Trisha Meili

wrongfully convicted. So today we'll be talking with Jason Flomm, who hosts and produce a podcast literally called Wrongful Conviction. With Jason Flamm, I've listened.

put it herself, quote a fighter all her life. Tricia eventually moved to New York City, where she worked at the financial firm Solomon Brothers, where she often worked late on the night of April nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine, Tricia Miley left her apartment for a jog just before nine pm and headed for the park. That night, a group of about thirty teenagers from East Harlem reportedly entered Central

Park from the park's north side. Police had been getting reports of attacks against cyclists and joggers by roving bands of teens. According to one police officer, a school teacher who was beaten with a lead pipe quote looked like he was dunked in a bucket of blood. At ten fifteen pm that night, police arrested two of the teenagers,

Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, both fourteen years old. Raymond and Kevin named thirty three other teenagers who'd been out that night, and police would eventually arrest three more, Antron McRae fifteen, Yusef Salam fifteen, and Corey Wise, who was sixteen. All five were black and lived in East Harlem. At one thirty am that morning, police found Trisham Miley in a ravine three hundred feet off of one hundred and

twenty second Street. The first officer who found her said, quote, she was beaten as badly as anybody I've ever seen beaten. She looked like she was tortured. End quote. She had lost seventy five to eighty percent of her blood and had suffered brain damage and internal bleeding. Her left eye socket was fractured so badly that the eye had been dislodged. The only parts of her body that were left unbruised

were the soles of her feet and now. The interrogation of the five teen boys took an intense turn, lasting nearly twenty four hours. The boys later claimed that the officers told them that if they would confess, they could go home, and they did submit a videotaped confession, although one of them, Yusef Salam, gave a written confession that he refused to sign. There were no lawyers or parents present at this interrogation. The boys quickly recanted their statements,

but it was too late. At a press conference, police announced that they'd found the perpetrators, and their names quickly got out to press. Many news stories presumed their guilt. About a month later, the same day Trisia Miley woke up from her coma, Donald Trump took out full page ads in all of New York's major newspapers calling to

bring back the death penalty for the teens. Miley described her attacker as a young man with stitches on his A detective consulted local hospitals for a man matching that description. He was given the name Mattia Rayas, a seventeen year old who worked in a bodega near the crime scene. The detective never followed up on that lead. In the years that followed, Rayes would go on to rape at

least two more women. Meanwhile, the Central Park Five, as they came to be known, were convicted of crimes ranging from sexual abuse to rape to attempted murder. Despite the fact that none of the boys could pinpoint the location of the attack, and all five came up with different incorrect timelines of the attack on Trisha Miley. There was also a staggering lack of DNA, physical or forensic evidence connecting any of them.

already completed their sentences. Collectively, they sued the city and reached a forty one million dollar settlement in twenty thirteen. And so what actually happened to Tricia Miley? And what does the wrongful conviction of these five young men of color tell us about the flawed and bias justice system used to find them guilty.

is wrongful conviction. And we're now Jesus of over forty million lessons and growing, so join us, and the stories are every week is mind blowing. So yeah, So I'm glad to be here with you all and excited to do this interview. Let's let's get it on. Let's go, let's roll line.

I wanted something to read. You know, there was no there was no phones to carry around and read everything on it back then. So there was an article in the Post that I was obviously meant to read. It was a story of a kid named Stephen Lennon who was serving fifteen years delay for a non violent first defense cocaine possession charge in a maximum security prision in New York State, And I was like, would you say come again? Now? I knew not thing about the drug

laws at the time. I knew a lot about drugs because I had been to rehab and I had my own issues with substance abuse. But it just blew my mind because I was like, he was thirty two. I was thirty two. It could have been me, you know. I was like, you know, he had been in prison for six eight years already. I had been sober for almost eight years. I was like that the roles could have been reversed, you know.

on speed dow. Yeah, and long story short, I got to take the case pro bono. Six months later, we end up at a court room in Malone, New York. I'm sitting there holding the kids mother's hand. They bring him in in shackles like he's freaking you know, the night stalker or something, right, mass murderer.

crime here and there. There's no wave, there's no It's all hype designed for clickbait and selling newspapers and getting politicians to be able to do things that we the public really don't want them to do. Right. So it's all a very sick, sinister, cynical, and cruel plan, but people fall for it. So the Center Bark five happened at a time when there was actually a significant amount of cime. There were eight or nine times as many

murders every year as there are now. It still wasn't Mad Max like they would have you believe, but it was a different vibe in the city and people were a little bit on edge, and this horrible crime took place in Central Park, So this got everybody up in arms, right, and the cops went wild and just decided to arrest five kids of color, right, young teenage boys.

a disgusting circus. And the fact is the authorities knew that they didn't do it, And if they didn't know it right off the bat, they knew it real soon after, because first of all, they had every reason to know that there was one perpetrator, even just from the fact of the grass was wet, there was one set of footprints, there was one you know, bodily fluids from one person, not five right, five, Yeah, And there was no indication that any of these kids were there, but it didn't matter.

They were good for it, and so you know, they got them to falsely confess, which is a surprisingly common phenomenon. Twenty nine percent of the first one hundred and fifty DNA exonerations about false confessions. And there's no reason to think it's changed since then. Right, So this is this is a very common phenomenon, and its madness because everyone thinks they would never confess to a crime they didn't commit. But everybody has a breaking point.

children did. So two things I want to say about the Central Park five. One is because the prosecutors willfully ignored the evidence that showed that it was a single perpetrator. And even though that guy was right on their radar, right, they were investigating him for another very similar crime at the time that this happened. This is this guy, what was his name, Ruiz ray Is rey Is right, Rayes,

So this guy had committed a similar crime. They it should have been the first place they looked was this guy, right, But they just chose to persecute these kids even after the blood work came back, which was weeks after they had been arrested, and showed that none of them matched right, none of them. It could not have been any of them. And they knew this, and they didn't fucking care. So what happens is Reyes of course gets away with it, because don't forget, when the cops frame an.

doctor salom use of Salam. Now he's a doctor. I'm not a medical doctor, but he's a PhD. He's running for city council, which is going to be a great turn of events.

call many of them, you know, family to me. You know, Amanda Knox calls me big brother. And Michelle Murphy is literally like my niece out at Oklahoma. She did twenty years of a life sentence. And I have so many really really wonderful relationships with you know, the Rerenzo Johnson. There's just so many of these people are just they're my freaking heroes, and they make me want to work

harder and smarter, and so that's what I do. I make speeches sometimes that I say, you know, I've had a lot of number one records, but I've never had one that's as good as walking somebody out of prison. I walked Nelson Cruz out last Thursday in Queens. It's an unbelievable feeling. It's so wonderful. So you're exactly right. Event these are people who are just the most graceful, gracious, optimistic, time hearted. There's no bitterness. I'm like, how is this

even possible? And you know who said it best, John Huffington. John Huffington did thirty two years in Maryland, sentence to death and proven actually innocent. Prosecutor has been disbarred for framing him, one of only five that's ever been disbarred for framing an innocent man. And he's at it like this, as somebody asked him, man, why aren't you bitter? And he looks at him and he goes Man. That's why the rear view mirror is small, but the windshield's big.

So back to cent Foary five. So what one other thing I wanted to say about that? And they're not called the exaggerated five. And this is I'm gonna. I'm literally i have my hands in the prayer position. I'm begging the audience. If you get picked up and brought in for questioning, I don't care what they're questioning you for. Okay, they could be questioning you for mowing your lawn the wrong way, right, whatever it is. Don't say a word except your name, and I want a lawyer, and then

stop talking until your lawyer gets there. And that's all you do. You can say, am I free to leave? You might well be. And if you are, leave, don't stay there. Don't try to be helpful. Don't I know you might be innocent or this. That doesn't matter because they're allowed to lie to you. No, never mind if they use violence like they did in such a Part five case, and that still happens. Physical violence is still a thing, and at least it's a perceived, very real threat.

So in America they can lie to you in the interrogation room. Not in other Western countries. They can lie to you, and they lie to you about lying to you. Right. They'll say, look, Rosia, you seem like a nice lady, but you know, we got your fingerprints on the knife. We just got it back from the lab to your fingerprints. What do you expect us to do?

where they're guaranteed to get worse. And if you go into these institutions with challenges of that nature, you are not able to follow the millions of rules and you know, orders that are being thrown at you. So you end up getting deeper and deeper into that hole. When then right into the actual hole, as they call it, right where you're going to be twenty three hours a day, you know, in a five by nine foot cell.

Why are they not allowed to have light? Right? Yeah, And so these kids were getting crazy and they would like literally like scratch a hole in the wall. Right. So they ended up taking all of that away and left these kids basically in a bare concrete cell with nothing in it and no light. So they're sitting in the dark, like what are we talking about, like the Count of Monte Cristo sounds it's got yet get in the un wouldout, you know, would go crazy if they

knew about this, and hopefully they do. And you know, I heard Amanda Knox on a podcast recently talking about how you know, people who are in our prisons and jails, if they're there, especially if they're there for a violent crime, it's almost impossible not to argue that they have some sort of something's wrong. Right, there's wires that aren't connected properly in their brain. Something happened to them, as in any cases they had childhood abuse. Right, hurt people, hurt

people hurt people. Hurt people know that. I mean, we know the crimes. There's crimes of opportunity, there's crimes that are caused by and this is the crazy thing. And I've been preaching this in New York where our mayor is running wild, you know, taking away the programs that actually help people and giving all the money to the cops and then lying about a crime wave. But you know what causes those kind of crimes is desperation, right

when you have shoplifting and things like that. And what stops those crimes from happening is hope.

because das have massive and virtually unchecked power. So when the DA's race in your area has happened, especially if you live in a smaller community, but even if you live in a big city, not that many people vote in those races, your vote matters a lot. And so look into this candidates. It's not that hard, you know, go to a paper that you trust in your area.

There are very few to go around these days, but if there's one, or ask somebody who you trust, so you don't have to do all the research yourself if you don't want to. But usually it's a pretty clear cut choice and vote in people who actually care about these issues and who aren't out just pretending that this is just some sort of weird scorecard and that these people that are the defendants are just there to service

their political ambitions or their career goals. And that's unfortunately the way a lot of prosecutors operate, not all of them. So judges races DA's races things like that, and then what we have to do on a more macro level. We have to educate people, and we created a show called Wrongful Conviction, Junk Sign and Junk Science. Is I

learned so much listening to it. I don't host that one that was hosted by my friend Josh Dubin, and on Junk Science, we teach people about how these junk sciences lead to wrongful convictions day and day out all over the country, Like these things are absolute nonsense, and yet they're allowed in courtrooms in all fifty states every day.

My point being that that's question once you understand that these sciences are not real, that CSI is a fictional show that doesn't have any relationship to reality, and the same is true of most of those other crime shows. Right, they're entertaining, sure, yeah, yeah, I know people who play a drinking game when they watch Lon Order Lawyers a group of lawyers, and every time there's a constitutional violation, they take a shot and they don't even make it

to the first commercial breakcause they're all asleep. I mean, these shows are unfortunately giving people this false sense of security that these forensic people are accurate and these sciences are working and the authorities are getting all the justice that you want, and the bad guys off the street, and you can sleep safely at home. Everything's good. So you know the idea that science constantly evolves and that things we know now we didn't know before. And then

textbooks are rewritten and new protocols are established. But lall looks backwards. Science goes forwards. Law looks backwards. A judge will have somebody in their courtroom and they're saying, you know, well, it's a bitemark case. And then you'll have a lawyer like an innist's project lawyer like Chris Fabricat, who wrote this fantastic book called Junk Science. If you're a book reader,

read Junk Science by Chris Fabricat. He's them in and say, well, we've proven in scientific study after study that bitemarks have no bearing. Like, no, there's not a human being alive who can tell you from a bitemark whether it was you or a vet. They can't even tell if it's an animal or a human, or whether it's a bitemark at all. And yet somewhere in this country today there's a guy in a lap coat up on a standing. I'm a forensic dis that pathologist, and I'm telling you

this is a vets bite mark. There's nobody else that could have made this bite mark. And that's the way that and the jury is sitting there going, oh my god, well that she's guilty as hell.

And then you've got to remember that it's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, as supposed to be beyond a reasonable doubt. But those principles are just words why our system operates right now. So those are some of the things that people can do to help stem the tide of this scourge of wrongful convictions.

of them. And then you know, often we're able to exonerate people, although it takes a long time, and that's why we have to stop these things from happening in the first place. Even the best case scenario, it takes a long long time, even with a great team, even with an innocence project, innocence projects all over the country. I'm on the board of the New York Anessis Project,

which is the original one. So the other work that there's the micro and the macro, and the macro work is you know, arguably the most important work, because the Embassis Project works to change practices and to change laws in order to help make the system fairer and better for everyone and make us all safe. In the process, as we talked about before, by making sure that the wrong person doesn't go to jail and the right one

for lacke of a better word, remains free. So you know, that involves working on changing eyewitness procedures and changing you know, forensic practices and changing the man I mentioned before, Chris Fabricant, the author of the book Junk Science. I'm gonna plug it again because I want. I think he's the Strategic Litigation Director. It's a position that I funded in honor of my dad when he passed away about eleven and

felve years ago. Some of the work he does is Chris will take him in individual case of someone who was wrongfully convicted, like Keith Allen Harward served thirty four years on a bite mark case, and then when he's exonerated, he'll go and use that case to help drive policy change or try to get legislators to pay attention, because you know, when you have an actual human being, it's harder to ignore it.

dollars of his settlement to the Innocence Project. And Atron is a loving husband and father of six and now lives a quiet life.

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