¶ San Antonio Four: Life After Exoneration
My interview with the San Antonio four was one of the first ones that I recorded in front of a live audience, and we did it at south By Southwest and the episode originally aired on April seventeenth of twenty seventeen. The good news is these four extraordinary women who went through this impossible ordeal, frame job and persecution and false conviction. In twenty eighteen, they finally had their criminal records expunged fully expunged. Cassandra Rivera started working in a law office
in twenty seventeen. Elizabeth Ramirez married a woman named Angel who she met in prison in February of twenty eighteen.
Anna Vasquez get Ready for this started serving as the director of outreach for the Innoctance Project in Texas in March twenty sixteen, and in June twenty nineteen, she was appointed as a representative of the Houston Forensic Science Center, where she will help to oversee Houston forensic scientists, providing a valuable perspective on the consequences of flawed evidence analysis and confirmation bias and Chris D. Mayhew is now studying
at the Vettech Institute of Houston, pursuing her dream of becoming a veterinarian that was put on hold for over fifteen years because of a crime she didn't commit. 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 in 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 a 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.
Now walk back inside that prison for the last time. Man, all help, broke loops. Man, this is wrongful conviction. Wow, how's everybody doing out there? South By Southwest? Let's go.
So I'm really happy to be here. I've been coming to south By Southwest for many years, but in the past I always came down in my other job, my other life as a record executive and checking out bands, which I'll be doing while i'm here, but this time I'm here as the host of Wrongful Conviction, which is a podcast that I started after having worked with the
Innocence Project for over twenty years. I'm a founding board member of the Innocence Project, and it's been my calling in life to help exonerate people who are factually actually innocent from prison, and to help them after they have been exonerated, to reintegrate back into society, which is of course a whole nother malla wax because it's getting out. You know, people see in the newspapers, the celebration on the courthouse steps with the family and the lawyers and
the balloons and the press. But then, as these women can attest, it's a tough road even after that. So it was a logical extension for me to start this podcast. And today I'm particularly excited because the first time I'm doing it in front of a live audience, which is you, So thanks for being here. We're here today to talk about and to talk with Annabasquez, Cassandra Riviera, Elizabeth Mariirez, and Christy Mayhew, who are the San Antonio four, as well as their attorney, Mike Ware.
In nineteen ninety seven, despite believing their innocence would prevail, the four were quickly found guilty.
They were convicted twenty years ago of sexually assaulting two little girls.
The San Antonio four still can't quite comprehend what happened. The little girls claimed they were raped during a drug fueled satanical rage with a gun pointed at their head.
But then one of the alleged victims recanted her story, same for the forensic testimony. Those and other factors convinced the court to exonerate these women.
Their attorney, Mike Ware, says this was a classic miscarriage of justice brought about by a panic over the women's lifestyle and a rush to judgment.
So welcome to all of you, and thanks for being here.
¶ Case Flaws: Bias and Bad Science
For those of you who are not familiar, this case was a case in which two little girls claimed to have been sexually assaulted in a very strange and fantastical scenario that made no sense to anybody who was actually paying attention. But the two actually most common causes of wrongful convictions were both prevalent factors in this case. One is I woulds misidentification. In this case, it's particularly as I was victim wrongful identification and there was a crime
that never even happened. The second most common cause is junk science, and that may seem counterintuitive, but in this case, there was a doctor who testified as to the sexual assault that had taken place, but in fact it had never taken place, falls squarely in the area of junk science. And then there was a third factor, which was inherent bias and prejudice because each of these women had recently come out as being gay, which in the nineties in
San Antonio wasn't an acceptable thing to be right. In fact, it was still illegal in Texas back then, which is insane. But that's beside the point I want to get into
¶ Before the Accusations: Normal Lives
the story. Let's go back and let's start with you this situation. It must have been just a surreal thing to be caught up in. What was your life like prior to getting caught up in this crazy criminal justice nightmare?
You know, recently graduated from high school. I mean, I was an athlete during those years. I had started school college education, and you know, I was looking forward to the future and becoming a registered nurse. That was my go back then, and you know, lots of friends. I mean, I was having the time of my life. Actually, you know, you had your whole life ahead of you.
Yeah, of course, of course. And then the next thing you know, you're being branded in the press and everywhere else as this sort of monster. Right, And there was a satanic panic in the nineties as well that sort of got caught up in this thing too. And you were accused. Well you were accused because there was a whole setup. But we'll get to that, right, There was a reason why these girls invented this story. And you know, I want to move to Cassandra and talk to you
a little bit about this as well. Take us back to the time when this all went so horribly wrong. God, it was.
It was a very dark time for us. It was back in nineteen ninety four. We were, like Anna said, we're living our lives. We're enjoying ourselves. And we were just hanging out with friends, just living normal lives. We had just come out. I had just come out. Me
and Anna were in a relationship with each other. I was raising my two small children, and all of a sudden we were hit with these false allegations and it was the biggest nightmare that you can even think of, to just wake up one day and being told that you're accused of lesting children.
And Elizabeth, it was your nieces, right, who are nine and seven at the time, And it's fair to say that our father put them up to this because of an unrequited situation that he had, and it's crazy how people could behave in these circumstances, and what he did
is in a certain way. Not only were you all victims of this, but so were the little girls right right, because they were forced under threat of violence, these young, impressionable little girls who were basically playing with Barbie dolls, and that led to these the line from how they were playing with Barbie dolls too, you must have been sexually assaulted if you're taking the clothes off and putting them on the barbie dolls, right, I mean, yeah, who
wouldn't think that is such a crazy thing. But for you, it's even more personal because of the fact that you were really at the center of all this because it was your nieces and it was this non relationship with a guy who actually had been married to your.
Sister, right, right, that's correct. They would come over and we would visit and they would stay over. So it was just a natural family thing that we did. And all of a sudden there come these charges and being accused of this crime and then including our friends and it also and.
Ultimately, you know, we'll get to that. But the older of the two girls recanted her testimony many many years later, right, a younger one yet, Yes, And Christy, you were Liz's roommate at the time, right, yes, Well, let's go back again, Like what was your life like at the time. You were not some serial sexual offender who was out praying on young children either, right, like waiting by the ice cream stand.
Actually, like four days after I graduated, I was going to Texas and him. My dream was always to be a Venarian. So actually I had taken a break from school and went back to San Antoniano, was working working at a grocery store. Through there I met Liz and then later on she was pregnant, so I was staying there to help her out. And then that's when the allegations came about, because our nieces came over like for a week to stay. It was like summer vacation during
the end of it. Yeah, and then shortly after that we were being accused, and you know, we molest them during that week that they stayed there because you know, Cassieanna would come and hang out. We were all friends, you know, just an ordinary life. We're all just young, enjoying life when trying to get started on a career.
¶ Homophobia and Flawed Investigations
Right. And it's interesting too, right, how society loses in this situation too. You were going to be a veterinarian, a nurse, a mother. It's like everybody loses in this situation. And in this case, it's extra tragic because of the
fact that it's a crime that never even happened. It wasn't like you were the wrong people, there was no crime, right, And then we see that not infrequently, unfortunately, these things just they sort of gained momentum of their own, and somebody's got to be held responsible because nobody wants to admit that they're wrong, even when they know it right. And Mike, let's turn it to you for a second.
How much of a factor was the climate at the time, the fact that they were lesbians in this right, because they were little girls, they were lesbians. I'm guessing in San Antonio in the nineties you probably had a hard time finding a jury that wasn't somewhat homophobic.
Well, you're exactly right. I wasn't involved in the trials, but in going back and reading the transcripts of the trials that you're exactly right about the jury Vanire and the inherent bias against lesbians that was coming out in the Vordyre process. I think the real role that the fact that they were gay, and it just recently had come out is is that the accusations in this case
were inherently preposterous. I mean, two little girls said they had been gain raped by four young women who had absolutely nothing in their history that would indicate that they had any kind of propensity like that, no criminal history whatsoever.
The accusations were totally absurd. They were preposterous, and had they been made against members of what might have been considered back then more mainstream society, for junior leaguers, for example, the police would have considered it ridiculous and never have even pursued the investigation in the first place. I don't think they wouldn't have felt like they had the moral authority or the courage to pursue the investigation.
¶ Exposing Faulty Forensic Evidence
And then you had the issue with the doctor.
The science backed it up. At trial, pediatrician doctor Nancy Kellogg testified that internal scars were caused by physical trauma. It was critical testimony.
And this was a respected doctor at the time, doctor Kellogg. Right. And we see in wrawful conviction cases. We've seen, I mean so many different factors and even when it comes to junk science.
Former Bear County District Attorney Susan Reed later admitted the medical science presented at trial was wrong.
It was believed at that time that that was evidence of scarring from a tear and that it would have been indicative of a sexual assault. There has been further studying which has led to information that it can occur naturally.
We have well intentioned doctors who make mistakes. Then we have doctors who willfully lie, right, And that's a common thing. And you know I talk about often on the show. I mean, every one of you here and everyone listening out there is a potential jury. Everyone's going to get called for jury. Dude, at some point. Maybe you don't like it, but you're going to be. And nobody loves
getting that notice in the mail. But the fact is, when you get called to trial and to be on a jury, it's important that you hear these stories because of the fact that you're going to be presented with testimony from people who look like they're practically wearing lab coats in there. There're gonna be people you're going to say, Wow, they're credited from this university. They must be telling the truth. But that's not always the case, mate, That's exactly right.
I mean, sometimes they're practically wearing lab coats and sometimes they're wearing police uniforms, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily telling the truth. In this case, this doctor, I believe, in all good faith, testified to what she believed were physical findings of sexual abuse, scientific physical findings of sexual abuse stemming from her examination of the children. And it was common back then, what she thought she saw whatever, for doctors to get on the stand and testify that
these are indicators, physical indicators of sexual abuse. But what we know now, and basically there was sort of this watershed study in two thousand and seven, I guess, approximately nine years after these trials that show that what was commonly thought by doctors back then as indicators of sexual abuse, we're actually it's just old wives tales, just urban myths that in fact, when they in two thousand and seven, when they examined I don't know how many, many, many
many young girls in which there was no suspicion of sexual abuse, that these young girls had the same physical characteristics that had previously been thought to be indicators of sexual abuse, and actually they're not. They're perfectly normal. They occur naturally. So up until that point, doctors, et cetera, you know, in other indisha of being experts, were testifying based not on science but on urban myths and old
wives tales. And it's very effective for the prosecutors. I mean, in this case, for example, the testimony was all over the map. The testimony was not inherently believable. But for the prosecutor to get up there and say, well, we've had scientific physical evidence that somebody sexually abused these children, then that was very powerful in this cause.
You know what's ironic about this, the only actual sexual abuse took place during the examinations. Like, as a father of a daughter, I can't imagine my daughter at that age being subjected to having to be probed in this way. It's disgusting, right, And so those girls now have to live with that trauma as well. And it's interesting too because you talk about how these things are old lives tales. And you know what else we've learned is that arson science is just complete nonsense too.
Right.
For years, I mean, it takes you could take a guy, I could ask the audience, but I'll just tell you, right, it takes forty hours at a correspondence course to become a licensed arson investigator, right, forty hours, So, I mean, and I don't even know what those questions look like. But so for years you had arson experts getting up and testifying as to this guy committed arson or that guy.
And we had, of course the most notorious take cases here in Texas with Cameron Todd Willingham who was executed for an arson fire that killed his three kids. And we now, and we knew then, I mean, the evidence was widely available and was available to the authorities at that time that it was not an arsen fire, was an electrical fire. But these you know, generations of firemen had just passed along this information that had nothing to
do with science. And of course that's you know, one of the most tragic cases imaginable where three kids died and then the father was executed after having lost his kids.
¶ Conviction's Impact: A Real Nightmare
So Liz few were sort of the feud as the ring leader, right, And they really threw the book at you. I mean, Liz, who really doesn't look like a dangerous criminal to me. I don't want to judge a book by its cover. Maybe she robs banks on the weekends. But you were sentenced that thirty seven and a half years in prison. I can't even thirty seven and a half years. What was like the moment when you got convicted. Nobody can imagine that it hasn't been through it. But could you put that into words?
Well, I don't really think there's kind of any words to kind of express the way I felt. I just I couldn't believe that they convicted me of a crime that never happened. And I believed in the truth, and I was like, how can they convict me of something that never happened, you know, and I believe. After they had sentenced me, I walked to the back and I fainted. It was just unbelievable. I was like, my god, how did this happen? How did something by a statement made by a child just convict me?
Just like that?
And my whole life was taken away from me.
Does any of the others want to weigh in on that. I mean, that's something that it's really the stuff of nightmares, right. I'm sure some of you have probably had a nightmare where you were caught doing some crime or I mean, I've had those those weird dreams where I'm like, you know, in one of those TV shows like Locked Up Abroad or something like that, I've got so I pick up the wrong suitcase. It it's like a Hitchcock movie and the next thing, you know, So it really is a
real life nightmare. Fainting would probably be the only logical response that the body could have to something like that, right, because it's all so surreal nothing happened. And I hear this again and again in interviewing exunreis, both on the podcast and just in my work at the Instance Project, where they just keep thinking that justice is going to be done because this is America. We don't lock people up for things that they didn't do. Now, if you
listen to some of the authorities, that's what they'll tell you. Oh, yeah, we don't arrest people who aren't guilty. Yeah, and so it's very important for us to counterbalance that and to expose, to talk about these stories so that people understand that we do We do it with an unbelievable frequency. And in fact, the best social sciences estimate that there's up to eight percent of people in prison in America right
now are innocent. And if you take that number, it's pretty scary because eight percent of two point two million is a big number. Anybody do the math. Yeah, it's
¶ Standing Firm: No Plea Deal
a big numb It's like two hundred thousand. So yeah, do you want to do you want to talk about that?
So, Christy, myself and Cassie were advised by attorneys not to be in court while Liz was on trial because we had several trials. So my mom went down in place of us and to show support for Liz.
And her family.
But when I got the call that she was actually convicted and it didn't take very long to convict her, it was devastating. And I remember getting the call at work and I immediately had to leave work.
I just I just couldn't believe it. So you were out on bail, yeah, yeah, And then you must have thought, oh my god, if they could do that to her, they could do it to watch too. Oh absolutely.
I mean, you know, the frightened a panic. But at the same time, when they did come to us with a plea offer, which was ten years deferred adjudication, and that was to basically plead guilty and then you would serve, you know, not even a day in Prinz. There's other things related to that, but they didn't, of course tell us that. But we, you know, we stood our ground and we believed wholeheartedly that we knew that none of
us are capable of such a crime. It wasn't something where I thought Christy might have been capable of it. I mean, there was just absolutely nothing to indicate anything could have ever happened. I mean, it just was impossible. And I believe that that's why we have stuck so hard to our innocence. And you're absolutely right, and I'm
sure you know, Jason Baldwin can attest to this. You do believe in the judicial system, and you do believe that somehow, some way that it is going to come out, the truth will come out, it will finally prevail, And it finally did. It's just it took a long time to prevail.
Well, this was at a time in America too, when there had been a rash of rawful convictions related to these daycare centers and day schools and stuff like that, where there was this hysteria that would start, sometimes with something relatively benign, like a parent complaining about something and a teacher not acting the way they wanted to do, and then they just invent these stories and the next thing you know, you had whole schools, all these teachers
being locked up for these crazy accusations of things that never happened, right, because it's not a common thing, right, And the fact is, you have to really stir things up to get people to believe that normal people with no records, who seem to be just going along with their lives, going to school, whatever, are these sexually deviant criminals. And it's it's really it's a horrendous crime that you were accused of, right, I mean, abusing a child is at the bottom of the scale in terms of what
you could could actually be accused of. You stood your ground, and you know, you refused this deal, which is a very principled but a very dangerous stand, especially when you knew that that they're yeah, you do what they were the Cable. You knew that Liz had already been convicted.
Well not only that, but the charges alone they carry from fire years to ninety nine years.
So we knew what we were faced.
But we still, you know, we still stuck to our ground.
Would you have, Mike, would you what would you have advised?
In that?
What can you even say? Right? He doesn't like that question.
¶ Broken System: Sex Offender Registry
Now, No, they obviously did the right thing in the long run by refusing to plead guilty to something they were completely innocent in.
Right, cons It's turned to you because ultimately, even though you wouldn't have served the day in prison, you would have been branded a sex offender. And what goes? I mean, what does that look like? Because actually after you got out, you were still, until you were fully exonerated, you were living as sex offenders. Is that right?
Actually, the three of us did not have to register a sex offenders.
Annam was the only one that did have to.
But if we would have taken a plea bargain, yes, we would have had to register. And to me that I mean, none of that was going to happen because you know, we never committed the crime. We were not getting into something we did not do. And like Anna said, we continue to fight we had to fire attorneys that did not want to fight for us, we had to retain more attorneys that would fight for us, And that would have damaged me completely because I do have two children.
I did at the time, they were ages seven and eight, one on eight and nine, and that would have ruined me.
Well, you wouldn't have been able to take them to school, you wouldn't been able to go to the playground, you wouldn't have been able to do really anything. Then it's so crazy, right, we have and this is not something I talked about a lot, but there's a great article in the Economists about this. There's almost a million people on the sex offender registry in America, which is totally fucking insane, right, and probably fifty thousand of them are
actually dangerous. So what does that mean. That means that a we can't keep track of a million people anyway, So it is counterproductive, Like a lot of government policies, right, it's actually counterproductive because what we should be doing is trying to monitor the activities of the people who are actually dangerous, but instead we have a million people who
are convicted of things like peeing in public. Right, you may not know this but if you, I don't know about you, but I love to pee, like in my house. If I'm on the lawn, that's my law. I'm gonna pee on the fucking lawn. I'm saving water, right, That's how I look at it. I'm trying to always be a good environmentalist. But if somebody's riding by on their bike and calls up and says, or drives by in their car and their kids at the back, and they go, I saw this guy peeing on this lawn on your
own property, you could become a registered sex offender. Oh yeah. And then I mean there's so many that the list of things that can get you on that list, it's so long, and it's permanent, there's nothing you can do about it. And then you can't live anywhere either, like you can't live within a certain radius of a school, which like in certain cities there is nowhere that you
can live except like under a bridge. And we see that there are communities of people that are sprung up or registered sex offenders who live under an overpass because there's no housing that doesn't put them in violation of the law by being in too close to approximity to a school or a playground or a church, or it could even be a typing school by the way, that's closed. It doesn't matter. They can call it whatever they want. So yeah, I can understand it's a really bad choice
to have to make. There's no good news there whatsoever. Your career is over. You're gonna have to fill out every job application ever you have to fill out. You're gonna be like, yeah, I'm a registered sex offender, but I really like to work here. And it's like, uh, yeah, I think we got somebody else that might be perfect for the job, you know what I mean. I mean,
¶ Holding Hope Through Incarceration
you seem nice and everything. So Chris still has turned to you heading into this trial, and were you optimistic, did you think there was a chance you'd actually win, or had you pretty much resign yourself the fact that they're just going to fuck us and that's the way it.
Is, to be honest, I still had hope that somehow, like you said, we believe in the justice system. I just felt some way that they would somebody would see the truth that we were telling the truth. Nothing happened, no crime occurred. We weren't capable of it. I mean, we were just basically like four young kids. You know, we were just barely becoming adults, which is more capable of doing this.
How long was it from Liz's trial until you're a trial?
What it was a year?
Almost year? So you had a year of being in this sort of purgatory right where you're just you're going along with your life, but you know there's this incredible weight hanging over your head that at any time is going to come and destroy everything, and that you're dreaming of everything that you stand for. What is that like? Were you all in contact with each other? Did you have meetings? The relationship must have strained over this now you knew you were all going to try together.
No, I mean I think we've remained friends strong through this whole thing. You know, I don't think it ever separated us.
Liz was already you were already in prison at this point, right, yes, So were you in touch? Were you allowed to be in touch? At this point?
It was advice by our attorneys again to not write letters because they would go through their mail. So again we're kind of separated because of that, because they except they would read our mail and see if there's anything that we're telling.
I guess I don't know, and Liz, that must have been extra hard for you because there you are locked up, facing thirty seven years in prison, and you're separated from your friends. I would think that's an even an additional strain for you to be facing this terrible situation alone.
¶ Sustaining Hope Behind Bars
Yeah, it was.
But at the same time, when I had gotten my time, I was writing. As soon as I was locked up at the county, I started writing organizations to try to help, and I knew the crime had never happened, and I was trying to reach out to people at that time already.
What is it that gets you through? I'm always fascinated by this because I think a lot of people I have a morbid fear of being locked up and everything about it. Anybody else shared that fear. Yeah, we have a few hands up you HOI an the other ones just look scared, so they're too scared to raise their hands anyway. So what is it that got you through?
We see different people that have been in this situation who some of them find faith in prison, some of them lose faith in prison, some of them find this sort of inner gear that is almost incomprehensible to me. But what was it for each of you, what was it that got you through this nightmare of being in prison for almost half your life at that point.
So the three words that come to my mind automatically are faith, hope, and love. My faith was obviously my religious beliefs. God was there with me throughout it all. You know, I had support from family, work from friends, but nobody's actually in the prison with you.
During this time.
It's very difficult, especially to be innocent of a horrendous crime like so, and then you're having to deal with the prison world and it's really tough. I mean, there's just so much that it all entails. But so my faith in God is what carried me through. And I'm going to say my hope was that some days, somehow, some way, our innocence would be proven. And here it has now, of course twenty two years later, but it
did work. And then the love, the love from my family that continued throughout this whole process, the love of my friends, the love of our supporters now, and honestly the love of Mike Whare, the Innocence Project of Texas and the filmmakers which is dev Escuonazi and Sam Tabbitt, And I feel like all of those That whole combination is what helped you our release arconeration.
I would give you a hugs up for the chair would fall over. So that was that was incredible. Let's go right down the line. Even I don't think I can top that. No, I don't think anything. It's okay that the.
West.
Yeah, Anna pretty much hit everything.
Basically when I went in, I went through many different emotions. You don't know how to feel. You know, you've just been wronged by a system that you were supposed to believe in. You know, you told the truth and you were taken down anyway, You're taken from your family, from your loved ones, from everybody around you that means something to you, and you're put into a world almost like a cage.
It is a cage.
You're having to fight for yourself from the inside, not knowing if anybody is going to listen to you. Because as Liz said, we wrote letters, we reached out from the Innocence Project, the ASIL, you lambda, there's so many different other ones that always gave us a negative response. So being that we kept receiving these letdowns, you have to pick yourself up. I started taking college courses like Anna said, we had love from friends and family. My
mom came to see me faithfully. She always brought my kids. Miss Blaska's Anna's mom came to see us faithfully. You know, when you have a love support, a love line, that is what keeps you going. And I truly believe that. As Anna said, you know your faith in God because you have to believe in something. And obviously he came
through with us because he did bring us. Michael where, darryl Otto, the people that helped us, Debbie s Canauzi, Sam Tibitt, everybody that started fighting for us, and here we are today exonerated.
Well that's that's that's a pretty good reference when you get a reference from God, you know what I mean?
¶ LGBTQ+ Discrimination in Justice
All right?
I think being in contact with someone on the inside is so important, right and I hear that over and over again, and writing to and there are various places you can go to write letters to people who are duck and so alone on the inside. And it's also important to note that the LGBT community is vastly overrepresented in the criminal justice system. And it's partially I think and Mike imagine a degree, but it's partially because of
these inherent biases that you fell victim to. It's approximately double. In terms of the number of adults who identify themselves as LGBT and the number of people who are incarcerated in the system, it's off by two hundred percent, and that's something as a country we really have to take a hard look. I mean, everyone knows that minorities are overrepresented, and overrepresented is the wrong way of putting it, because that sounds like a good thing, but they are discriminated against.
They're locked up at terribly alarming numbers. Percentage wise. Think that by now fifty years after the Civil rights movement, we would be past that, but we still have a long long way to go. So Liz, let's turn to you. You are facing this alone well through the first year anyway. How did you get through it?
Well?
I think both the girls have kind of touched base on everything, But I believe my faith in God is what really carried me through, and the fact that I had three friends that were incarcerated and I needed to stay strong and prove that we were innocent and the crap had never happened. And to me, I think that was what gave me the strength to continue fighting. Because I didn't. I wanted someone to hear us and know that, hey,
nothing ever happened. And I think that is what kept me going all those years that I was incarcerated, and kept me writing and writing even after every leaddown. You know, I had a child out there, Kathy had children, and I had a mom. We all had family out there, and it wasn't fair that our life was taken away for nothing that ever happened. And I felt like that was my only avenue to be able to help in some sort was to write, because that's all we happened there.
¶ Education and Self-Preservation
It was just paper and stamps in school. I think, yeah, which helps so many people too. And it's and it's crazy because I see this how the government, you know, and we went through this recently in New York State with this is big out quite Why are we educating prisoners. We shouldn't be spending money. And the fact is it's critically important, not only for the people on the inside
who are innocent, but also for other people. And I'm always amazed how politicians forget the fact that ninety nine or whatever it is percent of people or ninety five percent,
I don't know the exact number. Of people who are cars right, are going to come out one day, the and the you know, if they get an education at prison and they get that hope and they get that you know, second sort of second chance, they have such a vastly improved chance of being successful on the outside, which then of course benefits everyone in society, even people
who think that prisoners are all bad or whatever. They may end up living next door to whoever it is it gets out, and you're much better off having somebody there who's got a chance and wants to, you know, has the ability to turn their life around. So let's turn to you, Christy. Was there a key for you? Was there something that you clung to while you were in this nightmare?
I would say it was my faith. Just my faith in God is what kept me strong, kept me going. And I mean I did positive stuff. I would try to education, you know, while I was in there, to keep me on a good level, you know, and not get caught up in the system. That was the one thing for me was that I felt like, Okay, the system took everything away from it, but I refused for
them to take away me. So I conducted myself. It's still the same I was doing education out here, so I did education in there, you know, And I just stay positive, and I just I refuse to let the system take me, you know, myself. So I just stayed strong.
¶ Advocacy for the Wrongfully Convicted
You've got some difficult job, right. You're out there fighting against a system that doesn't want to see you, doesn't want to know about you. They like their convictions just the way they are. And we're in Texas too, right where they really like their convictions.
Right.
So you are up against everyday impossible odds. They've got the money and the resources and the thing and the people, and you're out there fighting the good fight. How do you stay strong? How do you maintain that optimism against these overwhelming odds?
Well, number one, the successes that we do have are so rewarding. That's certainly the main thing that keeps me going. I mean, you know, these are four wonderful people, and of course you don't know when this is going on. This could have all failed. As it turns out, it was completely successful, and they've all been completely exonerated now and those sorts of successes and we've had others as well as really what keeps us strong. So you know it can happen in spite of the ones that fall
short of the mark. We get one hundred and twenty letters a month, probably from inmates wanting our help. And we're a small nonprofit, so it's difficult, but thank goodness, we have a very competent staff that works for next to nothing to keep all this going.
It's noble work and I imagine you sleep pretty well at night. Let's put in a plug for the nonprofit. By the way, what's the website? How can people get involved? How can they donate? Thank you?
We're the Innocence Project of Texas. We have a website. You can google this and get to the website and the Facebook page. It will instruct you how you can donate in certainly, all donations, no matter how big or small or much.
Appreciated, and they can and they do, and they will lead to more exonerations of more good people like the people that we have here on the page. And also the work. It's important to recognize that the work. Every time somebody gets exonerated or a google people gets exonerated. The ripple effect is profound because every time there's a story in the newspaper, and the media plays such an important role in all of this right, and the movie about the Girls, all these movies that have now become
such an important part of pop culture. Every article. It influences people to think differently and to be more aware and to be better jurors. It comes back to that, because everybody's got a responsibility to be informed, to be skeptical, to be the best juror that they can be when
¶ Post-Exoneration: Public Reception & Future
someone's life is literally in your hands. Okay, so let's open it up to a couple of questions. You can even ask a question to Mike through God if you want to. We've already established that, or you or any other girls or me or whatever. Let me repeat the questions because I don't know if everybody could hear it in the air. So the question was, once you were released, did you find skepticism? Did people accept you as being
in a center? Did people still just judge you based on, you know, whether you had been wrongly convicted of you.
Know, when we first got out two weeks later, I was already working. I had a job, and with this job I would see many people because I'll just tell you I worked at a car wash, I worked for washtub. I don't know if y'all do you'll have one here in Austin washtubs. No, okay, Well they're in San Antonio and everybody goes to get their cars detailed and clean there.
And it was the first job that I could get because see, I could not apply online because then I would have to put that I was a registered sex I mean I was a registered I was a convicted sex offender fell in. Okay, whatever, but anyway, it's all terrible, but anyway, so I would have to put on there
that I had been convicted of this horrible crime. So basically I wanted to go somewhere where I could actually speak to somebody face to face, fill out an application and explain my situation so they wouldn't just judge by that convicted fell.
In part of an application.
So when I went and I was hired, it all wrote really well. And like I said, I met people constantly because you have to start in the vacuums.
So my customers would get.
Off their cars and leave them with us so we could clean them out, in vacuum them and throw out their trash. Well, this one gentleman looked at me and he was like, I know you, And I was just like how Because I didn't know. I mean, this is my first time being in society since nineteen two thousand. So when he said that to me, I just looked at him. I didn't know what to say. And then finally I said, are you sure?
And he said, yeah, I think.
And then he realized he had seen me on the news and he told me congratulations. And I never ever received any negative type of treatment, none of us ever have. Everybody has told us that they're praying for us. Our case was obviously very highly publicized, you know when we came out, and we've received nothing but love and support, and that support has grown tremendously, so you know, it's a real blessing to have so much on our side for once.
Another question here, oh microphone, did you want and or receive any apology from anyone the situation the people?
We did receive an apology from the one that we can in She apologized to us.
System wise, I don't nobody's.
Ever apologized to us. I mean I don't. I mean, I don't want an apology. I just wanted the wrong to be made right, which we got, which was the exoneration. Yes, it was nice for her to the one that recan and to apologize to us, but none of us really blamed her. She was young and it wasn't her fault.
Yeah, it was actually very commendable of her to do that as well, I mean, especially knowing the backlash that she faced.
So another question in the back.
I know you spoke about when you were released you were able to find a job. But have any of you ever considered or did you ever consider entrepreneurship as a method or a way to kind of propel yourself or reactivate into society or do you know of any stories of entrepreneurship and accipenders.
Yeah, there's any of exonreies that are out there doing very well for themselves.
I will say.
That have we thought about it?
You know what, this is all pretty new to us.
We were really We got the appeal from the appellate courts in November of the twenty third of twenty sixteen. So during that time, you know, we had a report to the bond So in order to do that, we had to maintain jobs throughout this whole process. But now that everything is done and over with, I think that either some or all of us do have some type of entrepreneurship in mind.
Okay, I think we had a couple more hands up here. It seems like your life got hijacked when you were at a very young age.
How do you think your life might have been different, or maybe your children's lives if this had never happened.
¶ A Call for Justice and Awareness
Where do you think you'd be now?
I would love to know how my kids would have grown up, they would.
Have had me.
I can't say I would have done better than my mom did, and I can't say that I would have done.
Worse, but I would love to know. Do you think there are a lot of people right now that might be going to do the same thing?
Oh, yes, ma'am, I do, and that's why the four of us want to make it our life to help them.
I think we may have time for one more, but before we do that, I do want to thank the Capital Factory, the audience that's here for being here, iHeart and PRX for hosting us on this very special day of wrong ful conviction with Jason plom that's me And it's a very moving experience hearing from each of you and so powerful and I really consider it a privilege to be able to share your stories with the audience out there. We have time for one more question, and we have one more question.
I'm from San Antonio, and I just want you to know that a lot of people there, I mean, we saw through the bullshit, like we all were on your side, and thank you, bless you, And I don't want to make you cry anymore because I feel like you've cried so much. I want you to be happy, So I want to ask you a happy question. What's something when you.
Got out that just blew your mind.
And you just made you so happy, Like something that you didn't know existed in the world, or something you never got to experience.
I know AOL discs.
Were probably a big thing back then, Like were you stoked about the iPhone? Like, was there anything that made you that you just love now that you wish you would have had back then?
Well, I don't know if I love it. But technology is crazy. I know, Dan, I can tell you some stories. When she first came out, she didn't know anything about it, and she was at a restaurant and everybody was on their phone, so she just thought they were being rude. So technology, I'm still learning, I mean, are.
Before we sign off, I want to put in a plug for the film Southwest of Salem, which won some awards recently, I think Tribeca and other things, so please do check out that film. I want to thank again each of you for being here and you might for doing what you do every day. And once again it's the NIS's Project of Texas. I strongly encourage everybody to get involved. If everybody would do a little something, we
would put a huge dent in this problem. The awareness is peaking, support for the death penalties at an all time low. We can make a real change and this is a big part of it. And your stories are going to really help move the needle on this very important topic and conversation. So again, thank you all for being here. Check out the movie Southwest of Salem, ANESS Project of Texas. Thanks again, Thank you guys, 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 Ennessis Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innesssproject 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 Ralph. 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 on one