How the Innocence Project Works

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Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and our newest co star, Jerry Rowland. Yeah, Jerry's been getting people like her more than us now, Oh yeah, can we just say that? Yeah? Yeah, Guatemala debut there like she's getting married proposals, um. She has been it's been suggested she should get her own Facebook fan page, and she's taken to smacking me on the bottom whenever I walk past her and she tells me to go get her some coffee or something. Chief Yeah,

chief guy. Yeah, So it's weird. Jerry's kind of blown up. Yes, it was hard to fit in this room with her head in here. At the same time, I know it's a little warm in here, isn't it. Yeah, it's hot, So Chuck, Josh, Um, would you and I had a rare opportunity recently, a perk, I guess you could say, of working for Mother Discovery. Ure. Um, we spoke to Ms Paula is On. Yes, uh, legendary broadcaster, journalist, newswoman, newsperson. Yeah,

and um. We were approached by our marketing people who said, hey, you guys want to talk to Paula is On And we said, of course, we want to talk to Paulazan. When do you want to talk to Paulson? They're like, you don't need to get all defensive and we're like, well, would you And it just kind of went on like that for a little while. Um, and then finally we ended up on the phone with Paula is on and

just started talking to her. She's got a show on UM Investigation Discovery I D for those of us who work for Discovery, UM, and UH, it's called On the Case with paul is on. It's on every Sunday at ten pm. She'll she'll shill and UM. We we started talking to her about true crime. Right, Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean we get interview UH setups like this. Sometimes we were kind of like, I don't know about that, but I'm way into courtroom drama and crime and really

a good hour long show like that. So I was way way down with it, right and UM she started talking about like, if you've gotten the impression that we weren't really certain what we were going to do with the interview, you were right. Um. But she started talking about, UM this uh one case that she did an episode on UM that the Innocence Projects factored into, and that

kind of rang a bell. But we started looking into it, and UM we remembered that last October there was a big kerfuffle about the Innocence Project UM out of Northwestern University's Medill Journalism School UM and the I think the Cook County UM chief prosecutor, maybe the state's attorney even stronger, more potent UM wanted to subpoena all of the notes and the grades of all the students on this case.

And it was just a big stinky deal. Yeah, because the deal was as these were journalism students as opposed to law students, So there was it's a bit of a fine line there between. You know, journalists aren't supposed to go up their sources telling these journalists they have to student journalists they have to turn over all their information, and so it's kind of a big deal as to where the singing's upright, and uh, as far as I know, it's gone kind of cold, right, Yeah, I think so.

But it was enough to spur our interest in UM looking up the Innocence Project a little more and we realized, ding ding ding, this is uh it, this is what we're going to do it on. Yeah, this is just a cool program. Yeah, I've heard of it before. Basically, the Innocence Project, if you haven't heard of it is they are those when you hear about a a murder case where someone's been in prison for twenty years for a murder care or rate case or doesn't really matter

what kind of case it is. As long as there is DNA evidence that they can dig back up and retest with modern methods, they can exonerate some uh you know, an innocent person. Yeah, some mugs who have been in jail for a long long time. And these are the people that you see on the news that's like, yeah, I was in jail for twenty eight years and now

I'm a freeman. And thanks to the Innocence Project right. Um. The the group themselves, uh were It was founded by a couple of guys named Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Newfield. He was on the o J team for a while. Wud he Yeah, yeah, um, and uh they founded This project is part of the Benjamin Cardoza School of Law Yeshiva University. Right And basically what they do is poor people, and by poor I mean both senses of the word

literally and figuratively. UM who have been incarcerated wrongly get really top notch quality UM legal aid for free UM from law students, mostly law students, but then in the case of Northwestern University, it can also be journalisms to UM who start pounding the pavement, interviewing old leads, coming up with new ones trying to find the person who actually did the crime. Yeah, it's based in DNA evidence, but the students actually do a lot more investigating as

if it was just an open case. Yeah, and it's not only DNA. It's pretty cool. Out of the d n axoneration cases, there's been two hundred and fifty four since the first one in But out of those two fifty four, um in a hundred uh one hundred and eleven of those cases, the actual perpetrator has been found from the DNA investigation. Yeah, and that's something that Check likes to point out. Obviously he's hanging his hat on that, right.

But the so you say, well, why do you need a group of do good or Scooby Doo law school

kids to go do this? Uh? The reason why you have to do is because you virtually need a law degree or to be well on your way to earning a law degree, to navigate the kind of um legal waters it takes to file an innocence appeal, uh, post conviction appeal saying I'm actually innocent and I need you to go conduct some DNA tests that weren't conducted before because my courter, pointed attorney was lazy, or because there wasn't DNA testing before, or because a lot of the

original evidence was destroyed, which we'll get to, which happens way more than I was comfortable with. Yeah. That I think is the key takeaway for me from researching the Innocence Project is that our legal system is fundamentally flawed in a lot of ways as right. Yeah, in more than one way. You're absolutely right, as anybody who saw them Tom Selick movie An Innocent Man knows. Cops aren't always on the up and up. Yeah, a lot of

times you'll get it. I mean a lot of these cases that we reviewed, and we're not knocking cops, believe me, or detectives, but there's often a lot of pressure on these high profile cases to find somebody, and if there's some material evidence there or some eyewitnesses that may or not be too credible, sometimes there's a little coercion. Sometimes there's a snitch and all of a sudden you have

somebody that's going to prison for something they didn't do. Right. Um, there was this a really big landmark deluge case um out of the l A. P D. I think in two thousand where one of the guys on this elite crash unit. UM was busted with six pounds of stolen cocaine that he was dealing. Yeah, and he started dropping

bombshells like nobody's business. He and other people on the force UM have been shooting innocent people, in framing them with guns, stealing drugs, dealing drugs, stealing money, framing people, and as a result, between a hundred and a hundred and fifty convicted felons were released. They had their their convictions overturned because they've been framed. So it definitely happens. It's not just in Los Angeles and it's not just

in Denzel Washington movies. Right, you kind of get the idea that there's a systemic, kind of informal procedure for railroading somebody that you are pretty sure it is guilty, but you don't really have a slam dunk case. So

well that's the case, which we'll get to. Yeah. Remember how like they found out that several people had been convicted in the same manner after this guy, Yeah, which is kind of chilling, like because you're seeing how the investigators and the prosecutors down in Brevard County functioned in like the early eighties. You know. Um, so, Chuck, let's talk about how people um end up wrongfully convicted. Right, Yes, there are many ways that this can happen, but here

are a few. Eye witnessed misidentification is a huge one. Um, it was a factor. They've got some stats here, which is awesome. It's uh, this kind of testimony has been a factor in seventy of post conviction DNA exoneration. So when they have let someone free with the Innocence Project or you know, maybe not with the Innocence Project, at

a time, there has been misidentification. And one of the big problems is uh involving race cross cross Racial identification is usually the culprit, and they found in studies that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own. Right. It's actually it's not Uh, it doesn't even have Other studies have shown that it's not linked to racial bias. It has nothing to do with racism. It's um, we are brains aren't wired to

recognize people of other races easily. Um. So it's called the other race effect, and uh, it's it's uh, it is. It can be very problematic in UM court cases. So uh, yeah, I can. I can imagine that is what you said. Yeah, that's that's a lot. That makes it the number one UM right for for wrongful convictions. Right. The second one, Josh, is invalidated or improper forensic science, and that comes in second at it played a role in fifty of the cases,

and that's basically sloppy work to a large degree. Well, not just that. I was surprised that most of the stuff you see on cs I hasn't been scientifically vetted fully according to the Innocence Project. Right. Um, you've got things like scerology, which is like blood typing or UM semen sampling, that kind of stuff, fluid, sticky, gross stuff, right, Um, that is vetted. That is hard science. But they're saying like, um, firearm tool marks, like shoeprint comparison. Uh what else, um,

hair microscopy bite marks. Yeah, so all this stuff is basically based on good guesses rather than a hard science, which is one reason why the Innocence Project UM and others rely so heavily on d n A. It's it's cutting edges as it gets. It's the best we have right now, and it's gotten way way better since it even started. Uh, using DNA samples. So UM number three, buddy is false confessions and incriminating statements and about at

a time that's been a factor. And in thirty five of the false confessions, the defendant was eighteen years or younger and or developmentally disabled. Yeah, there's a kind of a there's a famous case of UM. A woman named Victoria Banks who was in prisoned for two years in Alabama. She UM was a mentally handicapped woman who confessed to

killing her newborn child. UM. The thing was, no one had ever seen this child or seen her pregnant, and she actually underwent a physical exam and they found that she had her tubes tied at the time that she supposedly was pregnant. She never had a kid, ergo, she never could have killed her kid, and yet she was still in prison for two years before she was exonerated and released. Two years is that's pretty good for you know, and you don't want to lose two years. But I

think what was the average? Yeah, the average amount of time someone has been in prison and then released by the Innocence Project is thirteen years, right, And I was also that's something that I've always kind of wondered about, but never got around to looking into why somebody would

make a false confession. I understand being mentally handicapped or being under aging, either being badgered or misled by over zealous cops forst basically like, look, just admit to it and things are gonna go a lot more easily for you, you know. But there's another factor that's involved. If you're an indigent or poor um defendant and you don't have money to make bail. When we did our bail podcast, right um, if you don't have money to make bail,

you're sitting in jail until your court date. And if your court date is six months from now, right right? Uh? And they come to you with the plea deal and say, hey, we'll let you out in three months if you if you cop to doing this crime, which one are you gonna do? Or cop to a lesser crime? Maybe sure that you still didn't commit, right, So what are you gonna do? Sit in jail for three months or six months? Well, you're you're probably going to go for the three month things.

So that's a wrongful conviction right there too, based on false testimony or false um confession. Well, and if you're pouring indigent. You might not know all of your options. Um, you might not be the most educated person in the world. And uh, you know you're between a rock and hard place many times. So number four Joshua snitches snitches snitches. Nine per scent of the cases involved dirty, rotten snitches.

And I say that because most times are many times these snitches are flat out lying and they're trying to get themselves out of trouble in some way. Um, as was the case. And finally we've arrived in Brevard County, Chuck. Um. Yeah, there's a guy named Um William Dylan and he was I think like eighteen seventeen something like that. Um down in Brevard County, Florida, lived down there. He was a bit of a pothead. Uh, and he already had a drug beef against him. Um, but nothing heavier than that

right now, I don't think so. Some guy named James Dvorak uh winds up debt. He's found beaten to death on the beach at Canova Beach, Florida, and um, the

cops are trying to figure out who did it. Well, Bill Dylon happens to be sitting in his brother's car hanging out smoking a joint with his brother, Um when the cops come up and ask him what he's doing there, right, And then they get a little suspicious when he knows a little too much about this case, even though the case has been all over the news for five days. And for some reason, the the cops and the prosecutors liked William Dillon for this murder, so they started basically

investigating him to make their case around his guilt. Yeah right, um. And one of the things that they used was a prison snitch, UM who said that on the night Dylan was booked for this murder, he was in the holding cell and Dylan said I totally did this and here's how he did it right, And no one else witnessed his confession. It was just that one guy and UM. Coincidentally or not. After this trial Dylan's trial, the rape

charges against the SNI were dropped by prosecutors. Right twenty seven years later, I think the same snitch came into the courtroom for Dylan's exoneration trial or hearing and he said, I made this up. I didn't make it up. I was told to read this um by a cop, by an investigator who gave me the story and I went ahead and did it, and I'm very very sorry, right but chuck, Uh, well, here's Paulson talking about it. She

covered the case there here she is. It gets it gets even um more outrageous than that because another woman who testified against Bill Dylan, who was his girlfriend, h ended up admitting that she had had an appropriate relationship with the lead investigator on the case and made it clear that she testified against Bill Dylan because she thought that a potential federal drug charge she was facing was gonna get dropped, so in exchange for having this relationship

with the lead investigator, her charge would go away. And um, and then you know when a sum total of four or five witnesses testified and then recanted their testimony and number of times as this woman did. So, Um, here's this poor guy, you know, basically convicted on live lies. Indeed, Josh,

and you want to hear some more. The night of the murder, Uh, there was a guy driving down the road in Brevet County, Revard County, and he told investigators that he picked up a hitchhiker and the hitchhiker was wearing a bloody yellow T shirt that had the words surfeit on it. He later told the investigators that the guy was sweaty and had blood on his shirt and blood smeared on his leg and shorts. He agreed anyway to drive the hitchhiker to a tavern a barged three

miles away. And this is what's the most startling part to me, believe it or not, In that three mile journey the two men had, there was an oral sex act committed between the two of them, between the guy who just picked up the stranger and the stranger who was covered in sweat and blood. Yeah. What undermines only guy's credibility is the fact that he was blind in

one eye. Um, And he still picked William Dillon out and said this is the guy, even though he described the guy at first as having a mustache and meaning six ft Bill Dillon didn't have a mustache and he was six ft four. Yeah. And in fact it said, which is I love this part too, It says he's physically unable to grow a mustache. Yeah, which he's pretty much just slammed dunk. As far as that I witnessed testimony goes, still, that guy coupled with the prison snitch,

who really kind of shut the case. Um, and the girlfriend who slept with the lead investigator. Uh. There was one more big play year in this and he was a guy named John Preston and he was a scent dog handler and he and his dog har ass too. Yeah, who has nothing on her ass one? Um he they were on on um, they were on Bill Dylan like White on Rice. Yeah. I always pictured him when I

was reading this as the dude from First Blood. Remember the old guy with the dogs, go get him, Brian dunnahy, no, no, no, the guy that brought the dogs, remember through the woods, and he brought the dogs to chase after Rambo the colonel. Huh No, he was a civilian. He's an old Cadra that had some bloodhounds. John Rambo. Anyway, that's who reminded

me of. So he brings her ass too, and they conduct a couple of tests, one of which, well we should say real quick that while in the car after the sex act, the guy I guess took his shirt off, which oh yeah, you know, and uh leaves the shirt and the guy in the guy's car that picked him up, the guy realized that the shirts in there and just throws it in the trash police come the next day pick up the shirt from the trash. Right, which is pivotal because we should probably just cut to the chase here.

Bill Dilon sentenced, He's convicted, sentenced to UM twenty six years, right or more? He served twenty six years UM and was he okay? So he serves twenty six years. In that time, the fingernails, scrapings, UM, other kind of biological samples are just completely destroyed, loss, thrown away. The only thing remaining from this case, which was in nineteen e one, long before any DNA testing was going on, UM, was

that T shirt. Thank God for Bill Dylan. Bill Dilon starts representing himself per se UM and he's trying to navigate the seeds of UH post conviction appeal UM, and he keeps getting turned down because he's not following you know, legal formalities that kind of stuff. UM. Finally the Innocence Project heard about him because they had exonerated another guy who had been convicted based on a prison snitch, fake eyewitness testimony, and John Preston, the dog handler who turned

out to be UM. As the Arizona Supreme State Supreme Court put it, a charlatan yeah. Well, can I say real quick what the test was that he did with the dog? Yeah? I can't believe they convicted a guy based on this. He got harassed too, and they made him sniff the T shirt and then they made him sniff some paper that Bill Dylan had held in his hand, and I guess harassed who reacted in such a way where John Preston said, that's your man. Harassed two smelled

the two things and linked them. He was convicted on a dog's sniff, which, again we should say partially dog scent identification has never been proven, no and scientifically. And later on when the dude called him a charlatan, they did some testing and the dog failed. Her ass too, failed all these tests and test. Yeah, because you know he's got nothing against the guy, right and like I said,

he has nothing on her ass one. So Bill Dylan sprung right, Um, because of the Innocence Project and because of the T shirt. I don't want to steal Polzans thunder Chuck, I assume you don't either, right. No, No, let's let her take us home. On Bill Dylan. The key piece of evidence that actually freed this man was DNA evidence and miraculously, a T shirt that had been worn the night of the murder by the alleged murderer. Um was kept in a courtroom by some court reporter. Um.

This is long. You know, years ago they didn't do DNA testing and she just happened to keep this piece of evidence. Uh. William Dylan's attorneys were able to test it and guess what it wasn't his blood on the shirt. UM. So that that was the key part of overturning uh this this murder conviction. But you know, once again, he saw his countenance as he goes across the country telling

people the legal system work. I'm a freeman today. Well, it worked been in his case, I would argue very slowly and cost him twenty five years of adult living that he could have enjoyed. That's unbelievable. I can't imagine anything like that. So Chuck, you like to think that, Okay, Bill Dylan, who by the way, um now gives lectures on how the legal system actually works, or else he wouldn't have ever been sprang. Yeah, that's hard to believe.

He's not a better man, is on? Right? You? You would like to think that this guy is you know, a very he represents a very rare case. The evidence is that that's not true, that there's actually a lot of people in jail who are actually innocent. Right, Yeah, I've got a few stats just from what the Innocence Project has done thus far. Uh, there have been two hundred and fifty four you might have said this post

conviction exonerations thanks to DNA in thirty four states. Um, Seventeen of those actually we're on death row or had served time on death row. Yeah. One guy came with him five days of being executed. Actually, that's crazy, could you imagine? No? No, Uh, two of the cases closed by the Innocence Project, we're closed because of lost or missing evidence. So these people might be innocent too, but there's nothing they can do about it because the evidence

was destroyed. Um. The the Innocence Projects d DNA exonerations, it's not the only way you can be exonerated. No, right. Um. I read a study, uh that was written in two thousand four, and it was about exonerations from I think, uh to two thousand three. And Um. The author of his paper was saying that there that death row inmates in two thousand one hit a peak in the us

representing one quarter of one percent of the entire prison population. Right, but death row inmates represented of the total exonerations for the fifteen years prior from four. Okay, So what this guy was saying was, Okay, there's two ways of looking at it. Number one, that death row inmates death row cases are actually more likely of being um wrongly imprisoned because of the pressure to catch somebody for a horrible crime and kind of thing. And he's saying that's probably

correct to an extent. But he's saying the other hand, is probably correct as well, and that there aren't necessarily more death row inmates who are wrongfully imprisoned then in the general prison population. If that's true, right, that of the total population of exonerations that's true, then between Night nine in two thousand four, there should have been twenty eight thousand, five hundred non death row exonerations rather than two ye so potentially that many people are are rotting

in prison right now, and thousands of people unbelievable. Another thing to dude is the Innocence Project is part of the larger innocence movement altogether, which is fifty nine affiliated law schools and programs that work with US and UH. A guy in Texas, David dow As a as a law professor at the University of Houston, and he's seen that in the last five years there, actually, he says, way fewer death cases and prosecutors are asking for death less and less because of the work of the Innocence

Project and juries know about some of these exonerations. So he thinks beyond the exonerations that people are starting to become a little more careful and what they're trying to prosecute here, and well they should. I mean, we're talking about people's lives, you know, absolutely, let alone being incarcerated for a couple of decades. YEA. How they decide is they get thousands of letters from inmates that are sitting in prison that you know, say that they're innocent, and

they say they range. The letters range from really formal and well written to one that came in in two thousand that said, simply, I am not the man who did this rape. All I want is to go home. He couldn't even like spell, and he did go home. His name was Ricky Johnson and a goal of prison in Louisiana, and he was freed thanks to the Innocence

Project and DNA. So they have basically a bunch of volunteers, uh, including a high school teacher and a c l U veteran, former journalists and a poet who plow through these letters that they get and determined try and determine if they merit. And they don't do it on whether or not their heartstrings are pulled. They do it on whether or not there's actual DNA evidence still out there that they can work with, because if not, they're kind of, you know,

fighting a larger battle. The problem is there's only UM only about half of all of the states have UM laws in place that that say you have to preserve evidence after a conviction. Right, in most cases, a conviction is made and it gets thrown the evidence gets thrown

away or most of it does. Uh. And there's also even in states where you have to preserve evidence, either there's a statute of limitations where you're basically are just like, okay, it's been five years and the we we can throw it out and make room for more evidence, or there's no kind of penalty or UM I guess punishment for somebody who does throw away or destroy evidence from a case. Yeah,

they passed. Didn't Congress pass something on that? Yeah, but it's called the uh the Justice for All Acts, the most metallica of all the acts. It was passing two thousand and four, and basically, UM it offers financial incentives to states that have programs where UM evidence is is maintained, and then they withhold money, uh from from states they don't have these programs. So it's a pretty flimsy carrot and stick when you're talking about something as important as

wrongful incarceration. You know, I've always thought that the metallica thing. I always saw the Ride the Lightning Act was the most metallica. It's it's close. Yeah, so uh innocence projects huh Yeah, I think I had one more interesting note here. That's right, Uh, Barry Scheck, he is what he really wants the feather in his cap out of this. Eventually he wants to prove that a person has wrongly been put to death after the fact clearly. Oh, I'm sure

he'll eventually be able to do that. And he's not done that yet. He came close a couple of times, but it has not yet happened. Yeah, and Chuck, look for a podcast from us on Capitol Hounishment sometime. We're gonna get into that. Yeah, man, So there's tons more on the Innocence Project, Like we're just this is just scratching the surface. They actually have a database of every single um DNA exoneration case person um. You can read about them, you can read about the work they're doing. Uh,

it's just really interesting valuable stuff. Right. You can also watch the um Bill Dylan episode of On the Case with Paula is on on the Investigation Discovery website. Right one. I went and checked it out. It's from season two. It's called Killing and Canova Beach. Uh. If you go to uh investigation dot discovery dot com and search Canova Beach and in their handy search bar, it'll bring it up and you can watch it. And it's pretty cool. Yeah, and thanks to Paula's on for class in this turkey

up a little bit. Seriously, this episode of stuff you should know. It's brought to you by go to Meeting the Affordable way to meet with clients and colleagues for your free thirty day trial. Does it go to meeting dot com slash stuff. So chuck listener, Man, Josh, I'm gonna call this brightening days for our listeners and taking names. This comes to us from Becca, and Becca is a Facebook regular. She's cool, cool lady, h Hi, Josh and Chuck and Jerry. Of course, she says, you know those

days when everything you touch think seges utterly and spectacularly wrong. Yes, that was my day to day. Here wass Becca's day. She gives a short version here the highlights. I woke up as awoken awakened at two am by the teenage son of the friends that I'm currently staying with to save on rent because I'm sleeping on a couch where his friends need to crash. I'm not sure I get that,

but when is she's sleeping on a couch? Interesting? Since I had gone to bed in my own room, Apparently I started sleepwalking again because I woke up on the couch. Get yeah. I managed to make about four and seventy two stupid mistakes at work while also being slided, ignored, and or flat out insulted through email and Facebook throughout the day. Hopefully not no, no. Then I was off for my hour long drive to work to go to a nursing home until ten pm. She works at a

nursing home, so she can get her nursing assistance license. Well. After five hours of being pooped on their figuratively and literally, I was finally the last student to finish my rounds as everyone had to wait for me. Was quick to point out that is having a bad day. Yeah, that's a day. At that point, I was totally wrecked. Didn't even make it out of the building before I burst

into tears. Hour and a half drive ahead of me, I could barely see through the tears, and I was beating myself up for fear that I made a huge mistake by quitting my teaching job and changing careers. As I just happened to grab my iPod. You see where this is going. No, not if we made her feel worse than this is gonna be most pressing email lever. By the time I was finished with how midnight Regulations work, I was actually laughing at your discussion on the number

of syllables in squirrel squirrel. Remember that one syllable squirrel squirrel. If you're from up North, it's squirrel, two syllables. Apparently, if you're Woody Allen, it's two syllable. Yeah he's from up North, New York. I can honestly say, I can't think of anything else that would have redeemed my otherwise crappy day. Thanks for making me laugh, guys for giving me something to do while I wait to put my scrubs in the dryer so I can do it all

over again tomorrow from Rebecca. Thanks for writing in. Becca. At the very least, you're quite a go getter, so that's fantastic and we're glad we could turn that day around. Yeah, leaving her job as a teacher to work in a nursing home, so it's like she's covered either way on the good Samaritan front very much. So. If you have an email about a band day, chuck or a good day, well that's a good one too. If you have an email about the greatest day of your life, send it

to us. We want to read it. Uh, you can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it along on its way to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you