America has two point two million people in prison. If just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two thousand people. That's a lot of people's lives destroyed.
If the system want to take you out of society, they will do it no matter what laws they have to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, but they're breaking the lord.
Having to hear those people say that I was guilty of a crime that I did not commit, and then hear my family break down behind me and not be able to do anything about it. I can't describe the crushing weight that was.
I'm not anti police, I'm just anti corruption.
A lot of times we look and we see something happen to somebody and that's the first thing we said, that could never happen to me, But.
They can. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Ronful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today we have a very unusual, amazing group of guests. I have the honor of having the distinguished Professor of Government and Law, Mark Howard on the show. And Mark's been on before, and that's what I want to say. Welcome back to Ronfak.
It's great to be back, Jason. Thanks for having me, and.
This time he brought back up with him is one of his star students in the pre law class at Georgetown that he teaches with Marty Tankcliffe. So, Jessica Scarato, I'm glad you're here, Thanks for.
Coming, Thanks for having me Jason and.
Calling in soon will be an incredible man, John Moss who has been incarcerated for almost four decades for a crime he most obviously did not commit. So we're looking forward to get his call. Just any minute now.
Hello, you have a call from John Mossler and Innate at not all the Correctional Complex. This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring at any time.
John, I'm sorry where you are, but it's good to have you on the air with us and give the public some idea of what's really going on in this terrible case and in this crazy system that we have. So, John, I want to go back to the beginning. You grew up in Cleveland, right, Yeah? And what was that like? Did you have a happy childhood? Was it difficult? Can you just give us a painted little picture of what your upbringing was like?
Well it was it was a good upbringing. I'll come up will both parents at home and both working parents and I have two brothers, two sisters. I grew up.
Will you know what did your parents do well?
My mother she worked in the transportation of patients at the Cleveland Prennick Hospital in my father he worked out Cleveland Builders. You know, my parents was well providers. They took care of all of us.
So then you ended up in West Virginia, which was the worst place you could have possibly been, as it happens, but you had no way of knowing that. But you had you had family in West Virginia. Is that what you were doing there?
Yeah, my father's grandparents lived here in West Virginia. It was the reason that I had come here. You know, I wouldn't say I was the best kid growing up. You know, I gave my parents, you know, a hard time, and you know, they thought that coming to West Virginia might do me some good. And you know, my grandparents they needed help. We had a little farm there in Saint Albans, and you know I worked in the farm
and helped my my grandfather out around here. And you know, I started going to school there here in West Virginia. It was because my grandparents needed a little help around the houses.
You know, come to Western Junior, and of course that was where this tragedy took place. And it really is a tragedy what happened. And it's a tragedy on a lot of levels, because not only was the entire family brutally gruesomely murdered, and not only was the actual killer allowed to walk free. But of course what's happened to you is just an unimaginable fate that you've been locked up for almost four decades now for a crime that
everybody knew from the beginning who actually did it. And this is where I want to bring Mark and Jessica into the conversation, because obviously they've been doing some terrific work on trying to get you finally out and home where you belong. So Mark, how the hell did this happen?
So this case came to my attention about six months ago when I was starting to teach a class with Marty Tankliffe about wrongful convictions, and we were looking at cases of wrongful convictions, and I talked to Brian Ferguson, who himself is an ex Hoonnery and who's a student of mine of Georgetown, and Brian said, wait till you hear about this case about John Moss, it is surreal and he kind of talked me through it. I talked to Jimmy Gardner and realized about the friendship, which added
a whole dimension to this. And the more I learned, the more I realize we have to take on this case. And so we have a team of three students who've been working on it, and Jessica's here to represent them, and I'll let her tell a little bit more about their experience as they learned about the case. But it's something to think about. Thirty eight years, it's just an
astronomical amount of time. But also the fact that from day one, literally day one, we knew who committed these murders and we have no idea how on earth John Moss ever got connected to this.
Well, Jessica, let's go back to the murders themselves, because this is an innocent family. It's almost like a Manson style killing, right, This is how terrible this was. So can you take us through that tragedy that happened that John ultimately was turned into a scapegoat.
For absolutely so is A triple homicide took place in Saint Albans, West Virginia, which is right outside of Charleston, in nineteen seventy nine, December of nineteen seventy nine. It was a mother and her two children. The children were seven and four years old. They were brutally slain. The mother was stabbed multiple times. Both children were hanged in some way and suffocated. One of the children was drowned, the other was hanged over the door. And juxtaposed that
with the fact that it was almost Christmas. It was December, so you have a Christmas tree, and then on the other side of the crime scene photo you'll see a child hanging over the door. So it is it extremely intimate, passionate, just gruesome, horrific killing.
And this case is so bizarre because the father confessed on the spot pretty much ver he walked through in great detail and took the police to the house and explained. And again this is where it goes to like, I mean, a monster, this guy's a monster. He said that he drowned the one child because a kid liked to swim.
He hung the other one because she liked to swing right, And I forgot what he said about the mom, But I mean, when you get to that, it's like, oh, my god, this is really macabre, and one would think that law enforcement would be interested in getting an individual like that off the street where he can't do that to any other innocent people. But what the hell happened?
How did John end up? Why is he on the phone with us right now instead of being raising grandkids or whatever he's supposed to be doing.
Yeah, that's a great question.
Yeah no, And I've been stuck with that for thirty eight years. And you know, and they kill me. It goes back to my uncle, my uncle Alton, who lives here in West Virginia. It was something about him, but I didn't find out a few years later that he was the one that told law enforcement there's a John Moster, and you know, he might know something about the class. And you know, I was dumbfounded when the troopers said
that on the stand. And to this day, I don't know, and if anybody else know, they haven't told me yet. Why he told police that I knew something about these friends. I wasn't there. I knew nothing about the family. Besides, they lived in my uncle's hotel and later moved into one of my relatives houses. I see the kids in the yard, they're playing, But these are kids, Why would anybody want to do that? And they try to say the reason of being robbery. These are people that didn't
have anything, the furniture and everything that they had. My fam began to these folks, and why would I pick one of the poorest families in the neighborhood to.
Rob right, that's crazy. And why would you steal furniture that you already gave them? That's completely bizarre. And this is so nuts, right, And let's go back to you Mark, what the hell happened? Right? Because here you had a case that was over and shut. Yep, right easy, this one, this one came with instructions. Right, you have the killer going here it is. Here's what I did. Let me walk you through it. He was almost like he was proud of.
It, that's right. And he also apparently had been abusive towards his wife. He'd said, I'd never wanted to have a family, never wanted to have kids. It all made sense. It was done, and we still don't know this, and we'll never know because he's no longer alive. He did remarry the husband, he did remarry. There are some allegations that he was abusive towards his second wife. But he's no longer alive. But we don't know why the police let him go. John has no idea. I mean, we've
all tried to think of every possible angle. It defies logic, common sense, common decency obviously.
I mean you'd think too, even if a prosecutor is so morally bankrupt that they don't care about locking up an innocent guy, or this one't involve children, right, These are innocent children that were slaughtered in a gruesome manner, and so anybody would want, any citizen, any human being, would want that killer locked up forever to keep society safe.
But it gets even worse because there was essentially a cover up that came into play once they somehow got John. Now, they picked up John, who was incarcerated on another charge unrelated at age seventeen, and brought him in and beat the crap out of him and got what's probably a classic case of a false confession with physical violence, threatening him, threatening to kill him, and at some point he broke down, and that led to his conviction and the fact that it has stuck for all of these decades.
So they replaced a true confession with a false compression.
That nothing matched the crime scene. It's absolutely clear that the person who made that false confession, John knew nothing about the crime. And there's more in terms of the
medical examiner changing his report. The medical examiner initially filed a report that stated that the killings took place at a certain time when the husband was home, and eleven months later, when they picked up John, for reasons that we still barely understand had to do with his uncle calling in and saying that John was somehow involved, the medical examiner changed the time of death by a substantial number of hours, something that we've talked to medical experts
and medical examiners and they say they've never seen something like this before. So that suggests there was a much bigger cover up that was involved.
Jessica, You've been diving deep into this case now, and I've been so impressed with the work that the Georgetown pre law students have been doing, you and your team as well as the other teams. So do you have any theory Do you think that there was some connection between the actual killer and the authorities that they would have wanted to protect him, and so he was a ups driver. It doesn't really make a lot of sense.
Yeah, Initially we looked for that kind of connection, something that would explain why they made this very sudden switch in focus from the person that we believe is the true killer and the person who all the evidence points to to John. And it's interesting because there had been previous allegations by the father and husband that his confession was coerced. He claimed that there's very little evidence to
actually support that. Of course, we don't have the video recorded interrogation itself, but a judge upheld that confession as voluntary, so they were picking a jury for his trial. The judge upheld his confession as voluntary. That exact same day, the West Virginia State Police dispatched troopers to Ohio to
pick up John. So it's very unclear why when you have somebody who all the evidence points to, who has confessed that confession is upheld as voluntary in a court of law, you're picking a jury, why all of a sudden you would go seek out another suspect, even on a random tip from a person in the community, right Like, that doesn't make a lot of sense. And to me, there's no way that that isn't suspicious. There's no way
that that isn't a miscarriage of justice. All the evidence, all of the science point to this one particular person, and they're obviously seeking out for some reason that I don't know another person.
Well, I mean, it's hard not to think. You have West Virginia, which may be the whitest state in America, right, and you have initially the confession of the white male suspect replaced by the false confession of a black male suspect. I mean, I don't know. I wasn't there, but it sounds like that may have had some role in it. Again, which impossible to figure out these motives because it doesn't make any damn sense. Okay, so let's go back to it. So John, you get picked up and brought back to
West Virginia. What's going through your mind?
Well, we can go back farther than that. When I first met these troopers, I was in the detention home on the unrelated charge, and these two troopers the chief investigators of a triple homicide. They come to Ohio while I was in the detention home to talk to me about these murders, and they wanted a sample of my blood, and I told them I didn't have anything to hide, and if they wanted, you know, they pricked my fingers,
squeezed samp of my blood on a cotton swath. If there was a lady attorney visiting, another client came over to ask the officers what were they doing, and the troopers said they had talked to my attorneys in Ohio and it was okay, and they would be over there later to talk to me about it. The lady attorney advised them that they should come back when my attorney
was there. So when my attorney finally got there, he said, never talked to any West Virginia troopers about coming over and getting the sample of my blood, and he went to court. Supposedly he got the blood back, but years later, come to find out this sample of blood that these troopers took while I was in the detention home made it back to West Virginia. But my lawyers were telling me he was able to get the sample of blood
back before these troopers left Ohio. But come to find out they took this blood supposedly, and they gave it to Fred Zane and then I didn't find anything out about into the Zain investigation, and that's when it come out about kim fabricating and falsifying reports and everything. And this sample was never disclosed to any of my attorneys doing my first trial, knowing my second trial. But that's how I come to meet these.
Two troopers and Mark. Talk about Fred Zayne for a second, because this is one of the most notorious figures in American if there was a hall of fame of malfeasance in the court system, and malfeas is not a strong enough word because it's actually criminal activity that he was engaged in. But if there was a guy who was one of the worst framers of innocent people in the country, he'd be up there, right.
There are so many layers of misconduct in this. First of all, why are they coming and taking a blood sample from a seventeen year old in another state? Right, so raises the possibility what do they do with that blood? They may have actually planted it at the crime scene. Then you've got the person coming in to analyze that is Fred Zayne, who's been found in at least one hundred and forty cases to have falsified blood and other forensic evidence, and probably they're countless more that we don't
even know about. So here we have John who gets convicted based on a false confession that the police beat out of him. That's classic and completely unreliable. And this so called blood evidence that had the testimony of somebody who perjured himself and falsified evidence and as a criminal in every respect. And that's the totality of the evidence against John. And so what has unfortunately blocked John from having a chance of coming out is that Zayne at
the time was not the head of the office. He did all of the work in John's case, but there was a supervising person and even though that supervisor said I just signed off on everything Fred Zaye did, the fact that Fred Zaye wasn't the supervisor he became the supervisor a few years later, means that courts have rejected John's challenge to his conviction based on the work of
Fred Zaane. They're somehow saying that it wasn't actually a Zay case, even though Zayn did all of the work, because there was a supervisor who just was a rubber stamp. And so there are a lot of people who've gotten exonerated who were so called Zain cases, and Jimmy Gardner is one of them. But unfortunately they're not letting John join this group even though he clearly belongs in it. And that's just outrageous.
And let's not forget the fact that fred Zaye himself was convicted, right, that's hard, right in this system for the idea that a chief stroologist would actually be convicted and sentenced to four to twelve years at prison himself. So we have the actual real criminal is the one who falsely testifies and inculpates an innocent guy, which is John who's on the phone with us. Now it's all completely backwards. And what about the public defender? I mean, John,
were you? I mean it sounds like just from the little bit that you've told us already, that this public defender you had was not up for the task.
Well, the first attorney I had in my first trail, he was a Pase attorney. My parents hired him. I didn't have a crump defender into my second trial. But everybody took what was fred Zane was doing being the gospel. You know, nobody went back to check anything after my
conviction in eighty four. My attorney in my first trial, he made a statement in the newspaper during the Inzane investigations that he had talked to one of the jurors on the elevator and the juror told him that you had everything covered, but you just could not explain the blood. You could not explain that blood. But the lawyer even then, nobody would go back to check out Jane's credentials, to check out any of the testing. They just took his
word as being the gospel. My second trial attorney, he'd done nothing. He didn't do no investigative work in trying to find out if the blood was reliable anything. Sped of West Virginia wanted to do DNA tests and fred Zane they called him back from Texas during my second trial. And when Zane done tests in my second trial, he
destroyed everything. And you know, I was not able to have any other lawyer, any other investigators, any other doctor, sciences or whatever to review any of fred Zane's work when he was doing the DNA and he just destroyed anything. And that's why today I don't have the evidence to try to test to find out who is the real perpetrator. Fred Zane knew who he was because fred Zane he had to blood evidence and when he found out it
wasn't me, he destroyed everything. And my lawyers they dropped the ball in the early years of mind cancelations of questioning the terrology work in my case.
And Jessica, as a pre law student and soon to be lawyer, you didn't get into Georgetown without having a lot of active brain cells, right, And obviously you have a big heart. But when you hear this, it must pain you to think about these lawyers just basically doing nothing, I mean, not helping their client. It's almost like the doctor just letting somebody die. Right. How does this sit with you and thinking back on it, what would you have done differently?
Yeah?
Absolutely? And John, for that matter, his attorney's never looked for the blood evidence. That's something that we think is insane about this case is that the assumption that every attorney from the revelation that Zane had been contaminating evidence onward has never actually gone to the West Virginia crime lab and looked for the blood evidence. And the assumption was that it was destroyed. But we don't know that.
And in all five Zane related Kanawa County exonerations, which is where John was incarcerated, they had found the blood evidence after the fact, after having assumed that it was destroyed. They had found it later.
So it might still be there in other way, So.
It might still be there in other words, and nobody had looked for it. And obviously it's much harder to try to find it now than it was when all these revelations came out in the late nineteen eighties early nineteen nineties. And so it's so terrifying and disheartening to me that why would you not look for that?
That's crazy And it's so crazy too. I mean, John, when you were first arrested, who is President Jimmy Carter? So long ago? I'm just trying to give the audience a sense of how long.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it was Jimmy.
Yeah, Jimmy Carter. I name. Some people were listening won't even recognize it's so long ago, right, I mean, so yeah, it's just it's so it's so devastating, I mean, and listen, more power to you. I mean, the fact that you're still here and still standing strong and still fighting is a great testament to your character. And so I salute you for that. And you know, I just want you.
To know you can never give up. You know, there's so many things I haven't done, and the one thing I want to do is have control over my own life. I'm fifty five years old and not once have I been able to decide or what John Mall should do or what John Mom can't do.
John, you've been in for thirty eight years. Can you tell us what is the worst thing that's happened since you've been in prison? And are there any bright spots? Was there any moment of hope or redemption that you found while you were in there over all these years?
Well, the worst thing that ever happened was the loss of family. You know, my mother passed. She was she was my rock. You know, she missed everything. You know, it was because of her that I was able to fight. I kept to fight. Then I lose my father, my two brothers. I lost over half my family. That's the pain of being in prison, of losing the loved one and you can't show any support to the rest of
your family. That's what makes time so hard. And the fact that you're innocent and these people are doing what they're doing to you. They won't hear your cage. That's the hard thing about it. And my hope is when I see other guys, guys that I grew up with in prison, they make it out there and start doing
things like what Brian and Jimmy are doing. That's what gives me hope that the door's not completely closed on me, that I can still get out there, and you know, I can live the life that I've dreamed of that I've always wanted to have, maybe have a family, you know, them guys that would give me hope. And then you know, and what's happening now in Georgetown, Oh man, I'm just
blown over. And I tell Jessica, Maddie and Alex all the time, and Mark whenever I'm talking to him that, you know, I love them for what they're doing for me. But never, never in all my life, in all the years that I've been locked up, that I ever thought that I would get what I am getting right now. I did not know there were still people out there that would do the things that they are doing them. I didn't know this, and for them to do what
they're doing, it's phenomenal. I mean, this is just unbelievable. And I love them. I mean, I'm gonna be in their life for the rest of my life. You know, whether they walk me or not. I'm about them, you know, but you know these are the people that's helping me with my home.
Well, I can say, John, and I know I'm speaking for Mark and Jessica that when you get out and we're going to get you out, you'll have a new family and we're all going to be here to back you up and support you any way that we can. We can't replace the ones you've lost, but you know we'll do everything we can both to get you out and then to help you when you do get out, and I know you'll be successful and you have a chance on the outside to accomplish all those things that
you missed out on. So thank you. And I think we jump to the trial itself, because that's got to be the worst day of your life, where that verdict was read and you were and you were convicted of a crime you did not commit and sentenced to life in prison. How did you deal with it?
Well, you know, I was dumbfounded. What I could think about is my family. What I'm going to say to my family, Say to my mother because you know, she had high hopes that I was be able to prove my innocence. Because my family is in Cleveland. You know, I was there alone. I think one of my cousins, he might have been there, but I just felt alone. You know, there was nobody there. The only thing was around me is a bunch of white faces. There's nobody
that judged the jury, the lawyers, everybody. You know. I just sat there in that quarter alone. It was it was devastating. Here. I was convicted of a crime that I had nothing to do with, and they lewis and for some reason, they want to put me away for the rest of my life. And I was dumbfounded over my second trial. You know, I just knew. I knew that I was going to win this, this was my second trial. But then I got to thinking about all the things that the attorney didn't do, and it just
it was just a heavy weight. It was a heavyweight, and it's just it's just it's hard to describe, you know, what they've done. And you know, I had high hopes that I would get back in there and I would prove my innocence. But it has been over two decades since my last trial, and I haven't given up. I continue to fight with the help of you know, I called sharpshooters in here because they know this law in and out. And with the help of a few inmates, you know, I was able to get back in court.
I even had one of West Virginia top lawyers, Lonnie Simmons, went to my father again, which I hated, for help and getting legal representation. And it didn't know the way we thought it was. Lonnie is not who the family or I thought he was. And that was a devastating bloke. And you know, because of the money wasn't there. You know, due process was denied to me. I just didn't understand it. And why that I was being convicted again. Why was I going through all this? And because they knew, they
knew who've done it. Here's a guy that confessed. He showed the prosecutors and police and the medical examiners how he committed the crimes. And he said, why he committed the crimes. There's no loving father. It's going to make up the story like that because he wanted to stay. Police to stop beating on him. There's no story to be made up. This is the truth. This is what he said. That's no story. And then come along he takes the confession back, but they beat his kid a
black kid in the Faukinsburg police detachment. But they don't want to believe that. They don't want to believe that a young kid was beat like he was going down the highway and then at the police station. They don't want to believe that. But they will believe that this grown man thirty forty years old was told and beat into making a confession. But the cop showing how he
did it. It's what the medical examiner said. The medical examiner said that these are the things that happened, and what had happened was what Paul Records has said in his confession that the troopers didn't know what had happened because nobody had a copy of that report. Nobody had a copy of the medical examiner's report. They didn't know that the kids was packing up. They didn't know that
the kids were spank No. Paul Reagan said that in his confession the medical examiner didn't know this until he did in outopsy. He had the food that was in the kids' stomach, the bruises that were on their body. Nobody knew this but Paul Records and then the medical examiner he confirmed it. You know, and knowing all this and I'm sitting there in court and they said you've done it. You done it, And I said, what are you to do? What am I to do? So here I am pleading, begging for me.
The only good news is you have an amazing team behind you now, and you have all and you have a lot of good people out here that care about you. And you know, listen, I can only apologize for society as a whole to you for what's been done. I mean, it's not gonna it's not going to do much, but I can tell you that it's it's a disgrace. And I think when people hear about it on the show, they're going to be outraged as well, and there'll be a lot more people that are going to want to help.
What are the next steps now, Like, how do we correct this horrendous injustice? You know, a lot of the cases we talk about on the show and cases that we've covered are cases where they weren't able to find the actual killer so they framed somebody, right, which is totally inexcusable as well. But this one's just fucking confusing, right, It's like you already got this, It's done. As much as I've been doing this For twenty five years, I can't remember seeing anything so wrong as this. It's just,
it's wild. It's just it's like aggressive mouthfeasons right, it's like aggressive misconduct because you're undoing a rightful conviction and trading it in for a wrongful conviction. You're undoing a rightful confession and trading it for a false confession. It's nuts.
So I want to turn it back over to Mark and Jessica to talk about what the next steps are, and then how can people who are listening, who are hearing the voice of this incredible man who's been locked up for two and a half times as long as he was not locked up right When you think about the fact that he was sixteen years old when he was arrested and now he's been in for thirty eight years, the math is crazy. So what are the next steps? How do we get him home? And what can anybody else do to help?
Well, let me just first say that I had the pleasure of meeting John along with Jessica and Maddie and Alex at the mount With Correctional Complex, and for about two hours it felt like we were in the outside world in a restaurant talking to a good friend. We had an instant connection. John's a great person, caring, gentle, and I know that you can just see when you're in a prison. You see how the staff respect him. They all know he doesn't belong in there, They all
know that he shouldn't be there. So it added a real human dimension to be able to meet John in person, and I think solidified our friendship and our bond which will never be broken and that I hope will lead to a happy ending of him coming out of prison. In terms of what to do, I mean what we're focusing on in this class, in this project, I mean, we're looking at cases where there's not much legal hope
right now. I mean, obviously, as Jessica mentioned, if we can find the blood evidence that, if it still exists, and if we can test it, that obviously could be an actual innocence claim that could lead to John getting out. Beyond that, the legal appeals process is very, very limited in general, and in John's case, there's not that much hope. So here's where we come in. We're trying to provide broad public audience and support and mobilization to understand that
this was a wrong that needs to be corrected. We want to get the public galvanized. We want to get them mobilized, we want to get them pissed off, and we want to get them to force West Virginia to finally do the right thing, which is to free John Moss.
Jessica, what are your thoughts? People who are listening? Can they write letters? Can they call someone? What would you suggest? People are sitting there listening and they're going, I want to be Jessica. I want to do what she's doing. I get that all the time from people. I want to get involved. What do I do? What do they do? How do they help John Moss?
The third Yeah, the question that I was left with after examining this case for so long, and the question that I hope you is the audienceer left with right now, is why would the police switch from somebody who is obviously to us the real killer and go to a seventeen year old black teenager who had nothing to do with anything? And I want to pressure that question. And the same folks who were the prosecutors back then are in the prosecutor's office now, and I want to push
those folks to answer that question. And I don't think that they have a good answer. So right now, we have a petition up on change dot org for John and you can find that petition linked at our website that's Justice for Johnmoss dot com, so you can go visit that. We have a Facebook page, we have an Instagram, and through all of those mechanisms you can find the phone number for the West Virginia Prosecutor. You can give
them a call, you can write them letters. Because I want to push that question that they've refused to answer and that they've been unable to answer, is why would you let a real killer walk free for heinous, gruesome, disgusting triple murder and put this young black boy in prison for no reason?
So, Jessica, I want to give that website information again, it's Justice for Johnmoss dot com. That'll take you to all the different information that you need in order to get activated. And we're going to build an army around this case and then eventually we'll get them to back off, because that's what we do. We have a tradition on wrongful conviction, which is that every show I like to close with just open up the microphone to you to say anything you want about anything you want in whatever
way you want to. You know, let Mark go last because he's the professor, and so we'll have the student first. Jessica, what are your closing thoughts?
Yeah, well, first, I want to thank you for having us, Jason and Mark, for the opportunity to participate in this class. It's truly for myself and for the other two folks on my team, Mattie and Alex has been life changing and transformative. To be able to not only work on John's case, but to get to know John's case. John as a person, and I'm sure that everyone who's listening to this loves him almost as much as I do.
He's so compassionate and carrying and warm, and it's an honor to not only be able to help him in his rightful fight to get out of prison, but to call him a friend and a close friend. And I'm so grateful for the opportunit unity to be participating in something as big as this, because, like John said, it's not just him that's wrongfully incarcerated. There were you know, nobody knows the exact number, but tens of thousands of people across the country right now who are in prison
for things that they didn't do. It's about reforming the system on the whole. And I can say that myself and certainly other folks in this class have, as a result of this project, a more solidified and a stronger commitment to changing the way that system works, to make sure that folks who are in prison for crimes are there because they did it, and we shouldn't just as
a society, be putting innocent folks in prison anymore. So, all in all, I'm just so grateful and happy to be able to get to know John and be friends with John and be able to be a voice for him on the outside.
Well said, And now, Professor Howard, what do you got to say?
Well, first, let me say what Jessica I think has shown is that she belongs at any law school in the country, and any firm and any organization would be so lucky to have her. And also that applies to Maddie and Alex as students. They came into this class. It's an unusual class. It's taught by a Georgetown professor along with an Exannaree who have this close bond and we're childhood friends, and we gave them a set of cases and what they've done with them. I mean, there
are three other cases that are mind boggling. To John's, I think is just surreal. But what Jessica, Maddie and Alex have done is extraordinary. They really deserve the credit for having created the website, for having brought all the attention, for having investigated. I mean, they've worked tirelessly on this case. They've invested their lives, and that's not easy to do when you're a student, when you're a senior, there's a
lot of other things going on in your life. But they've made this their priority, and they're so committed and devoted to John, and that is infectious. And I'm completely committed as well, especially having met John in person. And I just want to close by bringing it back to something that I think I want the audience to just think about, which is thirty eight years. Think about what that amount of time is. Think about what you've done in your life. If you've even been alive for thirty
eight years uggles my mind. That my friend Marty did seventeen and a half years. I mean, that is alone is crazy and surreal. But when you think about thirty eight years, almost four decades, right, it's just extraordinary and John, for you to be as strong as you are and inspiring and kind. You're just a wonderful person and we will do everything we can to try to bring you out and bring you home.
John, I would like to turn it over to you too, so it's all yours.
Well. First, I would like to thank you for allowing me to speak on your show. I appreciate it very much, and I can never say enough of about my good friends there from Georgetow, Mark and Jessica, Maddie and Alex and I can't forget Marty again, you know the home I'm I'm just overwhelmed with everything that's going on, with the tension and the guy's bringing to my case and
the miscarriage of justice that has happened. It is my hope that the people would reach out and continue to talk about the wrongful convictions throughout the country, not just me, but throughout the country of guys like me just too. When I tell you, it's it's hard in time to express you know how I feel what I'm feeling. Oh jee Oh, I really appreciated the cases that you're giving me this opportunity. You know, it's it's been hard because
you know I don't have my family. That's what I always fall back on, my family get out of here. You know, that's one of the problems I would have to faith in not having my family. When I come to prison, there were seven of us. Now there's only three of us, my two sisters. And that's one of the things that I worry about and dealing with, you know, my family not being there. And it's gonna be hard,
and a lot has changed. And you know, some people say that John's gonna be hard, You're gonna need all kind of help, and I'm sure I know that I wouldn't need it because the world has changed out there. You know. When I was out there, I was a kid and now I'm a grown old man. And and it's one of the things that just I like to be able to rule my own life, you know, just thinking about you all life out there, and it's uncomparable.
And I like to have the opportunity to one day or drive a car, go to a movie again, and go see a show. These things were taken away from me for no apparent reasons. I've done nothing to deserve this, and it is my hope, my prayer that you know, society now would listen, we'll hear my cry and come to my hand and come and help me, because I need all the help I can get it. You know, I haven't found many many petitions, and I can't there's no more. Like you said, now, it's time to bring
awareness to the corruption of the judicial system. But I thank you. I thank you around me the offertility to speak, I'm not much your own speaking like this, but I very much appreciated Jessica and Marti. They spoke very good above my my case in my situation, and I appreciate all they have in what you are now doing, and I really do. I appreciate it. Thank you.
You should know, John, that they speak so highly of you, and I think that I'm speaking for them when I say that. I think they feel the same way about you that you feel about them. And I know now just getting to know you over the phone, I can understand why. John. I want to say, it's been an honor for me to have you on the show. You're one of the bravest people I know of I'm looking
forward to get to know you in person. Your army's getting bigger and uh and it's like I said, It's a privilege for me to be able to be a part of the solution, and I'm going to keep fighting for you right alongside these great people. So thank you again for joining us. I'm looking forward to meeting you, preferably on the outside and that's where that's what we're gonna be working for.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that.
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And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
on Facebook at Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one