I've never been in trouble in my life. I didn't even have a parking ticket, you know what I mean.
I was brought up like copsure the good guys.
I didn't know what was going to happen, but I do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like everything this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do with this. How is this possible? I grew up trusting systems. I've grew up believing that every human being
should do the right thing. And that's why, even though I knew I was dealing with four other people, I wasn't going to break anyone to get me out of prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that I break my way out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent, too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I prove my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me. Our system.
Since I've been out ten years, it has come a little ways, but it's still broken.
I totally lost trusting humanity after what's happened to me.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today's episode is a very special one. My friend Pete Uko is here all the way from Kenya, where he was sentenced to death even though a jury unanimously found him innocent. Pete, I'm glad you're here. Welcome to the show.
Thank you for hosting me, Jason.
First time in America, right.
Yeah, first time in America.
Could still dis in full amazing. Well, we're happy you're here. Your story is remarkable in so many ways. Of course, the craziest part of all is the fact that you were found innocent by a jury unanimously, and then the judge overruled the jury and sentenced you to death. Obviously they didn't succeed in killing you, because you're here, and I'm very happy about that, so you're sort of immortal. And then eighteen years in prison later, and now this
story is just it's phenomenal. But let's start at the beginning. So you were born in Kenya.
I wasn't born in Kenya forty eight years ago. A big family of twelve. My mom had nine girls and.
Three boys, which one were you?
I'm number eight back down in.
The line, number eight, okay, and two same parents for all twelve kids. Yeah, amazing, that's what we thought is in Africa sometimes. And what about your parents? What did they do?
Oh? My dad passed twenty nineteen ninety seven, just a year before I went to prison. And my mom is still alive. She's a retired teacher. She stays up country does farming. We're just aging gracefully.
And what was your dad doing before he died.
My dad was a lecturer, He was a civil servant. Both my parents actually are teachers. My mom taught me grade one to three.
So you grew up in this big, happy family. Yeah, and it was in the city or.
No, I grew up half of us grew up in the city with my dad who my dad was working in Arobi, and me and the others grew up country. Mom said she wanted to keep at least one of the sons up country because she didn't want the town influence to mess up her son. Then she picked on me.
I don't know why you went to school and graduated. How did the education start?
And then I went to primary school from class one to seven, I imagine as the best, one of the best in the country in nineteen eighty two exams primary school exams. Then I was admitted to Alliance High School, which is one of the top schools in the country, where I did my old levels. After that, I went from my A levels to another school and straight from school, my mom wanted me to go study in India. I didn't want to go study in India, so I went
straight to business. I was employed by Buttershoe Company as a shop manager at nineteen years, just before I turned twenty.
And you got married young.
Yeah, I was twenty two and my late wife was eighteen.
Is that sort of typical in Kenya? So people get married in their teens early twenties.
No, in some instances it tease. Now it's changed, But for me, I felt that getting married at that age you'd help me cool down. I led a pretty white life and I was just living the life so I want today. I mean, I just say that the girl would get my baby, just Maria straight. So when she told me she was expecting my baby, I say it fine, we make it happen.
And you did, and you did, and you had two kids. And then one night everything went horribly wrong in a way that is almost unimaginable. So your wife was raped and murdered in handcuffs, in front of the police station. And this is one of the things about this story that just absolutely boggles the mind of everyone who hears it. But the fact is, this is what happened. So first of all, how did this unwind that faithful night? Like, what were you doing? Where was she? What were the circumstances?
How did this go so horribly wrong?
I mean, just like you've said, many people when they hear my story and they see the mood, I mean, they think it's you know, they don't believe what it is. But yeah, on the eighteenth evening of December nineteen ninety eight, the story is I was told my wife left work to come home and she didn't come home. At that time, I was with my friend Willie. I was with Willie's family, his late brother John, and we did dinner then really
dropped me home. Later Jennifer was supposedly leaving her work at nine pm, just I think around nine pm according to the evidence, I sawn got and then when she didn't come home, I arrived home I think eleven when I will dropped me and I didn't find a home. Back then, we didn't have mobile phones and Kenya, we didn't have easy communications. So you had to rely on the landlines. So I waited patiently. I didn't see her.
I was like, it's not normal for her not to come home, But I don't know where to go start searching, So I just assumed maybe she could have gone to a cousin or a friend or relative. And yet I had this nagging that something was wrong, but I didn't know just what to do about it.
And she was working in a soon.
She was working in a salon, and she had a late client that night who was having a wedding the next day. These are things that came out in evidence on you in court. So the client came in just before Jenny was to leave work, and she kept Jennie until nine o'clock and then she left Jenny in the salon.
And that turns out to be an important detail later on, but go ahead.
Yeah, So the next day, on nineteenth, we woke up in the morning. I didn't see Jenny. The house, I didn't find Jenny. So I woke up very early, called the office her workplace the phone was entering, and then I went to my office was just not so far from where her office was, made another call, a second call because I was now getting agitated. Where could she be? She didn't tell me. I didn't have information about if she was supposed to go out anywhere, and I remember
it was a Friday. So the next thing I did was I called again at around nine point thirty, and then the lady on the other hand picked in the salon and told me, Hey, Pete, we're sorry, but Jenny has been found murdered. And I just went blank. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know how to react to it. I couldn't even cry because I just didn't know. It just hit me. I was twenty eight and Jennie was twenty four, and we had these small kids, and it just hit me like a thunderstorm. I just
got flomox and just stopped for a minute. And then I had to recollect myself very first, because for one, I knew I had left my kids in the house with the house help, and my sister in law also was staying with us, and I just didn't know how to face it. I just lost my dad a couple of months before, and Jenny was closest to me at that moment, and I mean she was a darling to my mom, very close to my mom, and she helped mom go through that grieving moment and now here she was.
So I didn't know how I was going to face it, tell my mom, tell my kids. I just didn't know how to handle that moment. So the first thing I did because I asked her where has it happened? Then she told me the body's been found right outside the fence of the police station. So I just carried my guide and asked myself, how can something like that happened outside the police station? And I know the police station is heavily guarded.
Just I just wanted to say, so the police station, it wasn't like an outpost. It was like a proper police station.
The police it's a big compound because the police lines are there, the police stay there are the very rare, and then the officers are in the front. So it's a reasonably big not three acres, let me say, And it's a reasonably big compound. And so the body was found on the outside, just behind the police lines. We call them the police lines, the police quoters are called police lines in Kenya. So the body was just found
outside the fence there. So when she told me that, I couldn't understand how because I knew that even on the other end, the police quoters are guided from back and front.
If somebody was going to take somebody and murder them, the last place they would take them instead the police station.
And that's that's that's what's hard to believe about this matter, because initially you're like, how could that happen? I mean, anyone would have said this guy would fear been caught somewhere here. And one of the things that seen in Kenya was that if someone rapped a lady, he'd take off if the lady didn't know that person, but if that lady got killed in the process of rape, it was out of fear that that person would be identified. And then it happened right out of the police station.
The postmotem report came that the riga motives set in when the hand was handcufft. That was the report of the chief government pathologists at that time, and it's the very handcuffs that I used to strangle around the neck. So these are reports that I got to find later. But at the initial stage I went to the police station. I found my in laws, who apparently hadn't approved of our marriage before because they felt had taken out their young girl before they had a chance to be long enough.
Maybe my mother in law is very supportive. My father and lawyers didn't like me. He just didn't want that. But first forward to that evening, I reached there. I find of my late wife's relatives, Jenny's relatives there. Then they tell the cops lock this guy in. As simple as that. I go to the police station. No one gives me an apology, no one tells me pete sorry or anything. The next thing I hear come into this room. I get into the police room, I'm told to strip off.
I don't know why I'm being told to strap off. I strip off, they do body search. Then I just hear someone say out there, lock this guy in.
What time of day was this?
That was around eleven o'clock in the morning.
Right, so this is now about twelve hours since the murder occurred. Yeah, so you show up there, the other relatives are there, and they see you being taken into the police station.
They're the ones who said that I should be locked in.
Because they didn't like you, because they didn't like me.
That's why it all started. It was about selling scores, like we didn't like this guy, so maybe let us keep him somewhere. But they did know the ramifications. Just to make it clear. They later came on to prison and apologies to me, but it was too late because I'd already been convict it.
They knew from the beginning that Jennifer was murdered in handcuffs, raped and murdered in handcuffs. Rangle with the handcuffs, where would you have gotten handcuffs from?
Because the big question, you know, the handcuff issue came at the postmotem stage when the autopsy was being conducted. But when the body was found there it was, as they said, the recamotes set in when the hands were upp here in a defensive position.
And they had taken the handcuffs off by now.
Yeah I think, yeah, now, I think they've taken the handcuffs off because she had scratch marks around her wrists and on her neck, so the larynx was broken by whatever it was.
I don't name her. And so so they take you into the police station. First, they make you strip. Obviously they were trying to see if you had some some scratch marks because obviously she fought right.
Yeah, Jenny could have let anyone do that. To her without a fight, of course.
Not especially a young man, but anybody. So you had no scars, no scratches, nothing, And then they started asking you questions, how does it work?
No question. I was just told I was just put in. I wasn't asked a single question. I wasn't told anything. The moment I was told put this guy in, I was thrown in for two weeks without talking to anyone. The law said that I should be taken to after fourteen days, but I was kept there for another fourteen days and then two more days, which was one month.
And can you describe that that's a jail, right, that's not a present that you were in.
No, that's police custody. It's just in the police custody. I was illegally detained for thirty days.
And can you describe what that was like?
The police jail cells like ten by ten feet, four four men and two four ladies on the other side, so that total of six. But then it's a place where they bring in every kind of person. The place where my little wife was found murdered was Ina, densely populated Eastland side of Nairobi, so they arrest drunks every other day. The cells are always full. They're no blankets,
they're no beddings, there's not nothing. I mean, you're there with drunks here there, with all kinds of people brought in every day, and then they have to go to court and you just kept there. You don't know why you're being kept there. No one is telling you anything. You get your newspapers, you read like everything is going on normally, but there's no communication.
And they bring the food into the cell.
I didn't take any food there. My secretary used to bring me food because at that time i'd I'd started my own business, and so I got food from home. I didn't want to take any food because I didn't trust anyone other time.
I was very smart, actually, because considering that the conspiracy was pretty clear from the beginning, you were the convenien escape goat, and they had to get somebody because they weren't going to arrest one of their own.
Yeah, at that time, we didn't even know it was one of their own, but we had strong suspicions that someone was hiding something there. I mean, I had a very good lawyer, George came and took that matter as if it was his own. It's like he was fighting his own life. George is the lawyer, right, yeah, George is my lawyer.
Okay, it's confusing to me sometimes George and judge. But George is your lawyer and the judge is the judge, and two very different characters. Because George was an honest guy and the judge was corrupt.
He asked for everything that was needed. They kept stolling him for a full month, and they told me we have nothing against this guy. Then he was asking, why an't you releasing me if you have nothing against him? So I think after a month, I had to write a letter to the police commissioner and to the Toorney General of the country because I'd noticed a pattern of cover ups and pattern of travesty of justice. And also the police were there. Because I'd stayed so long, I
became like the local there. Now they started telling me stuff, right because everybody.
Else is in and out, they're drunk and go home the next day, and you're still the.
Staff still there. I became a permanent feature there, and they didn't know why I was being held. Mind you, by that time, no evidence, nobody had written any statement about me or against me. Nothing that was nothing. The fellow was empty.
So you had an empty file thirty days go by because you weren't actually formally charged for four months, right.
No, I after thirty days when I wrote the letter. I wrote an official letter of complaint to the Attorney General and to the Police Commissioner. And I was very blunt in it. I said, I don't understand why I'm in a police custody. I'm supposed to be moaning my wife. I'm supposed to be finding out what happened.
To my wife and taking care of your children.
Yeah, and taking care of my children. But someone has turned it into a circus and they're using that opportunity to make up stuff and to cover up everything. So I said, for heaven's sake, take me to court if you feel you have anything against me. I'm the one was take me to court. And when they got that, because it was published in the media, they felt that I'd really got into them. I mean, back then, the criminal justice system was very rotten. You're not supposed to
question the police, You're not supposed to question anybody. And so they said, okay, you've reported us to our bosses, so now let's get down to it. So I was taken to quote after a month. On the thirty first day, there was nothing, so I was told go back to remand prison. At the remand prison, I waited for two weeks. I was taken back again to the police station because I couldn't be kept in remand custody without a file,
without any evidence, I couldn't prepare for anything. There was nothing on me, and so I went back to the police station. They kept me again for another thirty days, then they charged me after sixty days. By the time they were charging me, they didn't have a single evidence or any statement. So the first statement was written four months after my arrest in April. Because I have all the statements, we have all the dates, so we could see when that thing was written.
Right right right, That's the number I had in my head, was the four months, because that's when the only quote unquote witness who wasn't even really a witness. It certainly wasn't a witness of the murder. But this guy all of a sudden comes out and remembers details. And we see this again and again in frame ups right where suddenly you have somebody have a miraculous recollection of something that happened weeks or months or years ago that they
couldn't remember when they were initially questioned. And that's what happened here. They had obviously somebody went and spoke to this guy and told them what to remember.
Yeah, and I think God like, I think, you can try to hide some things, but you can't hide everything. And this guy when he came to court, he was very frank and candid. Adding his statements, he says he only wrote that statement after he was approached by the police to go to the police station and write it. He had nothing. He was told, now, come and do this, and that's why his statement was so disjointed. He had two statements. He wrote the first stedment, he wrote the
second statement, which contradicts the first statement. Luckily, unluckily, they gave me both statements. So he just choose those two statements to discredit his evidence. They're not adding up.
Okay, So what did he even say that he saw?
He said, he's saw someone come to pick Jennifer from work at eight, then they left at nine. Now that person was supposed to be me and me I was somewhere else with Willie and Linda and John and their family.
So you had an alibi, and it was a good albi because these weren't even family members of yours.
There were family members, and my alibi is too it. By the way, that's the other absad thing about my case. My other laba was accepted and I was still convicted.
Okay, it's getting weirder and weird, but how long did it take from this point to actually get to trial.
We went to travel in July because Judge, my lawyer, was very insistent that we had together think cracking. He didn't see a reason why I was supposed to be in prison for something I didn't do. And George incidentally also knew my late wife. They come from the same region me. I'm married from Kenya. There was this issue of this tribe should not marry this tribe at that stage.
Nowadays it's more common in people into Marian stuff. So there was that and it was basically political, but it got ingrained in many people's psyche that certain tribes should not intermarriage due to political competition. But then I went against the green and my dad had told me human beings are equal, so it doesn't matter where your friends come from. But just to go back to your question,
this guy when he came and wrote that statement. He came to court and said, I was told to do X y Z. I was taken to the cell where Pitt was before I wrote the statement, so he didn't even know who he was talking about. He was brought to the police cell. He will showed these a guy. After that he went and wrote the statement. These are stuff that in his official statement to the police and evidence in court. But at that point, no one wanted
to do the right thing. The judicial system was totally corrupt. Judges were taking bribes left, right and center. Some judges were even giving the litigants as long as they were paid. You write the judgment, bring it for me to sign. And that was one of the causes that the and you had a total overhaul of the judiciary in two thousand and three because it was throttened to the core.
So the judges were the richest guys in town. I guess right.
I don't know what they were doing with the money. I think they were drinking it off and just running around with pretty people. Maybe I don't know, But the thing is, my judge was one of the first to be sucked for corruption.
You really hit the reverse jackpot in terms of getting a judge and then an a Pellet judge as well. Both of them were proven later and fired for being totally corrupt. Back to the story, so you go to trial in July. Now let me just remember, so you've now been behind bars for.
That's the seventh month. Now when the trail starts was pretty fast, because back then you could start a trail after two years Kenya, there was a big backlog. Judges didn't want to do cases. But thank god to my lawyer George, he was very, very persistent and he really pushed to have everything done because he didn't see the reason no I should be in prison. So this gay comes to court says he's so Jennifer being walked away
by this guy who's supposed to be me. Then he forgets at the same time, Jennifer had a client at the very time he's talking about, Jenny was with a clant in the salon and that's why she stayed late until nine. So this clent comes to quote and says, the very time this gay says that Jenny was picked, I was actually with Jenny in the salon. No one came to pick Jenny. I left at nine. No one I didn't meet anyone in the stairs, and there's no
one I don't know this gay. This guy didn't come to pick Jenny.
So he's now been proven to be a liar.
He was a left from the word go.
So how many people were on the jury? Three? So the jury are listening to the very stuff that we're talking about now, right, the unraveling of the government's case, and they saw through all of it. It was so transparent that it's actually ridiculous.
It's ridiculous. And I'll just let you know that there was so bewildered that there are times this top trial to ask questions to the witnesses directly because it was just not making sense to them, and because they law allowed them to ask questions. When the judge noticed that they were asking questions that were beneficial to me, he would stop them. And that's when we suspected something was a miss. But we believe that since I was innocent, we had nothing to lose, we had nothing to fear.
I grew up trusting systems. I grew up believing that every human being should do the right thing. That's what my dad taught me. And that's why even though I knew I was dealing with corup people. I was not going to bribe anyone to get me out of prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that I bribed my way out of my wife's death. I said, if someone wants to charge me, I need to clear my name the right way.
Wow, that's a pretty strong statement. Back to the trial, So how long did the trial last?
The trial lasted the first year and then we had to take a break because two of the jury members were taken out to go do something somewhere. You said it lasted the first year and then the second because it ended in two thousand and one.
Wait, but how long how many days or weeks or months did the trial?
No, you'd have a trial two days in a week, then you're given an adjudgment for another three months. You come back, you have three days, you're giving another judgment for six months. I mean, it's nothing like you have one week of trial and the decision is meant.
So that's an interesting system because that gives everybody just enough time to forget everything that they just heard exactly. But that's so ridiculous, Like why it doesn't make I mean, listen, I'm not I'm not going to be critical because I know just how backwards our system is in so many ways. But that seems completely crazy. Why wouldn't you have a trial that is contiguous? Is there any rationale for that?
I mean, hard walking judges, consenttious judges insist on having trills started and completed at the best name. But I wasn't dealing with a concenttious judge, just like I've said, so he had his own agenda.
Okay, now I understand when you said the trial lasted a year two years. I'm thinking, you're going every day to court.
No no, no, no no. You go for a day or two adjuntment for one reason or another. The next day you're giving another three months to wait. You go back to prison, you just hung out there, You come back again. Maybe the witnesses are not there to go back home.
That's another thing. Like even the jurors, what if I mean, this is so crazy for them too, because what if they go away or somebody moves and then you haven't But it was the same jurors throughout the whole.
It was the same jurors. I mean, there were people who are I just looked at them and felt these days could do justice because they had no emotions. They were just stunfist. So but they were listening through every single thing.
So the trial takes forever two.
Years, which was very fast by Kenyon's standards. At that time.
Two years.
Trials were going for five years, six years.
Oh my god. The trial takes in your case two years, which is an eternity. When you're in the situation you're in having lost your wife, you had to be super worried about your kids. I mean, they're having a normal upbringing, happy family. Next thing you know, mom's been murdered and then dad's gone, and then everyone's probably talking to them saying horrible things about you. I mean, it's a miracle that they're doing well today. Not would more power to
them because it's absolutely unimaginable what they went through. So the trial winds down, the jury do they go out to a room to deliberate.
They go out to deliberate, and they come out to give their decision.
How long did that take?
They took a day?
And what did they say?
And they say, every one of them has to give their own reasons. They had the lead jura, but all of them asked to give the individual reasons by the judge. So they sturned up. The first one says they've looked at the case, They've realised new investigations is done, there's a blind focus on getting a conviction, and I'm innocent.
And the second one scond.
And one same story. No investigations or done by the police. In fact, what came out very clearly in all their assessment was that there was no investigation that had been done. There was a blind focus, a decision had been made, predetermined decision that this guy had to go to prison. So they looked through the evidence, they asked, I mean, they were bewildered. They said, the police lands are guided.
Something like this cannot happen at a police station. And if I told it happened, then the police could have arrested those people at that time or that person at other time. The crazy thing is that I was child, my child, she reads pete with others, not before the court committed the offense. And I took that as a insult because my wife has been raped and madered and he told me I took people to go rape my wife outside a corps station. You know, that was the
biggest insult to me. But I just said I have to look through this. I mean, I could have gone crazy at that point. I could have gone very mad at that point, but I realized that I was fire. I had a system that was so rigged, pre rigged to make people suffer injustices. So I just pray, don't asked God give me the strength to go through this.
So I didn't even realize that until now. They claimed that you brought other people with you.
Yeah, they said, I was child the charge she treats Pete with others, not before the court.
Right, I get it, but that is not before the credit. Yeah, you would be the only person who's ever done that in the history of the world if that was the case. But wife to be raped and murdered by you and others, whoever those others were, which were unnamed, as of course they were imaginary. You all had the same great idea to bring her to the police station, right, total madness. So the jurors and this is where it's supposed to end, right, this is where you're supposed to go home.
Jurors make their decision, and I say, you know, I sat down. I had seen the drama that was going on, and I said, because the jurors picked for the public. Whatever decision they'll make, I live with it. So to me, my trail ended the day the juris to up and said you are innocent, all of them unanimously. That is when I felt I'm vindicated. Anything that happened after that didn't matter to me.
But did you You had no indication that anything else could happen? I mean, did you have any idea?
At that point, I expected the judge to do the right thing. And then he told me to come from my judgment. On the day of the judgment, he didn't treat the judgment. He asked for two more weeks. I come back again. He postponed it again for the second time. And that was a process. If a judge wanted to be bribed, he would always push your judgment forward so that you go bribing before he releases you. And I wasn't going to do that. I told my family, I
told my friends, I don't have any money. We've used our money in the legal briefs, but we are not going to bribe anyone. No one should bribe anyone for this.
But the problem was, even if you had bribed him, he was being bribed already by the other side.
By the other side. He could have taken from both sides.
It would have been just the highest bidder. Right, It's really it's almost like a justice auction.
Yeah, I mean back then it was a justice auction. Kenya has gone through a very tough moment. Thanks to the new president, President Quebuck in two thousand and three, the justice system had a complete overhaul. They had to turn everything upside down in a good way, in a good way, in a positive way, and we had to start fighting these things in prison. The good thing is that the judge who came up in twenty ten in the new constitution had been detained by the former government
that convicted me. He had been detained in prison in the same prison I was in on political reasons, so he knew what people are going through in prison. And he used to tell us pet and make colleagues just write petitions, literate and bring them to court. Will make a decision.
Let's get to the verdict. So finally, after weeks of delays and delays and more delays and presumably more payoffs and bribes, and him waiting to see if your family's going to come up with even more money or whatever. You finally brought back to court for the decision, which again would seem like, at least in our justice system, and I think in most of the world, there is no decision have to be made because the judge doesn't
get to overrule the journey. So you come back. Finally, this ordeal is presumably coming to an end, but actually it was just beginning.
It was just beginning because okay, the judge makes the final decision. But the law in Kenyon says, the case that had been established stated that in the event he goes against the decision of the jury, he's supposed to give reasons. He's supposed to say I don't agree with them because of one to three. In this case, it was nothing. Instead, he wrote into his judgment things that were not even mentioned it court.
So he was actually not only the judge in this case, he was also playing the prosecutor.
He was playing the prosecutor, and he has a prosecutor all passed by the way. He was a prosecutor before his appointed the judge, and I was a prosecutor in one of the darkest moments of Kenya's history.
Okay, so you come back. He started reading off all these supposing new information, new lives, new fairy tales, with whatever you want to call it. And then he says you're guilty.
Yeah, he says you're guilty. You're sentenced to death by hanging until certified did by a medical doctor.
Wow.
And so Georgie is sitting down there. I'm sitting on a raised platform there. Our coats are not like yours, they're more British. So the suspects of the accused persons sit on a higher pedestal in the dock, and the witnesses sitting on the other side, and the lawyers sit down there. So Georgie looks back at me, joined my lawyer and I look at George and instead of crying, we laughed at the absurdity of it all. We were so disgusted, we just laughed. We couldn't believe what we
were hearing him read. But my family everyone broke down. We're not laughing because we were happy. We were laughing because we're disgusted. You're so mad that the only thing you can do is laugh, you know, that's the only way you can placate yourself. And then my mom was there. She had believed in the justice system. She was totally broken. My mom hasn't recovered up to twenty years later, she's
here to recover from that. She's yet to recover from the betrayal of two thousand and one, which is seventeen years ago, and my mom broke down my siblings. People just got confused because it never had the death sentence pronounced, and then they thought maybe that I'm going to be hang the next day. And the media is all there. They're all chasing this jewsy story. He had called them, that the circus judge had already called them to be there, all of them. So they're all following up on this
jewsy story. They want to take pics. And I said one thing, I don't want to see my kids in my kids to see me in handcuffs. I always believed I was going to see my kids, even though he had mentioned that I was supposed to be killed. I said one thing, I'll not allow my kids to see me in handcuffs. Any picture of mine for my kids to see me in handcuffs. So the media was out there. We leave the court room. He just tells me to take out you're going to appeal immediately. And so as
we're leaving the court room. The media has been told to and on one side they were waiting to take pictures and just being tiation because I had my family and friends. I just tell them walk beside me, and as we get out of the court, they block off the media. I walk on the other side. The media is on the other side trying to break through to come take photos of me, and then me I walk down very fast to go to the cells. And that
was it. I'm taken to prison, not to the same prison had spent the previous nighting because I came to court ready to go home. I'm not taking to the maximum security prison.
And what was that like?
It was crazy because the transport first would tell you that things are not the same. We will never be the same again. We had trucks. We didn't have buses as we do have in KENYAA. So these trucks had two compartments at their air and two small benches wooden benches, and a small truck would carry more than one hundred inmates,
so you're packed. You had to stand. For a tall person like me, I had to bend and just standing in this truck with one hundred other people plus the awarders in that track and you just pray that you reach wherever you're going because there are small holes at the top that's supposed to bring ventilation, ventilation holes. They're no windows. It's just a metal cage. It's like a cage, let me use the word a cage. And so the journey is long. We are ever at the prison, the
maximum security prison, at night around eight o'clock. So who's these person who's been brought in a meeting new people for the first time. All the cops want to know about my case. Everyone is asking many questions which I'm not answering, of course, because I'd learned how to live with people. By that time, I totally lost trust in humanity after what happened to me, and I just didn't want to start talking to anyone. I didn't know whether
they were asking me questions. So I was processed through the system, then taken to the cells.
And that's all block your own cell.
No, I was sharing that cell, the eight by seven foot cell, with thirteen other guys.
What eight by seven foot seal with thirteen other guys and I'm six four, Yes you are as You're not a small guy, larger than life character in many many ways. So there's thirteen other guys. So you you, I mean, could you even lie down in there?
You can't lie down? You sit now around in a corner. I mean, you just have to agree on yourself. One thing I loved about prison is that inmates really agree on things as a unit. In Kenya, we have no choice. We have no choice, so we say if we get in with our shoes or with our slippers, we could easily get sick because there was no water so to speak.
There was no running water at that time, and food was not guaranteed at that time because even the jailer at that time was very corrupt, and it was always ensuring that we had a mil one or the other day into alternating days so that in between he would know what to do with it. But when we went to prison at that time, we agreed, okay, we are many in the small cell, so you leave your sleepers outside, you get in, you put them back to back. Then we had made somewhere to hook them so that you
don't get diseases. In the cell. We had a bucket toilet that had to be hung on the door because there was no space to put it down there, and we slept side by side. There was no blankets back then nineteen ninety eight to two and one. There are no blankets in our prisons. So if you manage to get a small piece to cover yourself, fine, But it was so hot in there because you're thirteen grown up men in a small cell or fourteen in that case, and then it's so hot. I mean, the next guy
is literally on your skin. We had lots of skin diseases. Likely I never got stick for the eighteen years old in prison.
A miracle.
So basically like sorry, I mean on my side, I had I had marks on my side here, you know, on my hip because you sleep on this hip. It's not a carpeted flow. It's a terrazzo flow. The guys on this side you all face right. The guys on the other side face left. So when you want to turn, your prog on what time to turn so that the other guy is gone the other side you get turned to the other side.
Right, so literally like sardines. Then you have to turn at the same time, which is and by then you have cramps, and it's got to be cramps.
But after two weeks you get used to it and your body becomes immune and mutant. You just go with the motions, you become robotic.
And you would be allowed out of the cell thirty minutes in a day. Thirty minutes in a day, yeah, if at all.
That's only Monday to Friday. But from Saturday and Sunday, oh no, nothing, nothing, nothing unless you had a visitor, then you'd got So it was a privilege. Actually, when I came home, there's a day just stood out some and so the sunset for the first time in eighteen years, and they just stood and watched the sun got and I was like, this is what I was denied for so long, something I never saw in prison. I never go to see the sunset for eighteen.
Years, right, because you're walkinglo and so how the hell did you maintain your sanday? I mean there must be guys in there literally losing their mind, because I mean, how can you put people that close together and so hot and so uncomfortable physically and no room to move and no room to do anything? You have? Did you have any books in there or anything else?
Yeah? I could get books. Newspapers were illegal, were prohibited at that time. Later on they were allowed. But initially I loved reading, and I'm a man of faith, so I really kept to the faith. And the good thing with people were in their faith, you'd be allowed sometimes to go out more than once, so thirty minutes in the morning, thirty minutes in the afternoon, and many people actually came to the faith just because he wanted that opportunity.
I just learned how to keep my head underwater, not to stick out, not to ruffle feathers, but not also to walk on with anything. I mean, I became a voice to many of my colleagues in prison. They appointed me as one of their leaders, so I would speak out. We said, I told the officer in charge of the one and in charge, we want to do things differently. We're not going to be confrontational because we are going
to write memoranda. If we have an issue, we want to write a memoranda, call us the people involved, and then we face it with them. So we started writing memoranda about congestion, about torture, about every other thing that you could imagine. There. We brought issues because we realized that the government was giving enough money for our food, which food we are not getting. So we said, this is not the problem of the government. It's an institutional problem.
So we demanded for what was rightfully ours. Luckily, by that time the new president had come in the prisons department had moved from punishment to correction and rehabilitation.
I mean, you're a big guy. You're much bigger than an average person. So getting so little nourishment in there, did you lose a ton of weight? No?
I think I could have lost some weight, but I always believe it's all in the mind. I learned to appreciate whatever I have. I don't go for the big things in life. I just try to live within my jacket and just appreciate every little thing I get. Are very appreciative, by the way, and I work within that budget. The good thing is that by doing that, I don't stress myself out like I can't get this and this and that. I just live and appreciate whatever it is.
And contrary to what you might think, I don't eat much.
Wow, that's amazing. Well that's a good thing for that too. So were you in that same prison for eighteen years. No.
After one month, I was taken to another security prison in a place called Naivasha. Now that's the biggest prison in the country. In fact, I think in East Africa. It's massive, it's got a football field inside it. But that's one prison that's feared by many people because the wind blows from the Rift valley into the prison and so if you don't have anything to cover, you'd get cold,
you'd get tuberculosis. And if someone visits you the first time, they onlyn't want to come the second time because it was so far removed from the road from the transport network. So it's one of the most feared prisons back then, but now it has the biggest school population of all prisons in Africa. Yeah, it's become a model institution. The new reforms that were brought by the Kenya Prison Service.
They first accepted the admit mistakes. They had a paradegm shift and we thank the former Vice president who was made in charge of the prison's docket. Prisons in Kenya public institutions. So he said he wanted to see prisoners treated humanly. We started having that chance and that's how we started now getting more hours out in the sun. Torture became outlawed and inmates had a chance to go to school, land skills, get visitors. We have an open door police in our prisons in Kenya, and we could
manage all that I learned at in prison. I started training my colleagues in art. I formed the organization I ran now while I was on death row, and we started doing activities outside prison, but organizing from prison, and people thought that we were so well funded. I didn't have any money. What I did was design T shirts, designed cards, sell them to my fellow inmates, sell them to the other guys out there, use those proceeds to
run the crimes awareness campaigns. That word denounced it and I just thank God because there was so much ownership of the process that being in prison now didn't become a bud and it became an opportunity to invent myself and to find myself. I forgive the people who took me there. I removed all the beatterness and said, I have to live my life and if that's the purpose
I have, and since I believe I'll go home. At one point every single day I believe I was going to go home, then I had to start doing things differently.
Well, that's just I don't even know what to say. I mean, it's so remarkable that you exist in this state of the only way I can describe it as grace. I've never heard anybody describe it quite the way you just did. But it's always so remarkable for me just to be in the presence of somebody like you who has found this. You know what, I guess you could call it the meaning of life which allowed you to survive, really, because otherwise you probably would have died in there.
I totally agree there. I mean, in prison you have number one, you have to let go. You have to let go of all bitterness. You have to let go of assuming that life is the same, and you justus and recalibrate through that life. You don't become part of that life. It's there, but you live your life in that situation so that it doesn't get really into you and you feel like it's a punishment. You get to learn to coexist with your fellow people. I mean, it's
like a United Nations. You're meeting all kinds of people that may some very wonderful people. In prison. It's not just about the struggles of being in prison. Wrong Fully convicted people are going through what's out here. There are worse prisons out here than what we go through in prison. People addicted and close down to drugs in their own world,
they can't come out of that. My prayer always when I work with the youth to get them out of crimes and drugs is that they just find purpose wherever there. So that's what I started doing in prison. You don't believe this, is Jason, but when you're on death row, when we're getting that small amount of food, we mobilized all the fifty two thousand inmates in Kenya to forget their meals and to donate to people in Kenya who were dying of hunger. And people like, are you guys
doing this so that you can be reacent? We said, no, we are eating food in prison and we're not working. We're just sleeping. We eat and sleep, so why can't we just do something different? And we came together as inmates and I was taken from prison. That's the first time I got out to walk in the streets of Nairobi without handcuffs, and I was taken to the office of the Vice President. I made the donation on behalf of my colleagues and from there we just felt we
had to grow. So the different programs that were brought the leadership of the Kenya prison service helped us change that. The judiciary was revamped, the corrupt guys were taken out with seeing changes, and now we were using the law now to help overturn most of these things. I was writing appeals and petitions for my colleagues in prison last year,
the year before I left, that was twenty sixteen. I got six gays out of death row and I hadn't even cleared my law decree, you know, But that was just we learned how to write those things after so many years. You just learned naturally to some of this stuff. Look at the evidence, look at the case. Slow, make your presentations in court. Crazy enough, Some of the cases I've used in my pleadings were influenced by what the Nuisance Project is doing in America. I've always been a
great fan of the Nuisance Project. They intend to set up something similar in my country.
You studied the law, well, you got your college degree in prison, and then you studied the law, and now you're about to graduate from the University of London Law School, which is a part of the story that we have to get to. But before that, how did you get released or.
In twenty sixteen August, my son was going to graduate. They were clearing the university. And one thing that had really killed my mood in prison was that I was not able to be there for my kids' primary school graduation, high school graduation, and now they had their final graduation in university. And I felt that if I was not going to attend that, then had no business getting out of prison. It came to that. That's when I was depressed, just to feel that my kids had grown without me.
They had not seen me, they had had visits from other families, they'd seen other kids being visited, and they couldn't have their dad there. They couldn't tell their colleagues in school that their dad is in prison for allegedly murdering their mum. I mean, I felt that those kids dissolved me to be there with them for their graduation. So I took a lip of faith and wrote to the President of the country, President Kinata, and told him, your excellency, I was chilged with this offense of murder.
I still maintained my innocence. I don't agree with the decision, but as a law abiding citizen, I respect it. And so the position is that my son, my kids are going to graduate and I need to be home with them for their graduation, So could you use your prerogative to set me free?
And he did, he did in October. How did you get the news?
I was assisting? Like in prison, I was always in the documentation office, helping appeals and process the appeals for the inmates. And then those is breaking news. So one of the awardens in the office said, Pitt, something has happened. Guys are being released. I mean, the president has just signed an order releasing guys, and we know you must be in there. And then I was like, people have
been released before, but have never been there. I mean every other year people tell me, Peter, you're going home. You don't deserve to be here. But it never happened. But I just felt in my spirit at that time like the time has come. So I left the documentation office and went to my cell. By the time I was leaving, I was living in my own cell, though it didn't have a toilet, but it was a different block. We're only eleven of us in that cell. It's a
privilege I was given by the office and child. So I went down to my cell and just prayed and told God, if it's your will, let it be done, and I just hang on there. Then an hour later, the Commissioner General of Prisons drives in with the paw of massy staff with this team. So I'm told you have been called outside, so working out. The commissioner tells me, you know what, he wrote a letter to the present and he said you can go home. And it's such an amiable person. He talks like it's just a joke.
So first I'm like, ah, but when I look at the team he has with, then I have reason to believe. After that, we are called to the hall and the names are read out, and when we're just about to leave, I called my daughter. I went to the office and called my daughter and told her, Whitney, I'm going home. I'm coming home, And she was like, Dad, you always like cracking jokes. I mean, I don't trust what you're
telling me, so let someone else tell me. So I give the cops the phone and tell them tell this girl I've been released. And she says, no, I'll only believe when I see you. That's how stubborn my daughter is. And then she she goes like, okay, Dad, if I see you, then i'll believe. But I'm not telling anyone. And then the prison ward and tells us Pete and colleagues. You know, this is late in the evening. It's raining heavily. We'd like this thing to be covered by the media.
So do you guys just mind spending an extra night in prison? Then you go in the morning if you will, because it's for us sake that we don't know if we'll see you guys again, and we just wanted this story to come out, so we indulge them and to go and sleep.
And so he spent an extra night in prison.
I spent an extra night after release. Did you sleep, No, I slept. I slept very deeply. I was just thankful. I listened to a lot of music. I slept late. I slept at a round three. I just listened to lots of music because I had my laptop for studies in my room. And then I went to bed at a round three a m. So I woke up late. The other guys, I think they didn't believe, because they woke up at six. By six, they were in the office like we want to go home now, you know.
So even just the moment the doors were opened out of the documentary office, asking to go home, and so my mom came in. My mom came in with those are one of the pictures I look at, and she just hugged me and broke down. And I did not to handle my mom crying. I mean it was deep. Then she started singing, thanking God, crying just on my chest, and I was just trying to reassure them that also, okay, it's all over. But she still had this heavy hat, like why did it have to happen? For eighteen years?
She lost her good health because of that depression, and as we speaking right now, yeah, she's struggling with her health. But then God, she's strong.
So then they take you and your mom and they and they.
Passed through the office of the African Prisons Project just to say hi. And then after that we go over to my sister's place, who had come with my mom. And now my daughter still doesn't come. She still doesn't believe that I've been released. And I've called both my
daughter and my son. So as I'm leaving because I had to take a de tour and we used a long route because of traffic, it was around three o'clock, I call a friend of mine very close friend of mine and a mental of mine, and I tell him, Carol, you know what, I've been looking for you, but I don't know where to find you. So they know I was looking for your son because your son was supposed to go for an interview and I can't trace him. So I tell him, Oh, I'll tell him I'm going
to meet him. Then i'll tell him the next me, where are you at? Said, I'm home, Like, come on, stop kidding me, because people think when I was in prison, I liked cracking jokes just to keep people's moods on the app So he thinks it's another wild joke again, so he invites me to his office. Nice nice catch up is a childhood friend. After that, you go to
my sister's place. Then by that time, my daughter started believing because now she's getting calls from different people, and she joins me at my sister's place where my son was staying. My sister is my hero, Christine. She took good care of those kids for a while, for more than eight years, you know, through high school teenage staff, and she just took good care of them. And she's
just sickling. She doesn't have the best of health, but She took them in like our own and really saw them through what they were going through.
What was it like when you saw your kids for the first time in eighteen years as a free man? I mean, did you beat them both together at the same time?
Now you know, I wasn't seeing them for the first time, and the prison is in Kenya. When the laws were changed, we editated for a law to be enacted called the Persons Deprived of Liberty Act, and in that act we have parental visits, so four times in a year by law, parents and visitors and friends can just come and hang out the way you know, you just hang out. You bring food from home, you see to make food from home. You come and sit on with the family and staff
a quality time. And other than that, you can also apply on special days like when my daughter came to introduce her. Then boyfriend told me that I want to introduce someone to you, and I asked for permission from the off Saint Gege. We were given a room we just hang out. So I'd already seen them from the time they were after the first eight years when they had been told that I was dead. I didn't tell you that they grew up knowing that I was dead.
For the first eight years, the identity had been changed. So when I met my daughter for the first time, my country recognized after eight years, and then when they went to first from ninth grade, now I started seeing them. They could come to prison and see me.
Wait, so they grew up thinking you were dead.
I told her I was dead.
Wow by who?
But the very people said I should be locked in the in laws Wow. But the good thing. I thank my mom in law because she's the one who told me Pete, I'm sorry, but I told your kids that you're dead, and they told her, Mom, I have nothing against you. I love you just like my mom. I don't always love you. Whatever you did, I don't know why you did it. I have nothing against you. And we just have to live their life. God as the loved us to live.
Amazing. So I do want to talk about the African Prisons Project. I was very honored and humbled to be asked by the founder of the African Prisons Project, Alexander McLean, to come over to Uganda give a ted X talk inside a maximum security prison in Kampala. And of course it was during that trip that you and I met, So can you share with our listeners what the African Prison Project is and what it does and how you're involved in it. Oh.
Yeah, The African Prisons Project was started ten years ago by Alexander. I met Alexander when I was in prison, and just about that time, I'd been invited by the Judicial Service Commission to go give my views on behalf of the inmates about revamping the judicial system. And so when I went to that interview, I met all the top players in the criminal just system and the Attorney General then asked me are you a lawyer? Then I told him no, I'm not a lawyer. They told me,
would you like to study law? I told him yeah, if you pay for me, sir, I'll gladly study. They said, Pete, we know what you have in you and we know what your motivation is to study, so we are going to help you. You're going to pay how for your fees? And Alexander said fine. At African Prisons Project, we don't have a budget for education right now. We're not doing legal education. But if you have someone to pay for you have, I'll gladly pay for you the other half.
That's how we started off in twenty twelve, ive went to university through the African Prisons Project in twenty thirteen, I had to be taken from prison to go to my exams outside at the British Council, which is a great owner. Then the officer and Jire asked me, Pete, why are you doing this thing alone? And there's so
many people are suffering and we need that help. And I got in touch with Alexander told him, come on, could you try and get more guests to be supported in this course, And later on more people joined the program and the inmates are being trained to be change makers.
They're doing that in three prisons to the being trained in law in Kenya three prisons in Uganda, I think it's zero, and they're being trained in law and paralegal staff to assist their fellow inmates and also when they go out since the Indealentin Society, so that's the project
that goes there. After that. After my first year, I of course I graduated and after the first year, Alexander African Prisons Projects started paying for my fees at the University of London and the money because my gracious guest hosts or supporters Justice Isaac will still giving me four hundred dollars per year. I use that to pay for my children's school fees, and that's how my children went through school amazing, because I'd exhausted all my funds at
my trial. I mean so so, Justice Allah Isaac and Ahmed Nasir and Alexander helped get me on my feet to what I'm about to complete right now.
So Alexander MacLean is a hero of mine. I'm a big supporter of his work, proudly. And he has been going for a long time now into one of the most hopeless places on Earth, some of the prisons in Kenya and Uganda, and I think other parts of Africa, and training people like Pete who's sitting in front of me now in the law so that they can do exactly what you did, which is find a way to get yourself out and then in the process help other inmates. So, Pete,
this story is absolutely remarkable. The tradition here is that at the end of each episode I like to just turn the mic over to the guest, in this case, you to share any further thoughts that you have with our audience.
Oh, thank you, Jason, Thank you for having to New York. It's a great pleasure. I didn't know I would even get a visa to come here, but I'm grateful that it happened. And here I've met wonderful people. I enjoyed being with the Felex and Ruiz at the Gala. I just want to think the Innocence Project and I thank you and all the support you guys are given to that project. It's something also want to replicate in my country. I left the African Prisons Project and on my organization
called the Youth Safety Our Initiative. We're focusing on getting the youth out of crime. We're focused on getting inmates or living prison to have something gainful to do. And as I'm speaking to you right now, we've assisted fifteen of our inmates open bank accounts. So we're doing social enterprises and means of reducing recidivism. I had a double treat on twenty eighth of April, the same day I was granted a visa. I also got a call from one of the biggest landowners in our country, Cana, and
we're going to put a re entry home there. Funds allowing We're going to put the first halfway home in a big conservancy where you can also watch game.
That's amazing. And the name of the organization again.
Youth Safety Awareness Initiative, and.
How can people learn more and get involved.
You can go to www dot crimec poor crime c poor c r Ime Sipoa crime Cyper means crime is not cool. So we used a local to reach out to the youth. That's what we started doing in prison. And when we go to register, they said they cannot register the name crime as an angio. So we got Youth Safety Awareness Initiative. But the brand name which is registered brand name now is crime Syple. Crime is not.
Cool, Okay, So the organization's Youth Safety Awareness Initiative. Go and visit and learn about this amazing work of this amazing man who's sitting here in front of me now, which is a miracle in and of itself, and join me in supporting this work because this is in fact a global problem. We focus a lot on America on wrongful conviction, but it's a global problem and there's so
many people who need our help. So I want to thank you Pete Uko for coming on the show and sharing your thoughts and your amazing journey with our audience.
Thank you Jesseon for hosting me.
It's a pleasure.
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 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 Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one