#072 Jason Flom with Noura Jackson - RE-RELEASE

Nora Jackson is an extraordinary person who has been through an ordeal that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, as you know for listening to her episode that originally aired in November of twenty seventeen.

Nora was wrongfully convicted of the murder of her mother. Both of her parents were murdered, and she was left an orphan with no brothers and sisters when she was wrongfully convicted and ended up serving eleven years in prison. Of course, the Tennessee Supreme Court unanimously overturned her conviction and set in there ruling that the prosecutors had lied and cheated and broken so many rules. There were too many to count, too many examples of prosecutorial misconduct, too

She now lives in Brooklyn, and she is a sophomore in college to thirty two. Her freshman year, she achieved a three point sixty seven GPA. I know she's going to improve on it this year. She started in an organization called Meet Your Mentor, and she is working with some other incredible, dynamic women Sarah Rappold, Stacy Ryan, and others, and Meet Your Mentor is an organization that is dedicated to helping exoneries formerly incarcerated people get back on their

I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.

I was naive enough to believe that I would be able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence, that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't be going to prison because I was a good person. I hadn't do anything wrong.

In the back of your mind, you say, well, when we go to a hearing, we go to court, the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected from the lower courts all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.

You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really, in that moment unchecked authority.

Don't presume that people are guilty when you see him on TV, because it may just be a dirty da that is trying to rise upward.

Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I am particularly honored actually today to have in the studio Norara Jackson.

Nor Jackson was convicted in two thousand and nine of killing her mother.

Jackson was eighteen when her mother, Jennifer Jackson, was found murdered stabbed at least fifty times in the bedroom of her East Memphis home. In two thousand and nine, a jury convicted Jackson of second degree murder.

Nora Jackson has maintained her innocence. In twenty fourteen, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the conviction because of prosecutorial misconduct.

And ordered a new trial, claiming the lead prosecutor, now District Attorney Amy Wyrick, withheld a witness statement from the defense.

Stephen Jones, is facing misconduct charges for not turning over a key witness statement. District Attorney Amy Wyrick also is facing misconduct charges connected to the case.

In May twenty fifteen, Jackson's attorneys accepted a plea deal of voluntary manslaughter from prosecutors, avoiding a potentially lengthy new trial. She could have fought for another ten years on principle, I don't know anybody who would give up their thirties for principal.

Nora Jackson is officially a free woman today. Nora, welcome to the show. Thank you, and we have with you Bryce Benjett. You're lawyer from the ennisonce Project, and Bryce, welcome to you too. Glad to be here. This story just really shocked my conscience and you.

Lived through it unfortunately.

Yeah, there were times when I didn't know if I would make it to the other side.

But here I am.

Nor Let's go back to it was really not that long ago. I mean two thousand and five. You were still a teenager.

Yeah, I turned eighteen in March of two thousand and five, so I was just at the age where, you know, there was no issue with them charging me as an adult.

Right, Just another terrible circumstance of your case, And it started with one of the worst things that anyone can experience, which is the murder of your mother. And you had already been through so much because your father was murdered sixteen months earlier.

Correct in January of two thousand and four.

But they weren't together, No, no, no.

No, they weren't. They weren't together.

My parents had split up when I was like eighteen months old, and they shared custody for about eight years, and then there was an eight year period where I didn't see my father, and that's another interesting story. I actually walked into a convenience store about a year before he was killed and found him.

So I lived with my mom my entire life.

So the death of my father, it did really rock me, especially since there was like that newfound relationship there with him.

But my mom was my rock.

The death of my mother's mother, my grandmother, was the first one that happened in the summer of two thousand and three. Then the death of my father in two thousand and four, and then my best friend was actually killed in a car wreck on the way to my house in January of.

Two thousand and five.

So that was a really really rough year for me, a really rough time, and my mom was the one that was actually able to get me through all of that.

I had pulled back from a lot of my friends.

Anybody that has a single parent will know that that relationship is kind of sacred. It's totally different than if you're raised in a two parent household and.

You were an only child as well. Yes, so yeah, I can imagine that would create even a stronger bond because there's no one else. It's no buffer, right, it's just you and your mom and your mom Jennifer Jackson was a successful banker as well, right investment bank.

But yeah, she was actually a broker. She worked in the stock market. She was a bondsman, and she was very successful. And she'd actually just wanted a word about three months before she was killed, and it was a really big deal. They gave her like a gold bat for like a heavy hitter because of all the money that she had brought in, and I was her date for that.

Actually.

So you have all of these successful bondsman's there with their trophy wives and or their girlfriends, and you know, my mom is like kind of like the star of the evening and here she comes with her eighteen year old daughter.

So it was really really fun.

Yeah, it sounds like an awesome event, and she sounds like an awesome woman. It's worth noting that the murder of your father went unsolved and still unsolved. Correct, It's only worth noting as it relates to this particular case about your mom because of the fact that there could be some correlation. But let's go back to the terrible night when this happened.

So at that time I came home, and retrospectively, I can look back and see that there were signs that something bad had gone on in my house that night. I walked into the kitchen and I saw and broken glass on the floor, so I looked up at the window. My mom had actually broken into that same door once before when she had lost her keys. There's a way to enter into our garage from the backyard. We had

So that's what.

Makes me feel like anybody that was involved in anything that took place that night and killing my mom, they had intimate knowledge of our house, but at the time, it still didn't alarm me. What alarmed me was when I got ready to go to my room, which was across from my mom's room, and the light was on in the bedroom. The door was halfway open, so that's what caused me to go into the bedroom and.

I saw my mom and.

I'm sorry, take your time, And you know, I'm not really even sure of what I remember versus what I've heard along the way, especially like from trial and transcripts and things like that, but i do remember walking in and seeing her naked body on the floor and my first reaction was to just pick her up, and she was so heavy, and.

I'm looking and I don't even know if I registered at the time.

I must have.

I mean, somebody gets shot, you know, there's like a pool of blood. I don't even remember there being a pool of blood. I remember they're being blood everywhere, like on the sheets and even on the walls, and I'm just like screaming, and then I know I wanted help, so I run across the street and I go get a neighbor. And at that point, I'm thinking about the broken glass, and I'm like, somebody broke into my house and so he comes with me, and I guess I

That was like my life.

That was my cheerleader, that was my coach, and I needed to get to her. And so I went back in there, and the neighbor across the street, I think his girlfriend actually pulled me away from her and told me to call nine wood would So I called nine one one and I'm just I'm screaming. And at one point they asked me if she had been shot, and I said no, But I just remember sitting out on that curb.

You know, I watched plenty of TV and I know that. You know, the.

EMT goes inside and they bring the body out on the gurney if it's going to go to the hospital.

And the gurney came out and nobody was on it, and that's just went I lost it. They actually put me.

It's so ironic because it was like foreshadowing what was going to happen. I was so uncontrollable trying to run in the house. They put me in the back of a cock car.

At one point.

I don't even know what to say.

It's one thing that I see. I represent a number of people who have been convicted of a murder of a family member, and just to have that trauma of what you're talking about, and then to be sort of re traumatized by being convicted for it is just unimaginable.

And the interesting and disgusting thing is that the day of my mom's funeral, they had two detectives waiting on me. My mom was killed on June fifth. June sixth, I stayed with a family friend. June seventh, my aunts came into town and they tried to take me. I wouldn't go with them, so June eighth. They came and got me and they were like, you're coming with us. We stayed downtown in a hotel room and they left me there.

So she takes me.

To a child psychologist and he's talking to me and he was like.

This girl is in shock.

She needs to be surrounded by people that can pay attention to her and give her what she needs and love, and they need to give her some type of security. So my aunt's solution to that was to take me to Lakeside, which is a behavioral health center. So we go to Lakeside. I don't think at the time, I was really aware of the fact that I was eighteen,

I didn't go.

They took me straight back to Lakeside. I walk into the doors of Lakeside and I'll never forget. My nurse's name was Chris, and I just really, really really was clinging to her at that time because she reminded me of my grandma, and she was like, baby, She was like, I have to take you into the office.

You have some people here that want to talk to you.

I don't even know what I'm thinking, Like maybe it's like old friends, maybe it's a visit, maybe somebody's here to see me. And I walk in and it's two detectives with a camera and they hand over a piece of paper and so at this point Lakeside has become very overprotective of me. They're reading the paper and they were like, are you kidding me? Like you picked this day of all days, and it's the Affidavid with the warrant.

I just it was like out of body. I couldn't.

I could not cope with reality at that point, and I had no choice but to go with it because at this point i had nobody left. So I'm taking off my clothes and they're photographing me, and I'm thinking, like, I just wanted to lay down and die. At that point, I just I didn't. I did not have the wherewithal to continue.

I'm just trying to process, Well, you just told me you were, still, as you said, a child. I mean, the idea that they would strip you at that point, I mean, you're not even stripped of everything except your dignity, and then they took that away too. How how that's even possible is hard for me to process. You've I've been through everything that a human being can possibly adore.

Oh?

Well, my mom told me when my best friend and and id that grief is like Sarah. You know, that's the name that she wanted to name me, and she was like, you go through sadness and then you go through anger, and then you go through resentment, and then you go through acceptance, and then you go through healing. And I wanted to go through those things. So the

Prosecutors have not announced if they will be seeking the death penalty.

She's been charged with first degree murder, which carries us in life without parole, life with pearl, and even the death pen you know. And it just was like going on and on, and I remember sitting there thinking like, I wonder if they will try to give me the death penalty. The Constitution, they guarantee the right to a speedy and fair trial.

That's what it says in black and white.

But the reality of the situation is you will sit there for as long as they deem necessary.

Amy Wyrick was determined to be my prosecutor. She was a death penalty lawyer, and she was on what they used to refer to as the death squad, which meant that she was qualified to try death penalty cases.

Amy went out on maternity leave. Do you think that she handed the case over to somebody else.

No.

I sat there and waited for her to go on maternity leave, to have her child and come back. Amy was determined to try that case.

I wasn't there, but it's pretty clear that she saw you as a real stopping stone to where she wanted to get to in her career.

Correct.

This was the biggest and longest running case with the most evidence in the most exhibits and Shelby County history at the time, it was very clear to her that this could be like a career making case, especially if she got a conviction. Yeah, so she played like a win at all costs game. And you know one of the things that Amy Wyrick likes to hold on to and like she steadfast on, is that we had forty witnesses. Okay, you did, but let's look at what those forty witnesses presented.

That does not make you a murderer.

They made a big deal out of the idea that you were this craze druggie, right when in fact you were a typical eighteen year old. You're having, you know, some beers, you're smoking some p That's what eighteen year olds do. You were no drug addict.

I'm a diabolical killer, and then I'm a pothead. I'm someone that can totally get rid of any trace evidence that made blood disappear off of clothes that they pulled out the back of my car, Clothes that they had that I had on that night, that was able to overtake a woman that was five to eleven. I don't know,

Some type of fight, of course that would have been and we know that your nails were perfectly manicured, and there's just no way. And we know this from dreams of evidence of cases throughout the years that when somebody stabs somebody else numerous times, you always leave blood because the thing gets slippery and you get you know, and

Sleeves, right, So I think the theory that they adopted was that I had on long sleeves because they said I was trying to hide the cut on my hand. I kind of touched on the fact that I was a little bit different with this single mother. But I was also different because my father was Lebanese.

So that was a really difficult.

Thing for me, and it was made even more difficult at a young age by my mom's sisters because they constantly pointed it out. Growing up, I always wanted to look like my mom because she was like, she was so beautiful, and I just like idolized her. I could never do that figure wise, like I said, you know, she was tall and very fit, and I was short

Would look like more like my mom, I.

Have really, really, really hairy arms, and that is my heritage, that is from being Lebanese. So at that point in my life, I thought different was bad, so I didn't want to be different, so I tried to hide those differences, and it became just kind of a thing. I mean, I was called natured, but I think subconsciously it started off as being more of like trying to mask the difference in me versus other people.

But let's also just examine the fact of how ridiculous it is that you were wearing long sleeves to hide the cuts on your hands. You would have need admittence, right, That's what you needed, admits or something, right.

And so all of this comes down to seeing every fact through the prism of Nora's guilt. And once these investigators decide who they think did it, they make everything fall in line. And when they do that, they miss the obvious evidence that show said that there was somebody else there, there's somebody else's blood on the bed. Instead they're looking at shirt sleeves and.

That person is still free. All of this goes back to the idea that they had no evidence against you. There never was any evidence against you and the exculpatory evidence. I want to touch on that for a second too. Stephen Jones, the assistant prosecutor on the case, This motherfucker took evidence that he clearly knew would have blown the case against you, right, which means in English that he knew you were in it. But this was an inconvenient truth.

If my attorney, Valery Quarter is nothing else, she is very, very thorough. They knew that it would be found because she was thorough. Valerie, she knew head on going into this that these people were unethical.

The prosecutor, Amy Wyrick, had been censured numerous times for behavior not dissimilar to what she did to you. She was promoted after the trial, right, She's moved.

Up in the world and brought some of the detectives that were on the case up with her. This woman sat there and said that DNA analysis was not important it is important in some cases, she said, but it wasn't important in mine. But if you go back to the very beginning, they used DNA as a way to gain access to my body. They used all of this stuff to get what they wanted, and when the results came back then it wasn't relevant anymore.

That never really made sense to me.

You have a warrant that was issued in two thousand and five for a person's body because you say an arrest cannot be made in a case that's in June of two thousand and five. An arrest cannot be made in this case without some type of DNA or physical evidence. September twenty ninth, two thousand and five, you arrest me. December of two thousand and five, the Tennessee Bear of Investigations releases their findings with the DNA analysis and it comes back as a profile that it excludes me and

We should let her go. Let's go back to the drawing board, let's start over.

No, it's I can't, I mean, and I'm trying to. I can't obviously put myself in your shoes. Nobody can. But the nightmare it's total. I mean, the people who are supposed to be protecting you and are supposed to be, you know, protecting society are going so rogue.

I really really have to point this out. You have to have motive, means an opportunity. That's the three requirements when you're trying somebody for a case. So their motive became money. There was no money. My father ran a business that relied on cash, and some will say that he.

Ran an escort service.

If anybody knows anything about when you're doing I legal activity, you don't put that money in a bank account.

It's not ran on books. It's ran off books. Whatever was there.

We saw a person on video lifting cash out of a floor safe that I didn't even know existed. By the time the cops had released the keys to his house, it had been ransacked. My father had ten thousand dollars in a bank account, and my mom allowed me to make the choice of what to do with that, and we used that money and she ended up having to put like another thousand dollars with it to send his body back to Beirut so he could be buried with my grandparents.

So there was no money.

There was this big idea that there was a fight over control of an estate that did not exist, the idea that he had an estate or he didn't even have a will, I mean, there was there was nothing. So the whole theory of the case was built around there was money that my mom had that I could not have.

Well, okay, let's look at that too.

I'm eighteen, so anything that existed that she had by right would have gone to me. Then they said that she wanted to send me away. I'm eighteen. She can't send me away unless I choose to go. She could kick me out, but she can't send me away. So this whole theory that I was an out of control teenager that wanted some money that didn't I mean, it was like and what was so frustrating to me and I didn't know the time, is that all of this could have been easily disproven, but it wasn't.

You didn't testify in your own case, and this became a very important factor. Your attorney was concerned that in your fragile state, which by the way, you are now an orphan you've been in jail for three and a half years. Your attorney made what could be deemed a rational decision to not have you testify because on cross examination you could have broken down or who knows. I mean, it turned out to be the wrong decision, but you could sort of see where that came from, right Bright.

Yeah, it's always a tough call because you have this dynamic where the state has all the power. They are the ones who create this narrative, and they've got you on the stand. The judge is going to let them ask all kinds of horrible questions, and there is always a very delicate question about whether your client's going to testify. And certainly nobody should ever think about somebody not testifying, and that's an admission of guilt. Juries are instructed about it.

So you have these rights.

But here in the closing argument, the prosecutor takes that and really comments on that and invites the jury to in for guilt in ways that is unconstitutional.

Well, yes, the prosecutor this hyric chose to basically excoriate and more or less scream at you, demanding that you tell her what had happened, which is not only wildly inappropriate, but also patently illegal. Right, that's illegal behavior. You can't do it. But she did it anyway. She had this goal, right, she was gonna make it to where she had to go by stepping on your neck. And that's exactly what she did. And she was willing to not only bend the rules, but break the rules and break the law.

I mean, before she was able to finish a valerie quarter, my first attorney, she jumped up and you know, at this point, I'm I'm still like I just turned twenty one, and I really didn't know a whole lot, but I knew what she did right then and there, Like I was about to jump out my seat and I was about to say but you know, and my lawyer like put my hand like this, and she jumped up and she was like, you're on, Like you know, I object and all of that.

The thing is is that her intention was met.

It was very, very very calculating what she did. Jurors are your everyday people. The human condition is to be curious. These people walked out of the jury box with the last thing in their mind being just tell us where you were, Nora. That's all we're asking. She simplified it in a way like if you would have just told us where you were, none of this would be happening. So that's the last thing that these twelve people heard when they walked.

Out of that box.

And I'll tell you, as a lawyer, you know that you're not allowed to do that. You are not allowed to comment on a person testifying or not testifying in that manner. And if a defense lawyer had done that, they'd be in jail.

It's their world. You're in it, and they make the rules.

And they move the lines when they want to.

They do.

And if you're a defense attorney and you do something wrong, they'll have no fury. If you're a prosecutor and you do something wrong, it was a mistake, it was an invertent mistake.

They didn't mean to. They're sorry. It won't happen.

And Norah, let me point out that the Fair Punishment Project at Harvard, which is as blue chip of a panel as you can have, there are literally legal luminaries on that panel, and they just this year singled out Amy Wyrick, prosecutor in your case, for numerous allegations of misconduct over the last several years. And yet there she is serving an eight year term victimizing other people the same way she did to you, and getting away with it.

Yeah, it's crazy. And she actually gave a statement when that came out. She gave a statement, and she dismissed that as easily as she dismissed the dNaM My case.

Norah, when you were at trial, obviously you knew you were innocent, but now you'd been incarcerated in a horrendous jail situation for three and a half years, which let's not forget at that point that's a big percentage of your life. Was there a point during the trial at which you said, WHOA, they may actually convict me, Like, did you just expect that finally justice would be done and the jury would rule in your favor.

Going into trial.

I looked forward to it and I was looking for my day in court, and I thought that justice system would prevail, and I believed all that during trial. It was like, so when my mom was killed, it was a shock, it was a trauma, but it's like it had the advantage of like I didn't see it coming and I was totally blindsided. Going to trial, I was reliving all of that. I knew how horrible it was. I knew how horrendous it was. I knew what it looked like, I knew what she looked like, and I

And the only way I knew.

That is because when they took me to the holding cell, no one else was obviously going to court. It was Saturday, so I was in the whole jail by myself, and so they kept me in this little tiny holding cell that normally they would have the men in during the week, and one of the jailers had put a heart shaped butterfinger in there for me to like acknowledge that it

I think that not knowing was the worst.

And then we get to the point where the prosecutor, why Rick, violates your constitutional rights flagrantly by totally disregarding her responsibility to not highlight or make an issue out of the fact that you chose or your lawyer actually advised you, and you chose not to testify your own defense. And the jury goes out, and then they come back in, and that moment you knew when they came back in, I.

Knew, you know.

I almost feel like I knew when Amy did that as they walk back in. There was periods throughout that trial. It was like a fourteen day trial where when things are being discussed and things were being said, the jury would look at me. I mean, who wouldn't you know you're talking about this person like they're not in the room, but the person is in the room and they're just

So you're convicted and sentenced to twenty years and nine months in prison. You've already been now in jail for three and a half years. You go to prison, How did you deal with that?

You know? Prison?

I talked about Sarah with you, and prison was where I did like my anger, and then I did my resentment and then my acceptance, and it kind of armored me to go back out and FIGHTE again. I was really broken when I got to prison. I had totally

Of different activities.

So I go to this one seminar in the prison and they had assigned you to tables by stickers. Well, I decided I didn't like the sticker that I had, and I didn't like the table I had, and I wanted to sit at a different table. So I took it upon myself to switch my sticker with somebody else and move myself. I'm not thinking anybody's paying attention. There's

Like I've had so many people. I just at that point I didn't want to talk to anyone.

And her name was pat Colp and she is the reason that I still have my sanity. She runs an organization called Women Empowered to Become Self Sufficient shortened its webs, and what she does is she comes into the prison and she nurtures the people that have longer sentences. So many of the programs inside the prison are geared towards

We're gonna be there a while.

But then you have an amazing situation like mine happened, where the Supreme Court overturns all my stuff and I have the possibility of being thrown back out into society. But I have no tools and no help because I've been put at the back of the bus because of my sentence. So ms pat comes in, and she's so important because she offers computer classes, how to write a resume, thinking for a change, like things that people like me need, but the prison doesn't like they don't have anything for that.

These mothers get to have.

Their children from eight to three, open gifts with them, do arts and crafts with them, hold them, if they need to change their diaper, they can. You know, all of the things that mothers want and need to do for their children, and she enables that opportunity.

So to be a part.

Of that was like the most amazing experience ever. There was so much joy and at the same time, like you open up the day and it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen for these women in prison to be able to hold and have Christmas with their children. And then it's the most heart wrenching thing you've seen when these children have to walk out of the prison away from their mothers.

It will destroy your soul.

Norah. Then a miracle happens, literally a miracle right, I mean, because we know how rare it is for wrongful convictions to be overturned, very rare in Tennessee. For the Supreme Court of Tennessee to overturn a wrongful conviction, it's a miracle.

Right.

What was that day?

Like it was I'm actually on the toilet, going to the bathroom watching TV and it just like so happens that my roommate's TV is on the lower stand and she had it on mute. I think it was something good to eat for dinner that night, So everybody else has gone to the chowha, and I I see what I think is my name flashed across the bottom of the screen. Like you know how they have like the little title at the bottom of whatever the news story is about. Well, you get in trouble if you listen

Bit behind that. So I'm like, did I just see my name?

So I'm waiting for the closed caption to come on, and all I see is Nora Jackson, and I don't know if I saw reverse or Supreme Court.

So I was like, holy shit.

So I jump up and I changed the channel because we have something called three dash two, which is like it just runs the news over and over and over again. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, you know what, Like I get impatient. I'm like, I'm gonna go to a news channel five. I go to news channel five. I wait about two or three minutes it's on there.

I'm like, somebody let me out of here.

And I'm just so excited and i want to tell my friends and they're gone to eat, so I'm like waiting for them on the breezeway. I'm like guess what, and they're like what. I'm like, what would be like the best thing that could ever happen to me? And they were like, you know, you walk away and you do this and you do that, And I was like the Supreme Court just overturned my stuff, and we all just started crying because a victory for me was a

I'm just going to say that I don't remember ever having a visual quite like you sitting on the toilet, watching your own name scroll across the screen and then jumping around. I mean, you no, I know, It's like I.

Almost wanted to change the narrative just because I'm like, I'm sitting on the toilet, but I mean, that's what happens.

There's something symbolic about that, right, it really really is.

I mean, the toilet is perfect analogy for this a lot of what's gone on here so far. Something else is really dramatic about you having to wait to be able to tell your friends. So the Tennessee Supreme Court in a unanimous decision. I want to emphasize that the unanimous decision reverses your conviction and in the strongest terms, condemns the conduct of the prosecutors. And anybody listening is probably going, Okay, well, that's that's a wrap, right, case closed,

You know, if I was anyone else, I probably would have thought that that meant that I was going to be free. A lot of people, you know, that were not really really totally aware of the workings of the just system were like waiting for me to pack myself that night. But the way my life in my world works, I knew that there was still.

An uphill battle.

For there to be no real consequence of that is insane.

It is It's nuts that this can go on, That a court can identify, yes, a flagrant violation of her rights and that ultimately is a condemnation of this conviction. It's as close as can be to a finding by this court that she really didn't do it, and for that then to go back to the county and for them to just go right back to work on the same railroad that they were doing before is unimaginable from this perspective, but unfortunately pretty routine. So in a claim

So the Supreme Court or returns your conviction and then you end up back in court because they can put you back in court, and that's another outrageous thing about all of this. But nonetheless they put you back in court, and now you are faced with a momentous decision, which is that the government gives you the option to go back to trial or to take what's called an Alfred play. And I know that had to be really the hardest decision of your life.

It was okay, the Supreme Court overturned my conviction and in August of twenty fourteen, and I didn't even go back to the county jail. I had my first hearing in February of twenty fifteen, so there was like a long waiting period in between there. My first court appearance in February of twenty fifteen was for a bond hearing. And the mentality of people that are incarcerated in anybody that knows, is it's easier to fight your case from

You can meet with your lawyers as many.

Times as you There's a big advantage to that. So our thoughts were I would have.

A bond hearing and we would work really hard on getting me out and that way, because this case theoretically could drag on for a really long time. In a very calculating move, the Shelby County District Attorney's office recused themselves the day of my bond hearing, which therefore forfeited me the opportunity to have a bond.

And Jason, that's like really important.

Because if that just goes to show that they they were so underhanded and all of the stuff that they did to me.

I mean a bond hearing. People have bond hearings every day.

People get bond set before they ever have a court appearance. A special prosecutor does not need to be familiar with the facts of the case in order for a defendant to have a bond. But this is the judge saying that it was all just a ployee because the ultimate goal for them was for me to take a plea.

Of course, they had no case. There was so much public scrutiny.

The Supreme Court had slapped them down very very heavily in that opinion, and they had lost all their witnesses. A lot of them didn't want to testify, and a lot of them were now in material. So they just kept pressuring, putting off, pressuring and putting off. And the day before I took my plea, we had actually subpoened thirty assistant district attorneys and they had filed injunctions to block him, and then they were getting ready to go through.

Their ultimate goal was to keep Amy Wyrick off the stand.

She had already been in the stand earlier in that year about hiding evidence in a totally different case, and if you put Amy on that stand, she was going to have to be held accountable. And I guess the solution to all that was to get me off their case and just to dispose of all of this was a plea. So my lawyers came to me the night before I took the plea with the offer. There was a lot of confusion. I kept asking, like, you know, how much is it?

What is it?

And they just kept reiterating, you will walk out of here tomorrow, you can go home, you can be free. And my lawyer the first thing I asked them, I started crying and I was like, do you know what this means?

And she was like, what I said.

For them to offer me this plea, I said, this means that they know I didn't do it. They went to my mom's two sisters that were against me, and they agreed to this plea. If they really thought that I killed their sister, do you think that they would be willing to offer me freedom? I said, I don't know what's more awful the fact that I've been here, of the fact that these people know or have a doubt in their mind and still went through with all

She said, you want to get out and help people. You can do that. You want to get out and have a baby. You will be young enough to do that now, she said, hold on to the things that you can do and let go of the things that you can't and sign the paper.

And you did. I think any reasonable person in your situation would have signed that paper because you had seen the worst of what American justice system can dish out. At that point, you knew that they were going to go to any lanes they had to to reconvict you and send you back to hell, basically for as long as they could.

Right, I'm not in prison anymore, So I'm back logged down with a totally group of people.

I'm restricted from all of my friends. You make friends in prison.

We have Joehaus lawyers in prison called law clerks, so all of the people that can understand and empathize and actually talk about what the court proceedings and what's going on and fully understand them and give me advice. I'm not even allowed to communicate with these people. We're not allowed to write, we're not allowed to talk, We're not

They told me I would walk out that day.

You're sort of signing your life away, right, because once you signed that Alfred plea. You're not able to sue.

Them, they're not liable for anything.

On top of that, you're living as a convicted felon, even though the Tennessee Supreme Court has said five to nothing that basically that's not true. So it's really a Sophie's choice kind of situation, right, and you took the logical choice, but you took it under false pretenses, thinking that you were going to be freed that day, and instead you're sent back to prison for fifteen months, which is I don't know, it's really just it's just hard, like it's hard for me to just wrap my head around.

That was my lowest point.

So when I get there, TDC is like, we did not tell your lawyers that you will go home. We told your lawyers that you would be eligible for a parole. And when I was sitting there taking the plea that day, that's what Chris Kraft that George was saying, you'll go back and you'll be eligible for parole. But one of the things that my attorney's told me before I took the stand was, look, don't listen to anything he says. Okay, he doesn't know you're getting out we've arranged this with TDOC.

Is trying to pull me off the stand.

They are looking like, oh shit, like something has gone terrible wrong. They just knew, you know, because they weren't back there when my lawyers were telling me all this, and they're thinking that I'm signing this plea and I'm getting out that day.

They've gone out and they've bought me root beer.

They've bought me clothes, they bought me a toothbrush, and they're gonna be waiting on me when I get out and they're sitting there listening to the judge saying I'm gonna go up for parole, and.

Everybody we're all really confused.

So I get off the stand and I go back to the back room with my attorneys, and they're like, but you're not even smiling, like this is so exciting, you're about to walk out of here, and I said, I don't. I don't think I'm gonna believe it until it actually happens. So I go back to the jail, I give away all my stuff. I check the computer. It says disposed, So then it's real to me. I'm getting out of here. My case is disposed of. So they say, nor you have a visit. I go up

She was like, Nora, we already checked it. And I said, no, I want you to check it again.

And she did it and it said fifteen years because that's what I had signed for, so it said fifteen years hold TDOC, which is Department of Corrections. So that meant that I had to go back to TDOC and they needed to calculate my time.

I went back to.

TEDC and that was in May of twenty fifteen. When I got there, my expiration date, which is the day that I would get out, was sitting in July of twenty seventeen. I was past my parole eligibility date. So I get there and they're like, Nora, you're on the parole docket. And I just looked at the counselor and I don't think anyone has ever said this before. And I looked at her and I said, fuck parol. And she was like what. And I was like, I don't trust you. I don't trust TDOC, and I don't trust

I said.

I don't have anybody waiting on me out there, I said, and I don't trust anybody out there, and I'm going to flatten my sentence.

So let me explain.

Flatten means that I would sit there and earn my good time and meet my date. So I could have gone up for parole. I might have gotten it, I might not have. But if I would have gone out on parole, then that means I would have been under the Tennessee State supervision for two more years, which means Amy Wyrick would have been.

Like over me for two more years.

Isn't about to release what little control I had back to them at this point, to be quite honest, nothing personal. I didn't trust my lawyers, I didn't trust TDC, I didn't trust anyone.

So I had to trust myself.

So I sat there for fifteen more months so I could walk out of there and never look back.

Yeah, and think about this. She gets a decision from the Tennessee Supreme Court unanimous that puts her in the position of she's innocent, no more guilty than you or me of this crime, and she waits months and months and months to even get a hearing about whether she can get bond. There is no daylight but this one option that is put in front of her, and then the rug is pulled right underneath her. And it's just all of this to prevent her from just bringing the light of the day to what happened.

Here.

We see this over and over again, where you've got innocent people who are stuck behind bars with no legal justification, and they're given this forced choice because the government holds all the cards.

Norah, Then, what was it like for you the day you got out, you finally got out, how'd you feel?

It was unreal?

Up until the moment that I walked out this sally port the gates, I didn't think I would really get out. They had played with They would release me at twelve o'clock midnight, then they would release me at four o'clock the next day, and then I ended up leaving at eight thirty and the warden actually came and told me if I told anyone when I was leaving, they wouldn't

And I got out and Ansley was there.

I was so lucky and so happy to have her. But I honestly think being out, I knew that my mom was gone, and I knew.

That someone had killed her.

People talk all the time in prison about going home because they have this idea of home, and I don't really know what a home is for me right now, and so I think getting out has been such a blessing and I'm so grateful. And I used to always think that getting out was the hard part, getting released, getting free, but life after something like this is the hard part. I took that plea because I thought I

I find myself.

When I talk to my friends in prison, it's like I don't even want to tell them these things, because who am I to complain when they're still sitting in there?

You know, but these are the things they don't tell you when you're in there.

I think. I guess I'm just going to say, everyone who's listening out there, get involved. Donate to your local innocence project, go online, read about these issues, write to someone in prison. Support organizations like Women Empowered to Become Self Sufficient that meant so much to Nora when she was in Check them out and vote. Nora can't, but you can, and so get out there and make a difference, because you know it's time. It's time for us to

I don't know, I just I'm just one.

I'm one of many.

There are Michelle's and Shane's, and Joscelyn's and Octavia's and so many people like me that are sitting inside that haven't gotten the opportunity or the chances that I've gotten, that are just waiting on someone like the Innocence Project to accept their case. So I guess what I would say is I just hope that the people are listening.

R is that like any little bit counts, And I just.

Hope that people are able to look at this with an objectivity that maybe they didn't have.

I want to thank you both for being on the show, Bryce for sharing your wisdom of all these years, and Nora, of course you. I can't even know put into words how much it means to have you here, and I know the best is yet to come for you. We're all on your side, and we're fucking pissed too, Sonna. We're all gonna have to practice Sarah together. And I also want to give special thanks to Emily Basilon, who