I think we have the best legal system.
It's just the people that implement it. They get lost along the way and forget what their job really is. He just kept on trying to remind me that who was in authority, who was in control, and how easy it was for my body to be found in any alley of New York City.
It's a tough prison when you have the guards going against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
They do that. They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home in eat spaghetti like it was nothing. And anybody that said, well, why would you confess to something that you didn't do? My question to them will be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to kill your life?
The judge, he said, how you feel?
I said, I'm okay. He said, well, the days you're lucky day you're going home.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today, I have a very special guest, a fellow New Yorker and someone who was wrongfully convicted of one of the most notorious crimes in the history of New York, Johnny Incapier.
It was nineteen ninety one of the bloodiest years in city history. The brutal murder of tourists Brian Watkins, killed in the subway while defending his family from a pack of teens, shook the city to its core.
Tourist Brian Watkins was in the subway on September third, nineteen ninety when he was stabbed in the chest after a struggle with at least six teenagers.
If you lived in New York back then, you'd probably remember what it was like. The murder rate was astonishingly hi, the police force a lot smaller than it is now, and the long term solutions for those were just beginning to come into play.
People, though, were out of patience. A high profile crime like this required quick action. Within twenty four hours, seventeens, including of an eighteen year old Hincapier, confessed on tape to taking part in the robbery. Hincapier would later say that his confession was coerced by an abusive detective.
He says it was a combination of fear, false promises, and youthful ignorance that led him to confess to a crime that he did not commit.
He was convicted in nineteen ninety one. Three witnesses came forward to say Hincapier was not on the subway platform when the stabbing happened.
Conviction overturned.
Johnny Encopier is out of prison after serving twenty five years in one of the city's most notorious murder cases.
Johnny Hincapier paid his one dollar bail and ran into the arms of his parents.
Welcome, Thank you, Jason, thank you for having me.
So Johnny, let's go back. This is over twenty five years ago.
It's going to be twenty seven in September.
Right, and you were in high school, correct, living in Queens. Yes, that was life back then.
Life was beautiful for an immigrant family from Columbia, South America. First saw being raised in Florida, then coming to New York and being in a neighborhood like Bay Terrace, Queens. For anybody that knows about that section of Queens back in the eighties, especially when I was there, it was predominantly all Jewish, Italian and Irish. It's a residential neighborhood. You know, you're away from any type of problems in any of the places in New York City, which the
crime rate was extremely high back then. So growing up was definitely comfortable around a good group of friends and family members.
Right and then one night, one horrible night, everything changed in the worst possible way. There was a lot of crime in New York City back then. Back then there was borderline hysteria in terms of the fear that which the media was really hyping up because it wasn't Mad Max, but it was. You know, you had to be careful. And a terrible, terrible crime occurred. A family from Utah was visiting, took the train. They decided to take the subway to the US Open to go see the tennis.
Can you take us through what happened and what you were doing and how you came to be implicated wrongfully in this terrible scenario.
Oh well, growing up in New York, like you, said Jason, talking about a time in the eighties where breakdancing had came out and with rap music, freestyle and house music, which was like the hit type of music other than pop music to listen to in the eighties, at least in New York. But I grew up after being a dancer.
I went into becoming a DJ. As a teenager, I went to my first club for teens and that kind of opened up the door for me to work on weekends at other clubs that were promoting teen nights, and eventually I ended up working in another major clubs when I got older, and even started on a minor level promoting with other individuals those clubs. So I was a pretty decent minor or pre popular type of guy amongst
the group of people that knew me. Back in September of nineteen ninety, a good popular DJs was having a birthday party that he was throwing at Roseline, and everybody in New York City made plans to go out that night. So the group of individuals that I had met along the years and clubs and other parties invited me to go out because they haven't seen me for a while, And eventually they had friends that they invited, and their friends invited other friends. So it was a lot of
people that didn't know each other that went out. But there was a small fraction of individuals that didn't quite have enough money to get inside the nightclub, so they decided to commit a crime, and in the process of committing that crime, someone died.
Some of these kids because you were kids, I mean, you were still in high school at the time, went down thinking I'm going to rob somebody and get some money so I can go to the club. So they went into the subway. That's when they encountered this family from Utah and these were Hispanic kids, right, and the family Hispanic and black kids.
Right.
This of course prayed on all the fears that were in the media and the classic stereotypes of the time, which unfortunately still persisted this day. But at that time they were really peaking. And let's face the crime sales newspapers too, so it was on the front page. I remember the news and this case was on the front page for a long time.
Yes, what it was to do was.
Major, bold faced headlines. What happened when they went down to rob this family? Where were you and why did they pick on you?
When I got out of the train station, I made literally plans with one friend of mine that night. I had my wallet and I gave it to a friend of mine to hold for me because he was wearing a Fannie pack. So apparently when we got outside to the street, I didn't see him and ask people, you know, basically where he was, and some individuals indicated that he
never came out of the train station. Saw on my way going back inside the train station, I saw another friend and we were talking, and at that moment when I got there, he was flirting with some girls and I asked him and he told me that he thought that he was out of the platform. So I was gonna go back upstairs, but I said, you know what,
let me check and let me go downstairs. And I started going down the escalators, but I heard like a big commotion of people screaming and saw people coming running up towards the escalators towards me. So I never made it downstairs to the platform, and I turned around with everybody that was coming towards me, and I just went
out to the street. I decided to go to Roseland and I got online where I saw other people that I knew, and maybe like a couple of minutes later, the group of individuals that was downstairs in the subway platform that committed the crime came then and we all went inside of Rosan after an individual decided to volunteer
to buy tickets for everyone. But at the end of the day, with the news was reporting that these group of individuals that I told you about that stood back in the platform is that they didn't have enough money to go inside a roseland and they decided to rob a family, which they did not know. They were tourists.
They were visiting New York, they were planning to go see the tennis tournament, and in the process of that young twenty two year old man with the name of Brian Watkins died behind a minor stab wound towards the art of his heart.
Well, there was more to it than that as well, right, because it started as a robbery, and as these things do, it progressed from there, right because I think the kids they attacked the mother, if I remember correctly, and then the son, which was what really brought everybody's focus to this case, because the son was sort of a heroic kid. Brian Watkins was twenty two at the time, and he came to the aid of his mother and he tried
to fight back and protect her from these predators. And then one of them stabbed him and they ran out of the subway, and he ran after them and collapsed on the stairs and die like in a movie. Right, just a horrible, horrible thing. And you know, I guess it really triggered again everyone's emotions, especially because everyone would hope that they would behave the way that this kid did in trying to defend his family and his mother.
So it was just a real flashpoint. And we know in these cases when that kind of stuff happens and there's a lot of media attention, the cops they play a little loose with the rules a lot of times. Right, they become hyper focused on solving the crime. There may be accolades for them, right if they do. There may be promotions involved in any case. At a minimum, it'll take away the pressure that they're feeling from their bosses when when they get this case resolved. And in this case,
they knew they had a group of kids. It's got to be tricky to solve a case like that. It's hard enough to identify one individual in a single perpetrator crime, but here you have a whole group of kids. So you happen to have the misfortune, the terrible misfortune of being inside the club with the kids who actually committed this crime. But did you know at that time that they had committed the crime?
No, not at all. No one had mentioned anything about it before nor after the fact. And I got caught up with it only because one of the individuals that did commit the crime I knew from going to school with him, and he was one of the individuals that I hadn't seen in such a long time invited me to go out that night, and because he knew my
phone number. When the detectives asked him the list of individuals or the names of individuals that they wanted from him that went out to the colt, they never asked him that participated in the crime with him, that committed the crime, but they went out with him that night. He listed me and a few other individuals that he knew their phone numbers, and that's how they came to my house and dragged me out and took me to the precinct.
So you got dragged out? You were just home with your parents? Was it daytime? Nighttime? What was the scenario?
It was already evening and I was at home and the detectives came into my house after they rang the bell and my mother opened the door and they just barged in and they asked my mother if I was home, and my mother was inquiring why did they were asking about me? And they said that they wanted to ask me questions about a stolen car. So she called me and I came downstairs. They said they wanted to take me to the precinct, and my mother wanted to come along.
And they asked my mother how old I was, and she said that I just turned eighteen, and they said there was no need for that, and she kept on inquiring why and the until they finally confessed that they wanted to question me about a homicide that took place in the subway station. And thereafter they just took me outside and placed me in their police car.
And so she didn't go with you.
No, they told her that she couldn't come. She even attempted to call an attorney, but it was a holiday, was labor days, so she wasn't able to get in contact with anybody. And they took me all by myself and the car with the rest of the detectives that were outside and even another car that was escorting them from a precinct from my neighborhood into Manhattan's North Precinct.
So you got to take it all the way across the bridge into this city, and then you end up in the North Precinct and then the town North to be exactly and did they begin interrogating you immediately or did they keep you on the holding cell? What happened?
Well, when I got there, the detectives handcuffed me as soon as I came out of the car, and one of the detectives told me that there was a lot of media outside the precinct, so he said that it was in my best interest that he wanted to cover my face with his coat and handcuffed me. He did that exactly. He took me inside. I couldn't see any
of the media. I just heard the cameras flashing and people yelling things out, like asking questions or who was I Who was it that the detectives were bringing in. And they brought me inside and they were still guiding me until they got me. It was for them a secure place that the media wasn't able to see me
in a corridor of the precinct. And then they took me upstairs to a room where I saw it was a double bunks beds and there was the detectives in a T shirt laying down smoking a cigarette, and they uncuffed me and they some word that he wanted me to be placed, and he said place him in the back of the room where the tables at in the chair.
And then they began interrogating you soon after that.
Well interesting enough in my case, I came to find this out much later. The lead detective in my case was Detective Carlos Gonzalez, the same detective that was in the investigation of the Central Park five and he had just been transferred a little less than a year to Midtown North. So the detective that was in the room, he was discussing with Carlos Gonzalez. I don't know what, but throughout the whole entire interrogation, he kept on walking in and out of the room to just talk with
Detective Gonzales. And when I was left alone in that room with Detective Casey, who was the detective that interrogated me, keep in mind that I'm still handcuffed in the chair. And when I was handcuffed, the detective asked me what happened that night, and I told him the truth. I told him exactly what I did from the moment I left to my house to go to Roseland and immediately, you know, he didn't believe me. He kept on saying
that he didn't believe me. He kept on calling me a liar throughout this whole process until he went and bursted into a big rage and started blowing smoking my face from the cigarette that he was smoking. He just decided to really get belligerent with me until he finally started to beat me up. And when he beat me up, I was crying. There was like a moment of silence.
There was a long pause, and he basically told me that I was never going to make it out alive from that precinct unless I decided to comply with him
in memorizing a story Jesus Christ. He just kept on trying to remind me that who was in authority, who was in control, and how easy it was for my body to be found in any alley of New York City and nobody would care about it, because the police department in New York who he worked for, had it that simple in their power to do such a thing, and nobody would even point a finger to.
Them, like a Central American dictatorship or something. This is supposed to be New York City, which is located in America, the United States, exactly. Yeah, that's supposed to be the way it is, obviously. I mean, so this is an unbelievably terrifying situation to find yourself and you're eighteen years old.
We know that the brain doesn't fully develop until you're about twenty five, and we know that these confessions, these false confessions, happen so frequently with teenagers because you don't have enough life experience at that point to be able to draw on, to be able to rationalize and say, well, he can't really take me and kill me and dump my body, because the rational mind would say, well, that can't happen because my mom saw them come and take me.
But then again, who knows how you would react. Anybody in that situation would be in a state of complete disorientation, which is exactly what they were after.
Right.
They were well aware that you couldn't withstand as a teenage boy with no experience probably with this type of violence or mental pressure, psychological pressure. They knew that they were going to be able to get you to say almost anything if they took these tactics. And what happened. Did they give you a piece of paper to sign? Is that what the next thing was? And how I mean, how long we were in there? At what point did you get a lawyer? Did they ever ask you if you wanted a lawyer.
Well, let me just say this, Jason, before I get to answering that part of your question. Everything that you just said is absolutely true. You hit it right on the head. New York had a technique that they call the read technique where detectives basically questioned an individual to find out whether he's telling the truth or he's lying, and if they believe that he's lying, then they start asking him questions as he's guilty, just to make him to confess because they don't believe. In my case, they
didn't do any of that. This detective here, from the beginning, he just said that I was lying and then transition into beating me up, which he wasn't supposed to do yet he violated that. Now when I say that he was threatening to take my life, yeah, that's absolutely true. A teenager like myself at that time, at that age, eighteen years old, Yeah, my mind wasn't fully developed, right, But I truly believe that any individual who has been threatened with their lives being taken, I don't care how
old you are, right, is scared for their life. That those individuals that are physically pounding on you are going to kill you because they say that's exactly what they're going to do, whether you're eighteen or fifty. And anybody that would say, well, why would you confess to something that you didn't do, my question to them will be why wouldn't you confess? It's exactly to what I just mentioned when somebody's threatening to kill your life.
And not only that, but you add to it the fact that I imagine you grew up like I grew up, thinking that the police were there to protect you, right, and you respect the police right, and they respect you, and you know it says right on the side of the car, to protect and serve right. And I think
most police that is the approach that they take. But then there's bad ones, and the bad ones like this guy Gonzalez, who we know was responsible for extracting the false confessions in the Central Park Geogra case, the notorious Central Park Jogra case. He's one of those guys who obviously just didn't give a fuck. It's really hard for us who are what do you want to call it, empathetic human beings. It's hard for us to really imagine what could cause somebody to go so far wrong to
take somebody. They had no idea, they had no evidence. There was no evidence with you. There's nothing connecting you to this case. There wasn't even anybody at this point saying that you did it. I don't believe there was just this guy who said, I know this guy Johnny and Gtpia, I have his phone number in my phone whatever and not my phone right.
Yeah, But by the time they took me to Precinct, they already had the fashion of the individual that stabbed Brian Watkins and killed him, so they knew who had killed him. But, like you said, aside from being over zealous or any other elements that you want to include, from racism and just being biased and whatsoever, this detective just wanted to move up the ladder and didn't care for him whether I was telling the truth or not.
He just wanted to tag me along with everybody else, only because one individual knew me.
Right, knew you. But to your knowledge at that point in time, had any of the other individuals implicated you in the crime. No, So that's just such a random and terrible twist of fate that they just decided because at some point somebody had to say, well, let's go pick him up. Well, well, let's not go pick that guy up. He we don't know anything about him. We go pick him up for it doesn't make any sense.
So from that to beating this false confession out of you, literally beating it out of you, and we know, literally beating it into me, right, beating it into you, threatening you with death. Now all of a sudden, you're in the system, you've confessed, You're not going home, you're not going anywhere. You're going to trial. And that trial was a circus, let's face it, right, I mean, this was the biggest news in New York. And you were tried with some of the other kids together, right.
Yes, there was two trials and I was tried in the first trial. Interesting before I was taken to the priest and there was one individual that participated in the crime and made a confession and said to them that I wasn't even there. So everybody that he knew that participated in the crime, he mentioned that. He said six people committed the crime, not and two people left. And those two people that left that went out with everybody else that got to that train station was Johnny and Kevin.
So Johnny and Kevin had left. You had the district attorney. The ADA kept on trying to implicate me, and this individual kept on correcting the ADA, and he said, no, Johnny was not there. It was only six of us,
not eight of us. They did it about practicing me around six times, and this individual was separated from trial then placed in the second trial because the ADA and the judge decided that they didn't want the jury to hear my exportory information from him to them, so they kept them away from me so the jury couldn't hear this. And they tried me along with other individuals. Where a jury looking at a group of guys say, you know, everybody's guilty.
Right, because the jury, the psychology of a jury would seem to be that if there's four of you together and the other three guys, were the other three guys all guilty, guys, yeah on your side, right, So there was there was three in you, so you're guilty by association, literally, and the idea that they're going well justice, Most people think going into the jury box, the justice system works. If they got these guys here, they must be the guys.
This is a terrible crime. Everybody can relate to this. Poor families ordeal. You're there must be a reason, right, must be a reason. So you are ultimately convicted and sentenced to twenty five.
Years to life only due to a false confession, like you said, no weapon, no knowledge, no malice, harbored, no identification, no DNA, nothing but a false confession.
Not one witness placed you at the scene, no one, not the family, no one, nobody.
Amazing false confession and sentenced to the same exact sentence that everyone else in my case received, including the individual that killed the victim in this case.
So you know, I'm getting the chills now thinking about this, and now you're here to share the truth that these false confessions are a plague that we have in our justice system, and you know, we're making great progress in terms of New York State just passed finally mandatory videotaping of interrogations.
Kushell was a part of Proud to say.
I know you were, and I'm glad you mentioned that, because nobody could deny you the right to do anything that you want after what you've been through, But instead you and almost every other wrongfully convicted person I know, spends a huge amount of your time and energy fighting to prevent future wrongful convictions for people that you don't even know, right, It's an amazing thing how you're able to channel that impossibly horrible experience into something so positive.
And yeah, so my hat's off to you for helping with that effort, because just that simple change is going to make such a big difference. Do you think if your interrogation had been videotaped, is there any possibility of a jury could convict you?
Absolutely not.
Like, let's imagine this. Let's imagine that prosecutor goes up in the courtroom and is playing the video and here, oh, what did he hit him with? There? Was that a left or a right?
Right?
Oh, he's handcuffed a chair. Oh now he's just threatened to kill him. And the jury's gonna go, wait, what you can't do that. Everybody knows you can't do that, And of course you would confess. When I interviewed Raymond Santana on the show, and he explained, you know, going through a scenario different than yours, but similar. His was
more psychological torture than anything else. But he was fourteen and his interrogation went on, I mean, with no sleep and no food and no nothing, and just for a long, long time, and they did threaten to kill him. I said to him, by the end of it, you would have confessed to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. He says, absolutely anything to make it stop, right, And I imagine that's probably true for you too.
You know. And that's interesting that you say that, because it only goes to show how powerful these techniques and tactics are when used in getting someone to make a false confession. Because most false confessions they have individuals there anywhere from five to ten to fifteen hours. With me, that wasn't even the case. I was there for four hours, and in those four hours I confessed immediately because they put their hands on me. This detective Casey physically beat
me up. I was just eighteen for three months, no trouble with the law, had no criminal record whatsoever. This is my first time inside a police precinct and, like you said, looking up to police officers, being taught and raised by my parents to trust in them when anything goes wrong, if you had any questions, you stop a police officer in the middle of the street and ask him for help. And yet inside this precinct, I'm being beat up and threatened to die, of course exactly.
You weren't a thug, you weren't a street kid, you weren't even a fighter. You're an artistic guy, right, You're a guy who was doing music. I know you got into theater and dancing and things like that. My mind is exploding just thinking about what you were going through. And it's so.
And let me just give you a little interesting fact. If you would have saw a picture of me, like a week before or a couple of days before I was taken into that precinct, and then you look at the video tape confession. I had long hair back then, not very long, but long that I was growing, and it was pushed back, and on the side of my head you saw two ball spots from the way that
the detective was pulling my hair out. And you would think that showing this video tape confession to a jury, they would see the truth and how this detective beat me up. But back then, nobody did not know anything about false confessions. So introducing a confession to a jury, they're believing it immediately and disregarding the physical abuse and signs on my head of what took place.
Did your lawyer bring that up? Of course, he did, so you had a competent attorney.
Well, I wouldn't say competent, but he brought it up to a minimal factor, you know, because he was really arguing another issue in my case more than this, because he believed that, no matter how much I wanted to take the stand, because I was eighteen and experience, that the DA having this false confession was going to walk all over me on that stand and prove to the jury that that confession was to be taken to its veracity.
It probably would have to. I mean, I don't think there was any good answer to that situation. I think you were doomed before you walked into that courtroom. So you end up being convicted and sentenced to twenty five years to life. And what prison did they take you to at that point.
Well, after I left Rikers Island, which, let me just say, Rykers Island back then was atrocious. It was a hell hole. I literally literally went through hell every single day in Rikers Island. From the moment that I got there, I was told that if I wanted to stay alive, I had it to fight. And the thing about it is that the first people that were attacking me in Rikers
Island was the very CEOs, the very correction officers. So to fight a correction officer that has the power and already going through this transition of being beat up by a detective from the police department, I was afraid to fight back. I didn't know how to fight back.
What are you supposed to do? I'm going to fight a correction officer that doesn't even make any sense. And you're not I mean you're not a small guy. You're not a big guy either. I mean you're not like.
Back then, I weighed one hundred and fifty.
Pounds exactly right. So what'd you do?
I just took the beating. I took the beating. I cried all night behind it, and every single day I was harassed by correction officers no matter where I went because of the notoriety of my case, and it was all over the news for so long, and correction officers just kept on bringing it up against me until it got to the point where they got other inmates and Rikers Onland to attack me. And that's where I decided to put my hands up and fight back to the
best of my ability. But at the end of the day, that placed there you know, a lot of people they were fighting with razors and knives, and I didn't know how to hold one, and I was afraid to even use one. So when they used to pull out their knives and their raisers, I used to just comply and tell them, what do you want? What are you asking here for? Or if they were slapping me or kicking me, or I just took it. I didn't want no cuts in my face. I didn't want to be stabbed. I
was afraid. I was alone. I was eighteen, and I didn't know how to deal with it. So I dealt with with all the fear in the world that I
was going through. And until I went upstate to the state prison, it was the same treatment because although the notoriety wasn't the same, but you know, you had now a record and a file that was created by the District Attorney's office and the New York City Department of Corrections that was following me upstate, and this file was like a red flag making me sound like I'm the worst of the worst. And you're keep in mind, I wasn't even in the individual that took this victim's life.
They had me charged as an accomplice, Yet I'm being treated like if I was the perpetrator in this case. So even upstate, where there's even more bias and more racism, I still went through a lot of more horror. I was placed in segregation, I was set up with weapons. Just be shown how easily I could have been in segregation for years. They also had other inmates attempted to do things and ended up getting me into segregation again. So agony, my hell hole for so many years did not go away.
How did you maintain I mean, it's a miracle you maintained your physical wellbeing. I mean, the fact that you're here is a miracle. How did you maintain your sanity? How did you maintain your hope? I mean, because somehow or other, you managed to get to this place where you are now an exonerated man. Everyone knows you're innocent. How do you do that? The scenario your painting is so so grim, so terribly dark, and like it's everybody's worst nightmare.
Literally, when I was in there, I was very angry and very bitter, and I saw so many individuals doing what they were doing to me, doing to other individuals for other reasons. Jailhouse prison reasons, whether it dealt with jealousy, drugs, or hatred, envy, whatever it was. But the difference was that I saw a lot of these individuals that I was being told stories about them, or even seeing them with my own eyes, how they were turning into other beings that they were never to begin with in the
first place. A lot of them were turning into animals or were turning into the darkest, worst criminals that they were becoming inside of a prison. And when I saw that, I said to myself that, no matter how much I'm trying to defend myself and fight for my life in prison from two different parties, the CEOs and the inmates, I'm not like that. That's not who my parents raised me to be, and I don't want to become that. And I just had like an awakening and a conscientious
moment where I thought about my family. I thought about those simple words when they tell you I love you, we will always love you, we're your family, and we'll always be here for you. And those things used to bleed tears in my heart, just reminding me of who my family was and how did I end up in there in the first place. Why was I there, I asked God and everybody, and I couldnot get the answer for so many years, so I didn't know how to
deal with that. But because of that moment, I decided, you know what, I'm just going to fight in a different way, and it's not gonna be with my fist. It's not gonna be with my fist because I got to focus on my innocence here and I turned into education and I did everything that I could, go to the law library and write numerous letters to so many different law firms and law professors and organizations and even
clergy asking for all different types of help. And yet all of my letters were being rejected or nobody wanted to help me because I had no evidence at that time to prove my innocence, nor did I have the financial resources to hire anybody to help me. And education, yes, along with my family support, and yeah, a spiritual awakening as well. I mean, anybody in my opinion that would say that they never had a spiritual awakening in prison,
I would say that's a bunch of bs. No matter what gangst the role or hardcore role they want to play. To anybody and tell them how much of a big mato man. They were. When you're locked inside a cell and that CEOs turn that key and turn off the lights, and you're thereby yourself in four walls in the dark and eight x ten cell doing twenty five to life,
the only person you can turn to is God. So yes, I did have that awakening in all those different realms of life, and that was the only thing that I was hanging on to, the only thing that I was clinging on to that kept on giving me that hope and faith.
What happened to eventually unravel this mess? I mean, because it's a very difficult thing. Your case was not a DNA case. I mean, all the cases are difficult, but at least if it was a DNA case where you could prove that you weren't there, right, because DNA, we know it's science, it's pure science. And in this case, you had a higher degree of difficulty even to prove it because you weren't convicted based on evidence. So you can't prove that the evidence is fault because there was
no evidence in the first place. So and as you said, you weren't a wealthy guy. You couldn't hire a lawyer, you couldn't attract a lawyer because they look at the case and they go, well, so how did it break.
Well, my parents and my child did hire an attorney, but after that they just can't afford what these attorneys wanted to take my case. They wanted to charge anywhere over six figures, and my parents basically sold the house that we lived in. They closed down the businesses that they had to take this money to hire the attorney that supposedly was representing me in the beginning, which all he did was just railroad me and take my family's money.
So all these years of my family going to visit me in prison, the trips, the tolls, whatever food or packages they could bring me, this was a financial stretch for them else exactly. And this keep in mind that, yeah, I'm innocent. Here there was a victim in my case, a victim that did not deserve to die. He should have never died. This crime should have never taken the place.
But the one thing that I can't get over is that I don't know how this sounds, but because of the actions of someone else, and because of Brian Walkins's death, I too became a victim. I became a victim where again, there was no evidence. Nobody wanted to help me, nobody wanted to believe me. So while I was in the theater program, there was a woman that approached me. I was casted as Tony for Westside Story and she was my music coach, my vocal coach, and she said, you know,
what are you doing here? You don't look like you belong here. And I said, it's a long story. I'll tell you another day. And eventually I told her, But unbeknownst to me, she winded up contacting a good friend of her who was a retired police officer, and he told her, I said, this is a job for Bill Hughes. And Bill Hughes at the time was working for the Journal News up in Westchester County and he was like a man that exposed the corruption of judges, ada's and
police officers. That was his forte. So he decided to visit me in one of the shows that I was in the theater and he started digging into my case and he told me in the beginning, he said, listen, because you had no evidence, I didn't really believe you. But the more I started digging into your case and I saw these flaws and loopoe, it started making me
more interested. So he wrote an article that was printed in City Limits magazine here in Manhattan, in New York City, and because of that article, the ex commissioner of the New York State Division of Parole, Robert Dennison, decided to get involved with him, and between the both of them, they just started conducting their own investigation until they found evidence with witnesses and letters that actually proved my innocence.
And that was the reason why New York State judged throughout my conviction.
So they were like your angels pretty much right, yes, so in the way your prayers were answered, I suppose.
Right, yes, they were answered. It took twenty five years. You know, I'm just glad that I didn't die in there, because I can't even tell you how many days I used to wake up in the morning and ask myself the same question over and over and over, you know, is this today? Do I want to live? Or do I want to die? And there was a moment when I was on my fifteenth year of being incarcerated, all my appeals were denied, nobody wanted to help me, and I just got down on my knees inside my cell
and I started crying. Out to God and I told God, I said, listen, please take my life away, because I can't take this anymore. I can't do this time. I didn't do this, you know, I didn't do this, and I can't be here. I don't want to do this anymore. Who would, I said to him. All I wanted was just to wake up the next morning in heaven. I didn't have the guts to take my own life. I couldn't do the suicide, but I wanted him to do
it for me. And the next morning, when I woke up, I saw those bars in front of me, and I was so mad at God. I was so pissed at him because I was still there. There was a miraculous turn that took place in my life because since then, every single door opened up. And that's when Bill Hughes and Robert Dennison got involved in my case and everything just went perfectly. I really couldn't believe it. It took again twenty five years, but everything worked out so smoothly. That led to my innocence.
And I'm glad you brought that up to Johnny, because there are people listening who are in a position to make a difference like that. To take a call, to take a letter, to take a case like yours, and while at the outset they all look borderline hopeless. I have a saying that pertains to this, which is that I've seen too many miracles to stop believing in miracles. At the end of the day, it really comes down
to one person. The impact that any of us can make, which these two individuals did in your case, it's really profound. I mean, how somebody can come along and really rescue somebody like you who needs help as badly as anyone can have or need help in this fight. It's hard to think of anybody who's more sort of alone and more desperately in need of somebody to come along and be that angel than somebody who's wrongfully convicted like yourself.
And there's so many of you out there, right, there's so many people who've been wronged by this justice or injustice system, whatever you want to call it, that it hurts my soul. Now you're here, you ultimately were freed. What was that experience? Like this is the flip side now?
Right?
So when I mean I as much as you can't imagine how the desperation and the misery and the total shock of being wrongfully convicted. What's it like when that foot finally comes off your neck?
For me? From my mother, from my family, all the reporters there. It was a very warm, yet subtle, loud moment, just seeing that embracing taking place after so long, knowing that I wasn't going to go back again, and seeing the two investigators there, which I finally said to myself, you know, like a realization popped in my head. Immediately said. The two people that I'm looking up to right now is these two investigators, Robert Dennison and Bill Hughes, and
we need more people like that. When you ask my emotions of walking out, I felt valued again. I felt like I had worth again as a human being, something that was taken away from me from the moment that I was incarcerated. You can be rich, you can be intelligent, you could be nice and good looking, but if you don't have ethics in this world, you're never going to do the right thing. All those things are worth nothing,
and we need people to do the right thing. We need people to have these ethics, to have this courage. Someone writes a letter like I did, they would want to respond, especially when I didn't receive any response and people were turning me down. We need these type of people. So yes, I felt like I had worth and I
had value in my life again. Walking out of that courthouse, I was so overjoyed that I felt I don't know what words or emotions, but I just felt so happy that I think that all my worries of dying in prison were gone now. But nonetheless being out here and speaking constantly, protesting in city Hall and in New York State legislature, speaking against false confessions, asking for these cameras to be placed in in DC interrogations room, and even right now speaking about my story my release in the
last eighteen months has been extremely hard for me. I constantly remind myself of what I went through every time I speak about this, and this is not easy. Why would an individual like myself that came home after twenty five years and there's nothing waiting for him, no job, there's nobody saying, okay, we're gonna help you here. Yet everybody that is a convicted felon, they have some form of transitional re entry process to go to, but there's nothing for an innocent individual to go to or nor
source of help or assistance. This has been extremely crucial for me, extremely hard for me, difficult. I've had nightmares waking up about prison again, and no matter how hard I try to put this behind me, I still haven't found that piece, no matter how much love my family give me, because they don't know how to guide me through this process. They can give me all the hugs, kisses and affection in the world, but they don't know how to help me. And I don't know how long
is it gonna take. I don't know how long is it going to take? Until you know, I continue fighting and fighting and getting more things accomplished with the help of the Innos Project and so many other networks of organizations. I don't know when I'm going to receive that sigh of happiness. But from the moment, you would think that freedom is nice. It is nice because I would rather be out here than in there. But it's hard. It's very hard.
What are you doing now day to day? Like, aside from advocating and working for justice reform, what's your daily life?
Like?
You wake up and I was staying.
With my parents in the beginning, and when I came home, you know, while I was in prison, just keep in mind, I did everything in my power when I said to educate myself. I facilitated classes, went through the theater program, and I even got myself a master's degree. I had high aspirations when I came home, and I wanted to get myself a good job. But nobody really cared with all the bias, you know, whether I was innocent or not. They just didn't want to formally incarcerated an individual working
in their working environment. So it was difficult for me to find a job, and I winded up gaining employment and a bail bond agency doing bails. So look at this, ironically, I'm going to New York City jails every single night to bail somebody out, and that has been a turmoil in a nightmare as well. That was giving me some substance of financial income, but it just wasn't enough. And it's how New York City's expensive. Right now. You know, I have my own apartment now, the money that I
saved up, I got an apartment right now. But it's still very difficult. And I left that job and I'm looking for another job now. You know, again, you would think that, you know, there would be some type of network organization or a system say Okay, you know what you did twenty five years for a crime you didn't commit. We're going to help you here get back on your feet. That doesn't exist for exoneries. It's just not out there, so it even makes it more difficult.
We'll talk offline about that. I may have some ideas, but before we have to sign off, I always like to ask the featured guest, honored guest, if there's any last thoughts that you want to share with the audience, get off your chest, anything at all.
You know. I would say that if there were cameras all over every Prieston in New York, inside every room, because that needs to be implemented. Cameras need to be placed in every room in the police precinct because it's so easy to take someone and put them in another room when there's not a camera and still beat them up and then bring him into the interrogation when where
the cameras at so he can make that false confession. So, now that we have this law passed, anybody out there listening, anybody that wants to help this be prevented and has the power to do so, needs to put these politics to the side. They need to start thinking about human beings lives here, because if that camera was there twenty five years ago, I would have never spent twenty five years in prison. And don't stop believing, don't stop believing.
I know there's a lot of people out there that are believers or call themselves believers, but I would say this. A believer to me is someone that when you know nothing is out there, there's no way you can prove your innocence, and you write so many letters and you're getting all the rejection letters like I was. You know, most people would just stop. Most people were just that's sick,
give up. It takes somebody to wake up morning after morning and keep on going at it, to see it there when you don't even see it there, and then to finally receive your innocence. To me, that's a believer. So I just want to share that with everybody, say don't stop believing. And that's the believers that we need out there in society today to keep on encouraging and helping with this cause here of innocent people in prison that are still in there and with false confessions.
I guess it's like I say, you've seen too many miracles to stop believing in miracles too, and you are a miracle. Last question, are you on any social media?
You could go on my Facebook page it's Johnny Kopia joh n n y hi ncapie and on Instagram on Johnnyincopia Dot seventy two.
Follow him, learn more, get involved. We need your help. Let's make sure we minimize the future wrongful convictions.
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And I'm a proud donor to the NISNS project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project 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 in association with Signal Company Number one