South central Los Angeles was plagued by gang violence, and in Kierra Newsom's neighborhood, the block Crips and the eleven Deuce Hoovers ran the streets. Kiera avoided the gang life, but it still took the life of her boyfriend, Marcel Norman on December tenth, two thousand. On April sixteenth, two thousand and one, in retaliation for another gang shooting, three female hoovers rolled up to some block Crips and one of the women got out and shot into the crowd,
mortally wounding Christian Hinton. She got back into the car and shot again as she sped away, grazing the torso of Chante Allen. The shooter was described as African American in her twenties, with a lazy eye and a tattoo on her upper right sigh. This incident happened at eleven thirty am on a school day, ten miles from where
Kierra Newsom was in class. But despite this rock solid alibi and the fact that she didn't have a car or even a driver's license, to prosecute came up with a theory that Kiera, in retaliation for her boyfriend's murder, had somehow snuck out of her lockdown school, changed her clothes, dyed her hair, drove over thirty minutes of the scene, committed the crime, and somehow managed to return to her desk just seven feet from her teacher, with her absence
going completely unnoticed, but with coerced eyewitnesses and the fact that she happened to have a tattoo on her upper right thigh, Kiera ended up serving nearly twenty years, tormented by her co defendant Tonielle Flynn aka Astro, who is believed to have been the actual shooter. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction today. I am so excited and honored because I have, first
of all, Chris Hawthorne. Chris is the founder, director and clinical professor at the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentencing Clinic at Loyola Law School. Welcome to rofl con Piction.
Thanks Jason, I appreciate it.
And with him, the featured guest on our show today is the one and only Kiera Newsom. And Kiera, thank you for being here. Thank you Jason and this story it's a California story, and Kiera, you grew up in South central LA. Can you tell us what that was like growing.
Up in south central LA. My father grew up without his dad, so he gravitated to the gang lifestyle, which most young men do. And the neighborhood I grew up in the blocks and the Hoovers are what we consider it to be enemies. They always have gang violence. Before I was seventeen years old, I went to so many funerals I can't even tell you. But one thing I can say is that my mom was always as the type of person she really imposed education on this big time you know.
Yeah, and I understand you did very well at school, and that's despite all of the violence and hardship that surrounded you, including one murder that hit so close to home. And that was the murder that actually started the snowball effect that ended in your tragic, wrongful conviction. I'm referring, of course, to the murder of your boyfriend, Markel Norman, who at the time of his death was in fact an eleven Duce Hoover, but he wasn't in a gang. At age thirteen when you started.
Dating Markel, at the time was a straight a student living with his grandmother. So when his grandmother passed away, Markel and his sisters had to go back and live with his mom. She was addicted to crack cocaine. So when he went back to live with his mom, there were times that they didn't have food to eat. So I will sneak food out of my grandmother's house, in my mother's house to make sure that they would be
able to eat. So one day in particular, remember him calling me and he told me that he was gonna be put on the gang, and I was so upset, But then he started to explain to me the benefits that the gang was giving him. He'll have means to provide for his sisters and his mom, and everything was gonna be okay. And he really believed that. He believed this so much that he could go to school and beat a straight A student and be a gang member outside of school. And that's what our whole little bet
was about. And he was able to keep up that little facade for like the first report card or so, and I lost the bet, and that's how I ended up with the tattoo that I have. So after that things began to change. Markel got deeper into the gang, and I was barely seeing them. And I will never forget when my mom looked me in my eyes and she said, I'm gonna end up walking you to a jail to see this boy. I'm gonna end up you to a gravesite to see this boy.
And of course you're talking about what happened on December tenth of two thousand.
And that was on a Sunday. It was a church day and it was early and I remember walking outside and I remember seeing Markel and he had on all black and I remember a car driving down the street looking at us. When we turned around, these guys were no longer in a car. One was on a sidewalk, one was standing in the street. They both had their arms posted to us, and they had something covering their arms, and you can hear the gunshots. Markel pushed me out the way and I ran into the house and I
look out the window. I see Markel laying on the ground, and I remember when he turned his body around, he had a gash at the top of his head, and that's when I knew that he was shot.
I don't think many people have probably ever lived through anything nearly as traumatic as that, and it's hard to believe that that was just the beginning of this awful journey. It's at this point, too, that the first hero in the story emerges, right, and I'm talking about the principal at Duke Ellington High School.
Yes, his name is mister maclynn. When that happened to Marco and I became a witness, I didn't know at the time that the gang members ran into the school looking to kill me. Mister McLynn called my mom and he said, no, don't bring her back here. I got a school for her. If it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't be here today.
So the school Sehrter was a lockdown school, normally for kids who were involved in the juvenile justice system. Kiera wasn't involved in the juvenile justice system, but she was definitely in danger and so she was safer at a lockdown school than at a regular school.
Now things get really complicated April fifteenth, two thousand and one, Easter Sunday, when three associates of the Hoovers were shot in the park parking a lot of Red's Liquor store on West Century Boulevard. That's Rudy tiny Head and another man, and then the victims returned to a party, and police showed up at the party to ask questions about the shooting.
One of the things about gang shootings is most people who participate in gangs are teenagers, and they tend to be really reactive. Most of what they do is very impetuous and very sudden. So it makes sense that the next day someone from the eleven Duce Hoovers would try to take a shot at the block cribs. It's not typical you wait around for four months before you decide
to react to a shooting. So why the police didn't look at Red's liquor store is a mystery to me, especially since Rudy, who was one of the guys in the car who was shot at, was the boyfriend of one of the women who was in the car.
The next day, Yeah, I mean this is we're talking literally the day afterwards, at eleven thirty in the morning on April sixteen, two thousand and one, when three young African American women pulled up in front of fourteen thirty five West one hundred and thirteenth Street in the Westmont neighborhood of Los Angeles. There was a group of men outside,
all of whom were block crips. One of the women got out of the car, and this is important, so she was described as wearing all red tube top corduroy shorts, sneakers and visor. One or more of the men on the scene described her as having a lazy eye and a name tattooed on her upper right thigh. So she asked about someone named Nakia, but none of the men
knew who she was talking about. The young woman then walked back to the car, turned and fired a handgun once into the group of men, mortally wounding Christian Hinton, and the woman got into the car. They sped off and she fired a few more rounds, grazing Seante Allen's tour show, but Allan luckily survived. Henton, however, died two weeks later in the hospital.
They said that the woman who had shot Christian Hinton was in her early twenties and fairly tall. Ki's still looking kind of like a baby. Then she's still a teenage.
I mean, it would have seemed obvious for them to look towards a hoover named Doniel Flynn, also known as Astro, who would have been retaliating for the shooting of her boyfriend and the two other hoovers the night before, right, But one way or another, the really important part of this is that we know exactly where Kiera was at the time of the shooting, in my classroom. And how do we know that you were in your classroom?
I signed in in the morning, My teacher collected hay counts all throughout the day, and they would have noticed if I would have left, they would have caught the police on me, because that's what the school does.
Would you have been able to show up at school wearing all red, No, I wear.
A uniform, white polar shirt, black pants.
A couple of other things about that school. The classroom she was in where her teacher, Rebecca Woodruff, taught her, is very small, and Rebecca's desk was about six to seven feet from Kiera's desk.
H I am Rebecca Woodruff. I was Kiera Newsom's teacher in the spring of two tho. There was only one door to my classroom, and I always had a view of the door whether I was at my desk or in front of the class and my desk was actually positioned between the door and the students. So it's just impossible for somebody to get out and come back and have me not notice right away, And even if somebody
were to have gotten past me, which wouldn't happen. The front door was operated by the secretary, and she kept it locked, and they would have to be buzzed in or out. And the back door led to a locked gate on top of the locked gate with barbed wire. And it was the day after Easter that day, and I had actually noticed that Kiera had purple hair braided in She had said that her grandmother had done it for her.
So everyone know what African American ladies to take braids. Now that would have to take you anywhere from three to six hours. It just don't make sense.
No one's going to miss the fact that you have purple hair. Rangely enough, nobody said that in the description.
But still anyone who wanted to believe that you were actually the shooter would have had to believe is that somehow or other, you vanished into thin air without your teacher, who was seven feet away from you noticing it, snuck through multiple doors that were locked, climbed over barbed wire, got into a car which I don't even know if you had a car, changed your outfit, drove ten miles, which would have been at least a thirty minute drive because LA traffic, god knows, it could be a two
hour drive, and then killed someone calmly changed your clothes back, dispose of the other outfit, and magically snuck back into the thing, sat down your seat. And she also managed to dye her hair on the way while she was speeding through traffic. It's all so preposterous. So the state had nothing except for three eye witnesses. These guys who were on the lawn were definitely intimidated, not only by members of their own gang, but also by Donielle Flynn,
who had a fearsome reputation the neighborhood. In addition to that, they really didn't want to talk to the police. They didn't think it was any of the police's business. I've had local law enforcement complain to me and saying, like, you know, the problem to talking to gang members, that they just don't want to talk to us, And I said, the problem is that nobody wants to talk to you. It's never a good thing when a policeman is walking up your front walk and appearing at your door. No
one wants to talk to police in these neighborhoods. They're not bringers of good tidings. They're not people who help you. They are only people who make your life more difficult. Ryan Faust, of course, only appeared in court because the police threatened him with an arrest in another matter. Joe Cook, of course, didn't appear in court. After his preliminary earing. He fled to Mississippi where they were apparently unable to find him, and they had to arrest Bobby Johnson to
get him into court. But none of them particularly care about telling the truth on the stand because they don't regard this as a police thing. This is a block crip E Love and Douce Hoover thing, And frankly, they don't care who goes down for it. What they care about is their own value sitem and what they're going to do about it on the street. But talking about the street, every person I talked to in this case knew who actually did this crime. It's not a secret
that Kiera is innocent. So June fifth of two thousand and one, they brought you to the precinct right under the auspices of looking at a lineup to find your boyfriend's killer. But that was not what they had in mind.
By this time, they already came out to my grandmother house at least five or six times, trying to get me to put the murder off on a block crypt member, and I wouldn't do it. So I'm like, Okay, I'll go see these lineups. So I remember them picking me up and my dad said, Kiara, the longest they could hold you with seventy two hours. And I'm thinking in my head, like why would he say that?
You know?
When we got there, and they were like, Kiera knew some and I'm like yes. So I walked to the guy I'll never forget this. He has a poster in his hand, and I was so in shocked. It's like my soul left my body instead wanted for a murder, and I'm like, murder, Who did I murder? And they put the handcuffs on me. All you hear is chained. I was placed in the hallway. The woman stripped me down and look for tattoos in a room full of men. I was only seventeen, and I'm not understanding why I'm here.
I believe for seventy two hours that I was arrested for the murder of Mark Hill.
This episode is brought to you by Stand Together. Stand Together is a philanthropic community dedicated to helping people improve their lives. For more than twenty years, Stand Together and its partners have been on the front lines of criminal justice reform. By empowering people to take action, supporting nonprofits, and working with businesses, Stand Together tackles the root causes the problems in our communities and empowers those closest to
the problems to drive solutions. Solutions like reducing unjust prison sentences through the First Step Act, empowering community based programs and help people reader society, and now working to bridge divides in our communities. To learn how you may get involved, visit standtogether dot org slash conviction. When did they reveal to you that they were going to charge you with a different murder? Entirely?
I walk into the room and I noticed one of the old detectives from Markel's case and a new detective. I remember sitting down and them starting to ask to me about mister Christiani, Hinti and all these people. Then they're saying all this stuff about retaliation for Markel and listen, and I'm confused, And then they bring up now, I'm
really confused. Then when he say the day that it happened, the time it all hit, I'm in school at that time and now and I'm hopeful because I'm like, as soon as he go back, he talks to my parents, they go down to the school, they get the paperwork, they bring it. I'm free to go.
I've seen all the investigative materials in this case, and the police were focused on Kiera very early in this investigation, and they didn't check her alibi out until after they had arrested her in June. They originally had targeted Kiera as the driver of the car in this murder, I think because they thought that the person who was the
shooter answered the description of Douniell Flynn pretty well. But then they discovered that Kiera couldn't drive, and so suddenly they put her on the street shooting Christian Hinton.
Right, And so now you know she would have had been leaving school and then driving a car that didn't exist with a license she didn't have. They're willing to go to just extraordinary lanes and not to serve and protect, but to frame and destroy. Now comes the next phase, going through the courts. And the juvenile and the jail systems. You were a minor, so they started you off in juvie where you were at least safe from donniel Flynn's
reach at that time. But that was temporary. It was only until you turned eighteen, and then you were sent to the women's jail. So now Donniel Finn has access to you for the first time.
I've heard about her, but I've never seen her in action, you know. So my attorney at the time, mister Tahan, he felt that the best thing was to get me separated from her. He did a court order. They come through and they switch my wristband, so we were to not even be in the same dorm as each other, let alone the same holding tink as each other, or the same bus. So when we went to court that day, and that was my first time running to her seating her, she walks into the room and she sits down next
to me. Lady, it's like the devil itself. She says, Oh, everything is gonna be fine, It's gonna be all right. I need you to take this one for me. I need you to go to try with me. That's how she does me. What do you need me to go to try with you for because at this time we're trying to separate this case and get far away from her as possible.
You know.
And right then and there, it was like a switch popped off in her head and she just went crazy. She spit on me and I jumped back, and the officers came in, grabbed her, they took her out. That was the first attack. So they separated us. We went on two separate buses and everything, and then all of a sudden, word through the jail was I was a snitch. Don't snitches tell on people. Don't snitches know what actually happened. I don't understand how she manipulated these people to believe
that I was a snitch. And our next court date, the police officers put us on the same floor and I walked past and I heard somebody go snitch. It was her. She kicked me and she got hold of me and it was the officer. I'll never forget this. She jumped on top of my back and she had me down and she said, don't do anything. We've seen everything. So we were late for court that day.
We're talking December fourth, two thousand and two, during jury selection, Kiera's lawyer files a nine to nine to five motion to dismiss on the grounds of the teacher, Rebecca Woodruff's testimony. The judge dismisses the case on the credibility of the testimony. Okay. Then six hours later the DA reindicts and Kiera was rearrested. So when she's alone with the detective in his car, he drove her to a motel, the Magic Carpet, where he offered her a deal, have sex with him and
he'll give her an hour to run. Kiera refused. He brought her in and while booking her and taking her fingerprints, he asked if the finger he was holding at the time was the one she masturbated with. The room was full of chuckles from the other officers.
I sometimes think that the police never actually wanted Kiera to go down for this murder, but they were hoping that if they put her in terror, in fear of her life, that eventually Kiera would break and she would
tell them everything she knew. Unfortunately, she didn't know anything because Kiera is not a gang member, and in part that's why she ended up getting convicted here, because everybody else in this case is a member of a gang and people have their back, but no one ever had Kiera's back because she was not a member of a gang.
She was an outsider. The police were.
Looking out for themselves, gang members are looking out for themselves.
No one's looking out for Kiera. And that's just wrong.
I mean, now we get to the trial. They put her on trial with Donnielle Flynn, who the prosecution had now decided was the driver on that date, and Kiera was defended by Anthony Ta Hunnett Gran. A guy named Larry Williams offended Flynn, and the witnesses had described this tattoo on the upper right thigh of the shooter. The thing is, both Kiera and Donniel Flynn have a tattoo
on their right thigh. It's a crazy coincidence, but in a preliminary hearing something quite consequential and very shady transpired.
Kira has a tattoo on her thigh, very very high on her thigh, almost on our hip bone. Donielle Flynn has a tattoo much lower on the thigh, which is quite visible when you're wearing shorts. However, at the preliminary hearing, when Joe Cook was testifying, Doniell's lawyer did something that I think should be in the museum of clever tricks
by defense attorneys. He said, I'd like to have my client, Doniell Flynn, pull up her pants leg and show that she doesn't have a tattoo on her thigh, which Donielle did, but she only pulled it up about three or four inches above her knee, and so the tattoo wasn't visible. And even though this tattoo is in police reports, there
are pictures of it, that tattoo exists. And yet during that preliminary hearing, the district attorney allowed the court to place on the record that dauniel f Lunn didn't have that tattoo.
So in the jury's mind, Kiera is the only one of the two defendants with a tattoo on her right eye. But the defense presents her alibi very well. Again, she had signed in at eight am, again, mark President at ten to fifteen am, and twelve fifteen am, and the murder was at eleven thirty. Her teacher, Rebecca wood Troup, gave testimony verifying her presence in class and presented six dated assignments.
The way that I taught class, I would teach and then I would give assignments. All of the assignments had to be completed during class time. For example, you would not be able to get a packet of assignments from me if you had missed something from before. You'd actually have to be there every hour of the day to get each of the assignments. And Kiera had completed all six assignments that day, so it just would have been impossible for her if she had left and come back.
So this is where gang evidence plays such an important role in this trial. A gang evidence, which is put in evidence by a gang expert who's just a gang policeman who works the neighborhood, is really a way to get race into the courtroom. Gang evidence is race evidence, and the people who are the victims of this kind of evidence are always black and brown youth. It convinces the jury that the person sitting at the defendant's table
is capable of anything. Kiera Newsom gang member can commit murder and then go back and finish her civil rights assignment that afternoon without breaking a sweat. That is what gang evidence does to a trial. Now, in this case, gang evidence was appropriate for some of the people involved, Christian Hanton, Bobby Johnson, Ryan Faust, Danielle Flynn were all in the col gang's database and all had what we call FI cards validating that they were gang members. Kiera
Newsom had only one thing. She had a boyfriend tattoo on her upper thigh, and it was a tattoo so high under thigh that the only person who was going to see that tattoo was Mark Hal. That tattoo was identified as a gang tattoo by the gang expert at the trial. He said, you could not have a tattoo on your thigh like that unless you were a fully paid up gang member, or you would be shot on site on the streets of South LA. Now that's a myth.
You don't walk around with an invisible boyfriend tattoo and other gang members are prowling the streets.
Looking to waste you.
But that was the myth that they pushed at that trial, and frankly, it is the myth that I think convicted Kiera Newsom.
So Chante Allen, who was shot in the torys So, testified that he had gone to school with Kiera and knew her. He dispelled the identificases, saying that it was not her in the car at the shooting. How the fuck could she get convicted in spite of this, Chris, you got to help us out here.
Kiera is convicted of the murder of Christian Hinton, but she's acquitted of the attempted murder of Chante Allen, even though clearly the woman who shot Christian Hinton is also the person who shoots at Chantey Allen halfway down the block. It feels irrational, but I suspect it was the jury had a momentary crisis of conscience and wondered maybe if they got the wrong person, and so they thought they'd throw Kiera a bone, even though they convicted her of a crime she never committed.
July two thousand and three, Carrie, You've now been through almost everything a human being can go through, and you're still just a kid. And now the jury goes out.
They called Danielle Flynn, they called her Dean out first. It was like, not guilty first degree murder, not guilty second arg murder, and all these not guilties, you know, And she's sitting in the courtroom and she's crying, she's happy and everything, and they're like, Kiaraen k NewsOne not guilty attempted murderer and guilty first degree murder and I'm like what and I'm it's tears and she looks at me and say, that's what snitches get. It walks out with.
Many wrongful convictions. The person who actually committed the murder is still out on the street. What's even stranger is the person who committed the murder is sitting next to Kierra at the defendant stable. Daniel Flynn stays out and years later, she's convicted of an execution style drug murder on the streets of Las Vegas. And she's now doing twenty to life in Nevada State Prison. And you could say that that poor guy in that alleyway might be alive today if justice were done at this trial.
So Kira sends to sixty years to late. And now the torture wasn't over by any stretched the imagination.
When I had prison, not only did they have me as a Hoover Crip member, but also the people that was already there had got worked. I was a snitch, you know. So not only am I this gang member now supposedly, but I'm a snitch too. When I got up there, In my first few years, all I did was fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, And the only people that ever fought me was the hoovers. The blocks never fought me. They lost someone, but they knew the truth.
I wasn't the best fighter, but I learned to become good at it because I did it so much for least like three years straight. I had at least like two fights today, if not more.
But there were some correction officers that looked out for you. There's one named Lieutenant Norman who was one of the good guys.
Is that right, Yes, he's one of the good guys, you know. And Lieutenant Norman, he had me in his office and he told me, you gonna tell me what's going on with you now. Mind you, the other lifers had already told him what was going on. The fact that I was innocent, they already had told him. But my whole perception of the law and the system and police officers was to not talk to them about anything because it'll get twisted. The wrong thing could happened. I
was in fear of the justice system, you know. And he let me know that I can trust him. So I laid everything out to him and explained to him what was going on with me and what actually happened, and he reassured me that he already knew. So as long as he was on the yard that I was on, I was okay. I didn't have to worry if he started shifting people over, moving them to different yards and different things to make sure that these gang members stayed
away from me. That was good for like a few years, up until the time when he moved further along up to captain and he was no longer on the yards anymore. Every so many years, you'll have people coming in like, oh, yeah, that's the girl that sniched on Astro, And I'm like, are they serious? If I said something about this lady, wouldn't this lady be incarcerated right now? It was just crazy. So I just physically and mentally fought to approve to people, Oh,
I'm innocent, I'm innocent. I'm innocent, to the point to where I just gave up one day and said, you know what, I'm gonna stop doing that, and I decided to write letters. I would write every day, and I wrote the Innocence Project. The first time they told me they had too many people, and the day that I planned my own suicide. I get a paper from the Innocence Projects saying that they accept in my case, and that's the only reason why I decided to live.
The California Innocence Project. They did something great. They recognized that since you were a juvenile at the time of the alleged incident, they could reach out to the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentenced in Clinic, a Loyal Law School also known as Jeff's and Chris, that's when you got involved? What year did you get involved in? And then how did things progress from there?
Winter twenty thirteen, Justin Brooks came up here to speak at Loyal LA Law School and he brought Kiera's file with him and we went out to dinner that and I do. He handed me this file, this big red weald full of random papers, and he said, we kind of reached a dead end on this case. Can you put your students on this case? And we were a relatively new clinic, and I said, yeah, I'll take this case on. And I just want to tell you how the Jeff's Clinic works. I mean, students do everything in
the jeff Clinic. So when we got the case, we noticed that CIP had interviewed a lot of people from the school, but they hadn't been able to get to people in the neighborhood, and so we thought, well, that's where we need to start our work. So we went down to South la and with the help of Kiera's mom, we started fanning out and talking to people in and around the neighborhood. And then we caught a lucky break. We were able to through a documentary filmmaker who was
making a movie about that neighborhood. We were able to get in touch with Ryan Faust, and Ryan simply said, well, you know, I know that it was and Kiera who did that. I was under pressure from my family and from the police to identify somebody. When they walked in with the six pack, they had already circled Kiera's face, and so I knew that's what they wanted. So I simply initial that photograph and that became part of my testimony.
And once I had that testimony, I felt like I had to keep going into court and saying the same thing or I was going to get arrested and sent away for this bottle of vodka he had lifted from local Albertson's. I sent an investigator to talk to Joe Cook. Joe Cook didn't want to help because he'd been trying to avoid this case for I don't know how long. He said, I don't want to help anybody. I don't
want to change my testimony. And then he says to my investigator, he said, but the one thing I remember is that woman who pulls her pant leg up at the preliminary hearing, that was the shooter. And I'm not even sure Joe knew that. He was saying that was Donielle Flynn. And then we talked to somebody else who was in the neighborhood who said that Donielle Flynn had shown up at his house the day of the murder and had been looking for other people to help her
do this thing. And then it said to this guy, there's going to be something going down. You better better lie low for a while. And sure enough, not long after that, the sirens started going off and that.
Murder took place.
So we put together what I thought was a pretty compelling case, but we still had to deal with the requirements of habeas corpus and the incredibly steep hill you have to climb in order to prove that in superior court, and frankly we were unable to prove it to the satisfaction of the Torrent Superior Court, they rejected the petition. Now Luckily, in twenty thirteen, the California Innoscence Project needed an extra person for their California twelve March, and someone had dropped off.
That Brian Banks he was exonerating.
Wow, okay, And by the way, if you haven't seen the movie by that same name, I suggest you do watch it tonight. I mean, Brian is a great, great guy. And for those of you who don't know what the California twelve Innocence March was, justin Brooks, Melissa Burkal and Mike Simanchik of the California and this is project March.
Get this all the way from San Diego to Sacramento, seven hundred and twelve miles to deliver clemency petitions to Governor Brown's office for twelve clients aka the California twelve, all of whom had compelling evidence of actual innocence. The march took something like fifty five days and it started at the end of April of twenty thirteen.
So in May twenty thirteen, they said, can we submit a clemency petition to the governor Kira Newsom? Will you co sign that petition? And I said absolutely, we will do that. That was early in the Jerry Brown governorship. So towards the end of Jerry Brown's governorship, I got a call from a Border Parole hearing investigator and she said, I want to talk to you about Kiara Newsom's case.
And so I sat down with my petition and the investigator sat down in Sacramento and for two hours we went through every piece of evidence there and I made the case that Kiara Newsom was innocent. At the end of that then the investigators said thank you very much. And that's the last I heard until on Christmas Eve, Christina Lindquist and the Governor's office called me up and said, I've just talked to your client. Her sentence is being
commuted to twenty years to life. She should be eligible for parole.
Immediately, I thought I was gonna be sent directly home right away. I didn't know that I was going to have to go before the parole board, but I had to tell myself. I said, Kara, you always said whether through the boardroom or through the court room. You was going to get out of here. You can fight another day. Just do what you have to do. I'll do the court thing later. It's not justice all the way from me,
but it's something. And like I told them, the only thing that Kara Knewsom is guilty of is dating a gang member. I feel so bad for the victim's family. They still don't have the justice that they deserve. Okay, this is about them. I'll have my moment one day, and I believe that that day is coming eventually.
So April seventh, twenty twenty, Yes, you walked out of prison a free woman after serving nearly nineteen years in prison for a crime you didn't commit, you didn't know about, you had no knowledge of. And what did you do when you walked out of prison?
Well, the first thing I did is run into the arms of my fiance. But when we got out the gates, Rebecca was right there. And I was told that Hawthorne was not going to be there because of this pandemic. And when I seen him, even though it was a pandemic, you know, I'm like, I'm gonna hug him anyway. I got to see my top two people outside of my family and outside of you know, my loved ones. And then my crew was there, Marisa, all the students, everybody was there and it was just so exciting.
I mean, here it is now and you're seven months pregnant, right, Yeah, that's exciting, you know. So do you know if it's a girl or a boy.
It's a boy.
Okay, do you have a name picked out?
I'm gonna name him Champion. I've been through a lot as well as you know. His father has a tremendous story too. We both went to that school together, you know. So this baby deserves to be called Champion. This baby been through a lot. Even since yeah, even since I've been out, this baby's still been through a lot because whatever I feel, he feels. And I'm still going through it out here, still trying to find work. I have all these college degrees, and this big feeling just keeps
popping up, you know. But eventually things is going to change. I know, something's going to happen for me.
What remains to be done for Kiera Newsom? How does this eventually get truly righted? And what can people do to help her? And help you help others.
So Kiera is out of prison, she's free, but she's not exonerated. The next step for us, as you may have heard, we have a new DA in town here, George Gascon, and he is going to revamp the Conviction Integrity Unit where I hope to take this case again. We will have a petition up on change dot org.
Gierra should get the justice she's been deserving for so long and should be able to walk around a woman without a conviction to her name, which has kept a lot of doors closed for her so far, and it's not fair she should be walking around without this conviction
hanging around her neck. And so if you want to help, please look at the change dot org petition and also support the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentence and Clinic so that we can help more kids who were convicted and sent to the California prison system, kids like Kiera.
So we will put a link in our bio to support Kiera and to support Jeff's as well. And now we have what we call closing arguments. Closing arguments is the section of the show where once again I think our two extraordinary guests Chris Hawthorn and Kiera Newsom and Chris and Kierra. Here's how this works. This is the part of the show where I turned my microphone off, kicked back, close my eyes and just listen anything that you want to say. It's all yours for the closeout.
So Chris Hawthorne, why don't you go first, and then you can just hand the mic off to Kiera and she can do the mic drop.
We started the Juvenile Innocence in Fair Sentence in Clinic in twenty twelve because Los Angeles is the capital of juvenile over sentencing. There are so many kids during the nineteen nineties, during the early part of this century who got sent off to California prisons to serve really long sentences, some of them wrongfully convicted, all of them over sentenced.
It is so important for us as a city and a county to live up to the ideals we believe Los Angeles stands for, to be the city that we say we are, this big, beautiful, diverse city which values its citizens, values every citizen. Kiara Newsom is just one of the most egregious examples of how unjustly children are treated in the criminal justice system here in Los Angeles and were for many many years. I have a lot of faith that the new District Attorney's office is going
to change that. I'm hoping that we'll be able to continue the work we've been doing, and I'm so excited to be able to do it with Kiara Newsom free and at the side of all of our amazing students and staff who are going to keep doing this work as long as we can possibly do it.
First of all, I would like to thank each and every one of you guys for taking the time out to listen to my story. I am not the first that this what happened to, and I know that I am not the last that this what happened to. And I also know that where I come from, there are many many others I was just incarcerated, and I know at least ten more in me that's there that don't
even have the opportunities that I have right now. I won't for anyone that ever has to do jury duty and deal with cases that has to deal with gangs and threats and violence and things like that, to really really pay attention to the evidence, because one small mistake this can happen to anyone. And I just want to say that I blame no one for this happening to me, and I realized that everyone had a job to do, whether it was a judge, whether it was a da
whether it was the officers. In due time, God would deal with everybody accordingly. I just want everybody to have a peaceful twenty twenty one and enjoy themselves, and each one teach one and each one reach one and go out there and make a difference in the change in someone else's life, because you never know who you'll touch.
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 Flahm is a production of Lava for Good podcasts and association with signal Company Number one