Beginning on January third, nineteen eighty four, and stretching over the next five weeks, five women were victims of some degree of sexual assault in East Richmond, Virginia. Due to the location, nature of the attacks and similar descriptions of the assailant, police believed that there was a single attacker. On February fifth, nineteen eighty four, eighteen year old Thomas Hainsworth was misidentified.
By one of the victims and arrested.
All five victims eventually echoed the misidentification. Two of the attacks included biological evidence, but in nineteen eighty four, with no DNA testing available, roology could only determine that Thomas's blood.
Type matched that of the attacker.
After one of the charges was dropped, he was tried four separate times, convicted in three cases, and sentenced to seventy four years. Although Thomas was in custody, the assaults continued through December of nineteen eighty four, concluding with the arrest of Leon Davis, a neighbor of Thomas's. According to both men, they wrongly resembled one another. Despite their similar appearances and the continued attacks. Authorities maintained that both men
were guilty. Finally, in two thousand and five, DNA testing excluded Thomas from his only conviction in which there was biological evidence, simultaneously inculpating Leon Davis. After an investigation, the prosecutors joined Thomas and the mid Atlantic Inniscence Project, laying responsibility for all of the attacks on mister Davis. Yet, even without opposition, Thomas's case just barely succeeded in the Court of Appeals, but nevertheless he was finally exonerated after
twenty seven years. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flaman. I want to start by say this episode demonstrates a classic example of why eyewitness identification is so terribly unreliable and why we must keep working to institute practices that safeguard us against the problems with cross racial misidentification as happened in this case, keeping an innocent man in prison for twenty seven years.
And that man is our guest today, Thomas Hainsworth. Thomas, I'm so happy to have you here, even though I hate the reason why you're here, but thank you for taking.
The time to be with us on the show today.
You're wil And with Thomas as somebody who our avid listeners will recognize. Sean Arburst is the sort of the straw that stirs the drink at the mid Atlantic Innocence Project. She is an attorney, she's an advocate, she's a fighter, and she's my friend. And I'm super glad to have you here as well, Shawn, So welcome back to Rawful Conviction.
Thank you, Jason. Great to be here, and it always grew to be with Thomas.
So Thomas, take us back, if you would, what was your life like growing up?
No, Michelle grew up with three sisters and a younger brother, you know, into sports, into music, Like I said, my child it was falling friend, you know.
And you grew up in Richmond, Virginia.
Is that right, right?
Richmond, Virginia? Right?
So it sounds about like what the childhood is more or less I want to say supposed to be like, but pretty much sports music. You know. I'm sure you had your ups and downs like any other teenager. But a series of terrible, terrible crimes sort of rock the city of Richmond at this time. And Sean, can you describe to us what happened?
So the crimes Thomas initially got caught up in were a group of five crimes between January third and February first of nineteen eighty four, and they were all rapes or sexual assaults in the tiny corner of Richmond that's also right on the border of Henryko County. It was four crimes in Richmond, one in Henrico County. And these are eerily similar crimes. They happen at the same time
of day, all white victims. They all describe I mean, it's a fairly generic description because it's white victims describing a black perpetrator. But they all describe someone who looks fairly similar, someone who typically approaches with a knife, who has a series of kind of odd behaviors, says a bunch of odd things. So the sort of prototypical one of these crimes was either early in the morning or
right around dusk. Victim would be approached by a perpetrator outside on the street, and the perpetrator would take the victim to various locations and commit different types of sexual assault, so sometimes vaginal rape, sometimes oral sodomy, sometimes adle sodomy, and would make the victims kind of pretend to be his girlfriend as they were walking around. And when you're looking at a pattern like this, obviously not every crime
fits precisely into the pattern. Some get interrupted. In this case, the attacker was pretty easily scared away. This is part of how he avoided being caught for so long. But it's that same basic arc and these are terrifying crimes.
And the first case the one that said all of this in motion. I believe it was not only the crime itself that was so jarring, but also the location that had occurred in that threw the story to the forefront. So tell us what happened there.
The first case took place on January third, and the victim in that case went to her work at a church preschool and she was waiting for students to come in for the day and was very quickly accosted by a rapist who held her at nice point, raped her, and ran away as the first parents started coming in for the day. And so, you know, if you can imagine it, a woman who she's in her late teen's early twenties, she is in a church, she is waiting for three year olds to come in and is dealing
with the fact that she's just been raped. So right, off the bat, these crimes are really horrific and the kind of crime that make you think you're not safe anywhere, right, And I think it's that mentality that really started making these crimes particularly high profile in Richmond.
And the second crime took place just a few weeks after the first, on January twenty first, and it took place in a grocery store. Again, I think it added to the horror that these assaults were happening in places that we normally think of as being safe spaces, right, A nursery school, a grocery store, And they continued on with alarming regularity, because then the time between the crimes
started shrinking. So we're talking about on January twenty seven, and so now only six days after the second attack, a man with a knife approached a woman outside of her home and demanded money and sex. Sheilo luckily went inside and slammed the door shut and locked it and called the police, so she escaped. Then on January thirtieth, so just three days later, an eighteen year old woman was abducted, raped, and sodomized at gunpoint in Henrico County,
just a few blocks from the other attacks. And then on February first, So again, the windows are just shrinking faster and faster. A nineteen year old woman was adducted at gunpoint outside her East Richmond home. The gunman forced her to go inside the house, but he fled when the family dog began barking at him. And wow, I mean, what a close call that was. So all of these incidents happened within a one mile radius. This guy was almost begging to be caught, but he continued getting away
with it. Now, because of the locations of the attacks, a description of the attacker, and the nature of the assaults, everyone was pretty much on the same page that it was one person that was responsible, right, But what happens in these cases that we see again and again is that there was a misidentification which set this awful chain of events in motion. Take us through that, Sean, if you don't mind.
Absolutely. So, Thomas was walking to the store to get sweet potatoes for his mom and one of the victims saw him and said, that's my rapist. She called police. Police came picked him up, arrested him, and then four more victims identified him as the perpetrator, and that was it.
Now, these are all cross racial eye with its identifications, and that comes with its own problems already, and we find out later that the actual perpetrator did in fact resemble Thomas as well, just adding to the confusion and making it even harder for the victims to make the correct idea. But before we even get into that, Sean, can you tell us a bit about cross racial idea dentification in general.
So what we know, and we know this based on now decades of social science research, is that people are not good at identifying people of different races. We also know that white people are particularly bad at identifying people of different races, particularly when those people are African American. So what we have seen over and over and over again is that the likelihood of an error by an eyewitness is just magnified when it is a cross racial identification,
that is, a white person identifying a black person. If you look at the actual percentage of black on white rapes in the country, it is infinitesimally small. If you look at the percentage of DNA exonerations in rape cases that are black on white rape, it is extraordinarily large. And just those two numbers can tell you all you need to know about the enhanced risk of error when you have black and white idea.
Yeah, and it fits into the stereotype, this sort of racist mythology that has been a part of unfortunately, our culture and our judicial system for as long as we've had one.
And then you can't look at the cross racial nature of these crimes and not talk about where you are and when you're there. So you're in Richmond, which is the capital of the Confederacy, and it's nineteen eighty four, and you cannot divorce these cases from that time period and that place either.
Now, Thomas, tell us what happened when they arrested you and what was going through your mind.
These stopped me in the morning. They said, the lady she picked you out, and she can dentify you. And that's where I was going. I said, I'm going to the store. He said what he used to do. Right here, she could identify the person. I said, yeah, I ain't gonna have que I'm not gonna want So they want to get the female big and brought it back and she looked at me like she won too shore and then he sees some tour and she looked at me again like she won too. Shoe about the person, and
then they did it for the third time. They talked to her in the third time and she just put her hands up, and then they came and said he was unarrest said, I'm the rest for what. They put her handcufs on me and they put me in back patrol car and he took me to the Richardson in jail and.
They got dan Neil. Then when it came to reality, to me what was.
Going on the child's will, rape, production and burking the innswer, I ain't know what to think, you know.
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 relegal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need as
part of Excensure'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. Okay, so the initial identification at least from.
Your perspective looked shaky right.
The victim seemed to go back and forth a few times until throwing her hands up in the air. Then you're arrested, and eventually all five victims misidentified you as the attacker. All five dealing with the cross racial nature of this idea as well as the fact that you actually did resemble the attacker. So you're charged with rape, along with a slew of other charges that came with each incident. I'm talking about our abduction, breaking and entering, robbery, and then you go to trial.
One of my lord they came with suggestion, you know you got these seed childs. I think it the best you will. Please get to, you know, get a life sentence, to get fishball role with Somewhere down the line you got aldy seated charge. You're going to get a license, And I said, now, I'm not gonna plead get into nothing.
Ain't do.
I said, I'd rather pull the try out and I could be found get to convict the license.
I deal with it, but I'm never getting my right up to be innocent though.
So you've got your own defense team trying to push you to admit guilt, which is not unfortuately exactly uncommon. Obviously, some people are actually guilty while others plead guilty just because it's a smarter decision to do so. I mean, fased with the choice of a lenient sentence or the unknown at trial, right, especially when life or even death sentences are you know, dangling over your head. I mean,
with that at play. It's no wonder that convictions are obtained through guilty please, at a rate of close to ninety eight percent, right over ninety seven percent a melody. Convictions of the United States are a result of guilty.
Please.
It's a very understandable choice to make. But when given that choice, Thomas, you held firm in your innocence. I mean, that's a courageous and principled stand to take. Now, Okay, so we go to the trial, right, or should I say the trials, because there were four separate trials. The charges in the January twenty seventh incident where the attacker approached with a knife and the victim fled to her house, those charges were dropped. So for the four trials, though
the prosecution relied on the victims misidentifications of Thomas. Now, in two of the four cases, there was some biological evidence, but in the early eighties there was no DNA testing, only sorology, right.
Yeah, what you have in terms of physical evidence in the nineteen eighties is you can test semen for blood type, and you also can test for something that's known as secretor status. If I am a secretor I'm somebody whose blood type shows up in my other bodily fluids. So like if I spit on a table, you can figure
out my blood type from the spit. A non sec rereader is somebody whose blood type isn't in the spit, So they were in you know, at least a couple of Thomas's cases able to do that very limited amount of science, but that's science. It could give you percentages, but the percentages were pretty big, right, So think about all the people in the world who have type oh blood. Well, that's what you can really narrow down to. So you know, Thomas was in that case in the population of people
who could have committed the crime. But that's a really big population of people.
Right, So it really doesn't do a great job of proving anything at all. Zerology is actually really better at ruling a suspect out rather than in and There's also a moment in one of the trials where Thomas's height should have ruled him completely out.
So in the case in Henrico County, the victim had sworn and believed correctly, it turns out that her rapist was taller than her. She described the rapist as being about five to ten Thomas's five six. So Thomas's lawyer actually had the two of them stand next to each other in that trial to demonstrate that Thomas was actually shorter than this victim. But this is part of why I witnessed testimony is so powerful. Right, This still didn't
shake her confidence that Thomas was the perpetrator. She was still one hundred percent sure that Thomas did it. And so there's not much a defense lawyer could do in nineteen eighty four in the face of that kind of testimony.
So the charges had been dropped in the January twenty seventh incident, but you still had to sit through similar proceedings four times over, where the facts of four very real, unspeakably horrible assaults were presented, but along with no meaningful physical evidence to implicate you, even the fact that you didn't match the January thirtieth victims, description of the assailant's height. And now the jury goes out four times on you, and I've got to imagine that the first time was
probably the hardest pill to swallow. Right the January third break in and rape at the nursery school. How long did that particular trial last?
I reme in the first trial they last I think a day and a half.
The Jid could not come to a verdict, and Jill Center back home overnight and told them to think about him, and they came back the next day, I think about three hours they deliberated, and then they came back for.
The gilt, the virtue. And I was devastated.
My family devastated because the three charges at the beginning with rape, breaking the interest, and Robert Lloyd got them to miss the robber child. So I left the jew only with two charges and rape and bringing the interest. They came back. Their family get to the rape, but their family not get to breaking into the entrant. The parpartrat had to break into the place and rate the person. So I would wonder how you could find me guilt
to on one and not the other. And I noticed something about the jerid and all my trials, every time their family guilty, they give me the lowest sentence on each charges. If they cared fired in life, they get five year. If you get twenty to life, they give me twenty years. Because they had no sustained evidence that placed me at the cram scene.
The only thing to hear is her words against my worry.
So now you're since ten years, and I mean, this would seem to be the worst day in anybody's life, but you have to still stay on trial in these other cases. Then you got thirty six years for January thirtieth, Then you were acquitted for the January twenty first incident, and finally wrongfully convicted again for the February first incident
and sentenced to another twenty eight years. I mean, it's hard to even read this stuff, and you lived it, and thus begins your saga of being a number instead of a name.
When I got into the penitential, I think was that I'm not gonna see here lay there to take this. I'm not gonna sit here and to be a part of this corrupt system. I'm not gonna sit here that accept your selve it for my family and my life. You know, at the age of eighteen, I'm not gonna see, you know, waste all my life and penitendence. So I had to go there. I'm right to the end. I had things I know I had to do when I
first added to the system. The third thing I asked with the old library was and I signed them for that. Then I signed up for the GED class and I signed them for college. So my thing was that, you know, I won't prove these people wrong. Now I'm in the place that I had to grew up overnight. I had become a man over night. It took me three years just to open up to people. I did nothing for three years this working went to school. I had to learn quick and be quick on my feet of thinking
all the time. And you know, I had a couple older guys guide me, telling me the young blood sign up for school, take all the trades, and take a opportunity to and get some of the guys that stayed me in the right way. And they gave me good device and I took each to that.
Well, it sounds like there were some good people in there who were mentors to you. So I guess there was a little bit of light in this miserable dark tunnel.
That you were in.
And now we've got to turn our attention to a very important part of this terrible story, which is that while you were incarcerated, when the rapes should have stopped, they didn't stop at all. They actually increased. They continued throughout the East Richmond area, where another at least ten women reported being attacked by a young African American man who actually asked his victims to call the police and
referred to him as the quote black ninja. Now, on December nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, two Richmond residents saw a man following a woman down the street. He was arrested. This was a guy named Leon Davis. Now this is crazy, right. So Leon was actually your neighbor, Thomas, and you saw
him on January thirtieth, right after that incident. But it didn't click for you, right, The dots didn't connect until you were hearing the victim's story and the witnesses at your own preliminary hearing for that incident.
Right, what was on January thirtieth?
I was in my nixt birthday pond and I came outside of the front one of my friend they did who was on the front talking and Leon Davis came from the side of the house.
He's a leopard, and I looked at him. I said, well, happ to you?
And he said I would come down downtown mess with the white girls down there, and so they'll say, man, you don't you gonna put me down there?
He said yeah, he said, it chased me and I failed. It hit my leg.
At that time I had on one interacted with him. So then when my preminer here and when the victor seid what happened? How she told her friend and he chased them. I was saying to myself, Wow, there was to day on my niece birthday party. I was at home the day and I told my lawyer, I said, look at this guy named lil Lin in the street from me. I think he had something to do with it. And I told her to take the heart. Also, the leader taken on my case. But you know, my worry fell on death.
Yeah. They ain't pay me, no man.
And if only they would have, who knows how many of these other crimes could have been prevented. Sean tell us about this Leon Davis guy and how they managed to miss what should have been obvious signs.
So in the opinion of the Richmond Police Department and the Hunreca Police Department. The crimes that Thomas was convicted of, those types of crimes stopped when Thomas was arrested, and there was a break in crimes like this until April, and that is when Leon Davis, according to the original
government narrative, began his crime spree. I think what the police missed, of course, is that he just never stopped his crime spring, but he was committing crimes that looked an awful lot like, specifically like the last crime Thomas was convicted of, which is the one in Henriiko County where he made the woman walk around and pretend she was his girlfriend. And so he was able to keep committing these crimes in an incredibly brazen way until his
arrest in December nineteen eighty four. One of the most interesting stories I think in this case is what I didn't believe when Thomas told me at first. He told me that when he and Leon were locked up together, Leon approached him in the Richmond City jail and said, hey, you know, we kind of look alike. I've got a hearing coming up in my case. Would you Thomas mind standing in for me Leon at defense table to see if we can confuse the victim, to see if the
victim would identify you instead of me. Wow, And I thought Thomas had to be making that up because it's too crazy to be true. But I actually confirmed it. So this is something Leon new, it's something Thomas knew. And even though it didn't appear that the police were putting two and two together, there was one interrogation record of Leon Davis where he was asked if he knew Thomas.
But I think for a lot of the police officers at the time, there's that ongoing stereotype about black men being sexual predators, and so I think it was probably quite conceivable to the police department at the time that there could just be two people who were black men going around and doing the same thing.
I mean, it's a crazy coincidence. And you've mentioned earlier, Sean, about the fact that these crimes are exceedingly rare, in fact, that that stereotype based on nothing.
Yeah, I mean the lone black speak up in Thomas's neighborhood. He apparently told detectives at the time, you got the wrong kid, like this just isn't him. But detectives didn't buy it. Even the juries struggled in this case. The January third rape that went to trial first was supposed to be the strongest case. But as you heard Thomas say, the jury really struggled to reach a verdict. And that first case sentenced Thomas to ten years, and that was
supposed to be the strong case. So even at the time, there should have been warning signs that this wasn't right and someone should have put two and two together, but they didn't.
Okay, So let's get to the good part. Because in Thomas's case, just as his trials were particularly screwy, the process of getting him out took some twists and turns that we don't often see.
All Right, Thomas's case first came to our attention because he wrote to us, but the context in which he wrote to us was a little bit different. There had been several people at that point who had been exonerated based on DNA tests done on evidence like little tiny clippings of evidence, clippings of Q tips, clippings of underwear clothing that had been saved by a particular analyst at Virginia's Department of Forensic Science. After a few of those exonerations.
Then Virginia Governor Mark Warner ordered the State Crime Lab to do DNA testing in every single case between nineteen seventy three and nineteen eighty nine where there was physical evidence saved in these files. The Lab sent out of letters to people who had been convicted and who now had DNA testing happening in their cases, and I was listed as the contact person in those letters. So he
already wrote to me as a potential DNA case. But then I got a call from a Richmond Times Dispatch reporter named Frank Green who said, there's a case you got to jump on. It's this guy, Thomas Hainsworth. I covered his trial. I also covered the trial of the guy who did it. Frank had gotten hold of the DNA reports in the case, and it was one of
the three cases where Thomas had been convicted. The DNA excluded Thomas as the perpetrator and linked to Leon Davis as the perpetrator, and this was great news for Thomas. But the problem was that we only had DNA in one of the three cases where Thomas was convicted. What we did have was potential DNA in the case where Thomas had been acquitted. So we worked with the Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney to get that evidence tested, and once again it cleared Thomas and linked to Leon Davis.
Wow, and it would seem like this is where things should have just opened up for Thomas, that he should have been right on his way out of there, right, But unfortunately that's just not the way this played out.
So at that point, what we had was five rapes and sexual assaults in a five week period that everyone thought were committed by the same person, and we know concretely that two were committed by Leon Das for most people, logically, that gets you to a place where you say, well, Leon Davis did the rest of these crimes, right, everyone thought they were the same person. But that kind of
deduction is an evidence, right. So even though at that point the Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney thought Thomas was innocent, the Virginia Attorney General hen Kuchinelli, a very right wing conservative, was on the way to thinking Thomas was innocent. You
can't prove anything in court that way. What you have to do is go to the Virginia Court of Appeals and file something very legal sounding called a writ of actual innocence, and you have to have proof, so we did a couple of different things to try to get us there. Thomas took polygraph tests, one for the Richmond crimes that he was convicted of and one for the Henriko County crime he was convicted of. Passed both with
flying colors. Of course, we don't necessarily believe too much in the reliability of polygraph tests, but it was something that the prosecutors could use to sort of justify why they believed in Thomas's innocence. And then what we had
was the similarities between the crimes. So we worked with the Attorney General's Office and the Commonwealth Attorney to meticulously document all of the similarities between the crimes that we knew Leon Davis had committed and the remaining convictions on Thomas's record, and using all of that, we filed a rid of actual innocence in the Court of Appeals and I think February of twenty eleven, so Thomas was still in prison, we were able to get him paroled and
released unfortunately as a sex offender. While the case was pending. We had an oral argument in March of twenty eleven, and again there was no one opposing Thomas's exoneration except the court. That oral argument did not go well. It was pretty clear that the court just didn't believe we had met the burden we were supposed to meet in the case. In the summer of twenty eleven, the Court of Appeals came back to us and said, all of the judges on the court want to sit for another
oral argument in this case. And at the time, in order to win a rid of actual innocence, you had to prove by clear and convincing evidence that no rational trier of fact could find proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And that is, to anyone normal out there, that just sounds like a bunch of like legal legal, legal boring. It's about as highest standard as you can have. So we did that oral argument. Thankfully, six of the ten judges ultimately agreed that Thomas deserved to have his
convictions overturned and to be exonerated. So we won by six to four. But to put that in perspective, we only won by one vote in a case where the Attorney General's office agreed with us, which is pretty extraordinary.
Pretty terrifying, actually, I mean it's absolutely terrifying. Yeah, I mean, you almost lost. In other words, with overwhelming evidence of innocence, the attorney General, prosecutors, everybody going, hey, guess what, this was a mistake. Here, a terrible mistake. This guy's innocent, and yet you won by one vote. I mean, this is well, this is.
What happens when you have bad laws. So many exonerations depend on just having a decent person on the other side who's gonna wink and nod when the bad laws in front of them, And that's not what happens in Virginia. Winking and nodding doesn't work, so you're stuck with the bad law.
So, Thomas, from your perspective, finally you've got a fantastic team and all the things are lining up. Everybody's starting to acknowledge what you've been saying all along, that you're innocent. But you're finally freed with all these conditions. You got to wear an ankle monitor, you're on the sex offender registry. What was it like to walk out into the light, even with all those sort of caveats and restrictions.
It was frustrated. I mean I would have to.
Be out, just come home, get on the bat. I wanted to this because I was paying attentional and you come home and be back with your family.
When I first came home, I had to meet with one of my probation office. I think Sean was with me.
I knew damn high condition because I was still, you know, a regular sex offender.
I didn't have no problem with that.
You know, I'm gonna apply to the law, and I'm gonna be obedient to the law what I got to do to maintain my freedom. But when she told me that if I choose to date somebody, I had to bring in person down before she could meet them and she could tell.
Them what I'm locked up for.
You know, while my cues are and I looked at Sean, and I told Sean I had more freedom in rites and prison I had on the street. It was a little bit hard getting adjusted to it, because really, you home, you got all the conditions, still leave as a sex offender and still convict the feather. You still ain't even really free. For me, I couldn't go nowhere. I had to be in the house by five o'clock. I couldn't go out the house after that. I couldn't leave one
hundred feet from my house. I had this mom so I had the word round my leg and I had this big wad you had to put in my pocket contraction, and it was frustrated when I told Sean, look, we got to get this over. I'm tired of the rest of six offenom signed the feather, you know, I just want this over and done.
Now we get to the best part, which is that in twenty eleven, ten years ago, when you were freed and then finally you were exonerated, formally exonerated, cut that ankle bracelet off, and Governor Bob McDonald signed legislation which provided you with compensation as well, which is unfortunately most exogneries never get compensation. But I'm really glad that you did. It wasn't nearly enough, but at least it gave you a chance to get started, I would say, with a
new life. So what was it like when you finally were vindicated.
It's something that I've strived to do since day one, just to prove my innocative. I mean Sean and Kean Kuchen, you know, they did an outstand the child. I couldn't ask nothing out. I mean, just being literated, being back and getting clams off my back, getting my name stored that be the person that you know. You all not be who they want you to be, the bravest monster that me portrayed me to be.
That's how I want, you know. Once I got my.
Name clear, none have to matter. In a day, she called me and say you want sixty four. I didn't care like she said. We're one by one folk and I did a function one time and one of the judges who went against me, he got there, spoke and he got them.
He looked at me, sir Thomas, I'm sorry, I got it wrong.
I went against you. I told him, hey, I don't want no girls against you. What happened, happy, and I'm free. That's all that matters.
That calls one of the best calls I've ever gotten to make.
So now we turned to my favorite part of the show, which is called closing arguments. And closing Arguments is part of the show where I first of all, thank both of you again, Sean Armbers from the mid Atlantic Innocence Project and Thomas Haynesworth for sharing your incredible stories here today and just for being who you are in the world. Because I can't even describe how much respect I have for each of you for them reasons. And with that,
here's how closing arguments works. I'm going to turn off my microphone, kick back in my chair and leave my headphones on, probably close my eyes, and just listen to whatever else you want to share with our audience. Let's start with you, Sean, and save the man Thomas Haynesworth for the final closing argument.
So what I want to say is that sometimes people listen to these stories and hear them as proof that the system works. They hear them as proof that, well, we got it wrong, but eventually we did get it right. And in every single one of these cases that I have worked on, every exoneration I've seen has been an example of the system actually not working the way it was intended to work. Innocent people getting out is the
opposite of what's supposed to happen. There's an extraordinary confluence of circumstances that has to happen to even put someone in a position to be exonerated. Mary Jane Burton, the lab technician of the Department of Front Sciences, had to decide that she was going to be the analyst who kept random clippings of stuff in her files. She had to be assigned to Thomas's case. Three other people had
to be exonerated. The governor had to order testing in those cases, the lab had to agree to notify people, and that person had to be me, and Thomas had to be Thomas. All of those things had to happen just to put Thomas in a position to even prove his innocence, and then from there. The scariest thing to me about Thomas's case is that the standard to actually win was so high that the court wasn't necessarily wrong
that we should lose. That's how high it was, even in a case where innocence is as obvious as Thomas's, and we won anyway. And so his freedom isn't the result of anything going the way it was supposed to. It was really the result of everything going the opposite of the way it's.
Designed to work.
So for all of you out here who are taking the time to learn about this issue, which is super important and one of the many reasons why I think Jason is a national treasure, try to remember that changing that system is absolutely crucial if we really are going to try to protect people who get convicted of things they didn't do.
Thomas over to you, yeah.
I just want to say to the any surpriject that Sean I should appreciate the hard way did y'all do?
Fore the New feel and all them. I can't speak for having more about their surproject.
I just want to say to people, whatever you're going through, you feel you've been wrong convicted wrong because don't give up stand on your brand. You know if you don't give up a BIS, you will overcome. If you know anybody who'll be wrong, speak up for them. I'm living
the best life. Things ain't turning where I want them, but it ain't turn out batter for me, and I just want you to keep chinue to stride, don't give your claim but to be right standing, your innocent and they's stand up for yourself.
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
for Good on all three platforms. You can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with Signal Company Number one