¶ Pre-Conviction Fears and Ordeal
With the police banging on the door, open up.
The choice to be in that lineup was the last choice I made as a free man.
A year later, I ended up writing the system.
I'm going to be one of those people who everyone in the world is going to think as a monster or suspect as a monster for the rest of my life, and I'm just going to have to come to peace with that.
Somebody was able to look at my picture in the database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't. I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they might have to play in my hanging.
They had been told that two prison officers would have to participate in my execution.
And I walked back inside that prison for the last time. Man, all help broke loops.
¶ Introduction to West Memphis Three
But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flomm Today. I'm particularly thrilled, I actually even a little nervous, because I have two of my heroes in the studio today, Jason Baldwin of the West Memphis three. In May nineteen ninety three, three young Arkansas boys, Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore went missing.
Three little cub scouts, hog tied and left in an Arkansas did.
One of the most controversial legal cases in the state's history. A jury found the man guilty of murdering the eight year old boys back in nineteen ninety three in what prosecutors at the time had called some sort of a satanic ritual.
Celebrities fighting for the teen's release claimed the kids were railroaded because of their mullets, dark clothes, and fascination with the occult.
Sticking killings that might have been part of a satanic ritual.
Convicted murderers Jason Baldwin, Jesse mss Kelly, and Damian Eccles are now free men.
They spent seventeen years in prison for a crime that stunned dark.
So West Memphis. Three would be allowed to walk out of prison, but prosecutors agreed to sign off on the deal only if the defendants would plead guilty.
Welcome to the show, Thank you, Jason, it was a pleasure to be here.
We also have in the studio today a recidivius guest, a repeat defender on wrongful conviction. The one and only Barry Shack, co founder of the Innocence Project. Very welcome.
¶ Jason's Upbringing and Murders
Great to be here. So Jason, let's turn to you to start with. You have lived the most bizarrely extraordinary life, having been wrongfully convicted at sixteen and then spending more than half your life in maximum security prison. Let's go back to the beginning in Arkansas. You grew up in a very poor area. Poor areas, but nonetheless things were pretty good.
Yeah, my family had gone through a series of hardships, especially my mother. We had an abusive alcoholic step father, but at this time she had strengthened herself and we had kind of kicked him out because he was just so dangerous to us and our family. And she had gotten a job in Memphis as a truck dispatcher. And so we had like a family plan. The trailer we were living in my grandmother left us, so we were landowners. We didn't really have to pay rent, We just had
to pay bills. My mother had a car, it was paid for, and so the idea was that we would work hard, my mom would work hard and save up the money, and we would be able to move back to Memphis, Tennessee, to a house and then we could rent our trailer out and so we were in this huge process of building our lives up again.
One day, one of the worst crimes probably in history of America happens in this little town that you live in. Three little eight year old boys were out riding their bikes and they disappeared. Correct And were you aware at the time that there were these boys who had disappeared?
No, I didn't. I remember where I was when I first became where. It was May the sixth, a Thursday. I was at school, and in the school we had televisions and usually the televisions were reserved for like programs related to the class and stuff we were taking. But they just stopped class all of a sudden, turned the TV on and everybody got quiet, and it was a news bulletin saying they had just found the three boys' bodies. So apparently they had been searching for the boys all
night at the time, I wasn't aware of that. When I became aware, they had already found them, and everybody was like just freaked out about it.
Yeah, I'm getting the chills thinking about it now. And in a small town.
For me, you know, I just remember thinking it could have been my little brother, and I was scared, you know. And when I got home from school, my mom had stayed from work so she could see us, you know, because normally she she left for work at two thirty in the afternoon and we get back home at ten thirty at night from the trucking agency where she worked as a dispatcher. And it was my job to, you know, watch after my brothers and things like that.
So she was there.
She's like, hey, they found these boys. They were murdered. They don't know who did it yet. I want you all to stay at home until they find who is responsible and just watch after each other.
¶ Targeting and Prior Juvenile Record
So how many days went by before they started looking at you guys as possible suspects? And I started with Damien, right.
I think they went and questioned Damien immediately, Like the boys' bodies were found Thursday, they questioned him Friday.
Right, And that was because he was known in the community as being a guy who wore black clothes, listened to heavy metal music. He was goth, right, he was a goth.
He was goth before the ward was coined.
Right, right, And you were just his friends.
Great, I was his best friend.
And he's an interesting guy, I mean, from everything I've read and seen of him. He's a very intelligent guy, and he's a very interesting and introspective guy.
One day, I was biking home and I passed him in front of his house and he was skateboarding. I was like, oh, I know, you've seen you in study hall. He goes, yeah, me and my family we just moved out here. I was like, cool, skateboard. He's like, you want to skate on it? I was like cool. And next thing I know, he's riding my bike around. I'm skateboarding on a skateboard. And it just developed from there a great friendship.
When this hall came down, you were in tenh grade, tenth grade. Tenth grade, let's just reflect on that for a second. You're not even anywhere near being an adulted tenth grade. All of a sudden, things got really really serious. Friday, twenty four hours after the bodies are discovered, they're already talking to Damien. Correct, when were you made aware that you were actually going to be wrapped up in the summer.
The next day, they came to my house and knocked on the door, and Detective Allen, Detective Ridge came and summoned me. Damien and Dominie out of my house. Course, so I was still there babysitting my brothers, you know, because they haven't found whoever did this prime yet. So the orders from my mom is still the same. We got to stay at home and I got a babysit And so when the police came, honestly, it didn't really scare me or alarm me, because I figured they were
going everywhere. I figured it was door to door, you know, that they were talking to everybody they could, you know, and to me that made sense, you know, that was logical. But what I didn't know that they were targeting us. And the reason they were targeting us was when I was eleven years old, when I first moved to Arkansas from Memphis to two See and spent that summer there. I was eleven, My brother Matthew was nine, my little brother Terry was six. The trailer park was full of kids.
It had a lake, and we made friends fast. We swam in the lake every day. We played hide and go seek out in the soybean and cotton fields. Well out in the middle of the cotton field there was this oll ten shack and it had been there so long that a tree grown up and lifted the roof off of the building and pushed the wall in, and so for generations kids had been playing hide and go seek there. But one day the cops showed up and arrested all of us, all the kids of the trailer park.
Took us to the police station, called our parents to come get us and everything, and to make a long story short, when I ended up going to court, and of course all the kids in the trailer park ended up going to court, the prosecution told the judge, I think two years in the state reform school would do these kids some good, and our public defender, mister Montgomery, said, I agree, you're on her, And at that time my mom jumped up said my sons aren't going to prison,
which basically what reform school is housing for children. I was eleven eleven, my brother Matthew was nine, and in the range of ages of these kids, which was almost every kid in the neighborhood, was anywhere from nine. I think the oldest kid was fourteen. But when my mom objected, the judge called them up to the bench. Next thing I know, instead of two years in the state reform school, I've got five years probation and a five hundred dollars fine.
And for my mom that was a thousand dollars fine because she had two sons, our friends down the street. She had four of her kids affected by it for playing hide and seek, for playing hide and go seek.
And now you know, in Arkansas, because I didn't know, they gave.
Us criminal they charged was criminal trespassing and breathing and right, and I remember our family budget for Christmas was only one hundred dollars.
Right.
¶ The Arrest and Forensic Samples
And so now I'm on the record, right, I have a record. I have what's called a criminal record. And honestly, it really wasn't that bad. It wasn't that scary. I had a probation officer. I would have to go to his office, me and my brother would and he would look at our case, and he didn't even he didn't look at us like we were criminals, because we weren't. He would buy us soda pops and ask how we were doing in school, ask us for our report cards
and stuff. And of course when I was at school, sometimes I'd be in class and intercom would come on and they say, send Jason to the principal's office, you know, And I go to the principal's office and there would be mister Jones, I'm just checking in on you, you know. And this went on for you know, until before I got locked up. I became used to it, and so
that's how I got a record. When Damien came into the picture, he still suffered the prejudice of the rest of us kids out there, even though he didn't have a record, right, But because he suffered the prejudice of it.
You know, I didn't know this part of the story. So how could the public defender just immediately agree with the court and say, yeah, they ought to be convicted of a crime for playing hide and seek.
That's what he did. And you would think that the prosecutor would be on the benefit of the people, the kids, right, A reasonable person, a reasonable prosecutor, a reasonable officer of the law, would have just called our parents, not charged us, and says, hey, I know y'all have been playing hide and go seek at this place for years, but y'all just don't do that anymore.
I mean, of course, obviously, And it's interesting to Jason because we see this now in poor and urban communities, especially where they do these sweeps and they pick up everybody with a stop and frisk and all this other stuff, and all of a sudden, everybody's got a record, and then when something happens, is all of a sudden, you're the guy who's got a record, even though you didn't do anything wrong. So now everything goes completely haywire and you guys get arrested. Correct.
I remember when I was arrested. Thanks to public media, I was expecting things when I was arrested. I was expecting a fingerprints. I was expecting a mug shot, and I was expecting a phone call. They mug shot in me. But when they fingerprinted me, they didn't stop there. They took a fingerprint, They took an entire hand in pression. They took my entire foot prints right, and then they took me to the hospital and they took hair samples,
they took saliva samples, they took blood samples. And now at this point, I had already been engaged with the police, and they had asked me, you know, questions and stuff, and I had told them where I was at, and they absolutely refused the truth. They kept telling me, no, we've got another story. Your friend has told us that you have done this, and that what you're telling us is not true. I'm like, well, who is this friend? And they refused to tell me, and honestly, I thought
they were lying. I'm like, no one has told you that I'd done this, because I didn't do this. It was like I was just arguing with a brick wall. I couldn't make them understand where I was at and
what I was doing. So when they were taking these samples from me, it gave me hope because I thought, Okay, whoever committed this crime has left the footprint, has left a handprint, has left a hair sample, has left a saliva sample, or has left a blood sample, something for the police to compare my samples to right, And so
that's where my hope was. Now a couple of months go by and I'm in the county jail and they had to take all these samples from me again because they didn't have a core order for it, and I'm like, please take them from me. You can take them today, you can take them tonight, you can take them every day until you are able to prove that I am innocent.
¶ Satanic Rituals and Coerced Confession
But what you're saying is that you actually did believe that they were after the truth, which you would hope. In a small community like that, you would think that if for no other reason than a selfish reason, that the authorities would want to get this bad, evil guy out of the circulation and get to be in prisons so that their family's not victimized next, because that's a real possibility exactly. But that wasn't what was happening.
That wasn't the case. I was totally surprised when I went to trial and instead of the narration of the story revolving around evidence, the prosecutor John Fogelman and Brenton Davis were saying things like the crime scene was completely clean, there was absolutely no evidence, no physical evidence leftl behind. And this in fact is evidence of satanic cult ritual activity.
Because the devil finged up the crime scene basically.
But when did they get the confession from Jesse, miss Kelly.
It was on June the third of nineteen ninety three, the day that we were arrested. Like, they got the confession from him earlier dinner and day, and then they came and arrested us. They used that to get the one.
That's what they were telling you when they said we have a friend exactly.
So, but Jesse was a friend of yours though.
Right The first time I met Jesse was in the sixth grade, when I first started school in Marion. I was on the playground and I saw out the corner of my eye somebody rushing towards me really fast, right, And I look, and next thing I know, a fist is coming from my face. So I ducked and I ran and it was Jesse. He chased me all around the playground, around the Merry go Round, around the swing set. I was the new kid, you know. And next thing I know, this girl, Donna Spurlock comes running up and
stops Jesse. Says Jesse, Jesse stop.
Stop.
Promise me, Jesse, you will leave him alone. And he gave her his word that he would leave me alone. And he never messed with me.
Shout out to Donna on this johna thank you, way to go go now.
Years later he would move down the street from me. You know, we got to know each other a little bit for a few months until he moved again to Highland Trailer Park, when I never got to see him again.
So, Jesse, and this is where we turned to Barry. In this case, you had sort of a typical situation right, Jesse had a very low IQ.
Right.
I think the z IQ was as low as seventy two.
Seventy two.
Right, he was a teenager. Jesse basically was the perfect target for an unscrupulous detective or interrogator to extract a confession from.
And the statistics are shocking on the number of juveniles that give false confessions, but particularly juveniles in homicide cases. You know, when we're talking about people that were wrongfully convicted of murders and were sentenced to death, there's an extraordinarily high percentage of juveniles involved. The numbers are actually stunning, to the point where the American Psychological Association, when they wrote this white paper on what are the risk factors
for false confessions? Age is one of them. And we've long known that. But this was the perfect storm type case. It's a horrible, horrible murder in a small town that causes really a panic in the community, and they start looking for the other They look for the strange person, Damien, and then they get Jason Baldwin as good friend, and then they find the most vulnerable person to sort of feed their version of events to. It turns out to be Jesse MSS Kelly and from their bad things.
Let me add this that most people don't know that it's in the record of this case. The boys' bodies were found May sixth, we were arrested Jesse Muskelly gave the false confession on June third. But what many people have not really noticed it. On May the fifteenth, just a couple of weeks after the boys' bodies are found, Jesse went to the police with another friend because there was a tip line and a reward offered out for
any information on who may have committed this crime. Now, Jesse did not know who committed his crime, but he wanted the reward money. He was imagining the brand new truck he could buy his father and things like that. So him and another kid out of his trailer park went to the police and said, there's this suspicious guy in the town that you know, you need to check out.
And I don't know exactly what all he told them about this guy or whatever, but they ended up telling him, Jesse, you need to come back with a more believable story than that. Right, A few weeks come by go by. Now they're saying they've got that believable story. When they gives the false confession against Damian and me right.
And we know kids that age, especially with low mental capacity, are so susceptible to suggestion a. They want to please the police, they want to be accepted, they want to be sort of almost heroic in a certain sense. You're trapped in this room with people you're totally overmatched intellectually in terms of authority, in terms of power. You're scared. You want to go home. They're allowed to lie to you,
which they do. They are, And it's actually been shown that in many cases, you can convince an adolescent that he actually did the crime that he didn't do and get them to confess. That way, you get them so confused with this psychological protocol, which is the read method or other methods, that they eventually just they confess to something that they may actually believe they did even they didn't do it. So Jesse was the perfect target. He
¶ False Confessions and Legal Reforms
confessed and then it's all downhill from there, because we know that the confession is the most powerful piece of evidence that you can have in acquirement. It overrides DNA in the eyes of a jury. We've seen it over and over again, which is insane.
Has psychologically overwhelming to people. You never want to think that you would admit to doing something you didn't do. You always want to think that you have a strong will power that you you would not cave in under these coercial pressures. But that's blaming the victim.
He's paradoxical to Jason, right, because almost everyone's had the experience, especially when they were an ao lescent, of lying and saying they didn't do something that they did do. But almost no one's had the experience of actually confessing to something that they didn't do. So for a jury, it's so foreign because they're like, it don't make no sense to me. Well, that's one of the reasons we're working so hard on getting videotaping of interrogation right.
And you know, if there had been a videotape of the Jesse mss kelly interrogation, I think we would have found out that most of the details in there were probably fed facts, things that the police believed to be true but they suggested to him. And that's what's so extraordinary. Jerry Being, who is the lawyer for Stephen Avery and was featured in Making a Murder, just wrote a book called Illusion of Justice. His very good book about his
life story in his career. But the one thing that he pointed out that is kind of amazing is that the Innocence Movement was able to get videotaping of interrogations
as a reform in Wisconsin, but just for juveniles. And it's for that reason that we were able to get a videotape of the Brendan Dacy interrogation, which I think you know, had an enormous impact in this country because people could literally say how the facts were fed to him and his disability essentially and mental impairment, and how
that can happen. And you know, when you actually look at the statistics on false confessions in the Innocence Project dnaxonerations, Brandon Garrett has done an analysis showing that in eighty percent of the cases where innocent people proven by DNA give false confessions, eighty percent of the cases, they are confessing to details that only the police and the real perpetrator would know. So how did that happen other than the police feeding them the facts? So the videotaping is
critically important. Then I'd wager that none of you would have ever been arrested if they videotaped that interrogation or certainly the charges wouldn't have lasted that long.
¶ The Unfair Trial and Missed Alibis
Sitting in that court room, it's gotta be just the most surreal and terrifying experience. You didn't testify, because why would you didn't done anything? I guess right, I mean, well.
Honestly, I thought I was going to testify. I talked to my attorneys, I told them where I was at and I wanted to testify, and they assured me. I had my Albis, my great granduncle whose yard I was mowing that day. I needed him to testify. And they were like, do you have anybody that would have seen you or known you where you were at that day that was not your friend, that was not your family member, that would not have so called reason to lie for you.
And I remember I was thinking, you know what, everything I did that day, I played it over my mind a million times, and I was like, after I mowed my uncle's yard, I was at Walmart and I spent a dollar of the money that my uncle paid me to get us eatch a soda and we played a video game and there was this Asian kid standing next to us, waiting on us to get through playing. I
didn't know the guy. I didn't know what his name was or anything, but I remembered him standing there and watching us play, waiting on us to get through so he could play right. So I said, if you could find him, he has no connection to me and no reason to lie in the eyes of the law, he
can verify everything I say is true. And my attorney's actually found this guy and he actually told them, you know, exactly the truth, that he saw me at Walmart playing video games and I did not look like I'd committed a murder or was about to go commit a murder or anything. He wasn't called. Nobody was called. I wasn't called, And next thing I know, my trial is over with.
Was over with it.
It was over with and I did not get called or any of my witnesses.
¶ Systemic Failures in Public Defense
But so upsetting about this case. And you know, it starts, frankly with the public defender that's pleading you guilty to a misdemeanor, not even pleading you guilty. He's saying, I think it's a good idea that you get probation from
misdemeanor for playing hide and seek through this trial. Because the Arkansas public defense system, as I recall it, there had been a case where there'd been a finding that it was unconstitutionally underfunded, and the three lawyers that were representing Damian, yourself and Jesse mss kelly didn't have adequate funds. I don't think people fully appreciated that the lawyers didn't
have money. That they were even given five thousand dollars per client as money for investigators or experts, which there's some question as to whether they ever spent it on that because they were so short of funds that they couldn't do an adequate defense, and they waived their right in the state of Arkansas to take this trial out of the media market. They had a right to keep
cameras out of the courtroom. And in a case like this, where there's whole ridiculous prosecution is being done on the grounds of satanism and community panic, it's just all very troubling. And I think that the heart of it is unless you have a well funded, robust system for giving people lawyers, particularly charged with murder in these serious cases, and juvenile's adequate counsel, the whole system implodes on itself in some horrible, terrible way. You never had a chance.
A couple things really stuck out to me. One was when they put that guy in the stand who was testifying as an expert on satanism and witchcraft and all this stuff, right, and the defense attorney quite rightly said to him, where did you get certified at this? And it turned out he had spent like an hour of doing some online something or whatever. It was ridiculed. It was laughable, right, The fact that he was calling himself an expert was laughable. And that's one thing that I
was like, well, the jury's got to hear that. And the other thing was when they had the doctor on the stand, right, it was like an orthopedic surgeon or something whatever he was, and they were asking him about the fact the way that the one boy had been mutilated, right, and he had the skin cut off his penis. I mean, he's really pretty disgusting even things about it.
And which we found out later was animal predation. Animals had actually started eating their bodies in the water that they were submerging. And so when the police pulled Jesse into the police station and they laid out the photos of the bodies, they had him make up a story for all the visible wounds. The calls and manner of the wounds were unknown. They didn't know that all these wounds were animal predation.
¶ Mishandling Key Evidence
There's so much more to the story, and I want to get to it. But the other things that were so bizarre was the fact that they never investigated the restaurant manager the bo Jangles who called up and said there's a there was a black guy who came in leading all over the place. He went right into the
women's bathroom. I mean, right there, there's two things that if I'm a cop over going, you know what, I'm gonna get covered in mud, like I'm gonna be like, you know what, that's either a crazy ass coincidence or I better get my ass over there and I better go find out whatever the fuck there is to find out about this, because that's weird, right, And maybe it was a coincidence, because we don't know if that guy was a killer, and we'll probably never know, but that's weird.
And the cop just came and sort of went up to the drive through, might as well order have a diet coke while she was there. She didn't need bother to go inside and look at the situation. I mean, you know, well, to give.
Officer Regina mixed the benefit of the doubt. At that time, the guy had already left. She's on a mission to find some missing kids, right, so she's probably thinking, Okay, he's not in there. I can probably just drive around and I will run into him and get him that away, right.
But what is unacceptable is the next day when they have found the bodies, and the bodies were found very close to this Bojangles restaurant, and so then they're thinking, Okay, a guy came out of the bayou where the bodies were found, covered in mud and blood. We need that, right, So they go in there and they get just the very miniscule scraping of blood samples. And there were a pair of glasses, sunglasses that the guy left behind. And
you wear glasses, and you wear glasses very adjason. You know, glasses are the perfect thing for collecting fingerprints, right. But Detective Ridge threw the glasses away, and he threw a toilet paper roll completely saturated in blood away.
¶ Conviction and Devastating Family Impact
So back to the trial, back to the courtroom. If you remember when the jury went out, what did you think was going to happen?
I sincerely believed that we would go home, they would find us not guilty, that they would be able to totally ignore all the flaming prejudicial stuff that the prosecution was bringing up about Satanism and everything and look at the case for what it was and follow the evidence.
See.
And this very interesting because one of the things that we've identified as a risk factor in being wrongfully convicted is just being innocent. Any objective observer watching the way the evidence went in at that trial would have told you, Jason, that you were in big trouble. But an innocent person thinks, oh, it's all a big mistake. It's just the way you sad. Thank god they collecting all this saliva from me and a footprint and DNA and HARES, because you know this
will all prove that I didn't do it right. So I can't begin to tell you the number of stone called innocent people I've spoken to who when you read the transcripts of their trial, and you're one of the few that we have a video of your trial, you'd say, oh my god, they must have been terrified that you know they were going down. And yet innocent people don't think that, because they say this system should work. This is some horrible mistake that's going to be corrected.
And so you're told all your life that the purpose of the judicial system is to find the truth, when really it's to get a conviction.
Okay, but then the jury comes back in and the worst thing imaginabile happen, and you're sentenced to life in prison.
The first thing I thought about was my mom and brothers. As I told you, we were putting our lives back together. My brother Matthew was fourteen, my little brother Terry was nine. Well, during the trial, school starts back up. My little brothers have to go back to school. They harassed my brothers, and so my brothers would get into fights with kids in school and they go to the principal's office and the principal will be like, oh, you're his brother. So
they get expelled. For my mom, her employer, the trucking agency in Memphis, tells her, hey, I understand you were gonna want to be at the hearings and the trial for your son, and that's all find and Danny, you just won't have a job to come back to. Thankfully, our trailer was owned, our car was owned, but they didn't have money to pay for electricity anymore. They got food stamps so they could eat, but they couldn't put
gas to come and visit me or anything. Very often, I think I saw them just a small handful of times, and so I thought about them, you know, not only what they've gone through, but what they may continue to face because of this. Because at the time, even though they were being treated like this, I thought, well, when the jury finds me innocent, these people will come forward and apologize to all of us, and my brothers will be able to go back to school, my mom will
get her job back, and things will be fine. But that wasn't the case, you know, and so I'm worried more for them than for myself.
That's remarkable. I don't know if you know how remarkable that sounds of me. It's so crazily selfless, especially at your young agent facing what you were facing.
And so we've been through a lot together as a family over the years.
¶ Surviving Maximum Security Prison
So then you end up getting sent to maximum security prison.
Right when you first go to prison, and you're not going to death row, you go to what's called a diagnostic unit, and that's where they evaluate you mentally and physically to determine what your parent unit in the department corrections will be because they have a myriad of prisons on various different old slave plantations in the South, and each of them are different and in different ways by
age and your strength and things like that. And when I went to diagnostics, they saw me like you saw me as a small, innocent kid, and diagnostics they were like, we've got to send you to one of two places, Jason, or you're not gonna make it PC Protective Custody or what's called SPU Suicide Prevention Unit and suicide prevention you will have your own cell. And you know, I looked at it like this. At the time, we didn't have
very many people on our side. In fact, it was just us, and I was thrust in through this incredibly impossible situation, and I was escorted everywhere I went in the prison, and so I'd see the people in SPU going to chow and they'd be doing the thorozine shuffle
because they're so heavily medicated. And I had a fear that if I acquiesced and let them put me in SPU, that they would forcefully medicate me and I would lose my mind and my ability to think and reason and to fight and so I said, no, I can't do that. And as far as the PC protective custody, anybody knows if you are saying you are so weak that you need protection, that people are going to see that and
prey on you even more. And so I knew I had to some way, some fashion stand on my own two feet in there and earn everybody's respect back from the inmates and guards a light and they said, well, you not going to one of these places. We're gonna have to send you to Barner. And at the time, they had just shipped all these guys from the Little Tucker Unit to Barner and they were destroying the place.
They said, it was just chaos and destruction and just incredibly violent place, and that's where they were going to have to send me. And I just told them that that's what you gotta do. You got to do it. And so they did eventually send me to Barner Unit, and it was everything they said it was.
¶ Initiation and Confrontation in Prison
How did you survive there?
You know, by the grace of God, you know, as you said, I guess, I'll say I was incredibly lucky, but I was incredibly blessed to I went in there. They opened up and mister Patten stepped out, and his clerk stepped out, and mister Panton says, in may Bowlin, I'm mister Patten, the classification officer. I'll be assigning you to your housing unit. And this is my clerk, Mojo.
And they tell me you got to stand up for yourself in here or these people will just will run you over and turn you into a sex slave and all these horrible things and make you pay money for protection and stuff like that. And so they assign me to seven barracks, and seven barracks at the Barner unit is intake barracks. I walk down the hall and as I'm walking, I'm walking next to this barracks and it's got bulletproof glass three stories high, and these guys are
beating on it. Right, it's plexiglass, it's got chicken wire in it, and there are sell bars on the inside of it going all the way up three stories. And I look and these guys are literally climbing this thing. They are climbing it above one another, hanging on to the bars, looking at me, beating the glass and pointing at me. Because they've been watching the trial on TV and the hearings and stuff for an entire year. It's like a pep rally. Right, They're finally going to have
their hands on me, right. And I get there and Sergeant Ivy's working the door and he tells me. He says, if you go in there and stand up for you yourself, I got your back. If not, they got you. And I'm just holding the only thing I have is a bible, a couple of letters from a mom. That's it in a little paper bag. And they opened the door and put me in there, and next thing I know, somebody swings a fist at me. I duck that one. The next one catches me and I'm fighting. Immediately the door
opens back up, there's may sprayed. Sergeant Ivy's yanking people off of me. I'm on the ground and he says, are you ready to go to PC?
Now?
Do you need to catch out? And the guys are hollering, catch out, bitch, catch out, oh all these horrible things, you know, which catch out means to leave the barracks and to go and to protective custody. And like I said, you know, I knew I needed to earn these people's respect because I did not know how long I would be there. I know I'm innocent, but I don't know how long I'm going to be in this prison, and so I tell them no leave me. And next thing
I know, we go from the dayroom tier downstairs. The guys like push all the racks up against the wall. They circle around us, and I'm fighting this guy. And then I'm fighting this guy and there's people hitting me from behind. So it's kind of orderly and fair, but then again it's kind of not. And so I fight the whole barracks that Friday, everybody. And then they call shower call and the barracks next door, eight bricks, they call two barracks at a time to go to shower.
The shower holds one hundred people, and so when I get there, I gotta fight all these guys from eight barracks. And so I fought all week in. My whole face will swoll up, my fists will swoll up, my body was beat. And so I do this all weekend. I get into fights in the chowhu even like because there's even other people from other barracks is wanting to get to me in the chow haw and stuff like that.
Come Monday morning, I'm barely even able to walk, you know, and like the guys were like just pushing me and guiding me a bit and which way to go and stuff, because I can't even see even less than I normally do because my eyes and stuff are all swollen up. And I just remember thinking that whole weekend about this job out in the fields, host squad. There's gonna be sunshine, there's gonna be a down, and I'm gonna get to witness that. I was just looking forward to that first dawn,
you know, that that morning air. And so there was a part of me just no matter how bad it was, I was just looking forward to that first dawn. I'm like, if I can make it to that, you know, if I can make it to that, that's something good. And then I do, you know. I get there and they have us march in what they call a deuce two by two, and you march and you go through the sally port and they count you off and and everything,
and you're a part of what's called host squad. And they march me way off out in the fields and in the country and everything. And I'm in the middle of the line. We're cleaning out this ditch of bermuda grass, and the gouger whose job it is to like talk back to you to make you work harder, says Bowling. Drop your hole. So I drop my hoe. He says, step out of the line. I step out of the line.
He says, Sergeant Norris wants to speak to you. And Sergeant Norris is up on the heel on his horse, and I go walking towards him, stumbling towards him, more like it, And he says, walk over to that truck where the major is. He wants you. And so I stumble up to this truck and the major is the field major over the entire field operations. His name is Gibson, and he's got his pistol out on the driver's side door, and he yells out over my head, I'm taking Baldwin
with me, and he says, you better keep up. I'd hate to have to kill you for escape. And so he starts driving down this dirt road out on these old plantation fields, and I'm running trying to keep up with him. I was done so bad that weekend. I think I have a size twelve boot on one foot, a size ten on the other. I don't have any socks on my feet are sliding around. I've already got blood blisters on my feet and everything. Of course, I'm
all beat up. My hands now are like bleeding from blisters, not just the tops from fighting, but my hands from blisters and stuff. And he's saying all these things I've been hearing from people, all these hateful things, you know, And I already know that there's no talking to him, there's no communicating with him, because he already believes what he wants to believe. And he's calling me this horrible satan, tanic child murderer, and how I'm gonna die and deserve
to die. And we get way so far away, like even though I'm blind, like I could look back and still see a stretch of white, but I kept going further and further and further in the white just disappeared over the horizon, and it's just me and him way out here, and then these feels, and he's got his gun on me, and we stop, and he looks me in the eye and says, you kill those boys, You deserve to die, telling the same thing I told Judge Burnew.
I tell him I'm innocent, and we just sit there and he's got his gun in my face and we sit there. I don't know what he was thinking. I don't know if he was thinking, by kill Jason, that makes me a child killer too. I don't know if he was thinking that. I don't know if he looked at me and saw his son. I don't know if he just looked at me and saw me as a scum of the earth. But a long time dragged by, and he took the gun back, cranked the vehicle back
up and says, come on, we're going back. And he turned the vehicle around and I made the long march back to my squad put me back in the middle of the line.
¶ The Alford Plea and Freedom
I mean, this is the craziest fucking story imaginable. We're going to fast forward to eighteen years later. Right, So, now you've been in prison for longer than you had been alive before you went to prison. Right, You were sixteen when you got arrested.
That was a big deal to me too when it happened.
Eighteen years in prison, and now finally the tide turns, the public sentiment turns, and the government realized that they've got the wrong guys exactly. They don't want to let you out, but they realize that they're going to have to. So then one day you get offered sort of almost like a Sophie's choice, right, because they came to you and offered an Alfred plan and Barry could just speak on an Alfred place.
Second, this is a plea where in theory there's no admission of guilt. Sometimes they call them nolo cantandre please, where you say I know that the state has enough evidence if they take it to trial that they arguably could get a conviction, but I am innocent. And then they basically say, okay, we're going to sentence you to time served, but you get a conviction on your record
and to a lesser charge. But that was the horrible choice that you Jason Rawford, and it was a deal that would cover everyone, right.
And that's the tricky part, right, because she had resolved that you were never going to take an Alfred plea, because you had worked in the law library, you knew what you were doing. You're now a man, and you're a smart guy as well, and so you had made this decision. But they made it impossible for you to stick to your guns because of the fact that they were going to execute your friend. Is that right?
They had my best friend's life at stake. I remember very well. It was a Wednesday, August tenth of twenty eleven. At this time, I'm working in the school department. I'm helping people get their GDS and stuff like that. And I came in from work and they're like, bow and go back to the control center. You got an attorney visit. And I remember thinking, anytime I got an attorney visit, it's scheduled well in advanced. And I get there and it's Blake and he says, what if I told you
you could go home tomorrow? And I said, I hear a button there, and so he explains to me the alpha player. I told him, no, we have an evidentiary hearing set for December to twenty second, which isn't that far away, and we have all the evidence on our side. We're in front of what I believe to be a reasonable judge, Judge Laser.
We're going to.
Prove our innocence and we're gonna win, and we're going to go home. But the choice wasn't all mine. I can make that choice for myself, because you've heard how horrible it was for me going in well. By this time, I'd won the respect of the guards, I'd won the respect of the inmates, and instead of people cursing me and beating me, they were hugging me and praying for me,
wishing for my well being. And so even though it was not a life I deserved being in prison, it was a life I had built at the same time, So it wasn't so bad at that point. But for Damien, he's on death row. It's like being in the hole all the time. And even if they didn't kill him for decades more, his health was declining. He's basically being tortured every single day, and there wasn't anything really to say that they wouldn't execute him, because that was their
intent there. I had this real nightmare the entire time I was in there that one day they actually did execute Damien. And honestly, after the Alfred plea was brought to me and they'd said it was all or nothing, and I thought to myself, if I did not accept this Alpha plea and they eventually killed Damien, I would not be able to live with myself because I basically had the power to save his life, and so I had to make the decision. I had to say, what is most important? Is it my reputation or is it
an innocent man's life? And I had to make that choice because that's what is real. That's the realest thing to save an innocent life, and so to hell with my reputation.
¶ Post-Release Challenges and Advocacy
You know, it's not just your reputation. It's also the fact that you can't sue for compensation exactly, and you're still a convicted felon.
And in any moment they can come and just take me and accuse me of something, just as they've done before that I'm totally innocent up and they can put me in prison for twenty one years, right because of your record.
Yes, And let's not forget because this is a great dilemma. Having been involved in assisting all the different lawyers in this case, because by this point there was a legal team representing you, team representing Damien, one representing Jesse the way it should be, because of these kinds of potential conflicts,
although everybody had been working together in gathering all this evidence. People, you know, frankly, ordinary criminal defense lawyers don't understand this that innocent people who have been in prison for so long. It is such a big part of your identity. It is yourself that I mean, so many clients. If they had offered you parole, right if you admit to committing the crimes, you would.
Have turned that down exactly.
Yeah, And so you were going to fight for your innocence no matter what. And to make you give that up so that your best friend didn't get executed is one of the worst coercive And as you said, it's a sophie's choice. We all felt horrible for you. I mean, you felt horrible for everybody, but you know, we all knew how horrible that was for you. In particular. You are so articulate and so well read and so insightful.
¶ The Power of Education and Advocacy
I've never asked you, I mean, did you get a ged or what was your level of education by the time you were getting out.
I only filed one grievance the entire time I was incarcerated, and it was for my education. After I did my initial sixty days on what they call whole squad, you go up for classification and you can get a different job, and they gave me a job in the kitchen. Well, like you know, I was rested on my last' schol for the tenth grade, and so I put in a request for an interview to go to school to get my GED. They wrote me back very quickly, so you
have life without you don't need an education. Well, and so I filed my only grievance and said my education is important to me. I need school. And it went through the processes and I won, and they let me go to school, and I got my GED thanks to the movement, because of the movies WM three dot org. They put together a college fund and paid for me to get some college education. And I wasn't able to get a complete college education in there, but I was able to get a lot of education. And it followed
me here and now I've got my associates degree. I'm about to go back to school from bachelors with the hope to go to law school after that.
So now here you are. You've just moved from Seattle to Austin, and tell us about this organization because now you, like so many of these honreies, you are somebody who is standing up for the rights of others, to help other people have been wrongfully convicted, to prevent people from being wrongfully convicted. And you have your own organization you're now the deputy director. Congratulations, thank you. So can you tell us about that.
There's Proclaimed Justice. My good friend John Harden I built this organizations to help people like me, like Damian and Jesse, who who are in prison forever for something they didn't do. There are a lot of amazing and beautiful organizations that do this, like you know, like the Innocence Project. There are still so many people that need help and we can't possibly cover them all. After experiencing what I experienced,
I don't want people to suffer that. I don't want anybody else to go through that, and so the people who are I want to rescue from it, and I want policy change to make it more difficult for innocent people to be found guilty.
And if people, Jason, if people want to help Proclaim Justice, it's proclaim justice dot org. Correct and you can go to the website. You have the Instagram as well, Proclaim Justice. Well, let's go to you first, Barry, because I want you to have the last word. So, Barry, what do you take away from all of this and what can people do?
Well?
You know, there are innocence organizations all across the country, frankally, now even the world as part of our Innocence Network and other organizations such as Proclaim Justice where people can get involved. You should look at the innocence organization in your area. Whether you live in California or Texas or New York or any place you know there is a local innocence organization that you can get involved with, and the issue is just get involved. These organizations need help
spreading the word, raising money. But now we're at to point in time in our country's history where people have to get involved in the local level. Who's going to be elected district attorney? Everybody should care about that. We need progressive district attorneys who care about justice in each different jurisdiction. There are issues on the ballot or in the state legislature that the policy department at the Innocence Project and the innocence organizations in our network are pushing
in virtually every state. So there's a lot of ways to get involved.
¶ Final Words: Educate Yourselves
Jason, I'm going to turn over to you for last words. What would you like to share educate yourselves.
One of the most maddening, infuriating things. It's a phrase that I've encountered as being innocent, and it's this phrase, right here, they all say that. Right, you've heard this When you say, well, I'm innocent and someone shuts you down by basically saying they all say that, Educate yourselves, people, and learn that innocent people do go to prison, Innocent people do fall victim to the justice system, and they don't all say that. Just the innocent ones. The people
who go to prison who are actually guilty. The justice system makes it easier for them because they can make deals and things like that and take a plea bargain. But when you're innocent, you can't do that. Only thing you can do is say I'm innocent, and next thing you know, you're going to jury trial and they're trying to basically take your entire life from you. And so it's much more difficult when you're innocent than is when you are guilty.
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 wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project 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 composer Jay Rowlph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one