#205 Jason Flom with James Davis

a cab to meet with his girlfriend Kenin Johnson. Two hours later, a big fight broke out in the club, resulting in their friend, Jamal Black, being stabbed and another man, Blake Harper, being shot and killed. Police would interview people at the scene to get a description of the shooter, a light skinned black man with braids, but James didn't have braids at the time. He had short hair with waves.

Police then called stabbing victim Jamal Black's home and spoke to his sister, who happened to be James's spurned x Teina Black, who casually named James Is the shoot her, even though she had never even been at the party in the first place. Police found Jamal at the hospital, who told them the identity of the real shooter, Ta Hall, so was it Ta or Ja. Two weeks later, Jose Machicote, who was at the club that night, would enter the

precinct and second Tina Black's identification. About six weeks after that, James found himself the target of an interrogation, a sham lineup, and a murder charge. Only after his case was picked up by the Legal Aid Society was it revealed that Jose Machicote was actually one of the most dangerous drug dealers in Brooklyn and the subject of a joint FBI NYPD investigation. Magic Cote was murdered five months after his false testimony that sent James to prison for the rest

of his life. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. That's me. I'm your host, and today you're gonna hear a story that when they write the History of Wrongful Convictions they could put this on the cover, because this story is so outrageous that well, you're just gonna have to hear it for yourself. Hello, this is a prepaid correct call from an inmate at New York State Department of corrections

and community supervision. This call is subject to recording and monitoring. To accept charges, press one to refuse charges, press too. You would like thank you for using Securist. You may start the conversation now. On the phone from prison where he's been for almost twenty years, we have James J. Davis. Jay, thanks for calling in and I hope that we'll be able to make a difference. And with us today we have Elizabeth Felber, who is the supervising attorney in the

Wrongful Conviction Unit of the Legal Aid Society. Thank you for having us. Let's go back to the beginning. James, you had a rough childhood growing up in Brownsville right very. My mother and my father weren't really in my life. It was more my grandmother and my brother. My father died when I was in fourth grade. Roughly two years later, my mother passed away. The year before that, my brother father passed away, so both of us had no parents

by the time I reached sixth grade. I had to keep people from picking on him outside as well as keep people from picking on me and bullying me. So that's when the fight started happening, and I started getting into a lot of trouble. I was doing a lot of stupid stuff. I was young, was robbing people, I was selling weird and that's when you ended up in juvie. Yes,

when when I when I made it the juvie. I'm going to school and I met this teacher guy named Mr Bliss, and he convinced me to take my g D and I ended up passing at that past he was like, you can go to community college and get

going to high school now for re education. So I understand you're accepted the CAPE for your community college in North Carolina, near where your aunt lived, no small feat considering your record, but your probation officer wouldn't transfer your supervision out of state, so you were trying to get yourself into some computer science classes locally. Around that time, I found out that my brother was into the streets, and that's pretty much where I got back involved in

the streets, something weed and being there for this case. Elizabeth, take us back to January four. What happened that faithful night? Okay, So January was his brother Daniel's birthday, and Daniel wanted to go to a party that was being held at a Masonic temple lodge where they hosted events. It was a party for people with January birthdays. We all grew up in the projects. Bo is an older guy from the neighborhood that he's like a l like guy. He

does parties. He knew my brother as well. My brother he've been talking about his birthday for a long time, so they put him on the flyer. I guess when my brother birthday. My plan was the like, we're just gonna shield, maybe call up some girls to come hang out at the projects with us. He was been doing going to the party because his name was on the flyers.

So it comes to be almost twelve o'clock and I wanted to surprise my brother, so I walked to the liquor store before closed to get a bottle of the wet and the bottle of Hennessy. And when I got back, my brother was like, oh, I forgot the party. So by the time he got to the party, he had had a few already, and then he proceeded to have a few more drinks in the bathroom because they told him, Okay, you can have your own drink, but you have to

put some shade on it. Before you know it, I was trying to rush my drinks so that we can actually get out of the bathroom. I wanted to see what the party was really like in the Hennessey, and the more wet turned my stomach over. That was the start of the end of the night. I threw up maybe once or twice in the bathroom, and before I know it, threw the laugh and I hear my brother pretty much like, come on, man, now, I gotta take you back home. We just got here. We ain't even

fully been in the club long enough. Through negotiation, I just told him and I just woke me outside. I catch a cab and I go to my girlfriend house. So they went outside. They got a cab and James called his girlfriend kennein Johnson and took the cab to her place and she met him outside. Her mother didn't like James, so they would stay with her aunt. I got there to forty five maybe three. So when I got there, she's sitting on the steps already. I step out the cab and I threw up in between cars.

Before I even touched the sidewalk. She came running down the steps, rubbed my back, I think, and walk to our house, stop at the store and went in to our house, so he was long gone Before anything happened. At the party, which was around four in the morning, a fight broke out and somebody was seriously stabbed. We now know that was Jamale Black, and Blake Harper was shot and killed. A couple other people were shot, but not seriously. Um James had already left the party hours earlier.

So you wake up the next morning at your girlfriend canins her aunt's house. Really, and one of the guys you were with, Jamale Black, had been stabbed the night before? How did you hear that news? Both of us up the news was on It's about the Masonic temple. Immediately called my house on the landline in my arms, like, Jamal got stabbed and somebody got killed, but nobody knew who the guy was that got killed. So I'm like,

I'm coming over there. I got there. My brother pretty much told me all wasn't really involved in it, but it was crazy and eating. The fight broke out, people shooting, girls screaming, and everybody running. Police had responded to the scene and they interviewed a number of people at the club, and no one that they interviewed knew the identity of the shooter, but he was described as a young, light skinned Blackmail with braids on the back of his head. Now, James,

is that an accurate description of you at that time? No, I actually didn't have braids at the time. I had a low season like waves. So police have already interviewed witnesses at the scene the night before your friend who was stabbed, Jamal Black. They call his house, but they get a sister on the phone instead back like the

first girlfriend I ever had. What we learned was that Tina Black still harbord a flame for him and was hugely jealous when she found out that he had a new girlfriend, and out of spite, she told the police that James did the shooting, even though you can tell by the only police record on her she wasn't at the party that night. She was very sick with juvenile diabete. He's too sick to go to a party. The police should have known that she wasn't at the party, and

yet they just focused on him. The second page of the detective notebook says PERP James Davis j So it's just tunnel vision from then on out right, So the people that were there couldn't identify the suspect the woman who wasn't there does identify a suspect. And of course we know that Tina later on confessed to her mother and to others and she had lied to the police. Now we're up to the part where the detectives went

to the hospital, right and the interview Jamal Black. So the detectives actually went to the hospital the day of the incident and they were told he was just coming out of surgery. He was too out of it. The

doctors wouldn't let him interview Jamal. Jamal testified out our hearing and he told the court that what happened was those detectives came back later and Jamal told them he had been stabbed by the guy who was subsequently killed, and this guy named tay Hall was helping him out of the party when he says, oh shit, pushes Jamal to the ground and you hear shots fired. Jamal looks up and he sees putting a gun back in his pocket and saying, I got to get out of here.

The police are coming. But there was no written report about that conversation and it never came out. At the hearing. The judge said, oh, it's just not credible that they wouldn't have a report about it. Well, it's also not credible that you wouldn't interview the person who was stabbed, because they would most likely have the most relevant information. So let's fast forward then to a couple of months after the shooting, right, and that's when the warrant squad came.

They were actually looking for your younger brother when they arrested you, and you weren't even aware that they were looking for you because you knew that you didn't have anything to do with this and there was no reason to suspect you of anything other than being drunk and thrown up on the sidewalk. They took me from my house under the guides that I had a warrant, which I did. I did have a warrant for disorderly conducting

blue community service with the of it. Took me to the court building, took me down to like HAMMASI headquarters where I'm at Detective Hutchinson for the first time before they took me to the precinct. At the precinct, they pretty much was asking me, do I know Jamal Black? And do I know what happened to Jamal Black? So I explained to them the same thing that I just was telling you about getting drunk and leaving. Who actually walked me to the door? Whatever where I went after

I left the party? From there, I don't I don't remember exactly the rest of the questions, but it was pretty much all about the shooting there. So I'm like, when when am I going to court? I'm supposed to be going to court? Like, No, what we're gonna do is we're gonna put you in the lineup. I'm like, a line up. I need a lawyer. It's like, do you have a lawyer? I'm like, no, I don't have a lawyer, but I have a lawyer in my family

who can come and represent me. But he tells me if I don't have a number for him, then he can't call them. Then they just took me back to the room and left me in the room, and from there it went to the lineup and he came back before guys. Three of them is dog skin, two of them have He said, nobody looks like me, nobody favors me in no way, shape or form. But I'm like, this can't be did he brings two more guys in, like Indian looking guys. I'm nah, this is this Las,

Can you tell us a little bit about it? This lineup? And now things went so wrong. So the lineup in itself was already suggestive. But there were three people who viewed the lineup. One of them was jose Macha Cody. He was the first witness that they brought into view a photo spread about six weeks earlier, and it was unclear why he was called. He was the brother in law of the man who died, but he was not

one of the people that had been originally interviewed. It's pretty common knowledge that when you've picked someone out of a photograph, you picked them again in the lineup because you recognized them as the person. But the lineup happened

six weeks later. At the lineup, the two other witnesses, Harold Poe and Sean Belton, they were brought there by the mother of the deceased, and according to their testimony, she called them and said, they have the guy they think did it at the precinct, and they want you to just come to see if you can, you know,

identify him or something to that effect. That's already contaminating the lineup because there's a pressure put on them that this is the person they have, the person they feel compelled to pick one person, especially especially when the mother of the deceased has show for driven you to the precincts. So they picked James. But one of them said always from the beginning, well he resembles him except where the braids,

because when James got arrested, his hair was short. And the other guy, Sean Belton, Now, originally he had said I didn't see anything when the police spoke to him. Now he said, oh, I just said that because I was afraid. But the description he gave before he viewed him was of someone wearing a Skully cap and that's nowhere in any description. And also five ten and James was like five seven, so he didn't even describe someone that looked like James. So that's how they picked him.

There was a fourth person at the lineup who did not testify at the trial or the hearings, and what Detective Hutchinson said about him was he picked him out. He just wouldn't sign the sheets saying he had again you know though some things, just your alarm goes off that smells fishies. So um, we caught up with him. He did not want to be involved. He made that a hundred and fifty clear. But what he told us was no, I never said that was the guy. That's

why I wouldn't sign. And what I said to them was, if you say that's the guy, that's the guy. So to me, that says they were being prompted to pick James, and I should just add that. Sean Belton at the second trial retanted again and said I just glanced at him. He gave four separate statements, so that was him, and the other guy always only said he resembled him. So essentially it really came down to hose the Macha cody when you think about the convenience of Tina Black Jr.

Give him my name to the detective. And then a week later, Jose Monte Codi, the drug building, violent robber who's a humble barber, now just happens to walk into the priestsct Though he didn't stay at the crime scene when everything happened, he fled the crime scene. He walks into the precinct and he picks my picture. He's the only one that goes to the precinct. And it just so happens that he's known in this neighborhood to me the whole The whole case is weird from beginning to end.

I think that this was a misunderstanding, maybe from speaking to Jamale Black and him telling them the story he told him about pay then then acting his sister about Hey, and she telling them Jane, and they just went from there with the easiest thing that they could do to close the case, and and it just so happened to be that I was convenient for them. This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Orton, and Garrison. A leading

international offer. Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to provide an impactful, pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and in support of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal justice area. After the lineup, they told me I was being charged with murder, and he offered me a deal pretty much to taking questions and asked me to tell him that I did it because he already heard about the story

of what happened. Somebody told him that two groups of guys was fighting and the guy and one of the groups had a knife and the gun of a group had a gun, and he shot the guy with the knife that defend itself. But you can tell me that and I can help you speak to the d eight. I'm like, what the hell kind of ship is that? Why the funk would I tell you I did something that I'm telling you I wasn't even aware of. I wasn't there for you, Like you know, if I was you,

I would have did the same thing. If it was me that God comes at me with a knife and I got a gun, I would have shot him to you ain't doing nothing wrong. I was like, but you want me to admit to something, I didn't do it. That's wrong right there? Think of printing me and put me in a holding cell for the rest of the night. Now things go from bad to worse right the trial.

There's a number of problems at both trials. Although the first trial, amazingly, in spite of the fact that you had substandard defense, you still ended up with an eleven to one hung jury in favor of acquittal. You have this this one guy, Jose Macha Cody, who's laming the cause of this fight for his brother in law. Well, the two prosecutors witnesses beside him are saying and that he started the whole fight, and he's saying that I had nothing to do with it. I'm a humble barber.

I never permitted a crime again after I was blocked up all of those years ago. You have a conflict between your own witnesses. Nine Johnson, his girlfriend did testify at the first trial. She's explaining to them how I came to her aunt's place. While we didn't stay at a mother's house. Some of us was like a CEO or x CEO at the time. I guess she didn't think I was good enough for her daughter. I think that,

in part, was part of what I'm led to. The eleven to one acquitted that she was a very persuasive witness. But at the second trial, the d A is saying that I one of the witnesses, Sean Belton rekints but it's I can't really consider that rekinting because he went back to the initial statement that he never seen anything have a hold. We had his testimony read into the record because throughout the whole thing, he never identified me.

He only referred to me as looking similar to one of the guys, the other person that they say picked me out of a photo hre. He never signed on none of the pictures, but the detective is saying, I made a monk next to the picture that he picked out because he wouldn't sign it. It's like that don't

even make sense. The only only witness that they had was jose Manta Cody that actually positively picked me out of a lineup, and all you needed was your star witness Kenney and Johnson to show up and counter magic, just like she did at the first trial. But at the second trial, I'm not with my girlfriend anymore, so our contact is kind of really touch and go, where you know that I'm only calling to notify her of court dates and what's going on with my life, which

she's trying to avoid. I guess I don't know. My lawyers said he spoke to her and she was supposed to be coming in and then she didn't show up, but she was still being nice to him on the phone. He called her again and then she cursed him out. She told him that he sent police to her house

that like one in the morning. But we learned that day in the court room that it wasn't actually my lawyer that sent the police, that it was the district attorney who subpoenaed her, even though in court she said, I never planned on calling this girl as a witness because I don't know what she's gonna say, even though she heard what my witness said at the first trial.

But they still the subpoened hub and sent police to her house that like one in the morning, which actually infuriated her mother and caused her mother to kick out. That right there, pretty much still the deal as far as her come in to court and tell me guilty. Anyone who's listening it is probably wondering right now. Well, if if I was representing him back then, I would have checked to cell phone records. I would have checked

the cab records. We could have gotten ahold of the cab company and see if anybody because you took a cab right, and none of that stuff was done right. The weird thing is, out of all of the easy stuff that we think of that could have been done, my attorney at the time highest uh chiropractor or a child doctor to do medical examin or work. And I've never even seen the medical examin of work or any paperwork that he had done. But he didn't go and check a cab, he didn't go and speak to none

of these witnesses. That's in the d D files from the police reports. But you found adopted to play as a medical examiner from your office building. It's sad to say, but if you don't have money to actually pay for a lawyer and the justice system doesn't really work for you, it's real that it does. So meanwhile, the story goes on. Mr Machakot was murdered by a drug dealer five months after James second trial. Yes, after he was trying to rob the drug deal there for the second time in

a month. Um, so yeah, he was tortured and killed. And I mean, this is some Clinton Tarantino stuff now, but this is the guy that the authorities were painting to be a wonderful citizen who was bravely coming forward and now he's a simple barber and blah blah blah. So that's all out the window. So we learned this as the hearing was going on, the actual innocence hearing

that we litigated last summer and we're appealing now. During our hearing, I reached out to the assistant U S attorney because people were prosecuted federally for killing Macha Cody, and through it I met the FBI agent who told me that at the time of the trial, Jose Macha Cody was under their investigation. It was a joint NYPD FBI investigation into drug dealing, major drug dealing in Brownsville

and lo and Behold. In the spring, which was when the second trial was happening, a confidential informant was buying huge quantity of heroin and cocaine from Match of Cody. Now we don't know if the assistant district attorney knew that, but it's hard to believe that the detective who used to be a narcotics detective in Brownsville did not know that this man was a one of the major most violent drug dealers in Brooklyn and be under you know,

investigation by the FBI. So that was never disclosed. No, that would have been an inconvenient fact to bring up. And they were trying to present him as the perfect witness, right, and what was in it for Match of Cody? You know, I don't want to go down too deep a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, but that he was on parole

the night of this murder. He had violated parole by being out past his curfew and the fight that Jay was referring to a lot of the police reports, say a Spanish guy wearing a fur coat grabbed a bottle within a fight on the floor. That was Macha Cody, So that was also a violation of parole. So I don't know whether they threatened him with having him locked up, whether there was something corrupt going on. You know, it

was the seventy Precinct, which is notorious. And all we do know is that when the prosecutor got up in summation and said, he's such a credible witness, and you know he's credible because he was so honest about his past and now he's a barber. Well he might have been honest about his past, but he wasn't really honest about his present. So you know, in addition to the problems with you know, idea evidence in a situation like that, you also have this unsavory character pretending to be someone

that he's not. It's almost like an exclamation point on the whole thing. You know, he ends up in like a scene from Reservoir Dogs, being tortured to death by a guy who he was trying to rob for a second time, a drug dealer. I mean, nice witness right, and the first time he entered at gunpoint and tied them up and robbed them. So it wasn't his first rodeo, no, And it sounds like they turned the tables on him. And then he took this false testimony presented to the

grave with him. But I didn't know that justice system actually takes this long. But I thought, maybe, you know, uh, two years, I'll be back home. They fixed this whole thing, and I'll be home. Two years turned into seventeen and I'm still fighting and trying to convince them that they actually locked up the wrong person. And then, to compound this tragedy again, the little brother that you felt so responsible for it was murdered in two thousand twelve. I mean,

I can't possibly begin to imagine your pain. But your grandmother's still here. My brother, my grandmother was like my oldest friends in the world. My grandmother have been here for as long as I knew. I know she know my pain, and my brother was there with me through every thing. So it's like I lost out on with little I was able to spend his life with him in seventeen years. And my grandmother's like she was sixty three I dismissed all of these birthdays and times to

spend with her. I think that was my first Christmas ever, actually really buying my grandmother my own gift, and she was so happy for that. And then yeah, every year since that's something I didn't even do, pray for her every night. I need her to be strong for me, because that's one of the reasons that I lived for my grandmother. My mother was murdered two weeks or yeah, weekend some change at the Mother's Day, which was hard for my grandmother, and then my brother on Father's Day

right before her birthday. So it's like I've had a real, real rough journey. Her journey is just as rough. So this is why that's like my closest friend right there outside of my brother that passed away. Yeah, I can't imagine. We need to do everything we can to bring you home, James. Yes, So now you know we get to the post conviction investigation, and of course you had a meeting with the conviction Review Unit in Brooklyn that was actually before I became

involved in the case. Susan Epstein, who did the appeal and did a phenomenal investigation, brought the witnesses to the Conviction Review Unit. They had the case incredibly for five years. It's not exactly clear what happened, but one refrain that is throughout the transcripts of those interviews is why didn't you come forward sooner? And there's lots of them, right, It's not like this is one person. These are people who are you know, members of the community, who are

who are not kids anymore either. I don't know why they dragged their feet and they never came right out and said we don't believe you, we think he's guilty. Even after we brought the motion and started the hearing, they said to the press, you know, we're still looking into it, or something to that effect. But for some reason they just were unpersuaded. And that brings us to

the hearing we've been referring to this entire time. You and Susan Wilder for fort Emotion, which is New York legally'es for a motion to set aside the judgment that was in September two thou eighteen, and you argued for James's actual innocence as well as ineffective assistance of council and newly discovered evidence. At this hearing back in June of two thousand nineteen. Yes, we were pretty optimistic going

into it. So we had eight witnesses, including James. James went first, so he told the story that you heard, you know, about leaving because he was intoxicated. And then you Jamil Black came in and he had initially refused to cooperate and sent a letter to Susan saying he ruined my life because he had James had slept with his girlfriend when he was locked up at Rikers and he held a grudge. But he came in and he

told the whole story. First of all, he helped walk James out to the car, but then they started to get into a fight about this girlfriend again and he went inside and he met up with Tay, the shooter. So he told the whole story about how the stabbing happened, and how the shooting happened, and how it was Tay, and then how he told this to the police. We also had the woman who cut his hair and that the last time she saw him his hair was short.

And you had Corey Hines, who was at the party in the bathroom laughing at him as he was throwing up. His brother had signed an affi David saying I put him in a cab and sent him to his girlfriend's house. I'm sadly he was murdered in two thousand twelve, so we didn't have him as a witness. We had his affidavit and we believe the judge should have allowed that into evidence, and he didn't. And we had Kenine Johnson, the girlfriend who didn't show up at the second trial.

We actually had to do what's called a material witness order to have her arrested to bring her in, which I really didn't want to do. So when that happens, they assigned an attorney to you, and the attorney came in and said to the judge, she's willing to testify,

but she's terrified of the family. And what came out on the witness stand is that after she testified at the first trial, friends and family of the deceased followed her not just out of the courtroom, but out of the courthouse, calling her names, threatening her if we're going to find out where you live, if we see you on the street, And it was so bad that James's attorney put her in a cab because he was afraid of her having to take public transportation home, so here

she is. She hasn't seen James since the first trial, and she essentially says exactly what she testified to years before, that he got out of the car, threw up, and she got am ginger ale out of bodega and they walked to his hands. So she told that entire story. The two new witnesses that I found also particularly compelling.

One was b O. His real name is Ernest. Ernest was one of the promoters, and we asked him, well, how is it that you remember that he was there, and he said, so, I remember when he came in and I was joking about whose waves were better. So, unprompted, he basically said he had short hair at the time. And he also said somebody had thrown up by the bar, and he asked the bouncer what happened here, and he said, oh, you know those two brothers. One of them was drunk,

and I told him they had to leave. So that was information we didn't even know about. I think it's also worthwhile to mention Tina Black, a young woman who named James in the first place, is sadly no longer with us. In two thousand thirteen, she died of complications related to the very diabetes that had kept her from the party that faithful night, all the way back in two thousand four. And then lastly, and maybe the most emotionally compelling witness was Tina Black Senior, the mother. So

she came in, you know, with the cane. She's like crippled by arthritis. She basically was racked with guilt that her daughter eventually confessed to her and that she had set James up and that he was never coming home, and that she was still in love with him. So that was extremely compelling testimonies. So that was essentially our case. Then January, sixteen years to the day after Blake Harper was tragically murdered, the judge denied James Davis's wrongful conviction

motion and its entirety. I remember reading that the first time, We're going, oh god, right, we were stunned. And then we asked the judge to reopen the hearing so that we could call this FBI agent, so that we could show that they would have known about this evidence that Matchic Cody was not just a humble barber, but he was a major drug dealer in Brooklyn, and the judge refused to reopen the hearing, and now there's really literally

one stop left on this. You don't get to appeal of four or forty as a matter of right, you have to ask permission. He's called seeking leave to appeal, and we did get permission to appeal. So we are in the process of writing a brief and this is the last stop. We are going to the second Department of Pellet Division and asking them first and foremost to

find him innocent and dismiss these charges. So it turns out that the last stop in the second department of Palate Division, Jay and Elizabeth Hail Mary pass was a great success. And I have with me right now, James J. Davis. Jay, welcome back to wrongful conviction, finally breathing free. Hey man, thank you, Jason, thank you for having me back. If it was good to actually be doing this from my own cell phone instead of a jailful yeah, I mean it.

Obviously this should have never happened. It would have been better if you never had to go through this in the first place. But now, from what I understand, Elizabeth was able to finally prove that your trial counsel was ineffective because he failed to present any of the laundry list of alibi witnesses that would have easily and certainly cast reasonable doubt and proven your innocence at the original trial.

Do you have, like if you could say anything to them, because they're probably listening, let's face it, do you have a message for Elizabeth and all her great people at the Legal Aid Society. I gotta think Susan and Elizabeth and invest of the Legal Aid Society, but the hope that they gave me. Without them, I wouldn't be here

right now. So that's the great news. But the truth is we're not completely out of the woods yet, because after all, the Brooklyn d A has the choice to either appeal the decision, retry you, or dismiss the charges, and we're all hoping and so many of us are praying that they choose the ladder, because, as we've outlined here, out of the three who originally identified you, there's Seawan Belton who recanted, and Harold Poe, who didn't testify at

the second trial and always only said James resemble the shooters. So that leaves the dead drug dealer who lied to the jury about his true identity a lie. The prosecutor capitalized on in her summation, the likely incentivized witness, Jose Machakote, is the only person left identifying you. Meanwhile, the person who was stabbed and saw Tey Hall kill bla carper. Of course, I'm referring to Jamal Black, a guy who, despite his own personal grudge against you, testified to your

innocence and to Tay Hall's guilt. So if the Brooklyn d A's Office chooses to continue to charge you, it's definitely not any interest of justice. Please don't let us down here. And that said, Jay, what have you been up to since you're releasing I've been trying to spend time with my family, Man and my grandmother. Me and have been talking one on one about creating new memories because, as I told you before, my mother was murdered at the Mother's Day and my brother was murdered right at

the father's day. So we've been putting positive energy into the universe to create new memories for them two occasions and me coming home started it off. So we're trying to continue, trying to do something nice for her birthday to create some better memories cover up the old ones. Just have some happy moments, man, enjoy the rest outside to get And is there any way that our wonderful

audience can show you their support. There's a go fund me big that that my family is running for me right now and I'm trying to get me um be adjusted back to society. Anything that the audience can do to help me, great Man. I'm just happy to be here and have this opportunity. We will absolutely definitely have that link in our bio so our listeners can help. And I can honestly say, and everyone who knows me knows this. Nothing makes me happier than news like yours.

So thank you again for talking with us. And with that, I'd like to give your closing an argument and update. And what I mean now again is I'm just gonna kick back in my chair, turn off my microphone and just listen to whatever you have to say, Jason Man, I just want to say thank you, Man. I want to thank you again, Thanks Susan Epstein, Elizabeth Felber and the Legal Aist Society for to the help that they've given me. Mad I don't want to thank God Mancus

without him, I wouldn't be here. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. Please support your local innocence projects and go to the link in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne and Kevin Wardens. The music on the show, as always, is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at

Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one