#007 Jason Flom with Richard Rosario

I came from a beautiful neighborhood. I had a beautiful life.

I went to sleep because September seventh was the first day of my high school year.

I was going to be a senior. At twenty two, I was set to start college. I woke up and my life was never the same again.

Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw freedom ever since after that.

It's like roach motan. Once you get in, you and I can't now.

This is wrongful conviction with Jason Flommer. Today's guest is Richard Rosario. Richard, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Richard was convicted of a murder that happened in the Bronx while he was one thousand miles away in Florida, with thirteen alibi witnesses and.

Various other types of evidence to back it up. But let's go back. So you were born in Puerto Rico.

My parents were at the time just My mother was a seamstress.

My father used to work labor.

And they were poor by definition, by today's definitions.

But we had a house. We had a little mango tree in the front of the house. It was beautiful.

I mean, you didn't have all the luxuries that you see in America, but you have what you need. You know, you had the good weather, the sustenance, great weather, and people that loved you. There wasn't a day that I would go to sleep hungry or you know, have any troubles in school or anything.

So it was beautiful.

When did you come here?

When I was five years old, immigrated to the United States and we resided in the Bronx.

In nineteen eighty eighty one, we.

Started living in the Bronx, and it's an experience because you're an immigrant. You don't know English, so you have to acclimate to a whole new culture, right and the culture in New York back then was hip hop and you know, this whole drug phase happened in New York at the time where there was a lot of crime in the streets was riddled with that. So here I am a young boy from Puerto Rico who wasn't never exposed to that type of stuff, being exposed to this

I mean, we know, New York was a little were now in nineteen eighty eighty nine, eighty nine, so yeah, that was kind of the height of the crime wave. Things getting crazy, right, and then you got you had a little altercation and when you were fifteen years old.

Yeah, I was a kid, and you know, once again in Puerto Rico and never witnessed anything that that I've witnessed in the United States and the Bromston particular at this time. And for obvious reasons, the crime rate, the drugs and everything that was happening in this era, it was pretty tough. But you know, I began, you know, my teenage life trying to follow the new trends, wanting

And so I started hanging out with the wrong crowd as.

Most teenagers and despite what type of environment they grow up. When you meet your contemporaries at the time and you start acting made into what they liked, well, you know, the music, the style, and I living in the South Bronx, it's that's the environment that I'm acclimating to, where it's crime, it's drugs, it's closed, it's you have to go out and get it.

And so I got with this bad crowd, and.

You know, the one thing that they used to do is go out there and commit crimes to get what they wanted a shirt, a pair of sneakers and stuff. And unfortunately I knew it was wrong, but I followed and I got caught. One day, my friends committed the robbery as a kid, and they had the wallet. And my friend was older than me at the time, he was seventeen years old. His name is Danny and he died since, but he passed me the wallet and I took the wallet and I put it in my pocket.

System. I was caught with credit cards in my pocket.

And got probation for that.

Yes, I got probation.

Fifteen years old.

And yeah, you weren't a violent guy, you know, I was in No, we're going to go now from time you're fifteen to the time you're twenty, and we're talking about nineteen ninety six. Yes, right, in nineteen ninety six. Let's let's paint a picture here. So you're in Florida, Yes, right, And what were you doing in Florida at the time.

First of all, which part of Florida were you?

I was in Orlando.

And the reason why I went over there is, you know, I was a quick learning in life, and you know, I made the mistakes as a teenager. I got in trouble. I had my daughter, and things started dawning on me that I can't live life like this. I have children that take care of I have, you know, a daughter that's going to look up to a dad and a son that's gonna need me there.

So I said it's time for me to change. My environment.

In New York was in the place the Bronx, especially at the time, was in a place where I had opportunities because I had messed up them opportunities as a child, and I was known in the local precinct as you know, one of these troubled teenagers. And so I wanted to just leave that past and go to Florida and give my family a new life. And you know that's why my plans were.

So you went down to Florida to sort of scope it out and try to figure out what kind of opportunities were going to be there.

For you exactly, and it's basically you're twenty now, so you're saying, well, I want to Yeah, I want a piece of the American dream. What does that dream look like to me? To me, it looked at like on Florida, you know, Sunshine State, it's a slower speed. And I want folks to understand that I was still young and still immature, so you know, it wasn't beyond me smoking a little marijuana or hanging out in a club. But

So although I was into it.

These guys were still doing things that weren't good.

And I find out from my.

Mother, you know, I call my mother check up as I usually do, my wife and the kids how they're doing. And they're telling me the detectives are looking for you. And I'm like, they were just here just a couple months ago, you know, tell them I'm here, I'm in Florida.

They want me, they know where I'm at.

She said, well, I told them he was in Florida. They're saying, they're looking for you for a murder. And I'm like, I'm thinking at the time, my mother, she she knows English, but she's Puerto Rican descent. Maybe she's confused, she's maybe she's confused, right, But then my sister tells me the same thing, and then my wife tells me the same thing.

Detectives are looking for you for murder. And then they tell me to day June nineteenth.

And you had been in Florida for how long? For a couple of months.

I was there from May first that I arrived to Florida all the way to the time that I came back from Florida.

So you come back, you're here. They're looking for you, yes, so you come back to New York.

June thirtieth.

I got on a Greyhound bus and arrived July first, I at six in the morning, and I called my wife and I told her I'm heading home right now.

And at this time, me and my wife lived separately.

I lived at my parents' house until we had enough money to get on apartment. My wife is living at her parents' house. She was working, so I'm going over to my in law's house to see my kids, see my wife before she went to work. Seven in the morning. I get there and you know, I had to talk with her and I told her, listen, I've never killed no one in my life.

So I'm going to go to the Bronx.

I'll contact the priestsint and I should be home sometime tonight and we'll talk more. And I spent that afternoon. I made breakfast with my kids. I took them to the park, and I told my daughter at the end of the day, and that afternoon before I left to the Bronx that you know, she was crying.

She wanted to go with daddy, and I told her I'll be back. I'll be back later.

On and I left to go to the Bronx to talk to the police, and I never came back for twenty years.

I just got to digest that for a second, left it and after saying goodbye, like any dad would, Yeah, I gotta go take care of something. I'll see you later. It's the same thing any dad. Anything that would react a three year old girl. And so you go to the police precinct and you go in there to clear things up.

And what happens.

Well, first I got to the Bronx, I called the detectives. Detective Charles Krueger picks up the phone. He's from the Robbery Division. He has nothing to do with this homicide. So Charles Krueger tells me listen, they want to talk to you about some homicide that occurred, and one would be the best time.

And I told Charles Kruger, well, i'll be in with my lawyers tomorrow.

I'll get to the priests and with my lawyers. I didn't commit a crime. I've been in Florida. And he said all right, So I hung up the phone. A half an hour later, the detectives come to my mother's house. So I look at the peak hole and I see the detectives.

I opened the door.

There's nothing for me to worry about, and I let them in the house. They talked to my mother briefly, and this was Charles Kruger was there, but the main two homicide detectives were offso Martinez and Gary Whittaker where the two detectives. So they come in. Martinez spoke to my mother. Whittaker spoke to me and they said, listen, we just want to ask you questions and relating to this murder, and if you were in Florida, we're going to find out and you're going to be good.

And I said, okay, so let's go.

And right before we left, they said, but we have to cuff you because this procedure. And my heart like skipped a little bit because I'm saying, wait a minute, I'm leaving with you.

Why do you have to put can't cuffs on me.

I'm telling you I'm innocent, and I have evidence that I'm leaving with you.

It's not like I'm running.

I opened the door for you, and when they put them cuffs on me, it gave me a little chill having them cuffs on me.

And don't understand that.

I mean, I went to the priest and then everything changed in the priest and Detective Whittaker was very amicable. He tried to persuade me telling them the truth, which I was that I was in Florida, would be the best thing. And then Martinez would come in after Whitker would finish this interrogation start that lasted five hours.

And he'll tell me, we know you did it.

You know you're a murderer and you're going to spend the rest of your life in jail, and if you don't tell me about it, you will never see your daughter.

And he's given me this.

So after five hours, I said, all right, you want me to write a statement, and he passes me a piece of paper and a pen and I wrote on it and then I passed it back and they were really pissed off of what I wrote. I said, I've never committed a crime. I've never taken someone's life, and God knows this and it is God's will. And that was my exact statement. And that was it. From that moment on. They they they just processed me through the system. I spoke to Detective Silverman, who was in part of

So you're presenting them with basically ironclad evidence, right, There's really no other way to describe it. I mean, you can't have a better alibi than there were a thousand miles away. Right, It's not like I was at the movies and my sister said she saw me and whatever you know, I mean, which is still an alibi.

Right, it was impossible.

It's impossible. Here you are.

Now you're in the system. Now you're in lock up, right, you're waiting for your trial.

You got a lawyer.

Yes, I'm thinking this will be over in a day. You know, they're gonna find out I was in Florida.

Is done.

So first I talked to the detectives, went through that, talked to the DA, went through that, went through the lineup with a Lloyder named Rudy VELAs. I was picked out of the lineup. They finally assigned me a lawyer named Joyce Hartsfield. Then I poured out my heart tug because it's been more than a week now and I'm saying, hey, I don't belong here. You know, my witnesses are in Florida.

Okay, so now you're good.

I'm supposed to be good.

It's supposed to work great, Right, you get the evidence, you have the investigators going. What happened was that Joyce Harsfield, after a year, I'm telling her, please, you know, find these people. She would not answer my letters. She would not and to my my please, and I'm desperate. It's been Yeah, I've wrote the letters that we have records of. You know, she was not being she was in contact with me at all. And I'm desperate. I'm in prison. I'm not seeing my children as much as I would

It's rikers, It's chaos.

It's chaos. It's completely chaos. I mean, from the correctional officers to the inmates. The corruption is just so you know, abhorrent that that you know, I can't even put into the words what I was experiencing.

Now.

All I knew is that if I had to talk to my lawyer and my wife, I had to be at the mercy of gang bangers and you know, malicious people that are actually in there for crimes they committed and I'm nothing like these people.

Just to get to the phone, what do I do to talk to my family?

And you know, unfortunately it led to a lot of fights and tribulations and a lot of victimization. Because I don't I don't want people to think that I glamorized that. But I've been I've been slashed, I've been stabbed, I've been jumped by inmates, and I've had to struggle and fight and claw my way out that type of environment, even correctional offices. I've been brutalized by then. And you know, I've stood up because I was in the right. I didn't belong there and I had to suffer that, and

So your lawyer is not only doing nothing, but also not even returning your calls. Yes, so now what happens? Does she eventually come through, investigate through something?

What happens next? What leads Let's get up to the trial.

This is the amazing part that I saw of learning the law, and I had to this.

Lady's not defending me.

So I put in emotion to have a taking off my case and giving me another lawyer. The judge does this, he gives me Stephen Kaiser and so Stephen Kaiser comes in. He has no clue of what motion has been approved and denied. He comes in under the belief that the investigative funds were denied, no investigation.

And he never asked you.

I told him, I mean my witnesses. I mean, here's a year later, and I'm I'm I'm livid. I'm talking the same thing for years. I'm innocent. This is where the evidence is at, these all the people. And he says, well, the judge denied the funds for investigators, so I don't know nothing.

So you think now that maybe the first one had it wrong, yeah, or maybe the judge changed their mind, or whatever it is. And now you're dealing with a lawyer,

It's all a big mistake. Go home. Let's go find the real killer. That's what's supposed to happen.

That's what it's supposed to happen.

That's not what happened.

That's not what happened.

A right, So what happened now, so now you got to go to trial.

Now I got to go to trial with a lawyer that's ill prepared to defend me.

And they're balancing all these other things. They're going to court, they're juggling all these.

Cases, hundreds cases.

And one thing that I want to add to that, which is important. You know, I don't want to make excuses for these lawyers that misrepresented me, and you know it's completely appropriate to say that they.

Dropped the ball.

But before that, the DA gets the case, the police get the case. So before a lawyer touches your case, if anybody's going to know whether you're innocent or not, it's going.

To be the district attorney and the police, if they do the.

Investigative work and the work that they support supposed to be doing to protect the citizens that they've been sworn to protect and serve.

So the DA drops the ball.

Now they give it to these overworked, overstressed lawyers.

What do you think is going to happen.

You're in trial and the pressure is incredible. Now your lawyer gets up. Are there any of the witnesses from Florida that came up.

To testify on your behalf?

Yeah, Jeanie SAIDA.

And John Torres came and the DA said, well, they're his friends.

They were life in him.

But what we know now is that the DA was telling the jury a lie, that this crime that occur was not premeditated, that it was coincidental.

So they testified on your behalf and they're saying, all these are your friends and say whatever you want. In the meantime, they came all the way up from Florida just to lie for you, Okay, whatever. And there were some eyewitnesses for the prosecution.

Yeah, it was George, George Calaso's best friend. And I want to get into this because this is very telling and important for the narrative. Michael Sanchez testified, guy never met in his life, don't know him, never met him, don't know his history, his background, We have no connection. Robert Davis was the second witness. Don't know one, never

Now he's not saying that.

And so these other two witnesses were allowed to testify and perjure themselves because now we know both of the witnesses are saying that why the police told them that they had the right guy. That is how I went to trial, based on police telling these people, you know, they write these reports and said they looked at two hundred pictures. We come to find out now that not only these three witnesses are saying the police showed them a pictures.

But there were several witnesses in.

My case that they did not allow us to see, to interview or to testify my trial.

And these witnesses said the same thing.

The police came to them with a picture of one man and they mentioned that he was somehow connected to Florida.

None of these witnesses ever testified.

Right, And we don't know. I mean, they may have made some sort of a deal with them.

We don't know that, but we know for a fact at least this is what we know now. According to the witnesses, the police told them that's the right guy.

So I want to talk about this for a second. This is very interesting to me.

While experts agree to eyewitness testimony is inherently flawed, Americans and potential jurors continue to place a great deal of

It's amazing.

I hope that.

People will remember when they take away, they'll take away from this podcast that the I was identification. It's something that is very orful and it's something that you have to analyze.

Was this person in a panic mode?

Was it dark, were they across the street, did they have do they have a motive?

And this person's was there an interior motive?

Because now we're finding out that the main witness, Michael Sanchez, was sleeping with the young lady that was slapped by his best friend, George Colaso, two weeks from before the murder happened. Now this is all speculation, but now we know that someone came up to Michael Sanchez a week before the murder and told them we're coming after your friend. Now we know that the food truck guy saw the

This wasn't a shooting of two.

People that didn't know each other, because the shooter called the victim by name.

We know this now, this.

Back then, so they presented to jury fraud and misrepresentation by.

Telling them, oh, they don't know each other. This was a mistake. Now we know there was a getaway car.

But what they knew back then is that they could not prove that all those facts fit me. There was no connection with me. So they had to lie to the jury. They had to concoct this story to get a conviction.

And what we also know that the victim was carrying a gun, yes, and that his sister has satisfied or set on camera that he began carrying a gun because he had been threatened, yes, And because he had slapped the girl that you were talking about, and that her friends or her family had threatened to get him. So again, if you would follow that trail, you would say, well, maybe, I mean, if it would seem to me if I was, I would say, let me go, let me go check

The case ended with my picture again picked out.

That's it, the whole narrative. That's the criminal justice.

We've got to got somebody, they're poor, particularly a person of color, and you are basically about to get ground up by the gears.

And that's what happened here.

So you get convicted r Yes, serve twenty years of a twenty five year life sentence.

Yes, let's talk about the prison experience.

It's a psychological and physical torture. You know, you don't belong in this place. But now you have to face the indignations of what being a prison is.

And with respect to the system.

You know, if you committed a crime, you have to deal with these security measures. You have to get naked, you have to show cavity, you know, your butt, you have to go through cavity searches, you have to have your family go through searches, and you know, a lot of indignations. But if you committed a crime and this is what the system is built for, then a right, fine. You know, they have to keep the security of the

So here I am amongst these people.

I'm nothing like them, and I'm being treated as such, being pushed as such, being.

Put in positions where it's.

Either I have to fight to be able to talk to my family, to keep the little things that my family get me, provide me, whether it's some money for commissary.

And here you have a real hard and.

Murderer and a criminal trying to take what's yours, or correctional officer coming in his son because he feels that you're not You're not you're subhuman, you're worthless. They destroy your property. And now I'm going through these conflicts. I don't belonging here. And now I'm lashing out. I'm standing up. It's not even lashing out saying you don't have a right to do this, you don't have a right to

Every little one of those things would seem on the outside like a big problem, and there's just one of one hundred problems.

One of a hundred, because you're starting with your personal safety, yeah, your personal safety, and you think a correctional office is going to protect you. And a lot of times the correction of the officers the one that opens yourself so that inmate.

Could get in there and rob your property or you have.

And I want to be upfront with this, not all correctional officers. For the majority, most of these people are just wanting to come in, do their job and provide for their family.

So I don't want to seem like.

I'm anti corrections because I met some great correctional or some great men in there that live every day to just do the best to provide for their family and do their job with some type of integrity.

But then you have those more numbers or ulcers that you know, and.

Same thing with police officers, the same thing I could be said about them. For the most part, great individuals. They're here to protect our people in our communities. But you have that small percentage that just you know, causes adverse effect that everybody believes that all correctional ulcers are like this, and.

I'm with you.

I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm against the entire criminal justice system. I'm again, I'm in favor of fixing the problems so we don't have to have more stories like yours. So let's get to the part of the exoneration and to the and to what life has been like for the last four months on the outside.

Because I wanted to make sure that people know these stats.

First, Robert Johnson, who was the DA in the Bronx for twenty seven years and who is now amazingly a judge. Under his tenor in office, he had the lowest conviction rate in the Bronx, meaning that murderers land being allowed to run.

The streets, Thieves, murderers.

Whatever you want to call criminals were allowed to run the streets. The conviction rate in the Bronx was the lowest in the city. But what's telling is the highest rate of brawn for convictions were in the Bronx and they didn't have a committee. So you know, in essence, what this is telling you is that he was in convicting criminals. He was convicting innocent people. And that's just a horrible statistic. And now this man.

Is a judge, right, how do people you know, that's like saying the food's bad and the portions are too small, right, I mean you can't.

You're striking out on both sides. Absolutely, that's terrible.

So that's why it's happened with that, and those facts speak for themselves. But here we are twenty years later, no one has ever done the investigation in this new DA says, well, you know what, I want to start something new. She came into office under a cloud of suspicion. She wasn't voted in. They pulled the political maneuver the Democratic Party. Robert Johnson exited through retirement and they left the voters out and put Darcell Clark in through the

I was released on a Wednesday. This is amazing.

This woman investigated my case twenty years later and deemed that there was enough evidence there innocence to release me.

So now you're walking out into the fresh air, into the sunlight.

What happened then?

What I felt?

You know? One way, I felt relief be with my family finally, and you know, in a sudden that you know that I deserved, you know, and I'm happy.

I'm with my wife and my children, I'm with my ess. Yes they were all there.

But my thing when I came out, I faught a sense of anger because I you know, I was happy to be with my family, but it was like I was like just thrown out into society, and you know, in a fashion where there was no empathy towards what I went through other than people want to know what I felt like.

But DA's office, no.

One other than my family and you know, individuals like yourself.

I don't have a job.

I don't you know, have any needs of providing for my wife and my children. Twenty years later, so I'm having a hard time reintegrating into a life of having the work getting back into the workforce. But it's difficult for me. The transition is still is, but I'm making the best out of it.

What happened to Richard Rosaria was horrible. He spent twenty years, the best years of his life behind bars. When the criminal justice system makes a mistake, it's not just the individual that gets hurt. It's families, friends, partners, and children. Richard's children, Amanda and Richard Jr. Turned their stress and creep into music, and I wanted to share this audio note and song they made for their dad.

Good one today E fishsh Well, we.

Have to say all of my life I've been hearing and he's coming home. He's coming home, And I had so much hope.

One day it really had gotten to me.

I was right, really, really down, and I was sitting in our living room and I heard my brother in his closet playing the piano.

It was like a sad time in the house. So I was just playing around with keys and I just ended up coming up with this riff.

The song is about, you know, I wish he was here for my dance recitles. I wish he was here for this and for my brother's baseball games to cheer us on. You know, we have collect calls and we have letters and all those things, but I wanted to I want to experience this world and everything that I'm doing with you. I want you to be able to enjoy it, not through pictures, but right here physically with Menelet.

Call letter advance. It's together, wish this And I wanted to experience this world with you by my side, who cheering for me from the side lines.

Home man, tell me it's gonna.

Be oh oh.

There's no words I can explain that feeling of just hearing those words that he's coming home.

I was like, you know, don't get your hopes up. This happens all the time. We think he's coming home. And that was the craziest moment of my life.

And he's always showed love, and now that he's al, he's done it to the high extent that every day I went to wake up and to see his face every day.

I think this is supposed too much. Click and letters, short vines together, whish this would him?

Every collects let her short VISs together.

Wish this would and every night I wanted to experience this world with.

You bumba side here.

You cheered for me from the sidelines, homie and tell me it's gonna be oh ye oh, won't you place? Come and night from me aunt Hommie time through the dark see the light, won't you please God night?

Won't you please?

Home to night from me in your arms home meet time. The more the darknessy the light you please. I wanted to experience this world.

Whether you buy my side here, you t inform me from the side line home me and tell me.

It's gonna be ah.

Ohnan to experience this world.

Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongs. Go to Innisonsproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated