#086 Jason Flom with John Grisham

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, uh the cell door, and I locked downstairs and I actually walked downstairs to be outside. It felt very strange to be, like I said, to be walking without no chakos on my feet. I thought it was

a dream, But then again, it wasn't a dream. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction with Jason Flam 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. Um, how did you get involved in this case in the first place, the case of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. Yeah, by the way, the thanks for having me. Delighted to be here,

look forward to it. And uh we've served together on the board of the Instance Project for probably ten years now, right quite a while, go way back. I'm on that

board because I wrote this book. And I wrote this book because I Um, I saw an obituary in the New York Times in December two thousand and four, Uh, for a guy named Ron Williamson who had just died obviously in Oklahoma, and uh he was Ma Maje, 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 they well they don't write about boring people really well, and they write about people these fantastic stories of people you've never heard of. And uh so I've always check out the Times of obituaries, but uh normally there are you know, people in New York.

But Ron's story was the just captured my imagination. 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 gonna write this book and they said, um, for 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 changer than fiction. I think you spend your life as probably the most you know, uh prolific uh crime novelists maybe ever right and m and coming up with these stories, right, 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. 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 uh, these cases because nobody can. There's so remarkably uh unbelievable. And if you did, if you try to pass this off

as in a novel, uh, it's not gonna work. A novel has to be plausible. The story can be can be fiction and what you know, it's it's it can be science fiction, can be you know really you know, all kinds of different uh genres of fiction, but it has to be. There has to be a level of plausibility and in the story to make it work. Um, some of the cases we deal with in the innocence world are hard to believe, impossible to believe almost some of the factional scenaria in the case in Oklahoma that

Ron Williamson case. Um. The murder itself was easy to believe because it was a horrible crime and those happened all the time. But what happened after that, how he was well roaded and convicted in Aida, UH, is just a really remarkable story in the once I, once I started digging out, couldn't stop. It is a remarkable story. And and so in so many ways and on so many different levels. The victim in this case, Debbie Sue

Carter um is it's a tragic. All these cases are tragic, but in hers, especially as a father, UM, it's just such a horrific uh 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 uh, an agonizing death. And what what that speaks to is the injustice that's done to everyone, her family, her memory, and everyone else when

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 a police detective or whatever they had an investigator was so sort of morally bankrupt that they didn't mind, didn't lose a wink of sleep convicting innocent guy. By definition, they were allowing this sick, twisted, psychotic individual who did these terrible, terrible things to debb

Suit Carter to remain free. Yeah, and they knew him. They knew him. He was a local boy. He grew up there. He went to hospool with Debbie. That's how he got in an apartment. He uh he he was the last person seen alive with her when she was uh in a hockey talk 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 they were witnesses

to that, and the police knew it. And a few hours later he um knocked on her apartment and she led him in because she knew him. She didn't I don't think she liked him 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 uh, once he did. You know, it was a bad night. Uh. But again the police did not did not pursue him, the obvious person. UH. For oh years, years and years of the murder was unsolved. The cops

uh were thoroughly incompetent. And at the crime scene. The crime scene was horrendous because it was a uh, horrible killing. And he hung around and he and he wrote messages with her blood on the wall, and he wrote messages on the kitchen table with a bottle of catchup, and and there was just a horrible thing. He stayed there for a long time, trying to devise a way to deflect our point, to blame a 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 that was that decision. Hey, it's got to be two people. We we have two defendants here. And that 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 then 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 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, Right, what a name he's on Gore? How he's like he's serving a 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 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, uh 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. Uh, 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 um as to you know, I mean, I grew up like most people, you know, UM, respecting uniform and um. 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'm 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 inflect is the norm. I don't know how bad they were,

it's obviously how incompetent they were. Uh, you know, there there was some allegations that these guys there some of the some of the some of the cops there were later convicted for of selling drugs, and there was some evidence of Gore was selling drugs and the 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 are shady, but still just just the sheer incompetence of not investigating the two lead 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 of not even considering uh, the last person seeing with the victim. Yeah, who became a witness against uh

ron as 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 becomes a witness for the prosecution, because it's probably the simplest way to uh, you know, 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. Um 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, and that this was a young man who had once had so much promise. Right he was he was a professional baseball player, uh, drafted by the Oakland A's and you know, seemed to have his whole life laid out in front of him till he was injured, never made it to the big leagues. And what a strange thing to think about, the cruel, sort of capricious or or 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 commit. And and of course he lost his mind um in prison and 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 uh 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 some a small town in Oklahoma, and and uh a little bit to the north of this, and Mickey was, of course Mickey Um. But Ron was in the same mold, big strong guy, great athlete, UH, solid legs, could hit, and he certainly had a huge ego.

Small town guy, but he you know, he was attracting attention from the scouts and uh he had a great high school baseball coach and they won all these games and Ron was the man and he was gonna be the next Mickey Mantle. And he got drafted by the A's in nineteen seventy two in the first round. Uh they paid him somewhere between fifty a hundred thousand bucks for the bonus, which is not bad back then. He didn't I didn't last ron very long. He went to 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 um, you know, injuries, and he at some point he begins showing um signs of some pretty unstable mental issues and uh undiagnosed later diagnosis being bipo or and um 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 Oklaha, a small town born in Oklahoma. You know, he couldn't accept the fact he was not gonna he was not gonna be famous, he was not gonna be playing in Yankees Statum, he was not gonna be Mickey Mantle. And it just saw it crashed, he crashed on him, and he just he went back to Aida and acted more and more uh more and more bizarre different way.

He became kind of town not town drunk, but the kind of town misfit, unemployed, drinking too much party and too much fighting, too much uh and he was up and down. They tried to get him some help with 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 he was easy to convict Ron because everybody knew him. Became the town weirdo, the town goofball, the town near do Well today, that

was kind of Ron Williamson. And people um for for for buff for a few bucks, he would cut your grass with a beat up lawnmore with his shirt off. He pushes mower up and down the street, trying to get a 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 suit Carter was murdered in 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, and but they didn't stop him. They

just kind of manufactured a case against him. Right. There's no physical evidence connecting them to the crime, obviously because they weren't there, you know, so well, there was physical evidence in that. Uh. This part of the part of

what we were wrong in the prosecution. There were uh seventeen I think seventeen scalp and pubic hair is taken from the victim's bed crime scene and at trial this you know, uh certified Uh analysts with the Oklahoma Crime Lab testified um that the that the scalp and pubic hair matched Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. So they had physical proof junk science, okay, uh. And ten years later all seventeen hares were excluded by DNA. There was no

DNA available in nineteen seven when they went to trial. Uh, so there was a little bit of a little bit of physical proof. Uh. It was almost all uh hearsay, jailhouse snitch, uh, bogus testimony by cops, a dream confession, just guard garbage prosecution, and the prosecutor was pushing hard. He got a jury, local jury. They wouldn't change the venue. Uh, and so he ramloded 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 um, the other thing is with this case, it's just so um, it's 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 juror so are you and I, Um, I don't know who would put me on a jury, but never know. As

a defense lawyer, I kick jury exactly. So a defense

laur so, Um, not a prosecutor, Okay, so UM. So you know, my my hope is that in doing this show and with the now almost eight million lessons 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, that they will be better educated and more um, maybe I would say more attentive,

but maybe a little bit more skeptical. Um. And you know, I don't want to prevent a rightful conviction from happening. Um. You know, there's the famous saying Ben Franklin said, right, it's better that a hundred guilty men go free than the one innocent man should suffer. Um. Benjamin Franklin kind

of a great American Um. 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 uh 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 jurors if they're going next week into a trial, what would you tell them that could help them to

make the best decision and 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 um hair analysis or bite mark analysis, or bootprint analysis, or any one of fifteen different analyses that have all been proven to be rather shaky, entire tracks stuff is all you know. When the FBI

says that it's crack hair analysts got it wrong. Long 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, hard physical evidence, and in most cases they do. Okay, most of these cases are not that close. But 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 for the 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 a full confession, talked about the case, knew the facts, blah blah blah. Don't believe a word of what the snitchers saying, because the snitches could a deal with the prosecutor of the police to get some time off. Snitches should not be

allowed period. Okay, um, you know, I would if there's a false confession, if if there's a if there's a confession, okay, Uh. It leaves asked some basic questions. Did the defendant recant the following day as soon as he could get away from the cops and he recan't? Has he recanted every day since then? And most importantly, does his confession to the facts match up with the fiscal evidence, because in

almost every false confession there's no match. You know, whatever the guy confessed to he said to get out of the room with the cops, and and they are notoriously unreliable. Uh you and I served on the Innocence Project Board. We have three seventy DNA exonerations in the past twenty five years involved false confessions. False confessions are a huge problem that happened all the time. And if you're a juror, say, okay, the guy confessed and police custody him. Was a lawyer present, No,

because if the lawyers are he wouldn't be confessing. So if the lawyer wasn't there, how long did the interrogation last? Was a twelve hours throughout the night. Uh? And when he did confess, what did he say about the facts of the case? Do the match up? Is pretty basic stuff? But not all, not all durrawers, you know, are are

I guess, um curious enough to ask those questions? Although I gotta say, Jason, they are getting more and more skeptical because we are seeing fewer and fewer death verdicts, far fewer death vertics, far fewer executions, far fewer people

on death row because durwors are far more skeptical. I want to harp on one point that you made, which is that in that FBI UH, in the investigation that was done into the FBI forensic analysts who testified in hair cases, specifically in in cases where hair was the predominant factor leading to the conviction. UM, they found I think they examined almost four cases and they found that, as you said, over them, the FBI agents or experts were wrong. But in a hundred percent of the cases

of 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 and favor of the prosecution. So I think again, we have to really take a hard look at what's being presented in these contexts, think

about what people's motivations are when they're testifying. In the case of the jail house nitches, you couldn't be clearer, right, And it's so interesting in our in our kernel 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. Deal. 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 is at an all time low. Um, and I think it's the first time that more than half of Americans are opposed to death penalty. Um. How

have your views? Uh were you? Were you anti death penalty? Are you anti death play? How 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 a in the majority of states, who are your favorite If you look at the death belt thirties states, Uh, the people who lived there in both there the majority, and it's not it's you know, it's it's fifty fifty, but in some places it's slightly more who are in

faith still favorite the death building. So it's popular in a lot of areas. You know, where you live, it's probably not other places it's not. California is the biggest state that they have six d people on death row, but they know they've execute one person, not serious about it, but they you'll have death row and it cost them

a zillion bucks a year. Uh. Yeah. Growing up growing up in the Deep South as a Southern Baptist, you know that eye for and 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 um 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 there aren't many of

them now. Uh. Once I became a lawyer, though, and became into a lot of criminal defense cases, you know, slowly I realized that, um, we have some pretty serious problems in the criminal justice system, and and some very serious problems with the death penalty the way it is used. And um, 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. Uh, 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 two 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? Um? Uh, So they will say, well, not, 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 sense to death, whether death the not. Too long after their verdict was rendered, their defense attorney was disbarred or even arrested, or you know, um found to be you know, incompetence 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 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 a hundred or wherever 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 innocent people. Um Cameron Todd Willingham. There's so many other jestice to Pharaoh. There's so many that come to mind, and um, 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 and it's not a 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 more I think it's us in

Pakistan and North Korea, places like that, China. Um. Yeah, So it's uh, it's not a it's not a good it's a it's a bad thinction. And it's something that we can change and we must change. And and you know, we're gonna keep fighting until we do well. The good thing about Jason the Deathendal is dying. It's uh, it's dying because not because of courageous lawmakers, not because of courageous judges, but because of courageous jurors, and nowadays the

jurors for the same reason. We have reasons we've been discussing. Because of so many high profile e generations where these bogus prosecutions were exposed, Jurors today are far more skeptical about the abusive tactics used by police and prosecutors to to get convictions. That's one factor. Another factor is that most states today are spending more money to um train

defense lawyers. The defense lawyer and capital cases is far better than it was just a few years ago, so so that the playing field is kind of level now. And and when you go to trial and the most of your capital cases, the defendant is not only guilty, but very guilty. Is the proof is there? And so it becomes a question, how do you say this person's life?

And what 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 jural and what's the whole story is exposed in a court room once the jurors here the whole story, uh, we're seeing it weakly. 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. And I just finished reading the remarkable book by Richard Jaffee, who I think is he's a hero of mine. Uh, he's I think one more successful. He's he's one more death penalty reversals than any other or appeals than any other lawyer that I know of. And his book the subtitle is Defending the Damned. I'm trying to remember the first uh, the actual title. It's a 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, um, you know. And 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 Debbie Sue Carter. Eighteen months later, a young lady named Denise Haroway was abducted from a convenience store late at night where she worked in Ada, and uh vanished and uh, there was no there was no evidence, there was no the crime scene was contaminated. The police did not secure the crime scene, and she the the the cash raish was open and she was gone on and uh 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 one on for um eighteen months, and then UM the police, UM there were there was some composite police drawings that were pretty good, and uh the people called in. They said that it looks like Billy, looks like Joey, looks

like Charlie, looks like Tommy Loui whoever. And so the cops are getting a lot of input from um 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, UM, and they called him in for an interrogation, didn't tell him what, didn't tell him why they wanted to want to talk to him. And so he uh goes to the police station without any clue that that would be his last day of

freedom for the rest of his life. And uh, 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 not 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. Uh, no evidence at all. And Uh the interrogation went on for a long time, hours and hours NonStop. And um, Tommy has

said he wanted to talk to a lawyer. Uh, 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 Uh, Tommy finally snapped. He just snapped, which which is not unusual after eight or ten years of hours of abusive interrogation. And Tommy said, okay, finally, you know too, He said, you know, I'm gonna give these guys a story, and it's gonna be so outrageous that once they investigate it,

they'll realize I'm lying. Okay, So he just felt him a big story about um 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 that are where where did you dispose her body? Said, well, I threw it down the dish. So they had cops in Ada would run to that location and couldn't find a body. So they called back to the police station and said, we can't find the body. So the cops

the time, the body is not there. Where's the body? And they said, oh, you can make up some other Well, the body is over in the warehouse, you know whatever, So the cops would go over there. Well it wasn't there. Well, the cops it's it's in the bottom of a silo. They go. This goes on all night long. He he's stupid. Cops are running around eight or trying to find the body because Tommy's making stuff up. Okay, tom he's just making stuff up because he's crazy. He's half crazed. Okay.

And uh, 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 uh episode where he's sitting there, punched, drunk out of his mind and he can't get the facts straight, the cops are fed in the facts, and he keeps making mistakes and so the cops correct him on tape. You see this in the show.

And it's uh. I mean that that's been reviewed by some experts, who experts and 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 time he's found guilty of capital murder, rape and capital murder with nobody Okay. He goes off

to death row 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 um, they do the dental exams and it's it's the hairway and she'd been shot once in the back of the head and that was the cause of death,

not burnt, not stabb not you know whatever. Um, And in 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 uh, it's time to call time out and rethink things. But not 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 Karl 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. Everything was wrong. Everything was wrong, and the tragedy is and it's 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. Um. You know, you see Tommy particularly in the in the show, who's been in prison now for about thirty three years or thirty four years. It was a case, and he comes across as just sort of act of a big bear of a man, but it's kind of like a gentle giant, you know, and just sort of h very um, just a very kind He's got a kind way about him. You know he's um. You know, he's a he's a sweet guy. He was

a sweet he was a sweet boy. And he grew up in a church UH big family, all uh devout churchgoers. He he was, you know, twenty years old. He was on the wild side for a while. But now after after thirty three years thirty or four years in prison, he's He's earned his g D, has earned his degree. He's um. He's earned several Bibble study awards to the male he teaches, uh, several bibble study groups. UM. He's

sort of like the official chaplain at UH. This guy has a perfect prison record and he's never spilled a cup coffee in prison. Uh. 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 child, and he's lost the chance to marry, have a family. He worried about his mother, who's ninety and obviously the failing and he

would love to see her. But it's a huge tragedy. And the tragedy is we talked about Jason so many times 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. The thirty five years later, thirty thirty four years later, they still have never been brought to justice because the cops blew the case. And that's what happens. And with awful convictions, that's that's another reason to be so frustrated by them, is the real rapist and the real murderers are left free to rome and all. They almost always repeat their crimes. They almost always do. And 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 Karl Fontino, who was a guy who was um, you know, very clearly um you know slow he was. He was a guy who had uh, 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 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 remind me making a murder when they're interviewing Brendan Dascy right, because he just doesn't understand what's going on and he has 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 a limited mental acuity, but also people

who are most likely to 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 in the Norfolk four 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 from self, 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 uh, people who are vulnerable, um step way out of line to kind of help the cops out them. That's why a lot of a lot of interrogations, the police are quick to say, okay, uh, would you agree to a polygraph? Well, innocent people jump at the chance to do a polygraph to prove themselves guilty. People never do okay, but innocent guys and interrogation, they 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 won't back in the room with the graph paper. They throw it in the guy's face. And so you flunked the polygraph. Now we have proof you're lying. We can use us in court. You're getting the death penalty. And just bam bam bam, and saw a lie. But

our Supreme Court, so that's okay, right. And and America is I don't think alone in this, but is an outlier in this. And that uh, police are allowed to lie during the interrogation, repeatedly allowed they want to tell any low they want to tell during interrogation. They can do it with impunity. Right. So when you're sitting there going 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 instant tests. Whatever they say, right, And two buddies next door in several rooms have both said to us truth. They said, you pull the trigger. We know you do it. Okay, these guns are testified 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, 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. Um that actually, uh, I'm in it because they taped an episode of the podcast. But yeah, yeah, and you know that maybe you had that contact. Maybe why it hasn't becoming hitches, Yeah, 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 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 DoD is. 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's you do?

What what's the dues? And don't when you get first picked up and and and be remember of course you know as you touched on um 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 you can put them off, you know, you know, Okay, I'll I'll be there to more 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 the innocent people don't really worry about it. They still they want to cooperate with the cops. They want to help the cops solve the crime. So they walk into this and UM oftentimes get burned. But I would never listen. I've had in the past twenty years,

I've had UM two on two separate occasions. I've had the doorbell rings. I got to the door, it's the FBI agent and they have the badge FBI. I always kind of laugh, you know, somebody 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. Uh, And the guy said uh. Both guys said, UM, I'd like to ask some questions,

and I said, okay, what's it about? And uh, before they come in the house, okay, tell me, tell me what you're talking about. And so they would give me some you know, they kind of pushy. They 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 tomorrow 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 uh in it, Burton le uh, if tell an FBI agents 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 an investigation. But if if if if a FBI agent or a cops stopped me on the street and said, hey, can we ask you a couple of questions? I can

ask you some questions. I would say, what's it about, whatever crime, whatever situation, whatever inquiry. Um, yeah, I'll talk to you. Yeah, tell me when and where and I'll have my lawyer there. Right. That's something I talked about on the show, is that you know, I advise people. I mean, everybody wants to help in solving a crime. If you're witness to a crime, I don't want to tell you not to uh to you know, I mean, we all want we all want safe streets, we all

want a safe society. But you know, in the minute, there's an inflection point at which, you know, and Marty tank Clifts 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. Um, 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. Um. It took way too long for that to happen, and they were able to extract at least some there 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 uh, 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 what a beautiful, amazing, amazing guy, and what a what a terrible faith to lose both parents and then be blamed for it. And I meanwhile, there 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 and they're 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 cops is cann search your car, the answers, no, I don't care what. I don't care where you are. The answers no. 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, I want to search, sure, give me a show me a

search warrant. If they want to terogate you, yeah, I'll be happy to talk, but let me get my lawyer involved. You don't ever trust, have a have a healthy distrust for people who show up and want to talk or search. That's that's good advice. And again, if if we can help by virtue of you being on the show. Uh you know, one person avoid this horrible faith that uh Ron Williams and Dennis Fritz, uh Karl 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 aid to Oklahoma. You have four wrongful convictions inside the space of two years. Well actually had you had six in the span of five years, and four of the six have been exonerated by DNA, Ron and Dennis, and then uh Perry Lott and Kevin Lee Scott were served twenty and thirty years for rapes they didn't commit. And then that's full within

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 gonna be. We know they're innocent, and so yeah, so I'm just I'm just extrapolated six six and five years in Aida, Oklahoma, same same police, same cops, same prosecutor, same d a's office, same everything. Six wrongful convictions in five years. Right, and social scientists, the studies that have been done, obviously it's an no one can know for sure,

and we'll never know for sure. But as I made that, around five percent of people in prison America are innocent, So that numbers is pretty close to a hundred thousand people innocent people and two million behind bars, which is the the largest incarceration rate in the world, the civilized world. So you have two million behind bars, and you know, some people say five percent is below, that's still a

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 who is innocent uh in prison to um 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 dining or there might be somebody sitting at the next table that might be a you know,

somebody of influence, talked to a journalist, talked to write letters. Um. I mean, we have to bring as much attention to these cases as we can, and that's what we're here for. So um, John, we we have a tradition on Wrongful Conviction, Um, 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.

That's what I'm saying. You can't solve me when Aaron Selta this is the eminem defense I'm using right where you put all this stuff out there first, so um, as he did in the famous rap battle inn eight Mile. But so, first of all, I want to thank you for being here on Wrongful Conviction, and uh, I want to turn the mic over to you for final thoughts.

Final thoughts, UM. 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 a little bit because it's a from a storytelling point of view, it's a fantastic six story, very well done by somebody else. I wrote the book you know, years ago, and and got all

the attention I needed for that. But the Netflix is of series is is compelling, and it's informative and it 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 and John, thanks again my pleasure. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you

get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Awards. The music on the show is by three time OSCAR

nomine composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production go Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one