#073 Jason Flom with Damien Echols (Live from the Church of Rock and Roll)

should do the right thing. And that's why, even though I was dealing with corrupt people, I wasn't going to brave anyone to get me out of prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that I braved my way out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent to proven guilty. I'm guilty until I proved my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me. Our system. Since I've been out ten years, it's coming little ways, but it's still broken, a totally little trust in humanity after what happened to me.

This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. With Jason flam that's me and today we have an episode that um, I'm actually kind of intimidated to even do because I'm interviewing a personal hero of mine, Damian Echols. Damian, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me.

And it's extra special because we're here recording in front of an audience at the Church of Rock and Roll in Las Vegas, of which you have been an incredible part and I'm so grateful to you for your participation. But I want to start this episode by apologizing to you on behalf of um, the entire human race, for what is just and unbelievable. Um, there's not a right word for it, but nightmare, sago ordeal um that never

should have happened in the first place. And I just wanted to tell you upfront that I'm I'm, I'm inspired and uh just in incredibly moves by by your presence. And so so with that being said, before I get all gushy here, UM, let's get right into it. So, UM, I'm gonna ask you questions, some of them I already know the answer too, because I'm familiar with your story, but not not all the details. But let's go back to growing up, Um, your childhood. Um, did you have

brothers and sisters? I did. My family history is kind of odd and convoluted, just because my mother and father were both married about five times each. So I have a lot of uh you know, half siblings, step siblings, full siblings. So, UM, my family into the vary at any given time. It could be anything from just me and my sister too. I think like the most was like seven of us at one time, seven children at one time, so it was kind of all over the map.

And I've heard you talk about the fact that you grew up so poor that when you finally moved to a trailer, it was like you felt like you were like the Jeffersons moving on up right. UM, I mean, can you describe how what did that look like? I mean you were did you grow up in West Memphis? Well,

when I was really young. Um. One of the things whenever Lorie was working with the investigators looking back over the case and they were getting like my school records and things like that, one of the investigators was saying, this, this can't be right. The school records show that sometimes you moved as often as every two weeks and I did you know. I lived in Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland,

um Oregon, just everywhere. We were constantly moving, you know, my parents or my dad at you sort of thought, you know, maybe if we go to this place, then you know, somehow another will escape poverty. You know, there'll be a better job, a better place to live, a better something down the road. So we were constantly moving from place to place looking for something better than what

we had, trying to escape poverty basically. But we would always at the same time end up coming back to either Tennessee or Arkansas because that was where we had, you know, the most family members at least some sense of support or community. So we went all over the place, but would always end up coming back there. And for you growing up in this really, I mean I didn't even know every I mean every two weeks. You were

literally a nomad, right and an American nomad um. And I've heard you talk about I watch your moth presentation, which is wonderful if anyone wants to go online and see it just I mean, it comes right up on your Google Tamyan nichols Um. It's a ten minute video. Um, that is very, very powerful. So you talked about how for you and this is why it's so exciting and interesting to be here right now the Church of Rock

and Roll. We talked about how music and books, but really your way of sort of taking yourself out of this really miserable situation in many ways that you were in. Absolutely. You know my family, Um, I have a ninth grade education. I dropped out of school when I was in ninth grade. And that's more than anyone else in my family has. You know, if you look through my whole family tree, you won't find anyone with so much as a high

school diploma. Uh. So we didn't have you know, like a lot of books or a library or anything in our house. For me, I I used to skip school and go hang out at the library all day. As odd as that sounds, I would hide in the library, read books, bring them home, because when you're reading, you know,

you're you're even if it's only in your head. You're going different places, seeing different things, having different experiences, and you don't have to focus on the fact that you're eating rice again for the you know of time this week. And then you had a sort of an outsider. Um,

you're you're an outcast, right. Um. And as as partially has result of that, or maybe it was a cause and effect whatever, you ended up being inadvertently putting yourself in a situation where when one of the most terrible crimes not only the history of Arkansas but in the history of America, um or the world happened, there were there were these very small minded uh people around who sort of came to this instinctual call it conclusion that it must be the weird kid, right, it must be

the kid that wears black and listens to heavy metal. Because this was in the We're going back to right, and many people will already know part of this story. But on that tragic day, three little eight year old boys went out for a bike ride and disappeared, and they turned up sexually mutilated. One boy was castrated, they were tortured, hog tied. Um. It hurts me just to say it, um. And their bodies were dumped in a

swampy riverbed. Um. So we know, I know from decades of working on wrongful convictions that when you get a crime like this, especially at a small community but anywhere, there's a lot of pressure that nobody wants to have fat pressure, and everybody wants to calm the community, and so the authorities are more prone to developing theories that in a in a more calm environment might not make sense and they might not pursue. But in this case, somehow or other, they and this was their in the

Satanic panic as well. Right back then, um, for those of you who are old enough to remember, in the early nineties, there was this very strange thing that was going on in America. There was rumors of Satanic cults and stuff like that. None of them turned out to

be true, but that's beside the point. So what happened, Well, you know, for me my entire life, the thing that has been most important to me, that that I love the most, that my life always sort of revolved around, was Western hermeticism, ceremonial magic, all the way back from when I was a child. But I lived in a incredibly right wing fundamentalist town where I mean, there are places in this town where you come to a you know, four four corner stop and on all four corners of

the street will be churches. If you weren't like it was like Starbucks. Now, yeah, that's exactly what it was like. It was like, yeah, churches were like Starbucks is there? Um? And if you didn't belong to, you know, one of these mainstream for that area, mainstream fundamentalist religions, you were automatically viewed as suspicious. You know, you you were Satanic. That's what they thought. And it didn't matter if you were a Buddhist or a Hindu or something like that.

You're still satanic. You just don't know you're a Satanist. You're just being you know, tricked by the devil into thinking there's some other religion. But then whenever you start, you know, bringing factors in, like the fact that I actually did love ceremonial magic, and that's been one of their things that you know, they harp on forever that that is Satanism, that those two things, there's no difference in those. Um. So that was a huge part of what made them focus on me as well. You know,

that was what they thought made me a freak. They think, automatically, you're a Satanist. It would take a Satanist to commit a crime like this. Stick all those things together and they didn't even look for anybody or anything else. No,

and they ignored in this case. What's really stomach churning, aside from so many other factors, but one of the things that's really so upsetting is the idea that they ignored obvious signs you have that pointed to at least one, arguably up to three other individuals, including uh and this

this is just it's too strange to even believe. But the fact is that there was a local restaurant, was a Bojangles or something a Bojangles where the manager called the cops that night and said there was a guy covered in mud and blood that stumbled into the into

the fast food place and went into the bathroom. And to their credit, the manager called up and a police officer came but didn't investigate, and they ultimately collected evidence from that bathroom that he went into, which there was blood all over the place and mud, and they lost They lost it, right, they lost it. So I mean not only that, but also even after they did DNA testing, you know, years later they do DNA testing, find out that the DNA does not match me or the other

two guys they convicted. To this day, they still have not run that DNA through codis to see who it matches. They refused to do that. Yeah, which is you know, which is so strange. And I talked about on the show a lot because in a case like this, especially in the small community, the people who are doing the investigating live in that community. By definition, they may bring in outside experts, but a lot of them live in

the community. And you know, as as a dad, myself, or as as any as a citizen, as anybody, everyone's got relatives, everyone should be concerned for their own safety. When you have somebody out there who's capable of this, this sort of pure evil, you would think it for no other reason than purely selfish reasons. You would want to get that person off the street because that's a

you know, that's a really scary situation. So um, but that that's not what happened, And it happens too frequently that these various factors combine to result in a tragic outcome. To tragic outcomes. Well, in this case many because there were three of you, all your family members are affected. And then the fact that the actual perpetrators rolled out to remain free and there and there again we're obvious signs.

I mean, the one I just talked about. The various signs pointing to the stepfather of one of the boys, um including a bloody knife that had the kids blood on him that was found to belonged to him. I mean, this one kind of came with instructions, and I know that it's difficult, and I have no one of these people that I'm not an anarchist. I believe we do need a system of law and order, and I think a lot of there are a lot of very good police and judges and prosecutors out there. But in this case,

you ran into the perfect storm. It's a small town, high profile clime, complicated crime because the crime scene itself was a muddy riverbed, not the easiest place to collect evidence. It seemed to have been scrubbed to some degree. And then all the pressure and what people don't realize also, you know, just most people's knowledge of the legal system comes from watching TV, which is complete and absolute fiction.

They don't, you know they And it fosters this idea that these people, these judges, these prosecutors, these attorney generals, that they have these positions because they're somehow moral people. They're good people who are looking out resigned. Since that's excuse me, society In actual fact, these are politicians, just like senators, just like congressmen. Their number one priority is

winning that next election. So they're going to do or that next case exactly, whatever the community is pressuring them to do. That's the way they're gonna lean because they want to win the next election. So in this case, they focused on you, and then they had to find a way to get to you, right because there was no evidence connecting you to it. Did you know the boys never even heard of them, even in a small I mean, it's got to be a very small community.

I think that everybody would almost know every But of course I'm from New York, so I sound ridiculous, but you know what I mean, it sounds really small to me, West Memphis, Arkansas. I mean, we keep in mind, these are eight year old kids. You know, it's an entire generation than me or the other two guys even convicted. Were there were you know, no reason that we would know him. They were in elementary school. We were already you know, in junior high getting ready to go into

high school. Um. They also lived in you know, the suburbs and the next town over. Technically we didn't even live in the same town. They lived in West Memphis. Me and the other two guys lived in the next town over, which was called Marion, So you know, it wasn't like there was any reason for us to ever even come in contact with each other. And Jason Baldwin, let's just talk about Jason for a second, because he's

one of my favorite people. I called him before, the best Jason I know, UM, and he's been on the show. That was an awesome experience interviewing him, and just an amazing guy. He just recently got somebody off of death or I saw on Instagram today actually that he uh he helped to uh free a guy um from death row,

which is such an incredible accomplishment with his organization. UM. So, Jason was your sort of one and best and pretty much only friend at the time, right, And he was, I mean from just appearances physical appearances, he was sort of he didn't have the same stigma that you did, right. He was sort of just an average looking kid, very very young looking, uh must away a hundred pounds or less, long blonde hair, didn't look like a killer, but but

to them, you did. And he got caught up in all of this too, just because he knew me right, unbelievable. So so they found away and that way was Jesse Miscale. So from your view, and I want to know the moment, like I know, when the when the cops came to your door and your life turned into the living nightmare that I think is everyone's primal fear um. So they originally went after Jesse, and they sort of tricked him into confessing and he immediately recanted after where he confessed,

but he was I mean, he was slow, right. He had a few of somewhere between seventy and seventy two, and they interrogated him. I think the I can't remember exactly how many hours it was, it was something like between twelve and fourteen hours. And they're telling this guy, who you know, has an i Q that's way way below normal. They're telling him things like, you know, just tell us what we want to know and we'll let

you go home. So they finally get this guy to confess, and he can't get anything about the crime scene, right because he wasn't actually there, so he didn't know anything. They didn't care. The only thing they cared about was the fact that they got him to say yes. And most people you know, on a jury. Even today, they'll say, well, nobody would confess to something they haven't actually done. We

know now that that's not true. You know, all the studies show that something like over half of the people who are falsely convicted end up being forced into confessions in one way or another. And this guy was just another person that got forced into a confession. And we also know, Damian, that the most people who are most

susceptible to this our adolescence. We now know that the human brain isn't fully formed until you're twenty five, but when you're he was sixteen, right, and he was sixteen or seventeen seventeen, and with his low i Q, he was totally outmatched, overwhelmed, and probably after twelve and fourteen hours, he would have confessed to, you know, killing Abraham Lincoln example, I mean, just to go home because that that tiny room and the you know, and everybody being on top

of you. Um, you know, it's not a situation anyone ever wants to find themselves in. And and we know now from study after study that people will say and do almost anything to get themselves out of there. So and he kept changing his story. It didn't make any sense, but it was good enough for them, and then he got them to do exactly what they brought him in

there for, and he was just collateral damage. They didn't really care about convicting him, but they had to because he had now confessed, and in order to get you and to make his confession make even a modicum of sense, they had to bring him along for this terrible ride as well. And so he implicated you and Jason, and then they said, okay, now now we can we can proceed. And then one day, one night it was I guess right. You were home with Jason, yeah, watching movies. You had me, Jason,

my younger sister, and my girlfriend. At the time. We're just at home watching TV. You know, by this time, we had been harassed by the cops for probably a month straight. They were at our house, either my house or Jason's house, or stopping us on the street, you know, just messing with us non stop every single day. So when they showed up this night, we figured it was just more of the same, you know, we thought they were just here to harass us again. We didn't realize

they were coming to arrest us this time. So take us through that because it's it's so terrifying. But um, you know, like I said, we were sitting there watching TV and they start banging on the door. You know, they're they're just beating the hell out of it, like they're gonna knock it in. And at first, you know, I said, don't even answer the door, slid him stand out there and beat on it. Um, but they wouldn't. They didn't go away this time, so we go open

the door. Immediately. You know, whenever I opened the door, it looked like pretty much every cop in West Memphis standing with their guns pointed at me. They rushed into the house, start destroying everything. Uh. They put me in Jason, both in handcuffs, throw us in the backs of cop cars, drive us to jail. Uh, they put me. They immediately separated us. I wouldn't see Jason again for years. Well, I saw him for a short period of time at the trial, but we weren't allowed to communicate in any

way whatsoever. You know, even though we're sitting at the same table, They've got me at one side and him at the other, and they will not even let us talk to each other. So we wouldn't, you know, talk to each other again. For almost twenty years. I think. Uh, but okay, here's another thing. My brain goes dead a lot. I will forget what I'm talking about, because, like you were just saying, people's minds are still forming all the

way up until they're twenty five years old. I was arrested when I was uh nineteen, and I spent almost a decade in solitary confinement, So I lost a lot of things that people take for granted, like uh, face recognition, voice recognition. I have almost no short term memory whatsoever. I will a lot of times forget what the hell

I'm saying right in the middle of a sentence. Uh. Whenever I'm doing talks, I'll tell the audience set beforehand, I'll say, if I forget what I'm saying, I'll have to ask and you'll have to remind me what the hell I was even just talking about. The reason I'm telling you this now is because I just forgot what we're talking about. UM, no problem, I can. I can

bring you back. And I know you mentioned to me UM weeks ago when we were talking about during this event, that that that was the case, and that actually there's a study being conducted UM at Columbia University about the effects of solitary long term solitary confinement on the brain because for you, yeah, you didn't, You didn't really need those functions exactly when you were in solitary staring at four walls all day long with no contact. Well, it

takes huge tolls on you in many way. You know it. It almost cost me my eyesight because you're in this small space and out here your eyes are constantly changing focus. You know, you're looking at stuff far away, stuff close up, You're looking at all different colors. I didn't do that for twenty years, so I started losing my eyesight over time. Uh My, I was in the hospital for a day two weeks ago because my lungs are so screwed up from breathing in years of tear gas that I have

lots of attacks of bronchitis. Uh. It has screwed me up so bad that, like two weeks ago, I walked into a diner, um ordered some food, passed out on the floor. I come to the waiters are around me. They're saying, are you okay? Do we need to call them that one one? I'm like, no, just give me a minute, let me sit here next thing, I know, you know they'd called the ambulance because I passed out again. I didn't even realize it. Uh. So it takes a toll on you in huge ways that last for the

rest of your life. You know, there's no way for me to physically rectify the things that they did to me. No, and we want to get into that too, because the you know, the way you were treated. Um, even had you been guilty of this horrendous crime that you were in fact innocent of, there's no excuse or justification for the torture that was inflicted upon you. Um. It's you know, it's just shocks my conscience and I think it should shock everyone's. So you were thrown in the back of

the cop car, brought to the police station. Okay, well we're at the police station. Uh. I don't know what they did with Jason. They carried him off somewhere and like I said, I wouldn't see him again for almost a year. They put me in a cell that was about the size of a phone booth. It's not what you see on TV when you think of a prison cell. You know, there's no bed, there's no toilet, there's no sink. There was no anything. It was literally a cell that

they had. There was just enough room to stand in. Uh. And they even could you even sit down? No, I mean maybe you could, you know, sit like Indian style on the floor if you wanted to. Who But it was literally fun I've seen those. Yes. Yeah. They left me standing there all night long. Um. The only thing every so often one of the cops would come in and say, are you ready to make your confession yet? I would just stand there and look at them. They

would leave. I stood there all night long until the next day they got me and took me into a courtroom and told me I was being charged with Well, first they when whenever they take me into the courtroom, they tell me, uh, you know, somebody's already confessed to this crime. They've implicated you. They're saying you were the ring leader of this. So now what you need to do is confessed to this and say no, you weren't

the ring leader. They were trying to put the blame back on them, or you're gonna die because of this. I can't even figure out who the hell they're talking about, because, like I said, I've only got one friend in the entire world, and that was Jason Baldwin. I knew it wasn't him because he was with me, and I knew he didn't do it. I knew he wasn't going to confess to something he hadn't done. Um, So I didn't realize who it even was that it confessed until the

next day. Whenever they take me into the courtroom, they say who it is, and they ask, uh, you know, how do you plead all this sort of thing. They refused to even read the confession in the courtroom. Uh. They asked me, did I want it read? I said yes, And they wouldn't read it even after they asked me and I said yes. Instead, they take me out of the courtroom into a janitor's closet with mops and brooms. They give me a transcript, a type transcript of this confession.

When I started reading it, it's immediately obvious why they didn't want this thing read in court. It made no sense whatsoever. You know, you're talking about this story that's like a like a Frankenstein patchwork thing that they've sewed together out of many statements made by somebody with an i Q of between seventy and seventy two and they would.

What they would do is when he would confess to something and wouldn't get anything right, they would come back into the room and say, well, do you think maybe this could have happened or even I mean even more blatantly obvious. The first time they asked him when did the murders happen? And he said something like eight o'clock in the morning. Well, they knew that wasn't true because

all three of the kids were in school. So they come back later and they're like, well, do you think it could have been a little later in the day, like when was it? Was it around like lunch or was it around dinner? And he'll say, yeah, it was around dinner. Well, they still knew that wasn't true because the kids hadn't even disappeared yet. So then they would come back and say, well, you know when it happened when you did this, was it getting dark outside? And

he'll say, yeah, it was getting dark outside. Well, at that time of year, you know, it's not getting dark to like eight or nine o'clock at night in that part of the country. So gradually what they did was shape this thing to make it what they wanted it to be. That's why they didn't want it read in court. I read this thing. They put me in another cell where I would stay for almost the next year, Uh, while I waited to go to trial. When we do go to trial, the evidence that they present us against

us as things like, UM Stephen King books. Uh, the fact that we owned Metallica T shirts and albums, UM posters that were hanging on our walls. You know, things that were from like skateboarding magazines, UM ceremonial magic books. This is the evidence they had that the prosecutors tell the jury that these things are not only evidence that that we're guilty, but their evidence that I don't even have a soul, that this is how evil I am. They came back in. I think our trial lasted slightly

under a month something like that. They came back in. They sentenced me to death three times. Uh. They sentenced me to die by lethal injection three times. They sentenced Jason to life in prison without parole. The other guy they sentenced to life plus forty years. They immediately take me to the court from the courtroom to death row, where I would not see Jason again. I saw him

maybe twelve fifteen years later for maybe twenty to thirty seconds. Um. They used to bring other prisoners in to clean the barracks, and he was one of the prisoners they brought in day to clean death row. So he comes by myself mopping and sweeping. That was the first contact I had with him in like fifteen years by that point. Uh. David Jason talked about when he was on the podcast, how the first day in prison he was released into

the general population and basically the entire weekend. Uh. He said, pretty much everybody in the in the prison took turns beating him up. Um. He was certainly in no position to defend himself, but he did the best he could. Um. But obviously he had no chance. He was also he's also just a very small, slight guy. I mean he's not he's not playing linebacker anywhere, you know what I mean. He as I said, he was almost a hundred pounds when they started and probably barely over by the time

we were convicted a year later. Um. But for you, you were taken to the worst literally the worst part of one of the worst prisons. Um, you were taken to the whole of of holes. Really, right as I heard you describe it, it it was the darkest, deepest, lawless,

filthiest place in the prison. My situation was different from Jason's, and that, like he describes how they put him in general population, he spends you know, I don't even know how long fighting, sustaining all sorts of physical damage, skull fractures, broken collar bones. At one point he was hit in the face with a padlock and it messed his nose up so bad that it bled for like a year afterwards,

on and off. Finally, when he did see a doctor um they realized what it was is that his nose had been shattered and one of the bone shards was sticking out, and they had to go in and pull the bone shard out of his nose and cauterize it shut. For me, it was the guards. Death row is different from the rest of the prison just because everybody on death Row has a common enemy. You know, everyone knows that these people are trying to murder you on a

daily basis. You don't have time to squabble with each other because you're too busy fighting to survive against the system. So for me, exactly, every time my life was in danger, it was all always prison guards. So whenever I first get there, they decided they're just gonna welcome me to

the neighborhood. You know, it's nothing personal. They take me to the whole and spent the next eighteen days beating the hell out of me, starving me, uh, pretty much doing everything they could possibly think of to torture um being to me. Uh. The only reason they didn't kill me, and I do believe they planned on murdering me back there. The only reason they didn't kill me was because there was a deacon from the Catholic Church that used to come into the prison and bring communion to inmates on

death row. So sometimes the sewage would overflow and you would end up, you know, spending a couple of days standing like ankle deep raw sewage. Well, the guards aren't going to clean that up. When that happens, they bring other prisoners in to clean it up. So they bring these other guys in from population. They see what the guards are doing to me and go to this deacon from the Catholic church that's coming in, and they told him they're killing this guy back there. They're beating him

to death every day. This guy goes to the war and says, I know what you're doing, and if it doesn't stop, I'm going to start telling people. I'm going to go public with it. That's the only thing they care about, you know, the only only concern they have whatsoever, is that people in the outside world will find out what they're doing inside those walls. So they took me out of the hole after about eighteen days and put

me back in a regular cell on death row. If not for that guy and those inmates coming in to clean up the sewage, I probably would have not have even lived the first year that I was in prison. It doesn't sound like you would have lived the first month under those circumstances, but you did. There's so many twists and turns, and it's really remarkable the fact that,

you know, so many incredible people got involved. Um, the filmmakers, various celebrities, including Eddie Vetter, not the mains, Johnny Depp, Um you actually a little like Johnny by the way, anyway.

So um, so yes, so many people got involved because it was so obvious that this was such a terrible miscarriage of justice, and because it was such a such a a the crime itself was so unimaginable, right, and I think that drew attention to it and then the result was so obviously wrong that it made for let's face it mean, media is important in these things, and in this case the movies. Was it the movies that

started it? What? How did the I mean? And I want to talk about how you survived, and I know you're gonna lead us in the meditation afterwards, which I'm really looking forward to because if I can find one percent of what you've got through that meditation, um, it'll make my life better. So, um, so what was the tipping point that started to get people interested? Because here you are, like just a guy from the middle of nowhere,

convicted of the most notorious crime in the history of Arkansas. Um, the odds of you ever seeing daylight again were extremely slim. The odds of you dying in a prison cell or an electric chair were extremely high. Um what happened? The only thing that saved me was, you know, really, quite frankly, the vanity of the politicians that were involved. They allowed cameras in the courtroom. They thought, you know, this was gonna be a slam dunk thing. Nobody's gonna question this.

They're gonna send Jason off to prison, murder me sweep this under the rug. They're all gonna go out like heroes and everything's gonna be fine. So they let these cameras in the courtroom HBO. Uh. Two guys named Joe Berlin Dur and Bruce Snowsky. They come in, set cameras up and film the entire trial from beginning to end. Uh. Though that footage would eventually become a documentary, a series of documentaries. But the first one came out, and I think it was it was called Paradise Lost, and it

aired on HBO. If not for that, we would still be in prison right now, or I'd probably be dead right now. People started to see the documentaries, uh, you know, all over the country, and then eventually all over the world. You know, these things went all over the world. People would see them, and people started getting involved in the case.

You know, everything from really people would do, uh, bake cakes and have like cake sales to raise moneys to raise money for to pay for like you know, lawyers, private investigators, whatever it was. Because most people also don't comprehend the amount of money it takes to fight a legal case. Over the I was in for eighteen years and seventy six days. Over that time, it cost us

about five million dollars to fight this case. Because you know, even things like DNA testing, when you think of DNA testing, you watch it on TV, it's always the state doing it. You know, they didn't do anything in our case. We had to raise the money to pay for DNA testing ourselves, which in and of itself ended up being close to half a million dollars. Right, And now the good news

is it's become much more affordable. Um DNA tests can now be done for thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands, just thousands of dollars. And I do want to I'm glad you pointed that out because it's important to recognize the role that the general public played in this. Right, it wasn't just celebrities, exactly. It wasn't just filmmakers. There were people, I think it's fair to say, all over the world who saw this movie

and it's so painful to watch. And now we have the modern day equivalent with making a murder and Brendan Dascy, I guess you could say, right, except he wasn't sentenced to death. But when you watch Brendan Dascy, you know, his interrogation, you can get a sense of what the Jesse Miscally interrogation must have been like. And a couple of things that I want to mention about his his false confession. One is that he recant did it immediately

after he gave it, but nobody cared. The other thing is that they interrogated him for as you said, twelve to fourteen hours, but they only recorded a half an hour of exact right, So what does that tell you? I mean, it's really they apparently they didn't want a recording of them telling him all the information that he didn't know, since he wasn't there. That would have been inconvenient,

so to say the least. So there you are, and I guess you're kind of getting these little rays of hope while you're in the most hopeless situation that anyone can be in. Right, are you aware at this time of everything that's going on? This this and how important was it to you when people would write letters? Because it's one of the things I tell people when they asked me what can I do? I'm just a regular person. I don't have any access on any influence whatever. I'll

tell people. Go to the website, go to Innocence project dot org. Go to your local innocence project. There's innocence projects all over the country. Um, write letters, talk to talk to people, write letters to journalists. But also, I mean you must have been getting a lot of mail

at this time, and how how important was that? Because I talked about writing letters to people who are on the inside is being you know, one thing that almost anybody can do exactly, you know, and it really does help because it gives people inside something to focus on other than prison, other than you know, the walls you're trapped in twenty four hours a day, other than the brutality,

other than the deprivation and degradation and everything else. It gives you something to think about other than all of that stuff going on, which really does preserve your sanity. So even just doing something as simple as writing a letter to someone in prison really does change their life in a very marked, profound way. For me, you know, this was I still haven't seen the documentaries. Uh, I

don't watch stuff like that. So the only way that I would really know that it was that things were changing, that things were happening. One is the mail gradually started to change. It went from in the very beginning getting you know, there was a trickle of letters started right after the documentaries come out, Like you would get three five letters a week. It built up two by the

time I got out. The people in the mail room at the prison hated me because they would come to my sale with like big plastic you know, mail crates full of mail and they would have to stand there and get people to come help them open it all up and make sure there's no contraband or anything in it. And they hated me for that. Um So I knew about it from that angle, just because the mail was increasing.

And I would call Laurie every day and she would tell me, you know, Eddie Vetter is doing this, or these people in uh, you know Seattle are putting together this benefit concert, or you know, whatever it was. She would tell me about it. And you know, in one way, yet kind of helps you're thinking about it when you're on the phone, But in all honesty, the second you hang up that phone, that stuff is happening in a

different world. You know, it's so far away that it has almost no impact on the fact that you are fighting every fucking day of your life just to survive. You know, the fact that you know people are having like a bake sale in Nebraska or something. Theoretically, you know, somewhere in the back of your mind, somehow it gives you a little hope, but you don't think about that in the course of your daily life. And the course of your daily life, all you're doing is trying to

survive another day in prison. And and you know, I want to talk about the death penalty too, because everyone knows I'm a very vocal opponent of the death penalty. I don't think it has any place in a civilized society. And most of the world agrees, certainly almost all of the western world degrees. America is in the very uh in the top five of all countries in the world in terms of the number of people we execute. And

it's not a good list to be on. UM And we know now that we execute a lot of innocent people. We don't we can't prove the exact numbers, but um it's been proven that something like five percent of people on death row will have been exonerated. But that doesn't that doesn't tell us how anyone are in there still that we haven't been able to get to because as you said, it's a it's a time time consuming, uh

difficult and expensive process. And there's also estimates now people who do work in this field, like the Southern Poverty Law Center organizations like that, they're now estimating that as many as one out of every ten to people on death row are innocent. So think about the facts. If it's one out of every ten, if they told you that one out of every ten planes were going to crash, you wouldn't fly anymore. Everybody would demand that the system

be fixed. But since it doesn't affect everybody, you know, it's executions. Most people don't have a loved one, a family member, anybody else they know on death row, it sort of slips under the radar. Yeah, it's a it's a really scary number. And we know some of the ones. I mean Cameron Todd Willingham as a movie being made by professor at Columbia. Now about that case in Texas. An innocent guy who was executed for the the arson fire that wasn't arson. There was an electrical fire that

killed his kids. Um, all three of his kids would have faith that was um. And so we know that there we we have a number of names of people who have been executed who we know now were factually innocent, where people have confessed to the crimes that they were convicted of. Um, it's it's all just very very troubling

and disgusting and it needs to be abolished. It doesn't accomplish anything, it doesn't help, it doesn't reduce crime, it doesn't scare anybody off a murder thinking that anyone who's crazy enough to go and do something like that is not thinking, well, life in prison okay, but death penalty. Yeah, I'm gonna hold off, you know. I mean, I'll just go have a V eight you know what I mean, Like it's not happening so um, But for you, how I mean the execution date itself, how did how did you?

I mean, I want to know how you dealt with any of this right and then ultimately talk about your exoneration and what you're doing now. Um, so were you aware when did you have a date set? How many times was it moved? And how did you? I mean, how are you even here and not just bouncing off the laws? Are not sitting in the corner of some bar downtown, you know, with a with a bottle of scotsh I think my original execution date was May five, of either n or nine. I think something like that.

They weren't going to waste any time. No, no, they weren't. And I got even closer to it than I should have gotten because the attorneys that I had were so incompetent that they thought I was automatically going to be given a stay. I got within weeks of my execution date before they realized, oh, we actually have to file a stay to keep them from killing this guy. So I could have been killed just by accident, just incompetence. Yes, yeah, um.

After that, usually what happens is you get an execution date. Whenever you go from state court to federal court, Like after the your state court, your state supreme courts denies your appeal, they set you an execution date. The federal courts didn't decide whether they're going to hear your case or not. If they do decide, and they don't have to, if they do decide to hear your case, they'll give you a stay of execution, and then they'll hear your

case and it'll go on for a while longer. If they decide, we're not even gonna hear it, then they're just gonna kill you. Um I brain went day again. If they if they decided to hear your case, they're gonna kill you, right And here you are back in ready to be executed within weeks. That was it. So what happened is, by this time, you know, the documentaries had started coming out. People all over the world had

started to hear about the case. You know, they were I don't even you know, can't even count how many TV shows and and magazine articles and newspaper articles, and you know, people had started putting together website. So it I mean, what was happening to us was spreading like crazy. They knew that if our case went from state court to federal court, there was a good chance the federal courts were gonna hear it, that they were going to realize what was screwed up, and they were gonna throw

the whole case out. They didn't want that to happen, so instead of setting me an execution and allowing me to appeal at to federal court, they just sat on it and held it. In the eighteen years and seventy six days that I was on death row, Uh, I never got to go to federal court, it was still I mean, the swelling of support grew so much that finally the state court decided, we're going to have to do something about this because it's making us look really,

really bad. It's bringing too much attention. And just like whenever, you know, when I was in the hole and I told you, the only thing they cared about in the prison is that people on the outside world are going to realize what they're doing. Same way with with judges, prosecutors, all that the only thing they're concerned with is that people in the outside are going to realize that this

case isn't what they're telling people it is. So after that amount of time, they finally decided there's going They said, we're gonna have a new evidenciary hearing and all the evidence is finally going to be heard, all the new

DNA evidence. By that point, not only do we have the DNA evidence, but we had all sorts of witnesses that had come forward and said, you know, one woman admitted that the only reason that you tried to implicate us was because the police told her she had she had committed credit card fraud and they were going to charge her unless she helped them out with this case.

So she came forward and admitted to that there were eyewitnesses who said they saw one of the victims family members with all three victims within an hour of the time they were murdered. And this was not known at the time that we went to trial. So the prosecutors know all this stuff is about to come out in court, so they started talking with our attorneys and they come up with this deal um called an Alfred plea. I had never even heard of. This thing made no sense whatsoever.

What an Alfred plea means is that you are accepting a guilty plea while being allowed to legally maintain your innocence. The only reason this thing exists is so that the state can't be held responsible for what they've done to you, you know. And like I said, I was dying physically, you know, health wise. I knew that if I didn't take this deal one way or another, I was an We're going to live to see the outside of those walls,

you know. The prosecutor came to us and pretty much said, yeah, you'll win this case if you go to federal court, but we can draw this out for another five years, another ten years. Every time the judge sets a date, we can ask for an extension, we can appeal any decisions made, or you can accept this deal and go home tomorrow, literally tomorrow, but you can sign these papers and walk out of this prison. But there was another catch, which is that they insisted that all three guys do it.

And they had an amazing amount of leverage there too, because now it goes back to your friend Jason Baldwin, right, And Jason was ready to fight the case, but he wanted to He wanted to be declared innisent after everything he had been through. But they held a little bit of uh, I mean not a little bit. They held a huge um, a huge hammer um, which was that they made it known to him that if he decided he wanted to fight the case, they were going to

execute you. And and that friendship that you guys had had from when you were teenagers now here it is eighteen years later. And it's really interesting, right that one woman that you spoke about, who also changed her story over time, she got to keep her credit cards while sentencing you to death. That's really, let's face it, right, that was the deal she made. She somewhere in her head.

She decided that was a good deal. Now, maybe she thought you really were guilty, and they probably convinced her of that. Let's hope that was really the case. But one or another, for the sake of a couple of credit cards, UM, and and the difficulties it would have caused her if that, you know, went to court. Whatever, she was more than willing to roll over on you and and and have an innocent guy go to his death.

But so Jason now had really a Sophie's choice, right, he had to accept this Alfred plea UM allow the state to um force him to live his life as a convicted felon UM and never be able to sue for compensation. And there's the added element of the fact that when Alfred please are given an accepted typically it means that they won't go reopen the case because as far as they're concerned, it's still closed. So there's no

justice for the kids, there's no justice for their families. UM. But it was a convenient thing that allowed a certain number of people to save face and allowed you to go home. So so you took the Alfred play. I think anybody in your situation would have. And UM, when you when the alternative was death. It's a pretty easy decision to make. And how long after you took that did you get to go home? About a week later? Um,

what the hell was that? Like? I mean, it was honestly, it was kind of horrendous because I didn't know that I was going to get out until the night before I got out. The night before I got out, they came and got me and took me to the county jail, And I knew then they wouldn't be went through this amount of trouble because the county jail was like several

hours away from the prison. So I knew they wouldn't be going through this amount of trouble, you know, taking me several hours away from the prison unless I am getting out. So I knew there was a chance I might get out, but I didn't know I was going to. So in that week I did not sleep, I did not eat. I began, at that point edging towards a nervous breakdown. The day we walked out of prison, I did not have one single penny of money in my pocket. I didn't have so much as a suit of closed

the change into I had nowhere to go. I had nothing. We didn't think of stuff like that. Whenever I was in prison. We're just thinking, keep these people from killing me. Go home. That's the finish line. That's it. So that's what we had always been working towards. We didn't realize what was going to happen whenever I walked out of those gates. Keep in mind that not only had I've been in prison for almost twenty years by that point, I had spent almost the last decade of that in

solitary con finement. So I went from a decade of solitary confinement to being out on the streets of Manhattan literally overnight. And it shattered me psychologically. I can't remember the first two years that I was out of prison. If you put together everything I can remember within the first two years that I walked out, it may equal a couple of hours. Uh. It destroyed me in every way that it possibly could. We weren't counting on any of that. I've had two nervous breakdowns due to not

only that, but also once we're out. Uh, you know, you're constantly You've got the media coming at you, asking you every day all these questions about being in prison, about the case, all this, so you get to the point where you're thinking, why the fund did I even get out? I'm not even out of prison, you know, I'm out here, but it's the only thing people are asking me about. It's the only thing people are talking

to me about. You know, random people walk up to you on the street and start start talking about the case. So it's not even like you're out of prison anymore. It's just like the prison is in your hit all the time, you know. You Maybe it was like when I was in prison, at least I could have a mental and emotional life separate from the prison. Entire days, weeks, months would go by when I wouldn't even think about the fact that I was in prison because I was

so busy trying to build a life for myself. When I got out, it almost felt like I was having to think more about prison than when I was in and it destroyed me in every way that it possibly could. But there's a there's a real silver lining here, right and that silver lining um sitting only a few feet away from us right now. And um, how did how did you meet Lori? And how and what's the I mean? I can see when you two together it's like there's like an orb You're like a glowing orb. I think

you can probably see it from the space station. Um, so, how did you meet her and what's what does that meant to you? Laurie was one of the very first people who saw the first documentary back in six whenever it came out. She was living in New York at

the time. She was a landscape architect, and she used to get before it came out on HBO, they had like several small screenings and and like you know, art house type theaters, and she got tickets to one of those, went and saw the movie and said she couldn't stop thinking about it. And you know, just like I was saying while ago about how much letters mean to people inside the prison, she sat down and wrote me a letter.

And this was back you know, before the Internet was everywhere and you could find anything in the world just by googling it in three seconds. You know, she had to go through a lot of effort in trouble just to get the address of the prison, just to find out where I even was. Uh, whenever I got the very first letter from her, the minute I opened it, I knew that this was someone unlike anyone else that I had ever known, And it kind of goes back

to what you were just saying about the ORB. Honest to God, felt like as long as we were together, as long as she was looking after me, as long as she was in my life and working on this case. From that moment on, I honestly felt like these people cannot hurt me anymore. I'm safe. And it was true as long as she was in my life. I mean, yeah, there was a lot of bad stuff in prison, but it was like it never got to worst case scenario. Somehow or another. Things would always turn around, Things would

always work out. It was like we had uh divine intervention on our side. In a lot of ways. LORI ended up doing more work on my case than the attorneys, private investigators, and everybody else put together. After they did the DNA testing, She's the one out there digging through people's garbage to find cigarette butts to try to match the DNA too. She was the one out there, you know, doing the fundraising. Um if really she was doing everything

she could to keep people from forgetting about this case. Well, I mean for our landscape part with that, for our landscape architects, she's a damn good investigator. Just uh, you know, publicists um, advocate um and you know, and it's just uh, just a ton of respect and admiration for you, Laurie, and I can say because you're sitting here and everything that you've done and everything that you are so um.

So you you're together now, UM you're here at the Church of Rock and Roll um at opening weekend, which I'm so, like, I said, so grateful to both of you for coming and and what's this experience been like for you? It's been actually pretty amazing. You know. I think I've only started to come out of shock and trauma and become happy and everything else probably within the

last two years. We've been out for about seven years now, so probably within the past two years is whenever the real actual healing started and I started being able to focus on things that I wanted to focus on building

a life. And you know, one of those things was doing what we did here today or last night, like with the commitment ceremonies, and being able to talk to people about, you know, things that means something to me personally, uh, and develop real relationships with people based on things other than just the case. Last night. I would have people like twenty one year old kids who have no idea

who the hell I even am, don't care. They were coming to the commitment ceremonies, wanted to do the commitments not because it was me, but because they love each other. They want to be part of it, whatever it is. Stuff like that, that is what's rewarding. That's what I love doing, you know, things that are are real. Yeah, And I've had the opportunity to see parts of some of the ceremonies and also to talk to some of the people who participated in them, and the stories are beautiful.

I mean, people who were UM on the verge of breaking up after twelve years of marriage and and and came. I think they came because you were you and they wanted to have that. They wanted to get some of your special brand of of magic UM. And now they're

you know, now they're recommitted to each other. And and other people who found some new level to go to and whatever relationship they're in UM, and you're giving them their certificates and the embossing on the Church of Rock and Roll logo, And I mean, for me, it's just an unbelievable feeling to know that we're having that kind of a positive impact on them, on you because of them, and then on everyone who's around, UM, sitting in the pews, because we have pews outside and we have the UM

what do you call that when people do the fingers the two fingers up in the air, the rock and roll sort of the horns, UM, we have those in Neon out by the So I'm trying to give people a visual. And we're gonna be taking this on the road and hopefully bringing it to other cities near you, whoever you are, where you're listening, UM, And I'm really excited about that. And I think we're just gonna do

a lot of really really great stuff together. UM. And So my favorite part of the podcast everyone, and we're now in our seventh season, UM, is when I get to stop talking entirely and just turn turn the mic over to you, UM and and get your final thoughts on anything you want to talk about, whether it's how people can get involved or what people anything at all. I mean, you can talk about the weather if you want, UM.

So before I do that, I want to say again that, UM, I appreciate you being here and sharing your your thoughts and your wisdom and your your courage, um, and your story, because I know it's not easy with our audience and with everyone in the room here at the Church of Rock and Roll. So um. And then I'm going to turn it over you for final thoughts, and then we're all gonna we're all gonna meditate under your guidance, which

I'm super excited about. So actually, what I usually do instead of, you know, always tell people the reason I do stuff like this is not to force everyone to hear me ram along like a jackass. I'm here to talk about whatever people want to talk about, you know. That's that's the reason I'm here is because and that's the reason everybody else is here. I'm sure you know, when people hear these stories, they probably have things that come to mind that they wonder about that maybe we

didn't touch on or whatever it is. So I usually just like to give people the opportunity if there was anybody that had a question or anything out of everything we just talked about that you'd like to know the answer to, or hear more about, or anything else, I'm willing to you know, whether it's prison life, whether it's the case, whether it's life after whatever the hell it is you want to know about. If there's any question

you have, I'm open to it. Oh, this is a new thing we since we usually recording the studio without an audience. Now we have that opportunity, so we will open it up for just a few questions because then we do want to get to the to the meditation. Does anybody have a question for Damien? Damian? Thank you for sharing your story with us. It's flabergassing here that all that actually happened to you and you had to

live through it. Um, through all of your darkest hours, how did you find the strength to fight through that? I think, um for those at home who might not be able to hear the question. Uh, he asked, even before Laurie found me, before she started taking on the case, Like during my darkest hours, what it was that allowed me to keep surviving on a daily basis in prison? And really what it comes down to, and this is

incredibly important. You know, keep in mind they say that your average person in prison even when you take you know, we're talking about the guy in our case that gave the confession that only had an i Q of seventy to seventy two. Even when you take that out of the equation, the average i Q of the person in prison is only about eighty five, so that's still well

below you know, average IQ level. So a lot of people aren't capable of even doing this, which is why it's so important that help come from the outside world. But what it comes down to is finding something to focus on other than the prison. You know, I would see guys in there on a daily basis that didn't have people in the outside world, that weren't capable of constructing a routine or anything else to give them something to focus on. So their full attention was taken up

by the fact that they were on death row. They're waiting to be executed, and you see him snap all the time. You know. I would see things like one day, this guy, he just starts screaming and beating on the walls of his cell with both fists until both of his fists are just busted and bloody. They take him and he's screaming that the devil is in his cell. All they do they take him out, wrap his hands up,

and throw him back in his cell. People go insane because they are focused on the prison all the time. So really what I did was I had to find ways to give myself a life outside of that environment. And for me, a lot of it was you know, like we were talking about earlier reading at one point, you know, like I said, also, I only had a

ninth grade education. So after Lorie especially came into my life, I started hearing about all these things that I didn't have within my frame of reference, you know, like Camu and Dickens and told Story and Douystoyevsky and all these sorts of things. So I decided, um, I want to know what the hell people are even talking about whenever

they're talking about these things. So I started devouring books that I honestly didn't even really have a great deal of interest in, you know, even things like the works of Freud and Young and things like that, just because I wanted to know what it was about, uh, and it. I did eventually reach a point where I thought, none of this stuff is really feeding me in any substantial way.

You know, I'm taking in a lot of abstract knowledge and concepts and stories and writing styles and things like this, but it doesn't make me happy in any way. So one day, after we had filled up in entire storage facility with books. I stopped and went back to the things that meant something to me. So a lot of it for me was reading a lot, working out a lot, meditation a lot. You know. The heart and soul of my life when I was in prison, and even now

that I'm out of prison, was ceremonial magic. By the time I got out of prison, I was doing meditation and energy energy work for up to eight hours a day. And part of what destroyed me whenever I got out, you know, the psychological devastation. For some reason, when I walked out of prison, I could not read anymore. Like I would try to read a page, and I would read the same page over and over and over, and I couldn't retain what I had just read when I

got to the bottom of the page. I couldn't watch TV shows, uh, Like I said, I didn't even have face and facial recognition. So I would go to dinner with people, meet them two days later and not be able to even remember who they were. Um. So that screwed me up a lot. But really what it came down to in prison, what allowed me to survive was not thinking about prison, coming up with something else to focus on other than the horror that was going on

around me. Damian, I love your optimism and your lust for life. I would love to know what your idea of a perfect day is. Now, what does that look like? A perfect day is one when I live in New York up in Harlem. A perfect day to me is a day when I don't have to get on the subway, when I don't have to walk out my front door at all. I get up in the morning, I start going through my daily meditations, daily energy work, take a break, and this may sound crazy, but I actually take pleasure

and clean in the house. That's what really. One of the things that also helped me whenever I first got out was doing laundry. I had never done laundry in my life, but I would go into the laundry room where the washer and dryer was, and something about that was like being in a rocking chair. To me, it calmed and soothed my nerves. So really, a perfect day to me, I don't leave my apartment, I don't get

on the subway. Um, I'm back up now. Like I said, you know, it shattered me, like I couldn't even read. I'll so couldn't do magic, I couldn't meditate, I couldn't do anything. I went from eight hours a day to not even being able to do eight minutes a day. So I've gradually built up over time until now I'm back up. Some days I can do on a really good day between five and seven hours, So that's a perfect day to me doing that, ordering pizza um and playing with my cats. I think we have time for

one more question. I was just wondering if you were aware of any groups that are fighting for justice for the three boys. Do you think the real killer will ever come to light? I think, honestly I do. I think it will come to light. But you know, like I was saying earlier about the politics of everything involved, I honestly think before that happens, a lot of the people who have a vested interest in keeping this covered up, who you know, to preserve their jobs, can't let the

truth come out. I think a lot of those people will either have to retire or move on or whatever it is, and new people who don't have a vested interest in this will have to come on board. Who who will actually look at the evidence, who will actually hear the case? So yeah, I do think one day, eventually something will happen. Um. I honestly, I don't keep up with the case. Uh So, I don't know of any organization. The only organization I know of two legal organizations.

One is the Innocence Project, which Jason is on, and the other one has Proclaimed Justice, which Jason Baldwin is on. UM. And the only reason I know about those two is because of you know, personal relationships. I don't keep up with UM to me, you know, like I was just describing a perfect day. To me, a hellish day would be a day when I had to read like a court brief or a legal brief or you know, watch a true crime show or any of that sort of thing.

So those are, I honestly, the only two organizations that I know anything about it at all. I'm really glad to ask that question. That was a great question. So anyway, UM, now, I just want to say again this has been an awesome experience for me. Thank you everyone for being here at the Church of Rock and Roll, and thank you Damien for everything you're doing and for being a guest

on Wrongful Conviction. Thank you so much for having me. Well, let's fucking meditate 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 Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and

Kevin Wardis. The music on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on face Book at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one