered for peer ear rings by three men.
Speaker 1: Four hundred and fifty dollars earrings pier.
Speaker 4: Four hundred and fifty dollars ear rings.
Speaker 1: Right, a high school girl. And when they say four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars earrings, I'm assuming that's retails. Whoever
Speaker 1: whoever killed her for these earrings probably got maybe one hundred.
Speaker 4: Dollars for it, right at best.
Speaker 1: That's what her life was worth, a high school girl.
Speaker 7: Right when this happens, it's a high profile case. The
Speaker 7: community is outraged by so on and so forth. In Philadelphia,
Speaker 7: there's a lot of pressure in high profile cases for
Speaker 7: the cops to sib crime.
Speaker 1: So you weren't there when it happened.
Speaker 4: No, I wasn't there.
Speaker 1: In fact, you weren't even close by.
Speaker 4: I wasn't even close by.
Speaker 1: Well, let's go back to that, because where were you,
Speaker 1: and how did they end up? Like it seemed so
Speaker 1: random that you were several miles away, and then yet
Speaker 1: they ended up picking you up. And then the whole
Speaker 1: thing goes sideways and backwards from there.
Speaker 7: So at the time of the crime, I was on
Speaker 7: a bus in Philadelphia called the K Bus, traveling to
Speaker 7: abbas Ford Projects, where I seen someone familiar, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean, just the acquaintance I said hi to
Speaker 7: all this was instantiated right, even the time I said
Speaker 7: that I got on the bus and got off the stop.
Speaker 7: The bus driver testified that that was correct, right, So
Speaker 7: all these things were stantiated. So the police came around.
Speaker 7: They went to every neighborhood in the city of Philadelphia,
Speaker 7: and they started.
Speaker 4: Picking up stick up boys.
Speaker 7: And when they did that, a group of individuals lied
Speaker 7: and said my name for or ungodly reasons of jealousy
Speaker 7: or whatever you might.
Speaker 4: Want to call it.
Speaker 1: And you were twenty one.
Speaker 7: I was twenty one. I was barely I was a
Speaker 7: young man. I wasn't even a man. I had many
Speaker 7: aspirations of being in the music business. I would come
Speaker 7: up here to New York to the New Music Seminar
Speaker 7: every year. My group was one of the best amateur
Speaker 7: groups in Philadelphia, and we were receiving interest from.
Speaker 4: You know, music people. What group was that sensation? And
Speaker 4: we had won many talent shows.
Speaker 1: What kind of style of music was it? R and B?
Speaker 1: And you were the singer, I was the lead singer well,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, who knows, we might even cross paths
Speaker 1: at the New Music know It. But but then things
Speaker 1: obviously went took a terrible.
Speaker 7: Terror and then things just started to turn from there.
Speaker 4: You even see in the statements that.
Speaker 7: They all had talked on the phone or whatever, and
Speaker 7: then they just you know, made up this you know
Speaker 7: Storrey that I, you know, had on these clothes and
Speaker 7: that I was doing these things, and the police ran
Speaker 7: with it.
Speaker 4: But none of these people ever testified.
Speaker 1: I mean, were you caught up in the gang life
Speaker 1: or anything.
Speaker 4: I wasn't caught up.
Speaker 7: In any gang life or anything like that. I wasn't,
Speaker 7: you know, in any type kind of gangs.
Speaker 4: It really not.
Speaker 7: Really gangs in Philadelphia like that at that time, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So this was just people in the.
Speaker 7: Neighborhood didn't like me, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 7: had no significant criminal history whatsoever. I had a misdemeanor
Speaker 7: drug offense.
Speaker 4: On my record.
Speaker 7: Uh, and that's all I ever had on my record
Speaker 7: up until the time that I was arrested. So going
Speaker 7: back from the misdemeanor, I had a picture, you know,
Speaker 7: mugshot that the police kept in the number one spot
Speaker 7: the entire time when they were showing witnesses the photo rays.
Speaker 7: So one witness said, I think so. They said, can
Speaker 7: you be sure? They said no yet, and still they
Speaker 7: ran with that.
Speaker 1: And what was the description of the subject?
Speaker 7: Uh, five to ten to six feet tall, to one
Speaker 7: hundred and eighty to two hundred pounds, dark skin complexion.
Speaker 7: Now when they say dark skin complexion, they talk about
Speaker 7: Miles Davis or Wesley Snipes. You sitting here before me,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm brown skin. I weigh one hundred and
Speaker 7: twenty five pounds at the time, I had a diminutive
Speaker 7: frame and I'm five four in height. There's no way
Speaker 7: you're going to get five nine to five ten six
Speaker 7: foot one eighty to two hundred pounds from a hundred
Speaker 7: and twenty five and you're not going to ever mix
Speaker 7: me up with Wesley Snipes or Miles Davis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that should have been a moment that
Speaker 1: alone for everybody to go, well, Okay, let's just look
Speaker 1: and see if he's got an alibi, and if he does,
Speaker 1: we maybe wouldn't even need that, maybe would just say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: the description doesn't work. The one witness who at least
Speaker 1: is even saying anything still isn't sure. But that would
Speaker 1: have been inconvenient, yes, right, because they would have had
Speaker 1: to go back to the drawing board. And we know
Speaker 1: how these things work, especially in Philly in the early nineties.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a time where I would say
Speaker 1: that from what I know about the history of Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: it probably would have been a time when Philadelphia was
Speaker 1: probably the wrongful conviction capital of America. They were arresting
Speaker 1: and beating up people of color, yes, and everybody. But
Speaker 1: it was basically a policy, and it came from the top.
Speaker 1: There was that infamous police chief Rizzo, who became the mayor,
Speaker 1: and he was a notoriously brutal, lawless type of a guy,
Speaker 1: an area.
Speaker 7: That I grew up in in North Philadelphia. Abbas for projects,
Speaker 7: there are literally five people that have been proven to
Speaker 7: be innocent, myself included, that have all come home. And
Speaker 7: Anthony Wright, who I believe you may have had on
Speaker 7: this show. Is one of the guys that came from
Speaker 7: North Philadelphia. Him and I have the same.
Speaker 4: Police that worked on his case, did the same thing
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 1: And there's an amazing I'm glad you brought that up
Speaker 1: because there's an incredible article that ran in Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: magazine about Tony Wright's case, and I'll never forget there
Speaker 1: was a pull quote in that article where it said
Speaker 1: that in whatever year that was nineteen ninety or something
Speaker 1: that he was convicted, it said a black man had
Speaker 1: a better chance of getting justice in Philadelphia, Mississippi than
Speaker 1: they did in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: That is so true.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm happy to see that now we have
Speaker 1: a whole different situation in Philadelphia with Larry krast.
Speaker 4: Get much better with mister Krasner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know it had to change. But you
Speaker 1: were caught up in exactly the wrong place at exactly
Speaker 1: the wrong time. So at what point did they arrest you?
Speaker 1: Was it a day or two after the crowd?
Speaker 7: So as soon as I heard like this is one thing,
Speaker 7: that one other thing that people don't know, I got
Speaker 7: arrested like a month later. But as soon as I
Speaker 7: heard any rumors in the neighborhood of my name being mentioned.
Speaker 7: Actually went down to the police station and asked him
Speaker 7: did they want to speak to me? And stayed down
Speaker 7: there for over four hours, and they did not want
Speaker 7: to speak to me. Everybody has this thing about what
Speaker 7: innocent people should do.
Speaker 4: You don't run, you go to the police station, so
Speaker 4: on and so forth.
Speaker 7: So I get arrested November twenty third, nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 7: So before I get arrested, I went down there, me
Speaker 7: and my father and my brother asked him did they
Speaker 7: want to talk to me? I signed in the police
Speaker 7: law book. All this was said at trial they didn't
Speaker 7: want to talk to me. But two weeks later they
Speaker 7: came and arrested me.
Speaker 4: In a nightmare began.
Speaker 7: I did everything you supposed to do, and I still
Speaker 7: got my life stolen away.
Speaker 1: And so you go to trial when you had a
Speaker 1: quarter point lawyer, I'm assuming no.
Speaker 7: Actually, my dad and I you know, paid for my
Speaker 7: first attorney. It wasn't quarter point. My dad was a musician,
Speaker 7: He wasn't rich anything like that.
Speaker 4: We were poor. But my dad put the money together
Speaker 4: and he got me.
Speaker 7: What we thought was a you know, decent enough lawyer
Speaker 7: to represent me, but he did not.
Speaker 4: Do his job.
Speaker 1: How much time did you get to spend with him
Speaker 1: before the trial?
Speaker 4: None?
Speaker 1: None, none, He never visited.
Speaker 7: You came to see me one time to tell me
Speaker 7: that they were charging me with more cases, and that's it.
Speaker 4: Left.
Speaker 7: I would call him all the time, no answer, so
Speaker 7: on and so forth.
Speaker 4: It was that bad.
Speaker 1: Wow, And then you go to trial. Then I go
Speaker 1: to trial with an attorney you don't even know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who doesn't really know much about your case.
Speaker 4: Right, who's really not investigating things like that? And you know,
Speaker 4: so on and so forth. It was.
Speaker 7: It was the typical nightmare that you had come to
Speaker 7: know with all the great work that you do.
Speaker 4: But it was the typical standard. Okay, don't care.
Speaker 1: I mean he wasn't really the face I think you
Speaker 1: so much as processing you at the prison.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 1: And I mean, was he alcoholic or no.
Speaker 7: There was an article at the time that set him
Speaker 7: and two other attorneys took on the most homicide cases
Speaker 7: in the city of Philadelphia.
Speaker 4: It kind of came out like in the mid nineties.
Speaker 1: But you know, so he was just taking as many
Speaker 1: cases as he could get to make as much money
Speaker 1: as he could and not really worrying about the outcome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's how I feel.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like me. I mean when you say
Speaker 1: they were trying to put other cases on you.
Speaker 4: I was charged with over nine other robbery cases.
Speaker 7: They tried to make it look like I was Jesse James,
Speaker 7: and I was nothing of the sort.
Speaker 4: If you go back in.
Speaker 7: My community and you do your own type of investigation,
Speaker 7: which my lawyers and everybody do, everybody be like, Yo,
Speaker 7: he was a good kid, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: You know, nobody's perfect, but he ain't. No, you know,
Speaker 7: he ain't no robbery, he ain't no murdering, he ain't
Speaker 7: no stick up with you know what I mean. So
Speaker 7: I was charged with nine other cases that were later dropped,
Speaker 7: all except for.
Speaker 1: One, all except for the one the original one, or
Speaker 1: except for another one besides that.
Speaker 4: All except for another one besides that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you go to trial, right, and you charged
Speaker 1: with capital murder, which is murder in the act of
Speaker 1: committing another felony, which was robbing her of the earrings. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: And so how long did the trial last?
Speaker 7: The trial went from September about twenty first twenty fifteen
Speaker 7: October sixteenth. I was found guilty October nineteenth, they gave
Speaker 7: me the death penalty.
Speaker 4: Each part of that trial, it was horrible.
Speaker 7: I still relived even to this day everything that I
Speaker 7: went through, because you don't think that this is.
Speaker 4: Going to happen to you.
Speaker 7: You think, even then, you believe that the truth is
Speaker 7: going to come out, that you believe in the system,
Speaker 7: that everybody can see that I'm not five ten, two
Speaker 7: hundred pounds in dark skinned complexion.
Speaker 4: But you had a prosecutor that was something of a
Speaker 4: theme on law and order, right.
Speaker 7: You had jury members going to sleep, literally going to sleep.
Speaker 4: No mistrial. It was just a nightmare from beginning to end.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a pretty long trial. And I'm assuming
Speaker 1: that your lawyer wasn't doing much. What was he doing
Speaker 1: just sitting there listening?
Speaker 7: Nah, he was he he was doing I guess you
Speaker 7: could say he was doing I don't know what he
Speaker 7: was doing, to be perfectly honest with you, Jason, I
Speaker 7: don't know what he was doing. All I know is
Speaker 7: that it was the entire thing was a nightmare from
Speaker 7: beginning and the end. There's a part in the trial
Speaker 7: like if you go back and look at the transcripts,
Speaker 7: they even took my height right, and they get out
Speaker 7: of tape measure and they take my height so they
Speaker 7: see that I'm actually you know, five to four and
Speaker 7: I'm only five to five with this one and a
Speaker 7: half inch ill on right. Yeah, I mean, none of
Speaker 7: that made a difference to the jury. The fact that
Speaker 7: this crime took place within seconds. And you know, doctor
Speaker 7: Elizabeth Loaffers say, can't nobody identify nobody in two minutes,
Speaker 7: let alone seconds?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
Speaker 7: This is a violent crime, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: So you know, if somebody runs into the studio right here,
Speaker 7: and you know it robs us right now, nine times
Speaker 7: out of ten, we all gonna get it wrong when
Speaker 7: it comes to the physical description.
Speaker 4: Nobody paid attention to that.
Speaker 1: Right in this crime, this took place. There was a chase.
Speaker 1: The poor girl was after her her earrings were stolen.
Speaker 1: She was shot in the throat. She was with a
Speaker 1: friend who was luckily not harmed. But we know also
Speaker 1: from decades of research that in cases in which someone
Speaker 1: is up close when the violent crime is being committed,
Speaker 1: we know that that person is much more likely to
Speaker 1: mistakenly identify someone because you're in makes sense if you
Speaker 1: think about it, right, Your adrenaline is going crazy. Your
Speaker 1: own life is threatened. It's all that fight or flight
Speaker 1: and all those reflexes and impulses and all the nerve
Speaker 1: endings are going crazy. And there have been experiments where
Speaker 1: they they've actually staged the crime, right, and then they
Speaker 1: bring in people from the outside, and they found that
Speaker 1: people who weren't there have a better chance of being right.
Speaker 1: So actually those witnesses are not even as good as guessing.
Speaker 1: So in this case, you had all of those factors, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So you actually had three witnesses you know, that testify,
Speaker 7: but you actually had over nine witnesses and the other
Speaker 7: six you know, didn't testify because they didn't say what
Speaker 7: the police wanted them to say. They actually said the opposite.
Speaker 1: What about the other evidence that showed that you were
Speaker 1: somewhere else?
Speaker 4: That evidence was with hell for over a.
Speaker 1: Decade, and which evidence was that? All?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 7: So there was a welfare receiat from the young lady
Speaker 7: that I seen on the bus that stantiated my innocense
Speaker 7: as well that the police went to her, threatened her,
Speaker 7: and they took the welfare receipt from her. Now welfare
Speaker 7: receipts are done in military time. She had picked up
Speaker 7: her welfare receipt and then she had got on the
Speaker 7: same k bus that I was on, So the receipt
Speaker 7: said thirteen oh three. They told her that it set
Speaker 7: three h three pm because she couldn't tell military time.
Speaker 4: So when she.
Speaker 7: Takes the stand, she says exactly what they wanted her
Speaker 7: to say, that she seen me it, you know, later
Speaker 7: on that day and not the actual time that she
Speaker 7: did see me.
Speaker 1: Right, So had they not lied about that, then you
Speaker 1: couldn't have been there because they know the crime.
Speaker 7: Happened exactly, so that that stayed hidden away.
Speaker 1: That was one thing. There were there other things that
Speaker 1: were withheld as well.
Speaker 7: So the clothes that they said they took from my
Speaker 7: father's house that the police officers got on the stand
Speaker 7: and testified about.
Speaker 4: And said they were their closed that was used at
Speaker 4: the crime.
Speaker 7: Non the witnesses ever seeing these clothes, they weren't cataloged
Speaker 7: and they suddenly poof disappeared, right, and all this stuff
Speaker 7: could have helped prove my innocence, you know, going back
Speaker 7: to other evidence, there still was never two.
Speaker 4: Other people locked up.
Speaker 7: There's supposed to be three people to the crime, but
Speaker 7: only one person was ever arrested, which was me, right.
Speaker 4: So there's all these holes, you know, but it's all
Speaker 4: come from the same prosecutor and police officers.
Speaker 1: And the very real consequence of this, aside from the
Speaker 1: obvious terrible injustice that was done to you and your family,
Speaker 1: is the fact that there's no justice for Shadell Williams.
Speaker 1: Not to mention that the citizens of Philadelphia remained in
Speaker 1: danger with these two or three guys how many it
Speaker 1: was that actually committed this robbery and murder being out
Speaker 1: on the loose because you were in there instead of them.
Speaker 7: That's the har other situation that that family hasn't gotten justice.
Speaker 4: And when you lie.
Speaker 7: About something to someone, you dishonored a victim and you
Speaker 7: dishonored their family as well.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to that day of the verdict.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a picture of the courtroom that day.
Speaker 1: I mean, you had now been in the system for
Speaker 1: almost a year, but you still said you had hope
Speaker 1: and you still believe that no one could possibly convict
Speaker 1: you because you knew that you weren't there. You knew
Speaker 1: that none of the evidence match, You knew you had alibis,
Speaker 1: but you also knew that you know this trial had
Speaker 1: been sort of a you know, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, I'll say with a clusterfuck.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 1: But even with all of that, did you still have
Speaker 1: hope that the jury was going to do the right thing.
Speaker 7: I still had hope that the jury was going to
Speaker 7: do the right thing because I always had faith, period,
Speaker 7: ever since I was a kid. I always had that,
Speaker 7: you know, faith in God that you know, I could
Speaker 7: get through anything. So I'm sitting there and I'm praying
Speaker 7: that the right thing is going to happen, that people
Speaker 7: sitting on this jury would be able to see through
Speaker 7: all the you know, the lies and things like that,
Speaker 7: or that nature that went on in that courtroom. You know,
Speaker 7: when you look at the physical description, when you're seeing that,
Speaker 7: stuff just don't make sense, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And I had hope.
Speaker 7: So when they stood me up and then they read
Speaker 7: the verdict, it was like like somebody just knocked the
Speaker 7: wind out of me. It was like Tyson hitting somebody,
Speaker 7: you know. I immediately started crying. I remember my mom crying.
Speaker 7: I remember my sister rocking back and forth. I remember
Speaker 7: friends that I grew up with, men crying. Everybody broke
Speaker 7: down and just started crying because nobody could believe that
Speaker 7: this was happening, because a lot of lives would destroyed
Speaker 7: on that day, A lot of dreams were destroyed.
Speaker 4: It was a horrible scene. You know when you hear
Speaker 4: these cries and.
Speaker 7: These wells, and you you like in this moment that's
Speaker 7: so sad and like out of body, like you don't
Speaker 7: want to be in here, and you know when I'm
Speaker 7: shaking and I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: And then you said a few days later, you were
Speaker 1: sentenced to death right, which is the only thing worse
Speaker 1: that could happen to everything that's already happened. Right, And
Speaker 1: then you get taken I.
Speaker 4: Get taken to the greatest for a prison.
Speaker 7: From there you go to Camp Hill, and then you
Speaker 7: get your destination of what prison that you go to.
Speaker 7: So I wound up at huntingon death Row. After these
Speaker 7: other two stops of death row. You know what I mean,
Speaker 7: you get your first taste of death row.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what that's like for the audience?
Speaker 7: That process going on death row is your shackle Your
Speaker 7: feet and your hands are shackled. They got like a
Speaker 7: belt in a black box on you. You literally can't
Speaker 7: move and they basically strip you neckd which is a
Speaker 7: very dehumanizing process. When you come, they got the cameras
Speaker 7: on you and all that stuff, and then they throw
Speaker 7: you in the shell, you know, and then the nightmare
Speaker 7: gets even worse if you can believe it. You know,
Speaker 7: prison is such a dehumanizing place. Prison is meant to
Speaker 7: destroy families and relationships of everybody. And being on death row,
Speaker 7: you're considered the worst of the worst, less than human,
Speaker 7: and you get it from all sides, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean. Even though you got people in general population
Speaker 7: that may have worse crimes, it's a perception about people
Speaker 7: on death row like they're the worst of the worst,
Speaker 7: you know, so you catch it, catch it from all sides.
Speaker 7: What you gotta understand, you can't be in prison for
Speaker 7: nothing like that.
Speaker 4: So when I.
Speaker 7: Say that I went through hell, it's actually an understatement
Speaker 7: to describe what I went through. I got it from
Speaker 7: every side, guards, prisoners. I was basically in a fight
Speaker 7: for my life just to be whole, period.
Speaker 1: And that is because the case was such a high
Speaker 1: profile case.
Speaker 4: It was a high profile case.
Speaker 7: But back then you couldn't be in prison for nothing
Speaker 7: like this, anything that had to do with a woman
Speaker 7: or a child.
Speaker 4: You can't be in prison. This is real prison.
Speaker 7: I was in, you know, real situations where I was jumped.
Speaker 4: I was you know, had to fight, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. I had to defend myself. You know what
Speaker 4: I mean. I was jumped, I.
Speaker 7: Was set up by guards, I was rolled on by prisoners,
Speaker 7: on and so forth. It was a living nightmare, something
Speaker 7: that you never recover from, something.
Speaker 4: That you never get over.
Speaker 7: I got teeth in my mouth right here that are
Speaker 7: broke and fixed from stuff I went through in prison.
Speaker 7: You know, the battle scars are still on me and
Speaker 7: in my soul. My situation is just like what we
Speaker 7: all know that Kylief Brouder went through.
Speaker 4: I went through a lot of that.
Speaker 1: And you were on death row for a quarter of
Speaker 1: a century.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I spent twenty five point five years in prison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you maintain sanity? How'd you maintain hope?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if someone want to meet you now,
Speaker 1: they would have no idea that you've been through this.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's that saying that everyone you
Speaker 1: meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Just
Speaker 1: be kind, but this is the extreme version of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone's going through their stuff. You don't know
Speaker 1: what anyone's going through. It might be all heartbreak, might
Speaker 1: have just lost their job. Who knows what. You all
Speaker 1: have our stuff, But this is a different level. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is an extraordinary ordeal for anybody to go through
Speaker 1: and survive. And I'm sure there were a bunch of
Speaker 1: people that you met, a bunch of men you met
Speaker 1: on death row who didn't survive. I mean that that is.
Speaker 7: Kind of trippy because when I was in there, I've
Speaker 7: seen people kill theyself. You see the body bags come in,
Speaker 7: and you see the ambulance come in.
Speaker 4: You see people die from.
Speaker 7: Natural causes or what have your dehabilitating diseases.
Speaker 1: But how did you, like, what was it that allowed
Speaker 1: you to, you know, persevere and to not not take
Speaker 1: your own life and not go down this rabbit hole
Speaker 1: that so many of the guys went there.
Speaker 7: So when you in prison, for me to sit here
Speaker 7: and tell you that I never thought about suicide.
Speaker 4: That's a lie.
Speaker 7: Many times, even when I was in the county because
Speaker 7: like I told you, I was suffering so greatly.
Speaker 4: And nobody was hearing my crowd.
Speaker 7: Like one time I was literally gonna take my life
Speaker 7: because I just couldn't take it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: I'm innocent, and I'm not getting proper representation that. You know,
Speaker 7: everything is going on. You know, the cops done, you know,
Speaker 7: frame me, whatever the case may be. So for me,
Speaker 7: I once read this book by Victor E. Frankel called
Speaker 7: A Man Search for Mean And in this book he
Speaker 7: had this quote by Nietzsche. It said, he who, he
Speaker 7: who has a why, I can bear with almost anyhow.
Speaker 7: And my why has always been my daughters and my mom,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. Like I literally connected with
Speaker 7: it so much because here it was they had no hope,
Speaker 7: and he created hope for himself, and he didn't give up.
Speaker 7: You know the stories he would tell the other people
Speaker 7: in the concentration camps about their family so.
Speaker 4: That they could live and survive and have hope with
Speaker 4: some you know.
Speaker 7: And for me, I would do the same thing. I
Speaker 7: would visualize myself home with my daughters someday.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about your daughters. What are their names?
Speaker 7: My oldest daughter's name for Team, and my youngest daughter's
Speaker 7: name Kiara.
Speaker 1: And when you went to prison, one of them wasn't
Speaker 1: even born yet.
Speaker 4: Kiara wasn't born.
Speaker 7: She was born one week after I was stolen away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you never got to see her until you
Speaker 1: got out of prison.
Speaker 7: My dad would bring her to see me a lot
Speaker 7: that the family would bring them to see me, but
Speaker 7: I never literally spent a day with them with her
Speaker 7: until I got out. So everything I went through was
Speaker 7: for them and my father, you know. And then I
Speaker 7: wanted to restore my family name.
Speaker 4: Back, you know. And for me faith, faith in God
Speaker 4: was the key in music.
Speaker 7: And so every day I would wake up, I would
Speaker 7: hear these songs in my mind. Literally because it didn't
Speaker 7: have a good radio station up there, couldn't listen to the.
Speaker 4: Music I wanted to listen to.
Speaker 7: But every day I would hear the Wantings, Trusting God,
Speaker 7: John Coltrane, Dear Lord. And then I would hear Bruce
Speaker 7: Springsteen in the East Street Band, Bruce Springsteen, as you know,
Speaker 7: he has all these wonderful ad libs, all right, come on,
Speaker 7: you know, and I would play Hungry Hard or Born
Speaker 7: and run in my head, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: Then it would go to Stevie Wonder if It's Magic
Speaker 7: and Fleetwood Mac Don't Stop, And every day those songs
Speaker 7: would play.
Speaker 4: In secession in my head.
Speaker 7: And then I would get up, I would work on
Speaker 7: the Justice for Jimmy campaign. I would work on legal work.
Speaker 7: I would call my lawyers, I would discuss law within them,
Speaker 7: legal issues, how to you know, proceed and what we
Speaker 7: should do and things like that. And I just I
Speaker 7: think everybody has it in them, you know, to make
Speaker 7: it out of any situation if they believe. And I
Speaker 7: just knew and believe that my dead truth was going
Speaker 7: to come. On every single letter, if you would have
Speaker 7: received a letter from me in prison, and you would
Speaker 7: have opened it up on the top head of the
Speaker 7: paper said praying for the truth. And that was my model,
Speaker 7: praying for the truth. And I always believe that my
Speaker 7: dead truth was gonna come.
Speaker 1: I see you have a bracelet on it says in
Speaker 1: big letters, never ever give up, Never ever.
Speaker 4: Give up, and this one say not throwing away my shot.
Speaker 7: My lawyers from Arnold and Porter, who are liked my family,
Speaker 7: gave me these when when I came home.
Speaker 1: Now we understand how you found this extra gear, this
Speaker 1: extra this extraordinary otherworldly grace or whatever it is that
Speaker 1: allowed you to maintain yourself and maintain your sanity in
Speaker 1: an insane situation. How did you end up getting out.
Speaker 1: How'd that work?
Speaker 7: You know, for so long I labored just trying to
Speaker 7: yell out that I was innocent, over and over again,
Speaker 7: and the system felled me horridly over and over again
Speaker 7: until I got the Federal Court. On August twenty first,
Speaker 7: twenty thirteen, the Honorable Judge Nita Brody gave this forty
Speaker 7: six page legal opinion that breaks down the truth.
Speaker 4: About what happens to me.
Speaker 7: And the part that met everything to me was the
Speaker 7: first paragraph.
Speaker 4: If you read that opinion, it says.
Speaker 7: James Dennis was wrongfully convicted of this crime.
Speaker 1: And she called it a quote grave miscarriage of justice.
Speaker 1: And she's she wrote that police and prosecutors ignored, lost,
Speaker 1: or covered up evidence that was favorable to.
Speaker 7: You, and then came three years later, because nothing happens
Speaker 7: that quick. The Third Circuit, the entire panel ruled in
Speaker 7: a majority decision vote. You know that it was a
Speaker 7: great mischaracter justice that started the wills rolling to me
Speaker 7: getting home. So you know, the DA offered a deal
Speaker 7: to get me out, and it was something that I
Speaker 7: didn't want to do and something that bothers me to
Speaker 7: this day.
Speaker 4: But sometimes you got to make decisions.
Speaker 7: That's best for your family and not so much you
Speaker 7: or just to get you out, you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: because you might be in there another five years and
Speaker 7: you don't know what's going to happen, because I was
Speaker 7: literally at the end of my role. So if they
Speaker 7: appeal this decision, you go to the US Supreme.
Speaker 1: Court, and most people ask me that aren't familiar with
Speaker 1: this work, how could it be that this real judged
Speaker 1: need to Brody called this a grave mischaracter justice said
Speaker 1: you were innocent. Then the Third Circuit Court ruled, I
Speaker 1: think was nine to four strong majority.
Speaker 4: Strong majority, and it's a very scathing legal opinion.
Speaker 1: Quote evidence suppressed by the prosecution, a receipt corroborating Dennis's alibi,
Speaker 1: an inconsistent statement by the Commonwealth's key eyewitness, and documents
Speaker 1: indicating that another individual committed the murder effectively gutted the
Speaker 1: Commonwealth's case against Dennis. And she finishes by saying, I'm
Speaker 1: getting it chilled. The withholding of these pieces of evidence
Speaker 1: denied Dennis a fair trial and state court. So they
Speaker 1: ruled that you were innocent. And then people say, well,
Speaker 1: doesn't that mean in America you go home and you're innocent.
Speaker 1: But That's not the way it works sometimes, is it.
Speaker 4: No, that's not the way it worked.
Speaker 7: They were going to appeal to the US Supreme Court
Speaker 7: because no one's really trying to say we made a mistake,
Speaker 7: we did anything wrong. So that would have took more
Speaker 7: years out of my life. If you look and just
Speaker 7: ask comparison. If you look at the Anthony Right case,
Speaker 7: it took him three years to go to trial after
Speaker 7: the DNA evidence proved diminising. Then he still had to
Speaker 7: go to trial. Why do you have to go to
Speaker 7: trial and the DNA evidence? So this is Philadelphia, This
Speaker 7: is not where people.
Speaker 1: Are going to do the right thing, Johnson.
Speaker 7: There you go, and I can name other cases William
Speaker 7: niaz On and so forth, and the list goes on
Speaker 7: where they don't want.
Speaker 4: To do the right thing.
Speaker 7: So I would have spent another three to five years
Speaker 7: or more in prison, and we wouldn't even be sitting
Speaker 7: here talking.
Speaker 1: And you could have died in there too, I mean
Speaker 1: just from deprivation. You could die in there. But and
Speaker 1: then I want to go back to the you know
Speaker 1: said it was a scathing opinion.
Speaker 4: Yes, how did it.
Speaker 1: Feel to hear those words?
Speaker 7: So I'm sitting there in prison. So I just want
Speaker 7: to take you back to when the first one happened.
Speaker 7: Every day I used to walk back and forth and
Speaker 7: I'm looking for.
Speaker 4: A sign.
Speaker 7: For unit manage your account. So that runs the block
Speaker 7: to come and say you got to call your lawyers
Speaker 7: because your lawyer's called up here good news or whatever.
Speaker 7: You don't know, or it might be a family emergency.
Speaker 7: This particular day, it didn't even click in. I'm thinking
Speaker 7: something bad had happened with my mom because I had
Speaker 7: already lost my dad very tragically. You know, he died
Speaker 7: from all timer's and didn't even remember who I was.
Speaker 7: But just to let you know, when my dad found
Speaker 7: out that I was actually going to try out back
Speaker 7: in nineteen ninety two, he had a stroke sitting at
Speaker 7: the table and he never was the same again.
Speaker 1: Wo.
Speaker 7: So this is the kind of stuff that I endure.
Speaker 7: So that day they come to sell, they say, you
Speaker 7: gotta call your lawyers. I call my lawyers. A guy
Speaker 7: yells out the door. That's not bad news. Shorty is
Speaker 7: what they call me. You know what I mean, Shorty
Speaker 7: do wop because of the music thing. So they say
Speaker 7: that's not a bad call. So I pick up the
Speaker 7: phone and my lawyers say James A. Dennis, and they
Speaker 7: never set you know, my entire name, said James A. Dennis,
Speaker 7: and he said, your innocence has been proven. My two
Speaker 7: lawyers on the phone, Amy and Ryan, who are like
Speaker 7: brothers and sister to me, and they were telling me
Speaker 7: like kept saying it, but I didn't really fully get
Speaker 7: the full magnitude of it.
Speaker 4: And then when I got off.
Speaker 7: The phone, I put my tie up to the window
Speaker 7: and I broke down and cried because for me, everything
Speaker 7: that I went through in prison, I've been waiting for that.
Speaker 7: So when you read the legal opinion and you see
Speaker 7: the first words where say James A. Dennis was wrongly,
Speaker 7: that meant everything to me. That's what I waited for, period.
Speaker 7: And you don't know that you're gonna get that, but
Speaker 7: that's what I waited for my entire life that I
Speaker 7: was incarcerated. So when the second decision come, it's the
Speaker 7: same thing. I put the tie up, I put my
Speaker 7: head into the pillow and I cried. I ain't never
Speaker 7: cried before. I didn't know what was going to happen.
Speaker 7: I'm hoping and praying that they're going to do the
Speaker 7: right thing, and so when it came, it was like,
Speaker 7: you know, and the lawyers came up there and we
Speaker 7: talked and what.
Speaker 4: Does this mean?
Speaker 7: And it's a real emotional roller coaster, where, you know,
Speaker 7: did y'all call my mom, did y'all tell my mom?
Speaker 4: Did y'all tell my daughters? Did you you know what
Speaker 4: I mean?
Speaker 7: Do all these people know what just happened? So it's
Speaker 7: an emotional roller coaster.
Speaker 4: It's the best way I can explain it.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone can possibly begin to understand that
Speaker 1: that hasn't been through it. And let's talk about the
Speaker 1: day you got out.
Speaker 7: May thirteenth, twenty seventeen. I was released from Sei Green Prison.
Speaker 7: Korby was there, My lawyers were there, A cool guy by.
Speaker 4: The name of Dan was there, and they were waiting
Speaker 4: outside for me in a van, you know.
Speaker 7: But my lawyer of Ryan came in to get me
Speaker 7: and give me a suit, and I hadn't had on
Speaker 7: a suit and twenty five years, you know, since I've
Speaker 7: been to church.
Speaker 4: Oddly enough, the last night that I.
Speaker 7: Was home, I was in church. She and I went
Speaker 7: to church and did not get arrested that morning. So
Speaker 7: it had been a long time since I put on
Speaker 7: a suit.
Speaker 4: So I put on this suit this time, and we
Speaker 4: walk out.
Speaker 7: There's hugs, things like that, and then we get on
Speaker 7: this van and then we're going and everything seems surreal,
Speaker 7: and I start making phone calls to my mom, to
Speaker 7: my daughters, to my supporters, you know, thanking everybody. And
Speaker 7: I'm on my way to Philadelphia. And we're playing Boys
Speaker 7: the Men. We're playing Meek Mills, We're playing Elton John
Speaker 7: Philadelphia Freedom. Where we're doing, you know as we come
Speaker 7: into city, you know, we're playing pay La Belle, were playing.
Speaker 4: You know, all my favorites.
Speaker 7: We're on the highway, you know, driving John Coletrane, you know,
Speaker 7: the boss in the East Street band is up in
Speaker 7: there where we're just grooving down the highway.
Speaker 4: Me I'm sitting there.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of laughter going back and forth, and
Speaker 7: I'm in the moment.
Speaker 4: I don't know what to eat.
Speaker 7: When we get to a rest stop, I can tell
Speaker 7: you that my first meal was like some French fries
Speaker 7: with some onions on it and a milkshake with some
Speaker 7: sunflower seeds.
Speaker 4: I ain't know what to eat. I didn't know, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean.
Speaker 7: I had never seen a convenience store where McDonald's and
Speaker 7: a gas station all that was in one now, you know,
Speaker 7: stuff like that. So when we get to Philadelphia, after
Speaker 7: we get down the highway, you know, my mom and
Speaker 7: daughters are at the hotel and we have this there's
Speaker 7: this moment with me and my mom's it's a beautiful
Speaker 7: moment where we just sit there and we just hold
Speaker 7: their hands and you know that it's emotional, you know.
Speaker 4: And and now I'm.
Speaker 1: Back home, and how did you meet your beautiful wife
Speaker 1: who I've just recently met myself.
Speaker 7: Right, she's my childhood's sweetheart. We actually met at Girls
Speaker 7: High High School in Philadelphia and we were singing on
Speaker 7: the District sixth Festival choir. And back then she was
Speaker 7: an alto, I was a soprano, and we had met
Speaker 7: on a choir at eleven and twelve years old.
Speaker 1: But there was twenty five and a half year gap
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, this work.
Speaker 7: So there was a petition that was started by my
Speaker 7: supporters to save my life on change doc org. So
Speaker 7: my supporters would send me in the mail the actual
Speaker 7: petition to.
Speaker 4: See how it was growing.
Speaker 7: And I was going through the names and then they
Speaker 7: were in like alphabetic order, and then when it got
Speaker 7: to c I seen Corby.
Speaker 4: And it was like, oh, whoa.
Speaker 7: You know, it's like that moment when you're like okay, okay,
Speaker 7: that's my childhood sweetheart, right, you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: and you're like okay. So then I had asked my
Speaker 7: sister Hope to ask her, you know, did she believe
Speaker 7: in my innocence? And my sister Hope asked her and
Speaker 7: she said yeah. And it was like, okay, good cause
Speaker 7: you looking for a silver line and for anybody to
Speaker 7: believe in you, but for anybody to know the truth.
Speaker 7: You want everybody, every single person that ever cared about you,
Speaker 7: to know the truth about the situation. And did she
Speaker 7: read about it? And you know, and how did she
Speaker 7: find me? Basically?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 7: Because I basically like it's almost like I fell off
Speaker 7: the face of the earth for so many years and
Speaker 7: we didn't have any contact. So when I seen her
Speaker 7: name on the petition, I was like blown away. So
Speaker 7: I eventually call home and my mother says, somebody's here,
Speaker 7: and I says, and she don't tell me. It's like
Speaker 7: a little game. Then she gets on the phone and
Speaker 7: we start talking. I'm still not thinking nothing of it.
Speaker 4: I don't want to.
Speaker 7: Maybe she just came to see my mother and check
Speaker 7: on me, you know. But the next Sunday I call,
Speaker 7: she's there again and again, and so then you start
Speaker 7: to feel like, okay, maybe, and then eventually she wanted
Speaker 7: to come see me.
Speaker 4: But I had shut down.
Speaker 7: I was on some I'd stopped having visits for a
Speaker 7: number of years, For over at least eight years or so,
Speaker 7: I stopped having visits. I stopped going the yard, the
Speaker 7: library I built the library, and my cell the lawyers
Speaker 7: that sent me books, and all I was doing was
Speaker 7: getting up every day studying, working on the Justice Jimmy
Speaker 7: campaign because I was already suffering from the panic and
Speaker 7: anxiety attacks and didn't know that I had the PTSD. Anyway,
Speaker 7: she came five years prior to me being released, before
Speaker 7: any of the good stuff started to happen, And it
Speaker 7: just seemed like when she came, all the good stuff
Speaker 7: started happening again, you know what I mean. You got
Speaker 7: the legal decision after that, you know, the one from
Speaker 7: the honorable judging it to Brody, and she insisted on
Speaker 7: coming to see me, and it just went from there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just went from there.
Speaker 1: It did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you are got lucky?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you did? You know you're a remarkable guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm always just totally in awe of people
Speaker 1: like yourself, who I get the privilege of being around
Speaker 1: on a very frequent basis. It's almost a daily basis.
Speaker 1: Actually having dinner tonight with John Huffington, who was on
Speaker 1: death row for thirty two years in Maryland. And wow,
Speaker 1: you know, I was with Damien Echles this weekend and
Speaker 1: a man story of course. You know, there's so many
Speaker 1: incredible human beings and one more or so then the next.
Speaker 1: And I'm always like, every time I meet somebody like you,
Speaker 1: I always feel like I've heard everything there is to hear.
Speaker 1: And I hear a story like yours, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: my head's just exploding again. But I have to ask,
Speaker 1: are you bitter?
Speaker 4: I guess for me as well.
Speaker 7: I want to tell you that nobody comes through the
Speaker 7: prison system unscathed.
Speaker 4: For me, I'm in therapy. I go to therapy every week.
Speaker 7: I suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, panic and anxiety attacks.
Speaker 7: My life was destroyed for something I didn't do, and
Speaker 7: it's something that when I hear sirens, I just shook up,
Speaker 7: you know, I literally don't go nowhere.
Speaker 4: You know, me coming here was a thing, you know.
Speaker 4: It took a lot of courage for me just to
Speaker 4: come here.
Speaker 7: So there's a lot of bitterness inside of me. To
Speaker 7: say that there's no would be lying. I'm hurt by
Speaker 7: what has happened to me, you know, and I'm hurt
Speaker 7: that is still happening to other people, like I know,
Speaker 7: other innocent men and women that are in prison. What
Speaker 7: I try to do with that bitterness and that hurt
Speaker 7: that I feel, I try to channel it and to
Speaker 7: doing productive things like my music or champion other people causes,
Speaker 7: like Ralph Stokes, who's an innocent man in prison at
Speaker 7: s CI Green, Willie Vessi who's locked up, who had
Speaker 7: the same police detectives and district attorney and.
Speaker 4: He's locked up.
Speaker 7: And I go to their hearings and try to be
Speaker 7: supportive to their families and stuff like that. And when
Speaker 7: I have an opportunity to speak out, I speak out,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of hurt in me.
Speaker 7: You know, what my daughters went through while I was
Speaker 7: out of their life.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, let's not forget them and all of
Speaker 1: this too, right, I mean to talk about an innocent victim.
Speaker 1: They were baby, well one wasn't even born yet, the
Speaker 1: other one was born.
Speaker 7: And you have to understand the ripple effects of that,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean, the lasting ripple effects of
Speaker 7: not having your father and your life for twenty five.
Speaker 4: Pointy five years.
Speaker 7: You know, when the decision was made to get me
Speaker 7: out and I was on the phone where her you know,
Speaker 7: one of the things that she said to me was
Speaker 7: I used to sit by.
Speaker 4: She said, I used to sit by the door every
Speaker 4: day and look out the window and wait for you
Speaker 4: to come home.
Speaker 7: That's that's something hard to swallow. What she said, Oh,
Speaker 7: I want you to do is to come home and
Speaker 7: have a relationship with your granddaughter. And the ripple effects
Speaker 7: are very lasting on anybody who has been in.
Speaker 4: Prison, none of us us.
Speaker 7: No matter how good it seems everyone is doing. No
Speaker 7: one comes through the system unscathed. Me having nightmares all
Speaker 7: the time, struggling out here in the world.
Speaker 4: It's real.
Speaker 7: It's not easy, you know, because oftentimes when I hear siren,
Speaker 7: I think that they coming back to still my life.
Speaker 7: I made sure that there's a locator on my phone
Speaker 7: at all times where I'm at you know, when I
Speaker 7: first came home, I was literally calling the lawyers, like
Speaker 7: every hour on the hour, calling other people, just so
Speaker 7: my whereabouts are always known.
Speaker 4: It's that deep.
Speaker 1: People that are listening, I'm sure they're thinking, what could
Speaker 1: I do to help right some of these guys that
Speaker 1: you left behind, who are innocent and stuck in the
Speaker 1: situation that you were in. What could they do to
Speaker 1: possibly help you? Do you have any kind of social media?
Speaker 1: Do you do speaking? Do you have a page where
Speaker 1: people could donate to help you with your transition? If
Speaker 1: that's even something that interests you. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't want to make any assumptions, but what can people
Speaker 1: do to help either the people that you left behind?
Speaker 1: Let's start with that.
Speaker 7: Ralph Stokes, he has a Facebook page in the website
Speaker 7: Ralphstokes dot org. Get in touch with his supporters there.
Speaker 7: For Willie Vessi, you can look up his case and
Speaker 7: get in touch with his supporters and you could write
Speaker 7: these men they are still in prison, Willie Vessi is
Speaker 7: doing life v A. S. E.
Speaker 4: Y and Ralph Stokes has death.
Speaker 7: At Sei Green And any one of you listening can
Speaker 7: make a difference. You can help by writing them and
Speaker 7: reaching out to them and then just start championing their
Speaker 7: calls like I'm trying to do. Get involved on their
Speaker 7: support team, and you know, help get them some type
Speaker 7: kind of justice, you know what I mean. Because everybody
Speaker 7: can make a difference, even when they think they can't.
Speaker 7: They could use their voice to make a difference through
Speaker 7: social media, through other outlets.
Speaker 1: What about what about you? What do you need? What's
Speaker 1: I don't?
Speaker 7: I don't necessarily I'm not looking for a handout, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean. I don't even want to say
Speaker 7: it that way. Maybe that's wrong enough, you know, to
Speaker 7: say it. But there is a trust fund that my lawyer,
Speaker 7: Amy Row set up Amy Row of Washington, DC, Merland
Speaker 7: and you can look it up on our Facebook page
Speaker 7: where people could donate if they wanted to. But I
Speaker 7: have a social media Instagram, Jimmy Underscore, Dennis Underscore music.
Speaker 7: I just like for people to listen to my song.
Speaker 4: You said, if.
Speaker 7: Give a listen, if you like it, you like it,
Speaker 7: you know, hopefully you'll like it, heat know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And I just really want to be a part of
Speaker 7: the music fraternity, you know, earn my keep that way
Speaker 7: you know, it's always been my dream to be in
Speaker 7: a business since I was a kid. And for me,
Speaker 7: I used to see my musical heroes Gladys Night, Bruce
Speaker 7: Springsteening all on the Grammys, and even when I was
Speaker 7: on death row. That was the one time on death
Speaker 7: row anybody could tell you that you know me. You
Speaker 7: could not call me. When the Grammys were on, I disappear.
Speaker 7: I would put on my headphones and I would watch
Speaker 7: the Grammys, and I was in New Yorker LA all
Speaker 7: the time. I would not respond to anybody. I was
Speaker 7: there watching, you know, and rooting and chairing everybody on.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite song to sing? Oh?
Speaker 7: I don't necessarily have a favorite song to sing. I
Speaker 7: just like, you know, whatever comes to my heart, you know.
Speaker 1: Or what's your What do you want to sing right now?
Speaker 1: You want to sing something right now?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 1: The first time, Ibody, I'll say, you said, I say,
Speaker 1: you said, If you don't mind, do it?
Speaker 8: Okay, okay, Bull Through the Hurricane, went through, Firing, Ring,
Speaker 8: Fel Doll, Last Pain, Crazy, the Endsane for you, Woo.
Speaker 4: For you, Woo.
Speaker 8: Nothing Never Rider Bounce always there too, we found never
Speaker 8: once let ship down.
Speaker 1: I was there for.
Speaker 8: You woo.
Speaker 4: For you woo whoo? Who you said.
Speaker 9: You love me?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 9: True, you said love? You said.
Speaker 4: You said you love me.
Speaker 9: I'll be there for you.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 4: What's it's just Jimmy Dennis dot net.
Speaker 7: You could find a single you said, you said what
Speaker 7: you and then the word said?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: Last question? So what would you tell people? Because everyone
Speaker 1: that's listening right now someday is going to get a jury.
Speaker 1: Do you notice and you went through a really crazy
Speaker 1: situation people sleeping through a death penalty case. I mean,
Speaker 1: the word disrespect doesn't even come to mind. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's not strong enough. It's it's reprehensible, it's it's fucking terrible.
Speaker 1: But that's beside the point. What would you tell people
Speaker 1: they get called to jerry duty and they end up
Speaker 1: on a criminal trial. What advice could you give people?
Speaker 1: People listening saying I don't ever want to make a
Speaker 1: mistake like that. I don't ever want to send an
Speaker 1: innocent man to jail. What would they look out for?
Speaker 1: What would be the tips that you could give them?
Speaker 4: The first thing you shouldn't do is worry about making
Speaker 4: a mistake. You should go in.
Speaker 7: There and it has to be like twelve angry men
Speaker 7: in that room. If you take jury duty, somebody has
Speaker 7: to be Jack Lemon or Henry Fonda.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: You have to pay attention to every single thing going on.
Speaker 7: Don't be biased, sit back and pay close attention to
Speaker 7: the evidence and weigh it.
Speaker 4: It is a.
Speaker 7: Large responsibility for anybody to take on jury duty, and
Speaker 7: you should want to because you could be the reason
Speaker 7: that somebody doesn't get real roaded like me, and that
Speaker 7: an innocent man a woman comes home. We don't need
Speaker 7: more Jimmy Dinnis, Damien Echos, William Diez, Jeff Dislicks.
Speaker 4: And the man the knocks and so on and so forth.
Speaker 7: We have to stop it somewhere, and by you sitting
Speaker 7: on the jury, paying attention to all the evidence and
Speaker 7: then weighing it properly, you can be the one voice
Speaker 7: that says this doesn't make any sense, or pay attention
Speaker 7: to this facts and not the theatrics of it all
Speaker 7: that the other side is trying to do. Because that's
Speaker 7: what happened here. A lot of theatrics from the parties
Speaker 7: that big, the DA and the police, a lot of
Speaker 7: theatrics and lies. And there was no way that anybody
Speaker 7: sat on that jury and shouldn't have been paying attention
Speaker 7: to the facts. You have to pay attention to the facts.
Speaker 7: Facts matters.
Speaker 1: That's good advice and I'm sure it's going to help
Speaker 1: people as they go into that situation, which is a
Speaker 1: difficult situation for anybody. I think, you know, being in
Speaker 1: the courtroom and it's uncomfortable, it can take a long time,
Speaker 1: but it's a responsibility we all have to each other.
Speaker 1: I mean, because this could really happen to anybody, and
Speaker 1: you're living proof, you're just a regular person. So okay,
Speaker 1: then I guess the last part now is just anybody
Speaker 1: that you want to think that maybe we haven't thought
Speaker 1: about already, and then any closing words that you have.
Speaker 1: This is a tradition that we have on wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: At the end of the episode, I get to just
Speaker 1: sit and listen, which is what I like to do.
Speaker 1: And first I want to thank you, Jimmy. Very courageous
Speaker 1: of you to come up here and know it wasn't
Speaker 1: easy and to share your thoughts and your experience with
Speaker 1: the audience, So thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward. I'm looking forward to maintaining a friendship
Speaker 1: and I have some ideas you know you were talking
Speaker 1: before about how comfortable the bed is at the Western
Speaker 1: in New York. Well, wrongful conviction is going to get
Speaker 1: you that bed so you'll sleep good, you know, all
Speaker 1: asleep listening to your own show. Anyway, so we got
Speaker 1: that cover. But anyway, so now, like I said, I
Speaker 1: get to I get to shut down my microphone and
Speaker 1: just put my headphones, kick back and listen. So it's
Speaker 1: all up to you.
Speaker 7: I want to first thank you Jason for having me.
Speaker 7: You encountered means the world to me. Your hospitality is
Speaker 7: greatly appreciated. I just want to commend you for the
Speaker 7: work you're doing in the innocence community. It takes a
Speaker 7: lot of courage to do what you do. I want
Speaker 7: to thank Jennifer Thompson. She's been one of my biggest
Speaker 7: supporters and she's a hero of mine. I call her
Speaker 7: my SHEI ro you know what I mean. She's been
Speaker 7: there for me from day one, champion my calls. I
Speaker 7: like to thank all my supporters you know around the
Speaker 7: country that been there for me when I was in
Speaker 7: prison and since I came home.
Speaker 4: Jeff, Melanie, Uh.
Speaker 7: Kathy and Ron and everybody. I want to thank my
Speaker 7: friend my friends have been an instrumental support for me.
Speaker 7: You know, when you get get out, you need support.
Speaker 4: You know, your family, your friends.
Speaker 7: I just want to thank my friends and my wife Corby,
Speaker 7: and my friend Kasein Quade Ski and that due all
Speaker 7: for supporting me Arnold Imported Law Firm, Amy Ryan, Rebecca, Meghan, Melanie,
Speaker 7: Kitty B and James. They did a wonderful job and
Speaker 7: it's because of them that I'm sitting here there like
Speaker 7: family to me and I love them daily.
Speaker 4: And I just want to tell.
Speaker 7: People listening that if you do your due diligence and
Speaker 7: you read a case and you want to get involved,
Speaker 7: don't be scared to get involved.
Speaker 4: Reach out to that person in prison.
Speaker 7: Become their supporter and become their champion, become their voice,
Speaker 7: because a lot of people in prison have no voice.
Speaker 4: And to everybody on death.
Speaker 7: Road, to every man and woman in prison, never give
Speaker 7: up and never give up on you dream, no matter
Speaker 7: what your dreams are. For everybody in the innocent community,
Speaker 7: I don't care if you wanted to be a fisherman
Speaker 7: or a carpenter, go for it and don't give up.
Speaker 4: Never give up, never ever give up.
Speaker 1: This has been an extraordinary episode of Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: death Row EXONERI, Jimmy Dennis, Jimmy, thank you, thank you,
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 hellow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production
Speaker 1: of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company
Speaker 1: Number one