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 have two very special guests. Jerome Morgan, who was exonerated after serving twenty years in prison in Louisiana in the worst possible conditions.
Morgan was seventeen when he was convicted of the murder of a sixteen year old at a party and was sent away to Angola for life. He proclaimed his innocence, but it wasn't until new evidence was discovered in prosecutors' files that Morgan's conviction was overturned, helped by two eyewitnesses who recanted, saying their statements more than twenty years earlier had been coerced by police.
Kevin Johnson and Hakeem Shabaz were teenagers when they said they were coerced into naving Jerome Morgan as a shooter in the murder murder of the sweet sixteen party back in nineteen ninety three.
The DA's office finally dropped the charge last May. It was a triumphant moment for Morgan and his attorneys at Innocence Project New Orleans. A teenager who went to prison walked out as a thirty seven year old man.
And one of his attorneys is here as well. From the Innocence Project of New Orleans also known as IPNO. Kristin Winstrom is here. Jerome and Kristin, welcome to ronful conviction.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Let's go back to May twenty second, nineteen ninety three and even a little further back than that.
You grew up in New Orleans, Yes, sir, Yes, I grew up in the neighborhood called Putch Train Park here in New Orleans. It was a neighborhood that was built for and by Black's in nineteen fifty five, right after Brown versus Board of Educations with the Separate but Equal law that was written into the constitution, and so they had lent the history of ownership.
And so, you know, I grew up in a culture of being.
Able to teach it yourself and being able to take care of people, you know that needs your help in the community.
And did they have a big family.
No.
I grew up in foster care from the age of three until my own full arrest. My mom she didn't receive a former education, so her reasons were because she wanted us to have an education, she placed us in falster care. And that's how I end up in the punch Trained Park neighborhood with a foster family by the name of the Johnson's.
And on May twenty second, nineteen ninety three, you were barely seventeen years old. It just turned seventeen, Yes, sir, so are you're still a child.
Yes, yeah, as a young young male and you know, going through the phases of puberty. Of course, naturally, you know, as a young person you struggle with your identity, you know, this this stage of puberty and just trying to find your identity.
You ended up going to a party in a hotel ballroom. It was a sweet sixteen party, yes, sir, and so it sounds like, you know, recipe for a good night and then things went crazy.
Yeah, well this the backup a little bit.
I was put out from the foster home in Punchry Train Park a day after my sixteenth birthday for being suspected of selling drugs in the neighborhood.
In nineteen nine three.
My best friend was murdered, but before then, his mom called him in nineteen ninety two with some crack rock in his room, and so she called all of our parents, you know, his friends, because you know, it was a group of us.
It was friends that hang out every day.
And so she called my foster parents and then in turn put me out, and so I didn't see my friends because I went to stay in another area in New Orleans in the eight war with my aunt who had a one bedroom apartment on Franklin Avenue and she stayed there with her daughter, who was a year younger than me. And so my friend Romeo Johnson asked me to come to the party because we hadn't been hanging out and they wanted to, you know, spend some time,
and so I agreed. We met up at another friend's house and walked to the party, and so we got there. I was very familiar with a lot of people there because my freshman year was spent at McDonald thirty five and that's where the young lady whose birthday was.
That's where she attended.
And by this time all it was, all of us was juniors at the time, are just finishing our junior year in school, and so all I needed was to and I have credits to graduate, so you know, it was pretty much a friendly party until two group of guys started to you know, push and shove each other while dancing on the dance floor, and so that escalated. But one group of guys left out to I guess, avoid anything that may transpire from that pushing and shoving,
but then decided to come back in. And the moment they decided to come back in, the other group of guys that they was, you know, getting into the skirmish with you know, approached them and then they started to fight. And once the fight started, it was like a bro many people fighting and then shots he erupted. And once shots he erupted it. I was standing there next to the speakers by the DJ table because I enjoy music.
But once I heard the shots, my immediate reaction was.
To jump behind the DJ table and hide under the DJ table so that I won't get shot. A few of my friends in my peripheral I could see them running in some of the same directions and then running into another room.
How many people were at the party.
Well, by record, over eighty because everybody had to enlist their names before leaving. But that don't account for the people that may have left as they were running from the gun shots.
But at least eighty people, it was a pretty big party. Yes, yes, yeah, it sounds like a recipe for disaster. I mean, gunshots in a crowded place like that, anything could happen. You could have been shot, so you're hiding under the table.
Right and the shots ceased. You hear a lot of screaming, yelling. I heard, in particular, somebody shot in the area where I thought i'd see my friend run too, So immediately my attention went to there. I left it, went and went into that room and found a person that we was acquainted with was shot in the leg and my friends were trying to help him. So immediately took off my shirt because I see two wounds, entry wound and
exit wound. I don't know where I learned it from, but I took off my shirt to tie around his leg under the wound to stop the bleeding. But my shirt didn't fit because he was a kind of bulky guy. So my friend Romel Johnson snatched the table caught off of the refreshment table to tie around his leg, and so once we tied that around his leg, we sat there and to the ambulams came.
And then the police were called quickly. Yes, yes, I'm sure probably a lot of different people, probably called nine one one, and they showed up within minutes, right.
Yeah, Well, but at the time I had no knowledge of it. Like I said, I was in this adjacent room waiting with this victim.
Into the ambulance came.
So my personal knowledge of the police being there came about when we came out of the room with this victim and just that'll go with the paramedics so they can get him to the hospital.
But once I came out of there, it was like table set up.
It was ununiformed police there and uniform police there.
So I'm sure everybody listening is going, okay, well, so what's the story here? I mean, why would anybody possibly there's over eighty people, because, like you said, not including the people who left, they counted eighty people there, and obviously a lot of people probably ran right out the door. The people who are closest to the door, it's a safe bet they went to the street and got the hell out of there. I want to ask Christen this too, Like again, it sounds like you're going home and it's
a very unfortunate incident. You actually acted in a very kind of heroic way for somebody who's not trained as a doctor or anything else. Maybe you saw it on TV or whatever, but you did what a concerned and honorable citizen would do, which has come to the aid of somebody who's been shot and bleeding, and you did what you could do in the circumstance, and then stayed there till the ambulance came. That's more than ninety percent
of people would have done or did do right. So it sounds like that's where this story ends, but it's not so. Kristin, What can you tell us, like, how did he possibly become a suspect under this scenario? I mean, I know it's Louisiana, and I know it's New Orleans and crazy shit happens here every day all day and twice on Sunday.
But tell us what happened?
Well, to clarify a little bit. Once the shots are fired, not only was Jerome's friend shot in the leg, but there was another individual who shot in the abdomen. He ultimately survived that shooting. And one boy, Clarence Landry, was shot and killed and he died there on the scene.
And so that's how this became murder charge. But the reason that when our office looked at Jerome's case and we were committed to representing him, even though we didn't initially know how we're going to do it, is because, by everyone's account, the gunman shot those bullets and then ran out of the room.
It was a single gunman, yes, single gunman, a lot of shots though.
Let me think I believe there were eight shots. Seven or eight shots.
That's a lot in a crowded room.
But yeah, and so by all accounts, that gunman ran out of the room, as you would expect somebody who shoots a gun into a crowd, But he left the building. He left the building. And when the detectives arrived a bit later after the initial police arrived, and they took down the names, phone numbers, addresses, school social security numbers of every kid who was still in the room and kind of had them line up and asked them their information. I think basically was asked him, do you know anything?
Everyone in the room gave them their basic information and said I don't know who it was. I couldn't see it. They were then free to leave. And so there was in the police report a list of I believe eighty four names and Jerome's name, date of birth, address, social security number is listed there By all accounts he was in the room after the shooting. So the gunman fled, Jerome Morgan is still in the room, and somehow he gets convicted of this murder. So that's why we are
always confident in his innocence. But I can tell you why he was.
Convicted let's talk about that, because it is an insane story of incompetence, malfeasance, misconduct, carelessness, and just sort of a don't give a fuck about the truth type of attitude. They were fishing in the wrong pond, right, They knew that the actual perpetrator left, So what did they do. They decided to pick somebody from a group of people who should have automatically been excluded, right, And they lied
in order to accomplish that goal. I mean, and they didn't lie a little, they lied a lot, right, Which is one of the things that makes this case an important case for people to know about because it wasn't a small lie. It was a big lie, and it was a series of them that led to Jerome almost having his entire life taken away from him, but certainly his more than half of his life was taken from him. And had you guys not gotten involved, he would have died in prison.
Yes, he had a sentence of life without parole. So that was a sentence in Louisiana. That's a sentence to die in prison.
So, Jerome, you were a boy, not a man. All of a sudden, you're a boy in a very grown up situation. So what happened and then what went through your mind?
Well, but you know I was there. You know, I was a witness.
I seen the fire from the gun, and I seen the guy and dead and you know other guy shot. Now, the guy that was breaking up the fight, I didn't see him because from the record, he ran out into the lobby. And that's how they initiated the call to the police, because as soon as he ran out, he ran into a lobby and a person in there saw that he was injured and bleeding and called the police. You know, just that experience. But being in New Orleans
is like it's no surprise at that time. You know, New Orleans had a heavy culture and kind of rowdy music, bonce music, hype music, and that's what started the humbug between the.
Two group of guys.
You know, Like I said, I was put out from the Foster Home, so I was staying with my aunt, and you know, we were poor. Usually when I was staying with in the Foster Home, you know, I was more well off because I had more community, more neighbor support. But I'm saying that because at this particular time, I had to go find some cheap clues to wear to the party something new, and at the time the trend was Warner brother T shirts, you know, Jean Sharks and
tennis shoes, maybe some socks or something. But I say that to say, this is what I bought all Knall Street that ned it went to the party, and this is what the group of guys that got into with the guy who would feelings shot and his friends wore that night, Warner brother T shirts and Jean Sharks tennis shoes.
So my thing is by a lot of people being aware of who I was and my friends because we'd be at a lot of teenage events, you know, school dances, parties, we used to go to skate country a lot, so a lot of people are familiar with our face and so they probably misassociated me with this other group, and the other guy that actually did it probably resemble me in their perspective. So that's how I was associated with
that group, by you know, these teenage rumors. But at the time, like I said, I needed to and I have credits to graduate high school, so I was trying to focus on that, especially since my mom initially put me in foster care to get an education, and so I was also working at when Dixie at a grocery store.
So I was trying to figure out my life.
As it would end as a teenager and as I would approaching being an adult.
But you know, I had a lot to figure out.
I was reading about your case in the National Registry of Exonerations. And here's where it gets really weird. Right, and I'm just going to read this right the way they wrote it. It says that in June nineteen ninety three, so this is the next month, shortly after the Clime police received a crime Stoppers tip that the gunman may have been you, Jerome Morgan. The detective assemble the photographic lineup that included the photograph of you, a seventeen year old,
and other people who had been at the party. This is where it gets weird. Two witnesses are shooting were shown the photo lineup containing your photo. One witness did not identify anyone in the lineup as the gunman, and the other, Kevin Johnson put it says, put Morgan's photo asides, I'm going to call you by your last name here and said quote he knew that guy from grade school and he was not the shooter. Now I'm getting the chills like I do on this show, and I'm going, Okay,
wait a minute, we're done. Let's keep looking, because now we know this guy's not the guy. Yeah, so that should have excluded you right off the bat. Now, there's another part of this that's extremely disturbing, which is the same kid, Kevin Johnson told police that he chased the gunman, which is a crazy thing to do in the first place.
He chased the.
Gunman outside the building and followed him until he leaped
over a fence and escaped. Right, so the police knew that the gunman ran, jumped over a fence, and escaped, and later on they managed to sort of twist this into a whole different narrative where they said that actually they didn't show up till half an hour after the shooting happened, which we know was not true at all, and that therefore you must have been the guy who ran away, jumped over the fence, and then came back to blend in with the crowd, because that would be
just the dumbest fucking thing anybody could possibly imagine to do. Knowing that the police must be on their way, you're going to go back and sort of as they would say, blend In, that's a little bit of a stretch, right, So Kristin, how did they get how did they get a con? I mean you would think that there's just not a reasonable person that would believe this story.
Yes, there was a gunman who ran out of the room and Jerome was undeniably in the room after the police arrived, and the best witness to who that gunman was explicitly excluded Jerome from the lineup, So it seems pretty clear that Jerome was not the person who did it. After Kevin Johnson excluded Jerome from the photo array, the police had no other leads. I don't know that they were doing much work. They relied at that point on rumors from high school kids. That's what the crime stoppers
tip was based on. These are all just high school kids spreading rumors. And there were rumors that they're of other people besides Jerome as well. But the rumor that got to the police was Jerome Morgan, and so they put that photo line up together, he was excluded, and then they had no more leads. And so then that was June second, when that photo array was shown, and
nothing happened in the investigation. I mean, you can look at the police reports and there's really nothing in the police reports between June second until August twenty second, three months after the crime. And based on the police reports and what the jury heard, supposedly spontaneously, the police just called Hakeem Shabaz, who was one of the kids who was shot that night. He was shot in the abdomen
and survived. He was not involved in the fight, but he was trying to break up the fight, and supposedly the police called him three months after the crime. This is the first time speaking with him, and he just said, Jerome Morgan shot me, and he came in and made a photo identification. So that's the account that the police had. That's what the jury heard.
Right now. What's troubling me a little bit about this is if you were the guy who got shot and you knew who did it, what the fuck would take you so long to come forward with that information. Did you know Shabaz?
Well, yeah, he was a familiar face because we attended McDonald thirty five as Freshmans together.
Right. What happened there, Kristen, the true.
Story of how Hakim came to name Jerome Morgan. So the truth is is that Hikim had no idea who shot him. He like everyone else in that room. It was a dimly lit ballroom, and when the shots are fired, there was a bright light that came from the gun. No one could see the face of the gunman. Hakim was in the middle of breaking up a fight. He was in no better position to identify the gunman than other people who were shown photo rays and couldn't make
an identification. So the truth is he didn't know. But in that three months he heard rumors about Jerome as well. He heard that name being thrown around. And what actually happened was the police called him and got him on the phone and they said, Hikim, do you know who shot you? And he said no, and they said Jerome shot you. So the detective is telling him Jerome shot him, and Haikim, hearing the same name that he's heard in rumors, thinks, okay,
I'll believe that. He agrees, okay, and he goes down to the police station and makes an identification and makes a form statement. So now we have one witness who explicitly says that Jerome Morgan was the gunman.
But that's not all.
No, So now at that point, the police arrest Jerome.
Adventures arrested me on my mom's birthday that year, nineteen ninety three, October seventh. I mean, I was arrested, but they didn't get any indictment because it was just one eyewitness. And remember Kevin Johnson that gave a negative photo idea of me, and so I sat seventy two a's in Orleans Parish prison.
I had to be released after.
That time because they didn't get an indictment, and so they all crossed it and I was released on December sixteenth, nineteen ninety three.
Okay, so now you're out right. So this has a lot of twists and turns, but they weren't done. They were going to stick. As we see sometimes and myopic would be a nice way to put it right. We see this that once once a lie gets started or a witch hunt or whatever you want to call it, they don't give up easy, and they don't like to be proven wrong. And they needed somebody right, they needed to solve this crime.
Well, at the time when I was released, I don't think they care that normal happens.
It was a black guy, young black guy that was killed, so nobody in the DA's office really cares about that sort of thing. It wasn't until the fatal victim's mom got into the newspaper and got into the news and made attention that nothing is getting done behind my son's murder, and so that would cause them to, I guess, try to make like they were doing something to appease this parent who was making them look bad in the media about this crime taking place and no one being held accountable.
So then it comes back around and you're eventually rearrested, yes, and brought in for trial, and I assume you were represented by a public defender.
Yes, yes, contract butblic of defender. But out that the current occurrence happened. The fatal victim's mom went to Kevin Johnson, and I guess picked him up and told him that you need to talk to the DA and somebody because the person that is being rumored to have killed my son has been released and we have to do something about it.
And Kevin Johnson, just to refresh everybody's memory, was the guy who originally had said that you weren't the guy he knew you from grade school, You were not the shooter. But now all of a sudden his memory is different.
Well, yeah, I mean he's feeling pressure from you know, his best friend, one of his best friend's parents and their family. You know they have he had eleven other siblings. Clarence Landry did Lass Landry was the kid who was killed. Yes, yes, and so and the other two friends antonio' bradley and Harrison Hogan.
They weren't able to make identifications.
But you know, it's a out of pressure on Kevin because and then he buried the guilt of going back into the ballroom after the initial skirmish and they left. They were supposed to returning to get a cousin of his from inside the party, but once they went back inside the party, that's when the fight happened and his best friend was murdered. So Ms Landry picked up Kevin Johnson from his job. They went to i think first
the homicide detective office. The homicide detective pointed him to the d's office so that he could make a statement. And so they say that he altered statement in a way because he's saying a homicide detective misunderstood what he was saying, that he was in shock when he seen a picture and he said oh, he can't be, like, you know.
Just right right, So he went from it can't be to oh, it can't be. At the trial, there were a number of people who testified on your behalf and said that you never left the room, but we know that the shooter did, so that would be pretty strong testimony. You testified as well, and yet you were convicted in a trial that lasted one day. There has to be and this is something that is and should be troubling to every person, every American, the idea that a trial
or the consequences are so profound. Literally it's a death sentence. I've spoken to some ex houneries who will say that they would have preferred to be sentenced to death than life without parole. Yes, because it's death either way.
It just takes longer.
You get to spend the rest of your life in hell and then die and.
Then over at a younger age and maybe a other people.
It's pretty shocking that the justice system could take such a casual approach to somebody's life, but that's what they do, and down here in Louisiana they do it all the time. Yes, So it's almost like a factory process. It's a machine that grinds up the people it's supposed to serve. It leaves the public in a situation of which the actual killer is out there a roam in the streets, dangerous
as ever. And also when you think about locking up a seventeen year old person, we're going to spend millions of dollars over the years. Now, it's good for business. We know that there's people making money on it, but the public is paying for it, yes, through the tax dollars and everything else. So the only people making money are the people who provide services for the prison, right the industries that are associated with the prison. In some cases,
the sheriffs themselves. And we have a particularly strange situation in this country in some states where sheriffs actually own jails.
You just talk about making money off of incarcerating people. Obviously there's all the services, but there's the make money off of that system. But there's also the individual men who are at Angola, which is a former slave plantation or a combination of multiple slave plantations, where you've got men working in fields and to be for money to make off of them. And we had at some point requested Jerome's disciplinary record at the prison. This was in
the nineties. He was disciplined for not picking cotton fast enough.
Okay, let's just reflect on that for a second. What century is this exactly? He was disciplined for not picking cotton fast enough. I mean the images that that conjures up of the worst, you know, the most shameful periods in American history are very real. I mean, it's it's and this is this is in the nineteen ninety yea today, Yeah.
I think it was ninety six ninety seven that occurred.
In the proper word, they say it was not enough speed and efficiency, and the infraction was a worker fans aggravated worker fings.
Why do I feel like Abe blink and is spinning in his grave right now? Okay, so that was your infraction among yes, yes, so Angola to paint a picture. It's still a slave plantation, right. It's named Angola because of the fact that it was a slave plantation and the slaves were brought from Angola, so they named it Angola. Didn't take a lot of imagination, and it is really a place that's removed from society and is basically free from any sort of oversight as far as I can tell.
And what goes on in Angola, stays in Angola. Right, I call it the silence scene of truth, the silencing of truth. What do they pay the the inmates at Angola.
For a sense, but you only get two cents?
Two centses automatically put into some savings for you to afford court documents or supposed to be educational things.
But usually what they do is save the two cents.
So when you get in debt for restitution or any other rule in fraction they write you up on they can take that money that you pay as a fine or debt to whatever in fraction they root you up on.
Two cents an hour. Yes, wow, I thought you know. I thought I knew that, but I just didn't want to say it because it sounds too crazy. And I didn't want to say something that was completely crazy because it sounds so crazy that it's crazy. But it's crazy, so okay. And we know that in Louisiana, for second degree murder, there's only one sentence, which is life without parole. Lwop.
Yep.
There you were, all of a sudden serving life in prison without par in what I think many people would say is the worst prison in America. One of the worst in the world. How did you find the fortitude to inner strength, whatever it is, to be able to get through this and to ultimately contact the Innocence Project of New Orleans and continue to fight for your freedom. I mean, I think almost anybody else would have just given up and given in. That's not what happened. I mean,
here you are. Somehow or other, you managed to persevere and triumph.
I don't know, it's just that one thing I can always remember that I never thought of myself as just a prison you know, of any kind. I was thankful in the sense that I had been exposed to people who believed in freedom. Like I said, the neighborhood I grew up in had a history that I wasn't aware
of at the time. But the culture and climate of everyday life then was of just you know, being self supportive, you know what I'm saying, to supporting yourself in a sense, always thinking positive, always knowing that you have enough capability pass it as anybody else, to do what you need to do to make your life a successful one. And so it didn't always seem that easy. But when I was able to kind of like get over myself pity or whatever. I always revert back to that that you know,
I am a person. I'm blessed to be able to see here, smell, have all my lambs. You know, my heart is beating fine, and so at least I can have an encouraged word for somebody else and in turn that would encourage me, because that's that's all I wanted for my life to be, as you know, a difference maker to somebody else.
Wow.
Well, let me ask you this too. Was there a person or people inside Angola who inspired you to stay strong?
And it was a lot of people, And then outside Angola, I didn't know anybody there. I was one of the youngest, probably one of the smallest at the time, and so you know, there was many people like I would get
written up and go to extending lock Down. That's where I met, I guess, my most influential friends, because you know, when you in solitary confinment on lockdown, you stand and sell one man's sell for twenty three hours a day and let you outside of that six x nine sell into another caged area for an hour to take a shower and do exercise and or socialize with other guys on a tier with you, and so, like you said earlier, I've always been like a mild mannered person, reserved, you know,
in a great sense, and so I was then, but you couldn't be at that time because you dry yourself insane just holding all that stuff in. One guy, in particular, when I had my first experience on lockdown, that was able to you know, converse with you know, bounce our frustrations off each other and also encourage each other to think positively about what we can do.
Which guy is that? Noel Brooks? Noel Brooks who's Angola.
You know, he helped me out a lot, and we helped each other out and thinking about ways that we could help ourselves and help out this.
So that just one, but you know there was many.
So Kristin, how did this impossible situation eventually get Rizaud? How is he sitting here in front of us now?
Well, there are three pieces of new information that we learned that really just completely undermined the case against Jerome and proved his innocence. One is that there was a nine to one to one complaint history, which is a document that shows when a nine to one one call comes in, and some of the initial information that comes in from that caller and it's blocked off by minutes of time, and the nine one one complaint history here shows that the call came in from the Howard Johnson's lobby.
This is where the sweet sixteen party was, at a hotel lobby. It was clearly in response to seeing Hikeim Shabaz arrive in the lobby shot, and that call came in at eleven thirty and the complaint history showed that the police arrived at eleven thirty six, so six minutes later. But the state's theory at trial was that somehow Jerome shot everybody, ran out of the room, jumped over a fence, hit a gun, and then returned to the room full of eighty some odd witnesses and waited for the police
to arrive. And the only information that the jury heard about the timing of the arrival of the police and how possible that would be the window of time where the gunman theoretically could have returned to this room, as unbelievable as it sounds, was actually from Jerome himself. He testified he was asked how long it took for the police to arrive, and he said thirty to forty five minutes, and probably the reason for that is that that's how
long it took for the detectives to arrive. Not the uniformed officers that came in and sealed the room and made sure no one left or returned, but the detectives that actually interacted with the kids arrived thirty five minutes after at twelve o five am, And so those are people he interacted with. That's probably what he was recalling
when he testified to that. And there had been some prior testimony earlier on in the trial that suggested that there was an unusually long gap between the nine to one to one caller between the shooting and the police arriving, and so the jury heard the sort of thinking there might have been an unusual circumstance where a crime scene just sat unattended for a long period of time. And theoretically it's so absurd to say, but the gunman may have returned to the room, so that made it physically
possible for him to have potentially have come back. But once we knew that the police had arrived six minutes later, and they all testified that they arrived and they sealed the room and no one left after that and no one returned after that. That really changed the state's theory. It undermined the state's theory. The other two pieces of information relate to the witnesses, So the only evidence against Jerome at trial were these two teenage witnesses who testified
that they saw him as the gunman. But what we learned was that Hakim Shabaz first told the police that he did not know who the gunman was, and that the police said, Jerome shot you, and then he just agreed only because it was consistent with rumors he had heard, not from what he actually saw that night, but he had just heard some rumors and the police were repeating those rumors back to him, and he's a teenager, and he went along with it, thinking he was doing the
right thing. Kevin Johnson, we know, initially saw the photo, array saw Jerome's familiar face, didn't know Jerome's name, but saw a familiar face and had seen the gunman and excluded him. And the jury did hear that. The jury did hear that. But the jury also heard this explanation that when he said, oh, it can't be him, what he meant was like, oh, I can't believe it was him. That's what the jury heard, and that he made a
subsequent identification. But what we learned from talking to Kevin was that he was brought back to the police station with missus Landry, with his best friend's mother, the mother of the boy who was killed, and she was upset because she thought that the person who had shot her son had been released from prison. As Jerome mentioned earlier, he's under a lot of pressure. He blames some himself for the death of Clarence, and so he just goes
along with what the police say. The police tell him that he's shown another photo array, a different photo array this time. So the first one was just a set of your book photos because the police didn't have a photo of Jerome. Second time around, Jerome had been arrested, so they made another second photo array of mugshots, and again he's shown it. He does the same thing, puts Drome's photo aside, and they say, who did you say
was the gunman? And at that point, Kevin had heard rumors he had heard the name Jerome Morgan, so he repeats the rumor. He says Jerome Morgan, But he doesn't realize that the photo that he's putting aside and eliminating is Jerome. So he has a name, but it's separate from the face, and the police say, sure, it's not this guy, pointing to Jerome's photo. That's Jerome Morgan. And for him, well, he hurt again. It's just like Hachem. He'd heard these rumors and now the police are reinforcing
these rumors, and so he agrees. And so both of them went and testified at trial believing that they were identifying the right person and not knowing that the police were working off of the same rumors that they were hearing and there was no other evidence behind that at all. So when they testified, it was probably pretty convincing. I wasn't there because they thought that they were doing the right thing and that they were identifying the gunmen, when in fact it was all the police telling them.
But then fast forward twenty years, yes, and they came clean.
Yes, so they didn't know. So again Jerome gets convicted. They are not aware that there is no other evidence. So they go along with their lives and then an investigator from our office talks to each of them separately and he points out to them, did you know that Jerome was in the room after the shooting, and neither of them knew that, and so once there was a stain, I don't know if that's the right word, but something that kind of undermined their confidence that they had quote
unquote identified the right person. Then they started telling the investigator about how those identifications came to happen that really undermine their confidence in what they had done. They may have known that they didn't really have a reason behind identifying Jerome, or they may have known even that it really wasn't the right person, but they thought they were
doing the right thing. And it wasn't until they learned that the person they identified as the fleeing gunman was in the room after the police arrived that really changed their perspective, and so they came clean. They told this true story of how they came to make the identifications. It's not just a recantation, it's really an explanation of how those identifications happened and what the police did to make those false identifications happen.
At some point, the police went to these two witnesses who now are whether it's their conscience or whether it's this new information that's being provided to them, that they are now being made aware that they were fed lies by the police twenty years earlier, and that they played a major role in locking Jeroam up for the rest of his life. Based on being misled is a nice way of putting it. Now, the authorities are really scrambling to pack this conviction right, and what did they do
to these two guys? What did they threaten them with in order to try to coerce them into not telling the truth?
Well, both of them. Both of these witnesses consulted with attorneys before they signed Affidavid's and before they provided testimony in our post conviction hearing, so they knew that there was a possibility of a charge when they chose to get up on the stand and testify.
A perjury charge.
Yes, perjury charge, But they did, and they withstood direct and cross examination back and forth. Their stories remained consistent and based on that, plus the nine to one complaint history that shows that Timeline Jerome's conviction was overturned and so nothing happened to them initially, this state chose to appeal that decision to an intermediate appellate court, and the appellate court upheld the trial court's decision in a very lengthily,
clearly well thought out ruling. And after that ruling came down, when it appeared, oh no, this granting of post conviction relief is going to be upheld, the state then chose to charge these two witnesses with perjury. I just think the timing of it is interesting. It wasn't immediate. If they really cared about protecting people against society against inconsistent statements, they could have charged them with perjury back when they
signed these affidavits. But they did it after there was a good signal that the decision to overturn Jerome's conviction was going to be upheld and that there would be a new trial.
And we know that there were two lawyers who represented those two guys pro bono right yes, and spent years actually defending them against this evil machine of New Orleans justice or injustice, and ultimately they prevailed.
Another interesting fact that may not be too noticeable, but at the same time, I don't know you know how it happened in for his order, but it did also filed to have the judge recused and forced him to recuse himself. And so I end up in another section of court with a judge that was pretty you know, cool with the DA Yeah, Judge Franz Zibleich.
So they wanted to make sure they got a judge who was going to give them the best chance of winning and keeping you in prison. But none of that stuff worked because ultimately you won. What are the names of those two lawyers, by the way, because I want to give them a shout out for having spent all that.
Time, Jason Williams and BOBBYA.
Sportsburgh, So Jerome. When you finally prevailed, what was that like? Because we talked about the misery and the heartbreak of the whole thing. What was it like the moment when you actually did you even believe it was happening?
Uh?
Yeah, I believe it was happening, But I often describe it as just being overwhelmingly excited.
I mean, you envision these.
Things, you know, all those years, and that's what holds you up when you feeling like you can't make it no more.
Give us a picture of the courtroom that day. What were you wearing, what did it, what time of day was it, Who was in the courtroom with you?
How did you react from the moment that I was released from prison or jail.
I also had an ankle brason on too, so I still felt incarcerated. But even in that moment, just being outside, smelling the air of society, and you know, seeing my friends who was there from it since day one, being able to see them and hug them, and being able to just change into some regular clues right there in the street. It just was overwhelmingly exciting. When I exited prison, they didn't have any.
Clues for me.
Of course they didn't keep my clue for twenty years, but they're supposed to have your clothes that you went into prison with waiting on you when you get out.
So I didn't have any clues.
There, but you were never supposed to get out right, and so they gave me an oversized undershirt and some oversized shots that looked like pants, just to be released with. And so you know, my family and friends had few articles clothing for me a change into. Once I got out,
Christian met me that evening. It was like six o'clock on the fourth of February twenty fourteen, and so we stayed there on on Dupre Street, just celebrating, just smiling and hugging and you know, just taking in the new era because there had been a long time coming.
For all of us. What do you eat? I wanted Popeyes, you know, yeah, New Orleans fried chicken, you know, and I ain't going to you don't get.
Any of that, right, I mean, after twenty years of slop? Right, how good does food taste?
Oh? It tastes wonderful.
You know.
It's I'm very you know, particular about what I eat.
So it makes me feel good that I have options, Yeah, I because sometimes, you know, you have to go to sleep Hongry. You know a lot of guys return home and have cancer, and that's because of the slop that they eat for so long, and so you know, you have to kind of monitor that, you know, when you're in prison, and it gets tough because you know, everybody family is not well off enough to provide them with money to spend to buy food from, you know, the prison canteen or whatever.
And I'm glad you brought that up because there are a number of cases here in Louisiana people who were exonerated after decades in prison just came out and died of cancer shortly after they got out. And I think that that has to be a contributing factor. And it's also important to highlight and people are going to listen and say, no, that's not true, because when I read this,
I was like, no, that can't be true. But it is true that in Alabama they have a program where the sheriffs who own the jails of an an annual budget for food and whatever's left over they get to keep, not the sheriff's department, the sheriff themselves. So they've been feeding the inmates there corn dogs all day, every day because it's the cheapest thing you can get. And there's a lawsuit taking place right now. You can't even make this stuff up, and it's just it's sort of under
the radar. And of course with the current administration that we have, they turn a blind eye to it or they just endorse it. But on a state level, there are a lot of changes being made now. Jerome, I know you've been very outspoken in a very thoughtful way about the issues of socialization and compensation. As far as compensation goes, there's a crazy range of options different depending
on what state your wrongful conviction took place. In Louisiana, we know has the worst criminal justice system in the entire country, And as far as that goes as far as far as socialization and compensation are concerned. What does that look like for somebody like you who had their entire well twenty years of their life taken away.
Well, I mean in reality, if I use myself as an example, I wouldn't be surprised. I'd be in jail tomorrow, you know, behind unpaid bills. I haven't received anything, if anything, I've paid towards the same system. I pay taxes, you know, because I work for wages that you know, I'm not even able to afford all of the basic necessities that I would need. I've paid for drug testing, I paid bond.
I had to pay twelve percent of twenty five thousand dollars bond and just just continue or expenses that has resulted from my situation. But it doesn't look good, and that's why guys don't make it. Some guys result to drug use, alcohol, They have to result the crime sometime to take care of themselves. And so we are still in the fight of and conversation for myself and also civil action against prosecutor. Socialization is a struggle because that's
one of the silent killers. Social deprivation of guys in prison I mean meaning that they don't know how to communicate themselves to others that's not in prison with them because they have been doing that for so long, basically right amongst a fabric that excludes, you know, females, and you know, with all the other challenges, that's probably the heaviest challenge because you know, guys are excited now because now they can socialize with females once they get out,
but there's no way to transition these guys into doing that in a healthy way. And also people that don't recognize as Silent Killer kind of misjudge or misunderstand or forming incarcerated person's communication towards them, and so it just create a whole bunch of confusion. A lot of guys get mixed off of relationships and have to end up going back to jail for domestic reasons, retaliatory reasons of the person that they got into these intimate situations with,
and it causes a big problem. I just try to be reminded of that every day. But being in prison and being able to visit with people that's interning with the Innocence Project and working alone with the Innocence Project gave me the opportunity to exercise some social skills that I would need, you know, once I was released.
So it's actually almost like some crazy through the looking glass insanity that not only haven't you been compensated, but you're paying the state for the privilege of having been locked up for twenty years in Angola because I didn't even realize you're paying for drug testing and the bond. I mean that, don't get me started on that. That's a whole other show. That's madness. And what we should be doing as a society is providing counselor psychologists or
whatever appropriate form of treatment. You know, we know a lot of guys that come out have severe mental issues, but we don't. We don't do any of that. You have to sue to get your money, and we know that in Louisiana there's a cap right.
Oh yeah, I mean that conversation here is a whole another injustice Kristin.
What is the compensation statute in Louisiana? I mean, I know it again, but I don't even like to say it because I hear myself say and I don't even believe myself saying it.
The Louisiana compensation Statute provides for twenty five thousand dollars per year of wrongful incarceration, but it's capped at two hundred and fifty thousand, so it's essentially capped at ten years. I think we have one, maybe two clients who served less than ten years. Everybody served more than ten years, Drome served twice that, some have served three times that. So you get compensated for just ten years, and it's only at twenty five thousand dollars. That's paid out in
twenty five thousand dollars increment. And this is all after you get a judgment, which can take years. And then there is something called compensation for loss of life opportunities, and the idea there is to provide some money for education, job skills training, and medical expenses. But that's set up in such a way there's a theoretical eighty thousand dollars
pot for that. There's a time limit on using that money, and the way it's set up is that you have to spend the money before you get the money, and so you walk out of prison with nothing, then you wait years to receive that first twenty five thousand dollars check, and then if you have medical expenses, You're expected to front them before you get reimbursed, and that can take just the reimbursement can take over a year. It's an unfair system. It's fair to say.
It's cool, I mean, and it's important for people to hear about it, especially from somebody like you, your own, who's been through it and it's still going through it. It seems like it never stops, by the way, I want to say, in the innocence community, which is it really is a community, right. There's innocence projects all over the country and all over the world, but in that community, the Innocence Project of New Orleans is considered one of
the gold standards of innocence work. So you were very fortunate, much more fortunate than probably dozens of guys that you know that are in Gola who deserve a need a break. But yet you get out and you're still facing this incredible mountain to climb. There needs to be a whole paradigm shift, the idea that people like yourselves who have been through no fault of their own, ground up by the system and then come out and it's like, you know, you deserve a big fucking hug from society and like
a program. You know, no one's saying you should get like the minute you walk out, you should get a mansion and a thing and whatever. Right, but a fair shake, I think is what most of the guys would want.
I would suggest me and.
You know, in the spirit of justice, that we find ways to put them in position to use that experience positively, use those sufferings or whatever they've been through to help somebody else cope through it and not have to fall
victim to it. And if we can understand as a society, then you know, the money that we worried about far as you know, this person getting to match in a expensive car, what would be a concern, because these people will be able to afford those things for themselves as they seem to need them, you know, because you put them in a position where they can make it earn honest living, doing something that could turn whatever they have to heal from and relating it to somebody else and
helping them go through it.
And not end up being a victim of it.
That's very well said, and I think those words are really important. Before we wrap up, is there any last thoughts that you am about anything that you want to share with the audience.
Oh yeah, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts, but I mean, but to be shot, the one thing that I will say, kind of like a capital I just mentioned about us thinking of justice in that way, is that, you know, the just shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith. And I'm speaking of all of us. The people that I know that interested and invested in justice live by faith in the sense that they feel they have the faith that my good
could harm the wrong in the world. And so we have to believe that good will harm the wrong in the world. And so we have to approach everything with good nature or good spirit, not the manipulative or conniving or deceitful, you know, or selfish. That we have to come to the table of life with the faith and goodness of faith, and positivity faith and groot of faith, in togetherness, of faith, in equality, and that's the only
way that we're gonna live in a peaceful world. Then you will see that there has no room for selfishness or any inequality or disparities amongst humanity.
Wow, I don't even know what to say, and people who listen know I'm rarely at a loss for words. But all I can say after that is to thank both of you for being here. You've been listening to a special New Orleans edition of Wrong for Conviction. You heard me and our guests today are Jerome Morgan and Kristin Winstrom, and thank you both for being here and sharing your story.
Thank you Jason. Thank you appreciate this opportunity.
Thank you, Jason, don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
It really helps.
And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay 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