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. I was actually nervous coming over here.
I was so excited because we have somebody, Well, you're gonna have to hear for yourself, somebody named Jerry Miller.
Miller was convicted back in nineteen eighty two.
He served more than twenty years for a brutal rape, but recent DNA testing proved he wasn't the rapist.
He later filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging the now retired officers had framed him for the crime by conducting a suggestive lineup and failing to disclose evidence. The judge rejected those claims, ruling the officers did not engage in any misconduct.
Jerry Miller was paroled last year, but still had to register as a sex offender.
He missed nieces and nephew's birthday parties because he was not all to be around children. He had to wear an ankle bracelet and keep to a nine pm curfew. Jerry Miller was the two hundredth American wrongly convicted to be cleared by DNA evidence.
After twenty five years in prison for a kidnapping, rape and robert that he did not commit. Jerry Miller is now free, his conviction removed from the record based on DNA testing that proves his innocence.
Jerry, Welcome to ronfuel conviction.
Hey, how you doing.
Good morning, and with Jerry we'll call him exoneration Royalty. Here today, the founder of the National Registry of Exonerations. Maurice Posley is here with us today. Maurice, welcome, Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. So, Jerry, your story is remarkable in so many ways. But first take us back to the day this crime happened. You were in Chicago watching a fight with your father and your brother, right.
Actually, yes, I was home watching the fight.
My father was president brothers uncle, and I had no idea about any of this because I wasn't thrown into it until a week later.
The way that happened was I just was stopped by the police.
They said I was peering in the cars as if I was stealing cars, and so from that point they took down my name or they ran my name, and they said, well, you got a lot of traffic tics and I told him, I said, I don't even have a car, so I don't know how that's possible.
Well, your name Jerry Miller. So a lot of Jerry Miller's in Chicago, and you were arrested for walking while black.
Well that's correct.
But what happened is they just took my name and everything down, and so the crime had already occurred as soon because they were looking for somebody. And so when I go home, you know, I'm going about my life and then you know, these people who had stopped me show up at my home. I at first don't know who it is. All I know is the police, and I'm wondering why they knocking on the door. And so when I answered the door, they say, are you Jered Miller? I said yeah, and they say can we speak to you?
I said, what is it? And I hear my little brothers and my mother said who's at the door, and then say could you step out? When I stepped out, that was probably the worst thing I could have did, because at that point they put me on the arrest, put me in cuffs, and put me in the police car, and then they took me to almost fifteen miles away.
I would think I lived on the southeast.
They took me to build my western and that's on the north side, right, And so at that point, for three days, no one knew I was.
My parents was all you know. They knew.
The police came to the door, and they saw the police drive off with me, but no one actually knew where they took me. And so for three days they had me in interrogating me, trying to intimidate me. Well, I was intimidated because I actually know what was going on. They just kipnapped me and so this is the police and I'm in in lock up and no one is answering any question.
And then they.
Took me to police headquarters. They asked me to do a lot to take the test, and I had agreed to it, no problem. But when I got there, they had blank paper and they had an area for you to sign your name, and being a fresh at the military, I was like, wait a minute. I remember they would always say you do not sign anything you don't understand.
That's good advice throughout life.
You know.
So and they had words like they're too four, and I really didn't understand what that meant in the context of a blank piece of paper and a place for you to sign your name.
I said, I'll do the LOTE test, but I'm not signing this paper.
Now.
Let's talk about the crime. The crime was a brutal crime in which a forty four year old white woman was accosted by a young black man in the parking garage who pushed her into her car, beat her up, raped her, and robbed her and then threw her.
In the trunk.
That's it.
And then he attempted to.
Drive out of the garage and the cashier, I'm getting the chills thinking about this doinga the cashier who was very alert, he recognized the car, so he didn't allow the guy to drive out. And then another guy came and the guy jumped out and fled on foot, and she was freed, but she never identified you. And in fact, the cops had some very difficult things to try to figure out in this case because, and obviously they really
wanted to solve this case, a lot of pressure. Right, white woman rape by it's just you know, it's the typical.
So it was downtown, it was right off Michigan Avenue, and it's where a lot of people go, and so there was a lot of pressure to solve this from that perspective, Yes, and we.
See a lot of wrongful convictions happening in exactly those type of circumstances, but there's a lot of pressure from the community that they care.
About the most. Let's just say right, it's wrong, but that's the way it is.
It's exactly right.
And in this case they had some hurdles to overcome because your blood type didn't match, and your fingerprints didn't match, and they had this evidence. So at some point somebody had to make a conscious decision and say, well, let's just stick with this guy, even though we know he's not the guy, because they had to know you weren't the guy because you didn't magically change your blood type
or your fingerprints. And furthermore, the victim described that the perpetrator was clean shaven, and you had it, and you had a lot.
Of I had a go tee directly up under the chin and it was at least I say, two and a half three inches, And you cannot grow a goateee two and three a half inches in seven days. This was totally just ignored.
Right, I mean, Muris, would you agree that at some point a conscious decision was made to frame Jerry.
A conscious decision was made that even though the facts don't fit, we think this is the guy, and they put the blinders on and they keep going ahead even though there's all these red flags that point away where this case went off the track right from the beginning was the woman victim with police creates a composite sketch. These composite sketches go into a daily flyer that gets distributed. Back in those days, it was a piece of paper that got distributed at every shift change, and so people
would look for it. And the story was that the two guys that had stopped you for looking in cars said, well, that looks like the guy we just saw. So at that point those two officers were convinced that this Jerry Miller who they saw supposedly looking in cars was the person in the composite. And the case starts to move forward, and they don't want to stop and take a breath and say, well, wait a minute, could we be wrong.
Could the person who drew the composite have made a mistake, and composits are notoriously bad to begin with, or could the woman who gave the details have just been so flustered and so upset by this horrible thing that happened to her.
Well, and this woman had said that the rapist, the attacker, had ordered her to keep her eyes shut during the whole ordeal, and so she had admitted from the beginning that she would be having a very hard time making an identification, but that didn't stand in the way of progress. And this is also a case in which the cashiers were white, Is that right?
No?
No, they actually was the people who identified me to the point of the police making the arrest, because the rest was made because of the identification. They were black and the victim was white. And I always said to myself, why are these people lying about seeing me? Why don't they just tell them that they make a mistake. And then the victim is saying they kept her out the loop until a trial.
You know, she wasn't even involved in the case.
Just my experience of being the man in the hot seat, I learned and they literally at one point had to know I wasn't the person, but at one point they just decided they didn't care and it made no difference.
But they were black and she was white.
What about the cops who arrested you.
They were two white cops.
Cross racial is a serious, serious problem in a case
like Jerry's. You sort of really don't know is did the guys who worked at the security booths of the cashier's booth, did they honestly mistakenly or did they were they basically nudged by the police to say, well, we've got the guy, we think this is the guy, we believe this is the guy, and so they'll say, well, okay, I mean you hear this in cases of wrongful identification where it's well, the police assured me that they had the guy, and so I could figure out who to pick or however.
They did it.
And then when you know, you go into the courtroom, you know who it is. He's sitting there, but they know who the defendant is, and when they say, well, do you see him in the courtroom, it's pretty easy to find the right person.
Right.
So meanwhile, here you are in the middle of this nightmare, the way that took this, and then the trial comes and you were very misfortunate to have a judge who turned out to be a very corrupt and dishonest individual on top of all the other problems.
Right, yeah, he has a stow himself.
Actually, Judge Maloney went to prison ultimately for fixing murder cases. The evidence over time showed that number one, he was a very harsh sentence or maximum guy. He was throw away the key guy. You know, you got forty five years, which was oh my god. And he tended to balance the cases that he pitched where he was on the take, and some of these were murder cases. Where he was taking bribes to throw him out. He balanced that out
by being extraordinarily harsh in other cases. It's incredible. I mean, it's right out of a bad movie, right. You can't make this stuff up. And he ended up going to prison himself.
Yeah, even went to prison. I think he received fifteen years, if I'm not mistaken.
So Chicago, on top of everything else we know, is a place where wrongful convictions are extremely common, and you had the perfect storm hitting right.
You had a.
Lot of the different factors that we see again and again in these cases. Then you got Chicago where it just was sort of common, right.
The state of things back then was well. Ultimately, they had a federal investigation where they indicted seventeen judges and more than one hundred court clerks and lawyers defense lawyers for fixing cases. It was the name of that Graylow operation.
Graylor. Oh my god, I didn't know that.
That is where it was the first time in American history where they bugged a judge's court room, his chambers rather and caught them on tape fixing murder case. It was accessible, Holy shit.
I mean, on top of everything else, you had the police who were systematically torturing suspects right in that warehouse, right,
and this is Chicago, right. People need to understand that this is a phenomenon that happens all over the place, and we as a society owe it to people like yourself and to just regular civilians walking around to stop this insanity and to actually focus the resources of law enforcement on catching the actual perpetrator, because, again not atypical in your case, the actual perpetrator was left on the streets and ultimately went on to rape and rob other people.
And those are victims that never should have been victimized.
That's true.
You wonder who benefited from making me fit into that well? Ho, that was a waste of time because the gas day was out there, so if they knew they was framing me, then they knew they was leaving the gap.
The immediate sort of gratification. If that's the right way of saying, we've solved this crime. We've shown that we do our jobs. We are sending the message that we're protecting the public. Unfortunately, they do it on the backs of innocent people like Jerry.
And the innocent victims. I mean, how would you feel if you were that person? The next person that he raped, or the father or brother or mother or daughter or whatever of that person. And you're going, well, not only are you left in this terrible situation where for years you've been angry at the wrong person, you've also been deceived in a very tragic way by the people that you trust who are supposed to be protecting all of us.
And then you find out that that person who victimized you or your loved one is out there or was out there doing the same thing to other people. It's just another terrible blow for a victim and a victims family to have to absorb. But let's get back to you, Jerry. So you go to trial and you're represented by a public defender.
No, no, actually my father retained a lawyer. His name was Sheldon Rosky. He took my case. But in the end I got convicted. So even as I went through that process, even before they charged me, I didn't understand why they was trying to put this on me because I knew I had nothing to do with whatever they were talking about. Because they kept me to die. They never told me what went well or nothing. It just was just pushing me, pushing me on through their system.
You know, with the palm prints on top of the garbage camp, you know, and taking it somewhere and then coming back and asking questions in around about way, still not explaining to me what this is all about. And then the fact that I couldn't call anyone and no one knew I was.
You're talking about during the interrogation. Yeah, how crazy is it that they won't even tell you why you're there, Like they're trying to drive you insane? Basically, because who could withstand that type of a scenario on top of everything else. At least if you knew what they were charging it with, you could say, well, wait a minute, you know on that day or whatever I mean. But they wouldn't even give you that much information. So that's
a really horrible place to be in. And then comes to trial.
Well, actually, as you speak about the tearrizing, imagine a knock on the door, you foolishly step out, and then you're handcuffed in that context and put into a police car and take in fifteen miles.
Or you say foolishly. But you know, the thing is most people are sort of raised and it sounds like you were that the police are there to do the right thing. So when they make a request of you like that, you're not thinking maybe now you might think I wouldn't think that.
Your thinking that.
If I step out the door, I'm probably going to be handcuffed.
Yeah, that's a million miles no way I could have figured that out.
And because you know where you were at that point and in the military you were working, you thought, this is what police do.
This is their.
Job to come around and ask some questions, not thinking they're just going to whisk you away because somebody has decided you look like a picture.
Now on top of that, now this is you know, this might be hard to believe. To further make your point about where are we when you're doing things like that. As they was driving, I saw my brother in the car. He's with his girl, and he was coming towards us in a different direction. My hands are tapping behind my back in the back seat and I'm trying to get his attention, you know, and he's looking. I don't know if he even saw me, but the police told me say if he stopped, he going to jail too.
I mean, that's a randomness thing.
This is I mean, this is this is literally how it happened, how it started out.
I didn't want to talk about that trial and that moment. You go through the trial and then the jury goes out. Now you're in a situation that is I think impossible for anyone to imagine. What did you think they were going to say? Did you think that they were going to get to the truth?
Well, you know, it's funny that the process it self wears you down, you know, because you would get a court date, okay, and so when you had to go before the judge four in the morning, they would stop knocking your door until you get ready. And you're going through the jail system, and you start off at four in the morning, and then by the time you get to the bullpen to where you are and they come get you from there and take you right into the courtroom.
They did that almost ten times, waking me up four in them on the court case. As soon as I get there before the judge, nothing is really said at all continues, which means put them back in the bullfen, send him right back to the part of the jail where he's located.
And they did that over ten times.
It where is you down? And my point is you just want it to be over. Of course I want to be found innocent, but I'm going through the process. I know that they are railroading me. I know what they're doing, and there's nowhere for me to stop. It's like a train that you just cannot stop.
On those days when they would wake you up at four, did they give you breakfast? Did they give you coffee? Or they just took you and you're just sort of there on an empty stomach.
Well, you would get breakfast along the way.
Something you get breakfast along the way, then you would if you're still there, if you're still on your way or you're still waiting to see the judge, they would give you a blooney sandwich, which is like a piece of horse meat with two slices of bread wrapped in some cellarphan But at one point that even tastes good.
It's just it's a it's a hell of a situation to be.
In the process is very dehumanizing.
Oh yeah, all the way through.
So you finally get to court and you finally get your day in court. And it goes back to my question when the jury went out, were you optimistic, were you pessimistic?
What did you think?
Well, but I guess the easiest way to explain it is you kind of know what they have done and what they're doing that you are aware of, and no one else except the people who are doing it to you, you know, you being rare road, and so you kind of just go through the process. You hope that you found innocent, but you know the odds are against you, and you just give in to it.
You just are going to accept whatever they say.
If you find innocing, of course you're gonna be happy as anybody on this earth. But I mean to be wrung through the system like that so long for a period of a year, and then you know the way it happened, being kiddnapped from your home, and it.
Just was it was. I guess the word would be surreal.
It can't be explained how you feel, but it would be like anyone else who has been called in the situation where you can't really articulate what going on your mind because you're feeling everything. You feeling the hurt, you're feeling, the pain, you feeling the realism of being hopeless in a situation that's hopeless, and it's just hard to describe. But when it came back and said I was guilty. I was broken heart, you know. I felt bad for myself. I feel bad that my family was broke up and
sad for me. But they never gave up, you know, and they didn't want me to see their pain, and I didn't want to see my pain. So they had done all they could, and I knew it was hurt because they couldn't They couldn't fix it.
So you were with no evidence, no physical evidence of any kind, in fact, physical evidence that proved that you couldn't have been the guy. But of course they didn't introduce that a trial, right They didn't introduce the fingerprints that didn't match, they didn't introduce the blood that didn't match. They probably didn't talk much about the fact that you couldn't have been the guy because you didn't.
Magically grow a beard. And that's a pretty easy.
Thing for someone to say that you're clean shaven, or I mean, somebody makes up eye caller. That can mix up some other characteristics, but it's hard to mix up a guy with a beard, but a guy with no beard or go tee in your case.
But when you have a judge that's instrumental in the process, and he was very instrumental, because there was questions that he should have asked himself, you know, asked how this was going and what they were saying, I mean to take a blood test in the middle of the process of me going back and forth to court, and then when we go before the court to hit her the outcome of the laboratory test a comparison test. Their answer was inconclusive, and no one said anything. All they say
was inconclusive. But I was smart to realize that, how's it inconclusive? How can it be?
I don't know? And that's basically what that meant. We don't know.
When then, what did you compare it to? It was called a comparison test. The judge didn't say he accepted inconclusive. The prosecutor was the one saying inconclusive, and my lawyer accept an inconclusive.
Well, you guys all made the same mistake.
You forgot the pay off the judge right, that would have solved that problem, That would have been real conclusive. In prison, you went through a really dark time when your father died, and how you turned that into a positive, how you found whatever that inner strength was that really allowed you to survive and keep hope alive.
How did that work?
Well, you know, that was that was a tough time.
Was I think that was one of the toughest times, you know, in my life, because no one in my immediate family had ever died, and under the circumstances of me being locked up.
Man, it was a heavy load. You know.
Once I heard that not only did he die, they didn't tell me till three days later. For some reason, the information didn't get to me, I said, few days later. So so I never I never really knew, you know, knew the circumstances and all of that. But eventually, when I overcame that pain, then picked up the pieces because I was really giving up at that point. So I said to myself, you know what, I'm gonna clear my father's name. It's not my name now, it's my father's name.
I motivated myself by telling myself that this was work for him. This is I'm gonna continue with the rest of this bit to free myself and clear his name and letting his name be my motivating force. And that's what I did on the second half of that bit. Man, it was all about my father ain't cleaning his name?
And your mom had a lot to do with that, right.
My mother, while I was in jail when this whole thing started, I called on the phone and she said, you know what, son, you sound like you depressed. Actually she calls me little Jerry because I'm my father's.
Name, you know, Junior.
So she said, little Jerry, Look, when you get off this phone, I want you to pick up a book and started reading a book, a newspaper I want you to read. And I was so confused about the situation I found myself in that I took her literally. I said, you know what, if I can't trust nobody, I could trust my mother. So when I got off the phone, I literally walked up to this guy and said, you're reading that book. Let me read that book. Let me check that out when you get through. Said no, you
can get it right now. I took that book and I started reading.
What book was that?
I can't tell you what it was, just you know, it was just a book. And you know I wasn't I didn't read swell, you know, because I used to tell the truth skip school all of that. I wasn't a bad kid, but you know, I was always wanted to do something that I'm not supposed to do, and so I didn't do what I needed to do.
So when I started reading, I said to myself, damn.
You really need to be read. So I read things that I liked. That's how I started. I started reading things I like to read, entertaining things or whatever. And I think I read before I even left the gail. I think I read over one hundred books.
And not only did you read one hundred books, you wrote hundreds of letters.
Oh yeah, that's another thing. I used to write a letter and she was say, you know what, your spelling is pretty bad. That's my mother, she would say, and your writing is not too good either, And I took that literally. So from another suggestion from my mother, I started keeping the dictionary right there in hand. So anytime I wrote a letter, I made sure every word was spelt right.
You know.
If I wrote, if it didn't look neat or presentable, I redo it. So eventually she would write back, she say, your writing is much better, and it's funny. I just hearing them words from her made me want to do even better, you know.
And then you wrote letters to lawyer after lawyer after organization, or to anybody that might be able to help me.
Yeah, I was writing food. They give you they a lot, you three free letters a month, but I also would buy my own pre stamp. I would take a book and just write, write the letters and send it to everybody in the book.
And that's an interesting thing too, right, because your case wasn't taken up by any of these firms or organizations that you wrote to. And I can understand that. I mean, everybody's busy. Everybody gets a lot of letters. Nobody knows you and knows if you're innocent or guilty or whatever. But you got to keep trying. And Marie, can you talk about that, like the role that law firms and organizations like the Instance project play in this scenario.
That's an interesting question because when you kind of boil it down, it's a matter of triage because there's so many letters, there's so many people. Innocence projects in this country typically won't even look at a case unless the person has at least five years left in their sentence, because they want to get to the people with the longer sentences, and it takes a while to get these cas is undone. And so that's why I mean Trioche, just to tell you a little bit about Jerry's and
my relationships. I had been writing about wrongful convictions at the Chicago Tribune and Barry called me and said, we're going to have an exoneration coming up in the next couple of days in Chicago. Barry Shock, and we're going to be out there. It's going to be the two hundred DNA exoneration in the country. So it's a big deal. You know, a number means something. And so he was telling me a little bit about it, and I said, you know, and most of these cases the person is
still locked up. When he said that Jerry had been freed, I said, I'd like to go interview him and write a story that appears the day that he's going to be in court. So it kind of gives me a bit of a scoop, but it also gives me a sense of who this man is to go talk to him. And in writing stories about people are wrongfully convicted, I'm always have been astonished, encouraged and curious of how do they manage this. It's hard enough to do the time if you're guilty, but when you didn't do it, how
do you put one foot in front of another? And for twenty five years, I wanted to meet this man, and so we arranged to meet. I drove down South suburb and introduced myself and one of the first things he said to me was I wrote to you and you never wrote back. And I did not remember that, frankly, because I get a lot of letters, and I was embarrassed. I mean, he said it, and it wasn't like you know, and for that reason, I'm not going to talk to you.
We had a great interview and he really impressed me with his faith, how he had managed to maneuver through what seems to be you know, you talk about all the times you're coming to court, and it just after a while, the inevitability wears you down to the point where, I mean, you understand why people plead guilty to crimes that they didn't do, because it's like, I can't get out of this. So you take the best deal you possibly can, and you hope you can manage to sort
it out later or get through it. So to bring this full circle, Jerry tells me, I wrote.
To you and you never wrote back.
And so I went back to my office and I find the file and in there is his letter. So I gave it back to him, and it changed me in the way that I would look at cases and deciding whether to work on them or not. There's a real human being behind that letter. And so I never ever didn't write back to anyone who wrote to me from then.
On, not to cut you off, but I just wanted you to understand.
When you came and to that business office that day and I said, I looked at you and I said, you probably don't remember me, but I wrote you, and you never wrote me back. When I said that, I was happy. I was happy because I had already been told that in a little while you're going to be generated and all the lads will be told will be washed away. But I was actually happy, and I just knew that what I was doing was letting you know that you missed the school.
Well I did, indeed, and you're right, you weren't like I hope you burn in hell for the rest of your life. Know you were very generous and about it, and I was so thankful that you did, because it enabled me to see to realize that behind every letter there is a human being and a face and a real life. And that changed me as a person.
And so you ended up serving basically twenty five years, including the time in jail, about a year in jail and then twenty pen roll.
You know that was about a year.
Right, So that's the part I want to get to. So finally you serve your time and your parole and then you're out. But things got real grim. I don't think a lot of people focus on the stigma and the trauma that's associated with coming out and then being a prisoner in your own home and being looked down upon and mistreated by society in so many different ways. And I want to get into that because it's important
for people to realize. I mean, we have almost a million people as registered sex offenders in this country, which is ridiculous.
Can you talk about that? You come out and then what.
Well, Actually, when they released me from the penitentiary, I was happy than I've ever been in about twenty six years, twenty five years. For a period of time, getting from the penitentiary itself to my home where I would be located at.
I was free.
I was literally free, no parole offs, nothing, I was free, moving freely, going to the store first time. The first thing I bought when I was free was it might sound crazy, but I bought chocolate, milk and french.
Why.
I have no idea.
And I went to the store and I bought this and I was eating and I was looking around. It's just like I'd never done this before. I felt like, I've never done this before.
Who are you with?
I was by myself. You came out and they give you some of thewhare that's it?
Some of thewhere I don't know how much money they gave me, but I had money. And so when they dropped me off at the wherever they dropped you off at, I went into the store and I'm looking around on trying to decide.
It was too many things to decide from.
So I decided on French fries and choked the milk and I sat there eating it, just looking around like like I've never been in the store before, never been free before. And when it hit me that, you know what, Now I catch the bus and I get to see my family. So I go through that process, but I was just all I can say is I was happy.
But that changed real quick talk about that, Okay, by the time I reached my mother's home, because along the way I ended up my brother picked me up at ninety fifth at the bus stop.
He took me to my cousin's house.
Then from there we went to a brother's house and from there we went to my mother's house. But the next morning, the parole officer showed up with the police knocked on the door like they was trying to break in. So I asked the door and like I said, the happiness was over here because I was faced with parole officers aggressive, police officers aggressive, and they told me you got to go over to this police station and as
a sex officer. But prior to me doing that, they had me in the backseat of a car and then they said, look, you have to sign this paper. They explained it if I'm not mistaken as classes to go to. It was a new law that wasn't implemented when I first got convicted, and through all the years I was locked up, they came with this law, which is the sexest Offender Registration. So because it wasn't part of my incarceration, they said, look, if you don't sign that paper, we're
gonna take your ass right back to the penitential. And I was like, this can't be real. You know, I don't want to sign it. And I don't want to go back, and I really didn't know what I was going to be faced with. I signed the paper to be free. But when I signed that paper, the inencnserration, the humiliation started, all of it.
And here you were faced with signing a piece of paper.
It almost goes back to the beginning, right, signing a piece of paper without a lawyer, without anybody to advise you, but under threat of something that you obviously could not deal with.
Yeah, how would you how do you send yourself back to the pintention.
You don't, I mean, you sign anything at that point. But so talk a little bit about that. Now you're having to go to sex offender classes.
Right, let's deal with just going to the police station and for the first time my life, being called a sex offender and saying that I had to register. I'm so dangerous, I'm so much of an animal that I have to go to the police station and telling my animal and this is where I live and they're going to be watching me or whatever. You know that that was humiliating on his face, And I know in my heart I just did all this time that I shouldn't have done in the first place.
And now here you are again in my face, telling me you basically a piece of shit all over again, and.
You're basically locked up all over again because at this point they put all these restrictions on you, where you couldn't leave your house, you had to curfew, you had to turn the house dark on Halloween in case any kids showed up. You had all these, I mean a million and one rules to follow. Ankle, bracelet, GPS. It's so amazing to me that you were on the verge of actually giving up right at a certain point, and that's the day when things.
Yeah, that's you know what. That's just going to show you that my prayers will answer. Because when you're in the penitentiary, whether you give your innocent, you're among people like you, all of you, all of you have been convicted, all of you been sinens, and this is the life you're in right now. And so when you go home,
when you free, and you bring that stigma back. I use the word make you feel like a piece of shit, not to be vulgar, but to make you understand that literally you feel like that's the way they look at you because they try to avoid you when the truth comes out that the legal system has said this and branded you that, but it's not real. It's not real until you realize that this person is not even guilty.
It's a whole different scenario.
If you're guilty, he can carry his weight and people accept him as being guilty and he moves on with his life.
There's no confusion.
But it's a lot of confusion when you're innocent and you carry that weight of someone that you're not.
And so your sort of prayers were answered when the Innocence Project took your case and ultimately they were able to find a slip that the victim had worn, right, and they found the DNA on the slip, and then the authorities allowed for that to be tested, and that
proved I'm getting the chills again. That proved without any doubt that you were an innocent man who had been wrong convicted, and it also identified the actual perpetrator right, which happens a lot in these DNA cases, and sadly, tragically another one of these cases in which the actual perpetrator went on to commit other horrible crimes. Going back to that happy moment, in that happy day when you received a call from the Innocence Project telling you that this was about to.
Be Yeah, it was an instant project. Attorney Columns. His last name is Colin. I just called him Colin.
But he asked me, say, are you sitting down?
And said no. He said, well you need to sit down, and so I sat down. I didn't know what he was going to say, but he said, look, they ran the test and you are innocent. They ran it through colder. I think it's colds and they got a hit FB. So not only am I innocent, but to further prove the point, we know who did it, you see, and he's already locked up, you know, So that was like no doubt at all.
What did you do?
I died everybody in my phone and it was a you know, I hadn't really had a cell phone before. It was one a flip phone, and I died everybody in that phone, and my phone just died. It just that I had. I was unaware that it was gonna die. Just I'm talking to that because I'm telling everybody what has just happened.
And people with people freaking out.
Yeah, they were so they were so happy. They was screaming through the phone. I had to pull it away from my ear.
Who was the first person you called, well.
The first person I called was my cousin that I was living with. She was the immediate one. She was the one who helped me and kept everything where I wouldn't be exposed to a lot of the things that you go through being incarcerated, not yet proving yourself innocent and heard. She would always tell people my cousin. She was stunt on that, and people believed her, and as they got to know me, they believed me, and so
life would be simple in that small circle. She even went to neighbors and explaining them that I lived there, because eventually, you know, through the police, they find out that it's a sex offen of living, you know, on their block. And so I ended up meeting all of the neighbors on the block just about and through my interactions they felt safe. Not word it kind of takes the weight off, but you still have that plice thing checking in and the pro thing, and it just.
Got too heavy for me at one point.
But getting back to that day, that day, I knew that it was over with and it didn't matter what anyone else thought. I knew that I had more than just me in the.
Whole wide world. Saying I was innocent.
You know, it was the world had turned around now that not the world knew the truth.
That's the thing that when you talk to say we surprised, No I knew all along. It's everyone else that now has that proof and doesn't have to take byword for it.
It's priceless. This priceless. That's huge.
And if you could see what I see now looking at Jerry as he tells that part of the story, it's everything you need to know about why we always will continue to fight for innocence of people like yourself, because it's an indescribable feeling to be around you, know you right now, to be honest with you and see that expression on your face. So there was a there was one more thing that has to happen, right, You had to go back to court so they.
Could formally exonerate you, right, And that had to be an incredible day.
Can you talk about that day and who you were with and what was it sunny out?
Was it raining? What was the whole situation on.
That And I tell you what when I when I received that phone call from Insurprisect from Collins, my whole life changed.
My whole outlook changed.
As a person, I changed because you know, you're not really whole yet. Remember now, I had been battling since day one, screaming and telling everybody I could that I was innocent. But twenty six years you could take a poll out of all the people that I met in my life through that time, which side of the fence they fell on.
I believe him or I do not believe him.
So you you know that it didn't matter no more because night is the truth is out there.
So the lot that they told is being exposed.
Take us through that day. Obviously, you didn't just take your ankle brace itself.
That was that, you see.
Now, That's that was special too, because I had time to prepare for it. I was going to church, you know, I would go to church every Sunday, and that kind of kept me. It gave me some strength through them hard times of being on parole. But when by the time I've done that first interview, man, look, I was prepared, you know, I was ready for what was going to happen.
I knew that I was going to go for.
The judge, and the judge was going to say you're innocent, And I knew this was coming, so everybody was getting ready. It had the suits out, you know, the car gassed up, so it was like a caravan that went down to twenty sixth of California. I was like a horse ready to come out and run the race.
You know. I couldn't wait.
And when I walked in there, they had to know something was happening because I was smiling, like I'm smiling now.
And so I went through the metal detecting all that.
We all went through and you know, waited for my name to be called, went before the judge, and she was smiling too. She was happy because she knew what she was getting ready to do. And a lot of people were saying, what's going on, what's going on? You know people I didn't know this, People that's waiting for their cases to be heard.
What's all this? What's going on? I went for the judge and they got to.
Hear what was going and by the time I turned around, everybody was clapping a cheering.
What did she say?
She basically said, you are free, you're innocent, and you know, going about your life and I wish you well.
And then did you ever get an apology?
Well, actually, by the time I got out of the court. Remember so many people out there. Like I said, everybody started to see what was going on. I'm innocent. He just got proven innocent, and so everybody just got involved. People I didn't even know. They just was happy because they realized because I brought a crowd with me. You know, I had like twenty twenty five family members following me around.
And so we went upstairs to the Prosecutors lawl Ibery I think it was, I remember I was there before that. We went into the office and we had a round table meeting between the City of Chicago turns and they apologized for the first time inside closed doors, and they put the file down and they said, look, this is the guy. I think they said, you're gonna bring like three family members. I brought like five, and my pastor
went in there with me. Was aus in that table and they was like, once they sought up, it was like, he looks nothing nice.
Yeah.
So getting back to the identification, he looks nothing like that man in that picture.
And that was what punched your ticket from the very beginning. Yes, and then you cant who say, that's a compositive sketch looks like the guy we saw and that. As you said, the train left the station that day and it was no stop.
But so this glorious day happened and you were free. And then I got the pleasure of seeing you speak just a few days later, because you came to New York for the NS project Gall I think it was ten years ago, and you got up on stage. You came to New York and this must have been a crazy whirlwind because you were on Colbert right.
Yeah, yeah, that was that was fun.
But it's a backstory to that because when I got the call and they were telling me that, you know, would you be interested? And I was like, why would I go on a comedy show? Because I didn't know him at the time. How'd I go on a comedy show. There's nothing funny.
About what happened to me. Why would I want to go on that?
And so they explained it to me, you know, the context, and I said, okay, because you haven't feeled me yet, you know, And so I went and I really realized what it.
Really was all about.
It worked out pretty well, the message you got out because the innocent project.
Man.
Look, I tell them all the time that I feel so grateful that they accepted what I was saying in that letter, because all of the letters are not they don't all of them don't going to the ya you know, Yes we will help do your case.
Yes, we will help you.
Some of them get process out for whatever reason, they can't take everybody.
There's just not enough time problem. I mean, that's one of the resources. Resources.
That's what's the criteria, you know, whatever it is. It actually it must work because it captured me, you know, it allowed me to go through their process, which is a long process. But they stuck with it and stuck with it, and this is what the outcome is.
Yeah, you're here today, right now, and so it's so exciting because today is the day of the twenty fifth anniversary of this is project that we're going to have a big party tonight. You are going to be one of the guests of honor and I'm looking for or to that. You know, we have a tradition here un wrong for conviction, which is that I like to ask you if you have any final thoughts you want to share with the audience, anything at all.
Well, all I can say is the n SUR project.
The people that I've met that worked in in this project, they took my case and I was helped to be proven innocent. You know, I thank them because it was the support that kept me on. I guess on my trajectory to being a part of society again, because it's a process assimilating back into society and really functioning and living a good life, an important life, doing what you can for other people, and just being the person that you are. You know, I thank the inn a Surproject for that.
And I still.
Believe that the work that they're doing is God's work. Somebody has to believe in the people who are screen out for help. Everybody is not going to be found innocent. It might not work for everybody, but those who can be saved. You have to continue to do that. And when I speak about my story, I hope that people become interested and play a role in some kind of way, because it's important, it's real me personally. I don't think there's anything wrong with the legal system. I think we
have the best legal system. It's just the people that implement it. They get lost along the way and forget what their job really is. If the right people can take the jobs and do the right thing and care about what they're doing instead of trying to benefit from it.
You know, maybe it'll work a little better once again.
I'm just I'm happy when I think about where I've come from, you know, I'm just and I'm happy to be in New York.
I like me, Well, we're happy to have you, and I want to pick up on what you're saying. And I always ask the audience inta, get involved, and you can get involved. The good people at Chicago recently voted out a bad prosecutor the bad da actually right, and voted in a wonderful one. So I think we're going to see some big changes there. And that's one thing you can do. Another thing you can do is go to Innocence Project dot org. Go to your local innocence project, write letters.
I mean, just be nosy. What is this thing called exoneration?
You learn about it, what these people have.
Been exonerating, you know.
To get example, I was in the bank in New York and I was talking to one of the Tellisens.
She just she said, I'm not trying to be nosy, but what's going on? You know? And I explained it to her. She she was like, you know, I did hear something.
About it, but I didn't follow up, but since I met you, I think I will, and so I told
her about the INN project. I should just go check it out and see, you know, and you'll find out that when people at least put in an effort to find out what's really going on with these exigner reads this thing called otovation, you know, they become interested because most people are good people and they don't want no one mistreated unfairly, and they do whatever they can do, whether it's a donation or just speak about it in front of people who might be in jeopardy of that happening.
In the Maurice.
Any last words, Well, Jerry makes some really good points about awareness in Sunshine, But my job on a daily basis is to chronicle cases like Jerry's for the National Registry of Exoneration. Jerry was the two hundredth DNA exoneration just this past recently there was the three hundred and fiftieth DNA exoneration. The National Registry has more than two thousand exonerations since nineteen eighty nine. These are non DNA
and DNA. To raise the awareness in the public's eye about these cases can only create the sort of sunshine I think that well produce change within the criminal justice system.
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 Nocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one