#232 Jason Flom with Dennis and Lee Horton

On May thirty first, nineteen ninety three, Dennis Horton went to his brother Lee's home for a Memorial Day weekend cookout. Later in the day, they visited their father in North Philadelphia, as well as their childhood friend Robert Leif. Unbeknownst to the Hortons, Robert Leaf had committed an armed robbery earlier that day in which two women were injured and one man was fatally shot. The Hortons pulled up to their friend Robert Leaf on the street and made plans to

All right, good afternoon. How's everybody doing out there. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for inviting us on.

So let's get right into it. First of all, I want to say to both of you guys that while I am obviously delighted to have you on the show, I'm sorry that you're here because of what you had to go through and it should have never happened. So let's go back to the beginning. I'm talking about how was childhood for you guys growing up together while you moved to Philly in seventy seven, right, but give us a quick look at what your childhood was like.

So when we was young, growing up, we lived uneventful but a wonderful life. You know, my mom and my father was married in the early sixties.

It four of us, four kids. We grew up in some of the roughest places in the city, but our family. My mom, my grandmother, my father always instilled in us that you had to work for what you wanted their life, and so we started working at an early age my mom and father.

Unfortunately they split up in nineteen seventy two. My mom, she was trying to take care of four kids on our own. We wind up moving to the Projects, which was at the time East Falls Projects. I was around twelve years old, my brother was seven at the time. So the projects was a rough project.

You know, you had to prove the people up there that you was willing to fight in order for you to be able to stay, or they chased you out the projects. That's how it was.

And so I had got into a fight with an individual and I wanted to fight.

That was a blessing to some degree, but it was also a curse because now I was at ies with a lot of guys my age twelve or thirteen year olds in the projects, and one day I wound up on the wrong side of the projects when we was approached by a group of individuals and it was maybe about twenty something thirty guys, and they approached us and they wanted me to fight a guy. And you know, there was a bunch of guys that was about to jump us.

And then these other guys came out of nowhere and came to our rescue. And it was only a few of them, but they were like the neighborhood tough guys to some degree. One of these guys who would become a really good friend of mine was an individual named Rob Relief. And so I fell in with these guys and we became really good friends. He came to my house, stayed at my house, slept in my house, ate at my house. My mom to somebody, we became his mom.

By that time we kind of veered off a little bit, although I would go see my friends who were still living in the projects and some living in North Philadelphia from town to town.

And so now we move up towards the time of the actual crime, and I'm talking about Memorial Day weekend, May thirty first, nineteen ninety three. So there was an arm robbery at Toledo's Bar. Now, initial descriptions say it was two men, but later it was changed to three, one man with a twenty two caliber semi automatic rifle and another with a black pistol robbed the bar and its patrons. Samuel Alimo, six foot three and over two hundred pounds, wrestled with the gunman for the gun, but

So Lee and his wife invited me and my fiancee at the time over to his house. So of course I went to Lee's house, had a cookout out with him and his wife and his kids, and later on that evening, we decided we was going to take a ride.

So, okay, right away we see problems emerge with what the witnesses are describing. Right the alleged number of individuals involved in the robbery went from went up fifty percent, right from two to three. And when you're there at the hospital in the police paddy wagon right outside the hospital with the witnesses saying yeah them too. Also one of the witnesses described a blue car and gave a partial plate number. So did that match your own vehicles?

The only witness who claimed to see the car said it was a blue small car. It was as supposed to been a Chevy Chavette. He said the name of the car in his statement. Now Lee's car is a Priest Classic, a four door large car, two tones, two different colors.

But this witness, for some reason, we could never find him and never bring him the trial. The person the police put down giving out this partial plate number. When we got the witness on the stand, she said, right then there, I.

Never gave a police anything.

I never saw a car, so how could I have ever given him the name is on this paper. Though they said you gave it to him, She said, it's impossible. I didn't see a car. I didn't give him anything. And the thing about the officers who did this first thing, you got to give you a context to.

Who these officers are. The first officer was somebody who had strangled a guy to the early on, and then later, right after we was arrested, he shot a guy unarmed in a car. The second officer, she was involved in internal fears of investigation about a large quantity of drugs being found in the police station and them suspecting it

So I have to ask, do you think that they knew from the beginning that you guys had nothing to do with this.

That's a really good question, and our heart of hearts, we believe in the beginning maybe they wasn't sure, but as things begin to unfold, they had to be clear that we wasn't involved, just didn't care. And the reason why we know is because the prosecuted came to us with the deal. It was like five to ten years, and we were like, we're innocent, We're not taking any deal. Why should we take any deal to go to jail

They made, right, And it's very uncommon that in the crime as serious as this one armed robbery where someone was killed, right, that they're going to offer someone two guys in this case five years, right, you know, you don't have to be a legal scholar to figure this one out. So now we get to the trial and all three of you, Lee, Dennis, and Robert Leaf are tried together, and they have three witnesses. Now I'm going

There were no security footage.

What they had was they actually had the gun they said with the murdered weapon. They never actually could trace it to any of the bullets they got out of the body.

They didn't match. But this is the gun that Leif had on him. He left the gun in the car. The cops retrieved it and when they checked it, it had fingerprints. But we've been always trying to get these fingerprints checked because they could never trace them to any of us. If they took all of our fingerprints, they didn't fit any of us.

Now, the way that my brother got to become the shooter is a clear case of mistaken identification. Initially in the case, they all identified Robert Leaf at the shooter, and this where the whole case turns. If this don't ever happen, we probably would have walked. The one witness

Want to know the name? Because, uh, Dennis did it. It's Dennis. He said Dennis, and then she said, yeah, I heard him. They was calling Dennis. And then after that we were in the case and they knew that this woman just had made this up out of the sky, just right then and there, everybody refused to pull back, and they could have corrected that right there, and they had said, well, hold up, Yonner, she's wrong. Mister Leaf was wearing a red jacket. We know that for sure.

They just let the witnesses go on and on and on with these wrong identifications. And this woman had identified every last one of us as a shooter at one given time.

This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company, and by Accenture, 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 censures commitment to racial and civil justice.

Three weeks prior to our arrest, I had injured my leg on my job in such a fashion that I needed to acl repair. The holiday was on a Monday, I was supposed to go talk about the day that week I was going to have the surgery done. I just came off the crutches, so when we were arrested, it was impossible for me to be able to wrestle with this guy. I think they said he was like

So you both had different lawyers, So two people who were supposed to be working on your behalf, what were they doing with all of this information?

At trial, we made the mistake of a friend of my mom's told her that their son could be a good lawyer for us, and we accepted that, but he wasn't a criminal defense attorney. He had not tried one criminal case, and he wound up being a person putting our defense together. My lawyer had been retired and he was kind of older and he was a little out of step. Were just not prepared for a capital case. Now, the difference is Robert Leef was prepared. He knew the

We thought that we were innocent and it was going to be shown and it never was.

Literally, if you put this in the movie, you say, well, one guy's represented by a friend of a friend who never tried a criminal case before this capital murder we're talking about, and the other guys tried by a guy that they literally pulled out a retirement and wheeled him into the courtroom. You guys didn't even know that you're doomed. You're thinking, hey, we go in tell the truth. You were the only guys in the courtroom telling the truth.

And that's the thing that you know, even now gets to me a little bit because I spent twenty seven years in prison when this be nipping of it early on, and I didn't have to never go to prison after twenty seven years. You know, sometimes in your mind you think, well, you should have took there, But what would we have said. We didn't commit the crime, We didn't know anything about It. Took us twenty eight years to learn enough about this

Okay, So they knew you weren't involved from the jump, But since you wouldn't plead to lesser charges that you knew and I think they knew were false, they threw you into this kangaroo court situation tied to Robert Leaf, who was the actual culprit here, and to let the chips fall where they may, that's how they put it.

Right.

So then you were represented by people who had no business whatsoever really even being in this courtroom, right, I mean definitely not as lawyers in a capital murder case and you're literally on trial for your lives. So what was that like.

I can tell you what it was like. Robert Leif's attorney communicated with our attorneys and they spolly had a joint defense, and right towards the time the jury was going out the deliberation, I remember my attorney looking back and saying, I don't think that his attorney was with us, And I said, you think like he was doing everything in his power to get his client the best possible

So the jury goes out, they come back in four or five hours later. Did you guys have hope that they were going to actually see the light and that you were going to be vindicated.

I mean it was just a blur of a moment. Of course, you hold out hope that the system is going to do the right thing. I mean we were raised like everybody else, watching police shows and court shows, and from what they show on TV, it always seemed like the system does the right thing, everything would turn out right, even though everything was looking wrong.

We believed in the system to the point where I had put an application to the police force to being arrested. Like around the time when I got convicted, my wife received the letter saying that I was accepted to go to the next phase.

Jesus Christ. I mean, it's like you had. This was like an alternate reality, the life that should have been right. But okay, so the jury comes back in and the verdict is guilty. I mean, can you tell us about that moment. It's I mean, it's obviously horrible for anyone who experiences it, but here it's worse because one brother had to hear the other brother being declared guilty, followed by being declared guilty himself.

I gotta tell you, being oldest, I probably was the weakest. When I heard the verdict.

It was like I was in a state of shock, and my legs buckled, and I remember I felt like I was going down to the floor, and I remember hearing my grandmom's voice in the back.

Saying, stand up real loud, don't you fall on that ground. Stand up that part. I ain't never gonna forget when they've been to divertict. I felt like I was in the twilight zone, like this wasn't happening, Like somebody's going to come in and say, we're just kidding. This is not how it's supposed to end for us. I mean, we played by the rules. You know, we were taught to work hard for whatever we get in life, and that's what we did. We were taught to mind the

And it was crazy because he immediately SAIDs us to life without the possibility for rule immediately. And you know, when our family got a chance to speak on our behalf, each one of our family members got up there. They said that we didn't commit the crime, and the judge got bad at some point. I think he told my sister that if you're going to say that they didn't commit this crime, then don't need to get up y.

I haven't hurt enough of that. So, I mean, we were to distraught beyond words can describe it. I became angry, angry at the system, angry at myself for allowing myself to even be in that situation. Around a guy like this. And as time went on, my grandmother came to see as my grandmother and my mother and we would just complain and complain about everything that was going on. We was talking about how dark prison was, you know, how

The revenge was going to be to try to send as many guys home as we could that would not come back to prison.

And he talks about the law library, and that law library, we had a couple of tables of men who are all home now, who've all been exonerated. All of us was at those tables in nineteen ninety five, we all sitting around a table. And as the years were about, more and more men came into the institution and they would sit at those tables, and at the end of the day it was two of us as left. At

So while you're doing this amazing work, you're also, of course, you know, simultaneously fighting to overturn your own wrongful conviction. But so much of the information that you were discovering, exculpatory evidence, right tons of it was time barred, which means it was held back, you barred from being introduced because of procedural bullshit.

I mean, it was a lot of things that came, like, you know, the police officer when we found out about the internal fair investigation, they said that was public.

Information that we should have known about it, even though we had no idea that she was going through this, so how would we even know to look for it, So that was time barred. We had a witness individual we ran across who Robert Leif had confessed to because he was also incarcerated.

When we met him, they said that wasn't usable because he's a prisoner, so of course he would help you.

They use confessions against you, but you can't use one from somebody to get out of prison. But he said clearly what happened. Robert Leaf made a statement, and in his statement he identified the person he was with as somebody named Eddie and in the state he said, clearly when they said that this man died, and they believed he did it at the time because they took his jacket and they did paraffine tests on it, they did nitrate tests on his hands and all this kind of stuff like this.

And he said, if the man died, it was his time to die, then if I got to do the time for it, then I'll do the time for it.

That's what he said in his statement. And he said something in the.

Statement referring to us that put us not even with him, so everything that we would get would be time barne. So we spent twenty years pretty much fighting to overcome procedural hurdles. When we was transferred to ci Chester, a staff member who was watching us at the time, he was a counselor, and he started talking to us in general conversation and then one day he called us in they and he asked what was we doing to get out of prison, And we told him about our fight in the courts and about our.

Innocence and everything like this, and he said, you know.

I believe y'all, I really believe everything you've been telling me. And he is the one that suggested to us that we filed for commutation, and at the time we told him that we were actually innocent and that wasn't the venue for commutation.

And he spent months trying to convince us to file for commutation and just to give in, just to agree with him. We said okay, and he introduced us to a professor whose name is Kathleen Brown, who helped a lot of other guys with commutation applications. And she came to see us and we told her our story and she said, well, won't you follow actual innocence application. She said it would be the first one, but just write and just tell him what you told me. And that's what we did.

And the first time we went before the board far as we was denied and we were distraught. And around that time my mom was sick and she passed away not too long after that, and she was so supportive. We didn't talk a lot about her, but she was the person that was fueling our fight for all those years.

You know, my grandma's word just kept bringing in our ears that keep fighting. And we had developed the philosophy of freemen have freed themselves. So we went back to the courts, and then we filed for reconsideration and that was denied. And then we came back and filed for reconsideration again and they granted the reconsideration based on some other stuff. But right before that, the Lieutenant Governor John

I am a Lieutenant Governor, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and I also chair of the Board of Partons and Commutations here and I became acquainted with Dennis and Lee's case during one of their reapplicat for commutation, and when I read through it, I was blown away that these men were ever in prison, let alone struggling to be sent home. It's their background is astonishing. In Pennsylvania, the Board of Pardons requires a unanimous vote of five members. It has

So paint a picture for me. It's February twelfth, twenty twenty one, just two days before Valentine's Day. Governor Wolfe signs the papers, and you're about to see your wife again.

I would tell you honestly, it was extremely amazing and difficult at the same time.

It was like a miracle. It brought a sense of anxiety, but also it was a great feeling of hope. Prison For me it was a darkness I was in, and when I walked out it seemed like everything was bright, everything was beautiful. I could see everything.

Dennis, how about for you and for me?

It was bitter sweet at the same time because my mother was no longer there. She never gave up with fighting with us and to come home, and for her not to be here, I mean, it was just so painful, but it felt good to be free. It was just unbelievable. I felt like I can breathe again. But at the same time, I'm still like bewildered because some may not even get this chance, and I want to see others that are deserving of the same opportunity to get it.

I mean, it's really just an amazing, amazing story perseverance and triumph over struggling tragedy. And you know the fact that you guys, with the inspiration and the support of your families and other people, we're able to take this unimaginable burden and rise above it and turn it into something that enabled you to transform the lives of so many other people, and that you're still doing it today.

What I just would say my call action would be to pay attention to what's going on out here in society and to support criminal justice reform. Every innocent man is not going to make it out of prison, and it's a lot left behind, so we need some sort of criminal justice before and to make a way for others to be able to come out.

Now we've come to the part of the show that's well, it's the closing of the show, but it's become my favorite part of the show. And of course it's called closing arguments, And I want to say, first of all, I appreciate you guys tremendously just for being here and sharing your story. You know, you guys are heroes to me and so many other people, and I'm excited to get this out there, and get this story out in a way in the way that it should have been

So, folks, first of all, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening to my brother and I recount our story. The thing is this, at the end of the day, the people control the system. The system don't control you, but we've gotten to a place where we allow the system to control us. This is supposed to be our system, and we're supposed to hold people accountable

That was just another leg in our journey. The next part of our journey, we hope is spectacular. We want to do a lot of things out here in society. We did a lot of positive working inside and we'll do a lot of positive work out here.

And so what I would say is make sure you pay attention to what's going on. When somebody say they've been wrongfully convicted, try to give them the benefit of the doubt because they could be just like us, two individuals who just took a ride and wind up being arrested and sent away and spend twenty eight years trying to come back home.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava