This Paul is from a correction facility, and it's subject to monitoring and recording contactly elevenarisma.
Here. And it hasn't been.
Easy one hundred years.
That's man.
I'm a kid. I didn't do anything, you know, and uh, you know that was a that was real painful, man, you know, because my life was discarded as if you know, like I was a piece of trash or something, you know, one hundred years and I had dreams and I wanted to do things. I wouldn't committing crimes.
You know. I was a very good young man.
That is what happens in so many cases. The cops have a hunch, because they're so smart at the scene, they have a hunch, and once they act on that hunch, they sort of developed tunnel vision and they take off marching in the wrong direction. And that happens in so many of these wrongful convictions.
The opening the cell door and I'll walk down stave and I actually walked downstairs to be outside. It felt very strange to be, like I said, to be walking without no shackles on my feet. I thought it was a dream. But then again, it wasn't a dream.
This is a wrongful Conviction.
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm that's me. I'm your host, and today we have a very special and unusual episode featuring the one and only John Grisham.
John, Welcome to the show.
Delighted to be here.
So, John, I want to talk to you about this incredible TV series I just watched on Netflix, The Innocent Man, which is based on the book by the same name that you wrote several years ago, and it for anyone who hasn't watched it, I highly recommend it because it just rocked my world. How did you get involved in this case in the first place, the case of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz.
Yeah, by the way, thanks for having me. Delighted to be here, look forward to it. And we've served together on the board of the Innisis Project for probably ten years now, right, yeah, quite a while, go way back.
I'm on that board because I wrote this book. And I wrote this book because I saw an obituary in the New York Times in December of two thousand and four for a guy named Ron Williamson who had just died obviously in Oklahoma, and he was my age, my same background, everything, and he had come within five days of being executed in Oklahoma for a crime for murder
he did not commit. And the obituary was fascinating. I mean, I love New York Times obituaries because well, they don't write about boring people really well, and they write about people these fantastic stories of people I've you've never heard of, and uh so I've always check out the Times obituaries, but normally there are people in New York. But Ron's
story was, uh it just captured my imagination. And but by the time the day was over, I had talked to both of his sisters, one in Tulsa, one in Dallas, and I said, hey, I'm gonna I'm going to write this book, and they said whatever, and one thing led to another. I took off to Oklahoma to start digging, and I had no idea what I was doing. I I'm not a journalist, I'm not trained in you know, that type of work, and I had no idea how to go about telling that a real story.
And this is your only nonfiction book. And it's interesting because there's that classic adage the truth is changed than fiction. I think you spent your life as probably the most you know, prolific crime novelist, maybe ever right, and and coming up with these stores. It's what you do, dreaming these stories up literally, But then then you bump into this one and it's beyond anything that you probably could
have dreamed up, right, I mean, it's interesting. On the trailer for the Netflix show, I heard you say if you wrote this, nobody would believe it, right.
That's true with a lot of these innocent stories. As I have come to know over the past dozen years, the facts are so incredible that first of all, I couldn't dream these things up. I couldn't create these these these cases because nobody can. There's so remarkably unbelievable. And if you did, if you try to pass this off as in a novel, it's not gonna work. A novel
has to be plausible. This story can be can be fiction and what you know, it's it's it can be science fiction, can be you know, real, you know, all kinds of different genres of fiction, but it has to be. There has to be a level of plausibility in the story to make it work. Some of the cases we deal with in the innocence world are hard to believe, impossible to believe almost some of the factual scenario in
the case in Oklahoma, the Ron Williamson case. The murder itself was easy to believe because it was a horrible crime and those happen all the time. But what happened after that, and how he was railroaded and convicted in Ada is just a really remarkable story in the once I started digging out, I couldn't stop.
It is a remarkable story, and in so many ways and on so many different levels, the victim in this case, Debbie Sue Carter, is it's a tragic. All these cases are tragic, but in hers, especially as a father, it's just such a horrific circumstance, which speaks to what we're talking about right now, because in her case, Debbie Sue
Carter was raped and murdered and tortured. Her killer made sure that she suffered agonizing, an agonizing death, And what that speaks to is the injustice that's done to everyone, her family, her memory, and everyone else when the wrong
person is convicted. But also what boggles my mind, John, is that in a community, especially a small community like Ada, you would think that even if an authority figure, a police detective or whatever they had an an investigator was so sort of morally bankrupt that they didn't mind, didn't lose a wink of sleep convicting an innocent guy. By definition, they were allowing this sick, twisted, psychotic individual who did these terrible, terrible things to w su Carter to remain free.
Yeah, and they knew him.
They knew him.
He was a local boy. He grew up there. He went to hoschool with Debbie. That's how he got an apartment. He was the last person seen alive with her when she was in a honky TNK late at night as she was leaving, he was at her car. They were arguing and she sort of shoved him away and got in the car and she drove off, and there were witnesses to that, and the police knew it. And a few hours later he knocked on her apartment and she
let him in because she knew him. She didn't I don't think she liked him, but wanted to be with him. But because they were acquainted going to school together, he had the entree, the ability to get into her apartment. And once he did, you know, it was a bad night. But again the police did not did not pursue him the obvious person. For years, years and years of the murder was unsolved. The cops were thoroughly incompetent, and at the crime scene. The crime scene was horrendous because it
was a terrible killing. And he hung around and he wrote messages with her blood on the wall and wrote messages on the kitchen table with a bottle of ketchup, and there was just a horrible thing. He stayed there for a long time, trying to devise a way to deflect or point to blame in somebody else, and anyway, he was there for a long time. So it was a horrific scene. And these two Keystone cops who are on the scene decide, because it's so violent and it's
so bloody, it had to be the work of two people. Okay, that was that decision. Hey, it's got to be two people. We had two defendants here. And that is what happens in so many cases. The cops have a hunch, because they're so smart at the scene, they have a hunch, and once they act on that hunch, they sort of developed tunnel vision and they take off marching in the wrong direction. And that happens in so many of these wrongful convictions.
Yeah, in this case, it's fair to say that this case actually came with instructions which were ignored and they didn't go after the actual killer. I'm forgetting his name, Glenn Gore. Glenn Gore, Right, what a name.
Right, He's in Gore House, Like.
He's serving life with no parole in Oklahoma, convicted by the jury in Ada many years too late.
Right, I mean, talk about I mean, what an ironic thing that the guy's name would be Glenn Gore. Like I said, more instructions as if they were coming from it and it was a local criminal. He had a record, He was a bad dude. The cops were doing for drugs. He was a rough family that I mean, he was well known to the police, and they still didn't pursue him. They didn't prosecute him until they actually had to write. It became you know, it became impossible for them to
continue to deflect the blame from him. They sort of and I've seen this in other cases, they sort of protected him, right, which is you know, really hard to process as to you know, I mean, I grew up like most people, you know, respecting the uniform and you know, really, I think we all played cops like when we were kids,
and you know, and I still do. I mean, I still I am a person who believes in law and order, and I uh, you know, I have a lot of respect for most of the people in the criminal justice system. But when you get bad actors like these guys, the damage that they can inflict is enormous.
I don't know how bad they were, it's obvious how incompetent they were. Uh, you know, there was some allegations that these guys, there's some of the some of the some of the cops there were later convicted of selling drugs, and there was some evidence that Gore was selling drugs and the good Gore was selling drugs with the cops, and you know, there was never really a clear uh path to prove that he was with the cops obviously
knew him. Some of the cops were shady, but still just to sheer incompetence of not investigating the two league cops in the case. I don't think any history with drug dealing or whatever. They were pretty you know, just a couple of stand up guys, uh, doing their best. But the incompetence of just not even considering uh the last person seeing with the victim.
Yeah, who became a witness against uh Ron? I guess right, Yeah he was.
He was cleverly, I guess you could say deflected the blame, as we see not infrequently in these cases where the actual perpetrator uh becomes a witness for the prosecution, because it's probably the simplest way to uh, you know, put turn the attention away from you and onto somebody else's make yourself into a witness. And that's exactly what he did, and he got away with it for quite a while. So in this case, you know, you talked about how you were so taken with the story of Ron Williamson.
It is a fascinating and and sort of terrible story in that this was a young man who had once had so much promise right he was a He was a professional baseball player, drafted by the Oakland A's and seemed to have his whole life laid out in front of him until he was injured, never made it to the big leagues.
And what a strange thing to think about.
The cruel, sort of capricious or arbitrary nature of this whole thing that he went from a major League prospect to being on death row, and as you said, coming within five days of being executed for a crime that everyone should have known. He didn't come in, and of course he lost his mind in prison and died tragically soon after he was released. And there was another innocent man, Dennis Fritz.
Dennis's crime was that he was hanging around with Ron, and Ron became when Ron was growing up by the town. Ron was in high school in this section of southeastern Oklahoma. A lot of coaches and scouts believe that he was the next Mickey Mental Mickey's small town in Oklahoma and a little bit to the north of this, and Mickey was, of course Mickey, but Ron was in the same mold, big strong guy, great athlete, solid legs, could hit, and
he certainly had a huge ego. Small town guy, but you know, he was attracting attention from the scouts, and he had a great high school baseball coach, and they won all these games, and Ron was the man, and he was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. And he got drafted by the Aids in nineteen seventy two in the first round. They paid him somewhere between fifteen one hundred thousand bucks for the bonus, which is not bad. Back then, he didn't it didn't last ron very long.
He went through it pretty fast, lost most of it in a poker game. But he went off to the minor leagues because he was gonna make plenty of money and you know, injuries, and he at some point he began showing signs of some pretty unstable mental issues and undiagnosed later diagnosed as being BiPOL or and crashed and burned, and he never he never got over the fact the baseball career was so important to him as a small
kid in small town boy in Oklahoma. You know, he couldn't accept the fact that he was not gonna he was not gonna be famous, he was not gonna be playing in Yankee Stadium, he was not gonna be Mickey Mantle. And it just so, it crashed, It crashed on him, and he just he went back to Ada and acted more and more, uh, more and more bizarre different way. He became kind of the town not town drunk, but kind of the town misfit, uh, unemployed, drinking too much,
partying too much, fighting too much. Uh. And he was up and down. They they tried to get him some help with the local mental health people. They tried their best, but it was not enough, and he was he was just spiraling down and he became sort of it was it was easy to convict Ron because everybody knew it. He became the town weirdo, the town goofball, the town
ne'er do well. That was kind of Ron Williamson. And people for a few bucks, he would cut your grass with an old beat up lawnmower with his shirt off. He pushes mower up and down the street, trying to get you know, a few jobs here and there, that kind of life. Lived almost homeless and somebody's shed in the backyard, and it was a hard fall for him and it really affected him mentally. And then and then he lived fairly close to where Debbie Sue Carter was murdered.
And the cops early on, and the cops and the prosecutor felt for a long time like Ron was the killer. They just believe they just again tunnel vision, They had a hunch he was their man, and they had no proof, but they didn't stop him. They just kind of manufactured a case against.
Him, right There was no physical evidence connecting them to the crime obviously because they weren't there.
You know, so well, there was physical evidence in that this part of what was wrong with the prosecution. There were seventeen I think seventeen scalp and pubic hair is taken from the victim's bed crime scene, and at trial, this you know, certified analyst with the Oklahoma Crime Lab testified.
That the.
Scalp in pubic hair matched Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. So they had physical proof junk science, okay, and ten years later all seventeen hares were excluded by DNA. There was no DNA available in nineteen eighty seven when they went to trial, so there was a little bit of a little bit of physical proof. It was almost all hearsay, jailhouse snitch, bogus testimony by cops, a dream confession, just
garbage prosecution, and the prosecutor was pushing hard. He got a jury, local jury, they wouldn't change venue, and so he ram runned you through a conviction.
Yeah, junk science is an important part of this too. And you know it's interesting because I do want to talk about the death penalty and how this affected you and maybe your views on the death penalty. I don't know what they were leading into this. I don't know what they are now, but I'm interested to hear. But the other thing is with this case, it's just so it's so easy to put yourself in the shoes of the people on that jury. Right, who were you know
from the town. As you said, there was no change of venue. There's a highly publicized case, A terrifying murder in a small community always will generate that kind of media attention and extra pressure on the police. But I wanted to ask you, you know, one of my goals in doing this show. Well, my main goal in doing this show was to educate people, all of whom everyone who's listening right now is a potential jurors. So are you and I I don't know who would put me on a jury never know?
Exclude you as a defense lawyer. I'd kick you off my jury exactly. So a defense learn so not a prosecutor.
Okay, So, so you know, my my hope is that in doing this show, and with the now almost eight million listens that we've had over the course of the first seven seasons, that we have helped to educate people so that when they are called to serve on a jury at a criminal trial, and when they hold a Ron Williamson or Dennis Fritz's life in their hands, and that they will be better educated and more maybe I would say more attentive, but maybe a little bit more skeptical.
And you know, I don't want to prevent a rightful conviction from happening.
You know, there is the famous saying Ben Franklin said, right, it's better that a one hundred guilty men go free
than the one innocent man should suffer. Dan's beIN Franklin kind of a great American, And so I'm interested in your take on that, John, what would you say to anyone who's listening now, as having lived through this and research that have done all this work on this case and all the other things that you've done throughout your career looking at the criminal justice matters, how would you advise yourors if they're going next week into a trial.
What would you tell them that could help them to make the best decision in the interest of justice?
Well, I would urge anybody to ask themselves the basic question, what is the physical evidence? Where let's start with the proof. If it is something like hair analysis or bitemark analysis or bootprint analysis, or any one of fifteen different analyzes that have all been proven to be rather shaky.
Entire tracksco precise stuff is all. You know.
When the FBI says that ninety five percent of its crack hair analysts got it wrong, ninety five percent from the FBI, you can imagine what's happening out in the States. It's junk science. It's unreliable. So go back to the basic proof and if a prosecution does not have hard physical evidence, and in most cases they do. Okay, most of these cases are not that close, but as we know in this type of work, there are a lot
of cases where the evidence is very flimsy. Number two, I would say, if they show up with a jail house snitch, who is going to testify that while he was in the sale with the defendant six months ago, he heard the defendant give up full confession, talked about the case, knew the facts, blah blah blah. Don't believe a word of what the snitch is saying because the snitches cut a deal with the prosecutor or the police
to get some time off. Snitches should not be allowed period. Okay, you know, I would if there's a false confession, if there's a if there's a confession, okay, asked some basic questions. Did the defendant recant the following day as soon as he coud get away from the cops and he recan't? Has he recanted every day since then? And most importantly, does his confession? Do the facts match up with the fiscal evidence? Because in almost every false confession there's no match.
You know what if the guy confessed to he said to get out of the room with the cops and they are notoriously unreliable. You and I, sir, on the Innocence Project Board, we have three hundred and seventy DNA exonerations in the past twenty five years. Twenty five percent involved false confessions. False confessions are a huge problem that happen all the time. And if you're a juror, say, okay, the guy confessed in police custody. Was a lawyer present, No,
because if the lawyer's there, he wouldn't be confessing. So if the lawyer wasn't there, how long did the interrogation last? Was it twelve hours throughout the night? And when he did confess, what did he say about the facts of the case do the matchup is pretty basic stuff, but not all not all durors, you know, or I guess
curious enough to ask those questions. Although I got to say, Jason, they are getting more and more skeptical because we are seeing fewer and fewer death verdicts, far fewer death verdicts, far fewer executions, far fewer people on death row, because jurors are far more skeptical.
I want to harp on one point that you made, which is that in that FBI, in the investigation that was done into the FBI forensic analysts who testified.
In hair cases, specifically in cases where hair was.
The predominant factor leading to the conviction, they found I think they examined almost four hundred cases, and they found that, as you said, over ninety five percent of them, the FBI agents or experts were wrong. But in one hundred percent of the cases at which they were wrong, they
were wrong in favor of the prosecution. So whether they were mistaken, it's hard to believe that they were mistaken in all those cases because it just statistically doesn't add up that they would every single time make a mistake in favor of the prosecution. So I think again, we have to really take a hard look at what's being presented in these context think about what people's motivations are
when they're testifying. In the case of the jailhouse snitches, it couldn't be clearer, right, And it's so interesting in our criminal justice system. You know, everyone knows that you can't bribe a witness, right, that's a crime, that's a felony. You know, you can't bribe a witness. But the government has the ability to offer the best bribe that there is. I'm calling it a bribe. It's not called the bribe technically, right,
it's a deal. Yeah, they can offer the deal that it's you know, you can go get out of jail free card, right, walk out today, so or reduce charge or whatever else they want to do.
So yeah, so that that is I'm really glad you brought that up.
Let's talk about the death penalty because support for the death penalty in America's at an all time low, and I think it's the first time that more than half of Americans are opposed to death penalty. How have your views will you? Will you anti death penalty? Are you anti death play? Have they evolved as a result of dealing with this case.
Well, okay, the numbers are down, but there's still a significant number of people in the majority of states who are favorite. If you look at the death belt thirty six thirty eight states, the people who live there and vote there the majority, and it's it's you know, it's fifty to fifty, but in some places it's slightly more who are in favor still favor the death penalty. So it's popular in a lot of areas. You know, where
you live, it's probably not other places. It's not California, the biggest state that they have six hundred people on death row, but they know they executed one person. Not serious about it, but they you'll have death row and it cost the mozillion bucks a year.
Yeah.
Growing up in the Deep South as a Southern Baptist, you know that eye for an eye, that kind of stuff, and it was it was the Old Testament version of retribution. And we not only believe that, we we really sort of advocated the death penalty. And we no one back then and I can't ever remember uh was ever opposed to the death penalty, and are many of them now. Once I became a lawyer, though, and became into a
lot of criminal defense cases. You know, slowly I realized that we have some pretty serious problems in the criminal justice system, and some very serious problems with the death penalty the way it is used. And I just, you know, twenty five years ago, I said this, even if you support the death penalty, you cannot support this death penalty and the way it's used against minorities, the way it's used. Different different states use it differently for the same crimes.
It's just it's a mess, okay. And so I'm very much opposed.
To the argument I make to people, and I speak to people who are in favor of the death penalty. Is I asked them what percentage of people of innocent people is it okay to execute? So they will say, well, no, no, you can't execute innocent people, and I go, but you do understand that the system is not It's far from perfect, but it can never be perfect, even if everybody in the system did the best job that they possibly could. And we know there are so many different causes. There's
some of it's on the defense, right. We have defense lawyers who slept through capital cases. We have defense lawyers who are underpaid, they may be alcoholics. We have cases of death people sends to death, whether the death the the not. Too long after their verdict was rendered, their defense attorney was disbarred or even arrested or you know, found to be you know, in competence too kind of a word. So my question is, even if everybody did the best job that they could, we're still going to
make mistakes. So my question for anyone who's listening who's still pro death penalty would be, what how many innocent people is it okay to execute? Out of one hundred or whatever it is, Because if your answer is none, then you can't be in favor of the death penalty because we know we've executed incent people. Cameron Todd, Willingham, There's so many other Jesse to Farah, There's so many that come to mind, and I, you know, I can't. I don't want to live in a country that executes
innocent people. In America is it's so far behind the rest of the civilized world in this area. You know, we are among the top five nations and the number of executions, and it's not it's not a good list to be on. The other nations are not nations you'd be proud to be associated with in that way. Western Europe has abolished it. I mean in the rest of the civilized world they've for some reason, they have a much worrier I think.
It's us in Pakistan and North Korea, places.
Like that, China.
Yeah.
Yeah, So it's it's not a it's not a good it's a it's a bad distinction, and it's something that we can change and we must change. And you know, we're going to keep fighting until we do.
Well.
Good thing about Jason the death Penlly is dying. It's it's dying because not because of courageous lawmakers, not because of courageous judges, but because of courageous jurors. And uh nowadays the jurors as for the same reason we've reasons we've been discussing. Because of so many high profile exonerations where these bogus prosecutions were exposed, Jurors today are far more skeptical about the abusive tactics used by police and
prosecutors to get convictions. That's one factor. Another factor is that most states today are spending more money to train defense lawyers. The defense lawyer and capital cases is far better than it was just a few years ago, so so that the play and field is kind of level now.
Uh.
And and when you go to trial, and in most of your capital cases, the defendant is not only guilty, but very guilty. The proof is there, and so it becomes a question of how do you save this person's life?
And what happens now? Because the defense lawyers are so much better, they are able to present to the jury the whole picture of this defendant and where he came from, and his background and the fact that he probably never had a chance in life and jura, and once that whole story is exposed in a court room, once the jurors hear the whole story, we are seeing it weekly in this country. They're far more willing to go with life with no parole and spare the guy's life. They're more sympathetic, right.
And then there's a chance to fix it.
I just finished reading the remarkable book by Richard Jaffey, who I think he's a hero of mine. He's I think, one more successful. He's one more death penalty reversals than any other or appeals than any other lawyer that I know of. And his book, the subtitles Defending the damned. I'm trying to remember the first the actual title. It's a wonderful book and it really speaks to what we're
talking about. I mean, you see these cases where it would be apparent to anyone seemingly that these people were innocent. Anthony ray Hinton is a great example of that, you know, and going back to even the Innocent Man cases, right, I mean, or the Innocent Man Show, because in the show there were two different cases, right, It wasn't just w Sue Carter.
Eighteen months later, a young lady named Denise Harroway was abducted from a convenience store late at night where she worked in Ada and vanished and there was no evidence, There was no the crime scene was contaminated, the police did not secure the crime scene, and the cashrish was open, and she was gone, and some people had seen her leave with a couple of sketchy guys in an old truck, but she They couldn't find the body. They couldn't find her.
They could, they searched and searched, they couldn't. And this went on for eighteen months, and then the police there there was some composite police drawings that were pretty good, and the people called in. They said that look looks like Billy, looks like Joey, looks like Charlie, looks like
Tommy whoever. And so the cops are getting a lot of input from from the composite drawings, and they just sort of settled on a guy named Tommy Ward, who was a twenty year old kid with no record, and they called him in for interrogation, didn't tell him what, didn't tell him why they wanted him, wanted to talk to him, and so he goes to the police station without any clue that that would be his last day
of freedom for the rest of his life. And they began interrogating him, and things deteriorated quickly when he realized they were suspicious of him. He had nothing to do with the crime. He was nowhere near the crime scene, he never met the victim. There's not one shred of physical evidence that links him to the crime now or thirty five years ago, no evidence at all. And the interrogation went on for a long time, hours and hours NonStop, and Tommy has said he wanted to talk to a lawyer.
That's not clear from the record. There is really no record because it was not recorded. There were cameras in the room, but they didn't record the bad stuff, and Tommy finally snapped. He just snapped, which is not unusual after eight or ten years of hours of abusive interrogation. And Tommy said, okay, finally, you know, he said, you know, I'm going to give these guys a story, and it's going to be so outrageous that once they investigate it,
they'll realize I'm lying. Okay, So he just felt them a big story about grabbing the girl, taking her out, raping her, cutting her throat, burning her body, disposing it over here. And while he was actually doing this, the cops said, were where did you dispose of her bodies? So, well, I threw it down the dish, So they had a cops in EIGHTA would run to that location and couldn't find a body. So he called back to the police station and said, we can't find the body. So the
cops see tom the body's not there. Where's the body? And they say, oh, you'd make up some other Well, the body's over in the warehouse, you know whatever. So the cops would go over there, Well it wasn't there. Well, the copsure it's in the bottom of a silo that'd go this goes on all night long. He's stupid. Cops would runn around Ada trying to find the body because Tommy's making stuff up. Okay, Tommy's just making stuff up because he's crazy, he's half crazed. Okay. And finally they said, okay,
enough of that, let's have the confession. And after about I don't know, fifteen hours, they turned the machine on and they recorded Tommy. And you see this in the Netflix episode where he's sitting there, punched, drunk out of his mind and he can't get the facts straight. The cops are feding the facts and he keeps making mistakes and so the cops correct him on tape. You see
this in the show. I saw it, and it's I mean, that's been reviewed by some experts who experts in false confessions, who just shake their head at how bad the false confession is. I mean, as far as false confessions go, it's not even it's horrible anyway that they never found the body, okay, but they had a confession. So they go to trial without the body, and tom he's found guilty of capital murder, rape and capital murder with nobody. Okay,
he goes off to death throw In Oklahoma. Six months later, a hunter stumbled across a body in a shallow grave a few miles from Ada, in a remote section of the county, and they do the dental exams and it's these airway and she'd been shot once in the back of the head and that was the cause of death,
not burnt, not stab not you know whatever. And in most jurisdictions, in most places in the country, once the body was found, and once the people realized it had nothing even remotely familiar with the confession, it's time to call time out and rethink things. But not an Ada.
So yeah, I mean, when I think about this case, and it's been you know, several weeks since I watched the show, but I think back on it and I go, how in this country could Tommy Ward and Carl Fontano be convicted of a stabbing that was actually a shooting, right, I mean, it wasn't even the right crime. And furthermore, in their testimony they said that they were with another guy, right, and who we know wasn't there because his alibi was air tight.
So everything was wrong with this case.
Everything was wrong. Yeah, everything was wrong.
Yeah, And the tragedy is and it the human side of this, which of course, you know, affects me and I think anyone who's got empathy for their fellow man or humans.
You know.
You see Tommy particularly in the in the show, who's been in prison now for about thirty three years, thirty four years. He was a ninety four case, and he comes across as just sort of a sort of a big bear of a man, but kind of like a gentle giant, you know, and just sort of a very just a very kind He's got a kind way about him.
You know, he's you know, he's he's a sweet guy. He was a sweet he's a sweet boy. I mean, he grew up in a church, big family, all devout churchgoers. He was, you know, twenty years old. He was a little bit on the wild side for a while. But now after after thirty three years, thirty four years in prison, he's he's earned his g D. He's earned his degree. He's he's earned several Bible study awards. To the mail,
he teaches several Bible study groups. He's sort of like the official chaplain at This guy has a perfect prison record and he's never spilled a couple coffee in prison, and he's a wonderful human being who sort of accepted his fate in life that this is just, you know what I get for some reason. I've been dealt this hand and I'll survive it. And you know, but he's lost his childhood, he's lost the chance to marry, have
a family. He worries about his mother, who's ninety and obviously in the failing and he would love to see her. But it's a huge tragedy. And the tragedy is we talk about Jason so many times, is you get frustrated at the at the authorities and the bogus conviction and the you know, the cops and all the horrible things they did. But the real killer, you know, this was still out there, still is still out there. We have a few suspects in mind, but these people have not
been brought to justice. Thirty five years later, yeah, thirty four years later, they still have never been brought to justice because the cops blew the case. And that's what happens with awful convictions. That's another reason to be so frustrated by them, is the real rapist and the real murderers are left free to rome and they almost always repeat their crimes.
They almost always do. And of course there's another victim in this case. And when I say victim, I mean another innocent man who was convicted, which is Carl Fontano, who was a.
Guy who was.
You know, very clearly, you know slow he was. He was a guy who had you know, developmental issues of some sort. I'm not a psychologist, but you know you can. You can watch that tape and you just you watching that show. I want to jump through the screen and stop the process because you're sitting there watching it kind of reminds me of making a murder when they're interviewing Brendan Dacy, right, because he just doesn't understand what's going on, and he is so easily led like a lamb to
the slaughter, right. And we know that in false confession cases it's so much well obviously it's easier to get someone who's of limited mental acuity, but also people who are most likely to falsely confessor, people who are teenagers
and ironically people in the military. And you had that, of course here with the case that you were deeply involved with with the Norfolk for because they are used to and this is counterintuitive, but they because you know, I think most of us think that a military guy would be able to stand up for himself. But they're used to obeying authority figures and orders, so they.
Respect authority figures and they kind of want to do something to help the authority figures with their job. And a lot of times you'll see people who are vulnerable step way out of line to kind of help the cops out. That's why a lot of interrogations, the police are quick to say, okay, would you agree to a polygraph? Well, innocent people jump in the chance to do a polygraph
to prove themselves guilty. People never do okay, but innocent guys in interrogation, oh yeah, I'll take a polygraph, which is fatal okay, because what the cops are allowed to do is give the polygraph, a true, real polygraph, okay. And usually the defendant passes the polygraph and the cops are allowed to then lie about it. They walk back in the room with the graph paper, they throw it in the guy's face and so you flunk the polygraph.
Now we have proof you're lying. We can use this in cord you get in the death penalty and just bam, bam, bam and it's all a lie. But our Supreme Court so that's okay.
Right, And America is I don't think a loan in this, but is an outlier in this, and that police are allowed to lie during the interrogation probaly, Yes.
Low they want to tell exactly any low they want to tell during the interrogation. They can do it with impunity. Right.
So when you're sitting there going well, I would never confess to a crime, but then they bring in they go John, listen, man, we got your fingerprints on the murder weapon, we got your DNA on the on the body with we just tested.
We did a quick test, we did an instant test.
Whatever they say, right, and your two buddies next door and several rooms have both said total truth. They've said you pulled the trigger.
We know you did.
Okay, these gowns are testifying against you. You look at the death penalty and and your toast man. But if you if you'll trust us and go along with we know the judge, we know the prosecutors. You know we can we can help you cut a deal. But to save your skin, you better tell us now and we'll we'll we'll help you out right.
There's a there's a movie that actually is out now called False Confessions that actually, uh, I'm in it because they've they taped an episode of the podcast.
But you're in a movie.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know that maybe you had that content maybe why it hasn't become a HITCHES yet, but it will but anyway, but no, it's it's a it's a really good movie. And in it you see that what they do is they they they sort of close this circle where they finally come to you and go listen. Now, you know that we've got all this evidence against you, and we know that the other guy said you did it, So you can either be a perpetrator or a witness, which one do you want to be?
And then once so.
That speaks to another thing that I wanted to ask for your take on as someone who's got this vast experience chronicling writing about participating in so many different aspects of the criminal justice system. Let's say someone's listening now and they or a family member gets picked up for something they didn't do.
What's your advice?
What what what's the dos and don'ts when you get first picked up and and and remember of course, you know, as you touched on, many people get picked up not realizing that they're suspect. And I told their suspects, just come to the police stage. We want to ask a few questions about something. What would you advise.
We're assuming it's a serious crime that they are being questioned about. I would, well, I'm a lawyer, okay, So I would say, you know, I'll be there with my lawyer. I'll be there with put it. You can put them off, okay, I'll be there to more at whatever time with my lawyer.
Okay.
Is that that's the way I would start it. Most folks don't think like that, because, you know, the innocent people don't really worry about it. They they want to cooperate with the cops. They want to help the cops solve the crime. So they walk into this and oftentimes get burned. But I would never listen. I've had in the past twenty years, I've had two on two separate occasions, I've had the doorbell rings. I go to the door,
say FBI agent, and they have the badge FBI. I always kind of laugh, you know something you see on television. I've done nothing wrong, and both times it was sort of an ancillary issue to a bigger case somewhere that I've never got involved in. And the guy said, Both guys said, I'd like to ask some questions. And I said, okay, what's it about? And before they come in the house, okay, tell me, tim, what are you talking about? And so they would give me some you know, the kind of
pushy they'd give me some of the background. And both times I said, Okay, I'll be happy to talk to you. Let me call my lawyer. Where's your office I'll be there tomor with my attorney and we'll have a conversation. And they don't like that. But that's as far as they can go. Because if you if you were to inadvertently, if tell an FBI agent something is not really true, that's a federal crime. Okay, you can go to prison. Martha Stewart went to jail for that. Okay, that happens.
Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, that's happening now. You see it all the time. Now those those folks are on an investigation. But if if if a FBI agent or a cop stopped me on the street and said, hey, can we ask you a couple of questions. I can I ask you some questions. I would say, what's it about whatever crime, whatever situation, whatever inquiry. Yeah, I'll talk to you. Yeah, tell me when and where, and I'll have my lawyer there.
Right.
That's something I talk about on the show, is that, you know, I advise people. I mean, everybody wants to help in solving a crime, your witness to a crime. I don't want to tell you not to, you know, I mean we all want we all want safe streets, we all want a safe society. But you know, at a minute, there's an inflection point at which you know in Marty Tankliff's a great example of this too, right.
I mean, at some point it became clear that they weren't interviewing him as they said they were about his business partner or anything like that, about the father's business partners. They were they were looking at him as a suspect. And at that point, the only words he should have said, and I wish I could go back in time and tell him this or I want a lawyer, and that's it,
and then the questioning stops. It took way too long for that to happen, and they were able to extract at least some very some form of a false confession out of him, and the next thing you know, it took seventeen and a half years to overturn that conviction. And it's just it's a tragedy. And you know, we both know Marty and how much we think of him. I mean, what a beautiful, amazing, amazing guy, and what a terrible fate to lose both parents and then be
blamed for it. And meanwhile, the still the real perpetrator, who it seems abundantly clear who it is, remains remains free and is enjoying his retirement in Florida right now. So you know, there's that, and it just doesn't it doesn't add up at all.
So I tell listen, I've raised two kids of their adults now, but when they were teenagers. You know, I'm a former criminal defense lawyer, and I've always told my kids and my wife. If you get pulled over and the cop says, can I search your car? The answers no, I don't care what, I don't care where you are. The answers know if they show up at the door, yeah, if you if you have a search warrant, If they come to your house and knock on the door and want to search. Sure, give me a show me a
search warrant. If they want to interrogate you. Yeah, I'll be happy to talk, but let me get my lawyer involved. You don't ever trust, have a healthy distrust for people who show up and want to talk or search.
That's that's good advice, I mean. And again, if we can help by virtue of you being on the show. Uh, you know, one person, avoid this horrible faith that Ron Williams and Dennis Fritz, Carl Fontano, and Tommy Ward all in a small town of So let's think about that too, right, because I'm a statistical guy. You have this small little speck of a town aight to Oklahoma. You have four wrongful convictions inside the space of two years.
Well, actually you had six in the span of five years. And four of the six have been exonerated by DNA. Ron and Dennis and then Perry Lott and Cavalie Scott were served twenty and thirty years for rapes they didn't commit. And then that's four. With the Tommy and Carl, that's six. They're still locked up. They have not been exonerated. And you know, I'm not sure they're going to be.
We know they're innocent, and so yes, I'm I'm just extrapolated six six and five years in Ada, Oklahoma, the.
Same same police, same cops, same prosecutor, same DA's office, same everything. Six wrongful convictions in five.
Years, right, and social scientists, the studies that have been done. Obviously it's no one can know for sure. We'll never know for sure. But as to make that, around five percent of people in prison in America are innocent, So that number is pretty close to one hundred thousand people innocent people.
Yeah, two million behind bars, which is the largest incarceration rate in the world, this civilized world. So you have two million behind bars, and you know, some people say five percent is low, that's still one hundred thousand people. But there. I didn't I was not aware of that until I wrote the book and I realized how many innocent people are in prison, and there are a lot of them.
So yeah, and I encourage anyone who knows someone who is innocent in prison to get out there and make as much noise as you can, bring as much attention talk about it. You never know, even if you're talking about it in a nine or there might be somebody sitting at the next table that might be a you know, somebody of influence, talk to a journalist, talk to write letters. I mean, we have to bring as much attention to
these cases as we can, and that's what we're here for. So, John, we have a tradition on Wrongful Conviction, which is at the end of each episode, and this is my favorite part of the episode. I think it's one our producer. I think it's his favorite part of the episode, and it's our audience's favorite part. This is the part where I stopped talking and I thank you. It'll be a good thing, That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you can't insult
me when I are in Selton. This is the EM and M defense I'm using right where you put all this stuff out there first, so as he did in the famous wrap battle Inn eight Mile. But so, first of all, I want to thank you for being here on Wrongful Conviction, and I want to turn the mic over to you for final thoughts.
Final thoughts. Well, first of all, selfishly, I encourage you to watch The Innocent Man, the Netflix series which I had nothing to do with, although I'm the executive producer, which means I did nothing. Every show now has fourteen executive producers, and I still don't know what one does. But I was involved in it a little bit because it's from a storytelling point of view. It's a fantastic story, very well done by somebody else. I wrote the book you know, years ago and got all the attention I
needed for that. But the Netflix is of series is compelling, and it's informative, and it lays out so many reasons for wrongful convictions.
Well, thank you again for being here and you've been listening to an extra special episode of Wrongful Conviction with the one and only John Grisham.
John, thanks again my pleasure.
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts.
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And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one