The Innocent Network is an informal collective of independent organizations that advocate on behalf of the wrongfully convicted, and every year they gather along with the growing number of those whom they've helped free. Our team was honored to join them for their twenty twenty two gathering in Arizona. The stories we heard were both heartbreaking and inspiring, and some of those incredible people were willing to record with us.
On January tenth, nineteen seventy five, there was an open house party in Suffolk County, Long Island, attended by seventeen year old Keith Bush and fourteen year old Cherise Watson. Over twenty alibi witnesses confirmed that Keith Bush was with them in the house around one thirty am, when Scherise was believed to have gotten into a red sedan, never
to be seen alive again. The following day, Cheres's parents frantic search for their daughter included a visit to Keith Bush, who had told them about how he last saw her inside the house party. Later that evening, her body was discovered in a field near that house, having been strangled to death. Us were partially on zipped and there were multiple groupings of small punctual wounds on her back. Curiously,
the wounds had not bled. Biological material and clothing fibers were gathered from her fingernails, and a hair pick was found near her body. Two witness statements emerged alleging that Keith was the last person seen with Cherise. Ignoring a more promising lead, investigators instead tortured Keith in the police station until he relented and signed a statement he hadn't
even read. It was a false confession riddled with inconsistencies, including an impossible hair pick stabbing scenario that sent Keith way.
For twenty years to life.
DNA testing, independent autopsies, and witness recantations proved Keith's confession was false, Yet Suffolk County authorities and the Parole Board were not so easily convinced.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction.
Here we're recording at the Innocence Network conference in Phoenix, and what you're about to hear combines junk science, a false confession, police and prosecutorial misconduct on a scale that is staggering, lying witnesses, incentivized witnesses. It involves so many of the causes of wrongful convictions that we see again and again, all wrapped up into one. Keith Bush, Welcome to wrongful conviction.
Thank you, Thank you for having me.
You know, I always say I'm sorry you're here because well, the reason why we're interviewing you today. But I'm very honored to have you here.
I appreciate being here.
And your story is important for us to tell because a lot of the reasons that I've already laid out. But before we do that, what I really want to do is talk about the young man Keith Bush, the young teenager Keith Bush growing up in Long Island.
Well, I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I was kind of raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut. My mother and my father they separated when I was young. My mother has her roots in Long Island. Her grandparents were born on the Indian reservation. So she used to take us back and forth to Long Island from Bridgeport, Connecticut, and then she eventually moved to Bellport, New York.
Got it.
And from what I understand, you were a fine young man. You weren't in any sort of trouble. Would you say that you were on the right track growing up?
I was basically like most kids. I played sports, you know, I went to school, went to parties, and did basically what you know kids normally do growing up.
Sounds like a nice childhood ride in the ferry back and forth. Everything was fine more or less right. Everybody has their ups and downs, but everything was fine until this terrible incident that happened at a party Suffolk County, Long Island. And we know that Suffolk County unfortunately has been a hotbed of police corruption and misconduct for generations. Of course, we've covered the Marty Tankliff story on this podcast, but your story is as powerful as any, so let's
get right into it. So this crime we're talking about January eleventh, nineteen seventy five, the middle of the winter, and on that fateful day, the parents of a young girl named Sharise Watson called the Suffoc County Police Department and they were worried because their daughter hadn't come home from a party at a friend's house just a few blocks away. This would be a cost for concern. She's fourteen, It's the wee hours of the morning, and they began
looking for Sharis. Now, about one hundred people had attended this party, and you were one of them, right, Keith.
That's correct. On Saturday, the eleventh of January nineteen seventy five, Scharisse's mother, in her effort of trying to locate her daughter, she was trying to go around finding all the peace people that her daughter had come in contact with. They came to my home and she had quiet about, you know, Serice Watson, did she come home with me? Did she
leave with anybody or whatever? And I told her, I don't know, because the last time I talked to her, she walked out the front door and said I'll see you later, but she didn't indicate that she was going home or even coming back. And she said, well, if you hear anything, could you give me a call. Later on in the evening, they came back Cherise's mother and her father to my house. That's when they came with the police officer. And this time they obviously hadn't you know,
heard from her. And you're talking about five or six o'clock in the afternoon.
I think it's every parent's worst nightmare, right, it is missing. It's a young girl. I think that adds a layer of fear, you know. But her body was found in the field nearby where the party had been helped. Brace yourself for this because it's hard to hear. But she was faced down, her pants were partially unzipped, and there
were numerous small punctures on her back. That's an important detail, as we'll see as we go along, And autopsy would later say that she had been strangled with enough force to snap the hyoid bone in her throat near her body, another important detail which becomes the subject of misconduct of a type that would be comical if it wasn't so terrible and so serious. But near her body, police also found a black plastic hairpick and a white hat.
You know, it's important to note that that night they found Serise Watson, my cousin, and another friend that came to my house with this elder gentleman Vietnam. That this guy named Robert Stewart, and I didn't know him, but my cousin, George Golson, knew him, and he seemed to be a concerned person in the community, and we were talking about what happened, and he wanted to try to help, like a lot of people in the community, to find
out what happened to Scherise. So he had asked us, if you know, we were willing to help find out some of the people who was at the party, really find out who did this, and so I agreed that, you know, I would help in any way that I could, and we had met over to this guy's house two nights. He had said that, you know, there was having some problems with the names of people who was at the party.
They didn't know how to connect the names to the faces, and that maybe that we can kind of help connect them because these people can probably provide some information about what really happened. Only thing we knew at that time was that Scherise Watson had came out the house and got into a car, a stolen red car with three individuals,
and drove off. We heard that these individuals were from Riverhead in Suffolk County, which is another town over, but I never knew who these persons were, and no one really revealed it at that time.
So there's this whole red Sedan scenario right and compelling alternate suspects. In fact, in May nineteen seventy five, which was a few months after the murder, but critically before you wereun for conviction, a guy named John Jones had given a statement to the police which placed him at the crime scene, and he admitted that the hair pick
at the scene was his. Now we can only speculate that Jones wasn't pursued any further and a statement was hidden from over four decades simply because police had already decided that you were the guy.
Right.
Of course, that had dire consequences and not just only for you, But we'll get to that in a minute. But back to the immedia aftermath. So you knew Charise and you had joined Robert Stewart's effort with your cousin George Golson and your friend Chuckie Corbyn. My understanding is you told police what you told Cherise's mother, right the same thing, that you had seen her walk out of the party sometime around one am. Now, over twenty alibi witnesses placed you at the party before you left around
three in the morning. Now, police claimed to have learned that Cherise had left the party around when one thirty am, and that a little while later people heard screaming and shouts of rape coming from the field near the party where her body was eventually bound. So on its face, it seems very weird that no one from the party looked into these alleged shouts of rape. And then I also say that police claimed to have learned this because wasn't Charisse said to have left in a red sedan.
Now.
Police also interviewed a girl named Brenda Carlos, who said that she had last seen Charise talking to you around one fifteen am, but left the party before Charise, so it doesn't seem like her statement is very relevant.
Brenda Carlos was introduced to me by Charisse Watson that night. From my understanding, Brenda Carlos was a little older than Sarise and she was supposed to walk her home and make sure she had got home. And Brenda Carlos had said that she was going home, and Sharise Watson told her that she wasn't going to go home, so she said, okay, I'll see you later and she left. That was her statement to police, which was kind of insignificant in terms
of the crime itself. But at trial when she testified, she kind of altered that statement, and the bivocal part of her testimony then became when she asked her where you're going home? She said no, Kipy was going to walk her home, and Kipy was supposed to be me Keith Bush.
Even still, this would be circumstantial evidence even if her second story was true.
Right.
What they were doing is kind of painting a picture. Her statement might not have been relevant within itself, but her statement becomes relevant when she's mentioning my name, and then there's other evidence of suggestion that kind of points to me now.
Police interviewed a teenage girl. Fifteen year old girl in Vaccine Bell. She had recently run away from her foster home and was living in an abandoned building. She knew Sharise as well as you, Keith right, and many other people at the party from when I guess she had attended the same school as you did at one time.
Oh, yes, she did so.
The statement she gave police, she said that she was standing outside the party for several hours and had seen you and Scharise leaving together quote unquote hugged up. That's what she later testified, with your arms cradling Charise around the neck. I wonder if somebody told her to say that, I'm just saying, what can you tell us about this young girl?
They had got two statements from him, but in that first statement that Monday, which was the thirteenth of January nineteen seventy five, she alleges that Cherise Watson comes out the house with me, and when the Carlos later she backtracks.
She testifies that Charis Watson came out the house with me, hugged up, and she asked her that you know, you want me to walk you home, and then Cherise allegedly told to know that you know, I was going to walk her home, and she alleges that she left us standing there and that was the last time, you know, she had seen Charise, and she had hollered to her
that I'll call you tomorrow and she said okay. That was her testimony, and that made me, according to the police, a suspect in the case because that testimony was inconsistent with the original statement I gave to police about my activities on the night of the party.
Right, what you've always maintained about your activities on the night of the party was that you stayed inside the party when Charise left. And again, over twenty alibi witnesses did confirm that, and some of them later even testified despite pressure from the police, but police used this statement from Maxim Bell, alleging that you were the last person
seeing with Scherise in order to establish probable cause. Now, she tried to recant this statement as early as nineteen eighty and eventually admitted in the twenty sixteen Affi David that the statement was made out of fear of the police and that she chose to just confirm what they
already believed. And when our audience, here's what happens next to you, we can only imagine what kind of pressure and terror was brought down on Maxine Bell, this young female at risk runaway in order to evoke that false statement. So on January fourteen, things started to spiral even further downhill. You were at school and detectives were with your investigative, CHUCKI Corbin, George Golson, and the Vietnam VETT Robert Stewart, and the cops didn't just come and grab you first.
The two younger guys were sent to get you from school, but when the school said that they needed an adult to come and get you, Robert Stewart came instead. You were released to him and he brought you to his house where you thought that you were still just helping
with this lead on the stolen red sedan. Now, apparently there was a guy named Michael Christian who might have known something about the guys in the red car, and you thought you were just going to look at some pictures and help the police in any way that you could. So you got back to mister Stewart's what happened next.
That's when the police officers came in and they started interviewing us about, you know, what we knew in Ivis. I was the one that was at the party, George Golsen was, and Chucky Corbin had left earlier, so they were mainly asking the questions towards me. And then they asked if I can show them where Michael Christian lives. And this was a guy that supposed to had heard something from these guys the next day that was in that red car. That was something that's supposed to have been incriminating.
I know Michael Christian, and I knew where he lived. But now, actually what they did is when I showed him where he lived, they rolled past the house. So I asked him where they were going, so they said, oh, we have to go. We're going to the precinct to get the list of names. We thought we had them, but we don't have them, so that you can look at him and go over them. But before they got there, and they had spoke to two detectives that was in
another car behind them, got back in the car. They took me to the fifth Precinct in Patchog, which is the town over, and then they brought me down into a basement. When they brought me down to the basement, they they walked out, and two detectives walked in, Detective Dennis Rafferty and Detective August Stall. They walked in and took over the investigation. And that was the last time I seen the outside world.
Yeah, and this interrogation, it probably won't surprise.
People who are regular listeners to the podcast, but this interrogation resulted in your false confession after they punched and kicked and abused you in ways that had to be beyond terrifying. I mean, on top of the fact that it was sort of a surprise attack because you weren't even brought there as a suspect. Now all of a sudden, you're in the basement. That's scary enough, right, like kind of almost like a dungeon scenario. Right as we find out later, at least one of these detectives was so
racist that he was throwing the N word around. So tell us about the interrogation itself.
Let me just say, you know, the forty four years I've been battling with this effort to exonerate myself, the encounter in the precinct, particularly with the physical abuse, the psychological. Of all the efforts that I made to exonerate myself, the most painful part of that whole experience really sits did. What they did to me was something I would have never imagined from a person of that status, because obviously, when you're young, you're taught to believe that law enforcement
represents an authority that's equivalent to your parents. So when they begin to question me, in spite of the fact that I maintained my innocence, they didn't really want to hear that. They were only concerned with trying to get me to confess to the crime and to sign a confession, you know, with promises that they can help me. You know, I was a young kid, you know, things happened. I
just wanted to get laid. And then they started to tell me about this statement they had from this witness, which is why they said they know that I committed the crime because I was the last person to be seen with her alive. And they went on and on with this for maybe about an hour and a half, and then they decided to move me to Hogpok, which is the headquarters for homicide squad. Now, I constantly asked them could I call my mother. I felt the pressure
of confinement, of being trapped. Today I can articulate it as in communicato. There was no way, you know, they was letting me out of here, and I had to figure out how to get out of there. You know, I found out that my cousin and mister Stewart and Chucky Corbin had came to the precinct two to four times looking for me, and they told them that I wasn't there. So obviously they had no intentions of it ever. Let me get past that phase.
No, they wouldn't have let Jesus in if he showed up to try to help you.
Right, And their intentions was clear. They wanted me to confess to this crime. And once they took me to hog Park, they kept drilling me, one officer coming in after another, and you know, they kept going through that whole process, the good guy, bad guy tactic, and I kept telling him over and over I didn't commit the crime.
I wanted to call my my mother, called somebody, but you know, they just continue the process until all of a sudden, six or seven of these guys came running in and grabbed me from all over and just started pounding me, hit me upside their head with a phone book and stopping, trying to make me sign a confession. And I kept telling them I didn't do it. Then
they would start back up, stop, start. You know, they're threatening, and you know we're gonna make you stare you'll never have kids, and you know you're not going nowhere til you sign this. We'll beat you to and you know they're going on and on, and at some point, you know, I just you know, I got scared. I lost my focus, and when I signed that confession, I signed my life away. I know I signed something. I didn't know what the confession said or what I signed said. I never set
it out my mouth. I just signed the paper. When I first came to the County jail, I was in sick Bay for maybe the week to two weeks, and that's when I first you know read and found out what I had allegedly said to them through the signing of the confession.
You quickly recanted your confession, saying that the detectives wouldn't accept your denials or even let you call your mother. And importantly, this confession said that when she pulled your hand away from her pants, that she had refused your sexual advance, and then when she pulled her hand away, you started stabbing her with her hair pick, and that when she screamed or strangled her to keep her quiet.
So they provided the narrative, but even what they said was obviously provably not true and not possible scientifically, because the victim didn't bleed, which means of course that she was dead before whatever it was that punctured her skin punctured her skin.
That was a fabricated confession constructed by them before the facts were cleared to them. Whatever they had at that particular time, they used to try to paint a picture of me committing this crime, and they got it wrong.
Now, the hairpic is so important in this scenario. First of all, it's a ridiculous concept the hairpick. Unless it's made out of steel, it's going to break if you start stabbing somebody with it. And you don't have to be scientists to figure this out or an expert in plastic Did you even carry a hair pick at the time? Keith is balled these days, so I don't know what your hairstyle was back then.
Yeah, I wore an afro. Back then. We all carried picks. They were popular.
Oh yeah.
During the interrogation, they had showed me a black plastic pick that wasn't a plastic bag. And I didn't know that the pick that they found was from the crime scene. And they asked me, was that my pick? I said, no, that wasn't. But I don't know what's going on. I ain't know what she had punctured wounds in a lower back.
How would you know? You weren't there?
Yeah, I don't know none of this now.
They executed a search warrant on your house on January fourteenth, and they recovered or claimed to recover several items, including a metal hair pic that would be introduced to trial as the weapon that left the punctures on Scharissa's back, but it would later be revealed again surprise surprise, that the pick the police seized didn't belong to.
You, they wasn't going to leave my home until they found a metal pick, it didn't matter what kind, with style or whatever. And when they didn't have my pick, they called my cousin, George. He came over and he gave them his pick because my brother told them they ain't gonna leave until they get a pick. But the detective tried to testify that they got the pick from my brother, and my brother said it was my pick, which was a lie.
There's no real way to describe this other than that they planted the evidence. They didn't even bother the plant it themselves. They had to have somebody else come and bring me. It's so incredibly twisted.
So that pick that they alleged was used to create those puncture wounds on a lower back, they went clusters of threes, four and five. They had one that went so deep that it almost hit the liver. And you know, obviously today we have these medical experts saying that it's impossible for that pick to have caused those punctured wounds.
You don't have to be an experts and know that that's not possible. It's not possible because it's not possible. It's plastic and it's.
Dull these experts are saying today. Is like, you know, even an expert back then should have drawned that same conclusion. They said, I confessed it to a crime that was impossible to have happened. But the medical examiner testified in his opinion that these pick calls those puncture wounds.
Well, you had not only the medical examiner who was either completely wrong or lying, you have a suffercount of detective who's there saying that the victim who fought for her life scratching her assailant had your jacket under her fingernails.
As if they test every jack that was ever made and determine, you know, the particularities of those fibers or whatever. But there was no science to back it up.
Right, when we talk about junk science again, I have to laugh to keep from crying. I mean, it's so ridiculous that a fourth grader should be able to figure out that this was not possible. But of course a jury is going to be susceptible to testimony from people like this who are supposedly quote unquote experts. So on April eighteenth, this is important. There's not a logical suspect I'm talking about this guy, John Jones. A few months after the crime, they arrested a guy named John Jones
on a charge of unauthorized use of a vehicle. Now, no one really knows how he came to the attention of the homicide detectives, but he was questioned about Cheresa's death and given a polygraph that was said to be inconclusive. He was interviewed again on May ninth, short time after, and this time he gave a more expansive statement. I
got another red flag. He said he was at the party, got drunk and started to walk to his sister's house, even though she lived east of the party, and the body was found to the west.
Red Flag number two Jones.
This character said that he stumbled over Sharesa's body in the field and the process dropped his hair pick. He said he didn't know that the girl was dead until he heard about the death on the news.
Keep in mind, we never knew nothing about this guy till like forty years later. You know, at the time they interviewed him, they kept this hidden. We do know that the district attorney was intimately involved than it be because when they did the polygraph test, it was sent to him, and the person who took the statement from
him was Detective Rafferty. John Jones also admits to the guy that when that showed him the black pick, he said, yeah, that looks like my pick, and he places himself at the crime scene around the time frame that the experts estimate the cause of death. But they had already threw the crime on me. They had already claimed that I voluntarily confessed to the crime, and they didn't have the integrity or dignity to step back and say we made a mistake and open up that avenue of investigation.
So they protected this guy, who they had every reason to believe was a vicious killer of a young child. They allowed him to ring three. On February sixteenth of nineteen seventy six, he was arrested in charge with third degree rape after he impregnated a fifteen year old girl. But two weeks after Jones's arrest, ironically, two weeks later, on March first, nineteen seventy six, your trial began in the Supreme Court of the State of New York for
Suffolk County. You had a paid attorney named Harold Sulligman. The prosecutor was Gerald Sullivan, and the judge was Mervin Tannebound. The state's case, of course, was built around Bell's testimony, your false confession immediately recanted and the quote unquote forensic and physical evidence which we now know was just a
pack of lies. So doctor Adelman of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner's Office, as you mentioned, he said that the punker wounds on Charesa's back were consistent with the arrangement of the times on the hair pick found at your house, but the plastic pick was not interered into evidence a trial. Wow, there's a lot of lies just in that sentence alone.
There's like three or four lives. It's incredible. A suffer County detective predictably testified that the three fibers recovered from beneath Sharesa's fingernails quote did contain unquote fibers taken from a denim jacket that you wore. That would be laughable if it wasn't so serious. And when this sick fuck Rafferty testified, he denied any wrongdoing during your interrogation. Also predictable,
he claimed that you freely, involuntarily gave your statement. Seligman had no knowledge your lawyer, right had no knowledge of John Jones, as you mentioned Keith or his statement to the police. When he cross examined Rafferty, he said to the detective quote, officer, was there other suspects on the day you interviewed my client? Sullivan Deda objected, and the jury was excused while the two sides had a conference
in the judges chambers. According to an investigation by Newsday, Sullivan said there were.
No other suspects.
He told the judge that quote, there was nobody else who was connected with the crime with any evidence end quote. That is an incredibly bold lie. Sullivan said that if Seligman took Rafferty down that path, it would open the door to him asking the detective about all sorts of raw evidence that might be damaging to you Keith, and Seligman backed off.
He was preventing my lawyer from opening up lines of questioning as to other suspects in this case. Detective Rafferty was the one who took the statement from John J. Jones, and this was three weeks after he's sitting at a Huntly hearing determining the voluntary or involuntariliness of the confession. This guy is given testimony and he's pretending like I'm
the only person of interest. So now when he testifies that trial, when we did not question him in that area, we did not get an opportunity for him to go on the record. And I mean, obviously the lying all throughout, but to continuously lie by concealing exculpatory evidence.
And the existence of Jones as an ultimate suspect was hidden from you, as you said, Keith, for four decades, forty long years. And you also had multiple alibi witnesses. Some of them testified again under oath, that you would stay at the party till three am, an hour and a half after the murder took place. Others testified that
they never saw Bell outside the party. But several alibi witnesses didn't testify, and of course it comes out later and they said this in an affid Davis, that the police threatened them with the rest if they helped you with your defense. So that's what the police were doing. While they were letting this Jones guy walk the street. They were out there paying visits to the people who wanted to do their duty, who wanted to be honest and forthright and come to your defense. As they knew
you weren't the guy that did it. You did testify in your own defense denying killing her, of course, but when you testified about the brutal beating that you endured in the interrogation room, the prosecution attacked you. Tell me if this is wrong, Keith. They asked how many times you had been hit, and when you responded, I don't know. I wasn't counting, but I know it was a lot of times end quote, that was enough for them to say, well, see that he doesn't even know how many times he was hit.
What the hell are they talking about?
Ask the position they try to take.
But everybody should have seen through that. You were acquitted of intentional premeditated murder, but convicted of second degree murder and attempted sexual abuse and sentenced to twenty years to life in prison.
I was withdrawn. I was in a state of confusion, and it threw me into a deep state of shame of hurt because I was ashamed at myself for allowing them to do that to me, like I trapped myself in hell. Obviously, I've seen the world looking down upon me, and the hatred that people had for me was the direct result of me allowing those detectives to do that to me, and that bothered me to the extent that I hated them, I hated the system. I just felt a sense of anger, almost like it was born out
of me, like an entity on my back. I had a sense of anger that may have served as a few and all I wanted to do was fight back. And for forty four years, I just kept fighting back in every way I could.
And fight back you did.
So let's talk about the impellate process and how you got here. So initially, you didn't go after all of the issues of innocence that we've already laid out so far. Rather, the first appeal was focused on whether or not it was legal for them even to have detained you in the first place, and a Supreme Court decision had come down in nineteen seventy nine, I believe, called Dunaway versus New York, which addressed issues relating to the Fourth and
fourteenth Amendments. Now, the fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searchers or seizures and sets the guidelines for the issuing of warrants, and importantly here that warrants must be justified by probable cause.
Now after hearing your arguments, the.
Appell Division found the police used deception and trickery to.
Illegally de team you.
But if there was significant evidence to show probable cause, it would cure, so to speak, the illegal detention. Your defense was ready to argue that police did not have probable cause, even with the statement that Maxine Bell was just about to recant.
Maxine Bell had left Bell put after my conviction because she was having problems with kids in the community and there was well, how did you lie on them? And so anyway, to our surprise, the prosecutor had sent Maxime Bell a plane ticket from Alabama to come back to testify. But when she came back, she had told the district attorney that she's going to tell the truth that she lied and none of this really happened. That kind of
like knocked out the key argument of probable cause. But instead of the judge ruling in favor of the defense based on the recantation of Maxime in the fact that there wasn't sufficient evidence to support the illegal detention, he concluded that Maxine Bell's trial testimony is chewing, that her recantation is false, and he rendered in his determination that from the trial, she was a sympathetic and appealing figure.
Now she has gone into an immature adult, but the extent of her disturbance is not fully described, so he denied the probable cause hearing. So I had went back on a clatteral attack to argue against the judge's fact findings, and I argued at pro say. So I argued that obviously she had matured into a disturbed adult. But this girl, after she testified against me I was convicted, she was
home crying thinking about what she did during trials. She was pregnant and she had a baby boy, and three months after her baby was born, the baby just died. So she thought God was punishing her for what she did to me. She tried to commit suicide. She had to seek psychiatric care. So I said, obviously there is some disturbance in this girl, but all that disturbance relates
to her given false testimony against me. And I asked the judge if he would order that a professional in that psychiatric field can examine her and assist the judge in this fact finding determination, because this judge concluded that her disturbance is not fully described.
He denied that too, and you received denial after denial, first as a pro Salytican filing a federal Habeast and then even with the help of Censurion ministries, and the denials continued through nineteen ninety six, which is when you became eligible for parole.
Of course, the Parole Board denied you I think it was five times because you refuse to admit guilt and
register as a sex offender. And later the Department of Corrections went so far as to impose policies that further punished you for your refusal to admit guilt, and in response to that, you took them to court with a compelling argument, which was that since you swore on the Bible and proclaimed your innocence at trial, for them to penalize you and discriminate against you if you didn't break that oath, that sounds like a violation of your right to religion, and a judge determined that you had a
constitutional question of law that was entitled to review. It's actually brilliant. Meanwhile, you had also been pursuing DNA testing, and in two thousand and six the Sevin County DA started a DNA review project to look at old cases that had biological evidence that previously couldn't be tested, and so it finally looked like this could get you around the barrel board entirely.
They tested my DNA against the fingernail scrapings that they found. There was a male profile and two females, but the male profile did not match me. But at that time they didn't tell me that. And when my attorney, Harold Seligman, looked into it for me, they wrote me a letter telling me that they haven't got a decision yet. They haven't heard nothing yet, but when they do, they will notify me and that I go to the parole board and I will be released in two thousand and six.
Now I go to the parole board and I maintain my innocence. I refuse to take a sex offense. My stance don't change. They released me from prison, but they labelize me as a sexual predator, and they sent me back to the community with that stigma. Then they might my life twice as hard to transition because of that stigma for the next twelve years. All that time, my release from prison wasn't nothing but a transfer to another institution.
Like a bigger prison.
They're the bigger picture of my life was institutionalized.
I read an incredible quote from you, Keith.
Somebody must have asked you about why you refuse to me guilt, and it probably would have opened the prison doors and set you home, right, I would have you would have been paroled earlier. And you said, I refuse to let them do to me as a man what they did to me as a boy. I mean that
hits hard. So there you are out in the quote unquote free world, but unable to use the internet, to live within a thousand or fifteen hundred feet of a school, even try to rebuild your life, try to get meaningful employment. All those doors are totally closed to you. So the punishment continues, and then it gets worse again because, on top of all the other indignities, that you were supposed to pay a monthly fee to allow officials to monitor
your online activities. Okay, so with the money that you can't make because they won't let you really get a job because you're a registered sex offender, you're supposed to pay them to do the job that they're supposedly monitoring your online activities. Okay, there's a whole lot wrong with that, but we're going to jump to the next. So during an inspection of your home, officials found that you had
been working on your niece's computer writing your memoirs. Right, not doing anything wrong, the farthest thing from it, but the computer had Internet access. Sure enough, they use this as an excuse to send you back to prison for a freaking year because you were trying to write your memoirs on a computer that had Internet access.
When you're living under these types of stringent regulations, you're basically living the life of a slave. Irregardless to whether they would have violated me or not. You know, it wouldn't have made no different because I wasn't going to stop fighting for my innocence.
No, you would not, And you were able to get one of the one of the real greats in this field to take your case. I'm talking about Adele Bernhard from the Innocence Clinic that Pace Law School and later New York Law Schools Post Conviction Innocence Clinic as well.
So she was able to get the courts to allow DNA testing and to confirm with Suffolk County already knew that your DNA was excluded from the fingernail scrapings and the plastic pick found of the scene that, along with the nineteen eight nine state report criticized and the tactics of Detective Rafferty and others, should have been more than
enough to overturn the conviction. But Suffolk County still had the confession, the false confession that was signed under torture, police torture, and they argued that the nineteen eighty nine report was little more than a quote unquote fishing expedition and that the fingernail scrapings could have been contaminated, and somehow that that was enough to get your motion denied.
And then next you went after the false confession, and in order to prove that it was false, A Dell got the renowned forensic pathologist, doctor Michael Bodden to assess the autopsy and other physical evidence to show that the statement they wrote for you to sign did not match reality, That the pattern and spacing of the pick did not match up to the puncture wounds. The punctures were in
groups of three rather than ten like the pick. And in addition, some of the wounds were too deep to have been made by the pick without the neighboring wounds being equally deep. Now, how the wounds were made. We have no idea and according to this alleged statement, needed did you. But anyway, and also pointed out that without bleeding around the wounds, they must have been made posthumously, which contradicted the statement in which the stabbing happened before
she was strangled to death. Now you already had the twenty sixteen affidavit from Maxine Bell recanting, saying that quote, I was scared of the police. This is a direct quote. I was scared of the police. I believed I was doing the right thing by confirming what they already believed.
End quote.
Then in twenty seventeen, that's when you found out about this insane Brady violation, with John Jones having admitted in nineteen seventy five, before your trial and before a rape the Jones committed in nineteen seventy six that he admitted to being at the scene and.
That the pick was his.
Adele also obtained affidavits from witnesses at the party stating that they had been discouraged from helping you. And discouraged that's not a strong enough word, because we know what these motherfuckers were doing. I mean, I forget my language,
but this is it's just sick. Then, in twenty eighteen, Adele presented all of this to the new DA in Suffolk County, Timothy Sinny, who had just opened a Conviction Integrity Bureau, And when the Suffix CIV did their own investigation, they agreed with doctor Biden's findings, as well as that
the detective testimony about the fibers was also unsubstantiated. They furthermore suggested that John Jones, who died in two thousand and six, appeared to be quote and again I'm quoting directly the most viable suspect in Sherise Watson's murder end quote. And while they couldn't confirm the physical abuse during the interrogation, they agreed that even in absence of that, the tactics were psychologically coercive enough to produce a false statement from
a scared teenager. And while Rafferty would only communicate through his lawyer, his partner August Stahl, sat down for an interview in which he stated quote that fucking blank did it. So I don't think we need to say anymore about what,
unfortiately is not a surprising statement for Detective Stall. So finally, it took forty four years of fighting forty four years, but the Suffa County issued in order to vacate your conviction on May twenty second, twenty nineteen, rightfully, so you then filed suit against them and the State of New York,
settling in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. Now, no amount of money could ever be enough for what they put you through, But I'm glad that at least you can live out the rest of your days and some you know, reasonable physical comfort and the comfort of having your name cleared. Now, I'm sure members of our audience would like to keep up with you, like I already do. So what's a good way for them to do that?
You know, I'm not really on the social media. I got on TikTok as a little you know, so I did a couple of little skids on it. I plan on taking some of my poems and then turn them into skits and throw them out there.
Amazing.
Well, I'm already following him at kt Bush five. That's kt Bush like the plant five number five. We'll have that linked in the bio. And by the way, you mentioned your poetry, and I understand that you have a few books out, So what can you tell us about all that stuff.
I just I had did a book, a poetic book, Poetic Raised, Visioneering, Magnetic, and that was some of the poems that I kind of wrote when I was in prison, and it represents, you know, different stages of my development, the transitions I went through. There were anger parts, they were amicable parts, you know, just the different phases that I went through. But I'm in the process so completed
the memoir. I just got to get it published. And then there's another book that I had wrote on the African American self reparation concept that I had kind of developed. But I want to try to get these two books out this year and you know, probably within months.
Okay, well, we'll put a link to it in the bio. And now, Keith, we have a tradition here.
At Ron for Conviction. We closed the show the same way every time, and it's my favorite part of the show. And here's why, because it works like this. It's called closing arguments, and it works like this. Again, I thank you for being here, taking your time and sharing your story. And then I'm gonna turn my microphone off, leave yours on. I'm just gonna kick back in my chair. And listen for any final thoughts you want to share with me and our amazing audience.
Okay, first of all, you know, I got to give the highest praise to my mother. You know she is you know, she's my Earth goddess. And no one has fought on my side with me all the way, persistently, even when I got tired, that she had motivated me and she was there to see me exonerate myself. And I also know that my brothers and sisters never they never doubted my innocence and was always there for me. And there are family members who also supported me, friends
and a lot of people in the community. But doing prison time also changed the way I see the world, and there were some of them prisoners who were my teachers inspired me to grow, and I engaged myself in movements that led to educate a whole lot of other prisoners by teaching them what they need to learn in order to improve themselves. Because it's not only the innocence that's a victim to the criminal justice system, but it's the perpetrators who victimize that create the feeding of the
criminal justice system, and it eats all victimization. And I spent my time in prison wisely by investing in my personal development and giving back and helping some of these guys to change their lives around so that they can return home as an asset as opposed to a liability. But my journey was a difficult journey and it is
not one worth living again. But one thing I can say that once I place my faith in God, which is very important to my spirituality, then I was able to draw those things that represents God like righteousness right people to me, and they helped me to open this door. So I'm eternally grateful not only to the innocent projects with Adele and all the other people who fight for the innocent, but for the integrity units who have the dignity to stand up when something is wrong and say
that it's wrong. In that fight for your generation. That makes it easier. So you know, there is a debt that I pay. My debt to the righteous, all those who do right things and help us create a better world for ourselves in spite of the things that we go through. Because our world is balanced on polarity good and evil, and there's always going to be a battle. So I'm glad to be on that right side.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clivern 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, and 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