At around nine forty five. On the night of April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy six, the fifty four year old widow of a Cannon Mills executive was at her home and Conquered, North Carolina when a man grabbed her from behind. She fought him, scratching her attacker so hard that her nails bent backwards, but ultimately he overpowered and raped her. She described her assailant as a light skinned black man with no mention of facial hair, wearing a dark leather
coat and a beanie hat. A rape kit was done and the police carefully collected a mountain of forensic evidence. Meanwhile, across town, nineteen year old Ronnie Long was at home with his mother, on the phone with the mother of his own two year old son till ten PM. A few days later, Ronnie received a court summons for trespassing in a park after hours. He was wearing a dark
leather coat at the time. Police would ask the rape victim to be present in court to see if her attacker was pres and on the day Ronnie, the owner of a dark leather coat, was scheduled to appear disguised. She sat in the gallery for two hours in Ronnie's presence, only to identify him as her attacker when his name
was called. The state would present a case without any of the collected forensic or biological evidence, solely resting their case upon this extremely unorthodox and totally unreliable cross racial identification and Ronnie's unscratched leather coat. For that, Ronnie has been in prison for forty four years. This is wrongful conviction with Jason Flamma. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today's
case Will It's going to upset you. I'm going to tell you right now this is a grotesque injustice that was inflicted and is still being inflicted on an amazing man named Ronnie Long. And we're hoping to hear from Ronnie during the recording. He'll be calling in from prison where he has been since nineteen seventy six for a crime he didn't commit. In this time of COVID, there's all sorts of complications, so we're going to try to make it work with us now as well is Jamie Lao.
Jamie is an attorney at Duke University's Wrongful Convictions Clinic, and Jamie, thank you for joining us on the show.
Thank you for having me.
I'm going to do something unusual here. I actually want to start at the end. We almost never do that. But there's a quote from a judge named James Wynn, who's a circuit court judge in the fourth District Court. So this is a serious guy and judge when said, and I quote, prosecutors clearly had evidence that any defense council in the world, not only in nineteen seventy six, but in the history of this country would have wanted or needed, and which should have been supplied, and yet
we did not provide it. He goes on to say, what is it about us that we want to prosecute and keep people in jail when we know evidence may exist that might lead to a different conclusion. Why is that so offensive to us now that we want to protect illegal activity from forty four years ago? What's the harm of looking at the new evidence? He said? When did justice leave the process? So we let our rules blind us to what we all can see? Wow?
Oh, well, during the course of argument it made us optimistic that after forty four years, an end may be near to the injustice that occurred in Ronnie's case. It's been an incredible difficult journey through the courts to get his case to where it was. On May seventh of this year, you said we'll start at the end, and the end at this point in time was an argument on May seventh in front of the full Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is fifteen active judges, all have
been appointed by a President. Judge Winn was making that quote in response to arguments from the State of North Carolina that more or less was asking the court to disregard all the evidence that is now known about in this case that was hid from Rani at the time
of his trial in nineteen seventy six. And Judge Winn also discussed sort of the circumstances of nineteen seventy six and the conditions of black mails, particularly in the South in nineteen seventy six, and how they were wrongfully convicted in great numbers. So at the moment Judge Wynn offered his viewpoints during the course of the stakes argument, we knew that we had succeeded in conveying to the court the seriousness and the magnitude of the injustice that occurred in Ronnie's case.
As promised, we got a phone call from Ronnie and I must warn you that there was a poor connection with the prison, so ry's a little hard to hear. But what he has to say needs to be heard, so please bear with us.
You have a prepaid call. You will not be charged for this call. This call is from an inmate aunt Albemarle Correctional Institution. This call will be monitored and recorded. To accept this call, prins stive now to decline this call.
Hang on.
Thank you for you think Globe Tail link.
Hello, Hi Ronnie, thanks for calling me. I know we have limited time, so let's get right into it. Now. You grew up and conquered North Carolina, right, seven brothers and sisters. Can you tell me a little bit about your life before all of this horrible stuff happened.
I paid sports when I was in high school, right waiting to come forward. See, I learned how to link with such song. That's kind of little work I was doing with my dad. I would go to work with him sometime, take money with him. I had a son. I spent a lot of time with my son to cool in the game the game when I got the street with three.
Now I read about this one time before you had your son, way before the incident that landed you in prison. There was an encounter that you once had with some police officers. They pulled up on you, harassed you a bit, Hey, you know what you're doing around here? Boy type of thing, and you responded, isn't this America all right? I have free to walk on this sidewalk? That right.
I was coming from a girl hell, I was coming from a girl out one night. The area that I was in he was going to listen like area, So I'm coming home one night? The two white couple up behind me that the other were you coming from? What are you doing in this area here? Pat? Did you walk home here? They took me, trust me to be downtown for me in a room, I stated, gave up too loud, but also gave up, told me too, you can leave. I just gotta walk up, went.
Home, And that's it seems to be how he got to be on the radar of the local authorities. And then on the Faithful Day of Sunday, April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy six, at around nine forty five pm, a wealthy white, fifty four year old widow of a Canon Mills executive was burged and raped an awful, awful crime, and Canon Mills was a major employer in the area, and that name's going to come to play a big
role in this story. The victim said that while she was preparing food for a beach trip the following day, a black man snuck into her home and grabbed her from behind. She said the intruder told her that he only had fifteen minutes as his friends were waiting for him outside like a horror movie, and he proceeded to rape her. She later described her attacker as quote yellow looking and quote again not blue black, maybe wearing gloves, a beanie hat, no mention of any facial hair, and
a dark leather coat. She also described the violent struggle where she scratched her attacker so hard that her fingernails bent backward, which would definitely have left the mark on that leather coat. The victim said that whenever she tried to move, he would slam her head against the ground. Then the phone rang, startling the attacker, who gathered his things and left through the front door. Victim then rushed over to her neighbors naked, where she was able to
call the police, and they arrived around ten pm. The victim has since passed away. But that being said, she was rushed to the hospital for a rape kit, and the doctor performed all the tests and collected all the biological evidence and everything else. What happened next is that Detective Eisenhower of the Concord Police Department arrived at the
victim's home around ten thirty. He photographed the house and began collecting evidence, including latent fingerprints, carpet samples, suspect hair paint samples, as well as pieces of the victim's clothing and partially burned matches, and he later brought them to the State Bureau of Investigation office at Raleigh for examination. He also lifted a latent shoe print from a column near the porch. Now this is important later as nothing but the shoe print was ever the discussed at trial.
And before we go any further, we need to state clearly that Ronnie had a solid alibi, and remember the crime took place at nine five. Ronnie, at around nine thirty, you were at home with your mother, waiting on your father to get back with the car so you could head out to a party in Charlotte. You were on the phone with the mother of your child. Your mom hopped on the phone a few times to say hello to her grandson.
Right, yeah, he on the.
Phone too, but you can't all we understand what he say when he was trying to talk. He on the phone to my mom was on the phone, on the phone. I'm up on the phone and I'm waiting on my dad to come back with the card. Hey, I got that call o'clock one on to a party and shower.
So Jamie, can you take us back to how Ronnie came to be implicated in it and how he could have possibly been convicted in spite of no evidence of none zero.
Yeah, Ronnie, very much like other young black men in nineteen seventy six and still today, was harassed by law enforcement officers. That harassment directly led to what ultimately becomes this forty four year old wrongful conviction. On April twenty fifth,
the victim is assaulted and raped in her home. A few days after that, Ronnie receives a trespassing charge at the local park that was adjacent to his home when he shouldn't have been there, and during that time it appears that he was observed wearing a black leather coat.
The officer who stopped him. Recalled that the person who was described by the victim had been wearing a dark leather coat on the night of April twenty fifth when she gave a description to law enforcement, and despite Ronnie not matching other very prominent features that were included in her description, the officer decided that perhaps he was the individual who had assault at the victim. I mean it was significant the disparities between her description of her assailant
and Ronnie. She described her assailant as a yellow black male. In the South at the time, to describe somebody as a yellow black male meant a light skinned black person of mixed origin. She never mentioned her assailant having facial hair. Ronnie had facial hair, and disputed that he had facial hair on April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy six, when she was assaulted. So despite him having a different complexion having facial hair, where she never described facial hair, he becomes
a suspect. Officers then go to her home and says, we have reason to believe that the individual who had assaulted you will be in the courtroom on this date fifteen days later, May tenth, nineteen seventy six, and we'd like you to come down to the courtroom to see if you can identify the person who attacked you there. So immediately in her mind she thinks they've done some
investigation and have identified a likely suspect. But all they had done is made the connect to the fact that Ronnie had a black leather coat, similar to what she described.
The real curious thing with respect to law enforcement asking the victim to go to the courthouse to try and make an identification is they had a picture of long that they could have shown her when they went to her and asked her to come to the courthouse, and they could have did it in a fair procedure, or as fair as these identification procedures can be, with the inclusion of fillers to ensure that she's selecting him from memory and not because he looks most like the attacker
or because she's being presented a suspect in a very suggestive way. They elected to forego that. So she's brought to the courthouse dressed in a disguise because she's fearful that if her attacker was there, he'd recognize her. She describes during her testimony being terrify. She sits in the courtroom for an hour and a half Inglong's presence and
fails to identify him. And only when his name is called and he walks up to resolve the trespassing charge, which was dismissed that day, did she say he's the one. But it's telling because we later learned during her testimony at trial that there were only twelve black males in the courtroom. She quickly eliminated several of them because they
had afros where they were older. She described one as being old and hunched over, and she says that he was the only one that looked remotely similar to her attacker. And identification evidence is already flawed and highly unreliable, but here you can just take her words that she's just picking the person that's most likely to be her attacker that's present in the courtroom so she can end the experience where she's traumatized and terrified, so that in essence
becomes the only in Singing so Long. And here we are, forty four years later, trying to undo that identification.
And I'm glad you brought that up, Jamie, because we know the most unreliable eyewitness identification is cross racial. This fits exactly into that category, and then, of course there's still room for it to get worse. So Ronnie, take us back to the day that you were in court for the misdemeanor trespassing charge, when you had no idea. You couldn't have had any idea that there was a rape victim in the gallery who was being led to believe that her attacker was in the courtroom that day.
And the craziest thing is that you two were in each other's presence for nearly two hours before she idd you.
Right, yeah, they had a misdemeanor, just passed the child. So I go downtown o'clock when you call my name, I strewed up with walk in my day. This is when the police say. This is when they say that she ide me. The same two detectives that was on this case, that been on this tape the whole time they were sitting in the jury Fox, she testified that it was it got me twelve black in the court room. He's none of these people in here looking like me.
She's supposed to be looking far a young black man that assaulted her, But she distinctly stated that she's looked around and looked around and looked around into the trans trip and I didn't see nobody. I want you to hold you can think about this. She said. She sitting in the courtroom man for over an hour and a half looking around, and she never didn't see anyone. The people. Why she didn't see anyone else said because of the description that she gave the police for the light skinned
black man with no hand on his face. I'm sitting up in there and you understanding saying God's skin, it would hang on my favor. So I didn't match another the description your nouner said that she was looking for. That's why come she couldn't pick me out. You pick me out here stairs when they called my name, Run along to the front, run along if you court, I said, yeah, we've come down front. That's what she says. She recognized.
She ain't recognized me. She's reping down my name. You go, number one, How are you gonna sit in the courtroom stairs a whole hour and a half. They were eleven ain't but twelve blacks in there. You gonna sit in there for a whole hour and a half and you don't see this young black man that you're looking for. The reason you don't see it because She's like, yeah, he got he got head on his face. The court asked this woman, could the police department that I told
you to pick run alone? She said they could, Hell, I don't know. That's in the trench. They could, Hell, I don't know.
So the victim makes this shaky identification, tells the detectives. But you've got no idea that any of this is going on. You're there for this misdemeanor charge, which gets dismissed, and then you go home. But that was not the last you'd see of law enforcement that day.
I walkeroom, went home with the sleep I'll wake up two hours later, my mom jelly. Police back down in the morning.
When Ronnie was picked up, he was not told that he was suspected of this raid. Instead, he arrived at the station at six forty five pm, was read his rights, and the police claimed that they asked permission to search his car, but they hadn't, and then they testified to finding gloves, matchbooks, and a beanie in the car. Ronnie maintains that the gloves were his, but the beanie was not.
Ill follow the police downtown. I used to drive with glos, so when I get out of Connie with all speak of my phone, my sun Valley. I get out the car, I locked the door. I got on the black of the other jacket. Yeah, I'm going there. They killed me. I'm on suspecting of raping VERTI I'll take my keys up. They picked my keys up the front out of the door with me, the train two, the ticket that was in the courtroom that morning. Yo, man, without going with
my keys, bring my keys back hill. They're just going to look in your car. You ain't got nothing to hat now, But yuh ain't gave you permission to look at my car either. So they go down look at my car. They come back to me and they got mama. She took my other jacket off of me. Ys mack. It's a mother or stuff. They had my glove, they had lime green to bargain that I had never seen a dead in my life.
And for anyone who doesn't know it's a boggin, I didn't know it's a boggan is a hat like the one described by the victim in this case. So the police come back with what they claim to have found in your car. Go ahead, Ronnie, they said.
If you got just got your car, if you won't beat hide them back when we take complete our investigations, sign your name my hands. You gotta looks on the people for me to sign. And they said, sign your name my hand if you won't beat behind them. Okay, I know. I want my jacket back. Want I don't want my glove. I don't know who it is, but I don't know. I want my jacket and glove. So I signed the people come to find out as a consent for the search for cor.
So they tricked you in order to make it seem like you consented, and that way it would have made the search technically legal. They planted the lime green patter toboggan.
Now the police gotta line to eat the bog in big court, saying that this is to happen, that the perpetrator. I'm telling my lug and then I don't go mad that to you, man, I ain't ever heard of that. That that ain't gonna head. My log is put the inside out. It's really is looking at it. Really you got a line when I had it, I got black. It's man an, Yeah, I don't know what's the state would never let me be, I won't they did.
So we now come to the conclusion that the police planted this beanie in the car so that they could have another you know, well really another there is no other evidence, so that they could have something that they could use against him. And I say something they could use against him, because remember all that evidence Detective Eisenhower collected from the crime scene. Well, if the red hair is that they found in the beanie, that are clearly
not Ronnie's hair. Bother you just wait because it's about to get way worse again. The crime scene evidence comes back from the statepue of Investigation in Raleigh, and none of it matches Ronnie. But since the rich white widow of an executive of one of the biggest employers in town just idd him as her rapist rather than just doing the right thing, the just thing, the evidence never even made it to the prosecutor's office, let alone the defense.
So the police withheld the evidence from both the defense and the prosecution. Let me just repeat that the police withheld the evidence not just from the defense, but from the prosecution, just in case the prosecution might have decided, hey, wait a minute, we got the wrong guy. That the police decided to play judge jury, and I mean they might as well played executioner because poor Ronnie's been in prison for forty four fucking years. I mean, this is yeah.
I mean, just when I think I've heard it all, and Jamie, you're living this day in and day out. Now, I mean, what can you add to that? Because it gets worse from there?
Right, So, they not only tested this evidence and it didn't match long. When it didn't match Long, they made the decision that they wouldn't turn it over to the defense or the prosecution, which we contending. We argued this at the May seventh hearing that we had in this case, that there's a possibility that the prosecutor could have decided not to go forward with this case at all had he known that all the forensic test results pointed away
from Ronnie and towards another suspect. There was suspect hair collected brought to Raleigh, examined by the crime lab, determined by the crime lab to be, in the parlance of the lab report of Negroid or Mongolian origin, meaning that it came from a person who was either Asian or black. And we know that that hair that was collected that was suspect hair didn't match Long. If it didn't match Long, then the suspect, the person who should have been incarcerated
for forty four years. There's the evidence of who that person's identity is. And it's remarkable in the fact that they believe this would be probative. They collected because they thought it would be probative. All indications are that it did come from the suspect, but when it didn't match Long, they kept it from everybody, so the prosecutor would go forward on the basis of this completely unheard of identification procedure.
And I have to tell you, Jason, I'm very skeptical whenever any client offers a suggestion that evidence may be planted. But as you look at this case and what officers did keeping evidence away from the prosecutor, it really makes you stop and say, oh, my goodness, this is completely consistent with the behaviors of the officers in this case. And then when Long says those are my gloves. But I've never seeing that beanie in my life, you think, why would he acknowledge owning one but not the other.
And the only explanation is because the officers in this case set out to ensure Long was convicted that included lying, hiding, and with the beanie manufacturing evidence to ensure that he would spend the rest of his life incarcerating convicted for this crime, and for whatever reason, the State of North Carolina is just willing to ignore that altogether and continue to argue that Long is guilty of this crime.
It's crazy, right, And there's no evidence that he ever owned a beanie. There's no photographs of him and a beanie. There's no nobody knew about any beanie. There's also the fact that the victim had fought her attacker with all of her strength, and she had scratched the attacker so hard that her own nails bent back.
You take a leven chack, did you splatch? Did you look at them? A microscope? Ain't no wind? Will you can sling? That's media? Yeah, microscope step, But yet steal, she said, that's the coat, that's the jaging, that's the perpetrator.
Wolf.
They won no cludges, meet, they won no sludget sircum.
Well, there's a good explanation for there being no scratches on you, your face, your leather coat. It's painfully simple. It's because you weren't there that night. But she I d'd you. They were trying to make the square fit the circle, and they were willing to bend the rules, bend break the rules. They planted evidence in your car and tried everything they could to make sure that they got a conviction in this case. And people were out in the street protesting as well.
Right.
So, but when they arrested you, they offered you a plea deal so they could make all of that public outcry just go away.
No, they locked me up when they love me, or they offered me a seven year tree. They offered me a seven year of tree, told me that I would be back home in three years, and they made it explicitly clear that if I didn't take the tlee, if there was daryming for my life. So, I mean, I got people in the street, gem the straight, I got my family, I did the street. I got people in the street fills. They said it's support. I knew exactly
what they wanted, man. They wanted me to pe feed out to that charge so they could put it on front pains old letters, long tea. This was a great job. So always, y'all, I got hollering and yelling and throwing things, unsaying he's going home. But I knew I couldn't do that because number one, my dad said, I didn't raise y'all say you did something when you didn't do it, I turned down the tree. So I was facing yesterday. God was a serious lead to the same year, State Carolina.
But then we get to the trial itself, and this is going to shock exactly no one. But the jury was all white. Let me just say that again. This is an all white jury Conquered North Carolina nineteen seventy six. The jury was handpicked by the Cabres County sheriff. And get this, three of the members of the jury worked for Canon Mills. And you'll remember that the victim's husband worked at Canon Mills as well.
So the jury chairperson at the time created a master list of jurors. To get us summons for jury duty, you had to be on that list. And prior to Long's trial, he brought that list of master jurors first to the sheriff and allowed the sheriff to strike through any person on that list that the sheriff deemed unfit for jury duty. He then brought the list to the conquered police department, and testimony is that the chief of police and some of his deputies sat there and did
the same. So law enforcement, the very people who investigated this case, ended up lying about this case. About the evidence collected in this case played a role in the selection of the jurors who ultimately found mister Long guilty. And in this trial, every single witness that testified for
the state of North Carolina was white. Every single witness that testified on behalf of Ronnie Long to demonstrate his innocence, to prove his alibi, to show that he was nowhere near the victim's home on the night this attack occurred,
was black. And by selecting an all white jury in segregated Concord, North Carolina, in nineteen seventy six, ultimately what we had was a circumstance where the jurors were being asked to decide between finding their neighbors truthful or finding the people from the other side of the tracks, the black side of town. They would have had to find them truthful over the officers who are their neighbors, who were the people who lived in their community, their side
of town. That's what it would have taken to find Long not guilty. And of course we all know how it played out.
And this courtroom there was a racially divided court, with blacks on one side and whites on the other. And of course, now the really awful result, but predictable result of this sham trial, was that on October first, nineteen seventy six, with his whole life in front of him, Ronnie Long was convicted and sentenced to two life terms. His mother fainted, and a riot nearly ensued. Long himself has called his conviction a quote modernized lynching sanctioned by law.
When they found me guilty, they started fighting in the courtroom. They started fighting. Man I shoted, I started moving. My mom stopped, said bed me. She grabbed me afield, She said, who anto, Julie holds.
Love?
The still right there? Get that, man.
I won't even rally the night and listen to this.
So after Long's conviction, concord bubbled over with fury. The next day, hundreds of protesters descended on the cities downtown, staging a demonstration in front of the courthouse, and for days fifty or more police officers in full riot gear stationed themselves at a nearby park, and the least chief arned protesters that violence would be met with force. So
I mean, nothing has changed. And the bravery, the courage of these people who protested putting themselves in grave danger from the same police force that had just framed their friend, their neighbor, their fellow human.
I had spoke with his trial counsel, Jim Fuller prior to the May seventh arguments, and he said, Jamie, I've only been maced one time in my life, and it was after the verdict when outbursts occurred in the courtroom and law enforcement decided to clear out all the supporters of LNG. And he said officers were beating a young man and he tried to pull the officers away, and they turned and sprayed him Long's trial attorney in the face with mace.
Nothing has changed.
It's really.
It's really hard to you know. I mean, I'm trying to be optimistic, and you know, I think we are on the verge of change, but it's remarkable how much things are as they were forty four years later, the post conviction litigation history. Can you walk us through that, Jamie, because it's quite extraordinary in and of itself.
It's been a long process. So it began in the nineties after he was convicted, he filed his first what we call here in North Carolina emotions for Appropriate Relief. They're the post conviction review petitions that initiate post conviction proceedings, and it was related to the jury. He was ruled
against during the course of those proceedings. That was then appealed in federal court arguing the same things, that he didn't commit the crime and that his trial was unfair in part because of the way in which the jury was seated, and he was ruled against sing federal court. Over the years, he tried to get people to help him, and then in two thousand and five, the Innocence Project that the University of North Carolina took interest in the case,
and the present litigation began. They found an attorney to work with Ronnie. That attorney did all the work necessary to uncover not just the lies, but the evidence that was withheld from Long at the time of his trial, and they went into state court and held an evidentiary hearing where the judge hurt testimony related to the withholding
of this evidence. That's a real interesting proceeding because the prosecutor, the individual who tried Ronnie Long in nineteen seventy six, took the stand and testified for long that he didn't have copies of these reports. He didn't know that this testing was done. Had he known that it was done, he would have required that it been turned over. He also talked about a sexual assault kit that we haven't ben talked about, that they collected one from the victim and then it subsequently disappeared.
Jesus yeah.
So he testified for long, but despite all that, the judging state court ruled against Long and found that he hadn't proven that his ranks were violated. The case then went to the North Carolina Supreme Court. There are seven justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court. One set out the decision, and as a result, the Supreme Court split three to three. So Tye went to the state. Ronnie's
conviction was upheld and he was still incarcerated. It then went to an organization in North Carolina called the North Carolina Innocents Inquiry Commission, and they reviewed the case and their focus was trying to find the sexual assault kit
that was collected and disappeared. They did not find it, but they actually discovered that in two thousand and eight during the course of those proceedings, officers led again by saying that they had no physical evidence remaining in the case in their custody, when in fact they had all the late fingerprints that had been collected from the crime scene. That's when I got involved, and as you're reacting to, how just atrocious and an affront to justice this case is.
I had the same initial reaction the other attorneys I work with at the Wrongful Convictions Clinic. We worked to file another Habeast petition on Ronnie's behalf. It was dismissed because the district Court said that we had failed to bring the fingerprint related evidence in state court prior to filing our Habeast petition. Of course, it would have been brought in state court had it not been hid during the time that the state post conviction litigation was ongoing.
We appealed that dismissal. The Fourth Circuit reversed and sent it back to the district court. Then the district Court once again granted a dismissal on behalf of the state. The district court said that while we had shown that evidence was withheld, that it was favorable to long, but that the state court was reasonable in determining that the evidence was immaterial to the outcome of his trial, so it was dismissed again and we appealed that decision, which
came in July of twenty eighteen. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in May of twenty nineteen. A panel entered a decision two to one saying that Long had failed to demonstrate the materiality of the evidence since the State Court again was reasonable. That decision came down in January of twenty twenty. We then asked for full court review. It's called a petition for rehearing in bank. And what that triggers is that full fifteen judge review
of the case. The court agreed to hear it while sitting in bank and next to the argument we had in on May seventh of twenty twenty. So it's been a long fight to get to the point where we know that the judges are at least, you know, seeing the injustices here that we saw as evidence by the statement of Judge Win during the course of those oral arguments.
And so here we are ending where we started with the words of Judge Win expressing his frustration over how this happened to Ronnie, amongst so many others. I hope you all feel that same frustration and anger right now, Judge Wynn said, quote, prosecutors clearly had evidence that any defense council in the world, not only in nineteen seventy six, but in the history of this country would have wanted or needed, and we should have been supplied, and yet
we did not provide it. What is it about us that we want to prosecute and keep people in jail when we know evidence may exist that might lead to a different outcome. Why is that so offensive to us now that we want to protect illegal activity from forty four years ago? End quote? And of course he was referring to the illegal activity on the part of law enforcement in this case. Quote what's the harm of looking at the new evidence? He said? When did justice leave
the process? So we let our rules blind us to what we all can see? End quote. You know the fact that the cops took all the evidence from the crime scene and never turned it over alone, that should be it. They knew it wasn't him from the beginning. It just hurts my heart to think of this life, this poor fucking guy. Since we recorded this podcast with Jamie and Ronnie, I read a quote from Ronnie's mother saying that she is just waiting. This is a quote
from her, just waiting on Ronnie to get out. God let me live to see him get out of there. End quote. Since nineteen seventy six, Ronnie's grandmother, his two sisters, and his father have all passed, and unfortunately they were joined by his mother on July eleventh, twenty twenty Rest in peace. The family asked Jamie to speak at the funeral about Ronnie's case. Ronnie still has his wife, Ashley
Long waiting for him. She started a petition on change dot org that I've already signed, asking Governor Cooper to commute Ronnie's sentence. I hope you'll join me. There's a link in the episode description. Just scroll down, click and let's bring him home. Now to the episode as it was previously recorded. Now it comes to the closing of the show, which of course I call closing arguments. This is where Jamie, I thank you again for being here, Ronnie,
thank you for calling in. And now I'm going to turn off my microphone and leave my headphones on and just listen. Jamie, thank you.
Jason. What I would add is the listeners here, I'm sure have heard about cases that involve hiding exculpatory evidence. Separately, they've heard of cases involving misconduct and potential lies told on the witness stand, cases involving racial injustice. And here we have everything togethering one. We have the original trial prosecutor testifying on behalf of the defense, acknowledging that materials were not only hitting from the defense but from him
as well. We have evidence pointing to another individual as the perpetrator. We have evidence of misconducting lies from officers. And despite all that, forty four years later, Ronnie Long sis in a prison in North Carolina. I ask everybody listening to this to seize this particular moment that we are living through in history by taking one action among what I hope is many, to help Ronnie achieve justice
in his freedom. To do that, I hope not only that you'll go to change dot org and sign the petition, but also contact the Governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper. His email is Roy dot Cooper Cooper at NC dot gov and tell him to free Ronnie Long now. Because while we prove his innocence in court, which we plan to do, the governor can make this injustice right tomorrow by commuting long sentence to time served and letting him walk free. And it's forty four years past due for
that to occur. And I hope you all will send a message to the governor that if he truly believes that black lives matter, that lives matter, that he would use his executive authority to see that Long goes free, not next week, not next month, that Ronnie needs to be free.
Now.
Thank you, Jason, Yeah, and thank you Jamie. And I'm going to just jump in for one more minute and say that if anyone here knows someone who knows the governor direct the outreach can be a game changer. So thank you very much, Jamie, and now I'm going to turn it over to our featured guest, Ronnie Long.
Well, as you know, man, I appreciate the flatform that you appreciate and you let me tell my story. There's a lot of people you know, says, they're still don't know who I am, and the flattered me begins. I've heard of me, but they don't know the circumstances behind the treatment. I appreciate what you did for me or what you're doing for me, and hopefully one day in your spens here for a circumit compact the season, I
could prove everything understands that I'm saying here. Yeah, soever they had against me, but no more than the high witness identif chasing. They had falls that had flaws. And if they know what I'm saying, if they knew they had the right man, if they knew they had the right man, say, why did they pick by ourselves it's a chest. If they knew they had the right man, yes, and why did they would hold sixteen ynys physical evident
they just about the head of the guy. If any of that ever just had a point towards me, and they would have put off that everness to court. They know they didn't have they had the wrong man. They know that I wouldn't know the person being assault as this moment, but yet still just still put me there. Other in his life sings and I've done for it four years in regardless you understands saying the whether or not I be use cached now whatever.
Supportful videos, don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts.
It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one