Hi, Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well as the number one true crime podcast, My Friend The Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden, I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood, which reached number one on the charts when it debuted half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders
abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled to share this story of a man who fought the law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh. Wherever you get your podcasts.
Everyone seems you're guilty. If you're at that defense stive. Reasonable doubt is a fucking fictional term. The presumption of innocence is a fictional term.
Welcome to another bonus episode of the Burden.
I'm Steve Fishman and I'm Dax s Devlin Ross and that was justin Bonas a passionate young lawyer. You might remember from episode eight.
Justin bones on Behead and Nelson CRUs Good Morning office you.
Justin represented Nelson Cruz, one of the members of the actual Innocence Team, at a hearing to try to win his freedom. You might also remember that Justin had a little trouble that day, and he knew it.
I'm a young guy, you know what I mean. I gotta work out some of my kinks.
And then when Nelson Cruz's motion was denied, we witnessed another side of Justin. He leaped to his feet at the defense.
Table, outraged and well, I was in the courtroom and it looked to me like he was on the verge of tears.
We're gonna believe that on the day of his birthday he kills somebody. Let's think about that for a second. He's sixteen.
It's been a little over three years since that hearing, and Justin has come up in the world. He and his mentor, that's Derrick Hamilton, have pursued cases of wrongful conviction around the country. In Louisiana, Justin got a wrongfully convicted man out of prison after forty four years.
But you know what this case is about this was a legal lynching.
That's what this was. That's what this was. For this episode, we wanted to understand Justin's unusual passion, like where does it come from? So on today's very special episode, Justin bonus for the Fence. In his own words, where.
Are you from Jersey? Right outside of Trent. I'm from like the suburban. Yeah, I'm definitely from the suburbs. Absolutely. I grew up in New Jersey. I was born and raised in New Jersey. Was a good student in high school. I got over four point zero. I graduated from NYU with like a three to two. You know. It was a philosophy major at NYU. Philostity was very difficult as NYU a lot of very hot competition. I guess I
didn't take enough asst to do well enough there. But like whatever, my roommate was doing videos for Acinelly, he used to come stay in her dorm room. Kanelli Adams rapper.
Okinelly Ocinelli was an underground wrapper, best known for his nineteen ninety six hit put It in Your Mouth.
We shoot videos from And he said, bones what he did, That's what my nickname is. Bones. What are you doing for the summer, I said, I'm working at the fitness center at NYU.
But Oconelly had another idea. Bones He thought should work for the legal side of the rat business.
Literally, I walk in. I talked to his attorney, Scott Felterer. He talk about a guy that I represented, like on oz Acnelly, large professor on. He got me the job there, and then that's how I ended up meeting the rappers. I ended up working with these guys named bowen Villa. We started a record label called Deebo Status. But I also I basically kind of managed them. One was from Browns with the others from East New York, and that started bringing me out there.
In fact, Justin actually wound up moving into the projects.
I lived in Brookline houses out in East New York or Canarsie, whatever you want to call that, and then I lived on Colonial Uptown. In all of them they called him the t all those wrangle houses. Now why was this? Was this because of your connection with the raffers? They brought you in there or what I mean? Yeah? And then I wasn't making enough money like it. Let
me tell you something. I was like a three hundred dollars a week working at an entertainment law firm doing contracts for big, big, big name people, big name people. But I wasn't a lawyer. I was basically a glorified intern. But are you going to afford making three hundred dollars a week? Was in the project? It's horrible, horrible. Don't take the elevator, man, I mean, shit happens in elevators. I'm talking about like aggressiveness of people. You understand what
I'm saying. Like New York has that real New York. I'm not talking about these hypsos over here, you know, supreme puffs, these soft people. You know what I'm saying. Were you the only white guy in the team? Yeah, where do you fit in?
Or you're not in a cream puff? But what do you mean by I mean?
Yeah, I can handle myself, but I'm not a tough guy. You know what I'm saying.
Life in the projects also gave Justin an up close peak at the real, mean, the real criminal justice system.
No one knows what it's like when you get drug out of your car with a gun to your head by a cop until you've actually been there. I've been there. There's nothing you could say to them that will convince them that you're not doing anything wrong.
When did that? When?
When? How many times? How many times have I been brought out of my car by a bullhorn with two black men in the car and the police doesn't matter whether they're black white is? It doesn't matter? Said, with the fucking spotlight on me? Why are you hanging with these people? Why are you in this neighborhood?
Well, anyway, the record label it didn't work out.
Everybody was young, and we made a bunch of bad decisions and it wasn't my proudest moment. Rappers were really they were all over the place and people wanted to work with them, but we just we were just a punch and knucklehead. A street element was too heavy with everybody, not me, for save, but there were other people. And then it was just a lot of I ad decisions. I was doing a lot of shit I shouldn't. I mean, that's why I fell out of law school. You were
in law schooling at the same time. Yeah, I was going to tourel out in long Own. Oh okay, I was sleeping in my car, sleeping in my car. Wait, why are we sleeping in your car? Because I didn't really have an apartment at the time, from like most of most of two thousand and five, I didn't have a place to live and I got a victim from the projects and I got into Toro probably two years after I graduated, and it was like like a culture shock, because you like, law school is that much work? It
really is. I'm not a good test taker and all it is in law school is in the final. That's it.
Well, Justin at lyon in his case at least it didn't go well.
I hate the fucking rock bottom man. When I felt out of law school, fell out of law school, you just blew sixty grand and student loans and it's not pleasant.
Justin worked as a paralegal for a couple of years, then went back to law school, this time in Rhode Island, and it wasn't long before he started to hear from some of his old contacts in the hip hop world.
They knew that, you know, I was going to end up being a lawyer. So you know, everybody thinks, well, because you're a lawyer, you know all law, which is not true. I attempted to help people and going into the second time I was in law school, I probably at this point knew about five or six people doing a lot of time for homicides, and you know bribery, you know drug conspiracies in the sets.
And that's how Justin wound up meeting Derek Hamilton, the towering jail house lawyer in our series.
One Guy I wrote a brief for and a portion of the brief was about insufficiency the evidence on bribery count and Derek Court went into that and got a chance to read it. And then he read my directed research project in law school, which was about accomplished witnesses about how they're unreliable and they really should never be used because of their inherent unreliability, and then that's kind of reached out to me.
Justin was smitten.
It's impressive, to say the least. He is very very good at what he does.
Remember Justin's nickname for Derek Google Legal.
He's worth his weight in goals. I don't know if this a more expensive commodity, but he's like, I'm not a human being. He's very intelligent. He's a fucking good writer. He's a better writer than I am. Very good writer, very good writer. He knows the law pretty much better than anybody else does. And he comes with this knowledge base that nobody else hans. Nobody it's a real advantage to have in.
Him, and Derek in turn believes it's a real advantage having Justin. He knows Justin is still not the most experienced lawyer, to say the least, but he sees something else than Justin.
Justin would stand up in front of a judge and say, Judge, you're wrong, and be upset and angry and argue.
And he's young enough to be bothered by now. Derek and Justin have worked on a lot of legal challenges and appeals together all over the United States, and Justin says there's a big difference between New York and everywhere else, which gets this excitable Justin well excited.
I will tell you I've handled cases in Maine, I've handled cases in Georgia. I've handed cases in North Carolina. They want to wrap a motherfucker in not just through testimony, they want to do it through forensics and everything. You don't see that in the NYPD, and it's not because they're not capable of that.
And the DA's what about their.
Outlook, das really is they don't really play too fair. It's the problem. They don't believe defendants are ever innocent to take a hard line stance across the board.
How does Justin think Scarcela fits into all of this?
It's that he is a fucking tip of Iceberg. Now got two cases in me, now, single eyewitness cases right now that I almost positive I can prove that the witnesses didn't see how the person got shot through recreating the crime scene. But the DA's office and the medical examiner won't let me get the pictures of the victim.
I got one guy who says that my guy shot this guy in the back of his head, but the autopsy report shows that the guy was shot in the front of his head and the bullet went out his back. And he says, my guy is five foot eleven. It just happens to be that my guy could have been fucking Latreull's free. Well, he's six foot five.
So Justin and Derek have become a magnet for hopeless cases.
I have eighty cases, eighty eighty, and I got probably thirty guys that were at the very least, at the very least they didn't receive a fair trial. Most of those men are innocent. I would say, over twenty guys in New York. Yes, are innocent that I can pools their innocence. Well, these fans are looking and having bones in their corner. Well, Jesus, don't get crazy. They're still in prison.
Yeah, you're fighting.
Oh I'm trying.
So just one last question for Justin. Let's see if we can rile them up. What does he think of the cops and prosecutors?
Listen? I mean, you really want to know how I feel. I fucking hate all these people, but I have to be professional.
Justin. Bonus everyone. By the way, Nelson Cruz will be back in court soon and Justin file the federal appeal and he wont to hear it. This episode was produced by Drew Nellis. Our associate producer and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Sound isigned by Bianca Salinas, Steve Fishman and myself Dax Devin Ross. We're your hosts. The Burden is a production of Orbit Media.
Season two of The Burden Empire on Blood will be available everywhere you get your podcasts on August seventh. All episodes will be available early and ad free, along with exclusive bonus content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse, our subscription channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety nine a month.