I think we have the best legal system. It's just the people that implement 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 we are recording from New Orleans with a very special individual. My friend Daniel Tapia is here today. Daniel, welcome to the show.
Thank you, thank you, thanks for having me.
Well let's start with this. We're in New Orleans, which is the epicenter of the problem with the criminal justice system or the world. Actually, America locks up more people per capita than any place in the world, five times as many people per capita as the rest of the Western world, fourteen times as many as Japan, which is insane.
Louisiana locks up twice as many people per capita as the rest of the United States, and New Orleans locks up more people than any other county or city in Louisiana, sir. So overall, it's really not that shocking that somebody like you could be wrongfully convicted in a place like this.
That happens way too often.
Unfortunately, it's really troubling. Daniel was forced to take a plea even though he's innocent, because had he not done that, he'd probably be in prison for the rest of his life.
Is that fair, Yes, sir, because the way things roll down here, and to be fair, in most of the rest of the country, a huge number of people are faced with the same sort of Sophie's choice that you had, which is either plead guilty and sort of have that scarlet letter, or try to fight for your innocence and run the risk of the very likely scenario that you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison. So let's go back to your case, because it's like something out of a movie.
It absolutely is. That's the only way I know how to go a bad movie.
So walk us through that. What happened? Where were you? How did you get caught up in this?
Okay? I used to live in the Calio Projects in New Waters, That's where this incident occurred. That so on the day that it occurred, I was with a friend of mine. Let me say this. I had just bought my first call. I was a teenager. I was eighteen years old, just bought my first call, and basically all I was doing was everybody I knew, all my friends, anybody, Hey, you need to ride, Let's go this place, Let's go to that place.
You know.
We just were riding around everywhere, typical of most teenagers when they buy their first vehicle, especially when you're the only one out of your friends who has one at the time. You know, the data incident happened. I was outside talking to another friend of mine. Me and one of my friends were getting ready to leave, and he was like, where y'all about to go? I said, we I'm gonna go pass by my girlfriend and then we probably gonna go downtown, which was you know, I lived uptown.
So he said, all right, well just drop me off on your way over there. So I said, all right. So I dropped him off, and a friend of mine had recently been another guy that I knew. He had recently been shot by another individual, and you know, he was my friend who I was dropping off. Was going to check on him because he lived upstairs where I was dropping him off, fat in the projects on the other side. So as I dropped him off, he gets out, he goes in there. I pulled off. I pull up
way I was going to. My girlfriend was probably approximately maybe two to three blocks away. She lived in another driveway. And if I'm going that way, I started hearing gunshots. And when I started hearing gunshots, my friend who was in the vehicle with me, he's like, man, you know that's coming from where we just dropped off with my other two friends. So I look back. I can't see anything because the way the buildings are you can't see over to what's going on. All I hear is gunshots.
And then I start hearing gunshots getting rapid succession like a semi automatic, you know, like assault rifle. You can you know the difference between a sault rifle and a pistol going off? I mean, it's shot after shot, it's just relentless shot after shot. At that time, probably less than a minute later, my friend and his friend come running, and as they're running, somebody's behind them shooting at them with the assault rifle.
Over whatever.
It sounds like a video game, yes, sir, but it was crazy.
No, it's real life. It's split second. You gotta make a decision. What are you gonna do? So, as he's running, he's running towards me, and I see him, so I you know, I'm looking. I get back in my car and he comes running towards my car. Pull up, he jumps in my car. I take off. I'm like, man, what happened? He's like, man, just go, just go, just go. So, I know somebody's shooting at him. You know, I don't know exactly what went on, but I see someone shooting at him.
Well, someone shoot at him. They' shooting at ut exactly now.
Yeah, So there's no time to sit around and think about what happened or what might have happened. What's the right decision? Was not the right decision. So I pull off and I pull out of the driveway, and I mean less than maybe two blocks. There's cops coming from everywhere. So I stopped. I didn't do anything, you know, I stopped. I pull over to the side of the road. And as I pull over to the side of the road, they come pulling up on us. So, you know, I
put my hands up, get out the car. Whatever. I know something happened, but I don't know what happened. I know, you know, there was a shooting going on. I don't know what happened, though, So we get out. They pull us all out, They separate all of us, put us in different places. Four of you, four of us, Yes, sir, it was four of us. And this is where the story gets crazy. This is where it starts not making sense at all.
Pretty crazy so far.
But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I'm gonna just say, you know, this is when the corruption starts. Let me put it like that. So as we get stopped, we get pulled out. So I don't know what the cops are telling the other guy. But there's a black car that pulls is a black Cadillac with tinted windows and rims in it. And a guy pulls in front and gets out, and he comes straight to where I'm at and he comes back there and he opens the
door and he tells me he's a police officer. He just saw everything that happened, and he knows I didn't have anything to do with it, but he needs to know what's going on because it's the second murder in the neighborhood within that week. That was someone who was killed maybe a block away from where this incident happened, about five days before that, the Calio Projects in New Orleans. There was a lot of murders, a lot of stuff going on. It's a really bad neighborhood to grow up
in and living. And so I told him, I said, look, I don't know what happened. I don't know anything about the shooting. I said, man, I was just over here and I heard some shots. So he punched me. He hit me. He said, you're trying to take up for him. I said, look, well, look I want to talk to a lawyer.
Man.
You know, I ain't got nothing else to say to y'all. Y'all sitting here punching on me saying I'm lying. I ain't got nothing to say, so then he slams the door. So then one after one, cops start coming up to the car and they open the back door, and they keep asking me what my race is. I'm like, what my race is? What the what does that have to do with anything? Why y'all keep why? Why are these cops so interesting if I'm black or white? And so
I don't think anything of it. I'm just, you know whatever, the stupid cops. You know, I'm not thinking anything. Well, the captain of the sixth District comes and he tells me, because I want to take up for them, he's gonna make sure I get the death penalty win him after, you know alone whatever. We've been sitting out there, maybe two three hours now.
Right, The problem being that you don't actually know.
What I don't know what happened.
So even if you wanted to tell him that, you certainly would not if you couldn't live in that neighborhood on exactly, but there was no snitching, you would have to just make up a story out of thin air.
Yeah, I really legitimately don't know what happened for real, because I couldn't see over it that I couldn't see what was going on. But I know in my heart, I'm like, I didn't I didn't have anything to do with this. So I'm not even worrying about if I'm gonna go to jail or if you know, because I'm like, I didn't do anything. I stopped, y'all, I stopped, I got out. I don't know, y'all. Tell y'all are telling
me what happened. I don't know what happened. Y'all are telling me that somebody got shot and all this type of stuff. So I go to jail and they let the guy who was with me, my friend who was with me, they let him go that same night, and I'm just thinking of my head like this, this is crazy, you.
Know, like what this is the guy who came running into the car.
No, this was another guy, the guy who was with me at the time when the other guys came running to the car. There was two guys who ran to the car, and it was me and another friend of mine who were in the car at the time already. And they let him go, but they didn't let me go. So I'm like, man, you know why they taking me and and let him go. It's like, you know, but
I still don't know what's going on. I didn't actually find out what was going when it actually happened until when I was in jail, had been processed about three days later, because I didn't even see myself on a news I got a newspaper article from somebody. They let me see the newspaper when I got up on the til I was going on, and I read what happened, and I was like, what, holy shit. And then I start reading how they trying to involve me in and
I'm like, man, that's not even what happened. But I mean, what can I say? What can I do about it? I'm in jail now, So the first thing I'm thinking is, all right, this is gonna get played out in court. You know, I'll go to court. It'll be over. You know, they'll see Because the cops telling me he saw everything that happened and he knows I didn't have anything to do with it, and he told me because he thinks I'm trying to take up for them, that he's gonna
mess over me. But I'm like, this guy is't really gonna go through this and really come in here and lie in court and say, you know that I had something to do with something I didn't, but he did. And what's crazy is that even as they played the dispatch tape of him calling in the shooting that he allegedly witnessed, it doesn't even line up with what he testified to in court, Like it doesn't even make.
Sense because he called in and said it was three black men.
He called in and said it was three black males, which obviously I have no melody. I don't have a drop of it in my skin. That's all I can. Yeah, that's it, you know, especially in that neighborhood. I'm one of the only white people in that neighborhood period.
Actually, if he did witness the shooting, it would have been really easy for him to identify it.
Just spotted me a mile away.
If I had something, it would have been, yeah, that's the white guy from the name right exactly.
And you said it was three black males. But when you stopped us, you stopped three black males and meet and you let one of them go, which he didn't have anything to do with it either. But it's just a thought like where is all this going? Like how does this even make sense to y'all to actually prosecute this. It took over two years and I was eventually convicted the second agree murder.
It took two years for the trial to resolve. So you were in jail for two years waiting.
To go to trial, yes, sir, thinking I was going to go home, and I didn't. They convicted me, and it was it was the most surreal feeling I ever felt in my life.
And the crime happened in two thousand and three.
Yes, sir, April eleven, two thousand and three.
And Hurricane Katrina has a role in this whole crazy saga of your life as well. Definitely, So let's talk about that.
So in August two thousand and five, Hurricane Katrina comes true. So in the day leading up to Katrina, they basically just it was like nothing was gonna happen, no big deal. I'm looking at this giant storm coming our way, but there's no preparations being made. They're not moving us out of the line of fire. They're not taking us to another prison up north or something where we're out of the way of the storm and out of horms way. They just left us there. Friday, Hurricane Katrina hitting Sunday
that Friday. They turned the phones off inside the jail, so nobody can make a phone call outside to talk to their family, anything like that, or let them know that we were still in there.
Which jail was it again?
Orleans Paris Prison?
And what does that look like? Is it a tall building? Is it a flat?
It's four stories tall.
So it's not tall at all. Not when you have Hurricane.
Katrina coming, not at all, Not at all.
And if you're on the first the second floor, if.
You're on the first floor, you'd have been dead because I was on the second floor and we were standing in water.
So let me just get this straight. Hurricane Katrina's coming one of the biggest storms in the history of this country. Yes, sir, didn't take anybody by surprise. No, everybody saw that thing. He's coming a mile away, days away. There's one time the weather men actually.
Got it right. Yeah.
Yeah, they couldn't mess that one up.
So they decided that the appropriate response would be to abandon you there because they want to go protect their own asses. Yes, and turn off the phones.
Yes, that's exactly what they did.
So the storm comes, you were on the second.
Floor, I was on the second floor.
What was the vibe? What was everybody saying and doing? I mean, like it just just when you think things can't get worse.
Yeah, So what happened was we were all on a tib and of course, you know the power went out. When the power goes out before the deputies basically locked us in there. Left We can see out the window onto the fourth floor, which is the highest level inside of the building. Up there, that's where the deputies have stationed themselves at. They removed the inmates who were up there on the fourth floor and put them at lower floors.
And they were up there and they had like some of their family members and stuff in there up on the fourth floor, and they were up there cooking, and you know, you could see they had like a barbecue and they had all the food that was left. They took it up there with them. So they locked us inside of our tears, which is your cell blocks of your domes, and we had no food. Once the storm comes to you, we have no running water, we have no
clean water, we have nothing. We can barely even breathe in there because it's stifling from the lack of air and circulation going on inside there, and you've got on a particular tier I was on. There's enough beds for forty two people. We had about sixty four at the time up there, and like I said, with nothing else,
not even enough beds for everybody to be in. Obviously, being in prison, you around other people who are maybe not so nice individuals and who have different beefs and stuff from the street, and so when the lights go out, nobody wants to be that guy, because I mean you literally couldn't see your hand in front of your face
when the power was out in there. So you had guys that started lighting fires inside of there and stuff like that, and there's no air, there's no circulation, there's no windows, there's no anyway for this smoke to get out. So you got these idiots who started a fire on the other side, and there's smoke going all through the inside of the dome where we at. So we had to break windows in order for the smoke to get out, just so we could breathe and everybody didn't suffocate up there.
How did you break a window?
I mean, yeah, they have bars around them and it's reinforced glass. But we had like a big iron metal bar that goes across the shower, and we ended up breaking that down out of the wall and use that along with a broom and a mopstick that was up there to just beat on a glass until it put a hole in it. And once it put a hole in it, we just chipped the way at it and broke it out. So the bars were still intact, like we couldn't get out of the window, but the glass
itself was broken where we could. Air was able to come in and go out.
So that saved everybody's life right there. Literally, you're painting a picture of literally the worst imaginable scenario that anybody could be in. It's dark, it's stifling heat, there's no air.
No food, no food, no water over all of.
Them, and a storm coming in that just might kill you all.
Yeah. Well, by this time the storm had passed when the part of the lights and everything went off, the storm had passed. Now, with Hurricane Katrina, it wasn't the storm itself that caused the flooded. That's why we were so lost. Because the storm came, the wind came through, the rain came through, the power went out, and then
it passed and the sun was shining outside. Well, all of a sudden, now we're seeing water just coming up and up and up and up and up and up, and we're looking out the wind and we're like, man, where's all this fucking water coming from? You know, it just keeps pouring, raising up and up closer to where we are, until eventually it's to the second floor where we're at. Well, at the time, the building where I was at, we were right next to the coroner's office.
We didn't process this at the time because you know, you're just not thinking about what it could potentially be. We look outside the winter and it's dead bodies floating right right around the window right where we are, right next to us. There was at least seven dead bodies that were floating around out there. So we're like, man, this fucking water's coming up. There's no guards, no help, no food, no water, and we got dead blodies floating around in the window next to us. But there came
from the corner's office. Because the corner's office, which was on the first floor, was completely submerged in water and floated up. We didn't realize that until after everything was over. We just in panicked. Now everybody's panicking there's fucking water's coming up, there's nobody here with us. We're locked inside
of here, literally can't get out. There's dead bodies floating around the fucking window next to us, and we don't even know if anybody even knows we're here more or les's gonna come rescue us and get us out of here.
What happened to the people on the first floor?
They had got moved. Oh, that was the one thing I give them credit that they were smart enough to do, is they moved the people off of the first floor. There's a lot of rumors about some people were left down there and stuff like that. I'll never know the truth on that, because some of the guys who were on the first floor edded up on the second floor with me where I was at, and they just moved
them and kind of separated them on different tears. Like I said, they to the guys who were off the fourth floor and put them down lower so that they can go station themselves on the fourth floor and be at the highest point.
So there were actually cards there with there, they just weren't coming us. Because so if I'm I'm going to just make an assumption that they probably lived in houses that they couldn't stay in because you can't. New Orleans is under sea level and we all know, we've all seen the pictures of what happened. So had they stayed home.
They probably would have been flooded out.
They were using this as a shelter, exactly the building. I'm sure the building is built pretty well.
That building is not going and it.
Was no matter what storm comes.
So they had their family members of You could see their family members were up there with them, like you saw kids. You saw women who weren't offices and stuff like that were all staying up there on the force.
An emergency shelters. So how long were you stuck in this situation? On Friday is when everybody left.
Sunday they left the Sunday left us down on Sunday. Wednesday evening is when we finally were taken out of there.
And so what did you drink?
You didn't drink anything. You didn't have anything to drink.
You certainly couldn't drink the water you had the sewage in it, right, you had dead bodies floating around.
So we were all severely dehydrated.
I mean, and water was up to what was it up to your ankles.
It was about it our ankles. It was about it our ankles on the second floor. When it finally stopped, it was almost a sigh of relief because we didn't know if it was just gonna keep coming up, would just drowned. Yeah, because we couldn't go anywhere, and we tried. I mean, we ripped down the air conditioning ventilation, there were bars in the wall, we ripped the toilets out of the ground, there were bars in the floor. We tried to chip through the shop. I mean, that place
is a real fortress. Like you're not getting out of there unless you're going through the guards with keys.
So seventy two hours of sheer, terror, uncertainty, hunger, thirst.
Absolutely. You had guys started fighting. They had two guys had a knife fight, just because everybody was so stressed out and so on high red alert. Every little thing was taking them off. I actually had taken a sheet and rolled on it with a ma because we can hear the helicopters flying around and see the helicopters flying around outside, and like I said, we didn't even know
if anybody knew we were in there. So I had taken a sheet and rolle on that you know, people in here need help, and tried to hang it outside the balls because you know, we had broken the glass and tried to hang it out there, and the officers started shooting at us because we were sticking our hands out the balls trying to put a flag out there. They started taking potshots.
At Okay, so there's another thing.
Yeah, So that that was the end of us trying to send a flag. So now the idea is start another fire, because now we got the winners over. So now you've got guys who are gonna lit another fire and throwing flames like lit a mattress on fire and sticking it, hanging it out the balls to try and get the attention of the helicopters going around trying to just get anybody to come help us.
It's taking me a minute to price says this. Okay, So now I'm sure everybody else that's listening and scratching their head like I am and going what Yeah, So you didn't drown? No, thank that it was a miracle and you you survived this ordeal and ultimately you end up getting convicted of second degree murder, yes, sir, and sense to life in prison. And you were twenty years old at the time.
I was twenty when I was convicted. I was eighteen when I was arrested.
Right, and you get sent to Angola, Yes, I mean it's hard to say what the worst prison is in America, but I think a lot of people who are knowledgeable in this field would say that's that strong consideration.
Yeah, it's won't be.
Angola is a plantation in the middle of nowhere in Louisiana which is named Angola because it originally was a slave plantation and the slaves that worked the fields there were from Angola, And so it certainly at the time you were there, and I would say probably true to this day. It still operates basically like a slave plantation.
Exactly like a slave plantation.
You know, it's so far removed from sight, and people go there to die.
Yeah, it's its own world.
Most of the people, I think I read some of the eighty five percent of people that go there die there.
Yeah.
So I mean you got all kinds of people we were talking about before. They've been there. Since the seventies eighties.
You have about three average, two and a half to three people a month die.
It ain't golden, right, and I was told that during one particular flood, the Army Corps of Engineers came down there and wanted to build some dams or whatever, do some dig up some stuff, and they wouldn't let them in because they had to move some of the bodies that they had buried first, because they didn't want to, you know, because those people didn't necessarily die of natural causes. So here you are, in one of the worst places on earth, and with basically no hope of ever going home.
One thing I can say, though, is that's one thing I can't say. I never gave up my hope. I never gave up my hope. I think when I was convicted and the jury walked past me. When I was convicted, literally, and this is in my minutes, this is in my transcripts. I told my judge, Judge Camille Burris, I told her I'd rather have a death penalty then spend the rest of my life it ain't golden. And I even made a statement, I said, Yana, all due respect, that was
exactly what I told her. I'd rather had a death penndy, I said, I'd rather y'all kill me. They sent me up there to wait another fifty sixty years to die. She just put her head down and kind of, you know, motion to the bailiff to get me out of the court room. And they took me out of that because I was just like, man, there's no way. And after that, probably that first night, I was down on myself, and then after that I was like, man, I gotta get
out of here. This is crazy, this isn't fair, but this is my life, and I got to figure out a way to get out of here.
You know, it's interesting you sit there and you say, well, I had hope, but I'm getting the chill was thinking about it. But I think most people would lose hope absolutely. I mean, it's nobody's vouching for you at this point. Yeah, you're on your own.
I'm on my own, man. It's it's total mental gymnastics, because you want to have hope and you want to believe that the right thing is going to happen and that these people are going to realize that they made a mistake and they're gonna realize that you're innocent. But every day you're waking up next to guys who've been in prison since before my mother was born, before your mother was before my mother was born. You know, you got guys that's been up there forty to fifty sumi years.
Right, and some of them not guilty in the first place, and some of them, like you said, for minor crimes. I mean in Louisiana. Some of the things, some of the stories that you hear really just twist your mind around.
Yeah, the justice system here is just I don't even know how to describe it. It's it's very inhuman. It's it's all about winning and locking people up. It's not about actual justice. It's not about finding out the truth. There's more of a pursuit of so that people can say, look, I punished this guy. I punished this guy. You know, we found it, we solved it, and there's no in my opinion, real thought to you know, it's like they
do that. They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home in eat spaghetti like it was nothing, you know, and not think about it. Man, maybe I really sent the wrong person to prison for the rest of their life.
But then this is another very interesting thing about your case, cause you ended up in a scenario where you found a way, you found a crack, right, and talk about that and how you ended up being here. You're sentenced to life in prison. You're not supposed to be here right now.
No, absolutely, I'm not. After I was convicted, I think i've really I filed my attorney who I had. I had another attorney who was working on my appeal. The first thing that her and I spoke about, I told her, I said, listen, I know you probably don't believe I'm innocent. I don't think my last lawyer believed I was innocent. I said, but if you listen to what I'm going to tell you, and you help me investigate this like it should have been investigated, I'll prove to you that
I am. And so she said, listen, it's not my job to figure out if you're innocent or not. It's my job to get you out. I said, all right, that might not be your job, but it's important to
me that you know that I am. So I started talking to people and doing my own kind of investigating and being I guess you could call my own kind of jailhouse lawyer and investigator, just finding out everything I could find out about it, because there were just certain things that didn't make sense about what the police officer said, with my case. For one, he said that he was
there to meet up with a confidential informant. My first thought is, why would you go there to meet up with a confidential informant Because everything that you know about me with a confidential informant is that you want to keep it confidential. You don't want people around to know.
So if you're meeting with a confidential informant in an area where there's big time heroin being sealed and there's all kinds of people outside, if you're a copy and gonna pull up and pick this guy up and go sit down and have a talk, why would you go there. Why wouldn't you meet him anywhere else in the city that you could meet him at. Why would you go right to the dope set and meet up with an informant and sit down and talk. That just doesn't make sense.
So then I told my turn, I said, we need to find out who that informant was, because that's a potential witness. So we filed it was called the subpoena induceers tech them get the police officer's confidence and informancist. As soon as we filed that, they went crazy. They did not want to turn that over. They did not want to hand it over. I said, listen, I don't even need to see it. I don't want to see it for any reason. Just show it to my lawyer.
Because this is a potential witness. This is someone who they must have been out there. Why aren't they named in this as a witness. If this cop was sitting out here and say he saw all so all this stuff go on, why isn't the informant who he was sitting out there with a witness. Also, if this cop, we've poked holes in his story so many times, and it's so many things about his story, it don't make sense.
He described me as a black male. The way they made the scene was I was there when the murder happened, almost like I sent the guys to do it. I was out there to make sure it went right and all this type of stuff. Because the guy was shot with two different guns. I didn't have any gunpowder of residues on me. There was only two guns that were found, because that's, you know, all it was. But then there was another thing that came up that I saw in
my police report. Because this was a shootout, I didn't see it with my own two eyes. But from what I've been told by my code defendant from other guys, it was a shootout. You heard it, Yeah, you could hear all the shots going on this guy had. He was shot with a forty five caliber gun and a thirty eight. All around his body exactly where he's laying, there are nine millimeter casings all around his body. He
wasn't shot with a nine milimeter. He had a nine milimeter that he was shooting at my codefendants with and they were shooting at each other, and then someone else came and was shooting at them with the assault rifle who was one of his friends. This cop claims that this guy never had a gun. It wasn't a shootout, it was a hit. It was an execution, a broad day murder, all this type of stuff that they try and make, you know, try to tie it in the beat.
But where did these shellcasings come from? Literally, if I'm standing here shooting the shellcass, that's where they fall around where I'm shooting from. There's shellcass all around where he's at, But it's not from a gun that he was shot with. It just didn't make sense. So now we started investigating the where the gun could have possibly been. But this happened in the middle of the projects where there's a bunch of people outside, and so of course nobody wants
to come to court and be the witness. But if there's a gun laying on the ground, somebody's gonna pick it up. I'm not just gonna leave it out there. So this is just some of the things that didn't make sense about my case that I think when the attorney that high started looking into it, she started saying, Okay, maybe there's something here, maybe this guy really is innocent. Then he comes to my co defendant. He and I had the severance, which means we got separate trials. He
went to trial, he was convicted. I went to trial. I was convicted, but it was a separate times. When he found out I had been convicted, he sent a letter to my mother, who turned it over to my attorney and told her that, you know, listen, I just don't feel right with this. Dang. He didn't have anything to do with this. He wasn't even there when it happened. He didn't even know me and this guy with beef, and he had no idea any of this could have went on. He's literally just was in the wrong place
at the wrong time. I can't live with imagining him doing the rest of his life in prison and knowing that he didn't even have anything to do with this. So my attorney presents it to the judge they called my co defendant, and he gets on the stand, testifies, tells him exactly what I just said, that I didn't have anything to do with it. It was him and the other guy that got into a shootout with the guy.
I didn't know that they were even beefing with this guy more or less because I had just literally I was with another friend and he walked up to me and then just like, oh, you're going that way, let me get a ride. I'm not thinking anything of it. I always you know, I've been giving everybody a ride. You know. I just bought my first call. So he testifies to that judge orders me a new trial. She vacates my conviction, orders me a new trial because she
presided over my case. You know, And this is a judge, and Camille burrys, you can do the research. She doesn't overturn convictions. If a jerry finds you guilty, you got to take that up with the appellate court. She is not big on granted post conviction relief. She's very conservative. I have nothing negative to say about her, but she's a very conservative judge, and she takes jury convictions very seriously. She vacates my com the district attorney at the time
appeals it to the appellate court. The appellate court overturns her and reinstates my conviction. So now I went from life sentence, no life sentence, life sentence again. So you want to talk about mental gymnastics and trying to keep your mind right, you know, trying to stay focused. I'm literally being twisted and pulled upside down. I got my hopes up. Now my conviction's been overturned. It looks like I'm going home. He came in there and told him it was him. It wasn't me. I got to be
about to go home now, right, Yeah. No, No, they overturned it. They say I should have got him to testify before I went to trial or at my trial. I didn't practice due diligence, so therefore it doesn't count.
Right. That's sort of like how there used to be these laws. Like in Virginia, there was a twenty one day rule, you know by that, whichpecially meant that after twenty two days, if the dead guy walked in the courtroom and was like, hey, wait a minute, you guys made a mistake. I'm still alive, didn't matter because you're
too late. So that's basically what they were saying. They wanted you to be basically Clarence Darrow, you know, and Colombo mixed up in one and produce a witness before the trial when he was still hoping that he was going to exact it.
I mean, who can he's hoping that he's going to get out too. How How am I going to know that he's going to testify and get up there and tell them I didn't have anything to do with it. I mean, what what what co defendant? That doesn't happen very often. It was me, it wasn't him. Yeah, especially when it's the rest of his life in prison exact that he's facing for saying that exactly.
I mean, friends are friends. But that's that's a little much, right, So on a technicality, they said to you, we don't really give a fuck.
Yeah, go spend the rest of your life in prison anyway.
And next time this happens to you, make sure you get to us a little bit earlier. Yeah, basically, right, So now you got that, So then what happens so because you're here?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I appealed it to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court deniy me, so my conviction is reinstated. So this is the craziest story I'm about to tell you, Jason. And I don't know if you're a spiritual person. I don't know if anybody listening is spiritual person. But this is, honest to God, exactly what happened. And the tattoo on my right arm right here that you're looking at Code of Criminal Procedure Article eight fifty one point five with
the angel wings, that's my angel. That was my sent from God right there. I'm in prison. I'm in the whole for a knife fight. I had a fight with a guy. He pulled a knife out on man stab me. So I'm in the hole in a cell by myself. Get the letter from the Supreme Court saying that basically you're fucked. We've reviewed it. We felt that the appellate Court made the right decision. You didn't practice due diligence. Your convictions reinstated. You got to go spend the rest
of your life in prison. That's basically what they told me upon getting that letter. I'm in the whole. I have nothing. I have no books, i have no none of my legal work with me. I'm just in there, basically with myself and in a cell. And I got down on my knees and I started praying, and I said, God, I don't know what you're trying to get out of me. I don't know if you're real, I don't know if
you're listening to me. I don't know anything. All I know is I don't know how much longer I can make it like this because I did everything I could do. You know, my heart, you know I didn't do this. You knew I didn't have anything to do with this. I need some help, please. As I'm on my knees praying that I had read this auto called the law before. Just you know, when you're in jail, that's one of the things you do, especially when you're trying to work on your case. You read all kinds of stuff in
the law and stuff like that. But I didn't have a law book in front of me. But for some reason, this just just kept replaying in my mind over and over again. And I'm not trying to sound like because I'm not some super holy religious person anything like that. I believe in God. I believe in spiritual life and stuff, but man, I'm, you know, far from a preacher anything like that. But I'm telling you, I believe in my whole heart that was God speaking to me in my
head about this allticulored law right here. So I go to court for my hearing to put everything on the record to state, you know, basically on the record with the Supreme Court had said, and they're ruling and they're going to reinstate my conviction and send me back to Angola for the rest of my life. As I go in there, my attorney I bring it up to her. I said, you know, are you familiar with Cote of Criminal Procedure Article eight fifty one five And she's like, no,
not really. And this is a woman who's been an attorney for over twenty five years. At the time, she was not only an assistant district attorney who prosecuted people. Then she went and she was an attorney, a defense attorney, worked all kind of federal cases. Lourd White's she's now chief judge of criminal court. She knows as shit. She knows the law right, She wasn't familiar with it. She said, tell me what it says.
And your education at this point was what eighth grade. I had a ged okay, okay, bring it to that.
Yeah. I bring it to her, and she's like, well, I mean all she could do is say, I mean what, they're going to give your life anyway, there's nothing else they can do. We might as well try it. So I said, yeah, just go up to her and talk to her and see what she'll do. So she has to tell the assistant district attorney that she's going to go to the judge and ask for continuing so that she can file a formal motion based upon this order called the law. The prosecutor at the turns and looks
at me when she says it. She turned it and looked at me in my face and started laughing in my face, basically trying to make me feel like, you idiot, What do you know about the law? You know, because I guess she had told you, my client wants me to raise this issue. What whatever. She goes up there, talks to the judge to judge says, you know what, I want to hear more about that that sounds intriguing. Grants me a continuance. We filed emotion. The state opposers at YadA, YadA, YadA.
We go back, we rule, she grants me another neutrial. A judge who I can't name, one other person she's granted a new trial for grants me a second neutrial, this time based upon this order called a law right here. So now, as bad as I want to get my hopes up, like okay, this might really be it, I'm thinking, you know what, I went through this before and the appellate court shot me down and they reinstated it. Let
me see how this is going to play out. Goes back in front the same Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. What happens. They uphold it, They say, yes, you have to give them a new trial. They appeal it to the same Supreme Court that upheld it before and that I had to go do life. The Supreme Court comes back and says, we uphold it, you have to grant them a new trial. So they finally grant me a new trial. So I get a new trial, and I'm thinking, all right, this is it. You know, I got a
new trial. My co defendant confessed, said I didn't have anything to do with it. They gotta be about to let me go home now, right. This is two thousand and eight.
By the way, people that listened to the show, No, I've never he this quiet for this long. But I'm just sitting here like my eyes blazed over, like the yeah story is this?
Yeah yeah yeah, so and you can read about this. This is fact. This is on my docketmaster. You can read about this. So they changed the prosecutors on my case because that's what they do every so often. So I get two new prosecutors on my case, one of whom as I'm in one of my hearings, because they saying they're gonna take me to trial again. This is after my appeal has been granted. I get a new trial. They still won't just drop it. They saying they have
you know, they might bring me to trial. They deciding what they're going to do. So I'm sitting in prison all this time waiting. She goes to my mother and tells my mother, ma'am, I know you've been through a lot with this. We're gonna drop it. The worst thing might happen is we're gonna give him credit for time serve and he plead to all lesser charge and will let him out. Tells that to my mother, the district attorney, not my lawyer or not someone who works for the state.
The lady who's prosecuting me, goes and tells that to my mother. This is in September two thousand and eight, when I'm about to go to court. So I'm like, this is it. You know, I'm gone. I'm about to get out the day before I'm about to go to court for that. I'm on my tier in my cell right at the time, I was called a tear rep in a prison, which is basically I'm in charge of, you know, stuff on a tier, making sure everything goes right. They had two officers that came down there. They had
a guy that yelled something out the gate. And I had been talking to one of the officers because he used to work in my court section, and He's asking me what's going on my case, and so I'm telling him like, yeah, man, I'm about to get out. I go to court tomorrow. They saying they're gonna drop and give me credit for time serve. I'm about to go home. Well, the other officer hears him saying that. He comes over there and calls me to come back there. Ask me who was the guy who just yells I, man, I
don't know. You know, you don't tell on people. You know, that's that's just a rule. It's just you know, you're not supposed to tell on another man. So he takes me out. They bring me in a closet and lock me in there, beat the dog shit out of me. Says I know you're supposed to go home tomorrow. I want you to hit me back so I can rebook you. I'm gonna make sure you're never go home. In my mind, I'm feeling like this is my test. I'm like, you know what I said, I don't even want to hit
you. You're not even worth it. I said, you don't even hit hard enough to make me hit you. All I want is my freedom. I don't care what you do to me. I'm going home tomorrow. Beat the dog shit out of me. It's in my medical you know, they send me to medical or whatever. I didn't have any right up. I didn't even do anything wrong. They just did it because they thought I was about to get out, and they were trying to get me to get another charge.
I go to court the next day. They changed prosecutors again, and this time the one that comes on my case says, no deals, We're taking them to trial again. So now I got my hopes up again. This is September two thousand and eight, and now I'm just like but I'm like, I can't give up because I feel like, I know this conviction didn't get overturned for nothing. So in my mind, I'm like, all right, well we're gonna go to trialing and I'm gonna call my code defendant and understand this
time he's gonna come testifying front the jury. And they got this same police officer who's saying he's gonna, you know, he's gonna testify and say what he saw. So I'm getting ready preparations to go to trial again. I was supposed to go to trial November of two thousand and eight. Two days before I'm supposed to go to trial, I have a meet with my attorney. She's literally in tears begging me to take a plea Barkin, and I'm telling him, you know, man, I just I just I don't want
to give up. You know, I feel like we fought all this, you know, we got it going. I'm innocent. She's like, I know you're an innocent thing. She's like, but I'm telling you right now it's your word and your friend's word against a cop, and I don't believe that they're gonna believe y'all. She's like, listen, I've been doing this a long time. She's like, I'm just telling you. It's a gut instinct. I have them. She's like, if you go to trial again, I think you're gonna get
convicted again. She's like, you need to take this plea. Please take this plea. So I thought about it. I thought he about it. I fought with it. I said, all right, I take the plea. The plea bargain they offered me was I plead guilty to manslaughter. Right. They put a cap on it at fifteen years, and leave it up to my judge to sentence me to say, you know what she's gonna sentence me to. They're gonna do a pre sentenced investigation, you know, look into my background,
looking to my housing, you know, talk to me. The probation people, come talk to me all this and leave it up to the judge who's giving me two new trials on what she's gonna give me. So I'm thinking, okay, you know I should be all right, I should at least get out on this right go to court. When I go to court from my sentence and they have a man in there who they're saying, is that the guy who was killed? They're saying it was his father.
I'm gonna tell you about this. This is crazy. I still to this day don't believe this was this guy's dad.
Actor.
Yeah, they don't have the same name. I don't even believe he could tell you what the guy looks like. They put him on the stand. He gets up there and says, I've had two heart attacks and a stroke since my un died. The family can't get over it. We're so hurt, heartbroken. He needs to be in prison for the rest of his life. Why are y'all considering letting him out?
He didn't say, we really miss a convicted murdering major heroin dealing.
Yeah, so check this out.
He say that he made it sound like it was a choir boy exactly.
So my attorney says, well, sir, all due respect to you and your family. All due respect to what y'all lost. Your son was convicted of manslaughter. Also, he served six years. You felt like that was an adequate sentence for him. Why are you so opposed to this man getting the same amount of time for the time that your son did for the same crime. My son's never been in jail before in his life. Everybody looks, even the DA looks like they're like, oh shit, we're busted. My son's
never been in jail before. I don't know what y'all talking about. You don't know your son was in prison for six years. You don't know your son was arrested for murder. Do you know who they even talking about right now? Who the fuck are you, dude? What are you even doing here? So the judge gets mad, She says, you know what, We're not going to go through this line of question. You're badgering this witness. They stayed objects to it. They say, you don't have to answer that, sir,
and he's adamant. My son was never in jail. My son was never in jail. It was some crackhead looking dude off the street. I don't know if they told him that I killed his son and it was somebody else. I don't know if he was just an actor. I don't know what the story was, but this didn't make any fucking sense. Wow, he gets off the stand. The
judge's mad. She gives me fifteen years. So now, even the parole officer who came and talked to me, who did the pre sense investigation, told me his recommendation was no more than ten years, but he didn't feel like it was necessary to keep me in any longer. He wouldn't have a problem with me getting credit for Tom sertin getting out. Not only did she disregard that, Now I gotta go through another seven years in prison before I can get.
Out this story, ladies and gentlemen, his I don't even know what to say.
I don't have the right words. You know.
One of the reasons that I really wanted to have you on the show is that we are in the midst of a lot of different crises in the criminal justice system in America right now, but one of them is something called the guilty plea problem. And people don't realize that ninety five percent of the felony convictions in the United States are obtained through guilty. Police on a much more mundane level on much lesser crimes than dealing
with lesser sentences. Every day, all day in all these courts in the country, tens of thousands of people every day are faced with the same problem that you had, which is their attorney. And here in New Orleans we know that last year there were fifty two public defenders who dealt with twenty thousand cases. Do the math. So a lot of those public defenders who are underpaid, overworked,
that's madness, that's anarchy. So these people who are doing something that I could only say is noble, are out there every day, happened to meet with their clients, sometimes for the first time on the day of their trial and say to them, to the next Daniel, listen, the best thing for you to do is plea guilty. And that person, that kid is going but them innocent. They're going, I know, but they're going to throw the book at you. And so we are filling the prisons in jails with
people who are innocent. Because of the fact that our public defender system is broken, as well as the rest of the system, the scales of justice are so tilted in the favor of the prosecution. You were playing. Actually the highest stakes game of poker than anybody ever played, other than the death sentence, because you had to either put all your cars on the table and literally bet your life, literally bet your life, and you would be betting against a dealer that you know cheats.
Yeah.
Absolutely, you know they're hiding cards and there's nothing I can do about them cheating.
And this was your last year.
Yeah, and that's what the attorneys tell you. They told it to me, and I've heard I hear them say it all the time because I work at criminal court. Now it's like, do you want to take a chance with the rest of your life? Yeah, you may be innocent, you might not have done this crime, but look at what you're facing. If this jury doesn't happen to believe you, if they win, this is what you're gonna have. So do you want to take that chance and think you're
gonna win? Or do you want to take this lesser of two evils and at least know that you're getting out one day or know what your fate.
Is gonna be because the work you're doing now it's fantastic. Tell us about that.
All right, Well, it's kind of twofold. I work for a criminal court now actually ironically the same criminal court where I was convicted of second agree murder, which in Louisiana is a mandatory life sentence, mandatory life, mandatory life.
And that's my first degree murder.
No, no, no, sir, that's second degree, second degree. I am now the one of the cases managers for a re entry program, which is a program that was instituted by Judge Lurid White. It's an alternative to long term incarceration for drug offenders and people who you know, have been convicted maybe a few times for selling drugs, burglary, stuff like that. As of now, the program has no quote
unquote violent offenders in it. These guys in Louisiana. There are men right now in Louisiana State Penitentiary who've been there since the seventies and the eighties.
For heroin drugs, just drugs, no violence.
No violence, none whatsoever. And most of them is very small amounts of drugs, less than a gram, less than an ounce.
I really admire the work that you're doing, thank you. And it's really typical of the exenrees that have been on the show and the group of exguneries' ex Hoonnery Nation at large that you are devoting yourself to helping other people. Yes, sir, it's so interesting that the group of people that you could say are the most wronged by society of anyone are the ones who are contributing almost more to society as a group than any other group.
I appreciate that.
And now you have to wear that scarlet letter. You're not technically an exonery even though you're innocent. And in eighty four percent of the DNA exoneration plea cases, the alternate perpetrator was identified. So you had somebody who pleaded guilty and was proven innocent, and the altual perpetrator was later identified. So there's in case there was ever any doubt about the depth of the problem, the series is
the problem, and about the fact that it happens. There you go and in your case, it's actually that's sort of a similar case too, even though it's not a DNA case. But the actual perpetrator was right there going, hey, look at me, I'm the guy. I mean, that would seem to be pretty strong evidence for any court to look at. But you know, look, the fact is you're here, You somehow or other survived. Let's just let's just look back at this for a second. Of what we've discussed
over the last hour. You survived a shootout, a corrupt system that wanted to put you away for the rest of your life for something that they knew they you didn't do, a hurricane, a flood, almost being roasted to death, almost dying of smoke inhalation, being shot at, being stabbed, being beaten. Did we mention almost dying of thirst? I
think we left that one out. Then you survived the worst prison in the worst criminal justice system in the western world, and another series of trials that were rigged against you with an eighth grade education, just to sum up one more time, and then from somewhere in the depths of your consciousness or subconscious you pulled an obscure legal doctrine right statute that I've never heard of that I would bet if we went to Stanford Law School
right now and whipped that out, they'd be like, everybody be scrambling for their textbooks, Like, what the that you managed to get yourself free? What the hell can I say? You have all my respect, and I think it's incredible that you're here sharing the story, and I think there's a lot more that we have to do together. Because there's a lot of messages here. It's gonna take me
a while to process this. All I can do now is ask you, is there any final thought that you would like to share with the audience before we sign on?
I guess you know. My biggest thing that I tell people ever did is you never know what you can deal with until you don't have a choice, no matter what's going on in your life. You know, whether you're listening to this and you're dealing with cancer, you're dealing with incarceration, are you dealing with the loss of someone that you're dealing with, you know, a loss of a job, or there just anything in your life. It seems like it's insurmountable. If you still have breath in your body,
you can still fighting and you can still win. Don't give up on.
Yourself, 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 Innocis and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocentsproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one