In nineteen eighty nine, Paul Anderson lived in a Jamaica queen's drug house owned by his sister but operated by a man named Jomo Kenyada. On March sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine, Jomo Kenyada and one of his associates, Lloyd Witter, were shot at the house, leaving wid Or dead and Kenyada in a coma. Police found Paul Anderson alone, bound, handcuffed, and unharmed outside the home, under pressure from Lee Detective William Peppe and desperately trying to divert attention away from himself.
Anderson's initial description of four unknown men quickly changed to that of two acquaintances who did not fit his initial descriptions, Carlton Roman and Hollis Laylor. With no physical or forensic evidence tying Carlton or Hollis to the shooting, the state's case relied solely on the inconsistent and outright false testimonies
of Anderson, Kenyada, and Detective Peppe. Carlton, a twenty six year old bother at college due with no connection to the drug trade, was portrayed by the prosecution as a dangerous drug kingpin, and despite the testimony of alibi witnesses, Carlton was convicted and sentenced over forty three years in prison. The Queen Za blocked Carlton's attempts at justice for over three decades until the election of District Attorney of Olympic Cats and the formation of a new conviction Integrity Unit.
A reinvestigation revealed the misdeeds of Paul Anderson, Joe Mukanyata, and Detective Peppe, as well as led to Carlton's freedom after thirty two long years in prison. This is Wronful Conviction. Welcome back to Wronful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flahman. I'm going to start today's episode by issuing an apology and I'm going to direct that at our featured guest, Carlton Roman, because what he went through doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever, even by our crazy standards. And so,
mister Roman, thank you for being here. And then with mister Roman today is his attorney, James Henning. James, welcome to the show.
Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having us. Jason.
Yeah, and I'm glad you're here as well to help tell this crazy story because honestly, when I was researching this. I was kind of just like turning the paper upside down, back and forth and saying, maybe somebody left something out, Maybe there's a mistake or an omission here somewhere. I mean, Carlton, you were a twenty six year old man who was a father boyfriend, going to college, living in Queens, New York,
no criminal record whatsoever. So if a guy like you can get caught up in something like this, then the uncomfortable fact is that nobody's safe. Right, So let's go back to that. First of all, where are you from?
But I'm Jamaican. I was born Derek into this country in nineteen eighty one. I was nineteen, and my mother migrated before me, and she worked two tree four jobs sometimes until she was able to sponsor me and get me up here. The one point of me coming here was educational purposes.
To go to college.
We started going around trying to get me into a college, and she kept bringing me to different colleges and I'd be looking at the hamphuses. I have no frame of reference to what to go by. I mean, it's completely different. It's a first world country and all that. We started looking at colleges in Queens, and I fell in love with Queensboro, which was a community of college.
That's what I settled on.
So my mom and her husband started looking at place in Queens and then we moved there within like maybe ten months of me coming up here.
So it seems like everything was going pretty well until, of course, one day in nineteen eighty nine, and that's when it all went terribly wrong. Now, this was the late eighties in New York, a time that was rife with both drug dealing and police corruption that stretched through the nineties. And I'm not breaking any news here, right. It was the epidemic, the War on drugs. A lot of bad shit happened on both sides of the law.
And in Jamaica, Queen's there was a house known for drug activity and a guy Carlton knew Paul Anderson lived there. It was his sister's house, and a guy named Jomo Kenyada, who we later find out was a very violent guy operating under a number of aliases, who was dealing drugs out of that house. There was also a dude that Carlton knew, Lloyd Witter or Jimbo as people call them, who hung around with those guys and may or may
not have been involved in drugs as well. Now, on March sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine, a shooting happened at this drug house, killing Lloyd Witter and putting Jomo Kenyada into a coma that lasted for weeks. And when police first arrived at the crime scene, they found Paul Anderson outside bound and handcuffed, but somehow unharmed. James tell us where the investigation went from there.
Lloyd Witter is obviously killed and can't give an account
of the crime. Jomo Kenya is in a coma for several weeks following the crime, and so the initial stories come from Paul Anderson, and he gives several Initially, he claims that a group of individuals came to his house, unknown individuals that he describes in detail, and they force him inside at gunpoint, and they handcuff him and tie him up, and they tell him that they're after Jomo Kanyada and Lloyd Witter, and then they do nothing to him when they go and shoot Jomo Kanyada and Lloyd
Witter when they show up. It isn't until the next day that Carlton is purportedly identified by Paul Anderson as one of the individuals along with another guy he knew Hollis Laylor from among the shooters. And this is the same day that Carlton learns of the shooting of his very good friend Lloyd Witter and calls up Witter's wife and says is this true?
And she says, yes, it's true.
And Carlton, being a good friend, runs over to his friend's house to check what's going.
On, and it was found out that the victim's wife, Andrea Witer, was told by someone we don't know who that Carlton was responsible for her husband's death. We know she was contacted on her husband's beeper after the shooting took place. It may have been Paul Anderson perhaps Detective Peppe, were not exactly sure, so when Carlton got to her house, she called the police.
When he shows up, nobody answers the door at the Witer home and he goes across the street to a payphone to call up the house and see what's going on. And as he's calling, a number of unmarked carrs show up and missus Whitter crosses the street, points at Carlton and says that's the man who killed my husband, and things are just off to the races. From there, Carlton is identified as being one of the shooters and is
taken into custody by Detective William Peppe. And this is the morning of the seventeenth, and it just changes Carlton's.
Life, James, as you're talking about these various different stories that Anderson told, this is where the whole thing starts to become surreal, right because Anderson initially told Detective John Loguercio that four men came to his house and that he couldn't identify the men.
And there's no dispute here, Jason, that he knew who Carlton was at that point.
Right, So major red flag right there. But this initial description given to Detective Leagercio was never even presented to the jury and was only discovered recently, and he gave a detailed description for the police report. According to Paul Anderson, he didn't know any of the men, but the apparent leader was five to two or five to three and walked with a limp. Two other guys no taller than five to four, and then the fourth guy was about six feet tall with a cameo haircut, which you remember
from the music videos. At that time, this meant tight on the sides and tall on top. But then Anderson's account and descriptions changed six times before this thing even went to trial, and it comes out much later that according to Anderson, he was under a great deal of pressure from Detective Peppi, who fed various details along the way, but before his narrative changed, his description definitely did. When they get Anderson to the precinct, he allegedly identified Carlton
Roman as the shooter. So somehow he magically remembered that his friend was the shooter from these four unknown men who he described with some detail, right, an even stranger, Carlton, You had no criminal record whatsoever, no involvement with this drug house. You didn't match any of the initial descriptions of his initial descriptions. He's talking about guys who are under five to four and then one over six feet,
but you're five to seven. Help me out here, Do you have any other matching characteristics from the initial police report?
No, absolutely not.
And if Anderson knew it was you, Carlton, why in the world didn't he say so from the very beginning, right when the police first showed up after the shooting. How in the world is he not going to say, Yeah, it was my friend that did this, and here's where he lives and here's his phone number. That would have been the easiest id ever if you were the guy who actually did it.
I think the other thing that flows into that, Jason, which has always been a big point to me and was a big point to the judge who ultimately exonerated Carlton, is I kind of referred to it as like a Batman or James Bond scenario where Paul Anderson says that these guys came in told him their entire criminal plot, shot two other guys to pieces that they told him they were going to shoot, and then leave him completely unscathed and able to tell this story.
Nobody questioned that from the beginning.
Yeah, I was wondering about that too. And then it gets weirder, right because with Kenyata drifting in and out of consciousness for several weeks at the hospital, they went in and did some really crazy stuff in the hospital in order to get him to make an identification. Right, how did that work?
So?
According to Detective Pepe, the lead investigator, when Kenyata awakens from this coma, he goes to visit with him, and he displays a board with letters it because Kenyata is supposedly nonverbal, and he has Kenyada supposedly spell out the names of the people who shot him, and according to Pepe, he identifies Carlton, Hollis Laylor by their nicknames, and the other two people who by this point, Paul Anderson has identified a pair of brothers named Bigger and Richie. Now,
there are a couple problems with this. Number One, there's no basis in any police procedure for going and showing a nonverbal witness a letter board to identify people. Number two, there's no indication that Kenyada is separated from Paul Anderson or other people who could have influenced an identification. There's no indication that another officer is present or involved in
this procedure. And number three, when Kenyada ultimately testifies at Carlton's trial, he says, I didn't spell out these guys' names. I gave three letters. So he's only claiming to have identified three people during this procedure, and they don't correspond to the claims that Pepe made of this. When Carlton's attorney makes a motion to see what procedures produced identifications
in this case, the prosecution essentially hides Kenyata's ID. They represent that only Paul Anderson has made an idea, and because he knows Carlton, there's nothing suggestive in any way, shape or form. But Carlton's trial attorney's actually saying somebody in Kenyata's condition could have easily been led to make a misidentification. And the people's response, which is relied upon by a court, is that no, there's no problem because the only witness to make an ID knew the defendant.
So they kind of push forward without any review. These two IDs by these guys who were years later acknowledged to be completely incredible and all over the place.
Yeah, and if I'm hearing you correctly, there was only the two of them in the hospital room at the time. Anyway, Right, he could have said he identified, you know, Santa Claus or Helen Keller as the shooter, right, anybody, because it was just his word.
And there's an interesting aspect there where he aims that Kenyada spelled out the name of Hollis Laylor's girlfriend which he doesn't explain why Kenyada would have found that to be at all relevant. And the first three letters of that name just happened to be the same as Carlton's nickname. So it kind of stinks all around here.
This is how you sort of rash they were back in those days. Right, They didn't even bother to attempt to pretend to make this sound credible because they knew they'd get away with it anyway. Right. Was there any other evidence, physical, forensic, or anything tying you to the shooting?
Absolutely nothing.
During trial they said they'scovered the entire house from top to bottom, and they found no fingerprints that.
Were usable, no gun, no confession, no physical or biological evidence. It really just comes down to the word of Jomo Kenyada and Paul Anderson.
And then how long were you held before the trial?
The trial took eighteen months before it got there. I was in I did and you know, March Ju the system, a female associate of mister Greenberg. She came to represent me. She came back, I'm such and such and you're go in front of a judge, this is what's going to happen. And I remember selling this woman like what do you mean I'm not going to be able to go home today?
And she's like, no, this is such a I'm like, listen, I'm a working man, I have college, I have a girlfriend and the child home, and I'm going And she started writing all this stuff down, and when we went in front of a judge, she hammered him exactly with all the information I'd just given her a minute ago. And the judge granted me bail. Okay, bail said that one hundred thousand dollars. Bankers gabble and left and she was like, amazing, the judge gave you bail, and you
know you have a great record. All that, my family ran around, they put the house up, and I was bailed out and I remained at liberty, going back and forth to court for another sixteen seventeen months until certain changes were made in my case. It was a new judge and suddenly a new DA When Miss Lemucia came on the case, everything changed. I think on a second or so appearance with her, he acts for my bid
to be revoked. The new judge did it, and you know, my life went completely in the toilet from that point on.
This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company, and by Accentsure, a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the criminal justice system is a key pillar of the AIG pro Bono program, which provides free legal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need as part of Extensure's commitment to racial and civil justice.
Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in partnership with more than forty organizations, bringing meaningful change to people and communities worldwide. And so we moved the trial so because of the fact that there was no evidence, no actual evidence. The entire case of the state relied solely on the testimony of Detective Peppy, who we find
out is totally unreliable. And then, of course the contradictory and inconsistent testimonies of two perhaps incentivized, if not at least coerced witnesses, Anderson and Kenyata, and they each described
the shooting and the events leading up to it. So Anderson's testimony, he said that Carlton Roman, Hollis Laylor, Jomo Kanyada, and Lloyd Witter were at Paul Ederson's house on March fifteen, nineteen eighty nine, the day before the shooting, a quote unquote bus occurred after Jomo Kanyada and Lloyd witter took a gun from Carlton Roman. Did you ever have a gun? Carlton, by the way, did you ever own a gun?
Absolutely not, No, of course not.
And now back to Anderson's bogus account again, he said that day after this alleged bus over a gun that you never owned, Jomo Kenyatta and Lloyd Witterer were supposed to come over to help him, Paul Anderson, I'm talking about move. But allegedly before they arrived, Carlton Roman, Hollis Laylor and these two other made up characters Bigger at Richie came by handcuffed Anderson and put him in the basement. Several hours later, he heard the doorbell and then a
series of shots. He also testified that he was an architect. I mean, if you're gonna lie, why not just say you're a freaking astronaut. He also testified that he was not involved with drug dealing, and when it was alleged that he Paul Anderson had been shot by the victim Lloyd winner just a few months earlier, in November nineteen eighty eight, he denied that he had been shot or treated at a hospital for the shooting. He also refused to show the leg where it was alleged that he
had been shot. So he was an architect, had nothing to do with drug dealing or any ill will toward the victim in this case.
What we know now is Paul Anderson's residence was a drug house. It was used for drugs and gambling. And the underlying thing is that the law enforcement actors involved in this case had to have known the truth about Paul Anderson and what he was doing. So to let him get on the stand and say, oh, yeah, I'm an architect, I've never been shot, it was just fundamentally unfair.
Now we get to Kenyata's testimony, so he said that the initial March fifteenth argument was about drugs and involves Carlton Roman, Hollis Laylor, and Lloyd Witter, not a gun as Paul Anderson said. According to Kenyatta, he and Lloyd went back to Anderson's house on March sixteenth, and when they walked into the house, the door shut quickly behind them, followed by gunshots, and he allegedly saw Hollis Laylor and Carlton Roman shooting Lloyd Witter. When he tried to run away,
Carlton Roman allegedly shot him on the stairs. On direct examination, Kenyada testified that his criminal record consisted of a single conviction for reckless driving and that he was not involved in dealing drugs. He was recalled to the stand after Carlton's attorneys showed events of him pleading guilty to attempted possession of a weapon after being charged with attempted murder. So not only does he lie on the stand, but the two lying liars who lied don't match up with
each other. Not surprising, and they both just directly lied about their own backgrounds and ways that were provably false and in this case were in fact proven false. And Carlton, I have to ask you before we even get to Peppy's testimony. You lived through this, right, I mean, what were you thinking at that time?
Well? I was so stupid. I was just so naive.
I still expected Kenyada to come in there and say, no, it's not this guy.
He wasn't there.
So I was sitting there listening to this guy talking about how I shot him and all this other stuff, and I was like, I'm sitting there with my mouth hanging out. I remember at one point turning around to look at my mom, and my grandmother was there. They were also sitting there with their mouths hanging out. I couldn't believe he was actually saying any of this stuff. I'm sitting there like a train hit me listening to this stuff.
Yeah, I mean, you must have felt like you just want to scream out and say, wait a minute, that's not true, right.
I wanted to do that, and I made several attempts on mister Greenberg. He had a hand on my knee under the table and he kept squeezing my knee. Just relaxed, don't worry, take it easy, don't make a scene.
In the court.
It's not like I was going to turn the table over or anything. But I wanted to really like stand up and scream at this do like you're lying. You understand what I'm saying. And I've always regretted that I listened to my attorney.
From what I read in the research, there was very little defense to speak of. James, Can you talk about what did this guy do wrong? And what did he leave out and how did he manage to blow what should have been an easy win.
We only have one podcast, so I can't really go through everything he did wrong. Carlton's attorney had in alibi that Carlton provided to him. He had alibi witnesses that supported that Carlton was nowhere near Paul Anderson's house on the day of the shootings. Carlton testified in his own defense. His testimony was coherent with his alibi witnesses. Mister Greenberg, the trial attorney, called some of them, but then he permitted so much of this false insinuation by the prosecution
that Carlton was a drug dealer. One example of this is that Carlton had a car that his mother had put the down payment on, and all mister Greenberg would have needed to do is bring in the financing agreement for that car, which was a fairly easy thing to do to show that this wasn't the product of drug money. It was a car that was financed by his mother.
And instead, because he didn't do that, the prosecutor was able to make it seem as if, look, this is a drug dealer who's buying new cars and living high on drug money. But mister Greenberg just didn't rise to the occasion in response to these bogus allegations by the prosecution. There were so many opportunities where he just showed that
he had not been engaged in the case. And maybe that's because in the time between the shootings and the trial, it didn't seem like Paul Anderson was actually going to come back from Jamaica to testify. He had fled to Jamaica after the grand jury, and from what I gather from the transcripts, I think think Greenberg thought this was going to be dismissed. But you don't not prepare based on that. You've still got a client on trial for murder. You've got to be ready to defend them.
And so with the fact that these lies were allowed to be foisted on the jury and that your own team didn't really do much of anything to help you, the results were predictable and ultimately you were convicted of second degree murder as well as other counts and sentenced to forty three and a half years in prison. Can you describe what you were feeling in that moment.
They said guilty and I just fell into a black hole like I couldn't think. I don't remember was in the court. I don't remember even if I looked around at anybody. Everything that's closed in at me at once, and like I was just dragged into a black hole.
I couldn't think. I was a complete wreck.
It was like the worst thing in the world that could happen to anybody. The thing that never left me was like, I did not do this, and I'm going to have to prove that to everybody. So I never lost any of that hope. Over all the years, I always knew deep down that some way, somehow I'm getting out of this. You're going to know I did not do this. I'm an only child from my mother and I have one daughter now, and those are the most
two important people for me in the world. And I knew if I broke what it would do to my mom it would destroy her completely. I really felt that that hanger that this had happened to me, and that I'm dragging my mother right along with me through all of this stuff.
So I could not stop, and I never did.
No, you did not. And facing denial after denial from the courts and vicious opposition from Richard Brown's DA office, in Queen's Justice did not look like it must have looked like a very distant possibility, but you just didn't quit. So, James, when did you get involved in how does the situation finally get to where we are now? And how did the Queen's District Attorney's race play a role in all of that.
In twenty fifteen, the Queen's Day's Office certifies Carlton's file as completely missing. The prosecution file for his case is gone. And this is although since his conviction in nineteen ninety, Carlton had been litigating his conviction. I come in in twenty seventeen as co counsel for another attorney who had been working on Carlton's case, and we put in a motion based on some material that we felt was newly discovered from the Hollas Lalor file, and we were unsuccessful
in that motion. It was denied in twenty nineteen. A lot of this is because they could kind of argue whatever they wanted in the absence of a prosecution file. There's no reference point for saying this is what occurred or this is what was said, because all of the
material was purportedly lost. The attorney that I had been working with left the case and Carlton asked me if I would stay on as lead counselor, and I said sure, And we sent an investigator to Jamaica to locate Paul Anderson because we said, look, there's not a lot of moving parts in this case. And in twenty nineteen we went down and spoke with Paul Anderson and he recanted in an affidavit and on tape. And as you alluded to Jason, there was a race for Queen's DA. Richard
Brown had been there for years. His office had steadfastly opposed any attempt by Carlton to try and get a review of this evidence.
Carlton had never had a hearing on any of his motions.
And we brought the recantation of Paul Anderson to the new district attorney who had been elected, Melinda Katz her newly formed Conviction Integrity Unit, and they agreed to a reinvestigation of this case, and ultimately what they found and what we put forward made them agree that Carlton should no longer in prison, that this conviction should be vacated.
So what were the major points that ultimately tipped the scales of justice back to where they should have been in the first place.
So, for one, it's Paul Anderson unsurprisingly comes forward and acknowledges that his story was bs and he knew that the cops were looking at his house, which belonged to his sister, and that they knew that there was a legal activity going on there, that there was a drug operation running out of there which was headed up by
Jomo Kenyata. And we also learned that Jomo Kenyatta was operating under we don't know how many different aliases, but other than the crimes that were revealed at trial, he was wanted for at least one murder that's still a cold case in Queen's He was a heavy drug dealer, His brother was a drug dealer. Essentially, there was motive for many other people other than Carlton, who had no criminal record, to have committed this crime.
Including even the state's main witness, Paul Anderson, who, according to new eyewitnesses, had survived being shot by the victim in this case, Lloyd Witter. In November of nineteen eighty eight.
A conviction integrity unit did a number of interviews with Carlton and his alibi witnesses, and those essentially corroborated the alibi that was or should have been presented at trial, and interviews with Andrea Witter and others demonstrate that Detective Pepe was unreliable to say the least. Detective Pepe fabricated a visa to bring Paul Anderson back from Jamaica to testify at Carlton's trial. The fact that he's willing to break federal law fabricate an official document to push forward
this case. Where does that end? Does that end with fabricating witness statements? You have to take a hard look at that this is the guy that pushes forth the evidence in this case. Ultimately, what they come down to is that the original descriptions from Paul Anderson that did not match Carlton Roman are nowhere in the transcript, and that new evidence completely and totally undermines the two witnesses, Paul Anderson and Jomo Kenyatta, whose testimony is used to convict him.
So now you're still in at this point, Carlton. You've been through everything at this point, and you've been through every heartbreak and disappointment, But are you now feeling like there really is finally light at the end of this horrible tunnel.
Yes, I realized then that this was the closest I've come to getting the truth revealed and my freedom back. I've been to the Appellate Division, I've tried to, been to the Court of Appeals, as I did Federal Aid. I've done everything, and everywhere that I went it was just a consistent slam in the face, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny. It, like James correctly said, despite all the craziness you're seeing in my case, no judge that actually looked at it and seeing fit to at least grant me a hearing.
So nobody wanted to hear anything at all from me. I just kept going back like a boxer getting punched in the face every time, and just kept going back. But when this was happening now, it kind of felt different. It felt different, mainly because at the DA's office there were different people there and it seemed like they were serious. There was actually new people here who might be receptive to correct in what had happened to me.
So finally, August ninth, twenty twenty one, the Queen's District Attorney and you James, filed the joint motion asking the
Court to vacate Carlton Romans convictions. In that affirmation, the District Attorney's office said, quote, it had concluded that three witnesses and the facts undermining the credibility of the key trial witnesses Anderson and Kenyata could not have been discovered in the context of your trial, Carlton, with the exercise of due diligence, and are of such character that they would have probably led to a verdict more favorable to
the defendant. So on August ninth, twenty twenty one, Justice Michelle Johnson of Queen's County Supreme Court granted the motion and dismissed the charges against you and Dia. Melinda Katz said, this is a quote. We are not so arrogant to think that the system doesn't make mistakes. Powerful words. She went on to say, when we find miscaracters of justice, we do everything in our power to correct them quickly. And into the daily news, it's quoted you, carl that
I was saying right outside the courtroom. I'm not technically a shy person. I've nothing prepared to say to you all, but let me say one thing. The justice system everybody knows is broken. I've read a thousand reports that say that, but words alone aren't going to get that fixed. You all have a part to play in this also. But I'm here now. But there's a lot of people in there who need your attention. Now. There's people in there who have been fighting for justice longer than I have end. Quote,
what a fucking thing. By the way, here, you are just getting out of this thirty two year ordeal that's something out of a Greek tragedy or something, and the first thing you're doing is thinking about other people. I mean, who are you, dude? Who are you?
I've heard that so much different times. A lot of it is a blurnout too. I have to watch the thing to digest fully the entire moment. It was just so overwhelming for me. I had a conversation with somebody that was locked in sing saying that I knew for a long time, you know, made a secure as phone call and I was talking to him and he said, Man, I just want to to talk to you about one thing, and it's what you said when you came out of
the court. He said, there's dozens of people here who don't know you, and they're just so happy you said that. They're praising you and all this other stuff. I use this reference. It's like if you're in the desert and you're dying of thirst and there's while animals circling you, and you're there with a bunch of people and some are miraculously you stumble and make it out. The first thing and a decent human being should do is say, wait, there's more people in there that needs help. So that's
the point of view where I was coming from. And you know, it's a day for justice and all that, but we can't forget all the people in there who going to the very same thing.
Yeah, it just speaks a lot to your character. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening now. You're inspiring them to want to take action to make a difference, and you're inspiring me to want to do more. And what would you suggest as a course of action.
The first thing that come to mind for me is when people wind up in my situation and they finally get exonerated, something needs to be done to reintegrate them into a society. For instance, I've lost all my paperwork. I have no idea where my Social Security card is, passport, my immigration papers, my driver's license. All that stuff has gone. I have to go to hell just to get a learners permit on the way to get a driver's license.
I went to the DMV and I had nothing to show them that would make them allow me to take the written tests to start the old process over. The thing that helped me most get that accomplished was the front page of the Daily News with my picture on the cover saying I was exonerated after thirty two years. I know right now off the top of my head three other exonerated people who's out here and we're in regular touch, and all of us had the same problem.
You can't go to a bank and establish an account because when you go there, dear first thing, you're asking you for his ID. I remember pulling out out the last jlight D they gave me and it was told like, well, that's absolutely useless. I went to try to get my Social Security card. Rea shirt, well you need a driver's license and you need a pass, but I don't have any of those things. And when I go to another office,
they asks me for my Social Security card. So it's like this catch twenty two thing happening, and something needs to be done about.
That now we have. But I always referred to as my favorite part of the show, and everybody who's listening knows what I'm talking about because you hear me say it every week. But this is the part of the show called closing arguments, and it works like this. First of all, I thank each of you again, James Henning for the great work you've done for mister Roman and on behalf of other clients. Thank you for that, and thank you for taking your time to be on the show with us today.
Thanks for having us Jason, what you're doing means a lot.
And of course same for you, Carlton again, thank you so much for just being yourself and inspiring everybody to march forward and try to pick change. And now the closing arguments works like this. I turned my microphone off, I leave yours on. James, You're going to go first, if that's okay, and save the best for last. With all due respect to you, and all you have to do now is say whatever you want, anything that we may have left out or anything that's left unsaid. This
is closing arguments. James Henning, you go drop the mic, pass it off to Carlton, and that's how we'll close the show.
I think basically what I would say is that Carlton's case, the cliche never give up gets thrown around a lot. There was not a tremendous amount of hope after his entire file was lost, but he always kept fighting, and I think that's the spirit that this story should inspire in people. The people who actually did this were allowed to go free and potentially take other lives, but Carlton absolutely refused to let his life be taken, and I think that should be a message to everybody in whatever
situation they're in. This guy was in the darkest of places and he just never gave up. And it's a beautiful thing to see because he's a truly remarkable person.
And I'm very proud.
To have played whatever role I did in helping bring him back to society because he's an important guide and you know, he's great.
So that's what I'll say, and I'll pass on to him.
Hold public officials accountable, hold the district attorney and the idea is accountable, and even more important, all the judges accountable. People tend to forget how much power a judge as and how much thing a judge can look away from from my point of view, if my case atlanted in front of a fear judge, even say twenty five years ago,
this should have been over. Then judges can be allowed to just ignore cries of Pinnis and people because they just don't feel like reviewing it or granting a hearing or looking further into what happened or whatever. So there needs to be a spotlight on what judges are doing, how they're coming to the conclusions that they're coming to, and when they're shirking your duties. Man, they got to get out of there. And it's the same thing with
the district attorney's offices. And again, none of that stuff is secret stuff. Start calling pesterin, hammering whoever it is that's in the points of authority that's responsible for what's going on in these courtrooms. When they can't live up to the holtes they take, get them out of there, hold public officials accountable, make them do better.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn and Kevin Wadis. 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, on Twitter at wrong Conviction, and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one