#221 Jason Flom with Anthony Sims

Simms as they listened to music by Anthony's car. As the evening wrapped up, Graves asked Anthony to drive him down the block to Mr. Hanks. Oblivious to any issue with Chen, Anthony agreed. They went into the restaurant, when it is believed that Graves shot and killed Lee run Chen.

In shock, Anthony fled alone while Graves and the two younger guys returned to Graves's apartment, wiped the gun, clean, figured out where the statue, and began to conjure up a story to deflect blame from Graves and on to Anthony Simms, with Graves and a number of his friends and family supporting this phony narrative investigators set their sights on Anthony. Only one witness came forward independently who was

neither coerced nor friends and family of Julius Graves. Graves his neighbor Rachel, who was on the phone outside of Mr Hanks during the shooting and saw Graves running from the restaurant with a sawed off shotgun in his hand. Yet her statement was ignored by investigators and hidden from the defense, and as a result, Anthony Simms continues to serve twenty five years to life. This is wrongful conviction with Jason Flomer. Welcome back to wrongful conviction with Jason Flamm.

That's me, and today if you hear my voices, sounds sort of down. I mean, this is of the most troubling wrongful conviction cases that I've ever seen in twenty eight years of doing this work, which is almost as long as Anthony Simms has been locked up for a crime he obviously didn't commit. First of all, I want to introduce the two attorneys who are so devoted to this case and to this man, Jonathan Hiles and Thomas Hoffman.

Thank you both for being here, Thank you, thank you for doing this and now of course, saving the best for last. And I'm just so sorry that you're here under these circumstances. But I'm honestly honored that you're here with us today on the podcast. So Anthony Simms, welcome to Ronful Conviction. And Anthony, of course, is now forty five year old man, twenty four years into a life

sentence for a murderer he didn't commit. Now, this began back in but I want to go back even further than that, Um, Anthony, what where did you grow up and what was your childhood like? Was it a happy childhood? Yes? I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and grove a mother, father and my two older brothers, and we had was very happy, loving family. We would do a lot of fun activity together, go on vacations. I remember every Sunday with family Day, whatever thing we needed to do we

had to do together as a family. And leading up to when this awful crime occurred, you had kids, Beyonce, at that time, what was life like for you? I live what I thought was a normal life. I work for Bell Atlantic Telephone Company and I was a fail technician, installed fall lines and provided doubts on the customers. I live with my fiance a Kisha, and my two sons at the town and we would do a lot of family things together. As a told of very family oriented,

so we regard the movies, parks, practice rods, everything. We would just do as much as we can possibly. So this brings us to May eighteen, nineteen eight Yate, when you, Anthony, witnessed a terrible crime. There was a Chinese restaurant Mr. Hings, which was down the block from where your former friend Julius Grays lived, and around ten o'clock that night, a man named Lee run Shan, who worked at Mr. Hings

was shot and killed. But earlier that day, before any of that happened, you thought you were just going to swing by Graves's apartment to show him this new car you bought your fiance Keisha. So this day I decided to Baha care and Julius Graves was at that time my best friend, and of course because I bought the car, was happy. I wanted to show him the car and the boat. My wife this a process, so I drove took his house at that town. So during that time he asked me the job him to the liquor store.

I drove him to the liquor store and I went to the regular store and bought some There we was talking. I was letting the music play from my car radio, and then his two friends came over, his fiance's cousin Derek, and then later on his friend Louis, and they was listening to music with us. And I want to say, like around ten o'clock, he was getting late. I wanted to go home, showed my wife the cause, and I

wanted to be home with my sons. So during that time, Julius asked me to drive him today and findese restaurant. So I thought this is a weird request because he lived down the Blood around a corner from the restaurant, and I thought he could have just walked to the restaurant. So I said, oh, I listened. I was drinking a couple of days. Let me go to the thought about some restments because I don't like driving around like that. I remember, right before I decided to go to the

store to get the restaurants whatever. I remember Julius saying, listen, and I'm going to the house. I'm gonna go check with Chalik, which is his girlfriend at the time, to see if she wanted anything from the store as well. So I said, all right, so I can only assume that's the time that he got the weapon. And when I got back come out called Julius was sitting in my passengers seat and his two little friends was in

the back. They know that I didn't expect him to be in a car because they looked at me with this look like all right, we are, We're just gonna go to this restaurant with you. So I didn't think nothing now very I got in the car and I drove him to the finest restaurant. When I got out the car, I looked back and I noticed they were still sitting in the car. So I was like, all right, come on, because I'm not driving your home from here. I'm going straight home because it was getting late, so

I decided to proceed to the Chinese restaurant. When I got inside of the restaurant, I started looking around for the menus and stuff to see what I was going to purchase from my wife. The next thing I know, I saw Julius come in the store with like a weird expression on his face, and almost immediately he reached in his fans and pulled out a pseudo side gun, and and I remember thinking like what the hell was going on? And why didn't even get that gun from asked?

I said, what the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? Julius sexy said no, approached the counter, pointed the gun of one of the workers and pulled the charger and I couldn't believe it. I fell the blood rush from my body. I was like shocked, and well, I remember that time, just running out the store, getting in my car. Julius jumped in into and I said get out and kicked everybody. I said, everybody get out of my car. And I drove home and told keis what I happened.

That was the worst night of my life. Yeah, it would be the worst night of almost anyone's life to witness something like that good night. When I when I went home, I god like, I said, I can't believe it. I got home, I got on the phone and I called though, and I said, what the hell is wrong with you? Probably courage my ass some other things for him. Basically, want to know why he put me in that situation? Why do you Why did he allow me to walk into that Why didn't he tell me what was going on.

Maybe he could I would talk him out of it. I don't know, but he just kept apologizing and that's when he told me that you know the person that he said that, I can't believe it. And I said, dude, is don't ever call me again. I don't want to hear from you no more. I just wanted to try

to separate my cell phone. So it turns out that Julius Graves had a motive, and that is that Graves was upset that Mr Chen, who worked at the Chinese restaurant, had reportedly touched the hand of Graves's fiance Charlie earlier in the day of the murder. That he had touched her hand inappropriately. She was upset about this, she told Graves, and Graves said that he would go to the restaurant and scare the victim. We know he did a lot more than that, but that appears to have been the

motive that we didn't find out until many years later. Now, what was known at the time is that after the murder, after Anthony got Graves and his two friends, Derek Dallup and Louis Cologne to leave the car, it is undisputed that Graves took the shotgun used in the murder, went back to the apartment where he was staying, feverishly wiped off the shotgun to get his fingerprints off of it, and then gave the gun to his friend Louis Cologne

to hide from police. And Louis, by the way, was only fourteen years old at the time, gives is excuse for doing this is that he wasn't thinking. That was his only justification for the fact that he took the murder weapon, wiped it up, his fingerprints, and tried to

hide it from police. Now, Furthermore, this murder weapon, that sawt off shotgun had previously been kept in a lock box in the apartment where Graves was staying, and Graves and his friend Derek Dallup, who was also his fiance's cousin, admitted even that they knew the shotgun was kept there and had seen it there before. So all the evidence suggested that the shotgun belonged to Graves, and it is undisputed he had handled it right after the murder occurred.

Right and the physical evidence from the scene later proved that this sought off shotgun from graves apartment was used in the murder. So this is where we start seeing a narrative being formed from the Graves cab to try to deflect responsibility for this murder away from Graves and to and Anthony. And initially it will seem like a lot of witnesses came forward to support what was really just coming straight from Graves's imagination and what later became

the prosecution's narrative. But it will become clear as we move along here that none of these witnesses were to believed they should have believed for two reasons. One, it's discovered later that these eyewitness accounts are initially riddled with glaring inconsistencies and contradictions that were then changed to bit a cohesive narrative in time for trial, which is just not typical what a group of people are telling. The truths obviously right and to most of the witnesses are

friends and family of Graves. There are only two witnesses to who are not Graves as friends or family, one of whom was coerced by police into an ambiguous statement that nonetheless helped the prosecution's case at the time of trial, and the other is the only independent witness who bravely came forward to tell the truth about Graves's motive and having seen him running from the restaurant with the gun. However, none of this info about these two witnesses was known

to the defense at trial, but we'll get to that later. Now. Right now, let's focus on the dubious narrative coming from the Graves camp. So, the day after the murder, Charlik's brother, William Robertson told police a second hand story from Charlie that Charlie had said that Anthony had come by earlier the day of the murder and taken the shotgun out of the apartment. Then comes the narrative from Graves about

the night of the murder. Okay, ready, So, according to Graves, Anthony dropped by the apartment around six pm and they had a few drinks. Anthony allegedly showed Graves a shotgun that he had in his trunk, a shotgun that Graves should have recognized as the one from his apartment, as Jonathan just said that Graves had admitted. Now, at some point Anthony and Graves are joined by Charlique's cousin, Derek

Dallup and another younger friend, Louise Cologne. According to Graves, Anthony had a previous altercation with the victim, Lee run Chen, who worked at the Chinese restaurant down the block Mr Hins. The reason behind this disagreement and the timing changed between initial interviews and trial. In this farcical version of events, Anthony allegedly had refused to pay for something that Mr. Hings because it was either something he hadn't ordered, or

some chicken was undercooked, or it didn't look right. You know, lying is tricky that way, right, It gets hard to keep track of your own bullshit. Anyway, at the time of this alleged problem and refusal of payment, Lee run Chen allegedly pulled a gun on Anthony, to which Anthony allegedly responded that he would get Chen for this. So this patently ridiculous and poorly written story is what established

Anthony's alleged motive to murder Lee run Chen. According to Graves, that night, in the lead up to the murder, Anthony brought up this two to three week old and then later four to five month old be several times and was getting heated up about it before they headed to Mr Hins, where Anthony was the one who allegedly shot Lee run Chen, not Graves, whose fiance had complained to

him about Chen's inappropriate touching earlier that day. So this just super believable narrative is what became the prosecution's theory. I don't even know what to say at this point, but it just feels liberated to hear you retell that story because it sounded crazy to me, and from you saying how crazy it sounds to you, that means a lot because I've always believed down the line that the truth was going to come out and the truth was

going to set me free. I didn't know that I would be in prison twenty three years before this truth came out, and it's going to be out there now finally for everyone to hear, to shine a much needed light on this terrible and tragic injustice. There are a lot of good people working on your behalf right now, not least of which, of course, are your lawyers and Jonathan.

There's even more than know about Graves's ridiculous narrative. Yeah, I think the chronology of how the investigation unfolded, which Jason, you've sort of given that it was Graves trying to divert attention from himself. He his friends and his family, and that's why the murder got pinned on Anthony, because the case against Graves was so overwhelming that there had to be a scapegoat, and the story against Anthony was not only ridiculous, but as he alluded to, it was

so inconsistent. Graves first actually told police Anthony and Graves his other two friends had gone to the Chinese restaurant earlier on that evening and then come back and Anthony was heated about an argument with the victim. But Graves's two friends never said they went to the Chinese restaurant.

It was just made up. So Graves had to change his story and say that he had witnessed an argument between Anthony and the victim months earlier over a food order, and that Anthony was still fuming about this months later on the night of the murder. Again, Graves his friends right who were trying to back him up. They never said that Anthony had any beef with the victim or was fuming about it in the car that evening, so the story never really made sense. But what was important

to police and prosecutors, unfortunately was clearing the case. And once they had Graves and his two friends who were willing to point the finger at Anthony as a scapegoat. The train had left the station. Okay, so they've got their sites set on you, Anthony, and initially they show up at your job, but you were out that day. This tipped you off though that they were at least looking to talk to you, and eventually you went involuntarily.

I mean, you're an innocent man. So did you think, well, I'll just go in there, clear this up and head on home. I did, And a big key does me left out? Was there was a camera inside of a restaurant. So I thought regartless that somebody would at one point in Tom reviewed tape and that I had nothing to worry about to take what Cleary came up for me. So yes, I drove myself to the precint and that's what I've been ever. Sense knocked away. You never walked

out of there again, never walked out. Now what happened with the videotape from the Chinese restaurant? They said that the tape wasn't recorded. Do you believe that? To be honest, I don't know what to believe anymore. I used to have a lot of faith in the judicial system. But from being a crossery to myself listening to some of the other horror stories from people in here with me,

I don't know what to believe. Now they had their man, and any other evidence that existed then were emerged later that suggested Anthony was innocent or that Graves was guilty was just an inconvenience to the prosecution's case, and so it was not disclosed to the defense. And of course listeners to this show will know that when the authority's

withhold exculpatory evidence, it's called the Brady violation. Brady violations are illegal, but as our listeners also know, Brady violations rarely seemed to bring any actual ramifications for the people who commit them. So it just keeps fucking happening in case after case, and and in this case, I believe the worst Brady violation, the worst one amongst so many, is the sole independent witness who came forward in this case that I alluded to earlier, whose statement was hidden

from the defense. Will refer to her only as Rachel. So Rachel was right outside the Chinese restaurant where the murder occurred, talking on a pay phone. This was an undisputed fact and police spoke to her, and initially she said that she had heard the shot and seen people running from the Chinese restaurant, but she didn't have her contacts in and so she couldn't identify who those people were.

That was what she said. Now, this was not a neighborhood where it was easy to report to police who you had seen involved in a murder, much less if that person was your neighbor. And actually Rachel, who was seventeen at the time, she was neighbors with Julius Graves. Now, a couple of weeks went by and Rachel had kept this information to herself, but her conscience was gnawing away

at her. She learned that Anthony had been wrongfully arrested for the crime, and she actually received a call from Anthony's wife at the time, Keisha, who said to Rachel, I hear you were present at the scene and that you may have seen something. Please just talk to police, tell them what you saw, whatever you saw, Please just tell them the truth. Now, at around the same time, Rachel actually had an exchange with Graves and his fiancee

outside of their brown stone. During that exchange, there was an argument and Rachel said, you know, I know what you did. I saw what you did and what had she seen? In truth, she had seen Julius Graves, her neighbor, running from the Chinese restaurant with a shotgun right after the shot was fired, so she knew that he had run off with a weapon and was likely the killer. And she said, I know what you did, and you're

trying to put it on somebody else. And Graves said, you talked too much, and if you keep talking, I'm going to shut you up. And Rachel was terrified, but she was also angry at what was happening and at the injustice and also at the way Graves was talking to her, and so she called police, spoke to a detective and she said, I saw Julius Graves running from the Chinese restaurant with a big long gun. I know was him. He's my neighbor. And the detective said, we

already have another guy. It was the taller guy. Anthony is six three, Graves is five nine. Rachel said, no, I know, they look completely different. I know that it was Graves who was running with the shotgun. And the detective basically said, well, thank you for your time and hung up the phone. They had already arrested Anthony and decided he was the guy they were going to pin the murder on. Shaw Lee had anticipated that Rachel could

going to the police. So shaw Lee reports that Rachel said that Graves had committed the murder and she spun that as harassment. That was a written report. They had that report. But if I can complete that incredibly, even though Rachel lived next door to shaw Lee, they did not question Rachel at all about that police report. They didn't go up knock on the door and say is this true. They didn't have to go across the country

to interview somebody or across the state, right. They go across the street, across the street somebody who who actually had begged to be interviewed, right, who, even though she had been threatened by it by a really dangerous guy, was like, no, I'm going to do the right thing as someone we could be proud of, you know, that

comes forward in a situation like this. But instead she just got shut down by those who are supposed to protect us, which left Graves out on the streets to potentially commit more violent crimes, while Anthony was stripped of his freedom and civil rights. So back to this investigation. If you want to call it that, the grandmother of Graves's children, you know, Charlie's mom signs onto parents some

of the narrative. This is Dorothy Bolding, whose story changed from her initial interview when she didn't mention Anthony Graves or even having been at Mr. Hings at all. This interview critical information here hidden from the defense, and by the time the grand jury and the trial roll around, she's changed her story, now claiming to be able to implicate Antony in the murder. But still the investigators needed to get someone outside of Graves's inner circle in order

to strength in the case. And as I alluded to earlier, this is the only other witness besides Rachel who was not directly related to Graves. She was a single mom who certainly appears to have been coerced into giving an ambiguous statement that helped the prosecution's case a trial, and

will refer to this witness as Salima, now Shalima. As we have since learned, she initially told police that she, when visiting her friend's apartment across the street from the murder, had heard this loud bang, had looked out the window across the street from a second floor on a dark night and had seen a couple of men ran out of the Chinese restaurant, but she couldn't describe them at all.

It seemed that one of them appeared to be holding a long gun, but she couldn't make any sort of description because it was dark and it was a very fleeting observation. And they said, well, let's take you in

and see if we can refresh your memory. They took her in, They separated her from her young child, and they interrogated her for hours and intimidated her and wouldn't tell her where her child was, which she kept asking, and then eventually they emerged with the report saying that she identified the taller man as being the one holding the gun, which was something that was clearly fed to her because she told police that she couldn't describe the

men she had seen, including the person who was running with the gun. We first learned that in the past year. Shalima said, I don't know how I could have testified that I saw the taller man running with the shotgun. I couldn't have made a description, and that's what I told detectives, and their response was to take me in for basically a full day of interrogation, separated from my child until they had pressured her to give them what

they wanted. And so the prosecution really leaned on her with this made up story that they sort of force fed her because she was the only witness who wasn't totally biased in favor of Graves. Right, so now they finally had someone as shaky as this idea was to

corroborate what the Graves camp was saying. So July they charged you, Anthony, with two counts and murder in the second degree intentional and depraved indifference, and one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree, a weapon that you had never even held in your hand. And before a trial even began in April, Graves attempted

to disappear. Graves didn't want to testify. He wanted to get himself off of the hook, but even he perhaps had some pangs of conscience about falsely implicating someone who had formerly been his friend, and so he went underground

before the trial started. And he was on probation at the time, actually on a weapon's possession charge, and he hadn't been reporting to his probation officer for three years, and so the District Attorney's office actually initiated proceedings to revoke Graves his probation so that he would be remanded to prison potentially, And in the meantime, Grays went into hiding because he didn't want to participate in the prosecution's case, which was, as you said, Jason, a made up case

that was based on graves his own lies. This one's really mystifying. I mean, do you have a guy who has a propensity to violence, who knows his way around with weapons, who was a possession of the gun, who had a previous weapons violation, and it's like, yeah, no, we're just gonna ignore that. Julius was asked directly, have you reported to your probation officer often and regularly? He answered yes, when he hadn't reported for three years, and

that's why was not corrected. And clearly the credibility of Graves was critical. We did not know that he had not reported till last year. So at trial, the state presented Salima along with Graves's cadre of liars right Graves himself, of course, and his fiance's cousin Derek Dallup, his friend Louise Cologne and the grandmother of Graves's two children, Dorothy Boulding. Now Bolding story changed twice. In her initial interview, she didn't mention seeing Graves, Anthony or even having been at

Mr Hains. And then at the grand jury she testified that while drinking outside of Mr Hains, she saw Anthony enter with a long gun and heard a shot fired before Graves entered the restaurant. Then at trial, I don't know, maybe she had some pangs of conscience Either way, though, she testified that she Anthony go in, followed by Graves, then heard a gunshot but never saw a gun. Miss Bolding for initial report would have really discredit her as

a prosecution witness was not disclosed. Also not disclosed for bias given her relation to Julius Graves. Okay, so now there's Shelima. She also testified against you, Anthony. She said that on the night of the shooting, she was visiting a friend who lived on the second floor in an apartment across the street from Mr. Hans. She said that she heard a gunshot and looked out the window to see two black men running from the restaurant, and that quote the taller guy had a gun. This was helpful

for the prosecution because Anthony was taller than Graves. Now, Slima did not identify Anthony. The prosecutor tried to get her to identify Anthony. You know, look around the courtroom. Is the person you saw running with the gun here? She said, I don't know. I can't say. And also she testified that of the two men she saw running, it was the person who was running second, who was behind who was running with the shotgun. Graves testified that

he was running second, that he was behind Anthony. So actually her testimony was very ambiguous, but it was really the only thing the prosecution had that came outside of Graves's inner circle. And as a result, the failure to disclose what Shalima had had told detectives from the beginning that she couldn't describe anything was a very damaging Brady violation for Anthony's defense. Was there any real defense mounted in your case? Anthony? But no, we didn't even call

any witnesses. M of behalf although Layer can testify, and he said, no, what rightful person would just sit there and listen to people say certain things about him and not defend himself like he was really confident that there was no need for them because the case was a weak case, and they eventually gave it to say, you know, Julia did or whatever, and that was that. So I

didn't really have a defense. So after hearing from Graves's network of liars and Salima's ambiguous testimony, and then importantly the absence of Rachel, did you still hold out any hope at all that you'd be vindicated? I did only because it was It was a time during the deliberations what the jury came back into the courtroom and they passed to note that said it was deadlocked, and the just said, well, listen, I'm going to give you a

brief out in charge. It was almost like a kangaroo court because he was basically saying, I don't know what the problem is. It's not like he's facing the death county. Go give me a verdict. And they needed some reback, some courses and stuff. And I looked at my lawyer at that point and I was mad because I said, well, maybe if I testified, maybe it would have been different.

Maybe it wouldn't be at this point. But to answer you, of course, and I was still hopeful, although hope was slipping away at that point, but they came back and found you guilty. What was that moment was that if you can just take us inside that court room and inside your mind and your soul. At that moment, uh, I was shocked, confused, I was hurt, devastated, nass. I mean, I was angry. I remember trying to stand up, but I didn't have any feeling in my livings are just

so weak. Ironically, what was going through my mind at that point was my son's because they were so young, and every night I would tell them crazy bedtime stories, either ones that I read from a book or I used to make up some stories, and they looked forward to going to sleep just about I could come into room and telling them stories. And I said to myself, I'm not going to be able to do that for a while. As you can imagine, for the first couple

of years, I was very better. I was I was I was mad, I was angry, and I was almost like a walking Tommy so to speak. I mean, I was always trying to do programs and stuff and trying to help myself and help other people as well. But inside I was really messed up. And I remember going on a visit one day and my son, little Anthony Junior, which I loved to dollo, both of my sons, he

was crying. He just broke out one day crying on a visit and he said, Daddy, don't worry, I'm gonna I'm gonna get Julius to doing this to you, because he had known at that point Julius as his uncle, because we were so close. And I looked at him and I said, no, Anthony, don't ever say that a game as I don't ever say that. And I was basically letting them know that the law will e mentually

prevail and there to work yourself out. And in the same time, he looked at me and he says, Lord and Daddy, you gotta promise me that you would never do anything to him. And I said, I won't. I promise you that. And it was that point with that I forgave to is and I continue to live my life as a life giver but also trying to help any and everybody out because in a sense helping me as well. But that's that was my turnal point. That's

when I forgave him. Forgot what it did. Well, it sounds like you you did a hell of a job, even in the brief time you had with your son's raising them and teaching them right. Unfortunately, prison has a way to divine families, as you can only imagine. So my son's mother, which is my wife with the town, her name is also Keisha. This prison bay became too much for her but us, and it felt like I

was holding back from living high life. So we both came to the agreement that we should just divorce into the race so that she can live for life of this week. And God always has a way of making things happen. But my wife today with his alpen named Kisa, it's my junior high school girlfriend. She was my chiliader when I was a captain of the basketball team. So Jesus started to write me and one thing turned into another. All of the old filings came back and we decided

to try one more time and get married. And that was probably the best decision of my life. My name is Keisha Sims and I am Anthony Simms wife, and it is it's the best decision that we've ever made that I've ever made. Anthony and I were, you know, junior high school sweethearts. You know, people in the situation always think that the people in prison, you know, they should be grateful that someone makes a hyper commitment to them under these circumstances. But for me, Anthony has brought

just so much to my life. He hasn't reached my life so much. I'm grown so much as a person because of him. This situation in particular has made me stronger, and so I'm just grateful that he chose me to go on this journey with him and to fight for his innocence. One day, I was reading the newspaper from a friend of my name, Kevin Jenkins, and he asked me to read this article because the article is involved

the person that we both behavior, the value Cooper. Kevin suggested that I try to get intest with Tom Hopf and the lawyer that got this guy out. So I talked to my wife and she said that night it was awful her to sleep because she worked around a lot of lawyers and you can do that. She only had one shot at this and she was making a little bullet point. She was rehearsing what she would say because you knew that it was really important to obtain

Thomas Hosper. He said the first thing Tom wanted to know was was he because he would not represent anybody who was not innocent and casad yes he is, but I'm going to save you some information so that you can see it for yourself. At that point, I had all of Anthony's legal work because his son had kept all of his documentation, and he said, well, send me everything that you have. So I'm working from home. All I have is an Adobe scan app on my phone

which can only scan one page at a time. One of Anthony's transcripts is four hundred and some odd pages. That's just only one transcript. And I did that for days, you know, trying to get all the information to him, and he saw all of the discrepancies, you know, and all the violations and things that we had always seen. Tom knew that Anthony was innocent, and it was just astounding evidence to support that. At that Tom and kind of can have doing my kids pro bono, and you

ever had Lowy's work as hard as they were. It's an amazing story, I mean, a tale of tukishas and which eventually resulted in these two attorneys, which of course brings us to the post conviction litigation. And it looks like before you both got involved, there were some filing surrounding an inappropriate remarked by the prosecutor, in effective assistant claims, trial court errors, discriminatory jury challenges, all of which were

serious points but ultimately failed. There was some new evidence, a recantation of trial testimony from Graves. We know he was feeling remorseful for throwing Anthony under the bus, but he didn't want to come clean. So this affid David really is reflective of that, meaning he doesn't tell the whole truths. He basically says that Anthony went inside Mr Hans and he, Julius Graves, did not. He continued that he didn't see who shot Chen and was coerced to

testify that he had seen Anthony do it. So it takes the onus off of Anthony, but it's definitely not the exonerating evidence that one would hope for, as or the other filings in this case. Everything that sort of happened in those initial post trial proceedings was sort of skirmishes around secondary issues, which unfortunately is often the best you can do for a convicted person until you get to Tom Hoffman to fully reinvestigate the case. Like a detective. Right.

Without Tom, we wouldn't know the context around Shalima's testimony, which is what passed for a corroborating witness for Graves and his whole network of liars. I mean, it wasn't corroborating testimony at all, but misleading or even pointing to Graves's guilt. And then the major Brady violation in hiding Rachel for all of these years. Remember she witnessed Charlik and Graves talking about the inappropriate touching, which established the motive. She saw Graves running from Mr Hans with a gun.

Then when she confronted Charlie Engraves, she was threatened, you talk too much. You keep talking, I'm gonna shut you up. Was the quote, not to even mention of the previously unknown or ignored holes and Shifts and Graves as narrative. And finally, we haven't even talked about this yet, but there was a cook at Mr Hins who had a view of the shooter and described his complexion as quote not black. This is consistent with Graves's light brown skin,

while Anthony importantly has a dark complexion. So Tom, what is being done with all of the exculpatory evidence that you've compiled. The four forty was initially filed in December, and we attached Rachel's affi David Slima's statement. Both of those statements were recorded from beginning to end, all all to goodbye. We also found this documentation that Graves had lied about reporting to his probation officer often and regularly.

We also found additional Grady violation, and as the case was proceeding, we then get even more documents foil, including that Graves on the day of his testimony, received money, received housing together with his girlfriend, his girlfriend's brother, and the brother's girlfriend, and then he eventually gets twenty five thousand dollars in benefits. All this comes out, so we then amend our petition. We also found out that Cologne had told one of his friends that it was his

friend who committed to shoot it. Well, his friend was Julius Graves. That was only recently ascertained, as with others, and I should say, look the current four forty a d s. In their response, they did not address any of our allegations. Did Julius Graves lie or did he not lie? Not addressed. They said you could have a hearing. Well, the hearing's gonna take quite a while, and Anthony should be home now. His children are now twenty seven and

twenty eight, his father recently suffered a stroke. His eight year old grandmother wants to see her grandson before she dies. The evidence is overwhelming. Anthony should not have to wait any longer. The resistance on undoing a wrongful conviction is you. Yeah, absolutely, it is even under normal circumstances. But here in Brooklyn there's been an even more obstinate than usual obstacle in

this case. Anthony brought his case to the Brooklyn Conviction Review Unit in two thousand seventeen, and one would think that the good folks there would take one look at Graves's bullshit and do something about it. But the man tasked with running the CiU in Brooklyn since two thousand fourteen was Mark Hale, who just so happens to be the man who prosecuted Anthony's case. Yeah, but, and this is a big butt. Mark Hale just retired at the

beginning of July. So while this is good news for Anthony, there's still plenty of ways that this might not work out. So while we know that out case is overwhelming. There is no assurance that we're going to prevail, and that's why we need all of the help that we can. We appreciate all of the listeners to the podcasts, and of course Jason, all of your advocacy what you're doing

and just giving us a platform. And we have a website Free Anthony Simms dot com and you can sign your name to the petition which calls on Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez to join our motion to vacate Anthony's wrongful conviction and to let him go home to his family where he belongs. There's also a link where you can email the District Attorney's office, so please visit Free Anthony Simms dot com. And we greatly appreciate all of your help. And I'm going to be signing and joining.

And you know, I do believe in Eric Gonzalez. Eric, if you're listening right now, we're counting on you. That's all I can say. We believe that d Agnzalez, once he understands this case, he's going to do the right there. Amen to that, and I'll have the website linked in our episode bio. Okay, so now we come to the part of the show called Closing Arguments, where I offer my sincere thanks to you, guys, Jonathan Hows and Thomas Hoffman for your passionate devotion to this case and just

for being good humans. And of course you know, Anthony, you're a hero to me and so many other people, just for your spirit, courage, and your grace. You know, it's really an honor to have you here today. And so here's how this works. I'm gonna turn my microphone off, kick back in my chair, close my eyes, and each of you guys get the opportunity to share any final

parting thoughts you have. We call it closing arguments. We'll start with Jonathan Hoiles that you could pass the mike to Thomas Hoffman, and then we'll save the best for last and Anthony you'll be with all due respect to you guys, Anthony, he's going to be bad and clean up, so to speak. So, without further ado, Jonathan Hile's closing arguments.

Thank you, Jason. I think it's important to look at the broader picture and how this injustice occurred, and it's because the system did not value the life of Anthony Simms, and it also did not value the life of the run chunt and what we're fighting to do is to make sure that justice is served for Anthony and also for the victim, for the truth to emerge, and every ounce of help we can get to ensure that happens is deeply appreciated because the truth has been clear from

the start, and that truth is that Julius Graves was the perpetrator of this awful crime, not Anthony Simms. And it's time for Anthony to go home and to be reunited with his family so that he can be with them and serve the community to which he has so much to contribute. So thank you again, Jason, thank you again for doing this. I believe you have had a hundred forty five podcasts of people who were wrongfully convicted. I have listened to many. While the facts vary, the

stories are all the same. The horrific crime is committed, drawing wide media and public attention. Perpetrators need to be taken off the street and held to account. However, the concern of the police and the prosecutors is not to find the actual perpetrator, but to give the public the perception that the case was solved. It did not matter whether the right person was brought to justice as long as the conviction was secured and the public fear allay.

As Jonathan said, neither the victim nor the defendant's life is value as long as the case is worth so to the public is not valued as the police did not care whether the actual perpetrator remained loose and posed the danger to the public. Also common in order to win these cases, evidence pointing away from the defendants culpability is ignored and not investigated, as such investigation could potentially sculptor the accused, and of course Rachel is an example

of that. In this case, favorable evidence pointing away from defendants guilt is disregarded and, in contravention of the prosecutor's constitutional duty, is hidden from the defender. Meanwhile, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and sons and daughters are destroyed, all in the interests of winning at all. Course, people ask me why do

I do this? I now, I'm giving it away and a Holocaust survivor, I was born in nineteen Basically my family, extensive family was wiped out, and that Holocaust was caused by people remaining silent, and that is why I call on our audience not to be silent. Go to that website to undo this horrific injustice. Anthony, I want to say thank you, Tom, Jonathan, Jason and Connor. Really thank you for this. This has probably been one of the

highlights of many years. And now that I know that Gonzales is complete looking at this, I want to talk directly to you, miss A Gazales, and I want to ask that you please review this evidence. You don't just called my case like the restival few it with an open mind. I understand what would happen. And although I'll never be able to get back over year that I've been in here, I'm just you can make this right.

But doing a right that allow me to be the father, gain out of the society that I know I need to be with my sons. And I'm gonna about some time with my mother and father who got old, you know, and father had his show. My mother's walking around with kine as an at eleventh victim, my grandmother who's eighty six years old, who lives for me, my wife, family, my family, just a general allow me to get some of my life back, do the right thing. 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 Warness. 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 wrong a Conviction Podcast. Rightful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one