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 do 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 Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today we have a very unique and extraordinary guest, Lucinda Heights claybaw Lucinda, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, and Lucinda, you are such an interesting person, so strong and yet so little all right, and so tough and you've been through such a crazy saga. This is going to be I think the only episode of Wrongful Conviction ever that features a transgender marine coming to
the rescue. And he'll have Mary Poppins making an appearance as well as a big assist from the Nation. So fasten your seat belts because you're in for an interesting ride today. So, Liscinda, where were you from Originally?
Well, I was actually born in Columbus, Ohio. My dad was in medical school to become a doctor, and my mom was a registered nurse. They took off for Colorado when I was a little toddler. So I grew up in Colorado.
How nice where.
Until I was fourth grade, going fifth grade in Cortes, Colorado, the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation, right, So I grew up as a little kid skiing, and I also grew up watching the Ute kids come in and be forced to speak English when they were just preschoolers. And even when I was six years old, I thought, Gee, that's just wrong for them to slap the hands of those kids and make them cry just because they're speaking Ute.
And so I became a bilingual educator because I got that that wasn't okay, that they were hurting kids when they were trying to speak their primary language.
Yeah, that would definitely have an impact on someone, especially when you're young. So you channeled it into life and education, which is I happened to think, one of the most noble professions. So you eventually made your way from Colorado to the Pacific Northwest.
Yeah, I went to Read College.
Great liberal arts school, right, very much so. So you end up at Read College in the Northwest and you settle up there, and what happened.
Well, I thought I wanted to be a doctor, then thought I wanted to be a lawyer. And then I stopped a nuclear power plant for a little while from coming online. I worked for Ralph Nader's Readers. My job was to stop the Trojan nuclear power plant from coming online, and I was not successful. But I thought that that was a personal failure on my part, that I had not been able to stop it, and so I was really stressed out. I'd been stressed out going to Read
because it's a real stressful environment. And I came to the conclusion that maybe what I needed to do instead of trying to change politics go into law, maybe I needed to work on one on one changing the hearts of human beings and the minds of human beings. And so I thought, I'll become a counselor, and I will do something with the arts, because I love the arts, and there must be a way to make that work
with therapy and become a real good counselor. So I put together a program for performing arts therapy, and then I ended up going to New York. So in seventy six seventy seven, I came to New York, and I've lived in a feminist artist collective, took dance classes with different dance companies, and choreographed and auditioned all over Broadway. And so I got to choreograph, and I got to sing, and I got to dance, I got to act a little bit.
I wouldn't give away your age, but by the story that you're telling, obviously you were running around New York in the seventies, so you're not as young as you once were. But yet she has told me earlier that she was out dancing until four o'clock in the morning in New York last night. So it's nice to see that this entire ordeal has not dimmed your spirit anyway, nor your dancing feet. This is an amazing life that
you led. It's got a little bit of the Great American novel, traveling all around, going to different places, hitchhiking Broadway, teaching dancing. Ultimately you end up back in the Pacific Northwest.
Yeah. I studied at the Dance Notation Bureau here in New York. And one of the things I was trained in back then, they were using a technique which is really old, ancient Tibetan chigong. Today they call it tapping. There's the tapping solution. They call it EFT emotional freedom technique. But you use your middle index finger in most of the original technique, and you use the chalker points to tap for one and a half seconds. You do a double tap, and it's just on the part that reverberates
throughout your whole chest and its affecting your lungs. When you tap on that spot. People who have PTSD hold their energy, they hold their fear anger, and they hold that breath and they could be holding that breath for years and that thought that goes with it and all the emotions to go with it, and when you tap, it grounds the person and then suddenly it lets go and you are connected again.
Wow.
And it's a healing technique that's been used for thousands of years by about a third of the world's population that understand Eastern medicine.
Yes, and I'm someone who has benefited from Eastern medicine. I was a skeptic and I became a believer. It's quite extraordinary because I am somebody who's considered myself rooted in science and that does come back.
To comes back.
Exact you. So you were a healer in various different ways, and one of those was a technique, this Eastern technique of tapping. It was just demonstrating the studio. You can't see it, but sort of tapping below the throat and different places and showing me, which is something I didn't know about. So it's interesting to learn. But I want to get into what happened that took you on such a terrible turn in your life. How old were you when this all happened.
I was fifty fifty one.
So let's jump forward to the time of this incident that led to your being wrongfully convicted and sent to prison. So what was the school you were teaching at the time.
I was at Woodburn and I was in an elementary school that was a bilingual program, and I am credentialed as a bilingual teacher in Spanish and fluent, and I was substituting, but I'd taken a position I didn't really want to take. They'd called me and said, no, no, you can't teach music. You have to go teach this other classroom. We can't find anyone else who will take that class. And I thought, oh my god, what is wrong with that class that they won't take this class?
The third graders?
Right, they were a third fourth grade combination.
So how bad could it really be?
I guess, well, you'd think not. But the fact that no other substitute, you know, if nobody else is willing to do it, there's something. And so that was kind of a red flag. I wish that i'd never had taken that class that day. So I went in and sure enough, there was a kid who was really horrible with his behavior. Everybody knew this kid, everybody dealt with him all the time. He made life difficult. The poor kid had always been kicked out of the classroom for
his behavior, so he'd never learned to read. And I was a language development specialist, so I thought, Okay, i've had these reading classes. I'll diagnose what's wrong. I'll analyze what's wrong, and i'll write it up for the teacher, and I'll help this kid out. So I spent some time helping this kid, and my focus was pretty much
on him. And most of the other kids were being pretty good, except for this one girl who was like a puppy dog fan of this other kid, and she would copy everything that he did like an echo, and if he misbehaved, then she would do the same thing too, And she was defying my authority because he was defying my authority. Within the first fifteen minutes of the school day, she had falsely accused some boys of doing some things hitting and kicking, and was trying to get him into
trouble deliberately, and the boys were in tears. When it came to be recess time, I kept nine kids in because they hadn't showed me any work and they'd been playing around, and she was one of them, and she was mad that she couldn't go to recess, and so she was defiant. She refused to do any work. She stuck out her powdy lip and you stop, stomp, stomp, and she started chanting. My training kicked in. It was like oh, And then I realized I had to make
a commitment. This kid has always been passed on, and nobody's dealt with her, and nobody's dealt with these other issues.
So what'd you do? So what happened?
Well after she'd done these things over and over to these other kids, I got down on my knees because she was sitting at her desk chanting to herself, and I just tried to counsel her about being kinder to the other students, and she was just chanting and rocking. And so I went ahead and I said, with my finger tapping her on her manubrium, the upper part of this jurnam for one and a half seconds, I said, you need to change your heart. And she did take a breath, as I thought she might. She did, and
in that split second she took another breath. And then that's when you go ahead, and then you tap on the forehead for one and a half seconds again on the chalker to integrate the mind, and I said, you need to change your mind, because she needed to know that she had control over her own healing, and that she had control of choice. In doing this, and no sooner had she done that, But then she went back to rocking and chanting again.
When was it that you were first accosted by the authorities?
Two days later. Two days later, I was in a kindergarten classroom in that same school and the regular teacher had finally come back. Unfortunately I had not. I'd gone to the liaison to get the address and phone number so I could go on a home visit, because my intention that very first when I had tapped her, was to go on the home visit, say hi, I was the teacher for your child. Today she had a substitute, and I just want you to know this is what her behavior was today, and this is how I responded
to it. But I didn't have that opportunity because the laison was gone for two days, she was absent, the office closed early, so I never went on the home visit and had not had the opportunity to go talk to them. Meanwhile, the kid had gone home, and I don't know what she said to her mom or her dad exactly, but mom had called DHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and said my child has been touched, and that was interpreted misinterpreted as sexual abuse. It wasn't
the case, but that's what they said. The girl, when the regular teacher came back, had gone on the playground and said, the teacher touched me, and that teacher also jumped to conclusions and presumed all kinds of things, and people did not interpret the gesture accurately. The principal had called the counselor and said, I want you to talk to this girl, and so the girl had gone to the counselor. Counselor said, what happened. Can you tell me
what happened? She said, yes, the teacher touched me like this, and she showed a very rapid chigong tap. So she went back and the counselor said to the principal, there's nothing sexual, there's nothing intimate, there's nothing reportable, there's nothing here. The kid's fine, and the counselor conveyed that, but the principle didn't like me, so she said, well, I want you to go back and talk to her again. And so she called the student in again and said, the
principal wanted me to talk to you again. Can you tell me what happened? And again she showed her the chigong tap. So three times now she showed her the same thing and then she said, can you explain that again? And she said, yeah, the teacher hit me like this, and again she showed the same tap, but she used the word hit, and well, how do you feel about that? And it is like the fourth time she's been told to think about it again? Are you sure?
You know?
So they're tainting this witness's testimony, you know, they're starting to shape it. It's not being recorded. So her story had changed just a little bit by being asked four times and being real, are you sure? Are you sure?
And we know that any witness will change their story if there ask something enough times under enough pressure, But when it's a young, impressionable mind like a third grader, especially in this particular situation, who has been known to be an instigator, a troublemaker, or someone who makes up stories, that's a recipe for disaster. So ultimately she changed her story to one in which she was touched inappropriately.
Right, that only came about I think once the DA had started leading her towards that, or the police had started leading her towards that. That was never made clear
because she had said nothing she had just gestured. She did not say a word originally, she just pointed with her just string and that then the gesture was misinterpreted as a point towards her lower part of her body, and they say the part that was covered by a swimsuit on the bottom of her body, and that then was misinterpreted and the DA grabbed that, you know, and flew with and said do you mean this? And she was different that she was nodding all the time to
whatever the DA said, whatever the police said. She just kept nodding her head.
Those of us who grew up in the seventies remember that there was a whole wave of hysteria that swept the country where there were numerous cases of schools, daycare centers and schools for young children where there were reported mass sexual abuse or serial sexual abusees and sometimes with
a satanic overtone. And it turned out that none of those things were true, but dozens of people went to prison for these horrible incidents, and so we thought that that had been you know, I think the general feeling when the public was that that had been something that was in era, But obviously it's something that has persisted. And you're a perfect example of that. So ultimately they came and arrested you.
Yeah, they came to the school and they started to interrogate me, and I had never been treated like that in my life. And they'd use the read technique where the ones on the far side of your peripheral vision on one side and the other ones on the other side of your purfle vision, and they literally make you dizzy, going back and forth so quickly with harsh questions that you start to answer and then the other one comes in and interrupts and they really disorient you. It was
really upsetting. You know, I'm being treated really horribly, and I just can't imagine where these people are coming from. And then it saiding, no, no, you are being accused, and I went what And my jaw dropped, and I said, you've got to be kidding, You've got you know. I couldn't believe it. They weren't kidding, No, they weren't. And that's the thing is, you go, oh my gosh, these guys are serious.
So ultimately, these things we know, gained a certain terrifying momentum of their own, and once you get caught in the system, even someone like you who's highly educated and able to understand what's going on. Even still, once the gears start turning and someone's caught in them, there's really very little chance of getting out. I mean, we weren't a wealthy person who could hire, you know, the dream team.
But nonetheless, you were perfectly capable of understanding the situation and defending yourself, and you knew that this was an absurd situation. But nonetheless, you go to trial. You were offered a plea, which I think is an important part of the story, right.
I mean, well, they offered it, but I said no, I I was a quicker, and I said, I'm not about to say I did something I didn't do. So I went to prison.
So they offered you a plea. It's important to note that in America, ninety five or ninety six percent of felony convictions are the results of plea bargains, because people in your situation look at it and go, well, especially if you're get you're gonna go, well, I'm gonna take the best deal I can get, and the best thing you can get is a lot better than the worst one, And they make that very clear to you. And if
you're innocent. Even still, many people in your situation would have taken the deal because you can see what's going on. You can see you're being railroaded. You can see that your chances of winning when everybody's suddenly out to get you are slim to none. So a lot of innocent people,
tragically in this country end up taking a plea. So it says something, not everything, but it says something when somebody in your situation says, I'm going to take a chance on a seventy five month sentence instead of taking what let's call it a relatively light sentence, because you wanted to stand up for what you knew was true, which is that you were innocent.
Actually, it's because of my naivete though. I just didn't know what the system was like when you're in it, and I think most people in America think it's like
Law and Order on TV or something. But the reality was 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, which they did not, and that I would be able to have all the proof of my innocence just right there, and so that I wouldn't be going to prison because I was a
good person. I hadn't done anything wrong, and I didn't think that they would actually be able to do anything because I knew I hadn't done a thing that was criminal.
Not only that, but there was also a total lack of any physical evidence against you. And basically you're so, I mean, you were convicted on the testimony, which isn't even really testimony, but you were convicted on a wild
accusation made by a third grader. That's basically it. And then these uh, over, let's be polite and call it over zealous law enforcement people who decided to just take that theory which they had actually coerced from this child, and then turned it into a case that some of them maybe could make their reputation on or else they just were who knows, they're just doing their jobs, right, So no.
I think that she was overly ambitious. The Dada was extremely overly ambitious.
So let's go to the trial. So you go to trial, well, and at this point it must be becoming more and more surreal. This whole experience. You who's lived a would call it a virtuous life, helping people in so many different ways. SKI Patrol teaching counselings, mission work, and now all of a sudden you're being accused of a crime that is, you know, certainly one of the last things in the world that anybody would ever want to be
accused of. So you go to trial. Did you believe when you went to trial that the truth would come out?
And I did. I was notive enough to believe that, And all of my friends were also naive enough to believe that, and they kept believing in the system. Everybody wants to believe in the system. We are taught to believe in the system. We want to believe it works for us. I still do well. And the problem is the problem is is that you can't count if the d's are being trained to come out of law school and go in to be deceitful, and they see that the goal is not to seek the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth will help you God. But they actually think that it's an adversarial system. And that was brought home because the counselor, bless her, the counselor went to the DA. Later on, she went to the DA's office and she heard that the ten to two verdict, you know, was against me that I was going to go to prison. So she went to the DA and said, I have information about this kid that didn't get to
be heard by the court. Nobody had ever heard what had happened that I just told you about, you know, the tapping. Nobody had heard that because the DA had maneuvered. So nobody got to hear a whole classroom of kids as affidavit witnesses alby witnesses that nothing had happened. Nobody got to hear the licensed investigator for the licensure who had heard that the kid hadn't said a word. All
this was covered up by the DA. The DA was so despicable that she had the Assistant Attorney General for the State of Oregon put a quash to suppress the investigator from testifying as a witness. Why would she do that except she was covering her own rear end And I couldn't believe that she would do that. She would be so despicable as to not seek truth. That it was supposed to be a seeking process, I thought. And in reality, we've deteriorated to a point where there isn't justice.
All you get is people wanting to have a conviction and wanting to do whatever it takes to get that conviction, to help with the truth. You know, they didn't care, and the DA's office said to the counselor, I'm sorry, we aren't interested in taking your information. We're the ones trying to convict her. The counselor, I had to go the judge directly, and that changed the course of everything for me, because suddenly there was new evidence. There was
evidence of my actual innocence. I'd already been convicted ten to two. And this woman was finally coming forward because she'd been told by the school district not to go and talk to anybody, not to say anything. That they didn't ask her. Well, I had such an inept attorney that incompetent that they had not asked the questions. I said, you need to ask you this question, but they didn't. So finally she was coming forward on her own. The DA wouldn't take her statement. She went to the judge
and she wrote out a statement. She's talked to him for an hour and said, yes, I swear that this is you know I will speak.
This is after you were convicted, after.
I was convicted, tend to do so.
This is during the sentencing phase. Yes, let's go back to this second. First of all, this tragic wul happened to you, But it's also sad because this child, who was obviously a troubled child in the first place, also is now caught up in this. I mean, who knows what she ends up believing, whether this actually happened or not or whatever. And who wants to go through that process and be a subject of such a highly publicized and politicized event around your own sexuality when you're a child.
I mean, it's just it's all very distasteful and disgusting if you think about it. So you're convicted ultimately and sentenced.
To what mandatory minimum in Oregon is six years, three months.
Seventy five months in prison, right, seventy five months. That's that's a long time.
Yeah, especially when you actually hadn't done anything.
Done anything. I hadn't done anything ever.
And also was trying to help, you know, because I was I was trying to help a kid. I understood, and you know, I'm sure other people you know, served a lot longer, but you know, I went in I was a girl scout, I was a goodie two shoes, I was a Quaker and.
You were in your fifties and you were.
A mom, and I was an old, grandma, aged person. Yeah, so yeah, it was It was not the lifestyle I was used to.
So let's let's talk about that, because you have a remarkable story of having survived in a what would look to be an impossible situation when you went to prison. Here you are, You're a fish out of water to start with, and on top of that, you're a convicted sex offender, which is a terrible thing to be in that environment. So how did you get through it? I mean, you're you're not a big strong woman, right.
That was the second smallest woman in prison, right, I weigh ninety five pounds wet. Yeah. So I went in and I knew that God knew that I was innocent, and I knew eventually, I wasn't sure why I was there. At first I was upset, but then it was like, no, no, no, I'm here not because God put me here. I'm here because a little girl was very confused and lied and
has real mental troubles and emotional troubles. So I just prayed to have some direction, to try to see beauty every day, try to see goodness, try to see some kindness and try to be that for other people. I came to that realization that I had to be that for other people. I couldn't just want it for myself, because it's a real hell hole when you're put in prison and people have no idea that could be a whole program onto itself. It's a hell hole. So you
have to create God within there. You have to be God within there. You have to be the goodness. You have to be the beauty. You have to be the kindness. You have to live it, you have to emanate it, you have to create it.
But ultimately you need more than that.
Well, in the miracles, in the form of my marine, I was in choir. I chose to go to every church service that existed that they would let me get into my schedule. So I went to the Mormon choir for women. And behind me, sitting in the Mormon choir was this base voice. And I turned around and it was a transgendered marine six foot three or four size thirteen shoe big fellow who was now a woman, and
she protected me. She had been in the military, and she would walk around the yard with me and growl, people who are giving me our time, and she was wonderful. She's still writes me every week to this day.
I'm picturing this tiny little Lucinda walking around with the transgender marine, growling at people, and the whole scene is sort of surreal. Of getting a great visual here. So you found your protector.
I found somebody who took care of me between a year and a half two years that I was in there, and that was really wonderful. When she left, she was released, I really had to really pray then that I would have the armor of God for protection, that there would be guardian angels to protect me, that somehow that I could be protected.
Let's talk about Mary Poppins, because Mary Poppins is not part of a lot of wrongful conviction stories.
The reason I was singing Mary Poppins in the county jail when I was first arrested. I had never been in prison in my life, and so I had no idea what to expect. And it was a long time. You're in there for six hours and more, you know, just waiting, you know, for my bail to come through that very first time, and I realized that I needed to just start doing something positive so I wouldn't feel so depressed, and so I started singing all of the songs from Mary Poppins because I knew him by heart.
And this a woman came in who was in there for drug charges, and you know, she was kind of out of it for a while, and then she said, she said, honey, you need to not do that anymore. I said what, And she goes, you have a nice voice, you know, but but you need to not sing like that. And I said why, I don't understand, and she goes, well,
you're too happy. You're too damn happy. People in prisoner are kind of unhappy and messed up, and they're going to want to kill you if you sing any more of those you know, a spoonful of sugar.
So you survived with your faith and you're a guardian angel. What was your marine.
Friend's name, Sandra Soho?
So, Sandra Soho So.
She's now Reverend Sandra Soho.
After sand Soho was released, How did you manage to build up this armor and steal yourself against these people who are out to get really out to get you.
Well, before I was put in prison, I was an AVP Alternatives to Violence Project facilitator that's a Quaker program where they put half guards and have inmates together and teach about transformational power. They teach about love and being willing to be vulnerable and surrender and by breathing through not being afraid, breathing through fear, that you get through fear and then you are vulnerable. But there actually is a certain amount of miraculous power, transformational power that can
come to you. And sometimes I had that experience. Other times no, but I did have people coming up to me ready to punch me and stab me and things, and I would pray and say, you know, friend, I have absolutely no ill will towards you. You are welcome to read my affidavits. My attorney says, you can read all about my case so you can see that for yourself that I'm innocent, that I never would ever harm anyone, and am I have no desire to harm you, and I have no desire to do anything that it would
be disrespectful to you. And in one case, the woman just stopped in her tracks about three and a half feet from me, and you could just see her body expression and her body relax and she sat down and she I said, would you like to read my affidavit? She said, I don't need to.
So that was a very serendipitous. Yeah, situation, the fact that you had this training in defusing exactly the situation that ironically found yourself in. So there was a you had more than one guardian angel, as it turns out. And how important was the support of the Quaker community. Were you getting letters, were you getting positive affirmation from people? And what did that mean to you?
Laring this time, Well, everybody who's out in the outside world should right to end inmate. I don't think people appreciate how important it is. It's like Christmas, you realize that people care about you. It's a connection to the outside world. It's surreal in there, it's a hellhole, and people don't know how critical it is to have that connection to the real world where people are kinder and are more loving and are not as violent. I was
lucky because I had three different church groups. I had the United Methodist Church, I had my Quaker meeting, and I had the UCC Unitarian Universalists. I was involved with all those congregations, with helping hopeless people and helping immigrants and all these different things I did in for mission work before I went into prison, and so all those people came and visited me. Good friends that I'd known for years came to visit me. And some of them
came every week, faithfully, every single week. And I was really fortunate because there were women that never got a visit.
Can you remember? Would you want to talk about what was the worst and the best moment that you had, if there even was the best one, and it sounds like there was when you were in prison, Well.
I'll give you one of the worst ones was a woman who had thought that the label on me was true and didn't know me. I was in the kitchen working and she came up and took the bucket of caustic floor cleaner like draino, you know, bad bad pH and threw it in my eyes and face while I was working on the floor crew and that immediately caused a chemical burn on my eyeballs, my face and arms and stuff that were hit by a little of it
that wasn't as bad, it was just it hit my eyes. Well, I do have only fifty two percent of my vision now in my left eye. It ate away at the sclere of my eyes. Whites of my eyes were brought down. A couple of tissue layers, so all my blood vessels were exposed, and my eyes were really very red, and oh god, it hurt, It really hurt. And I had never had anything hurt that much in my life, and I'd had childbirth. So I just was crying and they would not let me have medical treatment for my eyes.
All they would do is they give me an ice pack and told me to go back to my unit. And so I walked down the hall from the clinic the infirmary with this ice pack on my eyes, and I had not even gone a hundred feet and they took my ice pack away from me. I had not even gone a hundred feet. For Pete's sake, people die in prison because they aren't getting proper medical treatment. People die because there's no protection. People die because there isn't adequate care.
We need to treat people in our presence as human beings somehow or other that that's been lost. What was the happiest moment.
I honestly, oh, okay, I can't think of something happy. I didn't think I could for a minute. There on my birthday, they had the Red Hat Society and I was invited and they sang Happy Birthday to me and they had a positive, inspiring message, and they were volunteers from the community who were so sweet and so kind.
The people that are kind to you in prison you can count on one hand, and the rest of the guards and the rest of the people that are in there, you know, are pretty sadistic and damaging and hurtful to people. I think we had cake and ice cream and they sang Happy Birthday to me and they made me the queen of the day and I got to wear a little crown. I mean that sounds really stupid, you know, but I just it was a moment that was so
out of character for everything that was going on. It was almost surreal, and it just it just tickled my heart to know that there were people in the world who loved me and cared about me out there enough that they were trying to communicate to.
Me light in the darkness. It's amazing. You told me earlier about this incredible statistic about the percentage of sex abuse claims that actually turned out to be real.
Of sex abuse accusations.
Right, sex abuse excusations. So whatever you're thinking out there, whatever the lowest number you're thinking as a percentage could possibly be, it's lower I believe, so, Zinda, can you just tell us from your research what that is.
Well, when I was first wrongfully charged, I had started doing research on teachers and false accusations to see what kinds of things people have done and that might help me, you know, to figure out what to do next. And I popped up with information on teachers in India and then also closer to home, people in the Welsh National
Teachers Union. Out of all the students who were falsely accusing teachers, they had discovered that it was three point two percent or actually real cases of sexual abuse, and
all of the rest were false accusations. And so they had gone to the Parliament and demanded that when students would dare to do this to a human being, a teacher, that there needed to be this person on a list of people that were falsely accusing and damaging people's lives, ruining totally destroying their careers and destroying their families and their financial retirement and just everything. I remembered that, and
then they did research not that long ago. Mark Gotsey had a great chapter in his book referring to the recidivism and that all that research on sex abuse recidivism had gone back to an article that had been misinterpreted. The research actually said between thirty percent and eighty percent
recidivism rate depending upon the type of person. They have done research more recently than that nineteen eighty six Psychology Today article, and that more recent research in what almost fifty states now they have one point seven to a maximum of three point eight recidivism, So, in other words, that's lower. Sex offenders actually recidivate at a lower rate than murderers or any other crimes. They are one of
the lowest of all of the crimes for recident. So all of this highly dangerous fear mongering which had gone into federal legislation and state legislations everywhere, that, oh, you've got to protect people, you can't let them be so many feep within a school, you can't let people be close, is not based on research.
It's so out of controls. There's almost a million people in the sex offender registry in the United States, I
think the estimates. I read this article in The Economists which said that about fifty thousand of them actually are of any danger to end right, and some of them are people who were kids when they were having an affair with another kid, and then you know every state has different laws, and you know, it's like it could be a seventeen year old with a fifteen year old or a six And by the way, listen, I'm a father, and I think that everybody needs to be responsible and
we need to take care of our children. But those laws were designed to protect children from predators, from adult predators, and they've been so badly misused and abused, and there's so many people in the system now and then it's very very important for people to remember exactly what you just said, So I'm going to repeat it, which is that almost ninety seven percent of cases in which a teacher has been accused of sexually abusing a student have
turned out to be completely demonstrably false. So if you end up on a jury and you end up in a courtroom, you need to understand this right because the next Lucinda is out there, probably standing trial somewhere in America right now, and it's because of most likely and there are some obviously, there's some that are guilty, but it's overwhelmingly likely ninety seven percent chance that what you're hearing in that courtroom is absolute horseshit, and you need
to be aware, and you need to really dive into it, and you need to look at the facts that you need to understand that you have somebody's life in your hands, and that what you're hearing is overwhelmingly likely to be false, not true.
And I blame a lot of it on the over ambitious goals of DAS and DDAs and the lack of willingness on the part of police to investigate. Everybody who has a responsibility for investigation in this sort of a thing needs to actually investigate, and they need to be worth their salt as investigators. I mean, the police force that I dealt with would bear in police department. They were absolutely lousy at their jobs and they didn't do a good job.
They were lousy, and they were lazy, and they were careless, and they were cavalier about destroying somebody's life. Actually more than one person's life, Your life, life of your loved ones, the lives of other people that you could have been helping in the community, the life of the child who was at the center of this case. Let's talk about your exoneration and how that felt after this madness, this ordeal that you had been through. Yeah, ultimately how did you get exonerated?
They had taken away my organ teaching credential when I was in prison, and then that went on too a national consortium Washington State suddenly sent a letter saying, we are going to start revoking your teaching credential because Oregon says you're a sex offender. Well I wasn't. I knew that that was a wrongful label. And I begged the people in Washington to let me win my appeal, to take all of the evidence, review all of the evidence.
I had affidavits that proved my actual innocence, and to take all that and I was confident that they would not revoke my credential. And they did. And the woman who was the administrative lod judge said that I was of good moral character, that I was fit to teach, that the DA had acted on her own personal opinion and no substantiate evidence existed, and that the judge and
Oregon had not followed the law. And those set me in the perfect position now to go to the Oregon State Bar and to have those people looked into the complaint for disbarment, which is the first step towards proscatorial misconduct in the state of Oregon. Nobody's ever had the guts to go against the DA in the state of Oregon. And my minister told me that I needed to do it because nobody else would do it, because everybody else was afraid. And I've been afraid for five years. I've
been out now and I've been afraid. But I realized that if I don't that she will continue to hurt people. And she has. She's continued to hurt other families. She's continued to destroy other lives. And it's time for a law to be passed on proscatorial misconduct in Oregon. It's time for a compensation package for people such as myself who needed to have compensation because they took away our livelihoods.
And it's time to be able to get a lot of the other pieces of support systems that are needed for exoneries and people that are actually innocent.
But wait, we skipped over one step. Your conviction was overturned after how long and how did it actually take place?
I won my appeal. I had been in prison waiting for justice to happen by having my appeal, and July eighteenth of twenty twelve, I won my appeal. The conviction was reversed. The sad part about that was that at that point that, in spite of the fact that the state was not going to take it to the Supreme Court, the DA was not willing to let go and admit that she'd made a mistake because she knew that she would get in some real trouble in admitting anything, so
she wasn't going to let me go. So I was in prison and I was being told you've won a new trial, You've got your chance. And then my friends came to me and said, we don't have the money for a second trial. We're sorry, they cried, We're so sorry. We couldn't get enough money for you for a good attorney the first time around. We don't have the money to do it a second time. And that's the problem with the ninety nine percent. When we're poor, there is
no justice. There is no innocence commission or a free People's court or a Desmond to to Reconciliation commission where you can come in and say I need to have all the evidence presented to clear my name. There's no way to do that, and our system is so screwed up. Right now, I am sorry, I have absolutely no faith in the system anymore. I've seen that it's all arbitrary. But I was in prison. I wasn't going to last I was going to die and there waiting to be
proven innocent. And my son came and he cried. He said, Mom, everybody knows you, knows you're innocent. Please come home. And so the conviction was reversed, the charge was dismissed. But then they said that they wanted me to do a no contest plea. I would not say that I was guilty.
I refused to do that. They said, no, if you say no contest, it means that the DA could come up with some evidence against you for a misdemeanor harassment because you touched that kid, you tapped her in She said that she was a little bit bothered by it, right, which is so, and so that's really overcharging hypercriminalization. Stretching the meaning of harassment doesn't fit any of the categories.
It is worth noting that the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the wrongful conviction based on the fact that the trial court had refused to allow the testimony of your expert witness, doctor McGovern, which goes back to what you were saying before she should have been allowed to testify, and had she testify, you never would have been convicted because she knew the truth and nobody would listen. It's insane.
And then ultimately they give you this, this sort of Sophie's choice where we had to plead no contest to a class BE misdemeanor an unrelated incident, because they have to have their little pound of flesh right, they have to still get their little They didn't get enough out of you, right, they didn't hurt you enough, They got to give you this extra little kick in the in the in the in the behind.
I knew that I would ultimately be able to bring the truth of that to bear because her prosecutorial misconduct of saying I had to please something that she wasn't willing to go with the truth, that she would let me die in there instead. I knew that eventually something would happen, and sure enough, the Washington State Court judge ruled that there was not any crime, that harassment was absolute garbage. But it took going to another state because
Oregon was so corrupt. Nobody has ever fought those das. And it's because I don't blame them their milk toast because they have to go every day into court and deal with those same das for their other clients. They aren't willing to put themselves on the line because once they do go for an innocence case and actually defend somebody and advocate for somebody, they'll never be able to
work in the state again because their career's over. They had to be willing to destroy their careers for me, and that was a lot of task someone I had to go a different route.
Well, Lucinda, I'm sort of at a loss for words to express how much I appreciate and those of us in the innocence movement appreciate your courage and your willingness to put yourself on the line to bring these things to light and to ultimately go back to what you were doing all along, which is helping other people. You found yourself in a situation you didn't want, no one ever wanted to be in. But now you're turning it around.
You're channeling it into a positive message, into a fight that few people be willing to take on, and I salute you for that. So we have a tradition here on wrongful conviction, which is that we like to turn the mic over to close the show to you for any last words that you want to share.
Okay, don't presume that people are guilty when you see them on TV. Don't presume when you hear about a case. Don't write that person off is about person. Don't presume that they're guilty of anything, because it may just be a dirty da that is trying to rise upward. Don't presume. Always keep an open mind and try to listen with an open mind and open heart.
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 Nisnce Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to innisonsproject 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 Flahm is a production of Lava for Good podcasts and association with signal company Number one