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 the 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 East 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 day as you're lucky, day you go home.
This is wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flomm. Today we have a very special episode. We have two fabulous Pennsylvania ladies. Our very special guest is Krystal Weimer, who is an ax hoonery from Western Pennsylvania.
January two thousand and one, someone killed Curtis Hath outside his Fayette County home. He had been beaten and shocked after being convicted of plotting the murder that spanned three towns in Fayette County. Crystal was behind bars for twelve years at the time. They said her teeth led.
Them to her.
A dental impression was taken over teeth, and they were compared to a picture of a bite mark on the victim's body, which we're found to be a match. Actually, that's not true. Scientific expert who testified to all of that in court later said it was junk science and he was wrong.
At today's post conviction relief Act, doctor Constantine car Zulas testified that a bitemarked fan on the victim's hand was Weimer's due to a bitemark analysis that he now considers to be junk science. After doctor Carzulas testified and without hearing any further testimony, President Judge John Wagner granted a retrial for Wimer.
It was Crystal who started her own path to freedom, acting as her own attorney, filing paperwork. The Pennsylvania Innocence Project and the Jones Day Law Firm got involved. They found other problems with the police investigation and the prosecution and convinced to judge she is not the killer. Weimer's attorneys believe the real killer has never been caught.
Crystal, Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
And with Crystal is her fabulous lawyer, Neila M. Sangvie, who is the legal director of the Pennsylvania Innists Project, and really looking forward to hearing from you and learning from the first time we've had some from the Pennsylvanian Instance Project on the show. So welcome, Thanks for happy to be here. So, Crystal, your story is insane, even by our very lofty standards of insanity. Here at wrongful conviction. You had the whole pot pirie of causes of wrongful conviction.
I mean, your case involved false confession by a co defendant, It involved police and prosecutoral misconduct. It involved bitemark evidence, which we know is put it politely, horseshit right. And there's more. It's a fascinating study and terrifying study into just how many things can go wrong. So let's go back to two thousand and one and even before you grew up in Pennsylvania. Yes, and what was that like?
What was your We always like to spend a few minutes talking about what life was like before this catastrophe happened.
It was good.
I used to work at a plan in newsday and assembling TVs and radios and things of that nature.
And I was working three on, three.
Off, two one two off days, twelve hour shifts. I was a single mother, raising my children by myself.
What are their names?
My oldest is Rose, she was ten, Miranda was seven, and the baby was Bridget and she was four. The high life of my life was them raising them and making sure they were off to school and went to work, and was living life on an everyday basis.
Not an easy life by any stretch, right, working a difficult job, but a good job, and still raising three kids. And I have so much respect for single moms everywhere I see the amount of work that goes into raising children. It's incredible. So the idea that you were able to hold it together, you know, while working, is really my hat's off to you. So how could this have possibly happened?
How could you sort of, I guess you could call a typical American, right, working, raising children, living sort of a regular type of place, right, How could you become ensnared in this craziest possible situation.
I don't even have the answers. I don't know how to even say how it all began.
Or let me give some details to the audience and then, Neil, if you could jump in any time you want. So, this was a case where a guy named Curtis Hayth was murdered outside his apartment building around four am on January twenty seventh of two thousand and one. And I guess the only reason that it even any attention was paid to you in the first place was because that night you had been at a party with him, right,
with a lot of other people. Yes, attending a party with somebody and murdering them or very different legally.
Speaking, right, I mean, I think what the police did made sense because when this man died, they wanted to know, okay, who else saw him, what was he doing? So it actually kind of made sense as a starting point for the investigation to talk to everybody he'd been with. But then obviously things took a wrong turn from that point on.
Right, So, Crystal, you and a friend had given him a ride home from the party around ten o'clock.
Right, Yeah, it was me and my cousin.
God could, yes, but then you went back to the party.
I went back to uniont where I was.
Right, and he was murdered six hours later or so, at four o'clock in the morning. And by that time, I'm assuming you were home asleep with your kids. Right, So how did this start to go wrong? Because it took a long time. I mean, this kid, this was a cold case, right, you know? Right?
They investigated for about a year after mister Hayes murder and really didn't have any leads. They questioned Crystal and a lot of other people, but didn't really have any leads. And then about a year into it, they brought in a Pennsylvania State trooper from the Cold Case Squad to
try to investigate more. Because this is a relatively small town and an unsolved Thomas side is kind of big news, So they brought in the cold case squad and it's at that point that they started looking into the potential bitemark evidence that really became a lynchpin of the case against Crystal as things went.
For so the victim had been bitten.
Well supposedly, we don't based on what we know now, are not even sure whether it was a human bitemark. There was an oval shaped bruise on the victim's hand that was not identified as a bitemark during the autopsy. But when this person from the cold case squad came in and was looking at the autopsy photographs, she saw it and said, well, I think this is a bitemark, even though she was not a dentist or an odentologist by training, and then started looking at it from that angle.
So the trained mortician or corner right, the.
Forensic pathologist right that did the autopsy.
Wasn't able to see a bitemark and clearly was looking for any signs that they could find because it was a murder, right right.
And we looked into this when we were investigating the case. What do you look for in an autopsy? And if you're a forensic pathologist, bite marks are one of the things, even at that time, that you were supposed to look for and account for and preserve in a certain way if you saw it. And the pathologist did none of those things, right.
So, what I'm trying to wrap myself around here is and this is just the first of so many I mean, whacky is a weird way to put it, but so many whacky things about this case. But I'm trying to wrap myself around to the idea that you have a trained pathologist forensic pathologist who is examining the body and looking with a fine tooth comb or microscope what everyone to call it, for any signs of foul play, but yet does not see or report anything to do with
any bite marks. But yet a state trooper. Right, there's no training in this area, Right, A lay person is going to look at a photograph one dimensional a year later and go, I got this. I figured it out like some sort of Sherlock Holmes moment and say, oh, that's a bite mark. And we know, from having examined and uncovered and had to undo cases around the country related to bitemark evidence, it is probably the junkiest form
of science that there is. I mean, there's so many cases that we've seen where they don't know whether it's a human bitemark, it could be an animal, it could be totally something, totally right exactly. So this was the beginning of what became a real life nightmare for Crystal.
So then things start getting really tangled, right, and really complicated, because there's a whole cast of characters here that are all out for themselves and are all working across purposes and all working at trying to well save their own asses, right, right, This is where the incentivized witness thing comes into play, right. Do you want to talk about that a little.
Bit now, Yeah, So, the incentivized witnesses in this case, it's interesting, actually didn't start even coming forward until Crystal
had already been arrested and charged with the murder. So after this BikeE mark story comes out, they're talking to other people and there's a guy in the county jail named Joey Stenger who offers to give the police some information about Crystal and about this murder, and he's got a bunch of charges, so I think he was hoping for something, but at this point he wasn't promised anything,
so it wasn't really incentivized at that point. But he essentially confesses to committing the murder and implicates Crystal in it with him. So they move forward based on this spiite mark evidence, based on this witness Joey Stenger, and some other things they had cobbled together. And then years after Curtis's deaths in two thousand and four and two
thousand and five, when Crystal's in the County jail. You get other prisoners coming out of the woodwork saying they've heard Crystal confess to them, which just seems ludicrous given the you know, in particular, the amount of time that had passed since the murder, and they, as it turns out, we found out much later, we're all asking for deals in exchange for implicating Crystal.
Again, we're supposed to believe that you, in an effort to purge your soul, are going up to total strangers in the jail and telling each of them your story about how you murdered Curtis haythe one night in January of two thousand and one.
Well, the sad part was, I didn't even know a lot of the people. I just met them through testimony or paperwork and stuff to that nature. I didn't I never even met him, like want a face to face basis, So I didn't even know who most.
Of them were.
So what happened here, it sounds to me like is going back fifteen years to when all this stuff was taking place. Is that, as we see time and again, the police and prosecutor came up with a theory and then in the absence of any physical evidence, because it wasn't any They had to figure out a way to convince a jury that you were this cold blooded killer. Did you have prior violent arrests in your past? No, you never murdered anybody else, never like it can blow
up anything record. No, No, you weren't like a You weren't like a mugger karthif I's kidding, I mean.
Like I said, you find sense of humor and all this madness.
I tried to because otherwise it's just too depressing. So yeah, they would have had without having gone to these lengths that they did to fabricate evidence against you. Very hard to imagine that the jury would have convicted you, because what would they have said, Here's this woman who was raising three children, working a job, respectable citizen, with no
prior history of violence. One day just up and murdered this guy at four o'clock in the morning, and we have no evidence to show you, but you should take our word for it. That basically would have been the case a judgment. I mean, somebody would have thrown that thing out. Our jury would have said, they would have taken ten minutes and they would have said, this is ridiculous, We're going home. Right.
And actually the charges against Crystal were thrown out the very first time they tried to bring them. This is when the additional informants and people start coming in, and they charged her again, and it was the second time that the charges stuck. So what you're saying actually did happen essentially the first time around.
Yes, that's in two thousand and four, right, which is already more than three years after the crime was committed. The case was dismissed against you because Beale recanted his earlier that you the murder, and he refused to testify.
He was the very first one that recanted. Joey's singer was the second one that recanted his statement. So whenever Bill recanted, they released me. But they never released me because of prejudice. They just released me and the judge gave them the option to refel charges against me for the second arrest. So I was begging to go back to prison, which is absurd, knowing that they were going to do this again to me, just to have a trial so I didn't have to go through all this again the second time.
And then who's taking care of your children this well.
My two oldest daughters were with their grandmother. Whenever all this took place, she was putting them off to school and making sure they were okay. Well that year, whenever I got released, I had three different apartments, Like I was trying to come out and get myself back together, and here they come again.
It was just crazy.
So I couldn't get myself together and make sure I was taking care of them, not knowing what they were going.
To do to me again.
So I wanted to make sure they were in a stable environment, which I left them with their grandparents, not knowing if they were going to come rearrest me again for the second time, or what was going to occur. So I wanted them in a safe environment.
That's why I left them where they were.
But even still, the idea, I mean, what is that like being locked up for something you didn't do and then not being able to tuck your kids in or read them a story or you know. I mean, especially as they're sort of their only parent and as a mom, like, how how did you deal with that when you're in prison? How did you keep your sanity?
It was extremely hard.
I mean, as far as being depressed and crying all the time, emotional. I would go see a therapist and the counsel all the time. I tried to go to a church. It was just so hard on a daily basis. A part of you just gone. Your baby's just gone. And no words can even describe that feeling.
That's horrible. That's the worst feeling in the world. Like the babies that.
You bore, that you were supposed to be secure and love and neuturing and mom and make sure their needs are met and just quality time, security time, just everything just being ripped apart and away from Oh, it is this horrible, horrible in my heart and my mind, my emotions. I don't even know how I cope and dealt with it.
I just.
I don't know.
I just try one day at a time. I just kept praying. I didn't know what else to do. But it pushed me to be persistent. Knowing I was innocent and I was wrong. Then I was coming home, So it pushed me even more so to fight and take a stand for what I believe in. And I knew in my heart I was going to come home. I just didn't know when or how long.
Well I'm getting the chills thinking about this. So you were rearrested in September of two thousand and four, and you went to trial. Yes, and you were represented by a public deffect at the time. Yes, right. They have a lot of respect for lawyers in general. But we do know that the public defender situation in this country is a crisis, nothing less than a crisis. We have a situation, I think in every state where they are underpaid,
they're overburdened, they're overworked. Some of them are incompetent, but many of them are very competent, but they have an impossible task. So if you're in this situation and don't have money to defend yourself, and sometimes even if you do, you have really a snowballs chance in hell of getting justice, and you now go to trial, it must have seemed like a circus.
It was a circus.
I was just in awe with all these people coming on and stand and testifying, and I was just like, what where did this come from? I'm shaking my head and looking like wow.
And Neilon. Not only were they coming in and saying a bunch of stuff that wasn't true, but they were also changing their lives. There were different lives on different days, right from the same person. The stinger guy changed his story again and again, I mean doesn't at some point somebody go, wait a minute, this guy is totally full of shit, right, I mean that forgive my language, but I mean he just kept coming up with new lies.
Yeah. By our account, by the time we got through the trial, the post conviction procedure and we're looking at a potential new trial, Stanger had given about fifteen different accounts of the events, and there were changes every time. So you wonder how the jury could believe this guy, which they really had to do because he was the only evidence that claimed to have firsthand knowledge of Crystal being at the scene, which of.
Course was not true.
But the jury really had to believe him, and they did, which I think just shows you that if it's the prosecution putting up the witness, sometimes that's really all you need and it doesn't matter that much what they say.
He admitted that he was coached by the police, right, which is again it's a fact. I think most people sit there and go, well, that can't happen. That's not allowed. And he admitted that the police told him what to say.
Yeah, he recanted. He said that they fed him the information basically.
Right, And that's done in ways, both subtle and not so subtle. Right. You know. The fact is we see in so many of these wrongful convictions police that feed information either like I said, sort of artfully right by in a suggestive in a roundabout way. In this case, it was much more blatant. Right, They just told them what they wanted him to say. But jury's I mean, sometimes they don't hear that. Sometimes they don't know. If
it's not videotape, it should be. Videotips should always be videotaped. That's one of the things we are working so hard on at innocence projects around the country, especially one in New York as the mandatory videotaping of interrogation. Strangely enough, New York State doesn't have it.
Yeah, in Pennsylvania we don't have it. A couple of counties have started doing it just within the last.
Year or so.
In this case, it's interesting one of Joey's statements to police was videotaped, but they didn't start the tape until after they'd alreadyn talked tucking him for a few hours, So by the time he's on the tape, there's a relatively for lack of a better word, canned story coming from him, so we didn't get to see what went into it, which really you want to see the whole thing obviously, to see how it unfolded.
Okay, so let me go to my soapbox here for a second. So, Crystal, one of the reasons that I'm so happier here is because you literally represent everybody in America. I mean, I think it's fair to say that if this could happen to you, it could happen to anyone, because you just don't fit the profile of somebody who would get picked up, you know. And I think there are some people who say, well, they must have been involved with something else, And people have this different attitudes
about exonnaies. We know that half of our exanneries had no prior record before they were wrongfully arrested and convicted. But the fact is that everyone should be concerned and everyone should be angry as I am now at the idea that we don't have mandatory videotaping of interrogations. It is preposterous. What could possibly be the reason why we wouldn't want to be able to see what goes on inside that interrogation room and know that the person is
actually the right person. Right. None of us want murderers walking the streets. But the idea that we forget as a society upon basically arrest and certainly upon incarceration, we forget that you are one of us. Right, You're an American, you're a person, you're a human, you're a woman. All that's gone out the window. You're just somebody to be chewed up and spit out by the system once you're in it. And I don't get that. I don't. I don't. I'm not okay with it, and I'm going to continue
to do everything I can fix it. Okay, So I'm gonna get off myself bucks now. So Anyway, when you were a trial and you're watching this crazy circus unfold in front of you and you're unfortunately stuck in the middle of it, did you think that this was still going to be okay, that the jury was gonna make the right decision, that you were going to go home.
I believed in my heart that the tchurth was gonna send me for it. I was confident. I felt really good about everything.
And I knew that I was innocent, So I felt like I was going to walk out.
That courtroom and go home where I should have been. But when they came back and.
After they gave the verdict it was guilty, guilty, guilty. I was just an awe, Like what where did that come from?
Can you describe that scene? Because nobody can imagine going through that, like the pressure of being in that situation and the idea that they're coming back in and they're going to decide your fate literally with a life in that situation, and so how it was a.
Murder charge to at that and I'm like, what what are we talking about? Like a murder trial? And then you're sitting there and you're waiting for all leads people to decide your future.
What's going to happen to you? It just it's like.
Your heart wants to stop, like your throat and everything. Everything's just like ah, you want to scream and it's just like all bottled inside of you because you don't know what they're going to say. But yet on the same note, on the good side of your head, you're like, oh, well you're fine, you're getting ready to go home, and hey, you're happy. But then there's another side like what's going
to happen? So it's like a mixed emotion thing going on inside of you, just waiting to hear what they say, guilty or not guilty.
And imagine that. So I mean and I think that people again have a tendency to be able to distance themselves when they're serving on a jewelry from that emotion from that person that is sitting in front of them, And they have a tendency to trust the system and want to believe people in positions of authority who are telling them this woman is a murderer, she's terrible, she's all these things they're saying about you, right, And I always say that people have to take an extra hard
look at what's being shown to them when they're on that jury and realize that there's a lot of bad actors in the system, there's a lot of good ones, there's a lot of bad actors in the system, and that people like you get caught up in the crosshairs, and that in fact, those roles could be reversed one day.
I highly believe that.
I believe that them being in the position that they're in, some people have more heartfelt and are educated in that area, but they also need to be mindful as well, that it's not always good, The system isn't always for you, and there is people out there that do corruption and do do bad things and harmful things.
How about this logic, right, So, if you're on a jury, and especially in a small town like yours, right, and you actually are witnessing and unfortunately playing an unwitting part in a terrible deception and a prosecution, not only are you then subject to being victimized by the actual murder who's still walking in the streets, but also those people, those the farious, corrupt people, police and prosecutors who are perpetrating this terrible act on you and in fact on
the public while I'm going to do it again because it's convenient, they get away with it, and that could be you, dur number seven sitting in the jury box. That could be you or somebody you love right that next time could get caught up just because they can't solve the case and they need they need somebody because they need to get it off their desk, and they want to keep moving up the ranks. And we see that people get promoted even when it's exposed that they
were responsible to these wrongflmakers. So you get found guilty and the worst moment of your life, I'm assuming, right.
Sh Yeah, it was a shock. It was just unbelievable.
And then you get taken away in handcuffs, yeah, and taken to well back to jail, but then ultimately to prison.
Right.
Yeah.
Well they had to escort like my sister out of the court room because my dad, he had to walk out and calm her down, because she was with me that night. And of course your sister can lie for you, but there's the difference whenever you see her with your own eyes with you. So she was so determined to try to help me, to get me to the truth, to give me freed, and when they say guilty, she just like it was just a mess in that whole courtroom that day.
Right, that's a crazy thing because for her, I I'm just trying to put myself in her shoes, and you're sitting there going, not only do I believe that my sister, my son, whatever it is, is innocent. She knew you were right, right, I Mean, you can't be in two places at once.
That's why she was like so determined. She was like, I'm not going to give up fighting for you. I'm going to do everything in my willpower just to get you freed. There's no reason why they should have did this to you. It was just like she was mindset and of course like yeah, your family, my tell.
Little fib or little story here or there.
But whenever you know with that is shadow of doubt with your own personal wise, and it's a total different story.
What can you tell us about the experience that you had in prison? Was every day the same? Were there any bright spots? Was there somebody that inspired you? Just give us a sense of what that was like.
It was really difficult.
Like whenever I first went in, there was only five hundred and maybe five eighty individuals women incarcerated. Towards the end there was over like twelve hundred women, so the prison population increased like over half. As far as survival, on an everyday basis, I would have a routine. I would try to walk, jall, go to the yard a lot. There was a lot of spiritual churches and services. I would always go to them to try to help me to get through it all. There was people that would
visit me through the prison society. They would come and see me. They were like men and nights. They would come and visit me. That helped and inspired me as well. There was definitely support as far as church and stuff like that, but it's just hard being surrounded by people from all different nationalities cult roles.
You just don't know these people.
They're just strangers and you're just thrown in this cell with these different people. But you do grow close to some of the individuals and you really find out who is loyal and who is really honest and genuine and every person an individual would find like their sense of group and they're fitting in and belonging. That's all I could do, just on a daily basis, just try to maintain and journal and keep myself mentally going.
Well, it's remarkable and of all my respect for having persevered through this and actually found a way out, And I want to get to that now. How did the Pennsylvania Innocence Project first hear about the case? Why did you decide to take this particular case, and how did you unravel this web of lies and deceit?
So Crystal wrote to us, that's how we get all of our cases. We won't even start to look at a case until a person writes us a letter. So that's how she first got into our process, and Crystal's letters were really compelling, you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier with her being a single mom. A refrain in all of her letters was I'm single mom of three girls and I just want to get home to them, which doesn't speak to innocence necessarily, but
it was really personally compelling. So she went through our review process, which takes years. She was sometimes patient, sometimes not with that, but we really vet the cases through a multi step process.
We read every piece.
Of paper we could find, every trial transcript, We talked to prior lawyers, we meet with the with the person to really assure ourselves this is an innocence case. And just from you know, talking, you've seen how complicated Crystal's case was. So it took us a long time to try to even figure out what the heck was the prosecution's theory, what the heck actually may have happened, Who
are all these players. There's so many different strands to it that it took a lot of time just to figure out what a coherent narrative of the case might have been. But Crystal really did a lot of the work herself. She lost her first couple of state court appeals, and so she went to federal court on her own to ask for a new trial.
There after, she'd already.
Written to us and we were reviewing the case, and the federal judge appointed a lawyer for her from the Federal Defender's Office in Western Pennsylvania, and they started investigating the case. They talked to Joey Stenger. He recanted his testimony and said everything he said was a lie. They knew we were looking at the case, and they knew
we'd have to go back to state court. So we ended up partnering together with them, and that's when we really started getting actively involved and representing Crystal because we determined by that point it was an innocent's case. She met all of our criteria. So we started working together with the federal lawyers and developed more about what was
wrong with Stenger's testimony. We went back with them and then again on our own to interview this dentist that had testified against her, claiming she bit the victim, and he said everything he'd said at trial was complete junk
based on advancements in the field since then. So we went through every piece of evidence that they put on and tried to see was there any validity to it, and it turned out we could debunk every single piece of it, and so we went back into state court based on that task for a new trial.
And I want to just take a second here to say, you know, you mentioned something very important, which is the length of time it takes for the Pennsylvanians, this project, or anything in this project to get to these cases. And that's why it's so important that people who are
listening out there donate money. I mean, time is great too, but money is important because very simply if you donate to the Pennsylvanian Project, what is the website, by the way, projectpa dot org, Innocence projectpa dot org, because then they can hire more lawyer lawyers or lawyers or paralegals, more more office space for students law students to come in and take more cases like crystals in a more expeditious manner and get more innocent people out because unfortunately, we
know from the best social science estimates that over one hundred thousand people in President of America are innocent, and that's a lot. And every one of those hundred thousand people has a story, not all as crazy as crystals, but they all have a story, and they all have families, and they all have hopes and dreams that are being taken away from them. So yes, donate Innocence PROJECTPA dot org.
So now things have gone full circle. You went from hitting the jackpot of all the causes of wrongful conviction, not all of them, but so many of the causes of wrongful convictions. It went from that to having this wonderful team of lawyers representing you and to having them not just debunk one theory of the prosecution, but all of them. Right, I mean, that's that's pretty unusual too. I mean to be able to come back at the court and go, not only was this piece of evidence wrong,
it's all wrong and we could prove it. And I see you starting to break out in a big, warm smile there thinking about it, because, Yeah, how incredible is that victory?
Yeah, after fighting all the years and being persistent and just getting turned down States, Superior, State, Supreme and just all these different nos and just fighting and just keep going.
So you go back to court feeling very confident.
I guess right, you know, we felt pretty confident. And Crystal Bay this point had the Federal Defender's office. She had every attorney in my office, which at that point was just three were not very big, and also this private team of lawyers from the Jones Day Law firm. So we felt like we had put together the best case we possibly could. So we felt confident, and we were prepared to put on a three or four day
hearing with multiple pieces of evidence witnesses. But in Pennsylvania we have one of the most restrictive post conviction laws in the country. So we had put together, we thought the strongest case we could. We were nervous because in Pennsylvania, the judge can't even listen to your request for a new trial, can't even hear those witnesses if he determines that you didn't file your petition on time. So the das always argue like, well, this is great, you have
all this new evidence. You should have found it sooner. You're too late. Doesn't matter what the evidence is, and we were really worried about that aspect, whether we could even get over that initial hurdle and have the judge listen to what we had to say. So we were confident on the one hand, but we also knew the legal landscape that we were facing is incredibly tough.
How do you feel about that? By the way, neither one of you can answer this. The idea that it's I guess it's called the sunset clause, right, The idea that the courts can say, well, sorry but or not even sorry, but you know what, you may be innocent, but we don't care because you didn't get the s you didn't get the information to us on time. I mean, it's like the Twilight Zone, right, I mean, how can that be personally?
I think sometimes the system just wants to wrap cases up. They don't care if it's right, if it's wrong, if it's indifferent, if it's personal, if it's biased. Not always, but a lot of times, when they get in this little hump and they have no other way out, they have no other choice. It's just wrapping that case and that whole outcome and that situation up.
How is it that we are able as human beings to say that we no longer care about you mean, we don't care, right, because we have to feed the system. Right, The system has to go on, the machine has to go on, and we've seen it over and over again. I remember Florida years ago tried to pass the sunset clause where they were saying, And some states have this right where even if you had DNA evidence of your innocence, you had to present it within like a month after
your try. Otherwise they weren't going to look at it. Now, who the hell's going to have it a month after their trial? But there are states that have that. In Pennsylvania's one of them.
Yeah, in Pennsylvania, it's pretty draconian. Once your conviction is final, you have a year to seek a new trial, which is not that long, especially if witnesses, you know, they just testified against you not that long before. Are they really going to be prepared to tell the truth now? After that year, if you file that new trial motion and you lose, you're presumptively barred from ever seeking relief again,
with a few exceptions. So if you find new evidence of innocence, like in Crystal's case, we had a witness recantation, we had this fite mark expert disavowing its testimony, et cetera, you only have two months. You have sixty days to go back to court, and even if you get in within the sixty days, that doesn't mean the judge is going to find that your petition was filed on time.
It means that he's going to look at Okay, while you got in with sixty days, but could you have found that evidence even earlier sixty days from what sixty days from? Basically when you get in, inkling that the person might be willing to recant or you have a new expert opinion, whatever new evidence is. So it's a really short period of time, particularly if you don't have a lawyer. But it also isn't the end of the game. Because you get in within sixty days, that's just the
start of the process. The judge then has to see whether that literally was the first time you could have brought this evidence, or if you could have found it sooner somehow, And the das will always say, well, they could have talked to this person a year ago, six months ago, whatever it is. In my job, this is what makes me bang my head against the desk the most.
Are you talking about the PCR?
A PCR okay, And it's what we call a jurisdictional requirement. So if you don't meet these things, the judge, even if he or she wanted to, has no authority to hear the actual evidence.
It's so maddening. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So then the day comes you're back in court. At this point, you'd been through everything. How do you resign yourself like oh, they're just going to screw me again, or like what was your before before?
We have been through so much like my good days, my good times. I'd done fired her one time and then rehired her the same day. But it was just all from anger, frustration, perseverance, just everything bottled up in me. I mean, it wasn't her personally, it was the fact about the system, what happened to me and what's been done, And here she is trying to assist and help me, but yet I'm firing her and hiring her back in the same day.
So yeah, that's been real interesting.
I mean, I was just so grateful though here comes my whole team and I'm soon to get victory. I was happy, but on the same note, I was like, oh, they're not.
Going to help me. It's going to be the same stuff.
Over crap, I'm saying in my mind over and over because I wasn't getting nowhere, it seemed like. But then all these doors started opening so fast. It was just like one court date. Here we go, Oh, another court date scheduled.
You know.
Here, I'm going back to the county. Here they're coming to see me every day. I'm getting visits and getting out of my room and out of my cell, and I'm all excited because I know it's getting closer. Here comes the big day. So when the big day came and they said we're releasing her. October first, twenty fifteen was the very special day. Very next day, they just opened the doors and just released me right to the street.
Here it is freezing outside in the middle of rain, and you know, we have jackets and different possessions and properties and things like that. After being there for what ten twelve years, so you accumulate a lot of belongings and things being in there. And it was just unbelievable. Here I am just being released to the streets. I didn't even get to go back to my home prison to collect what a little bit of belongings I had.
So I was just released right from the county Joel, and you know, I had to get my self shipped to me.
So it was just shock.
I was just in all with everything and how they went about doing the results of everything. I mean, totally unbelievable twelve years and here you just throw somebody out on the street and don't give them their a little bit of belongings and possessions and let them have transportation and have everything in order. They could care less, it didn't matter to them.
So it is full circle because you went into the first trial thinking that justice was going to be done and it wasn't. And then you went into the second trial thinking that justice wasn't going to be done, and it was. And then all of a sudden, here you are like a baby being born right out back into the world, like you said, like what the hell do I do now? Type of thing. Right, But the good news is you're free. At that point, you're exonerated, formally exonerated.
We didn't get I got exonerated October one, twenty fifteen, was my hearing. That's whenever I got freed. They put a GPS monitor and was still dangle with me for nine months. So from October to June twenty seventh, twenty sixteen, last year, I had a bracelet one that was my fully exoneration day. When they were they took that bracelet off and released me.
From that point, yeah, So in Pennsylvania, when somebody's innocent, you can't you know, some states you can ask for like a certificate of innocence, and that leads to an exoneration. All we can get is a new trial. So in October of twenty fifteen, we were lucky enough to be able to get Crystal the new trial. But all that that meant was that the d could appeal if they wanted to, They could retry her if they wanted to. Luckily, they didn't appeal, but they did say they were going
to proceed a trial. So she was out on bail as if she'd never been convicted, and it was back as if she'd been before the first trial, and she was on this electronic monitoring, and the judge said a really aggressive trial schedule. We got a pre trial order saying you're going to trial in December or January, and so we hit the ground running and did pre trial
work for Crystal. In the course of that, more information about incentivized witnesses came out that we hadn't been able to get during the post conviction process, and we filed motions to have all the charges dismissed with prejudice, meaning they could never charge her again, and ultimately, after a bunch of hearings on that, that was finally granted in June of twenty sixteen. So it wasn't over with the release.
That took another good nine months of lawyering and of Crystal hanging in there being on this electronic monitor before she could be truly free.
And that's one of the things that drives me crazy too. What people don't understand is that the indictment, the original indictment, still stands, even though the conviction has been overturned. The basically what the court saying is that your trial was wrong, the result was wrong, but the original indictmentsill stands and they can still try you. We talked about that moment when you were convicted something you didn't do, in the horror and shock of that with your sister and your
dad and the whole terrible scene in the courtroom. What was a moment like when you were exonerated?
Oh so wonderful, Oh man, happy tears again. I always call them a moment because I always.
Cry, you know, emost one tear eye just thinking of it.
It's just like the victory after like persevering and fighting and just everything for so long and so hard, and you know, want to give up hope and you know, throw the toweling.
You just got to keep going. And then it's just.
Like all that weight is finally off you. You're just like, oh wow, you're in awe. It's like awe moment. I call it a awe moment, but it's just relief, just like ten thousand things off your chest, your heart, your mind.
You'll know how to start, where to begin, but you know.
You're ready and you're doing something somehow, some way.
So it's just amazing. It's amazing.
Like I'm so grateful and thankful just small things that people take maybe for granted on a daily bisis. I just I'm just grateful and thank god just to be out because I could have still been in there, and you know, they might have tried to put me through a trial again and gave me a life sentence and say, oh death row sentence.
Who's to say, you never know?
With all this being said, you know, I'm just so happy and grateful that all this is just now it's behind me and I can move forward to my future and what lies ahead. And I'm just grateful to my team and all the ones that did all the work and put up with all my naughtiness and my good days and bad days and moments and times, and you know, and here I am today and I'm so grateful to meet you and be here and spend this time with you.
Is a blessing. Well, I mean, I'm.
Honored people who listen to the show. No, I'm really at a loss for words, but this is one of those moments. I do know that when we're done talking and I'm gonna give you a big hug. So the and when you meet Chris, it's the first thing you think, is this, I want to give this person a hug If you don't know so anyway, But you know, I think you may have already done this. But at the end of each episode, we have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction where I like to ask if there's any
last words you'd like to share. I feel like you may have already just done that. So in this case, we'll do it differently, and we will turn it over to your distinguished attorney Neil m and see if there's anything Is there anything you'd like to leave with the audience, or any final thoughts.
That you have, Oh, I'm just grateful that you have shows like this to get this in the public eye, to help people to be more aware of their surroundings and what occurs out there in the world in our society, to make change and make a difference for good and better.
Well said, I'm just so happy that you invited us here and that it gives Crystal a chance to give voice to her story and also the other women anxigneries. You know, there's a lot more men in prison. We've only had two female clients in our office, but I think the challenges are really different, and it's a story
that's not told as much as it needs to. Be so grateful that we have the opportunity to be here and have Crystal give kind of the women's perspective on this problem and a mom's perspective as well well.
This has been an extraordinary experience talking to both of you and learning thank you from you, and you are a perfect example of why those of us in this innocence movement are so passionately devoted to doing what we do. Now you're home and with your children and your grandchildren and able to get on with your life, which is great. I want to thank both of you, Crystal and Neilam for joining us and tracking all the way here from Pennsylvania. Yes,
thank you, and thank you everyone for listening. This has been a very special episode of Wrongful Conviction.
Than thank you.
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 Nisis project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innison's 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 and association with Signal Company Number one