On the night of January tenth, two thousand and nine, forty three year old Jerome Loach was performing as one of the leads in a church play in South Philadelphia. At the same time, police were responding to a home invasion in West Philadelphia in which two men forced themselves into a home at gunpoint, confronting three women. Nothing was stolen and no one was hurt. As police arrived, they saw two men running away and arrested Sophie Batt and
Jesse Higgins. One of the victims, stated that there was a third man involved in In Batt's original statement, he said that he didn't know the person, but under threat of deportation and other charges by investigators, Fat changed his story to say that the third man was his employer at a barber shop, Jerome Loach. Jerome was arrested when charged with forty two counts, but prior to trial, Bat recanted
his identification, citing pressure from investigators. Despite this, the prosecution read Bat's prior statement to the jury in light of the actual exculpatory phone records. An investigator misled the jury with fabricated phone records to tie Jerome into the crime. When the defense failed to present Jerome's alibi or to expose the fake phone records. Jerome was convicted and sentenced
to twenty five to fifty years. Jerome was able to win an evidentiary hearing in which he was able to present his alibi and expose the fraudulent phone records, proving both ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial misconduct, ultimately setting himself free after a decade in prison. This is romful conviction. Welcome back to ronful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flomm.
Today's episode would actually be better as a comedy if it wasn't so incredibly sinister and if the consequences were so terror of this ridiculous frame job. And when I say that, I'm talking about Jerome Loach. So, Jerome, first of all, welcome to wrongful Conviction. I'm sorry you're here, but I'm happy you're here.
Thank you, and the audience will allow me to come before y'all and share my story.
So, Jerome, you grew up in Philadelphia, is that right?
Yes, sir?
Feel listen, what was your life like growing up and what were your interactions with law enforcement before this crazy day?
Essentially, I grew up in a single parent household. My father passed away when I was about ten years old. That left my mother to raise six children. I took to the streets at of every young age. I wound up getting caught up in little nicknacked crimes, nothing serious, but just getting caught up with the wrong crowd.
All my other.
Siblings they wound up growing up to become successful entrepreneurs, ministers. My brother, he went on his served twenty five years in the army, and so I was the only one that made that wrong turn.
I was young at the time.
I served my time, and during my incarceration, I went to the University of Pittsburgh, went to college.
I wound up getting a couple of trades.
One of the main trade was in barbering, and I wound up getting my license. I transformed that and wound up getting my manager's license, and so when I come back home, I wound up getting into real estate and
opening up a barbershop. Once I opened up the barbershop, I felt the need to want to give back, and so those individuals that was returning home, ex offenders and things of that nature who had the barbered license, I would hire them at my barbershop, you know, give them like a second chance, like I got a second chance, try to get their life in order and doing this.
One individual that I wind up hiring was an individual by the name of Sophie fat And this is how this story in my life began to take a change.
Yeah, it adds a layer of tragedy to this awful injustice because it impacted you and your family, but also the opportunities that you were providing for people who really needed those opportunities. Let's go back to the case itself. So at nine point fifteen on January tenth, two thousand and nine, the Philadelphia Police responded to a report of
a home invasion in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of West Philadelphia. Now, three women were in the house, and they said that a man knocked on their door pretending to be a pizza delivery guy. He and another man forced their way in at gunpoint. But here's where it gets really weird, right. They asked one of the women where her boyfriend was. She said she didn't know, and soon they left without taking anything, sort of apologetically, from what I understand, they
were like, you know, sorry, we bothered you. Type of thing I mean, And in the end, nobody was hurt and nothing was stolen. Okay, very unusual set of circumstances here. So then police approached the he Wow. So they saw two guys running away, and they arrested two guys, a guy named Sophie Fat and Jesse Higgins. They recovered a bandana and a gun holster from Higgins at a tourist revolver from an alley where Higgins was found running. The women identified both of the guys as the home invaders
and said that they're in the invasion. This is an important point. Higgins would perceive a call and turned to Fat and said let's go right before they left Esventually, they were both charged with Berkeley conspiracy from at Berkeley So one of the women said there was a third person, a black man in his twenties, about six feet tall, with the tan jacket and jeans, who got away. Now. She told police that one of the other women might have known this man, implying that the home invasion had
been a setup. Sophie Fatt made a statement to Detective John Druding on January eleventh that he didn't know who this third man was besides that his nickname was Rome. So, Jerome, did you match the description of that person in any meaningful way?
No, no, no, no, I'm about twice that age number at that particular time. I'm mid forties, my built, everything was totally opposite. Nothing about her description match me. And we know that to be true because afterwards, a year or so later, when my picture was given to all the victims, they all said they couldn't identify me, that they didn't know who I was. Sophie Fat, in his original statement, he never said that there was three people
that came in the house. He said that it was another person that was involved in the planning, and that this person came to the house but never came in the house. Sophie Fat also stated that he was upstairs and he came downstairs and that's when the second person, Jesse, said we have to go. Sophie Fat never claimed in his first statement that he heard.
A phone call. He's seen a phone call, none of that.
And Jesse, of course versus Jesse Higgins, who was Sophie Vatt's co defendant. And in October of that year it had been ten months since the crime, Sophie Fatt made a deal with prosecutors, and this happens again and again, where people receive almost an offer they can't refuse in exchange for implicating basically anybody else. So in this new statement, Fat now said that you, Jerome, were involved in the invasion and were the person he had previously identified as Rome.
He said that you persuaded him to commit the home invasion to pay off a debt, and that you had been there during the robbery, had given Fat, who posed as a pizza deliverer, a gun, and had texted Higgins during the crime. So what do you think caused him to finger you? I mean, other than the obvious, which was that he had to pick someone out if he wanted to take some of the heat off of himself.
Well, I don't know what was in Fat's mind, but what I do know is that Fat came under a lot of pressure from the police officers. They was threatening with deportation, they was threatening with fifty years, all types of stuff.
And yeah, it's sad because you were a guy who had given Fat an opportunity working in your barbershop. So it's almost like a Shakespearean twist to this whole thing for him to come forward and implicate you. So this crazy case began under the district Attorney Lynn Abraham, who was wrapping up a very checkered twenty year tenure, to say the least. But her successor was the newly elected Seth Williams, and when he picked up this case, he decided to make it an example of how tough on
crime he was. And so, jero on December nineteen, two thousand and nine, you were charged with forty two counts related to the incident, including two counts of robbery and single counts of criminal conspiracy, burglary, falls and prisonment, terroristic threats at attempted theft. But neither fat nor Higgins had been charged with the majority of these alleged crimes. And then you were arrested January fourth, twenty ten. But here's
the thing. We haven't even scratched the surface on this insanity, because what adds another huge layer to all of this is your alibi. Your airtight alibi. I mean, in a world of alibis, yours was truly top tier. If someone could get convicted with an albi like yours, then nobody is saved from this. So tell us what you were doing at exactly the time that this crazy situation was unfolding.
At the time that this whole thing was unfolding, I was performing in a play called Clean Up Your Own Mess.
It was a church play.
And it had two viewings, one on the afternoon and one doing an evening.
In time, I'm one of the lead characters in this play.
You know, billboards, paste ubs, everything showing that I'm at this play.
And while was at this play, this crime was going on.
So how many people were there?
You know, we looking at over one hundred people, so that was there at this play.
So again, there's not too many cases I've ever heard of where you have over one hundred alibi witnesses. Now, your first attorney didn't even investigate the albi, right, which would not be a difficult alibi to investigate. I mean, you throw a stick out there and you'd hit one of the witnesses, so you replaced her, and the new attorney said he would investigate it and presented a trial.
But as the case approached the time of trial, that attorney told you and your family that he couldn't present his alibi defense because the first attorney failed to give adequate notice to the court. I mean, it's just unbelievable. But there you were heading into your trial, and there's yet another statement from Sophie Fatt. Please tell us about that.
So once he gave his statement, a month later he gave another state and guess what. It exonerated me of everything before I even go to trial. Before anything happens, he said, hey, hold up, I lie. This man never had nothing to do with this case. I made it up because I was trying to get a better deal. And so when we go to trial, he takes the stand and he told them over after he was badgered by the DA, he said, listen, this man ain't had nothing to do with this case.
I lied, And they didn't want to believe that.
They went so far as to say that I may have gotten somebody to get at him. Well, that didn't work, because he wound up saying, hey, I'm the leader of an Asian gang.
And I'm not afraid of none of this.
He hasn't been threatened, that no one had been approached.
They didn't want to believe that.
So two of the women testified and didn't identify you. Fat came clean and said that you had nothing to do with this, that he had lied previously, because he was threatened with deportation. And then Higgins, who pleaded guilty, didn't testify at all, So the prosecutors had basically nothing to go on at this point, so they had to make up something, right, and that's where these phantom phone records come in. We've been doing this show for over
five years, two hundred and fifty episodes or whatever. I don't think I've ever heard this one. Just follow along with me for a second here. Okay, So prosecutors used phone records to try to show that you were involved, right, What they actually showed was that you weren't involved. The original records they suppeeded in two thousand and nine were almost completely exculpatory for you. Higgins's phone showed no local calls at all on the day of the crime, so
that blows it up right there. Then the police assumed that the records were wrong, so they weren't introduced into evidence. Let me just say that again. Police assumed that the records, which weren't wrong because they couldn't have been wrong, were wrong. Then they used a digital tool called a universal Forensic Extraction device to get records directly from the phone. But this also showed no calls or text between Higgins and you on the day of the crime, So okay, again,
should be case closed, But nope. So this is where Detective Christopher ten Kellowix ended up going into Higgins's phone and looking at the call log. Now a trial, he testified as an expert in digital forensics, said that he quote manually extracted twenty five calls between the phone allegedly belonged to Higgins and a phone registered to Loach's wife. He manually extractedly, but I'm trying to figure out what
that means. He also said he found a text from the Loach phone to the Higgins phone, made a few hours before the home invasion, and this info was contained in a quote unquote supplemental report that Detective tank Kellowick's attached to the uped report. So, I mean, drum, what the hell.
Man this here?
It pains me to talk about it a lot of times. Essentially, what happened was that because the young lady said that there was a phone call, they needed something to corroborate that. They then got Sophie Fat and then instead of Sophie Fat saying that it was a phone call, he slips and say that it was a text message and it's on record now.
Has that never came out, I probably still would be doing fifty years in prison.
Detective John Juden, he was the lead detective on this case and he was the one who obtained the phone records a year before I even got arrested Sophie Fat and mister Higgins was already convicted a year before me.
And so Judy goes on this stamp.
He's talking insane things about the phone records. So we had to get what he said then in compare to what he's saying a year later now. And so when he got the phone records back then, he said that there was no local phone calls on mister Higgins's phone records. He then looked at Sophie fat phone records and there was again no phone calls between.
Us, so that was a problem.
He then turned around and he got with a detective named Christopher tink Kellowists.
He was a detective.
Who moonlighted as an expert in forensics. Mister tank Kelligish had the phone records from AT and T and Sprint, both of these phone companies basically said there is no phone calls during this time period. That equates it's the Loaches phone to these phones.
None. Not only that, the phone company.
Said this phone itself do not have the capabilities to make texts, but they withheld all of that. Tank Calliquish said, let's use a universal for rigic distraction device. This is the device that FBI and everybody else uses to extract information from phones and computers. And he plugged that into the phone and in two minutes it extracted no phone calls. And this is what tank Calliquish testified to after the report that none of this stuff was.
In that phone.
He then picked up the phone a day two days later, and miraculously he sees twenty five phone calls and a text message all around the time of this crime.
So he saw twenty five calls that AT and T had the incontroversial evidence never happened, and a text mess since that AT and T said the phone was incapable of sending. I mean, this is this is really dark stuff.
And it gets crazier because we say Higgins phone, well that was a lie.
It wasn't even his phone.
Sprint wind up sending records saying that Higgins never owned the phone, that this phone that they looking at belongs to someone else, and they misrepresented the facts, They concealed the evidence, you know, and they made it all appear to be something that it wasn't. Sprint records came back and said those was no twenty five calls at and T said, those wasn't twenty five calls at and T said that phone can't even text. But that's where when you say manually extract.
That sounds real technical.
But all he did was picked the phone up and looked at it, a phone that supposedly been sitting in evidence for over a year. So you saying that every other police officer or detective before tank Calibers who had that phone looked at this phone and they didn't see none of this because Detective Judie said that in order for him to get the phone number from that phone, he had to turn it on and look through the phone, and he said he could not find nothing in the phone.
That's because there was nothing in the phone. And it still gets crazier from here, because the police also had mister Fatt's phone records which showed a call at one twenty two and nine oh seven to the phone registered to your wife, right, because he was somebody who worked for you and you knew him right, but equally important, the phone continued to be used after fats arrest at nine to twenty pm on January tenth, two thousand and nine. So Detective Drudien testified that Fat would have had his
phone confiscated upon arrest. Of course he would, and he was unable to explain these additionalks. That's crazy. So the prosecutor closed by referencing the text from you to Higgins and said that the phone records showed a coordinated effort by the three of you. Loach Batten Higgins. He said, quote at nine oh seven pm, the robbery is underway. Sophie Fat is in the middle of this robbery. Who does he call? He calls the defendant. Why would he
do that? Ladies and gentlemen, There were twenty five phone calls that day. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time I called someone twenty five times in a day. The only way that's happening, something very important must be happening. Think about it. Something in your life. You know a baby, you know a job promotion, you get on the phone, you keep calling people. Well, this robbery is important it's important to the defendant, it's
important to fat and Higgins. End quote. What a steaming pile of bullshit that is. Oh my god, that's the quote from the closing argument. What is wrong with these people? So during deliberations, jurors asked to review the cell phone records for Higgins. Prosecutors told the judge that they didn't have the actual record us to supplemental report, So they withheld the real records, they substituted this quote unquote supplemental report,
and that was what was given to the jurors. I actually feel sick for the jurors because they were sitting there having no ability to make a decision based on facts.
You absolutely hit it on the nail. I do not fuck the jury. They only go on what's presented before them. And the jury acts three times. We want to see those phone records from Sprint. And that's when the DA said, yeah, no, we don't have those, and the judge was kind of like taking a back, like, huh, well, what was.
We using during the trial.
He said, oh, that was a report that was prepaid by the detective.
And the judge said, well, they don't want to see that.
They want to see the actual phone records, and so they asked the jury, listen, we don't have the phone records. Do y'all want to see the report? That's the only thing we have. And the jury took this and they convicted me. I do not falk the jury for what they did because they only went on what was resented before them.
So the jury convicted you of criminal conspiracy on May twenty seven, twenty eleven, but it quitted you on all the other charges. So that moment when the jury came back in, I mean, you had seen what these people were capable of, and you'd been through a lot of insanity already. Did you still hold out hope that you were going to be exonerated and the truth would come out? And what was it like to find out that you were going to prison for fifty years?
I honestly believe I was going to be exonerated because I knew I was innocent. But when that verdict came back, it took everything out of me. The only way that I can explain it, and my soul was stripped when they gave me fifty years.
I couldn't believe it. I said, I know my life ain't going in like this is y'all kidding me? Like, wake me up? Is this a nightmare?
I went in fighting because I said, if I'm going to die in here, I'm going to die fighting. And twice my life almost came to it end while being in prison. The psychological and physical torture that I experienced while being incarcerated. I am subjected to being in the cell by myself because the psychological issues that I have been dealing with, PTSD and things of that nature. And one day I fell out and myself out completely nine ten o'clock at night, I have to be rushed to
the hospital. Outside hospital in which I stayed for a few days, my blood pressure shot to the roof. I can recall the doctor said, why is your blood pressure so high? I said, why did y'all convict me? That's why my blood pressure is so high. And so another incident is when I couldn't walk no more than a hundred feet before I would pass out, and no one could understand why. I wind up being admitted to the
hospital for a couple of weeks. This time I wind up learning that I have a severe case of a needing. So now I have to take medication for the rest of my life to help me throughout the day.
And so all these things.
That I have been experienced with distress and loss of loved ones and things this nature like it just tormented me beyond torment. I can't describe it now. I don't wish this on my worsest enemy. What they've done to me, you know.
I can't even imagine. But during this time, you're also pursuing your claims of innocence, and Michael Pelegi began representing you after you had filed pro sae emotions and I know you had appealed the conviction arguing that a potential juror had been dismissed due to his race, that that's out of court statement was too unreliable to be admitted
to evidence. Sounds like you became a pretty good lawyer in Print and yourself, and in fact, you went so far and I loved this part of the story to send a subpoena to Higgins's phone company Sprint, including one way you referred to yourself as the law office of Jerome Loja. I love that.
Yes, that's how the phone records began to unravel. What I did was I had the love of my family still out here in society still to this day, and my brother went down to city Hall and for five dollars he got me some subpoenas from the courthouse and sent them back up to the prison and I filled those subpoenas out and I subpoenaed the phone company. Well, they thought I was working with the DA's office, and they wind up sending me the phone records saying that mister Higgins doesn't have a.
Phone registered to them.
That blew my mind because all through my trial transcripts, that's all they talked about is that the police subpoena mister Higgins's phone records. So I said, well, hold on, if they don't have no phone records for mister Higgins, then who is these phone records? So then I had to do another subpoena, and this time I subpoena the name that was used for this phone and they wound up coming back to a female and I said, wow,
they had this and they didn't tell me. And that's when I started learning about the twenty five phone calls that never existed, the text messages that never existed. It like, everything began to unravel from that point.
So they were making up calls from a phone that didn't exist. I mean, the layers of misconduct is a word I'm going to use, but it's stronger than that. And what eventually happened is that after all of this stuff came to light, prosecutors tried to push back. They said that You're claims were speculative, but the state said it would not oppose an evidentiary hearing about whether the trial attorney was ineffective for failing to secure the testimony
of alibi witnesses. The little victory there At the hearing, your lawyer, Pelegi, presented evidence of your incredibly powerful alibi, including the playbill that mentioned your role in the production that was distributed to the one hundred plus people who attended the show at the church. So there was literally a zero percent chance you could have been in both places at the same time. And so on July twenty four to twenty twenty, Judge Tracy roman Brandeis vacated your
conviction in order the new trial. She said that your attorneys had been ineffective and that the state had engaged in misconduct by failing to disclose accurate phone records. So this is not me saying, and this is the judge and prosecutors with the DA's Conviction Integrity Unit under the Great Larry Krasner, agreed that there were problems with the conviction, but they still didn't want to dismiss the case. Yet they offered you a deal to plead guilty, to reduce
charge and become eligible for parole. Now I know you turned it down, but did you even give it a second thought. That's a hard decision to make, right.
Well, my lawyer, he fought with me, you know, he was very concerned about me just getting out like not during the fifty years. And he was doing what any lawyer would do and say, hey, listen, this may be a good one.
We can roll the dice and things can have bad luck. Again.
I didn't think twice because if you won't convict me, then you're gonna have to do this again, because I didn't do this, and I'm ready to prove my innocence. I think that he saw that and he was convinced, and he gave me.
His full support and said, well, let's move forward. And we moved forward.
The judge came back and said there was a constitutional violation in this man's case. There was a serious, egregious Brady violation, y'all withheld these records. And not only that this man had a fight alibi defense woo.
That sent me to the moon.
The main thing that I think that was so telling was how the judge came back with the Brady claim in the violation of the constitutional right, that this was an unfair trap, that they can seal those phone records, that they misrepresented those records. I think that she really gave me what I would consider justice.
Wow. Listen, it's a beautiful ending to a truly miserable story. And of course, on June twenty fourth, twenty twenty one, almost a year later, the state of Pennsylvania dismissed the charges, stating that the prosecutors had admitted that they had insufficient evidence to move forward with a retrial. He had already been released on house arrestenced the judge's decision. But now
you're a free man. And on July thirteenth, twenty twenty one, you follow a lawsuit against the City of philed you as well as against Detective tech Kelowitz and Detective Druding in the US District Court seeking compensation for your wrongful conviction and Jerome, let's talk about that, because to this date, you've received exactly zero dollars in compensation. Is that right?
Yes, I have you seved no compensation whatsoever. They kicked me out the prison and said, and you is you got out of here after decade or more being incarcerated, losing all my finances, lost property, things of that nature. And now my family has put together go fund me to help me try to rebuild my life. So the only thing now that I have gone for me to help me at this particular time, it's a go Fundme page that people, if they want, they can support me.
So we're going to have the go fund me linked in our episode bio. Please take a moment right now, don't wait. If you got anything you can spare, that would help a lot to to make it through the next phase before Jerome hopefully wins this civil trial. But that's not a certainty. So please go to the blink of our bio, click on the GoFundMe, and join me and our team in donating to help Jerome and his family. So listen, you're a strong man, and I know you're
a great example of the power of human redemption. You're a courageous guy. And I know I speak for our audience and our whole team here at Ronful Conviction when I say that you have all of my respect for standing strong and for being here with us today and sharing your story so eloquently and powerfully. So now we have the closing of the show, which is my favorite part of the show and everybody knows it by now, and the reason is because it's called closing arguments and
it works like this. I thank you again for being here and sharing your story. And then I'm going to turn my microphone off, kick back in my chair with the headphones on, and leave your mic on so you can share with us any other thoughts you have about out whatever else you want to talk about.
I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank you Offer Conviction Podcasts for allow me this opportunity to come before this audience. One of the things that I will hope that anyone who's listening will begin to do is focusing on phone records. Phone records is so very important and if you don't understand how this goes, you need to start learning about phone records. They can be manipulated, they can be altered, changed, you got to make sure that.
When going in that courtroom, when a DA.
Or your lawyer or whoever it is talk about phone records, they have to authenticate those phone records.
Make sure that those phone records are accurate.
And it's not a they poor being disguised as phone records. There's a big distinction with certification of phone records coming directly from the phone company and those records that are being developed and created by detectives or officers who are moonlighting as expert witnesses.
They still may have a gender. Thank you and God bless.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wartis, 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 Ravel. Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcasts and association with signal Company Number one