EP 87 Exonerating Alaskans with Jory Knott

This episode contains references to court cases with disturbing details, including wrongful imprisonment and infant mortality. Listener discretion is advised. I'll see you next time.

Exonerees are often asked, very commonly asked, whether, oh, well, you got all this money i mean you're going to be fine right uh there was i forget the speaker who it was one year we had up here but he said it put it really well and said how much would i have to give how much would i have to give you to lose all your formative years you're like like let's use a fairbanks four as an example they're all 17 18 they're in for 18 years i mean how how

much would it costs to get to for you to lose your 20s yeah all the dates all that all the family events the your 30s uh all the way through your fort through to your 40s i mean i don't think there's the cost for that millions a year i mean i don't there there is no way to fully compensate one of these individuals for the formative years that they lost. That was Jory Knott. He's the executive director of the Alaska Innocence Project.

The Alaska Innocence Project started in 2008 under the direction of Bill Oberle, and it took seven years for them to get their first exoneration. It was the Farabanks Four case in which four Alaska Native men were wrongly convicted of murder and subsequently spent 18 years in prison. Jory says that that case involved a number of factors that led to a wrongful conviction, including eyewitness misidentification, incentivized witnesses, confirmation bias, racial animus, misconduct, and bad science.

This was the case that Guy Jory interested in working with the Innocence Project. He was an intern then, but made the decision to go to law school so that he could work there full-time. Studies that consider the number of people who have been wrongly convicted in the U.S. Since the late 1980s estimate that up to 5% of the prison population is wrongly convicted. In Alaska, that would mean about 150 innocent people are in prison.

Nationally, the average person who is wrongly convicted spends 12 years in prison before they're exonerated, And Alaska is among about a dozen other states that do not have a wrongful conviction compensation statute, so exonerees don't get any money following their release. Even convicted felons receive things like re-entry services, recidivism prevention, education, job services, and drug counseling. But Jory says that, despite all of this, he still has faith in the criminal justice system.

Because, for the most part, it gets it right. And wrongful convictions are rare. So here he is, Jory Knott. Welcome to Chatter Marks. A podcast of the Anchorage Museum. Dedicated to exploring Alaska and the Circumpolar North through the creative and critical thinking of ideas.

Past, present, and future. Music. How does someone realistically get wrongfully convicted? Well, realistically, the number one issue is that the legal system is not science. It is not hard science. It is a system that involves people, involves predispositions, biases, and preconceived notions of perhaps how an investigation should go, who is a likely suspect.

Um all these things come in factor from all the way from the beginning of the investigation um all the way through the justice system and the and the uh and uh and trial and criminal the criminal justice system and all the way through the jury um it's we have seen uh i mean there's there's predispositions in the courtroom in pre-indictment hearings uh in bail hearings of just, you know, them wearing a jail, an inmate uniform.

I will say also that doesn't necessarily help the fact of the cause of wrongful conviction is that for the most part, the criminal justice system gets it right. 95% of the time, they're correct. They get it right. I'm not sure if the sentencing's right and all that's right. But they get the correct perpetrator.

So wrongful conviction is rare. But at the same time, if there's been studies that up to 5% of, of our prison population is wrongful convicted and these studies came from no defense attorneys. This is prosecutors, police officers, and judges that were pulled. And they said it's likely that 3% to 5% of people in prison are wrongfully convicted. In Alaska, that would translate to about 150 people. 150 people in Alaska, its guests are innocent that are in jail. Correct.

And that's kind of how that works. Once you get into the system, it's very easy to convict and very difficult to exonerate as well. So the average person that is wrongfully convicted nationally spends 12 years in jail before they're exonerated. How often do you come across bad science that was used in a conviction? That's interesting because bad science isn't evolving, just like day-to-day science, technological advances. It changes.

It changes quite rapidly on the forefront when there's money behind it, but quite slowly when something becomes ingrained and accepted as truth, right? Bad science, in other words, might not have been bad science on the offset. Bad science might actually not be bad science, but it's interpreted incorrectly because it has to go through someone interpreting the data. Okay.

For instance, uh, fingerprint and all going all the way back to the beginning of the 1900s, late 1800s, fingerprint identification has been, you know, toted as one of the tried and true, um, uh, ways to identify an assailant, you know, our fingerprints that are like snowflakes, et cetera, et cetera. Um, however, if, if there is not enough points of reference on a fingerprint used. They can lead to wrongful conviction because there are similarities between fingerprints.

The standard is, I think it's 16 points of reference, and these are like specific points. This is its own expert kind of niche science. But I think 16 is the standard. It used to be eight. There's places around the world where it's less, and it depends case by case on who's actually looking at it. Either way, it's very persuasive to a jury to go, oh, look at this fingerprint.

Look at that one. oh they look really close yeah and and the uh basically the the person who's interpreted the data if they don't do enough use enough points of reference they have led to wrongful conviction there's there's a handful of wrongful convictions from what was thought at the time to be very very concrete uh fingerprint identification okay for instance um other things that science is always ongoing um there's there was a uh report through the fbi and

law and the justice department called the p cast report p dash c-a-s-t a very robust report from the criminal justice system on the federal uh and and they discounted many many sciences going backward um including bite mark um tool mark foot certain footprint uh like foot marks on other people per se like bruises or whatever uh there's been many many discounted sciences that have been discounted in the last 10 years um 10 15 years and interestingly enough after that all that huge

study we got letters from the fbi saying hey you need to look at this case you need to look at this case.

Another one is my hair microscopy is what it was called where you look at a piece of hair and the banding and and look at it microscopically you see the banding and if it's this way it's this person this way it's that person well since dna we found that that hair microscopy is totally bunk okay okay totally false uh there's there's there's many many people who were exonerated because after DNA testing, you know, they were found that that was not their hair.

So, yeah, science is a very, very, it's one of the more intricate.

One of the more intricate sort of fields that we deal with, new science, new forensic science and the change of forensic science. Because for us to find someone wrongfully convicted and to actually exonerate them through our statute, we require new evidence of innocence. Okay. Um, so when, when a piece of evidence is not new, but the science has changed, when is that, when does the change in science become new evidence? So it's something we're always battling up against.

Yeah, that, um, I guess hair follicle science, I had this image come to me of CSI and I felt like, or I feel like that's not even that long ago, you know, and that was such a, um, such a thing with that show is, you know, they're scouring through, you know, a hotel rug trying to locate just the tiniest piece of one strand of hair. And they're like, we got it, we got the guy, you know, but you're saying that that's bunk science.

Yeah. If it's, if it's not based in DNA when it comes to hair or actually most biological evidence, there's even, you know, blood type science was a big deal back in the day. Yes, that, that had some basis, but really without DNA, you don't get to that point of beyond a reasonable doubt that is supposedly the legal standard. What does it look like to find a case that has enough legitimate information pointing to the person being innocent? Well, again, it's rare.

I hate to say it, and it's not that the work isn't thankless or valuable or whatever else but i hate to say it uh our standard of proof here uh in alaska is among the strictest it is okay real yeah it's it's clear and convincing it's new evidence uh new evidence meaning evidence that was not not known at trial nor presented at trial meaning that if the the attorneys did not present it, but it was known and they decided not to present it, even despite the change

in science and everything, that might not be new evidence, even if it shows innocence, right? Okay. So there's, I'll just put it this way. We have a, I've come across a lot of cases where it's all the evidence, the timelines, the testimony, faulty testimony, the testimony that's later found to be false. We have come across a lot of cases where it's likely that they're innocent, very likely, and we have not been able to prove it because of the burden of our statute.

What does that feel like to be looking at a case and in your gut. You know, and from a legal perspective, you can say that this person is most likely innocent, but you can't do anything about it.

Right right and you're right to bring up the legal perspective it's like the gut does go first i mean we decide we are not and by no means mandated to take any case we are an individual non-profit we are not we have no affiliation with the state or the defense or prosecution or anyone any non-profit aclu i mean we're you know we're not we we we basically don't answer to anyone except ourselves and i'm the only paid employee right okay so we have a slew of volunteers uh and interns that go

over these cases and the the test is to let as many people see it that are volunteers as possible right a lot of them have 20 plus years investigating cases i mean we have attorneys even judges ex.

Judges um and you know the the the idea is to hey my gut says this um you know take a look at this actually for the most part we do blind our own blind studies we go take a look at this case with and we take all the memos and all of our own notes out of it and just go you know fresh eyes okay okay if everyone comes back and goes yeah there's something wrong here um that that puts it to a a higher grading system you know higher grade in our system we.

We also include out of state claims because people do reach out to us out of state which we can't do anything for, uh but we have over 800 claims of for for assistance okay um it's a it's a lot of work uh finding one that is innocent in that right yeah i mean. The vast majority is something was wrong with my trial, something that this evidence should have went in. This juror fell asleep. This officer didn't get to do a Miranda warning. Again, that's beyond all.

That's totally outside of our purview. We need provable cases of innocence. So when we do find one that has, has all, everything points to innocence and we look at our legal standard, realizing that it's a heck of a, you know, it's, it's going to be a heck of a, an ass to, to meet that standard.

It's tough. It is really tough. There are cases that we know that we would, could not meet the standard here in this state, but that very likely would have made the standard in another state. Okay. And that's just heartbreaking. I think that's a failure of the legal system where if this would have happened in, say, California did a new—they used to be as strict as us.

They didn't have a newer, a little bit more lenient law because a lot of the cases we come across, everything points to innocence. It's almost absurd that the jury convicted the person given the facts and the testimony.

But there's no evidence no actual evidence to prove their innocence the evidence may have been destroyed we do have a new statute that the prior ed put forward that uh that mandates preservation for for of evidence but that wasn't until the mid-2000s mid-late 2000s um there's a lot of cases we have from the 80s and 90s that evidence was destroyed lost misplaced uh that might show innocence, but without new evidence, without any, any evidence of showing innocence,

um, we can't file the claim and yeah, it is absolutely heartbreaking. Yeah. The Alaska Innocence Project was involved in the Fairbanks 4 case, and that was the case that really solidified your involvement with the Innocence Project, right? Oh, correct. Yeah, this will be an interesting story, I guess, a little bit of a personal anecdote. Well, Bill Oberle was the founding executive director in 2008.

He worked all the way through to 2015 and again many cases where were filed where uh couldn't the statute didn't allow um i won't go into that but anyway the uh yeah he founded the he was the he was the founding executive director in 2008 it took until 2015 for us to have our first exoneration um i started volunteering here and in 2015 when bill was up at fairbanks at trial okay i've been very exit trial with this case it was in september november of 2015.

Uh it was yeah it just i knew the innocence project of them and i thought it would be an interesting fit for my internship and my my fifth career you know i'm just going ahead and trying the legal field out, and he basically threw me the keys uh and and gave me a case he gave me a really big excuse me he gave me a very big case uh to read and uh and you know i was just kind of checking messages and just taking care of the office i mean the day i came in there it was very

trusting okay and uh and within just by december of that year 2015 the deal was made and the uh fairbanks four were exonerated um so bill came back and one of the fairbanks four george freeze came by the office.

And i looked at him and and just i i just it was an absolute life-changing experience for me, uh i hugged you know we we embraced he's just like hey thanks for what you're doing it's like man i i didn't do anything for your case i'm just glad you made it you know uh that solidified it i my internship turned into volunteering um you know 20 plus hours a week just anytime i could find time, and uh bill goes you know you've got the drive and the passion

for this you understand the cause why don't you go to law school and help me retire and take this over okay yeah so since 2015 um i've been working here i actually only started uh started the interim executive director about year and a half ago or maybe two years ago um you know kind of late covid and uh. And yeah, just we had the interim position open and we're hiring for over a year.

And given the demand for attorneys up here, given that we're a very small nonprofit that cannot, you know, that our resources are very limited, yet no one applied. I ended up with the job. I do think I was probably the best fit with my knowledge of the cases and everything else.

Um but and and we and i've been through a couple trials and and things like that um along the the way handling evidence and these these innocence claims in fact in um in 2018 uh i we went to trial on the case that bill gave me that very first day in the office when i saw him and uh the t.j edwards case and that went full circle and we are awaiting a decision on whether or not he will be exonerated. Yeah. And that TJ Edwards case, he was in prison for 14 years for second degree murder

and manslaughter in the death of an infant. Correct. You know, I found that case like you were just alluding to. I found it interesting because TJ got paroled before he could be exonerated. Correct. Um, that this kind of goes to your previous question about new science,

right? Uh, there is, there is a, uh, a very this is a it's a very very delicate subject this is uh the it's it started out as shaken baby syndrome it's then turned into abusive head trauma when shaken baby syndrome didn't quite fit the bill, um it has evolved to include to become a little bit looser um this is very difficult to talk about because you have a dead infant right um but there were this is where science has changed.

In that um there's found to be many different causes uh that might display the same uh symptoms, of what were was always thought of to be a shaken baby case there are now a uh there is science has changed enough and and you basically have to wait until the science catches up and the articles come out and the studies come out and and videotape you know everyone having a cell phone um it was not thought at the time that tj.

Edwards was convicted that a child could suffer a fatal brain uh brain injury meaning swelling uh brain a brain swelling bleeding um in in the brain and uh and retinal hemorrhages in the in the eyes that those were the three symptoms that were looked at as that as points almost almost infallibly to.

Shaken baby syndrome back in 2000 2001 um and and a little bit beyond i mean it's still an ongoing theory um and controversial on both sides yeah um yeah and uh and in some of these though they're just simply not crimes um there's issues of neglect sure there's issues of of uh and neglect could be i mean we've they found that rickets that malnutrition that um that certain things can cause these same symptoms um there's there's genetic diseases there's um

there there's a lot of different ones i'm not going to get too far into the weeds there but it took uh i think he first filed with us in 2008 i might be incorrect with that but i know at least by 2011 tj tj's case was was being looked at by the nss project and he was still in prison at the time.

It took all those years since then in the trial in 2018 for us to, we filed in 2017, the end of 2017, but it took that long for the science to catch up to where we could meet the statutory standard and say, hey, the science has changed enough. There's new evidence of other causes of this. And that's why it took so long to file. And yeah, he was paroled while all this happened. And he's one of the, him and I have become great friends.

He's one of the he's just such a sweetheart um and uh you look back for this case uh you know a big samoan guy and and in the kind of the racially charged late 90s you know given kind of gangs and whatever else it it seemed like the a pretty obvious choice for the jury you know okay um when in fact even all the people that were associated said that oh no tj treats all his kids, he had his own children and did, and took care of others.

He takes care of them better than I do myself, you know, was, was kind of the, the mantra going into trial. Um, and yeah, yeah. The, the new science took some time to catch up there.

Um, interestingly, this came back, this goes way back into the 1970s where they used to before crash test dummies, where they would throw monkeys against a wall.

In a jet propulsion kind of thing and and see what happened for the beginning of seatbelts and safety constraints or restraints and these the same person who did these studies came back later and said oh i did not said this applies at all to children to human children or to shaking babies this is not at all applicable um he came out in staunch support of of uh other causes of shaken baby. But anyway, let me back to the point. That's just a weird historical kind of thing. But yeah, morbid.

Very morbid, right, right. Kind of a dark bit of our past. But Belize was faced with, because in shaken baby cases, it's the last person, right? The last person alone with the child must have done a violent act with the child, not witnessed. Actually witnessed shaken babies is so rare um it's incredibly rare um the shaken baby syndrome.

Kind of uh non-profit lobbying group says this happens 30 000 times a year in in in the united states but like it's rampant um but we it's never witnessed very rarely witnessed um and and bait this baby was baby derek was very lethargic for quite some time before this there was hospital visits there were marks on his head he had suffered some sort of injury before um and so i mean the frustration thing that shaken baby group does goes oh don't don't get frustrated with

a crying child derek was not crying he was lethargic sleepy um you know his head it was hard for him to hold his head up uh he was in in some pain he had sustained an injury and bait but the the prevalent theory back in 2001 2000 um was that the last person with the child had to have done it um melissa had went to work was with the child woke up with the child um and then given um derek to tj to watch which was a normal thing and so they were the two suspects because it

had to have happen immediately, like shortly before the injury, it couldn't happen days before, which we now know can happen, called a lucid integral. But the police officer said, it's either you or him. Either you or TJ shook this baby. And faced with that, I mean, I'll come short of saying, she was an incentivized witness, but faced with that, you really don't have a choice.

And so now I'm pretty sure and understandably, given kind of the interrogation tactics and the science of the time, I would think that Melissa would think that TJ must have done it, which is really, really sad. Again, there may not, it's very likely that there was no crime here at all.

There was just no crime there at all. How often do you come across cases where there are bad actors versus bunk science? Bad actors typically involve, you know, prosecutors that withhold evidence, evidence of innocence, exculpatory evidence is called, which is a constitutional violation. It also involves, um, you know, uh, destruction of evidence or things that, uh, things, issues that a crime scene via detectives or police. Um, it could, uh, yeah, bad actors is usually pretty overt, right?

As you think of, there, there can be mistakes of course, uh, but it's typically bad actors is, has some intent.

Or at least a over uh an oversight of evidence that oh this doesn't really help our case uh it shows you know it puts a hole in it we we shouldn't present this or whatever else or hiding evidence from from defense uh however things have uh things have kind of changed so i mean before bad actors was in was one of the lower factors it was less than 20 i think of the first 900 exonerations that were proven innocent by dna okay uh it was in around 20 anyway uh there's been

a change that was kind of employed through the um wrongful conviction you know uh movement uh the all the different innocence projects around the nation and uh the registry the exoneration registry at the university of michigan which goes through all the nation's um wrongful convictions and and sees what contributed to them and kind of make these classifications there's been a bit of bit of a change in that uh the number one cause of wrongful conviction was always eyewitness misidentification,

45 plus percent of these of cases involved either an incentivized uh eyewitness uh faulty memory um and and it and all these different things that that contribute to that um. And again, proven by DNA to be innocent. Things have changed recently in that they've classified eyewitness lineups and the way that people identify people with law enforcement. Meaning, you know, a photo array, the stereotypical prisoner lineup. What happens with these lineups is they can be suggestive by law enforcement.

Meaning, you know, statements of affirmation if they point to the person they're looking at. You know, again, people in the criminal justice system have cognitive bias and confirmation bias where they get tunnel vision. And they go, this has to be the guy. He's done all these priors. This is similar. It has to be this guy. And so that carries, even perhaps without intent, through their investigation. And when they get in contact with potential game-changing witnesses.

So the National Exoneration Registry and kind of the instance movement has changed this classification of bad actors to include suggestive eyewitness evidence and testimony.

This would also include incentivized witnesses where someone gets a plea bargain because they say someone else did it, even though they may have done it right like the the the basically the interference of law enforcement from that might incentivize one way or the other or affirm possibly affirm one way or the other is now look like as a bad act and now at least just recently per this change of classification bad actors is the number one reason for wrongful conviction and

that is that changes everything you know and now this puts us in a weird pr place where we're having to point fingers and go yeah your investigative practices is what led to this wrongful conviction and i don't care who you are uh you do not want to be told that you put someone in jail wrongfully for for some decades you know yeah it ends up being a very personal thing and it ends up being a difficult.

PR, you know, it ends up being difficult to do the acrobatics and PR to go, hey, we're not pointing our fingers at anyone, but we're introducing this evidence of where you went really wrong in this case, and this is your fault. Music.

I want to get back to tj's case for a minute sure how much time do you think you spent with it oh boy um we still have that case ongoing um we spent months because of availability um it was you know a covet trial finding zoom openings uh and things there was experts from around the nation um we were in trial all the way i mean officially we're in trial all the way from, may 2021 until november of this last year okay so 2023 that that's unheard of trials usually take a few weeks.

We had a lot of issues in this trial that just kept us, and the evidence is so heavy and medically based, difficult terms that we had to educate the judge and everything throughout. I also want to get back to the Fairbanks 4 case.

And that case involved the wrongful conviction of four alaska native men george frees kevin peas marvin roberts and eugene vent they spent 18 years in prison because of what misinterpreted information wrong place at the wrong time yeah this case um and perhaps just so you know down the road perhaps we could get bill to talk about this because this was his case i'd be i'd be happy to set that up um but this case was it involved all the factors it involved eyewitness misidentification

involved incentivized witnesses it involves confirmation bias and racial animus i will even say i'll go that far definitely misconduct and.

And even bad science um i think that's why it is such a landmark case is that uh it it had so many factors that went wrong and the if it weren't for bill and if it weren't for brian o'donohue who's a professor at a now retired professor uh at uaf he put together he was a journalist and he put together a journalism class that studied this case um and they they found a lot of holes further the alaska native community um and alaska native uh tribal leadership were were

just admonished by by this case and as facts came forward um i mean it was so bad that even in trial.

It was mentioned that alaska natives will lie for their own there were 80 plus alibi witnesses for these guys it was pfd night it was a night after pfds there was a big marriage there was parties there was i mean fairbanks was was a glow with activity all four of these men were known to be in different places when this happened i remember one anecdote from marvin who said uh yeah uh Basically, Marvin was out.

He was paroled just shortly before, a few months before the exoneration of the other three. And he went and picked them up from Spring Creek. And yeah, he went and picked them up from Spring Creek. And he said the only time all four of them were ever in the same car was that moment.

Really okay and and here the whole case was based on them four being in the same car and running around doing violent stuff on pfd day and fairbanks you know, um it there was a lot going wrong there there was a lot there's a lot of tragedy out of that too um not only one of the incentivized witnesses who was told to change his testimony from the color of the car from law enforcement and through hours and hours of of uh prodding to change the you

know change the color of the car how many doors it had what the people look like to him and this is all 500 feet away i mean he he was basically convinced to change his testimony to fit the case the confirmation bias of the detectives and he was so guilt-ridden from that, um he he he is now passed um he is no longer with us um the actual perpetrators of the case. Were on a crime spree during those 18 years, and they're all incarcerated again, now incarcerated, the actual perpetrators.

But there were six people who died through Washington, Oregon, and California in those 18 years at the hands of the actual perpetrators while the wrong people were in prison. Wow.

Yeah so we always say we're non-partisan we're we are pro criminal justice we want the streets to be safe we want them to get it right and by doing that you get the right person in prison you take your time on a conviction you check your own biases and you take your time and make sure you get the right person in prison to prevent future crime and the economic harm it costs let alone, trauma that causes throughout communities and families when you have the wrong person in jail,

Did you learn anything from that case that you've since considered in other cases? Yes. I'd say the number one thing is the issue of Alaska Natives being at a higher ratio of incarceration. I mean, you look at the demographics. We do have a study, and I wouldn't mind talking about that a little bit if I had it in front of me, which I don't.

But we did, we had a federal grant that we worked through COVID or just before COVID, where we traveled to all the other, all the prisons and halfway houses and jails around the state, looking for remote causes of wrongful convictions, especially amongst Alaska Natives because of culture barriers and other things that we learned from this Fairbanks 4 case.

We have we got over 120 claims um again given our statutory standard it's very high um but we can definitely report and and this is outside of our mission i will admit but we can report that it looks like inequities in jury evidence how how evidence is taken how people are interviewed there are biases throughout our handling of Alaska Native criminal justice in the state.

And it's led to not only more Alaska Natives per ratio, per population ratio, vastly more Alaska Natives incarcerated, but also much more likely to result in wrongful convictions. So that's the number one takeaway. They are definitely targeted.

Um we found that cultural differences are are could very much be at play with wrongful convictions um just just kind of the clash between two cultures we found actually nationally and through the national uh exoneration registry it's found that uh interview that eyewitness um identification from a cross-racial in other words a say a black person identifies alaska a native or a white person identifies a Hispanic.

It's much more likely to be faulty right okay um this carries on in the criminal justice system throughout and we find specifically with alaska natives uh there's there's not only the eyewitness issue but also like say during an interrogation the the cultural differences are kind of uh, uh become exacerbated um say during a interrogation uh alaska native to a white officer averse their gaze or does not immediately answer the question or isn't adamant about their innocence and argumentative uh

or is you know um um just won't interrupt you know the the officer these are looked at as possible you know like uh possible deception okay uh that in the case of the Alaskan native culture, it's a, it's a mark of respect. It is a, and again, I'm not speaking for their culture by any means, but it comes out of respect for authority and for, you know, the hierarchy of authority and, and respect for the officer and what they do.

I mean, there's just a lot of different things that contribute to Alaska natives being victims of wrongful, of probable victims of wrongful convictions here in Alaska. You know, to your point about differences in cultures. Traditions, and I guess I would add religion, when someone who is not a Christian, you know, enters a courtroom, the jury, right? That's 12 people that is taken from Jesus's 12 disciples. So, although we do have this separation of church and state,

it's still very much a place that is rooted in Christianity. How interesting. There's definitely been, yeah, I think that there's perhaps that's part of that white Anglo kind of tradition carrying through the criminal justice system. I mean, certainly there's a lot of ways, a lot of things that contributed to us getting here where we are. I will say this, yeah, confirmation bias, other biases, they continue to be a huge problem with juries.

What's always interesting to me about these wrongful conviction cases is how much public perception can change in these kinds of cases. One minute they're calling for prosecution and jail time, and then the next they're calling for justice. They being, you know, the public. What do you think is the cause of all that? Is it errors in the initial police report? How the media reports on it? Is it mob mentality or is it something else?

You know, that's interesting too. I mean, given our times, we know how much coverage can change things one way or the other and how just kind of divisive and partisan things are.

Definitely at two different camps. uh also you know that i think it's that the political climate as well as are having an adversarial system makes it very very it's very easy to point fingers right um another thing but i i do think the the craving for uh perhaps sensational sensational media given a difficult really difficult case um i worry about yeah framing that in a way that that reflects an early parts of the investigation right like i

mean if you're hearing in the news and the press is asking you questions and i'm saying this from perspective of law enforcement or a da or whatever but if if you're having to report an answer to the community and the public through cameras and all this and kind of this mob mentality like we need to find someone who did this you want to have an answer for them yeah um so i i you know i'll i'll acquiesce to your uh to your thoughts there to a certain degree there's the pr side of

it we try to stay as you know uh again as neutral as possible Okay. We are just another fact finder. We're a truth seekers, right? I watched this documentary series on Netflix about some of the successful cases of exoneration. The innocence project has worked on over the years and something I noticed on. Not an insignificant amount of the exonerees is that when they get out, they go to nature. You know, they kind of get away from other people.

In your experience, how often is that the case? There's something about that. You have something there. There's exonerees throughout the nation that we've seen that, yes, get out to nature. They end up getting out fishing, et cetera. We also notice a trend of people who leave the state that convicted them. They're perhaps triggered, to put a light term, when they see a police officer. The whole environment of their life before they were exonerated led to them being wrongfully convicted.

So they are just not ever really comfortable. um that being said the more you have a sense of community that's supporting you through your wrongful conviction and family the more likely you will probably stay with them um you know and wherever they are uh getting out to nature itself though yeah i don't know uh it probably as far away from any sort of prison or incarceration institution as possible makes perfect sense to me Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

I think this next question is a little bit, a little bit more philosophical, but what do you think it does to a person when they're wrongfully sent to prison and they spend years and years and years of their life there?

Hmm. So you're saying kind of from a philosophical standpoint. Yeah. yeah well i could tell you this um and it is of course a case-by-case basis but.

Interestingly one thing i've seen and i just i went to a conference a recent conference in new orleans it's a wrongful conviction um or it's the innocence project network conference it's basically all the individual 501c3s go and meet and all the exonerees are invited to come to the conference as well we had 6 654 years of wrongful conviction in one room from individuals that did show up the fairbakes four did not show up this year um so that's just from it shows you just how

heavy and how widespread i mean these years lost are years lost from many many different people that's just the people that were spent time in prison,

let alone the economic impact. But. I'll say this i have never met a more humble a more thankful a more respectful group of people in my life um if it happened to me if i was wrongfully convicted i think i would be a pretty bitter person and somehow some way every single person i've met that's wrongful convicted is absolutely the opposite they're thinking and this is i mean i don't want to you know this is just my my general thought i don't want to put any words in

anyone's mouth but their thinking is if they give them bad you know bad thoughts bad negative emotions while they're now out of prison they're giving the system years more time sure yeah that makes sense and therefore they just seem like every day is a new day it's it's a new it's a new lease on life they uh the only time i will say this though the only time that i see them get a little bit of fire is when they bring up when they start

talking about compensation okay you know and you can hear some of them be like oh man we're gonna you know you you deserve this you deserve this and it's true i mean the one question that exonerees get asked very commonly is. You know, oh, well, you got all this money when you got out or whatever. And again, Alaska does not have a wrongful conviction compensation statute, so they get nothing here.

We can go back to that later if you'd like. But exonerees are often asked, very commonly asked, whether, oh, well, you got all this money. I mean, you're going to be fine, right?

There was, I forget the speaker who it was one year we had up here, but he said it put it really well and said how much would i have to give how much would i have to give you to lose all your formative years you're like like let's use a fairbanks fours example they're all 17 18 they're in for 18 years i mean how how much would it cost to get to for you to lose your 20s yeah all the dates all the all the family events the your 30s uh all the way through your fort through

to your forties i mean i don't think there's the cost for that, millions a year i mean i don't. There is no way to fully compensate one of these individuals for the formative years that they lost. One example, George Freese, the man I hugged in 2015 after he was exonerated, when I first started volunteering here, he went in prison with a new baby, a new baby daughter. He came out and his daughter had a baby.

A great so he had a grandbaby who was the same age of his daughter when he went in so all those years that were lost i mean birthdays um you know all the graduations everything i mean i think i think that affects them to the core and they but at the same time they're not bitter you know they're always looking for how they can give back uh the number one force very very apparent from that conference we went to with all the exonerations from around the nation the exonerees

themselves are the biggest force behind the wrongful conviction movement okay they're they're joining they're you know joining local um political office some some are some are becoming da's some are becoming i mean throughout the throughout the movement these people are giving back and in a very big way and they feel like there's there was one instance a guy in new orleans an exoneree in new orleans who when he got out and he got his compensation package he gave a million dollars to.

The organization who was working on the case of a friend of his he left that that he met in jail that he knew was also innocent and that million dollars helped exonerate his friend it's kind of the leave no man behind kind of thing, right? No soldier behind. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was very interesting and it's just mind blowing how, how great these people are and just, they're a great force for the communities. And generally when these exonerees, you know, they're exonerated, they're out.

I don't see them or hear them, you know, if I'm watching a documentary about this, or if I'm listening to a podcast, they don't really talk about their time in prison. And I wonder if that's because of the focus of the media that I'm listening to, or I'm watching, or if they consider those years lost years.

You know uh i i have definitely talked to uh enough exonerees uh to agree with you on that um it takes a lot to get to the point where an exoneree is talking about the day their days in prison okay um i you know the the friends i've made that i can i do consider friends i have heard about it and it's a constant battle i think it's that they're working through it um i think therapy is very important i don't again we don't have anything in our mission dealing

you know with that with therapy go after this conference and looking at other organizations we need something like that um we need a re-entry kind of thing that that other prisoners who were rightfully convicted get right like up here no no wrongful conviction statute no services no anything for an exoneree whereas a a convicted felon who gets out of prison will have re-entry services.

Uh things to prevent recidivism meaning returning to jail um education job services uh drug counseling etc etc an exoneree in alaska gets nothing not a but not a bus pass the exoneree in alaska gets nothing so yeah i i. I think that it's kind of one of those always forward, you know, never backward kind of things. I mean, if they kept looking at the injustice that had been bestowed upon them, they would not be living the fruitful life that they hope to live.

I mean, there's no doubt they don't take any, it's like a cancer survivor or something. They do not take any day for granted. And I look this up. It costs $60,000 a year to pay for the imprisonment of one Alaskan. And I did some quick math on this and for the Fairbanks four to spend 18 years in prison, it cost the state $4,320,000. Right.

And they received no compensation after they were exonerated they that's correct per our state there was there was an action um just you know there was an action and this was very recent um an ongoing trial of of the fairbanks four versus the city of fairbanks and the and the alleged bad actors of the uh that investigated the case okay some of the detectives and what have you the officers uh there was a settlement there um for three of the four um a substantial settlement um but,

look look where we are now it's it's nine years later right um why wasn't there anything they're waiting for them they didn't even get their pfts from when they're convicted because the pfd uh, law does not allow for payback for while you're incarcerated it just doesn't say have the little card out that says but if you're wrongfully convicted we can back pay you right yeah they Yeah, so they were fish out of water for nine years.

If it wasn't for their strong family, well, some of them had strong family units and Alaska Native support. And then, yeah, after nine years of just barely getting by, you now all of a sudden infuse them with a bunch of money.

Um who i don't i don't have an answer for that i don't know what's going to happen i'm concerned um it is not the right way for us to compensate our wrongfully convicted alaskans there should be more a much more uh robust kind of uh i don't know uh some kind of system to where they can reintegrate healthily i mean they came out of at the same time it's just so many drastic ups and downs when you're exonerated right sure yeah like when they they came out they were

rock stars they though they were you know they did events everywhere they went to the innocence uh project or innocence network conference down in san antonio after that year there's a picture of them for with amanda knox in front of the alamo you know wow okay they went to a basketball game with the spurs and and met uh coach popovich who's also a pretty big uh advocate for wrongful conviction justice okay i mean and and throughout the state they're just celebrities right.

But they were broke um i mean at the same time we're going hey can you help us with a fundraiser you know can you show up and do i mean we were part of the part of the same issue you know the celebrity and the big you know from prison to you know the paparazzi kind of thing and then, everything fades you know you have to get back to your day-to-day life these guys never had an iphone never had a cell phone they didn't had it you know

the internet and the facebook stuff and the social media stuff they didn't have any of that i mean some of them went in without, their license never had their license driver's license they're just kids you know yeah and uh and so yeah there just has to be you know the the big spike of fame and then happen to look at the wall and, and take this, this obvious PTSD home with you from all those years in prison, and then to wait nine years to keep your hopes up and hope, you know, um,

and to finally get a settlement to where these people aren't necessarily held accountable in front of you, you know, but you, you get this cash cow and then, then what do you do? Right.

It's just not moderate. It's, it's just it seems like it's a recipe for disaster in my opinion. Well jory those are all the questions i have for you i want to thank you for, you know spending this time with me today and of course you know the important work you're doing for the alaska innocence project i appreciate it cody um yeah we keep trying to fight the good fight. Anything we can do for, you know, a wrongfully convicted Alaskans, we are their only boys. Music.

For more information about the Anchorage Museum, visit anchoragemuseum.org. This podcast was produced by me, Cody Liska, for the Anchorage Museum. With additional help from Julie Decker. Chattermark's music is... Music.