THE DEPRIVED-Steffen Hou

you're exonerated after decades in the death house. The Deprived also focuses on those most likely to be wrongfully convicted in America and the reasons why. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Deprived. Innocent on Death Row with my special guest, journalist and author Stephan Howell. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Stephan Howell, thank you very much, thank you for having me. Thank you very much for this Before we get right

into these incredible examples of those that were. As you write The Deprived, what tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to want to write this book The Deprived.

And I was by then a very young journalist in my early twenties, and I felt so sad and sorrow for these people that I met that was trafficked into Europe. And from that moment I knew that if I was going to do any good as a journalist, I wouldn't be writing about problems occurring outside my every day window.

I would need to dig a bit deeper and look into some of these topics that a lot of people they don't know anything about, and that journalists normally don't dig into for many reasons, perhaps because it's too risky concerning their own personal life, but also because it's difficult getting underneath the surface. And when I later in my career red stories about these innocent people that was put in prisons and worst case, on death row, I knew that I had to look into this serious matter as well,

also because I had a personal stake in it. When I was seventeen years old, I was walking down the street one night in my hometown here in Denmark, and I witnessed a young man that was being brutally attacked and stepped to death by a group of fogs. And I reacted to this crime naturally. I feared for my own life and for many years to come, I was scared to leave my parents' house, and it really did

a number on me, so to speak. And I reacted to this fear in an emotional way by trying to avoid it in the way that I demanded that the people who have put this feary within me that they

suffered the same as a victim. So despite the fact that I come from a country that does not have death penalty and has not used death penalty for almost one hundred and fifty years, to me, my natural reaction was actually been in favor of the death penancy until I came across some of these stories that I have now put into the book The Deprived.

And the connection to nik Yaris is that he was actually in prison when he read an article about this brutal kidnapping and murder, and he thought that it was his way out of a possible sentence of the crime that in the first place put him in the jail. So he actually sold investigators that he knew who had committed the crime, and from the article that he was reading in the paper, he had a lot of details. So what he did was he sounded very persuasive when

he actually voluntarily told investigators what had happened. It turned out that the man that he named as the killer was actually alive. Nick Yards didn't expect him to be because he had been told that he had odeed a few weeks earlier. But it turned out that it was not this guy that had adeed, it was his brother. So in all of a sudden, investigators actually had a guy that they could confront with this crime that neck Yards claimed to be aware of. When they confronted the guy,

he had a solid alibi. So investigators actually turned it around and they said, well, mister Yaris, since you know so much about this crime, even down to the details, well you got to be the killer. And he was put on the stand and actually sentenced to death.

worst things that he experienced, as he says today. But reality is when he went to one of the most should we call it them in famous prisons in America, Huntingdon in Pennsylvania, the first thing he experienced was actually being met by a bunch of gods and they beated him up as severe as they could because that was their way of welcoming a prisoner to Huntingdon. But this was only the first of many brutal encounters that Nick had with gods and that he had with the other

inmate inmates. One of the things that took place in the prison, according to Nick, was a gladiator school or gladiator ring as the prison guards called it. Almost daily they would force inmates to meet each other in the cell where the fight would result. Always would one guy, you know, lying unconscious on the floor, and it didn't matter if it was your best friend that they let in.

One way or another, someone was going to end up on the floor unconscious because that was the only way that these guards they could actually resolve the bets that they made on who was actually going to get out

of the ring alive or or at least walking. And one of the things that really surprised me when I met Nick Yaris in a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles was that I had been told a bit about the experiences that he had in prison and how brutal it had been, And when I met him in the restaurant, I expected to see either a man crawling around along the wall because I imagined him to be broken, or the opposite, a cruel monster that had become as

evil as he was accused of being wrongfully on trial. But he turned out to be something completely different, a very humble, kind and insulgent man, because one of the things that he did while spending all these twin two years in prison was actually educating himself. He read thousands of books, and as he could see he was drifting into becoming this ego man, he decided to change himself.

He even changed the way that he spoke. He softened his voice, trying to avoid becoming something that was perhaps not something that he was actually perhaps not able to

avoid becoming. But he did. And it surprised me very much when I met him that there was actually sitting this guy opposite me, eating his French toest and being kind and attensive, asking about my life, and speaking in an emotional way about his life after being released, despite the fact that all the emotions that he more or less experienced from other ones till his release was evil and cruel.

this man for twenty two years. He'd been trying to prove his innocence. He had tried again and again and again to have law enforcement looking in true evidence that could prove his innocence, and then in all of a

sudden he gave up. The governor for this is too strange to true, But naturally, if there is a guy on death row who asks to be executed, then I will fulfill his wish wish and he actually accepted doing so, but not until all evidence had been thoroughly investigated one more time, and this time by the use of DNA, and when they came back with the results, there was no doubt Nickieris had never kidnapped, raped, and murdered this woman.

And after twenty two years on death row, he was set free and it was time for him to restore life as possible as it is when you spent more than two decades on death row.

move back with his parents. He decided that he was going to be as kind as as days long, and he had things up with his parents, and and and and tried to make up for the time launt. But both his parents were were up there in in in in the ages, and and and therefore they passed away a few years after he was being after he had

been released. But in the Yard's case, as he has also publicly told about, it has been hard for parts of his family actually to accept that the relative they fought was cold blood a killer suddenly turned out to

be innocent after twenty two years. And I have, over the years working on this book, interviewed a lot of people who have been exonerated, not just from death row, and a common thing for many of them is that it is actually difficult for the surrounding society to believe that they're actually innocent, because in the first place, it is a very difficult and cruel thing turning your heart and head around and believing that the son, the brother, the cousin, your best friend was actually not who you

believed them to be in the first place. No, in all of a sudden they were convicted of the most senious crimes. Then some years later you're told, well, your brother was actually innocent. That makes a lot of these relatives feel probably guilty that they suspected the loved ones

of actually being these killers. But what is more difficult for some of them is actually to admit that they were the ones wrong when they wrongfully convicted the brothers, the sons, the loved ones, And therefore they continue to perhaps hate or at least turn their back on these ex honaries. And that was also what Niger's experience from

parts of his family when he was released. He patched things up with his parents, but some of his closest relatives they actually did not accept that this man was not who whom they had fought him he was for twenty two years.

use include the case of Damon Thebideaux. Tell us about Damon Thebideaux and this incredible innocent guy that got all caught up in this and it is a dramatic example. Tell us about this.

with his life. He was seventeen years old when he had his son, but he didn't see his son because he was in a stage of life where responsibility and actually having a normal everyday life was not something that he was taught to have by the upbringing that he had.

But in his early twenties, twenty one years old. She decided to go back to be close to his family, and for the first time in life, things were actually going in the right directions for him, and he was very happy to be back with his family until one afternoon. He had been spending the afternoon with one of his relatives, actually a couple of them, and his cousin's sister, sorry,

his cousin's daughter. They had been roller skating through the afternoon, but because of the summer heat, they decided to go back and have a few cold drinks. But then this seventeen year old girl, she was not only thirsty, she was hungry as well, and she asked Damon if he could take her to a nearby mall so she could get something to eat. And Damon us was tired, so he said no, sorry, you have to go on your own. And since he said those words, he has regretted them

because this young girl she never came back. Some time between when she left her home and and and got to the Moon, she was abducted and taken to a remote area where she was choked to death, and Damon participated in the search for her in the hours to come, and by the end of the night, he went back home, and and and and he wanted to rest up before going to participate in in the search one more time, and two investigators they came and knocking on the door.

In the first place, they didn't suspect him of involved in the crime. They just had a few questions to ask him. But as they were there searching for this missing person, it became a homicide case because dispatcher told them that the girl had been found dead, and immediately they suspected Damon because he was one of the last ones to see her in the afternoon. They brought her down. They brought him down to the station, and they interrogated

him for a total of thirty six hours. And within these thirty six hours he only had a few hours of rest. He almost didn't have anything to eat or drink, and when they were done with him, he was so eager to get out of that room that he would confess to anything. He was a twenty one year old man, remembered the background that he had. It had never been a solid, calm background as many other teenagers have, so he was actually not in a very stable place in life.

So he didn't have the force and perhaps the coolness that it would take to resist given this confession after being as he says, mentally beaten and terrorized for for for for thirty six hours, and and and you know, by the end of the day he confessed, and the minute that he confessed, he passed out shortly after he woke up in in in prison, and he knew that this confession that he had given could never be taken back.

And and the pride was spending fifteen years on death row because he simply could not take anymore after thirty six hours.

not match up with reality. So all the forensics that they had back, the prosecutor could have cleared Damon right away because the confession he gave about how he had violated this young girl had nothing to do with what science proved. But they were so eager, probably to convict the man of the crime. And if they even had someone being stupid enough to confess into it, well then

let's go ahead with it. That seems to be how prosecution reacted to the fact of reality that the confession did not match with what investigators found on the crime scene. So he should have had a slap on his wrist for given a false confession, and then they should have gone and actually searched for the real killer, who has never been found. But instead they seemed so eager to just solve this case that they were putting an innocent man on death row despite the fact that they knew

he could never have committed to the crime. And that is not only something that goes for Damon's case. Again and again and again, people have been put in prison and worst case, on death row despite the fact that law enforcement knows that they were actually not lucking the true killer up behind boss. And in my book, you'll find more examples of prosecute prosecution acting against what they actually know to be true.

till he was released from prison. That is, even after his son sent him a letter saying that so fine life I haven't gotten to known you because it has not been a possibility. But I would actually like to come in and vissit you in prison, and I'm not so sure about what they say you have done is also true. So please invite me into your life, even

though it's behind bars. And still Damon refused. And when his son turned fourteen, Damon sent him a postcard, and he signed the postcard not with his title dad, but with his name Damon, simply because he thought that he didn't deserve the title dad. He had never been there for his son when he was having his first day at school, when he was getting into two troubles for

the first time, and so on. He never was there for his son as dad's normally wished to be, and and and and he didn't take any staking the way that that he was. His son had turned out to be actually a very good, loving boy because it had

never been under his influence. So his attachment to his son was that naturally he loved him, but he was not going to go and claim to be his love and dad because he had been deprived of being that after his release, just his son was actually waiting by the and what they didn't have together for fifteen years, they started working on that moment that he was released, and thank god, they actually have restored their relationship and all the way through just was one of the reasons

why Damon kept fighting. He kept fighting to prove his innocence. He kept fighting for the fact that these thirty six hours in an interrogation room was not going to be the reason why he eventually would lose life in prison. And he all the ways did that with his son in mind and at heart. And after these fifteen years, they also had the possibility of finally getting to know each other in real life.

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Murder fifty. Take advantage of this month special New year offer for fifty percent off your first month of personalized care of vitamins, go to take care of dot com and enter true murder fifty Stefan. You include some details along the way with these incredible dramatic examples of wrongful convictions and death row tragedies, people on death row and all the people affected by these wrongful convictions. Tell us about you talk about Damon being the three hundredth prisoner

in US exoner as a result of DNA. Give us a little bit of the statistics on some of those as you as you talk about some of the people that have been executed, just talk about some of those details that you include here, incredible details about the death penalty, and it's an execution in the US.

lot of people. That's a lot of lives. And I think that's one thing that's even more amazing, if I may put it that way, and that is that these sixteen thousand people has always been executed with a majority of Americans saluting their deaths. And if you look at statistics today, though the number of people in favor of the death penalty has decreased dramatically, if you just go a few decades back, still roughly fifty five percent of Americans are in favor of killing their own people. To me,

that is unbelievable. And especially if you compare the number of executions in America to other countries, then you'll have to compare to countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran Iraq, not countries like Germany, England and so on, not countries in the western world we compare to countries that we often see as not being in a human way just as civilized as we may be in the world world. But that is fact of reality, and you don't have to go that many years back to find huge numbers

of Americans being executed. If you roughly go back the last three decades, you'll find almost fifteen hundred Americans executed since nineteen seventy three. That is still a lot of people because how many of these roughly fifteen hundred Americans have been innocent? Well, we know for a fact that till today, in the same period of time, one hundred and sixty four Americans have been exonerated from death row.

So you know, it's almost like I want to ask, how many of these fifteen hundred people have then been innocent but not had the same luck of lawyer, students, organizations and so on hearing about the cases. How many of these fifteen hundred people have died alone knowing that they die for something that they never did. And I think you know that is those are cruel facts that these fifty five percent of Americans in favor of the

death penalty have to take into consideration. And I started out about telling how I had been in favor of the death penalty as a young man, but today I simply can't be I admit it. I'm the kind of guy who thinks that if you did the crime, you should do the time, and going to prison for a heenious crime that should not be like a vacation in a hotel. No, you should feel the consequences of the

evil and the harm that you've done to others. But that doesn't mean that the only way of making brutal killers pay for the price is by putting them on death row. And in my opinion, you always have benefit of the doubt, and in this case, this benefit of the doubt must go to the innocent on death row. And instead the people that we know with certainty did the crimes on on death row, why not put them in prison for life. If it's without parole it takes

to save innocent lives, well, then be it. But you cannot get a dead man out of the grave. You can, on the other hand, get an innocent man out of his cell if it turns out that he is one of these thousands and thousands of Americans that has already been acceonerted.

He'd been down in Florida working but things didn't work out the way that he had planned, so he asked her to come down with the kids and and take back home, giving him a ride. But when she got there, her car broke down and there was no way that they could afford fixing the car, so they agreed to letting a friend of Jesse's giving them a right upstate.

And they never should have accepted Waldo Road's offer because during night they pulled over and they were resting when a police officer did a routine check on them and he could see that in the bottom of the car there was lying a gun between the legs of wal the Roads, and at the same time he got a message back from the dispatcher telling that wal the Roads was actually on her role and therefore naturally not allowed

to have a gun. So the officer asked Walter Road to step out of the car together with him with Sunny's husband, Jesse, and when they stepped out, things escalated and the police officer was not the only one drawing his gun. Wald Roads did as well, and he ended up killing this police officer, but not only him. He was actually that night being escorted by a Canadian police officer who was there to visit him and see how the highway patrols were actually operating in Florida, but he

lost his life as well. On that night, and right after hearing the shots, Sonny was naturally paralyzed when it happened. She was on the back seat, covered up in the blanket, probably lying next to her two small kids, but with these shots blasting through the night, her life changed dramatically.

Uh and Walle the roads afterwards forced Sonny, her kids, and her husband Jesse into the police car and they took off, and as they were escaping, they also abducted another man using his car, and it was not till they came to a roadblock that while the roads was trying to avoid that the car was stopped and was stopped by the police opening fire on the getaway car, despite the fact that police officers knew.

didn't mind shooting into a car with kids. Thank God, the only one who was actually hit by these flying bullets was Walder Rhoades himself, but being an ex felon, he knew his way around the system. So what he did was immediately in hospital asking for a pleat bargain, and he ended up spending eighteen years in prison, while Sonny and her husband Jesse went to death row because he was the one who cut a deal claiming that Jesse was the guy who had killed these two cops.

And the worst thing about this story is that though it was later proven that both Sonny and Jesse were innocent of the crimes, and Jesse was not there to experience being set free two years before he was proven innocent, the state of Florida actually managed to execute him, so he was a living proof of an innocent man ending up dead.

attempted to being executed again. And a lot of these death row inmates that I've interviewed, they were not only fearing death. Perhaps those one thing they feared more than death, and that was the road that would lead them there, because they knew that there was a terrible possibility of them not going right away. And all these death row inmates they knew that being killed was painful because again and again and again they experienced the guy in the

next cell being dragged out, strapped down and executed. And witnesses, often reporters, they would come out of the execution chamber telling about how these death row inmates had suffered not for ten minutes at times, for perhaps an hour before being killed. And it was not only report orders and law enforcement official witnessing this. At times, it would even be them mothers. So been executed is by no means an easy thing. To go through as many people would

probably think. And some of the people that I've been talking to have also told that these physical executions are not a difficult, life haunting event for just the prisoners. It also is for the people witnessing it, and at times also for the people who are actually the ones that have at times volunteered or open shown to go through with these executions. Because one thing is when you sit by your desk or you're having coffee with your colleagues and you talk about what's going to happen, and

you prepare yourself. But when you go home at night and you line the bed and you close your eyes, you have to live with the fact that you actually the guy of one of the guys who put this man to death. And and I guess that it's got to raise a lot of questions among also law enforcement officials.

regarding the coffins. I couldn't believe this, Yeah.

at their graveside. And this just shows how cynical some people can be at the time in life where we as human beings are most vulnerable when we're saying goodbye to our parents. But still that is not enough for some people. Therefore they put microphones underneath the coffins.

Ireland for crime that he did not commit. And after the speech, he walked up to Sonny and over the months to come they developed a relationship, they fell in love, and then, as you said, they got married. And when I interviewed Sonny, she said something that almost took me

off my feet. She said that life turned out beautiful despite what she has been going through and suffered, and it's because she has chosen to view the life that she was given after death row in prison in a positive, beautiful way, and she's doing that together with her husband Peter, and they try together to help other exonorees getting the

same positive attitude towards life. But also have to say one of the remarkable things about my discoveries while interviewing these deferent inmates, and that is that many of them have become very spiritual. Many of them has actually become very religious. To some religion has been what has kept their hopes up. And it's not only Sonny who chosen

to have a positive attitude towards life. We started out by talking about Nick Yaris and all the brutality that he witnessed and also the brutality that he exposed other

prisoners to while incarcerated. He lives by as many of the others this every day for that they have to show the kindness to others that others could not show to them when they put them away from something that they didn't And one of the things that actually set me off with this book was I wanted to look into if it was only Nick Yaris being so positive towards other people, and if he was the old the one who actually were able to avoid becoming cynical and

bitter in his life after death Row. But it goes for all the people that I've talked to that every day they try to make the most of their lives, but not only towards themselves, also towards others, And I think that is amazing. I think that one of the reasons why Sonny and and the rest of them are so positive is actually because they have had all chances in life in life of becoming hateful, but they have

also tasted and realized what hate does to person. If you get out of bed every morning with the life that you have been given after death Row, deciding to be angry and hateful, well then perhaps that life you've been given is not worth living. But if you turn it around and you say what others could not do for me, and the kindness that they could not show me, if I can do that to them, then the life I've been given is a life worth living. And that is one of the things that have surprised me the

most working with these people. It is their ability to be loving human beings despite having so much injustice and cruelty committed to them. And you know what it's like we all do when you hear stories like this, we say to ourselves, well, tomorrow, I'm gonna hog and kiss my kids a bit more, and I'm not gonna yell at my wife, and I'm gonna be a bit more

positive when I get to work. Personally, I have to admit, well, normally doesn't last that long, perhaps an hour or so, and then you know, ah, why are all these toys lying around? And you know, I fall back, like perhaps most of us does. But these people, they actually manage to carry on with this positive attitude towards others, not just day by day, but year by year, and and and and I really think that they deserve a lot of credit for the life, for the way that they

have turned their lives around. But having that said, that doesn't mean that life is easy for them, because most of them are actually leading lives where they are affected by the cruelty done to them a lot of aspects. When you interview at death Row Exonnaye, you'll often find you know, big musculous men who you would imagine to be very hardened, but all of them eventually break down and cry when they reallive not only what death Row did to themselves, but what death Rowe also did to

their relatives. There's a story in the book about a man called Derek Jamison, and the chapter is called They Killed My Mom. And the reason why he chose to call the chapter this was because Derek is the most loving, sweet,

kind guy that I've ever spoken to. Like many of the other ones, or like all the other ones, I should say, but despite the fact that he's, you know, a big, strong man that has seen a lot in life, every time I spoke to him, he broke down and he cried and and and and and he cried like sorry to say, but but you know, like a little baby. And naturally it was because and this is not meant

in a negative way. On the other hand, I think that it is, you know, beautiful that a man that has seen what he has seen can actually be so in touch with his emotions as he is. But I thought, you know, that every time he cried was because he was reliving the experiences that he had on death Row and what had been done to him. But I got the feeling that what even made him cry harder and more than his own experiences were the experiences of his mom, because imagine what it is.

they were actually going to kill him. Imagine if your mom or dad, or brother or sister or just eleven soul, imagine how you would react knowing that ninety minutes from now your son is going to die, and actually being that sold six times when his death his execution was scheduled, there were always two questions that law enforcement or a prison official asked him what he was going to have for his last meal and to whom they were going

to send his body. So again, you know, I have to think about what it does to parents knowing that perhaps a week from now, a month from now, or just ninety minutes from now, you'll receive the coffin with the person that you love the most in the world. So all relatives are collateral damage of the death penalty. And and that is another thing that that should be taken into consideration when the leader of the free world executes its own people.

And for those people that are going to be lucky enough to read this book, just another fascinating, incredible, hard to believe story, Just another dramatic demonstration of the kinds of stories that you've picked for the deprived. Stephan tell us tell the audience where they might find out more information about how to get this book and about your work.

We really need to discuss if it's okay in twenty and nineteen continuing to kill your own citizens, And therefore hope that this book. My wish is that it will change the opinion of some of these people in favor of death penalty, and if it doesn't change the opinion, at least take a minute to think about what you're actually in favor of. And also that this book will

lead to having students debating it. At least I really hope that young people will also read the book, because if our generations are not willing to abolish the death penalty, the generations to come have that possibility, and I hope this book will give them an insight to what has been a common thing for hundreds of years and therefore perhaps not something that we think too much about, or at least that something does not because it's there and

it always has been. If this book can help them think about if it also should be there in the future, then I'm very grateful, and then I rest my.