At ten pm on a snowy April second, nineteen ninety three, twenty two year old Andrew Asher and Becky George sat in a parked car in front of her brother's apartment on Silent Road in Rockford, Illinois.
A black man.
Approached the car and a blue ski mask and a hoodie, and he opened the driver's side door, announcing a stick up. While Becky fished around in her purse and tried to offer the gunman the sixty dollars she had, he shot Andrew Asher twice. Becky ran to her brother's apartment to call the police, and the two bullets and their casings were retrieved from the crime scene and during the autopsy.
Through the use of incentivized eyewitness testimony, the coercion of a false confession, and grand jury testimony from Patrick Persley's girlfriend, Samantha Crabtree, testimony she later recanted a trial, and conflicting and misleading ballistics expert testimony. Patrick was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole, with an epic appeals process that included Patrick getting a law change from prison in order to get new BAE listics testing
done that would ultimately set him free. Patrick Parsley suffered for over twenty five years for a crime he simply didn't commit. In March twenty seventeen, Patrick's conviction was finally.
Vacated and he was released on bond.
He was formally acquitted at his retrial on January sixteenth, twenty nineteen. This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. This episode was recorded at Complex Con Chicago twenty nineteen, a culture, fashion, art and music hybrid event described as a streetwear fans kind of world's fair featuring limited edition brand collaborations, performances, and even the occasional live podcast recording
like this one. We only had thirty minutes though, to tell Patrick's story, so I'll be fleshing out some of the details along the way. Patrick Persley, this is going to be extraordinary, because Franklin, doesn't you, Because Pat is my new friend. I've just gotten to know him, his unbelievable spirit and intellect. But Patrick, I want to say that I'm happy you're here. I'm sorry you're here because you should never even have to be having this conversation.
But I'm happier here, and your case has so many of the hallmarks, so many of the common factors that we see in rawful convictions over and over again. You had incentivized lying witnesses, yes, coerced threatened witnesses. You had bad ballistics, terrible ballistics.
Right.
You had people in positions of authority who broke rules, broke laws in order to railroad you. Tunnel vision is another factor, right, And by tunnel vision, what I mean by that is once a suspect is identified. In many cases, we see that the police and prosecutors start to build a narrative, either consciously or subconsciously, and they managed to ignore or they subconsciously ignore evidence that points.
Away as they sated.
In your case, Yes, I'll term to suspects crime scene evidence, clothing, everything, everything was contradicted.
Patrick Pursley was ronflely convicted of a brutal crime, a robbery of two people in a car where the robber shot the guy sitting in the car twice and ran and then things went downhill from.
There very quickly.
And Patrick, this was Rockford, Illinois. But you didn't know the people, You didn't know anything about the.
Crime, didn't even know it happened.
You were home with your girlfriend when this happened.
Yes, I was doing a lated birthday party from my son and he came from Wisconsin. His birthday was on the twenty ninth, and we were celebrating on the night of the crime, which was four to ninety three, and had a chemistry set for him and we were just tinkering around and have no idea of these events happening just a few miles away now.
I Meanwhile, there's another aspect of this that's important to recognize, which is crime stoppers, right, and theory crime stoppers great thing. Right, people call up, they talk about a crime, they can
make us all safer. They get a reward. But in your case, except except when they do it like When's case where someone called up and knew nothing about the crime and just gave up his name in order to get two thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars the Price of life, right, about one hundred dollars a year for
the time you were in the Price of Life. So all of this must have come as a tremendous shock to you when it happened in stages right when you first first you became aware that you were a suspect.
Can you get into that aspect of this whole thing.
I was taking my daughter and my son to a birthday party and the police tried to for hid me, and unfortunately I was ghettle bred, so I fled and that's how it started.
That was June tenth, nineteen ninety three, about ten weeks after the crime. Two days earlier, on June eighth, Marvin Windham, a man Patrick knew from a few small time weed deals around Rockford, was the first one to point the finger at him in a call he made to crime stoppers.
It was later revealed a trial that not only did Marvin have ey for Samantha Crabtree, Patrick's girlfriend, but he also received leniency on a number of charges that he faced in exchange for his testimony not to mention the two six hundred and fifty dollars reward. With Wyndham's hot tip, the police now we're able to get a search warrant for Patrick and Samantha's apartment, where they recovered a Taurus nine millimeter that Samantha kept for protection. Notably, she always
stored it out of reach of her small children. While Patrick fled on foot and the cops rated the apartment, they brought Samantha in for some aggressive interrogation, and I'm putting that mile.
The intergregated my girlfriend for like twelve hours. She was pregnant, you know, just basically force fed a narrative to her while disregarding glaring contradictions.
And so your girlfriend was the pregnant mother of two or three.
Never been in trouble, three kids, three.
Kids, pregnant mother.
So she's a target for twelve hours, and the police tells her that if she doesn't tell them exactly what they want to hear, she.
Won't see her children till she's forty.
So here's how this unraveled.
So they take her from directly from the interrogation room to a grand jury where they make her repeat the story right now.
She's under oath, right.
Get her own record, get her under you know, a substantiate of evidence come in later.
So she tells them what they want to hear, and a girlfriend, to her everlasting.
Credit, stood strong to get back. Can you talk about that.
Yeah, So, as soon as she was out of custody, she filed an affidavit with my attorneys and said she was courced basically took back her statement. Whether Ellanoi idea is no takebacks right now. It's called perjury. It's called perjury. It's called come in that trial substantial evidence. Then you say this under oath and comes in as evidence of guilt.
Your girlfriend ended up spending two years in prison because.
She didn't go along with the narrative and took it back.
The narrative of her terror rized, spoon fed and patently false confession and her grand jury testimony was that she and Patrick were having financial trouble and on the night of the murder, they were driving around in search of a house to rob when Patrick told her to stop on silent road, hopped out of the car, put on a blue ski mask, told her to keep the engine running, and ran off toward the apartment buildings. Then a few minutes later, she heard two gun shots and Patrick returned
to the car carrying a Taurus nine millimeter. Hours before being threatened with a life separated from her children and regurgitating this narrative for her false confession, Samantha's apartment was being searched by the police where photos were actually staged.
There were staged.
Photos of her tourist nine millimeters being stored in plain sight for ease of use.
The whole gun situation as far as like pictures where the gun was. It's like I had children in my house. I'm not going to have a gun in plain view where a ten year old could get it. It just wasn't. The whole narrative of how it was put together was so far suppose it's just crazy.
But early on you you had a lawyer who actually made one move.
One move ch course, save your life. Yeah, So every defendant, I think, in the course of America says I didn't do it. I had a young lawyer who was beginning his career and I was his first depth penalty case. And then I had the older lawyer who kind of just like, I'm out of here. So the young lawyer and his pushback, right, you know you didn't do it. Well, we'll test the gun. Really, you can do that. Yes, please test the gun. Test gun. That's how it all started, That's what got me here.
Ballistic testing is very important to this story. Ballistics is the study of the dynamics of projectiles or of the internal action of firearms. It can tell us what type of firearm was used, where it was fired, from, how many shots were fired, and most importantly for this case, it can be used to identify a firearm by the
markings left on bullets and bullet casings after firing. So, after both the state's crime lab and the defense's independent lab test fire Crabtrees nine milimeter and compare the bullets and casings from both the test firing and the murder, the prosecution's expert testified that the gun used in the murder was Crabtrees Tourist nine millimeter and this is a direct quote to the exclusion of all others. Powerful testimony,
false but powerful. While the defense's expert testified that the murder weapon was likely a Tourist nine millimere but not crab Trees. However, the expert hired by the defense could not conclusively exclude the gun.
So think about this.
You now have the state testifying with absolute certainty and the defense inconclusive in their exclusion of Patrick. This, along with Marvin Wyndham's incentivized testimony and Samantha Crabtree's initial false confession, brings us to where we know this part of the story tragically, when, however, the ballistics testing becomes crucial again many years down the road, when the jury went out, You've now seen a bunch of dirty tricks. You've been around the system. You grew up, as you said, in
the streets, so you know what can happen. You're a young black man at this point in the clutches of a system that is designed to chew you up and spit you out.
I think Lupe called it planned convalescence. I think called it that.
Well.
That being said, when the jury went out, did.
You have hope?
Oh yeah, I knew I didn't do it. I know it was going home. And so when they returned a guilty verdict, I just I really don't even remember how I got back to my cell because I guess the blood drained off my body or something. I just went body numb, and uh, you know, I couldn't believe it. I just I couldn't believe it. It floored me.
I don't think anybody here can possibly begin to understand unless someone else here has been through what you've been through. And now you're facing the death penalty. Yes, come back for sentencing, and the judge.
Says, because of the inconsistencies of the evidence, I'm not going to give you the death penalty. However, I will give you natural life, I'll find you'll be a minister society. And this is at a time where people were actually picketing for me to get a new trial. It was very strange and very strange correlation what was going on.
And that's just fasake. We're not going to kill you quickly, but we are going to kill you slowly.
Right.
Yeah, I'm having mercy on you because I see the bs and evidence. But you're still going, buddy.
You're gone.
There was a cry in the courtroom when he announced that my daughters were there. It was something else.
You were said to some of the worst, well one of the worst prisons.
Yes, stay built, and I'm one job in the law library. I tried to play past the game banging and the dice games and try to educate myself. I got a grant to correspondence classes in law.
Is it as bad as everyone thinks it is?
I'm a natural life survivor right so, right now in the wintertime, although locks are cut off the windows so the natives don't make knives, However, what that does allows your cell to have enough ice on you can make a snow cone right off the bars. And freezing temperatures mice, roaches, so many roaches. You put a potato chip back in the corner of your segregation cell and the roaches going there and they can't get out, and so you hear kind of like the scraping. And that was the roach
motel in f House Panoptacon. They actually, uh, it's a landmark. It's a landmark.
And of the two point two million people in prison, there are a lot of them who don't have air conditioning.
And I don't know.
A guy who died recently in Texas prison, he told his brother that his brother said, why don't you have any sodas? You love soda, but you can't keep sodas in your cell. You said, I can't because they explode because it's too hot. Like what the fuck even is that?
Well, ice is the commodity. They might get one cup of ice in the morning, one cup of ice at night. Ice is a commodity. So you will deal with the elements. And right around April fifteenth they will turn off the heat every year like clockwork, despite the elements.
Right in Chicago, you got some elements here, God knows it.
So And I'm always fascinated and amazed by people like yourself, who managed to, you know, go through this ordeal as an innocent person, and the extra psychological damage that that must do to a person who's undergoing the extreme physical hardships and the loneliness and all the rest of it. The violence in the prison, we talked about it, the terrible food, et cetera. Set the cold, the heat, and then you are there, you know, innocent forever, innocent. Right.
I was done, all my appeals were done. I was done in court. It was over.
With that being said, you found this something, this inner strength, perseverance, whatever you have, you describe it. And you not only didn't you give up, but you had, first of all, you had every reason to give up. Motion after motion after motion, denied, denied, denied.
All I needed was one yes. I needed once one yes. That's it.
And how you got to that is a really incredible part of the story. So you deny, denied. Now, as I understand that the law in Illinois at the time allowed for post conviction testing of fingerprints in DNA, but not ballistics.
Exactly, So in two thousand and I asked for the testing. I've seen an article and a tribune about Illinois State Police. Now starts using the IBIS system Integated Ballistic Identification System, which uses algorithms to connect ballistics to crime scenes. So I was like, that can free me. I knew it could free me. It was just that simple. And unfortunately, because the law didn't allow for it in two thousand
and two thousand and one, wis for it. The courts was like, no, the law would have to be amended. The law would have to be a change in order to grant me the gun testing, which would potentially designer Rabian. That was two thousand and one.
Right, So you were stuff on a technicality, right because you knew that you had this evidence because your lawyer had tested.
We go back to that, right. Your lawyer had had the sense to go and get.
The testing independent lab. Independent lab. This lab had only testified for defendants four times.
So now a lot of people would say, Okay, here you are in the segregation unit of one of the worst prisons in America. Not a great education. You'd have a law degree, you didn't have a science degree. It would seem to be hopeless. But somehow or other, you managed to actually get the law changed from inside yourself.
So so long, long story short, it's two thousand and six. I'm in chowhall. There's an a warden, I would say, a southern gentleman. Maybe in past life he had slave ships. He sees my prayer beads and he says, are you allowed to have them?
Sir?
And me, being the sarcastic bastard I am, I buck up and say yes, sir. So he looks at me and says, are you sure you're allowed to have him? I don't like your attitude. He sees the energy coming off me. I say, sir, yes, sir, And so he gets a little closer in my personal space than the tar man's out with the gun. It's about two hundred inmates, and he says, I don't like your attitude. I said, we don't like your attitude either, sir. You brought much
misery and suffering to the land. As a result, I went straight to segregation six months in some of the worst conditions in the United States. But while there I had epiphany and I wrote an article that became a state law.
And what is that law? Yeah, exactly, here we go.
So the law is seven to twenty five. I'll see as five hue sixteen dash three as a minute October twenty seven, two thousand and seven, signed by Governor Blagoyevitch. I should probably send him some money for commissary because he actually he helped me. No, really, he helped me. I just it slips my mind sometimes, but he helped me. He really did. He signed my idea to law.
If you remember, back in two thousand and nine, Illinois Governor Rod Blokoyevitch was indicted on corruption charges that included the alleged solicitation of personal benefit in exchange for Barack Obama's recently vacated US Senate seat. As I remember that well, it was a bizarre episode anyway. He was later found guilty of seventeen different charges, including wire fraud, attempted extortion, and conspiracy to solicit bribes, and sentenced to fourteen years
behind bars. But before he left office, he did sign Patrick's amendment into law. Now back to the law. Bill Ryan worked for the Department of Children and Family Services as an advocate for long term offenders.
He had a.
Newsletter that was circulated throughout prisons as well as the families of inmates, to law professors and colleges, and even legislators and politicians. Mister Ryan published the article that Patrick wrote about amending the law to include post conviction ballistics testing through the Integrated Ballistics Identification System also known as IBIS. In turn, Illinois State Representative Arthur Turner Senior sponsored the legislation.
You can imagine the letters that come from prison, and so Bill Ryan are a long term advocate, explained to me, and Michelle says Patrick, you just don't get it. I had a table full of letters. I reached down to grab one letter, open it up. You asked me to give it to the senators, and I did so. It's completely by the grace of the creator, completely fortuitous, anomalist, whatever you think.
It was all just luck, right, No, I mean.
The stars lined upwards, genetics as a comminator, it's all the above.
It's a combination of everything. And so ultimately the log it's changed. They opened the jail doors, they let you out right. No, it's never not exactly. So the log has changed. Illinois.
It comes to first state in the country to have this law in order to grant me the gun testing. So the log has changed. In general, Block which were in the shadow of my attorneys over there on Clark Street, who spent like four point five million dollars over ten years to get me exonerated.
Well, first of all, let's not leave out there are a lot of heroes in your story right northwest, none bigger than you, by the way, And two of them are in the room, And I want to recognize Steve Drizzen and Laura and I Ryder from the Northwestern Center on Ronfel convictions, who have been steadfast support as they still are. They your biggest fans of me. To be embarrassed if you heard something things they said. But anyway,
so Rockford fought every step of the way. There was no welcoming Reese for the conquering hero.
It was none of that. It was more like my cousin Vinnie, we don't take too can of your kind around here. So it was a long fight. It was a very long fight. About five rounds of gun testing showed the gun didn't match. And of course no one and knits mistakes in this world. So we had to fight new trial, new trial.
But meanwhile, now you're hitting your.
Stride, I'm hitting my stride. We were winning motion after motion. It was just amazing. It was a momentum. If you can imagine ten fifteen years of representing myself, or you know, just trying to navigate the system.
And you're just starting to look like a lawyer.
Did everybody tell you that I do hear that I take my cues from Steve Drizzen, I confessed.
So, as you know, the wheels of justice turned painfully slowly. Even after getting the law changed in order to request new ballistics testing through the IBIS system in two thousand and seven, it took a tremendous amount of fighting in order for Patrick's lawyers to finally be able to present the new evidence from two different ballistics experts, excluding as the murder weapon the tourist nine millimeter, that same tourist
nine millimeter that was seized at Patrick's apartment. This all happened finally in December of twenty sixteen, and then at last, his conviction was vacated and a new trial was granted March of twenty seventeen, and Patrick Percy was released on bond that very April, and there he began to fight the new trial from the outside. In November twenty eighteen, Patrick's lawyers filed a motion for dismissal in light of a new bit of information that was not disclosed by
the prosecution after eighteen months. A story from Lois Asher, the victim's mother, that alluded to conscious wrongdoing by police in regards to the gun, even though at a December twenty eighteen hearing she admitted that the story came to her second hand through her now deceased husband. It's still worth hearing, but did not result in a dismissal. There's another aspect of this case that needs to be mentioned, which is the story of the gun.
So basically the state's attorney's once it came to realize that the gun didn't match, even the mother of the victim right had came forward and it was like, look, the detectives told me and my husband back in two thousand, that back in nineteen ninety four that they couldn't find a gun that killed their sons. So they just put Patrick's gun into evidence. And when she asked, her and her husband asked, are you sure you have the right person?
And they responded, well, we got one anyway. You know, there's a lot of victims in this case.
The parents of the victim right, your girlfriend ended up spending two years in prison.
My children, I can't explained watching what they went through, you know, all through my children, you know, because every step of the way they were my guiding light. They were my guiding light.
So finally the retrial is on. In January twenty nineteen, despite the evidence pointing to the contrary, the state's ballistics expert continued to connect the Taurus nine milimeters seize the Patrick's apartment with the murder weapon. Meanwhile, the defense hired two of the leading forensic firearm and tool mark experts in the country, Chris Coleman and John Murdoch, who worked independently of one another. That's important and arrived at the
same conclusion. The markings made on test bullets in nineteen ninety three and twenty eleven by the tourist nine millimeters seized from Patrick's apartment all matched and showed distinct similarities.
However, the test.
Bullets did not match the bullets and casings recovered from the nineteen ninety three crime scene. Therefore, the inescapable and for the authorities in this case, the inconvenient truth was that the Taurus nine millimeter did not could not have fired the bullets that killed Andrew Ashmer. Finally, your day comes, your day in court. Right, how good was that day of vindication?
Did you float out of the courtroom like.
Well, It's really strange because as I'm caught up in these events, I realized all that this is bigger than myself. But I had to sit for a second trial, and even though I knew I knew I was gonna be found innocent, I really believed it that everything came out the judge. It was very meticulous. He was very fair, right, but it was still very much like dangling your feet over hell fire because he could say guilty and you go back. So that's in the back of my head.
So when I'm actually exonerated, when I leave the courtroom, I still have that goofy look on my face, like right, So I still was numb. You know, it's like end to end because you really can't believe the gravity of the circumstances that you're caught up in.
In the twenty five years, I've been working on these cases and on this cause, criminal justice reform as a whole deincarceration, mandatory sense, synologic decriminalization of drugs. You know, my heart has been with the innocence movement for all those years. So I'm always proselytizing the questions I get asked most frequently by civilians who don't realize until we talk about it that these wrongful convictions happen at the
rate that they do. As I didn't realize until I found out, what happens to the people that did this to you?
And we know you? Answer to that is nothing almost always karma.
Karma's always there.
Karma is the thing. And two, do you get compensation? That question gets asked by everybody, and people just assume. So when he walks out, tell me he got paid, right, the state makes it up to him.
No, no, no, I mean, Illinois has the statute. But you have to basically go through another fight called a certificate of innocence, and then after that is another fight for the federal level for federal civil rights violations, which would be a wrongful conviction suit. So it's a process no one you know. Like I said, there's no reas for the conquering hero. It doesn't work like that. They fight fight, fight, fight, fight, because you're messing with people's careers. It doesn't happen like that.
But it's so crazy because it's a tax payer money. It's not like they're paying it themselves. In Illinois, there's a cap on how much you can get as well, unless you can prove a civil rights violation, right right.
But all those things are beyond they're beyond the kiln. That's all down the line. I have to fight a whole nother fight called certificate of innocence, just like the post conviction petitions. So it's a fight after fight.
But even then, the cap is I think going to surprise a lot of people how low it is. And Illinois is not the worst state by far right, but the cap here is what it's under.
Two hundred I know it's about one twenty something like.
That, under two hundred thousand dollars for twenty five years and.
Seven in present right, And that's after you fight, fight, fight, fight fight.
The good news is we're moving.
The project has been really moving the needle on getting laws passed state after state compensation laws. We're now up to thirty five states that have in their fifteen states that have no laws whatsoever. In some states that have a match, I think Misconsot right next door has a
cap of twenty five thousand dollars. So now you're out right making speeches and anyone who has heard Patrick's story today, If you know another organization, corporate, or otherwise that's interested in having him come and speak, that's how you're supporting yourself.
I'll run my mouth for a living. That's what I do. You run your mouth for I can't do much else.
Yeah, well you could do that. So that's number one.
And then the other thing is, you know, we're just out here trying to educate everyone. I mean, I'll ask everybody that's here to ask everyone you know to serve on a jury. Remember the things that you're hearing now when you're in that jury box. You know, the research is now showing the jurors are predisposed to think that a person in defend this box is guilty just because
they're there eighty percent to twenty percent. So remember Patrick, Remember what happened to him, And how what you're watching unfold in front of you as you're holding somebody's life in your hands, may not be what you're being told that it is. So they're supposed to be a reasonable doubt, reason of doubt, right, and they're supposed to be a presumption of innocence.
None of that work.
No, it's a credibility deficit. There's a credibility deficit for a defendant walking the door, period. And if you're poor, there's a credibility deficit. And if you're behind bars and you're fighting the case, you're not going nowhere unless you have an attorney. So pro say gets no play.
Pro sake, get's no play.
I want to ask you this question as we wind down, and I have one more question after this.
Are you bitter?
No?
No, that's I thought that was a good question.
No, it's no. I'm hurt. I'm very hurt. You know, I have reservoirs of hurt. So seeing what this has done to my children, you know, it's like stepping outside of a time machine and not really connecting with nothing out here because I'm the analog man from nineteen ninety three, you know. So it's really a very strange, you know, just surreal existence. But we make the best of it. We make the best of it. You know. I amkculture
dot org. So I reduced gun and gag violence promote higher education on the organization I found it while.
That I am kidculture dot org. And of course you're on You're on all social media now too. You hit the ground running. I mean, you only been el since January you got I.
Was on social media before I got out that that was that was my thing. I was a writer and Michelle helped propagate the stories. And we had professors coming in and out Stateville for years who was taking our material They were you know, volunteers, and they were taking our materials to gang peace circles, high schools, colleges. Kit Culture actually was born in Stateville, where I had a natural life sentence. Also, I have a book on Amazon, also,
the Adventures of Kid Culture in the World Explorers. We got t shirts on I amkidculture dot org. Please support, support, support because we are trying to connect to stop the violence movement across the country. Show culture to culture.
And one more thing, I got to ask this more question before I get to the last part. So you did talk very beautifully earlier about the programs that you sponsored in prison and about the importance of education.
Yes, so basically everyone knows how the grants got took in our prisons. Well, we led a fight to reverse that. We had did charities in prison. Police left. We said we're going to do hats for the homeless. So every time we tried to do something positive. People kind of like aah, right, well we still did it. So there
was very much that persistence. And also try to reach out to the community at large to show, you know, not just to stare the kids away from crime and educate college kids that were volunteering to come into state Bill also kind of educate the public at large. There's a lot of mismanagement and gross waste of money in the prison system.
Well said again.
And I now come to my favorite part of the show, which is when I get to thank you Patrick Pursley for coming and sharing your story, and you know, just for being here and being such a great example for everybody of the power of the human spirit. And thank the audience here for being here and listening of course Laura and Steve again for everything you're doing, and all the great activists in the room. And this part of the show I call it closing argument. This is where
I actually get to turn my mic off. Thank you once again. Thank to everybody at home or on your device wherever you're listening to Wrongful.
Conviction, Please check out the other episodes.
One story is crazier than the other and you can learn something from each one of them. So now I'm signing off and leaving your microphone on and I'm just going to kick back and listen right.
Those and arguments. Remember, people, everything isn't always is seems. Everyone has intrinsic value. Every one of us has value. That has to be our mission to be able to teach compassionate love. Right, So, facing the worst possible conditions, you can still move mountains and that is very much a testament to the spirit. And I have to thank Northwestern, I have to thank you. I have to thank General Block, Prison, Neighborhood Arts Project, Michelle, everyone that's been there every step
of the way. Because I'm a mess. I will tell you I'm a mess. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise that doing hard time and inhumane conditions, that would be against the law for you to leave your dog in So you think like that, So I always keep a part of me in the cellhouse. Right. So right now,
let's see they're back from child. You know that you have birds flying over their heads, you have spiders, you have mice, You have people who are loved, you know, loved ones and prisoners who are basically kind of get the scarlet letter for loving a prisoner. You see what I'm saying. So basically, if you have loved ones behind bars, write iler it at wrongful conviction. Consultants were trying to do something. We got allowed prisoners talk to us ellas I amkidculture dot org. It's a five o' one c
three reducing gun and game violence. We did a mixtape. Imagine that fifty three year old man come out prison, do a mixtape and no, I'm not rapping. It just tells the story of the wrongful conviction as well as the violence and Rockford, but also the hope and always work for love, Always work for love. It is the highest vibration of human spirit. And that's my closing arguments. Thank you so much for having me.
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 Annescence 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 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 Ralft. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook.
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