In the late eighties and early nineties, Stefan Morant and his best friend Scott Lewis were dealing drugs for local New Haven drug kingpin Frank Persi, who was going away on a weapons charge. When Paris asked Scott to take a larger role in his business, Scott refused, a decision that would alter the course of his in Stefan's lives forever. On October eleventh, nineteen ninety, former New Haven, Connecticut alderman Ricardo Turner and his lover Mamont Fields were shot and
killed while they lay in bed. Now meet Detective Vincent Rauschi, a detective involved in Pereise's drug game who would pin this double homicide on Scott Lewis for Perize. Rauchi put pressure on Stefan to extract the false confession that Stefan would recant the very next day. His refusal to participate in Scott Lewis's wrongful conviction would seal him to the same fate. So now we have a double homicide. Politicians and law enforcement entangled in the drug game of a
local mafioso kingpin, Frank Perezi. But eventually the FBI and a whole bunch of Yale and Columbia law students under Professor Brett Dignam save the day, bringing down the entire house of cards and setting Stefan and Scott free after they had served over twenty years in prison for crimes that they did not commit. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome
back to wrongful conviction. Fasten your seat belts and listen up, because the story of Stefan Moran includes a tangled web of a drug gang, a politician who turned up dead with his male lover in his bed, a corrupt detective who was in on the drug dealing as well and who ended up framing you Stefan not to mention a false confession, an incentivized witness who we know now was mentally ill and who lied through his teeth and changed his story multiple times, a' mafia kingpin in case all
that other stuff wasn't enough for you, And finally a good judge who ironically was named Hate. I mean, you can't even make this stuff up. And our featured guest today is Stefan Morant, who lived through this nightmare. So Stefan, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
So let's go back to the beginning. I mean, this is a Connecticut story and the backs are that on October eleventh, nineteen ninety, former New Haven alderman named Ricardo Turner and his lover Lamont Fields were shot and killed in their bed, and that's where our story starts. So back in nineteen ninety, you were a kid, you were twenty one about yes, and you were you know, you were hustling, right, yes, but you weren't killing anybody, absolutely not,
and you certainly weren't killing Ricardo Turner and Lamont Fields. Okay, so how does this start? Because you ended up getting into the crosshairs of a I want's say, corrupt detective. I mean corrupt would be too light of a word for this guy Rouci. I mean you weren't his only victim. There were tons. Yes, he's sort of like a character along the lines of that guy out in Brooklyn who
framed so many of those people. Stefan set the stage for us as to this crazy cast of characters in the New Haven drug market at the time that this double murder went down, because this was a culmination of a lot of other factors. So can you give us an overview?
There was a lot of different what you may call, I guess organizations, guys selling on different blocks. I was working with Scott and he was getting drugs from this guy by the name of Frank Pereisi from out of the Fay of Heightst Area. That's who detective she used to work for. I think the reason why me and Scott got framed is because Frank was about to go to prison. I think he was sentenced to eighteen years.
So he wanted somebody to take over the organization, and he picked Scott to take over the organization, and Scott wanted to get out of the drug trade. So Scott said that he would not do it. And next thing you know, me and Scott are being framed for murder.
So how did this cross your consciousness? When did you first become entangled in it?
As a young man, I was living with my mother at the time. I happened to call my mother in between seven thirty and eight o'clock, Me and a couple all of the guys wherever. He was about to go to a script club. So I just just calling her not to tell I was going to script club.
But you just mom, I'm going to strip club.
We're not doing that. So she tells me that someone came by. It was a detective, a couple of them, so she said they wanted me to call, So I was like, I have no problem with calling them, so she gave me the number. Happened to be Detective Rachi and I think it was a Detective Sweney at the time, which came into case later on. And uh, just probably by the reason why I'm sent before you to day because of the Detective Sweeney. That's another part of the story.
But so I happened to call him. He's asking me could I meet him somewhere, and I said, not a problem. So, uh, my cour defended mister Lewis and I and another gentleman we jumped into a vehicle. He dropped me off at a local gas station around the corner from my mother's home, and he started asking me questions. I was hesitating, a boy, answering anything because I didn't know what was going on. He opened the back door and he thrust me in. That was the beginning of a nightmare of my life.
They took me to the new police precinct, sent me to the Detective Burrough help me there for hours. At the time, brought out police reports, statements, those paper articles, and started aksing me the questions about doing anything about the double homicide.
I said, I did not.
Had you even heard about it in the neighborhoodor anything?
No? I did not.
Yeah, so this is taking you totally off. And you didn't have a lawyer?
No I did not.
Did you read you your rights because you weren't a suspect yet?
Or no, I was a suspect. Like I said.
We were at the house drinking and smoking. So we was a little little nice you know, before going to the script club. Instead of spending all the money in the script club, we just to get hired before. So we're in the police precinct for hours at the time they start threatening me with talking about, oh, you could get the death penalty. We'll put you into me an other bond. So I'm looking around, like in a room such as this, one small little room, you know, how
do I get out of here? Like if you help us, we'll help you. We don't want you anyway, we want Lewis.
So and Lewis was Scott Lewis, correct, Scott Lewis was your friend, my brother, your brother not from another mother from another Okay, So and he had not been picked up yet. No, he wasn't right. So you're in there by yourself.
Correct.
Obviously a scary situation going on, and plus you were already a little impaired in the first place. That couldn't help. Although I'm imagine this would kill your buzz real quick, yes, but still you didn't have all your wits about you. I mean, listen, I would like to go back in time to that day and shake you by the collar and go, dude, call a lawyer, like, tell them you want a lawyer. That's all you had to do, and the question would have had to stop. But you didn't
know that, because most people don't know. I was one of the reasons why we do the show, because we want to tell people what to do if they God forbid to end up in a situation like yours. So this questioning goes on and on and on. You don't even know. You probably have no sense of time at this point. Did you have a watch or anything.
I was probably got there, Like I said, it was like eight I didn't get out of there until like probably like five six hours later, after they gave me all this information. It was recording me, of course, and it kept stopping the tap. That's not how we want it. We need you to write the statement correctly, stopping the tape, starting stopping the tape. After they fined me all this information, so I said, I felt my best interest on the way I'm to get out of here is to do
what they want me to do. Because the key thing for me was what they said was after you write this, you got to come back. So now I see a way out. I didn't see a way out before because they wasn't give me a way out. I was like, listen, I don't know anything about the crime. I need to leave here and let me go, And they was not letting me go.
Which is actually against the law as well. They had to let you go if you asked me let go, right, I mean, considering they were willing to break so many other rules, they certainly weren't going to abide by that one either. So so you give a statement yes, which is a statement that they had basically fed you correct, giving details of the crime that you had no idea about. Correct, but that were accurate presumably if they fed them to you. Yes,
And then of course stopping and starting the tape. I mean, that's right out of a TV show as well. An amateur scriptwriter would put that in there, you know. And so they end up getting what they want. Did they then arrest you or did they send you home?
No, they actually let me go.
That's crazy. They me.
They told me to come back because I had just signed a statement. So my godmother name is Emma Jones. She was a lawyer at the time, and I immediately went to her home. When I got there, it was like three four in the morning. She looked at me and I looked at her, and I told her where I was coming from, and she said, you did not say anything right, And I just put my head down and she said, first thing in the morning, we're going to give representation. And my cousin detected. Pontu was my
father's first cousin. He called my mother and he knew because at the time of the crime, when it actually happened, I wasn't even living here. I was living in South Carolina, actually going back and forth from South Carolina North Carolina. So he was aware that I didn't live here at the time, so he called my mother. I didn't know what we camp meant. So he's like, you have a statement, down here, tell Stephan come down here. Recan't the statement.
We know that he wasn't here. He knew he wasn't here. So I went back to the detective place.
With my mother.
A detective came out and he was brought the statement out for me to sign it. I heard over the dispatch because I actually was supposed to meet my cousin over there, which was Detective Plantu, and it was like, disregard, we got this. So the detective came out, He's like, you have to sign this. So I'm not signing anything. I said, that's bullshit. I'm not signing it. I'm not signing it because it's a lie, it's false information, it's not true. It's like, what if you don't sign this,
you can charge your conspiracy. And me and my mother just she grabbed a pocketbook and we walk out the door.
Okay, So this is a bizarre story in a number of levels. One is that they let you go in the first place, instead of making you sign the statement right after you had falsely confessed that. I've never heard that one before. There must have been some reason for it, but I don't know what it was. By now, this is the next day.
Talking about going back to the police station. It was a couple of days later.
Now by now you knew the details of the crime. You knew this was a double murder, you know, super serious situation, probably getting extra attention because of the fact that one of the dead guys, Ricardo Turner, was a former alderman, right, so there was probably pressure to solve this crime. So now, in these three days that had passed, did you touch base with Scott Lewis? Did you let him know what's going on?
Yes?
I called him actually probably the next day, and I told him about it. So he actually called the police priescinct and called the detective himself and went down there and spoke to him. I don't know what the details of the conversation were, but he went down there himself.
So what happens next? How does it progress from here to where you end up getting convicted and serving almost half your life in prison?
Oh?
So what was I doing prior to being convicted? H So after leaving the police precinct, I went on with my life.
I was working.
I was working at a piece to place, being a delivery guy, and the detective Rachet, he's like, used to follow me everywhere. I moved back and forth, you know, from North Carolina, South Carolina. I moved back down there with me and my kid's mother. I formally got arrested two years later, so this is nineteen ninety e when the crime happened. I got arrested February nineteen ninety two.
My kid's mother, Christie Soben, she was pregnant with my sons and we were actually living a favor in North Carolina. Her mother and father came to pick her up in December of nineteen ninety one. She was complaining because I was, of course still in the drug trade. I was going back and forth from North Carolina, South Carolina, trying to make ends meet selling little bit of drugs. So I called her in nineteen ninety two. It happened to be February. Right,
my sons was born in Valentine's Day, twins. One of the great yeah, one of the greatest days of my life. Of course, it was definitely a blessing. I'm like, I got to get back to Connecticut, right, didn't have no warrant, didn't have no nothing. The last time I heard from the detectives when I seen them follow me around and the piece of place in other various places like nightclubs and stuff like that. So I didn't see him anymore
because I went back down south. So when I get here for my mother home, she lives in New Haven, I happened to see a K car, you know, police detective car. I just knew, you know, what a detective car looks like. So I seen them, and I just went the opposite way. So I happened to park on my car in the communal lot in Derby, Connecticut, and me and my friend name was His name is Rob. After seeing my boys, I was on my way going
back to South Carolina. So I was going to pick my car up at the communal lot and I seen my left tire was flat and looked crazy.
I just felt something.
And then I seen a guy like in a saville with a newspaper up on his face, like nobody reads a newspaper like that. Something's not right. So anyway, I get out of the car. As soon as I get out of the car, police come from everywhere. It's like the scene out of a movie. My sons was in the back, my name was in the back. I was in the front. I got out the detectives I was like, they asked me, what was my name?
Myself?
Of course my name is Steff for Morandom. But I say, you, guys, I got kids in the car that you put your guns down. It was like I was in control of the situation, but I wasn't because they put their guns down. I told my name and they're like, oh, you have an arrestaurant for doublehomicide. I'm like, what now, I'm arrested for dumb ohomicide. Like I believe if I would have never came back to Connecticut because what they was doing
they was about to take Scott to trial. So what they did was rest me so they could put pressure on me so I could come and testify against mister Lewis.
And that's just not how you say.
They try to put division between the both of us, and it didn't work. We both ended up, of course, getting convicted. I never testified on them because I'm not testifying to a lie. But I ended up getting arrested that day. Detective Rotch was the detective that came him and another detective and picked me up from the Orange precinct.
I said, hy, come this bull crap again. So he's like, oh, all we.
Want you to do is tell us that mister Lewis committed this crime. You could go home, this warrant could go away. I'm like, listen, man, what's my bond? I just need to know my bond. That's all I want to know. I ended up giving my phone call. I called my mother. She wasn't home, so I called my aunt. Told my aunt about it, and she called my mother let her know. And I was in jail for like a few months, and then my mother she bonded me out.
She put her home up, and I stayed out for an additional two years, and then I went to trial in nineteen ninety four.
The whole thing is really surreal. I mean for a lot of reasons, but also because of in particular because of the elapsed time, right because I feel like you're listening to you talking about it now, it seems like it was kind of in the tail liights. You were going all your life, You're raising your family, trying to make me, doing whatever you can, a little of this, a little legitimate stuff, some other stuff. But you weren't
killing anybody. You weren't even hurting anybody. They had another sort of nefarious weapon in their arsenal, which was this and another name that could only come out of a fictional account, right, this guy Ovill Ruiz like Ovill are you getting me with this name now? Orville Oval like evil? And Oval? Ruiz gave well, let's call it a co werced eyewitness account. He was incentivized, he was coerced. They
were using a carrot and a stick. He was promised leniency, and according to Ruiz, he came up with this story. I imagine the first time you heard about this was a trial. Did you know this Ruiz guy?
Yes, I knew of them well when we sold drugs. He used to sell drugs. We used to sell drugs. Yes, we wasn't the best of friends, but I know who he was.
So Ruiz came up with a pretty interesting story. He said that this alderman, the former Alderman, Ricardo Turner, was storing drugs and money for Louis, your co defender for his operation in the second four apartment that he lived in, and that he also owed Lewis money. So, according to Oval, Ruiz,
I love saying that name over and over again. On October tenth and eleventh, nineteen ninety, he claimed that you and Lewis discussed the idea that Turner might take the money and run, and therefore he rode with you guys to turn his apartment away in the car while you Again this is his account, his false account, but his account he claimed that, armed with a three P fifty seven and a thirty eight, did you guys force your way into Turner's apartment, murdered he and Fields in their bed,
and took the money and the coke got in the getaway car. Now this would all be a little bit more believable if not for the fact that he was promised leniency if he admitted to being the getaway driver. And you know, he probably didn't even come up with this story. They probably came up with it and gave it to him.
But whatever, Well, you know, at the time of me going to trial, this young kid would a background and mental health issues. My lawyer at the time subpoena in his records, and this guy was talking by he see red bean, he see different visions. He's on halladall and various drugs for his mental health. So he was not only thrown and thrusted and given leniency for given false testimony, but he also was a mental health patient. You know, I don't even understand how the jury believed this guy.
So now they had you, guys, they had this guy, they had a false confession. You had no shot at trial.
Absolutely not.
So you go to trial. You have tried separately from Lewis.
Yes, I have four counts. First, I have five counts, one count of conspiracy. They dropped that. To the beginning of the trial. Two council aid into benin and two concert felt any murder.
So when the jury came back in, did you have any hope that they would come to the right answer? He still believed. Yes, even after everything that happened, you still believed the justice were going out.
Of course I did have hope because I didn't do it.
So okay, so take us to that moment. So the jury comes in and they read the charges in order, right, right, So you've already had the one charge dropped. Now you have the first two charges and they go not guilty.
Right.
So after that second not guilty, I'm like, You're like, I'm going home, Yes, I mean, and then they drop a bomb on you.
And then a literal almost fell over, literally got rocked back. I had to catch myself and then I looked at the Jerry person, you know, he like he shook his head, like, yeah, we're convicted you. And then he read it off again and looked in his eyes again, and then he put his head down. The prosecutor, which is he was just as corrupt as the detective in my eyes. My son's again, he was twins. They were two years old at the time. And I didn't see my sons in a while, you know,
so I didn't bring me to court. I didn't even know I was going to court. The prosecutor rise a fruit basket, he puts them on the table. So my mother's there. I didn't know my mother's gonna be there, and my son's are there. So he says to me, missed this, of course, what kind of questions? And of course I missed my kids, he said, So what you gonna do about it? I said, listen, I told you before, I don't know nothing about this. I'm the same way I'm looking at my son's right here. Mister Lewis has
kids as well. So I'm gonna just take myself and say, okay, I'm gonna lie on the man to take myself out of prison and put him in prison.
Possibly. I can't do that. I just can't do that.
Did he actually tell you that he was willing to give you a deal if he would testify against Lewis? Or he would just.
Assume that that's what he told me?
And what was the deal they offered you?
He said we would work it out.
He didn't tell me, well, I'm gonna take thirty five I got seventy years now, thirty five years running wild, which means do this thirty five years and start all over again.
So what can you offer him? You can't offer me, No, you couldn't.
He couldn't have offered me a day because I'm not gonna sit here and lie on the man for something that I didn't do and he didn't do.
It's just not gonna happen.
Then that speaks to your character too, because I think there's you know, again, no one knows how you would, hell anyone would deal with a situation like the one that you were in, But you handled it, I mean with courage, and you know you did the right thing at extreme cost to yourself. So now you're sentenced to seventy years and you get taken to prison, I mean, how did you get out? I mean, these are the
things I want to get to here. Because you were there for twenty years, twenty one, twenty one years in maximum security. Obviously it's felling the murder.
Yes, I believe that my guy made away, you know, to mean, of course legal things took place, but people came back. Like I mentioned to you earlier, Detective Sweeney, he was a great part in this case. He came back after he was in Bosnia in nineteen ninety eight,
nineteen ninety nine, he happened to see my case. I was going back for a petition for new trial, and I had the lawyer by the name of Michael Fitzpatrick at the time, and he said, I got some good evidence that's coming, and that was It took another nineteen ninety nine to twenty fifteen, sixteen more years for the court to even listen to him. And this is a
supervisor of Detective Rocchi. That's telling you that the two men that you have in prison, if you're going by the information that was gathered by Detective Rocchi and that informat that you had that testified in these guys, absolutely not. I was Sweeny, was Tective Swing. He came to testify to that.
That's so crazy. I'm getting the chills now thinking about it, because here you have a senior official in law enforcement who is coming forward with no motivation. What could his motivation possibly be other than the truth. And they're going, nah, we're good, Like yeah, I mean, he's he's one of the heroes in this story.
Right, without a doubt.
Scott Lewis wrote a letter to the FBI as well about Rachi. They looked into it, and every time they did, they would find that things were not as he said they were, but as you guys said they were. They found that Rachi not only framed you in Lewis, but that he framed a number of other people. I don't think we'll ever know how many, because we know when these guys do it, like Scarcella and Brooklyn, they just keep doing it and doing it and doing it as long as they get away with it, which is why
it's so important that we tell these stories. And they even brought him back Rouchi, they brought him back to New Haven to question him, but they never charged him. They ended up charging him, this is ridiculous, but they charged him for misbuilding his overtime hours and assaulting his wife which is a serious crime in my view, and
yet he received two years probation. So he was dealing drugs, framing people for murder, assaulting his wife, and he gets two years probation and you end up with seventy years for a crime you didn't commit. Another hero in this story, and it's interesting because it's a New Haven story. And along comes a Yale law professor named Brett Dignam and Richard Emmanuel and a whole bunch of law students right
coming in like the cavalry, all from Yale. And that's a pretty good group to have on your side because at Yale they don't mess around. There's no question that you have an incredible amount of brain power and energy devoted to your case. How did they get involved? How do they find out about it?
They got involved in Scott case actually two thousand and nine, and Brett moved from she was the law professor at Yale, and then she moved to Columbia and then they just the students. A lot of the students just went along with her, or she just had some more Columbian students. I'm not really sure of the whole procedure how it went down, but they played a big role in this getting the conviction.
Overturned, and finally a good judge who ironically was named Hate.
The judge Hate huh with a name but a loving guy.
Yeah, Judge Charles Hate, the US District Judge Charles hat Junior. Your team wanted ruling in front of Judge Hate that the prosecution had failed to tell the defense and this is heavy. You get ready, that the key witness over Ruiz had repeatedly denied having any knowledge of the murders. All of a sudden he had a big memory recall after he was offered a deal. But it's important to recognize that he was at least initially telling the truth.
Doesn't excuse his behavior whatsoever, but it does highlight the length that they were willing to go to to get a conviction. And let us not forget that, of course, in your case, like in so many other wrongful conviction cases, like whoever it was that went and cold bloodedly gunned these two guys down, whether it was one guy, two guys, woman, We don't know who it was, right, I don't know if you to this day know who it was.
I don't know who it is.
I mean, they have other suspects that they said they have, but I don't know if they pushed forward to try to arrest anybody. I mean, I don't wish nothing bad on anybody, but whether it's one individual, two or three individuals still out there.
So now, what about our public exactly?
Let's just say it's not unlikely that whoever it was that committed this crime went on to commit other terrible crimes while you guys were serving the time for them. So how did you end up getting out? And why? I'm sure people are listening at home in their cars whatever, saying to themselves. But wait a minute, So you had this whole dream team all of a sudden, the Avengers riding in from Yale. How is it that you were never fully exonerated? How did that work? And was that
because of your false confession? Is that why they refused to ultimately admit your innocence?
Actually, mister Lewis, he was released in February March of twenty fourteen on a bracelet. The judge hate ordered that they release him within the ninety days I think of after the conviction was overturned in December, well, actually after they affirmed it it got overturned then they had to go to the second Circuit court and then all the charges was dropped. I think he got exonerated in twenty sixteen,
if I'm not mistaken. But it went in sequence, like one year he got out, the next year, it was affirmed. Next year. I think he got exonerated. Unlike myself, mister Lewis had a dream team and I had a team
that wasn't fighting for me at all. So push forward to a year later after they affirmed for mister Lewis average released because the attorney said he spoke with the district attorney and said, oh, I think that I could talk to him, so talk to him about what like, why now you're not found the motion for me to get out of prison because you and mister Lewis cases different. I said, what you mean? What do you mean different?
We went to We just went to trial differently. The evidence is the same, we just went to trial at different times. I want to be out of release from prison. I said, how long more do you think this is gonna take? He said it might take another three years. What this man's out of prison? You're telling me? I still got away the additional three years to be released from prison. He was like, yeah, So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go talk because I'm friends with
the district attorney. So I'm gonna go down there and see if he just say, see what could happen. I think that was a Tuesday. So he came back the very next day. He's like, oh, I got good new from you.
Going home.
The district attorney said they'd give you time served, but you have the cop out. I'm thinking, now, my little brother, he just passed away, Lupis. I lost my grandfather. I lost my father, I lost the host of a lot of friends. My mother's getting older, my children are older. You know they Dad, when you're come home. I have a wife now that married me for I don't know why in prison in two thousand and nine, what do
I do between a rock and the harbor place? Do I sit here and say, listen, I'm gonna fight for my name to be clear for another three years. There's nothing guaranteed in the judicial system. They already failed me once. So what do I do. I've always heard that if you could fight better from the outside than the inside. I need to get out. I need to get out of here. So I went with the terms in the agreement.
I mean ignorant, of course, of the repercussions of still fighting for my conviction, because I still have a conviction. Mister lewisis I told you a couple of minutes ago. Is exonerated, same evidence, just different trial. He's exonerated. I'm struggling. I just had to get a second job. You know, what do you do? You know, I got to survive though, you.
Know, yeah, I just hope, I hope that this show maybe can be a part of helping you to get the justice that you have deserved for or a quarter of a century now ever since you were wrongfully arrested in the first place, over a quarter of the century, almost thirty years, and that you can get a chance to get the compensation that you deserve, and that you're
co defendant has received a significant amount of compensation. A lot of guys never get it, you know, a lot of guys and women, even whether they're a complete or
whether they were exonerated. And people ask me all the time, and we still only have like thirty two states that have compensation statutes, and we're trying to change that because I think that everyone who's wrongfully convicted deserves compensation and deserves help to get back on their feet, as opposed to put in more roadblocks in your way like they're doing with you, which I call the second punishment.
I'm out here and I'm thankful.
Like again, I mean, I'm thankful that I'm able to be able to stand on my two feet. I'm able to go to a job and to go and make a difference. I don't know if you know, but I work at a halfway house. You know, it's a part of the correctional facility. Like my grandmother was a caregiver, so I guess I'm following the footsteps of her. I also just took on another job, working with the mental health I work at half of healthcare.
Now.
It's not a lot of money, but it's getting me and my wife by because at the end of the day, I mean, it's a struggle. Again, mister Lewis was compensated for his wrongful conviction. I'm still fighting. I told you I spoke with you earlier than far as.
Me and my lawyer.
Right now, we're trying to put together a pardon to try to see if that the state of Connecticut will pardon me unusual circumstances. We spoke with various people about it, so hopefully that this doesn't take forever, that my conviction is a return, so I could go on and live my life because I can't get job. I was just paid well because I have a conviction on my record. You know, I'm actually like getting half the pay, you know,
for somebody didn't do it. I'm still suffering. Sometimes I'd be like, yo, why, But then at the end of the day, why not. I'm not the first person that happened to him, won't be the last person that happens.
To One of the reasons I do this work and I'm so obsessed and committed to it, I've been for my whole adult life and will be for the rest of my adult life, however long that may be, is because of people like you. Honestly in awe that people like yourself can go through what you went through and come out with this and I picked it up when we met before is one of the reasons I want to have you on the show, because you're such a positive guy and you're such a sort of I mean
to meet you. No one would ever know that you had been through anything like this much less, this totally insane ordeal. So how did you survive prison? Was it as bad as what you were expecting? Was it as bad as what people think it is?
Well?
For me, I have a Christian background, right, My grandmother was she just was a faith driven women woman, my mother, you know, my father used to take me to church all the time. Actually, the day I got convicted June eighth, that night when they threw me, told me, they reminded me, how was it like like a whole building on top of me? And I didn't know how I was gonna get it off of me. So they put me in
a ballpen. There was nobody down there, and I'm looking around and I had a suit on so and the tie. So I shifted my tie from the left to the right, and I'm like, yo, how did I get How did this happen to me? So I was but to cry, of course, I'm like and so literally a voice came over me and says, son, you're gonna be all right.
You know.
I got down on my knees in that bullpen and I prayed, and that was my peace, that was my sanctuary, that's my sanity. That's what brought me through just not my faith alone. But my family was there for me, and they're still there for me. My big brother Frank, my brother Julian, he passed away at Lupis a year before I came home. He was my greatest support. My brother leand and my mother Linda, all host of family
and friends. I mean, you know, it's crazy in prison because some people don't even know what the visiting room look like. I just had a great support. My wife rain sleeve of snow. I'm telling you, if it was six feet of snow and the roses clear, she was there, you know, and that says a lot for her, you know. But again I had a lot of family there for me. My family was there, they're still there for me. And again my faith kept me whole.
You know.
I actually go to school right now, to a Bible institute to become a minister. It's not easy. I go through a lot of ups and downs because of the incarceration I call it today, because of they thrust them into a cage. I'm that dog that's running away from the cage, never to go back to that cage again. I want to go back there, but I want to go back there for the right reasons, as far as if I could inspire and encourage somebody to be like, listen,
there is hope. The's guys that see me today. When I was actually incarcerated, well I don't call it incarcerated again, when I was thrusting into that cage, they just literally like start crying, like, yo, yeah, you believed like you believed you was coming home when you was going home and you're here. Sometimes of course it gets rough sometime, you know, But what do you do with the situation when it happens to you? Do you sit down weeping crowd? Do you get up and stand tall? Because that's what
they want you to do. They want you to be like, Okay, we're gonna take this person, thrust them in a cage, and we want them to become an animal. I did the total opposite. I became an example, like to be a better person than what they wanted me to be. Even through incarceration, I was counseling people, whether it was CEOs, whether it was convicts, whether it was inmates. I just I just had a call on and I'm still doing
that to this day. So I'm just not say grateful for incarceration, absolutely not, but I'm grateful now for the opportunity to give back and to share with others that I've been through what you've been through. Like I talked to the guys in the halfway house all the time. Listen, I'm not gonna sit down and tell you that I've been in prison for twenty one years, but I'm going to let you know I've been where you are.
You could change, you can transition.
Your life could be totally different than what it really is today, but you have to make that first step. I could only give you a little bit of tools and ingredients, something I could share with you, a word of advice, but I can't make you walk like they say. You could bring a horse to the trough, but you can't make them drink.
Stefan, if people want to reach out to you, do you do public speaking?
Yeah? I'm doing.
And how do if people want to get involved in your case in any way, how do they reach out to you?
Do a Gmail?
Stephan Morant s t e f O n m O r a n t at gmail dot com.
Stefan Morant s T E f O n m O r a n t at gmail dot com. And the movie About This crazy case is called one hundred and twenty Years.
If you haven't watched it yet, I think you could go on YouTube and watch it. But it's it's called one hundred and twenty Years, a documentary of Scott Lewis. I'm also a part of that as well.
Check it out. So now we get to my favorite part of the show, where I first of all, I thank you again Stephan Moran for coming to the studio and sharing your thoughts and your incredible story and wish you all the best for the future. And then I get to turn off my microphone and just sit back and leave yours on for what we've come to call closing arguments, go for it.
Well, I just like to say I appreciate and I thank you for everything that you do wrong for conviction. It's just it's a sad day. It's just a sad situation. I remember my first Innocence Project conference and they said you go when your network. It was in Texas. So I was walking about and I seen this guy and I just walked up to him and he was a social worker from out of Ohio. Yeah, how you doing? He says, I'm all right, how are you? I said, yeah,
he said, we need a network meet different people. So he said, what happened with you? And I said, well, I wasn't just incarcerated for twenty one years, I know, even Connecticut. And I said to him, I said, yeah, everybody says that that they're innocent. And he looked at me and he says, no, they don't. And I had to think about that, and I said, wow, you're actually right. You hear that on TV, but in prison, it's like I could count on probably one of my hands and
somebody actually said that they were innocent. And I've been around thousands and thousands of guys. If somebody tell you they're innocent, right, how much effort does it take for you just to reopen an investigation or to just look into what he or she is saying instead of allowing on this to carry on for like it carried on with me and mister Lewis, for mister Lewis twenty years and for myself twenty one years, crying, like getting shot down,
denials after denials after denials. You know again. Now I have seven kids, Christian and Julian, my Twiland, Stefan Jr. Chandler, Miya and Prince Boy, junior. So we have me and my wife have a total of seven kids. Her name is Kimberlee Moran, you know, for biological, but all of them are biological to me now because that's how I bring my acceptance. You know, my children today, I don't even have a relationship like with them. I mean, we're building one and that's like the say as part of
this situation. But at the end of the day, it's like, how do you just do that to somebody? And how do you live with yourself?
Right? We need to change the way the judicial system is being ran today. You know, it has to be changed.
We just need somebody just to have an ear and to listen, not just to say, well we're gonna talk about doing something, don't do something. If you just put forth an effort and take the time out of your day, just be like, okay, just let me look into this case. Give me an opportunity, give me a chance. The evidence is gonna speak for itself. It's just as simple as that. If the person actually committed the crime, you could set time for saying they did this or they didn't do it,
But just give them opportunity. We investigate the situation. You know, I mean, I thank god for the FBI. You know who does that. They don't just say, okay, you write me a letter or not, I'm gonna get involved. And they said, hold up, something's wrong is going on, and then the state's attorney still doesn't do anything about it. The state's attorney stated that for a period of time, we knew that the lead detective was a liar, also the key witness. So why am I sitting here taking
time served? Why are you just not saying, okay, we're dismissing this case right now. So if it's a lie, if it's a tainted situation, why on earth is steff On Morant still a convicted fella? Mind you, I've never had a traffic ticket, I've never had a conviction. I sold a little drugs to get by, but I worked all my life. The question is, and I leave with this, I need help and I need stuff On Moran's conviction
to be overturned, because it's just not right. If one is innocent, the other one definitely has to be innocent, because you're saying I was just there. You didn't say I'd kill anybody. So how am I still a convicted fella?
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcast, 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 Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wortis. 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 Flahm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one