On November two, nineteen eighty seven, at one point fifteen am and eighta, Oklahoma. The victim felt a gun at the back of her head as she unlocked the door to her home. She was pushed inside, robbed and raped by a black man who was described as between five seven and six two, wearing a hat, a jacket, and perhaps a gold tooth. Detectives filmed a crime Stoppers re enactment video about the robbery and rape, and they approached
Perry Lot, who was parked nearby. While they asked him a few questions about his whereabouts during the incident, they noticed that he had a gold tooth and Perry, a bit of a lady's man, explained that he was in the area to see his girlfriend, but had been with his fiancee from three thirty pm on November first through six thirty am the following morning. Despite his alibi, police
brought him in for further questioning. There they put him into a lineup and the rest of the men were given get this gold foil from a nearby florist to simulate having a gold tooth. The victim not surprisingly identified
Perry Lot that in there as her attacker. A rape kit had been done the morning of the incident, but in nineteen eighty seven, DNA technology was not yet available to exclude mister Lott as it later would, and Perry Lott tragically was sentenced to three hundred years for rape, robbery, burglary,
and making a bomb threat related to the incident. In this episode, which was recorded at an art show opening featuring the work of an innocent man on death row in Texas, rob Will, we interviewed Perry Lott and Eric Cullin, the private investigator that was originally tasked with taking Perry's DNA swap, only to end up becoming one of his fiercest and most loyal advocates. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome
back to wrongful Conviction. We have two incredible gentlemen in the studio with me today, and the studio is not even a studio, But I'll tell you more about that later. First of all, I'll save the best for last. We have Eric Cullen, private investigator who has played an active role in more reversals now that I can count on probably both hands. It's great to have you here. Welcome to the show.
Thank you, good to be here.
And with Eric is a gentleman who he was instrumental in helping to free an individual who served three decades thirty one years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. DNA proved it. Perry, Welcome the show. I'm really honored to have you here.
Greetings, Jason is very exciting to be here at Also, I've been looking forward to this for some months now.
Well, that's awesome. And after thirty one years in prison and this is your first first ever, it's very excited. So we can call this the exclusive interview with very lot. Yeah, Perry, let's go back to the beginning. First of all, your case took place in Ada, Oklahoma, and Aida has become
synonymous with wrongful convictions. Yes, sir, because John Grisha exposed the fact that there were six wrongful convictions in the space of just over a year in this tiny town, and those were profiled in his book An Innocent Manner, Four of them were and you happen to fall into that town not knowing that it was I mean a trap, right, And you were a young man at the time, twenty four years old. Twenty four years old. You still look pretty young for what it's worth.
Thank you. I grew old and didn't know it.
In this case, it has a lot of the common factors that we see in wrongful conviction cases. Of course, as the most common factor, I witness miss identification across racial eye witness misidentification, which we know are even more unreliable than same race, and those are notoriously unreliable, and they played a factor in the higher percentage of wrongful conviction cases than anything else. So let's go back to when
this happened and how it happened. Because you were teaching school at the time.
Right, and moved to Aden in Wisconsin. And in nineteen eighty six, around Christmas time, I get a call from an old girlfriend in a Toka, Oklahoma, and I was between jobs, you know, feeling kind of bad about my surroundings, seeing a lot of negativity that I didn't want to get involved with. So relocating Oklahoma was my option, my best option, and that's what I did. I went to Oklahoma, ended up in a Toka, worked there for a couple of weeks, found a better job in Ada, and moved
to Ada. And that was the beginning of my sorrows.
That's a very eloquent way of putting it. Eric I want to turn to you for a second, So can you take us back to this case. I mean, this was a horrible crime. The local woman in Ada had her home broken into after one in the morning. The assailant pushed her into her house, stole money from her purse, and did unspeakable things to her.
Yeah, So the victor always contended to police and testified the trial that she received several prank calls at her home, harassing calls.
I think she might have stated.
Then she goes to work, which is basically across the street, to a restaurant she managed called Arby's. There she works her complete shift or just about her complete shift, and she claims that a bomb threat was levied by the same voice that had been calling her harassing at her home all day.
Now, sound like a horror movie, right.
Right, And so she clears her store, calls the police, no bomb. They go ahead and close the store down, and she claims again that the same caller calls the store again and asked why she closed the store down. I told you I was going to blow the place up if you didn't close.
The store down.
Of course, the building never blew up. That's what she contended all the way through trial. Then she goes at approximately one one thirty home back across the street. That's where she testified that one Blackmail had pushed her in her home, put a condom on and raped her and then took upwards of two hundred dollars from her purse. And then she also claims, of course she lost deposit receipts from the RB's close out cash.
To right, and he did other disgusting things. There was a picture of her daughter in the house that he apparently yes, had sort of you know, did sexual things to the photograph and like very very bizarre character. Whoever this guy was correct, That's what she testified to Perry. Did you know anything about this crime? He is a small community. Did it get the word get around?
I did not know anything about the crime when I was first approached by Officer Crosby. I was in that area of the crime scene, but I had no idea crime had been committed. I had no idea who this woman was.
And remember that name Crosby, everyone who's listening, because that's going to be a crazy development as we go on with this story. So in this case, we know that the eyewitness misidentification was not inadvertence, right, it wasn't an accident. She was steered as probably too light of a word to describe how they ended up convincing her to identify you. And we know that the mind is not a camera. I think a lot of people think that you see something,
you recognize it, you remember it. That's not the way it works at all. And of course, again in the cross racial situation, it's even more prone to mistakes. But the victim had described that her assailant had a gold tooth or half a gold tooth, right.
That's what they say personally. I don't believe she ever mentioned the gold tooth in her initial description of her assailant, mainly because of this. I seen the police report where the victim, it was a description at the very end was a gold tooth like it had been added on.
She wasn't able to identify his hair color or tighte because he wore a hat, and he wore a jacket and things like that. And her description was so general that she said that it was just a black male between five seven and six two. That describes most people, right.
That describes entirely the whole black community mostly.
Yeah, how did it get from there to where Perry ends up in a lineup. He had an alibi on top of everything else, a very solid alibi, right, Yeah, they didn't care about that. No.
How they landed on Perry was they were doing a recreation of the crime for a show called Crime Stoppers down there at the time, they would run on unsolved crimes or you know, fresh crimes even and they were filming that day. Perry had been in the neighborhood visiting someone just a block away. He goes, turns the corner and sees these camera crews up there and he stops
on the side of the road to watch. Detective Crosby goes and approaches Ferry at the car, notices the gold tooth, and it's all downhill from there.
Yes, you voluntarily went into the police station, and I imagine when you went in there you probably thought, well, I mean, I'm just going in and tell them what I know and go home.
Yes, sir, like I said, mister Crosby came and approached me that night. They questioned me for hours at the police station, search my car, search my home, took me back to the police station, released me with the words
you can go home, but don't leave town. So I went home and my fiance was there, and evidently they had questioned her while they were questioning me, And we had a lot of tizzy, a little bit of a spot because I just recently came to her home from Wisconsin, and now she's hearing that, Hey, your boyfriend might be a rapist, you know, so of course she's going to be on age somewhat. That next morning, at work, I was approached by Crosby again, would you mind helping us out?
We need to need you to be in a lineup. Like you know, I'm just doing what any average citizen would do, doing what my dad had always taught me to do, is obey the police, cooperate, don't get disrespectful. So I'll go to the police station with them and participate in his lineup.
Right, And then it's almost comical to think that they had this said. There's nothing funny about it. They took the other man that they put in a lineup and put aluminum foil as if to simulate a gold tooth in their mouth. But you were the only one that actually had a gold tooth, that's right. Plus they had you say the words that she said she had.
Heard and after the lineup he comes with a shit eat and green on his face. Yeah she picked you out, said what she picked me? Yeah, she picked you, And I'm right there. I'm just in a whirlpool of confusion. So I'm in the city jail for a couple of weeks, you know, screaming, Hey, I didn't do this, you guys making a mistake. Nobody heard that, nobody wanted to hear that.
They moved me across the street to the county jail, and I stayed there for a couple of months at least the quarter point of attorney never came to see me, never knew who I was until just right before time for appearances in court. His name was Frank Baber, and me being so naive since I didn't do this, I'm thinking this is the easiest flipping over a pancake to
get me out of this situation. It's so much that he allowed to go on that I now know he should have been object I think it's like, hey, are you on my side or are you on their side? That's what I was thinking in my head because at the time, even being totally unaware of what the law says, you get a feeling as a defendant, if someone is vigorously trying to defend you, I didn't get that feeling.
Sounds like it was more processing you than defending your processing.
That's right.
Did you hold out any hope that they were going to find you innocent?
Or I had always thought they would find me innocent because I knew that they had no evidence of me doing anything. I knew that I had not done anything. I'm thinking that this is gone all the way up into picking the jewelry, and you guys still think I did this. How can you think I did this? What I did not know at the time was that eye
witnessed testimony was considered evidence. That's what me. I'm sitting there thinking, Okay, where's the rake kit, where's the fingerprints, where's the picture that you say was taken out of the home? Where's the money that you say was missing. I was flat broke at the time. Hell, when they searched my house, they found a twenty dollar bill that my fiance had hidden in her dresser and it floated to the floor. Now I asked Jeff Crosby, I said, can I have that? And he says, yeah, you can
have that. So I picked up that twenty dollar bill and put it in my pocket. I didn't know better, so I ended up in prison. And the trial lasted all of eight hours.
Eight hours.
The trial lasted less than a.
Working day, and you were sentenced to three hundred years three.
Years consecutive sentences, four charges, four different sentences, one hundred, one hundred and fifty and fifty for rape, robbery, burglary, and bomb threatening.
Three hundred years. It's such a preposterous concept. I mean, it's the idea that we even do that in this country. Here the sense is a thousand years, and Oklahoma is notorious for these and again I'm not minimizing the nature of the crime. But Jesus Christ anyway, Eric.
An interesting side note free trial. I think it's interested back to how they were doing things in pot of Talk County. Eight of Williamson and Fritz were in jail with Perrys.
And Williamson and Fritz were two of the men that were profiled in the John Grisham, the only nonfiction book that John has ever written, The Innocent Man, and John told me John was on wrongful conviction. He said that when he wrote that book, he had to write it as nonfiction, he says, because when I write fiction, I have to make it believable, and he goes the story. The audience is not going to follow. Al I'm going to lose my readers because this doesn't make any logical sense.
And Williamson and Fretz such an unbelievably tragic case of two men wrongfully convicted and one of whom lost his mind in prison and just months after he was released ended up dead, really really sad, and he had been an open age pitching prospect, he had his life ahead of him. And the whole thing is a tragedy on top of a tragedy, not to mention that there was no justice for the victim, which was a rape and murder case. And I want to go back to this
eye witness identification. If you, the listener, end up on a jury and you have a pery lot in front of you, you're in a criminal case and there's no evidence except eyewitness identification. You should keep this in mind. And I'm quoting from the amazing book Convicting the Innocent by Brandon Garrett, which is sort of like the Bible of wrongful conviction. Causes and practices that lead to them, he said it. Many DNA ex on cases involving mistaken
eyewitnesses involved the use of suggestive identification procedures. A study of the first two hundred and fifty DNA exonerations revealed that an incredible eighty eight percent of the mistaken witness exonerations involved either factors that are known to affect the reliability of the identification, some suggestiveness in the identification procedure, or both, And in this case it was both. So the jury comes in.
It was the most surreal moment of my life. When the jury came back and they found me guilty, all I could do was stare in the space. I was just sitting there in shock. And when they started reading off the terms one hundred years, one hundred years, I was paralyzed, wondering, what how can they be allowed to
count more than a person can actually live? If I die in prison, you're still going to make me do time, you know, I mean, it's like you said, it just don't make sense to give a person more time than a lifespan, you know what I mean?
Right? And in case you come back to life, maybe they want to back and then you have to come back to life of these a couple of times and still live a long life. Each thing is ridiculous.
I had a discussion with Eric just last night. I said, you know, they should take the sentence and portion of the trial out of the jury's hands because they are citizens. They get emotional, They are angry when they get the details of these crimes. Whether it's coherst or whether it's fabricated, or whether it's just plain fact. These people have emotional attachments to that, and that's why they give people these
ex financial amounts of time. When you know, one hundred years is enough to see a person die in prison, but you want to.
Go overkill and even the just breaking it down to the granular level, just the idea that they sends you to fifty years for robbery and the robbery was one hundred and twenty dollars, right or whatever it was, two hundred dolls like that, I mean.
In fifty for the bumb threat. Additionally fifty the.
Bumb threat as well. Yeah, and we know, of course that these threats went on, and there were other cases after Perry was arrested and convicted, where whoever the actual perpetrator was continued with the same memo, which should be not even a red flag should be a flashing red light where they go, hold up, this is we got were bucked up, you know what I mean. But that's not what happened. So you get take into prison.
Yes, prison life. After sitting in the county jail for four or five months, you're kind of glad to go to prison. So it's a real messed up thing in the mind.
You know.
It's like they say, the eyes will play tricks on you. After a certain amount of time, with a traumatic situation or unfamiliar situation, the mind will start playing tricks on you to you hear things, you see things, you imagine things. So once I did get in the doc system, I was glad to have a bed. I was glad to have fresh clothes, a shower, movement of the things you don't get in the counter jail. So that took a lot of pressure off of what I was going through at the time.
Then I think most people don't realize, but I hear from so many of the exogneries that jails are worse than the prisons, and it's actually logical when you think about it. I think people if they're the word jail, they think of like the classic thing in the movies where it's like a country place and they.
Ain't like Barney and Andy like that.
So you know, like that, it's true all over the country. In jails, it's just a powder cake because everybody's in the cell together. There's no recreation, there's no education, there's no release of anything, there's no outdoors, there's nothing so and as you said, no clean clothes. I mean, it's really and it's designed to break people and actually make them confess the crimes that didn't commit just to go home. These places are dirty, they're incubators of disease.
They wouldn't worship on my worst ending.
A lot of informant Joie Howson snitch stuff comes out of that environment too.
But now you went to the prison and your sentenced to well life because three hundred years, you know you weren't going to live that long. It's a miracle you lived through this whole experience in the first place.
It surely is. I went in at twenty four years old, waited three or four years for the direct appeal. Once that was affirmed, I had no idea how the hell they.
Affirmed that affirmed your conviction.
How do you do that with the facts all laid out, I should have been home after three or four. I knew enough about law to know that what the jury says is what the jury says. However, that's what the appeal process is for, correctly, to rectify what the jury in the courtroom allowed that should never been allowed. When I was affirmed, I knew that I had a war on my hands. I had to become my own attorney because my family could not afford to help me. They
were so far away in Wisconsin. I was basically by myself against the state. I like to point out the people when I talk to them about this, when it says lot versus state, it's just like Oklahoma versus Texas. You're at war. I had to learn as quick as possible, as much as possible about what avenues is going to get me set free, because now I am here and it doesn't have a back door. Well, once I got to about twelve fifteen years in, I started losing it.
I started losing hope. I started thinking I just might die in here. And two thousand and two was the first time I went up for parole. Nothing changed. In two thousand and five, I had a near death experience with staff infection. That's why I am partially disabled now. Staff infection had gotten into my system. I didn't even know what staff was, so it lingered in my body, actually got into my blood and mercered and attached to
my spinal cord in my neck. It was eating through the vertebrae in my net, exposed a few nerves, and I'm lucky to be alive. So two thousand and five I was hospitalized. So they skipped over my parole hearing. Yes, yes, they totally skipped over my parole hearing, so I had to wait until two thousand and eight. That was probably the only time I ever considered dying in prison, and
that was two thousand and five. Between two thousand and five and two thousand and eight, I saw and I sensed that I wasn't ever going to be released by this parole board.
Ouse they probably wanted you to admit guil right.
I wrote a letter, thinking that if I admit to this crime, they just may give me some relief, because in prison, you are under the impression that they want some kind of remorse, they want some kind of confession, They want to see you broke down, especially when you've been claiming to be innocent. So I'm thinking I'm going to give them what they want. I'm going to manipulate
my way out of here. That's after so many years of being in you start thinking like this, Well, the truth isn't working, so now I'm going to lie and see if that'll do anything. Well. Between two thousand and eight and twenty eleven, the Innocence Project took my case. The first thing I did was told my attorneys, hey, look we got an issue. I've already confessed to these crimes. I didn't do them, but I confessed to them trying to manipulate and got the letters retracted, and we explained
why I did that. It was kind of like a duress, and that was probably the last time I had given up hope. But prior to that, I had already started feeling like it's hopeless against this. There's no way I'm going to be a I mean, I have done a stack of briefs like this on my case, and good good law work, proslit againt law work, and nothing ever worked. I said, damn, you know the law is written. Why aren't you guys giving me some relief?
Why aren't you actually paying attention to the laws that.
Were Everything in the law says that I should be getting some kind of relief from the state. You guys never really proved anything here. Why am I in prison? What connection do you have other than this high witness testimony? Being denied so many times was detrimental because when you feel like you have no hope of ever reaching anybody with the truth, you become something different. And if you don't have good people around you to help you get your mind right, you're going to become part of that
prison and you're never going to leave. It's kind of like the soft Shank prediction where the guy says, these walls do something to you. They do.
Yeah, that movie had a profound effect on me and so many other people. Nobody's listening. The Innocence Project gets involved, that's obviously a huge development.
That's the only time I regained hope.
Yep.
Actually I took my hands off the wheel when I knew. When you hear the word Innocence Project in prison, you know you got the kind of help you need. That place is synonymous with God when you're an innocent person, the Innocence Project, when you hear that name, you you know you're going home.
Wow, that's heavy. It's great to hear. Having been there myself for twenty five twenty six years, it's amazing. I never heard it put that way before, but it's great to hear. That obviously means a lot. So instance project gets involved. How did you get involved, Erek, and how did you help to resolve this? And how the hell is he here instead of serving another two hundred and seventy something years or two hundred and sixty eight to be exact.
That's my champion right there. Man.
So I was working on some other post conviction cases and Karen Thompson had reached out to me on a referral from some lawyers that I was working with on those cases. So in twenty thirteen, Karen wanted me to simply go meet Perry at Dick Connor in prison and take his DNA sample and then of course to get that sample to sell Mark, which is who the Innocence Project uses to test their.
DNA by the DNA lab very fast lab.
They're the best. And in the meantime Karen winahead and assigned me some other duties. One of those things was to find an alternate suspect and find the individual who actually did this. Well, I spent a lot of time doing that and doing my own covert methods of obtaining DNA, such as posing as somebody from a casino with you know, I've pulled this guy's trash that I thought, you know, I've done it, and he's a big casino guy. I
show up the gift guard, Hey, lick this envelope. We actually went that far, you know, tested it in the whole bit and a gift card trick.
That's good, yeah, yeah, and.
So but it was very disheartening. Uh, this guy been acquitted of two rapes I think one one dismissal and one a quttle, all within this somewhat of a similar mL and man, we were pretty confident it was him, and of course a little heartbroken to find out it was.
And but then again, we don't want to be part of wrongfully accusing people either, so that we moved on from this guy, and so we continue to move along the whole time, though in the mean meantime, Karen is constantly trying to get the DA from Potna Talk County. Who's this guy that's been there since the Williamson Frint Fontinea Award days. They're just so stuck, I mean, in their ways, and Karen trying to budget him just to cooperate. Well,
let's at least let my investigator interview this victim. And so, long story short, Finally Detective Crosby, who's still there as well, finds the victim and it was agreed upon that he and I would go interview her together.
And this is where shit gets real and he gets real real. So tell us about that.
Yeah, so we agreed that he would go first and I wouldn't interrupt him, and I would go last and he wouldn't interrupt me. We get in there, the victim says that going along with a whole bit, everything's the same, nothing's really changed today as I sit here, and then at some point, of course, me being in the room, I've done no telling how many interviews have individuals, from defendants to suspects. You just get the body language. Part two.
You can't really read in the transcript. I could see something change in her body language that was very much in line, and the energy was that she was ready to get this off of chess and tired of carrying this around. And in fact, in the transcript you can read in there. He actually asked her if she's okay during his questioning of her. It was really light, you know, and she.
Had to get a drink of water.
Her mouth was dry, and she stuttering things like that. And then it was my turn. And then in the beginning of my interview with her, she was definitive that it was still Pairy. She was definitive that it was his voice and that that voice is what carried her through her certainty it was Parry. And then the best thing I had to do, and I've done this many times, was and again I knew she had other things to say, Okay.
Well I'm ready.
Is that all you have?
No? Yeah, okay, well I'm okay. Well let's wrap it up. I appreciate your time, and this has been tough. And then she tells me more, I do that about three times. She ends up telling me that she identified Perry on a hunch, that on a hunch, that she did not receive multiple calls that day at her home, that she only received one call at the Arby's at her work, that there were two men there, not one, and the koupdo gral was is that it wasn't even his voice.
So this was a I see you smiling now, I mean that was a Eureka moment for you.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And I was so stunned that I didn't even realize she had said that. And two men in the interview as we sat there as this was unraveling, and at this point, Detective Crosby starts to interrupt, interject and sway her, even to the point of telling her that deep into her confession, so to speak, that he still thinks Perry's the guy that did that to her.
Her story totally flipped when Eric got in front of him.
I read the transcripts attached the post conviction relieve filing.
I mean you could.
See I was ready to leave her home three times, and she wasn't ready for me to leave. She wanted to get this off her.
Chest, right, And then then things start to really roll. And then so at what point did you know you were going home?
Like I said, the Innocence Project took my case in twenty eleven, and it was a couple of years after that fourteen when you got involved, when they came and got my DNA inside the prison. I think that was the moment I knew I was going home.
Eric, can you just explain the DNA findings in this case and how they impacted the outcome.
Yes, so there were two contributors found in the victims canal per the rape kit done in nineteen eighty seven. Her ex husband was generous enough to meet with me and allowed me to collect his DNA as well, and that was one of the matches. The other match is still unknown. I have my thoughts on who it is as I sit here, But Perry.
Was excluded, that didn't do it. Those are the magic words. Perry was excluded.
Yes, Karen and I are obviously very excited, the projects excited, but Ada being Ada, none of this was good enough. That still wasn't going They're still going to fight it. They're still going to fight the DNA. They're still going to fight basically a confession from the victim and then so they're forcing this the state all the way to a post conviction relief hearing. And so July ninth of twenty eighteen, that was one of what would probably be
two to three hearings. Jeff Crosby is slated to testify on July ninth, and of course I'll let Perry tell the audience tell you what would happened on the ninth. But on the seventh, unbeknownst to Perry and the team detached, Crosby had taken his own life.
So two days before this Saturday and Sunday, I was appearing in court that Monday.
So I mean, obviously we'll never know, but do you have any theory as to why he did that? I mean, the timing is not coincidental.
That would be my only thought.
I'm an investigator. I'm not a fan of coincidence, so I didn't find it coincidental at all. He was getting ready to get chopped up on the stand on Monday.
I think people at home are probably wondering, why in the world, with DNA scientifically proving that Perry had nothing to do with this crime, and with the victim herself recanting her testimony, and with no evidence whatsoever connecting him to it, why is he on probation.
Well, first off, that was something that Perry had to discuss with his two attorneys at the time. I wasn't part of that conversation, but I know enough that I can speak about it. The risk out of that county because it's a district judge that here's this. They transitioned to a new DA, but it's still the same type
a mindset in that county. So the risk, with all of this being put before a judge of still losing was still there, believe it or not, And so Perry and his attorneys had to decide do we want to take that risk or do you want to go home today and live to fight another day. In almost any other circumstance anywhere else, you would just put this up in front of a judge, put your evidence you're hearing on. Judge takes some time for finding the facts in law,
and you'd get your ruling bactual innocence. It makes no sense, and it truly is a sophie's choice.
I'd spent now twenty something years, twenty five years or so wondering how the hell do these people got me in prison and how come I can't get myself out of this. Karen helped me figure that out by helping me see that all of the things that we think should go right, when other people in power don't want it to go right, they have the power to make it go wrong. So she kept asking me, she said, how do you do it? How do you do it, and it's talking about keeping a smile and a good
attitude with all of this other stuff. How are you always in such a good mood, I said, It's just I love people. I cannot let this situation change me. Matter of fact, that's one of the things that I decided at that when I told you I was sitting at the defendant table in shock, I knew at that moment I had to remain in that state of mind
of who I was. I had to really get a tight grip on my identity and hold on to that for dear life, because I knew that this experience was going to do everything in its power to make me something I was not. Beginning with a rapist. Never in my life would I even considered attacking a woman when you can you know pretty much, I've called myself a player back in them days. You know you don't Back in them days, when you got it like I had it,
you didn't have to take anything from a woman. You could ask, and you ask what a certain amount of finess. I'm not saying, you know, you don't have to.
Say anything else. You got it.
You get the impression I'm trying to make, So you know, The thing is, I will always appreciate hearing in my life because she helped me understand something I never could figure out in twenty five years, as how am I doing this? What is it that's keeping me bolstered? And I realized it was a mixture of family, church, good friends around me that had their mind on right. She says. Finally, after she had worked on my case a little while, she said, mister Lott, I think I got you figured out.
I said, oh, yeah, we're to me. She said, I know how you do it. And this is after I've been disabled. And I said, oh yeah, what do you think? She said, you do it one step at a time, day by day. And the lights came on up in my head. I said, damn, you got it figured out.
Now.
That's when I knew I was going home by continually walking day by day, one day at a time, and one step at a time. See, at that time, I was taking little bitty baby steps. The disability I had, I was prognosed to never walk again, to never get out of the bed again. But I struggled and struggled, and I began walking in little bitty baby steps, and
then I started really pushing myself. I can take a full stride now with just a little bit of pain, and back in that time, I could a little bitty baby step like that and it would hurt like hell. That's how it is.
You know, Well, you answered the question before I asked it. I was going to ask whether you're better, and I don't have to ask that anymore.
Penitentiary will do two things to a person. It will make them better or to make them better. And it's a choice that you have to make before you go in that institution, before we.
Go to what I call our closing arguments, and I'll explain to you what that is. Just talk a little bit about what you're doing now, because you're actually working with this guy, right awesome.
Yes, Eric approached me about a job and I said, well, give me time to think about it. I was disabled, not really confident in my abilities, not knowing that I had abilities. A couple of months went by and said, hey, I need an answer, that's okay, And he told me that I could earn so much money, which is like twice as much as I would get on disability. And I didn't feel right on disability anyway. So when I
had the job, opportunity. I wanted to jump at it, but I was hesitating because of my state of mind. You know, what can I do? I'm thirty years missing in action, no record of work history, no record of medical history. I didn't know I had any ability at all. So when Eric offered me the job, I said, Man, give me time to think about that, and I'm just trying to figure out a way to tell him new
and eventually, Man, he made an argument with me. I couldn't deny that I could probably do this job in prison. I did this for twenty five years trying to get out of prison. I call it combing the records. You know how they have a rake kit and they combed the pubics. They're looking for whatever doesn't belong in those pubics. When I combed the records, I look word for word, line for line, looking for what doesn't belong here. It's missing from here. And it's a skill that you develop
without knowing that you're actually developing it. You know, because when you work on your own case daily for twenty five years, you don't realize it, but you grow old and you grow knowledge of the law and how it should be applied.
Perry works for another five oh one C three, another Chance Justice Project, and then we work on wrongful convictions and excessive sentencing and some commutation there. But my private firm is calling and Associates. Perry is employed through the project's.
Calling and associates. Yeah, we should shout that out a little bit. And of course, one of my favorite human beings who has also been on the show, Michelle Murphy served twenty years, was exonerated with DNA, the only female DNA exignery from Oklahoma. I encourage people to listen to that episode. It's an incredible episode of wrongful conviction with Michelle Murphy. But she's working with you as well, So
you have Yeah, I mean, it's actually perfectly logical. You're taking people who have actually the most profound experience and the most knowledge from having to out of necessity, from having to do all this research to get themselves free and to help others inside. Yeah, tentry, So you've got You've got the dream team with Perry and Michelle. I love it, you know that. So you know I always say on the show, you know, I'm happy you're here,
but I'm sorry you're here. I mean, I'm sorry you had to go through what you had to go through to get here. But it means an awful lot that you came in and came to New York, all the way from Oklahoma to share your incredible story, your spirit, your wisdom, your outlook. We got the whole Perry lot.
When I found out I was going to be here, that I just wanted to see you again.
Man, Well, what can I say? I'm just about to melt into a puddle over here, whereas the old say goes, knock me down with a feather. One of the reasons why today's episode is unique is because we are recording this in the middle of an art exhibit by an innocent man on death row in Texas, a guy named Rob Will who has created this remarkable collection of work
from his tiny cell. I can't not mention that it's sort of a heavy day as well, because as we sit here, Texas is probably in the process in the last couple hours before they carry out another execution of an innocent man. Larry Sweringen is going to be executed today, almost certainly in spite of evidence of his actual innocence. So we just have a moment of silence for Larry. Okay, So this is the part of the show where again this is my favorite part the show. I think it's
a lot of people's favorite part of the show. We get feedback online, etc. Where I get to once again thank you to outstanding freedom fighters for coming and being on rawful conviction with me. Eric. I know we'll be doing more of these in the future, and we're working together on various cases and I'm a huge fan of your work. I think you're one of the top people in the country at what you do and we need
more of you. So Eric Cullin, thank you again for being here my pleasure, and Perry again, I thank you before, I'll thank you again, and I'm looking forward to working with you in the future and spending more time together. And now, like I said, this is what we call closing arguments. So this is where I get to turn my microphone off, I kind of kick back rock back in my chair and just listen and turn the microphones over to you for your closing thoughts. I call it
closing arguments. It was really closing thoughts on anything you want to say, anything we may have left that out, or anything at all. And again we'll save the best for last. No offense are. I know, but the start of the show is Perry. So but first, Eric, you're closing thoughts.
Perry's case is just a shining example again, you covered it of the eyewitness identification problem. It's also a shining example of why Oklahoma is number one in incarcerating African American males in the world. And then of course on the side twenty eight years in a row for females, which is a whole other topic. But there's no surprise as to why we're here. When you hear Perry's story, when you hear Michelle's story, when you hear Williams and Fritz,
all these different ones from Oklahoma. It's horrifying. I think we're at a point now where it's becoming bipartisan this issue. You know, I think the eyes are open. You'd have to be a real fool to say that ron fold convictions don't exists now. We're just several years ago, it wasn't quite there. That's what my closing earner would be, And I would add one other thing. We're not done with Arry's case. We're going to work on this till we get him fully exonerated.
Very yes, sir, I heard you called me the start of the show. Well, you guys are the stars of my show. You know, without you guys in my life, I would probably be dead in prison, still in prison. So I want to thank you and honor you for that and your audience. I want to honor you for being attentive. And I want to admonish everyone under the sound of my voice to get involved with this awareness,
to get involved with the injustice, the police brutality. The only way evil like this prevails is when good people say nothing. A lot of people will see crime and close their windows, close their doors, turn their back. And that's why we're in the state that we're in right now. We have to be courageous enough to say I saw this. I want to say something and the truth. You know. Of being in prison for thirty one years, I came out very battle weary, not too much confidence in my abilities.
As I said before, overwhelmed with the stimulus of the free world. I still right now today have not cooked my own first meal. After being out of prison for it a year and some months, I don't have the confidence to cook a meal. I don't really go into big shopping malls anymore. There's too many choices. I'm not used to that. I am enjoying the freedom of going back and forth under limits being on parole or probation. But it feels good to be able to go here
and there without having to ask permission. So to speak. Life is good, man, and it's getting better. You know. I have a whole lot to be thankful for, even though this misfortune happened to me and took away a lot of my life. I tell people all the time, I got a whole lot more yesterday's than I do tomorrow.
So I'm going to make the most of it. And all I really want to do now is just be the best me that I can be, not only for myself but for anyone who's watching me, because someone's always watching and you never know what they're going to pick up from you. So I do my best to just be the best example I can. I'm not perfect. I have a ways to go. I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty close to it. That's a joke, no, but honestly, you know, heart goes out to the youth of America.
You know, the violence, the games, the influences. Find other things to spend your time with. I really don't want to be preachy, but these are the things I've learned the hard way, you know, is ask questions, don't take anyone's word, find your own truth, seek clarity, you know, just be true to yourself. It's very important.
Thank you all for listening. Thank you everyone at home. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud owner to the Ennisis 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 Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one