I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
I was naive enough to believe that I would be able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence, that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't be going to prison because I was a good person. I hadn't done anything wrong.
In the back of your mind, you say, well, when we go to a hearing or we go to court, the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected from the lower courts all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.
You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really, in that moment, unchecked authority.
Don't presume that people are guilty when you see them on TV, because it may just be a dirty da that is trying to rise upward.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Ronfuel Conviction with Jason Flumm. Today's episode will make your blood boil and it will blow your mind. So settle in because this is going to be a crazy ride.
Guilty one word ceiling. Lamont McIntyre's fate.
Lamont McIntyre aged seventeen in nineteen ninety four has so far been imprisoned for twenty two years. Twenty two years ago, two young men, twenty one year old Donielle Quinn and his thirty four year old cousin, Donald Ewing, were gunned down in a horrible double homicide.
Six hours after the murder's police arrested McIntyre, but never searched his house for evidence.
Moreover, it was a trial which prosecutors offered no physical evidence tying McIntyre to the crime, no motive, no connection between him and the victims, no weapon, no fingerprints, nor did Kansas City, Kansas Belief even requests search warrants to find any of that material.
A retired officer who reviewed the case caused the investigation grossly deficient.
Most notable is that the family of the victims for twenty two years have steadfastly insisted that he is innocent. Other witnesses, also relatives of the victim, insist that as soon as they saw McIntyre sitting at the defense table, they knew he was not the shooter. They told the prosecutor, but were ignored. One family member has signed an affi David claiming that under pressure from police and the prosecutor she lied at McIntyre's trial.
For the first time a jury is speaking publicly about the case, Greg Lauber says that he now believes that Ryan Dot County jury was wrong.
They didn't care about anything. They just had their man and.
It was enough for the twelfth person jury. In deliberations, Lauber says he and another juror were holdouts, but it was late in the day and there was mounting pressure from others who wanted a verdict.
Maybe I had an opportunity to, you know, do something good on that jury, but I sure didn't do it.
I took a coward's way out.
It is the speedy investigation and prosecution of that crime in this place that a team of exonerators now insist was also the focus of a terrible injustice. Lamont McIntyre, age seventeen in nineteen ninety four, has so far been imprisoned for twenty two years, convicted, and given two consecutive life sentences for a crime they say he never committed.
Well, I'm just going to say I'm really happy that today joining us to discuss the insane case of Lamont McIntyre, we have with us Lamont's attorney Cheryl Pilot, as well as retired FBI special agent Al Jenerich. Cheryl and Al, thank you for being here.
Thank you so much.
We're glad to be here, happy to be here.
And we will be hearing later on in the episode from Lamont, who will be calling in from prison in Kansas where he has been incarcerated for approximately twenty four years now since he was a teenage for a crime that he did not commit. Now, let's go back to the beginning. On April fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, there were two men sitting in a Cadillac in Kansas City, Kansas, when they were approached by a man with a shotgun.
These facts are not in dispute right correct, And what we know is that four shots were fired into the car, killing the passenger, Donielle Quinn instantly and the driver, Donald Ewing, who died later in the hospital. And amazingly, within six hours, they managed to find a guy who had nothing to do with the crime, Lamont McIntyre, who was seventeen at the time, and he was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder in spite of a total
lack of any physical evidence. Connecting him to the crime. How did this happen? Cheryl and Al jump in whenever you want.
Lamont was arrested and prosecuted after police obtained three interviews from witnesses, one of them never testified. But the taped interviews of these eyewitnesses in a very serious crime, obviously where someone can go to prison for the rest of their life, amounted to a total of twenty taped minutes, and one of the eyewitnesses was only interviewed for four minutes. Is that an investigation?
What is that? So?
Al?
You've done a lot of research, and you were in the FBI for quite a while, Is that right?
I was in the FBI for twenty five years. I was a special agent. I specialized in investigating police corruption. I worked in Chicago very successfully, and then in Kansas City.
Kansas Agent Generich was not involved with this murder case at all when it happened. I knew mister Generich through other cases and after he retired a number of years. After he retired, actually and I was working on trying to achieve Lamont's exoneration, I approached him to talk to him about the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department and things
that I had uncovered in my investigation. And it was at that point that Alan and I started talking about some of the things he had learned while working for the FBI, and they matched up with some of the things I had uncovered in my investigation. And it was because of that that he became a witness in this case that I hoped to use at our hearing.
So, prior to Lamont's arrest, can we talk about what was happening with this particular cop, whose name was Roger Glubski.
Sometime around nineteen eighty eight or so, I was able to open an investigation into police corruption in Kansas City, Kansas, And as the investigation went on over time, over many years, we developed maybe somewhere between two fifteen police officers who were titled the subjects of the investigation. Some of it involved civil rights like beating people up, stealing their shoes when they were walking down the street because the officer liked the shoes, or in the case of Kallupski, you know,
sexual extortion. But most of it involved corruption involving drugs, mostly cocaine. And in the course of this investigation, just by talking to people, which is what I'm pretty good at over time. You know, a number of people told us about Gallupski extorting sex from black women, and he liked black women. We never developed enough evidence on Gallupski to prosecute him. That's the extent of my knowledge about Gulupski, and I had no involvement whatsoever in the murder investigation.
Now, I always believed that that police were good, and the police were on our side and they're there to protect us all and so I always find these stories, even as long as I've been working on this issue, and I've got twenty five years now of experience, but I always find these stories so just depressing and shocking, and it flips everything upside down.
Well, like you, I was very naive until I went to Chicago and then I sought you police corruption on the mass of scale. But then when I got back to Kansas City in eighty six and probably got involved in Kansas City, Kansas in eighty eight, and I saw the same activity there, it wasn't on the grand scale.
You know.
It's that it's conducted in Chicago. It's basically police officers, most of whom are white, picking on minorities, most of whom are black, Some of them are hispanic, because when you're a drug dealer, you know, you can't go to the police or the FBI and say, hey, these cops are stealing my drugs, these cops are stealing my drug money. You basically have to you have to suck it up. So that's what they do in Chicago, that's what they do everywhere.
So so Lamont his troubles really began when his mom was at a car with I guess was her boyfriend at the time, Cheryl Right and Glubski approached the car and told her to get out and threatened her with the rest or the rest of her boyfriend unless she agreed to come down to the police station. And then the problems really began when she refused to become one
of his girls, so to speak. Right, I mean, obviously, she was in a terrible situation where she's very vulnerable, not able to defend herself from a cop who's willing to go to almost any lengths to fulfill his desires. She had a tremendous problem, and she decided that she wanted to maintain her dignity really, right, And so what seems like happened is that as a consequence of her action.
Golubski decided that he would target and frame her son in something that is so evil that you just sit there and say, I don't you know, it makes me want to quit the human race. And not only that, but he was also represented by an attorney who was so incompetent that he was disbarred not too long after the trial. So what kind of a chance did he really have.
Well, that's a lot to untangle right there. There was an encounter that Lamont's mother had with the detective some years earlier. I mean it was years actually before the double homicide happened. And at the time of the double homicide, my client was inexplicably dragged into the case. One of the eyewitnesses told the police she thought the shooter looked like a Lamont dating her Nie. Police never bothered to find out what Lamont that was. They don't go ask
the niece what Lamont that was. They simply put another Lamont, and it's undisputed, an entirely different Lamont, my client into the case and somehow obtain this identification. What's interesting about the lineup, and I've never seen anything like this before, is three of the five photos were of young male members of the McIntyre family.
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to say, well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. It's one perpetrator. It's not like somebody said there were three brothers that were involved. It's one perpetrator, you know. And then the justice system, we know, has a tendency to chew people up and spit them out when they are poor, particularly if they're minorities and underrepresented. It's really it's not a fair fight, is it.
Well, I mean this whole thing was an impossible battle for Lamont to begin with. I mean, first of all, the investigation itself, I don't think really qualified is a true investigation because so little was done. No evidence of motive was ever uncovered. There was no physical evidence that tied Lamont to the crime. There was not even any evidence that he knew the two victims. There are backgrounds of the two victims and who might have a motive
to harm them that was never investigated. There was an eyewitness directly across the street who was never interviewed, whose mother said, you know, she knows who the suspect is. I mean, the failures and lapses and irregularities in this case just go on and on. I mean, other than the twenty minutes of taped interviews from the eyewitnesses, there was very little else And the only evidence at trial against were two eyewitnesses who were we contend confuse, coerced, manipulated,
threatened into implicating Lamont McIntyre, and that was it. There was nothing else.
So you have this cop and this department that is so corrupt isn't even the right word, but that's engaged in so many illegal activities. And isn't it ironic and tragic that Lamont is in prison, living in hell after twenty four years and this cop who was from what I've read, raping people, robbing people, dealing drugs, protecting drug dealers, he's out. How is that? I mean? And that must not sit well with you with your whole background either.
What I'm really hoping for, what our entire team is hoping for, and what we have sought for a long time, is a very full investigation into the activities of this detective. There needs to be an investigation by people who have the power and the authority and the ability to follow all the leads, develop information, compel the testimony of witnesses and obtain other evidence.
Ah, let me turn it to you for a second, because we have not had somebody with your background and experience on the show before. And I would venture to say that you had a very, very difficult and dangerous job, right, I mean, investigating cops, particularly when you're investigating cops who've got a lot to hide, makes you a very unpopular person,
I would think. So, looking back on it, how did this manage to go on for so long without somebody coming along and saying, you know, besides you, hey, hey, we're not going to tolerate this.
They don't give a shit. At the time we were doing these investigations, the police chief of Kansas City, Kansas, a guy named Tom Daly. He had previously been indicted by the Federal Strike Force for extorting money at a whorehouses along the Kaw River in Kansas. He was doing that allegedly when it was a captain. He was acquitted because it was a real weak case. But after being acquitted for extortion, the city wound up eventually making him
the chief. Is that the actions, you know, wever responsible a city administration or a police department. So he had the chief over there Tom Daly, who had previously been indicted by the FEDS. He despised the federal government. He hated the US Attorney's Office and the FBI. And he's the chief, he was part of it.
So you have this guy Golubski, who, in that scenario is operating basically with impunity, right because he knows his chief doesn't give a shit, and with the chief having literally, well for what it sounds like, gotten away with that particular pattern of activity as well as I'm sure other things that he was doing. The people underneath him are probably thinking, hey, this is great, no one's gonna touch us, and they're right, and nobody did. So how frustrating was
that for you? There? You are really fighting an unwinnable war, right You're there trying to protect the public from the police force with a chief of police who not only doesn't give a fuck, but doesn't want that. He wants you. He probably wants you the fuck out of his hair, so he could just go and run his little you know, run the streets how he wants to.
Right when I started working over there, you had a person, you know, some guy I knewed a lot of people in the County jail, and they would say so and so confronted me and stole my money, stole my drugs. You go, what's the cops name? I don't know his name, you know what's he looked like? Well, you know he's
some Well you go to the police. The police did not have photographs of their police officers, So if a victim came in there alleging that so and so officer robbed from me, extorted me, they didn't even have photographs to show people so they could identify who the police
officer was. So good luck, you know, through the US Attorney's Office, through Julie Robinson, who was a prosecutor at the time, we subpoenaed photographs of every sworn officer in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department, and there was hell to pay for that. I was almost removed from the investigation because of that.
You know.
I think one of the problems is that other law enforcement officers don't want to investigate law enforcement and as a general rule, I think they find it distasteful something they would rather avoid, and there is a tendency to minimize misconduct. I found that really pretty shocking.
Not in light of it, everything else we're talking about. But I could see how you would, and it really gets easier and easier to see how these wrongful convictions are so common. I mean, here we have an interesting situation, right, We're talking to Al, who's in there with his badge, working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and basically being told go fuck himself. So what chance does a seventeen year old black kid from the poorer side of town.
What chance does he have against this blue wall, this blue monster that was out to get him. He had no chance. So now fast forward to twenty four years later, the monsets in the prison studying reading, by all accounts, a model prisoner, somebody who maintains a positive outlook in spite of this. You know what can only be described as the worst fate that can befall individual, to be concarcerated with something you didn't do for the rest of
your life. But now we have hope, right, I mean, he has hope thanks to you and the years of work that you've done in this case, in Al and other brave people who have devoted their time and in some cases probably even risk their own personal safety to try to get justice. In this case, what does it look like now, what happens next? Tell us what's going on.
We have a evidentiary hearing coming up in October and we intend to present somewhere between forty and fifty witnesses who provide very powerful testimony on various aspects of the case. There was almost nothing really to support the conviction to begin with, nothing other than the testimony of the two eye witnesses, and I believe that has been thoroughly shredded at this point through recantations and admissions and the result of other investigations. And we are also focusing on the
very troubling misconduct in the case. It is intimately connected to how the investigation was conducted, and we're going to bring all that out and show how we believe this went wrong, and we very much hope to be successful.
What's the data of the hearing October twelfth. October twelfth, And is this in a federal court.
We are in Windott County District Court, which is a state court. My client is litigating what's called a successive petition under sixtysh fifteen oh seven, and you have essentially a procedural barrier to get over before you can get back into court, but we do have this evidentiary hearing
schedule that we are very very excited about. One of the most compelling things about the case we haven't mentioned this yet, is that the families of both victims have always known my client is innocent and are very much squarely supporting the quest to free him. They know that they did not get justice. Their families did not get justice.
And that's Cheryl. In your experience, it's not a common thing, right, I mean, most of the cases I've seen, even in the face of what could be overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the victim's family sometimes stick with you what they've been told all along because they just can't. They can't even process the idea that they may have been lied to and that the wrong person may have been serving time for the murder of their loved one. So in this case, this is a very unusual scenario.
Isn't it.
It is?
And one of the eyewitnesses is related to both of the victims, and she her family and the family of the second victim to whom she's a bit more distantly related, have always told me that they have known from the beginning that the authorities got the wrong man. They have always known this. They've made periodic efforts to correct this, to a d rest this, to try and get some justice, all without success.
And they were never tested, they never called it testify a trial.
One of them was not called to testify. Another has admitted that she lied, that she was coerced. The other eyewitness seems frankly, very perplexed by her testimony, and it's very clear that it's an eyewitness a misidentification based on manipulation.
And we know also that had this trial taken place twenty years later or so, with everything that's known now about the unreliability of eyewitness identification, there's a very good chance that that would have been discredited because there was no other evidence connecting him to the crime.
You take a person who's traumatized, who has just witnessed a really horrific event, and they can be pretty easy to pressure or manipulate. And in fact, this witness provided in a tape statement my client's last name, a man she did not know and had never heard of, which raises the very interesting question of who gave her the name. It was undisputed at trial that she did not know my client. Yet the fact that there was an original tape statement where she provided his name never came out
that was never admitted at trial. She also stated wrongly that my client was the Lamont who had dated her niece. At trial undisputed that that was not true. It was an entirely different Lamont who was in fact identified by his name to the jury, an entirely different person. So, I mean, the whole thing is troubling beginning to end, really a perfect storm of chaos and horror and misconduct, things being done improperly.
And if there wasn't already enough to chew on, this is the part that really just sets me off. His court a point that Attorney Gary Long was on supervised obation at the time of the trial for failing to diligently handle three prior cases. He was suspended from the bar a couple of years later for failure to adequately hnder a separate criminal case. And he was this bar
in nineteen ninety eight. How is it even possible that in a life or death situation, because this is really somebody's life that they were playing with, right, how could it be in this great country of ours that you take somebody and you say, you know what We're going to give you a lawyer who's already messed up three times. You know it's I don't know, you know, it doesn't make any sense.
Well, when I said, nobody gives a shitt, do you understand what I mean? Do you know that that you know that Tara Morehead. Do you know she's now a federal prosecutor.
Yeah, so Tara Moorehead was the prosecutor in this case. Obviously didn't see anything wrong with her prosecuting a case in which a young man's life was at stake in a very real way in front of a judge with whom she had carried on an affair a few years earlier. I think most reasonable people would agree that one or the other should have been recused from this particular scenario because even if they were saints, and obviously they weren't.
Because she's also the same woman from what I've read, who threatened a witness who tried to come forward with the truth with losing custody of her own children. But yes, so now she's moved up the ladder. Seems like all the bad guys have won here. Al what the fuck?
Well, I think Tara Moorehead's currently married to a police officer. I think there's some other prosecutors over in the federal US Attorney's Office that are married to other police officers. So you're not going to expect them to investigate police corruption, are.
You, well, I guess that would make it tricky, and.
They're not going to do it, and they don't.
I mean, there is so much that could be investigated that ought to be investigated, And you know, I should also point out that sexual misconduct among police officers is not unusual in some departments. When you have poor and vulnerable people encounter folks with ultimate authority over them, ultimate authority in that particular moment, you know, those things can happen all too easily, and they do, and they happen frequently.
You know, when I was an agent, I'm about six foot four. I had a gun, a badge and a radio and everything. At nighttime when I was on my way home or on the weekends, I would not drive through Kansas City, Kansas unless I was accompanied by another FBI agent.
So because you thought they might have run you off the road or something else.
They could do anything.
They could pull me over and not saying they don't know who I was, and they could say I pulled a gun and they could shoot me. Well, I have all that power and authority. What does some little black kid on the street have? And I was afraid?
That's uh. I got to take a minute to process that. That's a very powerful statement, and it really does bring it into perspective. I hope that in exposing the story of Lamont and some of the things that you've shared out that people, you know, get their backs up and get get angry and get involved. These are just people, They're just regular people, and they're they're being so terribly abused and victimized by people who are supposed to protect them. I don't it makes me sick.
I should say that the fear and the terror that some of the citizens experience cannot be overstated. I mean, you have someone with a badge with ultimate and really, as I said in that moment, unchecked authority. There's enormous fear of the police and enormous, sometimes unmovable resistance to getting involved in anything that has to do with the
criminal justice system. I've spent some years, honestly, just earning the trust of some people in the community so that they will sit down and speak with me so that we can investigate the case. Nobody wants anything to do with a case you say, courthouse people walk the other way. They don't want anything to do with that. And ultimately we have been successful in securing some very good witnesses because they did want to help someone they viewed as innocent.
And you know, I should point out here that all of the street talk we have ever heard in the community is that Lamon is innocent, the guy who got wrongfully convicted. It's like everyone knows. The whole community knows, the victims' families know, everyone knows Lamont did not do this. Everyone knows.
I'm sure people are listening, doing and saying, God, this is horrible. But what can I do? How could I possibly help? So if you have any ideas on that to share with the audience, Cheryl, let's start with you and then go to al and give you last words. Take it away.
In a general sense, I'd say, support honest policing, be grateful for the good and honest officers that you know, and when you see wrongdoing done by someone with a badge, point it out, don't be afraid to make a complaint and hope and pray and I don't know, make phone calls, write letters and ask for an investigation of the misconduct that has come to the surface in this case.
Now, the problem is working police corruption. You're not very popular and even the work I did here were Kansas City, Kansas. You're not very popular. I know, a worried about being popular, you know. So it didn't affect me, but there's a lot of agents that simply don't want to do it because they want to be popular. They want people to like them.
Yeah, we need more guys like you out there, because otherwise it's it's the system's it feels. I mean, I'm so depressed after talking to you and hearing that it's actually even worse than I thought it was. It makes me insane, but it energizes me. Okay, thanks you guys. I'll be there in the courtroom with you in spirit on October twelfth.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You have a prepaid call from a monk and in me at Kansas Department of Corrections Lansing Correctional Facility to accept this call, press or say five to review. This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring at any time. You may be speaking.
Now, we just concluded a disturbing and really terrifying interview with al Jenrich, the retired FBI agent and Cheryl Pilot, who are doing such incredible work, heroic work on a case that keeps me up at night, in the case of a man named Lamont McIntyre. And now we have on the phone from maximum security prison in Kansas, Lamont himself. Lamont, Welcome to the show. Thank you have so, Lamont, I want to go back to the beginning, when you grew up and how this all started. I've seen photos of
you with your family. Looked like you had not an easy but a happy childhood. Is that fair?
Yeah?
Can you just describe what it was like. I've heard you talk about Christmas and stuff.
Ah, we tighten it. You know. It's like my mother was just an only parent in the house and he was close my siblings. We did everything together. We stayed in one house, you know, we took care of each other. So glowing up with me was my family was a big game. We didn't really fight about a lot of stuff. You know. It was me and my three brothers and my sister, my odest sister. My mother worked a lot, so my sister kind of watched after us a little
bit some other family members. I used to go to my family member's house, my uncles, and be around them. Our mother was at work. I kind of still stayed around family outside my home, so real family.
Oriented and where you grew up. You had no idea at this time that the police force was really as corrupt as anyone could possibly imagine until this terrible incident occurred. And I want to go back to that. What happened. You were a seventeen year old kid going along with your life, trying to make it in a difficult place, and then one day out of the blue, you get arrested and don't even know what's going on or what happened.
Uh, that's exactly what happened. And I was it was a typical day. It was like a Friday, typical day. I was enrolled in a downity college program where there's alternative school where they would help you get your high school the phone and then they'll get you in college. So it was like a little degree program I was a part of, and it was just a Friday. I wouldn't panish this in the time, or I wasn't looking at what I was doing. I wasn't thinking about it
because it's a typical day. And I get a car phone call saying the police is over my grandmother's house looking for me. Call my mother. We go to the police station, and they started talking about two murders. You know what I'm saying. They would ask me questions about an event that happened that day, and I had no answers for him because I didn't know they were saying
or what they were talking about. So from that moment, I was arrested, charged, and eventually convicted of two murders that I had nothing to do with about.
And we know now that they were deliberately targeting you because of this particular police officer who was up to all kinds of criminal activity himself. And that's the irony of this is that he belongs in jail. And I'm hoping that by the end of this that's exactly what's going to happen. But the idea that this system, this so called justice system, had made a decision that you were going to be their guy. There was this double murder, right, two guys sitting in a car. They were involved in
drug activity, They were dealers. We now know also that one of them had been beaten by the guys he was working for in the drug business. Right, he was working as a doorman in a crack then, and he had feared for his life, And in fact, he had good reason to because I guess he from what I've learned, he has been he had been stealing from them, So that every reason to know that this was a drug hit. And you weren't involved in that gang or that business. Did you know these guys.
I didn't know the witnesses, I didn't know the victims, and I wasn't connected to it at all. That's why so it so hard for me to understand how somebody that could happen, because and I was. I was forefront, I was forward about everything. I didn't tried to hide nothing I was. I was open to what they wanted to ask me about or whatever, because I knew that what they were talking about at that time, I had nothing to do with it, and I wasn't involved. Was
I responsible for the death of those men. So I still don't know to this day, like what happened, like or how I became the main suspect. I don't know how that happened. Still to this day, I don't know what the police officer's motive was to implement me or to plan tell me, or they don't know that this day.
What happened, Well, it does seem like now with everything we've learned, that the officer involved, the first one who arrived on the scene was an officer named Glubski, and he had it out for you because of a family situation, right. I mean, he is a white guy who had a proclivity for women of color and when he didn't get his way, he would exact revenge. And so what it seems like is that in this particular case, he targeted you because your mom wasn't having any part of that.
And that's what makes this particularly sinister and sick. You end up going to trial, and I find it interesting, among all the other things in your case, that they offered you a plea bargain, right, and you didn't take it.
A woman in the rest in the plea bargain, I don't know. I don't even know I was there. So it's like they telling me this stuff. They say something happened. I'm sitting there and I'm listening. They keep saying things to me, but I can't understand how I'm sitting in that situation and I don't know nothing about the crime itself, so plea bar goes far from my mom. I was thinking about the plee barley.
And why I find that and why I brought that up, Lamont, And I've seen the mugshot picture of you, and it really hurt my heart because I could see in your face just how confused you were and scared of a situation that you couldn't possibly imagine what's happening at that time.
I also would think that if you were guilty and they're offering you a deal, and you know your chances of winning in the court are going to be low because they have all these cops and everybody else that's going to testify this, you would have taken the plea bargain. Anybody with their right mind would take a plea bargain. You're not crazy, are you. I'm not right, you don't
sound you don't sound crazy at all. So in the situation like this, I mean, we have in this country over ninety percent and other cases end up in plea bargains. So had you been guilty, that would have been a very logical thing to do. But as an innocent person and probably somebody who still trusted in the system. You went forward with your right to a trial. And that's where things get really squirrely too, because you were represented by a guy who they knew your court appointed lawyer.
They knew this guy was incompetent because he had already been disciplined for three previous cases that he had completely botched. It almost sounds like they did it on purpose. They assigned a guy who didn't go and interview witnesses, who really didn't do anything he was supposed to do. And what was that like? Were you aware at that time that this guy wasn't I mean, I don't even know if it was really on your side, but I mean, as you're watching these proceedings, what were you thinking?
Well, I thought he was. He presented himself like a lawyer. He presented himself like a person in there o Moby had to take care of this business, and he seeing real professional at first. So I didn't know what to expect because I've never been in that situation before anyway, So his first impression was for me, it was a good impression because I didn't know what a lawyer was supposed to do or I was so ignorant to the law and how things worked. I just believed in the
justice system at that time. I really did. I thought there was no possible way, being an innocent person or person that has nothing to do with that crime, that I would be found guilty. So I didn't really pay too much attention to the credibility of this lawyer. It didn't down on me that I would be found guilty of the crime that I had nothing to do with. So I didn't really think about it in those times.
I was just thinking, you can give me any lawyer, anybody from anywhere, and it'd be okay because once they realized they had the wrong person to get ironed out in trial. That's what I was thinking. But I didn't plan all. I didn't think that people would get on the stand and lie. They was gonna fabricate, and I
didn't think that was gonna happen. I had no idea that they had already made it in their mind that I was going to be escaped goal for this particular crime, so ably being needed at a law have they worked in the justice system. I believe in the justice system at that time, I really did.
I think all of us do when we're kids, especially brought up in a good home like you were. You brought up to believe that people are good and that the system is going to work for you. And then you had a lawyer who, had he been competent, I still think would have won your case in spite of all this, because of the simple fact that it was an easy case. The witnesses were not credible at all.
We now know that they also withheld exculpatory evidence, and I'm sure that's going to come to light next month when you have your hearing. So you really didn't have a fair chance, especially not with a lawyer who was incompetent. And ultimately, let's not forget that this particular lawyer was
disbarred not too long after your trial. And again, for the listeners out there, think about that, this is a guy who had been disciplined in numerous cases prior to Lamont's and then ultimately gets disbarred when the extent of his gross incompetence is brought to the Supreme Court of Kansas the attention of the Supreme Court, and then he voluntarily gave up his license to practice law. And that wasn't the end of the nightmare. We now know too
that your appellate lawyer was disbarred. I mean, you can't even make this stuff up. So what happened, Like now you're in the courtroom, the jury goes out, the arguments have been made. You saw these witnesses get up and lie. You saw these police officers get up and lie. Your defense made whatever arguments they made. Did you believe that they would come back and declare you innocent?
I did. I did being I did. I just didn't know that. I didn't know that people can they the sejury thing like the jury selection and our course ran and I had no idea that this is how the system worked. I didn't know that they found me guilty based on false evidence or the kind of evidence that was presented by a certain district attorney. So basically, what she did was set the stage to make it seem as if I was guilty and I did something long and I had a reason for doing this. So the
jury heard evidence it didn't really exist. They heard stuff about me that wasn't even about Lama Mcatide, and she just kind of made stuff up. They told his story and the jury believed it. But at the time before they came back with a guilty verdict. I still didn't think I'll be found guilty because the whole time I'm sitting there and the whole time I'm going through the process of getting to trial, I still had no knowledge
of the actual crimes. So I'm thinking, with my young mind being naive, that there's no way the jury can find me guilty when I'm really not guilty, when I had nothing to do with it. I'm not tied to it at all. The witnesses, the victims, I'm not tied to it. I wasn't in the area when it happened, so I'm thinking it it gets dyed out the jury have come back. I didn't think I was ever gonna be found guilty. I didn't think that I was. It was shocking when they came back with a guilty verdict.
I was I was heart broken.
And can you talk about that that moment, which is the most devastating moment of your life.
When they came in, I noticed that those jury no one looked me in my face, no one looked looked up. Everyone came in looking down at the floor. So I kind of had an eerie feeling, but I still had hope that it would work out in the right way. So when they read the verdict and they said guilty, it's like I seen my whole life flash before me and I and for that moment, I froze and I and I was sitting there and I stood up, and
I just remember saying something. I was screaming something, you know, to the effects of I'm not guilty, and you got the wrong person whatever. And I felt someone hold me or grab me from behind, and I was in shot, so I didn't really I was like a lost moment. But I turned around. I see my mother hold me, screaming, crying like, don't take my baby away from me, don't take my baby. And I'm looking at her and I realized that this is a serious situation. Now I'm but
it still didn't feel real. It was my life in my situation, but it didn't feel like my life or my situation. I felt like I was outside of myself looking at this event happened and I couldn't stop it. So I was in shot. That shot lasted for a few years after that. I was in shot. I just couldn't There was nothing inside of me or my intellect or my experiences in life that prepared me for that moment. It was just something I just couldn't deal with. I
just didn't know how to deal with that. So emotionally, I was just distract I was hurt, I was I was frustrated, I was confused. I just it was just a horrible moment.
Man.
And when you talk about your whole life flashing in front of you as a seventeen year old, did you have plans, did you have a career in mind? What was the outlook for the future where you're still just trying to figure it out?
Yeah, it was things I wanted to do. It was just I was misguided a lot, and I was just in a place where everybody around me was either dying or going to jail or I was just in the kind of environment that didn't produce a lot of hope or didn't have I didn't have a lot of people to look up to or emulate, nothing like that. But I did enjoy taking care of my family. So my life was just basically about trying to take care of my family the best way I knew how, or to
look out for my loved ones. You know, I had skills and things I could do, like I was a barber, I was coherisons I was twelve or you know, I was a comedian. You know, I had these in the back of my mind. I wanted to be a comedian, and I had things I wanted to do. I just didn't know how to get to where I wanted to be. But I still didn't think that my life was of being in prison or going to jail or being in
this kind of situation. And I wanted a life. I didn't know how to obtain the kind of life that I wanted.
So now hold on. Now you're convicted of a double murder and sense to life in prison? Where did they take.
You to the process of life? From the funding and evicted? Then the county about too much? Then you go to Fennister now in Juanna County. They gave me two life sentences in toront and second and after that they send me to a content center which we call hardy you when they see you to determine what classification it would be, what custody will be in. I was the sided backs custody. So from there they give me to prison. They've been in prison at all? Yeah, I was in Hudson. That's
a that's a prison in Kansas. They called Lady in the School one of those tough prisons. You know what, people, you know, it's a prison. It's like the work idea, you have a prison? Is that more? It's the world and at all this dark negative and feel it's hopelessness, it's all those stays negativity.
I mean, you paint a picture that this really is. Yeah. I don't even know what to say to that. It just sounds absolutely terrifying and horrible, especially for somebody so young as you prefer, anybody, especially an innocent person. And then I also want to talk about a very unique aspect of your case, which is the fact that it's one of the few cases I've ever seen where the victim's family has been saying for almost the entire time you've been locked up that you are not the guy, right.
That is not something that we see in this business. And I think it's a very brave thing that they've done, that they've stood up for you steadfastly from the beginning. Have they been in touch with you? Have you spoken to them?
Nah?
They spoke to my legal team, and they spoke to the people who's putting together my defense and stuff. Like that, but not personally. I haven't, you know, it's something what I read in the newspapers or send the news or something like that. But no, I never spoke to nobody like that. They tell me what they tell me. I'm always getting a word on what's being said or how to fetch this field to pitch the family feel so I'm aware.
I also wanted to ask, what is a typical day like for you on the inside? How do you get through it? What's the schedule a typical day?
Typical day is re readjusted. It's like from one day to the next is finding a way to get by for one day, learn something from my days, and then I just try to it just sucks. I gotta repeat it. Like if I have a bad day or I'm frustrated for one day, I go to sleep, wake up to repeat this day again. So I try to find the best I can. I get the best I can out of a day, because waking up and repeat it is the anxiety that's where all that the worst stuff is.
Knowing that for the last twenty three years and two hundred something months and eleven hundred weeks in eight thousand days, it's the same thing. It never changes. So I devote my time to reading and studying and write. I write music and write poetry. I try to keep my mind free as possible. I try to stay out of prison mentally. I try not to. I'm not into prison politics. I'm not in prison mentally, but I'm here. I have to be in my body here, but I try to keep
my mind far from as place as I can. So it's just a bunch of moments of readjusting every day, Like today it's gonna be different than tomorrow because I feel there whether I have to readjust readjust you know, And like I said, I gotta I got a support team, a system of people that's emplaced it always there for me. That's all support me. And I have a lot of love people that love me and care about me. So I focused on that. That's why my attention goes so Finally,
if it's really it's bad. It used to be a lot worse than it is. Now I'm starting to see I'm coming alive now because I can see a light and then it just toddle. I've been there for so long, so I'm better now. But yeah, it wasn't so good before. It's better now. But it was always said to wake up and have to repeat this same cycle over and over again. That stuff is another driving person crazy.
How in the world can somebody in your situation just not give up? You sound like an incredible, incredible person.
I got a credit that the God and my relationship with God always managed to place good people in my life. Man, I've had a support system. Follow the moments is a lot of moments. While I feel like it, what's the point, you know, to keep going to wake up every day to have to deal with the exact same nightmare kind to SKay from the night before. But I had my mother, like she never gave up on me from day one.
Like when the worst moments of my life, you know, I'm felt like I just couldn't do it no more, feel like I couldn't take another step, she would show up. And when she would grab me and hold me and look me my faith and tell me this is not my life I'm passing through, this is not my destination. And so I had a lot of support my family, and I gave my life to God and I pray a lot, I meditated a lot. So initially I was kind of in this dark place where I was just
so hurt and sad and depressed. So I kept people kept coming to my life. There was like becons of light and hope for me. And I thank God for all those people came into my life and supported me. They sure that I always had something to look forward to, because this is a dark place. It's a dark situation where if you don't have enough. For me, it was just support. I have families important. Then years later Sheryl and Centurion Ministries and Innocent Projects, they kept start coming
into my life. They breathe life into me like my second win. And I'm grateful for those people, everybody who supported me and everybody who put forth effort go out every day and do something that helped me get my life back. I'm very grateful for those people.
Well that's I mean, that says it all. I mean, it says so much about your your character that I really I'm having trouble composing the right words to say. But I am glad that you brought up a number of things. Laman. Can you talk a little bit about the Centurion Ministries and their role as well as the role that the Innocence Project and which Innocence Project it was that's been able to help to get this case to the point it is now where we could actually see light at the end of the tunnel.
Okay, that was a other process in itself. Like I had written so many different innocent projects and different people, the President of the United States, it's just playing at the time I was writing, even wrote Open, I was writing now kind of people trying to get some type of help or some type of support. And after like the fiftieth sixtieth letter, I got a response back from the Centurion Ministries in New Jersey in print in New Jersey, and that was in the first time they responded to me.
It was in ninety six, ninety seven, but they told me that my case had to be dead in the water, so it was kind of early in my pill process. So they said they weren't able to help me at that time. So I've ben teagued with my pill process. So two thousand and one I contacted him again and they started corresponding with me. Now from two thousand and one, they kept writing me, responding and saying they're not taking
my case. They just looking at it to see if it has any mariors, to see if it's a case they can take and possibly win. So from two thousand and one to two thousand and nine, I just corresponded with them. They never promised to take my case. They never said they was going to commit any time or
resources to my case. We just corresponded for years. For eight years, there was a process of just corresponding and being two thousand and nine, Jim mcclousey came down from New Jersey said when me and my mother don't visit and said, congratulations, you know we're taking your case and we're gonna get you out of there now. Two thousand and nine.
And we know that the wheels of justice, when they're moving in the wrong direction, they moved very quickly, but when we're moving back in the right direction, they move very slowly. But nonetheless, it does seem like there's a lot of very positive momentum right now. And what about the Innocence Project, Lamona, Which innocence project was it that you wrote to? Because there are insist projects all over the country.
All right, answered projects in New York, Georgia, California, Topeka. I mean, there was so many different I was getting addresses, like my mother was always find an address and something somewhere, so I'll end up just send them to me in our write them. I was writing all over the place, I mean any place I could Kause School of Law, different wast Burn School of Law, just different places, like everywhere anywhere I could if I knew there was an
innocent project around, I'm pretty sure. I got in contact with them and most of them responded a by saying that something they could do. Some never responded, but sit through our ministries and pressing New Jersey they responded. You know, I responded, I've been grateful ever since.
Yeah, I mean it's projects around the country. They're all overloaded and overworked and overburned, and it's important for people to give money to them and also to Centurion mindiustries
to be able to continue this work. The Centurion Ministries really has done, from what I can tell, great work on your case ever since they got involved, and now getting it again to the point where you're going to get your day in court, and I think hopefully this time you're going to get a fair trial with more than competent attorneys, with great attorneys, and the truth will come out if you're even allow yourself, if you allow
your mind to go there. What are you dreaming about when you get out, because I'm convinced you are going to come home and I'm gonna be there fighting right alongside with everybody else. What's the first thing you want to do? And then how do you see the future?
First day, I'm gonna do eat something. I'm gonna go eat some breakfast or something. I'm home. You'll stay home right here, So I'm gonna eat something. That's what I fantasized about. Mostly, I want to eat something that there From there, I want to have a couple of impact or effect on young people making poor decisions that was eventually land them in a situation like this, you know.
So I want to just raise any kind of awareness I can about decision making, because, you know, had I been told how to make better decisions myself, I think even though I was I to the law and this is something that had nothing to do with me, and that I still could have been making better decisions for myself before this stuff even came about. So I didn't want to be able to be there for young people as much as I can. So I can I can help them understand that even though you don't do something wrong.
Even though you don't commit a crime, you can be you still got to be accountable, and you still got to be a mindful of the fact that you're out there floating around and you can easily be put in a situation like that and if you're not being productive
and doing something that's productive out there in life. So I don't want to be able to reach the young people as much as I can, and now that this that to be young just anybody that doesn't want to be able to share my experience and hopefully it will help out in any kind of way.
You know, well, I'm gonna say this, I'm sure that you will do that, and then you're going to have a very positive impact on a lot of people because you have a very rare combination of intelligence and manner that is so positive and strong but still gentle that I believe that you'll be able to affect a lot of a lot of young people and I'm looking forward to watching you do that. There's one other thing I
wanted to raise. I'm always amazed when I speak to someone in your situation, and especially so with you, that you don't seem to be bitter after everything that's happened. And I know you talked about your faith and family and the strength that you get from them, But how is it possible that someone can go through this most unimaginable nightmare still be in it, and yet be as positive and strong as you are now?
Well, I have my moments with anger, I have my moments with I feel frustrated, But I have my moments with anger. But you've always like taking poison helping someone else die from me. I was the only one affected about me being angry. No one else seemed to notice a pay attention to me being angry, So I was just learning experience like being angry doesn't help me. So I just wanted to help myself because I knew, I
always knew I was gonna be here forever. I knew that eventually the truth was surface and I would have a life outside of the wall. So I devoted a lot of time and energy towards helping myself and not hurt myself. So being angry was something that was a hindrance to me, not a benefit. So I just stood firm on what I believe. That's my life with God, and I try to say positive because this place is you got to keep up with yourself and take care of yourself, and anger and stress and all those things
is just shorten your life span. And I got the life to live. So I just choose. I choose to be positive. I choose to not be angry and allow anger to kill me. I don't want to die in this place, and I don't want to have a short life. So I stick farm to what I believe in. And I believe in my faithor and I believe in meditation, I believe in exercise. I believe in taking care of my mom, body and soul. And that's another vote my time too.
Wow. I don't know what else to say. I know that people are probably listening to this. I'm feeling the same way I'm feeling that they want to do anything they can to help. Do you want people to write?
Yeah, that'd be.
Fine, all right? So yeah, do you have the prison I D number in the address to write to?
Yeah? Okay, that's a LAMA back into number six oh five five a l C l PO box two Lance and cans six six four to three.
Okay, there it is, And hopefully people had a chance to write it down and we'll be able to reach out and I know hopefully we'll have at least a couple of people listening to the show, maybe even in a position to do something to help, aside from offer their their support, their prayers, whatever it may be. The mon I'm I'm just gonna turn it over to you and say is your microphone? What do you want to share with the audience.
Well, these kind of cases having more than they should, you know. So it's like a I always see on TV or Dayline twenty twenty each year and it said man so many years in prison, then he get exonerated, and you see this happen time and time again. But what you never ever see or hear or hear about is how much that's the impact of affected the family. For those people like I had a close knit family. We was close and it was a thing. It's just not just like me being affected by an invented happened
in my life. It affects everyone that's tied to me, loved me, or care about me, and it affected my family in a way that it's like it hurts me to see how much how much it affected not only me but my family. And it's difficult because if a man has to go through a certain thing by himself. That's his life, that's his path and life. He gotta go through that. I had to do what I have
to do no matter what. But when you see somebody you care about being affected by what you have to do or what you have to endure a different kind of feeling. And it's like people don't really pay attentions that I know about that, Like when district attorneys of being dishonest when they're trying to get convictions and all that, I don't think they take that consideration how many people they are affected by just not going by the law,
just not being truthful about certain things. It's not just me, whatever issue personal issues they may had about with me. My family's affected by that. My brothers, my brother's kids when all this happened, and they feel like they lost a mother because my mother devoted so much time for trying to get me back out of the system that they felt like they were neglected. So they were affected by that. My older sister was affected, my brother was affected.
I mean everybody was affected. And when you try to hold onto something good, even when you try to get something good this kind of situation, it's still nothing good come from me, it's just always bad. It's always negative. Talent is always hurdles, it's always something. But for the person that's in the middle of it, that's just my experience. But on the outside of it, that's something that people don't ever get a chance to see. That's just a
harsh or harsh reality. But the person that lives based on someone else being in competence when all the stuff basically could have been avoided by someone that's doing their job. But the job people was employed them to do, you know. So I think people should understand that and know that there's a lot of people to be affected by something
like that. I think a lot of pists should be brought to this moment and this kind of situation, so a lot of people can if you ever find another person that situation, it can be more mindful of that. It's not to help in a different kind of way. They could because it's not just about me, it's somebody everybody who care about me too.
It does have a ripple effect on the whole community. All I can do is tell you that you have you have all mine I respect and support, and I have a saying lamont you know I've seen too many miracles to stop believing in miracles. So I'm excited to watch you be the next one or one of the next ones, and we'll never stop fighting for you and for other people in your situation.
One minute remaining.
I'm looking forward to a positive outcome and to getting to know you on the outside and in the meantime. I just all I can say is thank you for being on wrongful conviction with me and sharing your thoughts and strength and wisdom.
I appreciate it, Manik for the time they're having me. All appreciate it.
We'll talk again soon. I'll see you when you get out, all right, all right, man, thanks, 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 Enesis Project, and I really hope you'll join me supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocentsproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph be Sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one