Racial Bias

We all took the same of of office. We're all bound by that common commitment to support and defend the Constitution, to bear true faith and allegiance to the same that you faithfully discharge the duties of our office. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. From Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio,

this is Sworn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. The reason why we have free publication vacation is because we want to create productive citizens. We want to teach children how to contribute to the communities. We also want to teach them about how to manage conflicts. We are trying to keep our society going. So the way that a system provides education to its children is symbolic of what it

expects from its children. If you are a six year old and this has happened, who is handcuffed at your school for throwing a temper tantrum by a police officer and booked that school, district, that community, Our society has made a very clear statement about what we expect from her. You wouldn't expect to hear that happening to a preschool or because who would do that to a preschooler? Who

would do that to a child? We valued children, We recognize what our time and energy invested in them will mean. But that isn't nearly always the case with black children. Hi. Everyone, Today we're going to talk about the ways prejudice and

even racism can factor into the American justice system. This, of course, is a huge topic, but we've had the pleasure of working with the Georgia Innocence Project to hear about their cases and the ways that they see racism and prejudice play into the legal system and society as a whole. People are working every day to fight these biases and to create a more perfect system. But like all of the topics we cover on this show, we

aren't there yet. And I hope the stories and the expert as you hear from today will help shed at least some light on this particularly troublesome aspect of the justice system. We spoke with an axonoree here in Georgia, Calvin Johnson. Calvin shared his story with us, his story of being held in prison for sixteen years for a crime that he did not commit. My name is Calvin C. Johnson, Jr. And I'm the sixty first person to be asserated in

the United States of America. That there is first person to be asonerated in the state of Georgia the DNA technology. I was charged with the charge of rape in Clayton County and Puton County, Georgia. Back in these counties sit side by side, and these rapes took place with a close prosinity of each other. Similar try action. They were positive the same guy committed bo pries. We asked Calvin how he got involved in this case in the first place.

Why did police think he was a suspect. My dad said, I opened up the can of worms and I put myself in that position. What happened to me was not right. It was wrong, but I wasn't a perfect individual, and I had some runners with the law and I had committed burglary, and that's how I got on the radar. There's nobody thought but my own I made a mistake as a young man and leave me. I learned from it. On the day that they arrested me. I remember it was a beautiful day. It was in the spring, and

I was coming home. I had been to work that day, stopped by the gym, and I was living with my parents at the time, so walking up the street and my mom rode by and I jumped in the car and she gave me a ride that went home, and no sooner than I got inside the house, there was a knock on the door. I got a little strange. Even when I got on my mom's card, something felt strange that they's just some didn't feel right. As soon as I got in the door, it was a knock.

Doom doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. I got rushed by police officers, throwing on the floor and cuff and it took me off and threw me into a cold, dark, damp self by myself. I had no idea what I've been charged until the next morning, and then they told me. They said, you're being charged with charged great, and I was basically shocked and surprise because I'm like, hey, I didn't ripe anybody. I figure. I said, well, they're gonna

realize that made a mistake. They're gonna let me go, and I'm gonna go home just a matter of time. At that stage in my life, I basically believe that justice. I brought up in the middle class family and middle class household. My father used to be uh he was a first black state senator in Ohio, is also a lawyer. My mother worked at the college. You know, I thought, hey, you know that everything was gonna be just fine. But

it didn't happen like that. They put me in a liveline up person picked out somebody else side and after David to that effect. So I'm thinking, wow, okay, hey, I'm going home now. I mean, I got all the sight. No, it didn't let me go. So then they had another person that came in. It was after they had several people, and this last person supposedly picked me out. It seemed some kind of strange in my opinion. They went ahead and took me to trial in Clay County. And first

of all, we had a preliminary hearing. That's when they asked questions. My lawyer asked questions, like, you know, how was Mr Johnson identified the lady who was the victim? She said that well, it was identified from photographs. He asked with what kind of photographs were the color for the black and white and she said that they were color. So later on the police officer came in asked him, said, well, did you show the victim of serious of photographs for

identification purposes? And he said yes. He said, do you have those with you today? He can't, we see him, and he pulled out a series of black and white photo. I'm like wow, I'm sitting there shaking my head and saying, okay, I know they're gonna let me go now, they're gonna realize they made a mistake. But it didn't. It didn't happen. I was wearing a full bear back then. She didn't say anything, but mustache had a mustache here since I was a teenager. What's going on here? This is back

in nineteen three. In three they want to use the DNA technology. So the blood sapple came back old positively. I believe that's that's the most common blood type there is you might be a positive and guess what, they say, you're guilty because you're all positive. But the hair samples came back and they did not match me. They matched somebody of African American ancestry, but they did not match

Calvin C. Johnson you. So I'm like, hey, I'm all over again, Like whoa, I'm going home now that I get all exp but they still don't let me go. They indicte me, now that's coming time to go through the jury selection. Maybe three blacks that they could selected and give a take a little but of course all of them were struck. So I ended up with all white jury and the victim was white, and I'm a black man. What are my odds? What are the chances?

And I tell people all the time if it had been an all Chinese jury and it would have been a Chinese, are all Mexican jury and the Mexican victory, what are the odds? The odds are totally statis. Striking jurors because of the color of their skin or any protected attributes like gender or race is a huge problem and a big example of the ways that biased and

prejudice can creep into the criminal justice system. Everyone is entitled to a trial in front of a jury of their peers, and it must be a fair and impartial jury. The concept of peers means that you need to account for diversity. There are now methods in place, a type of check called the bats and challenge that can prevent a biased right like the one Calvin had, and we'll go more into that later in the episode. They didn't listen to anything, goes emotional things. You go to the court,

get in there. I have all this evidence, told my innocence alibi testimony because I was at home with my parents. My employer comes and he shows my employee idea and testify that I had a full beer. Fact at the fact that the fact that brought out, But it didn't make any difference because that one dramatic moment. But they say, as the person that committed the crime in this courtroom today,

and they're so, can you point that person out? Of course they turned around, that a tear coming down to their cheek and they point that Recolt me and said he's the one, and the jury found me guilty. I was sitting to light life in the Georgia penitentiary there a year later, I did go back to the the court again for the foot County case, because remember I said there were two cases, and in Booton County it was

exact similar case. I gotta understanding and brought up my character and everything, and they brought up the fact that I already was convicted and so the odds were totally against me now, but there was so much evidence point towards my innocence. This jury here, which you had to make up of seven blacks and by whites, came back with a not guilty verdict. But even though they came back were not guilty verdict, I'm still in prison for

Clayton County for this case. I spoke with Molly Palmer, a lawyer and board member for the Georgia Innocence Project. She's familiar with Calvin's case and can speak to the ways she sees biased and racism play out from a legal perspective throughout the justice system, and in Calvin's case in particular. My name is Molly Palmer. I am an attorney in Atlanta, and I serve on the board of directors for the Georgia Innocence Project. I asked Molly what

inspired her to start working on wrongful conviction cases. I was really shocked at the fact that wrongful convictions happen and the prevalence with which they happen. I was a young, impressionable law student, and you go to law school thinking you're gonna be part of what they call a justice system.

I ended up going into what's essentially, at the time a small, cramped basement office with a bare bones staff and hardly any resources, and we were tasked with identifying and communicating with potentially wrongfully impress and men and women in this the criminal justice system here in Georgia and in Alabama. At the time, we covered both states. I think it was pretty harrowing to realize how many potentially

wrongfully imprisoned men and women are behind bars. The estimates are are somewhere between three percent and five of all people who are incarcerated are wrongfully imprisoned. I think the system operates from a history of structural racism. But we see these racial disparities in the system, but they're all a product of this legacy of racial injustice that essentially started with slavery and this idea of a racial hierarchy. There was a belief that black people essentially were inferior

and they've benefited from slavery. Even after the formal abolition of slavery, this thought persisted into convict leasing and this idea of African Americans being presumed, they being presumed to be criminals. And so what we see now in our current legal system is that the idea of the burden of proof or the presumption of innocence applies totally differently based on race. We see that people of color, in particular African American men, are presumed guilty. They're presumed to

be criminals from the time their children. We see disproportionate stops, frisks, arrests, We see in sentencing that these men are sentenced too far longer in prison than are their white counterparts convicted of the same crimes. And I think the way that we over incarcerate disproportionately affects communities of color as well. There's a huge collateral effect to communities, and that can be discounted either and when it comes down to exonerations.

Roughly cent of the US population is black, Roughly forty of the prison population is black, and almost sixty percent of all d nasarrees are black. I think that Calvin Johnson's case is a great example, and what we saw in his case is something that we see far too often. Essentially, it's a case of eye witness misidentification, something that we see I think in about sevent of DNA honorations, but of those involved cross racial identification, and Calvin's case is

a prime example of this. We looked at eyewitness testimony and the problems with cross racial identification in the last episode, and Molly is right, it is one of the most common attributes in wrongful conviction cases everywhere. Calvin was considered the suspects, the prime suspect, and I think what we saw in his case was devaluation of human life. It was a rush to judgment, and we see that with individuals of color on a level that we don't see

with white people in America. There's a quickness with which he was identified and the finger was pointed at him, and he was going to go down for these primes. Despite a patchwork of partial identification shans similar to Calvin's case in Louisiana, thirty of their axonorees had trials of less than one day, so we see an incredible swiftness in convicting young men of color. The brevity of that

kind of procedure shows just how careless we are. And I think what it shows is that a lot of these men, when you really think about it, it's not as simple as they're targeted because they're black. They're they're targeted because we don't care who the actual perpetrator is

because he's black. We as a society have not moved away from this idea that inherently, if you're African American, you're dangerous, and so a suspect standing before a jury or a judge who's African American almost satisfies it is inherent bias and allows us to render a verdict. I asked Calvin about the impacts of his conviction on him and on his community. It was it was hard because it broke my family's heart. Broke my mother's heart. A couple of months after that happened, she just she had

a stroke. It was too much strain on her because she couldn't believe it. Part of my family, my naturally file appeals and so forth. And there I am sitting down to one of the hardest working camps in the state of Georgia. I call it institutionalize labor. You call it what you want, but it's all of this is a formal institutionalize labor. It was a dangerous place to speak. Nobody at this camp had less than twenty years and we should work all around schwamp waters. And this is

in South Georgia. You can't even eat your food. That's cover your food before you can put it in your mouth. I'm seeing moccasons. I'm saying rattle snakes. There was a violent society that I was forced into. I had to make an adjustment. I had to be tough, the hard in my heart that it changed my attitude and I wasn't probably the nicest person in the world that during those years, because they had a lot of frustration inside of me. I mean, there was nobody who I could

really talk to about my emotions. So years go by, years go by. I remember, you know, they wanted me to get into this program called this sexual offender program. Being involved in the sexual offender program might be okay for somebody who's the sexual but in order to complete this program, they want you to sign and the mission of guilt. Now, I just came to a conclusion that Rabb died. I just rebber die in prison and then just to walk out, I would not have a life

at all. My name is Ebony Howard and a senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. I work in Alabama focusing on issues related to criminal justice reform, specifically juvenile justice. Our work tends to focus on the impact of the justice systems on black and brown people and other people of color. Ebony Howard is also the

voice you heard at the beginning of the episode. She and the organization she worked for, the Southern Poverty Law Center, raise awareness about prejudice and hate crimes across the country. Ebony's work has a strong emphasis in juvenile law, so I wanted to speak with her about the ways the legal system is set up to interact with some children more than others. The justice system as it operates is a continuation of a system of slavery using black bodies

towards capitalism. Even after you have the Civil War, you still have a backlash to it. And then you continue on and black people go from being enslaved to sharecroppers, and then you have the Civil rights movement, and so

they are definitely gains there. But if you see enslavement is still happening in some form or the other, because even once civil rights are established and black people can vote and women can vote miraculously, you have a prison system that is overwhelmingly filled with black people and also brown people, and you see that black and brown people are getting sentence at different rates. How is it possible that black people and white people can engage in the

same conduct, but yet black people get longer sentences. It is because that same value system that says that black people are other black people are inferior, carries through because it is woven throughout our history. It is woven into the American fabric. People say, well, black people engage in more crime than white people, Latin X people engage in more crime. The answer is that black and Latin X people are targeted far more than white people. We see

that over and over again. We see that with stop and frisk, we see that with the charging practices of district attorneys. The reality is that you can't say that black people are more violent because the data bears out that people are being charged for the same acts but getting different In US, it is and the same thing with our education systems. Why is it that when you look at the presence of police officers, and mostly white

schools are integrated schools. You see that the officer just kind of stays tucked in the back and you don't really see him or her. But in mostly black schools, the officers are there to police students themselves, not protect them, but to police them. That is because when the establishment looks at black children, when the establishment looks at black adolescence, they don't see children, they don't see teenagers, they see criminals.

And so we train throughout this education system for incarceration. I asked to have any to explain this idea called the school to prison pipeline and what it means to be exposed to the justice system at a young age. I have met children in high school who were arrested and maced and booked for getting into a fiet school. Years later, I encountered that same kid at like age

seventeen in an adult jail. I see the pipeline. I see how it moves, and I see how the way that this system is run, the way that the values that it's based on directly impact black people. I wish people knew what it means for people to be involved in the justice system. So the collateral consequences of being arrested, even if your case doesn't go anywhere, if it's dismissed, if it's a fluke, if you are arrested and fingerprinted, the state has your identity, they have access to you.

Every time a criminal act occurs and they're looking for whoever did it, you are in the pool of people that they will go to first. Apparently we have decided that the way we want our justice system to work is that we don't just lock people up. We have to punish them. So the punishment isn't just being locked up. The punishment is whatever comes with being locked up. So you'll hear people say often listen, they get what they get.

That is the consequences of breaking the law. You see, let me be clear about what the actual consequences are in an out of them a prison. Right now, Somebody is being raped. Somebody is sick because they have diabetes or some kind of chronic illness, and they are not getting the care that they need. They are dying. There is a seventeen year old in a jail seeing foul, horrible things that will forever change his or hers brain.

When you talk about they get what they deserve. The punishment is having your liberty taken away from you, the unseen punishment that people don't allow themselves to imagine. It's just absolute torture. If people were to allow themselves to imagine it, like to play it out in their head like a movie, they wouldn't be able to live with it. And I feel like that if more people did, they would understand how something drastically has to change with the

way that we run this justice system. In Alabama. There are a couple of ways that kids can be tried as adults. One of them is called transfer. It is when a child under the age of seventeen can be charged with anything, and if the prosecutor makes a motion, then the juvenile court judge can consider that motion and

then transfer that child to the adult court. In making the decision about whether or not a child should be transferred to the adult court, the judge has to consider a set of factors, but one thing that's listed there is the child's demeanor. So when you talk about something like demeanor, you've opened the door for all kinds biases to live out their lives. So he's there because he's

accused of doing something wrong. Perhaps he doesn't want to make eye contact because he's scared, and the way that his fear manifests itself is to look down, and the way that his fear manifests itself is not to speak up. And he's wearing the clothes that he's wearing because that's

what everybody in his neighborhood wears. He comes from a cultural context that the judges and policymakers who are in positions of power don't understand and fear, and so he's in this situation where you're expecting a fourteen year old to translate for you who he is when you're the adult in the room, like you are the one charged with ensuring that you don't do harm to this person, little pete, who are supposed to be thinking about how to best serve not just kids, but people who are

involved in the justice system, people who are involved in social services systems. Those people who are running those systems cannot get out of the ingrained racist biases to see people for people. I wanted to hear more about the effects of the justice system on youth and what happens when young people are put in the system. Early on, I spoke with Ashley Wilcot, a juvenile court judge into Cab County, Georgia, about the ways she sees racism in

her work with youth. I'm a child welfare law specialist. I've practiced juvenile courts for many, many years. I now serve as a judge into Cab County Juvenile Court. I do a lot of consulting and speaking nationwide a lot about the education behind our child welfare system. A lot don't understand it, aren't familiar with it, and so my goal is really often to educate about it. So I just want to share a few statistics to set the stage. So as you all probably have heard or no, the

United States has the world's highest incarceration rate in the world. Right, nobody is probably surprised to hear that there's clear racial impact as a result of that. Approximately of Americans incarcerated are non white. Average American I think it's one in twenty chance of ending up incarcerated. That's the average American. If you break it down into race, Latino was one in six rate of incarceration or chance of going to jail, African American was one in three, and then the white

average was one in twenty three. Those numbers apply equally to youth who are tried as adults. The big news is juvenile incarceration rates have been declining, and from my perspective with criminal justice reform, that's a good thing. So, for instance, between two thousand and ten, the juvenile incarceration rate dropped by forty so that's significant. But if you compare that to school discipline policies and what you see

happening in the schools, that's going the other direction. So for instance, since two thousand, the number of schools suspensions has increased by about ten percent, So you're seeing in schools that the discipline policies are increasing what happens to these kids and increases how these kids then touched the criminal justice system as a result of what's happened in school as of twenty fifteen, and this was five years ago, and it's still true today, and it's it's staggering to

me that this is true in our society, but it is. Black students are three times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students, especially when you take that into account with the fact that studies have shown kids who are suspended are more likely to either be held back a grade or to drop out of school. And when those things start happening, kids they need to have purpose and be busy, start getting into more trouble, even if it's you know, just school pranks or something they

think isn't that bad. They get arrested, they go to juvenile detention. It starts that process of ending up in the pipeline to prison. You Know, the thing that I really see that bothers me is I'll just give an example, there's been a lot of shoplifting. I've seen a lot of shoplifting cases um in the last i don't know, year to two years. I really feel like when they get arrested, the way they've been treated at them all as a herb of kids is different if they're African

American versus even if they are Asian or Caucasian. Right Like, there's this whole approach to me that feels very very different in terms of these are bad kids and we have to arrest them, versus it's bad behavior that kids

are engaging in. The Thing that infuriates me the most, not the most, but pretty high up there is when you see these little kids who have been through all kinds of trauma act out in the school environment, and then you see them get tasered, or you see them actually getting arrested with the handcuffs, or you see them

thrown to the ground and they're half my size. They've been through things you could never probably imagine, and as a result, we need to respond in a trauma informed way so that the response that they get can help them de escalate instead of escalating and ending up in the system. M m M. Here's Calvin Johnson explaining how he finally found a path towards exoneration. I got to the point where I felt like I was just about snap, like I was about almost lose my mind, like a

rubber band being stretched. And then later I heard about DNA technology. I said, DNA what some guys have gotten out based on DNA technology. There was a guy he ushould come into the prison, his name Jim Honor. He was a prisoner legal counseling project, and I told him my situation. I said, you don't have to believe a word I said. He said, let me just skeeve my transcript and you read it. He said, man, this is the worst case of injustice that I witnessed in my

entire time of the legal profession. They didn't have a lot of preserve evidence at that time, and they were actually going to destroy the evidence, and somebody, for whatever reason changed in mind and he kept the evidence. So he found an extraordinary motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, which means that DNA technology didn't exist, and now this is a new technology that could possibly prove that I'm innocent, and if that's possible, I should

be given a new trial. And then it defunded the project. So I spent time writing letters and writing letters to different people in different organizations seeking help. A friend that I grew up with when I was a child wrote me about the inn this is project in New York City and they looked at it and they said, wow, this is unique. Here. We got one jury that gives one verdict, another jury that gives another verdict is like

putting two rats indications on that experiment. Evidence was tested and they almost used all the evidence up and it came back where it was inclusive. Basically, they would telling me, is is that Mr Johnson, you got a choice again, Well, we just wait till technology gets better five teen years from now and reach us was left because there's such a small amount, it's probably gonna be used up, he said.

But there's one other option. He says, there's a guy in California named Dr Blake, one of the best ristic scientists in the country and maybe in the world, and said, we can't send it to him, but the choice of yours. I said, send it the thought to play, and it came in November of nineteen showing that it was impossible that I could have committed the crime based on DNA technology.

Now all of a sudden, they want to do their own tests State of Georgia, so they want to send it to the GBI lab, but do their own tests. They do their own tests and guess what the results come back? The saying I mean from the very beginning, I told him that that with God's my witness, you know, one day the truth will come out. And in nineteen ninety nine, jif the truth came out, I walked out of the President Freeman and beginning to do life. Started my life all over. Guess what I got out and

had to pay bills. I asked Calvin if he believed that racism and bias impacted this case and helped cause his wrongful conviction. I do I do believe that race had a percent to do with with me being arrested. District attorney, he was very powerful in this position in Clayton County at the time, and it's like they could care less about me as an individual. It's sad to say, but I think because I was black, I would look down as being less less of a human being, and

so they didn't care. But like a palm on a on a chess set being pushed around, and I said, how can people just take and devalue my life, play with my life like this? But he knew that in Clayton County he could get a conviction. Clayton County was predominantly white. The victim of white He knew there was no doubt no matter what evidence I had, what showed that that I didn't commit to cry, that he could get a conviction anyway. From there, it was just an

uphill battle. Having a culturally diverse jury is so important because then you have different people male, female, different backgrounds. I think the trial are a lot fairer, I know, And the perfect example is the fact that here I am, I get found guilty in one kind of by all white Jerry, I get found not guilty in another county by jury makeup for seven blacks by whites, and that that's not proof. I don't know what else could be

any more proof than that. Our government it's basically designed the system over the years to degrade and humanized black brace. That's sad because they've done it with films and movies that deale it with laws two strikes and three strikes you out. And now they got people incarcerated for marijuana with with a nickel bag. Now they got life sentences. As I said earlier, I stayed the institutionalized slavery, modern day slavery. They got privatization, private prisons. Now that's a

big profit making open sensation. Guess what, you need people inside. So what happens You arrest people, You come up with laws to increased the amount of people being placed in prison, and it's a free labor force. The twenty But things have they really changed that much. It's still going on. I mean this has been progressed, been some progress, yes,

but prejudice still exists. Racial injustice still as if you know, we all believe the same blood, we're all human beings and we just need to make it fair, and we need to make it a justice system, not just us. I asked Molly Palmer from the Georgia Innocence Project if there were ways her organization encourages people to take action against racial bias and all sorts of prejudice in the justice system. You know, we have to be vigilant in

terms of knowing who are elected officials are. We have to elect those people that that have a demonstrated record of caring about these issues. And I think we have to continue as jurors, as citizens to realize how important our role is in the community and in the legal system.

And if you get called for jury duty, I hope that people walk in there, no matter who is sitting at defense table, understanding the importance of reasonable doubt and what it means to prove somebody guilty beyond all reasonable doubt, and to take that job so seriously and examine yourself, examine those feelings when you see who's sitting there and

your first question is do they look guilty? That's the instinct and if you say yes, why, I think we can start by being incredibly critical of ourselves and realize that nobody is perfect and all of us have experienced some type of racism directed toward us where we've felt it and didn't want to admit it. We're not in

post racial America. It's and we see horrible, harrowing things every day that highlight the violence and the inherent suspected criminality that we see in terms of people of color, and we can't move past that until we critically examine ourselves. I wanted to just touch again on how vitally important jury selection is in the criminal trial process. It's important to have an unbiased and even a diverse jury. Calvin's case is not the only one where racism and racial

biased have played a role in jury selection. He's not even the only one. In Georgia, a man named Johnny Lee Gates from Columbus, Georgia, was recently released from jail after a trial all the way back from nineteen seventy seven, where he sat judged by an all white jury. The prosecutor in his case systematically struck every single black juror from the pool. In nine six, the United States Supreme

Court decided the case of bats And versus Kentucky. The bats In case held that jurors could not be struck simply because of their race. This ruling came after both Johnny Lee Gates and Calvin Johnson's trials, but it is something all new lawyers now learn about in law school. It's so important to have a diverse jury with all kinds of backgrounds and life experiences to weigh in on

these important matters of life and liberty. Whenever I have a trial, I keep an eye out for any biases that could come into play on either side for jury selection, and all lawyers should use bats and challenge is to call into question strikes made by on the other side when necessary. To speak to the school to prison pipeline, I just want to say that the legal system is like fly paper. Once you're in it, it's very hard to get out of it, no matter how hard you try.

Recentivism or people returning to the justice system over and over again is very common. Complicated and difficult probation and parole requirements make it hard to stay out of the system. All of these things have a huge impact on families and communities. We need a system that treats everyone fairly and doesn't over involve one group or another for any reason, including the color of their skin. I hope you take Molly's advice to heart and look at who your local

elected officials are. They are the ones who can most directly change the way our system works. Next time on Sworn, you know you're manipulated by people. That's even my parents. You know, my parents never believed I was actually innocent of the crime. People ask me you forgive them. Of course I do. When you're manipulated by a power and a justice system that is supposed to be the last of the line, is supposed to be the true sense of justice, the true sense of what's going on, at

least as closest we can get it. I can forgive anybody that has been manipulated. I can't forgive those that did the manipulated. Sworn is a production of Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio. Our lead producer is Christina Dana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright for Tenderfoot TV, Matt Frederick and Alex Williams for I Heart Radio, and

myself Philip Holloway. Additional production by Trevor Young, May Sin Lindsay, Mike Rooney, Jamie Albright and Halle Beatall original music and sound designed by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Blood in the Water by Layup. Show art and design is by Trevor Eisler, editing by Christina Dana, mixing

and mastering by Mike Rooney and Cooper Skinner. Special thanks to the team at I Heart Radio from u T a or In Rosenbaund and Grace Royer, Ryan Nord and Matthew Papa from the Nord Group, back Media and Marketing, and Station sixteen. I'd also like to extend a very personal and special thanks to all of our contributors and guests who have helped to make all of these episodes possible.

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As always, thanks for listening. I'm walking around I see an armadala I'm gonna jump out my books because I've never seen a armadala before in my life. It is risk. It's running across in front of me, looking like a giant rap with an army helmet on and something. I'm like, what the heck is this