With the police banging on the door open up. The choice to be in that lineup was the last choice that 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.
Now I walked back inside that prison for the last time. Man, all help broke loose.
But this weekend we're recording from sunny San Diego at the Innocence Network Conference, And because we have so many xaneries together, we'll be doing two shorter interviews with two incredible exoneries who will talk about what this conference means to them, Floyd Ledsoe and Cornelius Dupree. But let's start with Maddie Delone, the executive director of the Innocence Project, who will explain how this conference came into existence and
what it's all about. Maddie Delone. Maddie, welcome, Thanks Jason.
Great to be here.
Maddie is a force of nature. She has spent her entire life in criminal justice reform, fair to say, and everything from working inside of prisons to really building and running what is the organization at the forefront of the innocence movement, at the center, whatever you want to call it. And we're here today at the Innocence Network conference in San Diego, which is an out of this world's extraordinary event. And Maddie, you and I go back to the beginning
of this together and your memories better than mine. So I wanted to talk to you about how this all started and also what it means to be here, not only for you and the staff, but for the x Hoonneries.
Wow, that's a lot, Jason. So the Innocence Project started about twenty five years ago as a small clinic at Cardozo Law School with Barry and Peter running the show, working with students, other law professors, and really understanding the power of the science to get people out of prison. The DNA technology was pretty new in the criminal justice system.
Pretty quickly they realized how many innocent people there were and how much work it was going to take to get people out of prison across the country, and they began to find law professors really at other universities across the country to do this work. So the sort of next projects in the network were formed, the Innocence Project in ninety two, There was a project in ninety four. I just heard that the Innocence Project Northwest rated their
twentieth anniversary this year. So those are among the first projects, and pretty quickly people realized they needed to have a way to come together and to begin to share what they were learning and figure it out. You have to remember that while we have fifty post conviction DNA laws right now, so for people for whom DNA can prove in a sense, you now have a way to get back into court. That wasn't true when this all started.
So they had to figure out how do you get back into court when there's no mechanism, and they use the press, and they use persuasion, and more and more they could use as they began exonerating people, the power of those stories and the experiences of the xonaies. I think the first network conference was in two thousand, so it's seventeen years later, and this is the sixteenth conference. At that first conference, there were maybe seventy five or
eighty people. I wasn't there, but Barri and Peter were there, and a number of the people who are still in this work today. And with each conference the conference grew, new projects started, more people were exonerated, the exoneries began to come to the conferences in bigger and bigger numbers. We began to work. You began to work to help pay for people to get there, to put them up in hotels, people who had no resources.
Right, these are people from all over the country and even other parts of the world as well.
That's right. We had an amazing conference at the Ohio Innocence Project hosted in two thousand and eleven I think, where we invited Mark Gotsei, who was the Ohio Innocence Project director, really invited people from around the world who were doing this work to come, and they brought x hooneries from Japan and Italy and other places. So it has grown from probably in two thousand, maybe eight or nine, exonerated people and today in San Diego they're almost two hundred.
Yeah, it's amazing. I mean last night we posted a graphic on the screen with the total number of years served, including two hundred and twenty two years served on death row.
Extraordinary being here and being a part of it, and just sort of experiencing the energy, the positive energy that's developed or that's generated, I should say, from the ex houneries being around each other, because not unlike what I understand to be the case with POW's prisons of war, no one can understand what they've been through except for each other, as much as we try and as much as we want to help, and so it's really been
an extraordinary journey to watch them heal. And it's obviously a very long, it's a never ending journey, but progress is being made in this building as we speak, and that's the remarkable thing to be a part of.
Can I just tell you a story I just heard from one of the directors of one of the projects this morning. They have a client who got out of prison after thirty two years and got out maybe four or five months ago. Came to the conference last night. As you were saying, there was an introduction of all of the ex Honeries, including forty seven X Honeries who had never been here before. And at the end of that presentation and the whole crowd is standing and cheering
and crying and they're hugging each other on stage. Her client walked down the stairs from the stage and said to her this is the first time I felt free.
I mean, it's it's heavy, and it's magical. I mean, there's no other word to explain it. And yeah, it's so great because every time one of them gets up and the crowd erupts, nobody tells anybody to erupt, and nobody tells anybody to stand, But it's a standing ovation every time, and they're really among their peers, and they're among people who love them and care about them as we do. So it's a it's just an awesome thing.
What is that for the Innocence Project? I mean, how have you been able to focus the staff who traditionally were just focused on the legal stuff. How are you able to build this into the sort of the deal lack of a better word, the DNA of the Innocence Project.
One thing we had, you know, as we got more and more people out about ten years ago. We actually made the decision with our board that you're on to hire a social worker, and we now have two social workers who work in the office and each of them works on cases as people are about to come home, and then is a person for them to go to and talk to over the course of you know, intensively, probably the first year, but for some people they're still
talking often ten years later. We also have developed a fund for Innocence Project exonarees who don't have resources or have family without resources when they come out, so that we can help pay for rent or medical care that's not covered under state insurance schemes, or whatever the case may be. And I think we're trying to get I know, we're trying to get better and better at that every year, and we're learning more and more from the exoneries themselves
about what it takes. And one of the things I think it takes, and you talked about it at the beginning, is bringing them together with each other more often. They really are the people who are best able to help each other heal. And we're realizing the importance of their families and the importance of helping find support for their family members because like the exonarees. The family members worked for twelve years, for ten years, twenty years, thirty years,
when they stuck with them. They work to help get somebody out. And if you've been on that course of getting yourself out or helping someone else get out for twenty years and then they're out, you have to find the next course of purpose. And I think there's hope for many people that it will just be glorious and perfect and they'll be free. It's a thing they worked at for so long. But life on the outside is hard, and.
The first question people want to know is do they get compensation when they get out? And they're flabbergasset to find out that not only are there I think twenty states that don't have compensation statutes at all, but also even if you are entitled the conversation, it can take many years to get it. So you're just in the twilight zone. Now you're out and trying to figure out how to live with nothing, and it's an incredible series
of challenges. Let's just talk for a moment, Maddie about the strategic litigation aspect of our work.
So we have two programs, and the strategic litigation program is a pretty new program for the last five years, although I like to think that the Innocence Project has been doing it in maybe a less focused and concentrated way forever. But the Strategic Litigation Unit, which was founded five years ago by your generosity and that of your family, run by Christopher Fabricant, who's a brilliant lawyer, really works on getting the courts to understand their role as a
gatekeeper of bad evidence going into cases. And so the Strategic Litigation Unit takes cases around the country where there is bad forensic science is trying to be introduced, or eyewitness identification procedures that were done in a way that's not reliable and not likely to give you the best ID. In fact, seventy five percent of the DNA cases have
had an eyewitness identification, which is erroneous. So we know how important it is to get the ID procedures right, and our team finds cases to teach courts about how
to vet evidence and to keep bad evidence out. If we can keep bad evidence out of these cases in the first place, then you'll never have people being wrongly convicted until and lessen until the police and prosecutors and the courts understand that at the front end and begin to implement procedures and keep the evidence out of court. We're going to continue to replicate the problems we have
with wrongful conviction and to put more people in. And you said it yourself, it takes forever to get them out. If somebody goes in and they exhaust their state appeals eight years later, and then they write to us and then we take their case and then we litigate the case for ten or twelve or fifteen years. Sometimes heard someone today who has a case that they picked up in nineteen ninety nine. It's twenty seventeen. The person was
just freed. That's an entire life. So we have to stop it at the front end, and that's what the Strategic Litigation Unit tries to do. The Joseph Flohm Special Council has done amazing work in the courts to try to protect people from having bad evidence admitted in the first place in the courts. And that's what it's going to take to really change the system.
Yeah, and I know that my dad, if he were here, would be thrilled to see the quality of the work that's being done in his name. He was a supporter of the instant project, and Scadden of course has donated tens of thousands of.
Millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of legal brilliant legal talent and support to the.
Project, and they still do to this day. Recently, Keith Allen Harward was freed after thirty three years in prison in Virginia with the help of the pro Bone of Department at Scatten in DC, run by Don Salzman. So yeah, it just continues. Unfortunately, our work will never end. We'd love to put ourselves out of business, but unfortunately that's
not going to happen in our lifetimes. Maddie Delone, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today and I really appreciate you stopping by and dropping some knowledge.
Thank you, Jason, great to be here. Keep up the great work.
So that was a great introduction to the conference from my friend and partner in Fighting Injustice, Maddie the loan. Let's continue with the one and only Floyd Bledsoell.
After spending sixteen years behind bars for a murder his brother committed.
In nineteen ninety nine, fourteen year old Camille Arfman went missing after getting off the bus from school Bledsoe's older brother, Tom confessed several times to the murder and led police to her body, but several days later, Tom Bledsoe changed his story, pinning the murder on Floyd. New DNA evidence in October of twenty fifteen implicated Tom Bledsoe.
Just over a month ago, Floyd Bledsoe's murder conviction was overturned.
Law enforcement a district coord agreeing he was an innocent man. Floyd Bledsell, Welcome to the show. Thank you. Floyd is an axonnery from Kansas who served.
Sixteen years sixteen years.
And you out there listening had just as much to do with it as he did, that's fair to say. And his attorney, Alice Craig is here. Alice, welcome, thank you, thanks for being here. So we're here at the Innocent Network conference in San Diego. Have you been to San Diego before?
No, this is a very beautiful city.
Yeah, it's pretty. It's different than Kansas, very different than Kansas and the Ocean. I I just can't even So your case in a nutshell revolved around this rape and murder, and it's so bizarre because this one came with instructions right tragically, your brother was the culprit. And what makes this so insane is that he went he confessed to a religious figure, was a pastor or something, and then he confessed to the police. Yes, and he provided the murder weapon, told him where to find.
The body, took him to the body, took him to the body.
Yeah. Right, So you're probably having the same reaction I was, which was okay, so thanks for telling us, and here's your one way ticket to prison, right, I mean, but that's not what happened.
No, can you walk us.
Through how you ended up being charged for a crime that your brother had not only clearly committed, but had confessed to in every conceivable way.
Right, and he had confessed to multiple times, multiple people had heard him. Basically what happened On November seventh, at about ten o'clock that evening, he went to the police station, made a phone call to the pastor of the church. Said, Hey, this is Tom.
I'm sorry. I lied to you.
I know where she is. I'm going to turn myself in. He says, I wish I could have turned back to hands of time, but I can't. And then he said, please help my parents through this, and then he hung up. Called our father, and then called Jim back again and left basically the same message, saying that he wished he hadn't done it, wish he could have turned back to hands of time, but he made his choice. He's going to pay for it for the rest of his life, and that mom and dad were mad at him, and
he was turning himself in. He asked the church to forgive him, God to forgive him, and they took him to get int Arney. Then the attorney went to the police department. His attorney told him that Tom knows where the girl is, and then the police went with him to where the body was.
He showed him.
The detectives testified at trial that the area was so well concealed and only the true perpetrator would have known.
Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't a lucky guest. No, No.
And it was the middle of the night, dark.
And he had just bought the gun, and he had just bought the the gun.
Two weeks prior. So much stuff.
This was literally the easiest case in the history of criminal justice for the authorities. Alice, would you disagree with that?
No?
I wouldn't.
I mean this was it like, I mean, it's gift wrapped right.
They charged him with murder that Monday. Three or four days later, he decides he doesn't like jail and says he didn't do it, that his brother did it, which was me. So the police they were like, well, how did you know all this stuff? He said, well, he confessed to me on the side of the road. Detective Carino says, okay, that's plausible and says when Tom says two thirty in the afternoon, Randy says, are you sure? And this is all said in my trial. Randy says
are you sure? And Tom says, yep, I'm positive.
Had to be two thirty.
Randy told admitted a trial that he told Tom that he was lying and Tom said, no, I'm not. He goes, yeah, you are. You want to know how I know you're lying? He was like, how he said Floyd was sitting in my patrol car two thirty in the afternoon, and Tom said, well, must have been earlier. Randy admitted to giving Tom facts to make his story more believable.
At my trial.
The whole thing is just like, actually, I mean, and there's so much I mean, I guess basically.
It comes down to people getting tunnel vision, people making mistakes, poor detective work, stuff that should have been investigated they didn't look at. And then you throw Tom's defense attorney, who you know, his job is to get his client off and he means necessary within the law, supposedly. And so I don't think we know the true reason why everything went the way did. But ultimately, with his attorneys
and help and poor investigation, things flipped. They arrested me, they claim on November fifteenth, but when they interviewed me on November eleventh, I believe it was twelveth somewhere running there. They had me in the holding cell, wouldn't let me leave. They told my wife or my ex wife, but my wife then that they didn't know where I was. They said he got in a car and left. When she said, well, his car's out front, they told her he left. We
don't know where he went. I was in their holding cell.
The whole thing is totally set.
You know, for four days, nobody knew where I was except them, And then finally, after the press got a hold of it, then they.
Charged me with for sugar murder.
And then I went to trial. I had poor representation and got found guilty. The Tippeek at Capitol Journal interviewed an individual who was on the jury member and he said, we didn't know who did it, but this was our opportunity to make somebody pay. I guess we made a mistake. Sixteen years that's a mistake.
I guess We'm interesting. We just had somebody paid, just picked somebody out of the phone book, and just you know, I mean in this case, it was just you know, Alice, what a crazy turn of events. I mean, ultimately Floyd was exonerated, right, and Alice, how did the exoneration come about?
So Floyd's case is one of those cases that I think every lawyer who looked at it was really interested in and wanted to help. None of us were going to let go of it. My clinic at k Law School, the Innocence Project there, we took his case on. We probably started working on your case in two thousand and
five and went to federal court. And the interesting thing with the federal habeas that we did is that the federal district judge when we filed our habeas, actually ruled in Floyd's favor and issued an opinion that essentially said Floyd was innocent. And this conviction couldn't stand. Once he did that, Floyd said, well, can I be released? And I guess So we asked the federal court to release him while the state appealed, and they did so. Floyd
was actually out for a year. That was probably the nine months that was probably the hardest thing for us. The state appealed his case to the Tenth Circuit. I remember when we were about to argue in the Tenth Circuit. I was talking to the state's attorney before we walked up to the podium, and he said to me, we don't think Floyd did it, but we have to protect our jury verdict.
Okay, well, let's just think about that for a second. We don't think he did it, but the jury verdict is more important than justice or one person's them and liberty and all that in pursuit of happening to all that stuff is all out the window because we need to protect our jury theoretic because it's a sort of quoint.
Well, actually, what gets worse is we lost in the Tenth Circuit because of the standard of review, and the Tenth Circuit said, we're not going to overturn this. Kansas State courts and so we lost and they reversed the federal district judge and I had to call Floyd and tell me how to go back to prison.
But then you got them out. We're sitting here.
So at that point in time, we filed for DNA testing, and one of our concerns was that the investigation that was originally done, and I think it goes back to what you said at the very beginning that this seemed to be a slam dunk case. So a lot of investigation that should have been done wasn't done. And our biggest concern, I think, was whether or not there'd be evidence to test. That was the largest concern we had.
And they actually told me over and over again. They were like, look, we can't go back and fix bad detective work. You can't because we're talking at that time.
It was twelve years, yeah, twelve years later.
You know, it's not like you can just walk back even a few months and see everything because a lot changes in twelve years.
And by the way, and there's no way to tell this story in short of a time as we have here because it's too twisted. But on top of everything else, we can't leave out a couple of important details one is that your dad got involved. At the trial, he testified in favor of your brother, saying that he, you know, he gave him an alibi, He created all kinds of phony alibis and stuff like that, which is so it's like something out of Shakespeare, right, or a Greek tragedy.
We find out later that he was actually protecting himself because he helped with covering up and disposing of the body and all that stuff. And yes, he didn't want, you know, he didn't want to go to jail.
Well, when we pulled the DNA, that's when we've discovered obviously one of the motives for him to wanting to cover for Tom so hard.
Right, And the DNA proved conclusively that not only weren't you the culprit, but that in fact the perpetrator, but in fact it was your brother, and that your dad's DNA was found on her socks, on the victim socks. Because this theory there is that he helped to drag her. It sounds grotesque to the graveside or whatever, and of course that's a crime as well. In protecting himself, he managed to flip the script and get his innocent son
sentenced for murder while his guilty son stayed out. And then to wrap up the crazy, right, as if all this wasn't crazy enough, he killed himself. He did right, and he left three suicide notes in which he said, in case anybody wasn't listening the first time, he said it again, that he did it, that you didn't, that he was the sole perpetrator.
That he has sent an innocent person to prison.
His own brother, right, who's sitting here with me right now. So we hear at the Innoc's Network conference in San Diego, a weekend of healing and hope and strength, and you are a shine example of all of those things. I mean, if you could see and meet Floyd, you know, he's just sort of a I mean, you'd never know, you know, he looks like a guy who won the damn lottery, you know what I mean. And so that's the way he carries himself, which always, I mean all respect to you.
I'm always amazed at the joy and grace that the Xneries exhibit. And you're as good of an example as anyone could be. So let's talk about how you got from there to hear right, because you come out of prison, but it ain't so easy after that, is it? No?
You know, when an xonerary comes out of prison, they don't have much, if anything at all. Kansas does not have any compensation laws. I'll speak for Kansas because that's what I know. After sixteen years, you make a dollar five a day, and that's only if you work the job. The days you don't work, you don't get paid.
Dollar five a day, right, you know, and most and less one more time and no compensation laws and no compensation right. One of the twenty states that has only five.
Days for eight hours. Put that on a credit report, right, you know, almost your last shob dollar five a day.
Five days a week, and it sounds a lot like five twenty five a week. You know, exactly you made five and twenty five dollars a week. No, not exactly.
And so when we come out, you know, the clothes that you see, you know, when I was coming out of the Jefferson County Courthouse, the final shirt of jeans and the shoes that was bought by my attorneys. I had an aunt and an uncle and a few family members, but my aunt and uncle stuck by me for the whole sixteen years.
And let's not leave out of this your kids, right, because when you went in and they became victims.
Till I had two boys and a wife, she got divorced because obviously, you know, it was her sister in law or it was her sister, and she had the police and the county attorney was telling her all this stuff, lying to her, you know, lying to the family. She took my kids from me, filed to have my rights removed. The I saw I saw my kids prior to my release was November twelfth, at one point thirty in the
afternoon of nineteen ninety nine. I gave Cody, who was two and a half at that time, and Christian, who was nine months. I kissed in a hug and said I'll be back in a couple hours, and I never came back. And then for sixteen years I didn't see them. You know, I wrote letters, you know, I had a nice stack of letters wrote to them when I first started.
Every day, every day I'd.
Write and say I'm coming, Oh, I'll be homes on their birthday, Christmas, everything.
You tried not to lose.
Hope, and ultimately, after a while I gave up for writing because I had no place to send the letters nobody to read to the boys, to tell them, Hey, I love you, I'm thinking of you. I haven't forgot for sixteen years. I never once forgot my kids. I got a lot of friends that are still in prison, most of them are rightfully there. And I remember once, right before I got released for that short time in two thousand and eight, you know, he was like, Floyd, do you ever think you'll ever be.
Able to see your kids?
And I said, well, someday I'll be able to see them. Most people were like, you're crazy, You're crazy. You're never going to get out. You keep saying the same thing week after week. And finally in twenty and sixteen, in April, I saw my kids. What was that like, Well, they're much taller. Cody's six almost six y two and Christians five eleven.
Wow, because you're not a tall man too. They're in towering over you.
Yeah.
You know, you left them as these little babies, and now you're looking up at them.
Yep.
And you know what, there's no two people on this or that I'd rather look up to than those two boys.
And they're doing good now in spite of this terrible childhood that they had to endure without their dad and with this being fed these lies and believing that their dad was a child rapist and a murderer, right, And you know what a way to grow up that is. So somehow or other, you persevered in prison, even with this added burden of not being able to contact your kids. And you can see. I mean, I'm looking in your
eyes right now, and the pain is it. It's unreal. And as a parent, and I'm sure a lot of people that are out there listening have kids, I'm sure you can, you know, try to imagine what that would be like. But we can't imagine. And that's what's so powerful about this conference. I believe it's being able to get people together who have had similar experiences and you would know better that.
Last year was my first conference in San Antonio. I'd been out twelve weeks. Twelve weeks, and you know, I show up here and you're just starstruck because in Kansas you feel like you're all alone. But then you get here. Last year there was one hundred and fifty three Eggsonneries that had been in the same boat. I remember sitting down and eating with Amanda Knox and Ryan Ferguson and finally, you don't have to explain how you feel because they
already know. You don't have to answer all the questions of well what do you mean by that? It don't even have to be spoken because we've been through the same or the similar ways. We've all learned how to cope, and you learn how to persevere through it. And there's so much healing, so much renewal here. I've been looking forward to it since when I got back to Kansas City last year, you know, I was looking forward to the next one because you learn that there's people.
Just like you. Yeah, Unfortunately, there's thousands of them, and there's then there's tens or hundreds of thousands that are still in the numbers are truly mind boggling. Yeah, for me, it's just an honor and a privilege to be here and be amongst you and the you know, and the other men and women who have so overcome such impossible
challenges and odds and tragedies and trauma. To be here and be speaking for the people who are still in really, when you think about it, right, and for each other and stand it up for each other like you do.
And that's some of the stuff that I do now is I go to the Kansas Legislature and try to get the laws change to ensure that it doesn't happen. You know, I've spoke on the on the Mandatory Recording Act for Kansas, the recording of interrogation, right, That's one of the biggest causes was you would think that if you have somebody can that you would.
Record it, right.
I was not smart to me.
Jefferson County did not. They did not do any recordings of Tom until November twenty fourth or twenty fifth.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Everybody else they recorded right off the bat.
It's just it's like Alison Wanslan, It's just like through the looking lass. It's just backwards and upside down and inside out. It's nothing that they did make any sense. And I will say for myself, and I think I'm speaking for ninety some percent of the people that are listening, that if we weren't hearing this from your mouth, the story just you know, if I tell this story to someone, they're going to go, no, no, no, you got something wrong there,
because it doesn't work like that. It can't work like that. I mean, Alice, you must have the same feeling like it's just totally fucking bizarre.
This case is very bizarre, but it's not the only one. And I think that's the sad truth of it is. Floyd and I have been working together for so long, but there's other people that we're going to continue to as a team try and get out.
We all have of the shared responsibility, and I think everyone who's listening hopefully will feel the same sense and want to get involved and help, because you can't be around somebody like you, Floyd and not feel like Jesus, that could have been me, because it really could have been any of us. Right, You're just a regular guy.
You weren't some career criminal or some sinister like dark force of just a regular guy going about your life with a couple of young kids in the middle of America, you know, just a regular guy.
I was working for a drry, just trying to raise my kids on.
The farm, right, and then this, Right, And it's just so weird how when the forces of justice they start to churn and they just grind people up, and it's only a miracle that somebody like you can actually survive this ordeal and come out in one piece with a smile on your face. I see how you light up when you're talking about your kids. So now they're twenty and eighteen. Yes, and they're tall enough to be a
basketball players and they're doing good. Yes, if you want to talk about that a little bit, sure, a little bit, go ahead.
But he's just enlisted in the army. He's going into intelligence. He just finished basic training. He's on his way to go for extended training for intelligence. Christian is a senior in high school. He'll be graduating in May, going to fire fighter school.
Amazing, So you got you got a soldier and a fireman yep. And are you close to the kids now?
Yes?
I try to get up there at least once a month to see him. Cody will be a little harder because now he's out here, but we stay in contact.
Now.
I do animal portraits, painting and stuff like that.
Uh, Floyd learned painting.
People see that.
You must actually exhibiting right now at the Johnson County Public Library.
Yes, and it'll be on exhibit till May fifteenth.
But is there a website people can go if they want to just see it, because a lot of people can't get to the.
Tonight now yet. You know, I hope to have it up here pretty quick.
You let us know when you do it, we'll we'll put it on our site and people can be able to find the Floyd Bloods or maybe you'll turn out to be the next who knows Homer Winslow or something like that, you know.
And then I got married November nineteenth last year.
Congraduations.
She has a seventeen month old So I have a stepson that's seventeen months Blake, and he's a ball.
So it's actually kind of a full circle, now, isn't it. Right now you got your kids back. You actually have a young son who's really almost about the same age as one of your kids was when you went in.
So it's really a redo. I mean, what a difference to see somebody like you, who would have been literally rotting and suffering in prison for the rest of your life if not for the fact that good people like Alice and others that donate almost all of their time to the cause had come to the rescue and had ultimately proven that what should have been obvious to the authorities all along and really was obvious, you know.
And I remember just before we filed for the DNA. I would call Alice and Jeane and Beth.
They'd give me the answer.
We don't know what we're going to do, but we'll figure out something. It was like, we hit this big little stone wall, and I wrote in the thinking card to the d NKU and I said, when you're instructors and your students hitting the stone wall.
They didn't give up and turn around.
They picked up the chisel, they picked up the hammer, and they made away. And that's exactly what they did. They gave me my life back.
Yeah, they don't make it easy for anyone to get out of prison. I mean, even with extremely talented attorneys and advocates, which you were in that sense lucky to have. A lot of people don't even have that. It's still almost impossible task because they just keep putting up roadbloxed because, like you said, Alice, they want to protect the jury verdict or the wrongful prosecution or the wrong whatever the hell it is. And it's so weird. It's like why
why why why? No? This is simple, right, everybody needs to know who really did it.
It's hard to convince people. Even when we filed the DNA reports in Floyd's case, the investigators for Jefferson County that were reinvestigating it said, well, this doesn't mean Floyd didn't do it or wasn't involved, and it wasn't really until Tom committed suicide that they were convinced that was the only thing that did it. If we hadn't had that would probably still.
Be litigating it. Sounds like if you would have had pictures and photographs of the crime taking place and a timestamped video of you being somewhere else doing something else, they still would have went, well, yeah, they would have come up with it, because we've seen that. I mean, they come up with theories that are just a first grader would go that don't make any sense, But they do, and they did, and you're the living proof of it. But now you're here, so San Diego, what are you
going to do? Well, now you're saying going surfing, what do you do out here?
Well, Kansas, guys, I've always wanted to write a jet ski, So I'm trying to convince people to write a jet ski with me. But they're not really him because they're like, it's kind of cold in the morning, but hey, what's a little hyperthermia. You know it'll wear off eventually, you know, but.
Well, I'm gonna make sure you get on a jet skip if I have to go with you.
So I got the chance to go to La Jolla to see the sea lions, uh huh. And those are so awesome because you're just a few feet away. You can almost walk right up to them. I wouldn't recommend petting them because they kind of growl at you, but it's amazing.
Yeah, they don't have those in Kansas right now. So I really appreciate you being here. I know it's not easy. I appreciate you being here, and also you being here, so I appreciate you being in San Diego at the conference. I appreciate you being a really remarkable beacon of light
and hope. And I really appreciate both of you being guests on this very special edition of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flomm from the Innocent Network conference, where we are generating so much positive energy that we could probably light up at least a mid size city. Once again, Lloyd Alice, thank you for being here. It's been an extraordinary experience for me. And now let's have some fun sounds grew.
Thank you.
It's my pleasure, my honor actually to introduce a friend of mine for many years, an incredible man, Cornelius Duprix. He maintains and projects an incredible positive attitude and great energy, and that's why he's now an ambassador to the new ex hoonnaies, helping them adapt to life on the outside.
In nineteen eighty, Cornelius dupre was sentenced to seventy five years for aggravated robbery.
Cornelius Dupree Junior was just nineteen years old when he first went to jail.
The crime included abduction and rate. He has served the longest prison term of any Texas inmate ever cleared through DNA evidence. Pre was released last July on parole after thirty years behind bars. One week later, DNA test results proved his innocence.
Cornelius, Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me here.
So Cornelius, your story is remarkable in the fact that you served thirty one years in prison, that's correct for a crime you had nothing to do with, had no knowledge of, and no involvement with.
That's correct.
And this was a crime, I mean, the length of your sentence is extraordinary and unusual even among the axgoneries. But the causes of your wrongful conviction are common. You were a victim of wrongful identification and to some extent racism, I would say, right, And I want to talk about this with wrongful convictions that are based on misidentifications, which is the most common cause of wrongful conviction. It's been proven scientifically that the least accurate form of eywouldness identification
is crossration. Yes, and in this case, and I want to go back to it all those years ago, in nineteen seventy nine, right, that's correct, That seems like another century. It was another century actually, and two white people in Dallas, Texas were robbed. It was a couple and the woman was sexually assaulted by two black men. And you and a buddy were out. What were you doing that night?
We were on our way to a party, and they had house parties back then.
He and I.
Decided earlier the day that we was going to attend this party, you know, foo blocks away from where our parents lived. We lived with our parents at that time, So about maybe ten thirty eleven o'clock at night, we proceeded on to attend the party. And before us we acknowledged that there was a couple of squad cars.
You know, just sitting there.
So we proceeded on to go to the party, and the cops they stopped us and asked us where we were going, and we told them we was on our way to the party, and they at that point asked us to get up against the car and they frished us and find a bag of weed, marijuana and a little darrin of pistol which my co defendant had. So they proceeded to frish us to try to find more
stuff out. Soon then we really thought, you know, we were in trouble for the marijuana and the little gun, you know, a little pistol and whatnot.
So we were thinking that we were going.
To go to jail and possibly get out. You know, we were probationists. I was kind of borderline, you know, juvenile, young adult, you know. I guess they could have made it a felony, you know, a dult felt in the case.
Because you were twenty at the time, right.
Well, no, I was ninety, yes, nineteen turning twenty. So I was kind of borderline, I think. Yeah, I was an adult straight across the border.
I was an adult. He was a young juvenile.
Right, And to be fair, as the seventies. Everybody was carrying back then.
Yeah, y, yes, that was the thing.
But the pistol, you know, a couple of young black eyes and Texas with a pistol. The cops don't They don't like that.
Yes, yes, that's correct.
And were they white cops, Yes they were. They were white cops from an all black neighborhood.
But you had no idea that this robbery, this sexual assault had taken place, not in the general vicinity.
No.
Again, I come from an all black neighborhood. You know, it's all black. And from what I gathered, this incident happened man a few miles away, which was another neighborhood.
I guess at a convenience.
Store something like that. I'm not really for sure. I mean, I don't know anything about it. All I know is they stopped us, asked us where we were going, and put the cuffs on us, and then proceeded to taking us to the count of jail.
And then things went really wrong. Yes, sir, you were not a rich guy. No, so you couldn't afford to hire, not by a long shot. Right, So you had a public defender, Yes, I did, And the evidence against you really they had no physical evidence, no, because if they had it, they would have had to lie about that because you weren't there. So the only evidence they had against.
You was the marijuana and the pistol, but.
That had nothing to do with the client that you were convicted of.
Well, they used it as I mean, because I guess the guy was robbed. I mean, I guess that would have took a pistol or something of that sort.
Well, but at the same time, I mean, how many people have pistols. We know there's more guns in America than our people, and back then in Texas, I imagine a lot of people are carrying guns. That doesn't prove you assaulted and raped and robed anybody. But there was
no physical evidence. There was no biological evidence. There was no sperm or hares or anything else that could have connected you to this crime, which was since it was a crime that was physical in nature, that evidence would have existed and would have been able to be tested. There wasn't DNA technology back then, but there was enough blood type or this or that that they could have tested, and if they had, they would have learned that you
were not the guys that did it. Again, it comes back to they had circumstantial evidence, which is, here's these two black guys. There's a lot of black guys though, right, And here's a little gun, right, yes, And I don't want to minimize that as a gun. The weed has nothing to do with anything, right. And then they have these two white people, this couple who made a mistake. I don't think they wanted to identify the wrong pripall.
I'm sure they wanted to do it right. But we know now and they knew to an extent then that I went identification it's such an imperfect thing. And then of course there's all the stuff that happened at the police station and the ways that these procedures aren't conducted, whether it's mug shots or lineups or any other thing. We know that there's a lot of there's been a lot of improvement since then, and the Innists Project has
been behind a lot of those. But there's a lot still that has to be done to help to diminish the number of wrongful identifications. But in your case, I'm guessing that most of those procedures weren't followed. They had a couple of guys, they probably felt a lot of pressure. This is a crime that, particularly in the South. Nineteen seventy nine, a couple of white people getting sexually assaulted by a couple of black men. They want to get this off their desk, right, They're probably a lot of
pressure probably coming from the top, get this solid. And they got a couple of guys and you were one of them. You go to trial. Did you still believe that the system was going to function correct?
Well, I have to say no in that regards.
As the trial went on, were you becoming more I mean, obviously you had to be scared, but were you said you were a believer in the system, And a lot of the guys that I've interviewed on the show and women have said, yeah, I thought that justice would be done because this doesn't happen. But in your case, when the jury went out, were you expecting that they would convict you and send you to seventy five years in present like they did?
Well, that was like my whole cart. It was like I knew I was innocent. I know nothing about this case in which they were allegend that I committed, and so all I had was the system. So I sit in the count of jail or waiting trial so that I can come and sit before the accuser. I really didn't know how the trial system work. I felt that once I go to trial, I would sit before the cue and they would actually see me and say that's the wrong guy.
But that's not how it went.
That didn't happen. And then the jury went out and they came back in, and then the worst possible result happened. Yes, guilty verdict. Was your family in the courtroom? What was that moment? Like? How did you even deal with it?
They did not let my family in the courtroom. They stopped him at the back of the court and for whatever.
Reason did not allow them in.
I was not allowed to testify due to the public offender that I had told me that it'd be to my best interest not to take the stand because they were.
Going to make me look like a you know, a hootlum or something like.
This sort public business.
Yes, and they were.
Saying that it was the burden of proof was on them to prove that I was guilty. That I didn't have to take the stand and to prove my innocence and it being naive, you know, to the law, I said, well, I'm innocent, and I felt like, okay, I really didn't know. So I sit there and once I made that decision, they ate more lunch.
So you got cuvict you got sentenced to seventy five years in prison, and your co defender was sentenced to life. And then so many years went by and eventually you found out about the Innocence Project. Had you given up hope by this point or like, you know, you were in for decades already by the time that over two decades.
No, no, uh, I never given up hope. I always felt that someday I was going to be released. I just didn't know when that day was gonna come.
Because with the seventy five year sentence, they were going to carry you out of there in the box. Yes, possibility, that was the only way you were getting out. But so you wrote a letter to the Innocence Project in two thousand and seven, and obviously we took your case and that was the inn Project New York, and then things started to really turn your way.
Yes, it was actually after the O. J. Simpson trial.
It was a big trial and whatnot, And I think that's somewhere along there they became kind of well known, you know, DNA and whatnot, and uh, I was one who was very active in the law library, the rich rooms in the prison system. And one of the guys who know that I was working on my case and trying to get out, told me about DNA the introduced you know, told me about the ensign project and that that was some information that I could use concern the NSIN project in DNA.
And so I sit in my cell and I.
Had to figure out a way because I know I was in jail for robbery that didn't consist of DNA.
I was never charged of the rape case.
It was dismissed, right, And so when he told me about the DNA and the Innocent project, I had to figure out a way in which I could write this letter to the Niscient Project explaining to them that I was in prison for a robber that I didn't commit, but in the course of this rob but that was also a rape case that occurred that I was never tried for they dismissed, and that if you go back and open up that rape case and do a DNA on it, it's going to show that I didn't I'm
not the perpetrator who raped the lady.
And if I didn't rape the lady who.
Was with the guy in which they said I robbed then I'm not the actual perpetrator.
And that's exactly what happened. Fortunately the evidence was preserved, it was tested, and you walked out of prison a freeman in twoenty ten after thirty one years.
That's correct.
In Texas prisons, which is even saying that name Texas prisons, it just conjures up all kinds of nightmare scenarios. I mean, from the heat to the it's just an unimaginable thing to be able to persevere and overcome. And now now you're an ambassador to new exigneries at the conference.
Thank you.
You know, I want to ask you specifically about the conference because here you are in sunny San Diego an ambassador. That really means that you're here to help some of the newly exonerated people. I was going to say men, but we know it's men and women. And what's that like? What does that mean to them? What does that mean to you? Because you're viewed as somebody that is extremely respected among the entire community for the way you carry yourself.
How does that feel for you and what's the impact of that role?
Well, I'm very honored and pleased to have that title, but that it's just a title.
To me. I'm very emotional and I take it very personal.
When I engage with the guys and welcome these guys in as family. What I try to do is give back what was given to me when I was first released. When I came to my first conference, there was a few guys that came up to me after, you know, being confined for such an long time and being all up tight and not knowing what they expect and not knowing anyone.
It's very challenging. It can be very scary because you.
Don't know anyone, and being in prison for such a long time, You're in a hard environment.
It's a very different environment.
It's not an environment in which you embrace people.
It's an environment in which you keep people at bay. You know, you keep them away. And so.
By the guys embracing me after such a long time and welcomed me home and making me feel a part of family, I took that very personal. That stuck with me, and so throughout the whole time in which I have been free, I was trying to figure out a way in which I can become a part of this platform and give back to these guys and welcome these guys in and allow these guys to know that we are family and we stand by you, and we're gonna support you.
We're going to do everything we can me personally in my power to.
Make it better for these guys. You know, because.
We come from different parts of the world in terms of prison, but we all suffer the same thing and we all can identify with that, and so it's going to take people who understands that to try to make this more of a family atmosphere, more of a welcome home.
It's amazing because I heard you use the word family several times in that beautiful speech, and it really is a family. I mean, that's the sense that I get. And the experience of being in that room last night when almost two hundred Dexigneries got on stage, it was a beautiful thing to see and be a part of. And the speeches that were made and the hugging and the dancing and the connecting of people who have shared this. You know, everybody in that room is a member of
a club that nobody wants to belong to. But now it's amazing because every single exonery I've been privileged to spend time with is so devoted to helping their fellow exunarees and making a difference in not only improving their lives, but in helping other people who are still stuck in the system. And that's what we're here to do on the show, is to educate people and inform people and try to prevent the next Cornelius Dupree from ever happening,
you know, ever getting into the system. You know, once you get started on this work, I was lucky I sort of stumbled into it twenty something years ago. You can't stop, you know, you can't stop because there's no better feeling. And I see it in your eyes when you're talking about it. How you're able to do it now. It's a high, that is it's impossible to even put it into words. So we talked about the worst moment of life when you were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to
spend the rest of your life in prison. What's the best thing that's happened since you've been out.
Being married, getting married to my wife after courting my wife for such a long time. My wife is my best friend, She's my support system.
As you know, I met my wife while I was in prison.
I've actually known my wife for twenty some years prior to me getting out of prison and married my wife.
So my wife's been there practically thirty years.
How did you meet her? Let's go back to that.
Well, I met my wife while I was in prison. My wife was actually a prison guard. Incredible, Yes, my wife was. She was going to sam Houston her she major in criminology. She was on her way to possibly becoming a warden at some point in time, and she was actually a prison guard. I befriend my wife first. She was someone who I highly respected. She had no clue who I was. I had no idea that she would become my wife. Again, she was a lady who
I highly respected. My job in prison kind of allowed me to kind of get a little up close and personal with the guards, you know, being that I had been in prison such a long time, I was one who was pretty much trusted, you know.
I had a job that allowed me.
To intermingle with some of the guards, and so she was one who I used to talk to a great deal. My wife is a minister, so she was always talking about Christ.
She's very religious. Auented and that's what won me over.
That was one of the prayers in which I prayed to God to send me a Christian woman in my life to kind of help.
Me stay the course. I never knew it would be her.
It's an incredible love story. I mean, but you can't see through the radio, but Cornelius is a very stylish and handsome, distinguished looking gentleman. But still you have to have an incredible amount of game right to be able to meet the woman of your while you're on the inside. Right. You've got tens of millions of people out here on different dating websites can't even find love, and you found
it in the most hellish place on earth. It's just really beautiful that you found each other however, even though it was a horrible circumstance, and that we're able to connect on the outside and create a family. And I see when you're talking about I see the love in your eyes. It's amazing. So I would like to ask you if there's anything at all that you want to say.
Well, I would just like to say to kind of enlighten people about what the Innocent Project is all about. I really wanted to know that we are family. I feel that we are now a community. There are so many innocent men and women nowadays that we are actually a community within ourselves. And that's good, that's great because
we can all identify with each other's hurt. There's a big word around us that doesn't quite understand what actually we literosten see is what the Innocent Project is all about. And the people who have roamly been in prison, these people all suffer. We all suffer from some form of PTSD, and we need to be close and identify with one another, talk to one another so that we can start the healing process.
This is what it's all about.
So to add to that, I always like to give people a way to get involved, right and so of course you've heard me say the number of times. Please go to www dot nssproject dot org. You can learn more about Cornelius and his case and his life, learn how to get involved. Is there another any other website that you'd recommend? Or that's that's the place to go.
Yes, that's that's the place to go.
That's the place to go. Please join us, join us in this movement. There's so many more people in this tragic situation, and we gotta. We got to give them the hope and give them the ability to get there, get back out on the outside and achieve the freedom that they deserve. 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 Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wortis. 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 Flahm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one
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